The White Dragon (78 page)

And the water-well was on fire, anyhow.

The Guardians had attacked it, too, while his attention was diverted. Now they were attacking the house, even the land. A wave of men and women—
women
, he realized with shock—were melting out of the dark, flinging glowing spears of flame and hurling balls of fire. Guardian fire needed no fuel to burn, and his stone house would give way if he couldn't stop them. He must fight—

No, he suddenly realized. That was also what Tansen wanted.

The Shaljir River.

It was all he had left. He reached out to it, barely able to feel it through the chaos erupting all around him.
 

His brother had let go of the Shaljir, he was sure of it.
 

He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. Without the Shaljir River, he was no one and nothing. Without the river that Zilar relied upon, his life was over.

"
Siran!
"

Abidan's eyes snapped open just in time to see one of his assassins jump between him and an attacking
shallah
who used two
yahr
, swinging them with deadly skill. Both men were covered in blood, dust, and sweat. Both looked savage and deadly in the glowing light of the enslaved river, in the flickering shadows created by the burning house and the flaming trees.

The
shallah
felled the assassin with four heavy blows of his
yahr
, then turned on Abidan, crouched for attack.

"Abidan?" he asked, his gaze sharp.

Abidan was a waterlord, not a warrior; but if his hour had come, he would die like a man. He circled slowly, keeping at a safe distance from the stalking
shallah
. When he saw his chance, Abidan stooped and seized the
shir
of the fallen assassin whose body lay between them. He himself had made this
shir
, and so he was the only man alive who could touch it besides the assassin... or now this
shallah
, if the assassin was indeed dead. Stimulated by the intrusion of Guardian magic on such an immense scale, the wavy-edged dagger quivered so violently it was hard to maintain his grip on it.

The
shallah
hesitated, then dropped one of his
yahr
and, to Abidan's surprise, pulled a wildly shaking
shir
out of his boot.

"That's one of mine," Abidan blurted, furious that this
shallah
upstart had it now.

"You're losing a lot of them," the
shallah
replied.

"Where's Tansen?" Abidan demanded. They'd never met, but he knew this wasn't Tansen. Everyone knew that Tansen fought with two Kintish swords.

"He's busy killing your brother."

Abidan struck, but the
shallah
was expecting it. The
yahr
swept through the air and slammed hard across Abidan's face, then the
shir
sought his vitals, creeping cleverly between his ribs to inflict a mortal wound. A
shir
knew how to kill. It relished killing. A
shir
could almost think... It was a... It...

Hot and cold life force gushed out of him as he sank heavily to the ground. The fire made everything look like sunset. Sunrise? No, it was growing darker all around. Sunset.

The blood-streaked face of the
shallah
loomed in the distance, floating in his vision.
 

Making sure I'm dead?

Abidan heard the thought, but no words came out of his mouth.
 

He did hear a distant voice, though: "
Galian!
"

It was filled with the panic of the still-living.

The
shallah
whirled, his long black hair catching the firelight. There was a harsh grunt. Falling, falling down...

Abidan groaned when the
shallah
fell on top of him.
 

"
No!
" someone cried. "Galian!"

Scuffling. Fighting. Hard blows. Grunts. A harsh scream of pain. Everything moving in the flickering golden light.

Someone pulled the
shallah'
s heavy body off him.

"
Siran!
"

Abidan tried, but he couldn't answer.

"
Siran
, more are coming. A third wave."

He couldn't see anything now. He was leaving the world.
 

Where do waterlords go?

"
Siran
, we must fall back and abandon...
Siran?
"

Please, my only request... I just don't want to be with Guardians
.

Distant voices.

"Abidan is dying."

"We can't stop them. Not with the
sirani
both dead..."

"Liadon may still be alive."

"Not for much longer. Look at that. You can't really believe he'll live through
that
?"

"No. You're right."

Abidan felt something on his shoulder.

"Goodbye,
siran
. It was an honor to serve you."

"He can't hear you."

"Do it now. Call for retreat."

"I never thought it would end this way."

"It's not over. Tansen will pay for this."

"Yes, you're right. Tansen must pay."

It was the last thing Abidan heard before he died.

Chapter Thirty

Only two things matter: life and death.

      
      
      
      
      
—Kintish Proverb

A full-scale battle raged in the dark forest around the Guardian encampment high up on Mount Niran. Assassins were killing the Guardians, who fought back with bursts of flame and clouds of fire that briefly illuminated the night, then died as quickly as the Guardians did.

"Dar have mercy!" Mirabar cried.

