In Legend Born (34 page)

"He will kill anyone with me," Tansen said through gritted teeth.

"And the Valdani will kill anyone with
me
." Josarian shrugged. "I suggest we
both
be very careful."

Chapter Thirteen

"
Sirana
... are you well now?"

Mirabar blinked and looked around in confusion. "Where are we?"

Sister Basimar, who had been her companion ever since she had left Islanar, said, "Beside Lake Ursan."

"A house of water..."

Basimar blinked. "Yes. You were taken ill suddenly while staring into the water, and you kept saying strange things: 'A house of water. Fire in water. Find the
shir
and you find him.'" She paused and added, "You also kept saying something about an alliance."

"The alliance..." Mirabar tried to sit up, then groaned and lay her throbbing head back down on the soft ground. "I'm not mad," she said, hoping she sounded convincing.

"You are troubled, though."

"
Tormented
would be a more accurate word."

"By these visions?"

"Yes. By the visions. By powerful spirits from the Otherworld. By sights and sounds I don't really understand."

"It's good you didn't have this fit until after we were well away from the village."

Although they had gained cautious acceptance in several of the villages to which Basimar had guided Mirabar, too many people still seemed to be studying her for signs of a demonic curse.

"Yes," Mirabar agreed dryly. "Rolling around on the ground, screaming and uttering nonsense, would have created a bad impression."

"Truly, if you should have one of these fits in public—"

"I won't."

"How can you be so sure?"

"The Beckoner wouldn't want me to. He knows I'd be killed on the spot, and he wants me to live. For the time being, anyhow."

She squinted up at Basimar, her eyes watering against the glare of the afternoon sun. "And I guess he knows you won't hurt me."

"I am a Sister," Basimar pointed out. "Respect for all living things is my creed. I couldn't harm you even if I were afraid of you."

"And you're not afraid?" Mirabar asked.

Basimar shrugged. "Perhaps your life has been harsher than mine,
sirana
, and your... gifts are certainly unusual. But we are both women and both
shallaheen
."

"You have a long-winded way of saying no."

Basimar laughed. "My husband used to say that,
sirana
."

"Stop calling me that," she said irritably. "My name is Mirabar."

"Given what I have seen so far, it seems disrespectful to call you—"

"How old are you?"

"What?"

"Thirty? Thirty-five?"

"Thirty-six."

"Well, we—Tashinar and I—we
think
I'm about eighteen. So doesn't it seem silly for you to call me
sirana
all the time?"

"I..." Basimar sighed. "I had a daughter who would be almost your age now, had she lived,
sira
... Mirabar."

"There, you see?"

After a reflective silence, Basimar asked about the visions. When she felt steady enough, Mirabar sat up and poked her finger in the dirt to draw the mysterious symbol that continued to haunt her visions. "Have you ever seen this?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Oh, well."

"What is it?" Basimar asked.

"I don't know." Mirabar stared at it. "But I must find it. I must find the
shir
. I think they will be together."

"Do you think they belong to Kiloran?"

"I don't
think
so." She shook her head in confusion. "I don't know. I think they belong to the warrior that I seek."

"Then... is Kiloran the warrior?"

"Darfire! I hope not!"

"Well, does Kiloran have the warrior, then?"

"I don't know... He may have the warrior with him, or perhaps he can simply point the way."

"Is the warrior his friend or ally? An assassin?" Basimar frowned. "Another waterlord?"

"I don't know."

"So... the warrior could even be his prisoner, couldn't he?"

Mirabar's gaze flashed up to Basimar's round face. "His prisoner?" she repeated. "Dar help us, that's one I hadn't thought of."

The sky-reaching towers of Shaljir loomed against the horizon when Tansen and Josarian were still far from the city. Although Josarian had once been to Cavasar, he had never before seen anything so grand and awe-inspiring as the sight he now beheld. Standing on a summit, he and Tansen overlooked the broad, paved road where traffic flowed towards the Adalian Gate, the southern entrance to the city.

Of the three hundred spires which had graced the city in Daurion's time, only a handful were left. Josarian was so impressed by the sight of these graceful spirals of stone and marble reaching toward the heavens that his dazzled mind couldn't imagine even
more
of them filling the sky.

In any event, their absence was amply compensated for by the tall round towers the Moorlanders had left behind. They were topped by enormous stone dragons and impressive horned creatures, carved centuries ago by the hairy barbarians who believed such figures frightened away the demons they feared.

The many hundreds of red-domed buildings left behind by centuries of Kintish rule pleased the eye, weaving brilliant splashes of vivid color through the stone city when viewed from this distance. And although Josarian hated the Valdani with a passion that never abated, he could not deny the beauty of the vast, ornately decorated Valdani palaces that Tansen pointed out to him from their vantage point.

"What are all of those shacks and tents outside the city walls?" he asked his friend.

"Shanties," Tansen replied. "The dwellings of people who've come to the city looking for work."

