Call the Rain Read Online Free PDF

prey.
    The girl was gone. “Where is she?”
    Zuke laughed. “Smitten with the child, are you?”
    Joral sat up and took stock. He felt more normal than he had in over a day. The faint queasiness in his stomach had gone and the bands of pain that had encircled his head had dissolved. “How long was I asleep?”
    “Half the evening. You mauled my new assistant, spewed your dinner onto the floor, and then passed out.”
    Joral ran his fingers through his hair and considered how much to share with his friend. He tried to compose the words to describe how Illista appeared to him as some sort of water spirit. But every attempt sounded like a drunken hallucination. “How much do you know about the Waki creatures?”
    “Not much. But I think you were right. Illista is unusual.”
    Hope sparked in Joral. “Then you saw her--”
    “Poison.”
    Joral stared at Zuke. When he spoke, his voice came out as a hoarse whisper. “What poison?”
    “The grol last night was poisoned. I suspected as much. I've known you for too long to mistake your symptoms for drunkenness. When you puked, I was able to confirm it. When you add lemonweed to spineflower, it luminesces briefly. Spineflower dissolves neatly in grol and can be combined with any number of other powders to produce a variety of effects. Including death.”
    At the image of Zuke poking around in his offal, Joral cringed. “You didn't.”
    Zuke shrugged. “Knowledge is not all neat scrolls and ordered lesson plans. Life is messy. But back to the Waki helper you brought me. She guessed the truth even before I could confirm it.”
    “How?”
    “She did not say exactly. Perhaps she has some herbalist training. When I dismissed her for the evening, she nearly tripped over herself leaving. Do you suppose we have scared her silly?”
    “I hope not.”
    “Excellent. Now you have to get out of here, and I have a firestar show to perform.”
    ***
    The sky exploded with a shower of purples and greens.
    Illista sat snuggled under a fur next to her sister, their backs against the tall wheel of the half-packed cart of pots and pans. The entire camp, even the Waki, had stopped their evening work to watch the firestars. Several thousand pairs of eyes were focused upwards as a trio of reds popped like spring flowers in the night sky.
    She willed her mind to quiet, but it refused to listen. The memory of Joral's lips on hers, of his fingers brushing her cheeks, of his eyes seeing her...the memories swirled through her head. Swirled through her midsection. Stirred feelings she had so rarely felt. Excitement. Fear.
    And self-loathing.
    In the midst of a poison-induced hallucination, Joral had kissed a Waki. If he remembered what he had done, he would be humiliated. And if he tried to apologize, she would be doubly so. She hated herself for having loved that brief moment. For feeling like a woman. A woman attractive to a man like the prince.
    She hated herself for having believed the illusion she saw in his eyes. For believing for a single heartbeat that he knew what he was doing. That he saw her true form and wanted her for herself. She sighed.
    From far away, she heard again the sound of tiny crystal bells. It was the rains that the Segra waited for, prayed for. Water here was sacred. Sacred enough to fight wars over. Sacred enough to arrange marriages and to form alliances. If they could only depend on the rains. But the rains were fickle. Some years they were generous. For the few years she and Quarie had spent here, the rains were stingy with their bounty.
    Illista inhaled, trying to draw the sound of those bells closer. For a moment, they seemed to hesitate, to hover. Then the sound slipped just beyond her reach and was gone. She blew out her pent up breath as the boom of a firestar explosion left trails of smoke in the sky. False clouds.
    “Quarie,” whispered Illista. “Have you ever taken off your bloodstone?”
    Her sister gasped and stiffened. “Why would you ask such a thing?