Guardian of the Storm (2 page)

The fire, she discovered when she was within sight of it, was directly in front of the entrance to the cave. She stopped as if she’d hit a wall, too shocked to assimilate the implications at first. Even as she looked for the Niahian, however, she was grasped from behind in a hold she couldn’t hope to break. Wrenching her head around, she gaped up at the Niahian.

“I have food, little grat. You are welcome to share if you will refrain from trying to hit me with rocks.”

Tempest was too stunned to do more than nod.

Kiran studied her a long moment and finally released her slowly. When she did nothing more than stare at him, dumbfounded, he moved away and returned to the fire he had built from niahten. It was the one thing that Niah had in abundance … besides the dull red sand that seemed to go on forever. One had only to dig down a few feet most anywhere on their world and cut it from Niah.

The priests considered it sacred, a gift of the Great One, Zoe. The Keepers of the Memory said that it was the decaying remains of what had once been plant life in the time before the rains had ceased to fall, when their world had been full of growing vegetation.

Regardless of who was right, Niahians in general considered it precious, despite its abundance, and used it sparingly. He had not been pleased to find the cave of the little strange one and see the signs that told him she used it every night, most likely only to give herself comfort.

He studied her as she settled herself cautiously opposite the fire. She was a lovely creature despite her condition, but she would not last long if left to her own devices. She was painfully thin, showing obvious signs of slow starvation, and pity, unwelcome but impossible to ignore, welled inside him when he looked at the bones that threatened to protrude from her skin. He was amazed that she had survived as long as she had.

There had been other orphans that had escaped the death village the Earth people had built, but those had been taken in by Niahians to rear with their own offspring. This one would have been older than most at the time, for she was obviously grown into a woman now, but still so young she could not have been much more than a child.

He could not leave her here. It went against every belief of his people to leave a helpless one—and yet he did not welcome the burden, not now, when he was on Hymria, the sacred journey that he hoped would lead him to the One. He must remain chaste to be considered worthy by Zoe. He must focus mind, body, and spirit upon Hymria or the way would not be revealed to him.

The priests had told him the time had come. He must find the Storm, the One who commanded the elements, and lead him to the sacred temple of Zoe that legend held was beyond the far mountains in a secret valley long forgotten by all Niahians of living memory. For only when …
if
the two of them joined on the sacred altar could the rains be summoned to make their world green once more.

He had been told that he alone, of all those born on Niah at the time of the first sign, had been born with the mark of the Guardian.

The coming of the star people, the Earthlings, had been the first sign.

Chapter Two

Tempest eyed the Niahian with disfavor. He was a bossy bastard! He’d had the nerve to forbid her to build a fire of her own in the cave where she usually slept. As much as she appreciated the food—which was not only more than she’d had in weeks, but also better than she’d been able to cook for herself—she did not appreciate being told what she could, or could not, do. She’d managed quite well by herself all this time—Ok, so not so well, but she’d managed just the same.

In all honesty, she supposed it
was
wasteful to build a second fire. Conservation hadn’t been something
the people
had been really big on, particularly when it
inconvenienced them, and look what had come of that—their world had been dying even before the ‘planet killer’ meteor had hit and the Earth’s life cycle had collapsed like a row of dominos. This world being so arid, it made sense that they’d be more environmentally conscious.

And it
was
his world, after all.

On the other hand, he hadn’t taken into consideration that, unlike him, she didn’t have so much as a thin blanket to protect her from the incessant breezes. The fire didn’t do much to keep her warm when it only warmed one side of her body at the time. Facing it, her front was warm and her backside freezing, or vice versa if she turned over. She’d tried sleeping in the cave without a fire and discovered it was just as miserable. The cave walls protected her from most of the wind, but without a fire ….

If he’d been any kind of gentleman, he’d have offered her his blanket.

If she’d been bigger and stronger, she would’ve taken it.

“I will share the blanket and the warmth of my body,” he said suddenly, as if he’d read her thoughts.

