Stormlord Rising

by Glenda Larke

  It hadn’t been a good day. The Reduners had intensified their zigger assault, and the rainlords were hard-pressed to stop them all. Men and women had died. Terelle had never been so frightened. Several times she’d heard the buzzing whine and looked up to see men fall, screaming, clutching at their eyes, or ears, or throat.

  In spite of the fear of zigger attack, the men had worked hard most of the night at Jasper’s request. They were following the plan based on Terelle’s ideas, first cutting as many pede segments as they could from the pedes that had drowned in the rush, then scraping out the flesh. Thoroughly mystified, they filled them with all the sharp-edged stones they could find.

  In the meantime, Jasper used the drinking supply to make a block of water several paces each way and a pace deep, to check if Terelle’s main idea was workable. Halfway through the night they had the first loaded segment floating easily on top of the water. Jasper, elated, asked them to fill as many pede segments as they could find.

  By noon the next day, all was ready. The men were fully armed, waiting quietly for the word. Some even dozed.

  Jasper had not answered the sandmaster’s message, and as far as he and Terelle knew, Mica was still alive. But they had no way of knowing. When you called a man’s bluff it paid to know him, and they didn’t. Not really. The thought made her ill, that Mica could die just to make a point. Not so much because she cared for a man she had never met, but because she hated seeing the drawn, haunted look on Jasper’s face.

  Around her, tension was building. Men woke until everyone was alert—and edgy as they waited. They had been told that the attack would take place when the sun was high in the sky.

  She looked around, her waterpainter’s eye absorbing the scene, etching it permanently into her memory whether she wanted it that way or not. Ranged just below the south rim of the slope, out of sight of the Reduners, the undisciplined Gibbermen were scattered in small groups, hefting their unlikely selection of weapons. They were noisy still, laughing, teasing their friends, covering their nervousness with banter and jokes and crudity.

  Twelve of them waited closer to Jasper, strapping young fellows he had personally selected as capable of handling heavy weights. The pede segments were now lined up in front of them, each laden with stones the size of small oranges. Iani said they looked like a line of miniature barges along a portside quay.

  The waiting Scarpermen were more serious than their Gibber allies. They sat quietly for the most part, alone with their thoughts—of family and the homes they were defending, perhaps. Waterpriests, including Lord Gold, moved among them, dispensing blessings in the form of tiny waxed sachets of blessed water that could be tied to the upper arm. Even Jasper was wearing one, although Terelle doubted it meant much to him. When Basalt had reached the place where Terelle sat painting, he had passed her by without offering her one, his contempt mirrored in his expression.

  A little later, another waterpriest, apparently knowing nothing of his superior’s prejudice, had noticed she had no sachet and offered her one. She took a petty pleasure in refusing it and felt defiantly unrepentant afterward. And strangely bereft, too. Hollow inside. Her belief in the Sunlord was now so shaken that it offered no comfort. Once she’d been able to sacrifice a little water and feel warmed inside, less troubled. She’d been able to believe in something larger than herself and be comforted. Now, there was just emptiness.

  Scattered, too, were the rainlords: Iani, Ouina, Laisa and the others who had joined Jasper from Breakaway, Pediment, Denmasad, Scarcleft and the two port cities. Some twenty altogether. Many lay peering over the rim’s edge, even Senya, staring down on the scene below, alert for any zigger attack.

  The Alabasters had stayed together, a solid line of white, their pedes with them. Most were praying. Their mirrors sparkled in the sunlight. To their god who isn’t the Sunlord…

  Earlier on, Jasper had passed through the waiting throng, halting briefly to offer a few words of encouragement here and there. Only Terelle and Iani knew he saw victory also as a potential personal tragedy.

  How does he stand it? she wondered. He doesn’t want to kill people any more than I do, not really. He was a man who wanted to rule using his head, not his sword arm—or his killing water-power.

  As he looked down on the cistern, his calm was comforting. Davim could choose to launch a zigger attack at the lone figure outlined against the sky, yet Jasper appeared unconcerned. Every now and then he glanced down at the waterpainting at his feet, to check how close the scene she had painted was to what he could see below. “I spoke to Feroze this morning,” he said to her suddenly. “About what he knows with regard to Watergiver powers.”

