The Prince of Shadow

by Curt Benjamin

  “I have to find my brothers,” Llesho said tentatively.

  Kwan-ti nodded. “So he said to me on his deathbed.”

  “So he said to me in a dream beneath the bay,” he agreed.

  “You cannot go back to the oyster beds now.”

  “What am I to do?” he asked; this conversation with the healer felt more like a dream than the one he had with the spirit under the bay. Something about Kwan-ti’s eyes, the gentle touch of her fingers on the back of his hand, slowed time to a walk.

  “For the present, you must consider what you can do that will not kill your soul in the doing,” she answered, and the spell was broken. She rose and spoke to someone behind Llesho in the longhouse. “Are you feeling ill, Tsu-tan?”

  “Not at all.” The hopeful witch-finder bowed his head over the pearl basket he carried. “I just came to see how the young diver was faring. Shen-shu will want him back on the boat tomorrow.”

  “Then Shen-shu can speak to me tomorrow. Now, we must permit young Llesho to rest.”

  “Of course, of course,” Tsu-tan bowed and scraped his way out of the longhouse. He returned to his place beneath the coconut palm and took up again the pearl sorting basket never long out of his hands. He could see all the comings and goings of the longhouse from there, Kwan-ti knew, as she also knew he was watching her for evidence of witchcraft. She feared that Tsu-tan would now turn his attention on the young Llesho as well.

  For himself, Llesho felt no inclination to rest. He had not regained his full strength, but he felt well enough to take a walk on the shore and watch for the red harvest boats to come in from the bay. So he left the longhouse while Kwan-ti was occupied in bandaging the cut foot of the cook’s assistant, and wandered out past the cookhouse, onto the road.

  Few slaves traveled the road at midday, but those he passed had heard about Llesho’s double tragedy, the loss of Lleck and his own near drowning, and did not interrupt his brooding with idle conversation. Llesho had not quite told the truth about Lleck who, as minister of arts and education, was more a servant of the Thebin people than to the family of the king. Lleck had found him in captivity and joined him there, had taught the young prince not only reading and writing, but the arts of strategy that had come too late to save a king. As he walked, Llesho made good use of those lessons, setting evidence against probability, and examining methods to reach his goal.

  If the apparition had been a dream concocted by his own starved mind, how had he known the minister had died? And if it was a dream, how could he explain the same message delivered to Kwan-ti? It must be true then: his brothers still lived, in servitude as he did himself. Llesho had to rescue them and together the brothers must free Thebin from the killing grasp of the Harn. If their mother still lived, languishing in the dungeons of her own palace—The thought stuttered out. Llesho could not imagine his beautiful mother reduced to squalor and filth, but the image of his battered sister bleeding into the refuse heap struck him to the heart. He hadn’t wanted her dead, not really, he’d just wanted his mother back. By the time Ping had turned two, however, the little princess had adored him. He couldn’t help but love her back. Couldn’t—wouldn’t—imagine her dead.

  Since he had arrived on Pearl Island, he had been no farther from the slave compound than the oyster beds. There were no days off for good behavior, no visits to market or the city for a play or pageant. Once he had hated the duties that lined him up, smallest of seven brothers, to wave, nod, and bow at the side of his mother and father. He had longed for the day he was old enough to follow his brothers into the city for stolen pleasure in the night. That had all ended before Llesho even knew what pleasures his brothers found in the city. So why had Lleck come looking for the youngest and weakest, who was stuck on an island nobody ever got off of? Why hadn’t he found one of Llesho’s older brothers, who could actually do something about his deathbed revelation?

  Trying to figure out Lleck’s reasons wasn’t helping him decide what to do. Llesho had walked all the way to the docks without even seeing the road he trod upon, but had only confirmed the impossibility of ever completing the spirit’s quest. Who left the island, ever? Lord Chin-shi, of course, and his wife and daughters. Lord Chin-shi’s son had not been seen on the island since before Llesho had arrived. The foremen, Kon of first quarter and Shen-shu of second quarter, sometimes accompanied their master to the slave markets to acquire new pearl fishers. But Shen-shu was the older of the two, and he was scarcely thirty. Neither was likely to give up their privileged position any time soon.

