by Glenda Larke
"Surely that can't be right! How could such a person be revered as holy?"
"Well, he wasn't to us. Quite the contrary. In fact, he was rather an arrogant fellow by all accounts, not worthy of reverence by your priests and their faithful congregation. He failed to instruct his extended family in our faith, which was unforgivable. He gloried in the fact that women flocked to his door. He must also have been charming, I suppose. A man who genuinely loved the company of women. There is proof of his very human existence all over the place in Alabaster. Even in my family we have journals written by family members in which he is mentioned. He seduced my many times great-grandmother, and she wrote it all down afterward in an excess of remorse. The language is archaic and the ink faded, but the scrolls are still legible. I've read them myself."
Upset, Terelle tried to reject what he was saying, but his honesty was obvious. He believed his words.
"He returned to Alabaster as an elderly man," Feroze continued, apparently oblivious to her inner turmoil, "to be dying among those of his own faith. He was quite unabashed and wrote down all his tales of life in the Scarpen and Gibber. Ye can read his stories in the Samphire library. Written in his hand. Although they are in the Khromatis script, so ye wouldn't understand them, I suppose."
"You mean-are you saying that the Alabaster faith and the Khromatis religion are identical? And that the Scarpen one true faith is all made up, probably to account for an ability that had its origins in-in-a man with the morals of a street cat?"
He nodded.
She felt a wave of dizziness, as though the pede had tipped, upsetting her balance. "I don't think you had better mention that aloud in the Scarpen."
"Believe me, I don't."
She tried to smile but felt nauseated. Have I really been believing a lie all this time? Wasting my water? Maybe there was no deity at all. Perhaps life was just as random as flinging leaves into the wind and watching while they danced and fluttered their way to the ground.
The idea was too big, too alien, for her to grasp. She wasn't sure she even wanted to know. Messenjer, driving his own pede with several warriors seated behind him, halted the mount as he topped the rise overlooking the caravansary. He shook his head in bemusement at what he saw. "Who would have thought it? Gibbermen coming to the aid of Scarpen freedom."
Terelle removed her palmubra and fanned herself. Now that they had stopped the heat was ruthlessly desiccating. She was hot, dusty and tired. She looked over her shoulder. Behind them, the whole line of white pedes was slowing to a halt. So many of them, she thought. Myriapedes, packpedes, armsmen, supplies. She couldn't even see the tail end of the Alabaster caravan. Surely enough men to rescue Shale from Taquar, even though they don't have ziggers. The other thought niggling, though, was darker: But not enough to defeat the Reduners. Not nearly enough.
She dragged her thoughts back to Messenjer's words and stared at the pedes and people milling around outside the caravansary walls. Gibbermen? How did he know? Certainly the pedes around the caravansary were black, but they could have been Scarpen beasts, couldn't they?
"Gibber pedes are not as robust as Scarpen ones," he said, answering her unspoken question. "They are lighter, narrower animals. There's a mix of both Scarpen and Gibber ones there."
"Those people behind us will catch us up at any moment," Messenjer said to Feroze. "The dust is closer." They had been watching a red cloud behind them all day, stirred up by unknown followers. At first, they had feared it could be Reduners. Now, close to the caravansary, that fear had faded.
"Whoever it is, they are pushing their mounts," Feroze remarked in answer, his tone heavy with disapproval. Like most Alabasters, he hated to see a pede abused or overworked. "How about moving on, Mez? My old bones need to get off this animal."
Messenjer, who was older than Feroze, grinned and waved a hand in acknowledgment as he urged the pede down the slope to the caravansary. Feroze winked at Terelle.
As they reached the outskirts of the crowd around the caravansary, the billow of dust finally resolved itself into twelve men on a single black packpede. Boisterous Gibbermen armed with an extraordinary selection of weapons-everything from a sledgehammer to numerous thatch-cutters and the poled knives used to harvest bab fruit. They were young, exuberant, undisciplined and noisy, causing Messenjer to stiffen with distaste, Feroze to stifle a laugh and Terelle to grin.
"Are you out to join the stormlord?" she asked them as they drew up alongside.
The driver on the first saddle flashed a smile. "'Sright! You read them sky-writin' words too?"
She nodded.
