Crimson Rain

by Jaye Roycraft

  “Because I was the only survivor of the Crimson Rain not under your control. The only person alive who could ruin your illustrious career with the truth.”

  Another laugh, higher in pitch. “Fool. You know nothing! The body you inhabit belonged to my son. My son.”

  In the gaping orifice of the bay, as the echoes of the final two words died away, utter silence ruled.

  Rayn wondered if it was true, and if so, if Kylariz had known it. Roven, he’s playing mind games with you. Don’t be distracted.

  Dhagaz continued at last. “He didn’t know I was his father. He was raised by another. I loved him, but he betrayed me.”

  “You were the one who betrayed him. You left him to die in the Red Zone,” corrected Kylariz.

  “No, no. He refused my direct order. He wouldn’t kill the Xegen woman. He defied me.”

  Kylariz laughed, a deep sound layered with sadness, bitterness, and dark humor. “Your son didn’t defy you. I did. I had already transferred from the Xegen’s body to this body by the time you arrived on the scene. It was I who begged for the woman’s life, not your son.”

  The commander’s mustache lifted in what Rayn guessed was a smug smile. “Then my son was loyal to me,” Dhagaz stated, his words as self-righteous as his expression.

  Kylariz shook his head. “Perhaps not as loyal as you think.”

  Dhagaz lifted his chin. “What do you know of him?”

  “More than you think. When a Roven takes over a mind, there’s always one last imprint left at death. Your son’s imprint was clear. He hated you.”

  “No!” The pallid countenance of the commander reddened with his denial of the Roven’s words. “I’m going to enjoy watching you die, Roven.”

  Sage, I need news, now.

  It won’t be long. She’s just outside of the city. I should be there within moments.

  Roven, Dina’s not out of danger yet. We have to keep stalling.

  “So I ask you again, Dhagaz. What do you plan? To talk me to death?”

  “No, I have a surprise for you. I just wanted you to know who’s going to kill you, and why.”

  “Then do it,” said Kylariz.

  My turn to caution you, Roven. Don’t underestimate him.

  Rayn watched carefully as the room went deathly quiet again. Kyl’s gray eyes locked with Dhagaz’s pale blue eyes, and the alarm on Rayn’s sixth sense went off.

  Sage!

  “No, Roven, you don’t call it . . .” said Dhagaz.

  Rayn never had a chance to make the mental connection with his soul-counselor.

  “. . . I do.”

  Rayn fell into the Void, feeling his body jerk with the force of a lightning bolt. All muscle control lost, he toppled into a maintenance truck and fell heavily against its sharp metal edges. A black pressure numbed him, and having no physical strength, he fought the blackness with all his will. He forced his eyes to remain open and tried to focus his mind, but his mental machinery, like slipping gears, failed him as well.

  Time slowed to a crawl, and through vision that remained annoyingly clear when all his other faculties abandoned him, he saw Kylariz take a step and stagger. He heard the prolonged scream of pain, faraway, as in a dream, but his mind clearly heard the wail of a soul in torment. The anguish of the sound tore at him, and as he saw Kylariz sag to his knees, he knew the Roven was dying.

  Can’t end like this . . . came the only thought Rayn could form, and his eyes closed under the increasing pressure of the field of energy. But he refused to submit. Too weak for the ang’nagel, the spikes of pain, he pooled all his remaining will into the most basic tool a young dens learns to wield. One simple compelling thought.

  Dhagaz, drop the weapon.

  The thought formed, he steadied it, and launched it toward its target with as much impelling force as he could muster.

  Then the blackness smothered his mind, and Rayn thought no more.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bazaar of the Dead

  THE FIRST THING Dina felt was the sun hot on her face and the desert floor hard beneath her body. She opened her eyes and tried to take in as much of her environs as she could without moving and letting Vaizya know she was awake—not that she could move much anyway with her hands and feet bound. She was in the middle of some sort of ancient graveyard, surrounded by crumbling stone sarcophagi and beehive tombs. She lifted her head, blinked the sweat from her eyes, and saw before her the inscription along the base of a sarcophagus.

