Chapter Five

 

 

Josarian circled the tiny, isolated Sanctuary of the Sisterhood several times before finally concluding that it wasn't being watched. The Valdani were tightening their net, and it paid to be careful. Zimran had not been at their appointed meeting place, an old lightning-struck tree that was about three hours' walk from here. Josarian had arrived there to find a woven, knotted cord hanging from one of its branches; the message advised him to come here today after dark.

His brief life as an outlaw had already taught him to take nothing at face value, and it occurred to him that this might be a trap. The mysterious stranger who was searching the mountains for him knew their ways and their language. It seemed possible that he had found out where Zimran was next supposed to meet Josarian, had gone there himself, and had left the small jashar Josarian had found hanging in the tree. Nothing in the area around the tree suggested that a struggle had taken place, but that didn't necessarily mean Zimran was safe. The stranger, Tansen, could have killed Zim elsewhere. Or he could be holding him hostage at this small, isolated Sanctuary. Perhaps he was even now waiting inside the hut to kill Josarian.

So, suspicious and wary, Josarian arrived before sunset, circled the area several times, then crept up to the best-protected side of the little stone building, under the cover of heavy shadows. Listening at the hut's eastern window, he heard ragged breathing inside, as if someone were in panic or in pain. Moving with caution, he peered into the building—and was immediately relieved by what he saw in the shadowed interior. His cousin was on a narrow cot in the corner of the room, naked and glistening with sweat as he ground his hips against the woman who writhed energetically beneath him. With a wry grin, Josarian crept around the hut and crouched quietly by the front door, waiting for them to finish.

Calidar had always loathed Zimran for his womanizing, referring to his many conquests as the half-witted victims of his lust. While Josarian couldn't comment on their intelligence, most of the women Zimran sported with definitely didn't seem to consider themselves victims. Indeed, judging by the impassioned moans and urgent instructions of the woman inside the Sanctuary with Zimran right now, this one—like most the others that Josarian could recall—seemed quite pleased with the situation. True, there had once been a girl who'd begged Zimran to marry her after she'd become pregnant, and even Josarian, loyal though he was, thought Zim's recalcitrant behavior on that occasion had been disgraceful. The girl had wound up miscarrying—intentionally, some said—and was sent to live with relatives in Adalian, where it was hoped she might still find a husband.

Only Josarian's love for his cousin had made it possible for Zimran to eat at his table or sit beneath his roof after that, since Calidar openly despised Zim from that day forward, only showing him hospitality out of respect for her husband's wishes. After that close call with the marriage knife, however, Zimran had confined his amorous activities strictly to experienced women. It was rumored that he had nonetheless sired a few other men's children; but as long as he didn't seduce any wives in Emeldar itself, he was still a beloved son of his native village. Widows, of course, were another matter, and most people in Emeldar looked the other way if they chanced to see Zimran creeping into a lonesome woman's house after dark. Of course, the village might be a more peaceful place if he'd confine himself to one widow. Josarian—who had never touched any woman but his own wife—still blushed when he remembered the insults that two of Zimran's lovers had shouted at each other in the main square of the village one day a couple of years ago.

Josarian had also thought Zimran was crazy to seduce the bored wife of a Valdani landowner a few months ago, but he had to admit that the information she whispered to his cousin across her pillow about Outlooker movements had come in handy since he'd become an outlaw. Nonetheless, if Josarian had walked three extra hours today just so Zimran could enjoy a woman as well as meet with him, then he was going to punch his cousin as hard as he could when he finally came up for air.

"Yes, yes..." the woman in the hut wailed.

Zimran grunted harder and faster, and the cot started thudding against the wall.

Sudden desire coiled inside Josarian's belly, languidly unfurling and flowing down to pool in his loins as the couple inside the Sanctuary panted, moaned, and rode their way to ecstasy. He took a deep breath, welcoming thoughts of Calidar even as he fought them. Remembering the joys of his marriage bed only made him ache—and in a way that could be quite embarrassing if he was to meet with his cousin in just a few minutes. But sometimes the ache was as sweet as it was painful, and so he let his mind dwell on remembered pleasures, even as his body dwelled on needs that now had no outlet—except a solitary one that was a sorry substitute for what he'd known with his wife.

Fortunately, the rhythmic noises inside the hut peaked and died before his body broke free of the shackles of his will. He heard the Sister inside the Sanctuary sigh with deep satisfaction, and his cousin laughed exultantly. Some of the Sisters were virgins who had felt a calling and joined the Sisterhood at an early age. Most, though, were widows who'd lost their men to bloodfeuds, disease, assassins, accidents, the mines, or the Outlookers. They had sought a new purpose in a land where there were few spare men and where the chances of re-marriage were slim for a shallah woman. Josarian suspected that such women were pleased to have the occasional company of a handsome young lover such as his cousin.

