The Outworlder (12 page)

“But you read them,” she said, perching on
one of the long wooden tables scattered about the middle of the
domed room.

“No.” He dusted his hand off on his pants and
moved to another set of shelves. “I know too well the days of my
father. And I know all too well how they ended. No. My study takes
me further back. These here—” he pulled a sheaf of parchments from
one of the shelves and brought it to the table where she was
sitting— “are maps from one hundred and fifty years ago. Some go
even further back than that.”

“Why do they interest you so much? You must
be looking for something.”

“I am. I’m looking for…” He stopped and
considered for a moment. What was he looking for, exactly? “For
understanding, I suppose.”

“Understanding of what?”

“What else? The Dragon-Lords. I want to know
why they’re here. I want to know when they arrived. And I want to
know their weakness.”

Sahara leaned back on her forearms and stared
up at the domed roof high above. Gold stars were scattered on a
blue field, and at the apex was a device Sahara had never seen
before. Jared followed her gaze upward.

“That’s the most ancient symbol of our city,”
he said. “The
lilia-dir
, a three-petaled flower that used to
grow along the banks of the Alba River.”

“I haven’t seen a flower like that growing
there, Jared.”

“No. There haven’t been flowers there for
decades. It’s said that they died when the Dragon-Lords came. But
the memory of the flower is preserved here, and I believe that
someday it will grow again.”

Sahara glanced at him. “When the Dragon-Lords
are removed from power?”

“Yes, perhaps.”

Sahara pushed herself up into a sitting
position again, leaning her elbows on her knees. “So how much do
you know? What have you discovered?”

“Pitifully little for all the effort I’ve
spent looking,” he admitted. “But there are two things that come up
in all the stories. One is that the Alba River—the main water
source for our city and for the Great City on the Southern Sea—is
now controlled by the Dragon-Lords. It flows down out of the
northern mountains, and it’s rumored that they constructed some
kind of sluice-gate which they can close at will.”

“If the natives grow restless, you mean?”

“Something like that. Without water, we
wouldn’t last long. The desert would dispose of us within
days.”

“What’s the other common thread?”

“They require blood as payment for keeping
the sluice-gate open.”

Sahara’s brow furrowed as she mulled this
over. “What do you mean, blood? Do you think that’s why the other
settlements have disappeared?”

“Possibly. But I know that no ceremonial
offering has been made since the last uprising. That was seven
years ago.”

“So you think they will act soon?”

Jared sighed. “Frankly, I don’t know why they
haven’t acted yet. It seems to be not so much a matter of ‘if,’ but
‘when.’”

“How many do they ask for?”

Jared shook his head. “The accounts vary, and
it seems the demands have fluctuated over the years. But in the
past they’ve taken anywhere from fifteen to fifty men. And one
woman. Always a woman.”

Sahara’s eyes snapped up to fasten on
Jared’s. “A woman!” she blurted out. “Why?”

Jared shrugged. “And the texts seem to
suggest that the men are not sacrificed. One account even goes so
far as to say that they are made into slaves—kept somewhere in the
northern mountains and doing God only knows what terrible
labor.”

Sahara snorted. “Probably whatever I should
be doing right about now if that ship hadn’t crashed.”

“Probably. But the woman, who must be of
noble birth, is kept as a blood-offering.”

“So if they came to Albadir tomorrow…?”

“It would be Aliya.”

Sahara’s hands convulsed into fists, and all
her energy seemed to suddenly concentrate itself into a single
syllable.

“No.”

Jared regarded her with some surprise. “Look,
Sahara, I don’t think they’ll really—”

“You’re damned right they won’t really.
Because we’ll get them first.”

Jared laughed, but the look Sahara gave him
silenced him instantly. “You can’t be serious! I’ve been searching
these dusty old books for months now, and I’ve yet to find a
weakness that would give us some kind of hope!”

“You’ve got the scimitar of a dead
Dragon-Lord hanging above your fireplace,” she gritted. “It seems
to me that you already know their weakness. Hard steel through the
heart does wonders.”

“But we can’t get to them, Sahara! It’s been
tried. I told you that.”

