In Legend Born (70 page)

She returned his gaze, her own expression equally hard. "I was a woman alone after Gaborian died. I needed a husband. You had money, Valdani connections, and you were too interested in liquor and dreamweed and wenching to pay any attention to my activities."

His mouth worked for a moment. Then his sigh was like a surrender. "So. In my own way, I was the perfect husband."

"I would have preferred one who never hit me."

"I know." He was quiet for a long time before asking, "Did you mean to marry him?"

"Borell? No. It was his idea. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't listen. No man cares what a woman wants, when he wants her."

"You never... cared for him, either, did you?"

"A Valdan?" The loathing in her voice was answer enough.

Ronall idly rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, I daresay this has all been harder on him than on me, in a way, even though I'm the one who got locked up and beaten."

"I've been locked up and beaten, too," Elelar pointed out impatiently.

Ronall's heavy-lidded eyes flashed wide open at that. "What? When? Who beat you?"

"What do you care? You've beat—"

"I'm your husband, damn you! Of course I care if someone has beaten my wife!"

"Myrell," she said, surprised to hear herself confide
anything
to Ronall. "My second day here. Trying to make me talk. And..."

"Yes?" he prodded.

"Borell." Ah, it felt good to tell someone, even if it was only Ronall. "He assaulted me when he arrested me."

"Borell." Ronall seemed less surprised than she would have supposed. "Did he—"

"He hurt me badly." She didn't want to go into details. The expression on her husband's face made it plain that he needed none.

"He, uh..." Ronall nodded and looked at the floor. "As I said, this is harder for him than for me. He believed that you loved him. I always knew that you despised me."

She stared. "Are you making excuses for Borell?"

"No." His smile was wry. "I'm not even making excuses for myself today, though I'm sure this state of mind won't last long." He came closer to her, studying her face intently. "I'm not even making excuses for you, Elelar." He looked at her as if trying to memorize her features. "We are what we are, I suppose."

She felt uncomfortable under that sad, hungry scrutiny. For the first time,
she
wanted to make excuses. "I would have been a good wife to you, if only you'd—"

"No, you wouldn't have." He didn't sound resentful. Just weary and sad. "Even if I'd been..." He gestured vaguely. "A man. Sober. Tender on our wedding night. Even if I had been brave enough to be your husband, to stare down the contempt that was in your eyes from the moment we met..." He shrugged and concluded, "Even if I had been someone else, you wouldn't have been a good wife, Elelar."

"Oh, you are hardly in a position to lecture me about being a good—"

"No, I'm not," he agreed. "And perhaps I deserved you."

Elelar choked on her outrage. "You deserved one of your serving wenches or farm girls or foreign acrobats, not—"

"And it was a relief to you when I went to them."

"Yes." She arched her brows and reminded him, "And you warned me never to interfere."

"It was bad enough that you thought I wasn't good enough for you." Ronall grimaced at the memories. "It was more than I could stand when you thought I wasn't even good enough for a kitchen girl."

"One who wanted to be left alone!"

That silenced him. He looked away again, his skin flushing. "Well," he said at last. "You're quite right. I'd have been a bad husband to any woman. And you'd have slept with the Imperial Advisor and the Kintish High King's Ambassador no matter who your husband was."

She couldn't deny that, so she said, "I had a duty to perform, and..." She clenched her hands in helpless frustration. "I may not carry a sword! I may not enter government service or run a fleet of trading ships. I could never be recognized as a scholar. I had to marry or join the Sisterhood!" She shook her fists, pouring out her anger on Ronall. "I am allowed only a woman's weapons to fight the Valdani. Borell took another's man wife to his bed and revealed hundreds of imperial secrets to her! But is
he
in prison now? No, only
I
am!"

Ronall's expression softened as she raged at him. To her surprise, he reached out to lightly stroke her hair, as if trying to soothe her. He had been gentle enough in bed recently, but there had never been any simple gestures of affection between them before.

"I always thought it was just me that you hated," he said. "I never realized it was
all
men."

Feeling sheepish, she said, "I don't hate all men." Seeing his doubtful expression in the wake of her outburst, she added more honestly, "Well, not always, anyhow."

He grinned. For a moment, the years of dissipation faded away, and he looked young again. He was a handsome man. Elelar was so used to despising him, she often forgot that he was rather fine-looking when he wasn't bloated and pale or greenish and withered from the abuse he heaped on his body. Her personal revulsion had made her often overlook the most obvious reason that various women opened their arms to him.

He sat down next to her on the cot. She stiffened. He felt it. The Outlookers in the door suddenly seemed less like furniture and more like an audience. She and Ronall had been speaking common Silerian, so the Outlookers were unlikely to have understood a word they said. Still, she realized that the dramatics between her and her husband must have been keeping them entertained.

"So I'm to be held here without being harmed until the Imperial Council announces a decision?" she asked politely, discouraging any more emotional confrontations.

"Yes. Father and I will speak to Borell again and warn him that we know you've been... handled roughly by both him and Myrell, and that we intend to report this. It should discourage them from attempting anything else. They would be suspects in your murder should you happen to fall off the roof of the prison one night." He tried to match her cool tone, but she was better at it than he was.

"Borell wants me dead," she said. "He
needs
me dead to protect himself."

"Yes, I've grasped that," Ronall assured her dryly.

"If the Council refuses your petition, I will be dead within an hour of Borell learning about it."

"They won't refuse. They
can't
refuse." His voice was fierce.

Elelar looked at him, curious and baffled. "Ronall, even if... politics don't interest you, I've betrayed you in every way possible, and I've dragged you and your family into public humiliation. Why don't you want me dead just as much as Borell does? How can you possibly care what happens to me now?"

