Stepping down toward the debris, she slipped on the alabaster steps, flailed with one arm wildly to keep from falling or dropping the lamp. One of her feet sank into the water at the foot of the dais. Pain erupted instantly, like flame lapping straight up her leg, into her belly, flaring toward her head. Choking off a little cry, she jerked her foot out; her vision blurred and swam, and she quickly sat down on the stepped dais for fear that she would collapse if she didn't. She reached down to stroke her foot, but already the strange sensation was fading. Though more intense and brief, she recognized the sensations, the taste of the water on her skin. It was the same as that when the priests sprinkled her during the Test of the Body.

"The River," she muttered. The ruined court was not filled with water from the storm drains and sewers. This was the River, crept up under the palace. The lower palace had sunk down into him. This was where sacred water was drawn.

Her foot wasn't even wet. The court was flooded not merely with water, but with She'ned, Smokewater, the lifeblood of the River. As ghosts were the spirits of Human Beings, She'ned was the ghost of water, the spirit remaining when the substance departed.

The burning passed, but a deep, involuntary shudder rippled through Hezhi's body, and the thing in her—what the priests had tried to force into revealing itself—stirred. Unmistakably. Overcome, she remained on the steps, weeping.

She stopped her weeping when she heard a soft whispering. At least, she believed it to be whispering; she could not make out any words; it was merely the hiss one hears at a distance when people confide secrets.

I have to do something, she resolved. I have to try to find D'en..

The map had taken her this far, but now she had no clear idea of where to search. Her research had discovered the center of the old palace as the place to which the Darkness Stair descended. It had found her a path by which she might reach it. But her map did not have a point marked "D'en" on it.

Not that it mattered anymore. Hezhi now believed that she would not find him. It seemed to her that immersion in the Smokewater would dissolve a body, draw the spirit essence from it. Perhaps that was where ghosts came from. Those ghosts her father had summoned—the fish and the other things—they had all died in the River. It must be that when royalty died—no, when they were killed—it must be done in the River, so that he could reclaim their essence, the part of them that was him. That was what she felt inside of her, she realized. Part of her was River. She suddenly recalled her conversation with Tsem, nearly three years before. She had said something about the "Royal Blood" working in her, and Tsem had become absolutely solemn, almost fearful, had told her to never say such a thing. Perhaps that had been as much as he could say, Forbidden. To warn her about her blood.

That was it! It was all coming clear, deadly clear. If the Royal Blood worked right, if the River surfaced in one in the right way—whatever that was—then the child became like her father, her mother. Powerful, able to summon the River's puissance to do sorcery. A ruler. By using the part of the River that was in them. But if it went wrong, somehow, if it was… she still didn't know that, how it went awry. But it could go wrong, that was clear, and when it did those so "Blessed" were brought here and executed, returned to the River. Here, in the dark, where the people of the Empire would not know, would never see nobles die.

She reflected that many—like Wezh, for instance—might have noble blood but no waking power in them at all, destined neither to rule nor to die. Hezhi understood that she was not one of those.

Still she heard the whispering. She stood again and, more carefully this time, stepped out onto the rubble. She was vaguely sur-prised that it did not crunch beneath her feet; it must have settled through the centuries, become compacted. Moving as quietly as possible, she worked her way toward the gate.

She reached it easily enough and was soon peering through the steel bars. Beyond, the hall extended farther than she could see. There was something odd about the corridor, though she could not place for certain what it was for an instant. Then she understood. The water in it was moving—not flowing, but stirring about, as if something were swimming in it. The whispering was down that hall; it was a bit clearer now, and she could almost make out a word, now and then.

She knelt on the pile, set her little lamp down, and, shading her eyes from the flame, tried to see as far as she could; the brightness of the flame itself tended to blind her.

She wobbled on her haunches and put down one hand to steady herself. Doing so, she realized that whatever she was squatting on, it was neither rubble nor sand. Puzzled, she studied it more closely. She believed, at first, that the stone or whatever was covered with moss or even fungus, but the texture was unlike that, as well. It was actually rather smooth, slick but not slimy, bumpy. Like the skin of her mother's salamander.

As she was thinking that, an eye blinked open, no more than an armspan from her. It wasn't there and then it was, an eye staring at her, a perfectly Human eye. Beneath her, whatever she was squatting on tremored. It moved, shifted in place.

Hezhi tried to suppress her shriek of terror, but it leapt free of her throat and soared away, a bright bird of sound in a dark place, flapping around and around before the underpalace ate it up. She crouched, shuddering, not knowing what to do. The eye stared at her, then slowly closed again.

Shaking, she looked up and down the length and breadth of the thing with entirely new eyes. She was on the back of something alive. It might be, she realized, rather like those fish in her father's summoning. Or like the ghost that had come after her. Yet this was no ghost; this thing was substantial in a way that a ghost could never be, at least according to everything she had read—which was admittedly not that much, when it came to ghosts. It was real, alive, sleeping, even though she was on its back.

