by Greg Keyes
“Two days’ hard riding and we’ll be in Balat again,” the halfling observed. “We’ll have come full circle.”
“Not quite,” Perkar said.
“No? This is how we met, equipping an expedition to ride into the realm of the Forest Lord. Now we are back to that point.”
“I suppose. For you and me, this is full circle. Full circle for me will be when we reach the mountain. That’s where my mistakes began.”
“Oh, no,” Ngangata said. “Your mistakes began here, too, listening to Apad and Eruka—allowing their prejudices and fears to become your own—and hiding your agenda. The Kapaka would never have taken you along had he known you were in love with a goddess.”
“Is that what this is about? Are you here to dissuade me?”
“Yes. Your last quest to slay the Changeling brought all to ruin. Surely you remember.”
Perkar kneed T’esh roughly in the side; the stallion was blowing out so that the saddle would be loose, and today Perkar was having none of that.
“As usual, Ngangata, you know best. I even agree with you. Deep down, I no longer even believe in this quest. I do not think the Changeling can be slain, and I do not think I can put all my mistakes back the way they were. But I no longer have any choice in the matter.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Remember your diatribe against heroes, Ngangata? About how they are merely fools who have been glorified in song, how they are death to their companions?”
“I remember.”
“Then for the last time, ride away, because I think that soon I will die. And if I am a hero, we both know what will happen to my companions.”
Ngangata turned to his own mount. “I know this,” he said. “But does she?”
“Hezhi? No. Truth to tell, I don’t think I am the hero this time at all, Ngangata. I think she is. Maybe she always was. And that means we are to die in her service. What point in telling her that? Perhaps she can slay the Changeling, as Karak says. Maybe I’ll live long enough to see that. Gods granting, I’ll take my revenge on his instrument, at least.”
Ngangata shook his broad head and waved away a horsefly. “You are intimately familiar with several gods, Perkar. Do you think them likely to grant you anything?”
“If it serves them, yes.”
“Very well,” he conceded. “But listen to me.” He turned his dark, Alwa eyes upon Perkar, eyes Perkar had once found so intimidating. Time and friendship had taught him to see the deep expressiveness of them, the concern there—but they still gave him pause. “I will not leave you, Perkar. I will not allow you to throw your life from you like a worn bowstave. Whatever else you may be, you are my friend, and I can say that of very few. So when you ride to meet death, think of me by your side.”
“I don’t want that responsibility,” Perkar sighed.
“You don’t have it,” Ngangata grunted, in answer. “But if I force you to think of me—or anyone—before yourself, I’ve done a good thing.”
Perkar watched as Ngangata finished saddling his mount and then led his horse from the stall. “Will we win, Ngangata? Can we defeat the Changeling?”
Ngangata uttered an odd little laugh. “Of course,” he answered. “Why not?”
Perkar smiled thinly in response. “Indeed,” he agreed. “Why not?”
Together they rode out to join the company of warriors.
Perkar wondered idly if “Sheldu’s” bondsmen knew who their lord really was, but decided that it did not matter. They were a brave company, well-armed, and they seemed fit for anything. Thirty men now, plus his original six. Would the Forest Lord notice them and stop them? Perkar understood from experience that against the Huntress and her host, they would be as nothing. Then again, Karak rode with them, though disguised. Perkar hated to admit it, but it was a huge relief; with a god riding at their fore, he no longer had to worry about whether he was making the right decisions, leading them down the correct path. As when he had been caught on the River, he had nothing to say about where he was going—only about what he did when he got there.
“Why haven’t you traveled with us since the beginning?” he wondered to Karak aloud.
“I had things to do and I would have been noticed,” was the reply—not explaining who would notice, of course, or what things he had to do. “Now—well, we are about to enter my home. Even now, however, I must remain disguised. Do not expect much overt help from me. I am your guide, not your protector, though the closer we get to Erikwer, the more help I can be.”
“Erikwer?”
“His source; the place in the mountain from which he flows,” Karak answered. After that, the Crow God rode up front to talk to one of his men.
So Perkar allowed T’esh to lag back. The stallion’s coat gleamed, and Perkar himself had bathed, been dressed in fine new clothes, and a shining steel hauberk rode packed on Sharp Tiger. He should feel new and refreshed.
But two days before, riding and laughing next to Hezhi, smiling at her wonder at the mountains, he had felt a hundred times better. He realized, with some astonishment, that he had actually been happy. Odd that happiness was something one only identified when it was entirely absent.
The sun cast gold on bright new leaves and the upturned faces of wildflowers, but each moment only brought him closer to despair and doom.
He tried to brighten when Hezhi rode up but failed utterly.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. For an instant he almost explained; it hung at his tongue. But the chill remained in him, and when he shrugged instead of answering her he could almost palpably feel her pulling back from him, retreating behind her own walls against hurt and closeness.
“Well, then,” she said awkwardly. “I came over because I need to tell you some things.” Her eyes wandered from her skirt briefly to his face and back down before she went on. “I journeyed last night. I saw an army of Mang riding to meet us. An army much larger than this one.”
