In Legend Born (46 page)

"You admired Armian."

"I
worshipped
him," Tansen said. "If Kiloran had another assassin like that to send against me now, I could not kill him so easily as I killed the other two. And I would regret doing it, too, because the kind of courage and skill Armian had in a fight is rare."

"So this assassin took you with him to Shaljir?"

"He couldn't leave me in Gamalan and..." Tansen shrugged. "You know. The last of the Gamalani died there. There had already been so few of us left, anyhow, thanks to the bloodfeud with the Sirdari." He shrugged again. "I had nowhere to go."

The journey to far-off Shaljir was long. They avoided the main roads and traveled mostly by night. Armian never joined in Tansen's daily prayers to Dar as they circled the vast mountain wherein She dwelled. The assassin had no use for the goddess; when the war for Sileria was over, he would apprentice to Kiloran, who had made his
shir
, and learn water magic. Nor did Armian have much use for most of the
shallaheen
they encountered on their journey; he found them ignorant and superstitious. He even seemed to blame them for their poverty.

"How did he treat
you?
" Josarian asked.

Tansen hesitated. "For whatever reason... he grew to love me like a son."

"And did you love him like a father?" Josarian waited a long time for an answer. 

"Yes," Tan finally admitted. "I hung on his every word. Mimicked his actions, dogged his footsteps day and night." He nodded, remembering. "I looked up to him, and... I loved him."

Shaljir should have turned the head and fired the heart of a mountain boy seeing it for the first time, but Tansen was mourning his family. Since Armian was a man who knew how to get things done, they located
Toren
Gaborian's household quickly. To their astonishment, it was being run by an eighteen-year-old girl.

"Elelar," Josarian guessed.

Tan nodded. "Gaborian was old and very ill. Elelar tells me he grew steadily worse and died two years later."

"So you had found the Alliance."

The fabulous wealth of Gaborian's household and the strange intrigues going on there might have enthralled Tansen had he not become instantly and hopelessly enamored of Elelar. He had never seen a woman like her, had never known the painful, tongue-tied yearning which overwhelmed him in her presence. He didn't know how to control the lust that swept through him when she brushed past him or stood so close he could feel the heat of her skin.

He had also never before experienced the acute embarrassment he felt over her amusement at his rustic habits or clumsy infatuation. He was so much less than she was in every way. For the first time in his life, he was embarrassed that he was ignorant and uneducated; her pity humiliated him and her impatience shamed him.

He was a
shallah
and she was a
torena
. Even worse, he was still just a boy, and she was already a woman.

She sent him and Armian to the same inn, in the oldest section of the city, where he would lead Josarian nine years later. The keeper was not only in the Alliance, he was also privy to an astonishing secret hidden beneath the streets of the city: the survival of the Beyah-Olvari.

"How did you find out about them?" Josarian asked.

"Armian killed a beggar. The Valdani don't approve of Silerians committing murder in broad daylight in the streets of Shaljir. They sealed off the gates and started searching the city for us, not even realizing who Armian was. So Elelar hid us underground."

"Why in the Fires did he kill a beggar?"

Tansen sought his face in the dark. "Because Armian was an assassin, and the beggar annoyed him."

Gaborian was too ill to travel and Armian's mission had already been jeopardized once by betrayal, so Elelar decided to personally escort the assassin and the mountain boy to Kiloran. She didn't know where the waterlord was, but then, as now, she had ways of finding him.

"Are you telling me that
Kiloran
is part of this Alliance?"

"Yes."

It took them many days to find Kiloran. Emperor Jarell was devoting considerable energy that year to his war on the Society, and the waterlord was constantly on the move. During that time, Tansen discovered that Armian's method of extracting information from people was not dissimilar to the Valdani's. Tansen watched his idol enact scenes of ruthless brutality unlike anything he'd ever seen, and though he diligently applied himself to the fighting techniques Armian had decided to teach him, something inside of him started boiling over with revulsion. "Above all, I started to see the Society through her eyes," he said.

