Stormlord Rising

by Glenda Larke

  None of that had stopped the other escaped slaves with them from complaining at first. Sandblasted bellyaching mob, these Breccians. Had it too easy in their water-sated lives.

  One hundred and two people had absconded with them, mounted on fifteen pedes, and they wanted to go home even though “home” probably didn’t exist anymore. They’d wanted to go south, but Kaneth wouldn’t have it. He said that was where Davim’s men would be looking for them, and without Ryka to feel their water, they’d be caught right quick.

  So Kaneth had driven them relentlessly north, one dune after another, hiding by day in sand hollows, riding by night, urging them on by the sheer force of his personality. Not to mention the bleeding mystique of the man that was Uthardim. It had been his idea to give the pedes their heads when they had run out of water. The beasts had headed for the nearest waterhole. In the dark of night, they’d stolen the water, and so it was, dune after dune. And the eeriest thing was the way they never left tracks when they crossed the dunes. Out on the plains, yes, but on the dune sands—never. It gave Elmar the creeps. Somehow the sands shivered after they passed, and the tracks just… disappeared. At first he’d thought it was the wind. Not anymore.

  The journey was slow. What could you expect from people who had never driven pede, whose first ride on pedeback had probably been the day they were forced in bondage from their home city? And now some of them were expected to drive pedes at night over unfamiliar terrain, dodging encampments, yet raiding waterholes. Several times they were seen and chased, only to have their pursuers deterred when Kaneth made the sand move under their feet.

  When Kaneth stated that their destination was the hideout of the Reduner rebel army under Vara Redmane, Elmar had worried himself sick. These people they were leading to freedom weren’t armsmen. They knew salted damn-all about fighting. Half of them were women, for pity’s sake!

  Elmar thought their complaining was going to be a problem, but it didn’t happen. Kaneth was looking more like his old self now, with his hair growing out and covering the scar on his head, and the rumor began to circulate that he was actually a rainlord, Kaneth Carnelian. Although Kaneth neither confirmed nor denied it and among the slaves there were no uplevelers or armsmen who had known him previously, there were several who had seen him before. The initial grumbling faded away. It was replaced by a wary awe, especially as many now believed he could subvert the Reduners’ very own gods to do his bidding.

  Still, Elmar worried that their respect might not last if their thirst continued. They were so far north now they seemed to have run out of inhabited dunes. They no longer sighted the smoke from encampment fires, and the plains between the dunes were strewn more with rocks than with vegetation. Even the pedes were hungry and sluggish. Worst of all, they had no more water.

  “Just when are we going to stop?” Elmar asked. The sun was already perched on the horizon and they had been riding all night.

  “Something’s out there,” Kaneth said. “We’ll ride to the top of the dune and look.”

  After all their care to stay hidden, this was a change. Elmar said nothing, and attempted to subdue his unease. Sometimes he could not see Kaneth in Uthardim. This new man had an added aura of power he had never seen in Kaneth. That, Elmar figured, was an improvement; what he wasn’t sure about was the added layer of… something. Elmar was used to Kaneth’s rainlord abilities. An alert rainlord was always aware of the world around him. He had seen Kaneth navigate his way through the dark of a steep-sided valley at night without a moment’s hesitation, simply because he could sense the water in plants. Now he said he had lost his rainlord abilities, yet he seemed to know other things in its place. Like how to move the sand of a dune. And odd things, like how he, Elmar, felt about something. It was uncanny, and Elmar wasn’t sure he liked it.

  Once on the crest, they stopped. Kaneth stood up on the carapace of their pede. Behind them, the other mounts ploughed their way to the top. He looked to the north, where yet another dune crossed the plains from east to west. Between their dune and the distant one was an outcrop of red rocks, like bab puddings turned out of different shaped molds of different sizes. Fat and short, tall and thin, smooth or pleated or nubbed. They were at least as tall as the dune they stood upon. Taller maybe. Tits and dicks and buttocks, Elmar thought.

