Stormlord Rising

Book 2: Stormlord

by Glenda Larke

Genres: Action & Adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

The last Stormlord is dead. War has come to the cities of the Quartern. The violent, nomadic Redunners have put every rainlord they could find to the sword and the cities are left without hope. Shale has been betrayed, drugged, and left at the feet of his greatest enemy. Now, he must decide to work with those who have plotted against him or let thousands of the waterless die. He has great power but is no Stormlord. At least, not yet. . . Terelle has escaped the Scarpen in search of her homeland and her people, the mysterious Watergivers. But a desperate message will send her back to find Shale and face her worst fears. The people of the Scarpen are in danger. Shale and Terelle must find a way to save their people and punish those who have destroyed all they ever loved.

Release date: July 17, 2010

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 687

Sample

Scarpen Quarter

Breccia City

Breccia Hall, Level 2

The man lying next to Lord Ryka Feldspar was dead.

His eyes stared upward past her shoulder, sightless, the vividness of their blue already fading. For a while blood had seeped
from his wounded chest onto her tunic, but that had slowed, then stopped. She did not know his name, although she had known
him by sight. He’d been a guard at Breccia Hall. Younger than she was. Eighteen? Twenty?


Too young to die.

The man on top of her was dead, too. He was a Reduner. His head lay on her chest and the beads threaded onto his red braids
pressed uncomfortably into her breast, but she didn’t dare move. Not yet. Around her she heard Reduner voices still; men,
heaving bodies onto packpedes, talking among themselves. Making crude jokes about the dead. Coping, perhaps, with the idea
it could so easily have been them. Death or survival: even for the victors, the outcome was often as unpredictable as the
gusting of a desert wind.


Reduners. Red men from a land of red sand dunes, flesh-devouring zigger beetles and meddles of black pedes. Drovers and nomads
and warriors who hankered after a past they thought was noble: a time when rain had been random and they ruled most of the
Quartern with their tribal savagery. A people who had recently returned to a time of slave raids, living under laws decided
by the strength of a man’s arm and dispensed with a scimitar or a zigtube.


Ryka had been a scholar once, and she spoke their tongue well. She could understand them now as they chatted. “Those withering
bastard rainlords,” one was saying, his tone bitter and angry. “They took the water from Genillid’s eyes while he was fighting
next to me. Left his eyeballs like dried berries in their sockets! Blind as a sandworm.”


“What did you do?” another asked, a youngster by the sound of him.

“For Genillid? Killed him. That was Sandmaster Davim’s orders. Reckon he was right, too. What’s left for a dunesman if he
can’t see?”


“I heard he went around the men afterward and killed everyone who was like to lose a hand or a leg as well. No place for a
cripple on the dunes, he said.”


Ryka felt no pity. They had taken her city. Killed her people. Cloudmaster Granthon Almandine, the Quartern’s ruler, its bringer
of water and its only true stormlord, was dead, she knew that. His son, Highlord Nealrith, the city’s ruler, had been taken
and tortured. He’d died in a cage swung over one of the city gates. She knew that, too. She’d heard Jasper Bloodstone had
killed him to save him the agony of a slow death.


Poor Jasper. She’d seen the respect and affection in his eyes when he spoke to the highlord.

Gentle, kindly Nealrith. She had grown up with him, gone to Breccia Academy with him, attended his wedding to that bitch, Lord Laisa. Oh, Sunlord receive you into his sunfire, Rith. You did not deserve your end.


“Did we get all them bastards?” the same youth asked.

“The rainlords? Reckon so. I hear exhaustion finally sapped their powers, leaving them defenseless. My brother killed one
of them rainlord priests. Still, not even a sandmaster can tell one from an ordinary city-grubber. They don’t look no different.”


“I heard some of them are women.”

The first man gave a bark of laughter. “One thing’s for sure, we can slaughter any force that has to use women to fight a
battle!”


Ryka wanted to grit her teeth, but couldn’t risk even that slight movement. Blast Davim’s sunblighted eyes. The tribes of the Red Quarter had been leaving their violent past behind until he’d come along to twist their view of history.


