The White Dragon

by Laura Resnick

  "As you wish."

  Najdan released Zarien, who rubbed the painful shir burn on his throat as he warily backed away from the assassin. Older than most assassins, since it was not a profession which usually counted longevity among its benefits, Najdan nonetheless looked very impressive. He bore more than a dozen scars, all got in combat—except for a couple of burn marks acquired during his first encounter with Mirabar, when he had been her mortal enemy rather than her devoted servant. Najdan's eyes were hard, even when he smiled, and his ways were violent and unyielding. However, he had condemned himself to a bloodvow from Kiloran in order to save Mirabar's life and to try to save Josarian's. That ensured he had Tansen's loyalty.

  Najdan's eyes narrowed as he studied the boy. "You are sea-born."

  "This is Zarien," Tansen said. "He saved my life."

  "Don't tell me he fought the assassins lying dead o—"

  "No, I did, but... It's a long story," said Tansen. "I'll tell you later. Where is Mir—"

  "Tansen!"

  He knew that voice as well as he knew the face which now appeared as Mirabar emerged from a thicket, accompanied by Lann.

  Najdan scowled with disapproval. "Sirana, you were to wait—"

  "Dar be praised," she said. "You're alive!"

  "I told you he would be." Lann's voice boomed with its usual vigor. He grinned, big and bearded and robust, fully recovered from the severe wounds he had incurred several months ago during Kiloran's first ambush on Josarian. Tansen wondered briefly why he bore a fresh bandage on his head.

  Mirabar ran to where Tansen stood, hesitated for a moment, then embraced him. He put his arms around her and closed his eyes. He had held her once or twice before, but only in fear or sorrow. Never like this, relieved, glad to see each other. Her smooth cheek against his bare chest, her hair spilling over his shoulder, tickling his skin... That fire-bright hair, almost supernatural in its intensity, was a lava-rich color uniquely her own, like her flame-gold eyes, stirring him. Yet her Dar-blessed beauty had actually repulsed him the first time he ever saw her. And, if he were honest, for a while thereafter.

  He had traveled the world, had seen many things and learned much, but he was still prey to the superstitions of his youth. The waterlords so feared the power of people born with Mirabar's unusual coloring—and thereby blessed with great gifts of fire and communion with the Otherworld—that they had, centuries ago, convinced Silerians, particularly the shallaheen, that such people were demons, cursed in the womb by Dar, who must be killed on sight. As an adult, he knew better; but the fears and prejudices of a child could lurk deep inside even the most worldly of men.

  Mirabar pulled away, her eyes almost glowing in their fiery intensity as she met his gaze. "I looked into the circle of fire at Dalishar, but you were not there."

  "Not dead yet," he said wryly, knowing that she meant she had searched in a Guardian fire for his shade, the shadow of a person that sojourned in the Otherworld after the body's death.

  "All the same, I was afraid..."

  "I'm all right now," he assured her.

  Her hand slid down his side, touching the bare skin which had been an open wound when last they had seen each other, only days ago. She gasped at the sight of the scar. "What happened?"

  "We'll discuss it later," he replied.

  "Your wound is healed," Najdan said slowly, staring.

  "But," Mirabar said, "how could—"

  "I'm not sure," Tansen admitted.

  "You don't remember?" Najdan asked.

  "No."

  Tansen glanced at Zarien, who was looking at Mirabar with open-mouthed fascination. Being sea-born, he didn't share the dark superstitions of Tansen's childhood about orange-eyed demons with fiery hair, but it was safe to assume he'd never seen anyone like Mirabar. Once she was willing to take her gaze off Tansen, Mirabar studied the tattooed sea-born boy with interest, too. This deep in the mountains, he was almost as unique as she was.

  "A child is coming," she murmured suddenly, taking a step towards Zarien.

  The boy lifted his chin, evidently understanding the words she had spoken in shallah. "I am a man among my people." He paused and added reluctantly, "Well, almost."

  "Are you?" She scarcely seemed to have heard his words.

  "He has certainly shown all the courage of one." Tansen introduced Zarien to Mirabar and Lann, speaking in common Silerian for the boy's benefit. He told them briefly about the ambush and explained how Zarien had found him and brought him here.

