Stormlord rising s-2

by Glenda Larke

  Terelle intertwined her fingers into his and squeezed his hand. Her thoughts were in such turmoil it was a moment before she could reply. "I have to go anyway," she whispered. "If ever we can work out a way for you to stormshift without me."

  "There'll be a way." He lifted their clasped hands and brushed the back of her fingers with his lips. "We'll work on my using your paintings, even when you are not here. Or I'll find a way to use the power of other rainlords, more than one of them, perhaps, to boost my own power. The way I used Taquar's. We'll find a way. Because we have to. And you'll find a way back to me. I won't let you go alone, you know."

  She smiled her gratitude, but it wobbled on her lips. Tears trembled, but would not fall. "You realize that bringing Watergivers here will upset the waterpriests, to say the least? Especially if Watergivers from Khromatis are at all like the Alabasters, and preach what they believe-that Sunlord worship is a heresy based on a distortion of history."

  "Wouldn't priests rather find the truth of history than believe a lie?" Jasper asked.

  "Are you scoffing me? No, they wouldn't. This is their faith we are talking about. Besides, people believe the silliest things at the best of times, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. In the snuggery, the girls used to use an expensive cream to make their skin fairer. It never made the slightest difference, but they kept on using it. They thought anything that cost that much must be good."

  He sighed. "You're right. Basalt taught me about the one true faith, and he believed all sorts of stuff that sounded like dubious nonsense to me." He looked back at the sky and his face changed. "The time is right," he said.

  "Take care," she said, her heart leaping with fear.

  He signaled to the waiting men and they mounted their pedes. Dibble came forward with the pede he was to drive for the stormlord. Jasper smiled at her as he mounted. "Dibble and my guards and Laisa are all pledged to bring me through this alive."

  Laisa? She wanted to ask him if he trusted her, then decided she was probably a wise choice. Laisa liked her comfort, and if Jasper was the only way they were ever going to return to plentiful rain, then she would do her best to make sure he lived.

  The bladesmen on foot assembled behind the pedes, checking their rudimentary armor, their weapons. Those on pedeback took up their spears and loosened their scimitars in their scabbards. All of them-bar Dibble and Jasper on their pede-stayed behind the rim, out of sight of the Reduners.

  Terelle edged up to look down on the Reduner camp and cavern. She saw the water the moment it left the entrance. A long snake, the thickness of a pede, it slithered out of the cistern above the heads of Reduners, and swung up into the sky. She shivered. This was the crucial moment. If Davim ordered the release of thousands of ziggers now, all their plans would falter and probably fail. Jasper had to work quickly.

  She glanced to where he sat, cross-legged on his saddle. His face was impassive, giving no hint of the turmoil of his thoughts, or the strain on his body. She felt it, nonetheless. His water was turbulent inside him.

  The great snake looped across the Reduner camp, still dragging its tail out of the cistern opening. Jasper parceled out some of the water from its head, molding it, curving it, keeping it smooth to give it the mirror-like qualities he wanted. At the same time he was splitting the rear end of the snake up into great rafts of water. The mid-section he made into a cloud, which he then pushed skyward, controlling its passage so as not to block the sunlight. He was hoping to send it high enough to make ice.

  He moved the water-mirrors into place and angled them toward the sun. Almost simultaneously light dappled the cliff opposite. Jasper tilted the mirrors more, shafting reflected sunlight downward at the camp. Terelle saw Reduners fling up their arms against the brightness, or look away. She saw some of them running, and her heart sank. They were going for their zigger cages. They must have received the order to release them.

  Jasper didn't notice. He'd already brought the first of his water-rafts down toward the rim and held it there, a block of water with no obvious boundaries to stop it flowing away, hovering a hand-span in front of where he stood. The men around him were ready and waiting. They seized the pede segments at their feet and floated them on the water-raft. They worked fast, silently, focused.

