Waterborn

'I don't want to.'

'Neither do I,' Tsem muttered fervently.

 

 

A room should seem diminished when full, but the Great Leng Hall was as imposing as ever. Though its floor thronged with people—more people than she had been in the presence of in more than a year—it still seemed as vast as the sky. Indeed, its vaulted roof imitated the sky, deep azure at the rims, paler toward the meridian. The great buttresses seemed like the pillars holding up the heavens. She noticed a bird up there—a pigeon, a swallow? It was lost in the immensity, the apparent size of a mosquito.

And the noise! Drums were pattering somewhere, but that was nothing. It was the voices, chattering laughing voices that roared in Hezhi's tender ears, accustomed to the quietest corners of the palace. She felt buffeted by them, standing at the royal entry. When she was announced—Princess Hezhi Yehd Cha'dune—her name flew out into the din and was eaten, gone.

When her father came in, on the other hand, the voices dropped away, as if a hundred doors had been shut between her and them—one or two cackled on for a moment and then died, embarrassed.

The Chakunge of Nhol was an imposing man; Hezhi saw little resemblance to him in herself. He was tall, strikingly so, not thin or gangly. His shoulders were broad, his face sharp-boned but with no hint of femininity. Power swirled about him, power beyond that conveyed by his rich robe of saffron and umber, his turban and the golden circlet that held it in place. It was like the wavy outline of a ghost, or the burning of air above the hot tile roof in the summer. It made one's nape tingle just to look at him. Sorcerer, king, child of the River—all of that one could see even if he were naked. When he was announced, every person in the room dropped to their knees. Those nearest the central fountain reached for it, to wet their foreheads.

Hezhi's heart sank. She could never go near him, her father or no. And she felt… ill. There was a tightness, a weirdness deep in her stomach. It had been there before, all day, lurking, but now it redoubled. What was wrong with her?

A little hiss went up from the crowd, surprise. The Chakunge had not stopped at the dais upon which he usually sat; rather, he descended the steps onto the courtyard floor itself. The crowd parted away from him, like a mass of pigeons keeping well away from the feet of a pedestrian. His two bodyguards, hulking full-blooded Giants, walked ponderously on either side of him, massive gazes searching ceaselessly for any danger to their master. They were dressed like Tsem, but they looked even more ridiculous; they were less manlike than Tsem, longer of arm, very hairy, with brutal, flat faces and no chins.

Thus the floor emptied before the emperor until he stood at the very base of the fountain. Hezhi watched him carefully, her father, saw his sardonic face register some deeper, stranger sentiment as he approached the water.

It is the Blood Royal I need to understand, she reminded herself.

He brushed the tips of his fingers through the cascading water; that was all, and then he stepped back, eyes closed. The fountain was a simple one, a single jet rising thirty feet into the air of the hall and then roaring back down into a broad, alabaster basin. Now the water began to shimmer, though. Hezhi was still watching her father, and his figure seemed blurred, as if he were some-how vibrating like the plucked string of a lyre. The shimmering in the water increased, and suddenly the column was soaring up, up toward the vaulted roof of the hall. It grew like a great, watery palm, colors scintillating from it. Dark figures struggled in the water—fish? They were carried up, up the waterspout. Near the ceiling, the water suddenly ceased to shower down to its source, but instead spread out in a pool, a pool floating in the air. The pool quickly spread, shimmering and rippling, until the dome of the ceiling was obscured by it. Then the most peculiar thing of all; something about the water— not its wetness or its density, but something else, like the ghost of water, shimmery, feeling of depth—settled down upon the court. A little gasp went around the floor; it was as if they were underneath the River, staring up at the surface of the water. The dark things were still there, but now they began to acquire a nimbus, black images limned in glowing colors, jade, white, aquamarine, topaz. They swam down from the ceiling, in and among the courtiers, brushing against them. Hezhi saw one swim through a woman near her. Hezhi felt a terrible chill that started in her abdomen and flashed out, and yet at the same time she was captivated. They were lovely, these things. They were all creatures of the River; some were weird fish, the length of a person, armored in plates as if they were warriors. Some more resembled insects or crawfish, but were not the insects or crawfish Hezhi was familiar with. No, these were the things that lurked as shadows in the waters of the River; ghosts of things that once lived and died in his waters, however long ago. Now they swam and pirouetted at her father's whim.

