The Last Stormlord

by Glenda Larke

  He felt as if he had spent years looking only at shadows and reflections, and now he had stepped into the sunlight. Life is out here, he thought. Not down there in the cavern. Life outside might be ready to claw and rip at him, to tear through to his heart yet again—but at least it was real. He took a deep breath and smiled.

  At last he turned his back and looked south, in the direction of Scarcleft and the sea, both too far distant to see. Even in that direction, the Scarpen was not flat. Nor was it a plain strewn with pebbles and crazed with washes, like the Gibber. There were gullies and fissures and hillocks. The soil was a different colour. Not purplish and shiny with mica, but sometimes yellowish, sometimes brown. The plants were different, too, not cautious miserable things that crept along the ground, reluctant to reach for the sun, but small bushes and the occasional tree reaching upwards on a crippled trunk, spreading arthritic limbs and gnarled fingers to the wind, from which it gathered life-giving moisture. He stood under the meagre shade of one and marvelled. A tree that was not a bab palm or a fruit tree. Growing out in the open, not in a grove or a pot in someone’s yard, not jealously guarded and lovingly tended to yield its fruit and its wood, or its nuts and its bark.

  His gaze scoured the flatter land in front of the hill and lit on a squat tower crouching like an obese toad on the landscape: a maintenance shaft, signalling the presence of the tunnel burrowing beneath the land to escape the sun. One book had described the structures built over the shafts as brick chimneys. He had asked one of his teachers what those two words meant, and as a result, he now knew what he was seeing. Thoughtfully, he retraced his footprints back to the cavern.

  The next afternoon he left the waterhall again, this time with water skins, a battered palmubra, a blanket and a knife stuffed into a pack, all from the storeroom.

  He picked his way down the hill once more and set off to take a closer look at the first of the maintenance shafts. It was further away than he thought, and the sun set long before he reached it. At dusk, he ate some of the food he had brought and then wrapped himself in his blanket against the gathering cold. In the early part of the night he slept without stirring, but as the desert lost its heat, he awoke shivering and spent the rest of the night huddled into a ball, dozing fitfully. He had forgotten how the desert chill could creep into your bones in the time just before the dawn.

  At first light he set off again.

  The maintenance shaft rose up out of the ground to twice his height, built to discourage the entry of desert creatures or wind-blown sand. It was bulbous at the base, narrowing as it rose, just like a bab palm. He marvelled at its construction, the neat pattern of clay blocks—no, bricks, harder than the sun-dried daub they used in Wash Drybone Settle. The top of the shaft was covered by a wooden lid. Footholds to suit a man had been excavated into the brickwork so that it was possible to climb to the top. When he did so, though, the result was disappointing. He could slide the wooden cover open, but underneath was a locked grating, the iron lock covered by a seal. There was no way in without breaking it open, and he had no means to do so.

  He climbed down and sat in the shade cast by the structure, waiting for the midday sun to illuminate the interior.

  When the shade shrank to nothing, he climbed up to peer inside again. Lit by sunlight, the tunnel running below the shaft was much larger than he expected, large enough for a man to walk upright. A narrow brick walkway along one side ensured there was no need to wade in the water that ran sluggishly down the middle. A ladder led down the inside of the shaft, to provide access to anyone who could open the grating.

  Shale took it all in, then replaced the wooden lid once more and returned to the mother cistern. Each step back was a step away from freedom, but he took it nonetheless.

  I must have patience, he thought. The time will come, and I will be ready for it.

  If I stay, he thought, it will be because I want to, not because someone bars the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Scarpen Quarter

  Breccia City

  Level 2 and Level 3

  Ethelva came out of Granthon’s study carrying a tray. The food in the dishes was hardly touched and she stopped a moment to regard it with the eloquent arch of an eyebrow. From his seat at the dining table, Nealrith saw the look and pursed his lips.

  “Still not eating?”

  “Barely nibbling. Nealrith, he can’t go on like this.”

