Not much of anything, apparently, Raymond thought, his world spinning. Not only had the Pathway made him predictably sick, which he had been prepared for, however, he had not been prepared for Outside. The very sensory overload of the place was something he would not forget for the rest of his life.
He cracked an eyelid open, on his back with his forearm resting against his closed eye and squinted up at a very tall, half-naked female.
“Where be the Travelers, sphere-dweller?” Rowenna bit out and Raymond was taken aback.
She was not primitive at all, but assertive and well-spoken. He forced himself to sit up, his stomach giving a sick turn as he did. However, he was too distracted to pay it much mind and had nothing left to expunge.
“The Guardians?” he asked as confirmation, struggling to stand.
Her unusual eyes narrowed on him. “They guard nothing yet orchestrate our futures, foolish prince.” She straightened, gazing around at the evidence of his sickness.
He could not look away from the strange gills at her neck. Fascinating.
She scowled at his interest and thrust a canteen of some kind toward him and he spun the hammered cap, gulping some of the finest water he had ever had the pleasure of consuming and spit it out. Raymond extracted a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. Taking a second sip he studied the female and was instantly nervous.
She looked at him as a viper of the lowest intelligence and was beyond beautiful. How he had ever presumed that she was a sort of half-animal was laughable. His eyes went over the gills again at her throat and he wondered at that. Perhaps it was evolutionary? For he had heard many stories of how the sun was shadowed after the impact of the rocks, the ash had blocked out the heat of their star.
Had humans left outside developed a secondary means of respiration? Again... fascinating.
“Pray tell, why do you stare at my neck?” Rowenna accused, kicking up her chin.
“I mean no offense... I have not... seen...”
Then she pressed her hand to his mouth to halt his speech and a match lit. One he was instantly sure he could manage. He stepped closer to her and Rowenna hissed, “No fool, I see them.”
The Travelers, or Guardians, as Raymond knew them to be-- had arrived.
They would supervise their introduction, then he and Rowenna would be left to consummate their arrangement. He took another cleansing swig of the water inside the canteen as he looked at her, a wild and passionate woman, barely more than a girl... he did not know who would be consumed.
Perhaps it would not be she.
But he.
*
The Travelers, who were really two corrupt scientists from a parallel world, had arrived to ensure the union between the two peoples came together. For they would have a daughter and she would be their Key.
A genetic anomaly that would pull the groundwork together to make a new and enhanced race of people in their world. The reasons they gave these primitive peoples were true and highly plausible so force had not been necessary. However, Gary and Joe Zondorae could not go beyond their own timeline to see the outcome, it was conjecture. Everything they did now, they executed with a faith steeped in science.
Had they known how events would culminate in their future, things might have been handled differently. But for all their scientific acumen, hindsight evaded humanity as always.
The Zondorae brothers watched the two young people of this distant world come together, young for their time and mature for this one, they hoped that their choices had not been ill-placed. They had gone over the family lines most deliberately and the young man, soon to be King Raymond, who resided in bio-sphere number three, was the direct descendant of Stella. Who was also a distant relative of the woman, Rowenna, of the Clan of Cape Cod. Their resultant offspring should marry the genetics nicely and give them a carrier of sorts, a genetic messiah. If she were female, which they had reason to presume her to be, all the better.
The brothers gave each other a significant glance and Joe stepped forward, giving awkward introductions to the pair in a parody of the language with which they were familiar.
He would see them move toward their sexual entanglement before he departed or they would not leave here.
They waited.
It was Prince Raymond who understood for what they waited and was beyond mortified.
He turned to Rowenna. “They expect some kind of...” he waffled his hand back and forth, “show of our union.”
Oh dear Lord, Rowenna thought, glaring at the Travelers. Mayhap Evil Ones was a nearer moniker to ones such as they.
Rowenna was hideously true and loyal. As Raymond leaned forward to kiss her, she felt her betrayal of Rolland like metal in her breastbone. Slick, cold and metallic, Rowenna went against those deeply ingrained feelings and pressed her body into the kiss with this strange male.
Raymond felt her meld to his body and, Guardian help him, he forgot the strangers who were but paces away from their position. He wrapped his arms around a female that was nearly his height and kissed her like a starving man.
Satisfied, the scientists from a parallel world zapped out of existence. The Pathway winking into a spot of bright light, the sounds of wildlife quieting before its abnormal presence.
They left in the certainty of the forward motion of their interference. While that wheel moved, it flowed to destiny's course, one that was much different.
*
Raymond felt the hand pick him up from behind and heave him backward. He did an airborne tumble that sent his stomach into a secondary tailspin. However, Raymond prided himself on hands calloused from his days working the pungy oars himself. He had mucked in and out of his small oyster harvesting ships for years and collected the baskets with hands that did not reflect those of the King he would be. The solid wood buckets of oysters weighed fifty pounds each and he had hoisted them day in and day out. He was almost ten and eight but had another two inches of adult height he would gain and ranged around six feet that day in the meadow of Outside.
The great hulking giant that came for him was five inches taller and forty pounds heavier.
