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

by Curt Benjamin

  Visions of Tayy attacked by the magician filled his head. All his fault. He’d taken Tayy away from the protection of his people and lost him first to slavers and now to the deadly clutches of his own personal nemesis.

  “Too late, too late.” His feet pounded the rhythm through his body until it hummed in his teeth and in the scars that still pulled sometimes when he moved the wrong way.

  It’s just been minutes,he reminded himself, though it felt like he’d been running forever. Prince Tayyichiut would be all right, he just had to reach him in time. Master Markko didn’t want Tayy anyway—he wanted Llesho, and if Llesho was there, he’d leave the Harnish prince alone. Llesho ducked a branch and tumbled into a clearing broken by shattered rock from which hardy beach grasses grew.

  Tayy lay with his back against a jutting boulder spattered, like his clothes and the sandy grass beneath him, with blood oozing from a dozen or more razorlike slashes scoring the prince’s belly and ribs. A bedraggled monster, half bird and half beast, loomed over him: Master Markko. Attacking with beak and claw, the horrifying creature opened a deep gash across the prince’s gut. Llesho saw the pulsing of his entrails until blood filled the gaping wound.

  The prince had already screamed his throat raw. The sound this latest wound tore from him rattled with despair as he gazed in fixed horror on the bedraggled creature out of nightmares. Holding him in its obsidian stare, the creature used its beak to pick a bit of dangling human flesh from its talon.

  Llesho’s palm ran with sweat around the knife hilt clutched in his left hand. In his right, the spear of the mortal goddess of war sparked lightning all along its length.

  “Kill him,” the spear whispered in his mind. Normally, he didn’t listen to the weapon, but this time it had a point. His grip on his knife relaxed, ready for the explosive unfolding of the ritual defense moves that would leave his opponent dead. The spear he clutched more tightly, lest it lead instead of follow his action. He knew better than to show any sign of fear. In fact, however, he didn’t feel any fear, except for Tayy. Markko’s powers were at a low ebb, sodden and tattered, while Llesho felt fresh from his untroubled sleep and calm in his purpose.

  “Leave him alone!” he shouted, waving his arms wildly to distract the magician from his helpless prey. Then he charged.

  The creature fluttered its waterlogged wings, raising itself only as high as the lowest branches of the palm trees that surrounded them. It was enough to evade the initial attack, however, and to counter with its vicious talons. Llesho shifted to the left to avoid a slash, jabbed with the spear, drawing blood that burned to blackened ash on the blade, and leaped back to avoid a blow from still-powerful wings.

  The spear had ideas of its own. Without a thought or the twitch of a muscle, Llesho brought the weapon up and thrust for the great bird’s eyes. He missed, but blue lightning snapped between them, throwing the magician off and shaking his hold on the magical shape he had taken for the battle. With a convulsive shudder, as if he were settling his ragged black feathers, Master Markko regained his human form, coming to rest lightly with his sword over Tayy’s heart. The Harnish prince was helpless to save himself, and Markko would kill him before Llesho could move against him.

  “Is he one of yours?” the magician asked with mock civility. “I thought I knew them all. Still, it brought you. That’s what matters.”

  “You failed,” Llesho commented. “We’re still alive.” One eyebrow raised meaningfully. Of the two of them, Markko seemed to have had the worst of the storm as well as the battle. His face was gaunt and ashen, his hair streaked with white and tangled in a great matted nest from which bits of flotsam peeked like the treasures in a bird’s nest. His dark robes, though made of rich brocades, were torn and showed the wear of salt water and the wrack of seaweed and other, less wholesome stains. He was making an effort to look imposing, but Llesho noticed that he leaned a bit on an upthrust spur of stone. Tayy was in danger from his wounds, but the magician seemed hardly strong enough to hold up his sword to inflict another.

  “No failure,” Master Markko corrected with a haughty smile. He gave Tayy a nudge to remind him to stay still. The prince whimpered back, but slowly the magician seemed to cave in on himself. He spoke as if his battle-weary state meant nothing, however. “It was a test, and you passed with flying colors. As I knew you would. And in the end, the storm has put you where I wanted you—where, as you can see, I have been waiting for you.”

