He'd grown so accustomed to the magicians around him knowing his business before he did himself that it surprised him when Shou didn't recognize the name. It made him less like a sheep—or a slave—run through a counting shoot by omniscient masters.

"No stranger than your own," he answered, with a pointed look at Lady SienMa. "Was I wrong to be worried about you, or more right than I knew?"

Shou passed off the question with a raised shoulder, but Llesho didn't let it slide. "What happened with Tsutan? I'm not just prying. We are going after Adar and Hmishi and Lling, and I have to know what has been done to them."

"Put Hmishi out of your mind. He is dead already and waits only for his body to realize that fact and cease pumping blood to his heart."

"I won't accept that."

"Then don't. What you do or do not choose to believe will make not one bit of difference in the outcome." Shou crossed the room so quickly, and with such purpose that Llesho took a step back, expecting an attack. But the emperor merely brushed his elbow on his way to a low table where he picked up a bottle and poured a foggy liquid into a bowl.

"He's given Hmishi over to the torments of his followers, but fears his master if he harms a more valuable prisoner," Shou said after drinking the contents of the bowl. "Adar should still be safe from physical hurt, at least, until Tsu-tan reaches Markko's camp in the South. What Markko will do to him then I cannot say, but the witch-finder spoke much of burnings at the stake."

Llesho shuddered. He had time yet to rescue Adar. In his dreams he heard Hmishi's cries of pain, but he refused to believe that his friend couldn't be healed with time and the skills of the healer-prince. He wasn't as certain about Shou, who refused to acknowledge his own hurts.

"And you? What did the witch-finder do to you?"

"A simple beating, to put me in my place." Shou waved a hand to dismiss his tale as if to say the blows had meant nothing. But he reached again for the drink.

With a hand on the stone bottle, Llesho stopped him from pouring himself another bowl of the liquor. "Master Markko, then. From afar?"

Lady SienMa watched with distant interest as the emperor shook his head, no. She neither encouraged him nor gave any sign of disapproval, so Llesho continued his struggle for the emperor's story.

"He murdered the dream readers of Ahkenbad in their dreams," he reminded Shou, "and has visited my own dreams with threats of death as well. I know some of what he can do, but I don't have enough information yet to see the shape of his spirit."

Understanding clicked in Shou's head. Each story added to the picture, not only of Markko's powers, but also of his limitations.

"He raised my dead," he said. "In my dreams, he brought their torn and bleeding bodies rotting from their graves and pecked by birds to curse me for their suffering. Vast wastelands filled with the moldering corpses of soldiers killed in battle. Villages emptied by diseases that grow in the fields of unburied dead. Grandfathers starved to death after the armies had eaten all the villagers had grown for the winter, so that even the worms could find no food on their bones. Children and infants and old women and their strong young sons, all dead so that generals and emperors might trade a few li of ground. Each came to me and showed me deadly wounds and scurvied bones and flyblown sores, and cursed my part in their tortured dying."

"It's a trick," Llesho started to say, but Lady SienMa stopped him with a little shake of her head. Her wide, unfeeling gaze never left the emperor, however, and Llesho shuddered, praying that she never looked on him with such predatory interest. If this was love, he wanted no part of the emotion.

"If it hurts so much, why haven't you gone home? Why don't you just stop?"

"Because I love her." Shou whispered the confession that meant not just the Lady SienMa but the act of war itself, the struggle and the test of arms and the plotting of strategy against a worthy foe.

The lady went to him, a smile on her blood-red lips. He took her hands in his and she raised them to her face, put kisses on each fingertip and rested a cheek white as pear blossoms on their clasped hands.

"One good thing has come of this." Shou dropped a kiss on the bowed head of his lover, the mortal goddess of war. "My anguish serves as a warning to the khans along our borders, who now must fear the magician will attack them as well. It seems that, like yourself, we make allies where we once looked for enemies."

"And what of the governor of Guynm Province?"

Shou gave him a terrible smile, full of sadness and endurance and satisfaction. "He has joined my importunate dead."

"Oh."

Shou rested his cheek over the kiss he had placed on the Lady SienMa's head. When the lady freed her hands to raise his face to her again and run her fingers through his hair, Llesho slowly backed away, not wanting to see any more.

"I guess I'll be in touch," he stammered, at a loss for words.

Shou nodded, not really paying attention to him anymore. "I have moved my court here to Durnhag, to be closer to the fighting."

The emperor put his his arms around her ladyship and Llesho decided that was definitely more than he wanted to know. Remembering Bolghai's lessons, he began to run in a tight circle on the thick carpet. Thankfully, the emperor's temporary quarters vanished just as Shou lifted the goddess from her tiny feet.

Llesho closed his eyes tight, but that didn't stop the sensation that he was falling from a great height.

"Ohhhh," he groaned as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He knew this feeling, like Lord Chin-shi's fishing boats on a stormy sea, and had even grown used to it during his years in Pearl Bay. He'd lost the knack of it, though, and prayed only for it to end quickly, before his stomach turned itself inside out ridding itself of a breakfast he didn't have.

Then the bright light of full day was beating against his eyelids. He was back in the waking world again, his surroundings unyielding, as he rediscovered when his ankle turned on an outcropping of rock.

"Ouch!" He fell on his backside, grabbing his booted ankle and squinting against the light. Well. He was on the right side of the river, at least. There was the shaman's burrow, and Bolghai himself in human form, which reassured him that he'd landed in the right time and reality.

"Did you have a good trip?" Bolghai stared down into his face with a sly grin.

Llesho wasn't sure if he meant the dream-walk to Durnhag or the twisted ankle. He grimaced his displeasure with the question and struggled to get his legs under him.

"How is Durnhag?"

"Dark."

Bolghai gave him a reassuring pat. "We'll work on the 'when' of dream-walking later. For now it's remarkable that you went where you chose, when you chose to do it, after only a day and a half of lessons."

So he'd been gone only a matter of hours by the reckoning of the waking world. Llesho accepted that with relief. He had only four days, after all, and he had places to go and time to harness in his dreams. In the meantime, and in case the next exercise didn't work out as well, he made a report.

"If something should happen and I don't get back, tell Kaydu that the emperor has negotiated a truce with Tinglut-Khan on his eastern border. Together, they make plans for war against Master Markko in the South."

"And the governor of Guynm Province?"

"Dead," Llesho answered "So I should think."

Llesho nodded his agreement. Bolghai didn't need telling; he'd already figured that the governor must have been involved in the plot that had made Shou a prisoner of Markko's lieutenant, Tsu-tan.

"Chimbai will need to know this," the shaman continued with his musing. "There is no love between our khan and the East."

"Nobody says he has to marry Tinglut's daughter, but Chimbai will doubtless need all the human allies he can muster when the magician moves against the grasslands, which Shou believes he must."

"That's the problem, though," Bolghai answered with a snort. "Chimbai has married a daughter of the Eastern Khan. The lady has proved ... of questionable value as a wife."

Llesho remembered Lady Chaiujin's agate stare and shivered his agreement. The shaman's explanation made sense of the diplomat's war between the husband and wife that he'd felt in the ger-tent of the khan, but there was more at stake than an unhappy marriage.

"Markko is getting stronger. He couldn't kill in dreams before. I know. He tried." That was a memory he didn't want to revisit; he'd thought he was dying, and more than once, but Markko hadn't carried through.

"He's Harnish, and from the South by blood if not upbringing," Bolghai reminded him as if this made a difference in his powers. When Llesho showed no sign of understanding his point, the shaman explained. "Magic comes from many places, but always it grows strongest where our roots grow deepest. Your abilities grow stronger through training and exercise, but also because, as you near the source of your power, it flows through you with greater force and vigor. The same holds true for the magician. I would be surprised if he meant to murder the dream readers of Ahkenbad. He knows the legends, and would not want to call on himself the wrath of the Dun Dragon. But he is trying to control too many distant fronts, and he cannot have learned to harness the force of home soil in his magic yet."

"They're still dead."

Llesho didn't need the reminder. It ended the conversation about his dream journey to the emperor, however.

Discretion demanded that he remain silent about Shou's relationship with the Lady SienMa. The mortal goddess of war required more than romantic attention from her suitors. He needed to think about that more, sort out what was private and what was military intelligence vital to their struggle.

Being a god himself, Master Den would know what this new aspect of Shou's devotion to her ladyship would mean in the coming battle. He would understand the debts and allegiances between gods and the humans who received their attentions. Llesho might even learn something about Shou's relationship with the trickster god, and by the emperor's example, what he might one day be required to pay for the help he accepted from the gods in his quest. But how much did he have the right to tell the trickster god? He wasn't going to talk about any of it with the shaman.

As if he heard Llesho think his name, Bolghai gave his arm a shake. "Ready to go again?"

"Again?" But he already knew where he wanted to go.

"Four times to set the lesson," Bolghai asserted, "two more to go." He began to run. With a groan, Llesho followed, loping painfully on his sore ankle and blistered feet. Gradually, his forequarters lengthened, his scalp itched, erupted in horny antlers covered in a soft furze. With one bounding leap, and another, he landed in a camp of round black tents. At his shoulder rose the largest of the tents, and on either side half a hundred formed a ragged circle several tents deep. At their heart, a central commons had been eaten down to dust by the animals that wandered the encampment. Harnish raiders on their mounts laughed and joked as aimlessly as their beasts.

"Come in, witch." Tsu-tan, the witch-finder of Pearl Island and Master Markko's lieutenant, stood beside the largest tent. Hidden in the shadow of late afternoon, pressed dark against the black felt, he cocked an arrow in the bow he pulled.

Llesho, in the shape of the roebuck, quivered in all his muscles, but otherwise remained completely still. Behind the witch-finder, moving stealthily and with murder in her eyes, Lling crept nearer. She wore the rough pants and tunic of a slave and a smudge of grime crossed the bridge of her nose. In her hand she held a knife poised to strike.

"Come, boy. You remember what it is to be human. I won't hurt you."

"You can't hurt me," Llesho realized, "because I'm not really here."

"You're here, all right." Tsu-tan let the arrow fly and it brushed past on a breeze but didn't touch him. "The questions is, when are you?"

As if in answer to that mysterious statement, Llesho stepped painfully into his human form. Startled, Lling paused, her brows disappearing beneath the tumbled hair that fell over her forehead. The beginning of recognition fought its way through layers of fog that clouded her focus. She tilted her head, as if she could see more clearly out of the corners of her eyes, but came no closer.

"It's all right, girl, go on about your work. He's not going to hurt you." Tsu-tan didn't turn to look at her, but he seemed aware of every movement at his back. Lling said nothing, but slowly lowered her knife and backed away.

"Since my master took her mind she's become a fine laundress. He bids me leave her the knife to defend her virtue—for himself, I venture—not that she needs it. The knife, I mean, though virtue, too, seems a waste in a laundress. But no one would touch her even if she walked the camp naked with a price in cash around her neck. She's mad, you see. And no one wants to catch madness. It's the ultimate social disease."

Tsu-tan turned and entered the black tent then, so he did not see the look of hatred and low cunning that crossed Lling's face. With a last sly glance, she sheathed her knife and aimlessly drifted away. Llesho watched her go, wondering how much of her apparent mindlessness she owed to Master Markko and how much to her own talented spycraft. When she passed out of sight around a neighboring tent, he braced himself for what he would see, and followed Tsu-tan.

The witch-finder had gone to a small table on the far side of the firebox at the center of the tent and watched the reunion with mocking attentiveness. "I've brought you a visitor," he announced to the figure bent over a sickbed near the door of the tent, where guests of low station must wait.

"You had nothing to do with my coming here," Llesho corrected him. "I've come to tally up the charges against you, for when we meet in battle."

At Ahkenbad his dreams had been filled with the pain of his companions, so he knew to expect no good outcome of this dream-journey. When he saw his brother leaning over a pallet near the door of the tent, however, Llesho's spirits rose in spite of good sense. His brother, at least, appeared unhurt.

"Goddess, what are you doing here!" Adar greeted him with horror. Rising from the sickbed he tended, the healer no longer obstructed Llesho's view of his patient. The sight of Hmishi, lying feverish and battered on the low cot, struck him like a blow.

Llesho resisted the step that would take him to his friend and his brother. He was worried, but he didn't want to draw attention to the fact. Instead he walked toward the firebox, demanding a higher place as befitted one of rank.

"I'm not here. Not really, no matter what he says." He gave no explanation which Tsu-tan could report to his master, but his caution didn't seem to matter.

"Your brother travels in a dream, witch. He can do nothing for you."

"You're safe, then." Adar tried to keep his voice level, but he couldn't hide the sudden drop of his shoulders. The tension he had been carrying since Llesho entered the tent seemed to bleed out of him, leaving him almost limp with relief.

"I'm fine," Llesho assured him. "And our brothers Balar and Lluka as well, though I would have Lluka less stubborn." In spite of their terrible danger, Llesho offered this small joy in finding two more of their brothers alive as Lleck's ghost had promised.

"Then you would have a different brother," Adar answered with a wry tilt of his mouth. "For Lluka has known best, according to Lluka, since he was in the training saddle."

Llesho gave a nod, acknowledging the truth of Adar's words, but keeping his own counsel about the danger Lluka's arrogance might pose them all. Adar couldn't help with that, and he was anxious to ask the questions he had come for.

"You look well," he ventured.

"This one's master has a use for princes, and would keep me alive until he discovers we will not give him what he wants."

"Your milky face may be out of my reach, witch, but the boy is not," Tsu-tan warned them. From a table littered with the remains of a supper he picked up an iron rod and tapped on Hmishi's cheekbone, already decorated with bruises.

Hmishi screamed, but the pain seemed to rouse him from his stupor. Though glazed with fever and panic, his eyes tracked with intelligence as they moved from his tormentor to Adar to the newcomer in the room. "Llesho?" he murmured. "Are we dead? I didn't think it would hurt so much."

"Not yet." Tsu-tan gave a tap with the bludgeon to Hmishi's bandaged hand. "But soon enough."

Hmishi groaned, his face glazed with the oily sweat of pain. Llesho took a step forward, and the witch-finder raised his bludgeon as a warning. "You're just dreaming, young soldier," he mocked his wounded prisoner. "Your foolish king has forgotten you all."

"That's not true." Llesho clasped and unclasped his fists, but didn't dare to approach any closer. Alone, he could do nothing but cause both his friend and his brother more pain. "I'll be back for you."

"We'll wait for you," Adar promised him. "The magician assures my cooperation with the boy's pain. He won't let Hmishi die until he has what he wants from me." He didn't say anything about Lling and Llesho didn't want to bring attention to her by mentioning her either.

There were so many things they couldn't talk about, fears they didn't have to speak out loud because they shared them already: Master Markko might realize Adar would never give him what he wanted and kill both prince and hostage. Or, the witch-finder might slip his master's reins and beat the young guardsman to death in a frenzy of the hatred he felt against all magic. He may already have gone too far—Hmishi's face was pale, and he shivered with cold in spite of the gleam of sweat. There were injuries under the blankets Llesho didn't want to think about, and Tsu-tan already had his eye on Lling as a replacement victim in spite of his master's orders. It never paid to depend on the good sense of the mad; he had less time to bring troops to bear than he had hoped.

And he still didn't know where he was. He scanned the tent as if he could get some clue from the black felt, but there was nothing—instruments of torture on the lattice walls, a lantern over the cot, and the remains of supper amid the bloodstains on the low table. Llesho felt certain that the food had not been for Hmishi. More likely the witch-finder enjoyed his dinner with torture on the side. But he appeared to have no use for maps.

Adar watched him with a frown, trying to puzzle out what Llesho saw, or wished to see. Then something clicked behind his eyes. "Due west," he said softly, "straight into Great Sun."

"Unwise," Tsu-tan said. He raised his bludgeon over his head, and Llesho felt the ground fall away beneath his feet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

LESHO braced himself for the long drop to the turf outside of Bolghai's burrow, but when he reached for them, the grasslands to the north weren't there. Instead, he felt himself caught by a maelstrom that picked him up and dragged him far off his intended course.

"Whoa!" he called, as if he could bring the storm to his hand like a wild pony. But another, stronger mind was drawing him out past the camp where his brother tended Hmishi, away from the tent city of Chimbai-Khan where Bolghai waited for him to return from his dream-walk.

"Who's there? Who are you?"

Laughter echoed in his head, and a voice that turned his guts to water licked a poison trail across his mind.

"Just an old friend," Master Markko said with mock cheer. "We wouldn't want you to fall into bad company while you are wandering the dreaming places on your own, now, would we?"

It didn't get any worse than the company he was in. The memory of that voice in his dreams, calling him down into fever and death, ached in his guts where recent wounds were still healing.

"You made a bad enemy at Ahkenbad." Llesho tried to make it sound like a threat, but Markko laughed at him.

"Enemies, yes. Of corpses and children."

"And Dun Dragon."

"Like I said. Corpses. Greater powers than you or I pulled the teeth on that old worm more ages ago than you have hairs on your head, boy. But a good effort."

He didn't know. Before Llesho could explore that thought, something plucked him from the maelstrom with a wrenching force that ground his bones one against the other. It dropped him like a sack of flour to land on the carpeted floor of a tent he did not know, except that it was a Shannish rectangle with yellow silk for walls and for the curtains that partitioned the space. He had appeared in the back of the tent. On the other side of the curtain, the shadows of servants huddled, while the call of sentries floated on the night air outside.

Watching him with a satisfied leer, Master Markko sat in an elaborately carved chair. At his elbow stood a fragile table set with steaming pots and two bowls for cups, and his feet rested on a stool covered in a cushion of silk brocade. Behind him, a rumpled bed gave evidence of recent occupancy. In fact, the magician wore only a night coat belted loosely at his waist, as if he had been roused by a disturbance of his sleep.

Llesho staggered to his feet. There seemed no point in a reminder that this was a dream. In the first place, Master Markko had entered the dreams of Ahkenbad and murdered the dream readers in their sleep. Llesho had no reason to doubt the magician could do it again if Markko wanted him dead. In the second place, he wasn't certain he was dreaming anymore. If Markko's magic could defeat defenses as powerful as those of Ahkenbad, how difficult could it be for him to drag Llesho out of the dream realm if he wanted to? The truth was, he didn't know enough to make a judgment on exactly where he was or how Markko had got him here, so he kept quiet.

"Sit, please. Would you care for tea?"

Master Markko moved his feet from the stool, signaling that Llesho's place was below him, and held out a steaming earthen bowl. The vapors brought stinging tears to Llesho's eyes. He remembered other cups forced down his throat and nights spent writhing in agony on Master Markko's floor and shook his head, refusing both the tea and the seat.

"I won't be staying."

"What has happened to your manners?" the magician asked with a smile that dissected him on the hoof. "Don't you know it's a grievous insult in the grasslands to refuse hospitality? You must remember our happier days, when you used to sup from my hand and I would hold your head on my knee while you moaned in the night?"

"Where are we?"

"Tsk." Markko sipped from the bowl he had offered Llesho and set it carefully on the table before delicately wiping the moisture from his lips. "Oh, yes, it contains a careful selection of poisons." He waved a languid hand, as if objections were fat green flies he could brush away. "You never understood that I have always had the best of intentions in your regard, Prince Llesho.

"You proved useful in testing the effects of various poisons for the casual trade. But that was never my full purpose with you. I sought a disciple, one who might become as strong as I one day, and rule beside me in all my conquests. You were that boy; if future invulnerability requires present agony, who am I to deny the Way of destiny for the sake of a few nights of painless rest?"

The idea that the magician thought he'd been doing Llesho a favor enraged him more than it ever had when he thought Markko just used him as a convenient receptacle for his poisons.

"You could have killed me!"

"No, no," the magician objected. He poured a less noxious tea from the second pot into a clean bowl and drank steadily until the bowl was empty. "If you had died, you wouldn't be the one. Since you are the one, I couldn't have killed you. At least, not in the testing, as the others died. I am still stronger than you are, as Ah-kenbad proved."

Another test. He didn't know why he was surprised. Next time, however, he'd just refuse to jump over their fences and see what they thought they could do about it. Of course, Master Markko hadn't asked; he'd poured the stuff down Llesho's throat and he either fought the poison or he died. Most of the tests he'd faced since leaving Pearl Island were like that. They gave him only the one choice— play and win, or die whether playing or not—and he wasn't ready to choose the alternative yet.

"Is that what you're doing to Hmishi? A test?"

"Don't be silly—are you sure you don't want any tea?—the boy is just a diversion to keep Tsu-tan occupied until I can reach his camp with the ulus of the Uulgar clans behind me—"

"And the Southern Khan agreed to follow you?"

"Well," Markko lowered his eyelashes in a false show of humility. "He died so suddenly, you know. And the carrion crows who ate his flesh died as well, a great black crowd of them, which was a terrible omen. Someone had to step in. Since we had eaten from the same dishes and I remained unharmed, it seemed the spirits of the underworld favored me.

"But as I was saying before your manners forsook you altogether, it takes time, even for one of my persuasive skills, to bring the entire might of the Southern ulus into position. As a lieutenant, Tsu-tan has little to recommend him when compared to your gifts and talents, but he has proved himself loyal, given proper payment. I knew that harm to your brother would make the differences between us far too personal, and chivalry would demand an equal response if I let him play with the girl. Take note that I have held these two off-limits for the witch-finder's games.

"The boy is a soldier, however; a simple stone on a complex board performing his painful duty. If you are the companion I believe you to be, you will grow to understand sacrificing a few stones to gain greater territory in the pursuit of power."

"Lives aren't stones in a game. You can't just sweep them off the board."

"Of course I can." Master Markko twitched a finger and Llesho doubled over in pain. He hadn't touched the bowl of poisoned tea, but somehow, the magician had called upon the poisons lying dormant in his body and awakened them. Llesho fell, hot and cold by turns, gripped by the combined effects of all the doses he had swallowed in that long-ago workroom. His gut clenched and turned to water and he writhed convulsively in an old agony.

A whisper of silk warned him that Markko had left his chair. Llesho tried to curl protectively around his gut, to defend against the sensation of fiery knives shredding him from the inside. But the poisons bowed his spine so that his head stretched back almost to his heels. Like an old dream, the magician took his head onto his knees and touched his hair.

