The Blackgod

by Greg Keyes

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

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

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

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

  Hezhi looked up into the Giant’s puzzled face.

  “The fight? Didn’t you see?”

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

  “Truly?”

  “Princess, that’s all that happened.”

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

  “Well? Is he better?”

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

  “Thanks to you.”

  “Thank the Horse Goddess, or yourself.”

  “You slew it.”

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

  “You drew it through the drum.”

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

  “Are all gods thus?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Yuu’han chose that moment to interrupt.

  “Out on the plain,” he said. “Look.”

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

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

  “Perhaps it is someone else.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What? What is it?” Hezhi asked.

  “See there?” Ngangata pointed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  XX

  Dragons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “As do you, Lord Yen.”

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

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

  “Your husband is the captain, madam.”

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

  “Speak, Lady?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Bone Eel does not know?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “May I touch your flesh?”

  “What?”

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

  “Why?”

  “I want to see if it is cold.”

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

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

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

  She did not flinch from him. “Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Why is that?”

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

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

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

  “They have ways.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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