“Oh?” he said. Karak had not shown him an army, though now that he thought of it, he had alluded to one.
“Yes. They are led by Moss.”
“Moss?”
“Moss is the gaan—though I suppose we should have known that. I should have seen it.”
“Brother Horse says that gaan can hide their natures, even from one another.”
“Yes. Still; when he came to me, in that dream, he was attacked by something I never saw—something commanding lightning. The next day you found Moss, wounded. I never made the obvious connection.”
Perkar held up one hand helplessly, not sure what to say. Moss was just a boy—who would expect him to be the leader of hosts of Mang warriors? But then, he was older than Hezhi, and not much younger than Perkar himself.
“This army also has someone else with it,” Hezhi said. “Someone impossible.”
“Impossible?”
He listened intently as she outlined her vision, and when he understood that she had seen the destroyer who had murdered the Stream Goddess, his chest tightened until he thought it might rip itself apart. But then she explained who he was, and he remembered.
“I chopped his head off,” Perkar said incredulously. “Off.”
“This is the River at work,” she replied dully. “I’ll fight you no more about going to She’leng, Perkar. I just want you to know that. You need not coax me any longer.”
“I was never—”
“Don’t lie,” she answered, and with chagrin he saw real anguish in her eyes. “Yen lied to me, and now… now he’s coming for me again. He may not have ever been human. All I understand is this: when one of you comes close to me, holds my hand, kisses me, it’s only because he wants something besides me. Maybe if I live long enough, I can learn whatever secret it is, whatever magic exists that will let me survive that, but for now I’ve had enough of it. You and I will see this through; we will slay the River or die trying. But I don’t trust you, Perkar, because I know you’ve lied to me. I am certain, at least, that there are things
the Blackgod told you that you haven’t chosen to share. So I’m not doing this because I trust you, Perkar, but because it is the only thing I can see to do. And I don’t know that I like you very much, either.”
He listened to all of that helplessly, desperate to respond, but without anything to say. Because it was all true—all, save the implication that their recent closeness was no more than a ploy on his part. But he could see that it seemed that way, and besides, he didn’t have the energy to argue. If she wanted it this way, it would only make things easier should they reach an impasse later on.
So instead of arguing, he only lowered his head, knowing that she would take that as a sign that everything she said was true. And after a moment she rode off to where Tsem, Brother Horse, and Yuu’han traveled in a little clump.
In two days they entered the dark majesty of Balat. Hezhi was awestruck by the trees, for though she had seen them in dreams long ago in Nhol, the dreams failed to do justice to their sheer, overwhelming majesty. Some were two horse-lengths in diameter, and the canopy those gargantuan columns supported was like distant green stained glass, the occasional real rays of sunlight that actually fell through that imperial ceiling shining like diamonds amongst the ferns and dead leaves of the forest floor.
Her godsight showed her many things skulking just beyond the edge of vision: ghosts, and gods of a hundred descriptions. Balat was alive in a way that she had never imagined. Despite her resentment—despite having been herself threatened—she began to understand why the Huntress strove so implacably to protect this place. She saw now that Nhol and its empire rested on merely the corpse of a land. The only things that thrived there were Human Beings and the plants and animals thralled to them—as the Humans were thralled to the River. Balat was as the whole world had been, once—alive. The “monsters” her ancestors had destroyed lived here still, and they gave breath to the world.
Though to be fair to her ancestors, being rid of such creatures as the Blackgod and the Huntress could at times seem desirable.
Five evenings later they capped a hill and she saw She’leng. She realized, with a start, that she had seen it earlier that day and believed it to be nothing more than a remote cloud, for it was so distant that it was only just darker than the sky. Nothing could be that far away and yet fill so much of the sky except a cloud. But when the sun touched it, and red-gold blood quickened on the outline of the peak, it stood revealed, like a ghost suddenly reimbued with life and substance. It was still so far distant as to only be a shadow, but what a shadow! Its perfect cone filled the western quarter of the horizon. Truly such a place might give birth to gods, might humble even the likes of the River.
Throughout the journey, Perkar had become more and more distant, and though Hezhi wept about it once, secretly, she hardened her heart against him. She had given him the opportunity to dispute her, to tell her she was wrong, that he felt something more than some offensive mixture of anger and duty regarding her. He had refused the opportunity, and she would not give him the chance to hurt her again.
Besides, as the mountain waxed in the following days, recognition of the sheer audacity of what they were about grew proportionally, and that brought with it not only fear but a thriving excitement that she hadn’t expected. Once she had stood on the edge of the palace, proposing her own death. Now she proposed to kill a god, the god of her ancestors—her ancestor.
Feeling an awkward need to express such feelings, she reluctantly guided her mount to where Brother Horse rode. He greeted her cheerfully, though since Raincaster’s death his face more often fell in solemn lines.
“Hello, shizhbee,” he said.
“It is well,” she answered, in Mang—her acceptance of his calling her granddaughter once again. He understood and smiled more broadly.
“I did have hopes of making a Mang out of you,” he remarked.
“I had hopes of being one,” she returned, a little more harshly than she intended. They wouldn’t let me, she finished silently. But Brother Horse knew that, caught the implication, and an uneasy silence followed.
