The Last Stormlord s-1 Page 4

  "Kill some of our citizens… the lowlevellers perhaps. Now there's an idea," Kaneth replied, dryly sarcastic.

  Nealrith grimaced and softened his tone. It was pointless to turn his anxiety into bad temper. He went back to Kaneth's original point. "Implications? Yes. The main one being that there wasn't enough rain last year."

  "But there were the right number of rainstorms." Kaneth paused, and then asked, "Weren't there?"

  "Oh yes." Nealrith turned to face him. "I haven't lied to you. My father hasn't failed in that regard. Nor will he… yet."

  "So there was insufficient rain in each storm cloud."

  "Obviously."

  Kaneth's eyes narrowed.

  Nealrith made an exasperated sound and lowered his voice to make sure the reeve could not hear. "All right, I'll say it, Kaneth. My father's powers are failing. You want it even blunter than that? Granthon, Cloudmaster of the Quartern, is gravely ill. Possibly dying. He is not lifting enough water vapour from the sea. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

  "No, but I needed to hear you admit it, Nealrith. And I need to hear what you intend to do about it."

  Nealrith ignored his words and waved a hand at the tunnel entrance. "Take a sample here."

  Kaneth fumbled in his tunic pocket for one of the onyx vials he carried for the purpose. "Can you sense anything wrong?"

  "I would say the water is just about as pure as when it came from the skies. Its essence is not wrong, just the amount." Nealrith thrust his hand under the water where it splashed through the grille. He kept it there for a moment before he added, "About half the flow of this time last year. And every star cycle before that. The city's mother cistern is not filling to capacity. Ryka said it is eight handspans too low. They had to adjust the siphon."

  "How long before that translates into shortages on the streets?"

  Nealrith shrugged. "Depends on when we start rationing."

  "We can't wait until these cisterns are empty and the decrease becomes noticeable in the level-supply cisterns down in the city. We have to start rationing now."

  "That's… drastic."

  "Then what about deepening the mother well shafts?"

  "It's not a solution, Kaneth. I've spoken to the engineers. The groundwater level needs to be maintained. And the only way to do that is to have sufficient rain."

  "The engineers are fossilised old sand-grubbers, you know that." Kaneth turned back to the intake flow and caught some of it in the vial, which he then stoppered. "The city engineer wouldn't replace a single brick of the tunnel if it was left up to him, the sun-dried old fool. Rith, we can't just go jogging along pretending nothing is wrong! Deepen the shafts. Build more shafts. Tap into the groundwater elsewhere and bring water through a new tunnel. Be stricter about the enforcement of birth control-there are still rich folk who have more than two children because they can afford to buy their dayjars. Anything is better than sitting back and waiting for people to die of thirst. Better still-" He paused.

  "Better still what?" Nealrith was willing to listen to anything, for how could you ration something that was already apportioned at its acceptable limit? There was no wastage of water in Breccia. Each man, woman and child received exactly what he or she needed for life. Every fruit tree, every palm grove, every jute and flax plant, every vegetable patch received exactly enough for growth and harvest. Ration water and food production would drop. Eventually people would die. They'd starve, if they hadn't already died of thirst.

  But Kaneth backtracked. "Are you saying that the Cloudmaster cannot make good the lack?"

  "You don't need me to tell you it is unlikely. You've seen him. My father is old beyond his years, and ill. I am going to the Sun Temple after this, to ask Lord Gold to make a heavier sacrifice to the Sunlord. Perhaps that will help."

  Kaneth snorted. "Withering waste of water."

  They looked at each other, two men who had been friends since the day they had first met as children, almost thirty years earlier. Nealrith's heart lurched. They were like sand grains at the top of a slope too steep for stability, waiting for the landslip, the irrevocable damage, the words that couldn't be taken back. He smothered a desire to change the subject rather than hear something he knew instinctively he would not be able to countenance.

  "Spit it out, Kaneth," he said finally. "What is your solution? None of what you have suggested so far is practical. You can't tap into water that simply isn't there. More wells somewhere else would be accessing the same underground water as the present ones do; you know that. And I am assuming that you are not going to recommend wholesale slaughter of a number of our citizens so that the rest of us have enough to drink."

