The White Dragon

by Laura Resnick

  He couldn't believe the sea-born would accept a drylander as their first king in centuries. He couldn't understand why a sea goddess was bowing to Dar's will. How much could the world possibly be changing? How much more would it need to change for Sharifar to be satisfied and for Dar's will to be done?

  And he... he would never sail as a Lascari again. If Sharifar was to be believed, he had never been one in the first place...

  He must return to Sorin and Palomar, must make them tell him the truth!

  The sea soothed his desperate thoughts, carrying him safely through this strange realm between life and death. He supposed Sharifar would protect him until he reached the shore, so he had no fear of reefs, rocks, nets, or dragonfish.

  Once he reached shore, though... The fear of that threatened to consume him. He knew nothing about life on land. He would be as helpless as a baby among the landfolk. How would he survive?

  His musings ended when, contrary to his previous expectations, the current hurled him against a rock. He gasped—and immediately began coughing as he inhaled saltwater. The goddess's protection was evidently withdrawn, he reflected sourly, now that he had reached land. He was on his own from now on.

  Zarien braced himself as the waves broke against the rocks again, then he grappled for purchase with one hand while holding onto the stahra with the other. His seeking hand slipped on slime at first, but then he got firm hold of a rough surface and hauled himself out of the water. Breathing hard, he sat down on a rock and looked around. It was still nighttime, and now thick clouds obscured even the faint light of the first new moon. He couldn't see far and or make out any details beyond observing some rocky shoreline. He wouldn't know much more until morning.

  However, assuming he was on the Adalian coast—since he'd fallen overboard in Adalian's coastal waters—he tried to come up with a plan. He wanted most of all to return to the open sea, to find his parents... to find Sorin and Palomar, that was, and confront them with the goddess's tale of his dead mother and drylander father. But he looked longingly out at the dark sea, listening to its familiar roar, and knew it was hopeless. He had no boat. No sea-born folk would be in port right now, even if he could find a port in the morning. All sea-born clans were at sea for Bharata Ma-al. There were usually foreign ships in any sizeable port, but he had no money and so couldn't pay them to take him back to his family. And certainly no toren's yacht would escort him to the Lascari; the aristocratic toreni did not make a habit of exerting themselves for commoners.

  By the time any sea-born folk returned to port, the bharata would be over and the Lascari would be sailing for Shaljir. Zarien's presumed death wouldn't change those plans.

  So perhaps he should go overland to Shaljir, searching for Sharifar's consort along the way. And whether or not he found him by the time he reached Shaljir, he could try to contact the Lascari once he reached Sileria's greatest port.

  As for finding Sharifar's consort... It occurred to Zarien that there was already a likely candidate. Who better to embrace Sharifar than the man who had already survived the embrace of Dar? Who better to become the sea king than the Firebringer himself? Who better to unite the volcano and the sea than Josarian, who had already united the landfolk and the sea-born against the Valdani?

  He must find Josarian. He must take the Firebringer to Sharifar. Who else could Dar have chosen for her consort?

  Of course, finding Josarian would be no easy task. Even Zarien knew that Josarian's movements were a closely guarded secret. Not only did the Valdani keep increasing the reward offered for his death, but now Kiloran, the great waterlord, was his enemy and sought to slay him, too—which meant many assassins, as well as many other waterlords of the Honored Society, were after the Firebringer.

  Although the sea-born folk remained Josarian's loyal allies, Zarien knew enough about landfolk to realize that asking them to tell him where Josarian was would be useless. The shallaheen wouldn't trust a sea-born boy any more than the lowlanders would trust a city-dweller or a toren would trust an assassin. Josarian's unique gift was that he had somehow made Sileria's feuding and disparate peoples work together towards a common goal: freedom from the Valdani. For a time, at least. Now that Kiloran was his enemy, who knew how much longer the Firebringer's day of glory would last? The rebel alliance was crumbling even with victory against the Valdani in sight. Life in Sileria never really changed.

  I must find Josarian before Kiloran or the Society do, before the Valdani do.

