by Greg Keyes
Perkar’s lips flattened into a line, and his voice quavered a bit when he whispered, “I … I wouldn’t know.”
Angata had a retort ready, but it dropped from his open mouth as he gaped at Perkar instead. “Never? Never? Wait, what about last haygathering? Kenu’s girl.”
“I couldn’t. I just … I couldn’t, Angata. I tried.”
Angata touched his brow and muttered a little blessing. His intense eyes had lost their purpose, and they wandered now, embarrassed instead of certain.
“It must be some kind of witching,” he said at last, almost apologetically. “There must be some way …”
“It isn’t a witching,” Perkar said. “She says the same things you say. Find a Human woman. Have children. Raise cattle. Be a man. But I can’t, Angata. I don’t know that I will ever be able to.”
Angata shrugged again. The certainty was returning to the ridges of his brow; furrowed, they worked the problem around. Angata loved riddles, Perkar remembered. “Sex is only the tenth part of marriage,” Angata quoted, from somewhere. “You can learn, Perkar, over time. Learn to love a Human woman.”
Perkar shook his head sharply, a dismissal. Angata nodded his own head in reply, a confirmation, a sign to move on to other ideas.
“Fine,” Angata said. “A steer can be rendered by more than one tool.” Then he flinched apologetically at his ill-chosen aphorism. “I mean, many are the roads to Piraku.”
“Better,” Perkar acknowledged.
“I know more than one lad our age without a holding, or with one too small for his liking …”
“Like yourself,” Perkar interjected.
“Yes. Reed Valley is nice enough, but I’ve not enough cattle to fill it. My point is, there are things to be done about it, things such as they sing about in epics.”
“You mean we should put together a war party and go take someplace.”
“Yes. The landless could split up the territory, the cowless could take some of the cows.”
“That would have to be a big holding to make it worthwhile,” Perkar observed. “Though, of course, some of us would probably die.”
“Maybe. Though I’ve heard of conquest where no lives were lost.”
Perkar turned to his cousin seriously. “Who, Angata? Who would you raid? Lokuhuna, whose son we hunted with as children, and who would stand with his father as we cut them down? Teruwana, whose daughter you have tumbled more than once, who gave my father a prize bull as a friendship gift? Konu of the high pastures, whose wife brings the boar to every High Gathering, whose son-in-law Hutuhan plays the harp so sweetly the children cluster about his feet rather than dash around the banquet hall, upsetting dishes and servants? Or perhaps we should take the Kapaka’s own lands, the holdings of the High Chief?”
“No, no,” Angata said, pushing away Perkar’s objections with the flirt palms of his hands. “You mention all of those close to us, near to our hearts. But there are those, far on the borders of the forest country, near the great seas of grass, with whom we hold little kinship. They spurn invitations to the High Gathering, to haygathering, to all of the festivals. We owe them nothing.”
Perkar snorted. “They spurn our invitations because they dare not leave their damakutat unguarded for even a moment. They have the Mang at their backs, cousin. My father fought against the Mang once, and we nearly lost everything. And that was to a poorly organized war party. Those who live on the edges are more hardened to war than we here. They would cut us down like wheat. And if they did not, if we somehow triumphed, we would be the ones with our backs to the Mang. You wouldn’t, I suppose, because you would be safe with your new cattle back in Reed Valley. But I have no desire to live near the plains.”
“You have no desire for Piraku, then.” Angata sneered. “For if you do not marry and do not conquer, you will never have any.”
Perkar pursed his lips. “My grandfather married the daughter of a landless man, and he fought no one, and yet he brought enough land for a thousand cattle under pasture.”
“Your grandfather struck a deal with the forest god to take land from the trees. Such a thing happens only once in ten lifetimes.”
“So it does,” Perkar said carefully. “Let’s get back to work. I promise not to sever any of your limbs.”
“Good.”
“But your head may be another matter, if you don’t keep quiet about what I told you.”
