by Greg Keyes
“Why did you want the priest books? What did you think of?”
“Ghan,” she said tremulously, “Ghan, I’ve seen them. I found a way down to where the Darkness Stair goes, to the old palace. I saw them, the Blessed. I can’t be like that. I’ll jump off the roof first.”
She would, this time. She had promised herself.
“Hezhi, what did you think of?”
“That maybe … Maybe there is a way to stop it. To stop the Royal Blood from working. To keep the River asleep in me.”
Ghan’s head hung as if it weighed a hundredweight. She had never seen him look so old. “There can’t be,” he muttered.
“Why?”
“The priests would do it, don’t you think?”
“They do do it, Ghan. They stop it in themselves!”
“By castration, before the change starts. That won’t work for you. You aren’t a man, and if you were, you would already be too old.”
Her voice strengthened, as she gained a little courage. “If there is one way to stop it, there might be another.” She watched him rub his head hopefully.
“I don’t know. There might be. I don’t believe so.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she remarked bitterly. “Not if I can’t see the books anyway.”
Ghan looked up at her, meeting her eyes for the first time in several exchanges. “No,” he said. “But I can look at them, if I go there. They have to let me, if I say it is required for the index.”
“That would be dangerous for you,” she replied.
“Yes. As this conversation, right now, is dangerous for me.” He gripped her shoulder, pointed his index finger squarely at her nose, so that she almost went cross-eyed. “Stay calm, for a day or two only. Stay off of the roof, and act normally. Work here in the library, tell anyone who asks that I have demanded it. I will find out what I can, do what I can. But you have to trust me. Me, and no one else. Have they tested you once already?”
Hezhi nodded, dumbfounded by Ghan’s sudden passion.
“Then they are watching you, you can be sure of that. Somewhere, in the shadows, following you. He will see you, Hezhi, but you won’t see him.”
“Who?”
“The priests set watchers on children like you, children that worry them. Members of the Jik sometimes.”
“The Jik?” she repeated, her voice quavering.
“I know you’ve read about those Blessed who were discovered too late. The noble children who went wild, caused destruction. The priesthood won’t let that happen again. When they fear it, they turn loose the Jik—not to spy on foreign diplomats, not to kill overly ambitious merchants—but to watch children, to stop them while there is still time.”
“It sounds like you agree with them,” Hezhi murmured, suddenly unsure.
“I’m just explaining your danger and the reason for it,” he explained quietly. “I have no wish to see my library and the rest of the palace come down around my ears. But rather that than know you were below the Darkness Stair. Bide, Hezhi, and let me see what I may. And watch the shadows! Your half Giant will not be able to protect you from one of the Jik.”
When they returned to the central room, she noticed Yen, a half-dozen books open in front of him. He looked up and smiled at her. She waved but did not approach him. Her life was complicated enough without becoming better friends with the son of a merchant. Instead, she went home, silently watched Qey go about her tasks, and at last retreated to her own room, where she could hear the comforting sounds of the house without danger of having to speak to anyone.
As she lay there, turning thoughts and images over in her mind, her ghost appeared, a man-shaped blur touched at the edges by rainbow. She watched with some apprehension as he meandered around the room, as if performing some stately spectral dance. He did not approach her or threaten to touch her as he had before.
Eventually the shimmering that marked him twisted, became thin, a line, vanished.
Left alone once more, she reflected on what small comfort came from answers. After all, she now understood most of the events of the past few months. Her power began to waken when she began to bleed. The Riverghost had sensed her, lurked in the fountain while her father summoned its lesser brethren, and then come after her. Whether it meant somehow to feed on her or was merely drawn to her like a moth to a flame was immaterial, though she suspected the former, considering how the ghost in her room was able to draw form and substance from the merest contact with her blood. Who had the demon ghost once been? Someone like her, of course. A child filled with forces she neither wanted nor understood. She had lived below the Darkness Stair—for how long? She had died there, and the River, torpid and uncaring, had drunk her into himself.
She scratched at her own scale, her own sign of exile.
