The White Dragon

by Laura Resnick

  However, he did remember the shocked look on the faces of the respectable old couple who ran the place when he boldly brought a woman through the front door after dark and commenced enjoying her right there in the public room.

  The disdain and disgust on their faces was nothing compared to the way his own wife looked at him every day—

  Get out! Get out! Get out!

  —so it didn't bother Ronall in the least. His pretty companion, however, had suggested they continue their play in more private surroundings. He had agreed, laughing off the scandalized mutterings he heard behind him as he led the young woman up the stairs to his bedchamber.

  Now he rolled over and reached for her.

  The bed was empty.

  Surprised, Ronall lifted his head and looked around. He couldn't see a thing. The moons were dark, and the candle had guttered out. He started to speak the girl's name, thinking she might be there, but then realized he didn't know it.

  "Are you still here?" he mumbled. "Hello?"

  No answer.

  He sat up and vaguely wondered what had happened to her. She wasn't a professional on the prowl for more customers before the night was over. Outside of the major cities, there were hardly any prostitutes in Sileria; the rigid mores of the lowlanders and the shallaheen made life too uncomfortable for such women in rural areas. She was just some adventurous, a poorly-guarded peasant girl who had understood what was expected of her in exchange for the money Ronall had offered her.

  A surprisingly experienced peasant girl, he recalled with a satisfied smile. One who gave good value for the money.

  Oh, well. He now recalled her saying something about being a local torena's maid, and he supposed she had felt obliged to return to her post before morning. Too bad. The night was no longer young, but there was still plenty of it left.

  With the mindless pleasures of the girl no longer available to him, Ronall's thirst grew stronger. He rose from the bed, pulled on his dirty and rumpled clothes, and stumbled around searching for his purse. The sour-faced old innkeepers were probably fast asleep by now, in the cold comfort of their joyless marriage bed, but Ronall would leave money for whatever he scavenged from their liquor supply downstairs. Although most of his moral standards were wallowing in the dust, he was nonetheless a toren and would not stoop to stealing from the shallaheen who owned dreary little place.

  After several fruitless attempts to lay his hands on his dwindling supply of money, he found a candle and the flint box. Even the light didn't solve his problem, though, and that was when he realized what had happened.

  That little slut stole all my money!

  He had ceased caring about almost anything, so wouldn't have minded if she'd taken a little more than what he'd already given her. But all of it?

  Women.

  You could always count on them to make you feel like sheep dung.

  His befuddled vexation turned to hot anger when he discovered she had also taken all his remaining dreamweed.

  That does it!

  She wasn't going to get away with this. There were limits, by Dar!

  The sound which had awoken him must have been that thieving whore making her escape. His liquor-soaked brain recalled the fact that he had a horse stabled in the tidy little lean-to out back. Elelar's long-suffering gelding was even getting used to the strange and unpredictable hours at which Ronall required its services. So all he had to do was find out where the girl was going, and he had every chance of catching up with her and getting his belongings back. In fact, he decided with relish, after what she'd just done, he would positively enjoy humiliating her in front of her aristocratic employers, if she made it necessary.

  Having determined his course of action, he picked up the candle and staggered out of the bedchamber, shouting for the innkeeper. The first door he found had voices coming from the other side of it, which was promising. Ronall kicked it in (which took several clumsy tries), wishing the woman in the bedchamber he now entered wouldn't scream quite so shrilly.

  The elderly innkeeper stood in the middle of his small, spare, tidy bedchamber staring wide-eyed at Ronall's abrupt entrance. The old woman in the bed—his wife—kept screaming.

  "Where is she?" Ronall demanded.

  "What?" the man cried. "Who? What?"

  "Yaggghhh!" the woman shrieked.

  "Make her stop that," Ronall said.

  "Shhh, shhh," the man said to his wife. "Kadriah, please, please, stop. Stop now. Hush."

  Kadriah. Ronall wasn't quite sure what it meant, though he knew it was a shallah endearment. One that signified devotion.

