Rion (19 page)

Again there was no reply.

“No!” It didn’t matter that they couldn’t be together again. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t have a future together. Or
that they couldn’t wed. He couldn’t be dead.

The wreckage moved, began to reassemble. She couldn’t be seeing what she was seeing. But the pieces crawled together as if
they were alive and seeking other parts of themselves. Metal fused with metal.

Was she losing her mind?

If this insane machine could fix itself, why hadn’t it done so back on Tor? Marisa jerked backward and watched the wreckage
in amazement. This really was happening. The ship was growing back together.

She should be more frightened. Her mind was fuzzy, as if the world were coming to her filtered through a gauzelike curtain.
She must have been in shock.

But she had to pull herself together. Find Rion.

She took a deep breath. Closed her eyes, willed the dizziness to go away.

Something sticky slid down her cheek. She raised her hand and her sleeve came away bloody.

Her head throbbed. Her mind was clogged, not working properly.

Or she wouldn’t be seeing snow. Only the snowflakes weren’t like the tiny ones on Earth. These were fist-sized flakes that
clung to her clothing and quickly covered the ground. Within minutes the snow had hidden the debris.

If Rion was lying somewhere hurt, he would now be covered, too. God. Was he even alive?

In a storm, the wise man prays to the Goddess, not to deliver him from danger, but to deliver him from fear.

—H
IGH
P
RIESTESS OF
A
VALON

N
ot now. Damn it. Why did his flashes have the habit of arriving at the most inconvenient times? Like after a spaceship crash
that had left him dangling in his harness upside down. With his straps caught in the tree, and his arms tangled in the webbing
as tight as a straitjacket, he could barely move.

Even if the Unari were on the way to take them prisoner, he couldn’t have freed himself and begun his search for Marisa. He
had to outwait the series of images in his flash.

A man making love to his woman.

The woman’s belly full and round with child.

The woman holding the baby boy up to her lover.

Before Rion could assess details, his flash changed locations.

A soldier united with his mother.

Again his vision switched images, so fast his head spun.

A blue-eyed man called out for “Pendra.”

What did it mean? The people were unfamiliar. Yet from their manner of dress and language, he recognized they were from Chivalri.

Rion had too much respect for his gift not to try to remember the details. So he committed what he could to memory—even if
all the blood in his body had rushed to his head.

He’d thought the flashes were over. That he could cut himself from the webbing and climb from the tree. But yet another flash
hit.

Marisa, wearing clothing from Earth, sat on the ground, her back against a tree. Snow crusted her hair.

Rion hadn’t been able to see her face. Hadn’t seen if she’d been breathing.

Had she been sleeping? Hurt? Dead?

Sweet Goddess. She needed him, and he must find her, help her. He wasn’t going to let her die. Not this woman. Not Marisa.

Rion swore. He twisted in his bonds, straining for his knife.

But the webbing bound him tight. He had only one way out. Dragonshaping would require using precious energy reserves, but
he had no choice. His body expanded to twenty times his human size, and his arms extended into powerful wings. His skin thickened
and changed color until dark purple scales covered his body.

The straps popped as if they were no more than string. His clothing shredded. Free of the harness, he plunged toward the ground.
Spreading his powerful wings, he employed an updraft to stop his deadly fall.

He’d dragonshaped every six weeks during his lifetime to feed on the platinum that maintained his energy reserves. But this
time the dragonshaping slammed him with sickening pain. Smoke poured from his nostrils.

He bellowed in fury.

Terrible electric shocks zigzagged down his spine and over his wings. Agony cramped his stomach, pounded through his skull.

He barely landed safely on the ground before he humanshaped. Almost instantly, his shredded clothing repaired itself and,
more importantly, the pain disappeared. He gasped in huge breaths, stunned. In dragonshape, every nerve ending had felt as
if it had been bathed in acid. His mind took a few moments to clear.

Then he swore.

That terrible agony he’d suffered had been due to the Tyrannizer. And the machine projected that pain onto every dragonshaper
on Honor. No wonder his people couldn’t break free of the Unari domination.

Holy Goddess.

The dragonshapers who’d had to bear that agony for three endless years would have been better off dead. He prayed his parents
had not had to withstand such torture. But if any man could endure such agony without going insane, that man would be his
father. He couldn’t bear to think of his mother…

A Unari drone flew overhead and snapped him out of his grim thoughts. Had the search cameras spied him? Would they spot Marisa?

Staying under the cover of the trees, he battled through the drifts, backtracking to the crash site. He had to find Marisa
before the Unari did. Before she tried to dragonshape.

Rion sprinted through the forest. Thorns scratched his face and tore through his clothing to his flesh, but the discomfort
was nothing compared to dragon pain. Nothing compared to his people’s suffering. Or his fear for Marisa’s safety.

He couldn’t have lost Marisa in the crash. If he’d survived, she could have, too. Dread spurred him on. He recalled the blue
heat in her eyes when they’d made love, the sparks that sizzled through the air when she’d stood up to him, the way her skin
felt soft and silky smooth under his fingertips—and he redoubled his efforts.

She could be lying on the ground in the cold snow. Alone.

He’d brought her here. She was his responsibility.

He ran through the forest without stopping. Once, he saw movement in the trees. “Marisa?”

He spied a darthog rooting through the brush. No sign of Marisa.

Ignoring his tired legs, he got his second wind. He leaped over a stream, climbed past a fallen log. He had to find Marisa
and keep her safe.

She had no one else here but him. His people had no one who could help them but him. His fists clenched in anger. If that
meant making war, he would make war.

