In Legend Born (79 page)

More experienced than she, he sensed the change in her, the sensation of surprise and uncertainty yielding to need and desire. He leaned down to her, his head slowly descending towards hers, giving her one more moment to think it over. She started shaking in earnest, and she hoped he had already guessed how little she knew, how inexperienced she was. Mirabar had never been kissed before, and she didn't want the first time to be a humiliation of disappointment and embarrassed apologies.

He was very sure, though, despite her hesitancy and awkwardness. His arms tightened around her as his mouth touched hers, pulling her against his chest, making her feel weightless. Darkness swallowed her as their lips melded, rubbing, caressing, exploring. Her mind reeled, astounded that so simple a contact could make the world whirl around her. Mirabar sighed when he lifted his head slightly, then she opened her eyes and gazed at him in a daze.

His eyes were as hot as flames. It excited her. She wondered if hers were the same. If so, she knew it would repulse any other man, and so she burrowed into this one, determined to enjoy what other women enjoyed, what she had resolutely pretended not to need or want until this moment.

She kissed him again, more sure of herself this time, giving as well as taking now. His hands moved over her back, shaping her, molding her, pulling her even closer so that every curve and crevice of their bodies flowed together in harmony and hunger. His kisses were hot on her face, his breath now almost as fast as her own. She sighed again, enraptured, lost in him...

"
Sirana!
"

The sound of Najdan's shocked voice was like a bucket of cold water. They both froze. Too disoriented to respond to the intrusion with dignity, Mirabar stumbled out of Cheylan's embrace and faced Najdan. She was breathing as if she'd just run all the way to Dalishar and back. She could only guess what she looked like. Najdan's gaze was fixed on Cheylan, rather than on her. He looked suspicious and disapproving.

It infuriated her. He had a mistress near Kandahar, one he visited whenever they passed that way. Was she entitled to less just because of an accident of birth? Just because other men couldn't stand the sight of her?

"What do you want?" she snapped.

Najdan blinked in surprise at her tone. He had followed her to Idalar and was angry that she had run off like that, leaving Niran in the middle of the night without warning. She'd been very nice to him ever since his arrival here, trying to make up for it.

"Well?" she prodded, furious with him.

"Josarian is asking for you. You've been gone for some time." Najdan's voice was cold, smarting with insult that she should speak to him this way in front of a virtual stranger. They had come a long way since their first meeting at Dalishar, and he had grown to expect a certain consideration from her. "I was worried and thought I'd better find you. I saw the fire, and..." He shrugged.

Mirabar tried to control her temper, something she seldom bothered doing. Najdan's surprise was natural, since no man had ever before touched her. And this one was a stranger, after all. Najdan had perfectly good reasons for seeking her out. She had duties to perform. She had been gone too long from camp and had caused concern. 

Mirabar took the biggest breath of her life and let it out slowly. Then she met Najdan's gaze in the firelight. "I'm... sorry." Dar knew how she hated saying those words.

Najdan knew it, too. Having won an apology from her, he replied magnanimously, "I startled you,
sirana
."

"Yes," she agreed. "You startled me."

Cheylan said nothing. Too embarrassed to look at him now, Mirabar asked, "What does Josarian want?"

Najdan shifted uneasily. "I believe he wants you to Call his wife,
sirana
."

Chapter Thirty-Two

Zimran was not surprised when Tansen caught up to them in Shaljir's ancient, underground tunnels. He had seen the
roshah
fight often enough to know how hard it was to kill him. So, no, Zimran was not surprised—just a little disappointed. After all, Tansen had long ago replaced him in Josarian's favor. There was also something—though he wasn't sure what—between Tansen and the woman that Zimran now secretly wanted more than he'd ever wanted any other. So there were few men living whose deaths would have caused him less sorrow than Tansen's. 

To Zimran's relief, they escaped the tunnels the same night they freed the
torena
from prison. Carved out of underground lava flows long ago, perhaps from the now-extinct volcano of Mount Shaljir which filled the skyline beyond the Lion's Gate, the tunnels were a wonderland of strange blue beings, exotic plant life, and little glowing creatures. However, a brief visit was more than enough to satisfy Zimran, who hated enclosed spaces and felt as if he couldn't breathe properly until they were once again in the open air. Unfortunately, they fled by sea, and like most
shallaheen
, Zimran had no sea legs.

Tansen believed that their best chance of safe exit from the city was to leave Shaljir while the Outlookers were still stumbling over themselves trying to figure out what had happened. The following day would be too late. And so, after collecting Faradar from the Beyah-Olvari, they escaped via the same route Derlen had used, covering themselves in blue designs to disguise themselves as sea-born folk. They exited the tunnels at the port, where they joined a boatload of sea-born folk ostensibly setting out for their fishing grounds before dawn.

Afraid of disgracing himself, Zimran just concentrated on trying not to throw up everything he'd ever eaten while the boat heaved and swayed. Meanwhile, Elelar and Tansen consulted with their hosts. The sea-born folk and lowlanders had recently sent representatives to meet with Josarian, though no one knew where. This clan Zimran was sailing with, already part of the Alliance, believed that their people were nearly ready to join the rebellion. There was just one small problem.

"They want Josarian to prove he's the Firebringer?" Elelar repeated incredulously. "You can't be serious."