  "As much as it might sometimes be tempting," Kaneth said with a flippancy that grated on Nealrith, "one has to draw the line somewhere."

  "So?"

  "We must let the other three quarters fend for themselves. Your father has more than enough strength to supply us here in the Scarpen Quarter; let the other three find their own water."

  Nealrith drew in a sharp breath. "Sunlord help me-you are advocating wholesale slaughter! You can't be serious."

  "I am perfectly serious." And indeed for once he appeared to be. The cynical half-smile, the insouciance, were gone. He was utterly sober. "Save ourselves. It's all we can do."

  "It is unthinkable."

  "Oh no, it's not, for I am thinking it. And I am not the only rainlord to do so."

  "Taquar Sardonyx of Scarcleft, too, I suppose," Nealrith said bitterly. "But the idea is ridiculous. Quite apart from the sheer inhumanity, we would have the Reduners battering at our walls with an army of zealot tribesmen mounted on pedes and tapping out ziggers. Have you thought of that? A war on our hands at this time? You should, because you may be one of those who fall with a zigger burrowing up your nose. Although I suppose a war would indeed reduce the number of our citizens in need of water."

  Kaneth shrugged dismissively. "All right, keep the Reduners supplied with water, although I suspect they may actually care the least. Many of them think they should return to a time of random rain anyway. But we should stop sending rain to the White's 'Basters and the Gibber grubbers. After all, what have they ever done for us? We don't need them, Rith. They are weeds, sucking up water and producing nothing we cannot do without in the short term."

  He caught hold of Nealrith's sleeve. "Think of it. Your father need only supply half the amount of rain. He can do that much. It will buy us time to find other stormlords to help him, to find another to replace him as Cloudmaster when the time comes. He will live longer if he has fewer stresses on him."

  "He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he had to do that! The shame and the guilt would kill him. What of those who would die in the White and Gibber quarters? You are advocating the brutal eradication of two peoples, as if they were rats in the waterhall!"

  He had raised his voice and the echoes faded out around them: "waterhall… hall… all." The reeve looked up from his work, curious. Nealrith lowered his voice to a furious whisper and shook off his friend's hand. "Kaneth, I didn't think even you would be so utterly without conscience."

  "Even I?" Kaneth stood looking at Nealrith with a sharply raised eyebrow. "Well, even I don't want to see my fellow Scarpermen die of thirst. It is you-and your father-who would see us all die a lingering death as our gardens and groves wither and the cisterns empty. Tell me, Nealrith, Highlord of Breccia City, which is a better ending: to have all four quarters die slowly, or have two of them prosper and only two succumb to a waterless death? Yes, I'll admit it, I think of myself. Is there shame in that? I want to live! I am looking to settle down at last-to marry into the Feldspar family, actually. But that's neither here nor there. Rith, I want you to propose this solution to Granthon. He will listen to you."

  "Never!"

  "Then I will. Someone has to have a practical solution for a very real problem, and the Cloudmaster has got to listen. You're a dreamer, Rith, and your scruples will suffocate us all in sand." When Ne
alrith did not reply, he added, "I warn you, there will be those who will fight for this to the bitter end, and you may not like our methods. We will salvage something from this mess, with you-or in spite of you."

  "You can't force my father to do something that goes against all he has ever worked for: the unity of the four quarters and the prosperity of their peoples."

  "That's just words, Rith. There has never been unity. Or prosperity, either, if you were to ask a Gibberman. It may have been Granthon's dream in his younger days, but he never achieved anything like it. And now we have a problem. And even you have to admit that there are only two possible solutions, at least in the long term. We either find several more stormlords-and we've had a singular lack of success there, you must admit-or we reduce the number of water drinkers. It is as simple as that."

  Nealrith said nothing, knowing that it wasn't simple at all.

