by Greg Keyes
“Who are you?” she repeated, her voice close to shrieking again.
“I don’t understand how you got from the Darkness Stair to here without my seeing you,” the thing complained. “But if you hadn’t been so intent on slipping by me, I would have warned you about old Nu there. If she wakes up, you’ll warm her belly.”
“I didn’t come down the Darkness Stair,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice steady. “I came in through the ducts.”
“The ducts? The ducts?” The thing swirled about crazily in the water. “You weren’t brought down here, were you?”
“Let me see you,” Hezhi pleaded. “What are you?”
A head suddenly moved into her circle of vision. It was Human, basically, though gills branched like feathery horns from its neck. It had no hair, either. The back of its head devolved into a rubbery, spiky mass that seemed to be constantly writhing.
“What am I?” the abomination repeated. “Why, my dear, don’t you recognize a prince when you see one?”
“Prince? Prince?” “Prince L’ekezh Yehd Cha’dune, at your service.”
“That isn’t possible,” she managed to choke out, though she already knew that it was. “Who was your father?”
“Why, the Great Lord Yuzhnata, of course.”
“Oh, oh,” Hezhi gasped, still not quite able to grasp; but the puzzle was solving itself in her head again, the pieces rearranging themselves.
“That makes you my father’s brother,” she quavered faintly.
There was a moment of silence from the thing.
“Well,” it said. “Well, I have a niece. Welcome, niece, to the Chambers of the Blessed. Now, you should trust your uncle and do what he says. Climb off Nu and swim through the grate. I’ll protect you.”
“I don’t want to get in the water,” she moaned.
“Well, you don’t have much choice about that,” L’ekezh replied. “Embrace it, let it fill you up. Become accustomed to it.”
“Why?”
“Because you will never leave here, that’s why.”
“I will,” Hezhi insisted.
“You say you came here by the ducts. On purpose. Why did you do that?” L’ekezh seemed to be becoming more accustomed to the fight. He swam nearer, put his in-Human face up to the grating. She saw that his teeth were sharp and long, ivory needles.
“I wanted to know … where we go when they take us off.”
L’ekezh laughed with a kind of bubbling delight, though it sounded more like someone choking.
“How bright you must be!” he remarked. “That’s too bad for you, though I’ll doubtless enjoy our conversations. Then again, the bright ones go mad the most quickly. I think I’ve stayed sane for so long because I’m a bit thick. Tell me …” His voice dropped low, became an exaggeration of the “conspiratorial” tone used in theater. “Tell me. Do the priests know yet? Have you begun to manifest?”
“Manifest?”
“With me,” L’ekezh offered, “the power came first. She’lu—your father—was so jealous. Even when his power came, mine was always stronger. The Blessed are strong, girl. But then the priests came and they found—it’s always a little thing, something you haven’t really noticed—one of my toes had changed color. So, of course, they brought me here.”
“I don’t … why?”
“Why? Why? Look at me. Look at Nu, there. Could anyone stand to see us on the throne? Dancing about the court, with lords and ladies on our arms? And, of course, there is our power. They fear that the most.”
“Power,” she repeated dully.
“We are the Blessed,” L’ekezh snarled. “I have more power in one of my eyes than the Chakunge and all of his court.”
“Then why do you stay down here?” Hezhi asked.
“Because,” L’ekezh began, and then stopped, his eyes staring at her with awful intensity. “Are you real?” he whispered. “Did I create you?”
“I am real,” Hezhi assured him.
“I will go mad, one day, you know,” L’ekezh confided.
“Why don’t you leave?” she asked once again. “If you have such power?”
“Because the River drinks it,” he replied woodenly. “When they first put me here, I raged. I tried to pull down the foundations of the damned palace around me, kill them all. I could have done it up there, but they drugged me, of course. Down here, when the drug wore off—well, however powerful the Blessed are, nothing is as powerful as the River. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing!’” He finished by shrieking. Then he stared at her silently, his face writhing like a nest of stinging worms.