  Senya, on the other side of the table, next to Laisa, looked up from her food. “Is Grandpa dying?” she asked.

  “He is certainly not well,” Ethelva replied. She put the tray down and slipped into her own seat at the table.

  “I suppose we should be grateful he still lives,” Laisa said. “When we returned from the Gibber, I thought he was about to take his last breath any moment—yet here he still hangs on, making clouds, shifting storms. One has to admire his stubborn tenacity.”

  Ethelva murmured, her voice full of pain, “He’s not eating enough to restore the energy he expends.”

  “If he takes too much, he vomits,” Nealrith said.

  Senya pulled a face. “Oh, horrid,” she said. She dabbed at her lips with her napkin.

  Laisa washed her fingers in the lemon water of the finger bowl. “Senya is right, Nealrith. This is not a subject for the dinner table.”

  Nealrith’s face tightened, but he did not comment. Instead he said, “A finger bowl is a waste of water, Laisa. Please instruct the servants not to put them on the table.” He turned back to his mother and added, “Father told me today that he has decided to reduce still further the supply of water to the Gibber and the White Quarter.”

  Laisa gave a sigh of satisfaction. “That decision was long overdue. He has been wasting his energies on them far too long.”

  Ethelva dropped the bread she had been about to eat. “Watergiver have mercy,” she murmured. “That decision will have cost him more than any of you can possibly understand.” She glanced at the closed study door, as if she wanted to go back to him, but Nealrith placed his hand over hers.

  “No, Mother. You, too, need to eat.”

  She took a deep breath and turned back to him. “All right, all right. And Nealrith, there is something else—”

  “Yes?”

  “You aren’t going to like it.”

  “There can’t be anything much worse than the thought of ’Basters and Gibbermen dying of thirst.”

  “That’s not going to happen overnight,” Laisa said carelessly. “Many will have enough water in their cisterns for a year or so. They will just have to stop irrigating the groves. What is it you want to tell us, Ethelva?”

  “Granthon has decided to draw up the succession declaration this week. He has asked Mikael to prepare it.”

  Nealrith stared at her in silence for a long time. Even Senya was stilled. When he finally spoke, his tone was flat. “And it is not me.”

  “No.”

  “What?” Laisa looked shocked, then furious. “Why, how dare he—”

  “It is his privilege,” Nealrith said tightly. “But the Council of Rainlords can overturn his decision after his death if they wish. Who is named?”

  “Taquar.”

  Nealrith paled. “Taquar? No, Father wouldn’t do that. Not Taquar!”

  “Oh, goody,” Senya said, oblivious to her father’s shock. “If Taquar’s going to be the next ruler of the Quartern, maybe you will let me marry him!”

  At first Nealrith didn’t take in her words. He was still staring at his mother. “He wouldn’t do that, surely. Taquar? The man is despicable! He has the morals of a waterhall rat. He runs Scarcleft like it was one of the punishment quarries. Did you know he has introduced enforced abortion? And I heard he is nailing people—alive—on the city gates for water theft! And dumping Watergiver knows how many others out in the desert to die. By all that’s holy, Father would give the Quartern to such a monster?”

  “He’s not a monster!” Senya said hotly. “Those are just stories to scare
people into conserving water.”

  Laisa’s eyebrows shot up and she turned her head to stare at her daughter.

  Ethelva, as pale as her son, sat unmoving. “He does think harsh policies are the only ones that will work in the times to come, Nealrith. Since you all returned from the Gibber without a potential stormlord, we will return to a Time of Random Rain once your father has passed away. He does not think you could, um, cope with the kind of decisions that would have to be made.”

  “See, Taquar’s not a monster!” Senya cried, heedless of Laisa’s frown. “He’s only doing what has to be done.”

  “Like enforced abortion?” Nealrith stood up abruptly and strode off, but in the doorway he turned once more to look at the three women at the table. “Senya,” he said, and his voice was so suffused with pain and anger it was unrecognisable, “you will never marry Taquar while I am alive. Never.” He turned and left the room, his back rigid with fury.

