Stormlord’s Exile Read online

“Not that I saw. It was just the empty courtyard where they were going to fight.”

  “What was she doing while they were fighting?”

  “Still painting, I think. But I didn’t really look. I was watching the fight.”

  “What happened to the painting afterwards?”

  Senya frowned, trying to remember. “I never did see it.”

  “Think, Senya. It was in a tray and the tray was full of water. What did she do with that?”

  “Oh, I remember! She poured the water onto a potted tree near the gate. She carried the empty tray away. There was no painting in it.”

  “Was she carrying a rolled-up painting?”

  “No. Just her painting things in that string bag of hers. If she had the painting with her, it must have been all scrunched up in the bag.” She paused, then added, “That is odd, come to think of it, because she told Taquar she was going to do the painting as a record of the fight. Like it was important history, or something.”

  Laisa murmured, more to herself than to Senya, “Even more interesting is why she did all those weird paintings of dead ziggers before we enticed the little stinkers to the lanterns.”

  “You mean, like she was painting something that hadn’t happened yet?”

  Laisa stared thoughtfully at her daughter, her lips parted in wonderment. She said slowly, “That is an interesting way of looking at it. Jasper’s explanation was that Terelle is superstitious and believes she can kill ziggers by painting them dead.” She fiddled with the beads at her neck, her mind in ferment. No one can paint the future, surely? Whispers of sorcery always abounded among lowlevellers and the ignorant, but that was just superstition… wasn’t it? “You know, I think I need to speak to Lord Gold as soon as he gets back from Qanatend. And I think perhaps you need to go and visit your cousins in Breakaway until Terelle disappears out of Jasper’s life.”

  Senya brightened. “Oh, good! They give lots of parties, and the market there is full of things from across the Giving Sea.”

  Laisa stared at her, wondering why her daughter was giving no thought to another reason she needed to disappear from Breccia for a while: her pregnancy would soon be obvious.

  The Sun Temple, like most of the uplevel buildings in Breccia, was scarred with the marks of fierce fighting. The waterpriests had sold themselves dearly during the battle for Breccia. Except for Basalt, of course. He’d somehow managed to escape the city before it had fallen. Laisa felt her lip curling with disgust when she thought about it, but it was a pointless emotion. Like it or not, Basalt was an ally, and she would be foolish to antagonise him.

  The day after he returned to Breccia from Qanatend, she made her way to the Temple. In the aftermath of the battle, anything valuable, especially if it had been trimmed with gold or gemstones, had vanished—yet when she was ushered into the Sunpriest’s battered office, Basalt was clad in the full vestments of a Lord Gold and wearing a sunpriest’s gold insignia. After greeting her, he spoke to her at boring length about his experiences in Qanatend, and it was some time before she was able to question him about Terelle’s waterpainting of Jasper’s fight with Highlord Taquar.

  He replied readily. “Yes, I remember. Or rather, I remember her doing it. I didn’t actually see the result.”

  The look Basalt gave her was avid with his love of intrigue and gossip. Watergiver above, I do so loathe the man. He’s genuinely nasty. And that makes him a fool. Nastiness is such a waste of time and talent unless it has a purpose. If there was no point in antagonising someone, it was so much wiser to be pleasant to them. Still, she wasn’t going to be so misguided as to underestimate the Sunpriest.

  Elbows on the Sunpriest’s desk, Basalt regarded her over his steepled fingers. “Why do you ask?”

  “I understand Terelle has to leave to visit her ailing grandfather in the White Quarter. Lord Jasper hankers after the girl, although I find it difficult to see why. She may have had a snuggery background, but she hardly seems beguiling.” The remark was honest rather than spiteful; but then, she wasn’t a man. “However, that’s beside the point. I just want to make sure that she does not feel free to return to the Scarpen once she’s left. It’s in my interest for my daughter to become the wife of the Cloudmaster, and it may also be in your interest, too. That is unlikely to occur if he’s constantly enticed to the bed of another.”

  “That’s certainly true. But, forgive me, Lord Laisa, I fail to see the connection to her waterpainting.”

