He came to a halt as a strange power tore at him, almost knocking him over in its sudden sweep across his senses.
"Argh!" He fell back a step.
"Siran?"
Heat.
Terrible, intense, fiery heat.
Attacking him. Attacking his water. The river. His river.
Not the Shaljir, he realized. It was too big, too powerful, too much for them. This little river. This stream rushing past his house.
They think they can take it from me!
Shaking with rage, he swept the river into the arms of his will and commanded it to turn and attack. He struggled against the hot, alien power playing across the surface of his river. What did the Guardians think they were doing? They couldn't control water, they couldn't take this river from him! A hundred tentacles rose out of the water now, answering his will, responding to his sorcery. And the river reached for his enemies.
A shallah screamed as icy tentacles enfolded him and pulled him into the river to drown him. A lowlander struggled against a watery mask that covered his face, smothering him.
Now Abidan felt his brother reaching for the water, too, felt the familiar texture of Liadon's power. But Liadon was pulling the river the wrong way, trying to use it to defend his burning house, his burning land.
"Let it burn!" Abidan screamed, knowing it was futile, knowing his brother couldn't hear him at this distance. "Fight the men!"
No fire on my side, Abidan suddenly realized. Only men.
Did that mean there was only fire on Liadon's side, and no men? The two brothers would be using the river for different purposes, at odds with each other, if they were fighting different enemies without realizing it.
No, the same enemy, he realized. But a clever one.
Kiloran had warned them about underestimating Tansen. "He lets you see what you want to see," Kiloran had once said, "what you expect to see. Then he does what has never occurred to you."
This attack certainly proved that. Who but Tansen would strike a waterlord in his very home, the last place any sane Silerian would choose for a battleground? Even Outlookers had rarely tried such a thing, not since Harlon's day some forty years ago; and they had lost so many men before they finally destroyed Harlon.
There was another explosion, and the bridge that spanned the river went up in flames. Hot, violent magic poured forth from it, singeing Abidan's senses. The Guardians were trying to cut him off from his brother.
Did Liadon even know Abidan was also under attack? Or were he and his men so consumed with fighting the sudden fire, the ensorcelled flames of Guardians, that he didn't even realize—just wondered why Abidan hadn't yet come to his aid?
Didn't Liadon feel Abidan's will exerted on the river, too?
Let go, Liadon, let go. Give it to me now.
But Liadon didn't let go. He was trying to pull the water off course and drag it across his land in a vast wave to put out the fire.
A thousand hissing snakes of liquid were writhing across its tormented surface, reaching for Abidan's enemies but weakened by Liadon's call.
I'll let go of it, Abidan decided.
His men were outnumbered, but he was sure they could hold off their attackers until more assassins arrived in response to the alarm. And the people who lived around here, the shallaheen who relied on him and Liadon for every sip they drank, would come, too. Josarian was dead and Tansen's cause was hopeless. The people who lived under the brothers' protection knew who filled their cups, and they would fight loyally.
He would let Liadon have the river, and when the fire was out, then Liadon would realize what was happening and they would join forces. Whatever the Guardians thought they were doing, they weren't waterlords, and they couldn't command the river. The water was safe from them.
Take it, Liadon, take it.
Abidan let go, surrendering the river to his brother's needs.
A moment later, he realized what a huge mistake he had just made.
"Then he does what has never occurred to you."
The surface of the water exploded in flames.
Abidan had never seen anything like it. Had never imagined anything like it. Fire magic battering away at water. Wave after wave of flames sliding across the surface of his river. Spears of glowing lava plunging into it, hurting him as it did so, infecting his ensorcelled domain with something alien and strange.
He shouldn't have let go. That was what Tansen had wanted. That was the plan, Abidan realized with horrified fury.
Abidan reached for the river again—and found nothing there but a hot wall of violent resistance. Guardian magic now stood between him and the water which had been his.
"My river! Mine!" he screamed, running forward, determined to seize it physically if he couldn't touch it any other way.
Tansen couldn't have it! Tansen couldn't take away his whole future, his whole life!
"Liadon! Stop them! Stop them!"
He couldn't even tell if his brother was now battling the Guardians for their river, or if he had already lost it, too.
"Liadon!" he screamed.
Those spineless fire mages, those scraping servants of the volcano goddess, those mewling ghost-talking cowards now stood between him and his water, his river, his power! He would kill them all for this!
But as he turned away from the appalling sight of his river obliterated by a roaring display of enchanted fire which illuminated the night, he realized that he'd have to kill them the old-fashioned way. His water-well certainly wasn't enough of a weapon to fight off the second wave of peasant warriors now emerging from the flickering shadows, pouring out of the darkness and into this fiery nightmare.
And the water-well was on fire, anyhow.
The Guardians had attacked it, too, while his attention was diverted. Now they were attacking the house, even the land. A wave of men and women—women, he realized with shock—were melting out of the dark, flinging glowing spears of flame and hurling balls of fire. Guardian fire needed no fuel to burn, and his stone house would give way if he couldn't stop them. He must fight—
No, he suddenly realized. That was also what Tansen wanted.
