by Glenda Larke
“There’ll be trees and gardens and crops out there on the plains. When the sands cover them, the dunes folk will start again on the land that’s been uncovered.” He looked around them, and his voice was tender. “This valley will never be lived in again; it’ll indeed be a sacred place. A place to heal the wounded soul, where the sands never come. We’ll take its water, yes, to supply the encampments. We’ll even build tunnels or brick pipes to our city and to the dunes if they want.”
“The Reduners hate the idea of anything permanent on their dunes.”
“It won’t be on their dunes, but under them, lying on the solid plains. I can move sand,” he said. “I think I can gently push a hollow tube through a dune from one side to the other like a pebblemouse digging its burrow. I’ll ask the Alabasters to help with the pipe building. Jasper tells me they were the original engineers of all the tunnels.”
“And that’ll be as easy as finding sand on a dune, eh?”
He chuckled. “When are the dunes ever easy? For the moment it’s just a fancy, a wraith of an idea, something that may never happen.”
She moved closer to him, put her arms around his neck. “If that’s your future, then you must not die tomorrow. You must live to fulfil it.”
He dipped his head, his cheek to hers so she could not see his face. “There are no guarantees. I’ll be frank, Ry. I have a bad feeling about what’s going to happen. What I sense out there touches me with dread. I cannot interpret it all, but Ravard has plans and they please him. He’s laughing at me. That I know. Tomorrow one of us must die, and he doesn’t believe it’ll be him. He’s confident and amused.”
Her body fitted to his, as if they had always belonged that way: her curves, his muscles. Water to water. She whispered, “I can’t imagine a world without you.”
“You may have to live in it.”
“How could I ever start again? You were all I ever wanted from the day I turned thirteen.”
“And I was so stupid.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t credit his idiocy. “If—if I don’t come back, then my vision is passed on to you.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “Take my dream and live it, for me.”
She shook her head. “I cannot dream it without you.”
“Yes, you can. And you would, too. For Kedri, you’d have those dreams, part of them, anyway, whether I’m here or not.” He looked around. “I love you, Ryka, and I’ll do my best to survive this coming day—for you as much as for myself. And for Kedri, and the children as yet unborn. And where is that son of ours, anyway? I need to hold him.”
“Robena is looking after him. It was the only way I could stop her from hovering over Cleve like a sandgrouse guarding its eggs.”
He grimaced. “I really can’t stand that woman. By the way, I’m putting you in charge of the valley when we ride out.”
“But I’m a rainlord—I’ll be fighting.” She leaned back so she could see his face and gripped his upper arms, digging her fingers in. “You can’t do that to me!”
“God’s Pellets needs the protection of a rainlord, should we lose. What you do then will be up to you. I did consider leaving Vara behind too, but she’s already told me what she thinks of that idea.”
“And you think I won’t tell you what I think—?”
He gave a lopsided grin. “I’m sure you will. Nonetheless, it’s your task to defend this place and keep the women and the children safe. You won’t have many able-bodied men, I’m afraid. You’re the only person I can trust to do a good job with very little. To take care of Kedri. And that’s not just a statement from a fond father who wants his son to live. You know that.”
She tried to push away the horror of what might be, tried not to think of the possibilities. He was right. Someone did have to stay behind. And it had to be her.
Because I’m a rainlord. Because Kedri matters, and not just because he is our son. He’s the Quartern’s future stormlord.
“Blighted eyes,” he muttered suddenly. “What’s bothering Cleve now?”
They both turned, and sure enough, there was Cleve approaching with a determined frown that was almost a glower.
“Kher Uthardim,” he said without preamble. “Before this battle, I want to know if you will declare me Master Son.”
Kaneth stared at him in surprise.
Ryka expected him to rip into the young man for his presumption, but it didn’t happen. Kaneth turned away, hands behind his back, to stare out over the camp. Then, astonishingly, he nodded. “Very well. I’ll announce it later today.”
“Thank you, Kher. I will not fail you.”
“You will not fail the people of the dunes,” Kaneth corrected as he turned, his voice as sharp as a scimitar edge.
