LC02 Crystal Flame

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  He scowled at her from the other side of the water. “Kalena, this is no Healer’s trick. It’s just a mountain stream.”

  “The water’s black. I can’t even see through it. Water that shallow should be transparent.”

  “The sun has set and the light is going quickly That’s the only reason the water looks black,” Ridge explained with a patience that annoyed Kalena. “Close your eyes if the sight of the water bothers you. The creet won’t mind it.”

  “I can’t do it, Ridge.” She looked at him pleadingly. “I just can’t do it.”

  “Yes, you can.” He sent his own creet back through the stream. “Here, give me your reins,” he added more gently. “I’ll lead your creet.”

  “No!” Kalena yanked back on the leather, causing her already confused bird to prance in agitation.

  Ridge dropped his arm, making no move to grab the reins again. “Kalena, you have no choice. You have to cross that stream and you must realize it. I don’t know what fantasy you’re weaving in your head, but whatever it is, I can’t allow you to indulge it. There’s no reason to make a cold camp on the trail when warmth and shelter are just a short distance ahead.”

  “Please, Ridge. You must understand. I’m not indulging a fantasy. I simply can’t go through that water.”

  He studied her for a long moment and then the impatience faded from his expression. “All right. I can see you’re really upset. Do you want to sleep on the trail tonight?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Yes, please. I know it will be cold, but with our cloaks and a fire we won’t freeze. Perhaps this water will be gone by tomorrow.”

  He moved his creet a little closer to hers. “Perhaps. Let’s see what we can find in the way of shelter out here.”

  Kalena finally began to relax. He wasn’t going to argue further. “Thank you, Ridge,” she said with grateful relief. “I know this seems like so much female nonsense—but—No! Stop! Please, Ridge.”

  Her sentence ended on a squeak of protest as Ridge leaned forward without any warning and scooped her up out of the saddle. “You’re right,” he said soothingly as he settled Kalena in front of him. “It does seem like so much female nonsense. But it will all be over before you can count to ten.” Holding her firmly with one hand, he grabbed her creet’s reins and started into the Stream.

  “Ridge, no! Please, I beg you...”

  He folded the edge of his cloak around her, covering her face. “Don’t look if it bothers you so much,” he said gently.

  Kalena knew it was too late to struggle. She buried her face against the warmth of his chest, shivering violently even though she had the covering of two cloaks to shield her from the cold. She squeezed her eyes shut and clung to Ridge’s waist.

  Kalena waited for the nausea to overwhelm her, but her stomach stayed calm this time as the creets splashed into the stream. She was aware of an intense cold wafting from the black water, but that was all. Cradled in Ridge’s arms, she made the crossing without further trauma. It was as if the Fire Whip’s own heart was protecting her, she thought, half dazed.

  When the birds were standing firmly on the far side of the water, Ridge loosened his hold on Kalena. She sat up uncertainly and found him watching her with eyes that were both sympathetic and amused.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now you can look forward to a hot meal, a warm fire and a roof over your head.”

  Kalena still felt a little dizzy. She didn’t look back at the black stream. “What do you want me to say, Ridge? Do you want me to thank you for treating me like a witless child?”

  The sympathy and rather gentle amusement in his eyes disappeared. “A witless wife, not a witless child,” he muttered. “A child would probably have had more sense.”

  She stiffened and made to jump down from her perch. “I’ll ride my own creet the rest of the way.”

  “Am I going to be treated to a night of the sulks?”

  “I’m too tired to spend much time sulking,” she informed him as she climbed into her own saddle. “After the evening meal I’m going straight to sleep.” She picked up the reins and snapped them briskly against the creet’s neck. The bird moved forward obligingly, aware of the promise of shelter and food that lay ahead.

  “Kalena…” Ridge caught up with her, his face set in its familiar grim lines. “I’m sorry for having to carry you across that stream against your will.” His words were stilted. Ridge wasn’t accustomed to apologizing. “But I saw no other choice. I couldn’t let you spend a night shivering on the trail when shelter was within reach. It would have been stupid and irresponsible on my part. As your husband, I’m supposed to look after you. You must learn to trust me.”

