Ghan snorted. "What they wanted is not here. They should have been looking in the private libraries of older fops, not in the Royal Archive. Idiots." He scratched out a few more characters from the book he was copying. "Anyway, you can reshelve those for me."

  "I can do that," Hezhi told him.

  "And Hezhi…" She turned. It still surprised her when he called her by her name, rather than "you" or a sarcastic "Princess." "After today I will no longer require your labor."

  "What?" she choked out. "Ghan, what did I do? I'm sorry, whatever it was."

  "Yes, I'm sure you are. If you must know, what you did was to satisfy the terms of your servitude. I feel that you have repaid the debt you owed me."

  "But…"

  "Your father was very specific in the writ. I will be held accountable if I require you to work after today. The debt is paid, Hezhi."

  "But there is so much to do," she argued. "More than you have time for. Who would copy that manuscript if you had to shelve these books?"

  "I managed long before you were born, Princess, and I will do quite well tomorrow, and the day after."

  He was still copying the book, not looking up at her. Hezhi stood there, not quite sure what to say. Finally Ghan stopped, leaned back on his stool. "Is there something else?" he asked mildly.

  "Just this," Hezhi replied. She bent over the desk, took a page of the old book Ghan was copying and yanked it sharply, so that a thumbnail-size tear suddenly appeared. Ghan gaped at her, and then, for the first time since she had known him, he chuckled. Not an outright laugh, but a real, genuine chuckle.

  "Well," he said. "Shelve those books, and I will see you here tomorrow."

  She had shelved all but three of the books when she caught the ah-hem of a throat clearing behind her. She turned to face a young man—he was perhaps twenty. He was tall, his face thin and pleasantly tapered to fit a delicate aquiline nose. He was clothed in a plain gray tunic, not of royal cut. Still, Hezhi thought he looked elegant in it.

  "Pardon me, my lady," he said, bowing slightly, "but you seem to know something of this place."

  "The library? You want Ghan, I think. He is the master here."

  "Ah… yes. I have spoken to him. He allowed me in because I have a writ from the priesthood, but he said—how did he put it?—'I won't go so far as to be of any help to you,' he told me."

  She smiled. "That's Ghan. Which probably means I shouldn't help you, either." She cast a speculative glance at her mentor, but he seemed consumed by his copying task. Hezhi shrugged. Despite the lingering effects of the drug—or perhaps because of them—she felt giddy. This man had a pleasant way about him. "What sort of help do you need?" she inquired.

  "I have recently joined the ranks of the Royal Engineers…"

  "That's part of the priesthood?" she asked.

  "Yes, in a roundabout way. Sort of caught between the priesthood and the emperor. I think that's their unofficial motto, in fact."

  "Sorry," Hezhi said. "Go on."

  "Well, you understand that my father is a merchant, not in the royal family at all, but many engineers are hired from the merchant class, despite our mean birth. I tell you this so that you will understand I have absolutely no knowledge of the old script. It is a total mystery to me."

  Hezhi rolled her eyes. "You think most nobles know it? Most men your age are considered brilliant if they can puzzle through the syllabary."

  "Well, that makes me feel a bit better," the young man admitted. "But it really does nothing to solve my problem."

  "Which is?"

  "Well, my first assignment is to design a system of sewer ducts to go from the New Palace to the annex we begin building in a few months. It's a minor sort of thing, really, but I can't do it without knowing all about the old system I'll be adding on to, and frankly, I don't know all that much about underground construction or sewers at all." He spread out his hands, his voice dropping to a low whisper. "If I fail, I think I will be shunted back to my father and end up having to pilot one of his scows. That I would not enjoy doing, my lady. So I'm appealing to you…"

  Hezhi nodded, captivated by the man's motivation. Few who came into the library showed much interest or incentive to do anything. Most were scribes checking old trade agreements, genealogists tracing family relationships. Their research was carried out laconically, without ambition or zeal. This young man had a real need to learn. She could identify with that.

