Call the Rain Read Online Free PDF Page A

face, puckered and fuming, as the two men rode out together still made Joral smile.
    The Ken Segra were nothing like his southern father. The open plains with their winds and their unceasing flatness and seas of grass were beautiful like the ping snakes of his boyhood: Beautiful and deadly.
    He selected a steel mixing device from the assortment spread in front of him. One of Zuke's own designs, though Joral was the one to convince the castle blacksmith to work something so strange. It had cost him a month’s allowance. After only a single market day selling his various potions, Zuke repaid him with interest.
    Zuke snatched the mixing stick out of Joral's hand. “Thank you, your highness .”
    Joral snorted at the good-natured ribbing. Zuke could not get enough of laughing at his friend's new status. Not that the leap from bastard-son to prince had made him an accepted, wanted member of any group. If anything, he was even more unreachable now with his ceremonial robes and ritualized gatherings than he had been as an outcast in his father's great hall.
    The little Waki girl gasped, and Joral glanced over. Zuke was mixing something in one of his bowls. It smelled lightly of fruit and spice and something else. He blinked and the lights from the fire swirled in front of him.
    “Joral.” Zuke’s voice echoed in his head.
    He tried to open his mouth to speak, but a wave of nausea came over him again and he closed it and swallowed. This was the longest cursed hangover and by far the worst he had ever had. Worse than the night he had bested the castle vintner at dice and won an entire cask of the man's personal collection of wine. He and Zuke had finished half of it in one sitting.
    The room began to spin.
    Hands grabbed him, guided him. He felt like he was flying until the sensation of clouds breezing through his hair turned to dirt on his cheek. He rolled over and looked up.
    The little Waki girl hovered above him, with two faces where she ought to have one. One face was the round, childlike one that was nearly identical to the dozens of other small helpers he'd seen scurrying throughout the camp. The other face had a slender neck and the delicate features of a young woman, with long silvery hair and dark eyes.
    At first the slender face looked unsubstantial, like a scrim in a minstrel’s play, hovering over the Waki face. And then it shifted, and the Waki face faded leaving the silver hair and the eyes filled with concern as she knelt over his prone form.
    He reached one hand up to touch a lock of her hair. It danced through his fingers like quicksilver. The woman was speaking to him, but the words sounded far away, like echoes off a stone wall, muffled and garbled. He touched her cheek. Her pale skin was soft like a flower petal.
    Her lips moved. Speaking again, but he couldn't understand the words. Her hand covered his, still on her cheek. Her fingers were slender and delicate next to his. Her skin silky on his calloused palms.
    Her lips moved again and he watched, fascinated, at their shape and the glimpse of white teeth between. He lifted his head and gently guided hers downward and kissed her. She tasted sweet, like fresh spring rain and morning dew. Like the sweet, sacred water of the lake.
    Illista was his lake spirit.
    She pulled away, her hair trailing smoothly through his fingers until she was gone. Again.
    “Thank you.” He barely heard his own words, dry and sandy on his tongue.

Chapter 5
    Joral awoke to a sharp nudge in his ribcage and stared at the metal-tipped toes of a pair of boots. There were only two pairs of stiffly oiled, knee-high leather boots in this camp. One of them lay safely packed away in Joral's own tent because they were impractical for a Segra man to wear.
    “Good tidings. You are not hung-over.”
    He rolled over to his stomach and pushed himself to his hands and knees.
    The fire had burned to low embers, and the wind howled above the smoke hole of the tent like an eagle after its