Call the Rain (2 page)

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 stir 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.

“Now the Ken-Segra welcome you of the Xan-Segra into our family. On the eve of the next new moon, our tribes become one in people. Today, we become one in heart. Let us feast.”

His mother's voice cut through Joral's musings like a sword through buckskin and he gave himself a mental shake. He blinked, his vision blurring. For a moment he thought he saw the water spirit, slim and willowy, entering the ceremonial tent through the flap at the rear.

He blinked again, and the vision was gone, replaced by the sight of two plump Waki girls bearing baskets of food. With their plain clothing, silent feet and their discretely bowed heads, they were meant to blend into the backdrop.

The first of them glanced up and their gazes met briefly. Quickly, she bowed her head and hunched her shoulders even lower than before and hurried along the edge of the tent to deliver the fir
st of her bowls of food to the Xan-Segra.

Joral forced his eyes back downwards so he didn’t embarrass the little thing, or himself. He had spent far too many years among his father’s people in the lowland mountains. There were few Waki so far south. In his father’s stone fortress, the servants were all local people with distinct personalities and names of their own. Few were silent and none were treated as though they were invisible.

One of the Waki placed a platter with slices of roasted meat and stack of flatbreads in front of him. Bread might settle his stomach.

He waited. This part of the ceremonial dinner was familiar, even to his foreign manners. One always waited for the Lord or L
ady of the house to eat first. When his mother tore a healthy chunk from her own bread and dipped it into her stew, the mood of the tent visibly relaxed as everyone tucked into their food and low conversations began to swirl through the air in place of the ceremonial smoke.

The Waki moved quietly and quickly among the guests, refilling plates and cups and removing discarded bits and crumbs from the floor. No one paid them any mind. No one but Joral.

One of them padded up next to the Chieftess to right a cup that had tipped over and to blot the grol that had spilled next to the meem bowl. As the girl knelt down next to the filmy tendrils of smoke, she coughed.

It was a quiet cough, and no one else seemed to notice but him. The haze of the smoke cast shadows on Joral’s eyes too. The childlike servant’s face seemed to waver and shift in front of him so that she wasn’t one person but two, shimmering together in the same space. With quick, efficient moves, she finished her task and hurried out of the tent.

***

Sticky platters covered in crumbs threatened to spill from Illista’s carrying basket. She had overfilled it again, she knew. If she could just get these to the cooking tent to be cleaned in one trip instead of two, then she might finish her work just a little sooner. The bent-legged magician had prepared a firestar show tonight in honor of the betrothal. It was a treat almost unheard of here among the Segra, one she and Quarie had loved as children.

She remembered snuggling into her mother’s embrace as the colors popped and sparkled overhead. Remembered their dazzling reflections in the sea. Remembered her father’s warm laughter and the way Quarie would hold Illista’s hand so that she would not be afraid of the noise.

The top platter teetered as she backed out of the tent flap and into the dusky evening. She turned slowly around, keeping one hand on the top of the stack while the other clasped the bottom of her basket with shaky fingers. She righted that platter, but her movement shifted the entire tower, and one of the middle plates slipped out and tumbled toward the dirt.

“Whoa. I got it.”

A large figure blocked the orange-red sun, kneeling to pick up the fallen plate.

Illista squealed and stepped back but her foot caught in the leather tent flap behind her and she lost her balance and fell down onto her backside. The wooden and earthenware plates clattered against each other as they raced for the ground around her clumsily outstretched legs.

“Are you all right?”

The figure reached down a long-fingered hand. She grasped it with her stubby fingers and allowed him to haul her to her feet.

“I am sorry I startled you.”

She nodded, keeping her eyes focused firmly on the man’s feet. She was not supposed to make eye contact. Not supposed to speak unless spoken to. Not supposed to draw attention to herself. She had become exceedingly good at recognizing the individual tribespeople by their shoes.

This man wore knee-high boots of soft shearling with laces that crisscrossed up from lean ankles to firmly muscled calves. The shoes looked newly made, with only a little dust around the toes. Dust and bread crumbs and a few flecks of gravy.

“Let me help you with these.” He knelt, and Illista’s heart nearly stopped.

It was Joral. She had spilled food on the Chieftess’s son. Heir to the tribe, bridegroom-to-be, and grol-drinking late-night swimmer.

Illista stared up into eyes the color of the ocean at dusk, a deep blue-green-gray that twinkled with the first hints of the evening stars. The tendrils of hair that escaped the low cord at his neck were shot with the hues of a late autumn sunset and curled into unruly waves.
Where had a man of the Ken-Segra found green eyes and red hair?

His skin was the same deep bronze of the rest of the tribe and he was just as tall and powerful as the hardiest of the hunters. Tall, powerful, but lean. It was an efficient power that was lithe enough to ride a horse without killing it. The thick-set warriors of her homeland would underestimate the strength of this man. Of these people.

With that strength, he easily balanced the stack of dirty dishes on one palm.

“Pardon me, my lord.” Illista stammered as she reached up to accept the load from him.

He lifted his hands up, just out of her reach. “So Waki
can
talk.”

She stared into his smiling eyes. The corners actually crinkled. “Of course we talk, my lord.”

“Are you taking these to the wash tent? I can carry them.” He waved her hands away.

Illista's tongue seemed to grow three sizes too large for her mouth. What should she do? What would Quarie do? What would the other Waki do? Was there even a protocol for accepting help from one of the Segra? From the prince of the tribe?

“No thank you, my lord. It is my job.” She held her arms out again for the plates.

He ignored the gesture and began to walk. “It's no problem. The tent is this way, right? I haven't had a chance to see how your operation works.”

She had no choice but to scurry after him, taking two quick steps to his one. In this body, she was not even eye level with his shoulder blades where his long braid of hair bobbed over a bleached and beaded tunic. Her true self was not a lot taller than her Waki body, though. Enough to perhaps see his shoulder without raising her eyes. At least, she thought so. It had been hard to tell while he lay prone on the bank of the pond and she was sitting on his chest attempting to exchange lake water for air in his lungs.