by Glenda Larke
With the formalities finally out of the way, including the ritual offering and acceptance of water, Granthon turned to the reason that the Reduners had crossed the Warthago Range and the Sweepings to come to Breccia. "Well, Kher Bejanim, old friend," he said, "what is it that causes you to honour my city with your presence?" He stirred uneasily. His joints did not take kindly to sitting cross-legged on a carpet. I'm too old for this, he thought.
"Not a happy ride, m'lord. Our waterholes are little more than mud wallows. My brother, the Sandmaster, wishes to remind you of the ancient handclasp between the people of the Red Quarter and the stormlords of the Quartern. He says to inform you that the tribes of the Red Quarter have kept their clasp tight."
"Indeed they have. They are an honourable people." A lie, that. The Reduners were renowned more for their breaking of promises than for the honouring of them. However, Granthon was well aware of the terms of this particular agreement-the scribes of Breccia Hall had written it down even if the Reduners had not-and it was true that the Red Quarter had followed most of its clauses. They'd promised not to raid the other quarters as they had done with terrifying ruthlessness for generations. They'd acknowledged the cloudmaster as the head of all the Quartern with certain rights to taxes and privileges. In return, they'd received regular rain at places specified by the Reduners themselves.
Granthon added smoothly, "We, too, have followed the agreement."
Kher Bejanim's red face flushed still deeper in colour. "Not so. Our water is too little."
"We promised regular rain in sufficient quantities. We have done that. You do not thirst."
"No, not yet," Bejanim admitted. "But if the next storm around my dune's main waterhole was but a week or two late, the result would be unthinkable."
"Kher Bejanim, I'll not lie to you. I cannot maintain previous levels of rainfall, not when I have to do it alone. The reduced levels will continue until such time as another stormlord is found. This is not negotiable. I do not have the strength for it to be any other way. My reduced storms are still more dependable than rain based on the vagaries of nature. Believe me, you do not want a return of the Time of Random Rain."
The four men were silent and motionless.
"This is not good news," Bejanim said finally. "It grieves us."
Granthon found he had to suppress an involuntary shudder at the flint he heard in Bejanim's tone. He said quickly, "Even as we speak, our rainlords scour the Gibber for new blood to restore our ranks. We have every confidence of success."
"Cloudmaster, I hope you're right." More levels of meaning there, stacked one on the next. Bejanim gave a fleeting glance at the man next to him before continuing. "You've been honest with us; I'll be honest with you. We older tribesmen, those of us from dunes that follow the traditions closely, are losing control of some of the younger pede hunters and drovers on other dunes. They are angered by the diminishing rain. They blame you city dwellers. They speak of returning to the old ways."
"Old ways?"
" 'Free of the Scarpen harness' are the words they use. Free to raid and plunder when they feel like it."
"Free to steal water."
"Yes."
"They would be worse off."
"I believe you. But the young, as ever, prefer action to waiting. I am not sure how long the wisdom of older heads will prevail. Take this as a warning, Cloudmaster, meant in friendship, not as a threat uttered by an enemy. Do not cut our water any further. Ever."
Granthon's heart sank as he bowed his head in acknowledgement. He knew the links between the dunes were even looser than those between Scarpen cities. There was an overall leader-traditionally the sandmaster of Dune Scarmaker-but he had little way of enforcing his rule unless there was consensus to begin with. "I will take an oath," he said carefully, "that I will never cut the Reduners' water one drop more than I cut that of Scarpermen. We will live or die together, Kher."
Once again there was a long silence. Then one of the older tribesmen spoke, a shrivelled ancient called Firman, if Granthon remembered correctly. "There be old story among drovers," he said, his desert accent thick, his words clipped short, "telling of nomad, name Ash Gridelin. Learned water-powers from Watergivers, became first stormlord."
