The Blackgod

half-woman, half-horse creature from Mang fantasy. If the man in his dreams was Mang, then perhaps—but all barbarians looked alike.

No, that wasn't true. Some of them were as white as albinos with eyes like pale gray glass. Mang, at least, looked like people.

If he did not take the chance now, before Ghan said something, then Ghan would control all of the information. The old man could tell him anything, and Ghe's arcane senses were not keen enough to identify subtle falsehoods. Ghan had to believe in the fictitious temple expedition, had to believe that the priesthood knew where she was.

And so, mustering all of his confidence, he asserted the only thing he could think of. “We—and the priesthood —know only that she is among the Mang.” Then he fought to suppress a triumphant smile, for he smelled Ghan's chagrin, a bitter, salty scent. He had been right! Or partly right. Now Ghan would have to be careful what he said when he lied, for he could no longer be certain of what Ghe did and did not know. He could see the struggle in the old man, the hope of formulating a lie, the desire to fashion one as close to the truth as it needed to be to be believed. He nodded inwardly; yes, Ghan would deceive him, if he thought he could get away with it. Where would the scholar have led them, if he no longer believed the priesthood to be a threat to Hezhi? Then he would conclude that the only possible threat was from this expedition. But now he had evidence that the priests knew where she was, and that would motivate him to tell at least part of the truth.

“She is among the Mang,” Ghan finally agreed, and Ghe clenched his fists in victory. “That much is true. The priesthood must have been watching me more closely than I thought, must have known when I got word from her.”

“I have seen maps,” Ghe said. “The Mang Wastes are enormous. Knowing she is in them does not narrow our search significantly.”

“Yes,” Ghan said quietly. “But I know where she is to a much finer degree.”

“Must we travel overland? What is our course?”

Ghan sighed and lifted up a tube of bamboo and brass from beside his desk. He pulled a chart from it and spread it across the flat surface.

“Here is Nhol,” he explained, and Ghe recognized the spot easily enough. The River was represented by three waving lines, parallel to one another. Nhol was a drawing of the Water Temple, a stepped pyramid. Ghe felt a bit of familiar anger at that—that the city of the River should be represented by his nemesis.

“These are the wastes,” Ghan went on, gesturing at a vast area that lacked any real detail—save for the figure of a man on horseback, sword raised. The River cut right along the edge of those lands. The other side of the River was labeled “Dehshe,” which Ghe knew to be another barbarian tribe.

“We might as well stay on the River until we reach this point here,” Ghan said, indicating a single waving line that intersected the River.

“What's that?”

“Another, smaller watercourse. It may be that we can take the barge up it some distance. Then we will have to debark and go overland.”

“To where?”

Ghan glanced up at him frankly. “Understand me,” Ghan said. “I think I have little use to you or the emperor other than my knowledge of where Hezhi is. I wish to preserve that usefulness as long as I may. For now, I will say only that you should sail to the mouth of that stream and then up it, if possible.”

Ghe nodded. There was nothing stupid about the old man. Indeed, he reminded Ghe of someone. For an instant, he knew who it was; the old woman on Red Gar Street, whom he had murdered. He felt a sudden flush of emotion at the thought, a shadow of the sadness that overtook him after she died. Why should this old man remind him of her?

They were both old, both ugly, both hard and unforgiving, that was what. Both dangerous, added to the list. But there was something more fundamental he could not remember.

“Well, then,” he said, to interrupt his own thought. “I shall take this news to Bone Eel, unless you wish to advise him yourself.”

“Please.” Ghan snorted. “I have spoken to him once; that shall suffice until such time as I die and he summons my ghost and compels me to speak to him again. I have avoided his sort for many years, and now I am crowded shipboard with one.”

Ghe nodded. “I understand you. The priesthood and engineers are full of his kind. I believe that it is actually Qwen Shen who leads this expedition.”

“Yes, Qwen Shen. Lady Fire, Lady Ice.”

“What?”

“That is the meaning of her name, you idiot,” Ghan said. “Fire, ice.”

“Oh.”

“Go. I have much reading to do.”

“Master Ghan, do you never do other than read?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know that you have never been north of Nhol on the River. And yet, here you sit, closeted away, rather than beholding the world as it unfolds.”

“Yes, well, as of now I can pretend I am not on this mad journey. I can keep my mind on important things. Soon enough—when you have me marching overland on these ancient legs—I will not have that luxury. Besides, what can one see 'unfolding' out there?”

“Well … water and distant levees, I suppose, another boat now and then. I see your point.”

“Indeed. And a person of normal intelligence would have seen my point long ago and thus spared me wind that I cannot afford. I am old; there is not that much left in me.”

“Once again I apologize, Master Ghan, and I will leave you to your work.”

He bowed briefly and exited the room. He went back above and thought that he did not see Ghan's point. As he stepped out onto the polished planks, the world seemed wondrous and entirely new. The sun cast a cheerful yellow light on the world, and clouds meandered good- naturedly across a sky that, like the sun, was as simple and unshaded as the colors in his dreams. Some thirty or so of the soldiers stood along the railings, still in their aquamarine-and-gold kilts and burnished steel armor. His soldiers, really, here because he asked the emperor for them. Men who would fight and die at his command.

Best of all, the enterprise was not the wan hope it had once been. Ghan knew where Hezhi was, knew exactly where she was. Soon he would find her, protect her from her enemies, embrace her once again. He would bring her back to her father—not the poor flesh-and-blood one in the palace, but the one she truly belonged with. She fled him only because she did not understand him, and that because of the priesthood filling her from childhood with the wrong notions, notions that came from that dark place beneath, where a terrible creature masqueraded as Human while toying with the First Emperor on a chain. She had learned to fear the God, equate him with the perversions of the priests—perversions and fears that he himself had once embraced before death awoke him. But the River—the truth of him—was this he saw now, vastness, the sky come to live upon the earth, Ufe, the cycle of rain. Joy. In that instant, he felt his head and his feet as a world apart, and between them crawfish, gar, flatfish, crabs, catfish, eels—all of the living things in the waters, the vast brakes of reed and cane, the thick cypress and mangrove stands of the Swamp Kingdoms. No trace of hunger pained him, and the nightmare verity that he was dead seemed far distant, a misplaced worry. Only one unquiet thought lay in him, and it was annoying because he could not find its heart at all. In it was something of the temple and its weird master, but that was not the seed of his … worry? Fear?

Whatever it was, he would deal with it when it came, and now, for the first time since his rebirth, he felt— bizarrely—almost like singing. He would not let one skewed thought pull him away from this rare sensation. Nor would he sing; that would be too much, and others on the boat would think him addled —but he would watch the River gliding past and worship it, know it for his destiny, and that would be like singing.

IN his cabin, Ghan studied the map carefully, and another that held more detail. He cross-referenced it against the geography he had brought with him.