Stormlord rising

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Red Quarter Dune Watergatherer On the surface, it seemed a stupid time to plan a mass escape of slaves. There were one hundred more pedes and five hundred more seasoned warriors in camp than usual, the latter all heavily armed and outnumbering Ravard's men. In addition there were countless camp followers with them to serve the warriors, look after their pedes and care for their weapons.

However, Ryka soon realized they could not have chosen a better night. With so many extra men in camp, nothing was normal, and therefore anything unusual went unnoticed. Slaves came and went; when masters called they were busy elsewhere and no one thought much of it. When women slaves went missing, the men who usually slept with them made sour remarks about "Davim's bleeding randy drovers," but did nothing. When water skins went missing and water levels in camp jars were low, when a particular pede couldn't be found where it was supposed to be, if food seemed to vanish as soon as it was cooked, if the encampment was unusually noisy with the buzz of whispered conversations, if slaves seemed extra busy and always carrying things from one place to another, if every look exchanged seemed heavy with meaning, well-what else did you expect? There were so many extra people, all of whom were tired-you had to assume there would be a muddle.

Ryka turned to Junial for help. The baker was delighted to see her again and was happy to explain both the workings of the camp and what had already been done to prepare for the escape.

"You know," she added at the end of her explanation, "Kher Ravard doesn't have any slaves of his own, or didn't until we arrived. I believe we all belong to the sandmaster, not Ravard. Except maybe you. Apparently the Master Son doesn't much like slaves."

Ryka's eyebrows shot up. "You could have fooled me."

"Me, too. But everyone here when we arrived was a Reduner. Or an outlander who had adopted Reduner ways and a Reduner name, even becoming warriors, some of them. So we've trusted no one but ourselves. Uthardim and Elmar and a couple of the others have been organizing this escape for ages. Everyone knows what to do, believe me. All we have to do is pass the word that it's tonight." After she'd made sure that Ravard and Davim had left the tent to join the feast down in Davim's camp, Ryka returned to the tent and extracted the two perfume vials from the box in Ravard's room. She passed one to Elmar and the other to Junial, after using it herself. "It's the zigger perfume," she explained. "Just in case someone sends ziggers after us."

She joined the women then, finding and filling water skins and dayjars, cooking and packaging food, tying up the bedrolls and traveling tents. She herself spirited away two packpedes and a number of panniers into the dunes, and women took their pilfered items out there to be stowed.

Elmar had stolen a myriapede for himself, Kaneth and Ryka, and showed her where he'd hidden it in a hollow away from the camp. Asked by a Reduner where he was going, Elmar blandly told him he had been ordered to stake it out for grazing. Ryka found a set of saddle bags and tied it onto one of the rear segments, full of all the food she could pilfer, plus a couple of water skins, several warm blankets and three knives taken from the chests in Ravard's tent.

All the while, she was as tense as a pebblemouse aware that it was being stalked by something big and hungry. She feared for them all. If Kaneth has lost a rainlord's power, then he has no water-sense. He won't sense when Ravard comes to kill him. Tension teased out into numbing fear. If he gets taken by surprise…

One part of her said Kaneth was more than capable of looking after himself; another that he was handicapped. He couldn't wear a sword openly; he had to face at least two men, not one, because the shaman would be there. And he had to do it quietly. On the other hand, Ravard, for all his youth, was a man raised as a warrior, a man who had fought in battles starting with those waged against other Reduner tribes when he was fifteen, or so he had told her.

She fretted for herself, too. She'd seen the way the Kher had looked at her. A man hungry in a way that might have delighted a woman in love, but that disturbed her because it was also the look of a man who wanted to possess a woman in a way that gave no thought to equality. He owned her.

He came for her, as she knew he would. Davim's men had begun to drift back to their part of the valley, settling into their tents, if they had them, or wrapping themselves against the cold in their bedrolls if they didn't. The fires began to die down, the songs faltered and then ceased. In the distance a horned cat howled and spat. He found her finally grabbing something to eat from what was left of the feasting. The sandmaster was nowhere in sight.

He slipped his arm around her waist and licked her ear. "Come," he said, and she went.

This is the last time, she told herself. It doesn't matter.

