The Last Stormlord

by Glenda Larke

“Dammit, you appear to know a heap about my personal affairs, Rith.”

  “This is my city. It’s my business to know what all the influential people are up to, and that includes both you and the gem merchants. Ah, hush up, here’s your bride.”

  Kaneth turned.

  Oh, blast, he thought and his stomach lurched oddly. She looked like a corpse all fancied up for the taking of her water at the funeral ceremony.

  The emotion he felt, taking him by surprise, was pity.

  “She’s ugly,” Senya said to her mother in a whisper heard by everyone within a radius of five or six paces.

  “Hush,” Laisa replied, pinching her daughter’s arm.

  As rainlords, they had front-row seats along the curving balcony. It overlooked the temple’s ceremonial court where weddings, funerals, prayers and services took place. Ethelva was seated next to Laisa, but Granthon had not come. Lesser dignitaries sat at the back and had poor views of what went on, in spite of the heavily raked seating. By contrast, Senya and her mother could see everything.

  They sat in the shadow of woven bab shades. Kaneth, Nealrith, Ryka and the waterpriests stood in the full sunlight on the bare beaten earth below, and were not permitted even to wear a hat. They had to be exposed to the full light of the Sunlord, of course. Senya did not envy them. It was hot and airless down there in the courtyard, and she’d heard that even the priests fainted sometimes.

  Recessed in the centre of the court, in the full sun, was a long, narrow tiled pool, now empty. Under the stern eye of the robed waterpriests, Kaneth, then Ryka, came forward and each poured half a dayjar into it at either end. The other half of the dayjars, Senya knew, would have been donated to the priesthood. Everyone knew that the priests took care of their own first, even though they all received a water allowance from the city.

  Covetous parasites, her mother called them.

  Deserving servants of the Quartern, spending hours praying in the sun for our wellbeing, was the way her father put it.

  Senya eyed the water from Kaneth and Ryka intermingling in the middle of the pool and dwelt on the symbolism with a prurient fascination that would have shocked her grandparents.

  Next came the ceremonial words that began with a long and tiresome speech from Lord Gold, the Quartern Sunpriest, on the sanctity of vows made before the Sunlord in his temple. Senya fidgeted. Finally, Ryka and Kaneth vowed, before the Sunlord above, to cherish one another. Lord Gold then linked them by wrapping a yellow cloth around their clasped hands as they stood on either side of the pool. Then he stepped away, joining a group of lesser waterpriests in the shade. Kaneth and Ryka remained where they were, hands joined over the water, not speaking. They had to stay like that until the water—their sacrifice to honour the Sunlord and invoke his blessing on their marriage—had evaporated from the pool. Only then would they truly be wed.

  Bored, Senya glanced around to where Highlord Taquar sat at the end of their row. Because of the way the balcony curved, she had a good view of the interesting planes of his face. He was perhaps darker than she liked, but that made him interesting, too. Forbidding. Mysterious. Dangerous. And so-ooo handsome.

  He looked her way, smiled and winked. Then he rose and threaded his way through the other guests to the exit. Her heart thumped faster. He had smiled at her.

  “Mother,” she whined, “do we have to wait until all that water’s gone?”

  “Sunlord be thanked that’s over,” Ryka said. “I swear, I thought that water would never dry up. My nose must be as red as a ripe bab fruit, being out in the sun for so long.”

  “I never understood why those in the ceremonial courtyard are not permitted palmubras,” Kaneth replied.

  “Me, neither. As though wearing a hat indicates impiety.”

  “And discomfort and worship must go hand in hand.”

  “Exactly.”

  They fell silent, until she looked around in desperation to find something to say. “You swear this is all new?” she asked with a wave at the room furnishings.

  They had compromised on where to live. Ryka had agreed to move into Carnelian House, as long as all the bedrooms were totally refurbished and rearranged. She would not, she had informed him, sleep where he had once bedded his succession of hussies. Rather to her surprise, he’d swallowed the humiliation of that with good grace, even though the new furniture had taken fifty days to be made and he’d been compelled to beg the Cloudmaster for an extension of the deadline for their marriage.

