"I'll do it." Llesho stretched over the abyss to grasp the pin in the Jinn's back, but Pig wriggled out of reach.

"I have to promise first."

"You just did."

"No, I said I would would promise. You haven't asked me to do it yet." promise. You haven't asked me to do it yet."

Llesho was growing more annoyed with the strange pearly creature by the minute. When he stopped to consider this strange situation, none of it made sense, least of all his own patience in dealing with the captive Jinn. He was in it now, however, and could see no way out except through to the end.

"Promise me three wishes," he insisted, and started pulling himself closer on the chain even before the words "I promise" left Pig's mouth.

Suddenly, a hand big enough to hold Llesho and the Jinn together in its palm swept him off the silver chain and held him up to the face he most dreaded in the world. "Welcome home, Llesho."

"Master Markko!" he shouted, and woke up in a cold sweat, with a hand clamped over his mouth. Struggling against the strong arm holding him down, he almost missed the words whispered in his ear.

"You were calling out in your sleep."

Hmishi. Friend, then. When he thought about it, all the signs of a dream were there, but he hadn't questioned anything while it was happening.

He nodded once, to show that he was awake and paying attention. Hmishi removed his hand and sat back on his heels, waiting for Llesho to return to the present.

He remembered now. They had stopped at a way station with one small inn at the far end of a staging area for the caravans. Long, open stables flanked the square on either side. Adar and Carina had gone to the inn with Shou, as would be expected of persons of their apparent rank, with Dognut the dwarf as their entertainment. Lling had accompanied them to stand first watch over their master's sleep, maintaining the ruse that they traveled with Shou's party as guards for hire. The rest of their party bedded down with the travelers of lower station among the animals in the stables.

Nearby, sharp eyes gleamed with curiosity out of the late-night darkness. Harlol, the Tashek drover, had kept to himself during the day's travels. Now, he propped his chin on the palm of his hand and watched the Thebins.

"It's nothing," Hmishi assured the man, an undercurrent of threat a low rumble in his voice.

The drover took the hint and rolled over in his blankets. He only pretended to go back to sleep, Llesho figured. The veterans working as paid guards, who lay scattered among the sleepers for their protection, were doubtless fully alert behind their closed eyelids as well. Nothing like an audience when nightmares decided to make a performance of his sleep.

"You were calling out Master Markko's name," Hmishi whispered. "What was that about?"

Llesho shook his head. "Not here."

Thinking about this particular dream sent a shiver through his body. The logic of it fell apart in the light of his waking mind, but a seed of truth at its core worried him. What did it mean?

"Where is Master Den?"

"Privy, or maybe the pump," Hmishi answered. They both knew that could mean anywhere.

Llesho rose and gestured for Hmishi to follow. They made their way quietly past the huddled sleepers and those whose bodies lay unnaturally still as they listened. A cool breeze soothed their heated skin when they passed out of the stable under one of the many elaborate arches that pierced its long face. The cloud-streaked sky gave them no stars to see by, but enough light from one moon or the other filtered past the drifting tissue strands of mist to cast the long row of arches into darker shadows crossing against the night.

The Huang caravan had stopped at a reputable resting place inside the borders of Shan Province, but Kaydu had trained them well. Both of the young Thebin soldiers scanned the great echoing square for stealthy bandits and sneak attack. Shoulder to shoulder, hands at sword belts, they peered as deeply into the shadows as they could see. When a hulking clot of darkness detached itself from under one of the stable's great arches, Hmishi stepped between his prince and the approaching threat. Both drew their swords, but Llesho's blade shook in his hands.

"You are greatly troubled." Master Den's voice issued softly from the darkness before them. He moved a hand and the clouds parted before the great moon's glowing disk, pushing back the shadows.

"A dream, Master."

Master Den nodded and motioned him to a bench that curved around an ornate column holding up a gracefully curved arch. Master Den urged him to sit, then asked, "Tell me what you saw."

"It was more than a dream, wasn't it?" Llesho risked a glance at his teacher, but Master Den gave one of his typical shrugs, offering no useful advice, but demanding much of his supplicant.

