The Blackgod

That decided, he stepped from his robe and gathered darkness to him instead, sheathed himself in armor made of night; it was a simple trick, one he knew from devouring an odd little god in the form of an owl. He gathered a second armor of wind about himself and lifted into the air, and in that instant, Death and her embrace seemed a distant, impossible thing. He pulled the strands of wind like reins, commanding them to take him to Moss' tent.

“EAT more,” Moss told Ghan. ”You'll need your strength in the high country.”

“No I won't,” Ghan stated flatly. “I shall never reach the high country. Your new ally, Ghe, will devour me before ever we get there.”

Moss considered the chunk of venison between his fingers, licked a bit of grease from it. “I think not. His tastes are for gods now, not for men.”

Ghan gazed up at him dully. “Then why do soldiers still disappear each day?”

“Some are deserting,” Moss pointed out.

“Yes. Because they know that their fate is to be evening repast for a monster.” Ghan shot the younger man a pointed look.

Moss sighed. “I have protected you thus far, Grandfather.”

“I'm no one's grandfather,” Ghan snapped.

Moss crinkled his brow in frustration. “It is considered mannerly to address an elder so.”

“Is it also considered mannerly to march me across these foreign lands against my will? To force me to aid you in a cause I want nothing to do with? Why put fair paint over rotten wood by addressing me courteously?”

Moss finished his meat and followed it with a sip of wine. “As you wish, old man. In any case, what I was saying is that I have protected you thus far and I will continue to.”

Ghan snorted. “You are a fool, then. Don't you know what he is! You cannot protect me from him.”

“But I shall, you have my word.”

“How relieved I am,” Ghan sneered.

Moss grinned. “You really should eat something. I don't want Hezhi to think I starved you when we find her.” He paused and then lifted his wine cup again. “She loves you, you know. I think if I could have really convinced her that I would reunite the two of you, she would have joined me.”

“What do you care about this?” Ghan exploded suddenly. “I have held my peace, hearing you talk about her, but what is it that you want? Ghe is a mindless sort of thing, and I know what the River wants of her, but you …”

“I want only peace,” Moss replied mildly. “I want my relatives to stop dying. And I want my people to have the blessing of the River as yours do.”

“It is no blessing,” Ghan snarled. “It is a curse. It is a curse for those who bear his blood and it is a curse for those his children rule. This is a misguided desire you have.”

“So it may seem to you,” Moss answered shortly. “But I know better.”

“Of course—” Ghan began, but Moss' eyes suddenly blazed, and he jabbed his finger at Ghan.

“I know better,” he repeated.

Ghan slowly closed his mouth on his unfinished retort. There would plainly be no fruit from a conversation that branched from that tree. He slowly gazed around the meager furnishings of the tent, gathering energy for another try.

“Will you kill her?” he asked dully. “Will she die?”

“Old man, she will die only if the Blackgod has his way. If I win this race and this battle, she will live to be the queen she was destined to be. She will unite all of the people of the River in a single kingdom. That I have seen.”

“With you at her side?” Ghan asked, carefully this time.

Moss shrugged. “It matters not where I am then. My work will be done. When she is queen, the sort of power I command will mean nothing. The little gods will be swept away and the world will be clean of them. The mountains and plains will be home to men and only men. And there will be peace, without the likes of the Blackgod meddling in our affairs.”

There, Ghan thought. There is a tender spot. What experiences had shaped this boy? He was beginning to see the glimmer, the veiled shape of his motives. If he could understand those, perhaps he could talk real sense to him. For the moment, however, he lowered his voice to nearly a whisper.

“But I ask again, why do you ally yourself with the Life-Eater, this ghoul?”

“Because only he has the power to see us to the mountain. The gods will resist us each inch of the way. We have already been attacked thrice, did you know that? Each time Ghe disposed of the sendings. I might have done so, but only after terrible struggle. And when we meet the Blackgod himself—”

Ghan held up his hand. “You keep saying 'Blackgod,' ” Ghan muttered. “But this word? In my language, 'god' is used only for the River. What do you call him in your tongue?”

“Many things. Mostly we call him 'Blackgod.' ”

“No,” Ghan snapped. “Say it in your language.”

“ Yaizhbeen, ” he complied, clearly puzzled.

Ghan chewed his lip. “Wait, wait,” he muttered. “Zhbeen means 'black.' ”

“So it does,” Moss replied, bemused.

“In the old language of Nhol, zhweng was the word for black.”

“I have noticed our tongues are similar,” Moss said. “Your name, for instance, and my profession, 'Ghan' and 'gaan.' ”

“It is not my name,” Ghan said. “It means 'teacher.' But there is another word in the old tongue: ghun. That means 'priest.' “ He mused, clenching his fist before his face, all other thought forgotten, save the puzzle. “Ghun Zhweng.” He whirled on Moss. “What if I were to say gaanzhbeen in your language? What would that mean?”

“It would mean 'black invoker, black shaman.' It is merely another name for the Blackgod, for he is a wizard, as well.”

“How stupid.” Ghan scowled. “How very stupid of me. When Ghe told me about the temple, I should have seen it. But what exactly does it mean?”

“What are you talking about?”

Ghan snorted. “Our priesthood was founded by a person known as Ghun Zhweng, the Ebon Priest. Do you see?”

Moss stared at him, openmouthed. “Your priesthood was founded by the Blackgod?”

“So it would seem.”

“Tell me this tale. How can this be?”

“Ghe visited the Water Temple. Beneath it he found—”

Moss wasn't listening to him anymore. His eyes had glazed. “This will have to wait,” he whispered. “It may be that you should leave.”

“Why?”

“Something comes for me.”

“Something?”

Moss looked back at him, eyes hardening. “Yes, perhaps you were right. I don't understand why, but Ghe is coming for me. He just slew my outer ring of guardians.”

¡know, Ghan thought frantically, ¡know why he is coming for you. Because Qwen Shen holds his leash, and Qwen Shen is from the priesthood, and the priesthood … was a creation of the Blackgod. And whatever else this Blackgod was, it was an enemy of the River and of all of his blood. He was Moss' enemy—he was Hezhi's enemy, though she knew it not.

“Leave,” Moss repeated.

“N-no,” Ghan stuttered. “I think I can help you.”

“Why would you help me?” Moss asked, rising, facing the tentflap. Outside a wind was rising.

Ghan started to answer him, but Moss dismissed him with a simple wave. “Go. I have no more time to speak to you.” His body had begun to blur faintly. At first Ghan thought something was wrong with his eyes; then he understood. He had seen the emperor thus resonate with power. Moss stepped outside. Ghan followed quickly, as far as the tent opening, to watch.

Something roughly Human in shape and size hovered perhaps ten feet off of the ground; wind gyred about him, sparks from a nearby cooking fire dancing madly in his cyclonic path. The figure itself was darker than the surrounding night, a nothingness.

“Why do you come to me thus?” Moss demanded somewhat mildly. “Why do you slay my guardians when you have only to ask to pass them?”

“You have tricked me,” the shadow said, and it was Ghe's voice, of that Ghan was certain.

“I have not, and I know not why you think I have, but we should talk.”

But Ghe was apparently in no mood to talk. Light gouted from the sky as if the substance of the heavens somehow had been slit open. It ruptured into a million starlike fragments that cooled from white to violet and finally to a sullen red, all in the briefest instant, and then, like a swarm of bees, the summoning fell upon Moss. Moss himself sprang back, and Ghan saw that he had produced a drum. He stnick its head and shouted, and the fiery hornets were seized by pandemonium, flying everywhere. Many struck the tent, which instantly burst into flame.

Meanwhile, something huge and dark was forming beneath Ghe.

“Ghe, you idiot!” Ghan shrieked in the brief, pregnant silence. “You fool!”

Whatever was coalescing suddenly blazed yellow as a vaguely tigerlike thing leapt from Moss' drum and shattered itself upon the small cyclone around Ghe. Ghan saw a skeleton of something snakelike sublimating and then nothing at all. The shadow cloaking Ghe burned away like a tissue, revealing him naked, grinning, still above them, his outstretched hand against the sky. But in the next moment he languidly brought both arms down in front of him. He held up a single finger as if for their inspection, and Ghan could see that it terminated in a lethal-looking talon.

Moss had stumbled, his drumbeat faltered, but now he regained his feet and began a frantic chant. But Ghan was only faintly aware of him. What caught his attention was Ghe, drawing his own talon along his wrist. Blood drooled out, and Ghe dropped his hand; the black liquid trickled down his fingers, and he flicked droplets out and away from him.

They fell on the earth, and in each spot they struck, something erupted. The air was suddenly thick and sweet with the smell of blood, earth, and corruption, with the storm-scent of lightning striking.

Ten grass-bears arose, shook their great, flat heads, and attacked Moss.

Ghe turned then, to Ghan. “And now for you” he said, and advanced, walking down to him as if upon invisible stairs.

XXXII Beauty

“I remember you now,” Hezhi said, her voice small. “But before you were—”

“Yes, I have many suits of armor, many forms I may wear. Not as many as Karak, perhaps, but sufficient,” the Huntress answered.

“You wanted to eat me before,” Hezhi said, trying to summon some bravery to calm her voice.

“Yes. Perhaps I will yet, sweetmeat, but not at the moment. Karak's silly plan has finally come to my attention, and when I saw you coming, I thought to speak to you.”

“Oh?” She felt a faint relief wash over her, but kept a firm grip on her skepticism. Could she fly faster than the Huntress? Perhaps she and the bull could, but she did not want to lose the mare and the swan.

“Yes. I have some things to show you. We will travel together.”

As she said this, the mare and swan shook themselves as if waking. “Come.” The Huntress turned from them and began loping across the land. “Stay in my prints,” she called back over her feline shoulders. That commandment was simple enough to keep—the pawprints of the lion blazed the earth, blurred together into a trail of heatless flame. Hezhi rode with the bull, the swan on her shoulder, the mare just behind them so that they were really one, an eight-legged chimera with wings. Surrounded by her beasts, Hezhi felt confident again, but now she knew how illusory that confidence was, and she did not allow it to overwhelm her.

Running in the footsteps of the Huntress, their speed increased fivefold. The otherworld blurred into a void of transmuting shapes and colors.

When at last they stopped, it was upon the edge of a precipice; below stretched a plain.

“Here,” the Huntress purred. “This is as close as we dare approach—for the moment.”

“Approach whatV Hezhi asked, wondering what the Huntress could possibly fear.

“There,” the Huntress answered. “Take your swan through the lake, there, and look—but only from a distance.”

“Can I do that?“ Hezhi asked doubtfully.

“Yes. I will guide you.”

Hezhi cast another uncertain glance at the plain, and her keen eyes caught something, strange even in the otherworld. It looked something like a spider, or perhaps a spider and its web somehow become a single thing; a mass of tangled black strands and faintly multicolored bulbs that writhed aimlessly as they crept across the earth. “What is thatT Hezhi asked, pointing.

The Huntress growled, deep in her chest, before replying.

“That is what the Changeling sends to reclaim you,” she answered. “I have watched him grow from a seed of death into that mockery of gods and men that crawls where no such thing should crawl. Long have we tolerated the Changeling, for his power was so great, and, after all, he lay quiet in his bed most of the time. Now he sends things like this out and about. For that affront I have chosen to help Karak kill him.”

Hezhi turned to face the lioness. Crouching on the stone, she had changed a bit in appearance. Her fierce feline visage had crushed itself flat, so that the brilliant points of her teeth now gleamed from a face that somewhat resembled that of Ngangata or Tsem, but harsher, more brutal. The cords of leonine muscle had altered subtly so as to be more Human in appearance, as well, though Hezhi counted, with startlement, eight breasts on her tawny chest and belly.

“Why do you need usl” she asked. “I have a little power, it is true, but it is as nothing compared to yours. Perkar is handy with his enchanted weapon, but he told me of encountering you once before and how easily you dispensed with him. And yet every step of our journey has been planned by you gods. You cajole us and order us—I suspect one of you attacked Moss and the other Mang who followed us.”

“That last was one of Karak's pets,” the Huntress confessed. “But as to the other questions …” She leaned close, until the stink of rotten meat steamed in Hezhi's face. “I am not wont to answer questions. But you have been brave, and you command Hukwosha. And who knows, if all goes well you will have more power yet, before it is over, and perhaps I will ask favors of VOM. But listen, for I will not tell you a second time.” She glanced—almost furtively—back at the spidery thing on the plain and then continued. ”In the mountain, you met us all. Balati the One-Eyed Lord, Karak the Raven, Ekama the Horse Mother, and myself. But we are not separate things, and at times we do not exist at all. In all of the mountain, there is really only one god, and that is Balati. But Balati is vast, and ancient, and his tendency is to let this part of himself go this way and that part of himself go another. Karak is the one who is the most unfettered, the least like the rest of us in will and in purpose. Balati, he of the single eye, is where our true home resides—much as your spirits now reside in your heart—but he is a slow god, moving to the cycles of the earth and sky, not to the little moments and heartbeats that living things cherish. That I cherish.

“Now, this god you call the River, we call the Changeling, but we also call him 'Brother,' for he is that to us. Indeed—“ Her brow bunched and played as she considered her words. ”—it may be that he was once a part of us, just as I am. If so, he escaped entirely. And now Balati is slow to understand peril; he is still reluctant to act against his brother. He is angry, yes, but he cannot see the danger. Until recently, I was of the same mind. Only Karak knew better; Karak has labored long and secretly against the Changeling.”

“Why? Why secretly?”

The Huntress grinned a sharp, malicious grin. “If Balati is so moved, he can extinguish any one of us. Karak as Karak could cease to be, and of all of us, Karak most loves being”

“I still don't understand.”

“It's simple enough; the irony is delicious. Were it not for Karak, there would be no Changeling. That is the secret he has worked so long to keep hidden. That is why he strives so mightily and so stealthily to destroy the Brother.”

“Karak's fault? I don't understand.”

“It was a prank, at first., some joke of his that got out of hand. It is too long to tell, here and now. Suffice to say that once the Changeling was just a god like other gods, content and contained within the mountain. Karak tricked him into releasing himself, into becoming the River you know. That was long, long ages ago, but for Balati it was an eyeblink. He will not let us cut out the Changeling like the cancer he is. That is why we need you mortals. He does not notice you. When your enemies—“ She waved a pawlike hand at the plain. ”—when they invade Balat, the great forest, he will not object to my attacking them. When you enter into the mountain and find the River's source, he will not be aware of you, for Karak and I will cloak you. There you can do what must be done.”

“And what is that?” Hezhi demanded.

The Huntress raised her hand to her face and ran a large, black tongue over her fur.

“That I don't know,” she admitted. “Karak knows; he is the trickster, the sorcerer, the bringer of newness. He knows, and he will tell you. Trust that.”

“Do we have a choice in this?” Hezhi asked, not wanting to, but knowing she must.

