The Last Stormlord (29 page)

He grabbed for what he thought was one of the packs—he would need food and untainted water if he was going to head off into the desert alone—but his hand closed around an ankle instead. In shock, he stumbled and thumped down on his backside next to a body. One of his captors, semi-conscious, groaning. Who was the second man in the fight, then? He looked, just in time to see one of the fighters hit the other with a blow that lifted him off his feet.

The victor looked around, saw him, and said, “Shale?”

He was too stunned to answer.

“It’s Highlord Taquar. Come on, quick, let’s get out of here.”

“How—how—” he began, but his mind wouldn’t think. No,
couldn’t
think.

“Later. My pede is this way.” A hand closed over Shale’s and pulled him around a rocky outcrop to where a myriapede waited. “Quick, up you get.”

“But—”

“
Later.
” The voice gave every indication the owner of it would not tolerate further delay, so Shale stretched, hopping awkwardly, to shove his foot into the mounting slot and heave himself up. He settled cross-legged on the padded cushion-saddle. Experienced riders might be able to balance themselves without holding on, but Shale had no illusions. People could die falling off a pede. He held tight to the handle.

Taquar mounted in front of him and swung the pede away from the prostrate figures. Shale tried to sort out what had happened. How had Taquar known where to find him?

“Are you all right, lad? Hold on tight. I want to get out of here fast. Crouch down low.”

He did as he was told and felt the pede lift up underneath him as it quickened. The ground blurred; the wind rushed by. He gripped so hard his fingers ached.

When the beast tired and slowed, Taquar settled it down into a steady pace, then twisted around in the saddle to look at Shale. “Don’t worry, they won’t find us even if they do wake up. The ground is hard here—there’ll be no trail to follow.”

“How did
you
find me?”

“Come now, people like you and me don’t need marks on the ground to know a pede passed by. We can sense the trace of water ahead of us. I’m sorry it took so long, though.” He patted Shale’s arm. “And I’m so very, very sorry about what happened back there, in your settle.”

“I didn’t tell no one!”

“I fear it may have been my fault. I thought—never mind that now. I was coming to fetch you, but I was just a day too late.”

Memory flashed, unwelcome. “They s-spitted m’sister and Ma and then Pa. I saw that. My brother—they didn’t k-kill him. Mica and some of the older’uns—they were still alive when I left.” He started shaking and wasn’t able to stop. They had played a
game
with Citrine. And she hadn’t died until the third player had passed her back to the sandmaster and he had gutted her on his chala spear. Her blood had sprayed…

His stomach heaved.

For a moment Taquar was silent. Then he said, “Sometimes they take boys and youths back to the Red Quarter. Girls and the prettier women, too.”

Shale’s shudders went on. “As slaves?”

“No. Converts, more like.”

“Don’t unnerstand.”

“They take them to make warriors out of them. Tribe members. Tribal women. To become Reduner. It’s not a bad life.”

His revulsion and denial were instant. “Mica’d
never
be one of them spitless bastards!”

“You’d better hope he’s bright enough not to tell them that, then. Otherwise, he’s already dead. I asked the Reduners about him, back at the settle, and just then, too, but no one could tell me anything. I did hear about your sister. I’m sorry.” He fumbled in the saddlebag and then turned once more to press something into Shale’s hand. “I found this,” he said. “Your piece of jasper. It was lying on the ground near your hut.”

Shale’s hand closed around the stone, feeling its familiar shape. Citrine had held it in her hand and smiled. He was silent, grieving.

“I fear Mica will have to make his own choices. There’s nothing you or I can do about what happened in your settle, Shale. At least not yet. Put your mind to other things.”

He thought that over, and although it made sense, it just wasn’t possible. How could he rip out the pictures in his head of Citrine dying? Of so many bloody deaths? The splitting-shrill-begging scream of dying. The blood-vomit-shit
stench
of it. Citrine turning in the air, her little hands opening and closing as if she wanted to clutch something, anything, the jasper spinning away to be trampled underfoot, unnoticed by the Reduners, forgotten by him until now.

