Waterborn

Gregory Keyes

Waterborn

PROLOGUE

Out of a Deep and Ancient Place

The mountain split open with the clap of a thousand thunders, and through the rupture a cyclone of living steam screamed skyward. Blazing, many-colored lightnings rode with the wind and water, the groping fingers of an angry god.

Another god, cloaked in the flesh of an argent bird winging frantically away, was snapped like a twig by the first shock, his wings broken, the flesh seared and then stripped from bones that themselves were blown apart. The pain was awful, the fiercest agony that the god had ever known, and in eternity he had felt much pain.

Knitting a new body of air and black smoke, he redoubled his efforts to outpace the main storm, the unthinkable reservoir of power he had loosed. He rode with the blooming edge of the tempest, disintegrated and recomposed a hundred times in the wind's teeth. Jagged wounds of mountains, the pooled, dried blood of plateaus hurled beneath him with hideous speed, as incomprehensible and lethal as the gaze of a basilisk.

The god felt real fear for the first time in his existence. Who could have known his Brother held such power, such anger? Behind him he could see the air chewing itself to pieces, flashes like lightning but brighter by far than the sun.

Pretty, he thought. But it will be my death if he catches me, a real, endless death. Perhaps—just perhaps—I have made a mistake.

He tightened the thick strands of his heart and flew, faster than anything save the wind had ever flown, until, like a steed run to death, his might was gone and he fell.

The storm swept by above him, smote a mountaintop, and shattered it.

The god struck the earth and lay there as above him the sky became soot, the sun dimming to a pale ocher eye and then gone altogether.

Now he finds me and I die, the god thought. I may not be as clever as I thought.

But then the earth swallowed him, folded him up beneath, hid him, kept him safe. Above, in time, the steam calmed into rain and soaked the bone-dry hills and desiccated plains for some score or so years.

Much more time passed, and he awoke. His flesh had grown back. He flexed his wings, felt the warmth of golden blood in his veins, pulled himself from his protective womb.

The world had changed, he saw. Thick boles of trees towered about him, a thousand living mortal things, just as he had seen in his vision, so long ago. Unleashing the Brother, he had unleashed life as well as death. He took to the air and flew above it all, until the new world was a carpet of green below, the blasted mountains now healed by time. In the midst of it, the Brother was still there, but he lay quietly now, no longer angry. He wound across the land, a serpent shimmering blue beneath the sky. A River. He was, the bird thought, quite pretty.

But I am no longer pretty, he thought, for he had changed, as well. He was black, every feather, his beautiful argent plumage replaced by charcoal.

But he forgot that soon enough. The world was new and strange, and surely in such a place there was much mischief to be about.

And in a wink or two of his yellow eye, five more millennia passed.

PART ONE

Royal Blood

I

The Princess and Perfect Darkness

Hezhi confronted the black depth, felt a wind blow up from it and envelop her like the breath of a vast beast. She was seized by a sudden sensation of falling, though she could still sense the wet clay beneath her feet, slick as the back of the salamander in her mother's garden pool. Hezhi trembled; she had never been troubled by such darkness before. In the three years since she discovered the tight, narrow tunnels of the old palace, she had never ventured beyond the upper stories, the places where the ceiling was a lacework of crumbled stone, recently added sewer grills, the dense and spreading roots of O'ay trees. A ceiling that therefore let at least scraps of light drop through to guide her wanderings. Her room in the palace was likewise never dark, but always illuminated, if only by the tiny lamps of the stars peering down through the open roof of the adjacent courtyard.

But what she faced now was chwengyu, the perfect darkness that she had only read about, darker than her own coal-black hair. Behind her, a faint gray light lapped at her heels, trying to call her back, like a loyal dog, knowing its mistress was heading into danger, straining at the end of its leash to reach her.

Hands against the damp, perspiring wall, Hezhi shuffled forward, her tiny bare feet squishing in the wet layer of clay. Her shoes—beautiful felted shoes—lay discarded two turnings back, where the broken stairway vanished beneath this layer of mud. How long had the lower palace been buried? She remembered the tales of the flood, but none of them really said when it had occurred. During the rule of Q'anata, she seemed to remember. One day she would find out just when that was. Q'anata.

She gasped as her feet slipped, and the darkness, again like a great maw, grinned to take her in. Hezhi recovered her balance, shaking. She could turn back now, as she always did. She should: Her fear was a cricket, chirping frantically beneath her breastbone. But this time she had gone farther than ever before. This time she had more than curiosity, she had a reason to push deeper into these tunnels. D'en. He was down here somewhere. The priests had taken him off, just like that. Hekes, D'en's little servant-girl, had told Hezhi as much. When the priests snatched one of the royal family, everyone knew where they took them. They took them down, down the staircase behind the throne room, down into the old palace, and even deeper, to where the River himself filled the hidden foundations of the city. After that, those taken were never seen again, and they were never spoken of, save with -nata added to their names, the suffix that denoted someone as a ghost.

D'enata, Hezhi thought, felt herself near tears. Ten years old, she had met her mother a dozen times, her father perhaps twice that. They were polite to her, but more distant than gods. D'en was three years older than she, her cousin, a kind, gentle boy. Her best friend, besides the servants who raised her. Her only friend in the royal family. D'en and she had spent every idle hour together, scampering about the vast empty areas of the palace, eluding their bodyguards and servants, spying on the adults. Now he was gone, taken from her.

I'll find you, she promised. She could not descend the Darkness Stair, where they had taken D'en, but she knew other routes into the underneath. There must be a way to reach her cousin, to see him again, to rescue him from whatever fate the priests had taken him off to.

Thirteen more steps she counted; the slope steepened and then leveled off flat. Her poor toes kicked against a few pieces of brick, cracked and tumbled down from above. Hezhi hugged the wall at her left, for support, for solidity. The darkness seemed infinite, though she knew the passage she was in was only an armspan across. She reached over with her right hand to confirm that.

She couldn't feel the other wall; the passage had evidently widened. Hezhi stepped over a few more feet, puzzled.

Her legs zipped out from under her as if she had been pushed. She fell roughly to the damp floor, flailing ineffectually with her arm. A shriek turned into painfully exhaled air as the wind was slapped out of her, and before she could even comprehend that and the agony that accompanied it, she was sliding.

Then falling. She fell for what seemed a very long time before the rush of air was replaced by a stinging explosion that seemed to burn half of her body, to push the little ghost in her up into the high air, to leave her leaden corpse as food for whatever lived in such deep, underground pools. And she was in a pool. The water was as warm as bathwater, and it stank of rot. Her three layers of skirt held air and kept her buoyed up for a moment— long enough for her struggling lungs to steal new breath from the fetid atmosphere. She had not yet recovered her senses, however, when the hated garments began to fill with water, to drag her down. It would have been terrifying, the speed with which her own clothes became a powerful hand, tugging her beneath the water, were she not already shocked beyond such simple terror.

She was not so shocked or stupid that she did not kick the skirts off. Her slim, hipless, ten-year-old body shimmied easily out of them, though they grasped once more at her ankles as they sank into the deeps.

Hezhi could not really swim, but she could tread water. She was thankful that she wasn't wearing the heavy brocaded vest— that was back with her shoes. Her linen shirt did not add much to her weight.

Of course, even that weight would soon be more than enough. Hezhi was tired and numb already.

That was when she realized, for the first time, that death was not an option she would willingly take. It would have been simple, easy. The water, despite its stink, was really not unpleasant. It almost seemed to enfold her like comforting arms, like a blanket. In fact, she realized, this water must be the River, the life giver, the ancestor of the royal line. Her own ancestor. Didn't the River have her best interests at heart, know well her deep misery, her lonely days? So easy to go down into his belly, return to his seed. Then maybe she would be with D'en again.

But no, she wanted to live, even if she hated her life. It was a curious thing, a revelation. Even standing on the red-shingled roof of the Great Hall, staring down longingly at the neatly paved courtyard had never brought such a flash of insight. When she was on the brink of taking her own life, she always pulled back. She dared the roof only because she needed to know that there was at least one important choice she could make for herself. It was control she wanted, not death. Threatened with a death beyond her own hands, that distinction was more than plain, even to a ten-year-old.

I want to live, she thought, but I shall not.

That was when Tsem called for her. Tsem, her bodyguard, whom she had tricked, whom she believed too stupid to follow her.

"Tsem!" she shrieked, with what air she could bring into her voice. "I've fallen! I'm drowning."

A faint yellow glow appeared, high above her. The glow brightened along a sharp black line, like the sun rising in the east.

The line, she realized, was the edge of whatever precipice she had fallen from.

The glow suddenly had a center, the bright, glaring light of a lamp. Behind it, faintly, she could make out Tsem's rough features.

"Mistress?" he barked, his voice thick with concern. "I see you, Mistress. Come to the wall: Cling there while I come down for you."

In the faint light, she could see what wall Tsem meant. She had fallen over the edge of what must be the stairwell she had been descending. The pool drowning her was a half-submerged hall; the stairs surely continued down to its floor, which must be another ten feet or so below her. How stupid she had been! If she could only get to the wall, she could make her way to where the stair entered the water and scramble back up on it.

Except that she was so tired. And what was Tsem doing? The light remained where it was.

Hezhi managed to get to the wall. It was slick, very slick, and she could find little purchase on it. Kicking for all that she was worth, she tried to use her hands to push herself along it, vowing that someone would teach her to swim, if she survived this.

At nearly the end of her strength, Hezhi heard a thunderous splash, and the surface of the water broke into a billion shards of pale lamplight. Before she could even gasp, arms like the stone columns that held up the Great Hall wrapped around her, tilting her back so that her face was well out of the water. Beneath her, she could feel powerful muscles churning, pushing them along. It was like being borne on a cyclone or a waterspout, like being the mistress of a storm.

By the time they reached the edge of the stair, Tsem was shuddering with effort. His breath came in great, labored gasps as he threw her up onto the mud and then flopped out onto the slope himself. Hezhi listened to him wheeze like an old dog, felt the burning in her own lungs.

"Am I so heavy, Tsem?" she asked, concerned for her loyal guard.

"No, Mistress," he replied, his voice coming between gulps at first, but then waxing stronger. "No, indeed, you weigh nothing. It is Tsem who is heavy. My kind were not meant to swim, I think."

"You have no kind, Tsem," Hezhi said, not realizing until several years later what a hurtful thing that was to speak.

Tsem was silent for a moment, then he laughed, a single harsh grunt. "True enough, Mistress. My mother, though—she was not designed to swim. Giants stay far and away from the water. And my father was Human, like you, little one—and probably no better at swimming than you are." He paused and then added, "He had a lot more sense, though."

With that he scooped her up, and Hezhi found herself lifted onto Tsem's massive shoulders. He crawled up the slope on all fours, until they reached the place where the lantern still burned patiently; Hezhi could now see that it rested on a landing, five paces of level stone just where the stairs entered at the top of the room. What ancient prince had built it thus, so that he could preen and pose at the top before descending to greet his guests?

Tsem set Hezhi down by the light and began to inspect her for wounds, his thick fingers very gentle.

He was a big man, though in age no more than seventeen years. He stood a head and a half taller than any other man she knew, and his shoulders were so broad she could scarce touch both with arms spread wide. Thick boned, he was, with muscles braided like ropes and cables beneath his pale skin. His legs were short, in proportion to his body, his arms long. His jaw was both massive and receding, and when he smiled his teeth were enormous ivory cubes, like the bone dice some of the soldiers gambled with. He had been trained since birth to be what he was, a guard for the royal line. His mother, now -nata, had been one of her father's elite, a full-blooded Giant and terrible to see in her armor. Tsem was less large—much more manlike than the full-blooded Giants—but he was much smarter. Her father had predicted this when he ordered the mating.

The two of them made an odd pair, the half Giant and the child. Hezhi had limbs like willow switches, her little brown face delicate, nearly heart-shaped, an elegant setting for the black opals of her eyes. Tsem could lift her with one fist if he wanted to. Instead, he prodded her long bones gently.

"You don't seem badly hurt," he said at last. "We should have Qey have a look at you, however. She knows much more of this than I."

"No, Tsem, I'm fine."

"Besides being insane, you mean."

"You should know better than to talk to me like that. I am your mistress, remember?"

"Yes, little one." Tsem sighed. "But your father is a higher master. He would be most upset with me should harm befall you. Anyway,"—Tsem shrugged—"I can't help it if I say the wrong thing now and then. Tsem not too bright, you know."

Hezhi laughed scornfully. "Yes, I've seen you do that trick before my father and his court. 'Tsem want to help.' 'Tsem not understand such things, Master.' But I know better, Tsem. And you know I know better."

"You know too much for someone so young," Tsem said softly.

"It must be the Royal Blood working in me," Hezhi replied, through a contrived smile.

Tsem's face clouded, his thick eyebrows coming together like twin thunderstorms. But beneath the clouds, his eyes were gentle, sad. He grasped her arm. "Don't even say that, Princess," he whispered.

Hezhi frowned. "I don't understand. I am my father's daughter. I carry the Royal Blood—from my mother's line, too. I will be like them, powerful. One day."

"One day," Tsem said, shaking his head as if to clear it. "But now let's get you back aboveground, to a proper bath and fresh clothes."

"No," Hezhi replied. She pressed herself away from the half Giant. "No. I'm going on."

"Oh? So you can keep falling into pools?"

"I should have brought a lantern, that's all. Now I have one. Say…" Hezhi frowned. "I thought I lost you, like always. How did you find me?"

Tsem grinned a little, showing his enormous teeth. "You not lose Tsem, little Mistress. Tsem always stay far back, always out of sight."

Hezhi reddened. "You're using your dumb voice. Because I thought you were dumb, too. But I guess I was the one who…" She broke off again, this time to stifle a sudden giggle.

"What?" Tsem demanded.

"I was just picturing someone your size sneaking around after me and D'en."

Tsem touched her lightly on the shoulder. "I'm sorry about D'enata."

"His name," Hezhi snapped, all sudden humor vanished, "is D'en. Nn! And I'm going to find him!"

"I knew that was what you were about!" Tsem exclaimed. "Princess, it is hopeless. Give up this notion. Try to forget your friend. It is all that you can do."

"I will not."

"Where will you go from here? Even with a lantern? Your trail ends there, in the water." He gestured at the submerged lower stair.

That silenced her. Tsem was right. Or was he? In her excitement, in arguing with Tsem, Hezhi had not looked around properly, now that she was able. But Tsem was indeed right. She could just barely see the arch of one door, there beyond the stair. If she could reach that, she might duck under it and find another room. Or she might not.

"I'll go back," she said, "but only so far as another turning. There are many ways down into this darkness. One must lead to D'en."

Tsem wagged a finger. "I will carry you out, Princess. Your father will thank me."

"And I will come back, Tsem. Again and again, until I either find him or fall too far for even you to save me. If you always follow me, you know what I think of doing, at times. And now that I know how smart you are, I think I may get away from you. I was never as clever as I could be, Tsem, since I didn't realize I had to be."

Tsem knitted his brows back together. "What do you want of me, Mistress? My task is to keep you safe. I can't let you run around down here. There are things down here."

"There are things up there, too."

"I don't mean ghosts, little Princess. Those are mostly harmless, and the priests keep the bad ones swept out. Down here there are real things. And the priests don't come down here to sweep."

Hezhi sighed. "My mind is made up. You can either go with me—where I want to go—or you can leave me alone. Which will it be? Protect me, or let me roam?"

"My head," Tsem growled, "is as likely to leave my shoulders either way."

"I wouldn't let them do that, Tsem."

"You have no control over such things, Princess."

For a moment, Hezhi nearly relented. Tsem was so good, so loyal. Almost as much a friend as D'en had been. But Tsem and all of the other servants kept a certain distance from her—even Qey, the woman who had nursed her, been all but completely her mother. Even Qey had been withdrawing from Hezhi these last few years. D'en had been unreserved with his affection.

"Tsem," Hezhi said evenly, "I will find D'en. With or without you."

Tsem nodded sadly, not in her direction, but out over the sunken hall. "Very well." He sighed. "With me, then. But not now, Mistress. Not today. Tomorrow, when you've rested, when we get you some proper clothes."

"You'll come with me?"

"Yes, though it won't do any good," Tsem said sadly.

"We will find him," Hezhi insisted.

"Maybe that will not be a good thing," Tsem gently replied.

"Do you think he is dead?"

Tsem regarded her for a long moment, then scooped her up in his great arms. "You'll catch a fever like this, Princess." He bent and took the lantern in one massive hand and carefully started up the mud-covered stair.

"Why do they take them off, Tsem?"

It seemed that Tsem considered that question for perhaps too long a time before answering. "I don't know, Princess."

"I think you do," Hezhi told him petulantly. "Do they take servants off, too?"

"No. Not like that. When a servant is punished, it is done publicly, with much fanfare. So the rest of us will know."

Tsem was past the slickest mud now, and gray light was beginning to filter in from farther up the tunnel, where it turned right.

"Do you really not know why they take them off, Tsem?"

"I really don't. Not for sure."

"Do you think that they will take me off?"

"No," Tsem answered, his voice curiously flat and clipped.

"If they could take off D'en, why not me?" Tsem shrugged his massive shoulders. "You think too much, Princess. Because they won't, that's all."

Tsem could be a wall in more ways than one. Hezhi knew when he would say no more.

The hot bathwater felt good. The angry gaze of Qey did not. Her middle-aged face was as round and tight as a fist; her hazel eyes sparkled dangerously in the lamplight as she leaned over to scrub just a bit too hard at the mud crusted on Hezhi's feet.

"Where is your dress?" Qey whispered after a time. Her soft voice was not conspiratorial, not pitched to trade secrets. It was reined in low only so that it would not be a shout. Hezhi winced as the less-than-kind attentions of the scrub rag moved up to her face and neck. She did not answer.

"Your dress! Do you know? Your parents will think I sold it. I may be beaten. Or Tsem! If you won't think of me, think of him. Surely someone saw him carrying you, all but naked. They might castrate Tsem!"

Hezhi wasn't sure what castration was, but she knew it couldn't be good, not if Tsem was threatened with it.

"Nobody saw us," Hezhi shot back. Soap was smarting her eyes, and more tears swam about there, as well, despite all that she had shed since the disappearance of D'en. Her eyes seemed like the River, limitlessly full.

"You can't be sure of that. You're just a child!" But her voice had begun to soften, her frantic scrubbing becoming more gentle. When Hezhi's tears finally burst forth, Qey took her in her arms, soaking the front of her simple dress with soap and bathwater.

"Child, child," Qey whispered. "What are we to do with you?"

Later, in the kitchen, Qey did not bring up the matter at all. Bright sunlight flooded the courtyard outside, washed the inner kitchen walls with cheerful color. Strings of garlic and shallots dazzled white and purple above the table as Qey kneaded huzh, the thick black bread that Hezhi loved, especially with pomegranate syrup and cream. The warm pungence of the yeast mingled with the scent of coffee warming on the indoor skillet-stove and juniper smoke wafting in from the courtyard, where the bread oven was slowly heating up. Tsem was dozing in the sunlight, a happy smile on his broad face.

"When can I learn to cook?" she asked Qey. The woman did not look up, but continued to work her callused palms against the resilient mass of dough.

"You helped me already," Qey said. "Just the other day you beat some eggs for me."

"I mean really cook," Hezhi said, careful not to sound cross. There had been too much trouble today already.

"No need for that, little one," Qey replied. "There will always be people like me to cook for you."

"Suppose I want to cook," Hezhi countered.

"And suppose I don't?" Qey retorted. "Neither of us chooses what we do, Hezhi. It's all decided, and you'd best get used to it."

"Who decides?"

"Everybody," Qey replied. "The River."

And that was that. If the River said, it was.

"Did the River decide about D'en?"

Qey paused. She hesitated a moment, then brushed her palms on her apron. She knelt near Hezhi and took her hands.

"Hezhi, dear," she said, "I'm sorry about him. He was a good boy; I liked him."

