by Glenda Larke
“I am a stormlord. Outside of a battle, I have little need of guards.” Not a boast, just fact.
Inside, Elmar led the way to the room he had appropriated, where he fumbled with his flint to light a tiny oil lamp on a table. “Is there something wrong then, m’lord? I mean, I could easily have come to see you.”
“I’d rather no one knew what I was up to and I’d appreciate it if you told no one of this visit, except my driver, Dibble Hornblend. I need the two of you. You can tell him about it in the morning. Do you know him?”
“We’ve met.” The wick caught and lamplight flickered. Jasper looked around, but its meagre glow showed only devastation. Broken furniture, cracked tiles, slashed carpets, wooden cupboards scarred with knife cuts, a pile of broken pottery shards swept into a corner. At some time past, flames had licked their way up a tapestry. The tattered, charred remains, hanging like an exhumed shroud, still smelled of smoke.
“Even their cat didn’t survive,” Elmar said, seeing him taking it all in. “Those withering dunesmen ate the wilted thing. I found its remains in the fireplace. A cat.”
Jasper sat down at the table, careful not to disturb the pile of board-books propping up a chair with a missing leg. “I heard it was the same after the fall of Breccia. I suppose, to be fair to Reduners, cats aren’t pets on the dunes. It breaks Terelle’s heart. She rescued some kittens downlevel and brought them to the kitchen in Qanatend Hall.” He smiled, recalling her attempts to carry six clawing bundles of fur wrapped in her cloak. “But now, to tell you what I want. I’m going to visit Dune Watergatherer, in secret, to talk to Sandmaster Ravard. I need a guide, an experienced armsman, who speaks their tongue better than I do, just in case it’s needed. You, in fact. And I need Dibble to guard Terelle, who goes with us. And you may as well know this too: Ravard is my brother.”
Speechless, Elmar sat down with a thump on the only other chair in the room.
Jasper explained. When he had finished, and as he had expected, the armsman dug out every reason he could think of to back up his assertion that going to Dune Watergatherer was an appallingly bad idea.
Jasper heard him out patiently. “Elmar,” he said gently, “I am aware that the dune is in the heart of the Red Quarter and we have to cross a lot of other dunes to get there. I’m also aware that Reduners are dangerous, Ravard is an accomplished bladesman and a water sensitive, they guard their encampments, I’ve no right to risk Terelle’s life and, um, what else did you mention? Oh, that my brother will turn down any offer of conciliation. You could be right about that too—but I have to try. Not only because he’s my brother, but because a lot more people will die if we don’t bring this foolish war to an end.”
“Then maybe you’ll think about the withering, sun-blighted stupidity of risking our only stormlord in something so weepingly sand-brained. If you’ll forgive the plain speaking, m’lord.”
“I’m not defenceless. Neither am I witless. And everything you’ve said, Terelle has also said to me, a lot less politely, too, if you can believe that. It was she who made me promise to ask you along, because you’ve been there. Kaneth says you don’t like the dunes and don’t want to return. I’m hoping you can curb your dislike long enough to venture there again.”
Elmar tensed at the mention of Kaneth’s name, then shrugged. “Yes, of course. M’lord, we could all end up dead, easy as falling off a pede. We’ll stand out on the dunes like shooting stars in the sky.” He rubbed at his forearm, still stained red by the dust of the dunes. “None of you are red, for a start. None of us have braided hair. You don’t speak their natter and my knowledge of it is not too good.
“And don’t think you can dodge the tribesmen that easy either. These folk don’t hang around in their encampments, you know. They’re out there on the dunes: hunting, looking for plants and roots, herding their pedes from place to place, stuff like that. We could bump into a mob of chalamen, all armed to the teeth, long before we got near Watergatherer.”
“I can understand quite a bit of Reduner. Mica and I used to earn tokens serving the dunes caravanners when they came to our settle when we were lads. But most of all you should have faith in my water abilities, Elmar. You do your part, and I’ll get you there alive and undetected.”
