The Last Stormlord s-1

by Glenda Larke

  "So how did you find me?"

  "I walked the streets until I sensed your water."

  She was dumbfounded. "You can recognise me by my water?"

  He didn't reply.

  "That's a stormlord skill."

  "Ah-well. You know my powers have always been damned unpredictable. I can't do it from very far away, and not for anyone else. Just you. And don't ask me why, because I have no idea. I've been able to do that since we were children. Remember how I used to always know what you were up to?"

  "Oh! That explains a lot. It used to drive me crazy."

  "Which is why I never told you how I knew. I was glad of the skill tonight, because quite frankly, Scarcleft Hall was the last place I thought of looking. I was on Level Three, and I thought I must be imagining things when I sensed you up there. Although I suppose I should have guessed, the way you were fluttering your eyelashes at Taquar when we were in the Gibber Quarter. What the pickled pede do you think you are doing, going to Scarcleft Hall at night? Don't you know what sort of reputation he has with women?"

  "Fluttering my eyelashes? I do not flutter my eyelashes! How dare you insinuate-" She halted, flustered by her recollection of how-eyelashes notwithstanding-she had at least tried to arouse Taquar's interest in her. Then her fury exploded at the last of what he had said. "And as for reputations, what about yours? I hear far more about Kaneth Carnelian's acquaintance with every snuggery girl from Breccia to Breakaway than I do about Taquar's! You are utterly insufferable!"

  "Maybe, but that still doesn't explain what you were doing there. You can't think of marrying Taquar, surely. Even you can't be that foolish. You do know he has never sired a child, don't you, although it hasn't been for want of trying, believe me."

  "Even I? Sunlord save me, but you are insulting, Kaneth." Inside she thought miserably, Damn it, am I the only person who didn't know Taquar was sterile?

  "Only when you deserve it."

  She winced, and he changed his tone, suddenly gentle. "By all that's water-holy, what is it with us? Ryka, we used to be such good friends. What happened?"

  She looked at him, straining to see his face in the dim light. "You really don't understand, do you?"

  "No, I don't."

  He sounded so genuinely mystified, she took him at his word. "Bedding a string of hussies and snuggery girls may be forgivable when you are eighteen and as randy as a street cat surrounded by a crowd of fluffy felines on heat. It even has a certain youthful charm. But in a man of thirty-five or so, it's just… vulgar. Immature. Tawdry. It makes me sick. And the idea that I am to be just one in that string makes me feel dirty. As though I am a body to be enjoyed, but never a mind to be respected. Or a face to be admired, or a friend to be appreciated, or a wife to be esteemed."

  She stopped as Taquar's words resounded in her head, sour and hateful. And worrying. What if they were true? Your snappish character and lack of femininity as unattractive as your face and as dull as the way you dress. What if Kaneth felt the same way about her? Oh Sunlord, Ry, she thought, you never used to care that you weren't pretty. What's happened to you? Why should it suddenly matter?

  Kaneth raised his eyebrows. "Oh? Then why did you go sneaking around to Taquar's? You can't think he's more chaste than I am, surely."

  "Oh bother you, Kaneth. Go away."

  "I'll escort you to wherever you're staying."

  "I don't need company."

  "No, I don't suppose you do. You are a rainlord, after all. But it's late and I'll do it nonetheless. And I'll escort you back to Breccia, too. Granthon still wants to see us. And quite frankly, I don't know what we are going to say."

  " 'No.' At least that's what I am going to say. And if that is enough to stop our rainlord's allowance, then we shall just have to learn to do without it. It may curtail your popularity with the snuggery girls, but I'm sure you can learn to live with that."

  "Easy to see you haven't faced Granthon when he's made up his mind about something," he said, and she heard genuine warning in his tone. "Do you really think that's all the persuasion he has in mind?"

  She thought about it and went cold.

