The Prince of Shadow

by Curt Benjamin

  “I think someone hid the knowledge from you, to protect you,” Jaks said. “When it is time, you will probably remember it.”

  “Do you know what it is I’ve forgotten?” It took more courage to ask than he’d ever summoned in his too eventful life, but he held his teacher’s gaze, implying the question: “Am I safe with this knowledge in your hands?”

  As answer, Jaks took a sword from the weapons table and knelt on one knee before Llesho. He bowed his head, and when he looked into Llesho’s eyes, his own burned with a fire of regret that stunned the young prince.

  “We will not fail again,” he said. He started to reach out, then withdrew his hand, veiling with downcast lashes something fierce and personal in his declaration.

  “You were there,” Llesho whispered, but when Jaks spoke again, he had set the question aside.

  “Master Den has missed you. Let him take a look at you, get a new belt, and come back here when he is done with you.”

  Llesho blinked, trying to catch up to the shifting conversation, but Jaks was speaking again, warning him, “Don’t tell anyone what you know, or what you suspect. And watch yourself around Markko.”

  Llesho didn’t need Jaks to tell him that. But Jaks was gone, into the practice yard where he snapped an order for Bixei to pick up his pike, and not to treat the weapon like a plow.

  Llesho found Master Den in the laundry. The washerman took one look at the shirt hanging from his shoulders like the clothes on a scarecrow and sighed. “Eat your bread,” he said, and pulled a band of cloth from a cubby. “Then wrap this around your waist.” When he had done as he was told, Llesho followed Master Den into the private area where Den had taught unarmed combat to the novices. A wide sword rested against the fence; Master Den picked it up and took an attack stance.

  “I’m taller than you are, and my weapon’s got reach on you—what do you do?”

  “Run?” Llesho suggested.

  “Try it.”

  Llesho turned to escape, but before he could take a step, the flat of Master Den’s sword came down on his shoulder. Den wouldn’t hurt him. Llesho knew that instinctively. But the touch of the sword on his shoulder snapped him into the past, swords flashing, blood spurting. Llesho wanted to curl into a screaming ball, but a memory moved within him and he snarled, slipped under the sword and inside its guard, brought the knife up. He came to himself with the sword on the ground and Master Den’s hand tight around his wrist.

  “A longer reach is only useful when the opponent stays outside of it.” Den gestured approvingly to where Llesho’s knife rested just below his own sternum, pointing upward. “To counter, move inside the reach.”

  A killing stroke. When Llesho realized what he had almost done, he dropped the knife into the sawdust and drew his arms tight against his chest. His face crumpled, but he’d learned not to weep in the daylight, so he waited with his eyes grown huge and glittering with shock.

  “It’s all right, child.” Master Den wrapped him in a huge hug that soaked the trembling out of him like a warm blanket.

  “No damage done,” Den whispered. “We had to find out how much you had learned before you came to us.” He pulled Llesho away just far enough so that he could look into his student’s eyes. “Trust me. I won’t let you hurt anyone by accident.”

  That last was said with an ironic twist of a smile, and Llesho wondered who the teacher expected him to hurt on purpose. But he’d leave that for another day. He was simply too exhausted to think about it now. Den read the droop of Llesho’s shoulders, and tousled his hair.

  “Clean the knife,” he said, “and we’ll have a little visit.” Den did not seem to mind that Llesho said nothing; the teacher had enough stories, and when he finally heaved himself back onto his feet with the announcement, “Weapons practice is over; you’d best get back before you are missed,” Llesho returned to the overseer’s cottage with a lightened heart.

  His mood sank almost immediately. Markko stood behind a thin, narrow-eyed man in the robes of a noble who had taken the overseer’s place behind the desk. In an elaborate chair that Llesho had never seen before sat a woman, much older but with robes as elaborate as the man’s. Had they come to expose him? Llesho wondered. Markko smirked, fawning over the seated noble, but said nothing about his suspicions.

  “Lord Chin-shi and his consort have come to ask you some questions of their own about the witch, boy.”

  “No one is going to hurt you, boy.” Lord Chin-shi sat forward with his forearms crossed in front of him on the desk and his hands tucked into his wide sleeves. “Can you tell us your name?”

