Rainscape

by Jaye Roycraft

  “Thank you, Gaard.”

  He nodded once in acknowledgment, squeezed her hand lightly, and released it. He turned slowly and walked away from her, his image again wavering in the torrid air current. He mounted the skimmer, powered it, and sat for a long moment, looking in her direction. The heat rollers steadied, and Dina had a final clear view of him before he turned and was slowly secreted by the dancing waves of light and heat.

  Dina watched him disappear, then shifted her gaze downward. Her fingers opened slowly, like the petals of a flower unfurling, and there in her palm, like the flower’s pistil, winked the golden star.

  DURING THE EARLY evening of the third day following Rayn’s battle with Gyn, while Dina curled on her bed, trying not to think and not to feel, she heard the Voice in her head.

  Dina.

  Something was wrong. She didn’t know how she knew, but like so many feelings she’d had lately, she was absolutely certain she was right. Rayn? Are you all right?

  Come to Kathedra as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting.

  Rayn, wait . . . She waited, but there was no reply. Dina bounded off the bed, pulled a cooling vest from the room cooler, and quickly put on a weather suit. She rinsed her face and was headed for her skimmer within two minutes. Her hair was loose, but the narrow sunshield she opted for instead of the full hood kept it somewhat in place. Within the city proper she impatiently kept the speed of the skimmer down, but as soon as she reached the gate, she gave the machine full power.

  Her mind raced at an equal speed, trying to guess what had happened to Rayn. Damn Gaard for not telling me more! Had Rayn been injured after all? That would explain the three days—perhaps he had needed time to recover from injuries. But Gyn had wanted to destroy his mind, not his body. Perhaps Gyn had succeeded in breaking down Rayn’s mind to some extent. As she ran through the possibilities, she felt her chest constricting again, and her breathing became labored.

  The ride to the kap seemed endless as she crossed the Albho Mar, the faltering sun turning the desert sea from mirrorlike facets of silver and midnight to those of amber, mauve, and purple. The rush of warm air on her face stung, but she no more felt it than she took note of the collage of evening colors.

  There was only her destination ahead, symbolized by a glowing red dot on the skimmer’s trail finder. The red glow, built into the windshield, was like a promise, and led her on. The tiny red sphere pulsed and grew, until Dina, recognizing the unmistakable outcropping of rock, slowed the skimmer to a hover. Even in her haste, though, Dina’s habit of caution persisted.

  She searched the entrance of the cavern, but saw nothing. Almost immediately, he stepped from the shadow into the honeyed sunlight and took several uneven paces in her general direction.

  Dina all but dropped the skimmer to the ground and ran toward the cave, straining to see, but the low sun was behind him, casting him in a silhouette as black as the Void. The feeling of wrongness persisted, and her fear leapt with her strides. He almost appeared to be staggering.

  She pulled up and came to a dead stop, unable to see his face, frightened suddenly that he might be disfigured somehow. Would she be able to accept that?

  “Come ahead, Dina. It’s all right.” The words were stated as if by rote, and did nothing to reassure her, but she took one tentative step after another until she was an arms-length away. She could see his face now, shadowed, but visible. To her relief she saw no injuries, but his eyes were dark and his mouth unsmiling.

  She pulled her sunshield off, crammed it into her trouser pocket, then opened the front of her weather jacket. His eyes, flat as his voice, followed her every movement. She reached underneath her T-shirt and cooling vest and pulled the pendant to the opening at her neck.

  She closed her eyes briefly and clutched the stone tightly, feeling its smoothness and warmth, then pulled the chain over her head. She took one more step closer to Rayn and was vaguely aware of a strange taste in her mouth. Rayn dipped his head forward so she could reach over him to place the chain around his neck, and the realization that she had bit the inside of her lip was quickly swept away by the encompassing familiar scent of sweat, leather, and mountain mint. He lifted his head while her arms were still around his neck, and her heart slammed so hard it seemed deafening in the desert silence.

