by Greg Keyes
“I’m not a witch, Duk,” she said, her best response for the moment.
“I know, Hezhi. You are just very strange. From Nhol.”
“Well, sugar candy and brass bells come from Nhol, too, and everyone likes them,” Hezhi replied.
“That’s true,” Duk agreed. “Oh,” she then went on. “Mother wants us to lace together those boots.”
“Ah,” Hezhi said. That was why Duk had wanted to know what she was doing; not because she really cared, but as an overture to conscripting her. She shrugged. “Very well.”
Morning beat the snow-covered plain into brass, and they rode straight into the glare of it. The novelty of snow was beginning to wear off for Hezhi; it was becoming the same nuisance to her that it was to everyone else.
Not long into the day, Perkar and Ngangata rode over to say their farewells. Perkar had that worried, put-upon look that she was coming to recognize instantly. Perhaps she was becoming Mang, at least in that way. In Nhol she had rarely paid much attention to what others might be thinking.
“I’ll rejoin you in a few days,” Perkar told her. “Give my regards to Tsem.”
“I will,” she replied, trying to keep her voice neutral, trying to be nice.
Perkar nodded, then leaned a bit closer. “When I return, we shall race, you and I. Practice your riding!”
His attempt to sound jovial failed, but she relented and smiled—just a little smile—to let him know she didn’t hate him. It was the kind of smile she used to give Qey when the old woman was on the verge of tears. Just enough, and no more.
But Perkar, the dolt, replied with a big grin, certain that he had won some victory.
“Watch him, Ngangata,” Hezhi told the half Alwa, “though by now you must be weary of that task.”
Ngangata quirked his mouth evilly. “True enough. Perhaps I will do us all a favor and ‘take him hunting.’”
Brother Horse, not far away, clipped out a little chuckle at the reference—the plot of half a dozen Mang stories in which an unwanted child was “taken hunting” in some faraway place and abandoned there.
Perkar, a bit slower than Hezhi when it came to learning Mang, looked merely puzzled by the remark and the reaction it evoked. Hezhi had to suppress an actual smile then: Perkar was at his most appealing when he looked perplexed.
Hezhi watched the two until they were black specks on the horizon, gone.
She kept to herself, after that, though Duk and Brother Horse both tried to start conversations. Hezhi, however, was thinking about her next letter to Ghan. She sorted through the things she had learned since leaving the city and lagged Dark back so that she could watch the motion of the hunting party. The Mang liked to laugh and play, but when it came time to do something, they did it. Not for the approval of some court, not to win the respect of others, but because their lives depended upon it. In the movement of the horses and their riders, little motion was wasted; packs were distributed evenly so that no one animal was burdened more than the others. Not that there were no lazy, selfish, or stupid Mang; but such persons learned to do what they must anyway, because even a mother would indulge her child only so far. What she had written to Ghan was true; children were not beaten. Their punishment consisted of being ignored, even to the point of not being fed when they were too willful. A Mang learned early that cooperation and hard work were the only secure route toward a full belly, something she herself was having a hard time adjusting to—in the palace there had never been any question about whether she would be fed or not. Still, despite the drudgery of the work, in peaceful moments it brought a subdued joy, like reading a well-written phrase, not flowery, not audacious, just saying what it should say clearly and perfectly.
She wondered what the Ben’cheen would be like, how interested Ghan might be in the goings-on there, and her heart lifted a bit more.
It will be good to see Tsem, too, she reflected, and decided that perhaps her anger at Perkar was, after all, inappropriate. She had never needed anyone before, never been annoyed at someone simply for not choosing to remain near her. What was the point in becoming too dependent on a barbarian she hardly knew?
Satisfied for the moment, she glanced out at the landscape once more. Up ahead—half of the horses had already passed it—she could see a little cairn of stones. As she watched, Brother Horse reined in his horse, dismounted, and added a stone from his pack to the pile. Hezhi thought to herself that she should remember to ask him why … and then she saw it.
