The Outworlder Page 9

  “It is fascinating,” the old man admitted, his voice low. “But what it means?” He rubbed his jaw, his eyes fixed on the line of mountains visible outside the windows. “Time will tell, I suppose.” He swung around to face Jared again. “Have you considered asking her about this yourself?”

  “If I do,” Jared protested, “then she’ll know that I’ve seen them. What if she didn’t want me to know?”

  “And what will be the cost of your silence if you don’t admit to her what you have seen?”

  Jared stood up. “Nothing. There will be no cost.”

  “Secrets have a way of poisoning even the best of intentions, my son. Consider this carefully before you decide.”

  Jared bowed his head. “I will. And I’ll bring her to see you as soon as I can.”

  “Yes,” said the old man thoughtfully. “Yes, I should very much like to see her.”

  Jared made his way back down the steps with a heaviness in his heart that he couldn’t explain. Somehow he felt that he had betrayed Sahara, that he had violated an unspoken pledge of trust. He wondered suddenly whether he would feel the same way if he’d told Arnauld about it, but he brushed that aside as foolishness.

  It’s no good, he thought wretchedly. I’ll have to tell her. Not to tell her would be as good as lying to her face. I just have to tell her and deal with the consequences.

  With a sigh, he headed back to the river. A great wave of relief washed over him when he saw that she was still sitting on the riverbank. Her hair was bound up in a silver cloth and she was dressed in a black halter top and white cropped pants.

  “Sahara!” he called.

  She glanced over her shoulder and smiled faintly at him. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and he wondered suddenly if she had been crying. Then she turned away and stared out over the water. Jared stood beside her for a moment, hesitating, then took a breath and dropped down on the cool grass.

  “It’s…a fine day for swimming,” he said, feeling horribly awkward.

  “Yes. I’ve already been.” Her voice was quiet.

  The horrible moment had come, and so quickly.

  “I know.”

  She looked at him again. “How do you know that?”

  So many things he could say, so many things that would hide what he came to tell her. “Well, for one thing….” He stopped and looked straight into her eyes. “I saw you,” he said simply. “I saw you sitting here after your swim. About twenty minutes past.”

  The realization of what he meant spread slowly across her face, and a fierce red blush suffused her cheeks. “And I suppose you saw…”

  “Yes.” He touched her cheek gently. “But you needn’t be ashamed of that.”

  “Yes, I do.” Her eyes were swimming with tears. “Even if I could forget my past—even if I could change and become someone different, like you want me to—“

  “I don’t want you to—“

  She waved him to silence. “The point is, I can’t change. I can’t ever get away from it. It will be inscribed on my body for the rest of my life.”

  “On your body, maybe, but not your heart, Sahara!” he said. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”

  “I’ve tried your way, Jared.” She was once more in control of herself. To Jared, it was as if she had enclosed herself in plated steel. “That’s just not who I am. I’m not about pretty dresses and…and things like that. I felt…I felt like a fool.”

  “You didn’t seem like one.” He smiled at her. “You were wonderful last night. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  And I can’t stop thinking about it, he thought, remembering once again how it felt to hold her.

  Sahara blushed again and turned her head away. “That’s just perfect,” she muttered.

  “I don’t understand,” Jared said. “What are you so ashamed of?”

  “Can’t you guess?” she asked, so softly that he barely heard her.

  “No, I can’t guess.”

  She shook her head and sighed. After a moment, she roused herself and turned to Jared with some of her old fire.

  “We don’t have time for all that. There’s work to be done here. What do you read all day in the library? And why do you collect maps?”

  Jared blinked at her. “What?”

  “You heard me. Books. Maps. What do you study all day, Jared? What are you searching for?”

  Yes, her armor was on now, the visor down, the sword steady in her grip. It was a fitting image, it seemed to him. A fitting image for an impenetrable heart.

  I wonder if she’ll ever trust me enough to tell me what happened to her, he thought.

  “If you’re so hell-bent on knowing, come with me and I’ll show you,” he said.

  He stood up and waited while she gathered her bathing things into a neat pile and placed them next to the trunk of the nearest tree. When she was ready, he led her across the bridge and into the library. It was dark and cool inside and smelled of dry parchment. Sahara sneezed.

  “Does anyone else ever come in here?” she asked, rubbing her nose.

  “Not anymore,” he said. “But I was practically raised in here. My father was the official scribe of the city, and he spent many days and nights transcribing messages, accounts, birth and death records…whatever might be useful in constructing a picture of daily life in Albadir.” He went to a series of bookshelves in a small alcove. “These are all his work.” He ran his fingers over the faded bindings. “Almost twenty years they have lingered here, untouched and unread.”

  “But you read them,” she said, perching on one of the long wooden tables scattered about the middle of the domed room.

  “No.” He dusted his hand off on his pants and moved to another set of shelves. “I know too well the days of my father. And I know all too well how they ended. No. My study takes me further back. These here—” he pulled a sheaf of parchments from one of the shelves and brought it to the table where she was sitting— “are maps from one hundred and fifty years ago. Some go even further back than that.”

  “Why do they interest you so much? You must be looking for something.”

