Call the Rain

by Kristi Lea

  Call the Rain

  Copyright ©2013 Kristina Schmits

  First Edition

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and locations are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Kristi Lea Schmits

  Stock Imagery from Hot Damn Stock http://www.hotdamnstock.com

  For Charlotte

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you as always to Amanda Berry, Dawn Blackenship , Jeannie Lin, and Shawntelle Madison for the support, the coffee, the encouragement, the sanity-saving lunches, and frank criticism that keeps me writing. Thank you also to the wonderful members of the MORWA Core, who read multiple versions of this work and who always ask, “What are you writing?”

  Most importantly, thank you to my husband. Thank you for eleven years (and counting) of love and support. I would never make it without your help, your patience, your wonderful parenting skills, and your friendship.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 1Joral staggered to the edge of the lake and knelt down in the soft mud of its banks. His head spun from too much grol and too much meem-smoke and his heart was heavy from too little cheer. Flickering light from the bonfires behind him painted the water with orange and red. The water itself seemed to burn, but his own shadow turned the closest to tar.

  Cool wet sludge soaked into the knees of his suede leggings and would likely ruin the buttery finish of the costly garment. Some part of him was appalled by his thoughtless actions, his carelessness. That part seemed very far away, and the mud very close. It pulled him down, further into the morass.

  He shook his head, trying to clear it, and the shadows around him seemed to swirl. A churlish voice from within laughed at him. Tonight he had been dressed in finely beaded leather clothing and paraded about like a prize pony. As the son of the Chieftess, he was quite the catch. And caught he was. How ridiculous he must have looked, sick with the ceremonial smoke and the feasting. Sick with dread over what the future held.

  His head throbbed in time to the celebratory drums, still beating with a wild energy and a new rhythm. His wedding next moon would join the two largest tribes of the Segra people. Already tonight, at the betrothal ceremony, the best musicians of each tribe had collaborated. Melding. Mixing. Unifying their music.

  Too bad his betrothed was not here to hear the tributes to her beauty. Not here to dance to the rattle and bass and chanting of their people. Too bad he would not meet his betrothed until the wedding ceremony. He wondered if she were half as beautiful, half as graceful, half as kind as her Father-Chief claimed. He wondered if she would laugh when she found out that her husband to be fell drunk into the mud during the celebration. Or if she would turn a cold shoulder, like his mother had done.

  One more moon.

  He cupped a hand and dipped it into the cool black of the pond’s water, and brought it to his lips to sip. The water was sweet like the cane syrup harvested from the southern plains. Seductive like the finest grol. Sacred.

  He drank and drank, trying to cool the burning in his throat, and washed his face to clear it of soot from the fires. His vision swam again, and he wondered just how much of the spicy grain alcohol he had drunk. To refuse a sip from anyone who offered would have been an insult.

  To refuse the betrothal would have been an invitation to war.

  He shook his head. His future wife would be beautiful and graceful, because the daughter of a Chief set the standard for beauty and grace. And they would be well matched. Because the alternative meant hardship, violence and death. For both of their peoples.

  Joral ran dripping fingers through his long hair, combing it back from his face. His forehead burned He shivered in the night air, a chill that ran down his spine and took hold of his chest. He had wandered too far from the fires. His stomach clenched, then heaved.

  The tongues of red and orange flame flickered again on the water. Calling to him. Sweet. Cool. He leaned forward, reaching for another handful. His fingers breached the surface and slipped into the blackness.

  ***

  The voice of the water sang in Illista’s mind, pulling and teasing at her thoughts until she could barely stand still. More than once during the feast, she had found her feet wandering out of the cooking tent, towards the beckoning song. More than once, she caught herself at the entrance, the basket or platter in her arms about to spill its contents on the hardened dirt and grass beneath her feet.

  She fingered the tiny bloodstone she wore on a simple hemp cord around her neck. The rock pulsed beneath her fingers. Soon.

  Now, the food had been served. The evening chores complete. Legumes and hard grain soaked for the morrow’s breakfast, and the blazing cookfires had been damped to embers. The youngest of the tribesmen still danced and smoked and drank and caroused around the fire at the shore of the large puddle these people called a lake. The eldest were already snug in their tents, snoring inside their sleeping furs.

  She slipped through the shadows of the camp toward the far dark shore, cursing her clumsy feet and the plodding gait of her fat limbs. Soon she would be herself again. If only for a few stolen moments.

  Not that anyone would notice her like this. In the false skin of a Waki, she looked much like an overgrown and overly simple child. If one of her Segra masters were to see her wandering about the camp at night, they would ignore her, or shepherd her back to her own tent like a wayward tot.

  The Waki were not simple people. They were warm and loving and far more intelligent than the Segra gave them credit for. Still, whenever she glimpsed her reflection in a pot of water or the stillness of a pond, she shuddered. The face in those reflections with the broad cheeks and the dull eyes was not hers.

  The real Illista begged to be set free. Free of the disguise that forced her to stay inland, serving the tall Segra people with the bland smile of an even-tempered Waki. Free of the need to hide.