"I have always loved you best this way," he whispered into Llesho's ear. With a single languorous stroke, he wiped a sweat-washed tear from Llesho's cheek and licked it from his fingertip with a gentle smile. "You are like a son to me."

"I knew my father," Llesho gasped through his pain. "You are nothing like him."

"You're right, of course. Your father is dead. And I—" the magician brushed the hair back from his forehead, "—well, I would fight dragons to keep you just the way you are right now."

"You will have dragons and more to fight when I get free of you," Llesho promised himself. Then he threw up on the magician's lap. His bowels had released themselves already, his insides forcibly rejecting the poisons that had become a part of him, and he had to suffer the humiliation of his own fouled body as well as the pain. The magician did not react in disgust, however, but dropped a kiss at his temple.

"I haven't given up hope yet of bringing you to my side in this war," he said as he withdrew to change his soiled robe. "If you force me to relinquish my dream, I will regret what I must do, of course, but I will relieve you of your life by painful inches."

The magician dropped his soiled robes in a heap. Naked, he called a servant to dress him. Is that what his poisons will do to me? Llesho wondered. Master Markko's flesh was gnarled with twisted tracks of blue and green squirming under sickly skin marked here and there with the dull gleam of scales. "Magicians," Habiba had said, "all carried the blood of dragons."

A Thebin slave, though Llesho didn't recognize him, quickly answered the call, bearing robes and soft breeches. The man gave Llesho not a single glance, as if by seeing he might exchange places with this most recent victim. He cringed at his master's touch and did not breathe until the unnatural flesh had disappeared under its luxurious coverings.

"Bury it," Markko said The thought of smothering to death in a living grave did not distress Llesho as much as it should have. Anything was better than this. But the magician nudged with a careful foot at his discarded clothing, stained with the poisons of Llesho's body. When the servant had departed with his contaminated burden, Markko turned a calculating stare on Llesho.

"Perhaps, if you have some time to think about it, you will see reason yet," the magician said, and left Llesho to suffer alone.

It was a measure of Llesho's agony that being alone was more horrifying even than the company of the man who had put him there. He longed for the sound of breathing and the eyes of another human being watching him, more frightened of dying alone in such terrible pain than of suffering for the pleasure of his enemy. Gradually, however, that longing grew into a different shape. His heart, torn with pain and loss and terror, called to a power beyond his own, for home and love and—

Home.

"Llesho?" Pig looked down at him; a worried frown wrinkled his dark, open face.

"Am I dead?" Llesho asked him and winced at the reminder. Hmishi had asked him the same thing.

Fortunately, Pig's answer was similar to his own: "No, you're still alive. How do you feel?"

"Awful," Llesho was about to say, but that wasn't true any more. "Weak," he concluded. "Where am I?" and rolled his eyes. He had to figure out something more original to say—preferably something that didn't give away how little he knew about what he was doing.

"Same question," Pig agreed. "The answer is nowhere near as dire, but a great deal more puzzling. You're alive, but you've brought us to the gardens of heaven. Again. How did you do it?"

Llesho shrugged, discovered it didn't hurt and that he lay on a soft bed of moss under a tree with wide fronds that protected him from the flat white light. Things looked better than they had the last time he'd visited heaven, but there was nothing even the best of gardeners could do about the constant glare from the nightless sky.

"I was scared and alone and all I wanted was to go home," he said.

"Got that wrong, didn't you?" Pig joked. He made a great show of settling his sleek piggy body on the moss next to Llesho, but there was less truth than usual in his round little eyes.

If the Jinn lied now, perhaps he had about being alive as well. Llesho allowed his heavy lids to fall closed over his eyes. If it meant he could finally sleep, here in the gentle warmth of the Great Goddess' garden, he decided, he didn't mind being dead after all.

Leaves rustled nearby, but Pig remained where he was, so it didn't mean danger. That was just fine with Llesho—it meant he didn't have to wake up. When a finger touched his hair, however, imagination dropped him back on the floor of Markko's tent, under the magician's evil ministrations. In a cold sweat he started up, gasping for breath.

"Oh, Goddess," he moaned, and covered his face with his hands.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to remind you of him." A beekeeper sank down on her heels beside him. At her side rested a small pitcher and two jade cups. One, he felt sure, was the jade cup he had left in his pack back in the khan's camp. Setting her heavy gloves beside her, she tucked her veils up over her hat and watched him with a worried frown.

"You didn't. Don't. Well, not after I opened my eyes. You don't look like him at all."

She bore little resemblance to the beekeeper he'd met on his first visit to heaven either. She seemed much younger and more beautiful than he remembered; not with the cold and distant perfection of the Lady SienMa or the sinewy economy of function of Kaydu, though. The best he could come up with was "complete." As she sat beside him, her hands folded calmly in her lap and her dark hair tied neatly on top of her head, she seemed to contain her whole world in herself. Even her eyes seemed to reflect not just one color, but all colors, changing as he looked at them from brown to black to green to amber. The tears that shimmered unshed in them promised home for his weary soul in that world within her.

Watching the play of concern and other emotions cross her face, he wondered how many beekeepers heaven employed, and why they should all take an interest in him. The Great Goddess, of course, could appear to him in any guise. When he put it that way, the answer was obvious.

"We've met before, haven't we?" The rush of panic receded in a babbling torrent of words and he stopped, blushing.

"Did you find shelter from the storm?" she asked, and he knew that was the answer to his question. He had lost sight of her just as a storm had swept through heaven.

"My lady Goddess."

He struggled to rise, but she urged him to lie down against her knees with a hand placed gently over his heart. "Rest, husband."

Acceptance brought shame with it. That she had traded her unguarded appearance for one that must be more attractive to him meant that she doubted his ability to love her as she was.

"Please, my lady Goddess, don't change yourself for me. I will love you in whatever aspect you show me."

"Later," she said. "When your wounds have mended." Injuries to his heart and soul, she meant. From the pitcher at her side she poured a clear liquid into his cup. "This will start the healing."

He took the cup, discovering only pure, clean water on his tongue. As he drank, some part of the taint on his soul truly did seem cleaned away. With a contented sigh he returned the cup and let his eyes fall closed. Cool fingers stroked his forehead, urging him to sleep.

Before he gave in to her ministrations, however, he owed her his gratitude. "Thank you for bringing me here."

"I didn't," she said. "Your own dreams brought you to me."

"Home." It felt right when his heart had reached out in unspoken longing for the Great Goddess, and it felt right now, as he nestled against her homely skirts.

Heaven drew him like a warm fire burning at the very center of his being, and he gave up all his denials and pretensions to a normal life with a weary sigh. Maybe the struggle wouldn't be so bad, knowing he had love and home at the end of it. Only if he won, he reminded   himself. This was, after all, a dream. He'd have to go back soon.

"Home," the goddess agreed. "For a little while yet." In her arms, he let go of his burdens and slept.

He woke to the sound of running feet, and the shouts of familiar voices. Stipes, breathless and coming closer, called to their companions. "He's back!"

"What?" That was Bixei. "Where did he come from?"

"He just appeared, in his own bed."

Bixei was next to his cot now as well. "He's been hurt. Get Carina—and Master Den!"

"Right."

Stipes was gone with a brush of cloth against cloth at the entrance to the tent. Llesho's tent, since Bixei said he was in his own bed. He wouldn't know for sure until he opened his eyes, which was proving harder to do than he'd expected. With a flutter and blink against the glow of the lantern, however, he managed it, and saw the roof of his own tent, blood-red in the lamplight, over his head.

"Don't try to move—" Bixei tailed off in confusion. "My prince, excellence, please. I think you've been poisoned. Master Den will know what to do."

"Stipes is saying that Llesho is . . ." Kaydu burst into the tent and fell silent as she spotted her quarry. ". . . back." When she spoke again, her voice had gone cold as ice. "What has that old witch done to him?"

"Poison," Bixei told her. "I've seen it before. So has Master Den. He'll fight it off on his own given time, or at least he always did on Pearl Island. But it isn't a pretty sight. I hope Carina can give him something to help— can you stay with him until she comes?"

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to kill the Harnish witch who did this to him," Bixei announced. "And after that, my fist may have a few words for Master Den himself, for letting the treacherous bastard take Llesho away without any of us to guard him. Why Llesho thought it was a good idea to follow the trickster god into enemy territory is a mystery I will never understand."

"Wait," Kaydu ordered. "We are fifty soldiers in a camp of thousands. Before we kill the local holy man, we need to know what happened."

Easy for her to say, Llesho thought. She hadn't been on Pearl Island when he was dying by inches from Markko's slow poisons. But Kaydu didn't entirely rule out murdering the Harnish shaman, even if it got them all killed in the process, which it would. She needed answers first, though, and this time, she was right. He couldn't let his people sacrifice their lives over a misplaced threat, so he roused himself to say, "Bolghai didn't do anything. It was Master Markko. In a dream."

"Markko. Again. This magic business has never done anything but harm," Bixei grumbled. He kept his voice down and his face averted so that Kaydu wouldn't hear him. Llesho could have told him he was wasting his effort. Before she could respond, however, they were joined by the healer, Carina, and his brothers. Master Den and the dwarf followed close behind her.

"Soldiers, out!" Carina flapped her hands in an imperious command. "You can keep guard better on the outside, and we need room to work in here."

Bixei shuffled out with more grumbling, but Kaydu held her ground at the entrance to the tent. "He needs more than spears and swords to protect him from this, Master."

Dognut gave her his most reassuring pat on the hand. "He has more, child." He spoke with compassion and authority. Some message passed between them, and Kaydu bowed her head and left the tent.

"Who are you?" Llesho asked. He might have been willingly blind to the musician's powers until now, but he couldn't ignore Kaydu's unnatural obedience to a lowly servant and player.

"Bright Morning, a dwarf."

Llesho tried to find answers in the dwarfs quiet countenance. When he looked into Dognut's eyes, however, all he found was sorrow, deeper than a mountain lake but much, much warmer. It seemed easier, in his weariness, for Llesho to let his questions go. He didn't object when Carina touched his energy points and his pulse; he let her press on his belly and examine his fingertips, but he knew the answer to her inquiries before she had begun.

"I can't help him," she said at last to his brothers, who stood over him with varied expressions of anger and concern. "These are old poisons, not newly swallowed but a part of him in bone and sinew. Something roused them from their sleep, and forces well beyond my skills have banished them again. I can give him something for the pain while he heals, but he will need time and rest to repair the damage they have done to his flesh."

"I'm awake, you can talk to me," Llesho reminded her. "Where is Bolghai?"

"With Chimbai-Khan. He has been desolate since he lost you in the dream world, and has argued that the khan must take up your quest as a spiritual duty to your lost soul. He was much pleased to hear of your return, but can't escape his duties to his khan just yet."

Llesho nodded his understanding not only of her words but of Bolghai's duty. "It wasn't his fault," he assured her. "I knew the dangers when I began." How could I not, he thought, after seeing the destruction of Ahkenbad?

"I'll give the khan your message," Carina promised. "Now take this—" she filled a cup with wine and, sorting among the talismans and amulets that hung from her shaman's dress, she reached into one of the many small purses. Out of it came a small silver vial from which she counted seven drops of a thick, dark fluid into the wine. "It will help you sleep," she explained to him, and touched the cup to his lips.

He flinched away from it, wishing only for the cool water of heaven. It was enough for Carina to see and understand his misgivings. When she withdrew the cup, he apologized.

"I trust you, but memory sometimes overrides common sense."

"And sometimes," she conceded, "memory rises to warn us of unseen dangers. I would help you rest, but perhaps the medicine would do more harm than good."

"Let me help," Dognut offered. "Music is no drug, but it has the power to give pain or take it away, depending on the song."

"Can we rely on you to play only the latter?" Shokar challenged him with a solemn bow.

Llesho thought the dwarf would grin and answer with a jest, but he gave an earnest courtesy instead, and promised, "Healing voices only from my flutes, good prince, kind shaman. I would cause the chosen consort of the Great Goddess no more pain."

Master Den cast a warning glance at the dwarf in the corner. For a change, however, Llesho didn't deny the allegation. Dognut settled himself into a corner and brought out a reed flute. Soon gentle notes were drifting lazily on the yellow lamplight.

His expression thoughtful, Master Den stroked a gentle hand over Llesho's eyes, "Sleep, young prince," he said, "and dream only peaceful dreams."

The trickster god's words had the power of a spell, and Llesho followed the soft music into the gentle dark.

CHAPTER THIRTY

"LESHO! You're awake!" Shokar rose from where he sat in the corner listening to Dognut's soft playing. Balar had joined the music with a borrowed lute, but Lluka was nowhere to be seen. "Are you feeling better? I'll send a guard to fetch the healer."

"No need." Llesho raised himself on the bed and waited for his stomach to settle. The worst of the discomfort had passed while he slept; only the faintest traces of harmless images remained to tell him that he'd dreamed at all. If not entirely himself again, the thought that he might live came as a welcome relief instead of a curse. He owed that to the goddess herself. Silently he offered thanks, trusting the forces that guided him would carry his message to her ear.

At the tent flap, the point of a spear appeared, followed by Bixei, or half of him. With the tent flap pushed out of the way, Llesho saw not only Stipes standing guard outside, but half a dozen Wastrels and an equal number of trained Thebins.

"I thought I heard voices." Bixei cast a measuring eye over Llesho, and didn't seem to like his conclusions. "Carina will want to look at him, and he needs bread—goat milk will help as well, if we can get it. Food soaks up the poisons, or it did on Pearl Island."

"I'm fine—"

Ignoring Llesho's refusal of their attentions, Bixei sent guards in all directions: one to bring Carina, and one to inform Kaydu of the prince's condition, and another to look for food. When his messengers were well away, he returned to Llesho's side.

"What's been happening while I've been gone?" Llesho asked, and had a thought—"for that matter, how long was I away?"

"You went off with the Harnish witch three days ago. He returned two days later to report that some powerful force had plucked you out of the dreamscape and that he could find you in no realm of sleep or waking." Bixei dropped heavily to the floor at the foot of Llesho's bed, momentarily overwhelmed by the memory of the shaman's words. Though he would never admit his distress, Llesho had no trouble reading the grief in Bixei's drawn mouth.

"The Wastrels looked for you on the grasslands, and Bolghai and Carina both searched the underworld in the way of shaman. Kaydu looked for you from the air, but no one could find you. I kept the rest of your troops to our own camp, preparing to do battle against our host if it appeared that his shaman had banished you to a holy realm. We considered the possibility that the khan's son might have killed you for embarrassing him on the playing field, but he seemed to take your absence as a personal affront."

Madness, to cast their small force against the armies of the khan. But Kaydu was kin of the Dun Dragon, and Golden River Dragon had sired Carina, the healer. Chimbai-Khan might have cause to regret he ever welcomed such a band of monsters into his ulus if it came to battle between them. Fortunately, Llesho had returned before it came to a test, as Bixei reminded him.

"You returned before Great Moon Lun rose last night, and the sun is almost at its height now. I thought th< miserable old magician had taken you too far into deatl this time, but Carina said you had the mark of heaver on you, that you would recover with rest. She attend; Bolghai, who answers to the khan. Kaydu has accompanied your brother Lluka who, determining that you could not speak for yourself, insisted on negotiating with the khan in your name."

"I thought we'd already dealt with those pretensions," Llesho muttered. "Why didn't anybody stop him?"

Shokar stood at attention, braced for Llesho's wrath. "When you disappeared, and the old shaman couldn't find you, we discussed among ourselves who would take your place. I didn't want it—"

"Neither did I," Balar admitted from his corner. "And Lluka said that we'd already failed you when we let you go. He was the one who hadn't trusted the shaman from the start, and it looked like he was right after all." "It wasn't Bolghai's fault."

Shokar's shoulders lifted uncomfortably. "You say that now, but we had nothing else to go on. Master Markko entered the sleep of the dream readers and murdered them, but their bodies remained in Ahkenbad. You were just gone, vanished body and soul from the universe. We didn't think he had that power." "But Bolghai did?"

"Not on his own," Balar curled over his lute as if he would have disappeared himself rather than face his brother's questions. "Carina had explained that you were learning transforming magics and dream travel. We thought he tricked you into a trap."

Briefly, Llesho wondered if it were true. He was pretty sure that Master Markko couldn't have taken him that way unless he had already traveled the hard part— into the dream realm—on his own. Had Bolghai tricked him into Markko's reach? But it didn't feel right.

"Pig would have warned me," he decided. The goddess would not have returned him to the accomplice of his tormentor, he was sure of that, which meant that Bolghai hadn't been working with Master Markko. Tsu-tan, however, was the magician's puppet. It had been a mistake to go to the witch-finder's camp, but he'd needed to check that situation for himself.

"What's Lluka done while I was lost?" He didn't say, "that I'll have to undo," but his companions read it in his tone and posture. Oddly, Shokar smiled.

"Not much."

"The khan has declared himself indisposed to visitors," Bixei explained, "and so Prince Lluka has waited, while Bolghai and Carina sit in council in the ger-tent with Kaydu and Harlol as Carina's escort and Master Den, who comes and goes as he always does. Kaydu says that the khan takes Markko's attack on you as an insult to his hospitality, and he worries what such a powerful magician on his borders will mean to his ulus."

"It means desperate battle," Llesho agreed, "I have much to discuss with this khan who would be my friend."

Shokar had crossed his arms over his chest at this last declaration, and Bixei's chin jutted in the stubborn way he had.

"First food," Bixei insisted, just as Shokar said, "Not until Carina has declared you fit."

Llesho would have objected, but the smell of bread that wafted through the tent with the arrival of both healer and kitchen servant changed his mind. The khan would have to wait.

Not for long, however. Kaydu joined them soon after with an invitation to join the royal family—she emphasized the last part of the message: "as soon as you're well enough."

When Llesho refused to wait, she insisted that the full force of his honor guard accompany him to the khan. "It's time to comport yourself like a king, your royal holiness, instead of a boy on a lark. Kings treat with kings, after all; boys are taught lessons."

Bixei hung his head and refused to meet Llesho's eyes, but Harlol, as always, threw his allegiance with Kaydu. "Forgetting that might have cost your life, or that of the khan's son, on the playing field."

"I've already figured that out." He would need all the forces at his disposal— including the force of his own conviction in his position—to fight the evil that had taken his brother and his countrymen, that had enslaved his nation. That evil would grow more terrible still if he did not stop it on the grasslands of the South that were the source of its power. So he sent his brothers off to find their own princely clothes. Bixei and Stipes dressed him in the embroidered Thebin coat and breeches that always traveled in his baggage now, and set his sword and his knife at his belt. Llesho checked his knife by instinct, then placed at his back the spear that whispered in his ear of power and death.

Kaydu and Harlol had formed up his troops—who lingered suspiciously close to hand—into ranks of horse. Squads of Farshore mercenaries and Thebin recruits and Wastrels out of Ahkenbad, each in the dress uniform of his kind, blended into one disciplined square of allies. He didn't see Little Brother, and realized that he hadn't since he'd returned from the dream world. Asking about the monkey didn't seem very kingly at the moment, so he filed it away for later, another out of place fact to be accounted for.

When all was ready, Llesho accepted the salute of his forces and took his place at their head, his two brothers on either side, his captains right behind. Bright Morning the dwarf insisted on accompanying them to record the meeting for song and story, and Carina joined them to return to her teacher.

As they made their way with ceremonial gravity up the wide avenue of round white tents, they passed a scattering of riders. Some were going the other way and some just watched with the still focus of herders. Others—Llesho recognized some of the younger ones from Tayyichiut's first challenge—ghosted up next to them, never remaining more than a few moments, but never passing on until others had taken their places. Finally, when these unofficial representatives of the clans had had their chance to judge the newcomers in their stately panoply, Llesho's honor guard presented him at the silvered ger-tent of the khan.

The usual number of Harnish guards in their blue coats and cone-shaped hats were scattered on horseback nearby the royal residence. Others sat together in small groups, talking quietly and throwing the bones on a leather board. These latter stood when Llesho's party approached, but none moved to stop him or his honor guard of fifty. They might have scorned the small numbers of his retinue on his arrival, seeing no threat in so few. Since he had taken their own prince in a game of spears and traveled the hidden routes of the shaman in their camp, however, they attended him with wary respect.

At the door, half of Llesho's force broke off to stand mounted guard against dangers from outside the ger-tent of the khan. Senior guardsmen of the khan stepped up, one to each man Llesho left behind, while the juniormost of their members ran to gather the reins of his dismounting soldiers.

"Your guard can't watch the horses and their king," their captain offered.

Kaydu allowed it, except that Llesho's own horse she put in the care of the Wastrels Zepor and Danel. When the horses had been arranged, the captain stepped aside, permitting them to enter.

Llesho swept into the vast palace-tent of the khan, his head at its most regal tilt, his stride confident and with none of the boastful swagger of a boy. That took some effort, since he hadn't entirely regained his strength after his meeting with Master Markko. He had come to understand the value of theater in dealing with kings, however, and produced a carefully calculated frown when he found Lluka sitting in the lowest place, by the door.

"That is no way to treat a husband of the goddess," he said, and with a jerk of his chin, directed his brother to his side. Having delivered a message about the source and limits of his brother's status to both Lluka and the khan, he bore down on the dais where the royal family waited. Kaydu would have found out how to do the honor guard part correctly according to Harnish custom, so he left her to it, neither looking back nor giving any sign to acknowledge those who followed him.

At first the ger-tent had seemed almost empty, with just small clusters of young warriors who appeared to be randomly scattered, but who left no part of the vast room unwatched. As Llesho neared the raised platform where the royal family waited, he noticed to one side a group of men whose serious intent they made no effort to conceal. Each wore the long braid and curved knife that marked the chieftains of the clan. Among them, Yesugei kept his face averted with studied indifference, though Llesho saw his attention locked to a mirror hanging on the latticed wall. More than kings understood the theater of politics.

Nearer to the dais, a group of men and women, richly dressed and with headdresses crusted in jewels and colorful stones, rested on thick carpets of furs. The khan's brother, Mergen, sat among them, as did Bolghai the shaman. Advisers, he guessed; Carina left his party to join them.

