Stormlord Rising

by Glenda Larke

  “I would say it is not a problem for them.”

  One of the two Gibbermen in the group glared at Feroze, teeth bared in a snarl. “You salt-heads got what y’withering deserved when the Reduners turned on you, eh?” A rock collector from Wash Gereth named Lourouth, the speaker was a grizzled, lanky man who had spent most of his life traipsing the plains on the hunt for gemstones. His pragmatic ability to make do, even when he was without resources, had earned him the leadership of the disparate band of Gibber folk. What he was not renowned for was his tact. “Thought you could sell them red m’rauders spears and not get ’em back in your arse one day, huh?”

  Hurriedly Jasper interrupted. “Iani will now brief you all on the plans for the next two days. If you have any comments afterward, feel free to voice them.” He nodded for Iani to take over, and then retreated from the group. As they turned their attention to the rainlord, he beckoned to Terelle.

  When she joined him, he murmured, “We need to talk.”

  She had not seen much of him since they’d joined the rest of the army. There was always another storm to bring, another problem to solve, another argument to settle, another decision to make. And no matter what else was happening, somewhere or another the Quartern needed to have water supplied.

  He had even stopped openly posing for her paintings. She painted one each day, and distinguished it from the previous ones by introducing a new object, such as an item of clothing or weaponry lying on the ground where he was to conjure up his cloud. Each day he surreptitiously matched his surroundings to the painting already done. That way they avoided any association between her paintings and his stormshifting. “After all,” he told her with one of his rare grins, “I don’t want to get a reputation for an unhealthy need to have my portrait painted every day.”

  As for Terelle, if anyone disturbed her while she was painting, she covered the tray with a cloth and said she preferred no one to see her unfinished work. In fact, although she was careful not to harm a shuffled-up painting before it came true, she destroyed each after Jasper had successfully acted on it.

  They continued to hide her power and cultivate the notion she was just an artist who recorded the stormlord’s history in paintings. She would not have minded this, except that her lack of stature allowed Senya to spread the rumor Terelle was of dubious lineage, the product of a snuggery liaison and—as to be expected from such a mongrel mix—unbalanced and strange. The snuggery girl had been lost in the Whiteout too, for days, Senya added. Perhaps that explained things…

  Terelle simmered with the injustice of it all. She doubted Jasper had any idea how often she woke in the night doubled up with cramp. She knew why: although her mind knew she had to return to Russet, she longed to stay with Shale. Every time she felt nauseous and in pain, she had to spend time thinking of how she would travel back to the White Quartern and then onto the land of the Watergivers. After a while, she would feel better. For a time.

  And always there was that other hurt: Jasper had bedded Senya. She knew she had no right to be so pained; his promise to her had been nebulous at best. She now knew that he had been told, over and over, that he had to marry a rainlord. What right had she to be hurt? And yet it rankled. No, more than that. She felt brutally betrayed. Senya. So pretty and shallow and dumb.

  As they headed toward his tent, she asked, “Why didn’t you press Feroze to tell you where he got the wood for the spears?”

  “Because he didn’t want to tell me and I didn’t want to upset him. Besides, I think I know.”

  “Khromatis.”

  He nodded. “Where else?”

  “They keep a lot of secrets.” Briefly she told him all the things that had puzzled her when she was in the salt mines and Samphire. The lack of any evidence of how they worked their metal or made their mirrors, the huge gates of Samphire, the salt caravan that had gone eastward, the way they called themselves Guardians yet wouldn’t explain what they were Guardians of, their knowledge of Watergivers and the power of waterpainting.

  “They have so many secrets,” she said. “If I asked questions, they either lied or dodged answering.”

  “Tell me about the Bastion.”

  “He’s an old man, but sharp still. When I met him, he was surrounded by council members, and it was all very formal. He said he would arrange to send an army, even though the Scarpen under Cloudmaster Granthon had not helped them when the Alabasters asked for it. He told me I had to use my waterpainting powers. He promised to see that Russet was cared for. And then I was dismissed.”

  “Did you speak to many other people?”

  She shook her head. “I had the feeling that they were keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn’t. Messenjer and his wife and sons were with me all the time. D’you know—I never saw a single person in Samphire who wasn’t an Alabaster. It’s not like a Scarpen city.”

  “What do you think they are Guardians of?”

  “The border to Khromatis? That’s just a guess.”

  “Could be right. But best we don’t ask, I think. Not yet. They are our allies, and I don’t want to upset them. Anyway, that wasn’t why I asked you to come with me.” They had reached his tent by then and he raised the flap for her to enter. “I want to show you something.”

  His was the largest tent in the camp—in fact most of the men had no tents at all. It had been an Alabaster tent originally, roomy and furnished with their colorful rugs and blankets. She thought, They make themselves comfortable when they travel, these Alabasters. He waved her over to sit on one of the wooden chests next to his pallet, then pulled the cover from a small cage to show her the contents.

  “Ziggers,” he said. “I had them brought from Scarcleft.”

  She had a flash of memory, Donnick the gateman dying at her feet, the zigger crawling on his cheek…

  “I’d heard you refused to bring them. That you weren’t going to let our people use them.” She meant to sound impartial, but the distaste in her tone was obvious.

  “I’m not. These are for you to study, so you can paint them. Paint them dead. I wanted you to have a look at them alive first.”

  She quelled her revulsion and bent to look. Mindlessly, the ziggers flung themselves at the bars, trying to get to her, their drilling mouthparts whirring obscenely as they slavered. She jerked away, remembering that night in the snuggery. Remembering the blood. Remembering the death of a youth with a kind heart and simple mind.

  “I have an idea,” Jasper continued. “From something a man said to me while I was in Breccia City, just after the Reduners came. He said ziggers are attracted to lantern light… and later I saw it myself. Dead ziggers, burned against the hot glass of a lantern, or seared by candle flame and sizzling in the candle grease. My idea won’t kill all the ziggers, but it might get rid of a great many of them, without the slightest danger to our men. I’ll kill a few of these later, so you know what they look like after hitting the lantern. Tomorrow you’ll come down the wash with me, to a point just above where I think the Reduners will camp two nights from now. I want you to be able to paint the place accurately.”

  She nodded but didn’t speak.

  He grimaced wryly. “We need all the help we can get, Terelle. Nothing will change the fact the Reduners have more warriors than us. Seasoned warriors. While our men are salt traders, or potters, or gem cutters, or grove croppers.”

  He’s scared, she thought. But he’ll never show it. “How much painting do you want me to do?”

  “An awful lot by the day after tomorrow.”

  At Jasper’s request, and using his money, she had scoured the Scarcleft markets before they’d left, buying all the painting materials and ingredients she could find. He’d been planning ahead, of course; being the Cloudmaster when she just wanted a friend; being a stormlord when she wanted someone to put his arms around her and tell her he cared.

  “Terelle,” he said after she’d been silent a while, “we don’t seem to talk anymore. What’s wrong?”

  She set
tled her expression into bland indifference. “Well now,” she said thoughtfully, “that might have something to do with the fact you’re always so busy. Or not around. Or it might have something to do with your apparent preference for that spoiled brat Senya.” Oh, Watergiver take it, I never meant to say that. Her face felt hot in spite of the cold night air. She stood up abruptly and left the tent.

  Behind her, Jasper was wrestling with himself, wanting to call her back. But to say what, exactly? “Terelle, I didn’t want to bed Senya.” “I only did it once.” “I know I bedded her, but I don’t like her, not really.” “I’d much prefer to take you to bed, but you’ve got to understand, everyone says I have to marry Senya.”

  He sighed. At least he hadn’t been stupid enough to give voice to any of those sentiments. He didn’t know much about women, but he had a fair idea not one of those excuses would have been well received.