  Mirabar returned her attention to the healed shir wound. "But what about—"

  "Perhaps we shouldn't stay here," Najdan said suddenly.

  Tansen was too accustomed to his brusqueness to be surprised. "Are the bodies where I left them?" he asked.

  "The assassins?" Mirabar grimaced. "Yes."

  "When I found your trail," Najdan said, "I left the sirana behind to burn the corpses."

  "But Lann and I followed Najdan, instead," Mirabar said.

  "Let's go back there," Tansen said. "I want to get their shir."

  Mirabar was surprised. "But you never take the sh—"

  "We'll need them for an idea I have," he said. "And we should burn those bodies." He didn't want to send Kiloran's assassins to the Otherworld, if assassins even went there, but custom was custom: Silerians burned their dead, whether friend or foe. The island nation's native people were revolted by the Valdani custom of burying the dead, and they avoided the Valdani graveyards in Sileria, viewing them with profound distaste.

  "We should certainly do something with those bodies," Zarien agreed with a grimace.

  Tansen could imagine what stumbling across six violently slain men had been like for the boy.

  Mirabar asked Tansen, "What's your idea f—"

  "Sirana." Uncharacteristically, Najdan interrupted her yet again. "Let us leave this place."

  "Najdan's right," Tansen agreed. "My pace is slow right now. We should move if we're going to reach the caves by sundown."

  He waited as Zarien slipped back into the cave to fetch his stahra and Tansen's satchel. The oar was quiescent now, revealing no signs of its earlier spine-chilling animation. Tansen knew he had not imagined that bizarre occurrence, though. The weapon was yet another aspect of this unusual boy about which he intended to get answers.

  Meanwhile, Lann looked at Zarien and laughed. "An oar? You won't need an oar in the mountains!"

  Zarien sighed. "It's a stahra."

  "A what?"

  "His weapon," Tansen said.

  "Let's go," Najdan prompted, forestalling further discussion.

  "An easy pace," Mirabar warned the others, looking at Tansen with concern.

  "I'll manage," he assured her, concealing that he was tired already.

  As they trekked back toward the scene of the ambush, though, Tansen realized that it was Zarien, not he, who would determine their pace. "What's wrong with your feet?" he asked the boy after a while, realizing that they pained him.

  Zarien shrugged, embarrassed. "I am not used to the dryland." Then he quickly changed the subject. "Siran, we should be thinking about returning to sea where—"

  "Zarien," Tansen warned, "not now." He wasn't up to walking and arguing. After studying the boy's shoes for a moment, he ventured, "Those aren't yours, are they?"

  "I... I, uh—" Zarien's sun-bronzed complexion darkened.

  "Stole them?" Tansen guessed.

  "My bare feet were not used to all these... these rocks and pebbles and thorns and—"

  "No, I suppose not."

  "And I am not used to walking so much."

  "Why not?" asked Mirabar. She was directly ahead of Tansen, and turned often to look at both him and the boy with a thoughtful expression. Najdan led the way and Lann brought up the rear.

  "He's from a sea-bound clan," Tansen answered so that Zarien, who looked self-conscious, wouldn't have to.

  "I've heard about them. People—whole clans—never going ashore," Mirabar said. "That seems so strange
."

  Zarien bristled. "Have you ever been to sea?"

  "No," she said.

  "Not once in your whole life?" Zarien prodded.

  "No."

  "Well, that seems very strange to me."

  "Generation after generation?" Mirabar asked. "Your parents, their parents, your ancestors... No one ever comes ashore?"

  Zarien looked uncomfortable and shrugged. "Have your shallah parents ever been to sea?"

  "I don't know who they were," Mirabar replied.

  Zarien's face darkened again. "I'm sorry. I only meant—"

  "I know what you meant," Mirabar said without rancor. "I'm used to not knowing."

  "Can you..." Zarien frowned and asked her, "Can you really get used to that?"

  "You can get used to anything," she replied, and Tansen knew she spoke from experience.

  Her response seemed to send Zarien into deep thought. Tansen wondered if he was considering all that he would now have to get used to if his clan really wouldn't take him back. Tansen himself had gone alone into exile at a young age, so he understood some of what the boy must be going through, though he had only a very vague idea of the life Zarien had led until now.