  “I swear,” he said. “In fact, this used to be my sitting room.”

  “And no hussies in the house in the future. You want to be unfaithful, you do it somewhere else. And now, let’s get this over and done with. I am going to need you to unlace this stupid dress for me, unless you’d prefer me to ring for a maid.”

  “Oh, I think I have plenty of experience in undressing women,” he said dryly, “as you so frequently remind me.” He hesitated, then continued, “Ryka, I don’t like this. It’s not something that should be got ‘over and done with’ like taking a dose of kalo oil for indigestion. I’ve never taken a woman against her will, and I sure as the sands are hot don’t want to start now. Especially not with you. I value your friendship too much, for a start, but even without that—” He shook his head unhappily. “It’s distasteful, and I object to the position you have been placed in.”

  “There’s someone waiting outside the door, isn’t there? Granthon’s man? A water sensitive waiting to see if we mingle our water today?”

  He nodded apologetically. “I’m sorry. Um, we could fake it.”

  He sounded doubtful, though, and she shook her head. Blighted eyes, the idea that he could die, thrown out into the desert, because of her foolish scruples gave her the shivers. “No,” she said, more forcefully than she intended. Modulating her tone, she added more quietly, “We are not going to take such stupid risks.”

  “You don’t deserve to have your first experience forced on you like this. We could probably fool the fellow—”

  She blinked at him in startled surprise. “You’re scoffing me!”

  He stared back. “We could try—”

  “Not that! No, I mean—you can’t possibly think this is my first experience, surely!”

  “Why, y—” He stopped and reddened in embarrassment as the silence lengthened; her eyebrows were raised so high they disappeared under her fringe. “Er—I guess not.”

  “I’ll be damned. You did. Kaneth, I’m twenty-nine years old!”

  He was silent.

  “You arrogant, condescending, ridiculous male! You can bed women from one end of the land to the other, but I am expected to forgo all such pleasures simply because I am a woman?”

  “Well, you made such a fuss about my pleasures—”

  “Not the fact that they occurred but that they were so promiscuous, so blatant and—and—so commercial!”

  “I grant you that no one can say you were blatant. I have no idea who you favoured. Can I ask why you didn’t marry him?”

  “Who?” she asked, puzzled, and then started to laugh when she realised what he was thinking, but there was a bitter edginess to her mirth. “You really are impossible! Whatever makes you think there could only ever have been one? You have insulted me in just about every possible way in the past few moments. Am I so unattractive that you can’t imagine anyone wanting to bed me? Should we wait until it’s dark, perhaps, so that you find all this more… palatable because you can’t see the body in your bed?”

  “Oh, shit!” He turned away from her, throwing his hands up in the air, then spun to face her again, anguished. “Blighted eyes, Ry, why is it I have a genius for spewing forth turds instead of sense when you are around? You are the last person I want to hurt and yet I have an aptitude for doing just that. Forgive me, please. What I said was thoughtless and insulting, you’re right. And I am a fool.”

  She took a deep breath, torn between loathing and loving him. “It’s just as well I have a sense of the ridiculous, isn’t it
?” she asked at last. “Or that water sensitive outside the door would be running back to the Cloudmaster with a tale to tell. Even now, he’s probably wondering just why we are standing on opposite sides of the room.”

  “We can rectify that,” he said diffidently and rounded the bed to stand in front of her. “I have a mind to rid you of that cumbersome garment, for a start. Ry, we may not be lovers, but I would very much like to bed a friend. To build something worth keeping, especially if we have children. I can’t think of anyone I would prefer to bear a child of mine than you, you know.”

  “I can live with that, I suppose.” The words were ungracious, sharpened by her need to have him look at her as a lover, not as a necessary wife or prospective mother. She tried to soften them with a smile, but it came a shade too late to be convincing.

  He held out a hand to her and struggled on. “I don’t really want to wait for dark,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to see your legs without the benefit of clothing. I don’t think there’s another woman in the Quartern who can match them.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Lord Kaneth, are you attempting to charm me?”

