Stormlord’s Exile

by Glenda Larke

  She shook her head. “Just thinking. Something made me remember Taquar. He’s still alive, you know. Iani has him hidden.”

  “And you think that’s a mistake?”

  “Well, I understand why Jasper wanted it that way—in case he needs Taquar to help him make storms again. But for all that, I think it’s a mistake. You don’t put a man like Taquar in a prison and expect him to stay there.”

  He didn’t answer. It was a sobering thought.

  The following morning they rode on to God’s Pellets and arrived just after midday.

  From the outside, each entrance to the valley appeared only as an indent among tens of such indents and creases that led nowhere. Eight of these indents opened up to narrow canyons that led into the interior, four to the north, one to the east and three to the south.

  “How did you ever find your way in?” Ryka asked Vara in the language of the dunes as she studied the approach and failed to identify the entrance they were heading towards. But then, with her poor eyesight, she didn’t really expect to.

  “Saw wild pedes swallowed up by the rock, I did. Followed them. They were coming inside for the water and the grazing. Still do occasionally, but they use one of the northern entrances now, as far as they can get from our camp. Got some of the lads taming the herd so we can cull them every so often for mounts.”

  They rode into one of the indents, which opened out into a narrow, winding crevasse. Ryka craned her neck at the ribbon of sky above. The rock walls, fissured and cracked, towered straight up. A prison, Kaneth had said, but a trap was the term that occurred to her.

  Her heart faltered. Oh, sun-blighted damn, she thought. Having a baby makes you a terrible coward. You worry yourself sick about things that haven’t even happened yet and likely never will. She looked down at Kedri’s downy head, peeping out of the sling she wore to hold him resting on her chest. He made her feel as soft as bab mush and about as vulnerable. Just looking at him could curl her lips into a smile.

  The slim passage divided twice and finally opened out into the central valley. Her eyes widened in astonishment. She had never imagined anything like this. The valley floor was flat and green, the edges bobbled with clumps of trees. Ten miles or more in length, two miles wide, and as far as she could make out, the opposite side was just as steep and rocky as the one they had come through. These weren’t hills so much as stone walls pockmarked with cave openings and decorated all the way to the rounded knobs on top with strange shadowed holes, like the artwork of a giant sculptor.

  Mostly, though, she was overwhelmed with the feel of water all around her. The sensation was so new the hairs stood up on her arms.

  “Wither me wilted,” she murmured to Kaneth. “Everything is wet! And yet I didn’t sense any of that from outside. There’s water in the soil, did you know that? And in those grasses, too.”

  “The pedes love it. Although the wild ones never stay more than a day or two.”

  She looked around in awe. “I’ve never seen so much green. And look at the size of those trees!”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve read about places like this,” she said. “But they were always on the Other Side, not in the Quartern. And Jasper told me Russet the waterpainter says there are green places in Khromatis, too. Which is the cave with the water?”

  “The Source? There.” He pointed to a large opening several miles away to the left, one of the few places where trees did not border the rock. When she frowned, trying to see it properly, he said, “I’ll take you there.” He urged their pede in that direction. The other riders all headed to the right, where a substantial encampment had been built in amongst the trees bordering the southern side of the valley. It seemed an odd place for a camp until she remembered Reduners allowed neither camps nor pedes anywhere near a water supply for fear of contaminating it.

  “One day we should build a city here,” Kaneth said. “When we have peace and all the uncertainty is over.”

  She stared at the back of his head, dumbfounded.

  “Us? But you are a Scarperman,” she said. And I’m a Scarpen rainlord. “And this is the Red Quarter.”

  “Yes, and I’m mist-gathering, I suppose. I would never spoil this place, the valley. This is somehow sacred. I don’t know to whom or what, and I don’t care, but I do know there are some places that shouldn’t be changed, and this is one of them.”

  “So where would you put a city? Koumwards will eventually come and cover all this up.”