Even wearing sea-born clothes and covered in strange indigo designs, she looked beautiful in the faint, shifting lantern light. Zimran had never before seen such a beautiful woman. Every gesture and glance tugged at his loins, drew him further into her web, and made him long all the more for her. He was no fool, though. He had known that he had no chance of winning her while she was a
torena
living in a palace in Shaljir and wooed by men of her own class. He had flirted with her because he couldn't resist, but he had known she was beyond his reach—even though Tansen didn't seem to know that she was also beyond
his
.

Upon learning from Faradar that the
torena
had been captured, Zimran had believed, as had Josarian, that she couldn't still be alive. In these dangerous times, the Valdani executed Silerians every day, after all. 

Knowing that Josarian would seek privacy with Tansen at Idalar to break the news to him, Zimran had followed his cousin into the woods and eavesdropped. He wanted to see the pain on Tansen's face when he learned Elelar was undoubtedly dead. It wouldn't be as satisfying as seeing the
shatai
's corpse lying in the mud after some battle, but it would be enough.

Upon learning that Elelar was, in fact, alive, Zimran had known instantly that he must go to Shaljir with Tansen. Since the
torena
couldn't go back to her palace in the city or to her grand country estates, she would have to live with them, become one of them. Suddenly she was within Zimran's reach, and he would not let Tansen get to her first. He would not sit by idly while that
roshah
won her by rescuing her single-handedly from Shaljir. He knew that the
shatai
's plan was insanely dangerous, but he also knew that if anyone could make it succeed, it was Tansen. Zimran decided it would be better to die like a man in Shaljir rather than stay in the mountains and wish he himself could have been the
torena
's hero. So he went, praying that he would survive and hoping—but not expecting—that Tansen would get himself killed.

Having exhausted the improbable topic of Josarian flinging himself into Darshon, Zimran's companions turned to a new subject while the boat rocked the way his bed had done once during an earthquake in Emeldar.

"Dalishar?" Tansen repeated in response to the captain's question. "No, we can't go back there. The Valdani will expect it, so they'll be watching every road and raiding every village on the way." He sighed. "They'll want the
torena
back very badly, and they'll do a lot of damage trying to get her."

"You sound as if you think you should have left me where I was," Elelar said sourly.

"Don't you?" Tansen replied without heat.

She hesitated, then admitted, "Perhaps."

Wishing the deck would stop heaving beneath him, Zimran protested, "Your death could only be counted as a terrible loss,
torena
. Your life is worth whatever it costs us."

Tansen rose to his feet. "Oh, for the love of Dar."

He stalked away—though it wasn't possible to go very
far
away on this boat. Darfire, Zimran couldn't wait to get back on dry land!

At least Elelar smiled at him. Warm. Sweet. Welcoming. At least there was that.

Calidar's silken scarf danced in the circle of fire. Josarian watched it, absently rubbing the dull ache in his wounded thigh while Mirabar chanted. She had tried to talk him out of attempting this.

"It's the wrong season," she'd argued. "The wrong time of year. Your wife died in the spring. This world and the Other one revolve together, one moving as the other does. She will be out of reach right n—"

"You can do what others can't," he had argued right back. "And I
must
see her."

Mirabar had continued protesting until Cheylan delicately offered to perform the Calling in her place. That changed her mind fast enough. Tansen had once privately mentioned to Josarian that Cheylan seemed a little jealous of Mirabar's power and reputation. Now Mirabar clearly felt that Cheylan's offer to help Josarian trespassed on her territory. Guardians, Josarian observed wryly, were not so different from ordinary people, after all. Realizing that Josarian would indeed turn to Cheylan if she continued denying him, Mirabar agreed to Call Calidar. Cheylan had tactfully disappeared after that.

Now, alone with Mirabar and her fire, Josarian waited and prayed. The dreams, the visions, the prophecy... Jalan's mad ravings, the whispered rumors, the outright challenge from the lowlanders and the sea-born folk... 

Josarian knew that he could face death, even such a painful one as jumping into Darshon. After all, he had been facing death for a long time now; and he would embrace it when it came, carrying him all the way to the Otherworld and Calidar. But he didn't want to leave the rebellion in disarray by dying at the behest of his own overblown pride. He wanted to die fighting for Sileria, not stupidly seeking vainglory and legend. He wanted to die for a reason.

Perhaps the answer to his dilemma lay in finding out if Calidar had died for a reason, as Jalan had suggested.

She came at last, answering the Calling despite Mirabar's doubts and warnings. She came to him to answer his prayers and his questions, and that in itself was almost answer enough. He basked in the presence of the woman—the shade of the woman—he had loved more than life itself, the woman he had never stopped missing and longing for.

"
Kadriah
," he murmured, "I swore I would mourn you forever."

"Now another waits for you," Mirabar said, her gaze glassy and unfocused, her voice soft and breathless.

"Did you... leave... to free me for Her?" Josarian asked at last, his chest aching.

Calidar's shade didn't deny it or correct him. "Go to Her now... She awaits you..."

"And you?" He heard the pleading in his voice and didn't care. "I don't want to forget you."

"I await you in the Otherworld," Mirabar said on a sigh, her voice eerily like that of his dead wife. "I will wait for you forever."