The evil sorcerer Markko has sworn to capture the last of Prince Llesho's brothers. If Markko succeeds, Llesho will not be able to save Thebin, or reopen the Gates of Heaven. As murder and dark magic threaten Llesho's alliances, he realizes his only chance lies in finding his brothers first. So begins a desperate hunt that will lead the prince from the slave market to a sea voyage fraught with perils, and an incredible discovery about the sorcerer who seems bent on his destruction.
The Gates of Heaven (Seven Brothers)
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Rousing fantasy adventure. (Publishers Weekly) Fast-paced fantasy. (Midwest Book Review) Intriguing characters and a fluid approach to magic that is reminiscent of Asian folk tales. (Library Journal)
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter Three
LLESHO watched, taking in every step in the process of electing a new khan. For something so important-the khan would lead the clans, including their army of ten thousand-the method proved disappointingly simple. As the ceremony progressed, however, he found himself drawn into the gravity of even the simplest act.
Bolghai was summoned and came at the call. He wore his hair in a mass of plaits from each of which hung a talisman of metal or bead or bone. His robes, cut to show their many layers, still bore the bloodstains of the sheep he had slaughtered for the khan's pyre, but he had cleaned the pelts of the stoats that hung by their sharp little teeth in a collar around his neck. He did not walk with a stately pace to the dais as a Thebin priest might do, but scampered and pranced like his totem animal, setting the pelts to kicking at his shoulders in a little stoat-dance. His clothing jingled at each step with bells and amulets that swayed on silver chains sewn onto them.
The first time Llesho met him, the shaman had shocked and repelled him. But Bolghai had helped him to find his own totem, the roebuck, and had taught him to control his gift of dreams for his own ends. Sometimes at least. Now, he watched with interest as the shaman hitched and hopped to the dais in the persona of his totem stoat. Bolghai carried a flat skin drum and the thighbone of a roebuck that he used as a stick. He wouldn't be creating totemic magic, so he wouldn't use his fiddle. Rather, he'd need the drum to set the pace of the coming ceremony.
When he had reached the fur-heaped royal dais, the shaman grasped the thighbone in the middle and tapped with first one end, then the other, in a rapid tattoo on his drum.
"When is a prince not a prince?" he demanded, confronting Tayy with more beating of his drum while he waited for the answer to his riddle.
If there was no khan, there could be no prince. Tayyichiut bowed his head, accepting the judgment dictated by custom and the sacred nature of the riddle. Allowing himself to be ritually driven off by the beating drum, he left the dais to sit with Bortu and Mergen of his clan.
"When is a wife not a wife?" the shaman asked next, subtly changing the rhythm of his drumming. It wasn't what she expected. Llesho, watching Tayy carefully, saw the surprise in his eyes as well. Bortu's features, however, relaxed in grim satisfaction. Her son was dead, but she was no fool.
"I am no barren tree, but bear the khan's heir in my belly." she clutched a hand below her unbelted waist and spat at the shaman's feet. So, the riddle had set her aside not as the widow, but as one who had not truly blessed the marriage bed of the khan. Llesho figured that much. Sort of. And she objected. He wondered not for the first time what, if anything, the Lady Chaiujin did carry in her womb.
Bolghai accepted her correction, more or less, with the smallest of stoatlike gestures and adjusted his drumming accordingly. "When is a queen not a queen?" he amended.
A wife remained a wife even at the death of her husband, but with no khan there could be no queen. Lady Chaiujin bowed, as Tayyichiut had done, but with less grace, and let herself be driven from the dais. She took a step toward her husband's clan, but Bortu turned her back, and the Lady Chaiujin hesitated, finally taking up a position alone, though closest to the dais. No one challenged her for the assumption of that right, but no one came to support her either. While few might guess her part in the death of their khan, she had made no friends among them.
Alone on the dais, Bolghai let the thighbone hang by a cord that tied it to the drum. Holding up his open hand, he asked another riddle: "Apart they are weak, together they smite their enemies." As answer, he closed his hand tight and raised it high over his head: the separate fingers were each fragile, but made into a fist, they made a powerful weapon. So, Llesho figured, the clans, joined in the ulus, became strong.
Bolghai's next words confirmed Llesho's guess: "Who here gathered would make a fist?"
A huge roar rose out of the gathered clans, aided by the shaman's drum. When he settled into a slower rhythm, the clans began the process of electing a khan. No one outside of the clans had ever been privileged to see the like before, and Llesho held his breath, his eyes darting everywhere to see everything, as two guardsmen came foward and set a low table down in front of the fur-covered dais. Bortu came forward first and set a bowl on the table while Bolghai drummed and danced so energetically behind it that Llesho wondered how he managed not to kick it over. Bortu's bowl, of simple wood but inset everywhere with precious gems, he recognized for its great age. When she set it down, she raised her chin in challenge at her son's wife, who had no clan to bring to the ulus but must put herself forward as the regent of her husband's unborn child.