The Huntress considered that for only an instant. “Of course. You can choose to die. Little thing, the River made you to pour himself into. The Life-Stealer down there wishes to return you to him, and if he is successful, you will show him to be the shadow that he really is. You will be much like him, but if he is a blade of grass, you will be a forest. You will devour all of the world, including all of my children, and that I will not allow. I will kill you myself, if I can.”

“If the danger is that great, I probably should die. When I come to his source, won't he take me then?”

“Not if you are strong; he can no more see himself at his source than you can see your own brain. And you have resisted him before.”

“It was too hard,” she whispered. “I nearly failed. Perhaps I should die.”

The Huntress crooned a long “noooo, ” and to Hezhi's vast surprise, she laid a now fully Human—if still furred—hand upon her shoulder. “He will only make another, in time. It may be a thousand years, but he will make another. And it is a paradox—at least this is what Karak says—that only one suited to hold him can destroy him. I don't know that this is true, but if it is, then his opportunity is also ours. Karak has apparently had his eye on this situation for many years. I despise trusting him, but here even I have no choice.” She turned a slit-pupiled eye on Hezhi. “Nor do you. Now, look.”

Hezhi felt the swan settle up higher on her head. She closed her own eyes and, when she saw again, it was through those of the bird. And in a single blink, she beheld blue sky and green grass, as those eyes slipped through the surface of the otherworld and into the more familiar colors and sounds of her own.

On the plain, where the spider-thing sat beneath the lake, an army rode, an army of Mang. She glided over them, buoyed up by the heat rising in lazy spirals from the earth. Another bird flew with her, she saw, a keen-beaked falcon with the Huntress' twinkle in her eye.

She followed the falcon down, until she could easily pick out the weary faces of the men, see the perspiration on their brows.

And so, at last, with a braided mixture of joy and horror, she saw Ghan. On a horse! He rode listlessly, but in his face she could see mirrored the blaze of thought mat must burn behind his weariness.

Near Ghan, she made out another familiar face—Moss. And now she could see what he had hidden from her before: the spirits crowded within him. No wonder the bull had found them so easily, no wonder Moss had ridden through the herd unscathed! He was the gaan, the great shaman.

And with them rode another figure, one that even in mortal vision shimmered with such power and elicited such fear that she could not mistake him: he was the Life-Eater, the web of blackness.

He was Yen.

* * *

SHE came back to herself on the roof, her drum still held in nerveless fingers, her face salty and wet. All of her fear and horror bloomed when she pierced back through the drum into the living world, and nearly it was too much to bear. For a long time she shuddered, and each tear seemed to empty her heart, to hollow her, until soon enough she feared that her skin would collapse in upon nothing. Before that could happen, she clambered back into the damakuta, still weeping. She padded into its halls and into another room, until she found the sleeper she searched for. There she curled against him, until he woke, snuffled in confusion and then, without comment, wrapped the immense bands of his arms around her and rocked her gently. She slept the rest of the night in Tsem's arms, as if she were five years old—desperately wishing she were.

AT breakfast, Perkar wondered at how drawn and weary Hezhi looked. Dark circles lay below her eyes, and her face seemed pinched. She only picked at the food they were served, though it was the best breakfast any of them had enjoyed in some time—wheatcakes, sausage, and fresh eggs. Of course, his own meal tasted like wood in his mouth, for he had not slept at all until the very break of day, then only dozing into nightmare images of the same waking dream he had suffered all night: the Stream Goddess, his love, devoured.

He wondered, briefly, if Hezhi had been shown some similar vision, if she, too, were filled with a wintry resolve. He had cried as much as he would; now there would only be killing and dying. His death or that of the Tiskawa, he cared not which.

The irony was that the goddess had spurned his love because she did not want to see him grow old and die. It was an irony that would drive his sword arm, he was certain.

After the meal, he confronted Hezhi. He tried to find some warmth in his voice if only for her sake. Part of him wanted to ask what was troubling her, to comfort her with a hug, but it seemed like too much trouble, and in her mood she might reject him anyway. He added this to his coldness; whatever tender feelings had developed between the two of them were doomed, and he knew it. He had never been honest with her about all he knew, and now he never would be. The destruction of the Changeling was too important to rest on the whims of a thirteen-year-old girl, even one he cared for. In the end, he might have to use force to get her to the River source. He did not want to do that, but he would. Now he would.

“We ride out by noon,” he told her. “Sheldu and his men will go with us.”

“That's good,” Hezhi murmured. “We may need more warriors.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked, aware of the frost in his voice but unable to do anything about it.

Hezhi's face reflected his tone; hurt and then anger passed over it, ultimately replaced by weariness.

“Never mind,” she whispered. “I'll get ready to ride.” She turned away, and Perkar realized for the first time that she had traded her Mang clothing for the embroidered yellow riding skirt and woolen shirt of a woman of his own people. It looked wrong on her somehow; the Mang attire suited her better.

“Yes,” he said to no one. “I'll get ready to ride, too.”

From the corner of his eye, he caught Ngangata's reproving and concerned gaze, but he shook it off, striding with purpose to the stables.

IN the stables, he eyed Sharp Tiger, wondering if the beast would yet accept him on his back. His last try at riding the fierce stallion had been two days after Moss escaped them, and that had ended with a nasty bite that Harka had taken three days in healing, “to teach him a lesson.” He decided there was no point in trying, and for the hundredth time he regretted his vow to the doomed Good Thief to watch after his mount. Still, Sharp Tiger did not object to packs, and a packhorse was valuable on journeys such as this one. It was just a shame for such a fine war-horse to go unridden, and his own mount, T'esh, was showing increasing signs of rebellion, perhaps having been exposed to one or two too many strange sights and smells. He packed Sharp Tiger and was cinching on T'esh's saddle when Ngangata arrived. He nodded at his friend.

“Two days' hard riding and we'll be in Balat again,” the half-ling observed. “We'll have come full circle.”

“Not quite,” Perkar said.

“No? This is how we met, equipping an expedition to ride into the realm of the Forest Lord. Now we are back to that point.”

“I suppose. For you and me, this is full circle. Full circle for me will be when we reach the mountain. That's where my mistakes began.”

“Oh, no,” Ngangata said. “Your mistakes began here, too, listening to Apad and Eruka—allowing their prejudices and fears to become your own—and hiding your agenda. The Kapaka would never have taken you along had he known you were in love with a goddess.”

“Is that what this is about? Are you here to dissuade me?”

“Yes. Your last quest to slay the Changeling brought all to ruin. Surely you remember.”

Perkar kneed T'esh roughly in the side; the stallion was blowing out so that the saddle would be loose, and today Perkar was having none of that.

“As usual, Ngangata, you know best. I even agree with you. Deep down, I no longer even believe in this quest. I do not think the Changeling can be slain, and I do not think I can put all my mistakes back the way they were. But I no longer have any choice in the matter.”

“You always have a choice.”

“Remember your diatribe against heroes, Ngangata? About how they are merely fools who have been glorified in song, how they are death to their companions?”

“I remember.”

“Then for the last time, ride away, because I think that soon I will die. And if I am a hero, we both know what will happen to my companions.”

Ngangata turned to his own mount. “I know this,” he said. “But does sheV

“Hezhi? No. Truth to tell, I don't think I am the hero this time at all, Ngangata. I think she is. Maybe she always was. And that means we are to die in her service. What point in telling her that? Perhaps she can slay the Changeling, as Karak says. Maybe I'll live long enough to see that. Gods granting, I'll take my revenge on his instrument, at least.”

Ngangata shook his broad head and waved away a horsefly. “You are intimately familiar with several gods, Perkar. Do you think them likely to grant you anything?”

“If it serves them, yes.”

“Very well,” he conceded. “But listen to me.” He turned his dark, Alwa eyes upon Perkar, eyes Perkar had once found so intimidating. Time and friendship had taught him to see the deep expressiveness of them, the concern there—but they still gave him pause. “I will not leave you, Perkar. I will not allow you to throw your life from you like a worn bowstave. Whatever else you may be, you are my friend, and I can say that of very few. So when you ride to meet death, think of me by your side.”

“I don't want that responsibility,” Perkar sighed.

“You don't have it,” Ngangata grunted, in answer. “But if I force you to think of me—or anyone—before yourself, I've done a good thing.”

Perkar watched as Ngangata finished saddling his mount and then led his horse from the stall. “Will we win, Ngangata? Can we defeat the Changeling?”

Ngangata uttered an odd little laugh. “Of course,” he answered. “Why not?”

Perkar smiled thinly in response. “Indeed,” he agreed. “Why not?”

Together they rode out to join the company of warriors.

Perkar wondered idly if “Sheldu's” bondsmen knew who their lord really was, but decided that it did not matter. They were a brave company, well armed, and they seemed fit for anything. Thirty men now, plus his original six. Would the Forest Lord notice them and stop them? Perkar understood from experience that against the Huntress and her host, they would be as nothing. Then again, Karak rode with them, though disguised. Perkar hated to admit it, but it was a huge relief; with a god riding at their fore, he no longer had to worry about whether he was making the right decisions, leading them down the correct path. As when he had been caught on the River, he had nothing to say about where he was going—only about what he did when he got there.

“Why haven't you traveled with us since the beginning?” he wondered to Karak aloud.

“I had things to do and I would have been noticed” was the reply—not explaining who would notice, of course, or what things he had to do. “Now—well, we are about to enter my home. Even now, however, I must remain disguised. Do not expect much overt help from me. I am your guide, not your protector, though the closer we get to Erikwer, the more help I can be.”

“Erikwer?”

“His source; the place in the mountain from which he flows,” Karak answered. After that, the Crow God rode up front to talk to one of his men.

So Perkar allowed T'esh to lag back. The stallion's coat gleamed, and Perkar himself had bathed, been dressed in fine new clothes, and a shining steel hauberk rode packed on Sharp Tiger. He should feel new and refreshed.

But two days before, riding and laughing next to Hezhi, smiling at her wonder at the mountains, he had felt a hundred times better. He realized, with some astonishment, that he had actually been happy. Odd that happiness was something one only identified when it was entirely absent.

The sun cast gold on bright new leaves and the upturned faces of wildflowers, but each moment only brought him closer to despair and doom.

He tried to brighten when Hezhi rode up but failed utterly.

“What's the matter?” she asked. For an instant he almost explained; it hung at his tongue. But the chill remained in him, and when he shrugged instead of answering her he could almost palpably feel her pulling back from him, retreating behind her own walls against hurt and closeness.

“Well, then,” she said awkwardly. “I came over because I need to tell you some things.” Her eyes wandered from her skirt briefly to his face and back down before she went on. “I journeyed last night. I saw an army of Mang riding to meet us. An army much larger than this one.”

“Oh?” he said. Karak had not shown him an army, though now that he thought of it, he had alluded to one.

“Yes. They are led by Moss.”

“Moss?”

“Moss is the gaan—though I suppose we should have known that. I should have seen it.”

“Brother Horse says that gaan can hide their natures, even from one another.”

“Yes. Still; when he came to me, in that dream, he was attacked by something I never saw—something commanding lightning. The next day you found Moss, wounded. I never made the obvious connection.”

Perkar held up one hand helplessly, not sure what to say. Moss was just a boy—who would expect him to be the leader of hosts of Mang warriors? But then, he was older than Hezhi, and not much younger than Perkar himself.

“This army also has someone else with it,” Hezhi said. “Someone impossible.”

“Impossible?”

He listened intently as she outlined her vision, and when he understood that she had seen the destroyer who had murdered the Stream Goddess, his chest tightened until he thought it might rip itself apart. But then she explained who he was, and he remembered.

“I chopped his head off,” Perkar said incredulously. “Off. ”

“This is the River at work,” she replied dully. “I'll fight you no more about going to She'leng, Perkar. I just want you to know that. You need not coax me any longer.”

“I was never—”

“Don't lie,” she answered, and with chagrin he saw real anguish in her eyes. “Yen lied to me, and now … now he's coming for me again. He may not have ever been human. All I understand is this: when one of you comes close to me, holds my hand, kisses me, it's only because he wants something besides me. Maybe if I live long enough, I can learn whatever secret it is, whatever magic exists that will let me survive that, but for now I've had enough of it. You and I will see this through; we will slay the River or die trying. But I don't trust you, Perkar, because I know you've lied to me. I am certain, at least, that there are things the Blackgod told you that you haven't chosen to share. So I'm not doing this because I trust you, Perkar, but because it is the only thing I can see to do. And I don't know that I like you very much, either.”

He listened to all of that helplessly, desperate to respond, but without anything to say. Because it was all true—all, save the implication that their recent closeness was no more than a ploy on his part. But he could see that it seemed that way, and besides, he didn't have the energy to argue. If she wanted it this way, it would only make things easier should they reach an impasse later on.

So instead of arguing, he only lowered his head, knowing that she would take that as a sign that everything she said was true. And after a moment she rode off to where Tsem, Brother Horse, and Yuu'han traveled in a little clump.

IN two days they entered the dark majesty of Balat. Hezhi was awestruck by the trees, for though she had seen them in dreams long ago in Nhol, the dreams failed to do justice to their sheer, overwhelming majesty. Some were two horse-lengths in diameter, and the canopy those gargantuan columns supported was like distant green stained glass, the occasional real rays of sunlight that actually fell through that imperial ceiling shining like diamonds amongst the ferns and dead leaves of the forest floor.

Her godsight showed her many things skulking just beyond the edge of vision: ghosts, and gods of a hundred descriptions. Balat was alive in a way that she had never imagined. Despite her resentment—despite having been herself threatened—she began to understand why the Huntress strove so implacably to protect this place. She saw now that Nhol and its empire rested on merely the corpse of a land. The only things that thrived there were Human Beings and the plants and animals thralled to them—as the Humans were thralled to the River. Balat was as the whole world had been, once—alive. The “monsters” her ancestors had destroyed lived here still, and they gave breath to the world.

Though to be fair to her ancestors, being rid of such creatures as the Blackgod and the Huntress could at times seem desirable.

Five evenings later they capped a hill and she saw She'leng. She realized, with a start, that she had seen it earlier that day and believed it to be nothing more than a remote cloud, for it was so distant that it was only just darker than the sky. Nothing could be that far away and yet fill so much of the sky except a cloud. But when the sun touched it, and red-gold blood quickened on the outline of the peak, it stood revealed, like a ghost suddenly re-imbued with life and substance. It was still so far distant as to only be a shadow, but what a shadow! Its perfect cone filled the western quarter of the horizon. Truly such a place might give birth to gods, might humble even the likes of the River.

Throughout the journey, Perkar had become more and more distant, and though Hezhi wept about it once, secretly, she hardened her heart against him. She had given him the opportunity to dispute her, to tell her she was wrong, that he felt something more than some offensive mixture of anger and duty regarding her. He had refused the opportunity, and she would not give him the chance to hurt her again.

Besides, as the mountain waxed in the following days, recognition of the sheer audacity of what they were about grew proportionally, and that brought with it not only fear but a thriving excitement that she hadn't expected. Once she had stood on the edge of the palace, proposing her own death. Now she proposed to kill a god, the god of her ancestors—her ancestor.

