In Legend Born

by Laura Resnick

  "Shallaheen enjoy killing each other too much to pay a roshah to do it," Tansen pointed out. "And as for professional killings, the Honored Society would never tolerate the competition."

  "We are a difficult people," Josarian acknowledged. "There's no denying it."

  "Still, despite the expense, a shatai costs less than an assassin in the long run." Tansen stared into the fire. "Once you've paid a shatai, you owe him nothing and he goes his way. But once an assassin has done you a service, you are indebted to him forever."

  Josarian balanced the hare's carcass over the fire. They were too hungry to wait until the flames had died down to glowing embers, though the meat would have been better that way.

  "The Moorlands, the Great Northern Desert... Why did you travel so far?" Josarian asked at last.

  Tansen shrugged. "I was following the work."

  "And you couldn't come home."

  "No." No point in denying it. "I couldn't come home."

  "Even a skilled warrior cannot escape a bloodvow from Kiloran himself. Not in Sileria."

  "Nine years have passed," Tansen said stubbornly. "He must release me."

  "But will he? What did you do to him?"

  "Does it matter?" Tansen flashed him a quelling look, but Josarian didn't back down.

  "It's been thought that perhaps you betrayed Gamalan to the Valdani," Josarian said quietly. "And that perhaps Kiloran cared about someone—or something—there."

  Tansen felt as if he'd been cut with a shir again. This was an accusation so foul and degrading it had never even occurred to him. "Is that what Kiloran says?" he demanded harshly.

  "Kiloran seems to be silent on the subject."

  Hot with shame, Tansen asked, "Do you believe it?"

  "No," Josarian said. "Not now."

  Tansen heard blood thundering in his ears. For a moment he smelled the stench of death again, remembered across the years. He again saw his mother's twisted corpse, her entrails streaming away from her belly in a river of blood. He saw his sister's eyes, staring sightlessly out of her battered face, her thighs bruised and defiled with Valdani seed. He saw his grandfather... Oh, Darfire, what they had done to his grandfather! Even now, not a day passed without his thinking of the old man who had raised him and shaped his boyhood. Every prayer and curse he'd known, every secret and story, every skill and vice... All had been taught to him by that irascible old man before he died, slowly and in agony, at the hands of the Valdani.

  "That anyone should think I had a hand in that..." Repulsed, Tansen swallowed and turned away from the fire. "Still, perhaps this is my due, considering..."

  "What?" Josarian asked.

  "Considering what I did do."

  Without another word, he left the fireside. He did not come back to eat, nor did he return to bed down near the warmth. While Josarian, a hunted outlaw, slept peacefully by the glowing embers that night, an honor-bound warrior sat alone amidst the barren, windswept rocks high atop Mount Orlenar and fought his demons in silence.

  Chapter Seven

  Fire, the force which had given birth to Sileria, more powerful than anything in their world—except water. Fire, liquid rock churning in Dar's belly, streaming out of Her womb, bubbling up through a thousand orifices on the face of Darshon, flowing down its sides in slow-moving rivers of death and re-birth. Fire, spewing great fountains of glory and fury from the gaping maw atop the mountain, from the caldera at which the zanareen worshipped, from the glowing crater that was the gateway to ecstatic union with the goddess. Fire, becoming earth, air, river, and sky at the will of the goddess, and at the will of the Guardians, whom She had blessed with gifts beyond reckoning.

  Forbidden to summon shades from the Otherworld while the madness of her visions pursued her, Mirabar filled her days with the study of fire magic. Touched by Dar's favor, imbued with the very powers that had given life and death to these loved, hated, merciless mountains, she wove ribbons of fire through the air, shot daggers of flame into the night, and poured thick runnels of lava into the morning mist.

  Sometimes it hurt. Sometimes the pain was unbearable, but she didn't retreat or withdraw. Honed in fire and fury, Darshon was greater, stronger, and prouder than all other mountains; and among the Guardians, Mirabar would be like Darshon—or she would die trying.

