The Last Stormlord

by Glenda Larke

“Thirty-seven. That’s not so very old.”

  “Too old for you. Listen, Senya, if you go up on the roof you can watch the festivities from there. Ask the servants to rig up a piece of silk to keep off the sun.”

  Senya pulled a sour face. “It won’t be the same.”

  “No, it won’t. But it is all I can offer, and at least it is safe.”

  Senya gave a heavy sigh and left the room dragging her feet, a picture of weary gloom.

  “Giving you problems?”

  Ethelva turned in her chair and smiled as her husband entered. It was an effort not to show her concern at his weakness, not to jump up and offer him an arm as he made his way carefully across to his chair. “Yes, in a way. I have come to know her better, without her father or mother around.”

  Granthon did not sit as much as lower himself into the chair. “And you find that upsetting?”

  “I’m afraid I do. I had no idea she was so—so manipulative. Or so, petty with it.”

  He settled back into his seat. “She is beautiful. More so even than her mother. And like many beautiful people, she has been spoiled.”

  “I fear it is more than that.”

  He didn’t answer, waiting for her to explain, but she said, “I can’t explain it, Granthon, because I can’t put my finger on it. There is just something lacking in her. And it disturbs me greatly.”

  “She is a child yet. Younger perhaps than her years. Irresponsible. Sooner or later events will catch up with her and she will have to grow up. Then she will come into her own.”

  “I hope you are right. Waterless soul, I hope so. The child wants to marry Taquar! The man would eat her for breakfast and not even hiccup.”

  “I’m right. You’ll see. It is not Senya we should worry about. It is who is going to sit in my place when I am gone.”

  She stared at him, and her heart plunged. She knew him well enough to know she would not like whatever he was about to tell her.

  “I had another letter from Nealrith today. They still haven’t found a child who shows stormlord promise. There’s not going to be a stormlord ready to step into my shoes, Ethelva, even if we find a youngster who could become one with training. Someone has to rule this land in the interim.”

  “Granthon, we both know there won’t be a Quartern if there is no stormlord. How can any of us live if there is no water? And how can there be water if there is no stormlord to bring it? If you die, we all die.”

  “No. That’s an oversimplification.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “If there is no stormlord calling up storms and placing them exactly where they are needed, there will be rogue storms instead, dropping rain at random, the way it used to be. Without a stormlord, there will still be rain, sometimes, in some places, and rainlords can track it. Some people will survive.”

  “But not all,” she said flatly.

  “No. As far as I can discover from my reading, our population is about twenty times larger than it used to be in the Time of Random Rain.”

  “You’re telling me nineteen in every twenty will die?”

  He did not answer.

  “And what happens on the route to such a catastrophe? Can you imagine it, Granthon? People will not go willingly to their deaths. It will be hell, and it won’t be the gentle who survive.”

  He gave a grim smile. “Not a place I would want to live in.”

  She failed to appreciate the humour in his irony. “So—who?”

  “Nealrith is not up to it,” he said bluntly.

  She was silent.

  “I love our son; you know that. But I can’t blind myself to what will be. Nealrith is a good man, a gentle man. But the time after I have gone will not be a place for gentle men. Decisions will have to be made about the water we have in storage. About who will live and who will die. It will be the time for a hard man who has to make hard decisions. Nealrith… is not that man.”

  She felt the space inside her body contract, as if her own water was already disappearing. This is a mistake, she thought. Don’t make it, Granthon. Don’t destroy our son.

  “Taquar Sardonyx,” he said, answering her unspoken question.

  She shrivelled still further. “Nealrith doesn’t deserve that. You know they hate one another. Taquar lusted after Laisa, but Nealrith was the one who married her.” Her thoughts added an uncharitable: Because Laisa thought Nealrith, not Taquar, would be the heir to the Quartern.

  “I know.”

  “Have you mentioned this to Senya, by any chance?”

  “No, of course not. Why?”

  “She—she has her eye on that man.”

