Chapter Eighteen

 

 

"Armian?" Josarian repeated incredulously. "He really came home?"

"He came back," Tansen confirmed, continuing his story.

A mere boy who viewed the Society with the mingled fear and fascination of most shallaheen, Tansen instantly idolized the man he had found lying half-dead beneath the dark-moon sky that night. This was not just any Society member, either; this was Armian, son of Harlon, the waterlord who had fought so valiantly against the Valdani before they murdered him. Armian, who was spirited away from Sileria as a child because the Outlookers sought him so vengefully; Armian, who grew to become a warrior of great courage and prowess, who had vowed to return to his homeland someday to drive the Valdani from Sileria forever. This was the man whom many even believed was the Firebringer!

"Do you believe in the Firebringer?" Josarian interrupted.

"I did then." Dar would be the judge, in the end.

Armian had lost a lot of blood and needed immediate care. By dawn, the Outlookers would be scouring the coast in search of him. Tansen took him to a secret cave in the hills, not far from shore, where he kept his donkeys hidden. Armian was so weak Tansen had to half-drag, half-carry him most of the way. It was hard work, for a shallah boy from impoverished Gamalan didn't have the height and bulk of a grown man raised to be an assassin—and perhaps, someday, a waterlord. Realizing that Armian would soon die without skilled care, Tansen found a Sanctuary and brought a Sister back to the hidden cave. After three days of her healing magic, Armian climbed out of the depths of his weakness and started to recover.

"And did he tell you why he had come home?" Josarian asked.

"The stories were true," Tansen said quietly. "He had come to drive out the Valdani. He came from the Moorlands w—"

"The Moorlands? But everyone says he was sent into hiding in Kintish lands."

Tansen nodded. "That's what the Society wanted everyone to think. They let the Valdani believe he was in one place, while they really sent him to the other side of the world. No one looked for him in the Moorlands. He was raised by a wealthy family there, people who were somehow connected to Harlon through the Alliance."

Armian had come to Sileria as a special envoy; the Moorlanders had sent him here to contact Kiloran and the Honored Society in the hope of launching a successful attack against the Valdani.

"They knew that destroying Valdani power here, in the center of the Middle Sea, was the key to regaining control of the western sea and their own coastal lands. If their plan was successful, they thought they could even drive an attack up the coast, clear into Valda itself," Tansen said.

"So they proposed to assist us in a rebellion?" Josarian asked in amazement.

"Yes. They were ready to pledge men, ships, weapons..." He smiled wryly and added, "Horses."

"Horses," Josarian repeated without enthusiasm.

"It would have been the greatest military force fighting on our side since Daurion's time."

"And after the war was over, we'd be ruled by the Moorlanders again," said Josarian.

"They said not. They were prepared to offer written treaties guaranteeing full withdrawal of all their forces as soon as the Valdani were driven from Sileria." Tansen shrugged. "The Alliance believed it. The Moorlanders didn't want foreign territories this time; they just wanted the Moorlands back. They knew that while Valdania holds Sileria, she holds the entire Middle Sea."

"And this is what Armian came to do."

"Yes. To find Kiloran, without whose support the plan could never succeed, and to enlist the entire Society as a sort of army. They were the only armed Silerians, the only trained killers among us."

"The rest of us just do it as a hobby." Josarian's voice was dry with acknowledgement.

"And they do have the waterlords, whom even the Valdani fear."

"True."

The pirate who was Tansen's smuggling partner was part of the Alliance, Armian explained; it was the first time Tansen had ever heard of it. The pirate was supposed to take Armian to Adalian after unloading Tansen's cargo north of Liron. However, there'd been a sriliah aboard who'd given them away to the Valdani, and Armian had taken a desperate risk to escape capture. Although he had miraculously survived, the plan, the rebellion, and the freedom of Sileria were all still in jeopardy.

"So he really did come home to free Sileria?" Josarian asked.

"He came home to destroy the Valdani," Tansen said. "He had little information to go on. He knew only that, if something went wrong, the alternative plan was for him to somehow get to Shaljir and contact a toren named Gaborian: Elelar's grandfather."

"Ahhh."

Never having been west of Darshon, Tansen took Armian back to his village to consult with his grandfather. Upon arriving in Gamalan, they discovered that the Outlookers had tortured the pirate, and he had talked.

