The Destroyer Goddess (19 page)

"Considering his request, your views on this may be somewhat biased," Baran pointed out dryly.

"And yours aren't?" she demanded. "You, who destroyed your whole life—and so many other lives—because of one sole tragedy in your past?"

He glared at her, his dark eyes coldly angry. "It was not just any tragedy."

"Oh, yes it was!" Mirabar rose to her feet and crossed the room to confront him face to face. "You were betrayed by someone you trusted. So what? Could Dar Herself count how many people in Sileria, including the Firebringer himself, could say the same thing? And
you
were fool enough to trust Kiloran, a waterlord who had killed hundreds before you ever even met him!"

The water in the room's elegant fountain started hissing angrily as Mirabar recklessly tried her husband's temper. 

She ignored this warning and continued, "So your wife died horribly. Well, the tears of men whose wives have died horribly in this country could fill every river and lake to a surfeit and still keep coming." Mirabar blocked Baran's path as he tried to escape her torrent of angry words. "You were widowed young and grieved hard for a love you could never replace. Well, that was Josarian's fate, too! And Basimar's! And who knows how many others?"

"They did not love—"

"The way you did?" she demanded scathingly. "You will never convince me that you loved more than Josarian did, Baran. Only that you lacked the strength to go on, as he did, after your wife died. Only that you are nowhere near the man that Josarian was, the man that thousands of others have had to be after losing a loved one!"

"Josarian's wife died in childbirth," he growled. "Mine was  taken—"

 "I know. I realize that. Alcinar's fate was dreadful." She shook her head. "But Tansen's whole family was slaughtered by Outlookers. Their deaths were so hideous they still haunt his dreams. Yet he did not let such a tragedy make him demented and weak, as you did."

"It will be a
pleasure
to give your corpse to Kiloran," Baran snarled, his expression dark with rage.

"Even Tansen's son, just a boy, bears his grief better than you ever h—"

"Tansen doesn't have a..." He blinked and then laughed, his mood going through one of those unnervingly fast shifts. "Well, well, Mirabar. Who bore a son to the man you want for yourself?"

"Zarien is his bloodson," she ground out. 

"Ah... A recent addition to Tansen's bloodline, I gather? I haven't heard about this happy event."

"Your informants must be failing you."

"Well, to be truthful, I haven't been following Tansen's activities for some time," he confided. "It did not, after all, take any great insight to realize what he would do after Josarian died."

"You have extraordinary gifts, Baran," Mirabar said coldly, detesting him at this moment. "You're also intelligent and educated. You could have been anything, made anything of your life." She let her disgust show in her expression as she concluded, "And you became
this
."

"I became what I had to in order to defeat Kiloran."

"No, you—"

"Even you need me to defeat him," he reminded her. "You can't do it without me, so your self-righteousness does not shame me as you'd like, my dear."

Mirabar knew she was wasting her breath on him. She suddenly felt very weary. "You didn't have to become the way you are, Baran. You had other choices."

"Did I?" He smiled whimsically. "Perhaps I did. But I swear to you, I don't remember them."

She glanced at the letter, recalling what had started this argument. "What are you going to do?"

He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up, smiling nastily as he studied her expression. "Am I going to kill you, do you mean?"

"You can certainly die trying," she replied, tempted to immolate him on the spot... if she could. She wasn't sure. He was still very powerful, despite his illness.

"I admit it's tempting. Especially when you're at your least charming." His mood changed again and he turned away from her. "But Kiloran has once again misjudged me." Baran glanced over his shoulder at her, his expression more malevolent than she had ever seen it. "Might I have found my wife, all those years ago, if he hadn't convinced me she was dead beneath the surface of Lake Kandahar? Would I have grieved myself insane if I'd had hope, if I'd been able to search for her?"

"You do believe him," Mirabar breathed, surprised by the way it refreshed his hatred for Kiloran.