"We have the same story," Granthon said, "although we believe there was but one Watergiver, Ash Gridelin himself, who now sits at the right hand of the Sunlord. Our waterpriests pray-"
"Pah!" Firman said dismissively. "What they know, men living inside dried mud, never feeling sand beneath feet? Watergivers not gods."
Granthon gave Bejanim a questioning look.
Bejanim looked embarrassed. "It's a legend of our people. In it, the Watergivers are many, not just a single god. It says they live in a place where there's all the water you could ever want-"
"I understand there are many such places," Granthon said, "across the Giving Sea. Unfortunately for us, people live there already."
Bejanim ignored the interruption. "The story says that the Watergivers have power over water, but that they hide their land from the greed of the thirsty. That there are guardians who prevent us from ever finding them or their land. Some think the shimmering sand-dancers of the plains are in fact the guardians, dancing to lead a man away when he strays too close to the paths that lead to the Watergivers' land. The tale says that the Watergivers took pity on Gridelin when he was lost and admired his courage so they gave him the power to be a stormbringer and cloudbreaker. They sent him on his way and hid their land again. Legend has it that someone will find the Watergivers once more, when the need is at its greatest. In the past, some of our young hotheads have searched. None ever returned. It's said that one must find the key to the guardians first."
Granthon hid his irritation. "The story might be of more value if it told us where to look."
"Be wisdom to listen old stories," Firman said. The words were bland, but the tone was layered with contempt.
"I do," Granthon replied. "But I can't see how this one helps us."
Firman grunted, barely concealing his disdain for the Cloudmaster.
"More water?" Bejanim asked, proffering the jug. When he emerged from the tent some time later and straightened his tired body in the full heat of the afternoon sun, Granthon felt the grip of panic around his heart. How long could he hold on? He could feel power slipping away from him like water disappearing into desert sand.
Sunlord, he thought, is that how you will end our era, having us slain by ziggers wielded by renegade nomads? The thought was more a prayer for mercy than an accusation.
Oh, Ethelva, I have loved you so. And now I cannot even protect you from what is to come.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gibber Quarter Wash Drybone The distance shimmered in dance. From afar, the figure plodding across the Gibber Plain stretched and split and rejoined, now an elongated giant, now several thin-limbed sand-dancers. But there was no one to see it, no one to note that the illusion was larger than the reality: a boy of thirteen or fourteen, on foot, lugging a sack of resin on his back. Far beyond him, the sand-dancers swayed and cavorted…
Shale had spent three days collecting out on the plains; now he had run out of water and was desperately thirsty. He shifted the weighty sack from left shoulder to right. The harvest had been good and the resiner would pay him well. It riled Shale that he couldn't sell direct to the caravanners; he would get more tokens that way. But then, maybe not. Caravanners would try to cheat him. Besides, the resiner would make life unbearable, maybe even go to his father. No, it was better this way, at least for the time being. The last thing he wanted to do was rile Galen.
After the unexpected rush down the drywash, a full year ago, his father had hated him with renewed vigour, even though he rarely raised a hand to him any more. Shale was as grateful as he was puzzled. Surely his father could not fear him as some sort of shaman simply because he had sensed the coming of the rush.
He stopped for a moment, long enough to taste the air with his senses. He had been f
eeling water from an unexpected direction for some time now. Wash Drybone Settle was ahead of him, in the south-east. The Giving Sea was to the south, a long way off, but large enough for him to feel its water as a vague mistiness. What he felt now, though, was to the north and it was coming closer. It wasn't a cloud this time, he was sure of that.
Uneasy, he turned to study the horizon behind. It was never wise to travel alone on the plains; some who travelled the desert regarded a lone fossicker as prey. And Shale had a sack of resin, laboriously collected from gummy plants, drop by precious drop. He strode on, quickening the pace a little in spite of his fatigue and thirst. He would be glad to reach the safety of the wash. In a wash, one could hide.
