He had avoided death the many times it had come courting him on land after he'd fled Shaljir. He had run, hid, broken his private vow over and over, and so he was still alive.
Now his body plunged below the churning surface. He'd already lost all sense of direction, had no idea which way Zarien had fallen or where the boy might be now. He fought to reach the surface again.
"Zarien!" he shouted as his head emerged.
Waves covered him, forcing him back under. His body started panicking, fighting for air, burning for breath; but his mind was calm.
He would finally end the long, coy seduction and let death embrace him. The only way Dar and the Three could convince him they didn't want him dead was to let him find and save the boy. If he couldn't even do that, then he was ready for it all to be over.
Something enormous briefly bumped him. He lost control and inhaled involuntarily. Suffocating and choking, he again rose toward the surface, wondering what had hit him. Coughing and heaving as he bobbed up out of the water, he found the swelling waves moving rhythmically enough, for the moment, that he could catch his breath and look around.
"Zarien!"
He thought he heard a voice.
Scarcely daring to believe it, he started swimming toward it, cursing himself for never have learned to swim well.
"Zarien!"
This time he heard it, above the roar of the dark sea and the distant thunder of the volcano: "Toren!"
"Zarien!"
"Where are you?"
"Over here! Where are you?"
"Keep talking!" the boy shouted. "I can find you by your voice!"
"Najdan's in the water, too!"
"We'll find him!" Zarien shouted back. "Keep talking! I'm coming!"
Ronall wasn't sure that treading water and shouting to the boy counted as rescuing him, but it did seem rather like an answer to the ultimatum he had given the gods. Perhaps they didn't want him dead, after all. Perhaps he was indeed meant to live. Maybe even he counted for something in this chaotic world.
There had been very few moments of real happiness in his life, so he wasn't quite sure if that was what he felt now. It was not an emotion he had much experience recognizing.
Then Zarien's voice came, from much closer than he'd expected, full of panic: "Ronall! No!"
He felt the sudden, shocking blow, the immense power and weight and size rushing into him with malicious violence.
Then there was nothing. Only darkness. Only the sea.
"Mirabar! Mirabar! Mirabar!"
"Have you come to show us Dar's chosen one?"
"We have waited for a sign!"
"Quiet!" Mirabar snapped, pushing her way past endless throngs of pilgrims.
The mountain roared again, filling Mirabar's head with its angry tantrum. The terrible noise seemed to penetrate her bones, flooding the night, filling her blood.
Oh, and the heat of all these lava flows. Its intensity melted snow from the summit, then turned the water into steam, creating a bewildering veil of fog broken by occasional explosions and sudden bursts of flame. Her skin was hot, like any normal person's skin would be in such oppressive air, and she was sweating as the cool glow in her belly quivered in weary pleading.
She placed her hands over her stomach, trying to comfort her daughter in this strange place, surrounded by people who made her sorry she'd ever once called Baran crazy. Mirabar started pulling her clothing away from her sweat-drenched body, shaking in reaction to her ordeal. She gasped and nearly jumped out of her skin as steam suddenly spewed out of the ground nearby.
"Wait..." She looked around. "I've felt this before. Been here before." Yes. In a vision. She closed her eyes and listened.
The chanting... Yes, it was familiar, she'd heard it before, but only in her tormented mind. Beyond the shrieking of her name she heard other voices, other songs. Chanting. Trilling. Ululating. A bewildering mixture of voices filled with passion and fervor, ecstatic praise-singing flooding the hot, roaring night with fearsome urgency. Her head was reeling with it!
The ground was shaking again, but it wasn't an earthquake this time. It was power... tremendous power. Lava moving through the veins of the mountain, flowing somewhere beneath her feet, making the ground tremble with Dar's blood, Dar's breath, Dar's life... Mirabar gasped and leaped back as more lava erupted at her feet, its intense heat making her dizzy, weakened as she already was. The fumes, the sudden flames erupting out of the flowing ooze of the lava spilling forth from the world's womb...
A woman was screaming. Her panic and pain were distant, nearly drowned out by the fervent wail of the praise singers.
"Quiet!" Mirabar shouted at them all, but they ignored her and continued singing, their bodies writhing in frenzied dances.