"Elelar?"

"Yes."

Educated, articulate, and shrewd beyond her years, Elelar knew the Alliance needed to continue cultivating the Society because they were the strongest faction in Sileria; but she considered them almost as bad as the Valdani. Who starved the cities of water when tribute didn't arrive on time or wasn't deemed generous enough? Who ruled the mountains through terror and violence? Who controlled the
toreni
with abduction, ransom demands, and murder? Who had destroyed Sileria's last Yahrdan? Who had already killed more
shallaheen
than the Valdani ever would?

"Then why was she allied to them?" Josarian asked.

"For the same reason you will be," Tansen said, "now that you've promised to join the Alliance."

"You didn't tell me—"

"We cannot fight the Valdani without the Society. She knew it then, I know it now. You must understand it." He leaned forward. "When I first sought you, I thought only of keeping you alive to torment the Valdani. When I swore a bloodfeud with you, I thought only of making the torment last beyond our deaths. But now I have seen how men follow you, believe in you, risk everything to join your fight."

"All men want what I want, Tan," said Josarian. "To live freely and in peace, and to be able to feed their families. That's all. It's not so much, but the Valdani have denied it to us for too long."

"I don't think any man picks up a weapon just because he wants food and peace," said Tansen. "He does it because something or someone has inspired him to risk killing and dying. Something as simple as fear or hatred, or something as complex as a dream or a great man's leadership."

"I am no great man," Josarian said quietly. "I'm an uneducated mountain peasant who misses his wife and who can never go home again."

"You've changed lives all over the district of Cavasar. You've convinced frightened men to follow you, and clannish villagers to put aside their differences for a common cause. You've begun a rebellion in an utterly defeated nation by challenging the most powerful empire the world has ever known." He smiled wryly. "Like it or not, you're a great man."

"A heavy responsibility," Josarian said without enthusiasm. "I think I preferred being an outlaw."

"Before this thing is through, the Valdani will wish you had stayed a mere outlaw."

Returning to the point, Josarian said, "If he kills you, I will not be Kiloran's ally."

"I know," Tansen said. "But Elelar doesn't know that, and I need her help to find him."

"You think he
will
kill you, don't you?" Josarian prodded.

He smothered his fear. "I think he wants very much to kill me."

"Then why—"

"We've been all through this before. I'm not going back into exile. I'm not going into hiding. And I don't feel like spending the rest of my life battling assassins—who might very well start killing my friends and companions when they find it too hard to kill me." His gaze rested briefly on the swords lying beside him. "I will face him as a man, and one way or another, this thing between us will be settled."

Josarian sighed, nodding. "Then you'd better tell me why he wants you dead."

"Yes."

After nearly a twin-moon of searching, Armian, Tansen, and Elelar found Kiloran—or rather, he found them, responding to Elelar's signals.

"He was..." Tansen made a vague gesture. "Power radiated from him the way heat radiates from a fire. His eyes were cold and lifeless, like a snake's. The Moorlanders had chosen the right envoy; Kiloran would have trusted no other. He treated Armian with affection, but there was no warmth in him. Me... I was treated courteously because Armian required it."

"And Elelar?"

He smiled. "Oh, I would have pitied the man who failed to show her proper respect, even then."

"Did Kiloran approve of the Moorlanders' proposal?"

"He was suspicious at first, as was his nature. In time, though, he grew enthusiastic about it." Tansen's hands curled into fists as he recalled, "He saw what Armian saw, what I had failed to understand. The Moorlanders would give their support to the Society, not to Sileria, to fight the Valdani. After the Emperor was beaten here and the Moorlanders withdrew to finish the war on the mainland, all power in Sileria would be left in the hands of the Society."

"With Kiloran in charge of the whole country," Josarian guessed, watching Tansen intently.

"And with Armian as his successor. They... were very pleased at the prospect."

"Elelar had no objections?"

"Elelar and the Alliance believed the Valdani were the only enemies that mattered. All other problems and enmities could wait until the day the Valdani were finally gone."

