His companions waited for Llesho to defend his teacher, but Al-Razi only spoke the truth. Or part of it.

“A king who doesn’t use his wiles in the defense of his people doesn’t remain king very long. I learned that lesson in the Palace of the Sun in my seventh summer. Swords can support a canny king, but they can’t keep an innocent in power.” His father had been such a king, innocent in the ways of subterfuge and brutal attack. “Fortunately for Thebin, I return with a master of trickery at my beck. We will see a different outcome this time.”

He didn’t mention the mortal goddess of war, didn’t want to offend his host more sorely than he already had. But Hmishi was right. He needed to see Master Den. And he was right about other things as well. Llesho had slept away the exhaustion of his travels and remained asleep only to escape the struggle ahead. It was time he woke up in more ways than one.

“I need my clothes.”

Smiles bloomed on the faces of his companions. Even Prince Tayyichiut looked relieved. Hmishi ran to do his bidding, anxious, it seemed, to be out from under Llesho’s gaze now that he’d decided to return to the land of the living. While he waited for something to wear, Llesho turned his attention to the physician.

“You have my gratitude, and that of my people—those who travel with me, and those who follow behind us. I will be further in your debt if you will continue to watch over our companion, Prince Tayyichiut, whom you have brought back from the brink of death with your excellent care.” And someday he would have to trade stories with Tayy, find out how far down the path to the underworld he’d actually journeyed, and what stories he had to tell about the way back. But not now, when death still hovered too close in the air.

“As for myself, it is time I declared this particular well open for business again.”

Ibn Al-Razi stroked his short beard thoughtfully, but a smile crinkled at the corners of his mouth, and made crow’s-feet at his temples. “You will wish an audience with the Apadisha, then.”

“First I have to meet with my counselors. Then we must pay our respects to the Apadisha of Pontus,” Llesho agreed.

Hmishi returned with his clothes then and Llesho was unsurprised to discover that he carried not the rags of slavery, the clothes he’d come ashore in, but the royal garb of a Thebin king.

“Master Den?” Llesho asked, though he knew the answer.

Kaydu shrugged. “He said you’d need them.”

“When did he say that?”

“This morning.”

He didn’t know why it surprised him. Or why he wasn’t angrier that he’d been ambushed by a plot hatched among his guards and the trickster god himself. But they’d all signed on for a more important mission than the pleasure of Llesho’s personal whim.

“Your father and Master Den are still at the school?” Llesho dressed quickly as they talked.

“With Marmer Sea Dragon,” Kaydu assured him, while Ibn Al-Razi made a warding gesture in the air to protect himself from the offense against his own gods.

“Is it far?”

“About a li, though the way is twisty.” She gave him the grin that used to announce her intention to wipe the practice yard with his backside. “It’ll be a good test of your recovery.”

Llesho settled his embroidered sleeveless coat on his shoulders, wishing with a last backward sigh for his sleep clothes. Court dress was heavy and cumbersome in the warm climate of Pontus. He allowed Bixei to help him with his boots and then Hmishi set on his brow the silver fillet that marked a prince of Thebin. Master Den had been thorough, as always.

Ready to go, he looked around for the one face he hadn’t seen since he’d awakened to Hmishi’s rebuke.

“Where is my brother, Menar?”

“Here.” Menar followed his voice into the room. He moved fluidly, knowing the way in his blindness as a sighted slave might find his way in the dark. He had set aside the attire of a slave and wore more elaborate clothes in rich silk, blue for the pantaloons and red for the shirt, with a cream-colored coat that fit tightly at the waist and flared in a wide skirt to his calves. On his forehead he wore a circlet of silver which he fingered with a questing hand at his temple, and over his eyes a rich purple cloth was bound.

“I have grown out of the habit of crowns,” he confessed with an awkward smile. “But Ibn Al-Razi informs me the Apadisha will expect some such sign.”

“But no Thebin court dress?” Llesho asked, not chiding his brother, but curious about the clothes he wore, which were nothing like the simple whites of his master.

“In the house of my master I am a recorder of medical poems, but the Apadisha often asks my presence for my skills as a teller of tales. This is what I wear to perform for his gracious majesty. The other slaves assure me that I cut a dashing figure, except for my eyes, of course, which are covered so the sight of them doesn’t offend the Apadisha’s company.”

Llesho had spent so much of his life as a slave that he almost didn’t notice Menar’s reference to his own servitude. “Not a slave anymore,” Llesho insisted when it struck him that they had not yet discussed his brother’s condition. “I would dispute your master’s right to own a prince of the royal house of Kungol.”

“You need the Apadisha,” his brother warned him.

“Then we will discuss with the physician Ibn Al-Razi the terms of your freedom. I wouldn’t leave you here, a possession in a foreign land, under any circumstances. Under these, it is impossible. Lleck told me to find all of my brothers, not just the ones it was convenient to make away with.”

“I know, better than you think,” Menar assured him. “But wait, be patient. Hear the prophecy. Then we will see what we will see.”

Llesho didn’t mention that he’d come all the way to Pontus to hear the prophecy and, weeks after his arrival, had yet to find out what it said. He was about to hear it and arguing would only delay things. Instead, he untied the cloth that bound Menar’s eyes.

“These are not times to hide the consequences of our actions, or our lack of actions, from our allies,” he said. “If the Apadisha would hear the prophecy, and decide upon a course of action based on what he hears, he should see what the cost of doing nothing is.”

It sounded harsh, but Hmishi had stirred him to action and he found that he had little patience for himself or anyone else who would avoid knowing the consequences if he failed to act. So he didn’t apologize, but firmed his chin and, with a glare that dared anyone to test him, he swept out of the sickroom, leaving Prince Tayy wide-eyed in his bed and Ibn Al-Razi staring after them.

“My father is waiting for us,” Kaydu said when they were moving. “I’ll lead the way.”

A single nod, and Llesho followed his brother. The physician arranged for sedan chairs to carry the princes, and Llesho’s cadre fell in around them. Bixei and Stipes ranged out ahead and behind while Hmishi and Lling stayed close to the brothers in defensive mode. In that way they entered the streets of Pontus.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter Twenty-six

PONTUS WAS larger than Edris, with a more varied architecture. Llesho could see the roots of the one city in the other, however. The streets were wider in Pontus, but the houses that lined them still hid behind high walls gleaming whiter here than those of the city that faced it across the sea. Gates were more prominent, with elaborately decorated arches over them and a view of the flowery gardens visible between the great hinges. Unlike Edris, Pontus was a city of towers: graceful slim minarets and clusters of thick, bulbous domes raised their heads high over the mansions and more modest houses at their feet.

Kaydu was leading them toward a huge gate of carved wood bound in bronze. As they approached, a wizened face peered at them out of a small slot and then disappeared. A moment later they heard a bolt sliding in its keeper, and a portcullis door opened in the gate.

“Come in, come in,” The old man gestured them forward, reverting to the mysterious liquid sibilance of the Bithynian tongue spoken in the city. Kaydu quickly translated with a whisper in Llesho’s ear: “The masters await!”

Inside the high, white wall, Llesho found a self-contained little city of its own, more than a dozen buildings, the smallest no larger than a cottage. The largest stood twice the height of the wall that enclosed them, with six towers rising into the sunlight around a central dome shaped like a giant onion. Between the lowest, nearest the gate, and the tallest, at the farthest reach of the walled city-within-a-city, buildings of varied sizes and shapes lay scattered along sweeping pathways among lush gardens. Some of those had towers of their own.

As they passed down one of those sweeping paths of raked pebbles, Kaydu pointed out scholars and musicians and poets and soldiers and bakers, each of whom she identified by their style of dress and the color of their pantaloons. Llesho was not surprised to find their chosen path took them toward a large, centrally located building crowned by one large dome. He figured this for one of the main teaching facilities, where Habiba had come to visit with the professors of his own days as a student at the school. He did not expect the greeting that met him when he entered the great hall beneath the central dome, however.

Hundreds of students sat in an ascending circle that reminded Llesho of the bleachers surrounding the arena where the gladiators had fought in Farshore Province. Here the central auditorium was covered in carpets, not sawdust. Masters in brightly colored robes that indicated their special fields of interest sat in chairs gathered in two rows beneath the colored dome. Habiba rose from the front row to greet them, with Master Den at his right hand and Marmer Sea Dragon, in his human form, at his left. A man and a woman, both wrinkled with age, held hands as they waited to greet him. Llesho sensed that they clung to each other for courage. He wondered what could frighten two wizards who sat untroubled by gods and dragons, but his own party were the only newcomers.

“Prince of destiny.” The old man bowed to Llesho, making it clear where the title was meant to go.

“Prince of prophecy,” the woman added with her own bow. “Come, sit. And Prince Menar, who is the poet-prince, and a prophet for his brother’s coming: we hope to hear you recite the prophecy once again so that our students and masters can refine their interpretations.”

“It will ease my heart to do so,” Menar replied. “His Holy Excellence, King Llesho, may have many answers for us, though I think we will none of us take pleasure in them.”

“Prophets seldom have good things to say,” the old man agreed. “Good news can wait for tomorrow. Bad news requires warning.”

“Wise, as always,” Menar acknowledged, bowing to show respect for the teacher. Llesho wondered how a follower of Ibn Al-Razi’s more ascetic practice of belief in the religion of the Father-and-Daughter gods must view the Apadisha’s school for magicians. The physician had recognized the working of dragon magic in Llesho’s illness, however. His servant, Menar, seemed to have no difficulty with the more esoteric practices of the faith that included the training of witches and magicians and the welcome of gods and dragons into their school.

But the school wasn’t Llesho’s main concern. “The Apadisha has summoned us on the matter of the prophecy,” he said with a proper bow. “I honor your school and your students, but I’ve come to beg leave for my companions to accompany me to the palace.”

“Ah.” The old woman smiled brightly at him, her cheerfully glittering eyes almost lost in a sea of wrinkles. “I have not introduced myself. I am the chief astrologer for the good fortunes of Pontus and all Bithynia, adviser to the Apadisha and teacher in his school for the great magicians. You may call me Master Astrologer.

“And this is my husband, our Apadisha’s chief numerologist. You may call him Master Numerologist.”

An astrologer read the stars for an understanding of past and future and interpreted that knowledge for guidance in the present. A numerologist predicted the mathematics of future events. Dates and the calendar were important in the plotting of the future, as were the seeming accidents of numbers as one measured the path of a lifetime. Pontus, Kaydu had told him, enjoyed a reputation for producing the most skilled in these as well as other magical arts. Llesho gave a slight bow suitable from a youthful king to those of greater wisdom and years.

“We have been apprised of your summons,” Master Numerologist assured them. “Our sages and their students have been hypothesizing on the Apadisha’s question all day. But we can make no formal determinations until the poet announces his prophecies of doom in the presence of the Apadisha. And, of course, we must observe the one who claims to be the chosen king of said prophecy.”

At that, Master Numerologist stopped with a bow to his companion. Master Astrologer completed his thought as if they were but one person speaking with two mouths. “His Excellency, our most sagacious Apadisha, will then make such inquiries as will uncover any duplicity of the false prophet working in conspiracy with these barbarians from the East to deceive the sultanate. Or he will establish that the promised savior has appeared to assuage his troubled sleep.”

The professors of the magical arts spoke in high-flown accents, using a language Llesho had never heard before. A high-court form of the tongue the gatekeeper had used, he guessed from the cadence and the sibilant flow of the sentences. Suppressing a little smile, Habiba translated both for content and for the style of address. Llesho understood the smile well enough, though he couldn’t say as much for all the words. Unlike his own plain-spoken teachers, these courtly scholars used words to obscure as much as to enlighten. When he’d sorted through it all, he realized that, however the matter settled out, the astrologer and the numerologist could claim to have accurately predicted the outcome.

“So, Menar will tell his story, then I will tell mine,” Llesho said to Habiba, confirming his understanding of the conversation as it was translated to him. “Then the Apadisha will decide whether or not we are telling the truth.”

“That’s about it,” Habiba agreed, and hastily translated this into an elaborate description of Llesho’s excellent comprehension.

“And if the Apadisha decides against us?”

Habiba gave a little shrug, as if the consequences were minor. “Stoning, or beheading. I would be disappointed if the day goes against us, but even more dismayed if you stayed to see sentence carried out against you.”

The magician expected him to summon the avatar of his dream travels, and in the shape of a roebuck to leap out of mortal danger. His companions might die, but he would remain to carry on the fight with the armies Shou had already gathered at the edge of the grasslands.

“According to Lleck’s ghost, I need all my brothers, not just the ones easiest to keep alive.” That was a warning. Menar was no more expendable than Llesho himself, though how the blind poet would be of use in the coming battle he hadn’t figured out yet. For that reason if for no other—what he hadn’t accounted for in his plans invariably rose up and bit him on the nose when he wasn’t paying attention—he wouldn’t abandon his brother to the wrath of the Apadisha. It wasn’t the only reason, or even the most important. He didn’t want to get into an argument with Habiba about family loyalty, though. Or, even worse, about the love he felt for his brothers—even the most exasperating of them.

The advisers to the Apadisha had left out one important detail, but Llesho had picked up on the clue. “The Apadisha has dreams.”

Habiba blinked once, the only sign that he had understood the meaning behind the simple statement. He didn’t translate, which was all Llesho needed to confirm it. The Apadisha dream traveled, or perhaps had his own prophetic dreams that woke him with the same fear and dread that Lluka suffered. If he had experienced those baleful visions, there would be no question of truthfulness. For all their sakes, Llesho hoped the dreams hadn’t driven him mad.

