The White Dragon

by Laura Resnick

  "Then show us now." Armian released him and kicked him into the middle of the street.

  While the tense crowd stared, the spice monger picked himself up. "Yes, siran, this way, siran."

  No one interfered.

  No one ever interfered with the Society in Sileria. And while Armian wasn't wearing his jashar and had not withdrawn his shir—which was hidden in his boot—everyone here could see that he was an assassin. A powerful one. A ruthless one.

  Throughout Tansen's life, he had been part of the humble crowds who watched assassins take what they wanted and do as they pleased. He had admired their courage, respected their position, and envied their power. He had secretly wanted to be one of them, and he had even stated this ambition aloud to Armian, who took him seriously.

  Now he discovered that being someone the crowd stared at with fear wasn't as thrilling as he had supposed. Seeing Armian attack Outlookers in Gamalan had felt very different from watching him beat an unarmed merchant today. Armian hadn't needed to do this, not really. They could have found their way without help, or they could have asked someone else for directions. The assassin's sudden burst of violence against a recalcitrant spice monger... Well, it was far from glorious. And now the man's obsequious fear and babbled pleas gave Tansen no pleasure, no sense of power.

  In fact, he felt... ashamed. He was eager to leave this village and hopeful that he'd never have to come back.

  So he responded with alacrity to Armian's clipped command that he keep up. He maintained an uneasy silence as the sun rose higher, following Armian and the man who led them, having no idea what to say or how to behave. When they reached the hidden trail leading to a pass which would get them safely past a town swarming with Valdani, the spice monger gladly accepted Armian's dismissal. Tansen avoided the man's eyes as he departed.

  Armian's dark gaze followed the man, but his words were for Tansen. "Pardon one offense, and you encourage the commission of many."

  "I..." Tansen didn't know what to say.

  "I'm telling you this for your own good," Armian continued. "Permit rudeness, and you're offered insolence next. Permit insolence, and opposition follows. And opposition..." Armian looked at him now. "That we cannot allow."

  "No, siran."

  Armian was right. Of course Armian was right.

  "If you want to be one of us," Armian told him, "you cannot be one of them. It is the first rule."

  "Who..." Tansen nodded his understanding, then asked, "Who taught it to you?"

  "My father's assassins. The ones who went into exile with me, my mother, and my uncle."

  "Oh. Yes. Of course."

  "They taught me what they had learned from my father."

  "Harlon was..." A wise man? A shrewd man? "... a great waterlord," Tansen concluded at last. "I've heard many stories about him."

  "Our destiny," Armian taught him, "is to be obeyed. Demanding obedience is the source of the Society's power."

  "I thought water—"

  "And what do the waterlords seek when they withhold water?"

  Tansen hesitated only a moment. "They seek obedience."

  "Now do you understand?"

  "Yes, Armian. Now I understand."

  They were enjoying the hospitality of Sanctuary the night Armian asked Tansen to become his son. The three Sisters who lived here were old and timid. One of them was deaf, and another had been maimed by Valdani torture. Armian was polite to them, but when they began their evening prayers to Dar, he vacated their stone dwelling.

  Tansen, who knew better than to offend the destroyer goddess, prayed with the Sisters before following Armian outside. The night air was cool and slightly damp.

  "I've been thinking about what you said," Armian announced when Tansen joined him around a small fire he had built at the edge of Sanctuary grounds. "A man without a clan is no one in the mountains. A shallah is nothing without his kin."

  "Yes." It hurt to dwell on it.

  "Now you're alone," Armian continued, his voice kind despite the bleak words. "As I am alone."

  "You? But there are many Idalari. You clan is very—"

  Armian made a dismissive gesture. "My parents are dead. I've never met any of the Idalari, and they will be strangers to me when I finally do. At least, at first. I have no brothers. No wife." He paused and added with emphasis, "No son."

  Tansen stared at him in the firelight as Armian held up his right palm, showing Tansen its scarred flesh.

