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

by Curt Benjamin

  With a quick glance around him, Llesho wondered where the Lady Bamboo Snake had gone and if more tragedies awaited the Qubal at her touch. He shook off the feeling with an effort. He had to stay focused or he’d lose everything he fought for right here.

  Llesho had expected the formality. Mergen had been interrogating a captured enemy under conditions of internal security right up until the time he’d allowed a foreigner to intercede for the prisoner. Now, he engaged in statecraft with a Thebin king over the fate of a hostage. To show his respect for the khan, Llesho had come to this summoning with his whole force around him as an honor guard. Fifty men and women who had journeyed with him from Ahkenbad spread out along the back of the ger-tent, keeping to their place below the firebox but present in barely suitable numbers to honor their leader’s station.

  His personal guard followed him toward the royal dais, adorned with the rankings of the services from which he had borrowed them. As a record of the powerful allies who supported him, the varied uniforms might persuade the khan to join their number. Or they might tempt him to remove a danger with one sweep of a blade. Llesho couldn’t allow that to happen, for more than the sake of his own neck. The chaos and death of Lluka’s visions awaited them all if his quest failed, so he stepped forward with all the confidence he could muster, his brother-princes at his sides. Even Adar had joined them, though Carina had bound his arm tight under his formal court coat to brace the healing bones of his shoulder. Together, the princes bowed to the dais, though Lluka did so with less grace than he might have shown and Adar with more pain. For all the pomp of their entrance, Llesho was a ruler without a domain come to beg a favor of a khan risen to power under a shadow in his own. The khan’s attention fixed more surely on the ragged prisoner who entered at Llesho’s side than on the unlanded king of the Cloud Country himself.

  “Your report?” Mergen accepted their bows with barely contained impatience, only repeating his question when Llesho had drawn Radimus forward. “Have you broken the spell that binds this fellow’s tongue?”

  “Yes, Lord Khan, I have.” Llesho pointedly observed the formalities of address that Mergen had omitted, drawing an abrupt gesture of apology from the khan. They had made him wait two days for his interrogation, and he had run out of patience on the first of them. But he hadn’t expected that answer. Tayy had, of course, and let his chin drop onto his fist with a little smile of satisfaction.

  “This Markko’s magic is not so formidable after all,” he suggested.

  “Oh, yes,” Llesho answered with a level gaze. “It is. Ask Otchigin.” Mergen’s most-beloved friend, that was, who had fought the stone monsters Master Markko had raised up out of the grasslands and who had died in battle with a stony fingertip lodged between his ribs where his heart used to beat.

  The khan’s temper flared behind his eyes, and was quickly brought under control again. Mergen was no fool. “But you are more so?”

  Llesho gave a little shrug. “I’m just a boy. But one does not set all his guards to defend an outhouse.”

  Mergen acknowledge the riddle with a wry smile. “And have you tested your success against this lesser challenge, excellent prince?”

  Better than no title at all. “No, my Lord Khan. But Radimus has promised to answer your questions to the best of his knowledge, and I have promised to intercede with you for his life.”

  “His information is that good, then?”

  Shou had taught him to negotiate before the markers went on the table, but Radimus had taught him something of bargains as well, and hinted at the dice in his hand to up the ante. “Yes, Lord Khan, it is.”

  “You already have my word, as painless a death as a blade can deliver, in exchange for information about his master.”

  Llesho smiled, more confident in the game now that he knew there was something in the pot. “Not for his own sake, but for the friendship I hold for him and our shared past, I would ask that you return him to me alive.”

  “And if I offered you one favor,” Mergen suggested, turning the game on its head, “and you could have this old companion of your slavery returned to you, or the aid of the Qubal clans to fight against your enemies, which would you choose?”

  Llesho studied the khan for clues. He knew a test when he saw one, was sick of them, but couldn’t risk a life protesting now. Mergen gave away nothing of his own thoughts. A glance to the side showed him Dognut watching back, every twitching muscle bent on his answer. And Llesho knew then what it had to be.

  “I would have Radimus.”

  “I knew it!” Tayy crowed.

