The Destroyer Goddess (63 page)

"The
zanareen
," Faradar breathed.

"Yes." Many of them were still there, on Darshon, mourning the death of the Firebringer, seeking guidance from Dar, and awaiting Her pleasure. Many others had reputedly died in the explosions and eruptions tormenting the mountain since Josarian's death. Thousands of pilgrims were there, too, as deliriously enraptured by religious fever as the
zanareen
. "If nothing else," Tansen said, "we can organize them to search. Thousands of them. Surely even Cheylan can't evade that many people for long." Especially since most of them had, by all accounts, already demonstrated a stunning disregard for their own lives just by remaining on Darshon. They wouldn't care how dangerous Cheylan was if they thought it was Dar's will that they find him.

Now Tansen and Faradar shrugged off the weight of their own lives, too, as they pursued their duty and their loved ones, heading straight toward the angry volcano as fast as they could travel over the treacherous landscape.

"Elelar!" Mirabar shouted again, realizing that if Cheylan was here, her first instinctive cry had already given away her presence and there was no point in attempting secrecy now.

"Help!" The
torena
's voice echoed all around her, confusing her. "Help!"

"Stop shouting!" Mirabar ordered. "Stop! Do you understand me?"

"
Mirabar?"

"Yes! I've come—"

"
Argggh!"

Mirabar recognized the shriek as one of pain. "What's wrong?"

Elelar screamed again.

"Elelar!"

"Something's wrong with the baby!"

Damn Cheylan! How could he keep her in a place like this? "Are you injured?"

"No! Well, not badly."

"Stay where you are! I'm going to come to you. I'll keep talking, and you keep telling me when my voice seems closer or farther away."

"Yes, I underst... Aghh!"

Mirabar tried to ignore her panic and, when Elelar's scream of pain faded, she asked in a calm voice, "Am I closer or farther?"

No answer.

She's not dead, you're just farther. Keep your head. Try another tunnel
.

"Closer or farther?"

"Closer!"

She ventured down that tunnel, talking the whole while. "Where is Cheylan?"

There was a pause as her echoes died, and then Elelar replied, "I don't know. You're closer."

Mirabar came to yet another split in the tunnels. "He's not here?"

"You're farther." As Mirabar doubled back and tried another tunnel, Elelar continued, "No. He comes and he goes. He's been..." 

Mirabar couldn't hear her anymore and realized she had again chosen wrong. She doubled back. "He's been what?"

"You're closer. He's been gone a long time, this time."

"Do you have any idea how long?" 

"Not really. It seems like days. You're closer." 

"
Ow!"

"Mirabar?"

"It's nothing," she called through tight lips. A tiny drop of lava had fallen onto her shoulder, and she hadn't invoked her power quickly enough to prevent the searing pain. She followed the sound of running water until she came upon one of the stream's branches again. She stooped to wet her sleeve with its soothing chill, then pressed it to the burn. "Am I closer or farther?"

"Closer," Elelar replied, her voice coming clearly from a tunnel on the other side of this chamber. 

Mirabar whispered to her daughter, "I'm counting on you," then gritted her teeth and waded through the knee-deep stream, waiting for some new trap to attack her. Nothing happened, and she breathed with trembling relief when she reached the other side. "Elelar?" she called down the tunnel that had attracted her attention.

"You're closer!" was the excited reply. "Where are you? You sound very close!"

"Not so loud," Mirabar instructed. "It echoes too much, and then I can't tell where your voice is coming from."

"It's his child," Elelar said more quietly. "Cheylan's."

"I know," Mirabar replied, following her voice. 

"Is he crazy?"

"No, but he's very, very dangerous."

"I know," said the
torena.
"We can't let him have the child."

"That's why I've come."

"I'll kill myself before I'll let him have it."

Elelar's voice was very clear now. Mirabar was nearly there. She was peering down the length of the tunnel, dimly lit by dripping lava, glowing plant life, and bright little scurrying things. Her booted foot touched—

"Yagh!" Mirabar shrieked.

"What?" Elelar cried.

"Blegh! Oh,
yuck
!"

"What?"

Mirabar wiped her boot on the damp lava stone underfoot, her heart thudding with disgust. "I just stepped on some fat, glowing, slithering thing." She shuddered with revulsion and added, "It's dead now. Whatever it was."

"You're nearly here. I can tell. You sound very..." Elelar moaned loudly. "Oh, what's happening? Why does it hurt so much?"

"I don't know." Mirabar snatched her hand away from the tunnel wall an instant before touching something else disgusting. "What does it feel like?"

"It's like exploding lava inside of me. Do you think I'm losing the baby?"

"You can't lose this baby!" Mirabar insisted.

There was a short silence, and then Elelar asked, "Are you saying he's right? This child is... the one you've seen in your visions? The one you've prophesied will rule Sileria?"

"Yes, he's right. So we've got to get you out of here and to a Sister right away."

Mirabar turned a sharply curving corner and gasped as she found herself on the threshold of a vast cavern of fire and water, identical in every way to the one she'd seen so often in her visions. With one significant difference: a small river of lava flowed through this one.

"Fires of Dar," she murmured.

"It happened recently," Elelar said. "Yesterday? Today? I'm not really sure. Lava broke through that wall."