"You could be suffering the ill effects of a dinner left out too long in the sun. Only a dream reader can tell for certain. The Tashek have the most revered dream readers, but I don't expect to meet up with one on our journey."

"Has anyone ever seen a Tashek dream reader?" Hmishi asked, "I thought they were a myth, like the Gansau Wastrels, used to scare little children."

"They are real," Master Den confirmed. "But they are a religious caste, and enter the dreams of sleepers only when invited, to give aid to the troubled. They are not, as the tales suggest, the cause of night terrors."

Hmishi blushed, and Llesho wished he knew what they were talking about. He'd seen Tashek drovers in the streets of Kungol, had even watched, from a hidden corner of a balcony, when Tashek tribal chiefs had paid their respects to his lady mother. But servants did not frighten the palace heirs with stories of mythical monsters. Sometimes he thought that a great fault in his education. He might have fought more wisely as a child if he'd known of such things as Harnish raiders and their hunger to snuff out life. And he might even know what Hmishi and Master Den were talking about.

"Not a myth," Master Den informed them, "though we are not likely to find one to advise us on our present road."

"If it wasn't just a dream, what was it?" Llesho trusted Master Den's opinion more than he would a stranger's anyway.

"I won't know until you tell it, now, will I?"

"No." Taking a deep breath, he pinned his gaze to the pale disk of Great Moon Lun so that he didn't have to look at Master Den while he spoke, but that reminded him of the dream. Han and Chen had set while they were talking, and Lun had followed past the zenith.

"I was watching the magician, Habiba, catch the moonlight in a silver bowl filled with water. He was searching the moons' reflections for the black pearls of the goddess. I looked over his shoulder and fell in. That's when I met Pig."

Master Den settled a listening expression over his human face, but he offered no encouragement beyond his puckered frown as Llesho told the tale of his dream. When the telling had wound down to the last chilling words, Master Den nodded.

"Did you recognize anything else? Anything in Master Markko's surroundings that will give us a clue about where he is now?"

Llesho shook his head. "I saw Habiba's workshop well enough. I think he must have been in the imperial palace-I'm pretty sure I recognized the view out his window. Once I fell into the water, nothing seemed real. All I saw, beyond the chain and the Jinn who calls himself Pig, was Master Markko himself.

"There was something strange about him, though." Llesho paused, staring at Great Moon Lun while he tried to recapture the feeling of the dream. "Markko talked to me, and I talked to the Jinn. But Markko didn't seem to notice the Jinn or the silver chain, and Habiba didn't see me. It was like our dreams had touched, but only at the edges."

"If we are very lucky, you are correct," Master Den agreed. Llesho would have preferred an answer that didn't confirm his own suspicions.

"But it was a dream, right?"

"I know this Jinn," Master Den said. "Pig has served the goddess through many ages, and has been her favorite for most of those lifetimes."

"It seems a strange name for someone loved by the goddess."

Master Den's fond memories crinkled a smile at the corner of his eyes. "Not at all. Pig really is a pig. He was, in his mortal life, a great hunter of truffles. The goddess invited him to heaven and offered him any shape he wished, just so that he would provide the heavenly table with truffles as wonderful and pungent as those he had sought out in the mortal realm. He agreed but, being a pig, could imagine no greater calling than to be what he was. So the goddess raised him up on two feet, and gave him speech, which he finds amusing, and the rank of chief gardener, which he takes very seriously. In all else, however, he remains a pig. As for names, like his shape, he seems to feel a need for no other."

Llesho shivered. When he was a slave on Pearl Island, Master Markko had threatened to feed him to the pigs, and he could not help but find an omen in the dream. Master Den had also served on Pearl Island, however, and followed Llesho's thoughts with sorrowful ease.

"He is my friend," the trickster god reminded him. "Pig has never, to my knowledge, eaten either frightened slave boys or weary old men, no matter how hungry he might have been."

"You must think that I am a fool."

"A fool knows no fear, and needs no courage to go forward," Master Den corrected Llesho with wry humor. "A brave man understands his fears, but does what he must in spite of them."

