The Blackgod

by Greg Keyes

  “I am no one,” Ghe replied softly. “Just a mouse scurrying in these corners. I mean no harm.”

  The boy looked amused. He settled down on the edge of the dais on which he stood. Ghe could see more clearly now, could make out that the dais held all manner of objects: weapons, books, a rack of painted skulls, chests and boxes. The light was coming from there, as well; a wrought-iron lantern that burned quite dimly, with no flickering, as if its glow did not issue from any flame. Perhaps, like everything here, it was only the ghost of flame.

  “Sit, be comfortable,” the boy enjoined. “I rarely have anyone to speak to, and thou must have questions, if thou comest here.”

  “I have questions,” Ghe acknowledged. “But I would not bother you with them.”

  “Thou bother me not at all,” the boy answered, as Ghe peered more intently at what crouched, leashed, at the boy’s feet. The dark shape confounded him, refused to resolve into any recognizable form. The boy’s accent was more than old-fashioned; it was nearly another language, and Ghe had to concentrate intently to understand him. He moved closer, since he seemed to have been invited to.

  When he was ten paces away, the boy waved him back. “It would be well if thou approach no closer,” he said. “Mine dog is known to bite.”

  Ghe nodded to show that he understood, but he did not sit, as instructed, preferring to stand so that he might quickly respond to a threat, if need be.

  “Thou came in through the crypts,” the boy observed. “I have the right of it, have I not?”

  Ghe saw no point in denying this and so nodded.

  “Here, give me something to call thee. It need not be thy name.”

  “You may call me Yen,” Ghe answered, wondering too late if the boy might not know of that identity.

  “Art thou unsighted, Yen? I sense a blindness about thee.”

  “I am blind.” It dawned upon Ghe that the boy himself was without sight, his pearly orbs never focusing on anything. If the boy thought him blind—perhaps sensing his ghostly thrall—then why argue?

  “It seemed that it should be so. They say that only the blind can come here.”

  “Why is that?” Ghe asked.

  “My father made it so,” the young man replied, smiling.

  “Your father, the River?”

  The boy chortled. “Thou does not know where thee beest? No, my father is not the River. Not he.”

  “Do you guard this place?”

  “Thou lack persistence,” the boy said. “Thou wouldst know of my father.”

  “I have no wish to be rude.”

  “Trespassing is always rude, thou, but mind that not. I am the keeper of this place, and its guardian in that sense.”

  “What do you guard?” Ghe asked, eyeing the treasure behind the boy but playing his role as a blind man.

  “Baubles, bangles. Mostly this place, as I said.”

  “But who do you guard it from?”

  “Thee, I suppose.”

  “I don’t want anything here,” Ghe lied.

  “No, I suppose thou merely took a wrong turning. It is a common mistake, and many make it,” the boy mocked.

  “I was curious, nothing more.”

  “Come,” the boy said, a bit of anger creeping into his voice. “Tell me why thou art here. It matters not what thou sayest, save that I am bored and wish to speak with someone.”

  It matters not what thou sayest. Ghe caught the threat in that. Was this boy merely delaying him, as more priests came? But he had heard no alarm, felt no odd play of power. Though it was like peering through a mist, he had occasional glimpses of the guardian’s heartstrands, and they looked strong and strange, and he seemed confident, as if understanding that he needed no aid. And then there was the shadow at his feet, pulsing with malevolent force. If he could feed on them, or better, capture them, what might he not learn?

  “Very well,” he relented. “I have come seeking the secret of the temple, I suppose. Seeking how it holds the River senseless here.”

  “And dost thou have thine answer now?”

  “No. This place was mentioned in a book that was read to me, but now that I have reached it, I know no more than I did.”

  “Fortunate that thou hast encountered me, then. I know this place well.”

  Ghe hesitated barely an instant. “The book speaks of a mountain far away.”

  “She’leng, the source of the Changeling.”

  “Changeling?”

  “Another name for the River. Yes, there is such a mountain, which thou namest She’leng. And what dost thou think that has to do with this place?”

