The White Dragon (13 page)

He had no interest in eating animal flesh as the landfolk did. Even cooked, it looked disgusting, and the thought of eating it raw and bloody... Just the sight and smell of those butchered carcasses turned his stomach when he passed through market towns. And he soon gave up trying to catch wildfowl—traps seemed to be sadly unreliable on land, since birds here could perch anywhere, whereas at sea their choices were very limited.
 

So now, nine days after emerging reborn from the sea, he was subsisting solely on stolen bread and cheese, and whatever he could scavenge in the hills, valleys, and groves through which he passed: nuts, berries, fruit, baby potatoes, wild onions. Some of it he had discovered by himself, some he had learned about by watching the landfolk.
 

Water, at least, was no problem. Although sweetwater had to be carefully rationed at sea, it seemed easy enough to find on land. Despite all the drylanders' whining about the ruthless power of the waterlords, Zarien had yet to go thirsty.

The farther inland he ventured, the more drylanders he encountered who had never seen the sea-born. The landfolk stared openly at his indigo tattoos, making him feel self-conscious about something which was normally a source of pride to him. People eyed his
stahra
and, not realizing it was his weapon, often asked why he was carrying an oar.

Zarien had walked in the wrong direction for an entire morning on one occasion before discovering that three
shallaheen
had lied to him about the location of Mount Dalishar. What did his father... what did Sorin always say?
Shallaheen
learned to lie before they learned to walk. He marveled that Sorin, who had never once set foot on land, knew them so well.

They called it
lirtahar.
It was a Society creed which had spread throughout Sileria until even the island nation's sea-born folk accepted its basic tenets; the
shallaheen
, however, had taken it to extremes.
Lirtahar
was the law of silence. In principle, it meant that no one ever told anything to the conquerors of Sileria. From the Moorlander Conquest, through the Kintish invasions, to the Valdani occupation, the people of Sileria offered their foreign rulers lies, half-truths, evasions, and silence. In practice, however, a thousand years of
lirtahar
meant that Sileria's disparate and quarreling factions had evolved into a secretive and suspicious culture where information was hoarded and guarded like the diamonds of Alizar, particularly among the
shallaheen
. This made it a little challenging for a harmless sea-born stranger to find Mount Dalishar, despite its being one of the most famous landmarks in all of Sileria.
 

No one asked why he was going to Dalishar—perhaps they assumed he would lie or refuse to answer—but everyone stared at him with open curiosity. And, as he went deeper into the mountains, curiosity seemed close kin to hostility.
Shallaheen
were suspicious of strangers—
roshah
, they called him, "outsider"—and fiercely territorial.
 

The war had left many of their women unguarded by male relatives, and not everyone seemed to consider Zarien too young to be a threat in this respect. Some villages had been decimated by the Valdani, attacked and burned in retaliatory raids made by the Outlookers; some of these villagers resented the sea-born for waiting so long to join Josarian's cause. Other villages Zarien passed through now seemed to be deeply divided, as was much of Sileria, due to the rift between Josarian and the Society; those who were loyal to the Society seemed to know that the sea-born were not. And in one dreary village where he stopped, an assassin claimed a bloodvow and challenged a
shallah
to fight to the death.

Zarien had seen people die, for the sea-born life was a dangerous one, but he had never seen one man kill another before. It left him feeling hollow. He had no idea what that particular bloodvow was about, but he had learned by now that vengeance was always the motive. Josarian's world was every bit as strange and violent as Zarien had feared.
 

He wanted his family. He wanted his clan. Above all, he missed the sea. Every waking and sleeping moment, he longed for it. The scent of the ocean, the salty spray thrown up by the waves, the gentle lapping at the hull, the easy roll of the boat, the glimmering azure waters which mirrored the fiercely blue sky, the long reflection that the moons cast on the calms at night...

Don't think about it. Not now.

He would go home, in time. He would find Sharifar's mate—
Please let it be Josarian! Where will I even look if it's not him?
—and he would return to the sea. And although the Lascari would never accept him as one of their own again, he would at least confront his parents and find out who he really was.

Besides, if I bring home the sea king, maybe the Lascari will overlook my sojourn on land.

There had never been an exception. He knew that. To walk the dryland was to be declared dead by the Lascari, to ensure that your name was never even mentioned again. But surely there had never before been a situation like this? He was in uncharted waters now, cutting new wind in the storm-tossed world of the Firebringer.

He came upon another village now and decided to ask the way again to Dalishar. He must be close by now.
 

