The White Dragon

by Laura Resnick

However, at least struggling up and down Sileria's treacherous mountain paths distracted him somewhat from the pain of his feet. When he edged along crumbing cliffside trails that seemed ready to tumble into the gorges below, at least he wasn't thinking about the aching blisters on his heels. When his lungs burned like the Fires of Dar and his legs shook with fatigue as he hauled himself up yet another punishingly steep path, at least he forgot about his bleeding toes. Whereas when he walked through the fertile lowlands or lush valleys, he thought so much about how badly his feet hurt that he scarcely appreciated breathing normally and not worrying about falling to his death.

  When he sat down to rest, then he mostly just thought about how hungry he was. He had managed to steal some fish in the first few days, mostly from the backs of carts on their way to market. He'd eaten it raw the first time, since he had no coals or brazier. That was when he discovered that raw fish from a drylander market tasted a lot different than the succulent flesh sometimes eaten raw at sea only moments after taking catch from the water. His first attempt to build a fire like landfolk, using wood, was so discouraging that he'd resorted to spying on some shallah shepherd to see how it was done. His next attempt nearly set a whole valley on fire, and he hoped the toren who had run him off his land wasn't still trying to hunt him down.

  He had no interest in eating animal flesh as the landfolk did. Even cooked, it looked disgusting, and the thought of eating it raw and bloody... Just the sight and smell of those butchered carcasses turned his stomach when he passed through market towns. And he soon gave up trying to catch wildfowl—traps seemed to be sadly unreliable on land, since birds here could perch anywhere, whereas at sea their choices were very limited.

  So now, nine days after emerging reborn from the sea, he was subsisting solely on stolen bread and cheese, and whatever he could scavenge in the hills, valleys, and groves through which he passed: nuts, berries, fruit, baby potatoes, wild onions. Some of it he had discovered by himself, some he had learned about by watching the landfolk.

  Water, at least, was no problem. Although sweetwater had to be carefully rationed at sea, it seemed easy enough to find on land. Despite all the drylanders' whining about the ruthless power of the waterlords, Zarien had yet to go thirsty.

  The farther inland he ventured, the more drylanders he encountered who had never seen the sea-born. The landfolk stared openly at his indigo tattoos, making him feel self-conscious about something which was normally a source of pride to him. People eyed his stahra and, not realizing it was his weapon, often asked why he was carrying an oar.

  Zarien had walked in the wrong direction for an entire morning on one occasion before discovering that three shallaheen had lied to him about the location of Mount Dalishar. What did his father... what did Sorin always say? Shallaheen learned to lie before they learned to walk. He marveled that Sorin, who had never once set foot on land, knew them so well.

  They called it lirtahar. It was a Society creed which had spread throughout Sileria until even the island nation's sea-born folk accepted its basic tenets; the shallaheen, however, had taken it to extremes. Lirtahar was the law of silence. In principle, it meant that no one ever told anything to the conquerors of Sileria. From the Moorlander Conquest, through the Kintish invasions, to the Valdani occupation, the people of Sileria offered their foreign rulers lies, half-truths, evasions, and silence. In practice, however, a thousand years of lirtahar meant that Sileria's disparate and quarreling factions had evolved into a secretive and suspicious culture where information was hoarded and guarded like the diamonds of Alizar, particularly among the shallaheen. This made it a little challenging for a harmless sea-born stranger to find Mount Dalishar, despite its being one of the most famous landmarks in all of Sileria.

  No one asked why he was going to Dalishar—perhaps they assumed he would lie or refuse to answer—but everyone stared at him with open curiosity. And, as he went deeper into the mountains, curiosity seemed close kin to hostility. Shallaheen were suspicious of strangers—roshah, they called him, "outsider"—and fiercely territorial.

  The war had left many of their women unguarded by male relatives, and not everyone seemed to consider Zarien too young to be a threat in this respect. Some villages had been decimated by the Valdani, attacked and burned in retaliatory raids made by the Outlookers; some of these villagers resented the sea-born for waiting so long to join Josarian's cause. Other villages Zarien passed through now seemed to be deeply divided, as was much of Sileria, due to the rift between Josarian and the Society; those who were loyal to the Society seemed to know that the sea-born were not. And in one dreary village where he stopped, an assassin claimed a bloodvow and challenged a shallah to fight to the death.

