Stormlord rising

CHAPTER FOUR

The Scarpen to the White Quarter Caravanner routes The two waterpainters left Scarcleft on the morning after the earthquake, just as dawn was breaking over a tattered city. Crumbled walls, collapsed roofs, broken pipes and cracked cisterns, water gushing into the streets, fires raging through the lowest level-they'd seen it all on their way to the city gate.

And they were the only two people alive who knew who was to blame.

Only one of the two looked back as they left, and she cried, water-wasting tears that no one else in the Scarpen ever shed unless they had something in their eye. She cried because she knew people had died that night-died because she had inadvertently killed them; she cried because she wasn't going to Breccia toward the only friend she had in the world.

Oh, Shale. I'm sorry.

And then, because she hated people who whined about their fate, she dried her tears and looked resolutely ahead. She was Terelle Grey, nineteen years old, and one day she would be truly free. She swore it. Perhaps she'd even find Shale again.

Russet Kermes had not hired a guide or a pedeman. Terelle had naively assumed her great-grandfather knew what he was doing; after all, years before he had made the trek from his home in the Variega mountains of Khromatis, through the White and Gibber Quarters to the Scarpen Quarter. He'd spent years traveling the Quartern in search of her mother, Sienna. He must have ridden myriapede hacks as well as the huge packpedes capable of carrying up to fifteen people.

However, soon after they left the Scarcleft livery in the aftermath of the earthquake, she was forced to revise any assumption about his competence. He had bought a single myriapede, and piled it with their supplies on the back four segments, leaving the first two segments for the two of them. He took the front, sitting cross-legged on the padded cloth saddle as pede drivers and riders did, but as they headed along the trail up the scarp heading directly north, he had trouble organizing the reins. The pede sensed his incompetence and indicated its irritation by clicking its mouthparts and flinging its long feelers around.

"Never be driving pede before," he confessed when Terelle, seated behind him on the beast, asked him how much experience he had. "Always be passenger in caravan, or hiring pedeman. Offered tokens, but nobody be going White Quarter now. Dangerous. Reduners be raiding the 'Basters and killing caravanners. So-we go alone."

Terelle felt her mouth go dry. Dangerous? "Do you know the way?"

He pointed ahead with his riding prod. "There be trail. We follow."

"Aren't we heading north now? The White Quarter is to the east, isn't it?"

"I be knowing the way!" he snapped. "Waterpainters never forget a route. We turn northeast at second caravansary."

She wanted to ask if he knew how to harness the pede, or any of the hundred and one other things that must have been necessary to cross a desert safely, but before she could frame the question, he said, "If anything wrong, ye can be painting our way out of the problem, no?"

"No, I can't. I'm not painting anymore. At least, not in order to shuffle up the future."

He twisted in the saddle to look back at her in open surprise. "What ye mean? Of course ye will! Why ever not?"

"Because we can't tell what will happen! Artisman, people died when the earthquake came. They died just so I could walk free of my prison." The horror of it was still fresh in her mind, as raw as the moment it had occurred.

A mother rocking her dead child in her arms, keening her loss…

No, don't remember. Some things are better forgotten.

But there was no escaping what had happened. True, she had not been the one who had painted the wreckage of Scarcleft Hall with her scrambling over the ruins; that had been Russet. Nonetheless, she had been the one who'd made the quake possible. Russet no longer had the power to shuffle up the magic into his paintings; he could not now move water through the motley undercoat and the layers of paint, nor couple it with his waterpainter's power and fix the future of whatever it was he had painted.

She could, though. When Highlord Taquar Sardonyx had sent the waterpaints to her prison room, she had even tricked the magic and done what was supposed to be impossible. She had influenced her own future. How could she have known that shuffling up her shadow would also give power to Russet's concept of an earthquake?

Behind them, the lowest level of Scarcleft still burned. If she turned, she would see the smoke. "Sunlord help me, how many innocent people did we kill, the two of us?"

Still looking at her, Russet shrugged. The pede moved steadily ahead in spite of his inattention. "Who cares if folk died? Scarpen folk only. Not be our people. They imprisoned you to use you. Deserved to die!"

Furious, she glared at him. "You're sun-fried! Taquar imprisoned me, not some poor boy asleep in his bed who'll never wake up because a wall fell on him. What kind of monster are you?"

