by Greg Keyes
Probably he had capabilities he did not yet recognize; but the time to discover those things was in short supply. Yet he ground his teeth at the very thought of leaving the palace. The River had chosen him in a way that it chose no one else. It had given him life and power to serve him as the Waterborn could not and the priesthood would not. Who had more right to live in the palace than he? But it was foolish to risk himself in this way. He could hide in Southtown and feed on as many scorps and gung as he wished; the Ahw’en would not find him there—would probably not even bother to try.
He entered an abandoned courtyard and surveyed the cracked and weed-rampant walk through it. Not for the first time, he wondered why this part of the palace was empty, falling into dust. Once when he was a child someone had shown him a chambered shell from deep in the River. It was a straight cone, like a horn, and inside it was partitioned, the largest spaces toward the widest end. Trumpet-cuttlefish, someone had named it, and he had listened in wonder at how the creature, as its life progressed, added greater and grander chambers to its home while abandoning those it had outgrown. It had been a thing of water, of the River. Were the Waterborn of the same nature? No one had ever said such a thing—not that he could recall, of course.
In the center of the court was a sink, a well down which unwanted things and dirty water were passed. He lifted the grate and lowered himself into darkness. Passing a short distance—about twenty paces—he reached a second grate, clambered up and through it, thus entering his apartments.
His courtyard was bare of any life at all. When he had found it, it had been infested with weeds, as well, but a wave of his hand had withered them, given their water and life to him. Now the stone was clean and cold, simple and pure.
This suite of rooms was actually sealed off from the rest of the palace, the doors to the outside halls not only bolted but plastered over, like the backmost chamber of that strange creature.
He paused before entering the room he slept in adjoining the courtyard. Who had told him those things, shown him that shell? A seaman, at the docks? But that seemed wrong. It might have been a woman … He remembered, then, the old woman on Red Gar Street, and he felt a catch in his throat. Perhaps it had been she. He could not remember.
He crawled into his room, trying to ignore the hunger that gnawed in him. Soon enough he would have to feed again; it seemed that he needed to kill more and more often as time went on. It might, indeed, be best to retreat to Southtown, where monsters could live with impunity.
He curled up on his stolen sleeping mat like a spider, thinking, planning, and waiting for the darkness.
Almost he slept; his body sank into a torpor, though his mind remained active, peering at the strange fragments of knowledge he had attained.
He understood for certain now that he must invade the temple, though he knew not why. There his lord, the River, was no guide, for in that parody of some far-off mountain, he could not see. That was why Ghe was needed; to go where the god could not go.
Had that not always been his role, as a Jik, as a ruffian on the street? Always Ghe went where others were not willing to. As a child for pay and loot, as a Jik for pride and the priesthood. What reward would the River give him, one day?
But of course, he knew the answer to that, too: Hezhi. Hezhi would be his reward.
Thus he thought, and thus he was still thinking when the wall began to shudder beneath the weight of mallets, accompanied by the high, shrill keen of priests chanting.
XII
The Breath Feasting
Hezhi heard the roaring of the crowd outside, but she had been hearing such for several days, and in her pensive, withdrawn state she certainly thought nothing of it. Nothing, that is, until Yuu’han and Ngangata dragged Perkar’s still body into the yekt. His eyes were closed and a bright string of blood ran from one corner of his mouth. His nostrils, also, bore red stains. He was pallid, and she could not see if he breathed or not.
She stared, unable to think of anything to say.
Tsem, however, easily found his voice. “Is he dead?” the Giant grunted.
Hezhi frowned at Tsem, still trying to understand what she was seeing. Yuu’han had stripped off Perkar’s shirt, and beneath it his chest was livid, purple and red, as if he had been stepped on by a Giant twice Tsem’s size. No, not stepped on; stomped. But how could he be dead? She had seen Perkar alive after being stabbed in the heart. She had seen the blade appear from the front of his chest, a red needle with Yen behind it, laughing at her, at her stupidity. What could kill Perkar, if not that?
No one answered Tsem, and finally Hezhi, more irritated at that than Tsem’s blurted question, finally asked, “What happened to him?”
Yuu’han met her gaze levelly, for just an instant, before looking off into some middle distance the way Mang were wont to do. “He played Slap,” the young man said. “He won’t play again, I think.”
“Then he is—”
Perkar interrupted them by coughing. It was actually more of a gurgle than a cough, but he blew a clot of blood from his mouth. His eyes did not open, though his face pinched tight with pain. Yuu’han stared aghast, made a hurried sign with his hand in the air.
“Naka’bush!” he hissed. In Mang it meant an evil ghost.
“No,” Ngangata told Yuu’han. “No, he is alive.”
“He was dead,” Yuu’han grunted, watching Perkar’s chest begin to rise and fall, hearing his wheezing, rasping breath.
“No. It is that sword he bears. It heals him.”
“The godblade?”
The Alwa-Man nodded. “Tell Brother Horse but no one else.”
Yuu’han looked uncertain, but after considering he nodded and then left the yekt.