"Sriliah," Josarian spat.

"He wasn't one of us." Tansen shook his head. "He never could take pain. He squealed like a pig when I carved the bloodpact into his palm."

"So when you reached Gamalan..."

"My family was dead." His throat closed, remembering the horror of that morning. After a time, his voice hoarse with memories that had never softened or grown dim, he continued, "They had tortured my grandfather. And my mother. Raped my sister before they killed her. They did unspeakab—" He stopped again. "Well. Everyone in the village was dead. No one had been spared. Not even children." He cleared his throat, struggling to banish the images. "In the end, they apparently decided we must have already gone on to Adalian. But they left four men behind to watch the village, just in case."

"They set a trap for you?"

"No, they underestimated Armian. They thought they could simply take him in a direct attack." He looked at the waning curves of the moons and recalled, "He had a shir and a yahr. Someone had taught him well; I never asked who. Although the Outlookers were armed, he killed two of them and wounded a third. The fourth was so terrified, he let us escape."

"You admired Armian."

"I worshipped him," Tansen said. "If Kiloran had another assassin like that to send against me now, I could not kill him so easily as I killed the other two. And I would regret doing it, too, because the kind of courage and skill Armian had in a fight is rare."

"So this assassin took you with him to Shaljir?"

"He couldn't leave me in Gamalan and..." Tansen shrugged. "You know. The last of the Gamalani died there. There had already been so few of us left, anyhow, thanks to the bloodfeud with the Sirdari." He shrugged again. "I had nowhere to go."

The journey to far-off Shaljir was long. They avoided the main roads and traveled mostly by night. Armian never joined in Tansen's daily prayers to Dar as they circled the vast mountain wherein She dwelled. The assassin had no use for the goddess; when the war for Sileria was over, he would apprentice to Kiloran, who had made his shir, and learn water magic. Nor did Armian have much use for most of the shallaheen they encountered on their journey; he found them ignorant and superstitious. He even seemed to blame them for their poverty.

"How did he treat you?" Josarian asked.

Tansen hesitated. "For whatever reason... he grew to love me like a son."

"And did you love him like a father?" Josarian waited a long time for an answer. 

"Yes," Tan finally admitted. "I hung on his every word. Mimicked his actions, dogged his footsteps day and night." He nodded, remembering. "I looked up to him, and... I loved him."

Shaljir should have turned the head and fired the heart of a mountain boy seeing it for the first time, but Tansen was mourning his family. Since Armian was a man who knew how to get things done, they located Toren Gaborian's household quickly. To their astonishment, it was being run by an eighteen-year-old girl.

"Elelar," Josarian guessed.

Tan nodded. "Gaborian was old and very ill. Elelar tells me he grew steadily worse and died two years later."

"So you had found the Alliance."

The fabulous wealth of Gaborian's household and the strange intrigues going on there might have enthralled Tansen had he not become instantly and hopelessly enamored of Elelar. He had never seen a woman like her, had never known the painful, tongue-tied yearning which overwhelmed him in her presence. He didn't know how to control the lust that swept through him when she brushed past him or stood so close he could feel the heat of her skin.

He had also never before experienced the acute embarrassment he felt over her amusement at his rustic habits or clumsy infatuation. He was so much less than she was in every way. For the first time in his life, he was embarrassed that he was ignorant and uneducated; her pity humiliated him and her impatience shamed him.

He was a shallah and she was a torena. Even worse, he was still just a boy, and she was already a woman.

She sent him and Armian to the same inn, in the oldest section of the city, where he would lead Josarian nine years later. The keeper was not only in the Alliance, he was also privy to an astonishing secret hidden beneath the streets of the city: the survival of the Beyah-Olvari.

"How did you find out about them?" Josarian asked.

"Armian killed a beggar. The Valdani don't approve of Silerians committing murder in broad daylight in the streets of Shaljir. They sealed off the gates and started searching the city for us, not even realizing who Armian was. So Elelar hid us underground."

"Why in the Fires did he kill a beggar?"

Tansen sought his face in the dark. "Because Armian was an assassin, and the beggar annoyed him."

Gaborian was too ill to travel and Armian's mission had already been jeopardized once by betrayal, so Elelar decided to personally escort the assassin and the mountain boy to Kiloran. She didn't know where the waterlord was, but then, as now, she had ways of finding him.

