Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  Tsem nodded-weary assent.

  The last of the priests fell at the mouth of the tunnel, and Perkar relinquished his wildest hope—that the thing would pursue its tormentors out into the sand he could barely see beyond. He gritted his teeth and prepared to charge. Then he whooped, because the monster did glide out of the end of the tunnel. There was a furious clatter around it, which puzzled him momentarily until he placed the strange sound. Arrows, smacking into the stone surface of the duct. Soldiers, firing from outside.

  Standing at the lip of the tunnel, the world yawning wide before them, Perkar quickly assessed the tableau. Ten or so soldiers were hurriedly trading bows for swords; three more were running like frightened dogs. A wisp of rose curled against the western horizon was all that remained of the day, stars and moon smothered by churning clouds. The landscape was sand, scrub, and beyond that, green fields.

  Shrieks went up as the demon fell among the men, and Perkar, remembering his battle with the Huntress, felt a brief, diluted pity.

  They ran. Despite Tsem’s huge frame and powerful legs, his wounds and weight were taking their toll; the giant was soon staggering. The shouts behind them were still too near.

  “Come on,” Perkar said. “I’ll carry her.”

  “No,” Tsem gasped. “No, I have her.”

  “Where? Where do we go?”

  “West,” he said. “West into the desert.”

  Where the Giant came by his energy, Perkar did not know, but he kept going. He resisted the urge to look back, knowing that Harka would warn him if the god-creature came close enough to be a danger. The sounds of combat died away behind them, just as they entered one of the fields. Knee-high plants, gray in the darkness, shivered in the wind.

  “Best turn, Perkar,” Harka said.

  Perkar slowed and drew a long breath. “Keep going,” he told Tsem. “Just keep going.”

  Waiting, legs braced wide, he watched for the tiling. “At least I’ll fight some part of the Changeling,” he muttered.

  “Too bad the soldiers didn’t occupy it longer,” Harka said. “If we could have managed to get farther from the River …”

  “How much farther?”

  “Farther than we can get, I’m afraid. See, there it is.”

  Perkar could make it out, running up one of the irrigation canals, a dancing, deadly, many-colored flame. Of course up one of the canals—the canals were part of the stinking River. He should move, fight it out in the field, where it might have less power. He glanced back at Tsem and Hezhi: They were still paralleling the watercourse, unaware. It might pass him by and follow them instead. He tightened his grip on Harka.

  “Look,” Harka seemed to whisper, though the “voice” in his ear was no softer than it ever was. “See its heartstrings?”

  “I do,” Perkar said. Seven strands of living light knotted together behind the ephemeral, monstrous form, bearing down on where he waited.

  The ghost hesitated, perhaps puzzled by him. Staring at it towering over him, venomous, deadly, he saw no point in waiting for it to attack him. He shouted and slashed, Harka flaring with light, cascades of flame enveloping him. His blow went deep into nothing, until Harka’s edge struck a heartstrand, and that split with a force that nearly tore the sword from his hands. Something struck into him, too, a deep flare of heat, liquid metal filling his bones, a pain unreal in its intensity.

  “Fight, fight,” Harka urged frantically. “We have two heartstrings left!”

  Grimly Perkar struck back into the withering light.

  Hezhi felt Tsem’s blood soaking her, seeping through her clothes, sticky against her skin. Like honey. She wanted it all to stop, for Yen to be Yen and still alive, for Tsem to be unwounded, to have never even met the inhuman Perkar. She shut her eyes tight, wishing, wishing.

  Tsem gasped and stumbled, nearly cried out. Two more steps, and the great legs folded them to the earth.

  “Princess,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I have to rest, just for a moment. Keep this way, and I’ll follow.”

  “Tsem!” she urged. “No, Tsem.”

  He set her gently on her feet and then sank back to a sitting position. “Go on,” he said.

  Back behind them a shout rang out. Turning, she saw the ghost, a scintillating cloud, and the black shadow of a man silhouetted against it.

  “This is what comes of my wishes,” she muttered. “This.”

