by Greg Keyes
“What?” she gasped, and violently yanked her hand from his. She staggered to her feet, and, though Brother Horse called after her, she scrambled as quickly as she could out of the shelter and into the wide, bright eye of the sky. She did not stop running until she could no longer hear Brother Horse at all.
V
The Blackgod
Perkar watched the stranger advance, keeping his grip on Harka firm, despite his sword’s assurance that the approaching god—or whatever it was—posed no immediate threat. Whoever it was seemed, at least, to be in no hurry to threaten them, ambling across the eighty or so paces separating them, pausing to examine the sky now and then.
As he watched this, Perkar caught a movement from the corner of his eye. He turned reluctantly and saw the Mang warrior whose leg he had injured crawling across the snow, a fierce determination shining through the glaze of pain over his eyes. Perkar started, wondered why Harka had not warned him. Stepping quickly back, he was able to put both the Mang and the approaching being in his field of vision, and then he understood Harka’s lack of alarm. The injured man was not crawling toward him, or even Ngangata. He was clawing across the frozen ground toward his companion’s downed horse, which, despite the fact that Perkar had severed both front legs at the knee, was still panting heavily.
As Perkar watched, the man collapsed, ending the crooked red trail he was painting in the snow an arm’s reach from the stallion.
“Gods curse you, Perkar,” Ngangata hissed. “How could you—kill him. Now!”
For a moment, it was the old Perkar, the old Ngangata. What was the half man jabbering about? Why kill an injured man? And who was Ngangata to curse him?
“The horse! For pity’s sake, kill it!” Ngangata had his bow trained on the approaching figure. Perkar was nearest the suffering animal.
Of course. The Mang had been trying to reach the horse, put it out of its pain.
“Watch him, then,” Perkar answered, waving at the stranger. He turned on the beast.
It was gazing up at him, flanks heaving but its eye steady, a pool of black incomprehension.
“Oh, no,” Perkar whispered. “Harka, what did I do?”
“Bested two mounted men, I would say,” his sword replied.
Perkar said nothing to that, but he swung the blade savagely down, cut through the handsome neck. The body heaved once as blood spurted, steaming, onto the snow, and then, mercifully, ceased to move.
Sickened almost to vomiting, Perkar turned as much of his attention as he could focus on the newcomer, who was by now only a score of paces away.
He had the appearance of a Mang man, though taller and rangier than most, features regular and handsome. His clothing was rich and spectacular; a long split coat of midnight-blue sable, ermine boots, a fringed elkhide shirt adorned with silver coins. Thick black hair, unbound, flowed from beneath a cylindrical felt hat, also banded with coins, both silver and gold.
“Huuzho,” he said, uttering the typical Mang greeting in a sibilant, musical voice.
“Name yourself,” Perkar snarled back, still fighting nausea.
“Name yourself or come no closer. I have slain gods and will gladly do so again.”
“Have you?” the man said, bowing politely. “How interesting. In that case—I have no wish to die—I name myself Yaizhbeen, and I present myself to you most humbly.”
“Yaizhbeen?” Perkar looked blankly at Ngangata, who was more fluent in Mang. “Yai” meant a god of the sky, he remembered.
“Blackgod,” Ngangata translated. Perkar caught his friend’s peculiar tone.
“At your service,” the man answered. “And so good to see you both again.”
“Again?” Perkar asked, but already puzzlement was grading toward dismay.
“Blackgod,” Ngangata said, without ever taking his eye from the man, “is one name that the Mang give Karak, the Raven.”
Perkar snapped Harka up, flicking thick drops of horse blood through the air. A bit of it splattered on the Crow God’s cheek, but he did not blink, maintaining his somewhat condescending smirk.
“Karak,” Perkar gritted, “if you have a weapon, I suggest you draw it.”
“Perkar, this is useless,” Harka’s voice came in his ear.
Karak looked mildly surprised, “I fail to understand your mood,” he remarked, his voice smooth, confident. “And let me remind you that I named myself Blackgod. You asked me for a name, and that is the one you were given. Please call me by it.”