"Actually, I don't know if I do," he said. "And his attempt to manipulate and distract me this way would amuse me if he had chosen any tool other than Alcinar to use against me now."

She was relieved to realize that, however much Kiloran's letter had overset him, Baran's shrewd intelligence was now taking over. He understood Kiloran's ploy and wouldn't succumb, no matter how tempted he might be in his darker moments.

"Even if he's telling the truth," Mirabar said, attempting to bridge the rift of today's quarrel, "he can't give her back to you. You know that."

Now he looked sad. "No. And even if he could, he wouldn't. Kiloran does not give back what he has taken away."

"
Do
you think she might still be alive?"

"Now there's a vicious question," he said wearily. "Would I rather she died years ago, as I've always believed? Or do I want her to be alive now, but so changed that she's never tried to reach me... or so damaged that she's never been able to?"

Mirabar approached him and placed her hand on his necklace. "Let me Call her."

He flinched with surprise. Then he considered the idea with wary interest. "But don't you have to Call the dead at the right time of year?"

"Yes," she admitted. "The Otherworld revolves in harmony with this one."

"If she is dead," he said, "then I have no idea when she died."

"I'll try often, then," she offered.

"Here?" he asked doubtfully. "At Belitar? Can you?"

"I have been looking for my teacher in the flames while I've been here," she admitted.

"The one Kiloran took?"

"Yes. Tashinar is—was—very powerful, and if she makes her way to the Otherworld, I think... I believe I will feel it in the fire when I look for her there." She held out her hand. "I can look for Alcinar, too. Someday, she may be there, and then we'll know."

Baran touched the necklace. His mouth quivered briefly, and then he reached behind his neck to unclasp it. Handling the thing more tenderly than he had ever touched Mirabar, he gave it to her, unable to take his eyes off it even as she turned away.

"Wait," he said as she headed for the door.

"What?"

"In two days, Kiloran will wait for me to help him stop the Idalar River from flowing to Shaljir. When I don't—"

"He'll know you have indeed betrayed him."

"And he may put a great deal of effort into trying to do it without me."

"So? You've prevented him for years from completely controlling the Idalar."

"Still, it won't be easy. Especially not if he chooses someone to help him."

"Who would he trust?"

"He has an assassin, Dyshon, whom he's been teaching."

"How do you know?"

He smiled. "I
do
still spy on Kiloran, my dear."

"Oh." She frowned. "Is Dyshon strong enough to help him?"

"Possibly." He shrugged. "It would be sensible of me to kill Dyshon before he adds to my problems. Even after I do, though, and whether or not Kiloran decides to trust someone else..." Baran sighed and admitted, "I'm getting weaker now. Almost every day." He nodded. "I'll need help."

"Who can help you?" she asked worriedly. "Who can
you
trust?"

He grinned at her expression. "My teacher."

"You said Kiloran was your teacher."

"He was only my first teacher."

"Who was the next one?"

"Ah,
sirana
." Baran's expression was impossible to interpret. "I think it may be time to introduce you."

She suddenly realized. A dark flash of instinctive fear swept through her. "Your teacher is
here
. Somewhere in Belitar. That's what I've been feeling ever since I arrived!"

"You have proven—sometimes with pleasing enthusiasm—your sincere commitment to getting this child with me."

Mirabar ignored his suggestive smile and asked, "What does that have to do with..." Her eyes widened. "Are you telling me that your teacher is the one who told you..."

"A child of water. A child of fire." His expression was dreamy. "A woman with eyes of fire who would be... Well, not my final love," he admitted dryly. "Shall we say, my final mate."

She studied him with suspicion. "I've never heard of a waterlord uttering prophecy."

His dark eyes danced with delight at her surprise when he said, "My teacher is not a waterlord."

"Then what is your teacher?" she demanded.

"Have you ever heard,
sirana
," he asked silkily, "of the Beyah-Olvari?"

