Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  Perkar grimaced, worked harder at the packs. “It is bad luck to call a man his childhood name when he seeks Piraku.”

  She snorted, and Perkar looked at her for the first time. Her auburn hair was bound in three tight braids, and she wore her tall felt hat, the one that signified her marriage to Sherye. A hawk feather fluttered from the top tassel. She was dressed to send her son off to war.

  “You seek Piraku too far away, son. It can be found much closer to home.”

  “I can’t find it here.”

  “Because you are foolish; for no other reason.”

  “Father said …” Perkar began, but she cut him short with a humorless little laugh.

  “Oh, I heard the two of you last night, heads full of woti and silliness. Talking about grand adventures and sword fights. But tonight, Perkar, your father will come to me. He will come to me, and he will not weep, but he will lay his head against my breast. He will not sleep.”

  Perkar heaved a deep sigh. “I cannot live with him forever. He knows that.”

  “The Kapaka is a reckless man, and he chooses reckless companions. Your father knows that, too.”

  Perkar answered that with a shrug only. His mother watched him tighten the already tight packs.

  “They will be here soon, Mother. It will be unseemly if you are standing close enough to nurse me. They will think me less a man than they already do.”

  “The tower man will announce their coming. Plenty of time for me to move up onto the porch.”

  He nodded reluctantly. He was beginning to feel silly checking the packs. He drew his sword out, wiped it with a cleaning rag. The morning sun glinted from it.

  “Four generations, but my son is the one to be ruined by her,” his mother muttered.

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” Perkar said, and his tone was stringent enough that she actually winced.

  “Well. Well,” she said.

  He put the sword away, looked up to the tower man. He was gazing impassively off toward the road.

  “Listen, Perkar. You men run about seeking Piraku, finding it, stealing it. Killing each other for it. My only Piraku is you, you and your brother. Do you understand that? If both of you die before me, I will have nothing. Do you see? So you must take care of yourself.” Her voice trembled a bit; Perkar had never seen her cry—or even come this close.

  “Here,” she said. She was offering him something; a little wooden charm. “This is from the oak tree you were named for,” she confided. “Right near where I buried your caul. Tuck it away somewhere, where the other men won’t see it.”

  “Mother …”

  “Son. Each of them will have something like this. They will just hide it, as you will. No man leaves without something from his mother.”

  “I have much more than this from you,” he said softly.

  “I’m glad you believe so,” she answered.

  “Kapakapane,” the tower man shouted. The king is coming.

  “Hurry, Mother.”

  She turned and walked quickly up to the big porch. She was very small, his mother, as fine as a little bird. Now he had to fight back tears.

  Be a man, he thought to himself. But everyone seemed to think being a man meant something different. Women, for instance, seemed to have very confused ideas about it.

  Out at the gate, there was a clatter of hooves, growing louder.

  The Kapaka wasted no time setting off. The men praised each others’ horses; Perkar grinned from ear to ear when the Kapaka spoke of Mang. Mang, at least, was his. During all of this Ngangata—the halfling—was silent. He sat impassively astride a coal-black mare, an ugly creature, thick of leg. Perkar suspected that the horse, like Ngangata himself, was half wild. Still, he was too excited to think much on the half Alwa and his rudeness. The morning fairly gleamed, honey light dribbled over a fresh green landscape, birds sang. The cattle watched them impassively as they made their way out across the pastures, following the road off and away from his father’s holdings. His one moment of sadness, early on that ride, was the glimpse of the tree line that hid the Stream, the goddess that he loved. They did not cross her, however, but passed on west. They did stop at the pasture shrine and offer tallow to the old forest spirit; Perkar was pleased at the precise and fine manner in which the Kapaka made his offering. That even such an important man as he took the time to honor the ties forged by his ancestors.

  His companions were the same five who had come to the damakuta before. Apad—the dark-haired man his own age—seemed the most talkative of the lot. He rode a double arm’s length from him.

  “We shall have fine lands like these, my friend,” he told Perkar.