  Get out! Get out! Get out!

  He stood staring while the man tried to calm his screaming wife. Envy suddenly filled Ronall at the sight of these two old, homely, poor shallaheen who had found what had always eluded him. He could see it clearly now in the way the man tried to shield the woman from him. In the way the woman's plucking hands tried to prevent the man from shielding her at risk to himself. In the simple bed which they had probably shared for as long as Ronall had been alive. In the two pairs of worn shoes placed side by side on the floor.

  "We have done nothing, toren. Please, we have done nothing!" the old man said.

  "Where is she?" Ronall demanded again, pulling his thoughts back to his purpose.

  "Who?"

  "The girl!"

  "The one who, um... Who, um..."

  "The one I took upstairs and bedded," Ronall said. "Where is she?"

  The woman suddenly stopped screaming. The man stared at him.

  Then the woman said to Ronall, in a voice rich with outrage, "You're looking for her? That's why you come bursting in here like some assassin—"

  "She's a local girl, you must have recognized her," Ronall insisted.

  "—come to murder us in our bed?"

  The old man glanced at his wife, who was now shaking with anger rather than terror, and he said, "Actually, no, toren, she didn't look familiar."

  "This is a respectable place!" the woman shrieked. "We don't see the likes of her in a place like this!"

  Ronall's head was starting to ache. "Nonetheless—"

  "How dare you!" the old woman screamed, jumping out of bed now and advancing on him with finger-wagging fury. "How dare you profane my house with lewd behavior and then have the gall to terrify me in my own b—"

  "The girl stole my purse," Ronall told her.

  "I don't care if she..." The woman paused. "Your purse?"

  "My money."

  "Your money?"

  "All my money," he elaborated helpfully.

  The old woman scowled at him in exasperation. Ronall had not paid for his bedchamber in advance.

  The woman took a breath, then said with obvious distaste, "Perhaps if you told us her name..."

  "I don't know it," he said.

  "Dar have mercy," she muttered in disgust.

  "But she mentioned that she's personal servant to a local torena."

  The old couple exchanged a long look. A couple so close they spoke without words. Ronall was starting to hate them.

  "Porsall?" the old man suggested to his wife.

  "Probably," she agreed.

  "Valdani," Ronall surmised.

  The old man nodded in response. "The toren is a Valdan. The family has been here for..." He waved a hand and vaguely concluded, "Forever. I suppose that's why he hasn't fled. Perhaps he has nowhere to go."

  Then the woman said, "His wife is Torena Chasimar."

  "Silerian?" Ronall asked, still thinking about Porsall.

  "Half."

  "Half," Ronall repeated faintly.

  The old woman added with emphasis, "Given the torena's own behavior, I can well believe she'd have such a disgraceful girl as her maid."

  Ronall remembered the girl, his money, and his dreamweed, all of which he'd forgotten for a moment. "Then I suggest you direct me to Porsall's estate if you cherish any hope of my paying you what I owe you."

  They did so willingly. They were co
nsiderably more reluctant to provide him with the brandy he demanded, but he was better at insisting than they were at resisting, and so he got his fill before leaving in pursuit of the girl.

  It was a foolhardy quest, as Elelar would certainly have pointed out, since he didn't know the country and he couldn't see a damn thing. He carried a lantern, but its light was feeble enough in the consuming darkness to ensure a very slow pace even if his wife's gelding hadn't suddenly decided to develop a stubborn streak. By the time Ronall reached his destination, he was exhausted from kicking, slapping, and coaxing the balking horse.

  By Dar and the Three he'd make that girl sorry for this farce! When he got his hands on... on...

  All thoughts fled from his mind as he became aware of the shouts, the screams, and the glow in the sky above the trees. All of it coming from roughly where he expected to find Porsall's estate and the wayward girl.

  "What in the Fires..."

  A lone figure came barreling out of the dark, then shied and screamed upon encountering him. His horse responded in kind, demonstrating uncharacteristic nervousness—which was understandable, under the circumstances.

