The Last Stormlord

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Scarpen Quarter Breccia City Breccia Hall, Level 2 Morion came to tell Jasper to join Nealrith and his family in their private dining room that evening. When he did, he found neither Granthon nor Nealrith nor Ethelva was there. Instead, Rainlord Laisa and her daughter, Senya, were seated with Iani, who was still dusty and travel-stained.

Laisa looked up as soon as he entered. "Ah, there you are. Come meet Lord Iani. He has just come from a meeting with Granthon and Nealrith. They have excused him to have a meal. Poor man has not eaten properly since leaving Qanatend. You have heard the news, I suppose? I have dismissed the servants so I can talk to him freely. Help yourself to the food and drink on the side tables."

She then resumed her conversation, giving Jasper no chance to reply. He went to select his food, and sneaked a look at Iani while he helped himself. The rainlord was grey-haired and stooped. One side of his face was drawn downwards, out of kilter with the other.

When he went to join them at the table, it was Iani who spoke first. "So you're Jasper Bloodstone. Nealrith mentioned you."

Iani's speech was slightly slurred, and Jasper-reminded of his father's drunken mumbling-was for a moment repulsed. Then he saw that half of Iani's face did not move as the other half did. A trail of dribble trickled out of one side of his mouth; the man was partially palsied. He waved a spoon at Jasper. "Sit down, sit down. Nealrith said that Taquar was involved."

"Taquar found him," Laisa said by way of explanation as Jasper sat and stabbed at his meal with his spoon. He avoided looking at her because he wasn't sure if he could stop staring. She was wearing a loose robe that clung to different parts of her anatomy with disturbing effect, revealing more than it concealed. She continued, "Our estimable friend kept the boy a prisoner while he taught him the rudiments of watershifting."

"It seems unbelievable! Whatever was he intending?" He addressed Jasper once more: "Nealrith says that you are a stormlord."

"No, he's not," Senya interrupted. She smiled at Jasper.

"No, not yet," he agreed, controlling his wince. "Not really."

"My daughter Lyneth also had the potential to be a stormlord," Iani said.

"So I heard, m'lord."

"Iani, Iani, Iani. Call me Iani. She was beautiful, you know. Lyneth."

Jasper's face flooded with colour, and he changed the subject. "I heard you tell the guard that Qanatend is under attack by Reduners?"

"Yes. I rode for help. I was not in the city when they came; I was inspecting the tunnel. And looking for her, you know. Lyneth. My daughter. I always look for her." Jasper tackled his meal, but all the while he was thinking frantically. Had Nealrith spoken to Iani about Lyneth's bracelet? He thought it unlikely. This was the first time Iani had come to Breccia since Jasper had arrived, and there were more urgent things to consider right now.

"Is-is the attack serious?" he asked. "Or just a quick raid by marauders?"

"Oh, it is serious all right." Iani's tone was grim. "They surround the city. They have our groves and the mother cistern in the hills above. They control our water tunnel. When I left, Moiqa was holding them off at the city walls. I couldn't get back in. I wanted to find Lyneth for her, you know. Can you conceive what it is like for a mother to lose her only child and never to know what happened to her?"

Jasper shook his head and stopped eating. He suddenly had no appetite.

Iani continued, "The city will be all right for a while, with rationing. I sent some men to ask Pediment and Scarcleft for help, and I came here. It will take twice as long to get back with reinforcements. And several days to organise it all first. Supplies. Water. Got to bring their own water. Problem, that. But we can take the mother cistern back first." He swirled the hot honeyed tea in his mug. "Who knows if they can last long enough? The city, I mean."

"What do the Reduners want? Why would they raid a Scarpen city?" Senya asked, her eyes bright with interest.

"You tell me, dear child."

She pouted, apparently not liking to be called a child, and didn't answer, so Iani turned to Jasper. "You tell me."

"I don't know, although I suppose I could make a few guesses."

Iani looked interested, Laisa scornful, Senya disbelieving. "Such as?" Laisa asked.

"Sandmaster Davim of Watergatherer has united most of the dunes but needs to prove to them that he can lead-and that means getting them enough water."

Laisa made an impatient gesture. "Get to the point."

"Davim believed Taquar could supply the Red Quarter, if he wanted, through my cloudshifting powers. At a guess, Taquar told him I am a lot better than I really am and hasn't told him that he doesn't have me any more. So Davim tells Taquar to supply water to make up Granthon's shortfall. When he doesn't get it, he makes good on a threat. 'Fool with me, Taquar, and I'll destroy the Scarpen cities you want to rule one day. Careful, or I'll leave you with nothing.' And so he starts with Qanatend, which is the city closest to the Red Quarter."

"So much wisdom in one so young," Laisa drawled. "Where do you get your ideas from?"