  “Senya tells me Terelle told you she was painting the fight to preserve the scene for posterity. Yet she destroyed the artwork.”

  He looked at her blankly. “Yes, that’s right.”

  She kept silent.

  “Ah, I see your point. If it was to record a historic moment, why did she not keep it safe?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Maybe it was just poorly executed and she decided to throw it away.”

  “On the other hand, if it was some form of sorcerous magic, designed to influence the fight—”

  Basalt froze. When he spoke again, his words and the anticipatory gleam of his gaze were at variance. “It would explain why a man of Taquar’s skill and experience was defeated and sorely injured by an untried coward of a youth. Despicable!”

  “Utterly.”

  Another pause from him, then he said, “The lords of Khromatis call themselves Watergivers, or so I have heard. A presumptuous, blasphemous race.”

  “They are indeed.”

  He fiddled with the quill on his desk, then began to trim the point with his dagger. “I have heard rumours that they are much feared for their power: that they hold sway over the commoners through forbidden arts.”

  “Is waterpainting one of those arts?”

  He pursed his lips to blow the quill clippings away. “I don’t know. I know no details of their sorcery. They hide what they are.”

  “Which itself is suspicious, surely.”

  “I’ve heard talk of Guardians who exist to keep Khromatians safe behind their borders. I’ve even heard that the salt-dancers of the Whiteout are the Guardians, taunting travellers until they lose their way on the salt and die.”

  Laisa assumed an expression of worried concern. “I have an uncomfortable feeling about Terelle Grey’s waterpainting. There is—I hesitate to say it, for it seems ridiculous—some slight evidence to suggest that what she paints becomes the future.”

  Basalt’s eyes widened. “Sunlord save us!” For a moment he was speechless, then added, “Surely that can’t be right. Think of the power she would have.” His horror was unfeigned.

  “Exactly. And the stormlord is in love with her.”

  “If she’s dabbling in such wickedness, she must be stopped. But how can we find out if it’s true? She’s hardly likely to tell us. I did hear she was returning to Breccia with the stormlord.” He drummed his fingers on his desk while he thought over the problem. “Trouble is, the rules of our one true faith demand clear-cut proof when it comes to accusations of this nature. We’d have to be careful before giving utterance to any allegation. It would be a terrible shame to accuse anyone unjustly.”

  “Especially because soon there will be a meeting of the Council of Waterpriests to endorse your position as Lord Gold,” Laisa said, careful not to allow any touch of her cynicism to tinge her tone.

  “Indeed. I must find proof. Or at the very least wait until after the council meets before launching an official investigation.”

  “My understanding is that she won’t be staying here too long. She has to leave for Alabaster and possibly even Khromatis. I’m not sure there would be time to find any proof before she goes, especially when it is a hard thing to prove anyway.” She placed an elbow on his desk, balanced her chin in her cupped palm, and mused, “If a few wind-whispers were to be heard when she and Lord Jasper return to Breccia, it would be a shame, but I suspect it will happen.”

  “It could,” he agreed.

  “Of course, once she’s gone to the White Quarter, it would b
e hard for her to refute anything of a more specific nature. She could be accused of blackening Taquar’s name with her dark arts. Gossip is a powerful tool and it could cast doubts about my husband’s guilt and his unjust and arbitrary imprisonment. If people fear her and her waterpainting, how will she ever be able to return to the Scarpen, let alone marry the stormlord? I imagine that priests might rail against waterpainting from the temple balconies on Sun Days, if the Sunpriest—after research into the phenomenon—uncovered the sorcerous nature of the art.”

  There was a lengthy silence. Then Basalt—Lord Gold and Sunpriest presumptive of the Quartern—gave a slow smile. “You could be right, Lord Laisa. Indeed, you could.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Red Quarter

  Dune Watergatherer

  The man praying at the shrine was the Watergatherer Sandmaster, master of every tribe on the dune. Praying to the dune god was expected of him. Everyone knew that if the god was respected, then the dune dwellers prospered.

