Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  The hallway was beginning to become crowded as midmorning absolutions approached. Gaudily clad nobles, prim maidservants, bodyguards, and austere counselors all mingled through the arteries of the palace. Elsewhere they were pooling in fountain rooms, praying to the River where he erupted into the palace itself.

  He should leave the hall, he knew. It would not do for someone—from the priesthood, for instance—to recognize him. Especially not now, when the Ahw’en arm of the priesthood—those who investigated mysterious goings-on—must surely be active, searching for some trace of a certain vanished nobleman—the man whose clothes Ghe was currently wearing. The Ahw’en were often Jik, like himself. No, best he avoid crowds.

  Thus, although not certain he was prepared, he stepped into the library, where few in the palace ventured.

  It was, as he remembered, daunting. Mahogany shelves suffused the illumination from thick-paned skylights, swirled it about the room like cream stirred into coffee. Ghe was struck by the illusion that walls were hung with tapestries woven from the bodies of enormous millipedes, each segment of their bony armor the spine of a book. Most of the books were black and brown, enhancing this impression. The few that stood out—here a deep yellow, burgundy, indigo—these only suggested, somehow, that the great worms were poisonous. The books curled thus around a carpeted area in which several low tables stood, surrounded by cushions for sitting. Beyond, the shelves wandered back into the deep, narrow labyrinth Hezhi had named the Tangle. He remembered how effortlessly Hezhi had glided through the endless shelves of books, selecting first this, then that one for “Yen.” At first he had only pretended to pay attention to her talk of the “index” and the manner in which books were filed. Eventually, however, her enthusiasm proved infectious; knowledge was a weapon, and Hezhi had an arsenal at her command, one she seemed willing to share. He wondered now, belatedly, if she hadn’t used that arsenal to defeat him; certainly she had used it to escape the city. But had she somehow found the pale stranger with his supernatural weapon in the pages of these books? Had she conjured him, like a demon, from some tome?

  Ghan’s desk was set apart, and behind it sat the old man himself, copying or annotating a bulky volume. He wore an umber robe, and his skin gleamed a peculiar parchment yellow, so that he seemed as much a part of the room as the ancient documents that filled it. His features were sharp—jagged, almost—harsh frown lines etched permanently in his flesh. Not a pleasant man, Ghe remembered. He had dreamed, on first meeting him, of slipping a knife into his heart. Later he had come to think of the scholar as brave—but he had never learned to like him.

  Though Ghe was the only other visible person in the room, Ghan never raised his eyes to acknowledge him.

  He approached Ghan timidly, as “Yen” might. The old man continued writing, obscure and beautiful characters licking from his pen onto the paper with astonishing speed. Ghe cleared his throat.

  Ghan did look up then, his eyes hard pinpricks of annoyance beneath the wrapped black cloth that obscured his bald head.

  “Yes?” he inquired testily.

  “Ah,” said Ghe, suddenly not certain that his reluctance was entirely feigned. “Master Ghan, you might remember me. I am—”

  “I know who you are,” Ghan snapped.

  For a frozen instant, Ghe felt a stab of something like fear. Ghan’s gaze seemed to tear away the brocaded collar and reveal his throat, his true nature. He was acutely aware of all of the things he had forgotten. Had Ghan ever known him to be a Jik?

  “I’m sure you remember how to find your books on arches and sewers,” Ghan went on. “There is no need to bother me.”

  Relief rushed from his feet, through his gut, up to the top of his head. Ghan was merely being himself, impatient and unhelpful. He still believed him to be Yen, the architect.

  “Master Ghan,” he rushed out as the old man threatened to return to his work. “It has been some time since I have been in the library.”

  “A few months,” Ghan replied. “A fraction of a year. Is your head not capable of holding information longer than that?”

  Ghe shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, Master Ghan, it is. I …”

  “Don’t waste my time,” Ghan cautioned.

  Ghe lowered his voice, willed his face into lines of distress.