“I will call you as I please,” Perkar retorted. “Find a weapon.”
The Blackgod stepped forward until Harka was a fingerspan from his heart. His yellow eyes were steady on Perkar’s. “What quarrel do you have with me, Perkar?” he demanded, though softly.
“Must I name them all? You tricked my friends and me into slaying an innocent woman. You yourself killed Apad. That is sufficient, I think.”
“I see,” the Blackgod replied. Perkar could feel the tension in Ngangata, but the halfling said nothing, though he surely wanted to. From the corner of his eye, Perkar could see that his friend’s bow was still raised.
“Ngangata,” Perkar said, “please leave us.”
“Perkar—”
“Please. If you have come to care for me at all, if you have forgiven me at all, Ngangata, mount and ride from here. I could not stand it if you died now.”
“This is sweet, but there is no need for anyone to die,” Karak assured them reasonably.
“I believe otherwise.”
“Then let me answer your charges, mortal man,” the god said, a trace of anger showing at last. “For though I love carrion, I would prefer that you live for a time. Now, first, the woman. Who summoned my aid to enter the cavern and find the weapons she guarded?”
“We did not summon you.”
“Does it matter whom you intended to summon? You wished a guide to take you precisely where I took you, true?”
“Don’t play games with me.”
Karak leaned into Harka until blood started on his skin. The blood was gold in color, dispelling any doubts Perkar had as to his identity. “True?” he repeated.
Perkar flattened his mouth into a grim line. “True.”
“You wanted the weapons. They were bound to her blood, and she to the cave. The only way to take them was to kill her.”
“I would not have chosen to do that.”
“You did not. Your friend Apad did. Because you led him there, because he thought himself a coward and was proving himself to you. Apad got you what you wanted, Manchild.”
“And you killed him.”
“That was war. I obeyed my liege, the Forest Lord. I might remind you that disobeying your liege was what got you into that mess, by the way. Apad attacked me, and he died a warrior, rather than a coward or a murderer. He did considerable damage to the host of the Huntress before losing his ghost. What better death can a seeker of Piraku desire? How better to redeem himself?”
Perkar fought for words, but his tongue seemed thick and stupid beneath the weight of the Raven’s verbal onslaught. “You are twisting this …” he began, but the Blackgod shook his head.
“Wait,” he went on. “There are crimes you did not name. Let me name them for you. I allowed you to survive, after the Huntress wounded you. I left you among the dead so that Harka, there, could heal you. I gave you a boat to negotiate the waters of the Changeling, at risk to my own life and position both from the River God and from my own liege lord. I cajoled and bribed Brother Horse into aiding Ngangata, here, to find you, and I told them when and where to locate you. Just now I killed an archer who might have slain your friend. Now. For these crimes will you kill me, as well, or will you kill me and then thank me, in the order that I brought things to you?”
Karak narrowed his eyes, and in that moment, though he retained his Human form, he seemed very birdlike indeed. “And,” he snapped, “if you have no interest in thanking me, do you not have even the slightest curiosity about my motives fo
r following one lone, silly Human across half of the world to give him my aid? Do you not even wonder at that, Perkar? If not, you are a dolt. Push that sword into me, and we shall see who is the stronger, Harka or myself.”
“I know the answer to that already,” Harka said. “Sheathe me, you idiot.”
Perkar ignored the blade. “Tell me then. Tell me why everything.”
“Perhaps,” the Crow God said, his voice again mild, “when you have lowered your weapon. Perhaps I will tell you how to set things right. Set everything right.”
“The war with the Mang? My people?”
“Everything.”
Grinding his teeth, Perkar slowly, reluctantly lowered Harka. He heard the creak of Ngangata’s bow unflexing, as well.
“Make camp,” Karak commanded. “I will retrieve my mount.”
“You play dangerous games,” Ngangata told him as the Blackgod walked back off the way he came.
“Not a game, Ngangata. You know that.”
“I know.”
“Don’t forget your own advice, my friend,” Perkar said.
“Which advice?”
“About heroes. My fights are not your fights. When I provoke my doom, you should walk away.”
