The White Dragon (4 page)

This was what it was to be sea-born, to marry these glimmering azure waters at the moment of your birth, to carry the sea's mystery within your veins for the rest of your life. To work in pure harmony with the rest of your kind, afloat on a bit of bobbing wood amidst the endless wave and roar of the Middle Sea. To know your course based on the slightest touch of the wind against your skin, to smell the silent approach of land even in a fog, to shift your weight with currents and waves even in your sleep... There was no other life worth living.
 

Arms trembling with exhaustion, Zarien helped his father lower the final iron weight into the water. The women's chanting ceased at the exact moment the weight slipped below the shimmering surface. Zarien's ears rang in the sudden silence. The weight sank to the bottom, carrying their hopes and prayers with it.
 

"
Aiola
!" Zarien cried, and everyone on the boat followed his lead, shouting the guttural cheer in sea-born dialect that marked the end of setting the nets.
Aiola!
May they die!
 

Above their own shouts and the gleeful cries from the other boats, they heard the clan leader blow the dragonfish horn again. This was their signal to salute the eight winds, turning on deck to honor each god as the horn wailed eight times in succession.
 

Each of the eight gods was consort to one of the nine goddesses of the sea. The ninth goddess, Sharifar, had no consort. According to legend, she had been betrayed by the god who had been her consort, the ninth wind, and had cast him off. In his bitterness, he became the whirlwind—whom the sea-born folk loved no better than they loved the dragonfish. Ever since then, Sharifar had sought a new consort, but she had yet to find a man who satisfied her. If she ever chose one (which Zarien thought seemed unlikely after all this time), he would become the king of all the sea-born folk—their first acknowledged leader since before the Moorlanders had conquered Sileria a thousand years ago.

Concluding his salute to the eighth wind, Zarien looked over his shoulder to meet his father's gaze. Sorin's dark face was creased with smiles now. His green eyes—a souvenir of the Moorlanders' long-ago Conquest not only of Sileria, but of many of its women—glowed with pride as he clapped Zarien on the back.
 

"The nets are set well, son," he said, his grin broadening in response to Zarien's. "Perhaps I shouldn't have waited, perhaps I should have gone ahead and got you a
stahra
."

Zarien smiled to himself, having already spotted the
stahra
in the exact same hiding place Sorin had used for Orman's coming-of-age gift two years ago. Neither Sorin's habits nor his teasing were original, but they were as much a rite of passage aboard this boat as was the
bharata
itself.
 

"You didn't get me a
stahra
?" Zarien feigned outrage. "Don't you have faith in me?"

His father shrugged. "Well, the dragonfish are not even here yet. We shall see, we shall see..." His eyes met those of his wife, Palomar, sharing the joke.
 

"Yes," Zarien said, letting them enjoy what they fondly imagined was their secret. "You shall see. And then you'll be sorry you didn't get me a
stahra
before we left port."
 

Now the Lascari floated their boats away from the
bharata
maze they had constructed with such care. When the first dragonfish was sighted tonight, the men would row into the maze in small oarboats, armed for the slaughter. Until nightfall, though, clan members rowed from boat to boat, visiting relatives and enjoying conversation. New wounds and scars were exclaimed over, new babies admired, new wives inspected. Cousins and in-laws shared gossip about friends and enemies in other sea-born clans. Everyone talked about the Firebringer and his bloodfeud with Kiloran the waterlord. Would it destroy the rebellion, or would Kiloran and Josarian concentrate on driving out the remaining Valdani in Sileria before one of them finally eliminated the other? Which of those two giants was most likely to survive their enmity? True, Josarian had entered the Fires of Darshon and survived. But Kiloran... even the sea-born folk, who had little to do with the Honored Society, whispered his name with awe, almost afraid to say it aloud. He was the most powerful waterlord in Sileria, perhaps even the most powerful who had ever lived.
 

"If anyone can defeat the Firebringer," said Linyan, Zarien's grandfather, "surely it would be Kiloran."
 

"Then we must remember Josarian in our prayers," said one of Zarien's uncles. The others resoundingly agreed with this, since the sea-born had sworn loyalty to Josarian, not to Kiloran.

"Two days ago," said Zarien's father, Sorin, "we met with three boats of the Kurvari clan. They say that Kiloran has seized control of Cavasar." The Valdani had fiercely held onto Sileria's westernmost port city, even though its citizens had been among the first whom Josarian had inspired to riot and rebel.

"So the Valdani have finally surrendered Cavasar?" one of Sorin's brothers asked.

"But to Kiloran," Sorin pointed out. "Not to Josarian."

"To Sileria," his brother corrected. "All that really matters is that now Cavasar is free."

"Ah, but is it?" Linyan asked.

"Of course!" Zarien ventured, emboldened by his new tattoos to participate in the conversation as a man. "If the Valdani have abandoned Cavasar as they abandoned Liron and Adalian, then the city is free."

"Or have the Cavasari merely traded one master for another?" Sorin suggested. He and Linyan exchanged troubled looks.

Another of Zarien's uncles shrugged. "At least now they have a Silerian master."

"And the landfolk," Zarien said, "will always be mastered by someone." Not like the sea-born, who were meant to be free, beholden to no one except their own clans.

"But the rule of a waterlord is harsh," Linyan said heavily. "You'll understand this soon enough, Zarien. Such men bring terrible suffering to the lives that they touch."

Zarien's father agreed with this. Then, after a moment of contemplative silence, the men all began discussing other matters.