  Zarien had seen people die, for the sea-born life was a dangerous one, but he had never seen one man kill another before. It left him feeling hollow. He had no idea what that particular bloodvow was about, but he had learned by now that vengeance was always the motive. Josarian's world was every bit as strange and violent as Zarien had feared.

  He wanted his family. He wanted his clan. Above all, he missed the sea. Every waking and sleeping moment, he longed for it. The scent of the ocean, the salty spray thrown up by the waves, the gentle lapping at the hull, the easy roll of the boat, the glimmering azure waters which mirrored the fiercely blue sky, the long reflection that the moons cast on the calms at night...

  Don't think about it. Not now.

  He would go home, in time. He would find Sharifar's mate—Please let it be Josarian! Where will I even look if it's not him?—and he would return to the sea. And although the Lascari would never accept him as one of their own again, he would at least confront his parents and find out who he really was.

  Besides, if I bring home the sea king, maybe the Lascari will overlook my sojourn on land.

  There had never been an exception. He knew that. To walk the dryland was to be declared dead by the Lascari, to ensure that your name was never even mentioned again. But surely there had never before been a situation like this? He was in uncharted waters now, cutting new wind in the storm-tossed world of the Firebringer.

  He came upon another village now and decided to ask the way again to Dalishar. He must be close by now.

  The first two shallaheen he spoke to claimed, with every appearance of honesty, that they didn't even know the name of this village, never mind the location of Mount Dalishar.

  "I'm not a Valdan," he said impatiently, having encountered this sort of behavior too often lately.

  "Neither are you one of us, roshah." The two men turned and walked away.

  Many men were gathered around a large fountain in the village's main square. They were speaking loudly, engaged in a passionate debate about something. Zarien only caught a few words of the volatile conversation, since it was all in shallah and everyone seemed to be talking at once. They said something about a torena, then about the torena's servants... A journey to Shaljir... The torena had left this morning at first light... Something about Josarian... Now they were talking about Kiloran.

  Suddenly there was a lot of shouting. Some of the men seemed furious, ready to fight. Others were trying to reason with them, or at least to get between them and thus prevent a fight. Someone pulled out a yahr. Zarien had never even seen one before coming ashore nine days ago, but he recognized it easily by now and realized how menacing that simple weapon of two short sticks really was. This one gleamed darkly in the sunshine as its owner swung it in a circle over his head, making a soft whooshing sound while people stepped back and watched him warily.

  Someone backing away from the scene stepped on Zarien's foot. Given how sore it was, Zarien yelped. The man whirled around, his long black hair swinging like a loose sail. His apology faded in mid-sentence as his gaze traveled over Zarien. He stared for a moment, then said something in shallah about Dalishar.

  Zarien nodded and replied in common Silerian, "Yes, I'm looking for Dalishar." He wondered how the shallah knew. "Where am I now?"

 
"This is Chandar."

  It sounded like a real answer. Zarien plunged in and asked, "Are we near Dalishar?"

  Instead of replying, the man said something that sounded like, Do you know about Josarian? Or maybe it was just, Do you know Josarian?

  "No," he replied.

  The shallah continued staring at him. He seemed more puzzled than unfriendly. At last he said, "They say Josarian... They say he is..."

  "What?"

  "Why are you going to Dalishar?"

  I understood that. This is getting easier.

  Zarien tried the answer he thought would work best: "It is the will of Dar."

  The man frowned at him, though Zarien wasn't sure what the expression indicated, then looked briefly over his shoulder at the crowd behind him. More talking seemed to have forestalled the threatened violence, but passions were still running high.

  Finally the shallah pointed northwest.

  Zarien gazed up at the mountain that loomed over this village. It looked steep and rocky, but he half-thought he could live through the climb. "That's Dalishar?"