“That’s true,” Ngangata acknowledged. “I should. But until you provoke it again, why don’t you gather some wood while I see if our friend, here, is still alive.” He gestured at the crumpled figure of the Mang warrior.
“What will we do with him?” Perkar muttered.
“Depends. But we should learn why they attacked us.”
“Perhaps they know my people and theirs are at war. Perhaps they merely wanted our skins as trophies for their yekts.”
“Perhaps,” Ngangata conceded. “But did you hear what they were yelling as they attacked?”
“I don’t remember them yelling anything.”
“They called us shez. Shez are demons who bring disease. This is not an ordinary sort of insult.”
“Oh.” Perkar watched Ngangata kneel by the side of the injured man. The warrior was still alive, though breathing shallowly. Perkar walked back toward the stream, searching for deadwood, trying to keep his feelings from crowding out reason. What could Karak—or Blackgod, or whatever his true name might be—what could he offer to “set everything right”? The Raven was glib and clever, had a way of making the absurd seem reasonable. Yet one thing he said rang powerfully true to Perkar. Why would Karak care about him? Karak had changed his whole destiny—or at least given him the means to change his own destiny and follow a certain path. Why would a god take such an intimate interest in him?
He glanced back, to see that the Raven was leading his mount to where Ngangata still knelt over the injured man. Perkar pushed a little farther into the thin trees, trying to remember what he could about Karak while also searching for firewood.
Ngangata had reminded him that Karak was an aspect of the Forest Lord. The Forest Lord had other aspects—the Huntress, for instance, and the great one-eyed beast who had carried on the actual negotiations with the Kapaka—but Karak seemed to be the most deviant, the most free-willed of those avatars. And Karak himself was said to be of ambiguous nature, the Crow and the Raven. The Crow was greedy, spiteful, a trickster who took pleasure in causing pain. Raven—the songs spoke of Raven as a loftier god, one who went about in the beginning times shaping the world into its present form. Some said that he had actually drawn the original mud from beneath the waters to create the world. Others claimed that he stole the sun from a mighty demon and brought it to light the heavens. Perkar had paid little attention to such stories; the faraway doings of gods distant in both time and space had never been as important to his people as the gods they knew, the ones who lived in pasture, field, forest—and, of course, stream.
Now he was camping with a god said to have created the world, and he could not remember which stories about him were supposed to be true and which were told merely to entertain children on dark winter evenings.
“Tell me about Karak, Harka,” he said.
“About Karak or about the Blackgod?”
“They are the same, are they not?”
“Mostly. But different names always make a difference.”
“Did he really create the world?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Don’t evade.”
“No one created the world. But I think the Raven may well have created dry land.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Why is it important? What does this have to do with the present?”
Perkar sighed. “I don’t know. I just … what does he want with me?”
“I think that he will tell you, soon enough,” Harka replied. “Just keep your wits about you. Listen to everything he says, so that you can go over and over it later. The Raven gets things done. He is the Forest Lord’s wit, his cunning, his hand. He goes about making things and unmaking them. The Crow always tries to twist around what the Forest Lord commands, make it into something different, and even when the Crow and Raven are in accord, the Crow works through treachery, deceit, and chicanery. Still, they say, if you pay close attention—very close attention—you can hear the Raven telling you how to defeat the Crow.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. You’ve done it yourself—made excuses for doing things you knew you shouldn’t do. Planning to check on the cattle because your father wanted you to, but finding just enough other things to keep you busy so that you didn’t have time to.”
“That doesn’t seem like the same thing,” Perkar answered doubtfully. “But I will think on it.”
By now he had an armload of deadwood and so, with many misgivings, turned back toward Ngangata and Karak.
He got the fire started in silence, as Ngangata erected the tent. The Mang warrior had regained consciousness and regarded them with a mixture of bleary resignation and hostility. Karak merely sat, silent, watching them. Perkar decided that if the god was going to speak, it would be in his own time; he would not beg him to talk, certainly.
“What are you called?” he asked the warrior instead.
The man narrowed his eyes. “You are not my friend, and you are not kin to me.”
“I didn’t ask for your name,” Perkar persisted. “Just something to call you.”
The man regarded him sullenly for a moment more. “Give me a drink of water,” he finally said, “and I will give you something to call me.”
Wordlessly Perkar handed him a water skin. The warrior drank deeply.
“Does your leg hurt?” Perkar asked.
“It hurts.” He took another drink of water, then threw the skin back at Perkar, who caught it deftly. “You may call me Good Thief.”
“Good Thief,” Perkar repeated. “Fine. Good Thief, why did you attack us?”
“To kill you.” The warrior sneered. Across the fire, the Blackgod chuckled in appreciation.
“Well, you failed in that,” Perkar apprised him lightly.
“Yes. Because we did not believe,” the man retorted bitterly. “We thought the gaan was exaggerating.”
“A shaman?”
“He saw you in a vision. He said you were a disease upon the land. He said you brought the war with the Cattle People.”
Perkar stared. “What?”
“Yes, but he said you were also demons, that only by singing and drumming could you be killed. Only by fighting you with gods.” He turned to gaze at his companion’s corpse, at the messy ruin of the horse. “We should have listened, but we wanted your skins. We were fools.”
“You came after us, specifically after us?” Perkar pressed, frowning, poking at the fire with a branch, unwilling to meet the Mang’s accusing eyes.
“The Brush-Man and the Cattle-Man, traveling together at the stream. The gaan saw you in a vision.”
“Saw us in a vision,” Perkar echoed dully.
The Blackgod sidled up to the fire, sat closer. Ngangata, finished with the t
ent, joined them, as well.
“You see,” Blackgod said. “You have many enemies, Perkar. Enemies you don’t even know about. You need my advice.”
“What do you know about this?” Perkar demanded.
“In the west, there is a Mang shaman. He has been given a vision and seeks your death.”
“Given a vision by whom? By what god? You?” Perkar snapped.
“Oh, no,” Raven answered. “Sent by another friend of yours, the Changeling.”
“The Changeling,” Ngangata interjected placidly, “is not so sentient.”
“Oh, well, certainly you know more about gods than I do. Certainly you know the Changeling better than I, his brother.” Raven grinned evilly. “Listen to me. All you know is altered, for the years have moved. Once the Changeling was the most cunning of us all. Once he was stupider than a beast. Now—well, now he has awakened sufficiently to send dreams to a shaman. To do other things, as well.”
“Why? And why does he provoke them to kill Ngangata and me?”
“That is simple enough,” the Blackgod said, his voice laden with dark glee. “He knows that you have the means to destroy him.”
VI
Old Friends
Ghe stopped outside of the library door and fingered his neck again, felt the ridge of flesh beneath the high collar, hoping no one would find it suspicious. High collars came in and out of fashion in the palace. They were currently out, but then, he was supposed to be Yen, a merchant’s boy who joined the engineer corps of the priesthood. Merchants’ sons were known for ambitious but uninformed fashion sense.
He fingered through his memory, as well, retracing his fictional life as Yen, trying to remember all that he had done and said. It would be both embarrassing and dangerous if Ghan were to catch him in a lie. Fortunately, he had rarely spoken directly to Ghan, but instead to Hezhi. What he didn’t know was how much Hezhi had told Ghan about Yen.
And so he continued to hesitate near the arching entrance to the library, peering around the dark places in his mind, recreating Yen. Soft updock accent, each syllable of each word carefully pronounced. Different from his own Southtown accent with its clipped words and clattery consonants, but familiar enough to him, easy to imitate. His father was supposed to be an up-River trader, himself a lover of the exotic. The trace of a smile lightened his brooding features as he remembered the little Mang statuette he had given Hezhi, the story he fabricated about how his “father” obtained it. Hezhi had loved it—how well he recalled that. Surrounded by a palace full of riches and servants, her eyes had genuinely flown wide in delight at a stone’s-weight of brass cast in the form of a horse with a woman’s upper body. How would she have felt had she known he took it from the shelf of a petty noble from the Swamp Kingdoms, just after ending the man’s overly ambitious career?
