The Blackgod

But the sunlight did him no harm. In fact, it cheered him, as did the brightly clothed merchants bustling about the quays, the pungent stink of fish, the sweet incense of fortune-tellers, the savory scent of meat grilling on the charcoal braziers of food vendors. He stopped at one of the last, paid a dark young girl with a pox-scarred face a copper soldier for two skewers of garlic lamb and a thick, spongy roll of tsag ' bread. He sat on a dock with his legs dangling out over the River, eating his meal and watching the gulls worry about the barges, the thick-armed men unloading cargo from the Swamp Kingdoms, from up-River and from far-off Lhe.

Beneath him, he could feel the River, like a father, proud of his presence.

“You are mighty,” he said, addressing the limitless waters wonderingly.

Only reluctantly did he bend his mind to his worries.

His time in Nhol was limited; that much was clear. He could not kill every man and woman who recognized him. Already the priesthood must be investigating the disappearances, especially of the slain Jik. And it was surely urgent, in any case, that he leave soon to find Hezhi.

But the world was vast, and he knew not where to look. Only Ghan could tell him that, and Ghan had made it plain that he would say nothing. Given time, Ghe felt certain that he could win the old man's confidence—he cared deeply for Hezhi, and that was a lever which could be worked until the man's stone heart was prized up, lifted so that Ghe could make out what was underneath. But he needed time for that.

Time, also, to learn a few things. Even with the powers of his rebirth, he would face enemies he only vaguely understood—the white-skinned barbarian who would not die, for instance. Was he like Ghe, some sort of ghoul? Was he more powerful? And in Ghe's mind were vague shadows of other powers, out beyond where the River could reach. He must know something of them, as well.

He let his gaze settle over the city, wondering where he might find the answers he sought. In the library, perhaps, where Hezhi had found her secrets. But Nhol had many dark places, where old knowledge slept.

The foremost of these towered behind the dockside taverns and markets, as pristine and monumental as they were squalid and ordinary; the Great Water Temple. It was a stepped pyramid formed of white stone, water geysering from its sun-crowned summit, a fist of the River shaking aloft toward the heavens. He had been inside the building, seen the perfect column of water drawn up through the very core of the structure, and wondered, awestruck at the rush and power of it. From where he sat now, he could see two of the broken slopes where the water cascaded down, four streams for four directions rushing to rejoin their source in the canals that surrounded the priesthood's most holy building. To him, also, it had once been holy, a symbol of the great power he served and of the order that had raised him from sleeping with dogs to a position of respect and honor.

Now, with the River's perspective, he saw it much differently. Within its white shell, he now sensed a heart of mystery, a labyrinth of falsehood and deceit. From its caverns the priesthood spun their spidery webs, shaped the bonds that held the River God in place. It held libraries, too, vast dusty rooms of forbidden knowledge, chants and formulae of terrific power. He had but glimpsed such things when he was initiated as a Jik, but now he had some sense of what was hidden there, beneath the falling water, the great hill of rock.

He turned his gaze back to his feet, to the god flowing below them. “You want me to go there” he whispered.

That would be dangerous, even for him. The priesthood had the power to shackle a god—and what animated Ghe was less than a finger of the River's power. But the priests had taught him, made him from a common thief and cutthroat into a finely wrought weapon. A weapon could be turned upon its smith as easily as upon anyone else.

The food was not as good as he had anticipated. The smell had been wonderful, tantalizing—but in his mouth it had no flavor. As if, along with so many things, he had forgotten how to taste. Discouraged, he tossed what remained of his meal into the water. “Eat well, my lord,” he said, before rising and resuming his walk.

He went next to Southtown, though he was in no way certain why. He knew that he had been born there, but the nets in that part of his mind were the most torn and tangled; they held the fewest clear images. Walking down Red Gar Street, the place he remembered best, was like hearing only snatches of a song. Here a shop sign was as well remembered as his name; but blocks would go by that seemed as alien as the depths of the palace. Still, it brought something of a return of his earlier good cheer; his nose and his skin seemed to recognize the street as his eyes did not. A sort of melancholy happiness walked with him, the ghost of recollection.

And then, when he stopped on a corner to watch a boy pick a minor noble's pocket, someone spoke his name.

“Ghe!” An old woman's voice, one he utterly failed to recognize.

He turned in surprise, fingers knitting into deadly shapes. It was an old woman—an ancient woman—dressed as a fortuneteller. Her clothes were faded, shabby, but she wore a steepled hat with golden moons and stars embossed upon it that looked both new and expensive. Before her was spread a velvet mat for her fortune-bones. Her face was split in a half-toothless grin, and her eyes sparkled with an odd mixture of lights—happiness, wariness, and concern.

He knew her face. Images of it lay about his mind like shards of a shattered pot. But no name was attached to it, no past conversations, nothing. Nothing save for a faint, pleasant sensation.

“Ghe? Haven't you come to sit with an old woman?” The old eyes had sharpened with suspicion. He hesitated, searching his mind, thinking desperately. He smiled and knelt by her mat.

“Hello,” he said, managing to sound cheerful. “It has been a long while.”

“And whose fault is that? Ah, little Duh, what has the priesthood made of you? I scarcely recognize you in that collar. You look tired, too.”

She knew about the priesthood. Who was this woman?

“It is a busy life,” he muttered, wishing he at least had a name to call her by. Was she some relative of his? Not his mother, surely. She was far too old for that.

The puzzled, suspicious look was still clear on her face. He had to—do what? He should run, leave, that was what he should do.

“Read the bones for me,” he said instead, gesturing at the inscribed, polished slats that lay on the mat.

“You put store in that now? The priesthood teach you to respect old women properly?”

“Yes.”

She shrugged, picked the bones up, and rattled them around in her hands.

“Whatever happened to that girl?” she asked casually. “The one you liked, that they set you after?”

His dismay must have been as clear to her as the call of gulls above. Her own eyes widened. “What have you done, little one? What is this about?”

Ghe felt a little tremor walk up his spine. He had to do something. He reached out for the httle, fluttering knot of strands that made up her life. She knew it all, this old woman. That he was a Jik, about Hezhi, everything. Best to kill her now, quickly.

But he could not. He knew not why. The moment passed, and he shrank back from the strands, though now he felt a bit of hunger—completely unabated by the bread and meat he consumed earlier.

“Listen,” he hissed. “Listen to me.” He took a deep breath. “I don't know who you are.”

Her eyes widened and then flattened. “What do you mean by that? Life in the palace made you too good to talk to old Li?”

LI He had heard that name in his vision, when he was reborn. Then it meant nothing, just a sound. Now …

Now it still meant nothing, save that it was this old woman's name.

“No. No, that isn't what I mean at all. You clearly know me, know my name, know much about me. But I do not know you.”

Her face cleared then, blanked like a perfect, featureless mask: the inscrutable fortune-teller.

“What do you remember?”

“Bits of things. I know I grew up around here somewhere. I remember this street. I remember your face—but I didn't know your name until just now.”

Her face remained expressionless. “Perhaps some sort of Forbidding,” she muttered slowly. “But why would they cripple you so? This makes no sense, Ghe.”

“Perhaps,” he began, “perhaps if you were to tell me, remind me. Perhaps the memories are only sleeping.”

Li nodded slowly. “That could be. But again, why? You are still a Jik?”

“Still,” he said. “Always.”

“Last I heard from you, you had been set to watch one of the River Blessed. A young girl. Did something happen?”

“I don't remember,” he lied. “I don't remember that, either.”

The old woman pursed her lips.

“I should read the bones, then,” she said. “Maybe the bones will show something. Sit with me here a bit.”

She rummaged in a small cloth bag and began taking things out.

“You gave me this, you know,” she said, as she laid a little cone of incense out on her velvet mat.

“I did?”

“Yes. When you were initiated. This cloth and this hat. Be a dear, little Duh, and go light this on the flame of old Shehwad over there.” She waved her hand at a man cooking skewered meats a few tens of paces away. He nodded, rose, and walked over to the stand.

“Li asked me to light this here,” he told the person—who, despite the fact that Li referred to him as “old,” was certainly younger than she.

The man's sharp features began a scowl, but then suddenly transfigured. “Why, it's little Ghe, isn't it? We haven't seen you about here in an age.”

“No?”

“No, not since … well, I can't remember when. Since before the priests came asking about you.”

“The priests came asking about me?” Ghe asked, straining to control his voice, to sound casual.

“Months ago. There's some flame for you.” He presented Ghe with a burning splinter of black willow from his cook fire.

“Thank you.” He couldn't ask more; it would seem too suspicious. Why would they have sent anyone here?

Because, of course, his body had never been found. The Jik he had killed in the palace had indicated that someone had seen him dead—and then he had disappeared. They had looked for him.

Did the priesthood suspect? Could they suspect? That was worrisome. He had been trained to kill, but his knowledge of priestly magic was not great. Was there some way of seeing what had happened to him? Some magical trail or signature?

He turned back to the old woman. She must know that the priests had been here, but she hadn't mentioned it.

“Light the incense, silly boy,” Li said, when she glanced up from arranging the bones. He complied, touching the brand to the cone until it sputtered. A thick, pungent scent drifted up from the cone.

“Now, just sit here. Ill cast the bones, and we'll read them, just like we used to.”

Like we used to. Ghe grimaced. Who had she been to him? She was so familiar, in some ways. And he had confided in her, told her of the vast empty places in his mind. That had been stupid, but what other choice had there been?

Watching the people moving up and down Red Gar Street, he knew the answer to that. He watched them; the wealthy and the poor, the noble and the mean—none of them saw an old woman and a man clad to his neck in rough silks. They were unnoticeable, invisible. Every person that passed had some pressing business, some private thought, some destination, known or unknown. If he were to reach into Li, take her life …

He still didn't want to do that. She had meant something to him once, that much was clear. The only person who meant anything to him now was Hezhi…

That brought a frown. The priests might have been looking for him, but it must have been her they wanted to know about. To what lengths would the priesthood go to retrieve her? Had they already sent an expedition after her? Ghe knew that thought should have troubled him, stung him to action, but for the first time since his rebirth, he felt a heaviness, a pleasant weight across his forehead and eyes. The sun was warm, relaxing, and Li's voice floated soothingly as from far away.

“Now I cast the dice. Oh, see, they've fallen in the 'telling' pattern, the eye of the clouds …”

There was more, but he lost it, his eyes fluttering shut just for an instant.

When he opened them again blearily a moment later, the old woman was glaring at him, livid. He shook his head, uncomprehending. Why was he so tired? Why was the old woman so angry?

“You are not Ghe,” she hissed flatly. “I knew that you were not. You are nothing more than some ghoul who has swallowed him.”

No! Ghe wanted to say. No, see my neck? It is my body, my head, not some ghostly simulacrum. It is me … But he couldn't say it. He couldn't speak at all; his mouth and throat were numb, as were his extremities and his senses.

The incense! He should have recognized it, should have known. He sharpened his sight, and everything changed. Li faded to her little bundle of life, as did those on the street, vibrant strands in a transparent world. The incense was a spot of nothingness, of black beyond darkness, a hole sucking his strength into it. Snarling, he swept at it clumsily.

“No!” the old woman managed to choke out. She had clearly believed him weaker. She began muttering under her breath.

This time Ghe did not hesitate. He reached out, around the vacuum of the smoke, took hold of her life, and ate it.

It took only an instant; she writhed a moment, then was part of him. Gasping, he stumbled up, away from the burning cone, and the instant its fumes were no longer brushing him, feeling rushed back with a fierce, insistent tingling, as if his limbs had been momentarily deprived of blood.

Around him, the street continued to bustle, people hurrying hither and back. He struggled into the pedestrian stream and let it sweep him along. He glanced back once, saw Li lying as if asleep, her hat with its moon and stars fallen and lying across her bones.

“It's beautiful, ” he suddenly, sharply, remembered her saying once, long ago, of that hat. “The moons and stars seem to shimmer. Is the thread gold? ”

“I don't know, ” he had replied. I only knew that you would like it. ”

And though he remembered nothing more than that, he began to weep.

THAT night, he slept for the first time in seven days—since his rebirth. He slept and he dreamed.

Dreams were not as he remembered them. They were not vague, strange reiterations of his little fears or of days gone by, not shadow plays with little sense or substance. They were strong, clear, and simple. The colors were not right; they were too sharp, too bright, and without shading. Everything that was green was the same hue of viridian; all red was sanguine. These dreams had meaning, however, meaning that blared like the din of a cracked horn, rattled the frames of his dream images. The messages were loud, but they were not clear. Ghe imagined they were the sorts of things insects might hear if a man stooped and spoke to them.

He dreamed of being whole, knotted perfectly together, a vast and content serpent gnawing his own tail. It was an ancient feeling, barely remembered.

He remembered the Bright God coming, taunting him, cajoling him. In his dream, the Bright God was like a little sun, golden-feathered, light incarnate. He dreamed shame then, and anger, as the Bright God tricked him into uncoiling, into stretching himself out. Shame at being tricked, at being opened up. In revenge, he ate the Bright God's light, nearly killed him, but his foe escaped, though without his brilliance and beauty.

Now he rushed across the world, and his fear and shame began to fade; he coursed out for leagues, taking it all beneath him, cutting himself a bed, a comfortable place. And for a short time, he knew another kind of contentment, a wonderful hurtling joy. Time passed, and the earth changed, his bed shifting now and again, and he started to feel a hunger. At first it was merely discontent at no longer being whole. He was not a circle anymore, not a thing unto himself. The sky drank from him, plants took him up into their long, narrow bodies, and in the end he poured into a great emptiness, a gulf too vast for him to fill. He had become all motion, and nothing about him was still, nothing all his own. So the hunger began, a desire to take in the world about him, devour it, make it of himself until there was nothing without. Until, once again, he was within himself, a tightly coiled snake eating his tail. After a time, this hunger was all that mattered to him.

As ages passed, he found the limits of his reach. The other gods could see what he was about. His brother, the Forest Lord, sent the Bright God and the Huntress about, and boundaries were made. He paid them no mind, but his reach faltered nevertheless. He had dug himself into the world, and it would not let him out again.

Ages, again, and Ghe felt himself ache with need greater than he had ever known. He grew angrier with each decade.

At the height of his anger, Human Beings came to his banks. They were like the gods, in certain respects, though without the same sort of fire within them. Still, they were inventive, and in some ways they had great strength. He realized that these people were like vessels he might fill, feet that he might walk within, to leave his channel and devour the enemy gods.

So he set about filling them up. They were small, they could contain only a bit of him—but over time, he knew, the vessels of their bodies would be slowly perfected. That was another good thing about Humans; they were malleable rather than fixed, as gods were. All gods but himself, that is, for he could change. That was his chief strength, the thing that set him apart. It was also his agony.

He sent the little bits of himself out, patiently, and to his surprise the people built a city. They went out from his banks, and they slew the gods of the borderland, pushed his boundaries farther than ever he could have himself. This was good, and he continued to wait as generations passed and his people grew stronger and stronger, became more and more capable of carrying him in their bones and veins.

But then torpor overcame him, and he slept. He awoke only briefly after that, and thus it was a long time before he realized that something had been done to him, was making him sleep, robbing him of his sentience. It was a dull, muted frustration. He still did not know what had happened to him, though he could sense a dark well in the heart of his city, bleeding him, binding him somehow. He still had his children, born stronger with each generation, but they were distant from him. One was finally born who could contain him. Now she was gone.

GHE woke then. He woke and sat up on the pallet he had arranged. His little room was dark, but he could nevertheless see the spare walls, the small bundle of clothes and weapons that were his only possessions.

Hezhi, he thought. She was the one the River had waited for. He shuddered briefly. The thoughts and feelings in his dream were not human; he understood that they only seemed so because they had bent through his mind.

What the River felt for Hezhi, however, would not bend, would not settle upon any emotion Ghe had ever experienced, though it resembled lust in some ways. The old Ghe would not have understood it at all, but he was beginning to. That was why he shuddered.

Ghe understood something else now that he had not before.

The River did not know about the priesthood, did not even know they existed. To him, they were blank spaces, nothing. And the center of his pain—the dark vortex that bled his power, drew him relentlessly into slumber—Ghe knew what that was. He had been there, many times.

It was the Great Water Temple itself.

X A Game of Slap

TSEM met them near the edge of the camp. He was perched on an old house foundation, fending off a swarm of curious children. When Hezhi saw him, she slid down from behind Brother Horse and flew across the intervening distance to him.

“Princess,” Tsem growled, “where have you been?”

“I'll tell you later,” Hezhi said. “Right now, stay close to me. Please.”

“Of course, Princess.” The Giant turned wary eyes on the newcomers and said—loudly enough for the horsemen to hear, in his broken Mang: “They not hurt Princess, do they?”

“No,” she answered. “They only escorted me back here.”

“Princess, this is not the palace,” Tsem said more quietly in their own language. “You can't go running off alone whenever you want.”

“I know,” she said. “I know that.”

Brother Horse spoke to Tsem, also in Nholish. “Giant, take your mistress back to my yekt. Keep close watch on her. Things are happening I must attend to, and I need for you to keep her safe. I will send Yuu'han around, as well.”

“What?” Tsem asked. “What is happening?”

“I am not sure,” the old man replied. “I will come tell you when I know.” Hezhi noticed that Moss—and Chuuzek, of course—seemed restless.

Chuuzek confirmed that by growling to his cousin, “What is this babbling? What are they saying?” Moss shrugged, conveying his own puzzlement.

Ignoring them, Brother Horse turned to Hezhi and continued in her language. “Please do not fear me, child. I know what you saw, and it is nothing for you to fear. I should have explained more before asking you to see, that is all. Accept my apology, and I will come speak with you as soon as I can. In the yekt, with your Giant present.” He smiled, and she could not help believing him; his sincerity, for the moment, was more real than the strangeness she remembered.

Brother Horse switched back to Mang to speak to the other horsemen. “I am sorry to have been impolite,” he said. “The Giant knows but little of our speech.”

“I could teach him a word or two,” Chuuzek snapped. Moss only nodded.

“It was my honor to meet you, cousin,” Moss said to Hezhi, emphasizing “cousin.” “I hope to speak to you of your homeland soon. I have many questions about the great city, and I have never seen it for myself.”

Hezhi nodded politely but did not answer aloud. With Tsem's massive hand on her shoulder, the two of them made their way through the crowd. Behind them, whoops went up as horsemen rode up to meet the newcomers.

“What is this all about, Princess?” Tsem asked again, as they moved toward the yekt they were staying in.

“I wish I knew,” Hezhi told him glumly.

HEZHI noticed that Yuu'han appeared not long afterward, subtly. He sat near the fire outside of the yekt, talking with animation about something with a warrior near his own age. Hezhi noticed, however, that his eyes wandered the camp, fastening more than occasionally on the yekt.

“Is he trying to keep us in or keep someone else out?” she wondered, and Tsem's brow ridges bunched deeper. He did not repeat his earlier question, but Hezhi explained her meeting with Moss and Chuuzek. She skirted around the issue of why she had run off into the desert in the first place; she did not want to talk about that until she understood more. Tsem seemed content enough with that; after all, he had spent countless hours in Nhol following her at a discreet distance when she sought privacy by wandering the labyrinthine ways of the abandoned and ancient sections of the palace.

“I wonder what this means, this war?” Tsem asked.

“I don't know. I think that at the least, it means Perkar and Ngangata will receive a poor welcome when they return.”

“But what does that mean to us? To you?”

“I hope Brother Horse will tell us when he returns.” She paused. “I think Brother Horse believes me to be in some sort of danger.”

“That seems obvious,” Tsem replied. “But what sort of danger? What would these Mang want with you?”