  She hesitated at the edge of the brush fence that had been erected to keep their horses from wandering afield. It was a luxury to find so much wood at this campsite. The tiny lake, fed by two converging springs, was generous with her waters and supported a tiny copse of trees. Still, the superstitious Segra only gathered fallen limbs and would keep every stick when they broke camp. Some larger branches would replace aging tent poles and spears, and tender saplings could be bent to bows.

  In that at least, Illista, mused, the Segra were to be commended. They did not squander the wealth of life or soil their waters like Southern lords’ people did.

  Two horses nearby whinnied, and she walked as far away from the fence as she could while staying in its shadow. Horses did not much like Waki, in general and few could abide Illista. It seemed that they could sense what people could not. Her otherness.

  Finally, when there was no more fence and no more tents to drape the night in heavy shadows, she slowed her pace. To run, with these legs, would be to attract attention. Slowly, quietly, she walked as though out for a stroll on a fine spring afternoon instead of in the pitch black of the pre-dawn fall.

  The bloodstone charm that maintained her shape could not dim all of her senses, and of late the call of the water had grown louder. Louder than the seas of her girlhood used to. Louder than any stream she had passed. And with each breath, the sound seemed to grow.

  Through the toughened leather of her bare Waki feet, she could
feel the drips and sprinkles of moisture in the ground. She could sense the water flowing towards the trees on the far side of the pool, could feel the roots as they drank greedily from the ground. The bloodstone could not hide the scent of the water, sweet and pure with the bite of minerals from the rocks of the northern mountains from which it flowed.

  Then, at last, her toes could feel the welcoming cool of the lake. It lapped around her ankles and she had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out in joy.

  The necklace throbbed again against her chest, hot now. Angry. Its energy had to fight to maintain control of her disguise. Illista's true self threatened to escape it’s tightly wound bonds.

  She inhaled deeply and then exhaled, trying to control the pounding in her chest. She lifted the hem of her plain woven dress and waded a little deeper. The water curled around her knees, welcoming, cradling her legs. It could, too, could sense her true self.

  It was then that she heard it. The water whispered to her. It whispered of sadness and fear. Of wrongness. It pleaded with her for help. It was a call she dared not ignore.

  She pulled the bloodstone necklace off first, and gasped as her limbs flashed hot. The sturdy work dress, now too wide and far too short on her lithe frame, followed, and she piled them on the bank. With a silent prayer to the lake to protect them for her, she dove.

  Chapter 2

  Joral felt a whack like a sack of rocks pounding him in the chest, and he coughed. Water spewed from his mouth and he turned his head, gagging. His chest was pounded a second time.

  “Curse you, horseman. Breathe.” A voice hissed.

  He coughed again and vomited. More water. And mud. And foulness.

  The pressure on his chest eased and he blinked in the deep gray light. Nearly dawn. What had happened?

  “You shouldn't drink grol and swim.”

  He rolled himself fully to his stomach and pushed up to his hands and knees. His vision blurred again. The celebration. The grol. Drinking from the lake. He fought another wave of nausea as he tried to form words. “I don't swim.”

  “Clearly.”

  He saw a flicker of movement and turned his head, looking for the source of the voice. It was a woman, draped in the long shadows of night.

  “Who are you?”

  The form backed away. “A ghost.”

  Ghosts don't have silvery black hair or eyes that gleam in the moonlight. Joral tried to speak and his midsection cramped. His questions turned to a groan as he lowered himself back down to lie in the mud.

  He made out the gentle curve of a woman's backside as his silver ghost dove soundlessly back into the lake and disappeared.

  “Thank you,” he whispered to the empty shore.

  ***

  Illista frowned into the pot of stew that she stirred. The rumble of the boiling water echoed in her mind with an excitement loud enough to drown out a camp full of children galloping through pasture after the spring foals.

  “What is wrong with your eyebrows? It looks as though they are twitching.” Quarie set a basket of crumbs on the ground at Illista's feet.

  “Can't you hear it, sister?” Illista sprinkled a handful of dried barley on top of the water. The sound didn't stop. But it changed.

  Quarie bustled past Illista and her singing stewpot to the large roasting fire. “Haven't you turned the spit since I left? The meat is nearly burnt on this side. Chieftess will be unhappy with us.”

  Illista hung her spoon on a hook along the side of the pot and hefted the heavy lid to cover the vegetables-and-grain while it simmered. “Quarie,” she whispered through her fat Waki lips. “The stew.”

  Quarie glanced up from the large metal rack where she heaved the handle up and over her head. Her smooth, hairless arms were strong but still she struggled beneath the weight of the wild boar. “What is wrong with the stew? Help, please.”

  Illista hurried to her sister's side and helped push. The handle paused at the top of its arc, just at the far reach of their arms. Finally, with a groan, it crested the top of its rotation and began the easier descent. Melting fat dripped around the side of the large hogs, sizzling and popping as it hit the red-hot coals beneath.

  Illista held the spit handle just above shoulder level while her sister locked down the cross bar that kept it from freely rotating. She coughed lightly as another fat droplet hissed in the fire and kicked up smoke directly into her face.

