by Greg Keyes
Footsteps approached; the ghost of the blind boy identified them instantly, knew the cadence of walking like a name from first introduction, and so Ghe did not turn but called out, instead, a soft greeting, enjoying the sigh of air across the moving barge. “Lady Qwen Shen,” he remarked. “You stir at an odd hour.”
“As do you, Lord Yen.”
He half turned his face toward her so that she could discern his sardonic grin. “No lord I, Lady.”
“Is that so? I wonder, then, why the emperor gave this expedition into your hands.”
“Your husband is the captain, madam.”
“Oh, yes.” She sighed. “My husband. Perhaps we should speak of him.”
“Speak, Lady?”
The corners of her mouth turned up, and he noticed, once again, her great beauty, the slightly … exotic air about her.
“The emperor told you that he would furnish you with a barge to pursue your quest—and the trappings to go with the barge. A crew, a captain. My husband, Bone Eel, is just such a trapping.”
Ghe scratched at the scar on his chin. “Then who gives these soldiers their orders?”
“Bone Eel does. But he gives the orders I suggest, and I suggest what you tell me to. That is how command works on this vessel.”
“That seems needlessly elaborate,” Ghe observed. “Is Bone Eel aware of this arrangement?”
“Aware?” Ghe turned so that he could see the lady’s eyes sparkle as she spoke. “He is barely aware that breath passes in and out of his lungs. He is quite unaware that he never conceives an idea of his own. The emperor has given him a charter to sail up-River to ‘Wun and parts beyond’ as the emperor’s ambassador. It is up to you and me to determine to what ‘parts beyond’ we shall navigate.”
“No offense, Lady Qwen Shen, but wouldn’t it have been simpler to put Bone Eel—or some other captain—directly under my command?”
“Of course not,” she said, turning her face to catch a zephyr sighing across the water. “No lord would suffer to be commanded by a commoner—and a commoner cannot command a royal barge. Believe me, this is the best arrangement that can be made. Your directives will be carried out, never fear.”
He simply nodded at that. “The emperor explained our true mission?”
She solemnly returned his nod, and her voice husked lower still. “His daughter,” she all but mouthed.
Ghe nodded. “You’ve said enough.” But his brow stayed bunched in consternation.
“Don’t worry,” Qwen Shen soothed. “This is a charade I am accustomed to. You and I will captain this vessel quite efficiently.”
“An honor,” Ghe said, but what he thought was that he was at this woman’s mercy and a bit of his earlier elation faded. A gull cried in the darkness, and far out across the River’s supine majesty, Ghe could see another, smaller barge moving with the current. He wondered if it, too, had dragons leashed beneath its bow—or if it moved at the behest of more mundane forces.
“Bone Eel does not know?”
“As I told you,” she answered. “Nor anyone else save the old man. You must tell him to watch his tongue.”
Ghe flashed her an evil little smile. “No one has to tell him to keep his mouth darkened. He usually only opens it to insult or argue. But I will make certain he understands our situation, anyway. Just so long as you understand that he is not to know I have any real role in this expedition. He believes me to be an engineer with some love for Hezhi, that is all.”
He was aware of her regard spidering about him as they spoke, walking delicately here and there. Often it touched lightly on his throat. He kept his own gaze studiously out and away. When he did glance at her, the intensity of her inspection disturbed him.
“What of you, Lady? What do you think me to be?”
She was silent, and the boat glided on for a time, before she turned to him frankly and answered that question by asking her own.
“May I touch your flesh?”
“What?”
“Your hand. I wish to touch your hand.”
“Why?”
“I want to see if it is cold.”
“It is not,” he assured her. “It is the temperature of flesh.”
“But I want to touch it,” she insisted. “I want to know …”
“You want to know how the flesh of a ghoul feels?” he hissed.
She did not flinch from him. “Yes.”