By the time he dropped down into the dry riverbed about two sandglass runs later, he was staggering with the light-headedness of water deprivation. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and it took physical effort to detach it. In spite of his disorientation, he took care to hide the sack in amongst the rocks. The water on the move was much closer now. From this distance, he could not differentiate water in jars, water in people or water in animals, so the presence he felt could have been a wild herd of pedes-rare outside of the Red Quarter but not unheard of-a caravan on the move or even people on foot. The latter he doubted. Whatever it was, it was moving fast and there was a lot of water present.
He ignored its approach and attended to his more immediate needs. He crouched for a moment and cast about for water close by. Concentrated.
A feeling, an awareness. Not something he could explain. It was just there: knowledge that there was water to be found a short walk up the wash. When he arrived at the place, the knowledge was even more pressing and he could narrow down the position. About five hand spans deep, there was a pocket of water caught in a basin of rock. He would have to dig down for it, but he had expected that. He set to work.
By the time his thirst was sated a little later, he could sense more about the form of the approaching water: some myriapedes with mounted riders, and two larger packpedes. A strange combination. Usually in a trade caravan there were far more packpedes, burdened with supplies and goods, than there were myriapede hacks. They were approaching fast; and once they hit the watercourse, if they wanted to reach Wash Drybone Settle they would have to pass by him, perhaps even descending into the wash to follow the path.
He was filling in the hole he had made when one of the stones he had uncovered caught his eye: a pebble polished smooth by aeons of tumbling along in the sand-filled waters of the rush; green coloured but flecked with blood-red streaks. He spat on it and rubbed the spit over the surface. The wetness made the green sparkle and the veins within gleam with ruby fire.
Jasper! he thought. His heart slipped, unbelieving. He'd seen such gems before; not raw like this but polished, in the rings and brooches the Reduner caravanners wore. His disbelief leaped into delight and hope. A fine jasper piece would buy him-no, buy the whole family-enough water for days. Caravanners paid well for good gems.
And they might steal 'em, too.
His head jerked up and he scanned the air once more. The moving water was closing the gap.
His stomach clenched as he enclosed the stone in his fist and ran back to where he had left his sack. A rough heap of boulders made it a suitable place to hide and he hunkered down, confident he was difficult to see. His smock, given to him by the palmier and much mended by his mother, blended in with the pale ochre of the rocks.
It never occurred to him that there were men who could sense him the same way he sensed them. That to such a man, a dirty desert urchin among the sand-eroded rocks was a body of water in a desert, and worth investigating. Their water approached.
He peered through a narrow crack between the boulders, to see that they had already descended into the wash and would pass not more than a few paces from where he crouched. They had slowed down to a walk, probably resting their mounts now that they had found the path up the drywash. He stayed where he was, unmoving and silent, secure in the knowledge that they would be unlikely to catch a glimpse of a dust-covered boy blending into a background of dust-covered boulders.
As they passed, his jaw dropped. He had never seen such people. These were no Reduner or 'Baster traders. Nor were they marauders.
The first to ride past were armed men on several myriapede hacks. On the first mount, one man stood on the back of the beast, perfectly balanced, holding the reins in one hand and an upright spear in the other. The base of the spear was slotted into a niche on the pede; a flag marked with colours fluttered from the haft. The point of the spear was wickedly sharp. At his back stood another man, similarly armed, facing the opposite way.
Shale had never seen such a thing. Two men standing upright to ride the same pede? They were dressed oddly, too. 'Basters wore white to match their salt-white hair, salt-white skin and salt-white pedes; Reduner caravanners were red men dressed in red. Some said the Red Quarter stained everything red that came its way, whether men or clothes or water.
These men were different. They had pale but not white skin, and golden or light brown hair, and they wore plain white loose trousers that gathered in at the ankle, with loose white tunics over the top. Their only ornamentation was an embroidered mark on the breast of the tunic. Their mounts were unadorned: no embroidery, no lace, no carved history, nothing apart from the same mark etched on the back segment with a number below. They all wore hats of woven palm fronds, but shaped differently to the red headgear of the people from the Red Quarter-these were broader brimmed, hardly the sort of headgear worn by people used to fast riding or accustomed to battle.
