Authors: Laura Resnick
However, although he and Zarien wouldn't be in Shaljir for much longer, Tansen had every intention of visiting the Olvar again, in the hopes of finding him calmer and getting some answers.
Maybe I'll leave Zarien behind next time, though.
The Olvar's vague comments bothered Zarien, who hadn't liked him. Tansen decided not to share his private musings about the possibility that Zarien himself was the sea king. It could perhaps explain how the boy had healed his
shir
wound, if that was indeed what had happened. But that was a discussion which could wait until Zarien was done mourning and his anger at Sharifar had finally dimmed a bit. Meanwhile, Tansen was at least pleased that a visit to the mythical (or so Zarien had thought) Beyah-Olvari, however disappointing, had lifted the boy's sorrow-laden spirits for a few hours. That alone had made the trip worthwhile.
Hearing no tortured scrambling behind him now on Mount Shaljir's steep slope, Tansen realized he had absent-mindedly increased his speed and left Zarien far behind. He paused and waited for the boy to catch up.
Overall, Zarien seemed grateful that Tansen didn't insist on going to sea. Zarien was still convinced Tansen was the sea king, but now he was fiercely determined to deny him to Sharifar. For his part, Tansen was almost guiltily relieved. He didn't want to be beloved of a goddess, as Josarian had been. There was a woman in the mountains whom Tansen wanted to claim, and he couldn't have her if he was Sharifar's consort. Mirabar had made it very clear that sharing was not in her nature, and he rather doubted that Sharifar would like such an arrangement, either. Dar, after all, had been very jealous of Josarian's love for his dead wife, forbidding him to mourn Calidar any longer. So Tansen didn't think a sea goddess would be more inclined to tolerate his love for another woman—one who was not only alive, but fiercely powerful in her own right.
Now that he was going back to her soon, he hoped the decision about their future together would be as clear to Mirabar as it had become to him ever since Zarien announced that Tansen would not, after all, embrace Sharifar.
Of course, Mirabar—like Elelar—was a creature of duty. She might insist Tansen try approaching Sharifar anyhow, with or without Zarien's help. However, being close to the sea left Tansen as indifferent to Sharifar's desire as he had been in the mountains. He still believed that whomever she sought, it wasn't him. And the more he thought about it, the more he believed Zarien was the most likely possibility. Now if only Tansen could convince Mirabar that he wasn't the sea king, perhaps he could convince her, too, of his sincerity about forsaking all others—
all
others—for her, if she would accept him.
He didn't want to think about Elelar's conviction that Mirabar was destined to kill her; that the fate of Sileria rested upon it. He tried not to remember how much Mirabar wanted the
torena
dead. He...
He sighed and admitted that he still had a lot of problems with women to worry about, even if Sharifar was no longer his concern—or at least not his concern until Zarien had traveled far enough from his grief to think about the goddess without such harsh feelings.
And who knew when that would be? Not Tansen, who doubted he would ever forgive Dar for letting Josarian die.
He heard weary footsteps and panting breath behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Zarien, drenched in sweat and—he was glad to see—glowering at him with uncomplicated bad temper. "Where," Zarien demanded, "are we going?"
"I'm not sure," Tansen admitted.
Zarien's face froze in an expression of comical outrage. After a moment in which he seemed too offended to summon coherent words, he threw down the heavy stick he was using as a staff and announced, "Then
I
will decide."
"Oh?" Tansen lifted a brow.
"Yes," Zarien snapped. He staggered over to a rock and sank down upon it, breathing hard as he dragged a forearm across his tattooed forehead. "
This
is a good place.
This
is our destination." He added with a portentous glare, "And there had better be a very good reason that I had to come here."
Tansen suppressed a grin. "There is." He looked around. The boy had chosen the place, and it was his right to do so. A break in the rocks, from some long ago avalanche perhaps, gave them a breathtaking view of Shaljir, in all her weary glory, and of the sea beyond. In the other direction, they could see the mountains from which they had come together, and to which they would soon return. The dry heat of the season eliminated any mist or clouds that might normally soften those jagged, merciless peaks in the distance.
"Yes," Tansen said. "This is the right place."
"For what?" Zarien asked breathlessly, shaking his empty waterskin. "I'm thirsty. Aren't you thirsty?"
Tansen walked over to him and handed him his own waterskin.
Zarien felt its weight and seemed reassured. "Oh, good. There's no water around here, is there?"
"I don't know." Tansen wasn't familiar with Mount Shaljir.
Zarien sniffed the air, then shook his head. "No," he said absently, then drank gratefully.
Zarien's sensitive nose was presumably a sea-bound trait, acquired among generations who spent their lives hoarding drinking water amidst the undrinkable expanse of the sea. Zarien could easily distinguish between the smell of seawater and what he called "sweetwater," and he was usually the first to find a place to replenish their water supply when they were traveling.
When Zarien was done drinking, he asked, "So why are we here?"
Tansen prepared himself. Zarien wasn't a
shallah
. He might not understand. He might even dislike the idea.
"A mountain is the only fitting place for this," he explained to the boy, "and this is the only one close enough to Shaljir for us to do this now."
Zarien shrugged. "Do what?"
Tansen held out his scarred palms and waited for the boy to look at them. "You know about bloodvows and bloodpact relations among the
shallaheen
, don't you?"
Zarien shifted uncomfortably. "If this is about my not swearing the bloodvow against Kiloran at Zilar—"
"No," Tansen said. "This is... the only way I can give you something of value in place of what the sea has taken from you."
Zarien's wide-eyed gaze flew up to meet his, and Tansen saw that he knew and understood.