"So the Alliance and the Honored Society both supported the plan and intended to make a pact with the Moorlanders?"

"Yes. When it was approved, Armian was to travel to the southern coast to meet a Moorlander ship and give the Society's answer. Elelar accompanied him, to speak for the Alliance. I went with him, too, because..." The shame of it burned him like fire as he forced himself to confess, "It was my duty. I was his bloodpact son."

"Darfire! You're Armian's
bloodson?
"

"Yes. We had sworn the bloodpact before reaching Shaljir." He opened his left hand and traced another familiar scar.

Clearly stunned, Josarian said, "The
torena
said... you ruined everything, you destroyed Sileria's future." He leaned forward, perhaps already knowing the answer as he asked, "How?"

"I murdered Armian."

Tansen tried to look away from the intensity of his brother's gaze, apparent even in the dark, but he couldn't. Josarian said nothing, made no movement or gesture. He just stared. Tansen's lungs strained for air in the cool mountain night.

"I killed my own bloodfather, Josarian. You know that there are few worse crimes." His voice was so tight he had to force it out of his throat. "And I killed the man who... I think he may really have been the Firebringer."

"Why did you do it?" Josarian whispered at last.

"I saw... I saw another thousand years of slavery for us, under the heaviest yoke of all. This pact excluded all the other peoples of Sileria. The war wouldn't free this island for Silerian rule once the Valdani were driven out." Shame flooded his veins as he tried to explain his unspeakable act of betrayal. "The Society, led by Kiloran and Armian, would rule Sileria—more harshly than the Valdani or any other conqueror ever has."

"We would..." Josarian cleared his throat and sat back. "We would never be free."

"By now, we would be looking back on Valdani rule with affection." He released his breath in an uncontrolled rush. "Who starves the cities of water? Who rules the mountains through terror and violence?" Anger sparked inside of him even now as he recalled, "She was the one who said to me, 'Who has already killed more
shallaheen
than the Valdani ever will?' She was the one who taught me the history of our people and made me understand what
they
really are. I was an ignorant boy from a violent clan which was unquestioningly loyal to a Lironi waterlord. Even when I feared Armian, even when I turned away in horror from things he did, I still..." He shook his head. "Well, who can say what might have been? But until I knew Elelar, it never occurred to me that there could be another way."

"And once you knew, there was no turning back. I know. I've been there, too," Josarian said. "The night I first said
no
to the Valdani... I could never go back, after that. I suddenly knew, for the first time, that everything could be different, and
should
be different, and
I
had to try to make it so."

"I was the one who found him and saved his life," Tansen said. "He'd reached Kiloran because of me. Sileria would be enslaved forever by the Society because of me, because I had saved Armian to accomplish this thing." He closed his eyes. "So it was up to me to stop him. I had to destroy the only link between the Society and the Moorlanders, the only person trusted by both sides."

"How did you do it, though? A boy against a man? A
shallah
against an assassin?"

"I knew I couldn't succeed in a direct challenge. So I took him by surprise. He..." His blood roared in his ears. "It was easy to catch him off guard. He trusted me completely."

They were on the cliffs east of Adalian, Tansen explained, walking rather than riding, since it was a dark-moon night and the landscape was too treacherous for horses. It was raining and the wind was high. Tired and unused to such exertion, Elelar was lagging behind. Sick in his heart over what he had decided he must do, Tansen awaited his opportunity.

"It was very dark, hard to see anything in the distance. He stood on a cliff, with his back to me, looking down into a cove." Tansen's was voice dull and distant now, recalling each breath, each movement, each gust of wind. "He had recently given me a new
yahr
, one he'd gotten from Kiloran, made of petrified Kintish wood. I stood behind him and struck him with it."

Armian had fallen to his knees, stunned by the blow but not knocked unconscious. A great fighter, he instinctively rolled away from the second blow while simultaneously reaching for his
shir
.

"But he froze, like a statue, when he saw me standing above him swinging the
yahr
."