Shale stared and wondered.
His wonderment grew as he saw the next group of riders. In front were five adults, seated cross-legged on myriapedes. These animals were embroidered and ornately fringed; the saddle cushions were stuffed and equally ornate in their lace and straps. The riders themselves were plainly dressed, resembling the two guards in front except that they had no coloured marks on their robes. Two of them were women mounted on the same pede, both wearing hats draped with veils to exclude the sun and dust. Shale's eyes widened at the fineness of the clothes they wore, the fairness of their skins and the lightness of their accents. He was more thrilled than frightened, his excitement tickling his imagination, as stimulating as water trickling across his skin. Behind them on another myriapede were six boys and two girls mounted behind a man. They looked like Gibber folk, and he guessed they were all a little younger than himself.
As the two women passed, they chatted. He could barely understand them.
"Not much further," one said.
"What do we know about this place?" the other asked.
"Nothing," the first replied, her tone sour. "Another dirty hole in another dusty drywash."
Beside them, one of the men said, "May I remind you that it was just such a hole in a wash that produced no less than four water sensitives just six days ago? One of whom is a potential rainlord."
"Not one of them has stormlord potential," the second woman pointed out. "Not one. Sunblast it, a year on the saddle, Nealrith, and no new stormlord to show for it, not even at Wash Dribarra."
"We haven't finished yet, Laisa."
"No, damn it."
Shale heard, but hardly understood. The accents were too strange, the voices far from the guttural tones he was used to hearing.
They passed out of his view and it was a moment or two before several more riders appeared, all dressed similarly but riding mounts with less decoration and no fancy saddles or bridles. Servants, Shale guessed. Or guards. Some of them were armed. He knew about servants and guards from the Reduner caravans.
The next animals that came into his line of sight were two packpedes. Much larger than myriapedes, they were laden with baggage and a single rider on the first segment. The dozens of pointed feet undulated like a fringe lifting in the breeze, leaving the characteristic holed tracks in their wake.
There was one final rider yet to come. He had d
ropped behind. Shale remained hidden, waiting for him to pass, and he came into view a short while later. Not a servant, this one, Shale decided. He would have thought the same even if he had not noticed the decorated saddle and the inlaid bridle. There was something about the man himself. A regal assurance, the aura of a man who was certain of himself and of his power. Unlike the others who had passed by, he was swarthy, dark enough to be a Gibberman, with deep brown hair tied back at the nape. His face was sharp-planed, handsome, shrewd. There were no crinkle lines at the edges of his eyes; he was not a man who laughed much.
He reined in opposite Shale and sat motionless on his mount. Shale found himself holding his breath in growing terror. He saw boxes strapped to the back of the mount: zigger carriers. Shale knew about ziggers, too. All Reduner caravans were armed with ziggers, and most of the caravanners had a reputation for being willing to use them if they felt threatened. Still clutching his jasper, he dug the fingers of his free hand into the soil, as if holding tight to the earth would save him.
Slowly the man on the pede turned his head and stared right at the rocks where he was hidden.
It should have been impossible for the man to detect him. Shale had moved nothing but his hidden fingers, had not made a sound, and the slit he used as a spy hole was no more than a sliver of space between two boulders. And yet he knew, beyond doubt, that he had been seen.
"Come on out," the man said. His voice was deep, pleasant to listen to, like the regular booming of night-parrots. It contained no hint of threat, yet the command countenanced no refusal.
Slowly, Shale stood and stepped out from behind the boulders.
The man looked him up and down without expression. "You are from Wash Drybone Settle?" he asked.
Shale nodded.
"Answer properly, boy. You may address me as 'my lord.' " No anger; it was a neutral statement.
Shale stumbled over the word, not sure he understood. "L-lord?"