  It was a choice between the apparently impossible and the totally unconscionable. He turned away so that Kaneth wouldn't see his revulsion, or his grief at the widening breach in a long-time friendship. Breccia, like all Scarpen cities, was a single entity. Even though the narrow streets radiating downwards from Breccia Hall sliced through it, even though the winding lanes circling each level were cracks in its cohesion, every part of the city was linked. Houses and villas grew into one another, sharing walls, connected by their flat roofs, interlocked beneath the ground by arteries of brick tunnels supplying water.

  The first and highest level contained only the water hall. On the next was Breccia Hall, and the remaining thirty-eight levels spilled down the escarpment slope in the shape of a fan. The lowest level at the base, inhabited by day labourers and the waterless, was a tattered flounce to the city. Although hemmed with a wall, parts of this dirty petticoat to Breccia seeped out through the gates in the form of foundries and liveries, kilns and furnaces, knackers' and slaughter yards. Another trimming to the city was more salubrious: the bab groves, the rows of trees interspersed with slots and cisterns and vegetable plots. Beyond them were only the drylands, the Sweepings to the north and the Skirtings to the south.

  Level Three, where Nealrith headed after leaving the waterhall, was home to the city's richest inhabitants and the main house of worship, the Sun Temple, with its attached House of the Dead. After speaking with Lord Gold, the Quartern Sunpriest, Nealrith backtracked to Breccia Hall on Level Two. The hall was the traditional residence of the ruler of the Quartern, and was therefore now home to Granthon Almandine and the rest of the Almandine family. Granthon's father, Garouth, had preceded him in the post. When the old man had died ten years earlier, Granthon had succeeded to his father's position by virtue of his talent, not his birth. Unfortunately, Granthon was now not just the Cloudmaster of the Quartern, but the Quartern's only stormlord.

  Nealrith Almandine knew his father's life had been far from easy. If the histories were correct, in some eras there had been several hundred stormlords scattered through the Quartern. Even during Nealrith's own childhood there had been ten or eleven, but one by one they had died, leaving only Granthon. For five years, the Cloudmaster had shouldered his responsibility without the help of another stormlord, a burden too great for any one man no matter how talented. Worse still, he'd been forced to acknowledge to the world that Nealrith, his only child, was not a stormlord and never would be. It had been a bitter blow to both father and son.

  Granthon was kind enough never to mention his disappointment and wise enough never to reproach Nealrith for a lack beyond any man's power to remedy, but he could do nothing about the bleakness in his gaze. Nealrith saw it every time his father looked at him, and suffered that same blow again and again.

  If only. If only.

  When Nealrith entered the stormquest room of Breccia Hall, his father was reclining on a divan, propped up by cushions, while Ethelva hovered uncertainly behind her husband, wanting to fuss over a man who loathed fuss. Nealrith concealed a sigh. His mother was still tall and elegant, but her calm had long since become careworn, and the evidence was there in her prematurely white hair and the worry lines of her face. She was a water-blind woman renowned for her common sense, and Nealrith was not used to seeing her so indecisive, but Granthon's illness had lapped too long at her every thought. She had become prey to doubt, just as Nealrith had, filled with uncertainties about the future of the family and, indeed, the land itself.

  Nealrith delivered his assessment of Breccia's water storage and the tale it told: his father had cut back too much on the size of his storms. Granthon said nothing at the news. His stillness was unnatural, as if he had even forgotten to breathe.

  "Father?" Nealrith asked.

  The Cloudmaster stirred. His gaze dithered around the room, lingering for a moment on the scroll racks and the rolled documents they contained. The lectern in front of him was spread with the parchment he had been considering when his son had entered the room.

  "Father-"

  "Open the shutters, Rith."

  "Father, no. You have done too much today already. You can't drive yourself beyond-"

  "Every day that I allow the levels to fall is another day I will not be able to make up."

  That was true, and Nealrith knew it. He took a deep breath and pushed away thoughts of what should have been, of that insidious if only. "If you do too much, you will die, and where will we be then?"

  "You have to find a replacement for me."

  "We've been looking for as long as I remember." He concealed his frustration and tried to ease the tightness in his gut. Kaneth was right, damn him; they had to do something other than talk.

