"You had nothing to do with my coming here," Llesho corrected him. "I've come to tally up the charges against you, for when we meet in battle."

At Ahkenbad his dreams had been filled with the pain of his companions, so he knew to expect no good outcome of this dream-journey. When he saw his brother leaning over a pallet near the door of the tent, however, Llesho's spirits rose in spite of good sense. His brother, at least, appeared unhurt.

"Goddess, what are you doing here!" Adar greeted him with horror. Rising from the sickbed he tended, the healer no longer obstructed Llesho's view of his patient. The sight of Hmishi, lying feverish and battered on the low cot, struck him like a blow.

Llesho resisted the step that would take him to his friend and his brother. He was worried, but he didn't want to draw attention to the fact. Instead he walked toward the firebox, demanding a higher place as befitted one of rank.

"I'm not here. Not really, no matter what he says." He gave no explanation which Tsu-tan could report to his master, but his caution didn't seem to matter.

"Your brother travels in a dream, witch. He can do nothing for you."

"You're safe, then." Adar tried to keep his voice level, but he couldn't hide the sudden drop of his shoulders. The tension he had been carrying since Llesho entered the tent seemed to bleed out of him, leaving him almost limp with relief.

"I'm fine," Llesho assured him. "And our brothers Balar and Lluka as well, though I would have Lluka less stubborn." In spite of their terrible danger, Llesho offered this small joy in finding two more of their brothers alive as Lleck's ghost had promised.

"Then you would have a different brother," Adar answered with a wry tilt of his mouth. "For Lluka has known best, according to Lluka, since he was in the training saddle."

Llesho gave a nod, acknowledging the truth of Adar's words, but keeping his own counsel about the danger Lluka's arrogance might pose them all. Adar couldn't help with that, and he was anxious to ask the questions he had come for.

"You look well," he ventured.

"This one's master has a use for princes, and would keep me alive until he discovers we will not give him what he wants."

"Your milky face may be out of my reach, witch, but the boy is not," Tsu-tan warned them. From a table littered with the remains of a supper he picked up an iron rod and tapped on Hmishi's cheekbone, already decorated with bruises.

Hmishi screamed, but the pain seemed to rouse him from his stupor. Though glazed with fever and panic, his eyes tracked with intelligence as they moved from his tormentor to Adar to the newcomer in the room. "Llesho?" he murmured. "Are we dead? I didn't think it would hurt so much."

"Not yet." Tsu-tan gave a tap with the bludgeon to Hmishi's bandaged hand. "But soon enough."

Hmishi groaned, his face glazed with the oily sweat of pain. Llesho took a step forward, and the witch-finder raised his bludgeon as a warning. "You're just dreaming, young soldier," he mocked his wounded prisoner. "Your foolish king has forgotten you all."

"That's not true." Llesho clasped and unclasped his fists, but didn't dare to approach any closer. Alone, he could do nothing but cause both his friend and his brother more pain. "I'll be back for you."

"We'll wait for you," Adar promised him. "The magician assures my cooperation with the boy's pain. He won't let Hmishi die until he has what he wants from me." He didn't say anything about Lling and Llesho didn't want to bring attention to her by mentioning her either.

There were so many things they couldn't talk about, fears they didn't have to speak out loud because they shared them already: Master Markko might realize Adar would never give him what he wanted and kill both prince and hostage. Or, the witch-finder might slip his master's reins and beat the young guardsman to death in a frenzy of the hatred he felt against all magic. He may already have gone too far-Hmishi's face was pale, and he shivered with cold in spite of the gleam of sweat. There were injuries under the blankets Llesho didn't want to think about, and Tsu-tan already had his eye on Lling as a replacement victim in spite of his master's orders. It never paid to depend on the good sense of the mad; he had less time to bring troops to bear than he had hoped.

And he still didn't know where he was. He scanned the tent as if he could get some clue from the black felt, but there was nothing-instruments of torture on the lattice walls, a lantern over the cot, and the remains of supper amid the bloodstains on the low table. Llesho felt certain that the food had not been for Hmishi. More likely the witch-finder enjoyed his dinner with torture on the side. But he appeared to have no use for maps.

Adar watched him with a frown, trying to puzzle out what Llesho saw, or wished to see. Then something clicked behind his eyes. "Due west," he said softly, "straight into Great Sun."

"Unwise," Tsu-tan said. He raised his bludgeon over his head, and Llesho felt the ground fall away beneath his feet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

LESHO braced himself for the long drop to the turf outside of Bolghai's burrow, but when he reached for them, the grasslands to the north weren't there. Instead, he felt himself caught by a maelstrom that picked him up and dragged him far off his intended course.

