In Legend Born (77 page)

He saved Myrell for last. As the commanding officer here, Myrell should have been Tansen's first target, for Outlookers often lost courage and momentum when their officers fell. Myrell was also more skilled in combat than his men, meaning he was a greater threat and should be eliminated first. However, among all the men Tansen had ever fought as a
shatai
, this was the first one whom he personally, passionately hated, and so he ignored the tenets of his arduous training. He relinquished his own ruthless self-discipline and let Myrell live until the others were dead and the
torena
was gone.

He knew he had very little time left in which to make his escape. More Outlookers would flood the hall in just moments. Even in the middle of the night, Shaljir never lacked for Outlookers who were wide awake and ready to kill Silerians. But before he killed Myrell and fled, he wanted the butcher of Malthenar, Morven, and Garabar to suffer at least a little, as payment for all the suffering he had caused Tansen's kind.

He plunged one sword into Myrell's guts, an excruciatingly painful thrust. Pale, wide-eyed, and sweating with exertion, Myrell dropped his sword from a limp arm and fell to his knees in agony. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"Is that where you made the first cut on Corenten, you baby-killing maggot?" Tansen asked, speaking Valdan through gritted teeth.

He twisted the blade and jerked it up. A horrible sound came out of Myrell's throat. Blood dribbled through his lips.

"Did the women you slaughtered feel like this when they died?" Tansen whispered into his ear, suddenly remembering Gamalan, too, and the long-ago deaths of loved ones there. "What about the children?"

He ripped his blade out of Myrell's torso, widening the terrible wound even further. He looked down at Myrell's blood-drenched body as it collapsed on the floor. He would have preferred to leave Myrell like this, dying slowly in terrible agony. Dying the way Amitan had lain dying. But he couldn't leave a survivor, not even one as close to death as this. He couldn't risk that Myrell would find a way to tell his would-be rescuers that the attackers had escaped through the cellar. And so, wishing it could be otherwise, he killed Myrell quickly, then ran to the cellar door, closing it behind him and finding his way down the long, winding stairs in the dark.

Chapter Thirty-One

"
Great merciful bloodstained gods!
"

Having reviewed the mess at the ancient prison, Commander Koroll was running out of words to express his fury over this latest disaster.

In the middle of the night, his men had roused him from a heavy slumber induced by the ministrations of his third-level Kintish courtesan whose loyalties, in this time of warfare, were based on purely professional considerations. The men's hysterical, garbled explanations had been so vague and incredible, he hadn't really believed there'd been a prison break until he himself saw the wreckage of what had once been the main hall of the prison. There were seventeen dead men in the hall. Four more were reported dead in the cellar. None of the survivors had seen the rebels enter or leave. A fire in the stairwell and another incinerating the main door had prevented entry soon after the fighting had begun. Two men who'd been stuck outside said they'd seen no one except a Silerian
torena
. One of them resolutely believed she had somehow escaped alone—until he saw the carnage inside. Another man who'd been knocked unconscious in the stairwell also remembered seeing no one besides the
torena
. One man claimed there'd been two
shallaheen
; only two, and he had no idea where they came from. Someone else said he was sure the attackers must have been disguised as Outlookers. Several other men claimed there'd been numerous attackers, but no one agreed on how many, and Koroll had no doubt they were exaggerating to save their own necks. The survivors were all confused and uncertain, and all trying to decide whether they'd look worse if they admitted that the prison had fallen to only a couple of attackers or if they confessed that many attackers had somehow gotten inside unnoticed.

Surveying the disaster, Koroll could scarcely believe his own eyes. Seventeen men—including Myrell—lay dead. Right inside the Outlookers' own prison in the heart of Shaljir! By the mercy of the Three, how could this have happened? How had rebels gotten past the city gates? How had they gotten weapons into the city? How, by all the gods above and below, had they gotten into the prison to free the
torena
?

Had they been disguised as Outlookers? Three Into One, had they had the audacity to enter Shaljir posing as Outlookers? Or had Koroll's men been so incompetent and negligent that a rebel rescue party had entered the city and stormed the prison without being seen or caught?

An even worse notion occurred to Koroll as he returned to his command chamber at the Outlooker headquarters across from the prison: What if the rebels and their weapons had already been in Shaljir when the
torena
was arrested? What if they had been here for many months? What if there were far more armed rebels within the walls of Shaljir than he had ever guessed or suspected?

Koroll felt ill as he thought of it. He felt even worse when he acknowledged the ramifications of his having lost
Torena
Elelar.

Three pity me, that woman has caused nothing but misery!

This was going to be
very
hard to explain to the Imperial Council. It would have to be done, though; they were expecting Elelar to be brought to Valda for her trial. Koroll sat at his desk and buried his head in his hands, wishing it would stop pounding.

The last imperial courier had brought a dispatch to Advisor Borell informing him that the request of Ronall's family had been granted: Elelar would be tried before three Imperial Councilors as the wife of a Valdani aristocrat. Showing all the courage of a spring lamb, Borell had promptly climbed into a hot bath and slit his wrists. Fortunately, the servant who found him summoned an Outlooker immediately. The Outlooker, in turn, summoned Koroll to Santorell Palace.

