Curt Benjamin - [Seven Brothers 03] - The Gates of Heaven

by Curt Benjamin

  They were diving below the storm. When they reached a layer of calmer water, the dragon turned in a great curve and headed back toward Edris. Vivid images flashed through Llesho’s mind: the sea boiling in angry rivers up the narrow streets turned the city square into a deep salty lake. Swift-running currents swept away buyers and sellers along with all their wares: priceless silks clung to cheap tin pots caught on the horns of cattle trying to keep their heads above water. Human hands reached out of the flood, begging silently for rescue as the torrent carried them away to their deaths. Little boats that might have helped them lay shattered against upper-story windows, now even with the flood.

  Far inland, roof tiles torn off by the wind fell many li from where they had started, amazing the terrified horses who fled across the grasslands to escape the storm. And everywhere Llesho’s gaze fell, the rain tumbled like an angry quicksilver wall.

  “It’s too late to help them now,” a voice echoed in his head.

  Llesho couldn’t answer without breathing, and he couldn’t do that while the cavern in which he traveled was full of water. But the questions formed and clashed inside his head, created equally of surprise and guilt. “How?” he thought, the dragon’s words clear in his head.

  And, “Why?” In his dream travels he had visited Durnhag and returned before he left with the idea of turning the storm. Why hadn’t he traveled farther back, before Master Markko had shaped the storm with his mind and the sea? Llesho could have stopped all that death . . . though he didn’t quite know how.

  “We don’t always get to choose.” The voice of the dragon echoed in his head, resonating to something that Dognut had told him just weeks ago, though it seemed like forever since they had bargained over Hmishi’s life. Fate ran a certain way, and changing it always had consequences down the line. Maybe Master Markko had played with fate when he raised the storm, or maybe fate had used him to do its will. Llesho was about to take the same risk in turning the storm. He didn’t think he was meant to die now, however, when the end of his quest seemed within reach. Edris would suffer through the terrible storm. Many would perish on land and at sea, but he had to believe fate intended him to stop the end of the world or he would give up and breathe water where he sat.

  “Good choice,” the dragon-king approved his decision to keep his mouth shut and stay alive. They were rising now, and Marmer Sea Dragon warned him, “Hold on tight,” as water started to drain from the bony cavern.

  “Now!” the dragon’s voice boomed through the cavern. Llesho clamped his hands over his ears and realized that he hadn’t just imagined that the sound came from outside his head. A driving wind rose from unseen passages blocked off during their dive. Suddenly water exploded through an iris at the front of the cavern, forced out in a geyser that must reach high into the air as they neared the surface.

  “Help!” Llesho grabbed the bone spur he had used as a saddle, but he was lifted out of his seat, flung aloft by the powerful wind whistling through the cavern.

  “Hold on!” Marmer Sea Dragon snapped at him.

  Llesho tightened his hands around the spur while the wind swept him end over end, so that his legs stretched out in front of him, drawing him into the storm with the water spout.

  “I can’t!” he screamed. He’d lost all sense of feeling in his hands. Already bloody and blistered from his time at the oar, they couldn’t hold him any longer. One finger slipped, another, another. He felt the air go out of him in a defeated sigh as strength failed him. His hands opened, the wind took him, and he flew, out of the cavern, into the air.

  To be plucked out of the spume by a hook of horn growing out of the joint on the dragon’s wing that would have been an elbow in a human. They had come to the surface behind the storm which was moving slowly away from them now. To their rear, Llesho could see the shattered wreckage of the port. Ahead, the relentless lashing of the wind raised the sea into great towering mountains that met the banks of evil green and blue-black clouds on every side. Rain pounded at the troughs in slanted sheets, blending air and water in one turbulent essence. Only the angry white foam that capped the waves and ran away down their sides marked the dividing line between the sky and the sea.

  “Try to stay put this time,” Marmer Sea Dragon advised, and dropped his passenger back into the bony cavern between his horns.

  Llesho caught hold of his belt, which had remained fast to the bony outcrop where he had tied it. Then the dragon-king stretched out his great, scaly wings. They flew, so high that they soon looked down on the violent, many-armed disk of the typhoon. It was quieter up here. Amazingly, Great Sun still chased his brothers across a blue-and-yellow sky while below the clouds turned in a huge spiral dance of death.

  Over the many li his quest had carried him, Llesho had seen a myriad of things that had frozen him right to his soul in horror. Magicians in the shapes of mythical creatures had made war above his head. Golden Dragon Bridge had come to life, throwing Master Markko’s troops into the river and swallowing whole his healer, the aspirant Mara. Master Markko himself had raised stone monsters from the very ground, murderous, unkillable creatures that ate the hearts of warriors and left bits of stone in their places. Nothing, however, had inspired him with as much awe and terror as that great, ferociously wheeling storm.

  “By the Goddess,” Llesho whispered, overcome by the sight spread out as far as he could see. “How can we stop such a monster!”

  “We can’t,” Marmer Sea Dragon agreed, “but we can, perhaps, turn it a bit.”

  Llesho shook his head as if he could clear it of the terrible sight and deny his part in it at the same time. He would do whatever he must, of course, but for a moment, he gave in to the human need to deny the enormity of what he must do. The dragon-king couldn’t see the gesture, of course, but read the answer as he had read all of Llesho’s thoughts and moods in the chamber between his horns. He didn’t say anything about Llesho’s part in bringing such violent death to the Mariner Sea, however. Rather, he cautioned Llesho against taking on too much blame.

  “However it happened, you were bound to cross the Marmer Sea in search of your brother-prince, and the magician was bound to follow you,” he said. “Blame yourself for the suffering of your friend Tayyichiut, whose back has felt the lash by your actions. But this storm, and the upset that it brings to the sea and the shore, belongs to him who follows you, and to the Jinn who set the madman in motion to reward an ill-considered wish.”

  Llesho felt in his bones the truth of the dragon’s words, but they didn’t make him feel any better.I could have stopped this, he thought, and imagined Master Den’s response to such a claim. The trickster god would smack him on the back of the head and warn him against using guilt as false pride. Which was probably true and didn’t change anything.

  “What can I do?”

  “Pray,” the dragon-king answered.

  It sounded, at first, like an insult, that Llesho could be no help but must stay out of the way. Dragons were a respectful species when it came to the spirit, however. They were, after all, creatures of the sky, where the celestial kingdom lay, as well as of the water. Marmer Sea Dragon wouldn’t taunt him with the Way of the Goddess. There was something . . .

  Llesho closed his eyes and began to move through the motions of the prayer forms. “Red Sun.” He stretched to honor Great Sun, which shed a golden light on the tops of the billowing clouds. As he stretched his arms in the up-reaching circle, he shaped in his mind the memory of the gardens of heaven. The light there flushed the sky with a diffused glow that never changed. Moving into the “Twin ing Branches” form, he called to mind the wild profusion of plants and tangled weeds that had overrun the heavenly gardens. And in this moment of great need, it was the plain and graying beekeeper he conjured in his mind.

  Suddenly, he was there in the heavenly gardens. Disoriented from the shift across space and dimensions, he sprawled on his knees in front of a tree with a bees’ nest in it. The Goddess had appeared to him beneath this very t
ree on his first dream visit to the heavenly gardens. She was waiting for him now in the same place, with the netting tucked out of the way over the crown of her wide-brimmed hat.

  “Llesho?” She bent to touch his shoulder, lifting him up. “What has happened?”

  “I don’t know how I got here,” he answered with a deep bow from the waist. “But the quest is in grave peril.”

  Briefly he repeated the story of Tayy’s capture and their ill-fated struggle with the storm. When he had finished with Marmer Sea Dragon’s instructions to pray, she nodded as if none of his words surprised her.

  “I know the lesson Master ChiChu wished to teach with this prank, and you have surpassed all our hopes. This time, however, our trickster friend risks too much.”

  Master Den seemed the chief target of the Goddess’ anger. She brushed aside Llesho’s own confession with a gesture as of a broom sweeping away his objections. “You have learned your lesson from that mistake and taken action that cost you dearly to correct it. What point in bela boring it now?”

  Mergen-Khan had said as much, and honored him for his sacrifice. It humbled him to know that he had not fallen in the eyes of his blessed wife, the Great Goddess. For himself, however, only success would free his heart of the burden it carried. That meant defeating the storm before anything else.

  “Marmer Sea Dragon seems to believe I can do something to help him turn the storm. I think he sent me to you to find out what it is.”

  “I’ve seen this storm from my window.” For a moment sorrow clouded her brow, and he wondered how much she knew of what he had seen, and what he had begun to guess. He didn’t ask that question—figured he’d have to survive to find out the answer—but waited until her terrible, bright eyes cleared.

  “It’s simple, really.” The beekeeper briskly dusted off her hands, as if she could dismiss the worries that bloomed on her brow as easily. With an encouraging smile she touched his shoulder. He was back with Marmer Sea Dragon again, looking out on the terrible circle of devastation below them with her voice still in his ear: “Follow my Way, and the storm must do likewise.”

  “Where have you been?” the dragon-king asked.

  “Praying,” Llesho answered, and moved into the next form, “Flowing River.” He felt the currents of the sea in his bones, and the way the storm seemed to touch and lift, touch and lift as he skittered along its flowing path.

  “Wind through Millet” followed. Arms even with his shoulders, legs bent, he felt the wind pass through his limbs as he swayed, sweeping his weight from the back leg through his body and onto the forward leg, then farther, carrying the back leg through the move so that it became the fore. He envisioned the wind as it passed through him and answered the call of it, drawing him down into the storm. The wind and the rain and the clouds became a part of him. The wildness, the violence of it, took root in his heart and with it the need for motion and speed and the flex of muscles, gripping and tearing and turning end on end everything in his path. As he swept along with the storm, he felt stronger than he ever had, more powerful and more free. He rebelled against the memory of Pearl Island and the reality of the past day at the oar, and more shockingly, he tore and shrieked against the demands of his quest that bound him more surely than any shackles.

  He felt the stamp of Master Markko’s mind somewhere in the sprawling arms of the typhoon, feeding the great spinning disk with the press of his fear and desire. The magician became aware of his presence, clutching at him in desperation. He had lost control of the storm, but still he rode within it, carried along as in a herd of stampeding horses. He would have pulled Llesho in with him, but already he had exceeded his reach. His prey slipped out of his grasp.

  Habiba’s touch brushed against Llesho’s senses, and Kaydu’s. The storm paid them no heed. Its vast disk turned faster and faster as it closed on the tiny ship. Llesho shared its longing for the splintering of masts and the crashing of spars into the sea—a longing that the magician fed with his insanity.

  Chaos. The storm reached to gather chaos in the curve of its vast spiral arms. Llesho turned in its grip, no way out, wanting none, and found an eye of quiet. At its center, Marmer Sea Dragon rested with his head propped up on the coils of his body.

  “Is this what your Lady, the Great Goddess, intended of your working?” he asked, curious, it seemed, but not judging.

  Llesho stared at him out of the storm’s eye, as if he’d never seen the dragon-king before. “What do you want?” he asked. Even the storm knew its king.

  “My son,” he said. “For the moment I’ll settle for a hope that the world won’t end tomorrow.”

  That meant nothing to the storm, but Llesho reached for the worm’s presence in the world outside the storm. “My Lord Dragon?” he said.

  “King Llesho?” The dragon-king asked back.

  “Yes,” Llesho realized. And then he knew what he had to do.

  Neither witch nor dragon, he had no power to command a storm, nor did any of the prayer forms he had learned address such a need. But he could create a new form, following the Way of the Goddess to a new place on her path. Slowly he began to move in the paces of “Wind through Millet” again. Where the form called for straight arms even with the shoulder, he curved his arms toward his body, gathering the power of the storm within them.

  Releasing the new shape of “Wind through Millet,” he stepped out, as if performing “Flowing River” but then folded his knees so that he almost rested on his heels. Instead of shifting his weight from side to side, he turned in a tight circle. From this low crouch his foot lashed out. Ah. Here was the point at which the turning of wind and water had become a combat form.