He shook his finger at her. "Ye matter! They not matter. Ye are Pinnacle heir. Must be going home. Quartern folk no more than sand-ticks beneath your feet. Ye be not even knowing them."

"Do you think that makes me feel one sand grain better?" she asked, incredulous. She took a deep breath. "I am not shuffling up, not ever again." She pressed her lips together in what she hoped was a determined line.

Russet scowled. "Foolish frip of a girl! We could die." When she didn't reply, he looked behind them, as if he expected to see someone following. "Best we leave this trail. Taquar might be finding out we left city and sending enforcers after us."

She looked at the stark brown dryness of the fissured land to either side. "Strike out across the desert? We'd be lost in minutes!"

"Not if I be painting me riding into Fourcross Tell, and ye use waterpainting skills to make that the future." He was intent on her now, still paying no attention to the pede. "Try it."

"Taquar's far too busy coping with the earthquake," she said. "We'll take our chances following the track."

"Ye defy me, girl? After all I be doing for ye?"

Her knuckles whitened on the handle driven into the segment in front of her saddle. "I owe you nothing! Not since you painted me into your pictures to take away my freedom to determine my own future." Worse, every time she had tried to defy the magic of the shuffled-up paintings, she'd been sick. He'd done that to her. To her mother, too. Sienna had been ill for a long while, probably because she'd tried to resist her painted future, until she had died giving birth to Terelle.

Murderer.

With sudden resolution she met his gaze squarely, ignoring the disquieting fanaticism in the glare of his age-rheumed eyes as the pede lurched and scrambled up the steepest part of The Escarpment trail. "I don't want to be here. I escaped from Highlord Taquar to go to Shale, not to you. I am only here because you painted my future and I cannot fight the magic of your art. But don't ask me to like it. Or to feel loyalty to you. Or even to obey you."

"Be for your own good."

"My good???or yours?" she snapped.

"Ye be kin! Ye could lead a nation."

Watergiver help me, he's crazed. "That's my misfortune, not my obligation! You can't think your people would welcome me simply because my mother was the heir."

Forced to turn his attention back to the reins, he didn't reply. Her stomach roiled, protesting her rebellion, and she suspected he would not forgive her. However, he did not turn off the caravan trail, and that was her first small victory.

Instead, he started to teach her the spoken language of Khromatis. The journey was a nightmare, yet a nightmare painted on a background that stirred Terelle's soul. The wide skies, the strange orange light of dawn, the burning white sun of midday and the crimson dusks; the shadowed scarps, the gnarled trees clawing their way into barren soils, the weathered rocks and sculpted cliffs: she remembered it from her childhood's single journey, but then she had seen it with a child's eye. Now the artist in her saw the beauty of the land's raw roughness. It murmured to her, stirring a restless desire to record it, to capture it, to make it her own.

But there was no time to paint the scenery, and the nightmare was always there, riding with her: her great-grandfather was a murderous old man who didn't care that he had killed people to pursue his quest for power. Worse, she couldn't free herself. She was chained to him by the paintings he had done when he still had the power to make them come true. She would never be free until she stood on a green slope next to running water; the scene he had painted all those years ago.

It was a lonely journey. All trade between the quarters had ceased because the White and Gibber Quarters had been under periodic attack from Sandmaster Davim's marauders. Where once there had been a thriving trade route, a deserted trail was now often covered by wind-blown dust unmarked by any pede prints. Where there had been Alabaster salt and soda traders and gypsum merchants, where pede caravans of Reduner drovers had passed, laden with minerals and gems from the Gibber Quarter or herding a meddle of pedes for sale, now there was nobody.

The first caravansary along the route was a huddle of deserted buildings just a day's ride from Scarcleft. The cistern was still half-full, even though the windmill normally drawing water from the Scarcleft tunnel had been shut down and disconnected.

"Used to be caretakers here," Russet muttered. "Reeve too, to stop water theft from tunnel. Must be leaving after Qanatend taken by Reduners. Afraid Reduners come this way."

"I don't understand," she said to Russet. "Why did the Reduner sandmaster attack Qanatend? Reduners benefited from trade with the Scarpen as much as everyone else. They bought our bab oil and our beads and Gibber gems, our cloth and bab-weave canvas for their tents-so many things. They sold us pedes and animal pelts and dyes and wild herbs."