The first two
shallaheen
he spoke to claimed, with every appearance of honesty, that they didn't even know the name of this village, never mind the location of Mount Dalishar.
 

"I'm not a Valdan," he said impatiently, having encountered this sort of behavior too often lately.

"Neither are you one of us,
roshah
." The two men turned and walked away.

Many men were gathered around a large fountain in the village's main square. They were speaking loudly, engaged in a passionate debate about something. Zarien only caught a few words of the volatile conversation, since it was all in
shallah
and everyone seemed to be talking at once. They said something about a
torena
, then about the
torena
's servants... A journey to Shaljir... The
torena
had left this morning at first light... Something about Josarian... Now they were talking about Kiloran.
 

Suddenly there was a lot of shouting. Some of the men seemed furious, ready to fight. Others were trying to reason with them, or at least to get between them and thus prevent a fight. Someone pulled out a
yahr
. Zarien had never even seen one before coming ashore nine days ago, but he recognized it easily by now and realized how menacing that simple weapon of two short sticks really was. This one gleamed darkly in the sunshine as its owner swung it in a circle over his head, making a soft
whooshing
sound while people stepped back and watched him warily.

Someone backing away from the scene stepped on Zarien's foot. Given how sore it was, Zarien yelped. The man whirled around, his long black hair swinging like a loose sail. His apology faded in mid-sentence as his gaze traveled over Zarien. He stared for a moment, then said something in
shallah
about Dalishar.

Zarien nodded and replied in common Silerian, "Yes, I'm looking for Dalishar." He wondered how the
shallah
knew. "Where am I now?"

"This is Chandar."
 

It sounded like a real answer. Zarien plunged in and asked, "Are we near Dalishar?"

Instead of replying, the man said something that sounded like,
Do you know about Josarian?
Or maybe it was just,
Do you know Josarian?

"No," he replied.

The
shallah
continued staring at him. He seemed more puzzled than unfriendly. At last he said, "They say Josarian... They say he is..."

"What?"

"Why are you going to Dalishar?"

I understood that. This is getting easier.

Zarien tried the answer he thought would work best: "It is the will of Dar."

The man frowned at him, though Zarien wasn't sure what the expression indicated, then looked briefly over his shoulder at the crowd behind him. More talking seemed to have forestalled the threatened violence, but passions were still running high.

Finally the
shallah
pointed northwest.

Zarien gazed up at the mountain that loomed over this village. It looked steep and rocky, but he half-thought he could live through the climb. "That's Dalishar?"

"No, Dalishar is above it. Do you see?"

"Oh." Now he saw. Dalishar wasn't as high as Darshon, but it towered over the mountains around it—and over the nearer mountain—with imposing height.
 

He wanted to curse Dar, as She deserved, but that seemed unwise under the circumstances, so he just prayed, "May the wind be at my back."

Tansen returned to the cave before midday, as promised, with a Sister to tend Armian. She asked no questions upon being shown the bloody, unconscious man hidden in the stone heart of the mountain. The Sisters tended everyone impartially, gave Sanctuary to all Silerians without discrimination, and so she asked Tansen nothing about the wounded man beyond what she needed to know to treat his injuries.

If the Outlookers eventually found her and—like the barbarians they were—pressed her for answers about today, she would probably die under interrogation, as did so many people, rather than tell them anything
. Lirtahar,
the law of silence, ruled the mountains. To break silence, to tell the Outlookers anything, always brought terrible shame—and usually terrible vengeance, too. When a man or woman broke
lirtahar
and talked, revealed anything to the Valdani, he or she was shunned by everyone—village, clan, sect—and often severely punished, too. To betray the Society in any way meant certain death, of course, but ordinary people might be just as quick to kill for
 
vengeance when
lirtahar
was violated, because silence protected them all from the
roshaheen
and must therefore never be broken. Burning down a house, killing someone's livestock, declaring a bloodvow, or commencing a bloodfeud—all of this might be done to punish someone who'd spoken instead of remaining silent.

So Tansen had no fear that the Sister would betray them the Valdani.

It was close to sundown when Zarien rounded a bend in the rocky path—and nearly tripped over an open-eyed corpse lying in a fly-swarming pool of blood.

"By the eight winds..."
 

He held his baggy sleeve to his nose as the stench of death and blood assailed his nostrils. His mouth sagged open in shock as he took in the horrifying scene.

Four... Six... No
seven
men lay dead... Mangled bodies were twisted awkwardly, sprawled and broken, guts exposed, a head hacked off... or mostly off...
The blood...
It was thick and red and everywhere... All over them, the ground, the rocks, their clothes, their weapons...