Curt Benjamin - [Seven Brothers 03] - The Gates of Heaven

by Curt Benjamin

  “Ride beside me while your ally questions your foe,” Mergen said, and nudged his horse into slow motion, his mother and his nephew still at his side. Llesho followed his lead, with Yesugei beside him and his cadre among the khan’s own guardsmen. When they reached the platform on which the prisoner lay, Yesugei dismounted and strode forward on foot, drawing his sword. Kaydu followed, her face set as she prepared to act on Llesho’s orders even if it killed her.

  The raider locked eyes with his executioner, but Yesugei didn’t flinch. The point of his sword rested lightly against the raider’s belly; it hardly shook at all when Little Brother crept out of Kaydu’s pack and swung himself onto the raised pallet.

  Kaydu tried to rescue her familiar, but Little Brother whined and refused to leave the prisoner to his fate. Anxiously the monkey patted the man’s whiskers.

  “Have you anything to say, Southern Man?” Mergen-Khan asked with a glance at Little Brother that promised monkey stew for dinner.

  With an effort the captive turned to face the khan. “I am not a southern man,” he said.

  He hadn’t worn a beard then, but his voice echoed in Llesho’s memory from the time before Farshore, when he’d trained in the gladiators’ compound on Pearl Island.

  “Don’t let him send you to hell without your tip,” he said out loud, changing only slightly the advice that Radimus had given him years ago, when he hadn’t even understood what he’d been told. He’d been called up to the great house on Pearl Island. Lord Chin-shi hadn’t tapped him for the usual reasons that a lord pulled a boy out of the training compound, though. He’d wanted information Llesho didn’t have then, about the red tide killing the bay, but he’d paid his tip all the same.

  “Fighting and dying you do for nothing, because they own you.” Radimus repeated his own explanation from that long ago morning. “Anything else, they pay for. It’s tradition. Llesho? I thought you were dead, boy.”

  “Not yet.” Llesho dismounted and came to him while Radimus barked out a rough laugh.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Little Brother darted away in a panic at the sudden noise, or so it would seem. The monkey curled himself on Kaydu’s shoulder while the khan watched for signs and miracles, as if he hadn’t already seen them.

  “I’ll take it from here.” He held out his hand.

  Shaking his head in confusion, Yesugei turned over his sword. “I—” he began, but he didn’t seem to know what he’d intended to say. Llesho understood, and showed it in his glance so full of forgiveness that the chieftain fumbled at a loss and turned away.

  When he had gone and Llesho’s surroundings came back into focus, the khan was looking down at him like Habiba with an interesting specimen to study. “You do that very well for a boy,” he said. “Can you teach it to Tayy?”

  “First, you have to be born a god.” He’d never understood that about himself, and meant it as a flip answer. The situation was too dire for him to manage irony, however. Radimus seemed not surprised at all.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Mergen promised, though whether he took it for a boast or a joke was hard to tell. He didn’t object when Llesho dropped the sword at his feet, so they had at least progressed that far.

  Sweat slimed Radimus’ torso and lay in glistening pools in the hollows of his orbits. How long had the questioning gone on before the khan had sent for him? Too long. Llesho refused to let old horrors sidetrack him.

  “I think we need to talk.”

  “Would if I could, boy.” Radimus rattled his chains, explanation enough for that answer. There was more to his silence—or less—than loyalty to an old and dangerous master.

  “A spell?” Llesho wondered.

  Terror and longing moved in the captive’s eyes. “A—” Before Radimus could finish the word, his body contorted, conscious thought lost in a strangled scream.

  Suddenly, after an endless, heart-stopping moment, the convulsion ended, leaving Radimus limp and with the life gone out of his eyes.

  With a long sigh to compose himself, Llesho turned to the khan an expression of polite inquiry. “He’s done this before?”

  “Several times,” Mergen-Khan answered. “Usually he makes no sound at all before the twitching begins. Is he possessed?”

  “More likely a spell.” He looked again at Radimus, who watched him warily through the exhaustion that followed his fit.

  “He’s told you the truth. He’s not from the southern clans. We were slaves together in Lord Chin-shi’s stable on Pearl Island, more than a thousand li north of where the grasslands even begin.”

