The Last Stormlord

by Glenda Larke

  “We would have his sister as well, if you hadn’t been so damned set on teaching him a lesson. She shared his blood and might even have been a stormlord. You jeopardised everything I’ve been working towards.”

  “She was too young to be bothered with, and he needed to know my nature in case we ever need to threaten him. You are the one who jeopardised our agreement. You were to supply me with water until such time as all the tribes were behind me. Instead of their willing cooperation, I have had to fight some of them because I had nothing to offer them!”

  Taquar’s eyes gleamed at the opportunity to ridicule the sandmaster. “I’ve heard rumours there’s active rebellion against your leadership. I hear Makdim’s wife leads it from one of the northern dunes. An old woman!”

  “Vara Redmane is a shrivelled bag of bones, no more danger than a sand-leech,” he snapped. “Do you think we drovers fear a wrinkled old hag with no more children in her womb?”

  “If she’s so harmless, why haven’t you killed her and her followers?”

  “That is dune business, none of yours!”

  Taquar did not bother to hide his smile.

  “The lad. Tell me about the lad! When does he begin to cloudshift?”

  “Shortly. He must be eighteen soon, and that’s when most stormlords begin to shift.” He forbore to say that previous stormlords had always been able to extract vapour from salted water at a much younger age.

  “If I don’t see evidence of it within another year, then I will use other methods to bring water to the dunes. We don’t get enough random rain yet because Granthon is still stealing many of the natural-born clouds. I must placate those tribes who resist my rule, and I will do it one way or another. I do not carry all my wealth on the back of one pede, my friend. Remember that, if you choose to betray our agreement.”

  “You threaten me? I could take your water right now and leave you a dry husk on the floor.”

  “You’d never get out of here alive. Even you can’t kill all the ziggers out there in the hands of my men.” He smiled pleasantly. “Now show me what the lad can do.”

  Shale stood, dragging air into his chest, staring at the carvings on the segment plates of the servant’s myriapede. Memory renewed, raw and anguished: a bag roughly pulled over his head, the pain of the ride, the searing agony of Citrine’s death, despair at being parted from Mica.

  The Reduner servant did not notice his abstraction. The man was still working on his sandmaster’s pede, sharpening the roughened points at the end of the feet with a file.

  Shale inhaled once more, forced himself to think. Forced his thudding heart to slow. With awful clarity, he knew exactly how much depended on the rest of this day. If he made one wrong move, he risked his chance of freedom, perhaps even his life.

  He cleared his mind of emotion and thought back. Was this man, supposedly a servant, one of those who had initially carried him away from Wash Drybone Settle? He could not be sure, even though he was sure about the pede. He’d been too drugged, too sick, and during the day both men had kept their faces covered. Certainly the man Taquar was now talking to had not been either of them—but he could have been the leader who’d suggested a game of chala.

  Davim. Dressed in red, all but his eyes obscured by the red cloth he wrapped around his head, mount rearing up… a reddish pede. A sandmaster. Catching Citrine—thrown to him as if she was a ball in a game—on his chala spear and laughing as the blade pierced her dress but not her body… not then. They kept her alive as long as they could, those chala players.

  Shale cleared his throat and risked everything. He had to know. Quietly, and hoping the man understood, he asked in the language of the Quartern, “That’s a magnificent pede you’re working on. Does it have a name? Do Reduners name their pedes?”

  “Has, yes,” came the answer, thickly accented, but understandable. “Burnish.”

  Davim. The man in the inner room, it was him. The man who had killed Citrine… sitting there in the other room talking to Taquar, like an old friend.

  Davim and Taquar. Together. Planned all this.

  Davim uniting the Reduner tribes, raiding the Gibber. Slaughtering Citrine. Enslaving Mica.

  Taquar the betrayer, who had killed Citrine as surely as if he had been the one who had held the chala spear. Who had tricked Shale into gratitude by “rescuing” him from his captors. No wonder something about the rescue had bothered Shale: Taquar had not killed the two kidnappers. He could have done so easily. Should have done so, to ensure they weren’t followed. It was hardly the kind of thing that would have bothered his conscience.

