The Destroyer Goddess (55 page)

Something's hit us
, he realized.

Another boat?

There was another hard thud, and the whole boat shuddered while being tossed about like a feather on the wind. Ronall's body kept flailing against the hard deck, and it felt as if Najdan's grip would tear his arm from his body.

Only when he heard himself moaning in terror did he realize that the wild tumult was now settling into a series of big, irregular swells in the sea which the little boat rode with buoyant surety.

Ronall was promptly sick.

He felt Najdan release his grip, then heard the assassin rise to his feet.

"Zarien!" Najdan shouted. "Zarien!"

There was a frantic babble in sea-born dialect.

"What are they saying?" Najdan asked. 

Ronall lay on the deck groaning.

Cruel hands hauled him to his feet and shook him. "What are they saying?"

"I don't speak sea-born," Ronall muttered, wiping his mouth.

Najdan looked at the shouting sea-born again... and drew his
shir
. 

Ronall staggered backwards. "What are you
doing?
"

"I can't let Tansen's son die." He bent over and tugged off his boots. "I gave my word."

"Zarien?" Ronall said vaguely. "Where is—
wait!"

He stumbled after Najdan, who evaded his grasp and,
shir
in hand, jumped overboard.

"No!" Ronall cried. "There's a dragonfish down there!"

The sea-born family turned as one to stare at him. 

"A dragonfish?" the father croaked in common Silerian.

"Didn't anyone but
me
see it?" Ronall demanded. "Where's Zarien?"

"In the water."

"Zarien!" he shouted in panic.

Tansen will kill me. It's not my fault, but he'll kill me, anyhow.

It didn't take Mirabar long to find Faradar, despite the confusion which reigned in Gamalan immediately after the earthquake. There were about one hundred people here, but Faradar was the only other woman.

Fortunately, the maid had not been hurt. So the two of them started helping those who hadn't been quite as lucky. A few people had been injured, though none of them very badly. Still, everyone was shaken and even jumpier than they'd been before. Mirabar herself flinched when she heard the piercing cry of a sentry. 

Her eyes met Faradar's, who asked, "Could it finally be Jagodan?"

"It had better be," Mirabar replied. "Even Tansen can't keep these men here much longer."

Like everyone else around them, she and Faradar rushed to the remains of the main square. Tansen was already there, tense and waiting. Mirabar went to his side and followed the direction of his gaze. The parched, ash-caked land looked grim, and the heat-baked, earthquake-cracked cliffs were both beautiful and forbidding. 

Tansen shifted position and looked up at a sentry perched on one of the cliffs above them. A moment later, he waved to acknowledge a signal that meant nothing to Mirabar, and he murmured to her, "It's him. Finally." She could hear the relief in his voice.

More than thirty men appeared over the rise of the main trail leading into Gamalan. They came on foot, moving fast, as indifferent to the heat as they were to their own thirst. Their long strides kicked up volcanic ash which rose to cloud the air around them, so that they seemed to approach in a whirl of smoke and mist. Battle-hardened
shallaheen
, they were lean and scarred, with sun-darkened skin and long hair as black as polished lava stone. These were the Lironi, the biggest, fiercest, and most powerful
shallah
clan in the east, notorious for their hot-headed violence, their love of fighting, and their reckless courage.

"That's him, isn't it?" Mirabar whispered to Tansen. "The big gray-haired one walking ahead of them all."

"That's Jagodan," he confirmed.

As Jagodan approached, Mirabar could see that he had the face of a tough, proud, and shrewd man, but not of a forgiving one. She supposed that Viramar had either loved Kiman shah Moynari more than life itself, or else she had been an utter fool. One only had to look at Jagodan shah Lironi to guess what he'd do to a faithless wife and her lover. 

And now that he'd done it, it was also hard to imagine him apologizing for it, let alone offering reparations to the other clans.

"What do these clans want?" Mirabar asked suddenly, keeping her voice low.

Tansen kept his gaze fixed on the approaching clan leader as he replied, "They want me to kill him."

"Shouldn't someone go in after him?" Ronall prodded, gazing out across the tossing waves, his mind reeling with fear for Zarien.

"The assassin just did," the sea-born father said. "It's not wise to send more than one rescuer into the water unless it's necessary."

"Then let's get into the oarboat and go after—"

"We just lost it in the earthquake,
toren
."

Ronall considered jumping in after Najdan, because drowning in those big waves—which he would surely do if the dragonfish out there didn't get him first—would be preferable to facing Tansen if Zarien died.

"
Toren
, the dragonfish can't kill him, even if it attacks," the sea-born man said soothingly. "You saw the scars."

"Josarian only jumped into the volcano once," Ronall pointed out. "Even the Firebringer didn't count on living through something like that twice. Zarien shouldn't, either."

"Look!"

Amidst the heaving waves, Najdan's arm stuck up,
shir
in hand, signaling to them.

"Is Zarien alive?" Ronall asked weakly.

