“Something will hear,” she whispered, for suddenly she remembered another time, in the library, a book in the old script. Two days before, Ghan had shown her the key to understanding the ancient hand, how the ten thousand glyphs were ultimately composed of just a few. She was reading of her ancestor, the Chakunge, the Waterborn, and how he slew the monsters. When he banished the last of them, the text said he “broke the surface of the lake.” At least that was how she had read it, though the character was just a little circle that she did not think resembled a lake very much. But she remembered the word: wun. Bun, wun. He had banished the monsters and broken the surface of that other world, and even in the ancient language of Nhol the name for that surface was drum.

“Something will hear,” Brother Horse acknowledged, and his voice brought her back to the dusty desert and the shouting celebrants. “Or feel. And if it pokes its head through the drum, you can speak with it and strike your bargain.”

“That simple?”

“It is not simple,” Brother Horse said. “There are songs to be sung—you can send your words through the surface of the lake. But ultimately, yes, that is the essence of it.”

“I hear drums beating now,” Hezhi said. “Are they attracting gods and ghosts?”

“Perhaps,” Brother Horse said. “But their drums are not like this one, or like this one will be when you have made it yours.”

“And how do I do that?”

“As I told you before, it begins with blood. You must wipe a bit of your blood on the surface of the lake, and it will be yours. The lake's surface will open into you rather than into the empty air. Your farniliar can climb right out of the spirit world and into your body.”

“Then I cannot pass through the drum, into that other world myself?”

Brother Horse smiled ruefully. “You understand quickly. Yes, you may. But you don't want to do that, Hezhi. Not yet, not until you have many gods on friendly terms with you, or in your power.”

Hezhi regarded the old man for a moment. She was still afraid, terribly afraid. And yet, with that drum she could have power. Like being the keeper of an important doorway, through which anything might come. It was weirdly compelling, and briefly, her curiosity nearly matched her fear. She reached over and touched the drum skin; it felt ordinary, not at all unusual. But then, Brother Horse had not seemed unusual either, until she suddenly saw inside of him.

“I'll take the drum,” she said. “But anything else—”

“Take the drum,” Brother Horse confirmed. “Think on this, and in the morning, after the Horse God has returned home, we will talk again.”

Hezhi nodded and took the tight disk in her hand. Its tautness felt suddenly to her like something straining, pulling. But it was straining to stay together, of one piece.

Much like Hezhi herself.

XIII Becoming Legion

THE wall shuddered again, and Ghe knew for certain that it was no hallucination. Impossibly, he could faintly smell incense, seeping through some unseen crack.

Found out. How stupid he had been! But he never imagined that it would be so soon, so sudden.

Ghe was not accustomed to panic, and panic he did not. Instead he quickly surveyed his meager possessions, choosing what to keep and what to leave. Nothing to assure them of his identity; they probably knew, but perhaps they did not.

He poked his head around the door into the courtyard. It was black as pitch, a moonless and overcast night, but that meant nothing to him; his vision was better than an owl's, able to pierce the deepest darkness with ease. Thus he saw the shadow shapes ranged along the palace roof, awaiting him.

Of course. Pound on the wall to flush me out, catch me in the courtyard. They are not stupid, my old comrades.

What of the sewers? But the duct from his courtyard's sink led only to one place—the sink in the other courtyard. Beyond that he might find liberty, but the chance was far too great that they had stationed incense-burners there. His best chance, he realized, was the roof, despite the six Jik he counted on it. None of them seemed to be burning spirit-brooms; he could not see the spots, like holes in the air, that he had come to identify with them.

He hesitated only an instant longer, for the door to the apartment had begun to splinter. Choosing what he judged to be the most thinly guarded wall, he sprang, darting across the court and leaping like some nocturnal predator for the second-floor balcony.

Instantly, light flared above him, soft witch-light that caused the air itself to incandesce, a burning cloud like swamp fire. Not bright enough to blind his enemies, but enough for them to see him by. An arrow whirred near, and another, and to him they seemed almost to hang in the air as his senses raced furiously ahead of their motion, the River in him flowing as swiftly as a mountain stream.

His leap brought him to the balcony, clutching at the wrought-iron railing. He hissed as the bolts that held it to the rotten stone protested and then tore, and for an instant he hung in space, sagging backward over the cold stone below. It was an instant the Jik on the roof did not waste; an arrow sank joyfully into his back, just missing his heart, puncturing his lung. The pain was astonishing; it was like being pinned with a lightning bolt, and a deafening roar filled his ears like the thunder following.

The railing held long enough for him to vault over and onto the stone floor of the balcony; two more arrows skittered by him. The one piercing him began to writhe Hke a snake in the wound it had made.

Ghe still did not hesitate; he could have run out into the second-story apartment, but he knew that it, too, was sealed and that he would be cornered there like a sewer rat. Despite the unnerving pain, despite the sudden loss of strength and speed he felt, he crouched and leapt again, this time for the very edge of the roof. A shaft skinned across his knuckles as he gripped the plastered edge, and then, with the strength of his fingers alone, he levered himself up onto the flat roof.

A Jik waited there, of course. Ghe lunged immediately; power was bleeding out along the squirming shaft of the arrow that was surely more than an arrow. He was still faster and stronger than a man, but only just so. A blade, a pale ribbon in the witch-light, cut just over his head, and then he was inside the swordsman's guard. He jabbed stiffened fingers into the soft flesh of his opponent's throat, felt cartilage crush as the man lifted from the ground with the force of the blow. Two more assassins converged from the sides, and Ghe now saw the bloom of flame that was a broom igniting.

A roll gained him the sword and saved him from two more arrows, but a third impaled his thigh and, like the first, began to work some killing magic. It might be that he was already doomed; he could not tell, knowing as little as he did about the priesthood's witchery.

It suddenly struck him as stupid to rely on the sword; his old instincts as a Jik were betraying him. Instead, he reached out and snatched at the nearest man's heartstrands and tore them brutally, gasping as the sweet reward of stolen life pulsed into his veins, replacing what the arrows were taking. Turning, more swiftly now, he blocked a single stroke from his second tormentor, slid his own stolen blade neatly through solar plexus and spleen, bathed in the sudden release of energy as the man's spirit gushed out. Another arrow grazed him, and he ran, burning his newly gained strength, dodging erratically, hoping to outguess the archers. Missiles flew from unlikely places, and he realized that he had not yet seen all of his attackers, but that mattered not, so long as he ran fast and well. Night was his ally, and though new witch-lights bloomed here and there, there were not enough Jiks to be everywhere. The single man who managed to place himself in Ghe's path died without succeeding in loosing his shaft or swinging his sword; Ghe tore his life out from thirty paces away.