The White Dragon (24 page)

"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.