  She looked up at him in quick interest, even as she wondered how he could talk about it right then. “What did he say?”

  Without taking his eyes from the scene below, he said, “He confirmed what you said—Watergivers have two kinds of powers: waterpainting and water moving. I also got the feeling there was something he wasn’t saying. They know more than they tell us, I think.”

  She nodded. “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “Apparently they don’t have to stormbring in the mountains; did they tell you that? In fact, he had some tale I found hard to believe, all about how there was too much water and they directed their talents more to preventing clouds from breaking, but—” He broke off, then shouted, “Zigger! Duck!” She buried her head deep under her cloak, which she had brought with her for just this purpose.

  A moment later he added, “It’s been dealt with. You can come out now.”

  As she emerged, he reverted to the previous conversation without even sounding ruffled. “Sounded odd to me, and of course Feroze hasn’t been there. In fact, from what he said, I don’t think anyone from the Quartern ever has except Ash Gridelin.”

  “And they say he was a Watergiver explorer from Khromatis.”

  “Yes.” He squatted, still watching the sky and the Reduners below. “Lord Ryka once told me the Reduners have a slightly different version, about a paradise beyond the White Mountains where gods deliberately hide their land from greedy mortals to prevent anyone visiting. Their minions manifest themselves as sand-dancers to confuse those who try. According to the Reduners, these gods are responsible for random rain. Some say the gods’ green land is where you go when you die, if you have given proper worship to your dune god.”

  “So that’s different again.”

  “Feroze said the Watergivers are not gods, but he agrees they hide their land and refuse to let anyone from the Quartern approach it. However, he admitted they do mingle with Alabasters on the edges of the White Quarter.”

  Terelle snorted. “Yes—mingle. I heard. And leave babies behind.”

  “I don’t think they do that anymore, or the Alabasters would be awash in water sensitives, which they are not. Terelle, all these years of hunting for another stormlord and none has been found except me, and I’m flawed. You and I can bring enough water for the Quartern for the moment—but what happens if one of us dies? What happens if I die before the sun sets today?”

  He finally looked away from the scene below and met her eyes in a steady stare. “You have to go with Russet, we both know that. Initially, I thought when you reached the place he painted, you could turn around and come back. I thought of sending people with you, to make your return easy.”

  “And now you’ve changed your mind?”

  “There’s a hidden land there somewhere beyond the White Quarter, apparently full of people who can help us. Some of whom can shift water. But they deliberately keep knowledge of it from us. You, however, have a great-grandfather who wants to take you there.”

  She looked at him, her jaw dropping. “I’ll be withered. You want me to go there and bring some of them back.”

  He nodded. “To be stormlords. Until there are more Scarpen stormlords. Or to be the fathers or mothers of more stormlords, if that’s what it takes. It’s the only way I can think to free you from painting storms. It’
s the only way the Quartern’s future can be certain. It’s the only way I can ever have any life of my own. But it also means sending you into the heart of a land we know nothing about with the very man who imprisoned you with his painting. And it’s just a chance anyway. They might think it’s a rotten idea to come here. It’s certainly a rotten idea to ask you—but it’s the only idea I have for a long-term solution.”

  She sat quietly, pondering. In pain, yet unable to determine the origin of her sorrow.

  “I think,” he said slowly, without looking at her, “that this is the hardest thing I have ever had to ask of anyone. I want you here, with me. I want you to be happy, content, safe—and by my side. Instead, I am asking you to leave. To be hurt. To surrender yourself to someone who does not have your best interests at heart. To go into danger.” He looked at her then, his eyes a mirror to his misery. “I love you. I always will. And I am asking you to do this, not just for the Quartern, but also because I think it may be the only way we will ever find something for us—a life for us and our children. You are right, Terelle. Using waterpainting, even the way we are doing now, is no solution. It could go horribly wrong at any time. It could have effects we know nothing about. And it would tie you down to a lifetime of repetitive work, or even continuous traveling to the most arduous places in the Quartern. I don’t want that for you. I really don’t want—” But he couldn’t go on.

  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 R
eduner 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.