"Whoa!" he called, as if he could bring the storm to his hand like a wild pony. But another, stronger mind was drawing him out past the camp where his brother tended Hmishi, away from the tent city of Chimbai-Khan where Bolghai waited for him to return from his dream-walk.

"Who's there? Who are you?"

Laughter echoed in his head, and a voice that turned his guts to water licked a poison trail across his mind.

"Just an old friend," Master Markko said with mock cheer. "We wouldn't want you to fall into bad company while you are wandering the dreaming places on your own, now, would we?"

It didn't get get any worse than the company he was in. The memory of that voice in his dreams, calling him down into fever and death, ached in his guts where recent wounds were still healing. any worse than the company he was in. The memory of that voice in his dreams, calling him down into fever and death, ached in his guts where recent wounds were still healing.

"You made a bad enemy at Ahkenbad." Llesho tried to make it sound like a threat, but Markko laughed at him.

"Enemies, yes. Of corpses and children."

"And Dun Dragon."

"Like I said. Corpses. Greater powers than you or I pulled the teeth on that old worm more ages ago than you have hairs on your head, boy. But a good effort."

He didn't know. Before Llesho could explore that thought, something plucked him from the maelstrom with a wrenching force that ground his bones one against the other. It dropped him like a sack of flour to land on the carpeted floor of a tent he did not know, except that it was a Shannish rectangle with yellow silk for walls and for the curtains that partitioned the space. He had appeared in the back of the tent. On the other side of the curtain, the shadows of servants huddled, while the call of sentries floated on the night air outside.

Watching him with a satisfied leer, Master Markko sat in an elaborately carved chair. At his elbow stood a fragile table set with steaming pots and two bowls for cups, and his feet rested on a stool covered in a cushion of silk brocade. Behind him, a rumpled bed gave evidence of recent occupancy. In fact, the magician wore only a night coat belted loosely at his waist, as if he had been roused by a disturbance of his sleep.

Llesho staggered to his feet. There seemed no point in a reminder that this was a dream. In the first place, Master Markko had entered the dreams of Ahkenbad and murdered the dream readers in their sleep. Llesho had no reason to doubt the magician could do it again if Markko wanted him dead. In the second place, he wasn't certain he was was dreaming anymore. If Markko's magic could defeat defenses as powerful as those of Ahkenbad, how difficult could it be for him to drag Llesho out of the dream realm if he wanted to? The truth was, he didn't know enough to make a judgment on exactly where he was or how Markko had got him here, so he kept quiet. dreaming anymore. If Markko's magic could defeat defenses as powerful as those of Ahkenbad, how difficult could it be for him to drag Llesho out of the dream realm if he wanted to? The truth was, he didn't know enough to make a judgment on exactly where he was or how Markko had got him here, so he kept quiet.

"Sit, please. Would you care for tea?"

Master Markko moved his feet from the stool, signaling that Llesho's place was below him, and held out a steaming earthen bowl. The vapors brought stinging tears to Llesho's eyes. He remembered other cups forced down his throat and nights spent writhing in agony on Master Markko's floor and shook his head, refusing both the tea and the seat.

"I won't be staying."

"What has happened to your manners?" the magician asked with a smile that dissected him on the hoof. "Don't you know it's a grievous insult in the grasslands to refuse hospitality? You must remember our happier days, when you used to sup from my hand and I would hold your head on my knee while you moaned in the night?"

"Where are we?"

"Tsk." Markko sipped from the bowl he had offered Llesho and set it carefully on the table before delicately wiping the moisture from his lips. "Oh, yes, it contains a careful selection of poisons." He waved a languid hand, as if objections were fat green flies he could brush away. "You never understood that I have always had the best of intentions in your regard, Prince Llesho.

"You proved useful in testing the effects of various poisons for the casual trade. But that was never my full purpose with you. I sought a disciple, one who might become as strong as I one day, and rule beside me in all my conquests. You were that boy; if future invulnerability requires present agony, who am I to deny the Way of destiny for the sake of a few nights of painless rest?"

The idea that the magician thought he'd been doing Llesho a favor enraged him more than it ever had when he thought Markko just used him as a convenient receptacle for his poisons.

"You could have killed me!"

"No, no," the magician objected. He poured a less noxious tea from the second pot into a clean bowl and drank steadily until the bowl was empty. "If you had died, you wouldn't be the one. Since you are the one, I couldn't have killed you. At least, not in the testing, as the others died. I am am still stronger than you are, as Ah-kenbad proved." still stronger than you are, as Ah-kenbad proved."

Another test. He didn't know why he was surprised. Next time, however, he'd just refuse to jump over their fences and see what they thought they could do about it. Of course, Master Markko hadn't asked; he'd poured the stuff down Llesho's throat and he either fought the poison or he died. Most of the tests he'd faced since leaving Pearl Island were like that. They gave him only the one choice- play and win, or die whether playing or not-and he wasn't ready to choose the alternative yet.

