He paused and faced the dread he had been avoiding. There were other possibilities. Only the word of a few Mang horsemen—certainly men of less than untouchable repute—evidenced that she had escaped the city at all. He had received no reply from the letter he sent with the horsemen, though he had not expected one soon. The simple facts were that Hezhi could be dead, or below the Darkness Stair with her monstrous relatives, or…
Why did Yen want to know about the Water Temple? What did he know, or suspect? Was she there, for some incredible reason?
He noticed that his hand was trembling, and he frowned. Weak old man, he chastened himself. Weak. Stupid. She is safe and far from here.
What had he been thinking, though? Entrusting her to that pale-skinned foreigner on no more substance than a dream? He had given her hope, and he desperately wanted to believe that her hope had been rewarded. But he was an old man, long familiar with failure and disappointment. Things never worked out as one hoped.
If he could only know what Yen hoped, and why.
With a heavy sigh he noted down the references. Best that he watch, for the moment. Yen was an engineer, whose organization rested somewhere between the priesthood and the emperor. It could well be that he knew something that Ghan did not, especially now, since he had been cautious of late. There were many in the palace who disliked him—hated him even—and rumors that he had something to do with Hezhi's escape were not lacking. Not common, either, but certainly not lacking. If he were to show the slightest interest in her whereabouts, the Ahw'en investigators would take note with their hidden eyes, and then he must kill himself, ere they could torture Hezhi's whereabouts from him.
But perhaps this Yen could look for him.
And so, sighing heavily, Ghan noted down the best reference he could find by shelf and location.
He took it out and handed it to Yen.
“You remember how to find things from an index reference?” he asked.
“I look for this number on the shelves.”
“Yes. The volume you are looking for is entitled Notes on the Codex Obsidian.”
“I don't understand. This tells of the Great Water Temple?”
Ghan smiled thinly. “If it said as much in its title, the priesthood would have taken it from me long ago. This is a modern translation of the Codex Obsidian, a book written in the ancient hand. But the Codex Obsidian itself contains a long citation from the Song and Consecration of the Temple, the holy text that describes the origin and building of the temple and its associated fanes.”
Yen shook his head in wonder. “Amazing. Books within books within books. I see now why she …” He paused, embarrassed. “Why some spend so much of their time here,” he finished lamely.
“Indeed,” Ghan intoned flatly. “Now, if you please, I have much to be about.”
“Yes, yes of course. Thank you, Master Ghan.”
“I accept your thanks,” Ghan muttered, waving, returning his gaze to the work he had been transcribing.
But he watched Yen from beneath his brows as the young man ventured into the labyrinth of books.
I have given you what I can of the temple, he thought. Now let me see where that takes you next. Tonight, when everyone was gone, he would retrieve the same book, read what Yen had read. He would keep pace with him, each step.
The old, he reflected, should be good at that, at least: watching, waiting.
He returned his hands to their work, but his mind haunted the world, the steppes of the Mang, the expanse of the River, the black depths of the Water Temple, searching. Searching for a young woman with a heart-shaped face and wonder in her eyes.
GHE found the volume easily enough, high on a shelf and weighty. Still, with his strength he had little difficulty in lifting it down.
He paused in midreach as a vivid memory flashed through him, brighter and more insistent than most that remained to him. It was of himself, looking at the girl, Hezhi, her black eyes with his features reflected in them. The look of delight on her face as he handed her the bronze statuette, his own sudden, unexpected reaction.
He would have killed her, he knew, despite that. He would have killed anyone, if the priesthood had asked him to.
But how much better now that he did not ever have to think of killing her again. That was not—had never been—the River's plan for her. So much better that he be her savior, especially now, now that he knew he loved her.
Loved her? Ghe felt a sudden trembling deep in his bones. When had he decided that! Back in the sewers as his head fell off? In the depths, in the death before his rebirth?
Had he decided it at all?
But, of course, he had. The River knew no more of Human love than it did of Human hatred. It could not make him feel thus. And so it must be he, Ghe, who loved Hezhi.
He shivered again and shook his head. What had he been about? He glanced down dully at the book clenched in his white-knuckled hands and remembered, though he did not recall actually lifting the volume down. The temple.
He took the tome over to a reading bench of polished teak and laid it flat. He admired the spine of ivory, the ivory pins that riveted it together. The cover was a sort of leather unknown to him, black and densely wrinkled. Some kind of lizard or alligator, perhaps, or one of the great tusked beasts he had heard of.
Inside, the supple white pages were tattooed in blue and black, the sometimes curving, often choppy lines of the syllabary. That was a relief; he had no facility with the ancient hand. Rebirth had made him no better at such things; the River had many powers to offer, but apparently the River could not read, not even books about itself.
The Codex Obsidian read the title page. Ghe began prowling through it, searching for what he was not certain. But the center of his lord's frustration and torpor—the place he could not even see—Ghe knew, instinctively, that it was the temple. When he looked out over Nhol from the roof of the palace, he could see all of the city; the wings of the palace sprawling crookedly along the crests of the hill, the docks and merchant quarter, the thickly cluttered Southtown, and the temple rising high above it all. But when he closed his eyes and pictured that same scene, he saw only darkness where the temple should be. The god that pulsed the blood in his veins simply could not perceive it.
The temple, he remembered hearing, had created the priests the way an oven creates bread. Ordinary men had walked into it, when first it was formed, and the first priests had walked out. Priests were still made thus, though the process took many years. But whence had come the temple itself? That seemed an important story, and there was a sort of itch in his brain that suggested, maddeningly, that he had once known it. Surely he had been indoctrinated into the lesser mysteries in the time he had been trained for killing.
It galled him that he must search so for something he had once known.
And after a time he found it, in spidery characters that were written differently from the rest of the book, so old in style he must furrow his brow to puzzle through them, whisper the words aloud.
We read that in the fiftieth year of the ascension of Water to the throne of Nhol, the last of the monsters were killed, and the surface of the Lake was forever broken. There was rejoicing, there was feasting. The Chakunge thought, then, that it would
be good to have a palace, and a keep, and walls to protect the city. It would be good to have canals to carry his Fathers waters into the dry land, it would be good to have letters to record his thoughts and the thoughts of his Father