Llesho remembered that reassuring smile, almost remembered the words. No more than a year or so old, he'd ridden his first pony strapped into a training saddle, much as he did today. But he knew treachery when he saw it. Harlol, the man who tied him onto his horse, had attacked the emperor's person, might have killed Shou if he'd been a better fighter. Where was Shou now? Or Master Den, for that matter, or- "Where's Adar?"

Balar didn't answer right away. He mounted his own horse, staring out into the desert as if he could see something Llesho couldn't, which was likely given his gifts. "Adar will be all right. He was fully grown when the Harn attacked Kungol, and he didn't make the Long March." Guilt stirred in eyes grown damp with some old regret when Balar looked back at Llesho.

"He'll survive until we free him. You." He shook his head, unable, for a moment, to continue. Then he seemed to gather himself together for a last effort.

"The dream readers were not all agreed that you would survive the Harn again. They were afraid that you would throw your life away, fighting past hope until the raiders killed you. And that couldn't happen."

They were using the high court dialect of Kungol to keep their conversation private, and it took Llesho a moment to process the meaning out of the old, almost forgotten words. When he did, he gave his brother an icy glare. "I'm not that fragile." Or hadn't been, until Kagar had whacked him over the head. He was still unsteady from the blow, which made him sound less than convincing even to himself, but he wasn't about to let Balar treat him like a child. "The Harn took them, didn't they?"

Balar wouldn't even look at him, and Llesho remembered the sound of Hmishi screaming in his dream.

"Are we following them?" Pressure at his back told him no, but he waited for his brother to answer him. "We have to get them back."

"We are taking you to Ahkenbad. The dream readers will decide what to do next."

"Not good enough." Llesho wheeled his horse around, though weaponless and bound he could do nothing but make his brother chase him. "Master Markko will kill Hmishi out of spite, just for not being me. And you don't know what he will do to someone like Adar." Markko would take him apart, dissect him looking for the organ where the healer's gifts might reside. Llesho didn't say anything about Shou. Only the truth might move his brother to action there, and he still didn't know if Balar was his betrayer or the savior he claimed to be.

"We'll find Adar." Balar looked away, but not before Llesho saw the guilt fleetingly cross his face.

"What have you done?" he asked, determined to know the worst. His hands were still bound in front of him, his reins held on his right by his brother on horseback, and on his left by Harlol on foot. Kagar had taken his place on the camel, at ease on a pad of cloth folded into a seat in front of Dognut, who perched atop the creature's hump. Like the others, he furtively turned away when Llesho looked to him for answers. Dognut answered his question with a little dirge he played on his flute, but no one appreciated the humor. The mournful tune faded away into an uncomfortable trail of random notes, and the dwarf found something fascinating about the fingering of his instrument to study.

"Balar! Look at me!"

The musician prince gave a guilty start, but composed his features and faced his brother. "What do you want to know?"

"Why are you dragging me across this goddess-abandoned waste if this is not the direction they have taken Adar? And don't start babbling to me about dreamers and mystics. I've had my fill of the lot of them and I won't sacrifice the brother I have only just recovered to chase after some old hermit with a crystal ball."

"A powerful magician is looking for you-"

"Master Markko, I know. We have danced this dance many times. What of him?"

"Do you know why he wants you?"

"He thinks I have powers. I don't. So he's in for a disappointment either way it goes."

"You do, actually." Balar gave him a cool, appraising look.

Llesho smirked annoyingly at him, daring his brother to find any magic about him. When the dreams flitted through his mind, he banished them, refusing to believe they were anything more than a bad mix of anxiety and old memories rising out of his sleeping mind.

"I don't see it either." Balar shrugged. "But the dream readers swear it is true. This magician, they believe, will offer to free Adar if you set yourself in his place. He may include others of your companions in the trade if he must. They felt certain that you would exchange yourself for Adar, possibly for this Shou, definitely for the old servant who travels with Adar. To prevent your foolhardy sacrifice, I will take you to the dreaming place, bound if I must. When you are safely stowed, the dream readers will decide what to do about Adar."

