The White Dragon

by Laura Resnick

  "Searlon."

  "No. Say only what I've just told you. You don't know the assassin's name," she said. "You only know that it's your duty as a Valdan—"

  "But I—"

  "—to warn the Imperial Advisor that his life may be in danger."

  "That's all?" Ronall asked blearily.

  "That's all."

  "How will that secure a meeting with this... Searlon?"

  "He's there, somewhere in the Palace, close to Kaynall," she said. "He'll hear about it."

  "And?"

  "And he'll want to know how I knew he was there, and what I'm planning. Searlon is very clever. He may even suspect it's a message from me." Elelar shrugged. "But I doubt Kaynall will."

  "And then?"

  "Searlon will come," she said. "He'll find me."

  Ronall frowned in foggy bewilderment. "Why?"

  "Because, like his master, Searlon lives according to the old proverb."

  "Which is?"

  "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer."

  "Oh. Then I was right," he said with bitter satisfaction. "Nothing ever really changes here."

  Elelar sighed. "Will you remember any of this in the morning?"

  "Probably not."

  "We'll go over it again tomorrow."

  "Fine. Can I have the decanter now?"

  "You promise you'll do it?" she prodded. "You'll go to Kaynall?"

  "I promise," he said wearily. "You married me for my Valdani blood, so I suppose you can't help trying to use it yet again."

  "Yes," Elelar said quietly. "That's why I married you."

  "And also because you thought I'd always be too drunk to notice your activities." He remembered their conversation when he visited her in prison—the first honest conversation of their marriage.

  "And you were."

  "So let me be once again the man you married," he said. "Give me the damned decanter, Elelar."

  She came closer and handed it to him. He didn't even bother fumbling for his cup, just raised the bottle to his lips and drank deeply.

  Soon his senses spun away from his sorrows, and his blood felt that longed-for flow of comfort. Soon the world reeled around him, enchanted instead of bleak, gentle instead of harsh, forgiving instead of condemning. His thoughts flowed more calmly as the jasmine-tinged liquid warmed his belly, and his heart stopped aching as the wine cooled his grievances.

  He didn't know when Elelar had left the room, he only knew she was gone now. But he had the wine and so he didn't miss her.

  So Elelar thought she and some assassin could convince Kaynall to surrender Shaljir without a fight? So Josarian was dead, slaughtered by his own kind? So Elelar would never let Ronall touch her again? So he wouldn't belong to native-ruled Sileria any more than he had belonged to Valdani-occupied Sileria...

  So what?

  More wine, he thought.

  Dar had raged wildly the other night and shaken the ground from Liron to Cavasar, but Shaljir's walls were still standing, awaiting violent assault and massive bloodshed. The Valdani fled this land by the thousands, and Ronall couldn't go with them. Silerians celebrated every new victory for the rebels, every Valdan they killed, and he couldn't celebrate with them.

  More.

  His wife despised him. The Outlookers who'd guarded his cell had despised him. His father was disappointed in him, and his mother made excuses for him.

  Ronall felt tears of futile shame slide down his cheeks, and he poured wine down his throat, wishing for something stronger, longing for oblivion.

  He was wrong. So wrong. Sileria was changing. Everything was changing. Unprecedented days of glory and of horror washed across the only land he could ever call home, yet he hid here in his wife's house, confused, afraid, and useless.

  How would his life end?

  Had it ever even begun?

  More...

  Chapter Twelve

  In the embrace of memory,

  the heart always bleeds anew.

  —Kintish Proverb

  "Father!"

  Armian didn't respond. The wind was high, carrying away Tansen's voice, and the assassin's attention was fixed on the coast below them.

  They were on the cliffs east of Adalian, walking rather than riding, since it was a dark-moon night and the landscape was too treacherous for horses. The long rains had finally come, the season of heavy storms when the sun-baked land renewed itself. A fierce coastal wind swept the downpour sideways, drenching Tansen and his companions. Elelar was lagging behind. The young torena was tired, unused to such hardship and exertion.

