Prince of Dreams.

by Curt Benjamin.

PART ONE.

THE ROAD TO DURFHAG.

CHAPTER ONE.

"SO THIS is dying."

Llesho strained against his bonds, tormented by the fire burning in his gut and the icy sweat dripping from his shivering body. In his brief moments of lucidity, he wondered how he could burn and tremble with cold at the same time and where he was and how he had come to be a prisoner again. In his delirium, Master Markko came to him as a winged beast with the claws of a lion and the tail of a snake, or sometimes as a great bird with talons sharp as swords tearing the entrails from his belly. Always Llesho heard the magician's voice echoing inside his head: "Among the weak, yes; this is dying."

No escape. He knew, vaguely, that he cried out in his sleep, just as he knew that help wouldn't come. . . .

"Are you waiting for someone?" Master Den rounded the rough wooden bench and sat next to Llesho, quiet until the confusion had cleared from his face. "Your eyes were open, but you didn't answer when I called."

"I was dreaming," Llesho answered, his voice still fogged with distant horror. "Remembering a dream, actually."

A low waterfall chuckled in front of him, reminding him of where he was. The Imperial City of Shan had many gardens, but the ImperialWaterGardenin honor of ThousandLakesProvincehad become Llesho's special place, where he came to sort out his thoughts. Like him, the WaterGardenhad taken some damage in the recent fighting. A delicate wooden bridge had burned to ash, and Harnish raiders had trampled a section of marsh grasses beside a stream that had flowed red with the blood of the fallen for many days. At the heart of the ImperialWaterGarden, however, the waterfall still poured its clean bounty into a stone basin that fed the numerous streams winding among the river reeds. Water lilies still floated in the many protected pools and the lotus still rose out of the mud on defiant stalks. The little stone altar to ChiChu, the trickster god of laughter and tears, still lay hidden under a ledge beneath the chuckling water.

Like the garden, Llesho had survived and healed. He sat on the split log bench just beyond the reach of the fine spray the waterfall kicked up, contemplating the altar to the trickster god-a favored deity of an emperor fond of disguises and mentor to a young prince still learning how to be a king-as if it would give up the secrets of the heavens. In his hand he held a quarter tael of silver and a slip of paper, much wrinkled and dampened from the tight grip he held on it. With a sideways look at Master Den, who was the trickster god ChiChu in disguise, he placed the petition on the tiny altar with the coin inside it for an anchor. Then he sat back down on his bench and prepared to wait.

Master Den said nothing, nor did he reach for the offering on his altar. If it came to a contest, the trickster god had eternity to outsit him. Llesho gave a little sigh and surrendered.

"He comes to me in my dreams. Master Markko. He tells me I'm dying, and I believe him. Then I wake up, and he's gone, and I'm still here." Still alive. But the dreams sometimes felt more real than the waking world.

"And you want to know-?"

"Is it real? Or am I going mad?"

"Ah."

Llesho waited for Master Den to go on, fretfully at first, but as the silence stretched between them, he found that his fears, all his conscious thought, for that matter, drifted away. He heard the merry chime of water dashing on stone, and saw the bright flick of the light bouncing off the droplets in myriad rainbows. He felt the sun on his back, and the breeze on his face, and the rough split logs of the bench under his backside. The sun moved, and he turned his head to feel its heat on his closed eyes, on his smile. Without realizing it was happening, the moment stole through him, sunlight filling all the chinks and crannies of his fractured existence. He was aware only of a profound peace settling in his heart and his gut, pinning him to his bench in a perfect eternity of now.

"As long as you hold the world in your heart, he can't touch you." Master Den gave a little shrug. "But if you ever tire of the world, have something else to grab onto."

His mind went to Carina, the healer with hair the color of the Golden River Dragon, and eyes like Mara's, who aspired to be the eighth mortal god. But he knew instinctively that wasn't what his teacher meant. He already had a purpose to hold him: to free his country and open the gates of heaven. Now he needed a dream more powerful than the ones Master Markko sent to trouble his sleep. His questions, about the brothers still lost to him that he had pledged his quest to free and the necklace of the Great Goddess that the mortal goddess SienMa had charged him to find, would keep for another day. This lesson, to store up the sights and sounds and smell and touch of peace against the struggle to come, he finally understood.