“There are bleeding few places to hide out there. And taking a woman along? Terelle’s not like Ryka, a rainlord who knows how to handle a sword.”
“Believe me, I don’t bring her lightly. Unfortunately, she is necessary and I can’t tell you why.” I wish I could, though. However, hearing the malice in Lord Gold’s voice had convinced him that he and Terelle had made the right decision. To Lord Gold and people like Highlord Ouina, magic that wasn’t bestowed by the Sunlord faith was a canker on the face of the earth. To tell them that their stormlord was aided by Watergiver magic from Khromatis would be like asking them to trust a spindevil. The fewer people who knew, the better.
“What about settling for a more experienced armsman, rather than Dibble? He’s a bumbler—trips over his knees, he does.”
Jasper smiled, remembering the battle at the Qanatend mother cistern, when Dibble had saved his life several times. “Not when it counts,” he said. “And he’s my choice.”
Elmar subsided into silence, considering. When he spoke again, he was resigned. “When do you want to leave?”
“Tomorrow night. Tell me, how long will it take to get there?”
“Depends on who we bump into on the way.” He pondered the question further. “And how many times we bump into them. Ten days if we’re lucky and have good mounts. More likely double.”
“I leave the preparations in your hands. We take two pedes and we’ll leave after dark, without anyone knowing which way we’re going.”
Even by the light of the guttering lamp, he caught the appalled look on Elmar’s face.
“No one?” he asked. “You’re not telling anyone where we are going?”
“No. Almost everyone leaves tomorrow anyway. The fifty or so men remaining will be under instructions to await my return, that’s all.”
Now Elmar looked horrified as the full import dawned on him: he and Dibble were to be completely responsible for the safety of the Quartern’s only Cloudmaster on a trip across a hostile quarter to visit a man who wanted him dead. Jasper nodded sympathetically.
“Well, I’ll be pissing waterless,” the armsman said.
Only if I die, Jasper thought.
CHAPTER THREE
Scarpen to Red Quarter
Qanatend to Dune Watergatherer
Terelle had never been in the Red Quarter before. They travelled by night and slept by day, always tucked away in a dune vale as far distant as they could be from any encampment. On their first day on the dunes, Elmar was as tense and watchful as a pebblemouse away from its burrow until Jasper, exasperated by the armsman’s extravagant precautions, told him to trust the extent of his stormlord powers.
They were sharing their morning meal and he handed a piece of damper to Dibble as he spoke. “I’m not Kaneth or Ryka,” he said. “I can tell if someone’s coming our way much further off than they can. If I know the person, I can even identify them at a distance.”
He smiled at Terelle then, his look as sensual as a touch. She knew he was thinking of her, of the way he could sense her from the other side of the Quartern. The wonder of that skimmed shivers down her spine; he sensed only her so far away, no one else.
“Don’t worry,” he said, waving a piece of damper at Elmar before popping it into his mouth, “I’ll get you all to Dune Watergatherer in one piece. Where I’m going to need you most is in the sandmaster’s tent.”
Sneaking into Ravard’s tent in the middle of an encampment? The thought of it scared her into a state of panic. “Why are we doing this?” she’d asked when he had first told her of his intention. “I don’t understand. You told me you already spoke to Ravard—Mica—about this when you were at the mother cistern. You begged him then to reconsider—”
“Things
are different now,” he’d replied stubbornly.
“How?”
“Davim’s dead. Watergatherer was defeated. Mica is Sandmaster of the whole dune. He will be more inclined to listen to reason.”
She was not so sure, and from the look on Elmar’s face, and the way he and Dibble exchanged a glance, she didn’t think they were either. Finishing her damper, she said, “I’m going to do my waterpainting.”
“Waterpainting?” Elmar asked. “You’re going to be bleeding painting out here? Do we need our pretty portraits painted? M’lord, just what the pickled pede are you two dryheads up to?”
Dibble, still unused to Elmar’s lack of deference to his superiors, winced and put a hand to his eyes.
Jasper just looked amused. “Elmar, are you going to grizzle all the way to Dune Watergatherer and back?” he asked.
