Stormlord rising

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

White Quarter Mine Emery "Ye must use your waterpainting powers," Messenjer said, "to be saving us all."

Terelle, who was warming her hands by the fire that burned in Messenjer's kitchen on Mine Emery, looked up sharply.

They had arrived that morning, but Messenjer had been gone from the house all day, to return only with the setting of the sun. Terelle had grabbed some rest, but apparently he had not. Deep lines of exhaustion furrowed his face and reflected the pain of the conversations he must have had that day, telling his people what had happened at Mine Silverwall. In the distance, through the open doorway, she heard someone crying-a desperate keening of loss that had shafted into her consciousness on and off throughout the day, even though she didn't want the awareness.

"What do you know about waterpainting?" she asked sharply.

"That it writes the future in the hands of the skilled."

How does he know that much? Just who are you, you Alabasters? She curbed her aggravation and asked quietly, "Do you know what that means, Manager Messenjer?"

He was silent, so she answered for him. "The painting does what it is fated to do, not necessarily what the painter wants. The two are not always the same thing. It's therefore dangerous. I asked to get out of a prison, and it made an earthquake that brought down part of a city. People died, just so that I could be free." Maybe her waterpainting had done that; maybe Russet's. It didn't matter; the consequences were the same.

"Then it was God's will that they died, for waterpainting is surely a gift from God."

"No-it was a gift from my great-grandfather: that old man lying in the room behind you in your wife's care. He's the one who taught me. Don't give me that nonsense, manager. Who are you or I to say what's a gift from the Sunlord and what is not?" She was tired, so very tired, of people telling her what to do; she didn't want to argue about it. She was unused to the long hours of riding on the salt pan, but it wasn't physical fatigue that plagued her now; it was the weariness of never being in control of her own fate.

"A gift from God, not the Sunlord," he corrected. "There's no Sunlord."

She ignored that and gathered together the shreds of her strength. "I will not waterpaint again. You know why I ride with the man who murdered my father and hounded my mother into a situation that resulted in her death? Because he imprisoned me in his paintings and I can't free myself. Russet painted me in a place far from here-somewhere in the Watergivers' land-and I have to go there, whether I like it or not. My mother ran from Russet in terror and despair. I suspect she died because she tried to resist. And yet I have to ride with him, day after day. Tending him as if he was a child in my care. I loathe him. I loathe what he has done to me."

She stepped back from the fire and faced Messenjer across the kitchen. "You and your family saved my life. I am grateful for all your help, more than I can say. But once Russet is well again, we'll be on our way because it is what I have to do. Russet has water tokens; he can pay you for a pede and an escort to the other side of the salt."

He didn't answer that but said, "I want to show ye something." She was beginning to know him and she recognized the tone he used now: firm, soft, reasonable-with no possibility of dissent. He had not reached the level of mine manager by being weak. She already knew it was a post given by election, not inheritance.

He took her by the elbow and steered her outside to the ledge, the roadway that had no outer edge, in front of his underground house. "Look," he said. "Look around, and tell me what ye see."

She shivered slightly under the cut of the cold night air. Mine Emery was larger than Mine Silverwall, but the design was similar: tiered levels, each having houses built into the cliff sides. In the daylight, the greenish white of the quarried walls was haphazardly veined with other colors: orange and brown and umber. Now, the open doorways and windows across the mine were patches of yellow lamplight in the darkness. All of the mine must have been awake. When she looked down at the mine floor, she could see the silvery shadows of pedes in the twilight: tens of them, tethered there, feeding on piles of dried samphire fodder brought in from the edges of the Whiteout. Earlier, mounted messengers had left for other mining settlements, to Samphire itself, with the news: Mine Silverwall had been attacked and annihilated.

"It's beautiful," she said to Messenjer. The sound of children's laughter drifted up from a lower level, clear in the crisp air. The patterns of light on shadowed canyon walls were symbols of a town with a beating heart, its people. She wanted to paint it all, but she didn't tell him that.

"Compare it to Mine Silverwall. Remember the silence, the stillness, the unlit houses there. The absence of life. Children no longer play in Silverwall."

Terelle shook, either with cold or horror. She wasn't certain which. He guided her back inside to the warmth of the kitchen where she sat in one of the solid saltblock chairs and wished she could move it closer to the fire. Messenjer took the kettle off and poured her a hot drink. The whitish liquid was salty and sour, but she drank it gratefully.

"The excretion from the glands of white pedes," he told her. "Their way of disposing of excess salt."

Spluttering, she eyed the drink with less enthusiasm.