  “You can’t even lie convincingly anymore. You were thrown up on this island the same way we were—tossed here by the storm.” The spear crackled in Llesho’s hand, but he willed it to stillness. “It’s all been a lie, hasn’t it? You’re not even a magician; you’re a fraud.”

  High on Master Markko’s cheeks, spots of color stained the ashy gray. “A fraud? Ask your friend about that.” He brought his hand up and twitched a finger at the prince lying in a puddle of his own blood. Tayy whimpered, responding to some torment that Llesho couldn’t see. He seemed to be trying to draw himself into a ball around his exposed entrails, but his body wasn’t cooperating. They needed a healer, and soon, or Prince Tayyichiut was going to die.

  But Bolghai was with Mergen at Shou’s temporary court in Durnhag. So were Carina and Adar. They were all far away, and Tayy had never learned to dream travel. Wouldn’t have been able to do it in his current condition even if he’d studied the art, Llesho figured. He couldn’t have focused on moving between the realms himself with his gut in danger of spilling from his body like that.

  Lightning leaked back into the spear at Llesho’s side. “If Prince Tayyichiut dies, I’ll find you wherever you go, however you hide. Then we’ll kill you.” He meant by that the short spear as well, whose whisper had become a persistent moaning in his ear since Master Markko had cast his shadow on the island.

  “You won’t kill me. You can’t. We mean too much to each other.” Master Markko sheathed his sword and held out his hands, as if to embrace him. Blood and bits of flesh still clung to his fingernails. “If you intended to see me dead, you’d try it right now, wouldn’t you? But you won’t.”

  He was right. In the heat of battle, with a friend’s life at risk, he could have killed the magician and given it not a moment’s thought. But he hadn’t fallen so far that he could kill in cold blood, over a conversation. There would be other meetings, however; Tayy needed him now. Llesho ripped the hem from his shirt. Blood still dripped from the pulsing wound in the prince’s gut and he packed the cloth into it to stanch the flow.

  “I know what you are.”

  The magician waited with his mad, patient smile for Llesho to reveal himself.

  “Marmer Sea Dragon told me what you did. What Pig did.”

  He hadn’t expected to hear that. Rage blurred his features. At his feet, Prince Tayy keened a high, panicked whine as the monstrous bird showed through the human form of the magician, and the shape of a lion-headed creature more horrible still. Llesho had seen both before and carried their marks on his body.

  “I won’t kill you now,” he repeated, “because I owe the dragon-king of this realm a debt. But all your futures look bleak. If I can, I’ll find a way to free his son from his prison in your flesh. You’ll be powerless then, and I’ll see you face the justice of those you have harmed.

  “If I can’t free the dragon trapped within your flesh, I’ll kill you to protect Marmer Sea Dragon. A father shouldn’t suffer the blood of his child—even in this perverted form—on his hands.

  “If Tayy dies, however, I won’t be concerned about justice. You’ll have my vengeance to fear then. And the spear of the Lady SienMa likes vengeance.”

  Blue flame blazed along the length of the weapon. It sparked azure fire up and down Llesho’s body and filled the clearing with an unearthly light unbearable to look at. For the first time in all of their encounters, from Pearl Island to this hideout of pirates on the other side of the world, Master Markko looked nervous.

  “You’ll come around,” he said, bu
t he didn’t sound as assured as he wanted to appear. “And while we are apart, remember. I can reach you any time I want.”

  As if to prove his point, the magician raised a talon-clawed hand. Although the broken clearing lay between them, Llesho felt a touch on his shoulder, a stroke that brushed the hair from his forehead.

  “I chose you,” a rusty voice whispered in Llesho’s head. “I made you as a father makes a son, in the raising. You won’t escape the path I’ve laid for you.”

  The transformation was not as smooth as Llesho had seen in the past, but slowly the magician faded from view. In his place squatted a huge bird with a predatory gleam in its eye. With a lumbering flap of its wings the bird rose awkwardly into the air and circled, found a thermal updraft, and wheeled away.