He darted his hand out, swiftly, so that she would understand that he was more than Human as well as less, and he gripped her hand in his with enough strength to hurt her. She gasped but, other than that, did not complain.
“That is how my flesh feels.” He grinned savagely.
She closed her eyes but did not jerk away as he thought she might. “You were wrong,” she told him instead, and he suddenly felt her other hand, the free one, tracing along his knuckles. “Your flesh is warmer than that of a man.”
He released her hand with a dismissive thrust. “Does that satisfy your curiosity, madam?”
She rubbed her abused hand absently with her other. “No,” she said. “Oh, no. My curiosity is just beginning to awaken.”
And she favored him with her own sardonic smile as she retraced her path to the colorful pavilion beneath which her husband slept.
Ghe, for his part, stood rooted where he was long after sunup, nursing his astonishment into anger, the anger into rage. If Qwen Shen were going to play games with him, she would regret it. He planned a number of inventive ways to make her do so, and then, as more sailors began to move about the deck, checking the depth with long poles, casting out nets, or merely watching the River and shore for dangers, Ghe went below to speak with Ghan.
“She is not near the River, you can be certain of that,” Ghan told him—a bit warily, Ghe thought.
“Why is that?”
“I am Forbidden, so I will not delve in great detail into the subject. Suffice to say that she fled not Nhol so much as she fled the River, and to return to him would thwart all of her hopes.”
“Then we shall not return her,” Ghe assured him. “We will find her and warn her of the priesthood and its plans.”
“I don’t see how the priesthood can find her.”
“They have ways.”
“And you know that the temple’s expedition goes up-River rather than overland? That is why the emperor outfitted a barge for our journey?”
In fact, Ghe had not thought much about why he requested a barge; it had seemed the natural thing, at the time. Now he realized that he might have let the River God betray himself; the River could only conceive of up-River and down-River, and so naturally Hezhi must be in one of those directions. Ghe’s sense was that she was up-River, but now it dawned on him that the River’s belief in this matter—even filtered through him—was not trustworthy. The River did not know where she was.
His only clues were visions the River had been sending him in the past few days. Unlike the first—which had been about the River himself—these pictured a man, a dark, wild man on a striped horse who rode with companions dressed, like himself, in barbaric costumes. It seemed to Ghe—in this dream—that the wild man knew where Hezhi was, was somehow like himself: an extension of the River’s purpose into places where he could not flow. But the River gave him precious little information otherwise. And he needed information, something to make Ghan think he knew more than he did.
The man on the horse reminded him, almost against his will, of the little statuette he had given Hezhi, the half-woman, half-horse creature from Mang fantasy. If the man in his dreams was Mang, then perhaps—but all barbarians looked alike.
No, that wasn’t true. Some of them were as white as albinos with eyes like pale gray glass. Mang, at least, looked like people.
If he did not take the chance now, before Ghan said something, then Ghan would control all of the information. The old man could tell him anything, and Ghe’s arcane senses were not keen enough to identify subtle falsehoods. Ghan had to believe in the fict
itious temple expedition, had to believe that the priesthood knew where she was.
And so, mustering all of his confidence, he asserted the only thing he could think of. “We—and the priesthood—know only that she is among the Mang.” Then he fought to suppress a triumphant smile, for he smelled Ghan’s chagrin, a bitter, salty scent. He had been right! Or partly right. Now Ghan would have to be careful what he said when he lied, for he could no longer be certain of what Ghe did and did not know. He could see the struggle in the old man, the hope of formulating a lie, the desire to fashion one as close to the truth as it needed to be to be believed. He nodded inwardly; yes, Ghan would deceive him, if he thought he could get away with it. Where would the scholar have led them, if he no longer believed the priesthood to be a threat to Hezhi? Then he would conclude that the only possible threat was from this expedition. But now he had evidence that the priests knew where she was, and that would motivate him to tell at least part of the truth.