'Princess!' Tsem tugged at her, pointing. Three of the things were 'swimming' about her feet, gradually rising higher. One was a fish; the other was like a scorpion built for swimming; the third resembled a squid. These three were joined by four more, and they swirled all around Hezhi, like a cloud. She heard those nearest her gasp, and more than one whispered 'Royal Blood.'

Soon she could see nothing but the creatures enveloping her.

She should have been frightened, but instead she felt weirdly elated; the queasiness in her stomach seemed more like a glow now, as if there was something warm and strong in her. She laughed softly, reaching out her hands to touch the insubstantial fish. They seemed to suck at her, as if feeding, but she felt nothing.

Then they rose away, rushed back up to the watery pool above their heads, which was shrinking; with a sudden roar—the room had been nearly silent, save for awed whispers—the water began returning to the fountain, rushing down like torrential rain. The Riverghosts lost their shine, became shadows, less than that. In a matter of moments, the court was as it had been before her father came down. Save that now the people began to shout, shout her father's title. Chakunge!

The warm feeling in her gut had begun to feel 'wrong' again by the time her father reached his dais. Hezhi noticed that during the strange performance, her mother and sisters had emerged from their rooms and were already seated on the benches. As the Chakunge joined them, he turned and clapped his hands briskly. The cleared place on the floor—where he had stood so recently— grew wider as many young boys in the dress of priestly acolytes ran about, ushering everyone back. Hezhi watched, interested despite herself. Her father had demonstrated his kinship with the River, shown that he could speak to it, bend it to his will—or more likely, beg its indulgence. What now?

The drums began again, a slow, powerful rhythm like a heartbeat. The dancers came out.

They seemed fragile creatures, men and women alike, until they began to move, to swirl to the ponderous drumbeats; then they became as strong as the drums, as supple as drumheads. This Hezhi had seen before; it was the more standard court performance. Still, the dancers were beautiful to behold, with their sleek muscles and their costumes of silk and feathers. The crowd around her began to squat, or sit cross-legged. Tsem rolled out a little mat for Hezhi—had he been carrying it all along?—and she sat, too.

The story was an ancient one; Hezhi knew it well. It was the story of the first Chakunge, the man born of water. Now the dancers portrayed his mother, Gau, bathing in the River, and now she was heavy with child. Others portrayed the People, harried by the terrible monsters who once inhabited the River valley. A monster under each stone, living in each tree. They were terrible, tyrannical. They captured the daughter of the headman, surrounded her with ugliness and pain.

Hezhi studied the woman portraying the daughter; she was slim, a slip of a girl no older than herself. Sad, she was, bereft of kin, surrounded by monsters. Without hope, for none of the People could save her or even themselves. Hezhi felt a little glimmer of identification. It was easy to guess how she might have felt: alone, threatened, unable to understand the monsters surrounding her.

Now came Chakunge, the Riverson, laughing, full of power. He was clad in the rainbow, in armor of shell and fishbone, in plates from the giant Rivercrabs. His weapons were wit and water, swords and spears formed of the very substance of the River. First he tricked a few of the monsters, one by one. He convinced the first of them—the Black-headed Ogre—that his power came from bathing four times a day in the waters of the River. The monster emulated him and was drowned.

Soon enough, Chakunge was done toying with his foes, however. He went among the monsters who held the chief's daughter and slew them all, turned them into stones and sharks, ground them into sand. He took the captive woman away, asked her to be his queen.

Who will take me away? Hezhi wondered. She had never considered such a thing. But