The Last Stormlord

CHAPTER THREE

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.

But Kaneth backtracked. "Are you saying that the Cloudmaster cannot make good the lack?"

"You don't need me to tell you it is unlikely. You've seen him. My father is old beyond his years, and ill. I am going to the Sun Temple after this, to ask Lord Gold to make a heavier sacrifice to the Sunlord. Perhaps that will help."

Kaneth snorted. "Withering waste of water."

They looked at each other, two men who had been friends since the day they had first met as children, almost thirty years earlier. Nealrith's heart lurched. They were like sand grains at the top of a slope too steep for stability, waiting for the landslip, the irrevocable damage, the words that couldn't be taken back. He smothered a desire to change the subject rather than hear something he knew instinctively he would not be able to countenance.

"Spit it out, Kaneth," he said finally. "What is your solution? None of what you have suggested so far is practical. You can't tap into water that simply isn't there. More wells somewhere else would be accessing the same underground water as the present ones do; you know that. And I am assuming that you are not going to recommend wholesale slaughter of a number of our citizens so that the rest of us have enough to drink."

"As much as it might sometimes be tempting," Kaneth said with a flippancy that grated on Nealrith, "one has to draw the line somewhere."

"So?"

"We must let the other three quarters fend for themselves. Your father has more than enough strength to supply us here in the Scarpen Quarter; let the other three find their own water."

Nealrith drew in a sharp breath. "Sunlord help me-you are advocating wholesale slaughter! You can't be serious."

"I am perfectly serious." And indeed for once he appeared to be. The cynical half-smile, the insouciance, were gone. He was utterly sober. "Save ourselves. It's all we can do."

"It is unthinkable."

"Oh no, it's not, for I am thinking it. And I am not the only rainlord to do so."

"Taquar Sardonyx of Scarcleft, too, I suppose," Nealrith said bitterly. "But the idea is ridiculous. Quite apart from the sheer inhumanity, we would have the Reduners battering at our walls with an army of zealot tribesmen mounted on pedes and tapping out ziggers. Have you thought of that? A war on our hands at this time? You should, because you may be one of those who fall with a zigger burrowing up your nose. Although I suppose a war would indeed reduce the number of our citizens in need of water."

Kaneth shrugged dismissively. "All right, keep the Reduners supplied with water, although I suspect they may actually care the least. Many of them think they should return to a time of random rain anyway. But we should stop sending rain to the White's 'Basters and the Gibber grubbers. After all, what have they ever done for us? We don't need them, Rith. They are weeds, sucking up water and producing nothing we cannot do without in the short term."

He caught hold of Nealrith's sleeve. "Think of it. Your father need only supply half the amount of rain. He can do that much. It will buy us time to find other stormlords to help him, to find another to replace him as Cloudmaster when the time comes. He will live longer if he has fewer stresses on him."

"He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he had to do that! The shame and the guilt would kill him. What of those who would die in the White and Gibber quarters? You are advocating the brutal eradication of two peoples, as if they were rats in the waterhall!"

He had raised his voice and the echoes faded out around them: "waterhall… hall… all." The reeve looked up from his work, curious. Nealrith lowered his voice to a furious whisper and shook off his friend's hand. "Kaneth, I didn't think even you would be so utterly without conscience."

"Even I?" Kaneth stood looking at Nealrith with a sharply raised eyebrow. "Well, even I don't want to see my fellow Scarpermen die of thirst. It is you-and your father-who would see us all die a lingering death as our gardens and groves wither and the cisterns empty. Tell me, Nealrith, Highlord of Breccia City, which is a better ending: to have all four quarters die slowly, or have two of them prosper and only two succumb to a waterless death? Yes, I'll admit it, I think of myself. Is there shame in that? I want to live! I am looking to settle down at last-to marry into the Feldspar family, actually. But that's neither here nor there. Rith, I want you to propose this solution to Granthon. He will listen to you."