"I'm not going to leave my brother's life to the visions of a stranger. He doesn't have time for that."

/tfliS Harlol might have objected, and Llesho belatedly remembered that the drover practiced the religion of dreamers and Wastrels. Balar spoke up first, however, his eyes pleading, his expression ashamed.

"I'm not a soldier, Llesho. I know the forms; all the princes learned the Way of the Goddess, but I never used them to hurt a man until I had to pull you out of that inn. I just can't do what you expect of me."

Grumbling, Llesho gave in. He couldn't do much either, with his head swimming this way. Balar didn't have much to say after that, which left a lot of time with nothing to do but think.

"Adar is a healer. Balar centers the universe. Lluka sees the past and the future." He'd said those words to Kaydu, explaining his painfully failed vigil at the start of his quest. Six of his brother-princes before him had spent the night of their sixteenth summer waiting for the Great Goddess to show herself. Three of his brothers she had rejected, leaving each to his life of lesser gifts and no great destiny. Three she had found worthy: Adar and Balar and Lluka she had showered with gifts of the spirit, but none of them had been a soldier.

Llesho had ended his vigil with more destiny than he could handle, and no gifts to help him. Out of the blur of memories, his aching brain latched onto one unquestioned truth, however: Balar centers the universe. Balar centers the universe. Was that what this trek across the desert was about? And, if so, why? He already had more quests than he could handle. The universe was just a bit more than he felt ready to take on for a Tashek hermit's dream. Was that what this trek across the desert was about? And, if so, why? He already had more quests than he could handle. The universe was just a bit more than he felt ready to take on for a Tashek hermit's dream.

On the other hand-which was still tied to the first, he balefully reminded himself-Master Den had said he needed a Tashek dream reader and here he was, suddenly off to see one. He'd never explained what the dream readers were, or why they might be important, but Balar, who centered the universe, seemed to think they were important, too.

"Who are these dream readers anyway, and what do they have to do with me?"

Balar gave him a sideways glance, not trusting this reasonable conversation.

"The dream readers are the holy seers of the Tashek people. In their dreams, they move freely between the world of their people's dreams, where time and distance run differently, and the waking world. When they awake, they bring the knowledge of their dream travels into the day, to guide the Tashek people. Lately, though, dreams about a young Thebin prince have spread throughout the camp, and with them the Great Goddess has sent a compulsion, to find the prince, her husband.

"You have to understand, they do not worship the Great Goddess here, and the intrusion of a strange deity into the dreams of the Tashek mystics has upset them greatly. I don't understand all of it, but it has something to do with her gardener, the Jinn."

"Pig. I know. Your dream readers are not the only people currently plagued by visions of talking pigs."

Balar nodded as if Llesho had just confirmed a suspicion he hadn't yet spoken aloud. "The Dinha has seen this magician, Markko you say his name is, searching for the gardener of heaven. But in the dream, the gardener he seeks is not Pig, the Jinn, but a great black pearl on a silver chain around the throat of that prince."

Llesho didn't know what a Dinha was, but raised his bound hands and looped a finger over the neck of his tunic, tugging the fabric out of the way to expose his throat. "No silver chain," he pointed out, though he knew the chain his brother spoke of, had seen it in his own dream.

"No chain," Balar agreed, "but three black pearls."

They had searched him while he was unconscious, which he should have expected. That he still had the pearls on their cord around his neck surprised him.

Llesho shrugged in mock indifference. "I'm collecting them. It's part of the quest.' Lleck's ghost gave me the first one when he sent me to find my brothers. He stole it from the dragon queen who lives in Pearl Bay with her children, which turned out all right. She would have given it to me herself, she said, if I didn't already have it. Lady SienMa, mortal goddess of war, gave me the second."

He did not mention the other gifts he had received from the mortal goddess; he wondered if he had lost those relics of his past self in his brother's harebrained kidnapping. "The third I received from the healer Mara, beloved of the Golden River Dragon, and aspirant to the position of eighth mortal god. And mother to Lady Carina, apprentice to our brother, Adar."

He did not need to tell his brother the consequences of leaving Carina in the hands of the Harn. Balar had grown quite pale.

"I'm supposed to find them all-the pearls, not the gods-but no one bothered to tell me how many there are. I've collected three brothers as well, but I'm not as good at keeping my hands on the Thebin princes as on the pearls."

"You travel with such creatures and receive gifts of the mortal gods, and still insist you have no magical gifts?" Balar demanded, wary in his turn. "I think, perhaps, you do not listen to your own tale. But I am one brother, and Adar is a second. Who is the third?"

They were Balar's brothers, too. Llesho didn't see any reason not to answer. "Shokar has a farm in Shan. He was raising crops when I found him, but when I left, he had changed his agronomy to soldiers, and now raises troops."

"Make that four, then."

It was Llesho's turn to show both his pleasure and his surprise. "Who?"

"Lluka awaits our return among the dream readers of Ahkenbad."

Lluka was the third husband of the goddess, and had received the gift of knowing the past and the future, so he probably fit right in with the Tashek mystics. Llesho wasn't certain he was ready to hear about his future, though, even if it did insist on cropping up in his dreams. Especially since that future seemed to be taking him into the Gansau Wastes. Even the desert-hardened Tashek had fled into the Harnlands to survive the dry months. Or so Dognut had said. Dognut, of course, had lied about many things.

Balar seemed to read the doubt in his face, though he had no way of knowing the cause. "The Holy Well of Ahkenbad is no myth."

"Holy Well?"

"It is the most sacred place in all the Gansau Waste," Balar explained, "and whether the water flows because the Tashek dream it so, or the dream readers dream because the water flows, even the dream readers cannot say. You can ask Lluka about it when you see him."

A holy well in the desert. No wonder the people of Ahkenbad had strange dreams. Master Markko could probably tell them exactly what poison had seeped into the water from the surrounding soil to give them their visions. Then he'd torture them to death studying its effects.

"I'd rather know where my pack is," Llesho replied tartly. "I need my weapons. Kagar and Harlol might as well be riding backward for all the attention they are paying to the road ahead. The raiders won't be happy that you stole their prize, however wrongheaded they are to put so great a value on my hide. I don't give much for my chances if I'm unarmed and tied to my saddle when they catch up to us."

"We brought your pack." Balar gave him a penetrating look. "The spear you carry in it burns me when I touch it. Kagar suffers no such rejection and has taken your possessions in safekeeping."

His jade cup, his spear. He found himself growing suspicious and defensive when they were out of his control. "I want to check my property."

"The Tashek wouldn't steal from you, Llesho; they think you are their personal savior. I couldn't even if I wanted to, so whatever you have in there is safe. But if I return your weapons, will you give me your word as a prince and brother not to run?"

The sun rained hammer blows on Llesho's head in spite of the covering someone had flung over his brow for the desert crossing. He looked out through the protective mesh, stained now to the dun color of the sand, into the sand-clouded sky.

"Have we been on this trek minutes or days while I slept on my belly over Shou's stolen camel?" Laughing bitterly, he surrendered, biding his time. "Is there any direction to run in this hell that doesn't end with me dead of thirst?" Water, he dreamed, in a jade cup green as the sea.

Balar gave an uneasy look behind him; Llesho felt the pursuit as well, like heat pressing against his back. Har-nish raiders of the Uulgar clans thundered at their heels, goaded into the desert by the devouring hatred of the magician.

"If it comes to that, kill me," Llesho said. He wouldn't be a prisoner of the Harn or the subject of Markko's experiments again.

"If it comes to that, I won't. So don't let it come to that." Balar gave a sharp whistle between his teeth, and Kagar trotted up beside them.

"Give him his sword and his knife. Hold onto the bow and arrows, and especially the short spear. Lluka will want to look at them."

"You are speaking of the gifts of the Lady SienMa," Llesho warned his brother. "She will not take kindly to their theft."

