Waterborn

east, south, and west of the sea—seemed to be all forest, occupied by monsters and subhuman creatures. Under such circumstances, locating her dream forest seemed unlikely at best.

She had almost as much trouble with her researches into the royal family.

'The index lists a number of books that are not on the shelves,' she mentioned to Ghan one day.

'There are many books that need reshelving,' Ghan observed. 'You can do that this afternoon.'

Hezhi did so, but the books she sought were not among them. She brought this to Ghan's attention.

'Tell me the titles,' he said, and when she did, his eyes narrowed with anger.

'The priesthood took those,' he practically snarled.

'Why?'

'Let me rather ask you why you want them.'

'I am a princess, and I have an interest in the royal family.'

Ghan shook his head. 'Ah, no, Princess. You tell me the truth—so I will not punish you—but you omit much, as well. Your interest in the royal family seems very specific. The genealogies we have, and the Book of the Waterborn, which merely details the emperors and their deeds. But these— Manifestations of Godhead in the Waterborn, The Origin and Uses of Royal Power, The She'Deng—these are unusual books.'

'Is that why the priesthood has them?'

'The priesthood has them for many reasons, not the least of which I think is the rare child like yourself.' As he said this, he shuddered, and his eyes half closed.

'Well,' he muttered, sitting down.

'They Forbid you?' Hezhi whispered.

'Hush,' Ghan snapped. 'Don't speak of it. And I advise you not to speak of those books anymore, either, to anyone.'

'I… won't.'

Ghan nodded. 'The priesthood is singularly unimaginative,' Ghan said, after he seemed recovered. 'They take books from me in which puzzles are pieced together, but they leave the original pieces of the puzzle in the library.'

'What do you mean?'

Ghan sighed. 'The whole cloth is no longer here, but the warp, the weft, and the loom may lie around.' Another tremor ran through him, and Hezhi raised her fingers to her mouth.

'I'm sorry, Ghan. We won't talk about this again.'

'No, I don't think we will,' Ghan agreed, breathing heavily.

In the next few days, Hezhi read some of the texts on the royal family very closely—especially the histories. She turned up a number of rather cryptic references. One manuscript referred to the 'River-Blessed,' and at first she was certain that this meant people like her father, to whom the River gave powerful sorcery. Another mentioned a time when no suitable heir could be found who had reached the 'age of investment,' so that a vizier had to be appointed to rule until such time as someone reached that age. She discovered that many emperors had been no older than she when they ascended the throne—but none were much younger. On her paper, she wrote these two things down side by side. She returned briefly to a book on the history of the city's architecture, now that she could really read it. In it she found an oblique reference to a large portion of the palace being destroyed, not by flood or fire, but by a 'River-Blessed unleashed.' This 'River-Blessed' was named: Ta'nganata Yehd Zha'dune. She looked him up in one of the genealogies and discovered that he had been placed on the throne as Chakunge at the age of ten—the youngest emperor ever to rule. The chronicle recorded that he ruled for just over a year. This work did not mention any general destruction of the palace; it merely mentioned that the -nata ghost suffix was added to his name at that time. This particularly intrigued her because it occurred at the very beginning of her own dynasty; Zha'dune was the old pronunciation of (Zha'dune.

On her way home, rather than talking to Tsem—who seemed distracted anyway—she tried to piece together what she had learned. She could see clearly now what Ghan meant in his metaphor of the loom, warp, and weft. In no single book would she find all of the information about any person or event. The book on architecture had failed to note Ta'nganata's date of ascension and his untimely death, but the genealogy—which contained that fact—neglected the small detail that he had, in that year, de-stroyed much of the palace. These were threads she could weave together, threads that, she hoped, would form some tapestry with a picture she could comprehend. The loom, she guessed, was herself—no, that was wrong, she would be the weaver, wouldn't she? No matter. It was just an analogy.

Much of the evidence seemed to point to her own age—about twelve—as somehow critical in the royal family, at least for men who might be emperor. She suspected that it was somehow connected with her bleeding. If that technically made her a woman, there might be some similar change that made boys into men— though she knew for a fact that men did not bleed, had quite different organs than women. She decided that this would be the object of her research the next day. Whatever this change might be, it occurred at different times for different men, though within the same few years. This also fit with what she knew of women. The story she had reconstructed about Ta'nganata seemed especially important: a boy somehow raised to the role of emperor while still too young; at least that was her reading of it. Even in the genealogy there was a sense, though a very subtle one, that some mistake had been made in choosing him. She connected the fact that he had been the youngest emperor—she felt that this was emphasized in the text—revealed the nature of the mistake. And this boy—this eleven-year-old boy—had somehow destroyed a vast portion of the palace.

She was certain her father—and probably her mother—could do the same, if they wished. But there was no sane reason to do such a thing. That could be the source of the problem with Ta'nganata; eleven-year-olds, she knew from experience, were hardly sane. And yet, neither were many people, of any age. And why would someone incapable of suppressing awesome power at the age of eleven suddenly be able to at the age of twelve, thirteen, fourteen? The center of the riddle was in that question, Hezhi knew. This was the age at which royal children either went down the Hall of Moments to live with their parents or vanished, had the -nata suffix added to their names. Like D'en.

And inexorably, she was drawn back to the fact that she was now D'en's age—or, rather, the age he had been when she last saw him. She was also Ta'nganata's age, for that matter.

Something wasn't right when she reached home. Qey met her at the door, twisting a dishrag mercilessly in both hands. Her eyes were red, and Hezhi abruptly realized that Qey had been crying. Next to her, Tsem stiffened. She felt his tension like a brittleness in the air itself.

'Hezhi,' Qey said softly. 'Some people have come to see you. I want you to do what they say, and not be worried.'

Qey was clearly worried, but Hezhi did not say so. She caught the faint whiff of smoke; it was the same scent that the brooms of the priests gave off. She edged around Qey into the courtyard.

Four priests stood there, watching her entrance. They all wore cottonwood masks of a kind she had never seen before, blank-eyed, round-mouthed. They were fully robed, as if for some ceremony.

'Hezhi Yehd Cha'dune,' one of them intoned, in a singsong voice as high and clear as a silver bell. 'We have come to administer the rite of Ngess'e'.'

The name of the rite was in the old tongue, but Hezhi knew it: 'body.' She recalled the glyph for 'body,' a vessel affixed to a Human Being.

'What? I have never heard of this rite.'

'It is one of the rites of passage into adulthood,' the same priest explained. 'One does not learn of it until the time comes.'

'Sh-she has not begun bleeding yet,' Qey stammered. One of the priests turned his masked face toward her rather sharply.

'That does not matter, whether it is true or not,' he asserted implacably. 'The rite may be repeated, if we do it when she is too young. But we must not wait until she is too old,' he said, his smooth voice seeming to imply more than he said. Whatever the implication was, Qey shrank away from it.