The Destroyer Goddess (8 page)

Najdan wisely held his silence.

Tansen foolishly ventured, "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right!" she snapped. "I am going to be stuck with
those
two from now on!"

"I, um..." Tansen looked at Najdan.

Najdan looked down at his worn boots.

Mirabar looked at them both. "What?" she demanded. "
What?"

"Nothing," Tansen said.

"Nothing," Najdan agreed.

She collected herself. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout at you."

"
Sirana
," Najdan said, "shall I help them prepare for the journey?"

"No. They want to be alone." Mirabar shook her head. "I could almost swear Baran wasn't joking when he said she tempts him to be unfaithful to me."

Tansen choked. 

Najdan asked, "Why do they want to be alone?"

Mirabar shrugged. "She's tending his hand. He doesn't want me to watch. Or something." She waved a hand in the air. "
I
don't know."

"Well," Najdan said, "you did cut him rather—"

"I know, I know," she replied impatiently.

Najdan told Tansen, "It bled quite a lot, even for a—"

"I
know
," Mirabar repeated.

"I'm almost sorry I missed that," Tansen murmured.

Mirabar looked at him. Their gazes locked. Within moments, the air was thick with tension. 

"Will you excuse us?" Tansen said to Najdan.

"I will wait at the edge of Sanctuary grounds with the others," Najdan said, turning away.

When they were alone, Mirabar said, in a very different tone of voice, "I'm fine."

"I, uh, I guess I can see that." He looked away and added, "I was worried."

"So was I, to be honest," she said. "But, um, there was no reason to be."

Tansen couldn't think of anything more awkward than talking with the woman he loved about her recent wedding night with another man. It actually made his chest hurt.

"So..." He cleared his throat and tried to think of the vaguest possible way of asking what he wanted to know. "He didn't hurt you?"

"He didn't hurt me. And, well, we talked some more this morning, and I believe he's not
going
to hurt me." Mirabar waited for him to look at her, then said, "I really believe that, Tansen."

He nodded. He
hated
this, but he would accept her judgment.

The pain in his chest wasn't going away. He asked her about something else that had been bothering him since yesterday. "How did Baran know? 'A child of fire, a child of water.' Where did he—"

"I don't know. He won't tell me. At least, not yet." She folded her hands. "There are things at Belitar which I think he means to share with me. My visions tell me that many answers are there."

"Belitar," he said without enthusiasm. You'd have to be as crazy as Baran to like that gloomy, damp place. Tansen's peasant blood assured him it was haunted, as legend said.

"I'll be safer there than..." Now her face clouded. "Than you will be."

"I'll be careful," he promised, feeling hollow as he looked at her. "I... Pyron told me about Tashinar. I'm so sorry." Mirabar's mentor had been captured and taken to Kiloran's underwater lair at Lake Kandahar.

Her face darkened with grief. "I make a fire every day to  pray for her, pray that she's already dead, pray that Kiloran isn't... I pray that she's already dead."

"You can't tell?" he asked uncertainly.

She shook her head. "No. But that's not unusual."

"Oh." 

Mirabar shrugged and added pensively, "It feels strange, when I look for her. Even when I went up to the sacred caves and sought her in the ancient fires there, while waiting for Baran to return from Emeldar. It's as if..." She shook her head. "As if she's not in either world. Not this one or the Other one, but not lost or gone, either. Almost as if she's... I don't know... hovering somewhere."

Tansen had no idea what she was talking about, but he tried to be comforting. "I'm sure she's dead by now." He wasn't at all sure, but didn't know what else to say. "If I find out anything, I'll send word to Belitar."

She nodded. After a quiet moment, she changed the subject. "What will you do now?"

"I need to establish our influence across the central portion of the country, spreading through the mountains from Shaljir to Adalian."

"You intend to separate Kiloran's foundation of power in the west from the Idalar River and the mines of Alizar?" she guessed.

"Yes. And to separate the eastern and western waterlords from each other." He asked her to speak to Baran about the mines of Alizar, and also to find out whatever she could about the rest of the Society, particularly the individual weaknesses of the waterlords whom Baran knew. 

"I will," she promised. "But I don't know how cooperative he'll be. All he cares about is destroying Kiloran. I don't think he cares who wins the war, or what happens to the Honored Society, the Guardians, or anyone else."

"Now
that
," Tansen said, "I believe." It was even comforting in a way. If Baran's priorities remained unchanged, and he saw Mirabar as essential in his fight against Kiloran, then he really would protect and care for her.

Still thinking, Tansen flexed his hand, where the
shir
wound acquired in the ambush on Dalishar still troubled him from time to time. 

Mirabar noticed. "Surely whatever force healed the wound at your side, which was much worse, should be able to heal that, too?"

Tansen shrugged. "It's getting better by itself."

"Maybe if you tried—"

"I don't remember how it happened the first time," he reminded her. He'd been unconscious in a cave, tended only by a frightened sea-born boy, when the deadly wound in his torso suddenly healed, leaving only a silvery scar.

"Maybe if Zarien tried," Mirabar suggested.

"I've been wondering..." 
      "What?"

"Do you think
he
might be the sea king?"

"I don't know." She frowned. "Why do you think so? Because of the way the wound healed?"

"It could be the answer, couldn't it?" 

"I don't know," she repeated. "I don't know what the sea-born say about the sea king. Anyhow, if that wasn't it, then why—"

"Something the Olvar said when Zarien and I visited the Beyah-Olvari in the tunnels beneath Shaljir." 

"This boy will be," the Olvar said to Tansen, "more than you imagine. Perhaps more than you can accept."

