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

by Curt Benjamin

  Llesho followed his lead through the forms, scarcely noting what he did until his teacher called him to attention with a sharp reminder that the earth they honored in their prayers deserved better of him. It did, he realized with a jolt. The sun cast spears of yellow light around small, puffy clouds drifting low in a sky of blue so brilliant it brought tears of wonder to his eyes.

  Those clouds would release no drop of rain, would drift no lower to brush their cheeks with mist, until the spring came again. Already the grass around them had turned the color of old Dun Dragon, drawing back to reveal the dusty bones of the earth as the dry season passed its arid hand over the land. Still, the day was beautiful in an unforgiving way.

  A jerboa watched him from the shadow of a boulder in the circle of their camp for a moment before hopping away. Llesho thought of Carina mimicking her totem animal’s skipping gait in the shade of Bolghai’s den and the way his brother Adar watched her when she moved around the hospital tent. He thought about Balar playing his lute and Dognut his silver flute, and wished that he’d remembered to sing more when he’d been with them. A harmless black snake slithered by on its own business, and in the distance a herd of wild horses ran like a dark cloud come to earth. They were too far away to see clearly, but his mind’s eye supplied the tails flying out behind them and the manes rising like gleaming halos around their supple necks. Their own mounts whickered to join them.

  The wild run pulled at the spirit of Llesho’s totem animal, the roebuck. He felt the change start in him, the weight of antlers on his head. But Master Den called him back to his prayer forms and his companions and the burden of kingship. Menar remained ahead of him and Prince Tayy was out there somewhere, maybe hurt, or lost. There was too much to do before he could indulge the call of freedom. As he finished the Wind through Millet form, returning to the rest position, he felt the wildness settle a little. He might be a roebuck in the grasslands, but his heart belonged to the gardens of the Great Goddess, and to the high sweet call of the priests and priestesses in the Temple of the Moon. If he had to be a king to win back those things he loved, that’s what he would do.

  But first, he had to find Tayy and repair the damage he’d done there. No one had friends enough to throw away.

  “We’re going for him, aren’t we?” Kaydu lifted Little Brother out of his pack and settled him on her shoulder. She looked more tired than any of them, having taken the last watch. As a bird, she’d spent much of the day before in the air, scouting the way to the sea.

  He nodded, and a tension drawn fine as wire seemed to let go of his cadre. Somehow, Tayy had become one of theirs. Of them all, it seemed, only Llesho hadn’t noticed until it was too late. Master Den heaved a deep sigh, but said nothing. Just as well, since he had no intention of listening to any objections.

  “We go,” he said, with an eye to the horses playing in the distance. “And we start there.”

  They didn’t find him, though their search grew more determined after they circled in on the wild horses. Prince Tayyichiut’s mount was among them, free of its saddle and trailing its reins. Hmishi and Lling tried to catch it to bring with them, but the horse shied away when they drew near and the chief stallion of the herd challenged them with teeth and hooves to defend his new prize. They wouldn’t capture Tayy’s mount without fighting the leader, and Llesho decided he’d rather lose to the animal than cause it any injury. Cutting among the herd he kept the beast distracted long enough for Lling to clear the escaped horse of its bridle and then he drew his companions away again. With a toss of its head, the creature left them, returning to the life it had known before the Qubal had put their saddle on it.

  After that they watched the ground for signs of where Tayy had fallen or been thrown. As the shadows grew longer than the rays of the sun, however, the truth became too pressing to ignore. They weren’t going to find him.

  “It’s time to stop,” he admitted to Master Den, who rode beside him on his dusty old horse.

  “Maybe,” Den agreed, but Stipes interrupted his reply with a cry and a frantic wave of his arm.

  “A trail!” he called. “Dismount before you come any closer! Horses have passed this way.” Crouching close to the ground, he added, “Their feet were covered.”

  Llesho leaped from the saddle, as they all did. In matters of tracking, however, whoever found the trail took the lead. Therefore he deferred to Stipes, suggesting only, “Two hands or more of horse,” as he tested his own eye against those of his cadre.