“Shall we go?” Master Numerologist asked.

Llesho didn’t understand the words, but the gesture was plain enough to follow. A student came forward and took Menar’s elbow as they sorted themselves out in the correct diplomatic order. First came the two head masters of the magical arts, who would introduce the prophet and his prophecy. Then came Llesho and his brother Menar. Habiba, Master Den, and Marmer Sea Dragon followed as his court, with the rest of the teachers and then their students behind. Llesho’s cadre, with no assigned positions, flanked the hastily assembled column on both sides.

In a procession of over two hundred souls, they made their way to an inner door guarded by two women in armor, each with a tall spear in one hand and a sword in the other. “You may not pass,” the guardswoman on the right said, and tilted her spear so that it crossed that of the guard on the left side of the door.

“We come at the whim of the Apadisha,” the astrologer said with a deep bow. “Delay us at your peril.”

This seemed to be a formula of admittance rather than a genuine challenge. The guard took no offense but gave their party an assessing examination that would have fit right at home in the eyes of his own cadre. When the guards woman’s glance fell upon his companions, her formal posture gave way to battle readiness.

“No one may enter the presence of the Apadisha with weapons on their person,” she said, and added, “no foreign soldiers may pass this door, in any state of arms.”

“Of course.” They’d had the same rule in the Palace of the Sun. That hadn’t stopped the Harnish raiders. But who knew how many foreign spies would have slipped a knife between his father’s ribs before then, if their mercenary guards hadn’t made the same demands of guests and supplicants? Llesho, therefore, did as he was bidden. He took the scabbards from his belt and the sheath that held the spear at his back, putting them both into Kaydu’s hand.

“Stay here,” he said, “but stay alert.” He didn’t want them captured if things went badly on the other side of the door.

Kaydu gave a deep bow in salute, unhappy to be left behind but not surprised at the regulation. As a student of her father, she might have followed the others of the school, but that was neither her position in his cadre nor the uniform she pesently wore. She joined the others who followed him as they took up watchful positions around the perimeter. Llesho reclaimed his place in the procession. The Bithynian guardswoman struck a gong taller than she was that echoed through the hall and the door swung open.

Llesho had expected a room, but more gardens awaited them on the other side. This time an inner courtyard lay before them, surrounded by open and airy pavilions topped by the fat round towers he had seen in the distance on his arrival. A fountain gushed from the center of an intersection where half a dozen paved walkways met. From that center the paths wandered through stands of date trees and tall ferns. Thick vines raised themselves along white trellises, flowering with large red blooms that released a heady perfume as the procession passed.

In state, their party, with the whole school behind them, walked slowly past the fountain, down a path that snaked between hibiscus and oleander, to a set of doors the like of which Llesho had never seen before. They stood three times as high as Llesho’s head and four times the width of a normal door. Elaborate patterns of flowers and trailing vines covered the surface that was made entirely out of gold.

“The Divan of the Grand Apadisha of Pontus and all the surrounding lands of Bithynia and the Marmer Sea that washes his shores in the east,” Master Astrologer said. She smiled proudly as she announced the lands and holdings of the Apadisha’s rule. Marmer Sea Dragon bristled at the mention of his own realm among the possessions, but did not raise an objection. The gleam in his eyes warned Llesho that more remained to be said on the subject. For the time being he kept his peace, while the doors in front of them glinted in the afternoon as if the sun itself blazed with the glory of the Grand Apadisha.

“Leaf,” Habiba muttered in his ear. Gold leaf, that was. Artisans had beaten thin sheets of gold foil into the material that made up the bulk of the door, giving it the luster of gold but not the cost or weight. A solid gold door would have been impossible to move even if the Apadisha had wished to display his wealth in such a way. Gold leaf in such quantity itself spoke of overwhelming riches, however. Pontus was not just the center of magical education for witches and magicians. It was also the last stop in the East for goods passing into and out of the West.

Master Numerologist stopped in front of the magnificent doors and pulled on a thick silk rope that hung down from the center of a tubular chime. At the sounding of the chime, the doors began to heave slowly outward. Whatever they were made of, they were heavy. Three slaves on each side heaved against the thick crossbars, muscles bunching in their shoulders and veins straining in their necks. Slowly, the doors opened on soundless post hinges set into the ground and the lintel arch. When the doors had opened enough so that Llesho’s party could enter three abreast, the headmasters of the magicians started forward again.

The governor of Guynm Province must have gotten his decorating ideas from the Grand Apadisha’s Divan in Pontus. Everywhere the walls glittered with a million jewellike bits of glass worked in the same motifs of vines and flowers that had adorned the golden doors. Gold foil molded the leafy decorations that banded the ceiling from which rose the greatest of the bulbous domes that towered over the city. Stealing a glance overhead, Llesho saw a densely complex geometric pattern built of brilliantly colored tiles that covered the dome. Bits of colored glass let in shafts of painted light all around its circumference.

The Divan itself was a room so large that the two hundred students forming themselves in rows behind a hand-carved screen at the right of the door seemed to be tucked out of the way. Behind a matching screen to the left of the gold door an orchestra of boys played strange discordant music on their instruments. The masters led Menar and Llesho and their small party of advisers forward, with all the faculty of the magicians’ school at their backs.

They came to the foot of the sumptuously draped dais at the center of the great room, where a reclining figure awaited them on a low couch.

“Health and long life!” Master Astrologer proclaimed the greeting. She fell to her knees, as did Master Numerologist, both dropping their foreheads to the floor, awaiting the pleasure of their sultan. All the faculty and students that had followed them did likewise. Llesho and his company bowed their respect, but did not kneel or knock their heads on the floor. Menar might have done so, but his blindness absolved him from the awkward duty. As for the others in their party, they either were themselves or represented equal monarchs in their own right, and owed the Grand Apadisha no greater abasement.

From her position on her knees and with her face still turned to the floor, Master Astrologer introduced the newcomers: “My lord Grand Apadisha of Pontus and all the lands and waters surrounding it on which his hand has fallen by the Grace of the Father and the Sword of the Daughter, I bring you the blind prophet and a king in exile who claims to be the foretold one.”

Fortunately for them all, the old teacher ran out of air at that point, or they might still be listening while she awarded to the Apadisha all the lands from here to Pearl Island. The part about the Sword of the Daughter caught his attention, however. This was the first he had heard of a military aspect to the religion of the Father and the Daughter. Suddenly, he wondered how friendly this audience really was, and how seriously the Apadisha did take his claims to the property of his neighbors.

The Apadisha watched with bright, birdlike dark eyes. His gaze reminded Llesho of Kaydu, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to inquire about the presence of dragons—or eagles—in his lineage. He was very thin, with dark circles smudging his cheekbones and sagging flesh, as if he’d recently lost a great deal of weight to worry or illness.

Dreams,Llesho thought,could eat at the body as they ate at the soul. A moment of unspoken understanding passed between them as the exiled king of Thebin and the Apadisha of Bithynia recognized in each other the terrible burden they carried. But even that connection of mutual understanding must be proved in front of the many witnesses.

“In truth I make no such claim about myself,” Llesho corrected Master Astrologer. “I came to Pontus following rumors of the exiled poet-prince of Thebin, said to have been blinded and enslaved in the attack on Kungol, our home. I hoped to find my brother Menar, and I did.” He couldn’t help the smile that sneaked across his lips. Menar, injured but alive, stood at his side.

The Apadisha responded to his contentment with a formal reflection of his smile, but his eyes narrowed. “You travel with disreputable companions.” He looked to Master Den when he spoke, letting his glance slide over Marmer Sea Dragon as if he wasn’t sure what to make of this guest. “In both of the worlds open to men. But one is missing.”

Many had stayed behind, he could have said. But the reference to two worlds meant the dream world and the waking one. The Grand Apadisha knew of Pig even if he didn’t believe in the Great Goddess or her gardens.

“One follows the guide who knows the way,” Llesho therefore answered.

“But not too far, or with one’s eyes closed,” the Apadisha warned him.

Menar, the poet and master of lore and story, joined the argument with a knowing little smile. “Even the blind keep one eye open in the land of the spirits.”

Which offered Llesho the opening he needed to reassure his host, “Can I, with two eyes, be less wary than my brother?” He knew the Jinn’s crimes as well as anybody, after all.

The Grand Apadisha raised an eyebrow. “Is that a question?” he asked in an ironic drawl that Habiba refrained from copying in his translation.

Llesho wondered who had been whispering in the sultan’s ear, and what they’d told of his more hair-raising adventures in ignoring good sense. Still it was a fair challenge.

“Maybe it should be. Fortunately, I have other advisers—” At this, he made a small gesture with his hand to take in Habiba at his side. “—to keep me from falling too far off my proper course.”

The Grand Apadisha could have no objection to the magician, who had trained in his own royal school in Pontus.

Indeed, the sultan accepted this answer with only the briefest glance at Habiba. “The Father finds favor in one who, like himself, has had the raising of a Daughter of the Sword,” he agreed, calling upon the name of his god as witness. Then he added as a caution, “But for the Daughter’s mind, we must ask his sages. It is her prophecies, after all, that will lead us into war or bar the way of our enemies.”

“That is the other reason why I’ve journeyed to Pontus.”

Llesho took this opening to plead his position. “The rumors that reached the grasslands, about this blind poet who might be my brother, claimed that prophecies spilled off the blind poet’s tongue like water gushing from a fountain.

“My advisers suggested that I might find answers to further my quest with this poet. Even if he turned out not to be the Menar I lost as a child, I was honor bound to seek him out. But I know nothing of Bithynia’s troubles nor can I claim any part in its prophecies until I know what the prophecies say.”

The Grand Apadisha listened carefully and when Llesho had ended his little speech with a bow, he turned to Master Numerologist and Master Astrologer, who had remained on their knees, with their heads to the ground. “What do you have to say about this prophecy? Are we called to war in the East, or do we face the West for battle season? You have my permission to speak.”

Master Numerologist rose from his position of abasement and dusted fussily at his immaculate robes, to win a moment more for thought before he must speak, Llesho thought.

“As Your Excellency knows, the sages of the school have studied the prophecy of the blind poet for three cycles of the seasons to no avail. In this young king from afar we have, at last, a key of sorts. It is time, we agree, to listen anew to the words of the blind prophet, but in the presence of the king of which it speaks.”

“Master Astrologer?”

She rose as well, advising with fewer hesitation tactics but no more particular direction, “Let the young king explain what he can, and perhaps out of his tale we can find the star on which to set our course, and the numbers that mark the appointed time and day.”

The Apadisha considered the advice of his sages. “Vague enough to keep your heads on your shoulders if things go badly,” he remarked, to make it known that he hadn’t fallen for the trick before he went on. “A blind man to set the course of the season’s warfare. Hmm. Better than a pin in a map, I suppose, though barely.”

Habiba hesitated just a moment before he translated in tones as hushed as he could make them. Understandable, that nervousness.So, Llesho thought,we do not bring war to this Apadisha. We just give him a direction to point his soldiers during hunting season. He tried to imagine what Shou would say. Not difficult. The emperor who now sat in the palace of the provincial governor he’d executed for plotting treason would warn him to be cautious. This sultan who played with real armies like other men played at Go might send his forces into Kungol at Llesho’s behest. Getting them out again might prove more difficult than asking them in, however.

Shou would tell him not to invite an army he’d have to fight as soon as the common enemy had been routed. Especially when their leader was giving him that look that said, “It’s snack time. And you’re it.”

In fact, however, the immediate message in those hungry eyes was a simpler version of “snack time.” The Apadisha clapped his hands, summoning servants who had waited for his signal to begin their own procession. Breads and sauces, fruits and roasted meats, passed in orderly assemblage on great silver platters. “Sit, sit.” He waved Llesho’s party to cushions scattered before the dais. “Deciding the fates of nations is hungry work. It’s time we calmed the beasts in our bellies before they start making demands of the map.”

When he put it that way, it sounded like a good idea. Llesho sat, with Master Den on his right and Marmer Sea Dragon in human form at his left. As a servant, even so exalted a one, Habiba remained standing. He placed himself between the Apadisha and Llesho’s party as an arbiter. The sages, Master Astrologer and Master Numerologist, likewise did not join them at the feast. And since each had one of Menar’s elbows, he didn’t sit either.

When the Apadisha had taken a plate from a servant and helped himself to the delicacies there, he nodded his head at the masters awaiting his command.

“Let’s hear it, then. This prophecy has set armies in motion and washed up on my shore an exiled king demanding aid and armies. What can this young king tell us to shed light on the words of our blind poet?”

Menar stepped forward and spread his hands in the way of all poets, to show that he carried no weapons. In the market the gesture would also invite coins from the audience, but here it was form only. Menar gave a respectful bow and set his chin in the manner of one who looked into the distance in spite of his milky eyes. Slowly, in hypnotic cadence as if a force outside himself had taken control of his throat, Menar, prince of Thebin, began to recite.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter Twenty-seven

“What is that sound?”

The Father of all things asked. Looking out his window, the day was clear The sun shone brightly, but a cloud Marred the distance.

 

Cries of grief rose from the darkness.

 

“It’s only death,”

The Daughter of the Sword answered, Setting aside her blade to pour him tea. “A war pauses in its path, destiny Awaits a new coming.”

 

And cries of anguish rose from the darkness.

 

“When will that be?”

The Father of all things asked. He drank his tea. The day had darkened. The sun had fallen behind the clouds Blotting out the heavens.

