She wouldn't be the first dragon he'd befriended in human form, but he wasn't sure what he felt about following one of them into battle. Dragons didn't, he had concluded, quite grasp the concept of death. No reason to trouble Harlol with his questions, though. They were too complicated if you hadn't met a few of the creatures for comparison.

He'd thought Habiba preoccupied with the battle ahead, but when he surfaced from his musing, Llesho found the magician watching him sharply.

"Deep thoughts, Llesho?"

"Not really." He lifted a hand open-palmed, not to deflect the question but because words failed him. "I was thinking about Kwan-ti," which, it turned out, was more of the truth than he'd realized when he said it.

Habiba said nothing, and in the invitation of that silence, Llesho added, "She wasn't what I expected of dragons."

"Was Golden River Dragon more to your liking?"

"I liked Kwan-ti fine. At least she she didn't eat the people who tried to help me." He'd loved her, in a way. Not like his mother, but more than anyone since the Long March. During the years of his enslavement in the pearl beds, the healer Kwan-ti and his father's minister had been his only comfort. He hadn't known what she was then, of course. Not even when she'd saved his foolish life the afternoon he'd tried to escape Pearl Island the hard way. didn't eat the people who tried to help me." He'd loved her, in a way. Not like his mother, but more than anyone since the Long March. During the years of his enslavement in the pearl beds, the healer Kwan-ti and his father's minister had been his only comfort. He hadn't known what she was then, of course. Not even when she'd saved his foolish life the afternoon he'd tried to escape Pearl Island the hard way.

"Pearl Bay Dragon is young, as dragons go-much younger even than Golden River Dragon, who is younger by far than Dun Dragon. So she hasn't withdrawn so much from the world as they. And she is a mother. Her instincts would draw her to protect a youngling whose magic was just emerging."

It was Llesho's turn to nod that he understood. Not personal, Habiba warned him: his magic, not himself, like a mother duck takes stray chicks under her wing. But that didn't answer the question that disturbed him as he rode beside the magician. "I had thought the dragons left this world a long time ago. Now I've met three of them-are there any more of them still out there somewhere?"

"Not many, but a few."

"Have you met any of them?" A sneaky question that, and one for which he would have chosen his own answer if he could. No more dragons, and certainly not me, No more dragons, and certainly not me, it would have been, and nothing else to worry about but a magician who could sneak into a person's dreams and kill him there. it would have been, and nothing else to worry about but a magician who could sneak into a person's dreams and kill him there.

"Not many, but a few. Their day is past: mostly they sleep now, or tend to their own business." Habiba let him set the pace of the conversation, offering no more than Llesho directly asked.

"I wonder if it's a good thing, to meet a dragon day-to-day?" Llesho asked. He was thinking of Kwan-ti, and wondering about Habiba, both the dragons the magician had met and the dragon he might himself be. "One can admire Golden River Dragon, but one never mistakes him for a friend."

"Friendship may be asking too much of a dragon," Habiba conceded. "Loyalty, however, is a well-known trait of the species."

"And is Habiba the magician, her ladyship's general, also a dragon?"

He'd disconcerted the magician, and ruffled the feathers of the eagle on its perch. Llesho would have felt smug about that if not for the fact that he was shivering like he had the ague, out of fear that Habiba would actually answer him. "The Dun Dragon said . . ." he began, as if he could guide the magician's answer.

"The blood of Dun Dragon flows in the veins of the Tashek people," Habiba repeated what the dragon had said, and then reminded him of the Dinha's greeting, as if he could forget: "And I have Tashek blood."

Which didn't exactly answer the question, but was maybe as much as Llesho really wanted to know. That wasn't the end, however. "All magicians have a touch at least of the dragon in them."

"Master Markko?" Llesho didn't want to know.

"Certainly, though not as much as you may think," Habiba hastened to ease his fears. "He seems more powerful only because he has honed his skill in the arts that will do the most harm, and he turns the focus of his attention on the one task of finding and stopping our advance."

Llesho's advance, though it was kind of Habiba to share the blame around. His own magician seemed to read his face, if not his mind, however.

