by Greg Keyes
XII
The Song of Perkar
Tsem surprised everyone. He did live through the night, and a second, as they put leagues between themselves and Nhol. And, Hezhi reminded herself, the River. She felt a dull ache with each footstep of the horse, with each breath of the old Mang warrior she clung to. She was not certain what the cause of her pain was, whether it was the loss of Qey and Ghan and everything she knew or whether it was the thing in her crying out for its father, for her to awaken it again. During the third day, when they had to tie her to the saddle to keep her from leaping off and running back toward Nhol, it seemed certain to be the latter.
Midmorning that day, the company stopped and dismounted near a tree—an unremarkable cottonwood, gnarled and ancient, roots feeding in a meager wash. The desert stretched out and away from them, a pitted and striated landscape of rust and yellow sand.
“What are they doing?” she asked the old man—Brother Horse, he was named.
“Offering to the god of the tree,” he explained.
“The what?”
The men began burning bundles of grass; one placed a little bowl of something amongst the questing white roots of the tree.
“This is the first one—or the last, depending on which direction you’re going,” Brother Horse explained. “The god on the borderland, the edge of the empire of Nhol.”
“The edge of the River’s hunger, then,” Perkar said from nearby on his own horse.
Brother Horse chuckled. “Not the edge of his hunger, but the edge of his reach. From here on the desert lives again.”
“Then I shall offer, too,” Perkar said. He smiled at Hezhi, seemed happy. Dismounting, he joined the other men. She felt only a terrible anxiety, as if some unthinkable thing were about to occur.
When they remounted, rode past the tree, an appalling, wrenching pain pushed her violently into oblivion.
When she awoke—not sure how much later—the pain was still fading, like the sting from a hard slap. She felt for her scale. It was still there, still itching faintly.
“Ah,” Brother Horse said when he felt her stir. “Let me have a look at you.” He called a halt, dismounted, reached leathery brown hands to help her down. Her feet felt light and sensitive on the hot sand.
“Yes, yes,” Brother Horse said, smiling at her and mussing her hair.
“What? Yes, what?”
“Well, you see, child, I can see gods—always been able to. When I first saw you I said ‘Now, that girl has something in her.’ I could see it in there, you understand?”
She nodded. As she could see her father, when he called the Riverghosts, perhaps.
“Well, it’s still there, but it’s gone quiet. Can you feel that?”
She felt a faint tickle of joy, despite herself. “Yes,” she said, “I think I can.”
“Good. Come on now, cheer up. The River has lost his grip on you, too, and your friend may live yet!”
Hezhi actually felt herself grin.
“Back up!” Brother Horse ordered, boosting her up onto the beast’s back. When he was mounted, too, he gave a great shout, one that frightened her and delighted her at the same time. The animal beneath her surged, and she was reminded of Tsem carrying her. Yet this was different, a rushing thing that she had not understood or appreciated during their midnight ride out of Nhol. The landscape raced by, the horse a half-tamed thunderbolt beneath her. She did not shriek herself, but she almost did, and felt a brief, almost terrible shining joy, somehow more solid and real than the joy of a goddess. She thought of the little statue, the horse-woman, and was her, proud, fierce. Free.
“Now tell me,” Perkar insisted, days later. A pair of boys and a girl laughed nearby, chased a wooden hoop across the red sand of the village square. Sparks swept up from the fire, twining up an invisible tree of wind to join the darkening sky. A cool dry breeze padded down from the mesa, breathed across them promises of autumn, coursed on east.
Perkar, Brother Horse, Ngangata, and a Mang warrior named Yuu’han gathered about the fire in what Brother Horse named a Wheel of Words. Hezhi sat outside of the circle as Brother Horse’s eldest daughter, Duk, plaited up what little hair Qey had left her.
“Tell,” Perkar repeated. “I don’t believe that you just happened upon me.”
“Why not?” Ngangata asked. “Isn’t that the lot of a hero’s friend?”
“Riding to the rescue? That sounds more like the hero to me,” Perkar rejoined. “‘The Song of Ngangata.’ I like the sound of that.”