“You really shouldn’t be on her back,” he said again, after a time.
“How many … how many of you are there?”
“How many Blessed?”
“Yes.”
“Alive? Still in flesh?”
Hezhi nodded.
“Oh, just a few. Five.”
“Where are they?”
“Oh … around here somewhere. Your light frightens them. Anyway, I’m lord here, now that Nu sleeps most of the time. It’s my responsibility to welcome the new ones. I still don’t see how I didn’t notice them bringing you down the stair.”
“I told you, I didn’t come that way.”
“Well. So you did,” L’ekezh muttered, perhaps more to himself than to her.
“I wonder …” she began. “Is there one named D’en among you?”
“D’en? Of course, D’en,” the once-prince answered.
“I came to see him,” Hezhi said.
“Oh? Came all this way to see D’en. Well. Wait here.”
The head ducked beneath the black water and ripples marked his passage away.
She waited a long while, and it began to occur to her that she had been forgotten. L’ekezh seemed to have trouble remembering things. But just as she was despairing, as the fear of the sleeping thing upon which she sat began to overwhelm her, the water stirred again.
It was not L’ekezh. It was, to her eyes, a Human man, with long stringy black hair. His eyes, however, protruded on stalks and the hands that came up to grip the steel bars were clawlike, chitinous. One still possessed five fingers but the other had become like a pincer, the thumb grossly exaggerated and the other fingers melted together.
“D’en,” she whispered. “Oh, D’en.”
The thing looked at her with its crablike eyes. It croaked, like a frog. It croaked again, more insistently, and Hezhi thought she recognized her name.
“D’en? Can you talk?” She suddenly knew that she was going to be sick. Her stomach expelled the bread she had eaten before waking Tsem and continued heaving long after nothing remained in it. D’en watched her impassively.
“D’en doesn’t talk much,” L’ekezh told her, surfacing a few spans away. “He did at first, talked all the time. Usually our bodies change the fastest, then our heads. D’en—he changed inside first.”
“Why … why do you change?” she managed, faintly. As if knowing would help.
L’ekezh smiled, a rubbery arc that might have been amusing to a madman. “He fills us up,” he said, voice confidential. “A mere Human body cannot contain his full power.”
She tried to understand, while D’en—or what D’en had become—cocked his head, as if regarding her from another angle would offer him something new. It may have, for slowly, tentatively, he reached the hand that was most Human through the bars.
She reached over and, after hesitating briefly, touched the hand. The fingers flexed but made no other movement. It felt cold, hard, not at all like the hand she remembered, the one she had held as they ran, laughing, across the rooftops. Now that hand clutched vaguely, not remembering how to hold another. It was a mercy when D’en suddenly snatched his hand away, croaked once again. His horrible eyes swayed on their stalks, and then he sank, quickly, beneath the water.
“He recognized you,” L’ekezh told her. “I can tell. That was more than I expected.”
“D’en,” Hezhi mouthed softly.
Beneath her, the rubbery flesh trembled again.
“Quickly,” L’ekezh cried. “If you care for your life. Nu is awaking. If you really came through the ducts, go now. The River might yet let you.”
Hezhi rose shakily to her feet.
“Good-bye,” she said.
“I’ll see you again soon enough,” L’ekezh said. “See if they will let you bring me some wine. Though, of course, they won’t.”
He sank away, vanished. She took up her lamp and stumbled across Nu’s back. As she reached the dais, the monster was beginning to twitch and, before she had mounted it, began heaving. She hurried to the shaft, spared a glance back and saw Nu rising up. There was nothing recognizably Human about Nu at all; she was all fish and scorpion, her long, pointed tail lashing now at the water. More quickly than Hezhi could have ever imagined, the creature turned and lunged up onto the dais, flopped there, heaved and flopped again. Reflexively, she hurled her lamp; it shattered on the damp stone, and fire splattered among the shards. Nu hesitated at that, faceted, insect eyes flinching away from the fight. Hezhi scrambled into the dark tube and began to crawl frantically, gasping with fear. She clawed at the stone, trying to propel herself more quickly into the darkness, tore nails to the quick without even noticing the pain. She didn’t even begin to calm down until she saw the pale illumination up ahead of her, where Tsem was waiting.
