"Master Den will protect them," Llesho offered as comfort. It didn't help.

"Master Den might, but what about ChiChu?"

"They go back a long time," he reminded her, "before either of us were born."

Behind him, Balar's voice whispered anxiously in his ear, "ChiChu. A nickname for a fickle master?"

Llesho's baleful glare told him otherwise.

"Gods, Llesho! What have we done?"

Kaydu's face closed up around her thoughts with a muttered curse. Llesho knew the answer she would have given: brought down the empire and angered the trickster god. Made an enemy of the mortal goddess of war, left your own brother and a sacred healer to die at the hands of our enemies. Insane to talk about it in the middle of the road, though, where a stray word might escape even the protections of Ahkenbad. He followed Kaydu with just a brief comment for his brothers, "I think you're about to find out."

Only a hand of the dream readers remained in the dragon's mouth. Attendants had cleared away breakfast hours ago, and now they laid a light supper for their guests. Llesho recognized Kagar among the women setting out plates of fruits and flatbreads, and noticed again how she studied Kaydu with quick, darting glances. He had no opportunity to question her even with a look, however. Dognut stirred from his corner, a wide grin on his face.

"Lord Habiba! I knew Llesho would find you! Is that your lovely daughter?"

"Bright Morning, greetings. Yes, Kaydu has grown since you saw her last. I haven't come this far to reminisce, however, but to consult with the blessed Dinha of the Tashek people on a matter of great urgency."

It made sense, now that he thought about it, that these two would know each other. Bright Morning's family lived in the Lady SienMa's province and, like Habiba, the dwarf was in the confidence of the emperor. But Dognut had abandoned Shou and aided the kidnappers, even if they were Llesho's brothers; the association tainted Habiba as an adviser Llesho needed to rely on.

"Child of the desert." The Dinha released her attendant with a touch on his shoulder, and rose to greeted the magician with the rueful smile of familiar associates. "You find us well, thanks to your young prince."

Habiba bent to one knee in front of the Dinha and bowed his head. "Mother Desert, greetings. Meet your grandchild." Without looking up, he took Kaydu's hand and extended it to the Dinha's embrace.

"Granddaughter." The Dinha took both of Kaydu's hands and drew her into a kiss on each cheek. "Your father is a fine man, but he has kept us too long from his child!"

Only Llesho stood near enough to Harlol to see the avid excitement on his downturned face. "Truth?" he asked. "Or a courtesy?"

Harlol gave an affronted snort. "All Tashek are the children of the Dinha. As for the magician, anyone can tell that he has Tashek blood."

A little of both, then. Habiba and his daughter shared an exotic look of foreign lands. Part of that-the shape of the eyes, the sweep of the brow-might indeed be Tashek, though the sum of their features remained a mystery. So the circle is completed, So the circle is completed, Llesho thought, with himself bound into the plots of those who had no care for Thebin. Llesho thought, with himself bound into the plots of those who had no care for Thebin.

He had little time to brood, however. At the Dinha's welcoming hug, the pack on Kaydu's back let out a screech that drew terrified gasps from the acolytes hovering anxiously in the shadows. Harlol's swords hissed out of their scabbards. The Wastrel checked his motion with an annoyed roll of his eyes when Little Brother crept onto Kaydu's shoulder and peered anxiously about him out of wide monkey eyes.

"Pardon my enthusiasm, sir monkey." The Dinha offered Little Brother a star fruit, lightly poached, as a peace offering. "I mean no harm to my granddaughter's familiar." When Little Brother had accepted the gift, the Dinha gestured for the rest of the party to eat, herself taking a light selection of vegetables that her attendant brought her.

"The dream readers have been troubled these many days, Habiba, and you figure in our prayers. But let me first bless you for the loan of young Prince Llesho."

Llesho filled a flatbread with fruit and ducked his head. If he pretended to be invisible, perhaps they wouldn't notice him. He might just as well have disappeared, however; Habiba spoke about him as he would an absent and unruly cadet.