  She fought for control but lost. Sinking her hands into the dark hair tangled by wind and sweat, she pressed herself against him and willed him to return the embrace. He did, but strangely there seemed to be neither joy nor passion in him as he held her.

  For the moment, she didn’t care. She concentrated on what she had—the warmth of his body against hers, his hard strength, the feel of his thick hair between her fingers. He was alive.

  He held her as long as she needed to be held, until her curiosity finally compelled her to release him. She leaned back, her hands still on either side of his face, feeling the sweat-soaked strands of hair at his temples.

  Unable to look into his eyes, she bent her head and moved her hands down to the pendant. She moved her fingertips across the stone to his bare skin, feeling the hard muscles and damp curls. Even in the shadow, she could make out the shifting silver star in the golden stone.

  She finally worked up the courage to speak. For now, spoken words would have to do. His blank eyes did nothing to invite the intimacy of telepathic communication.

  “For three days this kept me alive. I know how important this is to you. I’m glad I could give it back.” She paused, but when he said nothing, she continued. “I know what this is. It’s a mother-and-child pendant. The mother-of-pearl is the mother, and the bharonite, the star stone, is the child. The golden star. That’s you, isn’t it? You’re the child, the golden star, Rayn DeStar.”

  She looked up, and Rayn’s battle for control of his emotions began to break through the stiff facade. His lips parted, and as his eyes glanced at the evening sky, then away to the rocks, then back at her, she could see they gleamed with moisture. A drop of sweat slowly zigzagged down the side of his face.

  In that instant he looked more vulnerable than she had ever seen him.

  “Rayn, talk to me, please.” Her plea was a rough whisper.

  He looked straight into her eyes. “The light and the darkness.”

  “What?” This was not what she expected.

  “You’re the light, and I’m the darkness.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.” The fear, which had subsided a little while he had held her, started to well up again.

  He released her completely. “You were right about me when you first met me. I’m everything you hated and feared. I just destroyed a man, totally, without showing any mercy during the act or any remorse afterwards. And he a countryman. No, more than that. This far from home, a brother.”

  “Rayn, he was the killer. He would have destroyed you, without mercy or remorse, then me, then would have gone on killing. You were the only one on this planet who could have stopped him.”

  He turned away from her, studying first the desert floor, the gray dust soaked to a deep golden coral by the dying sun. He shook his head and raised his eyes toward the sky. Struck by the light, the eyes became amber jewels in a face of bronze. She saw his Adam’s apple work. “It’s more than that.”

  He paused, drew a ragged breath, then continued. “From the moment I met you, I’ve done nothing but lie to you, deceive you, and seduce you.”

  Dina felt as if she had just had all the wind knocked out of her. Of all the things she had feared to be wrong, this was not one. She shook her head in denial. “No, that can’t be so. I probed your mind. I felt what you were feeling.”

  He gave a small, bitter laugh. “Your present emotions make you forgetful. If you remember, you didn’t trust me. You were right not to. What you did that day for the very first time I’ve been doing for decades. I knew I could hide anything
I wanted from you with laughable ease. When you first asked me for help with your investigation I knew about T’halamar. I’d known about him for a long time, just as he knew about me. I was afraid if you found out about him, it would just serve to reinforce everything you already believed about the dens. And I had other plans.”

  Her mind was spinning. Rayn’s words took on a surreal sound, as if he were speaking in an alien tongue. “What other plans?”

  “In the beginning I tried to resist you. I told myself it was wrong to destroy you.” He shook his head. “But I couldn’t stop. It’s in my blood. From the moment I saw you on the spacedock, I wanted to possess you, seduce you into coming to me.”

  He still wasn’t making sense. “But why the whole seduction routine? Why not just compel me?”

  He laughed again, an empty sound. “The dher is only a challenge when used on another dens. There’s no sport in using it on someone like you. And the conquest, the sport, is everything to a dens.”