  “Er… yes. I guess I am. Trying to charm the breeches, um, the dress off you. Ry, I do think we can make this work, if we try.”

  She took his hand. “Especially as the alternative is a little grim, eh? All right, let’s give that spy outside the door something to think about.” And she lifted her face to receive his kiss, hoping he would not feel the wild beating of her unruly heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Red Quarter

  Dune Scarmaker

  Vara Redmane had been born on the dune called the Scarmaker and expected to die somewhere along its mighty length. She was sixty-four years old and the furthest she had ever been from the red sands of the dune was the edge of a nearby waterhole, to fill dayjars, as she was doing now. It was a task she and the other women performed every morning, in the cool of the long dune shadows, carting the dayjars in panniers on the back of two packpedes.

  It was Vara’s favourite job and collecting the water was a pleasant time between waking in her tent and facing the true work of the day. At the edge of the waterhole, where bab palms grew and flame creeper insinuated itself like a thread-snake among the rocks, she was at peace, in harmony with life and the water of life. Here she could, with trueness, offer up a prayer to the god of Dune Scarmaker; here she really did feel grateful for the gift of living water and life. And here, when she spilled the water in sacrifice to their dune god, she took pleasure in the idea that the precious drops would find their way back into the cool greenness of the pool where they belonged and not be sucked up into the greediness of the dry air.

  Vara was old enough to remember many different dune camps and waterholes. It didn’t seem so very long ago that this hole had been at the foot of the dune. Now the round trip and the filling of the jars took far too long. If it had been up to her, the camp would already have moved somewhere east or west along the length of the dune, after finding and digging out a new waterhole that the dune had recently left behind as it moved. All it took was a message to Breccia to tell the Cloudmaster where to send the next rains.

  As though she had read Vara’s thoughts, one of the other women grumbled, “Vara, when are you going to ask that husband of yours to move camp? I swear, the dune is moving away from us as we speak! The trip back is longer than the one out, and every day it’s longer than the day before.”

  “Fully the length of your big toe,” Vara agreed, seeping sarcasm. “If you lost weight, Irinat Redlander, the walk would be easier.”

  “And if you’d talk to Makdim, we’d have it easier still!” Irinat shot back.

  A new voice intervened. “Makdim is not going to take any notice of what Vara says.” Zuzan, of course, her voice carefully neutral, even as her words stung. She was an ancient, almost beyond making the trip for water, and known for her forthright opinions now that her great age had bestowed her with status. “He is a leader who does not consult his womenfolk.”

  “No? Maybe that’s because we’re asking the wrong one of his womenfolk. Maybe we should ask her,” Irinat said, her tone full of spite, as she nodded towards the girl who was filling her jars at a distance from the others. “Maybe he’ll take notice of the pretty little bauble Davim dropped in his lap.”

  Her head is filled with sand, Vara thought without rancour. She hasn’t the wits to see how Davim’s bribery attempts have angered Makdim.

  Sandmaster of the Scarmaker and the most senior of all the dune leaders, Makdim loathed the upstart sandmaster of the Watergatherer, but he was finding himself increasingly powerless to stop the excesses of the man. The gift of a girl that Davim had seized on one of his forays into the Gibber had not pleased Makdim; it had infuriated him. Scarmaker did not deal in slaves and had not done so since before the days of Stormlord Garouth. To present Makdim with the gift of a human being was an insult; worse still, Davim had known that. He argued that the anti-slave laws were a Scarpen innovation and should not be followed by the Red Quarter. And he had presented Makdim with a dilemma: if the Scarmaker sandmaster refused the gift, then Davim could say that Makdim was a lackey of the Cloudmaster and his laws, and that he, Davim, had been gravely insulted. He could even insist on a zigger duel to avenge his honour. On the other hand, if Makdim accepted the gift, then he was giving tacit agreement to Davim’s espousal of slavery and his slave raids.