"Are you telling me that Kiloran is part of this Alliance?"

"Yes."

It took them many days to find Kiloran. Emperor Jarell was devoting considerable energy that year to his war on the Society, and the waterlord was constantly on the move. During that time, Tansen discovered that Armian's method of extracting information from people was not dissimilar to the Valdani's. Tansen watched his idol enact scenes of ruthless brutality unlike anything he'd ever seen, and though he diligently applied himself to the fighting techniques Armian had decided to teach him, something inside of him started boiling over with revulsion. "Above all, I started to see the Society through her eyes," he said.

"Elelar?"

"Yes."

Educated, articulate, and shrewd beyond her years, Elelar knew the Alliance needed to continue cultivating the Society because they were the strongest faction in Sileria; but she considered them almost as bad as the Valdani. Who starved the cities of water when tribute didn't arrive on time or wasn't deemed generous enough? Who ruled the mountains through terror and violence? Who controlled the toreni with abduction, ransom demands, and murder? Who had destroyed Sileria's last Yahrdan? Who had already killed more shallaheen than the Valdani ever would?

"Then why was she allied to them?" Josarian asked.

"For the same reason you will be," Tansen said, "now that you've promised to join the Alliance."

"You didn't tell me—"

"We cannot fight the Valdani without the Society. She knew it then, I know it now. You must understand it." He leaned forward. "When I first sought you, I thought only of keeping you alive to torment the Valdani. When I swore a bloodfeud with you, I thought only of making the torment last beyond our deaths. But now I have seen how men follow you, believe in you, risk everything to join your fight."

"All men want what I want, Tan," said Josarian. "To live freely and in peace, and to be able to feed their families. That's all. It's not so much, but the Valdani have denied it to us for too long."

"I don't think any man picks up a weapon just because he wants food and peace," said Tansen. "He does it because something or someone has inspired him to risk killing and dying. Something as simple as fear or hatred, or something as complex as a dream or a great man's leadership."

"I am no great man," Josarian said quietly. "I'm an uneducated mountain peasant who misses his wife and who can never go home again."

"You've changed lives all over the district of Cavasar. You've convinced frightened men to follow you, and clannish villagers to put aside their differences for a common cause. You've begun a rebellion in an utterly defeated nation by challenging the most powerful empire the world has ever known." He smiled wryly. "Like it or not, you're a great man."

"A heavy responsibility," Josarian said without enthusiasm. "I think I preferred being an outlaw."

"Before this thing is through, the Valdani will wish you had stayed a mere outlaw."

Returning to the point, Josarian said, "If he kills you, I will not be Kiloran's ally."

"I know," Tansen said. "But Elelar doesn't know that, and I need her help to find him."

"You think he will kill you, don't you?" Josarian prodded.

He smothered his fear. "I think he wants very much to kill me."

"Then why—"

"We've been all through this before. I'm not going back into exile. I'm not going into hiding. And I don't feel like spending the rest of my life battling assassins—who might very well start killing my friends and companions when they find it too hard to kill me." His gaze rested briefly on the swords lying beside him. "I will face him as a man, and one way or another, this thing between us will be settled."

Josarian sighed, nodding. "Then you'd better tell me why he wants you dead."

"Yes."

After nearly a twin-moon of searching, Armian, Tansen, and Elelar found Kiloran—or rather, he found them, responding to Elelar's signals.

"He was..." Tansen made a vague gesture. "Power radiated from him the way heat radiates from a fire. His eyes were cold and lifeless, like a snake's. The Moorlanders had chosen the right envoy; Kiloran would have trusted no other. He treated Armian with affection, but there was no warmth in him. Me... I was treated courteously because Armian required it."

"And Elelar?"

He smiled. "Oh, I would have pitied the man who failed to show her proper respect, even then."

"Did Kiloran approve of the Moorlanders' proposal?"

"He was suspicious at first, as was his nature. In time, though, he grew enthusiastic about it." Tansen's hands curled into fists as he recalled, "He saw what Armian saw, what I had failed to understand. The Moorlanders would give their support to the Society, not to Sileria, to fight the Valdani. After the Emperor was beaten here and the Moorlanders withdrew to finish the war on the mainland, all power in Sileria would be left in the hands of the Society."

