by Greg Keyes
Tsem wiped Perkar’s face, and the young man hacked again, moaning a bit.
“Did he find what he went looking for?” she asked.
“I suppose. I think he learned much. We learned about the war, at any rate.”
“From this goddess of his?”
“And from another god. From Karak, the Raven.”
Hezhi pursed her lips. “Perkar told me of that one. It was he who set you and Brother Horse to watching for us, when we fled the city.”
“Yes. It was also he who tricked Perkar and his friends into betraying our king. He is a strange, willful god.”
Hezhi sighed and shook her head. “I know nothing of these gods. They are all strange to me.” Monsters, she finished inwardly.
“I don’t know everything he learned from Karak,” Ngangata went on. He seemed to want to tell her something, but was trying to work to it carefully.
“Weren’t you there?”
“I didn’t hear the conversation. But afterward, Perkar was eager to return here, to find you. I think Karak told him something about you, something important.”
“Oh?”
Tsem growled low in his throat. “I like this not at all, Princess,” he muttered. “Too much, happening too fast. Too many people wanting you again.”
“I know, Tsem.”
“What do you mean?” Ngangata queried. “What is this?”
“Those Mang who met me in the desert. They acted as if they wanted something from me, too.”
“And they found you in the cliffs, though no trail from the west passes near. That means they were looking for you.”
Hezhi tried to deny that with a little shake of her head. “They might have seen me run into the cliffs.” But they hadn’t. She knew that, somehow. “No, you’re right, Ngangata. They were looking for me. And Brother Horse put me in this yekt, as soon as we returned, and set his nephews to guard me. He could tell something was wrong.” She did not add that she was worried even about Brother Horse’s intentions. No one who could not see into him would understand, would merely think she had become mad with paranoia
Ngangata nodded slowly. “Something with big feet is walking,” he muttered. “We were attacked by Mang, as well, up at the stream. They were looking for us. They said that a prophet had seen us in a vision. Perhaps he saw you, too.”
“But Perkar knows more.”
“He does, but he was tight-lipped with me. Whatever he learned worried him.” Ngangata chewed his lip, and then went on. “I did hear Karak say that there was some connection between this gaan and the Changeling.”
A sudden bright chill crawled along Hezhi’s spine. “The Changeling? The River.”
“Call him what you will.”
“I thought he could not reach this far.”
“Not with his own fingers, perhaps,” Ngangata answered. “But perhaps with the hands of a Mang shaman he can.”
Hezhi heard her voice tremble. “He wants me back, doesn’t he? He will have me back.” And she realized that, once again, the scale on her arm was itching dully. She reached to touch it.
And gasped; the room seemed to turn around, sidewise, so that she could see it all from a different angle. Tsem and Ngangata appeared hollowed out, skeletal, and the fire in its hearth was a dancing blade with laughing eyes. Perkar…
Perkar was hardly there at all. His skin glowed translucent, and at his side there lay a god. She could not look at it, at that nightmare jumble of wings and claws and keen, sharp edges. It hurt her, scratched at her inside as if there were a man in her head with a sword, swinging it. She lifted up her sight, tried to tear it away entirely, but Perkar himself riveted her attention.
On his chest crouched a blackness, a crawling, shuddering blackness. As she watched, long hairs as thick as wheatstraw grew from it, wrapped sluggishly around Perkar, and reached inside of him to seize his bones.
The blackness opened a yellow eye and stared at her, and she screamed. She screamed and ran, tripped, sprawled, and scrambled back up. Even when Tsem caught her she kept trying to run, kicking at his shins and wailing, eyes closed, shuddering.
When finally she opened them again, the room was as it had been before.
But she knew now. She had seen it.
“Tsem, go get Brother Horse,” she choked out. “Go and hurry. And let me sit outside.”
She flinched away from Brother Horse when he arrived, fearful that her sight would return and reveal him for what he was. She should not trust him with Perkar—she knew that—but she could think of no alternative. She did not know what to do for him, and something was wrong, terribly wrong. Brother Horse regarded her sadly for an instant and then entered the yekt. Hezhi remained on the stoop, and Tsem joined her.
“That’s a big fire,” he noticed, after a moment.
Hezhi regarded the enormous bonfire from the corner of her eye, unwilling even to risk seeing the Fire Goddess. For some time, the Mang had been carrying in fuel from all directions, and flames and black smoke rose in a thick column skyward.
“I wonder where they found all of the wood,” Tsem went on when she did not answer.
Hezhi shrugged to let him know she had no idea. “I think it’s for the Horse God Homesending. A ceremony they perform tonight.”
“What sort of ceremony? Have you written of it in your letter to Ghan?”
Good old Tsem, trying to distract her. “I think Ghan will never get any letter from me. Whatever we thought, these people are not our friends.”
“They needn’t be our enemies, either,” Tsem pointed out. “They are like everyone, concerned for themselves and their kin before all else. You and I don’t threaten them; Perkar does.”
“Does he? Perhaps his people do. I don’t know. We are lost here, Tsem.”
“I know, Princess,” he replied softly. “Tell me about this ceremony.”