  "My father sliced my palm when I was named. Years later, his assassins cut my palm when they made me one of them." Then he held up his left hand. It was smooth, unmarked by bloodpact relations or bloodfeuds. "I know that here in the mountains, you can choose a new father to replace the one you've lost."

  "I..." Tansen didn't want to presume, though his heart pounded as he realized what Armian must be leading up to. "I lost him so long ago that I don't remember him."

  "A boy needs a father. Even," Armian added quickly, "a very brave, capable boy who is nearly a man."

  Tansen's eyes misted, embarrassing him. Pride filled his throat, making it impossible for words to escape. The greatest moment of his life was taking place in the dark, far from anyone else who might have cared, and only after his family was dead. Were a man's great moments always like this, he wondered?

  "Will you honor me, Tansen," Armian asked formally, "and become my son?"

  The Firebringer wants to be my bloodfather.

  Tansen's chest rose and fell, breath gusting in and out as his feelings welled up, threatening to propel him across the sky like a shooting star.

  A man whose name lived in Silerian legend wanted Tansen as his bloodson. He was a man whom no one dared to insult, a man whose great destiny shone plainly in his proud face and ready courage.

  Tansen crossed his fists and bowed his head. "The honor would be mine, siran."

  Armian smiled. Then he took the small knife which they carried among their few possessions and stuck it into the fire, heating the blade for the bloodpact ceremony.

  "And perhaps," Armian suggested, "you could stop calling me that."

  "Yes, Armian."

  "Actually, I was thinking..."

  "Yes?"

  "Well... you could call me father." Armian shrugged casually, staring into the fire. "If you wanted to."

  The wind stirred the vast leaves of the gossamer trees. In the darkened forest, something stalked and caught its prey, which squealed in panic a moment before dying. Overhead, the twin moons gleamed on the snow-capped peak of Darshon, which had never looked more beautiful.

  "Yes, father," Tansen replied.

  "That must be Illan," Armian said, gazing down at a large town from the mountaintop where they stood together, surveying the countryside below.

  The diagonal cut of the bloodpact ceremony still made Tansen's palm throb; but then, it was supposed to. The privileges and responsibilities of a bloodpact relation were as binding as those which a shallah owed to the family he'd been born into. The pain was meant to remind him of the commitment he had made, and the scar it would leave was meant to remind him of its permanence.

  The Sisters had cleaned and dressed the cut on his hand, as well as the one on Armian's. Then the two of them left Sanctuary and continued the journey to Shaljir.

  Now Tansen pointed to the broad ribbon of silver-blue descending from the mountains to weave through the lowlands below them. "Then that would be the Idalar River."

  "The Idalar," Armian breathed, his interest sharpening as he gazed at it.

  It was, after all, the foundation of his clan's power, the water source which Harlon had used to bring the Valdani to their knees. The reprisals for Harlon's sorcery had been terrible, costing thousands of Silerian lives. But he was remembered as a hero in the mountains. A Silerian waterlord had opposed the Empire and made the Outlookers bleed.

  Now Kiloran, who was himself reputed to have learned water magic from one of the Idalari waterlords, controlled the Idalar. It was the chief source of water
for the great city of Shaljir, where Armian hoped to find the Alliance.

  Armian pulled his gaze away from the river below them and looked back at the mountains they would now leave. "By all the gods above and below, this is a beautiful country."

  "More beautiful than others?" Tansen asked.

  "Oh, yes," Armian said. "More beautiful than anything I've ever seen."

  "Is that why the Valdani want it?"

  Armian grimaced. "They want it because it is their nature to want whatever is not already theirs." He clapped Tansen on the back and said, "Let's go. If we move fast, we can make Illan by sunset. Doesn't a bed sound good for a change?"

  "Yes, father."

  "And after that, Shaljir."

  The exotic maze of Shaljir's streets and the sparkling glory of its many fountains faded from Tansen's mind as he and Armian were shown into the home of Toren Gaborian shah Hasnari. Armian said that the toren was the leader of the Alliance in Sileria and could take him to Kiloran. Tansen had never heard of the Hasnari, but this palatial house with its luxuriant furnishings left him in no doubt of their wealth and status.

