by Greg Keyes
“Tomorrow I will hunt for us, or fish perhaps,” Perkar told him. “When you can walk, we will strike off down-River.”
“If you are hunting, we will certainly starve,” Ngangata replied, but he smiled a bit.
“An insult!” Perkar returned, with a forced playfulness no more real than the love of a corpse. “Now we shall have to fight again.” He tried to grin.
“This time I will kill you,” Ngangata replied, in kind.
His smile was cruelly painful, and so Perkar relinquished it. “You were the best of us, Ngangata. We shall never fight again.” He reached over and grasped the other man’s hand. Ngangata returned the grip; it was still surprisingly strong. The strength seemed to leak out of it, though, and the pale man sank back onto his rough pallet of reeds, eyes closing gently. Perkar’s heart caught in his throat.
“Ngangata!” he cried, reaching for the man’s neck to seek his pulse.
“Let me sleep,” Ngangata whispered. “I need some sleep.”
Perkar sat with him, occasionally touching the body to make sure it was still warm. “I want you to live,” he told the sleeping man.
The gorge walls kept the sun from waking Perkar until late morning. He rubbed his eyes and wondered where he was. The swiftly flowing River reminded him, and he turned anxiously to Ngangata. His companion was still asleep, but a brief touch was enough to assure him that Ngangata was still alive. He rose and stretched in the sunlight, feeling better than he had in some time. Surprisingly, his sleep had been untroubled by dreams. Perhaps the Changeling ate those, too.
Waking was more painful; the Changeling apparently feasted neither on memory nor on guilt.
He set about trying to make good on his promise to find food. He was ravenous, and yet the hunger was pleasing, as if he were a shell filled only with air and light.
He fashioned a gig with his boot-knife and the slender branch of a willow, lashing the knife on with a length of leather lace. Crouched by the River, he waited for a fish to come by. He waited a long time before he saw something moving along, something broad and fish-shaped. He set his mouth in anticipation, and when the creature swam beneath his spear, he stabbed downward with it, felt the point plunge into flesh. With a flourish and a cry, he heaved the fish up onto the bank, where it flopped about wildly.
It was a strange fish, the like of which he had never seen, plated with armor. Still, it would certainly be edible … Perkar watched in shocked wonder as the fish suddenly collapsed in upon itself, became a stream of water, and flowed back into the River. A tingle ran up the nape of his neck as he fully recalled where he was. This was the Changeling, and nothing was what it seemed here, where water could dream of being a fish.
He speared five of the ghost fish before finally skewering one that fell out on the bank and stayed there. Unlike the others—which had all been unfamiliar in appearance—this was a trout, and a large one. Disquieted by the new revelation regarding the River, but still happy to have caught something to eat, he stirred up their small fire, added a few branches to it, and gutted the fish. He was just propping their soon-to-be meal above the flames when something on the River caught his peripheral vision.
There was a boat coming downstream. Perkar blinked at it for a moment and then, with a wild cry, plunged into the water. In an instant he was over his head, and he thanked the Stream Goddess that he had learned to swim as a child. Stroking frantically, he strained to intercept the craft before it whisked past him. He needn’t have worried; the boat nudged into him, as if by a will of its own. Throwing his arms up over the sides, he pulled himself in.
It was a fine craft, shallow draft, a dugout that must have been hewn from an outrageously large tree, so broad and steady it was. Perkar scrambled back to the tiller, took hold of it, and pointed the bow toward shore. The boat responded as if it were being paddled, actually cutting a wave across the current as it glided sedately to the rocky beach. Perkar remembered Karak’s parting words, his promise of a last gift. This was certainly it. Perkar doubted that god-made boats were often found wandering masterless, even on the Changeling.
He secured the boat as best he could to one of the few willows on the shore, then walked back upstream. He found Ngangata awake—probably roused by his frantic cries—and tending the fish.
“I take back what I said,” Ngangata confessed. “You have caught two fish today.”
Perkar smiled weakly, indicating the boat. “A gift from the Crow God, I think.”
“From the Raven,” Ngangata corrected. “The Crow God gives nothing away.”
“There are two of them? Two Karakal?”
Ngangata snorted. “No.”
Perkar thought he understood, but he was weary of gods, sick to death of them, and did not feel like perfecting his knowledge of them any more.
“Are the walls of the canyon lower farther down?”
“Lower and more sloped, perhaps a day or so downstream,” Ngangata acknowledged. “There will be rapids between here and there.”
“Should we wait until you are stronger?”
Ngangata shook his head. “We should go now. If the Raven knows we are here, the Crow does, as well, and one can never be sure where which Karak will be at any moment. Better to leave Balat behind.”
“I agree with that,” Perkar conceded. “We’ll eat, and then we’ll go.”
As it turned out, it was nearly dark before they set out; Ngangata’s dressing needed changing; Perkar went back upstream to salvage the leather from the harness and saddle of the dead horse. Ngangata claimed that it would be many days before they reached any Human settlements, and they would needy everything they could carry with them. Perkar wished desperately that he had taken more from Mang, but his own pack was all he had; there were some useful things in it: sinew, whetstone, a fire-making kit, but no food. Perkar wondered aloud what would happen to them if they had to drink River water. Ngangata pointed out that they could drink from streams that fed the Changeling, for they would be innocent of weirdness until they joined him.
Like the goddess, Perkar thought.
When they did put out into the River, Perkar felt a return of his earlier depression. Ngangata, exhausted by even a little labor, fell asleep quickly, leaving him alone with the slowly appearing stars, with the lapping of water at the bow. The lapping of his enemy. It was a quiet moment, even within him. The terrible raging of his mind was calmer, replaced by melancholy, by reflection. It occurred to Perkar that he had ruined the Kapaka’s expedition and gotten everyone but Ngangata killed so that he could reach this River and challenge it. Now that he was here, probably less than a day from the Changeling’s source, he was timidly fleeing it. If it weren’t for Ngangata …
Then what? Perhaps better to perish at least attempting that for which he had sacrificed so much than to return with the shame that would follow him home. He had killed his king and perhaps ruined his people. His only hope was to die well, like Apad and Eruka.
But he would not have Ngangata killed, not him, too. No one else should suffer for his destiny. Idly, Perkar drew his sword, laid it across his knees.
“Can you see the Changeling’s heartstrings?” he asked it.
“They are faint, far upstream. I can see them.”
“Are they many?”
“Seven times seven,” the sword replied.
“But he sleeps. How many could I sever before he awakens?”
“Many, perhaps. Not enough.”
Perkar knit his brows in frustration. Would he ever be this close again? How often did the River sleep, present this opportunity? He brooded, and in the next few moments, a plan came to him. He would take Ngangata to the first Human settlement, see that he was cared for, and then come back, if he could. The boat was magical, steering itself, cutting easily across even this swift current. Would it sail upstream?
Perkar felt a bit of elation. He could test that now. He would not go far upstream; but if it could be done, then he would not feel so helpless, so cowardly. He would
know that return was possible.
Checking to make certain that he would not run them aground, Perkar pulled the tiller half and then all the way around. The boat responded instantly, turning on the rushing water as if it were a placid lake. In no time, their prow was aimed upstream, back at the mountain, the heart of Balati. Not only pointed that way, but moving upstream. Perkar tightened his grip on the tiller, jubilant. He would take Ngangata on down-River and then come back, to die perhaps, but at least to have an ending. Triumphant, he let the boat keep its nose for just a bit longer.