Sahara shook her head fiercely. “Oh, believe
me, you can get to them. I can show you how. But you have to trust
me. And you have to convince everyone else to trust me too.”

Jared was silent for a moment. Sahara’s face
was deadly serious, pale with wrath in the dim light of the
library. But a pleading shone deep in her eyes, and finally he gave
a terse nod.

“It’s done,” he said. “Just tell me what to
do.”

“You have to listen to me!”

Sahara clenched her fists and took a deep
breath to steady herself against the wave of angry murmurs and
muffled laughter that swelled through the tavern. She was up on a
chair again, her whole body tensed.

She raised her voice to be heard over the
growing din. “Listen to me! This is the time! Now, before they
devastate your city with an attack! Or before they demand the life
of Lady Aliya in exchange for the water that keeps you alive!”

A stunned hush fell over the room.

“She better not let Lord Arnauld hear her
talking like that,” came several awed and frightened voices behind
her.

“Do you think I don’t know what’s happening
here?” Sahara demanded. “You crouch behind your walls, you have
your festivals, and you pretend that everything is fine. But it’s
all just a lie! Don’t you see that? They hold you in thrall, and
you don’t even have the courage to admit that you’re only alive so
long as it suits their pleasure!”

From her perch, she stared around the room at
the quiet and shamed faces below her. Then there was a sudden
scraping noise and one of the men rose from his seat. It was Armon,
the man she had humiliated by beating him at daggers. Her heart
sank.

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Armon
said in a loud voice, “but I’ve heard enough crazy talk for one
night. I’m going home.”

Sahara took her fears in both hands and
strangled them. “Why is this crazy?” she demanded. “Armon! Why is
this crazy?”

“Because you think you’re so much better than
we are, that’s why. You think you know how to live our lives better
than we do. But who are you, anyway?” As he spoke, the sneer in his
voice became more and more pronounced. “A convict, escaped off one
of
their
convoy ships, no less! An outworlder! So what I
want to know is, how do you get the nerve to call us cowards to our
faces?”

Sahara nodded slowly. “You’re right. I had a
dark past. But for whatever reason, I’ve been given a second
chance. And I intend to use it.”

“Is this about your personal salvation or the
good of our city?” another voice demanded. Sahara turned toward the
voice and saw an older man, one arm in a sling, only a stump where
his hand was supposed to be. “Last thing we need is someone on some
damned personal crusade. Things never go right for the rest of us
when folks get stars in their eyes. Last time someone got ideas
like that, I lost my hand.”

Sahara swallowed hard as a murmur of
agreement swelled in the room. “Don’t you believe that there’s
something here worth fighting for? Even dying for? Isn’t freedom
better than slavery, no matter what the price?”

“We don’t know about that,” Armon said. “We
have a quiet life now. They leave us alone and we leave them alone.
Our children and our crops grow. We eat, we laugh, we even dance on
occasion. Point is, we coexist.”

“The point is, you
don’t
,” Sahara
said. “You’re just a parasite that the Dragon-Lords haven’t
finished annihilating yet. And, in my experience, they never were
good with insects.”

The rumble of anger grew louder, and several
men in the back of the room toppled their chairs as they jumped to
their feet.

“You make awfully free with your tongue,”
Armon said, moving toward her slowly. “Someone ought to teach you
more respect.”

Jared, who had been standing at the foot of
Sahara’s chair during her speech, stepped suddenly between Armon
and Sahara.

“I’m sure she’ll consider your advice,” he
said coolly. “But I’d back off, if I were you.”

“What the hell, Jared? You aren’t listening
to this nonsense, are you? Has the girl gotten into your brain and
made it mush or what?”

“She’s not a girl,” he said. Sahara smiled to
herself. “And no, she hasn’t gotten into my brain. I’ve been
studying these matters—”

“
Studying!
” Armon guffawed. “Lord,
boys, we’ve got us a scholar on our hands! A scholar and a
madwoman! What a pair they make, eh?”

“You’re an idiot,” Sahara informed him. “Only
fools think they know everything.”