  He did that, she thought. Jasper. With the force of his personality and the briefest of training, he had molded a group of undisciplined Gibbermen into a unified, efficient team. By the time the first raft was crammed with segments, the second raft was already in place to be loaded and Jasper was maneuvering the first one away from the rim. It sailed across the Reduners, water sloshing a little when he briefly failed to keep the integrity of an edge. Men looked up, faces reflecting their wary incomprehension.

  The first row of Scarpen and Gibbermen fighters, led by Iani and the rainlords on pedes, started carefully down the scree. Before long, though, the descent degenerated into a slithering rush as men fell, pedes speeded up and loose shale cascaded. Noise crescendoed as men and rocks and pedes rampaged down the slope together. Jasper and his personal pedemen guard, Lord Laisa, Senya and Terelle stayed where they were. So did the Alabasters under the leadership of Feroze.

  Below, men ran and shouted, loading their zigtubes. It was going to be close. Too close. One man lifted his hand to gesture at the sky. Others aimed their zigtubes in the general direction of Jasper and his men, then winced as they were blinded by sunlight. More men poured from the cavern carrying zigger cages. Terelle fixed her gaze on the first of the rafts where it hovered over the middle of the open ground in front of the waterhall. She saw the moment when it fractured as if torn asunder from beneath. Water cascaded. The pede segments, filled with thousands of pebbles and sharp-edged stones, toppled. As they fell, tumbling over and over, they spilled their lethal cargo.

  To Terelle, it appeared to happen in slow motion. She watched as water and stones showered the men below. Reduners gazed upward, realizing their danger too late. She saw that frozen moment when no one seemed to understand the reality of the coming rain of death. Then the scene broke into a chaos of anguish and pain and screaming. Men collapsed, dead, injured, unconscious, she couldn't tell which. Pedes bolted for the safety of the cavern, ramming people aside as they fled.

  Emotion crushed Terelle, making breathing difficult. The horror had arrived.

  Near at hand someone screamed, "Ziggers!" She heard the buzzing whine, yet could not drag herself away from the horrible fascination of what she was watching. The second, third and fourth rafts were over the Reduner camp now. Rocks spilled on the people below. Reduners toppled as they raced for the safety of the waterhall. She saw zigger cages smashed, and hoped desperately the freed beetles would be wiped out by falling water. Next to her, one of the men who had been loading the rafts clutched at his eye and fell screaming to the ground. It was Laisa who killed the zigger burrowing deep in his eyeball, but the man went on screaming until one of his companions could stand it no longer and clubbed him behind the ear with a rock.

  Terelle vomited her last meal.

  "Wait here 'til it's over, Terelle," Jasper yelled. What if he never comes back? The thought made her want to throw up again, but she could not stop herself watching.

  Jasper turned from her toward the Alabasters under Feroze, and at his nod, they sent their mounts over the rim. Dibble prodded their mount and they plunged downward with the Alabasters in a moving tide of dust and sliding scree, Laisa's beast close on one side. Senya had remained behind, where she pointedly ignored Terelle.

  Just as the riders reached the bottom, arriving immediately behind those on foot, the rainlords combined their power to throw the water from the mirrors at the Reduners regrouping in front of the broken cistern grille. As still more Reduners poured out from the cavern, Jasper shattered the last two rafts. A shower of pede segments, rocks and water struck the ground in front of the entrance to the mother cistern, the sound as loud as anything Terelle had ever heard in her life. The last of the tents were flattened
. People were knocked flat. Tethered pedes curled tight into balls, legs tucked away, eyes shuttered and heads deep within the curvature of their bodies. The Reduners who survived the assault from above advanced to meet the first men to reach the bottom of the scree.

  The ziggers stopped coming. Terelle looked up in the sky. More clouds were forming, far above her head: black, angry storm clouds. Stormbringer, she thought. They used to call stormlords stormbringers. She scanned the ground. So many dead. So many injured. I never wanted to do this. I never wanted to have to hurt anyone.

  She had painted the mirror and the rafts. She had painted the stones falling. And if asked, she would do it again.

  ***

  Hidden under the water of the cistern, Ryka could not understand what was happening. The water was moving. Not the gentle flow as it drifted sluggishly from one cistern to the other, but fast. As if there was a massive hole in one end of the cistern, sucking out the water. She leaped to her feet in a panic, Khedrim in her arms, and pushed water away from them both. What was going on?