  “Our grandchildren, perhaps,” Perkar answered. “My father says that it takes many years and much hard work to create such beautiful pastures. In my grandfather’s day, they say, this was mostly burned stumps and weeds.”

  “Just so,” Apad gave back cheerfully. “This land is like a worn shoe; there is nothing better to wear. But we shall make our own shoes.” Perkar was wondering if Apad were joking about his name, which meant simply “shoe,” but decided not to ask. People were often sensitive about their names.

  “How I shall work!” Apad went on. “I will bet all of you now—bet you a fine steer—that I will clear more of my land in my lifetime than any of you!”

  Eruka tossed back his straw-blond hair and glanced back over his shoulder at them. “Apad bets you a steer he doesn’t even own.”

  “Yet,” Apad said, waggling a finger at his friend.

  “Hmm,” Eruka replied.

  “Eruka fears to take me up on the bet,” Apad confided to Perkar—loudly.

  Eruka shrugged. “Clearing land is hard work. I’ll be happy enough to clear what I need.”

  “Or have your wife clear it,” Apad said, an exaggerated sneer that was plainly meant good-naturedly—as opposed to as a deadly insult.

  The Kapaka—up ahead with Ngangata and Atti, the older man with the thick red braids—cleared his throat. “It’s a fine thing to plan,” he cautioned. “Remember only that the Forest Lord may or may not give his word.”

  “Of course, of course,” Apad replied. He winked at Perkar.

  “You, Atti, will you take my bet?”

  The braided man turned only slightly in his saddle. He had a habit of gazing all about him, all of the time—he never settled on looking at a single thing. “A useless sort of bet,” he replied. “If we judge how much we have cleared by the end of our lives, what use will the winner have for a steer?”

  “Well, fine, we can change the wager a bit. Let us say, then, whichever of us has the most pasture by the age of fifty.”

  Atti snorted. “That gives you many more years of chopping trees than I would have. Thirty to my ten. I might still win, though, against your soft valley hands.”

  Apad hooted. “We shall see, wild man from the hills! Will you use a broken stone to chop those trees, like your Alwat friends?”

  Perkar saw the frown cross Atti’s face before he turned forward again. Ngangata—had the jab actually been aimed at him?—reacted not at all. Eruka, though, shot Apad a cautioning look.

  They don’t like the halfbreed, either, Perkar realized. Only Atti speaks to him. And with his wild braids and strange accent, he is like a wild man himself. Something about that satisfied Perkar immensely. He had disliked Ngangata from the moment he met those insolent black eyes and that soft, rude tongue. He had also felt guilty about it—his father and the Kapaka clearly disapproved of such an attitude. But Apad and Eruka already knew the Alwa-Man, and if they did not like him either, there must be ample justification for feeling that way.

  Still, that last remark by Apad had chilled the conversation; apparently there were things that one should be cautious of joking about.

  After a moment, though, the Kapaka broke the uneven stuttering of hoofbeats. “Sing us something, Eruka. Something for traveling.”

  “Ah, hmm,” Eruka mused, and in a moment he hummed a not
e and began. He had a clear, fine tenor, wavering wildly on the final notes of phrases, an old style and difficult to do well. Eruka did it well.

  Up to the hoof I come

  Lifting it up, taking it on

  Here is what I said I would do

  When the new people and their horses come

  But never did I promise

  Never did I swear to them

  That I would not have my fun

  Not make them ache where their butts meet the saddle

  Not make them wish for a woman and a bed

  I will have my own fun …

  Apad chimed in now and then, on words like “fun” and “woman,” and he was a very bad singer. His “quavering” sounded more like a child bawling or an injured man crying for help. It made the song all that much more amusing, and Perkar felt himself smiling, broadly and unreservedly, for the first time in years. He was on the road, on the way out, to a world rich in Piraku, a world that suddenly had possibilities he had never dared imagine.

  But for the rest of the day, imagine he did. And when they left his father’s lands, crossed into the wilderness where no axe had been, his thoughts were not on goddesses, or mothers, or any such sorrow, but on the gait of his horse and the sound of boisterous voices.

