The Prince of Shadow

by Curt Benjamin

  “I don’t care who you are,” Hmishi had screamed, straining against the arms that held him down. “If you hurt him, I will kill you. Anywhere. Anytime. I will kill you.”

  For Llesho, time slowed to a frozen agony. Nothing moved but the blood dripping from the cut on Hmishi’s face, and from another, shallower mark under Master Jaks’ ear. Llesho thought he might walk unseen among them, like a wraith among mortals, tasting their blood and choosing who would live and who would die. He wanted to kill Master Jaks himself then, for what they both had done to his friend. But Master Jaks was watching Hmishi with relief touching the edges of a tension that had become a part of him over the weeks of training.

  “You’re ready,” he said. “Have your face seen to, and be prepared to march. All of you. We leave for Thousand Lakes Province in the morning.”

  Ready. Tomorrow would be Llesho’s sixteenth birthday. In Thebin, he realized, he would be going to his purification rites now. The eve of his natal day would have been spent in silent meditation and prayer, fasting and offerings of incense and fruit in the Temple of the Moon. His brothers had told stories of how the scent of the fruit would come to fill the world as the night lengthened and their hollow stomachs complained. And he’d heard the servants laughing at the bites in the plums they found after Adar passed the eve of his sixteenth birthday sampling the offerings.

  But the jokes and the ceremony were only the surface of the rite. During the long night, the betrothed prince became the true husband of the goddess in all ways, and received from her hand the bridegroom gifts of the spirit that would mark his soul forever. Those gifts brought with them powers of sight and the shared dominion over the living realm. Or the goddess would pass over him, and he would leave the temple in the morning changed only from a boy to mortal man.

  Llesho had no expectation that the goddess would choose him as her husband, but he did not want to enter into this new phase of hardship in his life still a boy. Tonight, therefore, he would observe the rites of the god-king to prepare for both journeys: into manhood, and then into the unknown. He left his companions on their way to the cookhouse, and followed one of the compound’s many pathways, over several of the ethereal bridges, to the small shrine deep in her ladyship’s gardens. Bowing low to the gods who lingered about the place, he drew his Thebin knife and lay it on the altar, the length of the blade stretching from knee to knee of the seated goddess. With an abject kowtow that she might accept him in his unworthiness, Llesho settled himself in the proper form for meditation, and began his long watch alone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  AS the darkness settled around him, Llesho’s doubts seemed to curl themselves in the corners of the shrine, peeping out at him with hot, fierce eyes. The priests were dead, none left to call the goddess to her husband with their prayers, and her ladyship’s shrine was small and far from the gates of heaven where the goddess dwelt. How would she find her betrothed, how would she even know to look for him, so far away and with none to herald his time?

  With an effort he set aside his misgivings. Only rats lurked in the corners, attracted to the cool shelter of the stone altar. Like them, he must put his life in the hands of the goddess and trust to her decision. Sitting cross-legged in front of her stone image, Llesho had lost himself in the silent meditation of his past life that made up the long night of passage for a young man entering manhood. His mother in her library in the Temple of the Moon, holding him on her lap, and his father, sitting in judgment on his throne in the Palace of the Sun, the two sides of heaven always in each other’s gaze across the city. The Long March, and slavery, Lleck speaking to him from beyond the grave, and Lord Chin-shi desperate to heal the dying sea, and spilling the blood of his regret upon the sand. Her ladyship, watching him at weapons, questioning him at the side of her husband, teaching him the forbidden secrets of the Way.

  Sinking deeply into his own mind, he sifted through the details of his life. Where had he failed, and where had he striven to serve with all he had to give Her whom he worshiped? In the balance, did he prove wanting, or would the goddess cast her favor upon him? At midnight he was disturbed by the presence of another in the shrine: her ladyship, come with gifts of fresh peaches for the goddess.

  “Peace is the most precious gift the goddess may offer us,” she said, holding up a piece of the fruit so that it glowed a rich gold in the candlelight. “Some say it is the one gift that man only appreciates when looking back in longing after he has rejected it. Others say the gift has no value except as a reward for strife. What do you believe, Llesho?”

  She offered the peach and he took it, considering its soft richness, so unlike the cold white woman who offered it. “I believe,” he said, “that each gift is a test, and with each test met we go a little farther upon the Way of the Goddess. And we cannot know what the purpose of the gift or the test is until we reach the end of the Way.”

  “Even peace?” she asked him.

  Remembering the Harn descending upon Thebin, Llesho nodded his certainty. “Especially peace,” he answered.

  Her ladyship studied him for a long moment, with eyes as sharp as Llesho’s Thebin knife. Then she let out a sigh, so gently that Llesho almost could believe he hadn’t heard it at all.

  “Know the goddess loves you,” she said, and rested a cold hand over his heart. Llesho bowed his head, and heard but did not see when she stood and departed.

  Alone again with the night and the rats with their glowing red eyes, he tried to settle into his meditations again, but the lady’s words had disturbed him. The goddess might love him, as she loved all that lived within her dominion, but the night grew long, and she did not come.

  In the deepest dark, when even the moon had set, meditation turned to memory and turned back on itself to mingle past and present in troubled patterns. He was grown, as now, but at home in the holy city of Kungol, alone and lost in the twisting mazes of the Temple of the Moon. From every wall remembered images of the goddess smiled down at him, but now they wore the face of her ladyship, the governor’s wife. Somewhere in the distance, he heard his mother cry out, but when he tried to reach her, her cries seemed to grow more distant instead of closer, and the images on the walls seemed to grow colder. Through the dream-laced memories wove the screams of the dying, and the smell of smoke from the burning marketplace in the city.

  “No!” His own voice broke the self-imposed spell of his meditation, but the sounds of pain and anger remained. The shouts of the watch summoning the guard and the slap of running feet were real. Here, now, in the governor’s own gardens, it was happening again.

  Llesho rose awkwardly to his feet, knees and ankles protesting the hours spent in their strained position. Grabbing his knife from the altar of the goddess, he hobbled to the door of the shrine.

  Fire glinted from the rooftops of the wooden houses of the compound closest to the road. A soldier wearing the neck chain and wrist guards of the governor’s house guard ran by, stopping long enough to push him back from the open door with a hand to his chest. “Get back inside,” she ordered him. “We’re under attack!”

  “I can fight!” Llesho returned, and raised his knife to show that he was armed. An arrow whipped past his ear and he ducked as it embedded itself in the thick lintel.

  “Find your squad, then,” she said, and ran to join the fray.

  Llesho slipped out of the shrine, keeping low, his knife held lightly in his steady fist. This time he was not a child; he had both the skills and the strength to defend himself. But the guard had been right: he had to find his squad. Master Jaks had trained them to fight as a unit, and he felt naked without his friends at his side.

  Crouching in the shadows of the reeds and low plant life that bordered the lawns and canals, he made his way back to the house he shared with the other novices. Before he could pull himself over the threshold, however, a voice he dreaded sounded nearby.

  “Search everywhere—I want the Thebin!” Overseer Markko’s insistent shout came from a more soli
d mass of shadow just steps away, silhouetted by the rising flames. “He’s here somewhere!”

  Llesho froze, paralyzed by that voice. Master Markko had gone to Lord Yueh at the death of Lord Chin-shi, but what had driven Yueh’s army to attack the governor’s compound? Why was Master Markko looking for him? To kill him outright, or to throw him into chains again? What did the overseer, or his new lord, know or suspect about Llesho’s true identity that they would seek him out in the midst of battle?

  Llesho had no time to ponder the answers to his questions; the sounds of fighting were getting closer. Suddenly, a hand snaked out of the window of his house, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him into the large room. Bixei. Lling and Hmishi stood back to back in the center of the room with their knives drawn. Kaydu was missing.

  “Where have you been?” Bixei hissed.

  “The shrine in the garden,” Llesho hissed back. “Where did you think I was? Opening the gates for Lord Yueh?”

  Bixei didn’t have to say anything; it was clear on his face that the accusation shocked and offended him. “What, then?” he asked.

  They looked at each other, and it was clear they each had unanswered questions. Lord Yueh’s armed guard wouldn’t be tearing the governor’s compound apart to find a common slave, but they had all heard Master Markko order his troops to look for Llesho.

  “Who are you?” Bixei pushed for an explanation in spite of the danger they were in, “What does Markko want?”

  Llesho uttered a single Thebin curse. He didn’t want to know what kind of rumors had spread. “We can talk about this later.” If there was no later, explanations wouldn’t matter anyway. “If you want to live, we are going to have to fight or run now.”

  The attack had come through the main gate, the only way in or out that Llesho knew. “Where is Kaydu?”

  Little Brother chose that moment to swing from the roof by his tail and pop through the open window with a chittering rebuke for their tardiness. Their young instructor followed him. “I’m right here. Let’s go. Jaks has horses waiting.” She disappeared again.

  Llesho ran for the window and would have been first out, but Bixei held him back. “In case of ambush,” he said, and darted out the window after Kaydu. Llesho followed, and turned around as Lling, and then Hmishi spilled out of the novice house. Kaydu said nothing, but gestured for them to keep low as they crept along the side of the house, hidden by the reeds and bushes.

  Kaydu moved so silently that Llesho was surprised to hear the clatter of heavier feet when Bixei followed her over the footbridge. He tried to imitate Kaydu’s silence with no success, but had to turn around to be certain Lling was still behind him. She was, and Hmishi next to her. Hmishi stumbled and came up again with a sword in his hand. Already a battle had passed through here, leaving its scattered dead and their weapons behind. Lling hunted around until she, too, had a sword in her right hand, switching her knife to her left. Bixei gathered up a spear, and a short sword which he wedged into his belt.

  Llesho remembered his own knife in his hand, and realized—damn!—he’d left his scabbard by his bed, along with the few possessions he had acquired while at the governor’s compound. Once again, he was starting out with nothing. But he was starting out alive. Llesho scrounged among the dead as well, and found a short spear that he took up in his free hand. He had begun to think that they would make their way clear when a sound to his right was followed by the flare of torches.

  The oiled parchment screens of a small house burst into flame. A shout rose from the fire, and shadows formed around it, resolved in the light into men on foot. Yueh’s men, dark against the fire that backlit them, had seen Llesho’s squad. Soldiers ran toward them brandishing weapons. Bixei caught the first across the ribs with the staff end of his spear, turned the long weapon quickly and finished his man with a lunging stab to the breast.

  Lling and Hmishi slid to either side of Llesho, swords poised high, knives pointed low. They joined the battle with a flurry of clashing swords, vanquishing their attackers, who fled with screams on their lips that they had been bested by demons. Llesho gave a grim laugh, but did not count his victory too soon. A horse loomed out of the darkness. Its tall rider urged the beast up on its hind legs to lash out at the Thebins with its sharp front hooves.

  With an enraged howl, Hmishi leaped to the defense, driving his sword into the rider. The sword passed through the man, who tossed him aside and laughed with the sound of ice breaking in his voice. Master Markko—Llesho recognized him even in the dark—bled from no wound, though Hmishi’s thrust should have sliced him in two.

  “You are mine, Thebin!” The magician pointed a short spear at Llesho, and cold terror pierced his heart. Frozen, he could not have moved, except for the warmth radiating from the short spear he held in his own hand. He raised the weapon between them, and it seemed to glow in the light of the silver moon. “Never again, witch!” he shouted, and Markko’s spear burned and shattered. The magician growled his wordless rage and brought his horse around to attack, but the animal bucked and fell, screaming, with the point of a spear buried in its flank.