  “Well done.”

  Llesho jumped at the sound of the deep voice. It hadn’t come from inside his head, which was an improvement. But where? Ah. Master Den stepped out from among the trees with a satisfied smile. “You did that very well. I liked the bit about Marmer Sea Dragon’s son particularly.” He’d shed his pirate garb for his more familiar dress of loincloth and coat, but it was going to take more than a change in his clothing to trust him again.

  “I meant it.” Llesho dropped to his knees at Tayy’s side, but he didn’t know what to do, where to touch him that wouldn’t cause him more pain. They had to close that wound, but how, without sealing up the poisons that festered in hiding? The thought of maggots in that huge wound made his own gut crawl.

  “You were right about the false magician. He did lie.” He didn’t dare ask the question,What are we going to do? aloud because he didn’t want Tayy to hear it. But his whole soul cried out in dismay at the growing pool of blood. The prince’s lips had grown as pale as his skin, and his eyes drooped half-closed already.

  Master Den squatted down beside him and rested a huge hand lightly on his shoulder. “This is no test. Not for you, not for Tayy. This is the war. I’d protect you from it if I could, but it’s your war. I can only watch, and guide.”

  Which was more real information than the trickster god had ever given him before and it made him wonder about all the other gods he’d met along his way. They could help, of course. Hmishi, alive, was proof of that. But Dognut had explained the cost of such a boon. Even once was more than you could ask in a lifetime, the god had made that clear. He hadn’t been able to get Harlol back and he couldn’t ask for Tayy.

  Master Den had trained warrior kings and gladiators for more lifetimes than Llesho wanted to think about, however. “Get my pack for me,” he said. “I left it there in the trees.”

  The pack, wrapped in a clean cloth, was right where the trickster god told him, hidden behind a rock jutting up between the trees. The trickster took it without looking and continued his instructions as he pulled from inside it a small pouch of what looked like tea and a small length of clean white cloth.

  “Go to the beach,” he said, “And bring back some of the nets you find there.”

  “What nets?”

  His teacher had his mind on Tayy. “Go, quickly,” he urged before turning back to his patient. He wiped gently at the many wounds on limbs and body. The prince was semiconscious, but sounds of distress escaped his slack lips.

  Llesho ran for the beach. He would force Moll to take them to Pontus, where they’d find doctors and magicians for Tayy—

  The pirate galley was gone. Singer was a good rower, and he’d make a good captain, but he had no taste for the magical. He’d headed out to sea, far from the presence of a magician in the shape of a huge raptor with an eye for human prey.

  As Den had known, however, the pirates scavenging for supplies had dropped their bundles on the shore when Tayy screamed. There were drag marks in the sand where they’d retrieved most of them, but a few nets remained, bursting with their booty of fruits and meat. Moll would have more bolt-holes to visit for food and water; safer hideouts. He didn’t know what Master Den wanted with the nets, but he grabbed two of the loads and raced back to the clearing.

  “Here.”

  “Ah. Better than I thought.” From among the small lizards and the breadfruit, Master Den pulled a coconut and cracked it on the sharp end of an upturned boulder.

  “Drink up.” He handed one half to Llesho and gulped down the rest himself.

  “What about Tayy?”

  “You know better than that.”

  He did, of course. Gut wounds were chancy. If you fed one, you ran the risk of horrible infection that killed faster than the wound itself. Without water, however, the patient would die of thirst. Already Tayy had the pinched, almost powdery look of one who had gone too long without drink.

  Master Den had straightened the prince’s body so that he lay flat on the grass with the cloth from Llesho’s shirt packed in his wound. With his own belt the trickster god had tied the prince’s hands to his sides, but still Tayy reached mindlessly to pluck at the curling edges of the wound. Llesho had seen the like in battle; without the restraints, he’d tangle his fingers in his own entrails. His lashes fluttered weakly when Master Den spoke, but he seemed unaware of what was being said.