  “Gladiators?” Mergen-Khan infused the single word with doubt.

  Llesho gave a little shrug. “Novices. I was in my fifteenth summer. Radimus was older; he’d come to it fully grown. We trained together with Bixei. Stipes was ahead of us in the ring.” He didn’t mention Master Den, who had taught them hand-to-hand combat for the arena.

  “And now,” Mergen-Khan added coldly, “he rides at the bidding of this Master Markko, who also served the lord of Pearl Island. This same magician has swept a path of death and destruction through the Shan Empire, and now into the very heart of the grasslands. If Prince Lluka is believed, he will bring the universe down around our heads in chaos and nightmare.”

  Llesho knew the terrors of his brother’s visions, had walked through their fire and smoke in his dreams, but he couldn’t let the horrors of the future distract him from Radimus’ plight in front of him. “None of that is the fault of your prisoner,” he corrected the khan gently. “Radimus is a slave and had no choice of masters.”

  “Once a slave,” Mergen agreed, who had apportioned out his own lower-ranking captives to tents not of their choosing. “But now? He wears the braids of command.”

  Or had, Llesho figured. Radimus’ hair was as much a mess as the rest of him. Too exhausted to show even a glimmer of hope, Radimus stirred weakly on the altar of Harnish retribution.

  “They’re going to gut me,” he whispered, as Yesugei muttered an apology and took up his sword again.

  Llesho said nothing. Mergen looked unforgiving.

  “Don’t let them bury me alive, please—” Radimus moistened his lips with a furtive tongue. “When it comes time, wield the knife for me your own self, boy. I don’t deserve a kindness, but I would see the face of a friend—”

  “You’d do better with Yesugei. He’s had more experience at this.” The khan spoke to the prisoner, but his gaze never left Llesho. “He’ll cause you less pain than the boy.”

  Now was not the time to make grandiose demands. He needed to think. Too much imagination, that was his problem. The weight of Yesugei’s blade in his mind tensed the muscles clear to his shoulder. He felt Radimus’ blood on his hands, and the slick glide of entrails. Suddenly, his skin was as sweat-slick as Radimus’, his mouth as dry. The Harn would take advantage of any weakness they could find, however; a king with no stomach for the customs of Harnish warcraft might see his own troops slaughtered by the very men he had thought were his allies.

  “He thinks you’ll defy me and kill him quickly, as a friend,” Mergen said conversationally. “The cut ends high, just below the heart bone. The blade is sharp, and a careless thrust might penetrate the heart itself, removing all temptation to give up his intelligence before he gives up his life.”

  “Master Markko has put him under a spell of discretion!” Llesho’s temper strained to be let loose. “Prince Tayyichiut said I couldn’t interfere if the prisoner didn’t want to talk, but Radimus would tell us what he knows if he could!”

  “But he can’t. He’s useless if we can’t reach the information we need about his master,” Mergen pointed out calmly. “In the meantime, we can’t trust him. He may harbor secret instructions to murder any or all of us. If he’s dead, at least he can’t hurt anyone. And it sends a message to his master.”

  “With the blood of a man twice captive on your hands and no information to speak of for your troubles, you will tell his master that
he wins.” Llesho was sure about that, and equally sure that, “I’ve faced the magician in battle down all the roads from Farshore, and I haven’t ever let him win.”

  That hit Mergen-Khan like a slap. “What do you expect me to do,god-king? ” Sarcasm edged his words, but there was an honest plea in the question.How do we get out of this with all the Qubal clans of the East watching? he meant, in true desperation. As the newly elected khan, his brother recently murdered in his bed, he could ill afford to show weakness.

  “Bring me Carina,” Llesho answered. “And Master Den. Ask Bright Morning, too, if he will come, and Bolghai. This is a matter for physicians, not torturers.”

  “And we need launderers for—?”

  “We need our gods about us when we challenge evil men,” Llesho answered softly the question that had troubled the Harn since his arrival. Yesugei seemed unsurprised, while Bortu looked pleased with him, a doting mother more impressed with his honesty than with Master Den’s identity. It was impossible to read Mergen-Khan, but Prince Tayyichiut was plainly furious and holding onto his anger only in consideration of the crowd that hemmed them in. He wanted his explanation to go no further into that crowd, so he addressed a supplicant’s bow to the khan and avoided meeting Tayy’s eyes.