"Is that what you're doing to Hmishi? A test?"

"Don't be silly-are you sure you don't want any tea?-the boy is just a diversion to keep Tsu-tan occupied until I can reach his camp with the ulus of the Uulgar clans behind me-"

"And the Southern Khan agreed to follow you?"

"Well," Markko lowered his eyelashes in a false show of humility. "He died so suddenly, you know. And the carrion crows who ate his flesh died as well, a great black crowd of them, which was a terrible omen. Someone had to step in. Since we had eaten from the same dishes and I remained unharmed, it seemed the spirits of the underworld favored me.

"But as I was saying before your manners forsook you altogether, it takes time, even for one of my persuasive skills, to bring the entire might of the Southern ulus into position. As a lieutenant, Tsu-tan has little to recommend him when compared to your gifts and talents, but he has proved himself loyal, given proper payment. I knew that harm to your brother would make the differences between us far too personal, and chivalry would demand an equal response if I let him play with the girl. Take note that I have held these two off-limits for the witch-finder's games.

"The boy is a soldier, however; a simple stone on a complex board performing his painful duty. If you are the companion I believe you to be, you will grow to understand sacrificing a few stones to gain greater territory in the pursuit of power."

"Lives aren't stones in a game. You can't just sweep them off the board."

"Of course I can." Master Markko twitched a finger and Llesho doubled over in pain. He hadn't touched the bowl of poisoned tea, but somehow, the magician had called upon the poisons lying dormant in his body and awakened them. Llesho fell, hot and cold by turns, gripped by the combined effects of all the doses he had swallowed in that long-ago workroom. His gut clenched and turned to water and he writhed convulsively in an old agony.

A whisper of silk warned him that Markko had left his chair. Llesho tried to curl protectively around his gut, to defend against the sensation of fiery knives shredding him from the inside. But the poisons bowed his spine so that his head stretched back almost to his heels. Like an old dream, the magician took his head onto his knees and touched his hair.

"I have always loved you best this way," he whispered into Llesho's ear. With a single languorous stroke, he wiped a sweat-washed tear from Llesho's cheek and licked it from his fingertip with a gentle smile. "You are like a son to me."

"I knew my father," Llesho gasped through his pain. "You are nothing like him."

"You're right, of course. Your father is dead. And I-" the magician brushed the hair back from his forehead, "-well, I would fight dragons to keep you just the way you are right now."

"You will have dragons and more to fight when I get free of you," Llesho promised himself. Then he threw up on the magician's lap. His bowels had released themselves already, his insides forcibly rejecting the poisons that had become a part of him, and he had to suffer the humiliation of his own fouled body as well as the pain. The magician did not react in disgust, however, but dropped a kiss at his temple.

"I haven't given up hope yet of bringing you to my side in this war," he said as he withdrew to change his soiled robe. "If you force me to relinquish my dream, I will regret what I must do, of course, but I will will relieve you of your life by painful inches." relieve you of your life by painful inches."

The magician dropped his soiled robes in a heap. Naked, he called a servant to dress him. Is that what his poisons will do to me? Is that what his poisons will do to me? Llesho wondered. Master Markko's flesh was gnarled with twisted tracks of blue and green squirming under sickly skin marked here and there with the dull gleam of scales. "Magicians," Habiba had said, "all carried the blood of dragons." Llesho wondered. Master Markko's flesh was gnarled with twisted tracks of blue and green squirming under sickly skin marked here and there with the dull gleam of scales. "Magicians," Habiba had said, "all carried the blood of dragons."

A Thebin slave, though Llesho didn't recognize him, quickly answered the call, bearing robes and soft breeches. The man gave Llesho not a single glance, as if by seeing he might exchange places with this most recent victim. He cringed at his master's touch and did not breathe until the unnatural flesh had disappeared under its luxurious coverings.

"Bury it," Markko said The thought of smothering to death in a living grave did not distress Llesho as much as it should have. Anything was better than this. But the magician nudged with a careful foot at his discarded clothing, stained with the poisons of Llesho's body. When the servant had departed with his contaminated burden, Markko turned a calculating stare on Llesho.

"Perhaps, if you have some time to think about it, you will see reason yet," the magician said, and left Llesho to suffer alone.

It was a measure of Llesho's agony that being alone was more horrifying even than the company of the man who had put him there. He longed for the sound of breathing and the eyes of another human being watching him, more frightened of dying alone in such terrible pain than of suffering for the pleasure of his enemy. Gradually, however, that longing grew into a different shape. His heart, torn with pain and loss and terror, called to a power beyond his own, for home and love and- Home.