Feeling an awkward need to express such feelings, she reluctantly guided her mount to where Brother Horse rode. He greeted her cheerfully, though since Raincaster's death his face more often fell in solemn lines.

“Hello, shizhbee” he said.

“It is well,” she answered, in Mang—her acceptance of his calling her granddaughter once again. He understood and smiled more broadly.

“I did have hopes of making a Mang out of you,” he remarked.

“I had hopes of being one,” she returned, a little more harshly than she intended. They wouldn't let me, she finished silently. But Brother Horse knew that, caught the implication, and an uneasy silence followed.

“I'm sorry,” Hezhi went on, before the quiet could entirely cocoon them. “You've been good to me, Brother Horse, better than I could have ever expected.”

“I've done no more than any other old man would do, to keep the company of a beautiful young girl.”

She actually blushed. “That's very—”

“It's true” Brother Horse insisted. “I'm like an old fisherman, come to sit down by the lake for a final time. I rest here with my feet in the water, and I know in my bones I won't be taking my catch home, not this time. Old men spend so much time thinking about the lake, about the dark journey that awaits us. The sight of beauty becomes precious—better than food, beer, or sex. And you have a glorious beauty in you, child, one that only someone with sight like mine can appreciate.”

“You aren't going to die,” Hezhi whispered.

“Of course I am.” Brother Horse snorted. “If not today, tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, the next day. But it doesn't matter, you see? There's nothing to be done about that. And this is fine company to die in.”

“I was worried that you came only because you thought you hadto.”

“What difference does that make?” Brother Horse asked.

“It's just that… I'm sorry about…” She remembered just in time that it was considered rude to name the dead until that name was passed on to another. “About your nephew,” she finished lamely.

His face did cloud then. “He was beautiful, too,” he murmured. ”What is comforting about beauty is that we know we will leave it behind us—that it goes on. When it precedes us, that's tragedy.”

He turned his face from her, and she heard a suspicious quaver in his voice when he spoke down to Heen, who trotted dolefully along the other side of his horse. “Heen says that's the problem with being as old as we are,” he muttered gruffly. “Too much goes before you.”

He reached over and ran his rough hand on her head, and she did catch a glint of moisture in his eyes. “But you won't,” he muttered. ”I'll see to that.” He straightened in the saddle and coughed. ”Now. What did you really ride over here to talk about?”

“It's not important.”

“I think it is. You've been silent as a turtle for three days, and now you choose to speak. What's on your mind?”

She sighed and tried to collect the fragments of what she had been thinking. “I was wondering how I should be feeling, going to slay my own ancestor. It should seem like murder, like patricide. Like killing my own father.”

Brother Horse looked at her oddly. “But you don't feel that way.”

“No … a little maybe. I was brought up to worship him. But then I remember my cousin, D'en, and the others below the Darkness Stair. I remember him filling me up, being inside of me, and I don't feel very daughterly at all. I want him to die. With so many gods in the world, he will hardly be missed.”

“Not true,” Brother Horse said. “His absence will be felt, but gladly. The world will be better without him. Are you afraid?”

“I was. I have been. But now I only feel excited.”

The old man smiled. “Felt that way myself, on my first raid. Just kept seeing that trophy skin in my hand, decorating my yekt. I was scared, too, but I didn't know it. The two feelings were all braided up.”

“It's like that,” she affirmed. “It's just like that. It's frustrating because I can't picture what will happen when we get there. I can't rehearse it in my mind, you see? Because I don't know what I am to do!”

“I rehearsed my first battle a hundred times,” Brother Horse said, “and it still went completely wrong. Nothing I imagined prepared me for it. You might be better off this way.”

“But why is this kept from me? Why shouldn't I know?”

“I can't guess. Maybe so no one learns it from you. Moss might be able to do that.”

“Oh.” They traveled on silently for a bit, but this time it was a comfortable pause. In that interval she reached over and touched the old man's hand. He gripped hers in return.

“If we succeed—if we slay him—I wonder, will the little gods like those who live here return to Nhol? Will the empire become like Balat?”

“No place is like Balat,” the old Mang assured her. “But I take your meaning, and yes, I think so. When he is no longer there to devour them, the gods will return.”

“That's good, then,” she said.

Two days later they reached She'leng. Its lower slopes were folded into increasingly higher ridges, and they wound up and down these, torturously seeking the place whose name she had begun to hear muttered amongst Sheldu's men. Erikwer. Her heart seemed to beat faster with each moment and passing league, filling her with frenetic energy. She could sense the fear that Brother Horse spoke of, but it could not match the growing apprehension of danger, which—rather than fear—kindled a precarious joy.

The fact that Perkar only seemed more sullen and drawn each day scarcely had meaning for her anymore. Four times before her life had changed forever: first when she discovered the library and Ghan; again when she understood the nature of her Royal Blood, its power and its curse. Thrice when she fled Nhol to live among the Mang, and again when she had stepped through the drum into the world of the lake and become a shamaness. But none of these had brought peace to her, or happiness, or even a modicum of security.

Tomorrow would. In Erikwer she would find release in one way or the other, release from the very blood in her veins by slaying or dying. And with that thought, tentative elation waxed fierce, and she remembered the statuette Yen had given her—so long ago it seemed. The statuette of a woman's torso on a horse's body, a representation of the Mang belief that mount and rider were joined together in the afterlife. She had become that statuette now. She was mare, bull, swan—but above all she was Hezhi, and she would live or die as herself. That could never be taken from her again.

Though everyone else trotted, she urged Dark into a gallop, stirring a small storm of leaves in the obscure light. The others watched her go, perhaps amused; she did not care. She wanted to run, to feel hooves pound in time with her heart. Tree branches whipped at her as the trail narrowed and steepened, but Dark was surefooted. Whooping, suddenly, she rounded a turn that plunged her down along a hillside—

And nearly collided with another rider. The horses shuddered to a halt as the other person—one of Sheldu's outriders—shot her a look that contained both anger and fear. She opened her mouth to apologize, but he interrupted.

“Mang,” he gasped. “We can't go that way.”

“What?”

“In the valley,” he insisted, waving his arms. “A whole army.” He frowned at her and then urged his mount past, disappearing up the slope.

Hezhi hesitated, her reckless courage evaporating—but not so fast as to take curiosity with it. The trail bent in a single sharp curve ahead, and through the trees bordering the trail she could see the distant slopes of another valley, far below. She coaxed Dark around that curve—hoping for just a glance of the army the outrider spoke of.

Beyond, the trees opened, and she faced down a valley furrowed so perfectly it might have been cut with a giant plow. On her right was only open air. To her left, the trail became no more than a track reluctantly clinging to the nearly sheer valley wall. So steep and narrow it was, she could hardly imagine a horse walking it without tumbling off; there were no trees on the precipitous slope to break such a fall before reaching the lower valley where the grade lessened and trees grew. Nevertheless, a group of Sheldu's men stood, dismounted, farther down the trail, and far below them another knot of men and horses struggled up the track. Below them, through the gaps in spruce and birch, sunlight blazed on steel in a thousand places, as if a swarm of metallic ants were searching the narrow valley for food.

But they were not ants; they were men and horses: Mang.

Yes, it was time to return to the group. She wondered how long it would take the army to climb the trail, and if the riders already coming up the slope were friend or foe. They were dark, like Mang, but even with her god-enhanced sight they were difficult to make out, though one seemed familiar.

That was when her name reached her ears, borne by wind, funneled up to her by the valley walls.

“Hezhi!” Very faintly, but she recognized the voice. And then it came again. Gaping, she turned Dark back toward the approaching army.

XXXIII The Steepening Trail

GHE'S fingers tightened around his throat, and Ghan felt that his eyes were about to pop from his skull. Fighting for the merest sip of breath, he scarcely had leisure to understand that all around him, men were dying, throwing themselves between Moss and the demons Ghe had summoned from his veins. Ghan wondered, inanely, if the men could really fight and die in such grim silence, or if it was the roaring of blood in his ears that kept him from hearing them.

He clawed at the talons biting into his windpipe, but he might as well have pried at steel bolts set in marble.

“Now, what lie were you about to tell me, old man?” the ghoul snapped at him. “Why were you calling me a fool? Or shall I just find out by opening you up and peering inside?”

Ghan answered him the only way he could: by beating feebly against his attacker's chest. Ghe looked puzzled for an instant and then roughly pushed him back. Blood and breath roared back into his head, and he fell, ears full of ocean sound.

He probably had only instants, but his throat was still closed up. Ghe had paused to examine his self-inflicted wound, the one the grass-bears had sprung from; it had stopped bleeding.

“I remember now,” Ghe told him, eyes suddenly mild.

Ghan grunted; it was the best he could do.

“When I died. Hezhi's mouth was bleeding, and her blood was turning into something.” He settled his feet onto the ground. “Blood, you see, gives spirit shape. Did you know the stream-demon I took in? She had Human form because a Human girl bled to death in her. And my blood is so many things now.”

“She's driven you mad,” Ghan shouted urgently. “Qwen Shen has you on a rope, like a dog, Ghe. Like a mongrel cur from

Southtown.”

“Shut up, old man,” Ghe gritted. “No more lies from you.” “It's true. Did you know you call Hezhïs name when you

sleep with Qwen Shen? She owns you, bends your soul to her devices.”

Snake-quick, Ghe was there, slapping him with an open palm.

The earth rippled like a sheet waving in the wind. Another slap, and Ghan saw only night.

WHEN he awoke, Ghe was daubing his mouth with a wet rag. He spluttered, raising his arms reflexively to defend himself. Ghe shook his head, a silent no that served only to deepen Ghan's confusion.

Moss stood behind Ghe. He looked weary, and one arm hung in a sling.

“What?”

Ghe shrugged. “I nearly killed you. That would have been a mistake. Like the River, I have trouble seeing myself; I need others, outside of me, to watch me. How do you feel?”

“Confused. I thought you and Moss were fighting to the death.”

“We were,” Moss interposed. “To my death, very certainly. You saved me, Ghan, gave me the information I was missing. I wish you had told me earlier about Qwen Shen's hold on Ghe. If I had known a day ago, many of my warriors would still be alive. It is fortunate for us both that you blurted it out at last.”

“I trust none of you,” Ghan muttered. “I've made no secret of that. I keep what I know close. If you want it, he knows how to get it.” He jerked his chin defiantly at Ghe.

The ghoul shook his head. “No. Your knowledge would have been bound up inside of me with everything else, if I had taken you in before. I remember now why I wanted you on this expedition alive: because even hostile to me, you are more useful as you are.” His eyes narrowed. “But I will have no more betrayal. You have balanced the old debt; do not incur new ones.”

“I still don't understand what happened.”

Moss smiled faintly. “I showed him his—what did you call it?Leash. I showed him the trap Qwen Shen had laid for him. Once I knew it was there, it was simple enough to see and reveal.” He rubbed his hurt arm. ”She is powerful, that one. Dangerous.”

“What has become of her?” Ghan asked.

Ghe's visage furrowed in wrath. “Gone, she and Bone Eel both. Gone I know not where. I will search for them.”

Ghan drew a deep breath. “Give me a moment to think,” he said. “Because I have something to tell you both. And some questions, as well.”

Now his senses could make out a cricket chirping half a league away, see a nut hanging on a tree at the same distance, scent the distinctive odor of a soul from even farther. Yet he found not the faintest trace of Qwen Shen or Bone Eel. It was as if they had wrapped a vanishing about themselves, the way powerful priests were able to—the way the temple itself did.

Out of sight of the camp, he raged. Trees splintered beneath his claws, small creatures of wood and field shriveled into skeletons in the tempest of his anger. He wanted to hurt himself, to pound his knuckles until bone cracked and blood covered him. He wanted desperately to feel pain once again, to purify himself through it.

But his skin no longer registered such sensations, and his flesh was no more susceptible to tearing than his bones to shattering. At last he gave up. He had failed the River, but that failure could still be redressed. Especially if he could puzzle out what Qwen Shen had been doing, and why. He remembered their lovemaking sessions now, and part of it at least was plain. She had labored to twist his fundamental desire to find Hezhi into some buried desire for her. She had not failed; he still trembled when he thought of her, her flesh, her eyes. But now he could remember the betrayals, the illusion of Hezhi in the throes of passion, the whispered conversations he forgot, the subtle suggestions that made such perfect sense from her lips …

Ah, when he found her it would be such a sweet thing. No passion she had ever brought him would be as great as unraveling the threads of her life, one by one, as he also unraveled the flesh and blood surrounding her.

He forced himself to think on the things she had made him forget; memories crowded for recognition, but he had no way of sorting them out. Moss could help him do that, and so could Ghan, though the latter would do so reluctantly. He rubbed his knuckles, again chagrined at their lack of soreness. They seemed odd, as he rubbed them, unyielding, and he realized with a start that some sort of bony plate was present beneath the skin. Puzzled, he continued to inspect his body. Broad sheets of hard substance lay beneath his chest, abdomen, thighs—a massive plate lay across his shoulders, and he realized that the skin there was actually colored by the armor pressing up from beneath, a dull aquatic gray, slightly blemished, like the back of a Rivercrab.

He didn't know whether to be amused or horrified; removed from the protecting waters of the River, his body had begun growing a shell to defend itself. Qwen Shen had hidden that from him, too. Why had she done that?

To maintain in him the illusion that he was Human, of course. To keep him from the persuasions of Lady Death and his own common sense which told him that as much as he might believe himself to be Ghe, he was not.

He couldn't think about that. It didn't matter. It didn't matter, because he was someone, and he had the memories of a legion now to draw from, and he had his desire, his purpose, though Qwen Shen may have tainted it. And he would still have Hezhi, if not for himself, then at least for the River and for her, so that she might be the empress Moss told him she would be: Hezhi, empress of the world. And in such a world, ruled by the River and his children, might there not be some place for such as he?

Furious and bewildered, he stalked back to the rapidly breaking camp. The urge to fly ahead, alone, and confront his enemies by himself was nearly overwhelming. But he must listen to Moss now, who knew this world of magic and many gods better than he. Moss could throw his vision from him, see things far away—something Ghe found himself unable to do; when he tried, the spirit carrying his sight inevitably tried to escape, and he was usually forced to devour it entire. Moss controlled his familiars in a different way, by cajoling them, by bargaining with them; they came and went willingly. The shaman's personal power was as nothing compared to Ghe's, but it gave him some advantages. Moss knew where Hezhi and her captors were, knew that in a few days the paths of their forces would converge, at the base of the mountain looming west. Moss had urged Ghe to wait until then to strike. The waiting was hard, hard. Yet one thing he understood, now that Qwen Shen's hold on him was released: he himself was a weapon, not a warrior. The River had made him thus, for it could not give him the wisdom or knowledge to know how he should strike or where. That was Moss' task. Moss knew best how to wield him.

So perhaps—as a weapon—he spent too much time thinking. Thinking only served to confuse him, in the end.

He entered the camp, wondering what Ghan had to tell him.