  "Well," she began, "much of what you want will be written in the syllabary, so there is a lot you can do without knowing the glyphs. Most of the New Palace was constructed after the syllabary was adopted, you see, and surely engineering texts have been written since then."

  The young man shook his head. "Fascinating. I knew you had the look of someone with intelligence. But how do I find these books? There seems to be no rhyme or reason here, and there are so many books…"

  "Let me explain to you about the index," she said. "Follow me as I replace these books."

  She showed him the numbers on the shelves and those in the books that matched them. With some pride, she even took him to volumes that she herself had indexed and shelved. He appeared suitably impressed. She explained the index and how to use it, which he seemed to comprehend. He was also gracious, thanking her and departing before she grew tired of his questions.

  That afternoon there were still a few moments for her own research, but her thoughts kept returning to the man, his questions. Something he had mentioned…

  Then she had it. Sewers. The First Dynasty had not built any, but the Second Dynasty had, and extensively. Even with the flooding, some of the ancient sewers might have survived. After all, unlike the buried building she and Tsem had explored, sewers were designed to be underground. Add to that the fact that all of the palace had not been buried—parts of the western extension dated to the Second Dynasty—and the young man's assertion that new sewers had to be articulated with the older ones, and her mind began piecing a kind of map together. It was baroque, that map, a brocade of ducts and tunnels lying across old buildings or even through them, those attached to newer ones, and newer still. This added an entirely new set of possible pathways to the ones she had already discovered—the ducts that piped water in to the palace. If she had maps of all of those things, then surely she could find a way to D'en. In fact, she could do some of the young man's research for him, and earn a bit of his gratitude, as well, something she had to admit did not exactly displease her.

  Sewers! She went to ask Ghan for the index.

  A few days later she had the beginnings of a map. She worked on it back in the "tangle," away from prying eyes. Ghan reluctantly gave her three colors of ink, so she was able to sketch the old, ruined palace in black, the ancient water ducts in blue, and the sewer system in red. She made a separate map of the palace as it was now, matching it to points on her hypothetical map of the buried city with numbers and notations. She worked on this in the evenings, of course, and at lunch. Ghan told her he had renewed his petition for her indenture, based upon the newly damaged book. Though the writ had not yet come back from her father, she attended to shelving, indexing, and repair just as she had for the past few months.

  She was busy at the index when the young man—the engineer—came back in.

  "Hello," he said.

  She nodded at him.

  "You know, I forgot to ask you your name when I was here last," he continued, a bit embarrassed.

  "Hezhi," she told him. "Hezhi Yehd… Hezhi." For some reason it seemed important to her that the young man not call her "princess." That seemed absurd, really, considering his mean birth, but part of her enjoyed keeping him in the dark about exactly who she was. Later, when she moved down to the Hall of Moments, perhaps she would tell him then, and he would be surprised. Perhaps he would tell his friends of how casually he and the princess had spoken together.

  "Ah," he said. "And I am Yen, son of Chwen. I wanted to thank you for your help—though I haven't had time to look at this index yet."

  "Well, this is it," Hezhi told him. "But, actually, I had a few moments the other day, and I wrote down some of the books you may want to look at. These first three are all in the syllabary, so you won't have any trouble with those. This last is in the old script, but that really shouldn't matter because it contains the diagrams you will want to see."

  "Well," Yen said, blinking down at the paper she handed him. "This is more than thoughtful of you, my lady…"

  "You may call me Hezhi," she informed him, in the "gracious" tone the ladies used at court. He smiled at that, and she realized that he thought she was lampooning those ladies. Her ears burned a bit, because she had actually been trying to sound grown-up, adult.

  "Hezhi," he began again, "I have no way to repay you for this kindness."

  She waved it off. "It only took me a few moments, really. Please don't think anything about it."

  "Well," he said, bowing a bit. "Thanks again." He went off with the paper and began searching for the numbers and titles she had listed, and was soon poring over the books, lost in concentration. She noticed that he made notes, now and then, on a roll of paper he had brought with him.

  On their way home that evening, Tsem asked Hezhi about Yen.

  "Yen son of Chwen? Not a noble, then."

  "No," Hezhi replied. "He's with the engineers. I've been helping him find some books he needs."

  "He smiles a lot," Tsem noted. "Too much."

  "You would smile a lot, too, if you were in the palace for the first time. You would be worried about who you might offend if you did not smile."

  Tsem shrugged. "I suppose. You talk to him a lot, I think."

  "Twice, Tsem. That isn't a lot."

  Tsem was silent, and she realized that she might have hurt him, a little. She and Tsem hadn't spoken that much lately, and since D'en's disappearance he had been her best friend. He had never been quite like D'en, of course—Tsem was always reminding her that he was her servant, and that was somehow different from a friend even if you liked each other. Still, she had taken him for granted lately.

  "Let's go to the fountain on the roof, Tsem. I want to look out over the city."

  "Qey said we should come home early…" Tsem began, but Hezhi rolled her eyes at that.

  "Come on, Tsem," she said, and changed their route. Soon they were winding through the abandoned wing.

  "This could be dangerous," Tsem remarked. "If a ghost can attack you in the Hall of Moments, it can surely happen here, where the priests rarely come."

  That gave Hezhi pause, but only for an instant. "We've been coming here for years, Tsem. It's never happened before."

  "Things are different now, Princess."

  They came to the foot of the stairway and started up. "I trust you to protect me," she told him.

  "Is that why you sent me away when the priests came?" he asked. His voice was mild, but she heard bitterness there.

  She looked down the stairs at him. "They were priests," she said. "I don't need protection from priests, do I?"

  The line of Tsem's mouth was tight and flat; he had nothing to say to that.

  Dusk painted Nhol in rust and pollen; the River flowed molten copper, painfully beautiful. Hezhi gazed out at the wonder of it.

  "You go out into the city, don't you, Tsem?" she asked.

  "Often, Princess. Qey sends me to buy spices and meat sometimes."

  "Would it be possible for me to go with you, next time?"

  Tsem shook his head. "Not outside of the walls. Not yet."

  "When? When I move down the Hall of Moments?"

  "Yes, then," Tsem said.

  Hezhi nodded. It was what she suspected. She traced around the city with her finger, over the great ziggurat and its perpetual flow of water, along the thousands of tiny cabins that crowded the levee. "Will you take me down there, when I'm old enough?"

  "Of course, if you wish it."

  "Good."

  She gazed off down the River and then up it, trying to imagine where he came from, how many leagues he flowed across before reaching Nhol. Were the forests in her dreams up there, up along the River? Desert, first, of course, more miles of it than she could imagine. The geography she had skimmed said the River was born in some mountain, far away, but it did not say what the mountain was like. It was named merely She'leng, "The Water Flows Out," and figured in many of the ancient legends. She had always pictured it as perfect, austere, a great bare stone, pointed like the mountains on the maps. She had of course never seen any mountain.

  "Tsem," she explained quietly, "I sent you away because I don't want anything to happen to you. You're the only friend I have."

  "My duty is to protect you, Princess," he replied.

  "I know that. And you always have. But not against priests, Tsem. If you hurt a priest—if you even touched one without permission—they would torture you to death in the Leng Court and still they would do to me whatever they wanted."

  "But they would pay," Tsem muttered. "By the River, you would cost them a high price."

  "By the River? Do you think the River cares for me, Tsem? Whatever happens to me, it will be because the River makes it so. I am part of him, the way my father is, the way the priests are. Whatever comes to Nhol, the River brings it, does it not?"

  Tsem did not respond, but he joined her at the parapet. The River had faded with the sun, gone from copper to mud, and soon enough he would catch the stars and moon, hold them in his turbid grasp. Hezhi wondered, idly, where the merchants lived, where Yen's house might be. Perhaps there, near where the ships clustered; houses stood there—not noble, but comfortably large. She almost asked Tsem if he knew, but refrained when she saw the reflective look on his face.

  A moment later, Tsem's massive hand stroked her hair, a gentle movement. "Come, Princess," he said. "Supper will be cold and Qey will be colder."

  "It's over, isn't it, Tsem?" she asked, surprised to find herself so near tears for no clear reason.

  "What's over, Princess?"

  "Childhood. I'm no longer a child, am I?"

  Tsem smiled, as faintly as the sun's last rays. "You never were a child, Princess." He stroked her hair again. Her tears stayed where they were, back of her eyes. She and Tsem walked back home, together, as behind them the River faded to gray.

  VII

  The Monster in the Raven's Belly

  Perkar revised his opinion of the previous night's darkness. A cave could be darker and most certainly was. He thought briefly of the bugs he had drowned in tar as a boy, wondered if having tar poured all over him would be this dark. But of course, the tar would be very hot, and any darkness it brought would be the least of his worries. Which was, in fact, their current situation. Lack of sight was discomforting—frightening—but they had other, more serious problems. It did not seem like the time or place to voice such thoughts.

  "We'll have to light a torch," Apad muttered. "Piss, Perkar, why did you have to open your mouth?"

  A cackle of laughter erupted right in Perkar's ear, and he could see again. The Lemeyi was crumpling against the wall, holding his belly.

  "We'll have to light a torch," he shrieked gleefully, his voice pitched high and shrill. "We'll have to!" He howled on.

  "Dung-eater!" Apad snarled, yanking his sword free. "Laugh at this!"

  "Laugh at this!" the Lemeyi roared, waggling a finger at Apad. Apad growled inarticulately and sprang forward, his sword swinging high and overhand. Perkar stood as if frozen, a protest trying to get from his numbed brain to his lips. Apad was not joking or making a threat; murder was plain on his face.

  He miscalculated his attack badly, however; doubtless he had never practiced swordplay in a narrow cave. The blade screeched in protest as it met with the low ceiling of the tunnel; sparks spattered onto the floor. Apad dropped the weapon; it clattered to the stone and he staggered, holding his wrist. The attack nearly killed the Lemeyi anyway; his chuckling became convulsions of hysteria, and Perkar thought that perhaps the creature had swallowed its own tongue; he watched incredulously as the Lemeyi's face changed from red to purple. Apad glowered, still nursing his wrist. Grimly he stepped to pick up his sword.

  "No!" Perkar snapped at him. "No, we need him!"

  "It's true, Apad," Eruka agreed.

  Apad watched the Lemeyi—who was actually wiping tears from his eyes—disgust and hatred plain on his face. Nevertheless he nodded, retrieved his weapon, and after glaring at the nicked and dulled blade, returned it to its appliqued scabbard.

  "You ask why I do this," the Lemeyi said, when he was able to speak. "There is your answer." He shook his head gleefully. "And now, if you great warriors would like to continue on…" He gestured down the tunnel.

  Perkar forbore asking the Lemeyi any other questions. They continued their passage into the mountain, the Lemeyi chortling every now and then, remembering his joke.

  At last the passage widened and then opened into an enormous glittering chamber. It was like the vault of heaven, shimmering with a million more stars than the real night sky. Every surface of the cavern was encrusted with jewels, radiant in their unnatural vision. For a long moment he could only stare, gape-mouthed at the wonder of it, at the cascades of shimmering crystals. The only sound was their breathing and the faint dripping of water somewhere.

  "Well," the Lemeyi remarked. "Here we are. Karakasa Ngorna."

  "Kadakasa Ngorna," Perkar corrected, thinking that the Lemeyi had mispronounced "Belly of the Mountain."

  "No, no," the Lemeyi said, a bit crossly. "Karakasa. The Raven's Belly. When he swallowed the sun that time, this is where it rested."

  Perkar studied the Lemeyi's face. Surely, as always, he was joking. And yet, Perkar knew so little of these gods. The claims they made… and the Crow God liked pretty, shiny things. Like the sun, or these crystals. Was it possible that this cavern was, also, in some way, some part of Karak? Better not to know for sure, Perkar decided.

  "The weapons?" Apad asked nervously. "Where are they?"

  The Lemeyi snorted. "You only demonstrate your mortality with such impatience," he muttered.

 

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