Though he listened to Ghan's words, Ghe found his attention drifting back to the open River mouth. It appeared, to his untrained eye, that the barge could easily fit, once beyond the sand and debris that seemed to clutter the entrance. Past that, the small river looked wide and clear.
Ghe narrowed his eyes. Something was happening where the tributary met the River. Water swirled into him, and where those waters met, Ghe saw a line of turbulence—not just in the liquid, but in the substance behind it. And he felt despair, humming in the air like some familiar song.
Despair and pain, hunger. The first two from the stream flowing in; the last, of course, from the River, for it exactly resembled the hunger he knew when he was away from the water and the living were his bread and meat. The River devoured this smaller watercourse: not just its water, but its spirit. Which meant that there were other spirits than the River in the world. Not gods, surely, but creatures like gods.
The sudden import of that struck him nearly physically, and he heard not a word of the conversation that continued between Ghan and Bone Eel. Instead, as he gazed at the continuing death of the tributary, he heard again the laughter of that creature beneath the Water Temple, its smugness, almost as if it viewed the River God with condescension.
He nearly killed Bone Eel when the fool plucked at his arm. He felt the might gather, and behind it a sudden renewal of hunger, perhaps a sympathetic reflection of the River's own hunger. But he caught Qwen Shen's concerned gaze, and he relented. “Really, Master Yen,” Bone Eel was saying. “I must insist you pay attention.”
“I'm sorry,” Ghe said, trying to infuse his voice with interest he did not feel. “I was just taken with the thought of leaving the River. It seems so strange.”
“Yes,” Bone Eel agreed, “and I wonder why we are doing it. Eight leagues isn't very far. What can we discover in eight leagues? It seems to me that we would be better off sailing farther up the River himself.”
“Darling,” Qwen Shen said sweetly, patting his shoulder. “Don't you remember explaining to me how important it is to chart navigable watercourses and land routes? Master Ghan assures us that both can be found up this stream. You may also remember that you said the crew needed a break to hunt and forage for a time. What better opportunity than now?”
“Oh, that's true,” Bone Eel said. “I was thinking that.”
Inwardly Ghe wondered how such a woman as Qwen Shen could stop herself from smothering this silly fop in the night, but he also knew the answer. For women in Nhol power could be had only through a husband, a son, or a brother. Bone Eel was heir to a fair amount of power but hadn't the wits to use it. Probably everyone at court understood the source of the nobleman's ideas and was relieved that he had a keeper.
“Very well,” Bone Eel said. “Haul on the tiller, and I shall command the dragons!” he called to a knot of sailors awaiting his orders. “Soldiers, I want to see bows and fire for the catapult! This is unknown territory, and who can say what we shall find?”
Moments later, their prow nosed carefully through the mouth of the River and entered, by way of water, the lands of the Mang. When they crossed that line—the one no one but he could see—Ghe felt a tremor, a wave of sickness that quickly passed. But it left undefined worry behind it. He noticed Qwen Shen's batted eyes, the invitation they issued. She understood his moods and knew just as well what was good for him. After a few moments, he left the deck and went to his cabin to await her.
Ghan was already back in his room, deeply engrossed in yet another tome. How many had the man brought with him? In passing, he noticed a feeling like… triumph? Hope? It was hard to tell with Ghan. He must have found something in his book he had been searching for. Hezhi used to light up with that same sort of ebullience when she found something she suspected or hoped for in her research. Though then he had not the power or need to sense those feelings; Hezhi radiated them, the way the sun produced light.
Hezhi. Soon!
His body stirred, in anticipation of Qwen Shen's arrival.
GHAN heard when Ghe went by; he had learned the ghoul's gait long ago. Desperately he began reciting a poem to himself, over and over, trying to mask his true feelings, his precariously balanced hope and triumph.
Ghe passed, but Ghan kept repeating the verse:
“Often sweeps Death
The houses of living, A menial task, That brings into her fair, dark eyes
A sparkle of joy
At the little things she finds there.”
Only when he heard Qwen Shen enter and the sounds of pleasure begin in Ghe's room did he return to the book, tracing his finger back to the point he left off, a paragraph or so below the bold caption that read, in the ancient hand:
On the Nature and Composition of Dragons.
XXV Falling Skye
THE shadow surprised Perkar when it settled upon him. Not because he hadn't heard the methodical progress of someone climbing up the broken, stony face of the mesa; he had known for some time someone was coming up, presumably to see him. What amazed him was that the abundant silhouette could be cast only by Tsem, even with the cooperation of the westering light to lengthen it. Tsem, or perhaps some gigantic beast—but then, Harka would warn him of the latter.
Then again, remembering that Harka had been less than perfectly reliable of late, he turned to see from what shoulders the dark umbra fell.
It was, in fact, Tsem. Perkar's face must have registered his amazement, for Tsem held out a hand signaling that, once he ceased wheezing and panting, he would explain what he wanted.
That took a few moments. Despite the coolness of the afternoon, the half Giant was sweating profusely; a faint breeze mingled pungent man-smell with the desiccated tang of juniper, sage, and yarrow.
