Glenda Larke: The Last Stormlord

"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."