Sunlight was deepening to gold when Perkar heard hooves beating up behind him. He gripped his axe a little more tightly; all of his talk with Angata about war made him nervous. Ironically, Angata had only just walked off across the hills toward his own father’s holding, reckoning that his debt to Sherye was more or less paid. If the approaching horse bore some crazed Mang tribesman, Angata would miss all of the excitement.
The horse turned out to be the red and black stallion that belonged to his brother, Henyi, who rode saddleless astride him.
“Elder Brother!” Henyi shouted, his voice filled with the same excitement that flushed his face.
“You should use a saddle, Henyi. It hurts the horse to ride it bareback.”
Henyi frowned in annoyance, but he did not take up his brother’s complaint. Instead, he continued on with his own news.
“The Kapaka is here. Father wants you to come greet him!”
Perkar was readying a sarcastic reply when he realized his brother was not talking about Kapaka the head bull, but Kapaka, the High Chief of the nine valleys. Kapaka, the king.
“Oh,” he said, to himself more than to his brother. He looked helplessly back toward the damakuta, two pastures and a forest away.
“Hop on up,” Henyi said, smiling. “But don’t complain about the lack of a saddle.”
Perkar nodded and climbed up behind the boy. Ten years old, he had his mother’s auburn hair and the same eagle nose that Perkar had gotten from Sherye, though Henyi’s was still snubbed short by youth.
The powerful muscles beneath Perkar bunched and played, and then they were running, the pasture rolling beneath them.
The Kapaka. What might he want? Perkar’s stomach felt tight.
“You’ve grown, Perkar,” the old man acknowledged after the formal greetings were over. He accepted the first cup of woti and saluted them with it before raising it to his own lips. The Kapaka was perhaps sixty years old, perhaps a little more. His face was seamed and brown, rough with time and beard stubble. Even seated he was clearly a head shorter than Father, which made him half a head shorter than Perkar, who sat on the floor; one should be facing up when addressing a chief.
“Yes, I remember a stripling, covered in mud. But I suppose those days are past. You’ve become a man now.”
Perkar’s father clapped Perkar on the shoulder. “That he has. One of the best sword arms I’ve seen, and he can work all day without letup.”
“Good, good. It’s good to see a boy grow up straight.” The Kapaka took another sip of his woti, carefully inhaling the warm vapors as he did so. “Now,” he said as he set the cup back down. “Sherye, let me ask about your cattle …”
Perkar found his attention wandering. His father and the Kapaka would compare their Piraku, neither boasting but each careful to list all of his assets. It was a game men played but one that—of course—Perkar had no part in. Rather than listening to the exchange, he instead let his gaze wander curiously over to the handful of men who had accompanied the chief from his home at Morawta.
Like the king, they seemed ordinary enough—in dress, anyway. The four of them sat together at the far end of the hall, their greetings exchanged. They were conversing in low whispers. One was about Perkar’s height, heavier, with tangled black hair and a fierce smile; his hands gestured expansively. Next to him in the circle was a fellow that Perkar had met before, if only briefly: Eruka something or other, a member of the rather small Kushuta clan. He was almost skeletally lean, hollow-cheeked, with hair the color of dried hay. Perkar seemed to remember he was a singer, of sorts. The third man was
older than the other two, who were not much older than Perkar. His seamed face and gray-shot red hair suggested someone about the age of Perkar’s father, perhaps thirty-five or forty. He wore his hair oddly; rather than cropped at the ears, he let it grow long and braided—like a woman. Other than that, however, he did not resemble a woman in the least.
The fourth person in the company was truly eye-catching. He seemed to be speaking the least, holding a bit aloof from the others, watching their conversation with large, black eyes. His hair was white, white as a cloud, shoulder length and tied back in a tail. This had the unfortunate effect of emphasizing his forehead—what there was of it. His head sloped back sharply from rather thick brows, beneath which his eyes crouched watchful in deep sockets. His mouth was wide, expressive. If he grinned his head would probably split into two pieces. To Perkar this did not seem a real danger: This man looked as if he never smiled. If man he was. In fact, he more resembled—
Suddenly those black eyes were focused on him, twin tunnels empty of any clear emotion. In an instant Perkar felt himself discovered, dissected. This man was used to being stared at and at returning better than he got. Perkar tried to hold that gaze for a moment, but it was too cold, too unearthly. Embarrassed and with the beginnings of anger, he twitched his eyes away, turning his attention—or at least his regard—back to the Kapaka and his father.
