Stormlord rising

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Red Quarter Dune Pebblered to Dune Sandsinger They crossed two more dunes the day they left Pebblered, but Ryka knew little about the journey. Griping pains seized her gut and she turned her senses inward, not outward. The blood was already seeping out between her legs and she knew of no way to stop it.

Come evening, the caravan halted at the foot of Dune Sandsinger, another inhabited dune. When Elmar and several of the other slaves unloaded her, still strapped to the pallet, they did not take her to Ravard's tent, but laid her in the open. They put up a cover against the dewfall, and built a fire of dried pede droppings for warmth. The smell was sweet with herbs; better, she thought, than the seaweed briquettes used in the Scarpen.

The other slaves left, but Elmar stayed, sitting close and keeping his voice down as he spoke to her. "Are you comfortable?"

She hedged. "The pallet is well stuffed."

"I managed to get hold of that scimitar. The one Whetstone grabbed. I have it hidden in the supplies."

"That was good thinking."

"A risk, though. The owner was searching for it when we left. If they think one of us slaves took it they might search us all."

"They'll think it was covered up in that upheaval of sand. Elmar, what happened?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I spoke to a couple of the slaves who were carting the jars to the encampment when the ground shook, and they never felt a thing, although they did hear the singing. The only folk who felt it were the ones around about us."

"Kaneth says he did it. Ravard thinks it was the dune god, protecting his tribemaster."

He looked uneasy. "The dunes sing and make sounds. And the Reduners say under each dune a god sleeps. Every now and then he wakes to speak to the shamans…"

"We are supposed to believe in the Sunlord, not dune gods. They don't exist."

"Don't know I believe in anything much. But something made the sand move." He shivered. "Uncanny, it was. I don't like these dunes. They move anyway, you know, swallowing everything in their path, like some kind of monster eating its way across the land. Put a pike in my hand and an enemy in front of me, and I'll enjoy a good fight. But sand that moves and sings? Gives me the shiver-shudders."

She smiled. "The dunes move very slowly, a few paces each cycle, and I suspect it is the wind sending them on their way across the plains, not any monster or dune god within. Elmar, I need to eat a lot tonight. Meat, if you can get hold of some, to bring my powers up to par. I'm losing blood."

He looked shocked. "You're bleeding?"

"Yes. I-I may be losing the baby." She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but the expression on his face told her she had failed.

"Sunlord help you. I didn't know. I'll get some food. And one of the women."

"Ask Junial. She told me she sometimes assisted the midwife on her level."

She rested, glad not to be jolting along on pedeback, but her peace did not last. Ravard came.

With sick apprehension, she wondered whether he would wonder what she had been doing standing up on the back of the pede just before she had fallen. She hoped he had not noticed. After all, Whetstone had been attacking him at the time…

He didn't appear to be angry. In fact, he looked more uneasy than anything. "Are you comfortable?" he asked.

"Not particularly."

He fidgeted awkwardly. "The baby?"

"I am bleeding."

"Ah." He scratched his ear, once again hardly more than a youth trying to cope with a situation too big for him. Sunlord damn, he looked anxious. Worried, for her.

She wondered if he ever appeared that way to his men and decided it was unlikely. They gave him a healthy respect and she'd never heard them mock him even when he wasn't around. No, this boyish, vulnerable side occurred only with her. Spitless damn.

"I'm sorry. Shall I get one of the women?" he asked.

"I've asked someone to come. Junial. The cook."

He looked blank, but nodded anyway. "Food?"

"Also coming."

"Is it, um, serious?"

"Of course it's serious."

"Oh. I-oh." He looked down and fiddled with the handle of the dagger thrust through his belt, as if he was an embarrassed lad of twelve, not the heir to all the dunes of the Red Quarter.

Then she saw the dark patch of Whetstone's dried blood on his trousers and looked away. Don't mistake the insecurities of youth for kindness, Ryka.

"I'm sorry," he said finally. "I dropped the reins and the pede panicked when the sand shifted. I feel responsible. I wish t'apologize."

Blighted eyes, she thought, there are times when I almost like him. "Kher, what happened back there? The sand, moving like that-"

He shrugged. "The sand shifts on the slopes sometimes, and sings. Perhaps it is the dune god, perhaps not. One thing for sure, it wasn't Uthardim." His voice was larded with scorn.

"What did the shaman of Pebblered say?"