  “And that,” Mergen assured his nephew, “Is why the clans do not elect boys of sixteen summers, such as your present self, to the khanate.”

  “It was a brave answer,” Tayy objected, and his uncle rolled his eyes.

  “He risks the lives of all his followers, and the lives of the people of the Cloud Country, and the very heavenly kingdom that he says lies under siege. And for what? The life of a slave he knew briefly while a slave himself, who in the years since their parting has risen in the service of the mortal enemy who is the cause of all his troubles. Only a boy could find romance in such a tale.”

  But Dognut was smiling, the tension gone out of the lines around his eyes. And when he looked to her for some sign that he’d not been as stupid as Mergen claimed, Bortu actually winked at him. He wasn’t sure what he’d just proved with his answer, but the khan made a mockery of his own exasperation with a broad wave of his hand. “Oh, sit down, and bring your guest with you. Let’s hear what he has to say before we do anything hasty.”

  Prince Tayy had turned red to the tip of his ears at his uncle’s taunt. Llesho figured it for a not-wrong answer, if not exactly the one Mergen had hoped for, and took a seat where Tayy, with a grin made self-conscious under Mergen’s dubious approval, made room beside him.

  With a bow as overdone as the wave, Llesho drew Radimus down with him at the side of the khan. “What would you like to know, Lord Khan?” he asked.

  “I’d like to know what in the name of all the ancestors this Master Markko wants with the grasslands.” His tone made it clear Mergen expected no answer. Radimus didn’t have the rank to carry great state secrets, but they might get an observation or two out of him that would make the whole thing less of a waste of time.

  He was wrong about that.

  “He wants power. Even with the resources of Farshore and Pearl Island he couldn’t defeat the emperor of Shan. When we lost in the capital city he needed to find a base close to the source of his magic where his power might grow stronger. The South remembered him from a long time ago. There are still stories about the thing he set lose there, some demon that wiped out whole clans before it disappeared, off to lay waste to somebody else’s world, they say.”

  “You scatter the secrets of your master like pearls at our feet, good Radimus.” Mergen-Khan pierced him with a calculating stare. “I have heard the old stories, of course, but not your magician’s part in them. How do you come by this valuable intelligence when a second of your same rank scarcely knew the name of the magician in whose service he fought.”

  “I would not lie to you, Lord Khan,” Radimus swore to answer the khan’s doubts. “I owe the magician no loyalty. He calls up demons and practices his spells and poisons on his slaves and prisoners. You’ve promised me an easy death in exchange for what I know, and that is more than he will give me if Master Markko gets me back.”

  “Your master does not seem a trusting enemy. How did you come by your information?”

  And then Llesho remembered. “I know,” he said, diverting the intensity of the khan’s focus to himself. “I remember, in a dream-walk, seeing Radimus in the doorway of the magician’s tent.”

  “I stood guard,” Radimus confirmed, “And heard his conversations. When he muttered to himself in the throes of his experiments or incantations, I couldn’t shut my ears no matter that I wished never to hear what went on there.

  “I do not like mag
ic,” he added forcefully as an explanation.

  “You are no friend to your master,” Mergen-Khan repeated, to make sure he had it right, “and yet I am to believe that he trusted you enough to stuff your head full of his secrets and set you over the Southern Harnishmen, and then sent you as a gift to the hands of his enemies?”

  “He rules by fear. Master Markko knows I hate him and that I’m terrified of him. He likes it.” Radimus admitted the plain truth. “He doesn’t trust anyone, certainly not me. He binds his guardsmen with spells so we can’t speak or raise a hand against him, then he forgets us, as if we were no more than his tent poles. Even if we could break the spell enough to slip a dagger in his heart, we wouldn’t dare act against him. We’ve seen what he does to his enemies when they fail.”

  A quick glance at Llesho, who had experienced Markko’s treatment firsthand, then he finished, “As for why me, I’ve asked myself that question often enough. He’s known me longest, though, and thinks he has my measure.”

  “Gladiators,” Mergen snorted, as if he still didn’t believe that story.

