The Blackgod

where the grade lessened and trees grew. Nevertheless, a group of Sheldu's men stood, dismounted, farther down the trail, and far below them another knot of men and horses struggled up the track. Below them, through the gaps in spruce and birch, sunlight blazed on steel in a thousand places, as if a swarm of metallic ants were searching the narrow valley for food.

But they were not ants; they were men and horses: Mang.

Yes, it was time to return to the group. She wondered how long it would take the army to climb the trail, and if the riders already coming up the slope were friend or foe. They were dark, like Mang, but even with her god- enhanced sight they were difficult to make out, though one seemed familiar.

That was when her name reached her ears, borne by wind, funneled up to her by the valley walls.

“Hezhi!” Very faintly, but she recognized the voice. And then it came again. Gaping, she turned Dark back toward the approaching army.

XXXIII The Steepening Trail

GHE'S fingers tightened around his throat, and Ghan felt that his eyes were about to pop from his skull. Fighting for the merest sip of breath, he scarcely had leisure to understand that all around him, men were dying, throwing themselves between Moss and the demons Ghe had summoned from his veins. Ghan wondered, inanely, if the men could really fight and die in such grim silence, or if it was the roaring of blood in his ears that kept him from hearing them.

He clawed at the talons biting into his windpipe, but he might as well have pried at steel bolts set in marble.

“Now, what lie were you about to tell me, old man?” the ghoul snapped at him. “Why were you calling me a fool? Or shall I just find out by opening you up and peering inside?”

Ghan answered him the only way he could: by beating feebly against his attacker's chest. Ghe looked puzzled for an instant and then roughly pushed him back. Blood and breath roared back into his head, and he fell, ears full of ocean sound.

He probably had only instants, but his throat was still closed up. Ghe had paused to examine his self-inflicted wound, the one the grass-bears had sprung from; it had stopped bleeding.

“I remember now,” Ghe told him, eyes suddenly mild.

Ghan grunted; it was the best he could do.

“When I died. Hezhi's mouth was bleeding, and her blood was turning into something.” He settled his feet onto the ground. “Blood, you see, gives spirit shape. Did you know the stream-demon I took in? She had Human form because a Human girl bled to death in her. And my blood is so many things now.”

“She's driven you mad,” Ghan shouted urgently. “Qwen Shen has you on a rope, like a dog, Ghe. Like a mongrel cur from

Southtown.”

“Shut up, old man,” Ghe gritted. “No more lies from you.” “It's true. Did you know you call Hezhis name when you

sleep with Qwen Shen? She owns you, bends your soul to her devices.”

Snake-quick, Ghe was there, slapping him with an open palm.

The earth rippled like a sheet waving in the wind. Another slap, and Ghan saw only night.

WHEN he awoke, Ghe was daubing his mouth with a wet rag. He spluttered, raising his arms reflexively to defend himself. Ghe shook his head, a silent no that served only to deepen Ghan's confusion.

Moss stood behind Ghe. He looked weary, and one arm hung in a sling.

“What?”

Ghe shrugged. “I nearly killed you. That would have been a mistake. Like the River, I have trouble seeing myself; I need others, outside of me, to watch me. How do you feel?”

“Confused. I thought you and Moss were fighting to the death.”

“We were,” Moss interposed. “To my death, very certainly. You saved me, Ghan, gave me the information I was missing. I wish you had told me earlier about Qwen Shen's hold on Ghe. If I had known a day ago, many of my warriors would still be alive. It is fortunate for us both that you blurted it out at last.”

“I trust none of you,” Ghan muttered. “I've made no secret of that. I keep what I know close. If you want it, he knows how to get it.” He jerked his chin defiantly at Ghe.

The ghoul shook his head. “No. Your knowledge would have been bound up inside of me with everything else, if I had taken you in before. I remember now why I wanted you on this expedition alive: because even hostile to me, you are more useful as you are.” His eyes narrowed. “But I will have no more betrayal. You have balanced the old debt; do not incur new ones.”

“I still don't understand what happened.”

Moss smiled faintly. “I showed him his—what did you call it?Leash. I showed him the trap Qwen Shen had laid for him. Once I knew it was there, it was simple enough to see and reveal.” He rubbed his hurt arm. ”She is powerful, that one. Dangerous.”

“What has become of her?” Ghan asked.

Ghe's visage furrowed in wrath. “Gone, she and Bone Eel both. Gone I know not where. I will search for them.”

Ghan drew a deep breath. “Give me a moment to think,” he said. “Because I have something to tell you both. And some questions, as well.”

Now his senses could make out a cricket chirping half a league away, see a nut hanging on a tree at the same distance, scent the distinctive odor of a soul from even farther. Yet he found not the faintest trace of Qwen Shen or Bone Eel. It was as if they had wrapped a vanishing about themselves, the way powerful priests were able to—the way the temple itself did.

Out of sight of the camp, he raged. Trees splintered beneath his claws, small creatures of wood and field shriveled into skeletons in the tempest of his anger. He wanted to hurt himself, to pound his knuckles until bone cracked and blood covered him. He wanted desperately to feel pain once again, to purify himself through it.

But his skin no longer registered such sensations, and his flesh was no more susceptible to tearing than his bones to shattering. At last he gave up. He had failed the River, but that failure could still be redressed. Especially if he could puzzle out what Qwen Shen had been doing, and why. He remembered their lovemaking sessions now, and part of it at least was plain. She had labored to twist his fundamental desire to find Hezhi into some buried desire for her. She had not failed; he still trembled when he thought of her, her flesh, her eyes. But now he could remember the betrayals, the illusion of Hezhi in the throes of passion, the whispered conversations he forgot, the subtle suggestions that made such perfect sense from her lips …

Ah, when he found her it would be such a sweet thing. No passion she had ever brought him would be as great as unraveling the threads of her life, one by one, as he also unraveled the flesh and blood surrounding her.

He forced himself to think on the things she had made him forget; memories crowded for recognition, but he had no way of sorting them out. Moss could help him do that, and so could Ghan, though the latter would do so reluctantly. He rubbed his knuckles, again chagrined at their lack of soreness. They seemed odd, as he rubbed them, unyielding, and he realized with a start that some sort of bony plate was present beneath the skin. Puzzled, he continued to inspect his body. Broad sheets of hard substance lay beneath his chest, abdomen, thighs—a massive plate lay across his shoulders, and he realized that the skin there was actually colored by the armor pressing up from beneath, a dull aquatic gray, slightly blemished, like the back of a Rivercrab.

He didn't know whether to be amused or horrified; removed from the protecting waters of the River, his body had begun growing a shell to defend itself. Qwen Shen had hidden that from him, too. Why had she done that?

To maintain in him the illusion that he was Human, of course. To keep him from the persuasions of Lady Death and his own common sense which told him that as much as he might believe himself to be Ghe, he was not.

He couldn't think about that. It didn't matter. It didn't matter, because he was someone, and he had the memories of a legion now to draw from, and he had his desire, his purpose, though Qwen Shen may have tainted it. And he would still have Hezhi, if not for himself, then at least for the River and for her, so that she might be the empress Moss told him she would be: