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

by Curt Benjamin

  “That only makes it worse.” Dun Dragon landed lightly on an outcrop above the demon’s cave while Llesho wondered when he’d had the experience of moving an army before, and what had befallen those terrified troops. The answer might have given him a clue about what would happen to his own army out on that mountain in the crack between the mortal realm and the underworld that Master Markko had opened by accident long ago. Dun Dragon’s tone didn’t invite questions, however, and he had work to do.

  Llesho climbed down the ridge that he’d once mistaken for a staircase on the right side of Dun Dragon’s nose. When he reached the ground Dun Dragon lifted into the air, circling overhead with the other dragons in search of likely prey from among the imps attacking below. Nearby the other mortal gods had risen in the air under their own powers. Llesho hadn’t figured out how to do that yet so he kept the stony ground under his feet.

  Farther down the mountain, with the demon-king’s cave between them, he saw Ghrisz, pale but standing and with his sword drawn. Ghrisz had seen him leave with Dun Dragon and so he was watching for him as he climbed down.

  “For the god-king, Llesho!” he called, and the dragons lent him the power of their voices so that his words rang through the mountaintops like thunder. His own troops and those who had followed Llesho heard the call and set aside their terror as imps and minor demons poured out of the cave, where Master Markko had pierced the boundary between the worlds.

  With a terrible, earth-shattering cry, the two forces of humans and imps fell upon each other, sword and shield against tooth and claw. The human soldiers had an advantage that their own battle frenzy drove them forward, against the foe, while imps and demons were as likely to attack their own as their human enemy.

  The minions fully engaged, it was time for Llesho to confront the demon-king who threatened heaven. He shifted his shoulder, stirring the cursed spear at his back, and checked his belt for the bag of tea with the Lady SienMa’s cup in it. Time to release the tainted cup of the Lady Chaiujin: he removed the signet from his knife and let it grow again until it returned to its natural shape as an elaborately carved wooden box. Then he opened it and took out the cup which Adar had painted with the poison mixture. The cup went into the pouch with the tea and the box went back on the butt of his knife. He was ready.

  The next step, getting himself captured, was easy enough. The tricky part was making it look like an accident. That was less difficult then he’d expected. A stone gave way under his foot, his ankle turned and he fell, skidding down the mountainside on his belly to land at the feet of a minor demon.

  The creature looked up from tearing an imp apart to confront the disturbance. “How did you get up here?” the demon mumbled around his fangs. Acids dripped from the corners of his mouth as he talked, raising sizzling smoke as it hit the ground between them.

  “I flew up in the head of a dragon to kill your master,” he said.

  “A likely story,” the demon sighed, not believing a word of it. He dropped the bleeding imp and dusted off his hands, which only succeeded in spreading the blood. “Still, I guess I’d better give you to the king. He’ll want to question you before we eat you.”

  Llesho tried to walk but his ankle wouldn’t carry him. With another exasperated sigh the demon grabbed him by the braids of his hair and dragged him the little way to the mouth of the cave from which imps continued to pour.

  “You have a caller,” the demon made the sarcastic introduction. “He says he’s come to kill you.”

  “Does he have anything worth stealing?” The demon-king, folded in upon himself like a paper crane to fit inside his own cave, shambled into the light and peered at Llesho through the stolen pearls of his eyes.

  He made a gesture of command and his imps seized Llesho by the arms, stealing the little bag of tea things and reaching for the spear at his back. It burned their fingers when they touched it, however, and they quickly backed away, cluttering and hissing angry threats at him.

  When nothing else seemed to follow, however, one of the more daring of them snatched the empty silver chain from his neck. Pig was gone, freed when he released the dragon-king’s son or simply traveling on his mistress’ business in the dreamscape. Llesho hoped that he would return to his person and not to the chain which now wrapped the wrist of the demon-king as a bracelet. “Tasty,” he said, licking his fingers of the last scraps of his imp-snack.

  “What’s this?” the demon who had brought him reached for the bag in which Llesho had gathered the Goddess’ pearls.

