by Glenda Larke
When the rider topped the rise in a swirl of dust backlit by sunset—a dark figure pasted on a blood-red sky like a mythical god—Davim asked simply, in his own tongue, “What happened to the promised rain?”
He expected excuses, a tale of blameless woe. Instead the Traitor shrugged and said, “I failed.”
He used the language of the Scarpen. Davim spoke it well enough, but he was in his own land now, and he refused to defile it with the outlander’s tongue. “Failed, my lord?” he asked, still using Reduner, knowing the man understood. He raised an eyebrow, but balanced the subtle mockery with the polite use of the title. It didn’t pay to be stupid. This man had powers that no sandmaster could match, and he could use them faster than any Reduner warrior could release a zigger. And the man carried ziggers as well; there was a cage strapped behind him on the pede.
The Traitor inclined his head and switched languages. He spoke Reduner well, although his outlander accent was strong. “Yes. I stole a storm as I said I would—with that I had no problem—but, alas, I lacked the power to bring it safely to the Red Quarter. I believe a wash and a settle or two in the Gibber must have received an unexpected water bore as a consequence.” He shook some dust from his robe and edged his mount closer to Davim’s. “Failure happens. There will doubtless be others. I need a rainlord to join his power to mine, Sandmaster Davim. At the very least. Better still, someone of stormlord level. If I had such, there would be no more failures.”
Davim opened his hands in a gesture of lack. “I have found none. Heard of none. My men scoured the dunes, testing in the ways you suggested. No one. Not unexpected. After all, we did it not too long ago, for the Cloudmaster.” His voice hardened. “Will you deliver on your promises, my lord?”
“In time. I never let a setback overturn the mount, Sandmaster. If I cannot discover an unknown stormlord, if I cannot locate a rainlord child to train, then I can kidnap the remaining one there is.”
“The Cloudmaster’s granddaughter?”
“Yes. Senya. Or I can kidnap a grown rainlord and force him to do my bidding by threatening his wife or child or loved one. There are always ways.”
“A rainlord is not a stormlord. You claim to be a potent rainlord yourself, yet you cannot make a storm.”
“Because of my potency, if I have a rainlord at my call, to bind his or her power to mine, it may be sufficient.” He shrugged. “Sooner or later there will be another child with the talent. It is just a matter of finding them before others do. Keep looking, Davim.”
“I’m a patient man. I can afford to be. I am young yet.” Davim smiled slyly, confident in his comparative youthfulness. He was not quite thirty years old, and the man he faced must surely have been closer to forty than thirty. “However, my patience is not limitless.”
“Nor is mine. And yet I will not jeopardise our plans by precipitate action—I am not in my dotage yet. Listen, Sandmaster, Granthon grows weaker by the day. Weaker in physique and weaker in power. He is already failing to bring enough water for all life in the Quartern. You have seen this yourself in your reduced rainfall.”
“That’s true. I even heard random rain has fallen along The Spindlings. Granthon is not even capturing all the natural-born clouds.”
“I hadn’t heard that. I’m not surprised, though. Cloudmaster Granthon has even let the cisterns of his own city drop dangerously in level.” He gave a snort of contempt. “He would let his own people suffer along with the rest of the Quartern. Did I walk his path, the Gibber or the White Quarter would have suffered first; but no, he tried to be fair. Fair! As if you can rule a land such as the Quartern fairly. He knows nothing about rule.”
For the first time in their conversation he was showing emotion and Davim hid a smile. The Traitor had a weakness after all. It was worth remembering. “The Cloudmaster is a fool. Fortunately for us, you say he also birthed a foolish son,” he added softly, soothing.
“Yes. When Granthon finally dies, you and I will be there to take his place, not Highlord Nealrith, never fear.”
“I will have the Red and the White Quarters. You may do what you will with the rest.” He could not help the joy of anticipation that edged his words. “Don’t make it too long, lord.”