  A hot surge of anger cut through, knifing up from below her fear and helplessness. Men were dying all around her, and she was curled up, wishing it all away—when she was the one who had wished it all into existence. Her mouth set in a little line, fists clenched, she stalked back toward Perkar and the ghost. She was not helpless. She was Hezhi Yehd Cha’dune, and ancestors of hers had tumbled cities.

  She suddenly felt the River, pulsing along beside her in the irrigation canal, felt as if it were part of her own bloodstream. She drank from it, her arms and legs flaring with energy, stretching out and out until she could embrace the canal, the field, Perkar, the demon. The demon she did embrace, tightly, angrily.

  It knew its danger; she felt its slow mind understand, and it flickered past Perkar, a spider made of lightning. She heard Perkar groan, but her attention was not on him anymore. She was actually smiling when her hand that was more than a hand reached out and into the ghost, seized the knotted strands of light within it and squeezed. Fire rushed up her arms, a brass drum crashing in her head with each heartbeat. The demon writhed in her grip, lashed at her, died. When it died, she ate it up. It was a fine meal, demon.

  Hezhi cackled gleefully as her embrace grew to include everything around her, even things she could not see. The soldiers pursuing them, the walls of the city—and it was flowing out yet, a pool spreading.

  She slapped at the soldiers first, though what she really wanted were the priests. The priests, who created Yen, the betrayer, the priests who put D’en down in the dark, who held her down, naked on the bed. She could make rubble of Nhol, and she would, she would. Feeling the walls, she marveled at how easily they might crumble. The soldiers were dead now, their feeble little lights gone. With sudden delight Hezhi sensed what must be a priest, a sort of blank place, the shadow of a person. He was standing on the wall, watching her, chanting. She danced and shouted as she pulled him apart, sent the shreds of his spirit scattering around the city.

  Nearer her, Perkar was still alive. He felt strange, stronger somehow than the others. Of course he did; Yen stabbed him in the heart and he was still alive. He was probably the only one here who could stop her, she mused. And so, laughing, she turned her attention to him, as he came unsteadily toward her. Yes, there was a little knot tying him to his sword. A simple enough thing to sever …

  She lived in that instant for a long while, stretched out, her head in the mountains, her body as long as the world. A hideous and beautiful cruelty saturated her, a delicious thing.

  I will live awake, she reveled. I am awake! Flesh and bone could know hunger better and deeper than any spirit, any ghost. That was why gods wore flesh, was it not? And she had been sleeping, sleeping in this flesh for so long! But even the pain of denial felt wonderful—as a memory to make the feast more pleasurable.

  Perkar was quite close. Best kill him quickly.

  Tsem grasped her from behind gently. She hadn’t noticed him, so familiar was he, so close to her.

  “Do not touch me, Tsem,” she snarled.

  “Princess,” he wheezed, “Princess, please.”

  How feebly Tsem’s heart beat! How slowly his flame flickered. The tiniest thought from her would end it. But even with her new vision, her anger and her pristine malice, she did not desire that. Tsem should live, should be her right hand in the new city she would build. She would need one loyal servant, at least. And so instead of snuffing him out, she reached in, intent upon fixing him, strengthening his weak strands. Healing him.

  And she could not. She could twist, tear, break. But she could not heal Tsem.

 
; In that instant—that long frozen moment, Perkar still stepping toward her with glacial slowness—she stood again on the roof of the Great Hall, gazing down. How simple to jump this time, to consume herself, not with death, but with power, with complete certainty. Life without doubt or fear, if she jumped. The little girl would die, but a terrible and exquisite creature would be born in her place, a goddess.

  But she was Hezhi, and she had faced this before. Suddenly the difference between death and power seemed illusory. She would have certainty, but not hope or love or longing. Only certainty and hunger. A rat had certainty and hunger, a ghost did, too. She had always, always wanted more. Love, purpose, comfort.

  And so, like all of the other times, she stepped back from the precipice, and as she did so a hard, clear wind blew out of her. When it was gone, when she shrank back to what she was, the earth rushing to slap her, Tsem caught her up, hugged her to his bloody chest.

  Perkar watched in astonishment as the monster suddenly writhed, clenched in upon itself, and then flew apart.

  “Harka?”

  “Behind us!” the sword said, snapping his head around with the force of the danger behind him. Hezhi stood there, a tiny figure in the dark. But around her, something rushed and swirled, heaved like black water. Perkar’s face tingled as from a rush of cold wind.

  “She will kill us,” Harka stated flatly. “Unless you are very swift indeed.”

  For an instant, Perkar’s mouth worked. As in the cavern beneath Balat, everything was coming too quickly, far too quickly for him to comprehend. But Harka was showing him now—the living mass of strands within Hezhi, the rope of shuddering lightning feeding into her from the canal. Strangling a cry, he began to run.

  He had been right all along. If he was meant to save Hezhi, then he should kill her. Brother Horse’s words seemed to jab at him from the maelstrom of his thoughts. About the River walking free, one day, destroying everything. And it was Hezhi’s feet the River was to walk upon.

  His own legs betrayed him after only a few steps. Grimly he struggled back up, steeling himself for the girl’s assault. She had many more strands than the monster he had just faced. He had no chance, but he had to try, for Apad, for Eruka. For the king.

  He staggered on, and no attack came. With each step he summoned more of his anger, her face in his dreams that allowed him no sleep. If he could only land a single stroke before he died, his ghost might know at least some peace.

  When he was less than a score of steps from her, the strands suddenly unknotted, whipped about like a whirlwind untangling, and swirled back into the water. Hezhi trembled, her eyes wide, sightless, and fell. Her face bore a little smile that seemed almost triumphant. Perkar raised Harka and advanced.

  “Can I kill her now?” he gasped.

  “With a single stroke. But she is no longer …”

  “That is all I need to know.” He stepped forward.

  Tsem saw him approach, seemed puzzled an instant before his dull eyes gleamed with understanding. The Giant snarled, raised his bandaged arm to ward off the blow, curled his huge body to protect her. Perkar took the final step, felt Harka, hard and effective in his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the Giant. “But this ends now.”

  The Giant did not answer, but followed the gleam of Harka in the moonlight as Perkar raised him.

  For the king, he thought again, summoning the image of that hollow ghost, caparisoned and parading at the Changeling’s whim. Focusing his anger to make the stroke clean, merciful. Tsem certainly deserved that. But the memory that lit behind his eyes was not of the king, it was of the woman in the cave, the touch of her gaze upon his as her life swiftly ebbed.

  An instant before it would have been combat. Now it was murder. Tsem’s loyalty did not deserve murder. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. This is weakness, he told himself. Avoiding what must be done. But the steadfast light in Tsem’s eyes was more adamant than any shield, and the anger in Perkar splintered against it like the flawed weapon it was. Trembling, he lowered Harka, plunging the blade into the black soil, following it down to his knees. A sob of frustration tore loose from his throat. He did not understand—anything. But he couldn’t kill Tsem and Hezhi, whatever sort of monster she might have been a moment ago.

  “Come on,” he said to Tsem. “Can you still walk?”

  Tsem nodded his head in dull affirmation and, still wary, stood, his charge tiny in his huge grip. With Perkar trailing, they walked away from Nhol, away from the River. None of them looked back.

  Near midnight, Tsem finally collapsed, moaning once and then toppling almost gracefully. Perkar disengaged Hezhi from the massive arms. She seemed to be nearly unconscious herself.

  He did what he could for Tsem’s wounds. The cut into his arm was deep, to the bone, and still bleeding. Perkar bound it up tightly. The gut wound was more of a problem; the giant was certainly bleeding inside. The blade had slid into intestines, mostly. Perkar did the only thing he knew. He was too tired and thirsty himself to go much farther, especially carrying Hezhi. He found water in an irrigation ditch and drank as if he had never touched water to his lips before. Then he gathered scrub and brush for a fire.

  The Giant shrieked in his sleep when Perkar plunged the burning tip of a branch through his wound, careful to follow the line of the sword puncture. The smell of searing flesh caught at Perkar’s nose and nearly made him gag.

  When Tsem’s shriek died down, Perkar heard a whicker out in the darkness, a sound he would know anywhere. Horses.

  Shakily he rose to his feet. The pursuit had come quickly, more quickly than he had imagined. Above him, the clouds were parting as if the stars and moon wanted to watch his last battle. He smiled, mocking that grandiose thought; of course the sky had no care for him. But the Pale Queen was there, resplendent in a double halo, and he found some contentment in the thought that he would die beneath her.

  “I’m sorry, Hezhi,” he muttered down to the girl. “I’m really not very good at this sort of thing, when it comes right down to it.”

  She surprised him by speaking. “I didn’t mean to call you,” she said. “It was … I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “It’s done now. I’m not angry, just sorry I couldn’t have been more help. Seems that the River’s plan for you was lacking in detail.”

  “The River had no plan for me,” she shot back bitterly, “save that I should become a monster.”

  He shrugged. “There are horsemen out there—one at least, and he just rode off, I think, to find the rest. They’ll be back soon, in force. When they come, hide somewhere; they may think you went on while I stayed here to hold them off.”

  “I will stay,” she replied.

  “No. Do as I say.”

  Hezhi gazed at the sprawling Giant. “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “He wasn’t a moment ago; I might have killed him trying to close his wound.” He paused. “Among my people he would be counted a very brave man.”

  Hezhi nodded, tiredly. “I killed him,” she said.

  “If he is dead, he died for you,” Perkar said. “That isn’t the same as you killing him. Believe me, I’ve had ample time to consider the difference, and the difference is great. We all have to die, Hezhi. It’s worth dying a little earlier if the reasons are good enough. His were; he told me he loved you.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “He did.”

  “Hide now,” Perkar whispered. “Hear? The horses are returning.”

  It sounded like a score of them, at least. He took a deep, painful breath. His heart beat weirdly, and he couldn’t shake the memory of feeling it stop, of seeing the bloody point of a knife slide out the front of his breast.

  “Maybe I’ll die this time,” he told Harka.

  “And me working so hard to keep you alive? Very ungrateful.”

  “I get sick when I think about the things that have happened to my body,” Perkar said. “No one should have to carry the me
mory of being stabbed through the heart. Death should soothe that away.”

  “I won’t apologize,” Harka said. “Someday you will thank me.”

  “I would thank you now, if I could be rid of you.”

  “Careful. You’ll hurt my feelings.”

  He threw back his head and howled. “Come and get me, walking dead men! I’ll pile your bodies around my feet, I’ll trample on your sightless eyes!” He wondered if Eruka would be proud of him, quoting verse even as the end came. He howled again.

  A horseman broke from the trees, another, and another. The lead horseman grinned at him, a smile that nearly split his head in half.

  “If you insist, I suppose,” the rider said. “Though that isn’t really what we had in mind for the night’s entertainment.”

  Perkar was actually struck dumb. More riders filed into the clearing, wild-looking men on lean, beautiful mounts, hair braided and ornamented with copper, silver, gold. They were all showing him their teeth, fierce, wolflike smiles.

  “Ngangata?” Perkar choked out at last.

  “Nice to be recognized by such a great hero,” Ngangata replied, leaning with braced hands, palms on his saddle. “And I would spend some time singing your praises, except for the fact that a contingent of Nholish cavalry will be on us in about two hundred heartbeats. Brother Horse and a few others will slow them down, but we had best ride.”

  “Do you have mounts for us?”

  Ngangata nodded, and a stallion and a mare were brought up.

  “The Giant has to go, too,” Perkar insisted.

  “Is he alive?”

  One of the Mang warriors knelt at Tsem’s side. He spat something at Ngangata, who replied in the same tongue. Another steed was brought up, and three men wrestled Tsem up onto its back.

  “They say he won’t live out the night,” Ngangata explained. “But they will bring him anyway, so that he can die on horseback.”