Crystal Rain Read online

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  No escape!

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE - THE WICKED HIGHS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  PART TWO - CAPITOL CITY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  PART THREE - THE NORTHLANDS

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  PART FOUR - THE BITTER END

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  PRAISE FOR CRYSTAL RAIN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Find out what’s beyond the wormhole in RAGAMUFFIN

  Copyright Page

  Preview Page

  Excerpt Page

  For Emily

  my first reader and then girlfriend,

  fiancée, and finally wife as I wrote this book

  No escape!

  John wriggled his back up against the tree and looked across at the men.

  “What are your names?” he whispered, but they remained silent. “My name is John deBrun. I’m from Brungstun, who are you?”

  The man with a battered face next to him looked off in the distance. “Is best we don’t know each other. Trust me.”

  “We have to get free,” John said. “We have to warn Brungstun.”

  “Shut up, man, just shut up,” a second man hissed. “We ain’t escaping, and you ain’t making this easier.”

  John’s thighs cramped underneath him. “What do you mean?”

  The man next to him, the first to speak, shifted. “Make you peace. Because soon we go die.”

  Last night’s captors surrounded the tree and pointed at the captives, coming to a decision. They sliced the ropes free and made two men stand up. To his shame, John felt relief.

  The two men were dragged off around the tree’s branches, out of sight. For several minutes only a few jungle birds fluttered and cawed into the silence.

  Then the screaming began.

  PROLOGUE

  Brown vines dried and crumbled along the village Refojee-Ten’s edges. Everything thirsted for the impending rainy season: the dry jungle, the hard-packed dirt roads winding through the village, the two wells, and the drooping emerald ears of corn.

  Wiry elders sat hunched over rickety tables outside playing cards, their eyes scanning the late-afternoon sky as they shuffled and dealt.

  In the distance over the green fringe of the treetops, the hazy Wicked High Mountains cut and shredded dark clouds, forcing them to release sheets of rain several days’ walk away from Refojee-Ten. The elders flicked their cards, flashed their gums, and licked lips as they eyed the pictures in their calloused hands.

  Rainy season tugged at their joints. It made them feel older, creakier, and yet thankful life was about to return because soon the jungle air blowing into the streets would be wet, the roads muddy, and the corn so fresh you could hear it grow at night in the fields.

  Yes, rainy season would burst in any day now.

  So no one jumped when the thunder cracked the sky. They looked up and nodded, wise to the land’s regular cycle proving itself for yet another year, as it had all the many years of their lives before.

  But the thunder did not die and give way to fat raindrops. It continued to boom louder and louder until mothers ran away from their wash-lines to grab their children. Men stopped and looked up at a fiery smoke trail that crossed the sky.

  The elders dropped their cards and stood up, shielding their eyes to watch in awe as a white-hot fireball flew over the village. The ground shook as it disappeared into the jungle with a distant explosion. Panicked birds swirled into the air to create confused patterns of bright plumage above the trees.

  The smoky trail remained in the sky until dusk.

  By that time the greatest hunters in Refojee-Ten had taken up their rifles and walked off into the dangerous night with torches to see what this curiosity was.

  Two days later the hunters found a section of the jungle where the trees had been blown down like mere sticks.

  Cautious, they followed the destruction inward. To walk over the hot ground, they bound their feet with aloe and arm-sized leaves. They choked from the smoke. When they could walk into the destruction no longer, they turned around and found a weary-looking man sitting on a steaming metal boulder.

  He wore a top hat, a long trench coat, and black boots. His eyes were gray, his dreadlocks black, and his face ashen. It was as if this man had not seen sun in all his life, but was born brown once.

  He spoke gibberish to them, then touched his throat several times until the hunters understood his words.
r />   “Where am I?”

  Near the village of Refojee-Ten, they told him, which is as far from the north coast as it is from the south coast, but a week’s walk from the Wicked High Mountains.

  They asked him if he came down from the sky, and how he did it.

  The man ignored their questions. He leaped from the metal boulder and landed among them. He pointed at their rifles.

  “These weapons, you got them where?”

  They told him they traded with northerners for them: bush hunters and merchants. It was an infrequent trade, but enough to let the villagers understand the world outside the jungle’s depths. The rifles, they knew, were made in a place called Capitol City.