"You are not the center of the world, Llesho," he admonished. "When the forces of death rise up in power, all who practice life are called to battle."

Llesho studied the general's stern countenance, and saw in it the memory of more battles than his own short life had sunsets. "Then I'm nothing but a pawn."

"I wouldn't say that." Habiba tugged on his reins, readying his horse to move out of the range of Llesho's questions. "That part about not being the center of the world? I lied."

There was no time for further sparring of wits with the magician, however. Bixei had returned from a scouting expedition with a brace of Gansau Wastrels.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

WITH a hand raised above his head to signal the troops who followed, Habiba called a halt to their line of march and signaled Bixei to report: "What did you see?"

"Tents," Bixei saluted and continued with a grimace. "Black felt domes, like poison mushrooms. I counted half a hundred of them going up not more than an hour distant."

It made sense. The sun had reached zenith. Half the distance they'd made since Ahkenbad had been straight up. If not for the altitude, they'd have broiled in their saddles by now. The Harn had come out of a cooler climate into the Gansau Wastes; they had little choice but to rest through the heat of the Great Sun. Common warfare would have pulled their own troops off the road to wait for the shadows to return. Habiba said nothing of this, however, but asked: "Did they see you?"

"No, sir." Bixei answered properly for all three scouts, but the Wastrels' indignant snorts at his back would have said enough. No outlander was going to catch a Tashek wanderer if he didn't want to be seen. "The raiders sent scouts back along the way they came. They would report that Bor-ka-mar follows, and will know that the imperial troops will have to rest from the sun as well. But they don't suspect an attack out of the Wastes."

Habiba squinted into a sky bleached white with sun glare and scratched absently at the ruff of the eagle in front of him. He might decide to stop here, Llesho figured, watching the magician take the temperature of more than the air. Or they might press on and catch the enemy while they still had the element of surprise in their favor.

"Did you see any sign that Master Markko has joined with the traveling party?" Habiba asked, his gaze fixed in the elsewhere.

"No, my lord magician. And we looked for him." The first of the Wastrel scouts, who introduced himself as Zepor, spoke with such elaborate courtesies and bows that Llesho wondered if the man was mocking them or actually terrified of the general. Bixei didn't rebuke him for it, so he figured it was terror.

"The camp remains divided in two factions as Kaydu described. Those who hold the Thebins hold the forefront, but there seems to have been fighting among the rear guard, where Shou is held."

"And the emperor?"

"We didn't see him." Bixei gave an apologetic little shrug. "They have put Master Den to work carrying water to the cook tent, with just a single guard accompanying him. The healer Carina met him at the entrance. She looked anxious but unhurt."

Bixei paused, but the Wastrel scouts who flanked him made no move to step into the silence. Rather, they looked to Bixei with worried glances, leaving it to him to report the conclusion they had drawn together.

"Some want to murder the hostages as a hindrance to flight, others would negotiate with their pursuers even this close to battle, a ransom being less costly than a fight no matter the odds."

"Bor-ka-mar won't negotiate," Habiba commented.

"No, sir," Bixei agreed. Kaydu had already tried, and failed, to dissuade him.

"But," Llesho interrupted, recalling Habiba's assurances of the night before, that Hmishi's deadly torment hadn't happened yet. "As long as the Ham believe they've captured me, they don't dare murder their Thebin prisoners. Master Markko would have their heads on pikes. Or worse. So they are slowed down whatever they choose to do and may decide to hand Shou to Master Markko as well-to get the problem of the extra prisoners off their hands."

"If Master Markko doesn't know that he has Hmishi instead of you, he will soon." Bixei clearly hated what he had to say-like the others, he had awakened to Llesho's screams, and had heard the prophetic dream-but he straightened his shoulders and made his report. "I saw Tsu-tan the witch-finder heading away from camp, to the slit trench. You knew him when you worked the pearl beds. He belonged to Master Markko even then, and must have recognized all of your party who came from Pearl Island: Hmishi and Lling, and Master Den as he was among the gladiators-a laundryman and teacher of hand-to-hand combat."