She took a deep breath; to Hezhi it seemed that she was trying to somehow steady herself by filling up with air.

"Hezhi," the woman continued, "what you must understand is that Tsem and I… we are not like you. We cannot speak and do whatever we please. There are people who watch us, all of us, and even when they aren't watching, the River is. So Tsem and I cannot discuss everything you want to discuss. Do you understand that?"

Hezhi looked at Qey, trying to see what was different. Because the woman who had raised her was different somehow. Smaller? Different.

D'en was of the Blood Royal. If something could happen to him, how much easier would it be for something to happen to Qey or Tsem? Hezhi did not want that.

"I understand, Nama," she answered. Qey gripped her hands, then went back to her bread. She seemed happier. Hezhi turned her gaze back out to Tsem.

I shouldn't force him, either, she considered, remembering their earlier conversation. But she had to. Besides, who or what could possibly take away Tsem?

II

A Gift of Steel and Rose Petals

Perkar held his new sword up toward the sun, delighting in the liquid flow of light upon its polished surface, in the deadly heft of it in his hands. He crowed aloud, a great raven war whoop, and the curious cows in the pasture around Perkar turned briefly to accuse him with their mild cow-eyes of disturbing their deep meditations. Perkar disregarded them. He had a sword.

He cut the air with it, once, twice, thrice, and then returned it reluctantly to the embroidered scabbard that hung on his back. Yet there, too, it pleased him, for he could feel the new weight, the mark of his manhood. A man at fifteen! Or man enough to receive a sword, anyway. He reached once more joyfully for the hilt of his sword, delight sparkling in his gray eyes.

No, his own hidden voice told him. You were given the sword because you have shown yourself to be trustworthy. Tend to your father's cows!

Even reminding himself of his mundane duties made Perkar feel good today. After all, that was what an adult—man or woman—did. They looked after their obligations. Dutifully Perkar crossed the low ridge in the pasture. The sun was halfway from noon to sundown, scattering gold upon the otherwise verdant landscape. Forest bunched thickly at the borders of the Cattle-Field, wild and dense as the forest at the start of the world. The pasture itself rolled on east, dotted here and there with the rust-red cattle his father preferred. Between two hills, a thin line of willow marked a stream leisurely crossing the pasture.

Perkar stopped first at the shrine on the brow of the high ridge. It was a modest affair; an altar of stone that came up to his waist, a small roof of cedar and cane sheltering it. On the altar rested a bowl of plain design. He took a cowhide bag from his waist and withdrew an incense brick, and with tinder and his bow-drill ignited it. The faint scent of cedar wafted up, and he sprinkled tallow onto the hot ember, smiling as the fat sputtered and flared. Clearing his throat, he sang, clearly and distinctly:

Once I was a glade

A part of the ancient forest

When Human Beings came

With their fourfold axes

With their tenfold desires

I kept to myself

Ignored their requests

Turned them away with

hard thorns…

Perkar sang on, the short version of a long story. It was the story of how his father's grandfather had convinced the god of the forest to let him cut trees for pasture. Because he was humble and established this shrine, the spirit had eventually relented. Perkar's family had maintained good relations with the Lord of the Pasture, and with the spirits of the surrounding land.

Leaving the brick smoldering, he moved on to a second shrine just inside the edge of the woods. This invocation was a bit shorter; they owed less to the Untamed Forest, and even let deer and other creatures graze at the edge of their pasture to mollify him.

The sun was well toward the horizon when he reached the stream.

The stream had cut deep banks, etched into the pasture; the cattle had likewise worn deep trails down to it. Perkar loved this part of the land the best; when the sun was bright and straight overhead, he often came here, to cool himself in the water, to chase crawfish, to throw crickets on the surface of the water and watch the fish snatch at them from below. Humming, enjoying the feel of the sword flapping against his back, Perkar moved upstream, away from the cow-roiled waters, to where the creek flowed clear and cool from the forest. He paused there, savoring the transition from the smells of grass and cow to that of dark, leaf-strewn soil. He reached down and cupped a handful of water to sprinkle on himself. Then he took out the sacrifice he had for the water: rose petals from his mother's garden. He started the song:

Stream Goddess am I

Long hair curling down from the hills

Long arms reaching down the valley...

Perkar finished the chant and smiled, sat down on the bank, combed fingers through short, chestnut hair. He removed his soft calfskin boots and dangled his bare feet in the water. Up the pasture Kapaka, the old red bull, bellowed, triggering a musical exchange of lowing across the hills.

Now, at last, Perkar took his sword back out. He laid it across his knees and marveled at it.

The blade was slim, double-edged, about as long as his arm. The hilt was made large enough for both hands, wrapped in cowhide, a round, polished steel pommel its only decoration.

"I know who made that," a girl's voice said.

Perkar nearly dropped the sword, he was so startled. Instead, he stared, gape-mouthed, at the person who had spoken to him.

She stood waist-deep in the creek, wearing no more than her dark, wet hair. Her face was pale, the color of ivory, her large almond eyes golden as the sunset. She looked to be a year or so older than he, no more.

Perkar was not fooled.

"Goddess!" he whispered.

She smiled, twirled around in the water so that her hair fanned out across it. He could not see where the silken strands ended and the stream itself began.

"I liked the rose petals," she told him.

"It's been a long time since I saw you," Perkar breathed. "Many years."

"Has it been so long? You have grown a bit larger. And you have a sword."

"I do," Perkar answered stupidly.

"Let me see it."

Perkar obediently held the sword up where she could see it. The Stream Goddess approached, revealing more of herself with each step. She looked very Human indeed, and Perkar tried his best to avert his eyes.

"You may look at me," she told him. She scrunched her eyes, concentrating on the weapon. "Yes. This was forged by the little steel god, Ko. He cooled it in me, farther upstream."

"That's right!" Perkar agreed enthusiastically. "Ko is said to be related to my family. He is said to have fathered my grandsire's sire."

"So he did, in a manner of speaking," the goddess replied. "Your family is old hereabouts, as Human Beings go. Your roots with us on the land are deep."

"I love you," Perkar breathed.

"Of course you do, silly thing," she said, smiling.

"Since I first saw you, when I was only five. You haven't changed at all."

"Oh, I have," she corrected him. "A little here, a little there. Wider in some places, more narrow in others. My hair, up in the mountains, changes most. Each storm alters it, alters the tiny rivulets that feed into me."

"I meant…"

"I know what you meant. My Human form will always look like this, little Perkar."

"Because…"

"Because someone with this shape was sacrificed to me long ago. I forget her name, though I remember a little of what she remembers…"

"She was lovely," Perkar said, feeling a bit bolder. When he said things like that to the girls at the gatherings, they blushed and hid their faces. The Stream Goddess merely returned him a frank stare.

"You court me, little Perkar? I am older by far than your entire lineage."

He said nothing to that.

"It is so silly," the goddess went on. "This thing about swords and men. I made my agreement with your family only because it amused me."

"Agreement?"

"There is more to receiving your sword than I suspect you know. A silly, symbolic thing, but as I said, amusing." And she reached out her long, slim arm. He took it, and felt that her flesh was indeed warm, like a Human Being's. She stepped up out of the water, glistening, her long, graceful legs nearly touching him. She smelled like—he didn't know. Rose petals?

He was certainly frightened. He had gone off, recently, with Hame, a girl his own age and Human. What they did—touching each other, exploring—had frightened him enough. The feelings it aroused had been so hungry. He could not see how such feelings could be sated, though he had come near to understanding once when he was alone.

But this woman drawing him down to her flesh was not Hu-man. She was Anishu, a spirit, a goddess. Perkar was trembling as she gently tugged at the belt of his pants. "Shhh," the Stream told him. "Don't worry."

Perkar and the goddess lay beneath a sky gone slate gray, and the shutters of the brightest stars were opening as night threw wide her windows. Huna, the Pale Queen, was brightening but already halfway across the sky, a thick crescent. Though the night breeze should have been cool, Perkar's bare skin prickled with unnatural warmth. The Stream Goddess was tracing the lean contours of his face with her index finger. She giggled at the downy promise of beard, then cupped his cheek when he flushed in embarrassment.

"You people age so quickly," she told him. "Don't hurry it more than necessary."

Perkar nodded without understanding. His life was too full just now. He felt as if all that he had ever seen and known was about to boil up out of him, become something he had never anticipated. He was having trouble thinking. And he was in love.

"That first time, when I was so young," he asked her. "Why did you appear to me then?"

"I need no excuse to appear," she said lightly.

"You came this time to honor a bargain."

"True enough. I came last time because you were laughing, and I thought it beautiful. I wanted to hear you with Human ears."

"The stream cannot hear?"

"Oh, it can. I can hear everything, the entire length and breadth of me, from the mountains until…" Her lovely face clouded. "I can hear it all. But it isn't like this. Being tied up in one place, being just a point, a quickly moving speck—it has a different sort of appeal."

"Is that what we are to you? Specks?"

She frowned, turned over on her side, so that the curve of her hip gleamed, impossibly beautiful to Perkar. "Before, my memories are different. I remember being born, I think, long and long ago. I remember when I came through this place in the old dry bed, over there." She gestured behind them. "Mostly, though, it was all the same: swelling with the rains, greeting my little ones and taking them in. The little thoughts of all the things that live within me. The Old People—you call them the Alwat—they came and touched me now and then, but I hardly noticed them— though other spirits told me much about them. Then your people came. They annoyed me at first; they angered me. I tried to ignore them. That was when they cut this girl and put her in the water. Her blood mixed up with mine, I felt her brief little life swimming away in me. Not like a fish at all. I was very sad, sad that Human Beings thought I craved such things. That is not my nature."

"Some spirits crave death, my father says."

"The land spirits need it, though they care little for sacrifice. Without death, forests have nothing to eat. But I…"

"Streams do not crave death?"

Perkar did not understand at first. The idea of a goddess weeping was beyond his young imagination. And yet she was.

"Why are you crying?"

"My song. Do you remember the last part of my song?"

Of course, Perkar thought. How could I ever forget your song? He cleared his throat.

Swollen,

I flow across short grass

Where the wild horses drink from me

There I end, I flow on

But I am not the same

Not the young woman

I am the Old Man there

The Old Man

And everyone fears me.

Perkar finished the stanza, gazing with wonder into her tear-streaked eyes.

"What?"

"The Old Man," she said at last, "is a terrible god. He eats me up. He eats me up!" She shuddered, her breath hissing.

"He swallows me each day. In time he will swallow this seed you have just put in me. He eats everything."

She rose up, a night goddess now. Huna touched her with silver.

"Stay away from him, Perkar," she said.

"Stop. I love you." He had begun to weep, too.

"I'm always here." She sighed, but now he heard the pain in that. As if she had also said, "and he always devours me." He could picture how, each moment of each day, she fell down the hills into him. Whoever he was.

She stepped onto the water, smiled at him. Then she was a sheet of silver water, collapsing. She was a ripple. She was the stream.

Perkar watched her flow, long into the night.

"I love you," he said again, before he left. He took up the sword that had been made by the god Ko, but it no longer seemed a delightful burden. It seemed heavy, somehow. Yet it was not a melancholy heaviness, not a grief. He felt strong, happy. But sober. Determined.

I will find out who this River is that eats her, he promised. That is the first thing I shall discover.

It was morning before Perkar returned home. The rising sun banished the melancholy from his soul, lightened his step as it lightened the sturdy cedar walls of his father's damakuta. He stopped at a little shrine at the base of the hill the fort stood upon, offered a bit of wine to the little god that slept there in the stone. A rooster crowed from somewhere up beyond the wall.

The damakuta had always seemed unimaginably huge to him, but as he glanced back up the hill at it, he knew that it had be-come smaller. He was a man now, in every way that mattered, the first of his father's sons to come of age. Soon he would seek Piraku, a thing that had many faces: destiny, wealth, cattle, prestige—and, of course, a home. Still, he reflected, when he did build his own house, there could be no better model than his father's. The sturdy walls had protected his family and cattle from more than one attack by jealous chieftains and once, even, the fierce horsemen of the eastern plains. The longhouse within the walls was tightly built, warm in the harshest winter, airy and cool when the windows were unsealed in the summertime.

Perkar came lightly back to his feet and fairly bounced up the hill. The outer gate was open, of course, and Apiru, one of his father's bondsmen, waved down at him from the watchtower.

"Morning, Perkar," he shouted, a little too loudly. A little too—was that a smirk on Apiru's face?

"Morning," Perkar returned. Did Apiru know? Did everyone know? By the forest gods, did his mother know?

Some of the bounce was gone from Perkar's step by the time he saw his father, sitting on a stool in the courtyard. The yard was large and bare, picked clean of vegetation by the gold-and-red chickens that roamed upon it. It was large enough to hold the most valuable of their cattle, when raiders came. Still, at the moment it seemed a little cluttered. There were more people than there should be, this time of morning. Besides his father, a number of his father's bondsmen and their families stood about, apparently doing nothing. Two of his younger brothers, his sister, and her husband were clustered together in the doorway of the longhouse. His father's two younger brothers, their wives—and grandfather! He must have come over from his own fort—nearly a day's travel—last night. What was going on?

"Good morning, Perkar," his father remarked. The older man's seamed, sun-browned, angular features and hawklike nose were a worn, presently unreadable version of Perkar's own. It always made Perkar nervous when he couldn't tell what his father was thinking.

"Morning, Father. Piraku beneath you and about you." That was the formal greeting, and Perkar guessed this to be a formal occasion, though no one seemed dressed for it. His father, in fact, was taking off his shirt, revealing the hard muscles and tight white scars Perkar had always so envied.

"Did your night go well, son? Do you feel more of a man?"

Perkar felt his cheeks flame with embarrassment. Father did know. He recalled the goddess' reference to some sort of arrangement between her and the family.

"Ah…" was all he could manage. A ripple of laughter fluttered around the yard. Kume, his father's oldest dog, lifted his head and yawned as if he, too, had a comment on the matter.

"One more thing, then, Perkar, and you will be a man," his father said, his eyes daunting, an ambiguous smile now ghosting on his lips.

"But I thought…" Perkar stopped in midutterance. When one did not know, it was best to keep silent. He wished desperately that he weren't the oldest son, that he had observed someone else coming into manhood. "What part is that, Father?"

"The part where I beat you senseless," the older man replied, gesturing with his hand. Padat, Perkar's cousin, came out from the doorway then, trying to keep a smile from splitting the round face all but concealed by his bushy, flaxen beard. He was carrying two heavy wooden practice swords. Perkar felt his bowels clutch. Oh, no. Not in front of everyone.

The swords were handed out, first to Perkar's father, then to Perkar. Perkar reluctantly moved out to face the older man.

"I, Sherye, patriarch of the clan Barku, challenge this whelp to combat. Do all of you hear this?"

There was a general chorus of assent. Sherye smiled at his son.

Perkar cleared his throat. "Ah… I, Perkar son of Sherye, son of the patriarch of clan Barku, take that challenge in my mouth, chew it like cud, spit it back."

"So be it," Perkar's grandfather growled from his stool.

That was that. Sherye stood immobile, waiting for Perkar to make the first move. He always did that, waited like a lion or a snake, and when Perkar attacked…

But Perkar had not even lifted his sword to fighting position, and suddenly his father was there, the oaken blade cutting at his shoulder, fast and hard. Perkar yanked his own sword up more by instinct than by design; his footing was all wrong, and though he caught the attack, he stumbled back beneath the sheer force of it. He let his father think he had stumbled more badly than he had: Perkar went back on one knee and then cut out at his father's extended leg. Sherye, of course, was no longer there: He was leaping in the air, the sword a brown blur. It thudded into the meat of Perkar's shoulder. The pain was immediate and paralyzing; Perkar nearly dropped his weapon. Instead he backed wildly away, amid the hoots and jeers of his family.

Sherye came on, and the expression on his face was anything but fatherly. Again the punishing blade swept down, and again Perkar's only consolation was that the weapon was wood and not sharp, god-forged steel. The blow scraped down his hasty guard, and flick, it whacked against his thigh. It could easily have been his hip, crippling even with a wooden weapon.

Twice struck was enough for Perkar. He was going to get hurt in this match—he might as well resign himself to it. Avoiding his father's attacks was an impossibility. The next time the blade darted at him, he ignored it, instead stepping into the blow, aiming his own attack at Sherye's exposed ribs. His father's sword caught him on his uninjured shoulder. His own weapon cut empty air.

Perkar bit his lip on a shriek. Sherye did not press his advantage, but instead stepped back and regarded his eldest son.

People were laughing at him again. Perkar set his stance and charged. The two men met and exchanged a flurry of blows; miraculously, none landed on Perkar, though he barely deflected one aimed straight at his head. Even more miraculously, one of his own strokes grazed his father's arm. Bolder, Perkar howled and leapt, committing himself to an attack that left him defenseless.

His father's blow landed first, a bruising slap against Perkar's ribs, but an instant later he felt the shock of wood meeting flesh from a more favorable perspective as his own weapon thwacked his father's upper arm. Perkar's war cry turned into a jubilant shout, but that was cut quite short as Sherye spun and laid a stinging blow across his shoulder blades. Perkar lost track, then, of how many times he was hit. In the end he thought it a miracle that nothing in his body was shattered, that the only blood was from the lip he himself had bitten.

The heat in the sauna was delicious—it almost made Perkar glad he was hurt. Sore muscles and bruises acquired a better flavor when marinated in deep heat.

The woti didn't hurt, either. It went down his throat like a warm coal and settled warmly in his stomach a moment before venturing on out into his veins.

"You never forget your first taste of woti," his father was saying. "You never forget when you become a man."

"Likely not, after that beating," Perkar complained—but lightly, so his father would know there was no real resentment.

"You took it well. You made me proud."

Perkar bowed his head, afraid to show the fierce grin of pleasure at his father's approval. Sherye laid his palm on Perkar's back.

"Piraku," he said. "You will find Piraku, just as I did, as my father did."

Perkar nodded; he could not speak. The two of them sat in silence, let the heat work further into their bones. Sherye threw a handful of water and spruce needles onto the rocks, and fragrant steam hissed up around them.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" his father said after a time.

"Yes," Perkar answered. "Beautiful. Father…"

"Hm?" The older man's eyes were closed.

"I love her, Father."

Sherye snorted. "Of course you do. We all did… do, though the way we love her changes. That's why our grandfathers made that pact with her, son. It's good to love the things in the land."

"No. No, not like that," Perkar went on. "I love her like…"

"Like the first woman you've ever made love to. I know. But she's Anishu, son. You'll see that soon enough."

"It's happened before! That song, the 'Song of Moriru,' where…"

"I know the song, son. But the man died, and Moriru lived on and on, always sad. That's the way it would be." He smiled and reached over to tousle Perkar's chestnut hair. "You'll find a Human girl soon enough. Don't worry about that."

"She's already sad," Perkar whispered, unwilling to pass over the subject so lightly. "She says…"

"Son." Sherye's voice was solemn, sober. "Son, let it go. There is nothing you can do for her. Let it go."

Perkar opened his mouth to speak again, but his father half-cocked one eyebrow, his signal that the matter would be pursued no further. Perkar turned his gaze down into the empty woti cup.

But he did not let it go. He could not.

III

The Labyrinth

The ghost hesitated at the edge of the hall, unwilling actually to venture into the light streaming down through the open roof of the small courtyard. Very little direct illumination reached the flagstones; the palace was three stories high here and the yard only ten paces across. Still, the white stucco shimmered with reflected sunlight. Ghosts did not particularly care for light.

Hezhi watched it back into the hall, hesitate near a stairwell, perhaps deciding where to go next. Qey had told her that ghosts often did not know what they were about—often forgot even that they were dead. Where and when did this one think it was? She studied it, hoping for clues, but this ghost provided few. It was less a form or even a shadow than a distortion in the air, like something seen through a glass of water—or like glass itself, for that matter. Sometimes you could see more—features, even. When Hezhi was six, she had awakened to confront the pale, nervous face of a young man. When she shrieked, he vanished quite quickly. She had never seen so clear an image since then.

Qey left little offerings for a few of the ghosts—especially Luhnnata, the one who inhabited her kitchen. Hezhi had come to be familiar with the young man who haunted her own room, though she never again saw his face.

She shrugged. This wing of the palace was strange to her, one with ghosts she had never seen. Certainly it would not be a dangerous one, not here, so close to the heart of things, where the Sba'ghun priests swept nearly every week.

"Let's go, Tsem," she commanded, stepping out into the light of the courtyard. The air was fragrant with sage and oregano growing from various stoneware boxes. A pigeon quickened its waddle to avoid their passage. Hezhi and Tsem brushed on past the ghost, which seemed to hug close to the wall when they came near.

"I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier," Hezhi muttered as they turned from the narrow passage onto a larger thoroughfare. Though it was a covered hallway, light streamed in from the courtyards on either side; the basic architecture of the palace made it impossible to go far from one of the alleged hundred and eighty-seven courts.

Tsem shrugged, not otherwise answering.

"You did think of it, didn't you?"

"Not exactly," the half Giant said reluctantly.

"Some help you are."

"Princess. Remember that you bullied me into helping you with this little enterprise. My agreement was only to go along with you into the lower cities to protect you. I never said I would do any more than that."

"You said you would help me find D'en."

"I never said that, Princess."

Hezhi thought about it. He hadn't. Still, she was in no mood to be generous. "Two years we've been running into solid walls— literally. If I'd thought to go through the library two years ago, we would have found him by now."

"Shhh, Princess. I think this is the place. You don't want anyone to hear your crazy talk."

The open doorway to their right did indeed seem to lead into the archives hall. At least, the legend on the frame said as much.

Inside, an old man sat on one of the fashionably low stools common throughout the palace. A writing board lay across his lap. On the board was a sheet of paper to which he was vigorously applying a brush and ink. Hezhi found herself instantly fascinated by the speed with which the characters flowed from his brush tip, the grace with which they lay on the paper afterward.

It took him a moment to look up.

"Yes?"

Hezhi nodded to Tsem, who bowed for her, then announced her. "Princess Hezhi Yehd Cha'dune, ninth daughter of the Chakunge—Lord of Nhol. She is here for instruction."

The old man blinked. Hezhi could see that the scarf wrapped around his head hid a nearly bald pate; his thin face crinkled naturally into a scowl as he carefully placed his brush upon the ink-mixing stone.

"Child, what do you want of me?"

Tsem started to speak, but Hezhi waved him back with what she hoped was a suitably imperious gesture. "My father wished that I should learn more of writing, of science, and of… architecture. You are to instruct me in these things."

The old man narrowed his eyes, as if fascinated by some strange insect he had just discovered on his morning meal.

"I've had no notice to that effect," he said at last.

"No matter," Hezhi snapped impatiently. "I'm here."

"So you are. But I am busy." He took the brush back up and began writing again.

"Who are you?" Hezhi demanded, in as imperious a tone as she could muster.

The old man sighed, paused in midstroke. He finished the character and laid the brush back down. "You may call me Ghan."

"That's not a name. That's the old word for 'teacher.' "

Ghan set the writing board aside. "At least you know that much. What else do you know, little Princess?" She did not miss the thick sarcasm in the scribe's voice.

"I can read, if that's what you mean."

"You can read the syllabary, I'm sure. Every child can read that. But can you read the old characters?"

"Some of them."

"And who, pray tell, taught you that?"

There was something accusing in the man's voice, something that made Hezhi feel suddenly insecure, cautious.

"All Royal Children are taught that," she muttered.

"Oh, no, Princess. You will not lie to me. That is the first and only thing I will teach you. With a willow rod, if necessary."

Tsem growled. "You will not," he said.

"Hold your tongue, servant. You have introduced your mistress. I will not hear from you again unless I ask you a question. Indeed, you will wait outside."

"He will not," Hezhi insisted, taking a step nearer her guardian. "Tsem stays with me, always."

"Not in here, he doesn't. Not unless he can read, that is." Ghan looked up speculatively at the huge man.

Tsem could read, but Hezhi knew better than to admit that. Servants who could read were considered dangerous and were usually punished.

"Of course he can't read," Hezhi said, hearing her own voice falter. Her manufactured confidence was rapidly failing her in the face of this terrible old man.

"Then he can wait outside."

"No."

"Princess," Ghan said testily, "he can wait outside, or I can send a message to the court, requesting to see your petition to study here. That is what I should do in any case."

Hezhi hesitated a long moment before relenting.

"Wait outside, Tsem," she said at last. Tsem said nothing, but his expression showed that he did not approve of her decision. He padded silently to the door and took up a place just beyond it, so that he could still see in.

Ghan watched him go, betraying no satisfaction at having his order obeyed. He then rose and moved to the nearest section of shelves. After a moment's study, he selected a single volume, took it down, and brought it over to Hezhi.

"Open this to the first page and read me what you see there," he demanded.

Hezhi took the book gingerly. It looked quite old, bound with copper rivets green with age. The cover was of some animal skin, which marked it as being at least a century old. The cotton paper was still white, however, if very soft from age and use. Hezhi opened the book, gazed down at the faded black characters for several long moments.

"It's something about the Swamp Kingdoms," she said at last. "This part is talking about the annual flooding of the delta."

"Read it out loud."

Hezhi brushed her hair out of her face. She glanced toward Tsem, hoping for a little courage.

"Ah, let's see. 'Herein begins our—something—we undertake to—ah—something—the many divisions of the delta lands—ah— inundated—the many dams and levees—"

"Stop." Ghan reached over and took the book from her hands, gently closed it.

"I'm sorry," Hezhi whispered. "I just didn't know all of those characters."

Ghan sat back down on his stool. "I want to know how you know any of them."

"I have a few books."

"Do you? In the old script?"

"I have a copy of the Hymn to Bitter Lands."

"Who taught you to read it?"

"I also have a book about the old script."

Ghan crooked his mouth to one side. "You mean you taught yourself?"

"Yes."

"That would explain your awful pronunciation, wouldn't it?"

Hezhi felt herself near tears. "I didn't know my pronunciation was bad."

Ghan shrugged almost imperceptibly. "Why do you want to study here, Princess?"

"What else is there for me to do?"

"Go to parties. Court young men. You must nearly be a woman now."

"I don't like parties," she replied.

Ghan nodded. "Princess, let me tell you the truth. I'm a little impressed that you taught yourself this much of the ancient script. It shows that you have sense somewhere in that little head. It's not too rare for you royal brats to come in here and waste my time, to try to learn just enough to make sparkling conversation and impress the court. What is rare is a young woman who already knows how to read. If you were a man, Princess, I would not turn you away. I might teach you something. But you are not a man. In a year or two, you will be a woman, and you will marry some fair-faced fool, and he will not want you to be smarter than he is. Teaching you would be a waste of my time, and I have little enough time to waste."

Anger was lurking behind Hezhi's fear and intimidation, hidden like a cat. Now it sprang like a cat, suddenly and without warning. "I would not want to waste your time!" she snapped. "I don't care if you teach me anything. Just sit here with your stupid pen and your stupid ink, and I'll find whatever I need. I'll teach myself, like I always have. Just leave me alone and stay out of my way!"

Ghan shook his head. "One must be taught how to use a library, whether one can read or not. You want to know about architecture. Do you think the books that treat that subject are somehow going to leap out at you? You think we keep them all together?"

"I don't care! I'll find what I want!"

Ghan stared at her, and beneath his skeptical gaze, Hezhi felt her anger begin to retreat once more. Without its heat, it was difficult to withstand Ghan's scrutiny, but she forced herself to, even when her anger was stone cold and she became frightened at her own outburst. She wondered if she should add a "please?" to her last statement, but now her jaw seemed frozen in place.

Ghan nodded suddenly. "Very well. You will be very quiet. You will never speak to me. You will be very careful with my books, and the first time you tear one sheet of paper, I will send notice to your father and have you barred from this place. Do you understand these conditions, Princess?"

Hezhi nodded dumbly, at last letting her gaze stray to the richly embroidered carpet beneath her feet. "Yes, Ghan."

"Good." Ghan took his writing board back up into his lap, retrieved his parchment, brush, and ink. He did not look back up at her.

Her knees shaking a bit, Hezhi turned to confront the hundreds upon hundreds of shelves that seemed to lead back into infinite depths.

Like the darkness, she thought to herself. Two years ago, I stepped into real darkness for the first time, searching for D'en. Into the unknown.

Here I go again.

"Confusing," Hezhi told Tsem, as the wind fluttered the cottonwood leaves above their heads. "You could know exactly what you want and never find it. But I made progress, I think."

"What are you trying to find?" Tsem muttered, scratching at an ant bite on his hairy lower leg. Nearby, water gurgled in an alabaster fountain beneath a sky of lapis lazuli and gold. The roof garden of her mother's apartments was one of Hezhi's favorite places.

Hezhi snorted. "You know. Maps. Old maps, drawn before this city was built upon the flooded one. Maps I can use to figure out how to get to D'en other than by the Darkness Stair."

"If D'en is even…" Tsem cut that off; how many times in the past two years had they had this argument? The given was that Hezhi would assume D'en was alive until she had evidence that he was not.

But this time Hezhi's face clouded, not with anger, but with sorrow. "I… Tsem, I'm not sure I remember what he looked like any more. He had black hair like mine, and a little round face… Sometimes I wonder if it's even him I'm trying to find, now. But I loved him so much, Tsem. It seems like a long time ago, when I was very young…"

"You are still young, Princess," Tsem reminded her. "Master Ghan is right. You have other things you could be doing."

"Oh, yes," Hezhi responded sarcastically. "Important things. Like going to parties. Like meeting men."

"Qey thinks…"

"I know what Qey thinks, and so what? Anyway, I'm not old enough for men yet. I haven't started my bleeding."

Tsem suddenly grew a shade darker and turned his attention intently upon the fountain. Realizing she had embarrassed him, Hezhi stood and walked to the waist-high wall that encircled the rooftop garden. The city of Nhol stretched out before and around her, a bone metropolis shimmering in the westering light. Her mother's garden occupied the southern wing of the palace, and though the towers and ziggurats of the central halls soared high above her to the north, nothing obstructed her view to the west, south, or east; this rooftop was the highest on the wing.

Now Hezhi gazed off east. Behind the palace, gardens and vineyards rolled out green for a thousand paces before they were bounded by the wall. Beyond that, vast fields of millet and wheat checkered the floodplain in black fallow and viridian cultivation. Not far beyond them, Hezhi knew, the desert began, the vast waste her people called Hweghe, "The Killer."

Tracing her finger along the stuccoed wall, Hezhi walked south, gazed out at where the walls of the palace faded seamlessly into the city, a jumbled, chaotic tangle of streets, shops, and dwellings. Near the palace, these were of comfortable size, but they seemed to diminish with distance. Though Hezhi had never been into the city, it seemed difficult to believe that her eyes told the truth about the most distant—and most numerous— houses visible to her. It seemed that they were no larger than Qey's kitchen—perhaps smaller.

East and south lay the River. Before him loomed the Great Water Temple, a seven-tiered ziggurat that blazed white, gold, and bronze, from whose sides four streams of water constantly cascaded, drawn up from the River by his own will. The two waterfalls Hezhi could see glistened like silver and diamonds. The River himself, beyond, was nearly too wide to see across. He lay heavy and cobalt, massive, unmerciful, unstoppable. A thousand colored toys bobbed upon his back: her father's great trading barges, fishing boats, houseboats, the tiny craft that could hold only one or two people. Foreign ships, beautifully clean and graceful of line, swept along beneath billowing sails, coming and going from the Swamp Kingdoms and the seacoast beyond like so many swans. All on the River, trusting—no, praying—that he would not capriciously choose to swallow them. People loved the River, worshipped the River, but they did not really trust him. The River had taken people in from the Killer, saved them, made them his own. The people of Nhol had no other god but the River—and his manifestations, the nobility. Like her father, who was part god.

Like herself. Like D'en, wherever he was.

An amazingly loud belch erupted suddenly behind her, and Hezhi smiled. Tsem was no god. He was mortal, pure-bred, despite his parents' different races. Mortal and happy to be so.

"Pardon me," Tsem said sheepishly.

Hezhi bit back a rude retort, but she did move upwind.

"It's not just the flood that buried the lower city, you know."

"No?" Tsem asked.

"I always imagined, la, and the flood covering the city, and then the Third Dynasty building this one upon that. But really, most of the lower city was filled in on purpose. To raise up the new one."

"So the next flood wouldn't be as bad."

"Right. The River isn't supposed to flood us, his children, but…" Hezhi shifted uncomfortably. "I've heard the River sleeps a lot. That sometimes we just have to fend for ourselves."

"Why not wake him up?" Tsem asked.

"I think that might be worse," Hezhi replied. But she made a mental note to look for books on that, too. Priests wrote most books, so there should be more than a few about the River. In fact, that might be another angle to consider. The new palace had aqueducts and canals crisscrossing it, so that the sacred water would always surround them, enclose its children. The old city must have had such ducts, too.

"There must have been at least a few pipes," Hezhi mused to herself.

"You've changed the subject, haven't you?" Tsem said, his brow wrinkled.

"Hmm? Oh, yes. The one useful book I found was on the reconstruction. There were no maps, and that was a disappointment. But it talked about what they did. They filled in the courtyards with sand and rubble. Houses back then were mostly courtyard, and the walls were even thicker than the ones in the palace are now, so with the courtyards filled in, they could build on top of the old buildings, even if the rooms were still empty. That's why the floor cracks in the old sections, sometimes, and there are spaces underneath. That's why we haven't gotten anywhere; even when we find a suite of rooms that aren't full of sand or water, we eventually hit one of those filled-in courtyards. But you remember that one pipe? The one we found about a year ago?"

Tsem grunted. "The one I couldn't fit into?"

"Yes. I bet that was one of the sacred water tubes, built to carry water to the interior canals and fountains."

"And? It was blocked off, too."

"It had collapsed. Recently, I bet. If we could just find those… If I knew where the old temple sanctuaries were…"

"Princess!" Tsem's eyes were wide. "Temples? We can't go into temples!"

"Why not? After all, one day there will probably be a temple dedicated to me, like there is one for my father."

"But not to Tsem, Princess. Tsem is not safe from sacrilege, and he guesses that you aren't, either, whatever you may think."

"Hmmf. Well, I'll find that out, as well."

"Princess, you spent all day in there and found only one book."

"You have to admit, it's better than bumping around in the dark the way we have been. In one day, I understand more about the problem than I did this whole past two years."

"Well, I'm all in favor of keeping you from bumping around in the dark."

"And yourself," Hezhi added.

"That, too," Tsem admitted.

IV

A Drink with the King

Perkar's palms stung with the shock of his blow; the axe twisted off the grain of the wood and whistled down, out of his control. Angata swore and danced aside, the heavy blade barely missing his calf.

"Pay attention to what you're doing, you fool," Angata snapped, glaring at Perkar from his new vantage two strides away.

"Sorry," Perkar grunted, barely meaning it.

"Sorry wouldn't help if you'd gashed my leg down to bone," Perkar's cousin retorted. He shook back his brown hair, his green-eyed gaze still hard.

Perkar shrugged. "Sorry is the best I can do."

"It's not helping us get the fence built, either," Angata complained, waving his hand vaguely at the split-rail snake winding back into the woods, then at the half league of pasture that remained to be crossed.

"I know," Perkar sullenly acknowledged. His gaze followed the line of Angata's finger off into the woods.

Angata stared at him a moment and then shrugged. He sank down to the soft, new grass of the pasture, folding his legs up beneath him. "I say we rest, then." He sighed. "You've been like this all morning, and I have no desire to hop back to your father's damakuta on one leg."

"Father wanted this fence done by the new moon."

"He didn't say which new moon, did he?"

Perkar shook his head ruefully and flashed his cousin a brief smile. "You've got me there. Maybe I should sit down for a bit."

"Yes. Until you can get your mind back on building your fence."

"My father's fence," Perkar corrected him, his voice a bit sharp.

"Oh. Oh. So that's it, eh?"

Perkar chewed his lower lip a moment before reluctantly replying. "I was seventeen yesterday, Angata. Seventeen. And I'm still working on my father's holding."

"Your father is a great man."

"Yes, yes. My father is a great man. Rich in Piraku. Yet what do I have?"

"His good looks." Angata grinned.

Perkar glared at him. "I should know better than to talk about this." He turned his face back toward the forest. An awkward silence grew up between them. Perkar, brows knotted, clenched around his frustration; Angata's broad flat face was set in an exasperated scowl.

"You know the answer," Angata muttered, breaking the silence first. "Get yourself a woman. A woman with a good dowry, a father-in-law with a lot of land."

"Why don't you just say 'marry Bakume's daughter'?" Perkar snapped.

"All right, you stupid fool. Marry Bakume's daughter. The Agasapanyi Valley has some of the best pasture in the world. Bakume offered you two pastures, twenty cows, and a good bull to go along with her. Not that anyone would need all of that to marry Kehuse. You'll find no lovelier bride."

"I don't like her."

"Perkar, I heard your father say he would offer you ten cows into the bargain himself, if you would marry her."

"Oh, he did? So now I have a dowry?"

Angata reached for him, but Perkar pulled away. "You should forget her, Perkar," he hissed, and Perkar knew they were no longer speaking of Bakume's daughter.

"Easy for you to say. You've never known her."

"No," Angata said, a little heat of his own rising into his tongue. "No, I've never lain with a goddess. But I've lain with women enough, and they're all pretty much the same, Perkar. I can't imagine that even a goddess would be that different."

Perkar's lips flattened into a line, and his voice quavered a bit when he whispered, "I… I wouldn't know."

Angata had a retort ready, but it dropped from his open mouth as he gaped at Perkar instead. "Never? Never? Wait, what about last haygathering? Kenu's girl."

"I couldn't. I just… I couldn't, Angata. I tried."

Angata touched his brow and muttered a little blessing. His intense eyes had lost their purpose, and they wandered now, embarrassed instead of certain.

"It must be some kind of witching," he said at last, almost apologetically. "There must be some way…"

"It isn't a witching," Perkar said. "She says the same things you say. Find a Human woman. Have children. Raise cattle. Be a man. But I can't, Angata. I don't know that I will ever be able to."

Angata shrugged again. The certainty was returning to the ridges of his brow; furrowed, they worked the problem around. Angata loved riddles, Perkar remembered. "Sex is only the tenth part of marriage," Angata quoted, from somewhere. "You can learn, Perkar, over time. Learn to love a Human woman."

Perkar shook his head sharply, a dismissal. Angata nodded his own head in reply, a confirmation, a sign to move on to other ideas.

"Fine," Angata said. "A steer can be rendered by more than one tool." Then he flinched apologetically at his ill-chosen aphorism. "I mean, many are the roads to Piraku."

"Better," Perkar acknowledged.

"I know more than one lad our age without a holding, or with one too small for his liking…"

"Like yourself,'" Perkar interjected.

"Yes. Reed Valley is nice enough, but I've not enough cattle to fill it. My point is, there are things to be done about it, things such as they sing about in epics."

"You mean we should put together a war party and go take someplace."

"Yes. The landless could split up the territory, the cowless could take some of the cows."

"That would have to be a big holding to make it worthwhile," Perkar observed. "Though, of course, some of us would probably die."

"Maybe. Though I've heard of conquest where no lives were lost."

Perkar turned to his cousin seriously. "Who, Angata? Who would you raid? Lokuhuna, whose son we hunted with as children, and who would stand with his father as we cut them down? Teruwana, whose daughter you have tumbled more than once, who gave my father a prize bull as a friendship gift? Konu of the high pastures, whose wife brings the boar to every High Gathering, whose son-in-law Hutuhan plays the harp so sweetly the children cluster about his feet rather than dash around the banquet hall, upsetting dishes and servants? Or perhaps we should take the Kapaka's own lands, the holdings of the High Chief?"

"No, no," Angata said, pushing away Perkar's objections with the flat palms of his hands. "You mention all of those close to us, near to our hearts. But there are those, far on the borders of the forest country, near the great seas of grass, with whom we hold little kinship. They spurn invitations to the High Gathering, to haygathering, to all of the festivals. We owe them nothing."

Perkar snorted. "They spurn our invitations because they dare not leave their damakutat unguarded for even a moment. They have the Mang at their backs, cousin. My father fought against the Mang once, and we nearly lost everything. And that was to a poorly organized war party. Those who live on the edges are more hardened to war than we here. They would cut us down like wheat. And if they did not, if we somehow triumphed, we would be the ones with our backs to the Mang. You wouldn't, I suppose, because you would be safe with your new cattle back in Reed Valley. But I have no desire to live near the plains."

"You have no desire for Piraku, then." Angata sneered. "For if you do not marry and do not conquer, you will never have any."

Perkar pursed his lips. "My grandfather married the daughter of a landless man, and he fought no one, and yet he brought enough land for a thousand cattle under pasture."

"Your grandfather struck a deal with the forest god to take land from the trees. Such a thing happens only once in ten lifetimes."

"So it does," Perkar said carefully. "Let's get back to work. I promise not to sever any of your limbs."

"Good."

"But your head may be another matter, if you don't keep quiet about what I told you."

Sunlight was deepening to gold when Perkar heard hooves beating up behind him. He gripped his axe a little more tightly; all of his talk with Angata about war made him nervous. Ironically, Angata had only just walked off across the hills toward his own holding, reckoning that his debt to Sherye was more or less paid. If the approaching horse bore some crazed Mang tribesman, Angata would miss all of the excitement.

The horse turned out to be the red and black stallion that belonged to his brother, Henyi, who rode saddleless astride him.

"Elder Brother!" Henyi shouted, his voice rilled with the same excitement that flushed his face.

"You should use a saddle, Henyi. It hurts the horse to ride it bareback."

Henyi frowned in annoyance, but he did not take up his brother's complaint. Instead, he continued on with his own news.

"The Kapaka is here. Father wants you to come greet him!"

Perkar was readying a sarcastic reply when he realized his brother was not talking about Kapaka the head bull, but Kapaka, the High Chief of the nine valleys. Kapaka, the king.

"Oh," he said, to himself more than to his brother. He looked helplessly back toward the damakuta, two pastures and a forest away.

"Hop on up," Henyi said, smiling. "But don't complain about the lack of a saddle."

Perkar nodded and climbed up behind the boy. Ten years old, he had his mother's auburn hair and the same eagle nose that Perkar had gotten from Sherye, though Henyi's was still snubbed short by youth.

The powerful muscles beneath Perkar bunched and played, and then they were running, the pasture rolling beneath them.

The Kapaka. What might be want? Perkar's stomach felt tight.

"You've grown, Perkar," the old man acknowledged after the formal greetings were over. He accepted the first cup of woti and saluted them with it before raising it to his own lips. The Kapaka was perhaps sixty years old, perhaps a little more. His face was seamed and brown, rough with time and beard stubble. Even seated he was clearly a head shorter than Father, which made him half a head shorter than Perkar, who sat on the floor; one should be facing up when addressing a chief.

"Yes, I remember a stripling, covered in mud. But I suppose those days are past. You've become a man now."

Perkar's father clapped Perkar on the shoulder. "That he has. One of the best sword arms I've seen, and he can work all day without letup."

"Good, good. It's good to see a boy grow up straight." The Kapaka took another sip of his woti, carefully inhaling the warm vapors as he did so. "Now," he said as he set the cup back down. "Sherye, let me ask about your cattle…"

Perkar found his attention wandering. His father and the Kapaka would compare their Piraku, neither boasting but each careful to list all of his assets. It was a game men played but one that—of course—Perkar had no part in. Rather than listening to the exchange, he instead let his gaze wander curiously over to the handful of men who had accompanied the chief from his home at Morawta.

Like the king, they seemed ordinary enough—in dress, anyway. The four of them sat together at the far end of the hall, their greetings exchanged. They were conversing in low whispers. One was about Perkar's height, heavier, with tangled black hair and a fierce smile; his hands gestured expansively. Next to him in the circle was a fellow that Perkar had met before, if only briefly: Eruka something or other, a member of the rather small Kushuta clan. He was almost skeletally lean, hollow-cheeked, with hair the color of dried hay. Perkar seemed to remember he was a singer, of sorts. The third man was older than the other two, who were not much older than Perkar. His seamed face and gray-shot red hair suggested someone about the age of Perkar's father, perhaps thirty-five or forty. He wore his hair oddly; rather than cropped at the ears, he let it grow long and braided—like a woman. Other than that, however, he did not resemble a woman in the least.

The fourth person in the company was truly eye-catching. He seemed to be speaking the least, holding a bit aloof from the others, watching their conversation with large, black eyes. His hair was white, white as a cloud, shoulder length and tied back in a tail. This had the unfortunate effect of emphasizing his forehead—what there was of it. His head sloped back sharply from rather thick brows, beneath which his eyes crouched watchful in deep sockets. His mouth was wide, expressive. If he grinned his head would probably split into two pieces. To Perkar this did not seem a real danger: This man looked as if he never smiled. If man he was. In fact, he more resembled—

Suddenly those black eyes were focused on him, twin tunnels empty of any clear emotion. In an instant Perkar felt himself discovered, dissected. This man was used to being stared at and at returning better than he got. Perkar tried to hold that gaze for a moment, but it was too cold, too unearthly. Embarrassed and with the beginnings of anger, he twitched his eyes away, turning his attention—or at least his regard—back to the Kapaka and his father.

Perkar missed the shift in conversation, but when he realized what the Kapaka was talking about, his attention became absolute.

"… That's why I think we need some new territory. Did you know that Anawal's son over there put together a raid against my brother? Of course they didn't accomplish much, but someone could have been killed. Too many sons, Sherye, too little land. Soon they'll be going down to join the Mang out on the plains."

Perkar's father nodded. "Maybe. But it's been a long time since land was added to the Domain."

"I know. I was thinking about an expedition, Sherye."

"Against the Mang?"

"Oh, no. We tried that a few years ago, remember? How many good men did we lose?"

"I suppose it cut down on the number of landless men, though," Perkar interjected, hoping to be clever.

"Yes, well, one of those men it cut down on was my son," the Kapaka returned. His tone was light, an old grief admirably well hidden.

"I… I apologize, Kapaka. I spoke rudely and without thought."

The old man shrugged. "What else should the young do? No, it's all right, friend. But I don't foresee going to war against the Mang again anytime soon. Too many fathers lost sons at the battle of Ngatakuta, and my powers of persuasion are limited." He smiled. "The best chief is the one who never tells his people to do anything they do not already want to do."

Perkar nodded. His mind was racing ahead, though, to the obvious conclusion. It was as if his frustration, his conversation with Angata earlier that day were both just two of a set of ripples, moving outward from where a stone had plunged into deep water. Now the ripples had come to the edge of the pool and were beginning to come together, bunch up, as if discussing the stone that made them, or perhaps the hand that threw it.

Could she have some part in this? he wondered. But it seemed unlikely. Since his manhood she had only twice come from the water to love him, and she always turned the conversation away from important matters.

"The thing is this, Perkar—this is why I had your father send for you. These men over here are going with me up into the mountains, into Balat, the old forest. I want to bargain with the Forest Lord for a few more parcels of land."

"The Forest Lord? Balati? Why not just bargain with the local spirits, the ones who live right there?"

The Kapaka raised his hands. "We've tried that, but like us, the gods in the land obey their High Chief. He has commanded his people not to give out more territory without his leave. There is also a further complication: Between our own lands and Balat there is a buffer zone of some few leagues; after that are the vast, vast countries of the Alwat. We must bargain to take land away from them, you see."

"Why should that be so difficult?" Perkar asked, a bit of scorn in his voice. "The Alwat are naked creatures, without Piraku. Why should they have the land over us?" Perkar had heard young men say this before—he assumed it was a general sentiment. But the Kapaka frowned at this and Sherye looked a little embarrassed.

"Because their claim is a thousand, thousand times as old as your people's," a quiet, almost whispery voice said from next to Perkar's ear. He jumped: How could anyone move so silently?

It was the strange man, the white-hair.

The Kapaka cleared his throat. "Perkar, this is Ngangata, from the west country. Probably the most valuable member of our expedition."

"You're an—" Perkar blurted, then stopped himself.

"My father was Alwa," Ngangata confirmed. "I have no clan."

Perkar nodded, wondering what that could mean, having no clan. Surely it made a man mean, hateful. To be feared.

Perkar would rather confront fear than back away from it. His eyes narrowed as he considered some insult he might give, to get it over with, to unsheath swords, if that was what it would come to. In his own home, this creature had made him to seem foolish.

"Perkar."

It was his father. It was his father, reminding him that this clanless halfling had the king's regard. It was his father reminding him that sometimes one did not seem foolish but instead was foolish.

"I'm sorry," Perkar said, perhaps without enough conviction, but an apology nonetheless. The white-haired man nodded acceptance. Perkar thought perhaps he should seem a little more grateful.

"I know very little about the Alwat," Perkar continued, more to explain his behavior to the Kapaka than to this strange person. "Perhaps you could teach me a bit, if we are to go to see them. May I call you by your name?"

"You may call me Ngangata, as the king does. It is not my name."

Perkar tried to ignore the slight. "You may call me Perkar," he replied softly, "and that is my name." And it may be that you and I come to blows one day, no name, no clan, Perkar felt but did not say.

V

A Forbidding and a Compulsion

Hezhi closed her tired eyes for a moment, watched the weird play of lights beneath her eyelids. The shapes that flitted there were familiar enough—the curves and angles of faded glyphs, some known to her, better than half as mysterious as the wind from the sea. How many days now had she been staring at them, scratching at their meanings as at an itch and with as little positive effect? She simply didn't know enough. Ghan was right.

And yet what she did understand of what she read would not let her stop. Her revelations were few and hard won, but they were sweet, sweeter than anything she had known in her life thus far.

Qey was worried about her, she knew. Dragging out of bed at first light, returning when the stars came out, fingering scraps of folded paper in her pocket. With a piece of charcoal, she copied glyphs she didn't understand, and at night, in her bed, by the flicker of an oil lamp, she puzzled at their meanings. The ghost in her room took notice; he came close, as if watching her, once ruffled his invisible finger across the paper. Perhaps he had been a scribe, in life, some learned man who loved writing as much as she.

I must open my eyes, she thought. I was just beginning to understand what this page was saying. But her eyes did not open, and in a moment sleep stole up on her.

She awoke falling, hurtling down into the black depths, but it was only a sleep terror, the kind caused by small imps that lived in one's head—or so Qey said. Hezhi put one small hand to her breast, to still the beating there. In her sleep-muddled state, she feared that Ghan might hear her heart. She feared as well that Ghan might have seen her sleeping; more than once she had seen him coldly expel those who did so, even those with the royal writ of permission to be in the library. A writ that she did not have. But no, if he had seen her sleeping, she would have awakened not to falling, but to the sage's sharp tongue.

Relieved, if still a bit disoriented, Hezhi turned her attention back to the book. Horrified, she saw that it lay sprawled, splay-paged upon the floor, and bit back a little cry. Had she dropped it? It seemed to her that she had laid it carefully down, handled it like the precious thing that it was. But there it was, facedown, like a dead bird with wings crookedly folded. Hezhi actually shook a bit when she reached for it. When she gently turned it over, her worry became panic, for there, just near the binding, the yellowed paper had torn. It seemed a long, obvious tear to Hezhi, as wide as the River.

If you tear just one page, Ghan had told her. Just one.

Hezhi wiped at her eye when she realized a few tears had squeezed out, and she shut them tightly, willing the salty water to stay beneath her skin. If Ghan saw her cry, he would know. He might learn anyway, but he would not learn from her. She remained there, thinking, composing herself, for some moments more. When she felt her face settle out of distress and into what she thought was a more normal mask of indifference, Hezhi carefully closed the book. There, one could not tell one torn page when the book was closed. Had Ghan even seen her take this particular volume? She was deep in what she called the tangle, a confusing maze of shelves and tables in the back corners of the library. Ghan had not seen her asleep, and he had not seen her take down this book. Satisfied with her reasoning, feeling a little better, Hezhi replaced the volume with its dark wine binding, nestled it among its brethren. She looked about once more, saw no one through the cracks and gaps between the books and shelves.

She took down another book, one that promised to tell her of the proper consecration of First-Dynasty fanes. She reasoned that since consecration involved painting the symbol names of the River upon supporting and necessary structures of the buildings, there might be some good description of the way that such buildings were planned and constructed. After an hour of half comprehension, Hezhi saw the mistake in this; the fanes of her father's dynasty were indeed painted, but in the First Dynasty, they were merely filled with particular and complex combinations of incense. There seemed little promise of architectural description in that. Her eyelids were beginning to droop once more and, rather than risk tearing another book, she replaced the useless volume and rose. She was proud of herself when she went past Ghan, neither hurrying nor dragging, in every way her normal self. As usual, he spared her not the tiniest glance.

Once outside, she scurried to where Tsem sat, back propped against the wall. He was talking to a young man in the dress of the court, some minor nobility. When the young man saw her, he raised his brows a bit, bade a quick farewell to Tsem, and started off down the corridor, plainly having business elsewhere. Hezhi paid little mind. She rushed up to Tsem, plucking at the titan's sleeve.

"Let's go, Tsem. Now."

Tsem nodded, frowning, and climbed laboriously to his feet.

"This was a short day for you," he remarked as they crossed the increasingly busy hall. Afternoon absolutions would be offered soon, and everyone was moving toward the open fountains. Hezhi, of course, would attend no such public ceremony, and though Tsem technically should, she made no sign that he might be released to go and do so.

"Yes, a short day. I thought I might help Qey in the kitchen."

Tsem snorted. "There is no need to lie to me, Princess. Tsem is your servant."

Hezhi frowned, a bit angry that Tsem should know her so well. They crossed the White Yarrow Courtyard and then entered the royal wing, where they met fewer people going to pray.

"Did the Salamander cause you pain, Mistress?" Salamander was Tsem's name for Ghan and his smooth pate.

"No, Tsem." Hezhi was startled to feel her tears threaten to begin again. Hadn't she put them away? She was fine.

"Huh." The Giant grunted. They walked along a bit in silence.

"Mistress," Tsem began, then paused a moment before going on. "You know Wezh Yehd Nu?"

"What? Tsem, what are you talking about?"

"I just wondered if you knew him."

"Should I?"

"His family is wealthy and powerful."

"And unscrupulous. A century ago they acquired their land by fraud and deceit. There was a murder or two involved, as well, I think."

"I have never heard this," Tsem growled.

"No one talks about it. After all, now they have Royal Blood. It was in one of the old records—a priest wrote it, bemoaning the thinning of the River's blood with that of thieves and cutthroats."

"Ah. But this was long ago, yes?"

"Yes, long ago."

"There is a young man of the family, one Wezh…"

"Was that who you were talking to in the hall?"

Tsem stopped, leaned against the bright turquoise painted wall of the Wind People Hall they were just entering. "You know," he said, "that just may have been him."

"Now, you don't lie to me, Tsem. He scurried off like a house lizard when the cat comes around. What did this 'Wezh' want of you? I warn you, if you think I will release you, even for a day, to bodyguard some fool while he goes off to get drunk in the city…" Hezhi had refused such requests before.

"Ah… no, Princess. That is not what he wanted."

"Well?"

"He asked me to talk to you."

"About?" Hezhi was impatient with this conversation. What was Tsem going on about?

"He would like for you to… meet him. In the Onyx Courtyard, perhaps, or wherever you choose."

"Meet him for what… oh. Oh."

"He asked me to tell you something else," Tsem murmured, almost inaudibly. His face was flushed dark, as dark as the time Hezhi had discovered him and the water maid who came around now and then to clean the cistern, poking and prodding one another in an old storage room.

"Something else?"

Tsem cleared his throat, his eyebrows drooping mournfully in embarrassment.

"Ah," he said. "Whither goes her brilliant beauty/My tongue cannot hold her name/More elusive than…"

"No! Stop right there," Hezhi hissed.

"I'm not very good at reciting…"

"It matters not. I don't want to hear that. This boy is courting me?"

"He would like to."

"No! I won't have that. No."

Tsem tightened his jaw, but then his coarse face softened. "Princess, what could it hurt?"

"I have no time for it," Hezhi answered. Nor will I prove Ghan right about me, she added silently.

"What shall I tell him, then?" Tsem sighed.

"Tell him whatever you like. This is no concern of mine, Tsem."

"As you say, Princess."

"Exactly so," Hezhi shot back. She strode off quickly, more than ready to be in her bed, alone, forgetting as much of the day as possible.

The rest did Hezhi good; she slept more than in any two recent nights. But as refreshed as she felt, she also had the nagging sensation of being behind, of having lost time. She ate a hurried breakfast of red rice and sausage, and with barely a word to Qey, she darted off toward the library. She did not stop to get Tsem, but he followed her anyway, catching up to her before she departed the royal wing. He reached her, in fact, near the foot of the Hall of Moments, a marbled corridor scintillating in the shifting colors that glowed through its stained-glass skylights. Hezhi paused there, both to allow the Giant to join her, and also to peer down the beautiful hall. Down there were her father and mother, aunts and uncles, older siblings.

"Beautiful, isn't it, Tsem?"

"It's very nice, Princess," he answered.

"When do you think I will move down that hall, live with Father and Mother?"

"When the time comes, Princess."

"Yes, when the time comes. My sister Lanah moved down there last fall. She was thirteen, just about my age."

"Perhaps soon, then, Princess."

"Tsem, you know, don't you? Why we all live out here, in the royal wing, but not with the family. Why we move in there sometime after our tenth years. And if not that, get taken away into the dark, below the city?"

Tsem didn't answer. Instead, he seemed to be concentrating on the colors in the hall.

"It used to be that I wanted to find D'en. I still want that, Tsem, but I wonder about myself now. Will I go down the corridor to live with Father and Mother, or will I go below the city, to wherever they took D'en? If you love me, Tsem, you should tell me."

Tsem nodded. "We have had this conversation, Princess, and I cannot answer you. I would if I could. I do love you."

Hezhi turned toward him, startled. His face was folded in pain, his eyes glittering like something glass and jagged.

"You can't tell me?" Hezhi asked. Tsem nodded. He opened his mouth to speak, but his lips worked soundlessly. He shuddered, and his eyes trembled up beneath his thick lids. He began to shake.

"No! Tsem!" Hezhi ran to him and threw her arms about his waist. She could not reach all the way around. His huge body was convulsing, shaking. As she held him, though, the shuddering quieted and finally subsided. She hugged him tighter, until two platter-sized hands reached down and gently disengaged her.

"I didn't know, Tsem. I'm sorry."

"It is something they do to us, when we are very young," Tsem said. His voice sounded tired, strained. "The priests—when we are chosen to work and live in the royal rooms. Me, Qey, everyone. So we can't talk about it. Do you understand?"

"I understand. I know what a Forbidding is."

Tsem acknowledged that. "I would talk to you if I could, Princess."

"I know. Come on, let us go to the library."

Her concern for Tsem ebbed as they strode on; not because she did not care for the half Giant, but because her anger began to wax. What was being hidden from her, from her siblings, her cousins? She knew no more than D'en had, and D'en was gone.

Light burst upon them again as they crossed the Ibex Courtyard, and with the real illumination came a sudden, hidden one. Hezhi grinned fiercely, her anger fitted neatly into place with purpose.

"It isn't architecture I should be studying," she whispered, not to Tsem but to herself. "It's us. The Blood Royal. This has to do with us." So simple, so obvious. Find the missing royalty, find D'en. Find herself. "That's what I should be studying," she whispered.

