"Whossit?" Shale asked.
For a moment he thought Taquar would refuse to answer. Then he said, "Who is it? I rule a city, Shale. There are matters that concern me that are better dealt with away from Scarcleft. Sometimes with men from other Scarpen cities, even Reduners. The man is a messenger, merely."
When Shale glared, he said, "Not all Red drovers are evil men, you know. There are moderate men among them who need to be cultivated. But who this is and why he is here is none of your concern."
Shale concentrated when the rainlord lifted the grille, trying to sense what happened. He thought Taquar moved water from one place inside the rock wall to another, through a pipe of some kind, and as a result the barrier opened. However, the rock blocked his feeling for the water within, so he found it difficult to understand precisely how it worked. I will in time, he thought. I must.
Taquar closed the grille behind him, and Shale watched him walk away. He had a loaded zigtube swinging at his side, and the insects screamed with rage at their close confinement. In their agitation, the odour they exuded was sharply tangy, the smell of toxins that kill with unimaginable agony.
He still didn't like them. "But how d'you know I am a stormlord?" Shale asked the next morning over breakfast. "And not just a rainlord?"
"Because you sense water with such ease. I knew right from the beginning, when we were in Wash Drybone Settle." He leaned back in his chair, rolling his mug between his hands. "One day you will bring all the water we need, from the sea, just as Granthon used to do."
"Is he still alive? Y'said he was almost snuff-er, you said he was dyin'."
"He is. And taking a long time about it, too. Fortunately for us."
"How long 'fore I can help him?"
"That depends on how hard you work. Several years at least. I don't know. I've never trained a stormlord before."
"Why don't y'take me to Granthon then? He'd know the best way t'train me. He went through it hisself."
The rainlord's face became curiously blank. "Because he is Nealrith's father. How long do you think you would be safe? Use your head."
Shale swallowed unhappily. Arguing with Taquar always made him feel vaguely threatened. He's not Pa, he told himself. He's not going to lam you. He said, "If he's snuffed it, he can't teach me nothin' and we're all in a heap of pedeshit."
The highlord's expression changed from blankness through exasperation to something else Shale could not quite read, but the stare was unsettling. "You will stay here," Taquar said finally, "until you learn enough to look after yourself. Then I will take you to Scarcleft. Now go and feed the ziggers."
Shale obeyed.
As he lay in bed that night, his discontent grew. He wanted to rebel, but wasn't sure what he wanted to rebel against. His imprisonment in the mother cistern? Not being taken to meet the Cloudmaster? Not being able to search for Mica? His fate generally? Something was not right.
I got t'know things, he thought. Them books aren't enough, specially if I can't read proper. He wanted more. Much more.
The next day, he begged still more books from Taquar and continued to pester him with questions. Finally, the rainlord said, more in exasperation than in a spirit of helpfulness, "I'll ask a few of the Scarcleft Academy teachers to select books for you. In fact, I'll ask them to set you some written work to do and then I'll take it back for them to mark. That should keep you happy. You can ask them questions in writing instead of asking me in person. I'm no teacher."
"But I can't write! Can't read proper, neither."
"I can't read properly," Taquar corrected.
"Can't read properly, neither."
Taquar sighed. "Then you will have to learn, won't you? I'll teach you more letters and words today and you can practise writing them. However, if you have written contact with teachers, I will need your promise that you will not tell them who you are or where you are."
"Course not," Shale said.
Inside, his mind was already bubbling with ideas and questions to ask, answers he wanted. Something told him that the key to his future lay in how much he could understand of things he had never seen. That first visit of Taquar's set the temper of all his visits. He came bringing books, food and other necessities; he tested the progress of Shale's water sensitivity, made sure that the state of the rooms was to his liking and criticised if it wasn't. He started to bring lessons from Scarcleft Academy teachers and take back the completed exercises. He'd glance at them, but their content did not seem to interest him much. He was more concerned that Shale learn to speak properly; sloppy speech he corrected without fail. Shale soon learned to mimic Taquar's accent and grammar, until his speech was no longer an issue between them.
At first, Taquar came every ten days; then the time between visits began to lengthen, until it was usually thirty days. He never stayed more than four days, usually less. And on some visits, he walked out towards the light of a distant fire in the desert. He never mentioned the reason for it again, and Shale did not ask. He always loaded his zigtube before he went, but whether he ever had cause to use it, Shale never knew.
The water exercises became more complex and difficult. He had to move plain water through coloured water without mixing the two. He had to move water through a maze without letting it touch the sides or base. He had to identify which out of a number of different-shaped containers held more water-and sometimes the difference could only be measured in drops.
Gradually his knowledge of the Quartern increased as his reading improved and he learned to write sufficiently well to communicate with his teachers. A map he found in the storeroom was invaluable. The only other maps he had ever seen were temporary things drawn in the dirt by caravanners; this one was an entry point into another world that he had not known existed. He'd had no idea that the Quartern was so large. That Wash Drybone Settle was so small. That distances were so vast.
Or that he could be important in such a huge world. Shale was aware of the passage of time: he could see much of the sky through the bars of the grille, and he watched the constellations move. The way his arms stuck out of the bottom of his tunic sleeves told him he was growing fast. His clothes were becoming too tight.
He rummaged through the clothes in the storeroom, only to find there was nothing there that fitted. The garments were for women or children, and he was no longer a child. He held one of the tunics he found and fingered the intricate embroidery along the hem-finer embroidery than his mother had ever done-and thought of Citrine. Sadly, he reflected that he had already begun to forget what his little sister looked like.
And Taquar seemed to have forgotten all about her, and Mica, too. How could he ever rescue Mica if he never got to leave the mother cistern?
By the time the stars told him he had been there for about half a cycle, his frustration was a boiling cauldron of emotion in his chest, and he knew he had to do something, or go mad. He waited until Taquar came and went once more, and then started to work on opening the grille to the outside world.
He thought he knew now, at least in principle, how it was done. He had sensed Taquar do it often enough. He already knew about pulleys and weights from watching the building and repair of houses in Wash Drybone Settle, and observing some of the mine diggings maintained by a few settle fossickers. He now had enough water sense to understand that the grille was opened by transferring water at each end from full tanks to empty ones through pipes in the hollows of the cavern wall. As the empty ones filled up, they dropped down. The falling weight worked pulleys to open the grille. To close it, it was just a matter of moving the water back again. What scared him was the possibility of moving the grille up but not being able to bring it back down again before Taquar returned.