Glenda Larke - Stormlord Rising

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Glenda Larke

Excerpt from Stormlords Exile copyright 2010 by Glenda Larke

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

First published in Australia in 2010 by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited.

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First eBook Edition: August 2010

ISBN: 978-0-316-07591-6

Thoughts jostled, unpleasantly confused. He frowned, sorting through the muddle in his head for something coherent, for something that made sense of how he felt.

He was on his way to the sea, he remembered that much. Breccia had fallen. He had killed Nealrith, rather than see him suffer. Cloudmaster Granthon was dead. And he, Jasper Bloodstone, was the only stormlord the Quartern now possessed, even though his water sensitivity was flawed and incomplete. Making clouds from sea water was beyond him, which meant people would thirst and die.

He blinked, looking straight up at the fading stars in the sky. Somewhere under his bedroll, a stone dug into his back, so he shifted positionand saw someone looking down at him.

Taquar. Taquar Sardonyx.

What a tale This is a GREAT book.

Aurealis magazine

A bold, inventively original world a sweeping saga that unmistakably marks [Larke] as one of Australias best speculative fiction writers.

Nexus (Australia)

In bookshops where bland fantasies line the shelves, Larke stands out from the crowd.

The West Australian

I SLES OF G LORY

The Aware

Gilfeather

The Tainted

T HE M IRAGE M AKERS

Heart of the Mirage

The Shadow of Tyr

Song of the Shiver Barrens

S TORMLORD

The Last Stormlord

Stormlord Rising

Stormlords Exile

W RITING AS G LENDA N ORAMLY

Havenstar

for

Taylah Griffiths

this one is for you, with love

Scarpen Quarter

Breccia City

Breccia Hall, Level 2

The man lying next to Lord Ryka Feldspar was dead.

His eyes stared upward past her shoulder, sightless, the vividness of their blue already fading. For a while blood had seeped from his wounded chest onto her tunic, but that had slowed, then stopped. She did not know his name, although she had known him by sight. Hed been a guard at Breccia Hall. Younger than she was. Eighteen? Twenty?

Too young to die.

The man on top of her was dead, too. He was a Reduner. His head lay on her chest and the beads threaded onto his red braids pressed uncomfortably into her breast, but she didnt dare move. Not yet. Around her she heard Reduner voices still; men, heaving bodies onto packpedes, talking among themselves. Making crude jokes about the dead. Coping, perhaps, with the idea it could so easily have been them. Death or survival: even for the victors, the outcome was often as unpredictable as the gusting of a desert wind.

Reduners. Red men from a land of red sand dunes, flesh-devouring zigger beetles and meddles of black pedes. Drovers and nomads and warriors who hankered after a past they thought was noble: a time when rain had been random and they ruled most of the Quartern with their tribal savagery. A people who had recently returned to a time of slave raids, living under laws decided by the strength of a mans arm and dispensed with a scimitar or a zigtube.

Ryka had been a scholar once, and she spoke their tongue well. She could understand them now as they chatted. Those withering bastard rainlords, one was saying, his tone bitter and angry. They took the water from Genillids eyes while he was fighting next to me. Left his eyeballs like dried berries in their sockets! Blind as a sandworm.

What did you do? another asked, a youngster by the sound of him.

For Genillid? Killed him. That was Sandmaster Davims orders. Reckon he was right, too. Whats left for a dunesman if he cant see?

I heard he went around the men afterward and killed everyone who was like to lose a hand or a leg as well. No place for a cripple on the dunes, he said.

Ryka felt no pity. They had taken her city. Killed her people. Cloudmaster Granthon Almandine, the Quarterns ruler, its bringer of water and its only true stormlord, was dead, she knew that. His son, Highlord Nealrith, the citys ruler, had been taken and tortured. Hed died in a cage swung over one of the city gates. She knew that, too. Shed heard Jasper Bloodstone had killed him to save him the agony of a slow death.

Poor Jasper. Shed seen the respect and affection in his eyes when he spoke to the highlord.

Gentle, kindly Nealrith. She had grown up with him, gone to Breccia Academy with him, attended his wedding to that bitch, Lord Laisa. Oh, Sunlord receive you into his sunfire, Rith. You did not deserve your end.

Did we get all them bastards? the same youth asked.

The rainlords? Reckon so. I hear exhaustion finally sapped their powers, leaving them defenseless. My brother killed one of them rainlord priests. Still, not even a sandmaster can tell one from an ordinary city-grubber. They dont look no different.

I heard some of them are women.

The first man gave a bark of laughter. One things for sure, we can slaughter any force that has to use women to fight a battle!

Ryka wanted to grit her teeth, but couldnt risk even that slight movement. Blast Davims sunblighted eyes. The tribes of the Red Quarter had been leaving their violent past behind until hed come along to twist their view of history.

Sandmaster Davim, with his vicious hatreds and his brutal desire for power, had taken away her scholarly life. Hed shattered the Quarterns peace, mocked the cultures not his own, destroyed the learning, all in a couple of star cycles. His men had killed her father. Watergiver only knew what had happened to her sister and her mother. And Kaneth?

No, you mustnt think he is dead. You mustnt lose hope.

Strange even to think of the life shed had; it was all gone now, spun away on the invaders swords and the shimmering wings of their ziggers, like sand whirled into the desert on a spindevil wind. A wisp of her hair tickled her cheek. She ignored it. She mustnt move. Not even a twitch. She had to live through this, for the baby. For Kaneth.

Sunlord, I know I dont really believe in you, but let him be alive, that wonderful, gentle bladesman-warrior of mine. Father of my child