The Blackgod

sheened as if with oil. It nestled a cone-shaped skull into Perkar's chest, and a thousand smaller worms wriggled from every part of the creature. The radiance in Perkar's breast was dim, though a stream of orange light fed into it from the sleeping, birdlike form at his side she guessed to be his sword.

Every now and then, the worm—or perhaps mass of worms—shuddered, rippled, and broke into crawling parts that then reformed. Two yellow eyes opened on the base of its “skull.”

“Leave. He is mine,” a voice told her. It was a clattery voice, like bones snapping.

Hezhi had no reply. She just stared at the thing.

“If you have come to fight for him, shamaness, you will surely fail. Go back to your bright world, leave this dying man to me in mine.”

The monster did not gesture, but she felt her eyes drawn beyond it, as if somehow it had directed her to look. There lay a circle of light. Through it she saw the interior of the yekt—part of a support pillar, a rug, and a hand. Her hand. The image wavered a bit, as if it were a pool into which grains of sand were dropping.

Hezhi hesitated. She could see plainly enough now that the thing on Perkar was killing him. But as of the moment, she had not the faintest idea what to do about it.

“I'll go,” she muttered to the thing. But I will return. Then she edged up to the drum and stepped through.

In a swirl of dizziness and disorientation, she bolted up, gasping. The horse body was gone, and she felt her own flesh upon her, suddenly so familiar, so well fitted that she would have burst into melancholy tears at being reunited with it.

Save that at the same moment, the body of a man slapped into the ground only an arm's length from her; she saw his eyes widen in surprise as the impact shattered his spine. All around her was shouting and the harsh grating and hammering of steel on steel.

INTERLUDE The Emperor and the Ghoul

THE great door creaked faintly as the emperor pushed it open, startling the orange-speckled house lizard on the wall into frantic though short-lived flight. It ran only a few spans before crouching against the edge of a tapestry, watching him with its cat-pupiled eyes. She'lu felt a brief amusement, considered flicking the tiny beast with his power. What audacity it had, a common house lizard, entering the court of an emperor!

He let it go. It was told that the spotted ones were good luck, and even an emperor needed that. Especially now, with the increased Dehshe raids on the border garrisons, the icy relations with once-friendly Lhe, and Dangul, at the limits of the Swamp Kingdoms, pressing to levy a tariff—a tariff-—on goods shipped through their territory. It was a modest tax, of course, easily paid, but a subject did not— could not—tax its emperor. Even the backward Swamp Kingdoms knew that, which could only mean that Dangul was testing the waters, hoping to gain greater, if not complete, independence.

In the morning he would dispatch a company of soldiers and Jik under the command of his nephew Nen She' to deal with the governor of Dangul, but there was no telling how well prepared the governor was, how good his spies were. Another reason to send Nen She'; he would be a capable enough ruler if the governor bowed to him without resistance, but if the mission failed and he was killed, no one would miss him, either—at least, not much. But then, of course, She'lu would have to send real troops, and that he did not relish doing at all. Wars cost money, and it seemed the Nhol had fought many wars of late. All small, all mere nuisances, but costly nevertheless.

He walked out onto the polished, bloodred stone of the court, enjoying the measured, solitary clapping of his wooden soles upon the floor. Seldom enough was he alone; even now, guards were near, but he had laid a minor Forbidding on them, preventing them from approaching him unless he requested their aid or called out. So now, in the hour past midnight, he could pace, sleepless and finally, finally alone in this, his favorite of courts, the Court of the Ibis-Throated. It was small, much too small for grand ceremonies, not severe enough to convene the everyday matters of the empire. Indeed, since his father's day, the court had seen no official use. But after She'lu's accession—when his father had begun the withering, as often happened to the Waterborn when they passed their seventieth year—his father had brought him here, with Nyas, the vizier, and the three of them had stayed, long into the night, drinking plum wine and speaking of things they had never spoken of. There were many such things; after all, She'lu had barely seen his father until after his fifteenth year, and even when he moved down the Hall of Moments to join the family after passing the priestly tests, his father was distant, cold, the emperor. It was only after, when the crown came off, that the old man spoke of love, of his pride in his son, of his grief over the loss of his other son, L'ekezh. Even that last had touched She'lu; he had always been jealous of L'ekezh, but when they took his twin off, shrieking, to the depths below the Darkness Stair and left him to inherit the throne unchallenged—well, after that he could afford to be generous, to pity his brother.

He had often met with his father and Nyas, secretly, the guards away and Forbidden, learning from the two of them how to be an emperor. Two years only, but he remembered them as the best years of his life. Young, excited by his role as lord of Nhol and its empire, touched by his father's long-hidden care. Then the old man withered and died, and his corpse was taken off by the priests while it was still warm, to be joined back into the River, and he had become emperor in earnest, learning the eternal, wearying drudgery that mingled with and eventually overwhelmed the excitement.

He stroked his hand on a yellowed column, slender as the legs of a crane, gazed up at the stars showing faintly through the eye-shaped aperture in the domed roof.

He had thought, someday, to bring a son of his own here. He would not have waited so long, until he stepped down and had only months to live. He would have shown a son affection the moment he ascended to the Hall of Moments, left childhood and its terrible possibilities behind. But the seed of the River had never produced for him a son. Of late he had turned his mind toward daughters—someone of his blood to share his stories, his secret thoughts, who would adore him as he had adored his own father. But with the two who had ascended, he had waited too long. Both were married, and like their mother they enjoyed the cloudlike wonder and oblivion induced by Nende'ng, the black snuff from Lhe, more than they did conversation. Hezhinata, who had been the youngest, was now slain by the Jik, but that had been necessary, and privately he would have rather had her slain than sent down to where L'ekezh still dwelt.

She'lu paused in front of the throne but did not sit on its sable cushion. Instead, he lowered himself to the steps, as he had when his father was still alive. He had refused to let the old man sit below him; even though She'lu was emperor in fact, in the Court of the Ibis-Throated, he gave his father the throne. Yes, it was a shame he had never brought any of his children here, when they were young enough, even though they were daughters. He could at least have told them about their grandfather. Hezhi—if not the others—would have probably liked that. Though he knew little enough of the child, he did know that she had spent her last months in the library, that she had apparently enjoyed reading, relished learning of the past He smiled; secretly—very secretly—he was proud of his daughter. She must have had power, power rivaling his own. Her sisters had shown no sign of such. Hezhinata had killed priests, many priests, and a Jik. Of course, her bodyguard had killed some of those, but still…

She'lu frowned. Certainly he felt pride, had felt it since the day Hezhinata was killed. But what he felt now was almost a glow, a silly sentimentality. He realized that all of his thoughts had been flavored with nearly lachrymose emotion, and a faint suspicion stole over him. Why had he awakened? Not that it was an uncommon experience for him to lack sleep. But it seemed to him that a dream had brought him out of bed, one of the simple-colored dreams the River sent now and then. More and more of those dreams had come of late, but rarely did they reveal anything to him that was of help in his policies. When he could remember them, he would discuss them with Nyas, and together they would try to sort them out, but this was different. He could not remember the dream itself, but it had left him thinking maudlin thoughts about his father and his daughters. No, not his daughters, but his daughter, Hezhinata, the only child of his to be born with power.

Thinking of this now, he recognized the signs. The River wanted him to think of her—something he was not in the habit of doing. Certainly the thought of bringing her here had passed briefly,