She noticed other things, now that she was looking. It helped her to study, detached her from her fear, from the fact that she was on the back of some alien thing. A stubby projection on the "bar" was some sort of fin. Or tentacle. And there, that lump… She shuddered and closed her eyes, detachment failing, not wanting to see more, wanting only to be somewhere else, alone, with Qey, with anyone, but very far from where she was. Because the lump was not a lump. Pale, like a fingered mushroom, a Human hand sprouted from the creature's back.

I have to open my eyes, she thought crazily. I can't leave unless I open them. But as much as she wanted at that moment to be gone, the thought of looking at the thing, of discovering some new horror was too terrible to face. Even less did she want to move. What if she woke it up?

"How did you get here?"

Her heart stopped for a moment, restarted with a painful jerk. She snapped her eyes open. The voice was strange, watery, tortured sounding. It came from beyond the grating.

"Who… ?" she began, and then stopped, still afraid of waking the monster she sat upon. She heard water stirring.

"Whoever you are, you are in a very bad place," the voice told her. A shadow was gliding in the ebon pool, beyond the light of her lamp.

"And where did you get that light?" it snarled. "Put that out. You'll have no need of that."

"Who are you?" Hezhi asked, holding the lamp higher, trying to see.

"Put that down, I say."

She set the lamp down but made no move to put it out. Nevertheless, the shadow swam closer. She caught a glimpse of it then: coils of scales glittering in the light, bony plates, a host of centipede legs—they did not congeal, form anything unified in her head.

"Who are you?" she repeated, her voice close to shrieking again.

"I don't understand how you got from the Darkness Stair to here without my seeing you," the thing complained. "But if you hadn't been so intent on slipping by me, I would have warned you about old Nu there. If she wakes up, you'll warm her belly."

"I didn't come down the Darkness Stair," she whispered, trying to keep her voice steady. "I came in through the ducts."

"The ducts? The ducts?" The thing swirled about crazily in the water. "You weren't brought down here, were you?"

"Let me see you," Hezhi pleaded. "What are you?"

A head suddenly moved into her circle of vision. It was Human, basically, though gills branched like feathery horns from its neck. It had no hair, either. The back of its head devolved into a rubbery, spiky mass that seemed to be constantly writhing.

"What am I?" the abomination repeated. "Why, my dear, don't you recognize a prince when you see one?"

"Prince? Prince?"

"Prince L'ekezh Yehd Cha'dune, at your service."

"That isn't possible," she managed to choke out, though she already knew that it was. "Who was your father?"

"Why, the Great Lord Yuzhnata, of course."

"Oh, oh," Hezhi gasped, still not quite able to grasp; but the puzzle was solving itself in her head again, the pieces rearranging themselves.

"That makes you my father's brother," she quavered faintly.

There was a moment of silence from the thing.

"Well," it said. "Well, I have a niece. Welcome, niece, to the Chambers of the Blessed. Now, you should trust your uncle and do what he says. Climb off Nu and swim through the grate. I'll protect you."

"I don't want to get in the water," she moaned.

"Well, you don't have much choice about that," L'ekezh replied. "Embrace it, let it fill you up. Become accustomed to it."

"Why?"

"Because you will never leave here, that's why."

"I will," Hezhi insisted.

"You say you came here by the ducts. On purpose. Why did you do that?" L'ekezh seemed to be becoming more accustomed to the light. He swam nearer, put his in-Human face up to the grating. She saw that his teeth were sharp and long, ivory needles.

"I wanted to know… where we go when they take us off."

L'ekezh laughed with a kind of bubbling delight, though it sounded more like someone choking.

"How bright you must be!" he remarked. "That's too bad for you, though I'll doubtless enjoy our conversations. Then again, the bright ones go mad the most quickly. I think I've stayed sane for so long because I'm a bit thick. Tell me…" His voice dropped low, became an exaggeration of the "conspiratorial" tone used in theater. "Tell me. Do the priests know yet? Have you begun to manifest?"

"Manifest?"

"With me," L'ekezh offered, "the power came first. She'lu— your father—was so jealous. Even when his power came, mine was always stronger. The Blessed are strong, girl. But then the priests came and they found—it's always a little thing, something you haven't really noticed—one of my toes had changed color. So, of course, they brought me here."

"I don't… why?"

"Why? Why? Look at me. Look at Nu, there. Could anyone stand to see us on the throne? Dancing about the court, with lords and ladies on our arms? And, of course, there is our power. They fear that the most."

"Power," she repeated dully.

"We are the Blessed," L'ekezh snarled. "I have more power in one of my eyes than the Chakunge and all of his court."

"Then why do you stay down here?" Hezhi asked.

"Because," L'ekezh began, and then stopped, his eyes staring at her with awful intensity. "Are you real?" he whispered. "Did I create you?"

"I am real," Hezhi assured him.

