The Destroyer Goddess (42 page)

Baran rolled his eyes. "Don't these shades ever think to warn you in more specific terms?"

"Then," Najdan said, ignoring Baran, "are you ready to accept that Cheylan has betrayed you?"

Baran laughed again. "Not to mention betraying Kiloran. Cheylan must be much braver than I th—"

"Oh, do shut up," Mirabar said.

"And far more clever than I would have supposed," Baran continued airily. "Convincing you to confide everything to him. Using Jalilar to distract Kiloran while Cheylan makes off with Elelar, free from pursuit. Even convincing Kiloran to make a mistake—in murdering Jalilar—so disastrous that Kiloran's enemies will now take advantage of it. Making Tansen think Cheylan is his ally, and then making Verlon think he's
his
ally."

"You don't know—"

"Oh, yes I do," he interrupted Mirabar, remembering. "Dulien, before he died, told me that Verlon had reached out to someone he thought could help him against Kiloran."

Vinn breathed, "His grandson the Guardian, in other words."

Baran nodded. "Judging by everything else, Cheylan's probably betraying Verlon, too. Or planning to." Baran paused for a moment of admiration. "I must say, I'm terribly glad Cheylan never befriended
me
. Such men are extremely dangerous."

Mirabar tried, "But perhaps we're overlooking—"

"Accept the unbelievable," Baran cheerfully quoted back at her.

"I've failed." Mirabar looked sick as she added pensively, "And now I must do the unthinkable."

"What does that mean?" Vinn asked.

She took a breath and then let it out in a rush. "It means I'm going after Elelar."

"What?" Vinn blurted.

"No!" Najdan said. "You can't."

"I would suggest a disguise," Baran advised.

Najdan glared at him. "Surely you, the father of her child, aren't agreeing—"

"She would go whether I agreed or not," Baran pointed out. "And I'm far too ill to waste energy trying to stop her. Besides if Cheylan is indeed the man described in that Calling, then it's evidently Mirabar's destiny to confront him. And you know how stubborn my wife is about destiny."

Najdan argued, "There's still plenty of time to—"

"Is there?" Baran asked. "If I wanted what Cheylan wants, then I would conceive that child as quickly as possible and keep Elelar prisoner somewhere until the baby was born."

"Then murder the mother?" Mirabar guessed.

"A woman like Elelar? Yes," Baran agreed. "She would be impossible to control. If I wanted unchallenged influence over the child, in order to secure dominance of Sileria, I'd kill Elelar soon after she delivers the baby. It would be easy enough to explain. Women die in childbirth all of the time."

"Protect what you most long to destroy," Mirabar said, a terrible understanding dawning on her features. "I must stop Cheylan. He'll destroy our future... I have to go after Elelar. I have to protect her and... if there
is
to be a child..."

"You still think the father might be someone else?" Baran asked skeptically.

"I don't know what I think anymore." She turned to Najdan. "We must leave immediately. Tell Haydar to pack a few things for me."

Najdan nodded and left, followed by Vinn, who volunteered to have two horses saddled for them. 

Baran rose and went to her. "Where will you go first?"

"Elelar's estate."

"She won't be there anymore," he said with certainty.

"I pray that you're wrong." She sighed. "But if you're right about Cheylan, then that's where I'll have to start hunting him." Her jaw trembled. "If you're right... I'm the one who caused all this. I told him about Jalilar, about Elelar. I let him—"

"Do you have any idea where he might have taken Elelar?" he interrupted.

Mirabar stopped the pointless self-recrimination. She was strong and understood. Regrets would only cripple her now, and she couldn't afford any weakness. "In a way. I think I've seen the place in visions. The first time I ever saw it, it somehow seemed like... like a prison to me. If he means to hold Elelar against her will, I believe it will be there. I just don't know where it is."

"No idea at all?"

"I think..." She nodded. "I think it must be in the east, where Cheylan grew up. Close to the volcano."

"It'll be a difficult journey now."

"I know."

He placed a hand over her womb, delighting in the cool power he could sense there. "Take good care of her."

She covered his hand with her own. "We will take care of each other, as Dar intended."

"This child," Baran whispered to her, "is very powerful already. I can feel her when I'm this close to you. Trust her."

She nodded.

He was surprised by the sudden impulse to be, if only for a moment, a good husband again... as he sent his wife off to perhaps the most dangerous task in Sileria, short of storming Kiloran's lair at Kandahar. So he thought of the most tender thing he could say. "May the wind be at your back."

Mirabar gave him a puzzled look.

Baran shrugged as he realized, "That may have been an unwise blessing. It was the last thing my wife ever said to me. The day I left our home at Kandahar, thinking I'd soon see her again."

She frowned slightly. "It sounds like something Zarien would say."

"Who?"

"Tansen's son. He's sea-born."

"Really?" That surprised him. A
shallah
and a sea-born boy. "So was my wife."

"Then..." Mirabar held his gaze for a moment. "Then I hope I take her blessing with me."

Elelar heard trilling, chanting, feverish ululating in the distance. The night was aglow with the fiery light of the restless volcano. The exalted praise-singing of Dar's worshippers, who populated the slopes of Darshon, filled the air all around Elelar.

She smelled sulfur and brimstone, the powerful odors of the angry goddess. It was both heady and nauseating, somehow seductive and menacing all at once. The belly of the mountain rumbled so loudly Elelar could hardly hear herself think.