  His father made a slight movement of his right hand, an opening out, as if he had just taken an unwelcome decision. "There's one place no one has looked. Two actually, although not even I would think of looking among the 'Basters."

  Nealrith was confused. "In the White Quarter? Of course not! Where, then?"

  "The Gibber."

  Nealrith made a gesture of irritation. "A waste of time, surely. From what I've heard, there are very few water sensitives, and there's never been a rainlord or a stormlord from there. You know the saying, 'Wash a crow with rosewater and it still won't be pink.' They are a water-blind people. Worse, they are stupid and ignorant and dirty and dishonest."

  His mother interrupted. "Don't judge, Rith. Perhaps they are dirty because they don't have enough water, ignorant because they have never been taught and dishonest because they are so poor. A thirsty man might steal to live."

  "And what about the stupid part?" he asked wryly.

  "Perhaps they are stupid merely because you haven't the wit to see them any other way."

  He had the grace to laugh. "All right, all right. They are not as bad as I think and I displayed a bias that was both unjustified and unworthy of me; you are probably right about that. But that still doesn't make them water sensitive. They have never paid more than the barest of lip service to the Sunlord and the Watergiver, which might explain it. We would do better to look in the White Quarter; they at least are a pious people who have some water sensitives. Or so I'm told."

  Granthon held up a hand. "We both know that the trouble with the White Quarter is not their sensitivity but their secrecy. We are not welcome there, and who can blame them? They have been spat upon for generations. Anyway, it takes more than sensitivity to make a rainlord, let alone a stormlord. We have more chance among the Gibber folk. At least they look up to the Scarpen. I suspect they would gladly give us their water-talented children."

  "Fools," Nealrith muttered, but the remark said as much about his opinion of his own quadrant as it did about the people from the Gibber.

  "I want you to go there," Granthon said. "A quest to find a potential stormlord. I want you to run the tests in every Gibber settle on the plains. Take Iani with you. It will give him something to focus his mind on."

  Nealrith was appalled. "You want two rainlords out searching the Gibber? Why? Anyone can conduct the tests for water sensitivity. It doesn't need a rai
nlord!" And I have a city to run.

  "I may not be much of a storm gatherer nowadays, Nealrith, but I am still in full command of my senses."

  "You must have a reason."

  "Other than desperation? Yes, two, in fact. My passion for our land's history has rendered up a reward. A name and a place. I didn't do the actual research work; I passed that to Ryka Feldspar. She has a scholar's mind." He smiled at Ethelva. "I wonder sometimes if we don't underestimate our women, Nealrith. She found that one of my predecessors-from a very long time ago-bore a name that sounds as if it came from the Gibber. Gypsum Miner of Wash Drybarrow."

  Nealrith stared, speechless.

  "The long history of mining in the Gibber means they have more family names related to that ancient occupation than we do," his father continued. "Their constant fossicking has led them to use minerals and rocks as personal names all the time. And 'wash' is the Gibber word for dry riverbed, what we'd call a gully."

  Nealrith was impatient. "Wash Drybarrow is an actual Gibber settle?"

  "Well, Ryka found a Wash Dribarra, which has a settle. After that, I sent some of my people out to talk to Gibber folk down on Level Forty."

  He was intrigued in spite of himself. "What did they find out?"

  "Gibber reeves manage matters pertaining to water. However, unlike our reeves, who must have water skills, they usually have none. There are occasional water sensitives among Gibber folk, but they are regarded as potential water thieves. As a consequence, a child exhibiting water sensitivity usually has the tendency beaten out of him."

  Ethelva gave an unladylike snort. "Or rather, they have the tendency to admit to it beaten out of them."

  "Exactly. Rith, I want rainlords testing in the Gibber because I don't want the slightest chance that a water sensitive child, or an adult for that matter, is missed. I want more than standard tests. I want you to hunt for any sign of people there who may be hiding their talent deliberately."

  Nealrith considered that. "I suppose it doesn't make sense that there should be water sensitives here but not in the Gibber. We are supposed to have had the same origins."