Lluka handed Balar a plain silver cup, but to Llesho he held out the jade cup of the Lady SienMa before seating himself at Llesho's left. A Tashek youth followed with a tall pitcher in his hand. He knelt before them, carefully pouring a scant inch of water into each cup. No one offered refreshment to the old Tashek dream readers seated together in the dragon's mouth, although each sat dust-covered and with parched lips.

"As you see, however, even the holy city has little hospitality to offer." The Dinha gave a nod in Lluka's direction, and the prince accepted permission to speak.

"Too much has happened since you left us, Balar, and little of it has been good."

Balar sighed and drank his scanty portion. "The situation outside is worse than we thought as well," he warned the gathering. "Our enemies are close behind us. We lost them as we approached the city, but they will not have gone far."

Llesho cocked his head, looking within himself for the sensation that had lately preyed upon his mind. He found nothing.

"They're gone," he said.

"Who?" Lluka asked as Balar pressed, "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Llesho insisted. "For now, at least. I felt it when they lost our track, like a stone lifted from my heart, but waiting to fall again."

He did not say, "It was during a dream about a pig in her ladyship's garden," but he thought perhaps it would not surprise the Dinha. "Now, the stone has turned to dust. Something turned them away."

Silent but watchful behind her unseeing eyes, the Dinha listened carefully. Then, with a languid gesture that seemed to arise out of dreams, she raised a hand to halt the questions. "Our guest needs rest."

She subsided again into trance, while Lluka took up duties as host. "You will want to sleep. I regret that we have no bath to offer you, but the spirits of the desert have struck Ahkenbad a terrible blow."

"Then it has happened-" Balar frowned. "The holy well no longer flows?"

"It fell to a trickle soon after you left us, and for days now the bucket has brought up only sand. We have a day or two in reserve, if we are cautious, but not enough water to hold Ahkenbad against the dry time, nor sufficient to take the old ones out of the desert. That supposes they would leave or had a safe place to go if they could travel. The dream readers of Ahkenbad have withdrawn into the dreaming way. They've given their share to the acolytes who stayed behind to serve them, but their sacrifice gains us just a few hours."

"I'm sorry." Balar let his head fall.

Llesho reached a hand to touch his brother's shoulder, as if he could somehow take the weight of desperate knowledge from him. So this explained the parched creases of Lluka's face. How long had he gone without water so that Llesho could drink? It reminded him too much of the Long March. He couldn't say that he liked these newfound brothers yet, but Lleck had told him to find them all, not just the ones who loved him. And he'd lost too many already-his people on the Long March; his teacher, Master Jaks, in battle; and now maybe Hmishi, too, sacrificed so that Llesho could complete a task he'd never asked for. He would not lose these brothers and the chance to know them again, to gain another day or two of life without them.

"If you die for me, I won't forgive you for it, ever," Llesho swore at his brother.

"I'll do my best to keep us all alive," Lluka assured him in return. "But the Dinha insists that you hold our fate in your hands, and in your dreams."

"And the goddess, your lady wife? What do you see with her gifts?"

"I see light reflecting off tears, and locked gates that have lost their keys." Lluka rose to his feet and offered him a hand up. "And maybe-after long seasons of searching-we have found the great key."

Llesho would have objected, but he had grown tired of making denials that no one believed anyway. He scarcely recognized this man whose voice managed to convey both irony and hope without letting any of his secrets go. Hard to remember that Lluka had been no older than Llesho himself was now when last they'd seen each other. His brother hadn't suffered the Long March, the battles, or the years of captivity to lay calluses on his heart, but his own hardships had changed him into this distant stranger with the farseeing look of the desert. Llesho missed the young idealist, the musician who glowed with the blessings of the goddess in his eyes.

"Do you still play the lute?" he asked.

"Often. I like to think the goddess accepts my music as the offering of a devoted husband. I hope that I give her some pleasure, and some peace, in these terrible times."

Llesho nodded, satisfied that this at least had not changed.

"You'd better rest while you can. Tomorrow we'll keep you busy performing miracles." The sun had set, casting the dragon cave into greater darkness, and Llesho felt the pull of sleep. Wearily he followed his brother to the back of the cave where Dognut sat watching with quick, dark eyes. As Llesho passed, he picked up a reed flute and played a simple lullaby, softly so that the sound barely reached beyond the niche where the stone staircase began. He wondered if the tune were meant to mock him in some way, but the dwarf looked troubled, and he finished with a sad smile.

"Sleep safely, young prince. Don't let the dreams steal all your rest."

Master Den had spoken with respect of the dream readers of Ahkenbad. Llesho had gotten the impression they were councillors of some kind, and his brothers' presence in the holy city inclined him to trust them. But Master Den was, in his true form, a trickster god, and his brothers had kidnapped him, abandoning the emperor of Shan to capture or death. So he answered, "I won't," and determined to stay on his guard even in sleep.

