by Greg Keyes
“Hezhi,” she told him. “Hezhi Yehd … Hezhi.” For some reason it seemed important to her that the young man not call her “princess.” That seemed absurd, really, considering his mean birth, but part of her enjoyed keeping him in the dark about exactly who she was. Later, when she moved down to the Hall of Moments, perhaps she would tell him then, and he would be surprised. Perhaps he would tell his friends of how casually he and the princess had spoken together.
“Ah,” he said. “And I am Yen, son of Chwen. I wanted to thank you for your help—though I haven’t had time to look at this index yet.”
“Well, this is it,” Hezhi told him. “But, actually, I had a few moments the other day, and I wrote down some of the books you may want to look at. These first three are all in the syllabary, so you won’t have any trouble with those. This last is in the old script, but that really shouldn’t matter because it contains the diagrams you will want to see.”
“Well,” Yen said, blinking down at the paper she handed him. “This is more than thoughtful of you, my lady …”
“You may call me Hezhi,” she informed him, in the “gracious” tone the ladies used at court. He smiled at that, and she realized that he thought she was lampooning those ladies. Her ears burned a bit, because she had actually been trying to sound grown-up, adult.
“Hezhi,” he began again, “I have no way to repay you for this kindness.”
She waved it off. “It only took me a few moments, really. Please don’t think anything about it.”
“Well,” he said, bowing a bit. “Thanks again.” He went off with the paper and began searching for the numbers and titles she had listed, and was soon poring over the books, lost in concentration. She noticed that he made notes, now and then, on a roll of paper he had brought with him.
On their way home that evening, Tsem asked Hezhi about Yen.
“Yen son of Chwen? Not a noble, then.”
“No,” Hezhi replied. “He’s with the engineers. I’ve been helping him find some books he needs.”
“He smiles a lot,” Tsem noted. “Too much.”
“You would smile a lot, too, if you were in the palace for the first time. You would be worried about who you might offend if you did not smile.”
Tsem shrugged. “I suppose. You talk to him a lot, I think.”
“Twice, Tsem. That isn’t a lot.”
Tsem was silent, and she realized that she might have hurt him, a little. She and Tsem hadn’t spoken that much lately, and since D’en’s disappearance he had been her best friend. He had never been quite like D’en, of course—Tsem was always reminding her that he was her servant, and that was somehow different from a friend even if you liked each other. Still, she had taken him for granted lately.
“Let’s go to the fountain on the roof, Tsem. I want to look out over the city.”
“Qey said we should come home early …” Tsem began, but Hezhi rolled her eyes at that.
“Come on, Tsem,” she said, and changed their route. Soon they were winding through the abandoned wing.
“This could be dangerous,” Tsem remarked. “If a ghost can attack you in the Hall of Moments, it can surely happen here, where the priests rarely come.”
That gave Hezhi pause, but only for an instant. “We’ve been coming here for years, Tsem. It’s never happened before.”
“Things are different now, Princess.”
They came to the foot of the stairway and started up. “I trust you to protect me,” she told him.
“Is that why you sent me away when the priests came?” he asked. His voice was mild, but she heard bitterness there.
She looked down the stairs at him. “They were priests,” she said. “I don’t need protection from priests, do I?”
The line of Tsem’s mouth was tight and flat; he had nothing to say to that.
Dusk painted Nhol in rust and pollen; the River flowed molten copper, painfully beautiful. Hezhi gazed out at the wonder of it.
“You go out into the city, don’t you, Tsem?” she asked.
“Often, Princess. Qey sends me to buy spices and meat sometimes.”
“Would it be possible for me to go with you, next time?”
Tsem shook his head. “Not outside of the walls. Not yet.”
“When? When I move down the Hall of Moments?”
“Yes, then,” Tsem said.
Hezhi nodded. It was what she suspected. She traced around the city with her finger, over the great ziggurat and its perpetual flow of water, along the thousands of tiny cabins that crowded the levee. “Will you take me down there, when I’m old enough?”