Cheylan had insisted they abandon their mounts before dark, and Elelar hadn't objected. The animals were jumpy and unpredictable by then, at the foot of Darshon, where the ground seemed to move with Dar's poisonous breathing and hot bleeding, where the sky was on fire with Otherworldly smoke and steam, where the destroyer goddess groaned and screamed at will.

Cheylan had been receptive to Elelar's subtle overtures since yesterday, but he was still not noticeably more communicative. Now that she was so afraid she could hardly speak, Elelar accepted the hand he offered her as he helped her over a bed of crumbling pumice. She asked him, "Are we climbing to the summit. Are we... going up there?"

Up there
. Where half-mad, mystically-summoned pilgrims ascended when Dar Called them. Where some were dying in calamitous eruptions of smoke, boiling mud, and deadly fumes. Where others survived to sing wildly, day and night, in praise of Dar.

"No," Cheylan said. "We're not going up there."

"I don't have to... jump into the volcano?" she asked, hearing her voice falter.

The ground suddenly shook again, and Elelar flinched as the volcano roared overhead. The trilling of Dar's faithful swelled to an ear-shattering pitch as the rumbling slowly faded.

"No," Cheylan said.

Elelar looked at him blankly. "No..."

"No, you don't have to jump," he explained, his expression kind and sympathetic.

"What do I have to do?" she demanded.

He gazed at her with longing. Even with tenderness. "Please, Elelar. Just come with me."

"Where are we going?"

This was all so strange, and she was afraid. So afraid now. 
      "We're nearly there," he promised.

"Where?"

"You'll see."

"But—"

Elelar gasped as the ground started trembling again. She stumbled and fell away from Cheylan.

A volcanic vent opened and started spewing yellow smoke at her.

"Cheylan!" She was separated from him by the glowing, billowing smoke. "
Chey
..." Elelar starting coughing violently, then fell back, realizing that she mustn't inhale this deadly vapor.

"Cheyl..."

Elelar fell to her knees, choking harder as the smoke wrapped itself around her. Her eyes watered. The ground shook harder. She couldn't see Cheylan. Couldn't hear his voice. She felt dizzy and sick, confused and weak. The violent praise-singing filled her ears.

Why didn't Cheylan help her? Where were all those mad praise singers when she needed them? Why didn't anyone try to...

This is it
, she realized, clutching her throat as she fell face down onto the pumice and ash, her head swimming with bright lights and black oblivion. 

I thought there would be more to it than this...
 
      But no. Dar wanted her dead carcass to rot on the slopes of Darshon, forgotten and ignored.

There would be no glory for the woman who had betrayed the Firebringer.

Wondering how Cheylan knew, and whether Mirabar had really foreseen this, Elelar surrendered.

I am coming, Dar. I am coming at last.

Josarian was finally avenged.

Mirabar passed through so many stages of self-condemnation, despair, disbelief, and dread that she felt numb by the time she reached Elelar's estate. Even the bandits which had attacked her the night before, mistaking her for a
torena
due to the disguise she wore, had been unable to stir a healthy level of terror in her. She felt almost detached as she frightened them away with spears of fire. Even the sight of Najdan killing one of them failed to affect her the way such violence usually did.

Not even Mirabar's numb, exhausted condition, however, could mitigate the jarring shock she got upon being welcomed into Elelar's home to discover
Torena
Chasimar in residence there.

"A Valdan?" Mirabar blurted rudely to Elelar's maid, Faradar, who escorted her into a grand reception room. "
Here?"

Torena
Chasimar twisted her hands, her eyes bulging as she gazed at Mirabar and murmured, "Half-Valdan."

"Here?" Mirabar repeated to Faradar. "In
Elelar's
home?"

She knew that Elelar, who had married one Valdan and slept with numerous others, hated them with an obsessive passion.

"It's a long story,
sirana
," Faradar said, looking positively haggard.

"And probably a very interesting one," Mirabar replied, tempted. "But, unfortunately, I haven't got time to hear it." She tore off the hot black wig she wore, along with the headdress Haydar had woven for her. Faradar took the wig and headdress from her, absently murmuring something about having them brushed before Mirabar left again.
Torena
Chasimar gasped and fell back a step as Mirabar's lava-red hair tumbled down around her shoulders.

"It's true!" Chasimar blurted, gawking at her undisguised appearance.

Mirabar's gaze dropped to the woman's bulging belly. "Darfire, is
everyone
in Sileria breeding?"

Chasimar covered her womb with her hands, as if fearing Mirabar's fiery gaze could penetrate her flesh to disturb the child she carried.

Too tired to think before she spoke, Mirabar frowned and asked, "Is it Zimran's?"

Chasimar made a strange gurgling sound. Faradar snorted, brought a hand up to her mouth, and started coughing.

"It's my late husband's!" Chasimar's tone was outraged.

Mirabar eyed her skeptically. "It was a reasonable qu—"

"
Sirana
," Najdan prodded from behind Mirabar.

Mirabar cleared her throat. "Yes. Excuse me. I apologize. Never mind." She looked at Faradar, "Where is
Torena
Elelar?"

Faradar's uneasy expression shifted into dark dread. "You don't know?"

Najdan came forward as he said, "Cheylan has taken her, hasn't he?"

Torena
Chasimar edged backwards, her frankly stupid face alarmed as she stared at the assassin. "She left with him."

"Where did they go?" Najdan asked tersely.

"Well..." Chasimar looked at Faradar.