Call the Rain

by Kristi Lea

  The prince knelt beside the fire and unwrapped the bundle in his hands. He effectively blocked her path to Zuke. If she tried to go around the other side of the fire, she would have to climb over assorted boxes and items. She gulped and made her way toward Joral, conscious of how her steps rocked and her fat feet scuffled along the ground.

  She could not keep from brushing against his tunic as she passed. From the folds of finely woven cloth, she smelled cedar and pine underneath the sour remains of the meem of today's banquet. They were the scents of the woodlands of her childhood. Places with tree trunks that soared upwards to tickle the clouds and soft sweet moss to cushion her feet. Places teeming with life and sunshine and streams generous with their waters.

  A loud hiss broke her reverie, sending icy shivers up her back. “What was that?”

  Zuke looked over her shoulder curiously. “Can you smell it?”

  Illista shook her head. The hissing sound turned to a glug, greedy and smug with tiny whispers that curled up and around through the air. She steeled herself and tried to ignore the pleas from the water in the bowl in front of Zuke. It was a cry of help, she realized. There was something in that water that was dark and foul.

  “How about you, Joral? Smell familiar?”

  The prince finished opening his leather wrapped bundle and spread the cloth out on the ground in front of him, revealing an assortment of small metal implements. “No. Should it?”

  Zuke waved Illista over, and she hurried the rest of the way to his side. Her eyes were drawn to the contents of his stone pot like iron to a lodestone. The water was deceptively calm and clear. She eyed it askance.

  “Care for a sip?” he asked.

  She backed away.

  Zuke laughed, the sound merry and loud and startling. “Excellent. Never eat or drink anything in this tent unless you are absolutely certain it is food. I think we shall work very well together.”

  ***

  Joral watched as Zuke showed Illista his collection of powders and herbs. Her naïve face was rapt with attention as the medicine man explained each item. He felt a pang of jealousy for the attention his friend paid their small helper and for the attention she paid to his friend.

  Since he arrived in camp in the summer, Zuke had been his only confidant. His mother had welcomed him formally, like the stranger that he was to her. The rest of the encampment had followed suit. Their ways were so entirely different from the stone fortress where his father had raised him. As the youngest son, the bastard son, of Lord Ralein, he was used to spending his time in the barracks among the men-at-arms, training with swords and hunting in the forests. He was much their equal, for his parentage did little to endear him to Lady Ralein. Still, it had been a comfortable life with plenty of grol, plenty of exercise, plenty of servant girls with whom to flirt.

  And then the messenger from the Ken-Segra had appeared with his summons. Lady Ralein had looked almost gleeful as she informed him that he was to pack his gear and ride out. That glee had turned to a snarl when Zuke announced that he would follow Joral.

  Zuke was the other castle misfit. Too crippled to train with the other men, he had studied longer and harder with the tutors than Joral. Throughout the years, Zuke had closeted himself with every passing minstrel, healer, herbalist, and charlatan who visited the keep, ready to glean the tiniest sliver of knowledge. Some summers he traveled with some of them as an apprentice, returning to the keep with fantastic stories of exotic cities that Joral would never see.

  When Zuke was not on the road with one of his many masters, he and Joral would train. Put of sight of the other men-at-arms, who would only have mocked and jeered, Joral had taught his friend as much of the swordplay and fighting techniques as he could. Despite his physical limitations, Zuke was proficient enough.

  While Joral had worked on blending in with the men of the castle, Zuke had worked on standing out from the crowd. As his knowledge of healing and alchemy grew, so did his prestige in the castle and the surrounding countryside. To lose such a talented magician had been a blow to Lady Ralein’s pride. The thought of her face, puckered and fuming, as the two men rode out together still made Joral smile.

  The Ken Segra were nothing like his southern father. The open plains with their winds and their unceasing flatness and seas of grass were beautiful like the ping snakes of his boyhood: Beautiful and deadly.

