The White Dragon (15 page)

Armian smiled. "Then Sileria's mountains must be a remarkable place."

"Yes
, siran.
The only place. No other place matters." Armian's smile emboldened Tansen to add, "It's good that you have come home
, siran.
We have waited so long."

"For what?"

"For you."

"Because I'm Harlon's son?"

How could he not know? "Because you're the Firebringer."

Armian grinned. "You seem like a bright lad, Tansen. You don't really believe that, do you?"

Tansen stared at him in shock. "Of course I do." An incredible thought occurred to him. "Don't you?"

"No."

"Then you... you aren't going to Mount Darshon to—"

"No."

"—embrace Dar?"

"Throw myself into the volcano?"

"Yes."

Armian laughed. "No. Why would I do such a crazy thing?" 
      
"Because you're the—"

"No, I'm not." Armian shook his head, still grinning. "I know the story—and that's all it is, Tansen. A story. Probably made up by some hungry peasants who'd smoked a little too much Kintish dreamweed one night, hundreds of years ago."

Tansen stared at the Firebringer, so strong, so powerful, so brave. The Firebringer... who evidently had no intention of proving his identity in Dar's embrace.

Armian's expression was almost kind as he continued, "Men must solve their own problems, Tansen, rather than dreaming of someone who do it for them."

"Yes, a man like you
, siran,
but..."

"And the man you will be, too, son," Armian said.

Sometime after sundown, they found a shallow cave where they could spend the night. Zarien explored it with shrinking horror, since he had learned by now that such places often harbored all manner of land creatures, from the disgusting to the genuinely dangerous: bats, worms, mice, rats, snakes, mountain lions... And, he supposed, bandits, rebels, Guardians, and assassins, too.

I miss the sea
, he thought for the thousandth time as he limped back to Tansen on aching feet and said, "It will do."
 

Tansen was leaning heavily on the
stahra
. Zarien didn't really mind this undignified use of the honored weapon, since he himself had taken to using it as a staff ever since coming ashore. Besides, this was
Tansen
. So Zarien wouldn't protest about the
stahra
even if he did mind.

He led Tansen into the cave and tried to help him lower himself to the ground. The warrior's skin was hot and dry, his limbs weak and limp as he tumbled to the cave floor in a sudden collapse, nearly taking Zarien with him.

This is bad.
 

"I'll get water," Zarien said. There was no reply. "
Siran?"
Still no reply. Tansen was unconscious again.

Zarien found a waterskin in Tansen's satchel, as he had hoped. He left the cave and stumbled through the dark, tripping over rocks, vines, plants, and tree roots. On a bright twin-moon night like this, he'd be fine at sea. On land, though, with its constant obstacles and strange surprises, he stumbled and strayed, no more capable than a drunken
toren
letting a pleasure yacht run straight into a reef.

He tried not to dwell on the fears that threatened to consume him. Josarian was dead, and Tansen seemed barely alive. Zarien's own life hung on a fragile bargain struck with Sharifar. His search for the goddess's mate, the truth about his birth, the destiny of the sea-born... the weight of it all pressed down upon him in the mysterious night world of the dryland.

Water
, he thought, focusing on the first task he must accomplish before he could confront the overwhelming problems that lay beyond it. He was thirsty, too, now.
I want water.

He heard it then, trickling softly down the mountainside.
Water.
A comforting musical sound amidst all the unfamiliar ones which crowded the night on land. He approached it, tripping several more times and once nearly walking into a sapling. He smelled it now, too, the soft scent of sweetwater, so different from the salty tang of the Middle Sea. Different, too, from the loamy smell of the north-flowing Sirinakara River, the great southern waterway that splintered into a thousand swamps, brackish lagoons, and streams on its way to the Middle Sea.

He found the water trickling down from above through a crack in an overhanging ledge. Consumed by his own thirst, he stood beneath it and opened his mouth, letting it run down his parched throat. Clear, cold, sweet.
 

When he had drunk enough to quench the worst of his thirst, he let the water run over his head, his shoulders, his back. He washed the dried blood off his hands, then drank some more. Finally, he filled the waterskin and brought it back to the cave.

Tansen was still unconscious. He didn't respond when Zarien tried to wake him. Zarien removed Tansen's ruined tunic, tore up a sleeve, soaked part of it in water, and forced it into the unconscious warrior's mouth. His mother... Palomar had once done this when Morven was very sick and too weak to drink.
 

