by Greg Keyes
It was later now. The mountains and even the hills were far behind them. They were more days than he could number—if he still counted them—from his home. A few times he had seen Human Beings; not his own folk, but dark, hard-faced men and women astride horses worth killing for. Many of the steeds were marked like his poor, dead Mang, striped with the hue of dried blood. The dark people and their horses watched him curiously as he drifted by. That had been later, when the River was no longer hurried, no longer gnashing through soil and stone with invisible teeth. Grassland rolled gently away from level banks thick with willow, tamarisk, and cottonwood. The sun was harsh, inescapable, burning their skin and then stripping it from them. Warning them to return to their softer land and then punishing them for not heeding the warning. Ngangata suffered the most. Though Perkar eventually stopped burning, his skin tanning a light coppery brown, Ngangata continued to be seared. His worst wounds had healed, and yet he never seemed much improved; he was weak, listless, spent much of his time in fevered sleep.
Perkar watched the halfling now as he turned uneasily, eyes closed but in constant motion behind swollen lids.
“It is the River eating him,” Perkar’s sword told him.
“Why doesn’t it eat me?” he asked.
“It does. I heal you, though not so much as I could if we were away from him. I have restored all but two of your heartstrings, but it is a struggle. He is trying to eat me, as well, but that is one advantage to being enclosed in this form. It is like a seed too hard for him to digest. If you were to drop me into him, he could consume me, but even that would take time.” The sword seemed to hesitate, then went on. “There is something else. The River seems to know you, somehow. Not the way you would know a person, or even understand something. He knows you as you might know a taste, a scent. I think even without me, he would not eat you yet.”
He nodded dumbly. The goddess had tried to warn him of this, told him that the River knew him, through her. He wondered if the blood he had loosed into the rivulet at Bangaka’s damakuta had also gone to him, but of course it had. For the first time, he realized that his dreams—the dreams that now made it nearly impossible to sleep—the dreams had begun a handful of days after his sacrifice. Had they begun when his blood reached the River? It seemed likely.
Almost from habit, Perkar examined his crimes. They had hardened in his time on the River. They no longer raged in him, diffuse, but lay sharp and cruel, like odd crystals that he could turn over and over in the palm of his mind, seeing each terrible, glittering surface, each stupid mistake. He could easily see the first blunder, the root from which all the others grew. From the moment he had loosed that blood, he had not done a single right thing. Even killing the Kapaka had not been enough for him, had not nearly been the end of it. Now he had doomed even Ngangata.
Doomed the only one who knows what you did, the most evil part of him whispered, now and then.
Ngangata awoke that evening, his eyes bleary. Perkar gave him a bit of water and some raw fish. Obtaining food—so long as it was fish—was not a problem. A hook cast into the water, baited or not, was soon heavy with their next meal. They had no way of cooking it, of course, but one could become accustomed to raw fish easily enough. On the islands, Ngangata recovered enough strength to set snares, and they had eaten rabbit, squirrel, and even deer once. The longer they remained on the islands, however, the more vivid and constant Perkar’s dreams became. Ngangata, though healthier on land, always returned them to the boat when Perkar became incapable of doing anything from lack of sleep. He begged the halfling to leave him, but Ngangata refused.
Today Ngangata was lucid, propped against the side of the boat. He drew a deep, weary breath.
“My fever is gone again,” he remarked.
“Good,” Perkar said.
“I’m not much company.”
Perkar frowned at him. “I’ve been thinking,” he muttered.
Ngangata tried to smile. “That has been a dangerous thing for you to do, in the past.”
He nodded his head in agreement. “Yes. But I’ve been thinking about you.”
“Even worse,” Ngangata pointed out
“I’ve been wondering if you couldn’t stay on one of the islands—if we ever see another. You would get stronger, perhaps strong enough to swim. He might let you swim to shore.”
Ngangata nodded. “I’ve thought of that. More likely he would eat me up right away. The River has no love at all for Alwat and he would probably mistake me for one.”
“Ngangata, we’ve seen people bathing in the water, remember? They didn’t seem to be in danger. It’s me, only me he wants. It might not even be the River that abducts us; it might be this boat. It was, after all, a gift from Karak, not the most trustworthy of gods.”
“It is the River,” Ngangata replied. “I can feel it. And I believe he will not let me go.”
“You could try. Otherwise, I’m afraid you will die. I don’t want you to die, Ngangata.”
“Very good of you,” the Alwa-Man replied. “But if I am to die, I doubt that you can do much about it. Tell me about your dreams again.”
Perkar was frustrated by this sudden change in topic. He wanted to argue longer, to convince Ngangata to try to leave the boat.
“I’ve told you already,” he answered shortly.
“Yes. But I’ve been thinking about them since. Tell me again.”
He sighed. “I dream about this River. But farther down, much farther down. As wide as he is now, there he is so broad that one bank cannot be seen from the other. And there is a city there, a city with more people than in all of the Cattle-Lands, in all of the valleys.”
“You see them, these people?”
“Yes, I see them, massed along the bank, fishing in boats, bathing, so many of them.”
“But the one girl you dream about?”
“She looks to be about twelve years old. Dark skin, very black hair, black eyes. Pretty, in a foreign sort of way. She seems …” He knit his brow together in concentration. “She is sad, worried. Frightened, I think. In my dream I always want to help her. I hear her call my name, but in some language I don’t comprehend. Does that make sense?”
“It makes sense,” Ngangata replied. “Of course it makes sense. It is a dream.”
“Yes,” Perkar muttered. “Her language, though, lately I have begun to understand it, or … I don’t know, this part is very strange. It makes me sick, because it happens when I am awake, as well.”
“What?”
He drew in a steadying breath, wished for the thousandth time that he had a flask of hot woti.
“I see a cottonwood,” he said, gesturing out at the bank. “But I do not think ‘cottonwood.’ I think ‘hekes.’” The strange word slipped off of his tongue and left a bad taste behind. “I see the sky, and I think ‘ya.’ It is as if the dreams are swallowing me up and leaving themselves in my place.”
Ngangata looked evenly at him. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think the River wants you to do something, something involving this girl. Or maybe it is the girl herself; maybe she is a goddess or some powerful sorceress. I think you have been compelled to go to this city down-River, summoned the way a shamaness summons a familiar or a god. I think I am caught up in this with you because the River is very, very powerful but not all that wakeful or discerning. Like the Forest Lord, he makes no great distinction between you and me. We entered the River together, that is all he knows. And then you woke him up by trying to go upstream, made him notice us.”
“I’m sorry.” Perkar sighed.
“You’ve said that so often that it is just a sound to me,” Ngangata replied. “But, Perkar, I hold no ill will toward you—not anymore, at least. The River drew you to this, somehow, guided you.”
“No,” Perkar disagreed. “No, my stupidity was my own. Even if the damned River chose me somehow, that was my fault, too.” He explained, then, for the first time, about the goddess, his love for her, her warning, his blood and seed loosed
into the stream. Ngangata listened patiently, and when Perkar was done, he slowly nodded his head.
“I see,” he said ruefully. “I have had the ill fortune to meet a hero, a lover of goddesses. Now everything comes clear. Had you told me this when we met, I would have ridden far away, avoided you for the rest of my life.” He grinned sardonically. “It is my firm policy to avoid heroes,” he confided.
“I’m not a hero,” Perkar snapped. “I’m a fool.”
“There is no difference,” Ngangata answered. “A hero is merely a fool glorified in song. A hero is words woven around mistakes and tragedy to make them seem fine.”
“I don’t …”
Ngangata sighed. “Believe it or not, I heard the great songs as a boy, too. At first I loved them, imagined myself as the great hero Iru Antu or Rutka. But as I grew older, I knew myself. Knew that I would never be a hero; heroes are always Human, and whatever I am, I am not that. When I realized this truth, I began to hear the same songs in a different way, Perkar. I began imagining that I was not the hero, but one of his friends or companions. Or even an enemy.” He glanced at Perkar meaningfully, to make sure he understood. He was beginning to, and though he had thought himself numb, Ngangata’s words struck pain in him.
“What happens to the hero’s companions, Perkar? Destiny cares little for them. They die so that he can avenge them, or they betray him so that he can punish them. The ground where a hero passes is littered with the bodies of his friends and enemies.”
Perkar closed his eyes, remembering the dead faces of Eruka, Apad, the old woman in the cave whose name he had never known. The Kapaka without even the dignity of a burial. Ngangata, suffering from day to day, barely alive. And, of course, the goddess, who tried to stop him, save him from destiny.
“She wanted me to be a man rather than a hero,” Perkar said, and to his horror discovered a tear trickling down his face. “She tried to make me into a man.”
“Then she is a rare goddess,” Ngangata replied. “The gods love making men into heroes. It is their nature. They do it without even meaning to, most of the time. It is in the nature of their relationship with us.”
“This takes none of the blame from me,” Perkar muttered.
“No. But if a song is ever made from this, it will take all your blame, place it on the shoulders of the gods.”
Perkar looked up fiercely, though more tears were starting. “Such a song would be a lie,” he snarled.
Ngangata snorted. “Songs are lies. That is their nature.”
Night came, and Perkar lay on his back, studying the stars, lulled by the gentle motion of the boat but not yet willing to sleep, to turn himself over to River dreams. Ngangata was undoubtedly right. The city downstream, the girl, the River—something was pulling him there, against his will. When he got there, did whatever they wanted, would he be released? At the moment the only release he could conceive of that would give him peace was death. What he wanted more than anything was to see Ngangata escape, cut loose from him, no longer the companion of a hero. Ngangata did not deserve such a fate. If the “Ekar Perkar” were to be sung one day, it must not contain a stanza about Ngangata dying in his arms.
Perkar took out his sword, lay with it across his chest.
“What is your name?” he asked it.
“I’m not sure I remember,” the sword responded.
“I have a question for you, no-name sword.”
“Yes.”
“Will you permit me to die? Cut my own heartstrings, here, now?”
“No, I cannot do that. I know you desire it, but that is not how I am made.”
“What if I throw you in the River, as you suggested?”
“That was hypothetical. I would never let you do that.”
“You are cruel, then, nameless; it would be best for us all.”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps you are called to do something wonderful.”
“I don’t believe that,” he countered. “I don’t believe that there is anything wonderful to do.”
The sword didn’t answer right away. Above, a cloud drifted across the stars. Ya’ned, sighed the dream in his head. Cloud.
“Harka,” said the sword.
“What?”
“That was my name, long ago. I have been called many things, as a sword. Jade, Sliver, Fang. But my name was Harka. I was a very young god … I barely remember it. I went out into the world clothed as an eagle, and was killed. The people who killed me were kind enough; they sent me back to be reborn on the mountain. The Forest Lord caught me, and I was born as this sword.”
“Harka. A fine name. Harka, please let me die. I’m tired of being dragged this way and that, of having no will of my own.”
If a sword could snort in contempt, it did. “You know nothing of that,” it replied.
He lapsed back into silence, wondering if he would ever learn not to shame himself.
He closed his eyes only briefly but dreamed much. Dawn opened his lids back up. Harka was still across his chest.
“You wake just in time,” the sword informed him. “Someone wants to speak to you.”
Puzzled, Perkar sat up. The sun was a mountain of red light directly before their bow. He Winked at it. Ngangata was still asleep. What could the sword mean?
Something on the bank caught in the sunlight, pulled his eyes that way. The Riverbank was thick with reeds and bamboo, a virtual forest denser than any he had seen in many days. They were just passing the mouth of a small river; a bar of sand extended toward them like a tongue, deposited there by the incoming stream.
A woman stood on the bar, watching them. It was she, of course, slim, beautiful, shining in the morning. She was weeping, her eyes fixed on him. As he watched, she walked toward him. He could see her reluctance, see the muscles in her legs bunching, as if she were being dragged by some force he could not discern. Her foot stepped off the bar, touched the water, and she melted. When that happened he heard, as clearly as a silver bell, a little gasp of pain, of horror, and even worse, of submission.
She appeared again, stepping from the mouth of the stream, stepping Riverward.
“I told you,” he heard her say, her voice just audible. “I warned you, my love! But you can escape him, as I cannot …” Then she was gone again, eaten by the River.
Always, he thought. Every moment. He had known that she was in pain. Only now was he beginning to understand it. He had promised to rid her of this pain as if she were a young girl with a cruel father or a nagging aunt. How she must have hated him for promising that, for mocking her agony with his youthful stupidity.
Far behind now, she appeared again, still watching him, replaying her ancient fate.
Live, Perkar, he thought she called, but her voice was very faint.
II
Dread and the Living
Hezhi stretched back on the bench, let sunlight drench her, seep through her skin and down into her bones. A breeze sighed through the ancient cottonwood in the center of the courtyard, stirred the white yarrow, and enfolded her in its fragrance. Her face felt transparent, the fine little bones beneath her dark skin like brittle glass. Here, in the courtyard, she could close her eyes and yet the light shone through; there was no darkness to be found even if one sought it. Her eyes were weary from avoiding darkness, and closing them was an extravagant luxury.
“Too much sun can burn you, Princess,” Tsem’s great voice informed her gently.
“I’ll stay here awhile longer, I think,” she told him.
“Princess, what of Ghan? You don’t want to anger him, do you?”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care if he is angry. I want to be out here.” Away from the darkness, away from the image of D’en that darkness always awoke.
“Princess, you haven’t been to the library in days. This isn’t like you.”
“It doesn’t matter, Tsem,” she said. “It doesn’t matter anymore, don’t you see? I found him. I found D’en. D’enata.” Her voice trembled on his name; she h
ad never said it aloud as a ghost name, ever. But she said it now and knew it for the truth, though his body—or what it had become—was yet living.
“You and Qey, you were right all along. It was better that I didn’t know.”
“You would have learned eventually,” Tsem pointed out.
“Eventually, when it’s all over, when I either join them or join my father. And I wouldn’t have had to see him, then. You don’t know, Tsem.”
“I know I don’t, Princess.”
“I would have been happier, Tsem, if I had never tried to find out.”
“Really?” Tsem said. “What’s the point of that sort of speculation? I might have been happier if I’d been born free, among my mother’s people. But I might not have. I’ll never know.”
“It’s not the same thing,” she snapped.
“You am right,” Tsem pronounced thickly. “Tsem not understand what Princess feel.”
She fought to be angry at that. Tsem only used his stupid voice with her when he was questioning her perceptiveness. She couldn’t find her anger, though. She found sadness instead, and fear, fear of what she would do without her huge friend.
“You’re always good to me, Tsem. I’m sorry. Maybe our situations are similar, in that way.”
Tsem stroked her head. “No,” he said. “I think you’re right about that. I only meant that wondering what might have been is not as productive as planning what might be.”
“Where does a slave learn this kind of wisdom, Tsem?”
Tsem coughed out a short, humorless laugh. “It is the kind of wisdom slaves have, Princess, if they have any at all.”
She pushed thoughtfully at her dress. “I wish I knew when the priests will test me again.”
“What good would that do?”
She lifted one hand in an I-don’t-know sort of gesture. “In the meantime …” she began.
“Yes, Princess?”
“In the meantime I want you to deliver a message for me.”
Tsem raised his eyebrows. “A message?”