"I will go mad, one day, you know," L'ekezh confided.

"Why don't you leave?" she asked once again. "If you have such power?"

"Because the River drinks it," he replied woodenly. "When they first put me here, I raged. I tried to pull down the foundations of the damned palace around me, kill them all. I could have done it up there, but they drugged me, of course. Down here, when the drug wore off—well, however powerful the Blessed are, nothing is as powerful as the River. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing!" He finished by shrieking. Then he stared at her silently, his face writhing like a nest of stinging worms.

"You really shouldn't be on her back," he said again, after a time.

"How many… how many of you are there?"

"How many Blessed?"

"Yes."

"Alive? Still in flesh?"

Hezhi nodded.

"Oh, just a few. Five."

"Where are they?"

"Oh… around here somewhere. Your light frightens them. Anyway, I'm lord here, now that Nu sleeps most of the time. It's my responsibility to welcome the new ones. I still don't see how I didn't notice them bringing you down the stair."

"I told you, I didn't come that way."

"Well. So you did," L'ekezh muttered, perhaps more to himself than to her.

"I wonder…" she began. "Is there one named D'en among you?"

"D'en? Of course, D'en," the once-prince answered.

"I came to see him," Hezhi said.

"Oh? Came all the way to see D'en. Well. Wait here."

The head ducked beneath the black water and ripples marked his passage away.

She waited a long while, and it began to occur to her that she had been forgotten. L'ekezh seemed to have trouble remembering things. But just as she was despairing, as the fear of the sleeping thing upon which she sat began to overwhelm her, the water stirred again.

It was not L'ekezh. It was, to her eyes, a Human man, with long stringy black hair. His eyes, however, protruded on stalks and the hands that came up to grip the steel bars were clawlike, chitinous. One still possessed five fingers but the other had become like a pincer, the thumb grossly exaggerated and the other fingers melted together.

"D'en," she whispered. "Oh, D'en."

The thing looked at her with its crablike eyes. It croaked, like a frog. It croaked again, more insistently, and Hezhi thought she recognized her name.

"D'en? Can you talk?" She suddenly knew that she was going to be sick. Her stomach expelled the bread she had eaten before waking Tsem and continued heaving long after nothing remained in it. D'en watched her impassively.

"D'en doesn't talk much," L'ekezh told her, surfacing a few spans away. "He did at first, talked all the time. Usually our bodies change the fastest, then our heads. D'en—he changed inside first."

"Why… why do you change?" she managed, faintly. As if knowing would help.

L'ekezh smiled, a rubbery arc that might have been amusing to a madman. "He fills us up," he said, voice confidential. "A mere Human body cannot contain his full power."

She tried to understand, while D'en—or what D'en had become—cocked his head, as if regarding her from another angle would offer him something new. It may have, for slowly, tenta-tively, he reached the hand that was most Human through the bars.

She reached over and, after hesitating briefly, touched the hand. The fingers flexed but made no other movement. It felt cold, hard, not at all like the hand she remembered, the one she had held as they ran, laughing, across the rooftops. Now that hand clutched vaguely, not remembering how to hold another. It was a mercy when D'en suddenly snatched his hand away, croaked once again. His horrible eyes swayed on their stalks, and then he sank, quickly, beneath the water.

"He recognized you," L'ekezh told her. "I can tell. That was more than I expected."

"D'en," Hezhi mouthed softly. Beneath her, the rubbery flesh trembled again.

"Quickly," L'ekezh cried. "If you care for your life. Nu is awaking. If you really came through the ducts, go now. The River might yet let you."

Hezhi rose shakily to her feet.

"Good-bye," she said.

"I'll see you again soon enough," L'ekezh said. "See if they will let you bring me some wine. Though, of course, they won't."

He sank away, vanished. She took up her lamp and stumbled across Nu's back. As she reached the dais, the monster was beginning to twitch and, before she had mounted it, began heaving. She hurried to the shaft, spared a glance back and saw Nu rising up. There was nothing recognizably Human about Nu at all; she was all fish and scorpion, her long, pointed tail lashing now at the water. More quickly than Hezhi could have ever imagined, the creature turned and lunged up onto the dais, flopped there, heaved and flopped again. Reflexively, she hurled her lamp; it shattered on the damp stone, and fire splattered among the shards. Nu hesitated at that, faceted, insect eyes flinching away from the light. Hezhi scrambled into the dark tube and began to crawl frantically, gasping with fear. She clawed at the stone, trying to propel herself more quickly into the darkness, tore nails to the quick without even noticing the pain. She didn't even begin to calm down until she saw the pale illumination up ahead of her, where Tsem was waiting.

She was sobbing uncontrollably when the half Giant lifted her gently from the tube. He cradled her tenderly in his massive arms, stroking her wet, slimy hair, and made soft, comforting noises. Then, carrying her in the crook of one arm and the lantern in his other hand, he waded across the room and began ascending the stairs, back toward light and home.