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

by Curt Benjamin

Kaydu might have been more successful with her, “I should think not!” But they all knew by now the tale of the spear Llesho carried at his back. It had killed him before, and while it rested quiet under his control now, in the past it had been his fate to die before his battle was won. Even Little Brother stared his accusation at Llesho, as if he meant to die on purpose, just to leave them all stranded in the middle of the fight. Which he had no intention of doing.

  If he could help it.

  He hadn’t thought Tayy could look any paler. By the end of the debate, however, he had turned as white as the mortal goddess of war herself.

  “Discussion of my successor can wait. You need rest,” Llesho said with a hand to the prince’s shoulder.

  Tayy looked as if he might resist, but Llesho made a gesture that only he could see, a drift of fingertips that traced the scar of his own terrible wounds beneath his formal Thebin coat. Prince Tayyichiut would understand that and the challenge in the tilt of Hmishi’s chin. He would be judged on this deck by soldiers who had suffered through their own terrible wounds, and they were looking for good sense and not bravery. A solder took rest when he could grab it, figuring he’d want to stockpile the healing for the days when there’d be no rest at all. Prince Tayy dropped his head, conceding the point.

  “You can find me belowdecks in my bunk if you need me.”

  “I’ll be heading to my own bunk soon enough,” Llesho assured him. Tayy gave him a dubious look but seemed to remember diplomacy and kept any comment to himself. With a careful bow, his hand discreetly resting over the healing wound in his belly, he left the poop deck.

  Master Den watched the departing Harnish prince with a slight tilt of the head. “He’ll be fine. I’ll just see that he makes it to his hammock,” he said. With a final “Be careful” to signal that he understood Llesho’s intentions, and approved, the trickster god followed Prince Tayyichiut from the deck.

  Llesho watched them go, thinking that this time he’d actually told the truth. Sort of. He’d recovered completely from his confrontation with the storm but hadn’t dream traveled since coming to Pontus. It was past time to see what was going on in the world. He had to check in with Shou; Habiba had doubtless reported already, but Llesho wanted to see how things were for himself. In particular, he wanted to know if Mergen and the Tinglut-Khan had settled their differences. He didn’t want to show up on the battlefield to discover a war in his own ranks.

  That was the easy part. They still had to find out where Master Markko had gone to ground. Moving through the dream realm, Llesho could orient on a place or on a person. Shou or Markko, the only difference was his reception on the other end. That made him the person best able to find the magician. He had a feeling that it all came down to the Golden City. Kungol. Markko would know that, too. It wouldn’t take much effort to find him; doing it without getting caught made it a lot harder. With Pig’s help, though, he’d finish the task and return before he’d left. He could rest then. And his companions would never know he’d been gone.

  Looking out to sea, he shivered, wishing he could call Marmer Sea Dragon. Dangerous thought, that. When had riding to battle in the third eye of a dragon come to represent safety and comfort? He’d forgotten that his cadre still surrounded him until Bixei interrupted his musing with a long-suffering sigh.

  “He’s got that look on his face,” Lling agreed.

  “What look?” Llesho didn’t pretend innocence. They knew he was planning something, they knew he knew they knew. But he was sincerely curious about how it showed. Oddly enough, they had even followed that convoluted thought.

  “The little frowny thing,” Hmishi supplied.

  “And the faraway look you get in your eyes at the same time, as if you were trying to see something that was too far away to make out.” That was Lling, who had commented in the first place.

  “At least when I sold him to the pirates, I knew I could follow and get him back eventually,” Stipes added, a surprise since he seldom spoke up in councils. He still placed himself below the others of his cadre. Not a thinker, or a courtier, he’d often said, but a simple gladiator who had become a soldier to follow his heart. But Master Markko’s storm had brought their most recent plan to the brink of disaster, and he still smarted from his part in it.

  “My father will be back soon with a report. Then you can decide what you have to do.” Kaydu’s tone was cool, logical, with none of the pleading he saw in her eyes. Even Little Brother looked worried.

  So they knew what he intended, more or less. He didn’t have to tell them, but perhaps Llesho owed an explanation of some sort. “The dream travel is my gift, and my one greatest weapon in my lady’s defense. I have to believe she meant me to use it.”