  Sometimes she was frightened, terrified beyond what she should have been able to bear in sanity. She knew that Tashinar was afraid for her, too; knew that she took risks beyond all sense and reason. Guardians ruled fire, but they were not impervious to it. She herself had seen a young initiate lose control of her power and go up in flames, writhing and screaming in terrible agony as her own fire consumed her. She had seen an old sage weaken in a Calling and get pulled into the sacred fire, the gateway to the Otherworld, where he lost his life.

  Arms extended, fingers dripping molten lava, body burning with the strain, Mirabar flung spears of flame into the mountain stream where the Guardians had refined this year's gossamer harvest. The fire was doused. The lava sizzled and sank, tiny chunks of cold matter now. Disheartened and exhausted, Mirabar sank to her knees at the river's edge.

  The Beckoner had shown her water the other day. She didn't know what it meant, other than apparently confirming her fears that her destiny was linked to the Honored Society. Water, stronger than fire, the medium through which the Society had secretly ruled Sileria for a thousand years. Water... the element in which Mirabar could not sustain her own power.

  How could she unite with the Society when any assassin or waterlord was likely to kill her the moment he saw her? The Guardians and the Society had been bitter enemies ever since the days of the Conquest, and no one had suffered more from their mutual hatred than Mirabar's kind. She knew now from her visions how different the world had once been, how many more like her had once roamed these mountains, how very different her life might have been if the waterlords had never convinced the shallaheen that anyone with her coloring was an accursed demon who must be slaughtered on sight. A thousand years ago, she might have been a trusted advisor to the Yahrdan himself. Instead, she had grown up a roshah among her own kind, a starving, hunted orphan who was more animal than human when Tashinar had found her.

  Now she was a roshah once again, for although the other Guardians in her group tried to be kind, she could already feel how far outside the circle of fire she was as a result of being excluded from the Callings. And the visions, yes, the visions set her apart—as they were intended to do. She knew now; she had guessed. The Beckoner was isolating her because he wanted her to leave the group, leave Tashinar. She didn't know why, and she didn't know where she was supposed to go, but she could see that the Beckoner was working to sever the strong bonds that kept her with the others.

  She swallowed her fear, feeling tears mist her vision. She had never known safety in her entire life before becoming part of this circle. If she had ever known affection or the touch of one who cared before entering this circle, she couldn't remember it. For Mirabar, there was nothing but a demon's shadow life away from her companions. How could she leave them?

  But she would. When the time came, she knew that if she didn't leave of her own free will, then the Beckoner would force her to. She had already seen enough to know he drew his strength from powers she could scarcely fathom.

  Staring into the water, Mirabar blew a flame into her hand, then molded the fire into something thick and heavy. She turned her palm over and watched the liquid fire drizzle slowly into the river, stretching out from her palm like a fine strand of spider's silk, spiraling gracefully as it hit the water and sizzled into milky oblivion.

  "Fire in water," she murmured. Fire in water. Why did the image haunt her so?

  As she stared at the water, the fire she had dropped into it came suddenly, blazingly back into being. It snaked around, coiling, twisting, dividing, then came glowingly to life in a shape she had come to recognize, though she still didn't know its significance. As the strange Kintish symbol blazed beneath the fast-mo
ving surface of the water, another image took shape with it, a water-born image that gleamed cool and silvery against the flames.

  "The shir..." Again.

  Fire in water.

  Mirabar heard the Beckoner's voice. "How?" she asked. "How can fire be strong enough to—"

  Fire in water. Find the shir.

  "Is it his? Does it belong to the warrior?"

  Find it and you find him.

  "That's not what I asked," she said tersely. She looked up. The Beckoner was on the other side of the river, his eyes glowing with orange fire, his skin shimmering with the light of the Otherworld.

  Mirabar jumped to her feet, frightened despite herself. She still didn't know what he was, still didn't understand his nature or why he had chosen her.

  "Is it Armian?" she demanded, wanting answers. "Is he the warrior I must find?"

  Fire and water.

  "Fire in water, fire and water... Which is it?" she snapped.

  Fire and water. An alliance.

