Stormlord Rising Read online

  He always did recognize my water, she thought, emotion bringing a lump to her throat. She began to thread her way through the sleeping bodies to his side. When she arrived, he didn’t move, but just stood there, looking down at her. She raised the lantern to view his injuries, and the sight was enough to wrench her insides.

  “Oh,” she whispered, and her hand touched his cheek with gentle tenderness. “Your poor face…”

  He gave a half-embarrassed smile, and when he spoke, he sounded at a loss. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I don’t seem to know you. Who are you?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Scarpen Quarter

  Breccia City, Breccia Hall, Level 2

  Warthago Range, foothills

  Ravard had called him witless. Ryka had hoped he’d hidden his sharp mind along with his identity, so his words had the impact of a physical blow. She was unprepared for the sense of rejection, unprepared for the pain his inadvertent betrayal of their love would cause her.

  She stepped away from him, and perhaps he glimpsed the horror in her expression because, whispering, he apologized again. “I’m sorry, I just don’t remember. I don’t even remember my own name.” He pointed to the scar on his head. “I was hit here, I think. In a fight, I suppose. I don’t recall.”

  “I do,” she snapped, and was instantly contrite. It wasn’t his fault. “I was there,” she added more gently, lowering her voice. “It was a spear—you fell into the cistern.” And saved my life. “You truly don’t remember?”

  He shook his head. “We knew each other?”

  His polite disinterest was shocking. It was a moment before she could bring herself to reply. “You could say that.” Watergiver, how do you tell a man who can’t remember his own name that he has a wife—and a baby on the way? “I’m—”

  She didn’t finish. Elmar Waggoner stepped out of the shadows in the pede stall and grabbed them both by the elbows to pull them inside, away from the men sleeping in the common area. Already one or two were stirring and someone had roused himself to look around to see who was talking.

  “Shh,” Elmar said, his urgency intense. “You can’t trust everyone.” The look he gave her was meaningful, but she could not interpret it. She stared, uncomprehending, as he closed the door to the stall. They were alone, just the three of them, but her mind was appallingly blank. Elmar took the lantern from her and hung it from a hook on the wall.

  “He really can’t remember?” she asked Elmar, finding her voice at last, but it was belief which made her wretched, not doubt. She didn’t need an answer.

  “Not even me. I’m a metalworker from Level Twenty-five, by the way. Never been in the army and the only bleeding thing I know about a sword is how to craft one. Taken it upon meself to look after this great hulking lump here, even though he’s missing half his wits. He needs someone to keep an eye on things for him. Doesn’t remember a thing. Not even which side of the battle he fought on. Mind’s as blank as a baby pede carapace.”

  She looked back at Kaneth, her breath coming in quick gasps. Not remember which side—? He smiled at her with a shining innocence that recalled to mind the words Ravard had used. Half-wit.

  “What name do you go by here, lady?” Elmar asked politely, his gaze locked on her face. Lady, not lord.

  When the silence threatened to become embarrassing, she said quietly, “Garnet Prase. Housewife from Level Ten, who can’t find her husband. I am slave to the Master Son, Kher Ravard. We are all being taken to the Watergatherer Dune, setting off tomorrow morning, you two and me included. Did you know?”

  Kaneth shook his head. “I didn’t.” He frowned. “Kher Ravard is a good man.”

  “He’s a slaver,” she spat back at him, aghast, not quite believing she had heard him correctly.

  He wrinkled his nose. “You smell really odd. Did you know that?”

  Nonplussed, she was speechless.

  Once again Elmar intervened. He picked up two water skins from the floor and thrust them at Kaneth. “Go fill these. We will need them if we are travelling in the morning.”

  Kaneth frowned, baffled, but he took the skins. “It’s too dark.”

  “Then take the lantern.” Elmar thrust that at him as well and he took it without comment, turned and went back into the main area of the stable. Elmar closed the stall door again, and they were plunged into almost complete darkness.

  “Blighted eyes, Elmar—what the withering shit is going on here?”

  She felt rather than heard his intake of breath. She was still whispering, but her tone and her swearing had startled him.

  “Watergiver forgive me, Lord Ryka, but he doesn’t remember as much as a newborn babe about himself. He doesn’t know he’s a rainlord. He doesn’t remember you, or me, or the fighting, or who he was. And the worst of it is, he doesn’t seem to care.”

  She wanted to call him a liar, to pound her fists against his chest in fury, but part of her knew her indignation was irrational. This wasn’t Elmar’s fault, and he wasn’t lying. She took a deep breath. “How did you find him?”

  “I managed to flee the waterhall. I didn’t see what happened to the two of you. By the time I got down to Level Two, the Reduners had the main gate to the hall open and the battle was over. I got rid of my sword, changed my clothes and tried to blend in with the servants. I was hauled off to carry bodies to the pedes. Ended up down in the groves, building pyres for the dead. I worked all day at it—fetching dry fronds, heaving the corpses into the flames. Sunlord save me, the stench! It was a horrible day. So many people I knew…”

  Impatient to know what had happened, she choked down her dread and asked, “You saw him flung on the pyre?”

  “No, no. I was collecting fuel. I didn’t know he was among the dead until I saw him lying there, burned, coughing up his lungs, with people standing around, Reduners among them. I reckon he was out cold when they flung him into the flames, but—thanks be—being burned roused him enough to shout. Somebody pulled him out. He wasn’t much burned anywhere except the face and his hair.” His voice stumbled and grew hoarse. “It’s not too bad, but he’ll—he’ll never be the handsome man he used to be.”

  “The Reduners—why didn’t they kill him? Don’t they know he’s a rainlord?”

  “No. No one knows who he is.”

  “But he’s Kaneth! You recognized him! Others must have, too.”

  “Lord Ryka, most of the soldiers and the uplevelers—people who would know him well—they’re dead.” His voice was low and urgent. “If they survived the fighting, they were slaughtered afterward. Don’t you know that? Men, women, children! Sunlord save me, I probably tossed bodies of people from every house on Level Three and Four onto the pyres. And I doubt there’s a single priest or reeve left in the whole city. If you are looking for friends or family, forget it. They’re dead and roasted. Their water not taken, no ceremonies, nothing.”

  She was glad the lantern was gone. She didn’t want him to see her face. She didn’t want to see his, either; the bitter horror in his voice was enough.

  Elmar lowered his voice still further. “As far as I can find out, just about everyone here is a downleveler, an artisan of some sort. If there are some who’ve seen him before, they don’t know him well enough to recognize him when he’s bald and half-burned. You just saw his face. Besides, he doesn’t act like Kaneth, or a rainlord. He even holds himself different. Humble, like. And if they do recognize him—or you, come to that—who are they going to tell?”

  He continued, calmer now, “The only reason I’m alive is ’cause the Reduners think me a metalworker, not a soldier, and it seems they need metalworkers. My brother owns a metal workshop and I do know a thing or two, fortunately.”

  “We can escape. With his power and mine, we can kill guards, seize the pedes, maybe even free the rest of the slaves. I thought perhaps our first night out from Breccia might be a good time—”

  “Lord Ryka, Kaneth doesn’t even know he’s a rainlord.”

  “Then te
ll him! I’ll tell him who I am! Remind him he is to have a child—anything! How can we bring back his memory, if we don’t stimulate it?” Frustrated, she glanced toward the stall door herself, wanting Kaneth to return. Why had he left so meekly at Elmar’s bidding?

  “You’re expecting a baby?” He sounded taken aback.

  “Yes! We have to make him remember.”

  “No, we mustn’t. Not yet. My lord, he is ill. His vision is blurred, his thoughts confused. His head aches, and he is in constant pain from the burns. He doesn’t understand anything yet.”

  “But we must escape before—” She hesitated. Before Ravard climbs into my bed. “Before we reach the dunes. Before we cross the Warthago Range.”

  “Lord Ryka, he’s not—”

  The door opened then, and Kaneth stepped in with the lantern and the water skins, now filled. He smiled absently at Ryka, as if he had forgotten her all over again. She felt her heart break, all over again, in answer.

