The Blackgod

“It is the priesthood, my lord,” the man continued. “They keep your power in check, do they not?”

“They are a nuisance,” She'lu admitted.

“I have discovered that they are much more than that,” the ghoul told him. “They and their temple bind all but the tenth part of the River's power, and you are the most of that tenth part, you and your kin. Hezhi was his greatest hope.”

“Hezhinata,” She'lu corrected.

“No, Lord, Hezhi. She lives yet. She escaped with a barbarian and her Giant bodyguard. Think on it and you will know that you never saw her body.”

“The Waterborn must be given back to the River in the crypts.”

“Another lie. I have been to the crypts. They are prisons for your ancestors, dungeons where their ghosts are kept to fade into eternity, never rejoining the god. But that aside, even if they did take Hezhi there, what of her bodyguard, the barbarian? Were their bodies seen by anyone you trust?”

“They were left in the desert to rot.”

“But I repeat, did this information come from a source that you trust?”

She'lu's head was awhirl. The things this man spoke of were incredible, but they were not preposterous; they were all things that he himself had considered, at one time or another. His own father had warned him of the priesthood, as had Nyas, countless times. They had always been a scratch in his eye, but to hear these things said, all at once—and of course he had been suspicious of the strange stories surrounding Hezhinata. Seven of his elite guard, killed by some “barbarian” at the docks? She'lu had always suspected the hand of the priesthood in that. In fact, the barbarian was said to have been nearly impossible to kill, bleeding from mortal wounds and yet still standing. Was that not a property ghouls were said to possess? How many ghouls did the priesthood control?

“Enough of this,” She'lu snapped. “Babble no more. If you have come to kill me, do your best. If you come for aught else, tell me what you want.”

The ghoul scratched his chin again, a gesture that She'lu was beginning to find annoying. “I want to find Hezhi and bring her back to Nhol. I want you to help me.”

She'lu could not speak for several moments, but the ghoul did not go on. The emperor vaguely realized that this “Ghe” had done what he commanded: told him only what he wanted and then stopped.

“What?” he whispered.

“I told my lord that—”

“Yes, yes, I understood you. She really is alive?”

“My lord, I cannot be certain. But I did not kill her, nor did the priests or the soldiers. She escaped into the desert, where the River has no power to see, and she may have been killed there, though, knowing her, I doubt it. But she is in danger; I know that to be true. The priesthood knows she is alive, and they will not rest until she breathes no more. There may be others.” The ghoul's voice dropped lower, and She'lu heard the deep sincerity in it. “My lord, the River brought me to life for this purpose, and this purpose alone: to find your daughter and return her to the River, so that she may fulfill the destiny of you and all your family. Can't you see how carefully the priests control you? They keep you from your children, slay or bind captivé all but a few who have power…”

“My brother was one so bound,” She'lu interrupted. “He was insane, and would have destroyed all. There is good reason for that binding.”

“In some cases. I do not doubt that the power drives many to madness. But Hezhi was his chosen, as you are, and yet they would have disposed of her. You, they keep tranquil with lies.”

“Have a care how you speak of me!” The ghoul seemed to be getting bolder, less respectful by the moment. She'lu tensed, expecting attack but unwilling to launch his own. Despite its insolence, this creature was making a sort of sense. And the River had prepared him for this, he realized, sent ahead thoughts of his daughter, fond memories. Behind all of that lurked his ever-present knowledge that the empire was losing its form at the edges, the persistent nagging feeling that power was somehow slipping past him, that his reach was not what an emperor's should be.

“I'm sorry, Lord,” the ghoul amended, “but I believe it to be the case. The priesthood has labored for centuries to check your power in a thousand subtle ways. Even your ghosts are kept chained.”

“You mentioned this before. What do you mean?”

The ghoul suddenly began shivering, power tightening around him like a cocoon, and She'lu raised his hands reflexively. But no thrust of potence came, no claws stretched to strike at his heart. Instead, the ghoul spoke again, but in a very different voice. Not merely in timbre and intonation; the very language was different, the ancient tongue of his ancestors.

“Thou knowest this be the truth, Chakunge my descendant. We are trapped in the tombs, starved to nothing, until such time as we amuse them. Then they may take us out, command us to speak, to sing, to blaspheme. We are their library, their drama stage. They play with us, grandson of my grandsons.”

“What?” She'lu sputtered. “What?”

“They keep us there, in their temple. The Chakunge himself, the First Emperor, they keep on a leash like a dog!”

She'lu knew that this was no trick; he could see the soul image, and it was not the ghoul's. Though he could not tell who it was, this was certainly one of his ancestors. His skin crawled like a bed of ants.

“Who are you, Lord?” he asked.

“I am Lengnata, fourth to the throne of the Nas Dynasty. Your ancestor.”

“The First Emperor is in chains?”

“As I said. You, too, will be chained when you die. Only a few escape, and them the priests destroy. I myself departed only in the heart of this ghoul, and now I am slave to him. But it is better, better. For through the ghoul, I see the River has a plan to destroy the priesthood, and that is good.”

“Lord Ancestor, I…” But the ghoul was the ghoul again.

“Pardon, my lord, but I have only recently entered into this power of mine. My control over it is growing but still imperfect.”

“You admit your weakness to me?”

“If I had no weakness, I would not beg for your aid. I was made to go where the River cannot go, Lord, and where the power of his true children thus cannot go. I cannot bear his strength as you can, cannot become him as Hezhi can; he has given me the strength to find my power as I go along, that is all. But to go where Hezhi is, I need help. Your help.”

“If this is all true …” He grimaced. “I must speak to Nyas.”

The ghoul shook his head. “My lord, the Ahw'en and the Jik seek for me everywhere now. I have killed many of them and invaded their temple. I have their secrets and I have stolen one of your ancestors back from them. I have seen the Chakunge of our most sacred legends on a leash like a dog. I have power, but the priesthood can kill me. If you do not ally yourself with me, help me, all will be lost. All And it must be now, quickly—this night.”

“Why did you not approach me sooner?”

“I did not know. We are taught that the emperor and the priesthood are warp and weft in the same cloth. Only as a ghoul have I found the truth.”

She'lu drew a deep breath. This was very sudden, but if it were true, if Hezhi still lived, if she could bring back the real power and glory of the throne… if even an emperor must eventually suffer a fate like that of the Blessed, a fate he believed he had escaped…

“What do you want of me?”

The ghoul knelt again. “A fast ship, to sail up-River. Horsemen and swordsmen, as many as you can spare. But most, most of all, I need the librarian from the archives.”

“Ghan? The old man?”

“He knows where Hezhi is. I know he does.”

“How do you know this?”

“I just feel it, Lord. They were very close, he and your daughter. He helped her escape, though none knew that but me. He knows where she has gone.”

“You may have him, then. And the ship, thirty mounted men, fifty foot. Will this suffice?”

“That will suffice,” the ghoul answered, and She'lu could hear the surge of victory in the voice.

“But tell me,” She'lu asked. “Why drag this old man out into the desert? We can torture the information from him, or merely snatch it from his brain.”

The ghoul smiled thinly. “I considered that. In fact, I could swallow his soul and keep it with me, open his memories like a book. Three things stop me: first, I believe he may be canny enough to prevent it somehow; you would almost certainly never torture him, for he would kill himself in some clever way rather than be the instrument of Hezhi's capture. The second is that I believe he will be wiser alive. Those Ï bind to me lose much of their essence, their ability to think. They are, really, just parts of me. This Ghan is worth ten counselors if he is on your side.”

“Three reasons?”

“Hezhi loves him and hates me. If Ghan is with me, she will trust us.”

“But you say the librarian helped her escape. You were a Jik at the time. Why should he trust you?”

“He never knew my identity. Still, he will be suspicious, and so a series of lies must be told him…”

She Tu scrunched forward, forgetting for the moment that he was an emperor and this man a ghoul. Something was happening, something that might make his reign a memorable one. He could not launch an assault on the Water Temple; such had been tried in the past and only resulted in the worst sort of bloodshed. But if this creature was right, he could free not only the River but himself. Of course, he would make some provision for his own interests; he could not trust this stranger—all the more reason to surround him with eighty of his handpicked men. That would be a thousand times better than having him skulking about the palace. Could he keep the priesthood from finding out? Maybe.

But in the palace, at least in his own section of it, the emperor was supreme.

Yes. A barge could be spared, and men. These were cheap; and if the expedition failed, he would be no worse off than before. But if it succeeded…

He was aware that the promise of majesty he felt was only partly his own, that most of it surged into him from the River. The god had never, in his memory, been this strong or wakeful. Some of his ancestors might have been glad of that, happier to rule without the intervention of the divine, but She'lu did not share their sentiments. He would see Nhol strong again. Perhaps, if all went well, he would see the priesthood spitted on stakes for his pleasure. He smiled then at the ghoul.

“Come with me. Tell me what else you require.”

PART TWO

UPSTREAM PASSAGES

XVII Kinship

TSEM roared and swung a stool at one of the swordsmen, caught the bright edge of slicing metal on the wood. The sword snapped with a metallic cry and the Mang echoed it as the half Giant's makeshift weapon thudded into his chest. He joined his fellow on the floor of the yekt, wheezing.

For an instant there was calm, in which Hezhi desperately tried to assess the situation.

“Princess!” Tsem growled, glancing toward her, but only for an instant, for another warrior stood in the yekt, menacing them. Ngangata, his face spattered with blood, held a throwing axe in each hand, his expression that of a caged predator, driven to fury. All told, three Mang lay on the floor, two unmoving, one clutching his chest and grimly working to regain an upright stance. A fourth warrior stood just inside the doorway of the yekt, and Hezhi could see several more just outside. She recognized two of them; the one whom Tsem had just battered with the stool was Chuuzek, the surly tribesman who had met her the day before; one of the men outside was his companion, Moss.

The interior of the yekt was in total disarray; only Perkar seemed unchanged, still pale with unnatural sleep.

“Tsem, what is happening?”

“Treachery,” Ngangata snapped, loudly enough for those outside to hear. “Though Brother Horse promised us hospitality, his kin seem bent on dishonoring his name.”

“There is no honor in harboring monsters,” Chuuzek gasped, already up on one knee. Tsem stepped quickly forward and slapped the man's broad face with the half-curled back of his hand, and Chuuzek sprawled back, spitting blood. A cloth bandage on his head, caked with old blood, began to dampen with new wet redness as well.

Moss stepped into the doorway. “Chuuzek! Stop!” he shouted, the first time Hezhi had heard the young man raise his voice. Chuuzek, fumbling for a knife at his belt, ceased, and instead scooted back against the wall of the yekt.

Moss took another step in, eyes intent on Hezhi. “There is no need for this,” he asserted. “These friends of yours need not die.”

“So far we aren't the ones dying,” Ngangata remarked. Hezhi had never seen him in such a state, either. He was normally so mild, deflecting insults or ignoring them.

“It's not to you that I am speaking, Brush-Man,” Moss replied.

“I don't understand any of this,” Hezhi groaned, and then more firmly, “Get out of this house. All of you, go away!”

Moss frowned. “I would not have chosen this,” he said. “My cousin acted hastily, but his motives were pure. You must come with us.”

“I must do nothing,” Hezhi snarled. ”Yesterday you spoke of hospitality. What did you say? 'I'm only sorry the hospitality of this camp was violated.' Fine words, but I see now which hole they issued from. Not from your mouth, that much is certain.”

Chuuzek stirred again angrily.

“Stand back up, little man,” Tsem growled. “I will break your neck.”

“You cannot break all of our necks,” Chuuzek returned.

“He does not have to!” came an angry voice from outside. “Move out of my way, all of you, you worthless carrion dogs!”

Hezhi saw the look of consternation, quickly mastered, flash over Moss' face. Reluctantly he stepped back as a burst of shouting from outside was followed by sudden silence. Brother Horse shouldered into the tent, swept furious eyes over the scene. His short, spindly legs and wizened body no longer seemed in the least comical or kindly; the old man bore his rage in every angle of his stance, spat it in each terse syllable. The wolf she had seen inside of him now shone out like a candle through a red paper lantern.

“Get out of here,” he said to Chuuzek softly. “Get out of my house, and take these piles of buzzard dung with you.” He kicked one of the dead or unconscious men with the toe of his boot.

“Now we see,” Chuuzek said. “We see the great man cares more for his dun'cheen friends than he does for his own people.”

“I care,” Brother Horse gritted, “more for the ways of the Mang—the Mang, you whelp of a cur and a turd—than I do for your insolent disregard of all we know. I promised these people hospitality, and you steal that from me, you thief. You horse thief!”

Which was about the worst thing one Mang could call another. Raiding and robbing others was war—and acceptable—but stealing from one who gave you hospitality was one of the worst offenses conceivable.

“Perhaps you want her for yourself, old man.”

Brother Horse ignored Chuuzek. He swept his gaze over Tsem, Ngangata, Perkar, and Hezhi. “Are you injured, child? Has any one of you been hurt?”

“I'm fine,” Hezhi answered. “I don't know about Tsem and Ngangata. I just… awoke.”

“We are not injured,” Ngangata answered. “No true harm has been done … yet.”

“No harm!” Chuuzek roared. “My cousins lie there thus, and you say no harm has been done?”

“They begged for their fate,” Brother Horse answered venomously. ”Were they—and you—not protected by the same hospitality that protects these others, I would have you all on the frame, screaming for days on end.”

“I would spit in your face.”

“Brave talk,” Brother Horse answered him. “You have never been on the frame; I have.” He turned to Moss. “You had my answer yesterday. You may seek to turn all of this on your rock-brained cousin, but I know better.”

“I warned you,” Moss said quietly. “I respect you greatly, and I understand your position. If you had let us take her, you would not have been dishonored; the onus would have been shouldered only by Chuuzek and myself. You need only have been too long engaged elsewhere. As it is …” He signed with his hand and four more warriors crowded up to the doorway.

Brother Horse shook his head. “You would slay me, in my own house, during the Ben'cheen? You are not Mang.”

“We do what must be done,” Moss answered. “We will bear the dishonor. Please don't make us bear the responsibility of your death as well, honored one.”

“The warriors of my clan are just behind you. Make another move, and you shall wear a coat of arrows.”

Moss smiled grimly. “You mistake your own family. These warriors have agreed to stand aside. They will not aid me, but neither will they aid you. I have spoken with them all.”

“Yes, well, I have spoken with them all, as well, and I told them to answer you thus. I wanted to see how far down this wrong, waterless trail you would stumble. Now I know.”

Hezhi wished she could have laughed at the sudden understanding on Moss' face, but her heart was still thudding too painfully in her chest. Too much happening, too much. First the mountain and then, with no letup, this.

The green-eyed man seemed to sag slightly, but then he recovered himself.

“You will regret this,” he said sincerely. Not with heat, but with a kind of sadness.

“I regret much in my life,” Brother Horse murmured. “This will not greatly add to my burden, I'm sure.”

“In that you are mistaken,” Moss assured him.

Brother Horse merely shrugged and slapped his hands. Men came from behind and seized Moss and his kin roughly.

“Watch them,” Brother Horse called to his men. “Disarm them but do them no harm. They are protected by my word, and I will not break that word.”

Two men came in to get the bodies. Chuuzek managed to leave under his own power. Brother Horse grimly watched them go before turning to examine those he protected.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't think things would go this far.”

“You knew,” Hezhi stated.

“Yes. I knew when I saw you with them in the desert. They meant to take you then, would have if I had not been present. Moss is honorable at heart, and thought to persuade me rather than slay me. It was a very near thing, though. Did you notice the way Chuuzek kept fondling his sword-grip?”

“No,” Hezhi admitted. “But I knew something was wrong.”

“Something is very wrong,” Brother Horse agreed.

“Thank you for your help,” Tsem said. “Thank you for protecting Hezhi.”

Brother Horse eyed the half Giant. “I had no choice, so there is no need to thank me.”

“I think you did have a choice,” Ngangata disagreed. ”Moss was right; had you turned your back, they could have taken us and no one would have faulted you.”

Brother Horse grinned tightly. “We work to keep the good opinion of our elders, but none here is my elder. That leaves me in the unfortunate position of having to stay clean in my own eyes.”

“They would have killed Perkar,” Ngangata answered, his tone still conveying thanks.

“They would have killed you all, all but me,” Hezhi added.

Tsem nodded. “They must have known you were ill and come to take you while you lay asleep.”

“Ill?”

“Princess, you have lain as dead for a day.”

That long? But it had seemed even longer.

“She was not dead,” Brother Horse said. “You bled into the lake, didn't you.”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “Yes. I wish I could have been with you, to help you.”

Hezhi held her hands up. “You were here when we needed you most, I think. What should we do now?” She surveyed her companions helplessly.

“Princess, that is your decision,” Tsem quietly responded.

She thought that Brother Horse or Ngangata would disagree—hoped they would—but to her surprise they did not, only watched her expectantly.

“I…” She stared back at them. I don't know what to do. We can't stay here anymore, though, can we?”

Brother Horse pursed his lips. “I never anticipated any of this. I offered you a life in this village, with my people, and yet…”

“We've been nothing but trouble to you,” Hezhi finished.

The old Mang grimaced. “It's this war, and something else, something Moss wouldn't explain to me completely.”

“He said I could bring peace.”

“Yes, he told me that, as well, but wouldn't explain how. I don't think he knows.”

“In any event, we have to leave,” Ngangata said. “We have to get Hezhi and Perkar away from here. They seem almost as bent upon killing him as upon snatching her.”

“What do you mean?” Hezhi asked.

“We were set upon by warriors out on the plains. They came to kill Perkar.”

Brother Horse waved his hand. “They are Mang, he is a Cattle-Man, and we are at war.”

“No, it was more than that. They were seeking him specifically, and no other.”

“It's because Perkar knows where we should go,” Hezhi broke in suddenly. “Karak told him.”

Brother Horse stretched a grim smile. “What do you mean, ‘where you should go’?”

“I… I don't know,” Hezhi realized. “There is something I'm supposed to do, but I don't know what.”

“You learned this on the other side of the drum?”

Hezhi nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, let me warn you that if you have only the word of the Blackgod, then you have little worth trusting.”

“He has only aided me” Hezhi said.

“When he set me to watch for you at Nhol?”

“No, since then.”

Brother Horse raised his eyebrows in surprise but did not inquire further.

“He works for his own purposes, that much is certain,” Ngangata said. “But he helped us against the warriors on the plains, too. He seems to have cultivated a liking for our little family.”

“How quickly do we have to leave?” Hezhi asked, mustering as much determination to put in her voice as she could.

“Tonight would be best,” Brother Horse admitted sadly. “We can hold Moss and Chuuzek and the rest for a few days, give you an escort and a head start to wherever you are going. Beyond that, my own people will begin to rebel at the thought of holding their cousins captive. Young people these days don't respect the old as they should.”

Hezhi nodded solemnly. “Ngangata, can Perkar travel?”

“Can you heal him?” the halfling countered.

“I don't know how.”

“Well,” the half man considered. “We can tie him to a horse, but that will slow us. It would be better if he could ride.”

“Put some distance between yourselves and the village first,” Brother Horse advised. “Then I believe I can show Hezhi what to do. She has the power now.”

He was looking at her strangely, deeply, and Hezhi understood that the old man could see what the others could not, the change in her.

“You will go with us?” she asked him.

“I will accompany you long enough to help with that. Afterward … well, there look to be many affairs that need my attention.”

Hezhi took a deep breath. “Running again. Always running.”

Tsem moved up to stroke her hair, and his tenderness awoke buried tears. She did not shed them, but they crowded into her throat and threatened to cut off her air.

“Well,” she gasped, “where shall we run? I know nothing of these lands.” Her pleading gaze fastened first on Brother Horse and then on Ngangata.

“North, perhaps,” Brother Horse muttered. “North, across the Changeling, ör perhaps east. Away from all of this.”