He looked uncomfortable. "The man heard the singing, but admitted that he did not recognize the song." He stopped and changed the subject abruptly. "If there is anything else you need, send someone t'tell me." He walked away without waiting for her reply, and she let out the breath she had been holding.

Elmar returned shortly with a plate piled high with food and helped her to sit up so she could eat it. "What did that bastard want?" he asked.

"To apologize," she said and told him what the Master Son had said.

Elmar started laughing. "He thinks it was his fault you fell? Because he let the reins fall? That's as good as a double dayjar ration!"

She wanted to chuckle, decided it would hurt too much and dampened the urge. Instead, she forced herself to eat.

"At least he has no clue the two of us were thinking of escape. It was a brave thing you did, m'lord," he said, keeping his voice low. "Weren't your fault it didn't work."

"There will be another attempt, I promise you. Perhaps when I am more sure Kaneth will join us."

The look he gave her was troubled. "I wasn't about to give him a choice this morning. I was going to seize the pede he was on."

"I know."

There was so much pain in his eyes. And something else. Love. Not for her, though. It shook her to see the tough warrior so vulnerable. "What happened out there?" he asked. "What made him say he had saved Ravard? Why would he want to save Ravard, anyway?"

"I don't think he was trying to do so. The sand collapsed under us, who knows why. Kaneth was just trying to make Ravard think he did it. Because of being Uthardim. The other Reduners are buying it, even if Ravard doesn't."

"I hope you're right. Because that would mean the old Kaneth is returning, piece by bleeding piece. Oh, he doesn't remember much past his early boyhood yet, but his-he is coming back. The man. The cynical, sarcastic bastard we used to know and love."

Relief suffused her. Soon. Soon we'll be out of here. Ravard will die and then we can go after Davim.

He continued to kneel at her side, his large restless hands pulling at his clothing as if he was looking for the scabbard he no longer wore. He said at last, "I gather he knows now he was a rainlord, but you didn't tell him you were, too. You don't trust him yet either, do you?"

"He is so confused," she said. "Weeping hells, Elmar, he can't remember a thing that has happened over the past twenty years-none of it! Not the way the young stormlords died, not what Taquar did to us all, not our search of the Gibber for talented children, not even Nealrith's death. Sandblast it, he doesn't even remember Nealrith except as maybe a child playing skittles with him! He doesn't know Jasper exists. How could he have any loyalty to anyone?

"You were right, and I was wrong. If he doesn't remember his loyalties, how can he know where to place his honor? I am waiting for a sign that he cares about us. When I have that, I'll tell him. In the meantime, you must tell him as much as you can, but not all at once. Little by little. A reminder here, a reminder there. Start-start with things furthest away in the past."

"I don't have much opportunity now," Elmar said. "Most of the time I am tied up with the other men and there are usually guards within earshot anyway."

He paused, and when he spoke again it was to reminisce. "I met him first when I was ordered to be his sparring partner in the practice yard, did you know that? Cocky brat he was then, as full of himself as a puffed-up sandgrouse and sure he could best anyone. We knocked the stuffing out of him as fast as we knew how. But he didn't resent it. I liked that. After that, we were a team, Lord Kaneth and me. At first, I was the teacher, him the pupil. In the end, he led, I followed-because he was worth following. We protected each other's backs. I always knew which way he'd move, and he knew he could rely on me. The best years of my otherwise useless life have been with him. M'lord, it's breaking me in two to see him like this and to be so powerless to help him."

The grief in his voice was profound, confirming something she had long suspected. "You love him."

He was silent.

"Does he know?"

His laugh had a bitter edge. "Come on, I got better sense than that. Would change things, him knowing. He may have slept with every damned snuggery girl in Breccia, but he's never looked at a man. Don't let it bother you. You got his heart, and that's the way it should be."

"And lost it, it seems, because of a blow to his head. Watergiver take it, Elmar; we are a sorry pair, aren't we?"

His low laugh was devoid of bitterness this time. "That we are. He wants to see you, by the way. Asked me if I would ask you first."

"Maybe it's Kher Ravard you should be asking," she pointed out dryly. "He's the one who owns us both."

"You may be out of earshot here, but you're hardly out of sight with only this bit of canvas overhead. I don't think the Kher'll take exception. He saw me bringing you the food and he said nothing. But then, he's a touchy bastard. Watch him, m'lord. He's a powerful man on the outside, but the inside quivers."

"With what?"

"Who knows? Fear? Insecurities? Madness? Hate? Rage against the world? That young warrior is two people, not one."