"We're all from Wash Kering Settle. Our reeve tol' us what them sky words said. There's been messages of all kinds all over the Gibber, not just written in them clouds. Comin' out of the Scarpen from some stormlord called Bloodstone. Heard tell the old Cloudmaster snuffed it and this is the new fellow."
Feroze nodded. "Have you seen many Gibbermen on the road answering the stormlord's call?"
The pede driver shrugged. "There's plenty who'd like to, y'know. But we're pissin' poor washfolk. Aren't many pedes in the Gibber, and fewer weapons… But he wrote up there on the sky he was washfolk like us, y'see. The new Cloudmaster! A Gibberman! When folk heard that, they was real eager t'help out. Everyone as could get hisself a pede's out there somewhere, on their way here. 'Strue he's a Gibberman?"
"Yes," Terelle replied. "I've met him. His name is Sh-um, Jasper Bloodstone, and he's from Wash Drybone Settle."
"Really?" one of the younger Gibbermen asked, awed. "We always thought them stormlords were gods, not Gibbermen. Even after folk tole us what them sky words said, we wondered if they was scoffin' us."
"And we heard Wash Drybone Settle was burned by them Reduners," the driver added.
"That's right, it was," Terelle said.
They pelted her with questions, which she did her best to answer. She was relieved when one of them spotted a group of Gibbermen making camp beside the track, and they rode off to join them.
Feroze halted the Alabaster caravan and he and Messenjer started to organize a camp. Terelle made herself useful by grooming Messenjer's pede, but as she worked, she gazed around. With the arrival of the Alabaster caravan, the overflow of people and pedes outside the Pahntuk Caravansary stretched half a mile beyond the walls in all directions.
Sandblast, she thought. Shale did this?
Only then did the enormity of what was going to happen become real. There was going to be a battle. And the Alabasters, maybe Shale as well, were going to be looking to her to do something. People were going to die. They wanted her waterpainting to work miracles-and she still did not have the faintest idea how to do it. Terelle's first impression of Iani Potch was not favorable. He stood up to greet her, but had to brace himself against the wall of the room, as if to give himself some stability. He looked sick and old, a Scarperman with dragging steps and sagging cheeks. His gaze found Feroze and his face lit up in a pleased smile-or so Terelle surmised. It was hard to tell when half of his face did not move at all and his mouth on that side drooped open at one corner.
His gaze shifted to her. "Would you be Arta Terelle the waterpainter?" There was a tremor in his hands, as if he had been drinking, but she could smell no amber on his breath. "In spite of your Alabaster robe?"
She nodded dumbly.
"Then I am truly delighted. I'm Lord Iani Potch. Otherwise known as Iani the Sandcrazy. You have heard of me, I believe, from Jasper." Without waiting for her acknowledgment, he turned to Feroze. "And would it be too much to hope you came back with your army?"
"Indeed I did. I met them two days out-one thousand armed men, several hundred support workers, another thousand armsmen to follow in a few days. I hope ye have water and food for them all, because we are running low."
Iani smiled, but his smile was little more than a sideways twist of his lips, and ended up more like a sneer. "Welcome. We're hunting and salting meat for everyone. As for water, the tunnel is still running. We found some of
those treacherous Scarcleft enforcers trying to steal some yesterday, down a ways.
"But I am forgetting my manners. Please sit down." He waved to one of the men hovering at the door, indicating he wanted some tea brought. The room was typical of a caravansary: brown adobe walls several hand-spans thick, window holes that could be shuttered tight in a dust storm, an adobe seat running all the way around the walls, strewn with threadbare embroidered cushions and faded rugs. Low tables made of polished pede segments were the only other furnishings.
Iani sat and patted the cushions next to him. "Sit here, Arta. Jasper gave me your description. Told me all about you. What you can do. He said he thought you'd come back because he sent you a sky message. We've had people looking for you everywhere."
She was astonished. "You've seen him? I thought he was Taquar's prisoner in Scarcleft! Jasper is Shale Flint, isn't he?"
Iani nodded. "He is. And in a way he is trapped. He needs to meet you, urgently. We're to take you to see him-apparently you're very important to his plans."
She blinked, trying to absorb that. "You mean, he's free?" Annoyance fluttered, threatening to grow larger. Shale had brought her back, not because he was in Taquar's clutches, but in order to use her?
