The White Dragon (21 page)

He couldn't think. He could only hear the buzzing of the flies and smell the acrid odor of death under the brassy Silerian sun. "I just want to leave," he said at last.

Armian thrust the Outlooker in front of him. "You wanted to kill this one yourself?"

Though Armian spoke to Tansen in Silerian, the Outlooker seemed to understand the gesture, the moment. "No!" he wailed. "Please, don't! I beg you!"

Armian held the
yahr
out to Tansen.

Tansen met the Firebringer's eyes, the cold eyes of an assassin.
 

He looked at the trembling Outlooker, drenched in sweat, weeping with fear. Begging, pleading, wailing for mercy.

He felt the hard wood of the
yahr
in his hand. He felt the thick woven gossamer cord that held the two sticks together, that turned a couple of pieces of polished wood into such a deadly weapon.

I'll have to beat him to death.

The
yahr
was a striking weapon. How many blows would it take, Tansen wondered? When would the Outlooker stop screaming? After the second? The third? Or maybe not until the seventh or eighth?
 

How will I know when he's dead?

Should he crush the skull to be sure, only stopping when he saw the splatter of brains? Or would Armian, who had killed before, tell him when he could stop? What would it feel like, the death of a man at his hands?

Tansen turned away and was abruptly sick, retching as humiliating waves of nausea overwhelmed him.

"Dar have mercy," he croaked.

"May the Three have mercy on me," the Outlooker whispered, waiting for his uncertain fate.

Tansen handed the
yahr
back to Armian, ashamed. "I can't."

"It's all right," Armian told him. "The first time is always the hardest. Today was not the day, that's all." He looked down at the Outlooker. "We're leaving now."

The Outlooker nodded, too afraid to speak, watching the hypnotic sway of the
yahr
as Armian toyed with it.

"You will return to your commanding officer," Armian instructed, "and tell him nothing."

"Nothing," the Outlooker repeated in a choked voice.

Armian put the end of the
yahr
under the Outlooker's chin and tilted his face up, so that their eyes met. "If anyone follows me to Liron, I will know that you have given me away, and I will return to kill you."

"Yes." The Outlooker licked his lips. "I understand. I will say nothing."

"Tansen." Armian met his eyes. "Let us leave this place."

Only when they were far outside the village did Tansen finally ask, "Why did you let him live?"

"Never destroy a useful tool, son. He will send the Outlookers haring off to Liron in the south while we go north to Shaljir."

"But he said he wouldn't tell them."

"You didn't believe him, did you?" Armian grinned. "By the time his commanding officer demands a complete account of what happened in Gamalan, he will have convinced himself that he acted shrewdly after his three companions died. He will assure himself—and especially others—that he wasn't truly afraid of a couple of barbarians like us, and he will be eager to think he tricked me into revealing our destination—which he will gladly report to his commander. That," he added, "is the way of men everywhere."

"I have never seen a man beg for his life," Tansen said slowly. "It made me—"

"Don't dwell on it now." Armian slapped him on the back. "You'll learn not to let it bother you."

"I will?" He didn't think so. He wasn't sure he wanted to. But perhaps an assassin must. And he... "I want to be an assassin," Tansen said suddenly. "There's nothing else left for me now."

"What about the rest of your clan? W—"

"There is no one." He explained about the bloodfeud with the Sirdari. "There were only a few Gamalani left, and they were all in my village."
 

"Then I'm even sorrier," Armian said after a long pause. "They died because of me, because I am here."

"So you must understand now," Tansen said. "You must see."

"See what?"

"Why the Valdani fear you so. Why the Outlookers will do anything to stop you."

"You think they know about the Alliance?" Armian asked, frowning. "About the plan the Moorlanders have sent me to discuss with Kiloran?"

"No." Tansen impatiently waved aside things he didn't understand or care about. "They know you're the Firebringer!"

The sun beat down on Zarien's head as he returned to the water source he had found in the night, still trickling fluidly down the rockface, and refilled Tansen's waterskin. His bruises ached where rocks had struck him during the earthquake. His feet hurt like at the Fires, as the drylanders said. He was so hungry he felt lightheaded, but he didn't want to leave Tansen alone long enough to find food.

The warrior was even worse off now, stirring fitfully in his fever dreams, lost in the shoreless world of near-death. Whatever he saw there obviously troubled him. His muttered exhortations were harsh and angry, or else full of sorrow and grief. His skin was hot, and the bleeding wouldn't stop.
 