  Zarien shivered as the coastal breeze swept over his wet skin and clothing. He shivered with loneliness and fear, too. He had not yet become a man according to the customs of the sea-born, and now he faced a task that he believed would make most men tremble. But, he reminded himself, he bore the tattoos of a man and his stahra had been given to him by a sea goddess. Manhood was upon him, whether or not this was the way he had expected to earn it. Surrounded by darkness and comforted only by the never-silent sea, he wondered where to start his search for the Firebringer.

  "Dalishar," he suddenly realized.

  Mount Dalishar, a sacred site of the mysterious Guardians of the Otherworld, had been Josarian's base since the beginning of the rebellion. For months now, the country around it had been rebel-held territory, a vast section of Sileria finally free of Valdani laws and Outlooker patrols. And Dalishar was said to be so heavily imbued with Guardian magic that even the Honored Society and its powerful waterlords couldn't attack Josarian there.

  If there was one place to find Josarian—or at least to find someone Josarian trusted, someone who could somehow be convinced to take Zarien to him—Dalishar would be the place.

  All Zarien really knew about Dalishar's location was that it was high up, somewhere in Sileria's merciless mountains, deep in the heart of the clannish, violent world of Josarian's own kind, the shallaheen.

  For a moment, Zarien almost wished he were back in the water with the dragonfish.

  Sileria's mountain peasants might be good fighters, but everyone knew they were ignorant, superstitious, dishonest, violent, and unforgiving of the slightest misunderstanding or offense. Few sea-born folk had ever ventured into the mountains; even fewer had come back out.

  Many shallaheen didn't even speak common Silerian, the language by which Sileria's diverse ethnic groups communicated with each other. Zarien had heard the guttural mountain dialect of shallah smugglers a few times and could only understand about one word in three. So even if they didn't kill him or steal what little he possessed, they might just not understand what he was saying to them.

  Josarian speaks common Silerian. He even speaks Valdan. Everyone says so, he reminded himself, trying to summon up hope. Some of the others will, too.

  Contemplating the difficulties of undertaking his enormous task without friends, family, money, or food, Zarien summoned all his will and rose to his feet. Tonight he would go the rest of the way ashore and get some sleep. Tomorrow, he would set out for Dalishar. Somehow, he would survive and do what he had to do. He had died and been reborn tonight, so he could certainly do this.

  Sharply aware of how motionless the surface beneath his feet was, he began picking his way through the rocks. They were wet and slippery, but they were no challenge to a boy used to the heaving decks of storm-tossed boats.

  Beyond the rocks was a narrow beach. Zarien had touched sand before, of course, diving in coastal seabeds. This was particularly coarse stuff, though, strewn with seaweed that tangled in his toes and rocks that poked the arches of his bare feet. He ambled along for a while, hoping to find a more comfortable surface for sleep. He wasn't ready to go farther inland in search of a good spot, though. Tomorrow would be soon enough to leave behind the familiar scent and sound of the sea, the familiar tickle of salty air in his nostrils and on his tongue. Tonight he needed to sleep near the soothing murmur and roar of her waves.

  Finally abandoning hope of encountering a stretch of smoother sand, Zarien chose a spot, cleared away the seaweed and rocks as best he could in
the dark, and lay down on the sand. The cloudy night sky overhead was soothing and familiar, since he usually slept on deck. But there was no gentle rolling, no comforting bob and sway beneath him.

  The clouds drifted apart and the glimmering light of the moonlit sky spread across land and sea. Restless and edgy, Zarien sat up and glanced around. The rocky beach looked no better now that he could see more of it. Depressed, he lowered his gaze.

  His breath caught when he saw, for the first time, the great scars left on his torso by the teeth of the dragonfish. Its terrible fang marks made a half-circle which went from his right shoulder, across his chest and belly, to his right hip. He reached awkwardly behind him as horrifying memories of the attack returned to him. Yes, he could feel corresponding scar tissue on the parts of his back which he could reach.

