The Destroyer Goddess (60 page)

"Thank Dar you're all right!" Faradar said, panting. "I looked everywhere for you."

"I was... Never mind where I was."

"Are these Verlon's men?"

"Yes."

Terrified, Mirabar tried to peer out a window and see what was happening. The fire she had made was dense and bright, though, obscuring her view of the battle. Even the noise was dimmed by the roar of her Guardian flames.

She turned away, frustrated, scared, anxious—and fell back with a gasp of startled fear as someone came through the flame-veiled doorway.

"What is it,
sirana?
" Faradar demanded. "What's wrong?"

He stood golden and burning before her, neither screaming nor reeling in blazing agony. And, as the flames melted away, she recognized him and understood.

"You!" she said.

Faradar asked, "Who? What?"

Her time is at hand
, the Beckoner said, his skin shimmering  with Otherworldly light.

"Where have you been?" Mirabar snarled, "I've
begged
you for help! For guidance!"

Faradar gasped. "You're having a vision, aren't you?"

You must go to her
.

"Now?" Mirabar asked incredulously

Time has run out
...

"I'm surrounded! How can I go to her now?"

"Is it a vision about the
torena?
" Faradar asked hopefully.

Come to me...

"Where is she?" Mirabar asked the Beckoner. "Tell me, and as soon as the battle—"

You must come to me
...

There was a terrible crash from the volcano, so violent it shook the house... and then Mirabar realized it wasn't just the volcano.

"Earthquake!" Faradar shouted.

"No," she muttered, horrified. "Not now. Not
again
."

They crouched down, huddling together and covering their heads as the ground shook insistently and the fire-shielded house began collapsing all around them.

"
No!"
Elelar screamed as the cavern shook wildly and rocks fell all around her. "Not again!"

The walls of the cavern groaned hideously, terrifying her. She scrambled to her hands and knees and stared in horrified fascination as a deafening, indescribable sound intensified along the far wall of the cavern... and then a river of lava broke through the wall, which began collapsing with chaotic violence.

Screaming in mindless panic, Elelar begged Dar to help her as she tried to save herself from certain death.

Tansen hauled himself to his feet the moment the ground stopped heaving, then launched himself in the general direction of several stunned assassins. 

Then a sound that terrified every
shallah
in Sileria made him freeze in his tracks as his blood ran cold.

"
Avalanche!"

Mirabar slowly rose to her feet, with Faradar's help, and surveyed the wreckage around her. 

"
Sirana
, are you hurt? Is the baby all right?"

"I think so," Mirabar panted. "I mean, I think the baby's fine. I think... Are
you
hurt?"

"No, I'm fine. But this house isn't safe,
sirana
. What should we..." Faradar went still. "What's that noise?"

Mirabar wanted to weep as she heard a terrible, ear-shattering rumble which she'd feared her whole life, accompanied by the warning shout, "
Avalanche!"

"Tansen!" She ran to the door, but it had collapsed during the earthquake and was now impassable.

Come to me
...

"Is he alive?" she begged, pushing futilely at the tumbled stone and crumbled mortar blocking her escape.

Only you can protect her...

"Tansen!" she screamed.

"
Sirana
, this house will collapse if there's another tremor."

You must come...

"Dar have mercy," Mirabar wept.

This is your destiny. Your duty. This is what you were chosen for.

"He's alive," she promised herself. "He's alive, I know he's alive." 

"Of course he is," Faradar said firmly. 

Mirabar closed her eyes. Tansen was too hard to kill for a mere battle, earthquake, and avalanche combined to finish him off. "Oh, Dar, please let him live. If You don't, I will kill the Yahrdan myself as vengeance for his death, do You hear me?"

Now...
the Beckoner prodded.

She looked at the window, their only possible means of escape now. "If assassins kill me the moment I leave this house," she warned the Beckoner, "my destiny won't matter, will it?"

The ground started shaking again, and the roof overhead—or what remained of it—groaned alarmingly. 

"All I know,
sirana
," said Faradar, "is that we'll die if we stay in here."