  ***

  Ryka remembered Kaneth's words when they faced the Cloudmaster in the Breccia Hall dining room several days later. Granthon was apparently well enough to sit up and have dinner with the rest of his family, but she was shocked by the decline in his health since she had seen him last. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes deep-set and suffering. Moreover, he looked… unkempt. And this in a man who had always been faultlessly attired, a regal, proud man, not one who would informally interview a couple of rainlords in front of his family, let alone be seen with his vest stained and his tunic sleeves dirty.

  Ryka shot a look at Ethelva and saw the tightness around the woman's eyes. They exchanged a wordless glance, and Ryka saw the pleading there, and the wisdom. Her expression said, as clearly as spoken words, "Don't thwart him. He's all we have."

  Ryka looked away to give her attention to the others. Nealrith, who had risen when she and Kaneth were ushered in, was shifting his weight uncomfortably. He'd greeted them both, but now refused to meet Kaneth's gaze. Laisa watched with interest, smiling faintly, as if secretly amused, while Senya, the little brat, sparkled with an unpleasantly gleeful interest.

  The kind of women men admire, Ryka thought. Beautiful, and who cares what the inside is like? Or whether they have anything but sand in their skulls. She sighed to herself, wryly aware that she did not much like the cynicism of her thoughts. She used to be a much nicer person before she'd fallen in love. How ironic is that? she mused. And do we really have to stand here like a couple of naughty children while Granthon chastises us in front of these two bitches, mother and daughter? Sands, this is as humiliating as my interview with Taquar.

  "Laisa, Senya, let's go outside, shall we?" Nealrith said. "This is not a matter that concerns us."

  "On the contrary!" Granthon barked, his white bushy brows drawn so tight they met over his nose. His voice was surprisingly strong. And angry, with a twist of deep emotion. "This is exactly something you should all hear, because you should all know the sacrifices you might be called upon to make in the future. Senya, particularly."

  He then directed his attention to Kaneth and Ryka, saying, "You both know the situation. The land could die with me. Probably will. And neither of you are doing your duty to prevent it. I have been patient far longer than I should have. I have threatened you with monetary loss. I have appealed to your sense of honour. I know nothing is certain-that any children you have may be water-blind-but we need to try everything, no matter the cost. If I can ruin my health and the quality of my life for you and this land, the very least you can do is marry for the good of it."

  Ryka looked steadily at the floor, but heat spread from the back of her neck into her cheeks. Shame. Anger. Helplessness. She wasn't sure what was uppermost. Humiliation, perhaps, and not just because the Cloudmaster's family was listening, but because she couldn't imagine a worse humiliation, than marrying a man she loved who didn't care for her and would be rubbing her nose in his faithlessness every evening. What would he do: bed her then go off to his snuggeries? Or the other way around? She felt sick.

  Granthon continued, "Now go into the next room and talk to one another, and don't come back until you have a solution that involves an attempt to bring another stormlord into the world. Is that clear?"

  She and Kaneth glanced at each other, silently communicating their reluctance to even discuss the subject. Then Kaneth turned his gaze to look at the Cloudmaster. "The fault is mine. And I will not compound my errors by forcing myself on a woman who does not want me."

  Granthon's eyes narrowed, but he did not comment.

  "Would you really countenance such a thing, Lord Granthon?" Kaneth asked. "Since when did the Cloudmaster advocate rape?"

  Nealrith winced. Senya smirked. And Granthon levered himself out of his chair in rage. "You think to play with me on this matter? It is the future of the Quar
tern we speak of here! Go discuss this, the two of you, and before you come back, think on this. If you will not marry-or set up a viable relationship in a home together-then one of you will be cast out of the gates as far as a pede can ride in three days, without water and away from a road. And the choice of which one of you that will be will rest on the selection of the shortest straw of two in my hand. Is that clear?"

  Ryka felt the colour drain from her face. He would kill a rainlord-and never mind which one-just to make a point? And in such a cruel way: death by thirst. Neither she nor Kaneth had the kind of power that could retrieve water from the city over such a distance.