  Radimus nodded. “Lord Chin-shi’s stable, until he lost us to bad debts and a plague on the pearl beds. Then Lord Yueh’s until Markko murdered him and turned us into soldiers.

  “I’ve thought you were dead half a dozen times since then,” he turned to Llesho with a shake of his head. “Markko was certain they’d killed you on the road from Farshore, then up you popped again and defeated him at Golden Dragon River. They almost had you in the battle at Shan Province, but your defenders were braver and your tacticians smarter than he’d expected. Master Den isn’t just a laundryman and hand-to-hand instructor, is he?”

  “Not that those things were ever just in themselves, but no. I wouldn’t say he’s more than that, but certainlydifferent than we thought him on Pearl Island.” Llesho couldn’t help the wicked grin.

  The trickster god returned it with a mock frown. “More respect,” he demanded in a haughty tone, “or I’ll set the priests on you. Let them debate my good qualities while you squirm under the boredom of their arguments!”

  “Boredom sounds good,” Llesho admitted. Aware Mergen was beginning to lose patience, he turned back to the prisoner with a warning, “The tales of my near death experiences may be entertaining in the peace of an evening fire, but I think we can forgo the list for now.”

  Radimus gave a little shrug, still with the wary question in his eyes, how had Llesho avoided death or capture so many times when so many others had not. Mergen was likewise adding up his qualities anew, and coming to a better notion of this beggar at his door.

  “The night after Llesho made his dream visit to Markko’s tent—” He stole a glance at Llesho, remembering a night when Master Markko had tortured the young prince, who had been hundreds of li away among the tents of the Qubal clans. “—he sent me to retrieve his prisoners from the witch-finder, and to find out where Llesho was hiding. He’d destroyed the Tashek mystics at Ahkenbad and knew Llesho had left the Gansau Wastes, but he didn’t expect him to recruit a new set of defenders so quickly. If he was still alive, I was supposed to capture him, not the other way around.”

  The prisoner’s eyes glinted with satisfaction. Llesho had freed him from his master’s spells. “As for what you want, I know all of his secrets. All of them.”

  “Truth?” Mergen-Khan asked Llesho.

  Radimus gave a ghost of a nod, something he seemed scarcely to know he was doing. Everything Llesho remembered of Radimus urged him to believe, not least that he had seen this with his own dreaming eyes. “Yes,” he said.

  “Very well.” Mergen had been sitting in the Harnish style, with one leg tucked under him, the other foot tucked up close so that his knee rested just under his chin. Until this point he’d sat back a bit, straight-spined and cautious, but now he draped his arm over his knee and rested his chin on his arm. Slit-eyed with concentration, he began his interrogation in earnest.

  “You say he wants power, and yet he spends what power he has amassed chasing a boy with nothing but a pathetic band of deluded followers at his back. Why is that?”

  “The magician follows the Way of the Goddess,” Radimus explained as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “He wants to be one of the mortal gods so that his living body may enter heaven.”

  “That’s not the way it’s done,” Master Den commented softly, and Bright Morning, in his corner, agreed with a dissonant trill on his flute.

  “I’ve never met a god, so I wouldn’t know. I’m sure I don’t want to either.” Radimus frowned at Master Den’s bark of laughter. “Who knows what a magical creature can do?”

  Mergen, however, did not see the humor. “The prisoner seems to have more sense than all the rest of my guests combined. Even the Qubal people can see that these gods seem only to cajole their subjects into deeper trouble than they had managed on their own.”

  He challenged Master Den to deny it, but the trickster god bowed to accept the hit. “In the battles waged between the worlds, sometimes the gods’ own favored warriors suffer. Sometimes, the gods themselves suffer. We are not immune to our own struggles. But the Way of the Goddess does not lead down an evil path.”

  “He doesn’t think he’s evil.” It took a great deal of courage to speak up, but Radimus was fighting for his life. “He calls it a shortcut, and blames Llesho for making it necessary. If you’d stayed with him, he thinks, and gathered your brothers under his banner, he wouldn’t have had to hurt you or your brothers or any of the other people he’s killed for getting in his way.”

  “And you believe what he says?” Mergen clearly doubted, but Radimus corrected that impression.

  “It’s what he tells himself. He’s mad, but he thinks he’s making sense. He talks about defeating the siege of heaven and taking the gates for himself. The Great Goddess will love him then, he thinks, and make him a god out of gratitude for all he’s done for her. But he needs the princes of Thebin to do it, the prophecy says so. He has to have them all.”

  “What prophecy?” Llesho asked, while Tayy interrupted with, “If he needs the princes, why is he trying to kill Prince Llesho?”

  “He’s not.” Radimus shook his head emphatically. “He wants Llesho to work with him, and he thinks he’s preparing him for some great battle with the demon he set loose a long time ago. He’s not strong enough to defeat it himself, but he thinks the prophecy means Llesho can do it for him.”

  Llesho wondered why the khan was letting the two princes he’d already dismissed as boys lead the questioning. Radimus seemed more comfortable answering them, however—maybe because they didn’t plan to kill him at the end of it. Mergen would make use of that greater ease as long as it got him what he wanted. Or, like now, intercede when he needed greater clarity in his answers.

  “Yet the young prince keeps escaping death at his hands,” Mergen reminded him.

  “It’s the prophecy,” Radimus explained. “Or he thinks it’s a prophecy, though some say it’s a song and others that it’s just a tale. Master Markko doesn’t have the exact wording, just hints and rumors that grow thick around the borders of Thebin. He knows he needs all the princes, but he takes that to mean however many princes are still alive when the battle comes.”

  “So, if he can’t persuade the princes to work with him, he plans to kill them.”

  Radimus nodded. It didn’t need more answer than that. Adar, however, dismissed this interpretation of the prophecy. “It won’t work,” he said. “The princes of Thebin will never serve an evil power. That isn’t the Way of the Goddess. And even we know that Llesho is the key. If he dies, hope dies.” He challenged even Lluka to deny it.

  Their brother dropped his gaze, but not before Llesho saw denial in his eyes.Does the magician speak to you in your visions? he wondered.Does he feed your despair with those images of death I saw in your dreams and promise your own rise to kingship if you follow him? He looked to Adar to confirm what he thought he saw in Lluka’s downcast eyes, but Adar
had already looked away.

  Mergen, however, had settled a thoughtful stare on Lluka’s bent head. “You pose an interesting problem, Prince Llesho,” he said. “But so far you have shown no evidence that it ismy problem. The eye of the Qubal people must turn east to the Tinglut who sent murder among us.”

  “Ask questions in that direction,” Llesho suggested. “There may be more than the Qubal people who have suffered losses through trickery. But the fall of heaven is a concern for us all.”

  “When the demon takes the gates of heaven,” Lluka interrupted, his voice forced and rough, “all the worlds above and below will fall into fire and chaos. All worlds, even yours, Mergen-Khan.” Something malevolent glittered hard and dark in the back of his eyes. Something mad. Llesho shuddered, but it had caught Mergen-Khan’s attention, too.

  “We need to know more,” he said. “We need to find the lost Thebin princes, and uncover the secret of this prophecy. Then, we will consider how to proceed.”

  “Master Markko is looking for the lost princes, too,” Radimus volunteered. “Among the rumors, he believes it true that one of the brothers is still in Kungol, leading a resistance force against the southern invaders. The whispers say that he defends a great jewel of power, but no one knows what kind of jewel it is.”

  Llesho didn’t know about any magical jewels and his brothers didn’t speak up either. It might have been a secret even from the oldest of them, who had been full grown when the Harn invaded, but he didn’t think so. They either weren’t letting on, or there wasn’t any jewel. He kept his thoughts to himself while Radimus told them about the other brother.

  “The magician says that brother will be easy to find once he enters Kungol, and he figures Llesho will bring the others to him when it’s time. As for the last, there are stories about a blind poet, a slave in the household of a master physician in the West. None of the stories have connected the poet to the lost princes of Thebin, but it sounds like it might be him, and the time seems right. So Master Markko seeks the last brother in the West. He says the battle will be on us soon and the princes must come together to fight it.”