  The pede waved its antennae and shuffled its numerous legs as if stimulated by something it smelled in the air. I hope that’s water. Then Elmar looked to the horizon behind him, to the south. In the sky, there were clouds. Pink clouds, lit by the sunrise. A string of them, fashioned into weird shapes. “Why are they carved like that?” he asked.

  Kaneth, spotting them too, started to laugh. “I may not remember this Jasper Bloodstone, but I begin to like him. I’ll bet he’s stirring up a dust cloud among the rainlords.”

  Elmar gave him a sharp look. “You remember the rainlords?”

  “I remember the feelings they gave me of being inadequate.”

  Kaneth had felt inadequate? Why? He had been one of the Scarpen’s best bladesmen! He decided not to pursue that thought. It was rainlord politics, and he wasn’t going to understand. “Why would Jasper make patterns in the clouds, and why send them here? And what in all hell’s dust holes are clouds doing way out here where nobody lives?”

  “Someone does live here,” Kaneth replied as the first of the other pedes arrived beside them. “I don’t know her, but I suspect it’s Vara Redmane. She’s out there in that rocky outcrop.” Losing interest in the scenery, he sat down on the saddle again.

  “How the withering winds do you know that?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I just know there is someone very old there, with fine wrinkles on her skin. I think it’s a woman, although I’m not sure what gives me that idea.”

  Elmar blinked, absorbing that. “Er—is she alone?”

  Kaneth shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t feel any others. It’s the wrinkles I feel, not her water.”

  “Weeping shit!” For a moment Elmar was rendered speechless, then he asked, worried, “So what are those clouds?”

  “The patterns spell out Reduner letters. Jasper is writing in the clouds, Elmar. He’s just sent a message to Vara Redmane.”

  “You can read it?”

  “No. ’Fraid not. But I do know what the Reduner script looks like.”

  “I doubt Jasper does.”

  “If he escaped Breccia to one of the other cities, he would have help. I hope Vara Redmane can read. Not all that many Reduners can.”

  Elmar lowered his voice to make doubly sure the others could not hear. “None of this makes sense. You should be able to sense water, not—not wrinkles.”

  “Weird, isn’t it? I can no longer sense the large, but the minuscule suddenly makes sense.”

  “What the waterless hells is minu-whatever-you-said?”

  “The small things. A full water jar means nothing to me anymore. I wouldn’t know it contained water unless I opened the lid and looked inside. But if you were to wet your fingertip with dew, the dampness would burn its message into my brain like a bee sting. I feel the crease lines on someone’s forehead if he frowns, because it changes the arrangement of water in his face. I know when someone is upset because of the way their muscles tense up. I can feel a grain of sand deep in the dune and know its importance.”

  “Is it you who’s been altering the sand behind us? To obscure our tracks?”

  “Of course. That’s easy. What is hard to understand is why and how I can do these things.” He gave a snort, half amusement, half exasperation. “Was I always so unfathomable?”

  Elmar gave a bark of laughter. “No, m’lord. You were once as transparent as water in a cistern. Show you a snuggery lass and you were like a tomcat on heat. Put a sword in your hand and you ached for a fight.”

  Kaneth turned to look at him, a peculiar expression on his face. “Is that true? You know, I’m not sure I like this Kaneth fellow very much. I’m not certain I ever want him back.”
<
br />   “You did change after—”

  “After what?”

  “After Ryka. Garnet.”

  “Did I marry her, Elmar?”

  “Er—yes. You did. I was at your wedding.”

  “Ah. I have a vague memory. Bleeding hot day, and that stupid priest going on and on…”

  “Basalt.”

  “Pompous fellow. And a woman. Wearing an awful dress. But I can’t picture her face. I can’t remember the feel of her.” The grimace he made then was one of pain, as if the thought broke his heart.

  Oh, spindevil take it—how am I ever going to tell him?

  Kaneth turned to the others gathered around on their pedes. “The end of the journey,” he said. “Down there, among those rocks. Freedom, my friends!”

  He prodded the pede and it leaped forward.

  Behind him, Elmar made a grab for the mounting handle. I hope there’s more than Vara out there, he thought, and licked his dry lips. We could do with some water.

  “Ouch! Is there any need to be so rough, woman?”

  “Perhaps you can enlighten me as to why a man who can take a vicious whipping without the slightest whimper squawks like a babe when I put honey on his cuts?” Ryka smiled sweetly at Ravard where he lay on his pallet and applied some more of the balm the women of the tribe had given her.

  “Aargh! Because it hurts.”

  “And you don’t mind being a babe in front of a mere slave?”

  He pushed her away and sat up, pale-faced and wincing. “Enough, enough.”

  He was in a foul mood, as usual. In one night his tribe had gone from being the one most favored by the sandmaster to the poorest on the dune. All the slaves that remained after the escape had been taken by Davim. Pedes killed or missing from Davim’s meddle were replaced by those taken from Ravard’s tribe. Davim himself had taken Ravard’s myriapede, and that rankled. In an unguarded moment, Ravard had told her he’d coveted the beast for years before being able to afford to buy it from its owner.

  In the aftermath of the landslip, he’d ordered as many of his men out as could be mounted to search for the missing slaves and pedes, but they had returned empty-handed. He’d then sent them out again, this time to hunt and capture wild pedes. He’d not been able to go himself, because of his flayed back. For several days he was even feverish, and it had fallen to Ryka’s lot to nurse him. As his wounds closed and healed, his temper had grown worse, not better.

  “You’ll open up the cuts again,” she said as he objected to her ministrations, “not of course that I care. I’ll be perfectly happy if you rip the scars open and get them horribly infected.”

  He glared at her, but lay down again. “All right, all right. I know it makes you happy t’cause me pain.”

  “I didn’t whip you,” she said. “And whoever gave you those very first scars was a monster. You were no more than a child when that was done.”

  She didn’t expect an answer, so was surprised when he said, “I was fifteen.”

  “What could a fifteen-year-old have done to deserve that?”

  “Who says I deserved it?”

  He was silent while she continued to apply the ointment, and once again she did not think he was going to say anything more. Then he added quietly, “I refused t’kill someone. The sandmaster wanted me t’prove m’loyalty to the tribe. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t.”

  “And you refused?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was brave. Foolish, but brave. Are we talking about Sandmaster Davim?”

  He nodded. “He had me whipped instead. Till I couldn’t stand the pain. Till I said I’d do the killing. They tied Chert to a boulder and gave me a knife. Told me t’cut his throat. He just stood there looking at me, not trying t’pull away or struggle. Waiting t’die.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Just a lad. I’d hated him once, but then things changed and we grew up and I liked him. We swore t’look after each other’s backs, y’know? I’d never had a friend like that before, and in the end he died ’cause we were friends. He hadn’t done nothing, ’cept refuse t’serve the tribe.”

  There was another long silence while he remembered. Several beads of perspiration ran down his neck to pool in between his shoulder blades.

  “You killed him?” she prompted, stilled by his words. Imagining. They were just children. Half-grown boys who should have been ogling the girls and trying to pluck up enough courage to steal the occasional kiss.

  “You know what the worst thing was? Chert told me t’do it. I thought I’d rather die. But he looked at me and said, ‘Do it. I’d rather you killed me than those bastards did.’ He was still looking after my back, y’see. So I took the knife and tried. But I didn’t know how t’slit someone’s throat. I stood in front of him and slashed. But it didn’t kill him. He moaned in pain. There was blood. All over me, all over him, everywhere. But he was still standing, and trying t’say something.”

  He closed his eyes and banged his forehead into the cushion under his head, as if he could rid himself of the memory.

  When he took up the story again, it was in a whisper. “Davim and the other men, they were laughing. Laughing ’cause I’d done it all wrong. It was horrible, horrible. But to them it was funny. In the end one of them yelled, between his guffaws, ‘Do it from behind, y’sand-brained grubber!’ So I got behind Chert and pulled the blade across his throat.”

