Rhani (Dragons of Kratak Book 3) Read online

  RHANI

  Dragons of Kratak | Book 3

  Ruth Anne Scott

  Copyright © 2017 by Ruth Anne Scott

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  Copyright © 2017 by Ruth Anne Scott

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Facebook: Ruth Anne Scott

  Contents

  Beginning

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  RHANI

  Tales from Angondra (Sample)

  Rohn (Sample)

  Legends of Black Salmon Falls (Series Preview)

  No Such Thing as Dragons (Series Preview)

  Special Invitation

  About the Author

  RHANI

  Chapter 1

  Moira Flannery watched the rocket shuttle soar away south over the distant mountains. It led her eyes away from Harkniss Keep to the jagged peaks of Planet Kratak surrounding the Allies research team. The rocket shuttle guided her eyes all the way around in a circle. That’s when she noticed the dragon.

  The team’s commanding officer, Rose Cooper, mutter under her breath, “I didn’t know there were dragons on this planet.”

  Her sister Reyna Cooper, the team’s genealogist, didn’t notice the dragon at all. “Here they come.”

  Both sisters turned their attention to four men walking down the hill from the Keep entrance. All the men of Clan Harkniss towered over their Allies counterparts with their massive shoulders and muscled bulk, and they kept their hands on swords slung at their sides.

  Moira noticed only the dragon. It swooped over the pointed peaks and alighted on a mountaintop. It rustled its leathery wings and craned its long neck around to train its silvery eyes on the team of strangers. Its eyelids snapped when it blinked. It looked straight at Moira.

  Tanner Montserrat, the team’s anthropologist, nudged her. “Come on, Moira. We’re going inside.”

  Moira took a good look at the Krataks for the first time. The men wore simple homespun clothes of natural linen. Their shirts stopped at the shoulder and revealed their muscled arms, and their pants ended just below the knee. They wore no shoes and took no notice of the chilling wind.

  Each man wore a diagonal buckler holding his sword with an intricate medallion positioned in the center of his chest. Even the white-haired patriarch wore his hair shoulder-length, but their skin caught Moira’s attention most of all.

  Iridescent whirling patterns emerged under their skin, touched the surface, and receded out of sight before the eye could register them. They gave the Krataks’ skin a colored hue, but each man’s moods and thoughts gave him a different color pattern. The patterns fascinated Moira. She would like to study them and follow them with her fingertip, but as soon as she recognized a familiar frond unfurling, or a wave uncurling, it vanished into nothing.

  She took a closer look at the tallest man. The patriarch introduced him as Damen, his youngest of three sons. This man’s skin patterns gave him a purple tinge, but something in those rippling swirls reminded Moira of the dragon. Moira saw the dragon’s flashing eyes and smoldering nostrils buried under Damen’s face before the pattern disappeared.

  She saw the same thing in the other son, Rohn, only with a greenish cast. The fourth man, the patriarch’s son-in-law Callan Assan, looked different, but his face showed the same tell-tale mark of something reptilian. Moira couldn’t put her finger on it.

  Moira followed her teammates into Harkniss Keep, but before she dropped into the mountain’s dark heart, she looked back toward the mountain beyond. The dragon lay curled on the summit with his wings folded against his back.

  Two women met the team at the Keep entrance. They wore ornate gowns sweeping to the floor, but their skin showed the same hypnotizing pattern. They hung back and withdrew from any attempt to engage the team in conversation.

  Rowan Harkniss, the patriarch, led the team down a deep passage into the mountain. Tapestries and pictures with the same organic unfolding patterns covered the black stone walls and every available surface. Those patterns sprang from the planet itself to grow up into planets, animals, and even people.

  Rose talked to Rowan, but the designs surrounding her on all sides entranced Moira. She slowed to a stop more than once to stare at them and puzzle over their meaning.

  One particular tapestry caught her attention. The mixture of twining tendrils and interlocking geometric patterns erupted from a fissure in a solid base to form the distinctive shape of a man, but a man unlike any man Moira ever saw.

  His shoulders widened around his head, and spikes extended from the flared outline stabbing around his body. His mouth opened in sharp spiky fangs, and a twisting jet of fire shot out of his mouth to curl in licking flame.

  Where had Moira seen a shape like that before? She couldn’t remember anything like it except from fairy tales out of her childhood. The man’s hands and feet curled into pointed claws, but the same convoluted patterns covered his face and body with intertwining designs.

  What did it all mean? Something in that man’s face reminded her of Rohn, or maybe Rowan the patriarch. Then again, when she really thought about it, it reminded her of all the Krataks. The tapestry must hold some meaning about their identity as a culture.

  Rowan led the team into a huge underground chamber with high stone walls. Tables and chairs sat around the room in different sitting areas, and a pleasant warmth radiated up through the floor to make it comfortable.

  Rowan sent his son Rohn to show the male team members to one wing of the Keep, while his daughter Haya showed the women another way. Moira observed the Krataks out of the corner of her eye.