  Ethelva looked down at her plate, grieving.

  “It’s not fair!” Senya wailed. “I’m never going to be allowed to marry anyone! There are no rainlords of my age.”

  “On the contrary,” Ethelva said, “I’ve heard there are several among the water sensitives your parents found in the Gibber.”

  “Gibbermen? You would have me marry a Gibberman? They are dirty! They never bathe! Besides, that lot of water sensitives are only children.”

  “And you are not?” Laisa asked. “The eldest of those lads is but two years younger than you. Anyway, you have just turned twelve and you’re far too young to think of marriage. If you think I would support this absurd desire to marry Highlord Taquar, you are quite mistaken. He is your father’s age, older in fact, and thoroughly unscrupulous. The only thing that could possibly be said in his favour is that he does not run after silly little girls. So I am quite sure this foolishness never came from him.”

  Senya glared, then threw her napkin on the floor and ran from the room. Laisa calmly selected a piece of the pede steak from the chafing dish, dipped it into the sweet pickle sauce and ate it.

  Across the table, Ethelva glanced at her in distaste. “Is that all you can say? Nealrith needs you now,” she said. “This will have shattered him.”

  “Nealrith brought this on himself by his foolishness. He is weak. We all know that. I do not approve of what Granthon wants to do, of course, but I appreciate why he has deemed it necessary.” She wiped her fingers on her napkin. “I would suggest, though, that you try to dissuade him from doing it, Mother Ethelva. For the moment Granthon dies and Taquar rules the Quartern, the present highlord of Breccia is a dead man.”

  Ethelva started in shock. “Wha—what do you mean?”

  “Watergiver save me from you all. You are worms burying yourselves in the sand thinking you’ll be safe! People won’t be happy with Taquar’s rule once we run short of water, and the discontented will look to Nealrith for leadership. Taquar will not tolerate such a rival. You don’t play with a man like him, unless you are prepared to face the consequences. If you want your precious son to live, and for all of us to be safe, you had better persuade Granthon to rethink his plan. In the meantime, I trust he does not intend to make this succession document public.” She rose, shaking out the wide sleeves of her dress and smoothing down the skirt. “Permit me to take my leave. I have an appointment with my dressmaker for the final fitting of the dress I am wearing to Kaneth and Ryka’s wedding tomorrow.”

  With regal composure, she went out, leaving Ethelva alone with her knowledge that Granthon had indeed every intention of making the succession issue public.

  Feeling bereft, she said to herself, “Oh, merciful Sunlord, where did we go wrong?”

  This, Ryka thought, is going to be the most ridiculous ceremony there ever was. Neither of us wants to wed, and yet we are having the largest wedding since… I guess since Nealrith and Laisa married.

  She looked at herself in the polished mirror stone with mixed feelings and wondered who had decreed that wedding dresses had to sweep the floor. No one ever wore such a silly garment at any other time. She preferred leggings and tunic. Lowleveller women wore tunics and short breeches to save on material and make work easier; uplevellers wore skirts to mid-calf. Yet every woman wanted to wear a dust-gathering heavy curtain around her legs when she married. She’d heard it said that a woman down on Level Forty made a living renting out the only wedding dress on the whole level.

  Sandblast, but it was heavy and confining. And the wrong colour for her, too. Wedding yellow made her look sallow, as if she’d just had a good dose of desert fly fever. Turning to look at her profile, she snorted. She didn’t belong in this elaborately woven garment or the silly frothy veil; she looked like someone pretending to be something they were not, and failing miserably. Her legs were her most attractive asset—long and perfectly proportioned, with a hint of muscular strength—and they were hidden. Her only other physical asset was her luxuriant light brown hair streaked gloriously blonde, and Beryll had just covered that with the veil. But not her face. No, her face had to be exposed to the critical crowd: long nose, nondescript eyes that had to squint to see better, too prominent a jawbone, an atrocious number of freckles even though she was careful to always wear a palmubra.

