The Last Stormlord (5 page)

“The best place to grow bab palms is in the good soils at the base of the escarpment, that’s why. Warthago Range is just rock and stone and rough gullies.”

“And the other cities?”

“They came later, one by one. Scarcleft, Qanatend, Portfillik, Portennabar…”

“Breakaway, Denmasad and Pediment,” she finished. “The eight cities of the Scarpen Quarter.”

“Yes. And there it stopped, because there is a limit to how much rain can fall from the sky. The cloudmaster had to water the other quarters as well, you see.” He added sadly, “In all those hundreds of years, the tunnels have supplied every city with exactly the right amount of water. Until now.”

Terelle drew in a sharp breath. His voice was grief-filled, as if he spoke of something past and done with, gone forever. In horror she realised that he was
afraid
. He was a
reeve
, by all that was holy! One of the men and women who controlled water, and therefore life. If he was scared…

Apprehension rippled up her spine as they came to a halt where the tunnel ended in a stone wall. Bevran said, “Behind this wall is the cistern. Water enters it from the level above.” He pointed to a metal wheel in the wall above a spout. “When I turn this, you’ll get your water.”

“But how do you know how long to let it run?” she asked.

He reached into an alcove near the spout and removed one of the objects stowed there. “We use one of these.” He showed her a glass timer filled with sand. Etched into the glass were numbers: 1/10. “One extra tenth,” he explained. “I leave the valve open for the exact time that the sand runs. These timers are all made by the Cloudmaster’s glass-smith, guaranteed accurate.” Swiftly he turned the wheel and upended the timer. Water gushed out into the tunnel. “Of course,” he continued, “it’s more complicated when it is time for the quarterly free allotments to be dispensed. Then we have to make calculations based on how many persons in each household, how old they are and whether they have water allowances anyway. All that is a decision made by a committee of reeves.”

She thought about that, then asked, “Who decided how much a day’s free allotment was to be in the first place? The Watergiver?”

“Maybe. Certainly that was decided a long, long time ago and as far as I know the size of a personal day jar has never altered. Just as the amount of land under irrigation can never be altered, either. ‘Each man shall have his sip and no more, lest the sky run dry,’ ” he quoted. “Any extra has to be bought, and the buyer has to explain why he needs extra.”

She wanted to protest at the injustice done to those who had no free allowance, who were born without an entitlement because of what their parents didn’t own or didn’t do. She wanted to ask about those who lost their entitlement because of a change in their status.

But she didn’t. She knew better. Who was she to question a representative of a highlord? She was a snuggery girl, born waterless, the lowest of the low, and lucky to be alive.

Instead she watched the water swirl out from the supply cistern and into the darkness of the tunnel.

Scarpen Quarter

Breccia City

Waterhall, Level 1, and Breccia Hall, Level 2

In the half-darkness of the vaulted waterhall, the water was black-surfaced and motionless, a mirror to the lamps lighted by the servants. Of the sixteen oblong cisterns, separated one from the other by stone walkways, twelve were full to the brim and reflected the teardrops of lamp flame.

To Nealrith Almandine—son of Granthon, Cloudmaster of the Quartern—the smell of water was overpowering. It doused any whiff of lamp oil, or any odour of sweat or dust or perfume that might have clung to his body or clothes. He shut his eyes and let its redolence seep into him: pure, cleansing, rejuvenating. For a moment in time he allowed himself to feel the connection: his body, the content of the cisterns around him. Water to water. Life—his life—calling to the source of all life.

If only—

“My lord?”

If only he could control it.

“Highlord?”

If only he had been born a stormlord.

He opened his eyes. With effort, he swallowed the bitterness, the sense that he had been the victim of an unjust fate. That was childish, and he was far from being a child.

Beside him the reeve waited, face impassive, even as the questioning intonation of the echo whispered through the vaults: “Highlord?… ighlord?… lord?… ord?”—until it was lost in the background tinkle of trickling water. “Should we take samples, my lord?”

Nealrith hauled his thoughts back to his responsibilities. “Yes, of course. All the cisterns, as usual.”

The man moved to obey. The only other occupant of the hall stayed at Nealrith’s side, regarding him with a cynical half-twist to his mouth. “Mist-gathering, Rith?”

Nealrith nodded, acknowledging his abstraction. “Sorry, Kaneth, I have much on my mind.” And that was an understatement. Even as he spoke, he was watching the reeve kneeling at the cistern to fill the vials they had brought. The black glass of the water’s surface shattered into half-moons of reflected lamplight and Nealrith felt the movement as a shiver across his skin.

“I’ve noticed,” his friend said dryly. “You should talk more about what bothers you, you know. As my old granny used to say, ‘A trouble shared is a trouble pared.’ ”

“From what I know of your old granny, I doubt she was ever given to uttering words of wisdom.”

Unrepentant, Kaneth shrugged and grinned. “All right, so it was someone else’s granny. But the sentiment remains. What’s the matter, Rith?”

“You know what’s the matter. And talking about it is not going to solve anything. Let’s see how much is in the overflow cisterns.”

“You don’t need to see,” the other man said flatly.

Nealrith looked at him. The lamplight accentuated the deep grooves of a desert-etched face; even Kaneth’s good looks were not immune.
We appear lined and older than our years
, Nealrith thought. And yet they weren’t old, either of them, not really. Other men of thirty-five considered themselves in their prime. But Nealrith and Kaneth were both rainlords, and in these times, that made the difference. Kaneth had the advantage, though; he had a fighter’s physique, broad shoulders and muscles that spoke of a more youthful strength and vitality. Nealrith was thinner and less toned.
Too much sitting at a desk dealing with city administration
, he thought, and envied his friend. Kaneth’s fair hair still glinted straw-gold in the light, while his own was already salted with grey.

“No. I don’t need to see,” he agreed. The admission was surprisingly hard to make, and he heard his voice sag with the same grief that had aged him. “The two top cisterns are empty. The middle ones are half-full. The lower ones are fine.”

“And at this time of the star cycle they should all be brimming.”

“Yes.” He began to walk up the slight slope between the oblongs of water. “I want to look at the intake.”

Kaneth fell in step beside him. “I saw the inspection team return this morning,” he remarked.

“Ryka Feldspar and Iani Potch?”

“Who else would I mean?”

“Yes, they are back.”

“Will you stop making me drag information out of you? Did they find anything wrong that would account for the drop in the amount of water arriving here?”

Nealrith knew his hesitation betrayed him. Worry seethed beneath his outward calm. Worry that was close to panic.

“Nothing. Ryka said they rode the whole course, checked the mother cistern, the intakes from the mother wells and every inspection shaft. There was nothing wrong. No signs of theft. Nothing except that the water flow is reduced from what is normal.”

“Could she give a reason?”

“The highest well shafts in the Warthago Range do not reach the underground water any more. Which means less water for the mother cistern.”

“She has enough water-sense to know that?”

“Granted, she’s not much of a rainlord. But Iani? He’s one of the best we have. Nothing wrong with
his
water-sense.”

“He’s also sandcrazy. Last time I saw him, he told me he thought Lyneth was with a nomadic tribe of pedemen who wandered the land, invisible to the rest of us.”

Nealrith shook his head sadly. Iani’s daughter Lyneth had disappeared in the desert and the rainlord had never been the same since.

“If the groundwater level has fallen…” Kaneth hesitated. “The information has implications.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Immediately he’d spat out the words, he wished he had not said them. There was no point in alienating a friend, and Kaneth was that. It was just so
hard
to bridle his worry.

Friend or not, Kaneth had never been one to accept rebuke mildly. He drawled, deliberately provocative, “On the contrary, I am quite sure you do. Your problem is not one of lack of understanding, but of will. The will to do something about it.”

“And just what do you think I should do?” Nealrith’s tone was still dangerously taut. “Slaughter half the city so there are fewer people who need to drink?”

They had reached the intake from the mother cistern tunnel. The splash of water through the heavy iron grille should have been comforting; instead it unsettled. Nealrith glanced through the bars. The rounded brick walls funnelled away into the darkness until they disappeared in a tiny pinpoint of light. That slim ray would have been sunlight entering at the first of the maintenance chimneys. There must be a crack in the cover. The tunnel did not end there, of course; it went all the way to the foothills of the Warthago Range, three days’ ride distant, to the mother cistern, which was fed in turn by pipes from the mother wells.

“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.