Zarien knew he must clean the wound so he could see it more clearly. If it couldn't be cauterized, perhaps it could be stitched. If the thought of pressing a red hot poker to human flesh had made him queasy, the idea of darning Tansen's skin like cloth positively appalled him. He was no healer. But that was Sharifar's mate lying in that cave, and Zarien was not about to let him die. He would do whatever he had to... On the other hand, how could he stitch the wound with no thread or needle?

He returned to the cave with the water. Tansen was murmuring unintelligible words. When he tried to rise, Zarien pushed him back down, surprised by how hard that was even though Tansen was weak and disoriented. Then again, here was no ordinary man.

The sea king.

Dar had helped Zarien, after all. She had thrown Sharifar's mate right into his path. Why, he had practically tripped over Tansen! What else could their meeting mean? With Josarian dead, who but the Firebringer's bloodbrother could be a fitting mate for the sea goddess? What drylander but the greatest warrior in Sileria could be accepted by the sea-born as their king?

Zarien poured water over the wound and wiped away fresh blood, as well as a lot of older residue. Tansen recoiled in unconscious protest at first, then fell into a motionless stupor. As daylight flickered through the shallow cave, Zarien studied the wound and felt despair creep through him. He finished washing it, then took the cleanest cloth he could find and pressed it hard against the ravaged blood-seeping flesh. If pressure couldn't stop the crimson flow, he wondered fearfully, what would he do?

"Please Dar," he prayed to the goddess who held sway here on land. "Please help him. He must be the sea king. I cannot go back without him.
Please
."

He pressed down on the wound, willing the blood to stop flowing. He begged Dar to make it stop bleeding. He prayed to all the gods of the wind and sea to save Tansen. He admonished the warrior to heal.

"Dar," Tansen rasped in his fever dreams.

Zarien glanced at the warrior's lean face, but he still seemed unconscious even as more whispered words poured from his cracked lips: "Dar... shield... sword... fire.... firebr... mercy...Father, father..."

Heal him, heal him
, Zarien begged in silence.

A chilling heat passed through him, a cold fire that made him shiver even as it burned him. He gasped and snatched his hand away from Tansen's body, startled, a little afraid. An icy mist rose from the wound, a crystalline glow that shimmered in the dappled sunlight creeping into the cave.

Zarien watched unblinking as it slowly faded away, leaving only Tansen's flesh in its wake. With his own breath rasping in his ears, he leaned closer to the warrior and stared in amazement.

The angry, bleeding, life-stealing wound was gone. Only a silvery scar was left in its place.

"Dar be praised," Zarien murmured in awe. "I have found him."
 

The sea king

Chapter Eight

There is no real sword outside the heart.

      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
—Kintish Proverb

Armian took care of everything—food, money, clothing, supplies, shelter at night, water by day, finding the way to Shaljir while avoiding the Outlookers, inventing a plausible background for himself and the boy at his side. Everything.

Tansen thought of little besides his loss, his grief, and the howling guilt that haunted him day and night. If he had returned home sooner, if he had not left home at all... His mind knew that Armian was right: He'd had no hand in what the Outlookers had done to his people. Yet he couldn't deny the conviction swamping his heart that it was he, not his entire village, who should have died at Valdani hands.

Armian showed him compassion for his loss, but he himself seemed untroubled by guilt. But Armian was the Firebringer, and his destiny was great. He would free all of Sileria, Tansen realized, so he knew that his life, in the end, counted for more than those of a few villagers.

If Tansen's grandfather or anyone else had given in and led the Outlookers to that cave in the cliffs... But they had died rather than tell. That was
lirtahar.
That was the honor of the
shallaheen.
That was the terrible, destructive courage of Sileria.

He and Armian traveled fast, crossing the mountains on foot. They only asked the way to Shaljir if Tansen judged someone apt to give them a true answer. The rest of the time, Armian, who was an educated man, relied on the position of the sun and his knowledge of Sileria's geography.
 

Armian adjusted quickly to life in Sileria's harsh mountains. His
shallah
dialect improved daily. His strong physique adapted to the punishing climbs, deadly descents, and long treks over uneven terrain which a
shallah
boy scarcely even noticed. He kept Tansen's mind busy by distracting him with many questions about Sileria's ways and her peoples. He knew much already, but now, he said, he needed to see Sileria through the eyes of someone who lived here.