Hezhi spread her hands to acknowledge her ignorance.

Tsem sighed. “I understood things in the palace. There I could protect you. Here … here I know nothing. We should leave this place, Princess.”

“And go where? There is nowhere we will understand better. And of course we cannot go back to Nhol.”

“Another city perhaps. Lhe, Hui…”

“Those are very far away, Tsem. How would we get there, just you and I? And when we got there, what would we do? They would not accept me as royalty there. We would have to live in their Southtowns.”

“Where do you say, then?”

Hezhi thought about that for a moment. “Here may be as good a place as any. Or…”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps with Perkar's people.”

Tsem grimaced at that. “His people are no better than these. Barbarians.”

“Well, then,” Hezhi grunted, dismissing the whole question with the back of her hand.

“You once said we might seek out my mother's people,” Tsem put in, unwilling to let the matter drop.

“Yes, I did, didn't I?” Hezhi said. “But where do they live? How would we find them? The two of us cannot travel alone. Can you build a fire, or kill game, or set a snare? I can't.” She looked up at Tsem squarely. “Back then, Tsem, it seemed as if the whole world was open to us. Now I see things in a different light.” She hesitated for just an instant before going on. “Yet there is something I can do, something to give us some choice, I think.”

“That being?” Tsem grunted, rolling his massive head back on his shoulders.

“Brother Horse says I have a gift for sorcery. It is the only thing I have, it seems.”

“You have me, Princess.”

Hezhi softened her voice and patted the Giant's arm. “And never doubt how much I value that, Tsem. You are my only true friend. But here, in this place, value is counted in terms of kin, and we have none. It is counted in horses, and we have none. It is counted in yekts and war honors and hunting trophies, and we have none. Nor are we likely to acquire any of those things.”

The Giant nodded ruefully. “Yes, I can see that.”

“But they also reckon worth in power, and that, perhaps, I have.”

“Witchery is dangerous, Princess.”

“Yes. Yes, but it is the only thing I have to make a place for us. And if we are ever to go where we will, we must have people willing to help us. We must have some way to pay them.”

“Or coerce them.”

“Yes,” Hezhi admitted softly. “I thought of that, too.”

THE village was not as Perkar and Ngangata had left it: it had bled out over the plain, filled it with color and life, horses pounding around makeshift racetracks, riotous noise. It was wild, barbaric, exciting—and not altogether unfamiliar. It had the quality of a homecoming or a hay gathering, though it was bigger, brighter, and more boisterous.

Where he and Ngangata rode, however, faces pinched tight in suspicion, even faces they knew, and by that Perkar understood that the news of the war had already come to Brother Horse's village. How could it not, with clans from the entire Mang world attending?

“It might have been best not to come here at all,” Ngangata gritted from the corner of his mouth.

“We have no choice,” Perkar muttered back, wondering how many warriors he and Harka could take before all of his heart-strands were severed. His sword made him much more powerful than mortal, but it did not make him invincible; the Blackgod had made that more than clear to him.

“If they attack me, I won't have you fighting with me. The war between their people and mine is not your concern.”

Ngangata shot him a scathing, raw look. “You may have forgotten this, Cattle-Man, but though I have no kin or clan amongst your people, it was still there that I was raised, and it was to your king that I swore my allegiance. Your people never gave me much, but what I got you will not take from me.”

Perkar stared for a moment, then nodded, blushing. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Feel free to die with me, then.”

“Thank you.”

It was almost as if that agreement were a signal for a handful of riders to rush up to them, shrieking. Perkar snarled and snatched for Harka.

“They are not attacking Harka said. “Not yet. Keep me ready. ”

Perkar eased his breath out then, and the riders parted around him, shouting, brandishing axes and thick curved swords. Perkar knew none of these, but like the riders at the stream, they had their war plumes on. Each wore a Human skin as a cloak, the empty arms and hands flapping like the wings of spirits.

He and Ngangata sat their horses as the riders circled them, enduring the Mang curses. At last, one of them parted out and brought his stallion stamping and gasping to relative stillness. He was a young man, thickly muscular.

“You!” he shouted at Perkar. “Cattle-Man. We will fight.”

Perkar avoided the man's eyes: meeting them squarely was considered an affront by the Mang. Instead he gazed up at the sky, as if wondering where the clouds were. “I have no wish to fight you, man,” he replied.

“We are here on the invitation of Brother Horse,” Ngangata added. “We are not here to fight.”

“I am not speaking to you, Brush-Man,” the warrior said. “And I do not care whose protection you are under.”

“It's true,” Perkar heard someone say. “They were hunting with us in the high country.” A few others echoed the sentiment.

“Hunting in the high country. Is that where he got my cousin, there?” He jabbed his thick fingers toward Sharp Tiger, and Perkar realized that if things could get worse, they had. They were Mang. Of course they would recognize the horse and wonder where its rider was.

Perkar was spared having to answer when a second man rode up beside the first. He was quite young, and his eyes were a peculiar color for a Mang—almost green. “Be still, Chuuzek. Brother Horse told us of these two.”

“Someone get Brother Horse,” someone else called from the side. “Bring him here quickly!” Perkar did not turn to see who it was, but thought he recognized Huu'leg, with whom he had hunted and shared beer.

“As I said,” Perkar repeated, “I have no desire to fight.”

The man who had been called Chuuzek glared at him. The crowd seemed split on the matter of their fighting; Perkar could hear many urging Chuuzek on, but others were as loudly proclaiming that such a breach of hospitality could not be tolerated. “What is your quarrel with me?”

“You are the pale man and the Brush-Man. You began this war,” Chuuzek proclaimed loudly, matter-of-factly.

Perkar could only stare, openmouthed. It was Ngangata who answered the charge. “Who told you this?”

“The gaan. The prophetG

And at that, there was silence for a moment, before Brother Horse's voice rose up.

“Well, my nephews are back!” he said dryly, not loudly at all. But in the quiet after Chuuzek's assertion he was more than audible.

“A Mang's nephews are Mang” Chuuzek spat.

“Well, so they are,” Brother Horse agreed. “And so they are—in this camp, at this moment.” The old man pushed through the crowd, two younger clansmen trailing closely. He glared up at Chuuzek. “Mang know how to behave properly in a relative's camp.”

“Yes,” the green-eyed boy assented. “Yes, they do.”

Chuuzek, whose face had been set in a fierce scowl, suddenly grinned broadly. He turned to Brother Horse. “You misunderstand, Shutsebe. This is the time of the Ben'cheen, of feasting and games. I was only asking your nephew if he wanted to go at the bech'iinesh.”

“He does not” Brother Horse snapped.

Perkar pursed his lips, trying desperately to place the word. He had heard it before, and it meant something like “flat” … No. It meant “they slap.” It was a game, and a rough one.

Chuuzek shrugged off Brother Horse's pronouncement.

“He can tell me himself,” Chuuzek said, “if he is too small and soft for a Mang pastime.”

“Well,” Perkar said softly, “I have no wish to fight you. But if it is only a game you wish to play …”

Brother Horse was frowning and shaking his head no, and the lift in Ngangata's brow also told him that he was agreeing to a bad thing. But if he did not do something, he would not know peace long enough even to get Hezhi. And if he did, there was nothing to stop a party of these men from following him from the village and attacking him in the open desert, away from Brother Horse and his hospitality. No, it was time for him to do something. And Chuuzek was looking at him expectantly.

He had five hundred leagues of Mang territory to ride through to reach his home. Best get this over with—or at least begin it—now.

“Of course. I accept your invitation,” he said, and the crowd burst into a hoarse cheer. Chuuzek bared his teeth in satisfaction.

“Fine,” Brother Horse said. “But let my nephew get a bite to eat, something to drink. There is plenty enough time for Slapping today.”

“No,” Perkar said. “No, I feel well enough to play now.” As he said this, he stared fully into Chuuzek's eyes and saw the malicious light there.

Brother Horse sighed. “Perkar has no paddle. I will loan him mine.” He turned and strode off.

For an instant, no one spoke, but then the crowd surged around them, and it almost seemed as if they lifted up Perkar and his mount and carried them to the track around the camp. Still shouting, they parted about the hoof-beaten path and lined the sides of it. Perkar wasn't certain, but many of them seemed to be taking bets.

Presently Brother Horse returned, bearing a wooden paddle as long as a man's arm and a hand's breadth wide. It looked to be hardwood wrapped with leather over some sort of padding. Brother Horse handed it up to him, and he took the felt-wrapped grip. It weighed almost as much as a sword.

Chuuzek was nowhere in sight.

“What do I do?” Perkar asked.

Brother Horse shook his head. “Tell me what you want buried with you. Chuuzek is going to kill you.”

Perkar smiled and nodded. “Yes, yes. What do I doT

The old man pointed around the track. “He's around on the other side of the village. In a moment, someone will blow a horn. You ride toward each other. You hit each other with the paddles.”

“How is the winner known?”

Brother Horse spit. “Oh, you'll know,” he said. “You just keep going until someone can't or won't. My advice to you is to fall off right away. Very dishonorable, but then again, it will give Chuuzek only one chance to break your neck.”

“Can I parry his paddle?”

“You can do whatever you want. It won't matter.”

“You've never seen me fight.”

Brother Horse laid a hand on his leg and looked up frankly. “You bear a godsword; I know that. No doubt with it in your hands you are a great warrior. But today you are just a man on a horse with a wooden paddle, facing a Mang who was in the saddle nine months before he was born.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Normally, people are careful enough when they play this game. Accidents happen, though, and if it looks like an accident, people won't call it murder. With you, it won't even have to look good.”

Perkar nodded grimly. “Well,” he muttered. “Let's go, then.”

Brother Horse nodded. “When someone blows a horn, ride that way.” He pointed north.

Perkar tightened his grip on the paddle, swung it experimentally a few times.

And someone blew a horn, two sharp notes. The crowd cheered raggedly, and Perkar dug his heels into T'esh. His mount leapt forward almost without that, as if it knew the significance of the horn. Perkar flexed his hand on the grip, then tightened.

“You can still help me, Harka?” he snarled into the wind.

“Some. Not much. Draw me and I can help you much more. ”

Perkar gritted his teeth but did not answer. T'esh had fallen into a fluid gallop, what Ngangata called an “archer's gait.” Where was Chuuzek?

The howling of the crowd, already deafening, rose in pitch. Chuuzek and his mount appeared in the curving track. For an instant, Perkar felt a dismay so powerful and shocking he nearly bolted his steed from the course. Chuuzek resembled a bear, his obsidian eyes glinting with a feral ferocity that smote Perkar with nearly physical force. Mang avoided eye contact normally, but for Chuuzek, only Perkar existed. There was no wavering there, no second thoughts, only murder.

Perkar bit his lip furiously and dismissed his fear. He was Perkar of the Clan Barku. He had faced the goddess of the Hunt on her lion, felt the steel of her lance in his throat. No Human horseman could match the terror of that.

So he narrowed his eyes, counted hoofbeats, and when the time came, he swung. The moment seemed to slow, as the hurtling mounts converged, eyes rolling but no hesitation in their strides. Chuuzek struck simply, hammering his weapon in a flat, sidewise arc designed to catch Perkar in the face. He was passing on Perkar's right, and there was little he could do save block the furious swing, so Perkar cut around at his enemy's paddle.

The boards clapped together, and a staggering shock raced up Perkar's arm and jarred his teeth. The blow lifted him up and out of his saddle, and it was only luck that one of his feet stayed in its stirrup. Brother Horse's paddle went spinning from his grip, and his head banged against his horse's rump. For a moment, Perkar couldn't grasp what was happening; then he slammed into the dusty ground. His foot still in the stirrup, the earth cut and burned him as T'esh thundered on another ten paces before slowing, realizing that his rider was no longer mounted.

Perkar twisted out of the stirrup and spat the sudden taste of iron from his mouth. His lungs were burning and the air seemed like a rain of golden fire, drowning his senses. The hooting of the crowd was distant, like a faraway flock of blackbirds chattering. Chuuzek, paddle held high, vanished around the edge of the track.

Grimly Perkar fought to his feet. A boy of perhaps ten hurried toward him, bearing the paddle, and he lurched forward to take it, stumbled back to T'esh, and remounted. For a dizzy moment, he wasn't sure which direction to ride in, but T'esh seemed to know, and he crouched in the saddle as the great beast beneath him returned to a full charge.

Chuuzek reappeared, a happy snarl on his face. Perkar felt anger, white hot, surge through him, and suddenly all he cared to do was to shatter those smiling teeth into the big man's throat. He heard a hoarse cry and realized that it was himself. Bouncing in the stirrups, leaning forward, he struck straight overhand. Chuuzek's blow arced out as before, but Perkar ignored it; Chuuzek's face, his stupid leering face, was his target, and he cared for nothing else. At the last instant, he stood as tall as he could and felt his blow land, even as Chuuzek's paddle cracked into his sternum. Something in his chest shattered, and he saw sky, earth, sky reel around him for what seemed a long time before the dust claimed him once more.

XI The Codex Obsidian

GHAN looked up wearily at the boy Yen.

“If you want help finding a book,” he muttered, “then I will help you. If you've come merely to bother me, leave before you waste any of my time.”

“No, in fact,” Yen said, “I have come for help in finding a book. My order has set me to work on a repair of the ducts in the Great Water Temple.”

“And they sent you here to find a book concerning such repairs?”

The young man looked suddenly uncomfortable, fingering his unfashionably high collar nervously.

“Well, to tell the truth, Master Ghan, they did not specifically tell me to look here, and I was afraid to ask them. They were impressed enough by my earlier work, and I think that they believe me more capable than I am.”

“You had excellent help before,” Ghan reminded the young man.

“Indeed, Master Ghan, I did. When I was in here last, you kindly offered—”

“I know what I offered,” Ghan snapped. He did not like Yen. He had not liked him when he was so transparently courting Hezhi, but the fact that he insisted on reminding him of her was intolerable. Though, to be fair, the young man had been discreet enough not to bring her up this time. So far. And Hezhi liked him, would help him if she were here.

“I can help you rather simply,” Ghan said. “There are no books concerning the Great Water Temple in this library. Not of the sort that you might want, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the priesthood is exceedingly jealous of its secrets. The construction and content of the temple is their most ancient secret.”

“Nothing here at all?”

Ghan readied a surly reply but paused. “What is it you want to know?” he asked slowly.

“Well, if there is nothing here on its construction, I will surely be supplied with plans of what I am to work on. But… is there nothing of its history here? Of its dedication?”

“Why would that interest you?”

“If I am to have the honor of working upon something sacred, I think I would like to know more about it.” He blushed. “I suppose I am merely curious.”

Ghan regarded the young man steadily. What was his hidden motive? Everyone in the palace had one. He had seen that in Hezhi instantly, though it had taken many months for him to untangle her secret. It was important to understand that no one told you what they really wanted and that sometimes they themselves did not know. Now here was this merchant's son, a member of the Royal Engineers but a junior one, just in his first year of service. He wanted to know about the temple, and the assertion that he was to work upon it was clearly a lie. But why did he want to know?

But the answer was clear enough to Ghan. He wanted to know because of Hezhi. He was clearly obsessed with her, frantic to discover her whereabouts. He had heard something or seen something that made him certain she was not dead.

Ghan realized that his mind had wandered far enough afield that the boy had noticed.

He will think me a senile old man, Ghan thought.

“I can help you with that, perhaps,” he said. “Wait here while I consult the index.”

Yen nodded as Ghan unfolded his legs and stood; he winced inwardly as his stiff joints popped and complained at the shift in position. Moving into the adjoining chamber where he kept the index, he took the huge volume down and carefully spread it open.

He flipped through the subject headings until he came to Wun Su'ta, “temples,” and scanned through the lists, trying to remember which ones were most suitable. As he recalled, Yen could read only the syllabary, not the ancient glyphs, so he excluded many right away.

He felt a little catch in his throat as he noticed the last few entries. They were nicely formed, very distinctive characters. Hezhi's writing.

“Such a bright girl,” he muttered, and wondered what she was doing at the moment. Sitting in some Mang hut, bored to tears, or riding about the world, seeing things he himself had only read about?

He paused and faced the dread he had been avoiding. There were other possibilities. Only the word of a few Mang horsemen—certainly men of less than untouchable repute—evidenced that she had escaped the city at all. He had received no reply from the letter he sent with the horsemen, though he had not expected one soon. The simple facts were that Hezhi could be dead, or below the Darkness Stair with her monstrous relatives, or…

Why did Yen want to know about the Water Temple? What did he know, or suspect? Was she there, for some incredible reason?

He noticed that his hand was trembling, and he frowned. Weak old man, he chastened himself. Weak. Stupid. She is safe and far from here.

What had he been thinking, though? Entrusting her to that pale-skinned foreigner on no more substance than a dream? He had given her hope, and he desperately wanted to believe that her hope had been rewarded. But he was an old man, long familiar with failure and disappointment. Things never worked out as one hoped.

If he could only know what Yen hoped, and why.

With a heavy sigh he noted down the references. Best that he watch, for the moment. Yen was an engineer, whose organization rested somewhere between the priesthood and the emperor. It could well be that he knew something that Ghan did not, especially now, since he had been cautious of late. There were many in the palace who disliked him—hated him even—and rumors that he had something to do with Hezhi's escape were not lacking. Not common, either, but certainly not lacking. If he were to show the slightest interest in her whereabouts, the Ahw'en investigators would take note with their hidden eyes, and then he must kill himself, ere they could torture Hezhi's whereabouts from him.

But perhaps this Yen could look for him.

And so, sighing heavily, Ghan noted down the best reference he could find by shelf and location.

He took it out and handed it to Yen.

“You remember how to find things from an index reference?” he asked.

“I look for this number on the shelves.”

“Yes. The volume you are looking for is entitled Notes on the Codex Obsidian.”

“I don't understand. This tells of the Great Water Temple?”

Ghan smiled thinly. “If it said as much in its title, the priesthood would have taken it from me long ago. This is a modern translation of the Codex Obsidian, a book written in the ancient hand. But the Codex Obsidian itself contains a long citation from the Song and Consecration of the Temple, the holy text that describes the origin and building of the temple and its associated fanes.”

Yen shook his head in wonder. “Amazing. Books within books within books. I see now why she …” He paused, embarrassed. “Why some spend so much of their time here,” he finished lamely.

“Indeed,” Ghan intoned flatly. “Now, if you please, I have much to be about.”

“Yes, yes of course. Thank you, Master Ghan.”

“I accept your thanks,” Ghan muttered, waving, returning his gaze to the work he had been transcribing.

But he watched Yen from beneath his brows as the young man ventured into the labyrinth of books.

I have given you what I can of the temple, he thought. Now let me see where that takes you next. Tonight, when everyone was gone, he would retrieve the same book, read what Yen had read. He would keep pace with him, each step.

The old, he reflected, should be good at that, at least: watching, waiting.

He returned his hands to their work, but his mind haunted the world, the steppes of the Mang, the expanse of the River, the black depths of the Water Temple, searching. Searching for a young woman with a heart-shaped face and wonder in her eyes.

GHE found the volume easily enough, high on a shelf and weighty. Still, with his strength he had little difficulty in lifting it down.

He paused in midreach as a vivid memory flashed through him, brighter and more insistent than most that remained to him. It was of himself, looking at the girl, Hezhi, her black eyes with his features reflected in them. The look of delight on her face as he handed her the bronze statuette, his own sudden, unexpected reaction.

He would have killed her, he knew, despite that. He would have killed anyone, if the priesthood had asked him to.

But how much better now that he did not ever have to think of killing her again. That was not—had never been—the River's plan for her. So much better that he be her savior, especially now, now that he knew he loved her.