They sat in comfortable silence together until the sun had reached the zenith, and then Master Den swept up the petition Llesho had placed on his altar.

"You are wanted at the palace." He flipped Llesho's silver coin in the air, and when it had landed in the palm of his hand, he tucked it into his own purse with a wink and a lopsided grin. He was, after all, a trickster god. "It's time to go."

Lesho had already put on the disguise he would wear for the next part of his journey, the uniform of an imperial militia cadet. Hmishi had stowed the gifts of the mortal goddess-his jade cup, and the short spear that seemed to want him dead-in his pack for the road. He had only to find his companions and be gone. Still, he doubted their plan.

" don't know who in their right mind would hire me to protect their camels," he grumbled. Merchants would expect a cadet of his age to have the skills and reflexes of a soldier, but no real experience of combat. "I explained that to Emperor Shou, but you know how he is." Shou had simply raised an eyebrow and asked when had he ever left anything to chance.

"I'm sure he has something in mind. After all, he had a very good teacher." Master Den winked, sharing the joke. He was, of course, that teacher, which didn't reassure Llesho at all.

Their horses awaited them at the rear of Shou's palace, in a cobbled courtyard milling with servants and stable hands, with friends staying behind and friends who would continue the quest, though not as many of the latter as Llesho had hoped to see. Kaydu was crying openly. Little Brother, her monkey companion, offered what chittering comfort he could from his perch on her shoulder.

"If I were a better witch, I could send an avatar of myself to ride with you." She gave him a hug, which dislodged Little Brother and made Llesho wish they had had been more than friends on the road. been more than friends on the road.

"Her ladyship needs you here." He understood that.

Master Markko, the magician who had betrayed the empire to the Harn, had escaped: none of them were safe until he was found and taken prisoner. After Llesho, Kaydu and her father had more experience with the traitor's evil than anyone else alive.

"I'll come after you, when we find his trail," she assured Llesho. "The gods know that you can't take care of yourself on the road."

Llesho smiled weakly at the joke. He would have told her how the magician came to him in dreams and threatened all he loved, but they were only dreams and didn't change anything. "I'll watch for you along the way," he promised. He wished he'd had the nerve to ask ChiChu to watch out for her. Asking anything of the trickster god was . . . tricky . . . however, and secretly he had hoped the god of the laundry would come with him to Thebin.

"I'm letting you down again." Bixei kept himself a little apart from the crowd. Stipes, a patch over the empty socket where he'd lost an eye in battle, stood at his partner's side. Bixei wouldn't meet Llesho's gaze, but stared at his feet as if overcome by his own failure to put duty ahead of Stipes. "The old man needs me."

Stipes gave him a jab in the ribs. "I'm no old man, though I can't deny I need the young'un here." A smirk escaped him at the description, Bixei being no child but a young warrior, and himself still muscled from battle. But he admitted, half ashamed, "It tore my heart out when Lord Chin-shi sold him to her ladyship. Now that we are free, we'd not be split apart and, together, we'd be a hindrance to you. Who would hire a guard with just one eye?"

Llesho wanted to answer, "I will hire you, one eye or none," but he couldn't be that selfish. Stipes wasn't fit and the trek they had ahead of them might kill them all as it was.

"It's not like you have abandoned the fight," Llesho reasoned with him. "Shokar needs you to help train the recruits. You'll still be working against Markko and the Harn. And who knows? You may get a chance to save my ass again." Llesho smiled in spite of his anger. It wasn't Bixei or Stipes he was mad at.

Shokar wasn't coming either. With the slaves freed, the oldest of the seven exiled princes had set himself the task of finding their Thebin countrymen carried into bondage by the Harn. Bixei and Stipes would train the Thebin recruits into an army, and they would follow later, when, or "if," Shokar had said. He had escaped the Harn attack, being out of the country at the time, and had spent the years of exile as a farmer and a free man. "If there are enough of us left to make a difference, we will follow.

"But there are a thousand li of Harn between Thebin and this, our only safe retreat. If we have to fight our way, march by march, there may not be enough of us left to do more than die on our own home soil."