He tried to swallow away his terror. His grief. He slipped the jasper into the seam of his tunic and held on to the segment handle tight to stop the shaking of his hands. “W-where you takin’ me?”

“Somewhere safe. Very safe. I can’t trust anyone. But we have a long ride tonight to get there. We’ll be there sometime tomorrow morning. Now let me concentrate on guiding the pede—it’s dark and it’s not an easy ride at night.”

He turned to pay attention to the way ahead. Shale huddled behind him and tried not to think too much.

By the time they reached their destination, the sun was blazing and the sand-dancers were blurring the horizon. It was more a cave than a building, a cavern carved into a steep hillside, just where the slope eased off to become an undulating rocky plain. Shale didn’t understand the land. It looked as if it had been folded and pleated and torn by a giant hand, or crushed in the grip of a maniac god. Used to the flatness of the Gibber, that intrigued him—but what overwhelmed him was the smell, the feel, the presence of water.

Taquar halted the pede in front of the entrance and slipped down. Shale was so tired, so stiff, that he fell rather than dismounted. The rainlord had to grab his arm to stop him crashing to the ground.

“Take a good look, Shale. This is going to be your home for quite a while. Can you feel the water?”

He nodded.

“What do you think this place is?”

He thought about that. “It’s got a cistern. A big ’un. There’s water comin’ into it all the time—and goin’ out, too.”

Taquar smiled in satisfaction. “It’s the mother cistern for one of the Scarpen cities. A tunnel takes water from here to my city, Scarcleft.”

Shale looked blank. “Tunhill?”

“Tunnel. Like an underground slot. A slot big enough to walk through.”

“Like a mine adit?” Shale asked, brightening. “I seen those. There’s lots of old mines near the settle.”

“Exactly. Except our tunnels are round.”

The rainlord unstrapped his pack and the two cages of ziggers from the back of his mount, passing the latter to Shale to carry. “You know what these are, what they can do?”

He nodded.

“Then be careful.” The rainlord turned and walked to the entrance. There was no door, just a large grille across the opening. Taquar stood in front of it for a long while, not moving.

He is concentrating
, Shale guessed, vaguely aware of water moving, but against a background of so much water, he could not be sure what was happening. He was astonished to see the grille rise, apparently by itself, and disappear up into the rock. It grumbled as it went, slowly, in spasmodic shifts. When it was fully open, Taquar walked inside and gestured for Shale to do the same. “Leave the ziggers on the floor near the wall,” he said. He strode across the flat floor of the cavern, the pede ambling after him, to where there were several troughs. He unplugged a spigot on the cavern wall and Shale blinked as water streamed out. He stepped back uneasily. It seemed a careless way to deal with water. The pede dropped its head to drink.

“While we are here, the care of my pede is one of your chores,” Taquar said. “Do you know how to groom one?”

He nodded again, still wide-eyed. Such odd jobs had earned him and his brother tokens from Reduner caravans.

“What about cupping blood from a pede for the ziggers?”

Shale nodded yet again. It was easier than talking.

“You’ve done it before?”

“For Reduners. They all have ziggers.”

“Good. Come with me into the inner rooms.” Taquar closed the spigot and went to open a door on the far side of the cavern. Shale put the ziggers down carefully and followed him through the doorway into a smaller cave.

Light filtered in from a long thin crack high overhead. Shale looked around: several raised platforms with folded-up bedding, four chairs, a table and a pot-belly stove—more items than in most homes of Wash Drybone Settle. Taquar took out his flint and tinderbox to get a flame going.

“Those are beds,” Taquar said when he saw Shale staring at the platforms, “to sleep on. It’s better than a pallet on the floor.” He indicated a recess in the wall. “That’s the deep-earth privy. You’d probably call it an outhouse.”