"But Master Markko won't find out until a message reaches him-"

Habiba flicked his eyelids, calculation passing in the flash of that tiny gesture.

"What the witch-finder saw, Master Markko already knows," Habiba informed him.

"Then the things I saw in my dream have begun-" Somewhere in that camp of black tents, Tsu-tan was torturing to death the most loyal friend he had.

"Perhaps." Habiba accepted the rebuke of Llesho's frown. "Probably."

Bixei's hopeful expression faded into a soldier's impassivity, but Llesho could see past the training. He, too, had ridden with Hmishi and Lling, and would fear for his friends.

ARIS Harlol cleared his throat then, a Tashek way of gaining his companions' attention. "Does this Tsu-tan also know Shou?"

"No," Bixei answered.

"The magician will pluck from the witch-finder's eyes what he needs to see," Habiba reminded them; and, "Master Markko does know Shou as a general in command of Shan's provincial forces."

They had fought against each other in the battle that had killed Master Jaks, Llesho's weapons teacher and military adviser. What would Markko do to crack the mystery of a high officer of the empire traveling alone so near the Harnish border with only a handful of Theb-ins and a simple laundryman?

He looked across at Kaydu, wondering what she made of this news and shivered, unnerved by what he saw. Little Brother had gone very still, studying his master as a careful student might. And Kaydu, in eagle form, ignored everything else and studied Little Brother as if he were lunch.

"We have to move now," Habiba decided, as Llesho knew he would. "Can you bring us around the flank without being seen?"

"Yes, my lord magician." The Wastrel Danel gave a short, sharp dip of his chin in affirmation. "The Harnish-men believe these hills protect their backs, but the road from here to there is an easy grade and the passes are wide and free of pitfalls. Our warriors will rain down on them like heaven's retribution."

Not yet, Llesho thought. The goddess remained locked behind her gates in her heavenly garden, from where even her tears could not reach them. But they could do the next best thing. How he was supposed to cross the Harnlands in secret after waging a pitched battle on their very frontiers he couldn't imagine, but with his brothers Adar and Shokar so close, with Lluka and Balar in this very train, and with the pearls of the goddess warm against his breast, he could believe they would succeed. Llesho thought. The goddess remained locked behind her gates in her heavenly garden, from where even her tears could not reach them. But they could do the next best thing. How he was supposed to cross the Harnlands in secret after waging a pitched battle on their very frontiers he couldn't imagine, but with his brothers Adar and Shokar so close, with Lluka and Balar in this very train, and with the pearls of the goddess warm against his breast, he could believe they would succeed.

The only question that remained was the cost, and if Hmishi-and Shou-would be paying it with their lives.

Habiba was saying nothing in haste, however. Thoughtfully he watched the sky and scanned the road ahead. "The road tends to the east," he finally said.

True enough, and their intended direction, to intersect the Harn heading west and south. Ah.

"We press on," Habiba decided, "at an easy pace, not to tire the horses."

Llesho shivered in spite of the heat as they set their horses once more upon the trail. Too many would die among those Harnish tents. For the sake of the empire, he hoped Shou was not among them. For his own sake, he thought of his brothers, and the companions of his cadre, which led his thoughts to the eagle riding near enough to take a piece out of his ear without leaving her perch. Could he follow such a creature into battle and trust its strange mind to bring him back out again alive? Habiba lifted her, a flinging motion with his arm, and she took flight, circled high on an updraft, and wheeled out of sight above them. Or, Llesho mused, would he even have the chance to test the question?

And what was he supposed to do with her damned monkey?

Habiba spread his army in a thin line across the hills that overlooked the Harn encampment. With Bixei on one side and Harlol on the other, Llesho waited for Hab-iba's signal while the sun beat down on their backs. That was part of the plan: the Harn would face a double disadvantage with a surprise attack coming out of the sun on their unguarded side. Screaming shadows would pour down on them out of the blinding light, driving them back before they had rightly figured what was attacking. His brothers, skilled in self-defense but with no training in the military arts, had withdrawn to the rear and waited with the baggage handlers and the grooms. They wanted to take him with them to wait out the battle in safety. He'd refused, with language that shocked Lluka, who was prone to ease his tensions in prayer. To Llesho's surprise, however, Habiba agreed with them, and they had argued the matter while they rode.

