The Destroyer Goddess (73 page)

"He's not Tansen's son." Searlon's smile held malicious satisfaction. "You don't know the truth either, do you?"

Najdan looked distracted. "What truth?"

But Searlon had seen that brief moment of distraction and made his move. Najdan stiffened and made an awful sound when  Searlon's
shir
slid past his guard and plunged into his belly. His hands flailed limply behind his back for a blurry moment. Zarien tried to shout, but only choking sounds came out of his mouth.

"The boy," Searlon murmured to Najdan, "is—"

Najdan's left hand moved, and before Zarien realized what had happened, Searlon staggered backwards, eyes wide with shock, his hand clasped to his throat. Blood seeped out between his fingers.  

Najdan fell to his knees. "You always were," he said weakly  to Searlon, "too confident once you had made your killing blow."

"Najdan!" Zarien ran to him and—stupidly—tried to haul him to his feet.

"Stay back, boy!" Najdan snapped. "He's not dead yet."

That was true, but Searlon's death didn't take long. Zarien clung to Najdan as Searlon collapsed and a river of blood poured from the broad slit in his neck. His eyes remained open, turning dull and blank as his life ended. 

"When your hands flailed like that," Zarien said hoarsely to Najdan, now understanding what had happened too quickly for him to see. "You were shifting your
shir
to the hand he thought was harmless once he'd stabbed you."

Najdan sank lower, starting to double over. "I was getting too tired. He'd have succeeded if I hadn't... done something... extreme."

"You let him stab you
on purpose?
"

"It... distracted him..." Najdan fell slowly onto his side, then curled around the wound in his belly. "I swore to Tansen... wouldn't let Searlon kill you."

Zarien started crying. "He didn't want to kill me! You didn't have to do this! Najdan!
Najdan!"

Blood was spreading out from Najdan's body, soaking the ground around him. 

"Get help!" Zarien shouted to no one in particular as he tried to get a look at the wound. "Get a Sister!"

"A Sister... no good..." Najdan muttered, his eyes looking dull and unfocused. "
Shir
..."

"Najdan, no!" Zarien howled.

"
Zarien!
Is that you?"

He looked up, numbly recognizing Tansen's voice. "Father! I'm here! Help! Father!"

A moment later, Tansen shoved his way through the crowd of people. "Zarien!"

"They fought! I didn't know how to stop them!" Zarien babbled as Tansen took him by the shoulders and stared in shock at Najdan. "And then Najdan let him... let him... What do we do? Father, what do we—"

"
Najdan!
" a woman screamed.

She rushed forward and bent over the assassin, her red hair gleaming fiercely in this hazy light. "
No!
Noooo!"

"
Sir...ana
..." Najdan's blood-drenched hand grasped hers as she kept wailing in denial of his death.

"I didn't want them to fight!" Zarien cried. "Get a Sister! Someone get a—"

Those fierce golden eyes suddenly turned upon him. "
No
. Not a Sister." Mirabar rose to her feet, staring at him and Tansen as she panted with agitation. "It's a
shir
wound."

"But—"

"Like the one Tansen had. The one that healed, as if by magic." Her gaze fixed on Tansen. "Najdan thought it was water magic."

Tansen said, "But we don't know what—"

"What was different in your life that day?" Mirabar demanded, her voice deep and harsh. "What can't we explain?"

"Mira—"

"This boy!" She seized Zarien's arm, pulled him to the ground, and placed his hand over Najdan's wound. "What happened when Tansen's wound healed?"

"I don't know," he said, his mind whirling with panic. "It just—"

"
What did you do
?" she screamed

"Um..."

"
Exactly
what did you do?" she said more coherently.

"I was... washing the wound. Yes, that's right, washing the wound with water and a cloth."

Mirabar sank her teeth into her sleeve, yanked hard, and tore off a long strip of dirty material. 

Tansen said, "Mirabar..."

"Water," she snapped at him.