Senya giggled.

Iani paused, his drink halfway to his lips. "Explain yourself," he said at last. "You think Davim and Taquar plotted treason together?"

"I saw them together. Taquar had me demonstrate my water skills to Davim."

Iani almost dropped his drink. "Do you mean to tell me you think Moiqa's city is under siege simply because this Reduner wants to teach Taquar a lesson?"

"That, and maybe it's a way for the Reduners to get more water, at least for as long as water flows into the mother cistern. They have the pedes necessary to transport it. I would say they are already doing their best to steal it from Qanatend."

Iani looked aghast. "This fellow, Davim-he must believe that Granthon won't send rain to the Red Quarter's waterholes now that he has raided a Scarpen city. So he would be entirely dependent on Taquar, whom you say he does not trust? He would not be so foolish, surely! He must have some other plan, something we are not aware of."

"He's gambling," replied Jasper.

"That's sandcrazy!" said Iani.

"No, because he doesn't think he can lose. If Taquar doesn't start supplying the water Davim needs, then he will simply attack more Scarpen cities until he does. Of course, he doesn't know Taquar doesn't have me any more. Each time he gains a city, he seizes more water. He thinks the Reduner tribes will be increasingly angry with the Scarpen, and happier with him."

"You are contradicting yourself," Laisa said. "You said they are already united behind him."

"Yes, most of the dune tribes are," Jasper agreed, "but at the moment he has their support only because they fear his power. He has been threatening them, and most have succumbed. But it's hard to win a battle with reluctant warriors. He needs the sandmasters of the other dunes to support him willingly. And one way to do that is to provide them with a common enemy. Who better than the people who stopped sending them water? He would then have a huge force of mounted tribesmen with ziggers. Enough to conquer the whole of the Quartern, if he wanted."

"And leave their families at home without water," Iani pointed out.

"Not exactly. There would still be water in most of the Reduner waterholes for a while. And he would be sending water back to them all the time."

Laisa looked at him, frowning. Senya more rudely asked, "How can you possibly know that stuff? You're just a Gibberman who never went to the academy."

Jasper flushed but continued doggedly, "I don't know anything. Rainlord Iani just asked my opinion, and I gave it. And I am hardly untutored. Cloudmaster Granthon tells me things he thinks I ought to know and gives me texts to read. So does Highlord Nealrith. I study with Rainlord Ryka. And I had nothing else to do but read when I was imprisoned. I even corresponded with Scarcleft teachers. Being caged gives you a lot of time to read and learn."

Laisa gave him a hard stare. "Well," she said, "who would have thought you would have all the answers. How do you explain the limited nature of this plan of Davim's? He must realise that sooner or later he will run out of water to steal."

"Once he has sufficient water stored in Reduner water holes to last a couple of years, he will rid himself of every rainlord in the Quartern, including Taquar, Granthon and me. He hates rainlords and stormlords. Random rain will then return. The Red Quarter will survive; we won't."

"Why can they be powerful in a time of random rain and we can't?" Senya asked.

It was her mother who answered. "They have pedes by the hundred. They are hunters. Their sandmasters and tribemasters and shamans are water sensitives who can find desert waterholes filled by random rain. We rainlords and reeves could, too, I suppose, but all of us in the Scarpen and the Gibber are linked too irrevocably to our groves and our cities and settles to prosper without them."

Iani all but choked with rage. "And Taquar allied himself with a monster such as this?"

"You have to admire his effrontery," Laisa said. "And it's not the worst thing he has done. Tell Iani about the bracelet you found, Jasper."

Jasper did look at her then. Her face was faultless, her eyes rimmed with cosmetics, her lips reddened. She appeared unaware of the enormity of what she was asking him to say. He had wanted to speak to Iani in his own time, if he had to, not like this. Not now, not in front of her. She cocked her head at him and raised a pencilled eyebrow, encouraging him to go on. Jasper found himself hating her.

He cleared his throat. "This may not be something you'd like to hear, Lord Iani." He dug into his belt pouch and drew out the bracelet. "I found this at the Scarcleft mother cistern, which is where Taquar was keeping me prisoner. There were clothes there, too, for a little girl." He handed him the bracelet and looked away, not wanting to see the expression on that ravaged face.

In the end, the prolonged silence of the rainlord forced him to look back. Senya was staring at the bracelet in a mixture of fascination and horror. Iani held it in hands that shook, and rubbed the name with fingers that trembled. His face was stark with pain. Jasper looked away.

"It is hers," the rainlord said at last, his voice so low Jasper had to strain to hear. "You are saying he took her? Because he wanted a stormlord?"

"I think so."

"What-what happened to her? What happened to my little Lyneth?"

"I don't know."

"Is she-is she-"

"If he still had her, he would not have needed me."

Another long silence, and then, in a whisper: "All those years, all those years of looking me in the face and pretending sympathy." He looked up from the bracelet, straight at Jasper. "How long did she live?"

"There were clothes there to fit a child of nine or ten."

"She wasn't yet six when she disappeared."

"I know."

Iani dragged in a deep breath and tried to still his shaking hands. "What-what do you think happened to her?"

"I don't know. He would not have hurt her or mistreated her physically, you know. He never mistreated me." He thought of a six-year-old child locked up at the mother cistern and repressed a shudder. Iani did not need to hear the details. "Her death would have been a disaster for his plans. An-an illness perhaps. There were other clothes there, too. For at least one adult woman. I suspect he had someone to look after her. Lyneth would not have been alone the way I was."

Laisa, who had continued to eat her meal, said between mouthfuls, "Of course, this is all speculation. I find it hard to believe that Taquar is capable of villainy such as that."

"Do you, my dear?" Nealrith said. "I don't find it hard at all."

Jasper looked up, startled. Too intent on their conversation, he had neither seen nor felt Nealrith enter.

"I will kill the bastard," Iani said. "Sunlord help me, I swear I will kill him!"

"Only if you are the first to get the opportunity," Nealrith said, sitting down next to him. "Before he is finished, there is going to be a long line of people wanting to effect his demise. I am sorry, my old friend. More sorry than I can say. We have all been blind."

"Perhaps you should have acted when Jasper first told us about all this," Laisa told her husband.

"And done what? Gone to war with another of our own cities? With a man supported by the Cloudmaster as Quartern heir, whose guards use ziggers when we have none?"

"What did Granthon say about Iani's news?" Laisa asked, pouring herself some more tea from the pot on the table. "Get me some more seeds, will you, Jasper?" He rose to do her bidding, bringing the cruet of resin seeds to the table from the sideboard. She sprinkled some on her drink, apparently oblivious to the emotional turmoil of those around her. Jasper, annoyed with himself, had to drag his eyes away from the sheer attractiveness of her languor. Senya watched him with a catlike stare.

"He says we cannot send guards to Qanatend," Nealrith said in answer.

Iani's head jerked up. "What?"

"He says it would leave Breccia City vulnerable to attack. And we don't have the numbers, anyway. He's right about that, Iani. By your own account, there were some seven or eight thousand tribesmen besieging Qanatend. We have barely thirty packpedes and thirty-five myriapedes at our disposal at the best of times, although we could seize those belonging to traders and individuals, I suppose. We have only five hundred permanent guardsmen. Father ordered me to send most of them to guard our mother cistern and the tunnel."

"Every man in Qanatend-and half the women and children-will fight. They were fighting when I left. What Qanatend needs now is rainlords!"

"I know, my friend. I know. But by the time we got there, the fighting would be over. You know that. Qanatend has probably already fallen."

Iani stood, knocking his chair over, and looked down on them all. "Do any of you know what it is like to abandon the groves outside your gates, which have been your city's life for fifty generations? Do you know what it is like to hear the ziggers coming over the city walls and know that they will not rest until they have found a victim? Do you know what it is like to feel you cannot sleep, because you are one of too few rainlords to defend your city? Moiqa knows! Then she had to watch while I fled for my life, pursued by Reduner warriors and too many ziggers to count. She can have no idea if I even survived."

Jasper stood and righted Iani's chair. The man sat down again, trembling, and added with a disturbing coldness, "I came across people caught outside the walls. People who had torn their own flesh trying to rip the ziggers out. People who had dropped in the midst of their tasks, dead. I saw a baby slaughtered in his mother's arms, with a zigger hole through his cheek. They like babies, you know. Because of the softness of their skin." He stopped and looked at the bracelet still clenched tight in his hand. "My poor, poor Lyneth. I couldn't find a way back into the city to help. I couldn't find my sweet Lyneth, either."

"And is Granthon at least going to stop all the storms to the Red Quarter now?" Laisa asked, sipping her tea.

Nealrith shook his head. "No. It would unite the rest of the tribes in opposition."

Iani cried out, his misshapen mouth distorting the words. "They are already united!"

"It doesn't matter which of you is right," Laisa said. "What is important is that having no water would kill the tribesmen, a favourable result for us, surely." Beside her, Senya's gaze flicked from speaker to speaker in fascinated interest.

"Not fast enough to save Qanatend. Or us," Nealrith said quietly. "They have supplies for months and would become more determined than ever to steal water from our cities. Thirst also kills the innocent. Granthon thinks to court the moderates and to use water supply as leverage. He wants to support the resistance under the leadership of Vara Redmane-"

For the first time, Laisa lost her calm. "Granthon is not fit to rule. He won't fight to save us, nor will he stop supplying water to our enemies! What shall we do: sit here and wait for them to come riding across the Sweepings to our walls?" She made a gesture of disgust. "Are there no men in your line, Nealrith?"

