In Legend Born (39 page)

"I believe so. But who can say for sure?" The Olvar dipped his hands into the Sacred Pool again. "But if we are the end of our race, then perhaps we are the beginning of it, too."

"The beginning?" Josarian repeated.

"The world is changing, and a new one is at hand," the Olvar said. "The portents are unmistakable. Now the Beyah-Olvari, blessings be upon the people of this name, are no longer alone. Now we have friends."

"What friends?" Josarian asked.

The Olvar stirred the waters of the Sacred Pool. "When I became Olvar, I pledged my people to the Alliance."

The Otherworld vibrated like a quivering arrow as Mirabar approached the Dalishar Caves. The fires up here were ancient, and the barrier between this world and the Other one seemed gossamer-thin in the presence of so much power. Souls poured through the night, groping for the gateway to the Otherworld, brushing past Mirabar as they sought eternity and the embrace of loved ones lost long ago.

"Corenten... Soladan... Romolar..." Mirabar's eyes watered as the travelers reached out to her in confusion. Some, she knew, would never complete the journey; eventually, they would wander into oblivion, frightened and alone. "Belar... Nevon... Siradar, just a baby..." A tear slid down her face. A baby had little chance, she acknowledged sadly.

"What?" Basimar said, shaking her. "Is it another vision?"

"No." Mirabar sniffed and jerked away. "Sojourners to the Otherworld."

"Right here? Right now?" Basimar asked uneasily.

"So many," Mirabar said in confusion. "So many, so suddenly." She reached out with her mind, trying to touch the wanderers. "Many people died at once."

"How do you know?"

"I know. This is Dalishar. The caves are very near. The gateway to the Otherworld is yawning before us..." She ignored Basimar's gasp. "Violent deaths... Terrible sorrow... Recently..."

"Yes. Recently," said a male voice behind them.

Basimar whirled to face the man. Mirabar kept her hood pulled up and her face hidden.

"I'm Sister Basimar," said her companion. "This is Mirabar, a Guardian."

There was a pause. Then the man said, "What are you doing up here? A pilgrimage?"

Mirabar decided to be direct. "We're looking for Josarian and the warrior who now fights at his side."

The
shallah
snorted. "So is everyone else in the district."

"Take me to Zimran," Basimar said. "He knows me."

"Corenten..." Mirabar said again, trying to separate the voices in the Otherworld from the voices in this one. "He died terribly, didn't he?"

"Yes," the man said. "Death by slow torture in the square at Malthenar. How did you know?"

"How many others died that day?"

"Twenty-seven. Killed in the riot that began when Corenten was seized for execution because he wouldn't betray Josarian."

"I must..."

"What, Mirabar?" Basimar asked, taking her arm.

"This man must take me to one of the ancient fires in the caves. I must petition..." She drew a sharp breath as more voiceless cries assailed her. "I must try to help."

The man hesitated for a moment, then said quietly, "I'll show you where to go,
sirana
."

"Then tell Zimran we're here," Basimar said.

"I'm sorry, he's not here, Sister."

"Where is he?"

"He went to kill the
sriliah
who helped the Valdani kill Corenten and the others in—"

"Arlen?" Mirabar gasped.

"Yes." The man frowned. "How did you know?"

"We found his corpse by the road this morning," Basimar said wearily. "How could Zimran have done that, even to a—"

"You did not see the blood that Arlen helped the Valdani spill in Malthenar's main square."

"Even if I had, I could never approve—"

"We do not ask for approval, Sister," he interrupted bitterly. "Only
lirtahar
."

"Only
lirtahar
," Basimar repeated, her voice thick with sorrow. She cleared her throat and asked, "If Zimran is gone, then can we see Josarian? He and I have met—" 

"He's not here, either, Sister."

"Is he off killing with Zimran?" she demanded.

"No, Sister." The man sounded impatient. "We don't know where he is. Or when he'll be back."

Mirabar's head reeled with the combined sensations of two worlds. She groped through her confusion and tried to focus on one thing at a time.

"And the
roshah
?" Basimar asked.

"He's gone. Josarian went with him."

"And they didn't tell you where they were going?" Basimar asked with growing frustration.

"Isn't it obvious?" Mirabar said, her vision swimming. "They've gone to find Kiloran."

"
Sirana!
" The
shallah
stepped closer. "How did you know? Have you seen them? Is Josarian all right?"

"How in the Fires should I know?" she replied. "I don't suppose the
roshah
gave you a hint about where he expected to find Kiloran?"

"Tansen? No, he didn't seem to know. He only said he knew who to ask."

"Tansen," Mirabar repeated. "That's the warrior's name?"

"Yes,
sirana
."

"Not... Armian?" She could feel disappointment pierce her like a thorn.

"
Armian?
" Basimar repeated. "You never said—"

"Armian?" the
shallah
said. "No,
sirana
, he calls himself Tansen. Why? Are you..." He caught his breath and leaned close to whisper, "Are you looking for the Firebringer?"

Mirabar rubbed her aching forehead with a grimy hand. "I wish I knew." She couldn't make sense of any of this while the souls of the dead screamed all around her.
One thing at a time.
"Take me to a circle of fire," she instructed. "And when I'm done..."

"Yes?"

Mirabar stumbled, lost in the silent cacophony which surrounded her. The man caught her elbow. Despite the chaos in her mind, she heard him gasp when a flame-red lock of her hair tumbled out of her hood. She saw him reach for his sword. A
sword!
Only in her visions had she ever seen a Silerian holding a sword! "It has begun." She looked up into the man's face.