"Never!"

"Then I will. Someone has to have a practical solution for a very real problem, and the Cloudmaster has got to listen. You're a dreamer, Rith, and your scruples will suffocate us all in sand." When Nealrith did not reply, he added, "I warn you, there will be those who will fight for this to the bitter end, and you may not like our methods. We will salvage something from this mess, with you-or in spite of you."

"You can't force my father to do something that goes against all he has ever worked for: the unity of the four quarters and the prosperity of their peoples."

"That's just words, Rith. There has never been unity. Or prosperity, either, if you were to ask a Gibberman. It may have been Granthon's dream in his younger days, but he never achieved anything like it. And now we have a problem. And even you have to admit that there are only two possible solutions, at least in the long term. We either find several more stormlords-and we've had a singular lack of success there, you must admit-or we reduce the number of water drinkers. It is as simple as that."

Nealrith said nothing, knowing that it wasn't simple at all.

It was a choice between the apparently impossible and the totally unconscionable. He turned away so that Kaneth wouldn't see his revulsion, or his grief at the widening breach in a long-time friendship. Breccia, like all Scarpen cities, was a single entity. Even though the narrow streets radiating downwards from Breccia Hall sliced through it, even though the winding lanes circling each level were cracks in its cohesion, every part of the city was linked. Houses and villas grew into one another, sharing walls, connected by their flat roofs, interlocked beneath the ground by arteries of brick tunnels supplying water.

The first and highest level contained only the water hall. On the next was Breccia Hall, and the remaining thirty-eight levels spilled down the escarpment slope in the shape of a fan. The lowest level at the base, inhabited by day labourers and the waterless, was a tattered flounce to the city. Although hemmed with a wall, parts of this dirty petticoat to Breccia seeped out through the gates in the form of foundries and liveries, kilns and furnaces, knackers' and slaughter yards. Another trimming to the city was more salubrious: the bab groves, the rows of trees interspersed with slots and cisterns and vegetable plots. Beyond them were only the drylands, the Sweepings to the north and the Skirtings to the south.

Level Three, where Nealrith headed after leaving the waterhall, was home to the city's richest inhabitants and the main house of worship, the Sun Temple, with its attached House of the Dead. After speaking with Lord Gold, the Quartern Sunpriest, Nealrith backtracked to Breccia Hall on Level Two. The hall was the traditional residence of the ruler of the Quartern, and was therefore now home to Granthon Almandine and the rest of the Almandine family. Granthon's father, Garouth, had preceded him in the post. When the old man had died ten years earlier, Granthon had succeeded to his father's position by virtue of his talent, not his birth. Unfortunately, Granthon was now not just the Cloudmaster of the Quartern, but the Quartern's only stormlord.

Nealrith Almandine knew his father's life had been far from easy. If the histories were correct, in some eras there had been several hundred stormlords scattered through the Quartern. Even during Nealrith's own childhood there had been ten or eleven, but one by one they had died, leaving only Granthon. For five years, the Cloudmaster had shouldered his responsibility without the help of another stormlord, a burden too great for any one man no matter how talented. Worse still, he'd been forced to acknowledge to the world that Nealrith, his only child, was not a stormlord and never would be. It had been a bitter blow to both father and son.

Granthon was kind enough never to mention his disappointment and wise enough never to reproach Nealrith for a lack beyond any man's power to remedy, but he could do nothing about the bleakness in his gaze. Nealrith saw it every time his father looked at him, and suffered that same blow again and again.

If only. If only.

When Nealrith entered the stormquest room of Breccia Hall, his father was reclining on a divan, propped up by cushions, while Ethelva hovered uncertainly behind her husband, wanting to fuss over a man who loathed fuss. Nealrith concealed a sigh. His mother was still tall and elegant, but her calm had long since become careworn, and the evidence was there in her prematurely white hair and the worry lines of her face. She was a water-blind woman renowned for her common sense, and Nealrith was not used to seeing her so indecisive, but Granthon's illness had lapped too long at her every thought. She had become prey to doubt, just as Nealrith had, filled with uncertainties about the future of the family and, indeed, the land itself.