The craft suddenly shuddered, the tiller wrenched from his hand. A wave from nowhere slapped the prow, and then, as if the wave were a great hand, turned the boat about and bore them back downstream. Perkar yanked at the tiller, but it was like straining upon a rod of steel forged to steel; it would not move in his grip at all. Around them, the River was abruptly different, somehow. It took him a moment to place the difference, but soon he understood it. The moonlight, formerly broken by the River into a million softly glowing shards, was gone from the water. The stream flowed as dark and silent as a night without any light at all. But above them, in the sky, the Pale Queen was glorious still, almost full.
“Well,” the voice in his ear remarked. “Now he is awake.”
XII
The Blessed
The Grand Chamber, she knew, was at the locus of four great halls. The ground plan of the original palace was a series of rectangles, one within the other. This court was the center of that concentricity. She could see that all of the halls were intact—not filled in here. They were, however, sealed by huge iron grates. The dais was built in the corner of the room, reflecting a First-Dynasty preference for angles as focal points. The corner was considered the most prominent part of a rectangle. The halls were thus in the midpoints of the long walls. To reach most of them she would have to swim—something she had learned a bit about but which she wished to avoid—or wade, perhaps, if she was lucky and the water not as deep as it appeared. The gate immediately to the right of the dais, however, could be reached more easily; a dark bar of debris butted up against the wall and stretched nearly to the hall itself. After a moment, Hezhi chose this path. She might have to swim once she reached the hall, but the longer she could put that off the better; she doubted that she could stay afloat and keep the lamp lit at the same time.
Stepping down toward the debris, she slipped on the alabaster steps, flailed with one arm wildly to keep from falling or dropping the lamp. One of her feet sank into the water at the foot of the dais. Pain erupted instantly, like flame lapping straight up her leg, into her belly, flaring toward her head. Choking off a little cry, she jerked her foot out; her vision blurred and swam, and she quickly sat down on the stepped dais for fear that she would collapse if she didn’t. She reached down to stroke her foot, but already the strange sensation was fading. Though more intense and brief, she recognized the sensations, the taste of the water on her skin. It was the same as that when the priests sprinkled her during the Test of the Body.
“The River,” she muttered. The ruined court was not filled with water from the storm drains and sewers. This was the River, crept up under the palace. The lower palace had sunk down into him. This was where sacred water was drawn.
Her foot wasn’t even wet. The court was flooded not merely with water, but with She’ned, Smokewater, the lifeblood of the River. As ghosts were the spirits of Human Beings, She’ned was the ghost of water, the spirit remaining when the substance departed.
The burning passed, but a deep, involuntary shudder rippled through Hezhi’s body, and the thing in her—what the priests had tried to force into revealing itself—stirred. Unmistakably. Overcome, she remained on the steps, weeping.
She stopped her weeping when she heard a soft whispering. At least, she believed it to be whispering; she could not make out any words; it was merely the hiss one hears at a distance when people confide secrets.
I have to do something, she resolved. I have to try to find D’en.
The map had taken her this far, but now she had no clear idea of where to search. Her research had discovered the center of the old palace as the place to which the Darkness Stair descended. It had found her a path by which she might reach it. But her map did not have a point marked “D’en” on it.
Not that it mattered anymore. Hezhi now believed that she would not find him. It seemed to her that immersion in the Smoke-water would dissolve a body, draw the spirit essence from it. Perhaps that was where ghosts came from. Those ghosts her father had summoned—the fish and the other things—they had all died in the River. It must be that when royalty died—no, when they were killed—it must be done in the River, so that he could reclaim their essence, the part of them that was him. That was what she felt inside of her, she realized. Part of her was River. She suddenly recalled her conversation with Tsem, nearly three years before. She had said something about the “Royal Blood” working in her, and Tsem had become absolutely solemn, almost fearful, had told her to never say such a thing. Perhaps that had been as much as he could say, Forbidden. To warn her about her blood.
