The White Dragon (9 page)

He wasn't so sure he would live, though.

Six dead
.
 

Was that all of them? Would more come now, a second wave? He hoped not. He wasn't sure he could even stand up, never mind fight a few more assassins. Darfire, hadn't Josarian told him only two days ago to get his strength back before going into combat again?
 

Josarian...

No, he couldn't think about Josarian. Not now.

Get up. You have work to do.

All they had dreamed together, all they had fought for side by side, Sileria united and free...
 

Six dead.

It had come to this. As it always did. Silerians fighting each other to the death, killing each other in murderous feuds over past insults, over the countless betrayals and injuries they committed against each other only because they couldn't seem to help themselves. Only because it had always been this way here. Only because they had always hated each other even more than they hated any of their conquerors.
 

He himself had come here straight from Elelar's bedchamber, where he had gone to kill her in vengeance for her betrayal of Josarian. Wouldn't Mirabar hate him forever now, only because he hadn't been able to do it, after all, and she would see that as betrayal, too? Hadn't he been driven there by the horror of Kiloran's vengeance against Josarian—Josarian who had killed the waterlord's only son in vengeance over Kiloran's betrayal of him? And Kiloran had always wanted Tansen dead, Tansen most of all, in vengeance for what he had done to Armian.

Must it always be this way here?

The wound at his side hurt so much that every breath was agony. His bleeding hand hurt like all the Fires of Dar. His palms were scarred, like those of all
shallaheen
, from slicing them open for bloodpacts and bloodvows; but no one was ever crazy enough to do that with a
shir
. He could hardly move the wounded hand, it was so painful.

Get up.

He couldn't lie here all day, just waiting for another assassin to come along and find him. And he'd never make it to Dalishar's caves now, not in this condition.

Sanctuary.
 

He must find a Sanctuary of the Sisterhood. He would be safe there. No Silerian ever violated Sanctuary, not feuding clans, not vengeful
toreni,
not even the Society.
 

There was a Sanctuary east of here, down another of Mount Dalishar's treacherous paths. It was inhabited by Sister Velikar, who was old, ugly, and notoriously mean, but a gifted healer.

I'll never make it.

He had to make it.
 

Focus on the task at hand—which, in this case, would be not dying in a pool of assassin's blood.

He lifted his head... and was promptly and humiliatingly sick.

Some legendary warrior.

He took steady, controlled, agonizing breaths, fighting to stay conscious. When he thought there was a reasonable chance that he wouldn't pass out, he slowly pushed the ground away and rose to one hand and both knees. Body trembling, head spinning, wounds throbbing, he stayed there awhile, concentrating on the heroic tasks of not fainting and not vomiting again.

My swords.

He looked around and found one lying close at hand. The motto of his
kaj
, carved into the blade in Kintish hieroglyphs—
Draw it with honor, sheathe it with courage
—was now obscured by filth. For the first time in his entire career as a
shatai
, Tansen didn't flip the blood off before resheathing it, didn't wipe it or clean it. He just slid the dusty blood-encrusted blade into its sheath.
 

He knew damn well where the other sword was, the one with his own motto carved into its blade.
From one thing, another is born—
as the
shatai
was born of the orphaned
shallah
boy, so long ago.

He gripped the sword's hilt, now sticky with blood rather than slick with it, braced his knee against the assassin's corpse, and pulled. He thought he'd vomit again, or at least that his skull would split wide open. He tried to breathe without actually letting his wounded side move, but that only made him dizzier.
 

There was enough of the assassin still clinging to this blade that Tansen made the monumental effort of wiping it—on the leggings of another nearby corpse—before sheathing it in the soft leather harness which fit him like a second skin.

Then, somehow, he was on his feet, leaning over, one hand resting on his knee while he studied the bleeding palm of the other hand. He slowly closed the coldly burning hand into a fist. He should wrap it, try to stop the bleeding, but he lacked the energy.
 

He was filthy. And thirsty.
Water
. He should find water.
 

Dar have mercy, let it be safe water.

Kiloran's secret control of the Zilar River had shocked them all, and had enabled the old waterlord to ambush and kill Josarian. If Kiloran controlled any water supplies this close to the Dalishar caves, this deep in Josarian's territory, then they were in desperate trouble. Tansen could fight as many assassins as Kiloran could send, but no one could do without water. That was, of course, what made the waterlords so powerful.
 

Water. I need water.

Yes, he would find water...
Damn it, where is there water around here
? He couldn't remember. Had he ever needed to know before?
 

He took a good look around... and finally saw the extent of the carnage. Six brutally slain men lay in a sea of blood. Some of their eyes were open. One's head was barely still attached to his body. Another's guts had spilled all around him.

