The White Dragon (49 page)

"They think you might just as easily have lost your temper with a Valdan," Elelar explained to the assassin that evening. "So they're determined to arrest and execute you, lest you break one of their own people's necks next time." She arched a delicate brow and added coldly, "They also feel that Silerians killing each other in their mountain villages, which the Outlookers readily overlook, is a different thing altogether than doing it in the streets of Shaljir right in front of Valdani women and children."

Armian shrugged in the dim light of the inn
where they were still staying. "Then let's leave Shaljir. I'm tired of all this waiting."

Tansen saw the young
torena's
jaw work briefly before she said, "They've locked all the city gates and are searching high and low for you. The Outlookers don't know who you are—ironically—so no Silerian can get out of the city until they've found the one who committed today's murder." She made an exasperated sound. "Do you understand how serious this is?"

Armian's expression was forbidding. "I suggest you find a solution,
torena.
If, that is, you're at all interested in securing Sileria's freedom."

Tansen never knew what Elelar would have said or done next if a manservant hadn't stuck his head through the window and said,
"Torena!
Outlookers!"

Elelar went pale. "It's too late."

Tansen jumped to his feet. "How do they know we're here?"

Elelar glared at Armian. "It couldn't be because you were a little careless about covering your retreat, could it?"

"Isn't there another way out of here?" Tansen asked.

 
Armian reached for his
shir.

"Don't be a fool," Elelar snapped.

"They will not take me," Armian growled.
 

Elelar came to a sudden decision. She turned to the chubby innkeeper
and said, "We must hide them with our old friends."

He glanced doubtfully at Armian and Tansen, but said, "As you wish,
torena.
I will stall the Outlookers as long as I can."

"Come with me," she ordered Armian and Tansen, then turned and hurried down a murky hallway that led to the back of the building.

There was no time to argue, so Tansen grabbed Armian's arm and, on this occasion, did the dragging. "Let's do as she says, father," he insisted.
 

They followed her down a set of sagging stairs, along a low-ceilinged corridor, and into a dank little room eerily lit by a flickering candle.

She closed the door behind her and studied their faces with a strange, desperate expression, suddenly looking very young.

"They'll search here." Armian sounded annoyed.

"They'll kill you," she said.
 

"I can fight Out—"

"They'll kill you right here, cornered like a rat in this little room."

"What are you doing?" Tansen demanded, truly afraid now. Did she mean to betray them, after all?

"I can save you," she said. "I can hide you where they'll never find you, and I can get you out of the city."

Armian glared at her, understanding before Tansen did. "But?"

"But you must swear on your life, on your soul, on your mother's honor..."

"Yes?" Armian prodded impatiently.

"You will never tell anyone, not a single soul, what I'm about to reveal to you. You will never betray the place I'll take you or the friends who will protect you."

They heard stomping overhead. The loud voices of the Outlookers.

"Father," Tansen urged.

"Fine," Armian said. "I swear. Whatever your secret is, no one will ever learn about it from me."

"Or me," Tansen added quickly.
"Torena..."

"Help me." Elelar crossed the room and crouched on the floor in the corner. "It's a trap door." She glanced at Armian. "Use the blade of your
shir
to pry it open."

He frowned. "I don't see any—"

"Right here." She pointed to a spot where hard stone met crumbling grout.
 

"I don't see—"

Tansen snatched the
shir
from Armian. It hurt worse than all the Fires, burning his flesh with cold fury, but he held onto it long enough to slip the blade against the stone. His eyes widened when the
shir
found a space which he'd have sworn wasn't there. He pulled, felt the give, and opened the trap door.

Elelar slid her hands under the door and yanked it open. Grinding his teeth against the pain, Tansen dropped the
shir
on the floor. Armian picked it up and joined him in looking down into the dark hole yawning beneath them.
 

They heard footsteps on the stairs, descending toward this room.

Elelar started down the steep, dark, winding steps now revealed to them. "Hurry!" she whispered. "Hurry!"

Tansen followed her. Armian was next, pausing only long enough to close the trap door behind him.

Dar be praised, we got away,
Tansen thought, lightly shaking his throbbing hand as if that might ease the pain.

He hadn't even reached the bottom of the winding, slippery staircase when he heard footsteps directly overhead and realized his prayer of thanksgiving may have been a little premature.

Dar shield us! Don't let them find the trap door.

Moving cautiously in the opaque darkness, he felt Elelar's hand at his elbow, guiding him when he reached the last step. Armian bumped into him, then steadied himself with a hand on Tansen's shoulder. They both knew better than to speak, lest even a faint hint of sound carry to the Outlookers overhead.
 

