Firestorm (24 page)

"Now, you'll never have the chance to meet him," Najirah murmured sympathetically, "to perhaps share your pain, and come to some kind of peace with him."

"I'd no intention of sharing anything with the man but the hilt of my dagger!" Raina viciously stabbed at the ground with her spade, inadvertently slicing a tuber in half. With a savage curse, she flung the spade aside and climbed to her feet, trembling with fury. "Forgive me, but I need time to compose myself."

Eyes wide, Najirah silently nodded.

Turning on her heel, Raina stomped off toward a nearby ravine and its tiny little stream. Najirah watched her walk away, a heavy sense of futility swelling within her. "Poor Raina," she murmured sadly. "You said Bahir betrays me, but what of you? How much worse has been your betrayal? First your father, then Vorax. And perhaps soon, all too soon, the man you claim you trust above all others."

Fifteen

That evening after supper, they sat around the camp-fire before Bahir's tent. As time passed, the conversation waned and a sense of tension rose in the air. Najirah cast her husband several imploring looks—none of which was lost on Raina—looks met with an implacable glance and taut jaw. Finally, Bahir rose.

"It's time we all took our rest," he said glancing down at Teague and Raina. "Come, I'll accompany you both to your tent."

Teague slanted Raina a puzzled look. Since that first night of their arrival, the Tuaret leader had never walked them to their tent. She arched her brow in reply, then, along with Teague, climbed to her feet.

Once they reached the opening to their tent, Bahir halted. "With your permission," he began, rendering them the expected desert courtesy, "Pd like a few moments to speak with you. Privately," he added "in the seclusion of your tent."

Teague nodded. "As you wish." Stepping aside, he opened the flap. "After you, Bahir."

The nomad entered the tent, then waited for Teague and Raina to follow. He turned and shot Teague a piercing look. "What I have to say isn't pleasant or particularly hospitable. I'm sorry for that, but it's past time it be said, and acted upon."

Raina moved to stand beside Teague. "And what might that be, Bahir?"

His glance skittered to hers, then moved back to lock with Teague's. "You and the mirah are not and never have been mates." He raised a silencing hand when the monk made a move to protest. "Play no games with me, Tremayne. You've not lain together in the past days, even within the privacy of your own tent. There are other signs, less overt, but there nonetheless. The charade is over."

Teague exchanged a troubled glance with Raina.

"All suppositions," she muttered darkly, glaring back at Bahir. "It's your word against ours."

Bahir smiled, but the smile never quite reached his eyes. "True enough, but in my camp, my word rules."

"What do you plan to do about it, one way or another?" The first tendrils of apprehension twined through Teague. What was Bahir's game? "And why should it matter? It has nothing to do with our mission."

"Indeed," the Tuaret calmly agreed. "It has nothing to do with your mission. But it has everything to do with my tribe, my men. The mirah is an unmated female. Most of my men need mates. She serves a greater good taking one to mate, bearing us children, than accompanying you further. You have our support now to retrieve the stone. Her presence on the mission isn't essential anymore. Give her over to me for one of my men."

Raina's hand snaked to her dagger. "Why, you slime-ridden sand worm! How dare you decide how we choose to carry out this mission? And despite your arrogant, archaic, self-serving outlook on things, I'm no piece of property to be traded back and forth. I'm a free woman, a warrior on my planet. And I'll kill any man who dares lay a hand on me."

"You may well be a warrior somewhere else, but you are, first and foremost, an Incendarian," Bahir calmly, replied eyeing her hand clenched about the dagger. "As such, you are bound to our laws." He turned back to Teague. "You've made it more than evident you've no intention of mating with her. It would be a generous gesture on your part to give her to one of my men. And fair payment, shall we say, for our continued support to retrieve the stone?"

The mission, Teague thought. The mission, in the end, was what mattered, not their individual lives or needs. And Bahir's assistance in reaching the caves and getting the stone back to the spy ship would be invaluable, if not essential.

But to give Raina to Bahir, to force her into a life she had no desire for, to condemn her to what she would most certainly view as another rape ... He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Bahir. Though I value your offer of assistance, your terms are unacceptable. Raina and I will not impose on your 'hospitality' a day longer. On the morrow, we'll set out on our own."