  “We can keep him alive if you don’t lose your head,” the trickster reminded him sharply. “When you’ve drunk that coconut, you’re going to find the spring where Moll’s crew were drawing their water and you’re going to bring some back in the shells.”

  Water—that made sense. He drank the coconut and took the other half of the shell. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “I know. Take a bit of net with you to carry the shells in. You may need to keep your hands free.”

  Llesho did as he was told, snugged the broken halves of the coconut shell into a net that he tied over his shoulders. Then he looked back, unwilling to leave the clearing for fear that Tayy would die while he was gone. Squatting next to the prince with his elbows on his knees, Master Den made a shooing motion with both his huge hands before tackling the nets with their booty of food inside. “Go, go. We won’t leave without you.”

  Which hadn’t been Llesho’s fear, or maybe the trickster didn’t mean on the ship Kaydu was bringing. With an abrupt, single nod to show that he understood, Llesho left the clearing for the forest.

  As before, he followed a path already beaten down by the animals that lived on the island. They would know better than he where to find water, and the shortest routes to it. He met with no large predators, though small scavengers skittered in the undergrowth on either side of the path and some strange creature with tall, slim horns on its head leaped out of the way as he came upon it nibbling bark from a pine tree.

  Not more than a few hundred paces from the clearing a tumble of fractured rock blocked the path. And from a crack in the rock high over his head, water trickled in a thin stream. It would have been impossible to capture that water, which drizzled through tiny grooves and cracks in the stone. At the base of the spill, however, water collected in a shallow basin made of the fallen rock. On the far side of the path, the water overflowed the basin into the sandy soil. Quicksand, he figured, and creatures with too many teeth that lived in the marshes and fens. He kept to his own side where countless animals had laid the safest course and climbed the stony wall of the pool. Filling the coconut shells, he settled them on his back again and climbed down off the rocky pile. Careful not to spill a drop, he headed back down the way he had come.

  It turned out there were more than human predators on the island after all. A tawny she-cat whose head came only to his hip, but with teeth longer than the fingers on each hand, barred his path. The thick hair around her neck bristled threateningly.

  “Nice kitty.” With cats, it was simple. Whoever intimidated the other more would have the right of way. Or so he had heard. On the other hand, she was female and looked ready to drop her young. That made it more complicated to know how she’d jump.

  Llesho was taller and he glared down at her, eye to eye, declaring his dominance. “Is this your own special route to the
spring? That’s okay.” The creature couldn’t understand his human language, but his tone would communicate his confidence. “You can have it. After I’m gone.”

  This was the tricky part. Stepping off the path for either of them meant backing down. The she-cat could walk away, submitting to Llesho’s control of the path. Or they could fight. If Llesho stepped aside, he’d be prey again, and she’d try to kill him for sure. He might win either fight, but not without killing the cat.

  He’d had enough of bloodshed for the day, however, and would rather not murder a mother defending her own ground. There was always the chance she’d beat him, too, in which case he’d be dead. Slowly he drew the knife from its sheath at his side. Lifting his shoulders away from his body, he made himself look bigger and held his ground.

  “Raowr!” She tilted her head, spreading her jaws so that he could see all her sharp, shiny teeth.

  “No!” Somehow the spear had come into his hand, flickering the blue sparks it gave off when it wished to strike. That was enough for the she-cat. She shook her head, ceding the territory, and padded away into the forest.

  This time, Llesho had won their little game of dominance and power. Even now, however, he didn’t dare let himself be afraid. The cat would smell the emotion on him and stalk him, waiting for her chance. Then she’d be on him before he knew she was there. The back of his neck prickled with unease, as if his skin already felt the heat of her breath, the pressure of her jaws snapping fragile bones. Whistling a cheery tune to convince both himself and the cat that he was just fine, he continued at his former pace to the clearing where Master Den waited with Tayy.

  “There are predators about, we can’t stay here long.” He carefully set the net with the coconut shells down before joining his teacher at the prince’s side.

  “We have to get to shore to hail Kaydu’s ship anyway,” Master Den agreed.

  “Cover your ears—there’s no time to warm it properly. This is going to hurt.”