Evening found her still there, and in the entry room across the courtyard, she heard a door open, and voices. She bolted up in her bed. If it was the priests, she was doomed. She wondered, wildly, if she could climb the wooden trellis to the roof, make her way to the Great Hall, steal their victory from them. But it was too late; footsteps slapped across the courtyard, hushed in soles of soft leather.
Her visitor was no priest. The woman who uncertainly entered her room and leaned against the doorjamb was the last person she ever expected. Almost, in fact, she didn’t recognize the woman. Slim, beautiful despite being a few years past her prime, coiled hair shot with a magnificent streak of gray. Eyes as wide and black as Hezhi’s own, the same eyes, so many were wont to say.
“Mother?” Hezhi gasped, even then uncertain.
“So,” the woman said, her voice cool, but edged with some almost concealed emotion. “You know me, at least. That is more than I expected.”
Hezhi nodded her head, unable to speak. She tugged at her sleeve, making certain the scale was concealed.
The two women gazed at each other, neither speaking, for a long moment. The elder finally broke the silence. “You’ve grown into a pretty thing,” she said. “Soon you will have many suitors.”
“I have one already,” Hezhi corrected quietly, sitting up and brushing at her disordered hair.
“The Yehd Nu boy? Yes, I’ve heard about that. You embarrassed him quite soundly.”
Her mother’s speech was glacial, each word carefully shaped as if just recalled from a distant memory. Hezhi noticed the discreet black stain beneath her nose, the dark cast to her lips.
“I didn’t mean …” she stammered, but her mother held up a hand.
“No, you should keep him guessing. And soon …” She paused, wrinkled her angular face, brushed at it with a finely manicured hand. “Yes, soon you will have many suitors, and have your pick of them.”
Hezhi nodded, still unwilling to offer anything to this ethereal creature, this woman she had seen only from afar for most of her life. When was the last time they had spoken? In her garden, two years ago? It seemed at least that long.
“Well, I …” Her mother seemed to search for words and frowned down at the floor as if she might find them there. When she looked back up, her glazed eyes held a frankness in them, an unspoken truth. “I just wanted to see you, Hezhi. It’s been a long time since we talked.” She smiled, a false and painful smile. “After all, I did bear you, didn’t I? Nine months in my belly you were, though you struggled to escape much earlier.” She shrugged. “I just wanted to see you, tell you I’m looking forward to you joining us soon. That will be nice, won’t it?”
Hezhi could see Qey, across the courtyard, wringing her hands, pretending to slice onions. She was crying, but of course, she always cried when she sliced onions. Halfway across the courtyard was a handsome, smart-looking man in royal livery, trying not to seem uncomfortable. Her mother’s bodyguard? Or a Jik? But no, the Jik she would never see; they were less visible than ghosts, and when their knives found your heart it was always from behind.
Her mother smiled at her for a score more uncomfortable breaths. “I just wanted to say hello,” she explained. “Y
ou’re really a very beautiful young woman.”
“Thank you.”
Her mother nodded. “I hope we see you soon,” she concluded sluggishly, and turned. Signaling her man with a slight crook of her wrist, she departed.
Her visit left Hezhi with a tight heart, a need for air. Dizziness crept up on her, and she realized her breathing was too hard, too fast. Why would her mother come see her now, of all times, after all these years? But Hezhi knew, she knew.
Even the most remote of mothers might want to see her child one last time.
Especially if she knew her child was soon to die. Or vanish.
Ghan had a harried look about him, as if he hadn’t slept. His face was tightened into a frown more bitter than usual, and he ushered her into the back room without delay.
“It was more difficult than I imagined. I’m afraid I awoke some of my own sleeping enemies,” he said tiredly.
Concern for the old man stole up through her other fears. “I never wanted to create trouble for you,” she said.
“No, I created my own troubles long ago,” he informed her. “Old debts can be put off for a time, but they must be paid eventually.”
“They let you see the books?”
“Yes,” he verified shortly.
She waited.
“There isn’t much that can be done,” he said at last. “Only one thing, really.”
“But something?”
