Firestorm (2 page)

***

The sweat cave was hot, hotter than he'd ever endured but the heat and scorching mist that rose every time he emptied a ladle of water over the superheated stones did little to ease his unsettled state of mind. With a soul-deep sigh, Teague rocked back on his heels, his fingers gouging into the sweat-slick flesh of his tautly muscled thighs.

He'd been in the sweat cave a half hour now, squatting naked in the dark, searingly hot chamber of stone, willing the chaotic tumult in his mind to calm. It had always—always-—worked before. But not this day. And perhaps never again.

His thoughts slipped back to the meeting in the king's private library. A grim smile twisted the monk's lips. Teran Ardane was a clever man, his mind more swift and agile than a fleet cerva startled out of hiding.

He had known better than to threaten or browbeat, techniques for which his uncle, the king, was famous. No, Teran Ardane hadn't done anything more than state the facts. Facts that included the unexpected capture of a Volan spy ship with state-of-the-art technology, technology that appeared capable of shielding travelers from Incendra's intensified electromagnetic field. Facts that included the Imperium's need for a special stone found only on Incendra. A stone they desperately required to push the Volans back and keep them, once more, out of the Imperium. And only Teague, as one of the few Incendarians caught off planet when the force field had suddenly intensified, had any hope of going back and retrieving it for them.

With a low groan, the monk flung back his head, his eyes clenching shut. What was he to do? What was he to do? He breathed deeply, raggedly, inhaling a suffocating cloud of steam. It made him cough and choke.

Teague fought for a moment to regain his breath, then forced his thoughts back to the problem at hand. Indeed, what was he to do? According to the Ardanes, the Imperium had begun the development of a device to divert the mind-slaving aliens from the Imperium and keep them, once more, at bay. If the prototype was successful—and the special Incendarian stone was a crucial element to its success—the plan was to build a transmission plant on each Imperial planet to protect it.

Only one obstacle to the king's scheme remained. He needed pilots to navigate the Volan spy ship—pilots capable of surviving Incendra's harsh climate, who knew the land and the language. Pilots who must be Incendarians. It was why they wanted him. Why he must go. The fate of the entire Imperium could well depend on him—an Imperium he had sworn to serve when he'd taken his monastic vows.

Yet even knowing that, the decision to refuse or accept the king's offer was made no easier.

Maintaining his thigh-punishing crouch, Teague shifted from one foot to the other. The soles of his feet stung from the hot stone he squatted upon. His chest ached from the brief, shallow breaths he took to avoid singeing his lungs. He opened his eyes. Sweat dripped into them. Still, he remained in the sweltering cocoon of stone.

Teague welcomed the discomfort. Pain was an integral part of his monastic training. Pain disciplined the flesh and tempered the mind. It focused one on the immediate, the here-and-now, and cleared the head for the work still to be done.

And there was indeed work to be done—if he chose to return to Incendra. Nothing more could be accomplished, however, until the Ardanes found a second Incendarian. Teague half wished they'd never find another one.

The big monk smiled grimly. That desire wasn't as farfetched as it might initially have appeared. Even before the increase in the force of the electromagnetic field had effectively halted all interplanetary travel, few Incendarians had ever chosen to journey off planet.

In an attempt to control the people by limiting the technological advances offered by other planets, his father, and fathers before him, had seen to that. Yet now, Volan ship or not, Teague tempted an agonizing death in flying back through the storms. As did any other one foolish enough to accompany him.

Foolish . . . A fool . . . You're such a disappointment ...

Stirred by the memories evoked by those words, for a fleeting instant Teague's thoughts flew backward, into a past he struggled every day of his life to forget. He turned the soul-searing phrases over and over in his mind.

His father had spoken those words and worse to him many times as a lad. Those times when he'd hesitated to try some warrior's task his sire had set him, or when his father had taken the measure of his son's small, skinny stature. Those times when he'd been discovered hiding in some leafy bower with his sketchbook and drawing tools, instead of out on the sun-drenched practice field wielding one of the cumbersome Vastita cudgels so prized by that particular desert tribe.

Prized, as well, by his big, hearty, warrior-king father.

His father had always been right. He had been a fool, and a weakling and a coward. Had been unworthy to claim the right as son and heir to the kingdom of Farsala, one of the largest continents on Incendra and realm of the seafarers and rocky coasts, of the mountain peoples and lands wherein lay the capital, of the inhabitants of the vast lake districts, and of the twelve desert tribes. And in that failure, that worthlessness, he'd betrayed not only his family, but his people and his land.

The strong, smooth muscles of Teague's thighs screamed in agony, twisting in spasms from the low crouch he doggedly maintained on the floor. Let them burn, let them hurt, he thought with a fierce, almost jubilant resolve. It was worth it if the pain would sear through the tumult of anguished thoughts and memories, the rising fear. He needed desperately to forget ... before the forbidden forced its way past his mental defenses.

Before he must face what he never wished to face again.

Teague clenched his eyes shut, blocking out the dimly lit chamber with its crude stone benches and pile of glowing red stones, the simple wooden water bucket and ladle sitting nearby. His shoulders hunched. His head dipped in anguish.

It wasn't working. Not this time. The first fingers of panic plucked at his gut. No matter the long cycles of monastic training, no matter the iron-willed discipline that had brought him to such an exalted position in his own order, Teague still couldn't contain the terror that surged through him at even the slightest consideration of returning to Incendra.

He stood to lose everything. Everything—his honor, his renewed sense of purpose, his dearly bought and even more dearly held self-control, and . . . and something even more elemental—the essence of what he now was, what he'd overcome, and become.

Ah, gods, Teague thought, his fingers digging deep into his thighs. He couldn't bear the thought of reverting back to the terrified, tormented, mangled boy he'd been when the monks of Exsul had first taken him in! Couldn't bear reliving that soul-shattering sense of failure and worthlessness!

By the five moons of Bellator, the Ardanes didn't know what they asked of him! Incendra was his land, ran in his blood for generations untold. Yet once he set foot back on its precious soil, he didn't know what primal forces—forces he might not be able to contain— would once again be loosed within him.

He had to protect the tenuous control he'd regained by dint of much effort and suffering from the clutches of his father and the man who'd killed him. To lose that again . . .

His life had been thrust into total chaos and disruption when Malam Vorax had overthrown his father. His existence, or at least all he'd ever known as the only son and heir at thirteen, had been brutally shredded before his very eyes. And it could all be destroyed in the space of a few days or weeks back on Incendra.

Destroyed ... if Vorax found him, if he was once more forced to face his people and relive his failure, his shame.

What would become of him then?

It was selfish, Teague well knew, to think only of his own needs and desires. It was cowardly to consider his own petty fears of greater worth than the plight of an entire Imperium of people. In the end what he was, who he'd become, should be of little import. What should matter was the good of many. Yet who else but he would heed what happened to him?

His family was gone; his people surely cared little for what had become of the king's heir. Small reason for any to concern himself with a Royal House whose internal weaknesses and failings had ultimately led to its downfall. That particular truth, above all else, had been drummed into him over and over again by Vorax's exquisitely talented torturers.

No one. There was no one who cared or would ever care again what happened to him.

Terror sucked at the monk, clawing at him with talons of remorselessness until it threatened to drag him down into that all-too-familiar sticky, suffocating morass of mindless oblivion. His heart pounded in his chest. He gasped; he shuddered. He fought for breath.

Survival ... the most primal instinct of all. He must survive.

Head bowed, fists clenched, Teague shoved unsteadily to his feet, grasping frantically at the only crutch left him—the mind control that his beloved monastic training and cycles of strict discipline had given him. He began desperately, fervently, to recite the sacred, healing Litany of Union.

Time is not linear but circular, he mentally intoned.

The universe has always existed and will continue to exist.

Even as he repeated the soul-healing phrases, his breathing began to steady, his pulse to slow. Anything born into this life has lived before. Any being who dies creates the cause for the rebirth of a new being. One's petty concerns are as naught. One's fears are groundless. All that matters is the unceasing flow of the universe.

As always, the litany stirred him to the deepest recesses of his being. Renewed strength filled Teague. The tension eased from his body. Peace washed over him in mind- and spirit-soothing waves.

After a time he lifted his head a smile of serene acceptance on his lips. His fear was gone, buried beneath the weight of a greater truth, a higher calling. His own existence meant nothing, save to serve the unceasing flow of the universe. He must never forget that, or cease to let it guide him. In the end, it was all he could ever hope to depend on.

Whatever fate awaited him on Incendra, perhaps it was his to meet. In the infinite, cyclical way of things, perhaps there was yet something undone that needed doing. And perhaps, just perhaps, the time had come to do it.

The monk threw back his shoulders, strode across the cave, and flung open the door. Steam ejected from the stone chamber with a hiss and a roiling white cloud. As the mist gradually cleared the first glimmers of stars in the rapidly darkening sky came into view.

Teague grabbed a cloth and wrapped it about his hips. One hand securely clutching the meager bit of homespun, he stepped outside.

The cooling night air wafted over him, setting his overheated and sensitized flesh to tingling. A shudder vibrated through his sweat-sheened body. With an impatient motion, he tossed back the long hanks of sodden hair that had fallen into his face and glanced around.

Perched on a rocky mountainside several kilometers from the Bellatorian capital of Rector, the sweat cave sat beside a small, beehive-shaped hermitage that monks of Exsul were required to use whenever they visited the royal city. Behind the hermitage was a high-walled exercise enclosure guarded by a locked door. In the deepening dusk, Teague could barely make out the center of the city that lay below, or the palace situated there with its gray walls and turreted buildings stacked one atop the other.

Just as well, he thought. It was past time to get on with what remained of the monastic day. There were meditations to be completed, a simple meal to be eaten, and later, a long-overdue ritual still to be performed.

And on the morrow? Well, Teran Ardane and the king would expect their answer on the morrow.

Teague glanced toward the hermitage. For once, it didn't beckon as it always had before, that cool stone sanctuary of countless monks of Exsul, that precious haven from the cares and tribulations of the outside world. And it wouldn't, not this night or any night for a long while to come.

Monastic discipline or no, he hadn't bested the dark terrors that had coiled around and embedded themselves in his heart this eve, terrors stirred anew for the first time since so many cycles ago. Terrors he'd thought he'd banished and now found he hadn't.

Once again, Teague felt thirteen cycles old. Confusion flooded him, a sense of overwhelming vulnerability and helplessness. A fool . . . Disappointed in you . . .

Surely those were the most painful words a child could ever hear from his parent. And because of those words, and his failure to save his family from their final destruction, those terrors might well destroy him someday. But for this moment in time, he must hold them at bay.

Peace flooded Teague once more. There was victory enough to be had in that. There had to be. He could only live one moment, one day at a time. Meanwhile, life must go on as it always had—until it became necessary for it to change once more.

All that mattered was the unceasing flow of the universe . . .

Two

Marissa Ardane glanced at her husband and nervously wet her lips. "I don't know if I'm up to this, Brace. I thought I was, but now I'm not so sure. It's one thing to ask a friend for a favor. It's entirely another to ask her to risk her life."

Brace Ardane, nephew to King Falkan and younger brother of his royal ambassador, cocked a dark brow and smiled. He stroked a finger tenderly along his wife's cheek. "She's the only one for the job, sweet one, and you know it."

The movement of one of the three transport technicians slanting a furtive glance their way caught his eye. Brace shot the man a quelling look across the large room of computer terminals, control panels, and a large transport platform enclosed in a transparent shield. The inquisitive technician had the good grace to blush and avert his gaze. "This discussion is moot at any rate." Brace then continued in a lower voice. "A discussion best reserved for a more private time, after Raina's arrival."

His wife caught the subtle movement of his head in the transport technician's direction and nodded. "As always, you're right." She shrugged the tension from her neck and shoulders and shot him a mischievous grin. "It must be difficult for you."

"Hmmm?" Brace asked distractedly, engrossed, once again, in watching the movements of the three men as they completed the final preparations for receiving an interspace transport. "What's that?"

"Being so infernally perfect all the time."

Her husband's head swiveled around. "What?" He stared down at her for a moment, then chuckled. "Now that you mention it, it is difficult. But not any more difficult than handling a she-cat like you."

"Or our four daughters?"

He rolled his eyes. "You had to remind me, didn't you? I thought this trip to Rector was to be a brief if glorious respite from our two sets of toddling twins?"

Marissa smiled archly. "Oh, it will be, beloved. Just as soon as Raina arrives and we've had time to convey Falkan's request and—"

"And you've had five or six hours to talk and renew old acquaintances," Brace finished for her wryly.

"Five or six hours!"

"I know you, Marissa. You haven't seen Raina since before our first set of twins were born. Shall we lay a wager on how long it takes you two to catch up on the past three years?"

"No, you'd win, and you know it." Marissa's gaze dropped for a flicker of an instant, then lifted to meet his. Mischief sparkled in her eyes. "Would you care to join us? I remember how well you and Raina got along when you first met."

He gave a snort of disbelief. "She didn't like me then, and I doubt we'd share more than a wary respect even now. You, sweet one, are the only thing that binds Raina and me. She tolerates me because of that." His mouth twitched. "And just as long as I treat you well, too, if I recall correctly."

Marissa's eyes darkened with distant memories. "Raina has good reason to distrust men. She won't be happy to hear she must now work with one on such a dangerous mission."