"
Shallaheen?
"

"
Shallaheen
, lowlanders, runaways, petty thieves, prostitutes, lunatics, escaped galley slaves from ships that docked here or foundered off shore... The poorest of the poor." Tansen gazed at the hovels huddling beneath Sileria's brassy sun for a moment before adding, "The Valdani clean them all out of there every so often, chasing them away and burning down the shanties. A few days later, those that survive start putting up shacks and tents near some other part of the city's walls."

"They should never have left the mountains," Josarian said, looking at the slum sorrowfully. "That is no place for a
shallah
."

"I don't think many of them come by choice."

"And perhaps now you'll tell me why
we
are coming here. I've asked you before and gotten no answer. You've been sulking ever since we left Dalishar."

"I do
not
sulk."

Josarian grinned, pleased to see him looking offended. "Oh, I've had plenty of time these past few days to study your mood, and sulking is
precisely
what you've been doing. It got worse after I caught you trying to sneak off without me the other night."

"I told you not to come," Tansen said irritably.

"I told you not to try leaving me behind. I go wherever you go, even if you choose to be worse company than a wounded mountain cat."

"Don't force your company on me and then have the gall to complain about my mood," Tansen grumbled.

Without waiting for a reply, he started scrambling down the mountain. However, Josarian noticed that, once they reached the main road, Tansen seemed to have made some peace with his situation. He wasn't exactly affable, but at least he stopped sulking.

Knowing they would reach the city gates today, they had hidden their weapons beneath their loose
shallah
clothing. The weight of Josarian's stolen Outlooker sword and its sheath were strapped to his back beneath his long, homespun tunic, his hair discreetly covering the lump of the hilt. Since it would take him a long time to get used that weapon, he also wore his
yahr
tucked unobtrusively in his boot.

Considering how many swords and daggers they had stolen from Outlookers recently, they hadn't been surprised to hear that everyone entering the walls of Cavasar was being subjected to a thorough search. However, they had so far confined their bloodfeud to that district, and the Valdani were nothing if not arrogant. Consequently, Tansen had said it was unlikely that Outlookers were conducting body-searches at the gates of Shaljir, which was far from the fighting.

Upon reaching the walls of Sileria's capital city, Josarian and Tansen were surrounded there by traveling merchants, foreign traders, and
toreni
coming and going through the gate in a noisy ebb and flow. Some of their retinues were amazingly large, including servants, horses, companions, household goods packed into carts, and fabulous quantities of luxuries and exotic goods which gleamed in the sunshine or spiced the air.

One foreign man mounted on a fine horse led a group of a dozen Moorlander women, who all walked behind him in single file. Josarian had only ever seen a few, and he stared in fascination at their long, fair hair and the intricate tattoos so prized by their people. Their pale skin was already growing pink under a sky more fiercely blue than their native one. They were tall, robust women in fine health, yet their exotic blue and green eyes were dull, and their strong shoulders sagged dispiritedly. Josarian realized with shock that they were tied together; a long, thick rope wove through an iron waistband worn by each woman, linking one to another, and binding all of them to the rider who led them down the road. Four well-armed guards—Valdani mainland soldiers, a rare sight here in their red-and-gray uniforms—flanked the female prisoners, their expressions tough and forbidding.

Josarian looked to Tansen for an explanation.

"Slaves," he said briefly. "The spoils of victory from some battle in the Moorlands, or perhaps just captives seized by a rival tribe and handed over to the Valdani in exchange for more land."

Josarian turned to watch the women as they walked down the road, away from the city. "But... why are they here in Sileria? Where are they going?"

"Most likely, they're being taken to fill Valdani brothels in the south." He met Josarian's appalled gaze. "They're a... a
courtesy
the Emperor grants his men, free of charge. Like the gray uniforms the Outlookers wear or the barracks they sleep in. The Valdani believe this practice prevents their men from brawling over a scarcity of women."

"A courtesy..." Josarian couldn't think of what to say. "Those
women
..."

Tansen glanced briefly over his shoulder at the retreating captives. "When the Moorlanders conquered Sileria, they raped, pillaged, and plundered. They enslaved thousands of our people, and they took unwilling wives from among our women. But Moorlanders seldom frequent prostitutes; it goes against their customs. Then the Kints, of course..." He shrugged. "Prostitution has been a specialized profession in Kinto for thousands of years. So the Kints brought their own women with them when they took Sileria from the Moorlanders."

He led Josarian toward the crowd of people awaiting entrance to the city at the Adalian Gate. "But the Valdani have always used conquered women as prostitutes. Their brothels here are filled with women from other lands because they know Silerians won't pay any attention, whereas we'd never rest if those were
our
women dying of disease and exhaustion after a year or two of lying beneath grunting Outlookers."

"I never knew." Josarian shook his head, staring blankly at the ground. Like any decent man, he had been raised to respect women. Yes, everyone knew about women who had no man to provide for them and, instead of becoming Sisters, made their living with their bodies. He'd even seen one or two, and he knew they were shunned and sneered at in public by the same men who brought them money or gifts in exchange for pleasure after dark. But he had never known about the monstrosities Tansen now revealed in a steady, quiet voice devoid of all expression. It struck him as even more disgusting than what went on in the mines of Alizar, where men were treated with appalling cruelty and where so many died without ever seeing the sky again.