"I want to go ashore!" Ronall said insistently. "I want to go ashore
now!
"

The Lascari boat heaved and rolled on the wildly rocking sea.

"We don't know where Searlon is, and we don't know if Tansen's plans are succeeding." The grim assassin at his side frowned in thought as he clung to a rope tied to the mast. "At least here, on a good boat, no one can approach without our knowledge."

"After we've drowned, that will be a great comfort to me!" Ronall shouted above the roar of the angry sea.

A huge wave washed across the deck, silencing them for a moment. When he was able to breathe and see again, Ronall glanced over to where Zarien, still a little disoriented from his accident, sat huddled on deck, also clinging to a rope. His relatives tended him conscientiously and were clearly concerned  about him, yet they made no effort to bring the boy out of his increasingly dark, withdrawn mood. They might not be shunning him in the usual sense of the word, but Ronall could understand why Zarien had protested when Najdan had presented (and then harshly insisted upon) this plan. The family's attitude to the boy suggested he had some hideous, contagious disease that revolted them all. 

Ronall had felt like the diseased, revolting one among his own family often enough to have tremendous sympathy for the boy; particularly since Zarien was blameless for the circumstances which had made him violate his people's rigid sea-bound traditions. 

The boy's awkward misery now strengthened Ronall's determination. "Linyan!" he shouted. "Don't you think we'd be safer ashore?"

Najdan gave him an impatient look. "They don't ever go ashore."

"'We,'" Ronall clarified to Linyan, "meaning me, Zarien, and the assassin."

Linyan pointed landward, where burning boulders were flying out of the volcano, visible even at this distance. "With the destroyer goddess determined to kill every drylander in Sileria, what makes you think you'd be spared once you were ashore?"

"She seems likely to kill everyone at sea, too," Ronall argued. "At least on shore, we might be able to run away."

"And straight into the arms of the assassin hunting my grandson?"

"I thought he wasn't your grandson anymore?" Ronall snapped.

Linyan looked sad. "No, he's not. He can't be. He made his choice—"

"
Choice
? What choice? He was killed by a dragonfish, you bigoted old—"

"We are protecting him now!" Linyan's sea-drenched face blazed with defensive anger. "We have
always
protected our own when they are threatened by you people! When Zarien's mother—"

"Do you want
praise
for helping an innocent boy from your own family? Do you think that makes you—"

"This is our way!" Linyan shouted. "This has always been the way of the sea-bound!"

"Since the world seems to be coming to an end," Ronall shouted back, "maybe tonight would be a good time to
change
your ways!"

"This bickering is pointless!" Najdan barked at them both.

"I agree," Ronall said. "Let's take the boy ashore."

"No." Linyan shook his head. "We'll go farther out to sea."

"How
much
farther?" Ronall asked.

"We can probably ride out more earthquakes safely if we're well away from the shore," Linyan said.

"Probably?" Ronall repeated, far from satisfied. "
Probably?"

"Survival on shore isn't a certainty right now, either," Najdan said, gazing at the distant volcano. 

"If another earthquake came while we were trying to navigate through all those crippled boats and sailing so close to the rocks..." Linyan shook his head. "No, it's not safe,
toren
. Not right now. Not with the sea so violent tonight."

Ronall looked out across the black, roiling water. Many other boats were doing what Linyan advised. Beneath the impenetrable black of the ash-dark night sky, torches blazed on hundreds of boats as far as the eye could see, and virtually all the vessels which were still seaworthy were sailing away from shore, bobbing on the tormented waves.

"Why are they all here?" Ronall wondered. He turned to Linyan. "Why are
you
here?"

"We felt we must come," was the answer.

"Like the pilgrims at Darshon," Ronall said wearily. "Did Dar bring everyone here just to watch Her tear Herself apart?"

Najdan announced, "We'll go farther out to sea for now."

As the boat rose dramatically and then dropped sickeningly, Ronall wanted to vomit again, but his stomach was empty. He gave Najdan a pained look.

To his surprise, Najdan added, "I hate the sea,
toren
. I assure you I'll reconsider as soon as I deem it wise."