  Automatically, Shale’s shaking hands went on polishing the plates of the pede. He didn’t notice that he was working on the same spot, over and over. His mind darted after facts, skimming all that had been said and not said. And in between it all, he heard Citrine’s last scream of terror.

  Power. All for power. Split the Quartern. A man who couldn’t be stormlord, but who wanted the power of the Scarpen ruler.

  Pede piss, but you are a fool, Shale. All Taquar ever wanted was the skills he thinks you have. He wants a stormlord. A man could do anything if he owned the only stormlord in the Quartern.

  The thought choked him, lumped somewhere in the throat. The teaching, the patience, even the small kindnesses—all a sham. And he, Shale, had tried to please him. He, Shale, had ached to be liked, ached to see respect in Taquar’s eyes. To make the rainlord proud of the lad he had rescued. Rescued!

  His stomach heaved, and he had to choke back the vomit. He grabbed up the file and began to work on the feet of the pede, savagely filing away the rough edges and sharpening the points. How could he have been so dumb? So credulous? Had he learned nothing from all that had happened at Wash Drybone Settle? Sun-fried, sandcrazy dryhead!

  He looked up briefly when Davim’s servant switched over to the near side of the pede, and was glad to note that the man kept his face averted.

  Making sure I don’t recognise him, Shale thought savagely. But I wouldn’t have. It’s been too long, and I was too crazed to think then anyway. He’s probably not a servant, of course. He’s a warrior. A chalaman.

  As he worked, his eyes lit on the zigger cage against the wall. Ziggers. If he could load a zigtube, one of Taquar’s, he could kill Davim and this man. But not Taquar. For that he’d need Davim’s zigger. Too difficult. Besides, Shale wasn’t wearing the correct perfume, so he could be the victim. No, he couldn’t use ziggers.

  But these men deserved death. Deserved it over and over again.

  Citrine, Mica, all of Wash Drybone Settle—either dead or enslaved.

  What kind of men are they?

  The pede stirred restlessly, unused to quite so much passion applied to its foot maintenance.

  The door of the inner room opened. “Shale, haven’t you finished out there yet?” Taquar called out to him.

  He straightened, laying down the file.

  Don’t let your thoughts show. “Coming, Highlord.” He washed his hands in the pede trough and went through into the other room.

  “Bring us some amber, there’s a good lad,” Taquar said. He and Davim were just about to seat themselves at the table. “And something to eat.”

  “Yes, Highlord.” He didn’t know how he could keep his voice calm, expressionless—and yet he could, and did. He walked into the storeroom, collected the amber and mugs, came back, poured the drinks. His hands shook slightly, but his nerves showed no more than that. This red man in his embroidered red tunic and breeches, his braided and beaded hair swinging around his face, had been the one who had played a deadly game with Citrine. Deliberately. To punish Shale for lying. To show him who had the power.

  For no good reason at all.

  As he handed the Reduner a food platter a little later, he deliberately looked him straight in the eye.

  Davim smiled. “What you name?” he asked, demonstrating a clumsy, heavily accented command of the Quartern tongue.

  As if you don’t know, you m
urderous bastard. “Shale Flint of Wash Drybone Settle.” His voice was steady enough—a little hoarse, perhaps, but that was all. The next words he addressed to the sandmaster were silent ones: Remember that name, Davim. It is the name of the man who will kill you.

  “How old?”

  He shrugged in reply. “Seventeen, eighteen perhaps. Thereabouts.”

  “Shale serve master good?”

  “I do not have a master,” he said quietly. “If you mean Highlord Taquar, he is my teacher.”

  Taquar gave the faintest of smiles and spoke in Reduner. Shale struggled to comprehend. “The boy is sharp, Sandmaster. I would not play mind games with him, if I were you.” He looked at Shale and switched to the Quartern tongue. “The Sandmaster would like a demonstration of your water-power. Bring some water in from the mother cistern.”