  “It was built to resemble that mountain,” Ghe answered, once again wondering at the antiquity of the boy’s speech. No priest he knew spoke in such a manner, save in incantations, and never did it flow so smoothly from their lips.

  “Very good. And thou wouldst know why?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Imagine,” the boy said, clasping one knee between his hands, leaning back and staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, “Imagine… Wert thou ever sighted? But of course thou wert; I can sense it. Imagine then, in thy sighted days, standing before a mirror. Imagine now, another mirror behind thee, just precisely behind thee. What is it thou seest?”

  “Myself, I suppose, reflected into infinity.”

  “Indeed. Now suppose thou art stupid, like a blue jay or some other noisy bird. Hast thou ever seen them fly against glass, accosting their own reflection?”

  “No, but I can imagine it.”

  “A truly stupid bird might batter itself into senselessness against a mirror. Caught between two, it would be a virtual certainty.”

  “You say that the River is such a stupid bird? That the mountain and this temple are like mirrors, facing one another?”

  “Well, I only offer a little story. The truth is much more complicated, I suppose. The River flows on past this temple, is aware beyond it. But in a sense, a part of him is fooled into thinking this place is his point of origination, his womb, and that—though he knows it not—is what he truly seeks: return to his ancient home. He cannot see this temple because he confuses it with the mountain, and for him the distance between is somewhat meaningless.”

  Ghe remembered his dream, the dream of completeness long ago, when the River was an endless circle, content. He was aware that he sought his ancient state but thought to reachieve it by growing larger. But if part of him were fooled into a dream of contentment…

  “So he feels the water rushing through the temple—”

  “And believes that it is himself, flowing out from his source. It confuses him, but the nature of the wyrd is that he does not know he is confused.”

  Ghe nodded his head. “That may be so. But there is more.”

  “Oh, certainly. A thousand ancient songs—lullabies, if thou wilt—are pooled here, and over time such songs lie upon one another and gather strength. A thousand blocks of incense are burned, and priests are made so that the River cannot see them, either. But those things are just ornament, paint, gilding. I have given thee the very essence.”

  “And this was all done by the Ebon Priest?”

  The boy laughed. “The Ebon Priest is actually quite lazy, but he knows how to set others at a task. Thou wilt not see him here in the midst of this drudgery he created for us all. I suppose he laid out the plan but left others to refine the details. What thou seest is more my creation than his, in many ways.”

  Ghe narrowed his eyes. Was this man lying? He seemed only a boy, and yet Ghe already knew better than that.

  “You are the Ebon Priest’s son?”

  “His bastard, yes. Thou—you knew that.”

  “I do now, I suppose. Then you have been here for some time.”

  “You have an engaging talent for understatement.”

  As they had been speaking, the boy’s strange speech had gradually altered, until now he spoke with Ghe’s own soft dialect. That was somehow much more unnerving than hearing him speak in the
ancient, incantive tongue.

  “You have been here since the First Dynasty?”

  The boy shrugged. “Now and then I sleep. I was sleeping when you arrived, but my pet, here, awakened me.” He tugged playfully on the golden leash, and the darkness quivered a bit.

  Ghe did not ask about the pet, remembering that he was supposed to be unsighted, nor did he ask about the books, the weapons, the skulls.

  “Are those all of your questions?”

  “I don’t know what else to ask.”

  “Perhaps you would prefer to speak to someone else?”

  “Someone else?”

  “Why, yes. One of my companions, perhaps.”

  Ghe studied the room carefully. He saw no “companions” save for the “pet”—whatever it was.

  “I listen for the Sound of Falling Water,” he said, the standard acceptance of a master’s wisdom by the pupil. He realized, even before the boy had uttered his short, barking laugh, how ludicrous the phrase now seemed.

  “Well, then, who shall we speak to?” The boy stood and walked over to the skulls, rubbed their smooth craniums with his palms.

  “Su’ta’znata? Nungeznata? No! You would want to speak to Lengnata. Here.” He lifted up one of the skulls and brought it over, sat with it on his lap.

  “There, Lengnata. Speak to your loyal subject Yen.”

  The boy was certainly mad, Ghe thought. Quite mad indeed.