But how? She had no idea where to begin. In her meandering so far, she had encountered nothing like what she sought. Ghan was right, absolutely right. One could wander in the library for a generation and not know what one searched for; not with her limited skills and knowledge.

She was still sorting through that when she reached the library. As always, Tsem made his way to the hallway left of the door and sat down to wait for her. Hezhi entered, uncertain where to begin, but eager enough.

She entered and knew something was wrong. Ghan glanced up immediately from his work, met her gaze with his for the first time since that day she had entered the library. He frowned slightly and stood, holding a book with a burgundy binding. Her heart stood cold in her chest as the old man beckoned her over to him.

She went, her face burning fiercely.

"You remember what I said?" Ghan said, his voice a faint sound, a dry page turning.

"It was already torn," Hezhi said, hoping to sound confident and failing utterly.

"I told you also I would teach you not to lie," Ghan said, mildly. "How did you know what I would accuse you of?"

How had Ghan even known she had that book? It was impossible. Impossible, unless… It seemed to Hezhi that there was some way it was possible, but she was too frightened to think, and Ghan was still standing there, demanding something.

"Well?" he asked.

"I… I fell asleep. It tore then."

Ghan nodded. "I warned you."

"Please…" she began, not knowing exactly how to plead with him, what she could offer. The expression on Ghan's face stopped her, however.

"There is no bargaining with me, Princess. I am the master in this room, subject only to the word of your father. And your father will not speak for you."

"I may come here no longer?" I will not cry, Hezhi thought, and suddenly felt confident that she would not, not until later.

"Oh, no, Princess. You will come here. You will come here every day, and you will do as I say." He handed her a piece of rolled paper. Ch'ange paper, the kind royal business was transacted on.

"Your father was kind enough to sign this, Princess."

"What is it?" Her head was swimming, her knees seemed wobbly, unsound, and she feared she would collapse.

"It is a contract. You are indebted to the Royal Library. During the daylight hours, you will be as my servant, doing what chores I see fit. You may not complain, and you must comply or be bound by your hair to the shaming post in the Grand Courtyard. Do you understand this?"

"Servant?" Hezhi blurted. "I cannot be a servant. I am a princess!"

"Which means nothing to me. Not with this paper in my hands. Even the emperor, your father, serves the River, and you serve him, as does all of the royal family. And he has commanded that you serve me." He proffered Hezhi the document.

She took it with trembling fingers, but she could not read it. She could not concentrate. But there was her father's signature, his seal. It was real.

"I…" she began.

"The first thing I tell you is to be silent. You speak only when I request it."

"Yes, Ghan," she acknowledged, lowering her eyes by way of answer.

"Now. Today I will show you how to mend books. I have many for you to mend. After that, I believe…" He shot his gaze about the room almost hungrily. "Have you improved your command of the old script? You may speak."

"I have tried…" She trailed off. She could not possibly read the old script as well as Ghan would want her to.

Ghan glared. "There is much indexing to be done. Do you know what indexing is?"

"No, Ghan."

"So ignorant." He sighed. "But it cannot be helped, I suppose."

"If I…"

"I didn't ask you to speak!" Ghan hissed, his face contorted.

"Your pardon, I—"

"Silence!"

But I am a princess, Hezhi thought, but succeeded in not retorting.

"Follow me. Do not stop to tear any books."

Ghan took her to a small table. There were sheets of white paper, a bowl of paste, heavy boards for pressing.

"Tears are simple," Ghan began. "Even the simple can fix them. I will show you that first, then the binding."

Hezhi nodded. Dully, she watched his smooth brown fingers deftly work with the paper.

"Use just enough glue. Just enough, and no more."

A sudden suspicion filled Hezhi. An image, even, of her sleeping, of Ghan standing over her, of him reaching down, tearing the book himself, then quietly leaving her there, still asleep. So that he could do this, humiliate her, punish her for invading his precious library.

Ghan's finger was a handspan from her nose, wagging angrily.

"You aren't paying attention," he accused. He looked angry.

Yes, I am, Hezhi thought. I certainly am.

VI

A Gift of Blood

"Please." Perkar groaned. "I'm leaving. Please, Goddess, give me your blessing."

The stream flowed on, caressing only his ankles, and them only indifferently, with no more feeling than it would a stick or a rock.

"Please," he repeated. As the sun moved on and on across the sky.

At last, near sundown, the water swirled. She was there, watching him.

"I am not for you, Perkar," she told him.

"It matters not," he answered. Her beauty would kill him, he thought. It was so terrible, so wonderful. Even in his dreams it could not be idealized, could not become greater; even in dreams it only faded.

She shook leaves from her hair. A wet, ebony tendril of it strayed down over her right eye.

"You have no right," she said. "You have no right to add to my sorrow. You are a beast like all other beasts."

"Yet you love me."

Her face twisted into a little smile, evil at the edges. "You don't know what I feel, Perkar. I am not a beast—or I am many. When I think of myself this way—in this form, in the form of this poor little creature whose blood was loosed in me—when I think of myself this way, I have some love for you. But it is my kind of love, nothing you would recognize." She shook her head, her most Human expression. "Go away, live and die, forget me."

"I am going away," Perkar said.

"Good. Stay away."

"Only when I do die."

Her face softened, and she walked over, stroked his face. But when her fingers touched him, she drew back again.

"There is talk among the spirits," she whispered. "You are going to speak to the Forest Lord."

"I am."

"You will be very near him, Perkar. The devourer."

"Not so," Perkar mumbled, reaching to touch her. "We go north and west. You—the great River is in the east. That is where you… he…"

"Where he takes me in. Where he kills me and chews me up. But that is down along his body. His head is farther up, up in the mountains. You will be near him, and you must be careful. He will smell me upon you, taste me. And he knows you, too, my sweet, for through me he has swallowed your seed. Promise me that you will not approach him."

"I promise you that I will find a way to kill him."

The goddess darted her hand out: It leapt quickly as a fish and slapped him hard across the face.

"You are a boy," she hissed. "You have the thoughts of a boy. Be a man and live with what may be, what is possible, and not what you childishly wish."

Perkar was too stunned to speak. He was still without his voice when she faded back into the water.

* * *

"I still say you should take old Yellow Mane," Henyi muttered.

Perkar smiled thinly at his little brother. "I don't think Yellow Mane would last very long in Balat—or any wild forest. I think Yellow Mane is fine just where she is. Happy, too."

"But I don't see why you have to take Kutasapal."

"Because Father gave him to me. What are you complaining about? You already have a fine stallion."

"So do you."

"For a journey like this, one needs many horses," Perkar said.

"So you say."

"Watch when the others arrive with the king," Perkar told him, tousling the younger boy's hair. "They will have more than one horse."

"Of course they will. There will be more than one of them. The king, that strange-looking man…"

"They will each have more than one horse, I mean." Perkar kicked at one of the red chickens pecking near his boots, where a few grains had dropped from the handful he had just given his horse. "I'm taking Kutasapal, here, and Mang, of course." Mang was Perkar's favorite steed. Years before, when the fierce Mang raiders had come up the valley, many had died and their kin never recovered their mounts. The beasts were hard to train—or so Perkar's father said—but one of the stallions got a mare with colt. Mang was second in that line, a proud fine horse, dun with fierce red stripes the color of dried blood on his neck.

"Henyi, give your brother a rest. He needs the finest of our horses."

Both brothers turned at the new voice.

"Hello, Mother," they said, nearly in unison.

"Henyi, the chickens need feed. See to it, please."

Perkar lowered his head, ostensibly to tighten the packs on the mare. In fact, he was avoiding his mother's troubled gaze.

"There is no need to do this, Masati," she said.

Perkar grimaced, worked harder at the packs. "It is bad luck to call a man his childhood name when he seeks Piraku."

She snorted, and Perkar looked at her for the first time. Her auburn hair was bound in three tight braids, and she wore her tall felt hat, the one that signified her marriage to Sherye. A hawk feather fluttered from the top tassel. She was dressed to send her son off to war.

"You seek Piraku too far away, son. It can be found much closer to home."

"I can't find it here."

"Because you are foolish; for no other reason."

"Father said…" Perkar began, but she cut him short with a humorless little laugh.

"Oh, I heard the two of you last night, heads full of woti and silliness. Talking about grand adventures and sword fights. But tonight, Perkar, your father will come to me. He will come to me, and he will not weep, but he will lay his head against my breast. He will not sleep."

Perkar heaved a deep sigh. "I cannot live with him forever. He knows that."

"The Kapaka is a reckless man, and he chooses reckless companions. Your father knows that, too."

Perkar answered that with a shrug only. His mother watched him tighten the already tight packs.

"They will be here soon, Mother. It will be unseemly if you are standing close enough to nurse me. They will think me less a man than they already do."

"The tower man will announce their coming. Plenty of time for me to move up onto the porch."

He nodded reluctantly. He was beginning to feel silly checking the packs. He drew his sword out, wiped it with a cleaning rag. The morning sun glinted from it.

"Four generations, but my son is the one to be ruined by her," his mother muttered.

"I don't want to talk about this," Perkar said, and his tone was stringent enough that she actually winced.

"Well. Well," she said.

He put the sword away, looked up to the tower man. He was gazing impassively off toward the road.

"Listen, Perkar. You men run about seeking Piraku, finding it, stealing it. Killing each other for it. My only Piraku is you, you and your brother. Do you understand that? If both of you die before me, I will have nothing. Do you see? So you must take care of yourself." Her voice trembled a bit; Perkar had never seen her cry—or even come this close.

"Here," she said. She was offering him something; a little wooden charm. "This is from the oak tree you were named for," she confided. "Right near where I buried your caul. Tuck it away somewhere, where the other men won't see it."

"Mother…"

"Son. Each of them will have something like this. They will just hide it, as you will. No man leaves without something from his mother."

"I have much more than this from you," he said softly.

"I'm glad you believe so," she answered.

"Kapakapane," the tower man shouted. The king is coming.

"Hurry, Mother."

She turned and walked quickly up to the big porch. She was very small, his mother, as fine as a little bird. Now he had to fight back tears.

Be a man, he thought to himself. But everyone seemed to think being a man meant something different. Women, for instance, seemed to have very confused ideas about it.

Out at the gate, there was a clatter of hooves, growing louder.

The Kapaka wasted no time setting off. The men praised each others' horses; Perkar grinned from ear to ear when the Kapaka spoke of Mang. Mang, at least, was his. During all of this Ngangata—the halfling—was silent. He sat impassively astride a coal-black mare, an ugly creature, thick of leg. Perkar suspected that the horse, like Ngangata himself, was half wild. Still, he was too excited to think much on the half Alwa and his rudeness. The morning fairly gleamed, honey light dribbled over a fresh green landscape, birds sang. The cattle watched them impassively as they made their way out across the pastures, following the road off and away from his father's holdings. His one moment of sadness, early on that ride, was the glimpse of the tree line that hid the Stream, the goddess that he loved. They did not cross her, however, but passed on west. They did stop at the pasture shrine and offer tallow to the old forest spirit; Perkar was pleased at the precise and fine manner in which the Kapaka made his offering. That even such an important man as he took the time to honor the ties forged by his ancestors.

His companions were the same five who had come to the damakuta before. Apad—the dark-haired man his own age— seemed the most talkative of the lot. He rode a double arm's length from him.

"We shall have fine lands like these, my friend," he told Perkar.

"Our grandchildren, perhaps," Perkar answered. "My father says that it takes many years and much hard work to create such beautiful pastures. In my grandfather's day, they say, this was mostly burned stumps and weeds."

"Just so," Apad gave back cheerfully. "This land is like a worn shoe; there is nothing better to wear. But we shall make our own shoes." Perkar was wondering if Apad were joking about his name, which meant simply "shoe," but decided not to ask. People were often sensitive about their names.

"How I shall work!" Apad went on. "I will bet all of you now—bet you a fine steer—that I will clear more of my land in my lifetime than any of you!"

Eruka tossed back his straw-blond hair and glanced back over his shoulder at them. "Apad bets you a steer he doesn't even own."

"Yet," Apad said, waggling a finger at his friend.

"Hmm," Eruka replied.

"Eruka fears to take me up on the bet," Apad confided to Perkar—loudly.

Eruka shrugged. "Clearing land is hard work. I'll be happy enough to clear what I need."

"Or have your wife clear it," Apad said, an exaggerated sneer that was plainly meant good-naturedly—as opposed to as a deadly insult.

The Kapaka—up ahead with Ngangata and Atti, the older man with the thick red braids—cleared his throat. "It's a fine thing to plan," he cautioned. "Remember only that the Forest Lord may or may not give his word."

"Of course, of course," Apad replied. He winked at Perkar.

"You, Atti, will you take my bet?"

The braided man turned only slightly in his saddle. He had a habit of gazing all about him, all of the time—he never settled on looking at a single thing. "A useless sort of bet," he replied. "If we judge how much we have cleared by the end of our lives, what use will the winner have for a steer?"

"Well, fine, we can change the wager a bit. Let us say, then, whichever of us has the most pasture by the age of fifty."

Atti snorted. "That gives you many more years of chopping trees than I would have. Thirty to my ten. I might still win, though, against your soft valley hands."

Apad hooted. "We shall see, wild man from the hills! Will you use a broken stone to chop those trees, like your Alwat friends?"

Perkar saw the frown cross Atti's face before he turned forward again. Ngangata—had the jab actually been aimed at him?—reacted not at all. Eruka, though, shot Apad a cautioning look.

They don't like the halfbreed, either, Perkar realized. Only Atti speaks to him. And with his wild braids and strange accent, he is like a wild man himself. Something about that satisfied Perkar immensely. He had disliked Ngangata from the moment he met those insolent black eyes and that soft, rude tongue. He had also felt guilty about it—his father and the Kapaka clearly disap-proved of such an attitude. But Apad and Eruka already knew the Alwa-Man, and if they did not like him either, there must be ample justification for feeling that way.

Still, that last remark by Apad had chilled the conversation; apparently there were things that one should be cautious of joking about.

After a moment, though, the Kapaka broke the uneven stuttering of hoofbeats. "Sing us something, Eruka. Something for traveling."

"Ah, hmm," Eruka mused, and in a moment he hummed a note and began. He had a clear, fine tenor, wavering wildly on the final notes of phrases, an old style and difficult to do well. Eruka did it well.

Up to the hoof I come

Lifting it up, taking it on

Here is what I said I would do

When the new people and their horses come

But never did I promise

Never did I swear to them

That I would not have my fun

Not make them ache where their butts meet the saddle

Not make them wish for a woman and a bed

I will have my own fun…

Apad chimed in now and then, on words like "fun" and "woman," and he was a very bad singer. His "quavering" sounded more like a child bawling or an injured man crying for help. It made the song all that much more amusing, and Perkar felt himself smiling, broadly and unreservedly, for the first time in years. He was on the road, on the way out, to a world rich in Piraku, a world that suddenly had possibilities he had never dared imagine.

But for the rest of the day, imagine he did. And when they left his father's lands, crossed into the wilderness where no axe had been, his thoughts were not on goddesses, or mothers, or any such sorrow, but on the gait of his horse and the sound of boisterous voices.

The sun westered soon enough—the day seemed to fly by. The woods were as open as the inside of a hall, trees like wide-spaced pillars, leaves like the shingled roof of his father's house. Red dusty sunlight leaked through the roof, however, gathered here and there beneath the trees, as if swept into little piles. The birdsong had changed to an evening tune, and the little black frogs that lived in the thick leaf-litter of the open forest floor began throating their own weird melodies.

"We should travel faster," the Kapaka told them. "We can reach the damakuta of Bangaka before nightfall, I think. What do you say, Perkar?"

"We would really have to ride," Perkar said.

"Good enough," the king agreed, and he urged his red and brown piebald into a trot. The others followed. Soon enough they burst from the forest into rolling pasture; a few indignant cows ran from them as they fell into full gallop. The sky opened up, a tapestry, heavy purple clouds woven into an iron-gray sky. The clouds smelled wet, and far on the horizon crimson lightning silently lit one up, the glowing heart of an enormous ghost. The sky and the field were spacious, but the sounds of the travelers stayed close to them, as if the thudding of hooves and their voices feared to stray far into the coming night. They galloped on, and Perkar felt part of Mang, part of the great four-legged beast. He had heard that the Mang tribes believed that a horse and rider who died together lived on as one creature, half man, half horse. It seemed a wonderful dream.

Now the clouds were gray, and the heavens black, and the stars not hidden by thunderheads shone steady. The moon, red as a fire god's eye, rose, half lidded, sleepy.

So it was dark when at last they saw the watchfires of the damakuta, when the men came out to greet them.

Perkar knew Bangaka and his sons well enough; indeed, one of the women he had been urged to consider for marriage was a niece of Bangaka's and lived at his damakuta. Perkar resolved to avoid her, if possible. Bangaka himself met them at the gate; he was an old man, his back a bit stooped, hair as white and thin as thistledown. He had an old-age vagueness about his eyes that made Perkar uneasy. He had eight sons, but only the youngest three still lived with him.

There was not much celebration—the hour was late, and Bangaka had not been expecting visitors. The king retired with the old man, to discuss Piraku and so forth—but the rest of them were offered the barn, an open fire, and warm flasks of woti.

"Well," Apad commented. "The hospitality here is not of your father's quality, Perkar, but it will do." He gazed reflectively at the little knot of serving girls, peeking and giggling from behind an outbuilding. "Sit here, Perkar. Have some woti."

Perkar hesitated. "First I shall rub down Mang and Kutasapal," he said. "Then I will gladly join you."

"Let the wild men take care of that," Apad said.

"What?"

"We will brush down the horses," Ngangata remarked shortly.

"You aren't wearing a servant's livery," Perkar said. "I can rub down my own steeds."

Atti walked over to join the half Alwa. His braids were like rust in the firelight. Ngangata was frightening; his eyes were caves, holes sunken into his head deep, deep. His wide mouth looked less amusing now and more dangerous.

"Let them do it," Eruka called from across the fire. "They enjoy it."

Perkar tried to hold Ngangata's gaze, but there was nothing to hold, only blackness. Finally he shrugged and joined the other two at the fire.

Woti loosened Eruka's tongue.

"My clan—Kar Kushuta—is next to nothing," he said. "My grandfather lost half of our land in a wager, and that on top of a feud with the Kar Hakiru. We were always on the losing side of that. There was no land, and it was hard for my father to make a good marriage for any of us without land or daughters."

"No daughters?"

Eruka shook his head. "They say my mother was cursed by the goddess of our apple orchard, for something she did when she was young. She has never borne daughters."

Perkar understood the problem. Sons could only receive land as dowry, through their wives. A man was more likely to give a daughter and her dowry to a clan that had recently done the same for one of his sons. In this way the total lands of the clan remained roughly similar over time. A man with little land and no daughters was unlikely to find marriages for his sons.

"So I became a singer," Eruka concluded glumly. "There is some Piraku in that, though not much."

Apad, whose eyes were already beginning to glaze, slapped Eruka on the back. "Don' worry," he slurred. "Tha' will all change soon."

As Eruka had become more talkative, the garrulous Apad had been nearly muted by the strong drink. As Perkar watched, he downed another cup. He himself was drinking only lightly—his father and he having been drunk the night before.

Eruka nodded in response to the dark-haired man's promise. "If the Forest Lord wills," he muttered.

Apad's face grew dark. "And what if he doesn't?" he demanded tersely, softly. "What if he doesn't, Perkar?"

Perkar shrugged. "I don't know."

Apad took another drink, fixed his gaze on the dancing flames, perhaps searching for the little wild fire goddess there.

"Remember the 'Song of a Mad God'? About the mountain god who came down and devoured men?"

Eruka cleared his throat.

And so I came down

I came to the villages

To the proud damakutat

The holdings on the hills

I wandered in the halls

I wondered,

How might a man taste?

I drank the blood of mortal men

Drank it but never quenched my thirst.

Eruka sang on, softly, as if afraid someone would hear. Sang about the hero Rutka, who put on the skin of a bear, posed as the brother of the Crazed God and learned his weakness.

