The Blackgod

by Greg Keyes

  “The sooner we find her, the sooner we can get you back there,” Ghe reminded him.

  “Of course,” Ghan muttered. “Of course.”

  Sleep eluded Ghan for most of the afternoon, but he was near finding it through a dark thicket of half thoughts and full fears when he heard shouting. In that realm of semislumber, it seemed like a bell, clanging, and an image erupted from his sleeping memory into vivid life; the alarm ringing in his clan compound, himself just turned sixteen, the grim-faced soldiers filling his father’s court like oddly colored ants, the look of terrible despair on his father’s face.

  “Hezhi!” The bell rang, and Ghan came entirely awake. The noise was from Ghe’s cabin, along with the now-familiar rhythmic thumping of his bed. Ghan’s mouth felt dry, and he reached a trembling hand to the stoppered jug near his bed and took a drink. The water was warm, nearly hot, and it failed to soothe him as it might. He wished it were wine.

  Twice now he had heard Ghe shout Hezhi’s name in the heat of his passion, and he shuddered to think what it meant. He forced himself to, however, because there was something crucial happening to Ghe, something the ghoul himself wasn’t aware of—something Qwen Shen was doing to him. Ghan could see the consequence, but he didn’t understand the cause.

  The effect was that Ghe was becoming stupid. In earlier conversations—both as Yen and Ghe—Ghan had not been unimpressed by the young man’s native intelligence. Despite a clear lack of formal education, he was still able to comport himself better than most nobles and to discuss topics of which he had no knowledge with fair dexterity once he had been supplied with basic items of information. Now, suddenly, he was unable to make obvious connections. His memory seemed worse than ever, erratic.

  The manifest probability was that Qwen Shen had somehow ensorcelled him. That made it likely that Ghe’s earlier—now stupidly discarded—guess that she was somehow connected with the priesthood was correct. He had seen but never read the forbidden books in the Water Temple, texts on necromancy and water magic. The references he had found to what lay inside those covers suggested that there were ways to turn the power of even a god against itself.

  He remembered Ghe’s tale of what lay beneath the Water Temple, the things he had learned. Many would have thought that account the insane ravings of a mad beast, but he had always had his own suspicions about the priesthood. How had Ghe explained the power of the temple to stupefy the River? It had to do with the resemblance between the temple and She’leng, the source of the god. The River sought, ultimately, to return to his source, and a part of him was tricked into believing he had found it, into forming a circle.

  Ghan sat up in bed, fists clenched on his chin. What if Qwen Shen had somehow done the same thing to Ghe? His purpose in existing was to find Hezhi. Whatever Human emotions he confused with that purpose, it came ultimately from the River. What if Qwen Shen somehow convinced a part of Ghe that he had found her? Did Ghe somehow suppose he was making love to Hezhi?

  Well, clearly he either thought that or fantasized it.

  And this was making him stupid. Controllable.

  That wasn’t necessarily bad. Ghe was a dangerous creature, an eater of life, a ghost in flesh. Whatever motives Qwen Shen had, they were bound to be more Human in origin and scope. But what were they? Unfortunately, though, he knew little of her motives, but he knew at least one of her aims: his death. That in itself was incentive enough for him to find some way of freeing Ghe from her influence. If she ever managed to convince him that Ghan was worth more as a ghost than as a man, he was doomed.

  He was probably doomed no matter what, he thought, and with that optimistic assessment, he lay back down and sought sleep once more, hoping that his own dreams might provide, if not answers, solace.

  “How can we be assured this is the right stream?” Ghe demanded, making certain that Ghan caught his suspicious tone.

  The old scholar blinked like an owl in the brilliant noonday sun. He pointed vaguely at the River mouth. A sandbar trailed downstream from it, and the banks were verdant with bamboo and other plants whose names were unknown to Ghe.

  “It’s the first one wide enough on this side—since going upstream of Wun,” he answered, somehow managing to make those dry facts sound like grumbling, a sharp retort. Ghe considered chastising him, but Bone Eel and Qwen Shen both stood nearby, and appearances had to be maintained.