  “Not the valley. Look at it. It’s never been filled with sand. If Koumwards does move, I think it’ll flow around it, like the waters of a rush down a drywash parted by a rock. If a city was built on the northern side, it would be protected, too. And I don’t mean a Scarpen city, either. It has to be Reduner.” He added in a murmur more to himself than her, “There must be a way of piping the water from the Source without damaging the valley.”

  Drawing rein in front of the cave, he helped her down and they walked hand in hand up a slope of smooth stone into the mouth of the cavern. The opening was a vast maw, as tall as two pedes end to end, the roof behind it high and cavernous, the depth to the back perhaps as much as two hundred paces. The lake, the Source—according to the folk tales, the Over-god’s gift to the dunes—lay as still as the rock itself. It covered the back half of the cave.

  Letting go of Kaneth’s hand, she walked deeper inside to see better. When she looked up, she could see glow-worms in the dark recesses of the roof, steely glints of light like a thousand distant stars. When she looked down at the water, each glimmer was caught in perfect reflection.

  She knelt beside the water and cupped some in her hand to drink. The ripples raced across the surface like living things, splintering the reflections into dancing light and dark. Sipping from her hand, she drank. Cold and pure, some of the water splashed onto Khedrim’s head and he startled, jerking his arms and legs in reflex. His eyes sprang open and he wriggled, twisting in her arms, squawking like an unfledged bird responding to its parent’s return to the nest. She smiled and murmured words of comfort to him, but he turned and struggled still more. If he had been a little older, she would have sworn he was trying to wriggle out of her arms into the water.

  “Look, Kaneth,” she said, “I think he wants to dive into the lake!”

  She glanced to where he was standing, further back near the entrance, a blurred silhouette against the brightness of the outside light. He didn’t reply and his stillness seemed unnatural to her. Panicking, she hurriedly stood and strode to his side.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Memories,” he said, his voice husky. “It was here that Vara brought back my memories of you. It was here she—she altered me. Changed me from Uthardim back to Kaneth.” He reached out to grasp her hand, to draw her close and bury his face in her hair. “She saved me, Ryka.”

  “The god can cure you,” she said from where she stood, next to that cold, still lake of water in the cavern. “Come, bend over the brazier. Inhale the smoke.”

  Old, wrinkled, nearly toothless, her red skin creped like the ridged crust of a salt pan, her dark bab-kernel eyes boring into him… Was she wise or misguided? He couldn’t tell. Elmar was glaring at him, signalling him not to trust a Reduner. The herbs burning in the flames smelled pungent, heady. The dagger she wore was kept wickedly sharp and in constant use, whether trimming the point of her pede’s feet or skinning an animal for the pot. Every night by the light of the campfire, there she was, playing with that blighted blade of hers. The warriors she led were polite and wary when they spoke to her. They knew she could be a dangerous woman, for all that she was as old and wrinkled as a dried bab fruit.

  But his head ached so, and the fringe of memories tormented him, never coming into focus. Ravard’s woman, Garnet—what had she meant to him? Was the child she carried really his? He sought the knowledge, but it slipped by, just out of reach. Somewhere inside, he knew he wanted to thrust Uthardim away, together with his stran
ge abilities; he wanted Kaneth the rainlord back.

  So when Vara had beckoned to him, he’d gone. And now, in further obedience, he knelt by the brazier and bent to inhale. The smoke swirled, entered his head and he was swept away in a hazy, potent mist.

  Later—how much later?—he felt himself walking. Tentative steps, feeling his way. He was in a thick fog, strong with herb smells, too dense to see anything. He walked on, groping blindly mile upon mile through that eerie, drifting obscurity, only gaining surety when it finally thinned. Voices from the past called out to him. Long-forgotten family members, childhood friends, girls he had bedded, men he had fought, teachers he had learned from. Events jostled to be remembered; fun begged to be recalled. He ignored them all as he strove to find the present.

  His tottering steps became the confident strides of a warrior. Freeing himself of the last curling wisps entangling his legs, he emerged into a sunlit world. In the distance, Vara’s camp bustled in morning sunshine. But it had been evening when he had bent over the brazier…

  He glanced back over his shoulder, expecting to see mist; instead he was gazing into the depths of the Over-god’s cave through its huge maw. When he turned to face forward, it was to see Elmar hurrying towards him, anxiety written in every crease of his frown.

