The Blackgod cotc-2

by Gregory Keyes

  “I could own land? Like this?” Tsem asked. From his tone it was clear that he thought he misunderstood. Perkar repeated his statement in Nholish, to make certain the half Giant comprehended.

  “I can have no sons,” Tsem said, his voice thick with emotion. “My sort can father no offspring. But…”

  “That matters not,” Perkar said. “Pass it on to whomever you want—it would be yours.”

  “After much hard work,” Ngangata added. “This is not cleared pasture we speak of. Perkar, I am a hunter, a guide, not a cattleman.”

  “For many years, the most of our sustenance will come from hunting, until our herds have strength and many trees have been felled. If you never choose to do aught but hunt it, it would still be your land.”

  “Yes, but I would be your brother, according to those terms,” Ngangata said, his voice thick with disgust. Perkar looked down in shocked astonishment, certain that after all of this time he and Ngangata were better friends than that…

  But then he saw the halfling was biting back his laughter, and when Ngangata did release his mirth, Perkar understood that it was all right. His offer had been accepted.

  “ISN'T it beautiful?“ Perkar asked, sweeping his arm to encompass the valley. Hezhi thought at first that the question was purely rhetorical, but then he turned his shining gray eyes on her, demanding a response.

  “It is,” she agreed. And it was. The expanse of the valley was breathtaking—not awesome, like some of the landscapes she had seen in Balat—but nevertheless lovely, a panorama of rocky meadows and spruce swaying in a breeze easing down a saddle in the surrounding mountains. But it was more wonderful still in Perkar's eyes, that was clear. Like so many things, she could never appreciate it as he did.

  “I shall build my damakuta there” he stated, indicating a gentle rise in the valley floor, “and there shall be my first pasture.” He indicated a flatter area nearby, where a stream snaked through a meadow.

  “That seems reasonable,” Hezhi replied, “though I know little enough about pasture.”

  He glanced at her again, and she wondered exactly what his gaze held. It looked a bit like fear.

  “Come walk with me a bit,” Perkar urged, dismounting.

  Hezhi watched as he tied his horse to a nearby tree, then reluctantly swung her leg over Dark's mane and head, sliding earthward. “Where have Tsem and Ngangata gotten off to?” she asked. “They were behind us a few moments ago.”

  “They've—all—gone off to look at their own allotments, down the ridge,” he stammered—and blushed.

  “Oh.” She felt an odd sensation in her stomach, for no reason she could clearly explain. “Where are we walking to?”

  “Just walking,” Perkar replied. “We have something to discuss.”

  Something serious, by his tone, and her belly tightened further. What was it he had to drag her four days' travel from his father's damakuta to discuss? It irritated her that Perkar was keeping secrets again. He had kept his offer of land to Tsem from her, for instance. She had been forced to drag that out of her old servant. During the journey to this place, he had barely spoken to her, as if his concealments were muzzling him. It was a side of Perkar she knew well and intensely disliked—and yet it was familiar, almost comfortable. Now, as he was about to reveal something to her at last, she was suddenly afraid to know. Could it be that she was more frightened of Perkar's candor than of his evasions?

  “You've made Tsem very happy,” Hezhi said, to have something to say, to delay Perkar's admission or whatever it was.

  “Good,” Perkar answered. “He deserves happiness.”

  “Indeed.” So why did she feel that Perkar was a thief, stealing her lifelong friend?

  “You've made yourself happy, too,” she went on. “I've never seen you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Happy, I said. Excited. All you can talk about is your land and your damakuta. I'm glad you finally decided to come here. Your family is delighted. Why—“ She stopped, wondering suddenly what she meant to say.

  “Go on,” he prompted. They had taken a few steps into the forest, but now he turned to confront her, his eyes frank but nervous.

  “Why so far out? Ngangata says this is as far as we could go and still be in the new lands. The closest holding is more than a day away from here.”

  Perkar shrugged. “Not for long. These lands will fill up soon enough.”

  “That doesn't answer my question.”