  “Thou mockest me,” Ghe heard himself say suddenly, harshly. He clutched at his throat. “Leave me to sleep. I have no subjects, nor ever did I.” He heard himself go on. His voice, speaking from his throat, without his command.

  “No! Stop! Make it stop!” Ghe cried, this time of his own volition. He could feel nothing, no intruding presence. It was not as if someone were forcing him to speak; it just… happened.

  The boy tittered, as Ghe answered himself. “Slay him, if thou canst, and if not, escape from here. If thou ever wert a subject of the Chakunge…” Ghe concentrated furiously, trying to make it stop, but it would not; the words kept vomiting from his mouth. He barely noticed how, at the mention of the Chakunge, the boy nearly doubled over in laughter.

  Stop, stop, Ghe thought, as Lengnata muttered on madly in Ghe’s voice. Desperately he reached out with the tendril of his power, searching for a way to make the babbling cease, to kill the source of the utterances. He felt into the skull and found it there, the ghost knot, and frantically seized it, closed the fist of his mind on it, and squeezed. The babbling suddenly did cease then, and almost instinctively Ghe pulled the ghost of Lengnata into himself and tethered it with the blind boy. It was a weak, starved creature, easier to manage than he had guessed.

  He realized suddenly that his knees must have given up holding him; he was on his hands and knees facing the floor, shuddering heavily.

  “Give that back,” the boy said slowly, deliberately. He no longer seemed amused at all.

  “No,” Ghe managed. “No, I don’t think I will.” And he struck like a snake, reached for the bunched strings of the guardian’s life.

  Fire hollowed Ghe out, burst from his eyes and mouth, and, as if physically struck, his body arched back and slammed to the stone floor, writhing. He kicked away madly, aware of his own shrieking but unable to do anything to stop it. A small part of his mind remained intact, trying to ride the crest of the agony, understand what had happened to him. He had reached out toward the boy and encountered something, a venom that struck up through him like a sword. He waited for the next blow, the one that would finish him, but something stayed it. Surely not him, though he felt a hard kernel of power in him, still untouched. He kept that near as, trembling, he turned back to the boy.

  The boy had a nasty grin on his face. His “pet” had risen up, and Ghe saw that it now wore Human form; a tall, striking man with enormous, fishlike eyes, a nose almost beaklike in its angularity. He wore armor made of some gigantic crustacean, and he carried an aquamarine blade. Within his bulging eyes were empty hollows in which danced darkness and white sparks. His hair hung long, jet, lank, bound by the golden circlet of a king.

  “Bow down, Yen,” the boy spat. “Rise, but only to your knees so that thy emperor may receive you.”

  Ghe still felt on fire, but the pain seemed to have been mostly illusion, or at least nonphysical. It had been as if his eyes and flesh actually melted, but he was still whole…

  What was the guardian talking about? The apparition whose chain he held was not the emperor; he had seen the August One many times. No, this was some ghost, or demon.

  “I see you do not recognize him, the First Emperor, the Riverson.”

  Ghe parted his lips to retort but could not find the air. It couldn’t be, he knew. Couldn’t be not a Chakunge but the Chakunge. If such were true, the power of this boy must be hideous… But now he could see the boy’s power revealed, the fire and lightning raging in his heart, a cyclone of fight. What had he done, what had he wakened?

  “Now. Give me back what you took.”

  I return to death regardless, Ghe understood. And so he ran, striking out with the force in him rather than reaching to take.

  Four steps he flew and felt his blow deflected, drained away, but then he was leaping, hurtling through the air. The boy shrieked in fury when he saw Ghe’s target, and Ghe felt a thousand hot needles of brass piercing his spine. The ghost of the Chakunge moved as quickly as a dark lightning crackling across the floor, chips spalling from the stone where his feet touched. In the same instant Ghe struck the roaring column of water and it struck him, a giant’s fist with no mercy or care. Light and thought vanished into thunder and then void.