And then another thought: This is his last time, ever. She felt a stab of compassion and had to remind herself that when this night's lovemaking was over, he intended to kill Kaneth.

She swallowed and spiraled her dread down into a tight coil within. She would do this, and she would do it well. And because she did, perhaps when he walked up the slope to the shrine, he would miss the first signs that someone was waiting to kill him.

Once in the tent she slipped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to kiss her, opening her mouth to his probing tongue. As Ryka lay in his arms afterward and Ravard drowsily nuzzled her breast, he seemed in no hurry to leave. "Why d'you wear those awful trousers," he asked, "when you have the dresses we brought from Breccia? T'morrow I want you t'wear that green one. I want every man here t'envy me for what I have."

"The sandmaster, too?" she asked. "I thought you wanted me to be inconspicuous."

"He doesn't have t'know I'm still bedding you." He smiled and hugged her tight. "I have a surprise for you t'morrow."

"What's that?" she asked, and wondered what he would think of the thudding of her heart.

He didn't seem to notice. "Half-face dies tonight."

Even though she knew it was coming, she stiffened in shock.

"My present t'you," he said and idly traced a finger over her breasts from one nipple to the other.

She was silent even as she sought for a response, any response.

"Aren't you pleased?" he asked. "The man got you with child and then abandoned you. Now he doesn't even remember."

"He-he's still the father," she said.

"No, he's not," Ravard replied, his anger hot and immediate. "I am. I told you. He is mine now." He touched the bulge of her belly. "And will be so always. My son, bearing a name of my choosing. Or my daughter," he added as an afterthought. "The child is never to know the name of the man who sired him, ever. He-or she-is never t'know. That is my gift t'you tonight."

"You-you are going out to kill him now?"

He chuckled. "No, I have better things t'do tonight. You've been out of my bed too long, sweetling. I sent a couple of my men t'take care of him instead." He laid his head on her naked shoulder, and in spite of his promise, within half a dozen breaths he dozed.

She waited, still and silent, hardly daring to breathe. Gradually his breathing deepened. Still she waited. When she was sure he wasn't going to wake, she edged out from under him.

Stealthily she picked up her clothing, stole another dagger and a sword from his chest, and left his room. She dressed in her room and tied some of Laisa's ribbons to her belt in a loop to carry the sword; not the best way to carry a blade but at least it left her hands free. She took her cloak and blessed the pockets sewn into the lining. They were big enough for some extra items, including the dagger. Finally, pulling up the hood, she left the tent.

Ravard slept on.

Outside, she raised her eyes to the crest of the sand hills surrounding the encampment. They were silhouetted against the sky, and occasionally the stars beyond them disappeared and reappeared a moment later. Sentries, walking to and fro along the sand ridge, doubtless cold and bored. Not yet sensing anything wrong. It all seems too easy, she thought. So many things could have gone wrong, so many ways they could have made a mistake. And none of it had happened.

At least… not yet.

A glance at Davim's encampment showed her only darkness. She caught muffled sounds of whispers and shuffling and hoped it was some slaves sneaking away. A number would already be hunkered down by the pede lines, waiting for the moment to snatch as many beasts as they could for transport and to scatter the others. They would be waiting for the signal-Kaneth's signal.

She struggled up the loose sand of the dune toward the crest where the shrine stone was. She couldn't see it, but as she climbed closer she could feel the presence of water there. Four bodies, one alive, three dead. Three. She had no idea which, if any, was Kaneth. Could he have killed three people?

Her cloak snagged on the prickles of the low bushes dotting the dune, jerking her back. She took it off in irritation and impatiently started to unhook it. And felt someone else's water. A man, stealthily climbing up behind her. Ravard?

She hesitated, torn. Reach out with her power and kill him, whoever it was? But what if it was Ravard? He'd feel the attempt and be warned. Damn.

Turning her senses upward again, she knew that whoever was alive at the shrine was not moving. If it was Kaneth, what was he waiting for? She wrenched at her cloak, tearing it away from the prickles to drape it around her shoulders, and crouched.

When the follower came up to where she was, she shrugged off her cloak and rose up in front of him, scimitar in one hand, dagger in the other. "Stand," she said, and then said it again in Reduner.

