"Father..."
Armian froze like a statue when he saw Tansen standing above him on that windswept cliff, swinging his yahr with deadly intent.
If he lived for all eternity, he would never forget the sound of Armian's voice as he said, "Tansen?"
His trusted child, his beloved son, his murderer...
"Tansen?" That voice, torn by shock and disbelief.
"Father."
"Tansen?" Wounded by betrayal and treachery.
"Father!"
"Tansen? Wake up."
He reached for his sword harness even before he was fully awake. Breathing hard, he looked around him in confusion.
"We're in Sanctuary," Zarien said, backing away cautiously. "You don't need that."
Sanctuary? Yes. They had stopped here for the night on their journey to Shaljir. Just the two of them. Traveling quietly and being discreet.
"What?" Tansen demanded. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know."
Zarien turned and gestured to the door of the bedchamber. Now Tansen saw a Sister standing there, holding a sputtering candle.
"Assassins," she said simply. "Four of them."
Zarien gasped.
"Where?" Tansen unsheathed his swords.
The Sister gurgled in alarm. Zarien quickly stepped between Tansen and the Sister, who took a few steps back while she babbled, "They're waiting outside. They've requested shelter for the night."
"It's very late," Tansen said suspiciously.
The Sister shrugged and, realizing he didn't mean to gut her, said more calmly, "I think they're in danger."
"From what?" he asked.
"Who knows?"
"Do they know we're here?"
"They know I have other guests," she replied. "They don't know who." When Tansen didn't respond, she prodded, "This is Sanctuary. I can't turn them away."
"They're assassins!" Zarien objected.
"Sanctuary is for everyone," the Sister pointed out. "And no one can harm anyone else here."
Tansen thought it over. "Damn." He sighed, then said, "Let them in, but don't tell them anything."
"Let them in?" Zarien exclaimed as the Sister nodded and scurried away. "Have you lost your—"
"If she turns them away, they'll wonder why. They might even wait for us just beyond Sanctuary grounds," Tansen explained, "and ambush us as soon as we leave tomorrow."
"You think they'd guess who's here?"
Tansen shrugged. "I doubt it. It's more likely they'd suspect we're toreni ripe for a profitable abduction."
"But if they find out who you are, then—"
"Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer," Tansen quoted. "At least this way we'll know where they are, and we can avoid nasty surprises when we leave."
Tansen pulled his humble homespun tunic over his head and laced up the neck to ensure that no one could see even a hint of the notorious brand on his chest.
"What are you doing?" Zarien kept his voice to a whisper now that they could hear the assassins entering the main room of the Sanctuary.
"I'm going to find out whatever I can."
"Maybe we should just stay in here," the boy suggested.
"You should stay in here," Tansen said pointedly, keeping his voice low, too.
"But... Oh." Zarien sighed. "They'll wonder, like everyone else, what I'm doing so far inland."
"They may even have heard of the sea-born boy who's been seen with me, and if so—"
"Seeing me, they might guess who you are." Zarien sat down suddenly. "Maybe we should just sneak out through the window?"
"Don't worry," Tansen murmured. "There are only four. I can handle them."
"Only four," Zarien repeated faintly.
Tansen grinned wryly at the distinct lack of confidence he heard in the boy's voice, then stuck his head out the door and peered into the main room. Despite the late hour, the four assassins were talking noisily and accepting food and drink from the Sister. None of them noticed Tansen, which gave him time to get a good look at them in the dim light without being studied in return. He didn't recognize any of them. It was, of course, nonetheless possible that they might recognize him, since he was by now more famous than any assassin; but he decided to risk it. They wouldn't attack him here, and he could handle them in the morning as long as he knew where they were. Meanwhile, if they didn't recognize him, perhaps he could learn something from them.
Two of them rose to their feet the moment they noticed Tansen enter the main room. He shuffled forward slowly, in a submissive posture.
"Who are you?" one of them demanded rudely.
Tansen crossed his fists over his chest, lowered his head, and murmured, "Sirani." Without raising his eyes, he said, "Forgive me for intruding."
They saw what they wanted to see, a humble shallah, an ordinary mountain peasant, a common man who held the Honored Society in awe. He submissively answered their terse questions about his presence here, telling them he was returning from Shaljir, after working there for some years, taking his city-born wife home to meet his family now that the Valdani had surrendered the city and Silerians could finally come and go in freedom.
No one asked why his wife remained hidden in her bedchamber; apart from a Sister, any respectable woman would avoid such men in the middle of the night, and city-dwellers were particularly afraid of assassins.
Tansen fawned enough to please them, and he pretended to be honored when one of them suggested he take a seat and join them at the simple wooden table where they were eating and drinking. As Tansen sat, he got a good look at one of their shir. He recognized the workmanship, having seen it before. He kept his face impassive, wondering what Wyldon's men were doing here, so far from their own territory.
As soon as the assassins drained their cups, Tansen refilled them. When the wineskin was finally empty, he fetched another—the Sister had gone to bed by now—and kept their cups full thereafter. He encouraged the assassins to tell bloody tales of the men they'd killed and the toreni they'd abducted. He admired their shir and made them laugh by gasping in pain when he accepted their mocking invitation to touch one of the wavy-bladed daggers.
When he judged the moment ripe, Tansen decided to get them gossiping. "Is it true," he asked, "what they say about how Josarian died?" A tense silence followed his question. He leaned forward and whispered, "Kiloran. The White Dragon. Is it true?"
"Kiloran," the youngest one said, practically spitting the name.
"He thinks he can do anything now," muttered the man sitting next to Tansen.
"He's wrong," said the young one. "He'll pay for what he did to us."
So...
Evidently Wyldon did blame Kiloran for the attack on his stronghold. Tansen wondered if any of these four assassins had been among those whom his own men fought that night. In retrospect, perhaps it was fortunate that the ambush had been such a messy affair, he reflected wryly. If any of these men had indeed been there that night, they'd never recognize their mud-covered enemy in the tidy person now sitting with them.
"So you..." Tansen hesitated for a moment, then rushed on, "You are not Kiloran's men?"
"Kiloran's men? Hah!" This from the young one again, who was wonderfully talkative. "We've just left Kiloran's men lying dead in—"
"Quiet!" The one sitting next to Tansen was more sensible.
"Why should I be quiet? Even if the rest of them tracked us this far, th—"
"You talk too much," the sensible one snapped.
The young one glowered and shrugged.
"Kiloran and Tansen are feuding now, they say," Tansen ventured, hoping to get the youngest assassin to blurt out more indiscreet and interesting information.
"Kiloran can't get along with anyone, can he?" said the assassin sitting directly across from Tansen. "Baran's feuded with him for years, the Firebringer quarreled with him, now Tansen's sworn a bloodfeud against him..." The man scratched his belly, then scratched his ear. "And now he's feuding with our master."
"That truce meeting was probably just a trick," the young one said. Tansen noticed he was starting to slur his words. "Wyldon was right not to go. He would be dead now if he had gone."
Tansen wanted to ask about the truce meeting, but he was afraid that another question from him might make the sensible one silence the others again.
"Tansen and Kiloran will tear each other apart," said the scratching one—now he was scratching his groin. Tansen worried briefly about lice as the man continued, "It's a lot more than a feud. It's another damn war, only worse than Josarian's war, because—"
"So what? Wyldon will rule Sileria when they're both dead!" vowed the young one.
"You think Wyldon can trust Baran?" Now the itchy assassin was trying to scratch his own back.
The fourth assassin, who'd been silent so far, murmured, "No one can trust Baran."
"True enough," agreed the scratcher.
The young one opined, "But Baran and Wyldon want the same thing now."
The quiet one spoke again. "No one really knows what Baran wants."