"The situation has changed," the general pointed out. "We don't need to flaunt you on the front lines as bait for Markko's taking this time. He knew when he attacked Ahkenbad where you had been, and that his raiders don't have you as they thought. Through Tsu-tan's eyes, however, he has discovered that they bring him valuable hostages. It would be better to force him to negotiate than to offer yourself in battle."

"And would you negotiate such an exchange? A deposed prince for a wandering emperor disguised as a lowly merchant?" Llesho gave Habiba a long, calculating look of his own. Would the Lady SienMa's magician, he wondered, prove any less powerful an enemy than Master Markko if it came to a conflict between them?

With just a nicker of an eyelash Habiba seemed to read his thoughts and brush aside his questions. Which Llesho took for a yes, but at the same time, a distaste for the skill. Just another reminder that little stood between the renegade magician and their own, except for the thing that Habiba had tried to explain to him on the road. Loyalty. Maybe he was starting to figure the size of that with a man like Habiba. Bigger than he'd ever thought, that was for sure. But ultimately pledged to the mortal goddess of war-not to the Emperor of Shan or a Thebin prince-which also bore thinking about.

The general, however, hadn't stopped talking just because Llesho had hit a crisis of trust. "Markko will expect you to advance with the forces sent to free the prisoners. And they've already caught a bigger fish than they know with Shou. It's a fool's mission to give them a chance at you."

"You trained me to fight." With his faith that the magician would not exchange him for the emperor restored, the giving of his life came into Llesho's own hands again. And while he would rather live and be free, once again he found the limits to what he would surrender to stay that way.

"Worlds stand or fall around Emperor Shou, but as you pointed out, I have brothers with the baggage. Either one can take my place in the Palace of the Sun if something happens to me."

"You are more important than you know," Habiba began, but shut his mouth with a snap around whatever he had nearly said.

"Don't expect me to hide when the lives of my brother and my friends-and that includes Shou-are in jeopardy." Llesho resettled his bow against his saddle with an expression that dared the general to order him off the attack.

Habiba glared back at him. "I expect you to take orders. And not to take foolish risks."

Llesho froze. This was more the magician he knew, but it reminded him how stupid it was to fling a challenge on the edge of battle. He could lose it all for them right here, split their small force along lines of loyalty-Shou's men, Thebin's and the Dinha's Wastrels. They needed to work together, under one leader, to win.

If the general gave the order, he'd be sitting out the fighting with Dognut and the monkey. But he could make his case until the order was given, and he could use the emperor in his defense: "Shou would say that you need to take the risks to understand the dangers, for later."

"And we see where it got him, don't we?" Habiba drew irritably on his reins and his horse startled and skittered in place.

Llesho had waited until he settled the animal, and then pressed his defense. "He's right, though, isn't he?" Which seemed a pretty stupid thing to say with Shou a prisoner, if not dead already. That didn't make him wrong, though.

Habiba gave him a look that peeled and dissected him for hidden motives, but he finally relaxed into a long-suffering sigh and a muttered comment about bad role models that Llesho didn't quite catch.

"Can I trust you to depend on the army at your back, and not to take it on yourself to rescue the Thebin prisoners singlehandedly?"

"I'm a soldier, trained under your own eye, sir." It cut right to his heart that the magician would doubt him, but something at the back of his mind squirmed under the demand for his promise. How much of a martyr was he willing to make of himself? Llesho decided not to look under that particular rock; better to admit the obvious.

"Do you think they'd let me?" Truth. The Wastrels and the Thebins in their party had arranged themselves as his personal army. At their head, Bixei and Harlol rode to his right and left. They might have been comrades in arms except for the tension that kept their eyes coming back to Llesho. Neither had seen the other in combat. Each doubted the wisdom of trusting Llesho's life to the other. But neither of them would let him get in over his head.