Though “saw” could never describe the way her eyes were invaded, as if they were doors forced by soldiers storming a house. Images and sensations far removed from mere vision raced through those shattered portals and assaulted her mind. It was a shivering of the air, like the outline of a ghost, like her father conjuring, like the string of a lute vibrating, but it was something much more violent than that, a rape, and she shrieked at the unexpectedness of it, at the alien thoughts that suddenly filled her head like crawling worms and spider hairs. She gagged and turned away, only vaguely aware of a voice, shrieking—her own voice. She was as she had been by the River, growing, her power becoming greater as her self shrank away beneath a flood of motives that were no more hers than the distant stars. Then she lost that association, shuttered her eyes against the terror, but it was still there, in her head.
And then it was gone, leaving only a confused memory, a beast who crossed the trail and left only its stench.
Brother Horse was beside Dark, murmuring something soothing. He was dismounted, she saw, holding out his arms to her. She felt, for a moment, that she would not need his comfort, for she seemed not to feel anything at all besides confusion. Her body, however, knew better than her shocked mind, and as the first of many sobs heaved from her tiny chest, she slid from Dark into Brother Horse’s arms, the scent of leather and smoke and old man. He stroked her hair and said nothing of consequence. Nothing, that is, save for one brief statement.
“I was afraid of this,” he murmured. “I feared this would happen.”
II
Rebirth
Ghe awoke. Something was trying to eat him.
It was something massive, an impression of fish, snake, and scorpion all at once. It nuzzled against him, fine tentacles groping at the strands of power that held his life together. This he noticed only peripherally, without any real fear. All of his fear and emotion was consumed in a flame that racked his body with trembling need, a need so great he did not even begin to understand it, one that allowed no space for other concerns. Every fiber of him yearned, pleaded, begged. He gasped and pushed away from the monstrous nuisance, searching for whatever it was he needed so badly. He sucked in a breath and his lungs stung as if he had inhaled shards of glass, and he suddenly understood that he had not breathed in a great while …
The thing took hold of him with cables of living flesh, and Ghe snarled, turned on it, and lashed out with the edge of his palm and with all his objectless frustration. The blow glanced harmlessly from the armored skin of the thing, but at the same moment, the beast seemed to open up, become a fine webwork of lines, clustered about a knot of color so tantalizing, so very beautiful, that Ghe cried aloud. He recognized, in that instant, his need. It was hunger he felt, magnified and distorted beyond all comprehension, but still hunger. Hunger for what he saw, for the light and life of this thing. Howling like a dog, he reached, tore at the rich heartstrands of the monster, snapped them like spider-web. He understood that it was not his hands that did this—he could see them, motionless against the rubbery flesh—yet as the strings of light writhed apart they seemed to burrow into his palms, course like fiery new veins up his arms, into his chest, burning into the cavern where his hunger dwelt and filling it with substance. It was such a profound pleasure and agony that it threatened mindless delirium. The fish-thing struggled, tore at him with claw and stinger, but its life gave Ghe strength, and pain meant little in the face of his hunger. Soon enough, the beast lay still, the last feeble strands of its life drifting
into the waist-deep water like shed hairs.
Only then did Ghe look about him. It was dark, pitch-dark, and yet he could see. He was beneath the vault of a great hall, majesty cloaked in darkness, drowned in water, smeared with filth. Water, cold and flat as lead, filled the place. Four hallways ran out from the great chamber, each blocked by a massive iron grille.
“Where am I?” he asked aloud of the darkness. “What place is this?” But it seemed to him that it was his place, his throne room. He could see the throne itself, carven alabaster waves lapping down from it to join the real water. Thoughtfully, he approached the magnificent chair, walking up the steps to it and out of the water. After a moment’s reflection, he settled into it and surveyed his newfound kingdom once again.
Far off, down one of the halls, something moved, rippling the water. He could sense the flicker of its heartstrands. That stirred a faint hunger, but he was sated enough to be curious. Concentrating, he saw another, and another.