“Of course, if you wish it.”
“Good.”
She gazed off down the River and then up it, trying to imagine where he came from, how many leagues he flowed across before reaching Nhol. Were the forests in her dreams up there, up along the River? Desert, first, of course, more miles of it than she could imagine. The geography she had skimmed said the River was born in some mountain, far away, but it did not say what the mountain was like. It was named merely She’leng, “The Water Flows Out,” and figured in many of the ancient legends. She had always pictured it as perfect, austere, a great bare stone, pointed like the mountains on the maps. She had of course never seen any mountain.
“Tsem,” she explained quietly, “I sent you away because I don’t want anything to happen to you. You’re the only friend I have.”
“My duty is to protect you, Princess,” he replied.
“I know that. And you always have. But not against priests, Tsem. If you hurt a priest—if you even touched one without permission—they would torture you to death in the Leng Court and still they would do to me whatever they wanted.”
“But they would pay,” Tsem muttered. “By the River, you would cost them a high price.”
“By the River? Do you think the River cares for me, Tsem?Whatever happens to me, it will be because the River makes it so. I am part of him, the way my father is, the way the priests are. Whatever comes to Nhol, the River brings it, does it not?”
Tsem did not respond, but he joined her at the parapet. The River had faded with the sun, gone from copper to mud, and soon enough he would catch the stars and moon, hold them in his turbid grasp. Hezhi wondered, idly, where the merchants lived, where Yen’s house might be. Perhaps there, near where the ships clustered; houses stood there—not noble, but comfortably large. She almost asked Tsem if he knew, but refrained when she saw the reflective look on his face.
A moment later, Tsem’s massive hand stroked her hair, a gentle movement. “Come, Princess,” he said. “Supper will be cold and Qey will be colder.”
“It’s over, isn’t it, Tsem?” she asked, surprised to find herself so near tears for no clear reason.
“What’s over, Princess?”
“Childhood. I’m no longer a child, am I?”
Tsem smiled, as faintly as the sun’s last rays. “You never were a child, Princess.” He stroked her hair again. Her tears stayed where they were, back of her eyes. She and Tsem walked back home, together, as behind them the River faded to gray.
VII
The Monster in the Raven’s Belly
Perkar revised his opinion of the previous night’s darkness. A cave could be darker and most certainly was. He thought briefly of the bugs he had drowned in tar as a boy, wondered if having tar poured all over him would be this dark. But of course, the tar would be very hot, and any darkness it brought would be the least of his worries. Which was, in fact, their current situation. Lack of sight was discomforting—frightening—but they had other, more serious problems. It did not seem like the time or place to voice such thoughts.
“We’ll have to light a torch,” Apad muttered. “Piss, Perkar, why did you have to open your mouth?”
A cackle of laughter erupted right in Perkar’s ear, and he could see again. The Lemeyi was crumpling against the wall, holding his belly.
“We’ll have to light a torch,” he shrieked gleefully, his
voice pitched high and shrill. “We’ll have to!” He howled on.
“Dung-eater!” Apad snarled, yanking his sword free. “Laugh at this!”
“Laugh at this!” the Lemeyi roared, waggling a finger at Apad. Apad growled inarticulately and sprang forward, his sword swinging high and overhand. Perkar stood as if frozen, a protest trying to get from his numbed brain to his lips. Apad was not joking or making a threat; murder was plain on his face.
He miscalculated his attack badly, however; doubtless he had never practiced swordplay in a narrow cave. The blade screeched in protest as it met with the low ceiling of the tunnel; sparks spattered onto the floor. Apad dropped the weapon; it clattered to the stone and he staggered, holding his wrist. The attack nearly killed the Lemeyi anyway; his chuckling became convulsions of hysteria, and Perkar thought that perhaps the creature had swallowed its own tongue; he watched incredulously as the Lemeyi’s face changed from red to purple. Apad glowered, still nursing his wrist. Grimly he stepped to pick up his sword.
“No!” Perkar snapped at him. “No, we need him!”
“It’s true, Apad,” Eruka agreed.
Apad watched the Lemeyi—who was actually wiping tears from his eyes—disgust and hatred plain on his face. Nevertheless he nodded, retrieved his weapon, and after glaring at the nicked and dulled blade, returned it to its appliquéd scabbard.
“You ask why I do this,” the Lemeyi said, when he was able to speak. “There is your answer.” He shook his head gleefully. “And now, if you great warriors would like to continue on …” He gestured down the tunnel.
Perkar forbore asking the Lemeyi any other questions. They continued their passage into the mountain, the Lemeyi chortling every now and then, remembering his joke.
At last the passage widened and then opened into an enormous glittering chamber. It was like the vault of heaven, shimmering with a million more stars than the real night sky. Every surface of the cavern was encrusted with jewels, radiant in their unnatural vision. For a long moment he could only stare, gape-mouthed at the wonder of it, at the cascades of shimmering crystals. The only sound was their breathing and the faint dripping of water somewhere.
“Well,” the Lemeyi remarked. “Here we are. Karakasa Ngorna.”
“Kadakasa Ngorna,” Perkar corrected, thinking that the Lemeyi had mispronounced “Belly of the Mountain.”
“No, no,” the Lemeyi said, a bit crossly. “Karakasa. The Raven’s Belly. When he swallowed the sun that time, this is where it rested.”
Perkar studied the Lemeyi’s face. Surely, as always, he was joking. And yet, Perkar knew so little of these gods. The claims they made … and the Crow God liked pretty, shiny things. Like the sun, or these crystals. Was it possible that this cavern was, also, in some way, some part of Karak? Better not to know for sure, Perkar decided.
“The weapons?” Apad asked nervously. “Where are they?”
The Lemeyi snorted. “You only demonstrate your mortality with such impatience,” he muttered.
“We’re in a hurry,” Perkar explained.
“Of course,” the Lemeyi replied, more than a hint of condescension and sarcasm in his tone. “This way.”
He conducted them across the cavern floor. “This is his feasting hall, you know,” the Lemeyi confided.
“Feasting hall?” Apad asked. “Where are the tables, the benches?”
“Can you not see them?”
Perkar, to his astonishment, thought he could. To his eyes, the cave seemed to flutter, like the wings of a bird; now an empty cave, now a hall more glorious than that of any damakuta, replete with tables and benches, all unoccupied, awaiting occupants.
“I do not,” Apad muttered.
“Then you are entirely mortal,” the Lemeyi retorted. “Is there no godblood in you?”
“No,” Apad said. “There is not. And that pleases me.”
“Of course it does,” the Lemeyi replied, and Perkar put a hand on Apad’s shoulder as it bunched, as he reached again for his sword. His friend shot him an angry look, but the sword remained in its scabbard. They continued on, Perkar stepping around a table, Apad walking through it.
“Ah,” the Lemeyi noticed, observing Perkar. “But you have a tiny bit of the golden blood in you, do you not?”
Perkar did not answer. The surprise was that Apad had none. What family had no god anywhere in its lineage? Apad’s, apparently, and he was proud of it. From the corner of his eye, Perkar saw Eruka avoid the table, as well.
They reached the far end of the gallery, and the Lemeyi stopped. “This is as far as I go,” he said. “I may wait for you here, if it pleases me—and I suspect, somehow, it will. The treasures are just down there.” He indicated a small side chamber; Perkar could just see it, adjoining the larger one.
“You may speak to the guardian about seeing the treasures.”
“Guardian?” Apad asked.
“Yes, well, of course there is a guardian. Some gods are greedy, and wealth must be protected.”
“What sort of guardian?” he persisted.
“Just go see,” the Lemeyi answered, taking another drink from the woti flask. “She and I don’t get along, so I’ll wait here.”
Perkar drew a deep breath. He had come this far; he was in the heart of the mountain at the heart of the world; he could all but feel his enemy to the north, the Changeling. He could not come so close to victory and walk away empty-handed. Without another word, he crossed into the adjoining cavern.
It was much like the Raven’s Belly, though smaller. This meant that the shimmering walls were closer, in a sense more splendid. Yet Perkar would not let himself be distracted; his scrutiny was fixed on the guardian from the moment he saw her.
Perkar was not sure what he had imagined—a dragon, perhaps, like the one encountered by Iru Antu in the “Ekar Iru Antu.” But this was no dragon, no one-eyed Giant. The guardian was a middle-aged woman, black hair shot with silver framing a careworn but handsome face. She wore a simple black shift, and across her lap lay an elaborate gown that she seemed to be embroidering.
“Hello,” she said, hardly looking up. Behind her, weapons rested on a shelf of stone. Swords, straight and sickle-curved, promised edges finer than glass. Hammers, spears, sheaves of arrows lay carelessly about. Around the weapons, other treasures vied for his attention: golden circlets, flasks of woti, all sorts of Human-made adornment.
“Grandmother,” Perkar said carefully.
“Who are you?” For the first time her gaze really fastened upon him; her eyes were gray, faraway—mist in the distance.
“My clan is Kar Barku,” he told her. “My own name is Perkar.”
The woman smiled a thin little smile. “Perkar—so you are an oak tree, are you?”
“That is my name.”
“A god named you?” she asked.
“Of course. The god of our household named me for her friend, the oak tree.”
The woman nodded, held up her needlework to contemplate it more closely. “Are your friends back there coming in?”
Perkar shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You keep bad company, you know.”
“You mean our guide?” Perkar asked.
“I mean the Lemeyi. If he brought you here, he must think you mean mischief. What mischief do you intend here, Oak-Tree Boy?”
“I am no longer a boy,” Perkar said softly.
“So you say. You have yet to prove that to me, however. What do you want here?”
Perkar fidgeted. He had expected a fight, perhaps, but not this interrogation.
“I told you my name,” he said. “It would be polite if you would tell me yours.”
“What good would that do you?” she asked.
“I might know a song about you,” Perkar said. “So that I could honor you. Or my friend, Eruka, who is a singer …”
She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “There are no songs about me, Oak-Boy. At least none you would have heard. Now, tell me what you want. Or can I gu
ess?”
“I want to see the weapons of the Forest Lord.”
“Well, there they are,” she said. “You see them. Would you like to examine them more closely?”
“Yes, Goddess, I would.”
She frowned in irritation. “Don’t call me that,” she said.
“You haven’t given me a name to call you,” he pointed out.
“Don’t call me anything, then.” She quit her needlework, crossed her hands over it. “What do you want the weapons for, Oak-Boy? To win glory in battle? To kill someone and take his damakuta? You could do that with the sword you have.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to take them,” Perkar replied.
“You didn’t deny it, either, and that’s a good thing, too, or you would have lied,” the woman replied. “Do you think the Lemeyi would have even brought you down here if he did not believe you would steal one of them? What do you want them for?”
“I wish to kill a god,” Perkar said.
She nodded. “Of course. And what did this god do, that you hate him so?”
“I don’t want to tell you that,” Perkar said. “Not unless it will convince you to give them to me.”
She smiled wanly. “I have nothing to give you, Perkar. The treasure will not leave this room while I am alive.”
“What?” Perkar was distracted by a furious spate of whispering out in the big cave. Apad and Eruka were still out there, discussing something with the Lemeyi. Something Perkar should know about, no doubt, for it seemed the moment of truth was approaching.
“I must fight you then?” he asked.
“I can’t fight,” she said. “I’m just an old woman.”
“You said the weapons would not leave while you are alive.”
“That is what I said. I never said I would fight you. Here.” She reached over and grasped one of the smaller swords. Holding the blade gingerly, she held it out to him.
“Take it. Take it and leave.”
Puzzled, Perkar took the brass-wound hilt of the sword. It tingled against his palm, and the blade shivered, like a god appearing. As if the blade, too, was just a “painting” over something deeper and more real.
