The White Dragon (60 page)

He thought he would be sick. Head reeling, stomach churning, whole body shaking in reaction to what he had just done, he stood upright again in the rain with Armian's
shir
in his hand.

He stared down at the body of his slain bloodfather, his mind blank, his heart burning with sorrow and shame.

Then Elelar's screams pierced the dark, rainy night, carried to him on the winds sweeping across the high cliffs of the southern coast overlooking the cove below.
 

He felt her hands on his shoulders, pushing him away from Armian. He staggered back unresisting and watched her examining the body, shouting Armian's name as if she could raise him from the dead. Then she turned on Tansen.

"What have you done? What have you done? Sweet Dar,
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

Rain pelted her, soaking her tangled, wind-whipped black hair, running down her smooth cheeks. It clung to her long lashes and made her blink as it crept into her eyes. The delicately painted silk scarf which had covered her hair earlier was now a soaked rag falling carelessly around her shoulders. Her clothes were wet and dirty, and she was panting with exertion and panic.

"What have you done?" she kept screaming. "What have you done?"

He pushed her away from Armian's body and, after taking one last look at his father, shoved the corpse off the cliff. Elelar screamed in horror as it bounced off the rocks below and plummeted to the beach. The wind, the rain, and Elelar all ensured that Tansen didn't hear it hit the ground, but he felt the final thud somewhere inside his heart.

Elelar backed away from him, screaming in horror.

"Torena..."

"No, no, no!" She staggered backward, as if afraid of him, and fell down on the uneven ground. When he stepped forward to help her, she crawled away on unsteady limbs, still screaming.

He backed away, hoping she would see he wouldn't hurt her, and waited. She was not a silly woman, and her screaming stopped as soon as she realized he meant her no harm. She lay there on the ground, wet and muddy, gaping at him as her body heaved with panting breaths.

At last she said, "Have you gone mad?"

"The Moorlanders will find the body," said Tansen. "They will take it as Kiloran's answer."

"I know that!" she shouted. "What in the Fires can you possibly be think—"

"Now the Moorlanders' plan will fall apart," he said, willing her to understand. "Now the Society will not rule Sileria."

"You idiot!" she screamed. "Now the Valdani will continue to be our masters!"

"We will find another way to fight them, to defeat them. We need not exchange this master for an even crueler—"

"You
are
out of your mind, aren't you?"
 

Tansen stared in dismay as she pushed herself to her feet and stalked toward him. He had thought that she, of all people, would understand.

"How do you imagine," she shouted, "we can do this without the Moorlanders?"

"But the Alliance—"

"The Alliance needs Kiloran, and you've just made us his enemies with this insane—"

"He
is
our enemy! You've told me so yourself!" Tansen shouted back. "'Who rules the mountains through bloodshed and terror?'" He quoted her own words back at her, things she had taught him during their flight from Shaljir, their journey through Sileria to find Kiloran, and their stay in the waterlord's camp. "Who controls the
toreni
with abductions, ransom demands, and murder? Who destroyed Sileria's last Yahrdan? Who has already killed more
shallaheen
than the Valdani ever will?"

"And who just killed our best chance of freedom in centuries?" she raged.

"You saw what kind of man Armian was. You know what kind of man Kiloran is," he insisted. "You heard them, just as I did, plan their future, our future, Sileria's future!"

"I heard them plan armed resistance to the Val—"

"There was no place in their new Sileria for you or me. No place for
shallaheen, toreni,
Guardians, or anyone else!"

"We'd have made our place!"

"How?" Tansen demanded. "The Moorlanders' plan only included the Society! Kiloran and Armian were going to take over the whole country with the Moorlanders' help, and rule the whole nation with terror, bloodshed, and drought. They'd have all the power in Sileria if the plan succeeded! How were you planning to take it away from them then?"

"Nothing is as important as driving out the Valdani!" she screamed. "No other enemy matters!"

He saw that she meant it. She, who had helped him see what the waterlords and the assassins really were—she, who had unknowingly revealed his terrible duty to him—she thought he was wrong. Elelar hated the Valdani with such blind passion, that she thought Kiloran and Armian would be better masters of Sileria and was willing to help them steal the nation from its own people.

"You're wrong," he said desperately, but he knew she wouldn't listen to an illiterate peasant boy from Gamalan. "You're so wrong."

"What's that?" She was suddenly alert, looking past him, down at the cove.

He followed her gaze, turning to peer through the murky night. Now he saw it: a Moorlander vessel, its lanterns blazing in the dark, drifting into the cove.