"No one will hurt you here," Lluka assured him with a glare for the dwarf.

Dognut gave no reply, so Llesho figured they were both telling the truth. He didn't know how that could be, but he followed up the stone staircase anyway, to the chamber that opened between the horns of the dragon.

There was no lantern, no plastered walls or paintings in the tiny cave, just a few rugs scattered on the rough stone floor and a pallet in the corner with his pack lying beside it. But the chamber seemed to glow with a faint light gleaming from the frozen crystals that pulsed like living veins in the rough walls.

"Sleep well. The Dinha will guard your dreams tonight. Not even Ahkenbad can promise safety beyond that. I wish . . ."

Llesho heard the unspoken good-bye. So this was his brother's secret, or part of it. The goddess had given her husband the gift of past and future. But in all those millions of tomorrows, Lluka saw himself in none.

"The spirit of our father's minister charged me to gather all of my brothers." Llesho gripped Lluka's shoulder and shook him, as if he could rattle some sense into him. "Without you, there is no hope."

Lluka smiled. "It shall be as the goddess wishes." The serenity of his expression seemed at odds with the blood that beaded on his cracked lips.

"Just make sure it's the goddess you're listening to," Llesho warned him. "We don't know what these Gansau spirits may want of us, or what they will do to get it." Superstitious fear kept the name of Master Markko from his lips. He would not bring his enemy into this holy place, although he feared the magician's hand in his brother's despair.

"Don't worry about me." Lluka left him with a bloody kiss at his brow. "Sleep in peace."

It didn't take a seer to realize the prince had made no promises. Deep in his troubled thoughts, Llesho dropped to the pallet, though he was certain he would not sleep. The conversation with the Dinha had sapped the last of his energy, however; his lids fell heavily, draping lashes like a curtain over his dreams.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

SEEP drifted in layers through his clouded mind. In one dream, his brothers brought him to the Dinha, who questioned him and bade him sleep. In another, the searching gazes of two magicians crossed like knives in the dreamscape. One magician looked for him with concern turning into panic, the other cut through his resistance as he sought the images that would lead him to Llesho's hiding place. In his dreams, Llesho fled from the dark rage of Master Markko, but he couldn't reach Habiba through the sightless night thick with the sounds of captivity-Hmishi, weeping brokenly, and harsh cries with the timbre of Emperor Shou's desperate voice.

"I don't want to be here," his mind told him, and cool fingers touched his brow, fading the terror to nothing. In the darkness that remained, relieved only by the faint light of the distant stars, Llesho stumbled on a narrow path. This was not his bed. He felt his way with a hand pressed against the cave-pocked cliff rising up on his left. To his right the empty dark of a blind fall to the valley floor lurked in wait for him. As it had in the desert, the huge black pig entered his dreams unbidden. The night was too thick to make out the creature clearly; Llesho saw only a mass of darker shadows swallowing the night ahead, blocking the way. Little piggy eyes glittered at him with a hard black light, like the pearls of the goddess that Llesho wore at his breast. He nodded to accept the visitor to his sleep, and the pig dipped his head in acknowledgment. The massive bulk on the path flowed and reshaped itself, and the pig began the steep ascent.

Llesho followed ever higher into the hills. The caves they passed were hung with cloths that crawled with shadows in the dark, but the stillness from their depths was complete. Whoever had lived or worshiped here had fled long ago, leaving only the sad reminders of their passing in the tatters covering the entrances to the caves. After a while even these abandoned coverings fell behind. The blind and empty mouths of the deep upper caverns whispered to him with the ghosts of winds passing through unknown cracks in the mountainside. The cave city of Ahkenbad lay below, while above only darkness and the holy, hidden places awaited. Llesho climbed, following the pig who waited patiently on the path and led him forward again when he caught up.

"You can't exactly lose me," Llesho complained. "There's no place to go except up this merciless goat track."

The pig, not surprisingly, said nothing, but trotted ahead, until they came to a turning where a date tree clutched desperate roots into the hillside. The creature pushed at the roots of the tree with his tusks, then gave Llesho a speaking look.

"You want me to dig?" Llesho asked, and when the pig continued to stare at him, he fell to his knees and cast about him for a stick or flat stone with which to dig. He had no need for tools, however. As he leaned into his search he felt his back twist and stretch, his fingers grow together until, looking down at them, he discovered that his hands had become the pink feet of a pig with sharp hooves at the ends.

'What is happening to me?' he tried to say, but the harsh oinks and squeals of a pig came from his throat.

Dropping his head in misery at the foot of the date tree, he moaned in mournful piggy tones while his guide stamped at the ground above him.

"What do you want?" The words came out in pig grunts, as Llesho feared they would. The creature seemed to understand, though he said nothing in return. He stared deeply into Llesho's own piggy eyes, and pawed the ground again.