Only by the copper blade

The axe beaten by the forge god

The one in the hall of the Forest Lord

Maker of death for gods

Rutka found the axe, after many adventures, and dispatched the blood-crazed god.

When the song was over, Apad was swaying, and Perkar feared he would fall into the fire. He wondered where Atti and Ngangata were; they should have been done with the horses by now.

"See, Perkar? They can be killed. What right has the Forest Lord to tell you and me what we may and may not have? We are Irut, true men—not like the Alwat, not like the little gods. Each of us is like Rutka. Strong! If the gods do not give us what we want, we will take it. Hey, Perkar? You're a good fellow, aren't you? Want what we want. We'll be heroes together, you and Eruka and I. We'll get what the king desires, even if the king doesn't like how we get it."

"What about Atti and Ngangata?" Perkar asked. His own head was swimming a bit now. The song made him proud, proud to be Human. He must have drunk more woti than he imagined, listening to Eruka sing.

"Heroes come only in threes and sevens," Apad snarled. "Never in fives." He reached for his cup of woti, but tipped it over with his hand. There was a giggle out in the darkness; the girls were still watching.

"Hah!" Apad muttered. "Let's see what that is!" He lurched off into the night. Grinning, Eruka followed.

Perkar watched them go. His elation was dimming, but there was something, something in the song…

Why had she slapped him? Called him a boy? Gods could be killed. If a mad god could die, so could a river. Of course they could, and the other men knew it! In the house of the Forest Lord there were things that could kill gods, surely.

The sky was clearing; tomorrow would be bright. Perkar found his way to standing, walked out across the bare ground. He waved at the tower guard as he went out the still open gate.

"Late," the man said. "I'll close the gate soon."

"I didn't want to soil the lord's yard," Perkar explained.

The shadowy figure didn't answer, but Perkar thought he saw his head incline. He walked on down the hill, relieved himself on the night-damp ground. Then he strolled a bit farther, to the willow-line he guessed marked a stream.

"And where do you go, god or goddess?" he inquired of it softly, but the stream—a rivulet, really—did not answer. Perkar thought he knew, though. They were up a neighboring valley, one that joined his own. Surely this little stream flowed down, eventually, to his father's pasture.

Perkar's head swirled, the warmth of the woti still coursing up from his belly. What could he send her, that she might know him? Know what he intended? What sacrifice could this tiny child of hers take to her?

He knew, of course. He fumbled out his little knife, the one he used for trimming leather laces. The cut went a little deeper than he intended—too much woti!—but it would not trouble him, there on the back of his hand. He washed the cut in the stream, gave it his blood. She understood blood; she would know his.

From back at the gate there was a whistle. Perkar let another drop or two fall into the water, then, satisfied and strangely happy, walked back up to the barn, and sleep.

INTERLUDE

Jik

A polished deckplank creaked beneath Ghe's foot, and he froze, waiting to see if the slight sound had been heard. After a moment he relaxed, satisfied that the little creak had been folded neatly into the hundred other wooden complaints as the barge rocked gently in the River, into the frogs and nightbirds singing in the Yellow-Haired-Swamp just downstream. The sharp features of his shadowed face quirked in a sardonic smile at his own nervousness, and he reached with his thumb to rub the little scar at the point of his pointed chin. I am a blade of silver; I am a sickle of ice, he mouthed.

He moved on, slipping past a guard nodding at his post, mesmerized, perhaps, by the distant lights of the city, or the even more distant lights of stars. Dressed in blackest shadow, Ghe moved as effortlessly as smoke, through an ostentatious arch encased in gold leaf into a spacious cabin, onto the rich carpet woven in distant and exotic Lhe. Toward the great bed, and its sheets of finest linen.

Ghe had not the faintest idea why it was his task to kill the man who slumbered there; the priesthood would never make him privy to such details. He need only know whom to kill and where to find them; the why of it didn't matter to him. As a child, he had killed for nothing more than a few copper coins. Now his skills were for the priesthood, for the River himself.

He suddenly realized that no one was in the bed, and the hackles of his neck pricked up. The lights on the barge were extinguished; he had watched from the small boat that brought him until they had all gone out. That meant his target somehow suspected something, was hiding in the dark, waiting for his death to come looking for him and find a surprise instead. Ghe turned quickly on the balls of his feet, crouching at the same moment, searching with his eyes. After a moment of that, he sighed in exasperation and relief. He had overestimated this trader, this Dunuh, just as Dunuh had overestimated himself, somehow. For there he was, asleep in a chair, silhouetted against the lights of the city.

Ghe's relief faded as quickly as it came, for there loomed another shadow, standing near the sleeping one.

"Ah," the darkness whispered, "the much-vaunted Jik, I take it."

Ghe said nothing. If he should fail and die, there must be no proof that he was actually Jik. He carried no emblem, no sign of the priesthood. Unlike the other priestly sects, Jik were not castrated, so there would be no evidence of that sort. Only overconfident words could betray him, and though Ghe was confident, he was not overconfident.

His blade snicked out of its oiled scabbard, caught moonlight like a silver eel.

"Jik," the shadow went on, "I am Sin Turuk, from the ancient city of Kolem. You have heard of Kolem?"

Still Ghe did not answer. The man went on. "Kolem has many exports. The oil of the Kakla tree, textiles—and warriors. Warriors taught to fight from the moment we can hold a sword. Much-valued men." White teeth appeared, then, amidst the black skin of his face. A faint hiss was his sword clearing into the night air.

"My master is a drunken fool," Sin Turuk said. "But he is still my master."

Sin Turuk leapt, pantherlike, lighted on the tips of his toes an armspan from Ghe. Ghe darted his ribbon of sword for the man's heart, but his opponent stepped aside, the sword flickering by him. He saw his mistake in the instant he made it, that his lunge was what Sin wanted. Ghe had no time to recover his sword and parry. Instead, he dropped flat, and the foreigner's sword whirred above his head. Ghe lashed out expertly with his leg, caught his enemy at the ankles, who fell, and yet Ghe could feel that it was too easy, that Sin had anticipated this move, as well, shifted his weight so as to fall controlled. This insight saved Ghe's life, for instead of sprawling helplessly, Sin had somehow contrived to tumble over him, lashing out with the bright-edged crescent he held. Ghe dropped his own sword, lunged inside the blow, sweeping the strong arms on, delivered a Tsehats blow to Sin's neck. The man grunted dully, lashed out again. He should have been dead, but at least he was injured, slow enough that Ghe could snake-draw his dagger and plunge it straight into Sin Turuk's heart, jiggle it, and withdraw. Sin died silently, with the dignity a great warrior deserved.

"A sickle of ice," Ghe whispered to the man, as his eyes went from shocked to empty. "But you fought well."

The idiot out on deck had not even heard anything. Ghe sighed, slipped his knife into the sleeping man in three key places—heart, base of the skull, and temple. He left the other guards alive, to shame them, to let them see that a battle of Giants had transpired within their earshot and they had known nothing.

On the way back to shore, he saluted Sin Turuk by dripping a bit of blood in the River and by touching a dot of it to his own chin, to the first scar he ever received in combat. For his intended victim—who had merely exhaled upon dying, a breath stinking of expensive wine—Ghe did nothing.

VII

Ghosts and Wishes

"You have ruined a five-hundred-year-old book," Ghan told her—rather matter-of-factly, without real heat.

"It was ruined already."

Ghan sighed. "No—it was damaged but repairable. Now it is ruined."

Hezhi looked up from what she was doing—pasting the fragments of a Second-Dynasty plate to a new backing—and met the old man's hard gaze.

"You don't pay attention, that's your whole problem. You don't pay attention to what you are doing, but to whatever happens to be running around in your silly little head."

One day, she thought, keeping her face neutral. One day I shall be an adult, adult nobility, and you shall disappear in the night, Ghan. I will have Tsem take you and stuff you down a sewer pipe.

"Like that!" Ghan snarled. "Like that, eyes gone all dreamy and stupid." He stepped swiftly up to the table. "Here is what you are doing." He gestured at the plate. "This. Keep your fingers and your brain together, for once."

"I've been doing this for twenty days," Hezhi muttered, trying not to snap. "Couldn't I do something more interesting?"

"Like?"

"I don't know. You mentioned something called 'indexing.' "

"You can't do that, Princess. You cannot read well enough."

"Well, I'm tired of this."

"But you've yet to do it well," Ghan replied. "Why should I waste my energy teaching you another task when you have not demonstrated the ability to do even the simplest with proficiency? To teach you to index, for instance, I would first have to teach you to read, and I have no intention of wasting the kind of time that would take."

"But I can already read some," she began. Read? If the side effect of this bondage was that she would learn to read, it would be worth it.

"Be still. Add a little more water to that paste. When you can paste a simple page together without ugly, overlapped seams, then we can talk about you doing something else. Or…" Ghan looked sly for a moment, calculating. Then he leaned heavily on the desk, stooped forward, so that their eyes were quite close together. "Or you can leave here this afternoon. But you must not come back, ever. I have gotten poor work out of you, but you have not yet paid your debt. Being here, you do more and more damage each day. So I will report your bondage satisfied. Just don't come in tomorrow—or any day after." He smiled wanly, straightened, and walked off without a backward glance. That evening, when she finally unkinked her back, put her paste and thread away, he did not acknowledge her. She left in silence.

Qey met her at the door, anxious. "You must take a bath," she explained. Her fingers fluttered like butterflies lighting on her hands.

"I'm tired," Hezhi replied. She had no time for Qey's timid mothering.

"It matters not. Your father sends for you."

"My father?" What could he want?

Qey nodded vigorously. "You must attend court this evening."

Hezhi frowned. "Must I? Send Father my regrets."

"Oh, no, Hezhi, not this time," Qey sighed, shaking her head. She glanced past Hezhi, presumably at Tsem. Suspicious, Hezhi turned, as well. Tsem's face was carefully blank, but she could sense tension there. His neck muscles were drawn taut; he was grinding his teeth. "This time, little one, you must go. The messengers your father sent were very insistent."

She digested that silently. She had managed to avoid court for the better part of a year. But perhaps—just perhaps—if she went to court, she could actually speak to her father or mother. Convince them to take away Ghan's power over her. Just thinking about the old man made her furious. For two days after Ghan showed her the writ, Hezhi didn't go to the library at all. Four men in the dress of the palace guard came and got her, forced her to the library and Ghan. Hezhi had to restrain Tsem; she saw the dangerous look in his usually mild eyes. None of the guards ever knew how close they came to having their necks broken or long bones splintered. But if she had allowed Tsem to defend her, he would have been mutilated or killed later. She could not stand the thought of that.

Yes, perhaps she could reach her father's ear, if only for a moment—if he even knew who she was, at a glance. He had, after all, not spoken directly to her for something more than a year.

"What are the colors in court today, then?" she asked. Qey looked relieved, almost happy.

"They sent a dress along," she said.

"This is just the revival of a style from a century ago," Hezhi complained as Qey helped her struggle into the monstrous dress.

It had a laminated spine of rivershark cartilage that ran from the nape of a stiff collar down her back. The dress's backbone parted company with her own at the pelvis—there it lanced out and back, supporting a stiff but mercifully short train that resembled the tail of a crawfish. This "spine" had to be held on, of course, so the rest of the dress worked at concealing the tight straps beneath her breasts and across her abdomen. It was lime and gold, spangled with purple mother-of-pearl sequins.

"Was it considered as ugly a century ago?" Qey asked, and she actually giggled—as if it were years ago, before she became so serious. Suddenly a bit happier, Hezhi modeled the dress for Qey, walking smartly, lampooning the ladies at court. Qey watched her with eyes full of wonder.

"You may grow up into a woman yet," she said. "How did this happen so quickly?" Hezhi heard the obvious pride, caught the hidden sadness, the worry.

The dress finally on, Qey applied the thick, burgundy makeup presently popular in court, filling the hollows of Hezhi's eyes, drawing a fine line down her forehead to the bridge of her nose.

Looking at herself in the glass, Hezhi was mildly surprised. She looked like a princess—not like the bondservant of a bald old librarian, not like the dirty little girl skittering about the hallways of the abandoned wing. No, she looked like the other women at court. Like her elder sister, whom she had met once. A princess; something she was used to calling herself, but had no sense of how to be.

Qey was still watching her. "Certainly you will have suitors now, whether you want them or not," she remarked. Hezhi nodded glumly at the older woman, wished suddenly that she had Qey's worn square face and thick limbs. But even those would not ward her from suitors; she was the daughter of an emperor. Her ambiguous feelings over her appearance settled more certainly toward disapproval; the taunting voice of Ghan seemed just in her ear, dismissing her as some pretty palace creature.

But what did she care what Ghan thought, anyway? She sighed and followed Qey from her room, out into the courtyard. Tsem was there, waiting, and Hezhi smirked openly at him. He was lashed into a black cotton kilt, a lime shirt, and an open, brocaded vest. His hair was oiled and braided, the braids piled on his head and tucked beneath a little square felt hat. He was trying hard to maintain a dignified, nonchalant air.

"You look beautiful, Tsem," she remarked. "With your size and that vest, perhaps no one will notice me."

Tsem snorted. "Shall we go, Princess?"

"I don't want to."

"Neither do I," Tsem muttered fervently.

A room should seem diminished when full, but the Great Leng Hall was as imposing as ever. Though its floor thronged with people—more people than she had been in the presence of in more than a year—it still seemed as vast as the sky. Indeed, its vaulted roof imitated the sky, deep azure at the rims, paler toward the meridian. The great buttresses seemed like the pillars holding up the heavens. She noticed a bird up there—a pigeon, a swallow? It was lost in the immensity, the apparent size of a mosquito.

And the noise! Drums were pattering somewhere, but that was nothing. It was the voices, chattering laughing voices that roared in Hezhi's tender ears, accustomed to the quietest corners of the palace. She felt buffeted by them, standing at the royal entry. When she was announced—Princess Hezhi Yehd Cha'dune—her name flew out into the din and was eaten, gone.

When her father came in, on the other hand, the voices dropped away, as if a hundred doors had been shut between her and them—one or two cackled on for a moment and then died, embarrassed.

The Chakunge of Nhol was an imposing man; Hezhi saw little resemblance to him in herself. He was tall, strikingly so, not thin or gangly. His shoulders were broad, his face sharp-boned but with no hint of femininity. Power swirled about him, power beyond that conveyed by his rich robe of saffron and umber, his turban and the golden circlet that held it in place. It was like the wavy outline of a ghost, or the burning of air above the hot tile roof in the summer. It made one's nape tingle just to look at him. Sorcerer, king, child of the River—all of that one could see even if he were naked. When he was announced, every person in the room dropped to their knees. Those nearest the central fountain reached for it, to wet their foreheads.

Hezhi's heart sank. She could never go near him, her father or no. And she felt… ill. There was a tightness, a weirdness deep in her stomach. It had been there before, all day, lurking, but now it redoubled. What was wrong with her?

A little hiss went up from the crowd, surprise. The Chakunge had not stopped at the dais upon which he usually sat; rather, he descended the steps onto the courtyard floor itself. The crowd parted away from him, like a mass of pigeons keeping well away from the feet of a pedestrian. His two bodyguards, hulking full-blooded Giants, walked ponderously on either side of him, massive gazes searching ceaselessly for any danger to their master. They were dressed like Tsem, but they looked even more ridiculous; they were less manlike than Tsem, longer of arm, very hairy, with brutal, flat faces and no chins.

Thus the floor emptied before the emperor until he stood at the very base of the fountain. Hezhi watched him carefully, her father, saw his sardonic face register some deeper, stranger sentiment as he approached the water.

It is the Blood Royal I need to understand, she reminded herself.

He brushed the tips of his fingers through the cascading water; that was all, and then he stepped back, eyes closed. The fountain was a simple one, a single jet rising thirty feet into the air of the hall and then roaring back down into a broad, alabaster basin. Now the water began to shimmer, though. Hezhi was still watching her father, and his figure seemed blurred, as if he were some-how vibrating like the plucked string of a lyre. The shimmering in the water increased, and suddenly the column was soaring up, up toward the vaulted roof of the hall. It grew like a great, watery palm, colors scintillating from it. Dark figures struggled in the water—fish? They were carried up, up the waterspout. Near the ceiling, the water suddenly ceased to shower down to its source, but instead spread out in a pool, a pool floating in the air. The pool quickly spread, shimmering and rippling, until the dome of the ceiling was obscured by it. Then the most peculiar thing of all; something about the water—not its wetness or its density, but something else, like the ghost of water, shimmery, feeling of depth—settled down upon the court. A little gasp went around the floor; it was as if they were underneath the River, staring up at the surface of the water. The dark things were still there, but now they began to acquire a nimbus, black images limned in glowing colors, jade, white, aquamarine, topaz. They swam down from the ceiling, in and among the courtiers, brushing against them. Hezhi saw one swim through a woman near her. Hezhi felt a terrible chill that started in her abdomen and flashed out, and yet at the same time she was captivated. They were lovely, these things. They were all creatures of the River; some were weird fish, the length of a person, armored in plates as if they were warriors. Some more resembled insects or crawfish, but were not the insects or crawfish Hezhi was familiar with. No, these were the things that lurked as shadows in the waters of the River; ghosts of things that once lived and died in his waters, however long ago. Now they swam and pirouetted at her father's whim.

"Princess!" Tsem tugged at her, pointing. Three of the things were "swimming" about her feet, gradually rising higher. One was a fish; the other was like a scorpion built for swimming; the third resembled a squid. These three were joined by four more, and they swirled all around Hezhi, like a cloud. She heard those nearest her gasp, and more than one whispered "Royal Blood."

Soon she could see nothing but the creatures enveloping her.

She should have been frightened, but instead she felt weirdly elated; the queasiness in her stomach seemed more like a glow now, as if there was something warm and strong in her. She laughed softly, reaching out her hands to touch the insubstantial fish. They seemed to suck at her, as if feeding, but she felt nothing.

Then they rose away, rushed back up to the watery pool above their heads, which was shrinking; with a sudden roar—the room had been nearly silent, save for awed whispers—the water began returning to the fountain, rushing down like torrential rain. The Riverghosts lost their shine, became shadows, less than that. In a matter of moments, the court was as it had been before her father came down. Save that now the people began to shout, shout her father's title. Chakunge!

The warm feeling in her gut had begun to feel "wrong" again by the time her father reached his dais. Hezhi noticed that during the strange performance, her mother and sisters had emerged from their rooms and were already seated on the benches. As the Chakunge joined them, he turned and clapped his hands briskly. The cleared place on the floor—where he had stood so recently— grew wider as many young boys in the dress of priestly acolytes ran about, ushering everyone back. Hezhi watched, interested despite herself. Her father had demonstrated his kinship with the River, shown that he could speak to it, bend it to his will—or more likely, beg its indulgence. What now?

The drums began again, a slow, powerful rhythm like a heartbeat. The dancers came out.

They seemed fragile creatures, men and women alike, until they began to move, to swirl to the ponderous drumbeats; then they became as strong as the drums, as supple as drumheads. This Hezhi had seen before; it was the more standard court performance. Still, the dancers were beautiful to behold, with their sleek muscles and their costumes of silk and feathers. The crowd around her began to squat, or sit cross-legged. Tsem rolled out a little mat for Hezhi—had he been carrying it all along?—and she sat, too.

The story was an ancient one; Hezhi knew it well. It was the story of the first Chakunge, the man born of water. Now the dancers portrayed his mother, Gau, bathing in the River, and now she was heavy with child. Others portrayed the People, harried by the terrible monsters who once inhabited the River valley. A monster under each stone, living in each tree. They were terrible, tyrannical. They captured the daughter of the headman, surrounded her with ugliness and pain.

Hezhi studied the woman portraying the daughter; she was slim, a slip of a girl no older than herself. Sad, she was, bereft of kin, surrounded by monsters. Without hope, for none of the People could save her or even themselves. Hezhi felt a little glimmer of identification. It was easy to guess how she might have felt: alone, threatened, unable to understand the monsters surrounding her.