  Inwardly he felt relief; he was now in complete control of the mask he wore, his worry evaporated into the stale air of the library. “Master Ghan,” he whispered almost inaudibly. “Master Ghan, I have come to ask you about Hezhi.”

  Ghan stared at him for a moment, and something flashed behind his flat countenance, was mastered, and vanished. Ghe appreciated that; Ghan had a very well crafted mask, as well.

  “Hezhinata,” Ghan corrected, adding the suffix to denote someone a ghost.

  “Hezhi,” Ghe insisted softly.

  Ghan trembled for an instant, and then the trembling reached his face and transfigured it, tightened it into fury.

  “Darken your mouth!” he barked. “Don’t speak of such things.”

  Ghe persisted, though adding even more reluctance to his manner. “I believe you cared for her,” he said cautiously. “She was your student, and your pride in her was obvious. Master Ghan, I cared for her, too. We … she cared for me. Now she has gone, and everyone says she is a ghost. But I know better, do you understand? I have heard the rumors the priests whisper. I know she escaped the city, fled with her bodyguard.”

  Ghan ticked his pen against the white page; Ghe noticed that the heretofore flawless document now had several irregular splotches of ink upon it. He knows! Ghe thought exuberantly. He knows where she has gone!

  Ghan glanced away and then stared back up at Ghe.

  “Young man, I can only caution you against repeating such things,” he said softly. “I know you cared for her. It was evident. But she is dead, do you understand? I’m sorry for you, but it is true. I myself am still in grief—I will be until the day I die. But Hezhinata is dead. She was laid in state with her ancestors in the vaults beneath the Water Temple.”

  He glanced down at the ruined page and crinkled his eyes in exasperation. “If you need to use the library,” he said, “I will help you, as she would have. I will do that for her. If you do not want to use the library, then you must leave. I will call the guard if need be, and you will be embarrassed before your order. Do you understand?”

  Ghan’s eyes were mild now, but they were also inflexible. Ghe could think of no reply that might draw out more information.

  “As you say,” he finally relented. And then, defiantly: “But I know.”

  “Get out,” Ghan said, his voice as brittle and dangerous as broken glass.

  Ghe nodded, bowed in respect, and left the library.

  He retraced his steps through the narrow corridors, eyes alert, brow furrowed. Ghan was more obstinate than he had imagined; winning his help would be no easy task—and he needed Ghan’s help.

  It had, at least, been good to speak to someone, to further prove to himself that he was indeed alive. He had been living in the palace for two days now, but furtively, observing and trying not to be seen. His only real encounter with a person up until now had been—well, less than cordial.

  His first day had been spent trying to find a place to stay; that had been, actually, his easiest task. The old wing of the palace had many uninhabited sections, and beneath that were the even less frequented spaces of the earlier palace that the present one was built upon. Hezhi had spent much time in those abandoned places, and Ghe had followed her, now and then, exploring them himself at other times. Finding a place where the guards never went was far from impossible, and he had done so rather easily.

  Finding clothes to replace his own ruined ones had been more difficult and more dangerous. Worse, he had discovered something unpleasant about himself. The apartment he entered for the purpose of stealing garments was that of a young man attached to minor nobility. Ghe had chosen him from a number of drunken revelers in the Red Blossom Courtyard, favore
d by the young for its remoteness. The fellow had the right build, no bodyguard, and was so inebriated he would likely never notice Ghe’s entry into his apartment. Nor did he; and yet when Ghe saw him, unconscious on his bed, hunger suddenly replaced his desire for clothing. Feeding on a monster beneath the city was one thing; killing a man in the palace who would be missed was another. Nevertheless, almost without his own knowledge, he had torn apart the strands of life in the sleeping man and devoured them, leaving a body as cold and bereft of life as a stone. It had seemed incautious to leave the body where it lay—the Ahw’en might have some method of determining how he died—and so now it rested beneath the palace, returning its substance to the River.