Perkar missed the shift in conversation, but when he realized what the Kapaka was talking about, his attention became absolute.
“… That’s why I think we need some new territory. Did you know that Anawal’s son over there put together a raid against my brother? Of course they didn’t accomplish much, but someone could have been killed. Too many sons, Sherye, too little land. Soon they’ll be going down to join the Mang out on the plains.”
Perkar’s father nodded. “Maybe. But it’s been a long time since land was added to the Domain.”
“I know. I was thinking about an expedition, Sherye.”
“Against the Mang?”
“Oh, no. We tried that a few years ago, remember? How many good men did we lose?”
“I suppose it cut down on the number of landless men, though,” Perkar interjected, hoping to be clever.
“Yes, well, one of those men it cut down on was my son,” the Kapaka returned. His tone was light, an old grief admirably well hidden.
“I … I apologize, Kapaka. I spoke rudely and without thought.”
The old man shrugged. “What else should the young do? No, it’s all right, friend. But I don’t foresee going to war against the Mang again anytime soon. Too many fathers lost sons at the battle of Ngatakuta, and my powers of persuasion are limited.” He smiled. “The best chief is the one who never tells his people to do anything they do not already want to do.”
Perkar nodded. His mind was racing ahead, though, to the obvious conclusion. It was as if his frustration, his conversation with Angata earlier that day were both just two of a set of ripples, moving outward from where a stone had plunged into deep water. Now the ripples had come to the edge of the pool and were beginning to come together, bunch up, as if discussing the stone that made them, or perhaps the hand that threw it.
Could she have some part in this? He wondered. But it seemed unlikely. Since his manhood she had only twice come from the water to love him, and she always turned the conversation away from important matters.
“The thing is this, Perkar—this is why I had your father send for you. These men over here are going with me up into the mountains, into Balat, the old forest. I want to bargain with the Forest Lord for a few more parcels of land.”
“The Forest Lord? Balati? Why not just bargain with the local spirits, the ones who live right there?”
The Kapaka raised his hands. “We’ve tried that, but like us, the gods in the land obey their High Chief. He has commanded his people not to give out more territory without his leave. There is also a further complication: Between our own lands and Balat there is a buffer zone of some few leagues; after that are the vast, vast countries of the Alwat. We must bargain to take land away from them, you see.”
“Why should that be so difficult?” Perkar asked, a bit of scorn in his voice. “The Alwat are naked creatures, without Piraku. Why should they have the land over us?” Perkar had heard young men say this before—he assumed it was a general sentiment. But the Kapaka frowned at this and Sherye looked a little embarrassed.
“Because their claim is a thousand, thousand times as old as your people’s,” a quiet, almost whispery voice said from next to Perkar’s ear. He jumped: How could anyone move so silently?
It was the strange man, the white-hair.
The Kapaka cleared his throat. “Perkar, this is Ngangata, from the west country. Probably the most valuable member of our expedition.”
“You’re an—” Perkar blurted, then stopped himself.
“My father was Alwa,” Ngangata confirmed. “I have no clan.”
Perkar nodded, wondering what that could mean, having no clan. Surely it made a man mean, hateful. To be feared.
Perkar would rather confront fear than back away from it. His eyes narrowed as he considered some insult he might give, to get it over with, to unsheath swords, if that was what it would come to. In his own home, this creature had made him to seem foolish.
“Perkar.”
It was his father. It was his father, reminding him that this clanless halfling had the king’s regard. It was his father reminding him that sometimes one did not seem foolish but instead was foolish.
“I’m sorry,” Perkar said, perhaps without enough conviction, but an apology nonetheless. The white-haired man nodded acceptance. Perkar thought perhaps he should seem a little more grateful.
“I know very little about the Alwat,” Perkar continued, more to explain his behavior to the Kapaka than to this strange person. “Perhaps you could teach me a bit, if we are to go to see them. May I call you by your name?”