“I don’t think I know everything,” Armon
retorted. “But what I do know is pretty simple. Right now we have a
chance of living out our lives without being terrorized by the
Dragon-Lords. If we engage in open rebellion, there isn’t a chance
in hell of us living without being terrorized. Make that living,
period.”

“You call this miserable existence
living
? Where you’re afraid to venture beyond the walls of
your own city for fear of being seen by the Dragon-Lords? Where
your water supply hangs by a thread that threatens to unravel at
any moment? Where you teach your children how to run and hide
instead of how to stand and fight? I don’t call that living.”

“We don’t care what you call it!” came a new
voice from the back of the room. “You’re an outworlder! What should
you know?”

“You think that just because I’m an
outworlder I know nothing of the Dragon-Lords?” Sahara demanded,
now thoroughly incensed. “Why in hell do you think I was on that
ship? They ruled my homeworld too! But we rebelled, and we made
them pay dearly for their tyranny!”

There was silence once more in the tavern.
Finally!
thought Sahara.
Finally they understand that I
know what I’m talking about!

But Jared was shaking his head at her. She
frowned.

“We don’t want to die for some fool cause and
some mad crusade,” said Armon at last. “We just want to live.”

“There are some things that are worse than
death,” Sahara replied quietly. “And there are many things better
than living only at someone else’s pleasure, groveling in fear all
your days. What can I do to make you see?”

Armon sniffed and looked around.
“Mmmm…nothing.”

“Would you be willing to die, outworlder?”
asked a voice from the back of the room. “For Albadir, I mean?”

Sahara sought out the speaker. He was a young
man, and he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his head
thrown back. There was a challenge in his eyes, and she sensed that
something critical hung suddenly in the balance.

“Yes, I would. I would die for Albadir. I
would lay down my life right now for this city.”

“Why?”

Sahara’s gaze flickered to rest on Jared for
a moment. So many emotions swirled within her. Memories of her own
homeworld, memories of her father and the love in his eyes…and his
certainty that somehow love was stronger than death, and that love
was the only thing worth dying for.

“Because,” she said softly, “this is my home
now. And I don’t want to lose it.”

The men in the tavern grumbled and shook
their heads. Armon looked her up and down, his lip curling with
disgust, and then stalked out, slamming the door as he left.

Sahara clambered off her chair and sighed.
She was as weary as if she’d just barely escaped a battle with her
life.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Jared asked. “You
look like you could use one.”

“I think I need a drink,” she answered. “I’ll
find us a table where we’ll be invisible.”

Jared smiled at her. “You did well tonight.
It takes a lot to stand up there and do what you did.”

Sahara shook her head. “Yeah. I did well
making a terrific fool out of myself. If we’d enlisted these men to
fight, then I’d say this was a success. As it is?” She shrugged.
“Whatever. I’m going to sit down.”

They split up and Sahara headed for the
darkest corner of the tavern and slipped into the booth. She leaned
her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands.

“So you think we have a chance, then?”

Sahara jumped and looked wildly around,
feeling like her heart was now beating somewhere in her sinus
cavity instead of in her chest. A man was sitting in the booth with
her, leaning against the wall with one foot up on the bench.

“Scared you, did I?” he asked, a grin in his
voice. “Sorry. The name’s Rafe.”

Sahara squinted at him. “You’re the one who
spoke to me across the room earlier, aren’t you? The one who asked
me why I’d die for Albadir.”

“That’s me.”

Sahara swallowed hard, trying to package up
her adrenaline. “And? What are you doing here? Come to laugh some
more?”

“Not at all. I think what you’re saying is
very interesting.”

“Interesting.” Sahara shook her head. “That’s
just great. Glad I could entertain you for the evening.” She swung
her gaze toward the bar. “Where’s Jared with those drinks?” she
muttered.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Sahara. I’m not
trying to insult you. Far from it.”

“Then what are you trying to say?”

“I think you’re right.”

Sahara’s gaze snapped to his face, and she
couldn’t keep herself from gaping at him for a moment. “I’m sorry,
but did you just say that you think I’m right?”