Glenda Larke: Stormlord rising

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."