“My mother's people,” the half Giant finally managed to gasp, “Giants must live on soft, flat land. Surely we were not made for climbing up and down mountains.”
Perkar stretched his lips in a grin he did not feel. He had volunteered for the watch up on the mesa to be alone; he had much thinking to do, and he knew he was poor company. Still, he had a guarded respect—admiration even—for the half Giant, although time and circumstances had allowed them only the most cursory of relationships. If this were some overture on Tsem's part, it couldn't hurt to appear a bit brighter, though he would much prefer to sulk. His father always said that a friendship missed was like an important trail passed by, and Perkar felt that he had already passed by many such trails in his short life. Of late, his friends had shown a tendency to die, and he was left, really, with only Ngangata and perhaps Hezhi, neither of whom seemed to be speaking to him at the moment—with reason. He could use another friend.
So he smiled his difficult smile and waved at the mesa edge, and said, to be social, “This isn't much of a mountain, either. Really just a ridge.” He turned his gesture beyond, jabbing an index finger toward a high line of peaks to the northeast. 'Those are mountains. Be happy we skirted around them.”
“I am,” Tsem assured him, mopping his brow and looking around. “Nice up here, though. It reminds me of a place Hezhi and I used to go.”
“It does?” Perkar could hardly imagine that. What he had seen of Nhol had been impressive, and from a sufficient distance its hills and high walls of stone had a certain recondite beauty; but there was nothing of the Nhol he had seen that suggested the crumbling stone slope of the plateau they sat upon or the verdant, stream-etched plain five hundred paces below where Hezhi and the others were camped.
“In a way,” Tsem clarified. “It's like being up on the roof of the palace, looking out over the city. The way the light shines, the smell. And there was a courtyard with flowers like this.” He waved a sausage-fingered hand at the white yarrow that blazed over the plateau, blushed pink by the sunset—an ethereal carpet of blossoms ruffling knee-high in an imperceptible breeze. They shone in vivid contrast to the stark black skeletons of ancient hills that bounded the tableland on its south and west.
“I never saw any sights like that in Nhol,” Perkar confessed. “My time there was short.”
“And spent mostly on the docks. I know.” Tsem's massive features crushed themselves into a thoughtful frown. “I came up to ask you a favor,” he blurted suddenly.
“Ask,” Perkar said. “Although at the moment, I wonder what use I can be to you.”
“Oh, but you can,” Tsem said. He stopped, grinned. “It is so good that you ken my language. Even Hezhi speaks it only when we are alone, and lately not even then. She wants me to learn Mang.” He looked embarrassed. ”I'm not very good at it.”
Perkar nodded understanding. “Neither am I, friend. I speak your language because the River taught it to me somehow. Or maybe Hezhi did, without knowing. But my Mang is at least as bad as yours.”
“Me bet we talk to each other good in Mang,” Tsem stammered in his broken version of the tongue.
“Yes. We speak good together,” Perkar answered in kind, and they both smiled. Perkar felt, once again, a warmness for the Giant that was difficult to explain; Tsem had threatened his life when they first met and had been at best brusque since then. But something about the quality of his loyalty to Hezhi, his genuine selfless love, demanded affection from Perkar. When the River transformed her, only Tsem had prevented Perkar from killing Hezhi, not by stopping him physically but merely by being there, by protecting her with his own wounded body. To kill Hezhi, Perkar would have had to kill Tsem—and he had been unable to do it. Perhaps because, in so many ways, the Giant was like Ngangata. Not just because they were both only half Human, but because they shared fiercely good hearts.
He had never gotten to know Tsem, though. Injured in the escape from Nhol, the half Giant had been unable to accompany the Mang to the high country for autumn and winter hunting. And of course Perkar himself had been injured immediately on his return to the lowland camp.
“You almost made me laugh,” he said, still grinning from their exchange of garbled Mang. “That's more than anyone else has done for my mood lately. Ask your favor.”
“I think you should know something first,” Tsem said solemnly, and the smile fled from his face. “Something that shames me. When you were ill, I advised Hezhi to let you be, to give you up for dead.”
Perkar nodded slowly, narrowing his eyes, but did not interrupt as Tsem pushed on with his admission, eyes focused firmly on a yarrow plant two handspans away.
“She's already been through so much,” he explained. “I understood that she would have to do this thing with the drum—this thing I don't understand, only I understand how dangerous it is. I couldn't bear the thought that she would—”
“I understand,” Perkar said. “You have nothing to explain. She didn't owe me anything.”
“She thinks she does. Maybe she does. But that's beside the point, because I owe you. You saved her when I couldn't. You saved us both.” He frowned again, chewed his lip. ”That really made me mad.”
Perkar did chuckle then, though it was a bitter humor. “I think I understand that, too.”
“I haven't said the worst,” the half Giant growled. “After I got hurt, I just lay there, surrounded by these people speaking nonsense. I guess I had fun with a few of the women—” He shrugged. “That's nothing. But Hezhi left, went off with you. I thought T can't save her anymore and I can't keep her company.' And I figured you two would get married and that it would only get worse. And I couldn't tell Hezhi any of this, you see?”