His own preference for peace didn’t matter. If it meant sending men into battle to their deaths, he would give those orders.
Some things were worse than death—like living under Unari domination. Like losing Marisa…

“Rion?” Marisa’s soft call sounded close by.

Thank the Goddess. She was alive.

“I’m coming.” He headed in the direction of her voice. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure.”

She didn’t sound right, and her flat tone scared him more than her words. Again, he increased his pace and scrambled uphill
past rock outcroppings, toppled trees, and thick underbrush. “Don’t move. I’ll find you. Just keep talking.”

She didn’t answer. Fear crawled down his spine. He’d told her he would look out for her and that she would go home after they
freed his people. He’d promised himself that he’d win back her respect. He’d lost his aunt and uncle, perhaps his cousin and
his parents. He would not lose her, too.

His breath came in harsh gasps as he struggled up a steep incline. “Marisa?”

Again she didn’t answer.

The sight of snapped treetops clued him in to the general crash site’s location. He’d been flung far away. He climbed a rock
cliff, using his fingers and his boot tips to scale the mountainside.

After he cleared the lip, he didn’t pause to wipe the sweat off his brow. The sight that met his eyes rocked him back on his
heels. His spaceship’s debris lay scattered in a huge field of grass. Snow floated over the grass and debris, and smoke fluttered
in the light breeze like a shroud.

The ship’s automatic systems had attempted and failed a self-repair. The task had been too great. This ship would never fly
again.

But he saw no sign of Marisa.

“Marisa?” He shouted and sprinted through the burned wreckage. He looked right, then left, and remembering his own plight,
his webbing caught in a tree, he looked up at the few remaining trees.

He spied another drone.

Had he really heard her call? Had he imagined her voice because he’d wanted to hear her so badly?

He turned around full circle and glimpsed a movement at the edge of the tree line. “Marisa?”

Whatever he’d seen move didn’t move again. He bolted that way. It was as good a direction as any.

When he spotted her, sitting with her back against a tree, looking wonderfully alive and unhurt, his fear rumbled into aggravation.
Why hadn’t she responded?

Head up, her shoulders braced against the tree trunk as if she didn’t have a care in the world, she sat in the snow between
gnarled roots. She’d pulled her knees to her chest. Eyes open and staring straight forward, she didn’t glance in his direction.

Something was wrong. She was breathing. But still. So still that he curbed his anxiety, lowered his voice, and spoke gently.
“Why didn’t you answer me?”

She didn’t react. Not to his presence or his voice. Since she’d responded earlier, the crash hadn’t damaged her hearing. But
now she acted as if he wasn’t there.

Had she injured her head? Had the stress finally gotten to her? She didn’t have a scratch on her perfect profile. Not one
bruise. Yet, something was off and his stomach tightened.

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Marisa?”

She turned her head, blue eyes unfocused and vacant. He gasped as the other side of her face came into view. Blood caked her
face. Her scalp was loose, a flap of skin and hair hanging from her skull. Blood and snow matted her lovely hair and oozed
from the ghastly wound.

She seemed to have no idea of the extent of her injury. Or of the reaction he’d failed to hide. He slipped an arm under her
and eased her onto her side, facing her wound toward the sky. “Marisa, your head’s cut. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

He needed water to clean the wound. Thread to sew her scalp. As a military commander he’d had rudimentary first-aid training,
and he’d need all of those skills to stop her bleeding and close the wound.

The cold had slowed her bleeding. But if she caught an infection that close to her brain… she could…

No. He would not let her die.

At least she didn’t seem to be in pain. But if her shock wore off and the feeling returned before he patched her up… he would
have to hurt her even more.

He hurried to find supplies.

The wreckage didn’t look promising. Finding a first-aid kit in the strewn ship parts was too much to hope for. However, he
did find plenty of sharp splintered metal—nothing with a needle-like hole in one end, but he spied a sliver of metal with
a notch that might hold thread, and slipped it into his pocket.

He glanced into the sky. The drones were gone. How long until they returned to base? He had no idea how much time he might
or might not have. Surely the Unari would send someone to investigate the crash site, and he wanted to be long gone before
they arrived.

Rion found no water, no alcohol, no cotton gauze or antibiotics. Instead he trudged past burned plastic, engine pieces, bits
of hose, gears, and many objects so badly damaged he couldn’t identify them. He was about to turn back when he heard water
trickling.

There must be a stream nearby. Quickly, he scooped up a broken pipe, ignored the heat to his fingers, and bent it into a U
shape. Then he hurried to the stream, where the water ran swift and clear. Kneeling, he drank. It was sweet and clean. He
washed out the pipe and turned his attention to his own hands, filthy from stumbles in the forest, climbing the rock face,
and searching through the debris. Dipping his hands into the water, he scrubbed his flesh with sand from the creek bottom,
then soaked them some more. Then, careful not to get his hands dirty again, he filled the pipe with clear water and hurried
to Marisa.

“I’m back,” he said softly.

She lay in exactly the same position. But now her eyes were closed. She didn’t appear to have heard him.

He took comfort in her steady breathing. Holding the water-filled pipe in one hand, he kneeled beside her, then wedged the
pipe between a root and the trunk to avoid spillage.

Quickly he gathered tree moss, kindling, and firewood and stacked these around the pipe. He left her once again to retrieve
a burning ember from the wreckage, scooped it into a metal tray he’d found, then fed the ember with moss until it burst into
flames. Finally, he transferred the burning moss to his collection of dry kindling and coaxed the tiny flickering flame into
a full-fledged fire.