Loved her? Ghe felt a sudden trembling deep in his bones. When had he decided that! Back in the sewers as his head fell off? In the depths, in the death before his rebirth?

Had he decided it at all?

But, of course, he had. The River knew no more of Human love than it did of Human hatred. It could not make him feel thus. And so it must be he, Ghe, who loved Hezhi.

He shivered again and shook his head. What had he been about? He glanced down dully at the book clenched in his white-knuckled hands and remembered, though he did not recall actually lifting the volume down. The temple.

He took the tome over to a reading bench of polished teak and laid it flat. He admired the spine of ivory, the ivory pins that riveted it together. The cover was a sort of leather unknown to him, black and densely wrinkled. Some kind of lizard or alligator, perhaps, or one of the great tusked beasts he had heard of.

Inside, the supple white pages were tattooed in blue and black, the sometimes curving, often choppy lines of the syllabary. That was a relief; he had no facility with the ancient hand. Rebirth had made him no better at such things; the River had many powers to offer, but apparently the River could not read, not even books about itself.

The Codex Obsidian read the title page. Ghe began prowling through it, searching for what he was not certain. But the center of his lord's frustration and torpor—the place he could not even see—Ghe knew, instinctively, that it was the temple. When he looked out over Nhol from the roof of the palace, he could see all of the city; the wings of the palace sprawling crookedly along the crests of the hill, the docks and merchant quarter, the thickly cluttered Southtown, and the temple rising high above it all. But when he closed his eyes and pictured that same scene, he saw only darkness where the temple should be. The god that pulsed the blood in his veins simply could not perceive it.

The temple, he remembered hearing, had created the priests the way an oven creates bread. Ordinary men had walked into it, when first it was formed, and the first priests had walked out. Priests were still made thus, though the process took many years. But whence had come the temple itself? That seemed an important story, and there was a sort of itch in his brain that suggested, maddeningly, that he had once known it. Surely he had been indoctrinated into the lesser mysteries in the time he had been trained for killing.

It galled him that he must search so for something he had once known.

And after a time he found it, in spidery characters that were written differently from the rest of the book, so old in style he must furrow his brow to puzzle through them, whisper the words aloud.

We read that in the fiftieth year of the ascension of Water to the throne of Nhol, the last of the monsters were killed, and the surface of the Lake was forever broken. There was rejoicing, there was feasting. The Chakunge thought, then, that it would

be good to have a palace, and a keep, and walls to protect the city. It would be good to have canals to carry his Fathers waters into the dry land, it would be good to have letters to record his thoughts and the thoughts of his Father

And so he loosed some of his blood back to his Father, and he prayed.

A season passed, and then came a stranger. He rode in a boat of ebon wood, and likewise his clothing was jet, likewise his skin and hair.

“The Riven thy Father, has sent me, ” said he. “For though your king is of his blood, a son should not serve his Father. Servants are needed, and I am midwife to all servants. ”

A faint memory awoke in Ghe. The passage referred to Ghun Zhweng, the Ebon Priest, about whom the priesthood told many tales. It was he who brought the planting of crops, the knowledge to build canals, the sciences of architecture and engineering. It was he who established the temple. Ghe read on, impatient with the dry history, hopeful that he would find something of use. A bit later, his attention became more focused.

Then Ghun Zhweng drew for them a plan. “The River must be honored in a Great Temple, where his waters will flow, fourfold. It should be made in the shape of She 'leng, the mountain from which the great god flows; it should have places, hidden and deep. It must have a belly of crystal, wherein the treasures are kept and the bones laid to rest. It should be measured to the following height and width

Something turned in Ghe, twisted, and the bright images of his Riverdream seeped from his eyes onto the very page. A mountain, cone-shaped, steepling high into the clouds and capped with dazzling brightness, where he had once been contained, content: the mountain that was his home, his cradle, his source.

His shuddering became bright fury, inhuman fury so great that he felt the pulsing of his blood threaten to burst forth from his heart and break his mortal body. Who did this? Who is this Ebon Priest, who made these shackles, this priesthood, this temple? Who is he, for I shall shatter him, harrow and eat his soul!

His teeth began to chatter, and his fingers clutched spastically at the pages of the book. The colors from his dream filled the room, a vortex of nightmare light, and for an instant he knew that he lay once again on the surface of oblivion, a greedy darkness eager to swallow him forever. But then, by degrees, the anger retreated, diminished to mortal stature, and then less than even that, so that he was left wondering what he had felt, and why. He was dizzy and weak; sweat slicked his skin and matted his hair. Dazed, he wondered if the terrible lights he had seen had been only in his own eyes or if they had truly filled the library, and he looked around him carefully; no one was about, there in the most jumbled recesses of the archives, and so far as he could tell, no one had come to investigate. Still, to the senses of the Waterborn, or of a priest, it must have seemed as if a fire had burned briefly or a claxon sounded. Ghe swiftly stood, wiped his brow, and arranged his hair as best he could. He replaced the book on its shelf and, with a hasty word of thanks to Ghan, exited the library.

As he hurried toward his room in the abandoned wing, his sense of urgency sharpened with each step until it became a razor carving at the inner dome of his skull. His time in the palace was drawing to an end, one way or the other. As a Jik, he had been the stinging end of the wasp, not its brains. The brains were the Ah-w'en, and he vaguely recalled that they commanded intelligence and sorcery in no small measure. By now they certainly knew that something fell was loose in the royal halls. His experience with the old woman on Red Gar Street had reminded him to respect witchery. Whatever the River had made of him, it had not made him unstoppable; he was susceptible to the same measures used against ghosts and the Waterborn themselves. The incense that had stunned him was the same used to banish ghosts and to stupefy the Blessed; priests routinely swept the halls of the palace to chase its hundreds of specters back into the darkness below its cobbled courtyards, and incense was the least potent power the priests wielded; even the lowliest acolyte could be taught to use a spirit-broom. What secret weapons did they keep against demon wraiths, against ghouls such as himself? It was a shame that he could remember so little of his learning as a Jik beyond the reflexes of killing; he might have once known how to track, trap, and destroy such a thing, an eater of life. Instead he had only the vague knowledge that it could be done.

Probably he had capabilities he did not yet recognize; but the time to discover those things was in short supply. Yet he ground his teeth at the very thought of leaving the palace. The River had chosen him in a way that it chose no one else. It had given him life and power to serve him as the Waterborn could not and the priesthood would not. Who had more right to live in the palace than he? But it was foolish to risk himself in this way. He could hide in Southtown and feed on as many scorps and gung as he wished; the Ahw'en would not find him there—would probably not even bother to try.

He entered an abandoned courtyard and surveyed the cracked and weed-rampant walk through it. Not for the first time, he wondered why this part of the palace was empty, falling into dust. Once when he was a child someone had shown him a chambered shell from deep in the River. It was a straight cone, like a horn, and inside it was partitioned, the largest spaces toward the widest end. Trumpet-cuttlefish, someone had named it, and he had listened in wonder at how the creature, as its life progressed, added greater and grander chambers to its home while abandoning those it had outgrown. It had been a thing of water, of the River. Were the Waterborn of the same nature? No one had ever said such a thing—not that he could recall, of course.

In the center of the court was a sink, a well down which unwanted things and dirty water were passed. He lifted the grate and lowered himself into darkness. Passing a short distance—about twenty paces—he reached a second grate, clambered up and through it, thus entering his apartments.

His courtyard was bare of any life at all. When he had found it, it had been infested with weeds, as well, but a wave of his hand had withered them, given their water and life to him. Now the stone was clean and cold, simple and pure.

This suite of rooms was actually sealed off from the rest of the palace, the doors to the outside halls not only bolted but plastered over, like the backmost chamber of that strange creature.

He paused before entering the room he slept in adjoining the courtyard. Who had told him those things, shown him that shell? A seaman, at the docks? But that seemed wrong. It might have been a woman… He remembered, then, the old woman on Red Gar Street, and he felt a catch in his throat. Perhaps it had been she. He could not remember.

He crawled into his room, trying to ignore the hunger that gnawed in him. Soon enough he would have to feed again; it seemed that he needed to kill more and more often as time went on. It might, indeed, be best to retreat to Southtown, where monsters could Uve with impunity.

He curled up on his stolen sleeping mat like a spider, thinking, planning, and waiting for the darkness.

Almost he slept; his body sank into a torpor, though his mind remained active, peering at the strange fragments of knowledge he had attained.

He understood for certain now that he must invade the temple, though he knew not why. There his lord, the River, was no guide, for in that parody of some far-off mountain, he could not see. That was why Ghe was needed; to go where the god could not go.

Had that not always been his role, as a Jik, as a ruffian on the street? Always Ghe went where others were not willing to. As a child for pay and loot, as a Jik for pride and the priesthood. What reward would the River give him, one day?

But of course, he knew the answer to that, too: Hezhi. Hezhi would be his reward.

Thus he thought, and thus he was still thinking when the wall began to shudder beneath the weight of mallets, accompanied by the high, shrill keen of priests chanting.

XII The Breath Feasting

HEZHI heard the roaring of the crowd outside, but she had been hearing such for several days, and in her pensive, withdrawn state she certainly thought nothing of it. Nothing, that is, until Yuu'han and Ngangata dragged Perkar's still body into the yekt. His eyes were closed and a bright string of blood ran from one corner of his mouth. His nostrils, also, bore red stains. He was pallid, and she could not see if he breathed or not.

She stared, unable to think of anything to say.

Tsem, however, easily found his voice. “Is he dead?” the Giant grunted.

Hezhi frowned at Tsem, still trying to understand what she was seeing. Yuu'han had stripped off Perkar's shirt, and beneath it his chest was livid, purple and red, as if he had been stepped on by a Giant twice Tsem's size. No, not stepped on; stomped. But how could he be dead? She had seen Perkar alive after being stabbed in the heart. She had seen the blade appear from the front of his chest, a red needle with Yen behind it, laughing at her, at her stupidity. What could kill Perkar, if not that?

No one answered Tsem, and finally Hezhi, more irritated at that than Tsem's blurted question, finally asked, “What happened to him?”

Yuu'han met her gaze levelly, for just an instant, before looking off into some middle distance the way Mang were wont to do. “He played Slap,” the young man said. “He won't play again, I think.”

“Then he is—”

Perkar interrupted them by coughing. It was actually more of a gurgle than a cough, but he blew a clot of blood from his mouth. His eyes did not open, though his face pinched tight with pain. Yuu'han stared aghast, made a hurried sign with his hand in the air.

“Naka'bush!” he hissed. In Mang it meant an evil ghost.

“No,” Ngangata told Yuu'han. “No, he is alive.”

“He was dead,” Yuu'han grunted, watching Perkar's chest begin to rise and fall, hearing his wheezing, rasping breath.

“No. It is that sword he bears. It heals him.”

“Thegodblade?”

The Alwa-Man nodded. “Tell Brother Horse but no one else.”

Yuu'han looked uncertain, but after considering he nodded and then left the yekt.

“He will heal, then?” Hezhi asked, her voice still dull with shock.

“I believe he will,” Ngangata answered, “considering that he was deadbefore and is now breathing again. That would seem to me to be the biggest step toward recovery.” His alien face remained expressionless, and Hezhi wondered what the strange man was thinking. Were he and Perkar friends or just traveling companions, forced together by circumstance? Did Perkar really have any friends? In the past months, she had begun to regard him as such. There were moments when he made her feel better than anyone else did, happier anyway. And she believed that, unlike Tsem or Ghan or D'en, Perkar could not be taken from her by death. It seemed safe to care for him. Now even that illusion was shattered.

“I hope so,” Hezhi replied, still unable to think of much to say.

Ngangata rubbed his forehead tiredly and selected one of the yekt's large, colorfully felted pillows to slump down upon. He looked very tired. “I have to know what you have heard,” he said after a moment.

Tsem crossed the room bearing a pitcher and bowl.

“Drink something,” he told Ngangata. Hezhi felt blood rise into her face with a wave of shame. She should be doing something. Ngangata took the water from Tsem.

“Fetch me a rag, Tsem,” she said quietly. “A rag and some more water. We should clean him up, at least.” Perkar's breath was still coming erratically, labored, but at least he was breathing. Tsem nodded and went to search for a rag.

Ngangata watched her expectantly.

“I don't know,” she said at last. “I'm not sure what is going on.”

“You've heard about the war?”

She nodded. “Yes, just today. Some men came in earlier. They found me out in the desert—”

“Found you?”

Hezhi helplessly realized that she was only making things more confused. “I was walking over in the cliffs,” she explained. “Two Mang men from the west found me.”

“Found you in the cliffs? What were they doing over there?”

“I don't…” She didn't know. “That's a good question,” she finished. “It isn't on their way, is it?”

“Leave that for a moment,” Ngangata said. “What have you heard about the war?”

“Not much. Just that there is one, Perkar's people and the Mang. There was an argument between those men and Brother Horse. He told them they were not to attack the two of you. I guess he doesn't have much authority over them.”

“It's too bad he didn't have even less,” Ngangata said wryly. “If they had simply attacked Perkar, he would have killed them with his sword; that much is a fact. As it was, they challenged him to a 'game'—you see the outcome.”

“I don't know,” Hezhi said. “You know more about bar—about these people than I do. If there were a real fight, with swords and everything, wouldn't others join in?”

Ngangata nodded. “Probably. It might have even turned into a little war, with Brother Horse's closest kin trying to protect his hospitality. All in all it was probably best this way. His sword will still heal him.”

Tsem returned with a damp cloth and a basin. She reached for it, but he gently held her away and began sponging Perkar's chest himself. Hezhi started to protest, but realized that Tsem probably knew more of what he was about than she did.

“I've seen him with worse wounds and still capable of walking and talking,” she commented. “Worse looking, anyway.”

“As have I,” Ngangata agreed, and Hezhi thought she caught a deep worry in his burring voice. He did not, however, offer anything further.

Tsem wiped Perkar's face, and the young man hacked again, moaning a bit.

“Did he find what he went looking for?” she asked.

“I suppose. I think he learned much. We learned about the war, at any rate.”

“From this goddess of his?”

“And from another god. From Karak, the Raven.”

Hezhi pursed her lips. “Perkar told me of that one. It was he who set you and Brother Horse to watching for us, when we fled the city.”

“Yes. It was also he who tricked Perkar and his friends into betraying our king. He is a strange, willful god.”

Hezhi sighed and shook her head. “I know nothing of these gods. They are all strange to me.” Monsters, she finished inwardly.

“I don't know everything he learned from Karak,” Ngangata went on. He seemed to want to tell her something, but was trying to work to it carefully.

“Weren't you there?”

“I didn't hear the conversation. But afterward, Perkar was eager to return here, to find you. I think Karak told him something about you, something important.”

“Oh?”

Tsem growled low in his throat. “I like this not at all, Princess,” he muttered. “Too much, happening too fast. Too many people wanting you again.”

“I know, Tsem.”

“What do you mean?” Ngangata queried. “What is this?”

“Those Mang who met me in the desert. They acted as if they wanted something from me, too.”

“And they found you in the cliffs, though no trail from the west passes near. That means they were looking for you.”

Hezhi tried to deny that with a little shake of her head. “They might have seen me run into the cliffs.” But they hadn't. She knew that, somehow. “No, you're right, Ngangata. They were looking for me. And Brother Horse put me in this yekt, as soon as we returned, and set his nephews to guard me. He could tell something was wrong.” She did not add that she was worried even about Brother Horse's intentions. No one who could not see into him would understand, would merely think she had become mad with paranoia.

Ngangata nodded slowly. “Something with big feet is walking,” he muttered. “We were attacked by Mang, as well, up at the stream. They were looking for us. They said that a prophet had seen us in a vision. Perhaps he saw you, too.”

“But Perkar knows more.”

“He does, but he was tight-lipped with me. Whatever he learned worried him.” Ngangata chewed his lip, and then went on. “I did hear Karak say that there was some connection between this gaan and the Changeling.”

A sudden bright chill crawled along Hezhi's spine. “The Changeling? The Riverr

“Call him what you will.”

“I thought he could not reach this far.”

“Not with his own fingers, perhaps,” Ngangata answered. “But perhaps with the hands of a Mang shaman he can.”

Hezhi heard her voice tremble. “He wants me back, doesn't he? He will have me back.” And she realized that, once again, the scale on her arm was itching dully. She reached to touch it.

And gasped; the room seemed to turn around, sidewise, so that she could see it all from a different angle. Tsem and Ngangata appeared hollowed out, skeletal, and the fire in its hearth was a dancing blade with laughing eyes. Perkar…

Perkar was hardly there at all. His skin glowed translucent, and at his side there lay a god. She could not look at it, at that nightmare jumble of wings and claws and keen, sharp edges. It hurt her, scratched at her inside as if there were a man in her head with a sword, swinging it. She lifted up her sight, tried to tear it away entirely, but Perkar himself riveted her attention.

On his chest crouched a blackness, a crawling, shuddering blackness. As she watched, long hairs as thick as wheatstraw grew from it, wrapped sluggishly around Perkar, and reached inside of him to seize his bones.

The blackness opened a yellow eye and stared at her, and she screamed. She screamed and ran, tripped, sprawled, and scrambled back up. Even when Tsem caught her she kept trying to run, kicking at his shins and wailing, eyes closed, shuddering.

When finally she opened them again, the room was as it had been before.

But she knew now. She had seen it.

“Tsem, go get Brother Horse,” she choked out. “Go and hurry. And let me sit outside.”

SHE flinched away from Brother Horse when he arrived, fearful that her sight would return and reveal him for what he was. She should not trust him with Perkar—she knew that—but she could think of no alternative. She did not know what to do for him, and something was wrong, terribly wrong. Brother Horse regarded her sadly for an instant and then entered the yekt. Hezhi remained on the stoop, and Tsem joined her.

“That's a big fire,” he noticed, after a moment.

Hezhi regarded the enormous bonfire from the corner of her eye, unwilling even to risk seeing the Fire Goddess. For some time, the Mang had been carrying in fuel from all directions, and flames and black smoke rose in a thick column skyward.

“I wonder where they found all of the wood,” Tsem went on when she did not answer.

Hezhi shrugged to let him know she had no idea. “I think it's for the Horse God Homesending. A ceremony they perform tonight.”

“What sort of ceremony? Have you written of it in your letter to Ghan?”

Good old Tsem, trying to distract her. “I think Ghan will never get any letter from me. Whatever we thought, these people are not our friends.”

“They needn't be our enemies, either,” Tsem pointed out. “They are like everyone, concerned for themselves and their kin before all else. You and I don't threaten them; Perkar does.”

“Does he? Perhaps his people do. I don't know. We are lost here, Tsem.”

“I know, Princess,” he replied softly. “Tell me about this ceremony.”

She hesitated a moment, closing her eyes. The village did not vanish as she hoped it might; it was still there in the vivid scent of burning wood, in the shouts of children and the wild cries of adults, the yapping of dogs. It would not go away merely because she willed it thus.

“They believe that they and their mounts are kin,” she began. Who had told her that, so long ago? Yen, of course, when he gave her the statuette. He had told her something like that anyway, and it had not been—like everything else he told her—a lie. Yen, who at least had taught her the folly of trusting anyone.

Tsem's silence suggested that he was waiting for her to finish. “You know that by now,” she murmured apologetically. “They believe that they and their mounts are descended from a single goddess, the Horse Mother. Now and then the Horse Mother herself is born into one of these horses. More often one of her immediate children is, a sort of minor god or goddess. When this happens, the Mang shamans can tell, and the horse is treated with added respect.”

“That would be hard to imagine,” Tsem noted. “They already treat their mounts with more kindness than any servant in the palace is shown.”

