Praise for...

The White Dragon

The Silerian Trilogy: Book Two

"Year's Best" list, Publisher's Weekly

"Year's Best" list, Voya

Best Epic Fantasy, Romantic Times Magazine

"Even better than the author's first book... this romantic fantasy leaves no doubt that here is that rare gem: a new writer with a serious and already-polished talent. Resnick builds her tale on a solid foundation of consistent mythology and magic, well-rounded characters, and a collection of completely believable cultures... A suspenseful mix of vague prophecies, startling revelations, constantly shifting loyalties, and the occasional divine intervention, this stunning novel tantalizes right up to the last cliffhanger page."

            —[starred review] Publisher's Weekly

"Vivid descriptions, three-dimensional characters, and a story filled with echoes of a distant past make this a stand-out addition to a fantasy series that belongs in most libraries. Highly recommended."

            —Library Journal

 "We are drawn ever deeper into her complex and interesting created world... There's violence and humor and mystery and surprises and plenty of action..."

                        —SF Chronicle

"Resnick has complete control of her craft. Not a word is wasted. Still, it's not a light read. The characters are complicated and real. There are plenty of twists and surprises, and the pace quickens as you go. Resnick's world is dangerous and exciting, yet it has a history and many hidden facets."

                        —Cincinnati Enquirer

"Atmospheric world-building, dry humor, and appealing characters make The White Dragon an epic fantasy not to be missed. New readers should check out the earlier book in the series, In Legend Born, for backstory, but this novel stands on its own as an enthralling fantasy adventure."                                                      —Romantic Times

The White Dragon

The Silerian Trilogy: Book Two

by Laura Resnick

www.LauraResnick.com

Copyright

The White Dragon

Copyright © 2003 & 2011 by Laura Resnick

ISBN: 978-1-61475-880-8

Ebook published by Blonde Trifecta

Maps by Elizabeth Person

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

The copying, reproduction, and distribution of this ebook via any means without permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and refuse to participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's intellectual property rights is greatly appreciated. 

To the memory of Aunt Sima—

to know her was to adore her

And to my cousin Julie, 

who loaned me Kiloran's name

Foreword to the E-Book Edition of

The White Dragon

The Silerian Trilogy: Book Two

This ebook contains some extra features which were not in the original hardcover and paperback editions of The White Dragon.

First and foremost are the color maps, which I commissioned from my friend Elizabeth Person. If you have a black-and-white e-reader and would like to see the color versions, or if you'd just like to see a larger image of the maps and some additional information about them, they're posted on my website.

There's also a Glossary of various terms created for the world of the novel, as well as directories of Characters, Clans, Factions, and Place Names.

The White Dragon has been out of print for a few years, and I am delighted to be able to make it available again. I hope you enjoy this novel—as well as the conclusion of this trilogy, The Destroyer Goddess, and the first book in the story, In Legend Born.

—Laura Resnick

Prologue

Dar, the destroyer goddess, chose 

Sileria as her home. Fortunately, we 

are not so easy to destroy.

                                    —Silerian Proverb

The vast island nation of Sileria rose majestically out of the azure waters of the Middle Sea. Surrounded by mainland empires which arose and fell as the eons passed, Sileria had suffered invasion and conquest many times. She was a great prize, since possession of Sileria was necessary for domination of the Middle Sea, once named Sirkara—heart of the world—by an ancient people whose forgotten empire had been the first of many to rise in glory and descend in flames. This inland ocean was bordered by the vast Moorlands, the sprawling Empire of Valdania, the ancient Kintish Kingdoms, and the delta created by the north-flowing Sirinakara River. 

For a thousand years, the island nation of fertile fields, rich mines, harsh mountains, and bustling ports had endured foreign domination as one conquering power after another claimed Sileria, the sun-drenched jewel of the Middle Sea, for itself. For a thousand years, her disparate peoples had suffered humiliation, servitude, and contempt. For a thousand years, Silerians had looked to Dar, the most powerful goddess in a nation of many sects and cults, to liberate them from the yoke of slavery. 

The goddess's home was the sacred volcano of Mount Darshon, whose snow-capped, cloud-piercing peak dwarfed the rest of this rugged, mountainous land. In the center of Darshon's caldera was the seething, bubbling lake of molten lava wherein dwelled Dar, goddess of fire and of the Otherworld. Forged from a union of earth and sky, Dar had traveled the three corners of the world in search of a home before finally coming to rest at Darshon, the mightiest of mountains in the most beautiful of nations. 

She was the destroyer goddess, wiping out whole villages on a whim, exploding in showers of lava and molten rock which set the surrounding mountains on fire and blackened the sky with ash. Her fiery nature had shaped Her people, making them ruthless, unforgiving, and violent. Yet it was also Dar who had made them the strongest, fiercest, and bravest people in the world. 

She was a creator, too, renewing the tired earth again and again, enriching the lowlands, leaving fertile fields in the wake of Her tempestuous fury. Without Dar, the harvests would be perpetually poor, the mines would be barren, and Sileria's people would be bereft of the Otherworld. 

Without Dar, Silerians would still be hopeless slaves of the Valdani. It was Dar who had given Her people Josarian the Firebringer, the prophesied warrior who united all Silerians for the first time in a thousand years and led the Silerian rebellion against Valdania. 

Silerians were a profoundly devout people, and so, even in the face of foreign laws prohibiting their native religious practices, they had never neglected Dar or failed to thank Her for these blessings. The zanareen, fanatics once considered insane by most Silerians, had worshipped at the rim of Darshon's fierce volcano for centuries, and many had died flinging themselves into the Fires of Dar in hopes of becoming the Firebringer. After Dar chose Josarian as the Firebringer, the zanareen served Her by serving him. 

The city-dwellers, the lowlanders, and the earth magic cult of the Sisterhood made offerings to Dar of flowers, fruit, wine, and grain. The toreni, Sileria's landed aristocrats, made Her rich offerings of livestock, even of gold and jewels. The shallaheen—the mountain peasants who were Sileria's poorest and most numerous people—worshipped Her even more devoutly than the others and offered their very blood to Her, slicing open their palms to swear bloodpacts and bloodfeuds as they chanted their prayers to Dar. They made pilgrimages from all over Sileria, coming to Darshon to offer the bones of their dead to the goddess. 

The Guardians of the Otherworld were closest of all to Dar, for She had blessed them with fire magic and with the ability to commune with shades of the dead sojourning in the Otherworld. For centuries the Guardians had devoted every day of their lives to Dar even though their kind had been outlawed by the Valdani for two hundred years—and sought by the deadly waterlords and assassins of the Honored Society for far longer than that. 

Yes, despite the bloodfeuds which destroyed whole clans and the fanaticism for which various sects killed and died, despite the terrible poverty of the shallaheen and the mixed blood of so many toreni and city-dwellers, despite centuries of foreign domination and exposure to foreign gods... Despite all this, most of Sileria's people still remembered to pay their respects to the fierce goddess who dwelled in the fiery heart of Mount Darshon. 

It was not enough.

Deep in the heart of Darshon's raging, fire-spewing sea of lava, Dar rumbled with discontent and claimed the right of a goddess to demand more from a people who, She knew, would now need more from Her. 

Chapter One

When the last dragonfish is dead,

then will I set my foot upon land.

                        —Motto of the Lascari Clan 

The deck of the fishing boat rolled beneath Zarien's feet, rocking and soothing him as it had every day of his life, since the moment he'd been hauled of out of the sea where he had been born. For as long as Sileria's sea-born folk had existed, their women had given birth to their generations in sacred coves, then  midwives blessed the infants with ritual immersions before passing them to waiting paternal arms aboard nearby boats. It had now been some fourteen years since the midwife had held Zarien underwater to introduce his spirit to the spirit of the dragonfish, whom his people feared, fought, and must someday vanquish. 

And for fourteen years, Zarien had lived by the creed which bound his clan, the Lascari—and many other sea-born clans—to life upon the waves: He had not set foot on land, not once in his life. 

True, many sea-born folk did walk among the landfolk of Sileria. They traded on shore and supplied the floating markets upon which sea-bound clans like the Lascari relied for those things that the sea did not provide. They met with smugglers, rebels, and outlaws on land. They personally delivered cargoes, carried from the nations surrounding the Middle Sea, to wealthy merchants, aristocrats, and waterlords. Some had even marched inland to meet the Firebringer himself, Josarian, to pledge the many clans of Sileria's sea-born folk to his cause. 

But the Lascari did not walk the dryland, nor would they until the last dragonfish in the Middle Sea was finally dead. Since before memory began, since before there had been waterlords in Sileria or the Palace of Heaven in Kinto, since before the empire of the Moorlanders had risen from the mists or disappeared centuries later into ashes, since before the Valdani had built the great city of Valda and struck out to conquer so much of the world, including Sileria... Since before all this, the sea-bound Lascari had thrived without going ashore; indeed, to do so ensured banishment from the clan. Theirs was a proud and ancient tradition, one to which they clung fiercely. Zarien had been taught not to rudely ridicule clans who mingled with the untattooed landfolk or who profaned their sea-born heritage by treading on solid ground while yet a dragonfish lived, but he was proud to be coming to manhood in a clan that did not do such unworthy things.

During the Festival of the New Year this year, he had received the tattoos of adulthood, as had all other sea-born children born fourteen years earlier, in the Year of Dark Skies. The intricate indigo markings he now bore on his hands, face, and forearms forever marked him as sea-born, as Lascari, and as a man. But only now might he become a man in truth; if he presented his mother with the heart of his very first dragonfish kill, then he would earn the right to say to her, as generations of sea-born males before him had said to their mothers, "Today I am a man." 

They called it Bharata Ma-al in sea-born dialect: the Time of Slaughter. Now, as spring ripened into its full promise in Sileria, the dragonfish swam close to shore to lay their eggs in warm coastal waters. Now they were vulnerable. Now the sea-born showed them no mercy. 

The rest of the year, these ferocious creatures might strike the sea-born folk anytime, anywhere in the Middle Sea. Many a boat had never returned from the open sea, many a man had died in those voracious jaws. No one—not marauding Moorlanders, not Kintish pirates, not the Valdani themselves with their sleek warships—had ever killed as many sea-born folk as the dragonfish had. Zarien's people had faced and fought this enemy since they first took to the sea, and until they had spilled the dark purple blood of the very last one left alive, there could be no peace. Only then would their destiny be complete. Only then might the children of their children's children set their feet upon land. 

Zarien shrugged and lifted his face to the wind, indifferent to the knowledge that he would never walk the dryland. Why would anyone want to? The sea was the only life for real men, the dragonfish the only enemy worth facing. Let the shallaheen, Sileria's mountain peasants, slaughter each other in their endless bloodfeuds. Let the assassins of the Honored Society kill and be killed in bloodvows which were sworn to serve the power struggles of their masters, the waterlords. Let the vast armies of the world's rising and falling empires grapple for supremacy on the mainland all around the Middle Sea. What concern was any of this to the Lascari and their kind, whose enemy had been chosen for them by their gods at the dawn of time? 

The sturdy two-masted boat upon which Zarien's family lived drew near the ancient killing grounds of the Lascari, the stretch of coastal waters which they had claimed as their own centuries ago. Zarien's heart began thudding with mingled pride, fear, and excitement. Tonight, for the first time, he would join the men of his clan in the bloody ritual through which they honored their gods and proved their manhood by facing the dragonfish. It was during the Time of Slaughter that, for once, the sea-born folk rather than the dragonfish staged the ambush, chose the time and place of the confrontation, and challenged the enemy rather than simply awaiting their unpredictable attacks. 

By the time the bharata was over, the shores of Sileria would be stained with blood and the sea would be dark with it. Not all of it would be purple either. Bharata Ma-al claimed many sea-born lives, too, every year. 

The season of slaughter was a short one, lasting only while the first new moon glowed alone, before the second one appeared to join it in the night sky, during the fourth month of the year. It was a sacred span of three days and nights, an opportunity which came only once a year. If Zarien did not slay a dragonfish during the bharata, the traditional time for a first kill, then he would have to rely on chance until next year, on the mingled hope and fear that a dragonfish would attack him somewhere in the open sea. And until he finally killed one, he would be excluded from the rights and privileges granted only to those who had done so. He would also, he reflected sourly, be obliged to listen meekly to the other men's endless boasts wherever boats met and mingled at sea or in Sileria's harbors.

"Stop scowling," his mother advised him, brushing past him as she prepared the deck to receive the first dragonfish corpse of the bharata. 

"I wasn't scowling," he said. "I was thinking."

"You were thinking?" Her dark brows rose. "Ah, for that alone, we should hold a special festival." 

He scowled at her but didn't retort. A sea-born man who was not respectful to women—especially to his mother—would be dragonfish bait before long. 

He didn't help her with her work, nor did she ask him to. Work was strictly divided among the sea-born, and each person stayed out of the other's way when it came to chores and duties. Boats were small and unsteady, after all, and the sea-born couldn't afford to trip over and bump into each other all the time like clumsy landfolk. So Zarien stayed out of his mother's way and attended to his own work—which currently meant trimming the foresail as the boat drew near the killing waters. 

Some of the boats of the Lascari clan were already there, and others were arriving even as Zarien's family brailed their sails up to the yard and prepared to drop anchor, positioning their boat for the setting of the nets. The women of each family had folded the huge nets aboard their own boats with care so that they would feed out smoothly and quickly when they were being set. 

Only let this slaughter make me a man, he prayed to the spirits that ruled the sea. Without his manhood, he would not be allowed to carry the stahra he knew his parents had already acquired for him and tried to hide below deck without his knowledge. Among the sea-born, the stahra was a deadly weapon with which a sea-born man protected himself and his family from enemies, pirates, landfolk, and dragonfish. To ignorant eyes, though, it simply looked like an oar, something which even the Valdani didn't object to Silerians possessing.

Of course, the need to conceal weaponry from the Valdani was changing with the coming of Josarian the Firebringer. A simple shallah turned rebel leader, Josarian had proven himself to be the long-prophesied chosen one of Dar, the destroyer goddess who dwelled in the volcano of Mount Darshon. With few exceptions, all of Sileria's disparate population worshipped Dar. The Honored Society, of course, was one of the exceptions. They had turned their backs on Dar a thousand years ago, during the time of Marjan, the very first waterlord, who had founded the Society. But even the Society—like the sea-born folk—were not openly disrespectful of Dar. After all, Zarien knew, to worship a land goddess like some mountain peasant was one thing, but to openly insult Her and risk Her vengeance was quite another.

Sileria and all her peoples had toiled under the rule of various foreign nations for a thousand years, since the days of the Conquest when the Moorlanders had sailed out of their misty western homeland in search of slaves and gold. After them came the Kints, founders of the ancient union of exotic kingdoms east of the Middle Sea; they had ruled here for six hundred years. Two centuries ago, they had lost Sileria to the Valdani, builders of the most powerful empire the Middle Sea had ever known. 

Through it all, prophecy, prayer, song, and story had spoken of a great warrior who would drive out the conquering powers that enslaved Sileria so that it could be, once again, a free and proud nation. He would prove himself by leaping into the volcano atop Mount Darshon and surviving. For centuries, of course, the mad zanareen kept flinging themselves into the Fires of Dar in attempt to achieve that ecstatic union with the goddess—and failing. Then Josarian had come along. 

Everyone knew the story. Hundreds of witnesses, including many skeptics, had been there to see the event. The rebel leader, the shallah who sacked Valdani supply posts and killed their uniformed Outlookers, had flung himself into the heart of the volcano and survived. Spewing fire and ecstasy, Dar had safely returned him to the volcano rim after having Her fill of him. And so Josarian's legend, born on the twin-moon night he had killed his first Valdani Outlooker, had ripened into fulfillment. 

Some of the other famous rebel leaders had been with him at Darshon, too, it was said. Tansen, Josarian's bloodbrother, was also a shallah, but he was rumored to be different from the other mountain peasants. He bore a strange foreign symbol on his chest, branded into his flesh by the gods of Kinto, which made him invincible. He carried two magically-engraved Kintish swords which he used with the skill of a sorcerer; they could leap out of their sheathes and slaughter men by themselves. It was said that Tansen had actually gone to Darshon to stop Josarian from jumping, afraid his bloodbrother would die in the Fires of Dar, but had arrived too late. And it was Mirabar, the stories said, who had led Josarian to Darshon. She was the flame-eyed, fire-haired Guardian whose visions had foretold Josarian's and Tansen's joint destiny to lead Sileria to freedom. 

The shallaheen, Zarien knew, feared beings like Mirabar—some silly mountain superstition about such people being demons. Yes, shallaheen were ignorant; but Zarien's father said that one must nonetheless honor the way they had flocked to Josarian's banner even before the events at Darshon. One must respect the many lives they had sacrificed to free Sileria from the Valdani.

The sea-born folk had joined Josarian's cause after his transformation at Darshon, and now many of them were also dying. The Valdani were losing the war, and Josarian's destiny would soon be fulfilled. But the Valdani had not abandoned Sileria entirely. That day was yet to come. 

When we take Shaljir, Zarien thought, then the war will end, and the Valdani will finally surrender and leave forever. 

All of Sileria waited for Josarian to commence the attack on Shaljir. For the sea-born folk, it would be the deadliest and most important battle of the entire rebellion. Shaljir, the ancient capital city, was the largest and most active port in Sileria. Zarien knew his father thought that Josarian should have laid siege to the walled city before now, that he was waiting too long. The delay was due to dissension among different factions of the fragile rebel alliance. The landfolk liked nothing better than quarreling among themselves, and even war against the Valdani had not changed that. Josarian the Firebringer had become enemies with Kiloran, the most powerful waterlord in Sileria, and their feud weakened them both when it came to fighting the Valdani. And so the expected attack on Shaljir had yet to be launched. 

Zarien, however, was glad for the delay. If he killed a dragonfish now, then he could join in the final great sea battle of the rebellion and fight alongside his father and elder brother for the port of Shaljir. Although they sailed primarily off the Adalian coast, the Lascari had no intention of being left out of the siege of Shaljir. Only Bharata Ma-al had prevented the entire clan from sailing toward Shaljir before now; no one ever skipped the bharata. But when the new crescent of Ejara, the second moon, appeared in the night sky and the slaughter ended, the Lascari would sail east, via the sacred rainbow-chalk cliffs of Liron, and then turn north towards Shaljir.

Oh, let me kill a dragonfish, that I may share the honor of driving the Valdani from the waters of Shaljir, Zarien prayed fervently to the eight gods who ruled the wind and to the nine goddesses who ruled the sea. 

After he placed the bloody purple heart of a dragonfish at his mother's feet, he would also be eligible to acquire a boat which he would someday offer as a wedding gift to the woman of his choice. Like his elder brother, Orman, he would continue living on his mother's boat until he married, and he would use the years between now and his marriage to make his own boat one that any woman would be proud to accept. 

Still praying for success during the bharata, Zarien watched the other arriving boats of his clan drop anchor and await his grandfather's signal to begin setting the nets. When he'd exhausted his promises to the gods about all he would do for them in exchange for the heart of a dragonfish, he thought again about the extraordinary events sweeping across Sileria now that the age of the Firebringer was at hand. Freedom from the Valdani. Freedom from crippling tribute and taxes, from sudden seizures and searches, from arrest, execution, and death by slow torture for violating the smallest of their endless laws. Freedom from the threat of transportation to the mines of Alizar, somewhere in the mountains of Sileria. No one sea-born had ever returned alive from Alizar. Zarien grinned, recalling the day they'd received word that Josarian had attacked and seized the mines. His father had opened a smuggled cargo of Kintish spirits and urged his family to drink freely. 

Zarien knew the number of his clan's square-sailed boats as well as he knew the number of his own fingers, so he knew when they had all arrived and were in position. The sun blazed gloriously down on the yellow sails and the azure waters as his grandfather blew into the ritual dragonfish horn, giving the first signal of the slaughter 

"Zarien!" his father called from the bow. "Prepare to drop the nets!" 

Zarien glowed with pride. The order meant that he would be the one to lead his own family in the setting of the nets. It was a great honor, one his father had hinted he would bestow upon him even though it was only his first bharata. Orman had led the setting of the nets before, so he wouldn't challenge Zarien's right to do so today—though Zarien knew he wouldn't get to do it two years in a row. His brother wasn't that generous. 

Now his younger brother Morven weighed anchor, allowing the boat to creep forward again with their mother at the helm as Sorin and Orman unfurled the foresail. Zarien lifted the first iron weight, his muscles straining as he prepared to heave it over the side. Orman, Morven, and their father took their places near him on the starboard side. The boat bobbed gently in the coastal current, and Zarien only noticed his slight adjustments to its motion because of the awkward weight he held in his arms. 

Taut silence replaced the typically gregarious boat-to-boat greetings of the sea-born people. Even the wind died down, awaiting the moment. Only the ever-present dull roar of the sea remained, the never-ending song of Sirkara. Then Zarien heard his grandmother's piercing wail, invoking the women of the clan to commence the chant of Bharata Ma-al. Zarien heaved the iron weight overboard, then heard his mother's voice strike the first note of the ritual chant at the very moment the weight struck the water.

Now there was no time to think, no time to worry about disgracing himself or his family if he failed to live up to his father's expectations. He fell into the rhythm of the chant, ordering his father and brothers to guide the massive net overboard as he hoisted the next weight into his arms. This second weight was at the end of the first net, and it must be dropped into the water exactly as the first chant ended, carrying with it the women's entreaty to the nine goddesses that the net be filled with a good catch. 

One by one, they dropped the nets into the water, working in tandem with the rest of the clan to form a vast maze in the sea. The nets hung from huge cords that were floated by corks, stretched taut through the water and weighted at the bottom by the precisely spaced iron weights. The open ends of the maze all faced the open sea, from which the dragonfish would come. Any dragonfish which entered the nets would get caught in the maze and eventually swim into one of the dead ends, or death chambers, to which the underwater corridors led. 

Stringing the bharata maze across the killing grounds was a long, hard task. The Lascari men worked efficiently under the fierce Silerian sky, sweat pouring down their beardless faces and naked backs as they dropped weights and lowered nets in time to the rhythmic chanting that filled the salty air. The singing women guided the boats skillfully, weaving a pattern on the sea's surface which defined the shape of the maze in its depths. 

The ritual chant entered Zarien's blood, became part of his heartbeat, matched its pace to his breath. He no longer had to concentrate to ensure that he set the nets in time to the singing that blessed them. He moved and the movement was right, he breathed and the breath was song and prayer, he sweat and the sweat became the sea. 

This was what it was to be sea-born, to marry these glimmering azure waters at the moment of your birth, to carry the sea's mystery within your veins for the rest of your life. To work in pure harmony with the rest of your kind, afloat on a bit of bobbing wood amidst the endless wave and roar of the Middle Sea. To know your course based on the slightest touch of the wind against your skin, to smell the silent approach of land even in a fog, to shift your weight with currents and waves even in your sleep... There was no other life worth living. 

Arms trembling with exhaustion, Zarien helped his father lower the final iron weight into the water. The women's chanting ceased at the exact moment the weight slipped below the shimmering surface. Zarien's ears rang in the sudden silence. The weight sank to the bottom, carrying their hopes and prayers with it. 

"Aiola!" Zarien cried, and everyone on the boat followed his lead, shouting the guttural cheer in sea-born dialect that marked the end of setting the nets. Aiola! May they die! 

Above their own shouts and the gleeful cries from the other boats, they heard the clan leader blow the dragonfish horn again. This was their signal to salute the eight winds, turning on deck to honor each god as the horn wailed eight times in succession. 

Each of the eight gods was consort to one of the nine goddesses of the sea. The ninth goddess, Sharifar, had no consort. According to legend, she had been betrayed by the god who had been her consort, the ninth wind, and had cast him off. In his bitterness, he became the whirlwind—whom the sea-born folk loved no better than they loved the dragonfish. Ever since then, Sharifar had sought a new consort, but she had yet to find a man who satisfied her. If she ever chose one (which Zarien thought seemed unlikely after all this time), he would become the king of all the sea-born folk—their first acknowledged leader since before the Moorlanders had conquered Sileria a thousand years ago.

Concluding his salute to the eighth wind, Zarien looked over his shoulder to meet his father's gaze. Sorin's dark face was creased with smiles now. His green eyes—a souvenir of the Moorlanders' long-ago Conquest not only of Sileria, but of many of its women—glowed with pride as he clapped Zarien on the back. 

"The nets are set well, son," he said, his grin broadening in response to Zarien's. "Perhaps I shouldn't have waited, perhaps I should have gone ahead and got you a stahra."

Zarien smiled to himself, having already spotted the stahra in the exact same hiding place Sorin had used for Orman's coming-of-age gift two years ago. Neither Sorin's habits nor his teasing were original, but they were as much a rite of passage aboard this boat as was the bharata itself. 

"You didn't get me a stahra?" Zarien feigned outrage. "Don't you have faith in me?"

His father shrugged. "Well, the dragonfish are not even here yet. We shall see, we shall see..." His eyes met those of his wife, Palomar, sharing the joke. 

"Yes," Zarien said, letting them enjoy what they fondly imagined was their secret. "You shall see. And then you'll be sorry you didn't get me a stahra before we left port." 

Now the Lascari floated their boats away from the bharata maze they had constructed with such care. When the first dragonfish was sighted tonight, the men would row into the maze in small oarboats, armed for the slaughter. Until nightfall, though, clan members rowed from boat to boat, visiting relatives and enjoying conversation. New wounds and scars were exclaimed over, new babies admired, new wives inspected. Cousins and in-laws shared gossip about friends and enemies in other sea-born clans. Everyone talked about the Firebringer and his bloodfeud with Kiloran the waterlord. Would it destroy the rebellion, or would Kiloran and Josarian concentrate on driving out the remaining Valdani in Sileria before one of them finally eliminated the other? Which of those two giants was most likely to survive their enmity? True, Josarian had entered the Fires of Darshon and survived. But Kiloran... even the sea-born folk, who had little to do with the Honored Society, whispered his name with awe, almost afraid to say it aloud. He was the most powerful waterlord in Sileria, perhaps even the most powerful who had ever lived. 

"If anyone can defeat the Firebringer," said Linyan, Zarien's grandfather, "surely it would be Kiloran." 

"Then we must remember Josarian in our prayers," said one of Zarien's uncles. The others resoundingly agreed with this, since the sea-born had sworn loyalty to Josarian, not to Kiloran.

"Two days ago," said Zarien's father, Sorin, "we met with three boats of the Kurvari clan. They say that Kiloran has seized control of Cavasar." The Valdani had fiercely held onto Sileria's westernmost port city, even though its citizens had been among the first whom Josarian had inspired to riot and rebel.

"So the Valdani have finally surrendered Cavasar?" one of Sorin's brothers asked.

"But to Kiloran," Sorin pointed out. "Not to Josarian."

"To Sileria," his brother corrected. "All that really matters is that now Cavasar is free."

"Ah, but is it?" Linyan asked.

"Of course!" Zarien ventured, emboldened by his new tattoos to participate in the conversation as a man. "If the Valdani have abandoned Cavasar as they abandoned Liron and Adalian, then the city is free."

"Or have the Cavasari merely traded one master for another?" Sorin suggested. He and Linyan exchanged troubled looks.

Another of Zarien's uncles shrugged. "At least now they have a Silerian master."

"And the landfolk," Zarien said, "will always be mastered by someone." Not like the sea-born, who were meant to be free, beholden to no one except their own clans.

"But the rule of a waterlord is harsh," Linyan said heavily. "You'll understand this soon enough, Zarien. Such men bring terrible suffering to the lives that they touch."

Zarien's father agreed with this. Then, after a moment of contemplative silence, the men all began discussing other matters.

As the sun set, painting a fantastic canvas of amber and amethyst across the endless sky, the Lascari sang songs and told stories. But when the lone new moon, Abayara, rose in the night sky, they fell silent. Soon the dragonfish would come, and nothing must warn them of the trap which awaited them. The Lascari lit no lanterns aboard their vessels tonight, and they ate cold meals this evening rather than risk lighting their braziers to cook. In silence and darkness, they awaited the enemy. 

Zarien was sitting between his father and brother in their long, low, wooden oarboat when the signal came. One of his cousins, keeping watch over the dark sea under a crescent-moon sky, had spotted the telltale horn of a dragonfish breaking the surface. His warning signal was soft, careful not to alarm the enemy swimming towards the maze. Sorin nodded to Zarien who, pleasantly aware of his younger brother's envious gaze, pushed the oarboat away from his mother's vessel and dipped his oars into the water to glide closer to the maze. 

Sorin silently directed Zarien with his right hand. In his left, he held an oil-soaked torch which he would light when the attack began and it was too late for the enemy to escape to the open sea. Their harpoons and tackle, along with Orman's and Sorin's stahra, were ready, neatly ordered at their feet or fastened to the sides of the boat. Now Zarien heard more signals from the lookouts as the number of sightings increased. 

"It will be a great slaughter this year," Sorin murmured, his low voice rich with anticipation.

Please let me kill one, Zarien prayed to the wind and the sea. What could be worse than failing to make his first kill during a bharata which would long be remembered as a particularly good one? 

As the sightings continued, he heard his brother say softly behind him, "So many this year, Papa!" 

Yes, Zarien decided firmly, he would rather die than endure the shame of failing to make his first kill now. Only some bumbling drylander would fail to take a dragonfish when so many were entering the maze.

The boat heaved beneath him suddenly. A geyser of water drenched him as he caught his balance. "There's one underneath us!" Zarien released one oar and reached for a harpoon. 

Sorin laughed with exultation. "Let it go, Zarien. There will be enough in the maze for us." 

Heart pounding, Zarien watched the sleek, deadly creature disappear back into the dark water. It was huge. Bigger than the oarboat. What a fine first kill it would make! But he supposed his father was right. They'd waste time chasing it down, and probably wind up losing it in the dark, anyhow, unless it turned and attacked. Better to keep rowing toward the maze. 

More than twenty oarboats took their place around the bobbing corks that defined the vast and elaborate maze the Lascari had laid out under the brilliant sun. Now the men watched the water's opaque surface as they awaited the moment which would commence the slaughter. Zarien was so excited he could scarcely breathe. He stared unblinking at the water until his eyes burned. 

Then it came! The sudden, thrashing rise to the surface of the first dragonfish to reach a death chamber and realize it was trapped. 

"Aiola!" Zarien shouted. May they die! 

The exultant cry was repeated by all the Lascari as torches flamed into life in every boat on the water.

More trapped dragonfish began rising to the surface, their massive curling horns reflecting the torchlight as they surged out of the water. Boats rocked wildly as the enormous bodies fell back down, noisily hitting the sea's surface and sending up showers of cool, salty water to drench the Lascari. 

"Bharata Ma-al!" cried Linyan, setting his clan free of all restraint. And the slaughter began!

Zarien moved quickly, but not quickly enough. His brother's blood was high, and his generosity in letting Zarien lead the setting of the nets without argument did not extend to letting Zarien make the family's first kill of the bharata. Orman whooped wildly beside Zarien as his harpoon sailed through the night and sank into the silver-gray and shiny-green scales of the nearest dragonfish. A terrible roar rose up from the water and echoed through the night. The dragonfish's agonized thrashing brought it crashing against the oarboat. Zarien braced himself as the boat rocked wildly and nearly flung him into his father's flaming torch. A dark stain spread through the water, absorbing the glow of the torches. It was the glorious cloud of the dragonfish's dark purple blood. 

"That one was mine!" Zarien said fiercely.

"You can have the next one!" Orman shot back.

"You do that again, and I'll—"

"Easy, son," Sorin interrupted. "You'll get your chance. Let's finish this one!" 

"Aiola!" Orman howled. He raised his stahra and then brought its sharp edge down on the dragonfish's writhing back, again and again, until the spine was finally broken. The creature's sticky purple blood covered Orman, Zarien, and Sorin by the time the great body lay still in the water. 

Another silvery horn broke through the water's surface as yet another dragonfish tried to escape the deadly maze. It flailed its powerful spiked tail in a desperate attempt to clear a space for itself, hitting Orman's fresh kill hard enough to send geysers of bloody water high into the air. Its wild thrashing started pushing the just-slaughtered corpse away from the oarboat. In an effort to retrieve his kill, Orman leaned perilously far over the side, reaching for the stahra, which stuck out of the dead monster's back. 

This one, Zarien thought as the living one hurled itself frantically towards the surface again. This one will be mine. He fixed his aim on the massive heaving body which twisted and flailed in fear and rage. 

"Damn it!" Orman leaned out a little farther, ignoring his father's warning not to, trying to haul in his kill. The thrashing of the second dragonfish was driving the corpse beneath the surface. "It's sinking! Zarien—" 

"Let go of me!"

"Help me—"

Poised to make his first kill, Zarien tried to shake off his brother's grasping hand. He scarcely heard Linyan's nearby shout or his father's cry of alarm. It was only when the impact of their colliding boats nearly knocked him into the water that he realized the danger. He braced himself against the sudden pitch of the boat. His balance would have held—had not Orman's nagging grasp turned into a reflexive yank which tumbled him headlong into the sea. 

"Zarien!"

Cool water engulfed him. Fear filled him, drowning all thoughts but one: Get out!

His legs were propelling him back toward the surface almost before he realized what had happened. He crashed into the underbelly of a writhing dragonfish, a beast so huge it blotted out the flickering torches he had briefly glimpsed through the blood-clouded water. 

No, no, no! 

Another dragonfish rose beneath him. Its mouth brushed his legs. 

No! Not my legs! 

Horrible memories of legless men hauled out of the sea clouded his mind with panic. He'd rather drown than bleed to death on deck in terrible agony.

Help!

He would drown if he didn't get to the surface. He'd had no time to fill his lungs with air before—

A flailing spiked tail broadsided him, snapping his head around, tearing open his flesh and nearly knocking him unconscious. Only the trained instincts of the sea-born kept him from involuntarily inhaling—and drowning. 

Get out, get out, get out!

He boldly pushed between two enormous, heaving bodies which struggled in the maze. He prayed they were too panicked to notice a puny thing like him right now. He prayed that the smell of his blood, now clouding around him, would be concealed by the scent of their own.

Through the wine-dark water, he saw lights flickering above him again. Hope blossomed in him. If he could break the surface. If his family could pull him out before—

A huge body sank down upon him from overhead, pushing him back down. 

No!

He kicked wildly. Swam out from under it. Got tangled in the net of the maze. 

The heavy weight of another dragonfish careened into him, trapping him against the net. The tough fiber of the net cut into his skin as he was pushed harder and harder against it. 

His lungs burned like the Fires of Dar. He was dizzy, growing weak. The weight of the dragonfish would crush him in another moment, leaving his mangled carcass dangling from the net. 

Sanity came to him a moment before death did. What a fool he was! Instead of pushing uselessly against the net, he now reached through it, then let his right arm grasp the small knife sheathed at his waist. All sea-born folk carried one to cut tangled lines, nets, and seaweed. 

Fighting the fatal instinct to inhale, Zarien cut through the net's tough fibers and freed himself, slipping out of the deadly maze. He had sunk far below the surface, but hope renewed his strength as he rose through the blood-darkened water. 

It was the blood, of course, that prevented him from seeing the dragonfish until it was upon him. 

As its great jaws closed around his torso and its gleaming ivory teeth sank into his flesh, Zarien screamed. Water filled his mouth, his throat, and his lungs, but the agony of the dragonfish's attack was the only sensation he knew as it dragged him down to the age-old destiny of the sea-born folk.

Chapter Two

From one thing, another is born.

                               —Tansen

The arms which held Zarien were cool and soft, pulling him ever deeper into the dark water. 

His thoughts returned slowly, coming to him one by one, like lazy waves lapping at the side of a boat. He was underwater. He felt peaceful and serene. He wasn't holding his breath, nor was he drowning. Someone soft and voluptuous and cool-skinned embraced him.  He felt no pain. No pain.... 

The dragonfish!

He gave a panicked start as terror quickened his heart. The lush arms tightened their hold around him. He struggled against the embrace, confused and scared. 

There is nothing to fear.

The rich and unfamiliar feminine voice filled his head. It seemed to come from within him as much as from all around him. Increasingly alarmed, he struggled harder. 

You're safe now.

They were going deeper and deeper, strong strokes propelling them ever further from the surface and survival. 

What happened to the dragonfish? Zarien wondered.

I took you from her.

He went rigidly still. A cold certainty flooded him. He tried to speak, but water filled his mouth. So he asked the question in silence: Are you Death?

The gentle laughter which greeted this question seemed so incongruous that his eyes snapped open—which was when he finally realized they'd been closed. 

The darkness surrounding him at this depth was made all the more apparent by the brilliant incandescence of the female creature who held him in her arms. Zarien drew in a sharp breath of astonishment. The fact that this action didn't make him gag or cough, even as he felt the cool water flood his lungs, was startling enough to distract him for a moment. He stared at his companion in bewilderment, now also realizing how inexplicably clear his vision was. 

You're safe now, she repeated.

She was as beautiful as she was strange, with veil-like fins flaring around her translucent body, revealing and concealing her voluptuous form as they flowed back and forth. Zarien, who had never before seen a naked woman who wasn't a blood relative, couldn't help staring. Her diaphanous skin glowed silvery-pale, like the moons on a misty night. Her full hips flowed down to a sleek tail whose undulations kept propelling both of them away from all that Zarien knew. Heat crept through his cold limbs as he became aware of the soft globes of her breasts pressed against him. Instead of hair, something like spun pearls grew from her scalp, flowing around her in pellucid strands. She must be a dream. Or perhaps... 

A goddess?

No, he must be dreaming. 

You're not dreaming. You fell overboard and were killed by a dragonfish. 

Then I am dead? he asked in sorrow.

Not for long.

You will return me to my family? 

In a way.

Bewildered, he risked another question. What has happened? 

Ah. 

She slowly released him from her grasp, then slid her cool palms along his arms until she was holding his hands. She felt like both flesh and water, both real and unreal, firm and fluid all at once.

The moment he was free of her protective embrace, he could feel the tremendous power of the underwater current. It pulled at his body, dragging fiercely at his weight. Only the grip on his hands kept him from being swept into the current's eddy. 

Face to face with the sea goddess now, his gaze was inexorably drawn to hers. He looked into the depthless pools of her eyes and saw his fate revealed there, the events of the bharata reenacted within her glimmering gaze. He saw himself, foolish in his eagerness, fall overboard when Linyan's oarboat collided with his own. He watched his own struggles beneath the sea's surface, and he wanted to weep when he saw how ferociously the dragonfish had attacked, mauled, and killed him. He saw the goddess tangle fiercely with the dragonfish, then carry his lifeless body away in victory. Embarrassment flooded him as he saw her press her translucent lips against his to breathe life back into him, and he nearly had to look away when he saw her nurse him from those lush breasts to restore his lifeblood. 

He watched his father return to his mother's boat and tell her and Morven of his death. His mother wept violently as she took a knife and repeatedly cut herself in mourning—an ancient sea-born custom which the Valdani had tried to outlaw. His father, his brother, and his grandfather all blamed themselves for Zarien's death. His mother hoisted dark purple banners from both masts to announce that one of her family had been taken by a dragonfish. 

I must go back, Zarien said. 

His mother's suffering made his heart raw. The guilt and self-condemnation of his male relatives were like the blows of a stahra. But he would end their sorrow, would bring rejoicing and celebration to his clan, if he returned.

When the goddess didn't respond, he added more insistently, Let me go—please!

I didn't save you for them. Now the voice in his head, so seductive earlier, was as cold as the sea.

He pulled himself out of the visions in her depthless eyes and tried to think. He knew enough about the gods to realize that this one would probably want something in return for giving him life after what the dragonfish had done to him. She hadn't saved him just to send him back to his family. 

Of course, he said, aware of the current tugging at his body, aware that the price for life would probably be very high —and death a certainty if he refused. I thank you for my life. What must I do to earn it? 

He could have drowned in the beauty of her smile. You must bring me my consort. 

If Zarien were alive in the normal sense, he would have choked on his surprise. Your consort?

The time has come. I must have him, and the sea-born folk need him.

Then you are Sharifar? he guessed.

Yes.

His body bobbed in the current as he considered her demand. 

I will be honored to bring him to you, Sharifar. Where will I find him? 

On land.

He recoiled so sharply that the goddess's own body jerked in response to the tug of his hands, rippling as water rippled in response to sudden movement. I can't set foot on land,  he protested. It was unthinkable. She might as well ask the sun to rise in the west. 

Yes, you can.

I am sea-bound! We do not—

No, you're not, she said. 

Yes, I am. I'm Lascari!

Not really.

My father is— 

Your father was a drylander. 

Take that back! he snapped, heedless of her divinity. My mother has never— 

Your real mother died long ago. 

My moth—He stopped abruptly, realizing what she had just said. My real mother? 

Yes.

He stared at the goddess in bewildered astonishment for a moment. No, you're wrong. 

You are not Sorin and Palomar's son. 

Of course I am!

No.

Sorin and Palomar are— 

They lied to you, she told him gently. Your whole life. 

No! His father a drylander? Absolutely not! No. You're wrong. 

I am Sharifar. I know.

I don't believe you!

You—

You're lying!

—must— 

No, I won't listen! I am Lascari!

Zarien.... She warned him against such disrespect by releasing one of his hands. The current tossed him around violently. Sharifar's cool grip on his other hand was his only anchor, his only link to survival. The gods only knew where this current would take him if she let go.

Darkness surrounded him. Cold filled him. He needed air. He needed to breathe. He would die any moment if he couldn't get air! Panic seized him. Pain consumed him. The deep wounds of the dragonfish's teeth began bleeding again. He'd be dead in moments, whether he drowned, bled to death, or was scented and attacked by another dragonfish. 

He had always believed he would die at sea, perhaps just this way—wounded and drowning... But now he would die not knowing the truth about himself, consumed by this terrible doubt, poisoned by Sharifar's humiliating claim. 

I am Lascari! And he would prove it.

He would die soon enough. Perhaps even from another dragonfish attack. But he would die knowing who he was, knowing the pride of the Lascari was his by birth. He didn't want to die now, like this, in doubt and shame. 

I will listen, he conceded at last.

A strong, cool hand grasped his flailing one and brought him face to face with the goddess again. His pain faded, his blood stopped flowing, and his lungs stopped burning. Angry and resentful, Zarien regarded Sharifar stonily and resisted the lure of her exquisite beauty. She smiled sympathetically. 

It's time for you to seek your true father, she told him, just as it is time for me to embrace my consort. 

My true father, he repeated without belief or enthusiasm.

You will bring my consort to me.

As you wish, he replied obediently, burning with outrage.

You will make your own choices about your father.

He couldn't stop himself, for thoughts flowed with far less control than words: Sorin is my father. 

Sorin raised you, but he is not your father.

Then why didn't he tell me that himself?

Because you were only a child.

Suddenly, despite the goddess's protection, he felt the full  weight and chill of the sea's depths again. Could Sharifar's claims possibly be true? Was this appalling discovery something Sorin would have revealed to him once he truly became a man?

The affectionate name by which he had always known Sorin came unbidden to his thoughts: Papa... 

Sorin cannot be your father any longer. 

But when he knows I'm alive—

You're going to walk the dryland, she said. You can never be Lascari again. Your sea-bound life is over.

But I... His mind went blank as her words ripened in his heart. She was right. No matter who was really his father, and no matter how glad the Lascari would be to learn he was alive, setting foot upon land would ensure banishment from the clan for the rest of his life. 

This was the price of his life. He could never be Lascari again. 

He would have preferred death, except that he could not let Sharifar send him incomplete to that shore which had no other shore. He had to know the truth about his birth, about his blood, before he sailed into death.

I... I will be an outcast. If he weren't hovering beyond life, somewhere in the domain of the gods, he would have had to fight tears.

You will find your own life ashore, she promised.

The sea is my life.

The world is changing, Zarien. You must change with it. 

I want to see my—I want to see Sorin, he said suddenly. I want him to tell me. To my face.

In time, perhaps. Now you must go in search of my consort.

On land?

Yes.

Your consort is... No, surely not. Your consort is a drylander? 

 Yes.

You can't take a drylander as your consort! How can the sea-born accept him as their king? 

He is chosen by Dar. 

Dar is... She is not... 

The volcano rules even the sea-born. 

But the sea-born do not worship—

The sea-born will accept my consort, as I will accept Dar's choice for my mate. 

Then I... I will bring him, Zarien said with far more resignation than hope. To earn my life, I will bring him to you. 

Perhaps sensing all the doubts he tried to hide from her, Sharifar added, It will be no small thing, Zarien, to bring back the first king of the sea-born in a thousand years. 

That, at least, was true. How will I know him?

She smiled again. It's enough that I will know him.

But I— He gasped when she released both his hands, abandoning him to the fierce current. Sharifar!