"Granthon has decided it is time to send a team of negotiators to Davim, to tell him we have Shale Flint. We will threaten to stop the storms to the Red Quarter unless they withdraw. When Davim discovers his unholy plot with Taquar is missing the most important element, he will be forced to obey. As long as we have Jasper, we are safe."

"Rubbish," Laisa spat at him. "What if Davim doesn't mind going back to random rain, as Jasper says? What if he comes in search of Jasper? We should at least send a couple of rainlords to assassinate this blighted sandmaster. Without its head, this unity of tribes may fall apart."

Nealrith didn't answer. Instead, he said, "All rainlords are going to be ordered to Breccia City."

Iani scrambled to his feet again. "You are ordering rainlords here? Not to Qanatend to help Moiqa?"

"Forgive us, Iani. Those are Granthon's orders. And he is right: his safety, and Jasper's, is of more importance than-"

But Iani didn't let him finish. Enraged, he hooked his hands under the edge of the table and heaved it upwards. Laisa leaped to her feet out of the way as dishes and mugs and food slid to the floor. Senya squealed. The table crashed on its side.

"More important than Qanatend?" Iani shouted at Nealrith. "Maybe you're right. But it's not just about Qanatend or my Moiqa! It's about all the other cities, too. And my Lyneth. It's about justice. And compassion. And children dying. It's about our honour!" He stood for a moment, gasping, then added, "I never thought I would live to see this day." And he walked unsteadily to the door and left the room.

Jasper, feeling foolish sitting where he was when his meal was on the floor, stood up. Senya, surveying the mess, put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

Laisa looked on dispassionately. "I'm surprised," she said. "I would not have thought he could do that with a crippled hand." She glanced to where Nealrith still sat. "You are a dreamer, Rith. Your awakening will be a rude one. To protect the whole tunnel system is impossible, you know that. We may be able to protect the mother cistern for a while with rainlords, but the many miles of tunnel? It is not possible."

"We may not have warriors like the Reduners, but we do have rainlords who can kill both men and ziggers. And who can sense men and pedes in the desert from afar. Davim will discover that rainlords are not to be trifled with if he comes here."

"If the rainlords are here."

"What do you mean?"

She turned on him in a swirl of flowing sleeves and skirt. "Do you really think that the cities of the Scarpen will give up their rainlords so easily in order to protect us?"

"Of course they will! Without a stormlord, they can't survive. They must protect us; they must save Granthon and Jasper-or they won't have water in the future."

"Tell people to think about the future when the present is threatening them, Rith, and see what happens."

"People are not so foolish," he muttered, as she walked away.

Jasper, righting a chair, was not so sure. He remembered the irrationality of the attack on Feroze, the Alabaster salt trader. Did it make any sense to condemn him to certain death and to kill his mounts simply because he was an Alabaster? Sooner or later everyone needed salt. He sighed. People can be so unbelievably stupid.

Nealrith clapped a hand to his back, adding, "Don't worry, Jasper. There's no way Taquar would countenance an attack on Breccia by Davim. He wants to rule here, rule a city, not a heap of smoking ruins. He will stop Davim. Or kill him if necessary. Anyway, I have a number of things to do right now. Orders to give. We are going to give priority to protecting the mother cistern and the tunnel and to keeping a watch. Your classes with Kaneth and Ryka will have to be put on hold. I need the rainlords. You can still take the religion classes, though, and I will get another swordsman to teach you, as well."

"I'd rather forget the classes with the High Waterpr-" Jasper began, but he was speaking to himself. Nealrith had already gone.

Senya smirked at him as she rose to go. "Don't you like religious studies, Jasper? I suppose that's because you Gibber folk are all heathens."

He watched her leave, not even bothering to reply, his thoughts elsewhere. Everyone was making decisions based on guesses. Who really knew what motivated Davim the drover? Or what he would do next? To even consider that the Reduner might take any notice of an instruction from Taquar was ludicrous. One thing Jasper did know: Davim took orders from no one. Nor was he a man to be scared by threats from the Cloudmaster.

He wondered if killing the sandmaster would solve the problem. Would the tribes go back to arguing with one another if they did not have his leadership? It was worth a try, although maybe Davim was grooming an heir. A son perhaps.

He sat down again in the chair he had put to rights. How could he know more than men like Nealrith and Granthon? It wasn't how things were supposed to be.

But I do, he thought, exasperated. They are wrong, and I am right, and no one will listen to me.