"Not quite," Baran pointed out. "After all, he does want me to help him kill you."
That finally shut Ferolen up. He stared at Baran with mingled curiosity and exasperation. Meriten's eyes narrowed.
"When you do that," Baran informed Meriten, "it makes you look a little like a wild boar. Strange that I hadn't noticed the resemblance until—"
"This is a truce meeting," Meriten snapped. "If you came here to kill—"
"You wound me!" Baran spread his hands in supplication. "Would I do anything so crude as disgrace a truce meeting with violence?"
"No, of course not," Ferolen said. "Just bad manners, veiled threats, boorish behavior, de—"
"And unfounded accusations," Kiloran said coolly. When Meriten and Ferolen glanced at him in surprise, he added, "Do you really believe Wyldon would confide in him?"
"Oh, that's good," Baran said. "Very good."
"You want us to believe he's lying?" Ferolen asked.
Kiloran didn't bother to answer. Instead, he told Baran, "You weary me."
"That happens easily," Baran replied, "when you get to be old, fat, and forgetful."
"I forget nothing," Kiloran said, his voice chilling the very air. "No promise. No dream. No friend or enemy. No favor or insult." He leaned slightly toward Baran as he added, "No mistake."
Mistake.
The word cut through Baran like a shir. As it was intended to. To hear Kiloran speak so casually of what he had done, to use such a barren word as mistake... A red haze of rage clouded Baran's mind. For an instant, he was young and blind with white-hot anger, agonizing loss, violent sorrow...
"No." He willed the feeling away, rejected the loss of control. He strangled the surge of devouring emotion that would have driven him mad long ago, had he given in to it.
But Kiloran knew. Kiloran had seen that brief moment of wild animal pain. He smiled, enjoying victory once again.
Now, Baran thought. I could do it now. Who cares if it's forbidden? Who cares if they all descend on me and kill me right here, as long as he dies first?
He called to the water in the fountain, that tainted, sad water which Josarian had used so ruthlessly to defeat his enemies. Baran touched it now with his senses and coaxed it to his will... Only to find it was already in someone else's grasp.
"Damn you," he whispered, feeling the sting of Kiloran's sorcery in conflict with his own. He knew the sensation of Kiloran's magic well, having felt it daily throughout their years-long war for control of the Idalar River.
Kiloran was still stronger, still the best. Baran could challenge him and survive. Baran could seize hold of Kiloran's water and cling to it with ferocious tenacity, violating Kiloran's command of it, mitigating his power. But Baran couldn't take the Idalar away from him, no matter how hard he tried. Now Kiloran had grasped Emeldar's central fountain before Baran reached for it, and Baran couldn't take this away either.
He might have fought for it, might have let this be the day he killed Kiloran or died trying... but fiery pain suddenly seized his innards. The world disappeared as he squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his jaw, and tried not to cry out in pain.
"Thank you." The voice was Kiloran's, satisfied and snide. He had felt Baran lose his grasp of the fountain's waters. Perhaps he even thought Baran had let go willingly.
He must master the pain. Mustn't let them see he was ill. He should have chewed some of those disgusting leaves of Velikar's before entering the village. Oh, well, too late to worry about it now. All he could do now was invoke the iron will that had made him who and what he was.
"You're welcome," he murmured, hoping his voice sounded dry rather than pain-fogged. He opened his eyes but kept his gaze lowered. "I wouldn't want to be rude."
A moment later, he heard Ferolen gasp. The gush of water filled Baran's ears as the sudden flare of sorcery filled his senses. If he didn't hate Kiloran so much, he would admire him; there was a time, actually, when he had. Now he heard Meriten rise to his feet, heard assassins shouting. As the pain faded, slowly receding into a dull ache, Baran looked up, though he could already guess was what happening.
A tower of water rose straight up from the fountain to loom over the square. At its peak, it divided into hundreds of strands that shot through the air, curving gracefully as they descended to touch the ground all around the square. An impressive spectacle, Baran acknowledged in silence, and one which effectively turned Emeldar into a watery cage. Although most of the riders reined in their mounts, one frightened horse lost its wits and careened straight into the silvery glowing bars that stood between it and the rest of Sileria. Baran winced when he heard the solid thud of horse and rider hitting crystallized water.