  And in his head, he was Kaneth Carnelian. Where the hell was he? What was going on? His last truly clear memory was fighting a Reduner in the Breccian waterhall.

  The Red Quarter, that was it. He was Uthardim. No he wasn’t. He was a slave. No he wasn’t—he’d escaped.

  He battled to remember his time as Uthardim. Garnet was just a name. He struggled with that. But there was something he had to remember about her… something…

  And then the horror hit him. Ryka. Blighted eyes help him, had she died there in the Breccia waterhall? He reached out to find her water, to touch her presence—but there was nothing. Just her absence. No, worse: no water anywhere. No feel of it in people or pedes or anything. He was as water-blind as a lowlevel street sweeper.

  He grabbed at Elmar, desperate for answers. “Ryka? Where is she? What happened to her? Do you know?”

  But even as he asked the question, Garnet’s face and Ryka’s melded into one. He struggled to comprehend.

  Elmar opened his mouth to say something, but Kaneth cut him short. “You lied,” he said. “She would never have stayed on the Watergatherer to have our child. Not Ryka. Not with that man. Why did you lie?”

  And that was when Elmar told him she had died. That Ravard had murdered her.

  He looked over her shoulder to the lake. “This is where I was reborn. Here is where I remembered you and lost you in the very next moment, believing you were dead, and Kedri with you.” He wanted to say more, but couldn’t. Words and emotion seemed inextricably mired in his throat, choking him. She looked away, as if she could not cope with his pain.

  Head averted, she said softly, “It’s over now. We are together and safe.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  But deep inside, he wondered.

  Ravard was still alive.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Scarpen Quarter

  Breccia City

  Breccia Hall, Level Two

  Sun Temple, Level Three

  “Where the salted wells is my green silk?” Fuming, Lord Laisa Drayman, widow of the last Highlord Nealrith of Breccia and wife of Taquar Sardonyx, rifled through clothing, most of which was heaped on the floor of her wardrobes. “And my fox fur cloak? Did the servants steal the clothes I left behind? Even some of my underthings have vanished.”

  The middle-aged woman standing behind her didn’t flinch. “I heard the hall servants got themselves killed or taken as slaves, m’lord. I doubt they had much of a chance to pinch stuff.” She shrugged. “The Reduners, now…”

  Laisa frowned, eyeing her with more attention. “Watch your tongue.”

  “You asked me something, so I answered. That’s not being cheeky, I promise you. I need this job.”

  Laisa dropped the dress she’d been holding. “You weren’t a servant here before, surely. I don’t remember you.”

  “No, m’lord. My name’s Ara. I was the wife of a goldsmith down on Level Five. When the Reduners came, he died, as did my sons. The gold was stolen, the shop wrecked. Heard there was work to be had here in exchange for food and water, so I came. Can’t say as the food is plentiful, though.”

  “We’re all hungry,” Laisa snapped. The whole city, once the richest in the Quartern, was now reliant on what help the other Scarpen cities would send, and it was infuriating.

  The door to the adjoining room opened just then, and Senya Almandine stepped in, her brows drawn together in a glower. “Mama, no one has cleaned my room,” she said in a tone of hurt perplexity. “There’s blood on the floor and the bedding isn’t clean and there’s no fuel in the water room and someone peed in my—”

  “All right, all right,” her mother interrupted, flinging up her hands in exasperation. “No more.” She nodded at Ara. “See to it that my daughter’s room is cleaned first, then mine, and that we are both supplied with water and clean linen.”

  “Clean linen?” The woman snorted at the idea, but she bobbed her head in terse acknowledgement and left, shutting the door behind her. Laisa sighed. “I am afraid it will be quite a while before things are back to normal, Senya. We have to make the best of it. Come, let’s see if we can find a meal somewhere.”