She spread her graceful fins through the water and moved forward, following him. The shimmering veils grew larger and larger, covering Zarien, spreading around him like the open sky on a clear day. From this veiled covering emerged a long slender object, slowly floating toward him. He recognized what it was only moments before colliding with it—a stahra, the weapon of a man. Sharifar's gift to him, he supposed.      

He seized the metal-tipped oar in bitter resignation and let it take him where it would. The shimmering veils of the goddess drifted away, leaving him alone in the endless sea. The current shifted and pulled him in a new direction. Free of pain or the need to breathe, he let it carry him according to Sharifar's will, away from her and away from his own death. 

He couldn't believe the sea-born would accept a drylander as their first king in centuries. He couldn't understand why a sea goddess was bowing to Dar's will. How much could the world possibly be changing? How much more would it need to change for Sharifar to be satisfied and for Dar's will to be done? 

And he... he would never sail as a Lascari again. If Sharifar was to be believed, he had never been one in the first place...

He must return to Sorin and Palomar, must make them tell him the truth!

The sea soothed his desperate thoughts, carrying him safely through this strange realm between life and death. He supposed Sharifar would protect him until he reached the shore, so he had no fear of reefs, rocks, nets, or dragonfish. 

Once he reached shore, though... The fear of that threatened to consume him. He knew nothing about life on land. He would be as helpless as a baby among the landfolk. How would he survive?

His musings ended when, contrary to his previous expectations, the current hurled him against a rock. He gasped—and immediately began coughing as he inhaled saltwater. The goddess's protection was evidently withdrawn, he reflected sourly, now that he had reached land. He was on his own from now on. 

Zarien braced himself as the waves broke against the rocks again, then he grappled for purchase with one hand while holding onto the stahra with the other. His seeking hand slipped on slime at first, but then he got firm hold of a rough surface and hauled himself out of the water. Breathing hard, he sat down on a rock and looked around. It was still nighttime, and now thick clouds obscured even the faint light of the first new moon. He couldn't see far and or make out any details beyond observing some rocky shoreline. He wouldn't know much more until morning.

However, assuming he was on the Adalian coast—since he'd fallen overboard in Adalian's coastal waters—he tried to come up with a plan. He wanted most of all to return to the open sea, to find his parents... to find Sorin and Palomar, that was, and confront them with the goddess's tale of his dead mother and drylander father. But he looked longingly out at the dark sea, listening to its familiar roar, and knew it was hopeless. He had no boat. No sea-born folk would be in port right now, even if he could find a port in the morning. All sea-born clans were at sea for Bharata Ma-al. There were usually foreign ships in any sizeable port, but he had no money and so couldn't pay them to take him back to his family. And certainly no toren's yacht would escort him to the Lascari; the aristocratic toreni did not make a habit of exerting themselves for commoners.

By the time any sea-born folk returned to port, the bharata would be over and the Lascari would be sailing for Shaljir. Zarien's presumed death wouldn't change those plans. 

So perhaps he should go overland to Shaljir, searching for Sharifar's consort along the way. And whether or not he found him by the time he reached Shaljir, he could try to contact the Lascari once he reached Sileria's greatest port. 

As for finding Sharifar's consort... It occurred to Zarien that there was already a likely candidate. Who better to embrace Sharifar than the man who had already survived the embrace of Dar? Who better to become the sea king than the Firebringer himself? Who better to unite the volcano and the sea than Josarian, who had already united the landfolk and the sea-born against the Valdani? 

He must find Josarian. He must take the Firebringer to Sharifar. Who else could Dar have chosen for her consort? 

Of course, finding Josarian would be no easy task. Even Zarien knew that Josarian's movements were a closely guarded secret. Not only did the Valdani keep increasing the reward offered for his death, but now Kiloran, the great waterlord, was his enemy and sought to slay him, too—which meant many assassins, as well as many other waterlords of the Honored Society, were after the Firebringer. 

Although the sea-born folk remained Josarian's loyal allies, Zarien knew enough about landfolk to realize that asking them to tell him where Josarian was would be useless. The shallaheen wouldn't trust a sea-born boy any more than the lowlanders would trust a city-dweller or a toren would trust an assassin. Josarian's unique gift was that he had somehow made Sileria's feuding and disparate peoples work together towards a common goal: freedom from the Valdani. For a time, at least. Now that Kiloran was his enemy, who knew how much longer the Firebringer's day of glory would last? The rebel alliance was crumbling even with victory against the Valdani in sight. Life in Sileria never really changed. 

I must find Josarian before Kiloran or the Society do, before the Valdani do. 

Zarien shivered as the coastal breeze swept over his wet skin and clothing. He shivered with loneliness and fear, too. He had not yet become a man according to the customs of the sea-born, and now he faced a task that he believed would make most men tremble. But, he reminded himself, he bore the tattoos of a man and his stahra had been given to him by a sea goddess. Manhood was upon him, whether or not this was the way he had expected to earn it. Surrounded by darkness and comforted only by the never-silent sea, he wondered where to start his search for the Firebringer. 

"Dalishar," he suddenly realized. 

Mount Dalishar, a sacred site of the mysterious Guardians of the Otherworld, had been Josarian's base since the beginning of the rebellion. For months now, the country around it had been rebel-held territory, a vast section of Sileria finally free of Valdani laws and Outlooker patrols. And Dalishar was said to be so heavily imbued with Guardian magic that even the Honored Society and its powerful waterlords couldn't attack Josarian there. 

If there was one place to find Josarian—or at least to find someone Josarian trusted, someone who could somehow be convinced to take Zarien to him—Dalishar would be the place. 

All Zarien really knew about Dalishar's location was that it was high up, somewhere in Sileria's merciless mountains, deep in the heart of the clannish, violent world of Josarian's own kind, the shallaheen. 

For a moment, Zarien almost wished he were back in the water with the dragonfish. 

Sileria's mountain peasants might be good fighters, but everyone knew they were ignorant, superstitious, dishonest, violent, and unforgiving of the slightest misunderstanding or offense. Few sea-born folk had ever ventured into the mountains; even fewer had come back out.

Many shallaheen didn't even speak common Silerian, the language by which Sileria's diverse ethnic groups communicated with each other. Zarien had heard the guttural mountain dialect of shallah smugglers a few times and could only understand about one word in three. So even if they didn't kill him or steal what little he possessed, they might just not understand what he was saying to them. 

Josarian speaks common Silerian. He even speaks Valdan. Everyone says so, he reminded himself, trying to summon up hope. Some of the others will, too. 

Contemplating the difficulties of undertaking his enormous task without friends, family, money, or food, Zarien summoned all his will and rose to his feet. Tonight he would go the rest of the way ashore and get some sleep. Tomorrow, he would set out for Dalishar. Somehow, he would survive and do what he had to do. He had died and been reborn tonight, so he could certainly do this. 

Sharply aware of how motionless the surface beneath his feet was, he began picking his way through the rocks. They were wet and slippery, but they were no challenge to a boy used to the heaving decks of storm-tossed boats. 

Beyond the rocks was a narrow beach. Zarien had touched sand before, of course, diving in coastal seabeds. This was particularly coarse stuff, though, strewn with seaweed that tangled in his toes and rocks that poked the arches of his bare feet. He ambled along for a while, hoping to find a more comfortable surface for sleep. He wasn't ready to go farther inland in search of a good spot, though. Tomorrow would be soon enough to leave behind the familiar scent and sound of the sea, the familiar tickle of salty air in his nostrils and on his tongue. Tonight he needed to sleep near the soothing murmur and roar of her waves. 

Finally abandoning hope of encountering a stretch of smoother sand, Zarien chose a spot, cleared away the seaweed and rocks as best he could in the dark, and lay down on the sand. The cloudy night sky overhead was soothing and familiar, since he usually slept on deck. But there was no gentle rolling, no comforting bob and sway beneath him. 

The clouds drifted apart and the glimmering light of the moonlit sky spread across land and sea. Restless and edgy, Zarien sat up and glanced around. The rocky beach looked no better now that he could see more of it. Depressed, he lowered his gaze.

His breath caught when he saw, for the first time, the great scars left on his torso by the teeth of the dragonfish. Its terrible fang marks made a half-circle which went from his right shoulder, across his chest and belly, to his right hip. He reached awkwardly behind him as horrifying memories of the attack returned to him. Yes, he could feel corresponding scar tissue on the parts of his back which he could reach.

Contemplating the mystery of his survival, Zarien lay back in the coarse sand again, folding his arms beneath his head. He gazed up at the endless night sky... and that was when he noticed that Ejara, the second moon, was now a glowing crescent beside Abayara, which was waxing.

That meant Bharata Ma-al was already over.

He had been underwater for more than three days.

Chapter Three

Only one thing is better than 

learning that an enemy is dead: 

learning that he is in Sileria.

                              —Valdani Proverb

Josarian is dead.

The words burned in Tansen's mind the way the seeping wound in his side burned his flesh. His heart hadn't known pain like this since that night, so long ago, when he had returned to his native village of Gamalan to find his entire family slain by the Valdani. Only a boy of fifteen then, he had turned to Armian, who eventually became his bloodfather, for courage. Now, more than ten years later, he was a man—a rebel leader, a warrior already embraced and embellished in Silerian legend—and, in the wake of this catastrophe, others would look to him for courage.

But he had none left to give, and he found that the coming of day didn't change that. Sorrow consumed him. Despair stole the last of his will. Pain and exhaustion clouded his mind.

 The trek from the village of Chandar to the sacred caves of Dalishar wasn't far as shallaheen reckoned things, and Tansen had been born to Sileria's mountains. But he had used the last of his strength during the night and had nothing left now. 

His wound had re-opened—was it only two nights ago?—when he had abandoned Sanctuary to try to save Josarian's life. The deep wound burned with cold fire now, sucking his life away. It wasn't fresh, it had been made many days ago, but it was a shir wound, and the wavy-edged dagger of a Society assassin wounded as no other blade did.  Created by the dark sorcery of a waterlord, a shir was fashioned out of water and imbued with a power so deadly that it ensured the assassins of the Honored Society were feared throughout Sileria.

Ironically, Tansen's wound hadn't been delivered by an assassin, but by a Valdan, the late and unlamented Commander Koroll. The commander had managed to slay an assassin at some point, during the long months of fighting between the Silerian rebels and the Valdani, and thereby acquired a shir.

Since a shir could be used even against a waterlord, the waterlords ensorcelled them so that only the trusted assassin for whom a shir was made could actually touch it. Only by killing an assassin could you make his shir your own. By now, Tansen had made more than a few shir his own, including the one which had belonged to Armian; but he didn't use or keep them. The two slender swords of a shatai were his weapons—earned with discipline and pain, wielded with honor and skill—and he had proved often that they were all he needed for killing Valdani Outlookers, Society assassins, or anyone else. 

I'll have to kill more assassins now...

After all the broken vows, betrayals, and deadly plots, Kiloran had finally succeeded in his goal. Two nights ago, when his latest plan to destroy Josarian—by having Josarian's trusted cousin Zimran betray him to the Valdani—had failed, he had fallen back on an even darker scheme. He had summoned the White Dragon from the waters of the Zilar River. Tansen hadn't even believed the wild tales whispered about such creatures until he saw it with his own eyes, grotesquely forming out of the shallow river, gathering itself into a huge and hideous monster under the two full moons which illuminated the night sky. A billion glittering drops of water crystallized into slashing claws, dripping fangs, and voracious jaws. Born of a mystical union between water and wizard, Kiloran's terrible offspring had seized and killed Josarian.

And I couldn't stop it.

Tansen had tried, but his swords swept ineffectually through that monstrous creature made only of water. Mirabar had tried, too, but even her fire magic couldn't stop that thing. Now Josarian's dying screams of agony still rang in Tansen's head, and probably would for the rest of his life.

After completing the task for which it had been born, the White Dragon simply sank back into the Zilar River. Quiescent. Gone. As if it had never been. There wasn't anything left for Tansen to fight, to kill. 

Except Kiloran.

Josarian was dead, but as a victim of the White Dragon, he would endure its vicious torment until its creator finally died.

All the more reason to kill Kiloran.

The old waterlord meant to rule Sileria. He meant to make the shallaheen and all the other peoples of this troubled land toil under the yoke of the Honored Society. Kiloran now intended to dominate the whole nation, rather than just his traditional territory, with violence and terror, with thirst and drought, with bloodshed and extortion. He would subject Sileria to worse misery than it had known during a thousand years of brutal foreign domination. And to ensure his success, he would use the Society to slaughter every last Guardian in Sileria. After centuries of enmity, the masters of water would eagerly employ their power to destroy the servants of fire once and for all.

Mirabar...

Mirabar, gifted with powers strong enough to frighten most waterlords, burdened with prophetic visions which even Kiloran respected. Young and hot-headed, sharp-tongued and quick-thinking, foolishly brave as a sorceress, unsure and inexperienced as a woman... Her death was now surely Kiloran's first priority.

Or my death, perhaps? For old times' sake. 

Tansen's lungs burned from working so hard to make up for the loss of blood from his wound and the lack of food and sleep during the past two days and nights. His whole body ached from the blows of the White Dragon. His flesh burned in a thousand places from the drops of ensorcelled water which had dripped onto him from that grotesque beast. The cuts that its claws had left upon him burned coldly, like cuts made by a shir. He was covered in dried blood: his own, Josarian's, his enemies'...

You've wanted me dead for so long, old man, perhaps you will want me first, before her.

Tansen paused to rest, something he almost never did in the long-distance trekking over brutal terrain that was a normal part of daily life in Sileria's harsh mountains. Unlike most shallaheen, he knew how to ride a horse, but horses were rare in Sileria, impractical deep in the mountains, and out of the question on the treacherous paths ascending to Dalishar. 

He had been back in Sileria—back from exile in foreign lands, back in these loved and hated mountains—for more than a year now. He was normally conditioned to this life. But not today. Not wounded, exhausted, and weak from blood loss. Head pounding, he bent over, breathing hard, and braced his hands on his thighs, aware that he hadn't covered nearly the distance he had expected to since leaving Chandar before dawn. 

Well past midday, he guessed, squinting up at the brassy Silerian sunshine. And he was still very far from the caves.

After Josarian's death in the Zilar River, Tansen had sent Mirabar to Dalishar, safe from Kiloran's reach, and told her to wait for him. He had gone to Chandar for one simple task. And he had failed at Chandar, as he had failed at the Zilar River. Now he must tell Mirabar he had failed. He must somehow make her understand why he couldn't do it. 

I can't kill her, Mirabar, I can't. 

His chest ached. His throat hurt. All of Sileria's sins were his, and he could think of no one whom he had never disappointed or betrayed.

Focus on the task at hand. 

Later, he hoped, there would be time enough for mourning. Later, he knew, he would pay for his sins and his failings. Dar would see to that in the end. But for now, there was so much work to be done.

He must reach Dalishar. They must make plans and protect the crumbling rebel alliance. When word of Josarian's death spread, the shallaheen would be frightened and confused. Some of them had already reverted to old loyalties and sided with Kiloran; now many others might follow in fear and ignorance. The lowlanders, the toreni, the city-dwellers, the sea-born folk—everyone who had joined the cause because they believed in Josarian—might now drift away, splintering Sileria once again into disparate and warring factions incapable of resisting either the Society or yet another foreign conquest.

If he couldn't improve his pace, Tansen acknowledged, he wouldn't reach the caves of Dalishar by nightfall.

Another day lost.

Another day wherein Kiloran could gain ascendancy. Another day wherein the world which Josarian had tried to build would now tear itself apart... Grief overwhelmed him again. 

Josarian is dead. My brother is dead.

Tansen had thought so once before, when Josarian had flung himself into the Fires of Darshon. Tansen, busy battling the will of the destroyer goddess in flame and fury below the summit, had heard Mirabar's terrible scream, had heard Dar's triumphant roar, and he'd known it was too late to save the man who was his ally, his friend, and his bloodbrother. Who could have known that the goddess would embrace Josarian like a lover and then return him to his people, forever changed, but unharmed? Tansen had believed, right up until that moment, that Armian had been the Firebringer, as the stories of his childhood had always claimed.

Only Armian never had a chance to embrace Dar, because I killed him... 

Bile rose in his throat. His head swam. Tansen pressed a filthy hand to the bitterly painful wound at his side. His thoughts were wandering too much.

Focus on the task at hand.

That was his training, part of the discipline that made him who he was, the man he had become out of the wreckage of his boyhood. He was a shatai, a member of the finest warrior caste in the three corners of the world. Nine years of exile to escape the bloodvow he had earned from Kiloran the night he had murdered Armian... Father, father... Five of those years spent training under a shatai-kaj in Kinto, a great swordmaster who'd been just eccentric enough to take on an ignorant and unkempt Silerian peasant boy as his apprentice.

Kiloran had wanted him dead before, and wanted him dead now. The Valdani had placed a high price on Tansen's head, second only to Josarian. Society assassins had come for him, as had Valdani Outlookers. But the brand carved into his chest—the mark of a shatai—wasn't just for show. He had earned it with five years of training that many apprentices didn't survive. He had faced not only Kiloran, but Dar Herself, and he knew that some people now even believed that he couldn't be killed.

But every man can be killed. Every man.

Certainly he had killed enough men to know how true that was, but it was something he had learned upon his first killing, long before becoming a shatai. The night he had murdered Armian, the greatest warrior he had ever seen up until then...

The night I betrayed and slaughtered my bloodfather...

Tansen straightened up and continued walking, pushing the memory of Armian deep into the recesses of his mind, where he knew it would lurk in wait for him. When he slept, yes, when he slept... that was when he inevitably remembered the father he had murdered.

Every man can be killed.  

True, he had faced many enemies and always won. A shatai was very hard to kill, and he knew without boasting that he was harder to kill than most. But he had no illusions about being invincible. His shatai-kaj had seen to that. For five years, every single day of Tansen's training as a shatai had begun with the ritual phrase he was supposed to utter with every challenge and before every fight: I am prepared to die today. Are you?

The sudden leap of his senses warned him of danger before any conscious thought. The years of training, the endless repetitions and mind-numbing exercises had not gone to waste. He unsheathed his words and spun to face his attacker before the first blow of the assassin's ambush could strike him.

"I'm not that prepared to die," he rasped, light-headed from the sudden movement.

He parried another stab of the assassin's glittering shir as he shifted in response to the movement of air on his left—a second attacker. Sensing the opening even before he saw it, Tansen killed that one with a quick slash across the throat. Messy, he acknowledged as the hot blood sprayed him, but effective. 

Where you know there is one, fight as if there were many, his kaj had taught him, for you'll find that there often are.

He slashed the wrist of the first attacker and moved to fight the imagined others—who, as it turned out, did indeed exist. 

"Kaja was right again," he muttered, fighting for air and balance. With the first attacker on his knees and the second attacker dead, Tansen confronted four more surrounding him.

Six assassins. An ambush. Kiloran had learned from his mistakes, and so had his men. Gone were the days when a sole assassin would openly challenge Tansen in the traditional manner of the Society.

He ignored the weakness claiming his body, the fierce pain of his wound, the vicious memories the White Dragon had left on his flesh. A shatai was contemptuous of pain, clear-headed in combat, and most focused at the moment when other men were most terrified. Tansen fought on eight sides and three levels, as he had been taught, taking control of the fight, of the footing, of the pace. He made a second kill, under the ribs and into the heart. The thrust took strength and a little too much time under the circumstances, but the opening was there and he took it rather than wait for another.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the first attacker slide into unconsciousness, soon to bleed to death. Tansen knew, without the panic or fear which shackled lesser men to failure and death, that he must kill the remaining three quickly, before the last of his strength failed him and he made his first mistake. Kiloran had not sent inexperienced young braggarts after him. Tansen could tell that these men needed only one mistake, a single opening, to make their kill. 

Of the three who still faced him, one carried two shir, as Tansen carried two swords. The other two assassins fought more traditionally, each swinging a yahr in one hand and wielding a shir in the other. That meant that, like Tansen, these two had probably been born to the mountains; the yahr, a deadly striking weapon, was typically used by the mountain-born shallaheen. It was made of two smooth, short, wooden sticks, sometimes metal-tipped, which were joined by a short rope or chain. To someone who didn't know what it was, it merely looked like a small bundle of sticks, or a distinctive shallah grain flail, the tool which had inspired the weapon. Developed two hundred years ago as a response to Valdani laws against Silerians carrying weapons, it had remained largely secret from the Valdani until the rebellion.   

Tansen blocked a blow from one of the yahr and could tell, by the feel of it against his blade, that it was made of petrified Kintish wood—an expensive luxury, as typical of assassins as were the black-dyed gossamer tunics these men wore. Even one careless blow of such a yahr could crush bones in Tansen's hand. A solid hit would probably break his forearm or shatter his kneecap. And a good blow to the head.... One would stun him, another blow or two would crush his skull. He knew, because he had killed Armian that way...

Focus on the task at hand.

His lungs were burning. He stepped away from a thrust before it even came, knowing by the shift of the assassins' shoulders and the flicker of their eyes what they would do before they did it. A shatai trained to know his enemies in combat even better than they knew themselves. Killing was a passion among Silerians, but only work to a shatai. Clear, focused, skilled work.

Tansen spun to kill one of his opponents—and missed. His left blade tangled with a yahr while his right blocked the jab of a shir. He flipped the glittering water-born blade out of the assassin's hand and completed the arc of his move by slashing the man's face. His vision swam briefly from the effort, but luckily the assassin fell back, clutching his bloody face in pain. Tansen heard the labored rasp of his own breath, felt sluggishness creeping into his limbs, and knew how little time he had left to finish this.

A yahr swung at his head. He dropped to one knee and spun quickly, arms whirling. One assassin screamed horribly as his belly split open and his guts spilled out. Another leapt forward —and collapsed when his leg refused to support his weight. He looked down and saw blood spurting from the huge gash in his thigh. His confused gaze flashed back to Tansen a moment before the shatai slit his throat.

Tansen heard a footstep behind him and knew the assassin with the slashed face was making another attack. Still on one knee, Tansen blocked the overhead blow from behind with his left blade and simultaneously flipped his right-hand sword into a reverse grip and thrust behind him, sinking it deep into the assassin's vitals.

The assassin collapsed on top of him. The fall wrenched the sword out of Tansen's hand before he could withdraw the thrust. The man's shir touched his cheek, burning him with its icy fury. Tansen tumbled to the ground under the assault of the assassin's full body weight. They rolled sideways, locked together, the assassin behind Tansen, and grappled on the rocky blood-soaked soil. 

My swords...

Fighting to stay conscious, Tansen realized he had let go of both swords now.

Never let go of—

His mind went blank with hot white pain when the assassin's murderous struggles drove his burning shir wound against a rock poking out of the ground. His vision swam with cold fire, with the black burning agony of sharp stone digging into the open wound.

Come on, he's the last one, finish him and you can live, damn it.

Grinding his teeth together, Tansen groped behind him for the sword sticking out of the assassin's torso. He found it—and lost his grip as his hand slipped on the bloody hilt. He felt the shir at his throat—Sweet Dar, he hasn't dropped it?—and forgot about his sword hilt as he grabbed at the dagger a moment before it could kill him. He grunted in pain as the wavy blade bit into his palm. Nothing hurt like a shir, not even the branding iron which his kaj had used on his chest to mark him as a shatai.

Ice and death, all of Kiloran's sharp-edged power, burned into his flesh and ignited his blood as he wrestled for the shir, so close to his throat that it stung the flesh there. The blade bit deeper into his palm, the blood making its water-smooth surface too slick to grasp firmly.

Think, think... Use your head.

He rocked back and rolled harder onto his wound, fighting the blackout threatened by his pain-swamped senses. He shifted just enough to grope wildly with his other hand and found the hilt of his sword again. Just barely able to reach it... The assassin screamed as Tansen's groping hand finally bumped hard into the sword buried in his torso.

 This is it—move!

 Tansen knocked the shir away from his throat, got a better grip on his sword hilt, and yanked it up with the last of his strength. When he felt the hot flow of his enemy's vitals, the death-sag of the body clinging to him, he knew he had won.

He wasn't so sure he would live, though.

Six dead. 

Was that all of them? Would more come now, a second wave? He hoped not. He wasn't sure he could even stand up, never mind fight a few more assassins. Darfire, hadn't Josarian told him only two days ago to get his strength back before going into combat again? 

Josarian...

No, he couldn't think about Josarian. Not now.

Get up. You have work to do.

All they had dreamed together, all they had fought for side by side, Sileria united and free... 

Six dead.

It had come to this. As it always did. Silerians fighting each other to the death, killing each other in murderous feuds over past insults, over the countless betrayals and injuries they committed against each other only because they couldn't seem to help themselves. Only because it had always been this way here. Only because they had always hated each other even more than they hated any of their conquerors. 

He himself had come here straight from Elelar's bedchamber, where he had gone to kill her in vengeance for her betrayal of Josarian. Wouldn't Mirabar hate him forever now, only because he hadn't been able to do it, after all, and she would see that as betrayal, too? Hadn't he been driven there by the horror of Kiloran's vengeance against Josarian—Josarian who had killed the waterlord's only son in vengeance over Kiloran's betrayal of him? And Kiloran had always wanted Tansen dead, Tansen most of all, in vengeance for what he had done to Armian.

Must it always be this way here?

The wound at his side hurt so much that every breath was agony. His bleeding hand hurt like all the Fires of Dar. His palms were scarred, like those of all shallaheen, from slicing them open for bloodpacts and bloodvows; but no one was ever crazy enough to do that with a shir. He could hardly move the wounded hand, it was so painful.

Get up.

He couldn't lie here all day, just waiting for another assassin to come along and find him. And he'd never make it to Dalishar's caves now, not in this condition.

Sanctuary. 

He must find a Sanctuary of the Sisterhood. He would be safe there. No Silerian ever violated Sanctuary, not feuding clans, not vengeful toreni, not even the Society. 

There was a Sanctuary east of here, down another of Mount Dalishar's treacherous paths. It was inhabited by Sister Velikar, who was old, ugly, and notoriously mean, but a gifted healer.

I'll never make it.

He had to make it. 

Focus on the task at hand—which, in this case, would be not dying in a pool of assassin's blood.

He lifted his head... and was promptly and humiliatingly sick.

Some legendary warrior.

He took steady, controlled, agonizing breaths, fighting to stay conscious. When he thought there was a reasonable chance that he wouldn't pass out, he slowly pushed the ground away and rose to one hand and both knees. Body trembling, head spinning, wounds throbbing, he stayed there awhile, concentrating on the heroic tasks of not fainting and not vomiting again.

My swords.

He looked around and found one lying close at hand. The motto of his kaj, carved into the blade in Kintish hieroglyphs—Draw it with honor, sheathe it with courage—was now obscured by filth. For the first time in his entire career as a shatai, Tansen didn't flip the blood off before resheathing it, didn't wipe it or clean it. He just slid the dusty blood-encrusted blade into its sheath. 

He knew damn well where the other sword was, the one with his own motto carved into its blade. From one thing, another is born—as the shatai was born of the orphaned shallah boy, so long ago.

He gripped the sword's hilt, now sticky with blood rather than slick with it, braced his knee against the assassin's corpse, and pulled. He thought he'd vomit again, or at least that his skull would split wide open. He tried to breathe without actually letting his wounded side move, but that only made him dizzier. 

There was enough of the assassin still clinging to this blade that Tansen made the monumental effort of wiping it—on the leggings of another nearby corpse—before sheathing it in the soft leather harness which fit him like a second skin.

Then, somehow, he was on his feet, leaning over, one hand resting on his knee while he studied the bleeding palm of the other hand. He slowly closed the coldly burning hand into a fist. He should wrap it, try to stop the bleeding, but he lacked the energy. 

He was filthy. And thirsty. Water. He should find water. 

Dar have mercy, let it be safe water.

Kiloran's secret control of the Zilar River had shocked them all, and had enabled the old waterlord to ambush and kill Josarian. If Kiloran controlled any water supplies this close to the Dalishar caves, this deep in Josarian's territory, then they were in desperate trouble. Tansen could fight as many assassins as Kiloran could send, but no one could do without water. That was, of course, what made the waterlords so powerful. 

Water. I need water.

Yes, he would find water... Damn it, where is there water around here? He couldn't remember. Had he ever needed to know before? 

He took a good look around... and finally saw the extent of the carnage. Six brutally slain men lay in a sea of blood. Some of their eyes were open. One's head was barely still attached to his body. Another's guts had spilled all around him.

Tansen didn't even have the energy to roll them into the brush or make them look more decent. He pitied whoever came upon this scene, but he had reached the end of his strength. There was nothing he could do about the sight of this bloodbath now.

Focus.

He would find water, then he would head toward Sanctuary. Once there, he would try to get a message to Mirabar.

Awaiting news of Elelar's death.

Yes, that was what Mirabar would want to know, even more than she'd want to know where in the Fires Tansen was.

Don't come back until it is done, she had said.

He had seen the look in her eyes when they had gone their separate ways after Josarian's death, when he had sent her to safety at Dalishar and had set out for Chandar to kill Elelar in the night. He had heard the steel in her voice.

Don't come back to me unless you can show me Elelar's blood on your sword.

She'd never forgive him for not doing it. And he'd have to be a much braver man not to dread a woman's wrath. He'd rather walk all the way to Lake Kandahar now, to face Kiloran in his underwater palace, than ascend the rest of Mount Dalishar and tell Mirabar, as he must, that he—

A terrible fear seized him, his dazed mind finally realizing what this ambush meant. If Kiloran had set a trap for him on the slopes of Dalishar, then he might have done the same for Mirabar. Perhaps with these very men.

Dar have mercy, could she already be dead? Did she make it to the sacred caves, or was she lying in a pool of her own blood somewhere farther up the mountain?

She was far from helpless even when alone, and he knew that Najdan had been with her—Najdan, the assassin who had betrayed Kiloran to protect Mirabar and save the Firebringer. So even if there was an attack, Mirabar might well have survived it.

But he had to be sure. He couldn't go to Sanctuary now, not until he was sure she was alive. She might hate him for all eternity for letting Elelar live, but he...

I need to know she's safe. I need to know that much.

He staggered forward, gritting his teeth, refusing to think about the punishing hike ahead, the great distance he would have to go in this condition—if I don't find her body only a hundred paces ahead of me—much of it in the dark.

He had taken perhaps a dozen steps when he fell to his knees. 

He tried to get up. Fell down. Tried again. Collapsed face down on the hard, dusty ground.

Mira...

He pressed a hand to his aching wound. The hand came away drenched in blood. 

That's not good.

He put his hand back over the wound and pressed hard. The pain made his vision go black, but pressure was the only way he could think of to slow the blood flow. 

Josarian, I will join you...

No, he wouldn't, after all. Even if he, so long a skeptic, went to the Otherworld, Josarian would not. A lifelong believer, Josarian had died in the dripping crystalline jaws of the White Dragon, from which the only escape was oblivion when Kiloran finally died. Josarian, who had never feared death because he believed it would unite him in the Otherworld with his beloved Calidar, the wife who had died in childbirth... Josarian was forever gone. He had believed in sacrifice, had served Dar to the exclusion of all else...

And You betrayed him, Dar. You let him die. Damn You forever.

Sacrilege seemed an irrelevant sin now. 

I am prepared to die today...

He felt dust inside his mouth. He hadn't even been aware of speaking aloud. He should probably say his prayers—and his curses—silently, given that he was dying face down in the dirt.

A warrior's death. Definitely less glorious than most people imagine.

What did the Moorlanders say? May you die on a day which is good for it. Moorlanders also said things like: May your death be a good one. And: I will give you a good death.

Not exactly a cheerful race.

Barbarians by any standards. But he had liked living among them briefly, even so. Their bloodlust made them like Silerians, in a way, and he had been homesick.

Focus...

All those years in exile... nine years, and not a day had passed without him longing for Sileria, for her harsh and merciless mountains, her lush and fertile lowlands, the scents of rosemary and wild fennel which filled the air after the long rains, the blossoming of the almond trees, the ripening of the lemon trees, the brassy Silerian sunshine glinting off the red-tiled roofs of crumbling Kintish temples and shrines, the towering cliffs overlooking sun-drenched beaches...

I am prepared...

Of course, he'd mostly visited the beaches on dark-moon nights, on those long-ago smuggling expeditions with his grandfather... Until the night his grandfather was too old to come and had stayed behind in Gamalan... The night Tansen's life changed forever, when he found a great warrior lying close to death on the beach of a rocky cove...

Armian...

Tansen felt his life seeping away. If the next person to find him was an enemy, he would certainly die.

Armian...

He'd probably die anyway. He wouldn't reach help if he couldn't walk, and he couldn't walk if he couldn't even get up. He didn't know if his eyes were closed or if his vision had simply gone black.

Now he saw nothing.

Nothing but memories. Nothing but the past.

Father... I am coming.

He should get up, should try once more.

I am coming at last.

Chapter Four

Enter not prayerless 

into the domain of Dar,

 for She forgives no slight.

                              —Silerian Proverb

Eastern Sileria 

The Year of Late Rains

Tansen mar Dustan shah Gamalani—Tansen son of Dustan, clan of Gamalan—was fifteen years old the night his life changed forever.

He had ventured forth from his native mountain village and come down to the sea tonight, to a hidden rocky cove, to await Aljuna, the half-Kintish, half-Moorlander pirate with whom he and his grandfather regularly engaged in a modestly profitable smuggling trade.

It was a dark-moon night, as it always was for their smuggling runs. Both moons, Ejara and Abayara, had turned their faces from Sirkara for a few nights. This was their way, Tansen's grandfather said, of granting their blessing to smugglers.

In better times, his grandfather also said, the last of the Gamalani (there were very few left, thanks to a decades-long bloodfeud with the Sirdari clan) wouldn't stoop to dealing with a pirate. But better times were long ago and far away. The Valdani were draining Sileria with the demands wrought by their endless wars of conquest and by the ever-growing population of Valdania, the empire ruled from the great city of Valda. Everything good was either scarce in Sileria or forbidden to Silerians by Valdani law. So anyone in Sileria with a little money—toreni, merchants, waterlords, assassins, and even some Valdani—appreciated the goods discreetly made available by Sileria's hard-working smugglers. Even people without money (the shallaheen, namely, who accounted for more people and less money than any other group in Sileria) could always use the necessities, and even the occasional little luxuries, which had become so scarce during two centuries of Valdani rule in Sileria.

After sharing the profits of their smuggling trade with the Society, as was customary in exchange for protection (or at least for benevolent disinterest), Tansen and his grandfather usually had enough left over to keep the family fed and clothed. Their womenfolk—Tansen's mother and sister—relied on the two of them. Before Tansen had spoken his first word or learned to lie (which, among the shallaheen, was at roughly the same time), his father had been killed by Outlookers, the gray-clad occupation army of the Valdani; so the Gamalani had lit his funeral pyre and scattered his ashes long ago. 

More than once since then, Tansen's mother had ventured higher into the mountains on the anniversary of his father's death, to ask the Guardians to Call him forth from the Otherworld. She seldom found the Guardians on these expeditions, though. They had once been the most honored sect in the nation, advisors to the Yahrdan himself, the traditional ruler of Sileria; but now they all lived in hiding and on the run, hunted not only by the Valdani, who had outlawed them, but also by their ancient blood enemies, the Honored Society. And even when Tansen's mother did find Guardians high up in the mountains, they had never been able to Call his father. If the Otherworld was anything more than a pretty tale, it seemed that his father had failed to reach it.

Tansen's mother did claim, however, to have once seen his dead brother in the flames of a sacred Guardian fire. Tansen himself had seen nothing during that Calling, at which he had been present, and so he remained skeptical. He scarcely remembered his brother, either. When Tansen was still very young, his brother had gone off, like so many men these days, to join the mad zanareen, those wild-eyed religious fanatics who lived atop the snowy peak of Mount Darshon and awaited the coming of the Firebringer. One day, suffering from the common delusion of a zanar that he himself was Dar's chosen one, he had flung himself into the fiery volcano—and died, as they all did.

As Tansen approached manhood, times got even harder. And so the Gamalani had entered the smuggling trade and offered the pirate Aljuna a bloodpact to ensure trust and loyalty in their mutual business. Aljuna had agreed to it without having any idea what a shallah bloodpact entailed. Tansen thought the pirate would faint when they made the diagonal cut across his palm to mingle their blood with his.

Foreigners, Tansen's grandfather said, were thin-skinned, weak-stomached, and pale-blooded.

His grandfather was not here tonight, though, as Tansen awaited the weak-stomached pirate with whom they did business. The rainy season had long since passed and the hot dry season was approaching, but his grandfather's knees now pained him terribly even so. So Tansen had insisted he could come alone. Was he not a man—or nearly so? His mother had added her exhortations to his own, and the old man had finally agreed to remain behind. 

Now, as he approached the shore, Tansen heard someone else moving through the dark night. He didn't doubt for a moment that it must be Outlookers. Who else would be so clumsy, so loud? He watched two of them, clad their in anonymous gray tunics, pass by without ever looking into the shadows where he crouched. He could have stolen the purse of the nearest one, they were so close, but he was no thief. Besides, he knew the penalty for stealing from a Valdan, and he had no wish to wind up in the mines of Alizar.

Not that he would be caught. His grandfather said that only a deaf one-eyed half-wit would let himself be caught by Outlookers. (Tansen always hoped this wasn't a description of his father, who had been caught and killed by Outlookers.)

Tansen paused behind a rock as more Outlookers passed him in the night. He could hear still more of them overhead, high up on the cliffs, calling to someone else farther down the coast. The beach was practically swarming with them tonight!

This could make things difficult, Tansen realized. Not that he had any intention of giving up and going home. The stubborn streak which had kept his clan locked in a bloodfeud with the Sirdari long after anyone left alive even knew why it had started now spurred him on to outwit the Outlookers patrolling the coast. His family needed the income too much for him to scurry away like a coward just because the Valdani evidently had decided to start cracking down on smugglers. 

He looked over his shoulder, up past the dark cliffs, up to where Mount Darshon rose to loom over Sileria. It was the home of Dar, the fiery goddess whose sighs had the power to sweep Gamalan clear off its own mountain perch. Even on a moonless night like this, Tansen could see the snow atop Darshon reflecting the starlight. On a twin-moon night, it always gleamed so brightly that it almost hurt the eye to look upon it.

Enter not prayerless into the domain of Dar, his grandfather always said. And so Tansen prayed now, because, as his grandfather also said, If Dar is on our side, then who in the Fires could possibly be on theirs? With Dar at his back, Tansen crept through the shadows and braved the wrath of the Outlookers, and the all-powerful empire which stood behind them, to collect his shipment of contraband from the pirate Aljuna.

Unfortunately, all his daring proved to be pointless. He waited for hours at the usual place, twice slipping into the shadows as more Outlookers passed by, but Aljuna never came. Tansen strained his eyes, fruitlessly peering out at the black infinity of the sea, but there was never any sign of the pirate's oarboat. At one point, he saw a light out there, glowing erratically in the distance for a while, but then it disappeared without ever coming any closer. Just some ship, he supposed, sliding over the curve of the dark horizon as it made its way to some port in the Kintish Kingdoms. 

Although he was annoyed, Tansen liked Aljuna, so he hoped the pirate wasn't dead or in chains. Aljuna reputedly led a dangerous life even apart from risking the wrath of Outlooker patrols. It was whispered that he had business with the Honored Society. If that was the case, Tansen's grandfather said, then the less they knew—or even thought—about it, the better. But Tansen did think about it. Who did not think about the Society, after all?

He had not yet told anyone of his own ambitions to become an assassin, not even his grandfather. He knew his family would worry, might even object, considering what a dangerous life it was. But he was strong and quick, a good fighter compared to others his age. What else was there for him in Sileria, if not the Society and the life of an assassin? 

His clan's bloodfeud with the Sirdari was finally over. The Sirdari had even given a bride to Gamalan in honor of the truce. So Tansen wouldn't be required to slice open his palm and pledge vengeance against that clan. Instead, he could choose his own destiny. He could go to a waterlord and offer his loyalty, his service, his life. Perhaps he would gain entry into the Society by fulfilling a bloodvow, by killing the enemy of a waterlord. Not only would it put his talents to better use than smuggling—or, he thought with disdain, than tending sheep—but it would also enable him to protect and care for his family.

Tansen yawned sleepily, then realized with disgust that the night was nearly gone. Sitting here dreaming about being inducted into the Honored Society wasn't accomplishing anything. And if he got so tired he fell asleep on the beach, even the Outlookers were bound to notice him once the sun rose. He got up and quietly started heading back toward the hidden trail he'd used to descend the cliffs hours ago. 

Tansen froze when he heard one rock strike another softly in the dark, as if displaced by a foot moving over the uneven ground. He had kept to the shadows and felt sure he had made no sound to betray his presence—but not sure enough to bet his life on it. When more stones shifted, his hand moved to his yahr, preparing to use it if necessary. He had never killed a man and didn't want the first time to be tonight. There would, of course, be a first time—for a shallah, there inevitably was—but he didn't especially want it to be now, alone in the dark, on a failed smuggling run, with Outlookers crawling all over the beach.

Please, Dar, he prayed devoutly, let that be another smuggler I hear.

Being caught by an Outlooker would be too humiliating. And killing one... Well, that would cause a lot more trouble than it was worth. The Valdani rarely interfered with Silerians killing each other, but they were so ruthless in punishing even the slightest offense against a Valdan that no one dared actually murder one. Tansen didn't think anyone had killed an Outlooker since the days of Harlon the waterlord some thirty years ago.

He considered his options for escape, in case that was an Outlooker stalking him in the dark rather than another smuggler trying, as he was, to go unnoticed. 

Now several rocks slid against each other at once.

If that's a smuggler, he's a very noisy one, Tansen thought critically.

He heard a stumble, a fall—and a stifled sound of pain.

Not an Outlooker. Surely an Outlooker would call for help?

This was someone who, like Tansen, wanted to keep his presence on the coast tonight a secret; someone who didn't want the Outlookers to catch him. 

Another smuggler, then? Tansen thought it would be better not to get involved, better to escape quietly before more Outlookers happened along. But what if it was an assassin? Someone from the Society, who would remember the young shallah who had helped him tonight, and who would perhaps even bring Tansen to the attention of a waterlord? 

Suddenly, it seemed worth the risk. Tansen decided to approach the unseen figure and, if it wasn't an Outlooker, offer assistance.

He crept closer to where the stranger had fallen. Now he could hear harsh breathing. Someone in pain, trying to make no sound. Moving silently, Tansen came closer still—and slipped on a wet stone. He recovered quickly, believed he made no sound... but the harsh breathing stopped that instant. Tansen peered into the syrupy darkness but could still see nothing, for the stranger had chosen to hide in the murkiest crevices of the rocks even in the moonless night. Now they listened to each other's deadly silence, each one awaiting a sign from the other: friend or enemy?

Since Tansen was the one creeping up on a wounded person, he decided to speak first. "Who are you?" he asked in shallah dialect, giving away his location.

He heard a slight whisper of movement and guessed the stranger was rolling to face him. 

"Who are you?" came the reply, issued in common Silerian. A grown man's voice, deep and probably powerful under normal circumstances, but laced with pain now and kept soft lest they be overheard.

Many shallaheen didn't speak common Silerian, but Tansen did. He and his grandfather had been coming down to the coast for several years, after all, and Silerian wasn't all that different from shallah—just enough to be confusing until you got used to it. Tansen hesitated, still unsure. Very few Outlookers spoke any native Silerian dialects, but those that did usually spoke only common Silerian.

Friend or enemy?

"I am a shallah," Tansen said in Silerian. He figured it was a safely vague answer.

After a pause, the man said, "So am I, come to think of it."

Tansen switched to the mountain dialect again. "Then why don't you speak shallah?"

"I do, but not very... well." This time the reply was in shallah, though the stranger had hesitated over a word.

"Why not?"

There was a longer pause. Finally he answered, "I was born in the mountains, as was my father. But I was not raised there, I don't remember him, and my mother spoke only common Silerian with me. You are..." The man gave up and switched to Silerian again. "You are the first shallah I've spoken to in years."

"That's strange," Tansen said rudely. Strange for someone born to a shallah clan, certainly. Blood ties were everything among the shallaheen. A man was no one without his clan.

"Yes, I suppose it does seem strange." When Tansen didn't reply, the man added, "The Outlookers are after me."

"Why?"

"It's not for smuggling." The voice sounded dry, despite the pain. The stranger obviously knew why a lone shallah would be creeping around the coast in the middle of the night.

Tansen didn't bother to ask again why the Outlookers were hunting for him. Any reason—or no reason at all—could suffice. Tansen was starting to suspect this was just some stupid toren who'd gotten himself into trouble, because, after all, what assassin didn't know any shallaheen? However, a toren was bound to have wealth or influence of some kind. Anyhow, it would be bad manners to leave him dying here now that they had spoken. 