He didn't notice. "Would ye like to see the Reduners here with their tribesmen and their scimitars and their ziggers?"

She was silent.

"Ye can stop it from happening."

She looked up at him in amazement. "Me? By waterpainting? I don't think you understand the limitations of the art! I can't bring about a future unless I paint accuracies!"

"Explain."

"I know the man who leads the Reduner tribes is a sandmaster called Davim the Drover. But I've never met him. Therefore I can't paint him being killed, or dying. Nor can I paint his camp being wiped out in a-let's say, in a spindevil wind, unless I know what his camp looks like."

"Ah. Then it won't be as easy as I thought. But there is much we can do. It's just a matter of giving it some thought…"

"Easy? Easy? You think it's easy to kill people?"

"The Reduners find it easy," he said. "Remember the children ye saw, clutching each other? I don't suppose they put up much resistance."

She took a deep breath to stop her shaking. "Manager Messenjer, do we really want to be like them? Waterpainting can kill the innocent. I know, because I have done it. Besides, there is something evil about it anyway. I could paint a scene right now, and shuffle your dead image up into it-and you'd fall lifeless at my feet within a heartbeat. In fact a waterpainter could do that to you from the other side of the Quartern if they knew what you looked like! No one should have that kind of power. No one."

"It is a gift from God. How can it be an evil thing?" he said. "God forbid that either of us would say all Reduners are evil, but God gave ye waterpainting skills to be using against evil people like those who wield zigtubes and scimitars to kill children. He would never bestow His gifts without a purpose. And He would never bestow the talent on a person who would use it unwisely."

She wanted to scream at him: What about what Russet did to me? Isn't that misuse? Was that the will of God? But there was no point. He did not fully understand the horror of what Russet had done.

"Leave the girl alone, Mez." Errica entered the room from the adjoining bedroom and stood there, hands on her massive hips, shaking her head at both of them. "If God gave her the gift, then he also gave her the goodness to be using it wisely, when necessary."

Messenjer made a gesture of apology with one white hand and ducked out of the doorway through the beaded salt curtain.

"Be gentle with him, Terelle," Errica said. "He lost a younger brother and a niece and a nephew back there in Silverwall. And we never found the children's bodies. They were probably taken as slaves. The girl was a beautiful lass: but fourteen, with salt-white hair down to her waist and eyes the color of the palest skies."

"That's awful, and I'm more sorry than I can say. But I still can't do it," Terelle said, then added, her stubbornness surfacing, "and he should not ask it of me."

"It is his responsibility to help his people. He had to ask. But go and rest now. Ye have traveled long and hard and need your sleep. God is good; trust Him and all will be well." She indicated the room she had just left. "Take the pallet next to Russet. He won't wake for a while." It was surprisingly easy to settle into the routine of the mine over the next few days.

Russet spent much of his time asleep, or feverish and raving. Terelle's drive to travel east was lessening, so she thought his continued physical weakness must be diminishing the hold his waterpaintings had over her. Occasional restlessness told her the power was still there, but it was easier to resist. Every now and then she thought uncharitably how much simpler her life would be if he was dead. She dreamed up ways to kill him, but in her heart knew she would never have the… what? Courage? Nerve? Malice? Resolution?

I'm the kind of person who doesn't have the guts to put a suffering kitten out of its misery. How can I possibly kill a man? If I couldn't shuffle up Taquar dead, how can I kill my own great-grandfather?

She thrust the idea away and spent her spare time exploring Mine Emery. No one limited her movements. Errica and Messenjer's younger and more likeable and talkative son, Sardi, made a point of guiding her around, including taking her inside the mine itself. To her surprise, it was cool, dry and pleasant underground. The floors glistened and the austere, cold beauty of the walls was sometimes patterned by lines of color, pleasing to the eye.

"Our salt goes everywhere throughout the Quartern," Sardi said with pride, "and even across the Giving Sea. Or it used to. Now?" He shrugged. "We did send a large caravan off to the south four days ago. We are exploring a new route through the Gibber and then west along the Edge to Portennabar in the Scarpen, where it can be shipped to the Other Side. A difficult route, though, because of the lack of water."

Several days later, when she saw a caravan setting off, she remembered those words and was puzzled to see it head out to the east across the Whiteout. It carried salt blocks, though she knew the only settlement further to the east was Silverwall, now devoid of people. When she asked Sardi about it, he prevaricated as though he didn't know what answer to give, then muttered that the caravanners were carrying empty jars to pick up the Silverwall cistern water. It was a logical thing to do, but Terelle didn't believe it. The white packpedes had not been carrying jars. Sardi had uttered an untruth, even though her impression was that Alabasters rarely lied and felt uncomfortable when they did.