  “Go,” Elmar muttered. “Before you are caught here. Look after yourself and the child. It is all you can do.”

  She turned away from Kaneth to stare at him. “How can you ask that of me? I made a vow once—”

  “Yes. I know. I was there, remember? But now your duty lies with your child. I am sure your man is in good hands,” he said carefully.

  “He is also a prisoner of his worst enemies.” For a moment she felt as if she had lost her hold on the conversation, as if the words were flowing by her like water from a broken jar. There was so much to say, to find out, but shock had left her with no idea what she should be asking first. Or how to grasp the meaning of words as they streamed past.

  Kaneth did not appear to be listening. He hung up the lantern again and placed the water skins back on the floor. “My head hurts,” he said. “I think I will lie down.”

  “Good idea,” Elmar agreed. The look he gave Ryka was full of meaning, and Ryka saw his unspoken, You see?

  “This is insane.” She lowered her voice still further. “Elmar, he is in such danger. If anyone gives them a hint of who he is—if he gives himself away, because he doesn’t know his power…”

  He snatched the lantern from the hook, grabbed her by the elbow and pushed her through the door, which he then closed. Her last glimpse of Kaneth was of his burnt face as he lay on his side in the straw. The fresh scar was still raw and ugly. I wonder if I could quicken the healing, she thought, by drying it out… Or would that make it worse? She didn’t know.

  Elmar handed her the lantern, then pushed her against the wall with an urgency she sensed rather than felt. “Lord Ryka, please heed me,” he whispered in her ear. “He is not to be trusted. Do you understand? He doesn’t know who he is. If you tell him your name and his name, he’s likely to blurt them out to the first Reduner he meets. He’s like a small child, with no sense of danger.”

  “He wouldn’t,” she protested, her anger surfacing. “He is Kan—”

  He stopped the word by jamming his hand across her mouth.

  “No, he’s not. Not yet. He’s a sick man who can’t remember a thing. His thoughts go nowhere and his pain is intense enough to make a sane man act sun-fried. The less he sees of you the better at this point, for your own safety.”

  She pushed his hand away, the pain of his truth more than she could handle. “I’ll never abandon him. Never. What kind of a woman would that make me?”

  “A living one! What kind of a mother would it make you to stay in danger when you have the power to escape?” he asked.

  Ryka’s desire to slap him was intense and immediate, but she was also aware her anger was only so sharp because she knew he was right. And because she did not want to relinquish the man she loved into the hands of another who sometimes looked at him the same way she did. It was her duty to guard her child. Kaneth’s child. Her duty as a mother, as a wife—and, as a rainlord, to bring another water sensitive into a thirsty world.

  “Escape now,” Elmar whispered. “You know that’s what your husband would want, if he was himself. If he regains his health, he will be able to get himself out of this. Me, too, I hope.”

  She hesitated still.

  “You cannot trust him,” he repeated. “Trust me. You know I’ll care for him.”

  Just then Kaneth called out petulantly, so unlike the man he had been she could almost believe it was someone else. “Elmar! Where are you?”

  She turned and walked away, back toward the muck chute.

  Ryka retraced her steps back to her room without any trouble. The two guards at the stable entrance had returned to their post by the time she reached the edge of the courtyard again, but were easily distracted by more gravel scattering in front of another block of water—stolen from the prisoners in the stable this time.

  No one had noticed the open kitchen door, the lamp from the passageway burning in the kitchen, or the missing candle lantern. She put everything back the way it had been. The climb down to her balcony proved easier than the climb up. She lay down on her bed—no, on poor dead Nealrith’s bed—and surrendered herself to her grief.

  An hour later, feeling no better, but more in command of her emotions, she roused and went to wash away the lingering smell of pede droppings and stable hay. Her dirty tunic she stuffed under the mattress in the center of the bed.

  Odd, she reflected, for the first time in my life, I don’t care about how much water I use. It was Reduner water now, not the Scarpen’s, and she felt no desire to conserve it.