  “I am. I’m looking for…” He stopped and considered for a moment. What was he looking for, exactly? “For understanding, I suppose.”

  “Understanding of what?”

  “What else? The Dragon-Lords. I want to know why they’re here. I want to know when they arrived. And I want to know their weakness.”

  Sahara leaned back on her forearms and stared up at the domed roof high above. Gold stars were scattered on a blue field, and at the apex was a device Sahara had never seen before. Jared followed her gaze upward.

  “That’s the most ancient symbol of our city,” he said. “The lilia-dir, a three-petaled flower that used to grow along the banks of the Alba River.”

  “I haven’t seen a flower like that growing there, Jared.”

  “No. There haven’t been flowers there for decades. It’s said that they died when the Dragon-Lords came. But the memory of the flower is preserved here, and I believe that someday it will grow again.”

  Sahara glanced at him. “When the Dragon-Lords are removed from power?”

  “Yes, perhaps.”

  Sahara pushed herself up into a sitting position again, leaning her elbows on her knees. “So how much do you know? What have you discovered?”

  “Pitifully little for all the effort I’ve spent looking,” he admitted. “But there are two things that come up in all the stories. One is that the Alba River—the main water source for our city and for the Great City on the Southern Sea—is now controlled by the Dragon-Lords. It flows down out of the northern mountains, and it’s rumored that they constructed some kind of sluice-gate which they can close at will.”

  “If the natives grow restless, you mean?”

  “Something like that. Without water, we wouldn’t last long. The desert would dispose of us within days.”

  “What’s the other common thread?”

  “They require blood as pa
yment for keeping the sluice-gate open.”

  Sahara’s brow furrowed as she mulled this over. “What do you mean, blood? Do you think that’s why the other settlements have disappeared?”

  “Possibly. But I know that no ceremonial offering has been made since the last uprising. That was seven years ago.”

  “So you think they will act soon?”

  Jared sighed. “Frankly, I don’t know why they haven’t acted yet. It seems to be not so much a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’”

  “How many do they ask for?”

  Jared shook his head. “The accounts vary, and it seems the demands have fluctuated over the years. But in the past they’ve taken anywhere from fifteen to fifty men. And one woman. Always a woman.”

  Sahara’s eyes snapped up to fasten on Jared’s. “A woman!” she blurted out. “Why?”

  Jared shrugged. “And the texts seem to suggest that the men are not sacrificed. One account even goes so far as to say that they are made into slaves—kept somewhere in the northern mountains and doing God only knows what terrible labor.”

  Sahara snorted. “Probably whatever I should be doing right about now if that ship hadn’t crashed.”

  “Probably. But the woman, who must be of noble birth, is kept as a blood-offering.”

  “So if they came to Albadir tomorrow…?”

  “It would be Aliya.”

  Sahara’s hands convulsed into fists, and all her energy seemed to suddenly concentrate itself into a single syllable.

  “No.”

  Jared regarded her with some surprise. “Look, Sahara, I don’t think they’ll really—”

  “You’re damned right they won’t really. Because we’ll get them first.”

  Jared laughed, but the look Sahara gave him silenced him instantly. “You can’t be serious! I’ve been searching these dusty old books for months now, and I’ve yet to find a weakness that would give us some kind of hope!”

  “You’ve got the scimitar of a dead Dragon-Lord hanging above your fireplace,” she gritted. “It seems to me that you already know their weakness. Hard steel through the heart does wonders.”

  “But we can’t get to them, Sahara! It’s been tried. I told you that.”

  Sahara shook her head fiercely. “Oh, believe me, you can get to them. I can show you how. But you have to trust me. And you have to convince everyone else to trust me too.”

  Jared was silent for a moment. Sahara’s face was deadly serious, pale with wrath in the dim light of the library. But a pleading shone deep in her eyes, and finally he gave a terse nod.

  “It’s done,” he said. “Just tell me what to do.”

  Chapter 10

  “You have to listen to me!”

  Sahara clenched her fists and took a deep breath to steady herself against the wave of angry murmurs and muffled laughter that swelled through the tavern. She was up on a chair again, her whole body tensed.

  She raised her voice to be heard over the growing din. “Listen to me! This is the time! Now, before they devastate your city with an attack! Or before they demand the life of Lady Aliya in exchange for the water that keeps you alive!”

  A stunned hush fell over the room.

  “She better not let Lord Arnauld hear her talking like that,” came several awed and frightened voices behind her.

  “Do you think I don’t know what’s happening here?” Sahara demanded. “You crouch behind your walls, you have your festivals, and you pretend that everything is fine. But it’s all just a lie! Don’t you see that? They hold you in thrall, and you don’t even have the courage to admit that you’re only alive so long as it suits their pleasure!”

  From her perch, she stared around the room at the quiet and shamed faces below her. Then there was a sudden scraping noise and one of the men rose from his seat. It was Armon, the man she had humiliated by beating him at daggers. Her heart sank.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you,” Armon said in a loud voice, “but I’ve heard enough crazy talk for one night. I’m going home.”

  Sahara took her fears in both hands and strangled them. “Why is this crazy?” she demanded. “Armon! Why is this crazy?”