  Tansen knew he should do it now.

  "Father," he said again.

  Armian still didn't hear him, and now he knew it was just as well. He couldn't look into his father's eyes and do this terrible thing. And he certainly couldn't succeed if Armian saw it coming.

  He must do it now, before Elelar caught up to them, to where Armian stood boldly at the cliff's edge searching the cove below for some sign of the Moorlanders he awaited. Tansen must do it before Elelar came closer, because a woman shouldn't see such a thing.

  His heart sick with anguish, his stomach churning with mingled guilt and terror, Tansen fingered the new yahr his bloodfather had recently given him. Armian had gotten it from Kiloran while they were the waterlord's guests. Something special for his son, he had said, something to honor such a fine young man. Made of petrified Kintish wood, it would do the job.

  Fast, please Dar, let it be fast. Let him not suffer. I can't bear to make him suffer...

  It was Tansen's weakness, Armian said, this distaste for suffering. Armian had no such weakness. By now, Tansen had seen him make too many men suffer to doubt this. Now he knew that an assassin wasn't indifferent to killing. An assassin relished it.

  Tansen withdrew his yahr from his jashar, the belt which would now never be knotted to identify him as Armian's bloodson, which would never bear the yellow beads of an assassin.

  He must be quick.

  Father!

  He must be stealthy and take him by surprise. The moment Armian knew what he intended, it would be too late. Armian was bigger than Tansen. Armian was so fast, so strong, so skilled.

  My father is a great warrior.

  He saw the black-clad silhouette faintly outlined against the tormented coastal sky and crept forward, squinting against the rain, ignoring the howling wind and the keening cry of protest in his own heart.

  My father is a cold-blooded killer who will rule this land in darkness and drought, in terror and bloodshed with Kiloran, if I don't do this now.

  Armian's back was still to him, but now he sensed his son's presence. He said something over his shoulder to Tansen. It sounded like he was cursing the weather, the darkness that made it impossible to see if a ship was down there in the cove.

  Now, Tansen knew, it must be now.

  He swung his yahr.

  Goodbye, father.

  He struck out. The blow connected, reverberating through Tansen's soul. Armian fell to his knees.

  Father!

  Armian was stunned but not unconscious. The yahr continued its arc as Tansen swung it back around over his head, without pausing, to strike again. Armian had been instructing him, had taught him not to hesitate over the death blow lest his still-living opponent seize the opportunity to fight back.

  A great fighter, Armian instinctively rolled away from the next blow, moving so fast he escaped it entirely, while simultaneously reaching for his shir. Even in the dark, the wavy-edged dagger gleamed boldly with Kiloran's sorcery.

  I'm dead, Tansen thought.

  But Armian froze, like a statue, when he saw his son standing above him on that windswept cliff, swinging his yahr with deadly intent.

  If Tansen lived for all eternity, he would never forget the sound of Armian's voice as he said, "Tansen?"

  Tansen had learned well from Armian. He took advantage of the moment of surprise, of his opponent's brief hesitation. He struck Armian in the face
with another blow of that fatally hard yahr.

  Now Armian knew, now he realized, now he moved to fight. But he was injured, and it was too late for him. That shocked pause, that stunned moment of inaction when he couldn't believe his attacker was Tansen, had ensured his defeat. On the next blow, he dropped his shir. By the fifth blow, he was dead.

  Tansen stood in the rain, staring down at Armian's corpse. After a moment, he sank to his knees.

  "Forgive me, father," he whispered.

  The night rained down upon him in dark condemnation for what he had done. Dar would punish him terribly for this, he knew. How could She not? The prayer he had uttered before murdering the Firebringer, his plea that Armian should not suffer, was the last time he would ever ask Dar for anything, the last time he would ever pray to Her.

  Enter not prayerless into the domain of Dar...

  Dark, the night was dark. His grief was forever stained with shame, his sorrow forever marred by guilt.

  ... for She forgives no slight....

  ...forgives no slight...

  ...forgive...

  "I imagine he was not altogether bad," Josarian said.

  "No," Tansen agreed. "He was not."

  Josarian? Where Josarian had come from?

  "Dar gives, and Dar takes away," said Josarian.

  "Dar didn't do this," said Tansen. "But She let you die." He looked up at his brother. "You were the Firebringer, not Armian. Why did She let you die?"

  "That's right," Josarian said, looking surprised. "I'm dead. Like him."

  Now Armian opened his dead eyes and repeated, "Tansen?" in that voice Tan would never forget, that shocked, disbelieving voice. That voice so rich with betrayal, so wounded by treachery...

  "No!"

  Tansen came hurling out of the dark world of his nightmares, scrambling wildly away from the memories that had chased him across the years and through many foreign lands ever since the night he had killed Armian.

  His chest heaved with panting breaths as the world reeled around him, reality slowly taking shape out of dreams. The windswept cliffs of the Adalian coast gradually faded into the glowing interior of one of Dalishar's sacred, silent caves.

  He was sticky with sweat, shaking with fear, dizzy with nausea.

  "Siran?"

  Tansen recognized the boy's voice.

  "I'm all right." He heard how breathless and thin his own voice sounded, and he focused on making it more reassuring. "I'm fine."

  "What is it?" Zarien mumbled, still half asleep.

  "Nothing," he said. "Go back to sleep. It's nothing."

  Just my ghosts. Just the demons of my dreams. They won't hurt you, son. It's not you they've come for.

  The boy squinted sleepily, then lowered his head. Watching him, Tansen thought he fell asleep again the moment his cheek touched the borrowed bedroll. He gazed down at the sea-born youth for a moment, sad and envious all at once. He hadn't slept like that, in such deep innocence, for ten years. His nights were riddled with guilt, his dreams laced with his sins.

  He needed air. He stalked past Lann, whom even an earthquake couldn't wake (as the others had delighted in telling him upon his arrival), and escaped from the cave. A sentry outside glanced at him questioningly. He shook his head and went to the edge of the clearing, gazing across the moonlit night to where Darshon rose majestically in the distance.

  The night breeze wafted through his hair, clean at last. He had bathed after eating, washing off the filth of violence and illness. The shir cut on his left palm was freshly dressed by Rahilar's expert hands, and her practiced healing magic had made it hurt less. He hoped the sea-born boy's feet hurt less, too, now; they had looked terrible when Sister Rahilar removed Zarien's stolen shoes to examine them.

  He hoped the boy's dreams would not be troubled by the memory of those six ravaged corpses he'd stumbled across yesterday. No one that young should see something like that.

  Don't dwell on it, Armian would have said, shrugging off violent death with the ease of a born assassin.

  Armian...

  Tansen's bloodfather had been right—the first time was indeed the hardest. Tansen, who had killed so many men by now, couldn't remember another death which had been so hard to inflict.

  Except Elelar's, of course. And so he hadn't done it.

  If he had never cared about her, never been enthralled by her, never once believed himself in love with her, perhaps he could have done it.

  But perhaps not, even so.

  His sins were too close to hers. She had tried to kill the Firebringer and, in slaying Armian, so had Tansen. She had betrayed Josarian, an ally, believing she did so to save Sileria from the Valdani. Tansen had betrayed his own bloodfather, believing he did it to save Sileria from the Society.

  He knew with all his heart that Elelar was wrong. Josarian's death put them in desperate peril. And he knew that she had believed that night on the cliffs—and believed to this very day—that Tansen had been wrong when he killed Armian, thus destroying the assassin's plan to use Moorlander forces to drive the Valdani out of Sileria and then rule the island nation with Kiloran.

  Yes, Elelar was still his weakness, but Mirabar—What in the Fires am I going to do about her?—was wrong about the reason.

  Elelar's sins were his sins. She was the mirror of his life, the banner of their culture, the sorrow of their times. She was Sileria, in all its self-destructive courage, in all its bitter sacrifice and traitorous ferocity. And in the end, so was he.