The Shaljir River.
It was all he had left. He reached out to it, barely able to feel it through the chaos erupting all around him.
His brother had let go of the Shaljir, he was sure of it.
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. Without the Shaljir River, he was no one and nothing. Without the river that Zilar relied upon, his life was over.
"Siran!"
Abidan's eyes snapped open just in time to see one of his assassins jump between him and an attacking shallah who used two yahr, swinging them with deadly skill. Both men were covered in blood, dust, and sweat. Both looked savage and deadly in the glowing light of the enslaved river, in the flickering shadows created by the burning house and the flaming trees.
The shallah felled the assassin with four heavy blows of his yahr, then turned on Abidan, crouched for attack.
"Abidan?" he asked, his gaze sharp.
Abidan was a waterlord, not a warrior; but if his hour had come, he would die like a man. He circled slowly, keeping at a safe distance from the stalking shallah. When he saw his chance, Abidan stooped and seized the shir of the fallen assassin whose body lay between them. He himself had made this shir, and so he was the only man alive who could touch it besides the assassin... or now this shallah, if the assassin was indeed dead. Stimulated by the intrusion of Guardian magic on such an immense scale, the wavy-edged dagger quivered so violently it was hard to maintain his grip on it.
The shallah hesitated, then dropped one of his yahr and, to Abidan's surprise, pulled a wildly shaking shir out of his boot.
"That's one of mine," Abidan blurted, furious that this shallah upstart had it now.
"You're losing a lot of them," the shallah replied.
"Where's Tansen?" Abidan demanded. They'd never met, but he knew this wasn't Tansen. Everyone knew that Tansen fought with
two Kintish swords.
"He's busy killing your brother."
Abidan struck, but the shallah was expecting it. The yahr swept through the air and slammed hard across Abidan's face, then the shir sought his vitals, creeping cleverly between his ribs to inflict a mortal wound. A shir knew how to kill. It relished killing. A shir could almost think... It was a... It...
Hot and cold life force gushed out of him as he sank heavily to the ground. The fire made everything look like sunset. Sunrise? No, it was growing darker all around. Sunset.
The blood-streaked face of the shallah loomed in the distance, floating in his vision.
Making sure I'm dead?
Abidan heard the thought, but no words came out of his mouth.
He did hear a distant voice, though: "Galian!"
It was filled with the panic of the still-living.
The shallah whirled, his long black hair catching the firelight. There was a harsh grunt. Falling, falling down...
Abidan groaned when the shallah fell on top of him.
"No!" someone cried. "Galian!"
Scuffling. Fighting. Hard blows. Grunts. A harsh scream of pain. Everything moving in the flickering golden light.
Someone pulled the shallah's heavy body off him.
"Siran!"
Abidan tried, but he couldn't answer.
"Siran, more are coming. A third wave."
He couldn't see anything now. He was leaving the world.
Where do waterlords go?
"Siran, we must fall back and abandon... Siran?"
Please, my only request... I just don't want to be with Guardians.
Distant voices.
"Abidan is dying."
"We can't stop them. Not with the sirani both dead..."
"Liadon may still be alive."
"Not for much longer. Look at that. You can't really believe he'll live through that?"
"No. You're right."
Abidan felt something on his shoulder.
"Goodbye, siran. It was an honor to serve you."
"He can't hear you."
"Do it now. Call for retreat."
"I never thought it would end this way."
"It's not over. Tansen will pay for this."
"Yes, you're right. Tansen must pay."
It was the last thing Abidan heard before he died.
Chapter Thirty
Only two things matter: life and death.
—Kintish Proverb
A full-scale battle raged in the dark forest around the Guardian encampment high up on Mount Niran. Assassins were killing the Guardians, who fought back with bursts of flame and clouds of fire that briefly illuminated the night, then died as quickly as the Guardians did.
"Dar have mercy!" Mirabar cried.
Najdan clapped a hand over her mouth, even though it was unlikely she'd be heard above the noise of the battle and the screams of the dying.
A wave of water had swept across the Guardian encampment, rising out of a stream that lay at some distance from camp and which had always been free of sorcery. Until now.
The encampment was in a clearing bordered by several caves, all of which were eerily decorated with paintings left by the Beyah-Olvari. Now the clearing was empty—except for the corpses that lay everywhere. Some waterlord had made the stream water so cold that all he had to do was wash it over them to kill them, pulling death across these Guardians like a watery veil. The water was gone now, only the damp ground and discolored bodies revealing evidence of how these men and women had died. The fatal wave had receded before Mirabar's stealthy arrival, subsiding back into the stream whence it came.
Crouched beside Najdan in the thick forest of gossamer trees just beyond the edge of the clearing, Mirabar stared in horror while faceless voices pierced the night all around them with wordless cries of triumph and of terror.
This had been her circle of companions, her only community in the days before the rebellion. These Guardians were her family. Sorrow and rage flooded her soul with equal fierceness as she stared at the slain. The deadly water had doused all but one torch, so she couldn't make out the lifeless faces in the dim and flickering light. She only knew that each of the eleven corpses she saw might well be someone she'd known most of her life.
