"But you left the pearl beds."

"Lleck died. His ghost gave me a black pearl, and told me to find my brothers and save Thebin. I couldn't do that at the bottom of the bay, so I became a gladiator in Lord Chin-shi's stable. I had passed my fifteenth summer by then. I was wiry and strong, and my natural stamina had returned. Master Jaks and Master Den knew who I was from the start. They brought the Lady SienMa from Farshore Province to test me, and she warned me to keep my identity secret. Master Markko guessed something as well. He was a slave high up in Lord Chin-shi's house, his overseer. When I look back, though, I think he was working against his master even then."

"Master Den was your teacher for the arena? So how did the healer Adar come to have as his servant a training master of gladiators?" Harlol asked with a mind to the trickster god's most recent disguise. He had curled his legs up under him, and listened avidly. Llesho wanted to hit him for treating his painful past like a campfire tale, except that it didn't hurt as much as he had expected. The words seemed drawn out like an arrowhead cut out of the flesh so that the wound could heal. But Master Den's story was his own to tell.

"It was a disguise. Master Den has many of them. Even I have never seen through all of them, and he has been with me as my teacher since Pearl Island."

Harlol seemed on the verge of making a comment, but something of what Llesho was thinking must have made it to his face, because the Wastrel said only, "What happened next?"

Llesho shrugged. "My first fight in the arena was my last," he said, taking up the story where he could. "The pearl beds failed, and Lord Chin-shi had gambling debts. Habiba managed to purchase some of us for Lady SienMa; the rest went to Yueh." Madon, a friend, had died at Habiba's hand that afternoon, a wasted sacrifice to stop a war that came on them anyway.

"Her ladyship kept no slaves. Under her direction, we became free soldiers. She gathered my friends and teachers, added Kaydu as our captain, and when Master Markko attacked, we were ready. The lady gave me the gifts that you have already seen-the short spear and the jade cup-and took her household to her father at Thousand Lakes Province. Our small cadre-me and Hmishi and Lling, and Bixei and Kaydu whom you haven't met yet- ran for the imperial city. On the way we met dragons and healers and gods and bears and we fought. Lleck is dead twice, and Master Jaks is gone. In the imperial city we battled in the streets and put an end to the slave trade in Shan, and discovered that Master Markko is himself aligned with the Harn, but I don't know why." He gave a helpless shrug. "I haven't been at this 'intrigue' thing very long, but the beings I've met along the way all seem to be pointing me at Thebin. In Shan I received more gifts of pearls which I am charged to return to the goddess who lost them. And to bring the tale back to the beginning, to do that I have to free Thebin."

He said no more about the "String of Midnights," the necklace of black pearls stolen from heaven. He needed to return it to the Great Goddess so that night could return to heaven, but he didn't trust the Wastrel with that much truth.

"For a short life, you have seen more battle and intrigue than the old men who chew their stories under canopies in the sun." With that brief comment, Harlol gave the tale a moment of silent contemplation before he asked. "Is that why we are out here waiting for an approaching dust cloud to resolve itself into friend or foe?"

"Friends, definitely friends." Llesho yawned deeply. Telling even a part of his story had exhausted him, but it had made him feel better, too.

"If that's the end of your story, you might as well take a nap," Harlol advised. "It makes the waiting pass more quickly." With that he tucked the tent coat under his hip to hold it in place and promptly went to sleep.

A nap sounded good, but the heat beating on their makeshift tent seared his lungs and the approaching party tickled at the corners of Llesho's mind. Not evil, certainly not Master Markko, but a mind he'd felt before and knew the texture of was out there looking for him.

And Harlol snored.

Llesho nudged at him with his foot, and the Wastrel snuggled down deeper into the small depression he'd dug with his hip. Llesho nudged a little harder, and the snoring broke, became a grunted snort, before resuming again. Llesho wondered how a man who slept like the dead, but more noisily, expected to survive as a wandering warrior. He reached a foot out to kick again.

Fast as a striking snake, Harlol grabbed his ankle. "Take a nap."

"I can't sleep. It's too hot, and you snore."

"This is going to be a long afternoon," Harlol moaned to himself. "All right. You go to sleep first. Then, you won't hear it if I snore."