Rowenna! Raymond thought with a speed that frightened him.
He was here this day to couple with a strange female and now he found himself in the role of protector against a male that was undoubtedly Savage.
His daily life and sparring with the guard of the sphere did not prepare him for the vigor of the surprise assault by the huge male, yet he was not as soft as this one supposed.
Raymond played smart and when the man charged again, a short sword with a deeply embedded and polished stone winked as he bore down. As he drew nearer, he simply grabbed the wrist with the weapon and, nearly embracing him, threw him over his outstretched leg.
And being the smart man he was, he rushed to Rowenna, who stood with a gaping mouth and launched his arm around her small waist, nearly picking her up.
“Let us make haste before the brute beats us,” Raymond rushed out even as he made off with Rowenna.
“Put me down!” she yelled, struggling inside his hold.
“No! Can you not see... foolish woman, that a Savage is after us?”
He was not after them, he was upon them, rolling the pair onto the ground so smoothly it had to have been orchestrated.
Raymond tried to toss the hellion, Rowenna, away from him so he might spare her a little longer and looked up into eyes so fierce they stilled his breath.
A hand raised above his head, the shadow of it encompassing his face and blotting out the summer sun of Outside.
“Rolland... no,” Rowenna said in a shaky tremor.
She knew him? Raymond asked himself in mute horror.
“'Tis not his fault, as it is not mine.”
The fist stayed raised, a fine tremor rippled through the warrior's body above Raymond's and he wondered if that great meaty hammer would fall.
Then it did not.
The warrior grabbed Raymond about the neck and slammed his head once on t
he ground and stood.
Raymond gathered his scattered wits, made more so by the blow and staggered to a standing posture. With the strange environs coupled with the blow and the Pathway sickness, Raymond was almost done in with it all.
“Is this your... idea of hospitality?” he asked, sweeping his hand toward the Savage who pressed Rowenna against himself as if protecting her from him.
How absurd. He was obviously deranged and violent.
Yet, the lovely Rowenna lay crying in gasping sobs against his body and the eyes which regarded him were cold.
If that were not enough, Raymond saw killing intent if he had ever in his short life. This male wished him dead.
Bones and ashes.
“What say you?” Raymond asked, his eyes shifting to Rowenna.
“I say she is my betrothed, sphere-dweller,” he snarled and Raymond took a step back as if slapped.
Good Guardian. “I am...” Raymond looked helplessly between the two. “I do not know what to say.”
They stared at each other for a few awkward and swollen moments.
“Do you understand what it is to watch your future mate lay with another?” The male's eyes blazed, his nostrils flaring.
Swollen time swirled between them. “No,” Raymond finally said in a quiet voice.
He released Rowenna and came to stand in front of Raymond and he held his ground. It was a difficult thing, the male who strode did so with a physical efficiency that was a thing of contained beauty in motion.
It was like watching a panther prowl; it was fine at a distance, up close, it was another thing entirely. That inky hair swung like a pendulum as he drew nearer and eyes to match bore twin holes of black fire on his person.
They stood toe to toe and Raymond looked up, having been very accustomed to being considered a larger man of the sphere, well-knit and quick at hand with a weapon.
This man from the Outside made him feel almost small.
He shifted his gaze to Rowenna, who stood looking every bit of the girl she was and very lost.
Raymond took a deep breath and let it out.
“I am Prince Raymond, from the Kingdom of Ohio.” He stuck his hand out, fully anticipating being slighted.
His flesh stood untouched for a heartbeat, then was engulfed in a crushing grip, those black eyes blazing out of a face hardened with things Raymond had never seen.
“I am Rolland, from the Clan of Massachusetts, betrothed to Rowenna of the Clan of Cape Cod.”
Rolland held his hand as it went hopelessly numb. When the handshake, if one could call it such, was nearing its end, Rolland jerked Raymond kissing close and whispered, “If you hurt her, I will peel your nails from their beds like the onions in the field.” Then he added, “Slowly.” As if there could be any doubt.
Raymond did the impossible and tightened his grip against the brutal force around it. “I am not a raper of females, sir.”
Then he was released, the other male's eyes tightening.
Raymond watched him like a cobra readying for the strike and Rowenna came to him, stretching up on her tiptoes she laid a feather weight's kiss upon his jaw and whispered, “Go.”
Rolland turned and stared at Raymond, the message so clear it was as if he had spoken and Raymond nodded at him.
I will not hurt Rowenna, though I will not love her as you do. She is but mine for a season, not a lifetime.
Yet, that unspoken promise would be the lie of his life.
For he did hurt Rowenna, his existence had seen to that.
And oh... he did want her.
He always would.
Yet that day, Raymond did not know of such things as love and destiny. He knew only of duty and obligation.
Life was an apt teacher and as Rowenna and Raymond watched her future mate of the Band bleed into the shadows of the forest she turned to him, biting a lip chapped from crying and the dryness of the warm day that held its breath around them as she put her hand out.
After a moment's pause, Raymond took it and they walked away together.
