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

by Curt Benjamin

  Mergen nodded, accepting the truth, but not the need. “The last time I sent a scouting party on your mission, Prince Llesho, you returned their dead bodies to me. I won’t stop you, but I cannot offer you the lives of more Qubal warriors to spend on an outlander’s. Go, and bring back proof of danger to the grasslands if you find it. Then we’ll talk about your wars and what aid you may expect of us.”

  “I understand.” Llesho bowed, accepting the khan’s decision, but with a question still on his mind. “Radimus, Lord Khan?”

  All eyes fell upon the captive, who knelt and touched his head to the ground in the way Llesho had seen the Harn do when they begged some mercy of the khan. Radimus, however, waited for judgment, saying nothing.

  “And what do you deserve of the khan of the Qubal people, Radimus?”

  “I’ve been a slave all my life, Lord Khan,” he answered with the form of address that Llesho had used. “What does a slave deserve of his masters but what they will of him? If killed, however, I would ask to be set out to feed the birds, who will take me on their wings to heaven, if that is possible.”

  “Your people have strange burial practices,” Mergen commented.

  To which Radimus answered, “At least we wait until a man is dead,” which seemed to amuse the khan.

  “Men have died in battle with your master, Commander,” Mergen chose to address his captive in his military rank rather than his more lowly status as a slave, which might have boded well or ill. His second, after all, had spilled his little knowledge and then his blood.

  But then Yesugei led two women toward the dais. Ah. Prince Tayy had explained about the Qubal custom. Llesho kept his smile hidden behind tightly clenched lips and was glad he did. Mergen hadn’t expected two, and he didn’t look happy about it.

  “I lost my husband to the stone monsters,” one of the women said, and Llesho guessed from her age, and the anger that touched the words with which she demanded this captive slave, that she was Otchigin’s wife. “My tent needs a man to tend the sheep and oversee the herd, and to stand between my children and the night creatures.” Wolves, that meant, creatures howling on the outskirts of any camp, even one as large as the tent city of the Qubal.

  “I have no husband,” the other said, with a glare at Otchigin’s wife. “Duty to a brother and a friend took the one who should have been mine. I need a man to tend the sheep and oversee the herd, and to stand betweenmy children and the night creatures.”

  Mergen-Khan inhaled sharply, as if he’d been slapped. Then he turned to Yesugei, who watched him somberly. Llesho realized he wasn’t the only one who had to put up with tests.

  “Radimus,” he turned to the prisoner. “A man of this ulus died in battle with your master. Will you take his place as a slave in his household, serve his wife as she would be served, protect what is hers, and ease her suffering in all things as she chooses?”

  Radimus raised his head from the fur-draped floor of the dais, his eyes full of questions, but he said, “To the best of my ability I will serve the lady and defend her children, though I do not claim any power to ease the suffering of her loss.”

  “I think you’ll be surprised,” Mergen suggested dryly. Radimus was younger than the lady’s former husband, and she seemed to be pleased with what she saw before her. Llesho suspected that her relationship with her husband had not been warm for reasons that had settled weariness into her bones but lit an angry fire in the other woman’s eyes. The second woman wasn’t young anymore, but she was still beautiful and carried herself with haughty defiance. Sechule, the khan’s lover, he guessed.

  Mergen-Khan confirmed it with a narrow-eyed nod in her direction. “As for you, friend Sechule, be free to enter any tent you wish. There is no claim on you, no blame will follow wherever you find shelter.”

  It wasn’t the answer she wanted. Llesho saw the sharp recognition of betrayal twist at her mouth before she dropped her head in submission to the judgment of her khan. Yesugei, however, seemed pleased with the decision.

  “Fool,” Llesho thought, with some compassion. Though he had barely seen eighteen summers, he knew the feeling of wanting someone who wanted someone else. Lling had followed her heart. For that matter, so had Carina. Mergen had closed off that path for Sechule, however; perhaps it wasn’t quite the same thing after all. Which, Llesho thought, just made things worse instead of better.

