Stormlord Rising

by Glenda Larke

  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, metal 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 scimi
tar 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.”

  “You did it well.”

  He searched for the water of those who remained. Iani, Feroze, Laisa, yes—somewhere Mica was still alive, too. A moment’s relief coursed through him, but hard on that joy came confusion.

  He felt something wrong, botched, water falling where there should have been none. Water bizarrely deformed. Panic rose in his throat.

  Not water. Ice.

  In shock, he remembered the clouds he had sent so high.

  Yelling for help from the rainlords, he strove to bring his powers into play. They nudged the falling ice in the right direction, so that it fell in front of the cavern and further down the gully, smashing into the bulk of Davim’s forces. Rounded chunks of ice, each half the size of a man’s fist, crashed down on the Reduners—and continued to do so.

  Jasper blinked, distressed. Some of his own forces were caught up in the edges of the ice fall, too. He saw three or four Alabasters fall from their pede, their bodies blossoming blood. A handful of Gibber men, too slow to separate themselves out from the retreating Reduners, dropped to the ground. A Scarpen pede screamed as its feelers were broken.

  Why had he forgotten? He’d sent the clouds as high as he could command them and waited for the ice to fall, but that had been much earlier. When nothing had happened, he’d decided the ploy had failed. He hadn’t realized it would take so long.

  He looked around. His army and the Reduners were now separated. Davim’s men—as many of them as could fit—had crowded into the cave. Those still outside had either run down the gully or sought shelter huddled alongside the pedes or flattened themselves against the cliff. Ice still fell on that side of the cleared area, the balls sometimes bouncing harmlessly off pede carapaces, sometimes cracking segments and breaking feelers. And sometimes killing men.

  Pedes. They didn’t deserve this.

  Scarpermen, Alabasters and Gibbermen were scattered over the southern half of the flat land and on both sides of the gully running down the middle. The whole area, including the drywash, was littered with the dead, the dying and the injured.

  “’Ware ziggers!” Iani yelled, bringing him back to reality even as the ice continued to fall, smaller pieces now. “There’s no reason now why those bastards in the cave don’t loose the last they have in this direction.” He stood up on his pede, ordering bladesmen to heap the dead, face up, as bait, hoping the beetles would not sense much difference between the recently dead and the living. Men raced to obey.

  Still keeping track of the falling ice balls to make sure they fell only in front of the cavern, Jasper turned his attention to those around him. He searched out the rainlords with his water-sense, dismayed to find there were six dead, their water lifeless. One part of him thought, We can’t afford to lose so many; another part simply grieved.

  In front of him, Dibble twisted a torn sleeve around a bleeding wrist. Laisa sat on the back of a myriapede behind her driver, looking as if she had just stepped out of her tent. She had partially veiled herself to keep the dust out of her hair and nose; her riding clothes were immaculate still. Looking at her, Jasper was uncomfortably aware of his sweat and dirt and blood. Next to her, Feroze was standing on the back of his great white pede, directing men to carry the wounded to the back. On the ground nearby Jasper saw no less than eight white-clad bodies, and when he glanced over the battlefield he saw many more.

  The worst affected, though, were the Gibbermen. Inexperienced and badly armed, they had fought with heart but little skill. The results were horrendous. Their ranks had been thinned. Pedes which once had carried a dozen riders now settled down to rest, legs tucked under their bodies, riderless. One animal was running its feelers up and down a Gibberman’s body, grieving. Jasper looked away; each and every death added a scar. Each scar was a burden he would bear.

  I’ll make it up to them one day. Somehow. But how was it possible to compensate for even a single death?

  He searched for others he knew and could not find them. There were a number of suspicious gaps in his own guard he didn’t want to think about. Oddly, he found himself thinking of Ryka. He’d never believed in ghosts, but for a moment her presence was there with him, so real he relived his grief at her death. She had taught him so much.

  He looked up at the sky. The dark storm clouds were localized directly above. Over to his left, the bottom rim of the sun was resting on the horizon, the light bleeding out over the land and bruising the turbulence of the black clouds with purple. Blighted eyes, the whole afternoon had gone, vanished into the hell of battle. He probed with his senses to see what ice or water remained. Entranced, he paused: the clouds were full of ice balls, rising and falling in the turmoil… but how to use them? He gave it a moment’s thought, then drew the clouds downward, sucking the water in all its forms toward him.

  Already, as he looked back toward the cavernous entrance to the waterhall, he could see Reduners busying themselves with zigger cages, passing them outside to the armsmen sheltering beside the pedes. They wanted to release them on the edge of their forces to diminish the chance of accidents to their own men.

  Around him, Jasper felt the shiver rippling through his army. Facing a warrior was one thing, but a normal man quailed before ziggers.

  “Don’t run,” he yelled. “Whatever you do, don’t run! Trust me.” He continued to drag the storm cloud toward him, pulling it as fast as it would come, hoping he would be in time. “Rainlords, spread out! Concentrate only on the ziggers flying toward your section.”

  “Down!” Feroze yelled from further along. His white robe was spattered with blood, but none of it seemed to be his. “All you men, crouch down. Put your head between your legs. Keep your nose, ears and eyes covered! Quickly now. Pack in close as you can to one another—that’s it! Closer. Closer still.”

  “You, too, Dibble,” Jasper said. “This time I can look after myself.”

  The man nodded and dismounted, pausing only to give the pede the signal to contract its segments to close up the gaps, and then to hunker down to protect its underside. With the pede taken care of, he joined the other armsmen. They all knew it was a temporary measure at best; few wore cloth thick enough to repel a determined and hungry zigger. Between them and certain death were the rainlords—and Jasper.

  The buzzing whine, when it came, sent shivers across his skin. Not one, not ten, but fifty or so ziggers, homing in, and behind them, the Reduners in the entrance to the waterhall were already
reloading their zigtubes for the next wave. Jasper redoubled his efforts to bring the storm cloud.

  Iani looked at him briefly, his palsy accentuated by his fatigue. His face sagged in lopsided weakness, his left hand shook. “Pedeshit,” he muttered and killed the first half a dozen ziggers heading his way, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Jasper.”

  The sight of the water cloud tearing through the air, a compact mass of dark fury, was as unnerving as the sound of ziggers, even to Jasper. Momentarily distracted, he missed an approaching beetle and had to whirl around to pinpoint its direction as it zoomed down on the huddled men. He shot a piece of ice, and it disintegrated, shedding chitin and wing cases and soft flesh harmlessly onto someone’s back. Further along, several ziggers had penetrated through the rainlord’s line and men were screaming with pain as the vile things burrowed in. The rainlords scrambled to deal with the beasts before they dug into their victims too deep to be shriveled.

  The second wave approached. Blighted bastards, Jasper thought, staring at the sky to concentrate on his cloud. Further along the line of rainlords, Laisa sat on her mount, no longer so cool and unruffled. “You conceited Gibber grubber!” Agitated, she waved an arm at the turbulence descending on them from the sky. “You’ll kill us all with this kind of pretentious bragging!”

  “I doubt it,” he said calmly, even though his heart hammered at his ribs. “Your hair might be messed up a little, though. Which could be a new experience for you, I suppose.”

  “You could have killed us all with that ice!”

  Jasper whipped the cloud closer, twisting it as it came, moulding its shape into a long tube. And he sent it straight into the opening of the waterhall, sweeping up the remaining freed ziggers and all the zigger cages on the way. He turned to Iani and Feroze. “Now’s the time to move closer.”

  Feroze stood up again and gave the order. Others passed it along to those behind.