So Tansen said politely, "I will help you."

"Good." The voice was even dryer as it said, "Because I didn't come all this way to die on the beach."

Tansen knelt down, close enough now to discover the stranger was soaking wet. "What's happened to you?"

"I was on a smuggling ship that—"

"Whose ship?" Tansen interrupted, already dreading the answer.

"Ah. You were waiting for Aljuna?"

"What's happened to him?"

"You're the smugglers he had to deliver some cargo to?" 

"Yes."

"Weren't there supposed to be two of you?"

"The other one couldn't come."

"I'm sorry," the stranger said, his breath still harsh and labored. "Aljuna's dead by now. I suppose everyone on board died, unless someone else jumped overboard, too, and made it this far."

"Why would they be d—"

"The Valdani burned Aljuna's ship."

"They burned it?" That must have been the light he'd seen hovering on the dark horizon a while ago. "They burned a smuggling ship? Why didn't they just arrest Aljuna's crew and confisca—"

"They weren't after his cargo."

"What were they after?" Tansen asked, bewildered. Poor Aljuna.

The man gasped as a new wave of pain assaulted him. "We've got to get off this beach."

"The Outlookers. Of course. Will they be searching for survivors?"

"They'll be searching for me." 

"I have two donkeys hidden in a cave in the cliffs. The Outlookers won't find us there."

"How far?"

"Not far, but the way is very steep. It'll be a hard trek for you, if you're badly hurt." When there was no answer, he prodded, "How badly are you hurt?"

"I'm not sure."

"How did you get hurt? When they attacked the ship?"

"No. After I jumped overboard. A dragonfish."

"Fires of Dar," Tansen whispered.

Like most shallaheen, he was secretly afraid of the sea and terrified of dragonfish. The sea-born folk might be strange, ignorant, and smelly, but no one could deny their courage. They risked death from the dragonfish every day of their lives, and once a year they openly confronted dragonfish in deadly combat during Bharata Ma-al. Tansen was thankful they didn't hold the bharata during the dark-moon, since the shore was awash with purple dragonfish blood throughout the Time of Slaughter, and he wouldn't relish sloshing around in it while he and Aljuna... Dead, he realized with sorrow. The colorful pirate was dead.

He asked the stranger, "Where did the dragonfish get you?"

"I'm not sure. I got banged against some rocks, too, and right now, I can't tell what parts of me have been mauled by the dragonfish and what parts have been smashed against the rocks."

"May I..." Tansen put his hand on the stranger. His back was soaking wet. It was too dark to tell if it was water or blood. And he was cold, terribly cold. 

This isn't good.

"I don't think anything's broken," the man said. "I made it this far, after all."

Not just through the water and onto the beach, Tansen realized, but away from the exposed shoreline and into the rocky crevices below the cliffs. It must have taken tremendous will.

"But if I leave a trail of blood," the stranger added wearily, "the Outlookers will see it as soon as the sun rises."

If this was indeed a toren, then he was tough, Tansen thought. As tough as any assassin.

"I must find the wounds," Tansen said decisively, "and bind them. But since I won't be able to see if we're leaving a trail of blood..." He took a breath and broke the news. "I'm sorry, we'll have to leave a false trail. That will mean a longer journey to reach the cave."

"But it's a good idea." The man tried to move, then gasped in pain. "It got my leg. Now I feel it."

Tansen felt for the stranger's leg. He heard the sharp intake of breath when his fingers found the wound. He stripped off his worn tunic, used his teeth to tear it, and bound the man's wounded leg. The wound he found on the stranger's shoulder was worse and took longer to bind. By then, his hands were coated with blood, and he realized the stranger might die before they reached the safety of the cave.

Outlookers passed their hiding place in the shadows once. Tansen and the stranger froze, scarcely daring to breathe. 

If they catch me now, with him.... Tansen decided not to finish the thought. Instead, he strained his ears to hear what they were saying. 

Unlike many shallaheen, he understood Valdan, the official language of Sileria for two hundred years. His grandfather had insisted he learn it, saying that a shrewd man understood his enemies, and so Tansen had dutifully spent a year of his childhood at the Valdani school in the largest town of his native district. However, he couldn't make out the Outlookers' hushed words now. He heard the urgency in their voices, though. After they passed by, he asked the stranger again, "Who are you, roshah?"

"Roshah... That means... outsider in shallah, doesn't it?"

"Outsider, stranger, foreigner. All of these things." Tansen shrugged, then realized the roshah couldn't see the gesture in the dark. "I didn't mean it as an insult," he assured the man. It often was meant as an insult, since few things were worse to a shallah than being an outsider, unknown and distrusted. "But without knowing your name..." He paused and waited, then finally repeated, "Who are you?"

"Help me up," was the only reply.

He was a big man, and heavy with muscle. Whoever he was, Tansen realized, he was in the prime of life and honed for combat and endurance. When Tansen slung the stranger's arm over his shoulder and supported his sagging weight as best he could, the man froze for a moment.

"By all the gods above and below," he said, his voice sharp with surprise as he uttered the strange phrase. "You're just a boy. I thought from your voice—"

"I am man enough," Tansen said flatly.

"Yes." There was both humor and apology in the man's voice as he added, "Yes, I've already noticed that."

"And Dar will shield us."

"Really? Why will She do that?"

Tansen heard the amusement and wondered at it. "Because they are Valdani," he said simply, "and we are shallaheen."

"She hasn't done such a good job of shielding you, so far."

"Me?"

"All of you. Everyone sweeps through Sileria: Moorlanders, Kints, Valdani. And Dar does nothing—"

"Shh..." Tansen pretended to hear more Outlookers coming, but really he was just trying to save the roshah from sacrilege. He didn't think it was wise to speak disrespectfully of Dar, especially not tonight when they so needed Her favor.

They proceeded in silence, moving carefully. The roshah tried not to be a burden, tried to carry his own weight, but he was growing steadily weaker. Tansen was strong and used to long treks over rough terrain, but he was drained by bearing more and more of his companion's weight as dawn chased them along the rocky cliffs and steep smuggling trails.

The sun was rising by the time they reached the cave, which was rich with the smell of Tansen's bored donkeys. Tansen left the man in the cave, barely pausing long enough to hand him the waterskin before he left to double back alone and cover their trail as best he could. Only when he was satisfied that no one could follow them did he return to the cave.

The roshah was lying where Tansen had left him, deep inside the cave, in a second chamber whose entrance was hard to find unless you knew it was there. Tansen spoke to him, received no reply, and realized he must be asleep or unconscious. So he fed and watered his two donkeys, ate and drank a little himself, and then took his lantern to the stranger's side to better examine his wounds in the dark cave.

It was his first real opportunity to study the man. His clothes were foreign, strange styles made of good materials. Very nice boots, Tansen noted with envy. Yet the stranger looked Silerian, albeit a little big for a Silerian—olive-skinned, dark-haired, strong-boned. He even wore a jashar around his waist, though it was now grubby with sand and red with his own blood.

At least it will tell me who he is.

Like most of his people, Tansen could neither read nor write. But the shallaheen communicated messages and information with jashareen—elaborately knotted and woven ropes, strands, and cords dotted with colored beads. The jashar a man wore around his waist—like the one a woman wore as a headdress on special occasions—identified him and his history. More elaborate ones covered doorways and walls, identifying merchants and craftsmen, codifying religious creeds, commemorating special events, and even relating shallah history and legends.

As Tansen started to untie the jashar from the unconscious man's waist so he could get a better look at it, he suddenly realized that it wasn't red from blood—it was just red, made that way to begin with.

Darfire, he is an assassin! 

No one who wasn't would dare to wear the traditional red jashar of the Honored Society.

Thank You, Dar, thank You for placing him in my path.

Surely this was a sign that Tansen's destiny was at hand, that the time had come for his ambitions to bear fruit.

He tugged more insistently at the tangled fastening of the jashar, then pulled it away from the stranger's body and held it closer to the lantern light to study it. 

Yes, he was right, some of the beads were yellow—the yellow beads which only an assassin or his family members wore on a jashar. He fingered the woven strands and knots, looking for the man's name, his clan, the identity of the waterlord he served...

He stopped breathing when he saw it. His blood ran hot and cold at once. Not all the beads were yellow, were they? He grabbed the waterskin and spilled water over the beads, wasting the precious substance in his haste. He washed away the dried blood and wiped the beads on his leggings, then held them up to the light again. Yes, now he was sure of it: Some of the beads were clear, made of water crystallized by sorcery.

Clear beads on a red jashar.

A waterlord?

No, not quite a waterlord. Son of a waterlord, heir to one, according to the way the knots were tied around the beads.

And the name...

Armian...

Armian mar Harlon shah Idalari.

Armian, son of Harlon, clan of Idalar. 

The Idalari, possibly the most powerful clan in the Society. Harlon, the great waterlord who had fought the Valdani for years, until they finally murdered him, throwing the Society into chaos for a time.

And Armian, the baby hidden from the Valdani who hunted him after Harlon's death, determined to kill him, too. Everyone knew the story. The infant had been spirited out of Sileria so that he might live, so that he would fulfill his destiny to return one day and free Sileria from the Valdani. Armian... whom everyone was said was the awaited one, the chosen one...

The Firebringer.

Tansen heard the blood roaring in his ears. His hands shook as he fingered the jashar of Armian, the heroic warrior about whom he had heard his whole life. The Firebringer. He felt dizzy. He must be dreaming. He looked again at the strong face of the unconscious man he had brought to this cave.

That's the Firebringer lying there.

He had saved the life of the Firebringer! Dar had smiled upon him, had shown him Her favor, and had made his life count for something. The Firebringer had stumbled while coming home to fulfill his destiny, and a shallah boy from Gamalan had caught him before he fell from grace.

Tansen couldn't wait to tell his grandfather.

And we will be free. He's here, alive, and he will...

Actually... now that he took a hard look, Tansen realized that Armian didn't look like he was going to do much besides die in this cave. 

Panic flooded him. He couldn't let the Firebringer die! Especially not after hauling him all this way like a sack of wet grain, he thought with a touch of annoyance.

A Sister. I've got to find a Sister.

He jumped to his feet, recalling that there was a Sanctuary not far from here. He could get there and be back with a Sister before midday. He started to sort through the spare supplies he and his grandfather kept stored here, looking for another tunic.

No wonder the Outlookers were searching for him. No wonder there were so many of them on the coast!

He found the spare tunic and pulled it over his head, then re-tied his jashar—plain hemp dotted with the rough clay beads of a shallah—around his waist.

No wonder the Valdani burned Aljuna's ship. He froze briefly as he realized that the rumors had been true. Aljuna did indeed have business with the Society. The most serious and secret business of all: Bringing Armian out of hiding and back to Sileria to free us all.

He returned to the assassin's side and tried to rouse him. "Siran," he said, using the traditional term of respect. No response. "Siran..." Nothing. "Armian?" A flicker of the eyelids this time.

Tansen gritted his teeth and shook him. "Armian!"

Suddenly Tansen was lying on his back, dizzy from the hard thud his head made against the stone floor of the cave. He didn't gasp though. He couldn't. A big hand was wrapped around his throat, cutting off all air. 

After a tense and confusing moment, Armian released his hold. His face screwed up in pain as his injuries punished him for his violent reflexes.

Tansen stayed where he was, too stunned to move.

Armian rolled away. "Sorry."

"I... I understand. You... I..." I frightened you, didn't really seem the right thing to say. Indeed, Tansen couldn't think of anything to say. So he just sat up and silently rubbed his throat, gulping down some air now that he had the chance.

"Where are we?" Armian asked in a strained voice.

"The cave I told you about."

"Oh. Yes. And did you tell me your name?"

"Tansen mar Dustan shah Gamalani."

"Ah. Tansen." He lay still for a few moments, obviously trying to master the pain. Then he looked hard at Tansen. "Why did you call me Armian?"

Tansen crossed his fists over his chest and bowed his head. A formal greeting, a gesture of respect. "Forgive my impertinence, siran."

Armian sighed. "I didn't mean that. You don't have to call me 'master.'"

"It doesn't really mean mast..." Well, actually, yes, it did. "We say it to show respect for someone, siran," he explained. "And who deserves respect more than you?"

"I see." Armian watched him closely. "When did I tell you who I am?"

"You didn't."

"Then who did?" He looked menacing now, despite the weakness and the wounds. He looked like an assassin.

Tansen met his gaze and spoke carefully. "The jashar."

Armian's expression changed. "Ah. Of course. The jashar. I'm not used to..." He sighed again, then winced. "No one in the Moorlands knows what it means. It's just decoration to them."

"You were in the Moorlands? But everyone said you had been taken to Kinto."

"Well, of course." The humor was back in his voice, tinged with exhaustion. "You didn't think my clan wanted to draw the Valdani a map, do you? They convinced everyone I was clear on the other side of the Middle Sea from where they had really sent me."

"Your clothes are Moorlander?"

"Mmmm... But the jashar..."

"You wore it so we would know who you are, but the Valdani wouldn't, not even if they found you."

"And they nearly did find me. Someone betrayed us. The Valdani attacked Aljuna's ship knowing I was supposed to be on it." He closed his eyes, looking as if keeping them open was too much of an effort. "I jumped just before they boarded. I saw them set fire to it..." 
      "Did you see Aljuna die?" Tansen asked, reaching for hope.

"No, but he's dead." Seeing Tansen's doubt, he explained, "They weren't taking prisoners, Tansen. But perhaps Aljuna died quickly," Armian added with a touch of kindness. "I just hope they believe a dragonfish finished me before I reached shore."

"The dragonfish. Your wounds," Tansen said. "I'm going to find a Sister to tend you. I should be back here with her by midday."

"A Sister?"

"Yes. The Sisterhood. You know."

"I've never seen one, but I've been told about them." Armian's dark eyes opened again. Tansen marveled at the strength of will he saw in them. "Can she be trusted?"

"She doesn't need to know the truth. I'll hide your jashar before I go."

"I mean, can she be trusted not to tell the Outlookers there's a wounded stranger lying in this cave?"

The question surprised Tansen. "Of course. The Sisters would never—"

"There's no 'of course' about it," Armian said. "I'm in this condition because I've been betrayed once already. And Silerians are famous for betrayal, aren't they—we?" He paused, then added, "Nothing ever really changes here, does it?"

"How do you know about... about..."

"About you? Sileria? Us?" He closed his eyes again, drifting away. "My mother, her brother, and the two assassins that came with us to the Moorlands." 

"Where are they now? Didn't they want to come home with you?"

"It was a long time ago. Almost thirty years have passed. Only my uncle is left alive now, and he's too old and sick for a journey like this." He sighed. "But he and the others all made sure I would be ready."

"Ready?" Tansen held his breath waiting for the answer.

"To come back. To, uh, come home." His breath was shallow, his eyes sunken as he added, "To fight the Valdani."

"It is you," Tansen breathed in awe.

"Of course it's me," was the weary response.

The Firebringer.

"I'll... I'll get help. You'll get well. I promise."

Armian didn't reply. Perhaps he was already asleep.

Tansen hid Armian's jashar, put the waterskin within his reach, blew out the lantern, and left the cave.

Outside, the brassy Silerian sunshine beat down upon the gold and amber mountains, so lovely in their harshness, so stark in their beauty. Darshon loomed overhead, its snowcapped peak piercing thin morning clouds, wisps of steam coiling up from the heart of the volcano. A faint scent of smoke rode the breeze, perhaps from some brush fire; the season was advancing, and soon such fires would be common. But for now, wild fennel and rosemary still perfumed the air while Silerians enjoyed the blessings of the island's most seductive season.

And under a sky more fiercely blue than any other, Tansen knew that his destiny had finally found him. It promised to be a glorious one.

Chapter Five

Anyone can hold the helm 

when the sea is calm, but 

a sailor is needed for the storm.

                  —Proverb of the Sea-Born Folk

Zarien's feet were killing him.

Walking the dryland was proving to be nearly as painful as being attacked by a dragonfish, and he knew better than anyone alive just how painful that was.

His feet had become blistered, bleeding, and swollen soon after setting out on his quest. The callused bare soles which were used to the wooden decks of small boats didn't adjust well to the harsh and unpredictable surface of the dryland—particularly not when required to walk farther each day now than Zarien had walked in the whole previous fourteen years of his life.

His second night on land, he had stolen a pair of boots. It was humiliating to resort to stealing—the Lascari despised thieves—but he didn't know how else to get the things he needed for his overland journey to Josarian's stronghold atop Mount Dalishar. So he stole food and clothing, hoping Sharifar's blessing would protect him here. However, his first crime was a failure. The boots fit so badly he discarded them halfway through the following morning and stole a pair of shoes that afternoon. The soles of his feet benefited, but his toes and heels suffered terribly from the unaccustomed chafing.

He could swim for hours without tiring, diving the coastal shallows, untangling nets, setting traps, gathering catch, and spearing prey. He could work from dawn till dusk, repairing boats, mending sails, hauling nets, heaving weights. But now that he was on land, he could barely get through each day without collapsing in an exhausted and discouraged heap. Sometimes he thought his heart would burst if he had to trek uphill for one more moment. 

However, at least struggling up and down Sileria's treacherous mountain paths distracted him somewhat from the pain of his feet. When he edged along crumbing cliffside trails that seemed ready to tumble into the gorges below, at least he wasn't thinking about the aching blisters on his heels. When his lungs burned like the Fires of Dar and his legs shook with fatigue as he hauled himself up yet another punishingly steep path, at least he forgot about his bleeding toes. Whereas when he walked through the fertile lowlands or lush valleys, he thought so much about how badly his feet hurt that he scarcely appreciated breathing normally and not worrying about falling to his death.

When he sat down to rest, then he mostly just thought about how hungry he was. He had managed to steal some fish in the first few days, mostly from the backs of carts on their way to market. He'd eaten it raw the first time, since he had no coals or brazier. That was when he discovered that raw fish from a drylander market tasted a lot different than the succulent flesh sometimes eaten raw at sea only moments after taking catch from the water. His first attempt to build a fire like landfolk, using wood, was so discouraging that he'd resorted to spying on some shallah shepherd to see how it was done. His next attempt nearly set a whole valley on fire, and he hoped the toren who had run him off his land wasn't still trying to hunt him down.

He had no interest in eating animal flesh as the landfolk did. Even cooked, it looked disgusting, and the thought of eating it raw and bloody... Just the sight and smell of those butchered carcasses turned his stomach when he passed through market towns. And he soon gave up trying to catch wildfowl—traps seemed to be sadly unreliable on land, since birds here could perch anywhere, whereas at sea their choices were very limited. 

So now, nine days after emerging reborn from the sea, he was subsisting solely on stolen bread and cheese, and whatever he could scavenge in the hills, valleys, and groves through which he passed: nuts, berries, fruit, baby potatoes, wild onions. Some of it he had discovered by himself, some he had learned about by watching the landfolk. 

Water, at least, was no problem. Although sweetwater had to be carefully rationed at sea, it seemed easy enough to find on land. Despite all the drylanders' whining about the ruthless power of the waterlords, Zarien had yet to go thirsty.

The farther inland he ventured, the more drylanders he encountered who had never seen the sea-born. The landfolk stared openly at his indigo tattoos, making him feel self-conscious about something which was normally a source of pride to him. People eyed his stahra and, not realizing it was his weapon, often asked why he was carrying an oar.

Zarien had walked in the wrong direction for an entire morning on one occasion before discovering that three shallaheen had lied to him about the location of Mount Dalishar. What did his father... what did Sorin always say? Shallaheen learned to lie before they learned to walk. He marveled that Sorin, who had never once set foot on land, knew them so well.

They called it lirtahar. It was a Society creed which had spread throughout Sileria until even the island nation's sea-born folk accepted its basic tenets; the shallaheen, however, had taken it to extremes. Lirtahar was the law of silence. In principle, it meant that no one ever told anything to the conquerors of Sileria. From the Moorlander Conquest, through the Kintish invasions, to the Valdani occupation, the people of Sileria offered their foreign rulers lies, half-truths, evasions, and silence. In practice, however, a thousand years of lirtahar meant that Sileria's disparate and quarreling factions had evolved into a secretive and suspicious culture where information was hoarded and guarded like the diamonds of Alizar, particularly among the shallaheen. This made it a little challenging for a harmless sea-born stranger to find Mount Dalishar, despite its being one of the most famous landmarks in all of Sileria. 

No one asked why he was going to Dalishar—perhaps they assumed he would lie or refuse to answer—but everyone stared at him with open curiosity. And, as he went deeper into the mountains, curiosity seemed close kin to hostility. Shallaheen were suspicious of strangers—roshah, they called him, "outsider"—and fiercely territorial. 

The war had left many of their women unguarded by male relatives, and not everyone seemed to consider Zarien too young to be a threat in this respect. Some villages had been decimated by the Valdani, attacked and burned in retaliatory raids made by the Outlookers; some of these villagers resented the sea-born for waiting so long to join Josarian's cause. Other villages Zarien passed through now seemed to be deeply divided, as was much of Sileria, due to the rift between Josarian and the Society; those who were loyal to the Society seemed to know that the sea-born were not. And in one dreary village where he stopped, an assassin claimed a bloodvow and challenged a shallah to fight to the death.

Zarien had seen people die, for the sea-born life was a dangerous one, but he had never seen one man kill another before. It left him feeling hollow. He had no idea what that particular bloodvow was about, but he had learned by now that vengeance was always the motive. Josarian's world was every bit as strange and violent as Zarien had feared. 

He wanted his family. He wanted his clan. Above all, he missed the sea. Every waking and sleeping moment, he longed for it. The scent of the ocean, the salty spray thrown up by the waves, the gentle lapping at the hull, the easy roll of the boat, the glimmering azure waters which mirrored the fiercely blue sky, the long reflection that the moons cast on the calms at night...

Don't think about it. Not now.

He would go home, in time. He would find Sharifar's mate—Please let it be Josarian! Where will I even look if it's not him?—and he would return to the sea. And although the Lascari would never accept him as one of their own again, he would at least confront his parents and find out who he really was.

Besides, if I bring home the sea king, maybe the Lascari will overlook my sojourn on land.

There had never been an exception. He knew that. To walk the dryland was to be declared dead by the Lascari, to ensure that your name was never even mentioned again. But surely there had never before been a situation like this? He was in uncharted waters now, cutting new wind in the storm-tossed world of the Firebringer.

He came upon another village now and decided to ask the way again to Dalishar. He must be close by now. 

The first two shallaheen he spoke to claimed, with every appearance of honesty, that they didn't even know the name of this village, never mind the location of Mount Dalishar. 

"I'm not a Valdan," he said impatiently, having encountered this sort of behavior too often lately.

"Neither are you one of us, roshah." The two men turned and walked away.

Many men were gathered around a large fountain in the village's main square. They were speaking loudly, engaged in a passionate debate about something. Zarien only caught a few words of the volatile conversation, since it was all in shallah and everyone seemed to be talking at once. They said something about a torena, then about the torena's servants... A journey to Shaljir... The torena had left this morning at first light... Something about Josarian... Now they were talking about Kiloran. 

Suddenly there was a lot of shouting. Some of the men seemed furious, ready to fight. Others were trying to reason with them, or at least to get between them and thus prevent a fight. Someone pulled out a yahr. Zarien had never even seen one before coming ashore nine days ago, but he recognized it easily by now and realized how menacing that simple weapon of two short sticks really was. This one gleamed darkly in the sunshine as its owner swung it in a circle over his head, making a soft whooshing sound while people stepped back and watched him warily.

Someone backing away from the scene stepped on Zarien's foot. Given how sore it was, Zarien yelped. The man whirled around, his long black hair swinging like a loose sail. His apology faded in mid-sentence as his gaze traveled over Zarien. He stared for a moment, then said something in shallah about Dalishar.

Zarien nodded and replied in common Silerian, "Yes, I'm looking for Dalishar." He wondered how the shallah knew. "Where am I now?"

"This is Chandar." 

It sounded like a real answer. Zarien plunged in and asked, "Are we near Dalishar?"

Instead of replying, the man said something that sounded like, Do you know about Josarian? Or maybe it was just, Do you know Josarian?

"No," he replied.

The shallah continued staring at him. He seemed more puzzled than unfriendly. At last he said, "They say Josarian... They say he is..."

"What?"

"Why are you going to Dalishar?"

I understood that. This is getting easier.

Zarien tried the answer he thought would work best: "It is the will of Dar."

The man frowned at him, though Zarien wasn't sure what the expression indicated, then looked briefly over his shoulder at the crowd behind him. More talking seemed to have forestalled the threatened violence, but passions were still running high.

Finally the shallah pointed northwest.

Zarien gazed up at the mountain that loomed over this village. It looked steep and rocky, but he half-thought he could live through the climb. "That's Dalishar?"

"No, Dalishar is above it. Do you see?"

"Oh." Now he saw. Dalishar wasn't as high as Darshon, but it towered over the mountains around it—and over the nearer mountain—with imposing height. 

He wanted to curse Dar, as She deserved, but that seemed unwise under the circumstances, so he just prayed, "May the wind be at my back."

Tansen returned to the cave before midday, as promised, with a Sister to tend Armian. She asked no questions upon being shown the bloody, unconscious man hidden in the stone heart of the mountain. The Sisters tended everyone impartially, gave Sanctuary to all Silerians without discrimination, and so she asked Tansen nothing about the wounded man beyond what she needed to know to treat his injuries.

If the Outlookers eventually found her and—like the barbarians they were—pressed her for answers about today, she would probably die under interrogation, as did so many people, rather than tell them anything. Lirtahar, the law of silence, ruled the mountains. To break silence, to tell the Outlookers anything, always brought terrible shame—and usually terrible vengeance, too. When a man or woman broke lirtahar and talked, revealed anything to the Valdani, he or she was shunned by everyone—village, clan, sect—and often severely punished, too. To betray the Society in any way meant certain death, of course, but ordinary people might be just as quick to kill for  vengeance when lirtahar was violated, because silence protected them all from the roshaheen and must therefore never be broken. Burning down a house, killing someone's livestock, declaring a bloodvow, or commencing a bloodfeud—all of this might be done to punish someone who'd spoken instead of remaining silent.

So Tansen had no fear that the Sister would betray them the Valdani.

It was close to sundown when Zarien rounded a bend in the rocky path—and nearly tripped over an open-eyed corpse lying in a fly-swarming pool of blood.

"By the eight winds..." 

He held his baggy sleeve to his nose as the stench of death and blood assailed his nostrils. His mouth sagged open in shock as he took in the horrifying scene.

Four... Six... No seven men lay dead... Mangled bodies were twisted awkwardly, sprawled and broken, guts exposed, a head hacked off... or mostly off... The blood... It was thick and red and everywhere... All over them, the ground, the rocks, their clothes, their weapons...

Zarien whirled away from the sight. He dropped his stahra and fell to his knees, retching violently again and again. The world faded away as nausea seized his body, his breath, his reflexes.

When he finally stopped, he rested on his hands and knees. His head felt heavy. The air was sticky and foul. Spots swam before his eyes. The partly-digested meal that his stomach had just surrendered now assumed the horror of his surroundings.

I'll never eat onions again, he thought in a daze, his mind shying away from the bloodbath he was afraid to look at again. 

He tried to blink away the blurriness in his vision. Something wet dropped onto his cheeks. That's when he realized his eyes were watering.

He drew in a steadying breath—and smelled it all again.

No, no, no...

"May the gods have mercy, may the winds guide me, may the waters be calm and my sails be strong," he prayed mindlessly, the familiar words pouring out of his mouth in a rush. "May the current carry me far... May I... I..." His mind clouded. Flies swarmed around the dead. A river of drying blood stained the harsh rocks of the dryland.

"Sharifar!" he cried, alone and afraid.

Someone groaned. A low, weak, pained sound.

Zarien leapt to his feet, poised to run.

Another groan. A slight movement from a body lying face down, just the faintest turn of the head.

They're not all dead.

His heart pounded so hard it hurt. His teeth were chattering. He clenched his jaw. His hands were shaking. Should he help or should he run? 

Think. Who are they? 

He forced himself to study the slain bodies. He finally noticed the wavy-edged daggers lying among them, along with the yahr. He knew what a shir was. Everyone knew, even those who'd never seen one before. Now he saw the black leggings and tunics, too. Presumably their tangled jashareen had originally been red, though they were so blood-soaked now that he couldn't be sure.

Assassins.

Zarien didn't want to get involved in anything to do with assassins. Or their remains.

His breath was rasping through his clenched teeth. He brushed at his eyes and swallowed hard. 

He flinched when the figure that had groaned now moved again. An arm fumbled briefly in the dirt, as if its owner were seeking purchase to rise or roll over. The body bore a leather harness and a sword sheathed at its back. That was unusual.

Zarien realized that this man's clothes weren't black. They were the rough homespun of an ordinary shallah. The left sleeve had escaped a complete drenching in blood. It still revealed its true pale color, albeit dirty and dusty.

Six assassins and an armed shallah, all dead or nearly dead after a terrible fight... So close to the stronghold of Kiloran's enemy... Hope suddenly filled Zarien's heart. 

Josarian?

He leaped forward, heedless of the blood, making his way past the dead assassins. Without hesitation now, he bent over the shallah's body, took his shoulders in a firm grip, and gently rolled him onto his side.

"Josari—"

"Argh!"

"Sorry!"

The man's lean face was screwed up in pain. His long black hair was filthy—sweat, dust, blood, mud. His eyes were squeezed shut as he muttered, "Darfire..." His deep voice was thin, his breath harsh. He rolled a little further onto his back and pressed a hand against his side. Zarien looked down and saw that he was bleeding from a wound beneath his ruined tunic. The rest of him looked terrible, too. Cuts, burns, bruises, blood, scars...

Scars... What in the Fires is that? 

There was a huge, elaborate scar on the man's chest. Zarien could see it through the shreds of the tunic. Why did someone do that to him? And surely it wasn't a battle wound? It was too regular, too patterned. It almost looked like the marks the Kints made on their loads of cargo....

The dryland seemed to tilt as Zarien realized who this was.

Tansen.

Except for Josarian, no one in Sileria was more famous than Tansen, the Firebringer's bloodbrother, the great warrior who carried two Kintish swords... And a brand carved onto his chest by the gods of Kinto. Trying to be gentle, Zarien rolled Tansen just a little further, all the way onto his back... until the movement revealed the evidence that confirmed the warrior's identity: He had been lying on his second sword, sheathed at his left side.

Two swords. The brand on his chest. Six attacking assassins dead around him.

Oh, yes. You're Tansen.

But he was near death now, already sailing toward that shore which had no other shore. 

"I will tow you back," Zarien promised him. 

At the sound of his voice, the dark eyes flickered open. Tansen looked dazed. "Wh... Who—"

"I'm Zarien. I will help you." 

"Where..." He tried to lick cracked lips. His tongue had the whitened look of someone who'd gone too long without water.

"I'll get you some water." Zarien spotted a satchel lying nearby and realized, from the Kintish symbols on it, that it must be Tansen's. "Is there a waterskin in there?"

"Where..."

Zarien looked around again, his mind racing. When these six assassins failed to return to wherever they came from, someone might be sent to find out what had happened to them.

"I'll get you some water," he repeated, "but first we must find a place to hide. Can you walk?"

"Mmmm... Help... me..."

Tansen was only average in size, but he seemed to be made of iron as Zarien hauled him off the blood-drenched ground. He was all hard muscle and wiry sinew, lean but heavy with the steely strength that people spoke about when they mentioned his name with such awe.

"I can't carry you," Zarien said as his throbbing feet protested the extra weight.

"Help... walk..." Tansen mumbled as he leaned heavily on him. "You're... boy... small..."

"I'm not that small," Zarien snapped. Yes, landfolk were a little bigger than the sea-born, but he was hardly a runt.

He heard a snort and glanced up quickly. A slight smile touched Tansen's lips, though his face contorted in pain again. "Didn't mean to... offend," he said, clearly speaking common Silerian now. Zarien hadn't been sure, before.

"Where can we go?" he asked. 

"Not up," said Tansen. "Down."

"Oh. Good."

"If more assassins come... They'll search past here... Above... Not below... To try to catch me..." But as Zarien turned and started down the path, with Tansen's arm slung over his shoulder, the warrior said, "No. Not the path."

"Through the scrub?" Zarien asked without enthusiasm.

"And... we mustn't leave... trail of blood."

"This is my only shirt," Zarien said, already resigned.

"Sorry," Tansen muttered as Zarien struggled out of the garment while trying to keep his hold on the warrior. "Get you another. Promise."

Zarien used his small stolen knife to tear up his stolen homespun tunic and fashion an adequate dressing for the wound. Tansen was silent throughout the bandaging process, his sunken eyes closed, his breathing fast and shallow. Zarien let him rest for a few moments while he went to retrieve Tansen's satchel and his own stahra, which was still lying where he had dropped it earlier. When he returned with the metal-tipped oar, he thought for a terrible moment that the unmoving warrior was dead, so still was he as he leaned against a boulder.

"Siran?" Zarien used the shallah term of respect which had become common throughout Silerian culture.

"Not dead yet," was the weary reply.

But soon, perhaps. I'd better ask before he dies, Zarien decided. "Where's Josarian?"

Tansen's eyes snapped open. "Why?"

"I must find him."

"Why?" Tansen repeated.

"I'll explain later."

"Then I'll answer you later."

Zarien stared at him with a touch of exasperation. "You really are a shallah. Not Kint or a toren, as some say—"

"And you're sea-born, aren't you?" Tansen still looked exhausted, but more alert now. "Those tattoos, that stahra..."

"Yes." Zarien supposed he shouldn't be surprised that Tansen knew what the weapon was called. A great warrior like him probably even knew how to use one. "I am Lascari." He hesitated, then added more honestly, "Or I used to be."

"Why are you looking for Josarian?"

Be patient. He guards Josarian's back. Of course he won't simply tell you where he is.

"The sea-born need him," Zarien began.

"Everyone needs him."

"It's complicated."

"I believe you."

"I have to find him," Zarien said. "My life depends on it."

Tansen lowered his head. "You're in trouble, then."

"What do you mean?"

Tansen didn't answer for a moment. When he lifted his head again, his face looked terrible. Haunted. Grief-stricken. "Josarian is dead."

Zarien felt it like a blow. "What?"

"Two nights ago. At the Zilar River."

"Dead?"

"Dead."

"You're sure?" Zarien asked.

"I was there."

"What happened?" When there was no reply, Zarien blurted, "How could you let him die?"

Pale from blood loss, Tansen seemed to go even whiter.

Zarien faltered. "I'm sorry. I didn't... didn't mean—"

"Go back to the sea, boy."

"I can't."

"He's dead."

"Then there must be another—"

"There's nothing for you here," Tansen said flatly.

"There must be!"

"Shhh..." Tansen lifted his head. He seemed to be listening for something. Zarien froze. More assassins? After a moment, Tansen shook his head. "We can't stay here and argue about it now." He winced, pressed a hand over the bandaged wound, and said, "You've helped me. That will be enough for them, if they come."

"Yes, we must hurry," Zarien dreaded the prospect of facing more assassins when Tansen couldn't even stand up by himself. "And night is coming."

"Night is always coming," the legendary warrior replied.

"Siran?" Tansen said softly.

Armian awoke with a start. His gaze flashed around the cave, glowing dimly in the lantern light, until he saw Tansen. "Tan? I... I thought there was a woman here..."

"There is." Tansen gestured to the Sister who lay sleeping in a far corner of the cave. "I brought her yesterday. She will stay until she's sure you will recover."

Armian inhaled, tensing and flexing his muscles. "I will," he said with certainty. "I feel much better."

"She says you are very strong."

"You're very strong, too." Armian studied him in the flickering light for a moment. "Not many boys could do all you've done for me."

Tansen felt his face glow with pleasure at the compliment, but he shrugged it off like a man. "You have been away from the mountains for too long. Here, I am not special."

Armian smiled. "Then Sileria's mountains must be a remarkable place."

"Yes, siran. The only place. No other place matters." Armian's smile emboldened Tansen to add, "It's good that you have come home, siran. We have waited so long."

"For what?"

"For you."

"Because I'm Harlon's son?"

How could he not know? "Because you're the Firebringer."

Armian grinned. "You seem like a bright lad, Tansen. You don't really believe that, do you?"

Tansen stared at him in shock. "Of course I do." An incredible thought occurred to him. "Don't you?"

"No."

"Then you... you aren't going to Mount Darshon to—"

"No."

"—embrace Dar?"

"Throw myself into the volcano?"

"Yes."

Armian laughed. "No. Why would I do such a crazy thing?" 
      "Because you're the—"

"No, I'm not." Armian shook his head, still grinning. "I know the story—and that's all it is, Tansen. A story. Probably made up by some hungry peasants who'd smoked a little too much Kintish dreamweed one night, hundreds of years ago."

Tansen stared at the Firebringer, so strong, so powerful, so brave. The Firebringer... who evidently had no intention of proving his identity in Dar's embrace.

Armian's expression was almost kind as he continued, "Men must solve their own problems, Tansen, rather than dreaming of someone who do it for them."

"Yes, a man like you, siran, but..."

"And the man you will be, too, son," Armian said.

Sometime after sundown, they found a shallow cave where they could spend the night. Zarien explored it with shrinking horror, since he had learned by now that such places often harbored all manner of land creatures, from the disgusting to the genuinely dangerous: bats, worms, mice, rats, snakes, mountain lions... And, he supposed, bandits, rebels, Guardians, and assassins, too.

I miss the sea, he thought for the thousandth time as he limped back to Tansen on aching feet and said, "It will do." 

Tansen was leaning heavily on the stahra. Zarien didn't really mind this undignified use of the honored weapon, since he himself had taken to using it as a staff ever since coming ashore. Besides, this was Tansen. So Zarien wouldn't protest about the stahra even if he did mind.

He led Tansen into the cave and tried to help him lower himself to the ground. The warrior's skin was hot and dry, his limbs weak and limp as he tumbled to the cave floor in a sudden collapse, nearly taking Zarien with him.

This is bad. 

"I'll get water," Zarien said. There was no reply. "Siran?" Still no reply. Tansen was unconscious again.

Zarien found a waterskin in Tansen's satchel, as he had hoped. He left the cave and stumbled through the dark, tripping over rocks, vines, plants, and tree roots. On a bright twin-moon night like this, he'd be fine at sea. On land, though, with its constant obstacles and strange surprises, he stumbled and strayed, no more capable than a drunken toren letting a pleasure yacht run straight into a reef.

He tried not to dwell on the fears that threatened to consume him. Josarian was dead, and Tansen seemed barely alive. Zarien's own life hung on a fragile bargain struck with Sharifar. His search for the goddess's mate, the truth about his birth, the destiny of the sea-born... the weight of it all pressed down upon him in the mysterious night world of the dryland.

Water, he thought, focusing on the first task he must accomplish before he could confront the overwhelming problems that lay beyond it. He was thirsty, too, now. I want water.

He heard it then, trickling softly down the mountainside. Water. A comforting musical sound amidst all the unfamiliar ones which crowded the night on land. He approached it, tripping several more times and once nearly walking into a sapling. He smelled it now, too, the soft scent of sweetwater, so different from the salty tang of the Middle Sea. Different, too, from the loamy smell of the north-flowing Sirinakara River, the great southern waterway that splintered into a thousand swamps, brackish lagoons, and streams on its way to the Middle Sea.

He found the water trickling down from above through a crack in an overhanging ledge. Consumed by his own thirst, he stood beneath it and opened his mouth, letting it run down his parched throat. Clear, cold, sweet. 

When he had drunk enough to quench the worst of his thirst, he let the water run over his head, his shoulders, his back. He washed the dried blood off his hands, then drank some more. Finally, he filled the waterskin and brought it back to the cave.

Tansen was still unconscious. He didn't respond when Zarien tried to wake him. Zarien removed Tansen's ruined tunic, tore up a sleeve, soaked part of it in water, and forced it into the unconscious warrior's mouth. His mother... Palomar had once done this when Morven was very sick and too weak to drink. 

Zarien wondered briefly if Morven was Palomar's and Sorin's real son. He hoped so. He didn't want his little brother to feel the shame and betrayal he'd felt ever since coming alive in Sharifar's embrace. For the rest of his life, Zarien would bear the tattoos identifying him as a sea-bound Lascari born to Palomar and Sorin—and it would never be true.

Immersed in the cave's darkness, he placed his hand on Tansen's throat and waited. It seemed a long time before he finally felt it move reflexively, swallowing the bit of liquid trickling from the cloth to the back of Tansen's throat.

Encouraged, Zarien poured more water onto the cloth. It soaked through into Tansen's mouth and, eventually, his throat moved again.

It took a long time to empty the waterskin this way. Zarien's back was stiff by the time he stopped bending over Tansen's prone body and, after taking the rag out of the warrior's mouth, left the cave to get more water. He wouldn't try to clean Tansen's wounds before morning, since he couldn't see them in the dark cave and didn't dare risk building fire. Even if he managed to do it right, it could be spotted by any assassins searching for them.

He returned to the cave again. "Siran?" No reply. He crouched and felt for the bandage he had bound to Tansen's side. It was wet. Blood must still be flowing from the wound.

"The winds carry me," Zarien murmured in despair. Maybe the stories were wrong. It seemed this man could indeed be killed, after all, and might even be dead by morning.

He turned away, wondering what else to do for the warrior right now, when a strange rumbling sound made him pause.

"What is..." The ground started trembling. "What is that?"

The rumbling turned into a grating roar. The ground started shaking in earnest. The whole cave seemed to be moving, like a small oarboat on the back of a dragonfish.

Rocks started falling from overhead. Zarien flung himself across Tansen. He heard a pained groan as his weight assailed the wounded body, but the warrior remained limp beneath him. 

Zarien shouted in fear as the cave floor heaved wildly and its walls shook around him. The rumbling roar was pierced by a great thundering crash in the distance that seemed to echo through his own veins.

Terror consumed him. The ground roiled like rough seas.  Rocks tumbled down on him as he tried to shield Tansen. The furious roar of the angry earth deafened him to the painful thundering of his own heart.

And Dar moved the mountains in Her fury.

Chapter Six

Make no vows or promises in the dark. 

Always wait until dawn.

                        —Najdan the Assassin

Mirabar had not been asleep when the earthquake began, so she was slightly—but only slightly—less disoriented by it than everyone else atop Mount Dalishar.

She had been through a few tremors in her lifetime—a span of barely twenty years, she guessed, though she didn't know for certain. Tonight's quake was far worse, though. It felt as if the ground was being pulled out from under her. The walls of Dalishar's six multi-chambered caves shook. The simple belongings of the forty or fifty rebels living up here tumbled around as if thrown by unseen hands. A terrible roaring filled the air, like the world screaming in its death throes.

And in the distance, Mount Darshon gave a terrible, thundering crack of rage.

Mirabar fled from the cave where she was spending the night, dragging Sister Rahilar with her as she escaped the shelter which had now become a potential deathtrap. When they reached the open ground outside their cave, she saw that everyone else at Dalishar was doing the same. The sentries were shouting wildly to alert everyone—As if anyone could sleep through this!—as people poured out of the caves, confused, armed, and frightened.

No, it's not Kiloran, not yet. Just an earthquake.

That was bad enough, she realized, as another violent tremor threw her to the hard ground. Kiloran wouldn't have to kill them all if Dar did it for him. And Dar was furious with them, for Sileria had killed the Firebringer.

Kiloran. Elelar. The Valdani. They killed him, Dar, not me. And You let it happen. So stop this! 

Mirabar tried to rise from the ground, furious at her goddess, even as the ground continued shaking.

"Sirana! Stay down, sirana!"

She didn't know whose voice she heard shouting in the chaos, but she knew it was directed at her. Sirana, they called her now, a term of the highest respect. Her, an illiterate shallah, a clanless orphan who'd grown up wild in the mountains. She had survived like an animal and barely been able to speak like a human child when first found by Tashinar, the Guardian who caught and tamed her all those years ago. The sick old woman was her mentor and the closest thing she'd ever had to a mother.

She prayed fervently that the earthquake wasn't this bad at Mount Niran, where Tashinar was tonight. Mirabar and Sister Rahilar clutched each other in fear, huddled on the ground, and tried to protect their heads from falling rocks.

Please Dar, shield Tashinar, shield her.

She only realized that the terrible rumbling which filled her senses was finally fading away when she heard the rasping sound of Rahilar's breath. Mirabar cautiously lifted her head.

"It is over, sirana?" Rahilar asked, her voice high and thready with terror.

Mirabar waited another moment. "Yes, it's over."

"Sirana! Sirana!"

She knew that voice. "I'm here!" she called. "I'm fine!"

Hard, callused hands hauled her off the ground a moment later. She saw the black clothes of an assassin, the yellow beads woven into the red jashar, the harshly lined face and long black hair—now showing some gray—of her protector. His shir trembled slightly, as it always did in response to her presence. She supposed Najdan had grown used to that by now.  

He released her quickly, showing a shallah's respect for a woman's sanctity and a servant's respect for the sirana's dignity.

"You are not hurt?" Najdan asked, his gaze traveling over her with proprietary concern. She knew he regarded her safety as his destined duty. If she came to harm, it stained his honor. The habits and values absorbed during his twenty years as Kiloran's trusted assassin remained with him, and now he applied them to the young Guardian to whom he had pledged his loyalty, the prophetess for whom he had betrayed his master.  

"I'm fine." She was shaking, but unhurt.

Najdan's breath was coming fast, and his face gleamed with the sweat of fear. He was a brave man, but no one liked earthquakes. Least of all shallaheen, whose villages were perched so precariously on Sileria's steep mountain slopes and high cliffs. Now Najdan would be worried, she knew, about his mistress, Haydar, whom he had left in the mountain Sanctuary of Sister Basimar. Haydar would be safe from Kiloran's vengeance there, but earthquakes didn't respect Sanctuary the way the Society did.

Mirabar was even more worried about Tansen. "He should have been here by now," she said, scarcely aware that she spoke aloud.

"He was wounded, sirana. He must be making the journey slowly," Najdan answered without needing to ask whom she meant. "He will surely be here tomorrow." He paused. "Today?" He shrugged and settled on, "After sunrise." He bent over and politely helped Sister Rahilar to her feet. She was shaking, too, but not, Dar be thanked, weeping or complaining. 

"Sister!" A shallah rebel named Galian, known for always fighting with two yahr, came running over to where the three of them stood. "Sis—" He stopped when he saw Mirabar, crossed his fists over his chest and bowed his head respectfully. "You are unhurt, sirana?"

"Yes," she replied, still unaccustomed to how much her life had changed. Her fiery red hair and flame-bright eyes had once, not long ago, made the shallaheen shun her, fear her, even violently drive her from their villages. Now most of them treated her with the deference usually paid only to a torena. Or a waterlord. "Do you need the Sister for something?"  

"Lann slept through the earthquake and—"

"He what?"

Galian grinned. "And he was hit by some falling rocks inside the cave. I don't think it's very serious, but that thick skull of his is bleeding."

"I will see to him," Rahilar said. "Bring any other wounded there, too, and I will tend them."

"Yes, Sister."

"We should remember not to leave Lann on sentry duty," Mirabar said to Najdan as the other two hurried away.

"It would perhaps be unwise," he agreed dryly.

Mirabar walked to the edge of the clearing and stood atop a sharp cliff left on Dalishar's craggy face long ago, presumably by a night even more violent than this one. She looked out across the dark expanse of Sileria and could see many mountains outlined by the rich light of the two full moons.

In the distance was Mount Darshon, so high and vast, its snow-capped peak so bold and bright, she could see it even from here on a twin-moon night like this. Lightning flashed around the mountain's snowy summit in uneven intervals. Mirabar fell back a step as flame shot into the night, piercing the clouds that shone palely in the harsh flashes of light flickering above Darshon.

"Dar is angry," Najdan guessed.

"Then Dar should have protected him," Mirabar replied bitterly. 

"Josarian chose his way, sirana. As I have chosen mine. As you have chosen yours."

"Now we must wait only to see what Tansen's choice will be."

"He said he would execute the torena."

"So die all who betray Josarian," Mirabar quoted softly, remembering. It was the death sentence of anyone who betrayed the Firebringer, the Silerian peasant who had struck out from his humble mountain village to change the world.

"Yes, and Torena Elelar did betray him." Najdan paused and added, "As I betrayed Kiloran."

"Revenge is Kiloran's strength," Mirabar said, "whereas Elelar is Tansen's weakness." She hated the knowledge of that more than she should.

Najdan smiled. An assassin's smile. "Mercy is his weakness."

Mirabar turned away, chilled by him, as she sometimes was, despite trusting him with her life. "Then may he be ruthless where that woman is concerned."

"If he isn't, sirana, it would be a simple matter for me to assassinate her myself." 

"No."

"I have never killed a woman," he said, tactfully avoiding mention of the time he had tried to kill Mirabar, "and I would rather not, as it is not honorable. But if you wish—"

"No," she repeated, in a tone that prohibited argument. 

"Ah. Must it be done," Najdan asked, "or must he do it?"

"It must be done," she replied. "And he must do it."

"Then let us hope that he already has, sirana, as he vowed."

"Let us hope that he is still alive." She shivered, though the night was only pleasantly cool, and returned to the thought that had kept her wide awake before the start of the earthquake. "He should have been here by now."

"Give him another day, sirana," Najdan advised. "He is very hard to kill, you know."

"Yes," she agreed. "That much is true."

Mirabar rubbed her forehead. Now that the thundering chaos of the earthquake was fading into memory, the ever-present song of Dalishar was returning to haunt her. The six caves up here were sacred to the Guardians of the Otherworld, claimed by the sect centuries ago. Guardian power here remained so strong that the waterlords had never challenged their supremacy at Dalishar. Sacred fires, blown into life long ago and left burning ever since—woodless, enchanted, mystically linked to the Otherworld—kept the caves perpetually bright, day and night. 

Fresh springs kept Dalishar well supplied with water year round, even at the height of the dry season. The caves were decorated with strange paintings, older than memory, left by a race of peaceful water wizards called the Beyah-Olvari, the first inhabitants of Sileria. Most people thought they were extinct, but Mirabar knew otherwise. She had never seen one, but she knew the well-guarded secret, as did Tansen: Though few in number, the Beyah-Olvari still existed, small blue-skinned beings, a dying race living in ancient tunnels below Shaljir. This mountaintop, like all of Sileria, had once belonged to them.

The Otherworld was very close up here, separated from this world only by a thin veil eternally pierced by the sacred fires of Dalishar. Shades of the dead called through the night to Mirabar now, their silent voices echoing around her, making her head ache. After a few days at Dalishar, she became so exhausted from the twin realities of this world and the Other one that it was hard to function, difficult to concentrate.

But she was safe from Kiloran at Dalishar, and so Tansen had insisted she come and await him here. It was not far from Chandar and the ruined villa where Elelar had been living in recent months, ever since Tansen and Zimran risked their lives to break her out of prison in Shaljir. Torena Elelar had been caught spying on her Valdani lover, Imperial Advisor Borell, and giving information to the Silerian rebels; she had been beaten, raped, imprisoned, and condemned to death by that same man. 

Mirabar hated Elelar, but even she had to admit that the woman was no coward. The torena was part of the Alliance, a rebel group which had existed since long before Josarian's birth, and she had devoted her whole life to ridding Sileria of the Valdani. Unfortunately, she was also willing to betray anyone—Josarian, Tansen, anyone—to achieve this goal. Long ago, she had betrayed Tansen to Kiloran. Now that Josarian was dead, Mirabar was the only other person left alive who knew why: Tansen killed Armian, and Elelar told Kiloran to ensure that he would not blame the Alliance for his comrade's death.

When the Valdani finally realized they were losing the war against Josarian in Sileria, they met in secret with the aristocratic leaders of the Alliance—which had been largely ineffectual before Josarian commenced the rebellion and united Sileria against its conquerors—and demanded Josarian's death in exchange for Valdani withdrawal from Sileria. For reasons which Mirabar would never ever understand, Elelar had not only agreed, she had personally plotted Josarian's murder. She seduced his cousin Zimran—who always thought with an organ very distant from his brain—and convinced him to lead Josarian into an Outlooker ambush. 

As much as Mirabar loathed Elelar, she also knew the torena wasn't stupid, so it bewildered her that she hadn't suspected what any fool should have guessed—that Kiloran was behind the plan all along. He had alerted the Valdani that the Alliance could be convinced to betray Josarian, and he had convinced the Alliance that his own enmity ensured that Josarian ought to be sacrificed to save Sileria. The shrewd old waterlord had undoubtedly counted on Elelar's mingled arrogance and fanaticism to lead her straight to the well of betrayal which he had secretly chosen for her.

But Kiloran, who valued and richly rewarded loyalty, hadn't suspected that, during the course of the costly war with Valdania,  Najdan's loyalty had switched from him to Mirabar. Najdan abandoned his master and betrayed Kiloran's plans to Tansen and Mirabar, who were Josarian's sword and shield, thus condemning himself to a bloodvow from the waterlord. 

Thanks to Najdan's warning, they had found Josarian in time to save him from the Outlooker ambush. Although letting Josarian be murdered by the Valdani would have been the tidiest solution for Kiloran, the waterlord had foreseen the possibility of failure, and so he had another plan, a far more horrible scheme, in reserve: the White Dragon.

So Elelar hadn't really killed Josarian. But she had tried. She had betrayed him. Had she not done so....

Would he be alive now?

Probably not, for Kiloran had set his final trap well. But that changed nothing. Vengeance must now be swift and merciless. This was Sileria, where mercy was indeed a weakness, compassion was dangerous, and forgiveness was a fool's delusion. Elelar must pay for what she had done.

If Tansen hasn't killed her, as he promised that night, then I will do it, Mirabar vowed. And I will never forgive him.

As for Kiloran.... Mirabar shuddered as she remembered the White Dragon rising out of the Zilar River. Unstoppable. Unkillable. Kiloran's hideous, voracious offspring, its water-born form dripping death in icy droplets that burned the flesh. The memory of Josarian's dying screams filled Mirabar's head, competing with the clamoring music of the Otherworld. How Tansen had wept afterwards. Covered in blood—including that of Zimran, whom he had killed that night—covered in bruises, in burns, in cuts and abrasions, swaying from the re-opened shir wound at his side, panting from his fruitless battle against the White Dragon... Tansen had wept like a child for the bloodbrother he couldn't save.

"Are you cold, sirana?"

Mirabar flinched, having forgotten that Najdan was there. "What?"

"You're shivering."

"Oh. I..."

"I believe it is safe to return to your cave now," he said.

"No, I don't..."

"I will move any fallen rocks, and then you will lie down." 

Mirabar knew that tone. The assassin could bicker like an overprotective mother if she resisted once he had decided what was best for her. So she said, "As you wish." 

She was following him into the mouth of the cave when she heard the Beckoning.

Come to me...

Mirabar was tired. She was grieving. But she well knew the penalty of resisting the Beckoner. If the Otherworld sometimes clamored inside her head, the Beckoner could thunder until her knees gave way from the force of his will. 

Come...

Najdan sensed her hesitation. "Sirana?"

"Go," she said, staring into the dark wilderness which bordered this cave. "I'll lie down later."

"But—"

"It's the Beckoner."

Najdan froze, then crossed his fists, bowed his head, and quietly retreated. This, after all, was what made her the sirana for whom he had betrayed Kiloran: the gift of prophecy.

The strange visitant whom Mirabar called the Beckoner—for lack of a more accurate notion of what he was—had opened the gates of destiny to a young Guardian initiate one night on the slopes of Mount Niran, and she had helped Josarian change the world. She saw the Beckoner again now, as she had many times since that first night: the ghostly shape of a strong man with flame-red hair and fire-gold eyes, his skin glowing with the light of the Otherworld, his feet never touching the ground. Not a shade of the dead. A god, perhaps? She didn't know. She only knew that whether or not she liked it—and she often didn't like it—she served Dar and Sileria through the prophecies given to her by the Beckoner.

His lava-rich coloring was rare, as rare as her own. In all her life, she'd never seen another person with hair like hers, and only one other with eyes like hers: Cheylan, a toren turned Guardian, whose kisses she well remembered and whose stunning secret she couldn't forget… 

Come to me... the Beckoner urged in the seductive silence of her vision, driving all thoughts of Cheylan from her head. He glowed like the clouds above Darshon tonight as he floated into the forest beyond the sacred caves.

You must come... 

That much was true, Mirabar knew. She had been chosen, and she had no choice. She had tried to resist before, and it was not permitted. Was it only last night that she had refused the Beckoner while she grieved over Josarian's death, betrayed by all she had wrought? But he had not allowed it. He had forced her to bend to his will. Again.

"Our work is not yet done," she said, following him, repeating what she had learned from him in the previous vision. "The new Yahrdan is coming..."

"Sirana?"

She heard a puzzled voice behind her, someone who wasn't familiar with her strange fits and visions, someone who had never seen her wander into the dark wilderness muttering like a madwoman, had never seen her suddenly fall to the ground when tormented by unseen forces.

Then she heard Najdan's voice: "Leave her."

"But..."

Their voices faded from Mirabar's senses as she followed the Beckoner into the fragile borderlands between this world and the Other one. 

"The Yahrdan," she said, using the title of the traditional ruler of Sileria.

There hadn't been a Yahrdan here since the death of Daurion, a thousand years ago, the Guardian and great warrior who had ruled this island nation with a fist of iron in a velvet glove before being betrayed by Marjan, the very first waterlord. Marjan was the Guardian who had unraveled the secrets of water magic encoded in the cave paintings which the Beyah-Olvari had left all over Sileria. He had betrayed Daurion and thereby weakened Sileria for the Moorlander Conquest. Marjan invented the shir, turned men into assassins, demanded tribute in exchange for water from the rivers and lakes he controlled... As much as the Valdani, Marjan had created the world into which Mirabar had been born.

"The new Yahrdan," she repeated into the darkness that danced around her, blotting out the gossamer trees, the caves, the ground, the moon-bright sky. "How will I know him?"

The ground disappeared beneath her feet, and she fell into the swimming emptiness of the Beckoner's domain. A hollow world beyond life and death, a region where the past and the future collided, where will was power and flesh was nothing.

Hot sparks ignited in the murky void and something liquid trickled musically past Mirabar's senses. Fire and water: the two elements which ruled Sileria. Incompatible, forever apart, forever at odds.

The sparks fell into the liquid, and the two substances united, becoming one, becoming something new, something which grew. Now fire whirled around her, strange blue flames of incandescent water, a burning liquid that scorched and froze her at once.

Fire and water, water and fire...

"No," she protested, "we are enemies. Now and forever."

He comes, he comes... Welcome him.

"Who? The Yahrdan?"

Fire and water, water and fire...

"Are you saying he's a waterlord?" she asked in horror.

Her whirling nest of blue fire became a cradle. The birthing screams of the world surrounded her, roared across space and time, filled her head. The agony of childbirth, strange and yet strangely familiar, seized her body, the pain causing her to double over as her screams blended with those that echoed around her. A river of fire poured out of her womb, turning into a flow of icy water that chilled and burned all at once. 

Only when the pain finally faded did she understand.

"Am I looking for a child?"

A child of fire...

"Yes?"

A child of water...

"No!"

Blue fire pierced her like a spear. She screamed in agony.       "Siran!" she cried, her eyes streaming lava as she pleaded for mercy. "Please, don't!"

A child of sorrow...

Mirabar gasped for breath, choking on a sudden, terrible sadness. Her heart wailed inside her chest, broken and empty. "Whose... sorrow is this?" she asked weakly. But grief was her only answer, longing her only comfort.

She fell through the stars, inhaling the watery blue fire all around her, drowning in it as it burned her throat and flooded her lungs. Tears of lava continued to flow down her cheeks. She caught them with her fingers and saw them turn into diamonds, glittering stones like those mined at Alizar. They gleamed beautifully for a moment, then turned into water so cold she gasped and dropped them. They coalesced around her and turned into a circle of fire, glorious flames rising through the dark. 

He is coming!

"How will I know him?" she asked again.

Prepare the way.

"What must I do?"

Shield him...

"How?" she asked bitterly. "I couldn't shield Josarian."

The night exploded like an eruption of Mount Darshon, showers of lava consuming her flesh. The ground pushed upward against her falling body, surging toward the tumbling sky, birth and death twining together in the heaving soil beneath her, in the liquid fire flowing through her veins and the deadly water glittering on her skin.

"How will I know him?" she cried.

Before she lost consciousness, she felt the answer sliding along her skin, filling her hands, whispering in her ears. She felt it and knew it was there, but she couldn't understand it.

A frustrated sob escaped her before her vision went black and she returned to her world, empty and helpless in the night.

Najdan waited until dawn to search for the sirana. 

He didn't fear the darkness. An enemy who awaited him in the dark could see no better than he could, after all. He didn't fear the assassins undoubtedly plotting his death right now, perhaps even haunting the slopes of Dalishar at this very moment. He had survived too long as an assassin to fear another of his kind. 

He feared very few things, since there wasn't much that he, who had served Kiloran for twenty years, hadn't already faced and survived. But he feared whatever it was the sirana so often confronted in her strange visions. And because she did not shrink from it—from something powerful beyond his experience, strange beyond his understanding—he served her, as she served this thing that ruled her destiny.

She was a prophetess, cursed and gifted with visions which had helped change the world. Najdan had little interest in the toils and struggles of the shallaheen, sheep whom his former master had always herded with ease, and he himself had not seen Josarian's transformation at Mount Darshon. He had, however, seen this small, impoverished girl, without family or clan or influence, face Kiloran and win his respect. Najdan had seen her win the respect, even earn the fear, of many of the Society's waterlords and assassins. She had initially faced Najdan himself as an enemy and, after a few misunderstandings during which he had tried to kill her, she had won his respect, too—and, eventually, his devotion.

Najdan knew a hundred ways to kill a man, and at least as many ways to force him to submit and obey. He had pledged his life and skills to the Society long ago, so he knew little of the Guardians or their religion. Until Mirabar, in fact, he had only known them as enemies to be killed whenever possible. He hadn't prayed to Dar in many years; the Society discouraged devotion to Her. He had consecrated his life to serving Kiloran, who had rewarded him richly, ensuring that he would never go hungry again. 

Loyalty was basic to his nature, and he hadn't wanted to betray Kiloran. But his master had forced him to choose—by ordering him to kill Mirabar. Najdan would have accepted Kiloran's plan to kill Josarian, because Josarian had murdered the waterlord's only son, Srijan; and spilled blood called for vengeance. But Najdan couldn't kill Mirabar. That was the push that had shoved him into the strange and unstable land of betrayal.

He was not an educated man like Searlon, Kiloran's most favored assassin. He wasn't worldly, like Tansen, who had traveled far and wide during the nine years he'd spent in exile for some crime against Kiloran which neither man had ever revealed. And he didn't possess the gifts of leadership and imagination which had made people follow Josarian even before he'd become the Firebringer. Apart from being very good at killing, Najdan supposed he wasn't special at all. However, he could certainly recognize those who were, and he had built a worthy life by using his skills to serve them. In the course of many years spent among Sileria's most powerful wizards, Najdan had never known anyone as special as Mirabar. So when Kiloran had forced him to choose between them, he had known what the choice must be. 

Kiloran's power was extraordinary—still the greatest in Sileria, perhaps in the whole world. But Najdan could not kill this lone girl who faced the torment of gods in the darkness without flinching and who consecrated her life to the service of something Najdan didn't understand but knew could change the world.

On the other hand, he also wouldn't stumble blindly into the midst of one of these strange visitations that consumed her without mercy. The gods who tormented Mirabar didn't like interruptions, and he didn't like the heat of Otherworldly magic that permeated these scenes. He had felt it the other night—they had all felt it, here at Dalishar—when Mirabar's visions had spilled over into this world for once, filling the night sky with sound and fury, with images which she, at least, seemed to understand. 

"He is coming," she had said. "The next Yahrdan. Our work is not yet done."

Najdan still felt queasy when he recalled those moments of wonder and terror. He didn't know how Mirabar regularly faced these things with such resolve, and he himself didn't want to come so close to them again. However, he also didn't like the thought of her lying somewhere out there, sprawled on the damp ground, easy prey to anyone or anything that might happen along.

When dawn came, when he felt sure the visions must have passed and the thing she called the Beckoner must have retreated, Najdan went in search of Mirabar. He brought Sister Rahilar with him, because he didn't know what Mirabar would need, and it wasn't fitting that he, a man, should handle her. 

The Sister was rather pretty, in the almost-harsh way of shallah women, but she chattered far too much. He missed Haydar, his woman of many years. He hoped that she was safe and that the earthquake had not hit hard at Sister Basimar's Sanctuary.

Najdan was scanning the hillside and ignoring Rahilar's vapid babbling when he spotted Mirabar lying in a heap, her fire-bright hair glistening with morning dew. Her long homespun tunic was hiked up, exposing her bare stomach. The modest pantaloons of a shallah female were now torn, leaving one golden knee naked. 

He turned his back on Mirabar and said to Rahilar, "Tend her." At least the woman was good at that.

Rahilar arranged Mirabar's clothing and woke her with some smelling salts. Najdan knew Mirabar was well when she snapped, "Ugh! What are you doing?"

"You had fainted," Rahilar murmured.

"I did not faint. I was... hit on the head with a volcano."

Rahilar looked at Najdan. He ignored her. "Would you care to return to camp now, sirana?" he suggested.

"No, I'd like to sit on the damp ground in the middle of nowhere all day." Her eyes glowed almost yellow with bad temper.

Yes, she would be fine. He had learned by now to expect a little crankiness after these encounters, as if she'd drunk too much wine or indulged in Moorlander cloud syrup.

"Oh, my head," she said, cradling it.

"I have something that will help that," Rahilar said. "Back at camp."

"Camp..." Mirabar met Najdan's gaze. "Has he come?"

Najdan knew whom she meant. "No, sirana. Tansen hasn't arrived yet."

"Dar shield him," she murmured.

"Yes, sirana." He had not prayed since his youth, but now he tried the words with an unaccustomed tongue: "Dar shield him."

From Kiloran. From himself. From the earthquake. From his destiny.

Yes, Dar had much to shield the shatai from.

Chapter Seven

To know is nothing at all.

 To believe—that is everything.

                              —Kintish Proverb

Tansen felt the re-opened shir wound throbbing at his side, draining his life away with the cold magic of a waterlord. 

It seemed like such a long time since he'd gotten this wound. Tansen remembered killing High Commander Koroll before collapsing. He'd never even seen the shir with which Koroll had done this to him. But he did remember one of his men later saying that it evinced Baran's distinctive workmanship, with its silver and jade inlays on a hilt of Kintish petrified wood. 

And Baran isn't even my enemy.

Well, not back then. Perhaps he was now. Who knew? An immensely powerful waterlord, Baran was nothing if not unpredictable. And who could say which was more dangerous in Sileria, anyhow: a friend or an enemy? As Josarian had said: I can take care of my enemies, but Dar shield me from my friends. 

Tansen grunted in pain. Not from the shir wound, but from the memory of Josarian's death, which now returned to him with the pain of a sharp stab to his vitals.

"Are you awake, siran?"

He tensed with surprise, coming into his senses as he realized he wasn't alone. With tremendous effort, he opened his eyes. The world whirled dizzyingly for a moment, a cacophony of sight and sound as sunlit shadows flickered over rough stone and the unfamiliar voice spoke to him again.

"Siran?"

His eyes came to rest on the figure addressing him. Dark-haired, olive-skinned, brown-eyed. Short hair. Intricate indigo tattoos on the face, forearms, and hands. None on the torso, as a fair-skinned Moorlander might have.  
      Sea-born. 

And young. Caught in that bewildering web between childhood and adulthood, but still clearly more boy than man.

Memories started to drift back into Tansen's conscious mind. The ambush on the path to Dalishar, his collapse afterwards, the voice which had roused him, the sea-born boy who had helped him.

What's he doing so far inland? And all alone?

They were in a cave, hiding because Tansen was too weak to defend himself—let alone the boy who had helped him—and incapable of making the journey to Dalishar or to Sanctuary.

What's your name?

His lips moved, but no sound came out. The boy seemed to understand the problem and, lifting Tansen's head, held the waterskin to his lips.

He choked briefly on the water, and his wounded side felt as if all the Fires of Dar were consuming it. His left hand burned coldly, too, and he now remembered the wound inflicted on it during his struggle with the last of the six assassins who'd ambushed him. He drank more, letting the water soothe his parched throat.

"What's your name?" he croaked at last.

"Zarien." The boy hesitated, then awkwardly crossed his fists over his chest and bowed his head. "I know who you are, siran."

No surprise there. His swords and the brand on his chest made him easy to identify in Sileria, even without the jashar he wore around his waist.

The boy's tattoos, Tansen knew, were like a jashar; but Tan was, after all, what the sea-born rather contemptuously referred to as "landfolk," and so he couldn't interpret them. "Family? Clan?" he asked, wondering whence this boy had come.

"I... was raised by the sea-bound Lascari."

"You're sea-bound?" Astonishment lent strength to his voice.

"I was."

"Ah..." He only knew a little about the sea-born folk. Even those sea-born who spent much of their lives ashore seldom came inland and rarely mingled with landfolk. He was aware, though, that the sea-bound clans were regarded as anything from slightly exotic to rigidly fanatical even by their sea-born cousins who willingly traversed the land. "This means... banishment from your clan, doesn't it?"

"Yes, siran. I am dead to my people." The stern, youthful pride in the boy's expression dared Tansen to pity him.

He finally noticed the bruises on the boy's face, and a fresh cut along his cheek. "What happened to you?"

Zarien reached up to touch a bruise on his forehead. "The land shook."

"Earthquake?"

"Is that what it was?"

"When the land shakes, yes."

"The ground heaved. The cave walls moved. There were falling rocks." The boy frowned. "I'm not used to caves. I didn't know it was unsafe until it was too late. Anyhow, you were here, and unconscious..." He shrugged.

Tansen didn't remember any of this. "You shielded me?" 

"I didn't know what else to do."

"I owe you my life," Tansen said. However, it felt like there would soon be nothing left to collect of the debt. His body was immobile, his mind weak and sluggish with fever and blood loss.

"It is my honor, siran," said Zarien.

"All the same... I am... very grate..."

Zarien lifted his aching head and gave him more water. It revived him, but less than it had before. He was weary, so weary...

His gazed drifted downward as he fought to stay awake. He caught his breath when he noticed the terrible scars on the boy's naked torso and realized what they were.

 "Dragonfish," Tansen murmured, remembering Armian's wounds. Only these scars were from a much, much worse attack. The beast's jaws had closed over the child's entire torso. Its broad teeth had sunk far into his flesh, Tansen judged, based on the width of the marks left behind. How in the Fires had the boy survived that? 

"Yes." Zarien took a deep breath and then blurted, "A dragonfish killed me during Bharata Ma-al."

Tansen digested this, wondering if he was hallucinating. "And then?"

"And then I was rescued by Sharifar—"

"One of the nine goddesses of the sea."

"Yes."

A detailed hallucination.

The boy added, "I thought that most drylanders didn't know the names of the sea goddesses." He sounded pleased with Tansen.

So my hallucinations are blessed with accuracy.

"I have a broad education," Tansen told him.

"Of course, siran." Zarien continued, "And then Sharifar made a bargain for my life."

The tale which followed was as compelling as it was extraordinary. The boy seemed sane enough, though Tansen didn't place a great deal of faith in his own judgment while he lay bleeding to death, feverish, weak, and confused. However, having seen Josarian emerge alive from the Fires of Dar to drive the Valdani out of Sileria, and having seen Kiloran's White Dragon emerge from the icy waters of the Zilar River to destroy the Firebringer, he supposed anything was possible.

"I'm sorry," he said, aware of the boy awaiting his reaction. "But Josarian isn't your sea king. Not now, anyhow. He's dead."

"Yes, I know that now. You told me yesterday."

He vaguely remembered. "Was it only yesterday?"

"I'm disappointed, of course," Zarien said. "But that is the way of the landfolk, isn't it?"

"Hmm?"

"To betray, to kill in vengeance, to fight among themselves."

Tansen felt both depressed and irritated. "And the way of the sea-born is what?" he challenged.

"To fight the dragonfish."

He grunted and felt himself drifting away again. Tansen felt compassion for this boy, so far from home, bent on a seemingly impossible task in a world which did not welcome him. "But you're... a strong boy." Zarien had come this far. He had faced the bloody mess Tansen had left on the path to Dalishar. He had helped a wounded man to this cave and shielded him during an earthquake that must have scared him half to death. Tansen figured Zarien's chances of surviving were better than average. "Strong," he repeated, too weak to say the rest. 

"I am Lascari," the boy said, with a creditable attempt to sound casual.

...Tansen felt his face glow with pleasure at the compliment, but he shrugged it off like a man. "You have been away from the mountains for too long. Here, I am not special...."

"There are ghosts here," Tansen whispered.

"Where?" He heard apprehension in the boy's voice.

"Don't worry," he murmured. "They are only my ghosts."

"I don't understand."

"No, I don't imagine you do."

"I've been thinking, siran..."

He closed his eyes, trying to decide what to do. Send the boy to Dalishar? Would he make it? To Sanctuary? Would he find it? If Zarien remained here, Tansen would probably die, whereas there was a slight chance that a Sister could arrive in time to save him... If a sea-born boy could find one and also remember where this cave was. Meanwhile, if assassins found them here together, the boy would certainly be killed.

And Mirabar, he wondered with sudden, confused urgency. Was she safe? Was she even alive?  

His mind reeled as all of his fears now assailed him. How long before news of Josarian's death spread through the mountains and into the lowlands? How soon would panic seize people? Would the Valdani honor their secret treaty with the Alliance and withdraw from Sileria now that Josarian was dead? Could Elelar convince them to abandon Shaljir before they discovered that Sileria was about to descend into the inferno of civil war?

Before they realize all they have to do is hold onto Shaljir long enough for us to destroy ourselves, and then—

"Siran? This wound..." Zarien lifted a saturated bandage away from Tansen's side. He vaguely realized that the cloth was what was left of the boy's tunic. The lad continued, "If my mother were here, I think she would cauterize it. So perhaps I should try to build a fire, and—"

"You can't cauterize it," Tansen interrupted, his vision swimming blackly. "It's a shir wound."

"An assassin did this to you?"

"No, a Valdan."

"I thought only assa—"

"It doesn't matter now."

"No."

With monumental effort, Tansen spoke again. "I want y—"

"But if we cauterized it—"

"Shir wound," Tansen repeated. He explained to the sea-born boy what any shallah knew. "Water magic. Put a hot poker to the wound, all you get is steam. Doesn't close or heal or stop bleeding."

"The winds take me." Zarien's voice came from very far away. "What do we do?"

"You've got to go—"

"Go? No!"

"Go to—"

"I can't leave you."

"Yes, you must. Go to—"

"No!"

He was too weak to argue. "Zarien..."

"No, I won't." The stubbornness Tansen heard in the boy's voice made his heart sink.

If assassins find you with me...

"I've come all this way to find you," Zarien said. "I won't let you out of my sight now."

This startled him enough to open his eyes. "Me?"

"I thought it was Josarian, but now I know it must be you."

"Me?" he repeated stupidly, falling through the dark night of death, barely able to hear the tattooed boy's desperate voice.

"Yes. Don't you see? You're the sea king!"

After three days of the Sister's care, Armian climbed out of the depths of his weakness and recovered with great speed.

However, he remained adamant about not going to Mount Darshon to embrace Dar.

"I've got to get to Shaljir," he told Tansen, in a voice which allowed no further debate. 

Tansen had never been west of Darshon in his life, let alone as far away as the capital city. "I will take you back to Gamalan," he offered. "My grandfather will know what to do."

Armian decided not to wear his jashar while they traveled through Sileria. Both his mission and Tansen, he said, would be safer if no one recognized him. "So don't tell anyone. Understood?"

"No, sira... No, Armian," Tansen corrected himself, for the Firebringer had insisted he accept the privilege of using his name. "I will die to protect your secret!"

"You don't need to go that far," Armian said dryly. "Just use that blank-faced discretion the shallaheen are known for. Lirtahar?"

"Yes." Tansen smiled, pleased that Armian was becoming more Silerian with every day he spent here. "Lirtahar."

Armian let him look at the shir which had been concealed in one of his well-made boots the night he had washed ashore; but, of course, Tansen couldn't touch it. A shir could never harm its owner, which was why neither Armian nor any other assassin needed a sheath for his water-born dagger. If a shir belonged to you, you could even sleep with it tucked inside your clothes, its deadly blade as harmless as a kiss against your skin. However, just the whisper of its touch was terribly painful to anyone else. Even the waterlord who made a shir was vulnerable if the weapon was wielded against him. When Tansen tried to touch Armian's shir, it burned cruelly with the cold fire instilled in it by Kiloran, the great waterlord who had made it as a gift—a sign of trust, a mark of good faith—when Armian had been born to Harlon's woman.

"I've come to find him," Armian said.

"To find Kiloran?" Tansen breathed in awe.

"Yes."

"He lives in hiding, like all the waterlords, ever since the Valdani Emperor swore he would destroy the Honored Society in his lifetime." He bit his lip when he realized Armian would already know this, since his own father, Harlon, had died after battling the Outlookers for years.

"There are people who can help me find Kiloran," Armian said. "People who can make arrangements."

"In Shaljir?"

"It's called the Alliance. Have you ever heard of it?"

"No."

"Maybe your grandfather has."

"I don't think so, Armian."

"We'll ask him when we reach Gamalan."

"Yes, of course," said Tansen. "He will know the best way to reach Shaljir."

"Good."

And after Armian found Kiloran, Tansen thought, perhaps then he would go to Darshon.

It was late morning when Mirabar awoke, still groggy from the violent and restless night, but feeling considerably better than she had when Najdan and Rahilar had found her lying unconscious in the morning dew.

Just once, couldn't I have visions in my own bedroll?

With wakefulness came the weight of worry again. Where was Tansen? She knew he still hadn't arrived, because someone would have awakened her—

She sat bolt upright when heard the shrill whistle of a sentry. Someone was coming up the southern path, identity still unknown. The southern path—the way Tansen would come, journeying here from Chandar.

She leaped out of her worn bedroll, pulled on her shoes, and went outside. Lann was there, larger than life, his long Moorlander sword unsheathed as he waited in readiness for whatever would happen now. He was bearded, an unusual trait in Sileria, and now his head was wrapped in the bandage Rahilar had used on the injury he'd gotten while sleeping—of all things!—through the earthquake. He was from Emeldar, Josarian's native village, and had known Josarian his whole life. A boisterous, openly emotional man, he had wept piteously upon seeing the Firebringer die at the Zilar River. Lann always wept when his friends died.

"Someone is coming," Najdan said, trying to force Mirabar back into her cave.

She resisted, "Yes, I heard. It might be—"

"It might be anyone," he interrupted.

She was about to argue when another signal from the sentry riveted her attention. "A friend," she said, praying to Dar that it was Tansen.

Mirabar rushed across the clearing and to the edge of the plateau, then ran sure-footed down the path watched over by the sentries. She felt the sharp edge of something cutting across her inner senses and mistook it for excitement. Only when she rounded a bend in the steep trail and saw him did she realize it was sorcery, the echo of power she always sensed in his presence.

"Cheylan," she said in disappointment.

His handsome, aristocratic features were made all the more arresting by the fiery glow of his golden eyes. His long hair was braided in the intricate style of a toren. Like her, he wore the broach of a Guardian pinned to his tunic, a single flame in a circle of fire. But Cheylan had been born to a wealthy family, and so his was made of silver, whereas Mirabar's was only copper.

"Mirabar! I didn't know you'd be here." 

He smiled and held out his hands, no doubt expecting a warm welcome. Though his hair was black rather than the fiery red of her own, he had the Dar-blessed—or Dar-cursed, depending on your point of view—fire-golden eyes which had once been common among the Guardians of Sileria long ago, before the Society had begun slaughtering them and encouraging others to do the same. A sign of the great power which was feared and persecuted by the Society, those eyes had made Cheylan, too, an outcast, despite his aristocratic birth and wealthy upbringing.

This similarity had created a common bond between the two of them when they met during the rebellion. It was even a source of attraction between them. Cheylan was the first man who had ever looked at Mirabar as a woman, rather than as a demon girl or a sorceress, and certainly the first who had ever touched her as a man touched a woman. She had tumbled willingly into the fiery warmth of the few stolen embraces they had shared.

So he seemed understandably perturbed when she brushed past him now without even a nod and gazed down the path behind him. "You came alone?" she asked, turning back to him.

He lifted a dark brow at her tone. "Yes."

"You saw no one else?"

"Such as?"

"Tansen."

"Ah." Cheylan studied her for a moment before saying, "Then he's not here? I thought he might be."

"Why?"

"I thought that mess lower down the mountain might have been his doing. But evidently—"

"What mess?" she pounced.

"You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"There are half a dozen assassins lying dead down there," said Cheylan. "All in one place. All killed with a sword. Or two swords, perhaps."

Mirabar's heart leaped with panic. "Fresh?"

"A day old, I'd say."

"Yesterday. He would have..." Her voice gave out for a moment. "He would have been there yesterday." She whirled and raced back up the path, heedless of Cheylan's puzzled voice behind her. "Najdan!" she called urgently. "Najdan!"

He appeared, shir in hand, before she had finished crying his name a second time. His face darkened when he saw Cheylan, whom he didn't like, and he moved toward him with open menace. "What has he done t—"

"No, no," she said impatiently. "It's about Tansen."

The rebels crowded around her, full of questions. She made Cheylan repeat what he had just told her.

"You think Tansen walked into a trap?" Lann asked her.

"And survived," Mirabar said. "Cheylan didn't see his body."

"Six," Najdan mused. "Yes, even wounded, perhaps he could defeat six."

"But if he survived, then where in the Fires is he?" Lann wondered.

Tansen knew something was terribly wrong even as he and Armian approached the village. There was no activity, no call of greeting. No old men sat outside the tavern at the edge of the village to exchange stories, share news, and play obscure Kintish games of strategy with intricately carved pieces worn smooth by years of handling. There were no children on the mountain path, no women at the water well, no shepherds on the hillside...

And then they entered the main square of Gamalan and saw the site of the massacre. Dozens of bodies. Everyone who had lived in this obscure, impoverished village, a community badly depleted by its long bloodfeud with the Sirdari clan.

The stench of death was unbelievable. The bodies lay under the merciless Silerian sun while flies swarmed around them, the ceaseless buzzing creating a thrumming drone which further disoriented Tan's stunned senses.

"No!" he cried. "No! No!" Over and over. No other word penetrated his thoughts, no other sound could emerge from his lips.

"Outlookers!" Armian warned suddenly. 

"No!"

Tansen felt Armian's grip and struggled against it. He felt Armian grasp something in his jashar and heard him mutter, "I need your yahr." He stumbled as Armian shoved him and said, "Stay behind me." He didn't understand, didn't care, knew nothing but the horror roaring through his veins.

"No! No!" He broke away from Armian, ran to the mute corpses, and started handling the stinking, heavy, blood-soaked bodies, looking for his own family. "No!"

"Tan, get back! Tansen!"

He saw the Outlookers then, their gray tunics, their clipped hair, their short Valdani swords. He didn't care. "No!"

Armian's shir glittered in the sunlight, its water-born blade slitting the throat of the first Outlooker to venture close to him. He swung Tansen's yahr at one who hung back slightly. The wood lashed through the air and connected with the Valdan's nose. Blood sprayed across Armian's face just before he whirled to confront another attacker. 

Tansen turned his back on them and continued looking for the proud flow of his grandfather's white mane, the tapered elegance of his peasant mother's work-roughened hands, and the womanly curves of his once-skinny elder sister. He found friends, cousins, and aunts among the dead, but not his family.

"Are they here?" Armian asked. His voice was breathless.

Tansen looked up, barely able to see him through the flow of his tears. 

"Your family," Armian clarified. "Are they here?"

He shook his head, staring. Three Outlookers lay motionless around Armian. The fourth was on his knees. Armian held him by the hair and pressed the shir against his throat.

"Are they dead?" Tansen asked blankly, looking at the three Outlookers lying on the ground.

"Two are dead," Armian said tersely. "The other will be dead soon, and why should I make it quicker for him?"

Hatred seared Tansen's blood as he looked at the Outlooker kneeling before Armian. A boiling rage flooded him, a thirst for vengeance so fierce it choked him. "Let me kill this one."

"Later, when we're done with him," Armian promised. He yanked the Outlooker's hair and prompted in Valdan, "Where is the boy's family?"

"I don't—"

Armian drew blood with the shir. The Outlooker screamed in pain, then babbled, "I didn't participate in the interrogation. I swear I didn't! I was just left behind to take you in case you came here, after all. We waited for two whole days, and then our commanding officer decided you weren't coming. He said you'd either died at sea or were already on your way to your destination. So he took the rest of his men with him and left us behind to—"

"How did he know about me?" Armian snapped.

"The pirate."

"Aljuna?" Tansen blurted.

"We had information, and when we caught the pirate at sea and you weren't on board anymore, we took him into custody before burning his ship. He broke under torture."

Tansen suddenly remembered the way Aljuna had squealed like a pig when they'd cut his palm for the bloodpact. It had seemed funny at the time. "He couldn't take pain," he said in a daze.

"What did the pirate tell you?" Armian demanded.

"A boy and an old man from a mountain village called Gamalan. He was coming ashore to meet them that night. Smugglers. They might have helped you if you made it to shore." The Outlooker's voice was shaking. He was panting with fear. "Please! I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"You certainly will," Armian said grimly.

"Only don't kill me!"

Tansen felt sick. "They're dead, aren't they?" When the Outlooker didn't reply, Tansen said, "Dead?" in Valdan, unable to choke out more.

"Who?" the man bleated. "The pirate? Yes."

Armian threw him to the ground and kicked him in the stomach. "The boy's family, you dung-eater!"

"Three have mercy, don't kill me!" The Outlooker started weeping with fear. "Please! I swear I had nothing to do with the interrogation! Don't kill me!"

Tansen felt even sicker. He had never seen a man beg for his life.

"This wasn't interrogation, you festering worm," Armian snarled. "This was a massacre!" He yanked the Outlooker's head up by the hair again and forced him to look at the dead of Gamalan. "There are children there, you maggot! Women and old men, girls and unarmed boys!"

"What..." Tansen swallowed and tried again, already knowing, in his churning gut, what the answer would be. "What interrogation?"

"The old s—sm—smuggler and h—his women," the Outlooker stammered, his eyes rolling with terror.

Tansen met Armian's gaze. "My grandfather. My mo... My..." He couldn't say it. Bile rose in his throat. His heart pounded with horror.

"My commander wanted to know wh—where the b—boy was," the Outlooker said, still weeping. "But they w—woul—would..."

"Wouldn't talk." Armian's voice was flat and hard.

"N—No."

Armian pulled on the Outlooker's hair until he was standing up, then said, "Show me." When Tansen followed, Armian turned and said to him, "Stay here."

"No."

"Tan—"

"They are my family."

Armian hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. "Show us," he ordered the Outlooker.

"Please..." the man whispered. "P—please, soron..."

"It's siran, you pig. And don't pollute our language with your filthy tongue."

"I'm sorr—"

"Shut up," Armian snapped.

The Outlooker led them into the best house in the village, a three-room dwelling in good repair. Tansen saw the village headman, who had lived here, dead inside. 

Along with Tansen's grandfather, his mother, and his sister.

It was worse than anything he could have imagined. He would see it in his nightmares as long as he lived. He would never forget, never forgive, and never recover from what the Valdani had done to his family while he tended Armian in a coastal cave, blissfully ignorant of the slaughter of the innocents in Gamalan.

His beautiful, work-worn mother, with her small hands and her soft brown eyes, now lay gutted, her entrails streaming away from her corpse. They had raped his sister and stained her bruised thighs with her own blood. He tried to arrange her clothes, lest any man see what only her husband should...

"Tansen," Armian said.

... but she would never marry now. He looked away from her lifeless body and turned to his grandfather. They had broken all the old man's fingers and gouged out his eyes.

"But you did not... tell them... wh... where I w..." Tansen couldn't stop crying, couldn't draw enough breath, couldn't look away from the old man's ruined face, from the empty, blood-drenched eye sockets.

"I didn't do this, I didn't do this, I swear to you, I didn't do this," the Outlooker kept repeating, his strained voice the only sound besides Tansen's choked sobs in this dead village.

"We must burn them," Tansen finally said.

"No," Armian replied. "We will let others do that."

"No, I must burn them. My grandfather says a person cannot journey to the Otherworld if the body is not purified through fire, and we can't just—"

"People should see the Outlookers' work," Armian said. "The murder of women and children. The torture of an unarmed old man..." He put a hand on Tansen's shoulder and tried to make him understand. "If you burn them all, no one will know. The Valdani can claim it was disease or sorcery or a bloodfeud."

"I don't care what they cl—"

"We want people to know," Armian said. "When they see this, when the mountains talk of it, then people will hate them as much as you and I do."

"People hate them already," Tansen said dully.