 

Cries of terror grew closer in the darkness. Seven lost princes each find the others

Six heads crowned with stars a gate have hidden Five armies, like one hand, close around them Four worms breathing fire rise above them Three bitter gifts must teach a bitter lesson Two paths are offered, one is chosen One jewel alone, to each of seven brothers.

 

A king is called to turn the sacred key. Return to heaven that which heaven lost—Justice brings both light and darkness—Then heaven will have peace.

 

Cry, cry, for justice howled in the darkness.

MENAR STOPPED then, to the puzzlement of many. “Is that all?” the Grand Apadisha asked him.

“As far as I have been given, Your Excellency.” The blind poet managed to shrug his shoulders and bow at the same time, no easy feat, but it said much of his own feelings on the matter.

Llesho wasn’t sure about the structure of the poem. The numerological portion, of which he understood a good amount, seemed dropped in from a different poem altogether. He didn’t know if that was the mark of prophetic poems in general or just the intrusion of the prophecy in what was otherwise a narrative poem about the gods of this land having tea, perhaps a preamble to an epic of war and battle. He’d heard enough of them in his time, across all the length and breadth of the road west.

The final verse should have had a reference to the daughter god at least, and a verse to follow, he thought, that summed up the reaction of the father in the poem.

As if his brother had read his mind and spoke to confirm the unstated question, Menar added, “I have tried, using my humble talents as a poet, to complete the verses. But it seems that whatever will happen next awaits what we do here, and will not be written until the path is truly chosen.

“This talk of paths is troubling,” the Grand Apadisha grumbled. “One wonders if the poet is falling into pagan ways.”

Llesho didn’t know what the going penalty for idolatry was in Pontus—no matter that the Way of the Goddess didn’t actually have idols—but he didn’t want it getting in the way of his dealings with the Apadisha.

“Perhaps the gods of Pontus have been troubled by events happening elsewhere in the realm of spirits and gods,” he suggested, “a realm far from the dominion of the Father and his Daughter of the Sword, where other heavenly beings on the side of right prevail for the moment but suffer attack by a mutual enemy.”

Habiba was quick to agree. “The prophecy makes sense as a warning of battles waged within and without the kingdoms of the gods, which arise elsewhere to threaten the Father and the Daughter in their heaven and in Bithynia below.”

It seemed as if the whole Divan held its breath while the Apadisha considered the witch’s appeal. The sages were a conservative lot by nature and seldom risked their necks on any controversy. And yet, the school had brought these strangers forward, had presented Llesho and his struggle for a different heaven—strange and heretical to the Bithynians—as explanation for the prophecy.

If their ruler took offense, he might order the beheading of every master and student in the city. So they waited, breath held, until the Apadisha’s narrowed eyes drifted from the poet to his Master Numerologist.

“What scientific proof can you present that this young vagabond is the king foretold by the Father and the Daughter?”

“That is the troubling matter,” Master Numerologist admitted. “Some parts of the prophecy seem clear enough. This exiled prince is one of seven brothers. In another land, a spirit told him to seek out those he had lost, which he has done.”

“All but one. I haven’t found Ghrisz yet,” Llesho corrected this small error. He had faith that the Way of the Goddess would take him to the last of his lost brothers. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Ghrisz is in Kungol, leading the rebels,” Menar said, as if this was common knowledge.

Apparently it was, because the Apadisha perked up at the reference. “Ghrisz the Ghost-Warrior of the Golden City?” he asked.

“The same,” Menar confirmed.

“Then our brother is dead?” Llesho couldn’t believe that he had come so far to find his brother gone and his quest come to an untimely end, but Menar shook his head, to dispel the idea.

“Not dead, but very good at hiding, until he strikes at his Harnish invaders as they go about their ruinous business. There are many stories of his exploits. They say his lair is hidden within the very walls of the Golden City of Kungol, that he preys upon the raiders and escapes before they can catch him.”

Ghrisz was alive! Llesho grew light-headed with relief. He hadn’t dared to hope that he might actually succeed. There was, for one thing, a dreadful enemy to meet at the end of that road, and a more desperate demon if they succeeded that far. For a moment, discussion went on above his head while he tried to settle the piece of the puzzle that was Ghrisz in its place in his heart.

Time had passed and the corners that had fit so well when he was a child had grown chipped with wear. Even so, he felt a lack that all his brothers did not fill. Ping, their sister, dead after just two cycles of the seasons on the mortal world. He hoped for his own sake that she returned quickly to the mortal world. He wanted to meet her in her new form and know that she would grow up happy and safe in this life with all the joy and laughter that she’d lost to early death in the last—

But Habiba was nudging his elbow, and he became aware again that Menar had continued speaking.

“The tales also speak of a beautiful woman, who is called the Sapphire Princess because she is as priceless to the Ghost-Warrior’s cause as the greatest jewel. I’ve made some of the stories into poems suitable for an audience myself, so I know that not all said of him is true. But it seems well known that he exists. His presence is felt wherever he leaves the wounded and the dead among his enemies.”

Ghrisz, a legendary hero, and with a beautiful consort, it seemed. Such a pair might not welcome a younger brother returning to supplant them at what must seem the end of their long battle. Still, if the prophecy had reached even to the Harn, Ghrisz must have heard it as well. What if he believed the prophecy was meant for him? It struck Llesho that he might be bringing civil war to a country already devastated by invasion. He didn’t want that. Didn’t want to be king, for that matter, but saw no way out, not even for a brother ready to take on the job. He already had one of those in Lluka, he reminded himself sourly. Why couldn’t anything be easy?

Master Numerologist had made a bow to the Apadisha, however, and Llesho brought his thoughts back into line. He knew better than to wander in the presence of emperors and sultans.

“So the seven princes are accounted for in the prophecy,” the numerologist counted off. “And the blind poet, Menar, has told us in council that the six heads crowned with stars must be the mountains that surround the city of Kungol.”

“I would agree,” Llesho said. “In the grasslands, many riddles are phrased like this prophecy. Bolghai could tell you better than I, but heads crowned with stars would seem to mean the mountaintops crowned with glaciers that glitter like stars in the sunlight.”

“Five armies, like one hand.” The Apadisha held out his fingers, then closed them into a fist. “Where are these armies?” So coolly did the question float on the air that one might almost have missed the menace in it. Llesho had entered Pontus as a wounded slave, with no armies at his back but his small band of guardsmen. The sultan must wonder, did his armies follow to attack once the beggar-king had allayed suspicion? Or, equally possible, was this exiled prince who washed up on his shores a madman whose accidental relationship with the poet had caused the sages to interpret the prophecy around him by mistake?

Llesho knew the answer, as did all of his advisers, who waited for him to speak. With a little smile, and an almost imperceptible bow to show that he meant no threat by it, he did.

“In Durnhag,” he said, “or they were when I put to sea. I expect by now they are on their way to Thebin. A difficult run, but not so far as the Long March, and they carry no children into battle. Well, if you don’t count us.”

With that he showed he understood one part of the Apadisha’s concerns, that they were too young, too inexperienced. Llesho could have told him of all the battles that stood between Pearl Island and Pontus, all the dreams and nightmares and deaths, the wounds that still pulled over his heart and the wounds that his companions carried as well. Having the experience, they could scarcely be counted as too young. Though he said nothing of this, some of his reflections must have shown in Llesho’s eyes, because the Apadisha’s expression grew more narrowly considering.

“Still, a distance to travel,” the Apadisha noted, “with many enemies between there and Kungol, which I believe is your goal?”

“Not so many enemies as there were a season ago,” Llesho demurred. “And an army suitable to meet them.”

“An army of children.” The Apadisha allowed a smile to show as if he tried to suppress it.

Llesho had expected no less. He returned the smile, felt the clash as steel met steel in the duel of wits. “The children have all washed up on your doorstep, Excellency. But the emperor of Shan sends his regards to the raiders who have enslaved Thebin, and among their number the Dinha of the Tashek people has sent her Gansau Wastrels, great warriors all.” He paused, lost for a moment in grief for the absent Harlol and his companions murdered by the stone monsters of the grasslands. “My brother, Prince Shokar, leads a band of Thebin recruits to make the second. Mergen-Khan of the Qubal people has brought the clans under his rule to join us, for three. And the Tinglut-Khan himself sends a party of his warriors to observe in the field and seek the answer to a puzzle that troubles the Tinglut clans. I count our armies as four. Discovering the prophecy in Pontus, I thought to find the fifth army here as well.”

“Or, if not, your princely outlaws in Kungol will do to fill out the numbers, eh, Master Numerologist?”

The sage dithered, hoping that his sovereign spoke in jest, but the Apadisha waited, one eyebrow cocked, for an answer.

“That is for the future to tell.” Master Numerologist gave as vague an answer as Llesho had ever heard. Did the Apadisha’s advisers ever offer useful interpretations? Which was unfair, he chastised himself. His own presence was a dangerous enough answer.

“So.” The Grand Apadisha waited long enough to make the Master Numerologist wish himself far away, and then he turned his dark and piercing gaze on Llesho. “Is it as easy to gather up four fire-breathing worms as to gather a hand of armies?” he asked mockingly. Llesho would have wondered if the sultan believed in the prophecy at all, except for a glint of desperation deep in his eyes. The condescending smile meant nothing, then. What had he seen in his dreams to terrify him so? This wasn’t the place to ask. Maybe, if they met inside a dream . . .

But he hadn’t answered the question yet. As it happened, he didn’t have to. Marmer Sea Dragon gave a little bow, but let the green fire light his eyes to show that he was more than the man he might have seemed.

“The Holy King of Thebin has met four of my kind, all of whom have urged him on his way in hope and trepidation. We don’t well understand the notion of cooperating toward a common goal. It is more our way to divide this world into our separate realms and abide where we rule, finding peace and harmony by ignoring our neighbors. The coming battle, however, may devour us all, and so we throw our lot in with the young king’s armies. If the prophecy calls upon four of our kind, then they will be Pearl Bay Dragon, and Golden River Dragon, and Dun River Dragon. I am myself the dragon-king of the sea which you have lately claimed as your own,” he added his own identity for the gathered sages and their Apadisha, as much a warning off his territory as a polite introduction. “Though I have my own sworn vendetta against the young king’s supernatural guide, to free my son from the unholy embrace of the false magician, I shall aid his battle as well.”

“Wonder upon wonder comes before me today,” the Apadisha remarked with an acid tartness in his voice. “What am I to make of it all?”

Llesho couldn’t tell whether Marmer Sea Dragon’s revelation came as a surprise, or even if the sultan believed any part of the tale they related. He had little time to ponder the matter, however.

“Three gifts?” the Grand Apadisha prodded, stroking his beard with one jeweled hand. It might almost have been a nervous gesture.

“I have those gifts, but with discretion I may not mention them here.” Llesho bowed to show respect but his jaw was set, his eyes cool. He shared the knowledge of his blessed gifts only with his closest companions and advisers—the Apadisha was not yet even an ally. And then there was the other matter, that gifts of goddesses and spirits must offend the Bithynian religion. He would not budge on this one thing.

“Two paths?” the Apadisha asked instead, and Llesho had to ask himself how much he already knew from his dreams.

“I have no answer to that part of the prophecy,” he admitted. “Since I left Pearl Bay I have followed just one path, the Way of the Goddess, though it may displease you to hear it. It would dishonor my lady wife to deny her place in the heavens and in my heart. If there is another path, I don’t know what it is, and wouldn’t choose it if I did.”

“Foolish to reject what you do not see,” the Apadisha warned, and for a change even Habiba looked concerned about his answer.

“Two paths lay before the young king,” Habiba said. “At the behest of my mistress and with the aid of his many advisers, including the emperor of Shan, I have endeavored to guide him upon the path the gods of Thebin and Bithynia have set for him.”

The magician carefully skirted the fact that he served two sets of gods. The Bithynian school of magicians, of which he was a part, honored the Father and the Daughter. The Way of the Goddess, on which he served the mortal goddess of war, promised the heavenly gardens of the Great Goddess at the end of struggle. From what Llehso had heard about the Daughter of the Sword, he thought the paths of gods must cross. In his own world, the Lady SienMa might be this warrior daughter who stood with weapon drawn at the right hand of her father. But Dognut bore no resemblance to the father that the Bithynians wor shiped, and neither did Master Den. The Apadisha didn’t mention this careful blurring of the magician’s loyalties, but nodded for Habiba to go on. “Another, darker path awaits at the call of the false magician, Master Markko,” Habiba explained with a sign to ward against evil. “It is to his credit that the young king sees no path at all down that dark way. The Daughter teaches, however, that sometimes we can only reach the light by passing through the darkness.”

That was disturbing. Did Habiba mean for him to fall under Master Markko’s spell after all? It hardly seemed likely, given all the efforts they had taken to free him from Markko’s clutches in the past. But there was no time to argue the point. He resolved to consider what Habiba might mean later, when he was free of the Apadisha’s scrutiny.

“So, we come to this one jewel, to each of seven brothers.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Llesho admitted. “My mother had jewels, but she took no interest in adornment for its own sake, and I can think of no ring or bead or necklet with special meaning.”

“It wasn’t our way,” Menar agreed. “Jade objects, and bronze and silver and gold, brightly colored ribbons and precious embroideries were valued at court. But our mother had a saying, that Great Moon was her pendant, and Great Sun the only crown our father needed.”

Master Numerologist considered the lack of a jewel with the rest of them. Then, tentatively, he offered a solution. “If we look to Kungol for this jewel, then perhaps it is no frozen gemstone at all. Didn’t you say, holy poet, that the tales speak of a beautiful woman whom the people call the Sapphire Princess? Perhaps she is the jewel mentioned in the prophecy.”

