In Legend Born

by Laura Resnick

"Fires of Dar, will you listen to me?"

  "If he kills you," Josarian had said more quietly, "who will honor your death? Who will burn your body? Who will ask the Guardians to guide you to the Otherworld and Call you forth on the anniversary of your death? Who will take your swords back to your shatai-kaj so they can be returned to the Stone Forest?" Josarian nodded. "It is my place to do these things."

  "Josarian..."

  But his brother slapped him on the back and grinned. "And who's to say we both won't live? You never can tell."

  Now, as he turned away to adjust the saddle on his own mount, Tansen realized that Josarian was unwittingly giving him the opportunity he needed to leave him behind. Tansen knew Elelar would cooperate—especially since she and Josarian didn't seem to like each other any better today than they had at their first meeting. When they reached a place where Tansen knew Josarian could safely find his way back into familiar territory, he'd urge the riders to disappear down the road at a gallop, leaving Josarian in the dust. If Tansen survived his meeting with Kiloran, then he'd apologize for the ruse when he returned to Dalishar.

  Elelar glided into the yard, giving last-minute orders to her steward as she pulled on a pair of riding gloves. As befitted her station, she wore an elaborate headdress of knotted, woven silk cords threaded with shiny aquamarine beads—the jashar of a torena—announcing her rank, family, and lineage. The cords of the headdress modestly covered her face, protecting it from both the sun and the staring eyes of strangers. Though he couldn't really see her eyes, Tansen could tell when her gaze touched him. They had talked briefly in private today. She had advised him that Koroll was now Commander of Shaljir due to Daroll's death at Emeldar. She seemed to know a great deal about what the Valdani knew (or thought they knew) about Josarian—as well as the fact that Koroll and the Imperial Advisor were concealing from the Emperor just how much damage Josarian had done so far. But then, Tansen had learned long ago that the Alliance's web of informants was widespread and far-reaching.

  "Josarian's life is extremely important to Sileria right now," Elelar had told Tansen, as if this fact might somehow have escaped his notice.

  "I agree." Knowing what she intended to ask, he explained Josarian's unassailable determination to stay by his side and assured her that he had already tried to make Josarian return to the mountains without him. "But he won't."

  "Because he's your bloodbrother. Because he thinks it's his duty." She sighed. "I hate idealists."

  "It's a little matter of loyalty." Tansen had let the comment stand between them like a wall, and Elelar, for once, seemed unable to make a stinging reply.

  Now he felt her gaze on him and was relieved that, this time, he could ride a horse with skill and handle himself like a man. How humiliating he had found it, years ago, to struggle ineptly as he mounted a horse for the first time and then to sit atop the great beast like a gawky, frightened girl.

  She tilted her head after a moment. When she spoke, he realized her attention had shifted to Josarian. "You're meant to ride the horse, Josarian, not lead it across Sileria."

  "I will not sit on this smelly, snorting creature."

  She snorted, too, though daintily. "Oh, for the love of Dar! It won't hurt you. Good heavens, if you're that afraid, I'd be happy to get you a child's pony—I'm just not sure we can find one strong enough to carry you."

  Josarian's face darkened with embarrassment, and Tansen realized that Elelar's taunts had pushed him where no amount of nagging could. So much for leaving him behind in safety, Tansen thought sourly.

  Josarian said in the chilliest voice Tansen had ever heard him use, "That won't be necessary, torena."

  As Josarian turned to mount his much-reviled horse, who stood patiently munching on its bit, Tansen quickly said, "I'll give you a leg up."

  "A what?"

  "Bend your knee. I'll help you get up on his back."

  "I don't need—"

  "Just do it," Tansen muttered, remembering how his own first-time efforts had once caused great amusement in this very yard.

  "That woman has the tongue of a horned viper," Josarian muttered back.

  That made Tansen grin. "Ahhh, just wait until you do something that really annoys her."

  Josarian rolled his eyes, then catapulted himself onto the horse's back. Once mounted, with his feet in the stirrups and his hands on the reins, he leaned over and tried to catch the animal's gaze. "I have a sword hidden under this shirt, and I know how to use it," he warned.

  Tansen turned to Elelar. "I don't suppose you'd care to finally tell us where we're going?"

  "An inn near Zilar."

  Zilar was reputedly one of the most beautiful villages in all of Sileria. It was famous for its lush foliage, for the vast, ancient trees that shaded it all year round, and, above all, for the fabulous gold-tiled Kintish temple built there nearly five centuries ago.