  “And how would I get there?”

  Go north through the jungle, they said, to Brungstun, and then use the coastal road. Or wait for a northerner to come trade with us and go with them.

  This satisfied the stranger. He seemed harmless, tired, and thin. He looked much like a pale insect one might find in the mud, so they took him back to the village. On the way back he ate their dried foods and acted as if they were the finest meats.

  He only stopped eating once: to stare at a bush by their side. A jaguar leapt out, and the stranger grabbed its throat and slung it across the road. The hunters watched the cat drop to the ground, neck twisted at an odd angle.

  The stranger stayed in the village for a week. He ate anything offered to him and gained strength. When he left, his muscles bulged. His skin looked like earth now; a proper and healthy color for a man.

  He chose, against all their protestations, to walk north through the dangerous jungle to go find the rest of the world. He asked one last question while among the Refojee-Ten villagers. “How long do I have until carnival?”

  They told him the number of months. Though, they knew, some towns celebrated carnival on different days throughout the land. When they asked him why he wanted to know about carnival, the man smiled.

  “I’m looking for an old friend, one who never misses carnival.” And that was all he said.

  After he left, the hunters talked at length about what they had seen and wondered who he was. But the elders shook their heads over their cards. Not who, they said to the hunters. What.

  When pressed for further details, they shook their heads and turned back to their cards, waiting for rainy season to start.

  PART ONE

  THE WICKED HIGHS

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Wicked High Mountains loomed around Dennis and his men as they skirted house-sized, reddish slabs of rock jutting from the soil, avoided deep, echoing chasms, and paused at a tiny stream to fill their canteens.

  Above the tree line the air cooled enough that Dennis could see his own breath. Yesterday he would have been amused. Today his huffing betrayed how fast he moved over the crumbling ground.

  Dennis looked around at his men. Mongoose-men. Nanagada’s best bush warriors. They hopped from rock to rock with grunts. Some had long dreadlocks down their backs and full beards. Others had short, cropped hair. They came from all over Nanagada, and despite being smeared with mud and colored chalk to help them blend into the shadows, they had skin ranging from mountainside and Capitol City soft brown to south-coast dark black.

  Each man dressed in gray: heavy canvas trousers, longsleeved shirts, and floppy wide-brimmed hats. All over this dull uniform sticks and leaves jutted out, glued on in random patterns.

  Out of the jungle and on the rock they stood out like shaggy gray-and-green creatures.

  Still, this was the quickest way to Mafolie Pass.

  The second moon rose. A dim double-lit darkness would be far better than the blatant daylight they’d been running in. Dennis glanced at the sky. They’d be less likely to get spotted by an Azteca airship at night.

  Earlier, many miles downrange of Mafolie Pass, they’d captured an Azteca scout. Much to their surprise, the Aztecan knew several code phrases. The mongoose-men had few spies among the Azteca. It was a rare encounter.

  Most Azteca who came over the mountains fled for Capitol City: Nanagada’s farthermost northeastern point. As far from their past as they could get.

  This Aztecan said his name was Oaxyctl. O-ash-k-tul. His teeth chattered. He had barely made it over the mountains. Shivering, hungry, and hardly understandable, he told them Mafolie Pass was under attack.

  “That happen sometimes,” the mongoose-men replied. Azteca threw various-sized attack parties at the pass randomly to test the thick walls and Mafolie’s perfectly placed guns, but the pass remained impenetrable. The mongoose-men based Nanagada’s defense from Mafolie Pass.

  “Not from the pass,” the spy hissed, his back against the rough bark of a turis tree, his legs in the mud.

  “Mafolie Pass the only place any big army able to cross,” Dennis objected.

  The spy wiped his face with a dirty sleeve. “They dug a tunnel,” he spat. “You understand?”

  They blinked. “A tunnel? Under the whole mountain? We would know about that.”

  “Nopuluca,” the spy cursed at them. “Azteca dug for a hundred years now. They fooled you into thinking they were still testing the pass while always digging. But they’re here. Believe me. We are dead men.”

  He’d begged water and food off them. They’d told him where the next low-mountain station was. Then the strange spy scrambled off down the mountainside.