Koroll was admitted to Borell's chamber alone. Thus it was that Koroll was the first man to examine the scene of Borell's death, read his sealed suicide letter, and see the imperial dispatch granting Elelar's trial.

Knowing that the trial would utterly ruin him, Borell had tried to avoid public humiliation in the traditional way of the Valdani upper classes: death. He left behind a rather maudlin, self-pitying note requesting that his body be buried back in his homeland.

Koroll's initial irritation had slowly warmed into exultation as he began to recognize the opportunities inherent in this new turn of events. He burned the imperial dispatch and Borell's letter. He then wrote a new suicide letter, using a shaky hand and liberally smearing the ink. If the letter was ever examined by anyone who knew Borell's own hand, then Koroll hoped the unrecognizable writing would be attributed to Borell's devastated emotional state.

The new letter, Koroll's own creation, explained that the Imperial Council had just denied
Torena
Elelar a trial. She was now condemned to death by slow torture, sentence to be carried out immediately by the Outlookers. Because he had loved her, Borell could not live with the shame of her betrayal and the pain of her terrible death, and so he would take his own life immediately.

After sealing the letter with Borell's ring (a thoroughly distasteful process), Koroll summoned Outlookers and servants into the chamber, ostensibly to begin cleaning up the mess and preparing Borell's body for its funereal rites and transport back to Valda. He really wanted them there, of course, to witness his "finding" the suicide note. He broke the seal and read it aloud in front of witnesses, none of whom appeared to have the slightest doubt of its veracity. Everyone had seen how besotted Borell was with the
torena
and how devastated he was by her betrayal.

However, Koroll privately mused, few things fed hatred like a love betrayed. Borell had furiously denied the charges against Elelar at first. Then the quantity and quality of the evidence seized from her house had mounted until the woman's overwhelming guilt was indisputable, and Borell had grown stupid with shame, grief, and boiling rage. Koroll was the only person who knew how eager Borell had become to see Elelar quietly murdered before she could reveal his disgrace to anyone.

It was a perfect plan. Koroll would get what he had wanted all along. Myrell would take Elelar to the cellar, torture her until she told them everything she knew, then kill her; it was the sort of work for which Myrell had an undeniable flair. Not only would they get the information they needed, but the
torena
would never have a chance to tell the Imperial Councilors that, though he'd never been the fool that Borell was, Koroll had nonetheless grown careless around her, too. Besides, if she knew Josarian and the rebels, she undoubtedly knew who had originally turned Tansen loose on the countryside, and Koroll had no wish for the Council to find out about that, either.

And, of course, when Ronall's family protested and the Council demanded an explanation, Koroll could simply show them Borell's letter. The
torena
's unlawful murder would be blamed on the vengeful and emotionally distressed Advisor, who had unwittingly given the rebels hundreds of state secrets before slitting his own wrists. There was no longer an imperial dispatch in existence in Sileria to contradict the orders which everyone here would insist had come straight from Borell in his final moments of life.

Yes, it was a perfect plan...
Until those murdering scoundrels attacked the prison, freed Elelar, and killed my men!

Now all he had was a sacked prison, a pile of corpses, and the ominous loss of the most valuable prisoner he'd ever arrested. He thought he would be sick. Myrell was a great loss, since he had excelled at tasks that repelled many men. Koroll had never liked the oaf, but there was no denying the value of a man so feared and hated by the enemy.

As dawn rose over Shaljir, Koroll knew that last night's events were not only a serious blow to his career, but they would also give a tremendous boost to the rebels' morale.

There were two obvious tasks to concentrate on now. He must find out how the prison rescue was launched and ensure that it could never happen again. And he must get the
torena
back. The daring rescue proved to Koroll that she was every bit as valuable to the rebels as he had suspected. He wanted her back because
they
wanted her so much. He
needed
her back, too, because the Imperial Council would eat his parts for breakfast if he couldn't turn this disaster around.

Koroll assigned one of his senior officers to supervise the examination of the prison wreckage in an attempt to discover exactly what had happened there last night. He ordered another officer to tighten security everywhere in Shaljir.

"I don't want any more rebels getting in. And if
Torena
Elelar and her rescuers are still in Shaljir, then I
definitely
don't want them getting out," he said. "Understood?"

However, he had a feeling that the
torena
hadn't lingered here. Wondering how to get her back, he could devise only two plans. The first was to have her husband arrested and imprisoned. They would charge him as an accomplice and hold him in custody in her place. It was a perfectly legal maneuver under the circumstances, one that even Ronall's powerful family couldn't counter. Koroll doubted that Elelar would be sentimental enough to return for her husband's sake, but there was no predicting what a woman would do, after all. Perhaps he could exchange Ronall for her.

The other plan was the old-fashioned kind: pursuit. It seemed likely that the rescue party would take Elelar back to the rebel-held territory around Dalishar, the only place they could keep her safe now. It would be their best move, since Koroll couldn't reach her there, not until he got enough men to reclaim the territory from the rebels. If he could catch her before she reached rebel territory though...

"I want two hundred combat-ready riders on fast mounts," he ordered one of his men. "We're leaving right away."