Cleve nodded. “I will not fail the people of the dunes.” He turned on his heel and left.
Ryka raised an eyebrow. “What happened just then?”
“You heard. If I die, use your judgement about whether to have him killed or not.”
She gaped. “What?”
“If I hadn’t granted him what he wanted, he would have betrayed us, perhaps in the middle of the battle. We couldn’t afford that. I just gave him the extra bait he needed to be loyal.”
“Kaneth, what the salted hells are you talking about?”
“Those little pieces of water of mine. If I read them right, they spoke to me of treachery. So I did what I could to prevent a betrayal we cannot afford. It seems we had two spies, not one. And this one didn’t know about the other.”
“What?”
“Two sons of Davim. Ravard must have approached them both. I felt something change in Cleve the moment Guyden disappeared. Remember how he figured out Guyden was probably Islar, the eldest of Davim’s legitimate sons? I suspect he realised then that Islar is Ravard’s favoured heir. I suspect he felt betrayed and began to wonder if he’s not better off here.”
“Are you sure? Can you be sure?”
“No and no, but it is an explanation that fits what my senses tell me.”
“Do we want such a man as Master Son? Kaneth—what if he turns on you in the midst of the battle? A misthrown spear… and he’d be the new dunemaster. And you’d be dead! Can you trust him?”
“For the moment. When he left here he wasn’t planning to stab me—or anyone—in the back. Except maybe Ravard.” He smiled at her in reassurance. “I’ll keep a watch on his little pieces of water, I promise. Even in the heat of battle. Especially in the heat of battle.”
She took a deep breath. “You can rely on me. If ever there is a need for Cleve to die by my hand for a greater good, it will happen. I’d even murder his mother if necessary.”
And that, she thought, is what war does to decency. Sunblast you, Ravard.
As they parted, she felt water vapour leaving the Source at a rate heavy enough to tell her it wasn’t a natural loss. She halted. Those two blasted stormlords: they were going to steal the water to use? Sneak it out as thin vapour so no one except a rainlord would notice?
While she was hesitating, wondering what to do, Jasper came up behind her to whisper in her ear. “I don’t want either Rubric or me to start the night exhausted because we’ve had to haul blocks of water from all over the dunes. I won’t break my promise. Fog never killed anyone. For killing water, we will raid the waterholes. I made that promise and I intend to stick to it, unless the result of doing so is too terrible to contemplate.”
“Blighted eyes, Jasper—that’s splitting sunbeams. People will die because they don’t see you coming!”
“And we’d die if they saw us coming. Which is better? Ry, neither you nor I believe in dune gods and Over-gods. There’s not going to be seven cycles of bad luck because of this. If we lose this battle, it’ll be because we don’t have as many warriors and because we listened to superstitions. However, Rubric and I will respect Reduner culture and beliefs. If armsmen see and feel streams of water coming in, it will be from the south, after we reach Dune Koumwards.”
She was unable to meet his gaze. “I suppo
se I’d rather you played with words than with lives.”
“I wonder who taught me to do that?” He walked away and didn’t look back.
That sunblasted man; he knew she wouldn’t say anything.
Ryka climbed to the top of the highest of the Pellets that evening, just before sunset. Kaneth and his army had already left the valley to assemble under the northern wall of God’s Pellets. She knew they must be there still, as it wasn’t dark yet, but the rock walls cut off all sense of their water.
The two sentries at the top of the knob were older men, beyond an age to fight. She was surprised that they could still manage such a stiff climb. “Old man I may be,” one of them said, “but I can still do my bit for the people of the dunes and Kher Uthardim.” He patted her hand in a kindly fashion. “Don’t worry, lady; the Over-god is watching over your lord. There will be a great victory tomorrow.”
Yes, but whose?
She gazed towards Dune Koumwards. She thought she could discern smoke from cooking fires smudging the air above the red sand hills, but she might have been imagining it. If she concentrated hard, she could feel water on the dune, but her sensitivity told her nothing more than that. Men, pedes, water in panniers, it all blurred together into a mere suggestion of abundant moisture, and the dune was far too distant for anyone to be seen.