  “I’d say.” Stipes agreed as Bixei joined them, followed by Hmishi and Lling. “One is carrying a double burden.”

  “Tayy’s horse got away,” Lling reminded them. Tayy hadn’t been so lucky. They all figured that.

  Stipes reached out and measured with his finger the depth of the print left in the dirt. “Rear hooves,” he said. “Dug in really good.” The horse had carried a dead weight slung over its rump. Tayy was hurt, knocked out in the struggle at least, though Llesho saw no evidence of a fight.

  “They found him when he was sleeping,” he said, and thought,alone, without anyone to guard his rest. “But who took him? Not the Southern Harn, they don’t wrap their horses’ hooves like this. And they’d be taking him south, to their own camp, or east, to bargain for ransom. These prints are heading west.”

  “Pirates,” Master Den suggested with a tone of certainty that made Llesho wonder again where’d he’d been the night before and what he’d seen or been a part of. “The sea is no more than a day’s ride; they’ll have been scouting for slaves.”

  “So we’ll find him.” Llesho gave a shrug more casual than he felt. “We can trade the horses, use part of the money to buy him back and the rest to pay our passage across the sea. If he even needs our help. When he tells the pirates who he is, they’ll ransom him back to his uncle. Tayy said that’s what they do with valuable captives on the grasslands.”

  He knew what they did with conquered royals of no particular value but didn’t think a Harnish prince would suffer the same fate. Reluctantly, Kaydu shook her head. “The pirates aren’t from the grasslands. They come from everywhere, but mostly from Bithynia.”

  Master Den added his own grim intelligence: “Pirates usually sell young female prisoners as concubines or servants in the marketplace. The old they murder outright, throw them overboard at sea or strangle them on land. Men of an age for hard work they put to the oar.”

  Now that they knew where Tayy had been taken, Kaydu had the best chance of following. “I’ll find them,” she said, and handed Little Brother in his pack to Bixei, who slung it over his shoulder.

  “Behave yourself,” he warned the creature. “If you give me any trouble, your mistress will find you in the stew pot when she comes back.”

  No one believed him, of course, least of all Little Brother. They all watched as Kaydu leaped into the air, changing into a hawk as she rose. When she had reached flying altitude, she arrowed away in the direction of the sea.

  Llesho turned his attention back to the god who stood watching him the way Habiba studied an experiment. “What part did you play in this, trickster?” His voice fell dangerously low. If he knew for sure . . . he didn’t know what he would do, but murder came to mind. Even the gods would answer to him if they had used him to harm the Qubal boy.

  “It hardly takes a trickster god to create a falling out between princelings who jump to conclusions as quickly as they leap into their saddles.” Master Den sniffed indignantly and smoothed the sleeves of his coat as if he actually had feathers to ruffle.

  The rebuke hurt almost more than Master Markko’s poisons. His fault. Stricken with guilt, Llesho turned an eye to the path in the dust.Why didn’t you tell me? It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, but he knew better. As a teacher, the trickster god had always believed he learned best from his mistakes. So he said instead, “No lesson is worth Tayy’s life.”

  “See. You’ve learned something already.” Master Den gave an encouraging nod and grinned at him.<
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  Llesho turned away, impatient with his teacher’s mood. “I think Shou must need your advice,” he said. “For myself, I have no appetite for your lessons.” He walked away, mounted his horse, and rode after the pirates who had too much head start.

  Presently he heard the sound of horses following, but none had the thundering sound of the monstrous creature the trickster god had ridden. Good. Let him find someone else to torment with his smug tricks and hurtful lessons. Llesho didn’t have time for it anymore. And if he remembered, from step to step, that he had done this and not his teacher, he pushed the thought down deep and looked ahead to the sea. His cadre would free Tayy from the pirates who had taken him for the most evil labor known to a seafaring people.