He gave the couple a few minutes for pillow talk. Then he called through the knotted and beaded ropes that covered the doorway, "Good evening, cousin! I hope I come at a good time."

The woman inside gasped and started whispering frantically. Josarian grinned as he heard them both scramble for their clothing, though his cousin's voice sounded calm and satisfied.

"You're early," Zimran called back.

"Stay where you are!" the woman added.

"Good evening, Sister Basimar," Josarian said politely, still speaking past the door jashar which, among other things, identified the Sister who lived here. "Are you well? A moment ago you sounded like you might be in pain."

The woman stuttered out a nonsensical response, her voice rich with embarrassment.

"Ignore him," Zim advised. "He's just envious."

"Mostly, I'm tired," Josarian said. "Is there a good reason—a very good reason—why you made me meet you here?"

A sun-darkened hand shoved aside the door jashar, and Zimran appeared, face and bare chest shining with perspiration. "A very good reason," he said with a broad grin.

"Come outside where I can hit you," Josarian said.

The woman gasped again and cried, "Don't hurt him!"

Zimran's grin broadened. "She likes my pretty face."

"Don't they all?" Josarian said wearily. "She can clean it for you when I'm done."

The woman thrust her head through several strands of the jashar. She looked from one man to the other for a moment, then said, "You're teasing, aren't you?"

"Almost," Josarian said, eyeing his cousin with some disfavor.

"Basimar." Zimran tilted his head. "My cousin, Josarian."

Having made the introductions, Zimran sauntered away from the door and retrieved his gossamer tunic from the floor. Sister Basimar backed into the stone hut, and Josarian followed her. She was perhaps ten years older than he, plump, and still pretty. She wore the long, simple gown of a Sister. She hadn't laced up the front yet, and he could see that her throat and the slope of her breasts were as pleasure-flushed as her face. No, Calidar, he thought, she's not a victim.

Basimar nervously tried to tidy her hair as she mumbled something about how pleased she was to meet Josarian. She glanced at the cot, then apparently decided that tidying that, too, would merely call more attention to what had just happened there. Instead, she offered wine to both men. Josarian accepted and sat down at the simple wooden table in the middle of the room.

"Well?" he prodded Zimran, who seemed more interested in stroking various rounded portions of the Sister's anatomy than in talking to his cousin.

Basimar blushed rosily, seeming as pleased as she was embarrassed. Nonetheless, she pushed Zim's hand away from her bottom and sat down at some distance from him.

"There's more news about this stranger, this Tansen," Zim said, growing serious at last.

"He killed an assassin. I know," Josarian said.

"My brother-in-law," Basimar said.

"The assassin?" Josarian asked.

She nodded. "My late husband's youngest brother."

Josarian caught his cousin's eye, realizing that there was a good reason for them to meet here. "Tell me more."

"Tell him what you told me last time," Zimran added.

She was a long-winded woman, but Josarian recognized the salient factors of the story pretty quickly. The stranger was sought by Kiloran—Kiloran!—for some long-ago offense. Related to the slaughter in Gamalan? Apparently no one knew. Basimar's brother-in-law had tried to claim the bloodvow as a means of gaining recognition. He was young and inexperienced, yet it had taken Tansen a long time to kill him. Moreover, Tansen had not come away unscathed. He was now reported to be carrying wounds delivered by the boy's shir. Those would not heal soon, Josarian knew. They would be painful; perhaps they would slow him down.

The woman talked at length and answered all of Josarian's questions, some in detail, some with general speculation. By the time Zimran walked him to the top of the ridge to say farewell in private, he had made up his mind.

"Go after him?" Zimran repeated in astonishment. "You mean to fight him?"

"Why not? We won't get rid of him any other way."

"Why not? Because he's got swords, and you've got a yahr."

"I killed two armed Outlookers with a yahr, and Tansen barely managed to kill a young assassin with his swords." Josarian nodded confidently. "I can take him."

Zimran's gaze scanned the heavens as he thought it over. Two crescent moons hung low in the evening sky. "He'll be easy enough to find, at least."

"He's about as discreet as a marauding Moorlander," Josarian said contemptuously.

"All right," Zim agreed at last. "Let's take him."

"And let's make sure the Valdani think twice before sending another one like him after me."

"I wonder..."

"What?"

"I wonder why Kiloran wants his blood?"

