In Legend Born

by Laura Resnick

  "Stop." She felt his hand in her hair, pulling, trying to force her to look at him. "Stop, Elelar."

  "Do you really think I ever felt a single moment's pleasure with it flopping around inside me?"

  "Enough, woman," he snapped. "You've had your say."

  "Not that it was ever in me for long. I've seen fish that last longer than you."

  "I will stop your mouth!" he warned, hauling back his hand.

  "Will you hit me again?" she asked venomously. "Does hitting a woman make a man of a Valdan? Is that how it works?"

  He stared at her with horror-clouded eyes, his jaw slack, his expression stupid.

  "You never even guessed how many other men I bedded, did you, Borell?" she taunted him. "Did you really think a woman would be satisfied with you?"

  "Your insults don't change wh—"

  "Ambassador Shiraj knew how to please a woman. He was not some fumbling, thick-waisted oaf."

  "Shiraj?" Now Borell looked as if he wanted to vomit.

  "Who do you think told him about the Imperial Council's plans to attack the Kintish Kingdoms? Who do you think—"

  "You told him?" Borell bleated.

  "How do you think the Kints knew the Empire's plans?" she said. "Why do you think the Kintish armies were expecting—"

  "Three Into One! You?"

  "Everything I ever learned from you, I told to your enemies," Elelar said stonily.

  A sickly pallor was fast replacing the sexual flush on Borell's skin. He dragged one arm across his shiny forehead. His hand was shaking. "Three have mercy..." His voice was thick and slow. "Do you have any idea how many deaths you've caused, woman? Three thousand men died in the first battle against Kinto."

  "How many deaths I've caused?" She gathered her torn clothes around her torso and sat up, glaring at him, letting him see just how much she hated him. "The Imperial Council sent tens of thousands of men to fight the Kintish Kingdoms, intending to carve a path straight to the Palace of Heaven, killing everyone who got in their way. You boasted to me that the Empire would destroy the Kintish union at last. You gloated about how the Valdani would seize the Throne of Heaven and vanquish a three thousand year old dynasty. And you can accuse me of causing deaths?"

  She pulled her pantaloons up over her hips, wincing with pain, filled with revulsion by the sticky fluid between her thighs. "You've starved my people, sanctioned torture to get information, seized land and crops and livestock at your whim, and raped my country's mines. You sign papers authorizing the importation of captured women for your brothels and complain about supply problems when they die within a year or two. You have never once prosecuted a Valdan for rape, murder, assault, or theft when the crime was committed against a Silerian."

  Her hands shook as she tried to find a way to keep her torn tunic fastened. She wanted to weep with humiliation, pain, and fear. But she would not let a Valdan see her do that, so she kept her expression hard and hate-filled as she looked again at Borell.

  "And you thought I could love you?" Now that her life was over, she wanted him to know. She wanted him to feel his disgrace until his dying day. "I betrayed you with other men. I betrayed your secrets to Kints, to Moorlanders, and to Silerian rebels. I read your dispatches after you slept. I spied on your private meetings. I did all this because I would do anything to free Sileria from you and your kind." She nodded slowly. "And the one part of my work that I truly loathed was letting you touch me."

  A horrible expression crossed his face, a mingling of nausea, fear, and raw hatred. He looked like he might try to kill her again. Then he surged awkwardly to his feet. For a moment she thought he intended to kick her, but then he strode to the door, yanked it open, and bellowed for some Outlookers.

  "You may take the torena now," he said, his voice rough with emotion. Then, without looking at her again, Borell left—still disheveled from their struggle and forgetting his cloak.

  She assumed the guards were taking her to the old Kintish prison across from the Outlooker headquarters. As she rose to her feet, she could tell that they had heard her screams while Borell raped her. Upon seeing her now, battered and abused, the youngest of the four men looked shocked. Another smirked and stared insultingly at the flesh exposed by her torn clothing. The other two men kept their faces impassive, their gazes impersonal.