"Then I must be the hero of this tale," Hmishi complained, "because I am terrified most of the time, of just about everything."

Master Den laughed, as he was meant to do, and slapped a hand on the back of each Thebin boy. "Go back to sleep," he ordered them as he might two mischief makers.

"Not me," Hmishi grumbled. "It's time I relieved Lling on guard duty anyway."

When he had gone, Llesho took a minute to ask a final question. "Whose dream was it? Was I in Habiba's dream, or he in mine?"

"Perhaps you dreamed each other." Master Den gave Llesho a comforting pat. "We'll figure it out. In the meantime, try to get some rest. I want you up early for prayer forms."

"Yes, Master." Llesho rose and bowed his gratitude to the trickster god. In simpler times he had learned the prayer forms and their defensive counterparts as combat forms. Master Den's reminder soothed his fretful soul: even on a caravan, far from anything he knew, he carried the ordering of his own existence within him.

Lesho was not so pleased when Hmishi shook his arm to rouse him from his too short sleep well before the sun had risen. "Master Den is waiting for you in the courtyard. I get a free pass today, because I've just come off duty, but he wants you up and out on the double."

Llesho groaned and rolled out of his blankets as Hmishi fell into his own. Lling was nowhere in sight, her pack already stowed for the next stage of the journey. Llesho followed her lead, and stumbled into the square just as the gray false dawn of the little sun washed the straggling line facing Master Den.

Lling was there, and Dognut, of all people. The dwarf stood at rest with his feet settled apart on short, bent legs and his equally shortened arms clasped around his belly. He almost appeared comical, until Llesho looked into the centered calm of his eyes. Then he found himself wondering what role the little man actually played in Shou's court.

Carina had cast aside her veils and joined them in her long split skirt. Adar stood with the emperor in disguise and a small cluster of senior guardsmen who gathered in front of the inn. A handful of merchants paused in their preparations for departure to watch as well, while a denser knot of the lower ranks looked on curiously from across the courtyard. A lesser number of Harnish merchants stood among the onlookers with their own guards in the dress of raiders.

Ignoring the curious audience as much as possible, Llesho took his place next to Carina. He shook his arms to loosen his muscles; perhaps he could impress the healer with his skill at the exercises, since nothing else seemed to be working for him.

Master Den gave the ritual bow, and their little line returned it. Then the laundryman and trickster god called out the first of the morning forms. "Red Sun."

Llesho moved his body into the gentlest of fire signs to greet the dawn. Each bend and stretch reminded him of all the times that he had performed the prayer form in the past. Warm as sunlight, the faces of companions lost or left behind came to him in his prayer: Bixei and Stipes, and Kaydu, alive and training their troops on Sho-kar's farm. The gladiator Radimus, sold to the enemy to pay a dead man's debts. Madon, who had sacrificed his life to stop a war and Master Jaks, who had given his life in fighting that war anyway. Lleck, who had grown old and sick in the service of the kings of Thebin, following Llesho into slavery to keep faith with his duty. Out of a storm-tossed life, memories of passing comforts squeezed his heart with a desire to see his comrades again.

The form brought them back to rest, and several of the guardsmen joined them. A groom or two followed, and even a few of the merchants abandoned their coats to servants and joined the ranks of those in prayer.

"Flowing River," Master Den called.

Personal memory emptied into a greater consciousness as muscle flowed into muscle. The Way of the Goddess, the exercise taught, did not resist, but pursued its course with unrelenting gentleness. Only now exists; time is the present in motion. The past flows into the future like the river which flows eternally yet remains always in the present.

"Still Water," Master Den looked to Adar when he called the next prayer.

Adar acknowledged the summons. He moved away from the inn and joined the teacher in front of the now-substantial rank of worshipers. With a bow to the mortal god, he took a stance and returned the trickster's welcoming smile with a grin of his own, as though they shared a secret. Master Den raised his arm, and Adar, facing him, mirrored the movement so that their upraised THE PRIHCE OF DREAPH hands almost touched. Adar bent deeply into the opposite knee and brought his free hand forward in a sharp, taut move that stopped just short of Master Den's hand reaching to meet it. The form passed through a series of sharp movements each poised in stillness before moving to the next, and each restrained a hair's breadth from its reflection in his partner.

