"Kiloran will never forgive this."
"But he can postpone his revenge until after the war," said Mirabar.
"He will not, sirana. And Josarian knew it when he killed Srijan."
"Then I will go to Kandahar and—"
"No!" Najdan's response was sharp and forceful. "My master would kill you, sirana."
Mirabar's hands twisted in the folds of her tattered tunic. "Then let that be the price of Srijan's death. Let Kiloran kill me in Josarian's place."
Heart pounding, Tashinar protested, "No, Mirabar, you can't! You—"
"Nothing is more important than defeating the Valdani," Mirabar insisted. "Not you, not me, not anyone. Josarian's destiny is to drive them out of Sileria. So we must protect him from Kiloran."
"Kiloran will accept no death in place of Josarian's, sirana," said Najdan. "Not even yours."
"Let's ask him," she said.
"No. I know him. Far better than you do. I have served him since before you were born." Najdan shook his head. "It must be Josarian. No one else."
Mirabar leaned forward, her gaze intent. Her hand trembled as she laid it over Najdan's. "Then help me kill Kiloran," she whispered.
He jerked away as if she had burned him. "No."
"You and I, together, we could—"
"No!" He shook his head. "He is my master. I am his servant. I swore an oath to him twenty years ago. My life is his, sirana. I cannot betray him."
Anger washed across her expression. "I know what these oaths are worth to assassins! How many of your kind have betrayed their masters?"
"I don't know," he said through gritted teeth. "But I won't be one of them."
"He betrayed Josarian," Mirabar said fiercely. "He betrayed us all!"
"We have only Josarian's word for that. A secret ambush by a handful of Outlookers—"
"At a meeting place known only to Kiloran and Searlon!"
"A Sanctuary!" Najdan shouted. "One where Josarian has had meetings before! A site he chose! Who's to say that another cowardly shallah didn't betray him? It's happened before!"
"He said that the Outlookers knew Searlon!"
"He was already locked in a quarrel with Kiloran! What better way to attack my master than by pretending—"
"Would Josarian pretend something that would destroy the rebellion?" Mirabar demanded.
"He has changed since Darshon!"
"But he has not lost his mind!"
Their shouting was interrupted by Tashinar's next coughing fit. Mirabar came to her side and tried to ease her through the spasm. Her chest ached. She could hear phlegm moving through her lungs. Her head reeled from the argument. Her nerves quivered from the explosion of emotions in this tiny space. When the spasm ended, she lay back on her pallet, gasping for air, cursing old age and its burdens.
"Sirana..." Najdan's voice was filled with regret as he held Mirabar's gaze. "I must leave. I must return to my master. You are loyal to Josarian, and I know that is as it should be. But I... cannot honorably continue to serve the servant of my master's enemy."
"Najdan..." Mirabar's eyes filled with tears.
"I would never betray you. If my master... planned an attack on Josarian, he never confided in me. And regardless of why Josarian killed Srijan, you and I must now be enemies." Najdan looked away so as not to see her tears. "Serving you has been the greatest honor of my life, sirana." He rose and turned to leave. Speaking over his shoulder, he said quietly, "I wish you health, happiness, and a long, fruitful life."
"Najdan... When your time comes..." Mirabar's voice broke for a moment. "I pray to Dar that the Otherworld will welcome you."
The assassin lowered his head to slip through the low-hanging mouth of the cave, then disappeared from their lives. Mirabar drew in huge gulps of air, struggling not to weep.
"What will you do now?" Tashinar asked her.
"I must leave, too." Mirabar nodded wearily, forming her own plans. "I must find Josarian. I must.... protect him from Kiloran." She sighed, a soft sound full of sorrow. "I know why he did it, but..."
"But?" Tashinar prodded.
"Must it always be this way here?"
"Always? I don't know." Tashinar closed her eyes, unbearably weary after a lifetime in Sileria. "I only know that it always has been this way here."