“The horse is never ridden. It is fed only the best grains. And then they kill it.”

“Kill it?” Tsem muttered. “That doesn't sound like a very good thing to do to a god.”

“They kill it to send it home, to be with its mother. They treat it well, and when it goes home it tells the other gods that the Mang still treat their brothers and sisters—the other horses—well.”

“That is very strange,” Tsem said.

“No stranger than putting the children of nobility beneath the Darkness Stair,” she countered.

“I suppose not.” Tsem sighed. “It's just that everything these people do seems to involve blood and killing. Even worshipping their gods.”

“Perhaps they recognize that life is about blood and killing.”

Tsem touched her shoulder lightly with his thick fingers. “Qey used to say that life was about birth and eating. And sex.”

“Qey said something about sex?” Hezhi could simply not associate the concept with the servant woman who had raised her.

Tsem chuckled. “She is, after all, a Human Being,” he reminded her.

“But sex! When? With whom?”

Tsem squeezed her shoulder. “Not often, I suppose, and with an old friend of hers in the palace. She would have been married to him, I suppose, if it had been allowed.”

“Who?”

“Oh, I shouldn't tell you that,” Tsem said, mischief creeping into his voice.

“I think you should,” she rejoined.

“Well, perhaps if you were a princess and I your slave, I would obey that command. However, since you insist that such is no longer the case …”

“Tsem.” She sighed, opening her eyes and arching her brows dangerously.

Tsem rolled his eyes and put on an exaggerated air of secrecy. He leaned very near, as if confiding a bit of court gossip. “You remember old J'ehl?”

Hezhi's mouth dropped open. “J'ehl? Qey and J'ehl? Why, he was a wrinkled little old man! He looked just like one of those turtles with soft shells and thin long noses! How could she—”

“Perhaps he had more use for such a nose than you might imagine,” Tsem remarked.

“Oh!” Hezhi cried. “No! Darken your mouth! I won't hear any more of this. You're inventing this because no one can call you a liar out here. Except me! Qey and J'ehl indeed. Qey and anyone. She was too old, too dignified—”

“Oh, yes,” Tsem said. “Do you remember that time when J'ehl came to deliver flour, and I took you into your room and sang very loudly to you, the same song, over and over?”

“The only song you knew!” Hezhi exploded. “I kept telling you to sing a different song, but you wouldn't. After a while it got to be ftin, though, me trying to put a pillow over your face, and you just singing and singing …” She stopped. “What are you saying?”

“Qey made me do that. So you wouldn't hear.”

“No!” Hezhi almost shrieked, but she was laughing. Laughing. It was shocking, horrible even to think of Qey and that little man making love as Tsem roared and she squealed, but somehow it was funny. And she realized that Tsem had tricked her, tricked her into an instant of happiness, despite everything.

“Those were good days,” she told him as her laughter trailed off. “How old was I?”

“Six years old, I think.”

“Before D'en vanished.”

“Yes, Princess.”

“And how did that song go?”

“You don't really want me to sing it!”

“I think perhaps I do!” she commanded.

Tsem sighed hugely and squared his shoulders.

“Look at me.

A giant monkey

Live in a tree

A giant monkey !”

His deep voice bellowed out into the evening air, and three dozen Mang heads turned in their direction. Though they could not understand his words, most smiled and a few laughed, for off-key is off-key in any language.

“Abig monkey! Him love Hezhi!”

Tsem shouted on, until Hezhi was wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.

“Stop, stop,” she said. “We've too many serious things to worry about.”

“You told me to sing,” Tsem answered.

“You haven't sung that to me in a long while.”

“Well, you haven't asked me to, and when you got a bit older and started wandering about with D'en so much, Qey and J'ehl had little trouble finding time for their passions.”

“I still refuse to credit that!”

“Believe it, little Princess. I could not imagine such a thing myself were it not true.”

“I think you imagine sex all of the time!”

“Yes, but not with Qey!”

She chuckled at that, too, but her brief happiness was already waning. It amazed her that she could have forgotten her troubles for even such a trivial moment, but Tsem had always been good at that.

“You are a big monkey,” she told him. ”And I love you.”

Tsem blushed but read her sobering mood, and from long experience he made no attempt to keep her laughing.

“I know, Princess, and thank you. Out here it is good to have someone who loves you.”

Hezhi turned her face back to the bonfire. She felt braver, and dared to look at it full on. “You've never said anything truer than that,” she said.

There was a small cough behind them. Hezhi turned to see Brother Horse regarding them.

“I need to speak to you, Granddaughter.”

“Call me Hezhi,” she said, frowning.

He sighed. “Hezhi.”

“Tsem will stay with us,” she informed him.

“Very well. An old man will sit, if you don't mind.”

“I don't mind.”

Brother Horse shook his head. “Look at that. They don't need to make the fire that big! They must have burned everything for a hundred leagues.”

Hezhi frowned over at the old man to let him know that today she had no patience for the Mang propensity to chitchat before getting down to the business at hand. He caught the hint.

“Perkar is very ill,” he announced, the playfulness suddenly gone from his voice and replaced by an almost shocking weariness. “He has been witched.”

“Witched?”

“You saw the thing on his chest.”

“I saw it.”

“You are strong, or you would be mad now. What you saw was a sort of spirit—something like a ghost, or god—perhaps the offspring of a ghost and a god. We call them 'Breath Feasting,' because they eat the life in a person. Usually they eat it right away, but Perkar's sword continues to heal him.”

“I don't understand. I thought Perkar was hit with a Slap paddle.”

“It must have been a witched paddle. Such things have been known to happen.”

“You mean someone did this to him.”

Brother Horse nodded. “Of course. It would have to be a gaan, someone with the power to bind spirits.”

“Like yourself, you mean.”

The old man grunted. “No. Someone with much more power than I ever possessed. Someone who could put the Breath Feasting in a Slap paddle and command it to wait.” He turned a frank gaze on her. “I know you were frightened by what you saw in me. I know you do not trust me now, and I should have explained before you saw. But I never believed that you could see into me so easily. That is one of the hardest things to do, to see a gaan. Gods are often disguised by mortal flesh, even from the keenest gazes. You must forgive me, you see, for I never thought that even if you did see into me, it would frighten you. I forget, sometimes, what it means to be from Nhol, where there is no god but the Changeling.”

Hezhi pursed her lips in aggravation and thrust out her jaw, trying to retain her bravery of a moment before. Tsem, beside her, was a presence of enormous comfort. “Are you telling me you are some sort of god?”

“What? Oh, no. No. But there are gods in me. Very small ones, very minor ones.”

“In you? I don't understand that.”

“There are many kinds of gods,” Brother Horse began, after a moment's pause to collect his thoughts. “There are those that live in things—like trees and rocks—and there are those that govern certain places, certain areas of land. There are also the Mountain Gods, whom we call the Yai, and they are different yet again; they are the ancestors of the animals, as Horse Mother is the begetter of all horses, as Blackgod is the father of all crows, and so forth. Those are the most powerful gods, the gods of the mountain.”

“Yes, this was explained to me,” Hezhi said, uncomfortably.

He nodded. “The Mountain Gods have younger relatives who walk about. Small gods cloaked in the flesh of animals—such as those we select for the Horse God Homesending that we hold tonight.”

“I know that, as well.”

“Such gods dwell in flesh, sometimes in places, and those places are like their homes, their houses. But when their house is destroyed—when their bodies are killed or their place ruined—then they are without homes. They must return to the great mountain in the west to be reclothed in skin. However, it is possible to offer them—or sometimes compel them—to make another home, here.” He tapped his chest with a forefinger. ”That's why we call this yekchag tse'en, 'Mansion of Bone.' You saw the dwellers in my mansion, child. Two spirits live within me and serve me, though they have, like myself, grown old and weak.”

Hezhi took that in doubtfully. “And what do these gods do, living in your chest?”

“First and foremost, they dim the vision” the old man said gently. “They toughen you so that the sight of a god does not enter you like a blade, to cut out your sense. Once you have a single familiar, no matter how weak, then you can resist.”

She suddenly understood what Brother Horse was getting at, and her eyes widened in horror. “You aren't saying I have to do that? Have one of those things inside of me.”

Brother Horse examined his feet rather closely. “It isn't bad,” he said. “Most of the time you never need them or notice them.”

“No!”

He shrugged. “It is the only way. And I can do nothing for Perkar. You can trust no other Mang healer, for we do not know who did this. You are his only hope, and you are your own only hope. You have been lucky and strong thus far, but you will weaken, and when you do, your Giant friend will not be able to help you, nor will I. I know you don't like it, but you must face this, Hezhi. I am trying to help you.”

“Brother Horse, I canW She worked her mouth helplessly, hoping it would fill with more words of its own accord, explain to the old man her horror of losing herself, of becoming something not Hezhi. That fear had been a strength when the River threatened to fill her up with himself, make her into a goddess. Now… one of those things, those monsters, living in her? How could she be the same, ever?

But if she did not, what would Perkar do? And what would she and Tsem do? Her talk to Tsem of using her power to help them survive—would she pretend she had never said it?

“How is it done?” She sighed weakly.

“Princess, no” Tsem gasped. He at least understood her, knew her fears.

“I don't say I will do it,” she muttered. ”Only that I want to know how it is to be done.”

Brother Horse nodded. “I have a few moments, and then I must return to my responsibilities. This is a bad time, such a bad time for all of this.” He reached around and pulled up the bag he had carried before, when they went into the desert. From it, he produced a small drum, thin and flat like the tambors played for jugglers in her father's court.

“I made this for you,” he said. “It is called a bun.”

“Bun,” Hezhi repeated. “Like 'lake.' ”

“Exactly. A drum is a lake.”

“That's nonsense,” Hezhi snapped. “What do you mean?”

Brother Horse continued patiently. “The surface of a lake is the surface of another world. Beat upon its surface, and ripples are formed. The things that live beneath that surface will see the ripples, feel the beating. Some may come to investigate. The skin of this drum—” He touched it gingerly but did not sound it. “—is the surface of another world, as well, or at least to a part of this one that only you and I—and others like us—occasionally see. And if you beat upon it…”

“Something will hear,” she whispered, for suddenly she remembered another time, in the library, a book in the old script. Two days before, Ghan had shown her the key to understanding the ancient hand, how the ten thousand glyphs were ultimately composed of just a few. She was reading of her ancestor, the Chakunge, the Waterborn, and how he slew the monsters. When he banished the last of them, the text said he “broke the surface of the lake.” At least that was how she had read it, though the character was just a little circle that she did not think resembled a lake very much. But she remembered the word: wun. Bun, wun. He had banished the monsters and broken the surface of that other world, and even in the ancient language of Nhol the name for that surface was drum.

“Something will hear,” Brother Horse acknowledged, and his voice brought her back to the dusty desert and the shouting celebrants. “Or feel. And if it pokes its head through the drum, you can speak with it and strike your bargain.”

“That simple?”

“It is not simple,” Brother Horse said. “There are songs to be sung—you can send your words through the surface of the lake. But ultimately, yes, that is the essence of it.”

“I hear drums beating now,” Hezhi said. “Are they attracting gods and ghosts?”

“Perhaps,” Brother Horse said. “But their drums are not like this one, or like this one will be when you have made it yours.”

“And how do I do that?”

“As I told you before, it begins with blood. You must wipe a bit of your blood on the surface of the lake, and it will be yours. The lake's surface will open into you rather than into the empty air. Your farniliar can climb right out of the spirit world and into your body.”

“Then I cannot pass through the drum, into that other world myself?”

Brother Horse smiled ruefully. “You understand quickly. Yes, you may. But you don't want to do that, Hezhi. Not yet, not until you have many gods on friendly terms with you, or in your power.”

Hezhi regarded the old man for a moment. She was still afraid, terribly afraid. And yet, with that drum she could have power. Like being the keeper of an important doorway, through which anything might come. It was weirdly compelling, and briefly, her curiosity nearly matched her fear. She reached over and touched the drum skin; it felt ordinary, not at all unusual. But then, Brother Horse had not seemed unusual either, until she suddenly saw inside of him.

“I'll take the drum,” she said. “But anything else—”

“Take the drum,” Brother Horse confirmed. “Think on this, and in the morning, after the Horse God has returned home, we will talk again.”

Hezhi nodded and took the tight disk in her hand. Its tautness felt suddenly to her like something straining, pulling. But it was straining to stay together, of one piece.

Much like Hezhi herself.

XIII Becoming Legion

THE wall shuddered again, and Ghe knew for certain that it was no hallucination. Impossibly, he could faintly smell incense, seeping through some unseen crack.

Found out. How stupid he had been! But he never imagined that it would be so soon, so sudden.

Ghe was not accustomed to panic, and panic he did not. Instead he quickly surveyed his meager possessions, choosing what to keep and what to leave. Nothing to assure them of his identity; they probably knew, but perhaps they did not.

He poked his head around the door into the courtyard. It was black as pitch, a moonless and overcast night, but that meant nothing to him; his vision was better than an owl's, able to pierce the deepest darkness with ease. Thus he saw the shadow shapes ranged along the palace roof, awaiting him.

Of course. Pound on the wall to flush me out, catch me in the courtyard. They are not stupid, my old comrades.

What of the sewers? But the duct from his courtyard's sink led only to one place—the sink in the other courtyard. Beyond that he might find liberty, but the chance was far too great that they had stationed incense-burners there. His best chance, he realized, was the roof, despite the six Jik he counted on it. None of them seemed to be burning spirit-brooms; he could not see the spots, like holes in the air, that he had come to identify with them.

He hesitated only an instant longer, for the door to the apartment had begun to splinter. Choosing what he judged to be the most thinly guarded wall, he sprang, darting across the court and leaping like some nocturnal predator for the second-floor balcony.

Instantly, light flared above him, soft witch-light that caused the air itself to incandesce, a burning cloud like swamp fire. Not bright enough to blind his enemies, but enough for them to see him by. An arrow whirred near, and another, and to him they seemed almost to hang in the air as his senses raced furiously ahead of their motion, the River in him flowing as swiftly as a mountain stream.

His leap brought him to the balcony, clutching at the wrought-iron railing. He hissed as the bolts that held it to the rotten stone protested and then tore, and for an instant he hung in space, sagging backward over the cold stone below. It was an instant the Jik on the roof did not waste; an arrow sank joyfully into his back, just missing his heart, puncturing his lung. The pain was astonishing; it was like being pinned with a lightning bolt, and a deafening roar filled his ears like the thunder following.

The railing held long enough for him to vault over and onto the stone floor of the balcony; two more arrows skittered by him. The one piercing him began to writhe Hke a snake in the wound it had made.

Ghe still did not hesitate; he could have run out into the second-story apartment, but he knew that it, too, was sealed and that he would be cornered there like a sewer rat. Despite the unnerving pain, despite the sudden loss of strength and speed he felt, he crouched and leapt again, this time for the very edge of the roof. A shaft skinned across his knuckles as he gripped the plastered edge, and then, with the strength of his fingers alone, he levered himself up onto the flat roof.

A Jik waited there, of course. Ghe lunged immediately; power was bleeding out along the squirming shaft of the arrow that was surely more than an arrow. He was still faster and stronger than a man, but only just so. A blade, a pale ribbon in the witch-light, cut just over his head, and then he was inside the swordsman's guard. He jabbed stiffened fingers into the soft flesh of his opponent's throat, felt cartilage crush as the man lifted from the ground with the force of the blow. Two more assassins converged from the sides, and Ghe now saw the bloom of flame that was a broom igniting.

A roll gained him the sword and saved him from two more arrows, but a third impaled his thigh and, like the first, began to work some killing magic. It might be that he was already doomed; he could not tell, knowing as little as he did about the priesthood's witchery.

It suddenly struck him as stupid to rely on the sword; his old instincts as a Jik were betraying him. Instead, he reached out and snatched at the nearest man's heartstrands and tore them brutally, gasping as the sweet reward of stolen life pulsed into his veins, replacing what the arrows were taking. Turning, more swiftly now, he blocked a single stroke from his second tormentor, slid his own stolen blade neatly through solar plexus and spleen, bathed in the sudden release of energy as the man's spirit gushed out. Another arrow grazed him, and he ran, burning his newly gained strength, dodging erratically, hoping to outguess the archers. Missiles flew from unlikely places, and he realized that he had not yet seen all of his attackers, but that mattered not, so long as he ran fast and well. Night was his ally, and though new witch-lights bloomed here and there, there were not enough Jiks to be everywhere. The single man who managed to place himself in Ghe's path died without succeeding in loosing his shaft or swinging his sword; Ghe tore his life out from thirty paces away.

I ama blade of silver, a sickle of ice. Ghe sighed, intoning his old assassin's mantra, hurtling across the space between two rooftops. He bounded up and over a ridgebeam, fell uncontrolled down the steep, opposite side as new fire entered his wounds. Fetching up against a parapet, he grasped the shaft protruding from his chest and yanked it out. The arrow squirmed in his hand, and he saw it as a line of darkness, like burning incense. Just holding it stung his hand, and he tossed it away, wondering if he had ever known of such weapons before this day.

He ran on across the rooftops, feet slapping on roof tiles, the black scales of the sleeping night dragon. When he was certain his pursuit was outdistanced, he stopped to withdraw the second dart from his leg; this was easy enough, for the missile had somehow eaten a nearly fist-size hole in his thigh.

He continued to weaken, even with the arrows removed. By the time he reached the wall surrounding the palace, he was dizzy, stumbling. He heard a surprised shout from one of the imperial sentinels, and then he was over, plummeting toward the street. He struck it clumsily, one leg twisting horribly beneath him. Had he been merely Human, he knew he would never have survived the fall at all, but even so, he felt things tearing.

Sobbing in frustration, he struggled to hands and knees and began to crawl.

No! he snarled inwardly, and then “No!” forced from his panting mouth. “No crawling.” He staggered up again and sagged against a wall. There were several shouts from atop the looming darkness of the palace, and so, gritting, he stumbled off down the street.

On the next corner, he met a woman, perhaps sixteen, and he took her life immediately, greedily. Her eyes never even registered shock, glazing over whatever thoughts she had been entertaining, the faint smile on her lips frozen as well. Ghe proceeded across the city like that, feeding as he went, leaving a score of dead behind him. It was like trying to fill a cracked pot; the new strength leaked from him as soon as it entered, and he knew he was leaving a trail of corpses any fool could follow.

Worse, he realized that he didn't know where he was. He had allowed some animal part of him to rule, and that was stupid, stupid, for any animal, no matter how strong, could be hunted and killed by the weakest man, so long as he was clever. The Ahw'en and the Jik were more than clever. He reeled about on the night-dark street, searching for some clue to his whereabouts. His wounds ached, and the life of his latest victim leaked from his yawning mouth. He leaned against a stoop to gather in his breath.

“What is wrong with you?” a small voice asked. Ghe turned in surprise, and his hunger urged him to reach to where the voice was and take sustenance. Ghe fought the impulse, focusing his sharp eyes instead. A child sat on the stoop, gazing at him with large, ebony eyes.

“Hezhi?” he gasped.

“No,” the child answered. “That isn't my name.”

It wasn't she, of course. In fact, it was a boy, and some years younger than Hezhi.

“Boy,” he whispered, “how can you see me in this darkness?”

“I can't see anything” the boy replied. “I've never seen anything. But I can hear you.”

“Oh.” It was difficult, fighting the urge to kill. But he had questions to ask. “Perhaps you can tell me,” he managed. “Where am I?”

“You sound hurt,” the boy said. “You smell funny.”

“Please. Just tell me.”

“This is Southtown, just along Levee Way. The River is behind me. Can't you smell him?”