  Now that Tansen was somewhat rested and his wound healed, he discovered that the distance he had previously covered with Zarien was not nearly as far as he had thought. They reached the scene of the ambush sooner than he expected, even at this slow pace. The corpses had ripened under Sileria's strong sun and truly stank. Zarien made a sound of disgust and moved upwind.

  "Six," Najdan said, gazing at the bodies. "And you were already wounded." He eyed Tansen and paid him a rare compliment. "Speaking as an assassin, I'm glad you're the only shatai in Sileria."

  "I'm lucky Searlon is in Shaljir," Tansen admitted. "They were good, but if he had been among them..." He shook his head, knowing he might well have died had Searlon been among them. Searlon was even better at killing than Najdan, and Najdan was among the very best. He shook off the thought and asked, "Do you know any of them?"

  "Yes. All but this one. He must have been new." Najdan touched the nearest corpse with the toe of his well-made boot. "That one..." He pointed briefly with his chin to the one who had been so hard to kill, the one who had nearly finished Tansen. "He and I were friends." Najdan's voice didn't change and his expression remained hard. After a moment he added, "We are better off with him dead."

  "He was a brave man," Tansen said politely. "A strong fighter."

  "Yes," Najdan turned his back on his former friend and met Tansen's gaze. "He was. You did well."

  Tansen knew there was nothing else to say, so he turned to see where Zarien had gone. The boy was sitting on a rock, resting his sore feet and keeping his face turned away from the carnage.

  Lann and Najdan began piling up the bodies while Tansen, now feeling the sting of his many smaller wounds and burns, collected the six shir which, by virtue of victorious combat with the assassins, were now his and his alone. Although two of the assassins' jashareen were too fouled to be of use even after washing, he took the other four from the bodies. Like the shir, they would be useful in the plan he was forming.

  He put all these things into his satchel and joined Zarien upwind as Mirabar began chanting over the bodies. Najdan's shir, never entirely still in her presence, began shuddering wildly in his jashar. A moment later, the six shir in Tansen's satchel started doing the same, making noise as they rattled against each other.

  Zarien jumped to his feet and snatched up his stahra as if ready for a fight. "What's happening?"

  "It's nothing," Tansen told him. "Shir do that in response to Guardian magic." The stahra was doing nothing, he noticed, in response to Mirabar's gathering power. It must only respond when Zarien was threatened. "Are all stahra enchanted?" he asked.

  Zarien's expression suggested this was a stupid question. "None of them are."

  Could the boy not know? Tansen decided this was a discussion which could wait until later.

  Mirabar, having recited the traditional blessings over the bodies of their enemies, spread her hands wide and blew gently onto the bodies of the dead. Her breath turned into a fiery mist that grew into a glowing flame.

  Tansen heard Zarien make a stifled sound of astonishment as the flame quickly expanded to ignite the entire pile of six men into a blazing bonfire which took only seconds to tower well above its creator. Mirabar kept chanting, her voice melodious and slightly husky, spinning through Tansen's senses as she sent his enemies to... whatever the ultimate fate of assassins was.

  "So..." Zarien swallowed, watching the scene with wide-eyed fascination. "So that's Guardian fire magic?"

  Tansen replied, "That's only some of it. She has many gifts."

  "Do they all?"

  "The Guardians all have gifts, some more than others. But she," Tansen said with a touch of pride which he knew not really his to feel, "is unique."

  "In the way she looks?"

  "In her gifts." He paused and added, "And in her looks, as far as I know."

  "She would be... well, startling to come upon unexpectedly in the night," Zarien admitted.

  The boy obviously meant it without any of the superstition which had so often characterized people's attitudes in the mountains, including Tansen's own, so he merely said, "Yes."

  "And she keeps company with an assassin."

  "Yes."

  "Your friends are... dangerous people," Zarien ventured.

  And these are the ones I trust, Tansen reflected wryly, but he only repeated, "Yes."

  When she was done with her ritual, Mirabar joined them upwind of the fire. "You have no tunic?" she asked, glancing at Tansen's bare chest.

  "No."

  "Perhaps Najdan would loan you his."