  He selected a steel mixing device from the assortment spread in front of him. One of Zuke's own designs, though Joral was the one to convince the castle blacksmith to work something so strange. It had cost him a month’s allowance. After only a single market day selling his various potions, Zuke repaid him with interest.

  Zuke snatched the mixing stick out of Joral's hand. “Thank you, your highness.”

  Joral snorted at the good-natured ribbing. Zuke could not get enough of laughing at his friend's new status. Not that the leap from bastard-son to prince had made him an accepted, wanted member of any group. If anything, he was even more unreachable now with his ceremonial robes and ritualized gatherings than he had been as an outcast in his father's great hall.

  The little Waki girl gasped, and Joral glanced over. Zuke was mixing something in one of his bowls. It smelled lightly of fruit and spice and something else. He blinked and the lights from the fire swirled in front of him.

  “Joral.” Zuke’s voice echoed in his head.

  He tried to open his mouth to speak, but a wave of nausea came over him again and he closed it and swallowed. This was the longest cursed hangover and by far the worst he had ever had. Worse than the night he had bested the castle vintner at dice and won an entire cask of the man's personal collection of wine. He and Zuke had finished half of it in one sitting.

  The room began to spin.

  Hands grabbed him, guided him. He felt like he was flying until the sensation of clouds breezing through his hair turned to dirt on his cheek. He rolled over and looked up.

  The little Waki girl hovered above him, with two faces where she ought to have one. One face was the round, childlike one that was nearly identical to the dozens of other small helpers he'd seen scurrying throughout the camp. The other face had a slender neck and the delicate features of a young woman, with long silvery hair and dark eyes.

  At first the slender face looked unsubstantial, like a scrim in a minstrel’s play, hovering over the Waki face. And then it shifted, and the Waki face faded leaving the silver hair and the eyes filled with concern as she knelt over his prone form.

  He reached one hand up to touch a lock of her hair. It danced through his fingers like quicksilver. The woman was speaking to him, but the words sounded far away, like echoes off a stone wall, muffled and garbled. He touched her cheek. Her pale skin was soft like a flower petal.

  Her lips moved. Speaking again, but he couldn't understand the words. Her hand covered his, still on her cheek. Her fingers were slender and delicate next to his. Her skin silky on his calloused palms.

  Her lips moved again and he watched, fascinated, at their shape and the glimpse of white teeth between. He lifted his head and gently guided hers downward and kissed her. She tasted sweet, like fresh spring rain and morning dew. Like the sweet, sacred water of the lake.

  Illista was his lake spirit.

  She pulled away, her hair trailing smoothly through his fingers until she was gone. Again.

  “Thank you.” He barely heard his own words, dry and sandy on his tongue.

  Chapter 5 Joral awoke to a sharp nudge in his ribcage and stared at the metal-tipped toes of a pair of boots. There were only two pairs of stiffly oiled, knee-high leather boots in this camp. One of them lay safely packed away in Joral's own tent because they were impractical for a Segra man to wear.

  “Good tidings. You are not hung-over.”

  He rolled over to his stomach and pushed himself to his hands and knees.

  The fire had burned to low embers, and the wind howled above the smoke hole of the tent like an eagle after its prey.

  The gi
rl was gone. “Where is she?”

  Zuke laughed. “Smitten with the child, are you?”

  Joral sat up and took stock. He felt more normal than he had in over a day. The faint queasiness in his stomach had gone and the bands of pain that had encircled his head had dissolved. “How long was I asleep?”

  “Half the evening. You mauled my new assistant, spewed your dinner onto the floor, and then passed out.”

  Joral ran his fingers through his hair and considered how much to share with his friend. He tried to compose the words to describe how Illista appeared to him as some sort of water spirit. But every attempt sounded like a drunken hallucination. “How much do you know about the Waki creatures?”

  “Not much. But I think you were right. Illista is unusual.”

  Hope sparked in Joral. “Then you saw her--”

  “Poison.”

  Joral stared at Zuke. When he spoke, his voice came out as a hoarse whisper. “What poison?”

