PROLOGUE
Death
Death
GHE plunged his steel into the pale
man's belly, watched the alien gray eyes widen in shock, then
narrow with terrible satisfaction. He yanked to withdraw his blade
and, in that flicker of an instant, realized his mistake. The enemy
edge, unimpressed by its wielder's impalement, swept down toward
his exposed neck.
Li, think
kindly of my ghost, he had time to think, before his head fell
into the dirty water. Even then, for just a moment, he thought he
saw something strange; a column of flame, leaping out of the muck,
towering over Hezhi. Then something inexorable swallowed him
up.
Death swallowed him and took him
into her belly. Dark there, and wet, he swirled about, felt that
last, bright blow like a line of ice laid through his neck flutter
again and again and again, hummingbird-wings of pain. It was most
of what remained of him, though not all. The little spaces between
the memory of that blade stroke were like a doorway into nothing,
opening and closing with greater and greater speed, and through
that portal danced images, dreams, remembered pleasures—danced
through and were gone. Soon all would gambol away like fickle
ladies at a ball, and he would be complete again, just the memory
of his death, and then not even that.
But then it seemed as if the sword
shattered, raced up and down his spine like rivers of crystal
shards; and the belly of death was no longer dark, but alive with
light, charged with heat and lightning, burning, pouring in through
that doorway. The light he recognized; he had seen its colors
blossoming from the water as his head parted from his body. The
doorway gaped and wrapped around him, bringing not darkness, not
oblivion, but remembrance.
Remembrance carried hatred,
bitterness, but most of all hunger. Hunger.
Ghe remembered also a word, as
strands met and were torturously yanked into crude knots within
him, tied hurriedly, without care.
No, he
remembered. Ah, no!
No, and he
fought to hands and knees he could suddenly feel again, though they
felt like wood, though they jerked and quivered with unfamiliar
weakness. He could see nothing but color, but he remembered where
he wanted to go and had no need of vision. Down, he knew, and so he
crawled, blind, whimpering, hungrier by the moment.
Down for he knew not how long, but
after a time he fell, slid, fell again, and then plunged into water
that scalded so terribly that it must have been boiling.
For a while, he could think of
nothing but boiling water, for pain had returned to him, as
well.
No. The
pain went into him like a seed, grew, spread roots, sent limbs out
through his eyes and mouth, shoots from his fingers, and then, very
suddenly, ceased to be pain. He sighed, sank down into the water,
which now enfolded him like a womb, utterly comforting and utterly
without compassion; just a womb, a thing for him to grow in, but no
mother or love wrapped around that. There
he waited, content for a while, and after he was sure the pain was
gone, he looked about for what had not blown through that dark
doorway into nothingness—what remained of him.
He was Ghe, the Jik, one of the
elite assassin-priests who served the River and the River's
Children. Born in Southtown, the lowest of the low, he had
risen—the memory stirred!—he had kissed aprincessl Ghe clenched and unclenched his unseen
hands as he felt the ghost of his lips brushing hers. He realized,
dully, that he had kissed many women, but that the only actual,
particular kiss he could remember was
hers.
Why was that? Why
Hezhi?
They had sent him to kill her, of
course, because she was one of the Blessed. His task had been to
kill her, and he had failed. Yet he had kissed her…
Abruptly his memory offered
mirror-sharp images, a scene from his past—how long ago? But though
his mind's sight was keen, the voices floated to him as if from far
away, and though he saw through his own eyes, it was as if he
watched strangers dance a dance to which he knew only a few
steps.
He was in the Great Water Temple,
in the interior chamber. Plastered white, the immense corbeled
vault above him seemed to drink up the pale lamplight in the center
of the room. More real, somehow, was the illumination washing down
from the four corridors that met in the chamber, though it was
dimmer still than the flame. He knew it for daylight, rippling
through sheets of falling water that cascaded down the four sides
of the ancient ziggurat in whose heart they stood, curtains of
thunder concealing the doorways of the temple. In that coruscating
aquamarine and the flickering of the lamp, the priest before him
seemed less real than his many shadows, for they constantly moved
as he stood still.
On his knees, Ghe yet remembered
thinking of the priest standing over him, You
shall bow to me one day.
“There are things you must know
now,” the priest told him, in his soft, little-boy voice; like all
full priests, he had been castrated young.
“I listen for the fall of water,”
Ghe acknowledged.
“You know that our emperor and his
family are descended from the River.”
Ghe suppressed an urge to rise up
and strike the fool down. They think because I
am from Southtown I know nothing, not even that. They think I am no
more than a throat-slitter from the gutter, with the brains of a
knife! But he held that inside. To betray his feeling was to
betray himself, and betraying himself would betray
Li—Ghe-in-the-water wondered who Li
was.
“Know,” the priest went on, “that
because they carry his water in their veins, the River is a part of
them. He can live through them, if he chooses. The power of the
Waterborn has but one source, and that is the River.”
Then why do you
hate them so? Ghe wondered. Because they
are part of the River, as you will never be? Because they need not
have their balls cut off to serve him?
The priest wandered over to a bench
and sat down, taking his quivering shadows with him. He did not
sign for Ghe to arise, and so he remained there, prostrate,
listening.
“Some of the Waterborn are blessed
with more,” the man went on. 'They are born with rather more of the River in them than others.
Unfortunately, the Human body can contain only a certain amount of
power. After that…”
The priest's voice dropped to a
whisper, and Ghe suddenly realized that this was no mere rote
litany any longer. This was something real
to the priest, something that frightened him.
“After that,” he went on, sounding
like nothing so much as an eight-year-old boy confiding some
terrible childhood discovery, “after that, they change.”
“Change?” Ghe asked, from the
floor. Here was something he did not know,
at last.
“They are distorted by their blood,
lose Human form. They become creatures wholly of the
River.”
“I don't understand,” Ghe
replied.
“You will. You will see” he answered, his voice rising to a firmer, more
dissertative pitch. “When they change—the signs are discovered in
childhood, usually by the age of thirteen—when they change, we take
them to dwell below, in the ancient palace of our
ancestors.”
For a moment, Ghe wondered if this
was some silly euphemism for murder, but then he remembered the
maps of the palace, the dark underways beneath it, the chambers at
the base of the Darkness Stair behind the throne. Ghe suddenly felt
a chill. What things dwelt there, below his
feet? What horror would disturb a priest merely to discuss
it?
“Why?” Ghe asked cautiously. “If
they are of the Blood Royal…”
“It is not only their shape that
changes,” the priest explained. He looked squarely at Ghe, his pale
eyes lapis shards of the light shimmering down the facing hall.
“Their minds change, become inhuman. And their power becomes great,
without control. In times past, some River Blessed have passed
unprotected; we have missed them. One was even crowned emperor
before we knew he was Blessed. He destroyed most of Nhol in fire
and flood.”
The priest stood up and walked over
to a brazier in which coals glowed dully. He nervously sprinkled a
few shavings of incense on them, and a sharp scent quickly filled
the room.
“Below,” he whispered, “they are
safe. And we are safe from them.”
“And if they know their fate?” Ghe
asked. “If they try to escape it?”
“We know what happens when the
Blessed are not contained,” the priest murmured. “If they cannot be
bound beneath the city, then they must be given back to the
River.”
“Do you mean…?” Ghe
began.
The priest nearly hissed with the
intensity of his reply. “The Jik were not created to carry on
assassinations of enemies of the state, though you now serve that
purpose well. Have you never wondered why the Jik answer to the
priesthood and not the emperor
directly?”
Ghe thought for only an instant
before replying. “I see,” he murmured. “We were created to stop the
Blessed from running free.”
“Indeed,” the priest replied, his
voice relaxing a bit. “Indeed. And more than a few have been killed
by the Jik.”
“I live only to serve the River,”
Ghe replied. And he meant that, with all of
his heart, both of him; Ghe then and Ghe in
the water.
BUT now he could see the lie, of
course. The great lie that was the priesthood. They existed not to
serve the River but to keep him bound.
Those whom the River blessed were given their power for a purpose,
so that he might walk the land rather than live torpidly within his
banks—so that the god of the River might roam free. And the priests
bound the River's children, though they
pretended to worship him. If one worshipped a god, would not one
help it realize its dreams? What matter to the River if a few
buildings were crushed in the pangs of birth, a few Human Beings
died? The River took in the souls of all when they died anyway; he
drank them up. All belonged to him.
Far from worshippers, Ghe could see
now, the priests were the enemies of the
River. They had fought for centuries to keep the Royal Blood
checked, diluted. That was why they had set him to kill Hezhi, the
emperor's daughter—kill that beautiful, intelligent girl. And he
would have done it, had not her strange barbarian guardian been
unkillable! Ghe had stabbed him in the heart with a poisoned blade, and still he stood back
up, chopped off Ghe's head—
He flinched away from that thought.
Not yet.
However it had happened, it was
fortunate that he had not slain Hezhi. Much depended upon her, he
realized. The River had many enemies plotting against him, and now
Ghe, the River's only true and loyal servant—now he had those enemies.
And he knew his task with a
wonderful, radiant certainty. His task was to save Hezhi from
her foes, for she was the River's daughter,
and more. She was his hope, his weapon.
His flesh.
Soon enough, Ghe knew, he would
open his eyes, would creep back up to the light, take up his
weapons, and make his way where Rivers do not flow. A wrong would
be righted, a god would be served, and perhaps, just perhaps, he
would once again kiss a princess.