  Damn it all to waterless hell. I’m the Cloudmaster, and I still can’t have what I want.

  * * *

  “Can you tell if they’ve already moved from the cistern?” Terelle asked. It was a strain keeping the conversation neutral, but they were both doing their best. She sneaked a look at Jasper where he stood, holding the reins of the myriapede, looking down the wash. She wondered what it would be like to fit the curves of her body to his… and stopped the thought abruptly.

  “I have them in my mind,” he said. “I feel them coming, like a horde of—of bugs tramping their way up the stem of a plant. A long line of them coming up the wash toward us. They will camp at the lower camp tonight, and just around that bend there tomorrow night. You’ll have to finish the paintings before their first scouts arrive, probably around mid-afternoon tomorrow. We’ll need to be gone by then, but we’ll leave everything in place. I will come back at night with some of the Gibbermen and rainlords to light the lanterns. Their sentries will spot them.”

  She nodded again.

  He walked over to unload the pede, extracted a lantern and placed it on a rock, well away from the trail. “There’s your first one.”

  “Won’t their scouts notice any of these?”

  His smile was playfully artless. “I’m assuming they won’t find them because your paintings will have ensured the future is that they don’t.”

  Her stomach lurched. Unable to joke about waterpainting power, she went to fetch her painting things and began to prepare the first of the trays, blessing the extravagance of buying thirty of them in Scarcleft.

  “I can do all the motley bases now for the trays I have,” she told him, “but I won’t be able to paint until I see what everything looks like at night. Jasper, are you sure the ziggers will be attracted by the lanterns?”

  “Ziggers use their sense of smell as well as their eyesight, especially at night, or that’s what the Scarcleft guards say. Someone will have to be here to provide the enticing smell to bring them in, first. A few rainlords and me. Live bait. We’ll wait beyond the lanterns. With luck, they’ll be confused by the lights before they ever find us.”

  “If they do like to sizzle themselves on lanterns, won’t the Reduners know that and not use them at night?”

  “They used ziggers the night they attacked Breccia, so I think they will here, too. They’ll expect to lose some, but I reckon they think most would rather find something to eat than butt heads with a lantern glass.”

  She shuddered just thinking of him being bait for ziggers. “Tether a pede here,” she said. “It’d be safer. I think someone once told me that they feed off pedes in the wild.”

  “Yes, and a few ziggers wouldn’t harm them. But there won’t be just a few, there’ll be thousands. I won’t kill pedes. If any get past the lanterns, we rainlords can deal with them.”

  “You shouldn’t risk yourself. This land depends on you. We all depend on you.”

  “I can’t ask people to do what I will not do myself.”

  “You’re more important than they are.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then—”

  “Forget it, Terelle.” His tone implied he would not listen to anything else she had to say on the subject. She suppressed a sigh as she squinted up at him from where she knelt in front of her tray. “How many ziggers do you think they’ll release?”

  “Believe me, there’s no way you can paint as many as they have. Just portray as many as you can. However many die will mean less for them to use elsewhere.”

  She nodded, and started to fill her trays while he watched. “Sh—er, Jasper,” she asked after a moment, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, did you ever hear from the rebel Reduners in answer to your sky messages?”

  “Vara Redmane? No, but then how would they reply anyway?”

  “Can you feel them, the way you feel those forces coming toward us?”

  He smiled at her. “I wish I could say yes. But at that distance, it’s tough. There are waterholes and camps—those have enough water for me to locate and they don’t shift, either. But people moving from place to place?” He shook his head. “Not unless they were really bunched together like Davim’s forces. I sent the message for her to the area that she was supposed to be hiding in, far to the north. I heard that much about her ages ago, before Breccia fell. Oh, and I did send another message visible to all the dunes once Davim was on his way.”

  She looked up, interested. “What did you say?”

  “That Davim’s warriors were on the move, coming to attack the Scarpen and now would be a good time for rebels to try to attack him from the rear if they wanted their freedom. If they wanted me to bring water to their dunes.”