  He took a hesitant breath as Otchigin’s widow led Radimus away by the hand. His old friend looked like a man who had plunged his hand into a sack of burning coals and come out again with a star in his fist. The widow’s eyes were clear as glass, but Llesho had a feeling the weight of a political match had gone from her as well. A look of daggers passed between Sechule and the khan. For a heart stuttering moment, Llesho wondered what had become of the plain, kind Lady Chaiujin, and who had introduced the serpent into the ger-tent of the khan.

  Chapter Nine

  WHEN THE public work of justice had been done, Llesho sent his troops away, all but a small cadre of guards as a dignitary would be expected to keep around him for the night watch. With nightfall, darkness had swallowed the vast empty reaches of the felted palace. Only a few scattered lamps on the brightly painted chests behind the dais shed their yellow glow over the circle of heads bent over the maps spread before the khan. At a sound out of the clotted dark, Llesho looked up sharply to see a shadow-figure approach. It took a moment to penetrate the gloom before he put a name to the shadow-figure.

  Radimus. After a brief absence to introduce himself to his new mistress and her children, he returned to the ger-tent of the khan with an apology that he could not join the companions of his gladiator days on their quest. He understood his position as a slave of the Qubal clans only too well. Better this than service in the tent of the magician, he assured them all, in case they were thinking about rescuing him. Llesho suspected that Radimus was secretly happy with his fate and made a space for him beside them, accepted his offer instead to tell them everything he had learned about the enemy during his years in the magician’s service. Mergen would head east with all his warriors to confront Tinglut over the death of Chimbai-khan. Llesho warned him of the vision he’d had in his dream travels: the Lady Chaiujin whom Llesho had met at Chimbai-Khan’s side was nothing at all like the lady described within her own lands. If some other hand had kidnapped the lady during her journey and put the emerald serpent in her place, then Mergen brought not only war but grief to Tinglut, who had made a powerful alliance with the emperor of Shan. None of them wanted to see the mark of the magician’s work in the household of the khan, but Radimus warned it sounded very much like one of his schemes. He would set the ulus against each other and challenge the victor for all of the grasslands.

  “He won’t respect you,” Llesho had said while the lamps burned low and went out, one by one. “He’ll expect you to attack Tinglut for revenge for the death of Chimbai-Khan or to win over the Qubal clans who chose your brother over you when he was alive. For all that he thinks the rest of humanity are lesser beings, that’s what he would do. It won’t cross his mind that you would question what you have seen.”

  “Llesho’s right,” Radimus added. “When Master Markko thinks no one can hear him, he mutters that the Harn are unruly children and mindless weapons. But his own ambitions are no better than the worst of his enemies.”

  “That will be his undoing.” Mergen leaned forward like a hawk sizing up its prey. A small, dangerous smile reminded them that the subtlety of his mind rivaled Markko’s own. “I’ll look for answers first and act only when—or if—I have proof of Tinglut’s treachery in my hand.” If there was something to find, he would uncover it and act within the honor Llesho had come to respect in the ulus of the Qubal people. The magician would not so easily drive the sword of suspicion between the clans.

  As a token of his pledge to seek answers before war, the khan offered to care for the still healing Adar, who would travel in the hospital wagon for the long trek to the East. Then Shokar dete
rmined to stay and watch over their wounded brother. Bright Morning wished to find the emperor he served as musician and spy when not tending to his duties as a god. “For the times cry out for mercy everywhere, but always with the greatest need where the Lady SeinMa walks,” he explained. Knowledge of the future etched sorrowful lines into his face, but he said nothing of what he saw.

  Three great forces would come together at Durnhag—the Tinglut, the Qubal, and the empire of Shan. Llesho didn’t need a vision to understand the hazards of Shou’s path. His inner eye flashed on a memory of burning pyres and bitter guilt. If not peace, the god of mercy had offered him a moment of release from the responsibility of so many deaths in the name of his quest. He would have had that comfort with him again, but knew that, having chosen War as his consort, Shou would have the greater need of Mercy.

