“Rast?” She said, coming into the room quickly. “Rast, who—?”
“Nadiah.” He got up, still blocking her view—deliberately Nadiah thought—and came toward her with his hands out.
“Rast, what’s going on? Who is that?” she demanded, trying to look around him.
“Someone you know—that both of us know, unfortunately.” Rast took her by the shoulders and held her eyes with his. “Brace yourself—it’s not a pretty sight.”
“But who is it?” Nadiah’s heart was pounding with fear. Not waiting for her husband’s reply, she twisted out of his grip and ran to the cot…only to stop short. “Y’dex?” she whispered, looking at her ex-fiancé in horror. “Is…is that you?”
It was a fair question. The old Y’dex had been straight and slender and proud, had moved with an insolent grace that spoke volumes about his arrogance before he even opened his mouth. But this thing lying in the cot…it was most horribly burned and blackened. Its skin was charred and cracked, pealing away in strips to reveal raw red meat underneath. Its legs were crooked, obviously broken in several places and no hair remained on its bald, smoldering head except for a single white-blond tuft over one melted ear.
“Y’dex?” Nadiah whispered again, this time in horror. “Oh no…no!”
At the sound of its name one cloudy light blue eye rolled toward her. It seemed to be damaged in some way but not nearly as much as the other which lay in a ruined mess on the thing’s cheek. It opened cracked and blackened lips. “Nadiah…” Her name was an almost unrecognizable croak but somehow Nadiah understood it. And she was sure now that this thing truly was Y’dex.
“What happened to you?” she demanded. “We thought you’d fallen to your death from the High Mesa except we couldn’t find your body.”
“Wish I had,” the thing croaked. “Would have been better…easier.”
“But Y’dex—”
“Caught by spies…Hoard spies. They wanted my ship…wanted to know how it worked.”
Suddenly Nadiah remembered him bragging that the Kindred weren’t the only ones with interstellar travel ability anymore. She hadn’t had time to wonder what he meant—at the time she’d been too horrified to see him popping up unexpectedly on First World to claim her. But now…
“How does it work?” she asked. “What did they want with it?”
“You’ll see…soon enough.” The blackened thing on the cot gave a hoarse, cawing laugh. “Your fault, you know. If I hadn’t chased you, this…” It gestured at its broken body with one gruesomely twisted claw, “Never would have happened. Your fault. Yours.”
“Y’dex, I’m sorry.” Nadiah shook her head helplessly.
“He’s coming for you.” The thing laughed again and this time the hoarse, awful sound had the sharp edge of madness in it. “He’ll kill you…kill you all.”
“That’s enough!” Rast snapped from behind her and Nadiah turned to see he was scowling. “Give him more pain medication,” he told the priestess healer on duty. “He’s crazy with pain.”
“Not crazy…” The thing which had used to be her fiancée laughed some more, sending cold chills down Nadiah’s spine. “Not crazy at all. Kill you! Kill you a—” Its laughter suddenly ended and the charred, bald head slumped on its ruined chest.
“My Challa,” said the healer respectfully after checking carefully for a pulse. “Forgive me, but I fear that the patient is dead.”
“Dead?” Nadiah heard the waver in her own voice. Though she’d gotten used to the idea of her ex-fiancé being dead earlier, now the concept was truly brought home to her. Y’dex wasn’t lying peacefully somewhere on the desert floor, his body buried in the shifting rainbow sands—he was actually dead, right here in front of her. And horribly burned and mangled into the bargain. She turned on Rast. “Why didn’t you save him? You could have done it—you brought me back with your wings when I was almost dead.”
Rast lifted both hands. “He didn’t want me to. I offered—believe me, sweetheart, I did. As much of a bastard as he was to both of us, nobody deserves to go out like this.” He gestured at the twisted corpse. “But he said no, that he wanted to die. He just wanted to see you first.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I never should have sent for you.”
“No.” Nadiah put a hand to her eyes and took a deep breath. “No, I…I’m glad you did. I never…never would have known it was truly him if I hadn’t talked to him. It’s horrible, but…but I needed to see it to believe.”