"Not enough," Armian said. "Not yet."

Tansen looked around, his mind blank with shock. "Then... we will just leave them like this?"

"Yes," Armian said. "I'm sorry." 

"Do you think..." He met Armian's eyes. "If I had been here..."

"You'd be dead, too."

"Perhaps I c—"

"You'd be dead, too," Armian repeated. "Even if we hadn't met, even if you had come straight home from the coast..." Armian shook his head. "The Valdani came here on a hunch. They did all this—" He gestured to the devastation around them. "—on a chance, a guess."

Tansen's eyes clouded with tears again.

"You couldn't have stopped them," Armian told him. "I couldn't have stopped them."

"Then..." He took his last look at his murdered loved ones. "Then I am left alive to avenge them."

"Yes. We will avenge them," Armian promised.

When they emerged from the headman's house, dragging the quivering Outlooker with them, Armian asked Tansen, "Is there anything you want to get from your own house before we go?"

He couldn't think. He could only hear the buzzing of the flies and smell the acrid odor of death under the brassy Silerian sun. "I just want to leave," he said at last.

Armian thrust the Outlooker in front of him. "You wanted to kill this one yourself?"

Though Armian spoke to Tansen in Silerian, the Outlooker seemed to understand the gesture, the moment. "No!" he wailed. "Please, don't! I beg you!"

Armian held the yahr out to Tansen.

Tansen met the Firebringer's eyes, the cold eyes of an assassin. 

He looked at the trembling Outlooker, drenched in sweat, weeping with fear. Begging, pleading, wailing for mercy.

He felt the hard wood of the yahr in his hand. He felt the thick woven gossamer cord that held the two sticks together, that turned a couple of pieces of polished wood into such a deadly weapon.

I'll have to beat him to death.

The yahr was a striking weapon. How many blows would it take, Tansen wondered? When would the Outlooker stop screaming? After the second? The third? Or maybe not until the seventh or eighth? 

How will I know when he's dead?

Should he crush the skull to be sure, only stopping when he saw the splatter of brains? Or would Armian, who had killed before, tell him when he could stop? What would it feel like, the death of a man at his hands?

Tansen turned away and was abruptly sick, retching as humiliating waves of nausea overwhelmed him.

"Dar have mercy," he croaked.

"May the Three have mercy on me," the Outlooker whispered, waiting for his uncertain fate.

Tansen handed the yahr back to Armian, ashamed. "I can't."

"It's all right," Armian told him. "The first time is always the hardest. Today was not the day, that's all." He looked down at the Outlooker. "We're leaving now."

The Outlooker nodded, too afraid to speak, watching the hypnotic sway of the yahr as Armian toyed with it.

"You will return to your commanding officer," Armian instructed, "and tell him nothing."

"Nothing," the Outlooker repeated in a choked voice.

Armian put the end of the yahr under the Outlooker's chin and tilted his face up, so that their eyes met. "If anyone follows me to Liron, I will know that you have given me away, and I will return to kill you."

"Yes." The Outlooker licked his lips. "I understand. I will say nothing."

"Tansen." Armian met his eyes. "Let us leave this place."

Only when they were far outside the village did Tansen finally ask, "Why did you let him live?"

"Never destroy a useful tool, son. He will send the Outlookers haring off to Liron in the south while we go north to Shaljir."

"But he said he wouldn't tell them."

"You didn't believe him, did you?" Armian grinned. "By the time his commanding officer demands a complete account of what happened in Gamalan, he will have convinced himself that he acted shrewdly after his three companions died. He will assure himself—and especially others—that he wasn't truly afraid of a couple of barbarians like us, and he will be eager to think he tricked me into revealing our destination—which he will gladly report to his commander. That," he added, "is the way of men everywhere."

"I have never seen a man beg for his life," Tansen said slowly. "It made me—"

"Don't dwell on it now." Armian slapped him on the back. "You'll learn not to let it bother you."

"I will?" He didn't think so. He wasn't sure he wanted to. But perhaps an assassin must. And he... "I want to be an assassin," Tansen said suddenly. "There's nothing else left for me now."

"What about the rest of your clan? W—"

"There is no one." He explained about the bloodfeud with the Sirdari. "There were only a few Gamalani left, and they were all in my village." 

"Then I'm even sorrier," Armian said after a long pause. "They died because of me, because I am here."

"So you must understand now," Tansen said. "You must see."

"See what?"

"Why the Valdani fear you so. Why the Outlookers will do anything to stop you."

"You think they know about the Alliance?" Armian asked, frowning. "About the plan the Moorlanders have sent me to discuss with Kiloran?"

"No." Tansen impatiently waved aside things he didn't understand or care about. "They know you're the Firebringer!"

The sun beat down on Zarien's head as he returned to the water source he had found in the night, still trickling fluidly down the rockface, and refilled Tansen's waterskin. His bruises ached where rocks had struck him during the earthquake. His feet hurt like at the Fires, as the drylanders said. He was so hungry he felt lightheaded, but he didn't want to leave Tansen alone long enough to find food.

The warrior was even worse off now, stirring fitfully in his fever dreams, lost in the shoreless world of near-death. Whatever he saw there obviously troubled him. His muttered exhortations were harsh and angry, or else full of sorrow and grief. His skin was hot, and the bleeding wouldn't stop. 

Zarien knew he must clean the wound so he could see it more clearly. If it couldn't be cauterized, perhaps it could be stitched. If the thought of pressing a red hot poker to human flesh had made him queasy, the idea of darning Tansen's skin like cloth positively appalled him. He was no healer. But that was Sharifar's mate lying in that cave, and Zarien was not about to let him die. He would do whatever he had to... On the other hand, how could he stitch the wound with no thread or needle?

He returned to the cave with the water. Tansen was murmuring unintelligible words. When he tried to rise, Zarien pushed him back down, surprised by how hard that was even though Tansen was weak and disoriented. Then again, here was no ordinary man.

The sea king.

Dar had helped Zarien, after all. She had thrown Sharifar's mate right into his path. Why, he had practically tripped over Tansen! What else could their meeting mean? With Josarian dead, who but the Firebringer's bloodbrother could be a fitting mate for the sea goddess? What drylander but the greatest warrior in Sileria could be accepted by the sea-born as their king?

Zarien poured water over the wound and wiped away fresh blood, as well as a lot of older residue. Tansen recoiled in unconscious protest at first, then fell into a motionless stupor. As daylight flickered through the shallow cave, Zarien studied the wound and felt despair creep through him. He finished washing it, then took the cleanest cloth he could find and pressed it hard against the ravaged blood-seeping flesh. If pressure couldn't stop the crimson flow, he wondered fearfully, what would he do?

"Please Dar," he prayed to the goddess who held sway here on land. "Please help him. He must be the sea king. I cannot go back without him. Please."

He pressed down on the wound, willing the blood to stop flowing. He begged Dar to make it stop bleeding. He prayed to all the gods of the wind and sea to save Tansen. He admonished the warrior to heal.

"Dar," Tansen rasped in his fever dreams.

Zarien glanced at the warrior's lean face, but he still seemed unconscious even as more whispered words poured from his cracked lips: "Dar... shield... sword... fire.... firebr... mercy...Father, father..."

Heal him, heal him, Zarien begged in silence.

A chilling heat passed through him, a cold fire that made him shiver even as it burned him. He gasped and snatched his hand away from Tansen's body, startled, a little afraid. An icy mist rose from the wound, a crystalline glow that shimmered in the dappled sunlight creeping into the cave.

Zarien watched unblinking as it slowly faded away, leaving only Tansen's flesh in its wake. With his own breath rasping in his ears, he leaned closer to the warrior and stared in amazement.

The angry, bleeding, life-stealing wound was gone. Only a silvery scar was left in its place.

"Dar be praised," Zarien murmured in awe. "I have found him." 

The sea king

Chapter Eight

There is no real sword outside the heart.

                                                —Kintish Proverb

Armian took care of everything—food, money, clothing, supplies, shelter at night, water by day, finding the way to Shaljir while avoiding the Outlookers, inventing a plausible background for himself and the boy at his side. Everything.

Tansen thought of little besides his loss, his grief, and the howling guilt that haunted him day and night. If he had returned home sooner, if he had not left home at all... His mind knew that Armian was right: He'd had no hand in what the Outlookers had done to his people. Yet he couldn't deny the conviction swamping his heart that it was he, not his entire village, who should have died at Valdani hands.

Armian showed him compassion for his loss, but he himself seemed untroubled by guilt. But Armian was the Firebringer, and his destiny was great. He would free all of Sileria, Tansen realized, so he knew that his life, in the end, counted for more than those of a few villagers.

If Tansen's grandfather or anyone else had given in and led the Outlookers to that cave in the cliffs... But they had died rather than tell. That was lirtahar. That was the honor of the shallaheen. That was the terrible, destructive courage of Sileria.

He and Armian traveled fast, crossing the mountains on foot. They only asked the way to Shaljir if Tansen judged someone apt to give them a true answer. The rest of the time, Armian, who was an educated man, relied on the position of the sun and his knowledge of Sileria's geography. 

Armian adjusted quickly to life in Sileria's harsh mountains. His shallah dialect improved daily. His strong physique adapted to the punishing climbs, deadly descents, and long treks over uneven terrain which a shallah boy scarcely even noticed. He kept Tansen's mind busy by distracting him with many questions about Sileria's ways and her peoples. He knew much already, but now, he said, he needed to see Sileria through the eyes of someone who lived here.

However, he was not much interested in discussing Dar, the zanar prophecies, or the Firebringer, and Tansen's grief made him too apathetic to press the point. Armian was curious, though, about why a man would abandon everything to go live at the airless, wind-swept, snow-capped peak of the volcano—and perhaps one day even throw himself into the caldera.

"The zanareen come from all walks of life," Tansen explained as they passed through a lush valley of blossoming almond trees. "My brother was one. He felt a calling one day, they say. That can happen even to a man who seems to have everything—a toren, a merchant, a wealthy city-dweller. Most often, though, they are men who've lost too much. Their livestock has all died, or their wives are lost in childbirth, or their fields have dried up and no waterlord will help them, or an assassin seeks them for a bloodvow... or their entire clan is killed in a bloodfeud." Tansen paused, then added, "A man without a clan is no one in the mountains. A shallah is nothing without his kin."

Armian gazed at him thoughtfully. "What about bloodpact relations?"

Tansen shrugged. "I have none."

Armian grasped the back of his neck and shook it, a gesture of affection, an attempt to lighten his dark mood. "Don't tell me you're going to run off and become a zanar?"

Tansen smiled. "No, that I will not do."

"Good."

"There is no need. The Firebringer has come."

Armian grunted in exasperation, then drenched him with spray from the waterskin. It was the first time Tansen laughed since meeting him.

Tansen drifted slowly into consciousness, feeling his way out of death's dark domain and back toward the world of the living. He remembered that he was in a cave, and he could smell daylight in the breeze which drifted in through its mouth. 

Only in Sileria, the most beautiful of nations, was the scent of day so seductively different from that of night. The burgeoning blossoms, the ripening fruits, the tender leaves, even the peach-and-amber rocks themselves seemed to soak up the sun and then, by midday, start sweating it back into the air, drenching a man's senses. Afternoon was traditionally a time of rest in Sileria, though the war had changed that for many people. Even at the height of the fighting, though, it was hard to think about killing, hard to seek blood, when Sileria wrapped Tansen in her perfumed embrace and coaxed him to sleep in her scented shadows.

He inhaled deeply, surrendering to the allure of his native land... and realized that his wound didn't hurt.

His eyes snapped open in surprise. Something else occurred to him, too: "I feel better."

The words came out as a croaking whisper. He turned his head. The movement made him a little dizzy, but without the sickening, whirling weakness he'd felt before. He didn't see the waterskin, though. Had the boy gone, after all? He should have left the water, but perhaps he expected to return soon. Tansen tried to remember what had happened after Zarien's startling declaration that, since Josarian was dead, he must be the sea king.

Dar spare me.

The boy had refused to leave his side. Had Tansen stayed awake long enough to tell him how to find the nearest Sanctuary? Or an alternate path up to the caves of Dalishar? Had he instructed the lad what to do and how to remember where this cave was? He didn't think so, but he couldn't remember for sure.

However, Zarien seemed very capable, even if out of his element, so perhaps he could make it to help and back even so. If not, then...

I'll have to make it alone.

Perhaps he should start right away, while he was feeling a cautious return of his strength. He rolled to his side and slowly rose to a sitting position. His head swam for a moment, but his vision didn't go black. Was the wound healing on its own? He looked down—and caught his breath in astonishment.

His seeping, open, pain-ridden wound was gone. Only a thick silver scar was left in its place. 

A scar. As if it had healed long ago.

One thing Tansen was sure of was that he hadn't been lying here for the months it would take for that to happen naturally.

Sorcery?

No one had been here but the boy. How had he done it?

Tansen remembered Zarien wanting to treat the wound and not knowing that it couldn't be cauterized. Perhaps he had more suggestions which Tansen had not stayed conscious long enough to hear. Certainly the sea-born—their women, usually—were reputed to be gifted healers. They had to be, since their boats were often far from help when disaster struck. And hadn't Josarian once told him that his own wife, believing she was barren, had sought help from the sea-born women in the port of Cavasar who were supposed to possess the secrets of fertility?

If the sea-born could do this for a shir wound, Tansen thought as he fingered his new scar, he sincerely wished more of them would come inland.

Then again, he acknowledged, Zarien was no ordinary boy. Regardless of what one thought about his tale of being reborn in the depths of the sea at a goddess's will—Tansen merely reserved judgment for the time being—he bore the most death-defying scars Tansen had ever seen. No one should have lived through the attack evinced by those terrible teeth marks. If Zarien had somehow healed himself after that attack, then he could probably heal a shir wound even in his sleep.

Tansen hoped they'd never have cause to find out, but the events now unfolding in Sileria suggested there'd be many, many shir wounds before the year was out.

His hand throbbed painfully, and he wondered why Zarien—who had cleaned and wrapped the fresh shir wound which was there—hadn't healed it, too. Fortunately, though, it wasn't life-threatening, just inconvenient. A Sister's balms would at least make it hurt less so he could wield a sword with that hand while it healed over the course of time.

Knowing he couldn't afford to waste more time, Tansen rose slowly to his feet. When he was sure he could stay on them, he looked around for his tunic. He saw a pile of blood-soaked rags in the corner and realized that was probably what was left of it, as well as of Zarien's. The boy should have burned those, rather than leave them here to attract animals, but he probably wasn't used to thinking about that; the carnivores of the sea only smelled blood in the water, after all, not aboard a boat. It didn't matter now, anyhow, since Tansen was leaving. 

He knelt by his satchel, moving carefully, and opened it in search of his spare tunic. It wasn't there.

Damn him, he thought, momentarily forgetting that the boy had saved his life.

Tansen heard footsteps outside the cave. Ingrained habits ruled his healing body. He reached for the harness lying nearby, scooped it up with his injured hand, and unsheathed a sword with the other hand as he turned to face the cave entrance.

The sudden action left him a little dizzy, so it was just as well that the intruder was only Zarien.

"Siran?"

"That's my tunic," was Tansen's irritable reply to the boy's questioning expression. The thin homespun shirt was a little baggy even on Tansen; Zarien was practically swimming in it.

"Mine is ruined." Zarien gave a pointed glance to the blood-soaked rags in the corner. Tansen sheathed his sword.

"Where have you been?" The moment he spoke the words he realized what a stupid question that was. The boy was carrying not only the waterskin, but an unappetizing assortment of wild onions, baby potatoes, and under-ripe figs.

"I went to get more water, and some food." Zarien paused, then added, "You may have all the onions."

"Thanks, I'm not hungry."

"You should eat," Zarien insisted.

"I'll wait until we reach Dalishar." Whatever food they had up there when he arrived, it would be better than this.

"I thought this was Mount Dalishar."

"I meant the sacred caves."

Zarien looked dismayed. "Must we?"

"I must. What you do is your own decision, of course, but we can feed and protect you at Dalishar until—"

"I go where you go."

"Good. Let's—"

"But we should rest another night here," said Zarien, "and then make for the sea."

"I can't," Tansen replied. "I have to—"

"Sharifar awaits you. The sea-born await you."

"No." Tansen saw the distress in the young face and immediately felt guilty. He sighed and tried to explain. "You've saved my life, and I am very grateful. I'll do whatever I can for you, help you in any way—"

"Then come with me," Zarien insisted.

"—that I can, provide you with whatever you need to return to your people—"

"They won't take me back. I can't go back without you!"

"—or to find this... this man you seek, but—"

"It's you," said Zarien. "I know it is."

"—I can't—"

 "They have saved you for your destiny." Zarien gestured to the healed shir wound.

"—go haring off—" Tansen stopped abruptly and stared at the boy. "Didn't you heal me?"

"No." Zarien shook his head. "I only prayed to them. They healed you."

"They?" He didn't like this. "Who?"

Zarien brushed a hand across his own torso, indicating the scars now hidden by the tunic. "Whoever did this for me. Sharifar, or—"

"This is land, not s—"

"Or Dar. Or perhaps they worked together." Zarien's tattooed hand moved back and forth, gesturing to them both. "To heal us both. To save us both. So that I would come here and find you, as I did, and bring you back to sea with me, as I must."

He could be a very convincing young man. Nonetheless, Tansen shook his head. "If Dar healed me... " That thought alone was incredible, but Dar had spared his life before that he might fulfill his destiny, whatever it was, and perhaps She had done so again. He hoped not. He was angry at Dar and didn't want to owe Her anything now. "If Dar healed me, it's so that I can finish Josarian's work."

"What if it was his work to unite the sea-born, as their king?"

Darfire, he was a persistent little brat.

"Then, in the fullness of time, perhaps I will," Tansen said, trying to end the argument. "But for now, I must make sure the Valdani withdraw from Sileria and that the Society don't rule it in their wake. And," he added, when Zarien drew breath to speak again, "I must begin by going to Dalishar to—" 

He stopped speaking abruptly and lifted his head, listening, his mountain-born senses tuned to an intrusion. 

"Wh—"

Tansen put a hand over Zarien's mouth and whispered, "Someone's out there."

The boy went still and wide-eyed, looking to him for direction.

Since Tansen had heard whoever was out there, they had probably heard enough to know that someone was in here.

"Let them see you," he whispered to Zarien. "Convince them you're alone." He couldn't risk more detailed instructions now. He only hoped Zarien could lie as well as any shallah boy. "I'll be right here, in case they don't believe you."

Breathing a little fast, Zarien nodded and moved to the mouth of the cave. Tansen crept along its wall, staying in the shadows near the entrance, both swords drawn as he waited. He felt sweat trickle down his face. His left hand throbbed fiercely, with the kind of pain only a shir could inflict. He felt stiff, his mouth was dry, and he was still weak from blood loss.

He could pray to Dar to make the intruders go away, he supposed, but he had a vivid memory of cursing Her as he lay bleeding on the path to Dalishar. No, he and the volcano goddess were not on good terms. So he merely cleared his thoughts and focused on the task at hand.

"Is someone there?" Zarien called out.

Tansen heard nothing, and that paradoxically convinced him that someone was indeed there—someone moving with stealth now that Zarien had evinced awareness of the intrusion.

"Hello?" the boy tried again.

Something distracted Tansen. A soft rattling sound, a strange vibration. He looked down and saw the boy's oar, the stahra, lying on the floor of the cave. It was shaking—shaking?—with increasing intensity even as Tansen stared at it in astonishment.

 He flashed a puzzled look at Zarien, but the boy's back was to him. He glanced at the quivering stahra again. 

What's going on?

He started to reach for Zarien, feeling worried, but for once he wasn't fast enough. Zarien stuck his head out of the cave. A dark hand snaked around from the side, grabbed the boy's hair, and yanked him the rest of the way out of the cave. 

"Assassins!" Zarien's startled exclamation was followed by a harsh grunt of pain. The stahra shuddered wildly, nearly tripping Tansen as he stepped past it. Instinct convinced him the thing's agitation meant Zarien was in danger.

Tansen dived out of the cave, a move designed to avoid the kind of trap that had caught Zarien, and rolled to his feet, swords flashing as he—

He stopped abruptly and stared in surprise.

"Well, only one assassin," Zarien admitted. The boy gulped as the assassin's wavy blade kissed his throat, the grip on his hair keeping him on his toes.

"Najdan." Tansen sagged with relief.

"Yes. And you are very lucky," Najdan said, "since a blind beggar could have followed the trail you left."

"I wasn't quite myself at the time," said Tansen.

Najdan regarded the youth in his grasp with interest and added, "However, until I found this boy, I thought there might be assassins here, so I am lucky, too."

 Tansen sheathed his swords. "Let go of him."

"As you wish." 

Najdan released Zarien, who rubbed the painful shir burn on his throat as he warily backed away from the assassin. Older than most assassins, since it was not a profession which usually counted longevity among its benefits, Najdan nonetheless looked very impressive. He bore more than a dozen scars, all got in combat—except for a couple of burn marks acquired during his first encounter with Mirabar, when he had been her mortal enemy rather than her devoted servant. Najdan's eyes were hard, even when he smiled, and his ways were violent and unyielding. However, he had condemned himself to a bloodvow from Kiloran in order to save Mirabar's life and to try to save Josarian's. That ensured he had Tansen's loyalty.

Najdan's eyes narrowed as he studied the boy. "You are sea-born."

"This is Zarien," Tansen said. "He saved my life."

"Don't tell me he fought the assassins lying dead o—"

"No, I did, but... It's a long story," said Tansen. "I'll tell you later. Where is Mir—"

"Tansen!"

He knew that voice as well as he knew the face which now appeared as Mirabar emerged from a thicket, accompanied by Lann.

Najdan scowled with disapproval. "Sirana, you were to wait—"

"Dar be praised," she said. "You're alive!"

"I told you he would be." Lann's voice boomed with its usual vigor. He grinned, big and bearded and robust, fully recovered from the severe wounds he had incurred several months ago during Kiloran's first ambush on Josarian. Tansen wondered briefly why he bore a fresh bandage on his head.

Mirabar ran to where Tansen stood, hesitated for a moment, then embraced him. He put his arms around her and closed his eyes. He had held her once or twice before, but only in fear or sorrow. Never like this, relieved, glad to see each other. Her smooth cheek against his bare chest, her hair spilling over his shoulder, tickling his skin... That fire-bright hair, almost supernatural in its intensity, was a lava-rich color uniquely her own, like her flame-gold eyes, stirring him. Yet her Dar-blessed beauty had actually repulsed him the first time he ever saw her. And, if he were honest, for a while thereafter.

He had traveled the world, had seen many things and learned much, but he was still prey to the superstitions of his youth. The waterlords so feared the power of people born with Mirabar's unusual coloring—and thereby blessed with great gifts of fire and communion with the Otherworld—that they had, centuries ago, convinced Silerians, particularly the shallaheen, that such people were demons, cursed in the womb by Dar, who must be killed on sight. As an adult, he knew better; but the fears and prejudices of a child could lurk deep inside even the most worldly of men.

Mirabar pulled away, her eyes almost glowing in their fiery intensity as she met his gaze. "I looked into the circle of fire at Dalishar, but you were not there."

"Not dead yet," he said wryly, knowing that she meant she had searched in a Guardian fire for his shade, the shadow of a person that sojourned in the Otherworld after the body's death.

"All the same, I was afraid..."

"I'm all right now," he assured her.

Her hand slid down his side, touching the bare skin which had been an open wound when last they had seen each other, only days ago. She gasped at the sight of the scar. "What happened?"

"We'll discuss it later," he replied.

"Your wound is healed," Najdan said slowly, staring.

"But," Mirabar said, "how could—" 
      "I'm not sure," Tansen admitted. 

"You don't remember?" Najdan asked.

"No."

Tansen glanced at Zarien, who was looking at Mirabar with open-mouthed fascination. Being sea-born, he didn't share the dark superstitions of Tansen's childhood about orange-eyed demons with fiery hair, but it was safe to assume he'd never seen anyone like Mirabar. Once she was willing to take her gaze off Tansen, Mirabar studied the tattooed sea-born boy with interest, too. This deep in the mountains, he was almost as unique as she was.

"A child is coming," she murmured suddenly, taking a step towards Zarien.

The boy lifted his chin, evidently understanding the words she had spoken in shallah. "I am a man among my people." He paused and added reluctantly, "Well, almost."

"Are you?" She scarcely seemed to have heard his words.

"He has certainly shown all the courage of one." Tansen  introduced Zarien to Mirabar and Lann, speaking in common Silerian for the boy's benefit. He told them briefly about the ambush and explained how Zarien had found him and brought him here.

Mirabar returned her attention to the healed shir wound. "But what about—"

"Perhaps we shouldn't stay here," Najdan said suddenly.

Tansen was too accustomed to his brusqueness to be surprised. "Are the bodies where I left them?" he asked.

"The assassins?" Mirabar grimaced. "Yes."

"When I found your trail," Najdan said, "I left the sirana behind to burn the corpses."

"But Lann and I followed Najdan, instead," Mirabar said.

"Let's go back there," Tansen said. "I want to get their shir."

Mirabar was surprised. "But you never take the sh—"

"We'll need them for an idea I have," he said. "And we should burn those bodies." He didn't want to send Kiloran's assassins to the Otherworld, if assassins even went there, but custom was custom: Silerians burned their dead, whether friend or foe. The island nation's native people were revolted by the Valdani custom of burying the dead, and they avoided the Valdani graveyards in Sileria, viewing them with profound distaste.

"We should certainly do something with those bodies," Zarien agreed with a grimace.

Tansen could imagine what stumbling across six violently slain men had been like for the boy.

Mirabar asked Tansen, "What's your idea f—"

"Sirana." Uncharacteristically, Najdan interrupted her yet again. "Let us leave this place."

"Najdan's right," Tansen agreed. "My pace is slow right now. We should move if we're going to reach the caves by sundown."

He waited as Zarien slipped back into the cave to fetch his stahra and Tansen's satchel. The oar was quiescent now, revealing no signs of its earlier spine-chilling animation. Tansen knew he had not imagined that bizarre occurrence, though. The weapon was yet another aspect of this unusual boy about which he intended to get answers. 

Meanwhile, Lann looked at Zarien and laughed. "An oar? You won't need an oar in the mountains!"

Zarien sighed. "It's a stahra."

"A what?"

"His weapon," Tansen said.

"Let's go," Najdan prompted, forestalling further discussion.

"An easy pace," Mirabar warned the others, looking at Tansen with concern.

"I'll manage," he assured her, concealing that he was tired already.

As they trekked back toward the scene of the ambush, though, Tansen realized that it was Zarien, not he, who would determine their pace. "What's wrong with your feet?" he asked the boy after a while, realizing that they pained him.

Zarien shrugged, embarrassed. "I am not used to the dryland." Then he quickly changed the subject. "Siran, we should be thinking about returning to sea where—"

"Zarien," Tansen warned, "not now." He wasn't up to walking and arguing. After studying the boy's shoes for a moment, he ventured, "Those aren't yours, are they?"

"I... I, uh—" Zarien's sun-bronzed complexion darkened. 

"Stole them?" Tansen guessed.

"My bare feet were not used to all these... these rocks and pebbles and thorns and—"

"No, I suppose not."

"And I am not used to walking so much."

"Why not?" asked Mirabar. She was directly ahead of Tansen, and turned often to look at both him and the boy with a thoughtful expression. Najdan led the way and Lann brought up the rear.

"He's from a sea-bound clan," Tansen answered so that Zarien, who looked self-conscious, wouldn't have to.

"I've heard about them. People—whole clans—never going ashore," Mirabar said. "That seems so strange."

Zarien bristled. "Have you ever been to sea?"

 "No," she said.

"Not once in your whole life?" Zarien prodded.

"No."

"Well, that seems very strange to me."

"Generation after generation?" Mirabar asked. "Your parents, their parents, your ancestors... No one ever comes ashore?"

Zarien looked uncomfortable and shrugged. "Have your shallah parents ever been to sea?"

"I don't know who they were," Mirabar replied.

Zarien's face darkened again. "I'm sorry. I only meant—"

"I know what you meant," Mirabar said without rancor. "I'm used to not knowing."

"Can you..." Zarien frowned and asked her, "Can you really get used to that?"

"You can get used to anything," she replied, and Tansen knew she spoke from experience.

Her response seemed to send Zarien into deep thought. Tansen wondered if he was considering all that he would now have to get used to if his clan really wouldn't take him back. Tansen himself had gone alone into exile at a young age, so he understood some of what the boy must be going through, though he had only a very vague idea of the life Zarien had led until now. 

Now that Tansen was somewhat rested and his wound healed, he discovered that the distance he had previously covered with Zarien was not nearly as far as he had thought. They reached the scene of the ambush sooner than he expected, even at this slow pace. The corpses had ripened under Sileria's strong sun and truly stank. Zarien made a sound of disgust and moved upwind.

"Six," Najdan said, gazing at the bodies. "And you were already wounded." He eyed Tansen and paid him a rare compliment. "Speaking as an assassin, I'm glad you're the only shatai in Sileria."

"I'm lucky Searlon is in Shaljir," Tansen admitted. "They were good, but if he had been among them..." He shook his head, knowing he might well have died had Searlon been among them. Searlon was even better at killing than Najdan, and Najdan was among the very best. He shook off the thought and asked, "Do you know any of them?"

"Yes. All but this one. He must have been new." Najdan touched the nearest corpse with the toe of his well-made boot. "That one..." He pointed briefly with his chin to the one who had been so hard to kill, the one who had nearly finished Tansen. "He and I were friends." Najdan's voice didn't change and his expression remained hard. After a moment he added, "We are better off with him dead."

"He was a brave man," Tansen said politely. "A strong fighter." 

"Yes," Najdan turned his back on his former friend and met Tansen's gaze. "He was. You did well."

Tansen knew there was nothing else to say, so he turned to see where Zarien had gone. The boy was sitting on a rock, resting his sore feet and keeping his face turned away from the carnage.

Lann and Najdan began piling up the bodies while Tansen, now feeling the sting of his many smaller wounds and burns, collected the six shir which, by virtue of victorious combat with the assassins, were now his and his alone. Although two of the assassins' jashareen were too fouled to be of use even after washing, he took the other four from the bodies. Like the shir, they would be useful in the plan he was forming.

He put all these things into his satchel and joined Zarien upwind as Mirabar began chanting over the bodies. Najdan's shir, never entirely still in her presence, began shuddering wildly in his jashar. A moment later, the six shir in Tansen's satchel started doing the same, making noise as they rattled against each other.

Zarien jumped to his feet and snatched up his stahra as if ready for a fight. "What's happening?"

"It's nothing," Tansen told him. "Shir do that in response to Guardian magic." The stahra was doing nothing, he noticed, in response to Mirabar's gathering power. It must only respond when Zarien was threatened. "Are all stahra enchanted?" he asked.

Zarien's expression suggested this was a stupid question. "None of them are."

Could the boy not know? Tansen decided this was a discussion which could wait until later.

Mirabar, having recited the traditional blessings over the bodies of their enemies, spread her hands wide and blew gently onto the bodies of the dead. Her breath turned into a fiery mist that grew into a glowing flame.

Tansen heard Zarien make a stifled sound of astonishment as the flame quickly expanded to ignite the entire pile of six men into a blazing bonfire which took only seconds to tower well above its creator. Mirabar kept chanting, her voice melodious and slightly husky, spinning through Tansen's senses as she sent his enemies to... whatever the ultimate fate of assassins was.

"So..." Zarien swallowed, watching the scene with wide-eyed fascination. "So that's Guardian fire magic?"

Tansen replied, "That's only some of it. She has many gifts."

"Do they all?"

"The Guardians all have gifts, some more than others. But she," Tansen said with a touch of pride which he knew not really his to feel, "is unique."

"In the way she looks?"

"In her gifts." He paused and added, "And in her looks, as far as I know."

"She would be... well, startling to come upon unexpectedly in the night," Zarien admitted.

The boy obviously meant it without any of the superstition which had so often characterized people's attitudes in the mountains, including Tansen's own, so he merely said, "Yes."

"And she keeps company with an assassin."

"Yes."

"Your friends are... dangerous people," Zarien ventured.

And these are the ones I trust, Tansen reflected wryly, but he only repeated, "Yes."

When she was done with her ritual, Mirabar joined them upwind of the fire. "You have no tunic?" she asked, glancing at Tansen's bare chest.

"No."

"Perhaps Najdan would loan you his."

"I'll be all right until we reach the caves." What few spare personal possessions he owned were kept there.

She looked uncertain. "We agreed to meet Cheylan back here after—"

"Cheylan is here?" Tansen was surprised—and not pleased.

"Yes. He returned this morning from the east. He told us about this." She gestured to the bonfire, indicating the six bodies that Tansen had left lying in bloody disarray on the path to Dalishar. "So we came in search of you."

"Where is he?"

"There's a Sanctuary not far from here."

"Sister Velikar's Sanctuary." He nodded. "I know."

"We thought you might have tried to reach it if you were too badly hurt to make it to Dalishar," Mirabar said. "So Cheylan and three of the men have gone there."

"But Najdan saw my trail—"

"Only after Cheylan had gone," she replied.

"Ah." Tansen said nothing else, but he doubted, after what Najdan had said earlier about the trail he and Zarien had left, that the assassin had failed to notice it immediately. Tansen thought it far more likely that Najdan had simply been eager to get rid of Cheylan, whom he didn't like. Since Tansen didn't like him, either, he was in sympathy with the ploy. Cheylan was an ally, but no friend. "Why is Cheylan back?"

"I didn't ask. When we realized you had been attacked and were missing, I just..." Mirabar sighed and looked off into the distance. "I didn't even tell him about Josarian's death."

"But word must be spreading," he said, aware of the flush of pleasure inside him. She had cared so much she'd forgotten about everything else. Unlike Elelar, the woman who had held him in thrall for so long, this one cared. "Every moment that we lose—"

"Did you do it?" Mirabar asked suddenly, without looking at him, her voice low. 

The warm pleasure inside him died in the chill of reality.

He didn't have to ask what she meant. Tansen had known, ever since leaving Elelar alive that night, that he would have to face this moment. If Mirabar had not feared him dead and been so relieved to see him alive, it would have been the first thing she said to him: Did you do it?

"No," he replied. Evasion would only make it worse. "I didn't kill her."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zarien's head swivel suddenly in his direction, the discussion drawing his attention away from the magical fire that continued to burn so brightly, so silently compared to an earthly fire.

Mirabar didn't move, didn't look at him, but he could sense her tension building, and he could practically feel the heat of her anger. There was so much to tell her, so many reasons that he couldn't kill Elelar for what she had done. And this particular moment wasn't the right time or place to talk about it. He tried to think of what to say—and waited too long.

"That's it?" she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "That's all you have to say about it?"

 "No." Since the time and place would probably never be right, he realized, he ignored Zarien's fascinated stare and said, "I didn't kill her because—"

"I don't care why you didn't do it!"

Zarien jumped as Mirabar leaped to her feet in fury. Even Tansen flinched a little. Lann and Najdan, standing too far away to distinguish Mirabar's words but close enough to hear her tone, whirled to face them. Lann took a step forward but Najdan stopped him from coming any closer.

Tansen rose to his feet, too. "Mira—"

"She betrayed Josarian, and you let her live!" The hot rage in her voice was matched by the yellow fury flashing from her eyes. "She betrayed us all, and you swore would kill her. And you didn't!"

"I realized I cou—"

"I know why you didn't do it," she snapped bitterly. 

Tears filled Mirabar's eyes. She clenched her teeth and raised her arm. Tansen saw the blow coming. He watched her arm swing, and he didn't move. He felt her palm connect with his cheek, and he welcomed the flash of pain, the loud crack of flesh against flesh. He welcomed the way his head whipped around with the force of her blow, the way his ears rang. He wanted the hot sting to be worse, to last longer than it would.

Tansen could make no other decision than the one had he made that night in Elelar's shadowed bedchamber, but he wanted Mirabar to punish him for it as he deserved. He had not avenged the betrayal of his bloodbrother. He had not avenged the torena's betrayal of them all. And he had neglected this woman in the throes of his obsession with another. 

Now Najdan came closer, though Lann did not.

Hit me again, Tansen thought, because Mirabar was too small and too unaccustomed to violence for the first blow to hurt as he deserved. Hit me again.

But she didn't. She merely said, her voice low and trembling with the effort to hold back more tears, "I will never forgive you."

It hurt more than being hit.

"Mirabar..." He laid a hand upon her arm.

She jerked away. "Don't touch me!" 

Much more than being hit.

"If you ever touch me again," she ground out, "I will tell Najdan to kill you."

"Sirana?" Najdan was at her side now, frowning as he glanced from her to Tansen.

"We're going to Sanctuary," Mirabar said to the assassin.

"Wait," Tansen said, trying to fend off this blow. "We have to make plans f—"

"No," she said coldly. "You've chosen your way. Now I choose mine."

"We're in this together," he told her.

"We were."

"Mirabar, let's—"

"I hope they kill you next time." Mirabar's fiery eyes were chilly with loathing. "You deserve to be dead."

"Sirana..." Najdan said uneasily.

"I never want to see you again," she told Tansen.

She turned and walked away.

That was the blow that nearly drove him to his knees.

Chapter Nine

Spilled blood calls for vengeance.

                              —Silerian Proverb

Torena Elelar mar Odilan yesh Ronall shah Hasnari was exhausted by the time she reached the great city of Shaljir. 

Elelar had roused her household in the ruined villa outside Chandar with her screams of rage and fury the night Tansen had slipped inside to awaken her, tell her of Josarian's death, and avenge her betrayal of the Firebringer. After Tansen had decided to spare her life—though she had not asked him to and was now almost sorry that he had—she immediately ordered her servants to begin packing while she wrote letters, issued instructions, and set her household on its ears with her sudden decision to travel halfway across Sileria. She had followed Tansen's orders and left at first light that very day. She had pushed herself, the servants who traveled with her, and their mounts to the limits of endurance in order to reach Shaljir as soon as possible. She hadn't even let that terrifying earthquake slow her down, though one of the servants had been injured. She'd left him in Sanctuary the following morning and continued her journey, anxious to reach Shaljir and carry out her duty.

Now that she was here, arriving at sunset, exhausted, depressed, guilt-ridden, and afraid, all Elelar had to do was move mountains.

Oh, Dar, as I have been faithful and true—in my way—I humbly beseech You to help me now, she prayed as she waited at the Lion's Gate for entry into the city.

But the prayers were probably useless, as was the remorse, for she had betrayed Dar's Chosen One. The destroyer goddess forgave no slight, after all, and what Elelar had done was considerably worse than neglecting her devotions or denying offerings to Dar. Her punishment for betraying the Firebringer would surely be swift and terrible.

It was bewildering to remember how pragmatic, how necessary, the decision had seemed at the time. The Valdani demanded Josarian's death in exchange for their final withdrawal from Sileria, for the surrender of Shaljir. Elelar's cohort Toren Varian reminded her that the zanar prophecies never said how the Firebringer would drive the foreign invaders out of Sileria. So, Varian suggested, perhaps he was destined to do so as a sacrificial offering rather than as a warrior. Josarian himself knew that the prophecies said nothing of his destiny beyond ridding Sileria of the Valdani; his ultimate future was as uncertain as any man's. And he was locked in a deadly bloodfeud with Kiloran, a wizard so invincible that few doubted he could destroy even the Firebringer. Kiloran wanted Josarian dead, and the Valdani wanted Josarian dead... and Elelar had believed that his death was the way to free Sileria.

A hot wave of shame washed over her every time she thought of it. Kiloran had used her. Even worse, she had let him. She had been so obsessed with her lifelong goal, so focused on her hatred of the Valdani, that she had let Kiloran make her his tool in Josarian's destruction, every bit as much as Zimran had been Elelar's tool.

The shallaheen had a word for someone like her: sriliah. It was the worst thing one Silerian could call another. Worse than liar, thief, cuckold, coward, murderer, or whore: traitor. Among Silerians, betrayal was the very worst crime a person could commit. The irony of their culture, the tragedy of their history, was that it was also perhaps their most common crime against one another. And it was always punished with blood vengeance.

Who will punish me?

She knew now that it would never be Tansen. Not because he loved her. Even if he had once loved her, even if he still could, she knew he would never want the woman who had betrayed his bloodbrother. 

She knew that Tansen had still wanted her when he had returned to Sileria after his nine years in exile. Elelar had seen it in his eyes, had felt it in the sharp tension that ran through him like pain when she touched him. She had smelled desire on his skin more than once and had believed he could be hers if she chose. But she always chose duty, and Tansen always chose loyalty to Josarian. 

Elelar had betrayed Tansen to Kiloran years ago for murdering Armian. She had sacrificed Tansen's young life to protect the Alliance, and yet he had continued to want her. Nine years in exile, nine years of wandering foreign lands and knowing other women, and yet he was not indifferent to her upon his return to Sileria. If Tansen had not precisely forgiven her, he had nonetheless never forgotten her.

However, while a man of honor might overlook a woman's sins against him, if he desired her enough, he could never ignore what she had done to his brother or his nation. Elelar's betrayal of Josarian had damaged more than Tansen's dreams; it had stained his honor and bloodied his heart. Tansen had introduced his bloodbrother to Elelar and had brought the mountain rebel into association with the Alliance. If not for Tansen, Josarian and Zimran would never even have known Elelar, let alone been vulnerable to her.

This was Sileria, where spilled blood called for vengeance. Josarian had killed Kiloran's only son, Srijan, in vengeance for betrayal. That act had incited Josarian's bloodfeud with Kiloran, had splintered the rebellion, and had turned most of the Society into his enemies overnight. Yet even Elelar, who had tried to stop Josarian from killing Srijan, understood why he had done it: Kiloran's offense against him must be avenged, swiftly and ruthlessly, or the shallaheen would never again respect and follow Josarian, even though he was the Firebringer.

No matter how worldly Tansen had become, he had been born and raised a shallah, so Elelar knew that his honor now depended on avenging his brother. He had killed Zimran and he certainly intended to kill Kiloran, but he hadn't taken his vengeance against Elelar. She knew the shallah in him would hereafter see his dishonor every time he looked at her. And no matter how strong he was, he had loved Josarian and was devastated by his death. He would be reminded of this pain every time he saw her.

Nor could he ever forgive her betrayal of Sileria, even knowing that she did it in ignorance. Tansen had loved Armian and had killed him even so, committing an unforgivable sin by murdering a bloodpact relative and offending Dar by slaying the man he thought was the Firebringer, all to save their nation from the Society. Now, by betraying Josarian, Elelar had paved the way for Kiloran to seize power and, a thousand years after Marjan first envisioned it, condemn Sileria to the absolute rule of the Society. 

Tansen should have killed me.

It was she, after all, who had convinced Zimran, Josarian's beloved cousin, to betray him. Zimran had possessed many of the virtues most prized among the shallaheen—reckless courage, wily shrewdness, and blood loyalty—but none of the virtues needed by a rebel in a war-torn land, none of the virtues Josarian needed in his followers. Zimran had lacked vision, imagination, or dreams. He was too selfish to be a leader, too cynical to believe in freedom, too jealous to share Josarian with others, and too short-sighted to understand that his boyhood playmate was no longer the simple mountain peasant he had always known. In the midst of world-changing events and fire-born prophecy, Zimran had stubbornly continued to long for nothing more glorious than a return to the simple life of a shallah smuggler in Valdani-occupied Sileria.

 Elelar had seduced Zimran, letting him believe he had seduced her. Although Tansen hid his pain and his jealousy behind the schooled mask of a shatai, Elelar sensed how he hated her relationship with Zimran. It was his own fault, she'd told herself more than once. Had Tansen been willing, as Zimran ultimately was, to switch his loyalty from Josarian to Elelar, then he could have been her lover. But Tansen always chose loyalty to Josarian.

She used Zimran as a conduit to Josarian when the Firebringer quarreled with the Society and turned his back on the Alliance. And she used him as her weapon against Josarian in the end, convincing Zimran to betray Josarian to the Valdani—Zimran, who had once daily risked his life to protect Josarian from them, back in the days when Josarian had been merely an outlaw on the run, rather than a rebel leader or the Firebringer.

It was happenstance that Elelar's plan failed, that Tansen discovered the plot, executed Zimran, and stopped the Valdani. Nonetheless, the Firebringer was dead, and she doubted Kiloran would have known enough about Josarian's movements to kill him that fateful night if Elelar had not betrayed him to Advisor Kaynall.

Tansen was right. She was such a fool. How could she never have suspected that Kiloran was behind the secret treaty all along? Searlon himself, Kiloran's most favored assassin, had escorted Elelar to the meeting between the Alliance and Advisor Kaynall! Yet she had never guessed. Her hatred for the Valdani and all they had done to Sileria had made her blind to the terrible danger of her own allies. What had Josarian himself often said? I can take care of my enemies, but Dar shield me from my friends. She should have listened. He was much wiser than she had ever realized.