  Behind their lord, Master Markko nodded his head, signaling his permission for Llesho to speak. Briefly, Llesho wondered if Lord Chin-shi would recognize him by his name, or if he knew it and was waiting only to trap him in an untruth. But Markko knew already, so lying wouldn’t help.

  “Llesho, of Thebin, my lord,” he answered and bowed low, first to the lord behind the desk, and then to his lady in her chair.

  His lordship nodded encouragingly. “That didn’t hurt, did it?” he asked with a thin smile. “Did you know that Thebin is infamous for its witches, Llesho?”

  “It is not so in Thebin, my lord. Or was not when I was taken away.” Llesho looked at him curiously. “Perhaps it is the Harn witches who give Thebin its reputation?”

  Lady Chin-shi frowned at him. “Don’t be impertinent, boy. You can still be hanged for treason.”

  “I am sorry, my lady.” Llesho bowed deeply again, “But I don’t see how I can be of any help. I know nothing of witches or witchcraft.” And he would have sooner believed that Master Markko was a witch than Kwan-ti.

  Markko himself made a bow, and spread his hands as if to demonstrate a point. “I beg your indulgence, my lady, but I did mention that the boy was soft in the head. He is small, but physically quick, and Thebins are known for their endurance, which will make him an asset in the arena. But Llesho had a mishap in the pearl beds, and it addled his brain. He can answer simple, direct questions, but he has little subtlety of wit.”

  “If you can do better with the boy, please do so.” Lady Chin-shi waved a hand impatiently. “I plan to watch unarmed combat practice this afternoon, and wish this matter disposed of.”

  “I presume that means I will be spending the evening alone?” Lord Chin-shi asked her, and Llesho ducked his head, trying to pretend he wasn’t there. But Markko walked over to him and lifted his chin. “The boy is quite innocent,” he commented over his shoulder. “It comes of a simple mind. Perhaps his lordship would like to question him at his convenience—alone?”

  “A good idea.” Lord Chin-shi rose from his chair, and beckoned with long fingers. “Come with me. We will leave my good wife to her shopping.”

  Chapter Nine

  OUTSIDE the palisade a sumptuous sedan chair and its six bearers waited for Lord Chin-shi. The bearers stood in rigid silence until their lord had entered the chair and arranged its brocaded curtains to keep out the dust. Then, in one smooth motion, they lifted him to their shoulders and carried him up the hill. Llesho followed: through the last of the dense wild vegetation on the hillside, across the wide lawn smooth as a knotted silk carpet, to the gracious house of three levels that rose above the island on the hilltop. The procession stopped at an entrance overhung by elaborately curled eaves and flanked by two guards of stony countenance and ready weapon. A house servant ran forward to open the curtains of the sedan chair, and Lord Chin-shi alighted.

  Llesho followed his master into a hall decorated in mother-of-pearl and pale-veined jadeite, with characters painted on the elaborately carved ceiling. The palace at Kungol had looked very different, but the sense of quiet power was much the same. So were the guards. He could have warned Lord Chin-shi how fragile such peace could be, that his guards would serve little purpose if he found his palace overrun by the Harn. His experiences since the slave market had shown him that no one listened to a child and a slave, however, and that he was safe as long as th
ey didn’t notice him.

  A servant dressed as elegantly as a duke came forward and bowed low. “My lord,” he murmured softly.

  “I will show our guest the way myself,” Lord Chin-shi said, “We will be in my apartments—send someone with a tray, and then make certain I’m not disturbed.” He dismissed the servant, who bowed low over a smirk that made Llesho squirm.

  Up a broad flight of stairs, down a corridor, and up again, this time they climbed a more modest staircase, each level flanked by its set of matching guards. Lord Chin-shi finally stopped at a room with a bed that looked big enough to sleep the entire barracks in the gladiators’ compound. Llesho dug in his heels. He knew how little choice a slave had in matters of his personal disposal, but if he made himself inconvenient—

  Lord Chin-shi did not stop at the bed, but went through the room to a door in a corner. “Come along,” he said, and slid the inner door open before motioning Llesho forward with a distracted wave of his hand. Llesho obeyed, and found himself in a workroom like Markko’s but brighter, and with a fresher scent that reminded him of Kwan-ti. He smiled without realizing that he had done it.

