Stormlord rising s-2

by Glenda Larke

  "You could join us, urchin."

  Was the offer made in all seriousness or did he do it to mock? Jasper didn't know. He felt an overwhelming despair. Where was his brother? Where was the child who had cared for him as best he could? Where was that person in this man with the hardened soul and scornful words? "Mica-"

  "Mica's dead, Shale. This man here in front of you? He's Ravard. And he has no heart, no compassion, no place for affection for a long-lost brother. This-" he tapped his own chest, "-is what you got in Mica's place. This is all there is: Tribemaster Kher Ravard, Master Son of the Watergatherer. Reduner with his own tent and his own woman and his own tribe." He grinned, and there was nothing pleasant there.

  Jasper knew then he ought to kill this man. He ought to pour his water on him and then stab him with his spear while he was blinded and startled. But he couldn't. For all his words, this was Mica. He had Mica's mouth, Mica's voice, Mica's memory of their shared childhood.

  He didn't know what to do, and his indecision twisted his guts with nausea.

  "Who's the fastest, d'you think, brother?" Mica asked softly. "Can I plunge this sword into your throat quicker than you can hit me with that water, d'you think? You can't take my water, y'know. I am water sensitive enough t'stop you."

  He knows, Jasper thought. He knows I will never do it.

  And then he was forcibly reminded again that he and Mica were not the only two people in the world. A pede came crashing through the water wall, its rider crouched on its back, bloodied scimitar in his hand, his robes almost torn from his reddened body. Jasper recognized the beaklike nose and close-set eyes: Davim the Drover. Instantly, while Jasper was distracted, Mica had the blade back at his brother's throat.

  "So we meet again, Gibber boy," Davim said, and his voice was almost a snarl. "Leave him be, Ravard. This one's mine."

  "If my sword falls away from his throat, he'll act," Ravard warned, and his eyes never shifted from Jasper's.

  "He's mine!" Davim cried, and brought his pede closer to face Jasper's, on the other side from Mica.

  Jasper flicked his gaze from Mica to Davim. The brightness of the glitter in the sandmaster's eyes was fuelled by contempt and hate.

  Because I'm a stormlord. He needs no other reason.

  Mica shrugged and gave a slight quirk of his lips as if to say: What does it matter? He dropped his sword and moved out of the way. Jasper exploded the wall of water into Davim's face.

  And Iani, appearing out of nowhere, flung his dagger straight and true into the sandmaster's back. "No," the rainlord said as the blade thunked home, "you are mine, Davim. For Qanatend and Moiqa."

  For a moment, nothing changed. Then Davim's scimitar dropped from his hand and he fell forward, toppling toward Jasper. Instinctively, Jasper raised his spear. Unseated and spewing blood, the sandmaster fell against the point, impaling himself. Soaked in blood and shuddering, Jasper pushed him away. Davim slipped from the steel of the spearhead and, his eyes wide in shock, crashed to the ground. He lay there on his back, looking up at Jasper with an expression of disbelief on his face as his life dribbled away.

  "Look, Lyneth! He's dead. I told you, m'dear. I told you I'd do it." Iani lifted his head and tried to grin in Jasper's direction, but his twisted mouth drooped on one side, producing an ugly scowl instead.

  "For Citrine," Jasper said.

  Davim heard the words, but they made no sense to him at all. By the time Jasper thought to look around, he was surrounded by Alabasters and Scarpermen. Mica had gone, melted away into the fight in front of the cavern. A bullroarer sounded a moment later, and the sound was taken up in ululations uttered by the Reduner warriors.

  The scene was confused. Reduner bladesmen on foot were sprinting away. The fight was abruptly broken off all over the clearing. The Reduners were retreating on the run, their pedes with them. And everywhere Jasper's men, exhausted and wounded as they were, let them go.

  Feroze rode up, holding a piece of cloth ripped from his robe to the side of his head. His ear had been half torn off. He looked down at Davim. "Isn't that the sandmaster?" he asked.

