Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  And then he could, see well enough to hack the mottled, leprous arm from a skeletonlike ghoul, bring the weapon around to threaten something that was part spider and part worm. See well enough to make out the Lemeyi, capering, back at the last turning, with several other creatures that resembled him. It was much like the magical vision the Lemeyi had granted him, but it was something more. He could see danger—his eyes were drawn to it, without his will. The black, scorpionlike thing that was menacing Eruka was behind him, yet his head seemed to turn of its own volition and make him see it. Snarling, he took two quick steps and sent the point of the blade plunging into what he guessed to be its head. He then suddenly realized that Eruka, still blind, unaware of the thing, was swinging wildly at him, and so he ducked away.

  “Apad, Eruka,” Perkar said, keeping his voice steady. “I can see. I think there is some god in my sword. It asked if I wanted to see, and now I can.”

  Apad and Eruka promptly began petitioning their own weapons, but their eyes remained terrified, sightless.

  “We’ll go slowly,” Perkar said. “The monsters have retreated a bit; I hurt some of them. I think they are cowards, like the Lemeyi. I think I can keep them back and lead us out of here at the same time.”

  “I hope so,” Eruka whispered. “I don’t like this.”

  “Sing us a song,” Perkar said. “Sing us a song, to show them we have no fear.”

  “I … I don’t think I can sing.”

  “Do it,” Apad groaned. “Please, Eruka. I can’t stand the sound of them. Drown them out.”

  “Perkar,” Eruka asked plaintively. “Can you really see?”

  “Yes,” Perkar told him, clapping him firmly on the shoulder. “I can see. Now sing us something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Something about light and green valleys.”

  “Ah.” Eruka sighed. Perkar took his hand and placed it in Apad’s. Then he took Eruka’s other hand in his own, moved to the front.

  “Come on.”

  The monsters were still behind them. They seemed to know how far his vision extended and were staying just at the edge of it. That was fine with Perkar. He led his companions up the tunnel. Eruka began to sing, a childhood song, a song about hunting crawfish and tadpoles with bows of willow. Perkar did not smile, but it made him feel a bit better.

  Not much later, they saw light up ahead. Eruka broke off his singing to cheer hoarsely. Perkar joined him; the darkdwellers seemed to be gathering courage, bracing themselves for an overwhelming attack that Perkar—even with a godsword—did not think himself able to repel, despite his encouraging words to Apad and Eruka. Even as they quickened their pace, Perkar glanced back as much as he glanced forward.

  The nearer they came to the light, the more his own unnatural vision faded. That was probably a good sign, as well. It might mean that the demons following him were losing their vision also, though the Lemeyi, of course, would be undeterred. Perkar was just wondering if it was the strange transition in vision that made the outside light seem orange when Eruka gasped something.

  “What?” Perkar asked. “What did you say?”

  “It looks like sunset out there.”

  For a moment that didn’t sink in, but then Perkar caught Eruka’s meaning. If it was growing dark outside, the demons might not be deterred at all, might follow them from the caves.

  “At least we’ll be outside,” Apad remarked. “At least we won’t die in here.”

  “We aren’t going to die,” Perkar snapped. Then he halted, almost stumbling as the source of the light came clearly into view and his dark vision was entirely dispelled. It was not sunlight at all, but a torch.

  VIII

  The Huntress

  Ngangata’s normally pale face was flushed with fury so bright that it showed nearly purple in the torchlight. Behind him, Atti looked equally dour.

  “You fools,” Ngangata grated. “You stupid, dung-eating fools! What have you done to us? What were you doing?”

  Perkar gestured behind them. “Time enough to explain that later on. Right now we have more to worry about than our stupidity.”

  Ngangata scowled as he looked around the three, peering out at the edge of the torchlight. There was nothing there to see, but the noises were still plain enough, without Human voices to cover them.

  “I see,” Ngangata said, voice still flat with anger. “Perkar, you are bleeding. Is anyone else injured?”

  “It isn’t all my blood,” Perkar said. Indeed, the wound in his shoulder was nearly closed, though it still ached worse than any pain Perkar had ever experienced. It was as if an icicle had been imbedded in him.

  “Let’s go then,” Ngangata said, when the others had not brought any injury to his attention. “We still have some distance to travel.”

  The torches Ngangata and Atti carried were good ones, slow-burning and bright. The demons stayed at bay, and at last they saw true daylight grinning at them from around a bend in the tunnel. When they finally stepped back out into the sunlight—it looked like morning—Eruka fell to his knees and began to sing the Sun Woman Epic. Atti yanked him roughly to his feet.

  “Not now. Not now. Now you explain where you’ve been to the Forest Lord, and you had better be convincing. You fools may have doomed us all.” Eruka seemed more than taken aback by this; he seemed on the verge of tears. Apad, covered with dried blood, seemed hardly alive, and Perkar took one glance at the assorted colors of blood staining his own clothes.

  “We should take off our armor, shouldn’t we?” he said. “I mean …”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ngangata said. “Whatever you did—whatever you fools did—the Forest Lord already knows.”

  Atti gave Apad a push, to get him going down the slope toward the trail. “Hurry,” he said.

  “Don’t push me!” Apad shrieked, suddenly coming alive. His new sword came out danced in the sunlight It seemed to Perkar that the sword was moving Apad’s wrist, rather than the other way around. The tip flicked dangerously near Atti, whose hand went to his own blade.

  “Apad!” Perkar bellowed. Then more softly, “Apad. Put that away. You don’t want to kill anyone else.”

  Apad’s eyes seemed mad, but as they focused on Perkar, they softened. A bit of puzzlement replaced the wildness there.

  “Perkar? Tell them not to push me. I can’t stand it.”

  “No one will push you, Apad. Put that sword away. It looks like it wants to kill something.” He noticed, startled, that the sword had blood on it. He must have handed Apad the selfsame blade he had killed the woman with. He didn’t remember doing that. In fact, he thought he remembered a different weapon, straight-bladed rather than curved. Apad had always held that curved swords were “just for butchering” while straight ones were for warriors. It seemed that he was right. Nevertheless, slowly, reluctantly, Apad put the blade away.

  “Those are godswords you have,” Ngangata declared, astonishment as plain as the chagrin. “Gods of heaven and mountain, what have you done?”

  “Nothing good, I think.” Perkar sighed.

  The trip back down into the lower valley was nearly silent. Perkar wanted desperately to stop and rest, if only for a moment. They had plainly been underneath the mountain for a full day and a night. He had hardly slept the previous night. The pain in his shoulder seemed worse, and his legs were beginning to wobble beneath him. So numb did all of this make him that, try as he might, he could not conjure up any image of the coming confrontation, had no idea what he would tell the Forest Lord. When at last they came before him, it was all he could do to stay on his feet.

  The Kapaka, seated on a stone, rose as the party approached. He was ashen, his face paler than his beard. Perkar almost thought he swayed when he saw them in their armor, with all the bloodstains. He closed his eyes for a long moment.

  The Forest Lord loomed larger than before; he seemed, somehow, to have become a part of the enormous tree, his huge bearlike body merging imperceptibly into bark and woo
d. His eye, now a wide black orb, seemed as sightless as they had been in the underneath. Perkar was vividly reminded of the Wild God. So low was Balati’s voice that he almost didn’t understand it.

  “So you see,” Balati told the Kapaka, “you have lied to me. I smell the blood of a mortal woman on them. They have slain her and stolen from my treasure.”

  The Kapaka bowed his head. When he finally spoke, it was with a semblance of conviction, but Perkar sensed the despair behind the seeming. “Lord, these men are young. They act foolishly. We will return your things and make restitution for the woman.”

  Balati may have considered that and he may not have; his head turned from side to side with glacial slowness.

  “I will give no more land to Human Beings,” he said finally. “And you must leave now, before I lose patience. That is the best I can do for you. No more words from you. Take your steel out of my realm. Take the things you have stained; I care nothing for them.”

  Apad was suddenly in motion, sword whipping out, a mad, inarticulate shriek on his lips. What then happened Perkar had to sort out later. He remembered Ngangata seeming just to appear in Apad’s path, the godsword cutting bright ribbons of light around him. Then Apad was lying on the ground, spitting blood from his mouth. Ngangata bent and carefully took the sword from where it had fallen. He seemed unscathed.

  “I think I’ll keep this for the moment,” he said.

  The Forest Lord, apparently unimpressed by any of this, turned and moved off into the forest. His bulk seemed to shiver, to break apart like a pile of leaves blown about by the wind. Each shard became a crow, a cloud of them, and they rose into the sky like a whirlwind of ashes.

  Perkar flinched away from the Kapaka’s gaze. The old man sat back down on his stone, lips pressed tight.

  “He had agreed to give us three more valleys, boys. Three more.” He closed his eyes again, put a hand to his temple.

  “Kapaka,” Ngangata said. “Kapaka, we had best go now.”

  Perkar could see the Alwal. They all looked agitated, kept glancing around themselves nervously.

  “Now,” the half man said.

  Atti touched Ngangata’s shoulder. “Couldn’t we wait a moment? Until the king recovers his strength?”

  Ngangata shook his head. “We are already too late, I think. The Huntress and the Raven will waken by morning if not sooner. If we are not far, far away by then, we will certainly die.”

  “But …” Eruka began, trailed off.

  “He told us to leave,” Perkar finished for him.

  “Yes. But I know these gods, and I know the Forest Lord. He is never of one mind. The Huntress and the Raven will want blood for this, and they will want to hunt. Thus we should go, now, be the best prey we can be. If we are very clever and very fast we may reach someplace beyond their power before they catch us.”

  The Kapaka looked up at that, his eyes watery and tired. “Then we die. No place is beyond their reach, I think.”

  Ngangata shook his head. “No,” he stated. “There is one.”

  Perkar patted Mang’s neck sympathetically. The horse’s flank heaved with exhaustion and his normally beautiful coat was foamy with sweat.

  “The horses can’t take much more of this,” he complained.

  “They have to,” Ngangata called back to him.

  The worst part of it was, despite the valiant exertion of the animals, they seemed to be making little progress. The hill country had no trails, and the ridges ran in the wrong direction. They spent all of their time climbing up and running down hills, picking their way around fierce thickets of brambles. Mang’s coat was crisscrossed with bleeding scratches, and none of the other horses was faring any better. Miraculously the Alwal, on foot, somehow managed to keep pace with them, though the eldest rode up behind Ngangata. Perkar tried to offer Digger a ride as well, but she seemed afraid to approach Mang closely, and, after all, she might not have really understood his offer. Unaccustomed as he was to reading Alwat expressions, it seemed to him that they understood their plight better than he; even the normally frolicsome Digger seemed grim, pushing through thorns and clambering over rocky ground with little regard for the countless wounds on her body.

  “Why must the Alwal flee?” Perkar asked. “Surely Balati knows they had no part in our folly.”

  “No. Are you deaf? I told you how the Forest Lord thinks. We were all with the Kapaka; he thinks of us all as the Kapaka. Whatever crime one of us commits, he sees that as the fault of all of us, even the Alwal. I told you this, and still you went ahead with your insane scheme.”

  “I didn’t understand,” Perkar said.

  “Well, you will,” Ngangata said. “And let’s leave this off. We have no time to fight amongst ourselves.”

  “What if we split up, went our own ways? Mightn’t they hunt only those of us who are actually guilty then?”

  “No. They would kill us all, alone, individually. Our only hope, together or alone, is to reach the Changeling. They will not follow us there; the Forest Lord fears his Brother.”

  “But what of the Changeling?” Atti asked. “Will he treat us any better?”

  “I have no idea. But I know for certain what will happen to us if we dally here.”

  They crossed over a ridge, and Perkar saw another line of hills in the distance. Between them and those ridges stretched a vast bottomland.

  “We can make better time down there, perhaps,” the Kapaka said hopefully.

  Perkar couldn’t answer. More than anything, he wanted rest. His clothes and armor felt like a skin of scabs, and he could not think clearly. His eyes were wooden balls, rattling aimlessly about in their sockets, his fingers continually slipping from the reins.

  “We need rest, Mang,” he muttered, patting the great beast’s neck again, leaning his forehead down upon his mane. The rich, warm scent of the horse seemed the only real thing in the world, a smell from home, the scent of the barn. Everything else was a dream, a fumbling, nightmarish dream in which he ran and ran and never got anywhere. He kicked Mang’s flanks, regretted it even as he did so, as the great heart under him strained to go just a little faster. Perkar felt his eyes blink closed, open reluctantly, blink closed again.

  He was standing near the city of white stone, ankle deep in water. The water sucked and pulled at his feet. He looked down at them, saw the angry, brilliant reflection of the sun there. Immensely tired, he stripped off his armor and clothes, crouched down in the water, and then, with a sigh, lay back in it, relaxed in its insistent tugging.

  When he opened his eyes again, there was the little girl, gazing at him with large, expressive black eyes. As he watched, she began to weep, and with a growing horror, he realized that her tears were red, like blood. Rivulets of it collected on her chin, cascaded down her chest, thickening, so that sheets of blood were pouring into the river at her feet. It was then that he realized that the entire river was blood, and the stench of it filled his head. He leapt up out of it, but the blood clung to him, even when he wiped at it frantically with his hands. He began to cry, but his own tears were blood, too. He began to shriek.

  Perkar jerked awake, gasping, his heart hammering in his chest. It took a long moment to remember where he was, what was happening. The dream had been so vivid that it seemed more concrete than waking. A miracle that he had not fallen off of his horse. The others were ahead; Mang had taken his dozing for a break. Reluctantly Perkar urged him on.

  When he caught up with the others, Apad was talking to Eruka. Perkar was a bit surprised; after recovering from Ngangata’s blow, Apad had been sullen and completely silent.

  “Perkar,” Apad said as he trotted up. “We thought we had lost you for a moment.”

  “I fell asleep. I need rest.”

  “We all do,” Apad said.

  “How are you, Apad? We’ve been worried about you.”

  “I’d be better with some rest, I think,” he said. “I was mad there for a while, wasn’t I?”

  Perkar shrugged.r />
  “I’ve never killed anyone before,” Apad admitted.

  “Nor have I,” said Perkar.

  “I just can’t believe …” Apad trailed off, his eyes becoming distant.

  “Later,” Perkar told him. “Think about it later. Right now we have to see that the Kapaka lives to reach the River.”

  Eruka nodded, but worry lay on his face, slumped on his shoulders. “Do you think Ngangata is right? Will the Huntress come after us?”

  “I think so,” Perkar said. “Ngangata knows this land, these gods. It was stupid of us to doubt him.”

  “I know,” Apad said. “Much as I hate to admit it. If we live through this, I suppose we have him to thank for it.” The tightness of Apad’s mouth suggested that this observation was not one he enjoyed making. “He should give me my sword back, though. If he’s right, we’re going to need it.”

  “If any of them will listen to any of us,” Perkar said. “But when the time comes, I will ask for you.”

  “Thank you, Perkar,” Apad said. “I’m sorry for what happened. I’m sorry I killed her. It’s just that I thought …”

  “The Lemeyi set you to it,” Eruka said. “He told us she was the Tiger Goddess, just waiting for her chance.”

  “The Lemeyi,” Apad said dully. “It is his fault. Why did he do that?”

  “I don’t think the Lemeyi needs a rational reason for doing things,” Perkar said, and then, after a moment: “Any more than we do.”

  After noon, the sky began to darken. A thunderhead gathered above the mountain, and cold, wet wind began to bluster down, bending the trees. Leaves flapped their pale undersides, and it seemed to Perkar as if they weren’t leaves at all, but thousands of white moths, clinging to dead branches. Ravens flew above, croaking their dire songs, ebony harbingers of the storm.

  “The hunt has begun,” Ngangata said grimly. “We still have far to go.”

  They redoubled their speed, and Perkar was again surprised at what Mang was willing to give him; though he could feel the animal shuddering, he broke from canter to gallop as they beat recklessly across the open floor of the bottomland. Perkar tried to calculate how far they had to go to the next line of hills. Engaged in that, he heard the first, faint howling. Wolves, and many of them, singing their hunger.