Free In Legend Born by Laura Resnick

emerged on the other side of the Orban Pass. Now, as he stood on a cliff top overlooking the pass, Tansen was able to see the country beyond it, and the distant snow-capped peak of Darshon, wherein dwelt Dar, the goddess he had been raised to worship.
    Staring at it now, seeing it for the first time since he had gone into exile, Tansen forgot about Josarian, Koroll, Outlookers, and his work. If he'd been a spiritual man, he'd have prayed. As it was, he simply stared in awed silence, fighting the emotions that burned his blood and the memories which screamed for release. In the village of Gamalan, his boyhood home, the slopes of Darshon were so near, they had seemed to stretch from one end of the horizon to the other, filling the sky. When Dar belched or bellowed, Gamalan shook. When Dar spewed fire, the shallaheen in Gamalan saw the smoke of the burning villages that lay close to Her angry mouth. And when Dar erupted in fury, spilling forth lava, the Gamalani carved bloodpacts on their palms to answer Her call... and prudently moved their children to safer ground.
    As a child, Tansen had played on the rough gray and black tumbles of ash and rock left by Dar's long-ago tantrums. He had seen his elder brother go off to join the mad zanareen and eventually die by throwing himself into the volcano while suffering from the delusion that he was the Firebringer. Taught by his proud and crafty grandfather to honor all the traditions of his people, Tansen had prayed to Dar every day and helped gather the annual ritual offerings to placate the goddess for another year. But he had not prayed since the first time he'd killed a man, and he did not pray now.
    His stomach tightened as he wondered what Dar's revenge on him for that day would be. Vast and forbidding even at this great distance, the mountain loomed starkly against the brilliant blue sky, its snowy peak rising through the wispy clouds. Still unable to pray after all these years, Tansen bowed his head in respect. Whatever Dar's revenge, he would face it. If, that was, he survived the revenge of the Society.
    Forcing himself to turn away from the sight which he had alternately longed for and feared these past nine years, he now searched for signs of his quarry in the spot he suspected Josarian had used to launch his attack against the four Outlookers. Within moments, he found a couple of footprints in the dust. It looked like his intended opponent was a big man. A few wisps of feather from the fletching of the arrows confirmed that the maker of those footprints must have been the murderer of the four dead Valdani. Josarian had known the Outlookers' route, planned ahead, and waited for them. He wasn't just some hot-headed brawler; he was capable of strategy, forethought, and planning. He could hold off his attack and await the right moment. And he could kill in cold blood.
    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