  When he stared at her now, she could see none of his weakness, just the harsh look of a ruler who was determined to help his land the best way he knew how, no matter the cost to others.

  There were no choices left, and she knew it. She tensed to control the shiver that threatened to skitter down her spine.

  She exchanged another glance with Kaneth, saw his compassion, and said, "Yes, it is clear. And we don't need time to think about it. I will do as you ask."

  "Kaneth?" the Cloudmaster asked.

  He nodded abruptly.

  "Good. Then I will expect to see you living under one roof within ten days. Nealrith, show them the door." He slumped back against the chair, suddenly once again an old, tired man. Outside the door, a servant came to show them out but Kaneth waved him away irritably. Ryka was already at the top of the stairs, where she had frozen, her attention caught by what she saw as she glanced over the banisters to the hall below. There was a new waterpainting set into the floor.

  It measured perhaps ten paces long and seven wide, and it showed a young woman riding a black pede crossing a white landscape. The pede's many feet kicked up a white cloud as it went. The woman was dressed plainly, in travelling clothes, a palmubra hat on her head, her cloak billowing out behind her. Heat shimmers rose into a cloudless sky. All the immediate landscape was flat, featureless and white; in the distance, a range of blue and grey peaks rose, capped with white. They seemed to float in the sky, impossibly distant, yet appearing solid and real at the same time.

  "That's new," Kaneth said at her elbow. He sounded upset, and she knew he was glad to find a neutral topic of conversation. "There used to be a picture of the clouds over Warthago Range, which was more appropriate for a cloudmaster's villa, I would have thought. This looks too, um, too personal. Although I'm damned if I know where it is. I've never seen a range like that one."

  "I don't like it," she said, shuddering, not sure if it was the painting or the Cloudmaster's anger or the commitment she had been obliged to make that was making her so fearful. "In fact, I don't like waterpaintings."

  "Why not?"

  "They are too powerful. They… dominate the room they occupy. And you are right. This one is too personal. That has to be a real portrait of someone. And she looks…" She searched for the right word. "She looks haunted."

  He glanced down at the painting again. "No, not haunted. Hunted. She looks hunted." He turned back to Ryka. "And I don't know why we are talking about a damned painting when we should be talking about what we are going to do."

  She didn't look at him, but started on her way down the stairs. "There's nothing to talk about. We have to go through with it." She strove to sound cool, insouciant. "All we have to do is decide what we opt for: marriage or just a liaison."

  "Marriage," he said.

  She waved a careless hand, trying not to read anything into the choice. "As you wish."

  Inside she wanted to weep.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Gibber Quarter Wash Drybone Settle Shale kept his promise to Taquar.

  He told no one he had been tested and had passed the test. He even explained away all he had previously said to Mica. "I was making that up 'bout knowing which bowls had water in them," he said. "I wouldn't have known, no way. I did know the rush was comin' down the wash that time-I saw the grey things in the sky, that's all. Clouds. Anyone could tell the rush would come down after that."

  Mica looked relieved, willing enough to believe the lie in place of the more inconceivable truth. "I'm glad there's not somethin' funny 'bout you. I was worried 'bout what Pa said. 'Bout the rainlords not liking anyone to meddle in their business."

  "Yeah," said Shale. "Me, too."

  In his heart, though, Shale wasn't sure he was doing the right thing, lying to Mica. The oddities of the conversation with Taquar had soon come to haunt him. First the rainlord had said a water sensitive was valuable and that Shale was in no danger, then he'd said water sensitives had been snuffed. First he had said no one in the rainlords' caravan would harm him, then he had told Shale it would be dangerous to tell any of the rainlords that he was a water sensitive.

  The inconsistencies worried him, but by then the caravan had gone, leaving nothing except the unreality of the memory. He could not even ask anyone in the settle about just what a stormlord was, because no one knew. When a small Reduner caravan passed through a couple of weeks later, collecting the settle's resin, he asked several of the servants about stormlords, but the answers were unsatisfactory. "A Scarperman," he was told. "The sandmaster of the Scarpermen," another added. "The stormlord breaks the clouds to bring rain to the waterholes." But none of them had ever seen a stormlord, although they had all seen it rain.

  Shale couldn't make sense of it. If a stormlord was a Scarperman or a sandmaster or powerful enough to bring rain-well, Shale was sure he was none of those things. Just knowing about water was a far cry from breaking clouds to make water fall from the sky. He continued to mull over the question, keeping his uncertainties to himself.

  In the meantime, life went on. His caution stopped him from trying to sell the jasper to any of the caravanners or telling his father about it. He had a feeling he might need the tokens it would fetch at some future date. For now, he continued to wander the plains collecting resin.

  Mica worked in the bab groves or the clay pit or the stone quarry, wherever there was casual work to be done that would earn them a few tokens to buy water and food. Marisal sold her embroidery-and perhaps her services as well-directly to the caravans, and then lied to her husband about how much she was paid. Galen did little except drink away as much of their earnings as he could.

  But Shale had gained something from Rainlord Taquar's visit: hope. For the first time in his life he had a vision for the future that didn't include his father, or being scared of him. He had a confidence he'd never possessed before. He no longer cringed before Galen. If he could, he simply walked away; if he couldn't, he stood his ground. Galen's eyes would flash with anger, but he no longer beat his son. Nor did he again broach the idea of prostituting him for money. The idea was dropped as if it had never been suggested.

  Patiently, Shale waited for the day when Taquar would return.

  Life seemed better than ever before. One morning early in the next star cycle, about a hundred days after the Scarpen rainlords' visit, a kick to Shale's ribs woke him from a troubled dream. He rolled over, aware only of a feeling of terrible wrongness. His head ached with the oppression of it.

  "We're outta fronds to burn. Go get some from the grove." His father's voice, still thick with the results of a drinking bout the night before. Dawnbreak had not yet come, and Galen had lit a rush light. Shale knew what he was supposed to do: sneak down to the palm grove and steal some of the fallen fronds under the trees. Anything that fell from the tree was the property of the tree owner, and such fronds were valuable as fuel or roofing thatch or for the weaving of mats.

  Shale could filch fruit from a garden orchard before the sandgrouse alerted the household, or shin up a palm tree and pinch the bab fruit from the back of the bunch without the owner ever realising it had been pilfered, or relieve settlefolk of their property in a hundred similar ways. But he didn't like doing it. It made him feel dirty inside. How could he feel right about stealing, say, from Rishan the palmier, when it was Rishan who occasionally gave him the leftove
rs from his kitchen or a few extra eggs from his sandgrouse?

  He staggered out of bed rubbing the sleep from his eyes, unable to say why he felt so rotten. So heavy-headed, so suffocated. That feeling of something botched was back. He glanced over at Mica, still curled up asleep, and contemplated waking him, but a fierce look from his father sent him stumbling straight out into the morning cold. His breath made clouds in the air and he regretted not having picked up his blanket on the way out. He thought about returning to get it, but the memory of the anger in his father's voice banished that idea, so he plucked the empty burlap sack from where it hung on the outer wall to put around his shoulders in its place. As he headed for the edge of the wash, he decided he must be sickening with something.

  The watercourse was black with night, the sun still hidden below the desert rim. A touch of colour tingeing the horizon indicated that dawn was on its way, but the bab palms were just indeterminate shapes barely rising to the level of the bank. It was too dark down there to be able to see anything.

  Yet it was all wrong. His awareness of water was telling him things that didn't make sense.

  He stood on the lip of the wash, knowing his world had been changed while he slept. There was water everywhere. The beginnings of panic finally snapped his eyes wide, tensed his muscles ready for flight, banished sleepiness.

  He forced himself to concentrate, and the details came into focus. Too much water. Surrounding him. Surrounding the settle. Once he concentrated on the pieces instead of the whole, he was able to put a name to what was happening. People. Not water by itself, but water inside people. Everywhere.