Adalian fell even sooner than expected, but Zimran could not find it in his heart to celebrate when he heard the news. The torena had been desolate ever since Srijan's murder. At night, she allowed Zimran to comfort her in the dark privacy of their bed, but she was distant and dismissive by day. Moreover, she went away often now and didn't always take him with her. Sometimes she was gone for only a day, sometimes for three or four days. She revealed little about her activities when he questioned her, saying only that the Alliance was busy discussing how best to govern the cities coming under rebel control. Even when they were together at the villa near Chandar, she seemed to have less and less time for him, always writing letters or holding meetings with other high-born members of the Alliance.
It was perhaps only now that he realized how much he loved her. He would not have cared about the long, unexplained absences of any other woman. Indeed, any other woman's inattention would merely have spurred him on to his next conquest. But Josarian had been right; now that Zimran had found Elelar, he wanted no other woman. He wanted this one to pay attention to him as she had in the early days of their liaison. Nothing else would make him happy again. He had briefly considered pursuing another woman as a means of making Elelar jealous, but he had dismissed the idea. He knew enough about her by now to recognize that he would lose her with such behavior.
Although Elelar's habit of excluding him from her thoughts and activities since Srijan's violent death made Zimran increasingly unhappy, he hadn't quarreled with her about any of this until today, when she summoned Tansen to the villa for a private meeting—one which she insisted Zimran leave when he discovered them together. Tansen and Elelar's angry voices certainly seemed to preclude any possibility of the meeting being a pretense for more intimate activities, but Zimran was furious all the same. He knew how much the shatai had always wanted his woman, and he knew how close together anger and passion could live in a man's heart. Zimran left the two of them alone as ordered, but his heart raged with jealousy and humiliation. As soon as the roshah left, Zimran confronted Elelar.
"We argued about Josarian," Elelar informed him wearily. "What else?"
"Then why couldn't I be there? Why must I be sent from the room like some child?" Zimran demanded.
"Because you and Tansen do not get along," she said reasonably. "And the conversation was volatile enough without adding that fuel to the fire."
He hated it when she was reasonable, when her arguments were irrefutable and sensible. It made him sulky. "You are always having secret meetings these days. Always writing letters. Always going away."
"This is the life I led before being imprisoned in Shaljir," she said. "The life I have always lived."
"Can't you rest now? You are no longer living a secret life in Shaljir, and this war should not be women's business, anyhow."
She went very still. For a moment, he feared he had said the wrong thing. She could be rather difficult. But, then, she was a torena, and they were different. He must remember that.
Trying to call up her softness, the part of herself that she reserved for him alone, he slipped an arm around her waist and whispered in her ear, "I worry about you so, kadriah. These are dangerous times, and I can think of nothing but your safety when you go away without me."
"I'm... I know," she murmured, softening under his touch.
Her waist was so slim, her stomach so smooth and flat. He usually took pleasure in the exquisite beauty of her body, but now he longed to see her waist thicken and her belly swell with his child. He had always dreaded the thought of fatherhood; some years ago, he had even resisted pressure from Josarian and his self-righteous wife to marry a girl in Emeldar who claimed to be carrying his child. He
enjoyed women for the pleasures they could share with him, not for the hungry mouths they could burden him with. Like so many other things, though, he found that this, too, had changed now that he was in love with Elelar. He wanted to plant his seed in her belly, to create a new life within her and someday watch her nurse his son.
Such an idea would have been unthinkable before the war. Even their relationship would have been unthinkable not so long ago, but everything was different now. And with the world turned upside down, Zimran intended to keep Elelar as his own. Forever.
He slid his palm up over her breast and gently massaged her, feeling her body quicken under his touch. Maybe a child would be just the thing, he realized. Maybe a baby would make her settle down at last, leaving the business of war to Josarian, Tansen, and their kind. Perhaps if Zimran got her with child, then the two of them could settle into a quiet life together, free of all this madness. Whether or not Josarian fulfilled the destiny of the Firebringer, he was as good as dead anyhow. Kiloran would never rest until he had avenged the death of his son. In the meantime, with Liron and Adalian already fallen and all of Sileria now involved in the war, surely destiny could play out the rest of this game without Zimran and his woman.
He kissed the slender column of her neck, inhaling the subtle fragrance that clung to her fair skin. He pulled her closer, glad he had locked the door when he had entered this room to quarrel in private; a torena's household was full of servants who were always inconveniently underfoot, bursting into her presence without warning or apology. It was so long since she had allowed him to make love to her in the middle of the day. He kissed her long and hard, intending to override any protest she might make now.
She let him unfasten the silken ties that held her tunic together. Beneath it, she was warm, soft, and fine-boned. His mind reeled away from the sudden unbidden memory of Srijan's blood covering the face he now kissed, soaking the hands which now slipped between his legs to stroke him. How could Josarian have murdered Srijan right in front of Elelar? Fury filled Zimran as he thought of it again, fury that flooded him with protective fervor as he swept her up into his arms.
How could Josarian have endangered her so?
What if there'd been a fight and she'd been hurt? What if Kiloran, who undoubtedly knew of her presence, didn't believe she was an innocent bystander who had actually tried to save Srijan?
Zimran had despised Srijan, but he knew that Elelar was right. Killing him, no matter what the provocation, had been an insane act. A shallah did not cross a waterlord and survive. Josarian may be the Firebringer, as people said, but this was Kiloran whom he had offended. And Kiloran no doubt now regretted having shown mercy to Tansen, Josarian's brother—a show of mercy that had obviously made Josarian lose respect for him. Kiloran would not make the same mistake twice.
Surely Josarian was doomed. How could he live much longer? And considering how Josarian had abused and endangered Elelar that day at Golnar, Zimran could not find it in his heart to be sorry that his cousin might die soon.
Elelar was finding it more and more difficult to get away from Zimran. Sex always pacified him upon her return home, but he was becoming increasingly sulky, quarrelsome, and demanding before each departure. She would glad turn him out of her household, except that her rift with Josarian had grown so wide that Zimran was now her only reliable connection to him.
Josarian might be half-mad since his leap into Darshon, but he was still no fool. He knew that Zimran told Elelar everything, so he said little to his cousin about the war, his plans, or his enmity with Kiloran. Nonetheless, careful questioning of Zimran after he saw his cousin always revealed more than Elelar could have learned without him, so she continued to let him stay with her. Luckily, in a doomed attempt to win Zimran away from her, Josarian had recently sent him off on some innocuous mission. Zimran resented the separation from Elelar, but—at her insistence—had accepted the assignment and proved his loyalty to his cousin by obeying orders. Not only did it serve to re-establish some of Josarian's waning faith in Zimran, but it freed Elelar for an important assignation with Searlon, one which would take her away for more days than Zimran would have tolerated without making a fuss.
She had met with Searlon once before, at the behest of the Alliance. Her associates were deeply concerned about the rift between Josarian and Kiloran. So far, it seemed that the Valdani knew nothing about it, which was a relief. Revelation of the crumbling rebel alliance would renew Valdani confidence just when they were finally losing it. Whichever side of the quarrel Silerians took, it was in everyone's best interest to ensure that the Valdani didn't find out about the unbreachable chasm of hatred which now separated the Firebringer and Sileria's most powerful waterlord.
Adalian and Liron had already fallen. Cavasar was in a state of constant turmoil and completely cut off from Valda. Moorlander warships now patrolled the waters off of Sileria's western coast, and the sea-born folk had controlled Cavasar's port ever since sacking it. One half of Sileria's land was under rebel control. The Silerians still living in Valdani-held lands were now openly loyal to the rebellion, preparing for their own liberation.
Indeed, at this point, the Valdani must be nervously wondering why the rebels had not yet made a move against Shaljir. At least the rebels' frustrating inability to take action at this time was having one useful effect: The delay was driving the Valdani mad with nervous anticipation.