Tansen didn't even have the energy to roll them into the brush or make them look more decent. He pitied whoever came upon this scene, but he had reached the end of his strength. There was nothing he could do about the sight of this bloodbath now.

Focus.

He would find water, then he would head toward Sanctuary. Once there, he would try to get a message to Mirabar.

Awaiting news of Elelar's death
.

Yes, that was what Mirabar would want to know, even more than she'd want to know where in the Fires Tansen was.

Don't come back until it is done,
she had said.

He had seen the look in her eyes when they had gone their separate ways after Josarian's death, when he had sent her to safety at Dalishar and had set out for Chandar to kill Elelar in the night. He had heard the steel in her voice.

Don't come back to me unless you can show me Elelar's blood on your sword.

She'd never forgive him for not doing it. And he'd have to be a much braver man not to dread a woman's wrath. He'd rather walk all the way to Lake Kandahar now, to face Kiloran in his underwater palace, than ascend the rest of Mount Dalishar and tell Mirabar, as he must, that he—

A terrible fear seized him, his dazed mind finally realizing what this ambush meant. If Kiloran had set a trap for him on the slopes of Dalishar, then he might have done the same for Mirabar. Perhaps with these very men.

Dar have mercy, could she already be dead? Did she make it to the sacred caves, or was she lying in a pool of her own blood somewhere farther up the mountain?

She was far from helpless even when alone, and he knew that Najdan had been with her—Najdan, the assassin who had betrayed Kiloran to protect Mirabar and save the Firebringer. So even if there was an attack, Mirabar might well have survived it.

But he had to be sure. He couldn't go to Sanctuary now, not until he was sure she was alive. She might hate him for all eternity for letting Elelar live, but he...

I need to know she's safe. I need to know that much
.

He staggered forward, gritting his teeth, refusing to think about the punishing hike ahead, the great distance he would have to go in this condition—
if I don't find her body only a hundred paces ahead of me
—much of it in the dark.

He had taken perhaps a dozen steps when he fell to his knees.
 

He tried to get up. Fell down. Tried again. Collapsed face down on the hard, dusty ground.

Mira...

He pressed a hand to his aching wound. The hand came away drenched in blood.
 

That's not good.

He put his hand back over the wound and pressed hard. The pain made his vision go black, but pressure was the only way he could think of to slow the blood flow.
 

Josarian, I will join you...

No, he wouldn't, after all. Even if he, so long a skeptic, went to the Otherworld, Josarian would not. A lifelong believer, Josarian had died in the dripping crystalline jaws of the White Dragon, from which the only escape was oblivion when Kiloran finally died. Josarian, who had never feared death because he believed it would unite him in the Otherworld with his beloved Calidar, the wife who had died in childbirth... Josarian was forever gone. He had believed in sacrifice, had served Dar to the exclusion of all else...

And You betrayed him, Dar. You let him die. Damn You forever
.

Sacrilege seemed an irrelevant sin now.
 

I am prepared to die today...

He felt dust inside his mouth. He hadn't even been aware of speaking aloud. He should probably say his prayers—and his curses—silently, given that he was dying face down in the dirt.

A warrior's death. Definitely less glorious than most people imagine.

What did the Moorlanders say? May you die on a day which is good for it. Moorlanders also said things like: May your death be a good one. And: I will give you a good death.

Not exactly a cheerful race.

Barbarians by any standards. But he had liked living among them briefly, even so. Their bloodlust made them like Silerians, in a way, and he had been homesick.

Focus...

All those years in exile... nine years, and not a day had passed without him longing for Sileria, for her harsh and merciless mountains, her lush and fertile lowlands, the scents of rosemary and wild fennel which filled the air after the long rains, the blossoming of the almond trees, the ripening of the lemon trees, the brassy Silerian sunshine glinting off the red-tiled roofs of crumbling Kintish temples and shrines, the towering cliffs overlooking sun-drenched beaches...

I am prepared...

Of course, he'd mostly visited the beaches on dark-moon nights, on those long-ago smuggling expeditions with his grandfather... Until the night his grandfather was too old to come and had stayed behind in Gamalan... The night Tansen's life changed forever, when he found a great warrior lying close to death on the beach of a rocky cove...

Armian...

Tansen felt his life seeping away. If the next person to find him was an enemy, he would certainly die.

Armian...

He'd probably die anyway. He wouldn't reach help if he couldn't walk, and he couldn't walk if he couldn't even get up. He didn't know if his eyes were closed or if his vision had simply gone black.

Now he saw nothing.

Nothing but memories. Nothing but the past.

Father... I am coming.

He should get up, should try once more.

I am coming at last.

Chapter Four

Enter not prayerless
 

into the domain of Dar,

 
for She forgives no slight.

      
      
      
      
      
—Silerian Proverb