Sandmaster Davim, with his vicious hatreds and his brutal desire for power, had taken away her scholarly life. He’d shattered
the Quartern’s peace, mocked the cultures not his own, destroyed the learning, all in a couple of star cycles. His men had
killed her father. Watergiver only knew what had happened to her sister and her mother. And Kaneth?


No, you mustn’t think he is dead. You mustn’t lose hope.


Strange even to think of the life she’d had; it was all gone now, spun away on the invaders’ swords and the shimmering wings
of their ziggers, like sand whirled into the desert on a spindevil wind. A wisp of her hair tickled her cheek. She ignored
it. She mustn’t move. Not even a twitch. She had to live through this, for the baby. For Kaneth.


Sunlord, I know I don’t really believe in you, but let him be alive, that wonderful, gentle bladesman-warrior of mine. Father
of my child. She longed to raise her head and look for him. Perhaps he lay somewhere beneath her, still alive. Or dead. Her hand longed
to move to cover her abdomen where their son stirred. She knew his water and thus his maleness. Oh, Kaneth, we had so little time…


The memory of her last moments with him replayed over and over. The battle in the waterhall. His last conscious act had been
to protect her with his body. Could she have done more? Done something differently? She had used the last of her power to
stop his bleeding, to dry the horrible wound exposing the bone of his scalp as he floated face down, senseless, in the cistern.
She had kept pure the bubble of air around their faces so they could both breathe. But mostly she’d just had to float there,
eyes almost closed, hoping the invaders would leave the waterhall so she could pull Kaneth out of the water and take him to
safety.


A futile hope, easily splintered. The Reduners had slung them both out of the cistern. They had dumped Kaneth, unconscious—or
dead—on the floor; the sound of his body thudding onto the paving echoed in her head still. She’d landed on top of him a moment
later. It had taken all her courage to allow herself to fall like a dead body. Not to stretch out a hand to break her landing.
Not to open her eyes, not to touch him, not to look to see if his wound was bleeding again.


More waiting then, more futile praying that the Reduners would leave the waterhall, more begging a boon of a Sunlord she didn’t
believe in. A little joy, too, when she’d felt the baby stir within her.


She’d tried speaking to Kaneth, whispered words of encouragement and love, but he had not replied. She thought she’d felt
the movement of his breath faint against her cheek, but she couldn’t be sure.


Several runs of the sandglass later, the guards had received fresh orders. She’d heard and understood:

“Take the dead outside. Load them onto a pede and dump them outside the walls.”

Her heart had leaped within her. A chance. A chance for both her and Kaneth—if he lived. Please let it be so…


More rough handling when she was thrown over a man’s shoulder and carried, her face bumping against his back, only to be dumped
once more, onto this heap of the dead. She wasn’t outside the city walls; she knew that much. Cracking open an eyelid, she’d
recognized one of the Breccia Hall courtyards. Hampered by the confounded short-sightedness that blurred the details of anything
more than ten paces away, she saw enough to know the last bastion against the invaders had fallen. They had lost the city
to the Reduners.


And so it was that she now lay motionless, cushioned by lifeless bodies, her clothes drying out in the heat of the afternoon
sun, as she listened and awaited her time to move.


Sunlord, but she was tired! She needed to eat, and eat well. Without food she had no energy, and without energy she had no
water-power, no way of fighting back. Her sword was gone and she doubted she could have lifted it anyway.


Some more desultory conversation, laughter, and then a voice answering an unheard question. “No. It’s the dead burning outside
the city wall you can smell.”


The words sent fear stabbing into her bowels. They were burning bodies.

“Are we eating them now?” someone asked, amused.

“You sand-tick, Ankrim! The sandmaster ordered all the dead burned as soon as possible. Easier, I suppose, than burying them,
when we have all those bab palms to fuel the pyres.”


“Nah. More to teach a lesson to the living, I reckon. Here, let’s get this pede loaded.”

She stopped listening. Burned! Sandblast the bastards—if Kaneth was unconscious, then… Being taken outside the wall began to sound like a rotten idea.


The packpede was loaded, but no one approached the heap of dead Ryka was on. The nearby voices were gone, leaving only far-off
screams and shouting. She risked opening her eyes. No one. Cautiously, she raised her head and looked around. She was in front
of the main entrance to the pede stables adjoining Breccia House, and as far as she could see, there was no one in sight.
As she climbed down, bodies squelched under her sandaled feet and the odors of death intensified. Rot, shit, piss, blood.
She gagged.