She was sobbing uncontrollably when the half Giant lifted her gently from the tube. He cradled her tenderly in his massive arms, stroking her wet, slimy hair, and made soft, comforting noises. Then, carrying her in the crook of one arm and the lantern in his other hand, he waded across the room and began ascending the stairs, back toward light and home.
INTERLUDE
On Red Gar Street
Ghe fingered the scar on his chin and breathed deeply, filling his lungs and nostrils with the smells of his childhood. Savory meat grilling at streetside stands, carts of fish just beginning to stink in the afternoon sun, the sharp, prickly scent of J’ewe incense; those were the best of them. When the wind shifted, shifted up from Southtown on the River, he got the worst. Garbage, mostly. The excrement of people and dogs, half-rotted food, stagnant, marshy pools where the River crept in. Here, on Red Gar Street, there was no trash to be seen, of course, but Red Gar cut the line between the sparkling center of Nhol, where the prosperous classes—the store owners, the boat captains, the merchants, the relatives of the relatives of nobility—met the much vaster realm of Southtown, where lived the Hwe-gangyu, the lowest of the low.
Ghe remembered well which side of the street he had come from. He would never cross there again save to kill someone at the command of the priesthood, and it was singularly unlikely that anyone in Southtown could possibly attract the attention of the priesthood. No, he would never willingly enter Southtown again, for he had risen above it and it was wrong ever to step backward. Here, though, on Red Gar Street, he had spent the best moments of his youth. Here, the child he had been could briefly forget the squalid hut he lived in, the mother he had killed by being born, the aunt who beat him and made him sleep with the dogs. On the street, he could see the best Nhol had to offer side by side with the worst, and he could plan his escape from Southtown. An escape he had now accomplished.
Ghe idly flipped a coin toward a boy watching the crowd with hawklike eyes. The boy snatched the glittering treasure from the very air, grinning and nodding at Ghe. Ghe nodded back and went on down the street, humming to himself. The wind shifted again, blew down from the palace and the clean side of town. A flock of Rivergulls went chattering overhead.
Ghe found Li just at the edge of Two Cottonwood Square. The old woman sat, as always, with her back as rigid as a board, her bone dice carefully arranged in front of her on a worn velvet cloth. The same cloth, indeed, as the one she had spread those years ago, when Ghe first met her.
“What do the dice say of me, ancient Li?” he asked. Her head turned up sharply at the sound of his voice.
“Ghe!” she crowed delightedly. “The bones told me that you would come see an old woman again!”
“You didn’t need the bones for that,” he whispered, bending down to place a kiss on her withered cheek.
Li’s eyes sparkled. “Sit down, duh, my little one, and tell me of the priesthood!”
“There isn’t a lot I can tell,” Ghe said apologetically. “But it is a good life. Everything that can be available to someone not of noble birth is there for me. Good food, wine, books …”
“Women,” Li interjected.
“Them, too,” Ghe agreed, unembarrassed.
Li nodded. “I haven’t seen you in two years, little duh. What have they been doing with you?”
Could he tell her? If there was anyone in the world he could trust, it was Li. And yet, though she had once won his trust—and even his love—there was still in him the boy who trusted no one. So he chuckled and clapped Li on the shoulder and told her a truth that was a lie.
“I pray a lot,” he told her, and she nodded.
“And look, I brought you something,” he went on hurriedly. He pulled a bundle from inside his shirt, carefully laid it near Li’s feet so that she might open it. She did so and clucked with amazement at the contents.
