Firestorm (33 page)

Raina turned to the shielding receptacle. With fingers gone suddenly weak and unsteady, she flipped open the latches, lifted the lid, and pulled out Rand's biosphere. A few seconds more, and she had the life support and communications wires and tubes disconnected. Holding the large, membranous globe before her, Raina brought it up to the back of Bahir's neck.

She shook the biosphere gently. A green, luminescent glow filled the thin, heretofore invisible, outer layer. "It's ready, Bahir," she said.

"D-do it," he wheezed. "I c-can't hold back the . . . the final stupor much longer. You need an undamaged brain as well as a healthy body. Do it. N-now!"

Raina locked gazes with Aban. The Tuaret managed a tremulous smile, nodded, then glanced down at Bahir. "Farewell, my friend. May we meet again in the infinite cosmos, on another plane."

"That we will, Aban," Bahir whispered, grasping his compatriot's arms to hold himself steady. "That we will."

Raina pressed the biosphere against the base of the Tuaret leader's neck. "Rand. It's time."

The green luminescence flared in intensity. The membranous globe began to soften, mold to the back of Bahir's neck. The luminescent temeritas swirled churned wildly.

Bahir stiffened. "N-Najirah. Ah, Najirah . . ." he cried. Fierce spasms wracked him.

In her fear and confusion, Raina tried to pull the biosphere free. She couldn't. The globe seemed to have adhered to Bahir's spine.

He opened his mouth. His face contorted in agony. Deep in his throat, death rattles rose. As she watched the luminescent glow slowly dissipated. Rand Raina thought. Even now, he was entering Bahir.

Terror filled her. What if it was too late? What if Bahir's mind died before Rand could fully assimilate into him? If he entered a damaged brain, would both of them be lost?

Gradually, the spasms that had wracked Bahir's body lessened. He went slack, falling limply forward into Aban's arms. The biosphere deflated then fell away.

Over the Tuaret leader's bowed head Raina's and Aban's gazes met. A question burned in Aban's eyes, but Raina had no answer. "Here, let's lay him down."

She slid, out from beneath Bahir's body. "Only time will tell if Rand made it safely into Bahir before . . . before his mind went."

Once more, Bahir was laid on the floor of the cockpit, and Aban's rolled cloak was placed beneath his head. Raina and Aban sat beside him, watching, waiting. The minutes ticked by, the heavy silence broken only by the resonant thrum of the engines. Anticipation and a strange dread rose, tightening Raina's throat and turning her mouth dry.

Bahir. Rand. Had she lost them both, then?

With a low groan, the man lying before them stirred. His head turned. Dark lashes lifted and amber-colored eyes stared back at Raina.

Confusion clouded his gaze. He blinked once, twice, as if struggling to clear his vision. Then, recognition seemed to bloom. He smiled.

"It is done, femina. Bahir's body is now mine."

Raina eyed him warily. "Indeed?"

He shoved to a sitting position and looked down at his body. Tentatively at first, he touched himself. First a hand on an arm, then on a leg, then he lifted both hands to his face. As he ran his fingers over the strong blade of a nose and dark, high-bred features, wonderment and a wild joy filled his eyes. "At last," Rand murmured. "At last."

Aban made a tortured choking noise.

Rand swung to the sobbing Tuaret. "I am sorry for your loss." He reached out a hand to the man, hesitated, then pulled back, not knowing what comfort his touch would give. "I am sorry to have been the beneficiary of your friend's death. But if it's any consolation, Bahir's mind died just seconds before I entered it. I waited outside his brain until he did. I refused to profit until he, as the man we knew, truly was dead."

"I appreciate your kindness and respect for him in that." Aban wiped his tear-streaked cheeks with the back of his sleeve, then climbed to his feet. "I ask only that you treat his body with the same respect it deserves. For all his failings, he was still a good, brave man and our beloved leader."

Rand rose to meet Aban eye-to-eye. "I'll always treat this body with the utmost respect, my friend. I swear it."

He extended his arm in the Imperial greeting. After a moment's hesitation, Aban took it. The two men stood there, clasped arm to arm, until Raina finally rose and walked over.

"It's time we headed back to Bellator," she said, meeting the Volan's steady gaze.