  “I would not wish Taquar on any woman, let alone a child.”

  “But you would wish him on the land?”

  “He’s the only person I can think of who could pull it through the turmoil to come. He has vision, Ethelva. And courage. He sees reality, not dreams. We need his pragmatism and the wisdom of his solutions.”

  “Have you told him?”

  “Not yet. But I have left documents in case I fade out before they all return from the Gibber.”

  She paled but continued the conversation doggedly. “As a matter of interest, what makes you think that once Taquar held administrative power he would ever relinquish it to a new stormlord?” Can’t you see what kind of man he is?

  “Perhaps he wouldn’t have to. He could continue to rule, and the stormlord—please Sunlord that we find one—could bring rain. Ethelva, I can’t ask Nealrith to take on a cloudmaster’s task. It would kill him. He hasn’t the… the cruelty for it.”

  Incredulous, she asked in dismay, “You’d put your land in the hands of a man you believe to be cruel?”

  His answer was barely above a whisper. “Yes. Taquar is not gratuitously cruel, you know; just sufficiently callous to enact the solutions needed for some to be saved.”

  Before she could answer, the Breccia Hall seneschal, Mikael, entered the room and cleared his throat. They turned to look at him, relieved at the interruption, knowing it had saved them from a bitter argument that might have scarred their affection for each other.

  “Your pardon, master,” he said, “but there is a delegation of Reduners at the gates. They have set up camp outside the walls and sent you this.” He held out a scroll cylinder.

  Ethelva and Granthon exchanged glances.

  “Doubtless it is just an update of the places in need of rain,” Ethelva said, not believing her own words.

  Granthon scanned it quickly and then started to translate it aloud for the benefit of Ethelva and the seneschal. “The representative of the Sandmaster of the Tribes of the Scarmaker bids the esteemed Cloudmaster of Quartern greetings and may his water be plentiful, with—”

  “Yes, yes,” Ethelva said. “Let’s dispense with the flowery bits.”

  “Then there’s nothing much else. He wants me to grace his encampment, being reluctant to cause me any discomposure by venturing to Breccia Hall, and so on, and so on.” He gave a cynical laugh. “They care little for my discomposure, of course; they just hate to enter anything with solid walls and a roof.”

  “Oh, my dear,” Ethelva said in concern, “for you to go all that way, when you have to sit through the religious ceremonies this evening—”

  “I am not decrepit yet,” he said mildly. He turned to Mikad. “Have a pede and driver made ready for me, with a chair saddle. I’ll take ten men from the guard. In the meantime, send water to the Reduner camp. One dayjar for each man and beast. Do that every day they are our guests.”

  The seneschal bowed and retreated.

  Ethelva looked at her husband in concern. “You didn’t even ask how many of them there were before ordering the water! Granthon, we cannot spare—”

  “Hush, Ethelva. Apart from our duty as hosts, we can ill afford to offend them now. I have been short-sending their storms for several years. They will have no reserves. All their waterholes will be operating at the bare minimum.”

  “Was that… wise?”

/>   “Wise?” He snorted. “Wise to cut the allotment of a volatile quadrant of nomads who live just to the north of us, all well armed with ziggers, scimitars and spears, warriors renowned for their ferocity, mounted on the best pedes in the Quartern?” Troubled, he ran a hand through his thinning hair. “So far they have enough, but the cuts will have worried them.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “It will be an awkward meeting at best. Fortunately for me it is the Scarmakers who have come and not that young hothead Davim from Dune Watergatherer. That lot would feed my eyeballs to their ziggers as an appetiser.” He levered himself to his feet.

  Ethelva rose immediately as well. “I wish one of the rainlords was available to accompany you.”

  He looked at her in affection. “I am hardly in danger from these men. And I am not defenceless, either. Not yet. I feel sure I can still take a man’s water.”

  “I’ll see that your clothes are laid out.” She walked out without waiting for him, knowing he would bless her for it. He hated her to see just how slow he was nowadays. How old.

