The Blackgod

blades felt cold suddenly, like twin hatchets of ice buried in him. But when the ghoul spoke, his voice was tinged with wonder, so that it seemed impossible he could be thinking of killing. “He's out there somewhere, isn't he? She's out there.”

Ghan nodded and cleared his throat, surprising even himself as he recited:

“With their ship, the Horse, They ply the sea of grass, They stalk the walking mountains, With stones they make their beds.”

He trailed off and studied the deck more intently. “Well, you have to imagine it sung,” he muttered.

“What was that?”

“From an old book, The Mang Wastes. I sent a copy of it to Hezhi when I learned where she was.”

“You've read much about the Mang?”

“Lately. Lately I have.”

“Since you discovered her whereabouts.”

Ghan nodded in reply, caught the crooked look Ghe sent his way.

“You do know where she is. Well enough to send her a book.”

“I told you that much before,” Ghan replied.

“So you did. But you never showed me how to get there. When will you tell me thatV

Ghan answered with some heat in his voice. “You could take what you want. I know that. In fact, I wonder why you haven't.” He set his chin defiantly, so that it wouldn't quiver.

“Qwen Shen wonders that, also,” Ghe said. “I'm not certain what to tell her.”

“Qwen Shen?” Ghan snorted. “Is she your advisor, too? Does she help you chart your plans as you take horizontal council with her?” He knew he was straying over the line, and he braced for the fist closing in his chest. But it made him angry, when people were stupid.

Ghe did nothing more than frown dangerously. “Have a care, old man,” he advised. “Qwen Shen is a loyal servant of the emperor and the River. She deserves your respect.”

“Five days ago you suspected her of plotting your destruction,” he persisted.

“Five days ago I had just been wounded. I suspected everyone. Now I conclude that the assassin was a Jik, placed among the guards by the priesthood.”

“Have you questioned him in this matter—the would-be assassin?”

Ghe raised his palms in a small gesture of helplessness. “He was killed by a Dehshe shaft just after wounding me. Not the death I would have invented for him, but at least he is no longer a danger.”

“You don't see the great convenience in that? In his dying before you could question him?”

“Enough of this,” Ghe snapped in annoyance. “We were discussing your decision to tell me where Hezhi is.”

Ghan sighed. “My life has recently taken a turn for the worse, but I'm still selfish enough to value it. I will take you to her.”

“Old man, if I were going to kill you, I already would have.”

“I know that. It isn't your killing me that I fear.” Which was not entirely true. Ghe inspired both fear and revulsion in him. And something was different about him these past few days, unpredictable since he and Qwen Shen had begun their liaison.

Ghe's lip curled, half protest, half snarl. “I told you—”

“I know what you think of her. But I am not sleeping with Qwen Shen—and I don't trust her. You just as much as said she's trying to convince you to swallow up my soul, or whatever it is you do.”

Ghe gazed straight at him then, his eyes like glass, the unwinking regard of a serpent. He clucked thrice with his tongue, as if chastising a baby. “You don't understand about her,” he said. He leaned close, and his voice became confidential. “I know we can trust Qwen Shen because she is the River's gift to me.”

“What?”

“For serving him.” Ghe lowered his voice further, and his murderer's eyes focused on the vast horizon. “Since I was reborn, I've never forgotten that I was dead,” he explained. “When I was a Jik, I used to say ‘I am a blade of silver, I am a sickle of ice.’ That was to remind me that I was merely a weapon, something the priesthood might wield against its foes. I was content with that. When I was reborn, I knew that I was still a tool, but this time my lord was higher, my purpose grander. But still a tool, to be discarded when the job was finished.”

A sickly grin writhed upon his lips. “Do you know what it is to live in nightmare? In my world, Ghan, food has no taste, wine no intoxication. The River has large, but simple appetites, and the small things Human Beings enjoy are beneath his notice. Nightmare, where nothing is as it should be. You bite into the sweetmeat and find it full of maggots. You shake your mother to wake her—and find her dead. That's what it's like, if you want to write it down. Yet now, now, the River has given me Qwen Shen. You can't possibly comprehend what that means.”

“You love this woman?”

“Love her? You understand nothing. She is a gateway. She prepares me.”

“Prepares you for what?”

Ghe stared at him as if he were insane. “Why, for Hezhi, of course.”

Ghan bit back a reply, but as it sunk in, he shuddered again at the sheer dementia of that claim. He very much wanted to leave the afterdeck and go somewhere else, but there was nowhere else to go. Ghe asked if he understood living with nightmare, and he wanted to reply that he did. The entire barge seemed like a floor ankle-deep in broken glass, and him without shoes: no place to tread safely. His hopes of misleading Ghe and the others grew slimmer with each moment; if the self-styled “ghoul” ever suspected that Ghan was lying to him, he would merely devour him. It would probably be best for him to drown himself now, before they got what they wanted from him one way or the other. But even that might be pointless, if Ghe really was linked with some Mang ally of the River. In fact, since the Mang were nomadic, Hezhi was more than likely not where Ghan had known her last to be. This dream man of Ghe's probably had more current information on lier whereabouts than Ghan did.

So killing himself would probably not help Hezhi significantly, and it would remove the only real ally she had. No, as long as a chance existed for him to help her, he would not remove himself from this game of Na. He might not be an important counter, but he was a counter. Even the lowest such could eclipse and remove any other marker on the board.

“Tell me more about the Mang,” Ghe said, abruptly interrupting his thoughts.

Ghan motioned at the surrounding plain. “You see where they live. They travel and fight mostly on horseback. They live in skin tents and small houses of stone and wood.”

“That passage you quoted, about walking mountains. What did that mean?”

“The plains are home to many large creatures. The Mang hunt them to survive.”

“What creature is as large as a mountain?”

Ghan cracked a faint smile. “That was Saffron Court literature. Literature from that court is prone to hyperbole.”

“Hyperbole?”

“Exaggeration.”

“But what were they exaggerating?”

Ghan shrugged. “We shall see for ourselves, soon enough.”

“That's true,” Ghe murmured. “I'm looking forward to it.” He gestured once again at the alien landscape. “I never understood how big the world was, how strange.”

“I would settle for a smaller one at the moment,” Ghan admitted. “My own rooms, my library.”

“The sooner we find her, the sooner we can get you back there,” Ghe reminded him.

“Of course,” Ghan muttered. “Of course.”

SLEEP eluded Ghan for most of the afternoon, but he was near finding it through a dark thicket of half thoughts and full fears when he heard shouting. In that realm of semislumber, it seemed like a bell, clanging, and an image erupted from his sleeping memory into vivid life; the alarm ringing in his clan compound, himself just turned sixteen,