  Mergen had been right about the distance. They had lost the morning searching for Prince Tayy, but made up some of the lost time by resting only in the deep dark and riding again when Great Moon Lun rose in the sky. As they rode, the ground fell away from the heights of the grassy plateau. When they came to the sea in midmorning of the third day of their travels, they had again passed into lands on the very brink of summer, the air rich and thick with moisture. Or rather, when they reached the outskirts of the strange port city of Edris. Spread around a protected inlet, the city blotted out any glimpse of the Marmer Sea.

  Kaydu joined them as they completed their descent to the coast, reverting to her true form as she landed lightly in her saddle. “Nothing,” she reported, as Little Brother screeched a welcome.

  The monkey climbed out of his pack on Bixei’s saddle and leaped from one horse to the other as they rode. Her mount, accustomed to its rider coming and going in great leaps, chuffed indignantly but didn’t shy as she lifted the monkey onto her shoulder. It seemed to give them both some comfort against the bad news.

  Together, their newly regathered company pressed forward, through a familiar circle of carts, to a cluster of round tents set in a series of half-moon curves around the landward side of the city. Black felt roofs washed like angry waves up against the city walls that rose in the distance. The Uulgar clans, who had sent raiders against Kungol and driven Llesho into slavery on the Long March, had come to market.

  The Uulgar had aligned themselves with Master Markko’s mad purpose, though what they hoped to gain from the fall of heaven and the destruction of the living worlds in fire and chaos Llesho could not imagine. He wondered grimly, however, how many enemies he would have to fight for the life of one Harnish prince. Only the thought of Tayy, abandoned to pirates and a living death in slavery to the oar, kept him from turning his horse and running in the opposite direction.

  His companions had their own memories of the black tents of the Uulgar. Hmishi had been tortured to death in one, and Lling had suffered her own captivity of mind as well as body. Kaydu and Bixei and Stipes had all fought with him in Tsu-tan’s camp to rescue their captive friends. They knew what the power of the magician could do when joined with the bloodthirsty ruthlessness of the Harnish raiders. As if of one mind, they drew closer to each other. For Tayy, whose unhappy plight lay on their consciences, they drove on.

  Down the center cut the wide avenue that Llesho and his band had come to expect of a Harnish tent city. This was not a massing of warriors under the war banner of their khan, however, but a smaller gathering for trade and commerce. Llesho had never actually seen shops in the Qubal ulus, though he knew they must trade for the many foreign goods he had noticed in the camp. Here, however, wares of Harnish make were laid out on blankets at the side of the road. An old woman sitting in the style of the clans presided over each blanket, haggling with passersby and shouting gossip and prices from one to the other. Llesho saw worked leather and beaten metal buckles, and woolens made from the fleece of the sheep that grazed the grasslands. No silver or gold seemed to change hands at the blanket bazaar, but buckles went for beads and leath erwork for embroidery silk.

  Farther on, they found Harnishmen with their horses. The Harnishmen watched the small band of riders with calculation in their eyes. They were selling the culls of their herds, however, not buying, and had no use for the outlander saddles and tack. Llesho’s cadre pressed on.

  The road through the camp ended at a gate in a high wall of plastered rubble that carried on out of sight in the distance to either side. Since it was morning and well into the trading day, the gates stood open. At the center of a sweeping arch over the passway, a watchman noted the comings and goings into the city with a keen eye for trouble. Enclosed like a covered bridge, the arch had arrow slits and lookout windows cut at random along its length, from which the city guard might defend the gate.

  For a moment, the watchman seemed to catch Llesho’s gaze and he wondered if the gates would suddenly swing closed on them. Would an army spill from the garrison to seize them when they passed and turn them over to the Uulgar traders pressed up against the defended city? That was long ago, he thought at the man, the Uulgar have no claim on the princes of Thebin. Whatever had been in the gatekeeper’s glance, he turned away and gave them no more attention as they passed inside.

