by Glenda Larke
Pulsating anger welled up inside Jasper, but he pushed it back down. This was not the time for rage.
"Lord Taquar," Lord Gold said in a shocked voice, "you will have to atone for this crime. Your confession is but a beginning. I shall-"
Taquar looked annoyed. "No more nonsense. Let's begin." He took off his sleeveless jacket and flung it aside. One of his guards handed him a water skin and he took a sip.
"A moment," Jasper said. "I wish to pray."
Once again he had disconcerted Taquar. The rainlord made an irritated gesture with his sword. "What possible interest could you have in prayer?"
"An admirable desire," said Lord Gold, with a glare in Taquar's direction, "and not one anyone could object to."
"Nealrith made sure I was instructed in the proper observance of rituals," Jasper said, scrupulously polite. "As we both know, the chances I will emerge from this alive are not certain. Allow me to make my peace with the Sunlord."
"Don't be absurd. Of course I'm not going to kill you." Taquar's suspicions were thoroughly aroused now. He paused, still looking for a trick, some reason for the delay, even as Jasper laid his sword aside on the ground and poured a libation from his water skin, his lips moving in prayer.
Jasper felt rather than saw the moment when the highlord made his decision. Terelle wasn't ready; she hadn't shuffled up the magic. And Taquar moved. He came at Jasper with the assured stride of a man used to fighting. Jasper dropped the water skin and grabbed up his weapon.
Taquar stopped and raised his blade in the standard salute, waiting for Jasper to cross blades. Instead, Jasper backpedaled, fast. Taquar was left standing, ready to fight-but his opponent was no longer anywhere near.
Nealrith had told Jasper several times that Taquar was the best sword fighter the Scarpen had, and Jasper's lessons had been desultory at best. If Taquar crossed blades with him, he was doomed, and he knew it. While Taquar was still staring after him, nonplussed, he turned and jogged across the forecourt to the other side.
"What the salted wells do you think you're doing?" Taquar roared at him. He was shaking with anger.
"You want to fight me, you have to catch me first," Jasper called back.
Taquar strode after him. Jasper waited until he was a couple of strides away, then darted back the way he had come. When he reached where Lord Gold and Senya stood side by side, he stopped.
"You're a coward," Senya said.
Intent on what Taquar was doing, Jasper took no notice. The highlord was following him, but this time his gait was different, telling Jasper that next time he intended to forestall any rush across the forecourt. This time he started moving while Taquar was still some distance away. He tore toward the gate, as if seeking a way out, and Taquar took off after him, rapidly catching up because he traveled the shorter distance. When Jasper reached the overman, he grabbed him in passing, then whirled around the man and raced back the opposite way. Taquar was caught unprepared, and lost ground as he reversed direction to follow. One of Jasper's Gibber guards muffled a laugh, and Taquar reddened in fury.
Terelle wasn't watching.
Good, Jasper thought. She had to get her painting finished. And he had to get himself-and Taquar-to the place she had painted… Oh, sand hells, please let her finish and shuffle up before Taquar skewers me.
Taquar hesitated.
That's right, my friend, worry about your dignity, Jasper thought, guessing that Taquar was afraid he'd look a fool if he chased his opponent all over the forecourt. Jasper didn't care for his own prestige-let everyone in the hall think he was a coward, running away from a fight; it didn't matter. He just had to stay alive.
As Taquar came at him again, Jasper raced behind Terelle, sparing a glance at what she had done as he passed. The background was detailed, but plain. She had painted it as if looking from above; that way most of the background was simply the packed earth of the forecourt. Against this, she was filling in the smudgy outlines of two men. Taquar and himself. Jasper continued on, to pause on the far side of the forecourt. He knew now where the real action of the fight was going to be.
Taquar moved toward him. "What the hell do you think you're doing, you cowardly wash-rat?" he snarled. "You intend to spend the whole day running from me?"
"He's a Gibber grubber. What else do you expect!" Tallyman said. "And this is the youth who wants to lead the Quartern? We'd be better off with a sun-fried idiot missing half a brain than a coward!"
"What's so brave about a talented swordsman who agrees to fight a novice?" Jasper asked. "Doesn't sound like bravery to me."
Taquar said, "Come on, Jasper, let's get this over and done with. You know you can't win and you know I am not going to kill you."
Jasper shot a look at Terelle. She was still painting. Taquar took a couple more steps forward and Jasper sidled away, circling the forecourt once more. Taquar made a dash, not at him, but to cut him off. Jasper raced away to avoid being boxed in against the corner of the wall, his feet scudding across the forecourt, racing for the open area near the steps to the hall building. It was a close thing. Taquar thrust out his sword to trip him up. Jasper took a flying leap over the top of the blade to slip past. The tip of the sword caught the leather heel of his sandal and he stumbled-but didn't lose his footing. By the time Taquar had whirled around, Jasper was several paces away, heading for the center of the court.
And Terelle shuffled up her painting.
She raised her head, looked straight at him, and nodded. And Taquar caught the exchange. He must have sensed something then, because he faltered. He stared hard at Terelle, trying to make sense of the silent signal.
And Jasper ran toward him, waving his sword and yelling.
The look of alarm on Taquar's face was comical. Jasper guessed it wasn't fear of him, but rather fear it was going to be difficult to avoid killing him. But at the last moment, Jasper threw himself into a forward roll, tumbling past Taquar, not at him. Taquar, about to strike at Jasper's sword, had to hold back for fear of slashing his unprotected back or neck instead.
As he came out of the roll, Jasper slashed upward and sideways. It was an awkward blow, but it hit Taquar behind the knee, slicing the tendon. His leg collapsed beneath him and he went down with an expression of appalled disbelief on his face. As the rainlord fell, Jasper knocked his sword from his hand.
Jasper stood and pointed his sword at Taquar's throat. Unfortunately, his hand no longer seemed steady and he unintentionally pinked the highlord's neck. "You've been hamstrung," he said quietly. "Stay right where you are."
Taquar lay still, but his eyes blazed his fury. No, more than that. An emotion Jasper had never seen in them before: hate. "You can't kill me," he said, his gaze never leaving Jasper's face. "You dare not waste someone whose power can help keep this land watered. I don't know how you managed to find the power to cloudshift, but I do know you dare not rely on it. You have to keep me alive and well."
The bastard. He knows that's true. Jasper did not reply. Fear prickled his skin. I ought to kill him right now. If I don't, he'll find a way to bring me down, I know it. And yet I can't.
Dibble ran to open the gate again, to let in more of his men.
Senya, who had been sobbing ever since Taquar had fallen, now ran to kneel at Taquar's side. "Are you hurt?" she asked him, her voice tremulous.
"Of course I'm hurt!" he snapped. He was rocking to and fro, clutching the sides of his upper leg above the knee with both hands.
She glared at Jasper. "How could you! Are you going to kill us all, you horrible Gibber grubber?"
"No one is getting killed," he replied, suppressing a sigh. "Your mother has sworn fealty to me, and you will return to her care. Both of you will have plenty of opportunity to show where your loyalty lies, and I suggest you avail yourself of it, Senya, because my patience does have a limit-one which is not very far away from where you stand right now."
Fortunately for his patience both Iani and Laisa came up then, with Lord Gold trailing behind, wearin
g his usual supercilious expression. Laisa grabbed Senya by the arm and pulled her away, whispering advice as they went.
"Harkel Tallyman, the overman and the rest of the hall guards are being rounded up," Iani said. He nodded in Taquar's direction. "I'll take care of him, too."
Taquar looked horrified. "Don't be ridiculous!" he yelled at Jasper. "The man will kill me as soon as he gets me alone!"
"Do you think I would wait that long?" Iani asked him.
"Lord Iani!" Lord Gold admonished. "That is not a joking matter!" He sprinkled some water on Taquar, saying, "I will see to your comfort, my lord, never fear."
"Take good care of him, Iani," Jasper said, ignoring Taquar and trying hard not to roll his eyes at Lord Gold's words. "He needs a physician as soon as possible."
Iani called to Dibble to bring a litter, then looked down at Taquar. "Dear me, that injury looks nasty. I doubt you'll walk properly again. Looks like the duffer's stroke, too. Don't you remember? Old Shamsir used to teach it to the dummies in the class-the boys who were novices or who had no aptitude for fighting. Roll and slash. You get one chance, and only one. Fail and you're dead because you'll come out of that roll as vulnerable as a pebblemouse about to be gutted for the pot. Fancy you falling for that one."
Jasper left them and walked over to Terelle. His knees felt weak. He looked down at the picture she had shuffled up: Taquar lying on the ground, blood pouring from the back of his knee; Jasper standing over him, sword in hand. "Thanks," he whispered. "It was you did that, not me."
With a rough gesture of her hand, she destroyed the picture and stood. Her face looked drawn, hollowed out with stress, yet she managed to smile at him. "We did it together," she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Red Quarter Northern dunes Dune Watergatherer Elmar licked dry lips and said, his voice cracked and husky to his ears, "We need to find water."