  “But I did come to you willingly! All you did was give me all that mumbo-jumbo about denzen physiology and my not being ready for you. You didn’t seem the least bit interested in making love to me.”

  “By then I found myself caring too much about you to hurt you any further. The deception was part of the plan. Falling for the light wasn’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Everything about you is light. Sometimes like lightning. Either way, I tried to catch it. When I could, I fed off it. I bathed in it. I saw reflected in you the image of the man I wanted to be. The B’haratan that doesn’t kill. The dens that doesn’t lie. But the more I bound you, the more I became what you hate.”

  She swung her head slowly back and forth. “Light?”

  “Your youth, innocence, strength. You clarity of purpose and the clarity of your ideals. And, yes, always, your beauty. You have no idea how much I wanted you.”

  She was still struggling to grasp what he was saying. Wanted? Past tense? Didn’t he still want her?

  “Rayn, you gave to me, too. Your strength nourished me. Your will, your power, made me feel warm and alive. Whenever you left me or disconnected a link, I shivered with cold. Do you know that the first day I met you, after you had rescued me from the mine and conveyed me to Sanctuary, I felt a chill when I let go of you and got off the skimmer? And I hadn’t even seen your face or heard your name at that point.”

  She searched his eyes for the answers to her questions. As in the past, she felt herself caught and held, transported to a place beyond physical reality. It was the bond. The bond led her through twin golden tunnels to a place where her answers were clear. The bond was the truth of her feelings. Wasn’t it? She was suddenly afraid again.

  “Rayn, answer this. Did we really bond?” she asked, in a whisper.

  He closed his eyes, and his hesitation gave her his answer before he spoke.

  “It only exists between one dens and another. With you there’s no such thing. That was part of the seduction, part of what a spithra like me does. You see, Gyn was right about me all along. Gyn and your partner both. They both saw me easily for what I am.” His reply, like her question, was barely audible.

  She waggled her head again, as if her persistence in denying his words could change them, but all she succeeded in doing was to whip strands of hair into her eyes. The bond existed, she knew it did. She pushed the hair out of her face. “But I knew where you were without seeing you. And I could feel your presence without hearing you.”

  “Mind tricks. Some simple, some complex, but all very practiced. I’ve been doing this for many years.”

  Dina still couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “No. I know what I feel.”

  “Listen to me. Every time we met, I sent you a ‘ping.’”

  “A what?”

  “One of the spithra’s best tricks. A mental equivalent of tossing a stone at you. I touched your mind very lightly, just enough so you were aware of my presence.”

  “Don’t keep saying that word, ‘spithra.’”

  “You’re right. It’s not a nice word. But it’s what I am. The deception is over, Dina. You have the truth now that you so badly wanted. It’s time now . . . to let you go.”

  She looked around, desperate for the sight of something familiar, but there was only her skimmer, the rocks, and Rayn, all bathed in the red-gold light. “I refuse to believe any of this.”

  He stroked her hair, set aflame by the dying sun. “I’m sorry, little girl. I really am. I’ve never said that to anyone.”

  She reached up and slapped his hands aside. “Well, it doesn’t make me feel any better to be the first to hear it. I’ll tell you something. I don’t care what words you say to me. As you’ve told me time and again, words are meaningless. I know what I feel when I touch your mind, and whatever you say about the bond being nonexistent, I feel it. So go ahead and tell me again how you’ve just been using me and how you don’t care about me.” It won’t matter because I know you would die a thousand deaths for me, and that no man will ever love me as you do. You told me you wouldn’t leave me. I believe that, no matter what you say.

  He drew her to him again and held her, but this time she felt his longing and desire in every part of his body. He held her like that for a long time, not speaking, but communicating with his hands, stroking her hair and caressing every curve of her back.

  She held him fiercely, until, at last, as if drained of all strength, he sank to his knees, dragging her down with him. They knelt on the desert floor, supporting each other for moments that lost all meaning except that they were together.

