“If you want help finding a book,” he muttered, “then I will help you. If you've come merely to bother me, leave before you waste any of my time.”

“No, in fact,” Yen said, “I have come for help in finding a book. My order has set me to work on a repair of the ducts in the Great Water Temple.”

“And they sent you here to find a book concerning such repairs?”

The young man looked suddenly uncomfortable, fingering his unfashionably high collar nervously.

“Well, to tell the truth, Master Ghan, they did not specifically tell me to look here, and I was afraid to ask them. They were impressed enough by my earlier work, and I think that they believe me more capable than I am.”

“You had excellent help before,” Ghan reminded the young man.

“Indeed, Master Ghan, I did. When I was in here last, you kindly offered—”

“I know what I offered,” Ghan snapped. He did not like Yen. He had not liked him when he was so transparently courting Hezhi, but the fact that he insisted on reminding him of her was intolerable. Though, to be fair, the young man had been discreet enough not to bring her up this time. So far. And Hezhi liked him, would help him if she were here.

“I can help you rather simply,” Ghan said. “There are no books concerning the Great Water Temple in this library. Not of the sort that you might want, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the priesthood is exceedingly jealous of its secrets. The construction and content of the temple is their most ancient secret.”

“Nothing here at all?”

Ghan readied a surly reply but paused. “What is it you want to know?” he asked slowly.

“Well, if there is nothing here on its construction, I will surely be supplied with plans of what I am to work on. But… is there nothing of its history here? Of its dedication?”

“Why would that interest you?”

“If I am to have the honor of working upon something sacred, I think I would like to know more about it.” He blushed. “I suppose I am merely curious.”

Ghan regarded the young man steadily. What was his hidden motive? Everyone in the palace had one. He had seen that in Hezhi instantly, though it had taken many months for him to untangle her secret. It was important to understand that no one told you what they really wanted and that sometimes they themselves did not know. Now here was this merchant's son, a member of the Royal Engineers but a junior one, just in his first year of service. He wanted to know about the temple, and the assertion that he was to work upon it was clearly a lie. But why did he want to know?

But the answer was clear enough to Ghan. He wanted to know because of Hezhi. He was clearly obsessed with her, frantic to discover her whereabouts. He had heard something or seen something that made him certain she was not dead.

Ghan realized that his mind had wandered far enough afield that the boy had noticed.

He will think me a senile old man, Ghan thought.

“I can help you with that, perhaps,” he said. “Wait here while I consult the index.”

Yen nodded as Ghan unfolded his legs and stood; he winced inwardly as his stiff joints popped and complained at the shift in position. Moving into the adjoining chamber where he kept the index, he took the huge volume down and carefully spread it open.

He flipped through the subject headings until he came to Wun Su'ta, “temples,” and scanned through the lists, trying to remember which ones were most suitable. As he recalled, Yen could read only the syllabary, not the ancient glyphs, so he excluded many right away.

He felt a little catch in his throat as he noticed the last few entries. They were nicely formed, very distinctive characters. Hezhi's writing.

“Such a bright girl,” he muttered, and wondered what she was doing at the moment. Sitting in some Mang hut, bored to tears, or riding about the world, seeing things he himself had only read about?

He paused and faced the dread he had been avoiding. There were other possibilities. Only the word of a few Mang horsemen—certainly men of less than untouchable repute—evidenced that she had escaped the city at all. He had received no reply from the letter he sent with the horsemen, though he had not expected one soon. The simple facts were that Hezhi could be dead, or below the Darkness Stair with her monstrous relatives, or…

Why did Yen want to know about the Water Temple? What did he know, or suspect? Was she there, for some incredible reason?

He noticed that his hand was trembling, and he frowned. Weak old man, he chastened himself. Weak. Stupid. She is safe and far from here.

What had he been thinking, though? Entrusting her to that pale-skinned foreigner on no more substance than a dream? He had given her hope, and he desperately wanted to believe that her hope had been rewarded. But he was an old man, long familiar with failure and disappointment. Things never worked out as one hoped.

If he could only know what Yen hoped, and why.