“No songs about me, please,” Ngangata said.
“Well,” Brother Horse told them, “you can sing a song about me, then.”
Perkar looked at both men in exasperation. Brother Horse grinned, took a drink of cactus beer, and finally relented.
“Your friend here was frantic when he discovered you gone, don’t ask me why. He insisted that we follow you. I refused, of course—I am an old man, much too old to ride out against Nholish cavalry.”
“To be sure,” Perkar muttered sarcastically. “Much too old to ride circles around them, widdershins and back.”
Brother Horse glowered at Perkar. “How long did you beg me to tell you this story?”
“My apologies, ancient one,” Perkar said. “Please continue.”
Brother Horse nodded with apparent satisfaction. “I did agree to take Ngangata—at great risk to my own life—as far as a village I knew of, there to bargain with my great-nieces and nephews and other assorted kin for a horse to ride to Nhol. A half day’s ride, a day walking. I guessed that the Woodpecker Goddess would not notice me in such a short time.”
He grinned, showing his yellowed, broken teeth to best advantage, quaffed another mouthful of beer. “Well, of course, halfway there—just past Lies-in-a-Square Rock—there came a whirlwind and a sound of feathers, and my old heart stopped dead in my chest. I was beginning a dignified defense of my actions …”
“He was on his knees, begging,” Ngangata clarified.
“Dignified defense of my actions,” Brother Horse repeated with a wicked glance aside to the Alwa-Man, “when I realized that the god standing before me was not Nuchiinuh but a black god, feathered, yes, but not a woodpecker. It was Raven, I knew that right away.
“‘Lord Raven,’ said I, ‘to what do I owe my great fortune?’ And he said, ‘No doubt you define “fortune” differently than I do,’ and he stared at me with those yellow eyes of his.”
“Karak? Karak came to you?”
Ngangata nodded, while Brother Horse patiently drank some more beer.
“I’ll shorten this up,” Brother Horse said, “because I can smell supper nearly ready. Raven-god told me he had been watching us all, from afar, because it pleased him to do so. He said that I should assist Ngangata in reaching Nhol, since he had foreseen that we would be needed. In turn, I explained my infirmities …”
“He asked Karak what was in it for him,” Ngangata elucidated.
“I explained my infirmities,” Brother Horse continued stubbornly. “When I was done, Raven asked me how infirm I might become if someone were to alert Nuchiinuh that I was wandering about unprotected. I didn’t like the tack of that conversation, I’ll tell you. But then Raven made a kindly offer to speak to the Woodpecker Goddess on my behalf. He told me that she owed him many favors, and that he would spend a few so that I could live out my years among my people again. Well, you know, I hadn’t really thought about it all that much, but I did miss my relatives, alone out on that island. I could also see that great things were happening, a grand adventure calling me to one last heroic task …”
“Karak convinced him to help,” Ngangata summed up.
“You tell the rest of it then,” Brother Horse grunted, lifting his beer cup.
Ngangata complied. “Brother Horse convinced some of his relatives to come along, promised them war honors if they came—and some old treasure of his, buried somewhere, I think. The rest isn’t much to tell. We rode straight across the desert to Nhol, wh
ile you meandered down the Changeling.”
“Yes, but how did you find me?”
“Karak told us to watch for you on land. That was cryptic and I thought not much help. We sat up on a hill where we could see the whole west side of Nhol.”
“From that far away? How could you recognize us, or even see us?”
“I can see gods, remember?” Brother Horse reminded him, his voice becoming ever so slightly slurred. “I know that sword of yours, and there are no other gods in that miserable land except the Waterborn—” He looked suddenly embarrassed and winked apologetically at Hezhi. “I’m sorry, child, I don’t mean to offend you.”
Hezhi shrugged her little shoulders and shook her head to say that there had been no affront.
“So,” Brother Horse went on, “I thought that anything I saw that looked like a god would be you, probably.”
Perkar shook his head in amazement. “And so you watched that entire time? Without sleeping?”