Bortu retired to sit again among the leaders of her clan, a signal for Great Mother to follow Great Mother, each rising to place her bowl before the drumming shaman. Every bowl was made of a precious material-worked silver or gold, porcelain, or alabaster, and each was elaborately decorated with some sign or sigil prominently marked to indicate the clan of origin. None showed the age of Bortu's, however. Chimbai's clan was the oldest, then, and Bortu, by chance or destiny, was the oldest of the Great Mothers. When he looked into her eyes, something moved, and for a moment the whites vanished into the hard black light of a bird of prey. Not a snake like her daughter-in-law, but he wondered what magics lay hidden within the old lady.
In a contest, he would have placed his bets on Bortu and he wondered why she had not used her skills to save her son. When he looked again, however, he saw only a sad old woman, grieving for her precious child. He thought of Lluka, his brother who saw all futures falling into chaos, and wondered if the old woman sacrificed her line to some future that none of them could see. He was pretty sure he didn't want to, all in all.
The procession of the Great Mothers had ended with seven bowls placed upright on the table at the shaman's feet, and three placed upside down as some sign to the gathered clans. Master Den leaned over with a brief explanation that confirmed his guess: "`Up' means the chieftain will accept the khanate for his clan if he is chosen. `Down' means the clan has no wish to rise to khan right now. Not wealthy enough, or not united among themselves enough, or perhaps just wise enough to know they presently count no generals among their younger men."
"Or waiting out the killing before stepping in to pick up the pieces, and the wealth of the losers," Kaydu suggested. They'd both seen as much in the far provinces of Shan, where Lord Yueh had hoped to reap the benefit of Pearl Island's fall and had been gobbled up himself by Master Markko. Llesho determined to pay more attention to those who had turned their bowls down. But now the Qubal clans focused on those who would be khan.
"One a hand may brush aside," Bolghai intoned to a slow and steady drumbeat, "Many lift their heads to heaven with a glittering crown about their brow."
Tayyichiut was the first to rise in answer to this riddle. In his hand, Mergen had placed a pebble-easily swept away, but many became a mountain with a crown of glaciers. He went to the table and set the stone inside Bortu's bowl with a bow to the shaman, who had stopped his dancing and shivered in place in a fit of ecstasy, and another bow to the ancient bowl. After him, Yesugei rose and, performing the same bows, set his stone in Bortu's bowl as well.
Master Den let go of a little sigh as their friend sat again among his clan. At Llesho's raised brow of inquiry, he whispered, "Yesugei was the most likely candidate if the clans decided against Chimbai's policies. He has signaled his followers where his own allegiances lie."
Llesho nodded. He thought he understood, but Master Den seemed unsatisfied with his reaction and added, "It could have come to war among the Qubal clans, with enemies on both their borders waiting to fall on them."
Master Markko in the South, and Tinglut, the Lady Chaiujin's father, in the East. He looked at the lady, sitting with venomous poise, her head demurely downcast, but with calculation glinting from under lowered lashes. As soon as they were done here, he'd have to find Shou and warn him. Tinglut would sign his treaty with a pen in one hand and sword held in the other behind his back.
"Would you share the thought that wrinkles your brow like an old man?" Kaydu asked him.
"I just realized that I am starting to think in Bolghai's riddles." She rolled her eyes in sympathy and added, "If you start giving orders in battle that way, I'll thump you."
He was so happy to hear her talk to him as his captain from the old days that he didn't even bother to point out he had never given the orders in battle anyway. That was her job.
The vote came to an end then, or so it seemed. The pebbles all looked alike. It would be harder that way to figure out who voted against the new khan once he took office, Llesho figured. That made retaliation less likely, though he was sure that some had done it in the past. His understanding of politics had grown that subtle at least. They hushed while Bolghai gave the count: three clans had stubbornly cast their votes for themselves, but seven had gone to Chimbai-Khan's line. The clans retrieved their voting bowls and each took a pebble from the little heap at Bolghai's feet.
When the table before the royal dais was once more empty, the shaman declared in riddle form, "Out of many, one. Out of one, four. Out of four, one. Out of one, many." Each part of the riddle was punctuated with a flurry on his drum.
The first part made sense: many clans had voted, one clan won. What the rest meant, Llesho couldn't fathom, until four figures came forward and faced the dais again. Chimbai-Khan's line, but who among the likely candidates would be khan?
If she spoke true that she carried... --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful conclusion to a rich and exotic fantasy trilogy,
By Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Gates of Heaven (Seven Brothers, Book 3) (Hardcover)
The Gates of Heaven is the concluding book in Curt Benjamin's thrilling Seven Brothers trilogy. It may sound like typical fantasy fare, with a young slave who is really a prince leading a struggle to reclaim the kingdom of his father, but the setting makes this book and this series something special. The action takes place in a world steeped with the mythology and legendry of the East; gods walk the world in human form, magic is real, and war is a constant and bloody part of life. Prince Llesho, enslaved at the age of seven when Harn raiders conquered his peaceful mountain kingdom of Thebin, learned eight years later that the seven brothers he thought dead were very much alive; charged by the ghost of his loyal former administrator, he sets out to find his brothers, raise an army, and reclaim Thebin - after he finds a way to gain his own freedom.
