by Greg Keyes
“Come over here, let the Fire Goddess warm you,” he said. She nodded, picked up her drum, and padded along the ridge to sit across the flames from him. She rubbed her hands, working the fire’s heat into her chilled flesh. Perkar fought his impatience, knowing she would speak eventually.
And eventually she did.
“Men are dying up there,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Cold fingers reached out of the night and prodded at his heart. “Many?”
“I think so. More than fifty, more than I could count. They’ve stopped for the night, but I believe that in the morning they will begin again.”
Perkar’s lips drew into a thin line.
“My father could be among them,” he muttered. “My brother.”
“I’m sorry.”
Perkar saw that she really was sorry. Her eyes were rimmed with wetness.
“It’s hard to cry over there,” she said. “Everything I feel is different, flatter. But now—” Her little shoulders began to quake. “They were just dying. Arrows in their throats, big holes in them—” She stuttered off, wiping at her face.
“Perkar…” she began, but he stood stiffly and walked around the fire, feeling foolish. He settled next to her and drew her against him, expecting her to stiffen, fearing she would.
She didn’t. Instead she seemed to melt into his side, her head nestling against his chest, where she sobbed quietly for a while. Her tears were contagious, and a salty trickle began from the corner of his own eyes. Almost unconsciously, he rocked back and forth, stroking her thick black hair.
After a time, he had to rise and add wood to the fire, and he realized how reluctant he was to release her. When he returned, he felt awkward, uncertain whether he should hold her again or not. He finally reached for her tentatively.
“I’m all right now,” she said. He withdrew his arm, embarrassed, and they sat there for a few moments in an uncomfortable silence.
“What I mean is,” Hezhi began again, “you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”
Perkar snorted softly. “You know me well enough to know that I only feel sorry for myself,” he answered.
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “Ngangata thinks you ache for the whole world.”
“Ngangata is the kindest man I’ve ever known. He flatters me. Still, he has never been shy about numbering my faults, especially my selfishness. Nor have you, for that matter.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Perkar glanced at her in surprise. “That’s the third time you’ve said that tonight,” he remarked.
“No, I am. A few months ago, when we were in the hills with the Mang, before all of this started, I thought we were going to be friends. But since then, I’ve been terrible to you. To everyone, really, and especially to Tsem. You think you’re selfish—”
Perkar smiled and began tossing twigs into the flames, where they stirred little cyclones of sparks to life. “The fact is,” he told her, “Brother Horse and Ngangata are right about us. We both see the world wheeling around our noses. We both think that the rising of the sun and the Pale Queen hinges upon us.”
“It’s hard not to,” Hezhi muttered. “So many people fighting and dying, and even the gods say we are the cause.”
“No. Make no mistake, Hezhi. The gods are the ones who began this. You and I—”
“I don’t want to talk about this tonight,” Hezhi said suddenly. “It’s all I think about, all you think about.”
Perkar hesitated. He had been about to tell her, was right on the verge of telling her all of what Karak said—that she was the one who had the power to slay the Changeling. But he could tell her that later, tomorrow. There was time enough, now that he had decided to do it.
“Well, then, what do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” she lamented, helplessly frustrated. “What would we talk about, if we were just two people, with no godswords, no spirit drums, no mission, no war?”
“Nothing. We would never have met.”
“I’m serious. What would we talk about? What would you tell me if I were one of your people and we were alone here?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know, either.”
“Well, try,” she demanded, crossly.
“Yes, Princess.”
“And don’t call me that. Not now.”
Perkar reached out, without thinking really, and stroked her hair again. “Now I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am.” He realized what he was doing suddenly and pulled his hand away as if her head were a hot stone. She rolled her eyes at that, reached up with her tiny fingers and took hold of his, draped his arm back around her.
“I changed my mind,” she grumbled. “I’m cold.”
“Ah…” Perkar felt his face burning, but he pulled her close again. After a moment’s thought, he unrolled a blanket and settled it over both of their shoulders. He took her hand in his and was gratified when she squeezed back.
“Thanks again for saving my life,” he murmured.
“Shut up. This is exactly what I’m talking about,” she cried, beating his chest with her palm. “Just tell me something, something of no importance at all.”
Perkar thought for a long moment before he finally said, “I know a story about a cow with two heads.”
“What?”
“A head on each end. My mother used to tell me that story. There was a fox who owned a cow with two heads—”
“Tell it, don’t summarize it,” Hezhi insisted.
“It’s a silly story.”
“Tell it, I command thee.”
“Your wish I grant, Princ—Lady Hezhi,” Perkar amended. “It seems that in the long ago, in the days when people and animals often spoke, and the cooking pots had opinions, and the fence-rails often complained of boredom, there was a fox who had no cows. And he asked himself, ‘Now, how might I gather a fine herd and Piraku—’”
“Is this a long story?” she interrupted.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
And for a time they pushed away death and destiny, and Hezhi grinned at the antics of the fox and his magical cow, and in the end they fell asleep, curled together.
Hezhi awoke first, uncertain of where she was. Her arm was asleep, and something warm was next to her.
She remembered then and extricated her arm with great care from where it lay beneath Perkar’s back. He was still sleeping, and she gazed at his face, astonished and confused by her feelings.
It was nice, the way sleep smoothed away his pains so that she could see the face of the boy he had been, once, before their destinies became bound. The boy he might have been. How old was he? Twenty at most.
And what did he feel for her? Pity? Protectiveness?
She wasn’t certain, but there was something in the way he held her, after she stopped crying, that seemed like neither of those things. It had seemed somehow desperate. And the oddest thing was that she understood that desperation, felt something akin to it. It was as if she had been growing a skin of stone, as if her face and fingers could no longer feel, any more than a piece of wood could. It was deeper than numbness. How long had it been since anyone held her, touched her? Even Tsem had been distant from her since the night they fled from Brother Horse’s camp. She had not even realized how much she missed her contact with the Giant. She was hungry for any touch.
But Perkar’s touch was something else again, something special. It was more akin to what she felt when Yen held her, but it wasn’t even that. Yen’s touch had been exciting, forbidden, and sweet. This was something that caught in her throat, and usually it came out as anger or spite. But last night it manifested as something else entirely, something with deeper roots. She wondered what she would have done had he kissed her. Had he even thought about it? She had feared that he would kiss her, last night, force her to decide what she felt or retreat from it. Now she wished the decision had been forced, for the one thing she did not need righ
t now was this powerful new uncertainty.
What would she do when he woke? How should she react? She lay back and closed her eyes again, a mischievous smile on her face. Let him make that decision.
XXIX
Forward-Falling Ghost
The first day, Ghan was sure that he would die. By the second, he wished he would. No torturer of the Ahw’en could have developed a more fiendish device for torment than the hard Mang saddle and the horse beneath it. Trotting rubbed his thighs and calves raw; the middle pace shook pain into his entire frame. It was only the extremes—walking and full gallop—that did not immediately pain him, but in the next day he realized that the death grip he kept on the beast when it ran had to be paid for with cramping muscles and febrile pain along his bones. Thrice the meat and tendons of his leg knotting into a bunch near his ankle had sent him sliding to the ground, cursing and shedding tears of pain.
They did not stop for sleep, and as he had never been on a horse before, Ghan was entirely unable to doze in the saddle as did the rough barbarians around him. When he did drift off, it was only to awake, heartbeats later, in terror of falling. By the end of the second day he was haggard and speechless.
He did not understand the Mang language, though it contained vague echoes of the ancient tongue of Nhol, and many words were similar. But Ghe could speak with them somehow, perhaps through the same agency by which Perkar had “learned” the speech of Nhol.
Ghan gathered, before he became unable to take in new information, that the troop of horsemen had been searching for them, apparently at the behest of the man Ghe dreamed about, who was some sort of chief.
The only other thing that Ghan knew was that they were riding to meet this dream man. And, of course, that he would never live to do so.
To distract himself, he made an attempt to observe the men around him—if such creatures deserved to be called men. It did not help much. They all looked much the same, with their red-plumed helms, lacquered armor, and long black or brown coats. They all smelled much the same: like horses. They all jabbered tersely in an ugly language, and they all laughed at him, an old man who couldn’t even sit a horse without considerable aid. His only comfort came from one of the surviving Nholish soldiers, a young fellow named Kanzhu, who stayed near him, caught him when he was near falling, and gave him water. Kanzhu was a cavalryman himself and knew well how to ride.
Ghe did not speak to him at all, but rode ahead with Qwen Shen and Bone Eel, both of whom seemed to have at least some facility with horses.
On the third day, he awoke to find himself lying in short grass. Someone was spattering water in his face, and a large locust sat on his chest.
“Master Ghan? Can you move?” It was Kanzhu. Ghan sipped gratefully at the water.
“I guess I fell asleep,” he conceded.
“Come on. You will ride with me for a while.”
“They won’t allow that.”
“They’ll have to, or leave you, and then they’ll have to leave me. I won’t abandon a subject of the emperor alone in these lands.”
A few of the Mang jabbered something at Kanzhu when he got Ghan up behind him in his saddle, but they eventually relented. The main body of riders was far ahead anyway, and they did not want to be left behind arguing.
“Don’t they ever sleep?” Ghan growled weakly into the boy’s back. The hard young muscles felt firm, secure, as if his arms were wrapped around a tree trunk. Had he ever been thus?
Probably not.
“This is some kind of forced march,” Kanzhu explained. “Lord Bone Eel, Lady Qwen Shen, and Master Yen seem to have struck a bargain with the leader of these barbarians, though no word has come back to us about where we are going—but I’ve heard a few of these men mention someplace named Tseba. If that’s where we’re going, they mean to get there fast. Even the Mang would never push their horses like this unless there was some dire need.”
“How do you know Tseba is a place, and not a person or a thing? Do you speak any of their language?” Ghan asked.
The boy nodded uncertainly. “Not much. I was stationed at Getshan, on their border, for a few months. I learned how to say ‘hello’ and a few other things. That’s about all. But a lot of then-places start with ‘tse.’ I think it means ‘rock,’ like in Nholish.”
“Can you ask how many more days to this place?”
“I can try,” Kanzhu answered. He thought for a moment and then hollered at the nearest Mang, “Duhan zhben Tseba?”
The barbarian screwed up his face in puzzlement. Kanzhu rephrased the question in slightly different syllables. After a moment, comprehension dawned on the man’s face, and he grimly held up three fingers.
“Three more days?” Ghan groaned. But then he gritted his teeth. He wouldn’t complain anymore; barbarians and soldiers hated the weak, and while he could do nothing about the infirmity of his body, he could certainly stop whining.
“Three days then,” he restated, trying to sound positive.
Miraculously, the next day was not quite as bad. Ghan speculated that most of his body had resigned itself to death and so no longer troubled him with pain.
Kanzhu trotted up that morning. He looked worried. “Something happened to Wat last night.”
“Who?”
“One of the soldiers, a friend of mine.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died,” Kanzhu stated simply.
Ghan nodded dumbly. Of course. What else but death would rate notice here, now?
After a few moments, Kanzhu cut his eyes back toward Ghan furtively.
“He wasn’t stabbed or anything; I saw his corpse. He was just dead.”
“Oh.” Ghan lifted his brows but offered nothing. What good would it do Kanzhu to know? It would only put him in danger.
Two more soldiers vanished that night. Kanzhu said their bodies weren’t found and confided to Ghan that he hoped they had deserted, though it was clear that he didn’t believe they had. Ghan offered his sympathy, but his own worries were growing. This was a bad sign; Ghe was losing control. Though he had consistently avoided Ghan since the Mang had found them, he had ridden near lately, his face a frozen mask, his eyes like hard, black iron. It was as if the humanity in him were sleeping, or strained beyond reason.
Ghan tried to think it through, to understand what was happening to the ghoul. Though terrible pain still housed itself in his shoulders, his thighs—and weirdly enough, the muscles of his abdomen—it was no longer agony, and he had managed to drop into sleep during periods of walking, which were signaled, like the other paces, by a horn trumpet. This meant it was actually possible for him to think again.
Ghe was a dead man animated by the River. His body had the signs of life, it was alive in most ways—save one. The spirit, the ghost inside his skin was not that of a man, was not held together by the same stuff of life that held a man together. It was not self-contained. Neither was a living person self-contained; it needed food and water, and in time, despite it all, the essence of a person’s life came unmoored from its flesh. But whatever Ghe was, his life came always from outside. Near the River, where the flow of vital energy was constant, what left through his eyes and mouth and every action was merely replaced. Out here—life had to be found elsewhere. And he had more mouths to feed than his own, if Ghan understood his nature correctly. One of them was a goddess.
The old texts had called creatures like Ghe Life-Eaters, but in the ancient tongue they had also been named “forward-falling ghosts.” That name made sense to Ghan now; Ghe must be like a man trying to run down a hill when his head is moving more quickly than his feet. He cannot stop, for he would fall. He can only run faster and in the end fall faster.
This was the creature who hungered for Hezhi. He had to be stopped, but Ghan was out of ideas. He was tired, and he wanted real sleep.
He cast a hopeful look at Kanzhu. Maybe something more could be done. Maybe he could convince Kanzhu to help him flee.
But that night Kanzh
u vanished, and Ghan never saw him again.
The next day brought a wonder that cut briefly through all of Ghan’s pain and trepidation. The horn to trot had just sounded, and the horses stepped down from running. Ghan was disappointed; now that he was able to stay on the back of his mount without straining every muscle, running was the gait he most preferred—next to walking, of course—because it was the smoothest. Kanzhu had taught him how to survive trotting, as well, but it involved bouncing in the stirrups, using his frail, worn-out legs to absorb the constant jolts. It was more work.
After only a moment of trotting, however, the signal came to slow to a walk, which was unusual; the shifts in speed were not usually done in such brief intervals. Soon, however, the reason for slowing became obvious. Mountains walked on the horizon.
The Mang named them nunetuk, but that word seemed somehow too short—or too long—to capture them in sound. Four legs built like the pillars of a hall supported their impossibly massive frames. From their heads snakelike appendages protruded, and to either side of that, sabers of bone—no, it must be ivory—curved up menacingly. They were shaggy, hair ranging from reddish brown to black. Fifteen or so stood in a clump, near a distant line of spruce, grazing in the tall grass. At first there were only the trees to give them scale; but with a sudden chorus of shrieks, a detachment of seven Mang tore off across the prairie toward the monsters and put them in firmer perspective: even mounted, the men scarcely reached to the bellies of the monsters.
“What are they doing?” Ghan asked incredulously. But none of the Mang answered him—and Kanzhu was gone.
Still shrieking, the warriors raced up to the now-wary beasts. Some of the larger nunetuk had formed a defensive ring about the smaller ones and the very small ones—only about the size of a horse—which Ghan took to be calves. The men had drawn swords and brandished them in the faces of the beasts; they appeared to be attempting to get close enough to cut them.
Wouldn’t lances be better? he thought, but then he understood that the Mang were not trying to kill the huge animals; they were merely trying to touch them.