  “My mood is unpleasant enough as it is,” she retorted. “Don’t make it any worse by lecturing me on the subject of your husbandly responsibilities and my wifely duties.”

  “I should never have left you alone with those women last night,” Ridge decided gloomily.

  Kalena thought about what had been said after dinner the previous evening. “For once, Ridge, you might actually be right.”

  If Ridge was startled by her unexpected agreement, he didn’t show it.

  Kalena awoke the next morning and found that Ridge had already vacated the pallet. The cloaks they had used as blankets during the night had been pushed aside and she could feel the bite of dawn in the small room. She yawned and wondered why Ridge hadn’t yet lit a fire. Perhaps he didn’t want to waste time on a hot meal this morning.

  She hadn’t exactly sulked the night before, but they had both been unusually quiet. When they had gone to bed Ridge had gathered Kalena close to him but had made no effort to arouse her physically. He had apparently been as exhausted as she.

  The creets stirred restlessly in the stalls that adjoined the main room. Kalena ignored them and studied Ridge, who had opened the door and was staring out into the dark gray dawn that hung over the mountains. There was something wrong. She could feel it. Kalena sat up, gathering her cloak around her.

  “What is it, Ridge?”

  He turned slowly to look back at her. There was a strange expression in his eyes, one Kalena didn’t recognize.

  “We’re lost,” he said simply.

  She stared at him, appalled. “Lost! But that’s impossible. We’re in the shelter on the trail. The same shelter that we used the first time we came through the mountains.”

  “The shelter is here. It’s the trail that’s gone.”

  Thirteen

  Kalena scrambled from the pallet, swinging the cloak around her as she hurried barefoot across the small room. Her feet felt as if they had been immersed in ice before she reached the door. She should have put on her boots, she thought.

  But the sight that greeted her when she reached Ridge’s side was more than enough to make her forget the cold. An endless swirl of gray confronted her. Nothing was visible through it. It enveloped the shelter and the entire surrounding area.

  “Fog?” she suggested hesitantly, knowing the mist was more than that but unwilling to admit it yet.

  Ridge shook his head bluntly. “If it’s fog, it’s unlike any I’ve ever seen. I tried walking out into it. You can’t get more than a few paces before it becomes absolutely impenetrable. The creets won’t be able to see any better than we can. They could walk straight off a cliff in that stuff. We’re trapped here.”

  “If it’s just fog it will burn off by this afternoon.”

  “It isn’t fog, Kalena,”

  “What, then?” She glanced at him questioningly.

  “I wish I knew. I’d say it was another example of the Healers’ tricks, except that we’re too far from their valley” His expression grew more shadowed. “At least, I think we are.”

  “No,” Kalena vowed, “this is no Healer’s trick. I’d know if it had something to do with them.”

  “Because you’re a woman?”

  “Yes, Ridge. Because I’m a woman.” She met his unreadable gaze. “What’s more, I think it’s the fac
t that you’re a man that makes you so sure this isn’t normal fog. This is connected to that black water that you forced us to cross last night.”

  “You’re letting your imagination get carried away again, Kalena.” He moved past her, striding out into the cold gray atmosphere.

  Kalena watched him for a moment, then hurried across the room to slip into her boots. When she returned to the door all she could see of Ridge was the back of his arm and one booted foot. The rest of his body was lost in the fog. Even as she stared, he disappeared completely.

  “Ridge! Come back here. I can’t see you.”

  He eased back into view slowly. There was a disorienting moment when all she could see were his golden eyes. They gleamed at her through the fathomless gray fierce, fiery pools of heat. Kalena stared into that gaze and saw the elemental predator that the philosophers said lay deep inside every male. It sent a jolt of fear through her.

  “Ridge,” she whispered, unable to move.

  And then he was back, coalescing out of the fog. “It’s all right, Kalena. I was just trying to see if I can find the mountain wall that lines the trail.”

  “Did you?” She swallowed heavily, aware of a peculiar dryness in her throat.

