“Perhaps,” he began, “perhaps if you were to tell me, remind me. Perhaps the memories are only sleeping.”
Li nodded slowly. “That could be. But again, why? You are still a Jik?”
“Still,” he said. “Always.”
“Last I heard from you, you had been set to watch one of the River Blessed. A young girl. Did something happen?”
“I don't remember,” he lied. “I don't remember that, either.”
The old woman pursed her lips.
“I should read the bones, then,” she said. “Maybe the bones will show something. Sit with me here a bit.”
She rummaged in a small cloth bag and began taking things out.
“You gave me this, you know,” she said, as she laid a little cone of incense out on her velvet mat.
“I did?”
“Yes. When you were initiated. This cloth and this hat. Be a dear, little Duh, and go light this on the flame of old Shehwad over there.” She waved her hand at a man cooking skewered meats a few tens of paces away. He nodded, rose, and walked over to the stand.
“Li asked me to light this here,” he told the person—who, despite the fact that Li referred to him as “old,” was certainly younger than she.
The man's sharp features began a scowl, but then suddenly transfigured. “Why, it's little Ghe, isn't it? We haven't seen you about here in an age.”
“No?”
“No, not since … well, I can't remember when. Since before the priests came asking about you.”
“The priests came asking about me?” Ghe asked, straining to control his voice, to sound casual.
“Months ago. There's some flame for you.” He presented Ghe with a burning splinter of black willow from his cook fire.
“Thank you.” He couldn't ask more; it would seem too suspicious. Why would they have sent anyone here?
Because, of course, his body had never been found. The Jik he had killed in the palace had indicated that someone had seen him dead—and then he had disappeared. They had looked for him.
Did the priesthood suspect? Could they suspect? That was worrisome. He had been trained to kill, but his knowledge of priestly magic was not great. Was there some way of seeing what had happened to him? Some magical trail or signature?
He turned back to the old woman. She must know that the priests had been here, but she hadn't mentioned it.
“Light the incense, silly boy,” Li said, when she glanced up from arranging the bones. He complied, touching the brand to the cone until it sputtered. A thick, pungent scent drifted up from the cone.
“Now, just sit here. Ill cast the bones, and we'll read them, just like we used to.”
Like we used to. Ghe grimaced. Who had she been to him? She was so familiar, in some ways. And he had confided in her, told her of the vast empty places in his mind. That had been stupid, but what other choice had there been?
Watching the people moving up and down Red Gar Street, he knew the answer to that. He watched them; the wealthy and the poor, the noble and the mean—none of them saw an old woman and a man clad to his neck in rough silks. They were unnoticeable, invisible. Every person that passed had some pressing business, some private thought, some destination, known or unknown. If he were to reach into Li, take her life …
He still didn't want to do that. She had meant something to him once, that much was clear. The only person who meant anything to him now was Hezhi…
That brought a frown. The priests might have been looking for him, but it must have been her they wanted to know about. To what lengths would the priesthood go to retrieve her? Had they already sent an expedition after her? Ghe knew that thought should have troubled him, stung him to action, but for the first time since his rebirth, he felt a heaviness, a pleasant weight across his forehead and eyes. The sun was warm, relaxing, and Li's voice floated soothingly as from far away.
“Now I cast the dice. Oh, see, they've fallen in the 'telling' pattern, the eye of the clouds …”
There was more, but he lost it, his eyes fluttering shut just for an instant.
When he opened them again blearily a moment later, the old woman was glaring at him, livid. He shook his head, uncomprehending. Why was he so tired? Why was the old woman so angry?
“You are not Ghe,” she hissed flatly. “I knew that you were not. You are nothing more than some ghoul who has swallowed him.”
No! Ghe wanted to say. No, see my neck? It is my body, my head, not some ghostly simulacrum. It is me … But he couldn't say it. He couldn't speak at all; his mouth and throat were numb, as were his extremities and his senses.
The incense! He should have recognized it, should have known. He sharpened his sight, and everything changed. Li faded to her little bundle of life, as did those on the street, vibrant strands in a transparent world. The incense was a spot of nothingness, of black beyond darkness, a hole sucking his strength into it. Snarling, he swept at it clumsily.
“No!” the old woman managed to choke out. She had clearly believed him weaker. She began muttering under her breath.
This time Ghe did not hesitate. He reached out, around the vacuum of the smoke, took hold of her life, and ate it.
It took only an instant; she writhed a moment, then was part of him. Gasping, he stumbled up, away from the burning cone, and the instant its fumes were no longer brushing him, feeling rushed back with a fierce, insistent tingling, as if his limbs had been momentarily deprived of blood.
Around him, the street continued to bustle, people hurrying hither and back. He struggled into the pedestrian stream and let it sweep him along. He glanced back once, saw Li lying as if asleep, her hat with its moon and stars fallen and lying across her bones.
“It's beautiful, ” he suddenly, sharply, remembered her saying once, long ago, of that hat. “The moons and stars seem to shimmer. Is the thread gold? ”
“I don't know, ” he had replied. I only knew that you would like it. ”
And though he remembered nothing more than that, he began to weep.
THAT night, he slept for the first time in seven days—since his rebirth. He slept and he dreamed.
Dreams were not as he remembered them. They were not vague, strange reiterations of his little fears or of days gone by, not shadow plays with little sense or substance. They were strong, clear, and simple. The colors were not right; they were too sharp, too bright, and without shading. Everything that was green was the same hue of viridian; all red was sanguine. These dreams had meaning, however, meaning that blared like the din of a cracked horn, rattled the frames of his dream images. The messages were loud, but they were not clear. Ghe imagined they were the sorts of things insects might hear if a man stooped and spoke to them.
He dreamed of being whole, knotted perfectly together, a vast and content serpent gnawing his own tail. It was an ancient feeling, barely remembered.
He remembered the Bright God coming, taunting him, cajoling him. In his dream, the Bright God was like a little sun, golden-feathered, light incarnate. He dreamed shame then, and anger, as the Bright God tricked him into uncoiling, into stretching himself out. Shame at being tricked, at being opened up. In revenge, he ate the Bright God's light, nearly killed him, but his foe escaped, though without his brilliance and beauty.
Now he rushed across the world, and his fear and shame began to fade; he coursed out for leagues, taking it all beneath him, cutting himself a bed, a comfortable place. And for a short time, he knew another kind of contentment, a wonderful hurtling joy. Time passed, and the earth changed, his bed shifting now and again, and he started to feel a hunger. At first it was merely discontent at no longer being whole. He was not a circle anymore, not a thing unto himself. The sky drank from him, plants took him up into their long, narrow bodies, and in the end he poured into a great emptiness, a gulf too vast for him to fill. He had become all motion, and nothing about him was still, nothing all his own. So the hunger began, a desire to take in the world about him, devour it, make it of himself until there was nothing without. Until, once again, he was within himself, a tightly coiled snake eating his tail. After a time, this hunger was all that mattered to him.