  Anina had not returned to tell her the search was over, even though the Reduners must surely have had time to search the entire cavern and surrounding hills half a dozen times over. Khedrim had woken and fed, and it had taken an age to get him back to sleep. He'd fretted and cried and squirmed, and she had been afraid someone might hear.

  But no one had come. And now, with the baby asleep again at last, the water was being pulled out of the cistern. Panic subsided almost as soon as it began. If water was moving in unexpected ways, then it had to be at the very least a rainlord who was responsible. And more likely the stormlord.

  She widened out her air space, placed Khedrim gently on the floor, and clambered up the rough edges of the cistern until she could peek over the edge.

  What she saw took her breath away.

  A long whirling tress of water emerged from the cavern and climbed steeply. Outside in the sunlight, men were gathering, fully armed, many of them with their pedes. Most of them were looking upward and shouting. It was enough to tell her no one would be worrying about her for a while.

  Jasper, when you do something, you don't do it by halves, do you?

  She nodded in approval as she picked Khedrim up and tucked him into her clothing. A moment later she was back in the store cave. The jars had all been moved around as if the place had been thoroughly searched. She laid Khedrim down on the floor out of sight, still wrapped tight in the coverlet, and then ventured out once more into the main waterhall.

  Reduners milled around just inside the entrance, but none of them glanced her way. Some were intent on what was happening outside; others were filling their zigtubes from the zigger cages stacked along one wall. She had an almost overpowering urge to run back to Khedrim, to cower down behind the jars with him in her arms. She was a mother and it was her job to protect her child. Kaneth's child.

  Without rain, there is no future for your son, her sensible, reasoning side said in her head. You're a rainlord. It's your duty to fight Davim to stop what he's doing because, if he wins, the Scarpen is doomed. Not to mention the Gibber and the White Quarter. And your son.

  "Oh, shut up," she muttered, but in her heart she knew the rainlord side of her was right. Fortunately for her own peace of mind just then, she saw Anina sneaking into the cavern and signaled for the slave woman to join her.

  "The Scarcleft's forces are attacking?" Ryka asked.

  "Yes!"

  "Where are the rest of the slaves?"

  "They're up in the small cave where the water inlet is. You have to climb up the cliff a bit to enter."

  "Can I get up there?"

  She shook her head. "Not without being seen. And there's no way out. The water is funneled in through the roof from the valley above."

  Ryka dithered. Risk joining the others? Or was there more of a risk in staying? What if her hiding place was discovered? Even as she wavered, she hated her indecision. Sunlord blast it, does being a mother turn you into a shilly-shallying sand-brain?

  "Where's the baby, my lord?" Anina asked.

  She made up her mind. "Back in the store cave. He's just been fed. Can you lie there with him? If this goes badly, if the Reduners win and I don't make it, try to pass him off as your own."

  Anina nodded, her eyes wide with apprehension.

  "My real name is Lord Ryka Feldspar of Breccia. Remember it. If the Scarpen forces win, go to any of the rainlords and mention that name."

  "Yes, my lord. Just-just in case." For a moment they stared at each other, in a silent sharing. Neither of them mentioned how Anina was to feed a newborn if Ryka died. There was no point.

  As Anina turned away, Ryka pushed her maternal instincts into the back of her mind and crept along the wall, still unnoticed by any Reduner, toward the zigger cages. When she was close enough, she grabbed up a cloth covering one of the cages and wrapped it around her head and lower face. Then she edged away and sat huddled against the wall as if she was just another slave woman, scared out of her wits by all that was happening.

  Salted damn, there are so many of the little bastards. She reached out with her senses and began to draw out their water, one by one. The moisture she removed from the cage, so that the manner of their deaths would remain a mystery.

  A short time later, just outside the cavern, light flashed, then steadied. She blinked in surprise. The area was lit up, suddenly bright. More puzzled than frightened, she stood to see better. The Reduners outside, half-blinded, were ducking their heads or raising their hands to shade their eyes.