Najdan clapped a hand over her mouth, even though it was unlikely she'd be heard above the noise of the battle and the screams of the dying.
 

A wave of water had swept across the Guardian encampment, rising out of a stream that lay at some distance from camp and which had always been free of sorcery. Until now.
 

The encampment was in a clearing bordered by several caves, all of which were eerily decorated with paintings left by the Beyah-Olvari. Now the clearing was empty—except for the corpses that lay everywhere. Some waterlord had made the stream water so cold that all he had to do was wash it over them to kill them, pulling death across these Guardians like a watery veil. The water was gone now, only the damp ground and discolored bodies revealing evidence of how these men and women had died. The fatal wave had receded before Mirabar's stealthy arrival, subsiding back into the stream whence it came.

Crouched beside Najdan in the thick forest of gossamer trees just beyond the edge of the clearing, Mirabar stared in horror while faceless voices pierced the night all around them with wordless cries of triumph and of terror.

This had been her circle of companions, her only community in the days before the rebellion. These Guardians were her family. Sorrow and rage flooded her soul with equal fierceness as she stared at the slain. The deadly water had doused all but one torch, so she couldn't make out the lifeless faces in the dim and flickering light. She only knew that each of the eleven corpses she saw might well be someone she'd known most of her life.

Tashinar.

She made a sudden, clumsy movement in their direction. Najdan's firm grip dragged her back into their dark hiding place. She gasped when her hand touched a stray trickle of ensorcelled water. The cold was unbearable. Instinctively, she filled her breath with fire and blew warming flames onto her dying flesh.
 

A small burn was left behind, but she had succeeded in eliminating the effects of the water magic on her skin. Just a few drops of water, she reflected in scared amazement, and the pain was consuming. Her eyes filled with tears as she turned her gaze back to the dead.

Where is Tashinar?

"There were perhaps fifty people camped here?" Najdan whispered into her ear.

She nodded. Half that number had camped here before the rebellion, but now this group included more Guardians and some of Josarian's men.

"Why aren't they all dead?" Najdan murmured.

"We must help them!"

"Where were most of them when the attack began?" When she didn't respond, Najdan prodded, "Out roaming the forest on a dark-moon night?"

"No, of course not. They'd have been r—" A nearby scream, surely from someone dying in agony, made Mirabar flinch and try to scramble to her feet. Najdan held her steady.

"Think," he whispered fiercely. "If they were all in camp except for the sentries..."

"Then..." She nodded, understanding. "Then why didn't the waterlord, whoever he is, kill them all with his ambush?"

"Why drive them out into the forest? If he couldn't move the water fast enough to kill them all, why not at least trap them in camp, where they'd be easier to kill?" The assassin paused in thought. "Is there something important I don't know about Guardians or about this place?"

"No." Mirabar flinched again, unable to hold still amidst the unseen violence occurring all around them. "How can you just sit here and ask questions? We've got to stop them!"

"Stop them doing
what?
" he whispered fiercely. "What are the assassins trying to do? This isn't the best way to kill all the Guardians. If I were—" He stopped and drew in a sharp breath. "They're not trying to kill them all. Just most of them."

He finally had her full attention. "Why?" she asked.

"Driving them into the forest on a dark-moon night. Separating and confusing them." Najdan nodded. "It's the safest way to capture some of them."

"Capture?" Mirabar didn't even want to think about what the Society intended to do with captured Guardians. "How do we stop them?"

"Come."

Keeping his head low and his steps silent, he dragged her back through the thick of the battle, sometimes only a few paces from grunting, struggling combatants. Cloaked in darkness, he retraced their steps until they found their companions where they had left them, hiding on the outskirts of the horrifying battle.

"For the love of Dar," one of the men blurted. "I hear women screaming!"

"We can't just sit here and do nothing!" another insisted.

"Do we have a plan?" Pyron asked.

"Yes," Najdan said crisply. "The
sirana
will encircle this entire battle with a ring of fire and then tighten it on them it like a noose."

"What?" she exclaimed.

"You did it at the battle for the mines of Alizar, and that's a much bigger place."

"I had help," she said in panic. "There were nearly a hundred Guardians there."

"There are others here, too," he replied calmly. "As we rescue them, perhaps they will have enough sense and strength left to assist you."

"What do we do?" Pyron asked.

"You will guard the
sirana
with your lives," Najdan said. "All five of you."

"But—"

"They're killing and capturing Guardians," Najdan said tersely. "Once the
sirana
reveals her location with fire magic, she will be in terrible danger. And once they realize that she's trying to trap them—"