Not that he’d have to be much of a mind reader to figure out she was too cold and miserable to sleep. She stared at him suspiciously for several moments, but the truth was she was beyond caring whether or not he demanded the use of her body in return. How bad could it be, after all? Granted, she didn’t know a whole hell of a lot about copulating, but she wasn’t completely ignorant. It had never taken her parents that long to do it—fifteen or twenty minutes, tops, of being groped, slobbered on, and stabbed by his blunt member, and then she could be warm the rest of the night.

She got up and moved toward him. As she knelt beside him, he lifted the edge of the blanket and after only a slight hesitation, she slipped under it.

It was absolute heaven. Warmth instantly enveloped her. Goose bumps covered her from the crown of her head to her toes, making it feel as if her skin had shrunk until it was too small for her body, but it began to subside almost at once as the warmth soaked into her skin, then into her muscles. Slowly, the tension seeped from her, and her muscles began to relax. As it did, she began to realize that she was still cold—warmer by far than she had been, but not comfortably so.

There were two sources of heat now—the fire, and the heat radiating from his body—and she wasn’t close enough to either to be comfortable.

Surprisingly, he hadn’t said another word, or made any attempt to collect payment for his offer. Maybe she’d been wrong? Maybe he didn’t actually have any interest in copulating and was just being polite?

After a few minutes, she inched a little closer to him—casually, as if she was just shifting to get comfortable.

“Be still. I can not sleep.”

Tempest stiffened and let out an irritated huff. “I’m cold,” she complained.

With a growl of impatience, he grasped her around the waist and hauled her back until she was lying full length against him. She lay stiffly for a few minutes, more than half expecting that, now, he would seize the advantage and expect her to perform for her comfort. Instead, he merely rubbed her arms briskly, tucked the blanket more tightly around them both and settled back.

“Better?”

She hesitated. She was warmer, that was for certain, but an almost weightless feeling clenched at her belly. She felt really strange, almost dizzy feeling his skin brush against hers, feeling every taut muscle of his body pressing into her. “Uh huh,” she finally managed.

“Then sleep, little grat, so that I may sleep. I must travel far on the morrow.”

Irritation surfaced. She didn’t know why she was irritated. She should have just been grateful. He’d offered food, and comfort, and neither asked, nor demanded, anything at all in return except that she be still and let him sleep, but she was annoyed.

“I wish you wouldn’t keep calling me a grat,” she muttered irritably.

“I do not know the name you are called,” he said with determined patience.

“Tempest.”

“Sleep, Tempest. I have come far, and have far to go.”

“You didn’t tell me your name,” Tempest pointed out.

He sighed. “I am called Kiran.”

Tempest swiveled around to look up at him. “Cool. I like the sound of that.”

It had been an impulsive act, but she saw at once that, like most impulses, it would have been better to resist it. They were almost nose to nose. Kiran merely stared at her for several moments, his gaze slowly moving down her face until it reached her lips, hesitating there for several moments and then dropping lower still, resting in the vicinity of her breasts, which were now pressed firmly against his bare chest. He swallowed convulsively.

“Sleep,” he said, his voice suddenly rough.

Unnerved, Tempest turned over once more. She discovered, however, that there was a very long, very hard ridge snuggling against her buttocks now. Alarm went through her, but so, too, did a deep sense of feminine satisfaction. She’d gotten a rise out of him without even trying. Despite the fact that he’d been careful to treat her like an annoyance, he obviously found her attractive—didn’t he?

Oddly enough, the realization comforted her as much as it pleased her. He was obviously not completely immune to her and yet he had made no attempt at all to take advantage of her. Feeling more secure than she could remember feeling in a very long time, she relaxed, snuggled closer, and slept.

The sun had barely risen over the horizon when Tempest awoke, cold and uncomfortable. Unwilling to open her eyes, she wiggled backwards, searching for the warmth that had sustained her through the night. She opened her eyes when she didn’t find it and turned over.