So much is strange here, she thought. They hide things.

She determined to ask Errica about the caravan, but the following day everything was turned upside down once more and she forgot.

Terelle was helping Delissal in the family kitchen, chopping up samphire for a vegetable dish, when she heard several people frantically calling her name from outside. The urgency of the call made them both drop what they were doing and race outside.

All along the ledge people gathered, their excited chatter blending into an unintelligible buzz.

"There's a message for ye!" Errica cried as she bustled up, far from her usual calm self.

Terelle's immediate reaction was that the statement didn't make sense. Who could send a message when no one knew where she was? Then she realized everyone was looking up, clutching at one another, laughing, almost choking on their excitement.

Blinking in the bright sunlight, Terelle raised her eyes.

There was a small storm cloud above, dark and compact, heading for the Border Humps. But that wasn't where people were looking. They were staring more to the east, and much lower. She turned her head. Her jaw dropped. There was indeed a message in the sky.

A white line of cloud had formed itself into shapes, into letters, as if someone had painted them there. A wave of laughter rippled around the mine as others emerged to look. Children danced and pulled at their parents' hands, begging to be told why the clouds were such a funny shape.

Then the first word leaped out at her: Terelle. Staggered, she needed a moment to make sense of the rest. You cheated at Lords and Shells. Help me, she read, I am in Scarcleft Hall. I need you. Come to Pahntuk Caravansary. Shale.

"Oh, Watergiver take me," she whispered. Joy so intense shook her that she almost fell to her knees. He was alive! But her next thought was far darker. Scarcleft Hall? He's not safe in Breccia? Oh, Sunlord save him, Taquar has him again. No. Oh, please not. Highlord Taquar, running his fingers up and down a strand of her hair while he manipulated her through her fear…

"It's a miracle!" Messenjer was clasping his hands together next to her, his face uplifted and shining. "Terelle, it's a true message from God."

"Oh pebbles 'n' sand," she snapped crossly. "That's not God, that's Shale." Several turns of the sandglass later, Terelle-feeling that her whole world had been turned on its end yet again-was deep in negotiations with Messenjer, Cullet and Sardi, while Errica bustled in and out of the kitchen carrying items to be packed, an intent expression on her face. There had been another message, not for her alone this time, and it had changed everything.

Written in large letters held together as they traveled across the sky, they had read, People of Alabaster, people of the Gibber, the stormlord bids you unite against the treason of Scarcleft and the Reduner marauders. Bring pedes, warriors to Pahntuk Caravansary, Breccian tunnel. We fight for the stormlord and our water!

"Let me see if I have this right," Terelle said, looking straight at the mine manager. Inside, her anger roiled. "Mine Emery will supply me with the means to return to the Scarpen in order to help the stormlord, but only if I undertake to use my waterpainting?"

"Yes. It's not just for us. This is bigger than Mine Emery, Terelle. Bigger than Alabaster."

"I know. But that doesn't make what you ask any easier."

Cullet snorted at that. Terelle glanced across at him. Although the older of Messenjer's sons, he lacked his brother's courtesy. A short, narrow-shouldered man a cycle or two over forty, he radiated dissatisfaction, frustration and petulance. Right then he stood with his arms folded, fingers tapping on upper arms.

Terelle said nothing, waiting to hear all Messenjer had to say before she could trust herself to speak.

He said, "If ye don't want to help, then there's no point in ye returning to the Scarpen. We'll go, though, whether ye do or not." He paused, evidently sorting out what he wanted to say and how to say it. "When the White Quarter was first raided by the Reduners, we thought we could deal with it ourselves. Back then, they raided our caravans, not our settlements. They mocked us, saying that white pedes were no use to them except to be roasting over a camp fire." He choked. "Our pedes-they are our wealth, our pride, our lifeline. Without them, we die."

He turned away to clear his throat before continuing. "We fought back, of course. The men of Alabaster are all taught to fight from pedeback. At least the theory of it. We're Guardians, after all. But we have no ziggers, and no defenses against them, and it'd been a long time since we'd fought for our lives. Generations. Skills were lost, fighters were inexperienced. Warriors and pedes died under their zigger onslaught. The Miners' Council and the Traders' Council in Samphire had a joint meeting and called upon the Bastion to be asking for help from the Scarpen-"

"The what? Bastion?"