  “Because you think you’re so much better than we are, that’s why. You think you know how to live our lives better than we do. But who are you, anyway?” As he spoke, the sneer in his voice became more and more pronounced. “A convict, escaped off one of their convoy ships, no less! An outworlder! So what I want to know is, how do you get the nerve to call us cowards to our faces?”

  Sahara nodded slowly. “You’re right. I had a dark past. But for whatever reason, I’ve been given a second chance. And I intend to use it.”

  “Is this about your personal salvation or the good of our city?” another voice demanded. Sahara turned toward the voice and saw an older man, one arm in a sling, only a stump where his hand was supposed to be. “Last thing we need is someone on some damned personal crusade. Things never go right for the rest of us when folks get stars in their eyes. Last time someone got ideas like that, I lost my hand.”

  Sahara swallowed hard as a murmur of agreement swelled in the room. “Don’t you believe that there’s something here worth fighting for? Even dying for? Isn’t freedom better than slavery, no matter what the price?”

  “We don’t know about that,” Armon said. “We have a quiet life now. They leave us alone and we leave them alone. Our children and our crops grow. We eat, we laugh, we even dance on occasion. Point is, we coexist.”

  “The point is, you don’t,” Sahara said. “You’re just a parasite that the Dragon-Lords haven’t finished annihilating yet. And, in my experience, they never were good with insects.”

  The rumble of anger grew louder, and several men in the back of the room toppled their chairs as they jumped to their feet.

  “You make awfully free with your tongue,” Armon said, moving toward her slowly. “Someone ought to teach you more respect.”

  Jared, who had been standing at the foot of Sahara’s chair during her speech, stepped suddenly between Armon and Sahara.

  “I’m sure she’ll consider your advice,” he said coolly. “But I’d back off, if I were you.”

  “What the hell, Jared? You aren’t listening to this nonsense, are you? Has the girl gotten into your brain and made it mush or what?”

  “She’s not a girl,” he said. Sahara smiled to herself. “And no, she hasn’t gotten into my brain. I’ve been studying these matters—”

  “Studying!” Armon guffawed. “Lord, boys, we’ve got us a scholar on our hands! A scholar and a madwoman! What a pair they make, eh?”

  “You’re an idiot,” Sahara informed him. “Only fools think they know everything.”

  “I don’t think I know everything,” Armon retorted. “But what I do know is pretty simple. Right now we have a chance of living out our lives without being terrorized by the Dragon-Lords. If we engage in open rebellion, there isn’t a chance in hell of us living without being terrorized. Make that living, period.”

  “You call this miserable existence living? Where you’re afraid to venture beyond the walls of your own city for fear of being seen by the Dragon-Lords? Where your water supply hangs by a thread that threatens to unravel at any moment? Where you teach your children how to run and hide instead of how to stand and fight? I don’t call that living.”

  “We don’t care what you call it!” came a new voice from the back of the room. “You’re an outworlder! What should you know?”

  “You think that just because I’m an outworlder I know nothing of the Dragon-Lords?” Sahara demanded, now thoroughly incensed. “Why in hell do you think I was on that ship? They ruled my homeworld too! But we rebelled, and we made them pay dearly for their tyranny!”

  There was silence once more in the tavern. Finally! thought Sahara. Finally they understand that I know what I’m talking about!

  But Jared was shaking his head at her. She frowned.

  “We don’t want to die for some f
ool cause and some mad crusade,” said Armon at last. “We just want to live.”

  “There are some things that are worse than death,” Sahara replied quietly. “And there are many things better than living only at someone else’s pleasure, groveling in fear all your days. What can I do to make you see?”

  Armon sniffed and looked around. “Mmmm…nothing.”

  “Would you be willing to die, outworlder?” asked a voice from the back of the room. “For Albadir, I mean?”

  Sahara sought out the speaker. He was a young man, and he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his head thrown back. There was a challenge in his eyes, and she sensed that something critical hung suddenly in the balance.

  “Yes, I would. I would die for Albadir. I would lay down my life right now for this city.”

  “Why?”

  Sahara’s gaze flickered to rest on Jared for a moment. So many emotions swirled within her. Memories of her own homeworld, memories of her father and the love in his eyes…and his certainty that somehow love was stronger than death, and that love was the only thing worth dying for.

  “Because,” she said softly, “this is my home now. And I don’t want to lose it.”

  The men in the tavern grumbled and shook their heads. Armon looked her up and down, his lip curling with disgust, and then stalked out, slamming the door as he left.

  Sahara clambered off her chair and sighed. She was as weary as if she’d just barely escaped a battle with her life.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” Jared asked. “You look like you could use one.”

  “I think I need a drink,” she answered. “I’ll find us a table where we’ll be invisible.”

  Jared smiled at her. “You did well tonight. It takes a lot to stand up there and do what you did.”

  Sahara shook her head. “Yeah. I did well making a terrific fool out of myself. If we’d enlisted these men to fight, then I’d say this was a success. As it is?” She shrugged. “Whatever. I’m going to sit down.”

  They split up and Sahara headed for the darkest corner of the tavern and slipped into the booth. She leaned her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands.