The Prince of Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

time—now faster, now slower, while the feet of running men kept the beat. Llesho had kept ahead of them easily, and soon enough they changed direction, moved off on a path Llesho never took, up the hill to the training compound at its height.
    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