  "Yes," Iani said. He jabbed the body over with his foot. "He's dead." He looked up at Jasper. "I think we should go after them. We need to free Qanatend, and if they are allowed to reinforce the men they already have in the city-"

  "Iani, they still number more than we do. We won because we had a stormlord and rainlords. And we are all exhausted. Look at you-you couldn't raise a drop of water from a cup in your hand. If our men go after the Reduners with us in this state, more of them will die."

  "More of us will die when we free Qanatend if we wait," he returned.

  Feroze shook his head. "If we follow them now, there's not much we can do. They can block the whole wash with a few men while the main force gets clean away. We should follow with the main force tomorrow once we have recovered our water-powers."

  "Feroze is right," Jasper agreed.

  "Who was that ye were chatting to in the middle of the battle just then?" Feroze asked, wincing as he pressed the cloth to his ear.

  "The new sandmaster of the Watergatherer," Jasper replied. "He was the Master Son until a moment ago."

  "And is he likely to be a thorn in the foot in the future?"

  When the long silence threatened to become embarrassing, Jasper forced the words out, trying to conceal the anguish behind them. "Yes. I rather think so. He also believes in a return to a Time of Random Rain. I'd like to say I could persuade him otherwise, if we were to meet again-but I suspect I would be lying."

  Oh, Mica. It should never have been like this.

  Feroze heaved a sigh, then grimaced at the pain in his wounded ear.

  The sun had set, but there was still enough light in the sky to see by, now that the storm cloud was gone. Some of the more resourceful men were already pillaging the cavern for torches and lanterns.

  Jasper, so fatigued his hands shook and he had to clench them into fists, took a moment to look around, but his head was having trouble understanding what he was seeing. The ground was littered with bodies of the wounded and the dead, their allegiance now irrelevant. Lord Gold was directing men to carry the injured into the cavern. One of the waterpriest rainlords from Pediment was methodically checking each body to see if they really were lifeless. Her clothes were torn and the whole side of her face was bruised. Several Gibbermen were walking behind her, collecting all the weapons. Off to one side, Messenjer held the corpse of Cullet, his eldest son-the one Terelle had never liked.

  She'll be glad it isn't Sardi, Jasper thought.

  Dibble was anxiously hovering at his elbow, inquiring periodically if he was injured. He shook his head. "Not as badly as you are," he replied, taking in Dibble's bleeding shoulder, cut wrist and bruised face. "Waterless skies, man, get a physician or a waterpriest to look at that shoulder. That's an order. And get someone to do a count of all my guard. I want to know how many are still fit, and how many dead."

  As Dibble left, Jasper turned to Iani and Feroze. "I'd like figures from everyone."

  Iani nodded. He spared another glance for Davim's body as he turned to go. "So much damage and sorrow," he said sadly. "And for what? Moiqa is still dead." He looked back up at Jasper. "And I don't know why I'm still alive. I never wanted to be. So many good men dead, and this stupid husk of a man with his dribble and his limp lives on. I've lost the only woman I ever cared for, and the only child I ever had. Why would I want to go on living?"

  "I need you," Jasper said simply. "Maybe that's why."

  Iani grunted. "Maybe. Maybe. Lyneth, oh, my little Lyneth. Four years in the hands of that monster…" His mumbling faded as he walked away with Feroze.

  Jasper headed toward the waterhall, knowing he had to see what was left of his pitiful army who had fought so well. Knowing he had to see who was dead and who was alive.

  The first person he came across inside the cavern was Laisa. Her clothes were torn, her chin was badly grazed from her fall, and she had a scimitar slash
across the back of her arm. A physician had sewn it up for her, and now Terelle was bandaging it with a piece of cloth torn from a dead Reduner's sleeve. They were arguing as she worked, Laisa snarling and cursing Terelle between gasps of pain, Terelle growling back, telling her to keep still. It was plain they loathed each other; it was equally plain, at least to Jasper, that each had developed a wary respect for the other that had nothing to do with esteem.

  As Jasper stood and watched, his need of Terelle swamped him. How could he ever do without her? And yet he must. If the Quartern was to have stormlords, she would have to bring them. If she was ever to be free of her waterpainted future, she had to live that future.

  As she tied off the bandage and leaned back away from Laisa, he heard her say, "Just keep your brat of a daughter out of my way. Or I might be tempted to paint her, and believe me, she wouldn't like the result." Then she looked up and saw him. She came across, both hands held out to take his. They stood like that for a long moment of silence and need.