  "He's in Zilar?" he asked discreetly.

  "No. I go there when I need to contact his son." She stared at him in silence for a moment, then added, "He's a man now, too."

  "But probably no more likeable than he ever was."

  Her laughter was soft. "No, no more likeable."

  She suggested they depart without further delay. Elelar and her pretty maid, a young woman called Faradar, mounted their horses with the assistance of a groom. The party rode out of the courtyard, the two male servants in front of the women, the two shallaheen behind. They proceeded directly to the Lion's Gate, only a short ride away. Leaving the city in the company of a torena proved to be even easier than entering the city had been, and they were soon out on the open road beyond the city.

  Josarian sat tensely atop his mount while Tansen quietly tried to give him some equestrian instruction. Keeping his seat required enough of Josarian's concentration that he scarcely spoke all day. Riding was a skill that used muscles which even a toughened mountain peasant had never before known existed. Josarian was stiff and limp-limbed when he dismounted that evening. They arrived at a rather pleasant inn near Zilar and settled in just before sunset. Elelar and her maid took the inn's best bedchamber. One male servant slept outside their door to guard them; the other slept in the barn to guard the horses. Appalled at the thought of sleeping near those beasts, Josarian insisted on sleeping outside. With their bellies full from a good dinner, he and Tansen stretched out under the stars.

  "It's good to be beneath the open sky after being in those tunnels," Josarian said. "And it's especially good to eat some decent food again. I thought I'd starve to death down there."

  "Their food is not easy to get used to," Tansen conceded.

  Between the Beyah-Olvari and their current companions, they had not been alone together since long before Elelar's arrival in the tunnels. Tansen knew that Josarian had many questions. There were things he had not spoken of in many years, things that shamed and humbled him, which might even lose him the friendship of a man whom he realized he had, despite his creed, grown to rely on. But Josarian trusted him, as another had once trusted him, and this time he wanted to be worthy of that trust.

  "Perhaps..." Josarian began.

  "Yes?"

  "Perhaps it's time you told me how an ordinary shallah boy became so familiar with a torena from Shaljir and earned a bloodvow from Kiloran himself."

  "Yes," he conceded. "Yes. I should." Only where to begin?

  "Well?" Josarian prodded after a long silence.

  At the beginning, he decided. The dark shore where it had all begun. The dark-moon night when the rage of the Valdani, the hunger of a dragonfish, and the blood of a stranger had changed his life forever.

  "I was fifteen," he said slowly, sitting with his back against a tree and his face turned towards the stars. "My grandfather and I... we fed our family by smuggling contraband goods from Kinto and the Moorlands, hauling them from the eastern shore to inland buyers. We'd made a bloodpact with the pirate who supplied us." He smiled briefly as he recalled, "He was half-Kintish and half-Moorlander, and he agreed before
he understood what a bloodpact meant. I thought he'd faint when we cut his palm."

  Josarian laughed. Tansen flexed the hand he had cut the night he'd sworn his bloodpact with Josarian. It had only finally healed a few days ago, having opened and re-opened many times due to constant use in combat and in the daily work of a man living off the land. That was how it was supposed to be. A bloodpact was a serious matter; the pain should remind you for a long time afterward of the vows you had taken. The scar should remind you forever.

  He traced the familiar scar from his bloodpact with that pirate as he continued, "My grandfather was growing old, though he denied it. In winter, when the long rains came, his knees hurt so badly that walking was painful, and a long trek down the mountains to the shore was impossible."

  "So you went alone?"

  "Yes. And one night... that night..." He shook his head. "The pirate didn't come. Then, after waiting for hours, I discovered the body of a man washed up along the shore. He'd been attacked by a dragonfish and was half dead, but he was able to tell me that the pirate's ship had been boarded at sea by Outlookers. They burned the ship. It seemed likely that everyone on board was dead."

  "They burned a smuggling ship? Why? They usually just—"

  "They didn't care about the smuggled goods. Not that night. They were looking for him."

  "Who?"

  "The man who escaped, who jumped overboard and risked death in the night sea rather than be captured by the Valdani. The man I found dying on the shore."

  "I don't understand," Josarian said. "What made him so important? Who was he?"

  Tansen took a deep breath, then said the name he had not spoken aloud since his boyhood: "Armian."

  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 assassi
n 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.