  Llesho’s experience with cities, from Kungol to Farshore and then back to the Imperial City of Shan, had all led him to expect spacious thoroughfares gracious with trees or banners or ribbons dancing on the wind. He knew about the poverty of cities as well, of course. In Shan, hidden out of the sight of the broad avenues, he had sidestepped slops pitched out of upper windows in buildings sagging in on one another like drunken revelers over streets so narrow a donkey cart would not pass. He wasn’t sure what to make of Edris, however. The streets were narrow and winding like the poor sections of the imperial city and like them too, water trickled thinly over slops dumped in open ditches.

  The day was warm and the smell of ripening ordure overpowered the newcomers. Llesho cut a sideways glance at Kaydu, to find her wrinkling her nose in distaste just as he had. Bixei had handed over the pack where Little Brother usually rode, and the monkey had hidden himself away in it, indignant at the smell, so that he didn’t even show his face as they rode.

  Behind the steaming ditches, however, whitewashed terra-cotta walls showed the pale blush of their blank faces to the winding streets. Protected by their walls the houses were hidden, roofs the color of burnt umber rising in lofty disdain well back from the noise and odors of the streets. Narrow windows high under the eaves peered mysteriously down on lush secret gardens with just the crown of a tree or a spill of bright blossoms on climbing vines visible on the street below. Llesho figured even the most highly perfumed flowers behind those walls couldn’t entirely protect the aloof residents from the smells of the ditches.

  Visitors from every nation Llesho knew, and some he didn’t, filled the narrow avenue leading into the city. He was jostled by a Shannish merchant and bumped with more deliberate insult by a Harnish trader, while a camel drover in the coats of the Tashek people passed through the crowd without looking in their direction. There were men in half a dozen different styles of turbans and some in round little caps and women dressed in everything from veils to soldier’s pantaloons. He would have enjoyed the novelty of it, but the constricted passage reminded him too much of shuffling down the chute to the auction block at the now-banished slave market of the Imperial City of Shan.

  Much as Llesho hated the feeling, he understood a bit of the reasoning behind the rabbit warren craziness of it. Any invading force would find a pitched battle in the narrow streets impossible to fight. Llesho had lived through two such attacks—in Kungol, and in the imperial city—and thought that was a pretty smart idea, especially given Edris’ neighbors on the grasslands. But even a cart with a broken axle could deadend the way into the city, causing panic as traffic continued to press in from the gates. Once that thought had planted itself in his head, he couldn’t shake the cold dread it fostered.

  Eventually, however, the road emptied them out into a wide square paved with blocks of stone round as dinner plates, a fountain at its center. At each of the cardinal points rose a lo
ng building open at the street level. Kaydu flung her arm in a wide sweeping circle to take in every compass point. “The Edris market,” she declared. Their party dismounted, staring about them The space after the confines of the streets stunned them, and the market buildings themselves—

  Llesho was impressed, as newcomers were intended to be. Arches held up by pillars—hundreds of them marching like paired soldiers down the length and breadth of the market—roofed the open street level while supporting the enclosed stories above.

  “That’s where the real money changes hands.” Kaydu had followed his gaze to the upper stories of the north side market, each level decorated with its own motifs of arches and screened windows looking out over the square. “Leg end says that countries have changed hands in the trading houses above the market at Edris. Kings, surely, have risen and fallen as the needs of merchants dictated.

  “Perhaps that is why Kungol fell,” Llesho mused aloud while his companions watched him nervously for prophecy. It wasn’t that, just common sense facing a market where Kungol would have temples. “The Uulgar wanted the riches of Kungol. The merchants would have wanted to attract the caravans away from the high passes and down to the sea. So it might have been arranged.”

  “Worse now,” Kaydu figured, “with Master Markko looking to the gates of heaven in the mountains. You don’t take on the easy quests.”

  “So Dun Dragon said.” He gave Kaydu the lead since she seemed to know the city She directed them toward the south end of the square, where the sound of cattle lowing and chickens squawking told them livestock was sold. “We can sell the horses here, and probably our tack as well.”

  Llesho drew his horse after him, under a set of vaulting arches. Even though there were no sides to the market, the heat of animals and their buyers and sellers combined in an unwholesome stew that raised the sweat on Llesho’s brow and made it difficult to breath.