  "What are you doing down here?" he asked. "You should have waited up at the camp."

  "I stayed there until I saw the Reduners leave. I worried," she said. "I lost sight of you in the battle. And Senya was worried about her mother. For once we found we had something in common, so we came down the slope to find you both."

  "Senya's here? That surprises me. She doesn't like unpleasant things."

  "Well, she saw Laisa was all right and then sat on a boulder at the edge of the wash and refused to look at anything. She's probably still there. I can't say I blame her."

  He opened his mouth to try to tell her how he felt. To say how much the idea of the dead and dying devastated him. To say his meeting with Mica had left him shattered, not knowing how to pick up the pieces. As usual, the words wouldn't come.

  Terelle understood. She put her fingers across his mouth, stopping the words he was trying so hard to voice. "No, Jasper," she said. "I know how you feel. I helped to paint it, remember? Watergiver help me, these-these are my deaths, too. And we will learn to live with them, you and I, in time." She took a deep breath to steady herself.

  "We won," he said, and knew he sounded foolish. "If you call this a victory."

  "It was," she said firmly. "They won't be back."

  He might. The thought was terrible. Too awful to ever put into words. How could he fight his brother? What had he ever done to Mica that he had been prepared to kill him? He knew the answer even before he formed the question, for Mica had told him. His brother saw him as joining the people responsible for their miserable childhood: the wealthy Scarpermen. The enemy of the Gibber, of the poor and wretched and waterless.

  Terelle watched him, head to one side. "You found Mica."

  "Yes. He knew who I was. He wanted to kill me. Might have done so if his pede, the sandmaster and then Iani hadn't intervened."

  She stared at him, horrified.

  He looked away, adding, "All these years I dreamed of seeing him again, of rescuing him. And when we met, he didn't want to be rescued. He wasn't a slave, but an heir. Worse, he wanted me dead. He sees me as an enemy. I owe my life to a pede, Terelle. A pede with a long memory. I once pulled it out of a flood rush down a wash. How the salted damn Mica obtained that particular beast, I have no idea, but I'll bet it isn't a coincidence… I'm babbling, aren't I?"

  "Oh, Shale. I-that's awful."

  He searched for hope in all that had happened. "In the end he didn't kill me when he could have. Maybe-maybe he found he couldn't. But I am not sure it's ended. He's the new sandmaster, and he wants to return to a Time of Random Rain. The fighting is not over."

  She was silent. There was, after all, little she could say.

  "Terelle," he said, "I'm sorry. So terribly, terribly sorry."

  "For what?" she asked.

  "For asking you to waterpaint this. For taking away your choices, yet again. For not protecting you in the first place. For-everything."

  The smile she gave was both sad and knowing. "Neither of us had much choice, did we?" She made a gesture at the carnage around them without looking at the dead. "Make me another promise, Shale. Promise me you'll build something decent out of this."

  "I promise I'll try."

  "I keep forgetting to call you Jasper. Do you mind terribly? Jasper is the stormlord. Shale-he's the person I care about."

  "You can call me whatever you want, and I'll like it. Although you could try, um, 'darling' or 'beloved' or something." He reached out and touched the tear hesitating on her cheek and a smile twitched at the corner of his lips. "Don't leave too soon, Terelle. Please."

  She shook her head, and what Jasper read on her face made him pull her roughly into his arms. She clutched at him, her embrace as desperate as his own, her needs matching his, as potent and passionate, containing all the wretchedness he felt himself, and all the hope he dared to dream might be theirs.

  They stood like that for a long time, two people loving each other, surrounded by horror, trying to make sense of it all and hoping that at the end, they would still have their love, even if all else had gone. "Mother!"

  Senya's outraged tones cut through Laisa's pain and brought her back to the present. Sighing, she gripped her elbow in a futile attempt to contain the agony of her throbbing arm. "What is it?"

  "It's that horrible snuggery girl!"

  Laisa stared at her daughter in incredulous disbelief. "We are in the aftermath of a battle and you want to complain about Terelle Grey now? Can't it wait?"

