The Last Stormlord

CHAPTER FIVE

Gibber Quarter Wash Drybone A boy dug in a patch of sand in the drywash. A vertical crease between his eyebrows indicated the intensity of the concentration he applied to his task; this was not play. He was digging a hole, using only his hands and a short stick earlier stripped from the centre of a bab palm frond. Sensibly, he had chosen a dip where a boulder offered shade from the morning sun. A straggly saltbush had put down roots there, but the rest of the wash was a barren riverbed of stones and sand, a gully recessed into the gibber plain, a crack slashed across the flat face of the earth.

The boy was scaled with dirt, the grime as much part of him as his dark eyes or the strong square fingers that scrabbled in the sand. The rigid skull cap on his head was only matted hair, once brown, now darkened with the accumulated dirt of a lifetime. His skin, golden brown at birth, now blended into the background of the land. His feet were bare, the soles so thick and hard that the heat of the sand meant nothing to him. There was little left of the smock he wore. It had once belonged to a much larger child; now it hung in tatters and hindered him as he worked.

He didn't know his true name. His father, Galen Flint, had once sworn that his younger son was as useless as a heap of shale, and ever since he had been known as Shale, the most worthless lad in the settle. If he'd ever had a name before that, he could not remember it. However, thanks to the settle's reeve, who taught the boys their numbers, and a chance remark from his father that he was a year younger than his brother Mica, he was able to guess his age to be around twelve or thirteen.

He was desperately thirsty and scraped at the dry soil with the determination of a desert animal. As the hole went deeper, the sand dampened. He drew in a deep breath, willing the water to come, wanting a drink so badly he could feel the taste of it on his tongue. Finally, when the hole was about as long as his arm, water began to seep into the bottom. When the level was several inches deep, the seepage slowed and Shale stopped digging. He waited patiently for the sand to settle and the water to clear. Then he inserted a hollow grass stalk he had brought with him and used it to suck up the moisture. It was gone in two or three mouthfuls, and he had to wait again for the hole to refill-and repeat the process several times more-before he had drunk sufficient to satisfy his thirst. He then filled in the hole to preserve whatever moisture remained from the power of the sun.

Then he shied like a startled pede.

Somethin's botched. He blinked, unsettled, not knowing why he had startled, or why that thought had suddenly popped into his head.

Somethin's real broke.

He sniffed at the air, but what he sensed had nothing to do with smell and it raised the hair on his arms. He clambered nimbly up the side of the wash, even though it was three times his height, to stand at the edge of the plain.

The Gibber stretched to the horizon in all directions, a flat tableland, with small stones strewn across a shiny, crusted surface of gleaming deep mauve. Here and there a few tiny plants survived on moisture that condensed from the air at night. There wasn't much: saltbush, spiny beggarchild and gummy plant. None grew more than a few inches in height, preferring to creep along the ground rather than reach towards the desert sun. The earth in between glistened with tiny fragments of purple and pearl-coloured mica as if the plain was sheened with starlight. All that was normal, but he spared a moment to envy his brother as he absorbed the scene: he would have liked a name like Mica, named after something so shiny. By contrast, the rock shale around his settle was always so grey and dull and dirty.

Distant hills made humps along the horizon, and mirages moved in a shimmering dance in front of them. Nothing odd there: sand-dancers were always around in the heat of the day. And then his senses stirred once more, and his body tautened in response. His head was full of sensation, rough-edged and scratchy feelings that brought a thrill of excitement and a depth of unease.

Water. It was water, water in pieces, all broken up into bits that wouldn't stay still. He knew the feel of water, but not like this. He frowned in bewilderment as he searched for the source. Then he found it. A smudge blurring the clarity of the open sky above the rounded bumps of land. A cloud. He'd seen those before. He'd even felt them, all bursting with water. But not like this. Not all mucked up and on the verge of shattering. And not when it wasn't expected. Anxious, he returned to the wash, hefted his resin bag onto his shoulder and headed down the path along the dry riverbed.