  "No, Dalishar is above it. Do you see?"

  "Oh." Now he saw. Dalishar wasn't as high as Darshon, but it towered over the mountains around it—and over the nearer mountain—with imposing height.

  He wanted to curse Dar, as She deserved, but that seemed unwise under the circumstances, so he just prayed, "May the wind be at my back."

  Tansen returned to the cave before midday, as promised, with a Sister to tend Armian. She asked no questions upon being shown the bloody, unconscious man hidden in the stone heart of the mountain. The Sisters tended everyone impartially, gave Sanctuary to all Silerians without discrimination, and so she asked Tansen nothing about the wounded man beyond what she needed to know to treat his injuries.

  If the Outlookers eventually found her and—like the barbarians they were—pressed her for answers about today, she would probably die under interrogation, as did so many people, rather than tell them anything. Lirtahar, the law of silence, ruled the mountains. To break silence, to tell the Outlookers anything, always brought terrible shame—and usually terrible vengeance, too. When a man or woman broke lirtahar and talked, revealed anything to the Valdani, he or she was shunned by everyone—village, clan, sect—and often severely punished, too. To betray the Society in any way meant certain death, of course, but ordinary people might be just as quick to kill for vengeance when lirtahar was violated, because silence protected them all from the roshaheen and must therefore never be broken. Burning down a house, killing someone's livestock, declaring a bloodvow, or commencing a bloodfeud—all of this might be done to punish someone who'd spoken instead of remaining silent.

  So Tansen had no fear that the Sister would betray them the Valdani.

  It was close to sundown when Zarien rounded a bend in the rocky path—and nearly tripped over an open-eyed corpse lying in a fly-swarming pool of blood.

  "By the eight winds..."

  He held his baggy sleeve to his nose as the stench of death and blood assailed his nostrils. His mouth sagged open in shock as he took in the horrifying scene.

  Four... Six... No seven men lay dead... Mangled bodies were twisted awkwardly, sprawled and broken, guts exposed, a head hacked off... or mostly off... The blood... It was thick and red and everywhere... All over them, the ground, the rocks, their clothes, their weapons...

  Zarien whirled away from the sight. He dropped his stahra and fell to his knees, retching violently again and again. The world faded away as nausea seized his body, his breath, his reflexes.

  When he finally stopped, he rested on his hands and knees. His head felt heavy. The air was sticky and foul. Spots swam before his eyes. The partly-digested meal that his stomach had just surrendered now assumed the horror of his surroundings.

  I'll never eat onions again, he thought in a daze, his mind shying away from the bloodbath he was afraid to look at again.

  He tried to blink away the blurriness in his vision. Something wet dropped onto his cheeks. That's when he realized his eyes were watering.

  He drew in a steadying breath—and smelled it all again.

  No, no, no...

  "May the gods have mercy, may the winds guide me, may the waters be calm and my sails be strong," he prayed mindlessly, the familiar words pouring out of his mouth in a rush. "May the current carry me far... May I... I..." His mind clouded. Flies swarmed around the dead. A river of drying blood stained the harsh rocks of the dryland.

  "Sharifar!" he cried, alone and afraid.

  Someone groaned. A low, weak, pained sound.

  Zarien leapt to his feet, poised to run.

  Another groan. A slight movement from a body lying face down, just the faintest turn of the head.

  They're not all dead.

  His heart pounded so hard it hurt. His teeth were chattering. He clenched his jaw. His hands were shaking. Should he help or should he run?

  Think. Who are they?

  He forced himself to study the slain bodies. He finally noticed the wavy-edged daggers lying among them, along with the yahr. He knew what a shir was. Everyone knew, even those who'd never seen one before. Now he saw the black leggings and tunics, too. Presumably their tangled jashareen had originally been red, though they were so blood-soaked now that he couldn't be sure.

  Assassins.

  Zarien didn't want to get involved in anything to do with assassins. Or their remains.

  His breath was rasping through his clenched teeth. He brushed at his eyes and swallowed hard.