  He turned to Bone Eel, who was gazing at the stream mouth unhappily. “Can we navigate that?” Ghe asked. Bone Eel knew little else, but he did know more about boat travel than Ghe.

  Bone Eel waved his arms theatrically. “Not far, I suspect. That sandbar is a bad sign. Makes me think the whole tributary might be fairly silty.” He turned to Ghan, hands now balled on his hips. “Does your book make any mention of depth?”

  Ghan looked cross and consulted the volume he had reluctantly dragged from his room to the Tiller Pavilion. It lay on a mahogany desk usually reserved for charts.

  “Let’s see,” he muttered. “Thick about with bamboo—the fishing is fair, if one likes trout—here we go. ‘The mouth is twelve copper lengths wide, and the channel is five deep. Both the width and the channel maintain themselves for a distance of eight leagues inland, where the River splits into a greater and lesser branch, neither of which will take the hint of a keel. By flat skiff, one may then make one’s way.’” The scholar glanced up from the pages. “That’s what it says,” he noted.

  Though he listened to Ghan’s words, Ghe found his attention drifting back to the open River mouth. It appeared, to his untrained eye, that the barge could easily fit, once beyond the sand and debris that seemed to clutter the entrance. Past that, the small river looked wide and clear.

  Ghe narrowed his eyes. Something was happening where the tributary met the River. Water swirled into him, and where those waters met, Ghe saw a line of turbulence—not just in the liquid, but in the substance behind it. And he felt despair, humming in the air like some familiar song.

  Despair and pain, hunger. The first two from the stream flowing in; the last, of course, from the River, for it exactly resembled the hunger he knew when he was away from the water and the living were his bread and meat. The River devoured this smaller watercourse: not just its water, but its spirit. Which meant that there were other spirits than the River in the world. Not gods, surely, but creatures like gods.

  The sudden import of that struck him nearly physically, and he heard not a word of the conversation that continued between Ghan and Bone Eel. Instead, as he gazed at the continuing death of the tributary, he heard again the laughter of that creature beneath the Water Temple, its smugness, almost as if it viewed the River God with condescension.

  He nearly killed Bone Eel when the fool plucked at his arm. He felt the might gather, and behind it a sudden renewal of hunger, perhaps a sympathetic reflection of the River’s own hunger. But he caught Qwen Shen’s concerned gaze, and he relented. “Really, Master Yen,” Bone Eel was saying. “I must insist you pay attention.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ghe said, trying to infuse his voice with interest he did not feel. “I was just taken with the thought of leaving the River. It seems so strange.”

  “Yes,” Bone Eel agreed, “and I wonder why we are doing it. Eight leagues isn’t very far. What can we discover in eight leagues? It seems to me that we would be better off sailing farther up the River himself.”

  “Darling,” Qwen Shen said sweetly, patting his shoulder. “Don’t you remember explaining to me how important it is to chart navigable watercourses and land routes? Master Ghan assures us that both can be found up this stream. You may also remember that you said the crew needed a break to hunt and forage for a time. What better opportunity than now?”

  “Oh, that’s true,” Bone Eel said. “I was thinking that.”

  Inwardly Ghe wondered how such a woman as Qwen Shen could stop herself from smothering this silly fop in the night, but he also knew the answer. For women in Nhol power could be had only through a husband, a
son, or a brother. Bone Eel was heir to a fair amount of power but hadn’t the wits to use it. Probably everyone at court understood the source of the nobleman’s ideas and was relieved that he had a keeper.

  “Very well,” Bone Eel said. “Haul on the tiller, and I shall command the dragons!” he called to a knot of sailors awaiting his orders. “Soldiers, I want to see bows and fire for the catapult! This is unknown territory, and who can say what we shall find?”

  Moments later, their prow nosed carefully through the mouth of the River and entered, by way of water, the lands of the Mang. When they crossed that line—the one no one but he could see—Ghe felt a tremor, a wave of sickness that quickly passed. But it left undefined worry behind it. He noticed Qwen Shen’s batted eyes, the invitation they issued. She understood his moods and knew just as well what was good for him. After a few moments, he left the deck and went to his cabin to await her.