  “Sit.” Lord Chin-shi pointed to a chair in the corner, by an open window with wildflowers drying in the breeze. Llesho studied the floor, but found no iron rings for chaining slaves, so he sat, and found himself relaxing into the pleasure of the sun on his face, and the soft wind carrying the fragrance of the drying flowers on the air. Lord Chin-shi himself pulled up a three-legged stool and sat, his elbows propped on his knees and his chin resting on the arch made by his clasped hands. He studied Llesho with a thoughtful, but not threatening, frown. It reminded him of Master Jaks, and their conversation in the weapons room. Llesho suspected that it would be too easy to forget that he was a slave and in danger if his identity were known to this man. He tried blinking stupidly, but Lord Chin-shi just laughed softly.

  “Who are you?” he muttered to himself, not waiting for an answer he would not receive. “A slave from the pearl beds who sits as comfortably in a nobleman’s laboratory as he does on a gladiators’ bench. A boy smart enough to know that playing the idiot is better protection than the wisdom of the sages.”

  “I don’t play at the idiot.” He felt the need to defend himself on that one, even if it did mean he was talking. “People who ask stupid questions should not blame others if the answers they receive are stupid as well.”

  “Fair enough.” Lord Chin-shi stood up and wandered over to a clean table on which a beaker full of a red liquid stood. “I shall try not to ask any stupid questions.”

  Llesho blushed with embarrassment, and no little fear. He hadn’t meant to insult Lord Chin-shi, but knew his lordship might easily have taken it that way. The lord laughed, softly again, as if at a private joke, however. It seemed strange that the lord of the island should need to dissemble in front of his own slave, which Markko was as surely as Llesho or Master Den. Before he could set to serious work on the question, however, Lord Chin-shi had returned, carrying the beaker, and all humor was gone.

  “Do you know what this is?” He handed Llesho the beaker with deadly seriousness.

  “Blood?” Llesho waved a hand over the beaker to waft a safe measure of the fumes under his nose. “Not blood,” he corrected himself. “It smells like seaweed.”

  “Not stupid,” Lord Chin-shi commented. “It is called the Blood Tide in the Chronicles.” He took the beaker into his own hands then, and stared at it with the grim fascination that Llesho reserved for the soldiers of his enemies. “It invades the living sea like a goiter and smothers everything that lives there. Already, the pearl beds are dying. Strange creatures of the deep wash onto the bloody shore and gasp their dying breath out on the land.”

  Lord Chin-shi’s voice dropped, thick with sorrow. Llesho remembered the water dragon that had saved his life, and imagined her lying dead upon the beach. He bowed his head, sharing a new grief with his master. So the lord’s next words slipped under his guard like a knife:

  “Master Markko swears that the Blood Tide is the curse of the witch, Kwan-ti. He says we must find her, and burn her, to restore the balance of heaven and earth. Only then will the sea flourish again.”

  “If you are looking for curses,” Llesho snapped, “I suggest you seek closer to home and leave your healers to their work.”

  “Master Markko also says that you disappeared from the compound on the day the witch vanished, and that you know where she has gone.”

  Lord Chin-shi’s fingers had gone white where they wrapped around the beaker of red death. Llesho winced, and the lord frowned in concentration, carefully easing his grip on the beaker and setting it on the floor between them. “Tell me where she has gone, boy.”

  Llesho grew dizzy with sudden fear. He had forgotten his position; lured by his master’s calm, and a sense of well-being that rested lightly in the sunny room, he had forgotten how dangerous the man in front of him was. Lord Chin-shi could have him put to death with a word, and no one would deny his right to do so. But the pain for the dying sea in the man’s eyes was real. Llesho reached for that fact: Lord Chin-shi loved the sea, and it was dying, and Lord Markko had told him that Llesho could make it stop. The only problem was, he couldn’t.

  “I don’t know where she is,” he said. “I did try to warn her, that’s true, but she was gone before I left the compound. No one saw her escape, or would tell me anything about it.” He sat up straighter in his chair as he had seen his father do countless times in the palace at Kungol, though he scarcely remembered that now, and willed his lord to listen and believe him. “Kwan-ti is no more a witch than you are, and she would no more hurt the sea.”