As the sun set, painting a fantastic canvas of amber and amethyst across the endless sky, the Lascari sang songs and told stories. But when the lone new moon, Abayara, rose in the night sky, they fell silent. Soon the dragonfish would come, and nothing must warn them of the trap which awaited them. The Lascari lit no lanterns aboard their vessels tonight, and they ate cold meals this evening rather than risk lighting their braziers to cook. In silence and darkness, they awaited the enemy.
 

Zarien was sitting between his father and brother in their long, low, wooden oarboat when the signal came. One of his cousins, keeping watch over the dark sea under a crescent-moon sky, had spotted the telltale horn of a dragonfish breaking the surface. His warning signal was soft, careful not to alarm the enemy swimming towards the maze. Sorin nodded to Zarien who, pleasantly aware of his younger brother's envious gaze, pushed the oarboat away from his mother's vessel and dipped his oars into the water to glide closer to the maze.
 

Sorin silently directed Zarien with his right hand. In his left, he held an oil-soaked torch which he would light when the attack began and it was too late for the enemy to escape to the open sea. Their harpoons and tackle, along with Orman's and Sorin's
stahra
, were ready, neatly ordered at their feet or fastened to the sides of the boat. Now Zarien heard more signals from the lookouts as the number of sightings increased.
 

"It will be a great slaughter this year," Sorin murmured, his low voice rich with anticipation.

Please let me kill one
, Zarien prayed to the wind and the sea. What could be worse than failing to make his first kill during a
bharata
which would long be remembered as a particularly good one?
 

As the sightings continued, he heard his brother say softly behind him, "So many this year, Papa!"
 

Yes, Zarien decided firmly, he would rather die than endure the shame of failing to make his first kill now. Only some bumbling drylander would fail to take a dragonfish when so many were entering the maze.

The boat heaved beneath him suddenly. A geyser of water drenched him as he caught his balance. "There's one underneath us!" Zarien released one oar and reached for a harpoon.
 

Sorin laughed with exultation. "Let it go, Zarien. There will be enough in the maze for us."
 

Heart pounding, Zarien watched the sleek, deadly creature disappear back into the dark water. It was huge. Bigger than the oarboat. What a fine first kill it would make! But he supposed his father was right. They'd waste time chasing it down, and probably wind up losing it in the dark, anyhow, unless it turned and attacked. Better to keep rowing toward the maze.
 

More than twenty oarboats took their place around the bobbing corks that defined the vast and elaborate maze the Lascari had laid out under the brilliant sun. Now the men watched the water's opaque surface as they awaited the moment which would commence the slaughter. Zarien was so excited he could scarcely breathe. He stared unblinking at the water until his eyes burned.
 

Then it came! The sudden, thrashing rise to the surface of the first dragonfish to reach a death chamber and realize it was trapped.
 

"
Aiola
!" Zarien shouted. May they die!
 

The exultant cry was repeated by all the Lascari as torches flamed into life in every boat on the water.

More trapped dragonfish began rising to the surface, their massive curling horns reflecting the torchlight as they surged out of the water. Boats rocked wildly as the enormous bodies fell back down, noisily hitting the sea's surface and sending up showers of cool, salty water to drench the Lascari.
 

"
Bharata Ma-al
!" cried Linyan, setting his clan free of all restraint. And the slaughter began!

Zarien moved quickly, but not quickly enough. His brother's blood was high, and his generosity in letting Zarien lead the setting of the nets without argument did not extend to letting Zarien make the family's first kill of the
bharata
. Orman whooped wildly beside Zarien as his harpoon sailed through the night and sank into the silver-gray and shiny-green scales of the nearest dragonfish. A terrible roar rose up from the water and echoed through the night. The dragonfish's agonized thrashing brought it crashing against the oarboat. Zarien braced himself as the boat rocked wildly and nearly flung him into his father's flaming torch. A dark stain spread through the water, absorbing the glow of the torches. It was the glorious cloud of the dragonfish's dark purple blood.
 

"That one was mine!" Zarien said fiercely.

"You can have the next one!" Orman shot back.

"You do that again, and I'll—"

"Easy, son," Sorin interrupted. "You'll get your chance. Let's finish this one!"
 

"
Aiola
!" Orman howled. He raised his
stahra
and then brought its sharp edge down on the dragonfish's writhing back, again and again, until the spine was finally broken. The creature's sticky purple blood covered Orman, Zarien, and Sorin by the time the great body lay still in the water.
 

Another silvery horn broke through the water's surface as yet another dragonfish tried to escape the deadly maze. It flailed its powerful spiked tail in a desperate attempt to clear a space for itself, hitting Orman's fresh kill hard enough to send geysers of bloody water high into the air. Its wild thrashing started pushing the just-slaughtered corpse away from the oarboat. In an effort to retrieve his kill, Orman leaned perilously far over the side, reaching for the
stahra,
which stuck out of the dead monster's back.
 

This one
, Zarien thought as the living one hurled itself frantically towards the surface again.
This one will be mine.
He fixed his aim on the massive heaving body which twisted and flailed in fear and rage.
 

"Damn it!" Orman leaned out a little farther, ignoring his father's warning not to, trying to haul in his kill. The thrashing of the second dragonfish was driving the corpse beneath the surface. "It's sinking! Zarien—"
 

"Let go of me!"

"Help me—"

Poised to make his first kill, Zarien tried to shake off his brother's grasping hand. He scarcely heard Linyan's nearby shout or his father's cry of alarm. It was only when the impact of their colliding boats nearly knocked him into the water that he realized the danger. He braced himself against the sudden pitch of the boat. His balance would have held—had not Orman's nagging grasp turned into a reflexive yank which tumbled him headlong into the sea.
 

"
Zarien!"