  Shale continued to put food on the table as he worked his water skills. He bundled up a ball the size of a man’s head, pulled it up out of the lake and brought it to hover low over Davim’s head. “What would you like me to do with it, my lord?”

  Taquar sent a questioning look to the Reduner.

  “Send it back,” the man snapped in Reduner. He must have known Shale could empty the water all over him any time he wanted. He stared hard at Shale as he spoke, and Shale was taken aback by the hatred he thought flashed there only to vanish a moment later under the fakery of a bland smile.

  “The lad is too clever,” Davim growled.

  “Shale has not had the best of experiences with Reduners, my friend,” Taquar said and switched languages once more. “Send the water back, Shale. And remember that not all men from the Red Quarter are coloured with the same dust. Please do not insult my guest by asking after those of your settle who were taken to the Red Quarter.”

  “No, my lord.” Shale removed the water and cut some bread. His fury swelled in his throat.

  Davim spoke again, and this time Taquar translated. “He asks if you can bring up a storm yet.”

  Scrupulously polite to cover his rage, Shale said, “I do not know, Sandmaster. I have never tried.”

  “I expect Shale to come into his full powers soon,” Taquar added.

  “And how much longer will Granthon last?” Davim asked.

  “It is nothing short of a miracle that he is still alive now.”

  They were speaking in Reduner once more, ignoring Shale. He strove to grasp the gist of the conversation while appearing oblivious.

  Davim sat back in the chair and regarded Shale through narrowed eyelids. “It will all depend then, won’t it, on which comes first? A stormshifter’s power or a stormlord’s death. We are prepared either way. We Reduners have no fear of a Time of Random Rain.”

  Shale did not understand all that speech, but he did hear the threat lurking behind every word.

  Taquar addressed him directly again. “That will be all, Shale. The grille is still open; why don’t you go for a walk outside? My friend here and I have much to speak about.” With that, he turned his attention to the food.

  Shale moved to obey. It was only when he was outside that he started to shake.

  Davim and his companion left about the run of a sandglass later.

  Taquar called Shale in to tell him that he too was leaving, going back to Scarcleft.

  “Who was that man?”

  “A sandmaster. He was concerned about the growing extremism among some of the Reduners, so I told him about you. He came for reassurance that there will indeed soon be another stormlord.” The untruth was easily said, without inflection.

  Shale stilled the tremor in his fingers. Blind rage turned his vision red, and he strove to subdue it. The salted bastard! Was there no end to his gall? The withering lies flowed from him like water from a calabash.

  Taquar had been allied with the Reduners of Dune Watergatherer all along. Not Nealrith or Kaneth or one of the other rainlords. Taquar, rogue rainlord, and the sandmaster who had burned Wash Drybone Settle.

  Part of Shale wanted to fall on the highlord and rend him to pieces with his bare hands. Rip his heart out and hold it in his hands. The image, detailed in his mind, shocked him, and the corrosiveness of the hate that had inspired it made him jerk back from the edge of the precipice that had opened up, black and forbidding, before him.

  I’m not like that. I will not be consumed by hate or revenge. And then the afterthought: Though one day I will have justice.

  Oblivious, Taquar said, “While I am away this time, I want you to concentrate on two exercises for me. The first is changing water to vapour. Remember what I have told you: the secret is to saturate the air with droplets within the cloud at a faster rate than water evaporates at the edge. The amount of droplets that the air will hold depends on temperature, so do not expect it to be constant.

  “The other exercise is, of course, simply to continue trying to extract fresh water from a salt solution. Next time I come, I will take you down to the sea to begin to practise on the real thing: clouds.”

  Absurdly, Shale’s heart surged. The sea. He couldn’t even imagine such a huge body of water.

  He quelled the longing he felt. He wasn’t going anywhere with the highlord, ever. Damn you, Taquar. You sent Davim and his men to get me, but my family was just an encumbrance. Blast you to a dry end and a waterless hell.

  He watched the rainlord leave.

