The Destroyer Goddess (83 page)

Kiloran cried out in pain and sank to his knees, dragging Tansen with him.

"Father!" Zarien cried.

It wasn't a mortal wound. Tansen could tell. He twisted the blade and tried to open Kiloran's gut, but the old man's surprisingly strong grip on his hand opposed him.

"Father!"

As Tansen looked over his shoulder in response to Zarien's cry, a chill swept through him.

Zarien's arms were raised for a blow. Tansen froze and stared at him, stunned, disbelieving. 

The boy leaped at him and forcibly knocked him away from Kiloran. Well-trained, Tansen kept his grip on the hilt of the
shir
, taking it with him—as part of the watery ceiling collapsed upon Zarien and Kiloran. Even the few drops which landed on Tansen's leg were so cold they burned painfully.

Kiloran had tried to kill him with that move.

Zarien had saved him.

"Get away from him, Zarien!" Tansen shouted.

The icy water rose around the two of them, a barrier which Tansen couldn't pass. Zarien was crying as Kiloran clutched at him.

"I'm sorry," the boy rasped. "I am sorry."

Blood from Kiloran's
shir
wound spilled onto the floor, mixing with the water as it started to twist and heave. Kiloran was panting, his eyes shocked, his grasp on Zarien weakening. 

"Noooo!" Kiloran said in the most awful voice Tansen had ever heard. "
No
."

Tansen realized what was happening. "
No
!"

"I'm sorry," Zarien said as he made tendrils of water twine around his father's throat to murder him. "I didn't want to..."

"No!" Tansen shouted. 

Hoping he wouldn't lose a foot in the flesh-killing water surrounding the two wizards, Tansen lashed out at Zarien with a swift kick, sending the boy sprawling and distracting him enough to stop him. The water collapsed away from Kiloran and spread around him. Just in case it was still ensorcelled with deadly cold, Tansen didn't risk stepping into it. Instead, he threw the
shir
. His aim was true and it landed in Kiloran's chest, lodging solidly there. Kiloran fell backwards and lay in the mingling water and blood. 

Baran felt the White Dragon suddenly collapse and drop him into the water. Within moments, the mystical creatures that infested the lake had all dissolved and disappeared. 

Bleeding from a dozen places and barely alive, he knew what that meant. 

Kiloran is dead
.

It was done. The old man was gone.

I've finally won
.

It was why Baran had broken his vows and chosen new allies, knowing it was his only possible chance of outliving Kiloran. Working together, they had now destroyed him. 

And Baran could finally let go...

Or life will let
me
go
, he thought, as he willed the water to carry him to the lake's shore.

He lay there for a while before he heard a familiar voice shout, "
Siran!
"

Rough hands hauled him out of the water and turned him over. It hurt monstrously, but he was too weak to protest, even to open his eyes. He heard pleading and felt someone trying to shake him into consciousness.

Now, really, is that considerate?

"What
happened
to him?" someone asked in horror.

"
Kiloran
happened to him," Vinn replied, sounding angry and mournful at the same time.

Yes, in the end, it was the answer to his whole miserable life.

Kiloran happened to me
.

Baran was ready to go, so he didn't fight death when it embraced him. And if he happened to meet Dar during his sojourn, he fully intended to spit in the old bitch's face.

Zarien gaped at Kiloran in wide-eyed shock for a long moment, then turned his gaze on Tansen.

"I live every day with knowing I killed my father," Tansen told him. "I don't want you to live with that, too."

Zarien rose slowly to his feet and looked down at Kiloran as he lay dying. Tears rolled down the boy's cheeks. 

"He's not my father," Zarien said at last in a broken voice. "He's just the man who raped my mother."

"Fire," Kiloran rasped.

"What's he saying?" Zarien asked.

"I don't care," Tansen said.

"
Fire
," said the old man.

Something clattered to the floor behind them, startling them. Tansen whirled around and was relieved to see that his swords had fallen down. Kiloran's power was dying with him. Tansen retrieved the swords, sheathed them, and said, "Let's get out of here before the palace collapses and we drown."

Zarien said, "It sounds like he's saying..."

"Zarien, we're leaving," Tansen insisted.

The boy went closer to Kiloran. "Fire?"

Tansen went to his side, meaning to pull him away. But the expression on the dying man's face made him pause. Kiloran looked utterly astonished and...
frightened
.

As Kiloran's eyes closed, he murmured one last time, "Fire." His body shuddered briefly, and then he was still.

"What does it mean?" Zarien asked.

"He probably felt the Guardians encroaching on his territory." Tansen bent over to retrieve the
shir
.

"What are you
doing?
"

Tansen yanked hard to pull it out of Kiloran's chest. "I want it. It was my father's."

The palace suddenly heaved, as if caught in an earthquake, and then the solid walls started slowly dissolving. 

"Let's go," Tansen said.

"Something's wrong." Zarien looked around with a strange expression.

"
Yes
, something's wrong. The wizard who made this palace is dead and we'll die, too, if we don't—"

"No, something
else
," Zarien insisted. "Something..." He started breathing hard, as if scared. "Something's
here
."

Tansen felt a chill sweep through him. Had Kiloran created something that would avenge his death? Something which this powerful boy could sense? A White Dragon? Something worse? He tucked Armian's
shir
inside his boot and grabbed his son's arm, determined to escape. When they turned around, though—

The floor was
glowing
. Not the silvery glow of water which he'd seen the day the sea king was reborn, but a fierce orange glow like the caldera at Darshon. It spread across the floor, ran under their feet, crept up the walls, and flowed across the ceiling. There was a terrifying rumbling all around them, and the palace started shaking hard even as it continued dissolving.

Then the floor beneath Kiloran abruptly caved in. Rather than swallow him, lava flowed up, engulfed him, and set him on fire. Tansen fell back, as astonished as he was afraid—especially when the dead wizard started screaming. Horrible, fierce, agonized screams... Screams he'd heard in his nightmares. Screams he recognized. 

"That's not Kiloran," he said slowly, watching the lava heave and bubble after Kiloran's body had been consumed.

"What?" Zarien bleated, staring at the transformation. 

These were the screams he'd heard the night Josarian died. The night the White Dragon, born of Kiloran in a mystical union with water, had devoured the Firebringer whole before sinking back into the river which Kiloran commanded.

"It's..."

"What?" Zarien asked. "What is it?"

He knew, even as the lava turned to fire, and an insubstantial form began to take shape in the flames, who it was. "
Josarian
."

"Where?"

Tansen
.

"Josarian!" He started forward.

"Father, don't!" Zarien held him back. "It's fire!"

"It's Josarian!"

"Let's get out of here!" Zarien said.

"Josarian!" he shouted.

His brother looked pleased for a moment, then worried. 

He's right
, Josarian told him.
You have to go
.

"What are you..."

Tashinar is here to help me, but I still can't control it
. 

"Control what?" he asked.

It's happening very fast, Tan
.

"
What's
happening?"

You've got to go now! Get away!

"No, I—"

I will always be here
, Josarian promised him.
Right here. It's what Dar wanted.

"What Dar wanted?"

Why did he die, Dar? Why did You let him die?

For this
, Josarian answered.
For this
.

"For
what?
"

Go now
.

"Father!" Zarien pulled him so hard he staggered. 

Tansen went with his son, who clutched his arm with one hand as he explored a dissolving wall with the other.

"The lake's not ensorcelled anymore," Zarien said with certainty. "All you have to do is hold your breath and kick your legs. I'll get us to the surface. Don't let go of me."

Tansen glanced over his shoulder for one last look at his dead brother, but Josarian was already gone. In his place there was a small volcanic eruption occurring. If the water didn't kill them both, then the lava surely would.

The ceiling collapsed, showering water into the lava-flooded room, raising skin-searing steam that spread out and rolled toward them.

Tansen took a deep breath and held onto his son as they dived through the wall and into the cold waters of Lake Kandahar to swim to its surface.

Chapter Thirty

Whatever doesn't kill us sets us free.

                                    —Kintish Proverb

Now that he wasn't distracted by imminent death, Tansen's
shir
wound hurt like all the Fires, his cracked rib was hideously uncomfortable, and every bone in his body ached from falling through Kiloran's ceiling to land on Kiloran's floor.

"I don't want to do anything like this again for a very, very long time," he said, sitting on a high hillside with Mirabar, overlooking Kandahar in the distance.

Her responding smile was distracted.

He hesitated, then said, "I'm sorry for your loss. I know you... were fond of Baran."

She nodded and looked very sad for a moment. "I will mourn him."

"Of course."

"For a year."

"A
year?
" he blurted. 

Her expression was uncompromising. "It's customary."

"But
he
was hardly customary!"

"I suppose he'd find it amusing if he knew—"

"Oh, wherever he is right now, he's laughing, I'm sure." When she didn't reply, Tansen prodded, "I have to wait a whole year?"

"Yes," she said serenely, gazing from this quiet hillside to the violent eruption still occurring in what had been Lake Kandahar only yesterday.

The dramatic light of the setting sun, streaked with the volcanic ash and smoke that was only slowly fading from their skies, touched her fiery hair and cast a shadow along her cheek. Oh, well, Tansen thought. She was worth a year's wait, if that's the way she wanted it.