  Senya made no move to leave the room. She settled herself on her mother’s bed, her expression sour. “Why did we come here? Why didn’t we go to Scarcleft instead? It’s much nicer there. They haven’t had a war, and Seneschal Harkel will see that we’re properly cared for even though Jasper and Iani have Highlord Taquar imprisoned somewhere.”

  Laisa suppressed an unmaternal desire to shake some sense into her daughter, and regarded her with concern instead. She lacks guile… but she is far from innocent. That’s a dangerous mix. Sunlord love me, what did I give birth to?

  As if she’d noticed her mother’s flash of annoyance, Senya added in concern, “There’s not even a proper physician here to look after your arm.”

  “My arm is fine. It’s healing nicely. But I do wish you would spend a little more time thinking things through. I imagine Seneschal Harkel is dead, my dear.”

  Senya’s eyes widened. “He is? He was fine when we left Scarcleft, wasn’t he?”

  “He was a prisoner, and Lord Iani was in charge. Do you really think Iani the Sandcrazy would have allowed Harkel to live? Besides, you need to be here in Breccia because this is where Jasper will be. You two must marry very soon indeed.”

  “How can we, when that outlander snuggery girl hangs around him? He loves her, not me! She’s the one who went to Qanatend with him.”

  “I’m afraid he does, but that has nothing to do with marriage. Do you think I loved your father? Of course not. One marries for position or wealth or security, not love.”

  Senya appeared unsurprised. Instead she remarked, “I did hear she was leaving.”

  “Who? Terelle?” Laisa looked at her with interest. “Who told you? And to go where?”

  “Back to her grandfather.” She pursed her lips in thought. “Or was it great-grandfather? Or great-great-grandfather?”

  “Where did you hear this?”

  “I hung around the back of Jasper’s tent one night before the battle—she sleeps with him, did you know that? I told Lord Gold she was a whore. He promised he would see to it that she was sent back where she came from. But when he spoke to Jasper about it, Jasper was furious. He wanted Lord Gold to return with us to Breccia. Gold refused, of course, but he was in such a foul mood all the time.” Her face lit up. “He hates Terelle.”

  “You spoke to Basalt? There are times when you truly surprise me. But you have to learn… subtlety. It wouldn’t do to be caught eavesdropping.”

  Senya smiled, a dazzling smile of pride. “No one caught me!”

  Forgetting her intention to seek out food
in the kitchens, Laisa sat beside Senya on the bed. “Perhaps you should tell me all you overheard.”

  “Well, a lot of it didn’t make sense. Stuff about those waterpaintings she does all the time. Terelle was trying to make them sound important so Jasper would think more of her. But she did say something about having to go to Samphire soon—that’s in Alabaster, isn’t it?—because her great-whatever-grandfather was there. It sounded as if he was ill. And then they talked about her going to Crow-wherever-it-is.”

  “Khromatis?”

  “Khromatis. Is that the land on the other side of the White Quarter? I think I remember the name from history lessons. Lord Gold says they’re all blasphemers there. Anyway, I didn’t understand what they were talking about. None of it made sense. Oh, Jasper was worried about whether he could keep shifting clouds.”

  “That’s not good news,” Laisa said in dismay. “I did wonder how he’s managed as well as he has. Senya, there is something odd about that girl and her waterpainting.”

  “It’s just stupid stuff. She’s got sand for brains.”

  “I’m not so sure.” She stood and began to pace. “I suspect this grandfather of hers is the outlander who did the waterpaintings for us in Breccia.”

  “The ones we had in the entrance hall?”

  “Yes. Do you remember the last waterpainting we had? Of the woman riding a black pede across a white land? The woman it portrayed was Terelle, I’m sure. I finally made the connection.”

  “Really? How odd! But what does it matter?”

  “Odd things have a way of being important.” Laisa stopped her pacing and turned to face her daughter. “She took her painting things that day Jasper and Taquar had their fight in Scarcleft Hall. You were there, not me. Tell me, what did she paint?”

  “It was so silly. She started painting before they even began fighting. She did a picture of the courtyard.”

  “That’s all? No people?”