  "I've never seen anything like this," he whispered to Armian, who had led him here through a long afternoon of asking throughout Shaljir where the toren lived. The city-dwellers of Shaljir were not as reticent as shallaheen, but the city was so enormous that, even so, finding this house had taken some time.

  "It's impressive," Armian agreed. "But even here, you can see what it means to be ruled by the Valdani." He gestured to a large, discolored square on the floor. When Armian saw that Tansen didn't understand its significance, he explained, "They've been selling things—there was once a rug there—to pay their taxes."

  "We had to." Startled, Tansen whirled around to face a young woman who spoke from the doorway. "The Outlookers beggared us with their demands for grain from our estates last year, and then the Society depleted our savings by abducting my grandfather." She arched her brows. "The ransom was very high."

  The abduction would have occurred during the long rains, of course, when the Society had trouble exacting tribute from the populace. It was the one time of year when water was so plentiful in Sileria, the rivers so fast-flowing and abundant, that even the waterlords couldn't keep Sileria thirsty with their power. Abducting toreni and wealthy merchants was an old custom, a secondary source of income for the Society.

  "And you did not apply to Kiloran for help?" Armian asked.

  Tansen supposed that if these people could help Armian find Kiloran, then they must be under his protection.

  The young woman studied Armian with obvious interest as she replied, "We did. However, the captor was an enemy of his who would not listen to reason."

  "Who?"

  "It doesn't matter now. He's dead." She added significantly, "He was an enemy of Kiloran's, you see."

  Tansen stood transfixed, scarcely hearing her words. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Long-lashed dark eyes commanded a face of intelligent beauty which was framed by elaborately styled black hair. Her silken clothes were so much finer than those of any shallah woman—and noticeably less modest. He could see the shape of her breasts and her waist under its clinging fabric, and her pantaloons tapered down to hug her trim ankles like a lover.

  Heat flooded him, making his body alert and his wits dull. Her glance fluttered over him, and for the first time in his life, he wished he had better clothes, wished he were taller, broader, older. He could tell that several years separated them, and her gaze dismissed him as a mere boy before she returned her attention to Armian. He saw Armian take her hand, a liberty that few respectable shallah girls would permit upon meeting a strange man. But the toreni, Tansen knew, were different. Without introducing himself, Armian asked to see Gaborian.

  "Since the abduction, my grandfather is frequently too unwell to receive visitors," she said. "I am Elelar mar Odilan shah Hasnari, and I run this household now."

  Armian let his surprise show on his face. Even Tansen knew that, though of marriageable age, she was very young to run such a large household. He wondered what his father would do now, but the girl surprised them again.

  "And you," she said, "must be Armian." She smiled at Armian's wary expression and added, "The Alliance has been awaiting you, though we feared you might be dead."

  They slept in one of the vast house's bedchambers that night. The following morning, Gaborian was feeling strong enough to meet them briefly. It was the only time Tansen ever saw the dying old aristocrat. Later in the day, the young torena advised them that she had set in motion the slow process of contacting Kiloran to arrange a meeting.

  She added, "So perhaps you should tell me why you're here."

  "I've come home," Armian replied simply.

  "Why?" She sounded a little impatient.

  "To drive the Valdani out of Sileria, torena. Why else?"

  "I know what the shallaheen say about you, but I'm not a credulous peasant, and neither is Kiloran." The torena ignored Tansen, who gaped at her, shocked by such disrespect. "Do you actually have a plan?"

  Armian grinned. "It is a plan, young torena, which should please even you."

  "Well?" she prodded.

  "When I meet Kiloran, then I will speak." He shook his head when she started to protest. "I've already been betrayed once on this quest, torena, so I think it best to keep the details of my plans to myself for now. Until I meet Kiloran, all you need to know is that the Moorlanders propose... an alliance." He smiled beguilingly at her. Tansen would have been jealous had the torena responded in kind, but she only looked annoyed.