  “Move!” Bixei shouted, and Hmishi was pushing him, and Lling was pulling her knife out of the gullet of a soldier who stared up at the sky with blank, dead eyes.

  Kaydu ghosted up to Llesho and whispered, “This way—Jaks has the horses.” They had entered the peach grove, the smell of the ripe fruit cloying over the sickening reek of blood and burning flesh and sweat and fear. Llesho followed the direction she pointed, moving deep into the darkest corner of the grove.

  Around them, troops were mounting up, too many for Llesho to judge in the dark, but it felt as if the whole household must be saddling to fly. Shadowed by a thick growth of trees and hedges, Master Jaks awaited them with their mounts. Fortunately, their warhorses were intelligent and trained to battle; the creatures stirred restlessly at the smell of blood on the hands and clothes of Llesho’s squad but did not balk when they gathered their reins and mounted. Llesho noticed with satisfaction that someone had strapped his cavalry-style short bow and a quiver of arrows to his saddle. The governor’s lady had been as good as her word, and his squad could ride now, and shoot from the saddle as well as on foot. They might need to before this night was out.

  Kaydu took the lead of their small party, finding their place at the center of a longer train of mounts and pack animals moving quietly in single file through the grove. Llesho allowed his horse to fall in step behind her, with his three companions following. When he saw where they were heading—toward a place of thicker shadows in the garden wall—he wondered if it were a trap.

  “Master Jaks!” Llesho turned around in his saddle to throw a whisper into the black on black murk, but he received no answer. There had been no sixth horse waiting; Jaks was staying behind. Llesho smelled blood, and saw the face of his teacher on the dead corpse of his bodyguard, and he knew that Jaks would die if he did not come now. Unthinking, he communicated his distress to his horse, which quaked under him in fear of the night and its shadows, and the dark emotions of its rider. Llesho rested a calming hand on the horse’s neck while his thoughts spun in turmoil. He knew right to the core of his being that the memory-vision was true. Time itself skittered out of control, the past and future colliding in the vision of Master Jaks, dead. The house guard could not hold the compound against the fires of the attackers, and Master Jaks would give his life to hold the attackers at bay for their escape.

  “I’m not through with you yet,” he muttered to himself. Turning his mount out of the column, Llesho headed back toward the low fires that marked where graceful houses had dotted the watery space.

  “Where are you going, boy?” An outrider caught his horse by the bridle and stopped him, staring hard into his face until it registered who Llesho was. “The midnight gate is the other way!” He turned his horse around to lead Llesho back the way he had come, but Llesho pulled back on his reins to bring his horse to a stop.

  “Where is Master Jaks
?” he said, using his best imitation of his father.

  The outrider jerked his head in the direction of the burning compound but continued to urge Llesho’s horse toward the bottom of the orchard.

  Llesho dug in his heels and refused to be moved. “I am not leaving without him.” He kept his jaw firm and hoped the man couldn’t see the shaking of his hands in the dark.

  “The lady will have my head,” the outrider muttered, but he turned his horse. “He went this way—I’ll take you.” They rode back, into the chaos and the fire, toward a tight knot of grunting bodies and clanging swords. The fighting was on foot and the outrider made quick work of it. He swept into the fray with a blood-curdling battle cry, cutting down one attacker and sweeping another under the hooves of his charger. Then he angled his horse between Master Jaks and the fires lighting a hundred battles like the one he had just fought.

  The outrider slipped from his horse and held out the reins. “His excellency wants that boy out of here, and the boy says he won’t go without you.” With that he was gone, lost to sight in the fray.

  Jaks lifted himself into the saddle, swearing softly under his breath. “Now, Your Highness?” he asked. The words dripped with sarcasm, but even so they served as a reminder to both of them.

  Llesho tilted his chin at the exact angle to receive his title, letting Master Jaks know in the doing of it that he read all the levels of anger and submission in his words. If they were going to use him for their own secret agenda, however, they would have to accept him at his rank, and not as just another stone in their game. He would not go quietly to anybody’s slaughter.