"I can't accept your gratitude, Dinha. I don't command the young man." Habiba dipped a ball of grain-meal into a spicy sauce and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully before explaining, "Had I done so, little of what has happened would have come to pass."

"And yet," the Dinha informed him, "before he found his way to Ahkenbad, the Holy Well of Ahkenbad had failed. In his dream, the Great Goddess' Jinn led Prince Llesho to its source where he released the waters from their prison. Without his help, only ghosts would have remained to greet you."

"The Jinn has come to him?" Habiba darted a glance at Llesho, returning his gaze quickly to the Dinha.

"In a dream," she nodded confirmation, "and not for the first time, I judge."

With his free hand, Llesho drew out the newest pearl with its banding of silver. "Pig led me to the spring, where I found this."

"We are on first-name relations with the servants of the Great Goddess now," Habiba commented in a deceptively offhanded tone. His avid gaze on the pearl gave away his real interest, however. Even Little Brother abandoned his star fruit to sniff the air for danger. The pearl caught his monkey curiosity, and he snatched at it in Llesho's hand.

"No, you don't, little thief!" Llesho closed his fingers around the pearl and looked up to see Habiba's hand reaching toward him as if he, too, would have seized the pearl. The moment stretched, frozen in the gleam of the magician's hungry eyes.

Finally, as though waking from a trance, Habiba let his hand fall. "My apologies, young prince-to you, and to the Great Goddess you serve." He dropped his head, horrified by his own action, while his daughter watched for the tic of an eyelid or the twitch of a muscle that would offer a clue how she should jump.

The Dinha gave Habiba's hand a comforting pat. "Perhaps you should start from the beginning?"

"Which beginning?" Habiba shrugged. "The birth of a seventh son to the king of Thebin? Or the fall to the Harn raiders of the mortal kingdom most beloved by the Great Goddess, and the scattering of her people? Or the perils of one boy through hardship and slavery and battle to free his home from tyranny?"

"There are some," the Dinha remarked acidly, "who would have argued that the king, this boy's father, lavished too much attention on his goddess and too little on his people, which may be tyranny itself. When one loses sight of the smaller things, disaster often follows in the large. But I did not mean to speak of the politics of the dead."

Llesho wondered for a bitter moment if she expected him to object. Well, he didn't. He'd come to the same conclusion himself, and somewhere between Durnhag and Ahkenbad he'd started to wonder if Shou didn't need a reminder of that as well. Maybe, if the emperor survived, they would sit down and talk about fathers and wild-hawk adventures and the people left without their king. The Dinha hadn't removed the arrow of her attention from Habiba's breast, however. "Perhaps you can begin with what our young prince was doing in Durnhag?"

Llesho sneaked a glance at Harlol. The Wastrel was the Dinha's man-how much that Harlol knew could be hidden from one who claimed his loyalty and could enter his dreams? For that matter, the Dinha herself had read Llesho's dreams. But he hadn't dreamed of the companions left behind at Durnhag; he'd dreamed of a magical pig. And Harlol, it seemed, believed Shou to be a simple merchant, with extraordinary skill with a sword but no greater connection to Llesho's team than the contract they had signed as part of their ruse.

"I knew it was a foolish plan from the beginning," Habiba muttered.

Her ladyship's magician was going to tell the truth. Llesho had a bad feeling about this.

"I expected Captain Bor-ka-mar's troops to contain any emergency."

"Shou was concerned about developments in Durn-hag," Llesho offered. He didn't want the soldier taking the blame for his emperor's decisions. "He stopped outside the towers to meet with the spies of the Lady SienMa and sent Bor-ka-mar into the city, where an ambush seemed most likely. Somehow, the Harn found out." And it struck him, not for the first time, that the goddess of war had wanted them there.

Little Brother had curled up for a nap in Kaydu's arms. She clasped her familiar close, braced for the terrible news she expected to hear. Balar had found them at the inn as well-their security had leaked worse than a pair of old sandals, but he'd been hauled off over a camel's back before he could discover anything about the conspiracy that had attacked them. Llesho shrugged, helpless to ease her fears.

