by Greg Keyes
“What are you talking about?”
Ghan snorted. “Our priesthood was founded by a person known as Ghun Zhweng, the Ebon Priest. Do you see?”
Moss stared at him, openmouthed. “Your priesthood was founded by the Blackgod?”
“So it would seem.”
“Tell me this tale. How can this be?”
“Ghe visited the Water Temple. Beneath it he found—”
Moss wasn’t listening to him anymore. His eyes had glazed. “This will have to wait,” he whispered. “It may be that you should leave.”
“Why?”
“Something comes for me.”
“Something?”
Moss looked back at him, eyes hardening. “Yes, perhaps you were right. I don’t understand why, but Ghe is coming for me. He just slew my outer ring of guardians.”
I know, Ghan thought frantically. I know why he is coming for you. Because Qwen Shen holds his leash, and Qwen Shen is from the priesthood, and the priesthood… was a creation of the Blackgod. And whatever else this Blackgod was, it was an enemy of the River and of all of his blood. He was Moss’ enemy—he was Hezhi’s enemy, though she knew it not.
“Leave,” Moss repeated.
“N-no,” Ghan stuttered. “I think I can help you.”
“Why would you help me?” Moss asked, rising, facing the tentflap. Outside a wind was rising.
Ghan started to answer him, but Moss dismissed him with a simple wave. “Go. I have no more time to speak to you.” His body had begun to blur faintly. At first Ghan thought something was wrong with his eyes; then he understood. He had seen the emperor thus resonate with power. Moss stepped outside. Ghan followed quickly, as far as the tent opening, to watch.
Something roughly Human in shape and size hovered perhaps ten feet off of the ground; wind gyred about him, sparks from a nearby cooking fire dancing madly in his cyclonic path. The figure itself was darker than the surrounding night, a nothingness.
“Why do you come to me thus?” Moss demanded somewhat mildly. “Why do you slay my guardians when you have only to ask to pass them?”
“You have tricked me,” the shadow said, and it was Ghe’s voice, of that Ghan was certain.
“I have not, and I know not why you think I have, but we should talk.”
But Ghe was apparently in no mood to talk. Light gouted from the sky as if the substance of the heavens somehow had been slit open. It ruptured into a million starlike fragments that cooled from white to violet and finally to a sullen red, all in the briefest instant, and then, like a swarm of bees, the summoning fell upon Moss. Moss himself sprang back, and Ghan saw that he had produced a drum. He struck its head and shouted, and the fiery hornets were seized by pandemonium, flying everywhere. Many struck the tent, which instantly burst into flame.
Meanwhile, something huge and dark was forming beneath Ghe.
“Ghe, you idiot!” Ghan shrieked in the brief, pregnant silence. “You fool!”
Whatever was coalescing suddenly blazed yellow as a vaguely tigerlike thing leapt from Moss’ drum and shattered itself upon the small cyclone around Ghe. Ghan saw a skeleton of something snakelike sublimating and then nothing at all. The shadow cloaking Ghe burned away like a tissue, revealing him naked, grinning, still above them, his outstretched hand against the sky. But in the next moment he languidly brought both arms down in front of him. He held up a single finger as if for their inspection, and Ghan could see that it terminated in a lethal-looking talon.
Moss had stumbled, his drumbeat faltered, but now he regained his feet and began a frantic chant. But Ghan was only faintly aware of him. What caught his attention was Ghe, drawing his own talon along his wrist. Blood drooled out, and Ghe dropped his hand; the black liquid trickled down his fingers, and he flicked droplets out and away from him.
They fell on the earth, and in each spot they struck, something erupted. The air was suddenly thick and sweet with the smell of blood, earth, and corruption, with the storm-scent of lightning striking.
Ten grass-bears arose, shook their great, flat heads, and attacked Moss.
Ghe turned then, to Ghan. “And now for you,” he said, and advanced, walking down to him as if upon invisible stairs.