  Pearl fishers never left the island, not living or dead. If they died of disease, they were cremated immediately to curtail the spread of infection. Rumor had it they did not always wait for death before feeding the fire with the struggling remains. When they drowned, or grew too old to work at all, they were fed to the pigs.

  Kwan-ti had been right, though, he could not go back to the oyster beds. His lungs were fine, he could survive underwater as long as he ever could. But if he were visited by a vision again, he would surely drown while he argued with the demon who accosted him. He needed a second skill, one that would keep him out of the pig trough and get him off the island.

  While he sat on the dock, thinking, the sun had dropped low, and he heard the taunting challenges of the pearl fishers returning home from the quarter-shift. He looked up, vaguely embarrassed to be wearing clothes when Lling and Hmishi and all of his fellow pearl divers were naked from work. He forgot all about the incoming divers, however, when he recognized the device on the prow of the harvest boat: tridents crossed over a round shield. Of course! Lord Chin-shi made his fortune on the pearl fisheries, but he spent his fortune in the arena. Renowned even in the longhouse for their prowess, Chin-shi’s gladiators competed in arenas almost as far away as Thebin itself. And gladiators were given a cut of the purses they won. If a gladiator was good, and survived his battles, he might pay his way free before age and injury cut him down.

  Llesho elbowed and apologized his way past his companions who were swarming off the boat, mocking him for his clothing and asking after his health. When he reached Foreman Shen-shu at the prow of the boat, Llesho fell to his knees and knocked his forehead on the dock in the formal style of a petition. “Honorable Foreman, sir, I respectfully request that you take my petition to your master, Lord Chin-shi of Pearl Island.” He carefully referred to the master as that of Shen-shu alone, accepting by implication that Shen-shu held that position over himself. He’d learned long ago not to show the anger that flared every time he had to kowtow to the foreman: strategy, Lleck had taught him, sometimes meant sacrificing today’s pride for tomorrow’s victory.

  “The witch forbids you to go back to the beds, doesn’t she, pig food?” Shen-shu answered.

  Llesho lifted his head from the dock and sat back on his heels, his palms resting on his knees. “I know of no witch, Master Shen-shu,” he said, ignoring the more pertinent part of the foreman’s statement for that which he could truthfully refute. “I come to you with a petition to Lord Chin-shi that I may train as a gladiator for the ring.”

  For a moment the entire dock went quiet, as Foreman Shen-shu stared at him in amazement. Then the foreman began to laugh. “A gladiator, pig food? A short contest with the pigs, perhaps.” In the silence, Shen-shu’s words rang sharply. “You pearl fishers are so skinny, Lord Chin-shi’s gladiators will use you to pick their teeth.”

  Llesho reddened to the roots of his black, wavy hair. Beneath his clothes, he knew himself to be as skinny as his companions, whose bones he could plainly see pressing against the thinly stretched flesh that covered them. He imagined the gladiators to be huge men, taller than mountains with muscles like carved rocks, and knew he could not compete against such specimens of manhood. But, he reasoned, even gladiators must once have been boys. They could not have been born with all that muscle and sinew, and they didn’t have a Thebin’s natural endurance. If they could become great fighters, so could he.

  “If I am so
skinny,” Llesho argued, “the pigs won’t miss me, and the gladiators will have some fun breaking me into pieces.”

  “That they will, boy, and feed you to the house dogs when they are done.” Shen-shu, who almost never displayed any sign of good humor, slapped his knee and laughed in agreement with Llesho’s assessment of his chances.

  “Forget about the old witch and her threats and warnings,” he chided with more of that good humor so alien to his nature. “Your shift-mates miss you, and it makes them inefficient.”

  “They must learn to do without me,” Llesho countered, “because I am determined to be a gladiator.”

  “You are a fool, do you know that, boy?” Shen-shu was no longer laughing.

  Although at a disadvantage, being still on his knees, Llesho looked up at the foreman and held his gaze steadily. A good strategist knew when to hold his ground. “Then I am a fool,” he accepted. “But I am a fool who will die as a gladiator, not as a pearl fisher. Nor as food for the pigs.”

  “We’ll see.” Foreman Shen-shu would say no more. With his authority over the pearl divers came the responsibility to mediate their rare petitions. Those he could not negotiate to a standstill must be referred to the Lord Chin-shi. And the boy Llesho was clearly not going to negotiate.

  “Your humble slave gives thanks for your beneficence, in taking this petition to your master,” Llesho answered, completing the formal petition ceremony.

  His shift-mates, who listened silently while he argued his case with the foreman, stood apart from him with confusion and even fear on their faces. Llesho looked from one to the other, but found no understanding or support, not even from Lling, who turned away from him when he tried to catch her gaze. For the first time in his life as a slave, Llesho found himself embarrassed to see his Thebin shift-mates naked.

  I am your prince, he thought, you owe me more than this. But they didn’t know, and he couldn’t tell them, nor did he expect that they would thank him if he did. He turned his eyes to the ground and walked away, ignoring the wagon that silently filled with the divers going home.

  Chapter Three

  WEEKS passed for Llesho in an agony of suspense. Kwan-ti did not approve of his decision, but she could not declare him fit to work in the pearl beds either. They both knew that left little but the pig troughs for a growing boy with no useful skills. Kwan-ti said nothing, but went about her work with her lips pressed together and her eyebrows drawn down in a frown.

  Llesho’s strength returned quickly, and with it the need for movement. He missed work, realized that the danger of the pearl beds had kept his mind sharp and his attention focused. And he discovered, to his surprise, that he missed his shift-mates. He had never thought of them as friends when they spent each quarter-shift together in the bay. In the days since he had seen the spirit of Lleck and nearly drowned, however, the pearl divers had begun to distance themselves from Llesho. The experience had set him apart as his secretive reserve had not. The usual quarter-rest banter that bound the group with petty griefs and shared workaday mishaps could not absorb so great a challenge, could not take in this new shape of him and make it ordinary. Llesho recognized the sudden emptiness where Lling’s smile used to be, and the absence at his back that Hmishi used to fill. It seemed that he had been wrong on all counts. Not friendless and, according to Lleck’s spirit, not without a family either. And not aware of any of it until he found himself well and truly alone. Well, damn.

  To fill the hours, he ran. Not fast at first, but as he recovered, his runs grew longer: around the island once, twice, before he stopped, gasping. Even Thebins needed to catch their breath eventually. Some days he had heard the measured tramp of feet falling in unison to a deep voice rumbling out the time—now faster, now slower, while the feet of running men kept the beat. Llesho had kept ahead of them easily, and soon enough they changed direction, moved off on a path Llesho never took, up the hill to the training compound at its height.

  Mostly, the running kept him focused on the moment: on the smooth, pale sand shifting underfoot and the fronds of dense foliage grown too close to the path that brushed against him as he passed, marking his skin with the scent of rain and mold and the broken promise of sunlight. The chitter of birds deep in the forest paced his own heart, but couldn’t take the place of absent friends. Alone in his weary orbit of the island, he wondered how long he would be left adrift between lives.

  In the third week after Llesho presented Foreman Shen-shu with his formal petition, a messenger came to summon the healer Kwan-ti to the main house. Lord Chin-shi had never summoned the peasant healer before. He had his own doctors, and the house servants took care of their own. Sometimes, when the wounds of Lord Chin-shi’s gladiators healed over on the outside but festered inside, Kwan-ti would receive a call to treat them. But she had always stayed in the longhouse before, listening to the description of the wounded gladiator’s condition, and sending the messenger back with instructions and a potion or packet of herbs. This time, Kwan-ti herself had gone with the messenger, leaving her bag of herbs and healer’s pouch behind. Her quick glance, resting lightly on Llesho in passing, told him that he was the object of the summons. Lord Chin-shi, or his trainer, would want to judge her answer for himself when he asked what chance a half-drowned Thebin boy had to survive the rigors of gladiatorial training. She would need no tools of her trade for that.