Ghe closed eyes. He could. Of course he could.

“ I can smell him. I can hear him, too.”

“Hear him?”

“He sings to me. He woke me up tonight.”

“Did he?” Ghe was growing impatient, but something stayed his hand yet.

“And I dreamed. I dreamed of vision. I dreamed I could see.”

“What?”

“Yes,” the boy went on. “I dreamed some beast ate me, but he did not chew me up. He just swallowed me whole, and I could see through his animal eyes.”

Ghe had heard enough. He could no longer concentrate on the boy's words. He reached out hungrily, tore the pulsing strands of light from their fragile moorings. The boy gave a little cry, a shudder, and fell forward into the street.

He did not chew me up, the boy's words seemed to repeat themselves, and Ghe, despite his furious need, paused.

What would happen to these little bundles if he did not devour them? He remembered the Jik he had killed, days ago, how the heartstrands had drifted off, a seed that might become a ghost, but which more likely the River devoured. As he considered this, the boy's life began to tug toward the River, and Ghe followed.

It wasn't long before he could feel the water, his lord. This part of Southtown was mostly abandoned because the marsh had invaded it, and the mud streets were filled with standing water. He sloshed through the quagmire and instantly felt strength returning, hunger abating somewhat. His thoughts sharpened, cut from his brain through the flesh of the beast.

The little ghost was still tugging at its leash, trying to bleed into the River water, but Ghe kept hold, considering. The River had sent him this child; for what purpose? Experimentally, he pulled the knot of spirit into him, but not to the furnace in his heart. Instead he discovered a sort of empty space, one that he had not known existed. The ghost settled in there, tied itself to his own strands and, though it faded, remained. Ghe felt, then, a new sort of strength. Incremental, to be sure, but it was a strength he knew would not fade. The boy's memories were there, too, for him to use. He leafed through them as through a book, the years of darkness in Southtown, a hunger of its own sort. Memories to replace his own lost ones. And he felt the fear, the surprise of death, though it was retreating, replaced by awe and wonder. For what was left of the boy was part of Ghe, and Ghe could see.

Ghe reached the levee and strode over it, found the vastness of his lord beyond, waded in until he was submerged. In the water of the River, he had no need of breath, and as his wounds finally healed, he considered what he had done, what it meant.

What if he had not eaten that first monster, there beneath the Darkness Stair? Would its strength be slave to him now, bound to him as this boy was? How stupid he had been! The River meant for him to bind, not merely to feed. He could be not one, but legion, fill himself with a whole court, and he would be their emperor. That was where his real strength lay. Still he would be cautious, still the priesthood might find some way to kill him. But now he was more than he had been, and he would be much more still. Content for the moment, he rested, knowing his lord would hide him, even from those who followed.

BEFORE dawn he found an abandoned house, nearly consumed by the fringe of the Yellow-Haired Swamp. He watched the dawn flush the waving, waist-high grasses that spread out south for as far as he could see, bordered only by the River on his left and a string of huts trailing its western fringe. Someone had told him—he could not, of course, remember who—that before he was born, this part of the swamp had been a checkered expanse of rice paddies, and in those days Southtown had enjoyed a certain mild prosperity, its inhabitants working the fields and keeping some measure of the crop for themselves. The River had flooded, however, not hugely but enough to silt up the fine network of paddies, and whatever lord owned it had decided the rice wasn't worth his trouble, not with cheaper rice coming up-river by the ton on barges from the Swamp Kingdoms. The swamp had been allowed to have the fields.

The house that now sheltered him reflected that earlier, more affluent year. It had been raised on sturdy cypress posts, and its floor had once been polished, traces of smooth sheen still noticeable in a few places. It had two stories, though now the roof was gone and birds nested in the upper story, whose rafters were gently collapsing in like the ribs of a corpse. The posts had shifted and begun to sink, and the floor sloped at a noticeable angle, bird droppings covering most of the once beautiful planks. Such, in sum, was Southtown.

Even this early in the morning, Ghe could make out a few bobbing heads scaring up the cranes and blackbirds; men and women wading through the muck with gigs and nets, searching for the almost inedible mudfish, salamanders, and eels that lived beneath the grasses. More than one would probably cut his feet or calves on the spines of the mudfish. He could remember an old man he once knew, his foot and finally his whole leg distended, blue and purple, rotting even while he was still alive. The boy he had gathered remembered more, his father dying from such an infection, the unbearable sweet scent of it. Terrible grief.

There was food in the Yellow-Haired Swamp, but there was more danger. Most in Southtown preferred a life of begging or thievery to the dangers of the mud, though a few still cultivated pitiful patches of rice here and there, Wading in the swamp had never been for him, he was certain, though he remembered hunting frogs at its edge, recalled the stink of it more than well enough. As a Jik, he had learned the reason for the stink he had been accustomed to for most of his life: the central sewage ducts from the palace emptied there.

Still, the swamp had a certain beauty, he could see that now, and with the wind blowing at his back, bending the grass away from Nhol, the stench wasn't so bad. He found himself wishing the fishers luck, when before he had only thought them stupid.

He could afford to be generous with such sentiments; he was strong now, his injuries entirely healed. Only the oldest wound, the ridged scar encircling his neck, tingled a bit uncomfortably, and he suspected that he knew the meaning of that. The River was becoming, in his way, impatient. Things must be happening elsewhere, with Hezhi, with her demon swordsman. Now that he understood what kind of strength he had, it was time to put it to use; before the Ahw'en and the Jik found him once more and made a better job of ending his existence.

He fingered the scar and wondered, absently, when it had ceased to repel him, when he had ceased to be at least inwardly horrified at his state. His lack of memories still troubled him, but now he had those of the boy—smell, touch, and taste anyway—to fill in the blank spaces of his childhood. An odd comfort, and he knew he would once have been disgusted by that, as well, but that had been a different, somewhat stupider Ghe.

And what would the smarter, stronger Ghe do today? He would invade the Great Water Temple, though on the surface that hardly testified to intelligence. But it was now or not at all, he felt sure of that.

And so, after watching the sunrise, Ghe rose up from the floor that creaked beneath him, and he thought of how he might best enter the most holy place of the priesthood, the sanctum of those who hunted him so persistently.

The answer gurgled and spluttered no more than a stone's throw from the dilapidated hut: a sewer duct, emptying into the swamp. Wide enough to crawl through, but only just barely. Ghe allowed himself a bit of a smile. Hezhi would have crawled into such a tube, if she thought knowledge lay through it. Could he do any less?

He found the sewer firmly sealed by a heavy iron grate, but for him, at the peak of his power, that was no deterrent. The pins that held it in place were newer—much newer—than the rotten ones that had torn beneath his weight back at “his” apartments, but they protested no longer when he exerted himself. He peered up into the darkness, aware of the almost unbelievable stench but unconcerned by it. Even the old Ghe would have been able to deal with that, and he, the ghoul, cared far less about such temporary discomforts. He paused only a moment before entering, to check his weapons, a reflex so thoroughly ingrained in him from his training as an assassin that it was not a matter of thought. When he realized what he was doing, he chuckled aloud, for, of course, he had no weapons of steel. But still he had the jwed, the way of darting hands, and he had his power. They had nearly failed him back in the palace, but a weapon would have helped him not at all. His hands, his power, his cunning must serve him, or nothing would.

And so he crawled into the tube.

Only the faintest tingle of claustrophobia and a hint of boredom betrayed his Human origins; otherwise he slithered up the tube like a snake. When the sediment on the floor of the duct had settled too thickly, he could not move forward at all, and he would stop to patiently claw at the offending matter until he could squeeze through. When the tube dipped and filled with water for a time, he was just as unconcerned.

How long this took, he could not say and only vaguely cared. After some interminable period, he reached another grate, this one of steel, and though it resisted him a bit longer, it soon opened before him, too, allowing him to enter into a larger way, one that he could stand in, albeit hunched.

He twisted through the labyrinth, the complex overlapping of sewers, flood drains, and, finally, sacred water tubes that he knew Hezhi had mapped. He, however, did not have need of such a map, for in him was the River's strange awareness of flowing, his own expertise with the underways, and even an added tactile sense from the ghost of the boy that was tethered to his heart. The River's unspecified “map” of himself was somehow filtered through the boy's sense of space without sight, and though Ghe would not have needed this added advantage to find the temple, it helped. And when he reached the temple itself, the River in him would be blind, would it not? He wondered, then, how much of his power he would retain, in those dark precincts below the great fountains and the alabaster steps. Perhaps, once again, his head would merely roll from his shoulders, and he would be undone, a corpse made puppet and then corpse again as its strings were severed.

He did not believe that would happen, but no matter. This was the path to serving the River, and it was the way that led, finally, to Hezhi. And he was no mere puppet, not some silly creature on a string.

And that was what he was thinking when his vision blurred, grayed, and doubt renewed itself as, at last, he crouched beneath the Great Water Temple.

XIV Horse God Homesending

HEZHI sat on the stoop, contemplating her drum, as Brother Horse, with a pat meant to be reassuring, rose and went back to his duties. The sun set and stars scattered across the dome of the sky, obscured only by a few tatters of indigo velvet clouds that quickly faded to mist. The Mang kept up their chanting, and the very air seemed to hum with some secret presence.

Tsem went in to get some more water, and when he returned, he said in a worried voice, “Something is happening to him.”

Hezhi turned fearfully back to the yekt, reluctantly stood, and walked inside.

Ngangata watched Perkar, his thick features cast in a worried mold. His forehead—what little there was of it—bunched like columns of caterpillars, his eyebrows their furry sovereigns.

Perkar moaned, then thrashed a bit. He opened his mouth and a few syllables bubbled forth, nothing she understood. Ngangata, however, nodded. “Here,” he answered in Mang, then switched to another language. With his right hand he beckoned her.

To her horror, Perkar's eyes slitted open, and the orbs beneath were glazed a peculiar blue, like those of a fish several days dead.

“Hezhi,” he muttered, barely audible.

“I am here,” she answered. She thought of taking his hand from Ngangata, but the idea repelled her; she knew what was crouched on his chest, what she would touch if she touched him.

“You must… shikena kadakatita.“ His tongue stuttered off into something she didn't understand, as if his River-given command of Nholish were failing. She looked to Ngangata.

“You have to go to the mountain,” Ngangata translated reluctantly.

“Balatata. ” Perkar gasped.

“Yes, I know,” Ngangata assured him.

“What? What does he mean?”

“He is perhaps delirious.”

“Tell me what he said,” Hezhi insisted, and then to Perkar, in Nholish: “Perkar! Tell me.”

Perkar's eyes opened wider, but his voice dropped away.

“He seeks you,” the faint breath from his mouth said. “The River seeks you. You must go to She'leng, the mountain. Look for signs …” His mouth kept working, but even the semblance of sound failed.

“His body seems a bit stronger,” Ngangata remarked after a moment. “But he should be well now. What did Brother Horse tell you?”

“That he has had a witching placed on him.”

“No more?”

“More,” Hezhi admitted, “but I must think on it.”

“Think quickly, then,” the half man urged, “if there is anything you can do.”

Behind her, Tsem growled. “Have a care, creature,” he said, the Mang thudding clumsily, like stones from his mouth.

Ngangata frowned but did not reply. Nor did he relinquish the hold of his gaze on her for several more heartbeats.

“I will think quickly,” she said, and left the tent. Tsem followed her, but not without casting a hard glance back.

“Thank you, Tsem,” she told him once they were outside, “but Ngangata is right. I can't let him die.”

“You could. It might save us a lot of trouble.”

“No, Tsem, you know I can't.”

He grumbled incoherently and shrugged a bit.

“Ngangata is like you, you know.”

“His mother a Giant? I think not.”

“You know what I mean.”

Tsem nodded sadly down at his feet. “Yes, Princess, I know what you mean. You mean we are alike in what we are not, not in what we are”

“Oh.” She hadn't thought of it that way, but that was exactly what she had meant. Each was half Human and half… something else. What they were not was fully Human.

“Tsem, I—” But there was nothing right to say about that now. Instead she threw up her hands in frustration. “Leave me alone for a bit,” she said at last.

“Princess, that would be unwise.”

“Stay near the door. If anything happens, I will cry out.”

She thought, briefly, that he would disobey her, but he did not, and brushed open the doorflap with his enormous palm.

Alone on the stoop, she once more contemplated the drum.

It seemed alive; larger drums had begun thundering, out where the Mang were holding their ceremony, and the small hand drum shivered in sympathy with its brother instruments.

She remembered Perkar, the rides they had taken together, the brightening in his eyes when he spoke of his homeland. She recalled only a few days before, when he had shown her the wild cattle, the sudden intense affection that had seized her. How could she let some black creature eat all of that, if she had the choice? Perkar said he had done terrible things—and she believed him. But she had also done terrible things. And some feeling for Perkar rested in her, she knew that now, for it had glowed hot with pain when he left her to go to see the Stream Goddess, and it lay chill in her now like a frozen bone. She had denied that it was love—and it wasn't, not the sort of love that made you want to marry someone—but it was a fragile thing, a part of her that existed only because she knew him. And when it was not hot or chill, it was warm and pleasant. Not comfortable, but more like the itchy moment before laughing or crying with joy.

And, even all of that aside, Perkar knew something, something important about her.

So there was no question of letting him die; she must admit that now to herself as she had to Tsem earlier. There were few paths open to her, and that admission closed all but one for now.

Tomorrow she would ask Brother Horse to instruct her. She did not really trust him, not anymore, and the other Mang were clearly less trustworthy even than he. Their treatment of Perkar, even after months of companionship, testified to where strangers stood among these people.

But Perkar was dying and the River was after her. Perkar had said so, said that she must go to She'leng. She'leng, the mythical mountain from which he issued. If the River sought her, why should she fly to his very head? It made no sense to her, but Perkar had spoken to one of his gods, one that had aided their escape from Nhol, one who seemed inclined to help them. But what did it mean, and why? “Look for signs,” Perkar had whispered, but she didn't know what that meant, either. Perhaps none of it meant anything, as sick as he was, but she had to know, had to do something. Once again she was being tossed about by forces she did not understand, and that she could not tolerate. She needed information; she needed power. All of that lay in the little drum.

“How fares your friend?” a quiet voice asked, interrupting her thoughts. She turned, startled.

It was the strange Mang, Moss, the one who had found her in the desert. He had come up, apparently, from behind the yekt. Sneaking up on her? She prepared to call for Tsem.

“I mean you no harm,” the young man assured her quietly. “Really. I only meant to inquire after the stranger.”

“What business is that of yours? He is not kin to you.” She emphasized the word in a sudden disgust for the whole concept. Her “kin” back in Nhol had never cared for her; for her worth as a bride perhaps, but never for Hezhi. They would have placed her below the Darkness Stair and forgotten her. Family were people who never earned your respect or love but demanded it nevertheless. These Mang took that to such a ridiculous extreme she wanted to shout with laughter and disdain.

Moss did not flinch from her words or her rude, direct gaze. He only bowed slightly. “That is true, and to be honest, I will neither be happy nor sad if he dies. I will only be disappointed that the hospitality of this camp was violated.”

“That means nothing to me. You Mang make much of your laws and traditions, but like everyone else in the world, you compromise them the moment they seem encumbering.”

“Some do, that is true, when the danger seems great enough, when temper flares. That is not to say we ever discount our ways.”

“Words,” Hezhi scoffed. “What do you want of me?”

Moss' face held nothing but concern, but Hezhi had seen that before, on the face of another young and handsome man, and she would not be fooled twice in the same lifetime in the same way.

“I wanted only to explain.”

“Why do you owe me any explanation?”

“I do not,” Moss replied, and for the barest flicker his green-tinted eyes lit with some powerful emotion, then became carefully neutral. He was not, Hezhi reminded herself, more than two or three years older than she was herself.

“I do not,” he repeated, “and yet I want to speak to you.”

“Speak, then, but don't bother to try to fool me with any false concern. It only makes me angry.”

“Very well,” he said. He glanced back toward the western quarter of the camp; the drums were beating frantically as the fire threw new stars at the night sky.

“Soon the Horse God goes home. That you should see, if you care to understand my people.”

“I don't care to understand them,” Hezhi replied. “Get to your point.”

Moss frowned, showing irritation for the first time. “I will. You know of the war between my people and those of your friend?”

“I know of it. It was you who brought the news, remember?”

He nodded. “Just so. But this war is more than a war between mortals, Lady of Nhol. It is a war of gods, unlike anything the world has seen in several ages. Among my people, there are visionaries, shamans who see things in the future, who barter and truck in the world of Dream, and they have seen many ill things coming with this war.”

She noticed then that his gaze had fastened upon her drum, and she deliberately placed it on the other side of her. “Go on,” she said.

“It is only this,” Moss said, chewing his lower lip for a moment. “There can be war, and many men and horses and perhaps even gods will die. They are already dying, you know. I don't know if you understand what that means.”

“I have seen men die,” Hezhi told him. “I know death.”

“These are my kinsmen dying,” Moss said.

“For whom I care exactly as much as they care for me, for Perkar,” she retorted.

Moss breathed deeply. “You wish to anger me, but my people have charged me with something to say, and I will say it. You have been seen, Hezhi, in dream. A great man has seen you, a powerful gaan who would avert the worst of this war, bring peace. But what he has seen is that only you can bring this peace.”

“Me?” Hezhi narrowed her eyes to slits.

Moss nodded. “You. That is what was seen. You are the only hope for peace, and the Cattle-Man, Perkar, is the bringer of death. You must go from him, come with me. I can take you to the gaan and together we can stop all of this. If you remain by the side of this man—” He gestured at the yekt. “—then it will be as a rain of fire, sweeping over the land and burning all before it.”

“Me? Bring peace? How?”

“I know not. I have only been told this, but the one who told me is beyond trust and deceit. It is the truth, I promise you.”

“And of course I believe you,” Hezhi replied. She wanted to, of course. She had been the cause of so many deaths that the image of her as a peace-bringer was like a beautiful flower in a wasteland. She held on to that image wistfully but knew it had to be false. Must be false.

“How dare you?” she said slowly. “How dare you? For twelve years no one cared what happened to me, whether I was happy or sad, whether I lived or died. Now the whole world seems to want me, to use me like some workman's tool. I gave up the few things I loved to escape that, but I loved those things dearly. Do you understand me? I fled my home to live with you stinking barbarians to escape. I have given everything I'm going to give, do you hear me? How dare you say this to me?“ She was trembling, and her voice had risen to a shriek. Words were spilling from her mouth without any consent from her, but she did not care. The fierceness in her heart might have been panic or fury or both, it was impossible to tell, as tightly bound up and volatile as it was. “Get away from me, you hear me? If I had any of the power you people think, do you honestly believe I would help you? I would strike you down, burn you to blackened bones, scatter your ashes from here to the ends of the earth!”

She wanted to go on then but finally caught herself, panting, reason overtaking anger. But she wanted to hurt Moss, sear that mild expression from his face, and she arrowed her remaining anger at him, as she had done in Nhol. There men had fallen, twitching and dying. Here Moss merely smiled a bit sadly.

“I'm sorry to have upset you. I thought you would be honored to save two peoples and perhaps the world itself from so much pain and suffering. I suppose I have misjudged you.”

“Your gods have misjudged me,” Hezhi snapped. ”The very universe has misjudged me. I only want to be left alone.”

“That is not your fate,” Moss answered placidly.

“I will determine my fate,” Hezhi said, over the rising furor of the drums.

Moss stepped back, his condescending little smile still in place. “I must go,” he said. “The ceremony nears completion.”

“I have told you to go,” Hezhi retorted.