  When Mergen’s route had been charted, the khan rolled the map they’d studied and called to a guardsman hidden in the darkness to bring the maps of the Western Road. From the chest where the bust of Llesho’s ancestor stood, the soldier opened a drawer and drew out several long rolls of parchment. Mergen took them and spread them on the furs that covered the dais, setting small lead weights at each of the corners. The company turned their gaze to the West, where Menar lay hidden from all but rumor in the camps.

  “Beyond the grasslands are not one, but three powerful kingdoms. Thebin we know as the Cloud Country, with the Golden City, once a great center of piety and learning, at its heart. Raiders from the South put an end to that. Now a traveler finds only danger and misery in the South. The caravans go elsewhere.”

  Llesho flinched at the description of his lost home. Kungol would again regain its place in the world of honor and learning, but first he had to find Menar. For that, he looked to the second place on the map where Mergen tented his fingers.

  “Bithynia is the ‘Door to the West,’ the greatest power in the world when it comes to trade, and second only to the former glory of the Cloud Country for its learning. From the little Radimus could tell us, I would guess you will find Menar here. The Bithynians are a people of two faces, it is said: one face looks to the stars and the sea, to the deep mysteries and the arts, while the other looks to the balance book and the armory. They say that the Grand Apadisha builds his roads and bridges and wages wars on his far borders so that his scholars may study in peace, but I have never been there to see for myself. If it is so, your Master Markko may have studied in the workrooms of Bithynia.”

  “Bithynia produces as many magicians as it does master builders or healers,” Kaydu agreed. “My father attended the great school at Pontus for a time. He didn’t know Master Markko then, but there are a lot of schools in Bithynia. Then, too, a lot of magicians learn a lesser form of the trade as pages and apprentices to the magicians of the great houses.”

  When Llesho first met him, Master Markko was the overseer of Lord Chin-shi’s holdings on Pearl Island. His post brought with it wealth and power, but he’d been a slave like the rest of them. A page in a household with a lesser magician, perhaps, made sense of what Llesho had seen. An inferior education in the magical arts might explain Master Markko’s obsession with arcane learning and the lack of control that had set a powerful demon loose to lay siege to the gates of heaven. Llesho gave a little shudder and cautioned himself against building a past for his enemy out of his own imagination. Only Master Markko knew where his path had led him, and none of it made his actions now less terrible.

  The map beneath Mergen’s hand showed a thick scattering of stars that represented towns and cities. “So many places to search,” Llesho whispered, trying to keep the despair out of his voice. It was hard, and he wasn’t sure he’d succeeded. He’d known where he was going when he found Adar and Shokar, and Balar had found Llesho, saving him a search, though at the cost of a great many dead. To find Menar he had only the name of a territory more vast than the grasslands, filled with crowded cities. “Master Markko is already ahead of us. If he knows the land there as well, how will we find Menar first? How will we even know where to begin?”

  “Pontus.” Kaydu tapped the star on the map with the point of her dagger. “There is a saying my father sometimes uses: ‘Reputations rise in Pontus and fall in Iznik.’ It’s a warning that a servant who loses the favor of a king will find himself posted to an outlying district. But he says it’s also true in its most literal sense.”

  An old saying didn’t give them much to go on, but he would find Menar because he had to. Faith would take him there; his dreams and the mortal gods who dogged his steps would see to it, as they had seen to the finding of his other brothers. He just had to let himself follow the unguided path that made the Way of the Goddess.

  “What is the third kingdom?” he asked, wondering how far this new road would take him.

  Mergen shrugged, with no good answer to give. “Barbar ians and bankers, or so the reports come back with the caravans. Their lands lie far to the west, beyond the borders of the Grand Apadisha. On any given sunrise, only he can say where those borders are, or where they will be when Great Moon graces the sky. If you want to know more, you will have to ask the Apadisha himself.” Mergen returned Llesho’s horrified stare with a wry smile. “Or the master of his caravans,” he relented. “Pontus is where all caravans end. In the marketplaces of the city the merchants from the West exchange their goods for wares of the East, and then both return the way they came, their goods exchanged at the Silver Door, which is the name given to Pontus.”