  As the Allies representative on this mission, she took responsibility for winning this race over to joining the Alliance. Sensitive questions about the Allies’ command structure and the inhabitants’ future after they joined would come straight to Moira, and this mission’s success depended on her answers.

  Everyone on the team knew how sensitive this mission would be. The male-dominated Krataks didn’t want to welcome a research team from a female-dominated society at all. They only did it to forestall a full-blown Allies invasion.

  Before she left home, General Duncan summoned Moira to her office for a confidential briefing. The General’s decorated blue uniform made her look taller than Moira, though the two women stood the same height. Her long blonde hair hung straight down her back. “I don’t have to tell you, Moira, the Allies have special designs on Kratak.”

  “I gathered that from the surveys you sent over yesterday.”

  “The Allies will take this planet one way or the other. Your primary mission is to ensure that happens peacefully. Whatever you do, don’t provoke these recalcitrant men. Let them cling to their precious autonomy. When they decide to join, we’ll move in and impose our own system of government on them. Then we’ll teach them what it means to be a civilized society.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll tell you something else, Moira, and this is not to go beyond these walls.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “No one else on the team knows this, not even Rose. She’s a scientist, not a diplomat. If any of these scientific types found out the Allies’ true agenda, ou
r whole strategy would be blown. Our approach to Kratak, just like all the other planets we’ve brought into our Alliance, has to appear totally benign. The rest of the team has to believe, beyond all doubt, that this mission remains purely scientific. They cannot understand this is a forward operation to gain a foothold on the planet.”

  “I understand that, General. I’ve represented the Allies enough times on these research surveys to know the stakes.”

  “I know you have. I just wanted to clear the air before you join your teammates in the Quarantine Wing. This will be the last time I get a chance to talk to you.”

  “Is there anything else, General?”

  “I know you can handle a sensitive mission and your teammates. I just want you to understand this planet’s importance. We can’t lose it, and the Allies will do anything to get it, even if that means taking drastic measures.”

  “From what I read yesterday, the inhabitants are primitive and disorganized. I doubt they have the numbers or the capability to repel the Allies, should the Command decide on a full-scale take-over.”

  “They don’t. They live in isolated family Keeps, and they have no weapons beyond metal swords. We have all the firepower, space-capable vehicles and rocket shuttles, armored fighter jets, and countless trained military personnel. They wouldn’t stand a chance. Even so, we want to avoid any show of coercion. If we coerced the Krataks or, heaven forbid, invaded them with guns blazing, we would never be able to convince any other planet of our peaceful intentions. We would have to fight tooth and nail every time we wanted something. In fact, every tin-pot tribe on all our planets would start jumping up and down demanding their independence, too, and we would have to fight a long, bloody war with each of them, just to keep what we worked so hard to build.”

  “I understand, General. We can’t let that happen.”

  “We built this Alliance on our reputation as a benevolent government. The Krataks will fall to that, too, and then we can move our mining equipment down to the surface and make use of the resources inside the planet’s mountains.”

  **

  Haya showed Rose, Reyna, and Moira down another long passage to their quarters. She opened a door and waved Rose inside before showing Moira to the room across the hall.

  Moira turned to Reyna. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

  Reyna didn’t answer. She gazed at a tapestry on the wall in front of her. So, Moira wasn’t the only person who noticed them.

  Moira went into her room, and Haya led Reyna out of sight. Moira looked the room over. Iridescent threads wove the twining patterns into the quilt covering the bed, and several tapestries decorated the walls.

  Moira studied them for a long time. They wormed their way into her brain so she could think of nothing else. They infected her soul with a subconscious understanding of this planet and its people. These artistic representations displayed the Krataks’ image of themselves and their world. They offered a vivid visual picture of the Krataks inner psychological landscape.

  A shaft cut into the mountainside let light through the wall. Moira gravitated toward the light. The landscape rolled away from her window to the far horizon. Even as she gazed through that window at the forbidding mountains with their dark forested valleys between, she saw with second sight the surreal patterns sprouting out of the ground to make up everything on this planet.

  Vines pushed their way out of the moist soil and braided themselves into tree trunks. They knotted into bone and muscle to create animals, and the invisible spark exploded from a central nexus to make people. The patterns filled the sky to accumulate into lavender clouds and tiny crystals fell as rain.

  In the distance, the dragon heaved on his mountain. He turned in a complete circle and cast a restive glance toward the Keep before settling himself down on his nest. He caught sight of Moira, and his silver eyes flashed. Even he contained those patterns. They created dragons, too, in their inscrutable way.

  When he looked at her, she recognized again the curious phenomenon she noticed when she looked at Damen and Rohn. Their facial patterns reminded her of the dragon. What would she find if she looked at the dragon up close? Would she discover some secret to explain the resemblance?