Llesho followed the moves with a scattered few who practiced the advanced forms. None but the two masters completed the "Still Water" form with a reflecting partner, however. Llesho gave up on the idea of impressing Carina. Though he hadn't known of it, his brother's mastery did not surprise him. Adar had received the favor of the goddess as one of her spiritual husbands. Her gifts had included Adar's great skill as a healer. He wondered how his brother could believe the goddess had likewise come to him, when he was clumsy and unskilled and had received no gifts at all on his vigil night.

When they completed the form, Adar bowed his whole body into a deep obeisance, as if the form had been meant as a rebuke.

"Butterfly," Master Den called, but a second voice challenged him.

"The journey to the West requires stronger gods than these." Harlol, the Tashek drover, swaggered into a cleared space in the square, pacing back and forth in front of the massed crowd of grooms and drovers and lesser guards.

Llesho felt a jab at his hip and looked down to see a troubled frown on the dwarf's face. "The master has been too long away from the caravans," Dognut whispered. "I hope he doesn't pay dearly for taking up with strangers for this journey."

Like the dwarf, Llesho had a very bad feeling about this.

Having made his challenge, the Tashek drover began to sway in a desert dance. Soon he was whirling madly, his heavy coats flying out around his ankles. From somewhere in the crowd a sword flew at him and he plucked it out of the air. Another, and he likewise grasped it, swinging both in counter circles as he twirled like a madman. Bending low, then leaping high into the air, he jabbed and thrust with both swords, and twirled them over his head in a choreographed dance of death. When he finally came to rest, his lungs blowing like bellows, the swords rested on Adar's shoulders, crossed in an X at his throat.

"I am a healer." At first, the Tashek seemed to take the words as a plea for mercy, and his lip curled in contempt. Then Adar finished his promise-"I won't hurt you."

"Read your fortune in the fire of the blades, healer."

Adar smiled at him, a warm crinkling welcome;, the swords on his shoulders rose and fell when he shrugged. "I don't think the goddess wants me today. But if she does, she can have me."

Llesho came to the immediate conclusion that his brother had lost his mind. He wondered if the emperor had done the same, letting the trickster god persuade him to hire on a madman as a drover. Would Shou really let a common drover murder a healer-prince in cold blood, and right in front of his eyes?

"No!" Llesho was so busy damning the lot of them to the outer reaches of hell that he didn't realize he had drawn his knife and sword until he stepped out of the line.

"No," Shou agreed, in a hushed voice so that only Llesho could hear. He took Llesho's sword from his hand, and Lling's, and approached the drover with both weapons held in a loose, easy grip.

"I know this dance." The emperor of Shan stood in front of his drover, his plain but rich clothes a reminder that this character he played studied the Guynmer version of the Tashek religion. He stamped his foot once, twice.

"Come, Wastrel, dance with me."

The term "Wastrel" was a complex one to turn on a Tashek. Outsiders used it as an insult, to mean that the race had neither ambition nor any inclination to work when they might beg or steal or trick a mark out of a day's bread. To the Tashek who came out of the Gansau Wastes, however, a Wastrel was a holy wanderer and, above all, a survivor. Shou could have meant either, or both. Neither tone of voice nor expression of face or body gave up his meaning. So a Gansau Wastrel would have done it.

"As you wish, merchant." Harlol drew his swords away from Adar's throat, leaving a thin trail of blood as a reminder, and turned to face the emperor-in-disguise. Stamping his own foot twice in the dirt, the Tashek accepted the challenge.

Gazes locked, the two men circled each other. Swords flashed and clashed in time to feet beating out the pattern of the dance in the dust. Whirling, leaping, dropping to the ground again, sweeping out a leg to upset his dancing opponent, the emperor met the Tashek move for move. The dance had a ritual meaning; swords flew and slashed about the body of the dancer who held them or met over the heads of the combatants. The worship form meant no harm to its practitioners, although accidents could prove fatal at the level these two prayed. A slip of the foot, a lapse in concentration for a fleeting second, could bring death to either man.