  From thee, dear wife, do I part

  And far away I go,

  Remain with me, my faithful heart

  For love is all I know

  She shivered, in spite of the heat. Above the poetic inscription was a portrait of the deceased, a man’s profile carved into the stone in a scalloped frame. She understood now a little of what Kyl had been trying to tell her in his reverent speech about Triplicity. Real people had lived and died here. She hoped she wouldn’t join them.

  She turned her head away and saw Vaizya. He was nearby, crouched behind a tomb, checking his weapons. She gave a silent thanks to the Gods that he seemed more interested in using them than using her.

  But her prayer was followed by a curse. She’d been careless. She and Rayn had approached Kyl’s house, and upon seeing the open service door, Rayn had projected his mind inside the large bay. He’d felt the presence of both Kyl and Dhagaz and had immediately instructed her to stay outside while he joined the party. Concern for both Rayn and Kyl had made her forgetful of her own safety, and she hadn’t heard Vaizya come up behind her. Though slender, the man was amazingly strong and fast, and he’d held her in a grip she couldn’t break.

  She wondered briefly if Rayn and Kyl were still alive, then decided they must be, or Vaizya wouldn’t be preparing for a fight. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and she craned her neck to get a better look.

  “What’s the matter, Sand-Man? Too scared to show yourself?” The echoes of Vaizya’s shout bounced eerily off the monuments to the dead.

  “You don’t scare me, Vaiz. You never have.”

  It was Sandy! She struggled to sit up, and stones bit into her knees thru the thin material of her trousers, but she didn’t care. Nor did she care now if Vaizya knew she was awake.

  His laugh careened off the tombs. “Bold boasts come easily to one who does nothing more than hide. Show yourself, Sand-Man, then see how boastful you feel.”

  She watched as Sandy moved slowly and deliberately, shifting like a shadow from one monument to the next. Vaizya’s rupter gun whined, and a tombstone exploded behind Sandy. The destruction of something that had survived for so long saddened her, but she was thankful the shot had missed its mark.

  “Your life is already forfeit, Sand-Man.”

  It was Sandy’s turn to laugh, and the chilling sound seemed to emanate more from the dead than from the mouth of a young man with boyish good looks. Sandy circled, exposing himself for brief heartbeats while Vaizya scrambled to reposition himself.

  Sandy moved again, and a succession of shots from Vaizya raised plumes of sand and stone in his wake, each shot closer to its mark than the one before. Sandy dove for the cover of a mausoleum a second before a corner of the ancient edifice tore apart with the howl of a wounded beast. Gray dust hung in the air and drifted with the vagrant breeze.

  Dina!

  The voice in her head wasn’t Rayn. Who are you?

  Sage Z’andarc. I came here with Rayn. He asked me to help you. Where are you?

  The soul-counselor Rayn had mentioned. I’m in some kind of necropolis.

  The Bazaar of the Dead. I know where it is. Are you all right?

  I’m fine. Vaizya Repere is in a gunfight with Rhoan Sandjan, Kyl’s shipmate. Sage, listen, I know you and Rayn came to kill the Roven, but spare
Sandjan, please.

  Acknowledged. I’m five minutes away. How do I tell Sandjan from Repere?

  Sandy’s got long hair, and he’s wearing a breastplate.

  If he’s indeed a Roven, he should be able to hear my Voice. I hope so, because I don’t want him blasting away at me.

  Vaizya lifted his head. “If you think you can hold me off until your friends arrive, think again, Sand-Man. They’ll all be dead by now. Pick a spot amongst the residents here, and I’ll see a proper stone is mounted in your memory.”

  It occurred to Dina that Vaizya didn’t know what the Roven really were, else he wouldn’t believe he could defeat Sandy so easily. Apparently Dhagaz hadn’t shared the same information with Vaizya that he’d shared with Rayn.

  “If you’re going to order a headstone, Vaiz, make it to your own liking, because it’ll be yours,” came Sandy’s voice.

  With a battle cry, Vaizya unleashed a deafening barrage of rupter fire in Sandy’s direction. Rubble and dust flew everywhere in a blinding maelstrom, and Dina closed her eyes and ducked her head against the stone fragments that pelted the ground. She coughed, then raised her head and squinted her eyes against the dust. She heard no answering taunt from Sandy, no return fire. Could it be Sandy was wounded? His human body would be just as susceptible to injury as anyone else.

