In Legend Born (10 page)

Tansen absently brushed away the footprints with the toe of one well-made Moorlander boot and pondered what he had learned so far. Who was this rabble rouser? Why had he decided to kill two Outlookers rather than accept the smuggling charge? As far as Tansen knew, smuggling still earned the offender a flogging and a year or so in the mines of Alizar, whereas the murder of an Outlooker meant—as Tansen well knew—death by slow torture. Since the two surviving Outlookers could identify him, Josarian must have known the Valdani would search every village in the district until they found him. There was no turning back once he'd killed those men.

And, having killed them, why hadn't Josarian simply disappeared?
Shallaheen
didn't travel far from home as a rule, and they were all distrustful of strangers. Certainly going away wouldn't have been easy, especially if he was wounded, but it was an obvious option; it was what Tan himself had done nine years ago. Josarian wouldn't even have to go into exile, since the Society didn't care about the murder of a couple of Outlookers. He could simply remove or alter his
jashar
—the knotted, woven, and beaded belt that conveyed a
shallah
's name and history—then go to a distant corner of Sileria and become someone else; the Valdani would be unlikely to find him or learn the truth. Yet he had chosen not only to stay right here, but also to incite the populace, launch further attacks against the Valdani, and make himself the most hunted outlaw in Sileria.

Why? Did he enjoy the fame? Was he insane with hatred? Did he simply like killing, burning, and stealing? He was obviously no fool, but it was too soon to be sure just how shrewd he was. Could he be goaded into a fight with a
shatai
, or would he run away? If he wouldn't come to Tansen willingly, could he be tricked or trapped? Would a peasant who had lived his entire life in these mountains even know what a
shatai
was? Tansen hadn't known, after all, until he'd seen one kill three men in the streets of a Kintish port city nine years ago.

While he considered these questions, he searched for Josarian's trail and found exactly what he expected to find: nothing. Josarian wasn't careless. He had covered his escape route and left no clues about which direction he had gone from here. Tansen would have to find him some other way. Having been born and raised in eastern Sileria, Tansen didn't know this district. No people anywhere in the three corners of the world were more secretive than
shallaheen
, and this was Josarian's territory. Without cooperation from the locals, Tansen could well spend the rest of his life searching this district to no avail. So he'd have to find a way to make Josarian come to him.

"He wears a
jashar
and speaks the mountain tongue like he was born to it," Zimran told Josarian one night.

They sat by the cooking hearth of Josarian's younger sister, who kept urging her outlaw brother to eat more. This was Josarian's first visit home in nineteen days, and his sister Jalilar had been so certain of his death that she'd even gone to see the Guardians on Mount Niran four days ago. They didn't seem to think he was in the Otherworld yet, but Jalilar knew that was no guarantee. The Otherworld was a mysterious place, and the journey to get there was long and arduous. Many never arrived, and no one knew why. Others were believed to be there, but wouldn't answer when Called. No, there were no guarantees.

So, unconvinced by the reassurances of an old woman whose three-fingered hand seemed too small and delicate to have endured torture by the Valdani, Jalilar had left the secret Guardian encampment and returned home to wait impatiently for Josarian to sneak into Emeldar one night. The continued presence of the Outlookers in the village was her proof that, whatever else may have happened to her brother, they hadn't caught him yet. Outlookers were such fools, they really believed that their failure to catch Josarian here meant he hadn't been home since that fateful night he'd become an outlaw. Jalilar looked at her brother again, relief warming the chill of dread that had settled into her bones. Her husband, Emelen, would be home soon, and he'd be almost as relieved as she to see Josarian, with whom he had grown up.

"You think this stranger is a
shallah
?" Josarian asked Zimran. He refused the additional food his sister tried to coax him into eating. "Jalilar, I'll burst soon."

"He must be," Zim insisted. "He has the first two bloodpact marks on his right palm. A few on his left." He added as an after-thought, "No marriage-mark on the right palm, they say."

Josarian absently looked down at the marriage-mark Calidar had carved on his palm the day they had married. It ran from the base of his thumb diagonally up to the base of his fourth finger. She had carved no child-marks across it, and now she never would.

"And he carries swords?" Josarian asked. "You're sure of this?"

"I am sure."

"Have you seen him? With your own eyes?"

"No."

"Then how do we know it's true?"

"Josarian, who would make that up?" his sister interrupted.

"Why would the Outlookers let him carry swords?" Josarian asked.

"Because he has promised to kill you," Jalilar said, her voice thick with fear.

"Zimran could walk into an Outlooker outpost tomorrow and promise to kill me. Do you think they'd let
him
carry a sword? What's so special about this
shallah
, that he may bear arms based on a promise to kill me?"

Zimran shrugged, then continued his description of the man searching for Josarian. "He wears fine foreign clothes. No one is sure, but a merchant from Malthenar thinks they're Moorlander. Someone in Britar saw the swords unsheathed and says they bear foreign writing that looks like the inscriptions carved on old Kintish temples and shrines."

Having ruled Sileria for six centuries, from the fall of the Moorlanders until the Valdani had seized it from them two hundred years ago, the Kints had left behind many temples, shrines, and palaces. Josarian had an uncle who now stabled some of his sheep in an abandoned Kintish shrine on Mount Orlenar.

"Kintish swords?" Josarian frowned in perplexity. "Moorlander clothes? A
shallah
?"

"Or part-
shallah?
" Jalilar guessed.