Hezhi sat on her mat. “Away. At first it seemed that just leaving Nhol was 'away.' Now … what lies north and east?”

“Ah … plains, forests, mountains. North, Human Beings are scarce. East are the Stone Leggings and other tribes. Giants northeast eventually. Beyond that I don't know.”

“We can't cross the Changeling,” Ngangata stated, his voice solid with certainty.

“No. No, of course.” Images of distant lands where no one knew or cared about Hezhi faded as soon as they formed. Was there such a place, anyway? A place where her blood would merely lie quiet and the River was not even a legend? Probably not.

“We'll go where Perkar said to,” Hezhi mumbled. “Where the Blackgod said to.”

“Where?”

“We'll go to the mountain.”

Ngangata frowned. “Princess, I—”

Hezhi stared at him, suddenly angry. “I know. I know he flows from there. But that is the only compass we have at the moment. If any of you has a better suggestion, tell me or decide for me. But if you want me to decide …”

Ngangata shifted uncomfortably. “The war is there. We would only be plunging into the heart of things.”

Brother Horse cleared his throat. “I know of a camp, up in the White Crown Mountains. It should be far from any such troubles.”

“If you know of it,” Hezhi retorted, “it is certain that other Mang know of it. Besides, this gaan seems to be able to smell me wherever I am. He knew to send Moss and Chuuzek here.”

“That could be coincidental, Princess,” Tsem pointed out.

“No. They came straight to where I was, in the cliffs. I was in a closed-off canyon, wasn't I, Brother Horse? What reason would they have for going in there?”

“They might have seen you on the plain, wondered who you were,” the old man muttered.

“You don't believe that,” Hezhi answered.

He shrugged his bony shoulders. “No.”

“If we go out into the desert and hide, they find us without you and your kin to protect us. If we go back to Nhol, the same fate that I fled awaits me. The same, too, if I try to cross the River. Twice now I have been told to go the mountain. That would at least put us in Perkar's homeland, where his people might protect us, would it not?”

Ngangata nodded wearily. “Yes. But that is a hard journey, by land, and we have to cross the country where the war is being fought.”

“One of you decide, then,” she said.

Tsem snorted. “You great men, you horsemen, you hunters. My princess has lived in these lands for half a year, you for your whole lives. Can't either of you think of anything?”

Brother Horse scratched his chin. “Only that she is right,” he admitted.

“That's all?” Tsem snapped—audibly, as his nut-size teeth cracked together on his last syllable.

“Listen, Giant,” Brother Horse suddenly blazed. “She is not a princess here. There are no armies waiting to march at her command. There are no kings on the huugau. Would that there were and I were one. I would surround her with my soldiers and a wall of stone and make her safe. But this is Mang country, do you understand? I have no soldiers, only kinfolk, and I have to spend as much time trying to please them as they to please me. And if I tell them to do something they are set hard enough against, they will ignore me. Then I lose face and power, and the next time they listen to me even less. Those men you killed today have relatives in my own clan. They will not forget you, or her, or me, for not giving you up. I have few enough years left to live, and I had hoped to live them in comfort, but that dream withers in the sun now. So don't you upbraid me for not being able to do what no man can do!”

Tsem's eyes widened with startlement, but his face stayed set. “I'll kill anyone else who tries to touch her, too,” he said. “So you better help us get away from here, before I have to break more of your precious kinsmen and make your old age even more uncomfortable.”

“Tsem,” Hezhi said softly. “Hush. He has already helped us, don't you understand?”

“No. I don't understand why they can't let you be. You've already … we've already…” Tsem suddenly bent and ground his face into the wall, shuddering.

Hezhi's gut wrenched. “Tsem!”

The Giant moaned and thrust his hand back, motioning her away.

“He must have been wounded,” Ngangata muttered. “I didn't see—”

“No,” Tsem croaked. “Not wounded.”

Hezhi understood then. The half Giant was crying.

“Please,” she said to Ngangata and Brother Horse. “Please get the horses together, or whatever. If we have to leave, we have to leave. But could the two of you make the arrangements?”

The old Mang nodded, but Ngangata hung back stubbornly.

“I will watch Perkar,” she assured him. “I'll watch him.”

After a moment the half man nodded curtly and followed Brother Horse from the yekt.

Hezhi approached Tsem and laid her hand on his massive ribs.

“I've never seen you cry,” she whispered.

“I don't mean to,” he wheezed. “It's just that… why can't they leave you alone!”

“Shh.”

“I saw how the priests hurt you, in Nhol, and I could do nothing. I saw the horror that never left your face, after you went down into that place, that place under the sewers. And then I could do nothing. Finally—”

“Finally you helped me escape the most terrible fate anyone could imagine.”

“Yes, and had to be carried away from Nhol on my back. I know who saved whom back in Nhol, Princess.”

She knelt, and hot tears were starting in her own eyes. “Listen to me, Tsem. You did save me, just not the way you think. I almost …” Became a goddess? Razed Nhol to its foundations? Would that have been so bad, looking back?

“I almost became something terrible,” she finished. “You saved me.”

“I don't remember that. How could I have done that?”

“Just by being Tsem. By loving me.”

“Ah. I thought you wanted me to stop crying.”

“I don't care if you cry,” she soothed. But she did. Even wounded, Tsem had not seemed so feeble to her. He had always been her wall, her strength. Wounded, he had merely been awaiting repair, being rebuilt to be her tower again. But this struck her down to the bone, all the way down. She was really alone here, in this place. She had to be her own strength, and even Giants couldn't protect her now.

She hated herself, but she wished he hadn't cried. She wished he had kept it in, wept to the wind later. But he hadn't, and now she knew, and she loved him enough not to tell him what he had done: that he had made it all worse.

“Come on,” she whispered. “We have to get ready to go. The world awaits us.”

XVIII On the Barge

A bright clattering of gulls blew through the door as the old man stepped into the darkened cabin. He stood for a moment, silhouetted in a rectangle of sunlight, a breeze that smelled like water and iron seeping past his body. Ghe motioned him in.

“You,” Ghan grunted. “What do you have to do with all of this?”

“My father has more influence than I ever told anyone,” Ghe answered, secretly amused by his joke. In his heart of hearts, his father was the River.

“Enough to command the use of a royal barge? Don't lie to me, boy.”

Ghe sighed and stood politely, smoothing the hem of his dark green robe. He motioned for the librarian to sit on the pillows heaped about the cabin. Ghan ignored the motion, stubbornly continuing to stand on the slowly rocking deck.

“Yes, then, you've seen through me,” Ghe admitted. “Please sit down. Have a measure of coffee.”

“I don't intend to stay.”

Ghe shook his head. “As you imply, you and I are in the grip of powers greater than ourselves. The emperor's soldiers are still outside, and I doubt that I can persuade them to leave.” Ghe was amazed at the strength of the old man. He could sense the cloud of fear and uncertainty about him, and yet his face and manner betrayed no such sentiments. A worthy opponent and a needed ally.

“But you know what this is all about?” Ghan asked, eyeing him critically.

“Indeed. As do you, I expect.”

“Hezhi,” the old man said dully, reaching to pinch the folds of his brow with one hand.

“Hezhi? Not ‘Hezhinata’?”

Ghan's only answer was a glare.

“She is in danger, you know. Master Ghan, she is in deadly danger.”

Ghan folded his thin arms across his chest like a hedge of bone, protecting him. “Danger.”

“Please sit down, Master Ghan. I tire of standing myself.”

Ghan pursed his lips in undisguised frustration and then, with a slight nod, settled onto one of the felted pillows. He appeared uncomfortable, sitting without a desk in his lap, a book splayed open before him. Ghe smiled reassuringly, bent, and poured coffee from a silver urn into twin porcelain cups. He offered one to Ghan, who took it almost without seeming to notice. His attention was focused entirely on Ghe, as if he were trying to peer through his clothing to the lies they hid, through the scarf about his throat to the impossible scar.

“Tell me what danger,” Ghan demanded.

“From whom else? From the priesthood.”

“The priesthood?”

“It has come to the attention of the emperor that the priesthood plans an expedition to search for her.”

“Search for her? Why?”

“Who knows what purposes hide behind their robes and masks? But the emperor believes that it has to do with the Royal Blood.”

“Away from the River, she is no danger to them.”

“I know little of these matters, Master Ghan. I am only the son of a merchant, an engineer at best. What I do know is that what is true or false is of no consequence to the priesthood. Set in motion, they are like a stone falling. What remains beneath them is crushed. For whatever reason, we know they seek her. Furthermore, we believe that they know where she is.”

“They could not.”

“Couldn't they? They have been sending out spies for the better part of a year. They have been working their sorcery, watching the stars.”

“All of this the emperor told you.”

Ghe held out his hands. “I did not, of course, have an audience with the Chakunge himself. But his minister spoke to me, after I made my concerns known.”

“Your concerns?”

Ghe nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes. The priests talk, and the careful ear ensnares their words. I have heard things.”

“Why were you researching the temple?”

“A false trail. I believed that they actually had her captive in their sanctum.”

“They do not.”

“You seem certain of that,” Ghe observed.

Ghan tightened his mouth, realizing that he had said too much.

Ghe leaned over the coffee urn and spoke intently. “The emperor knows, Master Ghan, that you helped his daughter escape the city. He has been watching you, hoping for some sign that you know her whereabouts.”

“And you were the spy?”

“One of them, Master. Please understand, it was from my concern for her.”

Ghan frowned sharply. “What is this all about? If you wish me to confess some crime, I will not. I have no patience for these courtly games.”

“This is no game, Master. In the morning, this barge swims upstream to search for the daughter of our emperor. Unlike the priesthood, we have no idea of where she is, save north and away. You can help us.”

“I do not know where she is.”

“You do. Assuredly, Master Ghan, you do.”

“Torture it from me, then.”

“The emperor won't do that. At least, he said he would not. He wants your cooperation and your loyalty. You are dear to Hezhi, and it is important that she believe in our good intentions when we do find her.”

“You aren't—” Ghan's face registered shock for the first time. His mouth actually dropped open. “You aren't really suggesting that I go with you on this mad search?”

“But that is precisely what I am saying.”

“Out of the question! The library—”

“The emperor has actually been considering sealing the library. It has been the center of much trouble, of late.”

“Sealing the library?”

Ghe sipped his coffee, let the implicit threat sink in. A mask of fury settled on Ghan's face and then quickly vanished.

“I see,” he clipped.

“Perhaps only temporarily, until you return.” He regarded his coffee cup once more. “There has also been talk of restoring certain names in the capital, of ending certain exiles.”

Ghan was nodding his head now. The sweetmeat and the rotten pear were both on the plate before him. Ghan's family was in exile and had been for decades; only his intense love of the library kept him in Nhol. The simultaneous threat to close the library and promise to reinstate his clan had to be a powerful combination.

“No purse is large enough to make me a whore,” the old man declared almost inaudibly, eyes nearly shuttered by his angry lids.

“Those were the emperor's words, his promises and threats,” Ghe whispered. “These are mine. I love Hezhi, Master Ghan, and I know you do, as well. You helped her once, at gravest risk to your own life and everything you hold close and dear. Help me help her. When we find her, I promise you—I swear to you—that whatever pleases her, we shall do. The emperor wants her back here, but I want what is best for her. And she must be warned, at the very least, about the determination of the priesthood. At the least.”

“You are mad. This entire city is mad, the nightmare of a brutish, sleeping god.”

“What does that mean? Do you mean to wish away the world as it is and replace it with one you imagine? If so, you must cease merely reading your books and do something. Come with me, Master Ghan.”

For the first time, Ghan raised his coffee to his lips, and in an instant—like the batting of an eye—Ghe sensed his fear and hesitation vanish. Replaced by … Ghe's new senses were like smell. Fear he had scented often enough to know it. This was something he did not know.

“I must have certain books. I must have maps.”

“You are free to return with the soldiers to the library. They will help you carry anything you need. You accept, then? I can relay that to the emperor?”

“You may tell him I will accompany you.”

“I will tell the captain, when he boards.”

“You are not the commander here?”

“As you say, Lord Ghan, one so lowly as I cannot command a royal expedition. A noble will be placed in command. But you and I will lead them, will we not?”

Ghan did not answer. Instead, he stood shakily. “I wish to gather my things now.”

“Very well. The emperor thanks you.”

“I'm sure.”

“And I thank you.” Ghe was surprised to find that his voice rang sincere, even in his own jaded ears.

SUNLIGHT sheathed the streets in molten copper, beat them bright and hot as Ghan trod across cobbles worn smooth by a hundred generations of feet. Last time he had walked this path, it had also been to board a boat, to arrange passage for Hezhi to his kindred in the Swamp Kingdoms and thence to far-off Lhe.

In hindsight, that had been a poor plan. Not only because it had not succeeded—the boat had been attacked by members of the same royal elite who now escorted him—but because in Lhe the priesthood would have found Hezhi easily, had they cared to look. In the Mang Wastes, finding anyone would be no easy task.

For weeks and then months he had awaited the writ of the executioner, sure that in the chaos of Hezhi's escape he had been found out. If the arrangements at the docks were known to the emperor, then surely the arranger was known, as well. But the writ had never come, and his old head remained where it had been for sixty-three earthly years, bobbing about on a neck that sometimes seemed too thin to support its weight. Now was such a time.

If he weren't in such terrible danger, he might be amused that the emperor and his servants could so deeply underestimate him. They believed that their courtly intrigues were so complex, so deeply cunning, that they could shift Human Beings about like the markers in a game of Na. Perhaps they shifted each other around so, but he was a scholar. He could see through their pitiful, dull machinations as if they were sheerest silk. Not every detail, perhaps, not yet, but he could see the shape of something beneath that thin skirt, and it was not the curved courtesan he was expected to see.

Who was Yen? That he did not know, but he was no merchant's son. His accent, while passable, was all wrong. His manner, his pretense of submissive cooperation was poorly acted indeed; they hoped to disguise a deeper haughtiness. None of this had mattered before now, and thus he had simply not expended the mental energy to make these connections. But since Yen's reappearance, his questions about Hezhi, his research on the Great Water Temple, Ghan was forced to reevaluate everything about the young man. Now that he set his mind to it—a finely tuned instrument, even now—it was clear to him that Yen had pretended from the first moment. His intention had always been to be near Hezhi. That made it likely—almost certain, in fact—that it had been Yen set to watch her, Yen who betrayed her, and who now sought to redress his error in allowing her to escape. And so Hezhi was in danger. Yen's suggestion that her peril came from the priesthood was probably a lie—unless the expedition the man was assembling was created by the priesthood. That was a logical conclusion—after all, those set to watch royal children were usually Jik assassins and therefore of the priestly order. Yet these were unquestionably the emperor's elite escorting him, and it seemed improbable that the emperor and the priesthood would work together on anything.

Anything, that is, save perhaps in the containment of one of the Waterborn. The priesthood and the emperor were of one mind on that, and only that. And perhaps they knew something Ghan did not, something about Hezhi's power or potential that moved both parties to cooperate above and beyond the norm.

So, Ghan thought as he passed the ever-grander house walls lining the street, best assume it is both of them. The emperor and the priesthood, but only I know where Hezhi might be.

And so this elaborate tale to convince him. Well, he was convinced. If he resisted, they might find some way to force him to tell. If he pretended to be duped by their moronic ruse, then he could do something. Something. But what?

AFTER Ghan departed, Ghe sat brooding in the cabin. He wished to leave the narrow confines of the living quarters, to pace the proud decks of the barge, meet the sailing men who would carry him up-River. But by now, surely, the priesthood had gotten wind of something. He knew well how deeply the palace was penetrated by the eyes of the temple, and this movement of men and supplies to one of the barges must have raised at least a few suspicious hackles. If he were seen, they would know for certain what was afoot, and whatever story was being circulated about the purpose of the expedition would be known as false. He was commanded by the emperor to remain cloistered until the barge was well away from Nhol.

It was a wise command, and therefore he heeded it. And so, instead of following his desires, he explored the world he was allowed, for the moment. That meant the little cluster of rooms at the rear of the barge which, from off of the boat, resembled an elegant, spacious mansion.

Inside, that apparent grandeur was seen as illusion, though the design of the cabins was essentially the same as a suite of rooms in the palace. His cabin opened directly onto the central deck, but it also had an entrance into a courtyard, of sorts. It was a small, narrow imitation of the ones in the palace, but it served the same purpose, allowing fresh air into the cabins arranged about it, especially those that crowded to the edges of the barge and could not thus open onto the deck. In all, four cabins similar to his own opened into the yard—relatively capacious rooms, furnished with colorful rugs and pillows, beds of down-stuffed linen. There were two much larger spaces, but those stacked sleeping shelves so that ten men could room in each. The whole complex was sunken into the deck on the rear end of the ship, and Ghe knew that there was another such cluster of rooms forward, but all of those were crowded ones, built to accommodate sailors and soldiers. The floor of the cabins was the bottom hull of the barge; the surface of the deck set a half a man's length higher to provide protected space for cargo.

Ghe wandered through the various rooms, noting their furnishings, access, and escape routes. He always preferred to know every way by which a room could be exited. One of the larger cabins, he discovered, had a latched access to the cramped cargo space that ran the length of the barge between the two “houses” at each end. After a moment's pause, he shucked his expensive robe—it had come with the cabin—and entered the dark space, clad in only the brief cotton cloth that wrapped twice around his waist and once to cover his crotch and in the scarf tied about his neck. Unused as he was to fine clothing like the robe, he did not want to soil it in his explorations.

In a deep crouch, he wandered curiously about the hold. Light streamed through a pair of open hatches and through the occasional perforations in the bulwarks at floor level that would drain rainwater or any other inundation that might tend to flood the barge or stand in the hold. Several sailors stood in the hatches, shuttling a few remaining items into storage. Though there was no particular need to, Ghe avoided them, padding through the shadowed crates and bags, identifying them by their markings: food, rope, assorted trade goods if they needed them. In addition, Ghe knew, there were sealed packs of arrows, spare edged weapons, extra boots and clothing for cooler climates. Finally, wrapped carefully and stored separately, a number of the head-size pitch balls that the catapult mounted abovedeck could fling at any vessel that might oppose them.

The horses were not on board yet, but Ghe found and wandered through the maze of stalls, wondering how such large beasts would be able to stand imprisonment that scarcely allowed them a pace to move in. This part of the hold was also open to the sky, though canopied in good weather with an elevated tarp. He wound through the stalls in the suffuse light that bled through the canvas, and though the deck was clean to a polish, he smelled the faint, musky odor of beasts. He found where the bulwark could be opened to let the animals on and off and marked it in his memory for his own possible use.

It seemed, to Ghe, a well-equipped expedition. Fifty footmen—most of them elite—thirty horse, himself, an engineer, the captain, whoever he was—and Ghan. Yes, it seemed a force to be reckoned with, but then, what did he know of that? What sort of dangers might they meet? He would have to talk—to Ghan, to the sailors who had been up-River before. Despite the tales he had told Hezhi, Ghe himself had never been more than a league beyond the walls of the city.

He could summon the ancient lord living in his belly to his lips, he supposed, ask him a thing or two. He could reach vague understandings with his ghosts without empowering them. But to deal with them specifically, he had to give them his voice to speak in. Though he could now summon and banish them at will, still he disliked hearing his voice chattering without his leave. No, he would save that summoning for later, when he had learned what he could from the living.

There was some change above him; the faint cadence of work songs, the thudding of feet on the heavy planks died away into silence, and replacing that, the faint tones of a single voice.