The general wasted no more time on him, but speared his self-appointed guards with a baleful glare. "The Ham don't need any more hostages," he warned them, "nor do the Thebin people need more martyrs."

Ouch. Habiba was using the deadly forms of argument after all.

"No, sir," Bixei saluted with more enthusiasm than Llesho thought was absolutely necessary, and Harlol gripped the hilts of his swords in the Wastrel posture of ready defense. He would have laid the blades at Habiba's feet in pledge of his good faith if they hadn't been traveling at the head of an army on horseback.

The general had acknowledged their pledges with a nod, and Llesho had marched with the army. Now that the waiting had come, Llesho admitted to himself that he was scared. He'd always carried a bit of fear into battle, of course, sensible considering he'd been wounded twice: once, in an ambush. He didn't remember much of that one-had slept through most of it thanks to the healer Mara, Carina's mother. Afterward, he'd gone back into battle no more scared than he'd ever been, but with the experience to know that sometimes in a fight you hurt your opponent and sometimes he hurt you.

But the wounds Master Markko had put on him scant months ago in the battle for the Imperial City of Shan had torn his body apart. Llesho still felt the scars pull when he overreached himself and likely would for the rest of his Me.

When the Harn had attacked the inn at Durnhag, he'd been too surprised to be more than the usual amount of logically scared. Then his brother had hit him over the head and he'd missed the rest. Poised in the hills above the enemy for the signal to advance, however, his fear went deeper than logic. He could feel a nest of dragon kits frolicking in his guts, where his brother Adar had stitched him up.

After arguing himself into this position, he realized that only one thing held him to his place in the line: an irrational determination that his brother Adar, held prisoner below, could not die as long as Llesho was trying to save him. He was, as Habiba had suggested, a fool. He hadn't realized until this moment that he was a coward as well.

"We'll get them out." Bixei sounded more than determined-as if he were reciting a known fact. They'd never quite been friends, but that didn't mean they weren't loyal to each other and to their cadre beyond all reason. Bixei had been at Shan, and he looked like he knew some of the things going through Llesho's mind.

"I know." Confidence in his companions he meant, not a boast about their success. He was feeling damned small in himself right then, and the world seemed upside down.

"I'd always thought battles that decide the fate of worlds would be bigger," he commented, revealing a little of what he was thinking. "There are so few of us, so few of them."

Harlol, on his other side, snorted his disapproval. "That's what happens when kings play soldier. Empires stand or fall, and no one is the wiser until they count the dead and kings are found among them."

He was risking Harlol's life. Spending it, if the Dinha saw truly. Llesho hadn't thought to ask, until now, why Harlol himself had come with them. Now wasn't the right time, but he could answer the Wastrel's charge at least.

"Kings are murdered sitting in their palaces, too. Better even for kings-or princes-to die fighting than to be slaughtered on their knees." He didn't think his father would have begged, but he knew enough now that he wouldn't think less of him if he had. And thought maybe that was Harlol's answer, too, or the Dinha's.

"Better not to die at all," Bixei reminded them both sharply. Unlike the Wastrel, he'd been through battles and unlike Llesho, he'd survived them relatively unscathed. Hurt worse in his single bout in the arena, he often reminded his less fortunate comrades. With none of Llesho's morbid dread, his common sense seemed to reach out and steady nerves. Llesho twitched an eyebrow to mark the hit his companion had made, center target.

But Shou was Habiba's problem. Against the rear guard of the Harnish camp the general led imperial troops who would die to the man to reach their emperor. To Llesho and his division fell the task of finding and releasing the Thebin prisoners. Hmishi had suffered torture in Llesho's name. They owed him rescue and they had to be quick about it. The Harn now knew he wasn't the prince Markko was looking for, which made him expendable in their eyes. They also had a prince their master didn't recognize. The trick was to reach Adar before the raiders could threaten to kill the hostages. Because Habiba had made it clear they would not surrender, not even to save Shou.