The Prince of Shadow (5 page)

Mostly, the running kept him focused on the moment: on the smooth, pale sand shifting underfoot and the fronds of dense foliage grown too close to the path that brushed against him as he passed, marking his skin with the scent of rain and mold and the broken promise of sunlight. The chitter of birds deep in the forest paced his own heart, but couldn't take the place of absent friends. Alone in his weary orbit of the island, he wondered how long he would be left adrift between lives.

In the third week after Llesho presented Foreman Shen-shu with his formal petition, a messenger came to summon the healer Kwan-ti to the main house. Lord Chin-shi had never summoned the peasant healer before. He had his own doctors, and the house servants took care of their own. Sometimes, when the wounds of Lord Chin-shi's gladiators healed over on the outside but festered inside, Kwan-ti would receive a call to treat them. But she had always stayed in the longhouse before, listening to the description of the wounded gladiator's condition, and sending the messenger back with instructions and a potion or packet of herbs. This time, Kwan-ti herself had gone with the messenger, leaving her bag of herbs and healer's pouch behind. Her quick glance, resting lightly on Llesho in passing, told him that he was the object of the summons. Lord Chin-shi, or his trainer, would want to judge her answer for himself when he asked what chance a half-drowned Thebin boy had to survive the rigors of gladiatorial training. She would need no tools of her trade for that.

Wondering what she would say just made him sick in the pit of his belly, so Llesho ran, as fast as he could manage this time. When he reached the landward side of the island, he plunged into the sea. He swam until his legs felt too heavy to propel him forward and he could not lift his arms to pull himself through the water. Alone and at the limit of his strength, he rolled over on his back and let the sea carry him, cradled in its warmth. So far from land, the sounds of Pearl Island did not reach him and Llesho allowed his mind to float with the current, wrapped in the quiet and at peace. He could stay here forever, he thought, with the salty breeze for company and the blood-warm water for comfort. The cry of a bird overhead seemed to come from a different world, calling to him though a bamboo screen set with bright silk streamers. It was another memory from his childhood before the Harn came, shaking itself loose when he let his thoughts wander. In summertime that screen had shaded the window in his mother's sitting room, its ribbons in the colors of the goddess fluttering in the breeze. Llesho wanted to hold onto that memory, to pass into that world of his past that called to him with the cry of birds like the sound of laughter. But somewhere in the back of his mind he felt the presence of his old mentor looking on with disapproval. He had things to do: brothers to rescue, a nation to free from the clutches of invaders and tyrants. No time for rest, eternal or otherwise.

The water seemed to take Lleck's side of the debate. The current pulled him away from the mainland that had grown no more distinct for all his efforts to reach it. After a while, Llesho executed a neat roll and began kicking strongly again, cutting through the water toward Pearl Island.

Too late, he realized that he'd swum out too far. The island was too far away and his legs were leaden, his arms numb. Llesho should have been afraid, but dying didn't frighten him anymore. He'd long ago come to terms with the gray depths as an enemy to his freedom; now he embraced the gentle side of the sea's strength, another friend he was leaving behind.

Something nudged his side, and the bumpy, grinning face of a water dragon broke the surface in front of him. Spume ran off her sides as her green-and-gold-scaled back rolled past him, never more than a tiny fraction of her length visible above the sea. She wrapped a loose coil around his waist. Her delicate forked tongue flicked out, touched his face, his hand; Llesho wondered if she planned to eat him for lunch. He thought he read laughter in her slitted eyes, however; she butted him gently with her tiny curled horns and disappeared, the soft, scaleless skin of her belly sliding effortlessly across his body. Even the water dragon had been company, once he figured out she didn't plan to eat him. But then, just ahead of him, the dragon's head rose out of the sea, coils glistening like gold and emeralds in the sun and the water. She dove, vanishing again into the sea, and he felt himself lifted on her strong back, and carried toward Pearl Island.

“I'm going,” he told her, “I get the point.”

The dragon seemed to understand. She gave her back a wriggle, and laughed at him between sharp curved teeth. The human sound of that laughter, feminine and musical, should have surprised him more, except that Llesho had grown to expect the impossible from the sea. So he laughed in turn, ran a hand down the gleaming flank of his companion, and nudged her gently with his knees, the way he had directed his pony forward when he was a child in Thebin. When they grew too near the shore for her great size, the dragon dipped her head beneath the waves, and Llesho released his hold. He was close enough now to make the shore under his own power, and he struck out with strong strokes, leaving almost no wake from his smooth kicks. He soon reached the shore, and sat panting and looking out over the water he had just crossed, but the water dragon was gone.

When he returned to the longhouse, spent but at peace, Kwan-ti was already there, tucking stray tendrils of wet hair into her glistening bun. She said nothing to him of her day's errand, nor did she question him about the lateness of the hour. For his part, Llesho made no mention of his attempted escape or the way the sea itself had comforted him and turned him back to face his future on Pearl Island. In the days that followed he still ran, but the urgency had gone out of his pounding feet. Tomorrow or the next day, the future would come for him. Fate was like that.

On the third day after Lord Chin-shi had summoned Kwan-ti, a boy not much older than Llesho himself, but a head taller and with pale gold skin, presented himself at the longhouse with the message that Llesho should gather up his possessions and follow. Since Llesho owned only the clothes on his back and the basket he had kept them in while at work in the pearl beds, he used his few moments to say good-bye to the healer, and to leave a parting message for Lling and one for Hmishi. He would miss them, and for a moment the thought of entering the gladiators' compound, where he would see no Thebin faces, daunted him more than any fear of the danger his new trade might hold. But Lleck had taught him that all of life was a circle. You couldn't go forward for long without meeting your past. Llesho had always hated that saying because he could think of little in his past that he wished to revisit. It surprised him to discover he took comfort in it now.

The messenger was eyeing him doubtfully when Llesho joined him. “I wouldn't want to be you for all the pearls in old Chin-shi's bay,” was all he said, though, and the two boys climbed the rise at the center of the island with only the crying of the birds for commentary.

 

 

Llesho had seen the gladiators' training compound from a distance, but he had never been within the stout wooden palisade. Up close, Llesho could see the wall as individual tree trunks set upright, side by side, and snaggled at their tops like a hag's teeth. Such precautions seemed unnecessary—if a Thebin trained to the bay could not escape Pearl Island, no soft servant or overmuscled gladiator would do better—but he figured that gladiators must, by trade, be violent men. And they might even be able to handle a boat. For whatever reason, it was as difficult to get inside the compound as it seemed to get out. At the postern gate, the boy who accompanied him spoke to a guard with an empty tunic sleeve tied up in a knot, who opened the gate with his one arm and herded them into a passageway so narrow that the shoulders of a larger man would brush each side as he passed through. Llesho clung to the rough palisade that made up the outer wall of the passageway. The inner wall was also constructed of tree trunks set upright in the ground, but peeled of their bark and smoothed of knots and other irregularities so that they fit snugly one against another. A broad polished band showed that most of the men who passed through these gates brushed against the smooth inner wall. But the sounds of grunts and curses and the clashing of weapons beyond that burnished palisade unnerved him, and Llesho pressed against the scratch and grab of the undressed outer logs for even the few inches of additional safety it afforded him from the sounds of battle within. Combat was part of his life now, but he shied away from the overwhelming reality of his decision as he followed his guide down the passage.

Llesho figured they had traveled halfway around the compound before they came upon a second guard, apparently whole, at an inner bar to their entrance. This man seemed to know Llesho's escort and wordlessly opened his gate. He raised an eyebrow over a twisted smile when he thought Llesho didn't see, but quickly turned back to his work with awl and leather and whipcord when Llesho answered with a puzzled frown. The man didn't look like a fighter, but then, neither did the golden boy at his side.