He knows how hard that is for me…
Oblivious to her growing irritation, Iani said, "Not exactly. He still lives in Scarcleft so he can make it rain with Taquar's help. But he does come and go as he pleases. He'll meet you outside the city. You'll be safe, don't worry; Taquar won't know you're there."
Agitated, she stood and went to look out one of the room's windows. Below she could see a seething mass of people, mostly men; a swarm of would-be warriors scurrying about like wingless ants from a disturbed nest. They seemed disorganized, uncoordinated, undisciplined. She remembered all Shale had told her of Davim. Of the way his men had callously wiped out the village of Wash Drybone. What chance did these people below have against a ruthless Reduner warrior?
She turned away from the window. "How-how is he?"
"Perhaps I'd better tell you the whole story. Why don't you sit down, Arta, while I explain. We can have some tea…"
She did as he asked, curbing her impatience while the tea was brought in tiny hollowed-stone cups, accompanied by honeyed bab cakes as hard as desert rock, and Iani began to explain.
"Jasper sent me a sky message-no, let me begin before that. I met Jasper when I rode to Breccia to get help for Qanatend. Cloudmaster Granthon turned me down. So I rode back. The Reduners had Pebblebag Pass blocked, of course, but I found a way through. By the time I got to the city, it'd fallen. From what I could find out from the few folk who escaped, the rainlords there were all dead. Including-including my wife. So I rode to Pediment.
"They wouldn't help, either. I tried Denmasad and Breakaway as well. They all turned me down. Then Breccia fell to Davim and I managed to get all the cities talking to one another, planning for war, training men, especially when they found out the Cloudmaster was dead."
"What happened to Shale?" She corrected herself. "Jasper. When I left Scarcleft, he was in Breccia."
"Apparently he fled when the city fell, with Nealrith's wife, Laisa, and their daughter Senya. Laisa drugged him and handed him over to Taquar. Ironically enough, it was probably just as well, because he and Taquar, working together, manage to make it rain." He paused to wipe away the spittle dribbling down his chin. "Rumors spread about what I was doing, and Jasper got to hear. He sent a sky message. We met out in The Sweepings."
"Is he-is he all right?"
Feroze's pale eyes flickered her way in interest.
"He's fine. I took him to Portfillik and Pediment, to meet the highlords there. Then he returned to Scarcleft."
"He returned? By himself? But why?"
That memory replaying in her head: Taquar standing beside her, playing with her hair, the rapaciousness of his gaze eroding her confidence and her courage, while she wrote a letter to entice Shale back into his cage…
"To make it rain, of course." Iani dabbed again at his lip and tried to sip from the cup. "He'd grown since I saw him last. Got not just taller but… older, somehow. I hardly recognized him. 'I'm glad to see you got my message,' he said, as calm as you please. As if I could have missed it! Anyway, first thing Jasper told me about was his cloudmaking. He can only do it with Taquar. That's why he can't leave." His face suddenly changed, haunted by a fleeting expression of hate and despair. "Taquar killed Lyneth, you know. He might say he didn't, but he did." The words were as stark as sun-bleached bones and Terelle had to repress a shudder.
"So I can't kill him," he added. "I want to. But if I do, we thirst and die. Jasper wants to free Qanatend from the last of Davim's claws. Did you know some Reduners are still there? Under the Warrior Son. And they control the mother cistern of the city, too."
She was silent. In the face of his despair, any words she might have uttered froze on her tongue.
"Moiqa died there; my wife, you know. One day soon, I will kill Davim. Him, I can kill."
"Where is he?" Feroze asked quietly, speaking for the first time.
"Gone back to the Red Quarter now, along with the Master Son. That's his heir, man named Ravard. Jasper will take the battle to the Red Quarter one day. You'll see."
Shale? Shale would? Terelle was reeling. He was the same age as she was. He wasn't a warrior. How could he lead men to battle? It was all too much to take in, and Iani's conversation was as undisciplined as a sand-dancer. "Why would he want to do that?" she asked at last. "If they go back to the Red Quarter, why not let them go? Leave them alone?"
"What about us Alabasters?" Feroze asked her, gently chiding. "They won't leave us alone. Should we just wait for them to kill us all?"
Iani nodded grimly. "He has to be stopped. But Jasper says we have to deal with Taquar first. And he needs your help."
