The White Dragon (94 page)

He didn't understand her preoccupied manner. "Good?"

"Yes." She seemed to come to a sudden decision. "I need a favor."

He almost laughed. "You of all people shouldn't—"

"No, you'll like this one."

He folded his arms across his chest. "What?"

"About Mirabar..."

"Yes?"

He saw the fire in her eyes now. It wasn't what he was used to from her, wasn't what he expected. Her face was alight with it as she said, "It's something the Olvar told me."

"The Olvar?" He recalled the gentle, wizened leader of the Beyah-Olvari living in the secret maze of tunnels and caves beneath Shaljir. "What did he tell you?"

It wasn't the cold light of shrewd calculation, nor even the hot light of her fanaticism, both of which had been so dangerous and deadly on many occasions in the past. This was different, the glow in those dark, kohl-rimmed eyes, the fervent warmth in that lovely face... Different but somehow familiar, as if he'd seen this look elsewhere...

"The Olvar told me," Elelar said, her voice rich with tension, "that Mirabar's going to kill me."

"She wants to, it's true," Tansen said, years of practice helping him keep his voice calm. "But I won't—"

Her face was brilliant with intensity. "That's the favor I want."

"Of course," he promised, realizing how Mirabar's fiery power could frighten a woman of merely human gifts. "I'll stop her if sh—"

"No!" she said. "Don't stop her.
Promise
me you won't try to stop her."

His first thought was that Elelar was planning a trap for Mirabar. His second thought was that the one thing that could make him kill Elelar would be if she hurt Mirabar.

"Elelar..." he began slowly. But then he realized he didn't need to warn her.
 

Now he understood what he saw in her face. No cunning plan, no double meaning, no concealed motive. He knew this expression, so strange and unfamiliar on Elelar's face, because he'd seen it elsewhere, on other loved faces: Josarian, Mirabar, Zarien. And on the scarcely-tolerated face of Jalan the
zanar,
too.

It was the look of believers. The look of people who could not be dissuaded or intimidated or stopped, because they had been touched by something so much greater than themselves that they were beyond the fears and reasoning of an ordinary man like him.

"What's happened to you?" he asked suspiciously, taking her by the shoulders.

"The Olvar told me..."

He was astonished to see tears well up in her eyes. Her smile told him these were tears of joy. Of relief.

"What?" Tansen demanded, shaking her slightly. "What did he tell you?"

"I must surrender."

He let her go. "Surrender?"

"When the one with eyes of fire comes for me, I must not resist."

Tansen was completely taken aback. He didn't want to kill her. He knew she should die, but he didn't want to let someone else kill her, either. And he didn't want Mirabar to have the blood of vengeance on her hands. Mirabar had no idea what that was like, and he never wanted her to find out.

"Tansen..."

He shook his head. He couldn't think of anything to say except, "No."

"The fate of Sileria depends on this."

"On Mirabar killing you? No." He shook his head. "I want to speak to the Olvar."

She came closer again. Pressed her palm against his arm. Then raised her hand to touch his cheek. A soft palm. Silken fingers. The skin so fair by Silerian standards. So different from the work-hardened, burn-scarred, sun-kissed hand of the woman who wanted her dead. The woman whom Elelar now claimed was destined to kill her.

"Don't you see," Elelar whispered. "Surely you, of all people, can understand?"

"No," he repeated, knowing what she would say next.

"It's my redemption."

He didn't want to lose her. That was the ugly truth.

Forgive me, Josarian. I can't let go. Not even now. Forgive me.

He was ashamed and humiliated. And afraid.

"My death, for Sileria," Elelar said. "I'm ready."

"
I'm
not."

"My guilt expunged. My shame healed. My soul purified for the Otherworld." She leaned closer, so close their breath mingled. "Let her do it. Let her kill me.
Promise
me."

"No."

"Let me be redeemed," she urged, seducing him with her desire to be sacrificed.

Tansen took her face between his hands. Her lovely, treacherous, yearning face. "Not like this." He tried to make her understand. "Not Mirabar."

She placed her hands over his, stroking his fingers, his wrists. "Don't you see? It must be her destiny, as it is mine."

"I don't care," he said firmly. "I won't let it happen."

"Sileria's destiny—"

"No."

"Let her cleanse me with her vengeance," she whispered, kissing his neck, pressing her lush breasts against his chest.

He shivered, then pushed her roughly away.

"And who will cleanse Mirabar for murdering you in vengeance?" he demanded.

"She's a
shallah
. She won't need—"

"Oh, yes, she will," he interrupted. "And I will not let your death become her burden. I'm a
shallah
, too, and I can tell you that the weight never grows lighter. Not ever."

Angry now that she was failing to win him over, she said, "
She
will not be killing her own father."

He'd been expecting that, but it made him hotly angry even so. "Darfire, maybe I
should
just kill you and get it over with!"

"After you just promised the boy you wouldn't?" she taunted.