“Probably,” Elmar said, scowling. “You’re both sandcrazy. You need me to bring some sanity to the party.” There was a brief silence. Then he added, politely, “My lord.”
Terelle hid a laugh.
“You’d better get used to it,” Jasper said, his tone mild. “Terelle paints wherever we go. Why is none of your business.”
Elmar snorted. “Of course not, m’lord.”
“Don’t you go all peevish on me, either. I think I’d prefer your swearing.”
“Ah. Yes. So would I, m’lord.”
Gradually, as the days passed, they became a team. Jasper trained with Elmar and Dibble every evening around sunset, before they moved off. During the day, they all shared the camp chores and the sentry duty. On the third day a meddle of pedes, under the care of several boys, approached the camp while grazing. Elmar suspected they were attracted by the presence of strange pedes, and told Jasper they would not change direction of their own accord. “M’lord, you’ll have to work out some way of spooking them,” he said.
“If I scare them, what’s to say they won’t run this way and flatten our camp?”
“They’ll head for home if they can’t see an attack from a particular direction.”
“I hope you’re sure of that.” He homed in on the largest beast with his water-senses, and started to pull the water from the animal’s gut through its cloaca. The pede panicked as its digestive tract spasmed, then thundered away, followed by the rest of the meddle.
“So?” Elmar asked. They couldn’t see the pedes from where they were, but they could hear the shouts of the young meddle herders.
“You were right.”
Elmar grinned at him.
It wasn’t the only near-disaster they had. Several times at night they had to ride out of their way to avoid drovers and hunters or grazing tribal pede meddles. Several times they hunkered down and waited until people had passed. Elmar had been so sure something would go wrong that Terelle thought he must be in a pleasant haze of surprise when they arrived on Dune Watergatherer without ever having been seen by a Reduner.
They reached the dune at dawn and hid in a shadowed sand vale about five miles to the east of a large encampment, which Jasper said was Ravard’s. They were still too far away for him to be aware of his brother’s water, but he knew exactly how many waterholes the dune had, and his maps told him which one belonged to Ravard’s camp, so he had no doubt he had brought them to the right place.
That was the easy part, she thought. And the easy part was over.
At sunset that day, Elmar walked to the top of the dune overlooking their makeshift camp. Jasper could tell him any number of times that there was no one else around, but every evening he checked for himself.
Reckon I got too used to Kaneth’s unreliable water-powers all those years, he thought. There’s no changing that now.
The fiery ball of the sun slid along the horizon as if it was reluctant to take the final plunge over the edge. The shadows along the lip of the dune had the rich colour of freshly spilled blood. On the plains between the Watergatherer and the Sloweater, the blaze of the last sunshine alternated with dark streaks of shadow from bushes and the occasional scrubby trees.
“I never guessed the Red Quarter would be so beautiful.”
He started, but it was only Terelle, arriving to stand beside him. He thought of the day he’d first met her and Jasper, in Scarcleft. She had been, what, eighteen? Not beautiful, but serene. Calm. And then the day had exploded into bloody violence. Elmar had not seen her again until she arrived in Qanatend. She still possessed that cool exterior, but now he knew it concealed a sharp mind and an even sharper eye.
She said, “I thought it would be ugly, but it’s not. In fact, I think it’s the loveliest of all the quarters. The Scarpen is too rough. The Gibber is too flat. Alabaster is too… white. But this—” She gestured. “The way the sand folds and pleats and ripples. All those glorious flowers that bloom in a day and are gone by night. The creepers that hug the ground like snakes. The wind patterns in the sand, the play of light and dark. Look, see the crest of the dune there? It’s so sharp, you would swear it’d been cut with a sword.”
He looked where she was pointing, surprised. He saw nothing beautiful in any of it. It was Reduner territory, a harsh, garish place with no softness, just like the men who inhabited it. “It’s time I was waking Lord Jasper,” he said.
“Give him a moment longer. He needs his sleep. Especially tonight.”
