The Destroyer Goddess (23 page)

Zarien gasped and asked Tansen, "Is he going to beat her?"

Tansen shook his head. "Not her."

Ronall felt sick with fear. 

Zarien gasped again. "We must stop him!" Incredibly, he leaped in front of Ronall to shield him. "No, Emelen!"

Emelen shoved him aside, swinging that
yahr
with deadly menace.

Ronall backed away. "Please, I'm unarmed!"

"Not in my wife's bed, you weren't, you stinking
sriliah!
" Emelen snarled.

"No, Emelen!" Jalilar shouted.

Zarien cried, "Father! Stop him!"

Tansen tugged at the sea-born boy, who was trying to interfere. "It's not our affair, Zarien!"

Jalilar shrieked, "Emelen, don't kill him!"

Zarien bleated, "
Kill
him? Father, he's going to kill him!"

"I'll take care of it," Tansen snapped. "Get away from them."

"Take care of it
now!
" the boy insisted. 

"Wait!" Ronall pleaded.

"Say your prayers," Emelen advised.

"No!" Zarien evaded Tansen's grasp and succeeded in getting in the way—just in time to be struck by Emelen's
yahr
. "
Ow!"

"Zarien!" Tansen's voice was harsh with alarm. 

There was a bewildering flurry of movement, and then Emelen was on the ground, Tansen had the
yahr
, and Zarien was clutching his bleeding nose.

"Ow!" Zarien repeated. He looked at Emelen, who lay sprawled on the ground. "You hit me!"

Still shouting, Jalilar ran to Emelen and knelt beside him, trying to keep him from rising. 

Tansen was saying to Zarien, "You just
had
to get in the way, didn't you?"

"It really hurts," Zarien informed him.

"Let me see," Tansen muttered.

"Is it broken?" Zarien asked.

"Does it feel broken?" Tansen replied, examining the bleeding appendage.

"Get away from me!" Emelen snapped at his wife.

"Stop it!" she cried. "You can't kill him! Emelen, you can't!"

"Oh, yes I can," he replied grimly, shoving her away as he rose to his feet.

"Father," Zarien prodded.

Emelen shouted at Tansen, "You tell him to stay out of this!"

"I've
been
telling him!" Tansen snapped back. "And if you ever hit him again—"

"He got in my way!"

"Don't ever hit him again," was all Tansen said.

Emelen evidently knew when it was wise to appease Tansen. Sounding far more exasperated than apologetic, he said, "I'm sorry I hit you, Zarien."

"I don't think it's broken," Zarien offered. Then he winced, "Hurts like all the Fires, though."

"Let that be a lesson to you," Tansen said.

Zarien demanded of him, "Are you really going to let this happen, father? This poor, scared, unarmed man, and Emelen angry enough to kill him before he has time to beg for mercy!"

Ronall felt humiliation wash over him at the boy's description of him. As if it even mattered, he realized that Tansen looked too young to be Zarien's father. 

"
No!
" Jalilar screamed, flinging herself in front of Emelen as he moved towards Ronall again. "Don't! No!"

Emelen stopped, his expression growing even more awful as he said to her, "Are you telling me you're in love with him?"

"
Him?
" Her tone could not have been any less flattering. "No!"

Emelen seized her by the shoulders and said between gritted his teeth, "You are, aren't you? That's why you're so—"

"Fires of Dar, of course I'm not in love with him!" she shouted. "He's a weakling, a drunk, a lazy fool!"

"Then why—"

"Do you think I'd have let this useless coward touch me if I hadn't missed you so much?" Jalilar demanded of her husband. "If I hadn't wanted you so much, been so sure you were dead or about to die without me?"

"Jalilar..." Emelen sounded pained.

Ronall burned with shame as Jalilar continued, "Ronall means nothing to me! Less than nothing! Can't you understand how unhappy I was, to turn to
him?
"

Tansen, who was dabbing at the boy's gushing nose, jerked sharply in surprise, causing Zarien to grunt in pain. 