“Granthon’s death comes. Possibly even before the next star cycle completes itself. Already he is desperate. He now wants to send rainlords to the Gibber to look for potential stormlords.” Once again his contempt broke through. “The Gibber, of all places! Next he will be sending us across the Giving Sea, searching lands where men have no water sensitivity!”
“He hopes to suck water from stone. I almost pity him.”
The Traitor smiled. Behind him, his packpede arrived at the top of the slope and clattered its segment plates with a shake, in an attempt to rid itself of sand. “Not I, Sandmaster. Not I,” he said.
“Will he further cut water to the Red Quarter?”
“No, I think not. He knows that would only rouse the dunes to frenzy. A number of people have, however, sown the idea that perhaps the Gibber and the White Quarters are not exactly as important. It will make our taking control of those two Quarters easier if they are thirsty.”
“How long?”
“Hard to say. Granthon is weak, but there is a sinew of toughness in that old man that will hang on to life and power. And a senseless streak of softness that will keep him sending water to the Gibbermen and the ’Basters as long as he can.” He paused as the sound from the heart of the dune thrummed in quickening rhythm. “What says your dune god?”
Davim gave an unpleasant smile. “He warns of treachery. Beware, brother. Do not cross us or you will learn to fear the power of the dune drovers.”
The Traitor shrugged. “I have no reason to contemplate treachery. How goes the training of your men?”
“Well. They will be ready whenever the wind is right. They are loyal, utterly, to my leadership of the Watergatherer. And I build numbers by taking in the unwanted. We never refuse water to anyone. My men slit their throats if they do not prove their worth within ten days or so, but that is rarely necessary. We are warriors as great as the dunes have ever seen. True men see and admire and long to follow.”
“The other dunes? Can you deliver them as promised, when the, er, wind is right?”
“Show them you control the rain and that you supply us with water at my bidding, and I could have them at my feet tomorrow. Already the weaker dunes offer their tribute to me wordlessly with fear in their eyes. If I could tell them I had a stormlord at my side to fill the waterholes to the brim as in the past, then they would come willingly, not dragging their feet through fear, and the larger dunes would follow. You understand the difference, I think?”
The Traitor shrugged. “Between threats and rewards? Oh yes. But one man’s way is not another’s. I demand nothing but loyalty. What prompts it is irrelevant.”
Davim gestured with an upturned palm, indicating his indifference to the other’s preference. “Just remember this: I prefer to bring the other dunes in with a bribe—a stormshifter, cloudbreaker, stormlord, whatever name you like—but I have other plans if you fail me. You may not like them as much as the present plan.”
“Threats are unnecessary,” the Traitor said coldly.
Davim smiled. “Do you stay the night in our camp? I offer the hospitality of my tribe.”
“Another time perhaps.”
“When do we meet again?”
“Not for a while, I think. If you have a message, you know how to contact me.” Without farewell, he swung his pede around, picked up the reins of the packpede in passing, and set them both at the gentler slope. The animals gathered momentum, and the red dust rose in a cloud behind them, obliterating any view of their departure.
Davim remained where he was for a moment longer. The smile he directed after the travelling pede was brittle. “You are a worthy ally, my traitorous friend,” he murmured, “and one day you will make an even worthier enemy. One day all the Quartern will be mine, and we wil
l depend on rainlords and their filthy water magic no more.”
Beneath his feet, the dune god growled.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Scarpen Quarter
Breccia City
Breccia Hall, Level 2
“Mercy! Has he gone mad?”
Nealrith braced himself for the tirade that was sure to follow. His wife, Laisa, stared at him, her dark blue eyes wide with unfeigned shock. She had just freed her long blond hair from its combs and it tumbled over her shoulders in thick waves, but for once she appeared to be oblivious to the impact of her sensual beauty.
He took her question literally. “No, no, not that.” He was tired. Too much had happened. Too many things over the previous ten days, all worthy of worry. He sat down on the bedroom stool and chose to look up at his wife as he listened. Dispassionately he wondered just how she was going to react to all he had just told her, once she was beyond the initial surprise.