  He sighed. “The truth is, I'm not at home back there, with my people. Not really, not anymore. And Tsem and Ngangata …” He trailed off.

  “Will never be at home there? Is that what you mean to say?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “But out here we can be. All of us.”

  “You and Tsem and Ngangata, you mean,” she replied, carefully. Just to let him know what he was leaving out.

  Perkar's shoulders visibly slumped, and though his mouth worked to say something, no sound emerged. Clearly frustrated, he leaned close, as if he must whisper what he had to say …

  And kissed her. It was not what she expected, not then. A year ago, perhaps, but not now. Couldn't Perkar get anything right?

  But the kiss seemed right, after an instant, after she fought back the first swell of panic when he leaned in. It seemed careful, and sweet, and when he drew away she was surprised to feel a bit disappointed.

  “I—uh—I've wanted to do that for some time,” he admitted.

  “Then why did you wait until now?” she asked, unable to keep a little of the bitterness out of her voice.

  Perkar's eyes lit with surprised chagrin. “I didn't think…”

  “Oh, no, of course not. Of course you didn't think.” She felt some heat rising in her voice. “You didn't think that while your mother was planning my wedding to some cowherd I never met and everyone was busily discussing your marriage to some cattle princess and Tsem—“ She choked off, bit her lip, and went on. ”You didn't think to give me any sign of what you were thinking or felt—for more than a year.” She snapped her mouth closed, feeling she had said too much.

  Perkar looked down at his feet. “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I thought it was clear.”

  “The only clear thing to me is that no one cares to see you and me together.”

  “I just kissed you.”

  “That could mean a lot of things,” Hezhi snapped.

  “And you kissed me.”

  “That could mean a lot of things, too,” she responded, but her voice wavered, because he was moving closer again.

  “What it means to me,” he said, his voice barely a breath, “is that I love you.”

  Hezhi wanted to retort sarcastically to that, too, to tell him it was too late, to hurt him just a little.

  But what she said was “Oh.”

  He shrugged. “Another reason for being this far out. I love my family, but I want none of their matchmaking. If there is anything that I've realized in all of this, it is that the most precious Piraku is that which you find. And despite everything, I was lucky to find you. It is the only thing I have to thank the Changeling for.”

  Hezhi clenched her eyelids, but the tears squirted out anyway. “This is a fine time to start this,” she murmured, “just when I had resigned myself to leaving.”

  “Leaving?” He gaped, as if the thought had never occurred to him. “To go where?”

  “Perhaps back to Nhol, perhaps to somewhere I've never been. I don't know; just away.”

  “Back to Nhol?”

  “Yes, of course. What is there for me here?”

  “I've just told you.”

  “Yes, I guess you have. But I don't know that I'm ready to become a wife. I know I'm fifteen, but for me there was never a childhood, Perkar. How can I become a woman when I was never a child?”

  Perkar reached and took her hand. “I haven't asked you to marry me,” he replied. “I only told you I love you, something I thought you already knew. You did know, didn't you?”
/>   “Yes,” she admitted, wiping her tears. “Yes, but you never said it.”

  “Well, we are two of a kind then,” Perkar rejoined mildly.

  “Oh,” she snapped, “of course I love you, you idiot.”

  “Then stay here, with Tsem and Ngangata and me. With your family.”

  Hezhi drew in a long breath and looked at him, this man she had first seen in dreams, and as she did so, she realized that her tears had stopped. “Well,” she said at last. “I do want to stay here, with you. I do. But I am not ready for marriage. I'm just not, despite my age. I want …” She drew her brows together and gazed defiantly up at him. ”I want to be courted for a time. I want more stories about two-headed cows. I want to separate what we feel from what we went through together—just a little.”

  “I remind you that I didn't ask for your hand—” Perkar started, but she shushed him with her finger.

  “But you will, Perkar Kar Barku. You will. And when you do, I want to give the right answer.”

  Perkar smiled then and took her hand. “Good enough, then. How do I go about this courting business?”

  Hezhi wiped what remained of her tears and felt an almost impish grin touch her lips. “Well,” she said. “I suppose you can kiss me once more, and then we should really find my chaperone.”

  Wind rustled the trees and dapples of sunlight streamed through the leaves above. It was a long kiss.

  Now available in trade paperback from Del Rey Books—the bold new adventure from the mind of J. Gregory Keyes!

  NEWTON'S CANNON

  by J. Gregory Keyes

  Please read on for a sneak preview of this thrilling novel…

  1716 A Miracle

  Benjamin Franklin was ten years old when he saw his first miracle. Cold fingers of wind had been groping up the narrow streets of Boston all day, and as night fell they tightened their grip. The equinox had come and gone, and winter had an early hold on the Massachusetts colony.

  Ben stood on the Long Wharf, watching the tall, sleek lines of a sloop as she sailed into port. He was worried less about the cold than about how to explain to his father where he had been and why it had taken him so long to get a loaf of bread. He should not lie to his father—that would be a terrible sin, he knew. But with his brother Josiah so recently run off to sea, his father would not want to hear that Ben had been watching ships again. Ben wondered if there were some way to frame the truth so that it was not incriminating. He could argue that his love of ships was just a love of well-crafted things. But he did long to follow his brother to adventure—whales and pirates and unknown realms. The truth was, he could not stand the thought of remaining for his entire life in Boston, not with the promise of grammar school and college snatched away from him.

  His mood bleak, Ben turned down Crooked Lane, hoping to shave a few moments from his journey back home. The narrow alley was almost entirely dark; here and there the halfhearted flame of a candle gave life to a window. The candles brought Ben no comfort, reminding him instead of what he would be doing tomorrow: boiling tallow to make the wretched things.

  Halfway up the lane he saw a light that did not flicker. At first he thought it a lantern, but even the illumination of a lantern wavered. This shone as steadily as the sun. Ben felt a little chill that had nothing to do with the marrow-freezing air. The light was peeping through the half-closed shutters of a boardinghouse.

  His decision took only an instant. He was already late. This light seemed so unnatural, he knew that it must be some trick. Perhaps the flame was encased in a paper lantern. He moved through the yard as quietly as he could. Now he could see the light itself: a pale, bluish, egg-sized sphere. He immediately understood that this light was not a flame. But if not flame, what?

  A spark from flint and steel had something of the quality of this sphere's light, yet sparks lived only briefly. He knew in his bones that this was alchemy, magic—science, the king of magics.

  If there was magic, there must be a magician. He crept closer to the house until his eye was almost pressed against the thick pane of glass.

  The sphere was the only source of light in the room. There was no fire in the hearth, but the window was warm to the touch. Ben wondered if the magic light gave off heat as well. If so, it could not be very much heat, since less than a foot away from the glowing sphere a man sat, reading a book. The sphere was floating above the man's head so that his wig and brows cast shadows over his face. He was leaning over the table, tracing the characters in his book. So clear was the light, so legible the characters, that Ben could make them out and determine that the book was written neither in English nor in Latin. The characters were all swooping curls and curves, as beautiful as they were enigmatic.

  The man was not having an easy time reading the script, Ben thought. He was puzzling at it, Ben could see, because the magician traced his finger over the same line several times before moving on.

  How long he stood there, Ben did not know—nor was he certain why. But what Ben thought was, That could be me. That could be me reading that book, commanding that light.

  There were no whales or pirates in Boston, but there were books. The three years of school his father had been able to afford had provided Ben with the skills he needed to read and understand what he read, and he had long ago devoured most of the books his father and uncle owned. None of them were on magic, but there must be books on it. And now his future suddenly seemed brighter. He would become more than a tallow chandler.

  Indeed, when he tore his gaze from the window, he realized that if one flameless lantern could be made, then so could another. And if enough were made, neither he nor his father would be in the candlemaking trade for long.