GHAN stumbled to the stream, sought up it until the current was unsullied by the hooves of horses. Kneeling, he brought handfuls of the clear and incredibly cold liquid to his face, gingerly probed the cuts and bruises on his throat. So close, so close, and yet now he wondered if he had done the right thing. It might have been better if Moss were destroyed.

Well, he shouldn't hold himself accountable for what he shrieked when Ghe had a grasp on him. Never in all of his years could he have ever imagined the forces at play, here beyond the simple and sterile world of the River. It was a terrifying world, and he feared for Hezhi. Everything seemed to hinge upon her, and a hinge swung too many times could weaken and break.

But, water take him, he was beginning to fear this unknown, unseen “Blackgod” even more than he feared Ghe. Here was a creature who had plotted and planned against this day for at least a thousand years. Such a creature might be resistant to attempts to alter its plans, and it would surely not take into account the feelings, desires, and wishes of a twelve-, no, thirteen-year-old girl. Whatever designs were laid down in the dark places of the world in the past millennia could not account specifically for Hezhi. One could not plan her—only a child like her. Hezhi had her own desires and motivations, and they might not coincide with what the gods wanted from her.

He closed his eyes, trying to imagine her face once more: chewing her lip, bent over an open book…

He opened his eyes and was startled to indeed see a woman's reflection on the stream.

“If you cry out,” she whispered, “if you make the faintest of sounds, you will die. Do you understand that?”

Ghan turned to Qwen Shen and nodded. Bone Eel stood a small distance behind her. He looked grim.

“You will come back to the horses with me, and you will mount, and you will offer no resistance. If you do those things, you will not only live, but you will see your darling pupil again.”

Ghan shrugged, though he found it impossible to conceal his expression of anger. He followed her to the horses.

Surely Moss or Ghe would sense them somehow, find them.

But half a day later, as their horses lathered and panted beneath them, and they entered the bosom of the enormous forest, he was forced to admit that perhaps he was mistaken about that. About midday, Bone Eel called them to a walk, so that their mounts might not die beneath them.

“You are a fool,” Bone Eel told him casually.

Ghan turned sharply in his saddle. There was something in Bone Eel's voice that sounded different, somehow.

“Am I?”

“You revealed us. We had the ghoul under our control, and you gave him the means to slip. You cannot imagine what you have released.”

“I think I can. I wonder if you can?”

Qwen Shen uttered a harsh laugh. “My husband has endured much,” she said. “He has pranced and played for your amusement, so that you would focus all of your attention upon me and never watch him. But do not be deceived. I have witchery enough, but—”

“Hush, beloved,” Bone Eel said, a cord of command strung through the words. “Giving this one knowledge is like giving an assassin weapons. Or perhaps like giving broken glass to a small child, I am not certain which. In any case, he needs to know little enough.”

“I know that you are servant of the Blackgod, who in Nhol we name the Ebon Priest,” Ghan snapped.

“Do you?” Bone Eel said easily. “Well, I must admit I would be sorely disappointed in you if you had not reasoned at least that much. Tell me more, prince of words and books.”

“The whole priesthood serves this Blackgod. But you are not priests. She is a woman and you are not castrated.”

“Right again. You are indeed clever, Master Ghan. Perhaps we were wrong in urging Ghe to swallow you up.”

“No,” Qwen Shen snapped. “We would still control the ghoul if we had persuaded that. What I endured from him, and then you render it all for naught!”

“Now, beloved,” Bone Eel sighed, wagging his finger at her. “You know that you enjoyed him well. Lie not to me.”

Qwen Shen opened her mouth to protest but when she met her husband's gaze, a devilish look flashed upon her features. “Well, after all, my lord, on the River you were less than your usual self.”

“Hush, I said,” Bone Eel snapped, and this time Ghan caught real anger in his tone.

Qwen Shen obeyed, and the three rode in sullen silence for a bit.

“May I ask where we are going?” Ghan asked.

“You may, and I may even answer,” Bone Eel replied.

“Well?”

“We go to rendezvous with Hezhi and her retinue,” he answered.

“At best, you can only hope to reach them hours before Ghe and Moss. Less, if Ghe takes to the air. He can fly now, you know.”

“I know. Well, you can thank yourself for this mess. The balance was easily tipped in our favor when we had some control of Ghe. Now we have none, and the outcome of this shall be messy, at best. I seek the advice of someone wiser and more powerful than myself. Leaving Nhol, I left much of my power and wisdom behind,” Bone Eel confided.

“You seek Perkar, who rides with Hezhi?”

“Perkar? The barbarian dolt? No. Actually, you will be pleased to meet him in person, since you have thought so hard upon him.”

“The Blackgod?” Ghan grunted. “You're telling me that Hezhi rides in the company of a god?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. I can only barely see them. But I would bet my last copper soldier that he is near if he is not among them.” He shrugged. “Either way, in a day or so you will witness a battle such as this world has not seen in many, many ages. The rotten stump has been kicked, and termites pour out!” He laughed, genuinely and loudly, and the peals of it rang weirdly in the vast roof of the forest.

BY the afternoon, he was no longer laughing. They entered a high, narrow valley and began hurrying their exhausted mounts up one slope of it. It was steep, very steep, and none of them was an accomplished horseman. Below, the lean shapes of mounted Mang began to appear, outriders or actual pursuit, it did not matter, for they clearly understood who rode ahead of them—whoops of discovery and triumph echoed through the vale. Perhaps Qwen Shen and Bone Eel had some priestly trick for muddling Ghe's and Moss' supernatural senses, but they could not fool the keen eyes of born hunters and warriors.

Cursing, Bone Eel brayed at his horse for more speed as Ghan noticed a strange hissing sound.

Something brushed through the forest to his right, moving much faster than a bird, and a black shaft appeared in a tree trunk.

“They're shooting at us,” Ghan shouted.

“I know that, you fool,” Bone Eel snapped back.

“He is coming. He is near,” Qwen Shen added.

“I know that, too. The two of you darken your mouths and ride, if you've nothing useful to say.”

A few more arrows hissed by, but they must be at extreme range—or the Mang would not be missing them.

It took all of Ghan's strength and recently acquired riding skills to remain in the saddle; the way twined tortuously through trees, rising and falling, though in the main it rose. He kept his hands clenched in his mount's mane and his head buried there, as well, above the heaving neck, and more often than not his eyes were clenched shut, too. They were closed when the angle of flight changed sickeningly, as if his beast's head were pointed straight at the sky. A different horse—not his own—suddenly shrieked. He opened his eyes to find that they were scrambling up an incline so steep that Qwen Shen and her mount had fallen and were sliding. Cursing, she managed to remount. Bone Eel paid her no mind, but urged his own beast the more.

These are horses, not mountain goats, Ghan thought, heart thudding madly. But then the trail became just less steep enough that the horse could find a gait, a tortured trot often broken by stumbles. The trees around them thinned and were gone, unable to find purchase on the rocky slope.

When he looked down, a few moments later, he wished he hadn't. The path his horse continued to slip upon seemed less than a handspan wide, and it wound up the side of a mountain—the mountain, he supposed—so that to the right was a nearly sheer cliff rising to greet the sky and to the left—to the left was a steep plunge that left him dizzy. Below that, the valley was filling with Mang, and from them lifted scores of black missiles, clattering into the hillside around them.

“There!” he heard Bone Eel shout furiously. Ghan looked about wildly and then saw them: a trio of horsemen above, blocking the way up.

“Surrender,” Ghan hissed. “We're doomed otherwise.”

“No! Look!” And Bone Eel pointed again at the men above.

Ghan did see, then. They were not Mang; beneath their helms, pallid faces gleamed, and the cut of their clothing and armor was strange. They were—had to be—Perkar's people.

His horse slipped, and a stone flew from beneath its hooves, out and down. Ghan hoped it struck one of their pursuers on his helmeted head. He glanced up again. Would they make it? It was so steep, so far…

Beyond the three riders was a fourth, very small, not dressed in armor at all but in some sort of yellow skirt. The distance was too great for him to make out any features, only the delicate brown wedge of her face. But he knew. He knewl

“Hezhi!” he shouted with all of the strength in his lungs, and he heard his voice repeating in the hollows of the mountain. The rider paused, but as her name began to come back to him, she suddenly spurred back into action, plunging dangerously down the trail toward them. “Hezhi!” he shouted again, clapping his beast's flanks with real force now, his old heart suddenly new with fierce determination. He was here now, she was alive, and even with an army below them there was hope; he knew it as surely as he knew her.

He felt a twinge of pain in his back, wondered why his old joints had protested no more than this up until now. He could make out her eyes now, though the light seemed to be fading. Were there clouds blocking the sun?

The pain in his back was worse, and an odd numbness spread through his limbs, dizziness. He reached back and felt the stickiness of blood, the wooden shaft sunken into his kidneys.

“Bone Eel …” he began. He wanted to tell someone how surprising it was, to have something in you. He had always imagined the pain would be greater.

The mountain wheeled around him, as if his mount had begun to fly and roll about in the air. It seemed to him that he should cling tightly to something, but his hands had lost their ability to grip. The whirling became floating, and he watched, astonished, as his horse, Bone Eel, Qwen Shen, and the other riders seemed to fly away from him, and only then did he guess that he had fallen, that he was plummeting down the mountainside.

Then he struck something unyielding, and light vanished. Oddly he could still hear a sort of grinding and snapping, a vague and distant pummeling, and then that faded away, as well.

XXXIV The Teeth of the Host

“GHAN isn't dead,” Hezhi explained to herself in a hushed voice. ”Ghan is in the library, with his books. Nothing could ever compel him to leave them.”

Then who was it she had seen? Whose toylike figure had pitched almost comically off of the trail, bounced thrice on the rough slope before vanishing into the growth of the lower valley?

Not Ghan, that was certain, though she heard someone mention his name—one of the newcomers, dressed in Nholish fashion—gibbering like everyone else in some incoherent tongue.

Why don't you all learn to speak? she thought bitterly. They probably weren't even saying Ghan. It was probably gan or gaan or kan or ghun. Who cared, anyway? They kept saying “Mang” a lot, too, but that was unambiguous; she saw Mang warriors clustering at the base of the slope, heard their far-off whoops of challenge.

One of the white men took her gently from her horse and placed her up on his. She let him; she was too busy thinking to ride, and it seemed that they were in a hurry. Thinking about who that could have been, who so resembled her teacher. Because he was safe in Nhol.

“Is she wounded? What's wrong?” Perkar shouted, when he saw Hezhi's blank expression, and that she was mounted not on Dark but up behind one of Karak's people.

“No,” the warrior replied. “She isn't hurt. She just saw someone die.”

Perkar had already dismounted and was rushing toward her, but Tsem beat him to it, plucking her from the back of the mare. She was mumbling something to the half Giant, as if trying to explain to him the most important thing in the world. Tsem only looked puzzled.

Two strangers came behind Hezhi, a man and a woman. Both were striking, beautiful even, and both—as far as he could discern, from his limited experience—were dressed in the fashion of Nhol: colorful kilts and blouses. The man wore a cloth wrapped upon his head, though it was so disheveled that it hung nearly off one side. When that man saw Karak, he quickly dismounted and knelt.

“Get up, you fool,” Karak—still, of course, in the guise of Sheldu—commanded.

Looking a bit confused, the man straightened and waved up the woman who had also begun to bow.

A man and woman from Nhol who recognized and bowed before Karak. What did that mean?

He was tempted not to care, and it seemed he had little time for it anyway.

“Mang, blocking the valley. I'm sure some will come up for us.”

“Single file,” Karak said. “They can be slaughtered easily.”

“Until the rest of them work up the more charitable slope behind us,” Ngangata shouted as he rode over. “They can be here before the sun has moved another span.”

“This is the quickest way,” Karak insisted.

“Only if we get there. How many Mang? A few hundred? Thirty-five of us, Sheldu. We must go over the spine and ride to our destination through another valley.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Ngangata knows these lands, Sheldu,” Perkar interrupted.

“As do I!” Karak roared, his eyes flashing dangerously yellow.

“Yes,” Perkar hissed meaningfully, striding close. “But Ngangata knows these lands from horsebackl”

“Oh.” Karak blinked. “Oh.”

Perkar turned to see Ngangata smirking at the exchange. He was certain the half man knew by now who their “guide” was.

“Over the spine,” Perkar grunted. He turned to Karak. “Unless you are ready to be more than guide.”

The Crow God slowly shook his Human-seeming head. “Not yet Not until we are too close for him to stop us.”

“Then Ngangata and I lead; the place you describe can be reached other ways than the one we are going. If the way is longer, then we must go now rather than argue. Leave a few of your men here with plenty of arrows to stop the Mang from coming up that trail. Tell them to give us a good head start and then leave, before they can be surrounded.”

Karak pursed his lips, annoyance plain on his face, but then he nodded brusquely and shouted the orders, moving off to choose his men.

“Well,” Ngangata appraised, “I wondered if you had left us again.”

“Soon enough, friend,” Perkar told him. “But not just yet.”

A moment later they were back on the move, their mounts scrambling across the trackless ridge. Mang war whoops seemed to be everywhere, and Perkar watched the tightness gather in Brother Horse's face. Difficult as it was, moving in and amongst trees, Perkar maneuvered close enough to the old man to hold a shouted conversation.

“You've done more than anyone can expect of you,” Perkar shouted. “I urge you to leave us now. No one should have to fight his own people.”

“I know what I am about,” Brother Horse snapped back at him, though he was plainly agitated. “Save your concern. I will not turn on you; I have cast my lot. If I am fortunate, I will not have to slay any of my kinsmen. But what goes on here is more important than any claims on blood.”

“I never thought to hear a Mang say that,” Perkar admitted.

Brother Horse set his face in a deep scowl. “If you search for an enemy among us,” the old man growled, “best to start in your own heart.”

“What do you mean by that?” Perkar shouted.

Brother Horse lifted one hand in a gesture of dismissal. “I don't know,” he answered. “But the last few leagues have brought me uneasiness about you.”

Perkar urged his mount ahead, angry and confused. How dare the old fool question him, when it was Mang who rode for the Changeling—the enemy of them all.

Ngangata was pacing close behind; their horses broke from run to canter and back as the leaves slapped at them. Perkar was vividly reminded of the last time he had ridden these ridges, fleeing the Huntress. Then, of course, they had been fighting to escape Balat and its mysteries; now they strove to reach its heart.

“Our pursuit is gaining more quickly than I thought they could,” Ngangata yelled over to him. “I think they split even before we saw them.”

“How many, can you tell?”

“Many. Hundreds, coming from possibly three directions.”

“How far do we have to go?”

“Too far, from Karak's description.”

Perkar smiled savagely. “How long have you known who our friend 'Sheldu' really is?”

Ngangata laughed coarsely. “Almost since you have. I read it on your face. And you've gone fey again.” He stabbed his finger at Perkar. “You aren't thinking of riding back against them?”

