The White Dragon (30 page)

Now Mirabar made a brief gesture, evidently bidding Cheylan goodnight. Najdan decided he had rudely shunned Velikar's company for long enough, and he retired to the stone hut before Mirabar turned in this direction.
 

"It's late," Velikar growled at him. "Go sleep outside."

"Of course," he said, seating himself at the table again.

"I said—"

"Ah, here comes the
sirana
." He rose courteously as Mirabar pushed aside the door
jashar
and entered the hut.

Mirabar seemed unusually hesitant as she met his gaze, her fire-bright eyes now dull with fatigue. "We, uh... Tomorrow we need to..." She shifted restlessly and tried again. "I should..."

Ah. This, at least, Najdan felt he understood. And since Mirabar was very proud, he knew what to do. "I'm uneasy about the
shir
wound," he said.

She blinked. "What?"

"Tansen's wound."

She frowned thoughtfully. "The one that healed so suddenly. As if..."

"By magic."

Mirabar nodded. "It bothered you. You wanted to leave that place."

"Yes. But now I think it may not be the place."

"The boy, then?" She murmured distractedly, "A child of water... I need to speak with that boy. I need to know why he's here."

"The boy, perhaps." Najdan shrugged. "Or Tansen himself." He held her gaze and said, "Who knows what might occur when Dar wants Her will done?"

"You're not afraid of Dar," she said. "That's not what you're worried about."

"No..."

"What do you think it was, then?"

"Water magic."

She drew in a quick breath. "What should we do?"

Najdan made it easy for her. "I think we should return to Tansen's side."

"You do, do you?"
 

"Especially if you want to speak with the boy," he added helpfully.
 

Mirabar brushed her hair way from her face. "All right. If you insist."

"It's best."

"We'll go in the morning," she agreed.

"I'm glad you understand,
sirana
." Najdan headed for the door. "I will sleep outside. Goodnight."

"It's about time," Velikar grumbled. "Leave, already."

"Goodnight, Najdan." Mirabar paused, then added, "Cheylan—"

"Will sleep outside, too," Najdan said loudly as the
jashar
flapped into place behind him.

Although raised in wealth and physical comfort by the aristocratic family he now seldom even spoke to and had never regarded with any warmth, Cheylan's Dar-given talents ensured that he had spent most of his adult life among the Guardians. So he was accustomed to sleeping outside, living in caves, appreciating whatever food and shelter he could find, and doing without it when he had to. He was not poor, for the Guardians did not require one to renounce one's personal wealth or worldly goods the way the Sisterhood did, but his family's money couldn't protect him from Valdani laws—and no one could protect him from the Society.

He had first met Josarian when the
shallah
was nothing more than a notorious local outlaw, a peasant who had killed a couple of Outlookers who tried to beat him to death one night after they caught him helping his cousin Zimran with a little smuggling.
 

Like all the Guardians at that time, Cheylan had appreciated Josarian's bold defiance of the Valdani. And he had been willing to help. Outlawed by the Valdani and hunted by the Society, Cheylan—like all Guardians—had too little to lose to worry about possible punishment for assisting the outlaw. But Cheylan had had no more expectation than anyone else that the local mountain bandit would change the world.

Unlike so many people, however, he hadn't needed Josarian's transformation at Darshon to convince him that a great destiny was at hand. Cheylan had realized it the moment he had first heard about Mirabar, an immensely gifted prophetess blessed with the fiery coloring that was a portent of great and terrible power.
 

Tansen, who knew her well, was always reticent about her, and so Cheylan had learned little of value from the
shatai
during the time they had spent working together—as allies, but never as friends—in the east. Most others Cheylan spoke to were in awe of the demon-girl who talked to gods and Called shades of the dead from the Otherworld, and whom even Kiloran respected. Little of value could be learned from the superstitious admiration of the
shallaheen
, but Cheylan heard enough to recognize that Mirabar's visions were as important as Josarian's acts.

It was only upon meeting her at last that Cheylan discovered, with mingled surprise and frustration, how little she herself understood the visions, how incapable she was of seeing where they would lead. She was cautious, too, about what she would relate. He had taken pains to win her affection and her trust, even sharing a deadly secret or two of his own to gain her confidence. Cheylan had cultivated patience his whole life, and now he recognized how wise he had been to do so.

Tonight was the first time Mirabar had ever spoken to him freely, without any reserve, about this thing she called the Beckoner, the Otherworldly demi-god who had led a parentless peasant girl out of obscurity and straight into legend. Tonight was the first time Cheylan began to realize the full weight of the Beckoner's power, the inexorable nature of its will. Tonight was the first time he'd been certain his own destiny—at last—was beginning to unfold.