 

 

Tansen decided it was time to increase the pressure on Josarian, so he finally took his performance to Emeldar itself. He'd spent days bragging loudly wherever he went, letting his tongue run wild with incredible tales after a mere cup or two in every tavern he entered—and he entered quite a few. The stories were so blatantly improbable that surely any man of sense would suspect him of being a drunken braggart of little skill and less intelligence, especially after the incompetent show he'd made of killing the assassin. He sweetened the bait, too, with insulting allusions to Josarian's cowardice.

"Why doesn't he face me?" Tansen demanded of the men in the vine-covered courtyard of the tavern in Emeldar that day.

It was a warm afternoon, and the men of the village were resting after the midday meal, waiting for the sun to move a bit further across the sky before returning to their fields, pastures, and other back-breaking work. It was a glorious Silerian day, the kind Tansen had remembered with hungry longing during his long years in exile. The sky was a brilliant cerulean blue, a heat haze made the harsh mountains shimmer like gold, and the scents of spring perfumed the air. It was an afternoon to spend lying in the shade and enjoying the fragrance of the Silerian hills, or perhaps creeping into an empty shed or some isolated Kintish ruins to enjoy the sighs and softness of a woman. Instead, he was swallowing mediocre wine and swaggering more than the slain assassin had ever dreamed of doing.

"I'll tell you why he won't face me," Tansen continued, warming to his subject. "He's afraid, that's why!"

All the men glared. Many argued. One or two mumbled vague threats. A few were silently attentive, perhaps suspecting the stranger was right about Josarian. So things were going the way he'd expected.

"He's heard about all the men I've killed," Tansen sneered. "He's heard how I fought twenty Moorlanders by myself, and defeated them all."

"We've all heard that one," said an old man.

"Three or four times, at least," someone else muttered.

Tansen pretended not to hear. "He's heard how I killed a Society assassin without even breaking a sweat!"

"Quiet, friend," another man said uneasily.

Some things in Sileria were still the same, Tansen reflected. People still didn't like to hear the Honored Society mentioned out loud in public places. Even his own shir wounds seemed to throb a little more when he spoke the word aloud, but he knew that was just a boy's superstition.

The conversation, such as it was, continued in this vein for a few more minutes, with Tansen finally concluding that Josarian had no balls and couldn't perform even for a Kintish courtesan possessing the finest erotic sorcery known to her kind.

As a boy, he'd seen a man killed over such an insult. Not surprisingly, someone here jumped to his feet, a yahr in his hand and battle in his eyes. A relative of Josarian's, Tansen guessed, or at least a friend. The man was about Tan's age. His face was so handsome it was almost as pretty as a girl's, and the gossamer tunic he wore, which couldn't have been cheap, accentuated his good looks. He was a little on the small side, but wiry and quick.

"Easy Zimran," someone said, stepping between the two men.

Zimran tried to shove past his friend. "You heard what this sriliah said! Let me—"

"No, you idiot!" The man shoved Zimran down onto a stool and snapped, "Are you going to challenge him here, with Outlookers swarming all over the village? Use your head!"

The warning brought the pretty fellow to his senses. Fuming with impotent rage, he turned his back on Tansen and swallowed a huge gulp of wine.

Judging that he'd hit his target, Tansen studied the expressions of the men around him. Yes, no doubt about it; Josarian would hear about this, even if he was already a sojourner in the Otherworld.

"Tell Josarian I'll keep looking," Tansen warned the men, slamming down his cup. "Tell him I'll find him. He can't hide forever."

Actually, he could; and if he were smart, he would. But shallaheen were proud, and Tansen had by now flung too many insults at Josarian to be ignored. He had set the trap and baited it well. Now instinct told him that the outlaw's move would come soon. And Tan would be ready for him.

Pretending to be slightly drunk, he made his way out of the tavern. Once on the streets, he took care to stay well away from the main square, avoiding a potential confrontation with Outlookers. True, he'd been hired by their district commander, but most of them didn't know it, and he rather doubted his explanations would carry much weight with frustrated Outlookers tired of hunting for an elusive shallah rebel.

Apart from the main square and the market street, most of the Outlookers in Emeldar were posted around two houses clinging to a cliff at the edge of town: Josarian's and his sister's. Someone had identified the two dwellings to Tansen this morning. A widower, Josarian now shared his small stone house with a bachelor cousin who was said to be the bane of every father in the village.

Tansen strolled down a side street, letting people see him now that he was well out of sight of any Outlookers. The season was advancing, spring coming into full blossom. Soon it would be dark-moon again. Back in Cavasar, Koroll was undoubtedly growing restless. Well, patience was a virtue worth cultivating. After waiting nine years to come home, Tansen had little sympathy to spare for an ambitious Valdan who couldn't wait more than a moon cycle for a man's death.

