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  The Blackgod

  Chosen of the Changeling, Book Two

  Greg Keyes

  For My Mother

  Nancy Ridout Landrum

  PROLOGUE

  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 a princess! 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.

  PART ONE

  Mansions of Bone

  I

  The Mang Wastes

  Hezhi Yehd Cha’dune, once-princess of the empire of Nhol, yelped as what weight her small body possessed was suddenly stolen from her in an explosion of force and wind as the thief—her horse Dark—shook all four hooves free of the earth. For a moment they hung almost still above the uneven slope of shattered stone and snow, but Hezhi knew—knew in her belly—that when they struck back down the mare would just keep falling, tumbling head-over-tail down what seemed almost a sheer grade. She doubled her hands in Dark’s mane and leaned against her neck, straining to hang on to the barrel-shaped torso with her legs, but when the horse’s hooves were reunited with the ground—first front and then thunderously rear—she slapped back into the saddle with such force that one leg kicked unwillingly free of its stirrup. The surrounding landscape blurred into jolting white, gray, and blue nonsense as she ignored the free-flapping stirrup and just held on. Then, suddenly, the earth was flat again and Dark really ran, digging her head into the wind, hammering across the half-frozen ground like a four-limbed thunder god. The mare’s flat-out run was so smooth, Hezhi’s fear began to evaporate; she found the stirrup, caught the rhythm of the race, and her tightly held breath suddenly released itself in a rush that quickly became triumphant laughter. Never before had she completely given the Mang-bred horse her head, but now that she had, the chocolate-and-coffee-striped mare was gaining on the four riders ahead of her. When one of them—perhaps hearing her laughter—turned his head to look back, she was near enough to see the surprise register in his unusual gray eyes.

  Thought you could leave me back farther than that, didn’t you, Perkar? she thought, with more pride than anger. Her self-esteem doubled when the young man’s expression of amazement became one of respect. She felt her own lips bow in glee and then promptly felt stupid for beaming so, like one of those useless creatures back in the palace or some brainless child. Still, it felt wonderful. Though she was only thirteen years of age, it had been many years since she felt anything at all like a child, good or bad. It couldn’t hurt to smile and laugh if she felt like it, could it?

  She clapped Dark’s flanks harder and was rewarded by a burst of even greater speed from her steed—and was consequently nearly thrown over the mare’s head when the animal quickly stamped to a halt to avoid crashing into Perkar and the others, who had stopped suddenly.

  “What?” Hezhi sputtered. “Are you trying—”

  “Hsst, Princess,” Perkar stage-whispered, holding up a finger. “Yuu’han thinks our quarry is over the next rise.”

  “And?” she shot back, though lowering her voice, too.

  “We should walk from here, or we may panic them,” another man answered. Hezhi switched her regard to the second speaker, who was dismounting. He swung his right leg over his mount’s head and let his thick, compact body slide to the ground; his boots crunched in the thin layer of snow. He was clothed in heavy breeks and an elkskin parka tanned white. In the hood, his face was paler than the coat, like bone, and his thick hair fell from one side in a milky braid. His eyes, on the other hand, were black, set deeply in his head beneath cavernous brows and a forehead that sloped back rather sharply from them, the legacy of his unhuman father.

  “Thank you, Ngangata, for explaining that,” she replied, “though I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about.”

  “It’s what we brought you to see,” Perkar explained, also dismounting. His hood was down, his short chestnut hair in wind-combed disarray. He was slighter than Ngangata, narrower in every dimension though nearly as bleached looking to Hezhi’s eyes, many shades fairer than her own sienna complexion. Lighter by far than their other two companions, Yuu’han and Raincaster, who were both Mang tribesmen, flesh burned copper brown by the fierce sun of their native deserts and plains.

  “You brought me to see nothing!” Hezhi answered. “Indeed, you tried to leave me behind.” She gestured back toward the hills they had just spilled down, where the highlands crumbled into the more gradually rolling plains the Mang called huugau. But even as she said this, she blushed; Perkar was grinning broadly and Ngangata not at all, but the two Mang were both studiously looking down and away from her. After half a year among the Mang, she knew what that meant. They were trying to keep her from seeing their smiles, which meant Perkar was telling the truth. They had intentionally goaded her into following and let her catch them.

  She pursed her lips and made to wheel Dark about.

  “No, wait!” Perkar shouted, forgetting his own admonition to silence. “We just wanted to see how well you can ride.”

  “You could have merely asked,” she replied icily. But sh
e was curious. “What did you decide?”

  “That you have learned to ride as well in six months as even many Mang do not in six years,” Raincaster answered, turning his youthful, aquiline features frankly on her. That startled her. The Mang never dissembled when they spoke of riding skill.

  “I—” She frowned in frustration. Was she supposed to be angry or not?

  She decided not, and dismounted. On the ground, her legs felt wobbly, and the snow immediately began leaking cold into her feet to match the numbness of her nose. “What am I supposed to be seeing, anyway?”

  Perkar gestured in the direction they had been riding. Here the huugau was gently rolling, as if a sky god had pressed down on the hills with a great palm. The ridges and valleys were still there, but they were so gradual that one could be fooled into thinking their high places merely represented the distant horizon; this was especially true, Hezhi found, when they were blanketed with snow. “Over the ridge,” Perkar explained, and the Mang nodded their slight but clear assurances.

  “Very well,” Hezhi said. “Let us go, then.” And with that she marched past the men, striding quickly toward the ridge.

  Perkar stood rooted for an instant as Hezhi brushed past him, the hem of her long vermilion riding coat trailing imperiously behind her, short bob of obsidian hair bouncing with her stride.

  He looked to the other men, but Ngangata was fighting a grin while the Mang studied the earth.

  “I’ll watch the horses,” Yuu’han assured them, and Perkar nodded, started at a jog to catch up with Hezhi. She heard him coming, though, and broke into a run.

  “No, Princess!” He tried to whisper loud enough for her to hear him, but it sounded only like steam escaping a kettle—and she heeded it no more than that. But then she reached the crest of the hill, and her booted feet slowed. Perkar came alongside of her just as she halted completely.