Tansen handed her his waterskin. She gave the cloth and the waterskin to Zarien, who soaked the cloth and started cleaning the wound. Najdan groaned.

"Then what?" Mirabar prodded.

"I remember that the blood wouldn't stop flowing." 

So he pressed down on Najdan's wound now, as he had pressed down on Tansen's wound then, willing it to stop bleeding. But the assassin's blood wouldn't stop flowing, just as Tansen's hadn't.

"And?" Mirabar's voice was dark with desperation.

"I..."
What did I do then?
"I prayed!"

"Pray now," she ordered.

"Yes."
Pray
.

His heart pounding with fear and confusion, Zarien begged Dar to make the wound stop bleeding. He prayed to all the gods of the wind and sea to save Najdan. He admonished the assassin to heal.

"
Sirana
," Najdan rasped weakly.

Heal, please, heal
, Zarien begged in silence.

A chilling heat passed through him, a cold fire that made him shiver even as it burned him. He inhaled sharply, remembering this sensation from the moment Tansen had healed. He drew his hand away as an icy mist rose from the wound, a crystalline glow that shimmered in the hazy air.

Zarien watched with a mingled sense of relief and dread as it faded away, leaving only Najdan's flesh in its wake. He saw Mirabar's stunned expression as she stared at the result. The life-stealing
shir
wound was gone. Only a silvery scar was left in its place.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Knowledge is hollow.

                                    —Kintish Proverb

Tansen gaped in stunned silence at Zarien, who knelt in the blood-drenched sand next to Mirabar and Najdan.

Najdan thought it was water magic..
.

All around them, the sea-born started chattering excitedly.

Water magic...

"No," Tansen said, even though it was a stupid thing to say now.

Zarien looked up at him, that young, tattooed face confused and afraid. "Father..."

Tansen heard the pleading in the boy's voice, but he was too shocked to respond.

Mirabar said hoarsely, "Najdan? How do you feel?"

"Better," was the weak response. "Just..."

"You've lost a lot of blood." Mirabar clutched his hand in both of hers and raised it to her cheek, inadvertently smearing her face with his blood. "You need to rest now."

"Thank..." Najdan tried to lift his head, but gave up the effort after a moment. "What... happened?"

"Zarien healed you," Mirabar said, brushing Najdan's hair away from his face.

Najdan frowned vaguely. "
Shir
... wound."

"Can anything heal a
shir
wound besides water magic?" she asked him.

"Only... time," he replied.

And time, they all knew, wouldn't have healed the deadly wound that Searlon had given Najdan. Only...

"Water magic," Mirabar said with certainty, looking at Zarien in wonder. "It was you. And it was you who saved Tansen's life that day."

"No!" Zarien cried as if accused of a terrible deed. "It's because Tansen is the sea king! That's why—"

"No, it's not... Tansen," Najdan said, sounding weary but more clear-headed. "It's Ronall."

"Ronall?" Zarien bleated.

Ronall?
Tansen thought.

Najdan said, "I saw... it happen. Lascari... all saw. We were there. He is... the one."

Mirabar gasped and looked up at Tansen, who felt as if he were at the other end of a long, dark tunnel. "That's what we saw!" she exclaimed. "That's what was happening in the sea. The birth—rebirth?—of the sea king!"

Najdan muttered, "Made me feel... sick to my stomach."

"The sea king..." Zarien murmured, looking out to sea with a shocked expression. "
Ronall
."

"You see, Zarien?" Mirabar put a bloody hand on the boy's arm. "It
was
you who healed Tansen." She gestured to Najdan and added, "Just like this. You're gifted... with water magic."

"
No
." Zarien sounded panicky.

"That's why..." Tansen's voice sounded hollow and his tongue felt clumsy. "Why you always know where there's water..."

"Father, please..."

"You can always find it," Tansen said, remembering. "No matter how dry the season or how unfamiliar the surroundings."

"You just can't smell it because you're a drylander!" Zarien insisted. "I don't have any special power!"