XXXII
Beauty
“I remember you now,” Hezhi said, her voice small. “But before you were—”
“Yes, I have many suits of armor, many forms I may wear. Not as many as Karak, perhaps, but sufficient,” the Huntress answered.
“You wanted to eat me before,” Hezhi said, trying to summon some bravery to calm her voice.
“Yes. Perhaps I will yet, sweetmeat, but not at the moment. Karak’s silly plan has finally come to my attention, and when I saw you coming, I thought to speak to you.”
“Oh?” She felt a faint relief wash over her, but kept a firm grip on her skepticism. Could she fly faster than the Huntress? Perhaps she and the bull could, but she did not want to lose the mare and the swan.
“Yes. I have some things to show you. We will travel together.”
As she said this, the mare and swan shook themselves as if waking. “Come.” The Huntress turned from them and began loping across the land. “Stay in my prints,” she called back over her feline shoulders. That commandment was simple enough to keep—the pawprints of the lion blazed the earth, blurred together into a trail of heatless flame. Hezhi rode with the bull, the swan on her shoulder, the mare just behind them so that they were really one, an eight-legged chimera with wings. Surrounded by her beasts, Hezhi felt confident again, but now she knew how illusory that confidence was, and she did not allow it to overwhelm her.
Running in the footsteps of the Huntress, their speed increased fivefold. The otherworld blurred into a void of transmuting shapes and colors.
When at last they stopped, it was upon the edge of a precipice; below stretched a plain.
“Here,” the Huntress purred. “This is as close as we dare approach—for the moment.”
“Approach what?” Hezhi asked, wondering what the Huntress could possibly fear.
“There,” the Huntress answered. “Take your swan through the lake, there, and look—but only from a distance.”
“Can I do that?” Hezhi asked doubtfully.
“Yes. I will guide you.”
Hezhi cast another uncertain glance at the plain, and her keen eyes caught something, strange even in the otherworld. It looked something like a spider, or perhaps a spider and its web somehow become a single thing; a mass of tangled black strands and faintly multicolored bulbs that writhed aimlessly as they crept across the earth. “What is that?” Hezhi asked, pointing.
The Huntress growled, deep in her chest, before replying.
“That is what the Changeling sends to reclaim you,” she answered. “I have watched him grow from a seed of death into that mockery of gods and men that crawls where no such thing should crawl. Long have we tolerated the Changeling, for his power was so great, and, after all, he lay quiet in his bed most of the time. Now he sends things like this out and about. For that affront I have chosen to help Karak kill him.”
Hezhi turned to face the lioness. Crouching on the stone, she had changed a bit in appearance. Her fierce feline visage had crushed itself flat, so that the brilliant points of her teeth now gleamed from a face that somewhat resembled that of Ngangata or Tsem, but harsher, more brutal. The cords of leonine muscle had altered subtly so as to be more Human in appearance, as well, though Hezhi counted, with startlement, eight breasts on her tawny chest and belly.
“Why do you need us?” she asked. “I have a little power, it is true, but it is as nothing compared to yours. Perkar is handy with his enchanted weapon, but he told me of encountering you once before and how easily you dispensed with him. And yet every step of our journey has been planned by you gods. You cajole us and order us—I suspect one of you attacked Moss and the other Mang who followed us.”
“That last was one of Karak’s pets,” the Huntress confessed. “But as to the ot
her questions…” She leaned close, until the stink of rotten meat steamed in Hezhi’s face. “I am not wont to answer questions. But you have been brave, and you command Hukwosha. And who knows, if all goes well you will have more power yet, before it is over, and perhaps I will ask favors of you. But listen, for I will not tell you a second time.” She glanced—almost furtively—back at the spidery thing on the plain and then continued. “In the mountain, you met us all. Balati the One-Eyed Lord, Karak the Raven, Ekama the Horse Mother, and myself. But we are not separate things, and at times we do not exist at all. In all of the mountain, there is really only one god, and that is Balati. But Balati is vast, and ancient, and his tendency is to let this part of himself go this way and that part of himself go another. Karak is the one who is the most unfettered, the least like the rest of us in will and in purpose. Balati, he of the single eye, is where our true home resides—much as your spirits now reside in your heart—but he is a slow god, moving to the cycles of the earth and sky, not to the little moments and heartbeats that living things cherish. That I cherish.