  Ghan was already back in his room, deeply engrossed in yet another tome. How many had the man brought with him? In passing, he noticed a feeling like… triumph? Hope? It was hard to tell with Ghan. He must have found something in his book he had been searching for. Hezhi used to light up with that same sort of ebullience when she found something she suspected or hoped for in her research. Though then he had not the power or need to sense those feelings; Hezhi radiated them, the way the sun produced light.

  Hezhi. Soon!

  His body stirred, in anticipation of Qwen Shen’s arrival.

  Ghan heard when Ghe went by; he had learned the ghoul’s gait long ago. Desperately he began reciting a poem to himself, over and over, trying to mask his true feelings, his precariously balanced hope and triumph.

  Ghe passed, but Ghan kept repeating the verse:

  “Often sweeps Death

  The houses of living,

  A menial task,

  That brings into her fair, dark eyes

  A sparkle of joy

  At the little things she finds there.”

  Only when he heard Qwen Shen enter and the sounds of pleasure begin in Ghe’s room did he return to the book, tracing his finger back to the point he left off, a paragraph or so below the bold caption that read, in the ancient hand:

  On the Nature and Composition of Dragons.

  XXV

  Falling Sky

  The shadow surprised Perkar when it settled upon him. Not because he hadn’t heard the methodical progress of someone climbing up the broken, stony face of the mesa; he had known for some time someone was coming up, presumably to see him. What amazed him was that the abundant silhouette could be cast only by Tsem, even with the cooperation of the westering light to lengthen it. Tsem, or perhaps some gigantic beast—but then, Harka would warn him of the latter.

  Then again, remembering that Harka had been less than perfectly reliable of late, he turned to see from what shoulders the dark umbra fell.

  It was, in fact, Tsem. Perkar’s face must have registered his amazement, for Tsem held out a hand signaling that, once he ceased wheezing and panting, he would explain what he wanted.

  That took a few moments. Despite the coolness of the afternoon, the half Giant was sweating profusely; a faint breeze mingled pungent man-smell with the desiccated tang of juniper, sage, and yarrow.

  “My mother’s people,” the half Giant finally managed to gasp, “Giants must live on soft, flat land. Surely we were not made for climbing up and down mountains.”

  Perkar stretched his lips in a grin he did not feel. He had volunteered for the watch up on the mesa to be alone; he had much thinking to do, and he knew he was poor company. Still, he had a guarded respect—admiration even—for the half Giant, although time and circumstances had allowed them only the most cursory of relationships. If this were some overture on Tsem’s part, it couldn’t hurt to appear a bit brighter, though he would much prefer to sulk. His father always said that a friendship missed was like an important trail passed by, and Perkar felt that he had already passed by many such trails in his short life. Of late, his friends had shown a tendency to die, and he was left, really, with only Ngangata and perhaps Hezhi, neither of whom seemed to be speaking to him at the moment—with reason. He could use another friend.

  So he smiled his difficult smile and waved at the mesa edge, and said, to be social, “This isn’t much of a mountain, either. Really just a ridge.” He turned his gesture beyond, jabbing an index finger toward a high line of peaks to the northeast. “Those are mountains. Be happy we skirted around them.”

  “I am,” Tsem assured him, mopping his brow and looking around. “Nice up here, though. It reminds me of a place Hezhi and I used to go.”

  “It does?” Perkar could hardly imagine that. What he had seen of Nhol had been impressive, and from a sufficient distance its hills and high walls of stone had a certain recondite beauty; but there was nothing of the Nhol he had seen that suggested the crumbling stone slope of the plateau they sat upon or the verdant, stream-etched plain five hundred paces below where Hezhi and the others were camped.

  “In a way,” Tsem clarified. “It’s like being up on the roof of the palace, looking out over the city. The way the light shines, the smell. And there was a courtyard with flowers like this.” He waved a sausage-fingered hand at the white yarrow that blazed over the plateau, blushed pink by the sunset—an ethereal carpet of blossoms ruffling knee-high in an imperceptible breeze. They shone in vivid contrast to the stark black skeletons of ancient hills that bounded the tableland on its south and west.