“Just so. But I would speak of this later, when you have thought upon it.”

“I have thought upon it,” she said. “I have thought upon it all that I will.”

Moss shrugged, bowed, and backed away for a few paces before turning back to the fire. Hezhi watched him go, aware that her entire body was trembling uncontrollably. She heaved in several deep breaths, attempting to steady herself. After a moment she glanced around her.

The yekt flap bulged slightly outward.

“It's okay, Tsem, he's gone,” she said, and the flap relaxed.

“And thank you, Tsem,” she finished. He, at least, was always there for her, because he loved her, and not for some mysterious thing she might be able to do.

She took the drum back up and stared at it, her fingers still trembling. She looked out toward the fire, where the Horse God was going home.

“Tsem, come on out here,” she called back into the yekt.

Tsem's huge head emerged immediately. “Yes, Princess?”

“Do you think that the roof of this yekt will bear our weight?”

He considered that. “I have seen many people sitting on them before. You weigh nothing, and I weigh as much as three men, but I think they can bear more weight than that.”

Hezhi nodded, remembering the thick beams that held up the roofs.

“Help me up onto the roof, then,” she said. “I want to watch this.”

“As you command, O Princess,” Tsem said, “if you will explain your conversation with that barbarian to me. I could not follow all of it.”

“I will explain, I promise,” she said. “But later.”

Tsem nodded and came outside. Together they walked around to the back of the house, where the outside beams formed a rough ladder. Tsem boosted her up and then followed, more laboriously. Hezhi expected the roof to at least creak beneath the half Giant's weight, but it held firm without protest.

She stood and peered out toward the assembled Mang.

She could indeed see better. The huge bonfire lit an encircling inner ring of excited faces, more dimly the next, until the crowd became a jumble of shadows and then darkness. The space cleared about the fire was perhaps twelve or thirteen paces in any direction. Seven drummers hammered away on drums from the size of her own to one monstrous instrument that stood as tall as the man striking it; it seemed, as well, that everyone in the crowd had some kind of noisemaker, a rattle, a string of bells, something. The drums, however, washed over these and engulfed them with thunder.

In the circle, masked dancers capered, wearing hoods or carved wooden masks that reminded her eerily of the masks the priests had worn when they came to test her. She shivered a bit, glad that they were distant from her. One dancer stood out, a madly prancing figure in bright colors who seemed to be making fun of the other dancers, like a clown or jester in her father's court. He wore a gaudy green shirt of Nholish satin, pantaloon breeks of some bright red cloth. His mask bore a ridiculous grin puckered out almost into a beak, and rather than hair the mask was furnished with a ruff of black feathers. The oddest thing about this dancer was his feet, which Hezhi could just make out; he wore shoes that somehow created the precise illusion that he danced upon a bird's three-clawed feet.

The Horse God stood nearby, and in Hezhi's vision she shimmered, a striking mare of the rare sort the Mang named w'uzdas, the gray of a thunderstorm streaked with jagged white bolts of lightning. Bedecked in fine harness, silver and gold bells, plumes of feather and long strips of ermine woven into her tail, she coursed in and among the dancers proudly but nervously, shying from the crowd.

“Barbaric,” Tsem muttered.

Hezhi agreed but thought that there was a strange beauty to the spectacle, as well.

The capering clown suddenly leapt at the mare, landed astride her, and in an instant she arched her spine, pawing at the sky with silver-shod front hooves and then reversing, planting front feet solidly and bucking her rump high into the air. The momentary rider was pitched head over heels, struck the ground, and rolled smoothly to his feet, to the appreciative roar of the crowd. The mare, furious, began to snap and paw at the other dancers and the crowd; she tore into one part of the circle, and Hezhi saw at least one person fall beneath the flashing hooves before the clown distracted her by swatting her rump. She turned to pursue him but stopped, puzzled by all of the sound and motion.

Now four women with spears emerged from the crowd, and Hezhi felt her throat tighten; but they did not move toward the mare, instead joining in the dance.

Hezhi glanced at Tsem, noticed that he was rapt, riveted by the spectacle. For no reason she could explain, she removed her own drum from its case. In watching the ceremony, in not thinking, she had completed her decision. From her skinning kit, a little leather purse dangling at her side, she removed a bone awl.

The dancing became more furious, the thrumming of the drums joining into a kind of breathless rushing with no space between their beats. Hezhi gripped the awl in her right hand and pressed it to her finger, felt the sharp point and tried to force it forward.

It hurt, and the thought of drawing her own blood suddenly sickened her; she bit her lip in frustration, wishing she had more courage. Why can yt I do it? She pressed a bit harder, still not hard enough to draw blood.

Then the night seemed to rupture; the drums and beaters crashed with a terrible furor and then died away; Hezhi gasped and started in surprise, pricking the bone awl into her finger. Her gasp turned into a little hiss of pain, as, in the same instant, the women plunged their spears into the mare.

The horse shrieked, screamed in a thoroughly inhuman and yet horribly Human way. She seemed almost to fly forward and flail at one of her attackers, catching one of the women in the shoulder with a sharp hoof, and Human blood joined the spectacle. The other spearwomen scrambled away, and the crowd was hushed as the mare started after one of them, stumbled, blood pouring from four wounds, three of the spears remaining in her. Her front legs buckled and she sank as if bowing, worked for a moment to regain all four feet, and then, as if suddenly resigned, slumped to the dark earth, rolling onto one side, flank heaving.

The dancers ran to her. One took the dying beast's head in her lap, another laid one hand on the mare's breast and stretched the other high. Hezhi watched, her own pricked finger forgotten.

The kneeling woman began moving her raised hand, beating a slow rhythm in the firelight. Tentatively the smallest drum began taking up that beat, and then the others joined, a slow, faltering rhythm, throoom, throoom, throoom, throoom.

“It's her heartbeat!” Hezhi told Tsem, and he but nodded. In her hand, Hezhi's drum was shivering again, shaken by the very air. People began emerging from the crowd, laying presents about the dying horse, gifts of food, incense, beer and fermented mare's milk, jewelry. Brother Horse had told Hezhi of this part; each Mang was whispering prayers for the Horse God to take home, back to the mountain. The mountain? She'leng!

Hezhi was dizzied by the sudden revelation. The River and the greatest gods of the Mang issued from the same place! It had to be true. There could be only one such place, one such mountain.

The drumbeat slowed, faltered under the direction of the woman pressing near the mare's heart. A final beat shuddered into the night, and then profound silence. Hezhi took in a quivering breath, wishing she understood. The pain in her finger reminded her of what she had done, and she glanced down. She dully realized that several drops of her blood had found their way onto the rawhide drumhead.

Well, that is done, she thought. Perhaps doing it at such an auspicious moment would lend her more power later, though she doubted it.

The drums boomed, shivered the earth, and Hezhi looked up, startled. They struck again and again, irregular at first, then gaining speed. Hezhi stared wildly, not understanding, and a peculiar panic seized her. She felt the hammering of her own heart, wildly fast, out of time with the increasing frequency of the percussion. If the drums had been the mare's dying heartbeats, then what was this? The quickening of the god, the ghost, the spirit?

And, all of a sudden, the drumming matched her own thudding heartbeat, and the little instrument in her hand suddenly came alive, not merely humming in harmony with the ceremony but awake, speaking in the same tones as her heartbeat as if actually drummed by the blood in her veins. The itch of her scale became a searing, livid pain and Hezhi turned into fire, a cyclone. The drum opened up a doorway into utter nothingness. Tsem was reaching for her, mouth agape, but he seemed to move slowly, so very slowly, as, like a storm seeking a vacuum to fill, she rushed through the doorway, screaming.

XV Beneath the Temple

THE sudden weakness did not pass, but neither did it worsen, and Ghe smiled grimly. He had been reborn to go where the River could not, and it seemed that this held true, even here, in the heart of his impotency. His vision remained viable, but only just so, and he relied more heavily than ever on the ghost of the dead boy, straining for sound, the touch of air moving on his skin—the senses of the blind.

The tunnel he traveled in debouched into a large chamber, devoid of furnishings but thrumming faintly, faintly. Ghe knew that he must be feeling the water being drawn up the great central well of the temple, further evidence that he approached his destination. By feel and faint sight he found a passageway, cemented shut with bricks. Though he was weak, still he was not as weak as a mere Human Being, and the ancient bricks were rotten, returning to the mud from which they were formed. Wishing now that he had at least a blade or bar of metal, he set to work pushing, tearing, prizing them apart. When the first hole appeared, an appalling stateness breathed through the aperture; whatever space he was digging into was sealed, as well.

He widened the hole enough to crawl through and slithered in, lubricated by the coating of muck on his body. He lowered himself gently to the stone floor, having already made more sound than he wished, wondering what wards this place held, if he had already triggered some alarm.

He had dug into a hall, its floor marbled, but with a low, vaulted roof. He could stand upright in it, but reaching fingers could touch the ceiling. The hall was wide, however, twenty paces or more, and the walls were stuccoed with faint images. He approached and tried to make them out, but his vision was too dim, his sense of color gone entirely. Shrugging, he passed on, removing his shoes, for they squeaked and squished with the moisture in them. The stone beneath his toes was smooth, cool, and still he could feel the hum of rushing water somewhere ahead.

The hall soon widened and deepened, the floor sloping away from him, and he saw that he was entering a chamber filled with water; at least its paths were, for what he saw resembled a city of canals, each building isolated from the others by a trail of water less than a full step wide. These miniature buildings were also of stone—most seemed to be composed of marble, granite, or striated sandstone. Ghe had learned each of these and their properties as a Jik, that he might know how each might be climbed, which were easiest to drive spikes into, and so forth. Puzzled, he moved on, until his toes encountered the still water, and then a sudden tingle rushed up his leg, much like what he felt bathing in the River, but somehow stronger, more forceful. He bent and touched the surface, and his fingers came away dry.

Smokewater, he thought. The Ghost of the River.

He recalled the hall where he had been reborn, the sunken place where the Blessed were placed. The smokewater contained them there, but it had not contained him, only given him puissance. He felt the raw power thicken in him as he waded into the dry fluid, but his vision improved only a fraction. The River's power was here but not his sentience.

If smokewater was a prison for the Blessed, then what was imprisoned here! But he believed he knew, both from memory and from hints in the Codex Obsidian. He approached one of the islanded structures and took the handle of its brass door.

The door opened easily, never protesting, and Ghe peered inside.

A man rested in the small space, or, at least, what remained of one. His bones lay jutting through rotten finery, a rusted iron scepter ringed by the disarticulated finger joints that had once held it. Ghe stared at the remains curiously. What king was this? Hezhi might know, would probably be able to read the ancient glyphs that patterned the tomb, recount some of the man's deeds. None of this really mattered to him, however, and with a small bow, he stepped back to close the door.

The bones shivered, blurred, and he realized suddenly that a nearly invisible shroud lay over the skeleton, a translucent film. This was now oscillating, wavering like the air above a stove or a fire. A tendril reached out tentatively to touch him, and he let it, wondering what it would do. A thin pain, a burning, started on his flesh where it touched him, and the shroud suddenly scintillated, glowed, tremors of color running through it. The bones themselves remained still.

He stepped farther back, brushing away the mist that touched him, and when that did not work, he disengaged it with his power. He could now see the simply knotted heartstrings, glowing above the dead king, the sort he had come to associate with ghosts. It had been clear, drained, and yet now with just a hint of his own power, it lived faintly.

These are not tombs for their bodies, he understood suddenly, but for their ghosts.

To trap them. To keep them from wandering or returning to their source. If the River could give him such power, what might it not do with a body and soul made to contain his will, the body of an emperor? This was the priesthood's way of making certain that such would never occur. The River's anger at that was distant from him, and so he did not fly into a rage as he had in the library. But what he saw confirmed his growing certainty that the priesthood worked against the River, not for him, and that they had been doing so for a very long time.

Staring at the fading ghost, it occurred to him that it could be tethered to him, just as the boy was. He could take the knowledge of an ancient king with him on this quest, use it to read the old hand and thus the enigmatic inscriptions all around him. Indeed, perhaps the solutions to all of the mysteries he sought to unravel lay here, in these tombs. But a strong instinct argued against that. The smokewater had so weakened these souls that to bring one to full sentience might drain him of power. Its touch had been so supremely hungry—what if if became the master of his body? A runner could usually gauge how far he could run, a jumper how far he could jump, and the same sense of ability made Ghe suspect that devouring the ghosts of these ancient Waterborn might be more than he was presently capable of.

So he moved on, brushing the tombs of kings with his hands, wading thigh-deep in water that did not dampen him. All here were dead: men, ghosts, River. As he advanced, he wondered what had brought him to this place. Understanding, surely, but understanding of what? What exactly did he seek? He hoped that the answer would be evident when he found it, that it did not lie in one of the many tombs. If it did, how would he discover it, by searching each and every one?

Perhaps he sought the priestly library, but he was certain most of those books were in hands he could not decipher easily or quickly. Of course, Ghan could, if he took one away. But how would he even know which one to take? In the end, he might have to gamble with a dead king anyway.

Perhaps he sought something more basic than books. The River wanted Hezhi back, but more, he wanted free of his shackles. Was there some way for him to overthrow the temple itself, compromise its power? That would be worth seeking, if he only knew what that might be, what valve he might adjust. It seemed unlikely that such a thing existed; more probably the entire structuration of the temple was responsible for its function; the bits of architecture he had read in preparing to converse with Hezhi had suggested as much. Certainly the fountain was involved, the flow of water up and into the temple, cascading down its stepped façade. And the Codex had suggested that the temple was in some way like She'leng, whence the River flowed. No, this was all too complicated for him. Still, he had to know what was here. Perhaps the River could sort some sense into it when he left the stultifying effects of the temple.

The hall of the dead ended at last, steep steps rising from the smokewater, and he set foot to their treads, padding upward carefully. He could hear the water now, not merely feel it and, at last, a few moments later, see it as he emerged into a grand hall, lit by a dim phosphorescence. As feeble as the light was, however, the walls and high ceiling picked up every bit of it and turned it back to his eye; for every surface of the room was mirrored with cut glass. The mere presence of his form awoke a million eyes that fluttered and blinked, his reflection passing through each facet.

And of course, the water. It rushed in a solid column from floor to ceiling, and he knew that it continued up through the many tiers of the temple until at last it emerged from its summit and streamed down the four sides like the water at the four corners of the world. He stared awestruck, despite himself. It had the appearance of a column of jet and silver; there was no spray, no spume; each drop went where directed, up and farther up still, like blood pumping through an artery. If he could sever such an artery—

“Who is this?” came a voice, but Ghe could not see from what throat it issued; he knotted his muscles, prepared to spring in any direction, but a long moment passed and still he saw nothing, scanning what he could see of the room again and again. It was a high voice, the voice of a priest, certainly. Slowly, very cautiously, Ghe sidestepped to his left, moving around the room's fountain core, until he saw the speaker at last. It was a boy, perhaps thirteen, perhaps younger or older by a year. He wore a black robe and his head was shaven. In his hand, limply, he held a golden chain, and a shadow was bunched at the end of it, a quivering murkiness.

“Who is this?” the boy repeated. Ghe pinched his mouth, wondering what to do: strike instantly or stay his hand, see what he might learn? Reluctantly he decided on the latter. It would give him a chance to close the intervening space, and surely there was more here than it seemed. He trod carefully, wary about placing his weight without first testing for a pit or some other trap; he had heard stories of the many ways in which the priesthood guarded its treasures. The Jik would plan such traps, and when it came to death, the Jik were inventive.

“I am no one,” Ghe replied softly. “Just a mouse scurrying in these corners. I mean no harm.”

The boy looked amused. He settled down on the edge of the dais on which he stood. Ghe could see more clearly now, could make out that the dais held all manner of objects: weapons, books, a rack of painted skulls, chests and boxes. The light was coming from there, as well; a wrought-iron lantern that burned quite dimly, with no flickering, as if its glow did not issue from any flame. Perhaps, like everything here, it was only the ghost of flame.

“Sit, be comfortable,” the boy enjoined. “I rarely have anyone to speak to, and thou must have questions, if thou comest here.”

“I have questions,” Ghe acknowledged. “But I would not bother you with them.”

“Thou bother me not at all,” the boy answered, as Ghe peered more intently at what crouched, leashed, at the boy's feet. The dark shape confounded him, refused to resolve into any recognizable form. The boy's accent was more than old-fashioned; it was nearly another language, and Ghe had to concentrate intently to understand him. He moved closer, since he seemed to have been invited to.

When he was ten paces away, the boy waved him back. “It would be well if thou approached no closer,” he said. “Mine dog is known to bite.”

Ghe nodded to show that he understood, but he did not sit, as instructed, preferring to stand so that he might quickly respond to a threat, if need be.

“Thou came in through the crypts,” the boy observed. “I have the right of it, have I not?”

Ghe saw no point in denying this and so nodded.

“Here, give me something to call thee. It need not be thy name.”

“You may call me Yen,” Ghe answered, wondering too late if the boy might not know of that identity.

“Art thou unsighted, Yen? I sense a blindness about thee.”

“I am blind.” It dawned upon Ghe that the boy himself was without sight, his pearly orbs never focusing on anything. If the boy thought him blind—perhaps sensing his ghostly thrall—then why argue?

“It seemed that it should be so. They say that only the blind can come here.”

“Why is that?” Ghe asked.

“My father made it so,” the young man replied, smiling.

“Your father, the River?”

The boy chortled. “Thou does not know where thee beest? No, my father is not the River. Not he.”

“Do you guard this place?”

“Thou lack persistence,” the boy said. “Thou wouldst know of my father.”

“I have no wish to be rude.”

“Trespassing is always rude, thou, but mind that not. I am the keeper of this place, and its guardian in that sense.”

“What do you guard?” Ghe asked, eyeing the treasure behind the boy but playing his role as a blind man.

“Baubles, bangles. Mostly Ms place, as I said.”

“But who do you guard it from?”

“Thee, I suppose.”

“I don't want anything here,” Ghe lied.

“No, I suppose thou merely took a wrong turning. It is a common mistake, and many make it,” the boy mocked.

“I was curious, nothing more.”

“Come,” the boy said, a bit of anger creeping into his voice. “Tell me why thou art here. It matters not what thou sayest, save that I am bored and wish to speak with someone.”

It matters not what thou sayest. Ghe caught the threat in that. Was this boy merely delaying him, as more priests came? But he had heard no alarm, felt no odd play of power. Though it was like peering through a mist, he had occasional glimpses of the guardian's heartstrands, and they looked strong and strange, and he seemed confident, as if understanding that he needed no aid. And then there was the shadow at his feet, pulsing with malevolent force. If he could feed on them, or better, capture them, what might he not learn?

“Very well,” he relented. “I have come seeking the secret of the temple, I suppose. Seeking how it holds the River senseless here.”

“And dost thou have thine answer now?”

“No. This place was mentioned in a book that was read to me, but now that I have reached it, I know no more than I did.”

“Fortunate that thou hast encountered me, then. I know this place well.”

Ghe hesitated barely an instant. “The book speaks of a mountain far away.”

“She'leng, the source of the Changeling.”

“Changeling?”

“Another name for the River. Yes, there is such a mountain, which thou namest She'leng. And what dost thou think that has to do with this place?”

“It was built to resemble that mountain,” Ghe answered, once again wondering at the antiquity of the boy's speech. No priest he knew spoke in such a manner, save in incantations, and never did it flow so smoothly from their lips.

“Very good. And thou wouldst know why?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Imagine,” the boy said, clasping one knee between his hands, leaning back and staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, “Imagine … Wert thou ever sighted? But of course thou wert; I can sense it. Imagine then, in thy sighted days, standing before a mirror. Imagine now, another mirror behind thee, just precisely behind thee. What is it thou seest?”