"
Zarien
." It was like a bucket of cold water. He realized that he had let her distract him. Well, nothing new in that. "Zarien," he repeated. "By all the gods above and below." He ran a hand through his long, tangled hair and said wearily, "Actually, I may not be around to keep you from flinging yourself into the fires of redemption at Mira's expense."

Elelar frowned at him. "Something to do with that boy?" When he nodded, she added, "What is a sea-bound boy doing ashore? And with
you
?"

"You and I have a lot to talk about," he said. "And there's not much time. The boy is impatient, and with good reason."

"A lot to talk about," she agreed. "The fighting in the mountains. The Society. These visions that people are talking about. The new government. The massacres of Valdani. And there are people at Santorell Palace whom you should—"

"Yes," he agreed. "I'll see them, speak to them before I go."

"Where are you going?"

He sighed. "To sea."

Chapter Thirty-Five

A fire in the soul is like a tiger in the cage;

both are reckless in their ferocity.

      
      
      
      
      
      
      
—Kintish Proverb

Zarien made a conscious effort to shake off the heavy tension between Tansen and the
torena
when he left Elelar's house with her servant. Sometimes Tansen could be too quick to reach for those swords of his, and there was a tumultuous anger in him as he faced the
torena
, a darkness which Zarien had never before sensed in him. For a moment, Zarien worried about leaving the two of them alone. No, he didn't believe Tansen would choose to kill a woman, not even a woman who upset him as much as this one evidently did. Besides, Zarien wasn't blind. He could see that there was also a man-woman current flowing between them which Tansen couldn't entirely resist.
 

However, although Tansen might be against killing the
torena
, Zarien had seen many times by now just how fast those swords could come out of their sheathes. No wonder people thought they leapt out by themselves! And Tansen didn't always think before drawing his weapons, intent on violence. Tansen was so fast that, when startled or surprised—or awakening from one of his nightmares—he sometimes didn't even seem to know he had already unsheathed his swords and was holding them poised for combat. So whatever made Mirabar hate Elelar, and whatever made Tansen seem like a wounded dragonfish in the
torena
's presence, Zarien had decided it might be prudent to make sure, before leaving them alone together, that nothing deadly would happen.

Of course, Tansen's irritable response made it clear that nothing would, despite all the air-snapping tension.
 

Landfolk.

No matter. Soon—very soon now—he and Tansen would be at sea. Sharifar would welcome them, and they could leave behind the volatile ways of the drylanders. Of course, Tansen would still care about what happened on land; and, after all this time ashore, Zarien could understand and accept that—at least a little. Waterlords and assassins shouldn't be allowed to rule and ruin Sileria in the wake of the Valdani surrender. There were some good people in the mountains. There were also some whom Zarien didn't like; but that could be said about life at sea, too.

Nonetheless, he was glad to be going home at last. Glad to be taking the sea king to Sharifar, as he'd vowed. If he was right, if Tansen was the one the goddess sought and Zarien was the one who brought the sea-born their king... Well, who knew? Perhaps the Lascari would even break centuries of tradition and overlook his little sojourn on land.

It could happen.
 

His parents would be so glad to see him alive. They would—

My parents...

His newly-full stomach churned a little. Glad to see him alive? Yes. They had loved him, he believed that. But to welcome him back into the clan, after his sojourn on land, when he knew now that he wasn't even a Lascari?

Perhaps not
, he admitted privately.

Everything about the night he had died came back to him now, including Sharifar's humiliating claim that his father was a drylander and his mother... Well, not Palomar, in any event.

One thing at a time, he decided.

He had to get to port and find someone to take him and Tansen to sea. Tomorrow, he hoped. The day after, at the latest. Get to sea. Find out Tansen's true destiny.

Then find out who my parents really were
.

With his course of action clarified in his mind, he lifted his face to the breeze wafting through Shaljir's narrow streets and took a deep breath.
 

He immediately choked on the city's overripe smells: sewage, many unwashed bodies, the odor of a funeral pyre, some livestock and their associated mess, the perfume of a passing Kintish courtesan, and a few barrels of volcano ale that had fallen from a cart and splattered the street in front of him.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, though, he smelled water. Not just the sweetwater these city-dwellers had been hoarding in barrels in preparation for Kiloran's assault on the Idalar River. Not just the water gushing from their fountains, singing to him almost as sweetly as Palomar used to. Not just the water he felt swelling in their wells and their basins. No. In addition to all that, he smelled the
sea
.

He inhaled and sighed like a lover. "Ohhhh, can you smell that?" he said to Teyaban, the servant whom
Torena
Elelar had sent with him.

"Hmmm." Teyaban sniffed the air and sighed, too. "That perfume. They say it induces visions."

"Huh?"

"Not the war-and-glory kind that Mirabar the Guardian gets, mind you," Teyaban continued cheerfully. "I mean the kind that make a man's body stand up and say hello."