This must be my captain, Ghe thought wryly. He considered once more that this might all be some elaborate trick, that the emperor had merely devised a ruse to rid himself of a dangerous ghoul. It would make more sense, in many ways, than the scenario he seemed to find himself in. Hiding like a spider in the rich cabin of one of the emperor's own barges, the elite guard obeying his orders? Much since his rebirth had been painted with the gray and blue of nightmare. Even moments of success and joy would suddenly flatten into something akin to terror when he remembered that he was, after all, dead. Here was one such moment, mocking even this achievement. A gutter scorp from Southtown on a royal barge …

He had taken the risk, and he believed he had won. Had to believe it, for the nightmare reached its nadir in the Water Temple. Returning again from oblivion, awakening in a canal with priests and Jik swarming in search of him, he had known that without powerful help his mission was doomed. He would fail against whatever that thing was that held the first emperor himself on a leash. Ghe was not the only inhuman creature walking in Nhol, nor the most powerful. Only the emperor himself was an ally worthy of that thing, and Ghe had known, then, that it was his to win the emperor or win nothing at all.

But the Chakunge was a man as well as a god, a living man,and as such had a natural abhorrence for Ghe and what he was. Perhaps the expedition was meant to go on, but he was not.

If so, however, the emperor should have had him extinguished in the palace, for here, floating on the very skin of the River, Ghe was in the flower of his strength. Even the gnawings of hunger stayed distant, an occasional irritation, but nothing he need feed. This was fortunate, since on a ship with only eighty people, he could not sate his hunger without being noticed.

So, with the barest hesitation, he threaded softly back to the entrance to the cabin, lifted the board aside, and entered.

“What sort of ship's rat is this?” a voice purred softly. A woman's voice. Ghe whirled, wondering how he could have been so preoccupied.

She stood there, regarding his condition of undress with obvious amusement. Thick, sensual lips bowed faintly at the corners of a narrow, tapered face. Opalescent eyes shimmered with amusement, curiosity—perhaps cruelty, as well. Her hair, bound up with a comb, was black, but unlike that of most of the nobility, it was not straight but instead slightly wavy, like his own—usually a sign of lower-than-noble birth.

Her clothing carried a message quite different from her features and hair, however. Though not ostentatious, her dress was of jeh, a fiber much like silk but rarer yet, available only to Blood Royal.

“Well?” she asked, and he realized he had not answered her. “What cause have you to skulk in my quarters? And what sort of apparel is this, loincloth and neck-wrap? Some new fashion in the court I haven't learned of yet?”

“A-ah,” Ghe replied, all but successfully avoiding a stammer. “You must pardon me, Lady. If you will hand me my robe, I will don it.”

“arrobe?”

“Yes. I did not wish to stain it inspecting the cargo.”

“I see.” Her gaze fastened on his scarf, and the amusement faded a bit, replaced by … fascination? An odd gleam in her eye, anyway. “You are Yen.”

“I am he.”

Only the emperor and perhaps Nyas, his advisor, knew Ghe's real name. Easiest to hide his identity from Ghan if he were the only one avoiding mistakes.

“Well, I think we expected you to be dressed to receive us. I do not stand on such formalities—with men, anyway—but Lord Bone Eel shall, I think.” She stooped and handed him the robe, which he stepped into immediately. She was slight though not particularly short. Young.

“I was expecting only Bone Eel,” Ghe said, frowning, trying to understand the faint buzz of emotion emanating from her, and failing.

“Lord Bone Eel is my husband. I am the Lady Qwen Shen.”

“Oh. I was not informed.” He stopped and bowed what he thought to be the appropriate bow, and she did not laugh outright.

“You will be accompanying us?” he asked when he straightened.

“Yes, of course. I could not let my husband stray far from my sight. Servants will be along soon with my clothes. I only wanted to see my quarters.”

“Well, then,” Ghe answered. “I hope that you approve.”

“Oh, I don't,” she said. “They are drab and cramped, and I detest them already.”

“Except when it rains, a pavilion will be erected for you on deck,” Ghe informed her. “I have seen such pavilions, and they are much more comfortable than these rooms.” Though he thought his cabin was very nice indeed, compared to anywhere he had ever lived, or to the crowded common rooms the soldiers must make do with.

“Well, it isn't raining now. Come up on deck and greet my husband.”

“Unfortunately, I am under direct orders from the emperor himself to remain here until the voyage begins. I regret the inconvenience, but the lord must come below to meet me.”

“He won't like that, even though he must come down here anyway. He prefers for his men to greet him on the deck.”

“Once again,” Ghe said, “I must apologize. But I must also do the emperor's bidding.”

“Yes, you must, I suppose,” she replied indifferently. Her mood had changed; whatever interest and amusement she might have found in him earlier departed. “Well.” She brightened. “Perhaps I will go see about having that pavilion erected.”

There came a clumping behind them, as someone descended from the upper deck. “I have seen to it already,” a man's voice assured her. Ghe turned, not caught unaware this time.

“Lord Bone Eel,” he replied, bowing a degree or so lower than he had for Qwen Shen.

“Yes, yes, enough bowing. We are shipmates, and you will find that on board ship there is less of that stifling formality we have in the city.”

“Yes, Lord,” Ghe replied, trying to get the captain's measure.

He already knew a thing or two, of course. The highest nobility, those in the immediate family of the Chakunge, were all named so that water was actually mentioned in their names. It was the next tier down, the secondary nobility, who tended to be named for creatures of the water. He thus knew Bone Eel to be well removed from the line to the throne, but not as far removed as the most minor nobility, who were named for creatures that lived around but not in the River, such as the little whelp who had courted Hezhi. Wezh, whose name meant “gull.”

Bone Eel looked like a captain. He was tall and striking, his profile hewn from a strong stone but polished to perfection. His hair was straight, glossy black, and worn cropped like a helmet at his ears. He was dressed in a simply cut but elegant yellow sarong and a sailor's loose shirt, umber with bluish turtles batiked upon it. A scabbarded sword hung casually from a broad leather belt.

“You are Yen, the diplomat of whom the emperor informed me?”

Diplomat? “Yes,” he answered cautiously. “I am Yen.”

“And who do we wait for now? This scholar, Ghem?”

“Ah, Ghan, my lord,” he corrected. ”And he will join us sometime hence.”

“Well, let's hope he arrives soon. I wish to be under way before nightfall.”

“Nightfall? I thought we were to leave by morning.”

“As did I,” Bone Eel replied, his mouth flattening into a grim line. “But the emperor said that we were to take no priests on this journey, you see?” By his look he clearly took for granted that Ghe did see.

“No, Lord, I'm sorry, I don't.” Ghe was beginning to feel a certain irritation with the man. He let his gaze wander inside the captain's chest, thought idly about just stroking the strands there, the way one might stroke a harp. But the time for that would probably come soon enough, not now. He must have patience, for there was much he did not know. If he had learned anything at all in the past days, it was that impulsive actions were not always wise ones.

“No? Well, ships are supposed to carry at least one priest, and they are raising a mighty hue and cry about this barge leaving without one. We must be under way before things become too noisy.”

“Oh.” Ghe wondered if the Ahw'en were behind this—if they suspected—or if it was just the usual petty political war waged daily in the palace courts.

“In any event, I am ready to go!” Bone Eel exclaimed, his deep voice tinged with enthusiasm. “Too long have I been a prisoner of land. I'm ready to feel the River beneath my feet again.”

“And how long has it been since your last voyage?” Ghe inquired.

“Oh, it's been—well, let me see …” He ticked off one finger, then the next, frowning.

“It's been five years,” Qwen Shen put in sweetly. She beamed at Ghe, but he thought perhaps there was a hidden glare in the expression.

“That long?“ Bone Eel muttered. ”Yes, too long indeed.”

Bone Eel continued to agree with himself as he went back above.

XIX Drum Battle

A wind slanted out of the east with the dawn, and Hezhi leaned into it, let it relieve her weary muscles of some small part of the task of supporting her. She was listing in the saddle anyway, worn out in more ways than she knew, and she could almost imagine that the wind, fragrant with sage and juniper, was a pillow, nestling against her, welcoming her to sleep.

Her body may have lain as if asleep while she traveled the skies, but it had apparently received no rest. After the fight and the discussion—after her decision—they had wasted little time, slipping from the camp while the sky was still an inky beast with a thousand eyes. Now they were more than a league from the Mang camp, the most immediate danger behind them, and events, unbroken by oblivion, crowded together in Hezhi's brain until they were a senseless litany of colors and shapes. Her eyes read the sky and the landscape only from habit, without much comprehension.

Of the night's watchful eyes, only one remained, the rest having fled or fluttered shut beneath sky-colored lids at the graying of the horizon, and that only made her sleepier, made her wish that she were a cold, distant, sleeping star. The holdout still flamed, defiant, defending his domain in the vault of heaven even though his was the easternmost portion, where the sun's birth was heralded by servants of copper and gold.

“What star is that?” Hezhi asked wearily, in an attempt to keep awake.

Brother Horse cracked the barest grin in the gray light. Hezhi noticed not so much the show of humor as how old he looked, with the stubble of beard on his chin.

“We call him Yuchagaage, the 'Hunter.' ”

“What does he hunt?”

Brother Horse waved the back of his hand at the star, winking dimmer each moment to their right. “He has hunted many things. Right now he hunts the sun.”

“Will he catch the sun?”

“Well, watch for yourself. The Bright King will kill him, sure enough, before even he has risen.”

“The Hunter is not the most intelligent of gods,” Raincaster added from up ahead of them, next to Tsem. Hezhi had been staring east in the first place to avoid watching the tail of Rain-caster's horse, which threatened to mesmerize her as it switched back and forth.

“True,” Brother Horse said. “He lies in wait for the sun, each morning getting closer. Always he is slain; he never succeeds—nor learns, apparently.”

“But he is still here, when the other stars have fled,” Hezhi noted. “He lives longer in defiance than in retreat.”

“The other stars are smarter,” Raincaster answered, but Hezhi thought she heard a faint contempt in the young man's tone—or had her ears added that?

“But not braver,” Hezhi retorted sourly. “And he isn't always running”

“I won't play this word game,” Tsem said, turning to speak but not so much that she could see his face. These were the first words he had spoken since crying the night before. “It was you who decided we should leave.”

“I never decide, Tsem,” Hezhi replied. ”It always happens, but I never decide.”

“Well, you are not a star, Princess, and if you are blown out like a candle one morning, you will not return to light the world again. I don't know much about these ghosts that people out here call gods—you know much more than I, as always. But they seem to me, from what I have heard, to be poor creatures to model your actions after.”

“Well put,” Brother Horse agreed, “though I must admit that as a young warrior I carried the likeness of the Hunter on my shield. Many young Mang do so still. He is a rash god, but then, young men value rashness.”

“What do old men value?“ Raincaster asked.

“Young women,” Brother Horse answered. “If I carried a shield now, I would paint one on it.”

Ngangata—riding slightly ahead of Raincaster—turned, his face a weird rose color in the light of the rising sun. “Perkar is like the Hunter,” he put in glumly. “Always. And you see where it gets him.”

The wind picked up, clean and cool, and for an instant it swept the rooms of Hezhi's mind of the broken bits of thought that cluttered them. She had to raise her voice a bit for Brother Horse to understand her.

“Yes, Perkar,” she said. “You told us we would speak of him.”

“Later, when you have had some rest.”

“I should rest soon, then. When I returned—well, just before I awoke, in your yekt—I saw the monster again, the one feeding upon him. I think it may be winning. If I do have the power to help him now—as you say—I may not in a few days.”

“That's probably true,” the old Mang conceded. “But first tell me everything. How you went through the drum, what happened—everything. We have time enough for that.”

Hezhi nodded and told him, trying to leave nothing out, though even the wind failed to keep her mind clear and the droning of her own voice threatened to put her to sleep. Her story became a patchwork of digressions, and she feared that what little sense it had ever made was now lost. The sky continued to brighten, as the sun puddled red on the horizon, and then, finding its spherical shape, rose up. At Brother Horse's direction, they put the rising light to their backs, bearing nearly due west. The land rolled and then flattened out like a pan, rimmed at the limits of their sight by hills on the south and north. Ahead, Hezhi could make out the purple contours of distant mountains. The sky was as clear as blue glass, and the last traces of snow were gone from the ground.

The end of Hezhi's story whipped off with the wind across the endless plain, and Brother Horse rocked silently in his saddle for some time without commenting on it. Hezhi did not rush him, instead looking about her once more.

Tsem sat a horse nearly twice as massive as the one she rode, and he was still too large for it, though the horse bore his weight without complaint. Tsem himself remained glum, his visage hidden from her as she recounted her journey to the mountain. It was just as well, for she feared what her words might have written on his face. Ngangata now rode well in front of the rest of them, ever the scout, and Heen had paced ahead with him. Yu-u'han led Perkar's horse, and Perkar dragged and bumped along behind on a travois. At Ngangata's insistence, they were also accompanied by Sharp Tiger, the mount that Perkar had been leading when he reached the Ben'cheen. Raincaster, after their conversation, had dropped back to rear guard, his hawklike features clouded with exhaustion. Two additional horses carried their provisions and tents.

Seven people and nine horses. We make no more impression on this plain than a line of ants, Hezhi thought. Dust in the eye of the sky.

Brother Horse broke the silence, clearing his throat. “You have had an unusual experience,” he said. “Unusual, I mean, even for a gaan.”

“It seemed unusual to me,” Hezhi admitted. “But I know nothing of these things.”

“You were caught up in the wake of the sacrifice. Traditionally we must make certain that the Horse God returns home without delay when she is slain. We must make sure she does not lose her way. So we sing her a path to follow.”

“It was more like being caught in a stream,” Hezhi said.

The old man nodded. “I have never flown in such a manner. Few gaans ever purposely risk the mountain. It is too dangerous by far.”

“Then perhaps,” Tsem exploded, turning in his saddle and unwittingly yanking his poor mount's head about, as well, “perhaps you should have warned her before giving her the means to do so. Or did you hope that she would do what she did?”

“I did not think? Brother Horse admitted, more to Hezhi than to Tsem. “I did not think. I honestly never believed you would open the lake without my help… without my urging, even. You seemed so reluctant.”

“Whatever else she is,” Tsem said, “she is still a very young woman. Impulsive.”

“Tsem—”

“Princess, I have served you for many years. Until quite recently, it was not enemies I protected you from but yourself. You have the mind of a scholar—I know you are smarter than me—but you have no sense sometimes.”

Hezhi opened her mouth to frame an angry retort, but she let it die unsaid, for Tsem was right, of course. Sometimes she became so lost in thought, she could not see where she was walking. At other times, it seemed as if she acted without any thought at all and had to spend her wakeful hours making up stories about why she did things. Anyway, it was the same old Tsem litany. He didn't really understand.

Instead of replying, she nodded wearily.

“In any event,” Brother Horse said, “with some rest, you should be adequate to the task of helping Perkar.”

HEZHI awoke, cold, though she was well bundled in blankets. The embers of a nearby fire gave out a dull heat, as well, but the air quickly sucked it away. Hezhi could not remember stopping; she must have fallen asleep in the saddle. She still felt tired, but it was a manageable weariness, not the soul-numbing shroud of exhaustion she had worn earlier. Most everyone else seemed to be asleep, as well, scattered here and there about the floor of some sort of cave or rock shelter. Outside the gaping entrance, moonlight drizzled onto the plain when swift-flying clouds allowed; she watched several of the dark forms pass before the Bright Queen, dress briefly in silver, then rush on to their nameless destinations. The air smeiled wet.

“It will rain soon,” a voice raspily whispered. Hezhi turned from the tableau to Ngangata. She could see only bits of his face in the dim glow. It seemed very inhuman, and she suddenly remembered the dreams she once had of a deep, ancient forest, of trees so huge and thick that light never fell, undiffused, to the earth. And though she had never dreamed of Ngangata—only Perkar—in the bits of his face she somehow sensed those trees.

“You can tell?”

“Yes. It is no difficult thing, really.”

“How is Perkar?”

“Breathing a bit more shallowly, I think,” he answered.

“Well,” she chuffed, rubbing her eyes, “would you go wake Brother Horse for me?”

“Do you have the strength for this? I know I urged you earlier, but…”

“I won't let him die, Ngangata. Not if I have a choice in the matter.”

He nodded and rose lithely, with no sound, and padded off on cat's feet.

Nearby, Tsem stirred. “Princess?”

“I'm here.” She rummaged through her things—they were in a pile near the blanket she had been wrapped in—and withdrew her drum.

“Can't that wait?” the half Giant asked.

“Wait forever, you mean? Tsem, try to understand.”

“Tsem always try to understand, Princess. Tsem just not very bright.”

Hezhi could not tell if Tsem was trying to make her smile or rebuke her with his “dumb act,” the one he had used in the palace so often.

“You'll be right beside me.”

“I was right beside you before, when your spirit left your body. You almost fell off the roof and broke your neck.”

“I was foolish. I didn't know what I was doing.”

“And now you do,” he replied sarcastically.

She didn't answer. Ngangata was returning with Brother Horse. The old Mang man knelt and touched Perkar's brow.

“Yes,” he muttered. “We should do this now.”

“How?”

“I will do it. You will lend me the strength I need.”

“I don't understand. You told me you couldn't heal him.”

“I can't—not without you. I don't have the strength. On the other hand, you don't have the knowledge, and I don't have time to teach it to you; that would take months of apprenticeship.”

“What do I do, then?”

“Tap your drum; follow me and watch what I do.”

“What will you do?”

He spread his hands expressively. “We must fight and defeat the Breath Feasting. We will use our spirit helpers. Watch how I call mine forth, and then call yours forth in the same manner.”

“The Horse, you mean—the spirit of the Horse.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Of course,” Hezhi repeated, not at all certain things were as obvious as Brother Horse seemed to think them. “I'm ready.”

“The rest of you be silent and do not touch us,” the old man warned. “Do you understand? Giant, do you understand?”

“If anything ill befalls her, I will break your neck.”

Brother Horse sighed and shook his head slowly at the cave floor. “If, when we get started here, you interfere, you may have no need to break either of our necks. The Breath Feasting may do it for you.”

Tsem glowered but protested no more.

They sat and after a still, silent moment, Brother Horse began scratching the surface of his drum with his nails, faintly, faintly. Soon he began to tap it, and Hezhi joined in, also tapping with the nail of her index finger. The effect was nearly immediate; though almost negligible, the vibration of the taut rawhide tremored up her finger and into her bones and blood, filled it with rhythm. She moved to a pulse not her own, pumped not by her heart but by the skin head, by the scale on her arm. She was only remotely aware when Brother Horse began to chant, a wordless incantation at first, a droned note repeated over and over and an occasional odd rise in pitch. But in time, the meaningless syllables resolved into words, and these she caught as they drifted by.

Wake up, my guest You have slept long In the house of my ribs, The house of my heart Wake up now, See through my eyes, Walk with my feet, Yush, my old friend

As he sang, Brother Horse began to shiver, wavering like flame in high wind. In that uncertainty of form, his face was the face of a wolf and his own at once, and she gathered from his limbs a sense of lean gaunt grayness that was not wholly Human. He chanted on, speaking to the spirit in him, and the air about Hezhi began to dream, to fill with the colors from behind closed eyelids. Tsem, Ngangata, and the others became shadowed, dimmed away as the real and the unreal traded their substance. Brother Horse continued to spread, became two shapes, wolf and man, though they were not entirely separate.

“Now,” the old man told her, though he still chanted when he said it, “sing as I sang. Call up your helper.”

Hezhi closed her eyes, rocking. It no longer seemed as if her finger moved the cadence of the drum; rather, it seemed to move itself. Hezhi's sight turned inward, and there she saw the horse-child, waiting for her call. She appeared as she had in life, iron gray with blazing white stripes, mane whipped by a fierce wind, racing upon a limitless, grassy field.

This is in me, Hezhi realized. The Horse's world nested within her, a world of hooves pounding and strong, willful blood.