Master Den was nowhere in sight. "Lord Chimbai-Khan." Llesho presented himself at the foot of the dais with a nod suitable for greetings between equals rather than between supplicant and benefactor.

"Princeling," the khan answered with a condescending smile.

Twenty-five hands went to twenty-five swords to demand payment in blood for the insult. The khan's guardsmen answered in like manner, but halted when he gave the signal to stand down.

"Welcome, Holy King of Thebin," Chimbai-Khan amended his greeting with a thoughtful gleam in his eyes. "Join my family, and accept our congratulations on your coming-of-age."

As compliments went, it still sounded like an insult. That would have rankled more a day ago. But all tests weren't the same; he'd figured that out lying in his own filth on Master Markko's floor. He'd never given the magician the right to ask anything of him, but the Chimbai-Khan was another matter. A glance at Kaydu gave all the instruction she needed. With a wary glance at Llesho, she unhanded her sword as a sign that his guard should do likewise.

When the swords had vanished into their sheaths again, Chimbai-Khan continued. "Your advisers may sit with mine, and your captains join my chieftains. As for your guardsmen, be at rest. You will find no hand raised against you in this ulus."

Llesho gave an affirmative nod, directing his brothers to the gathering of advisers and his captains to the chieftains. Yesugei, he noticed, watched with cautious interest. As one who had brought to the fire a small box that unfolded unexpectedly like a puzzle, the chieftain seemed to be trying to decide what threat that puzzle might reveal.

I am no threat, Llesho thought. He knew Yesugei couldn't hear it, just as he knew it wasn't true. He bore disaster on his shoulders like a heavy cloak, but for the time being, he'd take the Khan's questionable apology in trade for the certain danger he brought to the ulus of the Qubal clans.

On the dais, with a wide-eyed Little Brother in the crook of his arm, Tayyichiut waited with impatient excitement for Llesho to speak, as he might listen to Dog-nut's songs, or Master Den's stories. I am only too real, Llesho thought, and I would trade places with you in a   heartbeat—all the adventures for my parents alive, my home intact. The Harnish prince must have recognized some of these bleak musings in his complicated frown, for his eagerness turned into confusion and embarrassment.

A little shrug of apology seemed only to confuse the boy further. The singers and the storytellers never get it right, Llesho would have told him. Bravery is just an instinctive response to desperation. Some flee and some turn and bare their teeth. Your life is better served if you never have to do either. Tayyichiut would never believe that, of course; he'd been shaped by the stories as much as by his training. The prince would go into battle with the war cries of legendary heroes in his head, just like Llesho had.

Bortu focused her dark, sharp eyes on him, looking deeper than his skin. Llesho wondered what the khan's mother saw. Did she know what he was thinking? Did it condemn or acquit him? She said nothing, however, and showed nothing on her face to tell him her thoughts. Taking a hint from the old woman, he schooled his own features to uncompromising sternness.

In the face of this sudden, cold reserve, Prince Tayyichiut darted a quick glance from Llesho to Little Brother, as if he'd made himself foolish in the eyes of all the gathered company. Kaydu, seeing his dismay, stepped up with a formal bow and relieved him of the creature. Llesho silently thanked her for the distraction, which had drawn the attention of their audience to the monkey and away from both Thebin king and Harnish prince.

"You frighten me, Holy King of Thebin," Chimbai-Khan said. He hadn't been distracted after all.

A titter of laughter rose in the back of the ger-tent, from those who thought he jested with the foreign boy. The Khan silenced them with a hand upraised in warning.

"They are fools," he apologized, pondering the mystery of the boy king before him. "When first I met you, I said that you walked with wonders. Now I see that you are yourself one of those wonders. Come, look for yourself—"

As the khan rose to his feet, the Lady Chaiujin reached a hand to restrain her husband.

"Can I offer your guest refreshment, my khan?"

"Please, wife," he agreed, "but let our shaman advise your servants in the selection of delicacies suitable for a king lately suffering at the hands of his enemies."

No one said the word "poison," but it was in the mind and the eyes of the khan as he instructed his wife. Llesho wondered what plots exposed and hidden informed such a warning, but he had no time to consider the question. Chimbai- Khan left the dais and directed Llesho to follow. They stopped in front of a carved wooden chest suitable for storing clothes or blankets, where he gestured at the bust of a bronze head.

"My father." Llesho struggled to compose his features. Show nothing, he thought, give nothing away. "Where did you get this?"

The raid on Kungol, it must have been. In spite of his own advice, Llesho's hand strayed to his knife. Enemies, after all.

All movement, all sound in the huge ger-tent stopped, as guardsmen of both kings held their breath, afraid even a stray puff of wind might cause the very disaster their charges wished to avoid.

It was a very near thing. Old instincts stirred in Llesho's heart: the shock itself was almost enough to bring his lethal training into play. The khan seemed to know something of this, however, and made no move that could be misread as attack.

"Not your father, unless he lived for a thousand turnings of the seasons after sitting for the head." He spoke with the gentleness he might use with a wounded creature dangerous in its pain.

"You will find in this ulus no loot from the South's raid on Kungol, young king. I didn't lie about that, though I can't say the same for wars fought between our peoples in ages past.

"I didn't show you the head because of any resemblance to your father, however. I never met him, though I might have guessed, looking at you. The face is yours, the stern countenance, the penetrating eye, even the angle at which you hold your head. Look."

Keeping his movements slow and unthreatening, the khan raised an empty hand and pointed at the burnished mirror hanging on the latticed wall nearby. Llesho grasped at the simple instruction as a lifeline, something to do that wouldn't instantly collapse into chaos and death. In his past, lifelines had been chains, but he turned, trusting in the voice warm with a father's concern, and saw a face he didn't recognize as his own in the mirror. When had he become this person who looked back at him? What ancestor reached out of the ages to claim him for the long-dead past?

"I didn't see it when you first came to me, but you've grown into your past." Chimbai-Khan echoed his own thoughts eerily. "I don't know what it may mean, or why your path has brought you to my tent. But your eyes have looked upon the Qubal people with a silent rebuke all the years of my life, and all the years of my father's life, and so back to the first among the khans. The time, it seems, has come to pay for the deeds done that brought this bronze into the tents of my ancestors."

Chimbai-Khan's calm and earnest tones wooed him from his rage, and gradually Llesho loosened the violent grasp he held on his knife.

"In ages past, when Thebin held sway over the grasslands, a king with your own face and bearing ruled in the name of his goddess. The king, whose name was Llesho like your own, governed sternly, but with a light hand. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but the stories say he demanded an accounting of the herds and flocks each turning of the seasons. From this account he took only the smallest number for tribute, wishing the submission of the clans to his rule, but not their beggaring. Some called him Llesho the Wise. The grasslands simply withheld the title of tyrant."

"So far," Llesho objected, "your tale would lead one to believe you wished to collect on a debt, not pay one." He let go of the hilt of his knife, however, and reached out to touch the bronze. It was his face, and he ran his fingertips along the contours of the head, trying to grasp the idea of a Thebin as powerful as the khan described. The image failed him. He saw only Kungol in ruins.

"There was peace." Chimbai-Khan shrugged in answer. "Some would call the price cheap at a handful of horses and a small flock of sheep. Not all, however.

"During the festival of the Great Goddess of the Thebin people, when the chieftains brought their accounting to the king, this Llesho you see in the bronze met a daughter of the grasslands. His wife had lately died, and he wished to make this princess of the Qubal clans his queen. For herself, the story says, the lady cared nothing for crowns and glory, but came to love the man for himself alone.

"The king sent presents to her father, including this head. In the way of things when a suit is tendered and there is interest on the father's side, the chieftain kept the gifts. He was a simple man, my many-times-removed grandfather, and thought only that to have so powerful a son-in-law must mean he could forgo the payment of his tributary horses and sheep."

"But it didn't turn out that way." The spear at Llesho's back answered his unspoken questions, wailing in his ear for revenge so that he thought the riders passing on the wide avenue outside must come running. No one heard it but Llesho, however, except maybe Dognut, who sat hunched up as if in pain. What do you know, dwarf? That question, too, would have to wait, but he vowed to make the time later.

With an abrupt thought he meant to keep in his head, but which expressed itself with a dismissive twitch of his hand, he refused the spear its vengeance and denied it access to his mind. He was sick of the thing, told it in no uncertain terms that he had enough enemies of his own without looking for more among the ancestors. It was just a story. If, at the end of it to pay a debt, the khan would help him, so much the. better.

"What happened?"

"We cannot be certain, you understand," the khan warned him. "All we have is stories, and the bronze head. But it seems the lady had brothers, who saw in the courtship a chance to free the grasslands from Thebin domination. They seized their own sister and hid her away, claiming she had been abducted by a neighboring clan.

"It was a smart plan, really. If the king didn't rescue his bride, the clans would see him as faithless, which would cause unrest. If he did come into the grasslands in force against an innocent clan, he would be seen as a tyrant and the clans would rise against him. The brothers, riding as family and advisers, could approach him with weapons in hand without raising suspicion. They didn't know their sister was carrying his child."

Foreboding churned in Llesho's stomach, but he said nothing, waiting for the khan to bring the sorry tale to an end.

"The king came, with all his armies behind him, and met with his bride's brothers to aid in his search. As a false pledge of their unity, the brothers gave the king a short spear. They did not tell him that its tip was poisoned, or that the shaman, subverted by lies, had placed a spell on it to kill the one who wielded it.

"By then, of course, their sister's burden showed for all the world to see. Fearing that she would raise up her child to avenge his father, they held her prisoner in a tent far from the clans, where they thought no one could find her. A servant betrayed them, however, and led the king to where her brothers had hidden his love. And this is where the tragedy has put us in your debt. The king arrived just as his queen delivered his son, only to see her brother snap the child's neck. In his rage and grief, the king raised the spear the brothers had given him, meaning to slay the murderer and rescue his wife. The spell, of course, turned the weapon back on him and he died, the poison of his betrayers in his veins. Their sister could do nothing but look on in horror as the brothers she had once loved murdered all that she had come to cherish as a woman."

That same spear rode at Llesho's back. The story cast a new light on Prince Tayyichiut's innocent prank. Llesho remembered the recognition of it that had dawned on the Chimbai-Khan almost too late to avert disaster as the spear itself played out an old curse on both their ancestors. This time it hadn't won, though, he reminded the khan with a level glance at the young prince who watched them avidly from the dais. The khan nodded his understanding, and finished his story.

"The brothers had their war, but they died without winning it. King Llesho's older sons had ridden with him and they fought with the wisdom of their father, to regain the peace. The story ends with King Llesho's young queen. Some say the horrors of that day drove her mad, others that she stood her ground and refused the hospitality of her own clan for what they had done. All agree that she remained in the tent where her brothers had hidden her. Visitors would come to her and place gifts at her door until, one day, she wasn't there. She had walked away, into the woods to die some say. Others would have it that she was the Great Goddess herself, descended from the Thebin heaven to the grasslands in human form to love her eternal husband in his life as a king. In that version of the tale, she went to her heavenly home to await the return of her husband on the wheel.

"Whatever the end of the story, it has left a mark of sadness on this clan. For the crimes of our ancestors, the Qubal people owe a debt to Llesho the King. Ask, and I will give it to you."

Wisdom gained in a thousand bloody li of struggle had taught him that you didn't leave an enemy at your back or start an alliance with a lie. Chimbai-Khan was hiding something. "Do you also have a daughter, my khan?" he guessed, keeping his voice very low.

All expression left the man's face, which grew pale enough to remark even in the half-light of the ger-tent. "My daughter is only a child, and fosters with a friendly clan." He didn't offer a name of the daughter or the identity of the clan but added as explanation, "I would not have the past repeat itself."

"Nor I, my khan," Llesho agreed, but gave his own reminder, "I'm not the man of the bronze head, any more than I am my father."

"No," Chimbai-Khan agreed. "Both lost their battles in the end. You have to be better than either of them."

"With help," Llesho said, acknowledging the khan's goodwill even if he hadn't quite sorted out the enormity of the debt owed. Bruised and raw of heart he rolled the story around in his mind, taking in the shape of it as well as its parts. He supposed the current line of Thebin princes rose from the elder sons and shared no Harnish blood, for which he found himself heartily relieved.

"We have two battles to consider." With a bow, he accepted the invitation to return to the dais with the khan. "If we don't defeat the witch-finder and rescue his hostages before he reaches his master, he will at the very least kill the prisoners."

Chimbai-Khan nodded gravely. If the khan could comprehend that some things Markko did were worse than death, they were already halfway there. As he moved toward the dais, Llesho indicated with a glance that he wished his captains to draw nearer so that they could contribute their own knowledge of the enemy. An array of delicate foods suitable for an invalid waited for them.

Or waited except for Shokar, who abandoned good manners, to the dismay of their hostess, and helped himself to a taste of a variety of the foods—those most suited to an invalid and that Llesho might be tempted to try.

According to Bolghai, Chimbai-Khan had a troubled marriage, but he didn't think hostilities had reached the point where the Lady Chaiujin would poison her husband's guest. Mergen, however, gave an approving smile as he, too, dipped into the dishes. Surrendering to the protection he could not escape, Llesho chose only a bowl of milky broth from his brother's hand, grateful that no one pressed him to eat more. The bread and milk that Carina fed him had helped, as Bixei had remembered it would when he recommended it, but he was unwilling to tax his gut with anything stronger. When he had drunk sufficiently to satisfy courtesy, he set aside the bowl and waited until the food had been taken away. Then he began his own story, describing what had happened in his dream-walk.

"I traveled to the camp of the witch-finder, and found there my brother Adar, who appears well, and the two of my cadre who remain his prisoners. He has tortured Hmishi and, with the distant aid of the magician, has clouded Lling's mind. Only his master's orders restrain him, however, and I'm not the only one worried that he may slip his leash. I had set my dream course to return when Master Markko snatched me from the path I walked, and carried me to his own dream encampment. While he held me prisoner there, he tried to persuade me to join him."

Chimbai-Khan shook his head, as if trying to shake the pieces into place. "This magician thought to bring you to his side with torture and poison?" he asked, recalling the stir in the visitors' camp at Llesho's return and the illness that had directed the choice of foods at his table.

"He said it was important for his plan. My brothers and I have to remain alive and fall under his control for the next step in his campaign. The poisons, I think, are his idea of training the body—against assault by poisoners, perhaps."

"This next campaign. Does he mean to attack the grasslands?" the khan asked.

"I don't think so." Just so there were no misunderstandings, he explained, "Markko wants to rule over the grasslands, and he'll fight to win that power—if you don't go after him, he'll come after you. But bringing down the Shan Empire, killing the dream readers of Ahkenbad, and even overpowering the Harn—I think that's all about eliminating opposition to what he has planned at the end of it. He wants the power, and maybe that's all he wanted at the start. Now, he needs to make sure there's nobody to stop him when he puts his real plan into action."

Shokar had locked his attention on his brother's eyes as he spoke, his focus sharp as a hawk's. "Which is?"

Llesho shrugged. "I don't know. The raiders already control Thebin. If he holds the Southern grasslands, he can move on the holy city of Kungol any time he wants. My brothers will never recognize him as their legitimate king, but he had hoped, perhaps, that I was young enough to break to his will. That didn't work."

Except for a quick glance at Shokar, Llesho had addressed himself to the khan. As he spoke of his brothers, however, his eyes strayed to Lluka, who wouldn't meet his gaze. Not yet, he thought, but promised himself to uncover Lluka's unhappy secrets before they cost lives.

"Hostages to heaven," Shokar thought out loud. "Husbands of the Great Goddess. Three are in this tent, and Tsu-tan has the fourth, is already carrying him to his master. Something to trade for favors or power."

It made sense, but a fine tremor passed through Lluka's body. He seemed afraid of something much more terrible than Shokar's suggestion.

"Blood." He finally met Llesho's eyes, his own dark with horror. "Master Markko will want to make blood sacrifices. A commoner will do for a small request. A prince is better for a more powerful favor. The blood of a prince who is dedicated to the Goddess, and has her favor, may move heaven itself. Resisting will do, but willing is better. Young is better still, and innocent—"

Llesho knew what his brother meant, and blushed. Not for lack of wishing, he thought, but that was before. The goddess waited for him, and he could do no less for her. Once he had his own embarrassment under control, he considered the full implications of what his brother had said. Balar didn't seem surprised. Terrified, but not surprised.

"You knew," he whispered. "This is the future you saw, before the visions left you?"

"The visions didn't leave me," Lluka corrected him. "The future did. This Master Markko will kill you and open hell on the mountain where you die. The gates of heaven won't hold against the army he releases against them. That's where it all ends in most of the lines. In others, you die in battle, or the magician dies of his own magics, but always the end is the same. Hell is set loose, the gates fall, the world ends."

"Balar—" Llesho looked to his brother for a denial, but Balar shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "We've come to the place where we have to be, but the universe balances on a blade thin as a camel's whisker. A breath, a thought, tips all into darkness."

"More family business than we meant to share, Great Khan," Shokar apologized. Llesho nodded in agreement, but he let his brother carry the burden of the khan's shock while he studied the reactions of those around them. His own party stirred to greater vigilance, but they had all seen too many wonders to let surprise overcome them. Harlol had known from the start; the knowledge had sent him out to find a beggar prince and hide him from harm in the caves of Ahkenbad. That plan had worked out about as well as he would have expected.

Kaydu might have guessed on her own, or with her father's help. Bixei crackled with his anger, but seemed unbowed by the prospect of eternal chaos. Perhaps, like Llesho, his life as a slave and a warrior had prepared him for no other end. The tale had fired Tayyichiut with a dangerous fervor, however; the Harnish prince would take no warnings about the barbed edge to adventures now. Bortu seemed unsurprised, as did Mergen, which caused Llesho to wonder about their own sources of information. Chaiujin had fixed him with her serpent's stare, as if she would swallow him whole and digest him slowly for the juices of his mind. She froze the heart in his breast, so that for a long moment he missed its beating, but he had no time to consider what plots she might conceal. The khan turned to his shaman, demanding answers. "Is this true?"

"What part, my khan?" Bolghai replied with his own bland question.

Llesho sympathized with Chimbai-Khan's annoyance. While their beliefs might differ, mystics seemed to all share a common love of obscurity when asked a direct question.

The khan persisted. "Does this whinging prince have the gifts he claims? Is the world about to end?"

"Gifts, yes, Great Khan Chimbai," Bolghai admitted, and added, "Truth is a deep, cold stream, however, and this one wades ever in the shallows.

"The underworld of the animal spirits and our helpful ancestors remains untroubled. Sky spirits of thunder and starlight still walk the heavens unhindered by this magician and his magics. But heaven itself has suffered, and our worlds of dreams and waking mean little to the spirits we question in their passing."

"Does that mean the people of the grasslands will survive this master's magics?" Chaiujin asked, "or that we face defeat in anything we do?"

"It means, Lady Chaiujin, that one should listen with caution to the advice of those to whom the question of life or death has no meaning. But if the khan, your husband, were to ask me, 'Do we throw our lot and our lives with this mad boy's quest,' I would have to tell him, 'Yes.'"

"We have ten thousand gathered here in anticipation of battle," the khan said, "But even so, it will take some days to prepare for a march to the South." The indirection of his words caused Llesho to wonder what battle the Qubal had anticipated before his quest ever left Ah-kenbad. He would ask Master Den about that, but in the meantime, he had his own plan to prepare.

"First, we must secure the prisoners. The witch-finder travels with a hundred or two of Master Markko's raiders, no more. My own forces, though smaller, fight for the honor of heaven and to rescue friends and brothers, not out of fear of their master. We've won against such odds before. When we go after Master Markko, however, your thousands will be welcome."

"Your troops follow their king, like filings to a lode-stone," the khan corrected. "And we would not have them wandering our lands bereft of their true south. Take half a hundred of our fighters. Let them see with the eyes of the clans these terrors of which you speak and report to their captains the truth as they learn it in the flesh of their own experience. And if they should keep the royal lodestone from the hands of his enemies, then all debts are paid. The battle for the grasslands that follows will be for us."

"Agreed," Llesho accepted the offer and with it the hands of the khan, which he held between his own as a sign of the compact between them. When it was done, he glanced up at the mirror on the wall, and caught Ye-sugei's relieved smile in it. He returned a nod of acknowledgment; they had both done well by their different causes.

Tayyichiut would have spoken then, and Llesho guessed what he wanted, but the Lady Chaiujin silenced him with a cold frown. As she waited for the chieftains to settle, the lady beckoned a servant who brought forward small pots of tea, and bowls for the guests and family. One pot she set by the khan's wife with particular care. Lady Chaiujin's smile of welcome never warmed her eyes as she picked up a jade bowl in one hand and the teapot by its handle with the other.

For a moment Llesho wondered if she had taken it from his pack, but the challenge in her gaze as she filled it quelled the impulse to accuse. He was a guest and would make a gift of anything he owned save the wedding bowl returned to him by the Lady SienMa and the spear across his back. But the light from the smoke hole at the center of the roof played differently at its lip than he remembered. Not his own cup—another like it that she teased him with, urging him to a thoughtless accusation.

"I have a cup very like your own, Lady Chaiujin." His smile, for the teeth only, warned her that he saw through the ruse: "Save that the rim is thinner."

"Then you must have its match." The lady smiled graciously and gave him her cup to drink. "Keep it as my guest-gift. Like the bronze that haunts my husband, this cup comes from the Golden City of Kungol. Perhaps you can return it to its rightful place some day."

Too gracious. He wondered if her poisons were compatible with those of Master Markko. She caught his hesitation, however, and drew back the cup. "It's just tea," she assured him, and sipped from it. "I will beg the khan, my husband, to take no offense if you wish Prince Shokar to taste it as well, though I fear the tea will be gone by the time we are finished testing it."

Chimbai-Khan seemed more inclined to sweep the cup from her hands than to object to Llesho's caution. She seemed unlikely to want him dead, however, and had tasted it herself. The magician's attentions had made him the equal to any poisons that might leave another unaffected, so he took the cup into his hands and drank a small courtesy draft, no more than a sip.