  Finally she pulled away from him just enough to see his face. Her fingers followed her gaze, and she felt the tears on his cheeks. Wondering briefly if they were hers or his, she looked into the golden eyes. They gleamed with moisture, but there was no shame apparent in the release.

  “How can you want anything to do with me after knowing the truth?” His spoken voice was so low and pitted that she heard it more with her mind than her ears.

  She still cradled his face, wiping away the wetness with her fingertips.

  “Your truth, not mine.” Dina’s reply was no louder than the brush of her fingers against his skin, but she knew he’d hear her just as easily as she had heard him. The corners of her mouth tilted toward the sky. “Just tell me one thing. Do you want me as much as I want you?”

  His eyes locked in a union with hers that caused a troupe of shivers to dance down her spine, and he shook his head slowly. “No. No, I’m not going to tell you. You know that’s not what I do. I’m going to show you.”

  He rose to his feet, pulling her up with him, then effortlessly scooped her into his arms. She wound her own around his neck, and he carried her easily into the depths of the kap, where he set her gently down on one of the mats.

  Touch my mind.

  She stretched out her mind, like a hand straining upward to grasp what had never before been within reach, and when her mind touched his, it was as though a door, long locked, was sprung. A cool, fresh wind flowed through the portal of his mind and danced around her, a celebration of life. She laughed and wondered how she had ever lived without this joy.

  Let me into your mind, flowed the wordless whisper, borne on the wind. Let me be one with you.

  It was not a compelling command, yet a fine trembling shook her as she welcomed him into the depths of her mind and soul.

  Stay here. He rose, reached into a cooler unit, and brought out several packaged cleansing cloths, tossing a couple to her. This is the desert way. He stripped off his cooling vest and knelt on the mat facing her, his knees enclosing hers. She stared at him, her mouth dry and her pulse racing, as it always did when she was close to him.

  Well, little girl?

  She blinked, reached down for one of the packets, tore it open, and sl
id out the scented cloth saturated with waterless cleanser. She smiled. Mountain mint. She lifted her eyes and drank in his face, the face she never tired of, and with the mind link in place, experienced him in a way she never had before. Not only were her own senses heightened, but she could feel every response in him.

  She folded a corner of the cloth around her index finger and started at the top of his head, by the widow’s peak, touching the arrow of dark silk that so intrigued her. From the point a thick strand arced in a lazy crescent that embraced one golden eye. She looked into his eyes, and fell in, seeing nothing else, seeing everything else. In their amber depths she saw the Road of Time, the windings of the past crisscrossed with the promises of the future. The endlessness of the ripples of the Field of Forever dizzied her. She closed her eyes and leaned forward. He closed his.

  The cool current of air around her shimmered and melted into a blue flame, and heat flared, licking at her, chasing all else away. His passion, his longing were so deep she felt the beginning of burn, both on her skin and in her mind.

  He brought his hand up. Slowly, little girl. His hand held hers, and gently guided it downward. She opened her eyes to his, and the sparkle of a smile lit them.

  She resumed her exploration of his tanned face, from the cheekbones down the clean lines of his jaw to his chin. She touched the corner of his mouth, and his lips parted. The full mouth that could mock, tease, or make her feel like all the heat and wonder of the desert was in him when he kissed her. His eyes were portals to his soul, but his mouth was the doorway to his sensual self. His warm breath was a whispered invitation, and the provocative half-open mouth beckoned her. Unable to resist, she leaned forward and melded her lips with his, moaning when the sensations wrought by the link engulfed her. The softness enticed her, his strength snared her, and his need held her. The blue flame sucked at her, and she felt nothing except his heat, surrounding her, drawing on her, almost devouring her.

  Too quickly, though, she started to fight for air. Rayn broke the kiss, raised his head, and holding her hand, guided it again, slowing her down, lest she burn.