“Why did you come? He’s worrying himself sick about you, not knowing if you’ll be safer with him, or better off with Dibble. If you weren’t here, he could concentrate on what he wants to do.”
Her clear gaze did not waver. “Neither of us had any choice. Just trust me when I say it was unavoidable. And you shouldn’t make him feel worse about it than he already does.”
“You aren’t afraid, are you?” He stared at her in surprise, suddenly knowing it to be true.
“Not for myself. My future is not one that includes dying yet a while.” She glanced away from him towards the camp, and the look on her face told him more about her feelings for Jasper than words could have done. “But let me give you this before it gets too dark to see it.” She held out her hand and he saw that she was holding one of her rolled-up paintings. “A gift.”
He took it from her, astonished. After unrolling it, he held it up so the sun’s dying rays illuminated the paint. His heart gripped, quickening his breathing.
She was silent, waiting for him to speak.
It was a long time before he could get the words out. “How did you know?”
“I’m a snuggery girl,” she said. “Trained to see how people feel about one another.”
He touched the face she had painted. “It’s so real,” he whispered. “So very real.” Then he let it roll up again and his voice hardened. “Does it amuse you to see a tough-skinned bladesman love where he shouldn’t? Do you giggle about it with your friends?” He shoved the painting back at her, pushing it against her chest. When she didn’t take it, her passive resistance fuelled his anger further and he let the portrait fall to the sand.
She looked hurt. “I find nothing stupidly amusing in loving someone. I thought you might wish to have his likeness, that’s all. It was—it was the only way I knew to say thank you for being here. For being prepared to look after Jasper tonight even though I know you think what he’s doing is crazy. You’re risking your life for him.”
He shouted at her then, knowing all the while that it was the wrong thing to do. Knowing he was wrong. “You sun-fried female! I have to keep him alive. We all have to keep the stormlord alive. Without him, we die!”
Upset, she whirled away and ran down the dune towards the camp. He stood there, watching. When she disappeared under the shade of the canvas, his shoulders slumped. He stooped to pick up the portrait. Unrolled it again. And there was Kaneth, so alive and real, not the way he was now, damaged and scarred, but the way he had been: handsome, younger, carefree, on the day Terelle had first met them both.
And he wondered why the waterless hells he loved a man who could never love him back.
She felt such a fool.
Stupid, sand-brained sand-tick of a woman! You should have known not to poke your nose into other people’s business. Now you’ve just made him angry when he needs to be calm and focused.
She wanted to kick herself. Instead she went to wake Shale. Jasper. Remembering to appear cheerful, as if this might not be the last day of his life.
Elmar is right; what you are about to do is stupid and irresponsible. You’re the stormlord. You shouldn’t have a private life that means more to you than your safety—because the whole Quartern depends on you being alive.
It wasn’t fair. It never would be fair. But he was slowly accepting that—and so must she. If the rest of her life meant painting him stormbringing every day, then that was what she would have to do.
Pain cramped her gut, doubling her over. Wilted damn, she had to be more careful with her thoughts.
Think of Samphire and Russet instead.
Slowly, the pain passed and she straightened.
Jasper smiled at her when he woke, and touched her arm in passing when he rose. A small gesture, but she read the love there. Was it too late to persuade him to turn back? She opened her mouth to speak, but he shook his head at her.
“Not now,” he said.
“You’re irreplaceable.”
“Everyone is irreplaceable.”
“But only you are essential to us all.”
“Mica won’t hurt me. Not when we are face to face, in his tent. He’s my brother. We loved one another. In the heat of battle, everything was different. All I need to do is meet him not as an enemy bladesman, but as the only family he has remaining.”
He sounded so convinced, so adamant, she knew she had no chance of shaking his belief. But she went cold all over nonetheless. He is wrong. I know it. He is so wrong. Not wanting him to see her fear, she stood with her back to him while he readied himself. No, not fear—her terror. It means too much to him. Memory of an older brother who had once loved him, memory of a time when the only person who stood between him and a miserable, unloved wretchedness was Mica Flint.