  There was a strong smell in the nomad tent.

  It wasn’t that the Reduners never washed—they did in fact, often, because they liked to swim and had no qualms about doing so in the same waterhole that supplied their drinking water. The smell was exuded not by people but by the ziggers in their cages.

  Granthon had long since had them banned from Breccia City. If he’d had his way, they would have been banned throughout the Quartern, but the Reduners regarded them as part of their heritage and would never have countenanced limitations on what they called their ancestral right to own and travel with ziggers. They had a point. As a hunting people, they might have starved without the use of their traditional hunting weapon.

  Some cities of the Scarpen Quarter allowed ziggers to be carried for protection or used for hunting for sport, even though the number of citizens who died as a consequence of zigger accidents was, to Granthon, astonishingly high. They also fell into the hands of criminals from time to time, and then there would be a spate of robberies where victims were threatened or killed by zigger-carrying bandits.

  The smell of them in the tent was strong but not all that unpleasant, except that it reminded Granthon of his reluctance to impose his will on the Red Quarter.

  He avoided looking at the cages and glanced around the tent. The man who came forward to greet him he knew: Tribemaster Bejanim, who carried the title Drover Son with the honorific Kher, because he was responsible for Dune Scarmaker’s pedes. He was also the younger brother of the Scarmaker sandmaster and he spoke the language of the Quartern fluently. Granthon was pleased to see him and acknowledged his gesture of salutation before turning his attention to the rest of the tent. The usual mats and cushions: basic colour, red. Refreshments laid out. Four other tribemasters (he knew them all). At least they were still smiling. As he returned their greetings and spoke the usual Reduner set phrases of hospitality, he reflected that Nealrith wasn’t the only one who was too weak to rule the Quartern; he himself had displayed weakness and a deeply rooted disinclination to do anything that would result in confrontation. He should have banned ziggers from the Scarpen Quarter at the very least.

  With the formalities finally out of the way, including the ritual offering and acceptance of water, Granthon turned to the reason that the Reduners had crossed the Warthago Range and the Sweepings to come to Breccia. “Well, Kher Bejanim, old friend,” he said, “what is it that causes you to honour my city with your presence?” He stirred uneasily. His joints did not take kindly to sitting cross-legged on a carpet. I’m too old for this, he thought.

  “Not a happy ride, m’lord. Our waterholes are little more than mud wallows. My brother, the Sandmaster, wishes to remind you of the ancient handclasp between the people of the Red Quarter and the stormlords of the Quartern. He says to inform you that the tribes of the Red Quarter have kept their clasp tight.”

  “Indeed they have. They are an honourable people.” A lie, that. The Reduners were renowned more for their breaking of promises than for the honouring of them. However, Granthon was well aware of the terms of this particular agreement—the scribes of Breccia Hall had written it down even if the Reduners had not—and it was true that the Red Quarter had followed most of its clauses. They’d promised not to raid the other quarters as they had done with terrifying ruthlessness for generations. They’d acknowledged the cloudmaster as the head of all the Quartern with certain rights to taxes and privileges. In return, they’d received regular rain at places specified by the Reduners themselves.

  Granthon added smoothly, “We, too, have followed the agreement.”

  Kher Bejanim’s red face flushed still deeper in colour. “Not so. Our water is too little.”

  “We promised regular rain in sufficient quantities. We have done that. You do not thirst.”

  “No, not yet,” Bejanim admitted. “But if the next storm around my dune’s main waterhole was but a week or two late, the result would be unthinkable.”

  “Kher Bejanim, I’ll not lie to you. I cannot maintain previous levels of rainfall, not when I have to do it alone. The reduced levels will continue until such time as another stormlord is found. This is not negotiable. I do not have the strength for it to be any other way. My reduced storms are still more dependable than rain based on the vagaries of nature. Believe me, you do not want a return of the Time of Random Rain.”

  The four men were silent and motionless.

  “This is not good news,” Bejanim said finally. “It grieves us.”