Now came Chakunge, the Riverson, laughing, full of power. He was clad in the rainbow, in armor of shell and fishbone, in plates from the giant Rivercrabs. His weapons were wit and water, swords and spears formed of the very substance of the River. First he tricked a few of the monsters, one by one. He convinced the first of them—the Black-headed Ogre—that his power came from bathing four times a day in the waters of the River. The monster emulated him and was drowned.

Soon enough, Chakunge was done toying with his foes, however. He went among the monsters who held the chief's daughter and slew them all, turned them into stones and sharks, ground them into sand. He took the captive woman away, asked her to be his queen.

Who will take me away? Hezhi wondered. She had never considered such a thing. But it would be so nice, if a hero like Chakunge would come, free her from her problems, her worries. Perhaps that was where D'en was, off becoming a hero, so that he could come back and rescue her.

After the dance, the people in the hall lined up to file past the fountain; each drank from the water in their cupped hands, praying for their city, their emperor, themselves. Hezhi followed dutifully, and when she came to the fountain her mind was still picturing the dashing dancer portraying Chakunge, laughing, full of power. When she drank, she prayed silently. Send me a hero, she prayed. She felt weak, doing so. She felt as if she were betraying something. But at that moment, it was the foremost thought in her. Send me a hero, she beseeched, and she drank the water.

She had taken only a score of steps, and the water reached the hurtful place in her belly, and there it seemed to erupt, like pine knot thrown on a fire. She gasped and fell, saved only by the quick arms of Tsem from cracking her skull open on the hard marble floor. The water roared in her, rushed out into her veins, fiery. It made her skin feel like dough, like something soft and barely real; reality was the heat, the insides of her.

A hundred times she had taken sacred water, and it had always been just drinking. Now she thought she would die.

Her senses returned soon enough, though. No one but Tsem seemed to pay her much heed; he picked her up, carried her to a bench near the wall, and the two women occupying it leapt up hastily at the look he jabbed at them.

Perhaps Tsem, is my hero, she thought, but no, Tsem was as surrounded by the monsters as she; he was like one of the men the chief sent who failed. But he was a comfort.

Tsem laid her on the bench, and after a few moments the flame became a tingle, an itch, was gone. But something was different, changed.

"I should take you back home now, Princess," Tsem whispered.

"No." Hezhi shook her head. "No, I'm better now. It was just the water… I'm better. I should stay for the rest of this."

"As you wish, Princess." Still, he made her remain on the bench long after she was capable of walking. When finally she wobbled to her feet, his face was filled with concern.

"I'm fine, Tsem," she assured him, but her feet felt like wood and she sat back down, as best she could, with her dress's tail hanging off the back of the bench and resting on the floor.

The ceremonies were over; now servants passed here and there, bearing trays of steamed dumplings, fried fish cakes, strange foods that even Hezhi could not identify. She wasn't in the least hungry; she took a small cup of wine when it was offered, however, and the first few sips of it made her feel better.

She was taking another sip when she heard a polite cough.

"Princess? May I?"

It was the boy, Wezh Yehd Nu. He was dressed in as silly an outfit as anyone, a long robe of silk, green pantaloons, a shirt cut to look like a breastplate.

Hezhi reluctantly inclined her head in assent. The boy sat down. Tsem seemed to have withdrawn to some distance.

"You seem to be feeling unwell," Wezh remarked. "I thought I might ask if there was anything I can do."

"It's nothing," Hezhi said. "I felt a little faint, but I am much better now."

"I'm glad to hear that," Wezh said gravely. He moved his mouth as if to say more, but instead turned his attention back to the crowd. The two of them sat in awkward silence for a few moments.

"My father says these gatherings are the lifeblood of our society," Wezh said at last. "Don't you think that's true?"

Hezhi remembered her father, a blurred image with the River at his beck.

"I suppose," she replied.

There was another awkward silence, during which Hezhi began to feel well enough to be rude. Still, she held her peace. Perhaps those near her—Tsem, for instance—might be a little less annoying if she indulged their wishes just a bit. And of course, her father had probably been so insistent that she come for just this reason. Daughters were best married off early.

Wezh was not unkind or unpleasant looking. Perhaps, if not a hero, he could be a friend. She flinched at that thought—the thought of having another person as dear as D'en to lose—but it was no longer unbearable, as it had been a year or even a few days ago.

"I have a boat," Wezh said cautiously. "A little barge with a cabin on it. My father gave it to me for my fifteenth birthday. Do you like to go boating?"

Where had that come from? Hezhi wondered. From the lifeblood of society to his boat?

"No, I have never been boating," she told him.

"Oh, it's great fun," Wezh told her enthusiastically. "You can imagine that you're one of those pirates from the Swamp Kingdoms, you know, like in the romantic plays? You do like the plays, don't you? Most girls do."

Hezhi had seen a few of the plays he spoke of. Pitiful, debased things compared to the great epics like the one they had just witnessed.

"I liked the dance just now," she told him. "It was a wonderful rendition of the Chakunge epic."

"I found it a little boring," Wezh said diffidently. "You know, old-fashioned. Now the other day I saw this drama about Ch'üh—he's a pirate, you know…"

"That means 'mosquito' in the old speech," Hezhi informed him.

Wezh glanced at her, his eyes a bit wider than before, if such were possible. "Indeed?" he said. "That might explain why his sword is so long and thin, mightn't it? Well, how illuminating! I'm sure that you would have many such observations, if you were to attend such a play. Ah, with me perhaps." He looked around the room nervously.

"Are you searching for pirates?" she asked with mild sarcasm. "I don't think my father would admit them, you know."

"Oh, no, of course he wouldn't," Wezh said. "No, I was…" He closed his eyes and cleared his throat.

"Umm… Whither goes her brilliant beauty/My tongue cannot hold her name …"

The words were so rushed they were nearly incoherent, and so it took Hezhi nearly two stanzas to realize that Wezh was reciting his—or more likely somebody else's—poetry to her.

"Oh," she interrupted, standing abruptly. "I'm sorry, Wezh Yehd Nu, but I must bid you good day."

Wezh stuttered off, looked a little puzzled and forlorn. "Are you feeling unwell again, Princess?"

"Yes, Wezh, that is it precisely."

She turned and gestured to Tsem, who shot her a small expression of chagrin. She turned once to survey the hall again, before she left. The fountain was in its normal state, the water rising no higher than usual. But among the sparkling droplets she thought she saw something dark rising, as well. With an involuntary shiver, she took her leave without another word to the anxious Wezh.

"That was rude, Princess," Tsem told her, when they were back in the Hall of Moments and out of earshot of anyone. The hall was lined with guards in armor today, and a lone priest was sweeping, smoke rising from his spirit-broom, a little acolyte behind him with a mundane broom and dustpan, gathering the ashes. None of them were close enough to hear what the princess and her bodyguard were saying.

Hezhi shrugged. "He is an idiot, Tsem, stupid and unlearned. What use do I have for a boy like that?"

"You will find a use for men someday, or you will live as a spinster—or more likely have a marriage imposed on you."

"I think marriages must always be imposed, if Wezh is the common sort of man."

Tsem shook his head, then bowed it, in respect, as they passed the old priest and his novice.

"Anyway, I'm really not feeling well. You know that."

Tsem was about to reply, but there was a strangled cry behind them; Hezhi felt the hackles rise on her neck, experienced yet another terrible shuddering. She stumbled and turned to confront the source.

Something had emerged from the hall. Its outline wavered, and so she knew it for a ghost, but it was like no ghost she had ever seen, save only in the fountain earlier that day. It was huge, twice Tsem's size. It had legs like a crab's, or a spider's, and its body was long, twisted, like a crushed centipede. A flared tail— horribly like the one on her dress—swept around frenetically behind it. Its head was a grotesque mass of chitin and tentacles, and yet there was something—its eyes—that seemed appallingly, undeniably Human. Human and hungry. She knew instinctively that it was hungering after her.

The guards seemed frozen, and for one terrible moment, Hezhi feared that no one could see the thing except her. Then it was in motion, a scuttling mass of limbs and tentacles. One of the soldiers leapt at it then, his curved sword finally flashing out, and he was in its path, a tiny creature compared to the ghost. His sword chopped but once, slicing unhindered through the thing, clanging with great force and noise onto the marbled floor. Then the ghost passed through the guard and he fell, writhing, clenched up in a little ball, a jabbering kind of noise issuing from him the like of which Hezhi never imagined a Human Being could make. The beast lunged forward, and another guard—attacking more hesitantly—went down. She had the dull realization that, like a ghost, the thing wasn't solid—but it could certainly cause harm to men. She saw the second guard die very clearly; his skin puffed and split, exuding vapor—as if the blood in his body were suddenly steam.

That was the last she saw of it. Tsem had her in both arms and was running. Her last glimpse was of the priest, broom blazing furiously, standing between them and the apparition. The rest was nightmare flashes of this corridor and that, of Tsem's pounding heart—and the images of what she had seen burning on the surface of her eyes. Tsem did not stop until they reached one of the far shrines, a place that no ghost would ever dare enter. Placing her inside, he waited at the door, fists clenched. After a long while—when nothing happened—Tsem pointed a finger at her.

"Stay here," he said simply, and then he was gone, loping back up the way they came.

"Tsem! No, Tsem!" she shrieked, but it was too late. The half Giant was gone.

It wanted me. And it would kill Tsem as easily as it would anyone; it had no neck to snap, no body to bludgeon. She recalled the first guard, so young and brave.

Frustrated, afraid, she sat with her knees drawn up to her chin. The tail on her dress was broken, she remembered not how.

Taking deep, slow breaths, she tried to calm herself. It was then that she noticed the blood.

Her first thought was that it was Tsem's, that he was injured somehow, for surely it couldn't be hers. But there it was, little smeared drops on the floor, on her dress. Not much blood. She touched some clinging to her legs. It was sticky, certainly blood.

She understood then. It was her blood, and she was not wounded. She had begun bleeding.

She was a woman.

PART TWO

The Blessed and the Cursed

I

The Return of Steel

Perkar stood amidst the waters of a great River. The current clutched at his ankles, touching him with more urgency but far less tenderness than the goddess of the stream. Beyond the thick water lay a settlement, and the word that formed in his mind was city though cities were only a rumor to him. It was a vast thing, this city, unimaginably huge, a white hive of blocky white buildings given scale only by their myriad, antlike inhabitants.

The water swirled before him, and a girl arose. A girl, perhaps ten or twelve years old. Her dark skin, black hair, and tiny angular face bore no resemblance to his Anishu love, but she seemed to know him, to beckon for him. To whisper a name that was his own despite the fact that he did not recognize its sound. He shuddered, his feet shuffling toward her with a will of their own. Rather, the River moved them, pulling him toward the child. A panic seized Perkar, dream-panic that overwhelmed everything else, drove like a dagger between sleeping and waking, tore a rent in the wall of dream that he fell through, to lie blinking and groaning on his blanket.

"Never have I had such a dream," Perkar told Eruka. The two of them were trudging along an animal track at the top of a ridge, hoping to run across game—the expedition's supply of meat was running low, and the Kapaka had ordered a halt for hunting.

"The city you describe—I scarcely believe that such a place exists."

Perkar shrugged. "It was a dream."

"But sometimes dreams have great potency, particularly if you dream of something you have never seen. I once dreamed of my father, niece, granduncle, and a bull, all naked save for hats, dancing in a circle and singing. I think a dream of that sort means little—tiny sprites turning things already in your head inside-out. But the Great Songs speak of dreams in which heroes see unknown lands, unforged swords—those things they don't already know. Dreams like that must come from more powerful gods."

"Your niece—how did she look, naked?"

Eruka shouldered him good-naturedly. "My niece is more a woman than the waif in your dream city of stone towers and white streets. Much more. I can scarce reach my arms around her waist."

Perkar grinned, but the dream image came back to him: a black-haired slip of a girl with huge eyes and skin as dusky as a Mang's. Certainly he had never seen her.

"Sst." Eruka motioned silence. "There is a deer!"

Perkar bobbed his head a bit, trying to see what Eruka saw. Indeed, there it was, a buck with spreading antlers.

Eruka motioned to their left and began padding that way, drawing an arrow from the ornate quiver at his side. Perkar nodded and drew his own shaft, fitted it to the sinew cord on his own bow.

Sapling, I

Bending in the hardest wind

Came along a Human man

His name was Raka

Sapling, said he

I know what you might be…

He whispered the little song the bow maker taught him under his breath; surely it would make his arrow fly more true.

The buck snapped up its head and began to run. Gasping, Perkar pulled back on the string, let the arrow fly. The shaft cut air and a few leaves—the buck was no longer to be seen.

A few moments later Eruka rejoined him, scowling. "I thought you had hunted before."

"I have," Perkar answered defensively. "But on horseback, with hounds running the beasts. With a spear, not a bow. And I've hunted mostly boar, not deer."

"Me, too," Eruka said, grinning sheepishly. "I thought it would be no harder on foot."

Perkar snorted. "We were lucky to even see that animal, I think. I doubt we will see another."

"If only I was a great heroic singer, like Iru Antu." Eruka sighed. "The kind of singer who can change the songs of things, make spirits obey his will. I could simply summon us a deer, have it stand still while we slew it."

"The other night you boasted of just such an ability," Perkar reminded him.

Eruka grinned back at that. "Woti talks for me, sometimes. I can do a few songs like that—a very few. But you have to know the ins and outs of the original song before you can change it, and I know none about deer."

"Rabbits? Elk?"

"None of those," Eruka allowed.

Perkar nodded glumly. "We go back empty-handed, then."

"So we do," Eruka agreed.

* * *

They were not the only ones empty-handed; Apad had had no success, either. Ngangata and Atti, however, had a fine buck hung up by its rear legs, skinning it. Atti was already offering blood to the local forest god and to the Lord of Deer, as well.

"Well shot," Eruka told Atti.

Atti shrugged. "Ngangata killed him; I was just there to drag him back."

"Just the same," Perkar said, "I'm glad somebody brought fresh meat back. Another day of bread…"

"How much more of this, anyway?" Apad asked, gesturing at the forest around them. "It's been six days since we left the last damakuta behind."

"And tomorrow it shall be seven," Atti replied. "And the day after, eight. This is no jaunt up to your summer pasture, Apad."

"I know that," Apad said testily. "I just want to know how much longer."

Atti glanced at Ngangata. The half Alwa turned steady eyes on Apad. "Another eight or nine days, depending upon the weather," he said.

"How long before we enter the territory of your kin?" Apad inquired, unable to resist a faint sneer on the word "kin."

"The Alwat don't count me as kin any more than you do," Ngangata retorted. "And we've been in their territory for five days now."

"Five days? Where are they?"

Ngangata shrugged. "If any are around here, they are avoiding us. The only signs I've seen have been many days old."

"Signs? What signs?"

"Footprints. Tools, a few shelters."

Apad frowned. "I've seen none of that."

Ngangata shrugged noncommittally, emphasizing his relative lack of neck. "I suppose you haven't."

"What does that mean?" snapped Apad.

"I just repeated what you said," Ngangata rejoined softly.

Apad scowled. He stalked over to the bloody deer carcass, examined it with his fists resting on his hips. "You probably talk to them while we are asleep, don't you? Did they kill this deer for you?"

Ngangata stopped skinning, looked down at his own feet for a moment. Then he walked over to his bundle of things, picked up his bowstave, and strung it.

"What will you do with that?" Apad asked. "That isn't a man's weapon." Perkar saw that his friend was trying to affect an easy, haughty attitude; but he also saw that his muscles were tight, corded—Apad was tense, worried, ready to reach for his sword or dash aside. He was afraid of the halfling. And why not? A warrior would not shoot another over an insult—challenge him to combat perhaps, but not simply murder him. But who could tell what this kinless creature might do?

"It isn't a warrior's weapon," Ngangata agreed. "I am not a warrior." With that, he snapped a black-feathered shaft onto his string; for him, the motion seemed as easy as stretching at daybreak. The bow bent and sang; the little man's body somehow bent, too, bow and arm and back together. Perkar wasn't sure exactly how it was so graceful—and certainly he could not do it himself.

Down came the arrow, a bird impaled upon it.

"If you are worried about where the deer came from," Ngangata told Apad, "there is your meat."

The Kapaka, sitting at some distance from the rest of the group, chose that moment to come and join them. He clapped Apad on the shoulder.

"Best we have a fire to roast this on, eh, Apad?" he said.

Apad stood a bit longer—to give the impression of reluctance, Perkar thought—and then left to gather wood. After a moment, Perkar followed to join him.

We all fear Ngangata, he mused. We don't like him because we are afraid of him, afraid of what he might do. He remembered a favorite saying of his father's:

There is little real hatred in the world

Only Fear prancing in a man's clothes

The next day they left the rich lowlands behind, began ascending the hills. Ngangata led them through winding valleys, thick with laurel and hickory and, finally, higher up, white birch. The ways became steeper and steeper, but Perkar remained amazed that they made any progress at all, without trails and in such rugged country. The land pleased him, despite its wildness; he imagined how it would look in pasture, how well suited the ridge there on the right would be for a damakuta and its outbuildings. Oh, it would be far and far from his father's lands, but it would be his. It would be far from her, too, and that thought hung about him, a clinging mist of melancholy. He considered, once again, that perhaps it would be better, after all, to marry Bakume's daughter, if only so he could remain close to the goddess.

But no, he knew better than that. He could not have her. The best he could do was to give her a gift, a gift that she would remember in a thousand years, when he himself was the ash of a memory. His heart tightened on the thought of that gift, squeezing out other dreams, damakutat and pasture. Around him, the land lost its promise and luster, became merely trees and bushes.

His reverie was interrupted when the party halted. Knowing that he had missed something, Perkar glanced around him, searching for the cause of their delay. Nightfall was still some time away, and he saw no stream where they could water the horses.

"Who built this?" the Kapaka wondered, and it was then that the forest around Perkar came back into focus, reasserting its presence in his mind, if not his heart.

Near them stood the ruins of a damakuta. Perkar had ridden straight past the remaining timbers of its stockade, mistaking them for dead trees. The building itself had not been lived in for many years; the cedar shingles were nearly all gone, leaving the skeleton of the roof to bleach and wither in the sun and rain. The walls were collapsed, too, here and there, but whoever had built it had laid a firm foundation, for the frame still stood. The beams were entire trees, stripped of bark.

Inside, ferns and moss ran riot. The six dismounted and walked carefully through the ruin, searching for any sign of its inhabitants. Eruka began a little song to frighten off ghosts.

"What happened to them, do you think?" Apad asked of no one in particular, running his palm up the shaft of a support pillar.

"This wasn't their place, that's what happened," Ngangata answered. "They took from the Forest Lord without asking."

"How do you know that?" Eruka asked, interrupting his own song.

Ngangata shot the young man a clearly puzzled look. "Have you seen other damakutat? The Forest Lord has never granted Human Beings land this far into the forest. This is Alwat territory. The land is for them."

"To what end?" Apad growled. "I see no pasture, no fields, no fine houses. To what end do the Alwat use this land?"

Ngangata shook his head as if at a child. "That is no concern of ours. The Forest Lord does what he will with his land, gives it to whom he wishes."

Perkar frowned. "My great-grandfather bargained with a local god—not the Forest Lord. Perhaps these people did the same."

"Then where are they?" Atti asked, sweeping his hands around.

"They might have built elsewhere," Perkar suggested.

Atti shrugged. "Might. Might and a stone is just a stone."

"This once I agree with the half man," Eruka muttered. "This is no concern of ours. Let us be gone before the ghosts of these people waken."

The Kapaka was more stubborn than that, but not much. "We'll leave a cup of woti for the ghosts of men, burn incense for the women. This is the least we can do, for whoever they were."