"Our leader. Highlord, if ye like, elected for life. He rules in Samphire, with the help of the two councils."

Strange, she thought, all those years living in Scarcleft and I never had any idea of how Alabasters governed themselves. The thought made her uncomfortable. People gossiped about anything and everything in the common rooms of the snuggery, but she hadn't heard a whisper about anyone termed "the Bastion."

And these people thought of themselves as Guardians? Of what? Something important enough to be protected by armed and trained men? Yet another secret kept from the other quarters. What did they have to hide?

A possible answer popped into her head: some kind of connection to Watergivers. She looked at Messenjer. He cries tears. Like me. When Alabasters speak the Quartern tongue they sound a little like Russet. They know about waterpainting. And the patterns on their carpets-they are familiar because they remind me of Russet's tattoos, and the colors are like those of Russet's clothes. Yet they themselves don't look like us, not at all. Aargh, I hate mysteries!

Apparently unaware of her unease, Messenjer continued, "We didn't get the aid we asked for, as ye know. The situation worsened. We had to start guarding our tunnels, our samphire fields, our mines. What I haven't told ye is this: a few days before ye came, Gibber folk sent a message. They'd heard Reduners invaded the Scarpen and seized the northern city of Qanatend. Some say Breccia is next. Perhaps it has already fallen, but we just haven't heard because who's there to tell us? Traders are too frightened to be running caravans anymore."

Nausea swamped her. "We saw Reduners riding down to Breccia. Russet said he thought they were the baggage train of an armed force." The next words were hard to say. "If Shale is in Scarcleft, then Breccia has already fallen and the sandmaster has given Shale back to Taquar Sardonyx."

Cullet, frowning, said flatly, "Ye say this sky message is from him. Ye say he was being trained as a new stormlord. But the Gibbermen say the new stormlord is someone called Jasper Bloodstone."

"I've never heard of him. But it would be wonderful news-two stormlords instead of one?"

"Does it matter who it was?" It was Sardi who spoke, his face alight with hope. Cullet gave him an exasperated look, as if questioning his younger brother's rationality, but Sardi wasn't quashed. "It must be a stormlord. No one else could write in the sky."

"Only Shale knows I cheated at Lords and Shells," Terelle said.

"He needs ye, and God sent ye to us for a reason," Messenjer said.

"I don't even believe in your god! I worship the Sunlord."

"A tragic heresy."

She stirred uneasily. It was so much easier when things were straightforward and obvious. So much easier when you believed in something and didn't have to think about it.

"I think we have to be going to Samphire with this," Messenjer said finally, looking at Terelle. "The Bastion needs to hear all ye have to say. He will want to be talking about your waterpainting abilities, too. That talent of yours may be our savior. I've no doubt he will ask ye to ride with us to Scarpen if we go. Perhaps ye will listen to him."

Errica, who had just re-entered the kitchen with a pail of fresh pede secretion milk, paused. Messenjer switched his attention to her, saying, "All our fighting men must ride for Samphire."

Cullet gasped. "But that would mean we'd have to abandon the mine! We couldn't leave people here without protection."

"What purpose is a mine if we cannot use the caravan routes to be selling our salt?" his mother asked him. "We are already overstocked. We will leave."

Sardi and Cullet exchanged shocked stares. "The mine is also our home," Cullet said, dismayed.

"At least the Reduners can't burn it," Errica said with a shrug. "It will still be here when we return."

"There is something else you are not taking into consideration," Terelle said. "I am not free to travel. Russet's paintings tie me to him."

"He will come with us to Samphire."

"Each step I take toward the Scarpen and away from Khromatis will tear me in two." She shuddered, remembering how ill she had been every time she had plotted to rebel against the future he had painted for her, remembering the hours she had spent doubled up in the communal outhouse of their lodgings in Scarcleft.

The mine manager leaned toward her, his intensity intimidating, although she knew he probably didn't realize it. "Resist him. Ye are a waterpainter, like him. A Watergiver, like him. When all people have power, who prevails? Ye have your own strengths. Use them."

"Easy for you to say! My mother died, probably because she tried to resist!"

Errica gave a sigh of exasperation. "Messenjer, ye're as articulate as a newborn pede with brain rot!" She turned to Terelle, saying, "Lass, waterpainting is not evil, although abuse of power has ever been the way of some men, I agree. Bullies with muscles intimidate weaklings. The man with the stick threatens the man with none. But ye need not abuse your waterpainting power. What Messenjer is so clumsily trying to be saying is this: if ye withhold your help, then ye're no different from the bullies. Ye can misuse your power simply by not using it. Ye'll kill just as surely, by doing nothing. It's what we call the passive sin."