"Are you still of a mind to go?"

Surprise widened her eyes. "What do you mean? Of course I am!"

He smiled in gentle understanding. "Bahir paid a terrible price for betraying the calling of his heart. Will you now do the same?"

Anger flooded Raina, spilling out into her voice and words. "You don't know of what you speak, Volan. Teague doesn't want me, never has. Why should I risk all to go after him?"

"There are few assurances in life, femina. And the choices at times are daunting, if not terrifying." He lifted his hands in a wryly self-conscious gesture. "I'll have many of my own to make now. But I have time. You don't."

"Do you think you can pilot the spy ship back to Bellator on your own?" She managed a taut smile.

"I listened to all the same instructions you did when you and Teague were being trained. Besides, this is a Volan ship. How different can it be from the ones I've piloted before?"

"Your words have merit, Volan," Raina grudgingly admitted.

"Rand."

"What?" She frowned up at him, puzzled.

"My name is Rand. Won't you please call me by it? I'm as human as you now, Raina."

She gave a wry laugh. "Yes, I suppose you are. It'll just take some time to adjust to the changes."

"But you haven't much time left, do you?"

Her glance dropped to the dusty toe of her boot. "No." She looked up. "I need a few minutes to think."

"You have it, femina."

"I'll be outside."

Rand nodded.

Raina wheeled and quickly headed toward the exit. Though she sensed Rand somehow understood her dilemma, she couldn't bear to stand another moment with him or Aban. Too much had changed, and far too quickly.

Now, thanks to the gift of Bahir's body, the choice— whether to leave or stay—was once more hers. She stepped outside and back onto the desert. The sun had begun its fading trajectory toward the distant horizon. Brilliant beams of red-orange light emanated from the dying orb, bathing the land of sand dunes and rocks with a soft, gentle glow.

Incendra, Raina thought. Her beautiful, fiery land. Her land . . . and Teague's.

But did she possess the courage to stay? To fight for her love? Once Rand lifted off in the spy ship, there was no way to leave Incendra. Her fate would be irrevocably sealed.

And there was still no guarantee that Teague would want her. No assurance that sending her away, though at the time an unavoidable necessity, hadn't been but a convenient excuse for turning her out of his life. Perhaps it wasn't so much that he didn't feel worthy of her love. Perhaps it was just the plain fact he didn't want it.

Yet what other reason was there for remaining on Incendra? True, the land called to her, but she had been quite content with her life with the Sodalitas on Moraca. She could just as easily find fulfillment there as on Incendra.

No, she'd only stay for Teague. Though she still despised the man, her need for vengeance against Vorax had faded. And her father, already gone from this existence, had punished himself far more savagely than she'd have ever done.

Her initial motivations for remaining on Incendra after the mission was complete were no more. But now, where once the cruelties of men had driven her away, the love for one called her back. That much she'd learned, and would always cherish, from having met and known Bahir and his wife, Najirah.

What had Najirah once said? Raina's thoughts flew back to that day they'd dug asphodel tubers together. / give my love freely, Bahir's wife had gently told her, without expectation of recompense . . . because I cannot do otherwise . . . to do any less is to not fully live, to not be the person you were meant to be . . .

The sun slid behind the horizon in an explosion of riotous color. From all sides, the sky began to darken, deepening to blue-violet. It was time for Rand to be off, Raina thought. Time for her and Aban to head back across the desert. Back to Tuaret lands, back to join a battle against a usurper whose downfall had finally begun. Back to stand at the side of the man she loved.

She couldn't do otherwise. To do any less was not to be the person she'd always been meant to be.

Twenty-one

In the deepening twilight, the last rays of the sun barely smudging the sky, Raina stood with Aban and the equs and watched the Volan spy ship lift off. The earth rumbled, the rear thrusters fired in a burst of flame, and the ship soared into the heavens. Raina watched until the spacecraft was swallowed in the blackening maw of night, then turned to Aban.

"Let's be off. The sooner we reunite with Najirah and Teague and the others, the better I'll feel."

The big Tuaret nodded. "Best we head to our hidden encampment, then. Bahir told them to meet us there." At the mention of his former leader's name, his face fell. "By the firestorms," Aban groaned. "He's gone, femina. It's hard enough losing him, but to see his body rise again, ruled by another mind . . ."