  However, she was born to centuries of practiced courtesy, so she said, "And how may we amuse you in Shaljir until such time as we receive a message from Kiloran?"

  "Ah, torena." Armian smiled again. "You will find that I'm really very easy to amuse."

  An assassin and a shallah boy staying as guests of a toren were bound to arouse interest if discovered, and that was the last thing they wanted. So, Elelar informed them, Gaborian advised her to move their guests to a safe inn in the oldest part of the city. The public house squatted deep in a maze of narrow, tangled streets that the wind never reached. It took days for Tansen to get used to the ancient odors and encroaching buildings.

  However, although he'd have liked to see more of the beautiful young torena, he felt more at ease in the humble inn than he had in her grand home. And Elelar did meet with them several times. Meanwhile, Tansen became friendly with the chubby, good-natured innkeeper who, he soon learned, was also part of this Alliance.

  The Alliance was a secret organization composed of people from many walks of Silerian life: toreni, merchants, Sisters, city-dwellers, and even certain members of the Honored Society—most notably, Kiloran himself. There were no shallaheen in this Alliance ("they're wild, violent, and distrustful of everyone who isn't a shallah," said the torena), and also no zanareen ("all mad") or Guardians ("not as long as the Society are in the Alliance"). However, there were many roshaheen. Individuals from several tribes of the Moorlands and from more than a dozen of the Kintish Kingdoms were involved in the Alliance.

  "Freedom from the Valdani," she explained to Tansen, "is our purpose, the goal we all work for."

  Her grandfather, Gaborian, had founded the Alliance. Elelar had been raised to participate in the work of the Alliance, and, though still young, she'd taken over many heavy responsibilities since Gaborian had become ill.

  It was a world Tansen had never imagined before, having known only the daily struggle of a humble mountain peasant's existence. Until finding Armian lying on the beach that first night, he had never even considered the possibility of freedom from the Valdani. Since then, he had believed Armian alone would somehow achieve it, with Dar's help. Now he realized that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people believed in it, regardless of Armian. People had been working for it since before he was born.

  "So why haven't you accomplished it in all these years?" he asked.

  El
elar's indignation over this simple question seemed unreasonable. After all, she had just admitted that Gaborian had been trying to get rid of the Valdani for many years.

  Armian's theory, related privately to Tansen at the inn, was that the members of the Alliance could scheme and plot and spy all they liked, but nothing could replace action—and they seemed sadly inadequate at that.

  "But now you are here," Tansen said.

  "Now I'm here," Armian agreed. "And we will have action. I guarantee it."

  Armian also told him what he wouldn't tell Elelar: the details of the Moorlanders' proposal. Tansen was his son, after all. Armian trusted him.

  "Control of Sileria is essential for control of the Middle Sea," Armian said. "And control of the Middle Sea is essential for control of a mainland empire the size of Valdania—especially if the Valdani want to keep extending their borders, which seems to be the case.

  "The free Moorlanders know this. Valdania breaks treaty after treaty with them, and some of them have finally started to realize that the Valdani won't rest until they've swallowed the Moorlands whole, down to the very last tribe."

  A keystone of the Moorlanders' plan to stop the Valdani advance, therefore, was to destroy their power in Sileria. They wanted to unite with the only organized force in the island nation, the only faction which had ever made the Valdani bleed: the Honored Society. Even in the Moorlands, they had heard of Kiloran and knew that he was the waterlord best able to speak on behalf of the Society.

  The free tribes had an obvious envoy among them, the only person in all of the Moorlands whom Kiloran was likely to trust. The exiled Silerian assassin who lived among them even had the honor of being the son of Harlon, the waterlord whom the Moorlanders remembered for his fabled opposition to the Empire.

  However, they didn't know how to contact Kiloran; nor did Armian, who had spent his whole life on the mainland. So their solution was to find the waterlord through Sileria's secretive network of strange bedfellows, the Alliance.

  "So you will..." Tansen shrugged, trying to work it out. "Abandon the Alliance once you find Kiloran?"