  “In that case,” Mergen said, “you must have your launderer and your dwarf as well.” Which told him clear as a blue sky that Mergen knew all along what companions Llesho traveled with. No doubt his shaman kept him well advised. “Bind the prisoner to a horse and take him to Bolghai’s burrow. Consult with your witches and tricksters, and return to me with this Radimus’ secrets, or with his living entrails.”

  Which was as good an outcome of the afternoon as he could have hoped once Prince Tayy had shown up at the infirmary. Llesho bowed his thanks, rising only when the khan had departed with his retinue. Yesugei remained with a handful of his guardsmen to keep watch over the prisoner, and Llesho waited while he ordered the bringing of a horse. Bemused, the chieftain allowed Bixei and Stipes to direct Radimus into the saddle and raised no objection when they padded his shackles with strips torn from their own clothing.

  “Where is Bolghai’s burrow this time?” Llesho asked when they were ready to ride.

  On balance, Yesugei decided to be pleased to have escaped committing murder through an error in judgment. He answered with a wry smile and a play on an old riddle. “Where the river ends.”

  Tayy had spoken the same riddle. The answer was death, but Radimus hadn’t died yet. Llesho figured the chieftain was speaking literally this time in a game of double meanings doubled. Beyond the dell, then, past the camp Down Below. Not where the Onga River ended, many li to the south, but where it grew more narrow as it rounded a bend. He had no doubt that Carina and the gods he had asked for would be waiting for him when he got there.

  Chapter Seven

  CHARGED AS he was to keep watch over the prisoner, Yesugei led them to the shaman while Llesho’s cadre held the nervous Harnish guardsmen to the outskirts of their party. Bolghai’s burrow—a felt tent just one lattice in circumference—was set over a depression dug into a hollow where the river broke against a rocky spit. It proved less difficult to reach than Llesho had thought.

  “Wait here,” he instructed his cadre, with the explanation they could see for themselves, “There isn’t room inside for all of us.” He depended on them to keep the khan’s men out as well for reasons having more to do with information they might hear that shouldn’t go past the khan and his shaman.

  Kaydu agreed, with one exception, “Where you go, I go.”

  Yesugei likewise agreed, and with the same exception for his prisoner, so four entered the tiny burrow—Llesho and Radimus, each with a representative from the party who guarded him. As he passed through the doorway, Yesugei stopped and took up a position at the right. Although he was himself a leader of a clan and not a guardsman, he knew how it was done and set himself ready to defend against attack from within or without. Kaydu fell in behind his lead and took the left, hand resting on sword hilt in an equally threatening posture. The way protected by his high-ranking guardsmen, Llesho brought his prisoner forward.

  The burrow was much as Llesho remembered it from their encampment to the north. Felt batting wrapped the small lattice frame like snug blankets with just a hole in the umbrella roof over the firebox for the smoke to escape. Skin rugs padded the earthen floor and the pelts of stoats hung on the walls among the rattles and drums and the fiddle that Bolghai had played to set the pace of his running when Llesho had learned to dream-travel. Bunches of herbs still hung from the ceiling. Llesho never had figured out what they were for, but he remembered the brooms the shaman used for ritual sweeping—and dancing. He tried to pick out the one he’d partnered in the strange dance of discovery that led him to his totem animal, but it didn’t call to him anymore. The narrow chest at the back of the tiny burrow had been covered with tiny skulls the last time he’d visited, but they had already been swept to the floor to accommodate the teacups.

  Bolghai wasn’t alone this time. Carina, at the firebox, flashed him a smile as the shaman rose from his nest of heaped furs. The little stoat heads of his ritual garb bobbed as if they were still alive, a matter which sent Little Brother shrieking up a broom to the umbrella-spoked roof. From there the monkey vanished out the smoke hole.

  “My pardon.” The shaman bowed an apology to Kaydu. “I don’t bite.” His smile showed a line of sharp teeth. “Not friends, at least.”

  “My pardon, good shaman, for my companion’s discourtesy.” Kaydu replied with an equal bow. “He imagined danger from your totem animal, I suspect, and so his good manners fled.”