Perkar helped the others make the preparations hurriedly, kindling a small fire to provide coals for the incense and to warm the woti so that it could be smelled by the ghosts. Eruka sang the "Thanking Ghost Song," but even his fine voice could not hide his worry—indeed, he fairly flew through the last seven stanzas. Much too quickly really. It was well past midday when they mounted back up. Atti was the last on his horse; he dug through the packs on his second animal and brought forth a chain-mail shirt.

"Why that?" Apad asked. "Afraid of the ghosts?"

"Not the ghosts," Atti said. "Just a feeling."

A little chill ran up Perkar's spine, and after a moment's hesitation, he shifted his weight into his left stirrup, preparing to dismount and don his own armor. A frown from Apad stopped him, though. It was as if the other man had simply said, "Show the hill man that you aren't afraid." And so he stayed in his saddle. But he made sure that his sword was within easy gripping reach; he tied it across his saddle horn, where it had been for the first week of their journey, when Perkar still entertained some notion that he might need it. Now he entertained that notion again.

The damakuta was still in sight, but just barely so, when Eruka whispered, "See? See there?" Perkar stood in the stirrups and looked back the way they had come. A little curl of smoke from the incense was still visible; it would go out soon. And there, near it, crouched four figures, or shadows of figures. Eruka, between Perkar and the apparitions, had his eyes shut now, was reciting something low and quick. Perkar nudged Mang into a trot.

"Hsst," the Kapaka said. "No. It would be rude to flee from them. Ride slowly, don't look back. They will not follow."

Nevertheless, as the shadows grew longer and deeper, Perkar felt uncomfortable about his back. His spine seemed to believe that it was turned toward something dangerous, something darker than the shadows and more sinister than ghosts. Perhaps the apparitions were not ghosts at all but tiskawal, perpetually starving spirits who hungered after Human spirit and blood. He didn't voice his fears, for they seemed silly. He had seen more than a few ghosts in his life, and those back at the abandoned damakuta had looked and behaved normally enough.

Mang and the other horses shared his disquiet, though, nickering and stamping, rolling their heads about. Ngangata and Atti seemed even more watchful than usual, their necks craning, gazing up into the trees and down to the steadily thickening underbrush.

"Someone cleared this once," the Kapaka observed of the dense growth. "See how there are no large trees, how closely the saplings grow? This was once pasture."

Ngangata agreed. "It will likely get thicker. We should circle around this; they can't have cleared much."

"Too much. Far, far too much." Apad's voice sounded sharp and accusing. "They cleared and they burned. They killed my children and they never asked me if they could."

Perkar actually chuckled. Apad had pitched his voice so solemnly, so seriously, and yet the sentiments were not his at all. He was clearly mocking Ngangata's earlier remarks, speaking singsong, the way gods were supposed to, sometimes…

Perkar turned then and glimpsed the awful thing that spoke: a dark, hideous head perched atop a body something like a cat's, but much like a man's as well.

The real Apad gaped for an instant, then cursed and shrieked simultaneously. His horse reared and screamed horribly, as if imitating his master. The panicking roan crashed into Mang, smashing into Perkar's right leg. Pain lanced up through his thigh, and then Mang reared, dumping him beneath the roan's furiously pawing hooves. The ground came as a shock, like the slap in the face the goddess had given him before he left. His lungs sucked tight, and he could not draw air for a long, painful moment. He had barely the presence of mind to fold his arms around his head, seeking some protection against the iron-shod hooves.

Fortunately, for him, Apad brought himself and his beast into some semblance of control, and so Mang calmed in turn, despite the thing facing them, the thing that had spoken in Apad's voice. Gasping and moaning, Perkar struggled to a crouch.

His companions had all dismounted; their horses would not stand still enough to sit upon. Eruka and Apad brandished swords and Atti gripped his long-handled axe. The Kapaka had no weapon drawn, but his hand rested firmly on the hilt of his sword. Ngangata was just looping his bowstring into place.

"Steel," Apad's voice came from a rippling slit in a head like a black, rotten pumpkin. "You've come back. I just blink—take the merest nap—and there you are again, with your steel." The head seemed to grin; its eyes were knobs of deeper black, with no whites, pupils, or lids. Its teeth, Perkar thought, were much like a cat's and so indeed was its body; the monster squatted on a lion's rear legs, for certain. But the forearms, oddly thin for such a massive creature, looked very Human. Or Alwat. It was still, moving nothing but its mouth.

Eruka stammered at the god. "A-Aniru," he began. "We have not met you before. We don't know your song, or how to honor you. If you could te… teach us…" He trailed off as the thing cocked its head speculatively at him.

Perkar felt his shock-induced calm begin to vanish; he was close to shaking, closer still to running as fast as he could. He knew of gods—they were all around, in each tree and stone—but all of the ones he had ever known were tame, and the only one he had ever seen, in manifest form, was her. This was a Wild God, and Perkar knew nothing of them. Or rather, he knew only one thing: that he feared them.

"If you dislike our steel, come no closer," Apad warned, but his words rang flat and unbelievable.

"Aniru," the Kapaka said. "We had no wish to trespass nor to do damage in your domain. We only pass along here, going to the home of the Forest Lord in the mountain. We have business with him."

The head quivered. It spoke, this time in Ngangata's voice. "I know of no Forest Lord. I know only of your kind, what you bring with you, steel. Now I think I will eat you, shit your steel out with your bones. Your ghosts may go on to see this 'Forest Lord.' "

The Kapaka reluctantly drew his sword, as well. "We mean no harm here."

"Like you meant no harm when you cut down my trees and built your wooden cave? Yes, I know what you mean by that."

"That wasn't us," Eruka complained. "Ngangata, speak to it!"

The halfling had an arrow nocked. "It is a mad god," he said. "Wild and mad. What would you have me say?"

"Tell it we are leaving here."

Strange words trickled from Ngangata's lips, weird short syllables, strangely songlike.

"I thought you had a different scent," the god remarked, when Ngangata was done. "Your kind respect me. You may go, if you wish."

The god leapt at them, springing from its haunches without warning. Perkar scrambled wildly to his feet, seeking Mang and his sword.

The Wild God reached Atti first, and one of Ngangata's arrows already stood in an opaque eye. Atti met the monster with a downstroke; his axe thudded into the bunching sinews between neck and shoulder. Then Atti went down beneath the thing's weight. Perkar reached Mang, who was rearing again. He had to take his eyes off the battle for an instant, long enough to grab the hilt of his sword and pull out the long, sweet blade. From the corner of his eye, Perkar saw Ngangata calmly launching another shaft. Eruka stood as if frozen.

When Perkar turned again, the god was in midleap, poised above Apad. Apad shrieked and stabbed, shielding his face with his left arm. The blade seemed to go in, but it made little difference to the black apparition, which scrambled on past him toward the Kapaka. Miraculously, before it could reach him, it staggered, an arrow impaling the roof of its mouth and exiting between its eyes. The Kapaka stepped sharply back, then hammered his sword down, cut into the melonlike head.

Perkar was surprised to find himself in motion, screaming, sword raised. A long, dark, Human-fingered hand darted at him, and he brought his sword down from his shoulder, crossing his chest with the blade. The steel met the black limb near the wrist; it was like chopping into a stone, and the hilt rang in his hand, numbing it. The Kapaka stepped in again, and again, his heavy sword carving slivers of god-flesh from the monster's neck and head. Behind, Atti struggled to his feet, chest smeared with red blood. Perkar recovered and stroked his sword onto the squirming backbone. Then Atti was there, axe descending in a blow better designed to split wood than for combat. It hewed into a rear leg and severed it.

Perkar would never hear another sound like that; he would later call it a howl, knowing that such was no description for a noise that burrowed all the way into his bones. The god flipped back toward Atti, who had fallen along with his axe. Still screaming, it thrashed about on the ground.

"Up!" Ngangata yelled, still loosing arrows. "Up and ride! We cannot kill it, we can only flee."

The Kapaka seemed to know the truth of that; he was already gripping his saddle, preparing to mount. Atti struggled to his feet again, leaving a snail-trail of blood on the leaves behind him. Eruka stood, blank-eyed, until Perkar grabbed him by the arm and shoved him toward his horse. Then he was scrambling onto Mang. Apad was already mounted. Ngangata stayed a moment longer than they, placing three more arrows in the god—Perkar saw shafts protruding neatly from each eye. Then they were all fleeing on the thunder of horses' hooves. Perkar leaned onto Mang's neck, urging the animal faster.

"He was sleepy," Ngangata howled, from behind them. "Sleepy and slow. But he is awake now!"

"The other horses! Our packs!" Apad yelled back.

"No!" the Kapaka returned. "I forbid it. Leave them!"

Leaves and branches lashed at them, as if by their own will. The six riders fought their way over one ridge, then a second. When would they leave this god's territory and enter another? Apad's words were finally penetrating. Kutasapal was still back there, back with that black monster. Perkar very nearly wheeled Mang around then. He only truly owned three things: his sword, Mang, and Kutasapal. If he left Kutasapal, he owned only two. And he had discovered something in himself, something he never knew he had. When his sword struck the god for the first time, when it reached for him—all of his hesitation, his fear had dwindled, replaced by something… large. Something like anger or fury but colder, harsher. Brighter. His desire had been to hit the god again and again, until it died or his sword broke. Now… why hadn't he?

Because if he died now, he could never kill the god he really wanted to kill. But now he knew. A god could be killed, and he could kill it, with the right weapon.

So they rode on, and night fell, and still they rode, for the moon was full. Perkar's hand tingled, and it felt good. He had struck a Wild God and lived. What could he not do?

Not much later, Atti fell from his saddle. Perkar had tucked away the memory of the blood he had seen, preferring not to think about it. But now he was nearest the flame-haired man, and he dismounted. Atti was already trying to regain his feet.

"Just wait a moment," Perkar told him. "Let us look at that."

"Get him back on his horse," Eruka called. "That thing might still be coming."

The Kapaka and Ngangata trotted their horses so that they stood between Perkar and Atti and the way that they had come.

"See to him," the Kapaka said. After an instant, Apad also moved up to join them.

"Some god was protecting you," Perkar told Atti. "Telling you to put on your mail." The tough steel links had torn in the Wild God's claws; three rips ran for the length of a forearm from ster-num to crotch. The claws had dug deeper, and there was much bleeding, but so far as Perkar could tell, none of his organs were laid open to the air.

Atti swore copiously as Perkar got his mail and padded undershirt off of him.

"I have some long strips of colored linen here," the Kapaka said. "I brought it as a gift for the Forest Lord."

"Leave it then," Atti said.

"I have other gifts, still with me," the Kapaka replied. Perkar unpacked the linen and cut several lengths of it. Again to the sound of Atti's profanity, Perkar wrapped the cloth tightly about the hill man's chest and torso. Blood soaked it instantly, but even before the wrapping, Atti's blood had nearly ceased flowing of its own accord.

When Perkar was satisfied, he helped Atti back on his horse, handed him up a waterskin. Atti drank greedily.

"I think we need to go, if we can," the Kapaka said. Back behind them, the limbs of trees were beginning to wave to and fro. There was no wind.

"I can ride," Atti said. "I became dizzy for a moment only."

"This way," Ngangata said, spurring back to the front. He seemed to be examining something on the trees; Perkar thought, in the pale moonlight, that he saw marks there, tattoos on the trunks of the birches.

"There," Ngangata whispered. "See the firelight?" The moon had set, and that had slowed them down considerably. Now Perkar saw the faint, pale flower of illumination Ngangata referred to. Left to himself, Perkar would never have seen it; fatigue sat on his forehead, pushing on his eyelids, gently, insistently. The Wild God seemed far away, a dream.

"Who can it be?" Eruka wondered. "I hope they have some woti."

"They do not," Ngangata replied.

They wound through the last few trees. There, in the flicker of the light, Perkar saw his first true Alwa.

Ngangata had seemed so strange to him when they met, but suddenly Perkar thought him very Human, compared to the Alwat. Five of them clustered near the fire, standing as upright as any human. They were slender-hipped and broad-shouldered, thickly muscled. Their arms and legs seemed almost normal, but their bodies were not quite right, too wedge-shaped. A fine, silvery hair lay over their pale skins. It was in their heads that they were most strange, however. Their faces were flat and broad, bones as coarse as stone showing through them. They possessed neither foreheads nor chins; above their thick eyebrows their skulls were plainly flat; thick white hair was pulled back into buns. Massive but receding lower jaws blended into thick necks. It was in their eyes that he saw the most strangeness; like deep pools of water, they were murky, unreadable. They glimmered and quickened, darted or remained fixed, but in ways that seemed all wrong, that hinted at odd thoughts that Perkar could not understand.

Ngangata said something to them, the same clucking language he had spoken to the Wild God. One of the Alwat clucked back at him. The others stood stock-still. Their mouths were huge; Perkar was further reminded of the Wild God. What was it the Stream Goddess had once told him? That many gods took their forms from Human breath and blood? If so, perhaps in Alwat lands the gods took of Alwat blood for their forms.

"What are they saying?" Apad asked irritably.

"They say that the god will not follow us here. They say that this is the place of another god, Hanazalhakabizn. Hanazalhakabizn and V'fanaqrtinizd are old enemies."

"Banakartenis?" the Kapaka asked, trying to imitate the alien name. "Who?"

"V'fanaqrtinizd. The Wild God we just fought."

"But he will not follow us here. What about the local one—Hana-whatever ?"

Ngangata and the Alwat conversed a moment; two of the others added something; Perkar realized with a start that one of them was female; though shaped much like the men, she was a bit smaller and had very obvious breasts. He was surprised he had not noticed earlier.

Ngangata listened and then relayed what he had been told.

"Human people are allowed to pass through on their way to the Forest Lord, but not to build or cut. V'fanaqrtinizd was driven insane by Human Beings who injured him and killed his trees. They say the sound of the trees dying drove him insane."

Perkar was just realizing something else; that beyond the fire there was a building of some sort. A number of limber saplings had been planted and bent and tied together to form a sort of longhouse—a rude and tiny imitation of a damakuta. It was covered in bark and mats woven of some material. The Alwat were house-builders. Strange that he had never heard that.

The Alwat seemed to be through talking. They all squatted down, resting comfortably on their haunches. One of them—the female, actually—waddled a few feet from the fire and, as Perkar watched, commenced to shit.

"What disgusting creatures," Eruka commented.

Ngangata regarded them darkly. "Yes. They have agreed to let us stay near here. Tomorrow they will guide us on toward the Forest Lord."

"What did you have to promise them for that?" Apad asked caustically. "Our heads?"

Ngangata shook his head. "No. They think Human Beings amusing. They like to tell stories about them. If they travel with us, they will have many stories to tell."

"And you? Do you tell them stories about us?"

"I do."

"I thought as much."

Ngangata ignored that. "They say we may make camp on the ridge above this place," he said. "They said we may take a small branch of their fire if we wish."

"Thank them for me," the Kapaka said.

"They have no such word," Ngangata told him. "I can tell them 'It is enough' or 'You can share our camp, too.' "

"Tell them it is enough, then."

Perkar was glad that they were sleeping at some distance from the Alwat camp, though he had no illusions about being safe from them, should they decide to attack. It was just good to be out of their sight, out of that strange regard, the kind a child or a very old man might hold upon you. As he closed his eyes, he wondered what an Alwa might dream about, if dream they did. He might ask Ngangata, who must surely have dreams of both kinds, Human and Alwat.

INTERLUDE

In the Court of Black Willows

She'lu Yehd Cha'dune, Chakunge, Lord of Nhol, emperor of five domains and the desert hinterland, stared at Nyas—his vizier—with drooping eyes. The deep orange light slanting in through the chamber's high, narrow windows identified the hour as late, nearing sundown. He had been transacting the business of Empire since it had lanced through from the other side of the room at a similar angle. Soon, hopefully, he could snatch a moment of rest, some food in private. He need only focus his attention for a bit longer on the items of the day. Hard to do sometimes, when so many of them were so boring. For instance, Nyas was just finishing a tabulation of tribute received from the sixteen quarters of the down-River port of Wun Yang. She'lu hoped the next matter—whatever it was—would be a bit more interesting.

"Next, my lord, I have a somewhat personal item, a possibly distasteful matter." Nyas peered around his nearly round nose with wide-set eyes, awaiting She'lu's leave to continue.

"Go on," She'lu said, his attention fully focused again.

"It concerns your daughter Hezhi."

"It isn't another complaint from the librarian, is it, Nyas? I thought we had settled that matter." He picked at his robe, frowning.

"Perhaps so, my lord. That is not what I must speak to you about."

"Good." She'lu frowned as Nyas actually looked around him—as if every person within earshot had not been Forbidden to speak anything they heard. As if anyone he did not know about could approach this throne. This must be a delicate matter indeed.

"You remember the incident in the Hall of Moments, just outside of the Leng Court."

"Of course. Three of my elite guardsmen and a priest were killed before they banished the thing. Apparently the priesthood has become complacent—more intent on playing politics than keeping dangerous ghosts out of the Hall of Moments." He aimed this remark, with a flash of his eyes, not at Nyas, but at the pale, pudgy man who occupied a lower seat to his right. The man—today's representative from the priesthood, one De Yehd Shen—colored visibly but did not respond verbally. Not here, anyway, and not without the support of a more eminent priest.

Nyas, of course, caught the exchange, and so shook his head. "Our records show that the hall was swept the day before, in preparation for court, and was being swept again when the attack occurred. It is hard to find any fault…"

"Something was not done right. I still feel the track of the damned thing whenever I walk there. It was strong, more demon than ghost. Almost like something summoned. But I did not summon it."

"Perhaps it slipped through or awoke when you called the Riverghosts," the priest suggested, his little-boy voice clear and piping.

"I would have felt that," She'lu retorted, narrowing his eyes. "Do you think I have no more sense or control than to summon such a thing?"

"Perhaps if some other person took advantage of your summoning, however…"

"Stop," She'lu snapped. "Darken your mouth! I've been through this, and with members of the priesthood far more competent and knowledgeable than you. I don't wish to discuss this further. And what does this have to do with my daughter?" he demanded, suddenly realizing, to his chagrin, that he was somehow missing the point.

"Your daughter," Nyas said, "was seen in the Hall of Moments with her bodyguard at the time of the creature's appearance and attack." He looked meaningfully at She'lu.

The emperor glared back at him. "And?" he asked.

Nyas sighed. "If you remember, Lord, Hezhi is nearly of age— some twelve years old."

"Oh? Oh."

"Indeed. It may be a coincidence, but it could be something more."

"Is my daughter being watched?" he asked. Was the priest actually hiding a smirk? She'lu trembled with the sudden exertion of not striking the simpering fool down. The urge to reach out, slap his soul a bit, was overwhelming. He was emperor, he reminded himself, because he could resist such temptations. His brother, after all, had been born with more power—but no self-control at all.

"She has been watched diffidently, my lord. There has been no formal assignation to her."

"I suppose we should make one then, just in case, though I find it inconceivable that my daughter…"

"Even you are not completely apprised of the River's will," his vizier reminded him.

"Yes, yes. Assign someone to watch her, then."

"My lord," the priest chirped. "That is the business of the priesthood."

"I suppose it is," She'lu grudgingly admitted.

"If you will permit me, I will bring this to the attention of the order."

She'lu drummed his fingers on the arm of his throne, looked tiredly around the chamber. The black columns that supported the roof and gave the court its name seemed to mock him, somehow. Like the priest; nothing he could overtly do anything about. Yet. "Very well," he said at last. "But I want to know who it is."

"I suspect I know who will be assigned, my lord, if you will permit me."

"Go on."

"A new Jik has recently been initiated. He shows enormous potential. He will be very discreet."

"Why a Jik?" She'lu asked irritably. "I see no reason for an assassin to watch my daughter."

"Please, my lord. The Jik are not assassins. They are priests."

"Yes. The sort of priests who assassinate people."

De darkened again. "It is common practice, my lord, when the child is a direct descendant of the Chakunge. You yourself were certainly watched over by a Jik."

She'lu aimed a smoky stare at his vizier. "Is this true, Nyas? You were my father's vizier."