But Elelar had been so certain that she knew better than an illiterate mountain peasant, even one chosen by Dar. She saw the arrogance that overcame Josarian after his transformation at Darshon and was afraid. She was so accustomed to fearing the power of the Society that she had wanted the Firebringer himself to placate them rather than challenge them. She was so terrified that the Valdani, the only enemies she knew how to hate, would take advantage of the division among the Silerian rebels that she had agreed to eliminate...

Dar, how could I have done it? What madness was in my mind?

Her own actions may have destroyed the only dream she had ever lived for: freedom in Sileria.

Whatever Dar did to her now, it couldn't be punishment enough. Elelar, who did not believe in forgiveness, would never seek salvation for helping Kiloran destroy Josarian. But she knew that Tansen had let her live because he counted on her to accomplish something that mattered much more than her life or death: She must ensure that the Valdani honored their treaty and withdrew from Sileria. Then she must help ensure that the Society did not dominate Sileria in their wake. Once that was done, she could at least die with honor. Regardless of her terrible sin against Dar, her life's work would be fulfilled and her dream realized. Her people—Dar's people—would finally be free.

Tansen, who had been the one to teach Josarian to think like a leader, knew this. He had held a sword to Elelar's throat, burning with vengeance, craving her blood, yet he had let her live. With the strength of will that had driven him to kill the bloodfather he loved, he spared the woman who had betrayed his brother—and sent her to Shaljir to do her duty.

Unfortunately, he was right about something else, too: She had to seek Searlon's help. The thought of facing the assassin again galled her. Searlon had duped her and used her. He had made her not only a traitor, but also a fool. And he had done it all on behalf of his master. Elelar had made the fatal mistake of underestimating Kiloran and the inexcusable blunder of taking Searlon at face value. Now she trembled with shame and rage when she thought of seeking Searlon's help, but she knew she must.

Freedom from the Valdani was her life's work. Freedom from the Society was Tansen's. She must earn the life he had granted her at swordpoint by helping him defeat them both.

The secret treaty with the Valdani called for the Alliance to bring Josarian's body, or at least indisputable proof of the Firebringer's death, to Advisor Kaynall. Some sort of trophy, Elelar supposed, for the Outlookers to parade through the streets of Valda, the great city which was noisy with horrified gossip about the mountain rebel's crimes against the Valdani in Sileria. But Josarian's death in the magical jaws of the White Dragon left no evidence whatsoever. Fortunately, an Outlooker prisoner had witnessed the event. Tansen had released him and sent him back to Shaljir to report Josarian's death to Kaynall. Nonetheless, Sileria couldn't rely on one scared Outlooker to convince the Imperial Advisor that Josarian was truly dead and the Valdani should honor their treaty.

Tansen had learned from the Outlooker prisoner that Searlon was in Shaljir with Advisor Kaynall. The assassin was supposed to identify Josarian's body when the Outlookers brought it back from the ambush that Zimran led his cousin into. Since there was no body now, Tansen had ordered Elelar to get Searlon to help her convince Kaynall that Josarian was indeed dead and the secret treaty must now be honored. The rebels had one thing left in common with the Society, after all: They all still wanted the Valdani to surrender and withdraw from Sileria. 

Elelar would do whatever she had to. Once again, she chose duty—and did not shrink from its dictates.

"Torena."

Derlen, a member of her household, interrupted her thoughts.

"Yes?" she replied.

"We are next at the gate, torena."

Elelar looked around in the golden glow of early evening and realized this was his polite way of suggesting that she urge her mount forward. She did so, then ensured that the woven cords of her headdress modestly concealed her face from the Outlookers at the gate. They would not be able to interpret the way its knotted, braided strands and shiny aquamarine beads identified her name, family, and rank, but even Outlookers knew that such an elaborate headdress signified she was a torena. The headdress she wore today was relatively new, having been made recently by her personal maid, Faradar, to replace the one Elelar had lost here, at the Lion's Gate, when she'd been arrested months ago for spying.

Inside the gatehouse, Imperial Advisor Borell had raped her while the guards outside listened to her painful humiliation. It was here that the servants escorting her that day had died—except for Faradar, who had managed to escape to the mountains to alert the rebels. It was here that Elelar had been placed in chains and hauled off to prison to await execution.

It was not a memory she cared to dwell on. Her stomach churned now as she dismounted and identified herself to the Outlookers manning the Lion's Gate. She saw by their expressions that they had heard her name before. Well, her arrest hadn't exactly been secret. And after Tansen and Zimran had succeeded in their insanely dangerous rescue of her and she had escaped the city, the Valdani had hunted her far and wide. 

Now that two Outlookers unsheathed their swords and ordered her to surrender, she realized that news of her pardon had not been nearly as widespread as news of her arrest and her escape. However, since her pardon was a minor addition she had made to the Alliance's entirely secret treaty with Kaynall, this was hardly surprising. Maintaining her dignity at the point of the Outlookers' short Valdani swords, Elelar ordered Derlen to present her pardon, an official document written in Valdan and signed by Imperial Advisor Kaynall himself.

After one of the guards read it aloud, Derlen said in his punctilious way, "You will now sheathe your swords and treat the torena with the respect which is her due."

It was an impetuous comment for a Silerian to make. Although some fighting continued throughout Sileria, the Valdani had essentially withdrawn all the way back to Shaljir. Most of the country was already under rebel control. Outlookers were surrendering their remaining outposts throughout rural Sileria and fleeing to the dubious safety of Shaljir. This was their final stronghold, the site of their last stand in the island nation they had conquered two hundred years ago. They were awaiting Josarian's siege of the city, bracing themselves for the ultimate battle in this bloody war, and they were clearly not in a humor to tolerate anything from their enemies.

The city walls were gruesomely decorated with the heads of slain rebels. Dispossessed Silerians were leaving Shaljir in a steady stream. Most Silerians trying to enter the city had been turned away from this gate while Elelar had been awaiting her turn. Anyone who made it past the initial examination, as Elelar now did, was required to submit to a lengthy search. Elelar had anticipated that her baggage and her male servants would be searched, but she was appalled to discover that she and her maid, Faradar, must now submit to the pawing hands of two Outlookers if they wanted to reach their destination inside the city walls.

"I am a torena of the Hasnari clan," she snapped with regal anger. "I am also the wife of a Valdan. And I have already shown you my imperial pardon. How dare—"

"Body search or back to the mountains," a tall Outlooker interrupted with open rudeness. "The choice is yours, torena." He made her title sound like an insult.

Some more Silerians were being turned away from the gate. Elelar suspected it was only her status as a Valdan's wife—a situation made clear in her written pardon—that had let her get this far. 

"My husband, Toren Ronall, will hear about this," she bluffed, still hoping to avoid the indignity of a search. Silerian women, even a Silerian woman with morals as flexible as Elelar's, did not submit to the touch of strangers.

"He will doubtless understand that we're doing this for his safety," the Outlooker replied, moving toward her with purpose. "No weapons enter Shaljir except those which will be used in defense of the Empire."

"Oh, for the love of Dar." 

Elelar had to get into the city, and there was no other way. So she instructed Derlen and her other two male servants to cooperate, and she kept Faradar close to her as they submitted to the disgusting intrusion of the Outlookers' search. It was humiliating, particularly when the tall one felt between her legs without any warning or apology. She had to grind her teeth together to control her fury. However, she knew that Faradar had smuggled Tansen's swords into Shaljir by strapping them to her legs, when he had come here to rescue Elelar, so she realized the Outlookers weren't doing this for pleasure. They had simply stopped being careless. Besides, this man gave the impression of being bored beyond measure as his hands roamed freely over the two well-dressed women before him. Elelar supposed it was a small blessing that he had evidently done this so often that any prurience had by now faded into indifference. 

As for telling Ronall.... Actually, Elelar hoped her half-caste husband had already fled Shaljir for the mainland. She had married that whoring drunkard, born of a Valdani father and a Silerian mother, strictly out of duty. She had taken advantage of his wealth and his Valdani connections to serve the Alliance. It was through Ronall, in fact, that she had met Borell, the former Imperial Advisor in Sileria. No matter how distasteful Elelar found Borell's bed, becoming his mistress had given her access to information that helped Josarian drive the Valdani out of the mountains. Soon after Elelar's arrest, Borell committed suicide when he realized he couldn't avoid the public disgrace earned by his careless passion for a woman who had repeatedly betrayed his trust to help the Silerian rebellion. 

Ronall had, in his ineffectual way, tried to get Elelar out of prison by convincing his Valdani father to petition the Imperial Council on her behalf. When Ronall visited her once in prison, Elelar discovered, with mingled confusion and exasperation, that he even loved her in his strange and self-pitying way. The Valdani took Ronall hostage after Elelar's escape, but they eventually released him. Elelar didn't care, either way. What happened to Ronall was no longer any concern of hers. With her true loyalties exposed and with freedom so close she could smell it, the reasons for which she had married Ronall no longer applied. He was a Valdan and should go back to Valda. She hoped he already had. If not, if he was still in Shaljir, then she would make sure he left immediately. It shouldn't be hard, after all, to convince a coward like Ronall to flee Shaljir before it came under Silerian control.

Which it must. No matter what I have to do.

When the Outlookers were finally done with their lengthy search, Elelar was allowed to mount her horse and proceed through the Lion's Gate into the exotic city of Shaljir.

Here in Sileria's ancient capital, the island nation wore her long and tumultuous history like the jewels of an aging courtesan. Thirty-seven sky-reaching marble spires still rose gracefully above the city, though there had reputedly been three hundred of them during the reign of Daurion, the last Yahrdan of Sileria. The tall, round towers of the Moorlanders, who built thick walls around the city they had conquered after Daurion's death, still guarded Shaljir from enemies; and the enormous stone dragons and horned creatures which decorated these towers still protected Shaljir from the demons whom those hairy barbarians had feared more than they feared any mortal.

The complex and sophisticated culture of the Kints, who had taken Sileria from the Moorlanders, had gifted Shaljir with hundreds of red-domed stone buildings which had lasted even longer than Kintish rule in Sileria. The Kints had made Shaljir a city of fountains and flowing water, of bath houses and floating gardens.

The Society, of course, had changed much of that, gaining strength and power as the centuries passed, and making all of Sileria pay heavy tribute for the blessings of water. Even the Valdani, whose Emperor had waged relentless war against the Society for the past forty years, gave the waterlords what they wanted in order to ensure the flow of water into the conquered cities of Sileria.

And even the Valdani, Elelar admitted grudgingly, had contributed to the beauty of Shaljir. Their elaborate public palaces, ornate villas, and fine homes were impressive, if sometimes vulgarly ostentatious. Their broad boulevards and massive city-squares gave Shaljir an aura of grandeur that belied its humble status as a conquered city.

Some of Elelar's tension faded in her pleasure at returning home. She loved this city and had been away for too long, exiled in the mountains while her enemies continued to strategize an increasingly desperate war from Shaljir's Santorell Palace, the seat of imperial power in Sileria.

People from all the nations of Sirkara, the watery heart of the world, usually filled the crowded streets of the city. Men and women from all walks of life normally bustled and jostled for their place in the throng. But all that had changed since Elelar was last in Shaljir. If Advisor Kaynall had received news of Josarian's death, he had evidently not yet announced it to the city. Shaljir was still awaiting the rebels' planned siege—the long, bloody battle which the Alliance's betrayal of the Firebringer was supposed to make unnecessary. Josarian's death was meant to secure surrender and peace, to spare the Silerian rebels what promised to be the worst fight of the war. Shaljir had been conquered too many times to be thought impregnable, but it would be very costly for the rebels to take the city by force.

Houses, palaces, and shops were now boarded up and abandoned. Foreigners were conspicuously absent, though Elelar supposed that might be due to Valdania's two-front war on the mainland as much as to the battle expected in Shaljir. The colorful Kintish merchants and free Moorlander traders who were usually so abundant in Shaljir might have deemed it prudent to depart the Valdani-ruled city while their own nations were locked in deadly struggle with the Empire. 

It was the two-front war on the mainland, of course, which had created the opportunity that Sileria had needed to make its bid for freedom. The Valdani had never expected it, and they couldn't rally the men, money, and supplies needed to suppress the Silerian rebellion before Josarian had driven them all the way back to Shaljir. But if they could hold on to the capital for a year, perhaps even just half a year, who knew which way the wars on the mainland would go? If the Kintish Kingdoms or the last free tribes of the Moorlands surrendered, the rebels in Sileria could never withstand the might which the Valdani could then bring down upon them with the mainland armies they would then be able to spare. 

Whether through the secret treaty or—Dar forbid—the expected siege, Sileria must take Shaljir now. Delay could well mean disaster, an end to the rebellion, the death of all their dreams, and a brutal Valdani reconquest of Elelar's homeland.

"I feel almost as if we are strangers here," Elelar heard Faradar murmur to Derlen. "Everything has changed so much since we were last in the city." 
      Now there were no shallaheen, no sea-born, so Society assassins, no zanareen, and even very few lowlanders to be seen in Shaljir. Any faction known to support Josarian couldn't safely enter the last Valdani-ruled domain in Sileria.

There were Valdani everywhere, though, and many, many Outlookers. Even as darkness descended, Elelar saw long lines outside the few shops that were still doing business; people were evidently trying to hoard what food they could still find. So much water had been stored that Elelar even saw barrels on roofs and in courtyards. They thought Josarian would convince Kiloran to turn the Idalar River back on itself and starve the city of water. Or that, failing that, he could convince his ally and Kiloran's notorious enemy, Baran, to find a way to do it.

Thinking of this brought a sick lump of dread back into Elelar's belly. What would Kiloran do now? Whose side would Baran take in the coming struggle? How would the shallaheen respond to the news of Josarian's death? And what would Advisor Kaynall do?

It was with relief that she found her own house looking relatively normal under the encroaching night sky. Although Ronall was Valdani, they lived in a Silerian section of the city—because they lived in Elelar's house, the palatial residence she had inherited from her grandfather, Gaborian, who had founded the Alliance. Along with Elelar's parents, who had died when she was young, Gaborian had taught her to devote her life to the Alliance. She loved this house, as she had loved her grandfather. She had guarded its many secrets, as he had. Since her arrest, however, only one of its secrets remained: the mystical Beyah-Olvari who lived in the ancient tunnels running beneath the cellars.

"Torena," Derlen said, gaining her attention again. "I will go in first and ensure that you are properly received."

Elelar thought that was a little absurd, given the circumstances. She been in prison since last inhabiting this house, had spent most of the rainy season in a cave on Mount Niran, and lately had been living in a drafty, ruined villa outside of Chandar—and openly sharing her bed with Zimran, a shallah rebel. She knew that her house here had been sacked by the Outlookers when she was arrested, and she didn't even know if any servants had been inside it since then. It seemed doubtful, since no torches blazed outside the massive doors to herald the night. So Derlen's concern for her being received with the dignity due a torena almost made her laugh.

However, she nodded her head graciously and allowed him to do as he thought best, watching him as he entered the house. 

Derlen was a Guardian, though he did not, of course, wear his insignia here in Shaljir. Guardians had been outlawed by the Valdani centuries before the rebellion, and they were now known to have been among Josarian's earliest supporters. Derlen was a fussy, slightly pompous widower whose rather irritating young son (left safely behind in Chandar for now) probably accounted for the early graying of his short hair. Born to a family of wealthy city-dwelling merchants from Shaljir, he had left the mountains to become part of Elelar's household during the rebellion, pleased to return to the city and act as a link between the Alliance and the Guardians. After escaping Shaljir when Elelar was arrested, he had, like most of her other servants, rejoined her when she settled temporarily near Chandar. They had never actually discussed it, but he now seemed to be a permanent part of her household. He still carried messages between the Alliance and the Guardians, but he was increasingly devoted to ministering to her household's spiritual needs. Although more than a little lapsed in her religious observances, Elelar accepted his presence as fitting. It had once been the custom for toreni households to have a Guardian in residence. It should, she decided, become the custom again.

Whatever Elelar was expecting next, it certainly wasn't that Derlen would come flying backwards out of the imposing front door of her house and roll painfully down the broad stone steps to land in a heap before her startled mount.

"Derlen!" Elelar slid off her nervously prancing horse and bent over the Guardian's prone, panting body. The woven cords of her headdress swung across her eyes, obscuring her view of his face. She removed the headdress and tossed it aside.

"Derlen," she repeated, but got no answer. He lay stunned, possibly unconscious.

"Torena?" Faradar dismounted and knelt beside her.

"Someone's hit him," Elelar noted. His gushing nose had already dirtied her silk tunic with blood.

"Come away, torena," one of her male servants urged. "We have no weapons to defend you." 

It was a good point. But when she glanced up, she saw no attack issuing from the vast, dark doorway of her house. 

"Derlen?" Elelar gently shook the Guardian. "What happened?"

He mumbled incoherently. Then his eyes opened. He put a hand to his face, then snatched it away and scowled when he saw the blood on his fingers. "Dar curse that stinking drunk, that whoring, half-witted..." His voice trailed off awkwardly as his rolling eyes met Elelar's. "Er, I beg your pardon, torena."

"Oh, no," she sighed, already guessing the truth.

"Toren Ronall," the Guardian informed her with strained courtesy, "is in residence."

Chapter Ten

Honor my home, eat at my table, 

and sleep beneath my roof.

                  —Traditional Silerian Welcome

The climb to Dalishar might have made Zarien weep with the pain it caused his feet, had he not been so preoccupied with curiosity about the volatile scene between Tansen and Mirabar. 

The flame-haired Guardian had abandoned them in a blaze of rage, followed by the assassin—whose company Zarien couldn't honestly say he missed. Then the big, bearded shallah—Lann—had talked a great deal, though he'd only said one thing that mattered: They could leave immediately for the sacred caves, since the funeral pyre burned with Mirabar's disciplined magic and wouldn't set the hillside on fire even if a stray breeze came along.

It was obvious to Zarien that although Lann was discomfited by the fight between Tansen and Mirabar, he had been too far away to hear their angry exchange of words and had no idea what it was about. Tansen, after a few absent-minded attempts to distract Zarien's train of thought, had simply ordered him to stop asking questions about it and to concentrate on keeping up. Although Zarien would never say so aloud, it was good advice; even a weakened shallah could make that punishing climb with more speed than a footsore sea-born lad. By the time they reached the caves after dark, Zarien scarcely even noticed the woodless fires, the strange paintings (made by the Beyah-something-or-other), the staring shallaheen, or anything else. He collapsed in a breathless, pained heap while Tansen was welcomed with obvious relief by a lot of heavily-armed rebels.

Zarien was sitting at the edge of the clearing, resting his unhappy feet, when Tansen finally came to his side. "Are you all right?"

"I think I was in more pain when the dragonfish killed me," Zarien said, "but I'm not sure."

"I've spoken to Rahilar—"

"Who?"

"The Sister staying up here right now," Tansen said. "She's going to tend your feet."

"What's she going to do?" Zarien asked suspiciously.

He saw that slight tightening at the corner of Tansen's mouth which he was starting to recognize as a smile chased away before it could offend. "You can trust her. She's a Sister." Tansen sat beside him and added, "But first, we'll eat. You must be hungry."

"I have been hungry since the last time I ate my mother's cooking," he grumbled irritably.

"And tired," Tansen observed.

"Not that tired," he said significantly.

"We'll talk tomorrow."

"I would rather talk now."

"I'm sure you would. But I've decided we'll talk tomorrow," was the inflexible reply, "so that's the way it will be."

Zarien was annoyed enough to blurt, "No wonder she hates you."

Tansen glanced at him. "Mirabar doesn't hate me. She's just very angry."

"On that woman," Zarien observed, "anger looks a lot like hate." When Tansen's only response was a sigh, he probed,  "Who were you supposed to kill?"

"Didn't I just say we'll talk tomorrow?"

"Whoever it is—did she really betray Josarian? Is that why he's dead?" Zarien asked.

"If I could say 'we'll talk tomorrow' in sea-born dialect, then would you—"

"It seems very strange that a shallah, of all things, wouldn't avenge a—"

"Zarien."

He heard the warning note this time, something else he was learning to recognize in Tansen, and decided it might be prudent to wait until tomorrow, after all. 

A scarred, one-eyed shallah wearing a Valdani swordbelt and sword brought them a basket filled with food. Zarien's stomach rumbled, but then he smelled something repulsive, and he recoiled with an exclamation of disgust.

"What's wrong?" Tansen asked.

"Ugh. That." He pointed to the offending item.

"The venison?" 

"The cooked flesh."

"Cooked flesh?" Tansen regarded the grease-gleaming blood-dark pieces of animal flesh for a moment and admitted, "I suppose I wouldn't be very enthused, either, if I thought of it that way."

"How do you think of it?" Zarien asked without real interest.

"It's meat."

"Whatever."

"It's good," said Tansen.

"It's revolting."

"Have you tried any?"

"No, and I don't intend to," Zarien said firmly.

"A boy your age should—"

"Should stick to food that won't make him gag."

Tansen sighed again. "Have it your way. But you won't get much fish up here."

"Surely there are fish in the sweetwater?" Zarien hadn't had time to investigate, but it seemed an obvious conclusion.

"You mean in lakes and rivers?"

Zarien nodded.

"Yes, but..." Tansen shrugged.

"You don't fish?" Zarien asked.

"Poaching from waterlords has never seemed wise."

"They even own the water here?"

"Not here at Dalishar," Tansen said. "But there are no fish in the water up here."

"Do the waterlords control the water further down the mountain?"

"I don't think so, but it's all gotten very confusing since the rebellion started. Everyone's territory has changed, and some waterlords have been killed by the Valdani. Some of the water that the Society controlled may even be free now." Tansen added, "But I don't want you fishing anywhere without asking me first."

"Yes, siran."

"My name is Tansen."

"I know your name," he replied, surprised.

"I mean, you can use my name."

"Call you Tansen?" Zarien said doubtfully.

"My friends do."

"But they don't know—"

"And let's not tell them."

"But I must take—"

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," Tansen repeated wearily. "Now eat something."

Zarien peered suspiciously into the basket. "What is that?"

"Those are roasted vegetables."

"I've never seen them before."

"They're wild mountain beets. I don't suppose they'd be sold in the floating markets."

"And that?"

"Goat cheese," said Tansen.

"And that?"

"Just taste it."

"The flesh is touching it," Zarien grumbled.

"If I take the flesh out of the basket, will you stop complaining and just eat?"

"I am not complaining. I'm just asking. Would you put strange things into your mouth?"

"If I'd been living on wild onions, raw potatoes, and under-ripe figs since leaving home, I'd eat anything that a hospitable person put in front of me."

Zarien realized he'd been rude and felt chastened. "I'm sorry, sira... Tansen." While he might not be a Lascari by birth anymore, he still bore the tattoos of one and would not shame them before the landfolk by behaving badly. "Everything has been so strange ever since I fell overboard and died and then came ashore that I—"

"Yes, I can only imagine. I'm..." Tansen made a funny, stifled sound and said, "I'm sorry, too. I was impatient. I, uh, I haven't been at my best since we met."

"Perhaps..." Zarien stared at the legendary warrior and now saw the immense sorrow and fatigue in that lean face. The dancing light of the woodless fire lent a haunted look to Tansen's dark eyes. His filthy long hair made him look savage, and his many minor injuries shown starkly against his blood-drained skin. Even the sea king could not spring back quickly from near-death, Zarien acknowledged, and Mirabar's angry words had wounded him, too. "Perhaps you are right," he said at last. "Perhaps tomorrow will be better for talking."

After all, Zarien was not at his best right now, either. He was even, he privately admitted, a bit cranky tonight. It had been a long, hard day preceded by too many days of fear and confusion.

"You're a good lad." The compliment was casual, but Zarien heard its sincerity and felt his stature grow. Tansen returned his attention to the food. "I'll take the, uh, cooked flesh out of the basket." He took one of the leaves lining the basket and starting putting the chunks of meat on it.

A woman approached them with a bowl of some steaming liquid and said to Tansen, "You shouldn't eat that. Not tonight. I've made this for you." She wore a long, plain gown of the Sisterhood rather than the draped tunic and pantaloons typical of a shallah woman. This was, Zarien realized, the Sister whom Tansen had mentioned.

"What is this, Rahilar?" Tansen asked as she handed him the bowl.

"Blood broth."

Zarien rose quickly. "I'll think I'll sit upwind, if you don't mind."

Sister Rahilar frowned. "It doesn't smell bad."

"Humor him," Tansen advised. He regarded the bowl's contents with something less than favor. "Must I?"

"You must," she replied. "And often for the next few days."

"I won't be here for a few days."

"But you—"

"I'll drink it tonight and tomorrow." Tansen gazed down into the bowl again and amended, "Well, tonight, anyhow."

"You've lost too much bl—"

"Time is what I've lost," he said.

"You can't—"

"Rahilar."

Zarien noted that Tansen's warning tone worked on the Sister, too.

She pursed her lips for a moment, then said, "When you're both done eating, I will tend to your wounds. Then you may both feel free to go get yourselves killed." She turned and stalked away, her posture rigid with indignation.

Zarien watched Tansen pick up a piece bread to dunk in the blood broth, then asked, "Do any women like you?"

Tansen threw the chunk of bread at him. It was the first time Zarien laughed since meeting him.

"I can't eat," Mirabar said and pushed herself away from the crude wooden table inside Sister Velikar's humble Sanctuary.

The Sister, who was as old as the mountains and notoriously ill-tempered, ignored her and kept on devouring the lamb-and-fig stew she was sharing, as befitted the hospitality of the Sisterhood, with her unexpected guests: Cheylan, Najdan, Mirabar, and the three shallaheen who had come here with Cheylan earlier today in search of Tansen. That was a lot of people to feed unexpectedly, but the rebels at Dalishar often hunted fresh meat for the Sister and gave her supplies seized from the Valdani, so her larder was usually well-stocked. 

Cheylan and the shallaheen had met up with Mirabar and Najdan, who advised them the shatai had been found, and they had decided not to return to the sacred caves until morning. No one liked Velikar, but they all knew she was a good cook in addition to being a gifted healer. 

Mirabar felt Najdan's brooding eyes upon her and was aware of his disapproval. It made this raging fury inside her even harder to bear, but at least snapping at him gave her some relief: "What are you staring at?"

He ignored her and said courteously to the Sister, "I, however, have an excellent appetite. May I trouble you for some more?"

"Trouble yourself," Velikar said, jerking her head in the direction of the fat, black pot hanging above the glowing embers on the stone hearth in the corner.

Cheylan remained silent, but his glowing golden gaze rested often on Mirabar as he toyed with his food. Since the stone abode was so small, the three shallah rebels had chosen to eat outside.

Had their hostess been anyone other than Sister Velikar, Mirabar would have apologized for her rudeness. Even she, less schooled than most in matters of etiquette, knew what an insult it was to push away a full plate after taking scarcely a bite. However, though Velikar was less than charming, one of the distinct advantages of her company was that she didn't care how anyone behaved as long as they didn't pester her. 

If anyone was so foolish as to pester her, then she—in defiance of all teachings of the Sisterhood—usually drove them away with a yahr, which she could swing as well as half the men in Sileria.

Predictably, Josarian was the only person she had ever seemed to be fond of; it was a rare person who hadn't liked Josarian. Mirabar had not been pleased to announce his death to Velikar upon arriving here. The old Sister had asked no questions. She merely burned an offering to Dar, in mourning, and grumbled nastily at anyone who tried to speak to her thereafter. Filling her belly at dinner didn't noticeably improve her mood, either.

Cheylan, however, undoubtedly had plenty of questions, and Mirabar could sense his tension as he waited for this awkward meal to end so he could speak privately with her.

Angered by Najdan's coldly composed expression and exasperated with Velikar's presence, Mirabar blurted, "I need air." She whirled around and left the Sister's hut without a backward glance, escaping outside, past the three shallaheen finishing their meal, and into the head-clearing mountain air of the twin-moon night. Mindful of the dangers beyond Sanctuary, though, she was careful to stay on Velikar's grounds. 

He didn't kill her. He couldn't kill her. He let her get away with it.

Her head pounded in time with her heart, in time with the bitter refrain that filled her thoughts: He let her live, he let her live, he let her live.

Tansen had killed everyone who had ever threatened Josarian, who had stood in his way or gone against him. He had been Josarian's sword, as Mirabar had been his shield. Tansen could be ruthless when he needed to be. No one knew that better than Mirabar. She had communed with Armian, who now sojourned in the Otherworld.

But Tansen had spared Elelar, the lying, traitorous whore who had helped destroy the Firebringer.

And I will hate him forever for this.

It was impossible to understand, to accept, to tolerate his obsession with Elelar. The torena had betrayed him to Kiloran for killing Armian. She had taken many other men to her bed, ignoring his passion for her. After her arrest and near-death in Shaljir, she had chosen Zimran, not Tansen, as her lover. She had even flaunted this liaison before Tansen's brooding eyes. She had negotiated a secret treaty with the Valdani and used Tansen's weakness—as he lay helpless for many days after Commander Koroll stabbed him with a shir—to have Josarian ambushed while he was unprotected by his bloodbrother. 

Tansen's honor demanded vengeance for what Elelar had done to him, to Josarian, and to Sileria. 

Yet he spared her.

Mirabar knew why. She had seen the veiled desire in his dark eyes whenever the torena was in their presence. She had seen how he secretly watched Elelar even when his attention seemed to be on something else. Mirabar had noticed the tension in his body when Elelar came close and the carefully neutral way he spoke of her. She had seen the hot urgency that escaped his control when he learned Elelar been arrested in Shaljir, and the reckless obsession which drove him to risk everything to rescue her from prison. 

Mirabar had seen all of this in the shatai and knew there was no other woman in the three corners of the world whom he would forgive the things he forgave Elelar, no other woman who could paralyze and befuddle him as this one did. 

There was also no other woman who could make him forget Elelar.

It doesn't matter now.

And there was certainly no woman as skilled as Elelar at taking advantage of Tansen's weakness, his private hunger, his ungovernable thirst for what she would not give.

How had Elelar talked Tansen out of killing her? Had she even needed to? Or had he simply seen her and lost all sense of purpose, all desire to spill her blood?

Pain pierced Mirabar's heart. She sank to her knees.

Why? Why? Why her?

She knew what she really meant, and she was ashamed of herself: Why not me?

She remembered how Tansen had recoiled upon first seeing her, when she tumbled in a ball of fire through the icy waters of Kandahar into Kiloran's strange water-walled palace of air. Driven by visions and prophecy, she had gone there in search of the shatai, to save him from the waterlord, to help him find his destiny, and to bring enemies together in the visionary flame of the Beckoner. 

Tansen had seen her lava-bright hair and her flame-rich eyes, and he had recoiled like a shallah boy hunted by demons in his darkest nightmares. She had come to save him, and he had shielded Elelar from her—Elelar, who had betrayed him before and who would do so again.

Why her?

Mirabar still protected his secret, the murder of Armian, whereas Elelar had cost him his youth by going straight to Kiloran with the story. 

When he lay near death after being wounded by a shir, Mirabar had protected and tended him. Elelar had seen his weakness and used it to prey on Josarian.

Why? Why her?

Mirabar thought of the vow she had made in the dark last night. Could she really kill Elelar? She had committed acts of violence since becoming the Beckoner's conduit and Josarian's shield, but she had never killed anyone. Of course, she didn't necessarily need to. When Najdan got over his glowering disapproval, he would kill Elelar for her if she asked him; but she didn't think she would. 

Must it be done, Najdan had said to her, or must he do it? 

The assassin, once an enemy who had tried to kill her, now knew her so very well. Elelar had to die, but Mirabar wanted Tansen to be her executioner. It was Tansen's place, his duty, to avenge Josarian and to protect Sileria. It was also the only thing that would heal this raging wound inside Mirabar.

The night stirred with a sense of hot and cold, something which touched Mirabar's instincts more than her senses. She knew it meant Cheylan was coming, for she could always feel his presence even before she heard his footsteps. He was the only Guardian whose approach affected her this way.

"Do you feel it, too?" she whispered, knowing without looking that he was now close enough to hear her.

"Yes." He came closer.

"That... power."

"Mmmm." The heat of his body reached out to her as he hovered just behind her and lowered his head to scent her hair. "Yes."

"Have you ever felt it with any other Guardian?" She had never seen another person like him, but she knew he had seen one like her, a child in eastern Sileria, so she wondered.

"No," he whispered, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. "Have you?"

"I've felt this way near very powerful waterlords," she admitted. "Kiloran, Baran... But never with another Guardian. Only you."

"Then perhaps it's really this," he murmured as he turned her in his arms to kiss her.

She welcomed the hot promise of that embrace, longing for Cheylan to banish her sorrow and anger, her hurt and bitter yearning. But the more she sought oblivion in his kiss, the more she found it eluded her.

"Mirabar?" He sounded puzzled.

She pushed him gently away. "I'm sorry." 

Cheylan's eyes glowed in the moonlit night as he studied her. "There's more to Josarian's death than you've told me, isn't there? More than just a sudden attack by Kiloran's White Dragon?"

"Much more," she admitted.

"Tell me."

She saw him open his palm and start to blow glowing flame into it. "No, don't start a fire," she cautioned. "Not out here." Even being outside under the twin moons wasn't smart, she knew, but she couldn't face returning to the stone hut. "There may be assassins just beyond Sanctuary grounds who'll see us if we—"

"Yes, of course. After that ambush on Tansen, I should know better." Cheylan paused and added, "Why is Najdan with you? Didn't he return to Kiloran after Josarian killed Kiloran's son?"

"Yes, but..." Mirabar realized there was a great deal to tell him. So she began relating the bare facts of recent events, speaking until she concluded wearily, "So Tansen and I argued, and I came here." She wondered what Cheylan's steady silence signified. 

The answer came when he said succinctly, "He has betrayed you."

Perversely, though she herself thought so, it sounded unreasonable when she heard it from someone else. "Elelar is his weakness." The knowledge was bitter.

"We cannot afford a leader with weakness."

Mirabar shrugged stiffly. "Surely every leader has some weakness." Agreeing with Cheylan right now seemed like it might lead her down a path she wasn't prepared to tread yet.

After an uncomfortable pause, Cheylan said, "Tell me more about this child you're supposed to shield."

"A child of fire, a child of water," she murmured. "A child of sorrow."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know."

"A child of fire, a child of water, a child of sorrow," he repeated. "Interesting."

"Vague," she said peevishly.

"But a child?"

"I think so, but..." Mirabar shrugged. The unfolding of her visions had repeatedly confounded all her expectations, so she didn't know what to think. 

"How could a child lead us?" Cheylan persisted. "Become the new Yahrdan amidst rebellion and bloodfeuds and—"

"Dar only knows," she said on a sigh.

"How will you know him?" Cheylan asked.

"Good question."

"Perhaps...."

"What?"

"Nothing," he answered at last. 

When the silence lengthened, she ventured, "Tansen wanted to know why you've returned from the east."

"Verlon sent me with a message for Josarian."

His hot eyes shone coldly now. Verlon, the most powerful waterlord in the east, had once sworn a bloodvow against Cheylan. He had rescinded it for the sake of the rebellion, so that they—like so many other enemies in Sileria—could work together to help Josarian fight the Valdani. At the start of the rebellion, Kiloran had rescinded his own bloodvow against Tansen for the same reason. But now hatred and the lust for power had fanned the embers of old feuds into raging flames again.

However, Cheylan's situation was unique with regard to the Society, and this was the dark secret with which he had chosen to trust Mirabar: Verlon was his grandfather. 

When he confessed this to her, Cheylan didn't tell her why his own grandfather had sworn a bloodvow against him and tried hard to see it fulfilled. And she had been too stunned to ask. Mirabar hadn't known that a Guardian, least of all one with Cheylan's Dar-blessed eyes, could be so closely linked by blood to a waterlord.

"What is Verlon's message?" she asked.

"He knows Kiloran has control of Cavasar and the mines of Alizar. He knows that either Kiloran or Baran will ultimately gain full control of the Idalar River and, through it, will control Shaljir once the Valdani surrender."

"So he wants Liron," Mirabar guessed. The great city of the east, so close to the sacred rainbow chalk cliffs where Dar's fiery consort had dwelled eons ago before falling into the sea, had been the first of Sileria's cities to fall to the rebels. 

"Verlon claims it is his due, after all he contributed to the rebellion in the east." 

"Why does he need Josarian's permission? Kiloran didn't—"

"The Lironi," Cheylan said, naming one of the largest and most powerful clans in all of Sileria, "have decided, in the wake of the Valdani evacuation of eastern Sileria, that they like not having any masters."

"They're fighting Verlon for control of the city?" Mirabar breathed, scarcely daring to believe it could be so.

"Yes. For control of the whole district, in fact."

"What are the eastern toreni doing?"

"Mostly trying to protect theirs lands," Cheylan said dryly.

"Have any of them sided with the Lironi?"

"Some." He added, "Not my family, but a few."

She stepped forward and gripped Cheylan's arm, which was firm beneath the fine fabric of his tunic. "The Lironi are really fighting the Society in the east?"

"Yes." She could tell Cheylan was puzzled by her growing excitement as he said, "Verlon supposes that Josarian doesn't want... didn't want civil war. He sent me to ask Josarian to, er, make the Lironi see reason."

"In other words," she said, "on the eve of the siege of Shaljir, when Josarian would need the entire nation behind him, Verlon meant to make the city of Liron the price he would demand in exchange for supporting Josarian."

"Yes," said Cheylan. "But the question now, I gather, is whether or not there will even be a siege of Shaljir. And if there is, who will lead it?"

"Tansen, of course," Mirabar said.

The silence was long and awkward. 

"So... this thing you've told me about Torena Elelar," he said at last. "None of it is common knowledge?"

"Even Josarian's death isn't common knowledge yet."

"Word will spread quickly."

"Yes. But the part about Elelar..." Mirabar paused, lost in thought. "The Lironi are fighting Verlon."

"What does that have to do with the torena's betray—"

"It has to do with Kiloran," she said. 

"I don't understand."

"Damn Elelar," Mirabar said with bitter vehemence. "Damn her. She wins again."

"She does?"

"Don't you see? We can't expose her. We can kill her, but we can't expose her." Mirabar looked up at the glowing moons. "If we're to convince people to fight Kiloran—to fight the Society—then we've got to make sure they know he killed the Firebringer. We can't... complicate things by telling people about the Alliance's secrets and the torena's betrayal. Revealing the whole truth would just incite bloodfeuds, chaos, and a perfect opportunity for the Society to seize power the moment the Valdani leave."

"Do you really think people can be convinced to fight the Society?"

"Don't you? You just told me that the Lironi already are fighting them."

"Yes, I did, didn't I?" Cheylan paused for a moment, then said, "So perhaps we..." He took her hand again and raised it to his lips. "We can be full of hope."

She felt the damp warmth of his mouth against her skin. She felt the tingle along her senses that his presence created.

No, not you, she realized sadly.

In her inexperience, in her ignorance of men, she had previously thought the tumult of her senses whenever she was with Cheylan might be the sparks of love. Tonight, though, she knew better. The power of his sorcery was what made the air quiver around her and created the hot and cold confusion inside her. And the touch of his lips, the touch of his skin... Well, it was certainly pleasing, but it was not the touch of the man who had, without realizing it, taught her the pain of love rather than the pleasure of mere desire.

Damn Tansen.

"Are you all right?" Cheylan asked.

"I'm... just tired," she lied.

Damn Elelar.

"You've been through a lot."

"Yes," she agreed. "And now there is so much more to come."

May they both burn like the Fires of Dar for all eternity.

Najdan was not usually credulous of common gossip, but he tended to believe the rumor that Sister Velikar had been born old and mean. Not even among the assassins of the Honored Society had he ever known such a foul temper. And learning of the Firebringer's death this evening had only made her nastier. She had, as improbable as such a gentle emotion seemed in Velikar, been fond of Josarian.

When Mirabar and Cheylan abandoned Najdan to this woman's sour company, he was tempted to assassinate her just so he could enjoy the rest of his meal in peace. However, he didn't kill women, and violence on Sanctuary grounds was forbidden to all Silerians. If Kiloran himself walked through that door right now, they'd have to tolerate each other's company in peace.

One of Velikar's few virtues was that she was a good cook, and he was glad of that. Learning that Tansen had not killed Torena Elelar shah Hasnari, as vowed, may have ruined the sirana's appetite, but not his.

Young women were hard to understand, and Mirabar was more complicated than most. Najdan wished that Haydar were here to advise him. He wondered briefly how he could find the time and safe means to bring Haydar here from Sister Basimar's Sanctuary, but then he dismissed the idea; it was doubtful they'd be here for long, anyhow. Tansen knew he had to move quickly against the Society. And unless she had lost all her wits since sunrise, the sirana knew it, too.

But young women could, Najdan was starting to realize, make bewildering decisions based on incomprehensible motives.

He had previously suspected and now felt convinced that Mirabar's interest in Tansen was not based solely on the visions which had led her to him and kept them linked. He also believed that the shatai returned this more personal interest, albeit in a confused and sadly blundering way.

The old ways were the best ways, Najdan reflected. He pushed aside the heavily-beaded jashar that covered Velikar's doorway, and he stood there to enjoy the night air and escape the Sister's unpleasant grumbling. He had first seen Haydar in a marketplace more than fifteen years ago. He wanted her, he gave her father fifteen sheep and several bolts of imported Kintish silk as a bride-price for her, and so she became his. And—after a period of mutual adjustment during which she kept threatening to run away and join the Sisterhood—they had been content together ever since. He had never married her, since he was unwilling to mouth the pledges to Dar that were required before cutting open a palm with the marriage knife, but he was devoted to Haydar and had no doubts of her devotion to him.

However, while Najdan's life might be easier if Sileria's rebel leaders could sort out their affairs of the heart as sensibly as he had done, he didn't really envision Tansen collecting sheep for a bride-price—or Mirabar feeling honored by such an effort. And if the shatai simply tried to take her home with him, as men sometimes did upon choosing a woman whom they couldn't afford, then Najdan would be obliged to kill him.

Or die trying anyhow.

The carnage Najdan had seen on the path to Dalishar today only confirmed what he'd realized long ago. He was glad he had never had the opportunity to claim Kiloran's bloodvow against Tansen. Anything was always possible in combat, of course, but he knew that it would be the wildest stroke of luck for him to survive attacking the shatai.

In any event, Tansen had no home to carry Mirabar off to, and after their argument today about his failure to execute the torena, Mirabar would probably incinerate him if he tried, anyhow. No one knew better than Najdan that the sirana was far from helpless. She had captured, imprisoned, and terrorized him upon their first meeting, and survived his two attempts to kill her. She was unlikely ever to need him to defend her honor, though it was, of course, his duty to do so.

That was why he now hovered in Velikar's doorway and kept an eye on Mirabar and Cheylan, who were speaking together at the edge of Sanctuary grounds. Respectable young women did not visit alone with men in the dark, and Najdan realized he had too often been negligent in this respect. It was sometimes easy to forget that the sirana was, after all, a marriageable young woman—albeit a very unusual one—and therefore as vulnerable to her own inexperienced judgment as she was to the presumptuous attentions of disrespectful young men.

Young men such as Cheylan. Whom Najdan had never liked.

Just because Tansen, for all his worldly experience, evidently had no idea how to present his honorable intentions—and they had better be honorable—to a woman, that was no reason for Mirabar to compromise herself with another man. True, the shatai was drawn to Torena Elelar, and that may well be why he had spared her; but sparing a woman was hardly dishonorable. Moreover, the torena was married, which certainly settled the question of which woman Tansen would choose. Najdan felt fairly certain that the shatai would not murder another man just to have his wife. 

However, the sirana had become enraged beyond reason today. Threatening to set Najdan against Tansen. Embarrassing the shatai in front of Lann and the sea-born boy. Wishing aloud that Kiloran's assassins would succeed in killing him next time. Najdan particularly didn't like that; such wishes could well be powerful curses, he suspected, when uttered by such a capable sorceress.

Mirabar's hot-tempered inexperience and Tansen's ill-advised neglect of her feelings could cost them both—and everyone around them—a lot more than a broken heart. It was a woman's right, of course, to spurn a man, even after her parents had agreed to the bride-price. But Mirabar didn't have the luxury of abandoning her duty to Sileria because a man had hurt and angered her. Regardless of her personal feelings, she belonged at the caves of Dalishar tonight, conferring with the man who must lead Sileria's rebels now that Josarian was dead—not dallying in Sanctuary with Cheylan.

