The Prince of Shadow

by Curt Benjamin

  “I’m here, waiting for you, boy. We need each other, you and I. Together we will rule heaven and earth.”

  The words made no sense. Llesho was a runaway slave. No one but Llesho and the spirit of his teacher knew that Llesho’s journey did not end at Shan, but truly began there. Most of the time he didn’t believe that he would succeed in his quest to regain Thebin. He couldn’t figure out why Master Markko would care about Thebin or its princes anyway. A thousand li and two imperial powers separated Llesho’s country from Farshore, and that didn’t count the seven li straight up the side of a mountain range to the plateau where Kungol stood.

  His companions slept on, undisturbed by any sound, and Llesho wondered if he had imagined the voice in his dreams. But no, there it was again, sweeping over his mind like the mirrored flame of a beacon tower. “You are mine, body and soul, boy. You cannot escape your destiny. Didn’t I show you that on Pearl Island?”

  Llesho shuddered. The voice was in his head, and he felt the iron collar on his neck, the chains that weighed him down with despair. He could never escape those chains; they drew him from his bed in the moss, choked him when he would have resisted, and he followed the voice, and the pull at his throat. One step, two, past the huddled lumps of his companions wrapped in their blankets. Dimly, Llesho recalled that they had agreed to keep a watch, but he counted four sleeping bodies. When he stumbled over the last, however, the pain in his toe made him gasp. A log! He wondered if all the rumpled blankets hid firewood, but one of them moved and snorted in its sleep. After a moment Llesho released the breath he held and moved again, quietly, toward the voice in the forest.

  “Where are you going, Llesho?” Unyielding, Mara stood before him. She wore a shawl over her shabby dress, wrapped tightly around herself and held in place by both of her arms crossed firmly under her breasts. She looked younger in the moonlight, or ageless, and terrifying, as if she were living stone come to life in front of him.

  “I need to find a tree.” He stammered out the lie and hung his head, unable to meet her eyes.

  “The chains are gone, Llesho.”

  He did look up then, and met her grim-faced challenge: “He cannot make you come to him, he can only hope that you are fool enough to heed him when he calls.”

  “I’m not a fool.” He wasn’t sure of that, now that the voice was gone from his head and he thought about what he’d almost done. But it still made a terrible sense. “If I go to him, he’ll leave the rest of you alone. If I try to escape him, he will kill you all, and take me back anyway.

  “Only if he catches you.” She smiled at him, and he took no comfort from it at all. “Give us tomorrow, at least. Until we reach the river.”

  “I can’t,” Llesho pleaded with her to understand. “He’s in my head.” He hadn’t realized that he’d raised his voice until his companions stirred and begin to sit up in their bedrolls, guilty to be caught sleeping when they had agreed to post a double guard. Llesho figured that was Markko’s doing as well, but he kept his conclusions to himself, like a guilty secret.

  Hmishi and Lling came to him and took up guard positions. Hmishi stood slightly in front of him and to his right with a sword bared in his hand. Lling settled behind his left shoulder, an arrow nocked below his ear.

  “Are we being attacked?” Kaydu wanted to know.

  “Not anymore.” Mara was looking into Llesho’s eyes when she spoke: Master Markko would not disturb his sleep again this night. The healer believed she could protect them from the mental assault of his pursuers. In the moonlight her dark eyes seemed to reflect infinity, and Llesho was tempted to trust that she was right. He gave her the barest hint of a nod, enough to know that he would take her advice for now.

  She accepted his decision with an equally subtle nod. “Get a few more hours’ sleep,” she said to his companions. “We ride before daybreak.”

  Hmishi and Lling followed him back into the camp, but Kaydu joined Mara on guard, her face still troubled by her failure to fulfill her duty. He’d have to explain that it wasn’t her fault. They were all easy prey for dark thoughts at midnight, and Markko had taken advantage of that. The magician had seized their wills before they knew what was happening. Given that her father had been the governor’s witch all of her life, he didn’t think Kaydu would have much trouble accepting as fact what Markko had done. He just wasn’t sure what she would decide to do about it. And he was too tired to deal with it now.