  “The grol last night was poisoned. I suspected as much. I've known you for too long to mistake your symptoms for drunkenness. When you puked, I was able to confirm it. When you add lemonweed to spineflower, it luminesces briefly. Spineflower dissolves neatly in grol and can be combined with any number of other powders to produce a variety of effects. Including death.”

  At the image of Zuke poking around in his offal, Joral cringed. “You didn't.”

  Zuke shrugged. “Knowledge is not all neat scrolls and ordered lesson plans. Life is messy. But back to the Waki helper you brought me. She guessed the truth even before I could confirm it.”

  “How?”

  “She did not say exactly. Perhaps she has some herbalist training. When I dismissed her for the evening, she nearly tripped over herself leaving. Do you suppose we have scared her silly?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Excellent. Now you have to get out of here, and I have a firestar show to perform.”

  ***

  The sky exploded with a shower of purples and greens.

  Illista sat snuggled under a fur next to her sister, their backs against the tall wheel of the half-packed cart of pots and pans. The entire camp, even the Waki, had stopped their evening work to watch the firestars. Several thousand pairs of eyes were focused upwards as a trio of reds popped like spring flowers in the night sky.

  She willed her mind to quiet, but it refused to listen. The memory of Joral's lips on hers, of his fingers brushing her cheeks, of his eyes seeing her...the memories swirled through her head. Swirled through her midsection. Stirred feelings she had so rarely felt. Excitement. Fear.

  And self-loathing.

  In the midst of a poison-induced hallucination, Joral had kissed a Waki. If he remembered what he had done, he would be humiliated. And if he tried to apologize, she would be doubly so. She hated herself for having loved that brief moment. For feeling like a woman. A woman attractive to a man like the prince.

  She hated herself for having believed the illusion she saw in his eyes. For believing for a single heartbeat that he knew what he was doing. That he saw her true form and wanted her for herself. She sighed.

  From far away, she heard again the sound of tiny crystal bells. It was the rains that the Segra waited for, prayed for. Water here was sacred. Sacred enough to fight wars over. Sacred enough to arrange marriages and to form alliances. If they could only depend on the rains. But the rains were fickle. Some years they were generous. For the few years she and Quarie had spent here, the rains were stingy with their bounty.

  Illista inhaled, trying to draw the sound of those bells closer. For a moment, they seemed to hesitate, to hover. Then the sound slipped just beyond her reach and was gone. She blew out her pent up breath as the boom of a firestar explosion left trails of smoke in the sky. False clouds.

  “Quarie,” whispered Illista. “Have you ever taken off your bloodstone?”

  Her sister gasped and stiffened. “Why would you ask such a thing? You know the risk.”

  “I barely remember what it is like to be me. To walk on my own feet and touch with my own hands. Do you never feel that way?”

  Quarie exhaled as the thunder of more explosions rolled over them. “I took my bloodstone off, only once. Do you remember the cove where we stayed in that first spring? Before we joined with the Ken Segra?”

  Illista nodded. They had lived with a small family group of Waki there after fleeing their home.

  “I never told you. I couldn't help myself. The sea felt like...it felt like mother's embrace. It felt like home.” Quarie's voice sounded dreamy, far away. “I only did it once. You were asleep. It would have been so easy to just stay right there. Right by the ocean.”

  Illista nodded, thinking she understood. The water in the Segra's sacred lake was so sweet. It tasted like freedom and security. But she knew that was a lie. The waters here held only danger for her. “You were the one who hurried us to the plains.”

  Quarie released a shuddering breath. “I had to. The Waki we stayed with didn't trust us. Their leader suspected something. He tested me. He tried to demand that I marry one of their men. I couldn't do that.”

  Illista gulped. She had no idea. Quarie had kept all of it from her, every detail. The sea, the argument with the leader. So many secrets. “Why didn't you tell me?”