“Myself, I suppose, reflected into infinity.”

“Indeed. Now suppose thou art stupid, like a blue jay or some other noisy bird. Hast thou ever seen them fly against glass, accosting their own reflection?”

“No, but I can imagine it.”

“A truly stupid bird might batter itself into senselessness against a mirror. Caught between two, it would be a virtual certainty.”

“You say that the River is such a stupid bird? That the mountain and this temple are like mirrors, facing one another?”

“Well, I only offer a little story. The truth is much more complicated, I suppose. The River flows on past this temple, is aware beyond it. But in a sense, a part of him is fooled into thinking this place is his point of origination, his womb, and that—though he knows it not—is what he truly seeks: return to his ancient home. He cannot see this temple because he confuses it with the mountain, and for him the distance between is somewhat meaningless.”

Ghe remembered his dream, the dream of completeness long ago, when the River was an endless circle, content. He was aware that he sought his ancient state but thought to reachieve it by growing larger. But if part of him were fooled into a dream of contentment…

“So he feels the water rushing through the temple—”

“And believes that it is himself, flowing out from his source. It confuses him, but the nature of the wyrd is that he does not know he is confused.”

Ghe nodded his head. “That may be so. But there is more.”

“Oh, certainly. A thousand ancient songs—lullabies, if thou wilt—are pooled here, and over time such songs lie upon one another and gather strength. A thousand blocks of incense are burned, and priests are made so that the River cannot see them, either. But those things are just ornament, paint, gilding. I have given thee the very essence.”

“And this was all done by the Ebon Priest?”

The boy laughed. “The Ebon Priest is actually quite lazy, but he knows how to set others at a task. Thou wilt not see him here in the midst of this drudgery he created for us all. I suppose he laid out the plan but left others to refine the details. What thou seest is more my creation than his, in many ways.”

Ghe narrowed his eyes. Was this man lying? He seemed only a boy, and yet Ghe already knew better than that.

“You are the Ebon Priest's son?”

“His bastard, yes. Thou—you knew that.”

“I do now, I suppose. Then you have been here for some time.”

“You have an engaging talent for understatement.”

As they had been speaking, the boy's strange speech had gradually altered, until now he spoke with Ghe's own soft dialect. That was somehow much more unnerving than hearing him speak in the ancient, incantive tongue.

“You have been here since the First Dynasty?”

The boy shrugged. “Now and then I sleep. I was sleeping when you arrived, but my pet, here, awakened me.” He tugged playfully on the golden leash, and the darkness quivered a bit.

Ghe did not ask about the pet, remembering that he was supposed to be unsighted, nor did he ask about the books, the weapons, the skulls.

“Are those all of your questions?”

“I don't know what else to ask.”

“Perhaps you would prefer to speak to someone else?”

“Someone else?”

“Why, yes. One of my companions, perhaps.”

Ghe studied the room carefully. He saw no “companions” save for the “pet”—whatever it was.

“I listen for the Sound of Falling Water,” he said, the standard acceptance of a master's wisdom by the pupil. He realized, even before the boy had uttered his short, barking laugh, how ludicrous the phrase now seemed.

“Well, then, who shall we speak to?” The boy stood and walked over to the skulls, rubbed their smooth craniums with his palms.

“Su'ta'znata? Nungeznata? No! You would want to speak to Lengnata. Here.” He lifted up one of the skulls and brought it over, sat with it on his lap.

“There, Lengnata. Speak to your loyal subject Yen.”

The boy was certainly mad, Ghe thought. Quite mad indeed.

“Thou mockest me,” Ghe heard himself say suddenly, harshly. He clutched at his throat. “Leave me to sleep. I have no subjects, nor ever did I.” He heard himself go on. His voice, speaking from his throat, without his command.

“No! Stop! Make it stop!” Ghe cried, this time of his own volition. He could feel nothing, no intruding presence. It was not as if someone were forcing him to speak; it just… happened.

The boy tittered, as Ghe answered himself. “Slay him, if thou canst, and if not, escape from here. If thou ever wert a subject of the Chakunge…” Ghe concentrated furiously, trying to make it stop, but it would not; the words kept vomiting from his mouth. He barely noticed how, at the mention of the Chakunge, the boy nearly doubled over in laughter.

Stop, stop, Ghe thought, as Lengnata muttered on madly in Ghe's voice. Desperately he reached out with the tendril of his power, searching for a way to make the babbling cease, to kill the source of the utterances. He felt into the skull and found it there, the ghost knot, and frantically seized it, closed the fist of his mind on it, and squeezed. The babbling suddenly did cease then, and almost instinctively Ghe pulled the ghost of Lengnata into himself and tethered it with the bünd boy. It was a weak, starved creature, easier to manage than he had guessed.

He realized suddenly that his knees must have given up holding him; he was on his hands and knees facing the floor, shuddering heavily.

“Give that back, ” the boy said slowly, deliberately. He no longer seemed amused at all.

“No,” Ghe managed. “No, I don't think I will.” And he struck like a snake, reached for the bunched strings of the guardian's life.

Fire hollowed Ghe out, burst from his eyes and mouth, and, as if physically struck, his body arched back and slammed to the stone floor, writhing. He kicked away madly, aware of his own shrieking but unable to do anything to stop it. A small part of his mind remained intact, trying to ride the crest of the agony, understand what had happened to him. He had reached out toward the boy and encountered something, a venom that struck up through him like a sword. He waited for the next blow, the one that would finish him, but something stayed it. Surely not him, though he felt a hard kernel of power in him, still untouched. He kept that near as, trembling, he turned back to the boy.

The boy had a nasty grin on his face. His “pet” had risen up, and Ghe saw that it now wore Human form; a tall, striking man with enormous, fishlike eyes, a nose almost beaklike in its angularity. He wore armor made of some gigantic crustacean, and he carried an aquamarine blade. Within his bulging eyes were empty hollows in which danced darkness and white sparks. His hair hung long, jet, lank, bound by the golden circlet of a king.

“Bow down, Yen,” the boy spat. “Rise, but only to your knees so that thy emperor may receive you.”

Ghe still felt on fire, but the pain seemed to have been mostly illusion, or at least nonphysical. It had been as if his eyes and flesh actually melted, but he was still whole …

What was the guardian talking about? The apparition whose chain he held was not the emperor; he had seen the August One many times. No, this was some ghost, or demon.

“I see you do not recognize him, the First Emperor, the Riverson.”

Ghe parted his lips to retort but could not find the air. It couldn't be, he knew. Couldn't be not a Chakunge but the Chakunge. If such were true, the power of this boy must be hideous … But now he could see the boy's power revealed, the fire and lightning raging in his heart, a cyclone of light. What had he done, what had he wakened?

“Now. Give me back what you took.”

I return to death regardless, Ghe understood. And so he ran, striking out with the force in him rather than reaching to take.

Four steps he flew and felt his blow deflected, drained away, but then he was leaping, hurtling through the air. The boy shrieked in fury when he saw Ghe's target, and Ghe felt a thousand hot needles of brass piercing his spine. The ghost of the Chakunge moved as quickly as a dark lightning crackling across the floor, chips spalling from the stone where his feet touched. In the same instant Ghe struck the roaring column of water and it struck him, a giant's fist with no mercy or care. Light and thought vanished into thunder and then void.

XVI Gaan

THE sound of drums faded, replaced by an enveloping silence that included not even her heartbeat. Hezhi had a sense of rushing, but there was no confirming wind on her face. The terrible fear that gripped her faded, however, receding like the drums and her own heartbeat, and with some startlement she understood that her eyes were shut tightly. She opened them.

Something was hurtling by beneath her, a broad, endless something that could only be landscape, seen from high in the air. It was a dark landscape, the bunched masses of hills indigo, the plains mauve, wriggling strips of ebony that must be streams or rivers. The brightest color surrounded her; she was wreathed in clouds of sparks, exactly like the sky-seeking flashes from the bonfire, and with a shock she realized that the sparks were not merely following her but emitting from her; her body glowed like a red-hot brand.

What have I become? she wondered. But she still felt like herself.

Ahead of her, matching the pace of her flight, was a second brand, trailing flame like the comets she had read of, nearly white at its center, nimbused in orange and yellow, the faintest tail of the torch swirling away into turquoise, jade, and at last, violet. It was more than merely astonishing but beautiful, and she found that while her fear seemed to have been cut from her like a lock of hair, her wonder had not.

What had happened? She struggled to understand as her speed increased, the weird landscape sheeting beneath like an inconstantly choppy sea.

She had passed through the drum, the bun. She must be in that otherworld Brother Horse described, and she realized that she had never believed him, despite her experience with things arcane. Ghosts and the power of the River made sense to her; this land of gods and demons and worlds within worlds did not, and deep down she had always thought it to be some Mang superstition. That assumption had led her to be incautious, to meddle with something she understood not at all. It could be that she was dead, she thought. She must resemble a ghost quite strongly, a ghost such as the one that had attacked her in the Hall of Moments. Had her body been stripped from her like the peel of a fruit? Was Tsem even now holding her lifeless corpse, weeping?

She turned back, attempting to see more of her “body,” but only flame was revealed to her, a coruscating skirt billowing into nothingness.

If she were a ghost, then what flew ahead of her? But she thought she knew that, too. It must be the spirit of the horse, running back to its mother, the Horse Goddess. It was certainly dead, and that led Hezhi to suspect that she was, as well.

The land below grew rougher, and her flight swooped and climbed to follow the rising contours of it. She wondered, vaguely, if there was any way to control her flight, but after a certain amount of experimentation—willing herself to turn, waving her ethereal arms—she gave up. It was as if she were borne along on a swift stream, perhaps one that the Mang ritual had created to send the horse home. She was going farther and farther from her drum, then, which was probably her only way back to the world of the living—if that world even existed for her now.

Ahead, something bright shone, a brilliant eye with lids of rainbow arcing about it. It grew larger and nearer with immeasurable rapidity. She felt certain that this was their destination, for the shooting star ahead of her turned subtly to intersect it, weaving through the sawtooth silhouettes of mountain peaks, and she followed. The whiteness grew, expanded to fill the horizon. She had a sense of enormity, of a mountain larger than any mountain in the world and a tree with branches in the nether stars before the light enveloped her, and, shuddering, she came to a halt.

SHE first became aware of voices, muttering in a tongue she did not understand. She could pick out four, possibly five distinct speakers: two women, two men, what might be a girl or young boy. Around her, the light was fading, becoming red spots on her eyes.

Finally, magnificence replaced the spots.

She stood in the grandest hall she had ever known; no court in Nhol could even begin to match it for size. Its splendor was stunning, as well, but it was of an alien sort to Hezhi, resembling more the natural beauty of the cliffs and mountains than it did the refined—though often decadent—architecture of the palace. Still, in its vastness there was a simplicity that matched certain Nholish ideals.

The walls—those that she could see—were curtains of basalt, flowing to the floor and rising beyond vision above, though the hall was well lit by the barbaric guttering of perhaps a hundred torches. The floor was polished red marble, and by that she knew that some hand had crafted this place; otherwise she might have thought it a purely natural cavity. The floor was mostly empty, like a vast dance theater, and by comparison the part of it she stood upon was cluttered, for nearby were a throne, carved from a column of basalt, the dais that it sat upon, a vast table, and its attendant benches. None of these was occupied.

The other occupants of the room stood on the open floor, some forty paces from her, and they held her attention much more than the room. Foremost was a creature completely beyond her identification, a vast monster that resembled a bear but also resembled Tsem. He?—it had a single eye, a black orb filmed with faint rainbow. Perched on his shoulder was a raven the size of a goat, and still the bird seemed insignificant, so large was the bear-thing. A pace from both of these was a woman, naked, her flesh cloaked only in soft black fur. That and her pointed teeth reminded Hezhi of some sort of cat, save that horns grew from her head and tangled hair fell in a mass almost to her waist. A second woman seemed most familiar of them all; matronly, strong-limbed with thick, long straight hair, she appeared to be a Mang—or even a Nholish—woman. In fact, Hezhi was reminded of Qey.

Kneeling before them was the wavering, ghostly apparition of a horse. Hezhi held her own hands out before her and saw only bones swathed in shifting patterns of light and smoke.

“Well, well,” the cat-woman said, her voice barely a sigh and yet perfectly audible in the great hall. “And who have we here?”

“You know her,” the Raven clattered harshly, his voice just slightly more intelligible than the cawing of one of his smaller brethren.

“I don't,” the Mang woman said, stepping up to stroke her hand upon the horse's fiery mane. “How has this child come with my child?”

“I would say she did something very foolish,” the cat-woman said, walking toward Hezhi with fluid, padding steps. “You may speak to us, girl.”

“I… Ï don't know what—” These were gods. They must be. What could she tell them?

“You haven't come here to be clothed in flesh, that much is certain, for you still have the stink of flesh about you. You are no goddess, though you think yourself one, and you are no beast.”

“She smells of my brother,” the giant rumbled, in tones so low that Hezhi first mistook them for mere growling.

“Why, we should eat her, then,” the cat-woman opined, flashing her smile full of needle-teeth. “Yes, we have not dined on mortal flesh in some time.”

“Hush,” the Raven croaked. “You know what becomes of you when you dine on Human flesh.”

“Do I? I can never remember.”

“Exactly. Exactly!” the Raven cackled.

“What about you, girl? Do you wish to be eaten?”

“No,” Hezhi said, anger beginning to slice through her awe. “No, not at all. I only want to understand what has happened.”

“Well, you flew through a lake, I suppose, and came to the mountain. That would mean either that you are dead—which you are not—or that you are a great shaman …”

“Which she is not,” the black bird finished.

“No,” Hezhi agreed. “I don't think I am either of those.”

“You followed my child,” the other woman—who could only be the Horse Mother—said. “What do you want of my child?”

“Nothing!” Hezhi cried. “I only want to go back. I made a mistake.”

“Imagine that,” the Raven said. “But I say when one visits the mountain, one never goes away the same. Look at her, my kindred. A girl who flies about like a shaman, and yet she has no servants in her mansion.” He tapped his breast with his beak.

“What concern is that to us?” the cat-woman asked. “What does it concern us that this Changeling brat has no helpmates?” She looked suspiciously at the bird. “Is this some trickery of yours, Karak? Some part of your silly machinations?”

“I know her only by reputation,” the Raven said. “She caused something of a stir down the Brother's course.”

“I cannot see there,” the monster with one eye rumbled. “He has closed that to me.”

“Then it might not hurt to have an ally there, even a mortal one. Give the child what she came for.” The bird winked at Hezhi.

“I didn't come for anything,” Hezhi insisted.

“Everyone who travels to the mountain comes for something,” the cat-woman snarled. “I'll give her none of mine; she hasn't earned them.”

“Be reasonable, Huntress. I could only give her a crow, not really the sort of helper that would do her much good.”

The “Huntress” snorted. “No, I should think not. Silly, willful creatures, always cawing in alarm at the slightest scent of danger.”

“I won't argue,” Karak said agreeably. “That is why I suggest you give her something. A tiger, perhaps, or even a ferret.”

“A tiger? No, I think not. I'll have none of this.”

The Horse Mother looked up from her child. “Did you come for a helper? You must know it was foolish to come to the mountain for such a thing. Without one, you can never return.”

“I didn't mean to come here,” Hezhi said, helplessness—and thus anger—swelling in her.

“Life often ends with a mistake,” the Huntress remarked.

“Huntress—” the Raven began.

“No! Enough of you, Karak. Balati, judge!”

The giant blinked his eye slowly. “Hold her until her body dies,” he said. “Then we will reclothe her in something. You decide, Huntress.”

“Lord—” the bird began, but then his beak seemed to seal shut; and though he struggled to speak further, only muffled grunts escaped him.

“Fine,” the Huntress said, smiling. She waved toward Hezhi, and she lost consciousness.

SHE awoke in a chamber of obsidian, if “awoke” was the right word to describe her passage back to consciousness. Her “body” no longer sparked and flashed; it had faded to a faint translucence through which she could see the shadows of her bones, her organs, the faintly pulsing lines of her heart. The scale on her arm showed as a searing white spot, however, and from it whirls of color traced up her nonexistent arm, making it seem much more real than the rest of her.

“Hello!” she shrieked, but she expected no reply and got none. She wondered, dully, if the altered appearance of her ghost meant that her body had died or if it reflected some other change in quality about which she knew absolutely nothing.

She had met gods now, not just the little gods in Brother Horse and the landscape, but the Emperor of Gods, Balati, the Huntress, Karak the Raven, and the Horse Mother. Perkar had described all of them save the Horse Mother. It still seemed worse than unreal to Hezhi; it seemed like the cusp of nightmare and waking, her mind insisting that it was all illusion and night terror, assuring her that she need only keep hold of her fear until morning. How could this be real?

But the Blessed beneath the palace were real; the River was real. In a world that held those things, why not gods with antlers? Because she thought they were silly, or barbaric, or unlikely? They would kill her, no matter what she thought.

She set about exploring her prison. It was less a chamber than a glassy tube, traveling roughly upward. She wondered if she could fly, as she had before, travel up along it. She tried, but nothing happened. She attempted climbing and had better success. Her ghost body seemed to have little if any weight. The slightest purchase of her fingers was enough. Unfortunately, there was little enough purchase of any kind in her prison, and she never gained more than thrice her own height, climbing.

She was still trying, however, when a voice spoke from behind her.

“Such a determined child. The Changeling chose well when he chose you.”

She turned, lost her tenuous hold on the wall, and plummeted. She fell with a normal sort of speed, but the impact hurt her not at all.

“Who are you?”

“You should know me. Perhaps Perkar has spoken of me.”

She peered into the darkness, made out a pair of yellow eyes. “Karak?” she asked, the alien name croaking clumsily from her mouth.

“In the well-wrought flesh,” the voice answered.

“Perhaps you have come to taunt me, then,” she said. “Perkar speaks of you as a malicious god.”

“Perkar seeks to assuage his own guilt by blaming others. No matter; I am fond of Perkar, though he maligns me. Tell me, did he return to the camp yet?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he tell you of his journey?”

“Nothing. He was injured.”

The Raven stepped forward, or perhaps became somehow more visible. “What injury could prevent him from talking? He carries Harka.”

“He is ill; some sort of spirit is eating his life. That is one reason I attempted the drum.”

“To save him?”

“Yes.”

“How delightful!” Karak cackled. “But don't speak of that to anyone else here; his name is not particularly distinguished in these halls.”

“I know.”

“Well. This brings me, I think, to the point of my visit. I have decided to aid you.”

“You have?” Hezhi asked, hope kindling but kept carefully low. She did not ask why.

“Yes, as I said, I am fond of Perkar and, by extension, his friends. Actually, what you just told me clinches my decision. If he is ill in the way that you say, it will take a shaman to save him.” He changed then, went from being a bird to a tall, handsome man, though his eyes remained yellow. “Grasp my cloak and follow.”

Hezhi stared at him helplessly for a moment, but whatever he had planned for her could be no worse than remaining in this glass room for eternity. Karak had helped her once, in the past, or at least she had been told he had. Reluctantly she took hold of his long, black-feathered cape. Karak gave a little grak, became once again a bird, but this time the size of a horse, and she, she was knitted like a feather to his back. He rose effortlessly up the tube, spiraling higher and higher, until at last she saw a glimmer of light.