Feet beat a faster rhythm and the dance picked up speed. Shouts from the crowds encouraged first one champion, then the other. Shou was older, the Tashek sword prayer one of many forms he had learned over the years of his travels through his empire, though only Llesho's party among the crowd could know that. Harlol seemed much the favored dancer; he had the endurance of the young and the single-minded purpose of one who danced the only religion he believed. Shou had set his life against a thousand contests, however, while the Tas-hek drover had danced only for bragging rights among his age-mates.

Gradually, Llesho noticed a change in the pattern of the contest. Like the prayer forms of the Way of the Goddess, the dance had a combat style that dealt murder in every pose and action. So Llesho was not surprised when Harlol reached out with his swords aimed at his opponent's heart. A glance at Dognut's tense, watchful expression confirmed his suspicion: the Tashek drover had adopted the deadly style.

Llesho held his breath in a turmoil of indecision. He saw in his mind a vision of Shou dead in the caravanserai square, his blood spilling into the dust as his empire came apart like bricks in a wall without mortar. Harlol had dictated the shape of the combat, but Llesho blamed Shou for the aftermath his death would bring. The drover thought he was fighting a Guynmer merchant and certainly could not anticipate the destruction he called down on his people if he unwittingly murdered the emperor. But any move Llesho made to help might distract the very man he wished to save.

He took half a step forward, not certain what he would do next, and a hand fell on his shoulder. Master Den held him fast in a tight grip.

"He had a good teacher," the trickster god reminded him. Den himself, that was.

He would have objected, that Master Den taught the prayers and combat of the seven mortal gods, the forms that shaped the Way of the Goddess, and not this savage game of press and thrust. But even without any training in the Wastrel's dance, Llesho had seen when the prayer had turned deadly. Shou had seen the same, and moved seamlessly to adapt to it. A slash, another, and the drover lay at his feet, breathing raggedly and bleeding from cuts in his arm and leg.

"Dawn," Shou noticed, his voice steady and his breath calm. Great Sun had come up while they fought. "Friend THE PRIriCE OF DREATO Adar, can you help my drover? And I will need someone to take his place on the journey."

"I won't hold you back." The Tashek drover staggered in Adar's grip, but managed to hold himself upright. "I need just a stitch or two, and I will be back at my post by midmorning. Who will you find in a place like this to learn your ways as quickly?"

"I have certainly invested more in your education already than you deserve," Shou commented acidly. He returned the swords he had borrowed and raised a questioning eyebrow at Adar.

"The young have amazing recuperative powers of the body," the healer prince gently cuffed the ear of the wounded man he supported. "One wonders if his brains have not been addled in the sun, however."

"Dress his wounds, then, and pay for two days' keep." Instructions for the Tashek's care disposed of, Shou addressed his next order to Harlol: "Rest. You can join the caravan again in Durnhag when your leg will support you. In the meantime, we have need of additional hands, or we will never be ready to leave with the rest of our caravan."

Satisfied that the Guynmer merchant had settled accounts for the foolishness of a boastful young drover, the crowd broke up into small clusters of gossip before moving on to the day's work. A stranger with a family resemblance to the injured drover left one such knot to present himself to Shou.

"I'm Kagar, Harlol's cousin. For the honor of our family, I offer myself to take his place in your service, sir." Kagar bowed very deeply, shamed by the dishonor Harlol had already brought on his house.

"Is this some plot against my camels?" Shou demanded with all the indignation of a merchant who feared thievery and none of the censure of an emperor foiling an attempt at assassination. "Did you follow your cousin hoping to plunder my cargo between you?"

Harlol glared at the youth who had declared himself a cousin. "By my honor, I have no such intention, nor does my cousin, who is guilty of bad judgment only."

"I did follow you," Kagar admitted, "but not to steal from you. I had hoped that I might persuade you to take me on as a groom to assist with the horses. I did not expect my cousin to disgrace our family. Now I wish only to repair the damage he has done on this field of battle."