They knew Mirabar was at Belitar. Baran had warned them. He had promised them, as they desired, that he would eventually share the secrets of Belitar's ancient subterranean caverns with her and bring her down here to meet them. 

Even so, they chanted and gibbered with nervous fear upon meeting her, being timid creatures who were easily unsettled. Accustomed to them after all these years, Baran watched impassively as the Beyah-Olvari got acquainted with his wife.

No one could deny Mirabar's courage, though Baran thought her intense curiosity was probably a little unwise. She was so eager to discover and understand Belitar's secrets that she had readily come down here with him today, even though he suspected she half-feared he was bringing her to these dark, damp, underground caves beneath the ancient foundations of his castle to kill her. 

True, there was a rather surprising affinity between them in their marriage bed; Baran wasn't dead yet, nor completely lost to the simple pleasures of life, and Mirabar had turned out to be a woman of healthy human appetites, despite her Otherworldly visions and spiritual vocation. Nonetheless, Baran knew that Mirabar feared him—and that was just sensible of her, he acknowledged. After all, today he had indeed contemplated sending her corpse to Kiloran in exchange for the truth about Alcinar. Yes, he was that ruthless, that utterly lacking in honor. He would break every promise and betray every ally, if it was what he had to do to get what he wanted. That was who he was; that was what he had made of himself. She'd be a fool to doubt it or forget it; and Mirabar was no fool.

Tansen wouldn't love a fool.
 

Oh, yes, the day Baran married Mirabar, he had seen the unruly passion and heartsick longing in the
shatai's
eyes. Even Baran, who scarcely knew him, could see that giving up this woman was one of the hardest things Tansen had ever done, so hard it made him briefly rash and heedless, like lesser men. He had even come within a hairsbreadth of attacking Baran, something he must surely know he would never survive. And right there, on Sanctuary grounds, too! Unthinkable. No one did that.
No one.
Least of all a smart, cool-headed, focused man like Tansen.

But thwarted love, as Baran well knew, was a wild madness that robbed even the shrewdest men of their reason. And for a moment, Tansen's famously unreadable face had been hot with hatred, possessive jealousy, and bloodlust.

If Baran were anything less than what he was, he'd never have married Mirabar once he realized that Tansen wanted her. However, Baran could protect himself even from Tansen, and he certainly wasn't going to let the
shatai
's wishes interfere with his plans. He only wondered how Mirabar had managed to convince Tansen to go along with the marriage. He even felt a moment of pity for her; it must have been hard for her, since she clearly wanted what Tansen wanted.

Whatever secret sorrow might eat Mirabar's heart when she thought of Tansen, though, she did her best to keep it hidden from Baran. She was an admirable woman in many ways, and Baran might even have felt sorry about slaughtering her at Kiloran's behest. He'd have done it, though, to get what he wanted.

But what Baran wanted most was vengeance. Destroying Kiloran or, if he failed, giving Mirabar the child who would fulfill their mutual destiny... After a brief struggle today, Baran had reaffirmed what he most wanted. And Mirabar, the child, even Tansen—they could help him achieve his goal.

Whereas Kiloran could only dangle empty promises in the twisted maze of his deadly schemes. Baran knew that. Whatever had happened to Alcinar—the pain in his heart caught fire again as he thought of her—nothing would bring her back now. Oh, Kiloran was clever. It was true that Baran had been tempted, so tempted for a moment. But he was not a weak-minded acolyte like Meriten, or a sulking fool like Dulien, or a hot-headed idiot like Abidan and Liadon had both been. Baran had never let Kiloran manipulate him like all the others, no matter how skillful the attempt, and he wasn't going to start now.

His insides burning with the pain which was now rarely absent, Baran smiled faintly as he imagined what Kiloran's face would look like if he ever found out about the Beyah-Olvari. Sometimes the image was so amusing, Baran was tempted to reveal what might well be the best-kept secret in all of Sileria. However, that would be a betrayal which was beneath even his undeniably low nature.