“You there,” he grated, his voice harsh and clotted from long disuse. “You there,” he repeated. “Who are you?”
For a long moment no reply came, but then slowly, with seeming reluctance, one of the swimmers approached. A semi-Human head arose from the water and peered at him through the grille.
“You killed Nu,” the head accused.
“Did I? This Nu tried to eat me.”
Gar-teeth flashed in the fishlike face; bulging eyes goggled at him. “Hezhi? Is that you? Hezhi, my niece?” the head asked.
Ghe narrowed his eyes. “What do you know of her?” he demanded.
“Ah, so it is not you, not Hezhi.” The head sniffed. “Not of the Royal Blood at all, but like the Royal Blood. How did you kill Nu?”
“I ate him, I think.”
“Her,” the creature corrected pettishly.
“Her,” Ghe amended. “Tell me, where am I?”
“Well,” the thing answered, now swimming—or possibly pacing—back and forth at the grate. “Well. So many visitors lately.”
“Answer me,” Ghe commanded.
“So many visitors coming in the back door, not down the stair at all.”
“The stair?” Ghe frowned. He remembered a stair, remembered himself and others carrying someone down it, long ago, down it into a black place. “The Darkness Stair? We are below the Darkness Stair?”
“The chambers of the Blessed.” The thing in the water sneered. “Don’t you feel blessed?”
“But I didn’t come down the stair?”
“You fell in, through the duct, the one Hezhi crawled through. We thought you were dead, all except Nu. I think she thought you were her child, something stupid like that.” The creature laughed. “Now I guess she doesn’t think anything. Lucky Nu, eh?”
Ghe felt his annoyance growing. Still, he tried to keep hold of his anger, control it, as he always had. “How long? How long ago?”
The head suddenly burst into a gurgling parody of laughter. That went on for some time, as Ghe gripped the armrest of the throne more and more tightly. When at last the creature lapsed into quiet sobs of mirth—or sorrow—it was difficult to tell—he repeated his question.
“I’m sorry,” the creature said. “I’m afraid I lost track of the suns passing overhead, the phases of the moon. Careless of me, eh?”
“Long time? Short time?”
“All time is long,” the thing returned, and retreated beneath the water.
Ghe remained on the alabaster throne, ordering his thoughts, watching the distant swirl of the creatures. They were the Blessed, of course, the sort of things Hezhi would have become; creatures so filled with the River’s power that they became distorted and inhuman. Here the priesthood trapped them, where their power was nullified by the essence of the River itself. The water in the hall was barely wet at all; it was She’ned, smoke-water, a powerful, numbing substance.
Why am I alive? The thought bloomed like a black rose, always there, never fully opened before. He had thought and dreamed and remembered for what seemed like an eternity; but at the root of that dreaming was the blow to his neck, over and over again, his head falling into the muck, a weird glimpse of his own legs buckling, the fountain of iridescence rising. Now he was here, with the Blessed. Was he trapped, as they were?
Ghe blew out a long breath, steeled himself, and reached fingers up to his throat, stroking lightly from the base of his ear down. There: a raised ridge of flesh. He followed it around, found that it ringed him, a necklace of scar tissue.
“What does it mean?” he demanded, of no one in particular. But after a moment he nodded, answered himself. “I know what it means. The River remade me, put me back together, so that I might find his child and return her to him.” He reached his hand out before him, marveling at the touch of his fingertips against one another. “Not dead,” he whispered. “But not exactly alive either, I’ll wager. Not exactly alive.” And he remembered his hunger, like the hunger of fire for more wood, and felt a little thrill of fright.
“I wish I knew more.” But he wanted more than that. He wanted to see someone, talk to someone, prove to himself that he was alive and not in some lonely afterworld. He wanted to understand why he could open the doors to certain memories so easily, while other rooms in his mind were swept clean or drowned in chill, deep water.
It seemed that there was someone—an image came to him: an old woman, dark, hunched over a cloth, casting bone dice. But there was no name, no place, nothing. His mother? But no, that felt wrong.