"I told you my story." Llesho pushed out his jaw, belligerently. He was beginning to feel foolish for revealing so much in his tale, and their close quarters, separated only by the swords they used as tent posts, were making him nervous. "So what is a Wastrel anyway? Are you allowed to tell, or is it a sacred mystery?"

"You're not going to let me sleep, are you?"

Llesho shook his head. "I have a lot of questions, but 'What is a Wastrel?' is top of the list."

Harlol propped himself up by his elbow, with his chin in the palm of his hand. He didn't look sleepy at all, and Llesho figured the snoring had been a ruse, to avoid this confrontation.

"A Wastrel is a warrior-priest, sworn to the desert spirits. We don't choose, but are dedicated to the Dinha at birth. Those who survive the training and the trials of thirst and fire and solitude become the eyes and ears of the dream readers in the waking world. We go where the wind takes us. When our paths follow the caravan routes, we work at the common labor available to our kind. Other times, we wander as the stories tell, seeking out the lost places in the desert. We are the protectors of Ahkenbad. Always, however, we go at the will of the Dinha."

"Is Kagar a Wastrel now as well?"

"No." Harlol laughed. "Kagar is no Wastrel, but my true cousin, the child of my mother's brother. We owe each other much filial love, and so I kept her secret until API I could bring her safely home. But sometimes Kagar can be very annoying."

"That makes two of you," Llesho muttered to himself. "Why did you attack Adar?"

"The Dinha told me to protectat any cost." The typical Tashek shrug came off as ungainly in a reclining position, but Harlol didn't seem to care. "You didn't travel as princes-or as brothers. Adar looks not at all like the princes I knew. When I saw him pray the Way of the Goddess with the master, I knew he could ruin all our plans if he chose to fight against Balar in Durnhag. I meant only to test him, perhaps to injure him so that we could leave him behind. I would not kill any man unless he threatened you."

He wanted to resent the man, but couldn't. Harlol was too much like himself, in age, and even in the way his gods ran his life. Llesho would have seen it sooner if he'd been paying attention, the way Shou evidently had. For all his training, Harlol had seen far less of battle than Llesho's own cadre. He was a priest who spent much of his time alone in the desert or traveling with the camels, and hadn't crossed a thousand li of battleground to get here. So Shou hadn't killed him even after he had turned from prayer to battle forms in mid-demonstration.

"Had you ever used your training to deliberately harm another before that morning?"

"I am trained-" Harlol dropped his gaze. "I would not shame my training."

"Of course not." Quick as a thief Llesho had his knife out, point pricking just below the Wastrel's voice box. "I, on the other hand, killed my first Harn raider while still in the training saddle. I have seen men die at the hands of an ally for the honor of a shamed lord, and I have fought every li of the way from Pearl Island to Durnhag. Do not presume to understand those with whom I travel, Wastrel, and don't hasten to add my nightmares to your own sleep."

Harlol ignored the knife at his throat and met Llesho's eyes with a level gaze that reflected no fear, but bragged not at all of Tashek bravery. "My life is a tool of the spirits. I will do as the Dinha requires in their service. Are you going to kill me now, Prince?"

"Of course not." Llesho put away his knife. "If I planned to kill you, I wouldn't warn you. And I am warning you. I know the mind that approaches. Don't put yourself between us, don't speak, don't draw a weapon."

"Who is it?" Harlol was pulling himself upright, taking apart their tent with the knuckles of one hand white around the scabbard of his sword. They could feel beneath their feet the rumble of the approaching horses.

"The Dinha told us at breakfast. It's Habiba." Llesho flashed a predatory smile and settled onto his side. "He is a magician, and the right hand of the Lady SienMa, mortal goddess of war."

Harlol paled, but his fear seemed reserved for Llesho rather than the approaching riders. "Surely you walk among miracles, my prince."

"It's not all it's cracked up to be," he assured his companion. The Wastrel's shock should have been a victory, but Llesho just felt tired. Together they stood, waiting for the horses to come to a halt in front of them.

Habiba remained in his saddle, his tall white steed still as a statue. Behind him, his army worked to control their skittish horses. At his side, three dressed as officers slipped from their mounts, drawing off their desert headgear so that he could see who they were.

"Kaydu!" With a grin he ran forward and grabbed her hands. At the sound of his voice, the pack on Kaydu's back began to wriggle, and out popped a small head, followed by a tiny body in the uniform of the Imperial Guard.