  Vara had thought Makdim should refuse, but he hadn’t. He was an old man and he had long since lost a warrior’s ability to kill a zigger with a sweep of the sword. He was vulnerable. However, neither had he accepted the gift of a slave and thus lost his honour. Instead, he had welcomed the woman as a guest and taken her in. But the incident had diminished him. He ought to have confronted Davim; he hadn’t, thus he had lost face among the men of the Reduner tribes. The other women might not have realised that, but Vara did.

  She had married the youthful and headstrong Makdim when she was fourteen, and in the lifetime of years since then, she sometimes thought she had moved no further in her life than the dune had travelled on its slow journey across the plains. She had borne Makdim’s children, fetched his water, cooked his meals, embroidered his robes and hooked the lace for his mount’s trimmings. Under her supervision, his sons had grown up to be strong and noble warriors. They had learned the science of battle and the art of pede carving—but she might as well have been a grain of sand beneath his feet for all the public recognition he had given her. In fifty years of marriage he’d never offered her praise or thanks. And yet he loved her; she knew that. And she loved him, understood him. And now she grieved for him. For his loss of integrity.

  When Vara thought of the girl Davim had captured in the Gibber, it was with pity.

  “Speak of the spiny devil and his eye will find you,” Zuzan said suddenly. “He comes.”

  Vara looked up from her work. At first she thought it was their own menfolk back from the hunting trip that had sent them out over the plains the day before; then she saw what the old woman had already seen: the red banners carried by the first of the myriapede riders, the blood-red banners of the Watergatherer dune. Her heart pounded as she straightened from her task to take in the lines of myriapedes as they flowed down the dune in black rivulets, joining at the base behind the fluttering banners.

  Dune god save us, she thought. Makdim, you should be here now.

  “What shall we do?” Zuzan asked. Although she was older than Vara, she rightfully looked to Makdim’s wife for leadership.

  “Nothing,” Vara said calmly. “Fill your jars.” She topped up the last of her own jars and closed the pannier. Then she went to the head of the beast, gathering up the reins. Reduner women did not ride pedes, except sometimes as passengers behind their menfolk. When the women fetched water, they led the animals, as was proper.

  Patiently she waited for the others to finish their tasks, but the Watergatherer party was upon them before they were ready to move off.
Vara had hoped that Davim was not among them, but she soon recognised his mount, the formidable beast he called Burnish, reputedly the strongest and most intelligent of pedes ever born. And Davim himself, tall and straight and handsome—and arrogant.

  He urged his mount right up to hers, until he was just a body length away, facing her.

  “I have a gift for you, woman,” he said. His voice was without expression.

  “It is not meet that I should receive a gift from a man of another dune,” she said evenly. Her voice lied; it was her pounding heart that told the truth. She feared. She feared the flatness of his tone, the fanaticism of his eyes.

  “This one belongs to you,” he said. He signalled one of his men, who then opened a pannier on his mount and began to throw out the contents at the feet of Vara’s pede. At first, absurdly, she thought he was throwing down bunches of overripe bab fruit. They spattered onto the crust of sand, scattering tiny crowns of red drops where they fell. Drops of blood.

  Not fruit bunches. Heads.

  One rolled and came to rest against Vara’s toes. She stared, seeing and yet not comprehending. How could it be her son’s eyes looking up at her from the ground? How could it be? He had ridden out with his father and brothers and friends, a hunting trip. Just a hunting trip, after the desert elans, or tasty night-parrots. Her eyes went from head to head as they rolled—but her mind lagged behind, and her ears hardly heard the keening of the other women.

  “Your husband and his brother and your sons,” Davim said. “We left the others in the desert for the spindevil winds to cover.”

  Stricken, Vara began to shake. Makdim’s head had fallen face down, but his hat had come off and she knew that balding patch and the way his braided hair curled around his ears. And that over there was Bejanim. Gentle Bejanim, Makdim’s brother, who had travelled to the great Scarpen cities and returned with such tales of wonder. His head had landed on its neck, so that he appeared to be buried chin-deep in sand. Impossibly, he seemed at peace, sleeping. She dragged her gaze away, her attention snagged by the voice that was still speaking words to her, meaningless words concerning a world that no longer existed.