  "I'll be all right until we reach the caves." What few spare personal possessions he owned were kept there.

  She looked uncertain. "We agreed to meet Cheylan back here after—"

  "Cheylan is here?" Tansen was surprised—and not pleased.

  "Yes. He returned this morning from the east. He told us about this." She gestured to the bonfire, indicating the six bodies that Tansen had left lying in bloody disarray on the path to Dalishar. "So we came in search of you."

  "Where is he?"

  "There's a Sanctuary not far from here."

  "Sister Velikar's Sanctuary." He nodded. "I know."

  "We thought you might have tried to reach it if you were too badly hurt to make it to Dalishar," Mirabar said. "So Cheylan and three of the men have gone there."

  "But Najdan saw my trail—"

  "Only after Cheylan had gone," she replied.

  "Ah." Tansen said nothing else, but he doubted, after what Najdan had said earlier about the trail he and Zarien had left, that the assassin had failed to notice it immediately. Tansen thought it far more likely that Najdan had simply been eager to get rid of Cheylan, whom he didn't like. Since Tansen didn't like him, either, he was in sympathy with the ploy. Cheylan was an ally, but no friend. "Why is Cheylan back?"

  "I didn't ask. When we realized you had been attacked and were missing, I just..." Mirabar sighed and looked off into the distance. "I didn't even tell him about Josarian's death."

  "But word must be spreading," he said, aware of the flush of pleasure inside him. She had cared so much she'd forgotten about everything else. Unlike Elelar, the woman who had held him in thrall for so long, this one cared. "Every moment that we lose—"

  "Did you do it?" Mirabar asked suddenly, without looking at him, her voice low.

  The warm pleasure inside him died in the chill of reality.

  He didn't have to ask what she meant. Tansen had known, ever since leaving Elelar alive that night, that he would have to face this moment. If Mirabar had not feared him dead and been so relieved to see him alive, it would have been the first thing she said to him: Did you do it?

  "No," he replied. Evasion would only make it worse. "I didn't kill her."

  Out of the corner of his eye
, he saw Zarien's head swivel suddenly in his direction, the discussion drawing his attention away from the magical fire that continued to burn so brightly, so silently compared to an earthly fire.

  Mirabar didn't move, didn't look at him, but he could sense her tension building, and he could practically feel the heat of her anger. There was so much to tell her, so many reasons that he couldn't kill Elelar for what she had done. And this particular moment wasn't the right time or place to talk about it. He tried to think of what to say—and waited too long.

  "That's it?" she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "That's all you have to say about it?"

  "No." Since the time and place would probably never be right, he realized, he ignored Zarien's fascinated stare and said, "I didn't kill her because—"

  "I don't care why you didn't do it!"

  Zarien jumped as Mirabar leaped to her feet in fury. Even Tansen flinched a little. Lann and Najdan, standing too far away to distinguish Mirabar's words but close enough to hear her tone, whirled to face them. Lann took a step forward but Najdan stopped him from coming any closer.

  Tansen rose to his feet, too. "Mira—"

  "She betrayed Josarian, and you let her live!" The hot rage in her voice was matched by the yellow fury flashing from her eyes. "She betrayed us all, and you swore would kill her. And you didn't!"

  "I realized I cou—"

  "I know why you didn't do it," she snapped bitterly.

  Tears filled Mirabar's eyes. She clenched her teeth and raised her arm. Tansen saw the blow coming. He watched her arm swing, and he didn't move. He felt her palm connect with his cheek, and he welcomed the flash of pain, the loud crack of flesh against flesh. He welcomed the way his head whipped around with the force of her blow, the way his ears rang. He wanted the hot sting to be worse, to last longer than it would.

  Tansen could make no other decision than the one had he made that night in Elelar's shadowed bedchamber, but he wanted Mirabar to punish him for it as he deserved. He had not avenged the betrayal of his bloodbrother. He had not avenged the torena's betrayal of them all. And he had neglected this woman in the throes of his obsession with another.

  Now Najdan came closer, though Lann did not.

  Hit me again, Tansen thought, because Mirabar was too small and too unaccustomed to violence for the first blow to hurt as he deserved. Hit me again.