As The Gates of Heaven opens, Llesho has found several of his older brothers, but authority has devolved fully onto his own shoulders. He has put together a band of loyal followers, including childhood friends, the trickster god in the form of a washerman/teacher, the impish god of mercy, the powerful emperor of Shan, a powerful mage and his equally powerful daughter, and a young Harnish prince named Tayyichiut - not to mention a jinn named Pig who basically started the whole mess to begin with, a few wyrms (dragons), and several goddesses including the Great Goddess herself, Llesho's rightful lady wife. Like any noble hero, he also has his mortal enemies, principal among whom is the dark magician Markko. The story has gotten much bigger than the fate of Llesho, Markko, and Thebin by this point, though; if Llesho fails, darkness will claim the very gates of Heaven, where a demon is poised to destroy the very gardens of the Great Goddess. Only a journey across the waters separates Llesho from his destination, but getting there is easier said than done. The first half of the novel bogs down to some degree as Llesho executes a rather ill-conceived plan to rescue Prince Tayyichiut from pirates. One of the hallmarks of this series is Llesho's independence - and the many mistakes this leads to; he does not always trust his companion gods, especially the trickster god, but luckily they are always there to help get him out of the messes he falls into. Llesho is truly on his own at this point in the story, though, and it looks like his quest may end prematurely and rather ignominiously. Once he and his followers make it to Thebin, however, the story reclaims all of the potential it showed earlier in the series. Llesho's reentry into Thebin is unconventional at best, setting up an ending that takes the story to a more spiritual level. Some of the surprises that emerge in the latter half of the novel are more surprising to the characters, especially Llesho, than to the reader, but that takes little away from the reader's enjoyment. Just as Llesho was not the simple slave he once appeared to be, so is he also more than just a prince and ordained ruler of the kingdom guarding the Gates of Heaven. Many fantasy series drag on book after book, but Seven Brothers is a series you will not want to see end after a mere three volumes. Benjamin has created such a rich and exotic world that the reader hates to bid it goodbye - fortunately, though, the author is returning to this magical world and the future of Prince Tayyichiut in his next novel, Lords of Grass and Thunder.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strongly recommended!,
By CFE "CFE" (CT USA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Gates of Heaven (Seven Brothers, Book 3) (Hardcover)
This is the third book of the Seven Brothers Trilogy. The series should be read as a trilogy as each book builds on the former. Read the books in order. While it is a little daunting to 'take on' a trilogy by a pretty much unknown author I very strongly recommend this trilogy to those who like Bujold, Lackey, McCaffery and their books, as I do. While comparisons are invidious - i.e.I do not mean that Benjamin has borrowed from Bujold in any way - I think I can virtually guarantee that if you like Bujold's The Curse of Chalion' and 'Paladin of Souls' you will like these; the 'feel' of the books is similar. The fantastic world is interwoven with a world that seems superficially familiar in a similar way so gods and dragons 'pop up' and interact with normal mortals as if their presence is commonplace and mortals, while always respectful, nevertheless are not overawed - or particularly surprised by - their heavenly visitors. The books are very well written stories - I couldn't put them down - and tell of the journey/ quest of a young prince, the seventh son of the royal family of a conquered country who was captured and sold as a child into slavery. He was seven when his country was invaded by a Mongol-like people. His parents were killed and his siblings split up. He survived a Long March to become a child slave diving for pearls a long way from home. At about fifteen he is given the task of finding his brothers - whom he had believed killed - and liberating his homeland. The books chronicle his journey, both literal and figurative to achieve these all but impossible tasks. It becomes increasingly apparent to the Reader - and to the modest hero - that he is unusual and destined for great things - if he survives! The trilogy is set in a fantasy world which has the flavor of the far East, specifically Early Imperial China (the hero's homeland is reminiscent of Tibet), but the author has wisely only suggested parallels with these real cultures and so'any resemblence to any... country...is purely coincidental'. This gives the author great latitude for the setting of his story - but also gives the reader a bit of an anchor. The hero's world is populated with gods, dragons, witches (male and female) and sorcerers - many of whom seem to be using the hero as a pawn in some great game. I am not very familiar with Chinese mythology, but the fantastic characters seem to have their genesis in that tradition. The hero is a very likeable young man who inspires loyalty in his friends - and in the reader - as he struggles - mostly without complaint - to achieve his destiny. Strongly recommended!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Page Turner,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Gates of Heaven (Seven Brothers: Volume Three) (Mass Market Paperback)
I'm not finished with it quiet yet, but its one of those books that keeps you turning the pages a lot, it is a very enjoyable book to read :)
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