  Tiptoeing away he spared one look back, and in that instant the magician looked up from the book and rubbed his eyes. It was an unremarkable face. Then, it suddenly seemed to Ben that the man saw him from the corner of his eye, as if he had known Ben was there from the very beginning. Then the magician's face was in shadow again, but his eyes seemed to catch the light, reflecting red like those of a hound. Ben abandoned all efforts at silence and flew home with what speed his legs could command.

  “I told you, Josiah, the world is changing faster than we want,” Uncle Benjamin maintained, propping his elbows on the table. “I'd heard tell of these flameless lamps in England two years ago. And now one has come to Boston.” He shook his head wonderingly.

  Ben's father frowned at his brother. “I'm not so concerned with these new devices as I am with my son's moral well-being. I wish you would at least remonstrate your nephew for spying.”

  Ben felt his face burn. He looked about him to see if anyone else had heard, but the hubbub of conversation produced by Ben's siblings—eight of them were at home tonight—was enough to drown out the three of them. Ben, his father, and Uncle Benjamin often fell into conversation after dinner, especially now that Ben's older brothers James and Josiah were away. The remaining Franklins rarely cared to join them in their usually bookish discussions.

  Uncle Benjamin took his brother's comment to heart. He turned to his nephew and namesake. “Young Ben,” he said, “what betook you to spy on this man? Is spying a habit you nurture?”

  “What?” Ben asked, astonished. “Oh, no, sir. Twere not an act of peeping but of investigation. As when Galileo trained his telescope on the heavens.”

  “Oh, indeed?” Ben's father asked mildly. “Your observations were purely scientific, then? You felt no impropriety at peeking into someone's window.”

  “It was an uncovered window,” Ben explained.

  “Ben,” his father said, frowning, “you argue well, but if you do not take care, you will logic yourself straight into hell.”

  “Come, Josiah,” Uncle Benjamin said. “If you had seen such a strange and unnatural light—”

  “I would have passed it by or knocked to inquire, preferably at a reasonable hour,” Ben's father finished. “I would not have sneaked across the yard and peeked into his window.”
<
br />   “Only this one time, eh, Ben?”

  “Yes, Uncle,” Ben affirmed.

  Ben's father sighed. “I should never have named the boy after you, Benjamin. For now you rise to defend his every misdeed.”

  “I'm not defending him, Josiah, I'm merely making it clear that the boy knows he did transgress.” He did not wink at Ben.

  “I do understand,” Ben assured them both.

  His father's face softened. “I know that you are perfectly adept at learning your lessons, Son,” he said. “Did I ever tell you about that time he came home tootling on a pennywhistle?”

  “I have no recollection,” Uncle Benjamin admitted. Ben felt another blush coming on. Would his father ever cease to tell this story? At least James—who never failed to taunt him about his mistakes—was not here. Though he would never say it aloud, Ben could scarcely be sorry James was 'prenticed in England.

  “I'd given the boy a few pennies,” Ben's father explained, “and he came home with a whistle, well pleased. Such a din he made! And I asked him what it cost and he told me. Then what did I say, Son?”

  “You said, 'Oh, so you've given ten pennies for a whistle worth but two.'”

  “And he learned,” his father went on. “Since then I've approved of all his purchases—not that he makes many.”

  “I know what he saves his money for,” Uncle Benjamin said, patting Ben's shoulder affectionately. “Books. What are you reading now, Nephew?”

  “I'm reading Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, by Mr. Bunyan,” Ben answered.

  “Ah, so the Pilgrim's Progress pleased you, then?”

  “Very much, Uncle Benjamin.” Ben pursed his lips. “And speaking of such matters …”

  “Yes?” his father asked mildly.

  “Since I won't be going to school anymore, I'm hoping to pursue my education here at home.”

  “And I encourage you to.”

  “Yes, Father, and now I want to educate myself in science.”

  His father settled back in his chair, face thoughtful. “Ben, these new philosophical machines seem womsomely close to witchcraft to me. You know that or you wouldn't have asked me whether you could learn of them.”