"Theft again, Llesho? Is that what you think of your brothers?" Balar's stare burned his skin more surely than the sun, but finally he gave a fractional lift of his shoulder. He reached over with his knife and cut the bonds that tied Llesho's wrists to his saddle. "Return these gifts, then. We don't want to anger the goddess of war."

Kagar reached behind him and unlashed the pack resting on his horse's haunches. He took out the sword, the knife, and handed them over. Attaching them to his belt, Llesho held out his hand for the short bow which he strung and tested before sliding it into the saddle-scabbard behind his right leg. The quiver of arrows with her Ladyship's own fletching he settled across his back. When Kagar drew out the short spear, Llesho shivered, suddenly cold in spite of the sun. Pain cut deeply into his breast, shadow-memory of past deaths, but he refused to give the weapon power over his present.

"Give it to me," he commanded softly Moving like a sleepwalker, Kagar held out the spear. "The cup is safe, Holy One," the Tashek groom offered in a high, light whisper.

Llesho took the spear with a nod to accept both the assurance and the weapon. The groom trembled, wide-eyed with terror, but his hands were unhurt. Adar had blistered when he'd held the spear; Llesho didn't know how, but the weapon must be able to recognize the blood of a Thebin prince, and would accept only the chosen one.

"You travel with wonders about you, Llesho." Dognut the dwarf gestured at the spear with a twist of distaste around his mouth. "And they don't like you very much."

The dwarfs comments murdered any hope Llesho had that the connection he felt to the spear came from his own imagination. Kagar had felt it, but only when he touched it. Dognut hadn't needed the contact to be affected by it. Llesho resolved to pay closer attention to the dwarf.

Balar watched him expressionlessly, waiting for an answer that Llesho didn't understand himself. He said nothing, but nudged his horse into motion. "How long until we reach this holy well?"

"Too long," Balar admitted, and urged them to a faster pace.

CHAPTER TEN.

WITH the sun on their backs like the ever-present fear of pursuit, they pressed deep into the Gansau Wastes. Maybe the blow to his head had done more damage than he'd realized, or the spear whispering at his back had driven him mad. It seemed to Llesho that the desert itself, growing more impossibly bleak with each passing day, had bled his thoughts dry, leaving nothing but the dreams growing steadily more powerful that plagued his sleep: Hmishi screamed as though his captors had torn out his liver for the birds while Lling, pale and dreadful, looked on and Shou rattled his chains in helpless rage. Habiba followed on a great white horse, with an eagle perched on his pommel, but even his subtle powers could not show him the way. Master Markko appeared in none of these visions, but his presence filled them like a poisonous vapor.

Llesho grew to dread any rest. When he refused to sleep, however, the twilight dreamscape spilled into his waking mind like a hallucination, and he felt the anger and terror of the Harn in his own heart. Images assailed him, and he knew that the Harnish raider whose mind leaked into his both loathed and feared the magician whose will drove them from a distance. For the power of his clan, however, and in dread that Master Markko would kill them all if they failed, the man followed his chieftain deep into the desert. The Harnishman feared the Wastes as well, for the myths that Hmishi had talked about-the Wastrels, and the dream readers and the spirits that walked the deep desert. Equally he dreaded that they had lost their way in the parched wastelands. When they ran out of water, the sun would bake the flesh from their bones while their brains boiled in their skulls.

The raider's thoughts were so like his own that the distinction between them blurred. Llesho felt the pressing fury of the pursuer, only dimly aware that he was the focus of that rage. The Harnishman didn't resent the chief of the Uulgar clan who had led him into the Wastes, but hated the prey that drew him more deeply into the land of his nightmares. The man pictured in his head the tortures his raiding party would inflict on the Thebin prince when they caught him, and Llesho cried out in his dream. The imaginings of the raider raised bruises and welts on his skin, as if the blows were real. They would make him talk and turn him over to their master a broken, beaten slave.

Llesho pulled on the bonds that tied him to his saddle, lost between the torment of the dream and the throbbing unreality of his own trek through the desert. Dimly, from a distance he could not cross, he thought he heard Balar calling to him, but this time he couldn't escape the tortured visions that circled in his aching mind.

