by Greg Keyes
Yen nodded easily. “I think so. We all have choices, you, me, the people in Southtown. I could have followed my father, been a trader, but see, I chose another path.”
She wasn’t so easily convinced. “Surely it must be very difficult to live there. I mean, someone from down there couldn’t get appointed to the Royal Engineers, the way you did, could they? I have trouble enough imagining life without slaves, servants, soldiers to protect me …”
Yen chuckled shortly. “Why bother to imagine that? That would never be your lot.”
The irony of that almost stung, but she could not, of course, reveal her distress. “I try to imagine many things,” she stated.
“As do I,” Yen replied, and for a moment his eyes flashed in a most peculiar way, a way that tickled her belly with warmth, brought blood to her face.
“More,” she demanded, tearing her eyes from the young man and looking back out over the rooftops and streets.
“Well … the docks, there. I used to sit on them when I had nothing else to do, watch the foreigners come in. Some of them were so strange, they couldn’t even speak, but only gabble in their own barbaric languages.”
“Tell me about them,” she requested, resting her chin on the walled edge of the court, watching sunlight flash on the River like a thousand thousand golden eels. A great three-masted ship was just heaving out of the channel, toward dock, its sails crumpling as it came, all but the lateen sail in back.
“There. What sort of ship is that?”
Yen nodded sagely. “Look at that craft, Lady. It is built for sailing upon the ocean; see how most of the sails are rigged square, but the one aft is triangular? That lets them sail into the wind.”
“That seems impossible,” she remarked, watching the ship. It wasn’t headed straight for the dock, but was instead beginning a peculiar little dance, switching back and forth, approaching the shore as one might a lover one were very shy of meeting.
“See? They’re doing it now. Notice the pennant at the top of their mast? That will tell you how the wind is blowing.”
It was true. The pennant streamed away from Nhol and the docks, and yet the ship—the large ship—was somehow, if a bit tediously, moving into the breeze, without oars or a hauling rope.
“Very clever,” she breathed as she began to understand what was involved. They were using the wind against itself, stealing strength from it rather than confronting it headlong. “Where is that ship from?”
“Well, I’m not quite certain. The south, for sure, but I can’t make out the device on their pennant.”
Hezhi squinted. “A serpent surrounding a quartered circle,” she said.
Yen looked at her with new respect. “You have good eyesight, Lady. Well. That would be Dangun, one of the farthest of the Swamp Kingdoms, which actually borders on the coast. The ship, I think, is actually of Lhe manufacture.”
“Lhe? South along the gulf? I’ve seen that on maps.”
“Odd people, civilized in their own way, I suppose. They have skin as black as coal, as black as your hair and eyes. I like to watch them.”
He did not look at her as he said this, but she was left wondering if Yen meant he liked to watch the Lhe sailors or her hair and eyes.
“And up-River?”
“The Mang, of course, and across the desert to the east the Dehshe, who resemble the Mang. They cut timber, though, and mine tin, so I suppose they are a bit more civilized than the plainsmen. Their boatmen are usually a quiet lot. Again, unlike the Mang.”
“Have you ever met very pale men, with light hair and gray eyes?” she inquired.
“I’ve never laid eyes on such a man, though I have heard of them,” Yen said. “They are said to live in the ice and snow at the very edge of the world, which colors them pale. The Mang speak of them as enemies, I think.”
“They live north, then?”
“North and west, I think, from wherever the River rises.”
“From the mountain?” Hezhi wondered. “They live at She’leng?”
Yen raised his open palms. “I know little of religious matters. It is a constant source of irritation to the priests.” He stepped nearer to her, hesitated, then reached out his fingers and took her chin in his palm. His eyes glowed, dark opals flecked with gold. Breath caught in her throat.
“We should go now,” she managed.
“Yes,” Yen told her. “In just a moment.” He bent down, brushed his lips against hers. He did not press them wetly, as Wezh did, and they did not feel like wet liver. They felt sweet and warm, kind. And something else, something a little hungry …
She felt frozen as Yen drew away from her, unable to think.
