The Blackgod

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?

It was the dead man. Qan Yazhwu, son of Wenli, the netmaker—images flickered in Ghe's mind: childhood, a woman, the first terrified moment when learning to swim…

Shuddering, he thrust it away, and the voice was gone. The ghost-seed tumbled away from him and then once again chose a direction, floating purposefully down the hall. When it met with a wall it passed on through it effortlessly. Ghe understood where it was going. Downstream, to the River.

“Farewell, Qan Yazhwunata,” he whispered, and then turned back to the body, considering its disposal.

VII Surrounded by Monsters

HEZHI leaned against the wind-smoothed stone, steadied herself, and caught her breath. Already the terror of what she had seen was fading, but the strangeness of it remained, the shock. Brother Horse had seemed to her, in the short time she had known him, the most Human of creatures: earthy, affectionate, and easygoing. He had comforted her from the first, from the moment they met, lifting her onto his horse, wrapping her tight in his arms as they thundered away from Nhol, from her birthplace and her doom.

But he was most certainly not Human, or at least not completely so. Human Beings did not have creatures living inside of them.

At least, she did not think they did.

“I can't trust anyone,” she said aloud. “Only Tsem.”

And perhaps Perkar. It was odd, that thought. She had known Perkar for no more than a day longer than she had known Brother Horse, and she had seen the ugliness he was capable of, the slaughtered bodies of her father's ehte guard, the decapitation of Yen. But Perkar and she were twisted together in some way, braided by their own desires—not for each other, perhaps, but bonded in some inextricable fashion. It was not love—she loved Tsem, she loved Ghan, loved Qey. What bound her and Perkar was not that, nor was it the awkward, restless desire that Yen had inspired. It was something less compelling but more powerful.

But that was her belly talking. Her brain was learning to trust itself, and it told her that even Perkar was not to be counted on.

The cliffs behind her soared as high as three-story buildings and were often as sheer as city walls. She had regarded them from afar, from the village, and they had seemed mysterious, intriguing. Like a city, yet not a city. Spires, walls, caverns like halls—she had imagined them all. Crinkling her brow, rebellious, she strode back into them, following a crooked canyon floor, trying not to think about the things in Brother Horse, the god of the cairn, about gods and demons everywhere.

She was suddenly struck by an odd memory. The stone rising about her seemed to form a vast hall, and save for the lack of buttresses and a real ceiling, she was suddenly, powerfully reminded of the Leng Court, where her father often held ceremonies and audiences. When last she had been in the court she had seen a drama, a representation of the legend of her family. It told of the People, surrounded on all sides by monsters, unable to save themselves, and of how Chakunge, the son of Gau—a chieftain's daughter—and the River destroyed them all.

Surrounded by monsters: that was what the Mang were, surrounded by monsters, in every stone—maybe more than surrounded, maybe even penetrated, if all were like Brother Horse. In Nhol, the River had changed that, at least, killed these things that infested the land the way termites