Mirabar watched in astonishment as some of them danced upon the lava, apparently impervious to it... Or no. Not all of them. Lava sucked in one wailing worshipper, whirled around him, and flowed over his body. Flames ignited in his long hair. He died screaming right in front of her, sinking into the lava as she would have expected all of them to do. The others continued dancing atop the lava as if oblivious to the horrible death.
Who were the ones who lived, Mirabar wondered in a daze? Were they Guardians? Zanareen? The favored faithful? Their clothes were in such tatters, it was impossible to tell who they had been before they came to Darshon to be... whatever they were now.
She grasped one of the lava dancers, taking her by the shoulders and gazing hard into her wild-eyed face. "Are you a Guardian?"
"No, sirana! I am only a humble worshipper of Dar's divine—"
"Why are you here?"
"To praise Dar!" she cried gleefully.
"Dar demands praise!" someone else screeched.
"Praise Dar and welcome Her judgment!"
They started ululating wildly, drowning out whatever other questions Mirabar wanted to ask.
Through their shrill ecstasy, Mirabar heard more screaming. She looked around desperately, unable to tell where it was coming from. "Where is she?"
"Dar is in the—"
"No! That woman who's screaming!" Mirabar said. "Where is she?"
"Screaming?"
Screaming! Screaming for help. For mercy. Screaming in pain, in terror!
"We've got to help her!" Mirabar shouted, turning and wading through the lava upon which they were dancing—the lava in which she had just watched someone die horribly. Whatever power enabled them to dance on its surface, Mirabar didn't possess it. And if their obvious madness was inseparable from that strange talent, then she was quite willing to forego it. She pushed her way through the lava flow as if it were heavy, thigh-deep mud.
Oh, how it burned! She was so tired now, so weak, the searing heat pained her, scared her. The agony was unbearable, but the screams pulled her on.
Someone asked, "Who's she looking for?"
Wild-eyed pilgrims continued reeling in divine rapture on the liquid fire, shrieking and trilling, praising Mirabar's name. "She emerged from the holy caldera in a river of fire! She is beloved of Dar! Praise her! Sing her name!"
"No, don't!" Mirabar shouted. "Just help me!"
"Mirabar! Mirabar! Mirabar!"
"What help can we offer, sirana? Shall we fling ourselves into the caldera to prove our love of Dar?"
"No! Help me find Elelar! Can't you hear her screaming?" Was it Elelar? Or was it only more of these mad pilgrims dying farther up the mountain?
"The screaming..." A mud-streaked pilgrim's face suddenly focused with alert interest. "Yes. I hear it! I do!"
"I do, too! Yes, I hear it!"
"Move out of my way," Mirabar said, trying to get out of the lava flow and onto solid ground again.
The screams were louder now, beckoning to her over the lava's roar and the intense, hysterical trilling of the worshippers.
"Elelar!" Mirabar shouted, now running across rough ground, choking on fumes and trying to see through the smoke, steam, and ash clouding the air. "Elelar!"
&
nbsp; Screams of unthinkable agony, unfathomable pain. Screams unlike anything Mirabar had ever heard even in this tormented, war-torn land.
"Elelar!"
"Sirana?"
She looked around to see who had addressed her. A man stumbled through the ankle-deep volcano cinders to reach her. He was so filthy it took her a moment to recognize him. "Jalan?"
"Sirana!" Jalan cried. "She who foresaw Josarian! She who—"
"Tell me—"
"Have you come to offer yourself to Dar, too?"
She seized his shoulders. "What's happening here?"
"There is life in the new lava flow!" he cried gleefully. "Divine life! Our prayers and praise, our devoted worship, our—"
"What life? What lava flow? Show me!"
"Just here! See? We praise Dar for bringing you to us! You can tell us what this means! Has the Firebringer returned?"
"Josarian?" she asked.
"Who else could it be?"
Jalan dragged her through more huddles of praise-singers chanting with relentless fervor, then pointed through the misty, glowing air to another broad lava flow and announced, "He is coming!"
Mirabar drew in a sharp breath. "He is coming..."