  Contemplating the mystery of his survival, Zarien lay back in the coarse sand again, folding his arms beneath his head. He gazed up at the endless night sky... and that was when he noticed that Ejara, the second moon, was now a glowing crescent beside Abayara, which was waxing.

  That meant Bharata Ma-al was already over.

  He had been underwater for more than three days.

  Chapter Three

  Only one thing is better than

  learning that an enemy is dead:

  learning that he is in Sileria.

  —Valdani Proverb

  Josarian is dead.

  The words burned in Tansen's mind the way the seeping wound in his side burned his flesh. His heart hadn't known pain like this since that night, so long ago, when he had returned to his native village of Gamalan to find his entire family slain by the Valdani. Only a boy of fifteen then, he had turned to Armian, who eventually became his bloodfather, for courage. Now, more than ten years later, he was a man—a rebel leader, a warrior already embraced and embellished in Silerian legend—and, in the wake of this catastrophe, others would look to him for courage.

  But he had none left to give, and he found that the coming of day didn't change that. Sorrow consumed him. Despair stole the last of his will. Pain and exhaustion clouded his mind.

  The trek from the village of Chandar to the sacred caves of Dalishar wasn't far as shallaheen reckoned things, and Tansen had been born to Sileria's mountains. But he had used the last of his strength during the night and had nothing left now.

  His wound had re-opened—was it only two nights ago?—when he had abandoned Sanctuary to try to save Josarian's life. The deep wound burned with cold fire now, sucking his life away. It wasn't fresh, it had been made many days ago, but it was a shir wound, and the wavy-edged dagger of a Society assassin wounded as no other blade did. Created by the dark sorcery of a waterlord, a shir was fashioned out of water and imbued with a power so deadly that it ensured the assassins of the Honored Society were feared throughout Sileria.

  Ironically, Tansen's wound hadn't been delivered by an assassin, but by a Valdan, the late and unlamented Commander Koroll. The commander had managed to slay an assassin at some point, during the long months of fighting between the Silerian rebels and the Valdani, and thereby acquired a shir.

  Since a shir could be used even against a waterlord, the waterlords ensorcelled them so that only the trusted assassin for whom a shir was made could actually touch it. Only by killing an assassin could you make his shir your own. By now, Tansen had made more than a few shir his own, including the one which had belonged to Armian; but he didn't use or keep them. The two slender swords of a shatai were his weapons—earned with discipline and pain, wielded with honor and skill—and he had proved often that they were all he needed for killing Valdani Outlookers, Society assassins, or anyone else.

  I'll have to kill more assassins now...

  After all the broken vows, betrayals, and deadly plots, Kiloran had finally succeeded in his goal. Two nights ago, when his latest plan to destroy Josarian—by having Josarian's trusted cousin Zimran betray him to the Valdani—had failed, he had fallen back on an even darker scheme. He had summoned the White Dragon from the waters of the Zilar River. Tansen hadn't even believed the wild tales whispered about such creatures until he saw it with his own eyes, grotesquely forming out of the shallow river, gathering itself into a huge and hideous monster under the two full moons which illuminated the night sky. A billion glittering drops of water crystallized into slashing claws, dripping fangs, and voracious jaws. Born of a mystical union between water and wizard, Kiloran's terrible offspring had seized and killed Josarian.

  And I couldn't stop it.

  Tansen had tried, but his swords swept ineffectually through that monstrous creature made only of water. Mirabar had tried, too, but even her fire magic couldn't stop that thing. Now Josarian's dying screams of agony still rang in Tansen's head, and probably would for the rest of his life.

  After completing the task for which it had been born, the White Dragon simply sank back into the Zilar River. Quiescent. Gone. As if it had never been. There wasn't anything left for Tansen to fight, to kill.

  Except Kiloran.

  Josarian was dead, but as a victim of the White Dragon, he would endure its vicious torment until its creator finally died.

  All the more reason to kill Kiloran.