"Ryka? Thank goodness! I thought you might not be able to get away from that bastard."

Elmar. Ryka let out the breath she had been holding and lowered her weapons. "What are you doing up here?"

"I came for Kaneth. I thought maybe something had gone wrong. And he doesn't know where we've got our pede stashed. Everything's ready. Where is he?"

"At the shrine, I hope. There's one person there-and three bodies."

"That will be him then, the live one," he said with confidence.

And it seemed he was right, for no sooner had he spoken than the sand started to sing. This time it was a glorious sound, a stringed harmony threaded through with a poignant wandering melody that could have been played by a master piper. Then the hillside near the shrine began to rip with a tearing noise that challenged, then overwhelmed, the earth music. The slope rumbled, and the ground beneath Ryka shook and shifted slightly, so she staggered.

"Sunblast it," Elmar snapped, "I hope he's not falling down with that lot."

She broke into a smile. He was alive. "No, he's well away. Walking toward us. Jogging, in fact. Or someone is."

The sound grew, the rumbling became a scream, as if every grain of sand was scraping against another and combining their individual sounds into a single cry of a land cleaved and shattered.

"Salted Sunlord," Elmar said, in awe. "I'll go meet him. Stay here."

He started up the path to the shrine; she turned to pick up her cloak. It was caught on thorns again. Cursing, she bent to unhook it. No thought of anything but to get out of there as fast as possible. No thought of any other danger.

It happened so quickly there was nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do. The ground beneath her feet sheered away and dropped. She flailed, but there was nothing to clutch save her cloak. Her screams were lost in the ululation of sand on the move, the pain of a hillside as it died.

Kaneth had reached into the soul of the dune, too deep, too far, with too little understanding. Elmar whirled and stared. Where Ryka had stood a moment earlier there was nothing, not even the ground she had been standing on. And then, while he still stared at the dark empty space, jaw dropping in disbelieving shock, dust bellied upward from below, dense and choking, great billows of it curdling the air. All that was left of a hillside now surged skyward on the wind its fall had created.

He backed away from the still crumbling edge. Backed, because he could not tear his gaze from what was no longer there.

Coughing, choking, he bumped into Kaneth, who grasped him by the shoulder. He jumped in shock and almost fell.

Kaneth grinned at him, his teeth a gleam in the dark. "Sorry," he said. "Seems I got carried away. Still, no harm done. Let's get going."

Elmar opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

"Waterless soul, you're shaking all over! Come, let's go."

But Elmar stood rooted, speechless.

"Come on, my friend. Get a grip on yourself. We have to move!"

"Are you-are you all right?"

"Yes, of course! Let's get off this hillside. It could be unstable. Besides, we have to get off the dune before the Reduners organize themselves. I've no idea how much damage I managed to do. Probably not as much as I hoped-most of Davim's men were more to the other side of the dip, I think." He grabbed Elmar's arm and began to drag him down the slope. "Where's Garnet? Is she safe?"

"She-she-" His mouth opened, but the words wouldn't come out.

"Elmar!" Kaneth sounded more exasperated than alarmed.

The words came in a rush. He didn't consider them. They came unasked, unthought, hard on the heels of the thought that he had to save Kaneth and wouldn't be able to if the man started searching for Ryka. And Ryka was dead. The words reached his ears as if someone else was forming them. "She gave me a message for you."

"Which was?"

"She-she decided not to go with us."

Kaneth stopped abruptly. "What?"

"Because-because of the baby. She said she couldn't risk it. Too dangerous. If she stays the baby will be safe. Reduners are good to babies. She said she'll escape later. When the baby is born. She's very close to the birth, you know."

Kaneth stared at him. The twisted scar of his face appeared dark and ugly in the starlight.

His stillness, his silence, was unnatural. Elmar groped for more words. More lies. Anything to get him out of there. "She asked you to understand that the child comes before anything."

When Kaneth spoke again it was so softly Elmar hardly caught the words. "I see."

He continued on down the hill, and this time Elmar had to run to catch up.

"One day, I will kill that man," Kaneth said through clenched teeth. "He has no right to any child of mine."

Elmar had never been so heartfelt sick in all his life.