  “No. It’s as if there’s nothing out there but this gray fog.”

  “Surely when the sun has risen this stuff will thin,” she said with a touch of desperation.

  He shrugged and walked back into the shelter, closing the door behind him. “I’ll build a fire. We’re not going anywhere for a while. Might as well eat.”

  They spent a long day in the small shelter. Ridge kept the fire at full blaze, working his way steadily through the pile of wood that was stored in the creets’ stable. The heat was needed to ward off the biting chill. As the day progressed, Kalena felt colder and colder, despite the fire. She kept darting anxious glances out the window, hoping for some indication that the sun was having an effect on the strange grayness that surrounded them. But the fog seemed to grow darker, not lighter as the day passed. During one uneasy moment she had the impression that when darkness fell the mist would convert itself into the same stuff she had encountered in the caverns of Hot And Cold. She sensed that grayness was a temporarily quiescent form of that darker mist.

  “A good thing you always carry emergency food in your saddlebags,” Kalena tried to say lightly as she prepared the evening meal in front of the fire.

  Ridge didn’t answer. He had grown increasingly less communicative as the day went by. Kalena felt uncomfortable under his watchful gaze. She kept remembering the hunter’s eyes she had seen suspended in the fog that morning. Shaking away the image, Kalena tried again to find some topic of conversation.

  “The Healers told me a strange thing about myself, Ridge,” she said thoughtfully. “They said I have the Talent but that it was never developed and trained.”

  “They probably told you that as a way of inducing you to stay behind with them,” he responded shortly.

  She ignored that. “They said Olara knew about my Talent but kept it a secret from me.”

  Ridge swung his intent gaze from the fire to her face. “Now that I can believe. Your aunt wanted to use you. If it’s true you have the Talent, she would have had a problem, wouldn’t she? Healers can’t kill. How did she keep such knowledge from you?”

  Kalena kept her eyes on the fire, wondering why she felt so little warmth from it. “With the techniques a Healer uses to deal with troubled minds. Or so Valica claims.”

  “Ha. It makes a certain kind of sense. It would also verify what I told you a few days ago. Your aunt meant you to die in the attempt to kill Quintel.”

  Kalena threw him a quick glance, then turned back to the fire. “Ridge…”

  “Hush, Kalena. You know I speak the truth. There are very few recorded cases of a Healer willfully committing murder, but in those rare instances, the Healer herself has died in the process or shortly thereafter. Some sort of deep shock sets in or so I’ve heard.”

  Kalena drew a deep breath. “Ridge, if she lied to me about the Talent…”

  “Yes?”

  “She might have lied to me about…about other things.” Kalena concluded in a sad little rush.

  “Such as Quintel being the one responsible for killing the males of your house? Yes, Kalena, she lied.”

  “But why would she do such a thing? It makes no sense.”

  Ridge shrugged. “Who knows? If you want my opinion, she sounds as if she’s a Healer in need of a good Healer.”

  Kalena cradled her chin on her arms as she drew her knees up in front of her. “Ridge, I want to ask you something. Something important.”

  “Ask.”

  “How would you feel if you discovered that someone who had raised you, educated you, cared for you had also lied to you?”

  Ridge let out a deep breath. When he spoke his voice took on that curiously neutral tone that served to emphasize the controlled violence just under the surface of the man. “If I were to discover such a thing about someone I had trusted there would be a reckoning. I would neither forgive nor forget. Do you want me to kill your aunt for you, Kalena? Is that what you’re asking?”

  She was truly shocked. “By the Stones, no! Never would I ask you to do such a thing. Unlike you, Ridge, all I want to do is forget. How could you ask me a question like that?”

  For the first time that day his mouth was briefly edged with a wry smile. “To make you realize that there is nothing you can do except forget your aunt and all her poisonous teachings. It will do you no good to brood on the past. You can do nothing about it. It is beyond you to even exact vengeance for what was done to you.”

  Kalena shook her head in wonder. “You know a few mind tricks of your own, don’t you, Fire Whip? You’re absolutely right. There is nothing I can do about Olara now except put her in the past.”