  Lord Chin-shi gave a guilty start at that and Llesho followed his glance to the beaker on the floor. He did not comment on the similarities he saw, but added, “Kwan-ti is a healer. And you need a living healer a lot more than you need a dead witch.”

  “It seems, however, that I shall have neither.” Lord Chin-shi picked up the beaker and rose from his foot-stool. He led Llesho to the bedroom, where a tray waited on a carved and lacquered table. “You must be hungry—take what you want. For your personal safety, you will spend the night in these apartments and return to the compound in the morning. Rest—no one will disturb you. Do you read?” Llesho nodded, though he realized afterward that he had given too much away with that admission. Lord Chin-shi did not seem to notice Llesho’s sudden unease, but pointed to a third door in the bedroom. “There is a library through that door if you are bored.” With that the lord took a small plate of fruit from the tray and returned to his workroom. Llesho found himself alone with the food-laden table and the big, big bed.

  He succumbed first to the lure of the food: thin pancakes filled with scallions and herbs, cold dumplings and hot ones, rice and millet and pig flesh in half a dozen different sauces, fruits that grew wild on the island, and fruits carried down the long trade roads from far inland. Tea, and a liquor that burned and made him cough and his nose run.

  With his stomach full, he wandered around the bedroom for a while, examining the country scenes lacquered into the doors of the wardrobes and running fingers lightly over the carved figures of jade and crystal and ivory scattered on fragile tables about the room. He avoided the big bed in his explorations, turning to the library when he had exhausted all the other niches and alcoves in the master’s chamber.

  He had resisted the pull of the library, because the memory of books always brought with it the image of his mother, and he did not want Lord Chin-shi to find him weeping over some philosophical text. But it was still early in the night, and only the one door remained. He slid it open along its groaning track, and stepped inside while an invisible hand seemed to wrap cold fingers around his throat. A desk filled the center of the room, with a low bench behind it and a soft, thick carpet in front. Beneath the room’s single window, shaded with an oiled parchment screen, a low, cushioned divan sat next to a table with an oil lamp on it. Shelves covered the walls from f
loor to ceiling of a narrow gallery that wrapped the room and continued the shelves right up to the roof, where a square of tiles had been removed for a wide glass pane. A stout wooden pole propped open a trapdoor that would cover the sky window to protect the contents of the library during storms.

  The shelves on the floor of the library were divided into wedges and stuffed with scrolls of parchment and rolled bamboo and heavy silk. A room in his mother’s library had likewise been fitted for rolled documents. Thebin stood at the top of the world, where heaven and hell touched on the heights of the mountains that held the capital city of Kungol. Through its mountain passes all the trade of the living world traveled, most especially that of learning. His mother had loved knowledge. To the king’s mock astonishment, she had asked only gifts of writing from the many travelers who stopped in the capital city to rest on their journeys to foreign lands. Like his mother, Llesho had prized the books and scrolls and rolls that came to them from distant lands. He’d loved to touch them, despite the many attendants who shooed him away while they polished and dusted.

  Someday, his mother had promised, he would learn to read them all, as Adar and Menar had done. A healer and a poet, those brothers had teased that he must be the mathematician, since their mother was the priest, to make the set of scholars complete. Time had seemed limitless then, of course, and he had looked forward to many years of study with his mother and his brothers. Then the Harn came.

  Llesho took down a rolled bamboo and spread it out on the desk. Lord Chin-shi’s library, he decided, had too much dust, too much light. Perhaps he would warn his master of the damage the elements could do to fragile materials: already, the images were fading. In the upper right-hand corner, in pale shades of blue and green, the artist had depicted a mountain waterfall, with a deity sitting cross-legged at its foot. A small tripod stood in front of the deity. In one hand, he held a short wand over the tripod and in the other hand he held a vial of pills. Ancient characters filled the scroll beneath the image, as beautifully painted as the work of art. Unconsciously he curled his fingers away from the surface, however. He could not read the text, but he recognized the symbols of an alchemist in the painted decoration, and took it for a warning. No one was what they seemed, Lord Chin-shi least of all. With a wistful sigh he rolled the bamboo up again and replaced it in its place on the shelf. Had the Lord of Pearl Island read every one, he wondered, or merely hoarded them like a dragon on a heap of bones?