“Now, this god you call the River, we call the Changeling, but we also call him ‘Brother,’ for he is that to us. Indeed—” Her brow bunched and played as she considered her words. “—it may be that he was once a part of us, just as I am. If so, he escaped entirely. And now Balati is slow to understand peril; he is still reluctant to act against his brother. He is angry, yes, but he cannot see the danger. Until recently, I was of the same mind. Only Karak knew better; Karak has labored long and secretly against the Changeling.”
“Why? Why secretly?”
The Huntress grinned a sharp, malicious grin. “If Balati is so moved, he can extinguish any one of us. Karak as Karak could cease to be, and of all of us, Karak most loves being.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“It’s simple enough; the irony is delicious. Were it not for Karak, there would be no Changeling. That is the secret he has worked so long to keep hidden. That is why he strives so mightily and so stealthily to destroy the Brother.”
“Karak’s fault? I don’t understand.”
“It was a prank, at first, some joke of his that got out of hand. It is too long to tell, here and now. Suffice to say that once the Changeling was just a god like other gods, content and contained within the mountain. Karak tricked him into releasing himself, into becoming the River you know. That was long, long ages ago, but for Balati it was an eyeblink. He will not let us cut out the Changeling like the cancer he is. That is why we need you mortals. He does not notice you. When your enemies—” She waved a pawlike hand at the plain. “—when they invade Balat, the great forest, he will not object to my attacking them. When you enter into the mountain and find the River’s source, he will not be aware of you, for Karak and I will cloak you. There you can do what must be done.”
“And what is that?” Hezhi demanded.
The Huntress raised her hand to her face and ran a large, black tongue over her fur.
“That I don’t know,” she admitted. “Karak knows; he is the trickster, the sorcerer, the bringer of newness. He knows, and he will tell you. Trust that.”
“Do we have a choice in this?” Hezhi asked, not wanting to, but knowing she must.
The Huntress considered that for only an instant. “Of course. You can choose to die. Little thing, the River made you to pour himself into. The Life-Stealer down there wishes to return you to him, and if he is successful, you will show him to be the shadow that he really is. You will be much like him, but if he is a blade of grass, you will be a forest. You will devour all of the world, including all of my children, and that I will not allow. I will kill you myself, if I can.”
“If the danger is that great, I probably should die. When I come to his source, won’t he take me then?”
“Not if you are strong; he can no more see himself at his source than you can see your own brain. And you have resisted him before.”
“It was too hard,” she whispered. “I nearly failed. Perhaps I should die.”
The Huntress crooned a long “noooo,” and to Hezhi’s vast surprise, she laid a now fully Human—if still furred—hand upon her shoulder. “He will only make another, in time. It may be a thousand years, but he will make another. And it is a paradox—at least this is what Karak says—that only one suited to hold him can destroy him. I don’t know that this is true, but if it is, then his opportunity is also ours. Karak has apparently had his eye on this situation for many years. I despise trusting him, but here even I have no choice.” She turned a slit-pupiled eye on Hezhi. “Nor do you. Now, look.”
Hezhi felt the swan settle up higher on her head. She closed her own eyes and, when she saw again, it was through those of the bird. And in a single blink, she beheld blue sky and green grass, as those eyes slipped through the surface of the otherworld and into the more familiar colors and sounds of her own.
On the plain, where the spider-thing sat beneath the lake, an army rode, an army of Mang. She glided over them, buoyed up by the heat rising in lazy spirals from the earth. Another bird flew with her, she saw, a keen-beaked falcon with the Huntress’ twinkle in her eye.
She followed the falcon down, until she could easily pick out the weary faces of the men, see the perspiration on their brows.
And so, at last, with a braided mixture of joy and horror, she saw Ghan. On a horse! He rode listlessly, but in his face she could see mirrored the blaze of thought that must burn behind his weariness.
Near Ghan, she made out another familiar face—Moss. And now she could see what he had hidden from her before: the spirits crowded within him. No wonder the bull had found them so easily, no wonder Moss had ridden through the herd unscathed! He was the gaan, the great shaman.
And with them rode another figure, one that even in mortal vision shimmered with such power and elicited such fear that she could not mistake him: he was the Life-Eater, the web of blackness.
He was Yen.
She came back to herself on the roof, her drum still held in nerveless fingers, her face salty and wet. All of her fear and horror bloomed when she pierced back through the drum into the living world, and nearly it was too much to bear. For a long time she shuddered, and each tear seemed to empty her heart, to hollow her, until soon enough she feared that her skin would collapse in upon nothing. Before that could happen, she clambered back into the damakuta, still weeping. She padded into its halls and into another room, until she found the sleeper she searched for. There she curled against him, until he woke, snuffled in confusion and then, without comment, wrapped the immense bands of his arms around her and rocked her gently. She slept the rest of the night in Tsem’s arms, as if she were five years old—desperately wishing she were.
At breakfast, Perkar wondered at how drawn and weary Hezhi looked. Dark circles lay below her eyes, and her face seemed pinched. She only picked at the food they were served, though it was the best breakfast any of them had enjoyed in some time—wheatcakes, sausage, and fresh eggs. Of course, his own meal tasted like wood in his mouth, for he had not slept at all until the very break of day, then only dozing into nightmare images of the same waking dream he had suffered all night: the Stream Goddess, his love, devoured.
He wondered, briefly, if Hezhi had been shown some similar vision, if she, too, were filled with a wintry resolve. He had cried as much as he would; now there would only be killing and dying. His death or that of the Tiskawa, he cared not which.
The irony was that the goddess had spurned his love because she did not want to see him grow old and die. It was an irony that would drive his sword arm, he was certain.
After the meal, he confronted Hezhi. He tried to find some warmth in his voice if only for her sake. Part of him wanted to ask what was troubling her, to comfort her with a hug, but it seemed like too much trouble, and in her mood she might reject him anyway. He added this to his coldness; whatever tender feelings had developed between the two of them were doomed, and he knew it. He had never b
een honest with her about all he knew, and now he never would be. The destruction of the Changeling was too important to rest on the whims of a thirteen-year-old girl, even one he cared for. In the end, he might have to use force to get her to the River source. He did not want to do that, but he would. Now he would.
“We ride out by noon,” he told her. “Sheldu and his men will go with us.”
“That’s good,” Hezhi murmured. “We may need more warriors.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked, aware of the frost in his voice but unable to do anything about it.
Hezhi’s face reflected his tone; hurt and then anger passed over it, ultimately replaced by weariness.
“Never mind,” she whispered. “I’ll get ready to ride.” She turned away, and Perkar realized for the first time that she had traded her Mang clothing for the embroidered yellow riding skirt and woolen shirt of a woman of his own people. It looked wrong on her somehow; the Mang attire suited her better.
“Yes,” he said to no one. “I’ll get ready to ride, too.”
From the corner of his eye, he caught Ngangata’s reproving and concerned gaze, but he shook it off, striding with purpose to the stables.
In the stables, he eyed Sharp Tiger, wondering if the beast would yet accept him on his back. His last try at riding the fierce stallion had been two days after Moss escaped them, and that had ended with a nasty bite that Harka had taken three days in healing, “to teach him a lesson.” He decided there was no point in trying, and for the hundredth time he regretted his vow to the doomed Good Thief to watch after his mount. Still, Sharp Tiger did not object to packs, and a packhorse was valuable on journeys such as this one. It was just a shame for such a fine war-horse to go unridden, and his own mount, T’esh, was showing increasing signs of rebellion, perhaps having been exposed to one or two too many strange sights and smells. He packed Sharp Tiger and was cinching on T’esh’s saddle when Ngangata arrived. He nodded at his friend.