She knew it, too. If she didn't come to her senses by morning, Najdan would explain it clearly to her, but he didn't anticipate this would be necessary. He had never known her to shirk her duty, no matter how unpleasant. He disapproved of her behavior today, but young women were difficult to understand and so he was trying to be tolerant. Until sunrise, anyhow.

It was unfortunate that Cheylan happened to be here now. The aristocratic Guardian had followed his orders loyally throughout the rebellion, acting as a liaison between the Guardians and the Society, and between eastern and western Sileria. Despite this respectable behavior, though, Najdan found Cheylan's arrogant manners unpleasant and his reticence more suspect than modest. 

So now, under the glowing light of the twin moons, Najdan scowled when he thought he saw Mirabar permit Cheylan to kiss her hand. Fortunately, she seemed disinclined to permit additional liberties, particularly of the kind she had allowed Cheylan in the past. Najdan had once come upon the two of them locked in a passionate embrace. He had been too stunned at the time to warn Cheylan about the consequences of such actions. 

Now Mirabar made a brief gesture, evidently bidding Cheylan goodnight. Najdan decided he had rudely shunned Velikar's company for long enough, and he retired to the stone hut before Mirabar turned in this direction. 

"It's late," Velikar growled at him. "Go sleep outside."

"Of course," he said, seating himself at the table again.

"I said—"

"Ah, here comes the sirana." He rose courteously as Mirabar pushed aside the door jashar and entered the hut.

Mirabar seemed unusually hesitant as she met his gaze, her fire-bright eyes now dull with fatigue. "We, uh... Tomorrow we need to..." She shifted restlessly and tried again. "I should..."

Ah. This, at least, Najdan felt he understood. And since Mirabar was very proud, he knew what to do. "I'm uneasy about the shir wound," he said.

She blinked. "What?"

"Tansen's wound."

She frowned thoughtfully. "The one that healed so suddenly. As if..."

"By magic."

Mirabar nodded. "It bothered you. You wanted to leave that place."

"Yes. But now I think it may not be the place."

"The boy, then?" She murmured distractedly, "A child of water... I need to speak with that boy. I need to know why he's here."

"The boy, perhaps." Najdan shrugged. "Or Tansen himself." He held her gaze and said, "Who knows what might occur when Dar wants Her will done?"

"You're not afraid of Dar," she said. "That's not what you're worried about."

"No..."

"What do you think it was, then?"

"Water magic."

She drew in a quick breath. "What should we do?"

Najdan made it easy for her. "I think we should return to Tansen's side."

"You do, do you?" 

"Especially if you want to speak with the boy," he added helpfully. 

Mirabar brushed her hair way from her face. "All right. If you insist."

"It's best."

"We'll go in the morning," she agreed.

"I'm glad you understand, sirana." Najdan headed for the door. "I will sleep outside. Goodnight."

"It's about time," Velikar grumbled. "Leave, already."

"Goodnight, Najdan." Mirabar paused, then added, "Cheylan—"

"Will sleep outside, too," Najdan said loudly as the jashar flapped into place behind him.

Although raised in wealth and physical comfort by the aristocratic family he now seldom even spoke to and had never regarded with any warmth, Cheylan's Dar-given talents ensured that he had spent most of his adult life among the Guardians. So he was accustomed to sleeping outside, living in caves, appreciating whatever food and shelter he could find, and doing without it when he had to. He was not poor, for the Guardians did not require one to renounce one's personal wealth or worldly goods the way the Sisterhood did, but his family's money couldn't protect him from Valdani laws—and no one could protect him from the Society.

He had first met Josarian when the shallah was nothing more than a notorious local outlaw, a peasant who had killed a couple of Outlookers who tried to beat him to death one night after they caught him helping his cousin Zimran with a little smuggling. 

Like all the Guardians at that time, Cheylan had appreciated Josarian's bold defiance of the Valdani. And he had been willing to help. Outlawed by the Valdani and hunted by the Society, Cheylan—like all Guardians—had too little to lose to worry about possible punishment for assisting the outlaw. But Cheylan had had no more expectation than anyone else that the local mountain bandit would change the world.

Unlike so many people, however, he hadn't needed Josarian's transformation at Darshon to convince him that a great destiny was at hand. Cheylan had realized it the moment he had first heard about Mirabar, an immensely gifted prophetess blessed with the fiery coloring that was a portent of great and terrible power. 

Tansen, who knew her well, was always reticent about her, and so Cheylan had learned little of value from the shatai during the time they had spent working together—as allies, but never as friends—in the east. Most others Cheylan spoke to were in awe of the demon-girl who talked to gods and Called shades of the dead from the Otherworld, and whom even Kiloran respected. Little of value could be learned from the superstitious admiration of the shallaheen, but Cheylan heard enough to recognize that Mirabar's visions were as important as Josarian's acts.

It was only upon meeting her at last that Cheylan discovered, with mingled surprise and frustration, how little she herself understood the visions, how incapable she was of seeing where they would lead. She was cautious, too, about what she would relate. He had taken pains to win her affection and her trust, even sharing a deadly secret or two of his own to gain her confidence. Cheylan had cultivated patience his whole life, and now he recognized how wise he had been to do so.

Tonight was the first time Mirabar had ever spoken to him freely, without any reserve, about this thing she called the Beckoner, the Otherworldly demi-god who had led a parentless peasant girl out of obscurity and straight into legend. Tonight was the first time Cheylan began to realize the full weight of the Beckoner's power, the inexorable nature of its will. Tonight was the first time he'd been certain his own destiny—at last—was beginning to unfold.

A child of fire, a child of water, a child of sorrow.

Yes.

Now, as Cheylan bedded down at some distance from where Najdan the assassin ostentatiously stretched out in front of the threshold of the stone hut, he considered the things Mirabar had also told him tonight about the splintering rebel factions. He lay on his back and gazed up at the moonbright sky, wondering what he should do now. The time for patience was nearly over. The day for action was almost at hand.

Torena Elelar's betrayal might be irrelevant. Kiloran's brutal actions might be ill-advised. The Alliance might have been right or wrong. Cheylan would let Tansen, Mirabar, and Sileria's quarreling factions worry about all that. There would undoubtedly be bloodshed and chaos; this was Sileria, after all. The future remained uncertain, and Mirabar's visions were still too vague to act on for the time being.

However, one shining beacon of light, one promising turn of events assured Cheylan that his patience had not been wasted.

 The Firebringer is dead, he thought. Dar be praised.

Chapter Eleven

First the man takes a drink;

then the drink takes the man.

                              —Kintish Proverb

His own wife refused to see him.

Ronall sat in the luxuriously-furnished library of his aristocratic wife's palatial house in Shaljir and fumed in bitter hurt as he poured himself another generous glass of jasmine wine. It wasn't strong enough, but there was nothing stronger left in the house—he had drunk it all, and now he was too tired to go out in search of more. He could send the servants—he was a toren, damn it, he was supposed to be waited on!—but they were all her servants, and they were bustling around to make the torena comfortable now that she was back. To make the house suitable for the wandering traitress who had finally come home.

Ronall had been living here with just one servant on loan from his father's house, since being released from prison. He'd been held for several months in the old Kintish fortress not far from Santorell Square, as hostage for his wife who had staged a violent escape from prison after being accused of high treason against the Empire.

He swallowed more wine. 

Just one servant. Yes, all right, he supposed the house had become a bit dirty and shabby during his wife's long absence. She was right about that.

"Who gives a damn?" he muttered and drank some more.

What could one servant do, after all?

And why get more? The Silerian rebels were going to descend on Shaljir at any moment and probably use their fire sorcerers to burn the whole city to the ground. Or maybe they would just get their waterlords to flood it, or to wrap the Idalar River around it like a noose until no one was left alive. 

When Ronall was a child, many people had died of thirst in Shaljir before the Outlookers relented and met Kiloran's demands. In later years, the legendary waterlord's struggles with Baran, some crazy upstart from who-knew-where, had caused even worse problems. When those two giants battled for control of the Idalar River, Shaljir thirsted. Even sending generous tribute to Kiloran didn't solve the problem, since Baran didn't relent.

"Who owns it now?" Ronall asked the engraved silver chalice in his hands, noting absently that Elelar owned such very fine things.

If anyone knew, in all this chaos, which waterlord currently controlled the Idalar River, Ronall supposed it would be his dear wife. She kept company with such people, after all. 

"Keeps company with everyone but her husband," he mumbled.

Their marriage had been a living inferno since the day it began. His desire, her disgust. His desperate love, her cold rejection. His cowardly sniping, her unyielding contempt. His wild violence, her bitter tears. His self-disgust, her vicious sarcasm.

His drinking, his dreamweed, his cloud syrup.

Their marriage bed had been a place of conflict rather than comfort. And he'd hurt her there more than once. Hurt her badly more than once.

Afterwards, he was always ashamed, always wondered how he could have done it. But sooner or later, he always did it again.

So maybe he deserved everything that had happened to him in the past year. 

"At any rate, she certainly thinks I deserve it," he told the priceless Kintish sculpture on the mantle of the vast fireplace. A woodless fire burned in the hearth, the enchanted flames blown into life months ago by Elelar's pet Guardian. Ronall didn't know how to put out the damn thing. Maybe now that Derlen was back, he'd finally douse it. Ronall hoped so. Forbidden fire sorcery right here in his own house... it made him queasy.

Just another of those unexpected little consequences of his marriage. 

After his wife's arrest, Ronall had finally discovered who she really was and why she had married him. She had poured an enormous amount of his money into her rebel cause and used his family's Valdani connections to help Josarian the Firebringer. And she had spread her legs for every man who could help her—or so Advisor Borell told Ronall, in his rage. 

Remembering it now, Ronall quipped, "He was so furious that my wife had cheated on him." 

Ronall thought this over and started laughing. The more he thought about Borell's red-faced rage over the promiscuity of the married woman he'd been bedding, the funnier it seemed. Tears misted his eyes as his shoulders shook with bitter amusement. In his slack-limbed mirth, he spilled his wine. Dazed, his vision not quite in focus, he watched the chalice roll across the floor.

"Enjoying yourself, I see." Elelar's chill voice pierced his muddled reflections.

He whirled to face her, staggering a little as he did so.

"Elelar," he whispered.

He had barely seen her upon her arrival. She'd uttered a few angry words about the intruder he'd hit—Three Into One, how was he supposed to know it was Derlen, suddenly appearing out of nowhere after months with no word from Elelar or any of her escaped servants?—and then she'd gone up to her bedchamber, barring the door and telling him she would see him when she damn well felt up to it and not before.

Now he saw that she was as lovely as he remembered, even lovelier than the day they'd first met nearly seven years ago. Her softly waving black hair was pulled away from her face, braided and coiled in the elaborate style of a torena. She had never taken to wearing Valdani fashions, as did so many Silerian toreni in the city, not even after marrying into Ronall's family. And how her shapely body flattered the flowing lines of her silk pantaloons and the long tunic that hugged her lush breasts and slim waist. Her dark, long-lashed eyes still transfixed him after all these years. Her soft, wide mouth still made him hungry for her. Yes, he had seen more beautiful women, but he had never known one with his wife's allure.

"What are you doing here?" she asked with all the warmth and charm of an executioner.

He had also never known a woman who could so easily make him feel like something to be scraped off the bottom of a boot.

Ronall replied, "I thought you would come in here after you—"

"I don't mean in the library," she said impatiently. "I mean here."

He was a little confused. "I live here."

"This is my house," she snapped.

"I'm your husband." He peered at her. "I've been living here for six years."

"What could y—"

"You haven't, though," he continued. "You've been gone since before the long rains. Since before Josarian supposedly leaped into the volcano of Darshon and survived."

"He did leap and s—"

"Where in the Fires have you been?" Ronall demanded.

"In the mountains, obviously."

"What do you mean, 'obviously'?" Suddenly he was angry. Hotly, head-spinningly angry. "You escape from prison—with a body count that made the Fifth Moorlander War look like a minor squabble, I might add—and disappear for months. And you send no word and make no effort to let me know you're alive, let alone where you are."

"As if you wouldn't be watched," she spat.

"Watched? I was imprisoned, damn you!"

Elelar paused. "I know," she said in a more moderate voice. "I'm sor—"

"You know? How do you know? Who told you?"

"Advisor Kaynall."

"Kaynall? When did you have time to talk to the Imperial Advisor who was appointed after Borell killed himself because of you?"

"During peace negotiations," she said tersely. "But what are you still doing in Sh—"

"Peace negotiations?" Ronall repeated. "Ah. For your rebels. They want peace, do they?"

"They want the Valdani out of Sileria."

"Negotiations," he mused. "Josarian's giving Kaynall a chance to withdraw before Shaljir goes up in flames?"

Elelar went terribly still and stared at him, looking uneasy.

"Before thousands of Outlookers die here?" he continued. "Empire's last stand in Sileria, and all that." When she didn't reply, he asked, "Josarian thinks he can talk them out of fighting for it?" Ronall snorted and bent down to pick up the chalice. "He doesn't know the Valdani very well, does he?"

"He... He's..." She turned away from him and moved toward the fire.

"What?" When she didn't reply, he prodded, "Are you sleeping with Josarian, too?"

To his surprise, she merely said, "No."

He struck out again. "Lost your touch?"

She shook her head, staring into the flames. "He always belonged to the memory of his late wife. To her and to Dar."

Ronall thought he'd heard her wrong. "Belonged?"

Now she looked at him, her eyes churning with something so terrible that he wasn't surprised when she finally said, "Josarian is dead."

He digested that for a moment. "Valdani?"

"No."

"Silerians?" he asked incredulously.

"The Society."

"Ah."

"Kiloran."

Ronall nodded. "Well, that figures. If what they say about Josarian was true..." He shrugged. "Who but Kiloran could eliminate the Firebringer? And one Silerian killing another..." He sighed. "Nothing ever really changes here, does it?"

Her temper frayed a little more. "What are you doing here?" 

He flinched at her tone. "You and I are not the only couple in Shaljir who share a house without sharing a bed," he pointed out.

"I mean, why haven't you gone home?"

"I will not let even you shame me into scurrying back to my father's house like a child, Elelar." Ronall swayed a little and muttered, "I'm sobering up. This is no good." He found the decanter and poured more jasmine wine.

"I didn't mean your father's house," she said. "Though that would be an acceptable start."

He swallowed a life-giving, hurt-soothing gulp and said, "Huh?"

His wife's mouth tightened. "I mean, why haven't you already left for Valda?"

"Valda?" he repeated blankly.

"Yes."

He stared at her in confusion. "I'm not planning..." He wondered if he was drunker than he'd realized. "Valda?"

"I didn't think you'd be here."

Or maybe he just wasn't drunk enough. "Where did you think I'd be? In prison still?"

"Valdani are fleeing Sileria by the thousands," Elelar said wearily, sinking into a chair without her usual grace.

"May the Three have mercy on them," he said, finishing his wine and reaching for more.

"Why haven't you left, too?"

"Leave Sileria?" He finally understood. "For Valda?"

"Yes." She sounded exasperated. "How many cups of that wine have you already had?"

"Far fewer than you've had men," he said nastily.

"When it came to fidelity," she struck back, "I followed your example."

"How I've missed you," Ronall said dryly. "I only hope we have enough wine for me to get through this reunion." He sat down in a chair opposite hers and tried to focus for a moment. "Elelar, I've never even been to Valda."

She made an impatient gesture. "Somewhere in Valdania then, wherever your—"

"I've never been to the mainland."

"Wherever your people come from."

"They come from here."

"Your father's people," she clarified.

"They come from here, too."

"They are Valdani," she said between clenched teeth.

"And like many Valdani in Sileria," he said, "I've never been off the island. Not once in my life."

"Nonetheless, it's time to go," she said. "You don't belong here."

Her words hurt him, but for once he didn't think they were personal. In this matter, he wasn't her despised husband, he was his bloodline. He was the Valdani stain on Silerian honor, the Valdani seed in a Silerian woman's belly, a Valdani name with a Silerian face. And given the woman that he had recently learned Elelar was, he realized that he was an anomaly she couldn't accept.

"Go?" he repeated. "Go where, Elelar? To a city I've never even seen, to a mainland empire nearly as foreign to me as the Kintish Kingdoms would be?"

"You will not be a foreigner there, you—"

"I look like a Silerian." He was a little fairer than most full-blooded Silerians, true, but no one would take him for a Valdan. Not with his coloring and features. "And I speak better Silerian than Valdan."

"Not really," she muttered rudely.

"When I speak Valdan, I have Silerian accent." He knew she couldn't deny that. "Just like you."

"Even so—"

"I don't know the mainland, or their ways, or their culture."

"You are not a Silerian," she hissed.

"I'm not a Valdan, either." He took more wine and then concluded, "If I'm not going to belong anywhere, I'd rather not belong in the country which I know than in the foreign lands that I don't."

She sneered. "You think the rebels will spare you when they take the city."

"So you're positive they'll take it?" His wife was more likely than any else he knew to be informed about the rebels' true strength.

"Kaynall will give it up or they will take it," she said.  "Either way, we will have native rule in Sileria, Ronall."

He saw the passion in her eyes and knew she wouldn't understand when he said, "I've never cared who rules Sileria."

Elelar's contempt was as familiar as it was painful. "No, as long as you're protected by your rank and your wealth—"

"That's right," he admitted. Why deny it?

"As long as you've got liquor in your cellar, dreamweed in your pipe, and women in your bed—"

"Though seldom my wife."

"Never again." Her voice was low and rough. "You will never touch me as a husband again."

He knew she meant it. He had even been expecting it. But he still couldn't accept it. "We are still married. We still need an heir, and—"

"Divorce me."

The room seemed to tilt. "What?"

"You heard me," she said. "Divorce me. It's an easy enough matter for a Valdan. Claim that I'm barren. It's probably true."

"We were also married as Silerians," he reminded her. A mixed-blood couple, they had married twice in one day: once before a priest of the Three, and once before a Sister who witnessed them reciting vows to Dar. 

Seeing how deflated she looked, he said, "You shouldn't have married me under Silerian law if you were planning—"

"I didn't know what would happen, what the future held! I had my position to think of. I couldn't share a man's bed without—"

"How many beds have you shared?"

"I mean," she said with obvious irritation, "I couldn't live respectably as your wife without a Silerian wedding."

"So now, even if I divorced you as a Val—"

"If you leave Sileria," she said, "I can claim abandonment and dissolve the marriage when you don't return after three years."

It was, he knew, one of the few ways to end a marriage in Silerian custom. The Valdani didn't care whether or not Silerians stayed married to each other, but Silerians themselves were inflexible about such things. This was a land where blood-ties and family alliances mattered even more than wealth, rank, or property.

"I see you've thought this through," he said.

"We've never had children," Elelar continued, warming to her theme. "There's no reason—"

"No!" Ronall didn't want to hear this. "I'm not leaving Sileria, Elelar, and I'm especially not leaving Sileria just so you—"

"—for us to continue this—"

"No!" he shouted. He rose to his feet, swaying, and flung his half-full chalice across the room. It flew into a delicate sculpture and broke it in a smashing shower of noise.

Elelar gasped and jumped up. "You drunken—"

"That's right," he snarled, smarting under her openly disgusted glare. "That's right. I'm the drunken, whoring pig you married, the fool you robbed, the cuckold you betrayed again and again."

"I won't st—"

"I'm the only one who shares your bed by right of law—"

"You will never—"

"You're my wife!" he shouted, seizing her by the shoulders.

"Torena!" It was a man's voice.

Ronall glanced over his shoulder and saw Derlen in the doorway. Then Faradar, bless her insolent little heart, tried to drag the Guardian away, saying, "No, Derlen, no. Let the torena deal with this."

"I went to prison for you," Ronall growled at Elelar, shaking her as he spoke. 

"And you sobered up there, according to Kaynall," she said breathlessly. "Why couldn't you have stayed that way?"

He didn't know. Dar help him, Three have mercy... He didn't know why. He had intended to try. But his good intentions had dissolved as soon as he was released from prison.

"Torena?" That idiot Derlen still hadn't gone away, and Faradar's soft chatter urging him to do so was getting on Ronall's nerves.

Elelar's shoulders were firm under the fine silk of her tunic. Her black hair gleamed in the firelight. A flush of anger showed on her soft skin, which was darker than that of a Valdani woman but exquisitely fair by Silerian standards. She smelled sweetly of whatever scent she'd used in her bathing water upstairs. She was his wife... and he felt his body quickening in response to the knowledge, to the hunger that had assaulted him a thousand times in her presence and which would rule him until the day he died.

Her breasts swelled luxuriantly against the thin silk of her tunic with every panting breath she took as she stared up at him with those wine-dark eyes. He thought of their marriage bed, now cold and empty for so long. He remembered the warmth of her breath on his naked skin, the feel of their bare bellies pressed together, the damp friction of her thighs... His head swam with urgent passion.

"This..." Her voice failed her and she tried again. "This is usually the part of the evening where you rape me, isn't it?" Her tone was rich with loathing. 

It had the intended effect. His desire shriveled like parchment going up in flames, until nothing was left but ashes. 

He released her and turned away, swallowing the familiar potion of shame, hurt, and humiliation which Elelar knew so well how to brew for him.

He saw Derlen gaping at him from the doorway, his jaw hanging open. Faradar, who had been with Elelar since before their marriage, was more accustomed to such scenes; she just looked steadily at the floor. 

Ronall was pretty sure he felt embarrassed, but a little more wine would wash that away, so he didn't dwell on it. However, he was done amusing the servants.

"Go away," he ordered.

Derlen didn't move. Ronall decided it was a good enough reason to hit him again, and so he did.

Derlen cried out and fell back against Faradar, who recommenced trying to drag him away. Ronall noted with pleasure that the Guardian's nose started bleeding again. On the other hand, now his hand hurt. 

More wine, he decided.

Ronall slammed the door and went back to the decanter. It was only after he had drained an entire cup that he realized Elelar was still in the room with him.

"Why are you still here?" he asked.

"I believe that's what I've been saying."

"You shouldn't have married me." He said it to blame her for their predicament. But he reflected on the statement and realized what a profound truth he had just uttered. "You shouldn't have married me."

"Probably not, but as long as I'm stuck with you..."

The room was reeling. The wine was working. He felt better—which was to say, he felt less. And feeling less had been his primary interest for as long as he could remember. 

"Are you listening?" Elelar asked.

He realized she had been talking. He'd heard none of it. "Hmmm?"

"I want you to do something for me."

That struck him as wildly amusing. He burst out laughing. The long-suffering patience on his wife's face was so uncharacteristic that it made him laugh even harder. He tumbled sloppily into another chair, spilling wine all over himself, clutching his side when it started to ache.

Ache. That was bad. It meant he could still feel something.

"Wine," he muttered.

"You've had enough."

"Wine," he insisted.

"In a moment. In fact..." Elelar picked up the decanter and waved it enticingly just beyond his reach. When he made a clumsy grab for it, she backed away. "I'll give you all you want, and even get the servants to go find more at this Darforsaken hour, if..."

More, he thought, more.

"If?" he prompted.

"If you'll go to Santorell Palace tomorrow," she said.  "There's an assassin there named Searlon whom I must speak with in private, without Kaynall knowing about it."

Ronall didn't understand, but it didn't matter. "So?"

"I know you don't care who rules Sileria," she said. "But you probably don't want to see Shaljir destroyed."

"No," he agreed, "I don't."

"All the taverns," she said. "All the brothels, the gambling halls, the—"

"How can an assassin save all that?" Ronall asked, longing for the decanter.

"He's going to help me convince Kaynall to give it all up," she said. "No matter what I have to do."

Ronall heard those words and discovered he could still get angry. "Not in my house, Elelar."

"This is my house," she reminded him.

"Don't bed him here." He feared he would beg, and he didn't want to. "Don't bed him in my... in this house."

She looked surprised. "Searlon?"

"Or Kaynall."

He saw her lush lips curve in a slight smile. "I promise I won't." She shook her head and added, "That is not the bait which will lure either of them. Not these men."

"Then what?"

"That's my problem, not yours."

"My problem is to find this assassin in Santorell Palace?" When she nodded, Ronall asked, "How?"

"Ask to speak to Advisor Kaynall," Elelar said. "Tell him I've returned home. Tell him that, based on something you overheard me say, you think there may be an assassin lurking in Santorell Palace."

"Searlon."

"No. Say only what I've just told you. You don't know the assassin's name," she said. "You only know that it's your duty as a Valdan—"

"But I—"

"—to warn the Imperial Advisor that his life may be in danger."

"That's all?" Ronall asked blearily.

"That's all."

"How will that secure a meeting with this... Searlon?"

"He's there, somewhere in the Palace, close to Kaynall," she said. "He'll hear about it."

"And?"

"And he'll want to know how I knew he was there, and what I'm planning. Searlon is very clever. He may even suspect it's a message from me." Elelar shrugged. "But I doubt Kaynall will."

"And then?"

"Searlon will come," she said. "He'll find me."

Ronall frowned in foggy bewilderment. "Why?"

"Because, like his master, Searlon lives according to the old proverb."

"Which is?" 

"Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer."

"Oh. Then I was right," he said with bitter satisfaction. "Nothing ever really changes here."

Elelar sighed. "Will you remember any of this in the morning?"

"Probably not."

"We'll go over it again tomorrow." 
      "Fine. Can I have the decanter now?"

"You promise you'll do it?" she prodded. "You'll go to Kaynall?"

"I promise," he said wearily. "You married me for my Valdani blood, so I suppose you can't help trying to use it yet again."

"Yes," Elelar said quietly. "That's why I married you."

"And also because you thought I'd always be too drunk to notice your activities." He remembered their conversation when he visited her in prison—the first honest conversation of their marriage.

"And you were."

"So let me be once again the man you married," he said. "Give me the damned decanter, Elelar."

She came closer and handed it to him. He didn't even bother fumbling for his cup, just raised the bottle to his lips and drank deeply. 

Soon his senses spun away from his sorrows, and his blood felt that longed-for flow of comfort. Soon the world reeled around him, enchanted instead of bleak, gentle instead of harsh, forgiving instead of condemning. His thoughts flowed more calmly as the jasmine-tinged liquid warmed his belly, and his heart stopped aching as the wine cooled his grievances.

He didn't know when Elelar had left the room, he only knew she was gone now. But he had the wine and so he didn't miss her.

So Elelar thought she and some assassin could convince Kaynall to surrender Shaljir without a fight? So Josarian was dead, slaughtered by his own kind? So Elelar would never let Ronall touch her again? So he wouldn't belong to native-ruled Sileria any more than he had belonged to Valdani-occupied Sileria...

So what? 

More wine, he thought. 

Dar had raged wildly the other night and shaken the ground from Liron to Cavasar, but Shaljir's walls were still standing, awaiting violent assault and massive bloodshed. The Valdani fled this land by the thousands, and Ronall couldn't go with them. Silerians celebrated every new victory for the rebels, every Valdan they killed, and he couldn't celebrate with them.

More.

His wife despised him. The Outlookers who'd guarded his cell had despised him. His father was disappointed in him, and his mother made excuses for him.

Ronall felt tears of futile shame slide down his cheeks, and he poured wine down his throat, wishing for something stronger, longing for oblivion.

He was wrong. So wrong. Sileria was changing. Everything was changing. Unprecedented days of glory and of horror washed across the only land he could ever call home, yet he hid here in his wife's house, confused, afraid, and useless.

How would his life end?

Had it ever even begun?

More...

Chapter Twelve

In the embrace of memory, 

the heart always bleeds anew.

                                                —Kintish Proverb

"Father!"

Armian didn't respond. The wind was high, carrying away Tansen's voice, and the assassin's attention was fixed on the coast below them.

They were on the cliffs east of Adalian, walking rather than riding, since it was a dark-moon night and the landscape was too treacherous for horses. The long rains had finally come, the season of heavy storms when the sun-baked land renewed itself. A fierce coastal wind swept the downpour sideways, drenching Tansen and his companions. Elelar was lagging behind. The young torena was tired, unused to such hardship and exertion.

Tansen knew he should do it now. 

"Father," he said again.

Armian still didn't hear him, and now he knew it was just as well. He couldn't look into his father's eyes and do this terrible thing. And he certainly couldn't succeed if Armian saw it coming.

He must do it now, before Elelar caught up to them, to where Armian stood boldly at the cliff's edge searching the cove below for some sign of the Moorlanders he awaited. Tansen must do it before Elelar came closer, because a woman shouldn't see such a thing.

His heart sick with anguish, his stomach churning with mingled guilt and terror, Tansen fingered the new yahr his bloodfather had recently given him. Armian had gotten it from Kiloran while they were the waterlord's guests. Something special for his son, he had said, something to honor such a fine young man. Made of petrified Kintish wood, it would do the job.

Fast, please Dar, let it be fast. Let him not suffer. I can't bear to make him suffer...

It was Tansen's weakness, Armian said, this distaste for suffering. Armian had no such weakness. By now, Tansen had seen him make too many men suffer to doubt this. Now he knew that an assassin wasn't indifferent to killing. An assassin relished it.

Tansen withdrew his yahr from his jashar, the belt which would now never be knotted to identify him as Armian's bloodson, which would never bear the yellow beads of an assassin.

He must be quick. 

Father!

He must be stealthy and take him by surprise. The moment Armian knew what he intended, it would be too late. Armian was bigger than Tansen. Armian was so fast, so strong, so skilled.

My father is a great warrior.

He saw the black-clad silhouette faintly outlined against the tormented coastal sky and crept forward, squinting against the rain, ignoring the howling wind and the keening cry of protest in his own heart.

My father is a cold-blooded killer who will rule this land in darkness and drought, in terror and bloodshed with Kiloran, if I don't do this now.

Armian's back was still to him, but now he sensed his son's presence. He said something over his shoulder to Tansen. It sounded like he was cursing the weather, the darkness that made it impossible to see if a ship was down there in the cove.

Now, Tansen knew, it must be now.

He swung his yahr.

Goodbye, father.

He struck out. The blow connected, reverberating through Tansen's soul. Armian fell to his knees.

Father!

Armian was stunned but not unconscious. The yahr continued its arc as Tansen swung it back around over his head, without pausing, to strike again. Armian had been instructing him, had taught him not to hesitate over the death blow lest his still-living opponent seize the opportunity to fight back. 

 A great fighter, Armian instinctively rolled away from the next blow, moving so fast he escaped it entirely, while simultaneously reaching for his shir. Even in the dark, the wavy-edged dagger gleamed boldly with Kiloran's sorcery.

I'm dead, Tansen thought.

But Armian froze, like a statue, when he saw his son standing above him on that windswept cliff, swinging his yahr with deadly intent.

If Tansen lived for all eternity, he would never forget the sound of Armian's voice as he said, "Tansen?"

Tansen had learned well from Armian. He took advantage of the moment of surprise, of his opponent's brief hesitation. He struck Armian in the face with another blow of that fatally hard yahr.

Now Armian knew, now he realized, now he moved to fight. But he was injured, and it was too late for him. That shocked pause, that stunned moment of inaction when he couldn't believe his attacker was Tansen, had ensured his defeat. On the next blow, he dropped his shir. By the fifth blow, he was dead.

Tansen stood in the rain, staring down at Armian's corpse. After a moment, he sank to his knees.

"Forgive me, father," he whispered.

The night rained down upon him in dark condemnation for what he had done. Dar would punish him terribly for this, he knew. How could She not? The prayer he had uttered before murdering the Firebringer, his plea that Armian should not suffer, was the last time he would ever ask Dar for anything, the last time he would ever pray to Her. 

Enter not prayerless into the domain of Dar...

Dark, the night was dark. His grief was forever stained with shame, his sorrow forever marred by guilt.

... for She forgives no slight....

...forgives no slight...

...forgive...

"I imagine he was not altogether bad," Josarian said.

"No," Tansen agreed. "He was not."

Josarian? Where Josarian had come from?

"Dar gives, and Dar takes away," said Josarian.

"Dar didn't do this," said Tansen. "But She let you die." He looked up at his brother. "You were the Firebringer, not Armian. Why did She let you die?"

"That's right," Josarian said, looking surprised. "I'm dead. Like him."

Now Armian opened his dead eyes and repeated, "Tansen?" in that voice Tan would never forget, that shocked, disbelieving voice. That voice so rich with betrayal, so wounded by treachery...

"No!"

Tansen came hurling out of the dark world of his nightmares, scrambling wildly away from the memories that had chased him across the years and through many foreign lands ever since the night he had killed Armian.

His chest heaved with panting breaths as the world reeled around him, reality slowly taking shape out of dreams. The windswept cliffs of the Adalian coast gradually faded into the glowing interior of one of Dalishar's sacred, silent caves.

He was sticky with sweat, shaking with fear, dizzy with nausea.

"Siran?"

Tansen recognized the boy's voice.

"I'm all right." He heard how breathless and thin his own voice sounded, and he focused on making it more reassuring. "I'm fine."

"What is it?" Zarien mumbled, still half asleep.

"Nothing," he said. "Go back to sleep. It's nothing."

Just my ghosts. Just the demons of my dreams. They won't hurt you, son. It's not you they've come for.

The boy squinted sleepily, then lowered his head. Watching him, Tansen thought he fell asleep again the moment his cheek touched the borrowed bedroll. He gazed down at the sea-born youth for a moment, sad and envious all at once. He hadn't slept like that, in such deep innocence, for ten years. His nights were riddled with guilt, his dreams laced with his sins. 

He needed air. He stalked past Lann, whom even an earthquake couldn't wake (as the others had delighted in telling him upon his arrival), and escaped from the cave. A sentry outside glanced at him questioningly. He shook his head and went to the edge of the clearing, gazing across the moonlit night to where Darshon rose majestically in the distance.

The night breeze wafted through his hair, clean at last. He had bathed after eating, washing off the filth of violence and illness. The shir cut on his left palm was freshly dressed by Rahilar's expert hands, and her practiced healing magic had made it hurt less. He hoped the sea-born boy's feet hurt less, too, now; they had looked terrible when Sister Rahilar removed Zarien's stolen shoes to examine them.

He hoped the boy's dreams would not be troubled by the memory of those six ravaged corpses he'd stumbled across yesterday. No one that young should see something like that.

Don't dwell on it, Armian would have said, shrugging off violent death with the ease of a born assassin.

Armian...

Tansen's bloodfather had been right—the first time was indeed the hardest. Tansen, who had killed so many men by now, couldn't remember another death which had been so hard to inflict. 

Except Elelar's, of course. And so he hadn't done it.

If he had never cared about her, never been enthralled by her, never once believed himself in love with her, perhaps he could have done it. 

But perhaps not, even so. 

His sins were too close to hers. She had tried to kill the Firebringer and, in slaying Armian, so had Tansen. She had betrayed Josarian, an ally, believing she did so to save Sileria from the Valdani. Tansen had betrayed his own bloodfather, believing he did it to save Sileria from the Society. 

He knew with all his heart that Elelar was wrong. Josarian's death put them in desperate peril. And he knew that she had believed that night on the cliffs—and believed to this very day—that Tansen had been wrong when he killed Armian, thus destroying the assassin's plan to use Moorlander forces to drive the Valdani out of Sileria and then rule the island nation with Kiloran.

Yes, Elelar was still his weakness, but Mirabar—What in the Fires am I going to do about her?—was wrong about the reason.

 Elelar's sins were his sins. She was the mirror of his life, the banner of their culture, the sorrow of their times. She was Sileria, in all its self-destructive courage, in all its bitter sacrifice and traitorous ferocity. And in the end, so was he.

If they couldn't change, then how could Sileria? If they couldn't reap something worthy from their bloodstained past, then how could their country? 

Josarian had been all that was good in Sileria, the purity of intent and strength of heart that had somehow survived the centuries of servitude, poverty, and humiliation. Who else could have united Sileria's feuding, disparate factions and been embraced by Dar Herself? Who else could have resurrected Sileria's pride in itself and sown belief in place of resignation?

But even Josarian had been caught in the web of Sileria's worst flaws, and he always knew it: I can take care of my enemies, but Dar shield me from my friends.

If they were to triumph and survive as a nation, then betrayal and vengeance must cease to be their whole way of life. Tansen had started by not killing Elelar. He would finish by destroying the Society and killing Kiloran, not as a shallah seeking vengeance, but as a shatai eliminating the worst threat to freedom in Sileria.

Unfortunately, he also knew the shallaheen were far more likely to understand vengeance as a motive for fighting the Society than anything else. They were far more likely to oppose Kiloran if fired by revenge than if coaxed by abstract philosophy. 

Leadership called for compromise, and war called for expedience. In the morning, he would motivate his people according to their past. In the end, though, he must somehow help them find a new future.

Tansen sighed wearily and stretched his stiff muscles. He knew he should try to get more sleep. Dawn was far away, and he was still weak. He had too much to do and too many responsibilities to indulge in a slow physical recovery.

So, after another deep breath of cool night air, he reluctantly returned to the cave and his bedroll. Lann was snoring. As Tansen lay down, Zarien started murmuring in his sleep.

Tansen closed his eyes and tried to ignore them both.

...Armian froze, like a statue, when he saw his son standing above him on that windswept cliff, swinging his yahr with deadly intent.

"Tansen?" he said in a voice torn by shock and disbelief....

Tansen's eyes snapped open.

"Sea king..." Zarien muttered.

Lann's snoring was louder than an eruption of Darshon.

Tansen sighed. Dawn would be a long time coming.

Chapter Thirteen

He who has warned you has 

not killed you—as yet.

                        —Harlon the Waterlord

Northern Sileria 

The Year of Late Rains

Traveling toward Shaljir, where they would seek out this thing called the Alliance, Tansen and Armian avoided the Outlookers by sticking to the high mountain paths and old smuggling trails of northern Sileria. Sometimes they found them without help. Sometimes a local shallah recognized something special enough in the man or sorrowful enough in the boy that he'd simply tell them which way to go. And sometimes Armian forced people to give him the information he sought.

The first time Armian struck a stranger without provocation, Tansen was shocked. He would see it again, would even grow used to it by the time they reached Shaljir. But the first time befuddled him with stunned confusion. 

It was the act of an assassin, he knew. It was exactly the sort of penalty some of them had inflicted on Tansen's own people from time to time, leaving tears, blood, and humility in their wake. Tansen knew it was Armian's birthright, the merciless strength of his kind.

Somehow, though, knowing this didn't prepare Tansen for it, nor did the knowledge govern his reaction.

"Siran!" Tansen protested, watching Armian beat a spice monger who'd just refused to answer Tansen's question about a safe pass through the next mountain range. Some women screamed. Children scattered. Men backed away. Tansen never used Armian's name in front of others, since the Outlookers were undoubtedly still searching for the Firebringer. "Siran," he repeated.

Armian ignored him, grabbed the hair of the man he had just knocked down, and smashed his face into a table in the marketplace of the village they were in. 

"Now," Armian said pleasantly to the man who lay dazed and bleeding. "Perhaps we can count on a more courteous answer to the boy's question?"

"Ah... Uh..." The man panted with incoherent fear.

"Please, siran," Tansen whispered. People were staring, murmuring, waiting to see what would happen next. "We can find the pass without—"

"This man will be happy to guide us to the pass." Armian shook his victim. "Won't you?"

"Yes!" the man wailed. "Yes, siran!"

"Then show us now." Armian released him and kicked him into the middle of the street. 

While the tense crowd stared, the spice monger picked himself up. "Yes, siran, this way, siran."

No one interfered. 

No one ever interfered with the Society in Sileria. And while Armian wasn't wearing his jashar and had not withdrawn his shir—which was hidden in his boot—everyone here could see that he was an assassin. A powerful one. A ruthless one. 

Throughout Tansen's life, he had been part of the humble crowds who watched assassins take what they wanted and do as they pleased. He had admired their courage, respected their position, and envied their power. He had secretly wanted to be one of them, and he had even stated this ambition aloud to Armian, who took him seriously.

Now he discovered that being someone the crowd stared at with fear wasn't as thrilling as he had supposed. Seeing Armian attack Outlookers in Gamalan had felt very different from watching him beat an unarmed merchant today. Armian hadn't needed to do this, not really. They could have found their way without help, or they could have asked someone else for directions. The assassin's sudden burst of violence against a recalcitrant spice monger... Well, it was far from glorious. And now the man's obsequious fear and babbled pleas gave Tansen no pleasure, no sense of power.

In fact, he felt... ashamed. He was eager to leave this village and hopeful that he'd never have to come back. 

So he responded with alacrity to Armian's clipped command that he keep up. He maintained an uneasy silence as the sun rose higher, following Armian and the man who led them, having no idea what to say or how to behave. When they reached the hidden trail leading to a pass which would get them safely past a town swarming with Valdani, the spice monger gladly accepted Armian's dismissal. Tansen avoided the man's eyes as he departed. 

Armian's dark gaze followed the man, but his words were for Tansen. "Pardon one offense, and you encourage the commission of many."

"I..." Tansen didn't know what to say.

"I'm telling you this for your own good," Armian continued. "Permit rudeness, and you're offered insolence next. Permit insolence, and opposition follows. And opposition..." Armian looked at him now. "That we cannot allow."

"No, siran."

Armian was right. Of course Armian was right.

"If you want to be one of us," Armian told him, "you cannot be one of them. It is the first rule."

"Who..." Tansen nodded his understanding, then asked, "Who taught it to you?"

"My father's assassins. The ones who went into exile with me, my mother, and my uncle."

"Oh. Yes. Of course."

"They taught me what they had learned from my father."

"Harlon was..." A wise man? A shrewd man? "... a great waterlord," Tansen concluded at last. "I've heard many stories about him."

"Our destiny," Armian taught him, "is to be obeyed. Demanding obedience is the source of the Society's power."

"I thought water—"

"And what do the waterlords seek when they withhold water?"

Tansen hesitated only a moment. "They seek obedience."

"Now do you understand?" 

"Yes, Armian. Now I understand."

They were enjoying the hospitality of Sanctuary the night Armian asked Tansen to become his son. The three Sisters who lived here were old and timid. One of them was deaf, and another had been maimed by Valdani torture. Armian was polite to them, but when they began their evening prayers to Dar, he vacated their stone dwelling.

Tansen, who knew better than to offend the destroyer goddess, prayed with the Sisters before following Armian outside. The night air was cool and slightly damp.

"I've been thinking about what you said," Armian announced when Tansen joined him around a small fire he had built at the edge of Sanctuary grounds. "A man without a clan is no one in the mountains. A shallah is nothing without his kin."

"Yes." It hurt to dwell on it.

"Now you're alone," Armian continued, his voice kind despite the bleak words. "As I am alone."

"You? But there are many Idalari. You clan is very—"

Armian made a dismissive gesture. "My parents are dead. I've never met any of the Idalari, and they will be strangers to me when I finally do. At least, at first. I have no brothers. No wife." He paused and added with emphasis, "No son."

Tansen stared at him in the firelight as Armian held up his right palm, showing Tansen its scarred flesh.

"My father sliced my palm when I was named. Years later, his assassins cut my palm when they made me one of them." Then he held up his left hand. It was smooth, unmarked by bloodpact relations or bloodfeuds. "I know that here in the mountains, you can choose a new father to replace the one you've lost."

"I..." Tansen didn't want to presume, though his heart pounded as he realized what Armian must be leading up to. "I lost him so long ago that I don't remember him."

"A boy needs a father. Even," Armian added quickly, "a very brave, capable boy who is nearly a man."

Tansen's eyes misted, embarrassing him. Pride filled his throat, making it impossible for words to escape. The greatest moment of his life was taking place in the dark, far from anyone else who might have cared, and only after his family was dead. Were a man's great moments always like this, he wondered?

"Will you honor me, Tansen," Armian asked formally, "and become my son?"

The Firebringer wants to be my bloodfather.

Tansen's chest rose and fell, breath gusting in and out as his feelings welled up, threatening to propel him across the sky like a shooting star.

A man whose name lived in Silerian legend wanted Tansen as his bloodson. He was a man whom no one dared to insult, a man whose great destiny shone plainly in his proud face and ready courage.

Tansen crossed his fists and bowed his head. "The honor would be mine, siran."

Armian smiled. Then he took the small knife which they carried among their few possessions and stuck it into the fire, heating the blade for the bloodpact ceremony.

"And perhaps," Armian suggested, "you could stop calling me that."

"Yes, Armian."

"Actually, I was thinking..."

"Yes?"

"Well... you could call me father." Armian shrugged casually, staring into the fire. "If you wanted to."

The wind stirred the vast leaves of the gossamer trees. In the darkened forest, something stalked and caught its prey, which squealed in panic a moment before dying. Overhead, the twin moons gleamed on the snow-capped peak of Darshon, which had never looked more beautiful.

"Yes, father," Tansen replied.

"That must be Illan," Armian said, gazing down at a large town from the mountaintop where they stood together, surveying the countryside below.