The sun was directly overhead when he reached the top edge of the settle. Here the wash widened to contain two streets lined with houses, each with its walled garden. Both streets were no more than rock-hard earthen laneways running the same way as the wash. The garden walls had their sun-baked daub reinforced with stone, their only protection against the force of flash-flood stormwater that barrelled down the wash twice a year, as regular as the star cycle of the skies above.

Mica was waiting for him there. "What you been doin', you little wash-rat?"

Shale shaded his face with his hand, grinned up at his brother and shrugged. "Gettin' me some resin."

"Pa's lookin' for us. He's as wild as a spindevil."

Shale tensed. "Aw, Mica, what's he want now?"

"Rishan the palmier offered him tokens to crush the shell of the packpede that died way back. Pa says we got t'do it. Reckons he'll buy some meat with the tokens."

Shale found himself salivating just at the thought. It had been more than a year since he'd eaten meat. Gathar the butcher must have salted the dead pede. "You sure? Pa's more like to buy a calabash of amber and drink hisself stupid. I don't want t'work just so's he can belt me when he's slurped."

"Nah, it's all right. Ma told old man Rishan to pay direct to her. But we best hurry 'n' get started. I been lookin' all over for you." He grabbed his brother's arm and hauled him down the main street. "Sooner we start, sooner we get t'eat some meat."

Shale pulled himself free, then had to run to keep up. "Is Pa goin' t'help?"

Mica snorted. "Not bleedin' likely, the waterless bastard. Don't worry, he won't lam into you for bein' late, not if he wants you t'work."

Nonetheless they sped down the slope of the street to the lower end of the settle. Shale had rarely entered any of the houses to either side. Sometimes, when there was no one around, he would try and peek through the water slits to see into the gardens. It was easy enough at the top where Gravel the reeve lived on one side and Rishan the palmier on the other. Their water slits were the widest because they were entitled to the most water when it came down the wash and the streets became rivers. However, the slits narrowed as the street descended the slope towards the bab palm groves planted in the wash below the settle. You couldn't see anything at all if you peeped through the narrow slits for the last houses, where Stipple the potmender and Shard the jobman lived. He'd tried.

Emerging from the lower end of the settle, near the entrance to the underground cistern, he sent an anxious glance to the left-hand side of the wash, where a few sorry hovels huddled at the top of the bank. The first belonged to his pa, Galen the sot. Even from where they were, Shale could hear his pa shouting at his ma, Marisal the stitcher, although he could not make out the words.

Mica made a face. "We gotta go tell him you're here."

Ma, a thin, gaunt woman now heavily pregnant, stood outside the burlap curtain that was all the door the one-roomed hut possessed. To Shale, the contrast between her thin arms and legs and the bulge of her stomach was grotesque. He was vaguely sorry for the coming child: already unwanted and waterless, and the little grubber hadn't even been born yet.

The boys slowed and sidled up to her, warily eyeing their father. Galen was small and wiry and tough. Years of drunkenness had blurred his mind and twisted his spirit, as well as added a tremor to his hands. He was sober now, though, an indication more of the state of his purse than of inclination. Unfortunately, sobriety did not always mean evenness of temper; both his sons knew that.

He looked at Shale, his brow gnarled with anger. "Y'found him," he said to Mica. "Where you been this time, you spitless bastard?"

Long experience had taught Shale not to answer questions like that.

"Lazy little git; you're never around when there's work to do. Think we can feed and water you for nothin', eh? By all that's wet, I dunno why that stupid slut of a mother of yours ever had you to start with! You find any resin today?"

"Some," Shale mumbled, keeping his eyes downcast.

He swung the sack off his shoulder to the ground, and Galen hefted it to see how heavy it was. "That's all?" He raised his arm.

Mica went to pull Shale out of the way, but his mother prevented him, grabbing his shoulder. "Mind y'own business," she said, and then muttered in his ear, "You want him t'lam into you, too?"

Galen swung at his younger son, and Shale rode the blow, already moving away as hand and cheek connected. He fell anyway, dropping as if the blow had been much worse.

"Now git yer blighted spit outta here, the two of you," Galen roared. "The carcass is down in the grove in Rishan's plot."

