“What?”
Ghe shrugged. “I nearly killed you. That would have been a mistake. Like the River, I have trouble seeing myself; I need others, outside of me, to watch me. How do you feel?”
“Confused. I thought you and Moss were fighting to the death.”
“We were,” Moss interposed. “To my death, very certainly. You saved me, Ghan, gave me the information I was missing. I wish you had told me earlier about Qwen Shen's hold on Ghe. If I had known a day ago, many of my warriors would still be alive. It is fortunate for us both that you blurted it out at last.”
“I trust none of you,” Ghan muttered. “I've made no secret of that. I keep what I know close. If you want it, he knows how to get it.” He jerked his chin defiantly at Ghe.
The ghoul shook his head. “No. Your knowledge would have been bound up inside of me with everything else, if I had taken you in before. I remember now why I wanted you on this expedition alive: because even hostile to me, you are more useful as you are.” His eyes narrowed. “But I will have no more betrayal. You have balanced the old debt; do not incur new ones.”
“I still don't understand what happened.”
Moss smiled faintly. “I showed him his—what did you call it?Leash. I showed him the trap Qwen Shen had laid for him. Once I knew it was there, it was simple enough to see and reveal.” He rubbed his hurt arm. ”She is powerful, that one. Dangerous.”
“What has become of her?” Ghan asked.
Ghe's visage furrowed in wrath. “Gone, she and Bone Eel both. Gone I know not where. I will search for them.”
Ghan drew a deep breath. “Give me a moment to think,” he said. “Because I have something to tell you both. And some questions, as well.”
Now his senses could make out a cricket chirping half a league away, see a nut hanging on a tree at the same distance, scent the distinctive odor of a soul from even farther. Yet he found not the faintest trace of Qwen Shen or Bone Eel. It was as if they had wrapped a vanishing about themselves, the way powerful priests were able to—the way the temple itself did.
Out of sight of the camp, he raged. Trees splintered beneath his claws, small creatures of wood and field shriveled into skeletons in the tempest of his anger. He wanted to hurt himself, to pound his knuckles until bone cracked and blood covered him. He wanted desperately to feel pain once again, to purify himself through it.
But his skin no longer registered such sensations, and his flesh was no more susceptible to tearing than his bones to shattering. At last he gave up. He had failed the River, but that failure could still be redressed. Especially if he could puzzle out what Qwen Shen had been doing, and why. He remembered their lovemaking sessions now, and part of it at least was plain. She had labored to twist his fundamental desire to find Hezhi into some buried desire for her. She had not failed; he still trembled when he thought of her, her flesh, her eyes. But now he could remember the betrayals, the illusion of Hezhi in the throes of passion, the whispered conversations he forgot, the subtle suggestions that made such perfect sense from her lips …
Ah, when he found her it would be such a sweet thing. No passion she had ever brought him would be as great as unraveling the threads of her life, one by one, as he also unraveled the flesh and blood surrounding her.
He forced himself to think on the things she had made him forget; memories crowded for recognition, but he had no way of sorting them out. Moss could help him do that, and so could Ghan, though the latter would do so reluctantly. He rubbed his knuckles, again chagrined at their lack of soreness. They seemed odd, as he rubbed them, unyielding, and he realized with a start that some sort of bony plate was present beneath the skin. Puzzled, he continued to inspect his body. Broad sheets of hard substance lay beneath his chest, abdomen, thighs—a massive plate lay across his shoulders, and he realized that the skin there was actually colored by the armor pressing up from beneath, a dull aquatic gray, slightly blemished, like the back of a Rivercrab.
He didn't know whether to be amused or horrified; removed from the protecting waters of the River, his body had begun growing a shell to defend itself. Qwen Shen had hidden that from him, too. Why had she done that?
To maintain in him the illusion that he was Human, of course. To keep him from the persuasions of Lady Death and his own common sense which told him that as much as he might believe himself to be Ghe, he was not.
He couldn't think about that. It didn't matter. It didn't matter, because he was someone, and he had the memories of a legion now to draw from, and he had his desire, his purpose, though Qwen Shen may have tainted it. And he would still have Hezhi, if not for himself, then at least for the River and for her, so that she might be the empress Moss told him she would be: Hezhi, empress of the world. And in such a world, ruled by the River and his children, might there not be some place for such as he?
Furious and bewildered, he stalked back to the rapidly breaking camp. The urge to fly ahead, alone, and confront his enemies by himself was nearly overwhelming. But he must listen to Moss now, who knew this world of magic and many gods better than he. Moss could throw his vision from him, see things far away—something Ghe found himself unable to do; when he tried, the spirit carrying his sight inevitably tried to escape, and he was usually forced to devour it entire. Moss controlled his familiars in a different way, by cajoling them, by bargaining with them; they came and went willingly. The shaman's personal power was as nothing compared to Ghe's, but it gave him some advantages. Moss knew where Hezhi and her captors were, knew that in a few days the paths of their forces would converge, at the base of the mountain looming west. Moss had urged Ghe to wait until then to strike. The waiting was hard, hard. Yet one thing he understood, now that Qwen Shen's hold on him was released: he himself was a weapon, not a warrior. The River had made him thus, for it could not give him the wisdom or knowledge to know how he should strike or where. That was Moss' task. Moss knew best how to wield him.
So perhaps—as a weapon—he spent too much time thinking. Thinking only served to confuse him, in the end.
He entered the camp, wondering what Ghan had to tell him.
GHAN stumbled to the stream, sought up it until the current was unsullied by the hooves of horses. Kneeling, he brought handfuls of the clear and incredibly cold liquid to his face, gingerly probed the cuts and bruises on his throat. So close, so close, and yet now he wondered if he had done the right thing. It might have been better if Moss were destroyed.
Well, he shouldn't hold himself accountable for what he shrieked when Ghe had a grasp on him. Never in all of his years could he have ever imagined the forces at play, here beyond the simple and sterile world of the River. It was a terrifying world, and he feared for Hezhi. Everything seemed to hinge upon her, and a hinge swung too many times could weaken and break.
But, water take him, he was beginning to fear this unknown, unseen “Blackgod” even more than he feared Ghe. Here was a creature who had plotted and planned against this day for at least a thousand years. Such a creature might be resistant to attempts to alter its plans, and it would surely not take into account the feelings, desires, and wishes of a twelve-, no, thirteen-year-old girl. Whatever designs were laid down in the dark places of the world in the past millennia could not account specifically for Hezhi. One could not plan her—only a child like her. Hezhi had her own desires and motivations, and they might not coincide with what the gods wanted from her.
He closed his eyes, trying to imagine her face once more: chewing her lip, bent over an open book…