  “But Davim will have seen those messages, too.”

  “Perhaps. Though I did wait until he was already on his way up the wash.” He made a gesture of irritation. “It’s so difficult to know what to do, or what effect any of it has had. I can’t even tell if they have read the messages! Not all that many Reduners ever learn to read.” He shrugged, summing up his inadequacies. “I miss Lord Ryka. She knew so much more about them than anyone else. In the end I sent out messages in the Quartern tongue as well as Reduner. I thought if Vara Redmane, or any of the tribes, had contact with Scarpen slaves, there would be a chance of one of them understanding and passing the message on.”

  “So we just have to hope someone in the Red Quarter is stirring up trouble for any forces Davim left behind.”

  He nodded. “I have to go back to the camp. I am leaving a couple of guards with you. If you need anything, ask.”

  She smiled a farewell.

  As he turned and walked away, wind whistled up the drywash, scurrying the dust along like the sweepings of an invisible broom, but it wasn’t the wind making her shiver. It was fear, and the knowledge that she was twisting the future of the men coming up the wash to suit those waiting for them at the top.

  She painted all night and into the next morning. Each time she completed a picture, she checked it carefully to see if she had the details right: the exact way each lantern or lamp sat on the ground, the configuration of the stones at its base, the scratches on that particular lantern. Then she shuffled up the ziggers into the heart of the suggestive blotches she had already sketched in: hundreds of them in each picture. Dead or dying ziggers, grouped around each lantern, their wings frizzled against the heat of the glass. And then she moved on to another tray. When she had finished a number of them, she came back and cut the picture from the first ones, their purpose already defined, their power already stamped, for better or for worse, on the future. And so on to a different lantern, in a slightly different place—and another picture.

  All morning she was aware of people coming and going up and down the wash. Scouts to watch for the arrival of Reduners. Jasper, to check on her progress. Feroze the Alabaster, Lord Iani and Lourouth the Gibberman to check on the terrain—those three passed her by, discussing the positioning of their men, and hardly noticed her presence.

  Laisa came once and watched her with shrewd eyes. She knelt by the tray Terelle
was working on, staring. Then she said, “You’re not what you seem, are you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Lord Laisa.”

  The rainlord used her forefinger to turn Terelle’s face until their gaze met. “No one paints the same thing over and over—dead ziggers at that—just to record a history that has not yet happened. What are you hiding?”

  Terelle jerked her head away. Sandblast it, she hated the way the woman tried to make her feel like a child. “Not as much as you, at a guess. Tell me, my lord, are you on the side of the Scarpen and Jasper now, or is it just a temporary thing? Will you betray him the first time someone offers you something better?”

  Without answering, Laisa left in her usual swirl of silk and clink of jewelry, trailing her perfume behind her like the lingering musky scent of a horned cat.

  * * *

  Sometime around midday, Jasper laid a hand on her shoulder. “The first of their scouts is not far away,” he said quietly. “I want us to be out of here soon.”

  She sat back on her heels and nodded. Shuffling, she decided, was exhausting. She finished the picture she was working on and stood, stretching aching muscles. Salted damn, but she was hungry!

  “You’ve drawn thousands of ziggers,” he told her. “Far more than I thought was possible. Congratulations.” He gathered up the paints and trays. “Let’s get you back to camp. You’ve done your bit; the rest is up to other people now.”

  It’s not enough, she thought. No matter how many are killed here, it still won’t be enough. They’ll have more.

  In spite of the heat of the sun and the warm blast of the wind, she felt cold, shrunken. Tomorrow, led by a handful of rainlords, Jasper’s ill-prepared men would have to face a large army. He cradled her as he rode back to their camp. It should have felt good to be there, safe. His arms were strong, his muscles hard, his hold secure. Yet when he took a hand off the reins to brush hair away from her cheek in a gesture of care and concern, she would have liked to turn her face into his tunic and cry.