She remembered the scars on Ravard's back, and wondered about his past.

"I'll tell Kaneth to come, shall I?" Elmar asked.

She nodded.

"Go easy on him. Ah, here's Junial. I'd better go and eat something myself, before they truss me up for the night like a bale of bab kernels in a burlap sack." His scarred face seamed in a smile as he left and Junial took his place at Ryka's side.

Junial's advice was to the point. "Move as little as possible. You want to water the plants, you do it right here beside your bed. Bed rest is the only thing I know that can save a babe. But then, maybe it's better to let it go. After all, what's the point of letting a child be born to slavery?" She cleaned up the blood, pronounced the amount to be small as yet, and then left, promising to sleep at Ryka's side for the night if she could, in case she needed help.

No sooner had Junial left than Kaneth came and knelt at her side. "How are you?" he asked.

She studied his face in the firelight, the concern in his eyes, but could see nothing there that spoke of love. Disappointed yet again, she said bluntly, "I'll live. The baby may not."

"I can't apologize enough."

"For what?"

"You were going to stop that man from killing Ravard. If you'd jumped on him as he passed, you might have died. He had his scimitar over his head, ready to strike! I thought you'd impale yourself. All I could think was to stop you. And instead I hurt you."

A sign. She had wanted a sign that he cared, even a little. And now that she had it, she stared at him, incredulous. "I wasn't thinking to save Ravard! I was happy enough to see him die!" The irony stabbed at her, cutting deep. She tried to explain. "I stood up to move to the driver's saddle. I was going to steal the pede and ride away with you and Elmar in the confusion of Ravard's death."

He frowned, as if he had trouble taking in all she said. Finally he remarked, "They would have killed us with ziggers."

"They would never have released them. They would have lost every single slave for a start, not to mention any Pebblered Reduners not wearing the correct perfume-which might have been all of them. You do know that, don't you? That each dune uses a particular perfume their ziggers are trained to avoid?" And I would have killed any that came after us…

He nodded. "Yes, yes, I know that." He rubbed his forehead once more, a gesture she was beginning to dread. "Facts I recall. But I don't think very well sometimes. Was I always so witheringly slow?"

"You had a sharp mind once. You will again." But what the blighted hell makes you think you can move the very sand beneath our feet? "Would you-would you have come with us?"

To her dismay, he didn't give an immediate answer, and when he did reply, she wasn't sure she wanted the answer anyway.

"I would have wanted to," he said finally. "But it seems wrong to leave folk in slavery."

"A rainlord's skills are better spent elsewhere." You hypocrite, she added beneath her breath, and it was herself she meant.

"But that's just it, Garnet. I'm not a rainlord. Although I suspect I was trying to call on my water-sense when I tried to stop you." He made a gesture of frustration. "I'm not explaining this very well. When I saw you-as I thought-preparing to jump on the slave with the scimitar, I was too far away to grab you so I reached out for something to use. Water, I guess. I suppose what I did was instinctive because I certainly didn't think about it. I just felt something deep in the dune and reached for it. I touched it. But I don't think it was water. Then everything went horribly wrong."

"You really believe you made the sand move?"

"I think I did something to start the sand moving. And once it started I didn't know how to stop it."

"I think you just said 'No,' " she said dryly, "and it ceased."

He wasn't amused. "I can't explain it. And I feel so guilty. You were hurt. Worse, now you tell me I wrecked your chance to escape."

She didn't reply. In truth, she didn't know what to say.

"Ravard said your baby wasn't his."

"Of course it isn't!" Her rage bubbled to the surface, even though she knew she was being unfair. "It's only been what-ten days?-since I had the misfortune to meet Kher Ravard! I was looking through a pile of corpses for the body of my husband at the time…"

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I had no idea."

She stared at him, trying not to feel the hurt he had not meant to give her. The concern was still there in his eyes; concern for a stranger who had crossed his path. She wanted to reach out, touch his scar, cup his face with her hand. She wanted to feel his hands on her body, touching their child.

He said, "I don't remember what happened in Breccia in the days before I was flung onto the pyre."

In his confusion, his hand went to his head again and she wondered if his headaches were bothering him still. Or maybe it's just talking to me makes men fidget, she thought with a touch of hysteria. She took a deep breath and calmed herself. "The baby is my husband's. Let's just leave it at that."

Kaneth was upset, that was obvious. Her thoughts were in turmoil, but one emerged from the murk, clear and sure: he would not betray her. That danger was past.

