The Destroyer Goddess (61 page)

"Tansen! You're alive!"

"So are you," Tansen replied to the
shallaheen
who cheered this discovery. "Find out who's confirmed dead and who's missing, then organize two search parties to find the missing. Post new sentries. Then I'll need runners who can go round up reinforcements before we make our move against Verlon."

Tired, bloody, and relieved to
be
alive, Tansen automatically reeled off post-battle orders as he passed through the exhausted but exhilarated men with long, fast strides. He was heading back to the house where he'd left Mirabar before the battle had become wild with confusion from the earthquake, the aftershocks, and the avalanche. Mercifully, the deadly assault of rock and debris had swept down a north-facing slope and fallen well away from the village. Even better, he'd just been informed that it had killed two waterlords who had been participating in the attack from a safe distance. That knowledge made Tansen feel tolerant about the dust which the event added to the ash-thick air. 

It had been a long, difficult, chaotic battle, and it was very late now. Perhaps even close to dawn. He looked up as he approached the main square of Gamalan. If not for the lights from Darshon's summit, he suspected this would be the darkest night which had ever fallen upon Sileria. After a brief respite, ash once again fluttered thickly upon them now, reducing visibility, clogging the air, powdering everyone's hair, and dirtying their clothes. 

Tansen passed the ancient village well and saw that Mirabar's fire was still blazing there. She'd need to douse it so the men could draw water. He approached the house where he'd left her, peering through the falling ash...

His heart stopped. The house was a collapsed heap of burning rubble now. "
Mirabar!"

"Tansen, no!"

He fought the hands pulling at him as he tried to go to her, to the tumbled stone and mortar that hid her body. "
No!"

"She's alive!" someone screamed at him. "Stop it! She's not in there!"

Panting hard and almost dizzy from the roaring of his own blood, Tansen tried to focus. 

Faradar shouted right into his face, "She's not in there!"

He seized the maid's shoulders. "Where is she?"

"I don't know, but—"

He shook her. "
Where is she?"

Someone hit him. "Stop it, Tansen!"

He removed his hands from Faradar and tried to pull himself together. "Where is she?" he asked more rationally.

"She escaped and went into the woods." Faradar pointed. "There." When he moved to follow, she said, "No! Wait!"

"What?" he snapped.

"Her vision—"

"She had a vision?"

Faradar nodded. "She told me to tell you the Beckoner was leading her to
Torena
Elelar."

"
Now?
"

"That's what she said." Faradar impatiently brushed dusty hair away from her smudged face. "I wanted to go with her, but she said the attackers wouldn't kill me—an unarmed woman—and so I had to stay behind to tell you where she'd gone."

"Where?"

Faradar again pointed. "Into the woods. In search of the
torena
."

"That's it?" Tansen demanded. "That's all you know?"

"It's all
she
knew." Faradar sounded upset and defensive. "And she was in quite a hurry."

Tansen again looked in the direction Faradar had pointed. Then he lifted his gaze higher, to where Darshon loomed in its fiery fury. "I'll have to track her."

"I'm coming with you," Faradar said.

"You won't be able to keep up."

"I'll keep up or die trying." 

Tansen supposed he understood what Radyan saw in her, but he warned, "I'll leave you behind rather than slow down for you."

"Of course," she agreed. "But the
torena
will need me if she... if she..."

"Pack some supplies for us," Tansen said. "We may be going all the way to Darshon." He glanced at the burning well and added, "No wonder Mirabar forgot about that."

"We'll need torches," Faradar murmured.

"Yes. We'll leave as soon as I've given everyone their orders." With the Lironi alliance reestablished, the dreary remains of the village in shattered ruins, and the well now inaccessible, there was no reason for anyone to stay here. He'd order the clans to abandon Gamalan and rally with reinforcements elsewhere in the eastern mountains.

He accomplished his tasks quickly, his mind distracted with fear for Mirabar pursuing Cheylan alone in this dark war-torn terrain, and with dread for Zarien, probably still at sea during these earthquakes.

Tansen reminded himself that Najdan would give his life to keep Zarien safe. Besides, Zarien had a destiny which both Dar and Sharifar wanted fulfilled. Surely they wouldn't let the boy die now?

"I'm ready to leave,
siran
," Faradar said, rejoining him after she'd gathered supplies and prepared herself for a hard trek. 

Tansen nodded, soon finished giving the men instructions, then took a torch and said to Faradar, "Show me
exactly
where she went into the woods."

What she showed him, in the flickering light of their torches, was not encouraging. Alone in the night, without food or water, Mirabar had headed up a steep, rocky path going west. His heart flooded with renewed fear as he wondered how far ahead of them she was.

Focus on the task at hand
.

Once people moved into his heart, even a
shatai
had trouble keeping a cool head.

Zarien sat huddled on deck, soaking wet, miserable, and wishing he had never come back to sea. He wished Sharifar had simply let the dragonfish have him the night he died. 

The secret his family had kept from him all his life was bad enough. The thought of telling it to Tansen, though...

I can't. I just can't
.

He remembered the night he learned Tansen had betrayed Dulien.

"
He was a
waterlord,
Zarien
."

"But don't you... Doesn't..."