Whom did he know? He remembered several priests, but even in this state he did not want to see them. No, he remembered only Hezhi very clearly, he remembered everything about her, he remembered her friends—the giant, Tsem; the old man, Ghan; and that little idiot, Wezh, who courted her.
Well, Hezhi was not in Nhol; that was why he was still alive. Tsem was probably dead, for Ghe remembered stabbing him—though, of course, he had stabbed the white demon swordsman and he had not died. But if Tsem wasn’t dead, he was gone with Hezhi. Ghan …
He considered Ghan, the librarian. The old man had helped Hezhi escape; Ghe had followed him and divined his plans. But Ghan himself had not planned to leave Nhol. Furthermore, Ghe had never told the priesthood of Ghan’s identity; he had been saving that for later, to tell the high priest himself so no lower-order theurg could claim to have discovered the traitors. That meant the priesthood might not know about him, might not have tortured him to death.
That pleased Ghe for more than one reason. He remembered, vaguely, that he admired the old man for his willingness to help the girl. He had considered never reporting him at all …
Ghe shook his thoughts back into line. Ghan might still be alive and well in the library. And Ghan knew him only in his disguise as Yen, a young engineer who engaged in harmless flirtation with Hezhi. If he were Yen, Ghan might speak to him. He must speak to me, he thought, again feeling the scar and wondering why there was no revulsion.
Yes, he could be Yen again, couldn’t he?
Of course, first he had to leave the underpalace, and the only way out he knew was by the Darkness Stair. He was not yet ready to risk the stair and its guardians—who knew what effect the priestly wards might have on him? Yet the thing in the water seemed to intimate that there were other ways out, one way, in fact, that Hezhi herself had braved. Ghe smiled and shook his head at the thought. His estimation of Hezhi continued to rise. Certainly he had been a fool to try to kill her; she was worth the whole priesthood and the aristocracy, too. He imagined the sweetness of her lips once more, that warm forbidden thing.
Yes, she was a marvelous creature. If she should reduce Nhol to rubble when he brought her back, why should he care? He was now, in his own way, a child of the River, too.
But out, he reminded himself. He must have come down from the sewers, somehow. His memory of it was of no use: he had been blind, a worm crawling down, waterward. Now he was a man again, and so he would have to use his mind, his hands, his eyes—though his eyes were no lo
nger human, nor, he suspected, were his mind and hands.
He used those eyes to find the water duct that emptied into the chamber, though no light at all existed to aid him. Well, he thought, a place to begin.
He rose up from the throne.
He made many false turns in the strange, twisted ways beneath the city, but eventually, he found a clean breath of air and followed it. Its source was a sewer grate, peering down at him from above, the air sweet, smelling of smoke and roasted meat. He shuddered in relief, for he had begun to suspect that his resurrection was merely some terrible joke played out by the River God, a punishment for failing—a curse to wander the beneath forever. But the air and its scents were real, because he could not have remembered them sharply enough to imagine them.
No light fell through the grate, and so he judged it to be night. This was fortuitous; he had no desire to emerge onto a crowded, daylit street. He realized that he had no idea what he looked like, though he knew his form was much as it had been. He was not, like the Blessed, a distorted monster. Still, it would be safer to see himself before another saw him—there might be surprises more evident than his scarred neck. He knew his clothes would attract attention, for they were rotted; they stank, though he only now took note of that. He would have to do something about them. As he thought this, he shook his head in wonder. His clothes were rotted. How long had he been beneath the city? Perhaps Ghan and everyone he knew was dead, Hezhi an old woman. There were old stories about such things, men thought drowned in the River who emerged after generations …
Best not to think about that anymore. Best to learn the truth, since it lay just above him. He found the foothold spikes in the stone wall and climbed up them. The grate, cast iron, shifted easily—too easily, and he began to wonder how different he was now. He could see in the dark, he was stronger, much stronger …