“He will heal, then?” Hezhi asked, her voice still dull with shock.
“I believe he will,” Ngangata answered, “considering that he was dead before and is now breathing again. That would seem to me to be the biggest step toward recovery.” His alien face remained expressionless, and Hezhi wondered what the strange man was thinking. Were he and Perkar friends or just traveling companions, forced together by circumstance? Did Perkar really have any friends? In the past months, she had begun to regard him as such. There were moments when he made her feel better than anyone else did, happier anyway. And she believed that, unlike Tsem or Ghan or D’en, Perkar could not be taken from her by death. It seemed safe to care for him. Now even that illusion was shattered.
“I hope so,” Hezhi replied, still unable to think of much to say.
Ngangata rubbed his forehead tiredly and selected one of the yekt’s large, colorfully felted pillows to slump down upon. He looked very tired. “I have to know what you have heard,” he said after a moment.
Tsem crossed the room bearing a pitcher and bowl.
“Drink something,” he told Ngangata. Hezhi felt blood rise into her face with a wave of shame. She should be doing something. Ngangata took the water from Tsem.
“Fetch me a rag, Tsem,” she said quietly. “A rag and some more water. We should clean him up, at least.” Perkar’s breath was still coming erratically, labored, but at least he was breathing. Tsem nodded and went to search for a rag.
Ngangata watched her expectantly.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I’m not sure what is going on.”
“You’ve heard about the war?”
She nodded. “Yes, just today. Some men came in earlier. They found me out in the desert—”
“Found you?”
Hezhi helplessly realized that she was only making things more confused. “I was walking over in the cliffs,” she explained. “Two Mang men from the west found me.”
“Found you in the cliffs? What were they doing over there?”
“I don’t …” She didn’t know. “That’s a good question,” she finished. “It isn’t on their way, is it?”
“Leave that for a moment,” Ngangata said. “What have you heard about the war?”
“Not much. Just that
there is one, Perkar’s people and the Mang. There was an argument between those men and Brother Horse. He told them they were not to attack the two of you. I guess he doesn’t have much authority over them.”
“It’s too bad he didn’t have even less,” Ngangata said wryly. “If they had simply attacked Perkar, he would have killed them with his sword; that much is a fact. As it was, they challenged him to a ‘game’—you see the outcome.”
“I don’t know,” Hezhi said. “You know more about bar—about these people than I do. If there were a real fight, with swords and everything, wouldn’t others join in?”
Ngangata nodded. “Probably. It might have even turned into a little war, with Brother Horse’s closest kin trying to protect his hospitality. All in all it was probably best this way. His sword will still heal him.”
Tsem returned with a damp cloth and a basin. She reached for it, but he gently held her away and began sponging Perkar’s chest himself. Hezhi started to protest, but realized that Tsem probably knew more of what he was about than she did.
“I’ve seen him with worse wounds and still capable of walking and talking,” she commented. “Worse looking, anyway.”
“As have I,” Ngangata agreed, and Hezhi thought she caught a deep worry in his burring voice. He did not, however, offer anything further.
Tsem wiped Perkar’s face, and the young man hacked again, moaning a bit.
“Did he find what he went looking for?” she asked.
“I suppose. I think he learned much. We learned about the war, at any rate.”
“From this goddess of his?”
“And from another god. From Karak, the Raven.”
Hezhi pursed her lips. “Perkar told me of that one. It was he who set you and Brother Horse to watching for us, when we fled the city.”
“Yes. It was also he who tricked Perkar and his friends into betraying our king. He is a strange, willful god.”
Hezhi sighed and shook her head. “I know nothing of these gods. They are all strange to me.” Monsters, she finished inwardly.
“I don’t know everything he learned from Karak,” Ngangata went on. He seemed to want to tell her something, but was trying to work to it carefully.
“Weren’t you there?”
“I didn’t hear the conversation. But afterward, Perkar was eager to return here, to find you. I think Karak told him something about you, something important.”
“Oh?”
Tsem growled low in his throat. “I like this not at all, Princess,” he muttered. “Too much, happening too fast. Too many people wanting you again.”
“I know, Tsem.”
“What do you mean?” Ngangata queried. “What is this?”
“Those Mang who met me in the desert. They acted as if they wanted something from me, too.”
“And they found you in the cliffs, though no trail from the west passes near. That means they were looking for you.”
Hezhi tried to deny that with a little shake of her head. “They might have seen me run into the cliffs.” But they hadn’t. She knew that, somehow. “No, you’re right, Ngangata. They were looking for me. And Brother Horse put me in this yekt, as soon as we returned, and set his nephews to guard me. He could tell something was wrong.” She did not add that she was worried even about Brother Horse’s intentions. No one who could not see into him would understand, would merely think she had become mad with paranoia
Ngangata nodded slowly. “Something with big feet is walking,” he muttered. “We were attacked by Mang, as well, up at the stream. They were looking for us. They said that a prophet had seen us in a vision. Perhaps he saw you, too.”