Zarien wondered briefly if Morven was Palomar's and Sorin's real son. He hoped so. He didn't want his little brother to feel the shame and betrayal he'd felt ever since coming alive in Sharifar's embrace. For the rest of his life, Zarien would bear the tattoos identifying him as a sea-bound Lascari born to Palomar and Sorin—and it would never be true.

Immersed in the cave's darkness, he placed his hand on Tansen's throat and waited. It seemed a long time before he finally felt it move reflexively, swallowing the bit of liquid trickling from the cloth to the back of Tansen's throat.

Encouraged, Zarien poured more water onto the cloth. It soaked through into Tansen's mouth and, eventually, his throat moved again.

It took a long time to empty the waterskin this way. Zarien's back was stiff by the time he stopped bending over Tansen's prone body and, after taking the rag out of the warrior's mouth, left the cave to get more water. He wouldn't try to clean Tansen's wounds before morning, since he couldn't see them in the dark cave and didn't dare risk building fire. Even if he managed to do it right, it could be spotted by any assassins searching for them.

He returned to the cave again. "
Siran
?" No reply. He crouched and felt for the bandage he had bound to Tansen's side. It was wet. Blood must still be flowing from the wound.

"The winds carry me," Zarien murmured in despair. Maybe the stories were wrong. It seemed this man could indeed be killed, after all, and might even be dead by morning.

He turned away, wondering what else to do for the warrior right now, when a strange rumbling sound made him pause.

"What is..." The ground started trembling. "What
is
that?"

The rumbling turned into a grating roar. The ground started shaking in earnest. The whole cave seemed to be moving, like a small oarboat on the back of a dragonfish.

Rocks started falling from overhead. Zarien flung himself across Tansen. He heard a pained groan as his weight assailed the wounded body, but the warrior remained limp beneath him.
 

Zarien shouted in fear as the cave floor heaved wildly and its walls shook around him. The rumbling roar was pierced by a great thundering crash in the distance that seemed to echo through his own veins.

Terror consumed him. The ground roiled like rough seas.
 
Rocks tumbled down on him as he tried to shield Tansen. The furious roar of the angry earth deafened him to the painful thundering of his own heart.

And Dar moved the mountains in Her fury.

Chapter Six

Make no vows or promises in the dark.
 

Always wait until dawn.

      
      
      
      
—Najdan the Assassin

Mirabar had not been asleep when the earthquake began, so she was slightly—but only slightly—less disoriented by it than everyone else atop Mount Dalishar.

She had been through a few tremors in her lifetime—a span of barely twenty years, she guessed, though she didn't know for certain. Tonight's quake was far worse, though. It felt as if the ground was being pulled out from under her. The walls of Dalishar's six multi-chambered caves shook. The simple belongings of the forty or fifty rebels living up here tumbled around as if thrown by unseen hands. A terrible roaring filled the air, like the world screaming in its death throes.

And in the distance, Mount Darshon gave a terrible, thundering crack of rage.

Mirabar fled from the cave where she was spending the night, dragging Sister Rahilar with her as she escaped the shelter which had now become a potential deathtrap. When they reached the open ground outside their cave, she saw that everyone else at Dalishar was doing the same. The sentries were shouting wildly to alert everyone—
As if anyone could sleep through this!
—as people poured out of the caves, confused, armed, and frightened.

No, it's not Kiloran, not yet. Just an earthquake.

That was bad enough, she realized, as another violent tremor threw her to the hard ground. Kiloran wouldn't have to kill them all if Dar did it for him. And Dar was furious with them, for Sileria had killed the Firebringer.

Kiloran. Elelar. The Valdani. They killed him, Dar, not me. And You let it happen. So stop this!
 

Mirabar tried to rise from the ground, furious at her goddess, even as the ground continued shaking.

"
Sirana!
Stay down,
sirana!
"

She didn't know whose voice she heard shouting in the chaos, but she knew it was directed at her.
Sirana,
they called her now, a term of the highest respect. Her, an illiterate
shallah,
a clanless orphan who'd grown up wild in the mountains. She had survived like an animal and barely been able to speak like a human child when first found by Tashinar, the Guardian who caught and tamed her all those years ago. The sick old woman was her mentor and the closest thing she'd ever had to a mother.

She prayed fervently that the earthquake wasn't this bad at Mount Niran, where Tashinar was tonight. Mirabar and Sister Rahilar clutched each other in fear, huddled on the ground, and tried to protect their heads from falling rocks.