  The sun westered soon enough—the day seemed to fly by. The woods were as open as the inside of a hall, trees like wide-spaced pillars, leaves like the shingled roof of his father’s house. Red dusty sunlight leaked through the roof, however, gathered here and there beneath the trees, as if swept into little piles. The birdsong had changed to an evening tune, and the little black frogs that lived in the thick leaf-litter of the open forest floor began throating their own weird melodies.

  “We should travel faster,” the Kapaka told them. “We can reach the damakuta of Bangaka before nightfall, I think. What do you say, Perkar?”

  “We would really have to ride,” Perkar said.

  “Good enough,” the king agreed, and he urged his red and brown piebald into a trot. The others followed. Soon enough they burst from the forest into rolling pasture; a few indignant cows ran from them as they fell into full gallop. The sky opened up, a tapestry, heavy purple clouds woven into an iron-gray sky. The clouds smelled wet, and far on the horizon crimson lightning silently lit one up, the glowing heart of an enormous ghost. The sky and the field were spacious, but the sounds of the travelers stayed close to them, as if the thudding of hooves and their voices feared to stray far into the coming night. They galloped on, and Perkar felt part of Mang, part of the great four-legged beast. He had heard that the Mang tribes believed that a horse and rider who died together lived on as one creature, half man, half horse. It seemed a wonderful dream.

  Now the clouds were gray, and the heavens black, and the stars not hidden by thunderheads shone steady. The moon, red as a fire god’s eye, rose, half lidded, sleepy.

  So it was dark when at last they saw the watchfires of the damakuta, when the men came out to greet them.

  Perkar knew Bangaka and his sons well enough; indeed, one of the women he had been urged to consider for marriage was a niece of Bangaka’s and lived at his damakuta. Perkar resolved to avoid her, if possible. Bangaka himself met them at the gate; he was an old man, his back a bit stooped, hair as white and thin as thistledown. He had an old-age vagueness about his eyes that made Perkar uneasy. He had eight sons, but only the youngest three still lived with him.

  There was not much celebration—the hour was late, and Bangaka had not been expecting visitors. The king retired with the old man, to discuss Piraku and so forth—but the rest of them were offered the barn, an open fire, and warm flasks of woti.

  “Well,” Apad commented. “The hospitality here is not of your father’s quality, Perkar, but it will do.” He gazed reflectively at the little knot of serving girls, peeking and giggling from behind an outbuilding. “Sit here, Perkar. Have some woti.”

  Perkar hesitated. “First I shall rub down Mang and Kutasapal,” he said. “Then I will gladly join you.”

  “Let the wild men take care of that,” Apad said.

  “What?”

  “We will brush down the horses,” Ngangata remarked shortly.

  “You aren’t wearing a servant’s livery,” Perkar said. “I can rub down my own steeds.”

  Atti walked over to join the half Alwa. His braids were like rust in the firelight. Ngangata was frightening; his eyes were eaves, holes sunken into his head deep, deep. His wide mouth looked less amusing now and more dangerous.

  “Let them do it,” Eruka called from across the fire. “They enjoy it.”

  Perkar tried to hold Ngangata’s gaze, but there was nothing to hold, only blackness. Finally he shrugged and joined the other two at the fire.

  Woti loosened Eruka’s tongue.

  “My clan—Kar Kushuta—is next to nothing,” he said. “My grandfather lost half of our land in a wager, and that on top of a feud with the Kar Hakiru. We were always on the losing side of that. There was no land, and it was hard for my father to make a good marriage for any of us without land or daughters.”

  “No daughters?”

  Eruka shook his head. “They say my mother was cursed by the goddess of our apple orchard, for something she did when she was young. She has never borne daughters.”

  Perkar understood the problem. Sons could only receive land as dowry, through their wives. A man was more likely to give a daughter and her dowry to a clan that had recently done the same for one of his sons. In this way the total lands of the clan remained roughly similar over time. A man with little land and no daughters was unlikely to find marriages for his sons.

