Perkar puffed out a long, steaming breath. “You mean leave them here for the wolves?”
“Yes.”
“There should be something more we can do than that.”
“For dead bodies? No. Offer to their ghosts later, if you still feel guilty. Now we should leave this place before their kinsmen arrive.”
“How did they know to come here, in the first place?”
“Their gaan saw us, no doubt.”
“Then he will see us wherever we go.”
Ngangata shrugged. “If we are moving, there will be no place to see.”
Perkar nodded reluctantly. “I have to take Good Thief's horse.”
Ngangata gave Perkar a somewhat painful flash of a grin.
“That is a Mang war horse. No one but his rider may approach him.”
“Good Thief asked me to. It was his last request.”
Ngangata raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I will pack the tent,” he said.
Perkar stared at his fallen enemy for a few more heartbeats, then turned his attention to Sharp Tiger.
The stallion eyed him dubiously as he approached. Sharp Tiger seemed a fitting name; though most Mang horses bore stripes upon their flanks and hindquarters, his were pronounced and black, laid upon a tawny field. His mane was jet. Of course, his name would have nothing to do with his appearance. Mang horses were named after dead Mang warriors, just as Mang warriors were named after dead horses. Perkar wondered, as he approached the beast, whether a man or a mount had first borne the name in the long ago.
Sharp Tiger watched him draw closer, eyes flaring; he dipped his head up and down restlessly.
“Shununechen, ” Perkar said gently, as he had heard Mang say to mounts not belonging to them. “Smell me, cousin.”
Sharp Tiger allowed him closer, until he could place his cupped hand near the animal's nostrils. The beast sniffed him uncertainly.
He was still saddled, the bit still in his mouth. Perkar sadly realized that he hadn't even unsaddled T'esh for the night; he could see him grazing some distance away, nearer the stream. This was no way to treat such beautiful mounts.
But then, neither was cutting the legs out from under one, he reflected, gritting his teeth.
“Are you going to let me on, cousin?” he asked Sharp Tiger. His plan had been merely to lead the horse behind T'esh, but now he had an inexplicable urge to ride him. Ngangata, of course, was right. This horse would never let anyone but Good Thief upon his back. Still…
He put his foot in the stirrup, and Sharp Tiger stood there, passively. It wasn't until he tried to swing his other leg over that the beast reacted.
Perkar was suddenly in the air, propelled upward by Sharp Tiger's explosion of movement. He thudded to the ground and rolled. Sharp Tiger came after, lashing down with his fore-hooves. Only Harka's preternatural sense of danger saved Perkar from the stallion's hard, sharp weapons; he was only lightly grazed on one arm before he fought clear and returned to his feet. Sharp Tiger ceased his attack as abruptly as he began it and watched Perkar with clear, dark eyes.
Perkar smiled wryly at his own stupidity.
“Very well,” he said. “Then will you let me lead you?”
Sharp Tiger stood, quiet now. When Perkar cautiously took his reins, he followed without complaint.
Not much later, with the tent packed and Ngangata mounted, they set out toward Brother Horse's village. Perkar rode with his thoughts, and one eye on the cloudswept sky, the fear and memory of black wings clear in his mind.
IX The Reader of Bones
GHE took himself down to the docks to think.
Almost, he feared the sunlight. Tatters of stories remained in his mind, fantasies spun in the dark alleys of his youth by the poor and the fearful in Southtown. Creatures like himself stalked those tales, ghouls who fed on the lifeblood of the living, who shunned the bright eye of the sky lest it wither them away, reduce them to droplets of polluted and stained River water. In the daylight, such things remained in their deep crypts below the city, in the bottomless depths of the River…
But the sunlight did him no harm. In fact, it cheered him, as did the brightly clothed merchants bustling about the quays, the pungent stink of fish, the sweet incense of fortune-tellers, the savory scent of meat grilling on the charcoal braziers of food vendors. He stopped at one of the last, paid a dark young girl with a pox-scarred face a copper soldier for two skewers of garlic lamb and a thick, spongy roll of tsag ' bread. He sat on a dock with his legs dangling out over the River, eating his meal and watching the gulls worry about the barges, the thick-armed men unloading cargo from the Swamp Kingdoms, from up-River and from far-off Lhe.
Beneath him, he could feel the River, like a father, proud of his presence.
“You are mighty,” he said, addressing the limitless waters wonderingly.
Only reluctantly did he bend his mind to his worries.
His time in Nhol was limited; that much was clear. He could not kill every man and woman who recognized him. Already the priesthood must be investigating the disappearances, especially of the slain Jik. And it was surely urgent, in any case, that he leave soon to find Hezhi.
But the world was vast, and he knew not where to look. Only Ghan could tell him that, and Ghan had made it plain that he would say nothing. Given time, Ghe felt certain that he could win the old man's confidence—he cared deeply for Hezhi, and that was a lever which could be worked until the man's stone heart was prized up, lifted so that Ghe could make out what was underneath. But he needed time for that.
Time, also, to learn a few things. Even with the powers of his rebirth, he would face enemies he only vaguely understood—the white-skinned barbarian who would not die, for instance. Was he like Ghe, some sort of ghoul? Was he more powerful? And in Ghe's mind were vague shadows of other powers, out beyond where the River could reach. He must know something of them, as well.
He let his gaze settle over the city, wondering where he might find the answers he sought. In the library, perhaps, where Hezhi had found her secrets. But Nhol had many dark places, where old knowledge slept.
The foremost of these towered behind the dockside taverns and markets, as pristine and monumental as they were squalid and ordinary; the Great Water Temple. It was a stepped pyramid formed of white stone, water geysering from its sun-crowned summit, a fist of the River shaking aloft toward the heavens. He had been inside the building, seen the perfect column of water drawn up through the very core of the structure, and wondered, awestruck at the rush and power of it. From where he sat now, he could see two of the broken slopes where the water cascaded down, four streams for four directions rushing to rejoin their source in the canals that surrounded the priesthood's most holy building. To him, also, it had once been holy, a symbol of the great power he served and of the order that had raised him from sleeping with dogs to a position of respect and honor.
Now, with the River's perspective, he saw it much differently. Within its white shell, he now sensed a heart of mystery, a labyrinth of falsehood and deceit. From its caverns the priesthood spun their spidery webs, shaped the bonds that held the River God in place. It held libraries, too, vast dusty rooms of forbidden knowledge, chants and formulae of terrific power. He had but glimpsed such things when he was initiated as a Jik, but now he had some sense of what was hidden there, beneath the falling water, the great hill of rock.
He turned his gaze back to his feet, to the god flowing below them. “You want me to go there” he whispered.
That would be dangerous, even for him. The priesthood had the power to shackle a god—and what animated Ghe was less than a finger of the River's power. But the priests had taught him, made him from a common thief and cutthroat into a finely wrought weapon. A weapon could be turned upon its smith as easily as upon anyone else.