  Granthon found he had to suppress an involuntary shudder at the flint he heard in Bejanim’s tone. He said quickly, “Even as we speak, our rainlords scour the Gibber for new blood to restore our ranks. We have every confidence of success.”

  “Cloudmaster, I hope you’re right.” More levels of meaning there, stacked one on the next. Bejanim gave a fleeting glance at the man next to him before continuing. “You’ve been honest with us; I’ll be honest with you. We older tribesmen, those of us from dunes that follow the traditions closely, are losing control of some of the younger pede hunters and drovers on other dunes. They are angered by the diminishing rain. They blame you city dwellers. They speak of returning to the old ways.”

  “Old ways?”

  “ ‘Free of the Scarpen harness’ are the words they use. Free to raid and plunder when they feel like it.”

  “Free to steal water.”

  “Yes.”

  “They would be worse off.”

  “I believe you. But the young, as ever, prefer action to waiting. I am not sure how long the wisdom of older heads will prevail. Take this as a warning, Cloudmaster, meant in friendship, not as a threat uttered by an enemy. Do not cut our water any further. Ever.”

  Granthon’s heart sank as he bowed his head in acknowledgement. He knew the links between the dunes were even looser than those between Scarpen cities. There was an overall leader—traditionally the sandmaster of Dune Scarmaker—but he had little way of enforcing his rule unless there was consensus to begin with. “I will take an oath,” he said carefully, “that I will never cut the Reduners’ water one drop more than I cut that of Scarpermen. We will live or die together, Kher.”

  Once again there was a long silence. Then one of the older tribesmen spoke, a shrivelled ancient called Firman, if Granthon remembered correctly. “There be old story among drovers,” he said, his desert accent thick, his words clipped short, “telling of nomad, name Ash Gridelin. Learned water-powers from Watergivers, became first stormlord.”

  “We have the same story,” Granthon said, “although we believe there was but one Watergiver, Ash Gridelin himself, who now sits at the right hand of the Sunlord. Our waterpriests pray—”

  “Pah!” Firman said dismissively. “What they know, men living inside dried mud, never feeling sand beneath feet? Watergivers not gods.”

  Granthon gave Bejanim a questioning look.

  Bejanim looked embarrassed. “It’s a leg
end of our people. In it, the Watergivers are many, not just a single god. It says they live in a place where there’s all the water you could ever want—”

  “I understand there are many such places,” Granthon said, “across the Giving Sea. Unfortunately for us, people live there already.”

  Bejanim ignored the interruption. “The story says that the Watergivers have power over water, but that they hide their land from the greed of the thirsty. That there are guardians who prevent us from ever finding them or their land. Some think the shimmering sand-dancers of the plains are in fact the guardians, dancing to lead a man away when he strays too close to the paths that lead to the Watergivers’ land. The tale says that the Watergivers took pity on Gridelin when he was lost and admired his courage so they gave him the power to be a stormbringer and cloudbreaker. They sent him on his way and hid their land again. Legend has it that someone will find the Watergivers once more, when the need is at its greatest. In the past, some of our young hotheads have searched. None ever returned. It’s said that one must find the key to the guardians first.”

  Granthon hid his irritation. “The story might be of more value if it told us where to look.”

  “Be wisdom to listen old stories,” Firman said. The words were bland, but the tone was layered with contempt.

  “I do,” Granthon replied. “But I can’t see how this one helps us.”

  Firman grunted, barely concealing his disdain for the Cloudmaster.

  “More water?” Bejanim asked, proffering the jug.

  When he emerged from the tent some time later and straightened his tired body in the full heat of the afternoon sun, Granthon felt the grip of panic around his heart. How long could he hold on? He could feel power slipping away from him like water disappearing into desert sand.

  Sunlord, he thought, is that how you will end our era, having us slain by ziggers wielded by renegade nomads? The thought was more a prayer for mercy than an accusation.

  Oh, Ethelva, I have loved you so. And now I cannot even protect you from what is to come.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN