Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  The sword Apad had been wielding lay near him, quiet now. For a moment, Perkar considered taking it; it seemed in many ways more powerful than the one he bore. But it hadn’t saved Apad, and the jade sword had saved him, for better or worse. He arranged the curved blade on Apad’s chest and left it there, regretting he had no time to bury his friend. He had to go, though. He might still be of some use to the Kapaka. He did spare the time to sing the “Ghost Homecoming Song” for Apad. He burned the last of his incense while singing; some for Apad, some few Mang, and after a moment’s hesitation, some for his slain enemies.

  Return to Your Mountain

  Ani Waluka, Rutkirul,

  Lioness.

  Don new armor

  Walk forth anew

  We may meet again

  As friends …

  Feeling a bit stronger, he turned and, for the second time, began ascending the last ridge before the River, following the tracks of the hunt.

  Perkar found the Alwal at the top of the hill where he had left them. They had acquitted themselves well, armed only with cane spears. He wished he could have seen them fight. Five dead wolves were mute testimony to their determination. Digger lay curled around her torn throat, one hand still grasping her spear; the other end of it was fixed in the mouth of a wolf; the point emerged at the base of its skull. Inexplicably, tears started in his eyes, though years later he could not explain why he chose that moment to cry and not one earlier or later. He sank to his knees, sobbing. For himself, he supposed, for Digger, for Apad, for the nameless woman back in the cave.

  Still blinking back tears, Perkar started down the slope. Gravel and scrub soon gave way to sloping expanses of red, sandy rock. It was, in fact, a plateau of solid stone, though soil filled low places and creases in it, giving tenuous purchase to the roots of short thick pines and cedars. Occasional deeper depressions held horsetails and willow, small wet islands of green amidst the rust.

  Even on stone, the tracks of the hunt were clear, scratches in the rock, the shed hair of beasts, a stray arrow here and there. He strained his senses for some audible sign of the hunt or his companions, but, try as he might, he heard nothing save the wind; the world seemed all silence and blue sky, the clouds and thunder that rode with the hunt now flown far away.

  At least he had seen no other Human bodies. The rest of the expedition had made it this far. He suddenly wondered if he had lain as dead for a single night or many. He asked the sword.

  “Two nights. This is the third day since your battle.”

  Then his remaining companions were dead or escaped, probably the former. But surely he would find their bodies; the Huntress had not made trophies of Apad or himself.

  It took longer than he thought it would to reach the gorge, and there he found Eruka. The flaxen-haired singer stared up at the sky with empty eye sockets, his mouth slack. The godsword was still clutched in his hand. There were two dead wolves nearby, and much blood on the stones. Tracks led to the edge of the gorge.

  The Changeling had cut deep into the stone, deep indeed, and the striated walls of the ravine were sheer and unforgiving. There was no path down that he could see, only the precipice. Steeling himself, Perkar gazed over the rim and thus saw the Changeling for the first time outside of a dream.

  It both did and did not resemble his visions. Even in the sunlight, the River appeared cold, shadowed, the color of a killer’s gray-eyed glance. Fast-flowing, gnawing eternally at the stone, he hissed hungrily between close walls. He was not huge or wide here—not the horizon-spanning monster of Perkar’s nightmares—but for being this close to his source, the Changeling was broad indeed, a faint but certain promise of the River by the white city.

  How had his companions gotten down? The hunt must have stopped here, and Ngangata and the Kapaka were yet unaccounted for. They had to have descended to the River. He peered over the edge, puzzled. There were no hidden paths there, no switchback trails in the absolute verticality of the walls.

  Then he saw it, on a sandbar, his explanation. The carcass of a horse. He shook his head, trying to deny what should have been obvious. A slight ticking on the stone alerted him, and he turned at the sound.

  A man stood there, naked save for a long cloak of black feathers that fell from about his shoulders to midcalf. His skin was whiter than bone, where it showed. Luminous black eyes watched Perkar from beneath beetled, ebony brows and an unruly mop of hair, also black.

  “I know you,” Perkar whispered, drawing his sword.

  “And I know you,” Karak answered, his thin lips parting in a grin. “The Huntress believed you dead, but I knew better.”

  “Why?”

  “Why, why? Mortals and gods alike ask that question more often than I care to hear it. I let you live because I like pretty things.”

  “You think me pretty?” Perkar asked incredulously. He tried to imagine what he might look like now, encrusted in ten kinds of gore, the blanched puckers and slashes of unnaturally healing wounds, his matted and stinking hair.

  Karak smirked. “No. But that fight—you and that other Human, charging down on the hunt, killing the Huntress’ own mount—that was a very pretty thing. A shame if no one survived to polish such a gem.”

  “I don’t know that I believe you,” Perkar said, keeping the sword up and steady. A hard gust of wind enfolded them, flapping Karak’s long Crow-feather cloak, bathing Perkar’s bare torso in coolness. “I saw you kill Apad.”

  “So I did. After all, you couldn’t be allowed to win. But you—you should have been dead, little mortal. Even now I see your one heartstring—such a thin little thing. I’m afraid the Changeling will eat even that, if you go down to him.”

  “What happened to my friends?”

  “The other Humans? They flew into his clutches. That was a pretty thing, too; I came to tell you about it.”

  “Did any of them live?”

  “All but this one,” Karak said, indicating Eruka, and Perkar’s heart soared for an instant, until the Crow God’s meaning came clear.

  “All but this one; he did not fly. He stood here on the edge and waited for us. He was frightened, but less frightened of us than the edge.”

  “The others?”

  Karak cocked his head, pointed to the base of a tree. A broken rope was tied to it.

  “He stretched that rope between these trees; we did not see it, for his sword was blazing. Two wolves and a huntsman we lost, for they tripped on the rope and tumbled over the cliff.”

  “I’m proud of him. I wish he had killed more. But what of my other friends?”

  “They flew over the edge when we approached.”

  “They jumped, you mean.”

  “That isn’t as pretty.”

  “Are they dead? All dead?” It seemed incredible that anyone could survive such a fall.

  Karak shrugged, a slight movement. “I don’t know. Shall we see?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can take you to the bottom of the gorge; no farther. Even I fear the Brother.”

  “You? Who swallowed the sun?” Perkar asked sarcastically.

  “The Changeling can swallow much more than that,” Karak replied softly.

  Karak drew the cloak more tightly about himself, as if he were cold, and shivered in the way of gods. In an instant he was a Raven again, huge, his gleaming beak a reminder of Apad’s fate. Perkar considered trying to avenge his friend, but it was a thin thought, an obligatory one that sank away into his confusion and weariness. After all, he had already died for honor once, more or less, and killed for it, too. If Karak wanted to help him, no matter how whimsical his reason, Perkar would be a fool to spurn him.

  Karak flapped into the air, took a hold on Perkar’s shoulders in precisely the way he had taken on Apad, before pecking into his brains.

  “Best that you grip my legs,” Karak said, “Else I will have to dig into your shoulders too hard with my claws.”

  Perkar acknowledged with a nod, reached around the scaly b
ird legs, wrapping his arms so that both his hands and the crook of his elbow held him there. Nevertheless, when the Crow God flapped again and they took to the air, his claws bit uncomfortably into Perkar’s flesh.

  They floated lazily down into the gorge, Karak’s wings popping and snapping in the air. The Raven hugged close to the sheer stone, intent, it seemed, on not flying over the surface of the River. He deposited Perkar on a narrow shingle of gravel and fallen rock.

  “I don’t see your friends,” he said. “But perhaps they are here. I can see nothing, this close to the River.”

  Indeed, Karak seemed somehow paler, his feathers less lustrous. As Perkar watched, a few actually faded to a dull gray.

  “You see? This is what you wanted to battle, Perkar. Even asleep, he already begins to eat at me.” The Crow hesitated and cocked his head to the side. “But a battle is coming, Perkar,” he hissed softly. “A war of gods and men. You would be wise to choose the right side.”

  “A war?” Perkar grunted. “I’ll have no more of that.”

  “You have no choice, pretty thing.” Karak stretched his wings and beat once more at the air. His flight seemed labored, but the higher he flew, the more dexterous he became.

  Perkar frowned at his retreating form. “Thank you,” he called out. “But how did you know my plan to fight the Changeling?”

  Karak uttered a short, harsh laugh. “With which of these did the Forest Lord arm himself against his Brother?” he called, in the mocking voice of the Lemeyi.

  For an instant Perkar’s dulled brain did not understand, then fury stabbed through the fog.

  “You!” he shrieked. “That was you.”

  “Indeed,” came the diminishing voice of the Raven. “And you have everything you desired. Your enemy at hand and a weapon to kill him with. Good luck to you, Perkar. I will send you one last gift …”

  And, despite Perkar’s curses and imprecations, he was gone and did not return.

  Perkar sat on the shingle until the sun westered and the long shadow of the gorge consumed him. Then, not knowing what else to do, he rose stiffly to his feet and began to walk along the narrow shore, downstream. He passed the sandbar, where the corpse of the horse lay, bloated and covered with flies. He recognized it, of course; the Kapaka’s horse. Reluctantly Perkar waded out to it, sinking up to his waist. The water felt like any water he had ever been in, save for a faint cold tingling that might have been the result of his exhaustion. Two days’ sleep, it seemed, was not enough to heal such grievous wounds as his without cost.

  The horse stank terribly, but Perkar managed to free the packs that still remained upon it. He found full waterskins (he did not trust the River) and some food, the latter miraculously still dry in its resin-impregnated sack. These he took, along with a single bar of incense and a flask of woti, presumably one of the gifts the Kapaka had been saving for the Forest Lord. He trembled as he took them, remembering the dream he had shattered, the misfortune he had brought to his people, grandchildren who would not see their grandfather again. The Kapaka was dead at heart before the hunt came after them, dead the moment the Forest Lord revoked his offer of new lands.

  My king is dead, he realized, and his knees buckled, betrayed him into the cold River water. This was what it had all come to. A strange, new kind of panic came over him, a lucid surge of horror. Since Apad had killed the guardian, everything had seemed a terrible dream, the sort one could never run fast enough in. Now the running was done, the nightmare over, and he awoke to find it all true, morning without light or comfort.

  He had not merely led his friends to their deaths, not merely thwarted his king’s wishes; he had destroyed the Kapaka, killed him.

  For the first time since leaving his father’s valley, he felt the eyes of his people fasten on him, accusing. He had felt them before, but then they looked upon him with amusement, with disdain at worst, seeing a “man” without a wife, without lands, without Piraku.

  Now they saw a monster. His father, his mother, his brother, his grandfather, his honored ancestors—even they saw him so, the man who had killed the king, and more. For in killing the Kapaka, he might have slain his people. If the Forest Lord was now their enemy …

  They had been fools. He had been so much worse than a fool. No weapon could cut the Forest Lord, no host could stand before the hunt. If his people marched against Balati—for revenge, for territory—they would be swept away like autumn leaves before a whirlwind.

  Because of me.

  He thrashed about in the shallows, searching for the king’s body, for anything. For something to save. But he knew, even as he thrust numb fingers against the rocky bottom, knew that the Changeling had taken his share, too, taken the Kapaka to make pebbles of his bones and fish of his flesh. Taken even that.

  So Perkar continued on, stumbling, almost blind with remorse.

  It was nearly dark when he saw the spark of flame ahead, and the only hope he had felt since meeting Karak quickened his pace. The wind shifted his way, and he smelled burning juniper. It seemed delicious to him, more desirable than any food. When he got closer, he could see a Human form huddled near the fire, eyes reflecting the flames as they watched him approach.

  “Ngangata!” Perkar called. An arm raised weakly, waving.

  “I think you did slow them down,” Ngangata told him, his voice scratchy and weak. “For what it was worth. It is good that Apad died well.” He seemed genuine.

  “I should have died, too.”

  Ngangata did not respond to that. “The Huntress was dismounted,” he said, after coughing a bit. “You must have killed her lion.”

  Perkar twitched his lip. “My sword did.”

  Ngangata nodded. “Well. We could have all had swords like that, and it would have made no difference. You and Apad did well. It was my mistake. I meant to bring us out farther upstream, where the river-wall is lower.”

  “Your fault?” Perkar declared incredulously. “Apad and Eruka and I broke the trust. We stole the weapons, killed their guardian. You have done nothing but try to salvage something from the tatters we left you. Nothing here is your fault, Ngangata. I only wish you had killed me, back in that cave where we fought.”

  Ngangata coughed raggedly. “That might have been best,” he agreed. “Apad and Eruka would have never had the courage to enter the mountain by themselves.”

  “I know that. Why didn’t you beat me when we fought? You could have, and I deserved it.”

  Ngangata looked dully up at Perkar. “Do you know how many times I have had to fight because of what I am? Seven days haven’t gone by since childhood without some loudmouth challenging me. In my youth, I always fought to win, and I usually did.” He gazed out across the River. “I believed that someday men would respect me, if not like me. But when I beat them, it was never said that I was fast, or strong, or brave. Always it was said I won because I was not Human, a beast. When men say things like that, they talk themselves into doing things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Years ago, a man—never mind his name—I fought him, much as I fought you. But I beat him, in front of his friends. Later that night they all came for me, battered me senseless. I was lucky to survive.”

  Even in his present state, Perkar was shocked. “No warrior would ever do such a cowardly thing.” He gasped. “Piraku …”

  “Does not apply to one such as myself,” Ngangata said dryly.

  Perkar, ready to continue his protest, stopped. The Kapaka had said nearly the same thing. And if Perkar had been humiliated by Ngangata, what would Apad have said? He would have asserted precisely what Ngangata claimed—that the half Alwa had an unfair advantage over Humans.

  “I see,” Perkar said instead. “Yes, I can see that.”

  Ngangata waved his hand. “It’s an old story,” he said, dismissing the matter.

  Darkness fell complete, though after a time the Pale Queen peeped over the canyon rim. Frogs sang in the River, and the two men hud
dled closer to the fire as mosquitoes tried to drain what was left of their blood.

  “I’m glad you lived,” Perkar said, after a time. “But the king …?”

  “The Kapaka is dead,” Ngangata replied. “He hit the rocks and the River took him. I think he was dead even as we jumped; one of the Huntress’ arrows pierced him.”

  “I found his horse,” Perkar told him, feeling his throat tighten as he said it. “I’ve got some water and food.”

  “Good. We’ll need those.”

  “The Kapaka …” Perkar gasped, choking back a groan, his odd panic suddenly intensified.

  “Many died,” Ngangata answered him. “We survived. That is a fact.”

  “He was not your king,” Perkar hissed.

  “No. He was much more than that to me,” Ngangata shot back wearily.

  Perkar stared at the glimmer in Ngangata’s eyes and wondered what he meant, what lay there behind the black orbs.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I don’t know you at all, Ngangata.” He shifted, peered more closely at his companion. “What wounds do you have?”

  Reluctantly the half man pulled his shift aside. A bloody bandage covered his ribs. “An arrow there,” he said. “And my right leg is broken. Not bad for an encounter with the Huntress and a fall down a canyon.”

  A sudden inspiration struck Perkar. “Take this sword,” he said. “It can heal you.”

  “No,” said the voice in his ear. “Saving you bound our heartstrings together. I explained that. No one else can bear me unless those strings are severed, and that, of course, would kill you.”

  Ngangata saw the look of consternation cross his face.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “My sword speaks to me,” Perkar told him hesitantly. “It says it can heal only me.”

  Ngangata lifted his shoulders, attempting a shrug. “No matter,” he said. “I will heal. My leg is splinted already, and the bleeding from the arrow has stopped.”

  Perkar doubted that last; he had seen the flecks of blood when Ngangata coughed. He did not mention this, however.