  Once she was outside, Elelar saw the bodies of her two manservants, who must have died trying to save her. She blinked back tears. She would never let the Valdani see her cry.

  There was no sign of Faradar. She longed to know if the maid had escaped, but she couldn't risk inciting pursuit by asking about her.

  Elelar tried to calm herself by thinking about her mother and her grandfather Gaborian, about meeting them again in the Otherworld. But she was afraid; death by slow torture was almost certainly the fate that awaited her now.

  Most of all, she thought about the mines of Alizar.

  Oh, Dar, as I have been faithful and true—in my way—I beg you to help Josarian take Alizar.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  There was no day or night in the mines, no sun or moons, no dawning sky or twilight glow. There was only the obsidian maw of the earth's belly and the sickly glare of smoking lanterns. Once upon a time, employment in the mines had been an honorable trade, a hard and dangerous profession which attracted men because of the rewards they could reap. In another era, many young men came here for a few years to earn enough to pay a bride price, buy land, or establish a business. In that distant time, hope had flowered almost daily at Alizar and dreams had filled the air.

  Or so they said. Najdan was always skeptical about the stories people told. If you listened to the whisperings of the mountains these days, after all, you'd learn that Tansen had slain an entire shipload of Kintish pirates in a single night, Mirabar was an immortal spirit, and Josarian was the Firebringer. There was nothing the shallaheen loved better than a good story.

  Anyhow, whatever life at Alizar had once been like, it was now a never-ending nightmare of hellish misery. While the shallaheen kept their children under control by threatening to feed them to the fire-eyed and flame-haired demons that roamed the mountains, the Valdani menaced Silerians with the threat of a sentence in the mines of Alizar. The other mines in Sileria—minerals and precious metals—were small, private operations. A few were still Silerian-owned, but the majority of them belonged to wealthy Valdani, whether taken from Kints two centuries ago or stolen more recently from over-taxed and disenfranchised Silerians. When people referred to "the mines," however, they invariably meant Alizar: the huge, enormously rich mines owned and run by the Emperors of Valdania for the past two hundred years.

  Alizar was where Silerians served criminal sentences for most major and minor crimes. Yes, some crimes so enraged the Valdani that they sentenced the offender to death; but most of the time, they found it more profitable to send a man to the mines, where he worked until his sentence was served or he died—whichever came first. Yes, some criminals were simply imprisoned; but they were not safe from the mines, for they were usually just being held in reserve in case the mines suffered a shortage of workers after a cave-in or accident. Almost anyone caught breaking Valdani law in Sileria could count on being condemned to servitude in the mines of Alizar. Bribery was the only way out, and most couldn't afford it.

  Of course, even a law-abiding man wasn't necessarily safe.

  Despite harsh laws and a disobedient populace, the Valdani didn't always have enough prisoners to keep the mines operating at their full capacity. When this happened, the Outlookers would simply raid villages, round up men, chain them like slaves, and take them to work in the mines. That was how Najdan had lost his father. Many of these men were eventually released. Sometimes, though, they died in the mines, as many convicts did. It was worst of all, of course, when a family could never even find out what had happened to a man. The Valdani seldom deigned to answer questions about their prisoners at Alizar. So the men who survived the mines and returned home were alw
ays questioned by people trying to discover if a loved one still lived. The shallaheen willingly walked for days to reach a village where a man was rumored to have recently returned from the mines, just to ask: Have you seen my father? My brother? My husband? My son?

  No one had ever been able to reveal the fate of Najdan's father. Najdan was a practical man and therefore did not torment himself with foolish hope. Petty criminals often drew sentences of only a year or two, and so survived the mines. But Najdan's father, who had committed no crime, had been gone for over twenty years; no man had ever survived that long in the mines. Some people, however, held onto hope even longer than that. A man would have to have a heart of stone not to pity them.

  Those that did manage to survive long terms in the mines seldom lived long upon returning home. They must have been very strong men to have survived for years in Alizar, but the struggle always took its toll.

