The Last Stormlord

by Glenda Larke

  “Are there Reduners out there?” Laisa asked, addressing her question to Ryka.

  Ryka looked up wearily. “Not now. At least not within range of my powers. Their damn ziggers killed three of my men, though.” She indicated the floor, and Jasper saw that the flagstones were littered with dried-up zigger bodies.

  “Where’s your father?” Laisa asked.

  “Up on the North Wall. Trying to kill ziggers before they cross the wall into the city.” She shrugged. “Not easy in the dark.” She glanced at a wall niche where sand sifted through a sandglass. “Another two runs till dawn. I don’t know that he’ll make it. He’s not alone, but there are only four of them up there.” She meant four rainlords. “Four for the whole of the Level One wall, plus the Level Two escarpment wall.” She smiled wanly. “I don’t think they are going to make all that much difference, do you?”

  Jasper licked dry lips.

  Laisa didn’t comment. She was already turning to the nearest of the guards, asking him to open the trapdoor in the floor close to where the man stood. “Disguise the entrance after us,” she added to one of the reeves as the guard pulled up the cover. He nodded, as if he had been briefed on that already.

  Nealrith planned for all this, Jasper thought. The wall across the tunnel, our escape routes, every rainlord knowing where to go and what to do. Even the pack I carry was prepared for me beforehand. And yet they scorn Rith as a weak ruler.

  Ryka asked Jasper, “Kaneth? Did you see Kaneth?”

  He nodded. “He went to the walls. I don’t know which part.”

  She nodded, as if that was what she had expected to hear. Jasper turned away, unable to face the panicked expression in her eyes. She really cares for him, he thought in surprise. She’s sick with worry, but it’s for him, not herself.

  With the lantern in her hand, Laisa climbed into the hole and Senya followed, fussing about her skirts. Jasper climbed down after her and found himself in a dry brick tunnel. The reeve shut the trapdoor after him.

  “It leads to the groves with one exit between,” Laisa told him, “on the thirtieth level. We aren’t going to bump into anyone coming up the other way. At least I hope not, because that would mean that the Reduners have found the outside entrance in the groves.”

  “They won’t, will they?” Senya asked. Any semblance of scornful superiority had vanished. The sight of the dead ziggers had shaken her.

  “Unlikely,” her mother said. “The entrance is under the water in one of the grove cisterns.”

  “I don’t like this,” Jasper said. “We shouldn’t be running away. If the Reduners are using ziggers, only rainlords—you and Senya included—can stop them.”

  Laisa turned on him in a fury. “Do you think I want to run? If we don’t win tonight, I lose everything I’ve ever worked to have. I’d rather be up there killing ziggers than down here hiding. But you and Senya are the future, the only future we have. And I’ve been elected the one to secure that future. If Breccia City loses the battle tonight—tomorrow—I’m the one who has to escort you to safety. Now get going.”

  He paused, torn. She walked away down the tunnel, taking the lantern with her. Senya trailed behind, white-faced.

  Jasper thought, Laisa believes we will lose. Sighing, he followed.

  It was a long and silent trek, often steeply downhill, sometimes stepped. Jasper pondered his options as he went. He could not spend too long hiding underground. He was the only stormlord the Quartern had now. He didn’t think he could make clouds at all without Granthon, but he had to try. Perhaps, in Portennabar, close to the sea… If he could see the water, reach out to it.

  Deep inside, he knew it was unlikely.

  At last they came to a manhole lid in the bricked floor of the passage that had the figure 30 painted on it.

  “This is it,” Laisa said. “Open it up, Jasper.”

  He did as she asked, and she knelt to lower the lantern inside. He peered in. A ladder went down a cistern wall into water deep enough to be over his head.

  “I don’t want to go in there,” Senya protested. “I’ll get wet.”

  “You’re a rainlord, you fool girl,” her mother said, her contempt scathing. “Who ever heard of a rainlord getting wet if they didn’t want to? Jasper, you go first. Here, take the lantern. We’ll follow. Go down to the bottom and walk to your right along the cistern wall. There is a watertight metal door at the end. That leads into our hiding place.”