“Ah … not exactly.”
“He actually was asleep,” Ngangata put in. “But then Yuu’han, here, saw a burst of light, strange godlike light.”
“The ghost,” Hezhi murmured, the first words she had spoken that evening. “The ghost from my blood.”
Ngangata nodded agreement. “We found that out later; it was too dark for us to see anything else, really. We woke Brother Horse up, though, and after a good bit of squinting he swore he could see Perkar and a goddess, a goddess growing larger and larger.”
They all glanced at Hezhi, who shifted uncomfortably and stared down at the dirt.
“You all leave the girl be,” Brother Horse snapped. “She’s been through enough, lost plenty. No need to keep reminding her of unpleasant things.”
“It’s just that I’m the cause of it all,” Hezhi blurted. “All of you, traveling across the world, risking your lives, killing people, all because I made a stupid wish. It wasn’t even a real wish, just an impulse. And Tsem, hurt so badly …”
Perkar watched her eyes wander off, wondered how she was not crying and wished she would. Whatever kept her from crying seemed to hurt her more than a good bawl.
“Now,” Brother Horse puffed out. “Come here. Come here and sit with us.”
She stared over at the fire for a long moment, her black eyes drinking away the flames. Then slowly she disengaged herself from Duk—who understood not a word of their conversation, which was in Nholish—and hesitantly approached the fire. Brother Horse patted the spot next to him.
“Don’t waste your energy on that kind of thinking,” he told her. “You didn’t pull all of the threads that tightened up this net. You only pulled one of them. Take me. What did you have to do with my altercation with the Woodpecker Goddess? Nothing, that’s what. It happened six years ago, long before all of this began. Perkar, he was tied up in something gone wrong long before your blood set the River in motion. And Raven, who knows why he does what he does? But the certain thing is he does nothing at your whim or mine. Ngangata never even knew you, and he had precious little reason to help Perkar—no offense, Perkar—but he came along anyway.”
“But, Tsem,” she whispered, and then sobbed. “Qey, Ghan … all of those soldiers …” She buried her face in Brother Horse’s shirt and began to shudder with much-needed crying. Embarrassed, Perkar excused himself, wandering off from the fire. He went on out of the square, threading between scrubby junipers and wiry bushes, let the faint wind settle on his shoulders.
All those soldiers, she said. But he killed them. He should feel something, he knew, remorse, guilt the like of which had raged in him after the Kapaka’s expedition had all but died. Instead he felt only a vague regret, sorrow that the men had stood in his way, but no awful grief.
“Everyone dies,” Harka offered.
“And everyone lives,” Perkar retorted. “That’s no answer.”
“What about this, then? You’ve finally learned to shoulder what you do and move on, without wailing about the burden.”
“I like that better,” Perkar admitted, “though it seems a bit self-serving.”
“Better to serve yourself than someone else,” Harka pointed out. “I should know.”
“Can I free you, Harka? Is there any way to do that?”
“If there is, I don’t know of it. But thanks for the thought.”
“It wasn’t just for you, but you are welcome.”
Later, returning to the village, he noticed a low, familiar chanting issuing from a clump of scrubby pines. He nearly passed on, but after reflecting for a moment, he sat down on a convenient rock and waited, watched the crimson slice of the sun flatten against the black rocks in the west
After a while, the chanting stopped, and Ngangata emerged from the trees, bowstave in hand. He nodded at Perkar when he saw him. The two men regarded each other, Ngangata standing, Perkar seated on the stone.
“It should be time to eat,” Ngangata said after some time had elapsed.
He nodded. Wondering what it was, precisely, he wanted to say. He frowned in concentration.
“Come on,” Ngangata said, his voice soft, like the evening air.
Perkar shook his head. “No, I … Brother Horse was right, you know. You had no sane reason for coming to help me.”
Ngangata’s mouth quirked up. He glanced off at the horizon, at the faded sun, and it seemed a long time before his black gaze, once so frightening, came back to meet Perkar’s eyes.
“Perkar,” he sighed at last. “You think too much. Too much. Now let’s go eat; my bow and I are starving.”