Come on out. Come out and help me, she thought. Her lips formed the same chant that Brother Horse had recited, but this inner speech seemed more important than the formal words. It was her wish that the mare responded to, not the syllables in Mang. The mare came gladly, the thunder of her hooves shaking the drum so violently that Hezhi very nearly dropped it.

Hezhi opened her eyes. Brother Horse was talking again, perhaps to her. He seemed to be speaking urgently, but in her dreamlike state she felt sluggish, too lazy to puzzle at his meaning. She was more interested in the spirit emerging from her; it was almost as if she were giving birth—or at least, the way she had imagined giving birth might be. Far away, she heard a dog barking frantically. Heen? He was never frantic about anything.

Then she noticed Perkar standing, facing her, bending toward her. The almond molds of his eyes were entirely black, seething, bubbling like boiling tar. He grinned oddly, and his teeth were black, too. His sword squirmed in a white-knuckled grip, now a blade, now an eagle, now a single long beak or claw.

“I told you,” Perkar said. “I warned you.” He lifted the sword to point at her throat slowly, as if it were heavy and he was having trouble raising it.

A feral swirl of gray and teeth and claws smacked into Perkar and his black grin turned to a snarl. He staggered beneath the onslaught, swiping clumsily about him with his weapon. Brother Horse still sat, hands tapping the drum, as the wolf that had emerged from him tore with white teeth at Perkar.

Hezhi stared, gaping. Were they to kill Perkar? If the price of evicting the Breath Feasting from his body was to kill him, what was the point? But Perkar did not seem in danger of losing. One hand gripped the wolf by the throat now, and though it squirmed and shifted shapes from wolf to serpent to man, still he held it and brought the godsword around. The wolf split nearly in half, and its yowl was deafening. Perkar tossed it aside and advanced upon Brother Horse.

“Old man, you should have stayed away from this. He has been given to me by one much stronger than you.”

“By whom?” Brother Horse asked. His eyes remained on Hezhi, however.

“I will take your ghost to him, and he will have some use for it, I think.”

“I regret that I cannot accompany you.”

Hezhi noticed that the two halves of the wolf were still joined by a thread of life, and the doglike creature was obstinately dragging itself across the cave floor toward Perkar. It would never reach him before the Perkar-thing reached Brother Horse, however. Only Heen stood, teeth bared, between the old gaan and death—but if a wolf god fell so quickly, how long could an ordinary dog stand?

Hezhi hesitated just an instant longer. What if Brother Horse was the enemy, and this all a trick to kill Perkar once and for all? She still, despite all of her experience, had only his word that he was on her side. But watching him sit there, calmly, facing something that looked like Perkar but was not, not really—

“Come, Goddess, ” she cried. “There is your enemy!”

And the spirit bolted from her chest, like a heartbeat escaping, heart and all. It was not unlike the feeling of terrible sadness or joy, tightened beneath the tiny bones of her breast, suddenly bursting out, and of the two, more like joy. The gates of her heart swung open, and the Horse God sprang out.

Perkar turned at the sound, gaping wider than humanly possible. In fact, his whole head hinged open, almost comically. Black flame coiled out from an open mouth framing sharklike teeth. He brought his blade up, but he was too late. The mare erupted into existence, fury and passion rolling in her eyes, and her hooves slashed with more speed and force than summer lightning. They caught Perkar in the head and his skull split, burst into shards like a shattered pot. He swayed on his feet for an instant, as the Breath Feasting pulled free of the stump of his neck. The demon leapt out, coiled sinew and scales scratching at the air, spinning out rays like a thousand-legged spider, each leg a segmented worm tipped with a sting. It wheeled toward the Horse God, who reared to meet it, teeth bared and snapping. Hezhi braced for their impact, but it never came; something suddenly settled about the demon, a hoop of shivering light, and Hezhi realized that she had not seen Brother Horse approaching the duel, though now she felt how insistent his drumbeat had become. He swept the circumference of his instrument—which seemed now much larger than before—over the Breath Feasting, and as the beast passed through, it came apart. It literally burst through the skin head of the drum, a fountain of worms rotting into shreds of moldy black cheese and finally smoke. The only sound was faint, something between a snap and a gasp.

The old man made a few more passes with the drum, making certain that all of the fragments had become vapor, but no darkness was left, no visible remains of the demon; even the smoke was gone now. Then he bowed to the mare and knelt by the wounded wolf-spirit. He drew the creature to him, and in a gentle shudder they became one again. When he came back to his feet, there was a new shuffle and limp in his gait, pain etched plainly on his brow. He approached Hezhi and gently took her hand. It seemed as if her fingers were farther away than Nhol, not part of herself at all, but when he took them, the sound of drumming ceased, and she realized that she had never stopped tapping her instrument. The Horse whickered, pranced widder-shins around them both, and then leapt back into her; Hezhi felt only a vague shock, smelled horse hair and sweat.

Fear smote her. The world beyond the drum was stark and, in its way, simple, and Human emotions were dim things there. But now, afterward, the reaction set in as wonder realized that it should have been terror. And Perkar had been killed, not saved. His head had burst apart, destroyed by her own hand—or by the hoof of her spirit helper.

She blinked. Perkar lay on the cave floor, as he had before. His head was whole, and as Brother Horse and Ngangata bent over him, he moaned once.

“What happened?” Tsem demanded. “Why are you shaking?”

Hezhi looked up into the Giant's puzzled face.

“The fight? Didn't you see?”

“See? I saw you and the old man tapping your drums and singing nonsense. Heen there started howling and growling, and then Brother Horse stood up and waved his drum around. There was some smoke or something; that's all I saw.”

“Truly?”

“Princess, that's all that happened.”

Frowning, Hezhi turned back to Perkar and the two men with him.

“Well? Is he better?”

Brother Horse shook his head solemnly. “He is still ill. It will take time for Harka to heal him entirely. But the Breath Feasting is gone.”

“Thanks to you.”

“Thank the Horse Goddess, or yourself.”

“You slew it.”

Brother Horse spread his hands. “It is not really slain, but it will be many years before its substance knits back together.”

“You drew it through the drum.”

“Yes. It is a dweller in the lake. Cast out of its waters, without flesh about it, it suffocates, in a sense. It comes unbound.”

“Are all gods thus?”

“No. The Breath Feasting is delicate, in some ways. But any passage through the drum—from one side of the 'lake' to the other—must be prepared for, by spirit, god, or Human. The transition is always dangerous.”

“What are you talking about? What lake?” Tsem asked.

“I'll explain later,” Hezhi said, patting his arm. “I promise I'll explain later.”

“Good. Because right now, the two of you sound quite mad.”

Brother Horse did not grin, but his old humor seemed to flicker in his eyes as he shook his head and said, “Indeed. Madness is a prerequisite for becoming a gaan.” He reached down and gave his dog a scratch between the ears.

Tsem rolled his eyes. “Then everyone out here but me must be one.”

Yuu'han chose that moment to interrupt.

“Out on the plain,” he said. “Look.”

Hezhi followed the pointing finger, but all she saw was moonlight and clouds. Ngangata and Brother Horse, however, had a different reaction.

“I thought they would hold them longer,” the old man remarked.

“Perhaps it is someone else.”

“Perhaps.”

“What? What is it?” Hezhi asked.

“See there?” Ngangata pointed.

Hezhi followed the imaginary line described by his finger, but still she saw nothing. “No.”

“It's a campfire. Someone following us, between a day and half a day behind.”

Brother Horse groaned. “I had hoped to rest before sunup.”

“We can rest in the saddle,” Ngangata answered. “At least our tracks will be covered.”

“What do you mean?” Hezhi asked. But then she understood, as the first patter of rain came from outside. A distant thunder tremored, and a line of blue fire walked around the far horizon.

“I told you it would rain,” Ngangata said. But he was looking at Perkar, who moaned once more, and Hezhi thought she caught the hint of a smile on his wide, strange lips, a whisper of thanks from his halfling eyes.

XX Dragons

GHAN paused at the threshold of the library and turned back, scrutinizing each block of visible shelving as the soldiers with him coughed impatiently.

“Wait,” Ghan grumbled. He could see a volume, lying on a table, out of place. He moved stiffly across the room to retrieve it.

“Now, where do you go?” he asked rhetorically, checking the notation on the book, which told him exactly that. It belonged in the labyrinthine rear stacks—the ones Hezhi had named “the Tangle.” He motioned to the soldiers to indicate he would return shortly and took the book to its shelf. Alone, he rested his head against leather-bound spines.

“I've spent my whole life among you,” he muttered to the books. “What will you do without me?”

The tomes did not answer him, of course, but as he walked heavily back to the waiting guards, to his surprise, he answered himself. He rested his fingers on Grimoire Tertiary, the last in the row before he again crossed the reading area.

“Good-bye,” he whispered. “Someone will always come who cares for you. Someone.”

And then he left, not looking back again, turning his mind stubbornly outward to what must be.

I have seen dragons, he wrote a bit later as, ignoring everyone else on the barge, he spread his things in his quarters and began to write. They were, in their way, magnificent. Bone Eel called them with his blood, though I would have believed it too deficient to summon even a worm. But it was enough; they turned and writhed in the water like living waves, scintillating with the hues of a green rainbow. Quite beautiful. When they slid into their moorings, down beneath the barge, the first tug showed their power, for in one moment we were still and in the next the boat was in motion. Soon we will not give them a second thought, but they must work tirelessly, pulling us up the River that gives them life.

He set the pen aside then, folded down onto his bed, and closed his eyes. The day had been long and wrought much upon him, and even writing gave him little solace.

GHE emerged into the light before dawn, and Nhol was gone. Even with his enhanced vision, the River was almost all that he could see; on the nearest side he could make out the artificial horizon of the levee, willow, cottonwood, and bamboo rambling at its base. The other bank was so distant that it showed only as a thin green line. He took in a breath and thought it clean, new. They were in motion! The expedition—his expedition—had begun. And they would find her, he was sure of that. It was a vast certainty, inhuman in scope, but it still gave him joy.

Footsteps approached; the ghost of the blind boy identified them instantly, knew the cadence of walking like a name from first introduction, and so Ghe did not turn but called out, instead, a soft greeting, enjoying the sigh of air across the moving barge. “Lady Qwen Shen,” he remarked. “You stir at an odd hour.”

“As do you, Lord Yen.”

He half turned his face toward her so that she could discern his sardonic grin. “No lord I, Lady.”

“Is that so? I wonder, then, why the emperor gave this expedition into your hands.”

“Your husband is the captain, madam.”

“Oh, yes.” She sighed. “My husband. Perhaps we should speak of him.”

“Speak, Lady?”

The corners of her mouth turned up, and he noticed, once again, her great beauty, the slightly … exotic air about her.

“The emperor told you that he would furnish you with a barge to pursue your quest—and the trappings to go with the barge. A crew, a captain. My husband, Bone Eel, is just such a trapping.”

Ghe scratched at the scar on his chin. “Then who gives these soldiers their orders?”

“Bone Eel does. But he gives the orders I suggest, and I suggest what you tell me to. That is how command works on this vessel.”

“That seems needlessly elaborate,” Ghe observed. “Is Bone Eel aware of this arrangement?”

“Aware?” Ghe turned so that he could see the lady's eyes sparkle as she spoke. “He is barely aware that breath passes in and out of his lungs. He is quite unaware that he never conceives an idea of his own. The emperor has given him a charter to sail up-River to 'Wun and parts beyond' as the emperor's ambassador. It is up to you and me to determine to what 'parts beyond' we shall navigate.”

“No offense, Lady Qwen Shen, but wouldn't it have been simpler to put Bone Eel—or some other captain—directly under my command?”

“Of course not,” she said, turning her face to catch a zephyr sighing across the water. “No lord would suffer to be commanded by a commoner—and a commoner cannot command a royal barge. Believe me, this is the best arrangement that can be made. Your directives will be carried out, never fear.”

He simply nodded at that. “The emperor explained our true mission?”

She solemnly returned his nod, and her voice husked lower still. “His daughter,” she all but mouthed.

Ghe nodded. “You've said enough.” But his brow stayed bunched in consternation.

“Don't worry,” Qwen Shen soothed. “This is a charade I am accustomed to. You and I will captain this vessel quite efficiently.”

“An honor,” Ghe said, but what he thought was that he was at this woman's mercy and a bit of his earlier elation faded. A gull cried in the darkness, and far out across the River's supine majesty, Ghe could see another, smaller barge moving with the current. He wondered if it, too, had dragons leashed beneath its bow—or if it moved at the behest of more mundane forces.

“Bone Eel does not know?”

“As I told you,” she answered. “Nor anyone else save the old man. You must tell him to watch his tongue.”

Ghe flashed her an evil little smile. “No one has to tell him to keep his mouth darkened. He usually only opens it to insult or argue. But I will make certain he understands our situation, anyway. Just so long as you understand that he is not to know I have any real role in this expedition. He believes me to be an engineer with some love for Hezhi, that is all.”

He was aware of her regard spidering about him as they spoke, walking delicately here and there. Often it touched lightly on his throat. He kept his own gaze studiously out and away. When he did glance at her, the intensity of her inspection disturbed him.

“What of you, Lady? What do you think me to be?”

She was silent, and the boat glided on for a time, before she turned to him frankly and answered that question by asking her own.

“May I touch your flesh?”

“What?”

“Your hand. I wish to touch your hand.”

“Why?”

“I want to see if it is cold.”

“It is not,” he assured her. “It is the temperature of flesh.”

“But I want to touch it,” she insisted. “I want to know …”

“You want to know how the flesh of a ghoul feels?” he hissed.

She did not flinch from him. “Yes.”

He darted his hand out, swiftly, so that she would understand that he was more than Human as well as less, and he gripped her hand in his with enough strength to hurt her. She gasped but, other than that, did not complain.

“That is how my flesh feels.” He grinned savagely.

She closed her eyes but did not jerk away as he thought she might. “You were wrong,” she told him instead, and he suddenly felt her other hand, the free one, tracing along his knuckles. “Your flesh is warmer than that of a man.”

He released her hand with a dismissive thrust. “Does that satisfy your curiosity, madam?”

She rubbed her abused hand absently with her other. “No,” she said. “Oh, no. My curiosity is just beginning to awaken.”

And she favored him with her own sardonic smile as she retraced her path to the colorful pavilion beneath which her husband slept.

Ghe, for his part, stood rooted where he was long after sunup, nursing his astonishment into anger, the anger into rage. If Qwen Shen were going to play games with him, she would regret it. He planned a number of inventive ways to make her do so, and then, as more sailors began to move about the deck, checking the depth with long poles, casting out nets, or merely watching the River and shore for dangers, Ghe went below to speak with Ghan.

“SHE is not near the River, you can be certain of that,” Ghan told him—a bit warily, Ghe thought.

“Why is that?”

“I am Forbidden, so I will not delve in great detail into the subject. Suffice to say that she fled not Nhol so much as she fled the River, and to return to him would thwart all of her hopes.”

“Then we shall not return her,” Ghe assured him. “We will find her and warn her of the priesthood and its plans.”

“I don't see how the priesthood can find her.”

“They have ways.”

“And you know that the temple's expedition goes up-River rather than overland? That is why the emperor outfitted a barge for our journey?”

In fact, Ghe had not thought much about why he requested a barge; it had seemed the natural thing, at the time. Now he realized that he might have let the River God betray himself; the River could only conceive of up-River and down-River, and so naturally Hezhi must be in one of those directions. Ghe's sense was that she was up-River, but now it dawned on him that the River's belief in this matter—even filtered through him—was not trustworthy. The River did not know where she was.

His only clues were visions the River had been sending him in the past few days. Unlike the first—which had been about the River himself—these pictured a man, a dark, wild man on a striped horse who rode with companions dressed, like himself, in barbaric costumes. It seemed to Ghe—in this dream—that the wild man knew where Hezhi was, was somehow like himself: an extension of the River's purpose into places where he could not flow. But the River gave him precious little information otherwise. And he needed information, something to make Ghan think he knew more than he did.

The man on the horse reminded him, almost against his will, of the little statuette he had given Hezhi, the half-woman, half-horse creature from Mang fantasy. If the man in his dreams was Mang, then perhaps—but all barbarians looked alike.

No, that wasn't true. Some of them were as white as albinos with eyes like pale gray glass. Mang, at least, looked like people.

If he did not take the chance now, before Ghan said something, then Ghan would control all of the information. The old man could tell him anything, and Ghe's arcane senses were not keen enough to identify subtle falsehoods. Ghan had to believe in the fictitious temple expedition, had to believe that the priesthood knew where she was.

And so, mustering all of his confidence, he asserted the only thing he could think of. “We—and the priesthood—know only that she is among the Mang.” Then he fought to suppress a triumphant smile, for he smelled Ghan's chagrin, a bitter, salty scent. He had been right! Or partly right. Now Ghan would have to be careful what he said when he lied, for he could no longer be certain of what Ghe did and did not know. He could see the struggle in the old man, the hope of formulating a lie, the desire to fashion one as close to the truth as it needed to be to be believed. He nodded inwardly; yes, Ghan would deceive him, if he thought he could get away with it. Where would the scholar have led them, if he no longer believed the priesthood to be a threat to Hezhi? Then he would conclude that the only possible threat was from this expedition. But now he had evidence that the priests knew where she was, and that would motivate him to tell at least part of the truth.

“She is among the Mang,” Ghan finally agreed, and Ghe clenched his fists in victory. “That much is true. The priesthood must have been watching me more closely than I thought, must have known when I got word from her.”

“I have seen maps,” Ghe said. “The Mang Wastes are enormous. Knowing she is in them does not narrow our search significantly.”

“Yes,” Ghan said quietly. “But I know where she is to a much finer degree.”

“Must we travel overland? What is our course?”

Ghan sighed and lifted up a tube of bamboo and brass from beside his desk. He pulled a chart from it and spread it across the flat surface.

“Here is Nhol,” he explained, and Ghe recognized the spot easily enough. The River was represented by three waving lines, parallel to one another. Nhol was a drawing of the Water Temple, a stepped pyramid. Ghe felt a bit of familiar anger at that—that the city of the River should be represented by his nemesis.

“These are the wastes,” Ghan went on, gesturing at a vast area that lacked any real detail—save for the figure of a man on horseback, sword raised. The River cut right along the edge of those lands. The other side of the River was labeled “Dehshe,” which Ghe knew to be another barbarian tribe.

“We might as well stay on the River until we reach this point here,” Ghan said, indicating a single waving line that intersected the River.

“What's that?”

“Another, smaller watercourse. It may be that we can take the barge up it some distance. Then we will have to debark and go overland.”

“To where?”

Ghan glanced up at him frankly. “Understand me,” Ghan said. “I think I have little use to you or the emperor other than my knowledge of where Hezhi is. I wish to preserve that usefulness as long as I may. For now, I will say only that you should sail to the mouth of that stream and then up it, if possible.”

Ghe nodded. There was nothing stupid about the old man. Indeed, he reminded Ghe of someone. For an instant, he knew who it was; the old woman on Red Gar Street, whom he had murdered. He felt a sudden flush of emotion at the thought, a shadow of the sadness that overtook him after she died. Why should this old man remind him of her?

They were both old, both ugly, both hard and unforgiving, that was what. Both dangerous, added to the list. But there was something more fundamental he could not remember.

“Well, then,” he said, to interrupt his own thought. “I shall take this news to Bone Eel, unless you wish to advise him yourself.”

“Please.” Ghan snorted. “I have spoken to him once; that shall suffice until such time as I die and he summons my ghost and compels me to speak to him again. I have avoided his sort for many years, and now I am crowded shipboard with one.”

Ghe nodded. “I understand you. The priesthood and engineers are full of his kind. I believe that it is actually Qwen Shen who leads this expedition.”

“Yes, Qwen Shen. Lady Fire, Lady Ice.”

“What?”

“That is the meaning of her name, you idiot,” Ghan said. “Fire, ice.”

“Oh.”