She hesitated a moment, closing her eyes. The village did not vanish as she hoped it might; it was still there in the vivid scent of burning wood, in the shouts of children and the wild cries of adults, the yapping of dogs. It would not go away merely because she willed it thus.
“They believe that they and their mounts are kin,” she began. Who had told her that, so long ago? Yen, of course, when he gave her the statuette. He had told her something like that anyway, and it had not been—like everything else he told her—a lie. Yen, who at least had taught her the folly of trusting anyone.
Tsem’s silence suggested that he was waiting for her to finish. “You know that by now,” she murmured apologetically. “They believe that they and their mounts are descended from a single goddess, the Horse Mother. Now and then the Horse Mother herself is born into one of these horses. More often one of her immediate children is, a sort of minor god or goddess. When this happens, the Mang shamans can tell, and the horse is treated with added respect.”
“That would be hard to imagine,” Tsem noted. “They already treat their mounts with more kindness than any servant in the palace is shown.”
“The horse is never ridden. It is fed only the best grains. And then they kill it.”
“Kill it?” Tsem muttered. “That doesn’t sound like a very good thing to do to a god.”
“They kill it to send it home, to be with its mother. They treat it well, and when it goes home it tells the other gods that the Mang still treat their brothers and sisters—the other horses—well.”
“That is very strange,” Tsem said.
“No stranger than putting the children of nobility beneath the Darkness Stair,” she countered.
“I suppose not.” Tsem sighed. “It’s just that everything these people do seems to involve blood and killing. Even worshipping their gods.”
“Perhaps they recognize that life is about blood and killing.”
Tsem touched her shoulder lightly with his thick fingers. “Qey used to say that life was about birth and eating. And sex.”
“Qey said something about sex?” Hezhi could simply not associate the concept with t
he servant woman who had raised her.
Tsem chuckled. “She is, after all, a Human Being,” he reminded her.
“But sex! When? With whom?”
Tsem squeezed her shoulder. “Not often, I suppose, and with an old friend of hers in the palace. She would have been married to him, I suppose, if it had been allowed.”
“Who?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t tell you that,” Tsem said, mischief creeping into his voice.
“I think you should,” she rejoined.
“Well, perhaps if you were a princess and I your slave, I would obey that command. However, since you insist that such is no longer the case…”
“Tsem.” She sighed, opening her eyes and arching her brows dangerously.
Tsem rolled his eyes and put on an exaggerated air of secrecy. He leaned very near, as if confiding a bit of court gossip. “You remember old J’ehl?”
Hezhi’s mouth dropped open. “J’ehl? Qey and J’ehl? Why, he was a wrinkled little old man! He looked just like one of those turtles with soft shells and thin long noses! How could she—”
“Perhaps he had more use for such a nose than you might imagine,” Tsem remarked.
“Oh!” Hezhi cried. “No! Darken your mouth! I won’t hear any more of this. You’re inventing this because no one can call you a liar out here. Except me! Qey and J’ehl indeed. Qey and anyone. She was too old, too dignified—”
“Oh, yes,” Tsem said. “Do you remember that time when J’ehl came to deliver flour, and I took you into your room and sang very loudly to you, the same song, over and over?”
“The only song you knew!” Hezhi exploded. “I kept telling you to sing a different song, but you wouldn’t. After a while it got to be fun, though, me trying to put a pillow over your face, and you just singing and singing …” She stopped. “What are you saying?”
“Qey made me do that. So you wouldn’t hear.”
“No!” Hezhi almost shrieked, but she was laughing. Laughing. It was shocking, horrible even to think of Qey and that little man making love as Tsem roared and she squealed, but somehow it was funny. And she realized that Tsem had tricked her, tricked her into an instant of happiness, despite everything.
“Those were good days,” she told him as her laughter trailed off. “How old was I?”
“Six years old, I think.”
“Before D’en vanished.”
“Yes, Princess.”
“And how did that song go?”
“You don’t really want me to sing it!”
“I think perhaps I do!” she commanded.
Tsem sighed hugely and squared his shoulders.
“Look at me.
A giant mon-key
Live in a tree
A giant mon-key!”
His deep voice bellowed out into the evening air, and three dozen Mang heads turned in their direction. Though they could not understand his words, most smiled and a few laughed, for off-key is off-key in any language.
“A big mon-key!
Him love Hezhi!”
Tsem shouted on, until Hezhi was wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.
“Stop, stop,” she said. “We’ve too many serious things to worry about.”
“You told me to sing,” Tsem answered.
“You haven’t sung that to me in a long while.”
“Well, you haven’t asked me to, and when you got a bit older and started wandering about with D’en so much, Qey and J’ehl had little trouble finding time for their passions.”
“I still refuse to credit that!”
“Believe it, little Princess. I could not imagine such a thing myself were it not true.”
“I think you imagine sex all of the time!”
“Yes, but not with Qey!”
She chuckled at that, too, but her brief happiness was already waning. It amazed her that she could have forgotten her troubles for even such a trivial moment, but Tsem had always been good at that.
“You are a big monkey,” she told him. “And I love you.”