  The old waterlord meant to rule Sileria. He meant to make the shallaheen and all the other peoples of this troubled land toil under the yoke of the Honored Society. Kiloran now intended to dominate the whole nation, rather than just his traditional territory, with violence and terror, with thirst and drought, with bloodshed and extortion. He would subject Sileria to worse misery than it had known during a thousand years of brutal foreign domination. And to ensure his success, he would use the Society to slaughter every last Guardian in Sileria. After centuries of enmity, the masters of water would eagerly employ their power to destroy the servants of fire once and for all.

  Mirabar...

  Mirabar, gifted with powers strong enough to frighten most waterlords, burdened with prophetic visions which even Kiloran respected. Young and hot-headed, sharp-tongued and quick-thinking, foolishly brave as a sorceress, unsure and inexperienced as a woman... Her death was now surely Kiloran's first priority.

  Or my death, perhaps? For old times' sake.

  Tansen's lungs burned from working so hard to make up for the loss of blood from his wound and the lack of food and sleep during the past two days and nights. His whole body ached from the blows of the White Dragon. His flesh burned in a thousand places from the drops of ensorcelled water which had dripped onto him from that grotesque beast. The cuts that its claws had left upon him burned coldly, like cuts made by a shir. He was covered in dried blood: his own, Josarian's, his enemies'...

  You've wanted me dead for so long, old man, perhaps you will want me first, before her.

  Tansen paused to rest, something he almost never did in the long-distance trekking over brutal terrain that was a normal part of daily life in Sileria's harsh mountains. Unlike most shallaheen, he knew how to ride a horse, but horses were rare in Sileria, impractical deep in the mountains, and out of the question on the treacherous paths ascending to Dalishar.

  He had been back in Sileria—back from exile in foreign lands, back in these loved and hated mountains—for more than a year now. He was normally conditioned to this life. But not today. Not wounded, exhausted, and weak from blood loss. Head pounding, he bent over, breathing hard, and braced his hands on his thighs, aware that he hadn't covered nearly the distance he had expected to since leaving Chandar before dawn.

  Well past midday, he guessed, squinting up at the brassy Silerian sunshine. And he was still very far from the caves.

  After Josarian's death in the Zilar River, Tansen had sent Mirabar to Dalishar, safe from Kiloran's reach, and told her to wait for him. He had gone to Chandar for one simple task. And he had failed at Chandar, as he had failed at the Zilar River. Now he must tell Mirabar he had failed. He must somehow make her understand why he couldn't do it.

  I can't kill her, Mirabar, I can't.

&n
bsp; His chest ached. His throat hurt. All of Sileria's sins were his, and he could think of no one whom he had never disappointed or betrayed.

  Focus on the task at hand.

  Later, he hoped, there would be time enough for mourning. Later, he knew, he would pay for his sins and his failings. Dar would see to that in the end. But for now, there was so much work to be done.

  He must reach Dalishar. They must make plans and protect the crumbling rebel alliance. When word of Josarian's death spread, the shallaheen would be frightened and confused. Some of them had already reverted to old loyalties and sided with Kiloran; now many others might follow in fear and ignorance. The lowlanders, the toreni, the city-dwellers, the sea-born folk—everyone who had joined the cause because they believed in Josarian—might now drift away, splintering Sileria once again into disparate and warring factions incapable of resisting either the Society or yet another foreign conquest.

  If he couldn't improve his pace, Tansen acknowledged, he wouldn't reach the caves of Dalishar by nightfall.

  Another day lost.

  Another day wherein Kiloran could gain ascendancy. Another day wherein the world which Josarian had tried to build would now tear itself apart... Grief overwhelmed him again.

  Josarian is dead. My brother is dead.

  Tansen had thought so once before, when Josarian had flung himself into the Fires of Darshon. Tansen, busy battling the will of the destroyer goddess in flame and fury below the summit, had heard Mirabar's terrible scream, had heard Dar's triumphant roar, and he'd known it was too late to save the man who was his ally, his friend, and his bloodbrother. Who could have known that the goddess would embrace Josarian like a lover and then return him to his people, forever changed, but unharmed? Tansen had believed, right up until that moment, that Armian had been the Firebringer, as the stories of his childhood had always claimed.