The Destroyer Goddess (82 page)

He watched the White Dragon rise out of the lake, an enormous, glittering, brilliantly grotesque monster born of Kiloran's union with the water. The creature's long, curved claws looked terrifying, and its teeth were like a cluster of
shir
. Though it had no discernible eyes, it turned unerringly toward him, moving like a giant lizard.

"I'm disappointed with the aesthetics," Baran said to it. "I hope you won't be hurt if I admit that I expected something more attractive."

As it moved toward him, he crystallized the water around it. The creature looked almost comically startled as it came to a sudden, involuntary halt—well,
Baran
thought it was comical, though he supposed few people shared his sense of humor.

The White Dragon roared with rage and struck out at the hardened water. A few shards chipped off and flew around randomly in response to the power of these blows, but the solid substance withstood the attack.

Next, the creature started foaming. Baran briefly wondered if this was a sign of rage, but then he realized it was another attempt to challenge his power. The body of the White Dragon gradually dissolved as it roiled and foamed. It melted and sank into the crystal-hard water... which also began roiling and foaming. Baran resisted it, trying to keep it solid, but the creature was too strong. It would, he realized, succeed within moments.

He couldn't create a White Dragon of his own—not here and now. The process required time, strength, and water that wasn't already in another waterlord's grip. 

As the White Dragon dissolved the water which imprisoned it and then began reemerging, to attack again, Baran wondered what to do next.

Tansen turned away from the solid wall and looked around the room, trying to form a plan. Kiloran entered a moment later, looking as he always looked—fat, old, shrewd, and formidable.

Tansen reflexively reached for his swords. The moment they were in his hands, enormous tendrils of water shot out of the ceiling and seized them from him. Startled, he looked up and saw his swords dangling from watery coils high overhead. Out of reach.

Then, before Tansen could stop him, Zarien raced forward. "No! Don't!"

"Stay away from him!" Tansen ordered, following the boy. A pillar of water crashed down on him from the ceiling, then turned hard as rock and pinned him to the floor.

"No!" Zarien cried. "Don't hurt him!"

Barely able to breathe, Tansen turned his head to look at them. The floor beneath his cheek was glassy, smooth, and cold.

Kiloran stared at Zarien. "You're
protecting
him?" The tone was so ominous, Tansen suddenly feared for Zarien's safety.

"Let him go," Zarien insisted.

"This will happen again," Kiloran warned the boy. "You will never be safe while he lives."

"He didn't come here to kill me."

Kiloran sighed heavily and shook his head. "Do you think Armian was willing to believe it, either? And look what happened to him."

Tansen snarled, "Leave Armian out of this!"

Kiloran made a fist, and the pillar of crystallized water pushed down harder on Tansen. He made an involuntary sound and thought he felt a rib crack.

"Stop!" Zarien shouted.

"It's him or us!" Kiloran gestured to the corpses of the four assassins on the blood-drenched floor. "He's already murdered the four men I left here to protect you! What else to do you need to see to accept the truth, Zarien?"

"No, he only—"

"Damn, Baran!" Kiloran looked distracted and seemed, momentarily, to forget that Zarien and Tansen existed.

Zarien ran over to Tansen and started pushing at the pillar coming down from the ceiling. Nothing happened, of course.

"Water magic," Tansen said between gritted teeth.

"Tansen killed his own father," Kiloran warned Zarien, focusing on the two of them again. "Armian was a shrewd man, and he never saw it coming. If Tansen has made you believe he won't hurt you, then you must believe
me
when I tell you he's lying."

"
Please
, let him go," Zarien pleaded.

"No. I'm sorry. He has to die."

Baran called enormous tendrils out of the lake to twine around the White Dragon, capturing it. When it was his prisoner, he tightened the tendrils, commanding them to cut through the White Dragon's body like blades, dismembering the creature. After it was sinking into the water in three separate pieces, he let go, exhausted. He was nearly at the end of his strength.

Where in the Fires were Tansen and the boy? He couldn't hold out much longer, and who knew what else Kiloran had in store for...

"Dar have mercy," he breathed, staring in stunned surprise as the water heaved where the remains of the White Dragon had dissolved. Then he laughed. What an absurd thing to say. Of course She wouldn't have mercy! When had She ever?

Now
three
creatures rose out of the water, each forming itself from the remains of the one he'd destroyed by sundering it into thirds.

"I admit, I'm impressed." It would be petty to pretend otherwise.

Baran lifted a high, roaring wall of water between himself and his attackers, and he used it to force them back. They were strong, though, and he was indeed getting weaker. One of them finally broke through and seized him in its claws.

The agony was appalling, but Baran had been living with pain too long to be distracted by it. He formed a
shir
blade out of the water and used it to slit the creature's throat. This only seemed to slow it down, so he cut off its head. It dropped him, and he sank under the surface for a moment, realizing that the White Dragon he had just beheaded would probably become
two
new opponents in a few moments. A little discouraging, all things considered.

When he lifted himself out of the water, supported by a swelling wave meant to carry him away from the next attacker, he discovered his reflexes were getting too slow. One of the creatures knocked him sideways, back into the water. Disoriented, he didn't have time to form a shield around himself before it grabbed him. Fortunately, he hadn't let go of the
shir
blade, which he used to slice its gut open. Rather than killing it, this just distracted it long enough for the other White Dragon to seize Baran, stealing him as if he were a juicy meal. Which, he realized, he was.

Baran screamed in agony as the creature's enormous fangs sank into him. He tried to retain enough control to keep fighting the thing in the few moments he had left to live.

"I won't..." Zarien took a step forward and said to Kiloran, "I won't let you do this."

Kiloran's eyes narrowed as Tansen watched, but rather than reprimand or punish the boy, he chose another tactic. "Why not ask him about Armian? Then see if you're still determined to protect him."

"All right."

"Well?"

"Let him up first." When Kiloran hesitated, Zarien added, "How can he talk with you crushing him like this?"

Kiloran shrugged—and the pillar of water dissolved, drenching Tansen. Startled by the cold, bleeding from the
shir
wound in his shoulder, and now positive that a rib was cracked, Tansen rose slowly to his feet and met Zarien's eyes.

"Armian made me his son after the Valdani slaughtered my family," he said, moving slowly toward the two of them. "When he met Kiloran, they made plans together for the Honored Society to rule all of Sileria. Armian admired Kiloran and wanted to be like him. To be his heir." Tansen paused, remembering. "They'd have ruled the mountains together through bloodshed and terror."

Kiloran sneered. "We were going to
free
Sileria—"

"Zarien wants my story," Tansen said. "Your version can wait until after I'm dead, old man."

Zarien, looking hollow-eyed, said to Kiloran, "Let him tell me why he did it."

It was the most important thing he would ever say, and quite possibly the
last
thing he'd ever say, so Tansen made sure he spoke honestly and with simple clarity. "He was my father, Zarien, and he tried hard to be a good one, as I've tried. And he made mistakes, as I've made them. But I believed that killing Armian was the only way to stop him. To keep the Society from unchallenged rule of Sileria. To save this country from another thousand years of slavery—under the waterlords, rather than under foreign conquerors."

"Couldn't you have talked to him?" Zarien pleaded, sounding  as if he thought that long ago murder could now be undone, taken back. 

"I tried. Many times. He wouldn't listen."

"Couldn't you have done something besides
kill
him?" Zarien begged.

He must be truthful, since he this might be the last time he ever spoke to Zarien. "Maybe I could have," he admitted. "At the time, I didn't think so. Even now, I don't really know. I came from a people who viewed killing as the solution to overwhelming problems, and when I couldn't solve mine by talking to Armian... When the rains came and I ran out of time... I killed him, so I could stop his plan." 

Tansen again felt the weight of what he had done as he gazed into Zarien's sad eyes and continued, "I loved my father, Zarien, despite his faults. And I have dreamed of that night more times than I can count. But even now, in the same circumstances... I think I would do it again. I'm not sure, but I think..." He wished he could say he'd been absolutely right, but he knew better. "Since then, I've only done one other thing that I am as ashamed of—keeping this secret from you, when you had a right to know. I just..." He started to sigh, but stopped when his rib protested. "I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't want... I didn't want you to know this about me. I'm sorry."

Zarien bit his lip and looked down.

"He will only try again, Zarien," Kiloran said calmly. "Even if you believe he won't kill you, you must surely know his desire to kill
me
?"

Zarien lifted his head and met Tansen's gaze again.

"You might prefer," Kiloran advised Zarien, "not to watch this."

Zarien's eyes widened. "No!"

"It must be this way, Zarien." Kiloran's expression was cold, his tone inflexible.

The floor suddenly curled up to seize Tansen in a dozen icy, twining arms. He felt himself sinking into it and realized Kiloran meant to push him beneath the palace to drown him there.

"No!" Zarien cried. "Stop!" 

Tansen struggled against the water capturing him and dragging him down. He saw Zarien drop to his knees and frown fiercely at him. Then, even as he fought... the tendrils melted away.

"What are you doing?" Kiloran shouted.

Zarien turned to the old waterlord as Tansen hauled himself out of the hole he'd been sinking into. 

"Don't do this!" Zarien insisted.

Tansen's swords were still hanging from the ceiling; but there was another weapon here which belonged to him, too. Instinct warned him to move, and he made a rolling dive the very moment Kiloran opened up the floor beneath him. 

"Stop!" Zarien said, and a geyser erupted in the same spot as the boy rebelled against his teacher.

Tansen recognized Armian's
shir
even among so many. It had lived with him too long for him ever to mistake it for any other. He seized it, turned, and leaped on Kiloran, sliding the enchanted blade into the old man's body.