Mirabar looked for her in the dim, steamy air. Across the river of lava, she spotted out a form huddled on a ledge of rock along the far wall. "
Elelar?"
 

She wouldn't have recognized the
torena
if she had not been expecting to find her. Elelar was pale, wet, filthy, and haggard. She bore several nasty bruises and cuts, and streaks of dried blood marred her skin and clothing. No one would recognize her as an aristocrat now.

They stared at each other in mutual astonishment.

"You're pregnant," Elelar said slowly.

"Does it show?" Mirabar asked in surprise. She looked down and saw how wet she was. Ah, that explained it. Her normally modest clothing was plastered to her body, revealing the small but distinct bulge which it usually concealed. 

"Is it Baran's?" asked the
torena.

She glared at Elelar. "Of course it's Baran's."

"Oh. I didn't mean—" Elelar's face contorted with agony. "Oh, this
pain
, Mirabar," she gasped out after a few tormented moments. "Is this my punishment? For the things I've done?"

"Perhaps," Mirabar said, hoping it would forestall panic. She herself had suffered nausea and dark moods in her pregnancy, but no pain. She had a feeling Elelar's agony was, in fact, a very alarming sign; she just didn't see that it would help matters to say so. "Can you walk? We have to leave before Cheylan returns."

"Yes, I think..." The
torena
pushed herself away from the rock and started to ease herself down to the cave floor. The mountain rumbled menacingly, the cave moaning and creaking all around them as the cavern shook and lava roared through the mountain. Elelar screamed, doubled over in pain, fell off her perch, and tumbled down to the hard cave floor.

"Elelar!" 

Mirabar gathered her strength, shielded herself with the fiery power she commanded, and then plunged into the lava flow that separated her from the
torena
. The melting liquid heat was overwhelming, and the child of water in her womb convulsed painfully in response to it.

Don't be afraid
, she urged the child,
I can protect you. We must trust each other
.

Worse than the heat was the strength of the current, moving hard and fast. This must be a tributary of the caldera, flowing with fierce energy to the very heart of Dar's power. 

Mirabar dragged herself through it, resisting the force with which the flow tried to propel her out of the cavern and into another tunnel. She emerged from the river of fire unharmed but briefly exhausted. She paused for a moment, her heart pounding, and then staggered over to the prostrate
torena
. Seeing that she was unconscious, Mirabar dragged her to the river of water also flowing through the chaotic cavern and started splashing the fluid onto her face. Elelar coughed and opened her eyes.

"I don't know how I'm going to get you past that lava flow," Mirabar admitted. "Can we find another way out of here?"

"I've tried," Elelar said weakly. "He always prevents me. But now that you're here... Maybe we can get past the fires he uses to block the way. Even so... We may..."

"Get lost?"

"Yes." Elelar laughed weakly.

"What?"

"Well, you have to admit. The irony of this..."

"Oh."

"You here. Risking everything... to save me, of all people."

"Let's not dwell on the irony right now,
torena
," Mirabar said, trying to help her to her feet.

"I know you sent him to kill me."

"No, I sent him to bring you to Belitar, where I could protect—"

"I mean Tansen," Elelar rasped. "I know you sent him to Chandar to kill me after Josarian died. I know how much you wanted me dead."

"Well, aren't we lucky Tansen couldn't bring himself to do it?" Mirabar said dryly. "Otherwise, you and I might never have had this heartwarming reunion."

Elelar sputtered with laughter. "You're starting to sound like Baran."

"There's no need to be insult..."

She felt it then, like a sharp shock to her system. That blood-tingling mingling of hot and cold power she always sensed when he approached. She had just never before realized what it meant. Apparently no one had—not Kiloran, not anyone. Because none of them had ever felt it before, and so they had no way of understanding it. Because the truth about Cheylan was too improbable for anyone to suspect.

Fire and water, water and fire...
 

"Mirabar?" Elelar prodded. "What is it?"

"Cheylan's here," she warned.

Elelar quivered in her supportive grasp. "How do you know?"

"I can feel him. He's here."

"Can we hide?"

"It's too late," Mirabar said, dread and resignation sinking into her. "He knows I'm here." If she felt Cheylan's power nearby, then he felt hers, too. 

"What do we do now?"

"We make our stand," Mirabar said. "Here. Now. Against him. There is no other way." Elelar was clearly too weak to run, even if they had any idea where to go. The one escape route Mirabar could follow—the one she had marked with her own torches—was on the other side of that lava flow.

"No, you get away," Elelar urged. "Go! You know he won't kill me. He can't. So—"

"He'll just take you away, and I'll have to start searching for you again."

"But—"

"And he won't leave you alone and unguarded again. Not after this. I'll have to face him sooner or later. So I'll do it now."

"Mirabar..." Elelar made a helpless gesture and then, as they awaited Cheylan's approach, said the last thing Mirabar would have expected under the circumstances. "Tansen loves you, not me."

"I know." Mirabar pushed Elelar behind her. "But he'll be very unhappy, even so, if you die."

Mirabar
.

Cheylan knew who was here the moment he felt that bright, golden, wave of power emanating from her. She was
here
. And if he felt her, then she felt him.

How had she gotten here, through the maze of tunnels it had taken him years to learn? Had her visions led her here to challenge him? How had she gotten past the water warding these caverns? Was her fire magic even more powerful than he'd realized?