She said, obviously irritated, “It was bad enough to know that sick old man was sending you caravanning off on a fool’s journey with Iani, but now he would send me, too? To the most water-forsaken cracks in the world, looking for a new stormlord—this when we couldn’t find one after years of searching the most likely places?”
“Yes. You and Taquar.”
“His head must be stuffed with sand. He has gone crazy since someone stole his storm. Why me? Why Taquar?”
“He says he’s come to the conclusion that we are all needed to protect the sensitives we may find there. He feels that this rogue rainlord who stole the cloud wants all the potential stormlords dead. That he may have killed before. Remember all those deaths before we were married, when Taquar almost died?”
“That’s ridiculous! They were accidents, illnesses—”
“So we thought. But then someone stole Father’s storm. And, it seems, later dumped it into a drywash in the Gibber Quarter. Father sensed that much. He suspects the thief must be either a Gibberman, or someone who lives there. It’s another reason he wants us all there—to look for this man. Or woman.”
“This gets more and more silly. It must be fifteen years since Lyneth disappeared. And even longer since the others died. And he thinks the same person is responsible? And a Gibber plains-grubber at that? Your father is going senile. What’s to say the rogue who stole the cloud is not one of us?”
She started pacing, long hungry strides that ate up the floor space, forcing her to turn and start back the opposite way. Her silks—imported from across the Giving Sea—swished and shimmered, as intense and as beautiful as she herself. A concealed split up one side of the skirt allowed tantalising glimpses of a shapely calf and thigh.
She stopped pacing abruptly and considered him, head on one side. “Nealrith, could you do that? Seize a storm from him by force?”
He blinked, stupid with fatigue. “Of course not.”
“Not would you, but could you.”
“No.”
“Neither could I. A stormlord could, but a real stormlord could call up his own storm anyway; he wouldn’t need to steal one.”
“It must be someone with talent who needed my father to create the storm because he couldn’t do that part himself.”
“Hmm. A rogue indeed. There are fifty-two rainlords in Scarpen to choose from, but it must be someone who is stronger in water-power than either of us. That narrows it down a bit. I can think of only four or five. Highlord Taquar, Lord Iani and that awful wife of his, Highlord Moiqa. Your cousin Highlord Tolven, over in Denmasad, although he’s always struck me as the most unambitious man I’ve ever met. And then just possibly Lord Kaneth, whose power has always fluctuated from pathetically incompetent to flashes of remarkable skill, things even a stormlord might find difficult. Sunlord only knows why.”
“None of us would have a reason! It has to be someone who has the talent but who has never been trained.”
“Another kind of rogue, in fact.” She sounded more intrigued than frightened and he experienced a momentary irritation. Didn’t she realise how much his struggle to retain the storm had cost Granthon? Couldn’t she see how much it had cost the cities of the Scarpen? It had been days before his father had summoned the strength to create another.
Laisa was apparently following a different train of thought. “Why on earth would a rogue rainlord want to cast water on the Gibber?”
“Why would he want to steal it in the first place? Nothing about this makes sense.”
“All that water dumped on those plains-grubbers instead of where we could use it. What a waste!”
Something in the way she said that alerted him. “Kaneth’s been talking to you,” he said flatly.
“About abandoning the Gibber? Yes. So has Taquar on his last visit. But it wasn’t anything I haven’t thought myself.” She sounded matter-of-fact. “Your father is only delaying the inevitable. He’s far too soft.”
“Damn it, doesn’t anyone see how wrong that would be? We have a responsibility to the whole of the Quartern!”
She looked at him in surprise. “Oh yes, in good times, perhaps. But Nealrith, would you see Senya and me die of thirst? Of course we should cut off water to the useless desert-grubbers first! And to the ’Basters as well. That’s only logical. The Reduners are too dangerous to treat that way, unfortunately.”