That was it! It was all coming clear, deadly clear. If the Royal Blood worked right, if the River surfaced in one in the right way—whatever that was—then the child became like her father, her mother. Powerful, able to summon the River’s puissance to do sorcery. A ruler. By using the part of the River that was in them. But if it went wrong, somehow, if it was … she still didn’t know that, how it went awry. But it could go wrong, that was clear, and when it did those so “Blessed” were brought here and executed, returned to the River. Here, in the dark, where the people of the Empire would not know, would never see nobles die.
She reflected that many—like Wezh, for instance—might have noble blood but no waking power in them at all, destined neither to rule nor to die. Hezhi understood that she was not one of those.
Still she heard the whispering. She stood again and, more carefully this time, stepped out onto the rubble. She was vaguely surprised that it did not crunch beneath her feet; it must have settled through the centuries, become compacted. Moving as quietly as possible, she worked her way toward the gate.
She reached it easily enough and was soon peering through the steel bars. Beyond, the hall extended farther than she could see. There was something odd about the corridor, though she could not place for certain what it was for an instant. Then she understood. The water in it was moving—not flowing, but stirring about, as if something were swimming in it. The whispering was down that hall; it was a bit clearer now, and she could almost make out a word, now and then.
She knelt on the pile, set her little lamp down, and, shading her eyes from the flame, tried to see as far as she could; the brightness of the flame itself tended to blind her.
She wobbled on her haunches and put down one hand to steady herself. Doing so, she realized that whatever she was squatting on, it was neither rubble nor sand. Puzzled, she studied it more closely. She believed, at first, that the stone or whatever was covered with moss or even fungus, but the texture was unlike that, as well. It was actually rather smooth, stick but not slimy, bumpy. Like the skin of her mother’s salamander.
As she was thinking that, an eye blinked open, no more than an armspan from her. It wasn’t there and then it was, an eye staring at her, a perfectly Human eye. Beneath her, whatever she was squatting on tremored. It moved, shifted in place.
Hezhi tried to suppress her shriek of terror, but it leapt free of her throat and soared away, a bright bird of sound in a dark place, flapping around and around before the underpalace ate it up. She crouched, shuddering, not knowing what to do. The eye stared at her, then slowly closed again.
Shaking, she looked up and down the length and breadth of the thing with entirely new eyes. She was on the back of something alive. It might be, she realized, rather like those fish in her father’s summoning. Or like the ghost that had come after her. Yet this was no ghost; this thing was substantial i
n a way that a ghost could never be, at least according to everything she had read—which was admittedly not that much, when it came to ghosts. It was real, alive, sleeping, even though she was on its back.
She noticed other things, now that she was looking. It helped her to study, detached her from her fear, from the fact that she was on the back of some alien thing. A stubby projection on the “bar” was some sort of fin. Or tentacle. And there, that lump … She shuddered and closed her eyes, detachment failing, not wanting to see more, wanting only to be somewhere else, alone, with Qey, with anyone, but very far from where she was. Because the lump was not a lump. Pale, like a fingered mushroom, a Human hand sprouted from the creature’s back.
I have to open my eyes, she thought crazily. I can’t leave unless I open them. But as much as she wanted at that moment to be gone, the thought of looking at the thing, of discovering some new horror was too terrible to face. Even less did she want to move. What if she woke it up?
“How did you get here?”
Her heart stopped for a moment, restarted with a painful jerk. She snapped her eyes open. The voice was strange, watery, tortured sounding. It came from beyond the grating.
“Who …?” she began, and then stopped, still afraid of waking the monster she sat upon. She heard water stirring.
“Whoever you are, you are in a very bad place,” the voice told her. A shadow was gliding in the ebon pool, beyond the light of her lamp.
“And where did you get that light?” it snarled. “Put that out. You’ll have no need of that.”
“Who are you?” Hezhi asked, holding the lamp higher, trying to see.
“Put that down, I say.”
She set the lamp down but made no move to put it out. Nevertheless, the shadow swam closer. She caught a glimpse of it then: coils of scales glittering in the light, bony plates, a host of centipede legs—they did not congeal, form anything unified in her head.