"Llesho! Wake up! It's just a dream!"

They had come to a halt, or Llesho thought they must have since Balar was standing at his side.

"Drink, please!" A waterskin, evil-smelling and nearly empty, poked at his chin. He remembered a caution about poisoned wells and pushed it away, at the same time doubting everything he saw-the waterskin and the dead oasis long gone to sand, and the failed shade of dying date palm where they had stopped for rest.

"You have to drink, Prince Llesho, or you will die!" Dognut urged him, still atop his snappish camel.

"Please, brother." Balar lifted the waterskin again.

Llesho gave him a shove, "You're not real!" he cried, surprised at how hoarse his voice had become. The skin fell, water drooling into the sand. He could smell the moist promise of it with a desperate desire. Even a hallucination could tell the truth once in a while, and Dognut was right; he was going to die if he didn't drink.

Harlol, who had tried to kill the emperor, snatched the skin up again before too much was lost. "Damn it, Kagar, did you have to hit him so hard?"

"I didn't!" Kagar insisted. "It's the dreams. They've addled his brainpan!"

"Tell that to the Dinha when she asks us why we've come home with the dead husk of ."

Harlol was angry. Good. Well, not good if it meant Llesho was dead, but at least the Tashek had begun to show his true colors. They had kidnapped him to give to this Dinha. Balar said to trust him, but maybe he'd been duped.

"The prince won't die," Balar grabbed the waterskin and Harlol grunted a noncommittal answer before going off to check the feet of the camel.

He had no intention of dying. Llesho could have told them that, but he didn't trust them with the only truth he clung to: the minions of his old enemy, Master Mar-kko, had taken Adar. He would stay alive, whatever it took, until he got his brother back. If they chose to poison him, well, their dream readers survived it and so could he. After all, he'd been through it before with Master Markko.

"Please, Llesho. You've fought so long, don't give up now." Balar poured water into his hand and offered it like a supplicant. "Drink."

This time, he drank. It tasted stale, and a little bit like leather and Balar's dusty hands, but otherwise untam-pered with. That didn't mean he could trust them; it just meant they wanted him alive for the time being. He could deal with that.

"Good boy."

Llesho would have hit him for the condescending approval, but it seemed like a waste of effort to punish a hallucination. "You're not real." He'd already said that, but couldn't figure out anything more original to add. It must have worked, though, because Harlol cursed imaginatively as he climbed onto his horse. Balar said nothing, his expression closing in around his bleak desperation. Then they were moving again, and Llesho lost himself once more among the worlds of his dreams.

When the pressure eased, he thought that he had died, or that he would waken to discover that everything since the vigil of his sixteenth summer had been a dream. Afraid of what he'd find when he did so, Llesho opened his eyes to find himself in her ladyship's orchard in Far-shore Province. The mortal goddess SienMa had taught him to shoot a bow here, by taking aim at the stems that held the peaches to her trees and afterward they had dined on the fruit he had plucked with his newfound skill. In the dream, he woke to the green pattern of leaves overhead and the prickle of grass beneath his backside. The smell of peaches filled his nose with memories of his last moment of peace, and he would have wept, except that he didn't believe in any of it, not even for a moment.

"My gardeners cannot reach the top of the tree, where the best peaches have ripened-can you shoot them down for me?" The goddess SienMa nudged his shoulder, and Llesho peered out at her through an eyelid slit-ted open in the hope she wouldn't notice that he was looking.

"I know you're awake, and I'm hungry for that peach."

"You can't be real." He surrendered to the dream, drawing himself up so that his spine leaned back on the slender trunk of the peach tree. "Master Markko burned this orchard to the stone."

That was when the killing had started in earnest- Llesho's first true battle, but not the last. He'd forgotten the beauty of this orchard, though her ladyship was as he remembered her: beautiful and terrible at the same time, with a smile colder than the snow in the mountains high above Kungol.

"Even a dream can get hungry. I'd really like that peach." She was, he reminded himself, a mortal goddess and the patroness of wars. And Shou had left her on his throne to defend the Shan Empire in his absence.