Karak emerged from the hole and alighted on a mountain peak, became a man again, and Hezhi was able to step away from him. If she had had breath, she would have been without it, for she had never been upon a mountain, never gazed down from the roof of the world onto it. Clouds lay out below her, like tattered carpets on a far vaster floor; they hardly obscured her vision of the surrounding peaks, marching away to the edge of the world, snowcapped, clothed in verdure elsewhere, revealing their handsome granite bones now and then. Farther down still, blue with mist, were the bowls and gashes of valleys.

She saw no streams save one: a bright, silver strand winding from the base of the mountain.

“Your kin,” Karak said, gesturing at the River.

“Then this is She'leng,” Hezhi breathed. ”Where he flows from.”

“Indeed, your people call it that. We merely call it home.”

“You keep calling him your brother. Are you kin to him, as well?”

“Indeed. I suppose that would make you a sort of niece, wouldn't it?”

“I—” But Karak was laughing, not taking himself seriously at all.

“What are those?” Hezhi asked, waving her hand.

Small lights, like fireflies, were drifting up from the valleys. From most places there were only a few, but from one direction—she was not sure of her cardinal points here—a thick stream of them wound.

“Ghosts, like yourself, coming to be reclothed. Some Human, some beast, some other sorts of gods.”

“That thick stream? Where do they come from?”

“Ah! That is the war, of course. Many are losing their clothing there.”

Losing their clothing. Hezhi had seen men die; they never seemed to her as if they were merely undressing.

“Can't you stop the war?”

“Who, me?”

“The gods,” Hezhi clarified.

“I don't know,” Karak said thoughtfully. “I doubt it. I suppose the Huntress could come down from the mountain with her beasts and her wotiru bear-men and join one side or the other; that would, I think, bring the war to an end more quickly. But I can't think of anything that would prompt her to do that—nor, I suspect, is that solution the one you were suggesting.”

“No,” Hezhi replied. “It wasn't.”

“Well, then, you have your answer.”

Hezhi nodded out at the vastness. “What of me, then? You said you were going to help me.”

“Yes, and I will. But I want you to remember something.”

“What?”

“Trust Perkar. He knows what should be done.”

“He said that I should come to the mountain. I am here.”

Karak cocked his head speculatively. “This is not what he meant. You must come here in the flesh.”

“Why?”

“I may not say, here and now. Perkar knows.”

“Perkar is very ill.”

“Ah, but you will save him, shamaness.”

“I am no—” Hezhi broke off and turned at a sound behind them.

The Horse Mother stood there, and the ghost of the horse.

“Is this the only way, Karak?” the Horse Mother asked. Hezhi could hear the suspicion in her voice.

Karak—huge crow once more—ruffed his feathers, picked with his beak at them. “Can you think of another?”

“No. But I am loath to give my child like this.”

“You have many children, clothed in flesh. And it is only for a time.”

Horse Mother nodded. “I know. Still, if I discover there is some trick here …”

“All of these years, and you still cannot tell the Crow from the Raven.”

She snorted, and it sounded like a horse. “No one can.”

Hezhi followed the exchange in puzzlement. She wanted to ask what they meant, but felt she had already been too bold around such strange and powerful creatures.

The Horse Mother turned to her. “Swear that you will care for my child.”

“What do you mean?”

The woman glanced hard at Karak. “She doesn't understand.”

Karak stared at Hezhi with both yellow eyes. “To return, you must have a spirit helper. The Horse Mother proposes to give you her child, since the Huntress will part with none, nor will Balati. Your only other choice is to wait here until you die and then be reclothed in the body of some man or beast, bereft of your memories, your power,”

Hezhi frowned down at the stone of the mountain. “I might be the better without those.”

“Your choice,” the Horse Mother told her. “But if you choose life now, you must do so quickly, before the others discover us. And you must swear to treat my child kindly.” Her face hardened. “And your companion, Perkar—he has offended me, tortured one of my daughters. When the time comes, he must pay a price, and you must not stand in my way.”

Hezhi turned her startled glance back to the goddess. “Perkar? What do you mean?”

“A trivial thing—” Karak muttered.

“Not trivial. Her spirit arrived here lately, told me how shamefully he treated her. I will remember.”

“Perkar is my friend,” Hezhi said. “He saved me from a terrible fate. I cannot knowingly allow harm to come to him.”

“Not necessarily harm,” the Horse Goddess said, “but he must certainly pay a price. Tell him that.”

“I will tell him. But if you seek to harm him, I must stand between you, no matter how grateful I am.”

The goddess eyed her steadily for a long moment before finally inclining her head slightly. “I give you my child freely, with only the single condition. I understand loyalty, no matter how misguided.”

“I swear to care for your child,” Hezhi said. “But—”

Karak vented an exasperated squawk. “What now?“ he croaked.

“I don't know if I want some creature living within me. I hadn't decided when all of this—”

Karak cut her off. “Your time for making such decisions is spent. Either you take the child, go back, live, save Perkar, and fulfill your destiny, or you expire and spend your days here, first as a ghost and then eventually as a salmon or some such. It should be an easy choice.”

“None of my choices is easy,” Hezhi burst out. “I should be choosing which dress to wear to court, which suitor to allow to kiss me, what kind of bread I want for breakfast!”

“What is this nonsense? What are you babbling about? You were never destined for such humdrum choices! You walk between gods and men. Your choices are only between despair and hope!”

“Karak is a poet,” Horse Mother grunted. “Who would have known thaf!”

“Not I!” Karak answered, spreading his wings and contracting them.

“He is right, little one, though he knows more of you than I do,” the woman continued, her dark eyes kind. “You will have my child. I will watch over you.”

Perkar would die without her. She would die and be lost, a ghost, as pathetic as the apparition that once inhabited her apartments.

“I agree,” she said then. “I will be as kind as I know how tobe.”

“Fine, fine,” Karak snarled. “Quickly, now.”

Horse Mother stroked the horse. Like Hezhi, she had cooled from her flight and now had the appearance of a gray skeleton filmed with gauzy flesh. Still, Hezhi could sense the creature's confusion, its fear. “Hush, my sweet,” the woman said. “This is Hezhi, and she will return with you to the land of the living, to the pastures and the plains.”

“Now?” Karak snapped.

“Now,” the goddess replied, reluctance still clear in her voice.

“Good,” Karak answered. He pointed to Hezhi. “Cut to pieces.”

Hezhi just stared at him, wondering what he meant, and then pain was all that she could comprehend. Something chopped her to bits, dismembered her violently; she felt each bone wrench apart, and each individual piece ached on its own, so that even severance added layers of agony so profound that, though she did not lose consciousness, she quickly lost the ability to interpret anything. How long her ordeal lasted, she had not the slightest inkling; she was only aware of trying to scream and scream without lungs, tongue, or breath.

She had no awareness when the bits came back together, knitted solid. The Horse Mother and Karak spoke, but she understood absolutely nothing of what they said. After that, she had only flashes of the purple and black landscape beyond the drum and a persistent pounding that seemed like hoofbeats. And inside, a frightened voice, as confused as she.

WHEN sense truly returned, it was to those same hoofbeats. She was still high in the air above the otherworld, but rather than being swept along, as she had been before, she was running, her own hooves carrying her through the empty spaces between the clouds.

Hooves? She glanced at herself. As before, she was glowing like a coal, striking sparks from the very air, but this time she had more of a form. She could see her own arms, her hands, her naked upper body. But below …

Hooves, the thick, layered muscles of a horse's forepart. Turning back she could see rump and a flying tail of lightning.

I have become the statuette! she thought. The half-horse woman.

But she was still herself. She could feel the Horse in her—that was who ran, who flexed the great muscles that carried them through space. But the spirit in her was not invasive, not seeking to seduce her as the River had or bludgeon her like the gods she had seen since escaping Nhol. Instead, she was there, tentative, but a companion willing to learn.

“Thank you, ” Hezhi said. “Thank you for coming with me. ”

The Horse did not answer in words, but Hezhi understood her response, her welcome. Together they struck lightning across the sky, and soon enough, Hezhi knew that they had reached the village of Brother Horse, the yekt where her body lay without her. Nearly laughing with the pleasure of thunderous flight, ecstasy replacing their fears, Hezhi and the Horse raced thrice about the village, above the racetrack. She could not see the people, save as flickers of rainbow, and she wondered if any of them could see her.

It was actually with reluctance that she approached the yekt, lit upon its roof. She saw no one there and so descended into the house along its central pole, whose shadow in the otherworld resembled a tall and thickly branching tree.

The tent was the belly of a shadow, the people in it less than specters. She saw them as frames of dark bone, cages that enclosed furnaces of yellow light.

One of the figures lay prone—Perkar, of course—and something squatted upon him. Something real.

As soon as she saw it, Hezhi steeled herself for the sickening stab she had felt before, but it did not come. It was as if a strong wind parted around her, and she suddenly remembered what Brother Horse had told her about spirit helpers. About how she could see now without the vision clutching her.

So she examined the thing carefully, though even so it was terrible to behold. At first, there was no sense to what she perceived, only a jumble of coiled, glittering sinew, scales, and polished black ivory. But then the Horse moved in her, just a bit, and her perspective changed. It was like a snake, or more, like a centipede, jointed and sheened as if with oil. It nestled a cone-shaped skull into Perkar's chest, and a thousand smaller worms wriggled from every part of the creature. The radiance in Perkar's breast was dim, though a stream of orange light fed into it from the sleeping, birdlike form at his side she guessed to be his sword.

Every now and then, the worm—or perhaps mass of worms—shuddered, rippled, and broke into crawling parts that then reformed. Two yellow eyes opened on the base of its “skull.”

“Leave. He is mine,” a voice told her. It was a clattery voice, like bones snapping.

Hezhi had no reply. She just stared at the thing.

“If you have come to fight for him, shamaness, you will surely fail. Go back to your bright world, leave this dying man to me in mine.”

The monster did not gesture, but she felt her eyes drawn beyond it, as if somehow it had directed her to look. There lay a circle of light. Through it she saw the interior of the yekt—part of a support pillar, a rug, and a hand. Her hand. The image wavered a bit, as if it were a pool into which grains of sand were dropping.

Hezhi hesitated. She could see plainly enough now that the thing on Perkar was killing him. But as of the moment, she had not the faintest idea what to do about it.

“I'll go,” she muttered to the thing. But I will return. Then she edged up to the drum and stepped through.

In a swirl of dizziness and disorientation, she bolted up, gasping. The horse body was gone, and she felt her own flesh upon her, suddenly so familiar, so well fitted that she would have burst into melancholy tears at being reunited with it.

Save that at the same moment, the body of a man slapped into the ground only an arm's length from her; she saw his eyes widen in surprise as the impact shattered his spine. All around her was shouting and the harsh grating and hammering of steel on steel.

INTERLUDE The Emperor and the Ghoul

THE great door creaked faintly as the emperor pushed it open, startling the orange-speckled house lizard on the wall into frantic though short-lived flight. It ran only a few spans before crouching against the edge of a tapestry, watching him with its cat-pupiled eyes. She'lu felt a brief amusement, considered flicking the tiny beast with his power. What audacity it had, a common house lizard, entering the court of an emperor!

He let it go. It was told that the spotted ones were good luck, and even an emperor needed that. Especially now, with the increased Dehshe raids on the border garrisons, the icy relations with once-friendly Lhe, and Dangul, at the limits of the Swamp Kingdoms, pressing to levy a tariff—a tariff-—on goods shipped through their territory. It was a modest tax, of course, easily paid, but a subject did not—could not—tax its emperor. Even the backward Swamp Kingdoms knew that, which could only mean that Dangul was testing the waters, hoping to gain greater, if not complete, independence.

In the morning he would dispatch a company of soldiers and Jik under the command of his nephew Nen She' to deal with the governor of Dangul, but there was no telling how well prepared the governor was, how good his spies were. Another reason to send Nen She'; he would be a capable enough ruler if the governor bowed to him without resistance, but if the mission failed and he was killed, no one would miss him, either—at least, not much. But then, of course, She'lu would have to send real troops, and that he did not relish doing at all. Wars cost money, and it seemed the Nhol had fought many wars of late. All small, all mere nuisances, but costly nevertheless.

He walked out onto the polished, bloodred stone of the court, enjoying the measured, solitary clapping of his wooden soles upon the floor. Seldom enough was he alone; even now, guards were near, but he had laid a minor Forbidding on them, preventing them from approaching him unless he requested their aid or called out. So now, in the hour past midnight, he could pace, sleepless and finally, finally alone in this, his favorite of courts, the Court of the Ibis-Throated. It was small, much too small for grand ceremonies, not severe enough to convene the everyday matters of the empire. Indeed, since his father's day, the court had seen no official use. But after She'lu's accession—when his father had begun the withering, as often happened to the Waterborn when they passed their seventieth year—his father had brought him here, with Nyas, the vizier, and the three of them had stayed, long into the night, drinking plum wine and speaking of things they had never spoken of. There were many such things; after all, She'lu had barely seen his father until after his fifteenth year, and even when he moved down the Hall of Moments to join the family after passing the priestly tests, his father was distant, cold, the emperor. It was only after, when the crown came off, that the old man spoke of love, of his pride in his son, of his grief over the loss of his other son, L'ekezh. Even that last had touched She'lu; he had always been jealous of L'ekezh, but when they took his twin off, shrieking, to the depths below the Darkness Stair and left him to inherit the throne unchallenged—well, after that he could afford to be generous, to pity his brother.

He had often met with his father and Nyas, secretly, the guards away and Forbidden, learning from the two of them how to be an emperor. Two years only, but he remembered them as the best years of his life. Young, excited by his role as lord of Nhol and its empire, touched by his father's long-hidden care. Then the old man withered and died, and his corpse was taken off by the priests while it was still warm, to be joined back into the River, and he had become emperor in earnest, learning the eternal, wearying drudgery that mingled with and eventually overwhelmed the excitement.

He stroked his hand on a yellowed column, slender as the legs of a crane, gazed up at the stars showing faintly through the eye-shaped aperture in the domed roof.

He had thought, someday, to bring a son of his own here. He would not have waited so long, until he stepped down and had only months to live. He would have shown a son affection the moment he ascended to the Hall of Moments, left childhood and its terrible possibilities behind. But the seed of the River had never produced for him a son. Of late he had turned his mind toward daughters—someone of his blood to share his stories, his secret thoughts, who would adore him as he had adored his own father. But with the two who had ascended, he had waited too long. Both were married, and like their mother they enjoyed the cloudlike wonder and oblivion induced by Nende'ng, the black snuff from Lhe, more than they did conversation. Hezhinata, who had been the youngest, was now slain by the Jik, but that had been necessary, and privately he would have rather had her slain than sent down to where L'ekezh still dwelt.

She'lu paused in front of the throne but did not sit on its sable cushion. Instead, he lowered himself to the steps, as he had when his father was still alive. He had refused to let the old man sit below him; even though She'lu was emperor in fact, in the Court of the Ibis-Throated, he gave his father the throne. Yes, it was a shame he had never brought any of his children here, when they were young enough, even though they were daughters. He could at least have told them about their grandfather. Hezhi—if not the others—would have probably liked that. Though he knew little enough of the child, he did know that she had spent her last months in the library, that she had apparently enjoyed reading, relished learning of the past He smiled; secretly—very secretly—he was proud of his daughter. She must have had power, power rivaling his own. Her sisters had shown no sign of such. Hezhinata had killed priests, many priests, and a Jik. Of course, her bodyguard had killed some of those, but still…

She'lu frowned. Certainly he felt pride, had felt it since the day Hezhinata was killed. But what he felt now was almost a glow, a silly sentimentality. He realized that all of his thoughts had been flavored with nearly lachrymose emotion, and a faint suspicion stole over him. Why had he awakened? Not that it was an uncommon experience for him to lack sleep. But it seemed to him that a dream had brought him out of bed, one of the simple-colored dreams the River sent now and then. More and more of those dreams had come of late, but rarely did they reveal anything to him that was of help in his policies. When he could remember them, he would discuss them with Nyas, and together they would try to sort them out, but this was different. He could not remember the dream itself, but it had left him thinking maudlin thoughts about his father and his daughters. No, not his daughters, but his daughter, Hezhinata, the only child of his to be born with power.

Thinking of this now, he recognized the signs. The River wanted him to think of her—something he was not in the habit of doing. Certainly the thought of bringing her here had passed briefly, whimsically, through him, as had the fleeting joy that one of his seed had so frustrated and wounded the priesthood. But these feelings of love came from the River. At least, most of them did. He sighed. Should he wake Nyas?

At that moment he felt something, the equivalent of a foot-scrape or a loud breath, but it was not sound. Someone was here, in this room, with power. She'lu pursed his lips. Not power like the priests, that annoying power of not that got progressively stronger with the rank of the priest. No, this had “sounded” more familiar.

He flooded the room with force, filling it so quickly with his puissance that it would be impossible for the intruder to slip away undetected. If the intruder were Human, he would be dead or mindless in an instant, but She'lu already knew the hidden one was more than that.

“Show yourself,” he snapped, as the air rippled with killing magics.

Someone stepped from the shadows. He seemed to be shrugging off the attack, maintaining an admirable calm as he did so. She'lu could sense a sort of raw power that might be as great as his own, but it was artless, and he knew that his attack must be causing some pain. Despite this, his visitor walked out into the center of the floor, bent to one knee, and bowed deeply.

More puzzled than ever, She'lu withdrew the spears and nets of his strength and laid them into a dike about himself, securing his person but still prepared to lash out if need be. Who was this man? Even the most powerful of the royal family would have been at least stunned by his show of force, and yet this man retained the ability to walk and kneel.

“Thank you, my lord,” the man said, and so showed he could speak as well.

“Who are you? Step closer.”

The intruder did so, rising and moving close enough for She'lu to make him out. He was a well-built fellow with a thin, ascetic face. He was clothed simply in a black tunic and kilt, the signature dress of the Jik.

“You are an assassin,” She'lu said flatly.

“I am an assassin,” the man acknowledged. “But I am no longer a Jik. I do not serve a priesthood that does not serve the River.”

She'lu stared at the man, more perplexed than ever. What was occurring here?

“I recognize you,” he realized. “You were the one assigned to my daughter. The young one.”

“My name is Ghe, Majesty, and I am your servant.”

“You were killed, or so I heard, along with my daughter.”

The man paused for just an instant, and in that flicker his guard descended a bit, and She'lu could suddenly make out more than one web of heartstrands in the man. A sudden fear knifed into She'lu. He had heard, as a child, of such creatures, been informed of them as an emperor.

“It is true that I was killed, Majesty. But your daughter was not. Of that, I pray to speak to you.”

“My daugh—” No, damn him. First things first. “You say you died,” She'lu hissed. “But I see no ghost before me. You are a ghoul, or something very like one.”

The man cast down his eyes and reached to his throat. He unwrapped the black sash that obscured it. She'lu could not make out what was thus revealed until he conjured a pale yellow glow to illumine the court. Then he could see plainly enough the thick ridge of scar encircling Ghe's throat.

“A ghoul, I think,” Ghe said, “though I know little of such things.”

“The River sends them,” She'lu said softly, wondering if it would do any good at all to call the guards. “When an emperor goes against the will of the River, he sends them to kill him.”

The ghoul stroked his chin with his thumb, a remarkably Human gesture for someone who must have been decapitated and then given new, unholy life.

“I cannot speak for other ghouls, my lord, but that is not the case with me. I think that you should consider what you have heard to be yet another lie of the priesthood.”

“My spies have told me of a ghoul in the palace. The priests drove it from here.”

“And I have returned, at great peril to my existence. It is true that the River gave me new life, but it was not to harm you. You are the Chakunge, the Riverson. Why should he wish to harm you?” The ghoul paced slowly across the floor, and She'lu opened his mouth to speak before he realized that he was bereft of anything to say.