  And so he prayed. Sometimes he thought he even heard the god stir and murmur something, but whether it was a promise of victory or a prophecy of disaster and defeat, he had no idea. Most of all he wanted an answer, any answer, and it disturbed him that he never heard one, not really. Underneath the veneer of the warrior sandmaster, beneath the leader who strove to become the sandmaster of all the dunes, there was one part of him that was hardly more than a youth. One part of him that was a Gibber grubber who had become a tribemaster called Ravard.

  Now Ravard One Eye. He touched the red eye patch he wore, and rose to his feet, dusting the sand from his knees.

  He looked up at the finger of stone pointing upwards to the sky. It should have fallen in the landslip, but it had stayed where it was, rooted deep in the dune as the sands had slipped away from it. The visible part of the stone was now much longer than it had been, and the base wider. The dunesmen regarded that as a miracle, a sign that in spite of everything his tribe was still favoured by the dune god, and he was still the god’s favoured son. The disaster of defeat in battle had been Davim’s fault, not his, they said. That belief had become part of his legend, adhered to even by the men of Davim’s tribe. Emerging from his tent alive after battling a stormlord was enough to further that legend; to have plucked out his own eye to save his life from a rogue zigger had made him an admired hero.

  That was not the truth, of course; Ravard knew full well that Shale had been the one to remove the zigger and his eyeball. Just the sort of daft thing the Gibber grubber would indulge in—trying to help him, as if it was possible to go back to the past, to when they’d been brothers supporting one another. Those times had been nothing glorious anyway, certainly not anything worth remembering.

  He hadn’t told anyone he’d wrested Lord Jasper’s dagger from his hand and used it to spear his own eyeball; they’d made that assumption when they’d found him clutching the bloodied knife and staggering towards the door of the tent. God save him, he remembered the horror of it yet, the appalling agony and matching despair that had gripped him so tightly he had not been able to move or cry out. Ironically, it had been that action of Shale’s that made Ravard’s continued position as sandmaster of Watergatherer so remarkably easy. He would have liked to tell his brother that to mock him for the stupidity of his compassion.

  And yet…

  And yet. His little brother, Shale.

  No, he mustn’t think about what might have been. The only way was the one that lay ahead. He was going after Uthardim and Garnet. Kaneth and Ryka, rainlords. His men would support him in that; less risky than challenging a stormlord. Time enough to think about the Scarpen when he controlled all the dunes…

  He turned away from the shrine to see Kher Medrim plodding his way up towards him—Davim’s uncle, still the Warrior Son just as he had been for Davim, although the man complained he was too old now.

  He strode down the path to meet him. “Kher Medrim, welcome. I’ve been expecting you. Any success with the task I gave you?” He clapped the elderly man on the shoulder, genuinely glad to see him.

  “The lad is yours.” Medrim clasped his arm, smiling. “A clever plan to seek him out and offer something he couldn’t resist.”

  He grinned. “Ah, just a matter of blood running true. How could a son of Davim’s be anything but ambitious and brave and a leader? Come, have a drink with me and tell me all about it.” He led the way to the bench and chairs in the covered area next to his new tent. It was cooler there as the breeze skittered down the slope of the vale and funnelled between the tents. His latest bed mate, without being asked, brought them both a steaming mug of herbal mix and fresh-grilled yam crisps, then left them to talk.

  “A better cook than your Breccian slave,” Medrim remarked, tasting a crisp. “What was her name? Garnet?”

  “That wouldn’t be difficult,” he said dryly. “Come, tell me about this eldest son of Davim’s from Dune Hungry One.”

  “Promising lad. Eighteen, nineteen. That randy bastard of a nephew of mine sired him when he was no more than fourteen!” He chuckled, showing teeth yellowed and cracked with age.

  “A warrior?”

  “Indeed. Skilled. Arrogant as a half-grown horned cat, and as dangerous. Ambitious as ever Davim was. Resentful, just as you thought he’d be. In that particular tribe, his father is despised as the man who refused to marry one of the tribe’s daughters even though he got her breeding. The lad’s mother, a bitch called Robena, keeps her humiliation alive, fool that she is. He’s more than ready for a woman in his bed, and blood on his blade. Instead she keeps him at her side. The other youths tease him, the girls laugh. Yet he’s all Davim’s son. Strong, tough, unsentimental, a fighter who’ll leave bodies in his wake like a pede trampling a pebblemouse den.”