Nealrith delivered his assessment of Breccia's water storage and the tale it told: his father had cut back too much on the size of his storms. Granthon said nothing at the news. His stillness was unnatural, as if he had even forgotten to breathe.

"Father?" Nealrith asked.

The Cloudmaster stirred. His gaze dithered around the room, lingering for a moment on the scroll racks and the rolled documents they contained. The lectern in front of him was spread with the parchment he had been considering when his son had entered the room.

"Father-"

"Open the shutters, Rith."

"Father, no. You have done too much today already. You can't drive yourself beyond-"

"Every day that I allow the levels to fall is another day I will not be able to make up."

That was true, and Nealrith knew it. He took a deep breath and pushed away thoughts of what should have been, of that insidious if only. "If you do too much, you will die, and where will we be then?"

"You have to find a replacement for me."

"We've been looking for as long as I remember." He concealed his frustration and tried to ease the tightness in his gut. Kaneth was right, damn him; they had to do something other than talk.

His father made a slight movement of his right hand, an opening out, as if he had just taken an unwelcome decision. "There's one place no one has looked. Two actually, although not even I would think of looking among the 'Basters."

Nealrith was confused. "In the White Quarter? Of course not! Where, then?"

"The Gibber."

Nealrith made a gesture of irritation. "A waste of time, surely. From what I've heard, there are very few water sensitives, and there's never been a rainlord or a stormlord from there. You know the saying, 'Wash a crow with rosewater and it still won't be pink.' They are a water-blind people. Worse, they are stupid and ignorant and dirty and dishonest."

His mother interrupted. "Don't judge, Rith. Perhaps they are dirty because they don't have enough water, ignorant because they have never been taught and dishonest because they are so poor. A thirsty man might steal to live."

"And what about the stupid part?" he asked wryly.

"Perhaps they are stupid merely because you haven't the wit to see them any other way."

He had the grace to laugh. "All right, all right. They are not as bad as I think and I displayed a bias that was both unjustified and unworthy of me; you are probably right about that. But that still doesn't make them water sensitive. They have never paid more than the barest of lip service to the Sunlord and the Watergiver, which might explain it. We would do better to look in the White Quarter; they at least are a pious people who have some water sensitives. Or so I'm told."

Granthon held up a hand. "We both know that the trouble with the White Quarter is not their sensitivity but their secrecy. We are not welcome there, and who can blame them? They have been spat upon for generations. Anyway, it takes more than sensitivity to make a rainlord, let alone a stormlord. We have more chance among the Gibber folk. At least they look up to the Scarpen. I suspect they would gladly give us their water-talented children."

"Fools," Nealrith muttered, but the remark said as much about his opinion of his own quadrant as it did about the people from the Gibber.

"I want you to go there," Granthon said. "A quest to find a potential stormlord. I want you to run the tests in every Gibber settle on the plains. Take Iani with you. It will give him something to focus his mind on."

Nealrith was appalled. "You want two rainlords out searching the Gibber? Why? Anyone can conduct the tests for water sensitivity. It doesn't need a rainlord!" And I have a city to run.

"I may not be much of a storm gatherer nowadays, Nealrith, but I am still in full command of my senses."

"You must have a reason."

"Other than desperation? Yes, two, in fact. My passion for our land's history has rendered up a reward. A name and a place. I didn't do the actual research work; I passed that to Ryka Feldspar. She has a scholar's mind." He smiled at Ethelva. "I wonder sometimes if we don't underestimate our women, Nealrith. She found that one of my predecessors-from a very long time ago-bore a name that sounds as if it came from the Gibber. Gypsum Miner of Wash Drybarrow."

Nealrith stared, speechless.