  Ronall was still trying not to fall off the damn horse when he heard a surprised gasp. Then a familiar voice murmured breathlessly, "It's you."

  "It's me," he agreed.

  The girl recovered her breath and cried, "Dar be praised, it's you. It's you!"

  It was the first time he could recall anyone ever being so glad to see him. But he didn't allow that to distract him as he slid off the gelding's back, seized the girl by the arm, and demanded, "Where's my money and my dreamweed, damn you?"

  "Help us!" she screamed into his face. "They are killing the toreni! Help us!"

  Abidan the waterlord awoke the moment his deepest senses, the senses which only his own kind possessed, alerted him to a change in the Shaljir River.

  It was softening, trying to dissolve. Pushing against his will now. Trying to flow again. Trying to escape his grasp, a grasp too weak to hold it alone. A grasp which needed his brother Liadon's strength, too, to command such a river.

  Abidan knew instantly that his brother's control had slipped. Something had shifted his focus. Distracted him.

  Damn Liadon!

  Abidan arose and started scrambling for his clothes in the oppressive darkness of his bedchamber. He hated dark-moon nights. It was unnatural, this opaque blackness that enveloped everything once the sun went down. As a child he'd been taught that fire-eyed demons prowled on a night like this. As an adult, he had often used the obsidian black of dark-moon nights to attack and slay his enemies, and he'd always known they might do the same.

  It's that woman, I just know it's that damned woman! I told Liadon not to let her come back again!

  For the past three years, his brother had been in love with the most volatile woman in the three corners of the world. Abidan had already lost count of how many times she had left Liadon after a violent quarrel. Liadon sulked and moped in her absence, which was irritating enough, but things were even worse when she returned to him.

  As she always does, damn her!

  Abidan yanked on his clothes and shouted for one of the assassins on sentry duty.

  The return of Liadon's mistress invariably made him useless. He always expended all his energy in bed with her and left Abidan to worry about such mundane matters as dominating the Shaljir River, collecting tribute, controlling their territory, and dealing with their enemies.

  Then Liadon's quarrels with his true love would soon begin again, and he'd drive Abidan to distraction complaining and whining about her. When she left him again, as she always did after wreaking havoc on Liadon's household—and often on Liadon's person, too—he would swear that this was the last time, it was over, and he was finished with her at last. Abidan had actually believed him the first three or four times.

  An assassin came to the door of Abidan's bedchamber.

  "Siran?" He carried a lantern, and Abidan could see his puzzled expression. "Is something wrong?"

  "Yes, something's wrong!" Abidan snapped. "Go get my brother!"

  "But, siran... It's the middle of the n—"

  "Now!" Abidan roared. "You pull him out from between that bitch's legs if you have to! Do you hear me? And bring here!"

  "Yes, siran." The assassin departed hastily.

  Abidan finished pulling on his boots and strode out of the bedchamber. His own woman was in Sanctuary awaiting the birth of their second child. The first had been stillborn. Recalling how horrible that whole ordeal was, Abidan had sent her to the Sisters several months ago. A smart decision. Between war with the Valdani and now war with Tansen, he didn't have time for such things.

  Neither did Liadon. Abidan had thought—had foolishly believed—that his brother understood that and wouldn't let the emasculating whore who ruled his wits move back in, yet again, and destroy all their work.

  I'll kill him for this! I'll kill her for this!

  Abidan marched down the hall of his modest stone house which squatted deep in the mountains east of Zilar, so high up that Outlookers had never found it.

  I'll kill them both and feed their carcasses to the dogs!

  He didn't have dogs, but he could get some. It was a small point.

  He and Liadon hadn't had a good enough teacher. That's why they weren't as powerful as Kiloran, Verlon, Gulstan, Kariman, or some of the others. But Kiloran had made promises. Oh, yes. If they could help him against Josarian, help him kill Mirabar, help him defeat Tansen, help him dominate the city of Shaljir...