"Dinha," Habiba said, and Llesho had never seen her ladyship's witch at such a loss. "It seems we've lost the emperor of Shan, beloved ally of Lady SienMa."

Llesho saw the dismay in the witch's eyes, the dread he felt to return to his lady with the report of Shou's death. But they had lost others as well. "And with the emperor, the trickster god Chichu," he added to the tally, "and Carina, the daughter of Mara, who aspires to ascend into heaven as the eighth mortal god, and Adar, the healer prince of Thebin."

"The emperor?" Lluka asked. "How have I so mistaken the future in my visions?"

"Shou, the merchant," Llesho explained. "He travels in disguise sometimes."

"I didn't know." By the door, Harlol's eyes widened in shock. "You left this out of your tale, dreamer-prince," he muttered under his breath, but Llesho heard.

"It wasn't my story to tell."

"What tale is this?" Habiba asked. Harlol took the question as an invitation to throw himself at the feet of the magician. "I raised a blade against the emperor," he confessed, "and for my crime, my life is forfeit. May justice come swiftly, and sweet death end the torture of the guilty."

"Don't be foolish," Llesho poked him in the side with his toe for emphasis. "If Shou had wanted you dead, he'd have killed you."

Habiba looked down at the groveling Wastrel with wry exasperation. "You didn't know you fought the emperor, did you?"

"No, my lord."

"And would you have fought him in a public square if you had known?"

"No, my lord." This second answer came muffled from the carpeted floor where Harlol lay prostrate, punctuating each answer with a kiss on the magician's foot.

"And did you inflict any wounds on the emperor, intended or otherwise?"

"No, my lord. He beat me soundly, and sent me off in the hands of the healer-prince, who also traveled incognito."

"Then I don't see that we have a case here. Why don't you go back to the door and keep guard as you were doing?"

Harlol lay stretched between the magician and the Dinha for another moment. Then, softly, he answered, "Yes, my lord," and raised himself to his feet. "With the blessing of the Dinha, I pledge my skills and services to the coming battle, and will give my life to win back the life of the great emperor."

Llesho thought the "great emperor" was a bit much, even allowing for the natural respect Harlol had for the emperor's skills. But they could use all the help they could muster, and he'd grown used to having the Wastrel around. Best, therefore, not to mention the attack on Adar that had started the whole thing. The Dinha, however, had other plans for her Wastrel.

"Do you give up your charge so easily?" she asked him, and Harlol blushed.

"No, Dinha-" he pleaded with his eyes to be let off this rusty hook, but the Dinha did not free him.

"Hold to the task you start with," she said, "and it will bring you to what you must do. Even this."

Llesho didn't understand it, but it seemed to satisfy Harlol, who went back to his post with renewed fervor.

When the matter of the attack on Shou by his own party had been settled, Lluka extended his hand, palm up as if to soothe troubled nerves. "Surely these bandits won't hurt their prisoners," he suggested. His own voice quaked with doubts, however. "They will keep them well whatever course they take, in case they need to negotiate a surrender."

"They've already hurt him."

No one asked Llesho how he knew. The Dinha didn't even look surprised. A groan from another quarter, however, greeted the dire announcement. Balar, stricken with remorse, curled in against his knees. "I didn't know," he whispered, unwilling to draw attention to himself, but unable to stanch the flow of his grief. "We made a terrible mistake."

"Would the presence of this one boy have saved this precious party of emperors and princes, when the gods themselves did not, child?" The Dinha spoke to Habiba, but she meant it for them all. She held the witch's gaze, relentless but kind, until he surrendered to her logic.

"No, Dinha." He sounded much as Harlol had, on being chastised for taking on more than his burden of guilt.

"And did not the boy's own goddess send her familiar, the heavenly gardener Pig, who led the boy to the holy spring of Ahkenbad? And did not this Pig entrust to him a great pearl from the goddess' lost and broken necklace as a token of the quest he undertakes to free his kingdom and the very gates of heaven from the enemies of the Great Goddess?"