Boys, some of them. Not all soldiers, either…


In death, there was little difference between those who had their skin stained red by desert dust and the fair-skinned Scarpen
folk like herself.


Her feet reached the gravel surface of the courtyard and she stood up. She was sore all over, and stiff. She moved like an
old woman. After another swift glance around to make sure she was unobserved, she poked through the piled corpses. The Reduners
she ignored, and those wearing a guard uniform. Kaneth had never been one for uniforms. “If I am going to fight, I want to
be comfortable,” he’d said as he chose his oldest tunic and trousers. She’d joked that he looked like a brass worker from
Level Twenty, but she had followed his lead and worn clothes more suited to a laborer than a woman of her class.


She couldn’t find him. Tall, broad-shouldered, muscular, long-limbed—he was hard to miss. And that sun-streaked fair hair
he kept tied at the nape, it would stand out among the Reduners.


Again she searched, even more carefully. He wasn’t there. There had been a second pile of bodies, but it had disappeared.
If he’d been among those…


Panicking and weak and thirsty, she swallowed back a surge of dizzying nausea.

“Looking for something?”

The voice, and the accompanying sound of a weapon being drawn from its scabbard, dulled her fear for Kaneth, smothered it
in more immediate terror. Her heart skipped, pounded. Slowing its beating by force of will, she turned to face the speaker.
A Reduner man, for all he spoke the Quartern tongue with a strong Gibber accent. He’d just stepped out of the stables. Slim,
athletic, armed, his red skin streaked with dust and blood. His dark red braids were untidy with beads missing or broken.
His sword was blood-drenched.


The darkness of his eyes contained no hint of mercy, no hint of anything. She guessed he was at least ten cycles younger than
she was, but he carried himself with assurance. His belted robe was elaborately embroidered, so she knew why: he came from
a wealthy and important family.


Probably learned his Quartern tongue from his Gibber slaves, she thought, her bitterness deep. Reduners had been raiding the Gibber, almost with impunity, for more than four years.
Kaneth and his men had done their best to curtail the raids, but their success had been limited.


“My husband,” she said, keeping her voice level and respectful—but not meek; she would not grovel, even though she knew she
was a finger’s breadth away from death. Or worse.


He held his scimitar up and took a step toward her, the blade pointed at her chest. She did not move.

“Find him?” he inquired, his tone deceptively mild if the sword was to be believed.

“No.”

“You’re supposed t’be in the big room.” He waved his free hand toward the hall. “In there. How did y’get out?”

The point of the scimitar came within a whisker of her left nipple. She refused to look down and held his gaze instead. “A
woman will risk much to serve her husband.”


Something flared in his eyes then, but she wasn’t sure she could read it. “Not in my experience,” he said, his lip curling
in cynicism. “These folk,” he added, indicating the heap of bodies, “came out of the waterhall. Your husband—guard, was he?
Fighting up there?”


“He was up there,” she said, “but he wasn’t a guard. He was a brass worker from downlevel. He went to help.” She did not have
to feign grief; she knew it was written on her face and captured in her voice for anyone to see and hear. “He brought me up
here for safety. He knew nothing about fighting.”


“Then I think you can be certain he’s snuffed it. Everyone in the waterhall died.”

No, they didn’t. I’m here.


She didn’t move. Every piece of her being concentrated on not showing fear. Reduners valued courage and despised weakness,
even in their women. Not, of course, that he would think twice about lopping off her head with his blade if it pleased him.
“Doubtless you’re right,” she said, fighting her nausea, “but I would like to know one way or the other.”


“What’s your name?”

I shan’t make you a present of that, you bastard. If he realized she was a rainlord, she was dead—and someone among the Reduners might know the name of Ryka Feldspar. “Who
wants to know?”


He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “My name’s Ravard,” he said finally. “But what should count with you,
woman, is the weapon I hold t’your body. What’s your name?” The blade tip brushed her nipple this time, then traced a pattern up to her throat.


“Garnet,” she said, appropriating the name of the cook in Carnelian House and then adding another gemstone at random, “Garnet
Prase.”