Shokar had grieved for his brothers, but he had a family and a home in Shan, and he hadn't come looking in all the seasons that Llesho had suffered on PearlIsland. He felt Shokar's absence at his side like a missing weapon. The ghost had told him to find his brothers. He was not sure it would be possible to take Thebin back from the Harn if they didn't stand together. But he could not change his brother's mind. And Shokar, who had wanted him to stay safe in Shan, would not watch him go. Adar waited patiently, however, a hand on his mount's nose, and Lling and Hmishi both sat astride the sturdy little horses that had carried them from FarshoreProvince. Mara, who had traveled to battle in the belly of a dragon, had declared herself too old for such goings-on anymore. She had returned to her cottage in the woods with the explanation that adventures belonged to the young; the old needed more naps than a quest allowed. Her daughter, Carina, had joined them in her place, which suited Llesho just fine. During his recent convalescence, he'd had plenty of time to contemplate the color of her hair-the same burnished gold as the scales on the great back of her father, the Golden River Dragon- and her smile, which reminded him of her mother. Now he would have the weeks of their journey to debate the color of her eyes.

Shou hadn't come out to see them off. His ambassador had informed them that the emperor was occupied elsewhere. So, that was everybody. With a last look around to set the memory of old friends in a stolen moment of peace, Llesho raised himself onto his horse.

"It's time." With a jerk of his chin as farewell, he turned to the open gates. Adar moved up beside him, and Master Den took up a position on the other side, his stout walking stick in his hand.

"You don't think I'd send you off on your own, now, do you?" he asked gruffly. "Not after all the work I've put into you."

Some of the tightness over Llesho's heart loosened. I can do this, I can do this, he decided. he decided. We can do this. We can do this. "Let's go, then." "Let's go, then."

CHAPTER TWO.

WITH Carina and Hmishi in the lead, and Lling following at the rear, Llesho's party left the Imperial City of Shan by the kitchen gate at which they'd entered. He'd been asleep when they'd arrived, and it had been dark at the time, so the narrow, rutted supply lane that took them away from the palace came as a surprise. Apple trees crowded them on both sides, their branches growing so low in places that he had to lean over in his saddle to keep from hitting his head. The lush growth cooled their passage under the two full suns, but Llesho wondered at how poorly kept the road seemed.

"Not what you expected?" Master Den eyed the dense foliage with appreciation.

"I thought . . ." Llesho paused, trying to put those thoughts in order. He didn't want to criticize Shou, but he had to wonder what manner of leader would conscience such neglect at the very gates of his own palace. "I thought the empire was rich and prosperous. But this-"

"Who would believe such a ramshackle lane would lead one to the very heart of the empire, eh?" Master Den grinned as if he knew some hugely entertaining secret. "Wait a bit before you condemn our friend too severely."

They had journeyed no more than a li when they came to a crossing. Even paving stones, broken here and there by the roots of trees burrowing near the surface, showed that once the road had been better tended. Like the lane before it, however, the new road suffered from neglect.

The crossroad seemed to be a signal for their party to reshape itself. Hmishi left them with a word over his shoulder about scouting ahead. Llesho would have moved up to take his place next to Carina, but Master Den held to the bridle of his horse. Adar, however, had no such restraint. There he was, riding next to Carina as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and she was looking over at him and smiling. Llesho sneaked a glare at Master Den, who caught him at it with a trickster's gleam in his eyes. Fortunately, he didn't say anything.

"Where is everybody?" Lling had moved up to replace Adar at Llesho's side, and she cast a worried look about her. Fewer trees hemmed them in here, but where were the travelers?

"Do you think it's a trap?" Llesho's hand went to the sword at his side, reflexes honed in battle immediately on alert.

"This road sees more traffic at dawn," Master Den waved a hand at nothing in particular, as far as Llesho could see. "And sometimes, after dark."

"Spies?" Llesho asked. He knew the emperor's penchant for slipping out of the palace undetected, and for sneaking secrets in after dark.

"Maybe. But vegetables for certain, and rice and coal and perishables for the larder. You are on the kitchen road, after all, and most of its usual traffic is home growing the crops that will come through the gate when the daylight fails."

As an answer it almost made sense. But a few moments later a farmer passed them heading back the way they had come with a wagonload of yams. The man had an unusually military bearing for one of such lowly rank, as did the herdsman they came upon who watched them pick their way around half a dozen sheep milling in the road. Both gave short bows to Llesho's party.

"They're not . . ."