"Ouch." He said to Kiloran, "I don't like to criticize, but you could cause ill feeling with tricks like that."
"Oh, do shut up," Ferolen snapped.
"Are you always this edgy," Baran asked him, "or do I bring it out in you?"
"You bring it out in everyone," Meriten muttered.
Gulstan bellowed in outrage. His voice carried across the square as he shouted, "Stop this at once or we will respond in kind!"
"Oh, this should be good," Baran said. "I can't tell you how glad I am that I came here tod—"
"It'll be a bloodbath," Meriten snapped.
"Exactly," said Baran. "You're keeping up better than I expected."
Meriten's eyes iced over with fury. "If you—"
"That's enough," Kiloran said. "From all of you." The old waterlord caught Searlon's eye and nodded.
"Sirani," Searlon said, raising his voice to be heard above the threats of the trapped waterlords and their assassins. "My master means you no harm. Let us all remember that this is a truce meeting." He glanced over his shoulder at Baran, his handsome, scarred face disdainful. "And let us also remember that only one waterlord present is my master's enemy."
"I wish I had one like him," Baran remarked pleasantly. "But then, of course, so does everyone in Sileria." It was common knowledge that even some of the lesser waterlords feared Searlon—as did all of the Society's assassins.
"Unfortunately for you," Meriten advised him, "a waterlord must be wise and, oh, sane to command an assassin of Searlon's abilities."
"Why, Meriten, that was almost amusing," said Baran. "If you keep working at it, you may soon stop being the dreariest cuckold I've ever met. And speaking of your wife, tell her I—"
Meriten made an inarticulate sound of rage and leaped for Baran. Baran tried to block the first blow, but he was too slow. Meriten drove him to the ground. Baran fought back, but he could tell how his illness was weakening him. His defense was ineffectual, and Meriten's hands around his neck were making his vision go dark. Then someone plucked Meriten off him.
Choking and trying to conceal how shaken he was, Baran gasped for air. When his vision started to clear, he saw one of his own assassins, Vinn, holding a shir to Meriten's throat. As his gaze focused, he realized he was surrounded by seven or eight assassins now, all loyal to different masters, all with their shir drawn as they tried to decide what to do.
"Well." Baran suddenly felt weary. "That was interesting."
"Get up," Ferolen snapped.
When Baran spoke this time, still lying on the ground, it was to conceal that he needed time to gather strength before he could rise to his feet. "Do you know, Ferolen, from this angle, you don't look nearly so bald."
Ferolen's face contorted in a splendid surge of sputtering vexation. Baran eyed him, but the waterlord stepped back rather than giving into the impulse to kick him while he was down.
"Shall I kill him, siran?" Vinn asked Baran, still holding his shir to Meriten's throat. The jade and silver inlays, which always made Baran's shir among the most easily-identified in Sileria, gleamed on the hilt of Vinn's wavy-edged dagger.
Meriten stood very still, as vulnerable as anyone was to a shir. But, red-faced with rage, he ordered his men, "If I die here, kill them all! Kill them all!"
"You're going to upset pe
ople with talk like that." Feeling a little stronger, Baran rose to his feet. "This is a truce meeting," he admonished.
"And you have no idea," Kiloran murmured, gazing at Baran with interest, "how much I regret that at this moment."
Baran wondered if Kiloran knew, if he had guessed. Concealing his worry, like his weakness, he grinned. "When did you decide to start practicing honesty?"
The old man ignored the question and turned away to walk into the center of the square, stout, white-haired, dignified, and imbued with immense power. Yes, even Baran had to admit that Kiloran looked impressive as he stood at the center of his own high-domed, water-born prison and addressed the other waterlords.
"I sent no one against Wyldon," he said. "And I vow to punish any of my men who took any action against him."
"Rogue assassins?" Baran guessed loudly. "Growing wild and reckless as their master grows old and feeble?"
Kiloran ignored him. "However, without Wyldon here, instead of Baran, to speak for himself... Without the shir which Baran claims is proof that my men were involved... Without a Sister present to tell us that Wyldon and Baran did indeed meet at her Sanctuary, as Baran claims..." He shrugged. "Who can say what really happened?"