  Then, out of the gray haze, she saw two men stride toward her. One was Sandy, and the other could have been Rayn’s twin.

  “Drop your weapons, Vaiz,” said Sandy, but it was a Sandy she’d never seen before. Gone was the affable raider, the charming young man. His long hair, caked with blood and dirt, was a proper frame for the determination painted on the young face, and his ice-blue eyes flamed with a cold light that reminded her of a predatory animal.

  Vaizya stumbled backward and let go his rupter gun. It fell at his feet with a dull thud. His gaze darted from one man to the other, and his mouth moved, but no words exited.

  “I can take it from here, Roven. Go make sure Rayn and Kylariz are all right. You’re better able to help them than I am,” said the man Dina assumed was Sage.

  Sandy shook his head. “No. Vaiz wouldn’t have Dina if not for my mistake. I was trailing him, but he lost me in the River Maze. If I don’t make this right, Kylariz’ll never forgive me. Besides, I have a few old scores to settle with the rat here.” Sandy stroked his chin. “This body bears more than one scar from his blade. Go, and quickly. I sense our brothers need help.”

  Sage, please go help Rayn. I’ll be all right. I trust Sandy.

  Sage winked at her, then held out his hand toward Sandy. Sandy grasped it with his own. “Speed of the Gods, friend.”

  Sage left, and Sandy spared not even the briefest backward glance at the departing man, but kept his gaze riveted on Vaizya. “This is a sacred place, Vaiz. Have you no respect for the sanctity for the dead?”

  Vaizya laughed, and the sound seemed to bounce from headstone to headstone, as though the dead themselves wanted no part of Vaiz. “You’ll pardon me if my life takes precedence over a pile of bones long turned to dust. But if you like it here, I can arrange for you to stay.”

  “There’s eternal life in death, but there’s also immortality in life. You deserve neither, and you’ll have neither. Come, Vaiz. It ends. But I’ll give you a fairer fight than you would’ve given me.”

  The two men faced off against each other, but neither remained rooted in one spot. Vaizya circled his opponent like a planet orbiting a sun, and Dina guessed it was a ploy to force the rays of bright light directly into Sandy’s eyes. “Fair? You mean fair like when Kylariz stole my ship and all my cargo?”

  Sandy shadowed Vaizya’s every move, keeping his body at a forty-five degree angle to that of his enemy and maintaining a distance of one leg length between them. “No, Vaiz. Fair as in payment for the destruction of the Megaera.”

  Vaizya suddenly stopped and kicked up a spray of sand and stones in Sandy’s direction. Sandy took a step backward, shaking his head and swiping at his face as though a swarm of flies had attacked him. Vaizya advanced, whipping one foot forward to jab at Sandy’s left knee. “Fair to one is false to another, says I, so you’ll pardon me if I don’t abide by your rules.”

  Sandy kept his balance, though, his backward motion obviously minimizing the force of the blow. Vaizya was quick to follow through with a shin strike to Sandy’s thigh. The blow spun Sandy around, and Vaizya pressed on with a serious of kicks, all aimed for either the knees or thighs. Sandy went down as if his legs were paralyzed, but when Vaizya aimed a boot at his ribs, Sandy rolled away and regained his feet. As he straightened to his full height, he met Vaizya’s attack with a fistful of dirt to the man’s eyes. “Oh, your rules are fine by me, Vaiz, just fine.”

  Vaizya cried out and pawed at his eyes. His kicks continued, but they were blind thrusts that Sandy sidestepped with ease. He closed in, clinched Vaizya, and threw him against a nearby tombstone. Vaizya grunted, and his long limbs jerked this way and that, like those of an irritating insect flattened against a wall. He crumbled to the throat of the headstone, and Sandy reached down to haul him to his feet. But a flash of silver winked in the sun, and Vaizya slashed at Sandy’s arm, drawing a red line across his forearm.