  XVI

  Gaan

  The sound of drums faded, replaced by an enveloping silence that included not even her heartbeat. Hezhi had a sense of rushing, but there was no confirming wind on her face. The terrible fear that gripped her faded, however, receding like the drums and her own heartbeat, and with some startlement she understood that her eyes were shut tightly. She opened them.

  Something was hurtling by beneath her, a broad, endless something that could only be landscape, seen from high in the air. It was a dark terrain, the bunched masses of hills indigo, the plains mauve, wriggling strips of ebony that must be streams or rivers. The brightest color surrounded her; she was wreathed in clouds of sparks, exactly like the sky-seeking flashes from the bonfire, and with a shock she realized that the sparks were not merely following her but emitting from her; her body glowed like a red-hot brand.

  What have I become? She wondered. But she still felt like herself.

  Ahead of her, matching the pace of her flight, was a second brand, trailing flame like the comets she had read of, nearly white at its center, nimbused in orange and yellow, the faintest tail of the torch swirling away into turquoise, jade, and at last, violet. It was more than merely astonishing but beautiful, and she found that while her fear seemed to have been cut from her like a lock of hair, her wonder had not.

  What had happened? She struggled to understand as her speed increased, the weird landscape sheeting beneath like an inconstantly choppy sea.

  She had passed through the drum, the bun. She must be in that otherworld Brother Horse described, and she realized that she had never believed him, despite her experience with things arcane. Ghosts and the power of the River made sense to her; this land of gods and demons and worlds within worlds did not, and deep down she had always thought it to be some Mang superstition. That assumption had led her to be incautious, to meddle with something she understood not at all. It could be that she was dead, she thought. She must resemble a ghost quite strongly, a ghost such as the one that had attacked her in the Hall of Moments. Had her body been stripped from her like the peel of a fruit? Was Tsem even now holding her lifeless corpse, weeping?

  She turned back, attempting to see more of her “body,” but only flame was revealed to her, a coruscating skirt billowing into nothingness.

  If she were a ghost, then what flew ahead of
her? But she thought she knew that, too. It must be the spirit of the horse, running back to its mother, the Horse Goddess. It was certainly dead, and that led Hezhi to suspect that she was, as well.

  The land below grew rougher, and her flight swooped and climbed to follow the rising contours of it. She wondered, vaguely, if there was any way to control her flight, but after a certain amount of experimentation—willing herself to turn, waving her ethereal arms—she gave up. It was as if she were borne along on a swift stream, perhaps one that the Mang ritual had created to send the horse home. She was going farther and farther from her drum, then, which was probably her only way back to the world of the living—if that world even existed for her now.

  Ahead, something bright shone, a brilliant eye with lids of rainbow arcing about it. It grew larger and nearer with immeasurable rapidity. She felt certain that this was their destination, for the shooting star ahead of her turned subtly to intersect it, weaving through the sawtooth silhouettes of mountain peaks, and she followed. The whiteness grew, expanded to fill the horizon. She had a sense of enormity, of a mountain larger than any mountain in the world and a tree with branches in the nether stars before the light enveloped her, and, shuddering, she came to a halt.

  She first became aware of voices, muttering in a tongue she did not understand. She could pick out four, possibly five distinct speakers: two women, two men, what might be a girl or young boy. Around her, the light was fading, becoming red spots on her eyes.

  Finally, magnificence replaced the spots.

  She stood in the grandest hall she had ever known; no court in Nhol could even begin to match it for size. Its splendor was stunning, as well, but it was of an alien sort to Hezhi, resembling more the natural beauty of the cliffs and mountains than it did the refined—though often decadent—architecture of the palace. Still, in its vastness there was a simplicity that matched certain Nholish ideals.

  The walls—those that she could see—were curtains of basalt, flowing to the floor and rising beyond vision above, though the hall was well lit by the barbaric guttering of perhaps a hundred torches. The floor was polished red marble, and by that she knew that some hand had crafted this place; otherwise she might have thought it a purely natural cavity. The floor was mostly empty, like a vast dance theater, and by comparison the part of it she stood upon was cluttered, for nearby were a throne, carved from a column of basalt, the dais that it sat upon, a vast table, and its attendant benches. None of these was occupied.