"Street gossip say Davim be thinking to return people to old time of noble warrior. Nomads, raiding and stealing and hunting. Hear he says dune gods be angry because tribesmen deviated from nomadic ways." He shrugged. "Foolishness of ignorant man hungry for power."

And you? Terelle thought. That describes you, too, you frizzled old driveler.

They lost the trail half a dozen times the next day when the hardened ruts left by generations of pede feet disappeared under sifted dust. Russet's remedy was simple. He gave the pede its head and hoped it at least knew where it was supposed to go. Sooner or later, the trail would magically reappear under the points of the animal's feet and Terelle would breathe a sigh of relief.

Late that night they arrived at the second caravansary. It was larger than the first, but equally deserted. Fortunately there was a small grove of fruiting bab trees, so they ate well and the pede gorged itself on the fallen fruit until it could eat no more.

The language lessons continued until they went to bed. The trail divided at the caravansary, one branch veering off to Pebblebag Pass and Qanatend, a second heading northeast toward the White Quarter, and a third due east. "Goes to Pahntuk Cistern," Russet remarked about the last in the morning. "Route to Breccia."

She thought nothing of that until later in the day when they were following the middle trail up into the foothills of the Warthago Range. The way was steep, the views spectacular. Ahead were the savage peaks of the range scarifying the sky with their clawed edges. When she looked back, she could see for miles across The Sweeping, the rugged gullies they had crossed now no more than insignificant cracks on the landscape. Maintenance shaft towers cast their shadows across the land in lines, one to the west, one still ahead of them, marking the water tunnels to Breccia and Scarcleft respectively.

And far below, a spindevil whirling up the dust in his dance…

No. Not a spindevil.

She clutched at Russet's shoulder. "Artisman. Look behind."

He reined in and turned.

"That's not a spindevil wind," she said. "That's dust from pedes."

They sat in silence, watching, their shock growing. There were so many.

"They can't be after us. I don't think there are that many pedes in the whole of Scarcleft."

"No," Russet agreed. "Look. Not following us. They crossed our trail. Be riding south from Pebblebag Pass toward Breccia."

"Who-?" she began, then stopped. "Reduners."

He nodded. "Interesting. Pedes plenty; men not so many, I think. But too many of both to be trade caravan."

Shale. "We must warn Breccia!"

He gave her a contemptuous look. She flushed, acknowledging it was a silly idea. She and Russet were further away from Breccia than the Reduners, and they were two unskilled riders mounted on a slow hired hack.

"Be too late anyway," he said. "They be looking like supply caravan."

He flicked the reins again and the pede ambled on.

"What do you mean?"

He was silent.

"You think Reduners have already attacked Breccia!"

Russet looked over his shoulder at the caravan, squinting against the light to see better, and shrugged indifferently. "I think maybe we be lucky. I think we be missing the main army. They already in Breccia." She stared at him, appalled, as he added, "Besieging, maybe."

"Oh, Sunlord-no." Shale.

"Not our business."

He flicked the reins, but the pede maintained its leisurely pace. He jabbed it with his pede prod, and it reluctantly moved a little faster. Terelle watched behind. Sunlord save them, she thought, and reached for her water skin to pour out a little water to give force to her prayer. They crossed over the Breccian tunnel several runs of the sandglass later and breathed a little easier. Folds and gullies in the land soon blocked their view and they saw no more of the pedes or their dust.

Another night passed, so cold the stoppers froze in the necks of their water skins. The chill didn't stop the sand-ticks and sand-fleas, though; Terelle rose in the morning itching all over. Another blisteringly hot day followed. Harnessing, saddling and packing their innately lazy mount every day took almost an hour because it would not cooperate. The terrain worsened and the distance they traveled each day decreased. It took them two days now to ride between the deserted caravansaries.

After that, the language lessons became more sporadic. Russet was morose. Terelle would even have welcomed a return of his malicious humor; anything would have been better than hours of riding behind his hunched and silent back. Then, one day, when he seemed slower than usual rising from the sleeping platform in an empty caravansary, it occurred to her it wasn't just bad temper making him so taciturn. He was tired and old and the journey was wearing him out.