She walked forward, the screams scraping harshly along her senses now, so awful they brought tears of sympathy to her eyes. But she knew that wasn't Josarian screaming. It was a woman. And her voice was coming from within the river of fire which Mirabar approached.
It was impossible. The torena wasn't even a Guardian.
And I couldn't survive in that flow for as long as she's been in there.
Nonetheless, she shouted, "Elelar!"
The lava erupted in sudden motion, as if it were struggling to rise from the ground. Gradually the heaving shape clarified into...
"She has come!" someone cried. "It is Dar taking flesh!"
"Sirana?"
"No," she told Jalan as he approached her, his eyes gleaming with religious passion. "That's not Dar."
"The Firebringer?"
"No." Seeing the grotesque, burning form lurching about in pain and confusion, Mirabar gathered her strength and stepped into the lava flow, steeling herself against the melting heat. "Elelar! I'm here!"
"Sirana!" Jalan followed her. "I will consecrate myself—"
"Stay back!" she ordered Jalan. "Make them stay back, too!"
To her relief, the zanar obeyed her. "Yes, sirana."
Mirabar approached the reeling, screaming figure of lava and flame, talking to it the whole time, and placed her hands on it. It went still and silent, shuddering briefly, then accepted her touch. Tugging hard, Mirabar dragged it out of the lava flow. After it lay on the dark, rocky ground, she watched in blank-minded shock as the lava started melting away from it, gradually trickling back into the river of fire from which it had come.
Drop by drop, the lava drizzled away to reveal a large, glowing, apparently human shape. This couldn't be Elelar, though, Mirabar thought in confusion; this person was much too big.
Even when Mirabar saw the long black hair and delicate facial features, she found it hard to believe... Only when the torena's pale body was fully revealed, its clothes all burned away, did Mirabar finally understand.
"Dar have mercy..."
Elelar lay naked, panting, and barely conscious on the rocky mountainside beneath the thickly back sky... with a belly so swollen that she looked ready to deliver her child any instant.
"That's why it looked too big to be you," Mirabar whispered, feeling her knees give way.
Elelar weakly turned her head. "Mirabar..." she croaked.
Mirabar sat down hard. "Oh, by all the Fires... What do I do? It's going to happen here," she babbled. "Now. Dar has intervened. Brought him forth. Blessed you with Her... um... She has made him ready to come among us right now. Here."
Elelar was dazed and confused. "What..."
"Divine..." Mirabar's voice trailed off.
"Divine birth!" Jalan cried.
"Yes," Mirabar whispered, still staring dumbstruck at Elelar's enormous stomach.
Elelar screamed and clutched her belly. "He is coming!"
"Is there a Sister here?" Mirabar shouted into the crowd. "Is there anyone who has ever helped a woman in childbirth before?"
But they were all swamped in rapture, chanting and singing too loudly to hear her pleas for help as Dar's chosen one scalded his mother's womb with his demands for release.
"Mirabar!" Elelar screamed.
"I'm here, I'm here." Mirabar scrambled forward.
"He's coming right now!" Elelar cried.
"It's just childbirth," Mirabar said, trying to sound reassuring.
I can do this.
Elelar looked momentarily furious. "Just child—"
"You can do this," Mirabar insisted.
We can do this.
"No, there's fire!" Elelar said through gritted teeth. Then she screamed again. "Oh, the burning... Mirabar! I can't stand it! I can't!"
"Jalan, help me!" Mirabar ordered.
We have to do this.
He fell to his knees beside Elelar. "How, sirana?"
She thought of the only birth she had ever seen, an event within her Guardian circle several years ago. "Um, kneel behind her, brace her shoulders against your legs, hold her hands." A moment later she added, "No, not like that. Place your hands so she can push against them. Yes, that's better."
"The fire!" Elelar screamed.
The praise-singing all around them filled Mirabar's head as she knelt between Elelar's legs, raised her knees, and investigated the birth canal.
Dar shield me...
This couldn't be normal. She knew that much.
"Look!" a pilgrim cried behind Mirabar. "Lava is pouring from her womb!"
"Stay back!" Mirabar snapped.
"What did he say?" Elelar demanded faintly.