She grasped his thick-muscled arm. "I know, Aban. But at least you're the only one to see it happen, the only one who knows Bahir's real fate. Perhaps it would be better if no one else learned the truth. Even Najirah. It's best that she think Bahir dead—in every way."

He nodded. "It would be the kindest solution. To know some man is out there, in the body of her husband . . ." He shook his head and sighed. "I vow not to tell her, femina."

"And neither will I. It's enough that she know he loved her, and that he spoke her name with his dying breath." She released his arm and stepped back. "Now, come. It's time we left this place."

They rode long into the night, the events of the past day stirring such restless thoughts and painful memories that they couldn't have slept if they'd tried. Only when dawn's first light washed the sky did Raina call a halt— at the oasis where she'd first met Bahir. That place, too, was filled with many memories, but after being awake almost twenty-four hours, they were both exhausted and fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the blankets.

Pushing themselves hard, they reached the Tuaret encampment in the middle of the third day after they had left the oasis. Najirah's band, however, had yet to arrive.

"I don't like it, Aban," Raina grumbled, over a cup of mentha tea that evening. "It's been over eight days now since we parted at the Barakah Mountains. They should've been back by now. There's something wrong. I can feel it."

The Tuaret contemplated the contents of his cup. "I, too, feel great unease." He looked up at her over the campfire, his expression grim and worried. Flames licked at the blackness between them, sending blazing motes of red swirling into the night. "I suppose we could send out a search party . . ."

"And if they've been captured by Vorax's army?" At the man's ineffectual suggestion, frustration filled Raina. "What then?"

"We cannot hope to prevail against an army the size of Vorax's."

"No, we can't, but if we could get the other desert tribes to join with us, well, then we'd have an army to be reckoned with."

Puzzlement furrowed Aban's brow. "But even Bahir couldn't get the other tribes to join with him. And now he's gone. How do you hope to succeed where he failed?"

Aban wasn't the stuff of leaders, Raina realized. It answered a lot of questions as to why Bahir, as close friends as he was with Aban, had instead chosen his wife to be his second-in-command. But she could still use him and his standing in the tribe to her advantage, Raina knew. If she could just get him to support her plan.

"I mean to succeed," Raina patiently explained, "because I but carry on where Bahir's plan left off. Teague is more than just another man who decided to join with Bahir against Vorax. Teague is the man Bahir was waiting for all these cycles—the heir to the royal throne of Farsala."

"Yes, that's true enough," Aban nodded his agreement. "I recognized him from the start as the old king's son." His bushy black brows dipped in great concentration. He scratched the large black mole peeking through the beard on the left side of his jaw. "But how can we use that knowledge to our advantage?"

"Can you send out messengers to the rest of the tribes, at least, the ones who we can trust to value the message and its implications? Ask them to join us at some hidden spot on the way to Ksathra for a secret meeting? The news of Teague's true heritage will spread fast once we send out the messengers. Time will be crucial then, if we're to strike against Vorax with some element of surprise."

Aban considered her suggestions for several minutes, then nodded. "Yes, it seems the best of all plans. The messengers will go out on the morrow." He grimaced. "We'll omit sending a messenger to the Katebs, though.

They, of all the tribes, will never support anything the Tuarets lead. The tribal rivalry has been too long and too fierce for us ever to hope for their support."

"Then so be it." Raina met Aban's gaze squarely. "And on the morrow, we must head out to find Najirah's band, with you as our leader. Agreed?"

Aban smiled. "Agreed. The men will best follow me until we reach Najirah. But you'll advise me along the way. Agreed?"

Raina smiled. "I suppose that could be arranged. I had some experience as a warrior leader in my former life on Moraca."

He grinned. "I thought as much. You're a worthy mate for the king's son. You'll rule well at his side."

She lowered her gaze once more to the fire. Aban already had her crowned queen of Farsala. Though her doubts were many that that day would ever come, it served her purposes now to let him think it would. He'd support her and her plans as the future queen. So would the others, if the need arose.

If the need arose. Despite the warmth of the campfire, Raina shivered. She feared that need had already arisen. Teague and Najirah hadn't returned. And that didn't bode well. Not well at all.