Uncharitably, she thought it served him right, but she did take over most of the driving after that, learning to manipulate the reins and the prod and to battle the recalcitrant pede. Russet sat behind her, sunk in his own thoughts, rousing himself only to teach her a few more words in the language of Khromatis.

Her arms and shoulders ached. To dismount after hours of riding meant loosening stiff muscles and joints as if she was teasing out knots. No wonder Russet had been so tired. Still, she had no affection for him. Nothing could erase the knowledge that he had murdered her father and caused her mother's death. It was the pull of Russet's waterpainting that was sending Terelle to the White Quarter, not any genuine wish of hers to find out her history or to meet what was left of her family.

Russet had told her that his son-in-law was the Pinnacle of Khromatis, but the old man had not set foot in his country for twenty years. His son-in-law could just as easily be dead. Anything could have happened. All Russet's dreams for power could be so much dust in the wind. And what did it matter to her? She was Gibber born, Scarpen bred; she didn't want to go to Khromatis. She wanted to make sure Shale was all right. She wanted to explain about the letter Taquar had forced her to write. She wanted to be certain Shale had not done anything foolish because of that letter. What if he surrendered himself to Highlord Taquar again because she had begged him to do so in writing-?

But no, Cloudmaster Granthon would never have let him do that, surely.

What if Sandmaster Davim and his Reduners took Breccia City? Had already taken it?

No, don't even think that.

Sleep, whether wrapped tight in blankets on the ground or barricaded inside a mud-brick caravansary, offered relief from Terelle's tangled thoughts of Taquar and Shale, but dreams brought nightmares which might even have been real. Her sister, Vivie, trapped under the ruins of Opal's Snuggery. Garri the snuggery gatekeeper lying dead in the courtyard, hit by a falling balustrade. Madam Opal herself crushed under a fallen roof… She would wake, cold and shivering, wanting it all to be untrue. Wanting to wake up and find everything was all right.

But it wasn't. She and Russet had caused an earthquake and people had died because of it. Vivie could be dead in truth; she didn't know and had no way of finding out. I will never shuffle up the future again, she thought. Never. Waterpainting power is wrong. To secure the future for your own benefit was wrong-because you never knew who would suffer to make that future real. Their journey continued, apparently interminable. Russet had a fall from the pede and was badly bruised, which necessitated staying days at one of the caravansaries while he recovered. Their supplies ran out and they were reduced to living solely on the bab fruits they found in the caravansaries' groves. The pede liked nothing better, but Terelle found it a boring diet. Fortunately, now there were no travelers, the caravansaries had plenty of water in their cisterns.

With a normal caravan, fifteen days would have found them entering Samphire, the main Alabaster city. It took them almost double that before they even reached the border between Scarpen and the White Quarter, a place called Fourcross Tell where all four quarters met.

The caravansary there, on the heights of a crumbling plateau, was not deserted as the others had been. The keeper and his family were, however, readying for their departure to return home to the Gibber.

The keeper's wife, a spare woman with straggling gray hair and a harassed expression that could have been permanent, was only too glad to explain why. "We was attacked this morning, by a small band of them withering red marauders, the beaded bastards," she said. "Took everythin' they could find, they did. They're ridin' into the White Quarter, seizin' water-anythin'. They spared us till now 'cause we served Reduner caravans well in the past, but we've decided we don't want t'risk it no more. Got to think of them." She indicated the two children clinging to her traveling breeches. Their worried faces, wearing expressions that were miniatures of their mother's, peeked out through uncombed hair.

Her husband looked Terelle up and down in pity. "You'll be ripe for their pluckin', girl. Watch how you go. You're welcome t'whatever we've left behind. We won't be comin' back. Get the young 'uns up on the beasts," he added to his wife. "We've lingered long enough."

"You think they'll be back? The Reduners?" Terelle asked.

He gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, yes. They made that clear. This part of the Quartern belongs t'them red savages now."

Terelle and Russet watched the family urge their mounts down the hill slope into the Gibber, the two pedes-prodded into fast mode-scudding up dust that hung in the air long after they'd gone.

"Are we going to be safe?" Terelle asked as they shared a meal that evening while the sun slipped behind the Warthago Range. "Shale told me Davim and his tribe wanted to take over the White Quarter. We might be riding into the middle of a battle."