  Senya continued to protest, but Jasper didn’t wait to hear. He climbed down, pushing the water gently away from his body to form an encircling bubble of air. He arrived still dry at the bottom. He followed Laisa’s directions, creating his own tunnel of air as he went. When he reached the entrance she had mentioned, he cleared it of water and studied the configuration of the water lock of the heavy metal door. It was a simpler version of the Scarcleft mother cistern grille, easy enough to manipulate. He soon had it open, only to find another door, unlocked, immediately behind it. Just in case the first leaked, he guessed. He opened it and stepped through, careful to hold back the water behind him.

  It was a large room, much larger than he had anticipated. There were no windows and no other doors. Fresh air entered through several ventilation shafts set high in the walls. Pallets were piled in one corner; chairs and table sat in the centre; a fireplace—with kettle and pots on the hob—had been built into one wall, under a hooded chimney. The other walls were lined with cupboards and shelves and dayjars. He entered, still maintaining the wall of water so that it didn’t spill into the room. He put his pack and the lantern on the table and opened one of the cupboards. It was filled with sacks and jars of preserved food, bowls and plates. Another contained a pile of compressed seaweed briquettes, an earthenware jar of lamp oil and several lanterns.

  When he turned to face the door, Senya was just entering. She was half-soaked, and her skirt flapped wetly around her calves. Laisa came in behind her. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Senya, if you would only practise your water skills more, that wouldn’t happen. Now get rid of all that water before I close the doors.”

  Sulkily, Senya did as she was told and sent the water back into the cistern. It was clumsily done and left Jasper thinking that she really didn’t have much talent. He kept his expression bland. Laisa closed the doors behind her and reset the water lock. Jasper released his hold on the contents of the cistern and heard the water slap up against the outer door.

  “Who knows about this place?” he asked.

  “All the rainlords, including the waterpriests and Lord Gold. The seneschal. That’s all.”

  Jasper thought: And all it would take for Davim to find us would be one man tortured into telling.

  Senya looked around in horror. “There’s no windows! I can’t stay here.”

  “You don’t have much choice,” Laisa said unsympathetically. “Either this or ziggers. Take your pick.”

  “At least I could try to kill ziggers,” she muttered.

  “From the exhibition you just gave of water control, I’m not too sure you could.”

  “I could if someone would just teach me how to kill the rainlord way!”

  “When you display the kind of maturity necessary to make good judgements, perhaps they might,” said Laisa, hanging the lantern from a hook in the ceiling. She looked around the room with a sigh. “What do you know about ziggers, Jasper?”

  “Quite a lot. I used to care for Taquar’s. The Reduners would want to be quite sure all their ziggers are satiated and back in their cages before they themselves venture inside the city walls. They want no accidents caused to their own men by an improperly trained zigger.”

  Senya plonked herself down at the table, looking forlorn. Laisa, fidgeting, paced back and forth as she spoke. “They lost the element of surprise, thanks to Kaneth. And their mad rush from the Warthago Range means they and their beasts must be exhausted. It gives our rainlords a chance.”

  Jasper thought, She’s as furious about this as a scorpion taken ou
t of its hole. Aloud he said, “There’s too few of them to protect a whole city.”

  “Yes. Fifteen without counting us but including the waterpriest rainlords. Most of them with no fighting experience, like the priests, or incompetent, like Merqual and Ryka, or just plain old.”

  “The other cities should have sent their rainlords,” Senya said, “like Grandfather asked them to.”

  Jasper ignored that and said, “Fifteen rainlords to fight—what, two thousand Reduners? Ten thousand?”

  “I’ve no idea. Iani said the force that struck at Qanatend was about seven or eight thousand mounted pedemen. Kaneth couldn’t give an estimate of those he saw.” She laughed. “He said he didn’t stop to count them.”

  “What is this room?”

  “It has existed since the city was built, I expect. Our forebears were always quarrelling between cities, quite viciously, I understand, until the idea of Scarpen unity was imposed on them. I suppose they once thought they needed secret tunnels and hiding places.”

  “What’s our plan?” He was sure there was one.

  “Several myriapedes are secreted away in a hidden gully along the escarpment to the west. They are kept loaded and saddled under the care of a pedeman, waiting for us if the city falls. All we have to do is get to them unseen and then flee to Portennabar, on the coast.”

  “If the Reduners besiege us, we could be here a long time. Even Qanatend held out for ten days.”

  “We are to leave the moment the walls are breached. In the heat of battle, in effect. The reeve on this level will let us know the right moment.”

  “How will he tell us?” Senya asked. “No reeve can open water locks to get in here.”

  Her mother indicated the two ventilation shafts. “The one on the left goes to the outside. The right-hand one opens into the level’s Cistern Chambers. All the reeve has to do is speak down it, and we will hear. Anyway, let’s light the fire and have a hot drink.”

  She took up the kettle to fill it from the water jar. Jasper fetched some briquettes for a fire.

  “How long do we have to stay here?” Senya whined. “When’s Daddy coming?”

  Laisa ignored the question.

  Jasper stared at Senya, nonplussed. She sounded like a girl half her age. “There’s no way we can know the answer to that,” he said finally.

  “I don’t like it in here.”

  “Neither do I much.” He was about to say something else placating when he heard a whine, a sharp buzzing hum like the sound of a stone-cutter’s saw. He knew what it was, and he knew it was in the room with them. He and Laisa both shouted at the same moment: “Zigger!”

  Jasper acted without thinking. He grabbed up the nearest thing to hand, intending to swat the beast once he’d worked out where it was. At the same time, he pulled water out of the open water jar as a backup. He spun around, searching. The zigger was perching on the edge of the left-hand ventilator shaft, the one that led to the outside.

  Senya screamed and jumped to her feet. Attracted by the movement, the zigger streaked towards her, its wings a blur. She dodged, her shrieks escalating in pitch and volume. At the last moment, she flicked her head sideways in a desperate attempt to escape. Her long hair swept around her face, netting the creature. Shrieking hysterically, flinging herself around, she gave Jasper no chance to hit the zigger and Laisa no chance to use her power without endangering her daughter.

  Jasper flung the shaft of water like a spear. Half of it smacked Senya in the face; the rest tore the zigger out of her hair. Stunned and soggy, it fell to the floor. He stomped on it. When he lifted his sandaled foot, there was a splatter of red blood underneath.

  Senya fell to her knees, still screaming. With a controlled calm, Laisa stepped up to her and slapped her face. She picked the dead zigger up by a wing and waved it under her daughter’s nose. “Dead, see?”

  The screams faded into heaving sobs interspersed with indistinct complaints. “In my hair… could have died… horrid… Jasper wet me.”

  “Yes, and you should thank him for it. He saved your life. Sunlord above, Senya, it’s time you learned to behave like the rainlord you are. It is time you learned to be one.”

  Jasper turned away, embarrassed and shaken. He didn’t like Senya, but he didn’t like the way Laisa treated her daughter, either.

  He glanced down and found he had a seaweed briquette in his hand.

  Salted hells, he mused, just as well I didn’t clobber Senya with that. She’d never have let me forget it. He said, “I’ll find a bit of cloth to put across the opening of the shaft, but it was probably just sheer chance. It was looking for a way back to its cage.” He pointed at the floor. “Ziggers don’t have red blood. It had already eaten its fill.”

  Laisa casually threw the remains into the fireplace. “Revolting things,” she said.

  As he turned back to the task of laying the fire, Jasper considered what he had just done. He’d killed a zigger. He pondered that, and his thoughts were a revelation.

  I’ve been a withering idiot, he thought. There is more than one way to eat a bab fruit.

  And he smiled.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Scarpen Quarter

  Breccia City

  Level 40

  At sunset on the first day of the attack, Nealrith stood on the wall near the South Gate and felt a moment’s brief satisfaction. He hadn’t really believed the Reduners would come, but ever since Qanatend had fallen he had prepared for it anyway, and he thought they had all done well.