"Yes, Dinha."

Llesho sneaked a glance at Kaydu, who watched her father with the stillness of a cobra.

One tear fell from Habiba's eye. "But my ladyship has lost so much."

"Your ladyship is the patroness of wars, and gathers to herself only what she has sown in the fields of others. This boy you blame for all your tragedies has suffered at the hands of your lady war, and yet you blame him him for her losses?" for her losses?"

"No, Dinha," he said, with a sigh that released the anger he had suppressed but not let go of until now.

Llesho had thought it might please him to see the powerful magician brought down a notch, but now he realized how much comfort he had taken in that strength. If Habiba could be humbled like any man, what protection could he give against Master Markko and the armies of the Harn? Llesho remembered Master Jaks lying dead in a battlefield tent, all his strength and cunning spent so early in the struggle, and did not want to think that he could lose another defender.

"Apologies, my prince."

"Accepted. The important thing is getting them back before Master Markko, or his minions, do any more damage."

Habiba had treated him like a student and like a soldier in his command, and on occasion, even like an inconvenience, but the witch had never addressed him with the full weight of belief in his title before. Llesho found that it worried him now. If Habiba looked to him for direction, they were in deeper trouble than even he had thought.

"You're not making any sense, brother. You can't risk your life and your quest to save the emperor of Shan. He has soldiers and the gods to take care of him. Your responsibilities lie elsewhere. We will need you when the time comes to bring freedom to our people. The Great Goddess herself depends on you."

Lluka's objection came as no surprise. That didn't mean Llesho appreciated fighting with his brother over every decision, and his voice had an edge of frustration to it when he tried to explain again to his stubborn brother why he couldn't sit out the coming storm.

"That time is already here. If Shan falls to Master Markko, what chance do any of us have?" He gestured to the assembled company, to show that he meant not only Thebin but Ahkenbad and the mystics of the Gan-sau Wastes as well. "We need a strong Shan to back us if we are to have any hope of defeating the Harn." He didn't mention the demons that his dreams told him were laying siege to the gates of heaven. He didn't think Lluka was ready to hear it.

Habiba agreed. "Markko will have to eliminate anyone with the power to oppose him. Llesho is at the top of his list of targets. I'm certainly on that list and Ahkenbad will be soon, if it isn't already. When you intervened in Durnhag, you put yourselves forward in his eyes as well."

"I got them into this, I owe them my best effort to get them out." Llesho gave a little shrug. It went without saying, except that Lluka needed to hear it. "We are none of us safe, however, if we don't stand up to him now." Nobody needed to know that the torments of the captives echoed regularly in his dreams.

He suspected the Dinha already did know, though. She touched her forefinger to the back of Lluka's hand, as if reminding him of something he had known for so long that the awareness of it had fallen out of use. "You can't go back and prevent that small boy in your past from suffering the loss of his home and the murder of his parents. You can't roll back the Long March or erase the years of slavery.

"The young prince of Thebin has become a tool of the gods, and you can only love him and find your own place on the juggernaut."

Llesho recognized his own life in the Dinha's rebuke, but he didn't understand what she was telling his brother, except to let him go. Lluka didn't like it, but he bowed his head, in submission to what will Llesho was uncertain, except that Balar wasn't happy about it. And Dognut- Bright Morning-had a satisfied gleam in his eyes that didn't make sense on the face of a simple musician. He'd always known the dwarf was more, of course, but he was reminded of why that made him nervous. At the moment, however, he had more immediate worries, like the need for a plan.

"When do we leave?"

"The horses are exhausted," Kaydu reported, "and so are the troops that came with us."

The Dinha agreed. "So is Llesho."

"We rest then until sunset and ride with Great Moon Lun," Habiba decided.

With a gesture, the Dinha summoned an attendant and dismissed them with courtesy. "Quarters await you in the cavern of the acolytes. Balar can lead you."