Not poisons, he realized too late, but a love potion that set fire pulsing through his brain and body. Gazing into the lady's eyes, he saw that the potion had set her blood racing as well, but she sat demurely, her lashes quickly hiding the fever she had set to burning with her tea.

"Your pardon, Chimbai-Khan." Llesho stumbled awkwardly to his feet. His guardsmen, too, stirred uneasily to see their young king's interest so plainly written on his face and form. They could not know the lady had drugged him into love with her, but had to seriously question both his statecraft and his manners. With a shake of his head that did nothing to clear his thoughts but set his pulse to throbbing at his temples, he drew himself to his full height and sketched a shaky bow. "No offense meant to your lady or your hospitality, but my illness calls me to my bed." At the mention of his bed the heat rose in his cheeks and he swayed toward the Lady Chaiujin.

"Don't let us keep you from your rest, young king." The khan dismissed him with a wave of a hand that Llesho didn't see. He'd already turned away, facing the long walk past nobles and chieftains and his own guardsmen to the door.

"My respects—" He started walking alone.

At his back his brothers hesitated, torn between courtesy to their host and worry for their king.

"I hope the food and drink were not too taxing on his healing spirits," the Lady Chaiujin begged with mockery in her tone. "Perhaps he needs another day of rest." Her voice embraced him like warm honey.

"Oh, yes." Llesho turned around again and reached for her, found his hand restrained by Shokar, who studied him anxiously for illness. "Or . . ." He was confused. Llesho wanted to sink into her arms, but at the same time, his own voice in the back of his head, went, Ugh! No! Run away! "I have to rescue Adar." Focus. The little voice in his head added that to the chant and he obeyed it, marching toward the door with a singleness of purpose on which he knew his life depended, though he couldn't have said why. "But I'll come back . . ."

"Go. See to your brother," the khan dismissed the whole of Llesho's party. "We would not lose a second King Llesho to the hospitality of the Qubal clans."

Llesho thought the khan must suspect more than he could let on about his guest's sudden illness. He didn't feel ill, though. He felt delicious, and couldn't remember why he was leaving when the Lady Chaiujin waited for him on the dais, like a dream of heaven. Focus. As he passed the khan's gathered advisers, he sought out Carina, who saw with the eyes of a healer. Drawing a handkerchief from one of the many purses that hung from her shaman's dress, she made her way to the dais and swept up the jade cup that Lady Chaiujin had offered Llesho as a gift.

"His Royal Holiness will send his proper gratitude when he is recovered," she said, and wrapped the cup carefully in the cloth. With her own bow and a muttered apology she turned and followed his brothers, who had taken up positions with his captains surrounding him and moved him toward the exit. Before they had gone far, however, the door opened for Master Den. The trickster god strode toward them with an easy grin, pretending to a cheer belied by the thunderous footsteps that shook the earth as he walked.

"Magical torments are an exhausting business," he chided Llesho, leaving the gathered company to assume he meant the magician waiting in the South, and not the unsuspected potions of their queen. With a bow to the khan and a knowing glance at the Lady Chaiujin, Master Den fell into step behind Llesho's party and herded them past the firebox.

"Wait!" Llesho reached to the chain around his neck. His hand found the black pearl that was the Pig tangled in his silver wire, and he tugged at it. "I need to give the lady a present in return!"

"You will." Master Den leaned into his ear so that they could speak privately. "Tomorrow. When you are ready to leave is the proper time for a gift to your hostess. Now might be mistaken—"

"Not mistaken," Llesho whispered in his teacher's ear. "I want her."

"I know."

"And I don't even like her."

"Not surprising. I'm sure Carina can help. You've done well to remove yourself from the lady's presence."

"I have the cup," Carina joined in their whispered conversation. "I can analyze what she gave him when we get back to our tents."

They were hustling at an unseemly rate for a king's departure from another king, Llesho judged. But the voices in his head were in agreement with his feet this time, even if other parts of his body were still in rebellion. He didn't think those soldiers following him out were going to let him go back anyway, even if they were his own personal guard. Only Carina and Master Den suspected more than a natural, if rude, infatuation with the lady. The khan's men were unhappy with his behavior but not surprised by it; they seemed willing to let the visitors leave unharmed if they just—left.

A glance behind showed him that the Lady Chaiujin had gone, but Chimbai-Khan watched as Llesho's party withdrew. Regret and sorrow and even pity mixed in his eyes in a way that confused Llesho even more. Of course, Lady Chaiujin was the khan's wife, but ... it occurred to him, though he couldn't hold onto the thought, that the lady had wanted to hurt her husband and the upstart princeling on her doorstop. He'd got himself out of there without making a complete fool of himself, but she'd managed to humiliate them both without ever losing her own dignity. And that made him seriously angry.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

"I DON'T understand—"

"There's nothing to understand. It's a drug." Safely back in Llesho's command tent, Carina had unwrapped the Lady Chaiujin's jade cup and set it on the folding camp table. As she spoke, she filled it with clean water and added four drops of a brown liquid thick as mud.

"Oh, I understood that part right away."

Llesho paced out his nervous energy behind her, making a detour around Shokar but staying clear of Master Den, who had laid claim to the bed where he sat taxing the strength of the cot's joints. Llesho didn't need a bed, had slept away most of a day while the poisons sweated their way out of his system. The Lady Chaiujin's drug had a completely different effect on his system. If he couldn't get access to the lady herself, which Master Den and his brothers had determined he wouldn't, he'd race his own horse to Kungol, or climb the heavenly mountains with Dognut on his back to entertain the goddess when he arrived at her gates. Something, anything.

In the corner, Dognut started up a soft tune, and stopped again when Llesho turned on him.

"I am not in the mood, dwarf."

"So I see."

Dognut pocketed his sweet potato flute, but there was mischief in the glance he flashed at Balar who, fortunately for his skin, took no chances with Llesho's temper and a borrowed lute. Lluka was off skulking somewhere, but Shokar stood like a stone pillar in the entrance to the tent.

Llesho needed to move, so he paced, and thought, and talked.

"I know I don't really have these feelings for her. She's scared me witless since the first time I saw her. And not," he added before someone could interrupt, "because I was unnerved by an attraction to a beautiful woman. She's colder than the glaciers on the heavenly mountains, and that's not my idea of passion, however innocent Lluka thinks I am. I knew it was a trick."

Shokar shifted neatly in place to block Llesho's escape from the tent. "What I don't understand," he complained, "is why you drank from a cup the lady handed you in the first place. That should have been my place."

"And it would have served us better if the eldest prince had thrown himself at the feet of the khan's wife," Llesho snapped at him. He didn't have an answer that would please Shokar. Didn't, in hindsight, think much of it himself. "I didn't think she'd poison us until she knew more about us."

"You," Balar dropped the correction offhandedly into the debate. "Her attention was all on you."

Llesho knew that, and Master Den was challenging his statement with a raised eyebrow. No one believed him, it seemed, though they appeared willing to accept the lie as a symptom of the lady's tea. With a little sigh, he relented. The truth, after all, was easier to keep track of. Which was important when he wasn't tracking all that well. "Okay. I knew she was watching me, and I figured that she'd test me with something. But if Markko has been training my body since Pearl Island to withstand the effects of poisons, and if the Lady Chaiujin could drink the tea without any ill effects, I figured I could do it, too."

As he expected, Shokar liked the truth no better than the lie. "I can't believe you would risk your life on the good intentions of a magician who has left a trail of murder from here to Pearl Island," he thundered. "I can't believe you would deliberately swallow poison just to see what would happen. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!" he thundered.

"It was an alkaloid," Carina corrected him with absent precision. She wiped the cup carefully, and rinsed it again with pure water. "And, I think, a spell with it. There are markings etched into the bottom of the cup."

"Of course there must be a spell as well as a potion. Why should anything ever be simple?" Llesho kicked at a bump in the floor of the tent and pulled his foot back quickly when the lump scuttled away under the canvas floor. "The Lady Chaiujin had to know I carry the jade cup that Lady SienMa returned to me—she was daring me to accuse her of taking it. A search would have turned it up exactly where I left it, discrediting me and her husband, for inviting a troublemaking stranger into his camp.

"When that didn't work, she was ready with her backup plan."

"One should always have a backup plan," Master Den agreed. He didn't laugh, but it was a near thing.

"I should have challenged the khan for the honor of Thebin." Shokar fidgeted with his sword. Not a man who chose war as an occupation, he had learned it well enough. Especially in the early stages, when sides were being taken, honor and the reputation of one's cause carried as much weight as sword craft.

Dognut, however, spoke up from his corner, common sense rising out of his usual well of compassion. "The khan had no hand in it, I'd wager, nor acts out of a deep heart-love for his cold wife. But he'd be bound to defend her pretended virtue against us. We'd be dead. Markko would soon have his hands on Adar, and possibly other royal brothers who are still missing. And the khan would mourn the loss of his own honor in murdering the innocent to protect the wicked. This way, a boy lost his head in the presence of a beautiful woman but properly retreated to clear his thoughts rather than offend his host."

Master Den agreed. "Better to appear a fool than a cuckoo in the nest of a powerful man."

"Particularly when you wish him as an ally?" Llesho already knew the answer.

"And what if it had been a poison, meant to kill you and not to make you look the fool you are in front of the Harn?" Shokar was not yet ready to let it go.

"Then I would have lived or died, as Master Markko meant me to do when he fed me his doses," Llesho answered.

Shokar seemed ready to build a full head of steam, worthy of the best of his temper explosions at this answer, but Llesho stopped him with an upraised hand. He didn't have to say, "I am your king;" it crackled in every rigid muscle. When his brother bowed his head in submission, Llesho explained what had seemed obvious to him from the beginning.

"We are at war. Master Markko may command the Lady Chaiujin, or she may battle for her own cause, but I could not back down at the first flight of arrows. If we are to win this war, we have to fight it wherever it finds us, at table or on the playing field, or anywhere else it comes to us. If we don't, we'll die anyway, on our backs if not on our feet."

Shokar trembled with his inner struggle, wishing to protect his young brother while knowing that he couldn't.

"Let it go, good prince Shokar," Master Den advised him. "There comes a point in the nursemaiding of kings when one must relinquish the leading reins and let them ride on their own, even into disaster."

"It wasn't," Llesho objected quickly, but was forced to amend his defense: "A near thing, perhaps, but it worked out."

"And you've put up with this since Pearl Island?" Shokar gave his head a shake and added for Master Den, "I don't know how you do it."

None could misinterpret the little smile Den gave him in return. His Royal Holiness King Llesho was, perhaps, no more nor less than the trickster god had made him. Which warranted greater thought when Llesho had the time.

A stirring at the tent flap interrupted the conversation before anyone could comment. After a brief whispered word with Bixei, who stood guard outside, Shokar nodded, and allowed the newcomer to enter.

"Prince Tayyichiut." Llesho paused in his restless pacing to give the prince a bow of greeting.

"Holy King." Tayyichiut returned the bow, but did not meet Llesho's eyes. He raised a small sack of herbs so that everyone in the tent could see what he was doing, and offered it to Carina. "Bolghai recognized the effects of a potion on the khan's guest, and sends this antidote, with the humble apologies of my father, and his gratitude. He wishes you to know that he would have no harm come to you in his camp, but suggests that perhaps—"

Llesho raised a hand to stop him from committing a breach of hospitality in his father's name. "My troops prepare for departure even as we speak. I would have met with your father again, to make more detailed plans for the battle to come, but we'll have time for that after we free Tsu-tan's prisoners."

The Harnish prince let out a deep breath, as if he'd been relieved of a great burden. "My father hoped you would not forsake the alliance which he holds so near to the honor of this family. He begs you to accept the gift of a half a hundred of his best horsemen, and his son to lead them, to help you regain your companions."

Llesho's first instinct demanded that he reject the khan's offer. He'd had only a handful of days to get used to the idea of Harnishmen who didn't mean to kill him, and Tayyichiut hadn't helped to cement that change of view. The young prince seemed to owe little of his open demeanor to his mother but Llesho wondered how innocent had been the challenge on the playing field that had almost cost him his life. If the mother knew about the cup, did the son also know about the spear? He caught a breath to reject the offer, but the prince seemed to read his objection and moved to counter it before the words were spoken and it came to backing down in front of followers.

"I want to go. Before you answer, let me assure you that I meant no harm when I challenged you to play at jidu with me. I didn't realize that you carried magical weapons along with a magical name and thought only to test your conduct in warlike games. For my foolishness you hold my honor in your hands and I would win it back in battle at your command."

That all sounded too elaborate and poetical for Llesho, who still felt the uneasy effects of the potion fed him by the prince's mother.

Prince Tayyichiut read some of this in his frown, and answered for himself: "The Lady Chaiujin is my stepmother, I call her mother out of courtesy to my father." He said nothing more, but his loathing came through clearly in his voice, and the curl of his lip.

"I would not cost the khan his beloved son in a battle that isn't his to fight." That was Llesho's second doubt, but Tayyichiut swept it away with a wave of his hand.

"You're no older than I am, but you've already proved yourself in battle and you're leading a force of your own to rescue your friends. Just like you, I've trained to fight all of my life. Now it's my turn to prove myself."

"Not like me." It wouldn't help his argument to tell the war-trained prince that, until his fifteenth summer, Llesho'd wielded nothing more dangerous than a muckrake in Lord Chin-shi's pearl beds.

Prince Tayyichiut took the words like physical blows and Llesho knew he couldn't leave it that way between them. None of it was the prince's fault, any more than it was Llesho's. Unfortunately, it left him all out of arguments to make. "I don't want you dead," had been the big one, right after, "I don't trust you any more than I trust your stepmother," which didn't seem the right thing to say in the camp of his father.

"Drink this." Carina interrupted them with a cup of tea in which the leaves and bark still floated. He wrinkled his nose, but she insisted, "It will take away the worst of the effects you are suffering."

She didn't say which effects, and gracefully did not mention their source, but Llesho blushed a deeper wine-color anyway. He hadn't forgotten that he wanted to bed Tayyichiut's stepmother, but the prince had distracted him from the evidence that told the tale to all who might look on him. While Llesho drank, Tayyichiut carefully kept his eyes focused on the top of Llesho's head as he pressed his case.

"I would not stay behind with the women when there is glory to be won."

He couldn't have chosen a less convincing argument to join Llesho's band, nor could he have chosen a worse time to make his fatal point. Carina turned on him with an imperiously raised eyebrow just as Kaydu, returning from a scouting expedition, entered the tent.

"What's this about staying behind with the women?" she asked, shaking all over as if she still had feathers.

"I'd like to know that, too." Carina added her fuel to the fire.

"I didn't mean. I meant, Harnish women don't, or well, not often, and—" He stammered to a halt, as red to the tips of his ears as Llesho had been before he drank down Bolghai's antidote.

"Do you think you can let the boy off the hook now?" Dognut asked with a twinkle. "It would be easier to explain his injuries after the battle than w~

"Swaggering about taking on twice as many because our aims are pure sounded very good when you were bragging us up to the khan," Balar conceded, "but even for heroes, greater numbers are better than being outnumbered, especially when the enemy is one who channels powers from this dark magician."

Tayyichiut grinned at Balar. "My father agrees," he said, "Both to the prettiness of the speech and to the value of not testing it too far. Will the monkey come to war with us?"

"He always does," Kaydu assured him.

"I'll hold him for you some of the time," Tayyichiut volunteered brightly.

Llesho felt the stirring of jealousy for friendships that might be born there, between the Harnish prince and his own company. "The Harn are our enemies," he snapped, shocking his brothers and the prince, but not the companions who had known him throughout his journeys.

"It's hard to give that up," Kaydu gave a little shrug. "But we have to find out where this khan will stand in the greater battle to follow. Better to have his son under our eye than to leave the enemy at our back with no hostages to his good intentions."

"My father suggested that as well," Tayyichiut spoke up easily. Too easily.

"You've had a soft life in the lap of your family and the people of this ulus. You think you can win our forces to your side the same way you charm your own horse-guards, who are friends by decree." The effects of the potion, and his own habits of ease among his companions had relaxed Llesho's features, but now he hardened his expression as he hardened his heart. "We are not so easily won, and we—any one among us with whom you will travel—will kill you without a thought if you look like crossing the least of my commands."

He'd never tested that, but it had to be that way if he were truly king. Of course, being king also meant giving orders his people could, in conscience, carry out. But he didn't want this foolish prince to think a winning smile would protect him.

As if dropping a mask of his own, Tayyichiut let the good cheer fall away. "Lady Chaiujin was my father's second wife, until my mother died in her sleep. Then she became first wife." It took little imagination to figure out how Tayyichiut's mother had died. They had that in common, then. "That happened three years ago, and I am still alive."

Llesho understood that, too. He returned the bow, to acknowledge the battles this young warrior waged within the khan's own household. "You won't be any safer in our company, but you don't have to pretend to love your enemies."

"When do we leave?" Tayyichiut was impatient to be gone, and now Llesho could understand his reasons. "At false dawn. Say your good-byes tonight."

The prince accepted this answer with a quick nod and left without a backward glance. When he was gone, Llesho realized that Bolghai's potion had worked. He felt almost normal again. Except, he was famished.

Tayyichiut had told about half the truth, which was better than he expected. Llesho had gathered his party on the playing field that served as the staging area for the khan's encampment. Surrounded by the round white tents in the soft gray light of the little sun, they awaited the arrival of the khan's troops. He'd expected the khan and maybe his chieftains and a few of his advisers would come out to bid them luck in battle, not this turnout of old and young, men and women, who thronged the edges of the field. The crowd stirred and hummed with anticipation, so that Llesho almost missed the echo of distant horses reverberating through the ground underfoot. A cheer went up as the vague tremble of the earth turned into a thundering drive down the wide central avenue of a half a hundred galloping horsemen, each with a second horse on a lead. The warriors of Chimbai-Khan wheeled onto the playing field in a tight formation and drew to a bone-snapping halt at the dais that had been set up for the khan and his family.

With a grin, the Harnish prince at the head of the company leaped from his horse and presented himself to his father.

"The lives of your warriors are yours to command," Tayyichiut recited. Dropping to one knee, he bowed his head, baring his neck to his father's sword in a ritual display of submission. That's when Llesho saw the sling on his back, and the furry monkey head of Little Brother sticking out of it.

"Rise, warrior, and fight bravely for your khan," Chimbai-Khan answered, showing remarkable restraint at the sight of the monkey on his son's back. When he had completed the formal leave-taking for a soldier, he gave a warrior's deep laugh, wrapped his arms around his son, and lifted him off the ground in a huge bear hug that drew one indignant screech from the monkey before he curled more deeply into his sling.

"Bring home tales of wonder, and a scar or two to enchant the ladies," he instructed his son. In the khan's eyes, Llesho read the truth of his desires: for mild tales and small scars, but most of all, the coming home. Tayyichiut was his only son.

"I will." His eyes snapping with pride, Tayyichiut set his shoulders in a military bearing. "Father, bless these, your warriors, as they prepare to die in your name."

"Bring death to your enemies, take only shallow wounds to mark your striving on the battlefield."

The khan let his gaze drift over the waiting horsemen, and Llesho did likewise. Twenty-five of them were youths with not a moment's real experience in battle. When the khan's exhortation to the troops ended, the crowd descended upon his army. Mothers pressed packets on their sons with dainties for them to eat in the saddle. Fathers offered advice and the prized family sword or a quiver of fine arrows, as if these gifts of war-craft could bring their children home safe again. And more boys, swearing in an effort to seem more warlike, were unable to hide their disappointment that they had not been chosen.

With his heart in his boots, Llesho wondered why he'd been chosen to introduce the Harnish prince and his young followers to the battlefield. Perhaps he'd sounded more assured than he felt when he had talked about taking on Tsu-tan. If he'd known what Chimbai-Khan intended, he would have warned him. People he could ill afford to lose died in his quest—advisers and followers both—and the more he needed them, the more likely they were to suffer and die for it.

If the khan had seen the rescued Emperor Shou, he might have thought again about sending his son into this war, small as the coming skirmish might be when compared to the struggles that would follow it. He couldn't even tell that part, however, without risking the empire itself. Enemies, of which the Shan Empire had many, waited only for a sign of weakness to fall on their prey. Llesho didn't want to bring that down on his friend or on the people of Shan. He just hoped that by keeping silent he didn't bring disaster on the Qubal ulus and their young prince.

At least the boisterous young warriors each came with an overseer in tow. An equal number of hard-bitten veterans—with expressions so impassive Llesho knew they felt as frustrated as he did—followed their young charges onto the playing field, driving a herd of riderless horses on leads. As he thought about it, the strategy behind the makeup of the company started to make sense. Hardened warriors would balk at orders from a stranger and a boy, as they saw him. Tayyichiut's youthful cadre, however, would accept the leadership of their own age-mate and ally against their own race's older generation.

The warriors charged with seeing them safely through their first battle would fight at Llesho's command to keep their children alive, and to bring them home as grown warriors who had passed through their first campaign. That Chimbai-Khan had meant to wage this war all along crossed his mind. That the khan had sent his son to draw his first blood gave Llesho both a responsibility to his ally and an opportunity to learn through his son more about the hidden agenda of the khan. Keeping them all alive was the tricky part.

When the battle-scarred fighters drew to a halt, their leader dismounted. It was Mergen.

"Gifts," he said with a bow to Llesho and a sweep of his hand to indicate the horses stamping impatiently among the riders. "We will ride to battle in the Harnish style." That meant traveling at full gallop, an extra horse tied to each rider's mount. The Harnish riders changed mounts in mid-gallop, stepping from stirrup to stirrup as if crossing a stream upon stones.

"Like the wind," Llesho agreed. His own army lacked that skill with horses, so he added, "But even the wind pauses between gusts, to blow more fiercely when it rises again."

"So the wind blows in the East," Mergen gave a wry nod of acknowledgment, but his attention from the moment of his arrival had been focused on his brother, and he waited only for the minimal courtesies before turning to the khan himself.