“Go. I have much reading to do.”

“Master Ghan, do you never do other than read?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know that you have never been north of Nhol on the River. And yet, here you sit, closeted away, rather than beholding the world as it unfolds.”

“Yes, well, as of now I can pretend I am not on this mad journey. I can keep my mind on important things. Soon enough—when you have me marching overland on these ancient legs—I will not have that luxury. Besides, what can one see 'unfolding' out there?”

“Well … water and distant levees, I suppose, another boat now and then. I see your point.”

“Indeed. And a person of normal intelligence would have seen my point long ago and thus spared me wind that I cannot afford. I am old; there is not that much left in me.”

“Once again I apologize, Master Ghan, and I will leave you to your work.”

He bowed briefly and exited the room. He went back above and thought that he did not see Ghan's point. As he stepped out onto the polished planks, the world seemed wondrous and entirely new. The sun cast a cheerful yellow light on the world, and clouds meandered good-naturedly across a sky that, like the sun, was as simple and unshaded as the colors in his dreams. Some thirty or so of the soldiers stood along the railings, still in their aquamarine-and-gold kilts and burnished steel armor. His soldiers, really, here because he asked the emperor for them. Men who would fight and die at his command.

Best of all, the enterprise was not the wan hope it had once been. Ghan knew where Hezhi was, knew exactly where she was. Soon he would find her, protect her from her enemies, embrace her once again. He would bring her back to her father—not the poor flesh-and-blood one in the palace, but the one she truly belonged with. She fled him only because she did not understand him, and that because of the priesthood filling her from childhood with the wrong notions, notions that came from that dark place beneath, where a terrible creature masqueraded as Human while toying with the First Emperor on a chain. She had learned to fear the God, equate him with the perversions of the priests—perversions and fears that he himself had once embraced before death awoke him. But the River—the truth of him—was this he saw now, vastness, the sky come to live upon the earth, Ufe, the cycle of rain. Joy. In that instant, he felt his head and his feet as a world apart, and between them crawfish, gar, flatfish, crabs, catfish, eels—all of the living things in the waters, the vast brakes of reed and cane, the thick cypress and mangrove stands of the Swamp Kingdoms. No trace of hunger pained him, and the nightmare verity that he was dead seemed far distant, a misplaced worry. Only one unquiet thought lay in him, and it was annoying because he could not find its heart at all. In it was something of the temple and its weird master, but that was not the seed of his … worry? Fear?

Whatever it was, he would deal with it when it came, and now, for the first time since his rebirth, he felt—bizarrely—almost like singing. He would not let one skewed thought pull him away from this rare sensation. Nor would he sing; that would be too much, and others on the boat would think him addled—but he would watch the River gliding past and worship it, know it for his destiny, and that would be like singing.

IN his cabin, Ghan studied the map carefully, and another that held more detail. He cross-referenced it against the geography he had brought with him.

He trod a tightrope now, with razors on either side. If only he were absolutely certain that the priesthood had not sent a mission. But if they had, it was far ahead of them, and Hezhi and Tsem would have already escaped or been captured.

He did not see how the latter could happen unless the Mang sold her to them, and he could not imagine what a priest might offer or wield that would buy or intimidate the Mang.

His plan was still only half shaped, still coming together. Too much of it hinged upon Yen, who continually surprised him. There was something about Yen he did not understand, a part of the tapestry unwoven or out of sight, at least.

Meanwhile, he had his maps and his geography. He would learn what he could from them.

Thus, as Ghe walked abovedecks, wondering what prickled at his happiness, Ghan turned back to the first map and absently ticked his finger upon the conical drawing of a mountain labeled “She'leng,” whence the wiggly line signifying the River began. It was odd, he thought, how much it resembled the drawing that marked Nhol, half a world away.

XXI The Shadow Man

WAKE up, Perkar opened his eyes to a sky that shuddered and bumped so that he feared the clouds would shake loose from it and fall upon him. In fact, it seemed that some of them already had, for he was soaked to the bone. He raised his hand feebly in a vain attempt to brush the water from his clothing, and the world wobbled even more dangerously.

Someone chattered in a language that he didn't immediately understand—and then recognized as Mang. He jerked up, realizing suddenly how weak his body felt, how limp. His last real memory was of playing Slap with a big Mang warrior—and losing. What had they done with him?

He couldn't sit up, because he was tied down, strapped to a travois.

“Hey!” he tried to roar, but instead issued only a weak cough. Still, someone else heard it, and the scratching progress of the travois suddenly stopped.

A thick, half-Human face blotted the sky, and quick fingers pulled at straps on his chest.

“Ngangata,” Perkar croaked.

“How do you feel?”

“The way I felt after the Huntress was done with me. What happened?”

“Well, that is a very long story, and—”

“Perkar!” A rustling of cloth and soft boots on sand accompanied an excited shout. He turned his head and saw Hezhi scrambling across desert toward him.

“Brother Horse said you would wake up soon! I thought the rain would do it!”

“Hello, Princess. I hope someone can explain something to me soon.”

Thank her for saving your life, Harka muttered in his ear, faintly—as if the sword, too, were ill.

“Saved my life?” Perkar paraphrased. What was going on here? Surely he had broken his neck in the game of Slap and had taken some time to heal. But Hezhi stood wringing her hands, a variety of emotions playing across her face, and Ngangata looked happy, and perhaps surprised—as if neither ever expected to hear him speak again.

“What do you remember?” Hezhi asked, biting her lip.

“Nothing, I only—” But then Hezhi had buried her face in his shoulder, kneeling down to do so.

“I'm glad you're back,” she gasped, and her throat caught once, as if she would cry. Perkar was so startled that he had no reply, and by the time he thought to raise his own arms and return the embrace, she had already pulled away again. Her face was dry, and moreover, she suddenly seemed a bit embarrassed.

Ngangata had finished untying the straps. “Don't try to stand yet,” the Alwa-Man cautioned, but Perkar ignored him, trying to swing his feet around and ending by tumbling into the wet sand. Distant thunder rolled across the hills, probably one of the gods laughing at him.

“Well, alive again,” a gruff voice barked. It was Brother Horse. “Remember what I told you about the Mang being the only race to survive out here, in the time of creation? Remember that next time you think to play one of our games.”

“I will try to remember.”

“I will help,” Ngangata said. “Next time I will remind you by rendering you unconscious. You would suffer less damage that way, you idiot.”

“Nice to be back,” Perkar said, wobbling—-finally—to his feet.

“Stay in the travois a bit longer, until you are stronger,” Brother Horse suggested. “We have to be moving.”

“Why?”

“We are being pursued. We will explain that later, too.”

“I can ride alongside,” Hezhi offered.

“Give me a few moments to think,” Perkar said, “to speak with Harka. Then tell me.” He lay back into the rough construetion of hide and poles, then bolted back up as a sudden thought occurred to him.

“Sharp Tiger? Did you think to bring Sharp Tiger?”

Ngangata gestured with the back of his hand. “There he is. Now lie back.”

Perkar strained his neck to follow Ngangata's gesture, but he could see Sharp Tiger there, staring at him with what was probably horse-ish disdain.

He lay back and soon the sky began to rattle again. A gray cloud was winging over, and against it the tiny but brilliant form of some sort of bird—perhaps a crane.

“You seem to know what has happened to me, Harka.”

“Indeed, what has not happened to you? At some points I was nearly as ill as you, so my own memones are shaky through some of it. ”

“You were ill? What does that mean?”

“Our heartstrings are paired. Anything that brings you close enough to death weakens me, as well. ”

“But if I died, you would be set free.”

“Normally. Not in this instance, however. ”

Perkar shook his head in amazement. “Impossible for me to believe any of this. Tell me all, then, Harka. And tell me why I have Hezhi to thank for my life.”

Harka told him then, and afterward, Hezhi rode alongside to explain the occurrences in the world outside of his body. The fight, their flight from the Mang village, the battle of spirits for his life, the pursuit that they could see in the distance. Through all of this, Perkar felt steadily stronger. Without a supernatural entity to battle, Harka was healing him at the usual rapid pace. By the end of her story, Perkar was ready to try riding.

“Good,” Hezhi said. “Ngangata says we will be harder to track without the travois.”

“Probably. A travois leaves pretty deep and unmistakable prints. Even a hard rain might leave traces. How hard did it rain?”

“Not hard enough.”

The party regarded him silently, nervously, as he placed one boot into T'esh's stirrup and then heaved his belly onto the stallion's back. Grunting, he pulled his other leg over.

They resumed, and though he felt faintly dizzy and still very weak, Perkar was able to stay in the saddle for the rest of the day, refining his questions as they went along.

THAT afternoon they entered a hillier country, and their path tended generally to be upward as the land itself rose away from the lower steppe. In the distance, the mountains ceased to be faint purple clouds and had become worlds unto themselves, with forests, deserts, snowfields—close, it seemed, yet still far away and above them, it made Perkar feel easier, more at home, and a sudden realization struck him.

“Hezhi, where are we going? Other than fleeing from pursuit?”

“We are going to the mountain,” she stated, simply.

“The mountain.” There it was, lurking. He had been so concerned with the events during his days of forgetfulness that he had not put the days before it into perspective. Though he had not forgotten it, he had delayed thinking about his meeting with Karak—or the Blackgod, or whatever the fickle deity insisted on being called. Karak had told him to make certain that Hezhi reached the mountain.

“Why? Who made that decision?” he asked.

Hezhi pursed her lips. “You don't remember telling me to go there?”

“No.”

“Was it just your madness then? Did the Raven not instruct you to escort me to the mountain?”

Perkar felt a wave of irritation. “Did Ngangata tell you that?”

Hezhi frowned further, and her voice frosted a bit. “No. He told me that you spoke with the Blackgod, but he knew little of the substance of what you said to each other.”

Perkar took a deep breath, using it to cool his growing angst. What was upsetting him? “I'm sorry, Hezhi,” he said. “What I told you—though I don't remember telling it—is true. Karak says we are to go to the mountain in the heart of Balat.”

“He told me the same thing.”

“You spoke with Karak? Where?”

Hezhi couldn't suppress a grin when she answered.

“Another story I need to hear,” Perkar said, dazed. He felt as if he had awakened sliding down the slick side of a mountain of ice with only one foot under him. After the meeting with Karak, he thought he knew what to do, but the world had moved on without him as he lay among the dead.

“After,” Hezhi insisted a bit forcefully. “First you tell me: why must we go to the mountain?”

If she had spoken to Karak, why hadn't the Crow God told her that! Perkar brushed at T'esh's mane thoughtfully. She deserved to know. Particularly she deserved to know after saving his life from the Breath Feasting. But his people—possibly his father and his brother—were dead and dying. It was his fault, and he must weigh that into all of his decisions. Piraku insisted that he put the higher cause first. At least, he thought it did.

“Karak was vague,” Perkar answered carefully. “But he said that if we went to the mountain, to the very headwaters of the River, we could slay him.”

“Slay him? Slay the River?” Hezhi's voice was thick with incredulity. “Haven't you already stumbled drunkenly down that path? Haven't I heard this story?”

“It sounds insane,” Perkar admitted. “I abandoned that ambition long ago. But Karak—Karak tells me we can do it, and moreover that we must? That you can do it, he thought guiltily. But she had to be convinced a bit at a time.

“And Karak is trustworthy?” Hezhi asked.

“No, but Karak is a god of the same sort as the River, one of the ancient gods who created the world. And he has no love for the River—”

“You used to scoff at that. When you tried to explain about all of the gods out here, you were skeptical of their claims.”

“I am less skeptical now,” Perkar admitted. Deep down, he knew that he was overstating the case. He still doubted Karak rather deeply, but he believed his assertion that they could slay the River. He believed it because of Hezhi and the power he had seen her gathering about her, back at Nhol.

“I will not go near the River, Perkar,” Hezhi insisted quietly.

“It may not be necessary that you go,” Perkar lied. ”But please, hear me out. I don't know the entirety of Karak's plan. It may be that it will make more sense as we near the mountain. It will be a long journey, and Karak promised to leave signs. In the meantime, where else should we go?”

“He told me, too,” Hezhi muttered. “He told me to go there.” ”Tell me of that. Of your conversation with the Crow God.

Perhaps we can piece more together from both stories than from

either.”

HEZHI agreed, and told of her improbable journey. In telling it, she realized how ridiculous it sounded and for the first time really began to doubt the truth of it. It might, she realized, have been some sort of vivid dream.

Save for the goddess living in her chest. She could hardly doubt that anymore.

Perkar's recovery had loosened some of the despair in her heart, and with a little time she thought she might cough some of it up and spit it out. She understood that much of her depression came from powerlessness, from being swept along by events, with no part in shaping her own fate. The reality of her new powers cast all of that in a different light. That new light filtered through a shattered crystal, producing more than one image and color—she was in many ways as terrified of what she had done as she was elated. But she remained herself and yet wielded power—in the end, the direction of the journey had been her decision, and that felt good. The power she had been offered before—the power of the River—would have been immeasurably greater, but such puissance would mean the end of her, Hezhi. She understood now that though the world of the “lake” was strange and terrifying—still, the spirit that moved there was her own. The Mountain Gods had trapped her, they would have killed her—but even they had no wish to transform her.

Brother Horse, Ngangata, Yuu'han, and Raincaster all looked at her with more respect now, she was certain of that. And Perkar was back, alive, and best of all, she had played a major role in saving him. Now perhaps the debt he pretended she did not owe him would be mitigated, at least somewhat. Perhaps without that between them, they could really become friends. When he understood her part in saving him—and she thought she had minimized her role—he had thanked her, humbly and sincerely. She captured that moment like a butterfly, enjoying the motion of its wings while it lived. Knowing Perkar, she thought a bit sourly, it was not likely to live long. He was too preoccupied with his own worries, his own guilt—what, together, he called “destiny.”

Did he really believe he could slay the god of the River, merely because some self-styled Crow God told him so? Well, perhaps it was true. Perhaps that was the only way she could ever be truly safe from the River God. But she knew his power, knew it the way a child knows the fists of a father who beats her, and she did not believe he could die. If there was anything in the universe that was eternal, it was the River.

But perhaps nothing in the universe was eternal. She had read cogent arguments in several books to that effect.

For the moment, it seemed reasonable—insomuch as anything seemed reasonable—to pursue the course that, after all, she had chosen: to go on to She'leng. But unless she learned much about this plan of the Blackgod, particularly its execution and its likely aftereffects, she would not actually commit to approaching the source. The scale upon her arm told her just how dangerous that could be.

Perhaps her new gaan powers could help, however. She would have to ask Brother Horse, then consider all of the information available.

That night they had no choice but to sleep in the open, so they camped in the lowest spot they could find and ranged the horses about so that they might serve as sentinels. There was no sunset, for the sky had gone leaden, and the day faded pitifully away. Hezhi felt cheated; each sunset and sunrise usually seemed more spectacular than the last in the Mang Wastes, as if there must be some compensation for the lack of splendid palaces, gold filigree, and books.

As she closed her eyes, she wondered what Ghan was doing right then. She speculated, briefly, whether she could send her spirit abroad to Nhol, but the answer to that seemed obvious. If she went near him—or sent the Horse—they would be eaten. Brother Horse had done nothing in the lands of the River but watch, with his vision, if she remembered his story. He had never loosed his wolf or sent his senses out. She added that to her list of things to ask him about.

But she could picture Ghan, bent over a book by flickering lamplight, tracing the sublime curves of the ancient hand, certain of each stroke. She missed him.

I shall have to write him another letter soon. Though, of course, she had never managed to send the last. In fact, she realized with considerable chagrin, the earlier one was still in the yekt at the Mang camp.

Mentally composing its replacement, she drifted into sleep.

IN her sleep came a hurricane. Wind shrieked across a darkling plain, the colors of which were indigo, black, and beetle green. Rainbow lightning brightened the sky so that it resembled the stained glass Hall of Moments, back in the palace, save that here the glass shattered and re-formed in every instant. Images formed and faded in the trails the light burned on her eyes.

She did not stand but sat a horse, and she understood that it was her mare, her spirit. Dust devils birthed and died about them, danced like the ladies of the court, stunned into a simulacrum of carefree behavior by Nende'ng and wine, seeking only the sensation of movement and the promise of oblivion.

Across the vast courtyard—for such it was, she understood suddenly—a shadow man came walking. She saw him enter from a hall on the horizon, as tall as the great Water Temple, stalking toward her, lightning pattering upon his head and shoulders like fiery rain. From most of these obvious attacks he did not flinch, and she watched him approach in growing terror that even the nature of the otherworld could not entirely suppress. Beneath her, the mare whickered, stamped, and rolled her eyes. Hooves rang like bells on the polished marble.

Suddenly the sky sleeted white, however, a bright, furious light that blinded her, stilled the wind, and rocked the earth the mare stood upon. When the blaze faded, she saw only the giant's court, darker than before. The hulking shadow giant was gone. Above, she thought she saw vast wings vanish amongst the lofty unlit regions of the roof-sky.

“I had hoped to impress you,” a voice sighed from nearby, breaking the new stillness. “Now I am fortunate merely to be alive.”

She peered toward the voice. It was Shadow Man, but grown much smaller. Smaller than she, even, and curled into a ball like a fist.

“Who are you?”

“I am the gaan, the one who sent Moss and Chuuzek to find you.”

Hezhi opened her mouth to speak, but he quickly went on.

“I know you have been told I am your enemy. I know it must seem that way to you. But you have many enemies, Hezhi, and only a few who love you.”

“You do not love me,” Hezhi snapped scornfully.

“No. But I know who does. I know he is coming. I can take you to him.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Your old teacher, Ghan.” The shadow paused and clucked. “Gaan—Ghan. Have you ever noticed that?”

“Ghan is in Nhol,” she snapped, ignoring his linguistic observation. “I can never go there again.”

“Both of those statements are untrue,” the Shadow Man contradicted. “They are both lies, though you know not why you tell them. Ghan is coming here. Your father has sent him to make you understand.”

“Ghan sent me from Nhol in the first place,” Hezhi whispered, feehng as if she would fall from the mare. “He would not come to get me back.”

“I know what I know. Even Ghan can come to understand he was wrong. Hezhi, listen to me. Before, the River—your ancestor—was asleep. I do not know what transpired between you, exactly, but I know that it frightened you. Imagine him as a great creature, who, while asleep, did not recognize even his own daughter. In that state, he may have frightened you, and you would have been right to worry, perhaps even to flee him. But he knows you now. He feels remorse. Hezhi, you are the most important child he has ever produced. Karak knows that, that's why he plots with Perkar. Karak and Perkar will do you harm, Princess, though I cannot see of what sort.”

“Perkar is my friend.”

“Oh, no, Princess, he is not. Neither is the Blackgod. It was he who attacked me just now.”

“So you say. And even if he did, that would only mean he was helping me. Before you were a monster filling the horizon. Now you are a somewhat pitiful thing.”

“As I said before, I only endeavored to impress you. Even the greatest gaan is no match for a god like Karak, and Karak and all his brethren are no match for the Changeling. You are the Changeling's daughter, Hezhi, and they are no match for you, either, not if you don't want them to be. This tinkering about with little spirits and little victories—that is what I do, what I am capable of. You are destined to change the face of the world, not dirty yourself with such paltry forces.”

“What do you propose I do?” Hezhi snapped, making no effort to hide her irritation.

“Separate yourself from those you ride with. Find Moss and Chuuzek, who follow you. They will take you to Ghan. He will explain to your satisfaction the rest.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Listen to me,” the shadow hissed, rising up, growing to Human size as it did so.

Hezhi clapped the flanks of her mount, and the mare leapt forward, hooves flashing. Shadow Man leapt back, kept leaping back, growing more distant in a series of bounds that eventually carried him beyond the horizon and out of the hall. His voice, however, stayed near.