“I thought your old cloth might be a bit worn,” he explained. “And you’ve always needed a hat, to mark you out from these other so-called soothsayers. Now, here is a hat that will tell everyone that you see true futures.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “The moons and stars on it seem to shimmer. Is the thread gold?”
Ghe shrugged. “I don’t know; I only knew that you would like it.”
“You’re very sweet to an old woman.”
“Without this old woman, I’d still be slitting throats for copper soldiers on Lung Street,” he replied.
“So now you slit them for the priesthood, eh?” Li’s eyes sparkled dangerously, revealing the hardness sleeping in her. He didn’t blush, but he did touch her hand. The two had once dispensed with hardness between them, and seeing it again in her eyes felt like a little knife in his ribs.
“I’m sorry, Li,” he said. “I meant to tell you.”
She softened. “That’s all right, duh. It’s a difficult thing the priests have chosen for you.”
Ghe shrugged. “It was that or nothing, I think. They were only interested in me because of certain … skills I have. And, Li, I have learned much. I can use a sword—a sword!—better than any soldier you will ever meet. They taught me tricks of fighting with my hands that I never imagined.”
“Have you yet been set to a task?”
He nodded. “I can’t talk about that, Li, not in any detail. I have been Forbidden. But twice now I have been sent out, and twice returned with blood on my hands. The priesthood is most pleased with me.”
“As they should be.” Li smiled, squeezed his hand. “And the enemies of Nhol will fear you, though they know not your name. Didn’t I tell you that, those many years ago?”
“You did. But I think the prophecy came true through the prophet. You helped me when I needed help, taught me how to speak to the priests, introduced me to the admittance council.”
Li shook her head in disagreement. “You were never meant to rot in Southtown, fathering brats and eating shit. You were meant for better things, and anyone with a brain in their skull could see that. I knew the priests would understand it as soon as they met you.”
“You saw it first,” he reminded her.
“So I did,” she agreed. “But tell me, how is life in the palace?”
“Very good, as I said.”
“And the Riverborn? What is it like living amongst them?”
The two of them had been conversing in low tones amidst the babble of the street; Ghe felt perfectly comfortable speaking secrets here, for no word would travel more than an arm span farther than Li’s ear. Still, he lowered his voice even more. “They are idiots,” he confided. “I would never have imagined it. If it weren’t for the priesthood,
the city would collapse under their stupidity.”
“So I’ve often suspected,” Li said.
“Oh, the Riverborn have power, there is no doubt of that. But their minds are like the minds of very young children. Even some of the priests are like that, I suppose. But many of the priests are like me, not of noble birth.”
“Are none of the Riverborn capable?” Li asked.
“There are a few,” Ghe replied thoughtfully. “There is one girl I have been watching. She seems very bright indeed.” He smiled and cracked his knuckles. “It will be a shame if I have to kill her.”
PART THREE
Changeling
I
On the Hungry Water
Perkar had long since relinquished the troublesome task of numbering days and their dark complements. Singly or bundled together like so many reeds, they held no sense for him; his sense was all the River. Not that the River was outside of time, for he remembered earlier and later times upon it. Earlier, when the boat thrashed through the rapids in clouds of argent spray, pitching like a child’s toy. He remembered the sickening grinding of stone against wood, the vague wonder that even a godboat did not splinter and join the spume in ecstatic flight up and away from the rocks. Still early, after the frantic water, when he had made his first real attempt to bring the boat aground on an inviting shore in a gentle, forested valley, he recalled the bitter helplessness as the willful boat continued on in the channel, despite exertion at the tiller that left him with blistered palms and aching muscles. He knew that even if his arms had been stronger he could have pulled until his heart burst with no more effect.
“The River has us,” Ngangata told him once, when he was free of fever. “He will never let us go.”
Perkar had ceased doubting that. Twice the boat had allowed them to make landfall, both times on islands in the channel. In each instance, he attempted to swim to shore, and always the current seized him and brought him, exhausted, back to the boat. On those occasions he had carried a rope with him, tied to the bow; he had no intention of leaving Ngangata.