  Now Najdan was here in the black pits of hell, where whip-cracking devils ruled the never-ending night. The rebel plan of attack required men on the inside. When the fighting began, rebels down here would need to lead the prisoners in an underground fight. Najdan was one of thirty rebels who, posing as ordinary men, had willingly been caught in some petty crime during recent days. Unfortunately, some were still awaiting sentencing tonight, but most of them had already been transported to the mines and sent deep into the elaborate earthworks of Alizar.

  It had taken courage to give himself up to the Outlookers and the mines. Najdan had wanted to do it, to prove to himself that despite what had happened that day at Dalishar, he was still a brave man who could coldly face death. Now that he was down here, he saw courage in a new light and encountered bravery such as he had never seen among the assassins. In this shadowy world of pain, hunger, exhaustion, loneliness, and slavery, men still somehow found the courage to survive. In this underground world of darkness and hopelessness, they still recited the names of their children, recalled the women they loved, and spoke of going home after they'd served their sentences. When the Outlookers weren't watching, shallaheen cut open their palms with their mining tools to swear bloodpacts with each other. When one drink of water could mean the difference between life and death, a shallah might give up his ration to save the life of a bloodbrother.

  Then again, there was also depravity down here unlike anything that even a Society assassin had ever seen. While most Outlookers were merely indifferent to the suffering of their prisoners, Najdan had already encountered one who positively enjoyed it, and he'd heard stories about several others. Nor were the prisoners all men he looked forward to freeing. There was one he'd already decided to assassinate when the fighting began. The sriliah routinely betrayed his fellow prisoners for extra rations, and Najdan didn't doubt that he would side with the Outlookers when the attack on Alizar commenced—at least until the battle clearly favored the Silerians. Then there were others who had been made petty, vicious, and cowardly by their lives down here; but perhaps some of them had always been that way. Finally, there were those who had gone mad. Anyone too deranged to work was usually executed; but, over the years, Najdan had seen a few madmen wandering the mountains, released early from the mines due to the insanity which made them useless as workers. Some long-term prisoners therefore risked pretending madness, gambling that they'd be released instead of killed. Najdan would make no move against any of the madmen here, real or feigned, unless they jeopardized the battle.

  He was a strong, healthy man, so although the poor rations left him hungry, he was still able to do the backbreaking work down here. His wrists and ankles were already chafed and sore from the iron finery of an Emperor's miner, but he was an assassin and contemptuous of pain. For this reason, he could also withstand the lash without much trouble. He ignored the human stench and misery all around him, since he considered himself apart from it. He had come here to do a job, and when the rebels attacked, he would either die or go free. There was no possibility in his mind of spending more than a few days down here.

  The one aspect of his term down here that troubled him, however, was the feeling of being closed in. He felt the earth pressing down on him, suffocating him. Sometimes his chest constricted, as if he were smothering, and it took all his self-discipline not to lash out like a madman, battering at the rock-solid walls, floors, and ceilings that engulfed him. Some men who returned home from the mines were never able to sleep inside again; now he knew why. When he got out of Alizar, he'd be much more amenable to Mirabar's preference for sleeping under the stars when they traveled.

  Mirabar. He thought of her up on the heights surrounding Alizar, gathering strength with the other Guardians. He had already lost track of time down here. It was impossible to mark the hours in a place where there was no day or night. Now he had no way of knowing when the attack would begin. But he thought it would be very soon. Hoping he was right, he carefully began to spread the word, making sure that no one he deemed untrustworthy found out what the rest of them needed to know.

  Tashinar's knees ached from the long journey to Dalishar, but she didn't tell the others. I'm getting old, she thought. Her youth seemed to have been in full bloom only yesterday. Now she was already an old woman, an elder of her sect, someone whose aged presence was needed to hold the Guardians together in this unprecedented moment. The mystic sorcerers who conjured fire from their own breath and flesh, who communed with shades of the dead, and who hid like children from Outlookers, waterlords, and assassins... the Guardians were about to enter into battle.