"But there is something you should know," she added. "I didn't tell you before, because I wasn't sure I could trust you. You were so… confused."

"Go on."

"I'm also a rainlord. We've known each other since we were children attending the rainlord academy in Breccia."

He sat back on his heels, eyes wide. "Weeping shit."

She waited for him to say something else. Anything.

"Then why didn't you escape before now?" he asked finally.

"Because I wouldn't leave without you, you sand-brained idiot! We are rainlords! We-we help one another."

Another long silence, as if he was trying to puzzle something out. "Did you go to bed with that sand-tick because of me?"

She snorted. "Don't pride yourself! Why the waterless hells would I do that? I did it to get out of Breccia in one piece and save my child. My sister died in my arms in Breccia Hall because she wouldn't bed Davim, and I didn't want to end up the same way."

"Oh, sandblast it. I have to think about this. I-oh, sod the bastard. Ravard's staring at us with his hand on the hilt of his scimitar."

He stood up. "I think I had better go before I embarrass myself by uttering anymore inanities. Can I apologize again for being ten times a sand-stuffed fool? Garnet, is there anything I can do to help you now?"

"You could call me Ryka, when we are alone, at least. That's my real name."

Breathless she waited for something-some recognition, some indication that the name meant something. But there was nothing. His face was blank.

He hesitated. "I'd rather not. We knew each other once. I've known you for years, it seems. And yet… I don't know what you were to me. Family? Sister? Lover? Fellow comrade-at-arms? Friend? I don't know. And perhaps you are wise not to tell me. For now you are just Garnet Prase, and I start afresh even if you don't. The day I call you Ryka, you will know I remember you."

She watched him as he walked away, biting her lip to stop herself from calling him back. Only when he disappeared into the darkness on the other side of the cooking fires did she turn her senses inward to concentrate on saving their child. The man who thought of himself as nameless rose before the sun the following day. He walked through the outer perimeter of guards, nodding amiably to the closest of the sentries, who made no move to stop him, continuing on till he reached the top of one of the dune hills. The sky lightened as he went; the stars began to fade, then died in the shimmer of the coming dawn.

From the crest he could see in all directions. The encampment was beginning to wake. Slaves were out collecting pede droppings for burning in the camp fires, the drovers were cleaning and polishing their mounts. In the other direction, the tent settlement of the sandmaster of Dune Sandsinger was also astir. Unlike the traveling tents of Ravard and his men, the settlement tents were lavish affairs, embroidered and fringed, with a porch and several rooms each, and sides that could be rolled up or lowered. Their kitchens were communal, shared between three or four families, roofed with jute canvas and furnished with tables and benches made of bab wood or stone slabs.

Why do I know things like that? he wondered. I even know the Reduners grow jute around their waterholes and the Gibber folk grow it in their drywashes, while the Alabasters grow flax somewhere or other-and yet I don't know my own name.

He turned his thoughts to Garnet. Ryka. She puzzled him because she didn't seem to fit. He had vague memories of nebulous women-a lot of them-in his past. Women offering themselves for money, or perhaps for fun. Women taken and enjoyed and forgotten. He couldn't put faces or names to the memories, but he sensed they had not been like Garnet, nor had she been one of them. When she regarded him, the look in her eyes was unsettling in its intensity. In her presence he had a feeling of familiarity.

He thought of her, of the woman she was now, Ravard's woman. Now that he knew how recently she had been widowed and enslaved, he was staggered by both her bravery and her dignity. She had gone from wife to concubine, from free citizen to slave, all in the space of a few days, yet she stood up to Ravard and held her head high. Her courage astounded him. I am in awe of her.

And then he gave a grim smile. Perhaps she admired his courage too; if so, the admiration was misplaced. Oh, he was brave, he knew that, but his bravery came from a lack of caring. Without a past, he had no fear, because he knew of nothing he wanted to live for. Paradoxically, without a past, he knew of nothing he cared to die for either.

"What thoughts go round in that head empty of memories?"

He turned to face the speaker, who stood fifteen paces or so distant. If he really had been a rainlord, he would have sensed the man's approach, or so he supposed; instead he was taken by surprise.

"Kher Ravard," he said, inclining his head to the man, but not enough to indicate his slave status.

Ravard glowered at him.

"To answer your question-I was debating the nature of bravery. And also what makes a slave."

"Defeat makes a slave," the younger man sneered, and came several paces nearer. "A brave man fights t'the death rather than be taken by th'enemy."