"The long history of mining in the Gibber means they have more family names related to that ancient occupation than we do," his father continued. "Their constant fossicking has led them to use minerals and rocks as personal names all the time. And 'wash' is the Gibber word for dry riverbed, what we'd call a gully."

Nealrith was impatient. "Wash Drybarrow is an actual Gibber settle?"

"Well, Ryka found a Wash Dribarra, which has a settle. After that, I sent some of my people out to talk to Gibber folk down on Level Forty."

He was intrigued in spite of himself. "What did they find out?"

"Gibber reeves manage matters pertaining to water. However, unlike our reeves, who must have water skills, they usually have none. There are occasional water sensitives among Gibber folk, but they are regarded as potential water thieves. As a consequence, a child exhibiting water sensitivity usually has the tendency beaten out of him."

Ethelva gave an unladylike snort. "Or rather, they have the tendency to admit to it beaten out of them."

"Exactly. Rith, I want rainlords testing in the Gibber because I don't want the slightest chance that a water sensitive child, or an adult for that matter, is missed. I want more than standard tests. I want you to hunt for any sign of people there who may be hiding their talent deliberately."

Nealrith considered that. "I suppose it doesn't make sense that there should be water sensitives here but not in the Gibber. We are supposed to have had the same origins."

"Even Reduner sandmasters and tribemasters have some talent with water," Ethelva said, "and they aren't supposed to be related to us at all."

Granthon nodded. "We have searched the Red Quarter and the Scarpen-scoured them, more like-for the past twenty-five years, and found nothing. Think, Rith. The three new talents we identified in that time, we found right here at home. Your daughter Senya, Iani's Lyneth, and Ryka Feldspar. Ryka may be the daughter of a rainlord, but her power is weak. And Senya looks to be no better. Lyneth, now-but we all know what happened to Lyneth."

He fell silent, and Ethelva squeezed his hand. Even Nealrith was discomforted by the memory. How could he forget? She had been the hope of the Quartern, Iani's lovely six-year-old daughter. Dark-eyed and dimpled and plump, she had charmed them all with her lively inquisitiveness, her mischievous charm. And she'd been stormlord-talented. Then one day some fifteen years past, on a routine journey with her parents to attend a family wedding in another Scarpen city, she had wandered off into the desert. Nealrith felt sick about it even now. They had never found her body, and her father had never recovered from the shock. Iani the Sandcrazy-he had blamed himself because he was the rainlord of the group; he should at least have been able to follow the trace of her water.

Granthon stirred restlessly. "Only three children in almost thirty years-and we didn't even have to look for them, as they were all born to rainlords. What harm can it do to search the Gibber?"

"Father, it'll take a year or more! What about my duties here?"

"They can be shared by the city's other rainlords. This is important." Granthon lay back, fumbling for the support of the cushions. "Let's just say that we found a child in the Scarpen or the Red Quarter who has the potential to be a stormlord. It would be many more years before they would be skilled enough to help me." He gave a sick smile. "By that time we could all have died of thirst. On the other hand, if you find someone in the Gibber, they could perhaps be older and closer to attaining their full powers."

Nealrith grimaced. "I once had my purse cut by a waterless Gibberman, and I've seen how they live down on the last level. Hovels, reeking with vermin. And you should hear what caravanners say about travelling through the Gibber itself. They have to pay outrageous taxes just for passing through, whether they take water or not. If they don't pay up, they risk getting raided. Murdered even. Is that the kind of person we want as a new stormlord?"

"You are not usually so quick to judge!" his mother snapped. "Every pot is black on the bottom. They are not the only ones with a dark underside. There will be many good folk among them, too."

He forced a smile. "I'll try to remember that."

"Do so," she said with some asperity. "If there are ills on Level Forty, then ask yourself if that is not the fault of the city's ruler." Before he could retort, she added, "Perhaps the two of you should ask yourselves this: Why do we lack talented children all of a sudden?"