  He wondered how often he would have to feed like that.

  Indirect afternoon sunlight dazzled from stuccoed white walls as he stepped from the dark hall into a courtyard. He brushed past the fronds of a tree fern, savored the smell of bread baking and garlicky lamb singeing on skewers. The old woman cooking gave him a glance and then returned to her work, uninterested. Above, a second woman clucked something from her third-story window down to the cook, who merely waved indifferently up at her. He swept on through the small plaza, relieved when he gained the near darkness of the next hall, lit only obscurely by the blue patterns seeping through bricks of colored glass set in the roof.

  He returned his thoughts to Ghan. He had learned at least three useful things from the old man. First, that he could still speak to other Human Beings in a normal fashion, something he had begun to doubt; not only normally, but as a Jik, concealing his true self—whatever that was now. Second, that Ghan did not, in fact, know his true identity. As far as Ghan was concerned, he was Yen, a young man infatuated with Hezhi. Finally, though denying it verbally, it was clear from various subtle signs—which he could still read—that the librarian knew that Hezhi was alive and probably knew where she could be found. That meant that he was on a productive trail, likely the only trail, since, as it turned out, he had lain in the depths of the palace for nearly five months. Hezhi must be far from Nhol, far from the River and his vision.

  Ghe passed the entrance to the Hall of Moments, where light coruscated so brightly through colored glass that he had once believed the Waterborn had snared a rainbow to live there with them. He went by it quickly, head lowered as if in thought or deference, and hurried into the empty portions of the palace. It was there, some fifty paces down the Hall of Jade Efreets, that he noticed the man following him. Though startled, he gave no sign, instead continuing on as if nothing were odd. He took a few strange turns, leaving the traveled thoroughfares far behind, and eventually stopped to rest and wait in another of the palace’s innumerable courtyards. This one—he did not know its name—was in a sad state of disrepair, yet, consequently, had a melancholy beauty. Small, open to the sky, it was sunken through three tiers of palace, overlooked by eight empty, cobwebbed balconies. The pallid winter sun draped a scraggly, ancient olive tree in saffron light, and a few grassy weeds clawed at the pitted limestone pavement. Ghe sat on a bench of antique design, a stone slab supported by leaping granite fish—though the latter were mostly obscured by moss and lichen. A thick, black thornbush of some sort twisted tortuously up the wall he faced to cling to a wrought-iron second-floor balcony. Ghe idly wondered if it were some sort of rose vine and if its blossoms would also be black.

  A moment later, the man entered the court, and Ghe had his first good look at the person’s face. He nodded in gentle surprise; the face seemed familiar, and he should know the name that went with it. But he did not; it was fled into the darkness where so much of him had gone. For a moment, as he watched the recognition dawn on the other face, Ghe felt a profound bitterness, resentment even. Why should this man be whole, when he himself was not?

  “Ghe?” the fellow asked.

  Ghe managed a smile, though his anger continued to grow.

  “I am Yen presently,” he said. “Watching, you know.”

  “Where have you been?” He had boyish features, mouth a bit crooked. Ghe seemed to remember liking the man, or at least liking something about him.

  “Just now? The library.”

  “I mean for the past several months. You disappeared, after that mess at the Ember Gate. We thought you were dead.”

  Ghe feigned puzzlement. “Dead? No, I was just reassigned. They sent me down to Yengat, in the Swamp Kingdoms, to alleviate a little problem. I’ve just returned, and they’ve assigned me to another … child.”

  “Oh,” the man said. “I guess I just didn’t hear. Things were in such chaos, afterward. All of those priests and soldiers, dead—I just assumed she got you, too.”

  “What happened to her?” Ghe asked. “I never heard.”

  “They caught her, finally, in the desert.”

  “Ah.”

  There was an awkward pause, and the man flashed Ghe an uncomfortable little smile. “Well,” he said at last. “I thought I recognized you. I just wanted to make sure. Come around the compound, when you get a chance.”