Just then, unexpectedly, she felt water on the move, but not on the dune. “There’s something out there,” she said. Panic pounded her heart, although she hoped she kept it from edging into her voice. “That way.” She pointed out to the west. Neither her eyesight nor her water-sense was good enough for her to identify the source.
The sentries swung around to stare across the plains. “Oh, it’s the wild pedes. See? Look towards those pointed rocks. They’ve been hanging around for days. A large family group of cleanskin packpedes, including three pre-moult young. Kaneth had someone check them out. Must have come this far north because Ravard’s army scared them withering witless. If they reckon on drinking from the Source in the next day or two, though, they’re going to be disappointed. We’ve got this place staked up tight.”
She nodded, knowing that in normal conditions pedes ate dew-drenched plants at night, needing to drink at a waterhole only every ten days or so.
“Maybe the battle will be over by tomorrow’s end,” the old sentry said. “Then we can let them into the valley.” His smile gleamed with an anticipatory joy. If the pre-moults entered the valley, Ryka doubted they’d ever be wild again.
“Maybe,” she agreed, but her thoughts were more savage. Maybe Kaneth could be dead by the end of the day. Or Jasper. Or Vara. Or one of the other friends she had made among the Reduners.
Or all of them.
Him, too. Ravard.
She had no idea how she felt about that. Glad? Indifferent? Sad? She could not have said. All she knew was that she never wanted to see him again, and she never wanted him near her son again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Red Quarter
God’s Pellets to Dune Koumwards
Jasper, with Dibble seated directly behind him, and Kaneth on his own pede with five of his men, drove through the night at the head of their part of the army. While there was still light in the sky, Jasper had sent the cloud messages out to the southern portion of their army, and now he caught vague snatches of their water as they too moved through the darkness.
They rode in silence, twice stopping briefly to rest. Many of the men used that time to nap and he wondered how they could. He was too tense; his stomach roiled. He didn’t even want to sit still. Besides, he needed to keep his mind on the cloud.
He looked up to where it blocked out the stars. He wasn’t happy about messing with the water out of the Source, he had to admit. And if he was wrong and there really was a vengeful Over-god guarding the stuff, well, he and Rubric would be no more than pebbles and sand by the end of the night.
Towards dawn, they worked together, although they were miles apart, to drag the cloud. They settled it over the dune like a blanket covering a sleeping red giant. Only the dune wasn’t asleep. It seethed with Ravard’s men.
He felt them. Dreaming, eating, drinking, sleeping, patrolling, sitting by their pede-pellet fires, doubtless thinking of the death that could be theirs in the coming day. Men, like those he led: the frightened and the brave, the cautious and the foolhardy, the compassionate and the bloodthirsty. Men like any others. Like him. It was a travesty that they should come to this, he and Mica. They had loved one another, supported one another. They had cared.
Sunblast you, Mica, why couldn’t you listen?
He pushed the thought away. Choices had been made and he would abide by them. Hold on, Amberlyn, Terelle. I’m coming, I promise. I just have to do this first, and hope that Taquar is lulled into thinking he has me beaten…
The one thing he didn’t fear yet was death. Waterpaintings in Breccia showed him still alive and cloudshifting, paintings he hadn’t yet made true. I wonder if the Khromatians use waterpaintings to prolong lives? He’d have to ask Lord Jade sometime. He suspected she’d say no, that there were too many variables to make it a good idea.
Power is like that, and it’s probably just as well.
It was true, Rubric thought, what Terelle had told him. These folk didn’t care that Rubric Verdigris had once been Ruby Verdigris. Rubric hadn’t tried to hide it from them, but they simply weren’t interested. They judged him, yes—but not on that. No one worried that he wouldn’t be able to fight because he’d been born a woman; blighted eyes, he was a stormlord, wasn’t he? That was enough. No one tried to bed him as they might a woman, mocking him because of it.
A sprinkling of the forces were even women. Vara Redmane had done her best to break down old customs about a woman’s place in tribal society. He smiled, finding it ironic that on the dunes he would have faced more prejudices as a woman than as a man who had been born a woman.
Would he have come if he’d known that the first thing that would happen to him was that he’d be involved in a war? He wasn’t sure. He should be angry. Back in Khromatis, Jasper had glossed over a few details that he ought to have made clear, but somehow Rubric was enjoying himself too much to be enraged. It was one thing to be ordered by his father to commit a murder, quite another to help end a revolt that was tearing the dunes apart, had devastated two cities and destroyed the trade-caravan routes. This, perhaps, was why he’d wanted to be in the army of the Southern Marches to begin with.
After the battle, would he stay?
He wanted to see the Scarpen. He wanted to see his mother again, to find out how she was coping. He wanted to see Terelle and build on his friendship with her. He thought briefly of his father and Jet and Hue and of returning to Khromatis. He was still amazed at his lack of grief over his brothers. They had tormented him too long and too often; and now, when they were no more, he was more relieved than grieving. One part of him even felt grateful to Jasper for causing their deaths. He hadn’t expected that, and it shook him.
He decided then that if he could persuade his mother to stay in the Quartern, he would stay too. If she returned to Khromatis, well, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. His lips twisted in self-mockery: all his plans might end within a few runs of a sandglass and a scimitar slash across his throat, or a spear in his chest, or a zigger in his ear, although Jasper seemed confident enough that Terelle’s waterpainting of him would keep him alive.
Touching the leather and metal of the vest he had been lent, he worried; it was such primitive armour by Khromatian standards. Please God, care for this your son today, who carries your sacred water within… And forgive me for praying only when I am in danger, all right? I know I’m a hypocrite…
Damn it, how do you pray when you aren’t sure you believe in anything at all?
Just then he felt a change in the fog covering the dune ahead of him. Jasper was reworking it. He followed the alterations with his senses; the Cloudmaster was clearing a hole free of the mist, shifting it away from
Ravard’s men. They were still ringed by the white shroud of it, but the Watergatherer army itself was out in the open, its warriors able to see the sky and each other, yet not knowing what was going to come at them out of that mist. He chuckled.
They’ll feel hunted, vulnerable, unable to know how close their enemy is or from which direction we’ll come. They’ll be uneasy, nervous, as jumpy as the dunnarts we startled on our way across the plains tonight.
They reached the dune just then, and the driver of his pede urged their mount up an impossibly steep slope. Rubric gripped tight to the saddle handle, leaning forward to keep his balance. No wonder they don’t use alpiners; they would have been floundering knee-deep in sand after the first few steps.
They entered the fog, and at a signal from Kaneth he cleared a way for them. When they reached the flatter areas of the dune, they waited a quarter of a sandglass run for most of the men to top the first slope. Then Kaneth gestured to start the advance. Another signal, and drivers prodded the pedes into fast mode, while Rubric tore the fog away from immediately in front of them as they raced across the tangled vegetation of the dune surface.
The run of a sandglass, he thought, judging the distance to the first Watergatherer warriors. A single sandrun to the battle.
When Kaneth set his pede at the front slope of Dune Koumwards, he grinned. The dune sang beneath his mount, welcoming him. Ryka could talk about sand shifting and explain how one grain rubbed against another to set up resonance; Vara could speak of the voice of the dune god; Kaneth didn’t care. He just knew how it made him feel: welcome.
Should he continue to look for a man capable of being the dunemaster of all the dunes, as Makdim, Vara’s husband, had been—or should he look to himself? When he brought changes to make their future less insecure, would the people of the dunes follow him even though he was an outsider? Could he lead men to a new future and rule them justly?
Kaneth Carnelian: he’d never amounted to much, unless he was on the back of a pede with a sword in his hand. Perhaps he’d started to grow up, a little, once he’d married Ryka. But then someone had creased his skull with a spear and someone else had thrown him onto a funeral fire, and everything had changed. He’d become Uthardim. Even then, he hadn’t been much of a man, until Vara’s burning herbs and incantations had fused the two men together, Scarpen Lord and Reduner Kher, cynic and mystic, lover and aesthete.