"They all have to die," Tansen said. "Or be driven out of Sileria."
 

Yes, Tansen wanted to kill all the waterlords. He didn't want any to remain alive in Sileria. Everyone knew that about him.

What'll I do?

He couldn't tell Tansen.

But how could he keep this a secret?

He couldn't. Not for long. He already knew that.

At first, he'd just been shocked. Stunned. Even convinced it was a mistake. A lie. A dream.

And now... Now he could think only about what Tansen would say, what Tansen would do.

Nobody hated waterlords the way Tansen did.

Zarien ignored Ronall, who tried to speak to him, and looked out across the violent sea where hundreds of torches blazed, tiny dots of glowing gold under the dark menace of the ash-filled sky.

He suddenly wished the sea would swallow him before he had to face Tansen again.

Mirabar was thirsty and exhausted, in no condition for this kind of trek by day, let alone by night.

The dark was clinging to the sky for such a long time. Would morning never come?

She stopped walking and sat on a fallen, drought-withered tree trunk.

Come
.

"I need to rest," she insisted.

Fiery pain shot through her, an Otherworldly punishment for her weakness, her disobedience.

Only you can protect her
.

"How much farther?" she asked wearily, rising to her feet.

You must come...

Hating Dar and the Beckoner with all her heart, Mirabar began plodding forward again. Her tormentor was little more than an elusive glowing figure far ahead of her, relentlessly leading her  over ancient, rocky, quake-damaged goat paths, taking her west through the dark, treacherous mountains. Darshon loomed directly overhead; they were now very close to the sacred mountain's slopes. The dancing lights and colored clouds at its peak—even the noisy explosions of flaming rock and showering lava from the caldera—looked dim in the dirty air, though huge and terrifying from this perspective. 

Surely the sky shouldn't still be dark? Mirabar had a good sense of the passage of time and felt disoriented by the never-ending night. It wasn't right. A faint, eerie glow in the thickly black sky east of here seemed to promise dawn—had seemed to promise it for some time now—but it still didn't come.

Ash flew into her eyes, stinging for a moment. Then she realized. "Morning won't come, will it?" she muttered. "That's not night covering the sky. That's ash and smoke and volcano dust."

The Beckoner didn't answer. Of course. 

An eerie, obscure grayness spread slowly across the land as she continued her journey, but it was nothing like sunlight. Nothing like any day she had ever seen in her life. Visibility improved slightly, but not enough to make this trek notably less hazardous. Since starting out, she'd left occasional signs for Tansen to follow, hoping he would try to track her. But now that she knew he wouldn't have sunlight to help him, she was afraid he might not see her markers.

She grew weak and light-headed, and the ever-present cool glow in her belly turned into an insistent throb.

"I have to have water," she told the Beckoner. "
Now
. I can't go on like this."

There is water
.

"Where?"

Here...

"Where?" she demanded.

Glowing more faintly now, he led her off the path and over an enormous pile of jagged, tumbled rocks. She followed him into a narrow crevice with sheer stone walls so close together it was as if someone had sliced open a cliff but forgotten to push the two halves apart. 

That was when she heard it: the faint, sweet music of running  water. Her womb responded convulsively, startling her. 

She entered a tiny clearing, covered in ash, which ended in a cliff face concealed by the crevice she had just come through.

The Beckoner floated over to a low, shadowed hole in this hidden wall, then disappeared, as if melting into the rock. Mirabar hesitated, then followed him by going through the hole in the rockface.

She entered a cave. A tunnel, really. Probably carved by old lava flows from Mount Darshon. 

Mirabar stumbled on the uneven floor, unable to see anything in here except the Beckoner himself. She grew nervous as he drew her deeper and deeper into the oppressively dark, dank tunnel.

"This isn't safe," she said, thinking of the earthquakes. But he ignored her, and the distant sound of running water lured her onward, a temptation she couldn't resist, a necessity which was close to breaking her.

The tunnel split and divided into several other tunnels, which also split and divided. Mirabar blew torchlight into life at the entrance to every tunnel the Beckoner chose, knowing she'd never find her way back out without them if he, as was his custom, suddenly abandoned her.

Finally, when she was disoriented but fairly sure she was far inside the belly of a mountain, the faint and alluring trickle she'd been hearing turned into the promising babble of a stream flowing over rocks. Even as she heard it, the powerful life inside her womb reacted violently.

Something was wrong. This wasn't a craving for water she felt coming from her unborn child... This was something else.

Mirabar paused, unnerved.

Then the Beckoner proceeded down the next twisting lava-carved tunnel and left her alone in the dark. Mirabar decided that staying here felt no safer than going forward would, so she followed him.

As soon as she entered the chamber into which he led her, Mirabar caught her breath and felt her heart start to pound with stunned recognition.

A child of fire...

It was a dark place full of light, a bright place shadowed by darkness. A vast cavern, heavy yet airy, immense yet encroaching.

"It could almost be... a big prison," she whispered, dazed as she looked around her.

A child of water...

Fire and water were all around her. The churning lava of the volcano dripped into water which flowed through a cavern lit by unfamiliar glowing shapes. Angry hissing filled the air wherever fire and water met, and steam rose to obscure Mirabar's vision.