  Wondering what she would say just made him sick in the pit of his belly, so Llesho ran, as fast as he could manage this time. When he reached the landward side of the island, he plunged into the sea. He swam until his legs felt too heavy to propel him forward and he could not lift his arms to pull himself through the water. Alone and at the limit of his strength, he rolled over on his back and let the sea carry him, cradled in its warmth. So far from land, the sounds of Pearl Island did not reach him and Llesho allowed his mind to float with the current, wrapped in the quiet and at peace. He could stay here forever, he thought, with the salty breeze for company and the blood-warm water for comfort. The cry of a bird overhead seemed to come from a different world, calling to him though a bamboo screen set with bright silk streamers. It was another memory from his childhood before the Harn came, shaking itself loose when he let his thoughts wander. In summertime that screen had shaded the window in his mother’s sitting room, its ribbons in the colors of the goddess fluttering in the breeze. Llesho wanted to hold onto that memory, to pass into that world of his past that called to him with the cry of birds like the sound of laughter. But somewhere in the back of his mind he felt the presence of his old mentor looking on with disapproval. He had things to do: brothers to rescue, a nation to free from the clutches of invaders and tyrants. No time for rest, eternal or otherwise.

  The water seemed to take Lleck’s side of the debate. The current pulled him away from the mainland that had grown no more distinct for all his efforts to reach it. After a while, Llesho executed a neat roll and began kicking strongly again, cutting through the water toward Pearl Island.

  Too late, he realized that he’d swum out too far. The island was too far away and his legs were leaden, his arms numb. Llesho should have been afraid, but dying didn’t frighten him anymore. He’d long ago come to terms with the gray depths as an enemy to his freedom; now he embraced the gentle side of the sea’s strength, another friend he was leaving behind.

  Something nudged his side, and the bumpy, grinning face of a water dragon broke the surface in front of him. Spume ran off her sides as her green-and-gold-scaled back rolled past him, never more than a tiny fraction of her length visible above the sea. She wrapped a loose coil around his waist. Her delicate forked tongue flicked out, touched his face, his hand; Llesho wondered if she planned to eat him for lunch. He thought he read laughter in her slitted eyes, however; she butted him gently with her tiny curled horns and disappeared, the soft, scaleless skin of her belly sliding effortlessly across his body. Even the water dragon had been company, once he figured out she didn’t plan to eat him. But then, just ahead
of him, the dragon’s head rose out of the sea, coils glistening like gold and emeralds in the sun and the water. She dove, vanishing again into the sea, and he felt himself lifted on her strong back, and carried toward Pearl Island.

  “I’m going,” he told her, “I get the point.”

  The dragon seemed to understand. She gave her back a wriggle, and laughed at him between sharp curved teeth. The human sound of that laughter, feminine and musical, should have surprised him more, except that Llesho had grown to expect the impossible from the sea. So he laughed in turn, ran a hand down the gleaming flank of his companion, and nudged her gently with his knees, the way he had directed his pony forward when he was a child in Thebin. When they grew too near the shore for her great size, the dragon dipped her head beneath the waves, and Llesho released his hold. He was close enough now to make the shore under his own power, and he struck out with strong strokes, leaving almost no wake from his smooth kicks. He soon reached the shore, and sat panting and looking out over the water he had just crossed, but the water dragon was gone.

  When he returned to the longhouse, spent but at peace, Kwan-ti was already there, tucking stray tendrils of wet hair into her glistening bun. She said nothing to him of her day’s errand, nor did she question him about the lateness of the hour. For his part, Llesho made no mention of his attempted escape or the way the sea itself had comforted him and turned him back to face his future on Pearl Island. In the days that followed he still ran, but the urgency had gone out of his pounding feet. Tomorrow or the next day, the future would come for him. Fate was like that.

  On the third day after Lord Chin-shi had summoned Kwan-ti, a boy not much older than Llesho himself, but a head taller and with pale gold skin, presented himself at the longhouse with the message that Llesho should gather up his possessions and follow. Since Llesho owned only the clothes on his back and the basket he had kept them in while at work in the pearl beds, he used his few moments to say good-bye to the healer, and to leave a parting message for Lling and one for Hmishi. He would miss them, and for a moment the thought of entering the gladiators’ compound, where he would see no Thebin faces, daunted him more than any fear of the danger his new trade might hold. But Lleck had taught him that all of life was a circle. You couldn’t go forward for long without meeting your past. Llesho had always hated that saying because he could think of little in his past that he wished to revisit. It surprised him to discover he took comfort in it now.