  Afterward, she sat in the darkness of Nealrith’s study and tried to come to terms with all that had happened. She had already made up her mind that any escape would be better made from the caravan with a pede under her. That way there was the possibility of making it to one of the other cities and freedom. What she had not yet made up her mind about was whether she would escape at all, if Kaneth wasn’t prepared to go with her.

  One by one she marshaled the advantages and disadvantages. With cold dispassion, she examined her own motives. If she was going to choose an alternative based on emotion rather than academic impartiality, she wanted to be aware of it.

  Finally, she drifted into an uneasy doze.

  An hour later, the serving woman brought in her breakfast. Quickly, Ryka roused herself and dressed. As an afterthought, she selected a number of board books from the collection in Nealrith’s study and tied up the bundle with bab string, giving a wry smile as she did so. Even in a desperate situation, she could still dread the horrors of having nothing to read.

  She was just sitting down to eat when the door opened again and Ravard entered. She glanced up but did not rise.

  “Pour me some tea,” he said, indicating the pot. “I’ll eat with you.”

  Silently she did as he asked, only then noticing there were two drinking mugs on the tray.

  He sat opposite her at the table, dumping the small cage he carried down on a spare chair beside him. She smelled its occupants: ziggers. Sunlord, how she hated them! Their sickly smell, their greed for human flesh, the promise of pain in their dribbling saliva and their clicking mouthparts.

  Oblivious to her distaste, he helped himself to a steaming bowl of bab-fruit porridge. “Dune god save me, I’m getting so sick of Scarpen food,” he remarked. “At least there’s one good thing ’bout going back t’the dunes. Decent game on the platter and damper made from root mash, not withering bab flour.” He glanced across the table at her. “Why so silent?”

  She shrugged. “I have nothing to say.”

  “What, no sharp words about my moral standards or my taste? Now that’s a change!”

  “You expect me to be brimming over with delight at being carted off to another quarter as a slave for the entertainment of a man who has just helped lead an invading horde into my country, an invasion that killed my family?”

  “Why not? You’ll share the bed of the Master Son, the man who will one day lead the dune that rules all others. That’s a position some women of the tribe would kill for! ’Sides, I am young
and virile, as older men are not. Bet your husband was old and lacking.”

  She took a bite of her bread to stop herself from saying something she would be made to regret.

  “And remember,” he added, spooning down the porridge in noisy gulps, “we have a bargain. You welcome me t’your pallet, I protect the child you carry, and keep the other men from you.”

  “It would be easier if you tried courting me,” she snapped, “after a decent interval of mourning. And if you didn’t come to my bed while I carried another man’s child!”

  He tilted his head, amused. “Maybe I would—if I loved you. But I don’t. I want you. There’s a difference.”

  “You’ve just told me there are plenty of others who would like the company.”

  “Ah, but I’m stuck with you now for reasons of pride, aren’t I?” He grinned at her. “Besides, I like a challenge.”

  She gritted her teeth.

  “Don’t be so difficult,” he said. “I gave you a choice, remember?”

  “A choice? When the alternative is a piece of personal horror? You have a strange idea of choice, you Reduner barbarian.”

  Ryka thought he would match her fury with his own, but he shrugged with an indifference that was chilling. “I suggest you make it easy on yourself when the time comes.”

  “And just how do you recommend I do that?”

  “By accepting the inevitable calmly. What you had is gone. So why not enjoy what replaces it? A roll around on my pallet each night could well be pleasurable.” He stood up and spread his hands out. “Look at me. Am I so unattractive?”

  She stared at him. Since she’d first met him, his hair had been washed and rebraided with red and black beads. His red belted tunic with its embroidered panel down the front accentuated his broad shoulders. Underneath he wore full breeks gathered in at the ankle. He moved with all the muscular power of the young and virile, yet his smile, revealing white, even teeth, was more boyish than manly. Even his reddish skin and hair were attractive. If he had not been a threat to her, she would have thought him appealing. And handsome. Instead, he represented a future she was dreading with a sickness deep in her gut.