"Dar have mercy," Ronall muttered, covering his face with his hands. "I really, truly, sincerely hate my life."

Tansen asked, "Jalilar, did you say
Ronall?
"

"I love
you
," Jalilar said fiercely to her husband. "Only you. I want to be with you. Only you."

"Did she say Ronall?" Tansen asked Ronall.

"Yes," Ronall admitted wearily. "I'm half-Valdan. Just kill me now and get it over with."

"No!" Jalilar shrieked again, rushing at Tansen now that she had Emelen under control.

"Calm down," Tansen told her. "No one's going to kill anyone."

"Oh, good," said Zarien, pressing a messy sleeve to his nose.

"Who is this?" Jalilar asked suddenly, staring at Zarien.

"My son," Tansen said. "He doesn't like killing."

"Travels in strange company, doesn't he?" Emelen said to no one in particular.

"You've taken a son," Jalilar murmured, momentarily distracted. Then she added in amazement, "A sea-born boy?"

"It's a long story," Tansen said, "and we have other things to discuss now."

"I'm Jalilar," she said to Zarien, extending her hands to him. "Now you and I are family, because Tansen was Josarian's bloodbrother."

Ronall stared stupidly while the boy, still bleeding profusely, took Jalilar's hands and murmured polite things.

"Josarian's blood..." Ronall's head started pounding. No, it wasn't possible. If Tansen was related to her through Josarian, then... "You're... Jalilar, are you saying Josarian was your..."

She flung a reply over her shoulder, not even bothering to look at him. "My brother."

"The Firebringer was your brother?" Ronall demanded. 

"Yes," Tansen answered for Jalilar, who was busy embracing Zarien as a new relation.

"
The Firebringer?
" Ronall repeated in horrified shock. "I've been sleeping with the Firebringer's sister?"

Emelen punched him, knocking him down. "You been sleeping with
my wife
, you bastard!"

"No!" Tansen shouted, jumping between them. "Emelen, stop!"

"Stay out of this!" Emelen shouted back.

"No!" Jalilar screamed, abandoning Zarien to fling herself at Emelen again.

Ronall lay in the dirt and just wished they would all go away. No
wonder
Jalilar was so afraid of assassins, considering who her male relations were. And Ronall supposed the Society would be only too happy to kill anyone she cared about—including the drunken coward who'd been sleeping with her lately.

Damn her. Damn them all.

"No, Emelen," Tansen repeated. "You can't!"

"By the eight winds!" Zarien said, his voice muffled by his sleeve. "This is
Torena
Elelar's husband?"

Emelen froze and stared at Ronall, clearly stunned.

Tansen nodded to Zarien and said, "Exactly."

Emelen blurted, "
Him?
"

"Him." Tansen turned to look at Ronall. "Yes?"

Ronall returned his gaze uncertainly. "Yes."

"I know
Torena
Elelar," Jalilar said, staring at Ronall, too, now. "
You're
her husband?"

"Yes," Ronall repeated wearily. 

Tansen expelled his breath in a rush. "We've had people looking everywhere for you. Or your body."

"Me? Why?" he asked, baffled.

"
This
is
Toren
Ronall." Emelen shook his head. "Wonderful." The
shallah
gave his wife a disgusted look.

"What does it matter who he is?" Jalilar asked Emelen.

"You had to pick
him
."

"Please, Emelen," Jalilar pleaded. "Try to understand."

"Let's not keep talking about this in front of Tansen and Zarien and...
him
," Emelen added with a dark glare at Ronall.

Getting teary, Jalilar said, "I... I can't let you hurt him or..."

"I won't," Emelen promised, sounding depressed. "Tansen will make sure of that. Now let's go inside."

"No, there's something else," Jalilar insisted.

"What?" Emelen asked warily.

"And... and he should know, too," Jalilar said, glancing at Ronall. "It's his right."

"What?" Emelen repeated with a frown.

"Oh, no," Tansen muttered.