“But Perkar knows more.”
“He does, but he was tight-lipped with me. Whatever he learned worried him.” Ngangata chewed his lip, and then went on. “I did hear Karak say that there was some connection between this gaan and the Changeling.”
A sudden bright chill crawled along Hezhi’s spine. “The Changeling? The River.”
“Call him what you will.”
“I thought he could not reach this far.”
“Not with his own fingers, perhaps,” Ngangata answered. “But perhaps with the hands of a Mang shaman he can.”
Hezhi heard her voice tremble. “He wants me back, doesn’t he? He will have me back.” And she realized that, once again, the scale on her arm was itching dully. She reached to touch it.
And gasped; the room seemed to turn around, sidewise, so that she could see it all from a different angle. Tsem and Ngangata appeared hollowed out, skeletal, and the fire in its hearth was a dancing blade with laughing eyes. Perkar …
Perkar was hardly there at all. His skin glowed translucent, and at his side there lay a god. She could not look at it, at that nightmare jumble of wings and claws and keen, sharp edges. It hurt her, scratched at her inside as if there were a man in her head with a sword, swinging it. She lifted up her sight, tried to tear it away entirely, but Perkar himself riveted her attention.
On his chest crouched a blackness, a crawling, shuddering blackness. As she watched, long hairs as thick as wheatstraw grew from it, wrapped sluggishly around Perkar, and reached inside of him to seize his bones.
The blackness opened a yellow eye and stared at her, and she screamed. She screamed and ran, tripped, sprawled, and scrambled back up. Even when Tsem caught her she kept trying to run, kicking at his shins and wailing, eyes closed, shuddering.
When finally she opened them again, the room was as it had been before.
But she knew now. She had seen it.
“Tsem, go get Brother Horse,” she choked out. “Go and hurry. And let me sit outside.”
She flinched away from Brother Horse when he arrived, fearful that her sight would return and reveal him for what he was. She should not trust him with Perkar—she knew that—but she could think of no alternative. She did not know what to do for him, and something was wrong, terribly wrong. Brother Horse regarded her sadly for an instant and then entered the yekt. Hezhi remained on the stoop, and Tsem joined her.
“That’s a big fire,” he noticed, after a moment.
Hezhi regarded the enormous bonfire from the corner of her eye, unwilling even to risk seeing the Fire Goddess. For some time, the Mang had been carrying in fuel from all directions, and flames and black smoke rose in a thick column skyward.
“I wonder where they found all of the wood,” Tsem went on when she did not answer.
Hezhi shrugged to let him know she had no idea. “I think it’s for the Horse God Homesending. A ceremony they perform tonight.”
“What sort of ceremony? Have you written of it in your letter to Ghan?”
Good old Tsem, trying to distract her. “I think Ghan will never get any letter from me. Whatever we thought, these people are not our friends.”
“They needn’t be our enemies, either,” Tsem pointed out. “They are like everyone, concerned for themselves and their kin before all else. You and I don’t threaten them; Perkar does.”
“Does he? Perhaps his people do. I don’t know. We are lost here, Tsem.”
“I know, Princess,” he replied softly. “Tell me about this ceremony.”
She hesitated a moment, closing her eyes. The village did not vanish as she hoped it might; it was still there in the vivid scent of burning wood, in the shouts of children and the wild cries of adults, the yapping of dogs. It would not go away merely because she willed it thus.
“They believe that they and their mounts are kin,” she began. Who had told her that, so long ago? Yen, of course, when he gave her the statuette. He had told her something like that anyway, and it had not been—like everything else he told her—a lie. Yen, who at least had taught her the folly of trusting anyone.
Tsem’s silence suggested that he was waiting for her to finish. “You know that by now,” she murmured apologetically. “They believe that they and their mounts are descended from a single goddess, the Horse Mother. Now and then the Horse Mother herself is born into one
of these horses. More often one of her immediate children is, a sort of minor god or goddess. When this happens, the Mang shamans can tell, and the horse is treated with added respect.”
“That would be hard to imagine,” Tsem noted. “They already treat their mounts with more kindness than any servant in the palace is shown.”
“The horse is never ridden. It is fed only the best grains. And then they kill it.”
“Kill it?” Tsem muttered. “That doesn’t sound like a very good thing to do to a god.”
“They kill it to send it home, to be with its mother. They treat it well, and when it goes home it tells the other gods that the Mang still treat their brothers and sisters—the other horses—well.”
“That is very strange,” Tsem said.
“No stranger than putting the children of nobility beneath the Darkness Stair,” she countered.
“I suppose not.” Tsem sighed. “It’s just that everything these people do seems to involve blood and killing. Even worshipping their gods.”
“Perhaps they recognize that life is about blood and killing.”
Tsem touched her shoulder lightly with his thick fingers. “Qey used to say that life was about birth and eating. And sex.”
“Qey said something about sex?” Hezhi could simply not associate the concept with the servant woman who had raised her.
Tsem chuckled. “She is, after all, a Human Being,” he reminded her.