Elelar knew from dispatches making their way through Liron and Adalian that the Emperor's two-front war was devastating the economy of Valdania. If the Imperial Council had thoughts of calling for peace with either the Kintish Kingdoms or the Moorlanders, it was too late now. They had gone too far, committed too much. Neither the free tribes of the Moorlands nor the Palace of Heaven would accept an offer of peace now. They would know it was merely a sign of weakness, an indication that they might now have an opportunity to carve up the distant reaches of the Empire for themselves.
The Silerian rebels, however, had no ambitions on the mainland. They wanted nothing from the Valdani except unconditional withdrawal from Sileria. So, after two hundred years, the Imperial Council had decided that Sileria was expendable.
The new Imperial Advisor in Sileria had been instructed to meet with the Alliance under a white flag of truce to negotiate an end to hostilities. Unable to risk proposing peace to their two mighty foes on the mainland, the Valdani were evidently ready to cut their losses in Sileria. It would relieve them of an increasingly costly problem, and they undoubtedly believed they could reclaim Sileria at some later date, after securing the victories they still anticipated in the Moorlands and in the Kintish Kingdoms.
The Valdani wouldn't believe the prophecy about the Firebringer, if they even knew it: The enemies he drove out would never return to Sileria. And Elelar had no intention of trying to win them over to Silerian mysticism. After all, they'd be more likely to leave now if they believed they could simply come back later.
Elelar's heart almost ached with hope as, escorted by Searlon, she made her way to the negotiations she had been instructed to attend. The meeting was so secret that she had been advised to tell no one about it. Not even Faradar knew where she was now. Would the Valdani really make an offer—and if they did, would it be sincere?
Will the war really end?
As Searlon guided her to the edge of rebel territory and beyond, Elelar saw plenty of evidence that it would be best for Sileria if the war did end this year—perhaps even by summer. The rebels were prepared to fight for much longer. Now that the Firebringer had come, they would fight forever, if need be. But this impoverished land was already suffering under the burden of fighting the world's wealthiest empire. It would be so much better for Sileria if the fighting could end before her land was too war-torn and her people too devastated to reap the benefits of victory.
Above all, Elelar longed to see an end to all the killing. She had heard about the terrible massacres occurring all along the borders of rebel territory, but none of the stories h
ad prepared her for the horrors she now witnessed as she rode beside Searlon.
Village after village had been attacked. Many had already been burned, the tragedy so great that the survivors simply torched entire towns rather than trying to resurrect their lives amidst such devastation. In some villages, where survivors remained, Elelar heard such horrific stories of brutality, murder, torture, and slaughter that she felt physically sick. Even women, children, and dying old people were not safe from the Outlookers rampaging through the lowlands in a wave of violence so vicious that it eclipsed all memories of Myrell the Butcher.
The orders came from Commander Koroll, of course, and his name was on everyone's lips. Having failed to hold Sileria, he now sought to destroy her in his humiliation. It made Elelar think of what Borell had done to her in the guardhouse at the Lion's Gate. Now she saw that a man could try to do the same thing to a whole nation, that he could hate an entire people that bitterly.
Koroll must be stopped.
Josarian knew it, of course. He was fighting to defend the helpless villages falling victim to Koroll's vengeful rage. However, the Outlookers had learned a thing or two from the rebels. These attacks on undefended, non-military targets always occurred by surprise and usually in the middle of the night. They were secret operations. Even if Elelar were still living in Shaljir, sleeping in Borell's bed, and privy to his discussions with Koroll, she'd probably be unable to learn about the planned attacks in time to save the victims.
Koroll must be stopped.
And the war must end soon. It might be different if Josarian and Kiloran were still allies, but now that they were enemies, time was running out. The rebellion was crumbling already, splitting up into warring factions in the wake of Kiloran's betrayal and Srijan's murder. The Alliance must negotiate for the Valdani to leave now, before they could take advantage of Sileria's internal weaknesses again.
It's only a matter of time...
In Legend Born Page 63