“You must learn who your friends really are. You have been mistaken about such things before,” he said. “Watch Perkar. Especially watch the Crow God.”

Then the plain went dark, as if it were a room in which all of the candles had been blown out. Real sleep swallowed her up, and no more dreams came until dawn.

PERKAR sat gazing at the fire, knowing he should feel elated, wondering why he did not. He felt weary—unbelievably weary, considering that he had only been awake for half a day at best—and yet the thought of sleep unaccountably sickened him.

“They say there is a man at this fire in need of some wine,” a soft voice asserted from just behind him. It was Raincaster, returned from rubbing down the horses for the night. Yuu'han was only a score of steps behind him, bearing a wineskin.

“I should have helped you with the horses,” Perkar murmured. “I feel well enough.”

“You don't look well enough,” Raincaster said. ”And it insults a horse to treat her halfheartedly.”

“I would not have been half—”

“Raincaster meant no insult,” Yuu'han intervened. “You are not as strong yet as you would like to think, that is all. Have some wine.” He proffered the skin.

Perkar sighed. “Very well. I'm sorry, Raincaster.”

Raincaster wiped his forehead, a Mang gesture that dismissed all blame. “You have been fighting for your life against demons,” he reminded everyone. “No reason to think such an experience would sweeten your mood.”

Perkar returned the smile, though he did not feel like doing so. He liked Raincaster. He liked Yuu'han, as well, but with Yuu'han there was always the sense that his cordiality to Perkar arose out of duty—duty to Brother Horse and the responsibilities of hospitality. Raincaster seemed to genuinely like him—and to have an interest in the ways of the Cattle People. “Perhaps I do need some wine,” he said, by way of further, though indirect, apology. Perkar accepted the proffered skin, tilting it back and catching a mouthful of its contents—though with some misgivings. He quickly discovered his misgivings were justified; the wine was kbena, a strong drink made from some sort of desert plant, sweet and tainted by an unpleasant aftertaste that reminded Perkar of rotten pears. It was certainly nothing at all like woti, the prized drink of warriors in his home country—save that it did warm his belly. He also knew from experience that the first mouthful was the worst, and so quickly swallowed another before passing the skin on to Raincaster. The three of them drank in silence for a while, watching the Fire Goddess consume withered juniper scraps. The night sky lay heavy above, revealing no light.

Perkar quickly realized that he did not want to get drunk any more than he wanted to sleep. The fifth time the skin came around, he shook his head and passed it on. Yuu'han shrugged and took a long draft.

The wine stirred something in Perkar, something he might ordinarily not have brought up.

“I know it was hard for you,” he mumbled, addressing both of the Mang.

Yuu'han nodded, understanding him and already accepting the implied thanks, but Raincaster's expression demanded that Perkar express himself more fully.

“To leave your kin to help us. With the war and everything.” Even a mere five drinks of the potent kbena was enough to thicken his tongue and make him feel more stupid than usual. He wished for eloquence rather than the gruff, clumsy, apologetic statement he had just uttered—but, as usual, it was too late to correct.

Raincaster shrugged, apprehending the spirit of the comment. “Our uncle is right, and the others are wrong. Anyway, I've never cared much for those Four Spruces People. They've always had delusions of grandeur.”

Yuu'han's somewhat bleak expression softened at that. “Remember Mane Gatherer?” he said.

“I've heard the story,” Raincaster replied.

“I haven't.”

“Mane Gatherer told us the sun had spoken to him. He wanted us all to band up behind him and invade the Southlands—conquer Nhol, the Fisherfolk, the whole world, he said.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.” Yuu'han gulped down another mouthful. “He said it was the destiny of the Mang to rule the cities.”

“What happened?”

Yuu'han cracked a cryptic grin. “You've seen a city. Would you want to try to rule one?”

Perkar stared at the two Mang for only an instant, considering, before swearing, “No. By the gods, no.”

Raincaster clapped his cousin on the shoulder. “Our reaction exactly,” he proclaimed.

NOT much later, Yuu'han took the watch and Raincaster retired. Two tents had been erected: one for Tsem, Brother Horse, Heen, and Hezhi, the second for the two younger Mang, Ngangata, and Perkar. Perkar sought his blanket near Raincaster, after making Yuu'han promise that Raincaster—who had the next watch—would wake him for the last, or dawn, quarter. He could tell by Yuu'nan's answer that he would not be trusted to stand watch, not in his present condition.

He lay awake long, unable to understand what was growing in him, gnawing at him. He dozed fitfully once and awoke sweating, heart pounding. Raincaster was gone, Yuu'han in his place. Ngangata was curled in his blanket, snoring faintly. The brief nap had not rested Perkar in the least, but it had tightened something in his mind, so that he knew what dark disquiet had replaced the demon Hezhi and Brother Horse had driven from him. It gathered itself together and shouted him its name.

Fear.

A mere spark before, it had caught in him now and burned furiously. In the past year, he had seen more bloodshed than he dreamed possible. He had murdered and fought fairly. More to the point, he had been disemboweled, been lanced through the throat, and stabbed numerous times—once through the heart. He still dreamed of each of those wounds; the pain of each was written clearly on his body and in his mind. When he thought about it much, it revolted him. Despite all of that, still he had developed the illusion that he was invulnerable, unstoppable, because keeping grasp of that belief was the only thing that kept all of his terrors at bay. When he was a child lying in bed with the terrible nighttime understanding that death would claim him one day, he had faced that by pushing it away, insisting that it was many, many years before he would have to face such an unfair reality. The child in him had used Harka to do that again, to place death in a far-off place and time he need not think about.

But now he had experienced the pain of death several times over and no small taste of her oblivion. He owed his beating heart to Harka, but now he understood that even Harka could not protect him. Not against Karak, who had brushed him aside as if he were a child—not against Chuuzek, either, who had flicked him almost casually from his saddle.

He did not consciously remember the past several days, but something in him did. He felt as if he had been lying in a grave with spiders crawling in and out of his mouth, with worms chewing at his eyes. A simple warrior—a boy—was not fit to deal with such things. He was in a struggle meant for shamans, wizards, and godlings. Useless, even if he had his heart, whole and full of bravery, but his heart was not whole; it was deeply scarred, and not just metaphorically. Now … Now what he wanted most to do was ride away, leave Hezhi and Ngangata and all of his responsibilities, and hide—hide from gods, from wars, from the sky itself.

HEZHI awoke with the dawn. Ngangata was cursing and saddling his horse, as were all three Mang.

“Stupid. I should have watched him. We should never … whose watch was it?”

“Mine,” Raincaster answered, voice carefully neutral. “He said that he was going back a bit, to see where our pursuit was when the sun rose.”

“I'm sure,” Ngangata snarled. Hezhi sat up, fully alarmed now.

“What's happening?”

“Perkar,” Tsem told her. “He's gone.”

XXII The Dreamsnare

GHE felt a flash of pain and smelled life leaking into the air. He turned, puzzled, to see that one of the soldiers had thrust an arrow into his own eye and was working it deeper even as Ghe watched.

No. He had been shot in the eye and was merely grasping at the shaft as he died. Even as Ghe realized that, two more soldiers swore at arrows sprouting in the deck next to them.

The mist had hidden them, but now Ghe could see a half-dozen canoes ranged upstream on the River. All were converging on the barge furiously, each paddled by ten or fifteen barbarians.

The soldiers knew their jobs and did not remain surprised for more than an instant or two. Within heartbeats, twenty of them were at the bow, a wall of spears and swords, bows twanging behind them. Three men loaded and cranked the catapult. Ghe was just wondering what he should do when his better-than-Human ears detected a clamor aft. Grimly he raced toward the rear of the boat, springing up upon the cabin roofs and crossing them in great strides.

A boatload of the barbarians swarmed over the brass railing onto the afterdeck; three Nholish soldiers lay beneath their feet, pumping red life onto the planks. Other than barbarians and dead men, there was none to witness Ghe snarl and leap from the roof; two of the invaders managed to shoot him before he was amongst them, but neither shaft gave him pause. He was a panther among dogs.

The trip up-River had lulled them all. The people in the villages nearest Nhol had been coolly cooperative when they docked for supplies, but the farther away they voyaged from the great city, the more eager were people to see them. At Wun, the governor had thrown them a magnificent banquet, and though Bone Eel seemed bored by it—it was perhaps not sufficient for his jaded standards—Ghe thought it a grand show of hospitality, as did the soldiers. That had been a day ago. The governor had warned them that the Dehshe tribes on the east bank of the River were troublesome, but Ghe had gathered that most real attacks were on the outposts farther south and east.

But here they were. The impact of his body hurled several of them back, and then he was amongst them, carving at their hearts and lungs with the icicle point of his knife. He used the blade for two reasons. The first was that the soldiers on board the ship did not know his nature, and he did not want them to know. Let them think him a superb fighter—which, in fact, he was and could easily demonstrate. A more salient justification was that he enjoyed the feel of his blade in flesh, the exquisite geometry of cut-and-thrust, and though he could draw their lives from them more easily than he could stab them to death, the latter gave him greater pleasure. It recalled the joy of learning the ways of the Jik, and with that memory came a vague inkling of why he had ever been loyal to the priesthood, though they were so clearly monstrous. They gave him a thing of beauty; the discipline to kill with elegance, with art.

Of course, he did have the unfair advantage of already being dead. His wounds closed almost as quickly as his enemies made them, for this near the River, the flow of energy through his body was continuous.

He shattered an instep with a staccato stamp of his foot, plunged his blade through the gaping mouth of the ankle's owner, spun to parry—again, more for pleasure than anything else—a descending blade.

A flash of metal from his blind spot, and suddenly steel bit into his neck. His neck.

Ghe's shriek turned gurgle as his head flopped onto one shoulder. The blade had cut almost halfway through. He felt, rather than saw, the enemy arm cock back for a second blow.

Ghe blew the rest of the barbarians out like candles, reaching frantically for his head. It was already straightening, a weird, familiar tingling setting in. Ghe bit down on another shriek when the halves of his windpipe knitted back; then he nearly collapsed in a fit of trembling. He saw again the face of Hezhi's white barbarian, the demon, cleaving his head off, his life, his remembrance, blowing away on dark winds. Sagging against the rail, he shook like an ancient, palsied man.

And then his heart exploded. It was more reflex and gravity than design that toppled him from the barge and into the furrow of water behind it. Li, think kindly of my ghost, he thought, for the second time in two lives.

GHAN heard the sudden explosion of shouts, the twang of bows. He put his writing brush down carefully and approached the door to his cabin. He latched it. It was clear enough to him that the barge was under attack or that some sort of dispute involving most of the crew was coming to a violent resolution. He suspected the former rather than the latter. Though Bone Eel commanded no real respect from the men—he was such a fool—no one seriously questioned his station. And Qwen Shen did a fine job of seeing that he made the correct decisions, anyway, and so kept the men on his side. These were also imperial elite troops, not likely to mutiny under any circumstances—and thus far the voyage had been rather pleasant. Surprisingly so.

So they were likely being attacked, and likely by Dehshe barbarians—though also he considered that it could be the doing of the governor at Wun. The man, while affable enough on the surface, had a devious countenance when he thought no one was looking, and he seemed more than passing curious about the barge and its purpose. He had certainly not believed their stated reason for going up-River, which from the lips of Bone Eel amounted to no reason at all. What if the governor were in league with the barbarians, hoping to set Wun up as some sort of independent state? Ghan was familiar enough with the history of Nhol and other empires to understand that when an empire was weak—as Nhol was now—such things tended to happen. Or perhaps it was even simpler than that; perhaps the governor had turned pirate.

Ghan heard the clatter of a door opening and footsteps outside his door. Crouching slowly, so as to make as little sound as possible, he crouched to peer through the keyhole. He saw a figure just crossing from the sunlit hall into the shadow by the door that opened onto the narrow rear deck. That door suddenly swung wide, and a blaze of light flooded through, burned the person into a black silhouette bearing the arcing sliver of a bow in his hand. Through the door, Ghan could just make out another figure on the sunlit deck, leaning heavily against the rail. He thought it was Yen but could not be certain. The first figure raised his bow and fired. Yen—if it was Yen—tumbled over the rail.

The bowman stepped out onto the deck.

In the sunlight, Ghan could see that the man was not a barbarian or one of the governor's troops; he was one of the emperor's elite soldiers. Ghan had seen him several times standing watch. His scalp prickled. What was going on? He suddenly reassessed the possibility of mutiny and stepped gently back from the keyhole, realizing that he was holding his breath.

There came the sound of the outer door closing, then more footsteps, approaching his room. There they paused, and the door strained slightly against the latch.

By now Ghan was sitting on his bed. He looked up at the ceiling, an exaggerated expression of concern on his face. If the assassin looked through his keyhole, he did not want to be seen studying the door. Rather let him think him an old man, cowering until the battle was over.

Which, of course, was exactly what he was.

The footsteps went on. He heard the door to the main deck open. By then, the clamor of battle seemed to have mostly ceased. He heard soldiers barking orders, but no more frantic shouting or screams of pain.

Ghan's hands were shaking a few moments later when he screwed up the courage to open his door. There was no one in sight, but he could hear several soldiers talking on the rear deck. They must have catwalked around the side of the cabins or across the roof; Ghan had heard much trampling up there since the fighting began.

As he opened the portal, the entrance to the outer deck swung wide, as well, and for a terrible instant, Ghan thought it was the killer. But, though it was a soldier, it was certainly not the same man.

“Are you all right?” the man asked hurriedly. “Did any of them get in here?”

“No,” Ghan replied. “Any of whom!”

“Barbarians, either Dehshe or Mang. I don't know the difference.”

“Are they gone?”

“Yes, or dead.” The man smiled a bit wolfishly. “Took on more than they bargained for, I'd say.”

Ghan nodded absently. The soldier moved around the cabins, the rest of which were empty. Ghan followed him onto the rear deck.

“Great River, what happened back here?” the soldier muttered.

Ghan counted eleven dead men. Three were soldiers, but the rest were barbarians of some sort, dark-skinned, clad in rude leather and felts. He thought that the thick, lacquered wood and leather jackets they wore were probably intended to be armor. Most of them were heavily tattooed with blue unes and circles.

“Dehshe, I think,” he told the soldier. “I've read that they tattoo their faces—and that the Mang don't.”

“Well, Dehshe or Mang, they're as dead as dogmeat,” the soldier observed unnecessarily. He rolled one over. “This one's not even cut.” The corpse in question stared at Ghan with vast surprise and horror.

Ghan realized that he was going to be sick an instant before he actually was, and so he made it to the rail in time not to add more noisome fluids than blood to the deck. The soldier, probably embarrassed for him, left. The other three, having completed their inspection, moved on, too, leaving him mercifully alone. After he was done heaving, Ghan stayed crumpled on his knees, unwilling to turn back to the corpses, afraid that he would choke out his very stomach if he did. His chest ached from the unusual action of die muscles there, and he took deep breaths, hoping thus to soothe himself. Watching the boiling gash of wake, he tried to pretend that the whole nightmare would be over soon.

Though, of course, he knew it was just beginning.

It was as he rose to leave that he saw a hand emerge from the water and reach weakly for the barge. It clawed at the side, failed to find purchase, and fell away again. Ghan furrowed his brow; a mooring rope lay no more than an armspan from him, already knotted through an eye on deck. But was this friend or foe? As if he had any friends on this ship. Fingers showed again, grasping more weakly.

Ghan fumbled for the heavy rope. A corpse lay half upon it, and he had to shove the still-warm body aside. He pushed the coil beneath the rail, and it unspooled into the River with a muted splash. Ghan then picked up one of the fallen swords, thinking that if the man in the water were an enemy, he would merely sever the rope. He realized—too late—that the sword was so heavy, he might have real trouble doing that.

It was the first time he had ever held a sword in his life.

The rope tightened. A face emerged from the water, and Ghan let the blade relax when he saw it was Yen. The boy had an expression of dumbfounded pain on his face. He looked up vaguely at Ghan.

“Li … ?” he gasped. It was both a question and an imprecation.

“Come on, boy,” Ghan urged. “I don't have the strength to help you. But you've done the hardest part.” He remembered the archer, certain now that it was Yen who had been shot. He felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach as he realized that this was probably all for nothing, that the young man would die regardless. How had he kept up with the barge?

Yen managed to pull himself to the rail, and Ghan took hold of the man's shirt and leaned back, felt how appallingly weak his grip was. He was not certain that this helped in the slightest, but the younger man flopped up, under the lowest rail, and dragged himself stubbornly onto the deck. Ghan could see the arrow wound now, though the arrow itself was gone. It oozed blood, or some fluid that resembled blood but was darker. He darted his head about, but there was no one aft.

“Come on. Can you walk? We have to get you to my cabin.” Because the assassin was somewhere on the ship and, when he learned that his job was not complete, would probably wish to finish what he began.

Yen managed to get to his knees and, by clawing at Ghan's proffered shoulder, to his feet, though he leaned rather heavily. Puffing, Ghan steered him toward the open door of his cabin. He tried to lower him to the floor gently, but the result was that both of them collapsed. Ghan fell awkwardly, his hip slapping painfully against the hardwood floor. The hurt was mind-numbing, and for an instant he believed that he had cracked the bone.

Outside, he heard several men enter the corridor between cabins. Groaning, he disentangled himself from Yen, crawled on all fours toward the door, and pushed it closed before anyone could come in sight. Then, back to the door, tears of pain in his eyes, he waited for the inevitable shove against it. What story would he tell? He tried to think; the pain was subsiding to a warm numbness. No one tried his door.

Yen, for his part, coughed. A few flecks of blood came up, and Ghan knew that to be a bad sign. It was thus strange when the boy rose unsteadily to his feet, went to the door, and latched it. When he looked down at Ghan, this time, there was a sharp sense of recognition, and something unreadable flashed across his face.

“No,” Yen muttered—clearly to himself. “No, I won't.”

For the first time, Ghan stopped to wonder why he had rescued Yen at all, despite his basic distrust of the man. But the boy was the only one on the barge he really knew. And Hezhi liked him, which surely meant something.

Yen reached down for him and lifted him off the floor as if he weighed no more than a feather, cradling him like a baby. Ghan tried to protest, but the pain and his exertions had left him without a voice. The bed was soft, wonderful, when Yen laid him in it.

“Thanks,” he managed to breathe.

“No, thank you,” Yen answered. “I … may I stay in your cabin for a time?”

“I think you should,” Ghan replied. “Someone up there is trying to kill you.”

Yen raised an eyebrow. “You know who it is?”

“I saw him. I don't know his name.”

“Really? That's good. That you saw him, I mean.” He sat down and drew his knees up to his chest. His breathing seemed to have evened out.

“It might be Li, I suppose,” Ghan offered.

Yen looked startled—no, he was shocked. “What? Why do you say that?”

“It's the first thing you said, when you came up out of the water.”

“Oh. No, I… Li was someone I used to know, when I was a boy. I thought you were her for a moment.”

“She must have been hideously ugly,” Ghan remarked.

Yen chuckled. “Most found her so,” he said, “though I did not. Funny.” He looked at Ghan with clear eyes. “I believed I had forgotten her. And yet there she is.”

“Memory is strange,” Ghan said. “There are moments from my boyhood sixty years ago that I recall more vividly than yesterday. As you grow older, you become accustomed to that.”

“There is no 'older' for me,” Yen mumbled, and Ghan caught the glitter of tears in the dim lantern light.

Ghan swung his legs toward the edge of the bed, still worried about the ache in his hip, but certain he could walk now.

“I'll find Lady Qwen Shen. There must be someone on board who has medical knowledge.”

Yen shook his head vigorously. “No, let it be. I'm growing stronger each moment.”

“Let me see your wound, then.”

“You won't see much.”

“What do you mean?” But Ghan felt a sharp jab of premonition. It turned into a pain in the center of his chest, and he clutched at it, astonished by the sudden force beneath his sternum. The room shuddered. Somewhere, inside the maelstrom of pain and fear, he knew he was about to die.