“I’m sorry if that upset you,” Yen told her, his voice husky. “I know we cannot court. But I wanted to kiss you once, at least.”
“Once?”
He nodded. “Soon I will have no more excuses to come back to the library, at least not for many months; I will be supervising the construction. When I next see you, you will probably be married.” He smiled thinly.
“Well,” she gasped. “You should not have done it. If anyone saw …”
“But you promised no one would see.”
She colored further. “I did not ask you up here for that!” she insisted, turning her eyes back out to the cityscape, her heart doing hummingbird pirouettes in her breast. “But you may do it again, if you wish. Just once more.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw him lean in again and, closing her eyes, turned to meet him.
She thought about that kiss for the rest of the day, the hours in the library seeming in turns frozen in time and rushing by. She was still considering it as she made her way back to her apartments. It was an odd feeling, the memory of that sweet, forbidden thing, another gift to go with the statue, another bit of madness in her life. The broad corridors of the palace seemed like the narrowest parapet of the Great Hall, a thin, tiny path that she could easily sway off of, out into the deep, the unknown. It seemed to her that Yen was right, though he had not been speaking of her, that her possibilities were virtually unlimited. She wanted to dream on and on of what might be, bathe in promise, yet at the same time, she knew she had to sober herself, become calmer for the adventure awaiting her.
No matter how often she told herself that, her feet still felt light.
Turning into the corridor where her rooms were, the stink of incense assailed her nostrils. The priests had just swept here, and the smoke still hung thick in the air. Certainly they had just been sweeping, as they did now and then. But Hezhi’s eyes widened. The door to her rooms stood ajar a crack. Smoke drifted out, pungent gray coils of it. She could just see the fringe of Qey’s skirt, silhouetted against the light from the doorway. She stood, staring, pulse hammering. All of her gauzy dreams were torn, just like that, and she realized exactly how fragile hope was. Trembling, she reached into her pocket, stroked the statuette, but it felt only like metal, unfeeling metal. The horse-woman was cold, her promise dissipated in that first sharp scent of incense.
She stood rooted until Qey turned, her face revealed in the doorway. Hezhi had that one glimpse of it as Qey recognized her, a sad, tortured look, pleading. A terrible flash of insight caught her, as if Qey’s face were a light more blinding than the sun, and she understood she would never see the woman who had raised her again after this one last glimpse. The flash became an ache, a wish to be gathered up in Qey’s arms once more, to eat breakfast just one more time, to tell her that she loved her.
This was the last she would see of Qey, and she would never see Tsem again at all.
Horse-woman clutched in her hand, she turned and fled, ran as she had never run before, just as a shout went up behind her, the high, boyish voice of a priest.
The halls echoed hollowly beneath her slapping feet, as if she were inside of a skull or the tombs beneath the temples one read about. It was as when she was a younger girl, with D’en, dashing through the empty places of the great palace, footsteps their only compan
y. Now, however, the halls were crowded with footfalls.
D’en, she thought miserably. I will certainly never see you again.
Up a flight of stairs, and the next. She had no idea how close the priests were to catching her, the thundering of blood in her ears and the sound of her own flight obscured any clamor of pursuit. It didn’t matter really, if she could just reach the rooftops before they did.
She burst into the afternoon light, gasping, tears just beginning to trickle. Frantically she clambered up the side of the upper court, where she and Yen had so recently kissed. Wind whispered through the cottonwood as if to welcome her back.
This may not be high enough, she thought, and so continued her ascent onto the red slate shingles that slanted down to the garden from higher regions of the palace.
She had nearly reached the ridge of the roof when a voice shouted behind her again. She turned, briefly, to see first one and then a second priest emerge from the stairs. Ignoring them, she finished climbing to the ridgebeam and began to run along it.