A child of fire, a child of water, a child of sorrow.

Yes.

Now, as Cheylan bedded down at some distance from where Najdan the assassin ostentatiously stretched out in front of the threshold of the stone hut, he considered the things Mirabar had also told him tonight about the splintering rebel factions. He lay on his back and gazed up at the moonbright sky, wondering what he should do now. The time for patience was nearly over. The day for action was almost at hand.

Torena
Elelar's betrayal might be irrelevant. Kiloran's brutal actions might be ill-advised. The Alliance might have been right or wrong. Cheylan would let Tansen, Mirabar, and Sileria's quarreling factions worry about all that. There would undoubtedly be bloodshed and chaos; this was Sileria, after all. The future remained uncertain, and Mirabar's visions were still too vague to act on for the time being.

However, one shining beacon of light, one promising turn of events assured Cheylan that his patience had not been wasted.

 
The Firebringer is dead
, he thought.
Dar be praised
.

Chapter Eleven

First the man takes a drink;

then the drink takes the man.

      
      
      
      
      
—Kintish Proverb

His own wife refused to see him.

Ronall sat in the luxuriously-furnished library of his aristocratic wife's palatial house in Shaljir and fumed in bitter hurt as he poured himself another generous glass of jasmine wine. It wasn't strong enough, but there was nothing stronger left in the house—he had drunk it all, and now he was too tired to go out in search of more. He could send the servants—he was a
toren
, damn it, he was supposed to be waited on!—but they were all
her
servants, and they were bustling around to make the
torena
comfortable now that she was back. To make the house suitable for the wandering traitress who had finally come home.

Ronall had been living here with just one servant on loan from his father's house, since being released from prison. He'd been held for several months in the old Kintish fortress not far from Santorell Square, as hostage for his wife who had staged a violent escape from prison after being accused of high treason against the Empire.

He swallowed more wine.
 

Just one servant. Yes, all right, he supposed the house had become a bit dirty and shabby during his wife's long absence. She was right about that.

"Who gives a damn?" he muttered and drank some more.

What could one servant do, after all?

And why get more? The Silerian rebels were going to descend on Shaljir at any moment and probably use their fire sorcerers to burn the whole city to the ground. Or maybe they would just get their waterlords to flood it, or to wrap the Idalar River around it like a noose until no one was left alive.
 

When Ronall was a child, many people had died of thirst in Shaljir before the Outlookers relented and met Kiloran's demands. In later years, the legendary waterlord's struggles with Baran, some crazy upstart from who-knew-where, had caused even worse problems. When those two giants battled for control of the Idalar River, Shaljir thirsted. Even sending generous tribute to Kiloran didn't solve the problem, since Baran didn't relent.

"Who owns it now?" Ronall asked the engraved silver chalice in his hands, noting absently that Elelar owned such very fine things.

If anyone knew, in all this chaos, which waterlord currently controlled the Idalar River, Ronall supposed it would be his dear wife. She kept company with such people, after all.
 

"Keeps company with everyone but her husband," he mumbled.

Their marriage had been a living inferno since the day it began. His desire, her disgust. His desperate love, her cold rejection. His cowardly sniping, her unyielding contempt. His wild violence, her bitter tears. His self-disgust, her vicious sarcasm.

His drinking, his dreamweed, his cloud syrup.

Their marriage bed had been a place of conflict rather than comfort. And he'd hurt her there more than once. Hurt her badly more than once.

Afterwards, he was always ashamed, always wondered how he could have done it. But sooner or later, he always did it again.

So maybe he deserved everything that had happened to him in the past year.
 

"At any rate,
she
certainly thinks I deserve it," he told the priceless Kintish sculpture on the mantle of the vast fireplace. A woodless fire burned in the hearth, the enchanted flames blown into life months ago by Elelar's pet Guardian. Ronall didn't know how to put out the damn thing. Maybe now that Derlen was back, he'd finally douse it. Ronall hoped so. Forbidden fire sorcery right here in his own house... it made him queasy.

Just another of those unexpected little consequences of his marriage.
 

After his wife's arrest, Ronall had finally discovered who she really was and why she had married him. She had poured an enormous amount of his money into her rebel cause and used his family's Valdani connections to help Josarian the Firebringer. And she had spread her legs for every man who could help her—or so Advisor Borell told Ronall, in his rage.