He shrugged. “It is a chance. Some of the older texts speak of a time before the Blessed were consigned …” A look of agony washed over his face, and his jaw worked soundlessly, like a mute gibbering. “You know,” he gasped, after the spasm passed, “one can dance around a Forbidding, if one is clever. Sometimes I am not clever.”
“Before they were sent underneath,” Hezhi finished for him softly, wishing she could erase his pain.
“Yes.” He seemed composed again. “Before that began, they were dealt with in other ways. Some were killed. Others fled Nhol entirely, or were exiled to some distant land.”
“And now? Why not now?”
“There are uses for the Blessed,” he muttered. “Under the right circumstances, their power can be controlled, manipulated. Used to enhance the Chakunge’s power. More than that, though, was the nagging paranoia of the royal family. One does not let a rival power loose in the world.”
“I don’t …”
“Some evidence indicates that the … change”—Again he shuddered, lightly—“is so tied to the River that if one is not near him, if one is far away, it will not occur.” He paused, watching her, letting that sink in.
“Leave Nhol?” It was a bewildering thought.
“Surely it has occurred to you,” he said softly.
“I … no, I hadn’t thought of that. How? Where would I go?” Even as she said this, her dreams came flashing back behind her eyes; deep forest, mountains, the gray-eyed man. Was that what they were about, her dreams?
“I made a wish …” she muttered.
“What?”
“The day I began bleeding, I drank Sacred Water. I wished for someone—a man, I guess—to come and get me, free me from my problems. It was a stupid wish, I know. It feels stupid talking about it. But after that, I began having dreams of a far-off place, of a strange man.”
“You were bleeding,” Ghan whispered. “Your first blood.” He frowned, wrinkled his brow as if remembering something. “Blood is motion,” he said softly, and it had the sound of something quoted. “Blood is motion, and thus spirit. Spirit is the roots of the world.”
“What is that?” Hezhi asked.
“An old, old saying,” Ghan said. “I never thought about it much. But the Royal Blood sets things moving, Hezhi. The River knows the feel and touch of Human blood, the scent of it. But the blood of his children he knows very well. You may have set something exceptionally deep in motion.” He knitted his fingers tight, squeezed his palms together, nodded fretfully. “But what you get is not likely to be what you wished for.”
“Why would the River help me at all? Why would it help me escape?”
Ghan quirked his mouth in a shallow grin. “The River is not a thoughtful or wakeful god. He is a very literal one, and it has been said that none can know his will. Not because he is mysterious, or even capricious, in the usual sense. But because he does not know his own will.”
“Leave Nhol,” Hezhi considered wonderingly. “I can’t imagine it.”
“But you can imagine the alternatives all too well,” Ghan pointed out.
“I don’t even know how to begin.”
“Your Giant. He is loyal?”
“Tsem loves me,” Hezhi said. “He has always been with me.”
“In the palace, that means nothing. Do you trust him?”
“Yes,” Hezhi said, “I do.”
“Then leave and send him in to see me. He and I will make your plans.”
“What of me? Am I to have no part in my own rescue?”
“Tsem and I can move outside of the city. You cannot.”
Hezhi saw sense in that, reluctantly nodded acquiescence.
Ghan narrowed his eyes. “This man in your dreams. Describe him again.”
Hezhi closed her eyes, concentrating. “He has very pale skin,” she said. “Gray eyes, light brown hair. He wears armor sometimes. He has a sword. I think he is very far away; I have never dreamed about him here, in Nhol.”
Ghan nodded. “These dreams of yours may mean something or they may not. Nhol is a large city, and even if this dream-man is here, he may be difficult to find. Though there must be precious few men in the city who match his description.” He smiled and stretched out his hand to give hers a squeeze. “Well, it’s been long enough since I’ve been out of the palace anyway. This will be good for me.”
He motioned for her to go on, his eyes thoughtful. Already seeing the city outside, perhaps, and the paths by which one might leave it.
“Ghan?” Hezhi murmured. “Ghan, why have you helped me?”