  “They have me staying over here right now,” Ghe replied. “But I will.”

  “Good.” He turned to go. Ghe watched him walk ten paces, quickening slightly with each step. He sighed. “Wait,” he called. The man took another step or two, then slowly turned around. “Come back. What did I say wrong?”

  The soft face hardened, eyes narrowing; he snorted at Ghe. “Everything. Who are you, really?”

  “Oh, I am Ghe. That part is true.”

  “Is it? One of the priests who survived saw your head cut off. And I’ve been promoted; I would know if you had been sent to the Swamp Kingdoms. So I ask again, who are you?”

  “No one, if I am not Ghe,” he answered, standing up and striding toward the young man, who nodded as Ghe approached—as if he had asked himself a question and then answered it.

  Ten steps away, and the man’s right hand struck out, an easy, casual, fantastically quick motion. Ghe was prepared, and when the mean, thin blade reached where he had been, he was a full step to the left, pivoting against the wall. The steel pinged against something behind him as Ghe pounced, landed lightly just beyond arm’s reach. His opponent lashed out with a second blade, this one not made for throwing but for penetrating bone, for cutting heart and lung. The knife was wielded skillfully enough, but to Ghe it seemed pitifully slow, its arcing thrust utterly predictable. He stepped in, caught the wrist and elbow, just as the other Jik’s left hand slammed into the cluster of nerves on the side of his head. A jangling pain rang though his skull, but Ghe’s grip remained firm on the knife-arm until the other twisted strangely, dropping his knife in the process, and quickly stepped away, free of his grasp.

  “Very good,” Ghe softly commanded. “A trick I didn’t know.”

  “You are Ghe,” the man said. “Quicker, maybe, stronger. But his moves, his techniques. What happened to you?”

  In answer, Ghe skipped forward, feinted with a lunging punch far short of its target, followed it with a rear foot sweep. Almost, but not quite, his enemy avoided the low, vicious kick to his ankle; but Ghe clipped a heel, and the other man grunted as he stumbled back, off balance. Ghe leapt forward, committing to a dangerous lunging kick, hoping that the man actually was off balance and not feigning. He was rewarded with a harsh gasp as the ball of his foot splintered the man’s sternum. He fell heavily against the courtyard wall, glaring at Ghe and spitting flecks of blood.

  Ghe paused, not quite knowing why. Had this man been his friend? Probably not; he felt that he had few friends. But he was certainly a Jik, and perhaps a fond acquaintance.

  Though clearly injured, the other lashed out with the back of his hand, but Ghe knew it for a feint and so sidestepped the stronger punch from the opposing fist, cracked his own knuckles along the man’s spine. The Jik dropped and did not move until Ghe retrieved the fallen knife; then he made one feeble attempt to sweep Ghe’s feet. Ghe was never convinced his opponent was really unconscious, however, and easily avoided the attack
. He finished him with a quick thrust under the jaw, up into the brain case, watched the eyes roll and then set themselves, senseless, to watching the sky.

  “I wonder what your name was,” Ghe whispered to the dead man, and panting, sat against the wall, hand still on the knife hilt.

  He watched, fascinated, as the colored strands inside of the man began to unravel. He was not hungry, not at the moment, and so he just watched, curious to see how men died.

  The strands fell away. The ones extending into limbs and organs withered, vanished, were sucked up by the dimming knot in the heart. The knot, untied into slender filaments, now braided into a thick strand, and as Ghe watched, it retied itself in a new pattern, dimming further still, until almost he could not see it. It lay there for a time and then stirred, like a feather touched by the merest breeze. Curious, Ghe reached to touch it, not with his hand but with the something he used when he fed. The little bundle shivered, fluttered, moved to him. Ghe took hold of it gently, felt its rhythmic pulse, like a bird’s heartbeat

  What is this? it said. Just like a voice, but a voice that spoke in the hollows of his bones, in the beat of his own heart. What has happened?