"What do you mean?" Nealrith asked, still smarting from her implied criticism of his rule.

"Just that. Never before has the Quartern been short of stormlords, let alone rainlords. Perhaps we should be looking for the reason."

It was Granthon who answered. "There's nothing so unusual in going for a time with so few stormlords born. My study of history has taught me that much. It will change; it always does. In the past it never mattered much if there was a gap in births, because there were enough older rainlords or stormlords to manage until a new generation came along. It's just that this time we have been unlucky. We lost a lot of young, talented people."

Nealrith nodded. He'd numbered good friends among them.

"Two were probable stormlords and the others were possibles. Such a tragedy. Iani's Lyneth was just the last," Granthon said.

"Garouth called the deaths an unnatural coincidence," Ethelva said thoughtfully, then reminded Nealrith, "Your grandfather put all you younger rainlords-those who might have developed into stormlords-under guard after that."

"Unnatural? They were just unfortunate accidents and illnesses," Granthon said, but his protest was hesitant, as if he doubted its truth. "Two disappeared during a spindevil windstorm, I remember. We nearly lost Taquar Sardonyx then, too." He shook his head sadly. "I had high hopes of Taquar. I thought he might just make a stormlord. He came so close, but never had quite enough pull. I wondered if what he suffered in the sandstorm might not have been the reason he lost the edge a stormlord needs. So close, so close, and he took it badly."

He shifted position, trying to get comfortable. "He offered me his aid recently, you know. He added his strength to mine, to see if it helped me."

Nealrith tried to quell the jealousy that raged through him at the thought. It should have been me. But then, what would have been the point? They both knew the limitations of Nealrith's rainlord skills.

"No, I didn't know. When was this?" he asked.

Ethelva came to rearrange the cushions at Granthon's back as he elaborated. "Last year when you were out inspecting the tunnels. I tried to teach him the knack of gathering a cloud out of the sea." He sighed. "He is stronger than you, certainly, but not as strong as I hoped. He had nothing to lend me that would make any difference."

"Oh. He wouldn't have been holding back deliberately, would he?"

His father lashed out with a hint of his old energy. "That suggestion is unworthy of you! And ridiculous."

Nealrith flushed. "Perhaps. Father, there's something you should know. Kaneth and, I suspect, Taquar, and maybe others as well, are saying that we should abandon the 'Basters and the Gibber folk. That you should bring rain only to the Red and Scarpen Quarters."

To his surprise, his father said merely, "Ah yes. Taquar mentioned that to me. Several years back, when it became clear that we were not going to find any more stormlords in a hurry. He regards both quarters as expendable. In a way, he is right. We don't need them for our survival. We'd be short of resin and salt and soda and some minerals, but we'd survive." He looked up at his son. "So he's persuaded Kaneth to his point of view, has he?"

"It's an… an evil idea. How can they even consider-"

"Nealrith, don't be a fool. This is exactly the sort of thing we may have to consider. I will have to decide soon which areas must get no rain at all so that I have the strength to bring rain elsewhere. Would you rather we die first?"

Nealrith stared at his father in horror.

"Ah, I see. You would have us all go down together, so that no one survives at all?"

"I can't believe you would-"

"Believe it!" his father growled in another display of his old strength. "Stop dreaming, Nealrith. Even if you find a potential stormlord or two in the Gibber Quarter, we may have to let whole parts of the Quartern die. There won't be a choice. My disagreement with Taquar is over when to do it, not whether to do it. He wants me to conserve my energies as long as possible by cutting down on cloudmaking. It's a wise strategy; I'm just not quite desperate enough to do it yet. But if you fail in the Gibber Quarter, then yes, I will withhold rainstorms from that whole Quarter. And the White Quarter, too."

For a moment Nealrith stood, immobile, the blood drained from his face. Ethelva came and laid a hand on his arm. He turned to look at her and saw the acquiescence there, written in her eyes. His horror deepened, choking off thought. His mother could believe such a solution was necessary?

"Do as your father asked, dear. Open the shutters."

He strove for coherence. "Sandblighted eyes, Mother, he-"

"Nealrith, just do it."

He made a gesture of negation but threw open the shutters anyway. Light blasted in on a wave of dry heat, both so intense he winced.

Granthon did not bother to look down at the slopes of the city below; instead he squinted towards the horizon and waited for his eyes to adjust. Nealrith knew he was already assessing the distant water in the air, far beyond a mere rainlord's perception.

"The conditions are good," he said. "Can you see, Nealrith?"

It took a moment, but then he could indeed see wispy clouds dissolving and coalescing above where the Giving Sea bordered the southern limits of the Quartern. Not many, but enough to make Granthon's stormquest easier.

"Yes," Nealrith said heavily. If only I could help! Guilt rippled through him. Irrational, he knew. It wasn't his fault that he was no more than an average rainlord. Watergiver knew he tried.

Then his father's focus was gone from him, turned inwards, pushed outwards, whatever it was that he did at moments like this, with whatever power he possessed. Nealrith gazed at the cloud over the sea and tried to imagine that he could see the changes his father wrought, the gathering of water, the building of the dark storm clouds packed with the potential of life-giving rain.

For a long while there was nothing; then the storm clouds were there, growing larger and darker by the moment. Time passed; a servant entered the room twice to upend the sandglass. The clouds moved away from the sea, rose higher, slowly shifted closer across the Skirtings.

His father lay, propped up on the divan at the window, bathed in sweat. Giving up his own water in the effort. His own life seeping away as he reached the limits of his power. His skin was pale, his breathing shallow; his body shivered.

Nealrith shot a look at his mother, knowing he could not keep his fear out of the glance.

"Yes, it is too much," she whispered, the words soft, her voice resigned. "It was too soon. One day he will not come back." She held her son's gaze. "One day there will be one stormquest too many."

He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. "Could it be… today?"

"No, no, not yet. A year, two… who knows? Lord Gold makes sacrifices, the Sun Temple worshippers pray for him, the High Physician doses him; perhaps one of them will find the miracle they seek. We all do what we can. I no longer grow flowers. I bathe infrequently. I don't give my clothes to be washed so often."

He looked back at the clouds. They would bypass the city to the east, and they moved as if they rode winds across the sky. He knew there were no winds; there never were. Nothing except the force a stormlord sent from himself. All being well, soon they would reach the Warthago Range and be forced to rise and drop their rain.

Priests explained all water-power by saying the Sunlord had gifted it to his believers in order to mitigate the ferocity of his radiance. That made sense to Nealrith. A god by his very nature must always overwhelm, and water-power evened up the balance. What puzzled him was why the Sunlord had not helped as the stormlords disappeared one by one from the Quartern. Why had he not ensured the birth of others?

I mustn't question, he thought. The Sunlord knows best and the priests say we must accept his will. Everything happens for a reason.

He looked back at his father, the last stormlord in the land. He wanted to help him, yet he knew in his heart he was glad he didn't have to give up so much of himself to keep others alive. He was glad his whole life was not governed by the quest for storms. Still, he would have done it to help his father, to prevent the Cloudmaster's life seeping away from him, his strength draining drop by precious drop.

And then Granthon cried out, a heart-rending cry of pain and outrage and despair.

Ethelva gasped and dropped to her knees at his side, grabbing for his hand, but Granthon pushed her away.

"No!" he cried. "No-"

"Father, what is it?" Nealrith's heart was pounding. He couldn't even begin to guess what had gone wrong. He glanced at the storm clouds again. They were dark enough to carry rain and they were heading-as far as he could tell-in the right direction.

Granthon clutched at him. "Nealrith," he said, and shock made his voice quaver, "someone took it away from me. Someone stole my storm."