The diagonal cut of the bloodpact ceremony still made Tansen's palm throb; but then, it was supposed to. The privileges and responsibilities of a bloodpact relation were as binding as those which a shallah owed to the family he'd been born into. The pain was meant to remind him of the commitment he had made, and the scar it would leave was meant to remind him of its permanence.

The Sisters had cleaned and dressed the cut on his hand, as well as the one on Armian's. Then the two of them left Sanctuary and continued the journey to Shaljir.

Now Tansen pointed to the broad ribbon of silver-blue descending from the mountains to weave through the lowlands below them. "Then that would be the Idalar River."

"The Idalar," Armian breathed, his interest sharpening as he gazed at it.

It was, after all, the foundation of his clan's power, the water source which Harlon had used to bring the Valdani to their knees. The reprisals for Harlon's sorcery had been terrible, costing thousands of Silerian lives. But he was remembered as a hero in the mountains. A Silerian waterlord had opposed the Empire and made the Outlookers bleed.

Now Kiloran, who was himself reputed to have learned water magic from one of the Idalari waterlords, controlled the Idalar. It was the chief source of water for the great city of Shaljir, where Armian hoped to find the Alliance.

Armian pulled his gaze away from the river below them and looked back at the mountains they would now leave. "By all the gods above and below, this is a beautiful country."

"More beautiful than others?" Tansen asked.

"Oh, yes," Armian said. "More beautiful than anything I've ever seen."

"Is that why the Valdani want it?"

Armian grimaced. "They want it because it is their nature to want whatever is not already theirs." He clapped Tansen on the back and said, "Let's go. If we move fast, we can make Illan by sunset. Doesn't a bed sound good for a change?"

"Yes, father."

"And after that, Shaljir."

The exotic maze of Shaljir's streets and the sparkling glory of its many fountains faded from Tansen's mind as he and Armian were shown into the home of Toren Gaborian shah Hasnari. Armian said that the toren was the leader of the Alliance in Sileria and could take him to Kiloran. Tansen had never heard of the Hasnari, but this palatial house with its luxuriant furnishings left him in no doubt of their wealth and status. 

"I've never seen anything like this," he whispered to Armian, who had led him here through a long afternoon of asking throughout Shaljir where the toren lived. The city-dwellers of Shaljir were not as reticent as shallaheen, but the city was so enormous that, even so, finding this house had taken some time.

"It's impressive," Armian agreed. "But even here, you can see what it means to be ruled by the Valdani." He gestured to a large, discolored square on the floor. When Armian saw that Tansen didn't understand its significance, he explained, "They've been selling things—there was once a rug there—to pay their taxes."

"We had to." Startled, Tansen whirled around to face a young woman who spoke from the doorway. "The Outlookers beggared us with their demands for grain from our estates last year, and then the Society depleted our savings by abducting my grandfather." She arched her brows. "The ransom was very high."

The abduction would have occurred during the long rains, of course, when the Society had trouble exacting tribute from the populace. It was the one time of year when water was so plentiful in Sileria, the rivers so fast-flowing and abundant, that even the waterlords couldn't keep Sileria thirsty with their power. Abducting toreni and wealthy merchants was an old custom, a secondary source of income for the Society.

"And you did not apply to Kiloran for help?" Armian asked.

Tansen supposed that if these people could help Armian find Kiloran, then they must be under his protection.

The young woman studied Armian with obvious interest as she replied, "We did. However, the captor was an enemy of his who would not listen to reason."

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter now. He's dead." She added significantly, "He was an enemy of Kiloran's, you see."

Tansen stood transfixed, scarcely hearing her words. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Long-lashed dark eyes commanded a face of intelligent beauty which was framed by elaborately styled black hair. Her silken clothes were so much finer than those of any shallah woman—and noticeably less modest. He could see the shape of her breasts and her waist under its clinging fabric, and her pantaloons tapered down to hug her trim ankles like a lover.

Heat flooded him, making his body alert and his wits dull. Her glance fluttered over him, and for the first time in his life, he wished he had better clothes, wished he were taller, broader, older. He could tell that several years separated them, and her gaze dismissed him as a mere boy before she returned her attention to Armian. He saw Armian take her hand, a liberty that few respectable shallah girls would permit upon meeting a strange man. But the toreni, Tansen knew, were different. Without introducing himself, Armian asked to see Gaborian.

"Since the abduction, my grandfather is frequently too unwell to receive visitors," she said. "I am Elelar mar Odilan shah Hasnari, and I run this household now."

Armian let his surprise show on his face. Even Tansen knew that, though of marriageable age, she was very young to run such a large household. He wondered what his father would do now, but the girl surprised them again.

"And you," she said, "must be Armian." She smiled at Armian's wary expression and added, "The Alliance has been awaiting you, though we feared you might be dead."

They slept in one of the vast house's bedchambers that night. The following morning, Gaborian was feeling strong enough to meet them briefly. It was the only time Tansen ever saw the dying old aristocrat. Later in the day, the young torena advised them that she had set in motion the slow process of contacting Kiloran to arrange a meeting. 

She added, "So perhaps you should tell me why you're here."

"I've come home," Armian replied simply.

"Why?" She sounded a little impatient.

"To drive the Valdani out of Sileria, torena. Why else?"

"I know what the shallaheen say about you, but I'm not a credulous peasant, and neither is Kiloran." The torena ignored Tansen, who gaped at her, shocked by such disrespect. "Do you actually have a plan?"

Armian grinned. "It is a plan, young torena, which should please even you."

"Well?" she prodded. 

"When I meet Kiloran, then I will speak." He shook his head when she started to protest. "I've already been betrayed once on this quest, torena, so I think it best to keep the details of my plans to myself for now. Until I meet Kiloran, all you need to know is that the Moorlanders propose... an alliance." He smiled beguilingly at her. Tansen would have been jealous had the torena responded in kind, but she only looked annoyed.

However, she was born to centuries of practiced courtesy, so she said, "And how may we amuse you in Shaljir until such time as we receive a message from Kiloran?"

"Ah, torena." Armian smiled again. "You will find that I'm really very easy to amuse."

An assassin and a shallah boy staying as guests of a toren were bound to arouse interest if discovered, and that was the last thing they wanted. So, Elelar informed them, Gaborian advised her to move their guests to a safe inn in the oldest part of the city. The public house squatted deep in a maze of narrow, tangled streets that the wind never reached. It took days for Tansen to get used to the ancient odors and encroaching buildings.

However, although he'd have liked to see more of the beautiful young torena, he felt more at ease in the humble inn than he had in her grand home. And Elelar did meet with them several times. Meanwhile, Tansen became friendly with the chubby, good-natured innkeeper who, he soon learned, was also part of this Alliance.

The Alliance was a secret organization composed of people from many walks of Silerian life: toreni, merchants, Sisters, city-dwellers, and even certain members of the Honored Society—most notably, Kiloran himself. There were no shallaheen in this Alliance ("they're wild, violent, and distrustful of everyone who isn't a shallah," said the torena), and also no zanareen ("all mad") or Guardians ("not as long as the Society are in the Alliance"). However, there were many roshaheen. Individuals from several tribes of the Moorlands and from more than a dozen of the Kintish Kingdoms were involved in the Alliance.

"Freedom from the Valdani," she explained to Tansen, "is our purpose, the goal we all work for."

Her grandfather, Gaborian, had founded the Alliance. Elelar had been raised to participate in the work of the Alliance, and, though still young, she'd taken over many heavy responsibilities since Gaborian had become ill. 

It was a world Tansen had never imagined before, having known only the daily struggle of a humble mountain peasant's existence. Until finding Armian lying on the beach that first night, he had never even considered the possibility of freedom from the Valdani. Since then, he had believed Armian alone would somehow achieve it, with Dar's help. Now he realized that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people believed in it, regardless of Armian. People had been working for it since before he was born.

"So why haven't you accomplished it in all these years?" he asked.

Elelar's indignation over this simple question seemed unreasonable. After all, she had just admitted that Gaborian had been trying to get rid of the Valdani for many years.

Armian's theory, related privately to Tansen at the inn, was that the members of the Alliance could scheme and plot and spy all they liked, but nothing could replace action—and they seemed sadly inadequate at that.

"But now you are here," Tansen said.

"Now I'm here," Armian agreed. "And we will have action. I guarantee it."

Armian also told him what he wouldn't tell Elelar: the details of the Moorlanders' proposal. Tansen was his son, after all. Armian trusted him.

"Control of Sileria is essential for control of the Middle Sea," Armian said. "And control of the Middle Sea is essential for control of a mainland empire the size of Valdania—especially if the Valdani want to keep extending their borders, which seems to be the case.

"The free Moorlanders know this. Valdania breaks treaty after treaty with them, and some of them have finally started to realize that the Valdani won't rest until they've swallowed the Moorlands whole, down to the very last tribe."

A keystone of the Moorlanders' plan to stop the Valdani advance, therefore, was to destroy their power in Sileria. They wanted to unite with the only organized force in the island nation, the only faction which had ever made the Valdani bleed: the Honored Society. Even in the Moorlands, they had heard of Kiloran and knew that he was the waterlord best able to speak on behalf of the Society. 

The free tribes had an obvious envoy among them, the only person in all of the Moorlands whom Kiloran was likely to trust. The exiled Silerian assassin who lived among them even had the honor of being the son of Harlon, the waterlord whom the Moorlanders remembered for his fabled opposition to the Empire.

However, they didn't know how to contact Kiloran; nor did Armian, who had spent his whole life on the mainland. So their solution was to find the waterlord through Sileria's secretive network of strange bedfellows, the Alliance.

"So you will..." Tansen shrugged, trying to work it out. "Abandon the Alliance once you find Kiloran?"

"No." Armian clapped him on the head, a playful blow of admonishment. "What did I tell you before?"

"Um..."

"Never destroy a useful tool."

"Oh! Yes, I remember." He frowned. "How is the Alliance useful?"

"I'm not sure yet, but they're bound to be. Money, contacts, networks, influence." Armian shrugged. "Kiloran will know. And he will keep them in their place."

An important matter continued to trouble Tansen. "After we find Kiloran...."

"Yes?"

"Will we go to Darshon?"

Armian sighed. "You're not still thinking about that, are you?"

"Father, surely your destiny—"

"Is too bright to throw away by jumping into the damned volcano."

"Then what will you do?"

"I'll fight a war," said Armian.

"To get rid of the Valdani."

"Yes."

"But—"

"And then I'll become Kiloran's heir."

I'm his son, Tansen thought, it's my duty to say this. "That doesn't seem fitting, father. You're the Fire—"

"Kiloran will teach me everything he knows," Armian said, looking a little exasperated by now. "Including water magic."

"You'll become a waterlord?"

"I'm Harlon's son." 

"Waterlords' sons don't always... The gift doesn't always go from father to son."

"Let's just hope it has in my case."

"Are there any signs that you h—"

"No." Armian shrugged. "But I've never been in Sileria before, and I've never met a waterlord who might teach me. So there's never been any way of knowing."

"If you don't—"

"If I don't master water magic, then it will be very hard to rule Sileria."

A waterlord ruling Sileria.

It was not the same thing as the Firebringer.

It was not the same.

Tansen had never seen a woman like Elelar, had never known the painful, tongue-tied yearning that overwhelmed him in her presence. He didn't know how to control the lust which swept through him when she brushed past him or stood so close that he could feel the heat of her skin. 

He had also never before experienced the acute embarrassment he felt over her amusement at his rustic habits or his clumsy infatuation. For the first time in his life, he was embarrassed that he was poor, illiterate, and ignorant. Her pity humiliated him and her impatience shamed him. 

He was a shallah and she was a torena. Even worse, he was still just a boy, and she was already a woman. 

"She's a lovely girl," Armian said one day, following Tansen's gaze as it followed the torena, who was departing from a private meeting with them. 

"I suppose so," Tansen said with a show of indifference.

"I believe that even in Sileria," Armian said dryly, "women are moved by compliments, gifts, and acts of gallantry."

Tansen glanced suspiciously at him. "Oh?"

"So if you want to win the girl's affection—"

"I didn't say that."

Armian sighed. "Never mind."

After a few moments, Tansen ventured, "Acts of gallantry?"

"Show her the courtesies a woman likes."

"The courtesies a woman likes," he repeated blankly.

"For example, perhaps if you let her precede you through a doorway, rather than always going ahead of her—"

"But a man must always go first through a door! To protect a woman from the danger that may lie on the other side."

Armian frowned. "Yes, there are differences between the shallaheen and the toreni which..." He shook his head. "Perhaps compliments would be a better thing to focus on."

"Compliments," Tansen said without enthusiasm, morosely considering how tongue-tied Elelar's presence made him.

"A young woman like the torena..." Armian thought it over. "She will be indifferent to comments about her beauty, but compliments about her mind will flatter her."

Tansen took his father's advice to heart and tried to compliment the torena's intelligence when next they met. But he was a clumsy peasant, lacking the polished manners of Elelar's kind, and his awkward passion made his words sound foolish. She seemed more amused than flattered, and he quickly retreated into mortified silence. After that, he brusquely rejected Armian's encouragement in this matter.

"Well," Armian said philosophically, "she's a torena, after all, so I suppose things are best left as they are. And you're both still young enough that the age difference matters a great deal."

"Won't it always?" Tansen muttered.

Armian smiled kindly. "No. In the ways that matter, she won't always be older. However, she will always be a torena."

"And I will always be a shallah."

"No. You will be more than that someday. Much more."

Smarting under the pain of hopeless love, what happened "someday" hardly seemed to matter, but Tansen obediently replied, "Yes, father."

Chapter Fourteen

Who will be brave and stand with me?

                        —Daurion, the Last Yahrdan

Sleep eluded Tansen, so by the time dawn's amber glow finally kissed the sky above Mount Dalishar, he had been practicing forms and drills, with and without his swords, for some time. Sister Rahilar's dressing on his wounded palm ensured that it didn't disable him, though it was starting to throb again, and her disgusting blood broth seemed to have set him on the road to recovery. He was slower than usual and tired more easily, but with the life-threatening wound at his side completely healed, he was at least strong enough today for action and would, he knew, soon be fully recovered.

The mysteriously healed wound was just one of many concerns he must deal with today, and not the most pressing one. This morning, while a coil of dark smoke rose menacingly out of distant Darshon's caldera, he must take the first real steps in the necessary feat he had dreaded since Josarian's death: taking his bloodbrother's place.

After the rebels were all awake and the morning chores were done, Tansen called for everyone's attention. Only he, Najdan, and Mirabar knew the truth about Elelar. But eight of these men had been with Tansen when he saved Josarian from the ambush that Zimran had led him into, so Tansen had no doubt that the news of Zimran's betrayal had already been discussed at Dalishar and would soon spread across Sileria. 

Looking at nearly fifty attentive faces now, he began with a judicious half-truth. "As most of you know, I discovered that Zimran planned to betray Josarian to the Outlookers."

Galian, a shallah from Garabar who always fought with two yahr, asked, "Why did he do it?"

The disgusted reply came from Radyan, a young man from Illan whose intelligence Tansen had learned to appreciate: "Probably for the money the Valdani must have promised him."

"That," Lann said morosely, "seems likely." He had known Zimran well, having grown up with him and Josarian. "He always wanted more money, lots of money. I suppose his... his friendship with Torena Elelar beguiled him into believing she'd leave her Valdani husband permanently for him if he had wealth worthy of her position." Lann shook his head sadly. "As if a torena would favor a shallah for long."

"And presumably the Outlookers offered him a pardon," Tansen added. His blood simmered with guilt while his mind coolly noted that his lies would satisfy these men. "However, as you know, Zimran failed."

"Because of you," Lann proclaimed.

"But Kiloran succeeded," Tansen continued.

Sister Rahilar started crying. Lann's eyes misted in his dark, bearded face. Even Yorin, a notoriously tough one-eyed shallah, looked as if he was fighting back tears.

Tansen had thought about his next move a great deal and had decided that the harshest words must come from him. If not, then he would wind up defending his plans against criticism. And Armian had taught Tansen that a defensive fight was almost always a doomed one.

Always attack, and never hesitate.

"Now," he told the rebels at Dalishar, "we are caught between Josarian's enemies, between the Valdani and the Society, between Advisor Kaynall in Shaljir and Kiloran in our own mountains." The rebels' gazes were sharp and unblinking. "Now we face the worst odds, the hardest tasks, the heaviest fighting." The air was thick with tension. "Here, between the sword and the wall, between fire and water, between the past and the future," he said, praying for some of Josarian's charisma, "we must make our choice and, having made it, never waver from it."

He saw Zarien's young face, festive with sea-born tattoos, and suddenly felt the weight of the boy's expectations. "Now, here, today," Tansen said, "we must decide: Do we stand and fight, or do we surrender and submit?"

Lann's voice was hoarse with emotion: "Stand and fight!"

"At least pretend to think it over," Radyan suggested dryly.

"Josarian must be avenged!" Yorin cried.

"Do you know what that means?" Tansen challenged him.

"I know what it means," Radyan said. "I'm from Illan. I grew up on the banks of the Idalar River."

"If you want to surrender," Yorin snapped, "then there's no room for you at Dalishar."

Radyan sighed. "I didn't say I wanted to surrender. I'm saying you'd better be damned sure you know what you're getting into before you charge off in a blaze of vengeful glory."

"He's right," Tansen agreed.  "To avenge Josarian is to challenge Kiloran. To challenge Kiloran is to oppose the Society. And that," he said, remembering so well how he had learned it, "they will not allow."

"War against the Society?" asked Pyron, who had lost both of his brothers in the mines of Alizar under Valdani rule.

"War against the Society," Tansen confirmed.

This stopped their debate, and fear showed on their faces. This, they knew, was an even madder dream than Josarian's rebellion against Valdania. 

"War against the masters of water and the assassins who kill for them," Tansen said.

"But..." Radyan studied him with a puzzled frown. "What about the Valdani? What about the siege of Shaljir?"

He gambled everything on Elelar now. The future of Sileria, the rest of his life, and the lives of Sileria's people. He counted on the torena, who had proven time and time again that she could talk men into doing the unthinkable and sacrificing the unimaginable.

"There will be no siege of Shaljir," Tansen announced.

"What?" Lann blurted.

"We move against the Society now," he said. "Immediately. Starting today."

"And Shaljir?" Yorin demanded, his sole eye glinting angrily. "We just leave it to the Valdani, to the roshaheen who've killed so many of us?"

"We can't afford to lose time and men taking Shaljir," Tansen said. "Not now. Not after what's happened. Kiloran's already killed Josarian, and he'll use every moment from now on to extend and consolidate his power. Do you want to die freeing Shaljir for him? Because if we expend our energy now on the siege of Shaljir, this nation will belong to him. We'll be giving it to him."

"But if we leave the Valdani in Shaljir..." Galian shrugged, his two yahr clicking lightly against each other in his jashar as he did so.

"The Alliance has been deep in negotiations with the Valdani." That much, at least, was true. "Kaynall is on the verge of surrendering Shaljir. And since the Alliance includes members of the Society, I've made arrangements for Searlon to help Torena Elelar convince Advisor Kaynall to abandon Sileria at last."

"Searlon?" Pyron asked incredulously.

"Yes," Tansen confirmed. "He will speak on behalf of Kiloran. We are all still agreed that we want our mutual enemies out of our country."

But this was Sileria, so the enemies of their enemies weren't necessarily their friends. There was always enough hatred to go around in Sileria.

"Ahhh." Radyan thought it over. "In other words, you mean to let the Society free Shaljir for us?" When Tansen nodded, he grinned and said, "I like that plan."

It's got to work. Please, Dar, for their sakes, it's got to work.

"Will it work?" Galian asked.

"Yes," Tansen said. 

"You seem very sure," Yorin noted.

"Which brings us back to the decision we must make today," he said. "Do we make war on the Society for our freedom, or do we give up now?"

There was a long, uneasy silence. He let them have it. He saw the look on Zarien's face and knew the lad thought he was losing. He wondered how much of the debate, all in shallah, Zarien was able to follow.

"When I was a boy," Tansen said at last, "people whispered Kiloran's name, afraid to say it aloud. My village paid tribute every year to an eastern waterlord who was killed by Outlookers years later. Between what we gave him and what we gave the Valdani, there was nothing left for us. We lived in hunger and hardship." He paused and added, "And so did all of you.

"Sometimes the Outlookers came into our village, taking what they wanted, abusing our men, insulting our women, and terrifying the children. Sometimes assassins came, and they did the same thing." His gaze swept the crowd. "And they did it in your villages, too. 

"When Harlon the waterlord made his stand against the Valdani forty years ago, some Outlookers died and some assassins died. But mostly, thousands of us died.

"When the Firebringer came to free us from the Valdani, when he gave men a choice about their destinies and a nation to be proud of, who opposed him? Who thwarted him? Who betrayed and killed him?" Tansen's blood roared in his ears. His voice grew louder with each word of condemnation. "When it became Dar's will that we should be free, that we should fulfill prophecy and regain the lost glory of Sileria, who cared more about their own power than about the will of the goddess or the fate of this country?"

"Avenge Josarian!" Yorin shouted, leaping to his feet and waving his stolen Valdani sword in the air. "Avenge him!"

"You know what the Society can do to you if we oppose them," Tansen continued. "You know the lakes they can turn into crystal, the rivers they can stop from flowing, the wells they can make so cold your hands will fall off if you touch the water." 
      "Avenge Josarian!" Lann bellowed.

"You know they can pull a lake up over your heads to drown you, reach out to cover your faces with suffocating masks of water, and strangle you with liquid tentacles stronger than a man's arms."

"Kiloran must die!"

"I've seen the White Dragon," Tansen warned them. "And now I know that it's not a legend. Kiloran killed the Firebringer—"

"Avenge the Firebringer!" 

"—and will be harder to defeat than the Valdani, who are only men."

"We fought the Valdani!" Galian shouted. "We drove them all the way back to Shaljir!"

"I may not survive this war," Tansen said. "You may not survive. We will suffer."

"And we will end the suffering!" Lann vowed.

"Dar demands vengeance!" Pyron cried. "My brothers didn't die at Alizar so that a waterlord could reap the wealth of the mines!"

This is it. Make it good.

"You will decide what you must," Tansen said. "But I made my choice the night Kiloran murdered the Firebringer. My choice was made the night he betrayed Dar, Sileria, and our destiny!"

"So was mine!" Lann declared.

"I am Josarian's bloodbrother!" Their love for Josarian made them cheer Tansen now. "And I will defeat Kiloran or die trying!"

The wild enthusiasm which met this pledge left him in no doubt of their decision. They would go to war against the waterlords. They would fight.

They were Silerians and they understood vengeance. Craved it. Lived for it.

No, it wasn't the future he wanted, the creed by which he believed Sileria could survive and thrive. But it was the first step along the way.

They seized him now and hoisted him up on their shoulders. Josarian had always let such outpourings of emotion flow over him naturally, easy with the crowd's enthusiasm, accepting the adulation which, in private, had made him wryly humble. Tansen hated it now, felt embarrassed and awkward. But he knew that his feelings were irrelevant and mustn't be allowed to destroy the wave of faith that had to carry these men through bloodshed, terror, and loss before finally taking them to a safe shore.

He was the Firebringer's brother and, as such, knew he was a symbol in which they needed to believe. Like Josarian himself, he couldn't be just a man in the eyes of the people he must lead.

Josarian, however, had at least had a bloodbrother with whom he could enjoy the ease of being just a man. Whereas Tansen... 

He suddenly saw a flash of fiery hair gleaming under the sun and felt his heart quiver.

She had come back.

Mirabar.

Whereas Tansen... Ah, yes, Tansen always had women to remind him that he was just a man.

The Lironi were fighting Verlon the waterlord, opposing the power he'd always held in the east, and rebelling against his attempt to claim the port city of Liron.

It was extraordinary news, and Mirabar couldn't have made the announcement to the rebels at a better moment. They were so fired with ambition, in fact, that Tansen had his hands full trying to keep them here long enough to issue orders. The people loyal to Josarian's memory couldn't defy and defeat the Honored Society without strategy and tactics, after all.

Mirabar said nothing about Elelar, and she didn't contradict the story that Zimran had acted alone. She said only, in response to curses the rebels pronounced on Zimran's memory, "But Kiloran is the one who killed Josarian, and that's all that matters now. Kiloran is the enemy we must fight."

That was when Tansen knew that however much she might hate him for not killing Elelar (and Zarien was right, it really did look like hatred), she wasn't going to confuse their cause with her private grievances. He supposed he should have expected that. Mirabar always put Sileria first. Strangely, it was the one thing she had in common with Elelar.

"Where are the zanareen?" he asked Mirabar now, holding council in the golden sunshine with her, Lann, Najdan, and Cheylan. Zarien was currently in one of the caves, where Rahilar again tended his bloody, blistered feet. When she was done with that, the Sister would finish brewing up the pot of black dye which Tansen had requested first thing that morning. 

Still looking at Mirabar, Tansen said, "There were fifty zanareen with you when we parted company after Josarian's death, and I see none here now." Some of the zanareen had clung to Josarian like a shadow during the final months of his life.

"Some of them returned to the Zilar River after dawn," she replied, "to do who knows what. Mourn Josarian, I suppose. Some said they were returning to Darshon. Others scattered to spread the word."

"That Kiloran killed Josarian?"

"Yes."

"And Jalan?" Tansen prompted, asking about the wild-eyed mystic who was something of a leader among the zanareen.

Mirabar's eyes widened. "Of course! I should have told you. He's gone east in search of Josarian's sister."

"Jalilar." 
      "He thought if Kiloran had gone to such effort to kill the Firebringer, then the Firebringer's sister might be in danger."

Dar be praised, this was now one less task Tansen had to assign. He had realized the necessity of it soon after leaving Elelar's villa near Chandar, but he'd had no opportunity yet to send someone after Jalilar—and now he wouldn't have to. Upon learning that Josarian was dead, Jalilar's husband Emelen, a valuable rebel leader, would know what to do: get Jalilar safely to Sanctuary and then rally with Tansen.

Neither he nor Mirabar alluded to why she hadn't mentioned this before now, since yesterday's quarrel was not a subject for the many ears around them. He could tell by the rigid coolness of her manner, though, that nothing was forgotten or forgiven.

Focus on the task at hand.

"Cheylan," he said to the Guardian, "you'll need to go east again, first thing tomorrow." Tansen sensed Cheylan's reluctance. He also caught the sudden flash in Mirabar's eyes. "I want you to take messages to the Lironi as soon as possible, assuring them of our support against Verlon and getting theirs against Kiloran."

"As you wish," Cheylan replied.

"Lann, you need to send a runner to Zilar to tell them I'm coming. Hundreds—possibly thousands—of rebels have been  massing near there, awaiting Josarian's arrival. We can't let them panic over his death."

"And you want a runner to precede you?"

"Yes. We've got to get word to everyone around the town of Zilar, as soon as possible, that I'm coming in Josarian's place and they should wait for me."

Lann nodded. "What else?"

"We've got to establish more sentries and better vantage points between here and Chandar. I don't want any more assassins ambushing us in our own stronghold. And send someone down to Chandar to organize them there and send news through the mountains. Tell your runners—tell everyone—to see me for instructions before leaving."

"Is that all?" Lann asked.

"No. There'll be more before I leave today, but—"

"You're leaving today?" Mirabar blurted.

Cheylan glanced at her.

"But for now, gather five of the best fighters we've got up here. I'll speak with them..." Tansen looked at Mirabar. "After I'm done speaking with the sirana."

Lann nodded and rose to carry out his orders.

"You're leaving today?" Mirabar repeated.

"Before sundown," he replied. "You and I need to talk."

"We—"

"There's something I need to ask you about." He rose to his feet and, with a hand under her arm, forced her to do the same. Najdan, who could be very touchy about any disrespect to the sirana, didn't protest or even glare warningly at Tansen; his attention seemed fixed on Cheylan.

Cheylan's news from the east was important enough to explain his unexpected arrival at Dalishar. But Tansen was glad it also ensured there was good reason to order him to return immediately to Liron. Even without the aristocratic Guardian's interest in Mirabar, Tansen had never much cared for Cheylan's company. 

And what's the point of being in charge, after all, if I can't indulge my petty dislikes?

"What do you need to ask me about?" Mirabar's voice was cold as Tansen led her toward the cave where Sister Rahilar was tending Zarien.

"I promise you'll find it interesting." 

The Sister was finishing wrapping Zarien's feet in clean linen bandages when Tansen and Mirabar entered the chamber. Guardian fires burned magically in several places on the stone walls, their dancing flames glinting on the surface of the bubbling spring that formed a pool in the center of the cave.

"When that dye is ready," Tansen told Rahilar, "I'll need you to dye clothes for six men, including me. We're leaving before sundown, so they'll need to be ready by then."

"They'll still be damp," she warned.

"As long as they're not soaking wet. We won't actually wear them for a couple of days."

She nodded and left the cave to accomplish her task. 

Alone now with Mirabar and Zarien, Tansen said to the boy, "Tell her what you told me."

"About..."

"About why you're here," Tansen clarified.

Now Mirabar's hostile gaze flashed with interest. "Yes," she said suddenly. "I need to know why you're here."

"Ah." Zarien looked from her to Tansen, then back again. "You understand this sort of thing. This is your realm, isn't it?"

"Go on," she urged, sitting down. 

It quickly became clear that Mirabar found his tale as astonishing as Tansen had. Her eyes widened when Zarien, at Tansen's request, showed her the scars left by the dragonfish attack, and her brow furrowed with thought as he described Sharifar's instructions. She looked stunned when Zarien announced that Tansen was the sea king he sought.

Mirabar's reply to Zarien's urgent request that she agree with him was not quite what Tansen had hoped for: "It's possible."

"You see?" Zarien said triumphantly to Tansen. "Now will you come w—"

"However," Mirabar interrupted, to Tansen's relief, "it's certainly not what I've seen in my visions."

Zarien faltered. "It's not?"

"No. According to the Beckoner—"

"Who's that?"

"The one who brings my visions."

"Oh."

"According to the Beckoner, Tansen and I must prepare the way for the coming of the new Yahrdan."

"What?" Tansen said.

She looked a little sheepish. "I suppose I've neglected to mention that I've had more visions since... since Josarian died."

"Yes, you've left that out entirely," he said with a snap in his voice.

"But surely," Zarien said, "the sea kin—"

"The new Yahrdan?" Tansen repeated, rather enjoying his irritation with Mirabar. It felt good to attack rather than defend, for a change.

"Yes."

"You didn't think this was important enough to mention to me?"

"I just did mention it." 

"No." He pointed at Zarien. "It slipped out while you were talking to him."

"I had other things on my mind," Mirabar snapped.

"Such as castigating me for not committing a murder."

"You can say that?" she cried. "After what she did?"

"She is in Shaljir right now," he replied, enjoying the sudden release of his frustration in anger. "Convincing Kaynall to honor their treaty—"

"How can you even use the word 'honor' in the same sentence with—"

"—and surrender Shaljir to us!"

"—that blood-soaked secret treaty?"

"Who else could do that, Mirabar?" he demanded. "Who else could work with Searlon now? And Searlon is the key to convincing Kaynall—"

"You can make all the excuses you want!" she raged. "But I know the truth. No one else—"

"I'm tired of vengeance!"

"—could have betrayed Josarian with impunity!"

"Tired of killing in retribution for past killings!"

"You would have forgiven no one else!" she accused.

"I haven't forgiven her! I'll never forgive her! Fires of Dar, do you think it was easy to spare her?"

The sudden silence between them was thunderous.

Tansen was aware of Zarien's fascinated, open-mouthed stare. Mirabar's sun-kissed complexion was flushed with anger. His own breath was coming fast in his agitation.

"I think," Mirabar said at last, "that it was easier for you than killing her would have been."

"Maybe it was," he admitted. "But neither thing is easy. You've never killed. You condemn me without knowing what it means to take a life."

"True," she said. "But you've taken pl—" 

"The feel of the blade cutting into flesh, the spray of blood. You don't know how that f—"

"How did she talk you out of it?" Mirabar challenged. "Or did she even need to?" Her tone bit into him. 

"By pointing out how similar our sins are," he admitted wearily. "She betrayed Josarian, and I..."

Darfire, he didn't want to think about it now.

"Elelar used that against you?" When he didn't deny it, Mirabar said, "How like her."

They fell silent.

Zarien finally ventured, "Used what?"

Tansen shook off the weight of warring emotions. "Nothing.  Never mind." He looked at the boy. "What we should be talking about is you."

"Yes," Mirabar agreed quietly. "That would be better."

"Can you help him find this sea king?" Tansen asked her.

She looked surprised by the question. "I don't know. It's certainly a whole new—"

"I have found him," Zarien said stubbornly.

"I'm sorry, Zarien," Tansen said, "but I just don't think—"

"You didn't think Josarian was the Firebringer, either," Zarien interrupted. "So why sh—"

"How do you know that?" Tansen asked.

"Everyone knows that. You went to Darshon to stop him from jumping." Zarien nodded. "People talk."

"They certainly do," Tansen said. "However, I really don't believe I'm your—"

"And Josarian? Did he know he was the Firebringer?" Zarien challenged. "Before he jumped into the volcano, I mean."

Tansen searched his memories. "No, but he did have dreams. Portents. And there were believers." Long before Josarian went to Darshon, Tansen had started fearing he would go.

"And there were signs in the circle of fire, too," Mirabar said. "In the Calling I did for him the night he decided to go to Darshon." 

Tansen noticed that Mirabar didn't mention that she, too, had tried to stop Josarian, terrified he would die at Darshon despite what she had seen in her Guardian fires. They had both failed, though, and Josarian had fulfilled prophecy.

By all the gods above and below, Tansen suddenly thought. Could I possibly be this sea king?

Nothing in him felt that it was true, but he had been wrong about such things before—convinced that Armian was the Firebringer, certain that Josarian wasn't.

"But surely you've had signs of your destiny, too," Zarien said to him. "The brand on your chest was carved by the gods of Kinto, showing you their fav—"

"No, it wasn't."

Zarien looked disconcerted. "It wasn't?"

Mirabar blinked. "Is that what people say?"

"Yes," replied Zarien.

"I'm afraid not, son," Tansen said. "I got it the old-fashioned way. My kaj used—"

"Your what?"

"My teacher, the one who trained me to be a shatai—a Kintish swordmaster. He gave me this brand with a red hot poker. All shatai have one. It's nothing magical."

Zarien looked deflated. "No?"

"No."

"And your swords?" Zarien asked. "They... they aren't enchanted?"

"No." He hadn't known that people said so.

"They don't jump out of their sheathes by themselves?"

"I wouldn't have had to spend five years learning to use them if that were the case," Tansen pointed out. 

Zarien looked very disappointed in him. 

Mention of magical weapons brought to mind the boy's quivering stahra. Tansen was going to ask him about it when Zarien's face brightened as he said, "But what about your healed wound?"

"Actually, that's among my questions," Tansen replied.

"Mine, too," Mirabar added. "Who healed it?"

"He did," Tansen said.

Zarien shook his head.

"Did a waterlord find you?" Mirabar asked sharply.

Tansen's gaze snapped to hers. "A waterlord?"

She nodded. "Najdan says that healing a shir wound like that is water magic."

They both looked at the boy. He shook his head. "No one came." His expression was confused as he returned Tansen's equally puzzled regard. 

"Tell me exactly what happened," said Mirabar.

"I prayed," said Zarien. "To Dar, to Sharifar, to all the gods of the wind and sea."

"That's all?" Mirabar asked. "You just prayed?"

"So did Tansen."

Tansen shook his head. "I was unconscious." 

"You were feverish, but speaking," Zarien explained. 

"I prayed?" he said skeptically. He never prayed. Not since the night he had killed Armian.

"Yes. To Dar. To the Firebringer. You asked for mercy. You called out to your father... Is he dead, too?"

"Yes." Both of Tansen's fathers were dead, but he remembered only one of them. He had called only one of them "father." Only one of them haunted his dreams.

"As you prayed to them," Zarien said, "as we prayed together..." He shrugged. "There was, I don't know, heat or something. Mist rose from the wound, silvery and glowing. And it healed."

Mirabar answered Tansen's questioning gaze with a frown. "It could be water magic," she said. "But that would mean one of you..."

They both looked at Zarien, who immediately said, "Don't look at me."

"I thought it might be the place," Mirabar admitted. "But I investigated it on the way here today." She shook her head. "Nothing."

"What other possibilities can you think of?" Tansen asked.

"It could be related to the magic that healed his dragonfish wounds. In which case..."

"We should go down to the sea right away," Zarien urged.

"And who do you think will lead us against the Society?" Mirabar asked Zarien.

The boy rose to his feet, stepping gingerly. "I don't care," he declared. "That is a dryland quarrel and doesn't concern me."

"Oh, yes, it does," Tansen said. "Sea-born clans have been in the Alliance since it was founded."

"Not the sea-bound Las—"

"All the sea-born swore loyalty to Josarian." He studied the boy's resentful expression and pressed his point. "Do you take your vows so lightly at sea?"

"We take nothing lightly," Zarien protested angrily. "But if you were the sea king, then the sea-born would go wherever you led. Have you thought of that?" And then the boy stormed—well, limped with offended dignity—out of the cave.

"He has a point," Mirabar said.

"He does at that," Tansen admitted. "But I can't abandon everything here to venture out to sea in search of a goddess's embrace based on the strange tale—"

"Josarian long resisted going to Darshon," she reminded him.

"So did Armian."

"And he..." She nodded, understanding. "He wasn't the Firebringer."

"Not even though one ignorant boy was utterly convinced he was."

"More than one boy."

"Well, yes," he agreed. "Half the shallaheen in Sileria probably believed it. But Armian never did."

"What about your healed wound?" she asked.

"I think it's more about Zarien than about me. There's too much about that boy that's... unusual."

"Those scars," Mirabar mused. "No one should have lived through that."

 "And his stahra." Tansen told her about what he'd seen in the cave where he'd been healed.

"You think the weapon responds if Zarien is threatened?" she guessed.

"He says the sea goddess gave it to him." Tansen shrugged. "It looks like any other stahra to me, but... I didn't imagine what I saw. I wasn't still feverish. He doesn't seem to know about its magic, but I'm sure it's not an ordinary weapon."

"He is not an ordinary boy." Mirabar thought it over. "If Zarien remains convinced you're the man he seeks, the one this goddess wants, then you may have to return to the sea with him. Sooner or later."

"I saw what being loved by a goddess did for Josarian." Tansen could admit this to her. She would understand. "It's not what I want."

Her expression was sympathetic for the first time since coming here. The memories glowed in her fire-rich eyes. "There were many ways in which he would have preferred to remain an ordinary man." She was quiet for a moment before adding, "But then, he had been a happy man."

Tansen looked away. "A wife he loved. A quiet life in his native village. A clan and a family... And no memories that haunted him."

"You may even find peace as the consort of a goddess," Mirabar suggested quietly.

"Do you want me to go to her?" he whispered.

"This isn't about what I want." Her voice was equally soft.

"Isn't it?" He met her gaze again, drowning in its exotic heat. "If I go to another's embrace..."

Tansen put his hand on hers. He felt her startled reflex, but she neither withdrew nor protested. Her skin was warm, her bones as fine as an aristocrat's. He explored further and found the remembered feel of her work-hardened palm. 

He asked, "It will mean nothing to you?"

To be alone with her now, to see her look at him without anger, to smell her skin and feel its warmth...

Mirabar's fire-tipped lashes fluttered over lava-rich eyes. "You've already gone..."

"No." He leaned closer, his gaze drifting down to her mouth, to those soft lips.

"Gone to..." Her breath was shallow, her voice vague... until it settled on a word full of hurt: "Her."

"No." He shook his head. "Never."

"Only because she—"

"Don't bring her in here with us." Tansen heard the pleading in his voice and didn't care. "Not now."

She jerked away from him, startling him. "She is always here with us." 

"Mira..."

"And it's not my fault. You're the one who carries her image with you." Mirabar rose to her feet with the swift agility of a mountain girl. "You're the one who will have to banish it."

Tansen watched her go, knowing no way to stop her, no way to reap what he wanted from what he had sown with this woman.

Chapter Fifteen

Why should we hate Silerians when 

they're so good at hating each other?

                        —Imperial Advisor Kaynall

If you ever touch me again, I will tell Najdan to kill you.

So much for those fine, proud words, Mirabar thought as she left the cave and emerged into Sileria's brassy sunshine.

She couldn't ask Najdan to avenge a touch which she couldn't claim to have found insulting, let alone unpleasant. On the other hand, if Tansen's touch was the one she wanted, it was also the one that hurt her.

He had looked at her that way once before, had touched her with longing one other time... and had promptly forgotten her the moment Elelar appeared. Mirabar would not tolerate such dismissal again.

When he kills Elelar, when he does as he promised...

Then she would welcome him. Not before.

But he would never kill Elelar. Mirabar had seen that in his eyes as they argued. She had heard it in his words. Had felt it in his shame.

"She betrayed Josarian, and I..."

Oh, the torena was clever. How many more ways would she find to punish and torment Tansen for that night, so long ago, when a lone boy had stopped the Society from taking over Sileria? 

Mirabar's feelings caused a storm in her which evidently showed on her face, since Cheylan crossed the clearing and said quietly, "He's upset you."

The last thing she wanted was to go straight from facing one man to dealing with the other. How had her personal life become so complicated? She could almost feel a twinge of sympathy for Elelar, whose every waking moment seemed to involve juggling the men who claimed—or wanted to claim—a right to her company. Mirabar, by nature and experience, was far less prepared than Elelar to cope with such pressures. The greatest difference, of course, was that Mirabar cared about both of the men who troubled her peace, whereas she doubted Elelar had ever cared about anyone.

"If you're not needed right now," Cheylan said, "then perhaps we c—"

"I am," she blurted, wanting to avoid a tryst with Cheylan on the heels of her confrontation with Tansen. Seeing his questioning expression, she added, "It's something to do with Zarien."

"Did he heal the shir wound?" Cheylan asked, his gaze going to where the tattooed boy sat glumly at the edge of the clearing, ignoring the activity all around him as rebels prepared to depart Dalishar in pursuit of their newly-assigned duties.

Mirabar had confided her interest in the boy to Cheylan while he and Najdan helped her investigate the cave where Tansen had lain dying.

"He says he didn't," she replied. "I'm inclined to believe him, but I want to know more." She called to Zarien. He rose to his feet and, bringing his stahra, came to join her and Cheylan. His expression was a little sulky.

"Come with us," Mirabar said. 

She turned and led the way to the sixth sacred cave of Dalishar, which she entered. She passed through the successive chambers of the cave until they reached the fourth chamber. A huge Guardian fire, as old as the sect itself, burned in here, its flames rising up from the stone floor. A gateway to the Otherworld, perpetually open, its pull was so strong that Mirabar could hear souls streaming into its flames even now, their silent song reverberating through her head, disrupting her thoughts and making ordinary conversation difficult. She knew by the increased tension in Cheylan's face that it was the same for him.

Zarien's stahra remained immobile in his hand, with no sign of the life Tansen had described. If it was enchanted, at least it didn't hate fire magic the way all shir did, and that made Mirabar feel easier about it. There was no inherent enmity between her kind and whatever sorcery protected this boy.

Mirabar met Zarien's gaze and asked, "What have you brought to Dalishar from the sea, from your old life?" Seeing his puzzled expression, she clarified, "Personal possessions."

"Only my stahra."

"It's probably all that matters, anyhow," Mirabar said.

"What do you m—Hey!" Zarien protested when Cheylan took the stahra from him.

"We're going to try to do a Calling with it," Mirabar explained.

The boy looked suspicious. "What exactly does that involve?"

She replied, "We communicate with the Otherworld, to try to understand this world better."

Zarien looked even more suspicious. "Do I have to do anything? Or let you do anything to me?"

"No. We use a physical object, something which belonged to someone who's dead."

"I don't have anything—"

"In most cases, we can only Call shades from the Otherworld near the anniversary of their deaths."

"Why?" Interest was slowly replacing suspicion.

"The Otherworld revolves in relation to this one, time rolling over into time."

Zarien glanced at the stahra, now in Cheylan's hands, and reminded Mirabar, "That didn't belong to a dead person."

She pointed to the huge fire before them. "This is believed to be the oldest Guardian fire in Sileria. Ancient, sacred, very powerful." Mirabar gestured to the stahra. "Your weapon's origin is unusual, to say the least." She looked at Cheylan, whose eyes glowed hotly as he studied the oar. "Perhaps we can use it to learn more."

"I've told you everything I know," Zarien said.

Cheylan asked, "And don't you want to know more?" 

Zarien looked at them both for a moment longer before saying, "All right, let's do this... this Calling."