It seemed unlikely that the gods would burden Llesho’s prophecy with his brother’s consort. Unless the poem referred to Ghrisz all along, of course. He tried to fit the label on his relationship with the Great Goddess, but when he thought of her, it was the beekeeper who came to mind, easing his soul like a caress. Llesho couldn’t come up with any better answer, so he let Master Numerologist’s solution to the riddle stand.

The Apadisha, too, seemed less than convinced with the final part of the puzzle, but he passed over it with a wave in Llesho’s general direction.

“So we are left with a king. I don’t suppose you know what the sacred key is?”

“A metaphor, no doubt,” Llesho guessed. “I’ve always found prophecies to be most helpful after the fact. The pieces all seem obvious in hindsight. Unfortunately, no one has handed me a key with ‘gates of heaven’ engraved on the shaft.”

“No key at all, I suppose.” The Apadisha looked hopeful, but not surprised when Llesho respectfully denied all knowledge of such a key.

“None whatsoever, except as knowledge may be a key. But even that comes slowly, and at cost.”

The Apadisha’s eyes seemed to grow darker, the irises consumed by the dark fire at the core of his inner vision. Llesho couldn’t look away, couldn’t hide anything. Discovered that he couldn’t even move until, released from that intense focus, he felt the muscles in his shoulders ease back into his control.

“No small cost,” the Apadisha agreed. “The mark of your struggle is there for all to see. But what knowledge has it bought, I wonder?” He gave Llesho a sardonic smile. “I doubt you could tell me even if you wished to. Soon, though. Very soon.

“Justice brings light and darkness?” He emphasized each word like pronouncing a spell.

Justice.Llesho felt the word like a cry right to his soul.I should know this, he thought. Like the word that fails the tongue, or the book just out of reach. It teased at his awareness until he tried to look at it, then skittered away just as it seemed he must catch it, there. But Light and Darkness, that he had carried with him since he left Pearl Bay.

“I mean you no harm,” he said as he slipped a hand beneath his shirt.

Guardswomen he hadn’t noticed until then came to attention, spears at the ready, but Llesho kept his eyes on the Apadisha, who watched him with eyes dark and hungry as a crow’s. Llesho bowed his head and drew the thong from around his neck. He left the silver chain in place, willing Pig to keep quiet and out of the way, though he’d never had to worry about the Jinn in the waking world.

From the pouch that hung from the thong, however, he drew the pearls that he had gathered during his journey. One from Lleck’s ghost, stolen from the Pearl Bay Dragon. She would have given it to him as her parting gift anyway, she had told him. One from her Ladyship, SienMa, the mortal goddess of war, who had plucked him from the arena and set him on his path. One from Mara the healer, Carina’s mother, who aspired to be the eighth mortal god. Pig, who might or might not be part of the Great Goddess’ necklace, he did not reveal.

His Wastrels, dead on a Harnish battlefield, had yielded the remaining three and he looked on them with grief and yearning. He would not have given up a single life to regain a trinket, not even for the Great Goddess. But to restore the balance of heaven, he would sacrifice many. All who followed him, he would give, for the lives of the millions who slept unaware, and for all the realms of heaven and earth and the underworld which would fall in the coming chaos if he didn’t win.

The Apadisha’s crow’s eyes gleamed with the reflected light of the six black pearls, darkness shining on darkness, giving back black light. “Master Astrologer?” By the question, he signaled that he knew what he looked upon.

Pale and shaking, Master Astrologer stepped forward with a warding sign to protect herself from heresy. “So many,” she said with a quaver in her voice. “I dare not speak. The heavens do not fit in the palm of a young man’s hand. Such things do not exist. If they did, I dare not speak the consequences.”

It seemed that words did fail her. “Beg pardon, Excellency. Beg pardon.” Though a scientist of the heavens, she did not in all the time of her protestations reach out to touch the pearls in Llesho’s palm. Rather, she curled her fingers in on one another and tucked her hands into the deep pockets of her magician’s robes.

It was enough for the Apadisha, however. “Master Geomancer,” he called, and a short, round woman came forward with more confidence than the Master Astrologer, but some hesitancy nonetheless. “Can you tell me where each of these was found?” she asked. “The pattern they scattered on the earth may tell us much to further our studies.”

“Shan,” Llesho told her, “Far to the south. Pearl Bay, and Farshore Province, and Thousand Lakes Province, perhaps. And the grasslands, halfway to Durnhag.”

The geomancer’s eyes grew distant with mathematical calculations, and Llesho guessed that she saw maps behind her eyes, as he did himself sometimes when plotting the course of a journey in his head.

The Grand Apadisha permitted her to disappear into her own head only briefly, however. “Do you have that which you have been studying these last three cycles of the seasons?” he asked.

Master Geomancer bowed, and drew from her ample robes a small carved box. Opening the puzzle catch, she held out the contents to the sultan, who took them in his hand and held them out to Llesho. Two perfect black pearls.

“They were found in a copper mine outside of Iznik after a night of storms that drowned a work crew and set fire to a quarter of the town. Accordingly, the overseer took them for an omen, and had them sent to the school at Pontus. Can you explain how they came to be where they were found, and what caused the terrible storms that accompanied them?”

“Heaven is under siege,” Llesho answered. “Day and night no longer come to her gardens.” The Apadisha might decide to have him beheaded for heresy, but he doubted it. The man knew too much.

“As I thought,” the Apadisha agreed. “As did my Master Astrologer, who would not offend me with the truth.” He put the two black pearls back into their box with a heavy sigh and handed them over to Llesho. “An unlucky number, eight, young king. I hope I do not damn your quest with this gift.”

“Not eight.” He didn’t show the ninth, but ran a finger over the silver chain that showed at his throat when his hand brushed his shirt. “Ahkenbad, in the Gansau Wastes,” he added for the geomancer.

The Apadisha didn’t ask to see more. “Terrible things await us if you do not succeed, young king,” he said. A small part of his burden seemed to lift from his shoulders in spite of his warning, however.

Llesho knew they shared the dreams of chaos and destruction that awaited them. He could offer no solace but the knowledge that what he knew was shared. “A gift of prophecy gives no comfort.”

To those who watched, it seemed that he must speak about Menar’s poem. Between the two of them, however, passed a darker knowledge. Seeing the future in a dream didn’t mean you could change it in the waking world, or even rightly understand it. “What does not drive you mad sounds mad to anyone who hears it,” he added, thinking that having company in the knowledge maybe helped a little.

“Is your brother mad, then, young king?”

The Apadisha’s question stunned him for a moment. Lluka surely was mad, or nearly there at least. Then he realized the Apadisha meant Menar. Did they follow the babbling of a madman, which would make them mad as well for the dreams that troubled their sleep?

“His eyes may not see, but his mind is as clear as yours or mine.” He offered no real comfort on that score. They might yet all of them be mad. Master Den would tell him if it were so, he thought. Then again, depending on the trickster god seemed more proof of madness than otherwise.

“I agree.” To what, the Apadisha left between them. He clapped his hands twice and two of the guardswomen came forward. One, Llesho noticed, bore a striking resemblance to the Grand Apadisha himself.

“Take with you two hands of my guard, the Daughter’s picked swordswomen, and all who follow them. Boats will be made ready for you.

“Now go. I have spent too much time on the puzzles of strangers already.”

Llesho accepted the dismissal. He had at least ten soldiers from the Apadisha’s picked guard to accompany him. Not an army to bring against Master Markko, but it might, in a pinch, satisfy Menar’s prophecy. Llesho gave a proper bow and, in the manner of one who has been granted a boon remained in the abased position as he backed his way out of the Apadisha’s presence. As soon as boats could be made ready, they were going.

But first he had to see a magician about a jade bowl. He’d rather have left it behind, but had long ago concluded that any gifts of mystical inclination that came to his hand in his quest were there for a reason. He would not leave any of them, even the most deadly, behind.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter Twenty-eight

AS IT happened, the Apadisha would send ten thousand soldiers, women all, dedicated to the Daughter of the Sword. A thousand to each of his picked guardswomen, each of whom commanded her own hierarchy of officers. All fell under the spear of AlmaZara, a taciturn warrior who wore in addition to her weapons and armor the Apadisha’s nose and his intense dark eyes. The gathering of such an army, with all their provisions and ships to carry them to Edris, took the greater part of a month.

Habiba, in the shape of an eagle, returned to his mistress, the Lady SienMa, to alert the gathered army when they might be expected on the other side of the Marmer Sea. Among the allies were Mergen and Tinglut. In their mutual grief for loved ones lost at the hands of the Bamboo Snake Demon, the two khans had come to an uneasy alliance. Each put down his suspicion of the other with great difficulty. Tinglut-Khan had no reason to trust Llesho’s word, a new and uncomfortable ally.

As for Mergen-Khan, personal observation had shown him little to comfort him about Llesho. To make matters worse, Habiba carried news of Tayy’s injury at the claws of Master Markko, a foreign and magical enemy. Coming so soon after the death of the prince’s mother and his father, who was also Mergen’s brother and the former khan, the new leader of the Qubal had little cause for trust. And yet, Habiba reported on his return, the khan continued to honor the agreements made before his brother’s death.

This was partly Bolghai’s work, Llesho knew. Close contact with those who understood him best must speak for him in some way; surely one who stood in the good graces of three gods on earth and the Great Goddess in her heaven must command respect, if nothing else. He wondered if even the gods knew what they were doing, though, to put so much on his shoulders. He seemed to stumble in the dark more often than he followed a straight path in the light.

All this stewing over events he couldn’t control was giving Llesho a headache when he could least afford to be at less than his best. During Habiba’s absence, the physician Ibn Al-Razi suggested that his hospital was no fit place for young kings or princes grown healthy in his care. Since they no longer needed his attention, he could serve his religion best without magicians who claimed kinship with false gods under his roof.

While their ships were made ready, therefore, Llesho and his company moved to the school for magicians. In a room that was part schoolroom and part laboratory, with a high table full of little drawers at the center and benches for the students on all sides, he was subjected to intense examination by the scholars and magicians. They determined that indeed he had no dragon’s blood in his veins and agreed among themselves that unwittingly Marmer Sea Dragon must himself have influenced the storm according to the wishes Llesho conveyed with the empathic communication possible with such beasts.

Marmer Sea Dragon, in his human form, objected to the name of beast and assured them that he acted only as an observer. While the magicians apologized for besmirching his name, they shook their heads at his description of events.

“It’s not possible,” Master Astrologer explained with a simplicity surprising in her speech, “and therefore it cannot have happened that way.”

Finally, they were left with disagreeing on the topic. That brought the debate to Llesho’s greatest concern: Lady Chaiujin’s jade bowl, which he had given into Lling’s care. She had endured the strange and terrifying dreams of the Lady Chaiujin for her king’s sake. When the emerald-green bamboo snake began to commit its murders in the town, however, she had put the bowl in the keeping of the school. They all now hoped to discover whether it was indeed the source of the lady’s power in snake form.

While dismissing as a fairy tale the notion that a mortal boy might receive heavenly gifts from a Goddess wife, the masters found no reason to doubt that the bowl might be possessed by a demon. Picking it up from the high table where the instruments of their professions lay scattered in profusion, Master Numerologist studied the rune at the bottom of the bowl.

“I know of no computational symbol or representation of the numerical world corresponding to this mark. I would guess that it must be magical, however, since evil creatures usually are.”

Master Astrologer took the bowl next. Since no such alignment of stars occurred in the night sky, she could shed no light on it either.

Master Geomancer, however, took the bowl gingerly in her hand with a grim and knowing frown. “The sign of the snake,” she said of the spiral carved into the jade. “Though it’s not an emerald, the color is suggestive, don’t you think? But why give the bowl to this boy?”

“I don’t know,” Llesho answered, “I would have thought that she was some part of my quest—a test, or a battle—but she was working against the Qubal clans before I ever reached the Harnlands.”

“Not everything is about Llesho,” Tayy complained. “It just seems that way when the stitches pull. The Lady Chaiujin was moving against the clans seasons before we ever heard of the wandering Thebin king. She had already murdered my mother to raise her station in the ger-tent of the khan. Gradually she must have come to understand that my father the khan would never name her khanesse, and so she killed him as well. But that is a matter of the clans, not Llesho.”

“You may be right.” Master Geomancer cocked her head to study him. “It seems likely, then, that having lost her position among the Qubal, she sees Llesho’s quest as a way to attach herself to a victim she is better able to control. Llesho is young and his quest would leave him with a crown on his head. To one such as the false Lady Chaiujin, a crown is a crown, perhaps. Any one will do to drop her eggs in.”

The very thought made him shudder and when he looked to Prince Tayy, he was doing the same.

Kaydu, however, laughed. “What an absurd idea. Llesho is married to the Goddess. She is not so easily set aside as a human queen.”

“Llesho loves his Goddess.” Here was a notion that Tayy seemed to find perfectly normal. “He has the same look on his face when he talks about her as my father used to get when he looked at my mother. Only more so, because of the whole heaven and religion part of the marriage. How could she not see it?”

An image of Shou in the deadly embrace of a White Cobra with the Lady SienMa’s face rose out of a memory of a dream. Not easily set aside, surely, but love? His own love was nothing like that. He didn’t understand how Shou could love the cold white mortal goddess of war, even in her human form. But they did share a kinship of sorts: they both loved far beyond even their exalted stations. In past lives, that love had been the death of Llesho, and he wondered if loving the Lady SienMa would be the death of Shou.