  Oh, Sunlord save him, she thought. She wanted to weep but wasn’t sure if it was for Ravard or for Chert. What kind of world is it that Davim would have us live in where men laugh when a boy is forced to kill his best friend?

  He rolled onto his side to look at her.

  “You know what I learned that day, Garnet? That there are some things worse than death. Before that I was scared of everything. Of being beaten. Of dying. I was always shaking and shivering, trembling like dune sand on the move, too scared t’be anything but a coward. Always too frightened t’stand up t’anybody. I’ve never been afraid of death since, or of being whipped. They call me ‘The Dauntless Kher,’ d’you know that? It took Chert’s dying t’make me that way, and they got it wrong, of course. It’s not bravery; it’s just there’s nothing can hurt me that badly again, so what is there t’scare me?”

  He looked her straight in the eye. “Don’t push me too far, ever. ’Cause I could kill you as easily as cupping a pede for a zigger feed. And walk away afterward without a backward look.”

  “No,” she said, “not yet, you wouldn’t. You promised to keep my babe safe, and it’s a promise you will keep.”

  “You so sure I am an honorable man?” He gave a harsh laugh. “Your head’s stuffed with sand.”

  “I’m sure,” she said, her voice steady. “Your honor is all you have. You won’t throw it away so easily.”

  “You lied to me. You told me Uthardim was a metalworker, a nobody, but he wasn’t. He’s a bladesman. That lie cost me more than you could possibly know. You helped them escape. Afterward I saw that some of the perfume vials and weapons were missing from the wooden chest over there. For all of that, you deserve death, yet you expect me t’honor my promise to you?”

  The tone of her reply was implacable. “Yes.”

  He stared at her, then scrambled to his feet. He pulled on his tunic, every move exaggerated as he attempted to avoid pain, and left the tent. Outside he walked tall, as if nothing bothered him.

  Men, she thought.

  She’d thought him so simple to understand, and she had been so wrong.

  Uncomfortable, she shifted position. She already felt ungainly; how was she ever going to cross the dunes like this? But, oh, I want to leave this place so badly. And I will, I swear.

  Steal a pede, water and food, defend herself against ziggers, dodge people sent to hunt her down—she could still do those things. She was not guarded or confined. Apparently it never occurred to anyone she would try to escape on her own. They would never think she might dare to cross the Warthago and The Spindlings alone.


  But what about her son? Since her fall in the sandslip, she’d had some blood spotting. She rested as much as possible, horribly aware a long journey on pedeback would probably be the worst thing she could do to the child.

  Now that she’d had time to think about what had happened, she was more inclined to forgive Kaneth for leaving her behind. Elmar, she decided, had seen her go over the edge. He would have told Kaneth. The two of them had believed her dead. It was unrealistic to think that Kaneth would have cared enough to grieve deeply; he didn’t remember her, not really. He even had to take it on trust that the baby she carried was his, because he had no remembrance of the act that had brought it about.

  And that, perhaps, was the knowledge that gave her the most pain. Illogical, but it hurt that she had been forgotten. Silly, but it shattered her heart.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Scarpen Quarter

  Scarcleft City, Level 10 and Level 2

  and Warthago Range, foothills

  The snuggery on Level Ten was called Suzur’s. The original Suzur was long since dead but, as tradition demanded, the present owner answered to the name. That much Terelle knew as she tugged at the bell pull and waited for the doorman to answer the summons. What she didn’t know was just how Vivie had ended up there. When Terelle had gone to Opal’s and asked about her sister, the handmaidens had told her sourly that Viviandra had decided she was too good for Level Thirty-two and gone to the tenth instead. To Suzur’s.

  Terelle ran a finger along the patterns of purple amethyst inlaid in the woodwork of the gate while she waited for someone to answer the bell; by comparison, the white quartz designs on the gate at Opal’s Snuggery were dull. Vivie had moved up in the world.