Kiran, she discovered with stunned surprise, was gone.

She sat up and looked around. The fire had died to ashes. Around her was nothing but the same bare rocks that had greeted her every morning since she’d arrived at the watering hole. The only thing that had changed was that she was still huddled in the bedding and blanket that Kiran had provided.

He’d left them for her.

He had risen while she was sleeping, gathered his belongings, and left.

Tempest searched for a sense of relief and failed to find one. She was alone again. She should be glad that he’d gone, but a sense of desperation such as she hadn’t felt since she’d first come here filled her. She hadn’t realized how afraid she was of being alone until Kiran had forced his unwelcome presence upon her. Now, looking forward to waking day after day, alone, without a face to look at or a voice to listen to filled her with the most terrible dread.

She was going to go mad if she stayed here alone—assuming she didn’t die of starvation first.

Leaping to her feet, Tempest rushed over the rocks until she found a vantage point and looked around for Kiran. She saw him at last, his back to the bright red, rising sun, his silhouette already greatly diminished by distance. In a blind panic, she rushed back to the campsite, bundled the blanket and bedding and scrambled down the rocks to the desert floor. Kiran had disappeared over a dune by the time she left the rocky outcropping and her panic rose. Too frightened even to consider calling out to him, Tempest took off at a trot in the direction she’d last seen him. By the time she’d caught sight of him again, her panic had given way to breathlessness and she’d had time to consider whether it was even wise to allow him to know she was following him—particularly when she wasn’t at all certain she should—and she was absolutely certain that he didn’t want her to.

She stopped abruptly, indecisive now. Should she follow a man she didn’t even know to god alone knew where? Or would she be better off just to stay where she was?

She had a bad feeling that she was making a terrible mistake, but she could no more resist the urge to follow Kiran than she could stop breathing. She couldn’t think at all beyond the fear of being completely alone again.

He did not stop to rest. She hadn’t given herself time to consider all the ramifications of trying to follow Kiran. He was a great deal bigger than she was, which meant his stride was longer. Not only had he had a considerable head start on her, but he was accustomed to walking vast distances without stopping to rest. She had to take two or three steps to every one he took and, as the day wore on, she fell further and further behind.

She was too tired at first, and too driven, to be afraid. As Niah’s great red sun began it’s downward arch, however, and exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her, fear lifted its ugly head.

She’d lost sight of Kiran. She wasn’t even completely certain she was still following him, but she was fairly convinced that she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to her safe haven. When she stopped at last to catch her breath and looked back, she could see nothing but endless sand in every direction. As high as the outcropping of rock that had provided her little cave had seemed when she was standing near its summit, it was little more than a bump in the landscape.

She stood indecisively for some time but finally realized that her choice had been made even before she had left. She must find Kiran now if she was to have any chance of surviving.

She was heartened somewhat when she realized she could still see faint impressions of his footprints in the shifting sand. Wishing she’d had the presence of mind to drink her fill of water before she’d charged off, she gathered as much moisture into her mouth as she could, readjusted her burden, and continued, scanning the sand ahead of her now for signs of his passing.

Fear again assailed her as the sun dipped below the horizon and it became harder and harder to see the faint impressions in the sand and finally impossible. She stopped, knowing it would be madness to keep going when she could no longer be certain of his direction. If she tried, she would be hopelessly lost and then she would die because she had no water and only Kiran would know where there was a watering hole.

Resisting the urge to weep, she lowered the bundle to the sand and sat, trying to catch her breath, trying to gather the energy to spread the bedding as, one by one, the stars winked through the darkening canopy of sky overhead. As the blackness of night surrounded her, however, she caught a glimpse of light quite near the ground and her heart leapt in her chest. A campfire!

It was small in the distance—at least another hour’s walk, she thought, but, as tired as she was, she realized she would far prefer walking all night to sleeping alone in the desert. Then, too, she needed water. Besides, this might be her only chance to catch up to Kiran.