Discussing statecraft in the khan's ger-tent, Mergen had seemed a mild, thoughtful man. Now he confronted his leader and kin like a storm sweeping over the grasslands. Chimbai-Khan wanted to send his brother to watch over his son's small force. Mergen objected. They spoke too softly for Llesho to hear, their heads drawn together, but their views very far apart. Even from a polite distance he could see lightning flash in the eyes of the khan and thunder answer in the tight-drawn vee of Mergen's brow.

In the end, Mergen won, and Yesugei stepped up to take his place with Llesho's captains at the side of his own young prince.

"I see you plot with my chieftains against me, brother." Chimbai-Khan's low voice held subtle threat as he watched Yesugei exchange places with his brother. It was, Llesho realized, the chieftain's horse, and Ye-sugei's pack. Mergen had never intended to travel with the advance force.

"As always, Great Khan, your advisers conspire to keep you alive."

Llesho wasn't supposed to hear that either, or to see Mergen's quick glance toward the dais, where the Lady Chaiujin stood with the khan's mother and his other advisers. Nor did the khan mean for him to hear his answer, "I make it difficult for you, I know." The slap on Mergen's back, however, he gave as a signal to all that the dispute at the highest ranks had ended in peace.

The remounts had to be apportioned among the various riders and the company sorted into order. As the captains busied themselves insuring the preparedness of their troops, Yesugei himself took charge of Llesho's gift. "She is a strong and a tireless lady," he promised, stroking a hand down her neck and across the mare's shoulder. "I trained her myself."

"She is beautiful." Llesho gave the horse a rub, but he raised a questioning eyebrow at Yesugei "Mergen's no coward," the chieftain explained under cover of pointing out the finer points of horseflesh.

Leaning in as if to comment on the hardy grasslands pony, Llesho gave a quick nod to show that he had figured that out for himself. "Does Mergen really think she will try to kill the khan?" he muttered.

"What do you think?" Yesugei didn't blink. Anyone who saw them talking would think they were discussing bloodlines.

"I think, some gifts carry a heavy price." Llesho wondered if the Lady Chaiujin stewed her own plots or acted for her father in the East. Either way, she was the viper hidden at the bottom of the basket. He'd have to get word to Shou before the emperor put his trust in an alliance that might be false at its heart.

"He wants Prince Tayy out of her reach. I'll be glad to escape her eye as well."

Llesho gave a small nod, understanding well the khan's concern. An ambitious wife didn't need an heir by her rival in her way. Llesho wondered if she carried her own candidate for the role, or if she had convinced the khan that she did.

"Shall we oblige him?" Llesho asked the question lightly, but they understood each other.

Riders and horses sorted out, Llesho led the princes both Harnish and Thebin to bid Chimbai-Khan farewell. With them came Yesugei, who touched his forehead to the back of his khan's hand.

"Bring my son back to me, friend Yesugei."

"He will come back to you a man—you have my word, Chimbai-Khan."

Llesho had fought many battles, and had killed his share of men and monsters both, but he'd never understood how anyone could think him more of a man for taking a life than his older brother Adar, who saved lives. He let Yesugei's promise stand unchallenged, however, and completed his own farewells as diplomacy dictated. But he'd learned something important about the Harn in this leave-taking. More than the city that moved across the grasslands like a great bird of prey, or the food they ate or the way they rode their horses, he thought that maybe this was the greatest difference between the Harn and Thebin. He wondered how safe a peaceful nation could be with allies who bred war into the very bones of its children. That probably depended on the children— Chimbai- Khan's strategy had layers and layers.

With Harlol and his Wastrels scouting ahead and Kaydu above them in the shape of an eagle, they moved out. As Great Sun sent his first rays over the horizon, Llesho took the lead. His brothers like a defensive wall around him, he guided them in the direction Adar had given in his dream travels: West.

They'd be in time. The raiders might share the Qubal style of combat by speed and stealth, but the witch-finder who led them did not. Nor could Tsu-tan travel swiftly with his prisoners in tow, especially with one as weak and broken as Hmishi. Llesho tried to think of that as an advantage, but still it cramped in his gut. They'd find Tsu-tan and put an end to his torments, then they'd take down his master.

More thought would have to wait until first rest, because they were going to war Harnish style. The wind slapped at his face and the drumming of hooves surged in Llesho's blood. He leaned low over the neck of his horse and urged her to greater speed, knew their hearts beat to one rhythm. The wild joy of it drove out thought and the whispers of the death-spear at his back. For the first time since the Long March, his mind was free of memory.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

INTO the afternoon he called a halt for rest and to await the reports of the Harnish scouts and the Wastrels he'd sent forward. They had started across flat plains, but the land rose broken and uneasy as they flanked the Onga River. Stands of slender trees clung tenaciously to hillocks streaked with flecks of mica in the stone. Llesho's mount barked a shin on an outcrop jutting out of the grass like an accusing finger or a book of rocky tablets upended in the ground. Others had taken small hurts as well. Blowing and sweaty, even the uninjured horses needed rest. So did their riders, at least among those not bred to the saddle in the Harnish way.

It gave Llesho an excuse so that he didn't have to admit how worried he was. The scouts should have returned and their continued absence raised the hairs on the back of his neck. What was happening out there?

Tayyichiut wandered over to where Llesho sat a little apart from his brothers. He held his elbow a little way from his side and watched Little Brother, who clung upside down from his forearm and watched him back. "Where is Kaydu?" he asked, rubbing at the same raw wound that fretted Llesho.

THE PRWCE OF DREAMS "Scouting ahead," he answered. He would have added, "in the shape of an eagle" to discourage the prince's interest, or suggested that he take it up with Harlol, but figured that part of it was none of his business.

Checking for a patch of ground free of sharp stones, the Harnish prince lowered himself to the grass. "Without a horse?"

"She has another one." Llesho sneaked a glance at the sky. She might have hidden in the pearly tangle of pink and white and the gray of coming rain to the east. Kaydu had traveled west, however; the dark shadow of an eagle riding the updraft would stand out sharply against the hard, clear turquoise of that sky. He saw nothing, and it was growing late.

"You can tell what someone thinks of your intelligence by how well they lie to you." With his forefinger, Tayyichiut idly scratched at Little Brother's head, a gesture the monkey seemed to take as comfort. He seemed to focus all his attention on the animal, seemed not to have looked at Llesho at all. Continuing in the same even tone, he added, "Judging from that one, you must think I'm pretty stupid."

"Not stupid." Not anymore. The prince had sounded him out for the khan and reported with unnerving insight, after all. It would serve him well to remember that. Llesho snapped his attention back to the moment.

"Stupid," Prince Tayyichiut insisted. "You think I know nothing of the magical world, any more than I do of battle. You don't even pretend. I thought at first we might become friends, but . . . you can treat me like an enemy if that makes you feel better, but I won't tolerate being dismissed as unworthy."

With a casual flick of his arm, Tayyichiut settled Little Brother on his back and rose effortlessly. He started off in the rolling, bow-legged gait of the Harnish riders. None of his hurt feelings showed on his face.

Llesho came to his feet but made no move to stop the prince. He knew what Tayyichiut was feeling just below the surface, had experienced it himself often enough. Honesty wouldn't help either, the way he felt.

"What do you know?" he asked.

As an apology, it sounded more like an accusation, but it stopped the Harnish prince long enough to give an answer.

"Once, when I was very young, I surprised Bolghai at his private ceremonies. He bit me on the thumb." Carelessly, Tayyichiut stuck out his hand, thumb up as if counting off on his fingers. Each sharp little stoat tooth had left the mark of its own puncture in the fleshy pad. "So, when the terrifying Captain Kaydu entrusts her animal companion to my care, and her horse goes riderless to battle, I can pretend to be a fool, so that I don't offend the officious boy king with delusions of being better than I am. Or, I can admit that I've been watching for a small creature in the grass."

"Look up."

Tayyichiut raised a sardonic eyebrow, but understanding glinted in his eyes. Neither of them could resist a quick glance at the empty sky.

"And I am better than you." Llesho's taunt had none of the edge that would have made it impossible to say whether he'd meant it.

Tayyichiut puffed out his chest and struck a fierce pose. "Any contest, any time." Little Brother dented the swagger of the boast when he appeared above the prince's left shoulder to rub the top of his head on the underside of the princely jaw.

"So, you're afraid of her, too." When it came to issuing challenges, Llesho clearly had the advantage.

Tayyichiut caught the "too" at the end of it, though, and disciplined his smile to a rueful seriousness only after a struggle. "I would have thought the mighty king of the Cloud Country feared no one."

Llesho nearly choked trying to stifle the snort that escaped anyway. "Oh, please! She was my combat instructor and my first captain—and that was back when I was the lowly corporal, and no king of any kind." Not quite the truth, but close enough.

"You are born a khan—or a king—my father would say. It only takes circumstances to reveal that fact to those who would elect you."

"So you won't follow your father as the khan by right of birth?"

"Not unless the chieftains choose me. Should I live long enough, I'll first stand for chieftain and if our clan elects me, I will have our vote in the ulus. Eventually, when we need a new khan, the people will perhaps select me for the honor, and perhaps someone else. Yesugei is a good man, for example. I hope to be revealed as khan, of course, as you are revealed to be the king of the Thebin people."

"That sounds like something the Lady SienMa would say," Llesho thought out loud. Thebin didn't have chieftains to elect a king like the Harn did, but Prince Tayyichiut was right. He'd been chosen out of all his brothers for some inborn trait he still didn't understand, but her ladyship had seen it all along.

"The mortal goddess of war." The prince shot him an uneasy glance. "My father is right, you do travel with wonders."

"It didn't feel much like a wonder when Kaydu was pounding the stuffing out of me every day, though."

Tayyichiut puffed out a breath, his eyes on the sky and his mind far from her ladyship. "Yeah, but she is sooo hot!" Kaydu, of course. Only Shou could think such thoughts about the Lady SienMa "Yep." And she should have been back by now. It was time to stop waiting and start looking.

"Don't do it."

"What?"

"I'm not stupid, remember. Don't go after her. Your brothers will have my head if anything happens to you."

"That won't happen."

"At least, take me with you. I can fight—"

Llesho shook his head. "If I do anything that stupid, Kaydu will have my head." He didn't say if he meant going after her or taking the prince with him when he did it, but Tayyichiut didn't ask, so he didn't have to lie.

Bixei came to get them then, and they parted company with a last backward invitation— "Call me Tayy. All my friends do. Even the ones my father didn't order to like me."

Ouch. Llesho winced at his own slight. "Okay." Then, because he felt he owed him something more, he said, "Bixei and I were adversaries before we were friends." He didn't say "too" but they all heard it, even Bixei.

"You have to knock him on the head a few times, but eventually he comes around," Bixei assured the prince, then pretended to surprise. "But you already know that!"

Llesho gave him a shove, and even found a laugh to give his friend as a reward. But under the camaraderie, he was plotting his escape.

The Harnish pony he rode kept to a steady, ground-eating gait and knew the way the land fell here, so he gave her only as much attention as she needed to keep them heading west. He wasn't sure how this dream traveling worked. He knew he could reach the dream world easily enough running in a circle, but what would happen if he tried to do it while riding? For that matter, how could he transform into his spirit-being on horseback?

Whatever happened, he had to try. Yesugei would keep them on course if he succeeded, and Carina, at least, would know what he'd done and calm the others until he returned. That assumed his body didn't fall out of its saddle and break its roebuck leg when he leaped, but he had to take some risks.

If he worried about it, he'd never find his missing scouts, so he let go of every consideration but the important one—how to do this on horseback. Running was running, though. He settled deep into the saddle and caught the rhythm of his pony—her breath swelling the barrel of her chest between his legs and the beat of her hooves up through his knees, and the way her neck moved, as if she reached for each step with head and heart. When he found her stride in the rhythm of his own bones, he felt himself changing, running on four legs with the weight of a rack of antlers heavy on his head.

Kaydu, he thought, and in his dream-form, searched for her throughout all the worlds. There. There. He reached, and trod the air with his four sharp hooves, lifting toward the eagle circling low over a dark cloud rising up from the ground below.

She dived and he followed. Not a cloud, he saw, but the very earth, risen up taller than the forests in rocky pillars that walked on two legs. No more than a hand's count of creatures tore up the ground on which their prey made their stand, but each was the size of a hillock. In the unnatural chaos of churned earth and shadow below, Wastrels and Harn fought a desperate, hopeless battle against creatures who used whole uprooted trees as weapons against swords and spears. The stone-men wore earth and grass like a suit of clothes, but their gray faces flashed mica in the sun. Their shadows shed a darkness over all the ground below as they fought over their catch. Llesho watched in horror as a pair of the creatures tore a screaming Wastrel in two between them and abandoned their argument to feast on his human flesh.

The smell of death quivered in his nose, and roebuck instinct trembled in his muscles. Flee! But he'd sent these men to their deaths—Danel and Zepor, and, Goddess forgive him, Harlol, who had followed him out of Ahken-bad to his death. It was his fault, and he wouldn't leave them to the harsh mercy of these horrors.

"Nooo!"

Lowering his head to attack as Kaydu pecked and gouged with talon and beak, he struck the nearest of the stone monsters with his front hooves. Raking a gouge across its middle with his antlers, he drew clear spring water like blood from the wound. Llesho had no time to contemplate what this must mean, but pressed his advantage. He turned and kicked out with his back legs, putting all his strength into the blow.

The creature bellowed in rage. Raising a giant hand, it swung at him with the tree it used for a club. He leaped back, evading the worst of the blow. Kaydu swooped to his rescue, pecking at its flinty eyes with a beak that could snap bone but had no effect on the glassy stone. When the stone monster turned its attention to her, Llesho attacked again, but the first wound he had torn in its flesh had already healed itself. The second must surely do likewise.

As they fought, the screams and cries of their friends on the shattered earth rose up to them, urging them to greater efforts. Llesho wished his spirit-being was a dragon rather than a roebuck—a dragon might defeat the creatures who murdered his friends and allies. He didn't have that skill. But Kaydu—

Maybe she could have done it if she'd come upon the scene in her human form, but the eagle's brain was smaller, the transformations more difficult. We are well and truly dead, he thought, as a giant grassy hand reached up and grabbed him around the throat. It squeezed and he choked, feeling the air passage close tight under the powerful grip. He twisted his head, goring at its wrist with his antlers. Bleeding clear, cold water, it loosened its grasp on him, and Llesho wriggled away. Kaydu was suddenly between them.

"Goooo! Goooooo!" The harsh bird cry shaped the lipless word as she beat her wings in his face.

The screams from the scarred ground below had died. Llesho hesitated, searching for signs of life, but found none. Their friends lay scattered and still, their clothing torn, their bodies ravaged, their blood black upon black in the shadows cast by their rocky assailants. He faltered, remembering the Dinha's prophecy. Goddess, Goddess, what had he done?

"Gooo! Goooo!"

When he did not immediately obey, Kaydu raked a talon lightly across his nose—not enough to do him any serious damage, but it jolted him out of his shock. The monsters of loam and stone were falling, melting back into the earth, but an army of crows blackened the sky, heading for the dead. Llesho threw himself among them and tossed his antlers to chase them away. There were too many. He couldn't stop them as they pecked at the flesh clinging to the gnawed bones left behind by the monsters who had disappeared into the earth again. Kaydu wheeled overhead, diving among the crows but having no more success than he at chasing the huge flock away.

Staggering with grief and the blind confusion of his animal body, Llesho drew a little apart from the feeding frenzy of the birds. Exhausted, his dream set him free and he sank to the earth as himself, with legs weak as a newborn's. His mind had grown too numb to care that the ground he lay on might rise up and rend him as it had his scouts. His dead lay picked by the crows on the field of battle, but whatever had animated the rocky plain had departed. Nothing remained but the wind in the grass and the blood soaking into the ground.

Kaydu did not settle, but landed nearby with many small hops and lifts into the air, unwilling to trust to the uneasy earth. She did not return to human form, but cocked her head and watched him out of the beady predator's eyes of her eagle shape.

Water splashed on his knee, and he looked up, but the sky was cloudless. Another drop fell and he realized, distantly, that he must be weeping, though he felt too weary even for sorrow. Kaydu inched her way nearer by small hops until she had settled in the curve of his outstretched arm. With the feathered comfort of her nearness warm against his side, he let his eyes slide closed. Impossible as he would have thought it, he slept.

Standing among the dead in the field of monsters, Pig waited for him on the other side of dreams.

"You knew this would happen!" Llesho accused the Jinn.

"So did you."

"No." Llesho shook his head, denying the accusation. "This isn't what I saw in my dream. If I'd known that Master Markko could raise monsters out of the grass itself against us, I would have stopped him before it came to this."

"Maybe." Pig shrugged, shifting his silver chains so that they clinked with the motion. "What happens when I drop this stone?" To demonstrate, he let go of the stone in his hand.

"It will fall," Llesho answered as it fell. He wasn't in the mood for lessons, but knew he wouldn't get what he wanted until he'd given the Jinn answers to his self-evident questions.

"And how did you cause that to happen?"

"I didn't. Stones always fall when they are dropped."

"Now you begin to understand a little about the dream worlds."

So that was the point of this exercise. It wasn't his fault. If he believed the outcome would always be the same, though, he was doomed from the start. "You sound like Lluka, with all paths leading to the one end he sees in his prophecy."

"If it doesn't happen," Pig reminded him, "It isn't a prophecy. It's just another failed possibility."

In all of Lluka's visions, the world always ended in chaos and despair. The Dinha had known that when she gave him her children. In the field where her Wastrels had died, it seemed natural that he should think of her not as the young Kagar who had wanted to be a warrior, but as the Dinha, mother of her people. He wasn't the only one being jerked around by fate. Well, fate and Master Markko. He knew who had raised those monsters out of the bones of the earth. He knew what he had to do next, too. His dream—long ago, it seemed now, before Ahkenbad had died—told him that. He would have walked away and refused the task, but he reckoned Harnish warriors and Wastrels had died for this. For the sacrifice of his dead, he had to finish it.

Reality was not quite the same as the dream where he had first seen the Tashek dead on the Harnish grass. As he approached, he saw that only empty orbits remained where the eyes had been, and the birds had left little flesh on the bones.

"The pearls of the Great Goddess must be here," he said, and dropped to one knee at the side of a Wastrel he recognized only by his flowing desert coats. "Or it was all a waste, for nothing."

"Yes," Pig sighed deeply and agreed, "a waste."

He didn't want to look closely, or to touch, but he didn't have any choice. The eyes, as he had seen, were empty, and the bones of the fingers had been scattered and broken. But he remembered the story Pig had told him, of monsters who plucked out the hearts of their victims and left a bit of stone in their place. Cringing inside at what he had to do, he moved the Wastrel's torn coats a little bit and groaned, sickened by what he saw. Within the bony cage of the warrior-priest's breast, a large black pearl lay where the heart ought to have been.

"I can't," he whispered, and curled his fingers into his palm, refusing the desecration.

"You must," Pig reminded him.

"Oh, Goddess." Reaching for the pearl, he cried out against his fate. "You ask too much!"

"Not yet," Pig told him. "Soon, though."

Llesho rose, wiping the pearl on his shirt, and put it in the sack at his neck with the others he had found both in dreams and in waking. As happened when the Jinn walked beside him, the pearl wound with silver wire that usually hung from the silver chain of the dream readers was missing. It would return when the dream was done.

Now, Pig led him through the grass, from body to body. At each, Llesho stopped and bowed his knee. Lodged between the ribs of the second and the third, he found not a pearl, but a small stone which Pig instructed him to remove and fling away.

"The hearts of men are sweet to the stone monsters," _; Pig explained. "When they reach inside for the prize, ; they leave a piece of themselves behind, like a broken ! fingernail. It's how you know they've been here."

"No," Llesho corrected him. "You know it when they reach into the sky and pluck you out of it by the throat."

"That works, too," Pig agreed.

They moved on, stopping again at a body with the tatters of a long Harnish tunic clinging to the bones. It was harder for Llesho to grieve over the khan's warriors; he kind of liked Tayyichiut, but didn't trust him yet, or any of the Harnish he had met. Yesugei came closest and he thanked the goddess that the man hadn't been among the dead. Another step and he nearly tripped over a stoat gnawing on a Harnish tunic.

"Get away from there!" When the creature didn't scamper away as he'd expected, Llesho pulled his foot back to give it a kick. Pig stopped him with a forehoof on his shoulder.

"It's his son," he said.

Looking closer, Llesho saw that the creature didn't gnaw the body as he had thought, but nuzzled its fierce snout at the dead man's breast while tears rolled down his furry cheeks. "Bolghai?" he asked.

Pig nodded.

They had sent only seasoned veterans out as scouts, none of the boys who had followed Tayyichiut. Even men the age of Yesugei or the khan must have had a father at some time, he figured, though he'd never expected to meet one. Pig must have seen his thoughts in the look he fixed on the stoat and its warrior son, for his eyes gleamed with a dark, ironic humor. It wasn't his fault he didn't know anything about the fathers of fathers. He hadn't exactly grown up knowing much about families at all.

"What's he doing?"

"Trying to dislodge the stone," Pig eased himself down, and stroked the stoat's head with a gentle forehoof. "It pins the dead man's soul to this plane, so that he can neither enter the underworld to join with his ancestors nor return to the wheel of life to be reborn."

As if he had only then become aware of their presence, which was possible, Llesho thought, given the depth of his grief, Bolghai rested his furry head on Pig's knee. With his mouth held open for each panting breath, the stoat set up a high, keening wail that rattled Llesho's nerves and ached in his teeth. He didn't touch the animal, remembering bite marks in Tayy's thumb, but carefully eased himself to his knee.

Pig nodded, holding the stoat's attention with soft murmurs while Llesho reached into the dead breast of the shaman's son and plucked out the rock that had pinned his soul to his corpse. Llesho was beyond surprise, so it came as none that the stone was a black pearl the size of his fist. He tucked it into the sack around his neck, with the others he had collected. The act seemed to release both father and son, for Bolghai shimmered into human form, the tears still wet on his cheeks.

"I'm sorry," Llesho started to say, but Bolghai didn't seem to hear.

"Thank you," the shaman whispered as he faded into nothing on the breeze.