Master Den twitched an eyebrow, but said only, "Look-"

The road they followed ended, spilling into the great Thousand Li Road to the West, and Llesho silently apologized for doubting Shou's powers as emperor. The builders had drawn from quarries all across the empire to construct a patchwork of colors and textures underfoot. The stones had been carefully dressed to fit together smoothly, and Llesho realized that they'd been laid out in a pattern of light and dark in grays and greens that mimicked brush strokes on pale green paper.

"It's as wide as the market square in the city," Den said, urging him forward. Transfixed, Llesho watched all of Shan passing before him in the shadow of the Great Wall of the imperial city. Traveling merchants and bellowing camels and covered wagons that served as homes on wheels for the hapless souls who pulled them followed the great trade road west. The emperor had released a division of his regular militia for hire to the merchants who rode or walked the Thousand Li Road. Even Stipes might have felt at home among some of the more grizzled bands that marched purposefully forward to their private cadences.

There should have been dust from the tramp of so many feet, but the stones of the road showed patches of damp where a sprinkler wagon had passed. On the far side of the road the trees had thinned. Between them Llesho could see softly rolling fields of green topped with bright yellow flowers in rows like ribbons floating over the dark brown earth.

On the near side, the city wall raised its massive stone shoulder high above his head. Each green block in the Great Wall would have come up to his chin if stood on end instead of lying on its side. He saw no mortar between the stones, but the wall didn't suffer for the lack- hardly a chink showed for as far as Llesho could see.

"Does this please you more, my prince?" Master Den asked, pausing only for an ironic bow as he walked.

"I take it all back," Llesho admitted, although he had spoken few of his doubts aloud.

Master Den looked very pleased, as if he were responsible himself for the Imperial Road. Which he might be, Llesho figured. If asked, the trickster god was as likely to lie about it as not, but one could never tell with a powerful being which way the lie would go. Would he claim a feat he hadn't performed, or deny a feat he had?

"It's a wonder," he finally offered. The god could take it as a comment or a compliment as he chose. It seemed the right thing to say, because Master Den's eyes twinkled with pleasure.

"Yes, it is. Travelers' tales mention the Thousand Li Roadto the West as one of the great wonders of the world. The Great Wall of Shan they count as another. Three guards can walk abreast along the watch-path at the top, and a fast messenger can run from one end of the city to the other within the wall itself. There are cuts carved high overhead to give the inner passage light during the day, and torches light the way by night."

"Kungol had no wall." Llesho stared up at the mass of stone that towered over them. His mother and father might still be alive if they'd had any defenses at all. But Kungol was a holy city, her people given to prayer and meditation-and to the daily struggle to survive the barren, airless climate of the heights. They had not concerned themselves with battle strategy.

Master Den nodded, as if he followed all that Llesho did not say. Then he went on, telling a story as he had so many times in the laundry on PearlIsland. As he had back then, Llesho figured there was a lesson Den meant him to learn, and settled in to listen.

"Shan first rose as a city in the time of the great warlords, before there was an empire or an emperor," Master Den explained. "The lands that now make up the independent provinces of the empire waged war against each other. Thieves and bandits plundered their neighbors and dashed across each other's borders to safety, only to return the next time they got hungry. The warlords built their walled cities as a defense against each other and the bandits.

"Shan had won more of its battles than most, however, and for a while its ruthless warlords imposed their iron control over their own people and their surrounding neighbors. In the deceptive peace that followed, the city grew like wild blackberries outside the walls that were originally built to protect it. The old city inside the defenses turned to administration and governance and left the work of providing food and clothing and shelter to the provincial citizens who gathered at the foot of the Great Wall. The officials thought they were safe against any attack, but the seemingly impossible happened. Those neighboring warlords banded together against their more powerful oppressor. They burned the city that had grown up outside the walled defenses, but no fire or hurled stone or wizardry could penetrate the stones themselves.

"During the siege that followed, the barbarians attacked from the west-not the Harn, but the people we know as the Shan today. They drove back the warlords, but the wall still stood, protecting the rulers who cowered within. Fortunately-" Here, Master Den gave Llesho a hard-eyed glance, "-a wanderer among them knew the secrets of the tunnels through the city walls. By night the barbarians crept into the city. By morning they held it all and had driven out those comfortable ministers and noliticians and false priests. Since that time, the wall has grown with the city. The old foundations make good roadbeds."