Terelle didn't reply. How could she? What Errica said was right.

Messenjer turned to his sons. "Prepare the mine for exodus. We leave tomorrow evening in the cool."

Sardi smiled at Terelle. "We play Lords and Shells here, too," he said. "Do you really cheat?"

Cullet gave a contemptuous snort.

Terelle's face burned hot. Blighted eyes, Shale, couldn't you have found another way to tell me the message really was from you? Just you wait till I see you again! She had to shake Russet to wake him. He lay on the raised platform of salt that was an Alabaster bed. It was strewn with colorful quilts and blankets woven and knotted of dyed linen, just like his clothes.

He opened his eyes and stared at her, frowning, as if he had trouble remembering who she was. The room had no door, so the bustle of a house in the turmoil of preparations for a journey was audible and he cocked his head to listen. Then he asked weakly, "What's happening?"

"We are going to Samphire. Everyone." She outlined what had happened. "And so," she said, "you'll stay in Samphire."

His protest was lucid. "Ye can't go back! I painted ye into a future in our land."

"Your land, not mine. Right now Shale needs me, and that's enough for me."

He was aghast. "I spent years teaching ye! Anyway, ye can't just walk away. The magic won't let ye."

"Watch me," she said calmly. "And if you want me to return to you, you had better give me some good advice. I need to know how to resist the spell of your paintings." He clamped his teeth together in an expression of stubborn silence, so she added, "Vivie told me that my mother was always weak and ill. So now I'm wondering: was it because Sienna resisted the future you'd bound her into? She died, Artisman."

He stared at her, malevolence fading into dismay. "Ye be saying I killed her?"

"It's possible."

"I not wanted to be hurting her! I needed her!"

"Nonetheless, she died."

His rheumy eyes stared at her in denial. "Be not my doing," he muttered. He struggled to sit up while she watched dispassionately, unable to bring herself to help him. When at last he was erect, he leaned back on the cushions, his face ashen.

"Tell me what I need to know, Artisman. As you get better, my drive to head toward Khromatis will grow-but I can't return if I've died, now can I? Tell me, or you may lose me, too."

"Promise me ye'll come back."

"No. No promises."

His malevolence returned. "Only death can change a future that has already been painted. A strong painting would even stave off a death…"

She was relentless. "Your art was not strong enough to override Sienna's determination. It won't be strong enough to override mine, either. Right now I'd rather die than not go back to Shale."

That's true, she thought, surprising herself. Oh, Shale…

He gave a grunt of frustration. "One day soon, ye'll stand where I painted ye, beside that river. I still had my power when I painted it."

"Perhaps. But I've got to stay alive first. Tell me how to resist without killing myself, and maybe, just maybe, I will return."

With a suddenness that shocked her, he seemed to deflate. "Ye can kill me," he admitted. "I told ye that. If artist die, magic of painting dies."

They stared at each other. She wanted him dead, but could not kill him. And he knows it, the salted bastard. But then, anything he says could be untrue…

"What if the painting is destroyed before the scene it portrays comes true?" she asked. "Do the people in it really die?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Be in peril, definite. Painting destroyed, but future magic be trying to hold true. Like war." He gripped her arm tight, his bony fingers surprisingly strong. "Ye have those paintings?"

She didn't answer, still unable to tell if what he said was the truth. If that is true, wouldn't he have taken better care of the paintings?

"Old Ba-ba say Taquar's men took them."

"I have them. Taquar gave them back to me."

"Don't destroy them. Dangerous. Truly. If I paint true, then future win. If I weak, then ye be dying when painting die. Understand?"

She nodded sadly. Shale had destroyed her painting of Vato the waterseller by accidentally treading on it, and Vato had died under a falling building within a year. Coincidence-or was waterpainting withering dangerous? "So how can I fight the desire to return?"

Huddled into the bedding, shrunken and ill-looking, his body was small and negligible. Even his voice was weak when he finally spoke. "Decide now ye will return in less than a year. Promise me. Magic then leave ye alone. Girl in painting can wait a year. After that, too late. Ye'd be different, look older than I painted ye. Understand?"

She thought about it. "As long as I promise to return before I look older than the girl in the painting, the magic will not force me-if my honest intention is to be there."

He nodded. "Genuine intention. Understand?"

She sighed. There wasn't going to be any way out of this-unless he died. And she was no murderer. "All right. I promise. I will be back in Samphire less than a year from now."