When the last faint glow that marked where he had stood vanished from the air, Llesho turned to Pig, who stood grieving at the side of his friend's dead son.

"I have to find Harlol."

The Jinn nodded. He seemed too caught in his own feelings to speak, but he led on, to a body with the flesh still clinging to it lying on the bloody grass. He recognized Harlol's swords, and the red sash he wore around his waist. The orbits of his eyes were empty, and Llesho fell to his knees on the bloody ground with a whimper that sounded to him like no king at all.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

It seemed as though he had said nothing else since he'd been cursed with the knowledge of his destiny. Har-lol was dead, not reaching to pluck pearls out of their sockets as he had in the dream so long ago, before the Dinha had ever given her Wastrels to his quest. That didn't mean Llesho was getting off easy.

"His hand." Pig gestured with a forehoof.

"Oh, dear Goddess, no!" In death, Harlol's hand had plunged into his own breast. Beneath the cage of bone, dead fingers clenched around a pearl that rested where his heart should be.

Llesho pulled his own hands tight to his sides and rocked on his knees like a widow. "I can't, I can't, I can't," he said, over and over again, while Pig waited patiently for him to realize that, yes, he must, and therefore could.

"Can't you do this one thing for me?" Llesho asked.

"Is that a wish?" Pig asked, and all the world stilled in the moment. Not breath or breeze or beating wing broke the silence of the waiting world.

"Not a wish," he amended, "but my heart's desire, at a higher price than I can pay." With that he reached to cover Harlol's fingers with his own, and carefully pried them one from the other, away from the pearl at their center. He didn't add any more apologies. They'd been given and heard, or not, and he had nothing more to say that wouldn't admit too much. But he thought, within himself, I will miss you. I would have learned more about you, if fate had given us more time.

He rose to his feet, his eyes to the brittle turquoise sky, and when he looked again, it was to see the last shimmering glimmer as Harlol faded and vanished. Had he been there at all? Llesho wondered. Or was this just another dream, and he would waken to discover he had hours yet to stop the deaths, to send his party round another way. But when he turned away again, he saw Kaydu, still in the form of an eagle, watching him, and in the distance, the thunder of horses.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

"LLESHO!" Tayy was the first to reach him, jumping from his horse before the beast had entirely brought its headlong gallop to a halt. "What's happened here? Are you all right? I can't believe you did this after you promised . . ."

The Harnish boy had him by the shoulders, was shaking him, but his anger was a mask for the concern that sent fine tremors through him. Llesho stared into his face, wondering—

"Are you a dream? Or are you real?" he asked. He looked around for Pig, but couldn't find him. Kaydu was still there, however, watching him with the beady eyes of a predator. She spread her wings as if to take flight, but settled again when he reached a hand out to her.

"I'm real," Tayy assured him, "What are you?"

"I'm a dream," he muttered, and let himself fall into the safety of the other's arms. He knew exactly when he'd started to think of the Harnish prince as a friend. Bolghai, in the shape of a stoat, had lain his head on Pig's knee and wept for a fallen son, whom Llesho'd sent to his death. You couldn't stay enemies with a people who died for you. If Prince Tayyichiut wasn't an enemy, then he could accept his friendship. The logic had clicked in place between one heartbeat and another. He would be Tayy's friend, just as the boy had asked him. And he wouldn't let that kill either of them, no matter what. Tayy didn't know that, of course, but called for Carina in a voice high with panic.

"They're dead," he muttered into the shoulder that held him up, kept him from falling. "He raised the earth itself, stone monsters that tore them to pieces, and I couldn't stop it!"

"Gods of earth and water!" Tayyichiut muttered. "Are you talking about something real, or a dream thing?"

"Both, I think. Kaydu won't turn back."

They both looked over at her. She looked back, her intelligence dimmed to the hunting instincts of a bird. She didn't seem to recognize them at all.

"Goddess, Llesho, what happened?" Thank the goddess, it was Shokar who grabbed him away from Tayyichiut. He couldn't have tolerated Lluka's touch. "You were on your horse, riding with the rest of us, and then you were gone. How did you get here?"

"Dreams." He shivered, let his brother hold him for a moment more, then pushed himself away. He needed to be a king, no matter how bad it felt.

Yesugei watched him out of wide, wary eyes. Not the dream travel, he knew—as a chieftain of the Qubal clans, he'd seen the magic of his own shaman often enough. But he'd caught sight of the battlefield over Llesho's shoulder.

"They're all dead." Six men, on a field that had risen up against them. Carina perceived that he had suffered no injuries, and followed the direction he pointed, into the broken ground where the bodies had lain. "Bolghai's son was among them. I didn't know—"

"Otchigin." Tayyichiut nodded sadly. "He was my uncle's anda, his brother by sworn bond. Mergen will mourn him."

Bixei reached him, then, and once again he had to submit to a shaking, before Stipes could pull his companion away with an admonishment, "You aren't teammates in the arena anymore. That is no way to treat your king."

"It is when that king persists in behaving like an idiot, charging off alone into danger and doing it in ways his sworn bodyguards cannot follow." Bixei gave him one last shake, but having said his piece, he stepped back, taking up a guarding position at Llesho's shoulder.

The Harnish prince gave Bixei a look frosty with disdain. "You shouldn't let your servants talk to you that way," he advised. "My father says that familiarity breeds unrest."

"He's not a servant." Llesho thought about it a moment. "I suppose he's more like your uncle's anda, sworn to me out of friendship and a debt of honor that he has assumed from another."

Tayyichiut eyed Bixei with more interest this time. "I suppose he knows lots of stories about your adventures."

"Too many," Bixei admitted. "What's happened to Kaydu?"

They didn't know. "Harlol's dead. Killed by the stone-men. We tried to fight them, but it was no use."

"They'll be gone, then." Yesugei looked out over the turned earth with the still wisdom that had drawn Llesho to trust him from the first. "When the stone men return to the earth, they take the bones with them."

The bodies had been there a few minutes earlier, when Llesho had walked among them, plucking stones from their chests. Some time during the press of greetings, they'd disappeared, leaving nothing but the print of their bones in the blood-soaked ground.

"How will we free their souls," Tayy asked, suddenly distraught as he hadn't been by the news of their deaths. "How can I return with such a failure on my back, to have given the soul of Mergen's anda to the stone-men!"

Running to the place of blood and mayhem, he kicked at the blackened turves. When he drew his sword to slash at the exposed rocks, however, Llesho grabbed his wrist and forced it down.

"He's free. They're all free."

"You don't understand. The stone-men pin their victims' souls to the ground they died on—"

"With a broken fingertip, left in the breast where their hearts used to beat." Llesho shuddered, remembering the sensation of drawing the stones from between the bones of the ravaged bodies. Three black pearls as well, though j he didn't know how they'd got there. "I know. Pig told me. I took care of it, for Bolghai."

"You're not just saying that to shut me up?"

Llesho shook his head. "I wouldn't do that. Not anymore."

"There are no souls but those of earth and air and water on this land." Carina joined them, offering comfort where she might, though what she had seen troubled her. "Evil has passed here, but it's gone now. It seems to have taken the hate with it." She passed a thoughtful gaze over Llesho, and he ducked his head, embarrassed not at the change in him, but that she had seen the hate he had carried in his heart until now.

"I saw Bolghai mourn his son and I realized how stupid I've been," he confessed. "Otchigin died in my service, just like Harlol and the Wastrels. I'd forgiven Harlol long ago for kidnapping me, and I figured it was time to stop holding a grudge against the Qubal clans, who'd done nothing to me but bear a resemblance to my enemies."

Kaydu had figured that out long ago—that's why Little Brother was peering over Tayy's shoulder now. It sometimes took him a while, Llesho figured, but he always got there in the end. Carina seemed to agree, because she gave him an absent pat and wandered off again to squat down beside the eagle that Kaydu had become.

His explanation seemed to satisfy the Harnish prince as well, though for him that just meant more questions. Tayyichiut eyed the battlefield in wary study. "Did your Tsu-tan call the stone-men from the earth? That's a very powerful magic."

"No." Llesho was sure of that. "He's a miserable sneak with a talent for hurting people. He learned that much from his master, but he doesn't have the skill or the ability to do something like this." He needed to pay a visit to the real power behind the attack, on his own terms this time.

"Don't even think it." Little Brother screeched to be let go, and Tayy let him clamber down his long, gangly arm, but he never broke eye contact with Llesho.

"What?"

"If you don't want me to know what you're thinking, you will have to go back to being enemies, because your face is clear as Lake Alta to your friends."

"He's right," Bixei agreed. "About your face, and about not going after Markko on your own. After all we've been through to get here, don't let him goad you into doing something stupid that gets you killed this close to home."

Not close at all. The more li he put behind him, the farther away Thebin seemed to get. Maybe that was because of the armies that stood between, or maybe it was his own growing unease. The more he tried to think of Kungol as home, the more remote he felt. His fear of Master Markko paled beside this growing pain that Kungol was no more his home than Pearl Island had been, or Farshore Province. Perhaps he'd been wandering so long that he no longer had the power to feel at home anywhere he went.

And maybe they were right. Maybe he wanted to confront Master Markko because, when it came down to it, the battle that locked him to his enemy had become the only home he'd ever have. When had the thought of dying by a familiar hand become more comforting than that of living as a stranger everywhere? He was a fool, plain and simple.

"He's thinking again." Tayy addressed the comment to Bixei, with the question, "Does that always presage a quick leap into disaster, or does he sink into suicidal thoughts only when I'm around?"

"Master Jaks used to keep him focused." Bixei stared out over the recent battlefield, and Llesho followed him down that thought, to another field, and Master Jaks dead protecting him from the same enemy they pursued almost to the ends of the earth.

"I didn't know him for long, but his brother Adar seemed able to calm him when moods struck. And Master Den, of course, but he's with the army your father is bringing."

"Lucky for him," Llesho remarked, "I'm running through my teachers, and my brothers, like they were water in the desert."

Kaydu sat, one clawed talon curled under her and hungry eyes fixed on Little Brother.

"What happened to her?" Bixei asked. "She's never stayed in animal form this long before. Did Master Mar-kko—"

"I doubt he needed to. I think she really loved him, and she couldn't save him." "Harlol? Huh."

He'd noticed, of course, but none of them had taken it as seriously as they should have. Together, they watched as the eagle's fixed stare hypnotized the monkey. Tayy was the first to speak up. "She doesn't recognize him."

"She'll kill us if we let her eat him." Bixei started forward to rescue Little Brother, but Llesho pulled him to a halt with a firm hand on his shoulder. "Wait. If she kills him, we've lost her anyway." Tayyichiut looked at him as if he'd just confessed to eating babies for breakfast, but Bixei nodded, and held still. Magical forces gave an edge in battle, but only if you could depend on them totally. Better to know up front if they would slip control under pressure and turn against you. Even if it cost them Kaydu, they had to find out. Carina understood that as well, even as a healer. The knowledge marked her face with deep lines of sorrow, but like the rest of them, she waited.

Little Brother sat in the trampled grass, face scrunched in confusion as he frowned at his mistress. Several paces away, Kaydu cocked her head, as though she were deciding on the most effective angle for breaking the monkey's neck.

"Ahhh," he whimpered, and stretched out a monkey paw to touch her as if he expected her to transform herself and swing him onto her shoulder the way she had so many times before.

This time, however, she snapped at him with her heavy beak and shifted her weight uneasily from foot to foot. Llesho held his breath.

Little Brother rolled forward on his butt, looking around for help from some other direction, but Llesho didn't move. Kaydu hitched her wings and took a step back without breaking the gaze she fixed on her familiar. The monkey followed with a tiny creeping step forward, and the eagle reached, faster than Llesho or his companions could act, and snatched him up by the neck.

He'd seen hunting birds, and knew what came next. A quick toss of her head and she would snap Little Brother's spine. With care she might kill him without ever drawing blood. Llesho couldn't watch her, though. Not this time. Slowly he closed his eyes.

So he missed it when she changed, only realized when Little Brother's joyous shriek told him the monkey wasn't dead after all. When he opened his eyes, his captain stood before him. The untamed hunter lurked in her eyes, but they were shifting with the human pain of memory. She hugged Little Brother close, accepted his warm arms around her neck, but said nothing. Llesho expected Carina to do something healerish, or womanly, or something, but she dusted her hands off against each other as at the end of a dirty chore and wandered off with a satisfied smile that he didn't understand at all. They needed Habiba, and anger sparked at the Lady SienMa. She might be the mortal goddess of war and his own mentor on occasion, but she didn't have a right to demand Habiba's presence so far away when his daughter needed her father.

I hope you've been scrying your daughter, magician, he thought. I hope you've got a better idea of what to do for her than I have.

But no dragon appeared in the lowering sky, and there was no Harlol to sidle up beside her and calm her as he might the hunting bird. Only her father had had the same knack of treating her like a woman and a hunting bird both at the same time and in whichever form she took.

Tayyichiut hid his surprise behind a cough. "I knew about such powers, of course, from Bolghai. But it's a shock to actually see the change in person."

Llesho gave a little shrug. "Wait 'till you meet her father."

"Dragon blood?"

"Yep."

"I think I'll wait. Forever, if possible. But you never answered my question."

"What question?"

Kaydu was paying attention, too, stealing glances at the empty battlefield but, thankfully, tracking the discussion with all her wits about her.

"You're not dream traveling to confront this Master Markko fellow on your own."

"No," Kaydu informed him, still not given to more than brief, imperative statements, but in full command mode. "He's not."

"My father is bringing an army of ten thousand," Tayyichiut reminded them. "He'd be very disappointed if you cheated him of battle." There was enough in the statement to assuage Llesho's pride and nudge him to accept how ridiculous the idea was. If he reached Master Markko and defeated him one-on-one at his own magics, he still had an army of Harnish raiders to contend with. That army hadn't needed the magician to take Kungol; they wouldn't let it go even if he did vanquish their current leader. He might even be doing them a favor by ridding them of the magician.

"First, we rescue Hmishi and Lling and Adar," he agreed.

Kaydu shifted Little Brother to her shoulder. "Tsu-tan's war party lies not more than an hour from here," she reported, and started them moving back toward where their own forces waited. Yesugei and Shokar had held their army back, giving them the small privacy of distance to come to terms with their grief and resolve their differences. Now the time had come to act. "He must have trusted to the monsters his master raised here to stop us; he's made camp by the river."

Llesho squinted into the sky, estimating the daylight that remained. The clouds that had loomed in the eastern sky now made a low ceiling almost to the western horizon, but sunlight still slipped pink and gold around the edges. He reckoned they had time, if they didn't linger. So, plan on the move, relay through his captains. And Tayy's. Yesugei would see to that.

The chieftain cut a meaningful glance at Shokar, who returned the look with confidence. Bixei paid them no attention—no one measured him against a nation he was supposed to lead. He sought out Stipes and wandered off to deliver the plan to the small band of mercenaries who had come with him from Shan. Tayy, however, gave a sigh of long-suffering irritation that found an echo in Llesho's own breast.

"Do you ever get tired of their tests?"

"All the time," the Harnish prince answered. "All the time."

"Well," Llesho decided, "now it's time we tested them." Striding over with Kaydu at his right and Tayyichiut at his left, he said, "We ride now, and fight before dusk. Kaydu knows the way."

"He chose his stopping place for convenience to water, rather than defense," she reported. "The ground dips away to the river and the rise on either side obstructs his line of sight, giving us the tactical advantage. There's plenty of scrub and small clumps of twiggy trees close to the river. If we leave the horses a little way off, we can sneak into the camp itself and attack before he knows we are there."

"The bush attack." Tayyichiut nodded, knowing the tactic. "Break your forces into small squads and send them in from random directions, so that if one is sighted, the presence of the others remains hidden. When you're in position, I will bring my warriors around in the lake attack."

"What's a 'lake attack?'" Llesho wanted to know.

Tayy cupped his hands to demonstrate the closing of a circle. "We'll form a ring around the camp and attack from above, on all sides at once."

Yesugei nodded approval, but pointed out, "To be done properly, you should withhold half your force at least, and attack in waves."

Llesho recognized the suggestion for the test that it was. So did Tayy, who answered confidently.

"If we had a hundred more warriors, and this Tsu-tan the same," he agreed, "But we don't, and neither does he. Besides, if we don't take him in the first onslaught, he'll kill the prisoners in his rage."

Llesho was thinking the same thing. "We'll only get one chance to rescue them."

"And if you can't save them?" Lluka asked. His complexion had gone ashy pale from some vision Llesho didn't want to know about.

"Then we'll have all the time in the world for revenge. But I don't accept that as the only option." If all ended in chaos, then nothing he did could make things worse. Llesho found that freeing in a way he thought would terrify his brothers, who put too much faith in Lluka's visions. He believed that Lluka saw what he said; Llesho just wasn't convinced his brother understood what he saw. That made all the difference.

"Captains, advise your troops. Kaydu—"

She gave him a flash of warning in eyes gone cold and predatory. He shivered, but accepted that she didn't want his comfort or his pity.

"We ride for our cadre," he finished. Not what he wanted to say, but it reminded her of earlier ties than the one she had lost. She didn't want any bindings on her heart right now, but he wouldn't let her think she was alone, not as long as any of them were alive. We need you, he thought. We needed Harlol, too, but fate took that decision out of our hands before we left Ahken-bad. Before we met. He didn't know how much of that he communicated without the words she wouldn't allow, but she held Little Brother more tightly, and mounted her horse with a lighter step. That didn't reassure him. Llesho determined to keep an eye on her during the assault.

"You're not riding anywhere." Shokar, who knew better, rested a hand on the bridle of Llesho's horse. "You're a king now. It's your job to stay alive—"

It took him precious seconds to bring himself back from the battlefield of stone monsters and dead friends, back from the anguish of his captain. When he did, he brought with him the stony darkness that had taken root in his soul.

"No." Llesho kept his voice low, which seemed to make things worse. Silence tighted around their web of whispers. Dissension among the leaders always made the troops uneasy. He had to nip this fast, before they defeated themselves in their own ranks. "I'm a soldier. My masters trained me to fight and if we don't win this war, that's the only skill I have to sell."

Bixei caught his eye and held up an arm where the thick metal wrist guard of the mercenary guild gleamed. "We will be fighters for hire together," said the challenge in his sly smile.

"That's not all they've taught you," Shokar objected, but Llesho'd had enough of listening, and he had no intention of waiting for Lluka to add more doom to the discussion.

"I'm going," he said. "We don't have time to argue, and you wouldn't win anyway."

When he slung himself into his saddle, the Harnish prince did the same. "Chimbai-Khan, my father, says that kings fight their own battles, or they soon have no battles to fight."

No more battles sounded like the best outcome he could imagine, but he figured there was more to it. Hartal's battles were over, and so were Master Jaks'. The khan was right. Kings fought their own battles, or they died anyway, like his father had.

Shokar seemed to be working toward the same conclusion. "You know, if we die, Lluka will be in charge of the next battle."

"According to his visions, it's the end of the world. How much worse can even Lluka make that?"

He hadn't spoken the thought aloud before, but it didn't rattle his brother the way he expected. Lifting onto his own horse, Shokar heaved a put-upon sigh. "I don't know which of you is more trouble."

"My way, at least there is a chance of success," Llesho pointed out. "Lluka's way will save you an hour in the saddle, but could cost the kingdom."

"Right. You've made your point. Do you treat all your brothers this way?"

Bickering meant the crisis was over. Kaydu cut them short with an abrupt nod, and gave the signal to move out.

THE ground rose gently before falling away again to the Onga River beside which Tsu-tan had pitched his tents. Kaydu signed for a halt while the terrain was still rising. Another hand-signaled command followed, and the combined force of Thebin recruits, mercenaries, and the remaining Wastrels dismounted and broke into small, tight bands. At their backs, the Harnish warriors spread out in a thin line that ringed in the valley below. Llesho's troops would find the captives and spirit them away while Tayy's Harnish riders distracted the raiders with a "lake" formation assault.

Promotion had broken his own cadre as much as the capture of Hmishi and Lling had. Llesho found himself alone at the head of a squad of Shokar's Thebins; nearby, his brother led another. He'd considered Shokar more of a frontal assault sort of person, too straightforward for his own good sometimes, and grimly distasteful of battle. But he'd taken the same training from Bixei and Stipes that his recruits received. Crouched low to take cover in the undergrowth, he ran with a smooth, soundless grace copied by the squad that followed him. Half of them were women, like Lling.

Llesho hadn't taken the time to find out who his fighters were, and he regretted that now, when he was leading his own small band into the camp of the enemy. They moved together as a single organism, however, sensitive to his every gesture, and Llesho quickly adapted, trusting in Bixei's training and the strength and courage of his own people. He followed Shokar's example, crouched into a swift glide, and slipped among the clumps of undergrowth. Tsu-tan, or his captain, had posted guards, but they had grown lax with inattention as the days had passed and they grew more secure, thinking that no attack would come. A Thebin farmer-turned-soldier ghosted ahead and took out the man nearest their position, slicing his throat from side to side in one smooth, quick pass—a barnyard skill as much as a soldierly one. He let the body fall, and wiped his knife on the grass.

Llesho gave him a nod to acknowledge the service, and led his band around the smaller tents, targeting the largest, where he knew Hmishi lay with the healer-prince Adar in attendance. Off to one side, Bixei crept as silently with his mercenaries, and farther around the bowl of the river valley, Kaydu led the Wastrels. They had come to know her through Harlol, who would have led them if he'd lived.

Don't think about that, he warned himself. Don't think about the dead he'd already lost, or those who would die today or tomorrow or the next day in his battles. The black command tent was ahead, and he dropped silently to his knees and pulled out his knife while his squad followed, snugging in close under the shadows of evening. He could hear the murmur of voices inside; carefully he cut into the felt at the bottom of the tent and slid the small flap aside to peer in between the crosspieces of the lathing. Tsu-tan was there, squared off against Adar, who stood between the witch-finder and the bed on which the wounded Hmishi lay.

"He can't take anymore. He's going to die. Can't you get that through your head? He's a human being, and can only take so much abuse before the ability to heal is exhausted. He's already passed that point—"

"Then it doesn't really matter what I do to him, does it?" Tsu-tan picked up the iron rod he had used when Llesho had visited here in a dream. Adar moved to intercept the blow, and took the weight of the rod on his shoulder. Llesho heard the crack of bone, and his brother fell, groaning, to his knees.

Enough. Llesho would kill him with his bare hands and stomp his bones into powder. He started to his feet, but a hand, reaching out of the shadows, stopped him with a touch at his elbow. He thought his heart would fail at the shock, but training kept him moving until his brain could catch up. He rolled and twisted, shifting his knife from a sawing to a stabbing hold and poised, the point quivering at her throat.

"Lling!" soundlessly he mouthed her name, and she nodded, drugged hypnosis still cloudy in her eyes. She was fighting it. He could see that, and her own knife had come into her hand, as he had seen in his dream travels.

She held a finger to her lips, signaling him to keep silent, and rose lithely to her feet, folding her own knife down at her side as she did so. Then she was gone, slipping through the murk that shrouded Tsu-tan's tent.

Llesho's small squad watched him worriedly. They were supposed to wait for Tayy's lake assault before going in. Lling wasn't part of that plan, however, and Adar didn't have that much time. Llesho gestured for them to stay, and followed Lling, his knife and sword both at the ready in the deadly tradition of Thebin royalty. At the door to the tent, however, he waited. In the confusion of the coming attack, he could take Tsu-tan without fear of discovery. Now, Lling had the advantage—as long as she could fight off Master Markko's control.

Tsu-tan glanced over when Lling entered his tent, but gave her no more notice than that, his attention focused entirely on Adar. Llesho, hidden on the other side of the door flap, saw the sweat beading over the witch-finder's lip, the rapid rise and fall of his chest as the argument excited his breathing. "Do you want to take his punishment, healer?"

"Your master says no." Adar made no move to protect himself. His tone and expression made it a token protest. Like his patient, Tsu-tan had drifted over an invisible line, and there was no pulling him back now. Adar observed the forms, but did not raise a hand to protect himself. As a healer and as a husband of the goddess, he had taken an oath and would protect his patient at any cost to himself.

The witch-finder's hands tightened rhythmically on the weapon, but the reminder of his master stopped him short of raising it again. A Thebin peasant was one thing, but Markko wanted the princes for his own uses.

"Perhaps the girl, then?" he grabbed Lling by her hair and swung her body close to his. "My master will understand if I can take her instead—" He leered down into her trance-dazed face and raised the iron rod to strike another blow.

Not Lling, Llesho thought. In his seventh summer he'd lost his bodyguard to the Harnish raiders. He was older now, better trained, and Lling was still alive. It didn't have to end that way again. "Not one more blow against my people—"

Recklessly he moved the door flap aside, ready to come to her rescue even if it did bring the witch-finder's guards. As he stepped into view, Tsu-tan whipped around, Lling held close as a shield. "You!" he smirked. "Is this another trick of your dreams, beggar prince?"

"No dream," Llesho assured him, and raised his ready-drawn sword.

"I assume you're not alone?" Adar asked faintly. Llesho figured he knew what was on his brother's mind. It was easier to get into a prison than to get out of one, even if it was made of tents.

Before he could answer, he heard the sound he'd been waiting for: the war cry of the Harnish riders rising over the pounding of their horses. Tayy had begun the attack. Llesho heard the hiss of arrows in flight and the clatter and snick as they found their marks in bodies and tents. Some, he knew, carried barbed points, some carried flames.

The thunder of their galloping horses shook the ground as they made their descent. Raiders would be spilling out of their tents, gathering on horseback to repel the invaders while Llesho's ambush troops took their signal to slip into the abandoned tents to search for prisoners. They would find few, he knew, and join the attack so that the enemy was hemmed in on all sides and within its own ranks.

"That's your rescue party now," he said, watching Tsu-tan all the while.

"Guards!" the witch-finder called, and paled when the Thebin faces of Llesho's squad appeared in his doorway.

"Excellency?" Llesho's corporal inquired. She was tall for a Thebin, approaching middle age, and the scar over her right eye made her look as dangerous as she was.

Llesho acknowledged her salute. "Don't let anyone in until I tell you."

The woman frowned uneasily at the tableau before her. She knew her job, however, and bowed her way out. No one would pass while his squad lived.

"Let her go." Llesho gestured at Lling with his sword. "You know it's over for you now."

Screams rose in the camp, muffled by the black felt that surrounded them, but the witch-finder glanced nervously at the doorway, calculating, Llesho could see, his chances for escape. So caught up was he in the threat from outside that he almost missed the life glinting suddenly in Lling's eyes.

The flash of recognition wasn't enough to save him. Tsu-tan dropped the iron rod, freeing his hands to throw her away from him. Lling held on with her free hand and with the other she rested the point of her knife neatly at the base of his sternum.

"Die," she whispered, and plunged her knife into his heart. "Die crawling on your belly, snake." She took a step back and let him fall.

"I guess you didn't need me after all." Llesho pointed his sword at the ground, but kept his knife at the ready. The sounds of battle were close, and he didn't want to get overconfident.

"Actually, I did need you." Lling glanced up at him with a curious frown knotting her brow. "I think more clearly when you're around."

"Glad to oblige. How are you thinking now?"

"Good." She stared down at Tsu-tan, absently wiping her knife on her sleeve. "Good."

The witch-finder didn't hear. Blood frothed at his lips, and slowly his eyes filmed over. When the blood stopped, he was dead. Across the body, Llesho and Lling shared a little smile. He thought perhaps he shouldn't feel that way, but his heart felt lighter.

"Let me look at him," Adar whispered. His strength was almost gone, but still he held on. "Maybe I can do something—"

"It's too late. He's dead."

Llesho turned away from the body of his enemy and knelt beside his brother. Adar was going to fall on his face if they didn't do something, but any movement would drive more of the jagged bone fragments through the skin or deeper into his body.

The idea of his brother lying on the same floor as the man who had tormented him raised Llesho's gorge, but he didn't see any choice. He pulled off his coat and flung it on the carpets well clear of the blood that soaked through nearby, then eased Adar down, holding him while he screamed with the agony of shifting bone. He could hear the grinding of shards against each other, but had nothing to offer other than soft words of encouragement.

"Carina is with us. She'll be here soon. You just have to hold on a little longer."

Gritting his teeth against another cry that might bring the battle down on them, Adar grunted in pain, but he was down now. Panting through pursed lips, he held onto consciousness with the techniques that had worked on his patients in the past and would keep him awake now.

"Scream if it helps." Lling advised him while she pulled open drawers and pawed through dressing gowns until she found one that didn't reek of Tsu-tan's scent. "Llesho's people have the door covered."

"Fainting is okay, too," Llesho added. Fainting is good, he thought, you can't feel the pain that way. He couldn't help but notice that, in all the commotion of Adar's injury and Tsu-tan's murder, Hmishi hadn't awakened at all. Fainting is good, he reminded himself, but secretly he knew it was much worse than that. Adar had said Hmishi'd gone too far.

He needed Carina, and that wouldn't happen until they'd taken the camp.

"Stay with them," he requested. When Lling nodded assent, he slipped out to join his squad.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

INTO chaos. He'd been in a battle like this before, the other side of the Harnlands, but this time, they had more than the advantage of the high ground. Raiders would fight fiercely if they saw a profit at the end of it, or if a harsh master drove them from behind. But Tsu-tan was dead, his prisoners already taken. Llesho's bands of am-bushers rose up to harry Tsu-tan's guard from their supper and fire the tents. The arrows from Tayy's ring of warriors cut off escape, pushing the enemy deeper into their own camp so that they had nowhere to go but the commons, where they were easily cut down by spear and sword.

Llesho led his own small squad into the thick of the fighting, swords bristling. He slashed and parried, stabbed and slew until his arm ached. When he could no longer lift his sword, he drew the spear from his back. Old skills learned for the arena shifted his balance and he leaped and jabbed, twirled under the guard of a raider and tore up through the muscle that wrapped his opponent's rib cage. Not opponent, he reminded himself. Enemy.

The raider fell screaming; his blood hissed and steamed as it pooled on the ground, sizzling at the touch of old magics leaking from the spear. Llesho whirled to defend a squad-mate whose name he didn't know, and when he surfaced from the battle rage, the raiders had broken. Fierce against the weak, the very savagery of the Harnishmen's own raids added fuel to their terror of the mighty. They dreaded the retribution of their enemies, who they imagined were as merciless as they were themselves. At that moment, Llesho didn't blame them. He was feeling merciless indeed, but Yesugei had taken charge of the Uulgar captives who flung themselves to their knees in surrender. The remains of the battle moved off toward the river, pursued by Tayyichiut with a band made up of equal parts of his own warriors and Bixei's mercenaries. Llesho left them to it- -he had more pressing business.

"Shokar?" he asked of his corporal, who watched him with uneasy wonder as she struggled to steady her labored breath. She nodded in the direction of a burning tent.

Shokar stood with the point of his sword on the ground and his weight resting on the hilt. His eyes had the glassy look of shock about them.

"Are you hurt?" Llesho touched a finger to the back of his hand, careful not to startle battle nerves.

"I'm fine." Shokar brought his vision back from the middle distance to rest on his brother. "You're all bloody—"

"Not mine. Tsu-tan's dead. Lling killed him." He didn't say that he'd been glad, or that he would have done it himself, but Lling beat him to it. Shokar wouldn't understand the feelings that knotted his stomach. Wrong feelings, he would have thought, the satisfaction mixing with the grief. Tsu-tan was dead, Hmishi was dying, and Llesho didn't want to look at what his journey was turning him into. "Am I becoming like him?" he asked.

They both knew he meant Master Markko. He hadn't planned to say it out loud. Now that he had, he held his breath, afraid of hearing his brother's judgment but needing it all the same.

"You're becoming a king," Shokar told him. "I'm glad it's not me. Really. If I try to guide you, it's because I don't want to see you hurt. The Harnish boy's right, though. If we protect you too much, from the fighting or the decisions, you won't be fit to rule. If we don't protect you enough—"

He'd be dead, or turned into the enemy he despised. Llesho looked out over the battleground, where his small army was doing clean up. Moving from tent to tent, they entered with weapons at the ready and came out again with the captives Tsu- tan's forces had taken as servants. Along the way they gathered prisoners of their own, the Uulgar raiders of the South, who had hidden among the slaves. He'd leave that part of the campaign under Ye-sugei's command, he decided. His own concerns had narrowed to the handful of lives he had carried out of Shan. "Don't let me be a danger to my people."

"This is conversation for philosophers. Or the gods." Shokar refused the responsibility. "If you are brooding over the death of a villain like Tsu-tan, you need the priests or that old shaman, not a judge."

"I'm glad the witch-finder's dead—this blood is Adar's. Tsu-tan had tired of beating a dying soldier, and had begun on our brother."

"How bad?"

"Not as bad as Hmishi. He needs the bones set in his shoulder."

Shokar nodded, understanding the brooding now. "You'll want Carina for that; I saw her on the banks of the Onga. Tsu-tan's guard tried to run, but they were hemmed in at the river. Some jumped. The lucky ones were pulled out by their fellows, the less lucky washed up drowned at a bend a little way downstream. Where's Adar?"

"The command tent. Like his master, Tsu-tan liked to keep his toys close." Llesho turned away to find the healer, but Shokar's warm hand firm on his shoulder stopped him.

"You're a good man, Llesho," he said.

He wasn't sure of that anymore, but it warmed him to hear his brother say it. Shokar didn't wait for an answer, but went to attend their wounded brother while Llesho searched out the healer.

He found her among the dead who lay tumbled on the beaten grass that grew between the clumps of tall thin trees on the banks of the Onga. She wore the costume of a shaman and flitted from one to the next of the dead with the darting hops of a jerboa. With a prayer over each, she closed their staring dead eyes before moving on. At first, Llesho thought they were all Southern casualties. Then he recognized a boy among the bodies, and realized that he couldn't tell them apart. North and South, the Harnish wore the same long woolen shirts above wide leather trousers, with long coats over all. Some of the veteran Southerners wore hanks of hair sewn to their coats, trophies of their human kills as he remembered. Mostly, they looked younger than he'd expected.

Death, he had realized long ago, cured every face of its intentions. He didn't begrudge Carina's tears, but the living needed her more.

"I've found him. Adar. He needs you."

"He's hurt?" That surprised her. Which surprised him. Her mother didn't read minds, exactly, but Mara had known what he was thinking, and Carina's father was a dragon. Still, she moved fast enough when she knew there was trouble. "Please, lead me to him."

They met a party of Tayyichiut's veterans heading toward the river as Llesho and Carina left it. Among them they carried the body of Tsu-tan, taking him down to be burned with the others. Carina stopped them a moment for a prayer over their enemy. The hard-eyed warriors gave her the respect due a shaman, but they didn't encourage her to linger.

"Whoever killed him will need my attentions as well, when I have seen to Adar."

She looked at Llesho as if she expected him to confess, but he just gave her a weary nod. "I'll tell her. Adar said that Hmishi was too far gone, but I thought if you would look at him—"

"Of course. At the very least, I can intercede with the spirits of the underworld to gentle his passing."

That wasn't what he had in mind; Carina warned him away from a petition she mustn't honor with a frown. "Soldiers die," she said, "Kaydu knew that. Lling does. So do you."

They had reached Tsu-tan's command tent, so he didn't have to answer. Didn't want to have that conversation. He'd have taken it to avoid facing the inside of that tent again, but that wasn't a choice. The tent smelled of blood and other taints, but at Shokar's instruction, his squad had rolled the tent walls up halfway and had taken out the blood-soaked carpets.

Hmishi's spirit had not returned from the place where it waited for the journey to end. There was no part of his body that remained unbroken, but Lling sat with his shattered hand on a pillow in her lap, afraid to touch lest she return him to the pain of the waking world. Suddenly, the thick air in the tent was choking him, and Llesho knew he had to get out, away, before it killed him. So he ran.

Tayyichiut found him at the river. Still flushed from the battle, the Harnish prince fidgeted with flat stones he scrounged from the banks, skipping them over the water where his enemies had lately drowned.

"They sent me to find you," he said, and skipped a stone the color of a stormy sky once, twice, three times before it sank. "I told them to send a servant, but they pointed out that as a king, you had no obligation to obey a servant. As a guest, however, you must agree with your host or have the manners of your house cast in doubt. Shokar assured me you would never do that. So here I am."

Llesho sat with his back against the bark of a convenient tree and his knees tucked under his chin. Tayy was right; he owed his host not only for the protection of his camp and the training of his shaman, but also for the aid he had given in battle. Still, he found it impossible to move.

"They want you to come back. Kaydu said to make it an order if I thought it would work. Won't, though, will it?" Throwing himself to the ground next to Llesho, Tay-yichiut curled his leg under him and let the couple of stones left in his hand dribble to the ground. "I didn't think so.

"Otchigin is dead, and Yurki died right over there—" he pointed to a place of rusty stains on broken grass, "—and I don't know what I am going to tell my uncle, or my father, or Yurki's father, for that matter. I always knew that people could die in battle. Mergen taught me not to value life more than honor, and Yesugei warned us all to expect death and welcome life at the end of it. But nobody told me about the big holes it left in the world when you lived but your friends didn't."

Tayy's distress held a mirror to Llesho's own pain. When the first tear slipped from the corner of the prince's eye, Llesho found an answering tear in his own.

"Since Kungol fell, you can count the seasons I've spent with my brothers on your thumbs," Llesho said. He didn't look at his companion but stared out at the river, thinking back to Pearl Island. "I met Bixei and Stipes and Master Den when I went to the arena in my fifteenth summer, and Kaydu I met when we fought each other in my first and only bout as a gladiator. But all the life that I remember has Hmishi and Lling in it. We trained together for the pearl beds, and worked together as a team until my quest pulled me out of Pearl Bay. I thought I'd lost them for good then, but fate and the Lady SienMa brought us back together again in service to the governor of Farshore Province.

"Lling was always the best soldier. Hmishi only came along because we had all been together for so long we didn't know any other way to be. He didn't want to be left behind, and now I've got him killed."

"It wasn't just you," Tayy suggested. "From what I've heard, he loved Lling, and she loved him. He couldn't have stopped her from going, and wouldn't have let her go without him."

"Now you're saying it's Lling's fault?"

"Seems to me it's this Tsu-tan's fault, and his master's."

Llesho did look at him then, locked gazes, making very sure that Tayyichiut understood. "It doesn't matter whose fault it is. He's still dead."

"Not yet." Tayyichiut dragged himself to his feet. He wobbled a little, and Llesho could almost feel the shifting of balance in his own legs. Battle fatigue was hitting, leaving muscles limp as rope and bones shaking like a newborn foal, but he managed to right himself with the dignity of a warrior prince. "He will be soon, though. Lling thought you would want to say good-bye."

"Lling knows I am bad at good-byes." He'd nearly dragged Master Jaks back from the dead, were it not for the protest of the corpse itself. He knew better now, or thought he did. Nevertheless, he doubted Lling would leave him alone with her dead lover. Who still clung to life with each ragged breath. Giving a last empty glance at the river, he clambered to his feet and turned to follow Tayyichiut.

The prince reached out and rubbed his thumb across Llesho's cheek, first one, then the other. "My father says that a khan must never show weakness," he said, and Llesho saw the tears glistening on the fleshy pad just before he wiped them dry against the side of his coat. Together, they made their way back to the camp.

Shokar was efficient, and so was Yesugei. The Harn raised their camp on the plains above the little valley where the Onga River flowed. Their wounded needed to be close to water and protected from the wind, however. As healer and shaman in the camp, Carina chose the valley where Tsu-tan had made his camp. First she had the troops clear the black tents of the enemy, then the square red ones of Llesho's army and round white ones of the khan's troops were set in their places. As much as they needed shelter, their wounded needed the clean air of their own tents.

Hmishi was still alive, though he had not roused when they moved him to the shelter of a red tent. Lling had insisted that if he wake, it must be to the red light of his own tents, to convince him that he had indeed been saved. Though all his bones were broken, Carina set only his left arm, so that Lling could hold his hand on a pillow without the ends of the long bones grinding against each other with each small shift of her position.

"He made me break Hmishi's hand," she whispered through her tears. "He controlled my movements, but not my sensations. I raised Tsu-tan's iron rod, and felt the bones break beneath it when it fell."

Her eyes had a distant look, grim and deadly, so that Llesho wondered if the magician still controlled her from afar. "Something broke inside me, too. Then you came. Slowly the spell he cast lost its hold over my thoughts."

When she smiled, Llesho realized that she was slipping into madness. His quest, it seemed, had that effect on even the most competent of those who surrounded him.

"Is he still in your head?" Llesho asked. He thought he ought to be more worried about the intelligence Master Markko might be collecting through her eyes, but he found that mattered less to him than the creeping horror of the magician's hold on her mind.

But she shook her head. "I felt him go when the witch-finder died," she said, never taking her eyes off Hmishi. "I don't think he can maintain a hold on a mind he's taken from so far—not without a willing intermediary working with him. And Tsu-tan was more than willing."

"But he's gone. You're safe." He stopped her fingers from their restless wandering over the hand she held in her lap. You can't be broken, he thought. Hmishi's not the only one who needs you. He didn't add that to her burden, but reminded her of the only duty that seemed to matter to her now. "Hmishi will need you when he wakes up—the real you, the one he loves—right here, and not hiding away safe inside your head."

"Do you think I'm really safer inside my head?" she asked, her voice rising to a keening wail, "when all I can think about is the breaking of his bones?"

"I need you whole." It spilled out, selfish as it was. He needed her, he couldn't lose them now, when Master Markko's armies stood ahead of them, so close to the final battle.

"You need too much."

Llesho had said the same of his quest to the gods and ghosts who moved him. They hadn't released him, and he couldn't let Lling go either. "Who else can I depend on to do murder for me?" he asked, and it was the right thing to say. She was no less mad, but he knew that, just as the magician had, he could pull her strings. Only, instead of magic, he would use her hatred to control her. It made him ill to think it, but he couldn't let her go.

"He doesn't have your brother."

"What?" Llesho pulled back from the brink of his thoughts to focus on what she was saying.

"When the magician was in my mind, he took what I knew, but I sensed his thoughts as well." She shuddered at a memory. Coward though it made him, Llesho was glad she didn't share it with him. "He was looking for Menar, the poet, but he hadn't found him. It's hard to track the blind from a distance; he can't see out of his prey's eyes, so he doesn't know where to look. But he hears the camel bells, and the air grows warmer."

That jibed with Shou's report. He felt a burden lift from his heart that Master Markko hadn't succeeded in capturing the blind prince. But warmer? The high plains had already passed the height of summer and now declined swiftly into winter.

"Camel bells mean a caravan," Llesho mused out loud, "but does it cross north, down off the plateau toward Shan, or into the West?"

West, he thought. Lling didn't look away from Hmishi's wounds, but she was tracking now, and he took ruthless advantage of that. "Did he know of Ghrisz?"

"Oh, everybody knows about Ghrisz," she said in such an offhand way he wondered how the matter had escaped him.

That was Markko's imprint, however; the magician had tapped a mind somewhere Llesho's brother was well known. "Tell me, then." "He's in Kungol."

"A prisoner?" He was plotting rescue attempts in his head when she answered with a dark smile.

"A fugitive. In hiding. It's a race now, he thinks. If the raiders find Ghrisz, they will kill him." She had gone away in her head again, and Llesho wondered who was speaking to him—Lling, out of her memories, or the magician himself, in control again and taunting him with pieces of the puzzle. She'd said he was gone, but could she have been mistaken?

"Master Markko?" he asked, softly so as not to startle her.

But when she stole a glance at him, he knew. That was Lling, the most dangerous of their cadre, but herself alone.

"He can't touch me now," she said, and he wondered if she meant more than the breaking of the spell with Tsu-tan's death. "I can't read him either, anymore. But I remember it all." And she would use even her most horrific memories in their service if it brought her closer to Master Markko's blood.

