Hezhi tried to suppress her shriek of terror, but it leapt free of her throat and soared away, a bright bird of sound in a dark place, flapping around and around before the underpalace ate it up. She crouched, shuddering, not knowing what to do. The eye stared at her, then slowly closed again.

Shaking, she looked up and down the length and breadth of the thing with entirely new eyes. She was on the back of something alive. It might be, she realized, rather like those fish in her father's summoning. Or like the ghost that had come after her. Yet this was no ghost; this thing was substantial in a way that a ghost could never be, at least according to everything she had read—which was admittedly not that much, when it came to ghosts. It was real, alive, sleeping, even though she was on its back.

She noticed other things, now that she was looking. It helped her to study, detached her from her fear, from the fact that she was on the back of some alien thing. A stubby projection on the "bar" was some sort of fin. Or tentacle. And there, that lump… She shuddered and closed her eyes, detachment failing, not wanting to see more, wanting only to be somewhere else, alone, with Qey, with anyone, but very far from where she was. Because the lump was not a lump. Pale, like a fingered mushroom, a Human hand sprouted from the creature's back.

I have to open my eyes, she thought crazily. I can't leave unless I open them. But as much as she wanted at that moment to be gone, the thought of looking at the thing, of discovering some new horror was too terrible to face. Even less did she want to move. What if she woke it up?

"How did you get here?"

Her heart stopped for a moment, restarted with a painful jerk. She snapped her eyes open. The voice was strange, watery, tortured sounding. It came from beyond the grating.

"Who… ?" she began, and then stopped, still afraid of waking the monster she sat upon. She heard water stirring.

"Whoever you are, you are in a very bad place," the voice told her. A shadow was gliding in the ebon pool, beyond the light of her lamp.

"And where did you get that light?" it snarled. "Put that out. You'll have no need of that."

"Who are you?" Hezhi asked, holding the lamp higher, trying to see.

"Put that down, I say."

She set the lamp down but made no move to put it out. Nevertheless, the shadow swam closer. She caught a glimpse of it then: coils of scales glittering in the light, bony plates, a host of centipede legs—they did not congeal, form anything unified in her head.

"Who are you?" she repeated, her voice close to shrieking again.

"I don't understand how you got from the Darkness Stair to here without my seeing you," the thing complained. "But if you hadn't been so intent on slipping by me, I would have warned you about old Nu there. If she wakes up, you'll warm her belly."

"I didn't come down the Darkness Stair," she whispered, trying to keep her voice steady. "I came in through the ducts."

"The ducts? The ducts?" The thing swirled about crazily in the water. "You weren't brought down here, were you?"

"Let me see you," Hezhi pleaded. "What are you?"

A head suddenly moved into her circle of vision. It was Human, basically, though gills branched like feathery horns from its neck. It had no hair, either. The back of its head devolved into a rubbery, spiky mass that seemed to be constantly writhing.

"What am I?" the abomination repeated. "Why, my dear, don't you recognize a prince when you see one?"

"Prince? Prince?"

"Prince L'ekezh Yehd Cha'dune, at your service."

"That isn't possible," she managed to choke out, though she already knew that it was. "Who was your father?"

"Why, the Great Lord Yuzhnata, of course."

"Oh, oh," Hezhi gasped, still not quite able to grasp; but the puzzle was solving itself in her head again, the pieces rearranging themselves.

"That makes you my father's brother," she quavered faintly.

There was a moment of silence from the thing.

"Well," it said. "Well, I have a niece. Welcome, niece, to the Chambers of the Blessed. Now, you should trust your uncle and do what he says. Climb off Nu and swim through the grate. I'll protect you."

"I don't want to get in the water," she moaned.

"Well, you don't have much choice about that," L'ekezh replied. "Embrace it, let it fill you up. Become accustomed to it."

"Why?"

"Because you will never leave here, that's why."

"I will," Hezhi insisted.

"You say you came here by the ducts. On purpose. Why did you do that?" L'ekezh seemed to be becoming more accustomed to the light. He swam nearer, put his in-Human face up to the grating. She saw that his teeth were sharp and long, ivory needles.

"I wanted to know… where we go when they take us off."

L'ekezh laughed with a kind of bubbling delight, though it sounded more like someone choking.

"How bright you must be!" he remarked. "That's too bad for you, though I'll doubtless enjoy our conversations. Then again, the bright ones go mad the most quickly. I think I've stayed sane for so long because I'm a bit thick. Tell me…" His voice dropped low, became an exaggeration of the "conspiratorial" tone used in theater. "Tell me. Do the priests know yet? Have you begun to manifest?"

"Manifest?"

"With me," L'ekezh offered, "the power came first. She'lu— your father—was so jealous. Even when his power came, mine was always stronger. The Blessed are strong, girl. But then the priests came and they found—it's always a little thing, something you haven't really noticed—one of my toes had changed color. So, of course, they brought me here."

"I don't… why?"

"Why? Why? Look at me. Look at Nu, there. Could anyone stand to see us on the throne? Dancing about the court, with lords and ladies on our arms? And, of course, there is our power. They fear that the most."

"Power," she repeated dully.

"We are the Blessed," L'ekezh snarled. "I have more power in one of my eyes than the Chakunge and all of his court."

"Then why do you stay down here?" Hezhi asked.

"Because," L'ekezh began, and then stopped, his eyes staring at her with awful intensity. "Are you real?" he whispered. "Did I create you?"

"I am real," Hezhi assured him.

"I will go mad, one day, you know," L'ekezh confided.

"Why don't you leave?" she asked once again. "If you have such power?"

"Because the River drinks it," he replied woodenly. "When they first put me here, I raged. I tried to pull down the foundations of the damned palace around me, kill them all. I could have done it up there, but they drugged me, of course. Down here, when the drug wore off—well, however powerful the Blessed are, nothing is as powerful as the River. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing!" He finished by shrieking. Then he stared at her silently, his face writhing like a nest of stinging worms.

"You really shouldn't be on her back," he said again, after a time.

"How many… how many of you are there?"

"How many Blessed?"

"Yes."

"Alive? Still in flesh?"

Hezhi nodded.

"Oh, just a few. Five."

"Where are they?"

"Oh… around here somewhere. Your light frightens them. Anyway, I'm lord here, now that Nu sleeps most of the time. It's my responsibility to welcome the new ones. I still don't see how I didn't notice them bringing you down the stair."

"I told you, I didn't come that way."

"Well. So you did," L'ekezh muttered, perhaps more to himself than to her.

"I wonder…" she began. "Is there one named D'en among you?"

"D'en? Of course, D'en," the once-prince answered.

"I came to see him," Hezhi said.

"Oh? Came all the way to see D'en. Well. Wait here."

The head ducked beneath the black water and ripples marked his passage away.