The Tuaret's mouth quirked. "And did I say there was a choice in this? One way or another, before the next night wanes, the mirah will have a mate." He shrugged "It can be you, or another, but she will have a mate."

"It cannot be me, curse you!" Teague rasped. "I-I'm a monk. I've taken vows of perpetual chastity."

"Indeed?" Bahir cocked his head, a faintly amused smile glimmering on his lips. "How inconvenient for you, and unfortunate for her." He looked at Raina. "I could be mistaken, but I think she'd vastly prefer you over one of my men."

"Curse you, Bahir!" Raina snarled.

His smile died. "You're too late, mirah. I was cursed long before you returned to Incendra. And now, I've nothing to lose." He turned back to Teague. "By moon-rise on the morrow, I'll know your answer."

Teague dragged in an unsteady breath. "You already have it. I cannot mate with her."

Bahir's teeth flashed white in a lazy, disbelieving grin. "By moonrise, Tremayne." He strode past him then, leaving Teague and Raina standing there in shock. The tent flap, cracking back in place, at last wrenched them from their mutual misery.

Raina turned, grasping Teague by the arm. "You would let him do that, then? You'd give me over to one of his men?"

He jerked away, anguish burning in his eyes. "What would you have me do?" he cried. "We cannot escape this place. Bahir has it too well guarded."

"And your precious vows forbid you sullying yourself, even for a time, with the flesh of a woman. Is that it, Tremayne?"

"It's not like that at all," he hissed furiously. "I gave my word. I cannot go back on it."

"And are your vows of more import than what will happen to me?" Her voice rose on a thread of hysteria. With an effort, Raina mastered herself. She wouldn't beg. She'd vowed never again to beg, after that time with Vorax. "They're but words, and noble intent," she forced herself to continue. "I'm flesh and blood, a living being with feelings and pride and needs."

Teague turned and strode away to stand before the center tent post. "And why would mating with me be any better than doing so with one of Bahir's men?" He flung the statement over his shoulder. "All there has ever been between us is that Incendarian attraction anyway. And you're still being forced to mate against your will."

He glanced back, his gaze slamming into hers. "That is what you're suggesting, isn't it? Mating with me instead of with one of Bahir's men?"

Stunned, Raina said nothing.

"Well," Teague prodded ruthlessly, his silver-blue eyes flashing. "Isn't it?"

"There's more than the Incendarian attraction between us. That's only a myth at any rate. No exclusive planetary attraction kept Bahir from taking Cyra to wife, did it? No, it's far more than that," she said, her voice gone soft and infinitely sad. "I know you, Teague. I respect and care for you. I-I trust you. It would indeed be different."

He stared back at her, a myriad of emotions flashing across his face. Shock and surprise, a fleeting pleasure, desire, then fear. "Ah, gods!" With a harsh cry, Teague buried his face in his hands. "I can't, Raina. I just can't. It'll destroy me. You'll destroy me!"

"No, Teague," she achingly refuted his words. "You'll destroy yourself, if you let the fear claim you. In the end, whether you live or die, if you allow the horrors of your past to continue to influence you, you've allowed Vorax ultimately to triumph. But it's always been your right to choose. And it always will, until there's nothing left and you die an impotent, futile, despairing man."

Just like my father, she thought. He, too, had lacked the courage to face life and its challenges as they must be faced. Just like Bahir, who chose to fling himself into a hopeless cause rather than deal with his own shortcomings and failings, leaving Najirah to sorrow and yearn. As were all the men, Raina realized, who had ever played any significant part in her life.

"I'll die first," she told him, "before I allow myself ever to be taken again against my will. Just know that, Teague Tremayne. For what it's worth to you."

She turned then, hurt, confused, and embittered to the depths of her soul, and strode out of the tent, leaving Teague behind.

***

Teague climbed up the narrow trail leading to the highest vantage point above the Tuaret camp. He carried Rand with him, intending on a talk with the Volan once they were out of earshot of the guards. Teague desperately needed a voice of reason and sanity, and his past experiences with Rand had certainly provided that.