Tsem blushed but read her sobering mood, and from long experience he made no attempt to keep her laughing.
“I know, Princess, and thank you. Out here it is good to have someone who loves you.”
Hezhi turned her face back to the bonfire. She felt braver, and dared to look at it full on. “You’ve never said anything truer than that,” she said.
There was a small cough behind them. Hezhi turned to see Brother Horse regarding them.
“I need to speak to you, Granddaughter.”
“Call me Hezhi,” she said, frowning.
He sighed. “Hezhi.”
“Tsem will stay with us,” she informed him.
“Very well. An old man will sit, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
Brother Horse shook his head. “Look at that. They don’t need to make the fire that big! They must have burned everything for a hundred leagues.”
Hezhi frowned over at the old man to let him know that today she had no patience for the Mang propensity to chitchat before getting down to the business at hand. He caught the hint.
“Perkar is very ill,” he announced, the playfulness suddenly gone from his voice and replaced by an almost shocking weariness. “He has been witched.”
“Witched?”
“You saw the thing on his chest.”
“I saw it.”
“You are strong, or you would be mad now. What you saw was a sort of spirit—something like a ghost, or god—perhaps the offspring of a ghost and a god. We call them ‘Breath Feasting,’ because they eat the life in a person. Usually they eat it right away, but Perkar’s sword continues to heal him.”
“I don’t understand. I thought Perkar was hit with a Slap paddle.”
“It must have been a witched paddle. Such things have been known to happen.”
“You mean someone did this to him.”
Brother Horse nodded. “Of course. It would have to be a gaan, someone with the power to bind spirits.”
“Like yourself, you mean.”
The old man grunted. “No. Someone with much more power than I ever possessed. Someone who could put the Breath Feasting in a Slap paddle and command it to wait.” He turned a frank gaze on her. “I know you were frightened by what you saw in me. I know you do not trust me now, and I should have explained before you saw. But I never believed that you could see into me so easily. That is one of the hardest things to do, to see a gaan. Gods are often disguised by mortal flesh, even from the keenest gazes. You must forgive me, you see, for I never thought that even if you did see into me, it would frighten you. I forget, sometimes, what it means to be from Nhol, where there is no god but the Changeling.”
Hezhi pursed her lips in aggravation and thrust out her jaw, trying to retain her bravery of a moment before. Tsem, beside her, was a presence of enormous comfort. “Are you telling me you are some sort of god?”
“What? Oh, no. No. But there are gods in me. Very small ones, very minor ones.”
“In you? I don’t understand that.”
“There are many kinds of gods,” Brother Horse began, after a moment’s pause to collect his thoughts. “There are those that live in things—like trees and rocks—and there are those that govern certain places, certain areas of land. There are also the Mountain Gods, whom we call the Yai, and they are different yet again; they are the ancestors of the animals, as Horse Mother is the begetter of all horses, as Blackgod is the father of all crows, and so forth. Those are the most powerful gods, the gods of the mountain.”
“Yes, this was explained to me,” Hezhi said, uncomfortably.
He nodded. “The Mountain Gods have younger relatives who walk about. Small gods cloaked in the flesh of animals—such as those we select for the Horse God Homesending that we hold tonight.”
“I know that, as well.”
“Such gods dwell in flesh, sometimes in places, and those places are like their homes, their houses. But when their house
is destroyed—when their bodies are killed or their place ruined—then they are without homes. They must return to the great mountain in the west to be reclothed in skin. However, it is possible to offer them—or sometimes compel them—to make another home, here.” He tapped his chest with a forefinger. “That’s why we call this yekchag tse’en, ‘Mansion of Bone.’ You saw the dwellers in my mansion, child. Two spirits live within me and serve me, though they have, like myself, grown old and weak.”
Hezhi took that in doubtfully. “And what do these gods do, living in your chest?”
“First and foremost, they dim the vision,” the old man said gently. “They toughen you so that the sight of a god does not enter you like a blade, to cut out your sense. Once you have a single familiar, no matter how weak, then you can resist.”
She suddenly understood what Brother Horse was getting at, and her eyes widened in horror. “You aren’t saying I have to do that? Have one of those things inside of me.”
Brother Horse examined his feet rather closely. “It isn’t bad,” he said. “Most of the time you never need them or notice them.”
“No!”
He shrugged. “It is the only way. And I can do nothing for Perkar. You can trust no other Mang healer, for we do not know who did this. You are his only hope, and you are your own only hope. You have been lucky and strong thus far, but you will weaken, and when you do, your Giant friend will not be able to help you, nor will I. I know you don’t like it, but you must face this, Hezhi. I am trying to help you.”
“Brother Horse, I can’t!” She worked her mouth helplessly, hoping it would fill with more words of its own accord, explain to the old man her horror of losing herself, of becoming something not Hezhi. That fear had been a strength when the River threatened to fill her up with himself, make her into a goddess. Now… one of those things, those monsters, living in her? How could she be the same, ever?
But if she did not, what would Perkar do? And what would she and Tsem do? Her talk to Tsem of using her power to help them survive—would she pretend she had never said it?
“How is it done?” She sighed weakly.
