“I mean outside of the River's influence,” Ghe snapped. “Where he is powerless. You have mentioned them before, as did the governor at Wun. Remember? He spoke of the 'gods of the Mang.' As if there are gods, other than the River.”
“Ah. Well, some, I suppose, though what I have to go on is mostly superstitions gathered from the people who live out here, like the Mang.”
“What about that barbarian, Perkar? Did he tell you nothing about his gods?”
Ghan shook his head. “He and I had scant time for pleasantries.”
“You told me once that his folk live near the headwaters of the River.”
“Yes.”
“But they do not worship him?”
“Not from what I have read.” Ghan furrowed his brow. He had to make this interesting, stay on this tangent of thought, on the oddities of foreign gods. “Actually, as I understand it, they do not 'worship' gods at all. They treat with them, strike deals with them, even develop friendships and mate with them. But they don't worship them, build temples dedicated to them, and so forth.”
“Neither do we in Nhol,” Ghe muttered. “Our temples are not to worship him but to chain him.”
“Ah,” Ghan remarked, “but that was not originally true. And despite what you say, most people in Nhol do worship the River, make offerings to him. It is only—if I am to understand what you have told me—the priesthood that doesn't worship him. The temple, whatever its true function, is a symbol of that worship.”
“Agreed,” Ghe conceded, obviously restless on the topic. “True enough. But we've strayed from the subject. Out here, beyond his reach—”
“Do we know that we are beyond his reach?” Ghan interrupted.
Ghe nodded slightly but intensely. “I assure you,” he whispered, “I can tell.”
“I suppose you can,” Ghan responded, wishing to pursue how Ghe knew that but aware that he shouldn't. “Please go on with what you were saying.”
“You say that here in the hinterlands there are many gods, but they are not worshipped. They sound like petty, powerless creatures.”
“Compared to the River, I'm certain they are.”
“More like ghosts,” Ghe speculated. “Or myself.”
Ghan took a controlled breath. This was not where he wished for the conversation to go.
“I suppose,” Ghan allowed, hoping that a half truth would not ring in Ghe's dead senses as a lie. “I suppose,” he went on, “that they are something like that, save that they did not start out as people.”
“Where did they come from, then?”
“I don't know,” Ghan replied. “Where did anything come from?”
Ghe stared at him in surprise. “What a strange thing for you to say. You, who always seek to know the cause of everything.”
“Only when there is some evidence to support speculation,” Ghan answered. “On this topic there is naught but frail imaginings and millennia-old rumors.”
“Well, then,” Ghe accused, “your assertion that they do not begin as Human is without foundation, as well. Why couldn 't they be ghosts? Without the River nearby to absorb them when they died, might not they continue to exist and finally claim god-hood, when all who knew them in life had passed on?”
“That's possible,” Ghan admitted, but what he thought was How can you not see? See that ghosts, like you, are created by the River? Like… No, shove that thought away.
“Why all of this concern about gods that you do not believe are gods?”
Ghe shrugged. “Partly curiosity. That was the wonderful thing about Hezhi; she wanted to know everything, just to know it. I think I apprehended a bit of that from her. But more practically, though I may not believe them gods, I admit that there may be powerful and outlandish creatures in these cursed lands beyond the waters of the god. I wish to know the nature of my enemy. I think I may have met one of them already, perhaps two.”
“Really? Do you care to elaborate?”
“I think your Perkar was a demon or some such. Even you must have heard about his fight at the docks. I myself, with my living hands, impaled his heart with a poisoned blade. He merely laughed at me—much as I laugh at those who stab me now.”
Ghan's memory stirred. He did know of Perkar's fight; the strange outlander had claimed that his sword held a god, but perhaps Ghe was correct, and that was a lie. What sort of creature might he have sent Hezhi off with?
But she had dreamed him.
“And the other?” Ghan asked.
Ghe ticked his finger against his palm. “The guardian of the Water Temple.”
“Why him?”
“The priests don't have power as such; they are like darknesses resistant to light. But he was filled with life and flame, and it was not the life and flame of the River.”
“You don't know that,” Ghan interpolated. ”He may have some way of siphoning the River's strength through the temple. Perhaps ¿hat is why he remains there.”
Ghe regarded Ghan with what appeared to be respect. “I see you have been thinking about that, too.”
“Indeed,” Ghan said. “It's an intriguing mystery.”
“A crime” Ghe corrected.
“If you will, then,” Ghan agreed. “A crime, but one committed a thousand years ago, when Nhol was young. When a person the old texts name the Ebon Priest came to our city.”
“Yes, I read the record of it, in the book you showed me.”
“But that account is a he, of course,” Ghan continued, pausing just an instant for emphasis. “Because it says that the River sent the Ebon Priest, and clearly the River would not send someone to bind him.”
“No, wait,” Ghe corrected. 'The Codex Obsidian stated only that the Ebon Priest claimed to have been sent by the River.”
Ghan wagged his finger. “You should have become a scholar rather than a Jik. You have sense for detail, and that's important.”
“Important for a Jik, too,” Ghe observed.
“I suppose so,” Ghan conceded. “As a Jik then, someone familiar with crime—”
“I did not know I was committing crimes,” Ghe snapped. “I believed I was working for the empire.”
“Very well,” Ghan soothed. “I meant no insult, nor did I mean that. But the Jik and the Ahw'en also solve crimes, punish criminals. The people you executed, for the most part, were criminals against the state.” Or helpless children, committing no greater crime than continuing to breathe, intruded bitterly.
“That makes you angry,” Ghe said.