The Prince of Shadow (39 page)

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.

“You owe me a debt, Magician, but I will not collect it now. Consider yourself fortunate that I have business with this worm, or we would decide right here who of us is the stronger.”

“My lady.” Master Markko gave her a mocking bow and turned his horse. Before he rode away, however, he turned in his saddle and addressed her one last time, as if with an afterthought. “Caring is a weakness, my lady. Each delay finds you more encumbered than the last. And I grow stronger.”

Mara did not answer him, and he settled himself in the saddle with a final laugh before setting heels to the flanks of his horse. When the magician was no more than a speck on the horizon, Mara signaled the dragon to carry her to the other side of the river and set her down on the riverbank.

Llesho remained where he had fallen, lying in the grass by the river. He was close enough to observe all that transpired, but both Mara and the dragon seemed too preoccupied with their own business to notice one insignificant Thebin in the dirt. In this he was mistaken, not counting on the sensitivity of a dragon's sense of smell.

The golden river dragon opened his mouth just enough for his long serpentine tongue to flick out and lick his massive chops.

“It's been a long time since I received payment in virgin blood.” An occasional wisp of smoke escaped the worm's nostrils when it spoke, while his tongue explored the air for the taste of a scent. Llesho blushed to the roots of his hair when the dragon added, “I prefer girls, you know, though they've become more scarce than dragons. One wonders where the virgin boys come from.”

“They grow a little more slowly,” Mara answered with the same humor that the dragon offered in the question. “But they do grow, or there would be no young ones for you to ask about. As for this one—Llesho, stand up and bow to your benefactor. Dragons insist on good manners always—I still need him.”