Tashinar.
She made a sudden, clumsy movement in their direction. Najdan's firm grip dragged her back into their dark hiding place. She gasped when her hand touched a stray trickle of ensorcelled water. The cold was unbearable. Instinctively, she filled her breath with fire and blew warming flames onto her dying flesh.
A small burn was left behind, but she had succeeded in eliminating the effects of the water magic on her skin. Just a few drops of water, she reflected in scared amazement, and the pain was consuming. Her eyes filled with tears as she turned her gaze back to the dead.
Where is Tashinar?
"There were perhaps fifty people camped here?" Najdan whispered into her ear.
She nodded. Half that number had camped here before the rebellion, but now this group included more Guardians and some of Josarian's men.
"Why aren't they all dead?" Najdan murmured.
"We must help them!"
"Where were most of them when the attack began?" When she didn't respond, Najdan prodded, "Out roaming the forest on a dark-moon night?"
"No, of course not. They'd have been r—" A nearby scream, surely from someone dying in agony, made Mirabar flinch and try to scramble to her feet. Najdan held her steady.
"Think," he whispered fiercely. "If they were all in camp except for the sentries..."
"Then..." She nodded, understanding. "Then why didn't the waterlord, whoever he is, kill them all with his ambush?"
"Why drive them out into the forest? If he couldn't move the water fast enough to kill them all, why not at least trap them in camp, where they'd be easier to kill?" The assassin paused in thought. "Is there something important I don't know about Guardians or about this place?"
"No." Mirabar flinched again, unable to hold still amidst the unseen violence occurring all around them. "How can you just sit here and ask questions? We've got to stop them!"
"Stop them doing what?" he whispered fiercely. "What are the assassins trying to do? This isn't the best way to kill all the Guardians. If I were—" He stopped and drew in a sharp breath. "They're not trying to kill them all. Just most of them."
He finally had her full attention. "Why?" she asked.
"Driving them into the forest on a dark-moon night. Separating and confusing them." Najdan nodded. "It's the safest way to capture some of them."
"Capture?" Mirabar didn't even want to think about what the Society intended to do with captured Guardians. "How do we stop them?"
"Come."
Keeping his head low and his steps silent, he dragged her back through the thick of the battle, sometimes only a few paces from grunting, struggling combatants. Cloaked in darkness, he retraced their steps until they found their companions where they had left them, hiding on the outskirts of the horrifying battle.
"For the love of Dar," one of the men blurted. "I hear women screaming!"
"We can't just sit here and do nothing!" another insisted.
"Do we have a plan?" Pyron asked.
"Yes," Najdan said crisply. "The sirana will encircle this entire battle with a ring of fire and then tighten it on them it like a noose."
"What?" she exclaimed.
"You did it at the battle for the mines of Alizar, and that's a much bigger place."
"I had help," she said in panic. "There were nearly a hundred Guardians there."
"There are others here, too," he replied calmly. "As we rescue them, perhaps they will have enough sense and strength left to assist you."
"What do we do?" Pyron asked.
"You will guard the sirana with your lives," Najdan said. "All five of you."
"But—"
"They're killing and capturing Guardians," Najdan said tersely. "Once the sirana reveals her location w
ith fire magic, she will be in terrible danger. And once they realize that she's trying to trap them—"
"Am I trying to trap them?"
"—they'll shift their attention to killing her."
"Where will you be?" Mirabar asked, trying to smother the terror that filled her upon hearing his words.
"I'll be trying to capture one of them."
"Why?"
Najdan said, "It's our only chance of finding out why they're trying to capture Guardians instead of just killing them."
"That's it?" Pyron demanded. "That's your plan?"
"As long as you don't let them kill the sirana, we can disrupt their plan and end the battle before they've killed or captured everyone. Under the circumstances, we can hope for little more." Najdan paused and then added in a voice gone cold with menace, "I am leaving the sirana in your care. If you want to live past dawn, I strongly suggest that you don't let them kill her."
After the assassin left them to carry out his own plans, Pyron asked no one in particular, "Are you sure he's on our side?"
Tansen waited until he was sure the plan had worked, until he was sure both brothers had lost control of the narrow river which ran between their homes. Then he gave the signal for the next wave of men to attack, and he finally joined the battle himself.
Hanging back until now was hard. Fighting was what he did best; but he had to stay alive to implement his alternative plans if the first one didn't work.
Fortunately, though, Abidan and Liadon had fallen into his trap like bridegrooms falling into their marriage beds. The brothers needed each other, yet they had never learned to think and act as one. This was the weakness Tansen had discerned from the information gathered by the tireless Guardians in Zilar. If Abidan and Liadon could be separated by the attack, unable to communicate, they could be taken. Tansen had further played upon this weakness by giving them different problems, counting on each of them to fail to consider what the other might be dealing with until it was too late. Counting on them to struggle, lose focus, and make uncoordinated decisions, until one or both of them weakened enough for the Guardians to come between them and their water.
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