The White Dragon (34 page)

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and had not withdrawn his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."