  Blighted eyes, what is going on?

  And that was when the skies opened up and water, rocks and pede segments came crashing down. When she recovered from the shock, she wanted to rejoice, to laugh at Jasper's ingenuity, but part of her also saw the blood, and the broken bones, and the slaughtered young men.

  Oh, Jasper, she thought. Your brother is out there somewhere. I wonder if you know it?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Scarpen Quarter Warthago Range Jasper, amazed, found himself still on the back of the myriapede when he reached the level ground. Gripping the mounting handle until his fingers ached, he'd muttered, "I will not fall, I will not fall," all the way to the bottom. The slide of scree built up as they descended, and they arrived in a welter of rock and choking dust.

  Not everyone fared well. At the base, a young Gibber youth was sitting on the scree, rocking to and fro, clutching the top of his shin with both hands. A bone poked out through torn flesh. At least one white pede had lost its footing and tumbled, spilling men from its back like bread from a basket. One man had died, impaled on his own spear. The pede thrashed, scattering stones and bellowing in pain.

  Jasper wrenched his gaze from those around him to the scene in front. On the flat land the first warriors down were holding their own, just. Some of the Reduner forces had taken shelter in the waterhall, others were dead or wounded. Even so, Jasper stared at the number of men attacking and was appalled. From the bottom of the scree it looked like a solid wall of steel and men was waiting for them. But no ziggers. Be grateful for that.

  He needed to see better.

  "I'm going to stand," he shouted in Dibble's ear.

  Dibble nodded.

  Jasper grabbed up the extra spear racked along the pede's side and stood. With his feet hooked under the segment handle and the spear haft slotted into the groove carved into the carapace for the purpose, he had some stability and he could see better.

  There was water everywhere, most of it too muddy for him to use. He cursed his limitations and left the puddles for the rainlords. He was forced to reach further away for the clean water trickling into the cistern.

  The fighting was frenzied. Ignoring it as best he could, he pitched water balls, hard, into faces. A moment's inattention, a hesitation-on a battlefield, men died for that. Dibble and other members of his personal guard knew what to expect this time around. Thrusting spears jabbed, scimitars swept the air in brutal savagery, me
tal clashed on metal. Pedes reared and keened. Feelers whipped through the air distributing indiscriminate carnage. Injured men screamed and moaned. Maimed men died under pede feet. Jasper didn't kill, but knew more men died on the battlefield because of him than any other single warrior could have dispatched.

  The screams. Ah, sweet water, those screams. He would hear the echoes of them for the rest of his life. The blood-it was everywhere. His scimitar was clean, yet he was spattered.

  A Reduner tried to climb up the pede to slice at his feet. He panicked and threw so much water at him the man had to drop off in order to breathe. A red-robed bladesman on foot leaped for Dibble's reins and yanked. The animal objected and, before Dibble had time to react, it opened up its mouthparts and squeezed the attacker's head in the vice of its feeding pincers. Jasper watched, horrified, as the Reduner's skull was crushed. And then his personal horror just became part of the swirling, chaotic hell around him. Blood, smells, screams and fear-all merged into a single, featureless coalescence of revulsion and terror. He fought on in his own way. Manipulating water. Throwing it. Saving lives sometimes, causing death often. Until he was beyond terror, beyond horror, without thought or humanity or reason. Don't think. Don't care. Don't feel. Not now.

  Still later-moments? A sand-run? Two?-he looked about and saw more of his own men than Reduners. The invaders were being beaten back toward the waterhall or further down the gully. Simultaneously, the knowledge appeared to hit them like the shudder of wind through a grove, and Reduners turned and fled. Those left behind fought on for several more minutes until the whir of a bullroarer sounded. Pedes wheeled, men on the ground scrambled to pull themselves up behind the drivers, all of them racing back to regroup across the cavern front, the cliff at their backs.

  "Are you all right?" he asked Dibble. "You saved my life a couple of times back there."

  The man turned to grin at him. He dabbed at a cut on his hand, saying, "That's my job, my lord."