  "I'm having a little trouble convincing the others," she pointed out sourly.

  Find the alliance.

  "There is no—"

  The world turned sideways as the river rose to engulf her, fire and water combining to sweep her into a terrifying vortex that consumed all her strength. She couldn't control her screams, couldn't defend against the pain, couldn't master the fear she felt.

  Through the haze of terror, as the fire turned to ashes and the water turned to blood, she saw him again: Daurion, the Yahrdan with whom their freedom had died centuries ago. Through the mist of agony, she saw him raise his sword, a gleaming weapon that reached across the sky. And just before the icy waters of the river sucked her down into the domain of wizards and death, she saw him swing his blade... and smash the Sign of the Three.

  Tansen's long silences didn't bother Josarian overmuch, since he liked to talk and didn't mind the lack of competition. He soon recognized, however, that the shatai's silences were highly selective. When questioned, he seemed willing enough to talk about the strange lands he had been to, the incredible things he had witnessed, the wars of conquest being fought all around the Middle Sea, the erotic sorcery of Kintish courtesans, the strange and savage customs of the hairy Moorlanders, or the arduous training of a shatai. It was only when asked about himself, his past, his family, his connection to Kiloran, the origin of the shir that he now kept hidden inside his satchel, or the silk scarf in which it was wrapped that Tansen responded with a silence that could chill the air on a hot day.

  This, of course, only had the effect of making Josarian pursue these subjects with the tenacity of a Valdani priest collecting tribute goats.

  "You never mention your father," he said to Tansen as they sat down for a brief rest in the shade, less than half a day's walk from Malthenar.

  "You never mention yours. Water?"

  "Thanks." He drank briefly from the goatskin waterpouch Tansen handed him, then said, "My father died of fever. Four years ago. My mother died a few years before that."

  "May the Otherworld welcome them," Tansen said politely.

  Undeterred by the cool silence which followed, Josarian asked, "Is your father alive?"

  "No."

  "When did he die?"

  "When I was still in swaddling clothes."

  "How?" Josarian asked.

  "Bloodfeud."

  "With the Sirdari clan." It was not a question.

  Tansen looked at him in surprise. "How did you know?"

  "They were my wife's clan." He glanced at the marriage mark on his palm, remembering the sure feel of the blade slicing through his flesh, remembering how Calidar had bit her lip as she marked him, worried about hurting him.

  "No widow mark," Tansen observed.

  "I'm Calidar's husband," Josarian said. "Her death makes no difference to the vows I swore at her side." He wondered if his companion would shake his head, as Zimran did. Or urge him to put his loss behind him and choose another woman, as Jalilar did. Or scoff and jovially assume he'd get over this sentiment, as the men in Emeldar's tavern did.

  The warrior's dark eyes lost some of their chill. The forbidding expression relaxed a bit. He nodded, as if Josarian's response were perfectly reasonable. After a moment, he said, "No wonder you don't fear death."

  "She waits for me there." Josarian's heart filled with a sudden loneliness.

  "If you believe that—"

  "It's true," Josarian said. "I've seen her." Seeing Tansen's skeptical expression, he repeated, "It's true." He told him about the Guardians on Mount Niran, and the old woman who had summoned Calidar's shade from the Otherworld. "It was my wife. I saw her."

  Tansen rose to his feet and resumed their trek. "A year after my brother threw himself into the volcano, my mother took me with her to a Guardian encampment where we offered them smuggled Kintish cloth in exchange for a Calling."

  This was the first voluntary comment the shatai had made about his family since the night they'd met. Josarian prodded, "And?"

  "My mother claimed she saw my brother in the circle of fire. But I saw nothing."

  "Not everyone sees the shade in a Calling," Josarian pointed out. "Only the person who—"

  "Perhaps some see exactly what they want to see."

  "And perhaps some want to see nothing there," Josarian countered.

  Tansen glanced at him. "The Guardians are powerful."

  "Indeed they are."

  "Perhaps powerful enough to make a man believe he sees—"

  "I did see—"

  "But the Guardian spoke to you, not the shade. Yes?"