  He flinched when the figure that had groaned now moved again. An arm fumbled briefly in the dirt, as if its owner were seeking purchase to rise or roll over. The body bore a leather harness and a sword sheathed at its back. That was unusual.

  Zarien realized that this man's clothes weren't black. They were the rough homespun of an ordinary shallah. The left sleeve had escaped a complete drenching in blood. It still revealed its true pale color, albeit dirty and dusty.

  Six assassins and an armed shallah, all dead or nearly dead after a terrible fight... So close to the stronghold of Kiloran's enemy... Hope suddenly filled Zarien's heart.

  Josarian?

  He leaped forward, heedless of the blood, making his way past the dead assassins. Without hesitation now, he bent over the shallah's body, took his shoulders in a firm grip, and gently rolled him onto his side.

  "Josari—"

  "Argh!"

  "Sorry!"

  The man's lean face was screwed up in pain. His long black hair was filthy—sweat, dust, blood, mud. His eyes were squeezed shut as he muttered, "Darfire..." His deep voice was thin, his breath harsh. He rolled a little further onto his back and pressed a hand against his side. Zarien looked down and saw that he was bleeding from a wound beneath his ruined tunic. The rest of him looked terrible, too. Cuts, burns, bruises, blood, scars...

  Scars... What in the Fires is that?

  There was a huge, elaborate scar on the man's chest. Zarien could see it through the shreds of the tunic. Why did someone do that to him? And surely it wasn't a battle wound? It was too regular, too patterned. It almost looked like the marks the Kints made on their loads of cargo....

  The dryland seemed to tilt as Zarien realized who this was.

  Tansen.

  Except for Josarian, no one in Sileria was more famous than Tansen, the Firebringer's bloodbrother, the great warrior who carried two Kintish swords... And a brand carved onto his chest by the gods of Kinto. Trying to be gentle, Zarien rolled Tansen just a little further, all the way onto his back... until the movement revealed the evidence that confirmed the warrior's identity: He had been lying on his second sword, sheathed at his left side.

  Two swords. The brand on his chest. Six attacking assassins dead around him.

  Oh, yes. You're Tansen.

  But he was near death now, already sailing toward that shore which had no other shore.

  "I will tow you back," Zarien promised him.

  At t
he sound of his voice, the dark eyes flickered open. Tansen looked dazed. "Wh... Who—"

  "I'm Zarien. I will help you."

  "Where..." He tried to lick cracked lips. His tongue had the whitened look of someone who'd gone too long without water.

  "I'll get you some water." Zarien spotted a satchel lying nearby and realized, from the Kintish symbols on it, that it must be Tansen's. "Is there a waterskin in there?"

  "Where..."

  Zarien looked around again, his mind racing. When these six assassins failed to return to wherever they came from, someone might be sent to find out what had happened to them.

  "I'll get you some water," he repeated, "but first we must find a place to hide. Can you walk?"

  "Mmmm... Help... me..."

  Tansen was only average in size, but he seemed to be made of iron as Zarien hauled him off the blood-drenched ground. He was all hard muscle and wiry sinew, lean but heavy with the steely strength that people spoke about when they mentioned his name with such awe.

  "I can't carry you," Zarien said as his throbbing feet protested the extra weight.

  "Help... walk..." Tansen mumbled as he leaned heavily on him. "You're... boy... small..."

  "I'm not that small," Zarien snapped. Yes, landfolk were a little bigger than the sea-born, but he was hardly a runt.

  He heard a snort and glanced up quickly. A slight smile touched Tansen's lips, though his face contorted in pain again. "Didn't mean to... offend," he said, clearly speaking common Silerian now. Zarien hadn't been sure, before.

  "Where can we go?" he asked.

  "Not up," said Tansen. "Down."

  "Oh. Good."

  "If more assassins come... They'll search past here... Above... Not below... To try to catch me..." But as Zarien turned and started down the path, with Tansen's arm slung over his shoulder, the warrior said, "No. Not the path."

  "Through the scrub?" Zarien asked without enthusiasm.

  "And... we mustn't leave... trail of blood."

  "This is my only shirt," Zarien said, already resigned.