  “Sleep,” he muttered to himself, and reached for the soft comfort of his mossy bed again.

  Why is Master Markko so determined to get you back?” Kaydu wrinkled up her nose in displeasure, and Llesho understood why. During the night he had tossed and turned under the burden of his secrets, until he finally decided that they couldn’t afford to hide things from each other if they hoped to survive. While they prepared for the morning’s trek, he’d told his companions everything, starting with who Lleck was in Thebin and his apparition as a ghost in the pearl bay, how Master Markko had poisoned the bay with the Blood Tide and set the blame onto the healer Kwan-ti. He told them about the terrible months when the overseer had beaten him and held him in chains and used him as an experiment to test his poisons on. He admitted the sick dread he had of ever being returned to the master’s evil workroom. Hmishi and Lling had known some of it, Kaydu a little as well, and Mara, they thought, none at all. Only the healer was not surprised to learn that Master Markko had come to him in his dreams last night, however. Mara had nodded her gray head to confirm his suspicion that Markko had affected them all, putting them to sleep when they should have kept watch.

  By the time he was finished, Mara was stamping with impatience, but ignorance of Master Markko’s power, and of his intent, could kill them more surely than an hour’s delay. Llesho stared levelly into her eyes and then went back to stringing his bow and checking his arrows. He knew why they had fallen so quickly back to sleep after the midnight call, and he knew why Markko had made no return in his later sleep. He had no evidence, not even logic to back his intuition, however, so he accepted her silent command that he keep his guesswork to himself.

  Kaydu had spoken aloud the question that had bothered him since he realized that Master Markko was still looking for him: Why? When she didn’t get an answer, she offered her reasoning. “I mean, I know you were once a prince and all, but it’s not like anybody is offering to pay a ransom for you.”

  Strategically, it made no sense, and she tried to explain that to Llesho without hurting his feelings, he was sure. She couldn’t know that Llesho had asked himself the same questions ever since Markko had first snapped an iron collar around his neck. “Can you do magic or anything like that?”

  “I can hold my breath underwater,” he said with a perfectly straight face. “And I can, or could, execute a nearly flawless Wind Over the Mountaintops prayer form, though I tend to stumble in the middle of the related fighting stances.”

  Mara choked and made a display of holding her hands over her head and pointing to her throat. But she hadn’t been eating at the time, so Llesho wondered. When she had settled a bit, she motioned to them to go on, and walked purposefully into the trees.

  Lling jabbed him companionably with her elbow just then, declaring, “I don’t know anything about prayer forms, but I’ve seen you fall over in the middle of a fight sequence.”

  Llesho nudged her back; neither of them let the moment turn into a full roll-and-tumble play session, but the momentary distraction relieved the tension. It couldn’t drive out the feeling that someone was drilling holes between his shoulder blades with their eyes, though; he sobered quickly.

  “I don’t get it either,” he said. “If I had completed the vigil on my birthday, maybe I would have some influence with the goddess. But I didn’t.”

  “Maybe that was part of his plan,” Kaydu suggested, “He may have feared he couldn’t control you once you had successfully completed your vigil.”

  Her ladyship said that he had gained the favor of the
goddess. Llesho didn’t think that was a secret in the real sense, since he personally didn’t think it was true. He squirmed a bit when he evaded the question, though. “For all I know, he just likes the idea that he has a prince on a leash instead of one of those fluffy dogs Lady Chin-shi was so fond of. I don’t really care why he’s after me. I just want to make sure he doesn’t catch me.”

  “Then we had better get moving.” Mara had returned with Lleck following her and she gestured in the direction from which she had come. “We are not far from the Golden Dragon River where the Dragon Bridge crosses. Markko is likely to know about the crossing himself, and he will make for it just as we do, so we shouldn’t return to the road. I noticed this track, however—” she pointed to the ground near her feet where the grass seemed beaten down but otherwise no different from its surroundings “—and followed it to where it comes out on the riverbank just a stone’s toss away from the bridge. Once we break from cover of the forest, we must mount and ride as fast as we can. It will be a run for our lives if we are to reach the river ahead of him, but reach it we must.”