He felt suddenly nauseated, and turned away.
She didn’t notice his repugnance. “How do we find this rogue?” she asked.
Another question he couldn’t answer. Laisa, he thought tiredly, you have a genius for making me feel inadequate. “I’ve no idea. The only thing we can do is to put every rainlord on their guard.”
She gave an unpleasant smile. “When all the time it could be one of us. Wonderful.” Her smile thinned into calculation. “An intriguing problem, Nealrith.”
“It’s all I can suggest. There is no way we can trace just who did this. He or she could have been many days away in any direction. Or in a house right here in Breccia.”
“I’ll give it some thought. I do so like to pit my wits against a worthy opponent.”
“This is not a game, Laisa.”
“I did not say it was. In fact, I look at it more as a—a battle of minds.” She slanted an inquiring look in his direction. “And what of Senya?”
“Senya stays. I am not going to drag our daughter halfway across the Quartern.”
“Who will look after her if we are both away?”
“Mother will, of course.”
“Nealrith, stop that. You always get an idiotic smile on your face when you think of Senya. You spoil her with your—”
She was interrupted by a knock at the door, and the entry of a servant to tell Nealrith that Iani was waiting below to see him.
“I have to make arrangements,” he said as the servant left. “Laisa—”
“Yes?” She came close and raised an innocent face to smile at him.
“Don’t be difficult about this.”
“No, of course not.” She touched him, running her fingers over his crotch, arousing and tormenting as she moved her own body in a provocative gesture against his thigh. “When am I ever difficult?” Once she had elicited a response, she stepped back and waved him away in a swirl of silken sleeve. “Go, Nealrith, dear. You have more important things to do.”
He thought, You are always difficult, Laisa. His throat tightened and he mourned, although for what he wasn’t sure.
As usual, she had left him baffled, not knowing what she wanted or why a deep anger inside her burned at him through her eyes. After fourteen years of marriage, he had no idea what she thought of him. No idea if her playful sensuality was part of her loving or part of a deeper need to humiliate and tease. Her bedroom behaviour alternated between a passion so intense it frightened him, and a scornful coolness that left him both frustrated and at a loss.
He sighed, loving her, hating her, despising himself as he left the room.
Iani was waiting in the entrance hall, admiring the waterpainting that fl
oated in the shallow tiled pool set into the floor. It showed a picture of a storm crossing the Warthago Range, of rain descending from a broken cloud—a picture of turbulence and plenty falling onto a barren landscape. It had been painted at Laisa’s request by an outlander, a strange old man whose art had become fashionable in several of the Scarpen cities.
Its potency made Nealrith uneasy; the idea of wasting water on a piece of art reinforced his disquiet, especially as every now and then the water under the paint had to be topped up, otherwise the colours lost their vibrancy and the painting lost its impact.
He descended the stairs and clapped Iani on the back. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said simply. “I need to talk to you. Let’s go sit in my study.”
“You have another job for me?” One corner of his lips quirked upwards. “I know you think keeping an eye on the tunnels and mother wells is what keeps me sane.”
This was so close to the truth that Nealrith reddened. Left too much to his own devices, Iani became increasingly odd, muttering to himself, refusing to leave his room, forgetting to eat, shaking his fist at the sun and the sky, shouting blasphemies about the Watergiver or the Sunlord. Nealrith preferred to keep him busy.
“Father has set four of us a task,” he said as he ushered the rainlord into his study.
Yet another man who has aged faster than anyone should, he thought as he told Iani all he needed to know. At fifty, the man looked twenty years older. His face was crisscrossed with a network of lines as fine as a crocheted jug cover, creases put there, perhaps, by the many years he’d spent riding the Scarpen Quarter looking for any trace of his beloved Lyneth. Worse still, a later apoplexy had left him with a sagging lip and a dribble, a left hand that had trouble grasping things, and a dragging left leg.