Terelle felt her heart lurch to the pit of her gut. He meant her, not Feroze.
"Davim killed my wife, my Moiqa." His voice became a wistful shadow of its former strength. "I never even got to tell her about Lyneth… I never saw her again. By the time I arrived back at Qanatend, she was dead." He dabbed once more at his lip. "I am getting together an army, men from the other Scarpen cities, from the Gibber and the White Quarter. Taquar-that withering traitor: I'll make him pay." Hatred welled up and spilled over, pulling at the ravages of his damaged face, dragging his expression into the same hell-hole his soul had occupied for so long.
"I want to go back to Qanatend," he whispered.
Terelle swallowed, not knowing what to say to this man, so obviously balanced only precariously between sanity and madness. "How can we fight Taquar? We have no ziggers," she said, "and Taquar has thousands. And if we can't kill him anyway…"
"We have rainlords. Mostly very old ones, it's true, but skilled enough to kill ziggers. Moiqa's dead, you know. Did I tell you that?"
Terelle felt herself lost, so disoriented she might as well have been whirled away by a spindevil. Here was a rainlord of the Quartern talking to her as an equal, as if she was someone important. As if she could make a difference. She wanted him to sound competent and rational, but he was far from either.
She shot a despairing glance at Feroze, who then asked, "How can you fight a man whose strength is needed to bring storms?"
Iani was silent for a long time. Finally he whispered, "I want him dead so badly. They call me sandcrazy because I searched for her for so long-I never gave up hope, and all the while-" He choked. "Now I just want him dead. But I'm frightened, I'll admit that. If Jasper makes a mistake, we all die-slowly, of thirst and starvation. But he has a plan. Something to do with you, Terelle.
"He can be harsh, Jasper, when he needs to be. I told him the Highlord of Breakaway wanted guarantees before the city would help him. The next day, Jasper sent a sky message. 'Ouina,' he wrote, and he didn't bother to call her lord, 'I'll give you a guarantee: if you don't send your forces to support me, Breakaway will always be the last place to have its c
isterns filled.'
"I told him that was harsh. 'It was meant to be,' he said. 'But not, I think, unreasonable. These are harsh times. Somewhere, Iani, there has to be a smooth middle road. Somewhere between weakness and abuse. It's just a matter of finding it. I don't want to be either Nealrith or Cloudmaster Granthon. It was their weaknesses, their lack of understanding of evil, that brought us to this point. But I don't want to be Laisa or Taquar, either-for they are not fit to rule.' Then he told me to train the men who came to this caravansary while I waited here for you. Which I have done. And we aren't the only ones, you know. Jasper sent sky messages to all the other cities. People are gathering in other places, waiting for his orders."
Terelle gave a snort of laughter. "And Taquar doesn't know Shale is sending messages all over the place?"
He shrugged, indifferent. "He must know by now, I would think."
She took a deep breath. "So, when do we leave for Scarcleft?"
His lips moved, a twisted travesty of a smile. Poor Iani, she thought. Crippled and heart-wounded, full of hate and aching for revenge, and Shale's asking him to wonder if his moral rights to that revenge are worth the risk to the water supply of a nation.
Waterless soul, help me. Shale thinks I can solve this problem. What do I know?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Red Quarter Dune Watergatherer On the surface, it seemed a stupid time to plan a mass escape of slaves. There were one hundred more pedes and five hundred more seasoned warriors in camp than usual, the latter all heavily armed and outnumbering Ravard's men. In addition there were countless camp followers with them to serve the warriors, look after their pedes and care for their weapons.
However, Ryka soon realized they could not have chosen a better night. With so many extra men in camp, nothing was normal, and therefore anything unusual went unnoticed. Slaves came and went; when masters called they were busy elsewhere and no one thought much of it. When women slaves went missing, the men who usually slept with them made sour remarks about "Davim's bleeding randy drovers," but did nothing. When water skins went missing and water levels in camp jars were low, when a particular pede couldn't be found where it was supposed to be, if food seemed to vanish as soon as it was cooked, if the encampment was unusually noisy with the buzz of whispered conversations, if slaves seemed extra busy and always carrying things from one place to another, if every look exchanged seemed heavy with meaning, well-what else did you expect? There were so many extra people, all of whom were tired-you had to assume there would be a muddle.