The two boys ran. Just before they scrambled into the wash once more, Shale looked back at the sky. The cloud had vanished, but he felt the water still. It niggled at him, in his mind, in his chest. Botched, he thought again. I know it.

"Pede piss," Mica muttered as they walked through the shade of the grove trees. "I didn't think the bastard would slam you one. You all right?"

"Yeah. Wasn't hard. Reckon you were right-he didn't want t'hurt me when there's work to do."

"I hate 'im, Shale. Sometimes I hate 'im so bad-"

Shale shrugged. "He don't hurt me half as much as he thinks he does. An' you know what? I reckon when we're growed, he'll be scared of us."

"Sometimes I reckon he'll kill you first if he goes on like this. And Ma never does nothin' to stop 'im. Bitch." He took a deep breath. "Shit, I don't want nothin' to happen to you. Not ever. You're a good littl'un."

Shale looked at him, surprised. Then he grinned, enjoying a pleasant warm feeling inside. "Not so little no more," he protested, but he walked straighter. As they reached the first trees of the palm grove, he added, "Mica, there's somethin' I got t'tell you. Sounds crazed, but it's not. The rush is comin' down."

Mica laughed. "That don't just sound crazed, that is crazed; the next rush must be, I dunno, a full quarter cycle away."

"Nah. Goin' t'be a rush through by star-shine."

"Blighted eyes, Shale. Where you get these ideas from? What makes you think there's a rush due? Take a look at the sky tonight, you daft brat-the Old Man cluster is only startin' on its journey 'bove the horizon!"

"Can feel it comin'."

Mica's grin faded. "Sure as the sand is hot better not tell Pa that, or he'll have you staked out in the sun to see if roastin' your brains makes any difference to your sense. Knowin' too much 'bout water? That's bad stuff. Shaman stuff."

"But hadn't we better warn folk?"

"You sunfried? No one'll believe it and you'll get belted for sayin' so! And look an idiot after, when it don't happen." He strode off through the palm trees, jumping the slots as he went. Shale followed, taking care not to tread on the ground crops that grew beneath the rows of palms. Not, he thought, that it would make much difference. If the rush came down in full spate, with most of the settle's cisterns still partly full, too much of the water was going to flow right out of the town and into the bab palm groves. The slots would never cope. The palms would not mind if they were flooded, but crops beneath the trees would be washed away. He bit down on his lip, worried. He had been hungry often enough to know catastrophe when it threatened.

Water came twice a star cycle, as regular as the cycle itself, and everyone lived by its coming. Normally the crops would have been harvested before the rush was due; normally the slots would have been cleaned; normally the water allotments would have been checked and family entitlements recalculated after taking births and deaths into account. The width of the water slits would have been adjusted accordingly. Most of the floodwater would either be channelled off through the slits to empty into underground house cisterns, or it would disappear down into the grove cistern at the bottom of the settle. Any overflow from that would enter the slots and be soaked away to irrigate the trees and crops. The poorer people who owned the last of the bab groves would count themselves lucky if any of the water even reached their palms bordering the last slot. The drywash continued on to the Giving Sea, but the water never did.

This time, everything was wrong. The knowledge swelled inside Shale's chest and churned there painfully, stirred by fear and a strange anticipation that excited him. He had always been aware when the rush was close by, but never this strongly. Never this clearly.

And never when it wasn't expected. The remains belonged to a packpede, and a packpede was five times the size of a myriapede hack so there were plenty of chitinous remnants. They were piled under one of the last of Rishan's bab palm trees, close to where a dip in rocky ground made a natural mortar. Ants and beetles had already eaten away the last flesh; all that was left were the hundred or so legs, the feelers and mouth parts, and the curved plates. Crushing them to powder suitable for manure was a job better suited to a man with a sledgehammer, but Mica and Shale had long since learned to be grateful for any work. Work meant tokens; tokens bought food and water.

Not that water was going to be in short supply soon. "Dunno why we're doin' this," Shale grumbled. "It's all goin' t'be washed away 'fore star-shine. Mica, we got t'tell someone."