He shrugged. "Caring about you is my curse to bear, I suppose. Perhaps it will never leave me until I learn to bear it like a man." He leaned forward and held his head in his hands as if it ached. "Dar and the Three know I've borne nothing else like a man."

The rebels separated into smaller, more efficient groups and moved fast after Alizar, sweeping through the countryside, sacking Outlooker outposts, burning down Valdani estates, seizing hostages for ransom, and flooding major Valdani roads. Kiloran had succeeded in making the mines of Alizar inaccessible to the Valdani—or anyone else. Now the Society held the rebellion's valuable hostages in watery prisons until ransoms were paid, and they urged lowlanders and city-dwellers to join the cause. The
shallaheen
provided Guardians with safe escort into the lowlands to bring Sileria's ancient religion back to her people—and to use the influence of the Otherworld to draw them into the fold.

The Outlookers retaliated by razing whole villages without warning. The price on Josarian's head went up again. Myrell the Butcher stormed through the Amalidar Mountains on a brutal rampage of torture and destruction, trying to force information out of the
shallaheen
. One woman gave in and told Myrell what little she knew in order to save her son. In this harsh land where betrayal was regarded as a worse crime than murder, she was thereafter shunned by the other villagers and had to leave the mountains. Another man broke down and talked when the Outlookers started torturing him. Someone slaughtered him that very night, leaving behind a message that left no doubt about the motive:
So die all who betray Josarian.
Tansen and Josarian heard about it, but never knew who had done it. The assassination was attributed to Tansen, though he had been halfway across Sileria at the time.

After Alizar, Josarian decided it was time to take control of the territory around Dalishar. He'd left men and his sister up there, not to mention Jalan the mad
zanar
. It was a good base, one he didn't intend to give up. The landscape around it was rough, hard country for Outlookers and
roshaheen
. He had so many men under his command now, he didn't even know quite how many there were—several thousand, anyhow. The rebellion was starting to spread out of the mountains, infecting the lowlands and inciting the city-dwellers. News of the victory at Alizar made people understand that things could be different. The Valdani were numerous and powerful, but not invincible.

They die just as easily as we do,
Josarian thought once again, remembering the moment he had first realized it, and remembering how hard it had been, at first, to convince others.

Now Cavasar, the first city to hear of his exploits and strain against the harsh reins of Valdani rule, was in a state of constant turmoil. Five hundred more Outlookers had just been shipped in from Valdania to keep the "peace" in Sileria's westernmost city. Emelen had sent a runner to Josarian from the east saying that there'd been riots in Liron, too. The runner had had trouble finding Josarian because he was moving so fast; the news, which was nine days old, had only reached him this morning.

Armian had been right. Bit by bit, piece by piece, the tapestry of a new Sileria was starting to weave together, and the resultant canvas would be far stronger than any of its individual strands.

The rebels destroyed Valdani supply lines around Dalishar, then destroyed their supplies. They attacked Chandar and took it from the Outlookers in their bloodiest encounter since Alizar. Afterwards, Josarian paid a fortune to some Moorlander horse traders to get them to haul fifty Outlooker bodies to Adalian and abandon them right outside the city's main gate one night. Let the Valdani in Adalian think about
that
for a while.

Josarian was limping when he finally climbed up to Dalishar again, since he hadn't given his wound from Alizar time to heal. He greeted his sister and let her fuss over him while Jalan ranted about prophecy and portents and the fiery mating between Dar and the Firebringer. Sitting on a rock overlooking the surrounding region, Josarian reveled in the knowledge that, astonishingly, all the land he could see was now controlled by rebel forces.

It was a realization that took him far beyond his original dream. Yet it was still a long way, he acknowledged, from the dream instilled in him by a red-haired Guardian one night in Kiloran's underwater palace.

Zimran arrived the next day bearing messages from various allies and news about events west of here.

"There are three Valdani estates that have been abandoned right here in our territory," Josarian told his cousin as they relaxed together that evening and drank some chestnut wine. "We got this, among many other selections, out of their wine cellars."

Zimran wrinkled his nose. "A bit sweet for my taste." He sighed. "Ah, but the Kints like this stuff. I could have gotten such a good price for this, before the war."

"It
is
a war, isn't it?" Josarian mused.

"It was a war for us even before Alizar." Zimran added with a sneer, "But I hear that the Commander of Cavasar still refers to it as 'the mountain uprising' in his dispatches."

"I wonder what's happening in Shaljir?"

"Still no word from the
torena
?"

"No. Has there been any word from Derlen yet?"

Zimran shook his head. "Not that I know of. But ever since Alizar, Shaljir has been locked up more securely than a houseful of virgin daughters after dark. We haven't been able to risk sending anyone in, and it seems that the Alliance hasn't been able to risk sending anyone out."

Josarian considered this. "I suppose all the violence in the countryside would make it hard for Elelar to reasonably explain more trips out of the city, especially at this season. The harvest festivals will begin soon... Perhaps she'll be able to leave then." The festivals would be fewer and leaner this year, due to the rebellion, but Silerians wouldn't entirely forego their social pleasures and banned religious observances.

"You think something's happened, don't you?" Zimran guessed.

Josarian frowned. "I don't know. Dalishar was inaccessible until yesterday. Zilar has too many Outlookers stationed there now for a meeting to be safe. Elelar probably doesn't know how to reach the caves on Niran, and we've been covering a lot of ground almost every day. If she has somehow managed to get out of Shaljir when no one else can, she could be trying to reach us and just doesn't known where to look." He met his cousin's eyes and added, "But the long silence bothers me. No word at all from Shaljir. Not from her or anyone else." He nodded. "It bothers me."