  “You are not one who can walk the vengeance trail, Kalena, so it’s best not even to contemplate it.”

  “I think you’re getting to know me a little too well, Ridge,” she said with a rueful laugh.

  “I want you to forget your past because your future lies with me.” He looked at her, willing her to meet his gaze. “Do you understand that now, Kalena?”

  “I understand it, Ridge.” As she studied him in the flickering light it seemed to Kalena that the flames on the hearth etched his face in savage lines. The link between them held, but the knowledge of it did nothing to alleviate the wary sensation that was troubling her so deeply tonight. She felt as if there was a third force in the room, sharing the space with her and Ridge. Kalena didn’t like the feeling; it chilled her with fear.

  They went to bed early that night. Ridge made no move to gather Kalena into his arms, however, and for some strange reason she was just as glad. She felt edgy and restless, poised on the border of an uneasiness that threatened to turn into senseless panic. She had to keep telling herself that she had nothing to fear from Ridge. Nevertheless, it was hours before she fell into a troubled sleep.

  Her dreams that night were filled with visions of a bottomless pool of black water, endless gray fog and the golden eyes of a predator who came from the darkest end of the Spectrum. Kalena stirred frequently in her sleep, unconsciously seeking escape, although she couldn’t have said what it was she feared.

  She awoke with a shudder of alarm, the echo of a scream still on her lips. Her heart was pounding as though she had been fleeing a hook viper. The room was pitch dark. All warmth had died in the fireplace and the lamps were out.

  Ridge touched her arm and Kalena jumped. His hand fell away and he made no further move to comfort her. “Are you all right?” His voice was harsh, only remotely concerned. “You screamed.”

  “A bad dream. Ridge, it’s so dark in here.”

  “I’ll rebuild the fire.”

  She felt him leave the pallet, heard him fumbling with the kindling from the pile of wood near the fireplace. A moment later flames flared into life as Ridge used the tiny tube of firegel
he carried to ignite the wood. Kalena lay propped on her side, shivering, and looked at Ridge’s harsh profile as he knelt beside the fire. He was wearing only his trousers which he had kept on for warmth.

  The firelight gleamed on his shoulders and was reflected in his eyes. There was something strange about him tonight, something she sensed with every fiber of her being. Something had happened. Tonight he was the Other. Everything in him that was opposite to her was suddenly starkly visible to all her senses.

  Just as that realization struck her, Ridge got to his feet and came toward her. With his back to the fire his face was in deep shadow. Kalena could see only the gleam of his eyes. She edged back as he came across the room with the lazy stride of a prowling hunter.

  Kalena looked up and knew beyond any doubt that a bizarre transformation had taken place. This was not the man to whom she had bound herself, and yet it was Ridge. In the shadows he looked at her in a way she half recognized, even though she had never seen such an expression on his face before. He wanted her, but there was no sensuality in this male predator, only a hunger that fed on conquest and violence.

  “Ridge, you must stop,” she breathed. She sat up and scrambled backward on the pallet until she was against the wall. “Please, stop.”

  He didn’t halt until he was next to the pallet. “Are you afraid of me tonight?”

  Her head lifted proudly as she crouched in front of him. “Yes, Ridge, I’m afraid of you tonight.”

  “Why?” He sounded more amused than curious. But there was no warmth in his amusement. The laughter in him was as cold and ruthless as the hunger in his eyes. All trace of the warm fire that characterized the man was gone.

  Whatever drove him tonight, it wasn’t passion, Kalena knew. She had witnessed his passion, even when it was laced with his anger, and never had he been like this. She had never seen him so utterly and completely cold. Always before, Ridge had been a man of heat and fire when he reached for Kalena in bed.

  “Please don’t touch me, Ridge.”

  “I can do anything I want with you.” He said the words thoughtfully, as if the fact had just occurred to him. He put one knee on the pallet and put out his hand to slide his fingers along her throat. “Anything at all. I can take you and use you and when I’m finished…”