But then Yen quietly said “No,” as he had before, and the ball of pain in his chest was released. A sweet breath surged into his lungs, and another.

“I'm sorry,” Yen said. “You didn't deserve that. I—”

“What are you jabbering about?“ Ghan snarled, pain and relief suddenly churning into anger.

“Listen to me, Ghan. I wasn't lying when I said you and I were Hezhi's only hope. We are, and that is more certain to me now than ever. The emperor gave this expedition into my hands, do you understand? Not Bone Eel's.”

“Yes, yes. That much is clear. You and Qwen Shen control this expedition.”

Yen nodded grimly. “So I am betrayed by the emperor or more likely the priesthood. Possibly both.”

“I don't understand.”

Yen sighed. “I'm not certain I do, either. Have you explained to anyone else about our destination? Does anyone else but myself know even generally where we are bound?”

“The Lady Qwen Shen knows as much as you do. No one knows more.”

“Then they must feel certain they can get the information from you. They don't want to risk me because they can't control me.”

Ghan realized that Yen no longer seemed as if he was in pain at all. He had risen, begun pacing furiously about the cabin, though he kept his voice low, raspy.

“I saw your wound,” Ghan said, articulating each word with great care.

“You are the greatest scholar I know,” Yen said. He stopped pacing, and Ghan could see that his face was nearly drained of color. “Probably the greatest scholar in Nhol. And so you must tell me what I am, Ghan.” He reached to his throat and unbraided the silly-looking scarf he always wore, let it drift to the deck. Ghan stared, frowning for an instant, before what he saw made itself understood. Yen turned slowly, to help him.

Another shudder touched his chest, just a light caress, but Ghan thought he knew now where the pain came from, what it threatened.

“L-let me think,” he gasped, stammering for the first time since his eleventh birthday, eyes fixed on the impossible scar.

“Take your time,” Yen said.

THERE was a rap at the door. Ghan, deep in furious thought, looked up at Yen. Yen placidly replaced the scarf on his horribly scarred neck and went to the door.

Their visitor was Bone Eel, dressed handsomely in blue turban and matching robe. Ghan caught the gleam of steel beneath the robe, however. Bone Eel had apparently been moved to don a cuirass, at least.

“Ah, there you both are,” he said, sounding delighted. ”I only wanted to make certain you had both weathered our recent bit of trouble. Very exciting, wouldn't you say?”

“Oh, indeed,” Yen answered.

“Master Yen, your clothes are wet.”

“True. Unfortunately, as I rushed to defend the barge, I stumbled and fell overboard.”

“No! That's dreadful.”

“It was. Happily, one of the mooring lines hadn't been tied up properly, and I managed to get hold of it. Otherwise, the boat might have left me behind with those barbarians.”

Bone Eel smiled happily. “There wouldn't have been many to bother about, I assure you. We killed most of them, I'm happy to report, and the others will think long and hard about ever attacking an imperial vessel again.”

“That's good to hear.”

“Master Ghan? All is well with you?”

Ghan tried to focus his thoughts on the lord's demented patter. It was difficult. It was very much like sitting near a fantastically poisonous viper; the viper had struck, playfully, once, just to show him its speed, leaving him to wonder whether the viper would strike him, or Bone Eel—or not at all.

“Well enough,” Ghan tried to snap. “Though I would be better—far better—if I had never been included in this ridiculous mission.” His tension loosened, just a bit, as he warmed to playing himself. ”I think your charter has been well satisfied. We have sailed to Wun and 'points beyond,' and I think it's time we pointed the nose of this scow back down-River, to civilization.”

“Now, Master Ghan,” Bone Eel soothed. “One day up-River of Wun is hardly 'points beyond.' I think young Yen here would agree with that.”

“I do,” Yen confirmed.

“I never asked to be included on this trip, however,” Ghan acidly retorted. ”If I had—”

“Master Ghan, I've heard this objection from you before, several times, and I say what I said then. It is the emperor's wish that you chronicle this voyage, and so chronicle it you will. Now, I'm sorry for all of this unpleasantness, but the barge was never in any serious danger. We repelled all boarders and lost only seven men in doing so. Those are remarkably small losses, as I'm sure you know. Now, I must see to things, and knowing you are well, I do so without concerns for your health.” He made as if to leave and then stuck his head back in and said, “Try to be more cheerful, Master Ghan. It is good for digestion.” Then the noble left, closing the door behind him.

“Yes,” Yen repeated. “Try to be more cheerful.”

Ghan turned to face him. His speech about going back was contrived, but the outrage he had discovered was real. “You ask me what you are? Don't you know?”

Yen's show of tears was over; his face was placid, his eyes frozen jewels. But though his lips formed a faint smirk, Ghan thought they lay there uneasily. He had a brief ridiculous thought that Yen had pressed them into shape with his fingers while Ghan's own attention was on Bone Eel. In any event, Yen did not answer except to gesture with his hand for Ghan to go on.

Ghan shook his head stubbornly. “No. You can kill me if you wish—that much is clear to me—”

“I can do far worse than kill you,” Yen interposed, sending a chill down the knotted bone of the old man's back.

Ghan drew on all of his obstinance to continue. “But if you want my help, you must help me. What do you think you are?”

Yen stared at him poisonously for a moment, and Ghan wondered how this could be the same boy who had seemed so grateful a moment ago, who had so thoroughly charmed Hezhi a year before. But, of course, they probably were not the same.

“Very well,” Yen snapped. “I call myself a ghoul. That was what we called creatures such as myself when I was a child.”

“You have been a ghoul since childhood?” Ghan asked, his accustomed sarcasm reasserting itself finally. It was an old friend, comforting to have around, especially in the face of this.

“Very clever. I am not asking you to be clever in that way, Master Ghan.”

Ghan was impressed by the gentle force behind the threat, but he had found himself now and wasn't about to retreat to that younger, fearful self. He was Ghan, and Ghan would not cringe.

“When did you become this?”

“The day that Hezhi escaped from Nhol. Her white-skinned demon—”

“Perkar.”

Yen stopped, and a look of utter hatred crossed his face. “Perkar. He has a name. I knew I should have consulted you long ago.”

“What did Perkar do?”

“Cut my stinking head off, that's what.”

“You were in the River?”

“In River water, in the sewers. Something else was happening, too, but I don't remember. There was a sort of fountain of colors … no, I don't know what it was. It was next to Hezhi.”

Ghan pursed his lips. “I have heard of creatures like you, yes. The old texts call them different things. Names aren't important, though. It's what you are, what properties you possess, that matters, and you know that better than I. Are you still Yen at all?”

“I was never Yen,” the man admitted. “I was … my name is Ghe. I was a Jik.”

“Set to watch Hezhi.”

“Yes.”

Fury brighter than any that Ghan had ever known jolted through him then, and before he knew what he was doing, he had stepped up and slapped the Yen-thing, once, twice. The creature looked at him in real astonishment, but as he pulled back to strike again, anger danced across the young features. Ghan never saw Yen—Ghe?—move at all, but suddenly an iron grip closed on his wrist.

“Sit down,” Yen hissed. “I deserve that, but sit down before you make me angry. I have much to tell you. Then I must decide whether to kill you or not.” He pushed back, and Ghan was suddenly sitting on the bed again.

“Now listen, and then counsel me if you can. Because despite it all, our goal is the same. That you must believe. If you don't—well, there is a way I can kill you and keep your memories. But I would rather have you alive.”

“Why?”

“Because Hezhi loves you. Because you helped me just now. Because you remind me of someone.”

Ghan measured his breaths. Would things ever start getting simpler? He understood more about what Ghe must be than he let on. He had a few ideas about how such creatures might be destroyed. So did someone else on the boat, for they seemed to have almost done it. And yet, ultimately, Ghan thought, whatever this thing was, it had been cobbled together from a man. The pieces of it were Human, though perhaps glued together with something both more crude and more powerful than humanity. But Ghe had feelings that could be known, understood. And understanding was a weapon greater than a sword. Especially in this case, when a sword was likely to be completely ineffectual.

But he had to live. He could not let the Life-Eater swallow him. He had read of that ability, as well.

“Tell me then,” he said. “If what you say is true—if you really want only to help Hezhi—then I will help you. But you must convince me.”

“I will,” Ghe returned grimly. “One way or the other.”

WHEN he finally left Ghan's cabin, Ghe felt more powerful than ever, strong enough to rend the barge in two. Now his power was tripled; the holy strength of the River in his veins, the tethered ghosts at his beck and call—and Ghan, as an ally. He could never fully trust the old man, he knew, but he wasn't without his senses. He could feel that the scholar would cooperate. Certainly he would not go to Bone Eel or Qwen Shen—though little would be lost there, since Qwen Shen already knew what he was. And Qwen Shen had tried to kill him, of that he was certain. Not herself, by her own hand, but she had arranged it nevertheless. Why? Of that he wasn't certain, and he needed to know. Was she a tool of the priesthood or the emperor? He thought the former, or else the attempt on his life would have been far less subtle. He went to his cabin, sponged off, and changed into fresh clothing.

He found Qwen Shen on deck. She smiled when she saw him coming. “Master Yen. I am happy to see you survived the skirmish.”

“I am happy to have survived it,” he acknowledged. “Overjoyed that you were not injured.”

“Well, how very kind of you, Yen. Perhaps I am winning you over, after all.”

He smiled thinly. “Perhaps.”

“They say there were many dead barbarians on the after-deck,” she said. “Many with no apparent injuries. No one claims to have killed them, even the ones so expertly carved by knife.”

Ghe bowed slightly. “It would be better that it remain a mystery. But if rumors develop, it might be hinted that I have been trained to kill with the force of my hands, without need of a knife. Such killing may leave no obvious marks.”

She sidled toward him. “This is true?” she asked, reaching to touch the callused ridges of his hand. “You can kill with these?”

“You like that?” Ghe breathed. “That intrigues you?”

“It exhilarates,” Qwen Shen replied. “It makes me wonder what else such hands are capable of.”

“Such things may be discovered,” he remarked.

“Caw they?”

“They can.” He bowed again. “And now I return to my cabin.”

Qwen Shen bowed back, but her eyes remained fixed on him. He felt her scrutiny return to the cabins with him. It felt, to him, like an archer sighting along a shaft.

* * *

QWEN Shen did not wait long to accept his invitation. He had barely enough time to sit down before someone rapped on his door. Trying to anticipate almost any sort of attack, he swung his door wide, but no darts or flashing blades threatened, no incense or mysterious vapors. Just Qwen Shen. She glided through the door when he opened it, then stopped a few steps inside.

“Close the door,” she said, and he did, latching it. “Now, then. What shall we doT

“I have some questions for you. If you do not answer them, I will be forced to—”

“Hurt me? Will you hurt me, Yen?”

“What?” He stopped in midsentence.

“Why not hurt me first!” she cooed, reaching for the scarf at his neck. He reached to stop her, but she shook her head.

“If you want me to answer your questions, you must cooperate with me—at least a little.”

Ghe had not expected precisely this, he was certain. If she had been responsible for the attempt on his life, there should be some fear on her part, some worry that he suspected her. After all, he had rebuffed her advances since the voyage began. Why should he extend his own now?

Perhaps she had some weapon, concealed in her clothing.

“No,” he said. “You take off your clothes first.”

She stepped back from him, her grin broadening.

“Very well,” she whispered. She shuffled farther back and undid the sash on her kilt, then the kilt itself. They crumpled into a pile about her ankles, revealing slim, brown legs, a thick dark scorch of pubic hair, a sensuous curve of belly. With the same enigmatic grin she shucked off her shirt in a single motion, and then she was entirely, beautifully naked.

But nothing stirred in him, and he knew that it should. Would, if he were the man he had once been rather than a ghoul. She walked carefully toward him, as if balancing on a beam.

“And now you, my lord.” She pushed him back on the bed, and he numbly allowed her to.

He lay there, watching her undress him, feeling nothing save the stroking of her hands on his flesh—but his flesh seemed like wood. She flicked her tongue along and around his necklace scar, and a spark fluttered, guttered, and died. He tried then, suddenly frustrated. Could his body not remember this, remember what to do at all? He forgot about what he came here to do, forgot that he had never once desired Qwen Shen. He tried, concentrating on her beauty, her warmth, and the luxuriant softness of her flesh.

“Ah, Lord Yen,” she sighed. “You are keeping a dream from me. That is the problem. Don't try, don't worry, my love. Just let me know your dream.”

My dream is to be alive, he thought, but he knew now, for certain, that he was dead. He wondered, dully, if when he was fully certain—when every corner of his brain accepted the truth—he would return to oblivion.

“I believe I know your dream,” she said softly, coyly. “You dream of a little girl, a little heart-shaped face, a little girl named Hezhi.”

Anger stirred, if nothing else. What was this woman doing? Besides touching him, that is, here, there…

“Yes, Hezhi. You can say the name of your dream, can't you?”

“Shut up!” It exploded out of him before he knew what was happening. She sat astraddle him, and he struck her across the face. Her head snapped back, and she gasped, but instead of shrieking, she laughed. She gazed down at him with a broad, bloody grin.

“Say it,” she repeated.

“Hezhi!” he snarled, and struck her again.

And suddenly he came alive. A jagged bolt of sensation was born in his belly and roared out into his limbs, his groin. In that instant, Qwen Shen ceased to be Qwen Shen, and he recognized who she actually was.

She was Hezhi. Not the little girl he had known but the woman she would grow to be. She still had the same face, and he was amazed that he hadn't noticed before. The same pointed chin and bottomless black eyes. The breasts pressed so passionately against his own bare skin had been barely hinted at before, the curve of her hip deepened, thickened appropriately with the passage into womanhood. The legs were longer, almost as lean, but had more shape. It was Hezhi as she would be, his lover, his queen. Her flesh met his in ardent rhythm, and in rhythm he passed from passion into forgetftilness. He remembered Hezhi, gripping her lip in her teeth, a look of adoration in her eyes. Then he forgot that, too.

QWEN Shen was dressing as he awoke. He brushed at the fog that seemed to hang about his brow.

“What?” he sighed.

“Shhh. Quiet. You made enough noise earlier.”

“I don't …” He was naked, his body and the sheets drenched in sweat. Qwen Shen grinned faintly at him around her swollen lip.

“There, my sweet ghost. You rest.” She fingered her injury. “Next time you should not hit my face. I can explain it this once, but if you continue to leave marks, even Bone Eel may come to the obvious conclusion.” She bent, playfully nipped at his nose, then kissed him more fully on the lips. It seemed a distant thing, but his body still hummed with remembered passion. He could even recall the surge of volcanic pleasure …

He just couldn't remember doing it.

“Thank you,” he told her as she approached his door.

“Save your thanks for later,” she whispered. “There will be another time.” Then she was gone, a patter of footsteps outside of his room.

With her going, he continued to cool. An image hung tenaciously at the edge of his vision, a young woman's face, one he almost knew …

But he could not summon it in detail, could not call it into recognition. He felt a slight frustration. It was probably some old lover, called back to his mind by making love with Qwen Shen.

He had to have made love with her. It was the only thing that made sense. But he couldn't remember, and that meant that the River must still be making him forget things.

He felt—not quite resentment, but puzzlement at that. He had assumed all along that the memories he lost were parts of him that died before the River salvaged what was left of him and made him into a ghoul. He still felt certain that such was the case, because many of the things he had once known would have aided him in his mission. Not knowing the Jik back in Nhol, for instance; the necessity of killing him brought on by his forget-fulness had hastened the Ahw'en finding him. But if he could still forget things, new things … He shivered at that thought. How much of what he knew was real?

And floating around that memory was the one he had finally recalled. He knew who Li was, knew that he had loved her and trusted her more than any mortal creature. And in his ignorance, he had slain her. Why would the River allow that?

The pain of remembering who Li was had come closer to killing him than the sorcerous arrow that impaled his heart, but the remorse, like his passion, was cooled in him now. He wondered if it had cooled on its own, or if that, too, had been forgotten for him.

In the end it did not matter; all that mattered was finding Hezhi, the rest was mere distraction. His longing for her was almost frantic now, though he was not certain why. He must have her, his daughter, his bride …

This time, the strangeness of that thought troubled him not at all.

XXIII Deep Wounds

COWARD, coward, coward, T'esh's hooves seemed to beat on the sand of the gorge. Perkar bit down on his lip until he tasted blood.

“Where are we going? ” Harka asked.

“To get something that was stolen from me. To kill a thief.”

“That's a riddle, not an answer. ”

“You're my sword. I don't owe you any answers.”

“You just spent five days sleeping on the threshold of Deaths damakuta. Whatever you are about, you should wait until your head is clearer. ”

“I don't think my head is likely to get any clearer,” he snarled. “It's too much for me. I just want to be home, with my father, with my mother, tending cows. Why mel What did I do?”

“Loosed your blood in the Stream Goddess. Swore an oath. Killed Esharu, who guarded me. Betrayed the Kapaka and your people—”

“Stop, stop,” Perkar cried. Tears coursed down his face and streamed back toward his ears. “I know all that. I only meant…” He kicked T'esh harder, and the horse stumbled violently. Perkar's stiff legs almost failed to maintain their grip, as they jolted to a confused halt on recovery.

“Easy, ” Harka cautioned. I can help you see in the dark, but not your horse. ”

“She had a name!” Perkar gasped.

“Of course she had a name. ”

“And you know it?”

“She was my guardian. ”

“You never told me.”

“ You didn Y want to know. You still don Y. ”

“That's right,” Perkar whispered furiously. “I don't. Don't ever tell me anything else about her.”

Reluctantly, Perkar returned T'esh to a walk, at least until they were back to more open, level ground. Soon. The eastern sky was pinkening, as well, and so, shortly, T'esh would be able to see.

“ Where are we going? ”

Perkar collected himself before he answered. “I'm on some sort of edge,” he answered at last. “If I fall one way, I become an animal, hiding from the sun, afraid of everything. I have to fall the other way.”

“ Where do you fall if you fall the other way? ”

“I don't know. But if I let my terror overtake me, I'll be worthless for anything.”

“So, where are we going? ”

“It's death I'm terrified of. The last men to hurt me so, to defeat me, are down there following us. If I defeat them, I defeat my fear.”

“I doubt that. Many who bore me thought that by killing, they themselves could conquer Death. As if Death would be so pleased at them for feeding her that she would never swallow them. ”

“I didn't say I would defeat Death, only my fear of her.”

“This is not a rational decision. And you should know, because you made this same decision before, when you charged down upon the Huntress. You build up so much debt in your heart—and then try to discharge it by dying. But I won't let you die, and so it just builds up again. Anyway, you know that when a man dies in debt, his family must pay the balance. ”

“Shut up. Shut up.”

“Not rational. ”

“Listen,” he said savagely, “it is. First of all, this is not the Huntress and an army of gods. These are five Human Beings, nothing more, and you and I have defeated twice that number. We have a long way to go to reach the mountain, and we can't worry about pursuit the whole way. We don't have enough horses to keep the pace ahead of them. Better to deal with them now before they come upon us one night.”

“But if you happen to die in the endeavor, you will die a hero, and no one will blame you for not solving the larger problems you have created. ”

Perkar did not answer, nor did he respond to any more of Harka's overtures, until the sword—glumly, it seemed—warned him.

“There.”

Without Harka Perkar might not have seen them, camped in a wash and shadowed by cottonwoods. Now, however, he caught the motion of horses and men. Probably they heard him already, and he had no intention of being coy. If he did, if he hesitated, he would never do it. Terror beat in his breast, a black bat with clawed wings, and for a moment his fingers were entirely nerveless. He drew Harka anyway.

I'm going to die, he suddenly knew.