Kaneth, taking his turn driving the pede, didn't bother to turn around as he answered, "That's a superfluous remark if ever I heard one. Do you want to say something about your cracked ribs while you're about it?"
The rainlord had been in a foul mood ever since they had left Dune Watergatherer some twelve days earlier. The reason wasn't hard to figure out. Kaneth was furious with Garnet. Ryka. Elmar gritted his teeth, then winced. Ever since the fight with Ravard one of his teeth had been loose and painful. Not to mention the cracked ribs he'd received falling from the pede.
Kaneth might not be able to remember his own wife, but Elmar was not sandcrazy. He knew one part of the man was still in love with Lord Ryka, even when he thought she was Garnet the slave. And the thought she had voluntarily chosen to stay behind on the dune-probably still sharing Ravard's bed if the tribemaster hadn't broken his neck taking that dive from the pede-with his son growing inside her, riled Kaneth beyond measure. To make his feeling of betrayal even worse, Kaneth believed her decision had endangered all of them. Without a rainlord to find water or to sense warriors hunting them, he and all the escaping slaves were mired in trouble. Kaneth blamed her, not knowing she was blameless, not knowing she was dead.
Elmar, sick with guilt about his lie, still couldn't find the courage to confess. How could he burden Kaneth with the guilt of knowing he had caused the death of his own wife and child? Yet if he hadn't uttered the untruth, Kaneth would have insisted on trying to dig Ryka out and they never would have escaped. And she was dead. Elmar had seen the whole slope disappear into a thundering billow of sand. If the fall hadn't killed her, being buried would have. So Elmar had given voice to the one lie that would save Kaneth's life, and now he didn't know how to undo the damage.
If he finds out, he'll never forgive me. Weeping shit, how did I ever get into this mess?
They rode on in an oppressive silence, the escapees huddled behind them in the misery of thirst, their pede leading a line of animals over the sands of yet another red dune. Hot winds gusted, sending bursts of dust into their faces to abrade their skin. Grit insinuated through their hair to the scalp, trickled down their necks to lodge under their clothing, as irritating as hot sparks from a fire. I don't think I'll ever be clean again, Elmar thought. Or comfortable.
To take his mind off his misery-and that all-pervading gnawing thirst-he let his thoughts drift to the past. Elmar Waggoner, twenty-eight years old. Unsentimental, tough, a brawling pikeman with his origins in a downlevel blacksmith's house, sent to teach a few classes in handling a pike at Breccia Academy. His favoured watering hole at the time had been an all-male snuggery on Level Twenty, his favorite pastime indulging his lust, and his most profound belief that love didn't exist. Not for him. And who cared, anyway? He didn't need it.
Until he had fallen-tumbled like an amber barrel rolled down the North Way steps-head over heels, for one of his eighteen-year-old students. Worse, he had never changed his mind. It was a bitter irony that the man who had captured his heart proved to be a serial lover of women, a nipple-chaser unable to keep out of female beds, at least until his marriage to Ryka.
Do you know, Kaneth? Did you ever guess? Do you ever see something in this scarred old face of mine to tell you I'd bleeding die for you any time you asked?
Once he'd thought not. But now he wasn't so sure. Kaneth wasn't Kaneth anymore. He was Uthardim, and Uthardim was a mystery, even now that he was sensible. He still didn't remember much, but at least he did know which side he wanted to be on. And he craved information. About Taquar, and Shale who was Jasper and all that had happened in Breccia leading up to the fall of the city. Except about Ryka. He never asked Elmar to tell him about Ryka.
I liked her, you know, Ryka Feldspar. If I couldn't have you, reckon she was the next best thing that could have happened to you. But I couldn't let you stay behind for her, not when she was withering dead.
He had liked Lord Ryka, but he had been jealous, too. Sun-fried stupidity, he knew. But love was like that. You couldn't tell it what to do. And so now he ached with the knowledge she was dead-and he couldn't speak of it. Served him bleeding right.
Apart from that, they'd been lucky. Kaneth had found him in the dark on the night of the escape. In spite of the confusion, they had gathered together the slaves who had escaped. Come sunrise after that first night of riding, they'd been safely off the open plain and into the first of the dunes to the north of the Watergatherer. There'd been no sign of followers. Part of the reason had been obvious: the escaping men and women had taken many of the pedes and scattered the rest. And some Reduners had been killed in the sandslip, of course. Either Davim or Ravard would have managed to reorganize the tribes eventually, but with the camp in such a mess, men dead and injured and pedes gone, if they had indeed set out to find the missing slaves, it had been too late.
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 r
ide 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."