Here was her straight, narrow trail, illusion become real. It ran all along the top of the empty wing, a vertiginous path that led nowhere but to the roof of the Great Hall. There she would climb once more, put the distance of six ceilings and five floors between herself and the pavement. That would be high enough.
The shingles plunged steeply away from her left and right hands to join the flat roofs of lower floors. As she ran, she glimpsed little flashes of life in the courtyards below—a woman hanging laundry, a gardener watering potted plants, a man and a woman kissing. Such little things, and yet suddenly infinitely precious. As precious and precarious as her shattered hope. The only recognizable fragment of that hope was her chance to escape the priests—and D’en’s fate. As she understood this her tears transformed from sorrowful to bitter.
Clambering up onto the roof of the Great Hall, she glanced back again. The priests were far behind her; they had not spent uncounted hours here, in the bright air above the palace. She would succeed, she had time.
She slipped a few times, ascending the steep, vaulted roof, but she knew where the handholds were, knew to go up the crease where a mighty strut supported the roof. A moment she had then, to think of Tsem, of how sad he would be, of how glad she was that he was in the city when the priests came. He would have killed them, and then he would have died, too. Now that wouldn’t happen, nor would Ghan risk his life and freedom unnecessarily. She would solve her own problems, bear the weight of her birth on her own small soles.
Shuddering for breath, she completed the climb, and there took another moment to rest. The top of the dome was open, a great unwinking eye staring out from the Leng Court. Looking down, she could see its iris, the fountain, far below, the beckoning stones.
I mustn’t fall in the fountain, she thought. I mustn’t give the River my blood while I yet live; I won’t do that.
She was still crying, but the tears now had the melancholy solace of happy tears, of the sort of crying that feels good. The priests were still pursuing, sluggishly. Gazing about her, she cherished the glorious view—the dusty desert reaches, the filmy green fields, the vast bustle of humanity that was Nhol. The sun resting in the River, half sunken, a floating tangerine.
Stepping up to the edge, she admired her little statue once more. The fierce grin seemed like laughter, like a secret joy they shared. Another wind whipped around her, and she felt her heart washed clean by it, filled with light and high, endless sky.
She spread wide her arms like wings, the long streak of her shadow fleeing eastward in the steeply slanting light.
IX
The Quickening of Dream
Morning brought the city that Perkar remembered from his dreams, a forest of buildings flaming white in the sun. Yet already his pristine vision was faded, replaced by the reality of rude, incomprehensible people, dirty rooms, and the smell of the docks, a stench for which he had no name. Morning also brought with it a sense of immense inadequacy, for he had not the faintest idea what to do, how—or even what—to negotiate in this alien place. Until now, the River had provided him with direction and thus purpose. Now he lacked that. He wondered what would have happened had he stayed in the boat. Would it have sailed straight to where he was being called, to the task at hand? Or would he be in this same place, sitting at a thick, stained, knife-scarred table wondering what to do?
Midmorning actually provided him with part of an answer. He had been splitting his time between the table and its promise of employment and stepping outside, watching and wondering still at the immensity of Nhol. A few others in the Crab Woman seemed to be seeking work; a group of three rough-looking men, dark and scarred, conversed in low tones in a language he did not understand. Each wore his weapon in plain sight, as he did. Another, solitary man—he reminded Perkar of a ferret—sat scratching vaguely at his table with a knife. None of the four seemed much inclined to talk to him, and so he kept his distance, waiting and watching.
Around noon, four more men came in, three wearing plain kilts and one—a young, slim fellow—in tar-stained pants. Pants seemed a rarity in Nhol; these were the first he had seen. None of the four wore weapons, at least not visible ones, so he concluded that they were in the Crab Woman to drink rather than to look for “sell-sword” jobs.
They chose a table near his, ordered beers. Casually he listened in on their conversation, which largely concerned an individual named “Lizard” who seemed to be their foreman. The four didn’t like Lizard very much. As Perkar did not know Lizard, the conversation failed to capture his interest, and so his mind wandered with his gaze out beyond the door, to the people strolling past.