"With Kiloran in charge of the whole country," Josarian guessed, watching Tansen intently.

"And with Armian as his successor. They... were very pleased at the prospect."

"Elelar had no objections?"

"Elelar and the Alliance believed the Valdani were the only enemies that mattered. All other problems and enmities could wait until the day the Valdani were finally gone."

"So the Alliance and the Honored Society both supported the plan and intended to make a pact with the Moorlanders?"

"Yes. When it was approved, Armian was to travel to the southern coast to meet a Moorlander ship and give the Society's answer. Elelar accompanied him, to speak for the Alliance. I went with him, too, because..." The shame of it burned him like fire as he forced himself to confess, "It was my duty. I was his bloodpact son."

"Darfire! You're Armian's bloodson?"

"Yes. We had sworn the bloodpact before reaching Shaljir." He opened his left hand and traced another familiar scar.

Clearly stunned, Josarian said, "The torena said... you ruined everything, you destroyed Sileria's future." He leaned forward, perhaps already knowing the answer as he asked, "How?"

"I murdered Armian."

Tansen tried to look away from the intensity of his brother's gaze, apparent even in the dark, but he couldn't. Josarian said nothing, made no movement or gesture. He just stared. Tansen's lungs strained for air in the cool mountain night.

"I killed my own bloodfather, Josarian. You know that there are few worse crimes." His voice was so tight he had to force it out of his throat. "And I killed the man who... I think he may really have been the Firebringer."

"Why did you do it?" Josarian whispered at last.

"I saw... I saw another thousand years of slavery for us, under the heaviest yoke of all. This pact excluded all the other peoples of Sileria. The war wouldn't free this island for Silerian rule once the Valdani were driven out." Shame flooded his veins as he tried to explain his unspeakable act of betrayal. "The Society, led by Kiloran and Armian, would rule Sileria—more harshly than the Valdani or any other conqueror ever has."

"We would..." Josarian cleared his throat and sat back. "We would never be free."

"By now, we would be looking back on Valdani rule with affection." He released his breath in an uncontrolled rush. "Who starves the cities of water? Who rules the mountains through terror and violence?" Anger sparked inside of him even now as he recalled, "She was the one who said to me, 'Who has already killed more shallaheen than the Valdani ever will?' She was the one who taught me the history of our people and made me understand what they really are. I was an ignorant boy from a violent clan which was unquestioningly loyal to a Lironi waterlord. Even when I feared Armian, even when I turned away in horror from things he did, I still..." He shook his head. "Well, who can say what might have been? But until I knew Elelar, it never occurred to me that there could be another way."

"And once you knew, there was no turning back. I know. I've been there, too," Josarian said. "The night I first said no to the Valdani... I could never go back, after that. I suddenly knew, for the first time, that everything could be different, and should be different, and I had to try to make it so."

"I was the one who found him and saved his life," Tansen said. "He'd reached Kiloran because of me. Sileria would be enslaved forever by the Society because of me, because I had saved Armian to accomplish this thing." He closed his eyes. "So it was up to me to stop him. I had to destroy the only link between the Society and the Moorlanders, the only person trusted by both sides."

"How did you do it, though? A boy against a man? A shallah against an assassin?"

"I knew I couldn't succeed in a direct challenge. So I took him by surprise. He..." His blood roared in his ears. "It was easy to catch him off guard. He trusted me completely."

They were on the cliffs east of Adalian, Tansen explained, walking rather than riding, since it was a dark-moon night and the landscape was too treacherous for horses. It was raining and the wind was high. Tired and unused to such exertion, Elelar was lagging behind. Sick in his heart over what he had decided he must do, Tansen awaited his opportunity.

"It was very dark, hard to see anything in the distance. He stood on a cliff, with his back to me, looking down into a cove." Tansen's was voice dull and distant now, recalling each breath, each movement, each gust of wind. "He had recently given me a new yahr, one he'd gotten from Kiloran, made of petrified Kintish wood. I stood behind him and struck him with it."

Armian had fallen to his knees, stunned by the blow but not knocked unconscious. A great fighter, he instinctively rolled away from the second blow while simultaneously reaching for his shir.

"But he froze, like a statue, when he saw me standing above him swinging the yahr."

