The Blackgod

him anyway, and then do what Qwen Shen had been urging him to, capture his ghost for the information it held. He had resisted that, but now, for the life of him, he couldn't understand why.

He was crawling toward the door when there came a knock at it.

“Come in,” he gasped. The door opened and the soldier who stood thus framed in it had time only to widen his eyes before Ghe was upon him.

When it was over, moments later, Ghe gazed dully about the room, the arabesque pattern of blood and brains on the floor and bed.

I never did that before, he thought. Why did I do that? It had seemed as if just taking the life he needed wasn't enough. The beast in him had become a brute with no reason at all, not understanding that it could eat without eating. Revolted now, Ghe spat out the taste of iron that remained in his mouth, approaching nausea but never quite arriving there.

“And I will have to clean this up myself,” he muttered, irate, blinking owlishly at the mess. After another pause, he went about the task of doing just that, before the blood had time to saturate and stain any more than it already had. His linens were certainly ruined.

AFTER a bit of careful consideration, Ghan decided that the best place to be was abovedeck—though his hope was that no place would be particularly safe. He went to the afterdeck, where his chances of being alone were maximized, taking with him the journal he kept and brush and ink to add to it. Once settled, he contemplated the landscape that surrounded him and tried not to shake—tried not to think about the possibility that these could be his last moments in life.

They had traveled perhaps two leagues up the tributary, and the vegetation had thickened a bit, at least near the watercourse. The majority of trees were familiar—cotton wood and juniper—the former leafless, of course, for the climate was cooler here than it was in Nhol. Thick, tenacious trees he suspected of being stone oak shouldered amongst their more elegant cousins. The banks of the stream rose steeply from the water and went on uphill to the plains; there were no low, wet lands. That was all for the better, Ghan speculated. It meant that the water here was not of the River, was not him backed up into a swampy tributary. This stream flowed swift and sure down from the mountain valleys of the west.

Now and then the barge hesitated against a snag, and each time Ghan closed his eyes, clenched tight the muscles of his belly. After the first few such incidents he made a deliberate effort to compose himself by readying his pen and mixing the powdered ink with its mate, water. It was, for him, an old ritual and usually calming to his mind.

Predictably, Ghe joined him before he had a chance to write anything of note. Next to Qwen Shen, he seemed to be the only member of the expedition Ghe cared to talk to, and Ghan certainly could not discourage that. The more Ghe told him, the more clues he had to work with. He might still need such clues, if his current suppositions were wrong. Another worry struck him as he glanced at Ghe's handsome but pallid face. How would being away from the waters of the River affect a ghoul?

Probably not in any positive way.

Ghe settled near Ghan on crossed legs, reminding Ghe again of a large spider curling about a meal. As usual, Ghe began their conversation with a question.

“What do you know of gods and ghosts beyond the River?” the ghoul asked him. Odd, Ghan thought, how they had settled into a sort of pupil-teacher dialogue—with Ghe at least pretending to be the pupil. Was this some tactic of his to make Ghan feel at ease, afford him some illusory measure of control?

“Beyond the River? What do you mean?”

“I mean outside of the River's influence,” Ghe snapped. “Where he is powerless. You have mentioned them before, as did the governor at Wun. Remember? He spoke of the 'gods of the Mang.' As if there are gods, other than the River.”

“Ah. Well, some, I suppose, though what I have to go on is mostly superstitions gathered from the people who live out here, like the Mang.”

“What about that barbarian, Perkar? Did he tell you nothing about his gods?”

Ghan shook his head. “He and I had scant time for pleasantries.”

“You told me once that his folk live near the headwaters of the River.”

“Yes.”

“But they do not worship him?”

“Not from what I have read.” Ghan furrowed his brow. He had to make this interesting, stay on this tangent of thought, on the oddities of foreign gods. “Actually, as I understand it, they do not 'worship' gods at all. They treat with them, strike deals with them, even develop friendships and mate with them. But they don't worship them, build temples dedicated to them, and so forth.”

“Neither do we in Nhol,” Ghe muttered. “Our temples are not to worship him but to chain him.”

“Ah,” Ghan remarked, “but that was not originally true. And despite what you say, most people in Nhol do worship the River, make offerings to him. It is only—if I am to understand what you have told me—the priesthood that doesn't worship him. The temple, whatever its true function, is a symbol of that worship.”

“Agreed,” Ghe conceded, obviously restless on the topic. “True enough. But we've strayed from the subject. Out here, beyond his reach—”

“Do we know that we are beyond his reach?” Ghan interrupted.

Ghe nodded slightly but intensely. “I assure you,” he whispered, “I can tell.”

“I suppose you can,” Ghan responded, wishing to pursue how Ghe knew that but aware that he shouldn't. “Please go on with what you were saying.”

“You say that here in the hinterlands there are many gods, but they are not worshipped. They sound like petty, powerless creatures.”

“Compared to the River, I'm certain they are.”

“More like ghosts,” Ghe speculated. “Or myself.”

Ghan took a controlled breath. This was not where he wished for the conversation to go.

“I suppose,” Ghan allowed, hoping that a half truth would not ring in Ghe's dead senses as a lie. “I suppose,” he went on, “that they are something like that, save that they did not start out as people.”

“Where did they come from, then?”

“I don't know,” Ghan replied. “Where did anything come from?”

Ghe stared at him in surprise. “What a strange thing for you to say. You, who always seek to know the cause of everything.”

“Only when there is some evidence to support speculation,” Ghan answered. “On this topic there is naught but frail imaginings and millennia-old rumors.”

“Well, then,” Ghe accused, “your assertion that they do not begin as Human is without foundation, as well. Why couldn 't they be ghosts? Without the River nearby to absorb them when they died, might not they continue to exist and finally claim god-hood, when all who knew them in life had passed on?”

“That's possible,” Ghan admitted, but what he thought was How can you not see? See that ghosts, like you, are created by the River? Like… No, shove that thought away.

“Why all of this concern about gods that you do not believe are gods?”

Ghe shrugged. “Partly curiosity. That was the wonderful thing about Hezhi; she wanted to know everything, just to know it. I think I apprehended a bit of that from her. But more practically, though I may not believe them gods, I admit that there may be powerful and outlandish creatures in these cursed lands beyond the waters of the god. I wish to know the nature of my enemy. I think I may have met one of them already, perhaps two.”

“Really? Do you care to elaborate?”

“I think your Perkar was a demon or some such. Even you must have heard about his fight at the docks. I myself, with my living hands, impaled his heart with a poisoned blade. He merely laughed at me—much as I laugh at those who stab me now.”

Ghan's memory stirred. He did know of Perkar's fight; the strange outlander had claimed that his