  “And no report can relate as much as you can see with your own eyes.” Kaydu had flown far in the shape of a bird. She did understand at least that part of it. He didn’t think any of them would understand his need to confront Markko in his own lair, however. He wasn’t sure he understood that himself.

  Hmishi wouldn’t look at Llesho, but followed his gaze out to sea. From the start he had protected his prince even to the point of dying in his place. He’d never been able to accept being left behind. “When are you going?”

  “Now.” Llesho stepped away from the rail and started to run in a tight circle. He noticed the Daughters of the Sword left to guard him pass troubled frowns between them, but he didn’t have time to explain and wasn’t sure how they’d take his answers if he gave them. That was Kaydu’s job; she would know what to say.

  He leaped, lifted, stretched with hooves that found purchase in the clouds. Marmer Sea fell away behind him and when he reached again for the waking world, he found a dream.

  He knew it was a dream in the first place because it was dark, and he’d left Pontus in the morning. Time sometimes moved strangely in dream travel, of course, but one glance at the bed told Llesho he didn’t want to take a second glance. This was definitely not his own dream.

  He was in a yellow silk tent as large as the audience hall in Durnhag. Rich tapestries hung from thick silk cords strung between the tent poles dividing the space into several chambers. A single lamp rested on a simple wooden chest. Its soft glow illuminated a close circle around a low couch in the sleeping chamber where Llesho had landed. Shou’s bedchamber, he thought, since he’d set his thoughts on Shou when he left the waking realm. With a glance at the low sleeping couch, however, he realized that he wasn’t sure about anything except the sudden powerful desire to run as far as possible as quickly as he could.

  Two shapes writhed at the center of the bed, covered to what would have been the shoulders if either had been human. But they weren’t human, either one of them. Cobras each as thick as his own body had so looped their coils together that only the contrast of their colors told where one began and the other left off. The white cobra Llesho had seen before, and knew to be the Lady SienMa, mortal goddess of war. So he wasn’t exactly terrified when she raised her head on a long, flared neck and stared at him out of eyes black as onyx. She said nothing, but collapsed back onto the bed, nudging at the brown snake with her nose and flicking a darting tongue over his face to wake him.

  Llesho fell back in dismay as the brown snake turned, writhing under the blanket. Coils slipped and settled again; the cobra raised its head, watching him out of Shou’s eyes, Shou’s face. Terror and desire passed mindlessly across the emperor’s face. He didn’t seem to notice Llesho but focused inwardly, instead, on the shock of finding himself armless and legless with the fangs of a cobra stretching his lipless mouth. The white cobra heaved a loose coil over the emperor’s snaky body, dragging the covers down to reveal more of their squirming lengths and Llesho looked away. His mind could scarcely grasp what he had seen, but he knew he didn’t want to see any more.

  “My Lady SienMa,” he whispered, hoping that she didn’t hear the terror in his voice. “I’ll wait outside . . .”

  “Mine,” the snake hissed, bringing Llesho’s head a
round with a snap. In her human form he trusted her completely to protect Shou. This strange creature, however, made the flesh creep on the back of his neck.Don’t turn away, a voice of caution whispered in the back of his mind.Don’t trust what you see.

  Flaring her hood, the white cobra bared her fangs. Llesho screamed as she sank them deeply into the emperor’s throat.

  “Ahh!” Shou’s eyes opened wide, clouded with confusion and the coursing of venom in his veins. “Llesho?” he asked, surprised. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’ll go . . .” He began to back out of the room. Shou had closed his human eyes as if waiting for death.

  Despite his terror, Llesho stopped in his flight, unable to leave the emperor in such danger. “If you kill him, he won’t belong to anyone,” he pointed out with a low bow to the great white snake.

  “Mine,” she hissed again, but withdrew her fangs.

  Shou’s head fell back on the pillows, eyes opening slowly as his body became once more the human shape of a man tangled in the bedcovers. “My lady,” he murmured and reached a questing arm for her. “Come back to bed.”