  The forest growth was close on either side, with branches hanging to form a low canopy overhead and undergrowth grabbing at their legs as they passed. The company led their horses in single file, with Mara in the lead, and Lleck rumbling behind. In spite of their danger, Llesho found himself enjoying the stretch and pull of his muscles, the feel of his body doing work again. The sense of being watched had passed; Llesho wondered if Mara had something to do with that as well. He also wondered what good it would do them to cross the river if Master Markko was following right behind.

  Determined to confront the healer, he dropped the reins. Horses were stupid, but they would follow where they were led, and there wasn’t really anyplace but forward a horse could go in the thick wood. Before he had taken two steps, however, Kaydu had raised her arm to signal a halt.

  “Mount up,” she said.

  Mara had slipped into the woods. She would wait until Lleck came up to her position, then ride on his shoulders. Llesho set his foot in his stirrup and slung his free leg over the back of the horse, keeping his head bent low over the animal’s neck. He darted a nervous glance around him, then took his bow in his hand, ready to run or to fight. They broke into the clearing.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  THE sun had not yet appeared over the treetops, but when the companions broke from the shelter of the forest they discovered the riverbank was already bathed in a golden wash of sunlight. Llesho winced at the sudden shock of bright light, but he had little time to adjust. Kaydu’s voice rang in the still morning air:

  “Ride!”

  She kneed her horse into motion, and Llesho did the same, snapped into action at the familiar command in her voice. Lord Yueh’s troops, about fifty men on foot and a dozen on horseback, waited for them no more than a hundred paces up the riverbank. At first Llesho wondered why they did not leap to the attack, and then he saw that they were staring with amazement at the bridge that rose up in front of them. Llesho would have done the same if he’d had the time: Golden Dragon Bridge arched in glory high over the churning water below.

  Ancient artisans had carved it in the shape of the legendary dragon from which the muddy yellow river took its name. They had given the bridge two ridges of scales across its back to keep men from falling off in dark or windy weather, with space enough for four men walking, or a good sized wagon, to pass between them. True to its name, Golden Dragon Bridge glittered its burnished glory in the sunlight. But the bridge shouldn’t have been there at all.

  According to legend, a war between the giants had, in an earlier age, destroyed the wondrous bridge. No man living had seen the broken remains. Supposedly, no one even remembered where the bridge had stood. Some stories said that when giants walked the earth again, the bridge would rise out of the mist of the river and the past glory of that age would return. Llesho didn’t see any giants. The carved head of the dragon bridge, however, rested on the near shore, submerged to the realistically carved nostrils. Huge fringed lids shuttered its eyes, as if the masons and carvers had known that to portray in stone the living gaze of the dragon was to risk conjuring the creature itself out of myth.

  The legend hadn’t been completely wrong, however. Some great cataclysm of a former age had torn the bridge loose from its moorings on the far side of the river, because the arch disappeared under the water an arm’s reach from the shore.

  Mara crouched below a carved nostril of the sleeping dragon. She beckoned them to hurry when they would have frozen where they stood, in the same stupefied amazement that ensorceled Lord Yueh’s troops. Llesho kicked his horse into a gallop; someone in the enemy ranks shouted, and he faltered, trembling, as Yueh’s men parted. Master Markko made his way on horseback through the troops, looking for something. Me, Llesho figured. Their eyes met; he could not break that contact, but his body responded to his training even when his mind did not. As her ladyship had taught them, he fastened the reins to his saddle, controlling his horse with his knees, and drew his bow and an arrow from the quiver at his back.

  Arrow nocked, he stood in his stirrups, body turning to hold the gaze of his target. Steady, steady. Allow for the gallop of the horse—the changing distance and the uncertain elevation. He let the arrow fly, watched as Master Markko reached out and snatched it out of the air inches from his breast. Markko smiled, and the arrow burst into flames in his hand.

  Bad move, Llesho saw. That sudden whoosh of fire had startled his horse into a faster gallop, but it had terrified Lord Yueh’s soldiers, who scattered as if Markko had dropped the burning arrow among them. Those nearest their leader surged forward to overtake the fugitives, but those out of the direct line of the magician’s fierce glare ran back into the forest from which they had come.