  If they couldn't change, then how could Sileria? If they couldn't reap something worthy from their bloodstained past, then how could their country?

  Josarian had been all that was good in Sileria, the purity of intent and strength of heart that had somehow survived the centuries of servitude, poverty, and humiliation. Who else could have united Sileria's feuding, disparate factions and been embraced by Dar Herself? Who else could have resurrected Sileria's pride in itself and sown belief in place of resignation?

  But even Josarian had been caught in the web of Sileria's worst flaws, and he always knew it: I can take care of my enemies, but Dar shield me from my friends.

  If they were to triumph and survive as a nation, then betrayal and vengeance must cease to be their whole way of life. Tansen had started by not killing Elelar. He would finish by destroying the Society and killing Kiloran, not as a shallah seeking vengeance, but as a shatai eliminating the worst threat to freedom in Sileria.

  Unfortunately, he also knew the shallaheen were far more likely to understand vengeance as a motive for fighting the Society than anything else. They were far more likely to oppose Kiloran if fired by revenge than if coaxed by abstract philosophy.

  Leadership called for compromise, and war called for expedience. In the morning, he would motivate his people according to their past. In the end, though, he must somehow help them find a new future.

  Tansen sighed wearily and stretched his stiff muscles. He knew he should try to get more sleep. Dawn was far away, and he was still weak. He had too much to do and too many responsibilities to indulge in a slow physical recovery.

  So, after another deep breath of cool night air, he reluctantly returned to the cave and his bedroll. Lann was snoring. As Tansen lay down, Zarien started murmuring in his sleep.

  Tansen closed his eyes and tried to ignore them both.

  ...Armian froze, like a statue, when he saw his son standing above him on that windswept cliff, swinging his yahr with deadly intent.

  "Tansen?" he said in a voice torn by shock and disbelief....

  Tansen's eyes snapped open.

  "Sea king..." Zarien muttered.

  Lann's snoring was louder than an eruption of Darshon.

  Tansen sighed. Dawn would be a long time coming.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He who has warned you has

  not killed you—as yet.

  —Harlon the Waterlord

  Northern Sileria

  The Year of Late Rains

  Tra
veling toward Shaljir, where they would seek out this thing called the Alliance, Tansen and Armian avoided the Outlookers by sticking to the high mountain paths and old smuggling trails of northern Sileria. Sometimes they found them without help. Sometimes a local shallah recognized something special enough in the man or sorrowful enough in the boy that he'd simply tell them which way to go. And sometimes Armian forced people to give him the information he sought.

  The first time Armian struck a stranger without provocation, Tansen was shocked. He would see it again, would even grow used to it by the time they reached Shaljir. But the first time befuddled him with stunned confusion.

  It was the act of an assassin, he knew. It was exactly the sort of penalty some of them had inflicted on Tansen's own people from time to time, leaving tears, blood, and humility in their wake. Tansen knew it was Armian's birthright, the merciless strength of his kind.

  Somehow, though, knowing this didn't prepare Tansen for it, nor did the knowledge govern his reaction.

  "Siran!" Tansen protested, watching Armian beat a spice monger who'd just refused to answer Tansen's question about a safe pass through the next mountain range. Some women screamed. Children scattered. Men backed away. Tansen never used Armian's name in front of others, since the Outlookers were undoubtedly still searching for the Firebringer. "Siran," he repeated.

  Armian ignored him, grabbed the hair of the man he had just knocked down, and smashed his face into a table in the marketplace of the village they were in.

  "Now," Armian said pleasantly to the man who lay dazed and bleeding. "Perhaps we can count on a more courteous answer to the boy's question?"

  "Ah... Uh..." The man panted with incoherent fear.

  "Please, siran," Tansen whispered. People were staring, murmuring, waiting to see what would happen next. "We can find the pass without—"

  "This man will be happy to guide us to the pass." Armian shook his victim. "Won't you?"

  "Yes!" the man wailed. "Yes, siran!"