Ghan regarded her, his old face solemn. “I wish you wouldn’t ask me questions I don’t know the answers to,” he sighed. “Not when I have a reputation for knowing everything.”
VII
Paths of Stone, Mountains of Light
Perkar spooned the soup greedily; he believed it to be the best thing he had ever eaten. Nearby, a scruffy brown dog watched him with more than passing interest
“Otter Boy wants some,” Win explained. Win was a little boy of perhaps seven years with a broad, happy face. Nearby, his mother, Ghaj, watched with evident amusement as she spun cotton onto a wooden spindle. Hearing his name, Otter Boy stood, wagging and panting hopefully.
“Reminds me of my old dog, Kume,” Perkar remarked. “When I was this hungry, I wouldn’t give him any, either.”
“They have dogs where you come from?” Win asked.
Ghaj snorted, glanced up from her work to show them her thick-featured face. “They have dogs everywhere,” she opined.
“She’s right, they do,” Perkar agreed.
“Tell me more about where you’re from,” Win exclaimed.
“Don’t be rude,” Ghaj chided her son.
“It’s all right,” Perkar said.
Ghaj puckered her face in consternation. “He’s my boy,” she informed him. “I’ll decide what is and is not acceptable.”
“Oh,” he said sheepishly, “sorry.”
She nodded her forgiveness, but it was clear she had more on her mind. “I can’t invite you to stay with us tonight,” she told him. “Me a widow and you a foreigner—I don’t need that sort of talk. There is an inn in town—sort of—L’uh, the stable master, rents a few rooms. You understand, I hope.”
“I understand,” he assured her. He also understood the suspicious way she kept eyeing his sword and the faded brown stains on his clothes.
“You do have some money?” she inquired.
He stopped with his spoon halfway to his mouth.
“What is money?” he asked.
Ghaj rolled her eyes. “A foreigner who doesn’t even know what money is,” she muttered. “Strange things the River sends me.”
“Why can’t he stay with us?” Win complained. “He can show me his sword.”
“A sword isn’t something to play with or to unsheath lightly,” Perkar told the boy.
“How long will you stay in Nyel?” Ghaj asked.
Perkar considered. “Not long. I’ll leave in the morning, I think.”
Ghaj clucked her disapproval. “You must be in a big hurry to leave that soon. You’re in no shape to travel.”
“I have something to do,” he told her. “Something I want to get finished as soon as I can, so I can go on with other things.”
“I didn’t ask for your life story,” Ghaj chastened sourly. “I only wanted to know how long I have to put you up for.”
Perkar finished off the soup and set the bowl down. Without hesitation, Otter Boy nosed down into it, tongue slurping. “I thought you just said …”
“Let them talk,” Ghaj decided. “It’ll only be out of jealousy anyway. Strangers don’t stop here—they either stop in Wun or go on to Nhol, and the overland routes are nowhere near here.”
“There is a path to Nhol, though?”
“A path, not much more. Most people go by boat.”
“I lost my boat,” he explained.
Ghaj grinned broadly, with genuine amusement. “So I guessed,” she said, gesturing with the back of her hand at his still-damp and muddy clothing. “You know,” she mused, “some of my husband’s old clothes might fit you.”
As it turned out, the shirt fit loosely and the kilt needed taking in. He accepted them gratefully, though he didn’t much care for the kilt. How could one ride a horse in such a garment?
Ghaj was quick to suggest ways he could repay her kindness. She was low on firewood for cooking; two of her crawfish traps needed repair, and a new trash pit needed digging. He saw to all of these things, with the often dubious aid of Win. These chores he completed by evening, and when Ghaj served the late meal—River rice and steamed crawfish—he ate it with gusto. His muscles were beginning to ache, but to Perkar it was a delicious soreness, earned by doing something real and worthwhile. It reminded him of long days in his father’s pasture, cutting hay and thatching it together for the winter, of hard work on a neighbor’s damakuta and then a heavy meal and woti afterward. He had experienced pain enough, aching muscles to last a lifetime in the past few months—but that soreness had never brought him satisfaction.