Before Llesho could give this more than a passing thought, however, his companion had pushed him through the gate and he stumbled on the unfamiliar surface of sawdust under his feet. The smells of blood and sweat, and the sawdust itself, confused him, as did the flash of weapons and the deadly anger that seemed to crackle in the air around the fighting men. Llesho thrust one foot ahead of him, trying to regain his balance, and tripped over a piece of broken metal with bits of flesh clinging to it. With a squeal of surprise he fell face first into the training yard.

“Pick up your feet, fool!”

The words came from somewhere above a pair of darkly tanned sandaled feet that had planted themselves inches from Llesho's nose. He needed to pick up more than his feet, and he didn't want to guess what had made the wet splat soaking into his shirt. Llesho closed his eyes, wishing he could disappear, but his escort wouldn't let him.

“It's the new chicken,” the golden boy commented over Llesho's fallen body.

“Master's pet?” the unknown voice asked doubtfully while Llesho dragged himself to his knees and finally to his feet, a better angle to follow the conversation. The boy who had brought him shrugged. “Don't know,” he said, and “didn't ask,” in a tone that clearly indicated Llesho was not his problem and he would just as soon keep it that way.

“Go back to work, then, unless Master Markko wants you to bring him in yourself.”

“Didn't say so.” The boy was already heading away from his charge, and Llesho realized he still didn't know the other boy's name. Not a good time to ask, he figured, and tried to look regal for the man standing in front of him, while muck dripped off his tunic. The stuff stank with a pungent tang at the back of his throat, and Llesho crinkled up his nose, trying to identify the mess without sneezing.

“Paint and straw this time,” the stranger offered, and Llesho finally noticed the straw man lashed to a post, with bolts jutting from the place his chest used to be and bits of him scattered in a circle of sawdust.

The last time Llesho had seen a crossbow bolt, he'd been seven, and the bolt had been sticking out of his father's throat. He closed his eyes, but that made it worse, not better. Regal just wasn't working for him today. Hadn't, actually, for the past nine summers, but he still drew on old lessons in distress.

“Better vegetable than animal, but don't count on that for next time.” The stranger was watching him with sharp features set in a stern, forbidding frown below eyes that were judging Llesho to the soles of his feet. “What are you, boy, and what the hell are you doing here?”

“I'm a Thebin,” he answered, though the quirk of a smile, quickly suppressed, suggested that the stranger hadn't meant for him to answer the question. “My name is Llesho. I was sent for. To be a gladiator.” He hoped. It was that or pig food, and if he'd been summoned for the trough, he wasn't going to remind anyone.

“Llesho.” The stranger paused and seemed to be trying to remember something that escaped him before he could catch hold of it. “I'm Jaks, but you will learn all you need to know about me soon enough.” The stranger was taller than Llesho, but not as tall as the boy who had brought him here. His skin was brown and smooth, and he had broad shoulders and powerful arms with the line of each muscle carved sharply in the flesh. The left arm had six tattooed bands, the simplest ones faded with age and more recent ones in increasingly complex designs. Jaks wore a leather tunic with the history of old battles written in the bloodstains that marked it, and a belt with a sheath for a knife at the waist. Metal guards covered his wrists and forearms. He was obviously dangerous, but for some reason which Llesho couldn't quite grasp, Jaks did not terrify him as he thought the man should, given the situation and a grain of common sense.

But common sense couldn't explain why the tension drained out of Llesho at the sight of the gladiator, or why his head came up at a more confident angle. A memory returned to him then, forgotten like so many things about home. His father had hired men like this at court to protect his family. Those men had died, pressed step by step into the heart of the palace, loyal to the last. The man who had guarded Llesho from his birth had looked very much like this Jaks, until he lay dead at the feet of the terrified child. The memory sent a shudder through him, which the gladiator must have taken for fear of his new life.

“I don't know what he was thinking,” Jaks muttered under his breath, and Llesho figured he was talking about his petition to train as a gladiator, and didn't like the way the man dismissed him out of hand. But one problem at a time. The gladiator rubbed his neck with a mindless gesture that spoke of old injuries, or— Llesho's father had done that when faced with a particularly thorny problem. “Right now,” the gladiator said, “you need to change your shirt and check in with the overseer, Master Markko.”