With a knowing little smile, Master Astrologer took the hand of Master Numerologist. “One whoknows nothing of love would see nothing of love in the young king,” she suggested as an answer to the puzzle. “He seems a mere boy, inexperienced at such things and easily tempted into betrayal. It takes someone who has known love—of a husband or wife, but also of a parent or child, or even a beloved familiar, to recognize it in another.”

“Of course!” Master Geomancer said, scratching behind Little Brother’s ear to emphasize the last point. The monkey grinned back at her.

Hmishi had kept quiet in the company until now, but he knew better than most the boundaries of Llesho’s loyalty. The king had called him back from the dead, after all. “Lady Bamboo Snake was wrong on two counts, then,” he said, but Llesho stopped him.

“I would not knowingly betray my country or my friends. And I do love my lady, the Great Goddess.” He thought of her at times as my lady beekeeper, and did so now, when he needed comfort. “But the Lady Chaiujin tempted me. If it were not for Master Den, she might have had me by the river the day that Hmishi died.”

“You were attracted to the lady’s fangs at the time, as I recall.” Master Den spoke softly, but the heads of his cadre came up as if a drum had sounded. Only Tayy seemed to understand how he had felt that day, which Llesho figured was a bad thing.

“Even kings and the blessed husbands of goddesses are sometimes weak,” he confessed. Perhaps he had more in common with Emperor Shou than he had thought. They both had flirted with the grave.

“You mustn’t ever give up that way again,” Hmishi insisted. “In serving their kings, soldiers die sometimes. If you choose to follow us to the underworld, our deaths are wasted!”

“I understand that now,” Llesho said. “That doesn’t give you permission to die either.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“The bowl,” Master Geomancer said, bringing them back to the topic in her hand. “If that is the source of her power, I doubt that we can break her hold on it.”

Master Den took the bowl from her and held it up to the light as if the soft beams passing through it would somehow reveal the lady within.

“When accompanying a king on a quest, it is never a good idea to dismiss any magic one meets on the way as coincidence,” he reminded them. “Mischance is not one side of a coin, with strategy on the other. It is one face of a many-sided box. The Lady Bamboo Snake may have had plots of her own in the Harnlands. Llesho passing within her reach may have been an accident or fate playing a part. But we cannot dismiss the suggestion that once he fell within her reach, the lady abandoned her former schemes to influence the greater struggle which would play out in the mountains above the Golden City.”

“You mean it’s all about Llesho after all?” Tayy asked mournfully. At that moment, the comment struck the company as funny. Llesho thought it was hysterical laughter, but he joined it anyway.

“Not in all places, at all times,” Master Den assured him. “But in this place, and in this moment, one should hardly be surprised that it might prove so.”

“It’s an honor I would gladly forgo in favor of a quiet life. I didn’t ask for this.”

“Well, actually . . .” Lling gave a sly lift of the eyebrow. “I recall a certain pearl diver—with a very quiet life—on his knees before the overseer, pleading to become a gladiator.”

Hmishi smiled at her. “Who would have thought we’d come so far?” It wasn’t really a question, just a measure of his amazement at their adventures. But she smiled a challenge back at him. “I look forward to tasting the air of Thebin again soon.”

Having come to a decision, Master Den handed the bowl back to the geomancer. “I think we can assume that any magical item that has come into Llesho’s possession during his quest has done so for a purpose, whether we now understand that purpose or not. Until we do know what part this bowl is meant to play, we can’t destroy it. Neither can we allow Lady Bamboo Snake freedom to use the bowl against us in our travels.”

“We need a spell—isn’t that obvious?” Kaydu asked. “Something to lock her up so we don’t leave a path of dead among our allies.” As a student she should have withheld her opinion until the masters had finished their discussion. As the captain of Llesho’s royal guard, however, her opinions on the matter of his safety came before any more arcane discussion. Fortunately, Master Geomancer agreed both with her conclusion and her right to state it in front of the Apadisha’s great mages.

“Exactly,” the master said. Taking the bowl from Master Den, she held it up as he had done, examining the jade in the light. “If we cannot destroy it, we must contain it. So, this box of possibilities between strategy and mischance—we must set the bowl inside it and lock it with a key of our own making.”

“A numerological spell.” Not surprisingly, that was Master Numerologist’s suggestion. “I’ll weave dates and times and the latitude and longitude together in a spell that will trap her in confusion. If Llesho’s time and place are here and now, we must make it so that she never finds the coordinates of his conjunction again.”

“A star spell,” Master Astrologer volunteered. “If we lock Lady Bamboo Snake’s magic in the heavens, she cannot influence the coming battle in the mortal realm.”

Llesho shuddered. He knew it wasn’t the astrologer’s intention to set the demon snake among the gardens of his lady beekeeper, but he could not escape the possibility that if she broke the spell she could do more damage in the heavens than even the failure of his own quest.

But Master Geomancer gave up the bowl to no one. “She is an earth demon, I believe, since she takes the form of a snake in the waking world as well as in the dreaming one,” she said. “She will be bound only by an earth spell. Be careful, however, that you don’t release her. Captivity will do little to improve her disposition.”

He nodded his agreement. The distinction she had made took a great burden from his mind. Lady SienMa, he believed, had never turned into a snake when she was awake. He didn’t think a demon could become a mortal god, but sometimes he had wondered.

“All right, then.” She set the bowl back onto the table and rolled up her sleeves to work.

“This takes concentration, so the rest of you, out! I want the boy who will carry the bowl—our young king in exile. And a student assistant—you will do, if you can remember you are a student and not a general, young lady.”

Llesho had never heard anyone talk to Kaydu like that, and her humble bow to the round, stern magician shocked him even more. But the geomancer accepted the bow as a promise and turned to the rest of the company flapping the skirts of her robes as if she were shooing chickens in a farmyard.

“Go!” she instructed his cadre. To Llesho’s great relief, Prince Tayyichiut fell in with them as if he had always been a part of the quest. Together, they turned to their captain for orders. Kaydu had taken on the role of student, however, and gave them only a shrug for an answer. She would neither overrule the master nor set her own orders over those of the geomancer. They would have been at a stalemate, but Llesho added his own wave of dismissal to the geomancer’s.

“Kaydu is here; I’ll be fine.”

When they had filed out, the other magicians gathered around the table. Master Den came with them, but the geomancer raised her hands to bar his way.

“We respect your skills, Master. And you have brought this boy not only through a thousand li of danger and a thousand more, but from childhood to a manhood of strength and wisdom as well. For that you have our respect. But your religion is not our religion, and your methods not our methods. We cannot trust our secrets to one whose ends are always in doubt.”

It seemed for a moment that Master Den would challenge the geomancer for his place at the table. That battle they waged silently with their eyes, however. When it was over, the trickster god bowed humbly and departed. Kaydu looked after him with amazement, but it didn’t surprise Llesho.

“Even now, do we know he means us well?” he asked her. “He’s the trickster god—it appears that he wants us to succeed, but we could be no more to him than a tool he carries to a place where he has other interests altogether. Then we may find out that our failure is more to his advantage than our success.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

He’d shocked Kaydu, but that didn’t change his mind. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. I don’t know.”

“Good answer!” Master Geomancer applauded him. “Now, shall we set a trap for Lady Bamboo Snake, or shall we let her kill another innocent citizen of Pontus while we argue the niceties?”

Duly chastened, they turned to the jade bowl on the table.

From a long, narrow slot below the table, Master Geomancer slid a thin slice of marble. “A purified surface,” she said, and wiped the jade bowl carefully before placing it on the marble.

“Now, for a nice earth spell, we need some dirt.” Dusting off her plump, capable hands, she opened one of the many little drawers under the table, sorting among a dozen or more vials of soil.

“Not Bithynian,” she muttered under her breath, “No known affinity here. Harnish soil might do—we know she has some connection to the grasslands since you found her there.

“But no, I think we will go with this.” She pulled out a vial and emptied it onto the marble tablet. By the color and texture, Llesho knew it for Thebin soil, from high in the mountains.

“I’m making a guess here, but we’ll set the spell with the destination. The spell’s power will be strongest where you will need it most.

“Now, hmmm . . .” she continued to mutter ingredients while her fellow magicians Master Astrologer and Master Numerologist rooted through the little drawers to provide what she required. Dried herbs and saffron, small vials of oil, and something that smelled so badly it made Llesho’s eyes run quickly took their places on the table.

None of the ingredients went inside the bowl. “A spell already resides within,” Master Geomancer explained as she kneaded the ingredients into a paste. “We don’t know what effect a second spell would have upon the first. Our spell will go outside the vessel, surrounding it so to speak, like a magical fence.”

Kaydu stood quietly at her side, cleaning up each grain or leaf that fell onto the tabletop, outside the perimeter they had created with the marble tablet. When Master Geomancer waggled her fingers, Kaydu ran for water to wash the master’s hands. When she smacked her lips, Kaydu brought water in a cup for her to drink, and followed that with equal service to each of the other magicians. Master Geomancer never gave Kaydu a word of instruction.

At first, the workings of the masters brought back memories of serving Master Markko as he compounded his poisons. Kaydu would never aid evil so willingly, however, and the room had a familiar light and smell about it, of sunshine cutting through the gloom. It reminded him of Habiba’s workshop, where his dream travels frequently took him when he visited Shou. When he let go of his fear, Llesho was able to appreciate the subtlety and skill of the magicians. He watched with fascination as the three masters communicated their needs with little signs they were scarcely aware of giving.

Kaydu worked tirelessly, silently, and accurately. He had always known and valued her skills as a soldier, but now he had a chance to see the other part of her training. It felt strange, but made him proud, as if he’d chosen her as his champion himself. The Lady SienMa, who had set Kaydu to guard him, knew soldiers as only the mortal goddess of war might. But he remembered, too, the water gardens of the governor’s compound at Farshore Province. Somewhere along the line he’d forgotten the promise of those gardens. His captain, however, had remembered: after war must come healing.

He knew what Kaydu was doing among the magicians, but Llesho couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t sent him away with the others until Master Geomancer dusted off her hands in a habitual gesture that signaled a shift in her thinking. Master Numerologist had disappeared behind the table to rummage in a drawer as wide and deep as a spice chest. When he appeared again, he held in his hand a square wooden box covered all over with arcane symbols.

“Just decoration,” he explained when he noticed Llesho’s curious look. “And it scares away the curious.”

Inside, the box was empty. Master Geomancer lifted the cup from the tablet while Master Numerologist carefully scraped the spell-stuff into the box. When he had done, the geomancer carefully wiped off the bottom of the cup so every grain went into the box with the rest. Master Astrologer then took a knife and cut a square of satin from the geomancer’s sleeve. She set the satin on top of the soil in the box, and only then did Master Geomancer put the cup in its container. If he hadn’t seen the whole process, Llesho would have noticed nothing unusual at all about the package. Just a precious jade bowl in a carrying case with no visible sign of the spell beneath the satin.

When the cup had settled in its place, Master Geomancer closed the lid. “And now to seal the spell,” she said. “Young king whom those of the faith of Pontus may not call Holy Excellence, we need your blood now.”

Oh. Well that explained why they hadn’t sent him away with the others, then. “I don’t have much to spare,” he reminded them. He had suffered only minor injuries as a galley slave, but lately he felt as though he had been drained of more than the few drops the lash had taken.

Master Geomancer took no notice of his objection but put out her hand. When he hesitated, Kaydu whispered her own plea, “It’s important.”

She was his captain and he had followed her orders all the way from Farshore. No point in changing that now, he figured, and put his hand, palm up, in the outstretched hand of the geomancer.

“Not your sword hand—smart boy.”

He was watching her for a sign of her next move so he didn’t notice when Master Astrologer reached over with the knife that had cut the satin sleeve. So quickly that he didn’t notice she was moving until blood welled like a string of garnets, the magician slashed a shallow wound across his hand.

“Good.” Just as quickly, Master Geomancer turned their nested hands over so that the blood dripped on the box. One. Two. Three drops fell onto the wood. When she decided that there was enough of his blood beaded onto the wood, the magician freed his hand. Kaydu was waiting, silently, with water to wash the wound and a clean bandage. As she worked, the Apadisha’s masters gathered around the box. Llesho didn’t understand the words they chanted, but Kaydu paled over her bandaging.

He didn’t have to know the meaning of the words to feel the impact of the spell. The air in the schoolroom thickened and grew more difficult to breathe, as if it were tightening around his heart. He remembered Master Markko’s spell on Radimus and the hearts of the Wastrels plucked away and replaced with stone. He though his own heart would explode. Then, between one breath and the next, the pressure vanished. When he looked at the box, the blood was gone.

“I think you are ready to go now,” Master Geomancer said, and dusted off her hands one last time.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter Twenty-nine

THEY WERE on their way, heading out of port with all the fanfare that had been missing upon his arrival. The Grand Apadisha himself had come to the docks to see them off, not a single, limping vessel this time but thirty war galleys flying the banners of Bithynia and Thebin and Shan and the Qubal. They had no Tinglut on board and had made no agreements with them concerning Thebin, so rode with no banner displayed. They would have carried the colors of the Gansau Wastes in honor of the fallen Wastrels and those who now traveled to their aid with Shou, but the Tashek had no banner. The warriors of the Wastes rode like the wind, like smoke, uncounted and unobserved.

As their galley slipped away from its berth, Llesho came to attention with his companions around him. Habiba was already on his way to find Shou and the Lady SienMa, but Master Den stood at his back, a hand on his shoulder and another gathering in Prince Tayy. AlmaZara, the Apadisha’s daughter, had joined them on the poop deck for their departure. She stood a little apart with several of her fellow Daughters of the Sword at her side and Kaydu like a bridge between Llesho’s band and her own. Over their captain’s shoulder, Llesho saw Little Brother’s head peeking out of his pack. The monkey clung to his mistress with a suspicious, unhappy glare for the sea on which they rode and the ship so like the one that had almost taken Kaydu and her whole cadre to their watery graves.Smarter than the rest of them, Llesho thought. If anyone among them shared his own fears for the coming voyage, they didn’t show it.