  “Taking their hat and coat as they went,” Bolghai summed up the monkey’s disappearance. “Will your companion be safe on his own?”

  “Bixei will take him up, or Lling,” Kaydu assured him, and set herself once more in a posture appropriate to a door guard.

  Bolghai accepted the end of the conversation and turned his attention to Llesho, who stood waiting with a hand on the prisoner’s arm.

  “Is this a social visit, or are you here to continue your training?” With a nod in her direction, he added, “Carina was just making tea—you will of course join us. And your friend.”

  In his own quarters, Bolghai didn’t always speak in the formal riddles of his office. He had a way of phrasing the simplest question, however, that made Llesho certain even an invitation to tea hid a secret meaning when looked at out of the corner of the eye instead of dead-on, so to speak. Whatever the shaman’s purpose, Llesho had come for his own reasons, and he refused to let his suspicions distract him.

  “A matter of professional assistance.” He urged Radimus the few paces forward with a dip of his head first to the shaman, his host, and second to Carina, who knelt at the firebox.

  She wore, he noticed, her own shaman’s costume hung everywhere with silver charms and purses filled with medicines and the skins of her totem animal, the little hopping jerboa. With the teapot in one hand and a cup in the other, she returned his bow with a smile and a nod.

  “Butter and salt?” she asked, looking past Llesho to his prisoner. “Or Shannish-style, with honey? I don’t think we’ve met—I’m Carina, daughter of Mara who would be the eighth mortal god and Golden River Dragon, my father.”

  “Take the honey,” Llesho advised, “Bolghai’s tea tastes like stale socks.”

  Radimus looked from one to the other of them as if he had fallen in among madmen. He was saved from answering, however, by a commotion at the door. Master Den strode in with two Harnish guardsmen dangling from his sleeves.

  “Bright Morning has refused to come,” he explained the absence of the god of mercy, though not the presence of the guards who let him go to untangle their hair from the hanging brooms. “He said to tell you that Mercy has no place at an execution.”

  The prisoner flinched at the message. It must have sounded to Radimus like his old teacher wanted to see him put to death. But how
could he explain the grim disapproval Llesho heard in the words, or make clear the reminder from a god whose purpose must be served by others here?

  Master Den left no room for explanations. “Radimus!” he greeted his old student, only then noticing his presence. “What are you doing here?”

  “Having tea,” Carina answered. “He was about to tell me if he wanted honey or butter.”

  “Of course he’ll have honey,” Master Den answered for him just as Radimus himself got out, “Yes, please,” with a gesture to show that his hands were chained. He could not easily take the cup.

  “Don’t tell meyou’re Mergen’s prisoner?” Master Den asked, though Llesho thought the shock was a bit much. “Isn’t it a small world!”

  They had settled themselves comfortably enough, though the size of the small tent offended propriety by setting the high-ranked visitor next to his low-ranked prisoner below the firebox. Now they shifted over once again to make room for Master Den, who lowered himself to the pelt-covered floor with much theatrical grunting that gave no true indication of the god’s ability to fold himself into a Harnish position. With a smile, Carina reached over and placed the cup carefully into Radimus’ chained hands before fixing one for Llesho and another for the trickster god. All with honey in them, he noted with heartfelt gratitude.

  “My name is Radimus,” the prisoner offered in polite response to Carina’s interrupted introduction, though Master Den had made that less than necessary. “Gladiator-in-training to Lord Chin-shi, now deceased, traded in payment of debts to Lord Yueh, also now deceased, and come by right of capture to Master Markko, overseer to the properties of Lord Chin-shi, then Lord Yueh. Recently risen in the magician’s service through no wish of my own. Is your father really a dragon?”

  “Yes, he is,” Llesho answered for her. “I’ve met him and, aside from swallowing my healer in one bite, he’s quite polite as dragons tend to be.”

  “Hmmm,” Bolghai commented. Llesho wasn’t sure whether the comment referred to Radimus’ story or to his own description of the Golden River Dragon. After a pause to appreciate his own steaming cup, however, the shaman added, “Do you see a pattern with this Master Markko, young Radimus?”