  “Mine,” a voice whispered in his ear, and then the tent vanished and with it the sleeping couch. That last voice, however, hadn’t been the Lady SienMa. It had been Shou, and Llesho had the uncomfortable feeling that this time he hadn’t entered the lady’s dream, but the emperor’s. What it meant, he wasn’t sure, apart from the obvious. That had taken no more than the sight of her hand on Shou’s thigh in the governor’s palace at Durnhag to understand. He needed to talk to Habiba, though he didn’t know quite what to say, or how he could say anything. Shou hadn’t invited him into his dream and he had a right to his privacy. But Llesho had to do something.

  “I agree.” That was Pig, wandering out of the nothing-ness with a nod of greeting.

  “To what?” Llesho asked him.

  Pig just smiled and gave his body a little shake to settle the silver chains that wound around him.

  “I need to talk to Shou,” Llesho decided, “And in the light of day.” Since he was already in the dream world, it took no more than the thought and a toss of his antlered head to place him outside the tent he had lately escaped. Great Sun was peeping over the horizon. Even in daylight, however, the guards in front of the tent made warding signs as he came toward them.

  Pig, walking on his hind legs a few paces behind, whispered a reminder in his ear: “The antlers.”

  Ah, that explained at least part of the soldiers’ dismay. Llesho shook his head again, composing his features into his own face. His transformation didn’t seem to calm the guardsmen, and Sento popped his head out of the tent to see what the commotion was. When he saw Llesho, he motioned him forward, holding the tent flap aside while Pig entered after him.

  “Holy Excellence, enter, please.” The soldierly servant backed his way into the public audience portion of the great silk tent and brought a chair for Llesho to sit in. “His Highness the Emperor has been watching for you. We have all been worried.”

  Llesho did as he was bid. The tent was much as he’d known it to be in Shou’s dream, with carpets and tapestries dividing the rich silk space into its various chambers. Llesho recognized this outer chamber from more than his dreams, however.

  Long ago, at the start of his quest, he had knelt at the feet of the goddess and studied a map of the known world: the many provinces of the empire of Shan, and the grasslands, which had made no distinctions between friend and foe then but swept a single green march of fear and anguish across the map. The Gansau Wastes had appeared as a question at the edge of the known world and Thebin, far to the south, had glowed in golden threads that symbolized the Golden City at the country’s heart. The map lay hidden somewhere in one of the many travel chests, but Llesho would never forget that day when he first came to understand that great powers moved behind his quest and worlds balanced on his actions.

  “His Highness has just awakened from his rest,” Sento continued with his greeting as Llesho reacquainted himself with his surroundings. He showed no sign of having noticed Pig, who chose for himself a bit of carpet off in the corner. Tossing a few pillows about to make himself a comfortable wallow, the Jinn lowered his great bulk to the floor as the servant made his master’s excuses: “He will join you shortly; I’m just setting out breakfast—” Sento bowed his way out before disappearing behind the hangings that divided the tent.

  “It seems we are expected,” Pig said.

  In answer, the trill of a melody skittering restively from the throat of a silver flute.

  “Dognut!”

  “Llesho!” The dwarf, who was also Bright Morning, the mortal god of mercy, rose from a chair cut down to his small stature and crossed the space between them. “How fare our comrades? Have you been having many adventures?”

  “Oh, the boy always has adventures,” Pig answered grumpily as he snuggled down in his borrowed pillows. “Pulling honest people out of their hard-earned sleep.”

  “I see no one by that description hereabouts,” Dognut greeted the Jinn’s answer with glee. “Tell me everything,” he insisted, “or I’ll be reduced to writing love songs!”

  Pig just snorted. The dwarf had said nothing of the love about which he might write, but the ample wrinkles at the corners of his eyes crinkled with the lively enjoyment of secrets shared between them. Llesho wondered what entertained the dwarf more—the strange affair of the emperor of Shan and the mortal goddess of war, which made an epic of itself, or the nest of cobras that filled the lovers’ bed in their dreams. Or maybe, he simply enjoyed the discomfort of a young king from a country where they did not practice such sophisticated pleasures even in their sleep.