It was a cloudy, overcast day, rare for the desert, boding rain if the thunderheads churning ominously on the horizon were any indication. A cool breeze blew down from the sky, musty and moist. Teague shoved a wind-whipped lock out of his eyes, chose a flat outcropping of rock to sit upon, and laid Rand's carrying case on the ground beside him.

The view provided by his high perch above the camp was breathtaking. Dry cliffs, purpling in the dimming light of the approaching storm, rose from a floor of soft pink sand. Deep ravines slashed the land, vicious scars that were sure to bleed torrents of muddy water with heavy rain. As they'd bleed this night, once the storm broke.

As he'd bleed this night, not from any surface harm, but from the wound that would be indelibly carved on his soul when he stood by and let Raina go to another man. Yet what other choice was left him?

"Rand?" The single word, rusty with pain, forced its way past a throat gone tight and dry. "Are you there?"

"Yes, Teague Tremayne," came the Volan's reply. "As I was last night, when the Tuaret came to you and Raina."

A tone of disapproval emanated from the carrying pack. It only deepened league's misery. "I didn't bring you up here to listen to more recriminations. Raina has said it all, and most eloquently."

"Then what do you wish of me? Your mind is evidently made. No one can sway you, can they?"

"Is that what you, too, would do? I thought you always deemed the mission of more import than Raina."

Rand made a sound of disgust. "Don't try to turn the problem back on me. What matters here is that she cares for you and you care for her. Would you hurt her, cast her aside, just because you fear intimacy? Just because to have her, you must face your inner demons and amend your life once more?"

"And how many times have you had to amend your life?" Teague snapped.

"Only a time or two in the past hundred cycles," Rand muttered dryly. "But it doesn't matter, at any rate. When the time comes, if it ever does again, for me to claim another body, I, too, will have to rebuild a life of a sorts. I'll be frightened, I'm sure. I always was before. It's a lot safer and easier to remain within my biosphere. Not much is expected of me within this protective shell. But I would still go where my destiny called me. Just as you must answer the call of your destiny."

"You begin to sound like Bahir," Teague growled. "Have you perhaps been talking with him?"

"No, he hasn't," a new voice joined the conversation. "But I find the idea most intriguing."

Teague whirled around. Bahir had silently come up behind him. The monk cursed his inattention. If the Tuaret had been an enemy, he would've been dead.

"How long have you been listening?" Teague demanded, scowling fiercely.

The Tuaret leader shrugged. "Not too long. Just long enough to find I agree with the Volan. The mirah cares for you. Any fool can see that."

"Then that makes me a fool."

Bahir laughed. "Most men are, when it comes to realizing that a woman loves him. The biggest fool of all, though, is the one who runs from that love, and the great happiness it can bring."

As he spoke, a haunted look flared fleetingly in the Tuaret's eyes. Teague frowned. What secret memory had Bahir's words elicited? "You sound as if you speak from experience," he said, attempting to divert the conversation from himself.

It didn't work. "My love is in the past," Bahir growled. "Yours is before you. Will you be a coward and turn from it?"

Teague shot up from his perch on the boulder and stalked over to him. He halted but a half meter away and met his gaze, eye-to-eye. "And what do you care? I'd think you'd prefer it if one of your men took Raina. Why waste her on me?"

"Why, indeed?" Bahir eyed him narrowly, then turned and strode over to the edge of the stone precipice that overlooked the desert. He stared off into the distance for a time, then shrugged. "Perhaps I was wrong about you. Perhaps you truly aren't the man we need."

"I never said I was, curse you!"

Bahir turned. "No, you didn't. But if you aren't, it's past time you saw yourself for what you truly are, without the shield of pious utterances and oaths that allow you to live in a world of falsehood and foolish, futile illusions. Face yourself once and for all, Tremayne. You might be pleasantly surprised. And if you don't, then Vorax has won once more."

With that, the Tuaret walked back the way he'd come. Teague gazed after him, his fists clenching in seething frustration. As he stood there, the stormclouds raced overhead, bringing with them chill air and fierce winds.

"He speaks true, my friend." Rand's voice rose above the intensifying wail of the wind. "Vorax will triumph if you don't face yourself. And with that victory, he destroys not only you, but Raina and Bahir and all the others. He destroys them all."