The White Dragon (23 page)

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?"