by Greg Keyes
The other occupants of the room stood on the open floor, some forty paces from her, and they held her attention much more than the room. Foremost was a creature completely beyond her identification, a vast monster that resembled a bear but also resembled Tsem. He?—it had a single eye, a black orb filmed with faint rainbow. Perched on his shoulder was a raven the size of a goat, and still the bird seemed insignificant, so large was the bear-thing. A pace from both of these was a woman, naked, her flesh cloaked only in soft black fur. That and her pointed teeth reminded Hezhi of some sort of cat, save that horns grew from her head and tangled hair fell in a mass almost to her waist. A second woman seemed most familiar of them all; matronly, strong-limbed with thick, long straight hair, she appeared to be a Mang—or even a Nholish—woman. In fact, Hezhi was reminded of Qey.
Kneeling before them was the wavering, ghostly apparition of a horse. Hezhi held her own hands out before her and saw only bones swathed in shifting patterns of light and smoke.
“Well, well,” the cat-woman said, her voice barely a sigh and yet perfectly audible in the great hall. “And who have we here?”
“You know her,” the Raven clattered harshly, his voice just slightly more intelligible than the cawing of one of his smaller brethren.
“I don’t,” the Mang woman said, stepping up to stroke her hand upon the horse’s fiery mane. “How has this child come with my child?”
“I would say she did something very foolish,” the cat-woman said, walking toward Hezhi with fluid, padding steps. “You may speak to us, girl.”
“I… I don’t know what—” These were gods. They must be. What could she tell them?
“You haven’t come here to be clothed in flesh, that much is certain, for you still have the stink of flesh about you. You are no goddess, though you think yourself one, and you are no beast.”
“She smells of my brother,” the giant rumbled, in tones so low that Hezhi first mistook them for mere growling.
“Why, we should eat her, then,” the cat-woman opined, flashing her smile full of needle-teeth. “Yes, we have not dined on mortal flesh in some time.”
“Hush,” the Raven croaked. “You know what becomes of you when you dine on Human flesh.”
“Do I? I can never remember.”
“Exactly. Exactly!” the Raven cackled.
“What about you, girl? Do you wish to be eaten?”
“No,” Hezhi said, anger beginning to slice through her awe. “No, not at all. I only want to understand what has happened.”
“Well, you flew through a lake, I suppose, and came to the mountain. That would mean either that you are dead—which you are not—or that you are a great shaman…”
“Which she is not,” the black bird finished.
“No,” Hezhi agreed. “I don’t think I am either of those.”
“You followed my child,” the other woman—who could only be the Horse Mother—said. “What do you want of my child?”
“Nothing!” Hezhi cried. “I only want to go back. I made a mistake.”
“Imagine that,” the Raven said. “But I say when one visits the mountain, one never goes away the same. Look at her, my kindred. A girl who flies about like a shaman, and yet she has no servants in her mansion.” He tapped his breast with his beak.
“What concern is that to us?” the cat-woman asked. “What does it concern us that this Changeling brat has no helpmates?” She looked suspiciously at the bird. “Is this some trickery of yours, Karak? Some part of your silly machinations?”
“I know her only by reputation,” the Raven said. “She caused something of a stir down the Brother’s course.”
“I cannot see there,” the monster with one eye rumbled. “He has closed that to me.”
“Then it might not hurt to have an ally there, even a mortal one. Give the child what she came for.” The bird winked at Hezhi.
“I didn’t come for anything,” Hezhi insisted.
“Everyone who travels to the mountain comes for something,” the cat-woman snarled. “I’ll give her none of mine; she hasn’t earned them.”
“Be reasonable, Huntress. I could only give her a crow, not really the sort of helper that would do her much good.”
The “Huntress” snorted. “No, I should think not. Silly, willful creatures, always cawing in alarm at the slightest scent of danger.”
“I won’t argue,” Karak said agreeably. “That is why I suggest you give her something. A tiger, perhaps, or even a ferret.”
“A tiger? No, I think not. I’ll have none of this.”
The Horse Mother looked up from her child. “Did you come for a helper? You must know it was foolish to come to the mountain for such a thing. Without one, you can never return.”
“I didn’t mean to come here,” Hezhi said, helplessness—and thus anger—swelling in her.
“Life often ends with a mistake,” the Huntress remarked.
“Huntress—” the Raven began.
“No! Enough of you, Karak. Balati, judge!”
The giant blinked his eye slowly. “Hold her until her body dies,” he said. “Then we will reclothe her in something. You decide, Huntress.”
“Lord—” the bird began, but then his beak seemed to seal shut; and though he struggled to speak further, only muffled grunts escaped him.
“Fine,” the Huntress said, smiling. She waved toward Hezhi, and she lost consciousness.
She awoke in a chamber of obsidian, if “awoke” was the right word to describe her passage back to consciousness. Her “body” no longer sparked and flashed; it had faded to a faint translucence through which she could see the shadows of her bones, her organs, the faintly pulsing lines of her heart. The scale on her arm showed as a searing white spot, however, and from it whirls of color traced up her nonexistent arm, making it seem much more real than the rest of her.