  “So I became a singer,” Eruka concluded glumly. “There is some Piraku in that, though not much.”

  Apad, whose eyes were already beginning to glaze, slapped Eruka on the back. “Don’ worry,” he slurred. “Tha’ will all change soon.”

  As Eruka had become more talkative, the garrulous Apad had been nearly muted by the strong drink. As Perkar watched, he downed another cup. He himself was drinking only lightly—his father and he having been drunk the night before.

  Eruka nodded in response to the dark-haired man’s promise. “If the Forest Lord wills,” he muttered.

  Apad’s face grew dark. “And what if he doesn’t?” he demanded tersely, softly. “What if he doesn’t, Perkar?”

  Perkar shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Apad took another drink, fixed his gaze on the dancing flames, perhaps searching for the little wild fire goddess there.

  “Remember the ‘Song of a Mad God’? About the mountain god who came down and devoured men?”

  Eruka cleared his throat.

  And so I came down

  I came to the villages

  To the proud damakutat

  The holdings on the hills

  I wandered in the halls

  I wondered,

  How might a man taste?

  I drank the blood of mortal men

  Drank it but never quenched my thirst

  Eruka sang on, softly, as if afraid someone would hear. Sang about the hero Rutka, who put on the skin of a bear, posed as the brother of the Crazed God and learned his weakness.

  Only by the copper blade

  The axe beaten by the forge god

  The one in the hall of the Forest Lord

  Maker of death for gods

  Rutka found the axe, after many adventures, and dispatched the blood-crazed god.

  When the song was over, Apad was swaying, and Perkar feared he would fall into the fire. He wondered where Atti and Ngangata were; they should have been done with the horses by now.

  “See, Perkar? They can be killed. What right has the Forest Lord to tell you and me what we may and may not have? We are Irut, true men—not like the Alwat, not like the little gods. Each of us is like Rutka. Strong! If the gods do not give us what we want, we will take it. Hey, Perkar? You’re a good fellow, aren’t you? Want what we want. We’ll be heroes together, you an
d Eruka and I. We’ll get what the king desires, even if the king doesn’t like how we get it.”

  “What about Atti and Ngangata?” Perkar asked. His own head was swimming a bit now. The song made him proud, proud to be Human. He must have drunk more woti than he imagined, listening to Eruka sing.

  “Heroes come only in threes and sevens,” Apad snarled. “Never in fives.” He reached for his cup of woti, but tipped it over with his hand. There was a giggle out in the darkness; the girls were still watching.

  “Hah!” Apad muttered. “Let’s see what that is!” He lurched off into the night. Grinning, Eruka followed.

  Perkar watched them go. His elation was dimming, but there was something, something in the song …

  Why had she slapped him? Called him a boy? Gods could be killed. If a mad god could die, so could a river. Of course they could, and the other men knew it! In the house of the Forest Lord there were things that could kill gods, surely.

  The sky was clearing; tomorrow would be bright. Perkar found his way to standing, walked out across the bare ground. He waved at the tower guard as he went out the still open gate.

  “Late,” the man said. “I’ll close the gate soon.”

  “I didn’t want to soil the lord’s yard,” Perkar explained.

  The shadowy figure didn’t answer, but Perkar thought he saw his head incline. He walked on down the hill, relieved himself on the night-damp ground. Then he strolled a bit farther, to the willow-line he guessed marked a stream.

  “And where do you go, god or goddess?” he inquired of it softly, but the stream—a rivulet, really—did not answer. Perkar thought he knew, though. They were up a neighboring valley, one that joined his own. Surely this little stream flowed down, eventually, to his father’s pasture.

  Perkar’s head swirled, the warmth of the woti still coursing up from his belly. What could he send her, that she might know him? Know what he intended? What sacrifice could this tiny child of hers take to her?

  He knew, of course. He fumbled out his little knife, the one he used for trimming leather laces. The cut went a little deeper than he intended—too much woti!—but it would not trouble him, there on the back of his hand. He washed the cut in the stream, gave it his blood. She understood blood; she would know his.