"Dar shield me..." He stepped back as he saw her golden eyes.

"But then..." She blinked and wondered, "Why am
I
needed?"

It was late when Elelar returned home from the gathering at Santorell Palace. Ronall had left for one of their country estates this morning, planning a few days of hunting, drinking, and—Elelar supposed—whoring in rustic surroundings. Not only did Elelar enjoy being in the house when he wasn't here, it was also valuable time which couldn't be wasted.

She had excused herself from Borell's bed tonight, even though she knew that an Imperial courier had arrived from the mainland that very afternoon. It would be easiest to learn what was in those dispatches tonight, while Borell slept off the effects of passion and wine, since he tended to leave fresh dispatches lying open on the table near his bed. However, if the dispatches contained important news or orders, she could probably get Borell to tell her about it the next time she slept with him. He was shrewd and intelligent, but he trusted her. A woman lay with a man, let him spill his seed inside the secret recesses of her body, lavished him with compliments about his virility, courage, and intelligence, feigned fascination whenever he spoke, and... A hungry puppy taking food from someone's hand was not so easy to beguile as a man convinced that a woman was in love with him.

Tonight, however, with Ronall safely absent and the rest of Shaljir asleep for the night, there was business to conduct here at home which might well take until dawn: Two separate meetings with secret associates, their comings and goings concealed by loyal servants; confidential letters to be sealed and entrusted to brave couriers; contraband supplies to be smuggled into the house and hidden in the underground tunnels. There was even a body buried in her wine cellar: an Imperial courier whom the Alliance had prevented from returning to the mainland last year.

Ronall's absence provided one additional small pleasure, too. When he was gone and Elelar had the vast house to herself, she could recall happier days here, the years before her marriage, when her grandfather was still alive. The old man had taught her all he knew so that she could carry on the great work of the Alliance, the secret organization which, during his youth, he had founded with close friends. Her father, who had died in her infancy, had given his life for the Alliance. As far as the Valdani knew, though, her father had been a gutless
toren
who meekly obeyed all their laws. Her mother, who had died when Elelar was sixteen, had taught her how a woman's weapons could be even more effective than a man's in the secret war the Alliance waged against the Valdani.

She had inherited this grand, elegant house in the heart of Shaljir from them, and she knew secrets about it which, to her relief, her husband still didn't even begin to suspect: secret passages, hidden storage compartments, a concealed room... and a core of longtime servants utterly loyal to the Alliance. And beneath it all lay the secret, ancient tunnels that her grandfather had discovered more than fifty years ago, inhabited by the strange, lost race of beings whom he was the first to ever regard as Silerians, with as much right to this land as the rest of them.

Her grandfather, Gaborian, eventually brought the Beyah-Olvari into the secret network of rebels that he and several of his closest friends were establishing in those days. Through the friends Gaborian had made abroad, the Alliance eventually joined with secret societies in other lands ruled or threatened by the Valdani. He had also been responsible for bringing certain factions of the Honored Society into the Alliance, despite the violent protests he encountered upon doing so. As he had told Elelar time and time again, the Valdani were the only enemies that counted.

"The rest of us," he would say, "are Silerians, and we must fight the Valdani together."

Elelar had been born for this work, raised in this cause, tutored day and night in this struggle. She had never once wavered in her duty. After her grandfather's death, all of Shaljir had believed that Elelar must marry soon, because a young woman with no male protector had only two respectable choices in Sileria: marriage or the Sisterhood. Some now thought that, perhaps due to grief over the loss of her grandfather, she had made an impulsive and disastrous choice in marrying Ronall; he was still rather handsome and, when he chose, even possessed a certain reckless charm, but he had proved to be a terrible husband by any standards. Others believed that she had married him for his money. Though only a second son, he was nonetheless heir to two prosperous country estates, an ocean-going ship, and considerable sums of wealth.

Ronall was the son of a Valdani aristocrat, got on the man's second wife, a
torena
he had married after his Valdani wife had died trying to bear him another child. Ronall was deemed—quite correctly—to be too steeped in his vices and too interested in his pleasures to pay much attention to the way Elelar slowly began acquiring control of his land and wealth after marrying him. Her own family, the Hasnari, were hardly poor, but the activities of the Alliance ate up wealth faster than it could be acquired, so getting her hands on Ronall's money had been a distinct benefit of the marriage.

Even more importantly, Ronall's Valdani relatives and friends had opened up many doors to Elelar. The information she had been able to gather from these unwitting sources over the past few years had strengthened the Alliance beyond all expectation. The greatest opportunity had come three years ago, when the Imperial Advisor had extended an invitation to Ronall and his Silerian wife to some vulgar Valdani religious festival at Santorell Palace. From the moment they first met, Elelar had recognized Advisor Borell's interest in her. Well-educated by her mother in the ways of winning men, Elelar made Borell wait for months before she finally pretended to succumb to passion and entered his bed.

She had been discreet at first, visiting him infrequently and staying only briefly, keeping him hungry for her. Even after becoming his mistress, she had cautiously continued occasionally seeing her other two lovers in secret: one, a half-Moorlander Valdan, the other a high-ranking official in the Imperial Treasury. She was unwilling to give up those valuable sources of information until she was absolutely sure she had Borell where she wanted him. After a year, Borell had given up other women and even stopped exchanging letters with his longtime mistress in Valda. Elelar ended her relationships with the two other men, about whom Borell had never learned, and finally gave into his pressure to make their liaison public by acting as his hostess on numerous occasions and visiting him openly by day when he requested it.