“Dangerous for a woman t’be out on the streets after a battle,” he remarked with heavy mockery. “You never know what nasty
thing might happen. There’s men wanting their reward for a battle well fought, and they’ll take them anyhow they please.”


“So your men are out of control already?” she asked, and then bit her tongue. Why could she never learn to keep silent when
it counted!


His eyes narrowed. “You play a dangerous game, woman, with your Scarpen arrogance. Perhaps you care nothing for yourself.”
The sword point dropped to her abdomen. “But what about the brat you carry?”


This time she couldn’t control her shock. “How—?” she began, and then closed her mouth firmly, though her hand dropped to
cover the roundness of her belly, as if she could protect her son from his weapon. If only I had my water-power—


“I have eyes in me head,” he said. “Suggest you keep a still tongue in yours, Garnet, ’less you want t’lose your life and
your man’s get, as well. I’ll take you to the other women in there. Tonight you sleep with a man who’s not your husband, or
you’ll lose more than your man. Think on it.”


He turned her roughly and started her walking in front of him toward the hall’s main door. She hugged her arms about her to
stop the trembling.


A complete stranger works out I’m pregnant at a glance? It took Kaneth nearly half a cycle to wake up to it! This fellow was strange.


When she slipped in a patch of blood on the gravel, he grabbed her by the arm, wrenching her upright before she hit the ground.
“Careful, sweet lips,” he said in her ear. “We want you undamaged, don’t we?”


Ryka gasped in pain. The sword-cut on her upper leg—not deep but raw and throbbing nonetheless—had opened up.

He hadn’t noticed it before because the cut in her trousers was almost covered by her tunic, but he saw the fresh blood now
and gave an exasperated grunt. “Why didn’t y’tell me you were hurt?”


“It’s nothing.”

He pulled up the hem of the tunic and looked at the wound. A makeshift bandage around her thigh had long since come loose
and fallen off. “Hmph. Maybe not, but needs covering nonetheless, t’stop that bleeding.”


He left her where she was and went back to the heaped-up dead. With his scimitar, he slashed at a dead man’s tunic and brought
back a piece of the cloth. She wanted to take it from him, but he ignored her gesture and knelt to wrap it around her thigh
himself, over the top of her trousers. She braced herself for an intimate touch, a leer or a sneering remark, but all he did
was bandage her.


As he tied off the ends, he said, “When you get a chance, wash the wound ’n’ put a clean cloth ’bout it. Even a small cut
like that can kill you if it gets dirty.”


Perhaps that would be best, anyway, she thought. To die.


The thought must have been reflected on her face, because he said harshly, “Listen t’me, you water-soft city groveler. Living’s
what counts, understand? Your man’s dead. Probably your whole withering family’s been snuffed. Your city’s fallen. Your rainlords
are rotting in the sun. Soon there’ll be no more water in your skyless city. Take your chance with us. We’ve not got rainlords,
but our sandmasters and tribemasters can sense water on the wind. Our dune gods protect us.” He pointed to her abdomen. “That
young ’un of yours? It can grow up Reduner, a warrior or a woman of the tribe. Reduners don’t make no difference ’tween folk.
Out there on the dunes, we’re all red soon enough. Being alive, that’s all that matters. That’s all.”


She stood facing him. Wasn’t there more to life than that? Yes, of course there was—but you had to be alive to achieve it.
Sandblast it, she thought, despairing. How did we Breccians ever come to this?

She nodded to the man. “Yes,” she said. “You are right.”

“Now, get going, Garnet. I don’t have time t’waste on you.”

Kaneth, I will be strong. I promise, for the sake of our son. You’re on your own, wherever you are. And so, damn it, am I.


And then, just a whisper in her mind, to a man who was probably dead: I love you.


Scarpen Quarter

Breccia City

Breccia Hall, Level 2

Ravard handed Ryka over to a Reduner bladesman guarding the double doors of Breccia Hall’s public reception room. The man
pushed her roughly inside and closed the doors behind her.


Though the area was large, it was crowded. And noisy with crying. Her heart sank as she looked around and absorbed the significance
of what she was seeing. Women. No men. Women, yet no small children. Every head turned her way to see who had entered, eyes
fearful. And she was standing in a patch of half-dried blood on the floor.


Waterless hells.