“You may call me Ngangata, as the king does. It is not my name.”
Perkar tried to ignore the slight. “You may call me Perkar,” he replied softly, “and that is my name.” And it may be that you and I come to blows one day, no name, no clan, Perkar felt but did not say.
V
A Forbidding and a Compulsion
Hezhi closed her tired eyes for a moment, watched the weird play of lights beneath her eyelids. The shapes that flitted there were familiar enough—the curves and angles of faded glyphs, some known to her, better than half as mysterious as the wind from the sea. How many days now had she been staring at them, scratching at their meanings as at an itch and with as little positive effect? She simply didn’t know enough. Ghan was right.
And yet what she did understand of what she read would not let her stop. Her revelations were few and hard won, but they were sweet, sweeter than anything she had known in her life thus far.
Qey was worried about her, she knew. Dragging out of bed at first light, returning when the stars came out, fingering scraps of folded paper in her pocket. With a piece of charcoal, she copied glyphs she didn’t understand, and at night, in her bed, by the flicker of an oil lamp, she puzzled at their meanings. The ghost in her room took notice; he came close, as if watching her, once ruffled his invisible finger across the paper. Perhaps he had been a scribe, in life, some learned man who loved writing as much as she.
I must open my eyes, she thought. I was just beginning to understand what this page was saying. But her eyes did not open, and in a moment sleep stole up on her.
She awoke falling, hurtling down into the black depths, but it was only a sleep terror, the kind caused by small imps that lived in one’s head—or so Qey said. Hezhi put one small hand to her breast, to still the beating there. In her sleep-muddled state, she feared that Ghan might hear her heart. She feared as well that Ghan might have seen her sleeping; more than once she had seen him coldly expel those who did so, even those with the royal writ of permission to be in the library. A writ that sh
e did not have. But no, if he had seen her sleeping, she would have awakened not to falling, but to the sage’s sharp tongue.
Relieved, if still a bit disoriented, Hezhi turned her attention back to the book. Horrified, she saw that it lay sprawled, splay-paged upon the floor, and bit back a little cry. Had she dropped it? It seemed to her that she had laid it carefully down, handled it like the precious thing that it was. But there it was, facedown, like a dead bird with wings crookedly folded. Hezhi actually shook a bit when she reached for it. When she gently turned it over, her worry became panic, for there, just near the binding, the yellowed paper had torn. It seemed a long, obvious tear to Hezhi, as wide as the River.
If you tear just one page, Ghan had told her. Just one.
Hezhi wiped at her eye when she realized a few tears had squeezed out, and she shut them tightly, willing the salty water to stay beneath her skin. If Ghan saw her cry, he would know. He might learn anyway, but he would not learn from her. She remained there, thinking, composing herself, for some moments more. When she felt her face settle out of distress and into what she thought was a more normal mask of indifference, Hezhi carefully closed the book. There, one could not tell one torn page when the book was closed. Had Ghan even seen her take this particular volume? She was deep in what she called the tangle, a confusing maze of shelves and tables in the back corners of the library. Ghan had not seen her asleep, and he had not seen her take down this book. Satisfied with her reasoning, feeling a little better, Hezhi replaced the volume with its dark wine binding, nestled it among its brethren. She looked about once more, saw no one through the cracks and gaps between the books and shelves.
She took down another book, one that promised to tell her of the proper consecration of First-Dynasty fanes. She reasoned that since consecration involved painting the symbol names of the River upon supporting and necessary structures of the buildings, there might be some good description of the way that such buildings were planned and constructed. After an hour of half comprehension, Hezhi saw the mistake in this; the fanes of her father’s dynasty were indeed painted, but in the First Dynasty, they were merely filled with particular and complex combinations of incense. There seemed little promise of architectural description in that. Her eyelids were beginning to droop once more and, rather than risk tearing another book, she replaced the useless volume and rose. She was proud of herself when she went past Ghan, neither hurrying nor dragging, in every way her normal self. As usual, he spared her not the tiniest glance.