Emeldar was not as pretty as Gamalan had been, and Darshon was only a hazy vision from here, shimmering dreamily in the distance. Tansen had seen the burnt offering-ground beyond the outskirts of Emeldar, the thick scars on people's palms, and the sacred lava stone which was the first stone laid in any shallah village ever built. But no matter how sincere their worship of Dar was, these people were too distant from Her angry mouth to know Her as the Gamalani had. Even now, the boy inside him felt Her hot gaze upon him, waiting, watching, judging him.

He felt other gazes, too, of course. Most of them were hostile, since everyone knew he had come here to kill Emeldar's favorite son. They were proud of Josarian's exploits. They smirked at the Outlookers who couldn't catch him. They had come to understand, Tansen saw, that the Valdani were vulnerable.

A pretty girl sat outside her doorway with her face turned away from the street, letting only her profile show: the signal of a modest, respectable girl who was available for courting. Tansen saw a young man pacing slowly back and forth with his companions, talking with them but keeping his eye on the girl. She turned her head away as he walked past, just enough to let him know that she had decided she was not available to him. Momentarily disheartened, the young man then made a show of not caring.

Had Tansen's life been different, he, too, might have participated in these early courting rituals. But his introduction to affairs of the heart, like his introduction to everything else that had shaped his life, had been sudden, brutal, and as cruel as the cut of a shir.

On a day like this, with the brilliant sunlight gleaming on a young woman's dark hair, he could see her again in his mind's eye, as clearly as if she stood there herself: Elelar. The delicate complexion, the graceful hands, the midnight black of her hair, the scent of her skin which had always made his belly quiver with naive hunger...

He shook off the memory, surprised at its piercing sharpness. Elelar was no shallah, but there was a strength, almost a harshness, in the beauty of a Silerian woman that was unlike that of women anywhere else in the three corners of the world. Seeing the women of his homeland for the first time in so many years was bound to remind him of her.

The young girl finally heeded her mother's repeated call to come inside the house. The long-sleeved tunic draped her body all the way down to her knees and, like the pantaloons she wore, was modestly loose. The material was light and gauzy, though, accommodating Sileria's hot climate, and the afternoon breeze melded it lovingly against her body. Tansen wasn't the only one who noticed the ripe young charms outlined so gracefully as she stood up. Ah, yes, that one would find a husband soon, judging by the hungry gazes that followed her every move. Tansen turned into another street leading away from town.

The streets of Emeldar were like those of any other shallah village: steep, rocky, and crowded with small houses made of the cream, amber, and peach colored stone of Sileria's mountains. The strange circumstances which Josarian's activities had brought upon Emeldar may have subdued some of the exuberance of the locals, but the scent of wild rosemary still perfumed the air, some slightly out-of-tune bard still wailed ancient melodies that echoed around the surrounding hills, and children still played in the streets while their parents or grandparents sat in the doorways and kept an eye on them.

No, Emeldar was not as pretty as Gamalan had been, but it stirred an ever-present hunger inside him for the home he would never see again, a home that no longer existed. It recalled the life of a boy who had never killed, never lost his loved ones, and never turned his back on Dar.

Tansen veered away from the memories—and from Emeldar. He was heading east, and he had made sure everyone knew it.

 

 

Zimran longed to see Josarian himself, to tell his cousin what a swaggering, drunken, uncouth lout the stranger was, but he couldn't wait all night by the cool spring in the hills where he'd promised to leave a message. There was a widow in need back in Emeldar, after all.

The lady's husband had gone off to join the zanareen last year after watching all his sheep die of thirst due to the feud between the Valdani and the Society; and now she counted on Zim to soothe the sorrow of her lonely nights. However, she was a modest woman who only let him visit her during the dark-moon, when she was convinced no one could see him sneak into her house. It wasn't quite dark-moon yet—Ejara hung low tonight, a glowing sliver of alabaster in the night's ebony ear—but the widow had missed Zimran sorely this month and was eager to begin the orgy of pleasure they would enjoy together for the next few nights. She'd managed to get close enough to him in the marketplace this morning to let him know she was ready: Come tonight, come early, and be strong when you come.

Zimran grinned as he hid a hastily-knotted jashar under the usual rock near the spring. Why not let the lady keep believing that their affair was a secret and that half the village hadn't already guessed where he'd be sleeping tonight? A few whispered lies in the dark to ease her anxiety cost him nothing, after all.

And be strong when you come... Ah, yes, his was a good life.

If only Josarian hadn't had the misfortune to get caught smuggling, and then compounded the error by killing two Outlookers. But what was done was done. Dar had turned Her face from them for a moment; they must be men and make the best of the situation.