  “If we all done dead,” they called after him as he clambered down into the thick greenery, “why you come here? Where you think you going?”

  But he had already disappeared into the bush.

  Dennis and his mongoose-men broke their camp after a minute’s consultation, leaving anything they couldn’t carry where it sat, and started the run for Mafolie Pass.

  The heavy morning mist made it impossible for Dennis to see more than a few trees ahead. Small animals skittered around them, noises amplified in the dimness. The mongoose-men relaxed a bit, back in the jungle now. They were still three hours from Mafolie Pass. Better they relax now and not fray their nerves before getting closer.

  A twig snapped. Dennis signaled stop by flicking his wrist.

  The group’s rifle barrels rose in quiet unison.

  “Pddeeett?” chirped a voice from deep in the mist. It sounded birdlike enough to fool any townie.

  “Pass?” Dennis called out.

  “Plain porridge,” came the answer. “No sugar.”

  Everyone lowered their rifles. Their best runner, Allen, had dropped his packs and gone ahead yesterday to scout. Now he pushed through a pricker bush, sweat dripping from his forehead, and grabbed an offered canteen. He splashed water on his face.

  “Come follow me.” Allen wiped his face on his sleeve, smearing dirt over his cheeks and breaking a leaf off his hat.

  “Azteca?” Dennis asked.

  Allen nodded.

  No one slung their rifles.

  Allen led them down through a ravine, then back up the other side. They followed him, leaning into the sharply angled ground, arms loose, zigzagging up. A small dirt road cut through the bush at the top. Next to it a stone sentry-house perched on the ravine’s edge. Thick moss clung to the cracks in the wall and dripped with condensation.

  “You had see anything?” Dennis asked.

  Allen shook his head. His baggy canvas shirt was stained with sweat over the chest and armpits. “It real quiet now,” he said. “Come.”

  Together they walked forward. Allen pointed at a dead animal beside the sentry-house. Flies buzzed around it. Dennis walked over; saw a pair of hands bound with rope. “Look upon that.” He pushed the flayed body with his boot. He managed to roll it over, breathing through his mouth to avoid the smell. He pulled his machete free from its scabbard strapped to his lower leg. “See that?” He pointed at the ragged hole between the corpse’s second and third ribs.

  “Them cut through for him heart,” a mongoose-man said.

  “Warrior-priest in a hurry, don’t want cut through no breastbone,” Allen add
ed.

  Dennis didn’t see an eagle-stone imprint. Some passing Azteca warrior did this in a hurry without the usual Azteca equipment. Typical of a small hunting party come over the almost impassable Wicked Highs … but this was here in the heart of the mongoose-men’s world.

  Allen pointed to the sides of the dirt road. “See that crush-up leaf and footprint? I guess a thousand come through. At least.”

  A thousand. No small hunting party. A full invasion swing toward Mafolie Pass, but on this side of the mountain. Just as the spy had said.

  Dennis glanced down the road, imagining the tightly packed throng of bright feathers and padded armor marching down the mountains and into Nanagada. If they destroyed Mafolie Pass, Azteca could come over the mountains with ease. With enough time and supplies they could march anywhere in Nanagada. The Azteca would rule everything if no longer held back by the mountains.

  “Got some decisions for we make.” Dennis squatted by the road. He leaned forward on the machete’s handle for balance. The dark blade dug into the dirt. “You all ready for some heavy reasoning?”

  The mongoose-men stood in a loose circle around him. Two stood up on either side of the road, looking around the curve for any surprises.

  “Mafolie Pass probably already run over,” Dennis said. “We late. So what next?”

  Allen shuffled in the dirt. “No wheel imprint here.” He looked up at everyone. “These Azteca all moving on foot, seen?”

  “Make sense, wheel don’t do you much good in the mountain.”

  “They have no supplies with them. They moving light, moving quick. But they go have to get supply coming behind them if they want eat.”

  Dennis thought about the hungry, tired spy. How much food could these Azteca carry? A few days’ worth at the most.

  There had to be supplies on the way.

  “Yeah. More Azteca go be coming down the mountain,” Dennis agreed. “We could choose to run down the mountain to warn people, or we can slow down Azteca supply.”