  “A charm to ward off demons,” he answered, and used the powers of a god to channel the angry fire of the spear into the cord around his neck. When the demon touched it, blue light arced across the cave, throwing the demon against a wall and cracking his head open.

  The demon-king considered the unconscious and bleeding heap of his minion. “Your charm seems more intent on protecting itself than its wearer,” he pointed out. “And it strikes me that you’ve come ill-prepared either to storm my cave or to woo the lady in the gardens we all covet.”

  “Not so ill-prepared,” Llesho pointed out. “I’ve brought an army.”

  The sound of battle came to them dimly through the stone of the mountain. The demon gestured for him to follow and imps jumped to surround him and push him deeper into the cave. He thought the demon-king would have him bound, but the creature flaunted his power. Surrounded by the creatures of the underworld, Llesho had no chance of escaping. Fortunately, escape was the last thing on his mind. As he had anticipated, the jade cups among his few possessions soon attracted the evil creatures who had stolen them, and their fighting drew the attention of their leader.

  “Give me that!” With his sharp claws extended, the demon-king cuffed the imp who had opened the pouch. The imp scampered out of the way but not before a claw had split his pointy face from his temple to his long narrow chin.

  Llesho kept his own features unconcerned when the demon-king took out the cup the Lady SienMa had returned to him. The trickster god had trained him well, however. When the tainted cup of the Lady Chaiujin was drawn out, he made a face of indignation and yearning.

  “Does this cup mean something to you, young prince?” the demon asked.

  “Nothing,” Llesho answered, with heat in his eyes.

  “I see.”

  From outside the cave came the squeal of imps and the bellowing roars of the dragons, the clash of armies and the howls of imps raised against the high piercing shriek of the wind whistling with the speed of his movements as the Monkey God mowed them down in rows with his hundred-yard staff. Inside, however, the demon-king watched Llesho with no expression in his stolen eyes.

  “This wouldn’t be where you draw your power, by any chance?” he asked, holding up the Lady Chaiujin’s cup.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” He did, of course, and he let the knowledge show in his eyes. Of what, however, he kept to himself.

  “I thought so.” The demon-king gave him a triumphant smile. “Bring us tea,” he ordered. Imps dashed about to do his bidding while he sat, still as the mountain, watching Llesho. So wrapped in his thoughts had he become that he didn’t notice the new arrivals until they walked into his cavern and presented themselves below his squalid throne. Lluka cringed in the company of a young man unsteady on his feet. Llesho recognized him as the passenger who had ridden to war on the back of Marmer Sea Dragon, but he didn’t know who he was.

  “Bring me my tea!” The demon-king held out the poisoned cup for the imp to fill while he looked the newcomers over. “I know who you are,” he said to Lluka. “You have troubled my sleep for many cycles of the seasons now. It will be a pleasure to put an end to the disturbance. As for you . . . familiar, but . . .”

  “We’ve met.” The young man crossed his legs and sat. He made a graceful job of it, but from the quaking of his limbs, Llesho thought he couldn’t have stood any longer if he’d tried. “Tea?”

  “Not for you, little one. This is a drink for kings.” The
demon-king lifted his cup to drink, blood still dripping from his awful teeth. He watched Llesho as he did so; something in what he saw stopped him with a question.

  “Or have you learned more from the tricksters who surround you than it seems? You’ll drink first, I think.”

  Llesho had anticipated caution on the beast’s part. He took the poisoned bowl with both hands, his expression one of gloating pleasure meant to entice the demon-king to drink deeply when it came his turn. For his part, Llesho did as Adar had told him, and barely sipped.

  It hurt, but Master Markko had prepared him for that pain. He sat quite still, an eyebrow cocked, and waited for the demon-king to take his turn. The demon drank with loud slurping noises, tilting his head back so that he didn’t lose a drop. When he was done he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned his dark and gloating gaze on Llesho. Who smiled back, though the sweat had beaded on his brow and the pain had cramped his gut.

  “What have you done?” The demon-king jumped up in a rage, but already the draught was coursing through his veins.

  “I’ve poisoned you.” Llesho confirmed what the monster already knew.

  “But you poisoned yourself as well!” Sweat had formed on the monster’s brow and Llesho didn’t have to imagine the chill rattling the demon-king’s bones. He shook with the same waves of hot and cold himself.

  The demon-king flung down the cup in his rage, shattering it on the stone floor of the cavern. Quick as the flicker of a thought, an imp darted out of the darkness to snatch at the shards and dash out the yawning entrance to the cave. Llesho thought he saw something slither away from it, but his eyes were cloudy with sweat and with pain, so he couldn’t be certain. He couldn’t know the scream that followed was the imp dying either, but he felt the passage of the shard from one hand to another as if a thread that had tied the Lady Chaiujin’s gift to his soul had broken.

  “A word of caution could have prevented your own suffering!” the demon cried at him. He could make no sense of Llesho’s actions. “Why would you allow yourself to be poisoned?”

  “To save the gates of heaven,” Llesho answered through teeth that had clenched shut. “To save the mortal realm.”

  “You must know human poisons can’t kill even a minor demon.” The beast paced as he ranted, his size shifting as he lost control of his folds. “No human weapon can kill a king of the underworld!”

  “But it will make you suffer, at least for a little while—” He reached for the spear at his back, but the pain was too great. Wrapping his arms tightly around his belly, he toppled over while his muscles grew rigid, curving his back like a bow.

  No,he thought,not yet. The demon-king was still alive, and though the poison would soon render him as helpless as Llesho was now, he’d told the truth; no human weapon could kill him. Llesho needed to use the cursed spear, the weapon of a mortal god.

  “This is your fault!” The demon rose up to his great height and turned on Lluka, who muttered mindless incantations in the corner, wrapped as tightly around his own middle as if he had himself drunk from the poisoned cup. “Your visions brought him here! Your visions drove him!”

  “Not mine,” Lluka mumbled from his corner. “They were your dreams all along.”

  The demon-king seemed to grow more huge and terrible in his rage. He took a step, faltered as the poison tied cold knots in his gut. “They were my dreams! You had no right to invade my sleep and steal my dreams!”

  Muscles rippled and snapped under his skin with the effect of the poison and his terrible anger. He had his back to Llesho now, who lay in agony on his floor. Llesho willed his hand to move, to reach for the spear at his back, and felt it slide away from him even as he grasped it.

  The strange, shaking boy clasped the cursed weapon, wincing as the thing sizzled and burned the flesh of his palms. But he made no sound that might give away his purpose as he put the shaft firmly into Llesho’s hand and closed Llesho’s cramping fingers around it. It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t feel the weapon in his hand. It began to slip again. Then, with a slow smile and a nod to reassure him, the strange boy with eyes like the sea clasped Llesho’s hand in his. Using his own trembling strength to secure the spear in both their hands, he crept along at Llesho’s side.

  Imps and demons all around them stopped in their tasks, casting nervous glances from the mouth of the cave where the sounds of battle still raged, to their monstrous king, whose color had paled and darkened by turns through shades of putrid green. They made no move to warn him as Llesho, with the strange boy at his side, dragged himself closer.

  The demon-king snatched Lluka from his corner by one leg. “You are going to die for this!”

  The poison stole the will from his wrongly jointed limbs, however, and writhing, the monster fell to his knees. “All you measly mortal creatures and the foolish gods who gather you like stones upon the board. You’ll all die!” Bent over his poisoned gut, he reached for Lluka’s other leg, to tear him in two.

  Llesho staggered to his feet with the strange, silent boy at his side, and together they plunged the cursed spear into the demon-king’s back. Cold fire ran like lightning up its length. The boy fell. Trembling with the effort of containing the shock, Llesho held on. But the monster still moved. Calling on previously unknown strength as the mortal god of justice, a strength greater than any mortal could summon, he plunged the weapon deep into the monster’s heart.

  “What?” The demon-king sighed on his last breath, and fell dead at Lluka’s feet.

  Suddenly, the madness cleared from Prince Lluka’s eyes, leaving confusion in its place. “Where are we?” he asked.