“Hello!” she shrieked, but she expected no reply and got none. She wondered, dully, if the altered appearance of her ghost meant that her body had died or if it reflected some other change in quality about which she knew absolutely nothing.
She had met gods now, not just the little gods in Brother Horse and the landscape, but the Emperor of Gods, Balati, the Huntress, Karak the Raven, and the Horse Mother. Perkar had described all of them save the Horse Mother. It still seemed worse than unreal to Hezhi; it seemed like the cusp of nightmare and waking, her mind insisting that it was all illusion and night terror, assuring her that she need only keep hold of her fear until morning. How could this be real?
But the Blessed beneath the palace were real; the River was real. In a world that held those things, why not gods with antlers? Because she thought they were silly, or barbaric, or unlikely? They would kill her, no matter what she thought.
She set about exploring her prison. It was less a chamber than a glassy tube, traveling roughly upward. She wondered if she could fly, as she had before, travel up along it. She tried, but nothing happened. She attempted climbing and had better success. Her ghost body seemed to have little if any weight. The slightest purchase of her fingers was enough. Unfortunately, there was little enough purchase of any kind in her prison, and she never gained more than thrice her own height, climbing.
She was still trying, however, when a voice spoke from behind her.
“Such a determined child. The Changeling chose well when he chose you.”
She turned, lost her tenuous hold on the wall, and plummeted. She fell with a normal sort of speed, but the impact hurt her not at all.
“Who are you?”
“You should know me. Perhaps Perkar has spoken of me.”
She peered into the darkness, made out a pair of yellow eyes. “Karak?” she asked, the alien name croaking clumsily from her mouth.
“In the well-wrought flesh,” the voice answered.
“Perhaps you have come to taunt me, then,” she said. “Perkar speaks of you as a malicious god.”
“Perkar seeks to assuage his own guilt by blaming others. N
o matter; I am fond of Perkar, though he maligns me. Tell me, did he return to the camp yet?”
“Yes.”
“And what did he tell you of his journey?”
“Nothing. He was injured.”
The Raven stepped forward, or perhaps became somehow more visible. “What injury could prevent him from talking? He carries Harka.”
“He is ill; some sort of spirit is eating his life. That is one reason I attempted the drum.”
“To save him?”
“Yes.”
“How delightful!” Karak cackled. “But don’t speak of that to anyone else here; his name is not particularly distinguished in these halls.”
“I know.”
“Well. This brings me, I think, to the point of my visit. I have decided to aid you.”
“You have?” Hezhi asked, hope kindling but kept carefully low. She did not ask why.
“Yes, as I said, I am fond of Perkar and, by extension, his friends. Actually, what you just told me clinches my decision. If he is ill in the way that you say, it will take a shaman to save him.” He changed then, went from being a bird to a tall, handsome man, though his eyes remained yellow. “Grasp my cloak and follow.”
Hezhi stared at him helplessly for a moment, but whatever he had planned for her could be no worse than remaining in this glass room for eternity. Karak had helped her once, in the past, or at least she had been told he had. Reluctantly she took hold of his long, black-feathered cape. Karak gave a little grak, became once again a bird, but this time the size of a horse, and she, she was knitted like a feather to his back. He rose effortlessly up the tube, spiraling higher and higher, until at last she saw a glimmer of light.
Karak emerged from the hole and alighted on a mountain peak, became a man again, and Hezhi was able to step away from him. If she had had breath, she would have been without it, for she had never been upon a mountain, never gazed down from the roof of the world onto it. Clouds lay out below her, like tattered carpets on a far vaster floor; they hardly obscured her vision of the surrounding peaks, marching away to the edge of the world, snowcapped, clothed in verdure elsewhere, revealing their handsome granite bones now and then. Farther down still, blue with mist, were the bowls and gashes of valleys.
She saw no streams save one: a bright, silver strand winding from the base of the mountain.
“Your kin,” Karak said, gesturing at the River.
“Then this is She’leng,” Hezhi breathed. “Where he flows from.”
“Indeed, your people call it that. We merely call it home.”
“You keep calling him your brother. Are you kin to him, as well?”
“Indeed. I suppose that would make you a sort of niece, wouldn’t it?”
“I—” But Karak was laughing, not taking himself seriously at all.
“What are those?” Hezhi asked, waving her hand.
Small lights, like fireflies, were drifting up from the valleys. From most places there were only a few, but from one direction—she was not sure of her cardinal points here—a thick stream of them wound.
“Ghosts, like yourself, coming to be reclothed. Some Human, some beast, some other sorts of gods.”
“That thick stream? Where do they come from?”
“Ah! That is the war, of course. Many are losing their clothing there.”
Losing their clothing. Hezhi had seen men die; they never seemed to her as if they were merely undressing.
“Can’t you stop the war?”
“Who, me?”
“The gods,” Hezhi clarified.
“I don’t know,” Karak said thoughtfully. “I doubt it. I suppose the Huntress could come down from the mountain with her beasts and her wotiru bear-men and join one side or the other; that would, I think, bring the war to an end more quickly. But I can’t think of anything that would prompt her to do that—nor, I suspect, is that solution the one you were suggesting.”