Elelar took Tansen's hand. It was a gesture he had dreamed of ever since meeting her, but he had always pictured it happening under vastly different circumstances. Now her touch, coming so soon after he'd held the
shir,
made him want to howl. He ground his teeth some more instead. She guided him to a wall. It was rough and very uneven, like a cave wall, damp and a little slimy. His head brushed the ceiling above him, and he realized Armian would be obliged to crouch.

In complete silence and total darkness, they felt their way along the wall, guided by Elelar. They were in some sort of tunnel. Before long, it grew so narrow he could feel the opposite wall brushing his shoulder. Tansen hoped Elelar knew where she was going.

Only after he believed they couldn't possibly be anywhere near the
inn anymore, let alone within reach of the Outlookers, did he risk whispering, "Where are we? Where are we going?"

"We're nearly there," she whispered back. "Can you see up ahead?"

"I can't see anyth..." No, that was wrong. Now he realized there was a faint glow in the distance. Reassured by this, he held his silence until they reached it.

"A candle?" he said. "Who keeps a candle down here? And why?"
 

"Our old friends always leave a light here for us, since we find their world confusing and might miss the entrance."

"Their world?" Armian's expression, visible in the faint light, was suspicious. "Entrance?"

"Here." Elelar took the candle and held it up to illuminate a dark crevice. "Through there."

Tansen's eyes adjusted, and he recognized a shadowy entrance to another underground chamber.
 

"We must go further down, further underground," Elelar said. "But this is the way."

"And what will we find through here?" Armian asked darkly.

Elelar's smile was strange. "The Beyah-Olvari."

Chapter Nineteen

He who seeks me seeks death.

      
      
      
      
—Wyldon the Waterlord

Tansen crept through the damp foliage, moving carefully in the dark so as to make no sound. Up ahead, he could see the faint glow of torches lighting the perimeter of Wyldon's stronghold. As he drew closer, he could hear the sounds of running water.

Emperor Jarell of Valdania had sworn to destroy the Society during his lifetime, and the Empire's Outlookers had worked toward this goal for some forty years. Consequently, the waterlords had lived in hiding and on the run since well before Tansen was born, though they had never relinquished their power over Sileria's water or her people. In a wealthier, easier era, the Society might well have felt that joining Josarian's cause was too risky to be worth the effort. Fortunately for Sileria, though, the Valdani had ensured that the waterlords had little to lose and were willing to follow destiny and join the rebellion. Tansen was the Society's enemy now, but he knew—as he told Josarian long ago—the rebels had needed them to defeat the Valdani. Unity had been essential, just as enmity was now inescapable.

Although Valdania had lost its grip on all of Sileria except for the city of Shaljir, the waterlords hadn't yet adjusted to their new situation, so most of them still lived in the secret, hidden places to which they and their forebears had retreated years ago. Kiloran inhabited an inaccessible palace of water beneath the surface of Lake Kandahar, Baran squatted in Harlon's ancient abandoned ruins at Belitar surrounded by an ensorcelled lake, and Wyldon... Wyldon's stronghold was a cave, deep in the forest, whose entrance was hidden by a waterfall.

However, in the absence of the Valdani, Wyldon had abandoned caution and now boldly announced his presence here with a stunning display of waterworks. Tansen hid in the lush, wet foliage that grew in thick abundance all around Wyldon's dwelling and looked for assassins patrolling in the torchlight. Most would be asleep now, but there were bound to be sentries posted. He'd have to rely strictly on sight to find them, because Wyldon's residence was so damn noisy.

The waterfall itself filled the night air with a steady rushing sound that might have been soothing under different circumstances. It split into dozens of shimmering strands halfway down the stone wall along which it flowed. The sparkling strands twisted to become coils that formed an elegant barrier of gleaming bars over the entrance to Wyldon's cave before weaving together again and flowing into a pool which lay in the center of the small torch-lit clearing.
 

With his clothes now soaking, Tansen sincerely hoped that Wyldon's cave was so damp it gave him rheumatism and made his worldly possessions rust and rot.
 

The pool of water, in turn, spewed an enormous fountain that arched high upward to feed the waterfall, completing the enchanted cycle. A billion dancing droplets of water, glittering even at night, flew away from the fountain's sky-reaching curve. Wyldon, not content with this display, also indulged in water sculpture. Men, women, and beasts inspired by Silerian history and myth, as well as by Wyldon's own fancy, populated the clearing around the pool, all of them fashioned from water.