"I suppose it was the false priests who prompted the wanderer to reveal his secrets," Llesho gibed, more interested at the moment in the fall of the old city than the rise of the new. He had no doubt who that wanderer had been, almost expressed aloud the thought that crossed his mind-that only a fool would trust a trickster with the plans to one's defenses. Since he was doing the selfsame thing, he had to wonder if there was as much warning as history in the story.

Master Den fell still, a dark sorrow carving lines around his mouth. "Actually, it was the false generals. When the neighboring warlords put the new cityto the flame, no general, no politician, nor any priest rode out to rescue their dying people. Armies, grown fat on the taxes of those tradesmen and skillsmiths, hid themselves behind their wall for protection while outside the children screamed and the mothers begged for help and with their husbands beat their lives out against the flames."

Llesho could hear the anguish of the parents, even the crackle of the flames. He could feel in his throat the cries of the children, and the tight pain of holding back his own screams, waiting for his moment. Almost he imagined the slick glide of blood on a fist much smaller than the one he clenched now, the knife slipping between ribs, ;and the raider falling under the weight of Llesho's seven jsummers. It hadn't been enough. They'd murdered his father, killed his sister and thrown her body on a pile of 'refuse like yesterday's garbage, scattered his brothers, and sold them into slavery. His beautiful, wise mother was gone, dead.

"What was Thebin's sin?" he asked, his voice rough as if he was still holding back his screams today. "What did we do that was so terrible that our country had to die?"

"Nothing." Master Den shook his head slowly from side to side, as if trying to rid himself of the taste of ash in his mouth. "Sometimes evil wins, that's all."

Sometimes, evil wins. Llesho stared up at the wall that marched beside them, li after li of stone between the city and the fields that stretched away from it. "When I am king, Kungol will have a wall, and watchful guards, and an army," he decided.

But posing as traders and merchants, the Harn had entered the imperial city through her open gates as easily as thaj had entered Kungol. The fields that lay around him might be put to the torch just like that long ago city. Master Den already knew, of course. A wall could imprison its builders inside their own fears, but it could not keep out a determined enemy.

"There has to be a way to protect my people, or why am I going back at all?" he demanded. The goddess' people. "If all I can do is bring more death, what is the point?"

Master Den gave him that scornful look that he'd seen too often in the practice yard. So he ought to know better. Fine. If he didn't get it, was it his fault, or his teacher's?

"What protects Shan?"

Not the wall.

The emperor. Emperor, general, trader, spy. Friend. Judge. Not the office, then. "Shou. Emperor Shou."

"What is in here-" Master Den placed a hand over his heart. "Not the robes, the man. Can you be that man, Llesho?"

"Not yet." He didn't speak his doubts aloud-Shou was twice Llesho's age, and he had a heart for adventure, while Llesho just wanted to go home-didn't want to make his fears real in the world, as speech would do. But Master Den knew the uncertainty that curled like a worm in his gut.

"You will be."

Llesho didn't trust that confident smile. Master Den was his teacher, but he was also the trickster god. And trusting Thebin's fate to such a god seemed . . . unwise. It worried him that he couldn't seem to help himself, though the story of the Great Wall warned him against trust. Finally he shook his head. The story would simmer in the back of his brain somewhere, until the moment when need and understanding came together.

The sun was warm on his skin, however, and if nothing else, Master Den's stories were good to pass the time. He realized that they'd been riding for several hours and, with a shiver, that the Great Wall of Shan still tracked them on their way. He'd known the imperial city was big, but he hadn't quite wrapped his mind around how how big. big.

They were coming to an end, however. From a distance the sound of the caravansary drifted softly on the wind. The lowing of camels, and the clanging of their bells, the general uproar of drovers and grooms and loaders and merchants and acrobats and beggars released a flood of happy memories. Llesho urged his horse to a faster pace, leaving his teacher behind with his concerns about the future. Master Den dropped back to walk with Carina, who smiled her welcome while her horse continued its slow amble. Llesho felt a sudden flash of temper that confused him before the smells of camels and cooking and dust pushed whatever thought he'd started out of his mind. Adar caught up with him and rode at his side as he had when Llesho was a child, with Lling and Hmishi following tight on his tail. A stranger would have mistaken Adar for the focus of the guards' protection. Llesho himself did not realize that his brother, as well as his companions and his teacher, all set their guard for him.

CHAPTER THREE.