"Little Brother!" Llesho greeted the monkey, who climbed out of his pack and chattered ferociously at him. With a chuckle, Llesho stood still while the creature clambered onto his head, exploring for wildlife before returning to his mistress.

"What wonders are these!" Harlol whispered at his back.

"It's a monkey, Kaydu's familiar."

"I have seen monkeys before." Harlol drew himself to his full dignity. "But they are known to be fickle creatures. I had thought they would make poor soldiers."

Kaydu let it seem as though his words had caught her attention, but Llesho knew she did her father's bidding, drawing out the stranger while Habiba watched carefully from the distance of horseback and wizardly silence. "Little Brother is a paragon among monkeys. I would not count on any other to defend my back."

She made it sound like a joke, though Llesho remembered a time when Little Brother had saved all their lives, carrying a message to the Lady SienMa when Markko's forces had threatened them on the road. Some things would take too long to explain, and even longer to believe, so he laughed with the others, content to let the tension ease, if only for an hour. Soon enough they'd be back in the fray.

"So much affection for a cowardly ape, and not even a greeting for your brothers in arms!" Bixei, Llesho's onetime enemy and more recent ally, stepped away from his horse and received a companionable slap on the shoulder.

"Bixei! What are you doing on the march? You're supposed to be in Shan, helping to train a Thebin army. How is Stipes?"

"I am very well, Prince Llesho." Stipes himself came forward, letting Llesho see him. He wore a leather patch over his damaged eye, but otherwise looked sound and hearty. "And you see a part of that Thebin army before you, though we could not stop the emperor's own imperial guard from accompanying us."

Llesho glanced over the small company bristling with weapons. Fifteen Thebin faces stared at him in wonder as they sat the small hill horses like his own, while thirty tall warriors at the rear rode the warhorses of Shan. Scattered among them, Llesho recognized the mercenary garb of his childhood bodyguard, the same worn by the weapons master who had died to protect him in the war against Master Markko's villainy. He would have sent them home, the debt their clan owed a dead king long paid, but he knew they would not go.

"How is this possible? I left you only weeks ago-"

Bixei grinned wickedly. "With the Lady SienMa's assistance, and the fall of the slave trade in Shan, many potential allies found themselves at loose ends. And no few of them have trained in secret and waited for the chance Shokar offered them."

"With the arena in turmoil, your brother had his pick of trainers," Kaydu explained. "Now he raises armies, and husbands a bumper crop."

She gave a little shrug. "He has given the emperor the loyalty a guest owes his host, but trusted this particular plan of Shou's not at all. So he took the harvest of his labors to Durnhag. He was right. We arrived at Durnhag too late to prevent the attack, but Shokar tracked the raiders, who were heading toward Ham. We followed the signs of your passage into the Gansau Wastes until yesterday, when the desert seemed to swallow you up. We thought we had lost you. Then, suddenly, there you were again and here we find you in the empty desert in the company of one lone Wastrel."

"We are not as far from civilization as we seem." Llesho answered Kaydu's unspoken question, but he looked to her father as he did so.

"So you have found Ahkenbad." Habiba bowed his head in a thoughtful nod. "And you can find it again?"

"Waking or sleeping, whether I wish to go there or not." The magician understood Llesho's wry smile. "The dreams don't ask permission," he commented. To which Llesho added, "Neither does the Dinha of Ahkenbad."

"Respect, if you please." Harlol raised himself up to his full height, his hands resting on his sword hilts in the way Llesho had come to recognize as readiness for battle.

"With understanding," Llesho countered. He did respect the Dinha; he just didn't trust her to put the will of a young Thebin ahead of the needs of her own people.

Habiba interrupted before the Wastrel could respond with a challenge, however. "We have traveled long and ridden hard. If Ahkenbad is as close as you say, perhaps we can finish this discussion out of the sun-"

"Of course." Llesho gave him a formal bow, but cast an uncertain look back toward the cave city. He had come out ill-prepared to accompany an army on horseback. Kaydu saw his indecision and offered a hand when she had mounted her own horse. "She can carry two, if it isn't too far."

"I'll take the Wastrel with me," Stipes offered. Bixei's glare changed his mind. "Or, Bixei will ride with me, and the Wastrel can borrow his horse?"

Bixei leaped onto the horse's rump with a surly growl and gave his partner a pinch under cover of securing a grip. Smothering a chuckle, Llesho shook his head when Harlol looked to him for guidance. The Wastrel knew nothing of his companions but their names, mentioned in passing as they shared stories to help the time pass. He wouldn't have understood the byplay, but he mounted the offered horse and let Llesho take the lead.

Kaydu nudged a little away from the others so she and Llesho could talk without being heard. "Where are Lling and Hmishi?" she asked, the pleasure of meeting falling away as the business of guarding a prince took over. "I trained them better than to let you wander off alone."

"We were betrayed." Llesho stared out into the desert, remembering a dream of anguish and despair. "The Ham have them."

"Damn. I'm sorry. But we'll get them back," Kaydu assured him, all levity now gone.

The pressure of Master Markko's search had not returned, but a superstitious dread of being overheard by magical means kept Llesho from saying anything more. Llesho's nemesis might not yet know what prizes his raiders held.

Kaydu turned in her saddle with a worried frown, but she said nothing more. Llesho could tell by the faraway look in her eyes that she, too, tested the air for more than the taste of dust. After a journey the longer for the exhaustion of the horses, they passed through the dream readers' barrier that blinded the eye to the presence of the cave city of Ahkenbad.

"By the Great Goddess, that's a trick," Kaydu muttered when the carved cliffs of the cave city appeared around them.

Inside the warding defenses that protected Ahkenbad from her enemies, Llesho braced himself for another confrontation. How was he going to explain to Habiba that he'd lost the emperor?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THEY had come to the gaping stone mouth of the Dragon Cave. Worried acolytes and servants surrounded them, stirring up the dust with their feet. He recognized Kagar among them. Her avid, envious eyes locked briefly on Kaydu before she slipped into the chamber where the dream readers gathered. The Dinha trusted her; Llesho didn't. He still had the lump on the back of his head to remind him why that was a smart thing, but his brothers presented the more immediate problem.

Lluka and Balar stood side by side in the very teeth of the stone dragon as if they could hold off Llesho's new forces with their persons. From Llesho's seat atop Kaydu's horse, his brothers looked very small. He shook his head to rid it of a fleeting image: the jagged stone teeth snapping shut, the bloodied faces of his brothers ground against sharp edges come to life. Not a wish, but a worry- What part did the sleeping dragon of Stone River play in the dreams that tied the princes of Thebin to this place?

They could not know where his thought had taken him, of course, and watched their rebellious younger brother with matching stern frowns. "Only a fool goes into the desert unprepared," Lluka scolded him. "When you didn't come back, we thought you must be lost, or dead. You will have apologies to make to the Dinha, and to the search parties when they return."

"Harlol was with me," Llesho reminded his brother, but that answer just earned the Wastrel a scathing snarl of contempt.

"You move through the world wrapped in a no-sense zone, Llesho. It warps the judgment of anyone who comes in contact with you."

"Then don't come too close, or you might grow a backbone."

Lluka colored as if he'd been struck, and would have continued the argument but for Habiba's rumbled, "It's true, Llesho. Admit defeat with grace."

He didn't concede any such thing, of course, but Balar chose that moment to turn the attack on the magician, freeing Llesho from the unwanted attention of his brothers and the lady's witch.

"You have breached the Dinha's security." Balar said it as a fact, rather than an accusation, just as his will to protect the dream readers was a fact and not a show of bravado.

Habiba slipped from his horse and bowed a respectful greeting in spite of the surly introduction. Llesho was glad Balar wasn't carrying a lute. Experience had shown him that his brother wielded the instrument as well in battle as in song, but the magician had a tricky temper at the best of times. He might indulge a verbal challenge. In a physical attack, however, he was as likely to turn Balar into a camel first and apologize later. Not the best plan in a place that reeked of sleeping magic. Fortunately, his brother had come out unarmed even with music, and Habiba's courtbred manners guaranteed his good intentions.

"You have nothing to fear from me-Prince? I honor the Dinha and her dreams." With that very proper greeting, Habiba gave the signal for his army to dismount. "I beg hospitality for my troops-water for their horses, and a place to rest out the heat of the day. I would pay my respects to the Dinha, and we will be on our way with the rising of Great Moon Lun."

The brothers could not help but recognize, among the soldiers massed at Habiba's back, their own countrymen and the clan dress of the honorable mercenaries who had guarded them as children. Lluka surrendered with a lowering of his eyelids and gestured for a Tashek groom. Kagar had put off her disguise here, among her kinsmen, and Harlol had taken up his role as a warrior, so the task fell to a stranger. Experience told Llesho not to trust the man out of his sight, but Harlol cast him a challenge in a glance. He had to accept the aid Habiba had requested or pay for the insult to the Tashek people. This time, he conceded the point.

Kaydu arranged for a soldier to take her horse. With Stipes and Bixei at her back, she gave the princes a cool examination. Llesho shook his coats into order, pretending to a disinterest he didn't feel when the princes returned her disapproval with watchful glares.

"These must be brothers," she declared with a satisfied smirk. "They look more like you than Shokar or Adar, though I can't say much for their dispositions."

Llesho would have returned Kaydu's grin, but he dreaded his coming report on the Harn attack. He didn't want to compound his offenses with poorly timed humor.

"Indeed," he therefore answered as neutrally as he could manage, "May I introduce the youngest of my older brothers, Prince Balar, who would hold off our army with the daggers of his eyes-or his five-stringed lute, which felled no few of our enemies on the outskirts of Durnhag. And Prince Lluka, who would still have me taking naps in the afternoon with my favorite hound sneaked into my bed."

His brothers' hostile glances turned to surprise and awe when he reversed the introduction: "Princes, may I introduce the loyal servant of her ladyship, the mortal goddess SienMa: Habiba the magician-witch, and his daughter, Kaydu, who is the captain of my own cadre. You know-the Imperial Guards you left in the hands of the Harn."

"My Lord Habiba," Balar began, but an angry roar interrupted his greeting.

"You what!" Bixei, who had remained silent but watchful at Stipes' side, strode forward to place himself between Llesho and the threat of his brothers. "I'm amazed Shou didn't strip the skin off your hide after a fool stunt like that!" he shouted into Balar's face.

In spite of his rage, Bixei retained enough sense not to blurt out the emperor's title. Llesho did the same.

"Shou had no say." This was the moment he had dreaded since Durnhag. "The last time I saw him, Shou was holding off three Harn raiders, trying to reach Adar's side. Neither Adar nor the Lady Carina bore any weapons. Both are skilled in the Way of the Goddess, but they could not hold out against so many. While I fought the raiders between us, one of our Tashek grooms struck me from behind, and I fell."

Harlol, who had taken a position of defense at Llesho's side, jumped at the mention of his cousin's part in the kidnapping, but carefully avoided eye contact. After only a brief, scathing glance, however, Llesho continued his story.

"When I recovered consciousness, I found myself halfway to Ahkenbad in the custody of my brother and our Tashek drovers. They left the others, including Adar and Shou, Master Den, and Carina, to the hospitality of Har-nish murderers."

He exchanged glares with his brother over Bixei's shoulder. Balar still owed him for the lump on his head, and perhaps for much more if the worst had happened to Emperor Shou. Or their brother: the ghost of his adviser, Lleck, had said nothing about getting his brothers killed while gathering them to his side.

Habiba's eyes opened wide. Briefly, Llesho thought the princes of Thebin were about to die. Maybe Habiba would kill him, too, for arrant stupidity, though he doubted it. Llesho was starting to figure out the part he played in the grand scheme of this conflict. Habiba needed live bait to catch Master Markko, and he was it.

He had begun the move to his knife, instinctively ready to protect his brothers, when Habiba brought his expression and his temper under control with a long cleansing sigh. "We should take this discussion under cover," he advised with a quick scan of the road, "And I have yet to pay my respects to the Dinha."

Balar fumbled indecisively in their path, but Habiba set him aside with a casual sweep of his arm and entered the sacred cave of the dream readers. Harlol followed close on his heels, hands perched dangerously on his hilts. Llesho figured he had more right to his place there than the rest of them, so made no objection. The magician wasn't through with him yet, though.

"Could you have angered more of our gods with one foolish act if that had been your intention?" Kaydu spat at the bemused princes before following her father into the gaping mouth of the dream readers' cave.