But when Llesho rose to leave with the rest, she set a hand on his sleeve, her eyes fixed on the stone staircase set into the back of the chamber.

"I believe your Master Den suggested that you might better understand the course you take if the dream readers of Ahkenbad visited your dreams and gave you counsel."

He hadn't ever told her that, exactly, but it didn't take a special ceremony to have the Dinha enter his dreams. She must have seen his answer in the set of his mouth, because she accepted the rebuke with a bow of her head. "It is, however, an honor to sleep between the horns of the dragon. And sometimes, the dragon himself whispers in the sleeping ear of his guest."

She smiled when she said it, so that he could dismiss it as a jest or a fireside tale if he chose, but the glint in her eyes promised more if he believed. He wasn't sure how he felt about the Stone River Dragon, but he'd met enough of the creatures in his short life to know that, true or not, he didn't doubt the tale was at least possible. possible. He gave the shadows at the top of the stone staircase a long look, then, with a bow of thanks, he went up. No surprises-he had visited this chamber in dreams, and found the pallet set there for his rest as he remembered. He didn't think he would sleep, but a heavy curtain he hadn't noticed before shut out the heat and glare of the afternoon sun, and soon his eyelids shuttered the glow of the dragon's crystals. He gave the shadows at the top of the stone staircase a long look, then, with a bow of thanks, he went up. No surprises-he had visited this chamber in dreams, and found the pallet set there for his rest as he remembered. He didn't think he would sleep, but a heavy curtain he hadn't noticed before shut out the heat and glare of the afternoon sun, and soon his eyelids shuttered the glow of the dragon's crystals.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

IN a dream he left his bed and went not to the staircase he had ascended to this place but to the beaten path that passed in front of the dragon's horns, above the head of the stone dragon. When he pushed aside the curtain, he found that Great Sun had set, leaving only the dim, dim glow of the lesser moons, Han and Chen, to light the trail to the cave shrines above the city. Centuries of Tas-hek pilgrims had made this path, carving shrines like a string of prayer beads out of the soft rock of the hillside. Close up, Llesho could see how varied were the hands that had created these offerings to the Gansau Spirits. Some caves were no more than shallow holes in the cliff, roughly finished in mud, their entrances covered by coarse curtains stitched with trembling fingers. Others cut deeply into the hillside, hollowed around elegantly carved pillars of rock, their walls smoothly plastered and decorated with jeweled images of the Gansau Spirits. The rugs at their entrances showed a fine hand in the weaving, shot through with precious threads.

The greatest of the cave shrines hid secret chambers filled with prayers written on paper and silk cloth, knotted in rags or wrapped in tooled wooden boxes. Nuns and priests made this pilgrimage from all over the Wastes to deliver the prayers they wrote down for a penny on the backs of older prayers or supply lists or letters of safe-passage, if their clients could not afford fresh paper. But all who found their way here-rich or poor, scholar or unschooled-made the trip up to the shrines on foot.

The trail was steep in places, in others passable only by ladders set along the cliff face and hard to find or follow in the dark. Llesho stumbled and caught his balance-the wrenching pain in his knee made it all more real than a dream had any right to be. Just as he began to wonder if he really did travel the pilgrim way through the waking dawn, however, the patchwork of rugs and curtains shrouding the mysteries of the mountainside came to writhing life. Against a faded backdrop of hills streaked with rust the color of blood, gods and goddesses and impetuous spirits moved through landscapes of thread.

Trying not to return the looks of the woven figures who stopped and watched out of the tapestries as he passed, Llesho moved more carefully through his dream. He had little understanding of the beliefs that had created monuments out of mountains, and he did not wish to intrude where he did not belong. His dream created caves out of his own mind, however: not Tashek designs, but something more familiar drew his hand. The embroidered scene on a background of pale blue reminded him of her ladyship's gardens in the governor's compound at Farshore Province. Those gardens had themselves been an artful rendering of her ladyship's home, Thousand Lakes Province.