Perkar shook his head. “No. I mean, I did think about it, but what would be the point? Most would just go around me. If there were a narrow pass to hold, or if I could reach their head—Moss, or that—thing …” He turned fiercely in his saddle. ”I will warn you of this, my friend. If I see an opportunity to slay the creature from Nhol, I will take it. Do you understand that?”

“No,” Ngangata replied frankly, “but I can accept it.”

“Good.”

Perkar spent the next hundred heartbeats fighting his way to the front of the column. Hezhi still looked dazed, but Tsem's horse could not bear even her tiny additional weight, and so she rode up behind Yuu'han. In fact, the Giant's massive charger quivered so that Perkar feared it would collapse any moment. Then what would Tsem do? Of course, soon all of the horses would be useless enough to any of them; even T'esh was near exhausted. And Sharp Tiger, pacing placidly and stubbornly behind him, would be no help to anyone.

The howls behind him were drawing nearer.

Even Karak seemed concerned, glancing nervously around.

“You could stop them,” Perkar pointed out.

“That isn't my place,” the Raven answered testily. “We are too close to our goal now. I can almost taste our victory. If I reveal my power, if I uncloak myself here, now, Balati might notice all of this going on. Who knows what he would then do? I don't.”

“If we are all slain—” Perkar began.

But Karak interrupted. “You and the rest could purchase some time for me and Hezhi,” he said. “She is the crucial one. Only she matters.”

“There aren't enough of us,” Perkar snapped. “They would flow around us like the River they serve. My companions and your men together would slow them down not at all.”

“It will come to it soon enough. Then I may have to reveal myself,” Karak said. “But I won't until I must.”

“You mean until the rest of us are dead and yoxxfly with Hezhi from here.”

“Yes, now that you mention it, that is what I mean. But let us hope it doesn't come to that.”

At that moment, Ngangata raised his bow and shrieked, and his cry was echoed by a half score of Karak's men. For a moment, Perkar feared that the Mang had caught up with them, but then he saw the truth; ahead of them, the trees bristled with spears and bows. The dark, lean forms of wolves coursed between the great trunks restlessly, and more warriors than could easily be counted. They stretched out along the ridge as far as Perkar could see, utterly blocking their way.

GHE dug his talons into his palms, calling on all that remained of his self-control. The outriders had discovered Qwen Shen and Bone Eel. He could be upon them in instants, if he wished, take himself up on pinions of wind. Yet Moss warned him not to, and with greatest reluctance he conceded the young shaman's expertise. Though he felt that nothing could resist his power, Moss assured him that such was not the case—and indeed, whatever black arts Qwen Shen and her doltish husband controlled had not only concealed them and allowed them to steal Ghan away, but it had also made them exceedingly difficult to follow. Even now he could not sense where they were, though Moss assured him that they were not far, that before the day was done his army of Mang would encircle the whole lot of them, Hezhi and her pet demon included. Then there would be fighting enough.

“What we cannot do,” Moss had insisted, “is allow our eagerness and anger to separate us. My spirits and I have woven a hundred spells to keep from awaking the Forest Lord and to protect us from the other things that haunt this wood. If you go off alone, you will only have your power to protect you. You have much raw strength, but there are gods here who have more, gods you will not easily dispense with. Together we have a chance, you and I.”

So even though Hezhi was so near, he must cultivate patience.

Death came to him on the breeze: Mang warriors, bravely daring the winding trail up which Qwen Shen, Bone Eel, and Ghan had fled. At the top, someone was defending the precarious pathway. He felt their lives flicker and go out, and amongst them—someone else dying—someone familiar.

“Worry not, Moss,” he told his companion. “I'll go no farther than the outriders. But there is something ahead I must see.”

“Have a care,” Moss cautioned. “Whatever you sense, it could well be a trap.”

“I know. But somehow I don't think so.” He dismounted and, like a hound following a familiar scent, raced off into the scrubby, evergreen foliage of the slope. Whatever it was was fading, fading, and almost it was gone before he reached it. Yet it was stubborn, and when he found the source he knew he should have recognized it by that alone.

Ghan's broken body lay curled around a tree in a sort of reverse fetal position, his back bent completely the wrong way. One eye stared open and empty and the other was closed by the crushing of one side of his skull. Only within him was there any sign of his life, the filaments of his ghost even now fading and detaching from his ruined flesh. Ghe stared, wondering that he could feel any sorrow at all for such an annoying, dangerous old man, but he did. It was a sight that made little sense, the dignified scholar whose pen formed such esoteric and beautiful characters lying here, hundreds of leagues from any writing desk, in a forest, broken and arrow pierced.

Gingerly he reached out and tugged at the strands, pulled them free of a body that would serve now only to feed beasts and the black soil. He took the ghost and settled it into its own place amongst the august company of gods, an emperor, and a blind boy.

There, old man. At last I have you.

What? the spirit feebly replied. What has happened? Where is Hezhi? I just saw her…

Hush, Ghe told him. Rest there, and I will explain all to you later. Then he closed up the doors on Ghan, for the fear and panic of the newly captured wore poorly on him, and he could not afford now to be distracted. But it would please Hezhi, he knew, that he had saved the old man. For her, he would even let the scholar speak to her through his mouth. Yes, she would be happy and grateful when he did that.

He turned; Moss had come up behind him.

“I'm sorry, old man,” the shaman told the corpse. “If you had only told me of them sooner…”

Ghe smiled sardonically. “He kept one secret too many, and now he has none at all.”

Moss shrugged, and then his eyes cleared and he gestured up the ridge with his chin. “My spirits have slain those who held the trail, and a third of my force is approaching the ridge from another direction. We'll have them soon, unless something else goes awry.”

“When we do capture them, Qwen Shen is mine,” Ghe stated flatly.

“Well enough,” Moss answered, a slight edge in his voice.

“What's wrong?” Ghe asked.

The shaman shook his head uneasily. “It seems too simple. The Blackgod must have planned more elaborately than this. I will trust nothing until we have Hezhi and have reached the River.”

“And how far is that?” Ghe asked.

“The Changeling? We are near his source, and he emerges into his upper gorge less than a league from here.” He closed his fist. “Once we have her, nothing must hinder us. If we but reach his waters, no god or power on earth will be strong enough to take her back from him.”

“They seek his headwaters,” Ghe said. “Why not simply let them reach them?”

“No, they must not go to his source. That they must not be allowed to do at any cost. And they will not. Fifty of my swiftest warriors went ahead, weeks ago, and I have but lately seen them with my eyes that travel. Should we fail here, they still stand between them and his source.”

“How did you know that was what they sought?” Ghe asked.

The gaan shook his head. “I did not. I gambled. I still could be wrong, but I don't think so, not anymore.”

“Then let us go,” Ghe said softly. “Hezhi awaits us.”

THE host in the forest regarded them but did not advance, and for fifty heartbeats, no words were spoken or moves made. Karak sat his horse impassively, and Perkar had no sense of what his reaction was. A wind sighed across the hill, and in the distance the calls of the Mang came closer with each moment.

Perkar drew Harka. He knew whose horde this was, having been once slain by it.

“Can you see the Huntress?” he asked the weapon.

“No. But that is her host. And yet I sense no danger from them. ”

“No danger?”

I do not believe they are hunting you. ”

“Who then, the Mang?”

“ Wait, ” Harka said, and then, “there. ”

Perkar let his eyes be drawn, and then he saw her, emerging from the massed might of her Hunt. When last he saw the Huntress, she had been in the aspect of a black-furred Alwa woman with antlers and the teeth of a cat. She had ridden a lioness, which he had managed to slay before she speared him.

Her aspect had changed, but there was no mistaking her. The Goddess of the Stream had once explained to him that the gods took their appearance from contact with Human Beings, especially from their blood. The Huntress, Perkar knew, had tasted much blood, Human, Alwa, and otherwise. Her present guise was Human, more or less, a pale, lithe woman with thick black hair in a single braid that fell to the backs of her knees. Her eyes were slivers of deep brown with no whites, which gave her the appearance of a statue rather than a living creature. She was naked, and in her hand bore the same spear that had once pierced his throat. As before, antlers grew from her proudly held head, these backswept like those of a fallow deer.

“Well, what a pretty host,” she sighed, and it was the same voice, the same cruel set of the mouth that Perkar remembered. She gazed on him and her smile broadened. “Few there are who escape me,” she told him. “You will not do so again, if I hunt you. I know Harka now, recall his virtue. Remember that, little one.” She walked farther from her beasts and wolf-warriors, her eyes straying to Karak and a silver laugh coming up from her throat. But she said nothing to him, instead advancing toward where Hezhi sat behind Yuu'han, watching her dully.

“Well, child, are you ready? The final race is at hand now.”

“They killed Ghan,” Hezhi said, and even as she spoke, Perkar could hear her voice awaking, transforming from shocked to fierce. “They killed my teacher.”

Tsem dismounted and interposed himself between the Huntress and Hezhi, but the goddess merely stood there, nodding at Hezhi's answer.

“There will be no final moment,” Karak said, agitated, “if we are not on our way.”

“As you say, Lord—Sheldu, is it? As you say.”

“I did not expect you,” Karak went on.

“I'm hurt,” she replied. “Hurt to think you would not invite me to such a hunt as this.”

Karak did not reply. What was going on? What sort of games were these gods playing at? But then the goddess was approaching him again, and his skin prickled, remembering the languid glee with which she had once slaughtered him.

“Well, sweet boy,” she asked, when he was close enough to see that she bore fangs like a cat and that her tongue was black, “will you ride with me or not?”

“Ride with you?”

“Against them,” she said, indicating the sounds of the Mang approaching behind them. “Someone must stop them, or your friends will never reach the source of the Changeling. But I will need help, I think—and I seem to remember your love for the hue and cry of the charge.”

“I have never cared for it,” he muttered back.

“You rode against me once, and you killed my mount, whom I loved. Now I give you a chance to ride with the Hunt. Few mortal men are accorded that pleasure—fewer still have ridden on both ends of the spear.”

Perkar gazed around at his companions. Ngangata's eyes clearly warned him no, but Karak was nodding urgently. Hezhi—he saw many things in her eyes, but was sure of none of them.

“Very well,” he said. “Yes, very well. If you promise me the Tiskawa.”

“You will find him no easy foe,” the Huntress replied. “But as you wish.”

“Wait, then, just a moment,” Perkar said. He urged T'esh over to Hezhi and gazed levelly into her eyes. She met his regard fully, and he saw that she was indeed past her shock, eyes clear and intelligent.

“If I don't see you again,” he said, “I'm sorry.”

“Don't go,” she said faintly. “Stay with me.”

He shook his head. “I can't. I have to do this. But, Hezhi—” He sidled T'esh closer and leaned in until his lips were nearly on her ear. “Watch Sheldu,” he breathed. “He is Karak, under a glamour. He knows what must be done to destroy the Changeling—but don't trust him. And be careful.” And then he lightly kissed her cheek and rode to join the Huntress.

“Come,” Karak grated, and the company started off as the host of the Huntress began to move, parting around them, opening their ranks so that the Raven and those who followed him could pass through. Only Ngangata remained with Perkar.

“You have to go with them,” Perkar said. “You are the only one I can trust to watch after Hezhi. Only you know enough about gods and Balat to guess what must be done.”

“That may be,” Ngangata said, “but I don't want you to die alone.”

“I have no intention of dying,” Perkar replied. “I've outgrown that. And I ride with the Huntress! What can stop us?”

“Then you will not mind me joining you,” Ngangata persisted.

Perkar laid his hand on his friend's shoulder. “I want you with me,” he admitted. ”I've never told you this, because I'm ashamed of the way I treated you at first. But there is no one I would rather have at my side than you, no friend or brother I could value more. But what I said was true. I fear for Hezhi, and I need you there, with her. Believe it or not, I somehow feel you will be in more danger there than here. I'm sorry. But I'm begging you to go with Hezhi.”

Ngangata's normally placid face twisted in frustration, and Perkar thought that the halfling was going to shout at him again, as he had done back on the plains. But instead he reached his hand out.

Perkar gripped it in his own. “Piraku with you, below you, about you,” he told his strange, pale friend.

Ngangata smiled thinly. “You know my kind accumulate no Piraku,” he replied.

“Then no one does,” Perkar said. “No one.”

The Huntress—far ahead now—sounded her horn, and Perkar released his grip on Ngangata's hand and turned T'esh to ride with the host.

“And afterward, you must take me to see the lands beyond Balat!” he shouted back. Ngangata raised his hand in salute, but he only nodded, and then he, too, turned and rode to join Hezhi and the rest.

Perkar urged T'esh to a gallop. Wolves paced him, great black beasts the size of horses, as did fierce packs of rutkirul, bear gods wearing the shapes of feral men. A few moments at full gallop brought him beside the Huntress, who was now mounted upon a dagger-toothed panther. She nodded imperiously and then grinned a fierce, delighted grin. Despite himself—despite all of his doubts and fears—Perkar felt a bit of her joy, and the boy in him—the boy he had thought to be dead—that boy wondered what songs might be sung of this, of riding with the Goddess of the Hunt.

And as the sounds of the foe drew nearer, he surrendered himself to a whoop to match the howls rising from all around him. They breasted one hill and then the next—and the air was suddenly thick with black Mang shafts. One glanced from his hauberk, and his belly clenched; but then he saw, in the fore of the vast array of Mang, the face of his enemy, the one who had slain his love, and a red veil descended over his eyes, fury washed away his doubts and most of his humanity.

For the second time, Perkar Kar Barku raised Harka against the creature who had once been called Ghe, and pounding hooves closed the gap between them.

XXXV Shamans

HEZHI clenched her saw as the horses hurtled madly down the hillside. The sounds behind them were lost—the Huntress and her Hunt, the Mang, and Perkar—swallowed by the forest and the gorge they were descending into. All that existed now were rocks skittering down sharp, sometimes vertical slopes as their mounts struggled to retain footing. Even as Dark recovered from a stumble, one of Sheldu's men shouted as his stallion fell, rolling over him twice before smashing into a tree. The rider, hopelessly tangled in his stirrups, cried out again, more weakly as he and his mount reached a steeper gradient and vanished down it.

“Tsem!” Hezhi called back over her shoulder. “You dismount and walk!” The Giant was well behind them, his overlarge beast clearly unwilling to negotiate the vertiginous path. Tsem nodded reluctantly and got off, stroking the mare's massive head. He reached to unstrap his packs.

“Leave them!” Sheldu shouted. “We are near enough now as to have no need of that!”

Tsem, looking relieved, pulled out his club, threw his shield onto his back, and started down the hillside, puffing and panting.

“How much farther?” Hezhi snapped at the strange man who had somehow—she failed to understand how—become the leader of her expedition. Mindful of Perkar's assertion about him, she watched him carefully.

“No distance at all, as the crow flies,” Sheldu replied bitterly. “On foot, however—it will take some little while. But when we reach the bottom of this gorge, we can ride more freely.”

“Tsem cannot.”

“He can keep up; we won't be able to run, and even if we could, the horses would never manage it.”

Hezhi nodded, but her heart sank; she knew how quickly Tsem's massive bulk tired him.

True to Sheldu's promise, however, they soon reached the narrow bottom of the gorge. A stream coursed swiftly down it, and the air itself seemed cool and wet, smelled of stream. It raised her spirits somewhat, and Tsem, though round-eyed with exertion, seemed able enough to keep up with them on the soft, level earth. Hezhi let Dark lag so that she could stay beside him.

“Will you make it?” she asked worriedly.

“I will,” Tsem vowed.

“If you can't—”

“I'm fine, Princess. I know what you think of me, but I'm done complaining about how useless I am.”

“You were never useless, Tsem.”

He shrugged. “It doesn't matter. Now I know that I can contribute to this battle. Even if my strength to run fails I can turn and defend you against any enemies that might follow us.”

“Tsem, Ghan is already dead.”

“You don't know that, Princess. It couldn't have been Ghan. It must have been someone who resembled him.”

“I'm going to find out. Do you recognize either of those two?” She gestured at the man and woman who rode beside Sheldu.

“Yes. The woman is named Qwen-something-or-other. The man is a minor lord, Bone Eel.”

“A lord and lady from Nhol, here. Then it was Ghan, wasn't it?”

Tsem nodded reluctantly, but they discussed it no further.

Not much later, Sheldu called a halt when another horse collapsed. They stopped and let the animals drink.

“Perkar and the Huntress are doing their work, I hope,” Sheldu said. “I don't hear any pursuit.”

“You won't,” Ngangata pointed out. “This gorge seals out sound from beyond itself. We won't hear them until almost they are upon us.”

“We have to rest, if just for a moment,” Brother Horse said. “Sheldu is right about that.”

Hezhi made certain that Tsem drank some water, and then she walked across the thick carpet of leaves to where Qwen Shen and Bone Eel sat against a tree bole.

When she approached, both quickly came to their feet and bowed.

“Princess,” Bone Eel said. “We are your humble servants. Forgive us for not introducing ourselves until now.”

“I have two questions, and no time for courtly protocol,” Hezhi snapped. “The first question is, why are you here?”

Qwen Shen bowed again. “Your father sent us, Princess, to save you from the agents of the priesthood.”

“My father? The priesthood?”

“Yes, Lady.”

Hezhi blew out a puff of air. “You can tell me more of that later. When you joined us, another man rode with you, a man who tumbled from his horse. Who was he?”

Bone Eel lowered his head. “I believe you knew him,” he said. “That was Ghan, the librarian. It was he who convinced the emperor of the need for our expedition. He was—we shall miss him. I'm sorry.”

Qwen Shen was nodding, and Hezhi thought she caught the sparkle of a tear in the woman's eye. She swallowed the tightness in her own throat.

“Ghan himself—why?”

“He learned of a plot to find you and kill you, or return you to the River. It was commanded by a young Jik, whom I believe you also knew.”

“I knew him in Nhol, and I have seen him more recently in a vision,” Hezhi muttered. “But he is dead. I saw him killed.”

“The priesthood has great power,” Bone Eel told her. “They can create sorcerous creatures. This 'Ghe' is not the man you knew.”

“The man I knew is not the man I knew,” she nearly snarled.

“Mount up!” Sheldu shouted. “We must continue.”

Hezhi leveled a cold gaze at the two. “I will hear more of this later, and I will know, too, how you came to be acquainted with this man Sheldu.”

“Ah,” Bone Eel began. “He is well traveled, an agent of sorts—”

“Later,” she repeated sharply. “I'm confused enough as it is. Much of what you say makes no sense. Just tell me this, quickly. You know what our mission is, here?”

Bone Eel nodded solemnly. “You seek to slay the River.”

“If you interfere, my friends will slay you, do you understand?”

“Indeed, Princess. We have no wish to interfere. It is what Ghan and the emperor agreed upon.”

Hezhi tried to keep her face neutral as she returned to Dark. They were lying, lying, lying, and she knew it. But how much of their talk was false?

Once back in the saddle, she leaned over to Tsem. “If those two do anything even slightly suspicious when we reach this place we are going,” she said softly, “I want you to kill them. Can you pass that along to Brother Horse and Yuu'han?”

Tsem's eyes widened in surprise. “Princess?”

“I mean it, Tsem. We've been through too much to allow agents of my father—or whomever they work for—to interfere. I don't trust them; they act as if they were friends of Ghan, but he would never be friends with such as they.” She paused and almost told him of Perkar's warning about Sheldu, but then she decided that it was best to give Tsem only one thing at a time to worry over.

They resumed, beneath a sky that had begun to don a cloak of dusky clouds. She thought that the rest had done the horses scant good, but the Mang and “Sheldu” probably had greater understanding of the needs of the beasts. Dark's flanks heaved and white foam matted her hair, and Hezhi worried; Dark was her first horse, a beautiful creature, and she did not want to see her die.

She regarded Sheldu as they rode along, searching for some sign of Karak in him. Could Perkar have been right? Was that what he was hiding from her? She tried to think back to what he said, but it was all confusion—at the time, her mind had been trying to understand about Ghan falling.

It had been he, but she couldn't dwell on that. Couldn't. She need only keep it back, away from her heart, for another day before allowing it to overwhelm her. She could do that. Now she had pressing things to puzzle over, important things.

She had glanced back up at “Sheldu,” intent on understanding what connection could exist between a Crow God and two nobles from Nhol, when the stream before them suddenly erupted into a fountain of sludge and spray. The nearest riders—Sheldu's vanguard—were bowled over by the explosion, and Sheldu himself was thrown from his rearing mount. Hezhi simply watched, gape-mouthed, at what took form.

Its upper part was salamander, thickly wrinkled, grayish black, with knobby little eyes and branching gills sweeping back from the sides of its head like feathery antlers. But it sprang forward on hind legs not unlike a man's, though the forelimbs were the stubby-fingered paws of an amphibian. Its toothless maw gaped open, easily wide enough to swallow a person.

GHE saw the Huntress first, felt the pulsing of power from the bizarre woman-thing. Her host was resonant with energy, too, and he realized now that Moss had not lied to him. Defeating this woman and her creatures would be no easy task. He gathered his own host within him, slashed his palm to release his black blood and potence, but even as it trailed along the ground and monsters of his making sprang up to challenge the wolves and savagely dressed men, he saw the demon descending on him.

Perkar, Ghan had called him, but to Ghe that meant only death. Shrieking, his features set in a grimly insane mask, the bone-faced man charged toward him.

Ghe wrapped himself in a cloak of wind, strengthened his living armor, knitted a shield of invisible fire for himself, and, devouring the flame of life in his horse, leapt from its back, flinging out his blood so that it formed into grass-bears and long-legged stalking things he had no name for. Let them deal with that blade, those iron-colored eyes. He himself flew like a spear toward the Huntress, certain that if he could devour her, nothing on earth could possibly stop him—not even his old death.

PERKAR screamed in frustration as the beasts spurted up around him and surrendered his rage to the song Harka sang as the sword directed his arm. He snarled with brutal satisfaction as a bear's head sprang from its massive shoulders and a gout of hot black blood struck him across the face even as Harka turned and swept like a scythe through a thin, skeletal abomination that resembled a praying mantis.

Around him, the armies came together, and the forest was suddenly a garden of death, the Mang skirling and the gods of the host venting unrecognizable sounds. From the corners of his eyes he noticed a rider and horse go down beneath the fangs and claws of a wolf; he saw a bear-man, blinded by two arrow shafts, wander into the decapitating edge of a curved Mang sword.

Claws raked against his hauberk and rings snapped with the force, and suddenly T'esh was shrieking and down; he leapt clear, and though he sought with Harka's edge to dispatch his foes, he searched with each free instant his eyes had for the Life-Eater. He finally saw him, as he stepped from the path of a dying bear; the Nholish man was a blur of flame and motion near the Huntress. Her spear had pierced him, but he strove up it, sliding the shaft through his own belly, and something like lightning cracked between them. His throat nearly raw with shouting, Perkar fought that way, and whatever came between him and the Tiskawa died.

Ghe reached the Huntress before Perkar fought his way through, however, and something like sunlight bloomed where they touched. The Huntress screamed, shrill and carrying. Perkar continued to fight, half blind, as his foes redoubled in number and ferocity, and when he again saw clearly, it was to behold the Tiskawa fight savagely from beneath a pile of rutkirul and wolves. As Perkar watched, however, these minions of the Huntress fell away, twitching, and the Tiskawa stood amongst their corpses.

Perkar recognized him now, though his glimpse of the man—when he still was a man—had been brief, in the shadows beneath the streets of Nhol. He had been a worthy enough swordsman—without Harka, in fact, Perkar would never have beaten him.

His face aside, there was much about the Tiskawa that no longer seemed Human. Most of his clothing hung in shreds upon him, so the weird colors of his flesh and the bony unnatural lines of his torso and shoulders were revealed. His eyes held a kind of black fire as he pushed up through the slain beasts and gods to confront him. Perkar wondered where the Huntress was, and then forgot worry as he remembered this thing devouring the Stream Goddess. He howled and leapt.

Much faster moved the Tiskawa, fading away from the blow, even though he rose from an awkward position.

“You!” it snarled. “This time you cannot have my head.”

Perkar didn't answer. He kept Harka in a guard position. When the monster suddenly lunged, darting forward and slashing down with hooked talons, even Harka had difficulty moving his arm quickly enough. He struck for the neck, but an upflung arm interposed itself. Unbelievably, the godblade did not bite but slid instead down the forearm, skinning the flesh from it and revealing the yellow plate beneath. He twisted Harka and stumbled back, carried the blow on into the ribs of the Life-Eater, and there the edge finally parted flesh and bone, cut from the lowest rib through the spine, down to the pelvis. Then the claws swiped across his face and he felt sudden numbness at the same moment that a furious heat seemed to consume him. Like a child burnt by a coal, he shrieked and leapt backward. The Tiskawa tried to follow, but its body sagged crazily as the legs understood the spine that animated them was severed.

Scrambling back farther, Perkar put his hand to his own neck and felt a jet of warm fluid, realized that one of the arteries there had been torn, but even as he did so, the flow diminished as Harka closed his wound.

That was nearly it, the blade said. He dug into our heartstrings, too.

Snarling, Perkar started forward again, but at that moment a horse slammed into him, battering him to the ground, and he had to raise Harka quickly to meet a Mang warrior's attack. The god-blade flicked out deftly and impaled the man as he leapt down. When Perkar returned to his feet, he saw the earth itself rise in a column, form quickly into the Huntress, now massive, bearing the black antlers of an elk on the snarling head of a lion. The Tiskawa had just risen into the air, wind rushing furiously about him, his lower body hanging limp, when she gored him on her horns. The Life-Eater shrieked, but he also reached around her neck with both arms, and—incredibly—lifted the Huntress off the ground. Together they flew into the air, blown up like leaves in the curled fist of an autumn wind. Perkar saw the Huntress transform again into some sort of dark-pinioned bird, and then the two of them disappeared into the dense opaque vastness of the canopy, gone.

Gripping Harka even more tightly, he thought to follow—somehow—but at that moment his body sprouted a pair of arrows; his hauberk stopped their heads, but Harka drew him relentlessly to face his mortal opponents.

“ You cannot kill the Tiskawa if you let these Mang hack you into pieces. ”

Grimly Perkar turned to his work, ashamed that, in his heart of hearts, he was relieved.

For the Tiskawa, he knew, would have killed him, and he wondered if he could face it again. Something that could give the Huntress such a battle …

Then there was no more time to think.

SHELDU'S men attacked the thing, but Hezhi did not need to see the first of them die to understand that what they faced was a god of no mean strength; she had seen him instantly, knew that he formed from the water and dirt rather than emerged from it. She did not even reach for her drum, but as when she had captured the bull, Hukwosha, she merely slapped her palms together and opened the lake.

This time she did not hesitate; she called on Hukwosha, and the bull bolted gleefully to the task.

But we must manifest, the bull said. We cannot fight only beneath the lake.

“I don't know how to do that,” Hezhi told him.

Give me your leave.

She hesitated only a moment; Tsem was rushing forward with his club, certainly to his death—despite his size, strength, and recently acquired skills. “You have it!” she cried. Might surged into her limbs, and she took in a breath that went on and on. Blood surged in her as her body thickened and distorted with agony that was so exquisite as almost to be pleasure; even before the change was done she was pounding across the earth on four cloven hooves. The colors of the world had faded to shadow, but her nostrils brought a new realm of sensation that she had never imagined and had little time to appreciate. She could smell Tsem, the acrid taint of his fear nearly masked by a sour anger. One of Sheldu's men had soiled himself, and Sheldu himself had no scent whatsoever. The leaf mold and the crisp freshness of the forest faded before the corruption of the attacking god and its sudden fear, stinking like a rotten corpse. Then he was on her horn, and she tossed him, gored him again, and slammed him into a tree. The dull salamander eyes glared at her feebly.

“Hezhi,” it groaned—not from its froglike mouth, but from somewhere inside. “Hezhi, listen to me.”

Hukwosha stepped back and hooked the monster anew on his horns and began to run joyfully.

“Listen!” Its eyes were fading.

“Talk, then,” Hezhi bellowed. “You haven't long.”

“Beware the Blackgod, he—”

Hezhi suddenly recognized the voice. “Moss? Moss, is that you?”

“Yes,” the voice answered feebly.

“Hukwosha, stop,” she commanded, but the bull continued to run, and sudden panic mingled with her elation.

Free, Hukwosha roared. Free me.

“No!” She wrenched at him then, grappled him back into her mansion, though it felt as if her body had burst into flame. She knew her body was changing again, and as that happened she sank into the unreal haze of the lake. The dying god shimmered, and she saw him—whoever he was. But linked to him she saw Moss, and he was impaled as plainly as the Salamander God.

“You've killed me,” Moss sighed. “I was only trying to … I wouldn't have hurt you.”

“I'm sorry,” she answered, and even in the flat cold of the otherworld she was.

“No matter,” he gritted out. “I—” Then his eyes widened, and he vanished as if he had never been. An instant later she blinked and the sight was gone. She was Hezhi, a little girl, lying on the leafy floor of the forest. Nearby, the corpse of the Salamander God blubbered out a final breath, and then its spirit departed.

Through the woods she could hear Sheldu and the others approaching.

* * *

AFTER a tense moment, the task became simple butchery. The unholy creatures summoned by the Tiskawa were all dispatched, and the Mang, though indeed brave and fierce, were no match for the host of the Huntress, as Perkar well knew. The horsemen fell to hon and wolf, to the gods who were sometimes bears, to eagles and hawks that swooped upon them—and to Harka, of course.

Before it was over, Perkar wept for them.

Among the dead he found Moss, who was not dead, though his gut was torn open. The young shaman's eyes followed him, pleading.

“Listen to me, swordsman,” he bubbled through a mouthful of blood. Perkar approached cautiously, mindful of what Chuuzek had managed in such a state.

“Listen,” Moss repeated. “I have no way of knowing whether you are the Blackgod's dupe or willing ally. But I am slain now, and I saw Ghe carried off by the Huntress. You may be Hezhi's only hope.”

“What nonsense is this?” Perkar growled.

Moss closed his eyes. “The lake comes to swallow me,” he muttered. “I can't—” He opened his eyes again, and they held a peculiar blankness. “Perkar, are you still there?”

Perkar crouched down beside his foe. “I'm here,” he said.

“I think I know what the Blackgod intends,” the dying man whispered. “I think I understand now.”

He whispered another sentence, and Perkar felt a profound chill. It was a sensation that gathered strength.

“Oh, no,” he muttered, because he knew it was true. There could be no doubt.

“Karak must have conspired with the Huntress to separate me from her,” he snarled. Moss nodded faintly.

“Does it hurt?” Perkar asked. “Are you in pain?”

“No. It's a sort of fading. Let me fade, if you will—it will prepare me. Many vengeful things await the ghosts of shamans, and we must have what advantages we can.”

“Can I help?”

But Moss didn't answer. He was not yet dead, but it was clear that he had spoken for the last time. With Harka's vision Perkar could see the last thread of life unraveling.

Trembling, he stood, Moss' revelation repeating itself in his brain, and grimly he began to run back the way he had come. T'esh was dead, and the last of the Mang horses either fled or devoured. He had no chance of reaching his destination in time, but he also had no choice but to try; once again, it was all his fault.

XXXVI Erikwer

GHE tumbled through space, the treetops a nightmare blur that they sometimes hurtled over and sometimes crashed among. They fought with claws and teeth and with the energies burning within them, and almost as soon as they began, Ghe understood that he would lose. The Huntress was the most powerful being he had ever faced save the River himself. Her existence seemed to extend all about him, into the earth and the trees—this form he fought was only a finger of her. His sole satisfaction was knowing she was not toying with him; he was giving her a good fight, drawing power from her to hold himself together—but he was losing, for she was both more powerful and more experienced than he. For the first time, Ghe truly understood the sheer desperation of the River in creating him, the minusculity of his chances of success.

Nevertheless, he clung to her as she disemboweled him again and again.

“You hurt me,” she admitted in a feral, growling voice. “Few have done that, so feel proud.”

He didn't answer, for at that moment one of his arms tore free of his body. Again he was surprised at the lack of pain, and he wondered if there would be pain when she finally bit his head off. Shuddering, he called up all of the gods he had swallowed; he began to burn them for strength. The stream demon was strongest, would burn longest. He did not bother with the feeble fuel of his Human ghosts, though they shouted at him.

One shouted at him more loudly than the others.

River! he shouted. Ghan shouted.

Ghe understood in a blaze, but there was no triumph in that comprehension, for it came too late. He could scent him, his Maker, and he realized that their aerial battle had brought them very near his waters. So it was worth a try.

Using what strength he could, he tore himself from the Huntress and flew. For an instant he was free of her, and sprawling below him he could see trees, the rising flanks of mountains—and a gorge that pulsed with salvation. How could he have forgotten that his lord lay so near?

“No, you don't,” the Huntress shrieked as sharp talons dug into what remained of his spine. 'Oh, no, my sweet.”

For an instant he went limp with despair, but then Ghan spoke again within him, a single word.

Hezhi.

Ghe snarled and struck his talons into the Huntress, reached for the beating heart of her power. He touched it and it surged through, burning him, tearing at him, far too much energy for him to absorb; his extremities charred and his vision blazed away with his eyes, and then they were falling, the Huntress shrieking and beating about him, but they were still falling. She had not recovered.

“No,” she snarled, and then they hit something that broke them both.

“G? fine,” Hezhi said, stumbling toward Dark. But she wasn't fine. She had killed Moss, and though the man had been her enemy—or had he? She barely knew that anymore. The effort of fighting Hukwosha back into her heart had sapped her of strength, and she could barely stand.

“I've never seen anything like that,” Sheldu muttered. ”Not in a Human shaman. Surely—“ He bit off his remark, seemed almost ready to chortle. ”Come. Our success is certain now. In ridding us of that menace yourself, you have removed the last chance that we might be stopped.”

“You mean because you wouldn't have to reveal yourself, Blackgod?“ Hezhi muttered.

The man smiled grimly. “Well. I thought that Perkar might soften, eventually. But it matters not. I would have revealed myself to you—it is to this forest that I dare not show my power—not yet. The actions of a Human shaman such as yourself—”

“I don't understand what you're talking about,” Hezhi groaned. “But shouldn't we get going?”

“Indeed.”

As they continued their ride up the valley, Ngangata flanked her on one side and Tsem on the other.

“So you know,” Ngangata said, his voice low.

She nodded. “Perkar told me.”

“Give the word and we flee,” the halfling said. “With your familiars and Tsem and me to stand for you, chances are good you can escape.”

“Why? Why should I want to do that?” Hezhi asked. “This is what I want. I want to be rid of this malevolent thing our people call Lord. The thing that brought Ghan here to his death—that—that—” She stuttered off, realizing that she was dangerously near crying. She must not weaken now; the end of all of this, one way or the other, was nigh, she could feel that. She took a deep breath and continued. “I care not what designs your Crow God has, what hidden agenda his scheming covers. The truth is that compared to the River he is but a flea.”

“A flea who believes he can slay the dog,” Tsem muttered.

“And I believe he can, with my help,” Hezhi said. “But he is still a flea.”

“Do you imagine yourself more, Princess?” Tsem asked softly.

She looked at him, shocked, but then reflected on her words and smiled.

“It sounds like I do, doesn't it? It's just that I know what it feels like, the power in the River. Just now, when I was the bull, I felt I could do anything, and that takes more than a moment to forget.”

Tsem bridled. “I wish I could forget it in a moment, Princess. If you could have seen yourself—”

“Hush, Tsem. I'm fine: I don't want to be a goddess. That is exactly what I want to be free of. Only the River can poison me with such might—the Blackgod and his kin cannot, will not do it. They have the same desire I do, to end the threat I pose.”

“They could do that simply by killing you,” Ngangata argued.

“True, which is why I do not fear the Blackgod. He has had ample opportunity to slay me and he has not. Why? In another generation the River can produce another like me, perhaps one more receptive to his will. As long as he exists, the threat I represent exists.”

Ngangata shrugged. “Still, it is never wise to trust the Blackgod completely.”

“Or any god. Or any person!“ Hezhi answered. As she did so, Yuu'han drew abreast.

“An instant of your time, please,” he asked of Hezhi.

“Of course.” Hezhi was taken aback by the man's tight, formal tone.

“I have tried to dissuade Brother Horse from this trip many times,” Yuu'han admitted. “He is an old man, and I fear for him.”

“I have tried to turn him back, as well,” Hezhi told him.

“I know. I thank you for that.”

Hezhi regarded the young man. Since Raincaster's death, Yuu'han—always somewhat dour—had withdrawn from almost everyone but Brother Horse. “If you wish to try again …”

“I have done that, thank you. He will stay with you, and because he does, I do, as well.”

“Your uncle means much to you.”

Yuu'han raised his enigmatic gaze to lock fully on her own, something the Mang were reluctant to do unless angry—or very, very sincere. “I call him uncle,” Yuu'han said, quite softly. “I call him that because he was never married to my mother, and thus I have no right to call him 'father.' Nevertheless, he is the one who begat me. And when my mother died and her clan refused her orphan, Brother Horse drew me into his clan. Few would have done that; most would have let the mother's clan dispose of the child.”

“Dispose?”

“The custom is to leave an unwanted child in the desert for the gods to take their mercy on.” He glanced away at last, having impressed upon her what he wanted to.

Hezhi looked to Tsem and Ngangata for support; the halfling nodded to himself, but Tsem appeared confused, perhaps not following the entire conversation. Neither of them gave her any clue as to how she should respond to Yuu'han. “Why do you tell me this now?” she finally asked.

“So that if my une—” Yuu'han paused and began again. “So that if Brother Horse and I are both slain, you will know how to sing to our ghosts. In death I may be spoken of as his son.” He smiled wryly. “Understand me, this is no demand. My sword is yours, because Brother Horse is with you. I merely request this of you.”

“I would rather promise that you will not be slain,” Hezhi remarked.

“Do not promise me what is not in your power,” Yuu'han warned. “Do not insult me.”

“I will not insult you, cousin,” Hezhi assured him. “If you are both slain, I shall do as you ask—provided I survive.”

“I say the same,” Ngangata assured him.

“Thank you. It is good.” Seemingly content, Yuu'han dropped back to where Brother Horse rode.

Shortly they began climbing again, but it was to be a brief ascent They mounted up out of the valley, and Hezhi realized then just how high they were; She'leng walled off most of the sky—they had scarcely begun ascending it—but even the valley they rode in was lofty, overlooking the folded layers of forest marching off from them.

Karak stood in his saddle. “Follow now,” he said. “I grow impatient, and one more obstacle remains.”

“What's that?”

“Some fifty Mang warriors await at the entrance to Erikwer, the place we seek.”

“Fifty Mang?” Ngangata said, taking in the remaining warriors. “That is no small threat.”

“For you, perhaps. For me, if I try to maintain my disguise. But my Lord Balat is slow to waken, and I am certain now that he sleeps.” He turned to them, and his eyes were blazing now. Many of the men who followed him seemed taken a bit aback, uncertain.

“Know all of you who did not that I am Karak, the Raven, who made the earth and stole the sun to light it. This and many other things have I done for Humankind, for you are my adopted children. Many malign my intentions—” He paused and looked significantly at Ngangata. “—but you will find no tale of me that does not ultimately speak of my love and service to your kind, even in defiance of my Lord. You have all ridden with me, some knowing me, some not, to this place. You have fought and died so that I might preserve my identity until the time came to strike; that time is now, but we must hurry. I fly ahead to dispose of the brave but misguided warriors who yet stand before us; no more of you need die. But when I uncloak, when my power stands revealed, my Lord Balati will begin to wake from slumber. We must slay his Brother before that happens. Slaying him we free the land from a terrible burden and an even more terrible threat.”

“And you from a great guilt!” Brother Horse shouted.

Karak leveled his yellow gaze at the Mang. “I freely admit my fault in the matter. Even such as I can make a mistake.”

“It was no mistake,” Brother Horse shouted heatedly. “It was caprice, like most of what you do.”

Karak regarded the old man silently for a long moment.

“Were you there?” he asked softly. “Were any of you there, when the Changeling was unleashed, or do you just repeat the rumors my enemies have circulated for five millennia?“ He glared around at them. ”Well?”

“Enough!” Hezhi shouted. “Do what you must, Blackgod, and I will follow. Do you need any of the rest of them?”

Karak was still glaring angrily. “No,” he answered.

“Then go.”

For an instant longer, he remained Sheldu; and then, like a cloak turned inside out, he was suddenly a bird. At that instant, the wind rose. He beat his black wings up to a heaven now thick with gray clouds. When he was a speck, the trees began to shudder with the force of the wind.

Some hesitated, but when Hezhi kneed Dark forward, Ngangata and Tsem came after. Qwen Shen and Bone Eel followed closely, and after a moment's hesitation, all the rest.

In the middle distance, lightning began to strike and thunder to sound, a noise like the air itself shearing in halves. First one strike, then another, and then a crashing and flickering of blue light that raged continuously.

When they broke from the forest into the vast meadow, the thunder had ceased. They found the great black bird standing on a blackened corpse, pecking at its eyes. The meadow was littered with burnt and broken men. A few horses raced about aimlessly, eyes rolling.

As horrific as the sight was, Hezhi had become numb to death; what drew her attention and held it was not the corpses but the hole. It gaped in the center of the meadow like the very mouth of the earth itself, a nearly perfectly round pit that even a powerful bowshot might not cross the diameter of.

The Raven became a man, a black-cloaked man with pale skin.

“That is Erikwer,” he said. “That is the source of the Changeling, his birth—and his death.” His birdlike eyes sparkled with unconcealed glee.

“What do we do?” Hezhi asked, her heart suddenly thumping despite all of her earlier bluster and confidence.

“Why, we must descend, of course,” Karak said.

PERKAR ran desperately, Harka flapping in a sheath on his back. Without the Huntress to direct them, the host was slowly dispersing, returning to whatever haunts or fell places they issued from. They didn't bother him; she must have set some sign upon him they recognized.

But he would never reach Hezhi and the others in time, and that drove him madder each moment, each heartbeat he had to understand what Moss told him.

“Can you give me more strength, help me run faster?” he asked Harka.

“No. That is not the nature of my glamour, as you should know by now. ”

“Yes. You only keep me alive so that I can properly appreciate my mistakes.”

“ What you run toward now could very well end that little problem of yours. ”

“So be it.”

I thought you had learned fear. ”

“I have. Learned it and relearned it. It makes no difference now.”

“The Blackgod will do you no harm unless you attack him. ”

“It's moot, Harka, if we don't get there in time.”

A movement caught his attention in the wood, something large and four-legged coming toward him. He whirled, blade bared in an instant.

“Not an enemy, ” Harka said.

Perkar saw that it was not. It was a stallion, and more precisely, it was Sharp Tiger.

The stallion paced up to him and stopped, an arm's length away.

“Hello, brother,” Perkar said softly. “Let me make you a deal. You let me ride you, and I will slay he who killed your cousin.”

The horse stared at him impassively. Perkar approached, sheathed Harka, and took a deep breath. The beast was unsaddled; Perkar had long ago given up trying to ride him. Neither, in fact, did he have a bridle, but if the animal would accept him on its back, he could find a bridle and saddle from one of the dead beasts being devoured by the Hunt.

He blew out the breath and leapt upon Sharp Tiger's back, knotted his fist into the thick hair of the stallion's mane.

Nothing happened. Sharp Tiger didn't react.

“Good, my cousin,” Perkar said, after a few instants went by. “You understand. Then let me find a bridle—”

Sharp Tiger reared and pawed the air, and Perkar hung on with his legs and fists with all of the strength in him, preparing for the inevitable, bracing for being thrown. But when the fore-hooves drove to earth, the Mang horse plunged straight into a gallop so swift that the wind sang in Perkar's ears, racing in amongst the trees and cornering so tightly that Perkar lay on the stallion's neck and wrapped his arms to keep from falling.

As the horse hurtled down a steep grade, leaping and stamping hooves, slipping but almost never slowing, Perkar gasped. “I hope you know where you are going, Sharp Tiger!”

For he had not the slightest control over the beast.

* * *

THE path into Erikwer wound down the side of the hole, a vast helix carved into the living basalt of the mountainside. Hezhi tried to imagine why such a hole might exist, a black tunnel bored straight down into the bosom of the world. She traced her gaze back up the way she had come; traveling single file, the entire party still did not complete the circumference of the pit. They had been once around, and in that time the steep path had dropped them into shadow. Sunlight still dappled the walls a bit above her, and bushes and scraggly juniper trees clung in crevasses and along the side of the trail, feeding on the light. At the rim a few Human heads were limned against the sky—Karak had left most of his men to guard against any remnants of the Mang who might yet arrive. Down, she could see nothing, save a vague glimmer in her godsight, the feel and smell of water rising to greet her.