"He wants Kiloran dead," asserted the sensible one, momentarily forgetting that they shouldn't discuss their business in front of the shallah sitting with them.
The scratching one, who was twisting and contorting while he spoke, said, "Baran wants Kiloran to suffer more than he wants him dead."
The young one said with fuzzy conviction, "He wants both things."
"Do you think Baran went to the truce meeting?"
"No."
"Baran? Hah!"
"If he did, he's probably dead now. Surely it was a trap?"
"No, I'll bet even Kiloran wouldn't violate a truce meeting that way. He's smart, he must know the whole Society would turn on him if he did that."
The scratching one grunted, and then they all fell silent. Unable to resist, Tansen finally asked, "Truce meeting?"
"Kiloran called a truce meeting," the young one began. "To put aside his—"
But the sensible one interrupted him by saying to Tansen, "You ask a lot of questions."
"I'm sorry." Tansen let admiration warm his voice as he added, "I have never talked to assassins before."
"Oh?" The man leaned closer. "Or maybe you have and you've just forgotten."
Tansen caught the hint. "Perhaps. It's true that I have a terrible memory."
"Is that so?" The man suggestively fingered his shir.
Tansen kept his eyes on it as he assured him, "Definitely."
After a tense moment, the man grinned and leaned back in his chair. "I thought so."
"If you'll excuse me, sirani..." Tansen rose to his feet. "My wife needs me."
They nodded and returned to drinking and talking, forgetting the timid peasant before he was even out of the room.
The bedchamber was dark, but Zarien was wide awake.
"Well?" the boy prodded in a whisper.
"Their conversation is limited, but very interesting," Tansen replied quietly.
"Are we leaving now?"
"No."
"But—"
"We'll leave after they fall asleep—which should be soon, at the rate they're guzzling wine."
"You're sure they don't suspect who you are?"
"They saw what they wanted to see," Tansen assured him. "Someone who was admiring and afraid. Someone they could talk in front of with impunity."
"No," Zarien said after a moment. "I think they saw what you wanted them to see."
Cheylan finally located Semeon, the fire-haired flame-eyed boy whom he sought—and located him, of all places, in Tansen's long-deserted native village of Gamalan. Now that Outlookers no longer menaced the Guardians, the child's circle of companions had grown bold, despite the danger from waterlords and assassins. They were permanently inhabiting the abandoned ruins of this forgotten village rather than living on the run in one temporary encampment after another.
Cheylan considered the possibilities and, after some thought, decided that this could work to his advantage.
Semeon was still very young. His exact age was unknown, since he'd been abandoned by his parents. That was a typical fate for such a child, and better than the usual alternative—to be murdered by one's parents. As far as Cheylan knew, he himself was the only "demon" child in centuries whose parents hadn't killed or abandoned him in fear and despair. Not that his own childhood had been enviable. Cheylan hadn't starved or lived like an animal, as had Mirabar and Semeon in their early years, but he had seen his mother shrink from him every time he'd ever sought her affection. He had seen distaste and suspicion in his father's eyes. He'd known, as far back as he could remember, that his parents considered him a burden rather than a blessing, and that they dreaded him rather than loved him.
Cheylan sometimes thought that abandonment might have been preferable.
However, had he been abandoned, he never would have known Verlon, his grandfather; and thus the gift of water magic which lay hidden in Cheylan's fiery sorcery might have been forever unknown to him. Had his own grandfather not been a waterlord who soon spotted his talent, Cheylan might never have recognized the subtle signs of the cold power born in his veins. Unlike fire magic, the gift of water magic felt like a normal part of your senses until someone else showed you what it truly was and taught you how to harness it.
Of all Cheylan's family, only Verlon had sought his company as a boy. Only Verlon had wanted him, cared for him, seemed to cherish him. Verlon was the only person in the world to whom Cheylan had ever been close. The cold old wizard had been the sole warmth of Cheylan's childhood, as well as his mentor in the fluid mysteries of water magic.
