Glenda Larke - Stormlord rising

"Senya's here? That surprises me. She doesn't like unpleasant things."

"Well, she saw Laisa was all right and then sat on a boulder at the edge of the wash and refused to look at anything. She's probably still there. I can't say I blame her."

He opened his mouth to try to tell her how he felt. To say how much the idea of the dead and dying devastated him. To say his meeting with Mica had left him shattered, not knowing how to pick up the pieces. As usual, the words wouldn't come.

Terelle understood. She put her fingers across his mouth, stopping the words he was trying so hard to voice. "No, Jasper," she said. "I know how you feel. I helped to paint it, remember? Watergiver help me, these-these are my deaths, too. And we will learn to live with them, you and I, in time." She took a deep breath to steady herself.

"We won," he said, and knew he sounded foolish. "If you call this a victory."

"It was," she said firmly. "They won't be back."

He might. The thought was terrible. Too awful to ever put into words. How could he fight his brother? What had he ever done to Mica that he had been prepared to kill him? He knew the answer even before he formed the question, for Mica had told him. His brother saw him as joining the people responsible for their miserable childhood: the wealthy Scarpermen. The enemy of the Gibber, of the poor and wretched and waterless.

Terelle watched him, head to one side. "You found Mica."

"Yes. He knew who I was. He wanted to kill me. Might have done so if his pede, the sandmaster and then Iani hadn't intervened."

She stared at him, horrified.

He looked away, adding, "All these years I dreamed of seeing him again, of rescuing him. And when we met, he didn't want to be rescued. He wasn't a slave, but an heir. Worse, he wanted me dead. He sees me as an enemy. I owe my life to a pede, Terelle. A pede with a long memory. I once pulled it out of a flood rush down a wash. How the salted damn Mica obtained that particular beast, I have no idea, but I'll bet it isn't a coincidence… I'm babbling, aren't I?"

"Oh, Shale. I-that's awful."

He searched for hope in all that had happened. "In the end he didn't kill me when he could have. Maybe-maybe he found he couldn't. But I am not sure it's ended. He's the new sandmaster, and he wants to return to a Time of Random Rain. The fighting is not over."

She was silent. There was, after all, little she could say.

"Terelle," he said, "I'm sorry. So terribly, terribly sorry."

"For what?" she asked.

"For asking you to waterpaint this. For taking away your choices, yet again. For not protecting you in the first place. For-everything."

The smile she gave was both sad and knowing. "Neither of us had much choice, did we?" She made a gesture at the carnage around them without looking at the dead. "Make me another promise, Shale. Promise me you'll build something decent out of this."

"I promise I'll try."

"I keep forgetting to call you Jasper. Do you mind terribly? Jasper is the stormlord. Shale-he's the person I care about."

"You can call me whatever you want, and I'll like it. Although you could try, um, 'darling' or 'beloved' or something." He reached out and touched the tear hesitating on her cheek and a smile twitched at the corner of his lips. "Don't leave too soon, Terelle. Please."

She shook her head, and what Jasper read on her face made him pull her roughly into his arms. She clutched at him, her embrace as desperate as his own, her needs matching his, as potent and passionate, containing all the wretchedness he felt himself, and all the hope he dared to dream might be theirs.

They stood like that for a long time, two people loving each other, surrounded by horror, trying to make sense of it all and hoping that at the end, they would still have their love, even if all else had gone. "Mother!"

Senya's outraged tones cut through Laisa's pain and brought her back to the present. Sighing, she gripped her elbow in a futile attempt to contain the agony of her throbbing arm. "What is it?"

"It's that horrible snuggery girl!"

Laisa stared at her daughter in incredulous disbelief. "We are in the aftermath of a battle and you want to complain about Terelle Grey now? Can't it wait?"

"She's hugging Jasper, and he seems to like it." Senya's face was sour as she pointed at the subject of her ire.

Laisa glanced that way and sighed. "So?"

"He can't marry her, can he?"

Laisa forced herself to coherent thought. "There would be plenty of objections. Jasper needs to have stormlord children, and your offspring offer a chance of being that, at least. You are the logical mate for him, but preferences don't carry the weight of law, you know. We can attempt to persuade him, but we can't force him."

"I'm going to have his baby."

"Oh." She wasn't surprised, but she had trouble grappling with the implications. She was hot and thirsty, exhausted and hungry. She needed rest and pampering, and Sunlord knew when she would get any of that. Damn you to a waterless hell, Taquar. You brought us all to this. "Then I think we shall have to make sure he will marry you, shan't we?"

"Can we force him to?"

"Oh, for Watergiver's sake, Senya, why would you want a husband who has been forced into marriage? No, we will entice him to do so. Easy, with someone who has an overdeveloped sense of duty. You might try being more pleasant to him, you know. If anything more is needed, we won't do it." Senya pulled a face at that, so she added, "If any further encouragement is needed, someone else will do it, not us."

"Who?"

"Lord Gold and the Sun Temple do have their uses. For now, you can make yourself useful and get me a pede and a driver. I want to get back to my tent."

"Lord Iani and that awful 'Baster man are saying the pedes are for the wounded."

"Am I not wounded? Just go get one, Senya, and leave the conversation for some other time." Left alone, she glanced over to where Terelle stood within the encircling arms of the stormlord.

Laisa's eyelids began to droop with fatigue, then snapped open. I'll be waterless, she thought. I know where I've seen that face of hers before.

Not in person, but in a painting. A waterpainting, in the hallway of her own home, Breccia Hall. That strange old outlander artisman had painted a girl riding a black pede across a white saltscape. Laisa had been annoyed, because it hadn't been quite what she expected when she'd asked for something unusual, unlike the artwork he had done for others. Now that she recalled the painting, it was obvious that Terelle had been the model.

She frowned, trying to make sense of that. Sometime, I must work out what this whole waterpainting thing is about. There's a mystery there, and that girl knows what it is. But not now, not now…

Tired, she closed her eyes and lay back against the cavern wall.

She had no idea that, just over two runs of the sandglass earlier, Ryka Feldspar had done the same thing in the same spot.

Scarpen Quarter Warthago Range to the gates of Qanatend Ryka, almost unbalanced by fatigue, tried several times to leave the cavern while the battle was raging outside. The first time, she was threatened by a Scarperman who almost ran her through before he realized she was a woman with a baby; the second time she came close to being knocked flat by a blinded Reduner warrior and then trampled by a pede. Both times she retreated and watched for another opportunity. She couldn't tell who had the upper hand, and as the battle continued, she grew more desperate.

She tried again when the sun was low in the sky, the shadows long. Nothing much had changed. The fighting was still ferocious, the thickest of it directly in front of the entrance. She edged out past the grille, flattening herself along the rock face of the cliff, her arms wrapped protectively around Khedrim. Her chosen route was interrupted almost immediately. A Gibberman pulled a Reduner from his mount and both men thudded to the ground at her feet. They'd lost their weapons and rolled across the ground like a pair of schoolboys in a fight. Only this was deadly. The Reduner had his hands around the Gibberman's throat and was choking him. The Gibberman was trying to knock him out with a rock. Ryka settled the argument by kicking the Reduner between the legs. She leaped over them both as the Gibberman finished what he had started, but she still didn't progress.