Until, that is, one of them mentioned his boat, and that took hold of his notice and kept hold of it.
“Strangest thing I ever saw,” the pants-wearer was saying. “A whole crowd of us watched it, too; it’s not like it was just me.”
“Currents,” an older fellow with a thin beard said. “Currents are strange.”
“It was going against the current, no sail, no paddles, nobody even in it.”
“And?” the bearded man responded.
“And that’s it. It sailed right up Eel Canal, quiet as you please, six men in it yanking on the tiller.”
“Priest stuff,” one of the other men ascertained, and they all mumbled general agreement.
That was too much for Perkar. He rose and approached the table.
They nodded wary greetings, as if fearing he might want something.
“Excuse me,” Perkar said. “I am Perkar of the Kar Barku Clan. I’m sorry to have been listening to you, but I did overhear you talking about a boat, sailing along without anyone in it.”
“That’s right,” said the small man defensively, the one who had seen it.
“It’s true.”
“What happened to it?”
The little man grinned. “Last I saw, two of the priests had come down from the temple with some of those brooms of theirs, the ones they burn.”
Which meant nothing to him. “Where might that be?” he asked.
“Might be in the deep blue sea,” the bearded man grunted. “But it’s not. Back up that way, where the canal runs up to the palace.”
“I’d like to see that,” he told them.
“Well, that’s nice,” the bearded man said, and the others laughed.
Determined not to lose his temper, Perkar merely nodded at them. “Thanks,” he said. Surely someone outside could tell him where Eel Canal was.
“Just go left, out the door, follow Shadowfish Street,” the small man piped up. “That’ll take you to Eel Canal. Just walk up that, you’ll see it if the priests haven’t managed to do something to it yet.”
“Thanks again,” Perkar said, and continued on out the door. Outside he glanced at the docks, several streets down, and turned left. He looked back—to memorize the landmarks near the Crab Woman, so that he could find his way back, and raised his eyebrows in astonishment. The largest man he
had ever seen was just entering the tavern. He surely stood seven or more feet tall, massively muscled, thick, broad, with relatively short bowed legs. Despite his size, the glimpse of his face Perkar got reminded him of Ngangata. Heavy brows, sloping forehead. Shaking his head in amazement, he went on in search of his boat.
Finding Eel Canal was no great feat, and neither was following it to the palace, though it was a long walk. There, perhaps a hundred paces from the base of a towering wall, was the Crow God’s boat. Floating, empty and serene. Perkar wondered what had happened to the dead men he had left in it, but quickly put that thought away as something he didn’t want to dwell much on. The boat was covered in streamers or ribbons of some sort, and no less than four blocks of some strange incense were burning on the canal wall nearest it. A young man was tending the incense and looking glumly at the boat Perkar waved at him, and he stared back.
“Good day,” Perkar said, not knowing how to wish “Piraku” in the language of Nhol. The man nodded back at him.
“You are watching this boat?”
“Yes,” was the sullen reply.
Perkar was startled; the man was younger than he appeared, a boy really. “Why?”
“It was moving by itself,” the boy explained. “It is either some gift from the River to the priesthood or a demon; we aren’t sure yet.”
“Perhaps it is inhabited by a god,” Perkar offered, leaning against a nearby building, hoping that would not give any offense.
“Barbarian,” the boy said, clearly disgusted. “The River is the only god.”
“There are many gods where I come from,” he replied reasonably.
“Demons, you mean. Ghosts, maybe. No gods.”
He shrugged, remembering Balati, the Huntress, Karak. They certainly were not ghosts.
“Are you a shaman?” he asked, hoping that was the correct word.
“A witch, you mean? An old midwife? You are a barbarian. I am a priest of the River.”
“Priest.” Perkar knew the word—ghun—of course, but the concepts connected to it were vague. “What is a priest exactly?”
