She gasped. "The tunnels!"
"We found a way into this place from the tunnels by going through old—really old—sewage conduits."
"That's why you're both so wet."
"You probably haven't noticed the smell, in all the excitement," Zimran said, leading her through a dark passage and into a small, stinking cell. "But before long, I guarantee it will be all you'll think about."
There was a hole in the floor in the corner of this tiny, low-ceilinged room. There'd been a rust-encrusted grate over the hole; now it lay on the floor next to the hole, ready to be replaced when they escaped. The edges of the hole, like the floor around it, were coated with ancient, hardened substances and stains that Elelar didn't even want to think about, let alone touch. The smell rising from the hole was truly indescribable.
"We're going down there?" she choked.
"We have only two choices," Zimran pointed out. "And I want to go back upstairs even less than I want to go down there."
"Oh, Dar shield me," she muttered. Knowing he was right, she pulled her delicately embroidered sleeve over her hand, then used it to cover her nose and mouth. She glanced at Zimran and said, "After you."
Tansen fought in eight directions and on three levels, as he had been taught. He caught a few cuts on his forearms but ignored them, as he had been trained. He saw the way his opponents' shoulders moved, the way their weight shifted, and so he knew where their blades would go as soon as they knew; even sooner in the case of the inexperienced ones. He moved economically, never wasting motion or breath. A shatai divorced his emotions from his work, never let the combat become personal, and never let rage or hatred cloud his judgment or diminish his skill. Never, that is, unless he was facing a man such as Myrell the Butcher.
He saved Myrell for last. As the commanding officer here, Myrell should have been Tansen's first target, for Outlookers often lost courage and momentum when their officers fell. Myrell was also more skilled in combat than his men, meaning he was a greater threat and should be eliminated first. However, among all the men Tansen had ever fought as a shatai, this was the first one whom he personally, passionately hated, and so he ignored the tenets of his arduous training. He relinquished his own ruthless self-discipline and let Myrell live until the others were dead and the torena was gone.
He knew he had very little time left in which to make his escape. More Outlookers would flood the hall in just moments. Even in the middle of the night, Shaljir never lacked for Outlookers who were wide awake and ready to kill Silerians. But before he killed Myrell and fled, he wanted the butcher of Malthenar, Morven, and Garabar to suffer at least a little, as payment for all the suffering he had caused Tansen's kind.
He plunged one sword into Myrell's guts, an excruciatingly painful thrust. Pale, wide-eyed, and sweating with exertion, Myrell dropped his sword from a limp arm and fell to his knees in agony. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
"Is that where you made the first cut on Corenten, you baby-killing maggot?" Tansen asked, speaking Valdan through gritted teeth.
He twisted the blade and jerked it up. A horrible sound came out of Myrell's throat. Blood dribbled through his lips.
"Did the women you slaughtered feel like this when they died?" Tansen whispered into his ear, suddenly remembering Gamalan, too, and the long-ago deaths of loved ones there. "What about the children?"
He ripped his blade out of Myrell's torso, widening the terrible wound even further. He looked down at Myrell's blood-drenched body as it collapsed on the floor. He would have preferred to leave Myrell like this, dying slowly in terrible agony. Dying the way Amitan had lain dying. But he couldn't leave a survivor, not even one as close to death as this. He couldn't risk that Myrell would find a way to tell his would-be rescuers that the attackers had escaped through the cellar. And so, wishing it could be otherwise, he killed Myrell quickly, then ran to the cellar door, closing it behind him and finding his way down the long, winding stairs in the dark.
Chapter Thirty-One
"Great merciful bloodstained gods!"
Having reviewed the mess at the ancient prison, Commander Koroll was running out of words to express his fury over this latest disaster.
In the middle of the night, his men had roused him from a heavy slumber induced by the ministrations of his third-level Kintish courtesan whose loyalties, in this time of warfare, were based on purely professional considerations. The men's hysterical, garbled explanations had been so vague and incredible, he hadn't really believed there'd been a prison break until he himself saw the wreckage of what had once been the main hall of the prison. There were seventeen dead men in the hall. Four more were reported dead in the cellar. None of the survivors had seen the rebels enter or leave. A fire in the stairwell and another incinerating the main door had prevented entry soon after the fighting had begun. Two men who'd been stuck outside said they'd seen no one except a Silerian torena. One of them resolutely believed she had somehow escaped alone—until he saw the carnage inside. Another man who'd been knocked unconscious in the stairwell also remembered seeing no one besides the torena. One man claimed there'd been two shallaheen; only two, and he had no idea where they came from. Someone else said he was sure the attackers must have been disguised as Outlookers. Several other men claimed there'd been numerous attackers, but no one agreed on how many, and Koroll had no doubt they were exaggerating to save their own necks. The survivors were all confused and uncertain, and all trying to decide whether they'd look worse if they admitted that the prison had fallen to only a couple of attackers or if they confessed that many attackers had somehow gotten inside unnoticed.
Surveying the disaster, Koroll could scarcely believe his own eyes. Seventeen men—including Myrell—lay dead. Right inside the Outlookers' own prison in the heart of Shaljir! By the mercy of the Three, how could this have happened? How had rebels gotten past the city gates? How had they gotten weapons into the city? How, by all the gods above and below, had they gotten into the prison to free the torena?
Had they been disguised as Outlookers? Three Into One, had they had the audacity to enter Shaljir posing as Outlookers? Or had Koroll's men been so incompetent and negligent that a rebel rescue party had entered the city and stormed the prison without being seen or caught?
An even worse notion occurred to Koroll as he returned to his command chamber at the Outlooker headquarters across from the prison: What if the rebels and their weapons had already been in Shaljir when the torena was arrested? What if they had been here for many months? What if there were far more armed rebels within the walls of Shaljir than he had ever guessed or suspected?
Koroll felt ill as he thought of it. He felt even worse when he acknowledged the ramifications of his having lost Torena Elelar.
Three pity me, that woman has caused nothing but misery!
This was going to be very hard to explain to the Imperial Council. It would have to be done, though; they were expecting Elelar to be brought to Valda for her trial. Koroll sat at his desk and buried his head in his hands, wishing it would stop pounding.
The last imperial courier had brought a dispatch to Advisor Borell informing him that the request of Ronall's family had been granted: Elelar would be tried before three Imperial Councilors as the wife of a Valdani aristocrat. Showing all the courage of a spring lamb, Borell had promptly climbed into a hot bath and slit his wrists. Fortunately, the servant who found him summoned an Outlooker immediately. The Outlooker, in turn, summoned Koroll to Santorell Palace.
Koroll was admitted to Borell's chamber alone. Thus it was that Koroll was the first man to examine the scene of Borell's death, read his sealed suicide letter, and see the imperial dispatch granting Elelar's trial.
Knowing that the trial would utterly ruin him, Borell had tried to avoid public humiliation in the traditional way of the Valdani upper classes: death. He left behind a rather maudlin, self-pitying note requesting that his body be buried back in his homeland.
Koroll's initial irritation
had slowly warmed into exultation as he began to recognize the opportunities inherent in this new turn of events. He burned the imperial dispatch and Borell's letter. He then wrote a new suicide letter, using a shaky hand and liberally smearing the ink. If the letter was ever examined by anyone who knew Borell's own hand, then Koroll hoped the unrecognizable writing would be attributed to Borell's devastated emotional state.
The new letter, Koroll's own creation, explained that the Imperial Council had just denied Torena Elelar a trial. She was now condemned to death by slow torture, sentence to be carried out immediately by the Outlookers. Because he had loved her, Borell could not live with the shame of her betrayal and the pain of her terrible death, and so he would take his own life immediately.
After sealing the letter with Borell's ring (a thoroughly distasteful process), Koroll summoned Outlookers and servants into the chamber, ostensibly to begin cleaning up the mess and preparing Borell's body for its funereal rites and transport back to Valda. He really wanted them there, of course, to witness his "finding" the suicide note. He broke the seal and read it aloud in front of witnesses, none of whom appeared to have the slightest doubt of its veracity. Everyone had seen how besotted Borell was with the torena and how devastated he was by her betrayal.
However, Koroll privately mused, few things fed hatred like a love betrayed. Borell had furiously denied the charges against Elelar at first. Then the quantity and quality of the evidence seized from her house had mounted until the woman's overwhelming guilt was indisputable, and Borell had grown stupid with shame, grief, and boiling rage. Koroll was the only person who knew how eager Borell had become to see Elelar quietly murdered before she could reveal his disgrace to anyone.
It was a perfect plan. Koroll would get what he had wanted all along. Myrell would take Elelar to the cellar, torture her until she told them everything she knew, then kill her; it was the sort of work for which Myrell had an undeniable flair. Not only would they get the information they needed, but the torena would never have a chance to tell the Imperial Councilors that, though he'd never been the fool that Borell was, Koroll had nonetheless grown careless around her, too. Besides, if she knew Josarian and the rebels, she undoubtedly knew who had originally turned Tansen loose on the countryside, and Koroll had no wish for the Council to find out about that, either.
And, of course, when Ronall's family protested and the Council demanded an explanation, Koroll could simply show them Borell's letter. The torena's unlawful murder would be blamed on the vengeful and emotionally distressed Advisor, who had unwittingly given the rebels hundreds of state secrets before slitting his own wrists. There was no longer an imperial dispatch in existence in Sileria to contradict the orders which everyone here would insist had come straight from Borell in his final moments of life.
Yes, it was a perfect plan... Until those murdering scoundrels attacked the prison, freed Elelar, and killed my men!
Now all he had was a sacked prison, a pile of corpses, and the ominous loss of the most valuable prisoner he'd ever arrested. He thought he would be sick. Myrell was a great loss, since he had excelled at tasks that repelled many men. Koroll had never liked the oaf, but there was no denying the value of a man so feared and hated by the enemy.
As dawn rose over Shaljir, Koroll knew that last night's events were not only a serious blow to his career, but they would also give a tremendous boost to the rebels' morale.
There were two obvious tasks to concentrate on now. He must find out how the prison rescue was launched and ensure that it could never happen again. And he must get the torena back. The daring rescue proved to Koroll that she was every bit as valuable to the rebels as he had suspected. He wanted her back because they wanted her so much. He needed her back, too, because the Imperial Council would eat his parts for breakfast if he couldn't turn this disaster around.
Koroll assigned one of his senior officers to supervise the examination of the prison wreckage in an attempt to discover exactly what had happened there last night. He ordered another officer to tighten security everywhere in Shaljir.
"I don't want any more rebels getting in. And if Torena Elelar and her rescuers are still in Shaljir, then I definitely don't want them getting out," he said. "Understood?"
However, he had a feeling that the torena hadn't lingered here. Wondering how to get her back, he could devise only two plans. The first was to have her husband arrested and imprisoned. They would charge him as an accomplice and hold him in custody in her place. It was a perfectly legal maneuver under the circumstances, one that even Ronall's powerful family couldn't counter. Koroll doubted that Elelar would be sentimental enough to return for her husband's sake, but there was no predicting what a woman would do, after all. Perhaps he could exchange Ronall for her.
The other plan was the old-fashioned kind: pursuit. It seemed likely that the rescue party would take Elelar back to the rebel-held territory around Dalishar, the only place they could keep her safe now. It would be their best move, since Koroll couldn't reach her there, not until he got enough men to reclaim the territory from the rebels. If he could catch her before she reached rebel territory though...
"I want two hundred combat-ready riders on fast mounts," he ordered one of his men. "We're leaving right away."
"Where are you, damn you?" Mirabar cried.
She had left the safety of Kiloran's camp and entered the woods, begging the Beckoner to come to her. The expression on Josarian's face ever since the departure of the lowlanders and the sea-born folk terrified her.
He's thinking of doing it!
He had sought her alone several times since then. Questioning her, probing her understanding of the Otherworld, seeking guidance. And she couldn't give it to him! She had no answers, no hints, no visions about this. She knew only the panic of any ordinary person when confronted with the extraordinary. Josarian was thinking of throwing himself into Darshon to prove, once and for all, whether or not he was the Firebringer.
"What can I tell him?" she begged the silent void. "Answer me! I know you hear me!"
But the Beckoner always Called her, she had never Called him. He came only when it suited him, never when it suited her. He came for his purposes, not hers.
"I must know what to tell Josarian..."
Tears stung her eyes. She felt helpless, frightened, frustrated. Josarian had confided his dreams to her, cataclysmic and mysterious dreams about painful yet ecstatic union with fire and lava. It could mean anything, though. He said that Tansen—the only other person who knew about the dreams—thought his mind was just reflecting the fears and feelings inspired by the constant rumors and Jalan's mad ravings. Mirabar thought the dreams might mean that Josarian was destined to become a Guardian. Such dreams and visions sometimes afflicted someone being called to serve Dar and the Otherworld.
She supposed it could even be some nasty form of Valdani sorcery. Mirabar knew very little about their wizards and their magic, since the cult of the Three had risen to eclipse more ancient Valdani religions in recent centuries, and the Valdani now placed their trust in the might of their arms and the wealth of their treasury, rather than in mysterious and unpredictable arts. But who could say for sure that these dreams were not being fed to Josarian by some powerful enemy? Mirabar had heard of such things, and she had seen enough strange sorcery in her own short life to know better than to ignore the possibilities of things she hadn't yet seen.
She had never believed in the Firebringer, mostly because the zanareen who awaited him were so patently mad. What if she had been wrong, though? If the Firebringer was real, then surely there had never been a more likely candidate than Josarian.
So many choices. So many possibilities... If only she knew what to do! Josarian sought guidance from her, and she sought guidance from the Beckoner—and, so far, they were both disappointed by the lack of answers.
Burning with helpless fear, she shouted into the empty woods, "I have done everything you have asked of me! Everything. Now I want an answer!"<
br />
She rent the night with fire and fury, flinging her will against the locked doors of the Otherworld, trying to force her way through the barriers between this world and the Other one. Her failure was as sharp as physical pain. Exhausted and despairing, she slumped onto the rain-softened ground and lay there weeping, lost in her misery, oblivious to the world.
There was a chill in the air, due to the season as much as to Kiloran's nearby presence. The harvest would soon begin in full measure, and then the long rains would come. The earth would sleep and renew itself, preparing for another long year under Sileria's merciless sun. The shallaheen would know no rest, though. They would keep on fighting until every Valdan was gone or every rebel was dead. Would the lowlanders and sea-born folk join them? Mirabar sighed wearily, having no answers...
She felt his presence well before she heard his footsteps or the unfamiliar sound of his voice. There was a faint touch, almost like a caress, along senses sharply attuned to visions no one else saw, voices no one else heard. There was a melding, a warmth, a subtle vibration. It was so unfamiliar that it should have frightened her, especially out here alone and unprotected. There was nothing threatening about it, though; on the contrary, she was drawn to it the way she had always been drawn to fire, even before she had understood what she was. Like fire, she sensed that this was something powerful that could be terribly dangerous, but she felt a communion with it which overruled any sense of caution. She sensed, too, that it had found her by following her violent Call to the Beckoner.
He approached quietly and was very close before she heard him. She had no doubt those were a man's footsteps, no matter how soft and subtle. She had grown up wild in these mountains and knew the sound of every creature that roamed them. She stood up and looked through the trees, waiting for his shape to separate itself from the thick shadows. It was nearly dark out. She had stayed away from camp a long time.
In Legend Born Page 52