Russet thought for a moment. "Best we pass Samphire by, no?"

"How do we do that?"

"Cross Whiteout."

"The Whiteout? I've heard of that. It's a salt plain."

"Flat. Easy ride. No Reduners be finding us on Whiteout. Cross straight to salt marshes. That be the border to Khromatis."

"I've heard stories about the pans. Trackless, they say. Just heat and salt and nothing else in all directions. I heard the white sends folk mad. How will we find our way?"

"I crossed it once. Can be doing it again." Russet stood abruptly and walked to the doorway. He pointed across the courtyard to the open gateway. "Look! See that white line bordering the sky? Those be the clouds over Variega mountains in land of Watergivers. That be where we be heading. Keep clouds in sight, can never lose selves."

She squinted. The caravansary was high on the range dividing the southern quarters of the Gibber and the Scarpen from the northern two-the White and the Red-and the view to the east and northeast was extensive. The plain far below stretched without interruption to the distant line of pinkish white, illuminated by the last long rays of the setting sun. "Why can't we see the mountains themselves?" she asked, doubtful.

"Far, far away. Later ye see the white tops."

"White? Are they made of salt then?"

"Be topped with snow," he said, and she heard his familiar mockery of her ignorance.

"Snow? What's that?"

"A form of water. Like-like shavings of white ice."

She tried to imagine a world where there was so much water it coated the hilltops with ice shavings, and failed.

"That family leaving much food behind. Pack it all," he said. "And all water pede can carry. Make sure it drinks well too, before we be leaving." He already sounded invigorated, as if the hint of his homeland had infused him with energy.

Terelle did as he suggested, stripping the bab palms of their ripe fruit the next morning in the washed-out light of predawn and cutting them into strips so they would dry easily. She filled every water skin they had to the brim, sealing them with candle grease after stoppering them tightly. Russet found some extra dayjars, and she placed those in the side panniers of the pede as well. When they'd finished, Terelle regarded the loaded pede dubiously.

"That's a heavy load for a myriapede," she said.

"Downhill," Russet said. "Then flat, mile after mile. Each day weight less as we drink and eat, no?"

"The pede will need to drink a lot, and often, out there. How many days will it take to cross the Whiteout?"

"Less time than be taking to finish the water," he replied.

Unsettled, she wondered if he really knew. In the snuggery, she had heard tales of the White Quarter, of travelers dying on the salt, their bodies found years later, mummified and dried solid. Pickled. What kind of people were they, these Alabasters, who apparently did not have red blood in their veins? Who could live in a land where the very ground beneath one's feet was made of salt?

In the first few miles after Fourcross Tell, the land was not all that different from the areas they had already crossed: stunted trees dug into the soil with grotesquely twisted roots, gullies scarred the land in memory of long-ago streams. Even the dust felt the same. Later in the day, though, as they descended to the plains, the vegetation changed and she felt as if she was leaving everything sure and familiar behind. The trees disappeared, replaced by low bushes and creepers snaking over the ochre-colored earth. When they stopped to rest, Terelle fingered the leaves of one plant and found it dusted with salt.

It was hot by then, stifling. The air hung so still it felt heavy on her shoulders, and thick to breathe. When she licked her lips, she tasted salt. When she touched her hair, it was stickily coated.

"We stay here while sun high," Russet said. They dismounted and he sat in the shadow cast by the pede. Wearily, he pulled his embroidered head-wrap loose and drank from his water skin. His earlier vigor seemed to have been vanquished by the heat. "We go on later; be cooler."

Terelle nodded and strung up bab matting for shade by tying it to the pede on one side and a single saltbush on the other. She sat down next to Russet, using the pede as a backrest. Even under the cover, the heat was intense enough to shrivel the skin. Carefully she smoothed some of the pede ointment onto her face; Vivie would have approved. The pede flicked one of its feelers backward and touched her cheek in a tentative gesture.