"Yes." Tansen rubbed a hand over the place where Zarien had healed his own
shir
wound. "You do. And the Olvar... Fires of Dar! The Olvar
knew
it."

Zarien rose to his feet, shaking his head. "No, he was just a crazy old—"

"You felt strange down in the tunnels. So close to all their water magic," Tansen said with growing conviction. "Because you felt things there that an ordinary person can't sense. That
I
can't sense."

Tears gathered in Zarien's eyes. "It's not my fault!"

Mirabar quickly said, "No one is blaming you for anything, Zarien. This is a gift. This is—"

"
He
doesn't think so," Zarien told her, gesturing to Tansen.

"I'm... very surprised." Tansen congratulated himself on such restrained understatement. "This isn't what I, uh..."

"Zarien," Mirabar said, giving Tansen a warning look as she rose to her feet. "Have there ever been any waterlords... er, I mean, water magic among the sea-born? It's a gift which can skip so many generations that someone like Baran can inherit it without even having known it was in his bloodline, but—"

"How do you know that?" Tansen asked.

"I've been living with a waterlord for a while now," she reminded him. "I know many things about water magic that I didn't know before." She rubbed a hand across her gently swelling belly. "And I'm learning more every day."

"I've never heard of water magic among the sea-born," Zarien said, sounding tragic. 

Najdan spoke from his prostrate position. "Your grandfather... might know. He's very—"

"No!" Zarien said emphatically.

"Your grandfather," Tansen breathed. "We should talk to him."

"No!" Zarien repeated.

Najdan said, "Linyan is be nearby, with Ronall. They—"

"
No!"

They all looked at Zarien. 

"I'll talk to him alone," Tansen said. "You don't have to see him or sp—"

"I've seen him," Zarien ground out. "We've been living on his boat for days."

That surprised Tansen. "Have you talked to him, then?"

The boy's complexion darkened under his tattoos. "Yes."

Tansen frowned. "You've found out the truth?"

"Let's go," Zarien said suddenly.

"The truth..." Najdan repeated.

"Stay out of this!" Zarien warned the assassin.

Mirabar asked, "Out of what?"

Najdan raised a hand to Mirabar, who helped him rise to a sitting position and knelt on the ground to support him. Then he asked Zarien, "Why didn't Searlon... want to kill you?"

Tansen glanced in confusion at the dead assassin. "What?"

"He had plenty of time," Najdan said to Zarien. "But he didn't do it. And you told me he didn't intend to do it."

Zarien just stared mutely at the ground.

"Searlon said..." Najdan paused.

"What?" Tansen prodded, feeling bewildered and slow-witted.

The assassin finished, "That he knew the truth about Zarien."

It was like being slapped without provocation. "What does Searlon know about my son that I don't?
What
truth?" His gaze sharpened as he looked at Zarien, who continued avoiding his eyes. "The truth about your parents?"

Mirabar asked, "Zarien, is it that you're not really sea-born?"

"I am!" Zarien said defensively. "My mother was sea-born. But she went ashore, and so the Lascari shunned her. When they found out I went ashore, too, Linyan said it was in my blood, because my mother had left them to marry a drylander... The rest doesn't matter."

"A drylander? And your mother..." Mirabar suddenly gasped, her brilliant eyes going wide as she gazed at Zarien. "A sea-born woman... fifteen years ago... water magic..." Mirabar forgot about Najdan, who sagged a little as she abandoned him to rise to her feet, her gaze fixed on the boy. "She made choices that brought her ashore..." Mirabar made a funny sound. "It was her, wasn't it, Zarien? Your mother was Alcinar."

Zarien flinched violently. "How do you know that?"

"Who's Alcinar?" Tansen demanded.

"A sea-born woman," Mirabar said slowly, "who went to live in the mountains, where she was loved obsessively... by two waterlords."

"Two waterlords?" Tansen remembered what Mirabar had told him about Baran and Kiloran, about the origin of their mutual enmity. "Are you saying Zarien's mother was Baran's wife?"