With a heavy sigh he noted down the references. Best that he watch, for the moment. Yen was an engineer, whose organization rested somewhere between the priesthood and the emperor. It could well be that he knew something that Ghan did not, especially now, since he had been cautious of late. There were many in the palace who disliked him—hated him even—and rumors that he had something to do with Hezhi's escape were not lacking. Not common, either, but certainly not lacking. If he were to show the slightest interest in her whereabouts, the Ahw'en investigators would take note with their hidden eyes, and then he must kill himself, ere they could torture Hezhi's whereabouts from him.

But perhaps this Yen could look for him.

And so, sighing heavily, Ghan noted down the best reference he could find by shelf and location.

He took it out and handed it to Yen.

“You remember how to find things from an index reference?” he asked.

“I look for this number on the shelves.”

“Yes. The volume you are looking for is entitled Notes on the Codex Obsidian.”

“I don't understand. This tells of the Great Water Temple?”

Ghan smiled thinly. “If it said as much in its title, the priesthood would have taken it from me long ago. This is a modern translation of the Codex Obsidian, a book written in the ancient hand. But the Codex Obsidian itself contains a long citation from the Song and Consecration of the Temple, the holy text that describes the origin and building of the temple and its associated fanes.”

Yen shook his head in wonder. “Amazing. Books within books within books. I see now why she …” He paused, embarrassed. “Why some spend so much of their time here,” he finished lamely.

“Indeed,” Ghan intoned flatly. “Now, if you please, I have much to be about.”

“Yes, yes of course. Thank you, Master Ghan.”

“I accept your thanks,” Ghan muttered, waving, returning his gaze to the work he had been transcribing.

But he watched Yen from beneath his brows as the young man ventured into the labyrinth of books.

I have given you what I can of the temple, he thought. Now let me see where that takes you next. Tonight, when everyone was gone, he would retrieve the same book, read what Yen had read. He would keep pace with him, each step.

The old, he reflected, should be good at that, at least: watching, waiting.

He returned his hands to their work, but his mind haunted the world, the steppes of the Mang, the expanse of the River, the black depths of the Water Temple, searching. Searching for a young woman with a heart-shaped face and wonder in her eyes.

He would have killed her, he knew, despite that. He would have killed anyone, if the priesthood had asked him to.

But how much better now that he did not ever have to think of killing her again. That was not—had never been—the River's plan for her. So much better that he be her savior, especially now, now that he knew he loved her.

Loved her? Ghe felt a sudden trembling deep in his bones. When had he decided that! Back in the sewers as his head fell off? In the depths, in the death before his rebirth?

Had he decided it at all?

But, of course, he had. The River knew no more of Human love than it did of Human hatred. It could not make him feel thus. And so it must be he, Ghe, who loved Hezhi.

He shivered again and shook his head. What had he been about? He glanced down dully at the book clenched in his white-knuckled hands and remembered, though he did not recall actually lifting the volume down. The temple.

He took the tome over to a reading bench of polished teak and laid it flat. He admired the spine of ivory, the ivory pins that riveted it together. The cover was a sort of leather unknown to him, black and densely wrinkled. Some kind of lizard or alligator, perhaps, or one of the great tusked beasts he had heard of.

Inside, the supple white pages were tattooed in blue and black, the sometimes curving, often choppy lines of the syllabary. That was a relief; he had no facility with the ancient hand. Rebirth had made him no better at such things; the River had many powers to offer, but apparently the River could not read, not even books about itself.

The Codex Obsidian read the title page. Ghe began prowling through it, searching for what he was not certain. But the center of his lord's frustration and torpor—the place he could not even see—Ghe knew, instinctively, that it was the temple. When he looked out over Nhol from the roof of the palace, he could see all of the city; the wings of the palace sprawling crookedly along the crests of the hill, the docks and merchant quarter, the thickly cluttered Southtown, and the temple rising high above it all. But when he closed his eyes and pictured that same scene, he saw only darkness where the temple should be. The god that pulsed the blood in his veins simply could not perceive it.

The temple, he remembered hearing, had created the priests the way an oven creates bread. Ordinary men had walked into it, when first it was formed, and the first priests had walked out. Priests were still made thus, though the process took many years. But whence had come the temple itself? That seemed an important story, and there was a sort of itch in his brain that suggested, maddeningly, that he had once known it. Surely he had been indoctrinated into the lesser mysteries in the time he had been trained for killing.

It galled him that he must search so for something he had once known.

And after a time he found it, in spidery characters that were written differently from the rest of the book, so old in style he must furrow his brow to puzzle through them, whisper the words aloud.

His shuddering became bright fury, inhuman fury so great that he felt the pulsing of his blood threaten to burst forth from his heart and break his mortal body. Who did this? Who is this Ebon Priest, who made these shackles, this priesthood, this temple? Who is he, for I shall shatter him, harrow and eat his soul!

His teeth began to chatter, and his fingers clutched spastically at the pages of the book. The colors from his dream filled the room, a vortex of nightmare light, and for an instant he knew that he lay once again on the surface of oblivion, a greedy darkness eager to swallow him forever. But then, by degrees, the anger retreated, diminished to mortal stature, and then less than even that, so that he was left wondering what he had felt, and why. He was dizzy and weak; sweat slicked his skin and matted his hair. Dazed, he wondered if the terrible lights he had seen had been only in his own eyes or if they had truly filled the library, and he looked around him carefully; no one was about, there in the most jumbled recesses of the archives, and so far as he could tell, no one had come to investigate. Still, to the senses of the Waterborn, or of a priest, it must have seemed as if a fire had burned briefly or a claxon sounded. Ghe swiftly stood, wiped his brow, and arranged his hair as best he could. He replaced the book on its shelf and, with a hasty word of thanks to Ghan, exited the library.

He entered an abandoned courtyard and surveyed the cracked and weed-rampant walk through it. Not for the first time, he wondered why this part of the palace was empty, falling into dust. Once when he was a child someone had shown him a chambered shell from deep in the River. It was a straight cone, like a horn, and inside it was partitioned, the largest spaces toward the widest end. Trumpet-cuttlefish, someone had named it, and he had listened in wonder at how the creature, as its life progressed, added greater and grander chambers to its home while abandoning those it had outgrown. It had been a thing of water, of the River. Were the Waterborn of the same nature? No one had ever said such a thing—not that he could recall, of course.

In the center of the court was a sink, a well down which unwanted things and dirty water were passed. He lifted the grate and lowered himself into darkness. Passing a short distance—about twenty paces—he reached a second grate, clambered up and through it, thus entering his apartments.

His courtyard was bare of any life at all. When he had found it, it had been infested with weeds, as well, but a wave of his hand had withered them, given their water and life to him. Now the stone was clean and cold, simple and pure.

This suite of rooms was actually sealed off from the rest of the palace, the doors to the outside halls not only bolted but plastered over, like the backmost chamber of that strange creature.

He paused before entering the room he slept in adjoining the courtyard. Who had told him those things, shown him that shell? A seaman, at the docks? But that seemed wrong. It might have been a woman… He remembered, then, the old woman on Red Gar Street, and he felt a catch in his throat. Perhaps it had been she. He could not remember.

He crawled into his room, trying to ignore the hunger that gnawed in him. Soon enough he would have to feed again; it seemed that he needed to kill more and more often as time went on. It might, indeed, be best to retreat to Southtown, where monsters could Uve with impunity.

He curled up on his stolen sleeping mat like a spider, thinking, planning, and waiting for the darkness.

Almost he slept; his body sank into a torpor, though his mind remained active, peering at the strange fragments of knowledge he had attained.

He understood for certain now that he must invade the temple, though he knew not why. There his lord, the River, was no guide, for in that parody of some far-off mountain, he could not see. That was why Ghe was needed; to go where the god could not go.

Had that not always been his role, as a Jik, as a ruffian on the street? Always Ghe went where others were not willing to. As a child for pay and loot, as a Jik for pride and the priesthood. What reward would the River give him, one day?

But of course, he knew the answer to that, too: Hezhi. Hezhi would be his reward.

Thus he thought, and thus he was still thinking when the wall began to shudder beneath the weight of mallets, accompanied by the high, shrill keen of priests chanting.