"Pay no attention. They're all crazy," Mirabar assured her, staring at the lava which was dripping out of the birth canal.
"Make them go away," Elelar panted.
"I can't," Mirabar said. "I'm sorry. Even if I could... I think they're supposed to be here."
"Why, for the love of—Argggghhhh!"
"Agh!" Jalan screamed, too, his face contorting as the torena squeezed his hands in her agony.
Mirabar tried to feel for the baby. "Ow!"
"What?" Elelar gasped.
She'd burned herself on the child's molten head. "Nothing... I mean, these people are meant to see this. I understand now. It's why Dar has been Calling pilgrims here. Just as there had to be witnesses to the Firebringer's rebirth in the caldera, now there must be witnesses to the birth of this child, so he can be acknowledged as Dar's chosen ruler without doubt or dispute." She kept talking, hoping to distract Elelar from what she imagined must be excruciating torment. Even ordinary childbirth was, Mirabar knew, usually agonizing. But this...
And to think I merely wanted her dead.
Dar's own plan to punish Elelar had been so much harsher, Mirabar now realized.
"By all the gods above and... I'm naked!" Elelar was clearly appalled. "In front of all these—"
"It doesn't matter now. Just—" She was interrupted by another of the torena's hideous screams.
"This is why it hurt so much before, isn't it?" Elelar said between gulps of air. "In the cavern, when I was a prisoner. I thought I was miscarrying... But this child is... made of fire..."
"A child of fire, a child of water." And sorrow? She didn't know. Had Cheylan been twisted by sorrow, or merely bitterness, hatred, and thwarted ambition?
"A child of fire and water," Elelar breathed. "In that cavern, all the pain while the volcano raged... This baby was..." She paused, grimacing in brief agony. "Was preparing to... meet Dar in the caldera? Was preparing for... this?"
"That's why it had to be here!" Mirabar exclaimed, finally understanding. "In the cavern I envisioned, the cavern where Cheylan imprisoned you. Where Dar could embrace this child after he was conceived."
&
nbsp; "Then why did you—arggggh!—you come there?"
"Cheylan could have survived what happened, and he'd have been here with you now instead of me."
Perhaps Dar had even been unwilling to kill Cheylan Herself. He had been faithful to Her, after all; to Her alone.
"Dar wanted you..." Elelar panted. "With me... and the baby..."
Mirabar's own religious fervor briefly took over. "Do you remember anything about being in the caldera? Anything about how this—" She placed a hand on Elelar's swollen belly. "—came to happen?"
"Just the fire. And the pain. Worse than this. So much worse." Elelar added weakly, "It would have been easier if Tansen had just killed me in Chandar."
Tansen...
"I don't know if he survived the battle at Gamalan," Mirabar said suddenly. "I left during the fighting, and I—"
"Tansen always survives," Elelar said. "You should know that by now."
Before long, Elelar started shivering. Mirabar demanded someone in the crowd give her a blanket, but covering the torena with it didn't seem to help. Her shivering turned to shudders which fought for dominance with the hard contractions of imminent childbirth.
"He's gone cold," Elelar said through chattering teeth, running a shaking hand over her stomach. "So cold."
"Fire and water," Mirabar murmured. She searched for the baby's head again, but was careful not to touch it this time. Even without contact, she could feel the bitter chill which emanated from it, worse than any shir.
Impulsively, Mirabar put a hand on Elelar's leg and squeezed reassuringly. "He's very powerful."
But Elelar was already lost in her screams again and didn't hear her. After a while, the torena threw off the cloak and broke into a heavy sweat. Mirabar knew that the baby, so close to life, was again veering toward the other extreme of his nature as he sought entry into the world.
When the contractions starting coming one upon the other, with almost no pause between them, she knew it was time. She didn't even bother trying to talk to Elelar, who couldn't have heard her above her own screams and the noise of the exalted praise-singing. A river of fire poured out of Elelar's womb, turning into a flow of water that chilled and burned all at once. Mirabar asked her own unborn child for protection as the moment came when she could no longer avoid touching this child of fire and water whom Dar had brought her here to protect.
The Destroyer Goddess Page 45