  Llesho heard him at the very edge of consciousness, but he wasn’t able to answer. Didn’t know what answer he would give if he could have spoken. The monster was dead, but what came next he didn’t know, except that the strange boy who had helped him wasn’t moving, and his own hold on consciousness was slipping away.

  “Is it over?” Lluka tried another question. He likely didn’t mean the battle, but the future that he had seen end in disaster so often in his dreams.

  “Almost.” He knew that voice, from long ago. Kwan-ti: Pearl Bay Dragon in her human form. A figure crossed at the corner of his eye and he saw her silver drapes glimmering like scales as she knelt at his side.

  “Drink this,” she said, and held his head while she fed him an antidote from the marriage cup that Lady SienMa had returned to him at the beginning of his quest. The draught in it was sweet and clear and pure as water from a mountain spring. Llesho drank sparingly, afraid that anything he added to his stomach would make the cramps and nausea worse. Kwan-ti’s elixir soothed his pain, both of body and spirit, however. With each sip he found himself stronger and cleaner, as if some terrible stain caused by Master Markko’s poisons was being purged from his soul as well as his body.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “We would have spared you if we could.”

  “I know. But it was my quest.”

  “And now it’s time to rest.” Satisfied that he’d taken enough, and that he would sleep for a while, she left him in Lluka’s bewildered care.

  “I don’t remember much,” Lluka whispered. “But I think I’ve done terrible things. I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” Llesho mumbled. He turned his head to watch as Kwan-ti knelt beside her next patient.

  The boy who had helped him kill the demon-king lay unmoving, his eyes fixed. Tears gathered in Llesho’s eyes; he recognized the bloodless look of a body growing cold with death in the healer’s arms.

  Kwan-ti brushed the stormy sea of his hair away from his chill brow. “Brave boy,” she said, and took the stranger’s hand in her own. “You learned your lesson and amended your errors as well as any creature might. Now rest.”

  “My son?” Marmer Sea Dragon joined them. He brought the smell of blood and battle with him, more stinks to join the charred smoke of burning demon.

  “Gone,” Kwan-ti answered him. “Though he he
lped to save us all.” As she spoke, the body of the stranger was changing, shifting slowly back to his true form. “Stories of the human king and the dragon-prince who fought together to defend the gates of heaven will keep him alive forever.”

  So,Llesho thought.That’s who he is. Always at the center of Master Markko’s thoughts, no one would know better than the dragon-king’s son what disaster would come of the false magician’s schemes. It was, after all, his own powers that had freed the demon-king to wreak his havoc.

  But, dead? Too high a price to pay for an anxious heart and hasty word. Many had died in the battle to repair the damage of the wish he asked of Pig, the Jinn, however. In Justice, he couldn’t rail against the fate of this young dragon-prince, as badly as he might wish to.

  Marmer Sea Dragon roared with the terrible anguish of his dragon kind, so that Llesho feared his voice would shake the cave down on top of them, but soon the roaring gave over to weeping. He lifted the coils of his dead son into his arms and cradled him close to his breast, as if the beating of his heart could encourage the dead organ to resume its pulse in the other’s chest. It didn’t happen, of course. As the dragon-king started toward the door, he cast a glance at Llesho, who stared back out of half-lidded eyes.

  “What of the boy-king?” he asked Pearl Bay Dragon in her human form.

  Kwan-ti had risen to her feet again and wiped her hands on the crisp white apron of a healer that she’d tied over her shimmering silver robes.

  “He lives,” she said, and mused, thinking him asleep. “I wonder if he knows how close we came to disaster today? If the demon-king had managed to shed his royal blood here, we would all have died, more horribly than the monster did himself.”

  “Could he have killed the demon-king without the help of my son?” Marmer Sea Dragon asked. Llesho heard in that question the more pressing one: did my son give up his life for nothing?

  Kwan-ti gave a little shrug, not indifference but, as she explained, “Maybe. Maybe not. At best, however, he would have fared no better than your son. And the consequences of that cannot even be measured.”