"He said..." Tansen stopped, remembering other things the wizened Olvar, the gentle leader of his ancient tribe of small blue-skinned beings living in secrecy, had said. 

"There are other Beyah-Olvari," he said slowly, crying with joy. "Others like us. Alive. Somewhere in Sileria."

Tansen almost told Mirabar this extraordinary news, but then he recalled the prophecy of the Olvar's which had made his blood run cold while he was in Shaljir.

"He told me," Elelar said, "that Mirabar's going to kill me."

Staring stupidly at Mirabar now, Tansen suddenly realized that she had married someone who could help her kill Elelar, or even do it for her. Someone who could do it easily and—knowing Baran—cheerfully.

He had no idea what to say to her about Elelar now. Besides, Mirabar was about to leave for Belitar. Tansen didn't know when he'd see her again—didn't even know if they would both live to meet again—and he didn't want his last memory of her to be soiled with yet another fight about the
torena
.

"Tansen?" Mirabar prodded. 

"Huh? Sorry."

"What did the Olvar say?"

"Oh. It's not... It doesn't matter."

"Tansen." She sounded exasperated.

"You know vague the Olvar is."

"Not from experience, no."

He smiled. "Well, you'd probably find him irritating."

"Speaking of irritating..." She sighed. "It's a long journey to the next Sanctuary. I suppose I should go convince...
them
that it's time to leave."

If they never met again, he wanted her to know. "I'll think of you often."

Her mouth trembled. "So will I."

"If you're ever afraid—if you ever feel he has lied to you, I want you to promise me you'll leave him." When she didn't reply, Tansen urged, "Send for me. I'll come get you."

Mirabar looked uncomfortable. She compromised by saying, "If I think it's necessary, I will."

"And I, uh..."

She waited.

He said, "I'll miss you."

Her golden eyes glimmered with tears and she pressed her lips together. He filled his heart with the sight of her, then turned away, unwilling to stay and watch her leave with her husband.

In the golden glow of the setting sun,
Toren
Ronall crawled half-dead onto Sanctuary grounds and called for help. When no one came, he tried, with the last strength he had left, to think of the
shallah
word for "help."

He couldn't. Didn't even know if it was indeed different from the common Silerian word for it. 

So he just kept rasping, "Help! Someone, help!"

Maybe the Sisters weren't coming because they just didn't  hear him. His swollen tongue and aching throat, he now realized, barely produced any sound.

Ronall lay face down on the rocky soil. Something sharp poked him in the belly. His swollen face, his abused ribs, his back, his legs... everything hurt abominably. His left arm was broken. His bare feet were cut, bleeding, and desperately sore. 

Oh, Three have mercy, just let me die. Let me die now.

He started retching again. Dry heaves. The pain had made him black out before. He hoped it would make him black out again, because enduring it was
awful
.

He was swimming darkly toward oblivion when he heard a woman's warm voice: "By all the Fires!"

Ronall groaned when she touched him, her hands running over him to check for injuries. His loud gasps of pain let her know every time she found another one.

"Can you stand up?" she asked at last.

"No." 

"I can't carry you," she told him.

"Get help," he muttered, eyes still closed, head throbbing.

"There is no one here but me."

"Then leave... me here," he mumbled.

"I can't do that."

He gasped a moment later when her strong hands seized him by the shoulders and started trying to haul him upright. 

"Ow! Ow! Ouch! Stop!"

"Then help me," she insisted.

Ronall opened his eyes and squinted at her. His first comment was probably beside the point: "You're not a Sister."

"No," said the voluptuous
shallah
woman whose humble clothes didn't resemble the austere gown of a Sister. "The Sister who lives here abandoned me. She's gone east."

The woman spoke
shallah
, but clearly and slowly enough that Ronall understood most of it.

"She's gone... to Darshon," he guessed hazily.

"Yes. Dar Called her."

He closed his eyes again and summoned what little will he possessed. "All right. I'll try to get up."

"I'll help." She slung his arm around her shoulders and, demonstrating more physical strength than he expected in a woman, hauled him to his bloody, aching feet.

He swayed dizzily. "Give me a moment."

"How did you make it here?"

Good question. "I don't really know. I just... kept moving." Even after being reduced to crawling, or just dragging himself along.

"Take a step," she instructed. "Lean on me."

The pain was nauseating, but he was too exhausted to protest, so he did what he could to assist her as she dragged him into the stone Sanctuary, bearing most of his weight herself. She was tall for a woman, particularly for a
shallah
woman.

Once they were inside, she hauled him over to a simple bed and helped him lie down on it. He must have passed out after that, because when he opened his eyes again, he was mostly unclothed and she was dressing his now-clean, though still throbbing, feet.

She started speaking to him. When he didn't understand, she made an obvious effort to switch to common Silerian, though her speech was still liberally sprinkled with
shallah
words.

"A Sister could heal you more quickly,
toren
," she explained, having guessed his rank. "But I can't leave Sanctuary to find one for you elsewhere. Besides, you shouldn't be left alone. Don't worry, though. I have enough experience to help you. I'm just not..." She shrugged. "I don't know the arts of the Sisterhood. Just practical things."

He nodded his understanding.

"Your arm is broken, and your ribs are damaged—but not badly, I think." 
      "They feel bad," he said, his voice weak and cracked.

She shook her head. "No. It's nothing."

Shallaheen.
Yes, he had no doubt that to
them
his injuries seemed like nothing. He, however, was trying hard not to cry like a baby in front of this woman.

Not that he had any tears to spare. "Water," he croaked, nearly maddened with thirst.

"Of course." She lifted his head and gave him a little at a time, showing more patience than he would have had in her position.