Perkar stood a bit unsteadily. His vision was a trifle blurred, as if some dust had blown into his eyes. He brushed off his kilt, took a few, slow steps to join Ngangata. “Thank you,” he said.
Ngangata looked down at his own feet, nodded. “Come on. Food.” And when he smiled, Perkar felt his own face respond, smiling back.
“Princess?”
Hezhi woke to the familiar voice, wondered if she had overslept again, if Ghan would be angry, what Qey was preparing for breakfast. Reality intruded quickly, the red desert, unfamiliar voices buzzing in the background. But Tsem, Tsem was familiar. And awake.
“Tsem!” Hezhi fell forward across his chest, buried her face in his monstrous shoulder. “Please live, Tsem.”
The half Giant chuckled wanly. “That is what I hope to do, Princess, believe me.” He glanced blearily around at the cedar posts, the soot-darkened walls of the little house they were in.
“I don’t know where we are,” Tsem admitted.
“Let me get you some water,” she offered, “and I’ll tell you.” She patted him on the shoulder and went outside, down the hill to the spring Duk had shown her. So much she had to tell Tsem, and so much of it was unexplainable. So much unknown. Where were Ghan and Qey now? Being tortured for their part in her escape? Dead already? She might never know. Fetching the water back, she took a moment to regret her refusal of power. Whatever else she would have done, she would have saved Ghan and Qey. But if the fire in her had burned that far, she would have been lost, and many, many people would have died.
Tsem accepted the water thirstily and listened with wide eyes as she explained where they were, what had occurred while he slept.
“What will we do?” he asked, when she had finished.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “But I hope you will stay with me. I can’t bear to lose you, too.”
“Of course, Princess. I am your servant.”
“No,” she refuted. “I am no princess and you are no servant, not out here. If you stay with me here, it must be because you choose to.”
Tsem nodded and sat up, gazing silently out the bright rectangle of the door.
“I should like to step outside,” he said at last.
“I don’t know …”
“Please.”
She was scant help in aiding Tsem to his feet, but in reality he seemed to need only her moral support. Out in the sun, he leaned against the clay-plastered wall of the hu
t, gazed around at the distant horizon.
“I would like to find my mother’s people,” he said at last. “Someday. She used to tell me about them …”
“We can do that,” Hezhi said.
“Not necessarily right away,” Tsem put in. “But someday.”
“Someday,” she agreed, and grinned. She laid her hand on his shoulder, and together they contemplated the distance.
EPILOGUE
Autumn
A month passed, and the sky grew clearer, the winds colder. Some days brought clouds of geese and ducks, winging from the north in search of a warmer sun. Others brought the cold fingers of winter the birds were fleeing. The Mang worked hard in that month, chinking up houses, trekking to the wetlands nearer the River to gather nuts and berries, ranging in the uplands for meat and pine nuts.
Tsem recovered slowly, but after the first week the Mang healer attending him announced that he would certainly live—though he hinted that the debts he had incurred with certain gods would have to be repaid. Perkar, eager to do his part, organized a hunting expedition with Ngangata and a few younger Mang men. It was decided that a few women would accompany them, as well, and Hezhi, unskilled as she was, begged to be included.
Two days brought them to a lightly forested canyon, and there they made a strong camp, set up tents, dug firepits, built skinning frames for the hides they hoped the men would bring in. Hezhi set about learning the things Mang women did: gathering nuts, digging roots, tanning hides. The work was hard, and many times, early on, kindled nostalgia for the palace, where she was waited on by servants. The women she worked with were cordial but a little impatient with her. They seemed to expect her to already know how to do things. Hezhi was a quick learner, however, and before many days had passed the women began including her in their storytelling sessions, laughing now and then at her highly imperfect Mang, but never with any malice. The men returned every few days, always with game, and the women murmured much about the skill of Ngangata and his bow. Perkar was less esteemed, but he also killed much game, often entering the camp, flushed with his success, “like a little boy, just learning to hunt,” the women would exclaim.