  Llesho chose to believe it was the former, and aimed his comments at that target: “What in the name of all the realms of heaven and earth and the underworld do they think they are doing?” he whispered urgently. He couldn’t free himself from the image of Shou’s face above that snaky body, Shou’s terror. None of the strangeness of the dream had shaken the emperor’s desire for his goddess, however, in any form she took.

  “Is that what loving above one’s station does?” he asked, not alone about Shou, but for his own case and the Great Goddess who waited for him.

  “It depends upon the lovers,” Dognut mused, no help at all. He didn’t say what it was about the lovers on which the shape of their affection rested.

  One of the pair in question, the Emperor Shou, strode out from behind the tapestries that defended the privacy beyond. He wore the armor of a general in which Llesho had first met him and strode to the map table to oversee the arrangement of more domestic forces on the table. Sento followed, a heavy tray carried in his arms, and arrayed the fare as his emperor directed. Eggs boiled in their shells and steamed dumplings with red beans and stewed fruits held their positions amid the cups and plates while the steaming pot of tea marshaled reinforcements from the center of the spread.

  “Breakfast?” Shou invited him.

  Pig had perked up at the mention of breakfast, and his great turned up snout sniffed the air shamelessly, hinting at an invitation. Neither Shou nor his servant seemed to notice the presence of the Jinn, however. With a disgruntled sigh, Pig finally subsided into his silken wallow, his chin resting on his forehoofs. If no one noticed him, he could gobble down every word between the kings and gods gathered under her ladyship’s silk roof. For a Jinn, that was almost better than food. Pig wriggled himself a little lower among the pillows, trying, Llesho thought, to make himself invisible. Which would have been impossible with a pig so large, except that no one could see him anyway.

  “Her ladyship will join us shortly,” Shou informed Llesho with a smile. “We can make plans and fill our bellies at the same time.”

  No other sign of the dream Llesho had invaded marked the emperor’s features, though he would have sworn it was Shou’s dream, and not her ladyship’s. Something of his confusion must have shown in his eyes because Shou stopped, arrested in mid-greeting.
A half-remembered image notched a crease between Shou’s eyes.

  “I saw you . . .” The emperor blushed like a schoolboy. This was so unlike the assured commander and spymaster Llesho knew that he wondered if Shou still suffered the effects of his captivity. Markko, using his lieutenant Tsu-tan, had tortured Hmishi to death. His torments had left the emperor of Shan a broken man for months. Shou didn’t look broken now, however. Just embarrassed.

  “It’s just a dream,” he finally stammered out. “I’m not . . . she’s not . . .”

  Her ladyship joined them then, gliding across the thick layer of carpets in a many-layered gown dyed the colors of Thousand Lakes Province. Her face was as white as the glaciers on the mountains above Kungol—and as cold—her mouth the red of fresh blood on new snow. Her eyes, however, glowed with richness and warmth as she went to her lover and threaded a slender hand through his arm.

  “I trust you slept well,” she bade him before gracing Llesho with her attention. “Holy Excellence. Welcome.”

  She inclined her head in a mark of respect that brought a deep burgundy glow to Llesho’s own bronze cheeks. Such a greeting, from a lady of her station, added the weight of her regard to his claim of a holy kingship in the realm of the spirit as well as that of the living. He’d grown accustomed to such deference among mortals, but felt he had yet to prove himself to the gods.

  He was here, however, a thousand li and more from where his companions doubtless waited in seething frustration for his return. And without a drop of dragon’s blood in his veins. That had to mean something. He returned the lady’s greeting with a bow, and took his place in the camp chair at the table.

  Shou’s servant and guardsman returned with an extra plate and a cup for Llesho to join his hosts for tea and breakfast then. Her ladyship thanked him with a graceful drift of fingers.

  “Would you ask Habiba to join us?” she said. “And the others who make up our councils as well?”

  With a low bow to her ladyship, Sento departed, leaving them to break their fast in privacy. Or nearly so. No one would question the presence of the emperor’s fool at his table, least of all those who knew the dwarf as the mortal god of mercy. As for Pig, only her ladyship seemed to notice his presence and she made no indication that he should remove himself. So Pig stayed, content to gather what information he might, while Dognut plated a small selection of dumplings and grains for himself and returned to his own specially built chair in the corner.