Of course, with all the trouble Josarian had caused since then, there was now no chance of the Outlookers forgiving and forgetting, or even of their accepting a generous bribe. Zimran would never understand why, having gotten into this mess, Josarian now insisted on making it worse—looting and burning Outlooker outposts, harassing Valdani priests, murdering more Outlookers, and urging other shallaheen to do the same. These were not the acts of a rational man! Where had Zimran's happy, placid, fun-loving cousin gone? Everyone knew that Calidar had taken Josarian's heart to the Otherworld with her, but Zimran now suspected she'd taken all of his sense, too.

Arguing about it with Josarian made no difference, either.

"So what if Valdani can be killed as easily as shallaheen?" Zimran had said in exasperation one night not so long ago. "Let the Society do it! It's what they do best, anyhow."

"The Society doesn't kill them to defend us, they kill them to maintain their power over us!"

"It has always been this way," Zim argued. "Why do you think it should be different now, just because you've killed half a dozen Valdani?"

"Don't you see? If every one of us killed half a dozen Valdani—"

"Then the Emperor would just send twice as many to Sileria. What's the point?"

"Do you really want to spend the rest of your life watching the food we harvest, the livestock we raise, and the minerals we mine go to enrich the Valdani and pay for their wars of conquest against more people like us?"

"I want to spend the rest of my life getting rich from smuggling, and sleeping with grateful women who don't expect me to marry them," Zimran said with conviction.

And Josarian... Well, Josarian never stayed angry for long. He had merely smiled at that. "And so you shall, Zim. But I stumbled from the path one night, and I can never go back."

"But you don't have to make war on—"

"Yes, I do." Josarian nodded. "The scenery is different when you leave the path. You see things that you never dreamed of before..." He sighed and met the gaze of his cousin, who was growing increasingly convinced he'd lost his mind. "Even if I could go back, I wouldn't want to. I have a new destiny now."

"A short one, I'd say."

Incredibly, Josarian had laughed. "I'd say so, too. But even a short life is a worthy one if it counts for something." He paused and added more soberly, "And after Calidar died, I thought mine would never count for anything again."

That was when Zimran had realized that Josarian no longer feared death. And as a smuggler, Zim knew that such a man was the most dangerous kind of all.

However, he did agree with Josarian about one thing: They had to kill Tansen. Zimran had been worried about the scheme at first. A mercenary with two swords wasn't someone he felt sanguine about attacking. However, having seen the boasting, self-important oaf in Emeldar today, with his cuts from the assassin's shir still angry and sore, Zimran had no more doubts. In fact, now he longed to taste Tansen's blood, after what that sriliah had said about Josarian.

He descended the mountain, sure-footed even in the dark, and made his way to an old goat path that would eventually take him to a pasture above Emeldar. From there he would slip through the back streets to the widow's house, where he would feast luxuriantly all night on some of the sweetest flesh he'd ever known. She'd be a little annoyed, of course, when he told her he had to leave tomorrow and would be gone for a night or two. But he would be back before Abayara rose in the east, which was when their titillating cycle of abstinence would begin again. Well, her cycle of abstinence—he, of course, kept busy between dark-moons. Anyhow, he had to go away tomorrow; he had promised to help Josarian kill Tansen, and now he wouldn't miss it for all the diamonds in Alizar.

The jashar he'd left on the hillside had been detailed, assuring Josarian that Tansen could be killed without much risk, and suggesting they do it tomorrow night. If Tansen was heading east, as was rumored, they could follow him as he left the village of Islanar tomorrow and kill him on the far side of Mount Orlenar—where, according to this morning's gossip, there happened to be very few Outlookers at the moment, since Josarian was erroneously believed to be heading south.

Yes, Zimran would be back from there in time for another dark and furtive meeting with his favorite widow before he had to leave for the coast on a smuggling expedition; but she would nonetheless be angry when he broke the news tonight. Slipping through the back streets of Emeldar, Zimran smiled as he pictured her reaction, because she was always particularly bold in bed when she was angry or trying to get her own way. He certainly would have been a great fool to waste half the night in the hills just to have a little conversation with his cousin.

He was still congratulating himself on his good judgment when he arrived at the widow's door and started to ease it open. As expected, she had left it unlatched, and the hinges were as well-oiled as ever. His expectations suffered a severe shock, however, when he found four Outlookers waiting inside for him.

Instinct made him try to escape even before he saw the widow weeping in the corner. Panic made him fight back as two Outlookers seized and arrested him. Fear made him struggle wildly as they searched him at swordpoint, and he didn't subside until they beat him unconscious while the widow screamed and begged for mercy.