"He would have used Adar to draw Ghrisz out of hiding, but now he seeks the last brother to use as ba to draw you all to him. If you win through and fii Menar first, he loses his leverage against the raiders wl hold Kungol. And he wants something in Kungol ve; badly."

"But what?" The raiders had looted the treasuries Kungol long ago, and they had mostly been spiritu; anyway.

"I don't know. I never got deep enough to find out. Her gaze was clear when she turned it on him. "Fin him for me, and I'll make him talk. Those secrets—wha pain he feels as pleasure, and what other he fears mos in the world—I know."

Llesho shivered at her grim purpose. What did it maki him, knowing he couldn't do what Lling proposed, bu willing to let her take that burden for him? What othei tasks in front of him would prove greater than hi; strength? This one, for instance. Watching Hmishi die.

Carina joined them then, with a shallow dish of pungent purple water in which leaves and bits of bark floated. "He can't drink," she said. "Even if his throat could swallow, there is too much damage throughout his body. Any liquid would leak through the wounds and create infection where it pools. But this will help."

She took a soft white cloth and dipped it in the water, then smoothed it over Hmishi's cracked lips. "Sometimes, especially when the pull of life and love are strong, the spirit of one who has traveled so far on his journey to the underworld will turn back to bid farewell. This should free him from the pain, if he should rise out of his sleep to say good-bye."

"Thank you." Lling reached for the cloth, and Carina gave it to her, relieving her of the pillow on her lap so that she could move about his bed with ease.

"Bathe him carefully—he won't feel the pain where the elixir touches."

Llesho figured he wouldn't feel the pain anyway. He'd seen death on the battlefield, and it hovpr^H tui^v this bed like a dream. It gave Lling something to do, however, and a way to touch her lover without fear of hurting him. Knowing Carina, that was her intention. It seemed to be working. The healer passed in and out of the tent with a word, a touch, but left them to their vigil. Chen and Han, the lesser moons, crossed the sky with Great Moon Lun in pursuit, but Llesho marked their passing only by the dim red light that moved across the roof of the tent.

Finally, as the lesser sun spread the gray light of false dawn, Lling curled up on the floor close beside the bed and closed her eyes. Llesho resisted the pull of sleep but battle and grief had exhausted him. Like Lling, he would not leave Hmishi to die alone, but found a place on the rugs to rest. Sleep, when it came, crept up on him like a gray mist.

Pig was waiting for him in the dream world, but he didn't need his spirit guide to tell him where he was. He recognized his brother, and the woman pulling him down on the rich-turned earth with an arm around his neck and a kiss on his lips while the bright heads of sunflowers above them guarded their play. With a long, silent glance at Pig, who watched the couple moving among the tall green stems, he began walking, out of his brother's dream.

He had figured out on his own that he sought out Shokar's dreams unconsciously, for the comfort they afforded. That ought to mean that he could visit his other brothers as well, though he doubted that he would find so warm and inviting a resting place in any of their dreams. Before he went on spending lives in his quest, however, there were things he had to know. Like, what did Lluka dream that filled him with despair? He would go there before he was done, but first he brought the image of Balar to mind. This brother, too, harbored secrets. He didn't think Balar would react as badly as Lluka would to finding Llesho in his dreams, so he stepped up, into a room with walls plastered in yellow mud and lit by a branch of candles on a familiar table. They were in Balar's music room in the Palace of the Sun.

"Come in if you want to, but try to keep still." Balar turned to him with a frown of concentration pulling at his brows. In his hands he held a lute which he was tuning with small turns of the keys and small shifts of the frets. It was a smaller instrument than Llesho knew him to play: four courses of strings, he saw, with two strings per course, except for the highest string. Seven strings in all, six in pairs and one alone.

"Where is Ping?" Llesho asked. He figured the strings must be the seven brothers, but where was their sister?

"Not yet born," came the answer, "Soon, though, I should think." Not long after Ping was born, Balar had gone to Ahkenbad for a diplomatic visit and training in the mystical ways of the dream readers. In his dream, Llesho's brother had returned to that more peaceful time, but still his face was tense with worry.

"What are you doing?"

To demonstrate, Balar strummed the lute. It took no expert in music to hear the sour clash of notes. "I can't seem to bring them into harmony, no matter what I do." He shifted the frets a bit more, tried again, and shook his head, dissatisfied. "This one is the key—" He plucked the highest string, the solitary note. The string Llesho thought must symbolize himself.

"I think it's this one," Llesho said, and pointed to the lowest string, so tightly drawn that it seemed on the edge of snapping. The neck of the lute seemed to strain under the pressure of that tension.

"I've lost the key," Balar pointed to the beak, where one tuning key was indeed missing. "Still, it's all in the balance. The other strings will have to compensate. Especially—" he gave Llesho a pointed look "—the highest."

"I don't think I can stretch any farther," Llesho answered in the same metaphor.

Balar gave a little shake of his head. "Then you'll have to find the key." He returned to his tuning as if he were alone.

After just a moment more to breathe in the memory of Kungol, Llesho started running in his dream. He thought about visiting Adar, but didn't want to disturb the work of Carina's healing herbs on his brother's sleeping body.

"You know what you have to do," Pig reminded him. "You might as well get it over with."

Llesho did know, and he ran with a purpose, finding his brother Lluka sleeping in his tent with a lantern glowing in the dark. He wondered if Lluka always slept with a light, if the darkness of his mind was so desperate that he daren't close his eyes on an outer darkness as well.

"What do you want?" Lluka opened his eyes, staring into the corner of the tent where Llesho stood, but his brother didn't seem to see him. "If you are a demon of my sleep, begone. I've had enough of your torments. They don't move me anymore."

"Not a demon. It's me, Llesho." He stepped into the lantern light, but Lluka didn't see or hear. With a grumble he straightened his tangled blankets and lay on his back, staring blank-eyed at the tent cloth overhead.

No dreams here, Llesho thought, before he was swallowed whole into a directionless gray twilight. Like the gardens of heaven, he remembered, where night never fell. He reached to clasp the pearl he carried at his throat. When he found them all and returned them to the Great Goddess, light and dark would return to heaven, and the stars would ascend to their proper places. He didn't know how, but it was part of his quest. This wasn't the heavenly gardens, however. In Lluka's dream, there was no earth to stand on, no heavenly paths or divine fruit trees. The gray dusk, aswirl in ash and fire, rang with the clash of swords and the cries of the dying, reeked with the sweat of battle and the fear of horses and soldiers. And their blood, a smell that choked him as Llesho struggled to find his way.

"Lluka!" he called through the dream landscape. "Where are you?"

"I am in hell, brother. All the futures I have seen come to this, though you are dead in most of them." Lluka took shape, came forward out of the mist.

"What has happened here?" Llesho asked. "For that matter, your answer to my first question was dramatic but not very useful. Where are we, and how did we get here?"

"The questions are impossible to answer. 'How will we get here?' at least gets the when of it right. This is the future of all the worlds. 'Where' doesn't exist anymore. Hell will overrun heaven and earth, killing the night and murdering the day, wiping out all that lives or grows or breathes. When they are free, the demons of hell will set fire to the air and trample the heavenly gardens under their clawed hooves. The material world will vanish, disintegrate into nothing as the forces of heaven and hell come together in the greatest conflagration the universe has ever known. All the realms of sky and earth, of the underworld and the wheel of life will fall in the fires of that battle. In all my dreams, and my waking nightmares, this is what I see."

As Lluka spoke those final words, the sounds of battle erupted in an explosion so immense that his senses couldn't grasp it. Fire swept toward him in a wall, faster than a horse could run, faster than a mind could grasp the oncoming devastation. Llesho called out in terror and threw his hands over his eyes, too late to stop the blindness as the fire swept over him. In the trembling gray of the death of the universe, he realized that he was still alive, the battle raging around him as it had before the conflagration had passed over.

"And now, we do it again," Lluka said with a grimace of a smile, mocking both of them.

"Does Master Markko do this?" Llesho asked, his voice shaky but determined. All he had to do was stop the magician, and none of it would happen.

"No," Lluka answered, "though he started it long ago. When he was young, I think, he wished to prove his power over the underworld, probably by calling the dead, though his purpose and his methods make no part of the dreams that fill my nights. What the dreams show is that he released a great demon king from hell instead. How the magician survived his own magic I do not know either, except that he must have made some bargain with the creature. Their goal is now the same—bring down the gates of heaven. When hell takes the heavenly gardens, all life will perish, all worlds will perish."

A fireball suddenly filled the sky, sucking all the sound out of the air and freezing time and motion in the moment. Llesho crouched down, cowering behind his sleeve, as the waiting havoc was released in a hurricane riding ahead of the flames. When the storm had passed over them, Lluka continued.

"Like you, I once had hope. But one by one the futures that might vie with the destruction have vanished from my dreams. Now I only see the end, and sometimes, the face of the demon raging at the gates that still stand against him. But they weaken, and there is nothing left to be done but die."

"There has to be a way," Llesho insisted, though his heart quivered in his chest. "The Great Goddess calls me to her aid. That has to mean we have a chance of winning."

"None that I can see," Lluka answered, then he squinted, as if something had obscured his vision. "Llesho? Where did you go? Llesho!"

Returning his brother's call would do no good, any more than waving his hands in his brother's face. The dream had taken Lluka past Llesho, and he wandered away, moaning as the fireball rose again, taller than any tree, tall enough to swallow Great Moon Lun in its vast maw. When Llesho brought his eyes away from the horrifying sight, he was back again in the tent city of the khan. The ger-tent of the khan lay ahead, and he felt the lingering pull of the Lady Chaiujin's potion in his blood. He entered, surprised that none of the khan's many guards stopped him as he passed down the center to the dais where the khan slept with his wife. Except that when he reached the mound of rugs and furs, an emerald- green bamboo snake raised its head and looked at him out of lidless black eyes.

"Go back," she hissed at him. "You do not belong here." And she laid her head down on the khan's breast.

Pig rejoined him then, a troubled frown curling around his tusks. He put a forehoof on Llesho's shoulder, drawing him away. "She's right. You don't belong here."

"I want—" he began, and woke up with the words still on his lips.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

LLESHO woke in the red tent where he had started his dream travels. Dawn had brightened the sky to the color of Lluka's dreams, confusing him for a moment. Had he really returned, or was he still dream traveling? But Lling still slept at the side of the cot where Hmishi's labored breath stuttered and fell, stuttered and fell. Back, he thought; it hadn't happened yet. There was still time to stop it. He gave a shaky sigh of relief and threw off his blankets.

On the cot in the corner, the breath rattled in Hmishi's throat, and died.

No! Leaping to his feet, Llesho pressed his lips tightly together to keep from raging out loud. He thought he ought to wake Lling but refused to give her up to grief; he needed her sane to keep from flying to pieces himself. But he couldn't stay here, with the rage beating at his ribs.

Low branches hit him, and vines grabbed at his legs, but he ignored them and the small injuries he collected. Llesho was running before he realized what he was doing. No, no, no! He needed to get away, escape to the river where he could rail at the gods for laying waste to his life again and yet again. When he was far enough from the encampment that he thought no one would hear, he gave himself up to the anger and pain clawing its way out of his throat.

"I can't do this!" he screamed at the gray mist clinging to the river. "I needed him! I needed Harlol, and you took them both! How am I supposed to save Thebin?" The fireball of Lluka's dream rolled through his waking mind. "How do I stop the end of the world if I can't even keep my own cadre alive! You may as well ask me to empty the Onga River with a drinking cup—it's impossible!"

He didn't know who he was shouting at, but it wasn't the woman who stepped from between the trees. Lady Chaiujin, dressed in green like bamboo in the spring, answered him anyway.

"I know, child." She stretched her arms wide to him, and smiled sadly as she said, "They ask too much and never give you the rest you crave. But I will give you rest. Come."

He should have wondered how she happened to appear in the woods outside his own camp when he had just visited in dreams the tent city of her husband a hundred li away. The dream he had visited, in which she lay as an emerald-green bamboo snake on the breast of her husband, should have warned him of the danger she represented. But her voice crooned low, hypnotically calling to him with promises of rest and more in the comfort of her soft arms. She didn't inflame him as she had before but offered the cool water of peace between her breasts. Part of him remembered Carina's warning, that a potion had stirred the longing she raised in him.

It should have troubled him, but his losses lay so heavily on his heart that he was beyond caring anymore. He went to her with his own arms wide, and let her wrap him in her green peace.

Heavy footsteps rattled in the undergrowth behind him. Llesho sprang back, shocked to be caught with his arms around the wife of the khan. Before he could begin to formulate his excuses, however, Master Den broke into the clearing by the riverbank.

"I thought I might find you here."

The lady had disappeared. Den's brow furrowed when he caught sight of Llesho standing alone by the river. Coming closer, he hissed a "tsk" and from the place where the lady's arms had wrapped him, Master Den plucked a snake as green as new bamboo. "We'll have none of that, Lady Chaiujin."

With Master Den's presence, the dream state seemed to fall away from him, and Llesho recognized the snake as poisonous, with a sting as deadly as anything Markko had ever poured into him. She went for the trickster's hand with bared fangs, but Master Den caught her behind her jaws and raised her so that they were eye-to-beady-eye. "He belongs to the goddess," he said. "Your master cannot have him."

She hissed at him and lashed her tail while he held her gently, so that she hurt neither herself nor him. When she had calmed a little, he set her into the crook of a tree.

"Is that really Lady Chaiujin?" Llesho asked as she slithered away in the branches.

"As real as she was when she greeted you in the tent of her husband," the trickster god asserted. Llesho wondered, though, which visit he meant—the formal one, when she had poisoned his tea with a love potion, or the dream travel where she had greeted him as a serpent in the bed of her husband. He didn't have a chance to pursue his question, however.

"You've been busy," Master Den noted wryly, brushing at his shoulders with the discerning eye of a body servant.

Llesho waved him off, heading back toward the camp with an angry jerk of the head. He was sick of riddles, sick of help showing up just when it would do Hmishi no good at all.

"How did you get here, and why do you always arrive just moments too late to be of any earthly use to anyone?" Llesho snapped the questions like arrows as he headed back for the camp.

"The khan traveled through the night with his army and raised his city on the plains above us." With his great long strides, Master Den quickly caught up to Llesho, who didn't indicate by any gesture that he noticed while Master Den gave the mundane explanation for his appearance. "We fetched up here shortly after false dawn, but no one could find you in the camp. Prince Tayyichiut seemed to think you might have sought the comfort of the river. And so I have come, just in the nick of time, to save you from a greater rest than you bargained for."

There were layers to that statement that Master Den's presence forced him to consider. No, he hadn't come to the river to find the comfort of death. But, yes, he had welcomed the touch of the Lady Chaiujin even knowing what she offered. And as for the nick of time—

"Maybe not." Let his teacher chew on that and see if he liked it. When a beautiful woman offered him rest in her arms, he'd be a fool not to take it, even if she meant it to be permanent.

More likely, he was a fool to think that was a good idea. It gave him pause. Maybe Lling wasn't the only one who had crossed the line of sanity. He'd seen it in her—how had he not seen it in himself?

"Carina said to tell you that Adar is resting comfortably, but will have to travel under sedation and with the baggage until he heals. Lling would not be moved, but has taken a little tea. She will sleep at least until Great Sun rises. Bright Morning attends Hmishi's body, and wanted me to fetch you."

"The mortal gods make uncommon messengers," Llesho remarked pointedly.

Master Den raised an eyebrow and sniffed his displeasure with his student. "That's what we do—deliver messages. The question, when confronting the gods, should always follow thusly: 'Who sent the message?' and, 'What was its purpose?'"

"Do I get any clues?" Llesho kicked through fallen leaves, expecting no answer. The trickster god surprised him.

"You can be sure that the gods who attend you fit the purpose."

"Then I suppose I am lucky that I've got you and not the Lady SienMa."

Den slanted him an ironic side glance. "Oh, she's on her way."

That didn't surprise Llesho at all. But Emperor Shou had her special favor. "What does Dognut want?"

"You'll have to ask him yourself."

They had come to the tent where Hmishi lay. Carina was nowhere in sight, but Bixei and Stipes waited for him in front of the tent, and Tayy stood with them, cradling Little Brother in his arms.

Bixei stirred and gave a bow of salute. "Your brother Shokar was here, and paid his respects. He has gone off to keep an eye on Lluka, who has begun muttering under his breath in a way that worries Balar and sets Shokar's teeth on edge, he says. Balar himself is inside, with Bright Morning."

"Where is Kaydu?" He didn't mention Lling—Llesho knew where she was.

Tayy answered with a wave at the sky. "She has gone to offer her report to her father. That one suggested it—" he jerked his chin at Master Den. "But I'm worried that she might become trapped in the form of a bird, as she was before."

"Habiba can handle it," Master Den dismissed the objection with a shrug. "She'll be back."

"Then if everything is in order, I'll go to the khan." Tayy cast a worried frown at the rim of the dell. On the plains above, an army ten thousand strong settled in around them. But in one tent, the key to all their fortunes lay in fever. "My father is not well," he advised them. And, because he knew Llesho would understand, he added, "The Lady Chaiujin carries a second heir."

Second after Tayy himself, Llesho knew, but her claim seemed unlikely to be true. He wondered what kind of child the bamboo snake carried in her belly, and if Chimbai-Khan had anything to do with it at all.

"There is room in my cadre for a likely warrior," Llesho offered, and darkness lifted from the prince's eyes. Almost he could forget the boy was Harnish. Without another word, the prince left them. Llesho entered the tent where Hmishi lay, with Master Den at his back.

There you are." Dognut set his flute aside and faced Llesho with a sad smile. Curled into the corner of the tent, Balar continued to strum a lament softly on his borrowed lute. Master Den lowered himself with a grunt to the rug near the door. Llesho thought to bring him higher in the room as befitted a visiting god, but that was a Harnish way of thinking. He sat where he could guard the door against intrusion and listen to the mournful plucking of the strings at the same time.

"It was a mercy," Dognut looked up at Llesho, watched him move agitatedly around the tent. Llesho would not sit, but strayed over to stand and watch Lling, who slept beside Hmishi's bed. "The boy was so badly hurt."

"No." Llesho turned cold eyes on the dwarf who was more than he had ever seemed but, like Master Den, no use at all to any of his dead. "There is no mercy here. Evil wins again, because Mercy has gone out of the world."

"That isn't true." Dognut rested his hands on his knees, and Llesho was reminded that fate had shown the dwarf no mercy either, but still he seemed to believe. "We don't always recognize mercy when we see it. It isn't always what we want or think we need, but it's there. It's here."

A veil seemed to slip from the eyes of the dwarf. He let Llesho see what lay inside—the turning of the seasons, and the aging of the sun, and the rise and fall of empires. The smile was old, and wise, and patient, and filled with the pain and misery he had seen across all the ages. But it wasn't kind. "Is it a mercy to bring him back to suffer, not just the pain of his physical injuries, but the memory of all that was done to him?"

"That wouldn't be mercy, no. But to bring him back, mended, a god could do that."

"The universe is a place of balances, young king." Bright Morning lifted his hands, palms out, to demonstrate his point while Balar nodded his agreement from the corner.

"If a god should grant such a favor—" one small hand rose above his shoulder, while the other he dropped to his waist, "—what would you trade to restore the balance?"

"My life," he said, too quickly, and Master Den gave him a stern frown. He'd been trying to throw his life away since—it seemed—forever. Hardly a sacrifice, then, and one he couldn't in conscience make anyway.

The dwarf tilted his head, considering Llesho carefully. "Who among the thousands who follow would you trade for the life of your best friend?"

"No one," he finally admitted. He had plenty of lives to spend in the war with Master Markko, but none at all in trade for the sole purpose of seeing Hmishi laugh at him again. "I don't have anything. It's just—he's one too many, you know? I need a reason to keep going. I thought that Kungol was it—home, and freedom, a kingdom—but they're just words and a world away.

"Hmishi and Lling, Kaydu, Bixei and Stipes, they're the only home I have. Even my brothers don't feel a part of me like they do."

Balar bowed his head over his lute. He didn't protest, though Llesho saw that it cost him to keep silent.

Bright Morning agreed, however. "The mortal goddess   of war does good work, though its strength is never meant to last."

"A broken sword wins no battles."

The dwarf dropped his hands into his lap. "You ask too much," he said.

Master Den barked a short, ironic laugh. "You've been taking lessons from the student, Bright Morning. I've heard him say the very same many times."

True. He'd said the very words himself, to no avail. The gods kept asking for more anyway. Now he was asking back; he figured it was time they knew how it felt.

"Balar?"

The prince dropped his forehead to the pregnant body of his instrument. He didn't look at them as he answered the question that Bright Morning must have asked already, and more than once.

"Lluka sees disaster down every path. For myself, I cannot answer. I want to see my brother home, on the throne of our father, and I would balance that end any way I could." He did look up then, with a grim smile. "My gift has not deserted me, but I don't dare use it." "You're right, you know. We do ask too much." Bright Morning shook his head. In the end, it came to a simple truth. "Your heart needs rest."

With that, he took up a silver flute and set it to his lips. When he played, Llesho's heart lightened. Lling stirred from her sleep, rubbing her eyes.

"What's happening?" she asked, her eyes on Llesho but her ear cocked in the direction of the music.

"I don't know," Llesho began, but the silver tones of the flute lifted him with unreasoning hope. When he looked on his dead friend, Hmishi's breast rose and fell, rose and fell, almost imperceptibly at first, then growing stronger with each breath, until his eyelids fluttered.

"Hmishi!" Lling fell to her knees and dropped her head on his shoulder, her arms enclosing him. Between her sobs she repeated his name, "Hmishi, Hmishi, Hmishi."

Llesho watched them, as if from a distance. He'd wanted this, asked for it, but in the end, it wasn't about him at all.

Hmishi's eyes roamed without focus or comprehension until they fell on Llesho, then his brows knotted. "Am I dead?" he asked.

The words echoed down the long dark corridor of memory. Hmishi had asked him that before, and he'd asked the same of Pig. This time, Llesho smiled and answered, "Not anymore."

"Good." With a contented sigh, Hmishi closed his eyes and went to sleep.

The trilogy concludes with The Gates of Heaven New in hardcover Spring