  No point in wasting another arrow; Llesho tucked his bow into the strap of his quiver. He bent low over the neck of his sturdy little horse and urged it to close on the bridge that frightened the animal as much as it awed him.

  But Mara was standing now, still dwarfed by the massive size of the dragon, but urging them to cross. Kaydu stormed onto the bridge first, Little Brother tucked into a pack strapped to her back. Hmishi and Lling followed right behind her, the hooves of their horses ringing like a demented carillon on the gold paving stones, and Llesho came next, pounding up the steeply sloped spine of the bridge until he was high over the river, looking straight ahead because he didn’t have the nerve to check behind him for pursuit. And then he was on the downward slope, horse stretching out over the last broken arm’s length, and there was water under them, no bridge at all.

  The jolt of solid ground shuddered through him. A stone wall lay in front of them, with the twisted branches of fruit trees rising above it. A perfect place for an ambush, but they were out of choices. Whooping a battle challenge, Kaydu bent into the jump, and her horse leaped, leaped, and was over the wall. Hmishi and Lling jumped next. Llesho gave his horse its head and it soared, cleared the wall, and ran out its momentum between the rows of fruit trees. When it stopped, Llesho saw that he was surrounded, with hundreds of soldiers closing in on him.

  Llesho’s stomach clenched like someone had reached inside with a fist and squeezed. He reached for his bow, but a hand stayed him: Master Jak’s. Llesho hadn’t seen or heard him, and he shivered, knowing that if the assassin-soldier had wanted it, he’d be dead. The six tattooed rings around Jaks’ arm told their own story about that, but Llesho hadn’t and still didn’t want to think of his teacher as a man who sneaked up on people and murdered them for cash. Someday he would press the man for his stories, but not now. Now he would be grateful for this man’s skills.

  “How did you find us?” Llesho didn’t need to ask how they knew to come. Kaydu was a few feet away, wrapped in the arms of her father. Little Brother chittered and screamed from a branch over their heads.

  “How did you find the bridge?”

  “A little bird told us.” Jaks followed his gaze
with a wry smile.

  Llesho nodded. Mara had known and sent word by the swift he’d seen at her window. He wanted to thank her, but he couldn’t find her among his companions or the soldiers who had come to greet them. “Where is she?”

  Master Jaks looked back, toward the river.

  “Alone? Markko will kill her!” He turned his horse and Jaks grabbed hold of his bridle.

  “I can’t leave her to face Master Markko alone.”

  “If Habiba isn’t worried, doubtless she can take care of herself,” Jaks reasoned quietly.

  “Maybe.” Llesho figured the magician would sacrifice the old woman to protect the surprise of his ambush; Habiba didn’t owe the healer a life-debt, after all. Breaking his teacher’s hold on his reins, he headed back the way he had come, hunching over the neck of his horse to absorb the jolt of the landing on the other side of the wall.

  In mid leap, a warning stabbed through his head. The pain disappeared almost as soon as it had come, but he had already lost his concentration on the jump. The horse skittered under him, unsettled by his uncertainty. It bucked and rolled, and Llesho was falling, hitting the ground like a sack of rice. Master Markko’s soldiers didn’t notice their prey lying helpless on the far shore, however. They had their own problem. And Mara clearly didn’t need his help.

  With their leader driving them forward from atop his massive warhorse, Markko’s troops had begun to cross the bridge. As they reached the very top of the arch, Mara had stepped out from the shadows by the carved eye and climbed up on the wide snout. She called something Llesho couldn’t hear, and the great eyelid opened to reveal an emerald as tall as Mara herself. The bridge blinked, and then it writhed and contracted. Straight-backed and terrible as he had never seen her, the healer Mara stood at the center of the great golden head, her gaze locked with the magician’s as the neck of the dragon raised her high above the river, higher than the arch of its great worm body. The loop of its back twisted and sank, tumbling screaming, terrified soldiers together with their panicked horses into the rushing river. Gradually the cries of the dying faded out of reach. Mara lifted her right arm straight ahead of her and pointed at Master Markko.