Mica looked worried. "Shale, don't gab things like that."

"Why not? 'Strue."

Mica hammered a large pede segment and sent pieces flying in all directions. "Think, you daft brat: who sends us the water?"

"Cloudmasters. Rainlords. The Watergiver. They's Scarpen gods." He considered what he had said. "Don't know where Scarpen is. Maybe up in the sky? The caravanners say that's where the rush comes from. Seems awful strange to me, but they say it's true. Water falls from the sky 'cause the thing it's inside of-which is a sort of grey water jar called a cloud-breaks. Then the water falls out and it's called rain. It falls into the wash and we get a rush. I saw one of them cloud things today."

"I don't think Scarpen's in the sky," Mica said doubtfully. "Anyways, it's not important. What you should be worryin' 'bout is them rainlords and stormlords. Have you ever knowed them to fail? Sometimes they might send less than we want, specially just lately, but have you ever knowed the rush not to come when it's 'spected, or to come when it's not?"

Shale shook his head.

"They are gods. Gods don't make mistakes," Mica said seriously. "And if you say they do, they'll maybe hear you and get real angry. And if Pa or any of the other folks hear you, they'll say you're funnin' stormlords and rainlords and the Watergiver. Then they'll blame you next time the bab crop shrivels or the sandgrouse get sick and die. They'll say it's 'cause gods don't like folks funnin' 'em. 'Sides, if you know too much 'bout water, they'll say you was born t'be a water thief."

Shale thought about that as he banged the shell pieces with his hammer. He'd had quite enough bad luck already, yet he hadn't ever mocked any of the rainlords. Why then had they never given him any good luck? He wouldn't have minded being Rishan's son, Chert, for instance. Chert got to live in the top house, with real walls and a cistern and a garden. It had an outhouse in the yard, just for them, and Chert said the house even had a separate room for sleeping in. Shale frowned, thinking of his own hovel of stones and palm fronds, with his pa peeing through a crack in the back wall because he was too slurped to find the collection pot.

"It's not me that's bringin' Wash Drybone Settle bad luck," he said finally. "The water was already on its way 'fore I told you. Not my fault." He scratched at his chest, as if that would relieve the feeling pressing in on him.

Mica heaved a sigh. "You're as stubborn as a rock stuck in a cistern pipe, Shale. Have you heard a word I've tole you?"

"You're not listenin' to what I say!" Shale protested. "Mica, when I say the rush is real close, will you climb up onto the bank with me, out of the wash?"

Mica started to say no, but Shale gave him a ferocious glare, so he rolled his eyes instead. "Oh, all right, if I have to. If only to show that you're gabbin' pebbles and nonsense."

Shale subsided, partially satisfied, and worked on in silence. He took the smaller pieces and crushed them to a fine powder, which he poured into the woven palm-frond basket Rishan had supplied. When the water came, he would at least be able to save that much.

In the midafternoon, Rishan's household servant brought them some bab bread stuffed with steamed bab fruit and a calabash of water. He let them drink their fill, then took the calabash back with him.

"Pede's piss, wish Ma cooked this good," Shale said as he stuffed the bread into his mouth. All he'd had to eat that day were two pomegranates he'd filched the day before from the garden belonging to Gamath the resiner, the gum collector. "Hope he don't cut the number of tokens we get 'cause we drank his water."

"Nah. Rishan's a soft 'un. He feels sorry for us." Mica dropped his voice. "Watch it. Here comes Pa."

Shale hurriedly finished the bread and picked up his hammer. Mica was already swinging his mallet to shatter yet another pede segment. One glance at their Pa was sufficient to tell them both that his mood was now more amiable. "Glad to see you hard at it," he said. "I'd help, but if I do drudge work like this, folk'll think it's all I'm good for. There's a Red caravan through tomorrow. I 'spect I'll have the unloading of that."

If you're not slurped after gettin' your hands on Rishan's tokens, Shale thought, and avoided catching Mica's eye.