Shale nodded, but he had a hard time containing his astonishment. All the hovels along the top of the Drybone wash had shared a single outhouse, and privies in the settle were always built outside, in the garden, not inside the house. He sniffed cautiously, but couldn’t smell anything. Still, he thought it stupid to put an outhouse in the room you wanted to live in.

“When you use it,” Taquar said, pausing to apply the flame to the wick of a lamp on the table, “wash properly afterwards.”

Shale’s eyes widened further.
Wash?

Taquar didn’t notice his amazement. He continued, “The door on the left opens to the storeroom. This one here”—he picked up the lamp and walked to another door on the right—“goes to the waterhall.” He stepped through, beckoning Shale to follow. The sense of water was suffocating.

At first Shale couldn’t see anything in the dark. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw that they were in another huge underground cavern. He’d seen such things before, below the surface of the Gibber. There was no direct opening to the outside world, and beyond the feeble light of the lamp and the light that entered through the door, there was only darkness. Close to where they stood, he could see the edge of an underground expanse of water, the surface of which was as smooth and as black as a starless sky. He gaped, overwhelmed.

Taquar gave a faint smile. “You’ll get used to it, in time. Water flows into this lake from the mother wells, which are deep in the Warthago Range. The inlet pipe is over there.”

He pointed. Shale could not see it in the dark, but he felt the flow.

“Over there”—Taquar pointed to the opposite side—“there’s another pipe, through which water is siphoned off, to the tunnel that runs to Scarcleft. There’s an overflow pipe there, too, which also runs down to the tunnel, just in case the lake level rises too high. Not that
that
happens these days,” he added in disgust. “We in Scarcleft do our utmost to conserve water, yet are treated the same way as those cities that squander their water-wealth! I’ve had to adjust the siphon several times over the past year because the water entering has lessened.”

“Scarcleft’s a settle?” Shale asked, struggling to understand.

“Of sorts. If you were to walk to Scarcleft from here—without stopping from sunup to sundown—it would take you six days or more. And it is a very
large
settle, called a city.” Taquar’s tone implied he expected Shale to retain all this information because he wouldn’t be told again. Then the rainlord reached into the darkness behind him and picked up a bucket, which he filled to the brim from the lake.

“One thing I will not tolerate, Shale, is filth. And you are a filthy child. You are going to wash, using soap, and I am going to shave your head. Then I am going to burn that smock of yours. I have several sets of clean clothes for you. You will wear them, and you will keep them clean. You will brush your hair—once it grows again—every day. You will clean your teeth every day. Every day you will use a bucket of clean water for washing. When you have finished with the water, you will pour it into the pede trough. Those are orders. Understand me?”

Shale stared at the rainlord in amazement, one part of him horrified. “Use w-water for washin’ m’
body
?” he asked. “
Every day?
”

“That’s right.” Taquar’s voice was as hard as iron, making it clear there was to be no argument. Without pausing, he went on, “Right now, you will wash, dress in clean clothes, then you will eat, and only then can you go and rest. This evening, after you have napped, we will begin work.”

Shale did not dare ask what kind of work.

The twist of fear inside made him feel as if his father was still there, haunting him.

Scarpen Quarter

Scarcleft City

Level 36

After a few weeks on Level Thirty-six, Terelle knew everyone who lived or worked nearby. She and Russet lived on the upper floor of a mud-brick building. Lilva, a gaunt, mean-minded woman who rented out the sexual favours of her son and daughter, lived in the room next door. On the other side was Cilla, who wove bab-leaf sleeping mats for sale, and next to her, Rhea, the wife of a thief who was missing most of the time. Directly below them on the ground floor was old Ba-ba the humpback, bent double with swollen joints, who made and sold sinucca-leaf paste for whores—and for respectable married women, too—to prevent pregnancy. His wife, Fipiah, a buxomly handsome woman at least twenty years younger than him, was known to fix any problems that arose when the paste failed to do its job.