"No one can take your father's place, Zarien. But a boy needs a father. Even a very brave, strong boy who is nearly a m—"
"He wasn't—He—" Zarien made an anguished sound and jumped to his feet, pushing past Tansen to stare out at the sea beyond Mount Shaljir.
"I will honor his memory in your heart," Tansen began.
"I didn't want to tell you. I didn't want to tell anyone," Zarien babbled. "I didn't want anyone to know. Not when I can't even... can't even..."
Frowning in puzzlement, Tansen came closer and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "What? What is it?"
"He wasn't...
Oh, damn Sharifar
."
The grief in the boy's voice hurt him. Tansen said nothing, waiting.
Zarien was shaking now. Trembling with emotions Tansen couldn't interpret. Keeping his back to Tansen, the boy finally choked out, "He wasn't my father."
"What?" Tansen didn't understand.
"Sharifar..." Zarien took a deep breath. Then another. He hugged himself with his arms. "The night I died. The night she told me I had a choice between staying dead or coming ashore..."
Damn Sharifar.
"She told me... Sorin and Palomar weren't my real parents."
"Ah." Tansen thought he understood. "I see."
"No," Zarien insisted. "You don't."
"It's no disg—"
"No, there's more."
"Tell me." Seeing Zarien's reluctance, Tansen promised, "You can tell me anything. Always."
"My father wasn't sea-bound. Not even sea-born. My father was a drylander." The words were choppy and harsh.
"Who was he?" Tansen asked.
"I don't know."
"I see. And your mother?"
Zarien shook his head. "I don't know."
Now he understood. "That's your secret, then? That's what you didn't want me—or anyone—to know?"
"Yes."
Tansen proceeded cautiously. It meant less than nothing to him who Zarien's true parents were. The dead sea-bound couple who had raised and loved the boy had obviously done it well. However, Tansen was
shallah
enough to understand what pride was involved in clan identity and bloodlines, and what disoriented shame came from not knowing one's true origins. He didn't remember his own real
father, but at least he had always known who he was.
"And now," Tansen said, "you can never ask Sorin who your real father was."
"No." Zarien was trying not to cry.
"Or thank Sorin for becoming your father."
Zarien nodded and swallowed a sob.
Tansen looked out to sea. "Would any of the survivors in your clan know the truth?"
Zarien shrugged.
"Now that Sorin and Palomar, who were your parents in the ways that matter most, are dead... Do you care who the real ones were?"
Zarien turned to stare at him in surprise.
Tansen shrugged. "We can try to find out—look for the remaining Lascari and see what they know. If it matters to you." When Zarien didn't reply, he added, "But it doesn't matter to me."
Zarien lowered his head again. "I am sea-bound, but shunned. Sea-born, but fathered by some drylander whose name I don't even know. Dead, but still walking around. Enemies with a goddess." His tone broke Tansen's heart when he said, "I am nothing and no one now. I have no place. No beginning, and no destiny left."
Tansen had forgotten just how utterly hopeless things could seem when you were that young and inexperienced. When you didn't yet know that the terrible thing you couldn't live through was, in fact, not as bad as the next ten terrible things you'd have to live through. He had forgotten how hard life seemed before you learned to accept how few of your desperate questions would ever be answered and how little justice you would ever see in the world.
"You are the best young man in Sileria," Tansen told him. "And I would like you to be my son."
A tear dropped from one dark eye and rolled down a tattooed cheek as Zarien met his gaze. "I would be... a
shallah?
"
"I, uh... I don't know," Tansen admitted. "I've never heard of anyone but a
shallah
becoming a bloodpact relation, so I don't know—"
"No," Zarien said decisively. Tansen's heart stopped until the boy added, "I will still be sea-born. Gillien was right. Unless someone can tell me for certain that I was not born in the sea to a sea-born woman, no one can take that away from me, even if I am not Lascari and can never be sea-bound again."
"That seems fair," Tansen said, using a word he knew the young liked. "Then, Zarien, will you honor me and—"
"Sharifar said—" Zarien blurted... then stopped and stared at Tansen, as if seeing him for the first time.
"Sharifar said?" Tansen prodded.
"She said it was time for me to seek my true father on land. I thought she meant..." Zarien's tormented face smoothed out into an expression that, at last, almost looked happy. "Maybe she meant you." He frowned a moment later and asked, "Um, fifteen years ago, did you perh—"
"I was younger than you are now," Tansen assured him, "and had never yet, uh, done what one must do to father a child."
"Oh."
"But a
shallah
bloodpact relationship is as binding as a birth relationship," he said. "If you become my son today, it makes me your true father from now on."
"Then perhaps," Zarien said slowly, "Sharifar did mean you."
Tansen spoke the truth when he said, "I don't care what Sharifar meant. This is a vow between people, a kind of new birth in the eyes of Dar, and a sea goddess has nothing to do with it."
"Unless she sent me to you," Zarien said. "But I will not take you to her, even so."
"You may never need to."
Zarien looked around. "What do I have to do?"
Tansen smiled, feeling relieved, pleased—even excited. He was about to become a father. It gave his life—so eventful, even so legendary—a meaning, a fulfillment which it had lacked until now. It gave him a stature which, as a
shallah
, was even more important than his achievements as a warrior. It gave him, who had spent so many years alone, someone to love and protect; and he suddenly knew that was what he had been born to do.
For the first time ever, he wondered how Armian had felt at this moment. Had Armian felt this mingled humility and exultation? This quiet joy and glowing pride? Had Armian, too, been eager to meet the challenge yet afraid of not being worthy of it? Had Armian, upon gaining a son, been happy?