  Quarie turned and planted ham-like fists on her plump hips “Are you sick, Illista?”

  The thick smoke in the cooking tent would choke most people of the tribe as well as Illista's true self, but the Waki were supposed to be immune. It was what made them such ideal workers. Ideal and invisible. The tribespeople barely notice the small round Waki, waddling in and out of cooking tents and mines and other laboring areas. With her bloodstone and her borrowed form, she should not have been affected by smoke. Nor should her eyebrows have been moving as she frowned. Not even twitching.

  A breeze wafted a puff of sooty smoke into her face and Illista's lungs seized in a fit of coughing. “The stew,” she wheezed between short squeezing breaths. “It is singing.”

  Illista gasped again as Quarie slapped her hard on the back, knocking the wind from her lungs and making her pendant bounce against the bare flesh beneath her dress. It prickled at her skin today like a burr, each bounce stinging her breastbone.

  Illista stumbled to the tent flap and inhaled deeply of the fresher air outside. It stank of horse dung and dirt and hot sun on unwashed skin. But it did not make her cough.

  “I hear nothing.” Quarie's voice was a whisper from the far side of the fire of the tent where she poked hesitantly at the cauldron of boiling broth.

  The joyful chimes of the stew had quieted to a low babble, almost too quiet to hear from here. Almost, but not quite.

  “Have you been in the grol, sister?”

  Illista took another deep breath and tried to relax the clenching of her belly. It didn't mean anything. The singing. The coughing. Her swim last night and the faint hum of whispers from the lake.

  From somewhere outside, three short burst of a horn sounded followed by a trill

  Quarie dropped the lid onto the pot with a loud clang. “That is our signal.”

  Illista’s breath caught in her throat and she gasped as though the air outside had suddenly become as thick and smoky as the cooking tent. Someone knows. We have been summoned.

  As Illista fought to control the sudden shaking in her knees, Quarie grabbed her by the arm and looked her over. “What is wrong with you today? Off with that apron. And wipe the smudges off of your cheeks. The council will think that their food is tainted with filth if they see you looking like this.”

  Illista stared into her sister’s wide bland eyes. Quarie’s blandly impassive face belied the urgency in her voice. Beneath her sturdy dress, Quarie wore the same sort of bloodstone pendant that Illista did. Had her sister ever taken hers off during the three years since they fled their homeland? Even for a moment? Would she even recognize Quarie’s true form anymore?

  Quarie pulled on Illista’s arm, dragging her bodily into the sunlight. “Come on, Illista. And after we serve the Chieftess, you need to see the healer. You are not yourself today.”

  ***

  Joral sat cross-legged on the soft suede of the tent floor, his hands clasped firmly in his lap. Firmly enough to keep them from trembling, as clouds of meem smoke billowed above his head. His stomach roiled at the scent, spiced with aromatic seeds and dried winter bark. But he could not show weakness. Not now. Not here.

  Not again.

  Not while the Chieftess entertained the delegation from the Xan-Segra.

  Zuke nudged him gently, the man's spiky elbow digging into Joral's rock-tight arm muscle. He took a surreptitious breath of air and held it as he accepted the steaming meem-bowl. He bowed his neck and closed his eyes and forced his chest to expand as though he were inhaling deeply of the mist. He exhaled then, above the bowl, so that his breath would s
tir the swirling silver cloud and no one would notice that his lungs had been clear of the influence. As clear as they could be in such close quarters.

  The Chieftess's ceremonial tent had a tall ceiling far above the reach of any man, and it spanned the width of ten horses standing nose-to-tail. But today it was crowded. Joral's own position, at the right hand of his mother, afforded him little more room than any of the dozens of others crowded here.

  “Mmmph.”

  Joral stiffened at the syllable from his mother's lips. He was too slow to inhale the meem, too fast to exhale. Perhaps his head was bowed too low this afternoon, or his hair had grown the wrong color. She was never satisfied with his manners. Despite all of his training these past months, he still felt like a foreigner in her gaze.

  He turned to present her with the earthen bowl. She arched one eyebrow at him, her black eyes sparkling with questions and disapproval and purpose. Her hands moved slowly, evenly, patiently to accept the offering and set it soundlessly on the skins that lined the floor. She moved with the grace of a wolf, with a body long accustomed to hunting and fighting. But though her touch was soft, it was not quite gentle. The jaws of this wolf-mother could snap the neck of the young pup if she chose.

  From across the fire, the eyes of the Xan-Segra delegates bored into him as well. Their leader, a warrior named Rafil, met Joral’s gaze with a stony look that fell just short of a sneer. The others in their orange-banded tunics and beaded chokers and icy blue eyes followed his every move. Likely they would dissect his every gesture, his every breath, his every strand of hair to measure his worth. Whether they would paint him in a favorable light to his betrothed, or to revile him, remained to be seen. Please Gods that she does not despise me before we even set eyes upon one another.

  Joral's stomach growled audibly. He wanted nothing more than to crawl back into his sleeping furs until the pains that still wracked him ceased. He closed his eyes and his mind immediately recalled the lake bed with its soft grass and the sweet scent of clean water. And the spirit who had saved him in the night.