"Llesho?" Pig looked down at him; a worried frown wrinkled his dark, open face.

"Am I dead?" Llesho asked him and winced at the reminder. Hmishi had asked him the same thing.

Fortunately, Pig's answer was similar to his own: "No, you're still alive. How do you feel?"

"Awful," Llesho was about to say, but that wasn't true any more. "Weak," he concluded. "Where am I?" and rolled his eyes. He had to figure out something more original to say-preferably something that didn't give away how little he knew about what he was doing.

"Same question," Pig agreed. "The answer is nowhere near as dire, but a great deal more puzzling. You're alive, but you've brought us to the gardens of heaven. Again. How did you do it?"

Llesho shrugged, discovered it didn't hurt and that he lay on a soft bed of moss under a tree with wide fronds that protected him from the flat white light. Things looked better than they had the last time he'd visited heaven, but there was nothing even the best of gardeners could do about the constant glare from the nightless sky.

"I was scared and alone and all I wanted was to go home," he said.

"Got that wrong, didn't you?" Pig joked. He made a great show of settling his sleek piggy body on the moss next to Llesho, but there was less truth than usual in his round little eyes.

If the Jinn lied now, perhaps he had about being alive as well. Llesho allowed his heavy lids to fall closed over his eyes. If it meant he could finally sleep, here in the gentle warmth of the Great Goddess' garden, he decided, he didn't mind being dead after all.

Leaves rustled nearby, but Pig remained where he was, so it didn't mean danger. That was just fine with Llesho-it meant he didn't have to wake up. When a finger touched his hair, however, imagination dropped him back on the floor of Markko's tent, under the magician's evil ministrations. In a cold sweat he started up, gasping for breath.

"Oh, Goddess," he moaned, and covered his face with his hands.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to remind you of him." A beekeeper sank down on her heels beside him. At her side rested a small pitcher and two jade cups. One, he felt sure, was the jade cup he had left in his pack back in the khan's camp. Setting her heavy gloves beside her, she tucked her veils up over her hat and watched him with a worried frown.

"You didn't. Don't. Well, not after I opened my eyes. You don't look like him at all."

She bore little resemblance to the beekeeper he'd met on his first visit to heaven either. She seemed much younger and more beautiful than he remembered; not with the cold and distant perfection of the Lady SienMa or the sinewy economy of function of Kaydu, though. The best he could come up with was "complete." As she sat beside him, her hands folded calmly in her lap and her dark hair tied neatly on top of her head, she seemed to contain her whole world in herself. Even her eyes seemed to reflect not just one color, but all colors, changing as he looked at them from brown to black to green to amber. The tears that shimmered unshed in them promised home for his weary soul in that world within her.

Watching the play of concern and other emotions cross her face, he wondered how many beekeepers heaven employed, and why they should all take an interest in him. The Great Goddess, of course, could appear to him in any guise. When he put it that way, the answer was obvious.

"We've met before, haven't we?" The rush of panic receded in a babbling torrent of words and he stopped, blushing.

"Did you find shelter from the storm?" she asked, and he knew that was the answer to his question. He had lost sight of her just as a storm had swept through heaven.

"My lady Goddess."

He struggled to rise, but she urged him to lie down against her knees with a hand placed gently over his heart. "Rest, husband."

Acceptance brought shame with it. That she had traded her unguarded appearance for one that must be more attractive to him meant that she doubted his ability to love her as she was.

"Please, my lady Goddess, don't change yourself for me. I will love you in whatever aspect you show me."

"Later," she said. "When your wounds have mended." Injuries to his heart and soul, she meant. From the pitcher at her side she poured a clear liquid into his cup. "This will start the healing."

He took the cup, discovering only pure, clean water on his tongue. As he drank, some part of the taint on his soul truly did seem cleaned away. With a contented sigh he returned the cup and let his eyes fall closed. Cool fingers stroked his forehead, urging him to sleep.

Before he gave in to her ministrations, however, he owed her his gratitude. "Thank you for bringing me here."

"I didn't," she said. "Your own dreams brought you to me."

"Home." It felt right when his heart had reached out in unspoken longing for the Great Goddess, and it felt right now, as he nestled against her homely skirts.

Heaven drew him like a warm fire burning at the very center of his being, and he gave up all his denials and pretensions to a normal life with a weary sigh. Maybe the struggle wouldn't be so bad, knowing he had love and home at the end of it. Only if he won, he reminded himself. This was, after all, a dream. He'd have to go back soon.

"Home," the goddess agreed. "For a little while yet." In her arms, he let go of his burdens and slept.

He woke to the sound of running feet, and the shouts of familiar voices. Stipes, breathless and coming closer, called to their companions. "He's back!"

"What?" That was Bixei. "Where did he come from?"

"He just appeared, in his own bed."