"
No
," Ronall said, already guessing what Jalilar would say next.

"I'm going to have his child," she told her husband sadly.

Chapter Nine

A man's friends are always 

more dangerous than his enemies.

                                          —Najdan

By now, travel was sheer agony for Baran. Even Sister Velikar's noxious tisanes and chanting couldn't control the debilitating pain that consumed him, and he became exhausted so easily now that his pace was affected—his judgment, however, was not.

So he viewed Dulien's awkward overtures of friendship with amused skepticism. The tedious waterlord, having requested this private and secret truce meeting at a Sanctuary deep in the mountains, now sulked and scowled, as was his unattractive habit, while he spoke with Baran—who airily claimed that his own rather grim appearance these days was due to a recent illness from which he was now recovering. 

Struggling with pain, fatigue,
and
the tedium of Dulien's conversation, Baran was relieved when the waterlord finally got to the point by saying, "Kiloran has killed Wyldon."

"Ah. Art lovers everywhere will be relieved to hear that." Baran added with a dramatic shudder, "Did you ever
see
any of Wyldon's water sculptures?"

Dulien scowled. "Kiloran tried to make it look like you did it."

"How enterprising of him."

"He thought you would be blamed."

"Well, yes," Baran said affably. "That would be the point of trying to make it look like I did it, wouldn't it?"

"But Wyldon's assassins say it was Kiloran, not you."

"Then they're smarter than I gave them credit for."

"It really wasn't you, was it?" asked Dulien.

"No."

"Kiloran wanted to discredit you within the Society."

"Perhaps, but I imagine he mostly just wanted Wyldon dead." Baran smiled. "Besides, I thought that my marrying Mirabar had already discredited me within the Society." 

Dulien leaned forward, his beady eyes alight with speculation. "You married her because you thought if you allied yourself with the Guardians, Tansen would let you live."

Baran leaned forward, too, and confided honestly, "I don't really think it's up to Tansen whether or not I live."

Dulien asked with ghoulish curiosity, "Can
she
kill you?"

"Mirabar?" Baran shook his head. "She's not going to try." He didn't usually tell so many truths in a row, but it amused him today.

"You're not claiming she
loves
you?" Dulien's incredulity made Baran laugh.

"Are you implying that I'm not lovable?"

"Does she know you vowed to kill her?"

"Yes. It made the wedding night a little awkward."

Dulien's eyes bulged. "So you've actually... You two have... You and she..."

"Was avid curiosity about my married life the reason you asked me to come here?" Baran asked.

The waterlord blinked. "No. Where was I?"

"I really couldn't say."

Dulien scowled again. "Did you know that as soon as the Valdani abandoned Cavasar, he killed the two waterlords who used to control the city's water?"

"He?" Baran prodded.

"Kiloran!"

"Oh, yes. Do forgive me. Go on."

"Now he's got that sycophant, Meriten, trying to wrest Abidan's and Liadon's territory from the Guardians."

"I gather that
shallaheen
are stabling sheep in the ruins of the twins' houses." Baran sighed and shook his head. "Does no one have any respect anymore?"

Dulien continued sulkily, "Kiloran also had Searlon openly helping Meriten."

"So I heard." 

"And now..." Dulien paused dramatically. "Searlon has disappeared."

"Dead?" Baran asked with hopeful interest. Kiloran's favorite assassin had always been a shrewd and dangerous enemy.

Dulien shook his head. "No. Surely someone would boast of Searlon's death, if that were so. And Kiloran would certainly mourn him."

"True. So... Searlon's on some delicate mission for his master," Baran surmised, "and no one knows where or can guess what."

"It makes me nervous," Dulien admitted.

"I imagine it makes everyone nervous."

"It means there's something even more important to Kiloran than just the things we already know about," Dulien explained, as if Baran might somehow have failed to grasp this implication. "You know: helping Meriten reclaim the brothers' territory, destroying you, killing Tansen, accessing the mines of Alizar, get—"