No one answered. Najdan started swimming back to the boat, towing Zarien with one arm. The boy looked dead.

Oh, Dar, just take me now
.

Ronall stared stupidly, feeling numb and useless, as the family sprang into action, throwing a line to Najdan to haul him in, then bringing Zarien's limp form aboard the boat. 

"He's bleeding," Ronall mumbled, watching the sea-born mother and her two daughters work on Zarien's prone body.

The sea-born man pointed to the foremast, which was now destroyed, as if broken in half by the hand of a goddess. "When the other boat hit us, it smashed our mast. It hit Zarien, and he was tossed from the boat."

Ronall heard Najdan climbing on board behind him, breathing hard, but he didn't take his eyes off Zarien.

"I don't think there can be a dragonfish stalking us,
toren
," the sea-born man opined.

"I saw one. I'm sure I saw one," Ronall murmured.

"No. The boy was in the sea, bleeding, for too long. If a dragonfish were so close, it would have attacked before we brought him aboard."

"Maybe it was frightened away or hurt in the earthquake."

The man shrugged.

Suddenly Zarien gasped, choked, spewed sea water, and then start coughing.

"Is he all right?" Ronall asked.

"Yes," the mother assured him. "He will be fine."

"That boy," Najdan said wearily, "is a lot of trouble."

"We should go ashore," Ronall suggested.

"Or farther out to sea," Najdan countered.

"No one's going anywhere today," the sea-born man informed them. When they both looked at him, he explained, "One mast is destroyed, the other badly cracked, and our oarboat has been lost. Until we can repair the cracked mast, we're anchored here, whether we like it or not."

"There are hundreds of boats here," Ronall said. "Maybe one of them will take us ashore."

"That will depend," Najdan pointed out, "on finding someone who doesn't have similar problems right now."

"The other clans want your life," Tansen said to Jagodan. "Yours for the ones you took. That will cancel the debt and end the bloodfeud."

They sat alone together in the little stone dwelling where Mirabar and Faradar slept each night. The two women, as well as more than a hundred men, waited outside, beneath the smoke-filled sky, while Tansen presented the terms of truce to the clan leader whose impetuous slaughter of his wife and her lover had destroyed the eastern
shallah
alliance and put all of Sileria in jeopardy.

Jagodan nodded, his expression stoic and weary.

Tansen studied him. "You expected this, didn't you?"

"Wouldn't
you
have expected it?" 

Relief, dark and sad, unfurled inside of Tansen's chest. "It's why you were so late in coming here, isn't it? You had to... make plans. Prepare your clan to carry on without you."

"I've chosen my eldest daughter's husband to lead the clan after my death. You will like dealing with him. He's honorable and more... cool-headed than my brothers or my sons."

"Good." Tansen couldn't take his eyes away from the dark, haunted, intelligent ones which gazed into his. "We're facing—
making
—a new world here."

Jagodan nodded. "Yes. I understand that now." His voice was raw and exhausted. "One act of vengeance... so typical, even so honorable... My faithless wife and the
sriliah
who dishonored me by bedding her... To kill them for their betrayal, and to kill others in order to defend my right to kill them..."

It was their way. It had always been their way in Sileria.

"But then I saw it destroy the alliance I had built," Jagodan continued. "I saw Verlon regain territory we had taken away from him, and I saw people go thirsty because of it. I saw clans who had fought together against the Valdani and against the Society now turn on each other..." Jagodan's eyes misted with tears as he whispered, "I saw what I was destroying. Not just the alliance, but the whole future. I have dishonored all the sacrifices which my clan has made, and forsaken all the people who've died to free Sileria. Forsaking my slain loved ones, and even the Firebringer himself..." He sighed heavily. "All for one act of vengeance, so typical... even so honorable."

"I'm so sorry I sent Kiman—"

"No, Tansen," Jagodan said. "He was a good fighter, a shrewd warrior. We brought the Society to its knees. We were nearly free. You couldn't have known what he would do, what my wife would want. I don't blame..." Jagodan shrugged. "It was just... Honor. Vengeance."

Tansen nodded. "I understand." 
      "Yes. If anyone would understand that, it would be the last of the Gamalani." After a moment, he added, "And if anyone would understand why I'm willing to die for it now, it would be the
roshah
who has led all of Sileria against the Society."

Roshah
. Stranger. Outsider. Foreigner.

"No one here has called me that for a long time."

"It's what made you who you are," Jagodan told him. "I don't mean a great warrior. You would always have been that. Oh, you wouldn't have those two swords and all of those..." He made a vague gesture. "... fancy Kintish fighting skills. But you would always have been a great fighter. You were born to be one. Anyone can see that."

"I will always remember a compliment like that coming from a warrior like you," Tansen said sincerely.

"But if you had not traveled in other lands and learned to think like a
roshah
, not just like a
shallah
, where would Sileria be now? Who would have taught Josarian how to fulfill his destiny? Who would have led us after the Firebringer died? Who would have challenged Kiloran himself?"