There was a gasp from a group sitting on the floor, and a figure came flying to grab her in a tight embrace, sobbing, gasping,
shuddering, pouring out her woe. Beryll, but not her pretty, carefree tease of a little sister. Not anymore.


“Beryll,” she whispered, “quietly, quietly. I can’t understand what you are saying! Calm down.”

“Ryka, oh, Ryka! Mother! They killed Mother! They didn’t give her a chance. She—she—”

Ryka had been expecting it, but still the stab of grief pierced deep, then twisted painfully with the bitter rage that followed
it.


Her eyes swollen, her chest heaving, Beryll wailed between gulping sobs, “I wanted us to escape with the others down the underground
passageway, but she said she’d wait until Father came back. He never came. Then we heard he was dead, but she still wouldn’t
go. And I couldn’t leave her, could I? Anyway, there was the Lady Ethelva and the ceremony of the taking of the Cloudmaster’s
water and Mother thought we ought to be there, so we went to the House of the Dead and we couldn’t come back safely because
of the ziggers until Lord Gold brought us with the Lady Ethelva afterward. Oh, Ryka, it was awful. Lady Ethelva seemed so—so
old, all of a sudden. Like she’d all shriveled up. It was so horrid. And we didn’t know whether you were all right, or if
Papa really was dead, and then the Reduners broke through…” Her face went white just with the remembering.


Ryka led her away from the door to a more private spot near the wall. Her sandals left sticky footprints on the floor.

“But Mother really is dead? Are you sure?” She was having trouble absorbing the reality behind the words.

“They—they slit her throat. Like they were slaughtering an animal.”

Oh, sweet water save us. “You saw it?”


Beryll’s frame shuddered in her arms as she nodded. “Her and the Lady Ethelva. Oh, Ryka, they killed so many! The guards and
the men first, in the fighting when they broke in through the gates. Then they rounded up the women, servants and all. They
took the older ones out and—and just killed them. Just like that. They said it was because Stormlord Jasper didn’t surrender
himself. There were so many dead. So many of the older ones had thought they’d have a better chance if they didn’t go down the tunnel. There wasn’t room
for everyone, anyway…” Her voice trailed away in misery.


Ryka tried not to change words into images. The words were bad enough. Blindly, she patted her sister on the back; aching,
she kissed the top of her head.


When Beryll had calmed, she changed the subject. “Listen, you mustn’t call me Ryka. If the Reduners know they have a rainlord,
I’m dead. Our only chance of getting out of this alive is to hide who I am. Call me Garnet.”


Beryll lifted her puzzled gaze to look at her sister’s face. “What? Garnet? Why?”

“Just in case they know there is a rainlord called Ryka Feldspar.”

“Oh. Would they know that?”

“I doubt it, but I don’t want to take the risk.” There was also a slight risk a Reduner warrior might see her and recognize
her as a woman who’d fought in the waterhall, but she didn’t think there was much of a danger of that, either. Those still
alive were under the impression she had died; certainly none of them knew she was a rainlord. To make herself less recognizable,
she untied her hair, shaking it loose over her shoulders and around her face.


She looked around short-sightedly, seeking familiar faces, neighbors from her level perhaps, anyone who might give away her
identity, but saw no one she knew. “Is there anyone here who will recognize me?”


Beryll shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know these people. They were from the other levels. They took refuge here
when the city was attacked.”


As far as Ryka could tell, no one was looking at her with recognition. Dirty, sweaty, bloodied and dressed as she was, she
was not surprised. She hardly looked like an upleveler rainlord. Besides, she was not well known, not like Kaneth or the Cloudmaster’s
family, the Almandines. She was a scholar who fulfilled her duties as a rainlord by teaching at Breccia Academy and taking
her turn to check on the mother wells and patrol the water tunnel between the city and the Warthago Range.


“We are going to be slaves, aren’t we?” Beryll whispered.

“Beryll, I’m a rainlord, remember? We just have to wait for the right time, for when I am strong again and can get us out
of here.”


“Can’t you do it now? I don’t want to stay here! They—they murdered children, Ryka. Children. All the really young ones.”