  “You look lovely,” Beryll said cheerfully at her side, as she contemplated the mirror image.

  “Liar.”

  “All right, not lovely. Wrong word. But… interesting. Intriguing.”

  “Stop trying so hard, Beryll. You are making me sound like an unusual rock formation. I’m not pretty or even attractive, and right now I look horrible. A bit like a rockslide, come to think of it.”

  Beryll screwed up her face at her sister. “You are so hard to compliment sometimes, Ry. I thought you would be happy today, marrying the man you love, but you look as if you are going to his funeral. Or your own.”

  Ryka’s expression tightened to match the lump in her throat. “He’s only marrying me because he has to,” she pointed out. “Think about that sometime, Beryll. Think about how that makes me feel.”

  “He’ll come to love you,” Beryll replied with her usual youthful optimism. “After all, I do, and I can’t think of many reasons why I should, because there’s nothing you and I seem to agree about. Except maybe that Kaneth is gorgeous, at least to look at.” She tapped her buttocks with both hands meaningfully. “Stand him up on a pede with the reins in his hands and I just melt. He’s not only the best pedeman in the whole Quartern, but he’s the most delicious to look at, too.”

  Ryka blushed, which was odd. She had not thought she was the blushing sort.

  “I wish you were happier about this, Kaneth,” Nealrith told him as they waited in the temple for the waterpriests and the bride to arrive.

  “So do I,” Kaneth agreed morosely. “I’ve always liked Ry, you know that. And she was the one who changed, not me. In fact, I suppose in the back of my head I always had the thought that if I was going to marry anyone, it would be her. I always wanted a—a sensible woman to raise any offspring of mine. It’s one thing to have a pretty, empty-headed doxy in your bed, but you want quite another person to raise your sons and daughters. If there are any.”

  “Do you have reason to doubt your fertility? Is that why it took my father’s intervention to bring you to your wedding?”

  “No. That was just—I don’t know, laziness, I guess. A disinclination to spoil my fun. I’m not a particularly good man, Rith, for all that you stubbornly believe otherwise. Perhaps Ryka has the right of it when she calls me immature. But unlike Taquar, I took care not to burden any woman with a child I wasn’t prepared to be a father to. Ironic, isn’t it? He’s tried so hard and it’s got him nowhere. The Sunlord has a sense of humour, after all.” He turned to look at the archway through which the waterpriests and Ryka would enter the courtyard. “Are brides ever on time?”

  “Not that I know of. Laisa kept me waiting so long I thought she’d changed her mind and run off with Taquar. Kaneth, may I ask,
you aren’t thinking of circumventing my father’s orders are you, by not consummating the marriage?”

  “Neither of us are that sandcrazy. We both know this has got to be real. He’s placed someone in my household, hasn’t he? Two of my servants resigned last week for no reason I could discern. Finally got them to admit they’d been offered a job at Breccia Hall, and hardly had they vanished than two more were knocking at the door with just the right qualifications.”

  “Water sensitives. Not my doing, I assure you. They’ll be hanging outside your bedroom door until you two convince them your marriage is real.”

  Kaneth grimaced. “I thought as much. I don’t suppose it will do much good to protest the distasteful intrusion into our privacy?”

  “I’d take your word, you know that. But Father won’t.”

  “I feel as I did when we were at the academy and on probation after some prank or other.”

  “You deserve it. I heard you were at the Level Three snuggery last night.” Nealrith shook his head in a troubled way. “For someone who purports to know women, you can be exceptionally silly sometimes.”

  “I was just settling up my tab there and saying goodbye to the girls,” he protested. “That was all.”

  Nealrith rolled his eyes in disbelief. “If you are wise, you will devote some time to convincing Ryka that you didn’t just marry her to save your water and your wealth. And you’ll stay away from snuggeries and that pretty hussy on the sixteenth that you’ve been sharing with those rich gem merchants from the fourth.”