  One day, Taquar, he promised, I will have justice for them.

  That night, alone again, Shale did not sleep.

  He lay awake shivering. Thinking. Trying to make sense of all that had happened. One thing he knew for certain: Davim was deceiving Taquar, and Taquar was too arrogant to see it. Shale was sure he had not mistaken the look in Davim’s eyes. He had seen it too often on his father’s face: a flash of loathing and contempt, warring with a murderous rage. Davim hated both him and Taquar.

  Worse, though, was the ache Taquar’s betrayal had left behind. The emptiness that swamped him as a result. He felt a sense of loss, but wasn’t sure what it was that made him grieve. He had never liked Taquar, yet he felt bereft. Perhaps that was what betrayal was: the creation of a hole inside the betrayed. The loss of part of oneself.

  You dryhead, he thought.

  He could have prevented the massacre of Wash Drybone had he not listened to Taquar in the first place. Why had he not gone to Highlord Nealrith and taken the sensitive’s test in front of all the rainlords? Citrine might still be alive and Mica safe if he had.

  His stupidity had killed or enslaved his whole settle.

  His fault. Because he had feared the wrong people and trusted where he should have feared. Never again, he thought. Never again.

  In the morning, he rose, tired and dulled, and prepared to leave the mother cistern.

  He packed a cloth bag with food and his best clothing, a bottle of lamp oil and a lamp, some candles, his flint and striker and tinderbox, a couple of empty water skins and—after a moment’s further thought—six books. He scoured the storeroom for anything of value he could convert to tokens, but the only thing he found was the gold bracelet with the carved name. He had forgotten all about it and now he packed it without a qualm, together with his piece of jasper. The last thing he added to his makeshift pack was a length of hempen twine.

  He raised the grille, closed it behind him and set off for the maintenance shaft. He walked quickly, scarcely aware of his surroundings, anger driving him forward.

  Once there, he climbed up to the top of the shaft and removed the wooden cover. He made no attempt to break the lock; instead, he emptied his belongings out of the cloth bag and threaded the twine through the shoulder strap. The other end of the twine he tied to the grating. Then he pushed the bag through the bars. He had chosen to bring only items that would fit through the grating and could therefore be reinserted into the bag now that it was on the inside of the inspection shaft. Once the bag was full again, he lowered it down and left it hanging there, within easy reach of someone walking along the tunnel below. He went to close the woode
n cover, but changed his mind. He left it half open to let in a shaft of light. Then he retraced his steps to the mother cistern.

  Perhaps the long walk helped calm him, for he managed to sleep a little that night. The next morning, carrying a lighted candle, a bucket of water and an old cloth, he walked to the overflow outlet. Designed to drain water into the tunnel if the lake ever rose too high, it was covered with a metal mesh filter, easily removed. He peered into the pipe, as he had done several times before on his previous explorations of the lake, but could see nothing. It disappeared into a darkness as deep as a starless patch of night sky.

  He set fire to the cloth and dropped it into the outlet. It slid down and dropped out of sight as he watched its progress. For a few moments longer he could see the glow of the flames somewhere below the end of the pipe. Then he poured the bucket of water into the pipe and followed the water with his senses. He had done that before, too, but he wanted to double-check exactly how long the pipe was, that it did not get any narrower, that the water gushed out of the other end without any impediment to its flow. He wanted to confirm that it then plunged only a body length before it hit ground again. His main worry was that his shoulders were nearly as broad as the pipe itself.

  He stripped off all his clothing, took a deep breath and entered the pipe feet first. The lower part of his body slipped in easily, but when he tried to wriggle in still further, his upper torso became wedged. He curled his shoulders inwards, crossing his arms in front.

  For one terrifying moment he was trapped, then he was plunging down, burning his bare skin against the sides of the pipe. He had a brief sensation of flying unimpeded through total darkness before his feet hit the brickwork at the base of the tunnel. He was free of the pipe, crouching in the blackness, his feet stinging from the impact. There was water underfoot because the inlet from the siphon was somewhere behind him.