"No. Defeat makes a captive, not a coward. Bravery is sometimes the decision to go on living. Tell me, who was Uthardim?"

"A hero of the past who had a burned face."

"You appear to scorn the legends of your people."

"Scorn them? No. I scorn you." Ravard approached, and his right hand fell to his scimitar hilt. He had a zigtube clipped to his shoulder, and the nameless man could hear the frenzied buzzing of the zigger within. "You're not Uthardim Half-face reborn. You're a Breccian nobody, and you were thrown onto a funeral pyre before your time, that's all."

"Perhaps, perhaps not. I asked one of your drovers who speaks a bit of the Scarpen tongue about Uthardim Half-face. Apparently the story is he was the man who gathered together the remnants of the original people of the Quartern and led them to a new life on the dunes, after the ancestors of the Scarpen folk came from across the Giving Sea and displaced them. They looked on him as a savior, the founder of their culture, because in the dunes they found the pedes and the ziggers and they became Reduner drovers and caravanners and hunters as a result, instead of the impoverished herders of goats they had once been. When Uthardim was dying, so the story goes, he said he would be reborn out of the fire, to lead your people to victory against the invaders."

Ravard, now only a pace away, dropped his voice to a low tone laden with threat and anger. "That's not you, for sure," he spat out. "Why would a reborn Uthardim come back as one of the enemy rather than a drover of the dunes? You're no hero returned! If I had my way, you'd be thrown back on that pyre, and that'd be the end of it. You keep away from my woman or that will be what happens t'you, no matter what the sandmaster wants."

The nameless man smiled. "That woman belongs to no one, and in your heart you know it."

Ravard reached out and grabbed him by the neck of his tunic, jerking him forward until his face was only a hand-span away. "Garnet made her choice. I don't force her. Ask her the truth of that, if you like."

"I can hardly ask her anything. You just told me to keep away from her."

"You're like all wilting Scarpen uplevelers! You mock us by playing with words, thinking they give you power. Well, they don't. Power comes from this-" He gripped the hilt of his scimitar. "-And this." He tapped the zigtube, then flung the other man from him.

The nameless man staggered, but kept his footing. He said, and the words were lies, "This morning, I spoke to the slave woman who is tending Garnet. She says it is unlikely she will live the day out. Not if you strap her to a pede for another day's trek. Leave her here, if you want her to live. Let the tribal women of Dune Sandsinger care for her until she has recovered."

"One day you'll make a mistake," Ravard said, "and I'll be free t'kill you."

The nameless man shook his head, upset. Had the fellow even bothered to listen?

They exchanged a stare, each taking the other's measure. The nameless man, bent on irritating the other, allowed a slight smile to play at the corner of his lips. They were both large men. He was broader in the shoulder, but the Reduner was all muscle and sinew. He was experienced, he instinctively knew that much about himself, but the Reduner had the quickness of youth on his side.

"You can try to kill me," he said. "I feel sorry for you. There's nothing you would like better than to slit my throat with that scimitar of yours. But your men look up to me and Davim has forbidden you to harm me. In fact, I suspect he has forbidden you to treat me as a slave. After all, that wouldn't be wise if I really was some sort of reincarnation of a mythical hero, would it?"

"You're no hero, let alone one from the past. You're just sand-witted dross, the leavings of a man who doesn't even remember his name. Half-face is a good name for you. Because that's all you are; half a face, half a mind and half-witted."

"Ah, but can you be sure?" He was amused, and felt an echo of the man he had once been. "Did you not see the sands obey my words? I owed you a life, Ravard. And yesterday I paid you; you are right about that. We are even now, you and I."

"The dune doesn't obey you, a non-believer! You blaspheme. It was the dune god of Pebblered who saved one of his tribemasters, and in so doing saved me!"

"Are you sure?" he asked again. Then he turned and walked back down the slope toward the camp. And you'd better see to Garnet's wellbeing, you bit of waterless shit, or I'll-

The thought, however, stopped there, because he couldn't imagine just what he would do. He was unarmed in a camp full of Reduner warriors led by a man who was fast coming to hate him. He heaved a sigh, aware that, even though he had little memory of his history, at times he wasn't the wisest of men.

Garnet. If it looked as if Ravard wouldn't leave her behind, he would do something, anything, to make sure he did. He just didn't know what yet. And he wasn't quite sure why. What was it in his past that tied him to a woman he couldn't even remember?