  Considering everyone’s lack of experience, not bad at all.

  His gaze roved up and down, searching out any activity on the part of the besieging red warriors. Most were hidden among the bab palms of the groves or behind the buildings outside the gates, well out of range of his power to seize their water.

  Mistake, that, he thought, to allow the livery stables and the smelters and so many other noisy and grimy workshops to build so close to the walls. Bad strategy for defence of a city. They should have been sited further away.

  And now it was too late.

  He glanced along the wall at the line of guards. Too few of them, but still, more than he’d expected. Ordinary citizens, determined to do their best, had joined them. They’d be useless under real attack, but armed with butterfly nets, they didn’t do too badly against ziggers.

  He allowed himself a smile. Ryka’s idea, that. The nets, soaked in bab oil, were designed to catch the butterflies that came to lay eggs on the green bab fruit, but they were effective against ziggers. Once the little stinkers were caught, their soft hind wings stuck to the oil and they couldn’t fly. Helpless, they were easy to squash. Breccia had not lost as many people as he had feared, even at night, when it was hard to see ziggers.

  At intervals along the wall’s walkway were catapults, another idea of Ryka’s. Inspired by a child’s toy, they provided a way of launching fireballs to illuminate what was happening beyond the walls at night, or to heave rocks during the day.

  “You sent for me, Rith?”

  He turned to look into the street below. Kaneth, mounted on the back of a myriapede, greeted him with a wave. Watergiver damn, but the man looked exhausted. He couldn’t have had much sleep in three or four days, and he’d made a ride that would go down in history—if there was anyone left to write it after this was all over.

  “Yes,” he said. “Wait there; I’ll come down.” He turned to the overman standing next to him. “I’m going to grab a bite to eat. Let me know immediately if there’s any change.”

  “Yes, m’lord.”

  By the time he was down in the street, Kaneth had dismounted. Nealrith clapped him on the back, saying, “You’ve got to snatch some sleep. But come and eat with me first. How are things on the north wall?”

  “Quiet. I think the red bastards are sleeping. At a guess, we can expect an attack about two hours before dawn.”

  “Make sure you get some sleep between now and then.” He guided Kaneth towards the guardroom
across the street. “But you know, they need not attack at all. They could just maintain a siege and send ziggers in until there are too few of us left to defend the walls.”

  “They are Reduner warriors hankering after their supposedly more glorious times as nomadic raiders. They’ll attack. And I bet they know a lot more about our vulnerabilities than they did before they took Qanatend.”

  Nealrith grimaced. “You’re probably right, unfortunately. I suppose it means we don’t have to worry too much about our water supply or our food stores, because those will last longer than we do. Seen Davim at all?”

  “Who knows which one he is? They all look alike from up on the wall. And he’s probably too damned canny to make himself a target.”

  “We’ve done well with killing their ziggers. I’m proud of the men of Breccia.”

  Kaneth gave a lopsided grin. “Better mention the women, too, or you’ll have Ryka punching you on the nose. She’s just spent the day keeping ziggers and Reduners out of the waterhall. They’ve been attacking through the tunnel.”

  Nealrith nodded. He knew they had lost both the mother cistern and the tunnel to the invaders.

  When they entered the nearby guardroom, the aroma of hot food drifted from covered dishes on the table. “Sunlord above,” Nealrith said, “that smells good. I don’t think I’ve eaten today, come to think of it, which is foolish of me.” He spooned some food into an empty plate. “You heard about my father, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, and not just because he was our Cloudmaster.”

  “I loved the stubborn old goat. I haven’t had time to take it all in yet, let alone grieve. I couldn’t go to his water gifting. I haven’t even seen my mother since he died. I hear she’s refusing to leave the city with the others. Sunlord damn it, it’s hard to take. All of it.” He shook his head wearily. “Eat something, my friend. That’s an order. You need it.” He watched while Kaneth piled up his plate, then asked, “We are going to lose this one, aren’t we? Eventually.”