  Quarie fixed her with a pointed look, the reflection of the fireworks glistening in her eyes. “You were forever defying the leader. Forever forgetting to be a Waki. Forever making foolish decisions. If I told you that I had succumbed to temptation once, you would have stripped that pendant off in front of the whole clan and they would have turned us over to the hunters.”

  “But--”

  Her big sister squared her shoulders, the heavy muscles stiffening next to Illista's. “No but's. I promised Mother that I would protect us both. We left the sea. We left the water because I could not even trust myself. This is the only place that is far enough from temptation for me.”

  Illista licked lips that were suddenly parched. She hadn’t known. She was so young when they fled their home, barely into adolescence. Quarie barely on the verge of true womanhood. Quarie always seemed so sure of herself, so dependable. To think she had fought a temptation and run away from it. “And what if this is not far enough away to keep us safe from the hunters? Safe from temptation?”

  “It has to be. We are Waki now. That is the only way.” Quarie tucked an arm around Illista and drew her close. “I promise that we are safe here.”

  With a cacophonous thunder, dozens of firestars of every color of the rainbow exploded overhead, dazzling Illista with their light and power and drowning their voices. She watched and wished. Wished for a true rainbow of mist and sunshine. Wished for her mother. Wished to wear her own face in front of the world. Wished for rain.

  She watched and wished that Joral's kiss had been intended for her. For her true self. For the Illista of the lake. Wished that he had kissed her out of affection, of admiration, of love. Wished that his kiss was not a hallucination borne of poison. Illista huddled closer to her sister feeling farther away than ever.

  The light faded into a cloud of diaphanous smoke floating up and away, but the thunder remained. And grew louder. Not thunder, horses. Their hooves pounded past the tents toward the heart of the camp.

  Quarie gasped and pulled the fur up, half covering Illista’s face with the fur blanket.

  “What is wrong?” she asked, shoving herself free for a look. In the deepening night, all she saw was their dust.

  Her sister trembled beneath the furs. “They are not Segra.”

  Before Illista could ask what Quarie meant, Nunzi appeared before the sisters. “You are needed to serve the Chieftess again. We have visitors.”

  ***

  Joral stood by his mother's side, arms crossed over his chest. He wore his finest linen shirt, and hard soled leather boots, and strapped his sword belt and dagger at his waist. Instead of woven wool breeches, he had donned the beaded leather, and had braided his hair ba
ck like the Segra.

  When a messenger boy told him that a party of twenty-some heavily armored men had ridden into the camp, he had reached first for the weapons he had trained with all his life.

  When the messenger told him that he was summoned to his mother's side, he realized that his place in this tribe was with the leaders first, not the warriors.

  When the messenger told him that the strangers had identified themselves as bounty hunters from the Western territories, he realized that he was summoned as much for his Southern blood as for his Segra. The Segra and the Southern lords warred as much with the clans of the West as they did with each other.

  The Chieftess had not batted an eye at his attire, nor had she stared him down while he had entered the tent without the proper deference and strode across its length as though he gave the orders. If anything, her eyes had brightened. Perhaps it had been a trick of the firelight. At least Rafil and the other Xan-Segra had already broken camp and left.

  Mother sat cross legged on her furs with a score of the Ken-Segra warriors arrayed behind her in deceivingly casual stances. Six moons prior, Joral himself would have mistaken the relaxed set of their shoulders. Now he knew the underlying strength that they belied. He could see the warrior’s staves at the ready and the bows already strung. He also knew the speed of a viper and a hawk and a wolf as they snatched their unsuspecting prey.

  The three foreign riders in the tent were garbed in the white-furred skins of the western glacier, where bears and seals and wolves wore their winter colors for most of the year. Beneath hooded coats they had metalwork breastplates and belts studded in aqua and turquoise stones. The one in the center wore a necklace of shells over his armor. Shells that gleamed black and orange against the whiteness of his coat. Joral wished for his Zuke's knowledge of these three men's origins, but he was not invited to the greeting.

  “Thank you for granting us this audience so quickly,” said the one with the necklace, directing his remarks to Joral. “We regret to be the bearers of bad news.”