"Go! Go!" The acolytes, running on foot, were a little ahead of them, but they caught up, were well past the most elaborate of the caves when the roar rose in pitch, and the whole mountain shook, throwing off dirt and rock and the offerings of centuries. The great Dun Dragon rose into the sky, belching fire and screaming in anger.

The mountain was gone, the voices fallen to a low moan. Llesho thought the dragon was going to kill them all, but it circled slowly and came to rest at Kagar's feet.

"Dinha," Dun Dragon said.

Kagar bowed. "Lord Dragon."

"Who is this creature who rouses the Gansau Spirits and disturbs my sleep?"

"His name is Markko, and he searches for this boy." She gestured at Llesho, and put a hand on his arm to lead him forward. "Prince Llesho, of Thebin."

"What does he want of this child?"

Llesho's experience with dragons had taught him caution, and he answered politely when Kagar looked to him for an explanation.

"I am on a quest, Lord Dragon, to gather my brothers and free my people from the bandits and raiders who oppress them." He bowed deeply to the creature, to show his respect even as he spoke. "As part of my quest, I must find the pearls of the Great Goddess, the String of Midnights, free the gates of heaven from the demon who lays siege to them, and bring the turning of night and day to the heavenly gardens."

"If memory serves me well-and it always does- princes usually go hunting for princesses, or treasures, or alchemical formulae for everlasting life," the dragon commented. "Don't you think you've taken on rather more than you can chew for a first time quest?"

Llesho found it difficult to take his eyes from the trail of smoke drifting from the dragon's left nostril, but he managed a diffident shrug in answer to the dragon's curiosity. "I didn't choose my quest-it's been handed to me in pieces along the way."

"It may be time to add the word 'no' to your vocabulary."

The dragon studied him, and Llesho considered asking it to return the Dinha. He was getting tired of dragons eating his teachers. But this time, he knew it would be no use. The Dinha had been dead when the dragon awoke. She wasn't coming back.

"What of this Markko-why does he want you so badly he will kill my children to reach you?"

"I don't know," he answered as truthfully as he could. "He has only ever found me useful for testing poisons on."

"I suppose he has learned something about you we do not yet know. Like why the gods would burden a young prince with so onerous a quest. At any rate, it seems clear enough he wants to stop you from accomplishing your many sacred tasks."

Llesho had no answer to that, but he had a question, growing more pressing as the mournful lament rose to painful levels once more. "Who . . . ?" he began, meaning the voices wailing in the night.

"The dead weep for the dead." The dragon sighed a thin stream of ash. "The Gansau Spirits demand vengeance for the innocents who have died here." Something about the way the dragon said that made him shiver. Dragons didn't always live in the same present as humans did, and this one seemed to be answering a call out of the past as well as the present. He didn't think he wanted to know how those voices had become the captive spirits of the Gansau Wastes.

A trill on a reed flute announced the arrival of Dognut the dwarf and his intrusion upon the conversation.

"Lord Dragon!" He performed a sweeping bow. "The songs of this terrible night shall be sung from Thousand Lakes Province to the very gates of heaven!"

"We've had enough of songs, Bright Morning." The dragon's head rose on its limber neck, waving back and forth hypnotically. "I have my children to attend, those your Master Markko has left me. Grieving must be done, and rituals performed. Take your quest and go. But don't come back."

"Not my quest," Dognut objected, but the dragon wasn't listening. Llesho was, though: it sounded almost as though Dognut and the dragon knew each other, which was impossible. The Dun Dragon had slept under the cliffs of Ahkenbad for untold ages-had been been the cliffs, more or less. the cliffs, more or less.

"I think we've worn out our welcome," Dognut said to the air, then looked around him. "Has anybody seen my camel?"

When he had wandered off again, the Dun Dragon rested his head on his claws and smoked quietly as Kagar said her farewells.

"I had hoped to have time to travel with you, to see the world as a Wastrel sees it," the new Dinha told him, "but I am called to a harsher duty much sooner than any would have thought."

Llesho bowed his head in agreement. "We are both called to duty too soon, Dinha."

She touched his hand to acknowledge the truth of that, and tears filled her eyes as she said, "We will send a party of our Wastrels to guide you. The sword of the Tashek people will join the storm gathering at your back. Spend our children well."

"The Tashek people have lost too much for a quest they didn't ask for. I'd rather not spend them at all, Lady Dinha."

Harlol chose that moment to join them. He held out Llesho's pack in his hand. "I know you didn't want to lose this."

Llesho took it with a sour frown. "I only wish I could," he said. The gifts of the Lady SienMa had only brought him bad luck.

Harlol didn't understand, but the dragon seemed to. Smoke rose from between its back teeth, but the creature did not object to the Dinha's offer, and finally Llesho surrendered with a promise, "I'll try to send them back in the condition I got them."