  “You offered him the post of my Warrior Son if he proves his worth in Uthardim’s betrayal?”

  “Yes. I gave him a year. He has to give us the location of their camp and all their weaknesses in less than a star cycle. He jumped at the chance. Brilliant strategy, Kher. Damned if I can figure how you knew it would work.” He raised his mug to his sandmaster. “How’s the eye?”

  “The socket doesn’t trouble me. Being without an eye does, though. It hampers my ability to fight. I’m learning to compensate by using my water-senses. I took your advice and have been training a battle partner to cover my left-hand side. But tell me more about this get of Davim’s. His name? And what are his beads?”

  “Clevedim. Calls himself Cleve.” He chuckled again. “Because it makes people think of cleaving, I suppose. And his beads are devil’s dice. Young men—they’re all the same. Scrambling after names and symbols that make them seem bigger men than they are. Devil’s dice are just lemonite. Like Jasper Bloodstone.” He snorted. “Why Bloodstone? It’s just another name for green jasper with red spots, but it makes him sound bloodthirsty. Misnamed, if ever there was a misnaming. The fellow won’t even stop our water because he can’t bear the thought of children thirsting. He forgets children grow up into warriors or become the mothers of warriors.”

  Citrine, Ravard reflected. And then wondered why he had suddenly remembered his little sister. Not giving himself time to pursue the thought, he asked, “How does this Cleve think he’s going to get into Uthardim’s camp? We’ve had no success with anyone we’ve tried to plant among them.”

  “He reckons all he has to do is wait for Uthardim’s men to come to him. He’s not going to hide his parentage. Apparently, the rainlord Kher has recruiters visiting all the camps that aren’t wholehearted in their support of us. He’s taking their strongest and best, and Clevedim is certainly that. They haven’t been to his tribe yet—it’s one of the most remote.” He drained his mug, took another piece of yam and added, “Now I must be on my way back to my own camp if I am to arrive by nightfall.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Ravard said, standing up at the same time as the older man did. “I want to see Islar.”

  “But if we have Cleve, we won’t need
Islar.”

  “If one sand-tick hidden on a man’s arse can draw blood where it hurts, what do you think two could do?”

  Medrim chuckled. “Give him more to itch?”

  Islar, the older of Davim’s two legitimate sons, had newly been accorded warrior status. At fourteen cycles in age, he wasn’t old enough to challenge a tribemaster, let alone to think he could be sandmaster. Yet Ravard had the uncomfortable feeling that such a challenge would occur one day. People expected it and many of them would urge Islar to try when the time came.

  To stave off any jealousy in the lad, he’d promised Islar the position of tribemaster of Davim’s tribe as soon as he was eighteen, but already he’d seen the first signs that Islar was becoming a focal point for the disaffected of the dune, which was annoying. He liked Islar. He was enthusiastic, a hard worker, a talented fighter. Quiet, serious and tough, too.

  As he sat with what had been Davim’s family—his two sons, his wife and his brother—eating a meal and speaking of general tribal matters, Ravard thought of what Kher Medrim had said about the choice of beads. Islar, he was amused to note, had threaded his hair with ice quartz. The crystals, clear and cold, were supposed to be a focus for visionary wisdom. They were generally not favoured by warriors though, not when they so easily caught the sunlight and could send a flash across miles of dune. Not something you wanted to be wearing if there was tribal rivalry or dune wars.

  As the afternoon cooled, he indicated to the lad that he wanted a private conversation and suggested they take a walk. Islar agreed with alacrity, obviously proud to think the new sandmaster wanted to consult him.

  Ravard curbed his amusement, wondering just when he himself had suddenly become old enough to notice such things and find them entertaining. As they followed the path the women took to collect water, he remarked, “So now you’re a true warrior of the tribe. And I hear good things from your uncle about your progress on the training grounds. He says you’re becoming renowned for your extraordinary courage.”