  “I never saw any sights like that in Nhol,” Perkar confessed. “My time there was short.”

  “And spent mostly on the docks. I know.” Tsem’s massive features crushed themselves into a thoughtful frown. “I came up to ask you a favor,” he blurted suddenly.

  “Ask,” Perkar said. “Although at the moment, I wonder what use I can be to you.”

  “Oh, but you can,” Tsem said. He stopped, grinned. “It is so good that you ken my language. Even Hezhi speaks it only when we are alone, and lately not even then. She wants me to learn Mang.” He looked embarrassed. “I’m not very good at it.”

  Perkar nodded understanding. “Neither am I, friend. I speak your language because the River taught it to me somehow. Or maybe Hezhi did, without knowing. But my Mang is at least as bad as yours.”

  “Me bet we talk to each other good in Mang,” Tsem stammered in his broken version of the tongue.

  “Yes. We speak good together,” Perkar answered in kind, and they both smiled. Perkar felt, once again, a warmness for the Giant that was difficult to explain; Tsem had threatened his life when they first met and had been at best brusque since then. But something about the quality of his loyalty to Hezhi, his genuine selfless love, demanded affection from Perkar. When the River transformed her, only Tsem had prevented Perkar from killing Hezhi, not by stopping him physically but merely by being there, by protecting her with his own wounded body. To kill Hezhi, Perkar would have had to kill Tsem—and he had been unable to do it. Perhaps because, in so many ways, the Giant was like Ngangata. Not just because they were both only half Human, but because they shared fiercely good hearts.

  He had never gotten to know Tsem, though. Injured in the escape from Nhol, the half Giant had been unable to accompany the Mang to the high country for autumn and winter hunting. And of course Perkar himself had been injured immediately on his return to the lowland camp.

  “You almost made me laugh,” he said, still grinning from their exchange of garbled Mang. “That’s more than anyone else has done for my mood lately. Ask your favor.”

  “I think you should know something first,” Tsem said solemnly, and the smile fled from his face. “Something that shames me. When you were ill, I advised Hezhi to let you be, to give you up for dead.”

  Perkar nodded slowly, narrowing his eyes, but did not interrupt as Tsem pushed on with his admission, eyes focused firmly on a yarrow plant two handspans away.

  “She’s already been through so much,” he explained. “I underst
ood that she would have to do this thing with the drum—this thing I don’t understand, only I understand how dangerous it is. I couldn’t bear the thought that she would—”

  “I understand,” Perkar said. “You have nothing to explain. She didn’t owe me anything.”

  “She thinks she does. Maybe she does. But that’s beside the point, because I owe you. You saved her when I couldn’t. You saved us both.” He frowned again, chewed his lip. “That really made me mad.”

  Perkar did chuckle then, though it was a bitter humor. “I think I understand that, too.”

  “I haven’t said the worst,” the half Giant growled. “After I got hurt, I just lay there, surrounded by these people speaking nonsense. I guess I had fun with a few of the women—” He shrugged. “That’s nothing. But Hezhi left, went off with you. I thought ‘I can’t save her anymore and I can’t keep her company.’ And I figured you two would get married and that it would only get worse. And I couldn’t tell Hezhi any of this, you see?”

  “Married?” Perkar said, incredulous. “Whatever gave you the idea we were courting?”

  Tsem shrugged his mammoth shoulders helplessly. “I don’t know. Nothing. But she cares for you, the way she has never cared for anyone except me and Qey and Ghan. It scared me. And when I thought she might risk her life for you, that scared me more than anything.”

  “Because you love her.”

  “No, that’s the worst thing—the very worst. Because I thought ‘What will I do out here without her?’ Not ‘What will she do without me?’”

  Perkar regarded the Giant’s agonized face for a long moment. “Does she know any of this?” he asked quietly.

  “She knows I’m useless out here. She thinks I’m pathetic. She tries hard to talk her way around it, but she does. She looks to the rest of you for help and strength, but for me she only feels pity. And she’s right. I am no use to any of you out here. Anywhere but in Nhol—in the palace. Such a little place; it was easy to be strong there, Perkar.”