"I know that's what you want." The look she gave him pierced Llesho to the heart, and he would have cut it from his breast and offered it to her in his outstretched palm rather than see what she had seen come to pass.

"Harlol, at least, stays here. You will need him."

"There is no 'here' anymore, no safety anywhere," she answered him, ignoring the spark of anger in the Wastrel's eyes that almost rivaled the dragon's in its fire. "Ahkenbad no longer dreams my cousin. Harlol has passed to your dream now."

If the look in her eyes was anything to go by, Harlol was dead at the end of Llesho's dream. He couldn't let that happen.

"It's time you went, before you lose the light of Great Moon Lun." Kagar closed her eyes against his silent entreaty and walked away, into the moaning night. Yet again Kagar had become someone he didn't know, and the audience was over.

PART THREE.

THE ROAD TO HARfi

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THEY rode into the silver night of Great Moon Lun with Habiba at Llesho's right hand and Harlol at his left. His brothers would have taken the places of favor at his side, but in his mourning he refused their company with a baleful glare.

"I don't need your protection, and I don't have time for your regrets," he informed them stiffly. "I have a magician to kill."

Habiba flinched at the dire threat. Llesho didn't mean him, of course, but he was angry enough to give even his friends second thoughts about approaching him. With more determination than good sense, his brother Balar ignored the warning to plead with Harlol, "Make him understand."

Harlol's face had become a mask, wiped clean of any emotion. Only his bitter words revealed the depth of his revulsion. "I'm done with drivingwhere he doesn't want to go. I'd have thought you'd had your fill of it as well."

The accusation struck Balar like a bolt from a crossbow, but Lluka responded with smooth reason: "The Dinha wanted to see him-"

"Not the way we did it."

If they hadn't dragged him by the chin to Ahkenbad, the Dinha and her dream readers would still be alive. Ahkenbad itself wouldn't lie in a ruin of shattered stone. No matter what Harlol said to make him feel less guilty, they all knew it. After a moment of tense silence, Llesho's brothers fell behind.

Harlol would not back down. "The Dinha will have my head in a bucket if anything happens to you," he insisted.

He meant Kagar, who had wanted to be a warrior before Master Markko had wiped out all the tiers of priesthood between the Dinha and her most rebellious acolyte. What do you think of war now? What do you think of war now? he wondered. Llesho could well imagine what she would say to her cousin if he failed her. he wondered. Llesho could well imagine what she would say to her cousin if he failed her.

With a handful of the mercenaries lately come from Shan, Bixei scouted the dangers ahead. Behind rode a force in excess of fifty soldiers, including ten Gansau Wastrels the Tashek of Ahkenbad could ill afford to lose. Llesho didn't know what Harlol thought he could do that their gathered forces could not. He'd lost more than any of them in Master Markko's spirit attack, however, and seemed determined to fulfill whatever charge his Dinha laid on him as penance.

It was hard not to trust this man who had lost his home and everything he loved in Llesho's defense. Some debts transcended all possibility of payment, but he thought they might share the common goal of destroying Master Markko. That much he could give the Wastrel. But he expected Kaydu in Harlol's place, and craned around in his saddle to find her. Stipes led her horse, riderless except for Little Brother, who peeked out of a sack tied securely to the saddle pack.

"Where's Kaydu?" he asked Habiba.

"Scouting." Habiba cut his eyes skyward, by which Llesho understood that his captain was hunting information in the shape of a bird.

"Where are we going?"

"Toward Ham." Habiba gave a shrug. He was working on little sleep and less information, and seemed to beg forgiveness for not seeing into the hidden heart of their adversary as Master Markko had looked into theirs. "We'll have a better idea of our course when Kaydu returns. For now, we are simply putting as much distance as possible between us and Ahkenbad."

No need to ask why. Llesho wanted to find the magician, but on his own terms, not wake up with Master Markko's teeth sunk in his throat. He couldn't do much to move their party faster across the Gansau Wastes, or to hold Great Moon Lun in the sky past her transit to light their way. But he could get his own enormous rage under control and do something about Habiba's unreasonable guilt. With a long, cleansing breath, he let go of his anger-for the moment-and looked to her ladyship's magician.

"How difficult would it be for an adviser who can enter the mind of his enemy to do the same to his allies?" he asked.

"Not difficult at all, my prince."

Llesho returned a measured nod, accepting the conclusion. "Would you advise a prince to trust a counselor who might steal through his mind at will?"

"No, my prince."

"Then you present me with a problem in logic, Lord Habiba. How do I condemn you for the very lack that makes it possible for me to trust you in the first place?"

The magician slanted Llesho an exasperated frown. "I had thought of that, my prince. The simplicity of the question belies the complexity of the answer. Which answer, I might add, I do not have."

