The Last Stormlord (32 page)

Davim.

The piece of jasper from her hand turning in the air, catching the light like an arc of bloodied green fire.

Taquar leaned forward and slapped him across the face. “Stop it!”

Shale was gasping for breath, his chest heaving, his eyes wild.

Taquar was relentless. “You are our only hope for the future, boy.
You.
Granthon is old, close to death. You are the only person we have who can possibly be the next cloudmaster. The only one who has enough power within to be trained.”

Stormlord.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No.” He stood, hands up, palms outwards, as if to ward off an attack. “Noooo.”

Then he whirled and ran. There was no sense to it, no plan, nothing but a desire to run from a trouble too great to bear, from thoughts that were, in fact, unbearable.

There was nowhere to run, of course. He shot across the entrance hall, past the pede, and came up against the metal squares of the grille that separated the underground building from the outside. It was closed once more. And because there was no exit, he climbed. Even then, there was nowhere to go. He reached the top of the grille; above, there was only rock wall, far too smooth to offer a handhold. He hung there on the bars, facing outwards, lit by the last rays of a setting sun, like a spider’s prey caught spread-eagled in a web.

“Come down,” Taquar said. He did not sound angry, just exasperated.

Slowly, Shale did just that. When he stood on the cave floor again, Taquar added, “There’s nowhere to run, Shale. Nowhere. You were born to be what you are. It is your duty. Accept it.”

“You don’t unnerstand. They all died ’cause of me,” he whispered. “They
died
.”

Taquar heaved a sigh. He came forward and pulled Shale into his embrace, Shale’s cheek to his shoulder. For once, his tone was gentle, threaded with regret and concern. “Yes, that’s right. I’m not going to lie to you. You are more important than any one of them. If you die, thousands of people die. From now on, Shale, you think of nothing but making yourself into a stormlord. Nothing else is important.
Nothing.
Not one of those people mattered by comparison.”

Shale’s jaw tightened with anger.
Citrine mattered.

Taquar felt his tension and released him. “All right,” he said, voice hardening, “if you don’t believe that, then believe this. Your only chance of ever finding and freeing your brother is to have the power of a stormlord. Then you can do
anything.
” He turned Shale back towards the inner room. “Go and finish your meal,” he said. “Then we will start the first of your lessons.”

Shale returned to the table. He took the piece of jasper from where he had put it in his tunic pocket and rubbed it with his thumb. For a long time, he didn’t speak; the lump in his throat didn’t allow it. Finally, he closed his hand over the gemstone, holding it tight. He would keep it forever, to remember Citrine.

He raised his head to meet Taquar’s gaze. “Why didn’t they snuff
me
out?” he asked. “Why did this—this rogue rainlord ask the Reduners to find me if not to kill me? They bunched all the rest together, those they didn’t kill. But me—me they asked for by name. They put me on the pede and took me away ’stead of snuffing me.
Why?
”

“I don’t know. It may have something to do with that water that came down your wash. Remember that? It was stolen from Granthon by someone who has water-powers. It’s unlikely that he intended your settle to be the recipient of it. I suspect he was trying to send it elsewhere, and he failed. Perhaps that told him he is not as powerful as he thought. Perhaps his Reduner ally is angry with him as a result. Perhaps the Reduners have begun to wonder if they will have enough rain for themselves after Granthon dies.

“They were taking you to the Red Quarter, that’s what I found out when I went to Wash Drybone to collect you. You were to be a prisoner on one of the dunes.”

“They tole you that?”

Taquar smiled, a touch of nastiness in his satisfaction. “A rainlord can be very persuasive, Shale. Anyway, what I learned leads me to suspect that you were to be their secret stormshifter, the one who could save them if their Time of Random Rain didn’t work out to be as successful as they hoped.” He shrugged. “It’s the only thing I can think of that even begins to explain what happened.”

Shale stared at the two bowls on the table. One was filled with water; the other was empty.

“Look,” said Taquar.

Shale watched as the water in the first bowl flowed out, seemingly of its own accord, into the second bowl.

“That,” said Taquar, “is the simplest of all exercises. Learn that, then you will move on to these others.” He indicated a jumble of items on the table. He selected one, a twist of glass tubing that stood several handspans high. It was made up of tubes of a variety of sizes and shapes, connected one to another by a series of open bowls and chutes and stepped slides. “You have to get the water from top to bottom and back again without spilling it,” Taquar said as he poured water into the top. “As you can see, that means either pushing it uphill or controlling its speed as it comes down. Not as easy as it looks.” As he spoke, water began to move at a measured pace through the tubes.

Shale gazed, mesmerised by its passage. “
You
are doing that?” he asked, awed.

“Indeed. Any rainlord can do this. As will you, in a matter of weeks. You will learn to manipulate water, not just move it. Like this…”

A drop detached itself from the water in the bowl. It moved into the air and hovered above the table. Then it jumped to the left, slowly skated sideways to the right and moved in a loop before it dropped back into the bowl. “Control, Shale, is just as important as the ability to move it. Before I leave, I will run through every piece of apparatus here. That will give you enough to work on while I am gone.”

Shale’s heart lurched. “Leave?
Gone?
”

It had never occurred to Shale that he was going to be
left
in this place. On his own.

Taquar looked at his horrified face and gave an exasperated hiss. “Shale, I
can’t
take you to Scarcleft. You must be strong in water-power and able to defend yourself against attack before we reveal your existence to the world. I don’t know how old you are, but you must be at least fourteen by now, surely. Quite old enough to manage on your own. You will be safe. No one knows you are here. If anyone does come, you will feel them coming because you can sense their water, and you can retreat into this inner room with the door closed. No one can open the grille except rainlords, and none will come this way.”

“Defend myself? How, by chuckin’ water at them?” Shale asked, saying the first words that came into his head.

One of Taquar’s eyebrows shot up. “So,” he drawled, amused, “the Gibber cub has a modicum of spirit, after all, eh? No, Shale. There are other ways we have of defending ourselves. Ways you will eventually learn when you are old enough. Until such time, you will remain here. Safe.”

“And you reckon I’ll be able to move clouds one day?” Doubt and elation jostled in his mind.

“If you work hard at the exercises I give you, certainly.”

“I’ll be pissing waterless!”

Taquar glared. “Watch your language. Vulgarity is the mark of the inarticulate. We will start on the exercises tomorrow. I will leave the following day. Do you have any questions?”

“Uhuh, yeah. I wanna know why this rogue rainlord asked for help from a Reduner sandmaster, and why a sandmaster gave it. Don’t make sense t’me. I reckon Reduners don’t much like anyone but themselves. That’s what they say—used to say—in m’settle.”

Taquar’s grey eyes flashed, but Shale could not read what the emotion was.

“Not so dumb, are you?” he said flatly. “Good.” He leaned forward, once more pinning Shale down with his stare. “A rainlord is only one man. He can only do so much by himself. He needs powerful friends. Armed men to back his ambition. Yet no sane Scarperman would follow him if he told them he planned to kill other rainlords and prevent the training of a new stormlord. But there are other people out there who aren’t so sensible, underlings who are discontented about their status, who will listen.”

“Reduners?”

“
Some
Reduners, yes. The men who attacked Wash Drybone are from a tribe on the dune they call the Watergatherer. Sandmaster Davim is a young warrior with ambition. We in the Scarpen have heard rumours that this man hankers to free all the dunes from any reliance on the rainlords or stormlords of the Scarpen. He thinks the dune tribes are better off in a Time of Random Rain. He seeks to lead all the Reduner people as nomads, the way they were once before. We thought no one would want to follow a man with so foolish a dream. But if he was allied to a rogue rainlord and they had in their hands the next stormlord—yourself—well, that could be another tale.”

And Mica was in the hands of this man. Shale felt he was suffocating in horror.
Mica, how will I ever save you?

“When I arrived at Wash Drybone Settle, I saw Davim’s men still looting. He’d gone, though.”

Shale struggled to understand. “They didn’t snuff you?”

“Obviously not.”

“Why not?”

“A rainlord with a cage full of ziggers and the powers of his rank is a man to be feared. I could have killed any one of them. In fact, I did, to make the others talk. That was how I knew what direction you had been taken in and where you were headed. That’s how I knew they were Davim’s men.”

Shale looked disbelieving. “You speared them all?”

“I have no need of such bloody methods. I merely took their water. And killed the ziggers they were rash enough to threaten me with. But enough of this conversation. It is time for you to go to sleep. Tomorrow we will start your teaching in earnest.”

He stood, indicating Shale’s bed. “Don’t forget to clean your teeth as I showed you.”

Shale nodded absently. Somewhere in the back of his mind a thought troubled him, something about his rescue by Taquar, but he shrugged it away. He was just grateful that it had happened.

Took their water.

He would remember those words. Just as he would remember the name Davim. And Nealrith. Nealrith, highlord. And one day he would seek his revenge.

His
justice.

Scarpen Quarter

Warthago Range

Scarcleft mother cistern and surroundings

That night, Shale cried himself to sleep.

He took care Taquar did not hear him, as he was sure that the rainlord would not approve. Shale was not afraid of Taquar, not the way he had feared his father. The man had no wish to hurt him, he felt sure. But he could wither with a look, and Shale dreaded seeing disapproval in that judgemental gaze. At the first sign of a quivering lip or indecision or fragility, Taquar would raise an eyebrow and look at him—and it was a look that quelled emotion, that forced the masking of fears. Inside, he felt as if he had been reduced to a toddling child once more. In private, he cried, tearless sobs of grief. He’d lost all the family he had ever had. Even Mica was gone. The thought of that swelled inside him like a canker about to burst.

In the morning, Taquar looked at him in distaste as he swung himself out of bed. “You are feeling sorry for yourself, lad,” he said. “Be grateful that you live when others have died.”

“They were m’fam’ly,” he muttered.

Taquar’s expression was pure surprise. “You don’t
grieve
for them, surely? You said your father beat you and your mother never did much for you, either. Your brother still lives, as far as you know. Your sister was just a babe.”

Shale frowned at him. “She was m’
sister
,” he said, thinking that was sufficient explanation.

Taquar shrugged. “Doubtless I do not know how you feel. I do not have a sister. And please remember not to slur your words. Copy the way I speak.”

Shale pressed his mouth closed and went to wash.

After breakfast, Taquar sat him down at the table with the two bowls of water.

Shale stared at them resentfully. “What am I s’posed to do?”

Taquar sat opposite and reached across to tilt the boy’s face up with his hand. “Before we start, I think I know what’s bothering you. You think it’s all your fault people died, don’t you?”

Shale nodded, but in his heart he knew it was a lot more than that. It was
everything
. It was losing the only two people who had ever loved him: Mica and Citrine. It was fear of dying, fear of being hunted like an animal, fear of being gutted on a spear. It was fear of becoming what he was supposed to become, a stormlord.

Taquar did not notice his hesitation. “Well, it wasn’t your fault. Nealrith or some other traitor was responsible, plus Sandmaster Davim and the men who followed them. You did nothing to deserve what happened to you, nor are you responsible for what happened. The only thing you have to do is to be worthy, so that they didn’t die in vain. If you become a stormlord, then you become the saviour of a nation—of all the Quartern. And you can’t even
begin
to imagine how many people that is. More than you’ve ever seen in your whole life.”

Shale couldn’t control himself well enough to risk speaking. He wanted desperately to please this man who had saved him. Who had such expectations. And yet…