From a bandstand set up on the dock, the Apadisha’s orchestra of youthful musicians played until a military band made up of soldiers left behind took its own turn. Farewell songs and martial anthems alternated between them. The magicians of Pontus had turned out in all their finery. Master Geomancer had wished to go with them, to observe for herself the lay of any further pearls they might find. On stepping aboard, however, she found that the ebb and flow of the sea did strange things to her earth-bound stomach. With tearful regret she had debarked, and now stood among her fellows with her possessions in a forlorn sack at her feet. Since neither Master Astrologer nor Master Numerologist wished to take her place, they carried with them no scholars to represent the magicians’ school but their own captain, Habiba’s daughter and an apprentice witch in her own right.

Llesho had grown stronger, and Prince Tayy had healed a great deal since they had come to Pontus, but still they were glad to hear the call to oars at their backs that would mean the formal leave-taking would be over soon. With a roar like thunder the oars hit the benches in a showy display of rowing skill for their departure. Almost unconsciously, Llesho counted the beats. Muscles tensed under newly healed skin as his body responded to the demand of the beater to step, step, pull. The boat surged ahead in that leaping manner of a galley under oar. He kept to his feet, casting a sidewise glance at Prince Tayyichiut and receiving a shrug of one shoulder in answer. Tayy was twitching to the rhythm of the drum as well, but he wouldn’t sacrifice his dignity to acknowledge it.

When the dock had grown so small that they could no longer make out the bands playing their clashing instruments, the travel party broke from its stiff pose.

“Pardon, Holy Excellence.” AlmaZara had picked up the court-formal title. She approached him with the slight bow for almost-equals befitting the daughter of the Grand Apadisha to a foreign king. “If it would not cause offense, I would stay with my own swordswomen. I will, of course, come to your call under the light of the Father or the Daughter should you require my services or my counsel.”

By night or day, she meant. Bithyninans, he had learned, saw Great Moon Lun as male instead of female, giving a stern, cold light. Great Sun’s furious heat, the physician Ibn Al-Razi had told him, must belong to the heavenly Daughter of the Sword. And so the people of Pontus reversed the order of the Thebin universe. The pledge that AlmaZara meant by it, however, was the same.

“As you wish.” In the normal course of things, he wouldn’t agree with her decision to travel with her guardswomen, apart from his own company of advisers. Much of his decision-making went on in the informal give and take of the cadre. She would miss out on that if she separated herself from them. But it made what he had to do a lot easier. He could avoid at least one uncomfortable explanation about abandoning his guards to travel alone and unprotected in the dreamscape.

“I would also, for my peace of mind and the comfort of my father, set two Daughters of the Sword to guard your safety at all times. Not that I doubt the intentions of your own picked cadre—” She did not say that she distrusted his male guards. Her glance at Prince Tayy’s middle, however, indicated that she’d formed her own opinion and it did not cast a favorable light on the ability of his companions, male or female, to ensure his safety.

“I would not wish to impose on your privacy, of course,” she added, gesturing to take in the guardswomen in question, who stood watchfully at a distance. “They have orders, however, to keep you safe, even against your persuasive arguments. The pirates who roam this sea make poor hosts.”

That last she said with a disapproving frown in Kaydu’s direction. Her guardswomen didn’t owe this king of Thebin any loyalty except as it served the will of their sultan. They wouldn’t be trusting him to his own devices while he went off on one of his dangerous schemes involving, oh, selling himself into slavery, for example.

“No more pirates,” he assured her, but kept his current plan to himself. He had an army moving on land as well as by sea. AlmaZara seemed to take his promise at face value, however, and with a formal bow, left him to find her own troops gathered belowdecks.

When she had gone, Bixei glared over at the foreign guardswomen, who glared back, weapons bristling. “What does she think we are?” he grumbled under his breath.

“Men,” Lling stated the obvious. She kept quiet on the matter of how many times their charge had escaped their benevolent watch to get into more trouble than they could handle. But, with a knowing little smile, she pointed out, “She’ll find out soon enough.”

They all understood what she meant, and Llesho rolled his eyes at her. “I’m not that bad.”

“Yes, you are,” Prince Tayyichiut retorted. “It’s just that no one else on this ship has the rank to tell you so.”

“That’s not true! Master Den . . .”

They laughed. Even his teacher had a twinkle of humor in his eyes, not an unusual sight, but still . . .

“That’s right.” Tayy didn’t need to remind him, but he did anyway. “You are depending on the trickster god to guide you away from foolish risks!”

“Should a king run away and hide when his people are dying under the yoke of invaders and tyrants?” Llesho asked with perhaps more indignation than necessary. He didn’t think they were going to like his next plan any better than they’d liked the last one, and he was setting up his defenses early.

“It depends on the king,” Tayy answered, but he lifted his chin a little, a reminder that he, too, followed a dangerous path to pay a debt his people owed to the royal family of Thebin.

“The worst of the danger is over anyway,” the Harnish prince added hopefully. “You defeated Master Markko at his own storm and sent him running when he tried to kill me. You’re stronger than he is and now he knows it. He’ll be afraid to come after you.”

Kaydu looked nervous at that, and Llesho figured she’d been talking to her father, who would know better. “I’m not stronger,” he corrected the misunderstanding before it took root in the minds of his company. False confidence could kill them all.

Tayy was right about rank; his captain couldn’t call the prince’s conclusions into doubt. For an ally to do so might, under other circumstances, have brought their nations to war. But this was Llesho speaking, a friend beyond rank, and about his own weakness.

“Master Markko raised the storm and threw it at our heads. The strength of that blow measures the growth of his power and learning. He couldn’t control it, but I couldn’t have raised it in the first place. I didn’t control it either. With Marmer Sea Dragon’s help, I shifted its direction just enough to protect our ships. The storm continued its destruction on a slightly altered course—it may still be out there.

“I’m no magician, just a man favored by the gods with certain gifts in the dream world.” He knew that wasn’t quite true even as he said it. Echoes sounded in his heart, something he was supposed to remember but couldn’t quite grasp.Later, he thought. It didn’t have anything to do with the current point, though it felt like it was going to be important later on.

“You heard what Marmer Sea Dragon said. Master Markko is as much dragon as human. The question isn’t how powerful he is, but how well he has learned to control the dragon that has become a part of him. If we’re lucky, Marmer Sea Dragon’s son will resist Markko’s efforts to turn his powers to evil. But I’m guessing they’re both mad as loons by now because of what Pig did to them.”

In the course of his argument with Tayy, he said a lot of things he hadn’t told his cadre before. They listened in a silence unnatural to them lest he remember that he’d meant to keep the dragon’s conversation a secret. Tayy had been present to hear it all the first time, however, and hesitated not at all to argue right back.

“Then how will we defeat him?” Prince Tayy had grown pale during the farewell ceremony, and now he gripped the rail as if he might tether himself to the world that way.

“Not with my powers as a magician, because I don’t have any.” But he hadn’t given up hope. “The thing about being a king, though, isn’t how strong or how powerful he is at doing all that needs getting done, but how well he leads others who have the strengths he needs.

“We have Habiba on our side, and Kaydu, and Marmer Sea Dragon and the seven mortal gods, or at least some of them, each one of them more powerful than I can even imagine. We have the emperor of Shan and the khan of the Qubal and the Tinglut and the Dinha of the Tashek people, who has given us her Wastrels. We have the Daughters of the Sword from Pontus, and the mortal goddess of war chose my cadre. And in the dream realm I am defended by a servant of the Great Goddess herself.”

“A pig with more mischief than good sense,” the prince reminded him about the last. They had met during a storm-tossed dream at sea and Tayy hadn’t been impressed.

Llesho had to smile. The Jinn seldom made a good impression, even after long acquaintance, but somehow, he managed to bring Llesho home safely from his dream travels. Which he mentioned, adding the point of his list-making:

“Who does Master Markko have behind him? How long do you think the Uulgar raiders would stay there if they weren’t terrified of his dreadful powers?

“If we win, it will be because all the powers of all the realms of heaven and earth and the underworld have thrown in with us against the terrible chaos that awaits if Master Markko has his way. It’s a better chance at winning than you can imagine, but it doesn’t offer any guarantees for the safety or survival of any of us. Not even me. The one thing we know for sure, though, is that if we don’t try, all the realms will end in fire and chaos.”

“But what if you die?” Prince Tayy challenged while his companions looked on with the same question in their eyes. “Who will all these powers follow then?”

“They’ll follow the person who picks up my sword.” Llesho didn’t say who that might be, but Tayy got the message.

“Oh, no! Don’t you put this on me! I’m not even from Thebin! I have my own problems and they don’t include the mortal gods of Thebin or a heavenly garden I don’t even believe in!”

“Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” Llesho tried to reassure him.

Kaydu might have been more successful with her, “I should think not!” But they all knew by now the tale of the spear Llesho carried at his back. It had killed him before, and while it rested quiet under his control now, in the past it had been his fate to die before his battle was won. Even Little Brother stared his accusation at Llesho, as if he meant to die on purpose, just to leave them all stranded in the middle of the fight. Which he had no intention of doing.

If he could help it.

He hadn’t thought Tayy could look any paler. By the end of the debate, however, he had turned as white as the mortal goddess of war herself.

“Discussion of my successor can wait. You need rest,” Llesho said with a hand to the prince’s shoulder.

Tayy looked as if he might resist, but Llesho made a gesture that only he could see, a drift of fingertips that traced the scar of his own terrible wounds beneath his formal Thebin coat. Prince Tayyichiut would understand that and the challenge in the tilt of Hmishi’s chin. He would be judged on this deck by soldiers who had suffered through their own terrible wounds, and they were looking for good sense and not bravery. A solder took rest when he could grab it, figuring he’d want to stockpile the healing for the days when there’d be no rest at all. Prince Tayy dropped his head, conceding the point.

“You can find me belowdecks in my bunk if you need me.”

“I’ll be heading to my own bunk soon enough,” Llesho assured him. Tayy gave him a dubious look but seemed to remember diplomacy and kept any comment to himself. With a careful bow, his hand discreetly resting over the healing wound in his belly, he left the poop deck.

Master Den watched the departing Harnish prince with a slight tilt of the head. “He’ll be fine. I’ll just see that he makes it to his hammock,” he said. With a final “Be careful” to signal that he understood Llesho’s intentions, and approved, the trickster god followed Prince Tayyichiut from the deck.

Llesho watched them go, thinking that this time he’d actually told the truth. Sort of. He’d recovered completely from his confrontation with the storm but hadn’t dream traveled since coming to Pontus. It was past time to see what was going on in the world. He had to check in with Shou; Habiba had doubtless reported already, but Llesho wanted to see how things were for himself. In particular, he wanted to know if Mergen and the Tinglut-Khan had settled their differences. He didn’t want to show up on the battlefield to discover a war in his own ranks.

That was the easy part. They still had to find out where Master Markko had gone to ground. Moving through the dream realm, Llesho could orient on a place or on a person. Shou or Markko, the only difference was his reception on the other end. That made him the person best able to find the magician. He had a feeling that it all came down to the Golden City. Kungol. Markko would know that, too. It wouldn’t take much effort to find him; doing it without getting caught made it a lot harder. With Pig’s help, though, he’d finish the task and return before he’d left. He could rest then. And his companions would never know he’d been gone.

Looking out to sea, he shivered, wishing he could call Marmer Sea Dragon. Dangerous thought, that. When had riding to battle in the third eye of a dragon come to represent safety and comfort? He’d forgotten that his cadre still surrounded him until Bixei interrupted his musing with a long-suffering sigh.

“He’s got that look on his face,” Lling agreed.

“What look?” Llesho didn’t pretend innocence. They knew he was planning something, they knew he knew they knew. But he was sincerely curious about how it showed. Oddly enough, they had even followed that convoluted thought.

“The little frowny thing,” Hmishi supplied.

“And the faraway look you get in your eyes at the same time, as if you were trying to see something that was too far away to make out.” That was Lling, who had commented in the first place.

“At least when I sold him to the pirates, I knew I could follow and get him back eventually,” Stipes added, a surprise since he seldom spoke up in councils. He still placed himself below the others of his cadre. Not a thinker, or a courtier, he’d often said, but a simple gladiator who had become a soldier to follow his heart. But Master Markko’s storm had brought their most recent plan to the brink of disaster, and he still smarted from his part in it.

“My father will be back soon with a report. Then you can decide what you have to do.” Kaydu’s tone was cool, logical, with none of the pleading he saw in her eyes. Even Little Brother looked worried.

So they knew what he intended, more or less. He didn’t have to tell them, but perhaps Llesho owed an explanation of some sort. “The dream travel is my gift, and my one greatest weapon in my lady’s defense. I have to believe she meant me to use it.”

“And no report can relate as much as you can see with your own eyes.” Kaydu had flown far in the shape of a bird. She did understand at least that part of it. He didn’t think any of them would understand his need to confront Markko in his own lair, however. He wasn’t sure he understood that himself.

Hmishi wouldn’t look at Llesho, but followed his gaze out to sea. From the start he had protected his prince even to the point of dying in his place. He’d never been able to accept being left behind. “When are you going?”

“Now.” Llesho stepped away from the rail and started to run in a tight circle. He noticed the Daughters of the Sword left to guard him pass troubled frowns between them, but he didn’t have time to explain and wasn’t sure how they’d take his answers if he gave them. That was Kaydu’s job; she would know what to say.

He leaped, lifted, stretched with hooves that found purchase in the clouds. Marmer Sea fell away behind him and when he reached again for the waking world, he found a dream.

He knew it was a dream in the first place because it was dark, and he’d left Pontus in the morning. Time sometimes moved strangely in dream travel, of course, but one glance at the bed told Llesho he didn’t want to take a second glance. This was definitely not his own dream.

He was in a yellow silk tent as large as the audience hall in Durnhag. Rich tapestries hung from thick silk cords strung between the tent poles dividing the space into several chambers. A single lamp rested on a simple wooden chest. Its soft glow illuminated a close circle around a low couch in the sleeping chamber where Llesho had landed. Shou’s bedchamber, he thought, since he’d set his thoughts on Shou when he left the waking realm. With a glance at the low sleeping couch, however, he realized that he wasn’t sure about anything except the sudden powerful desire to run as far as possible as quickly as he could.

Two shapes writhed at the center of the bed, covered to what would have been the shoulders if either had been human. But they weren’t human, either one of them. Cobras each as thick as his own body had so looped their coils together that only the contrast of their colors told where one began and the other left off. The white cobra Llesho had seen before, and knew to be the Lady SienMa, mortal goddess of war. So he wasn’t exactly terrified when she raised her head on a long, flared neck and stared at him out of eyes black as onyx. She said nothing, but collapsed back onto the bed, nudging at the brown snake with her nose and flicking a darting tongue over his face to wake him.

Llesho fell back in dismay as the brown snake turned, writhing under the blanket. Coils slipped and settled again; the cobra raised its head, watching him out of Shou’s eyes, Shou’s face. Terror and desire passed mindlessly across the emperor’s face. He didn’t seem to notice Llesho but focused inwardly, instead, on the shock of finding himself armless and legless with the fangs of a cobra stretching his lipless mouth. The white cobra heaved a loose coil over the emperor’s snaky body, dragging the covers down to reveal more of their squirming lengths and Llesho looked away. His mind could scarcely grasp what he had seen, but he knew he didn’t want to see any more.

“My Lady SienMa,” he whispered, hoping that she didn’t hear the terror in his voice. “I’ll wait outside . . .”

“Mine,” the snake hissed, bringing Llesho’s head around with a snap. In her human form he trusted her completely to protect Shou. This strange creature, however, made the flesh creep on the back of his neck.Don’t turn away, a voice of caution whispered in the back of his mind.Don’t trust what you see.

Flaring her hood, the white cobra bared her fangs. Llesho screamed as she sank them deeply into the emperor’s throat.

“Ahh!” Shou’s eyes opened wide, clouded with confusion and the coursing of venom in his veins. “Llesho?” he asked, surprised. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’ll go . . .” He began to back out of the room. Shou had closed his human eyes as if waiting for death.

Despite his terror, Llesho stopped in his flight, unable to leave the emperor in such danger. “If you kill him, he won’t belong to anyone,” he pointed out with a low bow to the great white snake.

“Mine,” she hissed again, but withdrew her fangs.

Shou’s head fell back on the pillows, eyes opening slowly as his body became once more the human shape of a man tangled in the bedcovers. “My lady,” he murmured and reached a questing arm for her. “Come back to bed.”

“Mine,” a voice whispered in his ear, and then the tent vanished and with it the sleeping couch. That last voice, however, hadn’t been the Lady SienMa. It had been Shou, and Llesho had the uncomfortable feeling that this time he hadn’t entered the lady’s dream, but the emperor’s. What it meant, he wasn’t sure, apart from the obvious. That had taken no more than the sight of her hand on Shou’s thigh in the governor’s palace at Durnhag to understand. He needed to talk to Habiba, though he didn’t know quite what to say, or how he could say anything. Shou hadn’t invited him into his dream and he had a right to his privacy. But Llesho had to do something.

“I agree.” That was Pig, wandering out of the nothing-ness with a nod of greeting.

“To what?” Llesho asked him.

Pig just smiled and gave his body a little shake to settle the silver chains that wound around him.

“I need to talk to Shou,” Llesho decided, “And in the light of day.” Since he was already in the dream world, it took no more than the thought and a toss of his antlered head to place him outside the tent he had lately escaped. Great Sun was peeping over the horizon. Even in daylight, however, the guards in front of the tent made warding signs as he came toward them.

Pig, walking on his hind legs a few paces behind, whispered a reminder in his ear: “The antlers.”

Ah, that explained at least part of the soldiers’ dismay. Llesho shook his head again, composing his features into his own face. His transformation didn’t seem to calm the guardsmen, and Sento popped his head out of the tent to see what the commotion was. When he saw Llesho, he motioned him forward, holding the tent flap aside while Pig entered after him.

“Holy Excellence, enter, please.” The soldierly servant backed his way into the public audience portion of the great silk tent and brought a chair for Llesho to sit in. “His Highness the Emperor has been watching for you. We have all been worried.”

Llesho did as he was bid. The tent was much as he’d known it to be in Shou’s dream, with carpets and tapestries dividing the rich silk space into its various chambers. Llesho recognized this outer chamber from more than his dreams, however.

Long ago, at the start of his quest, he had knelt at the feet of the goddess and studied a map of the known world: the many provinces of the empire of Shan, and the grasslands, which had made no distinctions between friend and foe then but swept a single green march of fear and anguish across the map. The Gansau Wastes had appeared as a question at the edge of the known world and Thebin, far to the south, had glowed in golden threads that symbolized the Golden City at the country’s heart. The map lay hidden somewhere in one of the many travel chests, but Llesho would never forget that day when he first came to understand that great powers moved behind his quest and worlds balanced on his actions.

“His Highness has just awakened from his rest,” Sento continued with his greeting as Llesho reacquainted himself with his surroundings. He showed no sign of having noticed Pig, who chose for himself a bit of carpet off in the corner. Tossing a few pillows about to make himself a comfortable wallow, the Jinn lowered his great bulk to the floor as the servant made his master’s excuses: “He will join you shortly; I’m just setting out breakfast—” Sento bowed his way out before disappearing behind the hangings that divided the tent.

“It seems we are expected,” Pig said.

In answer, the trill of a melody skittering restively from the throat of a silver flute.

“Dognut!”

“Llesho!” The dwarf, who was also Bright Morning, the mortal god of mercy, rose from a chair cut down to his small stature and crossed the space between them. “How fare our comrades? Have you been having many adventures?”

“Oh, the boy always has adventures,” Pig answered grumpily as he snuggled down in his borrowed pillows. “Pulling honest people out of their hard-earned sleep.”

“I see no one by that description hereabouts,” Dognut greeted the Jinn’s answer with glee. “Tell me everything,” he insisted, “or I’ll be reduced to writing love songs!”

Pig just snorted. The dwarf had said nothing of the love about which he might write, but the ample wrinkles at the corners of his eyes crinkled with the lively enjoyment of secrets shared between them. Llesho wondered what entertained the dwarf more—the strange affair of the emperor of Shan and the mortal goddess of war, which made an epic of itself, or the nest of cobras that filled the lovers’ bed in their dreams. Or maybe, he simply enjoyed the discomfort of a young king from a country where they did not practice such sophisticated pleasures even in their sleep.

Llesho chose to believe it was the former, and aimed his comments at that target: “What in the name of all the realms of heaven and earth and the underworld do they think they are doing?” he whispered urgently. He couldn’t free himself from the image of Shou’s face above that snaky body, Shou’s terror. None of the strangeness of the dream had shaken the emperor’s desire for his goddess, however, in any form she took.

“Is that what loving above one’s station does?” he asked, not alone about Shou, but for his own case and the Great Goddess who waited for him.

“It depends upon the lovers,” Dognut mused, no help at all. He didn’t say what it was about the lovers on which the shape of their affection rested.

One of the pair in question, the Emperor Shou, strode out from behind the tapestries that defended the privacy beyond. He wore the armor of a general in which Llesho had first met him and strode to the map table to oversee the arrangement of more domestic forces on the table. Sento followed, a heavy tray carried in his arms, and arrayed the fare as his emperor directed. Eggs boiled in their shells and steamed dumplings with red beans and stewed fruits held their positions amid the cups and plates while the steaming pot of tea marshaled reinforcements from the center of the spread.

“Breakfast?” Shou invited him.

Pig had perked up at the mention of breakfast, and his great turned up snout sniffed the air shamelessly, hinting at an invitation. Neither Shou nor his servant seemed to notice the presence of the Jinn, however. With a disgruntled sigh, Pig finally subsided into his silken wallow, his chin resting on his forehoofs. If no one noticed him, he could gobble down every word between the kings and gods gathered under her ladyship’s silk roof. For a Jinn, that was almost better than food. Pig wriggled himself a little lower among the pillows, trying, Llesho thought, to make himself invisible. Which would have been impossible with a pig so large, except that no one could see him anyway.

“Her ladyship will join us shortly,” Shou informed Llesho with a smile. “We can make plans and fill our bellies at the same time.”

No other sign of the dream Llesho had invaded marked the emperor’s features, though he would have sworn it was Shou’s dream, and not her ladyship’s. Something of his confusion must have shown in his eyes because Shou stopped, arrested in mid-greeting. A half-remembered image notched a crease between Shou’s eyes.

“I saw you . . .” The emperor blushed like a schoolboy. This was so unlike the assured commander and spymaster Llesho knew that he wondered if Shou still suffered the effects of his captivity. Markko, using his lieutenant Tsu-tan, had tortured Hmishi to death. His torments had left the emperor of Shan a broken man for months. Shou didn’t look broken now, however. Just embarrassed.

“It’s just a dream,” he finally stammered out. “I’m not . . . she’s not . . .”

Her ladyship joined them then, gliding across the thick layer of carpets in a many-layered gown dyed the colors of Thousand Lakes Province. Her face was as white as the glaciers on the mountains above Kungol—and as cold—her mouth the red of fresh blood on new snow. Her eyes, however, glowed with richness and warmth as she went to her lover and threaded a slender hand through his arm.

“I trust you slept well,” she bade him before gracing Llesho with her attention. “Holy Excellence. Welcome.”

She inclined her head in a mark of respect that brought a deep burgundy glow to Llesho’s own bronze cheeks. Such a greeting, from a lady of her station, added the weight of her regard to his claim of a holy kingship in the realm of the spirit as well as that of the living. He’d grown accustomed to such deference among mortals, but felt he had yet to prove himself to the gods.

He was here, however, a thousand li and more from where his companions doubtless waited in seething frustration for his return. And without a drop of dragon’s blood in his veins. That had to mean something. He returned the lady’s greeting with a bow, and took his place in the camp chair at the table.

Shou’s servant and guardsman returned with an extra plate and a cup for Llesho to join his hosts for tea and breakfast then. Her ladyship thanked him with a graceful drift of fingers.

“Would you ask Habiba to join us?” she said. “And the others who make up our councils as well?”

With a low bow to her ladyship, Sento departed, leaving them to break their fast in privacy. Or nearly so. No one would question the presence of the emperor’s fool at his table, least of all those who knew the dwarf as the mortal god of mercy. As for Pig, only her ladyship seemed to notice his presence and she made no indication that he should remove himself. So Pig stayed, content to gather what information he might, while Dognut plated a small selection of dumplings and grains for himself and returned to his own specially built chair in the corner.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter Thirty

“DON’T STAND on ceremony with us,” the Lady SienMa bade him with a gesture at the food spread on the table between them. “You must be very hungry from your travels.”

“Always,” Llesho agreed, gratified that he had drawn the smile he had hoped from her ladyship. As he tore off a bit of steamed bun and popped it in his mouth, however, Llesho wondered if he was really there at all. Was he still inhabiting a dream? And whose dream was it? Trying to figure it out was giving him a headache, so he decided to ask.

“When I leave here, will this visit have happened?” he asked in a low and musing tone, one that his hosts might politely choose not to have heard. “Will anyone remember it but me?”

In answer, her ladyship took an egg and held it up by the fingertips of one hand. With a short curved knife she sliced off the top, shell and all, to reveal the rich golden center. “I remember everything,” she told him, holding the egg between them.

Their eyes met, his own filled with questions, hers offering answers he might never understand. Ages passed in the depths of her gaze, and memories of war and death past counting. His own bloody death: how many times had he fallen in battle, defending the Great Goddess, his wife, through countless lives? She had seen them all, and he read in her glance both the sorrow of those memories and the hope for a better outcome this time. He took the egg, which seemed like a promise between them. Spring coming, life renewed. They would hold back the fire and the darkness together.

With a little nod to show that she had understood all that had passed unsaid between them, her ladyship picked up a second egg and again she sliced the top off. This time, however, she cradled the egg in her palm, which she held just below her heart for a moment before offering it to Shou. Had she been capable of it, he thought that she might have blushed herself, an idea that boggled the mind. So many ages, so much she had seen of slaughter and pain and the uneasy peace that fell between struggles that he wondered what gentle emotion could remain to unsettle such a heart.

Shou’s eyes grew moist. He took the egg with a tender smile so full of joy and protectiveness and fear that Llesho dropped his gaze.Too much, he thought,I don’t want to know that much about you. After the first bite the emperor offered a spoonful to her ladyship, who swallowed the creamy yellow center with downcast eyes. Llesho was on the point of excusing himself from the private moment when Habiba entered the tent. Instantly the magician sized up the situation and, with a bow so low that his beard almost touched the ground, offered his congratulations.