"They're here," she said, her voice calmer.

"They'll send an oarboat ashore. They'll find the body."

"Not if I can prevent it," Elelar said with sudden determination.

"Torena,
no!"

She shook off his restraining hand. "I'm going to salvage this proposed alliance with the Moorlanders." Her voice was hard as she added, "The only way you can stop me is by killing me, too. Now get out of my way."
 

She tried to move past him. Tansen doubted that she could find her way safely down to the beach in time to meet the Moorlanders; but he couldn't risk it. He had never handled a woman roughly in his life, but now he came to a sudden decision and grabbed the
torena.

She shrieked a protest—perhaps afraid he really would kill her—as he bore her to the ground with a knee planted in her back. He tore the sodden silk scarf away from her shoulders and used it to bind her wrists together behind her back. Then he rose, hoisted her over his shoulder, and carried her away from the site of Armian's death like a sack of grain. He didn't release her until dawn, when he knew there'd be no chance at all of her contacting the Moorlander ship.

While untying her wrists, he explained that he would escort her safely back to Shaljir.

"I'm not going to Shaljir." Her voice was hoarse, but still livid with fury.

"Where shall I take you then?"

"I'm going back to Kiloran. To tell him what you've done. To tell him that I tried to stop you and that the Alliance had no part in this insanity." Elelar glared at him with anger which had only grown hotter with the passage of hours. "I will not let one bloodthirsty peasant destroy what my grandfather has spent his whole life building."

"Elelar..." He heard the pleading in his voice and hated it.

"What do the
shallaheen
call someone like you?" she prodded.
"Sriliah?"

Traitor. The very worst thing one Silerian could call another.

He stared at her in dumbfounded silence as she rose to her feet and declared, "Kiloran will swear a bloodvow against you, and I will celebrate on the day I learn of your death."

"But you..." He made a helpless gesture. "You showed me the way. It was—"

"Don't you
dare
try to blame this on me." Elelar gave him one last look as she said, "You've destroyed everything, and I will pray to Dar to punish you as you deserve."

Tansen watched her stalk away from him, knowing she would soon find the coastal road if she kept going in that direction.

She'd probably find Kiloran before long, too.
 

A bloodvow. From Kiloran himself.

He knew he'd never survive it. No one could survive that. And he had no doubt about how relentless Kiloran would be, given what Tansen had done.

A bloodvow.

What could he do? Even fleeing to the farthest corner of Sileria wouldn't save him. Not with Kiloran determined to kill him.

The early morning wind shifted. He caught a whiff of sea air.

The sea.

He had never been to sea. If truth be known, he was afraid of the sea and found the notion of entrusting his life to a boat more than a little frightening. He had never been out of Sileria in his life.
 

Tansen trembled as he realized what he was contemplating.

A bloodvow lasted for nine years, and then it must be honorably withdrawn if the enemy had not been killed during all that time. This rule was part of a centuries-old code of conduct established by the waterlords to help keep the Society from tearing itself apart with the same unquenchable lust for vengeance that regularly destroyed clans like Tansen's.
 

He had no chance of surviving Kiloran's wrath for nine years in Sileria, but if he went away now... and only came back when the nine years were over...

His family was dead, his clan decimated, his village destroyed. He had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. No one would miss him once he was gone, just as no one would care if Kiloran killed him.

He might die on a faulty boat crossing the Middle Sea. He might starve, lost and alone, in some foreign land. He might be imprisoned or killed by whatever manner of men lived on the mainland... But he had to try. His only other choice was to cower in hiding until Society assassins cornered and killed him, as they inevitably would.
 

Tansen wasn't ready to die. He was only fifteen, and he wanted to live. So he had to try. He would flee Sileria and try to survive on the mainland. And if he lived... Then someday he would come home.

Tears misted his eyes. He blinked them back. His boyhood was over. It had ended in the night, on a rainy, windswept cliff. Now he must be a man.

Nine years. Perhaps it will not seem such a long time.

He wrapped Armian's
shir
in the finely painted scarf he had used to bind Elelar's wrists, then rose to his feet and began his journey. By nightfall, he reached the port of Adalian. The next day, offering to work for his passage, he boarded a ship bound for the port city of Kashala in the Kintish Kingdoms, where his new life would begin.

Chapter Twenty-Four

If you feel like a man of stature,
 

try giving orders to another man's dog.

      
      
      
      
      
—Valdani Proverb