Galen squatted next to the bulbous trunk of the closest palm and leaned back against the smooth grey surface. "Big'un, this caravan. Twenty packpedes and a couple of myriapedes. The pedemaster's offsider just rode in to warn us. They'll be buying water and resin and fossicked stuff. And selling us salt. Make sure you're there. There may be work for you boys." He laid a friendly hand on Mica's shoulder, but the stare he gave Shale was flat and cold. "You-" he said finally. "You're old 'nough to earn your keep with a caravanner, if one of 'em asks. Understand me, boy?"

For a moment Shale didn't understand. And then he caught sight of the revulsion on Mica's face, and he did. He laid down his hammer. "Nah. Don't want t'do that," he said. "Not what Ore the stonebreaker makes his boys do. They say it hurts."

"Hurts? I'll give you hurts if you cheek me, boy! You'll do as you're tole." His pa stood up and came towards him.

"The rush is comin' down," he blurted out. "You got t'do somethin', Pa. Warn folk."

His Pa looked at him in astonishment. "You crazy as well as lazy, boy?"

Mica gave him an agonised look, but Shale couldn't keep quiet even though his hands had started to shake. "If the pedeman has his mount tied up in the street, he should get it inside someone's garden. The water'll be here 'fore the sun goes down."

Without warning his father back-handed him across the mouth, this time hard enough to send him flying. He hit the trunk of the nearest bab palm and slid to the ground, dazed.

Mica sat still, biting his lip.

"Your brother's got the brains of a sand-tick. What the pickled pede is the matter with him?" Galen asked him, without even bothering to look at Shale.

Mica shrugged and said nothing. His father walked away, grumbling. Mica waited until he'd disappeared through the palms, then went to kneel where Shale was trying to sit up.

"You all right?"

Shale touched his mouth gingerly. "S'pose so."

"What the withering spit did you have to tell him for?"

But Shale couldn't put into words the desire he felt-the stupid, childish need he had-to see approval in his father's eyes. He knew it was stupid, but couldn't help it. He mumbled, " 'Cause it's true. Mica, it's almost here. I can feel it. We got to get to the top of the bank." When Mica opened his mouth to scold, Shale added reproachfully, "You promised."

"Pedeshit. All right. Though you're too messed up to go anywhere much."

Shale pushed the basket of crushed segment plates at him. "Take this."

"Someone'll say we're stealing if they see us makin' off with it."

The feeling in Shale's chest suffocated him, speeding up his breathing, quickening his sense of urgency. Roughly, he shoved the basket into Mica's arms. "Then hang it up high in the bab palm so's it won't get washed away."

Mica gave an exaggerated sigh of irritation, but slung the bag over his shoulder, hauled himself up over the bulge of the lower trunk, then shimmied up the narrower part above until he could reach the fronds. He hung the bag on the broken end of a stem and slid down again. Shale, his whole face aching, headed for the bank on the opposite side from where they lived, and Mica followed.

"Pa's right," he said as he pushed Shale up over the top lip of the wash a moment or two later, "You got no more brains than a wilting sand-tick."

"Folk should know," Shale said, stubborn to the last. He felt dizzy and sick. Blood dripped from his nose and lip and already his face was beginning to swell. "Mica, think. They won't have their garden cisterns open. Gravel won't have opened the grove cistern, neither. An' what if there's folk in the streets? The pedeman's pede, too. Even Pa might still be in the wash somewheres."

"But it's not goin' to happen," Mica protested. "You're as muddled as a legless pede!"

"It's comin'!"

Mica stood up and looked down the wash. He could see over the settle to where the riverbed cut north through the plains. "There's nothin' there." He glanced at his brother where he sat in misery, holding his head in his hands. "Shale, there really isn't." But even as he said the words, he gave an uneasy glance back up the wash.

Beside him, Shale struggled to stand up. His fear vanished, swamped in the excitement of feeling the power of water on the move. The water in his blood stirred in joyous response; his heart raced. "Listen," he said, and cocked his head to hear better. "I tole you so!"

Mica listened, then squinted against the light to look up the wash. His eyes went wide with horror.

"Weeping shit!" he said.