“She is among the Mang,” Ghan finally agreed, and Ghe clenched his fists in victory. “That much is true. The priesthood must have been watching me more closely than I thought, must have known when I got word from her.”
“I have seen maps,” Ghe said. “The Mang Wastes are enormous. Knowing she is in them does not narrow our search significantly.”
“Yes,” Ghan said quietly. “But I know where she is to a much finer degree.”
“Must we travel overland? What is our course?”
Ghan sighed and lifted up a tube of bamboo and brass from beside his desk. He pulled a chart from it and spread it across the flat surface.
“Here is Nhol,” he explained, and Ghe recognized the spot easily enough. The River was represented by three waving lines, parallel to one another. Nhol was a drawing of the Water Temple, a stepped pyramid. Ghe felt a bit of familiar anger at that—that the city of the River should be represented by his nemesis.
“These are the wastes,” Ghan went on, gesturing at a vast area that lacked any real detail—save for the figure of a man on horseback, sword raised. The River cut right along the edge of those lands. The other side of the River was labeled “Dehshe,” which Ghe knew to be another barbarian tribe.
“We might as well stay on the River until we reach this point here,” Ghan said, indicating a single waving line that intersected the River.
“What’s that?”
“Another, smaller watercourse. It may be that we can take the barge up it some distance. Then we will have to debark and go overland.”
“To where?”
Ghan glanced up at him frankly. “Understand me,” Ghan said. “I think I have little use to you or the emperor other than my knowledge of where Hezhi is. I wish to preserve that usefulness as long as I may. For now, I will say only that you should sail to the mouth of that stream and then up it, if possible.”
Ghe nodded. There was nothing stupid about the old man. Indeed, he reminded Ghe of someone. For an instant, he knew who it was; the old woman on Red Gar Street, whom he had murdered. He felt a sudden flush of emotion at the thought, a shadow of the sadness that overtook him after she died. Why should this old man remind him of her?
They were both old, both ugly, both hard and unforgiving, that was what. Both dangerous, added to the list. But there was something more fundamental he could not remember.
“Well, then,” he said, to interrupt his own thought. “I shall take this news to Bone Eel, unless you wish to advise him yourself.”
“Please.” Ghan snorted. “I have spoken to him once; that shall suffice until such time as I die and he summons my ghost and compels me to speak to him again. I have avoided his sort for many years, and now I am crowded shipboard with one.”
Ghe nodded. “I understand you. The priesthood and engineers are full of his kind. I believe that it is actually Qwen Shen who leads this expedition.”
“Yes, Qwen Shen. Lady Fire, Lady Ice.”
“What?”
“That is the meaning of her name, you idiot,” Ghan said. “Fire, ice.”
“Oh.”
“Go. I have much reading to do.”
“Master Ghan, do you never do other than read?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know that you have never been north of Nhol on the River. And yet, here you sit, closeted away, rather than beholding the world as it unfolds.”
“Yes, well, as of now I can pretend I am not on this mad journey. I can keep my mind on important things. Soon enough—when you have me marching overland on these ancient legs—I will not have that luxury. Besides, what can one see ‘unfolding’ out there?”
“Well … water and distant levees, I suppose, another boat now and then. I see your point.”
“Indeed. And a person of normal intelligence would have seen my point long ago and thus spared me wind that I cannot afford. I am old; there is not that much left in me.”
“Once again I apologize, Master Ghan, and I will leave you to your work.”
He bowed briefly and exited the room. He went back above and thought that he did not see Ghan’s point. As he stepped out onto the polished planks, the world seemed wondrous and entirely new. The sun cast a cheerful yellow light on the world, and clouds meandered good-naturedly across a sky that, like the sun, was as simple and unshaded as the colors in his dreams. Some thirty or so of the soldiers stood along the railings, still in their aquamarine-and-gold kilts and burnished steel armor. His soldiers, really, here because he asked the emperor for them. Men who would fight and die at his command.