"From what little you've told me of her past she won't be happy to hear she's being asked to return to her former home, either."

"No," Marissa sighed, "she won't." For a moment, her glance strayed toward the technician who was taking his place at one of the control panels. As she watched, he shoved the power lever forward. Marissa turned back to her husband. "But as you already said she's the only one for the job." Her mouth quirked sadly. "Besides that strange monk, of course."

A curious buzzing filled the room. Marissa's heart commenced a wild pounding. Her hands rose, clenched over her heart. Raina, she thought. Raina would be here any moment now.

In a shimmering flurry of color and light, the slender form of a red-haired, green-eyed woman gradually materialized. "Raina," Marissa breathed, and shot her husband an eager, questioning glance.

"Go to her, sweet one," Brace urged, a smile of loving understanding glimmering on his lips. "It all depends on you, at any rate."

For an instant, she stared back at him. Then, Marissa gave an unsteady laugh. "It's been a while since I was involved in the salvation of the Irnperium. I'm afraid I might be out of practice."

His hand settled in the curve of her lower back and he gave her a gentle shove forward. "Trust me. It'll come back. It always does."

Marissa tossed her long mane of chestnut brown hair and walked over to stand before Raina. Her friend smiled in greeting and, as the transparent shield around her lifted, she stepped off the transport platform.

"Marissa!" she exclaimed, and strode over to her. Though her heart leaped with excitement, Raina refused to reveal her emotions before the men gathered in the room. She motioned to Brace, standing near the door. "I see you brought your husband. Must I endure a requisite social hour with him before we're permitted some time alone?"

Marissa had opened her mouth to protest when Raina laughed and grabbed her hand, giving it a quick squeeze. "I was only joking, sweeting. Come, let's leave this place. I cannot bear the prying eyes of these other men."

Leading the way, Raina headed across the room, halting only when she stood opposite Brace. As tall a man as he was, she lifted her gaze only slightly to meet his. Her glance was steady, direct. "You want something of me, Ardane. Let's find a private place and finish the unpleasant business quickly, so I may then spend the rest of my time here visiting with Marissa."

"An excellent suggestion, domina," Brace agreed equably, using the ultimate feminine term of respect. "Is the palace garden suitable?"

Raina's eyes narrowed. "Domina, is it now? You must really need a favor to address me thusly." She shot Marissa an amused glance. "He's become quite the diplomat, hasn't he? And yes," she continued, looking back at Brace. "The garden is quite suitable."

Brace laughed. "And she hasn't changed a whit, has she, sweet one? I like that." He indicated the door with a motion of his head. "Shall we go, then, Raina? The day draws on and we've less than a half hour left before the sun sets."

The red-haired woman nodded. "Most assuredly, Ardane."

The journey through the halls of the palace's auxiliary building housing one of the city's two transport stations was silent save for the clap of their footsteps on the smooth stone floors and the polite greetings exchanged with any they passed. The late spring wind buffeted the windows, but the heat of the sun that had beaten in all day warmed the corridors nicely, promising an equally pleasant if brief interlude outdoors before nightfall.

As they walked, Raina glanced outside. The gardens skirting that side of the building were large and arranged in the ancient Umarian manner, a popular technique long revered as one of the cornerstones of Imperial gardening. A half kilometer square, the garden included myriad herb beds, a small orchard of cerosa and pirum trees covered in snowy white and delicate pink blossoms, and long, intricately interconnected beds of arosa bushes and various exotic flowers imported from all over the Imperium.

But another self-aggrandizing display of the long-reaching arm of the mighty warrior planet Bellator, Raina thought bitterly, riveting her gaze back to the long hall before her. And of a king whose summons none dared refuse.

She shot Marissa a sideways glance. Her friend seemed genuinely happy to see her, but their greeting, however warm it had been considering the circumstances, had been overlaid with a certain tension. It didn't originate from her husband's presence, or from any undue influence on his part, though.

Marissa wouldn't have agreed to any of this if she hadn't felt the need was great. Indeed, so great and of so much import that even a secured interspace communications link wasn't worth the risk of it being intercepted and decoded. What needed to be said had to be said in person.

That, even more than Marissa's anxious reserve just a few minutes ago, worried Raina, setting her warrior's instincts on edge. A pleasant possibility filtered into her mind. Perhaps this mystery involved some mission in which she and Marissa could join forces. Just like old times . . .

Brace triggered the portal to open at the end of the long hall, then stepped aside and motioned the two women through. Raina allowed Marissa to go before her, then followed halting beside her husband. "Not coming with us, are you?"