If he lived for all eternity, he would never forget the sound of his bloodfather's voice as he said, "Tansen?" 

He had heard it in a thousand nightmares since then and, if he lived long enough, he would hear it in a thousand more. 

Having learned well from Armian, Tansen took advantage of the moment of shocked surprise, his opponent's brief hesitation, and struck him in the face with another blow of the yahr. The shir fell from Armian's hand with Tansen's third blow. By the fifth, he was dead.

"I pushed the body off the cliff, so it landed on the shore of the cove where the Moorlanders were to meet him."

"So they'd find it there... and consider their proposal refused," Josarian deduced.

"Well, everyone knows what a violent, irrational, quarrelsome people we are." Tansen's voice was bitter.

"And also how dangerous, secretive, and unpredictable the Society is." Josarian paused before asking, "What did Elelar do?"

"Ah, Elelar..."

The young torena's screams added to the horror as Tansen stared down at Armian's corpse. At first, the terror and shock of the sudden murder numbed her wits, and she could do little but scream and weep. Then they fought bitterly, shouting at each other on that windy cliff. She thought he had lost his mind and destroyed their entire future.

"Then we saw the Moorlander ship enter the cove," Tansen said. "She became determined to go down and try to speak with them herself, to see if she could somehow salvage the proposed alliance, despite what they would find down there."

"Did you stop her?"

His mouth quirked, "Yes, and she hates me for that most of all."

He tore off the pretty scarf covering her hair in the damp, windy night, bore her to the ground, planted his knee in her back, and used the silken cloth to bind her wrists together. Then he carried her away from the site of the meeting, hauling her on his shoulders like a sack of grain. He didn't release her until dawn, when he knew there'd be no chance of her contacting the Moorlander ship.

"I planned to escort her back to Shaljir." He laughed briefly and without humor. "I had just murdered my own bloodfather, but I didn't think it right to let a torena travel alone." He shrugged. "She had other plans, however."

"She decided to go straight to Kiloran and tell him what you'd done, so that he wouldn't withdraw from the Alliance."

"Exactly. She felt she had to... prove the Alliance's loyalty to him and their mutual cause by condemning me." He gazed up at the indifferent stars. "She said that Kiloran would swear a bloodvow against me and that she would celebrate on the day she learned of my death."

"So at fifteen, with no home, no family, no clan, and with powerful enemies who would soon be searching every crevice in the mountains for you, you decided to leave Sileria."

"Despite what I had done, I still wanted to live," Tansen admitted. "So I boarded a ship bound for Kashala and worked for my passage."

"And now you are a man and a great warrior. Now you have friends and a brother who will not abandon you."

"I've killed a bloodpact relative, Josarian. You should—"

"Fortunately, it's up to Dar, and not me, to judge you for that. Especially if he really was the Firebringer."

"Do you believe in the Firebringer?"

"I believe men must solve their own problems, rather than dreaming of someone who will come do that for them."

Tansen drew a fast, sharp breath.

"What's wrong?"

"That's what he said to me once."

"I imagine he was not altogether bad," Josarian conceded.

"No. I wish he had been. Then it would be easier to bear what I've done."

"Tansen, even the Outlookers I've killed were not, I believe, altogether bad men. Each one of them must have... I don't know—loved a woman well, or been kind to children, or treated his mother with respect, or even just died bravely...

"You're a shatai. You've said that you're different from an assassin, that your teacher wanted you to use good judgment when you fight and before you kill. Yet you must know that you could never kill if you required that an opponent prove his complete unworthiness to live. How many men could oblige you, after all? Very few, I think."

"But I killed one who trusted me, one with whom I'd sworn a bloodpact."

"Yes." Josarian nodded. "It's a terrible burden to carry, and I see that you will suffer beneath it forever. Who knows? Perhaps Dar may even decide that's punishment enough."

"Kiloran won't."

"I doubt Kiloran believes in remorse," Josarian pointed out. "But you told Elelar you will return the shir to him."

"The one he made. The one I picked up off the ground after throwing Armian's body off the cliff."

"You kept the woman's scarf after you untied her..."

"Yes."

"You returned it to her in Shaljir, and she no longer wishes for your death." Josarian put a hand on Tansen's shoulder and squeezed. "Perhaps once he has the shir, Kiloran's hatred will be quenched, too."