However, Verlon was a waterlord, and they were all the same in the end. By the time Cheylan was a young man, he'd realized that Verlon only wanted to use him. The old waterlord saw his grandson as a means of expanding his own power and influence. Through Cheylan, Verlon thought he could have access to fire magic, to communion with the Otherworld, and to the Guardians themselves.
Resentful and ambitious, Cheylan resisted the old man's attempts to use him to achieve his own ends. And when Cheylan thought he was powerful enough, when he felt ready to become a waterlord in his own right, he turned on the grandfather who had abused his trust.
Unfortunately, Cheylan had underestimated the old man. Or perhaps, he acknowledged now with the wisdom of additional years, he had overestimated himself at the time. In any event, his bold and bitter attempt to take Verlon's place had failed disastrously, earning him a bloodvow from his grandfather. So Cheylan had prudently joined a Guardian circle and disappeared into the mountains.
Even so, Verlon's persistent wrath had made Cheylan's life dangerous while he remained in eastern Sileria. Since Guardians stuck together, especially when menaced by the Society, Cheylan's circle of companions eventually elected to migrate west as a group, rather than let him go alone. Soon after entering the western region, Cheylan met Josarian and was drawn into the rebellion.
Cheylan hadn't seen his former circle of companions in many months now, nor could he honestly say he missed them. He didn't even know where they were anymore, nor did he care. His destiny was far greater, after all, than that of the impoverished fire mystics whom he had joined in desperation years ago.
However, as Mirabar herself had said more than once, destiny didn't just happen by itself; it required effort, courage, commitment, and sacrifice. Destiny also required, Cheylan knew, bold acts and shrewd intervention. So he had traced young Semeon to the forgotten ruins of Gamalan, the sad little place which he knew—due to their reluctantly close association for a while during the rebellion—still came vividly to life in Tansen's nightmares.
Maybe Semeon was no threat to Cheylan's destiny. But if life in the shadow of Darshon had taught Cheylan anything, it was that only the ruthless prevailed. This was the land of the destroyer goddess and Her fire-raining volcano; of the Firebringer, who'd slaughtered thousands of Valdani in his bloody quest for freedom; of the White Dragon, which had slain the Firebringer in vengea
nce and agony; of the Honored Society, with its waterlords and assassins; of bloodfeuds and bloodvows and clan warfare that lasted for generations. This was a nation which betrayed its own leaders and sacrificed its own heroes.
There was no place for mercy in Sileria, Cheylan knew; and there was no room in his heart, nursed on the bitter milk of his demonic birth, for compassion. In a land which granted no second chances, Cheylan would willingly go further than this to eliminate any potential risk to the powerful future he envisioned for himself. And so he felt no guilt or regret as he plotted the murder of Semeon, a boy barely old enough to leave his own mentor's side.
Mirabar sat on the horse Najdan had acquired for her as they traveled toward Mount Dalishar. She was disguised as a torena now, albeit a relatively humble one. At Sister Basimar's suggestion, Haydar had purchased a wig in Islanar for Mirabar, effectively hiding her flame-bright hair. The elaborate woven headdress Mirabar now also wore, the jashar of a torena, modestly shielded her face, hiding her golden eyes from strangers as long as she kept her gaze lowered behind the beaded and knotted strands that hung down past her neck.
Mirabar had never even seen a wig before. She would have laughed if her mood had not been so dire with grief. Did elderly aristocratic women with thinning hair really wear such absurd things? Mirabar thought it felt as if a small animal were sleeping on her head.
Haydar, whose most notable feature was not a colorful imagination, said no, it was merely like wearing someone else's old hair. A charming thought indeed.
Still, at least the hungry shallah who had sold this hair to a wigmaker had evidently had clean habits, since there was nothing offensive in the shiny black hair. And the clothes Haydar had purchased to complete Mirabar's disguise as a torena traveling with her small entourage... Well, they were much finer than anything Mirabar had ever worn before.
The White Dragon Page 55