"I thought you two feminas could use some time alone." He grinned down at her. "Disappointed?"

Raina's mouth quirked. "Hardly, but you already knew that, Ardane. You've never been a stupid man."

His grin widened and he chuckled softly. "Careful now. You border on the complimentary."

She cocked her head as if in sudden consideration.
"Do I? I must be growing soft, then." Raina stepped
through the doorway and cast a sardonic look over her
shoulder. "But if you believe that, Ardane, watch your
back, for I may well be there when you least expect
it."

Brace threw back his head and gave a shout of laughter. Then, without another word, he withdrew into the building and sent the portal sliding shut before him.

Raina turned, her glance meeting the frowning one of Marissa's. "I meant no harm, sweeting," she hastened to explain, misinterpreting the emotions behind her friend's frown. "He really isn't bad—for a man, that is."

"Oh, I know that." Marissa made a distracted dismissing movement of her hand. "Both you and Brace revel in the verbal battle. But I know you see him for the good man he is, too." She paused wetting her lips. "It's . . . something else."

"Something like the reason why you invited me—no, insisted—I come to Bellator, after three cycles apart?"

Marissa flushed. "I asked you to visit many times in the past. If you recall, it was you who had some excuse or another."

"Yes, that I did" the auburn-haired woman admitted gravely. "The Sodalitas needed me. You, on the other hand . . ."

"Didn't need you anymore?" her friend finished for her. Marissa smiled sadly. "Whether I need you or not, you'll always be my dearest friend Raina. You just didn't want to share me with Brace, or with our children. I think it would've made you . . . uncomfortable, too."

Raina eyed her closely for the space of an inhaled breath. "Perhaps." She shrugged. "One way or another, I'm here now. What is it you want of me?"

The chestnut-haired woman laughed. "Always the take-charge leader, always right to the point. Have you no need to hear first how the cycles have gone for me, or, for that matter, to permit me to ask the same of you?"

"I'll ask those questions soon enough. First, let's get the less savory business completed. Then we'll have time to renew old acquaintances and truly enjoy each other's company."

Marissa nodded. "Fine." She indicated the path that lay before them. "Let's walk out farther into the garden, where none may overhear. A woman will soon join us whom I want you to meet. Brace has gone even now to fetch her. What we have to say to you bears no eavesdropping. The future of the Imperium may well depend on this mission."

"Indeed?" Raina fell into step beside Marissa. "I'd an inkling it was something like that." They made their way down the flagstone path, skirting raised beds where the bright green, sprightly shoots of what looked to be Cygnian bellflowers and Moracan silver torches already grew in dense profusion, before taking a path to the left, past a variety of herb plots, to where a cunning little bower of uva vines stood. There, Marissa indicated that they should sit.

The buds of the uva leaves had yet to open and fill the spaces between the entwined vines. Thus, though the bower gave them some semblance of privacy, the lack of foliage also afforded Raina and Marissa an unimpaired view of the garden from all directions.

Raina smiled inwardly. Wife and mother that her friend might now be, she still retained the essence of their Sodalitas warrior's training and innate vigilance. No man, not even one of the caliber of Brace Ardane, would ever take that from her. She was still her own person, and that was good.

Light from the setting sun streamed through the skeletal framework of the bower. It flickered off Raina's hair, setting it aflame with glints of deep bronze, vivid copper, and crimson. For a fleeting instant, Marissa was caught up in the fiery beauty of her friend's vibrantly red tresses. As always, Raina wore her long hair pulled severely off her face and high up onto the back of her head, where it was then braided to hang down to the middle of her back.

Not one for feminine adornments of any kind Raina's only concession to a visit to her best friend was, instead of her usual warrior garb, a cerulean blue long-sleeved overblouse of shimmering serica cloth with black breeches tucked into knee-high black boots. The requisite Sodalitas long dagger was strapped to her left thigh. It was, for the occasion, however, housed in an ornamental sheath of finest black domare hide encrusted with sparkling azurite gems that exactly matched Raina's overblouse.

She truly was a magnificent woman, Marissa thought in loving admiration, from her sparkling green eyes and flawlessly fair skin with its disconcerting sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, to her slender, whipcord-hard but still femininely curved body. A woman whom many men had looked on with a desire that had never been reciprocated. A woman who most likely would never know or want the affection or devotion of a man.

The realization saddened Marissa deeply, especially in the past few years since she'd come to know and love Brace, bear his children, and raise their family together. If only Raina would open herself to the possibility of there being a man out there whom she might be able to trust and love. If only . . .