The others were great water wizards, powerful sorcerers who ruled whole territories, commanded hundreds of assassins, and made thousands submit to their will and their whims. But Kiloran was still the greatest, blessed with a fierce, deep, and finely honed power which awed even them. Individually, none of them could escape this prison while Kiloran lived, not unless he willed it. Even working together, they might not be able to break his power and melt the watery bars of this vast cage without Baran's help.
With Baran's help, they could probably kill Kiloran if they all united against him. But that kind of unity among them was no more likely than a Sister massacring a whole village. Besides, although none of them personally remembered the chaos which followed Harlon's death forty years ago, all of them knew about it. If Kiloran died violently today at his own truce meeting, the Society would erupt with such ruinous internal violence that Tansen wouldn't have to bother destroying them; they'd do it themselves.
These men knew all of this. Baran could see them consider their options and, one by one, decide that accepting Kiloran's word, rather than Baran's, might be the best choice. For the time being, anyhow.
Kariman, the most sensible of the three departing waterlords, was the first to dismount. He crossed the square, stood directly before Kiloran, and announced, "Perhaps we were too hasty."
"Perhaps something distressed you enough to affect your judgment," Kiloran suggested dryly.
Gulstan spoke loudly from his horse. "Forgive me for pointing out the obvious," he said to Kiloran, "but it's your fault that we can't kill him today."
Baran laughed. "Well, you could... But only think how happy that would make Tansen. All the chaos. All the mistrust and fighting amongst yourselves after my disgraceful murder at a truce meeting. All the condemnation and retribution from the rest of the Society." He nodded. "Yes, if I were going to accept Tansen's offer of friendship and devote myself to his cause, I think I'd try to get you all to kill me today. He'd be very happy with the results."
Dulien remarked, "Still, it might be worth the risk."
Searlon, seeing sudden movement among the men, said, "There will be no killing here today." His was a voice which commanded more attention than half the waterlords Baran had met.
Gulstan dismounted and said, "Perhaps Baran's tale about Wyldon's accusations is indeed best ignored for now."
Everyone present seemed to agree, and, as they all dismounted, the tension gradually dissipated. When Kiloran saw that the meeting would go forward according to his desires, he closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and released the water. The crystal-hard bars melted, curled upward, and soared toward the sky, glaring blindingly under the brilliant sun. One by one, with a speed and grace that made Baran recall his earliest attraction to water magic, they coiled inward and dissolved into the towering pillar of water which rose from the fountain; then it sank slowly in upon itself, giving off a faint glittering mist as it came to rest.
Baran shrugged, uninterested in pressing Wyldon's argument on his behalf. If Kiloran meant to kill Wyldon, that was Wyldon's problem, not Baran's. Besides, Baran realized with sudden amusement, there was always the faint possibility that Kiloran was actually telling the truth and knew nothing about the assault on Wyldon's stronghold.
Baran hoped so. It would make today's quarrel all the richer and more delightful in his memory.
Now Kiloran turned to him, impatience revealed in those dark, flat, snake-like eyes. "Will you accept my offer of a truce? Will you become my ally until our enemies are destroyed?"
Baran shook his head. "Oh, that's not what you came here to ask me, old man."
Kiloran's lips thinned. "Will you release the Idalar River to my control so that I may ensure that the city belongs to the Society and not to Josarian's people?"
"You really should have thought of these problems before you killed him," Baran chided.
Kiloran's eyes narrowed. "What's done is done. What is your answer? Are you with us or against us? Will you come home to your own kind?"
"The Guardians are with Tansen," Meriten reminded him, as if anyone in Sileria might have forgotten. "And there can only be one victor."
"Fire sorcery and water magic cannot exist together in Sileria," Kariman said. "Not any more."
"Certainly not since the leader of the Society murdered the Firebringer," Baran agreed reasonably.
"You have no future with them," Kiloran said, ignoring the jibe. "They are not your friends. They cannot be, and they know it. They will use you, abandon you, and then destroy you."
"All right, I'm confused," Baran said to Kiloran. "How would that be different from your friendship?"