  Radimus added, “I’ve heard stories of the West, that men live in huts made of sticks and wear the skins of animals untreated and unstitched as their only clothing. It seems an unlikely wardrobe for a kingdom of bankers.” He gave a shrug. “Stories may travel like silk and wool, but they change more in the passage. The magician dismissed them as children’s tales, but there is often a seed of truth in the most outlandish tale. Whoever they may have been in their own country, Bithynia has the say of it now.”

  Llesho nodded. It was a forbidding reminder of the vast power that held Menar in slavery. Llesho had met great powers before, however, including Mergen-Khan himself, and he’d come out of it with his life and his heart more or less intact. He’d do it again because he had to. Between the grasslands and the star-scattered realm of the Apadisha, however, lay a field of blue that began a few days march west of the khan’s current position and stretched more than a hundred li in every direction.

  “What land is this?” Llesho asked. It seemed by far the most convenient route, though he knew there must be some reason why the caravans had avoided it for the passes above Kungol.

  “No land at all, but the Marmer Sea,” Mergen said, sweeping his finger around the southern curve of blue. “Your Master Markko will doubtless take his men around the curve of the shore here.”

  Master Markko himself might choose to travel as a bird or in the shape of one of the horrific winged monsters Llesho had seen him transform into before. Though they had to learn the trick of it, magicians inherited that skill with even one drop of the dragon blood in their bloodline. His Harnish followers would have to travel more mundane paths, however.

  “Why not by sea?” Llesho slashed a diagonal across the blue with his finger. The sea route from the southern grasslands to Pontus would save some distance.

  “No Harnishman would willingly leave solid ground to risk his life on something as soft as water,” Yesugei explained. “Any more than one would cross a fire by leaping from flame to flame. Fire and water can only be tamed so far. At any moment they may rise up against their master with soft power, dragging their victims down to their own level to destroy them.”

  None of the young warriors lost at the river in the recent battle had known how to swim, which hadn’t made sense to Llesho. Now it did.

  “The Marmer is well known for its storms,” Radimus agreed. “They sweep up suddenly, demon-tossed, and crush a boat like a paper toy in the palm of a giant.”

  “Don’t forget the pirates,” Pr
ince Tayy almost managed to hide his grin. “As deadly as the Marmer’s storms, and just as unpredictable.” In the grasslands, pirates were villains of tall tales passed around the stove late at night, and not the dread of seafarers.

  “And dragons,” Kaydu added with her own irrepress ible grin.

  “Still,” Mergen-Khan objected with a frown meant to subdue his nephew, “most ships get through, or there would be no sea trade at all.” When he received a sufficiently meek bow of the head, he turned to Llesho. “I assume that’s the route you’ll be taking?”

  “When the storms blow, do they drive boats back to shore, or hurry them on to Pontus?” To Llesho there seemed no point in taking the shorter route if storms would make the journey longer, but Mergen answered, “They rise in the grasslands and drive their prey onto the shores of Bithynia, though not always so conveniently as to bring them into port.”

  Llesho nodded, taking it all in. Danger, of course, but not more than facing the magician in battle, he thought. “How far?”

  “Three days’ travel.” Mergen cast him a dubious look. “Two if you’re eighteen.”

  The world was turning out to be much bigger than he’d dreamed when the ghost of his father’s dead minister sent him out to find his brothers and save Thebin. He wondered if the Dun Dragon hadn’t been right about biting off more quest than he could chew. If he faltered, however, Kungol would be lost forever. The very gates of heaven would fall under the onslaught of whatever demon held them under siege. So he bowed his head and prayed that Bithynia was as far as he’d have to go.

  They talked long into the night and went to their beds exhausted for a short rest. Lluka and Balar would have traveled west to find their lost brother as well. In Llesho’s dreams, however, Lluka was a hand tightening around his throat. Somehow his brother must be dealt with, but the khan had left him no time to discover what drove a blessed husband of the Great Goddess to madness or how to stop the growing torment of his visions. As the light of Great Moon Lun moved across the roof of his red tent, Llesho lay awake with images of a wall of fire out of Lluka’s dreams sweeping over his weary head. Finally, he came to the decision he had known in some part of him that he would have to make.