Best of all, the enterprise was not the wan hope it had once been. Ghan knew where Hezhi was, knew exactly where she was. Soon he would find her, protect her from her enemies, embrace her once again. He would bring her back to her father—not the poor flesh-and-blood one in the palace, but the one she truly belonged with. She fled him only because she did not understand him, and that because of the priesthood filling her from childhood with the wrong notions, notions that came from that dark place beneath, where a terrible creature masqueraded as Human while toying with the First Emperor on a chain. She had learned to fear the God, equate him with the perversions of the priests—perversions and fears that he himself had once embraced before death awoke him. But the River—the truth of him—was this he saw now, vastness, the sky come to live upon the earth, life, the cycle of rain. Joy. In that instant, he felt his head and his feet as a world apart, and between them crawfish, gar, flatfish, crabs, catfish, eels—all of the living things in the waters, the vast brakes of reed and cane, the thick cypress and mangrove stands of the Swamp Kingdoms. No trace of hunger pained him, and the nightmare verity that he was dead seemed far distant, a misplaced worry. Only one unquiet thought lay in him, and it was annoying because he could not find its heart at all. In it was something of the temple and its weird master, but that was not the seed of his … worry? Fear?
Whatever it was, he would deal with it when it came, and now, for the first time since his rebirth, he felt—bizarrely—almost like singing. He would not let one skewed thought pull him away from this rare sensation. Nor would he sing; that would be too much, and others on the boat would think him addled—but he would watch the River gliding past and worship it, know it for his destiny, and that would be like singing.
In his cabin, Ghan studied the map carefully, and another that held more detail. He cross-referenced it against the geography he had brought with him.
He trod a tightrope now, with razors on either side. If only he were absolutely certain that the priesthood had not sent a mission. But if they had, it was far ahead of them, and Hezhi and Tsem would have already escaped or been captured.
He did not see how the latter could happen unless the Mang sold her to them, and he could not imagine what a priest might offer or wield that would buy or intimidate the Mang.
His plan was still only half shaped, still coming together. Too much of it hinged upon Yen, who continually surprised him. There was something about Yen he did not understand, a part of
the tapestry unwoven or out of sight, at least.
Meanwhile, he had his maps and his geography. He would learn what he could from them.
Thus, as Ghe walked abovedecks, wondering what prickled at his happiness, Ghan turned back to the first map and absently ticked his finger upon the conical drawing of a mountain labeled “She’leng,” whence the wiggly line signifying the River began. It was odd, he thought, how much it resembled the drawing that marked Nhol, half a world away.
XXI
The Shadow Man
Wake up.
Perkar opened his eyes to a sky that shuddered and bumped so that he feared the clouds would shake loose from it and fall upon him. In fact, it seemed that some of them already had, for he was soaked to the bone. He raised his hand feebly in a vain attempt to brush the water from his clothing, and the world wobbled even more dangerously.
Someone chattered in a language that he didn’t immediately understand—and then recognized as Mang. He jerked up, realizing suddenly how weak his body felt, how limp. His last real memory was of playing Slap with a big Mang warrior—and losing. What had they done with him?
He couldn’t sit up, because he was tied down, strapped to a travois.
“Hey!” he tried to roar, but instead issued only a weak cough. Still, someone else heard it, and the scratching progress of the travois suddenly stopped.
A thick, half-Human face blotted the sky, and quick fingers pulled at straps on his chest.
“Ngangata,” Perkar croaked.
“How do you feel?”
“The way I felt after the Huntress was done with me. What happened?”
“Well, that is a very long story, and—”
“Perkar!” A rustling of cloth and soft boots on sand accompanied an excited shout. He turned his head and saw Hezhi scrambling across desert toward him.
“Brother Horse said you would wake up soon! I thought the rain would do it!”
“Hello, Princess. I hope someone can explain something to me soon.”
Thank her for saving your life, Harka muttered in his ear, faintly—as if the sword, too, were ill.