The burning gaze of Rolland followed them all the way to the opposite end of the forest.
*
Raymond moved aside foliage he longed to caress and study, simply so different than that of the sphere but his time was not for learning and curiosity's sake, it was for a purpose.
A vital one.
They entered the cave that had been made ready for their rendezvous.
Rowenna took one look at the makeshift bed of feathers and down and burst into tears. Raymond took her into his arms, her lithe body tucked against his.
“I cannot!” she wailed. “I know ye not!”
“Shh...” he soothed. “We have time, we do not need to rut like mindless alley cats,” Raymond said, brushing away the wetness of her tears with his thumbs, the sickness of the Pathway still riding him at the edges.
They did not have time aplenty but he would not force himself on a young woman who was this fearful.
Hope shone in her eyes, then anger. “I am not some weak female,” she said, stepping away and crossing her arms underneath an ample bosom. Raymond could not help but notice her mode of dress, which would have been the height of immodesty inside his sphere. She wore a tightly bound tunic with bare arms that had a light, sun-kissed gold that lay deeper than that of her hair and he gave a hard swallow. He prayed that she did not notice the proof of her beauty on his body. It was not something he could help. He was male and she stood before him, beautiful and by sphere standards, nearly naked.
Raymond cleared his throat, holding his hand out. “Let us get to know each other then.”
She stared at his proffered hand. He saw when she made an internal decision and she took his hand.
He walked her to the temporary bed and they sat upon it.
They spoke to each other until the light changed so much outside the cave that he took his leave.
Raymond and Rowenna walked hand and hand to the portal that would put another nick in the length of his life and this time, when he kissed her, she did not flinch.
Rowenna kissed him back.
*
Rowenna watched Prince Raymond disappear into the rip of space and time and was aggrieved.
He was a man of honor. Even she was not so naïve as to think that many males would not have pounced on her the instant they could lay claim. Yet, he had not.
He wished for her to give herself to him.
She remembered his words so carefully laid before her in their meeting place of stone: “You will come to me without compulsion, of your own desire. If it take one month or six, it will be of your choosing, Rowenna.” Then he had laid his palm against her face, searching her eyes. “I will have all the people's futures on my conscience and bear it,” he had paused for emphasis and clarity, “yet I will not have your fear and reluctance cloud my mind for the rest of the time I have left.”
She had folded her hand over his and he had picked her up and settled her on his lap and held her.
When the light grew low inside the cave he had whispered, “I will go and return again.”
“When?” she had whispered back.
“I will send the homing dove.”
She nodded against him and did not struggle when he stood with her in his arms.
Rowenna felt like she had known this man her whole life.
The irony of the unfairness was not lost on her. She was clan and he was a sphere-dweller. There could not be any unity. It was nigh impossible.
Yet it was there, as a flavor in the air they breathed.
Rowenna did not pretend to understand it, she accepted it and was grateful that someone, fate... had finally done something right.
Yet... there was the matter of who really held her heart.
She did not turn when she felt the hand of her future mate sink on her shoulder.
“Is it done?” he growled, his voice like a weapon on her skin.
“No,” Rowenna replied, turning and he took her by the
shoulders.
“How long shall I share you?”
Rowenna lifted her shoulder. “We have not... he would not...”
Rowenna could not say it.
Rolland put his finger under her chin and tilted it so their eyes met. “You did not come together?”
She shook her head and he gave her a fierce hug.
“Why not... is he, not right?” Rolland asked, genuinely puzzled.
Rowenna laughed and instantly thought of what she had seen as proof positive he wanted her. Very much. Yet, he did not want her against her express will.
“He does not want to... force me because of our obligation.”
Rolland stopped walking and turned her so they faced each other again. “He... will not rape you, Rowenna.”
Rowenna dipped her head in abject shame. She hated what she was, what she must do.
“No, do not, Rowenna,” Rolland said, his eyes tightening. “I cannot bear your grief and my jealousy, both.”
She finally looked up. “I misjudged the sphere-dweller.” Rolland paced in front of her then brought himself up short. “I hate that he will touch you.” He slammed his fist into the palm of his hand and Rowenna flinched. “But if a male should have you and it is... not I.” She felt the knot of his emotions and it stilled her breath. “It would be a male of worth such as he. For he shows restraint. And that, my dear Rowenna, is not an easy thing around a female such as you.”
Then he walked away.
Rowenna followed, knowing that this would be a harrowing time. Not for the reason of coupling with a male she did not know.
Her disquiet had deepened. For Rowenna had thought to do the miserable deed and wash it from her memory.
Instead, Rowenna had been shaken to her core over the surprise of Prince Raymond.
She liked him.
Very much.
And therein lay the problem. She recognized it even as she watched the broad back of Rolland as he strode to their mounts.
She would hold her heart in check. However, in the end, the heart ruled. Love was an errant master, unjust to the finest detail, forcing its will against all odds, against all reason.
The SAVAGE Series, Books 1-3: The Pearl Savage, The Savage Blood and The Savage Principle Page 57