"What does the
jashar
say?" Josarian asked Zim. Although considered illiterate by
roshaheen
—outsiders—the
shallaheen
communicated information with elaborate strands of beaded knots and weaving. Any self-respecting man displayed his identity and history wherever he went by wearing his
jashar
; a woman's history was related in the woven headdress she wore on special occasions. Since this mysterious stranger wore his
jashar
, perhaps they could learn something useful from it.

"He is Tansen mar Dustan shah Gamalani," Zimran said, "born in the Year of Red Moons."

"Younger than you," Jalilar said to Josarian.

"But not much," Zimran added.

"The Gamalani?" Josarian sat up straighter. "Gamalan..."

"Does that mean something to you?" Zimran asked.

"Something Calidar told me..." He frowned and searched his memory. "A cousin... Yes, that's it."

"What?"

"Calidar and I had to postpone our wedding because her family went into mourning for a cousin who'd been killed by Outlookers."

"Yes, I remember," Jalilar said.

"The cousin had been given in marriage to honor the end of a bloodfeud. She went to live in Gamalan, which is..." He shrugged. "Somewhere near Darshon, anyhow."

"Calidar's clan had a bloodfeud with a clan on the other side of Sileria?" Zimran asked him. "What were they fighting about?"

"Who knows?
They
didn't seem to anymore." Such was life in Sileria. "The point is, Calidar's cousin died there when the entire village was slaughtered by Outlookers."

"I remember hearing about the slaughter, but I never knew the name of the village. Gamalan?" Zimran’s dark eyes widened when Josarian nodded. "And the stranger is a Gamalani who survived the slaughter somehow." Zim shrugged. "Maybe he didn't live there."

Individuals and whole families often spread out from a clan's village of origin to make marriages, seek new pastures for their livestock, apprentice to artisans and craftsmen, take possession of inherited smallholdings, or flee Outlookers, assassins, or bloodfeuds. Josarian had no particular reason to suppose the stranger seeking him was somehow involved in the cataclysmic destruction of Gamalan and its feud-withered clan—but he suspected it, nonetheless.

"A killer carrying swords and employed by the Valdani," he mused. "Who knows, Zim? Maybe he survived because he helped slaughter the Gamalani. Or betrayed them to the Valdani. Maybe he revealed something so big—a secret cache of smuggled weapons, the murder of a tribute collector—that the Outlookers decided to kill every man, woman, and child in the entire village."

"
Sriliah
," Jalilar said, the worst thing one
shallah
could ever say about another—worse than coward, cuckold, killer, liar, thief, or whore:
traitor
.

"Well, depending on who got killed that day," Zimran said, "it might explain one thing that no one understands."

"What's that?" Josarian asked.

"They say that while he's looking for you..."

"Yes?"

"A Society assassin is looking for him."

Chapter Four

Tansen was actually relieved the day the assassin appeared. Ever since coming home, he had been waiting for the Society to make a move, to offer a sign, to find him. As with his pursuit of Josarian, Tan knew he could spend the rest of his life trying to find the waterlord he sought. So spreading his own name through these mountains had served two purposes.

There was, of course, one other way to find Kiloran, Tan acknowledged as his gaze flashed briefly on the painted silk scarf that lay crumpled inside his battered satchel. He closed the satchel and refused to think about the woman, refused to picture her face or remember her scent.
Elelar
. Even the memory of her name brought an ache that never eased. No, he would not call on her to find Kiloran; he would make Kiloran find him.

He'd known that Kiloran, the most powerful and notorious waterlord in Sileria, would hear about his indiscreet search for Josarian. Tansen was too unusual a sight here not to attract attention wherever he went. And he knew with certainty that the old wizard had not forgotten his name—or what Tan had taken from him.

He would have preferred to meet the assassin in private, but the man chose to confront him in broad daylight in the main square of a tiny, impoverished village half a day's walk from Emeldar. There were no Outlookers here today; like Josarian and the assassin, Tansen made a point of avoiding them. He didn't want a repetition of the incident that had led to his arrest in Cavasar.

Tansen had slept in a cave in the hills last night. Then he had come to this miserable little village this morning to buy supplies, ask questions, and make sure people got a good look at him. He considered cleaning and oiling his swords, but he'd done that so many times lately that he thought they would slither away if he did it again today. Still, it did make an impressive spectacle, sitting in some public house or village square, powdering, wiping, and oiling his engraved Kintish blades while dozens of
shallaheen
watched, some discreetly, some with open fascination. If Josarian hadn't heard about him by now, then the man must be dead or halfway across Sileria.

He was debating whether to unsheathe his swords for another oiling or simply shoulder his satchel and leave town when he noticed the village square emptying out in a hurry. That could only mean one of two things, and since he didn't hear the hoofbeats of mounted Outlookers, he had a feeling he might need his swords for something besides play-acting today.

He shoved his satchel aside and pushed himself off the rim of the stone fountain where he'd been sitting. The fountain was dry; apparently the villagers hadn't paid enough tribute to the Society lately. His harness was made to fit him perfectly and needed no adjustment as he stalked into the center of the village square, one sword sheathed on his left side, the other resting in the scabbard on his back. He was no longer a frightened boy with nothing but a
yahr
to protect him. He was a
shatai
, a member of the finest warrior caste in the world, and he had faced death too many times to fear its beckoning now. Whether there would be vows of peace or a fight to the death now, he had no idea, but he was ready for either. He briefly tensed and relaxed his left shoulder, testing his wound. Then he ignored it.