"All right!" Llesho snuffled around the roots of the withered tree, seeking out a hint of a scent. There, right there-he pushed his snout into the dirt, trying to get closer to the elusive smell, and tusks at either side of his mouth drove deep gouges into the baked ground. He dug at the root with his hooves, snuffling his snout under the tree when he had cleared space enough. There . . . there . . . trapped in a hole beneath the date tree, he found the black pearl bound in silver wire he remembered from his dream on the road, and nudged it free with his broad flat nose. He reached for it; his forehoof stretched, became fingers again, and he snatched the pearl up in the palm of his hand and clutched it tight in his new-made fist. The smell he had followed was stronger now. Water. He'd found water, could hear it maddening him with its call. When he tried to bring a handful to his mouth, however, he woke to find himself still on his pallet in the cave of glowing crystals.

"Lluka!" he called.

When nobody answered, he struggled onto his feet and staggered to the staircase, determined to find the path of his dreams and uncover the sleeping pearl. Cross-legged on their pillows, the dream readers remained as they had been, staring into their mystical visions with eyes that saw past the material world. Llesho gave them only the briefest glance as he headed for the entrance. When he pushed the silk curtain aside and wandered out onto the road, he discovered that dawn had come to Ahkenbad, and with it a stir of excitement and hope that he had not seen on his arrival.

"Llesho! Wake up!" Lluka tapped him cautiously on the shoulder.

"Where am I?" Llesho blinked, embarrassed, and squinted into the sunlit road.

"Ahkenbad. You were walking in your sleep."

"Now I remember." But it didn't feel like a true memory at all. How much of it had been a dream?

Balar was walking carefully toward them, a plain earthen cup in his hands and a broad grin splitting his lips.

"Water!" He held up the cup for Llesho to see. "The spirits of the desert favor you. The holy well has begun to flow again. Drink!"

Water. Aged Tashek mystics wandered out of their caves, giving praise to the spirits of the Wastes for the return of the holy well. The smell of it reminded Llesho of his thirst. He hadn't had a chance to drink at the spring above the city, and he reached for the cup only to discover that his hand remained clenched in a fist pale as a pig's hoof. Dried dirt crusted his nails and plastered the cracks between his fingers.

Balar rubbed the pad of his index finger across Llesho's nose, bringing it away again with mud on the tip. "Where have you been roaming in your sleep-" He frowned, staring thoughtfully at his finger, then his head came up abruptly, eyes wide and his mouth round as he gasped, "Oh!" Lluka glanced from one brother to the other, then took Llesho's clenched fist in his hand and carefully pried open each finger. There, on Llesho's dirty palm, lay a black pearl.

At Lluka's gasp, the Tashek passing nearest them came closer and when the brothers dropped to their knees, the Tashek did likewise.

"Get up!" Llesho colored like a berry, overcome with embarrassment. "This is ridiculous!"

The brothers stood, but they seemed only to be humoring him. The Tashek came more slowly to their feet. Whispers spread out from their center, and the crowd of devotees grew around them as Llesho explained. "The black pig led me to a date tree up in the hills. The pearl had blocked a spring at the base of the tree. I thought it was a dream, but I must have walked in my sleep." He did not mention turning into a pig. They would probably believe it, and he wasn't ready for that.

"There are no pigs in Ahkenbad," Balar informed him. "And no date tree in the hills."

Lluka nodded, rejecting Llesho's effort to make sense of the pearl in his hand. "I watched through the night, and you never strayed from your bed in the acolyte's cavern until just now, when I woke you," he insisted. "If anyone had come in or gone out, the guards would have alerted me."

Llesho remembered fingers on his forehead, but said nothing about them. He reached inside his shirt instead, and drew out the pouch in which he had carried the black pearls since leaving Shan. All three lay inside it. Neither of his brothers looked particularly surprised, but it bothered Llesho. It was one thing to dream of a place and find it afterward, and quite another to bring a pearl out of a dream and into the light of day. And, if he could believe his dream, he held no pearl at all but the transformed person of Pig, the beloved gardener of the Great Goddess' heavenly orchards.

"Let me through!"

Reprieve! Harlol blustered his way through the crowd, drawing up in front of Lluka. "The dream readers of Ahkenbad have awakened," he announced. "The Dinha requests the presence of the Thebin princes."

Llesho shook his head, seized by the notion that the mouth of the Dragon Cave would snap shut and swallow him up forever. He didn't have a rational explanation for the feeling, so he mumbled something instead about being hungry to divert their attention.

It didn't work. Lluka had grown more determined in the years since his childhood in Kungol. "The Dinha will feed you," he insisted, and drew Llesho away from the curious Tashek who followed, tugging at his coats as he passed.

"Why are they doing that?"

"They believe your touch will confer blessings, even healing, on their families." Balar looked as if he ought to know this, but Llesho didn't know why. Thebins didn't put much stock in talismanic magic, and certainly no one in Shan had looked upon his person as sacred. It might have saved him a few nasty practice sessions with knife and sword if they had.

"They've got the wrong brother," he grumbled. "Llu-ka's the mystic around here. If they need a healer, you should have rescued Adar instead of me."

"They needed a dreamer to bring back the water," Lluka reminded him, "You saved them-all of us, actually. The dream readers of Ahkenbad wish to thank you, no doubt."

"Nothing to worry about-" Balar clapped him on the back, but Llesho didn't find it reassuring. "The dream readers of Ahkenbad are perfectly civil when they're awake. They'll probably pinch your cheek and cluck at each other about what a fine young man you are. It likely won't make a bit of sense, but it will keep them happy. Once they've checked you out, you can ask them questions if you want."

"The Dinha's answers didn't sound very useful last night," Llesho reminded him, to which Balar nodded enthusiastic agreement.

"Oh, the answers won't make any sense when you hear them. When it's too late, you'll realize what you should have done, if they'd been more straightforward about their warnings in the first place."

It sounded like every bit of advice he'd ever gotten- straight-forward enough until it turned out you hadn't understood it at all.

But Lluka was looking at him as if he'd grown a second head, and it was speaking in tongues. "Be quiet, Balar! He didn't see the Dinha last night."

"What? Oh. No, the dream readers haven't woken in weeks," Balar agreed. "You must have the Dinha confused with one of the acolytes, though that hardly seems likely. Of course, if you haven't met the Dinha, you wouldn't know that."

"She was old," Llesho said, "and blind. And you, Lluka, led me to a chamber above the cave of the dream readers, lit by seams of natural crystals running through the walls."

"The Dinha is not blind, though it is said that dreaming, her eyes turn inward." Lluka searched his face, as if he could pierce Llesho's soul and spy out the mysteries hiding there. "You had a dream, and in your dream, you had another dream, and in that nested dream, you saved all our lives."

The mystery is in my hand, not my eyes, he thought. The gifts of the sleeping world were supposed to vanish with the rising sun, but the black pearl still lay in the palm of his hand. he thought. The gifts of the sleeping world were supposed to vanish with the rising sun, but the black pearl still lay in the palm of his hand.

His brothers did not speak for a moment, though they said much to each other with glances. Gifted with the sight of past and future, Lluka did not look pleased when he admitted, "The futures I've seen are unclear. That doesn't have to mean anything, of course. Seeing the future is an imprecise art; but this, I did not see at all."

"Sounds like a pretty useless gift to me." Llesho wasn't really asking-the answer to his own question was plain in his tone of voice, that they were not gifts at all, but a major inconvenience. Shokar thought so, too. He'd received no gifts, and often declared himself the happier for it.

Lluka raised a wry eyebrow. It was hard to deny the charge, after all. "The gifts of the goddess are like a garment cut to the shape of our older selves. As we grow in the spirit, time and the use we make of our gifts improve the fit."

"And you, Balar, have you grown into your gifts?" Llesho wanted to know.

Balar shook his head. "Sometimes," he said, "I think that they are not gifts at all, but a madness that comes of approaching too closely matters that are beyond our comprehension."

"Sounds like a husband to me," Lluka commented tartly. "The Dinha awaits us, however. I suggest we do not leave her to cool her heels like a supplicant while we debate family history."

"I have plenty of questions for the Dinha, like why they sent you to steal me from my quest and drag me across the desert. And why we abandoned Adar and our companions to the enemies who wish our whole family dead."

Lluka tried to stare him down, but that hadn't even worked for Master Den, who was himself a god. It surely wasn't going to work for his brother, however much a mystic he had become.

"If you really see the past and the future, you know that glaring at me never changed my mind or my course of action."

"Use caution, at least. You cross the dream readers of Ahkenbad at your peril." Lluka's warning clashed discordantly with Balar's assurances, but Balar was the brother who looked uncomfortable.

"They won't strike you dead or anything," Balar protested, but had to concede, "but they can make you squirm like an ant under a lens if you try to hide the truth from them."

"Some secrets are worth even my life to keep."

Lluka shook him roughly by the shoulder. "Don't even think it, little brother. Yours may be the only life we can't afford to lose."

"You don't know that."

He'd faced death and wonders alike in his journey, and apparently he'd learned a thing or two from his masters about glaring. Lluka dropped his sleeve and took a step back, which brought a pleased smile to Balar's lips. "For my sixth natal day, I asked the goddess to gift me with a new wonder every day. She hasn't disappointed me yet."

Llesho suddenly found himself in common cause with Lluka-the two of them glared in unison at their brother. Then Lluka turned on his heel and followed Harlol a short distance up the Stone River Road, toward the cavern where the Tashek dream readers awaited them.