  Master Markko, who wished his way into his powers, had little knowledge of the Way of the Goddess, or how that way was an echo of the natural world. He had no understanding of the form or power of the typhoon he had set into motion but called on the stolen magic of the dragon-king’s son to raise the storm to still greater heights, as if he could overwhelm Llesho with the pure might of wind and water. Llesho, however, had come into his own power with careful training and the grace of the Goddess, his wife of many lifetimes. Khri, his bodyguard, had taught him as a tiny prince in the Palace of the Sun in the Golden City, and he had learned at the foot of his mother’s throne. Lleck had taught him as man and ghost and bear cub. And Master Den had added the formal style of the prayers to the inner knowledge he had gathered from everyone he had touched from the day he was born.

  To set against the raw anger of the storm, Llesho created a new prayer out of his body and his soul and the teachings of a lifetime. In the shaping of the prayer he learned the nature of the spinning wind and the greater forces that propelled it forward across the sea. Now he had to find a way to change that course.

  Marmer Sea Dragon read his mind and his touch, returned a satisfied “hrmmm, hmmm” whuffling through the passages of his long snout. High above the storm he turned toward a breeze that pressed with no great speed against them, showing Llesho what he knew. The gentle-seeming wind banded all the world of men, never restless but always moving. Storms might cross it, sunlight might stir it, but the breeze was always there. Gentle clouds of midsummer and the storm that circled in on itself were both propelled forward by this breeze.

  Llesho understood. In the prayer form he created, “Gen tleness turns the storm,” Llesho touched here, there, and the breeze shifted. At its heart, the storm continued its rampage, gobbling up the ocean in its path and emptying it back again in angry torrents. But gradually, gently, and from a distance, the breeze turned the storm.

  At first the new path seemed no change at all, a single footstep off its former route that Master Markko, caught in the violence circling outward from the calm center, didn’t notice. Then, the typhoon seemed to take another step, and another. The gentleness of the breeze, aspiring not to destroy the storm but to guide it, succeeded where the force applied by the contesting wills of magician and witch could not. The great wheeling disk veered
away from Kaydu’s ship. Its new path would take it more li out of the way of the pirate galley.

  He sensed the easing of Kaydu’s spells, and those of her father, as they felt the changing direction of the storm. Master Markko, too, felt the shift. Screaming with rage, he seized upon the storm and called upon the young dragon bound into his flesh to set the typhoon back on course. Caught within the prevailing pattern of the world currents, however, even a dragon-prince could make no change in the path of the storm. Instead, he fed the storm with his desperation. Its far-flung arms spiraled faster, gathering so much water in its embrace that a man of Edris could walk a li or more onto the sea-bed and never dampen his sandals.

  From high above the storm, Llesho watched that writhing, skyborne sea obliterate all distinctions between earth and air and water. In that onslaught, the malevolent consciousness of the magician vanished, swallowed by the very storm he had conjured. Not dead—that would be too much to hope—but Master Markko was gone, and sorely weakened, at least for now, by his struggle. The storm would carry him far out to sea, where Llesho’s prayer form had sent it. With a weary sigh, he fell onto his back in the cushioning seaweed bed that lined the bony cavern between the horns of the dragon.

  “You did that well,” Marmer Sea Dragon informed him. “Better than I expected, better even than I had hoped.”

  “Don’t you people ever get tired of tests?” It seemed petty of him to be arguing the point while the storm raged harmlessly out to sea. They’d just missed death by a whisper, however, which made Llesho short-tempered.

  “I tired of them long ago.” The dragon-king snapped his answer, revealing much of his own temper and pain. “But you can’t expect all the powers of heaven and mortal beings to put their faith in your hands until they are sure you have the courage and the strength to use them properly. And that doesn’t even mention the intelligence to know when to use them and when to keep still.”

  Llesho was exhausted and not in the best mood for arguing the fate of all the worlds. It made him snappish as well. “If you had anyone else, you wouldn’t need me, so it seems a bit pointless to pretend there is any choice about it.” Master Markko hadn’t left any of them a lot of options.