“A fertile union casts its blessing on us all,” he said, rising once again to show not pleasure but doubt in the tight purse of his lips.

“Can the hope of life bring anything but light to the darkness we face, magician?” the Lady SienMa chided her adviser with a hand resting defensively over her womb.

Llesho sealed his lips tightly, while questions swirled in his mind. Somehow he’d gotten the idea that the mortal gods didn’t reproduce. They were too old, too much of the spirit world to reap that which they planted in the mortal realm. Gods usually left the harvesting to others, whatever the crop. He wondered what kind of curse or blessing was born in a child of war conceived amid the greatest struggle for the survival of all the realms. Would the kingdoms of heaven and earth and the underworld survive long enough to see the birth of a god’s child? With a shiver of superstitious terror the question he feared to even consider snaked its way into his thoughts: what sort of child—human or serpent—would the mortal goddess of war and the emperor of Shan produce between them?

He’d wondered much the same about the emerald bamboo snake demon who had entered the Qubal khan’s bed as the Lady Chaiujin. But Chimbai-Khan had been deceived. Shou had joined the mortal goddess of war in serpent form. But that had been a dream. Shou was neither serpent nor magician. The dream readers of Ahkenbad might have found meaning in the shapes the emperor took in the dream world. But there was no evidence that the lady or her human consort carried into the waking world the physical properties of their dream-selves. No evidence that they didn’t either, but he decided not to give that thought credence.

“I asked Sento to gather the others,” Habiba reported blandly. He had schooled his features to show none of his emotions. Llesho strove to do likewise, but with less success. He wished he’d sent Kaydu in his place, as any reasonable king would have done. With any luck she would have kept all the personal stuff out of her report to him, and he’d never have had to know any of it.

His brothers began arriving quickly at Sento’s summons, so he didn’t have to wait long in a company that had become so strained that Dognut refrained even from any musical comment. Balar, with his usual enthusiasm, noted Llesho’s presence with a wide grin and a hug. “Dreaming again, brother? It’s been a long time since you included us in your travels!”

Shokar followed with a hug of his own. “It’s so good to see you again, and unscathed, for a change.” Neither brother stood on the ceremony due a king.

Lluka hung back, however, correcting his brother with dire warning in his voice. “He hasn’t been traveling. At the moment of greatest need, his strength has failed him.”We are all doomed fell between Lluka’s words, but his fellow princes understood them anyway. Llesho closed his eyes for a moment of solitude before he entered the fray. He’d forgotten how taxing it had become to deal with Lluka’s madness.

The healer-prince entered then, a little apart from his brothers but with the healer Carina and Bolghai, the Harnish shaman. They seemed distracted among themselves, as if interrupted in the middle of some deep conversation about salves or elixirs. Adar, however, had heard enough. He gave Llesho the slow, wise smile that had soothed him as a child. His words he reserved for his brothers, “At the last, perhaps his strength did fail. But not, surely, at greatest need, or he wouldn’t be here at all. Nor, I think, would the rest of us remain to debate the point.”

In spite of their brother’s reassurance, Shokar was quick to remorse. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, and stepped away as if even his close presence might do further harm to unseen injuries. “I should have asked before cracking your ribs like that.”

“No injuries,” Llesho promised, though he knew he skirted the truth with his answer. His physical injuries, healed now, had been slight among the pirates. They’d been no worse at the end of that adventure than they had been the last time he’d seen his brothers, so they seemed to require no mention now.

As for the weariness of the spirit that had gripped him after his contest with the great storm raised by Master Markko, he didn’t know what to tell them. Lluka had sensed something, however, and he’d need to address it soon. All his gathered brothers but Adar looked to him with worried frowns.

The healer-prince brushed the hair from Llesho’s forehead, fingertips finding the nubs of antlers beneath the dark strands. His arm had mended since they’d parted on the plains of the Qubal people so long ago, it seemed. But Adar still read him as clearly as the recipe for any potion. “You’ve been through a lot,” he observed softly, as if he held a frightened bird in his hand. “Not, I think, however, so much that you come to us in defeat.”

“Less than victory, but more than rout,” Llesho assured them. “But where are Tinglut and Mergen? Not gone to make war on each other, I hope.”

Mergen joined them in the Lady SienMa’s tent then, an entrance so opportune that Llesho wondered if he’d been listening at the tent flap.

“Still here, young king.” Apparently, he heard at least the last of Llesho’s remarks. His next words made that clearer still: “And Tinglut-Khan, who raised his tents at an aloof distance, follows close upon my footsteps.”

The khan raised both his hands in greeting to show they were empty of weapons. In so doing he acknowledged the rank of those in attendance without accepting any authority over him as a bow might have done. “At the risk of seeming discourteously abrupt, may I ask about that scamp, my nephew?”

“Well, or nearly so,” Llesho reassured him.

They had but minutes to share the more frightening details. Sawghar, the Gansau Wastrel who had on occasion served in Harlol’s place in Llesho’s cadre, soon joined them to represent the Tashek in council. Then, with the jingle of silver medals on his silken coats, Tinglut brought their number to its full tally.

“I have had my breakfast, and look for none from your ladyship’s table,” Tinglut announced, his hands raised in a more abrupt version of Mergen’s greeting. “This one—” he pointed an elbow at Sento, who had followed him in and now set about gathering cups and fresh tea for the newcomers, “—this one said we are called to council. I had thought we were finally to ride, and now I see that we are again to dangle from the tails of this young shaman-king.”

“Dangle from my coattails or not, I do call upon those who would follow to ride now, or lose everything.” Llesho stiffened his spine, his chin raised in the way that Master Jaks had warned him against so long ago. Then they strove to hide his rank from assassins who would have murdered him before he learned the statecraft to stay alive. Now his steady gaze, deep and dark with decisions made and consequences survived, matched the resolute tilt of his head.

The Tinglut-Khan read all of that as a leader of long practice must. If he continued to harbor doubts, he kept them to himself for now. “And my daughter? Any further news of the Lady Chaiujin?”

Reflexively, Llesho’s hand went to his Thebin knife. “As Mergen-Khan and his advisers have reported to you, to our regret none of the Qubal people or any of my followers have ever met your daughter. The Emerald Bamboo Snake demon stole her name and her place among Chimbai’s clans, who took their own terrible losses at her fangs.”

Mergen gave a slow nod to remind Tinglut of their own conversations. “And is there any word of the false Lady Chaiujin who has caused so much pain to so many?”

“The lady followed us to Pontus, where she continued her murderous habits. The magicians of the Apadisha determined that her demon spirit somehow attached itself to the jade cup she gave me in the tent of Chimbai-Khan. They were able to contain her within it, so for the present, we are free of her influences.” With his thumb he stroked the new decoration set into the butt, a signet as it seemed, carved out of wood. Those among the party who had advised and urged him on his path took this information as the sort of intelligence they expected of a king who must fight demons for the gates of heaven.

Tinglut-Khan, however, had his own agenda. “Where is it?” he asked, meaning the cup. He examined Llesho from head to toe with a greedy eye. Llesho thought he might snatch the cup out of his possession and release the demon to demand an accounting if he knew where he kept her hidden.

“He can’t help you,” Mergen deflected the Eastern khan from his interrogation. “He is here only in a dream.”

“Is that so?”

Llesho answered Tinglut with a guilty shrug. “Afraid so.”

“Enough,” Shou said. “He cannot help you now. Be content that something has been done to curb the murderer of your daughter, sir. This holy king has traveled far by magical means to join our council. Let us hear what he has to say.”

With her own hands, her ladyship offered Llesho tea. “Our trusted magician advises us that you have found allies in Pontus.”

He took the cup as gingerly as if it held one of Markko’s poisons. He trusted her ladyship with the success of his quest, but had grown wary long ago of the dreams she inhabited.

She had brought him to the purpose of his travels, however, and Llesho bowed his head to acknowledge the truth of Habiba’s report.

“At Pontus we found Prince Menar a slave in the house of a physician who practices a strict sect of the Bithynian religion. It suits his beliefs to treat his servants well. As with the rest of us who found ourselves in hostile lands, Menar kept his identity a secret.”

“And are the stories about his sight also true? Is Menar blind?” Balar asked.

His brother’s gifts balanced the universe. Llesho knew by the sorrow in his eyes that Balar had already seen the answer. “Yes,” he said for those who hadn’t already tallied up the costs, wondering which of his own escapes Menar had paid for with his sight. He’d been around that argument with Master Den already, though, and knew he couldn’t add every ill of the world to his own account.

Each of the Thebin princes reacted to the news of their brother as their tempers dictated. Adar remained a calm center, though sorrow deepened the lines around his mouth and between his brows. Shokar, who had once claimed to be no soldier, clenched his hand on his hilts and Llesho felt the same impulse to fight the long-ago enemy who had so hurt his brother. Balar took Adar for his model and tried to compose his face, but tears ran a trail down his nose and clung woefully from his upper lip. From Lluka, there was a mad smile.

“You’ve seen it, too,” he said to Llesho. “There is no escape.”

By that his brother meant the dreams of devastation, fire, and wind and the worlds of gods and men in chaos. Llesho didn’t believe it had to end that way, though, and paraphrased Master Den’s reminder to the magician-scholars of Pontus. “Prophecy is not a coin with two sides but a box with many faces. We have to see around the edges to a brighter face.”

He was meant to stop the destruction that Lluka dreamed, and finding Menar even in his wounded state fulfilled another part of Lleck’s quest, showing, in his metaphor, another face to the prophecy.

“So, brother,” he agreed, “the prophecy may speak true that we have no escape from the dire consequences of events set in motion long ago by a miscast wish and a foolish Jinn.”

Then he added with the grim determination that had driven him across the wide expanse of land and sea between Farshore and Pontus, “Victory, however, is possible. And I will have victory. The Grand Apadisha sends ten thousand of his Daughters of the Sword. They sail for Edris as we speak. I’ve come to count the armies we bring to meet them on this side of the Mariner Sea.”

“Ten thousand from the sultan,” Mergen said. “When do they count landfall?”

“Two weeks, maybe three, depending on wind and weather. Can you match them with an equal number from the Qubal clans at Edris?”

“That very number of horsemen await the word to ride,” Mergen assured him with a knowing smile. The number had been decided long ago.

“An equal number from the Tinglut,” the khan who took his name from his people contributed, unwilling to be bested in the matter of warriors under his banner. “But I will want vengence for my daughter at the end of this great battle of yours.”

“Justice, surely,” Llesho agreed. “I would not carry the consequences of vengence through another lifetime.”

“The Tinglut have different beliefs in such matters, young king. But theological discussions can wait until we can debate them at our comfort in the Palace of the Sun.”

Llesho bowed to accept this compromise and turned to the emperor for his tally.

“Twice that number from the empire, and more.” Shou threw in his own armies, giving credit where due: “We have Wastrels among us, and a contingent of Thebin freedom fighters follow our banner. Another of mercenaries ride to reclaim their honor in the Golden City.”

“And we are not so far from Edris as all that,” Habiba assured him with a knowing smile. “You will find a familiar river flows not a day’s ride from camp.”

The Onga, where he had traveled briefly with the Qubal people. Llesho returned the smile.

Her ladyship, the mortal goddess of war, had said nothing while they made their reports, but called Sento with a sign to clear away the table. For security’s sake, no other servant was present. They waited, therefore, while Shou’s attendant cleared away teapots and cups and dishes covered with crumbs and bits of egg and fruit. When he had done, he spread a map where the breakfast had been.

“You sail to Edris?” Her ladyship traced the route from Pontus with a finger, but her brow knotted with the question.

“Not quite,” he answered, understanding her concern well enough. Success depended on giving the enemy as little time to prepare for attack as possible, which meant moving in secret. Not even the best of generals could transport an army unnoticed through the center of a port city like Edris.

“There’s a private cove a little to the south of the city where the ships of the Sultan will make landfall.” Llesho pointed to a place on the map just below Edris that looked like some great sea creature had taken a round bite out of the land. “When we get closer to shore, Kaydu will scout ahead to track Markko’s armies and report back.”

He didn’t mention his plan for a little dream travel scouting on his own, but Habiba guessed something. “I do not count my daughter expendable,” he qualified what he was about to say, “but she’s sworn her allegiance to a holy king sacred to the Great Goddess herself.” Llesho himself, that meant. “If I may advise: were I such a king, I would reserve the greater risks to my own life for those occasions on which the fates of all the known universes rest. Let others take the risks at lesser moments according to their stations.”

Llesho dropped his chin to show he understood and valued the gift of Habiba’s wisdom. But he couldn’t take the magician’s advice, at least not this time. “Sometimes the fate of worlds rests in large battles spread across great bloody battlefields. Sometimes it rests on a single word, spoken at the right moment.”

Her ladyship had listened with her finger resting on the map, where Edris met the sea. Now she moved her hand to cover Llesho’s where it lay over the sultan’s private cove. “Words seldom work on the mad,” she reminded him.

The point sent nervous glances darting in Lluka’s direction, but no one made any comment about Llesho’s mad brother. With a sigh, however, he had to disappoint even the goddess of war.

“I have to try,” he said. Thousands would die in the coming battle. Tens of thousands. He knew Markko was mad, but the magician had always wanted to talk. Maybe he would see, if not reason, at least a less bloody path.

“Then take Pig with you,” she insisted. “And remember what he is.”

A Jinn, in spite of his piggy appearance, and the head gardener in the gardens of heaven. Which of these would serve him in the confrontation to come? Her ladyship had returned her attention to the map, however, with no more advice on how to use the Great Goddess’ rascally servant.