Was that sarcasm pressing a thumb to the scale next to the respect that had weighted Habiba's use of his title of late? About time, Llesho figured. "Let me know when you've figured it out," he responded with equal tartness. They rode on in silence then. The tension still lay between them, but they'd come to an agreement of sorts, to set it aside as long as they needed each other.

When Great Moon Lun chased her lesser brothers below the horizon, Habiba called a halt and had the tents set up for a few hours of rest before dawn. Llesho settled in the command tent with Bixei and Stipes nearby, a barricade of restless, lightly dozing bodyguards between him and his brothers. Harlol didn't rest at all, but huddled over a camp table at the center of the tent, where they had spread a map in the light of a shuttered lantern. The Wastrel's breathy voice rasped low in the night, answered by Habiba's deeper whisper. But there was little of planning to do until Kaydu reported on the progress of Markko's Harnish accomplices. Gradually even these murmuring voices died away. Llesho had feared more dreams, but the memory of soft fingers at his temples settled his frayed nerves. The Dinha had died, but still he recognized her touch, like a benediction and absolution. He rolled snugly in his blanket against the cooling air and let his heavy lids fall over his weary eyes. Harmless, meaningless dreams wandered through his sleep. He made no effort to banish or to follow them, and woke to Kaydu's voice setting a forceful alto counterpoint to the deeper tones of her father and Llesho's brothers.

"I found Bor-ka-mar on the road and took his report. The Ham who attacked the emperor's party left Durnhag with the prisoners in train, as we suspected. Master Mar-kko wasn't with them, so Shou's identity may be intact."

"Kaydu." Llesho pulled himself out of his bed and nodded a salute which his captain returned. After a visit to the trenches to relieve himself, he took his place at the map table and Kaydu continued her report. She looked weary, he noticed, but her delivery remained crisp and efficient.

"Bor-ka-mar followed with twenty imperial militiamen. He guessed wrong on the direction and lost the trail and a day's march."

Llesho didn't notice his own hiss of dismay until Kaydu had answered it, defending the man Llesho had thought a sound and competent soldier. "I would have guessed the same, that the raiders would head straight for the Guynm-Harn border. The captain's men had to turn back, but they are on the right track now, and have gained back some of the distance they lost." She pointed to the map with a fingertip to mark their own position, then sketched the path from Durnhag toward them rather than away. "We've had some luck there. The raiders are heading north by northwest, as the crow flies-"

Llesho gave her a wary look which she returned with a bland smile. She'd been the crow flying, then. He made a mental note to ask her how she did that some day and bent to the map. They would need luck and more to intercept the raiding party even heading straight at each other. On the desert, a man who wandered off to take a leak could lose his party and his life in the endless sameness over the next dune.

"And Shokar?"

"Shokar, too, has adjusted his course. At utmost speed, however, I don't expect either party to catch up until sometime tomorrow afternoon."

"How long before they pass into the Harnlands?" They all knew time was their enemy. The map compressed all distances. It had taken them weeks to cross the Wastes to Ahkenbad, a matter of finger-lengths drawn on soft leather.

Harlol had listened intently, not speaking until now he stabbed at the border some fifty li west of the position Kaydu had marked out on the map. "I expect they are following the Gansau track and will cross into Harn territory here."

Lluka and Balar had fallen quiet while Kaydu and the Wastrel talked, but now Lluka added a caution, "If the raiding party crosses the border at a place of their choosing, rescue forces will face whatever support they have waiting for them."

"Then we will have to find them before they can join forces. We don't have troops enough to wage a war against Harn." Llesho didn't tell them that he heard their companions crying out in his sleep, that even now it might be too late.

"Best not to bring war to someone else's doorstep," Harlol agreed, "but the Harnlands aren't like Thebin or the Shan Empire. Small bands follow their herds all across this map. They have no centralized government and only the most limited communication between the most powerful of the clan lords. Sometimes a few clans will make short-term alliances for specific goals, but there's hardly a concept of 'official' at all. The raiders turned away from the most obvious route, perhaps to make it more difficult to follow, or to draw attention away from movements gathering against Shan. Or they may be making a detour around their own enemies among the clans.

"The farther into the heart of the grasslands you go, however, the less likely anyone you meet will have any notion that their neighbors are waging wars in the name of the Harnlands. The clans won't know or care what the raiders are doing, as long as they themselves are left in peace. Their shaman may be troubled by a powerful magician in their midst, but the Shan Empire figures in the thoughts of very few. The raiders will doubtless have some number of their allies waiting to aid them at their intended crossing, but I'd warrant their numbers will be small, and their Harnish neighbors unhappy."

Habiba had listened silently, but he stirred at this intelligence. "Master Markko or one of his puppets will be close by, probably at the border where the raiders plan to cross. He won't want to wait to question the prisoners."

Harlol studied the magician with a troubled frown. "No, you don't want to meet this one in battle," Llesho tried to convey with the downturn of his mouth; and: "Kill me yourself if the choice is to fall into his hands again," he pleaded with his eyes.