  She cast her mind back over the passages Haya took to bring her to this room. She could follow them with no trouble, back to the Keep entrance. She would see the dragon better from there. Maybe by that time, it would get up and fly around some more.

  Chapter 2

  Moira found no one in the passage outside her room. She followed it all the way back to the main hall without seeing a soul, human or Kratak. She found her way back up the passage to the entrance with no problem.

  Sure enough, the sun shone full on the mountainside and lit up the countryside. It struck the dragon’s red hide and reflected a thousand prisms across the valley to her eye. Did the sunlight reflecting off its skin make those patterns, too?

  She didn’t really mean to start walking down the hill. She only wanted to see the dragon better, to see what made its skin glitter in the sun like that. In a few moments, she found herself standing at the bottom of the hill next to the team’s gear. She glanced around. She was completely alone in this fascinating world.

  The dragon let out a screech from the mountain. When she looked up at him, he writhed his head on his long neck to peer down at her. He rose on his four feet and extended his wings.

  In a split second, Moira understood. That creature in the tapestry wasn’t a man at all. It was a dragon with fire spurting out of its mouth. The spiky patterns shooting out from its shoulders were wings beating the air to take flight.

  Why did she think it was a man? When she thought back, she couldn’t make out exactly what it was. It shifted in her imagination like some kind of optical illusion. One minute, she saw the man clearly. The next minute, he changed into a dragon and back again.

  The dragon on the mountain flexed his wings and took to the air. He swooped out over the forest and dwindled to a speck. Moira sighed. She could go back to the Keep, but the forest stood just there. She noticed the same lacy designs scoring the bark of the first trees.

  She took a few steps into the woods and touched the bark. The tendrils she imagined growing into the trunk cut deep fissures in the bark. She moved to the next tree. Each tree bore the marks of the pattern integrated into its flesh, but a unique pattern covered the surface of each tree, just as each man carried his own individual pattern etched into his skin.

  She walked from one tree to the next when the dragon swooped low overhead. It let out another deafening screech and angled its wings to fly back toward the mountain. As it passed, it bent its head to stare down at her.

  She stopped with her hand on a tree. She couldn’t see any sign of the Keep when she looked back over her shoulder. Trees blocked her view in every direction. They covered her head and cast her world in shadow. She should go back before she got hopelessly lost out here. She always went off exploring by herself and always found her way back again, but there was a first time for everything.

  Just when she made up her mind to turn around, the dragon soared overhead again—lower this time. He cried out again, but the sound didn’t set her nerves on edge the way it did before. For some reason, she got the idea he wanted to call her. He looked down at her again and flew up to land on his mountain.

  She set off again in that direction. She could always find her way back to the Keep. The Krataks must know this terrain well enough to find her if she got lost, and they didn’t seem all that concerned about the dragon.

  She hiked through the forest, but the trees got thicker and the woods darker. She lost sight of the mountain, so she didn’t know exactly where she ought to go, but she kept walking. Those world-building patterns occupied her thoughts. She never saw anything like them before. Would she ever be able to look at anything again without seeing them woven into the fabric of the universe? Would they disappear when she left this planet?

  Her own world withered into a hollow
husk in the past behind her. No life-giving pattern kept it thriving and vibrant and interesting. No spark of life excited her nerves when she laid her hand on the cold metal hull of a rocket shuttle.

  Her whole life lay behind her as one featureless waste. No wonder the Allies took over one planet after another with no thought for who got hurt. They couldn’t understand life when they were dead themselves.

  They couldn’t understand a living planet like Kratak, with living people rooted in a living fabric of other living things. The Allies could understand nothing but destroying people and places like this.

  The sound of running water touched her ear and sparked an insatiable thirst in her parched throat. She headed toward the sound and found a crystal-clear waterfall splashing into a pristine pool.

  She stepped forward to take a drink when a roar split the tranquility of the forest scene. The noise startled her ten times more than the dragon’s high-pitched screech. She jumped a foot in the air and spun around to see the biggest creature she ever laid eyes on thundering toward her.

  It looked like a pig, but it towered over her as tall as an elephant, with spotted hairy skin and cloven hooves. She caught sight of stubby tusks. It opened its mouth to reveal crooked brown teeth, and it blew jets of steam from its flattened snout.

  Then it came too close for her to see clearly. It bashed its great head into her chest, and a stabbing pain ripped through her guts. She hit the dirt on her back, and the creature straddled her to bellow into her face. With a sideways wrench of its head, it ripped the tusk from her abdomen and tore her open.

  It dove in to attack with its horrible teeth bared. With the last of her strength, she heaved her arms over her head and knocked it in the snout. Its teeth clicked shut right next to her ear, but in a flash, it came back for another slash.

  The warmth of Moira’s life trickled out of her into the sod. Whatever trace of that pattern that infused her body and spirit with life returned to the planet from whence it sprang. It would feed another life with its roots and leaves and molecules. Some particle of Moira Flannery would live on in this primal environment.