from the vault into which only he might go, where lay the very bones of The Goddess. Servitors whose tongues had been cut out announced his ascent, since no voice may speak of such a thing. Blindfolded priests helped him remove his vestments, each of their movements part of a prescribed ritual.
Hadel stumbled breathlessly into the anteroom of the Holy Chamber, then remembered where he was, fell to his knees, and tapped a small gong on a stand nearby. Tharanodeth entered and looked at him sharply.
“Well, what do you want?”
Too frightened to conduct himself gracefully, the Nagéan blurted out all that he had seen, embellishing the tale with a few malicious laughs, words muttered in an unknown tongue by a child too young for speech (“But there’s a lot of that going around,” interrupted The Guardian.) and the faintly heard sound of something scraping its way down the wall beyond the barred window.
Intensely, passionately, recovering some control of his rhetoric, Hadel begged as he had months before, to be allowed to smother the little enigma before worst came to worst
“You waste my time,” sighed Tharanodeth. “Go away. This whole interview borders on blasphemy. You could not have come at a more inopportune moment”
“But, most dread lord,” continued Hadel, “to have such a mysterious influence in our court can never come to good. I have sensed danger with my magic.”
“Hmm. Has the brat got a name?”
“I... don’t think so.”
“Then his name shall be Mystery.”
“Let him be called Ginna. In the speech of the hill people the word means ‘mystery.’ Ginna ne Ai Hanlo.”
“No! Never! That cannot be!”
Tharanodeth grew angry. “What makes you so sure of what can and cannot be? I rule here. For the last time, no harm shall come to the child. I do not think him dangerous. If anything, he intrigues me. Now, if I were not as patient as those who sing my praises claim, you might not be safe from harm much longer. Have you considered that?”
Hadel’s moustache quivered. His eloquence fled away. He was barely able to speak at all.
“I... only mean... I mean to say, that is, that I mean—meaning no disrespect—that if this... ah, unusual infant bears Ai Hanlo in its name, well, it isn’t proper. I mean you don’t know where the boy is from, and he might be of low birth actually. I mean—”
“You mean. So be it Just Ginna then.”
The Rat made the gesture of Blessing Received and backed out of the room, his head bowed, bumping into the doorway as he did. He was glad to have accomplished something, even if the squirming intrusion would have to live. It irked him to settle for second best.
CHAPTER 2
Like the Child
As the days went by, Kaemen turned out to be a veritable monster, the terror of his nurses, ill-tempered, foul-mouthed at an astonishingly early age, and wholly lacking the grace and moderation of his father. His teeth came in early. He learned how to use them. It nearly cost an old woman a finger.
Like the child, so shall the man be was a proverb of Randelcainé. Despite his name, tie was not the bright hope of anyone.
Ginna was ignored for the most part He was not brought to meals with the high-born children of court, nor did he eat in the kitchen with the servants. Occasionally someone would leave scraps by the door of his room. He was not even taught how to keep himself clean until the stench disturbed Kaemen.
All were forbidden to enter that bare room. Rumor had it a deformed monster was kept there. Once the boy learned to walk, this was to his advantage. He was properly shaped, if undersized, filthy, and pale for want of sunlight. When he wandered about he was often not recognized.
At first the only places he knew were a few musty rooms, a corridor, and the entrance to Kaemen’s nursery, beyond which he was not permitted to pass. He often heard cries and shrieks coming from the nursery, dishes crashing to the floor, and the bare feet of the servants padding back and forth. Those same feet would kick him whenever he tried to investigate, so after a time he learned to keep to himself.
There was a girl who came to play with him, who said she would pretend to be his big sister. She was very big, twice as tall as he. He didn’t know her age, all ages being unimaginable, but she was much wiser than he. She taught him many new words, and how to count on his fingers. He decided he was most happy when she was around, and wished she would be around always.
But then she came no more. Months later he saw her in the hall, straining under a yoke from which two buckets of water hung. A massive woman twice her size walked behind her and glowered. He called her name, but she turned her face away. He never saw her again.
One day a bird came to his window, stood between the bars, and began to sing. It seemed to Ginna that tins song was even more beautiful than any the girl had sung, and more mysterious for not having any words. This was surely the most wondrous creature he had ever encountered.
He stood on a stool and reached for it, but it vanished into the unknown blue void beyond, and then he had a new desire. He wanted to go where it had gone, away from things familiar.
He was three and a half then. He had heard of a world outside but knew nothing about it, and he was aware of his ignorance.
At the end of a certain hallway there was a huge door, too heavy for him to open. It was always kept shut, but sometimes someone was careless. Occasionally he caught glimpses of a stairway on the other side of it, spiraling down into someplace he had never been.
When the young prince bawled that his bathwater was too cold that night, and swore that he would have everyone flayed alive when he was a little older, Ginna saw his chance. There was much scurrying about, and two burly men came through the door with a new tub of steaming water. In their haste they left the door open.
Ginna found the steps too large for his short legs, so he went down backwards like a man on a ladder, dropping from step to step.
He knew he was in a tower from the way he was going down, down, farther than he had ever imagined he would go. The stairs curved away above him until he could no longer see the door. He had truly ventured out of his world.
* * * *
At last the stairway ended. There was a damp stone floor at the bottom, which was cold beneath his feet. A lantern hung from above on a chain, driving the darkness away from a doorway. Over this were two portraits of the same woman, but in each she was different. In one she wore a long black gown sprinkled with stars, and held a serpent in either hand. Lightning flickered above her head. At her feet was a boiling cloud in which hundreds of writhing figures were visible: homed men, serpents, toads with the heads and claws of lions. He had never seen such things. The girl had told him about many animals and described them, but these went well beyond the range of her descriptions. Many were just shapes to him.
The other picture showed the lady in brilliant white, astride a dolphin. Or Ginna thought it was a dolphin. It looked vaguely like a fish, and he had seen a fish before, swimming in a bottle being taken into Kaemen’s room. He was able to guess that the bright thing in the lady’s right hand was the sun. In the left was a tree.
He liked the lady of the second picture