"This isn't about you and me. It can't be. And I know you understand that, no matter what kind of games you play," Kiloran said. "Everything is at stake now, Baran. The destiny of Sileria. The future of the Society. The continued existence of the waterlords." Baran felt some of the old man's undeniable charisma as he came closer and insisted, "Water magic itself will now perish or survive in Sileria, based on whether we let Tansen and his followers destroy us or we destroy them."
Baran almost flinched when Kiloran reached for him, took him by the shoulders, and held him at arms length like a father imploring a recalcitrant son to listen and understand. It had been a long time since they had stood this close together; even longer since Kiloran had laid a hand upon him in friendship.
But this wasn't friendship. Kiloran had no friends. Not now, not then, not ever. This was coercion. And Baran had forgotten how good Kiloran was at it.
"This thing between us will be finished someday," Kiloran said, his voice as warm as it had been in the days when Baran had trusted him. "But you and I should finish it." His fingers tightened and his voice grew stronger as he demanded, "Do really want Tansen to finish it for you?"
"No," Baran said honestly. "I don't want Tansen or anyone else to finish it for me."
"Then come home," Kiloran urged. "Join us—join me—in securing the future." He nodded. "After we have put our house in order, then we can afford to fight within the Society. But for now, we must stand united—"
"United against our enemies," Baran said. "For this is what makes us stronger than they, what makes us endure while they perish."
"Do you accept the truce?" Kiloran asked.
Baran nodded. "I accept the truce."
"Will you relinquish control of the Idalar to me?"
"Ah." Baran smiled slowly. "Perhaps if we cooperated..."
"Release it," Kiloran demanded.
"He has accepted the truce and offered to cooperate," Kariman pointed out. "That's enough."
"It's not enough," Kiloran insisted. "Shaljir must—"
"Working together," Gulstan said with obvious relish, "you can starve the city of water. Baran has said he
will cooperate."
"If his friendship is secure," Dulien said to Kiloran, "why should you demand that he give up his power?"
Baran smiled innocently at Kiloran, enjoying the moment. "Shall we confirm our alliance, siran?"
He saw the old man struggle with his disappointment and anger. "If you betray me—"
"You'll kill me the way you killed Josarian?" Baran shrugged. "You can certainly try."
Kiloran prodded, "And you vow to help us destroy Tansen?"
"I'll even help you destroy Mirabar," Baran offered. "Although the rumor out of Zilar is that she's currently well-protected by... Now who was it again?" Baran snapped his fingers. "Oh, yes! Najdan the assassin. Now isn't that interesting?"
The other waterlords were clearly surprised by this news. So much for the quality of their informants. Kiloran's pasty face seemed to go even a little paler as his jaw worked, but he held his silence.
"So really," Baran mused, "I suppose there are actually several possible explanations for how one of your shir wound up buried in the, er, body of one of Wyldon's hideous sentries. Hmmm?"
"I will deal with Wyldon," Kiloran said coldly. "And also with Najdan."
"And what shall I do?"
"Go home to Belitar. Await my signal. Prepare to pull the Idalar out of Shaljir." Kiloran paused and said with a touch of malice, "I imagine you'll need to rest and save your strength."
So the old man had indeed noticed something. Baran wondered just how much he had guessed. No doubt, he would soon attempt to find out more. Fortunately, no one but Velikar knew, and she had promised not to talk. She might be a dreadful woman, but Baran felt certain she kept her promises.
"What about Tansen and Mirabar?" Baran asked.
"Yes," Kiloran said. "We must consider precisely how to eliminate them. But first..." The bucket of drinking water which rested in the shade roiled noisily in response to Kiloran's magic. A slender tendril of water arose from it and snaked through the air. "First, shall we confirm our alliance before these witnesses?"
"By all means."
Kiloran extended his arm to Baran, who took it in an elbow clasp. The old man's physical strength had ebbed and weakened over the years, but his sorcery had only grown stronger. Baran was aware of both things now as the snaking tendril of water started coiling around their clasped forearms. It flowed continuously, never resting, twining and re-twining coldly around their warm flesh as they recited their vows.
The White Dragon Page 45