  "Yes, but they were Calidar's words, and I saw—"

  "Sorcerers who can blow flames from their mouths and pour fire from their hands... Who's to say they can't control what you think you see in the fire?"

  "Tashinar never knew Calidar. She couldn't have spoken so much like her. Those were my wife's words that night."

  Tansen relented. "Then may Calidar welcome you when you journey to the Otherworld."

  "She will." Josarian's eyes scanned a mountain pass far below them, keeping an eye out for Outlookers. "And then we will be together again." Satisfied that there were no riders in the pass, he glanced again at Tansen. "But you don't believe that, do you?"

  Tansen shrugged. His long, gleaming, black braid hung down the middle of his back as he turned away and kept walking. If nothing else, Josarian reflected, the still-mysterious roshah no longer expected an attack from his companion. Tansen had returned Josarian's yahr the morning after they'd met; it was now tucked securely into Josarian's jashar. He followed Tansen along the precarious path skirting the side of the jagged mountain.

  "The Guardians can't explain why not everyone goes to the Otherworld," Tansen finally responded.

  "The journey is long and arduous."

  "I've heard of weak, old, lecherous sriliaheen being Called every single year by some relative," Tansen pointed out, "while there are strong young men who died in a rockslide and have never once appeared in the circle of fire."

  "Maybe the bodies weren't burned." Everyone knew that a corpse must be purified through fire. "Maybe that's why—"

  "No." Tansen shook his head. "If it were that simple, that consistent, we would know."

  "So do you believe everyone goes into oblivion?" Josarian asked curiously. Being a mercenary who regularly risked his life in combat must be frightening for one who didn't believe in the Otherworld.

  Tansen slowed his pace and looked down at the scars on his right palm, the ones made by relatives when a baby was named and when a child became an adult. "I don't know," he said at last. "I hope not."

  "Where do you think you'll go?" Josarian persisted.

  "I think..." Tansen glanced into the distance, to where Darshon rose majestically above all other mountains. "I think Dar may want me for Herself."

  It wasn't a boast, Josarian realized. "For punishment?" He would have asked what Tansen had done, but he knew the warrior wouldn't answer him.
<
br />   The moment was over. Tansen shrugged again, then turned away and increased his pace until even Josarian would have been hard pressed to find breath for more conversation.

  Tansen watched the road outside of Malthenar while Josarian descended into the village's narrow, winding streets to get food and information from the home of some bloodpact relations. After four years of traveling alone, Tansen found the outlaw surprisingly easy company, despite his frequent questions about things Tansen had no intention of discussing with anyone. Josarian's comments also showed a quick mind and an intuitive understanding of human nature. He was intensely curious about the world beyond these mountains, too, and those were questions which Tansen didn't mind answering. It was useful for a shatai to be able to put clients and potential allies at ease with a ready supply of good stories, and although he wasn't a talkative man by nature, Tansen nonetheless had a shallah's natural ability to tell a tale.

  Although he had learned a lot about Josarian while pursuing him, he was still surprised by the qualities of the man with whom he had now joined forces. He hadn't expected to like him so well. He'd been quite prepared to put up with an embittered, headstrong, and willfully ignorant sheep herder if necessary, as long as the man continued harassing and terrifying the Valdani and encouraging others to do likewise. While looking for Josarian, Tansen had simply thought of him as an effective outlaw in a land of hopeless slaves. He had not expected what he found: a visionary.

  It was in Josarian's voice whenever he spoke of Sileria, his village, his family, the injustices he had seen, and the moment he had chosen a path of violence and rebellion. He wasn't just raiding supply posts and murdering careless Outlookers. No, he had sworn a bloodfeud against the Valdani. He had shown Tansen the fresh scar on his left palm.

  A bloodfeud could last for generations, and whole clans could be wiped out. It was the sort of custom that had made Sileria so easy for the Valdani to conquer. Yet it was, conversely, also a source of immense strength. Men who had declared a bloodfeud could be fearless, merciless, committed beyond all sense and reason to slaying their enemies.