“No,” Hezhi replied. “It wasn’t.”
“Well, then, you have your answer.”
Hezhi nodded out at the vastness. “What of me, then? You said you were going to help me.”
“Yes, and I will. But I want you to remember something.”
“What?”
“Trust Perkar. He knows what should be done.”
“He said that I should come to the mountain. I am here.”
Karak cocked his head speculatively. “This is not what he meant. You must come here in the flesh.”
“Why?”
“I may not say, here and now. Perkar knows.”
“Perkar is very ill.”
“Ah, but you will save him, shamaness.”
“I am no—” Hezhi broke off and turned at a sound behind them.
The Horse Mother stood there, and the ghost of the horse.
“Is this the only way, Karak?” the Horse Mother asked. Hezhi could hear the suspicion in her voice.
Karak—huge crow once more—ruffed his feathers, picked with his beak at them. “Can you think of another?”
“No. But I am loath to give my child like this.”
“You have many children, clothed in flesh. And it is only for a time.”
Horse Mother nodded. “I know. Still, if I discover there is some trick here…”
“All of these years, and you still cannot tell the Crow from the Raven.”
She snorted, and it sounded like a horse. “No one can.”
Hezhi followed the exchange in puzzlement. She wanted to ask what they meant, but felt she had already been too bold around such strange and powerful creatures.
The Horse Mother turned to her. “Swear that you will care for my child.”
“What do you mean?”
The woman glanced hard at Karak. “She doesn’t understand.”
Karak stared at Hezhi with both yellow eyes. “To return, you must have a spirit helper. The Horse Mother proposes to give you her child, since the Huntress will part with none, nor will Balati. Your only other choice is to wait here until you die and then be reclothed in the body of some man or beast, bereft of your memories, your power.”
Hezhi frowned down at the stone of the mountain. “I might be the better without those.”
“Your choice,” the Horse Mother told her. “But if you choose life now, you must do so quickly, before the others discover us. And you must swear to treat my child kindly.” Her face hardened. “And your companion, Perkar—he has offended me, tortured one of my daughters. When the time comes, he must pay a price, and you must not stand in my way.”
Hezhi turned her startled glance back to the goddess. “Perkar? What do you mean?”
“A trivial thing—” Karak muttered.
“Not trivial. Her spirit arrived here lately, told me how shamefully he treated her. I will remember.”
“Perkar is my friend,” Hezhi said. “He saved me from a terrible fate. I cannot knowingly allow harm to come to him.”
“Not necessarily harm,” the Horse Goddess said, “but he must certainly pay a price. Tell him that.”
“I will tell him. But if you seek to harm him, I must stand between you, no matter how grateful I am.”
The goddess eyed her steadily for a long moment before finally inclining her head slightly. “I give you my child freely, with only the single condition. I understand loyalty, no matter how misguided.”
“I swear to care for your child,” Hezhi said. “But—”
Karak vented an exasperated squawk. “What now?” he croaked.
“I don’t know if I want some creature living within me. I hadn’t decided when all of this—”
Karak cut her off. “Your time for making such decisions is spent. Either you take the child, go back, live, save Perkar, and fulfill your destiny, or you expire and spend your days here, first as a ghost and then eventually as a salmon or some such. It should be an easy choice.”
“None of my choices is easy,” Hezhi burst out. “I should be choosing which dress to wear to court, which suitor to allow to
kiss me, what kind of bread I want for breakfast!”
“What is this nonsense? What are you babbling about? You were never destined for such humdrum choices! You walk between gods and men. Your choices are only between despair and hope!”
“Karak is a poet,” Horse Mother grunted. “Who would have known that?”
“Not I!” Karak answered, spreading his wings and contracting them.
“He is right, little one, though he knows more of you than I do,” the woman continued, her dark eyes kind. “You will have my child. I will watch over you.”
Perkar would die without her. She would die and be lost, a ghost, as pathetic as the apparition that once inhabited her apartments.
“I agree,” she said then. “I will be as kind as I know how to be.”
“Fine, fine,” Karak snarled. “Quickly, now.”
Horse Mother stroked the horse. Like Hezhi, she had cooled from her flight and now had the appearance of a gray skeleton filmed with gauzy flesh. Still, Hezhi could sense the creature’s confusion, its fear. “Hush, my sweet,” the woman said. “This is Hezhi, and she will return with you to the land of the living, to the pastures and the plains.”
“Now?” Karak snapped.
“Now,” the goddess replied, reluctance still clear in her voice.
“Good,” Karak answered. He pointed to Hezhi. “Cut to pieces.”
Hezhi just stared at him, wondering what he meant, and then pain was all that she could comprehend. Something chopped her to bits, dismembered her violently; she felt each bone wrench apart, and each individual piece ached on its own, so that even severance added layers of agony so profound that, though she did not lose consciousness, she quickly lost the ability to interpret anything. How long her ordeal lasted, she had not the slightest inkling; she was only aware of trying to scream and scream without lungs, tongue, or breath.
