by Greg Keyes
A black lion, she was, whose mouth parted to reveal the shadows of dagger-teeth against the red soul that burned in her shell, that illumined her eyes from behind, as well, slits of flame with no pupils. A black lion the size of the bull. He lowered his horns to meet her.
“Call back your beast,” the lioness said. “The others will not aid you.”
Indeed, Hezhi saw with a thrill of dismay that the mare and the swan were kneeling, after their fashion. The bull himself trembled, trepidation mixed with fury.
“Who are you?” Hezhi asked, her godlike confidence quickly evaporating.
“We have met, you and I,” the lioness said, and she seemed to grin—at least she showed the full range of her teeth and switched her great tail behind. She spoke then, to the bull.
“Kneel down, Hukwosha. I know you, and you know me. You know I cannot be challenged here. Be wise for your new mistress.”
The bull regarded the lioness steadily, but Hezhi sensed a frustrated easing of muscles, as if the bull agreed, however reluctantly, with the pronouncement of the great clawed beast.
As easily as that, I am without protectors, she thought.
“You should remember me, and it pains me that you do not,” the lioness growled, padding closer, pausing to run her tongue on the fur of the mare—whether grooming or tasting, Hezhi could not tell. She advanced until the twin coals of her eyes were inches from Hezhi’s own.
“Let me introduce myself,” the lioness went on. “I am Paker, Apa, Bari—I have many names, but most often I am called Huntress.”
XXXI
The Lady of Bones
Sensation crept along Ghe’s skin, pleasure and darkling pain, and he bit into his lip until he found the iron tang of blood A fountain of flame seemed to erupt from him, and white-hot stars fluoresced and faded in the heavens behind his eyelids. The woman caressing him stroked his face, and he looked up into her features. And remembered.
Hezhi’s older face, Qwen Shen—both stared down at him. Fury and futility surged in the wake of gratification. How many times had she done this to him? How many times had he forgotten ? Somehow he understood that he always forgot, remembered the passion but not the details, the woman but not the witchery. What was Qwen Shen doing to him? A wave of humiliation coursed through him as he answered himself: she controlled him. She held him taut on a leash, and he did not even realize that, save in these lucid instants after…
After what? What had he been thinking? Something annoying, but slipping from him. Something about Qwen Shen’s face, glowing above him, lips curled in a gentle, teasing expression.
And then, of a sudden, she was no longer Qwen Shen. He was suddenly straddled by a corpse, bones of black ice, the withered face of a mummy leering down at him. And then that horror was replaced by yet another woman, beautiful and dark, whom he had never seen before.
“Ah, sweet Ghe,” she sighed as she stroked his face with a finger that was both a yellowed bone and supple, black skin. “Thy mother gave you unto me with thy birth. It is my womb you return to, and it aches for you. You and this godling cause me pain with this delay, sweet one.”
“You,” he gasped, frozen by terror or glamour, he knew not which. In his mind he suddenly beheld the little bone statuette that Li once kept, the forbidden image of a goddess the priests said did not exist. But the accursed of Southtown believed, down deep, in their ancient goddess—though he never had; for him the only god was the River, and the Lady just another tale to frighten children.
“Yes, of course you know me,” the Lady said, and where she touched him, worms sprang from his flesh. “Come with me now, before you cause yourself more pain. He only tricks you, you know. You will never live beyond his wish. Much of you is already with me, if you would like to see it.”
“ What?” he asked
“Everything you have lost—the most of you, sweet Ghe, lies corrupting in my house. It is all there, your childhood, memories of Li—whom you took from me, by the way.”
“I did not—I never…”
She smiled, and her smile split back to her ears, as her black almond eyes were suddenly Hezhi’s. “All men are surprised by me,” she assured him. “But few wish to resist.”
“I will not go,” Ghe snarled suddenly. “Not yet.”
She looked down at him sadly, an old woman—Li, in fact. “Why torment yourself?”
Ghe reached out, then, intent on swallowing her—after all, a goddess was a goddess, and he had already swallowed one such. But what was in her eluded him; nothing was there to devour, only emptiness. She laughed.
“Even gods are living,” she cackled. “But I am death.”
“I will defeat you then,” Ghe snarled. “I have taken many gods into myself these past days. I have dined on great powers, and they will sustain me until nothing lives or moves on the earth.”
“For me,” she replied sweetly, “even that space of time is nothing—save perhaps annoying. You don’t want me to be annoyed when you come to suckle at my breast at last.”
“Take me if you can,” Ghe shot back. “And if you cannot, then leave me.”
She nodded distantly. “Very well,” she told him. “I gave you the chance, for Li, who loved me, who burned incense for me. I will not offer this again.”
“You offer me only death.”
“Death is sweeter than anything you will know now,” she answered, and was gone.
He awoke shuddering. Qwen Shen stroked him, consoled him with little words, with small kisses. She looked worried. He reached to touch her face, and for just an instant, a bare instant, he saw not her face but Hezhi’s, and a sudden rage filled him, but try as he might, he could find no reason for the emotion. So, bit by bit, he allowed himself to be soothed, knowing that given time, he would discern his vision of the Lady to be only a lying dream, perhaps a false vision given him by one of his more willful vassals—for a few still fought for freedom. But now he was far too strong to be escaped or troubled by dreams; since meeting the Mang shaman, Moss, at White Rock, he had found the land rich in these so-called gods and now he was swollen with them, distended. Perhaps it was merely a sort of heartburn that plagued him.
“You are well now?” Qwen Shen asked, the first words she had spoken.
He nodded.
“Good, then. What was wrong?”
“Nothing,” he answered. “A sort of night terror.”
She clucked softly. “But you do not sleep, my love.”
“No, but it is always night to me, and even for me there is sometimes terror in the darkness.” He stopped, angry. Why would he show even Qwen Shen his weakness? No longer.
“I’m sorry for that,” she soothed. “But I must tell you something, something that terrifies me.”
“What is that?”
“I fear this shaman, this Moss. I worry that he plots against you.”
Ghe levered up on one elbow. Outside of the tent, cicadas sawed their shrill tunes, frogs croaked imprecations at the moon. It was the first night they had spent together since leaving the ruined barge—indeed, the first night not spent on horseback. Moss insisted that they must make great speed if Hezhi was to be found in time, before the demon Perkar and his conspirators harmed her. But the pace they kept had killed many horses, something the Mang loathed to do, so now they camped in a broad meadow while fresh horses could be found to replace bone-weary ones and new provisions could be hunted. A delay of a single day presented an opportunity Qwen Shen made certain he took—to “relax.”
“Why do you say this of Moss?”
“I mistrust him. I believe that he leads us to our doom. I have heard him speak of it to his men. He and the Mang are in league with this white demon of yours.”
“Moss is a servant of the River.”
Qwen Shen’s eyes narrowed dramatically. “I am a servant of the River, you are a servant of the River. Bone Eel carries his blood, though he is too insensible truly to serve. But these are barbarians, not people of Nhol. You cannot trust them.”<
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He sat up and rested his chin on his knees. “What have you heard? What have you heard the men saying?”
“They fear you. They will be glad to be quit of you. And they think that Moss is very clever in his plan to dispose of you.”
Ghe frowned. He knew the first two things, of course. His senses were keener than men thought; he could make out even distant conversations, if he cared to listen. They feared him because they suspected the men who disappeared were his prey—which, of course, they were. Since his killing of the grass-bear, his reputation had grown, but it was the reputation, he saw now, that one might credit to a feral beast, not to a man. He was respected because he was feared, and the Mang believed that their shaman could keep him in control.
They were wrong. Moss was indeed powerful; he kept many souls within him, as well, but his control over them was of a different nature, and he did not draw his sustenance from life the way Ghe did. His hunger was not a weapon. In a contest between Moss and Ghe, Moss would lose.
“I must think on this,” he muttered, arising and donning an elkskin robe. He pulled it so as to cover his naked body, drawing it up high around his neck and holding it bunched there with one hand. Without a backward glance at Qwen Shen he brushed through the tent flap and out onto the meadow. He stalked toward the tree line, a lean wraith in the night.
The “Lady” could have been sent to him by Moss. He knew Moss could send dreams, because he admitted sending them to him and to Hezhi, as well. But what purpose would such a dream serve the shaman, unless Qwen Shen were right, and Moss was trying to frighten or weaken him?
He thought back over the shaman’s story; how he had been captured by Perkar and escaped by summoning one of his familiar demons, how he had held Hezhi in his very grasp and then lost her, fled here to meet him, and organized this forced march by contacting his captains in their dreams. His hope, he said, was to stop Hezhi before she reached the source of the River, where Perkar and some barbarian “god” were leading her. But now that he scrutinized that story, it made little sense. Perkar’s aim had always been to keep Hezhi away from the River, deny her heritage to her, probably to father some litter of white whelps on her in some squalid wilderness cottage. Why would he take her to the River’s very source?
Maybe Moss was lying. Qwen Shen had a keen, incisive mind; the emperor had chosen her well for this expedition, and the River had chosen her well for his lover. She came thus highly recommended, and her advice until now had been good, very good. If he had listened more carefully to her all along, and less to Ghan, things would be very different now. And now that he thought of it, Moss treated Ghan well, brought him to ride beside him, lavished attention on the old man, as if they were old friends. He claimed that this was to honor Ghan because Hezhi loved him, but what if, somehow, the old man and the young Mang shaman were in league?
That made perfect sense. Ghan had led them into the trap of sailing upstream, knowing the dragons would not survive it. Ghan had made contact with the Mang before, even sent things to Hezhi through them. And when his plan to wreck the barge succeeded, was it not a suspicious coincidence for the Mang to be there, at that very spot, awaiting them? As if they had been informed of the scholar’s plan? And to what purpose? Not to lead him to Hezhi, but to lead him as far from Hezhi as possible. While he journeyed to She’leng, she was racing away, farther away each moment.
He had reached the tree line now. He shuddered with self-fury at his stupidity. It was difficult to think sometimes, this far from the River. But that could be no excuse; he was Hezhi’s only hope, the River’s only hope. He could not betray them through weakness of mind, not when he was this strong otherwise.
Moss had been sent to confuse him and had done a good job. He could not out-think Moss in this state, and if he confronted him, challenged him to tell the truth, the Mang would merely spin some plausible web of lies—and he, dulled by distance from his lord, might succumb to deceptive, honeyed words. Better not to give him the chance; better to confront him only with death and be done with him. Then he could torture the truth from the shaman’s soul, once he had captured it.
That decided, he stepped from his robe and gathered darkness to him instead, sheathed himself in armor made of night; it was a simple trick, one he knew from devouring an odd little god in the form of an owl. He gathered a second armor of wind about himself and lifted into the air, and in that instant, Death and her embrace seemed a distant, impossible thing. He pulled the strands of wind like reins, commanding them to take him to Moss’ tent.
“Eat more,” Moss told Ghan. “You’ll need your strength in the high country.”
“No I won’t,” Ghan stated flatly. “I shall never reach the high country. Your new ally, Ghe, will devour me before ever we get there.”
Moss considered the chunk of venison between his fingers, licked a bit of grease from it. “I think not. His tastes are for gods now, not for men.”
Ghan gazed up at him dully. “Then why do soldiers still disappear each day?”
“Some are deserting,” Moss pointed out.
“Yes. Because they know that their fate is to be evening repast for a monster.” Ghan shot the younger man a pointed look.
Moss sighed. “I have protected you thus far, Grandfather.”
“I’m no one’s grandfather,” Ghan snapped.
Moss crinkled his brow in frustration. “It is considered mannerly to address an elder so.”
“Is it also considered mannerly to march me across these foreign lands against my will? To force me to aid you in a cause I want nothing to do with? Why put fair paint over rotten wood by addressing me courteously?”
Moss finished his meat and followed it with a sip of wine. “As you wish, old man. In any case, what I was saying is that I have protected you thus far and I will continue to.”
Ghan snorted. “You are a fool, then. Don’t you know what he is? You cannot protect me from him.”
“But I shall, you have my word.”
“How relieved I am,” Ghan sneered.
Moss grinned. “You really should eat something. I don’t want Hezhi to think I starved you when we find her.” He paused and then lifted his wine cup again. “She loves you, you know. I think if I could have really convinced her that I would reunite the two of you, she would have joined me.”
“What do you care about this?” Ghan exploded suddenly. “I have held my peace, hearing you talk about her, but what is it that you want? Ghe is a mindless sort of thing, and I know what the River wants of her, but you …”
“I want only peace,” Moss replied mildly. “I want my relatives to stop dying. And I want my people to have the blessing of the River as yours do.”
“It is no blessing,” Ghan snarled. “It is a curse. It is a curse for those who bear his blood and it is a curse for those his children rule. This is a misguided desire you have.”
“So it may seem to you,” Moss answered shortly. “But I know better.”
“Of course—” Ghan began, but Moss’ eyes suddenly blazed, and he jabbed his finger at Ghan.
“I know better,” he repeated.
Ghan slowly closed his mouth on his unfinished retort. There would plainly be no fruit from a conversation that branched from that tree. He slowly gazed around the meager furnishings of the tent, gathering energy for another try.
“Will you kill her?” he asked dully. “Will she die?”
“Old man, she will die only if the Blackgod has his way. If I win this race and this battle, she will live to be the queen she was destined to be. She will unite all of the people of the River in a single kingdom. That I have seen.”
“With you at her side?” Ghan asked, carefully this time.
Moss shrugged. “It matters not where I am then. My work will be done. When she is queen, the sort of power I command will mean nothing. The little gods will be swept away and the world will be clean of them. The mountains and plains will be home to men and only men. And there will be peace, without the lik
es of the Blackgod meddling in our affairs.”
There, Ghan thought. There is a tender spot. What experiences had shaped this boy? He was beginning to see the glimmer, the veiled shape of his motives. If he could understand those, perhaps he could talk real sense to him. For the moment, however, he lowered his voice to nearly a whisper.
“But I ask again, why do you ally yourself with the Life-Eater, this ghoul?”
“Because only he has the power to see us to the mountain. The gods will resist us each inch of the way. We have already been attacked thrice, did you know that? Each time Ghe disposed of the sendings. I might have done so, but only after terrible struggle. And when we meet the Blackgod himself—”
Ghan held up his hand. “You keep saying ‘Blackgod,’” Ghan muttered. “But this word? In my language, ‘god’ is used only for the River. What do you call him in your tongue?”
“Many things. Mostly we call him ‘Blackgod.’”
“No,” Ghan snapped. “Say it in your language.”
“Yaizhbeen,” he complied, clearly puzzled.
Ghan chewed his lip. “Wait, wait,” he muttered. “Zhbeeti means ‘black.’”
“So it does,” Moss replied, bemused.
“In the old language of Nhol, zhweng was the word for black.”
“I have noticed our tongues are similar,” Moss said. “Your name, for instance, and my profession, ‘Ghan’ and ‘gaan.’”
“It is not my name,” Ghan said. “It means ‘teacher.’ But there is another word in the old tongue: ghun. That means ‘priest.’” He mused, clenching his fist before his face, all other thought forgotten, save the puzzle. “Ghun Zhweng.” He whirled on Moss. “What if I were to say gaanzhbeen in your language? What would that mean?”
“It would mean ‘black invoker, black shaman.’ It is merely another name for the Blackgod, for he is a wizard, as well.”
“How stupid.” Ghan scowled. “How very stupid of me. When Ghe told me about the temple, I should have seen it. But what exactly does it mean?”