  Naturally, Tashinar knew the history of the Guardians. She knew that they had once governed Sileria, that there had been many thousands of them, and that there had even been many like Mirabar. She knew that there had been warriors among them— including Daurion himself. Yet the thought of Guardians entering into battle against the Outlookers... Well, it was almost as extraordinary as the thought of them working together with the Society.

  She knew from the moment Mirabar first returned to their circle of companions—with an assassin in tow—that something extraordinary had happened. The Guardians had already learned from their own communion with the Otherworld that a new age was at hand, that their entire world was about to change. Fire, water, and the blood of thousands would mingle to herald a new beginning in Sileria. Then Mirabar had found them again, had come home, bringing peace-offerings from Kiloran himself on behalf of the Society. Two of Josarian's men came with her, too, and they spoke of something called the Alliance, a secret society now pledged to Josarian. Confident, impatient, and driven, Mirabar had become the leader of her former mentors. At her instructions, they had spread through the mountains, alerting other Guardian circles, forging links with the Society and the shallaheen, cooperating with emissaries from the Alliance, and sending their own companions into the heart of danger when necessary.

  Derlen, Tashinar thought suddenly. He was supposed to be here tonight. He had not come, and no one knew why. Shaljir was such a treacherous place, the very heart of Valdani power in Sileria... Tashinar sent up a silent prayer to Dar that Derlen was all right.

  When Mirabar had first told her of this plan, Tashinar thought it would be difficult to convince the Guardians to assault the most heavily-guarded site in Sileria outside of Shaljir. The diamonds of Alizar were the Emperor's single most important source of income in Sileria, and he protected the mines with a force of over one thousand well-armed Outlookers. Almost every Guardian, however, knew someone who had been sent to the mines; and many knew someone who had never come out. There were also those who had seen the round-ups, when the Outlookers would seize innocent men and force them into service because there was a shortage of prisoners at Alizar. With their confidence bolstered by Josarian's victories against smaller targets and their fear of the Society temporarily appeased, most of the Guardians had proved readily willing to contribute their special talents to the battle at Alizar.

  Kiloran was here, too, tonight. Kiloran himself. Tashinar didn't know precisely where he was, and she'd be j
ust as happy not to encounter him—tonight or any other night—but she could feel him. Oh, yes, she knew he was here, and she suspected he wanted her to know it, wanted them all to know it. He honored the truce between them, but there could never truly be peace between the servants of fire and the masters of water. Eternal enmity was in their flesh, their blood, their bones, and Kiloran let the Guardians preparing for battle at Alizar know that he had not forgotten. A subtle vibration of power chilled the air and warned them: We are allies, not friends.

  Emerging from the darkness, hugging the shadows and moving stealthily, Mirabar joined Tashinar on a summit overlooking Alizar. They exchanged a brief, silent greeting, then Mirabar noticed her nervous twitch as Kiloran again stung the night with his cold venom.

  "Ignore it," Mirabar said. "He's just showing off."

  "He's not to be underestimated," Tashinar murmured. They both kept their voices low, wary of any remaining Outlookers patrolling the area. "Or trusted."

  "No, but he knows there are assassins down there tonight. Some are imprisoned in the mines. Many will be fighting beside Josarian. Kiloran is ruthless, but he doesn't waste his own men."

  Tashinar nodded. Why worry about what would happen after tonight, when no one yet knew who would live or die here?

  "Who would have thought we would come to this?" she said, grateful she had at least lived long enough to see it. "I never imagined a moment such as this, a dream such as the one you and Josarian share."

  "It's everyone's dream, Tashinar. When the Outlookers cut off your fingers as a young woman, didn't you dream of—"

  "Not really. Until this... you, Josarian, Tansen, the Beckoner, the Alliance, Kiloran..." Tashinar shook her head. "Freedom was a tale told by wild-eyed zanareen and superstitious mountain peasants."

  "Zanareen," Mirabar said sourly. "How they pester Josarian."