  Vaizya pushed himself to his feet with a war cry and threw himself against Sandy with a hail of quick knife jabs. There were no large arm swings, no cocking of the arm to aim a single deadly blow, only an efficiency of motion and small rapid-fire stabs aimed at whatever body part was in reach. Dina knew it was a smart strategy, and her heart pounded in her throat with fear for Sandy. She had trouble seeing how many times the knife found its target, but Sandy kept moving, which Dina took as a good sign. Her long-ago IIB training had taught her that putting distance and obstacles in an enemy’s path was as smart as a good offense.

  The fight moved closer to her, and she could see that both men were armed with knives, and both were wounded. Blood ran down Sandy’s right forearm and encased his hand like a red glove, while that from a cut on his face dripped and ran down his metal breastplate. Vaizya stood peppered with blood so all-encompassing she couldn’t tell where his specific injuries were.

  Sandy stepped to the side of a mausoleum and pressed his back against the stone. He held his knife high in his bloodied hand and dropped it. The blade fell with a faint thump, and only silence followed. Sandy stood against the stone wall like a condemned prisoner awaiting execution.

  Sweat mixed with blood on Vaizya’s arms and glittered with a lurid sheen. Then, with a cry he raised his knife hand over his head and launched himself at his target.

  Dina screamed, Sandy moved, and the two men clinched in a noiseless death grip. They twisted and turned as though they were locked together in some bizarre mating dance, then Vaizya’s body jerked, his head lolled to the side, and Sandy pushed him away like a lover spurned. Only then did Dina see the knife in Sandy’s left hand. He wiped the blade on Vaizya’s trousers then stepped to Dina and carefully cut the ropes binding her hands and feet.

  “I thought he had you,” she whispered.

  “He did, too. Overconfidence made him careless. He never even saw that I held a second knife.”

  She shook her head. She hadn’t seen the second knife, either.

  He smiled. “What, you truly feared for me? You don’t honestly think I’d let the likes of him mortally wound me. I’d have to spend my next lifetime in that hideously ugly body of his, and there’s no way I’d allow that to happen.”

  She looked at his cuts and knew his flippant words couldn’t deny the seriousness of his wounds. “Well, if we don’t tend to those right now, you’ll bleed to death, and I don’t fancy you taking my body for your own.” He took bandages from the belt at his waist and helped her staunch the flow of blood.

  “We have to move quickly now,” he said when she was finished. “I sense our friends are in simi
lar grave danger.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Roven Killer

  THE ELECTROMAGNETIC field hit Kyl like a tidal wave slamming against a sand castle. He saw DeStar go down like a dead man, and it was like watching a movie of his own death. What happened to the dens would happen to him, and seconds later, as expected, Kyl’s legs buckled beneath him, the first victim of the attack on his nervous system.

  The dens screamed, and he screamed, but he heard neither voice. All he could hear was the sound in his head that was one with the pain and pressure. He slumped to the floor, his back against the cruiser, and he tried to block the pain, but it was like trying to defend ground with a cannon when the cannon had already been spiked. He fought to retain his sight, as if he could see a way out of this, but there was none. The pain would drive him from his body, and there was no other to take. The dens was probably already dead, and he’d never make it through the electromagnetic field to reach Dhagaz, even if he did have any desire to spend his next lifetime in the body of his enemy.

  It was an ignoble way to die, not that the Roven ever contemplated a good way to die.

  The pain increased, becoming finer, sharper, and more exquisite—like a thousand needles stabbing at the core of his being. His vision blurred, and he struggled to form the most basic of thoughts. Ax, I’m sorry . . .

  Before he could finish the thought, the Roven Killer clattered to the floor, and the electromagnetic field was terminated. The pressure lifted from Kyl’s mind, and he neither questioned providence nor hesitated making his next move. He shot the strongest bolt of mental energy he could at his enemy, and Dhagaz’s body jerked with muscular contractures. His eyes bulged, spittle ran down his chin, and his body hit the floor with a heavy thud.

  It was over, but Kyl had no idea what had happened. Something had made Dhagaz drop the weapon, but what? He looked at DeStar. The dens was face down on the floor, as still as Dhagaz. Kyl couldn’t yet stand, but he reached his mind to his fallen comrade. Comrade. The word sounded strange to his mind’s ear. He had had so few true comrades, save for Sandy. He felt for DeStar’s aura and found it. It was weak and in shreds, but it hadn’t fled his body. He was still alive.