And left the older ones and the young women, Ryka thought, but she didn’t give voice to the words. Instead, she said, “I don’t have any power left. I haven’t eaten in
so long. Or slept. Is there any food here? If I had something to eat…”


“I don’t think so. After the Reduners herded us in here, they seemed to forget all about us. No one has brought us any food.
But then, they killed the servants. Except for the pretty ones. Ethelva sent them down the tunnel before the Reduners came.”
She brushed hair out of her eyes with a trembling hand. “I wish—I wish I had gone, too.”


“Where is everyone from our level? Why aren’t they here?”

“Most of them went down the tunnel. Level Three and Four people had first choice. Maybe they’re still hidden there. Where’s
Kaneth?”


“He was injured. I don’t know what happened to him.”

“Oh.” Beryll started to cry again, in juddering sobs. Helplessly, Ryka patted her on the back. Oh, Beryll, she thought, things could get a lot worse even than this.


Miserably, she looked around. Nealrith had brought as many of the city folk into the protection of the level’s walls as he
could, but it had been an illusory safety. The city’s two top levels, where the waterhall and the Cloudmaster’s residence
were located, had lasted longer than the stepped levels of the lower city, but in the end it had made little difference. We rainlords failed these people.


The Scarpen’s only hope was that Jasper Bloodstone had escaped with Nealrith’s wife, that spitless bitch Laisa, and their
daughter, Senya. Perhaps Jasper and Senya could start a new line of stormlords.


Perhaps the other cities will prevail. Perhaps they will stop this Reduner sandmaster. Perhaps in the end it will be that
bastard Taquar Sardonyx who will stop him…


“Listen, Beryll, you must tell me all you have seen. The Reduners—the leaders. Who are they?”

Slowly, Beryll calmed enough to speak again. “Well, there’s Davim. He’s the sandmaster. He’s horrible.” She was trembling
still, and stark fear shone in her eyes.


“How will I recognize him?”

“He wears a red robe that’s got all this red embroidery down the front and lots of gemstone beads—no one else has as much.
He’s maybe about Kaneth’s age. There’re some others who have some embroidery. Like the man who translates for those who don’t
speak the Quartern tongue. His name is Ravard, I think.”


“Ah. I suspect I’ve met that one.”

“I—I don’t know about any of the others. Someone said the man in charge of all the killing is older. They call him the Warrior
Son, but I don’t know which one he is. They all look alike to me, anyway. And it’s better if you don’t stare at them. They
don’t like you to stare.” She clutched at Ryka’s arm. “Be careful, Ry. You can’t argue with them. They don’t like that, either.”


Time passed so slowly. Ryka circled the room, looking for a way out, but the doors were locked and the openings for light
and air were high above their heads. There was a small water-room tucked away at the far end, its facilities too few for so
many people. There was always a queue, and the place stank because there was only a trickle of water. No one seemed to have
any food, and most had not eaten anything in over a day. The wailing of grieving women and terrified, hungry youngsters—not
one of them under nine or ten—was a constant noise, grating on her nerves because no one had the means to comfort them.


In the end, Ryka fell asleep lying on the floor in Beryll’s arms.

It was dark when she woke to the sounds of commotion. Slamming doors in the distance, fear-saturated muttering, renewed weeping.
Everyone scrambled to their feet. Beryll clung to Ryka’s arm. The central double doors were flung open and a line of Reduner
warriors, some bearing torches, entered behind two of their leaders. One was the man who had brought her there: Ravard.


Staring at the other, Beryll hissed in her ear, “That’s him. Sandmaster Davim!”

Her first thought was, But he’s so young! The next: Watergiver damn his eyes. The man has no soul. There was nothing in his gaze that spoke of pity or compassion, and much that rejoiced in the misery he saw before him.


Silence spread to cover the room, as if the sandmaster’s gaze compelled all sound to cease. Even the children were silent.
He stood in front of the doors, Ravard at his side, his warriors arrayed behind him. He wasn’t a tall man, but there was no
doubt he commanded.


He nodded to Ravard and the younger man stepped forward. He said, “I speak for Sandmaster Davim of Dune Watergatherer. The
sandmaster rules here now. Kneel before him.”


The room stilled. For a moment no one moved. No one even seemed to breathe. Then, when Davim’s stare bored into the women
closest to him, they fell to their knees. Gradually, others around the room followe