“No!” he shrieked, and rode down into the wash in dim but waxing light. An arrow and then another flew by, and his fingers ached to tug on the reins, to ride out and away. But the arrows were terribly wide of their mark, and his shriek became a whoop that pretended, at least, to sound brave.

“Something wrong here, “ Harka said.

Perkar sensed it, too. He counted five Mang bodies, sure enough, but only one of them was moving. That one was Chuuzek, leaning heavily against the bole of a tree, bow raised awkwardly. Perkar leapt from his horse and rushed toward the thickset warrior, splashing through the shallow water of the wash. He suspected that at least some of the bodies he saw were merely bundles of clothes and the other Mang were hiding in ambush.

Chuuzek fired once more, missed, and drew his sword barely in time to meet Perkar's attack. It was a weak parry; the Mang weapon was flung back by the force of the blow, and Harka plunged into the warrior's lower chest. Perkar withdrew the sanguine blade and quickly stepped back.

“That for our game of Slap,” he snarled.

“You be damned.” Chuuzek coughed raggedly. His knees folded, but oddly, he did not fall. He seemed to balance on his toes, one arm draped against the cottonwood. Perkar searched for other attackers.

“No others, ” Harka assured him.

“What?”

“He was the only one, the only danger to you. ”

Chuuzek was trying to gasp something else out. The sword fell from his fingers, and he tried to reach for it. His hand seemed to be stopped by some invisible barrier that would only allow him to reach down so far. With a sudden shock, Perkar realized that Chuuzek was lashed to the tree. He could see the cords now.

He could also see that the man had numerous wounds other than the one Perkar had just given him. They were crudely bandaged, but the blood soaking them seemed fresh.

“Chuuzek?” Perkar asked. “What happened here?” He moved up to cut the man's bonds.

“No!” Chuuzek roared. He almost seemed on the verge of tears. Blood flowed freely and formed the largest pool amongst several already in the sand. “No. I deserve to die on my feet, you hear me? I deserve it.”

“What happened?” Perkar repeated. “Are the others all dead?”

“All dead, all but me. Knew you would come. Go away, let me die among my own, without some shez around.”

“Why do you call me that?”

“You are an abomination,” Chuuzek whispered. “You are the doom of us all.”

“Who told you this? This gaan I have heard about?”

“A drink of water. A drink of water and I will tell you.”

Perkar found a waterskin near the remains of a fire that had not been fed in several hours. He brought the skin over to the dying man.

Harka warned him, but he did not move quickly enough. Chuuzek's knife slid in, cold as an icicle. He felt it scrape his ribs. Perkar sucked for air and fell back onto the sand, clawing at the offending steel. He got it out with considerable pain, then lay there gasping as the day came fully to life around them.

“We are still weak, both of us, “ Harka apologized. ”I should have known more quickly.”

The wound had stopped bleeding, though it still hurt mightily.

“Chuuzek …” He rolled over, so that he could see the other man. Chuuzek's eyes were already glazed. The knife, coated in Perkar's blood, stood point first in the sand.

I murdered him, Perkar thought grimly.

He had just managed, shakily, to stand, when he heard horses arriving. He retrieved Harka, lying an armspan from where he fell.

“Not enemies, ” the sword soothed him. His hand was shaking.

Harka, of course, was right. The riders who came down into the wash were Ngangata and Yuu'han.

PERKAR was not greatly surprised to find that Chuuzek had either lied or been wrong. Three of the other Mang were dead, their throats torn open. One remained alive, however; the young man, Moss. He wasn't even bleeding, though there was a nasty bruise just beginning to purple on his forehead. He was spattered with a black fluid that Perkar recognized.

“That's godblood,” he told Ngangata. “Godblood is either black or gold, in my experience.”

“Something attacked them,” Yuu'han muttered. He was staring suspiciously at Chuuzek.

“I killed him,” Perkar admitted. “He had a bow. I didn't know he was wounded already.”

Yuu'han shrugged. “He was brave, but his notions of honor were twisted. And at least he got to stab you.”

Perkar almost retorted, but then he took Yuu'han's meaning. When he stabbed Chuuzek, it had been murder, plain and straight. The Mang had been in no condition to fight him. But he probably would have died anyway; he had strapped himself to the tree so that he would die standing up, with some slight chance to kill another enemy. Perkar—unintentionally—had given him that last opportunity. Perhaps Chuuzek had even died believing he had killed Perkar. Perkar felt a brief smile play on his lips.

His humor was short-lived. He had proved nothing to himself. There had been no battle, no real test of his courage. Indeed, he had killed an already dying man and then been duped into being stabbed. If the knife had been witched as the Slap paddle had been, he might be dead now despite it all.

Ngangata shot Yuu'han an irritated glance but did not speak to the Mang's comment. Instead, the half man followed the speckles of black blood across the wash.

“They wounded this, too, whatever it was. Perhaps that explains why two of them survived.”

“Chuuzek must have wounded it before it could kill Moss. The others died in their sleep, I think.”

Perkar joined Ngangata and stared intently at the trail himself. “What sort of footprints?”

“They look Human.”

Perkar nodded. “That's no surprise. Gods take their mortal forms from the blood and bone of mortal beings. Most are said to appear Human, more or less.”

“Should we follow?”

It took Perkar a moment to register that Ngangata was actually asking him what to do. “Maybe,” he answered. “It could be the Blackgod, couldn't it? 'Helping' us?”

“It could,” Ngangata replied, his voice empty of inflection.

Perkar followed the trail of dark fluid with his gaze, thinking.He remembered the hideous strength of the Crow God, the casually summoned lightning. He remembered Good Thief's doom, and how easily the fickle Blackgod might have chosen Ngangata instead. “Whatever it was—the Blackgod or some local spirit—it has done us a favor,” Perkar finally said, trying to keep his voice even. It felt shaky, and he seemed to have trouble backing it with breath. “I think we should leave here now, before whatever it is turns on us.”

“Good,” Ngangata replied, heat creeping into his voice. “I wanted to see if you had even that much sense. If you had chosen otherwise, I would have clubbed you unconscious, magic sword or no. What kind of stupid idea came into your head and sent you down here alone? Playing the hero again? Haven't you learned your lesson by now?”

Perkar knew he couldn't explain to his friend, but he owed him something. He raised his hands—almost as if in defense—and tried to think of something to say.

“No,” Ngangata snapped. “I don't want to hear it. You always think you're right, think you know exactly what you should do. Challenge me to a fistfight because I didn't know my place. Attack the Huntress. Leave me on the island with Brother Horse, because you knew it would be better for me—”

“You were dying,'” Perkar said, faltering beneath the rush of Ngangata's words.

“Always you know what to do, and always you are wrong. Then you say ‘I surely was wrong that time, but now I know better, and next time I'll be right.’ You stupid cowherd.”

Perkar flushed with shame. He wanted to tell Ngangata that it wasn't at all like that this time, that he hadn't thought he was right, he had just wanted not to be terrified. He had needed to do something. But he couldn't say that. What came out instead was quavering, uncertain sounding.

“I just… you've all been fighting my fights for me while I lay on my back. I wanted to do something myself.” Not a lie, not as unspeakable as the truth. He might have been able to tell Ngangata, but Yuu'han was there, judging him with that hard Mang judgment, and he simply could not.

Ngangata just frowned and started for his horse, his ration of words apparently spent for the day.

“Wait,” Perkar said. “I wasn't wrong about leaving you on the island. I was right about that. You would have died on the River. If you hadn't, you would have died when the soldiers attacked me in Nhol. I didn't want you dead.”

“ You don yt want, ” Ngangata snarled, spinning on his heel. “You don't want this, you don't want that. Maybe I don't want to see you killed doing some damn stupid thing like this, did you ever, ever consider that? And maybe Hezhi and Brother Horse don't want you killed, or they wouldn't have risked their lives in the otherworld to get your stupid ass back.”

He strode violently over to Perkar and, quick as a snake striking, slapped him so hard that he rocked back on his heels and sat down, violently, his teeth snapping with the impact.

“Now get on your damn horse and ride back up the hill with us and start using your head for more than a battering ram.”

So saying, he leapt upon his stallion, gave heel to it, and in a flurry of dust was gone, leaving Perkar, blinking, on the ground watching him depart.

Yuu'han regarded him placidly, then offered him a hand up.

“If it's any comfort,” Yuu'han confided, “I don't much care if you five or die. I say you should feel free to ride down on our enemies anytime the mood strikes you.”

“Thanks,” Perkar said, spitting blood onto the warming sand.

“We should take Moss with us,” Yuu'han added. “Could you help me tie him to one of these horses?”

“Yes, of course.” Perkar went to get one of the horses standing about.

“You didn't warn me that he was going to hit me,” Perkar complained to Harka.

No, I most certainly did not, ” the sword replied.

THEY broke camp when Ngangata and Yuu'han returned with Perkar and Moss. The latter was unconscious, tied unceremoniously across the saddle of a horse Hezhi had never seen before. When she saw this, she expected to behold Perkar strutting about, full of his brave deed, and she was prepared to give him the tongue-lashing he deserved. Instead, she saw him looking more ashamed and uncertain than ever.

He wouldn't speak to her, other than to mumble a few apologies and to make certain she understood he was thankful to her for saving him from the Breath Feasting. After a few moments of strained silence, she kneed her horse up ahead to where Ngangata rode vanguard. There she pried the story from the half man, who doled it out in short, clipped phrases.

“What's wrong with him, though?“ Hezhi asked. ”Wasn't it better that he didn't have to fight?”

Ngangata lifted his odd, square shoulders. “I don't know. Sometimes I despair of ever understanding him.”

“You've known him for a long time.”

“No. Only just over a year.”

“Really?” Hezhi thought she understood the general outline of Perkar's story—what Ngangata jokingly called the “Song of Perkar.” But this part of the tale she did not know.

“How did you meet?”

“We were both members of the expedition to Balat. Of the five of us, only we two survived.”

“It must have made you close. You seem like brothers.”

That seemed to amuse Ngangata. “The first time we met we insulted each other. It may have been my fault. Later on we fought—with our fists, not with swords. That was his fault. After that…” He trailed off, but after a moment's thought picked up the thread and sewed it a bit further. ”There is some good in him, you know, of a peculiar kind. Being as I am, I act as a sort of sieve that most people flow through, if you know what I mean. Perkar nearly went through, but in the end, he stayed. Whenever that happens, I count the person a friend, because it happens so rarely that I can't afford to ignore it.”

“You mean most people are repelled by your appearance.”

He shrugged. I am repelled by it. There is nothing I hate more than a mirror or a clear pool of water. Well… maybe there are things I hate more, but I dislike seeing myself.”

“I don't find you ugly,” Hezhi said.

“You stopped in a different sieve long ago—your friend Tsem. So I would count you a friend, were we to know each other better. But you would never marry me, or bear my children.”

That startled her. “I haven't—”

He waved with the back of his hand. “I only wanted to show you how alien the thought is to you. I have never given any thought to courting you.”

Hezhi bit her lip. “Or anyone, I guess.”

“Or anyone,” he confirmed.

“Then you should, because I think someone would marry you, Ngangata. You are a good man, thoughtful. There must be a woman who wouldn't fall through the sieve.”

He smiled. “Show me this woman and I will court her,” he allowed. “I am not as fatalistic as Perkar. I take what opportunities come my way and do not spend time regretting those that do not. Show me such a woman, and I will take my opportunity.”

“I'll keep my eyes open,” Hezhi said. “But you should, too.” She glanced at him and then away to the increasingly hilly land. “We haven't spoken very often,” she said.

“No.”

“I must ask you a question. I must ask you to answer it truly or not at all.”

Ngangata raised his thick brows and waited.

“Can I trust Perkar?”

The half man pursed his lips and rode silently for so long that Hezhi believed he had taken the offered option not to answer at all. But finally he nodded.

“It depends on what you mean. You can trust Perkar to always try to do the right thing. That doesn't mean that you yourself can trust him. In the end perhaps you can, because the people he knows are dearer to him than Perkar himself comprehends. He believes, for instance, that it is the failure of the expedition to Balat that gnaws most at him—the fact that he let his people down. And he does feel that. But what strikes him most deeply is that the actual people who trusted him died: Apad, Eruka, his king. Now he struggles to right those wrongs, and it may blind him to certain things. Do you understand the distinction? Perkar believes in the pursuit of higher causes. That is why I call him a 'hero.' But when he focuses his vision too narrowly on saving the world, he can make terrible mistakes, and it is usually those close to him who suffer for it. In that way he is very dangerous, Hezhi. You should be careful of Perkar. He means no harm, but people die in his wake, nevertheless.”

“I think I knew that. His rescue of me was for some 'higher purpose.' ”

“Yes.”

Hezhi shifted uncomfortably in her saddle. That seemed to be the end of the discussion about Perkar, though it only served to confirm what she already suspected. Unexpectedly, she found that she enjoyed speaking with the halfling—and was not yet ready to end their conversation. “What do you know about dreams?” she was surprised to hear herself ask.

“Not much. I do not have them. If I do, I do not remember them.”

“How odd. I thought everyone dreamed.”

“I have had hallucinations, when I was fevered. But I've never had a dream or a vision.”

“My father has dreams,” Hezhi said. “All of those of Royal Blood have them. The River sends them so that we may know his will.”

“Have you had such a dream?”

“Something like that,” she replied cautiously.

“You should speak to Brother Horse. He knows more of this than anyone here—as I'm sure you are aware.”

“Yes, and I'll speak to him eventually. But I want you to know, too. In time it may become important.”

“I'm flattered,” the half man said, and he did not sound sarcastic.

“First of all, I don't think I got the dream from the River—not directly. I believe that if he could send me a dream, he would do more than that. I believe that I really am beyond his reach. But I think he sent his message through someone else.”

“Who?”

“This Mang gaan the Blackgod told you about, the one who sent Moss and Chuuzek, whose men attacked you and Perkar earlier. He has found a way into my dreams. He tells me lies.”

“What lies?”

“That part isn't important. I just thought… if he can send dreams to me, he might be able to do more. I know just enough about sorcery to suspect that.” She looked down uncomfortably. “What I'm saying is, perhaps I can't be trusted, either. Perkar nearly slew me once, and for good reason. A dreadful power sleeps in me, Ngangata. I just want you to know that I should be watched, that's all.”

Ngangata smiled. “I trust very little about the world,” he said. “Perkar is perhaps my best—if only—friend, and as you know, I don't trust him. Inside of you, however, there is a—I'm not good with words—a kind of glimmer. Or maybe a truth. Something I trust, anyway.” He looked away, plainly embarrassed.

“I hope you're right,” Hezhi said.

“Well, I have been wrong before,” Ngangata admitted. “And believe me, I never rely entirely upon such instincts. I will watch you—even more closely than I have.”

“Thank you.”

“No need for that,” Ngangata assured her.

THEY traveled steadily until noon, and then the men conferred and called a halt. Brother Horse and the other Mang were essentially convinced that whatever creature had dispatched Chuuzek's party was not following them, guessing that it was a territorial rather than a roaming god. Perkar diffidently agreed. Moss had awakened, and everyone wanted to question him.

But it was Moss who asked the first question. “Chuuzek? What has become of my cousins?”

Moss sat on the ground, weaponless, hands tied in front of him. His feet were hobbled with a length of rope that would not hinder him much walking but that would prove inconvenient if he attempted to run. Brother Horse, Perkar, and Ngangata stood over him.

“Don't you know?”

“I don't remember anything much. Something struck my head as I was waking—” He fingered the bruise tentatively.

“Your cousins are dead. Something bleeding black blood killed them. Do you know what it was?”

“No,” he replied, but his eyes flicked to Hezhi, and she saw something there that made her doubt his answer.

“Why were you following us?” Perkar demanded.

“You know,” Moss answered sullenly.

“I know only that some shaman sent you to kidnap Hezhi. I don't know any more than that.”

“That is the only thing you have need to know.”

Brother Horse crouched, creakily, before the boy. “Moss, we want to know this thing your cousins died for. They died well; one tied himself to a tree, and whatever god they battled, they sent it away wounded.”

Moss looked a bit triumphant at that but said nothing. Nor did he reply to any of their other questions. Hezhi was afraid they would strike or torture him, but after a time, they merely stopped in frustration; Ngangata, Perkar, and Raincaster went to hunt, Brother Horse retreated to tend the fire, Yuu'han watched Moss from where he whittled at a cottonwood branch. After a moment, Hezhi stood, brushed at her dress, and walked over to the green-eyed Mang. Heen roused himself to accompany her—the old dog seemed to have appointed himself her guardian as well as Brother Horse's.

“May I talk to you, Moss?”

“You may.”

“You tried to convince me to go with you before. You said I could bring peace.”

“I did tell you that.”

She nodded. “I know you believe that to be true. There is much I don't know about you, Moss. I know even less about this gaan who sent you to gather me up. I only know that you aren't much older than I am and you can't be much wiser.”

He started to interrupt her, but she held up her hand. “Listen to me, please. I want to say something to you, while I am not too angry to say it.”

He subsided then and she continued. “When I was younger than I am now, back in Nhol, my best friend vanished. I looked everywhere for him, but I knew where he was all along. The priests took him away and put him in a dark place. They did this because he bore the blood of the River—the one you call the Changeling—and because that blood had marked him. I understood then that if his blood marked me, I would be taken away, too.”

“That would have been a shame,” Moss said. “A shame to put such a lovely woman somewhere dark.”

Hezhi felt some bitterness creep into her voice and wished she could keep it out somehow. She really wanted Moss to understand her, not to raise his hackles. “Some have called me pretty—some, perhaps, because they thought it, others merely to flatter me. But if the Royal Blood had worked long in me, no one would have thought me pretty. My relatives so marked all became monsters. Do you want to see my mark?”

“Very much.”

She pushed up her sleeve and revealed the single iridescent scale. “That was only the beginning. When I knew for sure that the change was coming to me, I ran. All of these people you see around me helped me run. They have all suffered for it, and many died because of my selfish desire to live. Now your gaan sends people after me, and more men are dying, and I want it to stop. But I will never go back to the River, because no matter what you have been told, I have felt his blood working in me. I know what I would do should he fill me up. He is tricking your shaman, trying to bring me to him. Your shaman in turn tricks you, and he sends me dreams, pretending to offer me my heart's desire. But I know what is best, because the River has been in me. People die now, but it is as nothing compared to what will happen if you return me to the Changeling. I will be forced to end my own life, if that happens, and I don't want to do that. But if men like you—good men, I believe, in your hearts—continue to die because of me …” Now she was weeping. ”Why doesn't it stop? Why don't you all just stop it?”

Moss spoke very gently, and his eyes were kind. “The world can be seen from so many different angles. Each of us is born seeing the world in a different way, and each moment we live shapes our eyes and hearts differently. I believe everything you say, Princess. You have my sympathy, and I am sorry to have caused you pain. But I still must place my duty first, and now I have the blood of my cousins to avenge, as well. I will think on what you told me, but I will not lie to you; my way is clear.”

Hezhi felt anger spark, but she pushed an acrimonious retort away.

“I don't expect anything from you,” she said evenly. “I just wanted you to know”

Moss sighed. “And now I know.”

As far as Hezhi could tell, there was nothing left to say. She felt tired, drained. Her vision had robbed her of most of the night's rest, and she wished she could take a nap, at least.

But there were two things she still needed to do. She had to speak to Brother Horse about her dream—but not now. Her talk with Moss had worn her out on that subject. There was something else, a nagging in her heart. She needed to talk to Tsem.

He had been moping for days. It troubled her that they had not spoken, but she was embarrassed, both by the Giant's morose self-pity and by her own reaction to it. Was this what growing up consisted of? Discovering that what you had always believed to be towers of eternal stone were really only shoddy façades? She had believed that her childhood had nurtured few illusions, but the feeling that Tsem was as unbreakable—in spirit, at least—as the iron he was named for had always been with her.