“I’m sorry,” Hezhi went on, before the quiet could entirely cocoon them. “You’ve been good to me, Brother Horse, better than I could have ever expected.”
“I’ve done no more than any other old man would do, to keep the company of a beautiful young girl.”
She actually blushed. “That’s very—”
“It’s true,” Brother Horse insisted. “I’m like an old fisherman, come to sit down by the lake for a final time. I rest here with my feet in the water, and I know in my bones I won’t be taking my catch home, not this time. Old men spend so much time thinking about the lake, about the dark journey that awaits us. The sight of beauty becomes precious—better than food, beer, or sex. And you have a glorious beauty in you, child, one that only someone with sight like mine can appreciate.”
“You aren’t going to die,” Hezhi whispered.
“Of course I am.” Brother Horse snorted. “If not today, tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, the next day. But it doesn’t matter, you see? There’s nothing to be done about that. And this is fine company to die in.”
“I was worried that you came only because you thought you had to.”
“What difference does that make?” Brother Horse asked.
“It’s just that… I’m sorry about…” She remembered just in time that it was considered rude to name the dead until that name was passed on to another. “About your nephew,” she finished lamely.
His face did cloud then. “He was beautiful, too,” he murmured. “What is comforting about beauty is that we know we will leave it behind us—that it goes on. When it precedes us, that’s tragedy.”
He turned his face from her, and she heard a suspicious quaver in his voice when he spoke down to Heen, who trotted dolefully along the other side of his horse. “Heen says that’s the problem with being as old as we are,” he muttered gruffly. “Too much goes before you.”
He reached over and ran his rough hand on her head, and she did catch a glint of moisture in his eyes. “But you won’t,” he muttered. “I’ll see to that.” He straightened in the saddle and coughed. “Now. What did you really ride over here to talk about?”
“It’s not important.”
“I think it is. You’ve been silent as a turtle for three days, and now you choose to speak. What’s on your mind?”
She sighed and tried to collect the fragments of what she had been thinking. “I was wondering how I should be feeling, going to slay my own ancestor. It should seem like murder, like patricide. Like killing my own father.”
Brother Horse looked at her oddly. “But you don’t feel that way.”
“No… a little maybe. I was brought up to worship him. But then I remember my cousin, D’en, and the others below the Darkness Stair. I remember him filling me up, being inside of me, and I don’t feel very daughterly at all. I want him to die. With so many gods in the world, he will hardly be missed.”
“Not true,” Brother Horse said. “His absence will be felt, but gladly. The world will be better without him. Are you afraid?”
“I was. I have been. But now I only feel excited.”
The old man smiled. “Felt that way myself, on my first raid. Just kept seeing that trophy skin in my hand, decorating my yekt. I was scared, too, but I didn’t know it. The two feelings were all braided up.”
“It’s like that,” she affirmed. “It’s just like that. It’s frustrating because I can’t picture what will happen when we get there. I can’t rehearse it in my mind, you see? Because I don’t know what I am to do!”
“I rehearsed my first battle a hundred times,” Brother Horse said, “and it still went completely wrong. Nothing I imagined prepared me for it. You might be better off this way.”
“But why is this kept from me? Why shouldn’t I know?”
“I can’t guess. Maybe so no one learns it from you. Moss might be able to do that.”
“Oh.” They traveled on silent
ly for a bit, but this time it was a comfortable pause. In that interval she reached over and touched the old man’s hand. He gripped hers in return.
“If we succeed—if we slay him—I wonder, will the little gods like those who live here return to Nhol? Will the empire become like Balat?”
“No place is like Balat,” the old Mang assured her. “But I take your meaning, and yes, I think so. When he is no longer there to devour them, the gods will return.”
“That’s good, then,” she said.
Two days later they reached She’leng. Its lower slopes were folded into increasingly higher ridges, and they wound up and down these, torturously seeking the place whose name she had begun to hear muttered amongst Sheldu’s men. Erikwer. Her heart seemed to beat faster with each moment and passing league, filling her with frenetic energy. She could sense the fear that Brother Horse spoke of, but it could not match the growing apprehension of danger, which—rather than fear—kindled a precarious joy.
The fact that Perkar only seemed more sullen and drawn each day scarcely had meaning for her anymore. Four times before her life had changed forever: first when she discovered the library and Ghan; again when she understood the nature of her Royal Blood, its power and its curse. Thrice when she fled Nhol to live among the Mang, and again when she had stepped through the drum into the world of the lake and become a shamaness. But none of these had brought peace to her, or happiness, or even a modicum of security.
Tomorrow would. In Erikwer she would find release in one way or the other, release from the very blood in her veins by slaying or dying. And with that thought, tentative elation waxed fierce, and she remembered the statuette Yen had given her—so long ago it seemed. The statuette of a woman’s torso on a horse’s body, a representation of the Mang belief that mount and rider were joined together in the afterlife. She had become that statuette now. She was mare, bull, swan—but above all she was Hezhi, and she would live or die as herself. That could never be taken from her again.