"What is it, girl?" she asked. "You can't be thirsty already." Gently, she prodded the belly between the segments; the moisture-saturated tissues were soft. She gazed into its myopic compound eyes, and wondered whether it had a name or not. The liveryman had called it Number Twelve-indeed, it had the number etched into its rear segment. It wasn't a handsome creature, all carved and polished and sewn with embroidery, like a lord's animal. It was just a plain, working hack. Still, she tried to do what was best for it. Russet had said pedemen kept the crevices between carapace and skin cleaned of grains of sand and such, so every evening she groomed the pede carefully and checked every segment groove for sand-ticks, every one of its eighteen pairs of feet for injury. When she found abraded spots on its skin, she smeared on the lanolin supplied by the livery.

Encouraged by Terelle's words, the beast curved its front end around, poked its head into the shade cast by the cloth, then rested the base of its head on the ground at her feet. If a pede could look soulful, then that was what it did. Terelle chuckled. "Oh, I see-you're just hot too, eh? Fine, Number Twelve, you stay right where you are. We can share the shade." The creature settled its first segment mantle down over its eyes-the only way it had of closing them-and dozed. Next to her, Russet was already sleeping.

Terelle glanced around. Nothing moved in the midday heat, so she, too, closed her eyes. She was awoken by a scream.

She leaped up, whirling around to find the danger. The pede raised its head and flicked its feelers. Russet was clutching his leg and moaning.

"What is it?" Terelle asked, trying to slow the thumping of her heart.

"Something be stinging me." Hurriedly, he pulled the cloth of his wrap back from his calf. A single spot of blood oozed just above the ankle.

"Snake?" She cast around where he had been lying, but nothing moved.

"Only one hole."

"Sand-leech?"

"More painful. Scorpion."

"That-that's not-not so very serious, is it?"

"Not if ye be treating it," he replied between gritted teeth. "Reduners use herbal concoction."

"We can go back to the caravansary-"

"Don't be stupid. We be going on. Get the water skin. Must be washing leg." He took the water and waved her away, indicating with further gesturing that she should dismantle the shade cloth and reload the pede. She did as he asked; she knew better than to argue.

They set off once more, in silence, and she concentrated on persuading the pede to whatever speed it was capable of-which never seemed to be as much as she had seen other pedes do. Whenever she looked behind at Russet, he was staring straight ahead, expressionless.

When she slowed their mount some hours later, thinking to stop for the night because the sun had almost set, he spoke again. "No," he said, "go on."

"I won't know what direction. I can't even see the ground properly." And I'm tired. And you are sick.

"See well enough once star river shines. Go on."

She did as he asked. A little later he brusquely pointed out a particularly bright star in the sky and said, "Be keeping that on your left."

He was silent for a long time as they continued. Every now and then she turned her head to check if he was still there, to find him hunched up and motionless behind her. In the silver-blue light she could not tell if the bite was bothering him. She felt a pang of guilt at her lack of compassion, but he was forcing her on this journey, sunblast it! He had no right to expect anything of her except rage.

It was pleasant traveling in the cool of the night; at least at first. Later the slight breeze they generated with their passing chilled her skin like slivers of ice. She drifted off, dozing on the saddle, but roused with a start when he spoke.

"We camp now."

His voice sounded small and thin in the silence of the night, as friable as ancient sun-bleached rock. She reined in, dismounted and went back to help him. Even so, he fell out of the saddle rather than climbed down, and then collapsed, unable to stand.

"Give me my pack and be fixing a meal," he said, and there was still enough authority in his tone to have her obey without protest. If he did not ask for help, she knew it would only anger him to offer it. She stifled a sigh.

By the time he was wrapped in his blanket, she had a fire alight, using dry twigs and leaves for fuel. The salt coating the soil and plants spat in the flames with green and blue sparks, the sound animating the quiet of a salt-encrusted world. She made some soup out of the shredded dried meat and bab root she had obtained at the caravansary. She had to wake him when it was ready, but he ate gladly enough, then slept again. After she'd had some of the soup herself, she went to groom the pede. It was eating the low plants with enthusiasm and took no notice as she followed it around brushing out its segment joints. When she'd finished, she hobbled the animal by linking its antennae together. No pede moved far or fast when it didn't have the free use of its feelers.

Just before she turned in herself, she felt the pull of her journey as sharp as a knife beneath her ribs. The pull of the future Russet had painted for her.

My mother could resist, she thought. Why can't I? And she remembered once again the offhand words Vivie had uttered about Sienna: she was always ill.

Resistance came with a price.