Kaydu shivered, a combination of empathy and memory in the way she met his bleak gaze. He saw a promise there. Good.

"We have to intercept them before they reach the border," Kaydu agreed. Little Brother wrapped himself around her neck, his uniform hat in his hand, as if he would urge them on their way. "We have a good chance of success if we can limit the fighting to just the raiding party. If we cross in force, neutral clans would have to enter the conflict on the side of the raiders, to repel what they see as an attack on their territory." Like him, she did not mention the futility of taking on the magician in his power.

"So we ride," Habiba instructed. Kaydu gave a low bow of salute, and Harlol and Bixei did the same. Together, they escaped to set their troops in motion. Llesho tried to follow, but his brothers blocked the way. Lluka was giving him that big brother look, a sign of trouble sure as a beacon. Lluka saw the future, except now, when none of his visions made sense to him. Must be driving him mad, not to know know the right thing to do. "What?" the right thing to do. "What?"

"Let us us go with the troops, in your place." Lluka gestured at Balar and then at himself. "Stay to the rear with your own picked guard. Once we've returned the emperor to his militiamen, we can bring Adar and Shokar back here with us and decide what to do next." go with the troops, in your place." Lluka gestured at Balar and then at himself. "Stay to the rear with your own picked guard. Once we've returned the emperor to his militiamen, we can bring Adar and Shokar back here with us and decide what to do next."

"And if I say 'no,' will you hit me on the head and leave me tied to a tent pole?"

"You're the seventh son, Llesho." Lluka held out a hand, as if he held the Thebin Empire in his palm and could offer it as a gift. "The goddess needs you alive to fight for Kungol, which you can't do if you die for Shan." "You can't protect me from my own quest, Lluka." Llesho rejected his brother's plea with a slow shake of his head. "And you don't know what the goddess expects of me." Too much, he would have said, but he didn't want to undermine his own argument with his brothers. "If the disaster at Ahkenbad taught us anything, it is that there is no safety except to see this miserable quest through to the end."

"What happens to the empire, or the kingdom, when the true ruler expends his life like a foot soldier?"

"I don't have a kingdom to lose." Where were you when the Harn came? Where were you when the Harn came? He gave his brother a long stare, trying to keep the accusation out of the memories of blood in the Palace of the Sun. "But I do have one to win. I can't do that cowering in a tent in the middle of the Gansau Wastes." He gave his brother a long stare, trying to keep the accusation out of the memories of blood in the Palace of the Sun. "But I do have one to win. I can't do that cowering in a tent in the middle of the Gansau Wastes."

"Llesho's right," Balar interrupted with support from an unexpected direction.

His brothers had seemed a united front, not against him so much as opposed to what he had to do. Until now. "Bringing Llesho to Ahkenbad was necessary to maintain the balance between heaven and earth. We had to study his gift, and the dream readers died for what we learned. But the Dinha knows where his duty lies, and so do we."

Balar didn't look happy about what he said. Llesho wasn't sure he even knew why he'd spoken out, but he didn't back down when Lluka glared at him. Instead he held out his hand, reflection of his brother's gesture, but his fingers flexed as if they held within them something as fragile as it was precious. "Much rides in the balance-"

Habiba watched the brothers, sharp eyes flicking everywhere. His shoulders heaved with a quick breath of relief when Lluka bowed his head, conceding the argument. With a nod to accept his brothers' surrender, Llesho followed his captains out of the tent.

He found Bixei and Kaydu and Harlol each among the forces they commanded, and drew them away for a quick conference of his own.

"Before we go on," he said, "I have to know where your allegiances lie." In particular he looked at Bixei and Kaydu. "We aren't the cadre that the Lady SienMa set on the road to Shan together anymore. So tell me now, who holds your oaths."

They knew he meant, "How far can I depend on you? Will I look up during battle to discover that the winds have changed at the first uncomfortable command, and allies have become enemies?" It troubled them, what he must think, and more the reasons why he thought it.

"I never should have stayed behind." Bixei stripped off his brass armguards and extended them on his outstretched hand with all the guilt in his heart written in the lines that creased his stricken face. "I thought only of myself. Our cadre was broken, and Shou has fallen to the enemy. We could have lost you both-"

Losing Emperor Shou to the Harn must have rubbed that old wound raw in the hours his broken cadre had to brood while he slept. But Llesho had no more use for his companions' guilt than he had for the armguards held out to him. It wouldn't save Shou or his fellow prisoners, and it could only destroy the hard-won rapport that had made their cadre work at all. Llesho wanted his friends back, wanted the backslapping and the bragging with which they had met him out in the desert, back the other side of telling them that he'd lost Shou to the Harn. He didn't think that would ever happen now. And Habiba had come out to watch what he would do next. Another damned test.