  "She's hugging Jasper, and he seems to like it." Senya's face was sour as she pointed at the subject of her ire.

  Laisa glanced that way and sighed. "So?"

  "He can't marry her, can he?"

  Laisa forced herself to coherent thought. "There would be plenty of objections. Jasper needs to have stormlord children, and your offspring offer a chance of being that, at least. You are the logical mate for him, but preferences don't carry the weight of law, you know. We can attempt to persuade him, but we can't force him."

  "I'm going to have his baby."

  "Oh." She wasn't surprised, but she had trouble grappling with the implications. She was hot and thirsty, exhausted and hungry. She needed rest and pampering, and Sunlord knew when she would get any of that. Damn you to a waterless hell, Taquar. You brought us all to this. "Then I think we shall have to make sure he will marry you, shan't we?"

  "Can we force him to?"

  "Oh, for Watergiver's sake, Senya, why would you want a husband who has been forced into marriage? No, we will entice him to do so. Easy, with someone who has an overdeveloped sense of duty. You might try being more pleasant to him, you know. If anything more is needed, we won't do it." Senya pulled a face at that, so she added, "If any further encouragement is needed, someone else will do it, not us."

  "Who?"

  "Lord Gold and the Sun Temple do have their uses. For now, you can make yourself useful and get me a pede and a driver. I want to get back to my tent."

  "Lord Iani and that awful 'Baster man are saying the pedes are for the wounded."

  "Am I not wounded? Just go get one, Senya, and leave the conversation for some other time." Left alone, she glanced over to where Terelle stood within the encircling arms of the stormlord.

  Laisa's eyelids began to droop with fatigue, then snapped open. I'll be waterless, she thought. I know where I've seen that face of hers before.

  Not in person, but in a painting. A waterpainting, in the hallway of her own home, Breccia Hall. That strange old outlander artisman had painted a girl riding a black pede across a white saltscape. Laisa had been annoyed, because it hadn't been quite what she expected when she'd asked for something unusual, unlike the artwork he had done for others. Now that she recalled the painting, it was obvious that Terelle had been the model.

  She frowned, trying to make sense of that. Sometime, I must work out what this whole waterpainting thing is about. There's a mystery there, and that girl knows what it is. But not now, not now…

&nbs
p; Tired, she closed her eyes and lay back against the cavern wall.

  She had no idea that, just over two runs of the sandglass earlier, Ryka Feldspar had done the same thing in the same spot.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Scarpen Quarter Warthago Range to the gates of Qanatend Ryka, almost unbalanced by fatigue, tried several times to leave the cavern while the battle was raging outside. The first time, she was threatened by a Scarperman who almost ran her through before he realized she was a woman with a baby; the second time she came close to being knocked flat by a blinded Reduner warrior and then trampled by a pede. Both times she retreated and watched for another opportunity. She couldn't tell who had the upper hand, and as the battle continued, she grew more desperate.

  She tried again when the sun was low in the sky, the shadows long. Nothing much had changed. The fighting was still ferocious, the thickest of it directly in front of the entrance. She edged out past the grille, flattening herself along the rock face of the cliff, her arms wrapped protectively around Khedrim. Her chosen route was interrupted almost immediately. A Gibberman pulled a Reduner from his mount and both men thudded to the ground at her feet. They'd lost their weapons and rolled across the ground like a pair of schoolboys in a fight. Only this was deadly. The Reduner had his hands around the Gibberman's throat and was choking him. The Gibberman was trying to knock him out with a rock. Ryka settled the argument by kicking the Reduner between the legs. She leaped over them both as the Gibberman finished what he had started, but she still didn't progress.

  Ahead a wounded packpede with a spear thrust into one of its eyes thrashed around in a frenzy of pain, attacking anything in sight. She took one look and retreated again. She knew she had built up a little more power after eating, but she was loath to use it on a pede. She wanted something in reserve for emergencies.

  Just then, the nature of the fight changed. At first she wasn't sure what had happened. Someone shouted, but she didn't catch the words. A cry went up, a mix of victorious elation and wails of despair. It was followed by the rhythmic thump of a bullroarer. A heartbeat later, every Reduner seemed to be moving.