  Kiloran was old and had no heir. Kiloran knew things about water that no one else did, not even Baran—who, although he even crazier than Liadon's mistress, was damned good, Abidan admitted grudgingly. All the brothers had to do was support Kiloran against the Guardians and Josarian's loyalists, and the old waterlord would teach them everything he knew and make them heirs to his immense power and vast territory. Who knew? If his plans succeeded, Abidan and Liadon might even rule Sileria when this was all over.

  But not if we can't even maintain control over our own damn river!

  They must bring Zilar to its knees. Zilar, where Tansen had publicly declared war against the Society, where he had commenced his bloodfeud against Kiloran and attracted thousands to his cause. Zilar, the jewel of their own territory!

  If the brothers failed now, Kiloran would find them unworthy. He might even decide they were expendable.

  So when Abidan felt Liadon's grasp on the Shaljir River slacken even a bit, he saw their future crumbling before his eyes. Liadon understood how much was at stake. Abidan was sure that only one thing could distract him now.

  That woman.

  Abidan decided he had never hated anyone so much in his life. He stepped out into the clear night air, determined to make Liadon focus all his attention on the Shaljir River, as he damn well knew he should. He'd get Liadon to concentrate on his duty even if it meant killing that woman right in front of him!

  "Get a torch!" Abidan snapped at an assassin guarding the door to his house.

  "Siran?"

  "We're going to my brother," he growled. He was too restless to wait here for Liadon. He'd go there. And he'd murder that woman when he got there!

  The brothers lived in similar stone houses on opposite sides of a narrow river, the first significant water source they had ever learned to harness and command. Now that the long rains were only a memory and the dry season was approaching, the river was shallow and growing sluggish. Abidan couldn't see it from here, not on a night like this, but he could smell it, hear it, feel its presence. He owned it in every way that mattered, as he owned the Shaljir River—as he dreamed of one day owning the Idalar itself, the greatest river in Sileria, the one which determined leadership of the Honored Society and domination of the capital city.

  Those plans would never come to fruition if his idiot brother didn't keep his mind on their work.

  Filled with yet another surge of rage, Abidan took the torc
h which the assassin brought to him and set out for Liadon's house.

  I will kill him for this! I will make him watch while I kill her! I will—

  These satisfying thoughts were interrupted by shouts and screams coming from across the river.

  "Fire! Fire!"

  "Siran!"

  "They are burning the house!"

  "Where's it coming from?"

  "Watch out!"

  "Sound the alarm!"

  "Arrrrgh!"

  Flames erupted in the night. Screams filled the air. There were strange explosions of fire in the trees. A flickering glow painted the sky above where Abidan knew his brother's house lay.

  "Wake everyone!" he ordered an assassin.

  Many were already awake, alerted by the noise. Half-dressed and confused, they emerged from the darkness, from their tents and their quarters, armed with their shir. Many weren't here, though. They had homes of their own. Assassins served him and lived under his protection, but they didn't live right here. Many would hear the alarm, sounding at this very moment, but it would take time for them to get here. Others lived so far away they wouldn't even hear it. Wouldn't even know that they were needed. A waterlord's home was always well-guarded, but it wasn't a military encampment

  It didn't need to be, Abidan reminded himself with growing fury at this outrage. A waterlord could defend himself and his land. A waterlord could destroy anyone who dared to violate his home or attack his person.

  More men came plunging through the night. Shallaheen. Lowlanders. Tansen's people. They flung themselves into combat with his assassins. And the fire... Guardians, he realized.

  Guardians attacking his home. Attacking him and Liadon. Attacking waterlords.

  They'll die for this.

  "Liadon!" Abidan shouted.

  Liadon's house was burning.

  No wonder he was distracted. No wonder his grip on the Shaljir River had slipped.

  Abidan started forward at a run, dropping the torch in his hand. He must get to his brother. Together, they would destroy those who had the gall to attack them in their homes tonight. He must get to his brother, and they would—