Even here, even after all this time, she could recognize the River. Images danced before her on the black rock, on Tsem's back as he strode in front of her, and behind her lids when she blinked. The sun-drenched rooftops of Nhol, the Water Temple shining as if cut from white cloud, and beyond them the River, all majesty and puissance. In her heart she had never really feared him, but only herself. In her heart, he was still Lord, still Father, still Grandfather.

But there were other images, other sensations. The monstrous ghost chasing her in the Hall of Moments, seeking the blood signaling her womanhood. Soldiers fighting and dying to stop it. D'en, her beloved cousin, twisted and mindless and imprisoned beneath the deep labyrinth of the underpalace. The scale on her arm pulsing. She knew what she must do, but entering into the place of his beginning, she could not feel outrage or anger—and only faintly could she feel purpose. What she did feel was what a daughter might, entering the bedroom where her father slept, scissors tight in her hands and murder in her heart, despite what that father had done and would continue to do.

It was more of a relief than anything else to know that matters were out of her hands. The strange and alien presence of the Blackgod was now a comfort. Back in the yekt, she had first felt the burden of guiding herself and her friends, of choosing one path of many, all dangerous. For months she had shouldered that burden, until Perkar came out of his depression and began making decisions—and now, finally, with Perkar gone, someone had stepped in to fill his place. It was good, for she had no strength for it. It was not something she was meant for; a princess did not make decisions; she only married well and then let her husband serve those needs. Ghan had tried to bring her up to it, but that had turned out badly all around, especially for Ghan. No, she only wanted to be alone again, by herself, with no one wanting her or needing her, no decisions to make beyond when and what to eat.

After such furious action, it was odd that the very last leg of their journey should be so slow, so measured. They had left their mounts above; even the most trustworthy steed would be a danger here, and their horses were ridden nearly to death, could barely stand. All those climbing down were silent, as if the majesty and presence of Erikwer physically forbade speech. She had leisure—for the first time—to realize that Perkar might be dead, to remember the few moments of tenderness that had passed between them since they met. It was a strange, braided thing they felt for one another, she thought; so like love, so like hate, implacable and fragile at the same time. She tried to summon some anger at Perkar for his deception, for drawing her close and then coldly thrusting her away, but she could not find it; not when he might already be a wraith, winging up to the mountain summit and the merciless gods who dwelt there. Whether he lived or died, he and the Huntress had done what they set out to do, played their part in her destiny: stopped Moss and Ghe and the army of Mang who sought to return her to the bosom of the River.

Instead she would go to his head and stab a spike into his brain. But how? Only Karak knew.

And as they descended, the air sank past them in a faint breeze, as if the hole were eternally inhaling. The breeze grew cooler as the light dimmed, as eventually the hole above them shrank and dimmed as night fell over it as well, at which point Karak's men—the ten who accompanied them down—lit torches. The god's breath fattened the flames and caused them to lick downward now and then. Before it was entirely dark, she heard water, a sort of shushing that increased in volume. Soon it filled everything, hummed gently both inside and outside of her skull Water.

And then, with no ceremony whatsoever, the shaft opened into a vaster place on all sides save the one the path continued on. That descended to a shingle of a black beach, and the yellow flowers of the torches were caught and reflected by a vast, restless sea that stretched out into the darkness. A roof of stone hung over it, vaulting up but always low, and the feeling was an eerie combination of claustrophobia and infinity. The last of them—some of Karak's men—stepped onto the shingle, where the underground sea lapped up and down against the rounded black pebbles that stretched out from the mounds of talus fallen from above. Hezhi gazed up, hoping to see a star, but there was nothing—save for perhaps a vague clattering, high above.

“Now, come here, child,” Karak breathed. He still wore Human shape, but his nose was thin and beaklike, and in the torchlight his eyes gleamed with fierce triumph and anticipation.

“Come here, and we shall slay him.”

Trembling, Hezhi moved to comply.

XXXVII Changeling Blood

WATER again, his comfort and womb. Life again, too, but this time he did not emerge into light and air. The River took Ghe and dragged him through the cold and dark.

He was different. The parts of him charred and torn by the Huntress had grown back, but not as Human flesh. Bony plates compassed him, and he propelled himself with limbs more like flippers or fins than arms, kicked something—not legs—that he feared even to think about.

His eyes saw the River bottom and the rippling mirror of the surface, and the bare, sterile stone over which he flowed. But another eye—a deeper one—saw something far, far ahead of him.

He searched through his servants and found a few still there. The stream demon, the stalker, and the ghosts of Ghan and the blind boy. The old lord—Lengnata—was there, too, though he was weakened or perhaps terrified into an almost unthinking state. Others—the many that he had bound on the journey across the plain with Moss—were part of him no longer, destroyed or released in his battle with the Huntress. As for that one—the Beast Goddess—the River had eaten her. She was gone, utterly and without a trace.

And now he was no longer Ghe the ghoul, but Ghe the fish, the serpent, the thing. Not Ghe at all, though he knew he had never been that, not since Perkar took his head. If only he had, at least, the satisfaction of knowing for certain that the pale man was dead, too…

You are Ghe, Ghan disagreed, a disembodied voice sharing his prison of plates, stings, and spines. Despite all that the River has done, part of you is Ghe. I know that now.

Shut up, old man, Ghe thought. He did not need the scholar's lies and advice anymore. His only reason for existence was to serve the River's will.

If he could enforce his will himself he would, Ghan insisted. You saw what he did to the Huntress, how invincible he is in his own domain. If he resorts to making ghouls of dead men, it is to go places where he cannot go himself But that means that in those places, he does not control you. You can do what is right rather than what he wills.

“What he wills is what is right,” Ghe answered angrily. ”I am not capable of doubting that. You should understand by now. If you cut up a tree, and make it from a tree into a boat, it is a boat, whether you are there to sail it or not. The River made me to find Hezhi. It is the only thing I am capable of!”

If a ghost could vent an exasperated, impatient sigh, Ghan's did. VII give you a different metaphor, my friend. If a smith makes a sword, he has no assurance that the weapon he has forged cannot be turned back upon him. You have my memories and knowledge, but I can see yours, as well. I believe you can be turned, Ghan pressed. Not by me, but by yourself. I know what I know.

“You know that the Blackgod and the Ebon Priest are the same. I never saw that.” It was too hard to think the way Ghan was asking him to think.

I was going to tell you. Qwen Shen and Bone Eel took me before I could.

“I know that, too,” Ghe replied. Overhead, the light filtering through the water abruptly darkened. We are underground now, he suddenly understood.

I think Bone Eel may be the dangerous one, Ghan persisted.

“I agree,” Ghe returned. “And I think I know who he may be. But what will they do with Hezhi? What is their plan? How can the River be killed?”

I don't know, Ghan answered. But I believe Hezhi is in great danger, or I would never willingly aid you.

I know that, too.

It grew even darker, and as it did so, his other sight began to fade. It was like being beneath the Water Temple, his senses fading as his potence grew. His surety and his direction vanished, and to his enormous frustration, he felt himself becoming confused. Again.

He finally stopped swimming; the water about him was barely moving.

What do I do now? But neither Ghan nor any other part of him knew the answer to that.

And then, in the darkness, a beacon flared, one that seared him with pain, one that struck like a bolt into the River himself. Ghe turned and strained his body to swim as fast as he could, gathering his strength as he went.

THE Blackgod took her gently by the hand and led her to the edge of the water. Her trembling worsened, for suddenly she could feel the power there, latent in the pool. It lay quietly, stupidly, unlike the River she knew, but it was he, without doubt. If she wanted the power she need only reach for it, but it would not enter her against her will, not like before. She would become a goddess only by choice and if she had not chosen it before, she would certainly not choose it now.

“What do I do?” she whispered. They had moved far from the torches, though Tsem and Ngangata kept edging after them.

“What are you doing, Karak?” Ngangata snarled.

“What I told you,” he answered. “What we came here for.”

“What—” Hezhi began again, but then something cold slid through the flesh of her ribs, and though she tried to shout with pain, her breath sucked in and closed on itself. She gazed down in shocked astonishment and saw Karak's hand gripping the hilt of a knife. As she watched, he twisted it.

Then several things happened at once. Tsem repeated Ngan-gata's question, stepping even closer. Ngangata suddenly exploded into action, whipping an arrow from the sheath on his back and setting it to his bow in a single motion. As the pain from the twisting knife hazed her vision, Brother Horse and Yu-u'han drew swords and swung at Bone Eel, who was in the act of pointing a white tube of some sort at Ngangata. Hezhi saw all of this in an incredible blaze of light and lucidity as a single drop of her blood squirted from off Karak's blade and struck the surface of the water; a column of white flame leapt up and ignited the very air.

Then the pain truly caught her, and she realized that there was steel in her, and without a single thought she lashed at Karak.

What happened then wasn't clear to her, save that the knife wrenched out and she was shoving her fist into the hole in her side. Karak stumbled away from her, sheeted in blue flame—while she was hurled back onto the shingle. She hit and slid, able to think only about the blood that soaked her dress with preposterous speed. She had done something to Karak; he was clutching his eyes—

Her heart reached hummingbird pitch, and the motion around her seemed to slow, so that she could almost leisurely pick out the details of the strange dance being performed for her benefit, there in a Stygian courtyard that only a god could imagine. But she could do nothing, say nothing, because her thoughts were all gushing from her side with the waters of her life.

Tsem hit the Blackgod with his club, and the god pitched back, an arrow appearing in him at almost the same moment. Qwen Shen shrieked as Yuu'han hewed into her, the sorcerous flowers of energy gathering on her fingertips suddenly withering. Brother Horse struck his sword through Bone Eel, but Hezhi could see a coiled serpent of power in the nobleman, revealed as it was unleashed. All of his strands surged into the pointed bone tube he held. As Brother Horse stepped back to gather for a second swing, Bone Eel turned faster than a snake, and the tube he was holding suddenly telescoped, shot out like an improbably fast-growing stalk of grass; it passed all the way through Brother Horse, who stood transfixed for a moment before dropping his sword. Heen, worrying at Bone Eel's leg, went flying, yelping, through the air.

Hezhi choked on a scream, kicking away from it all, crawling back over the black stones, life leaking out of the hole in her.

The light from the burning blood was fading, but she could see perfectly well as Tsem hit the Blackgod again, and again, and again, until his club broke. Ngangata rushed toward her, but Bone Eel turned and the weird thing he held suddenly lanced out again, passed through the halfling's shoulder. He gasped and collapsed, bow clattering to the ground.

He's killing my friends, she realized. Why?

Hukwosha answered her. Does it matter? Release me. I shall deal with him.

“Release you?” Hezhi muttered. The scene was wavering. She felt very weak. “Very well.”

And she did.

HUKWOSHA sprang into the frail and wounded body with a terrible shout of triumph, a bellow to shake the heavens. Too long had he been bound by first this godling and then that, and finally, humihation upon humiliation, by mortal Man and Woman! But wounded and half out of her mind, this one had released him, and he did not intend to pass the opportunity by. Before him lay an entire world, as it had in the beginning, in the darkling plain even before Karak brought the sun. What cared he for these scheming gods and their demented brother?

But it nagged him to run. Hezhi wanted him to stop the man with the tube—he had killed Brother Horse and Ngangata! No, he saw that that wasn't true; the old man was fumbling with his drum, albeit feebly. Yet what did he, Hukwosha, care for the old man, for Hezhi's desires? He bunched his muscles and prepared to go—as an attack struck him, the point of Bone Eel's jumping spear-bone turning on his hide. His fierceness overwhelmed his reason then. He turned on the man—ahí not a man, but a Lemeyi, one of those silly half-god sorcerers. He lowered his horns. Little creature, Hukwosha thought, you've made a singular mistake.

His first charge lifted the puny thing from its feet, rammed him into the stone wall. Fierce energies rained upon him, attacks gnawed at his heart, and given time they might have succeeded; but he twisted the immortal heartstrands on his horns and snapped them, sent all of Bone Eel's potence out into the air to fade. Then he shook the impudent, broken thing from him.

When he turned, there was Karak, rising up over the body of Tsem like the shadow of the carrion bird he was. Karak appeared unhappy.

“Hezhi,” he snarled. “You fool. You are wasting your blood, don't you know that? It is the only thing that can slay him!”

“My blood?” Hukwosha snarled.

“You will slay him and take Misplace, Hezhi. You will not die, you will become a goddess. But you must stop fighting me.” Then his face hardened further. ”Or fight me, it matters not.”

Hukwosha lowered his horns to charge again, but sudden weakness jolted through him. He became aware of the gash in his side, shifted his hand in it in the vague hope that the blood would stop pouring out, wondering where his horns and hooves and might had all run off to.

“Hukwosha—” Hezhi began, but Karak reached out with an impossibly long talon and ripped Hukwosha from her, tore the great bull into shards of light, scattered them on the water. He fixed what remained—her—with the suddenly argent orb of one eye.

“Now, child, your blood. It is for the best. There must be a River, you know. It just need not be him.”

Hezhi stumbled back, but all of the bull's strength was gone. “I don't want to be a goddess,” she murmured, as if trying to explain something simple to a child.

“You have no choice. Only his blood can slay him—and you we can control. We will not make the same mistake we made with him. Perhaps Balati need never know at all, once you wear the Changeling's clothing.”

He stepped forward.

“Not just yet,” shouted something as it arose from the water.

PERKAR'S fingers tingled as he loosened his death grip on Sharp Tiger's mane. That wasn't easy to do, for the Mang stallion continued down the narrow spiral trail, if not at a fall gallop, well beyond a canter. No horse could be so surefooted, but Sharp Tiger seemed either unaware of or unconcerned about that simple fact. Still, Perkar knew he would need feeling in his hands soon, feeling enough to wield Harka one last time, and so he unknotted his fingers from the thick black hair and let his legs hold him on, allowed himself a moment of reluctant humor at the memory of the expressions on the faces of Karak's men as he and the stallion crashed from the woods, through their ranks, and into the pit.

He wondered how much farther down he had to travel; night had fallen, and he could no longer make out the opening to the sky, nor tell how fast and far he had already descended.

He remembered the last time he had entered Balat, what seemed like centuries ago. Could he really have been so proud, so arrogant, so absolutely sure of himself? It didn't seem possible. When he entered the mountain, he had been a boy, full of dreams and ideals and hopes higher than the stars. When he left he had felt old, used, and worn. Scores of days had passed before the first glimmer of light had entered back into his soul. One such glimmer had been Brother Horse, when he met the old man, hiding on an island in the Changeling. Another had been Ghaj, the widow near Nhol who taught him that he could find pleasure with other than a goddess. But in the end, in the aftermath, it had been Hezhi who brought real joy back to him.

Why hadn't he ever admitted that? Because he would rather force her to share blame for his crimes than enjoy her company? Because he feared she could never care for a killer and a fool?

His scalp prickled and he urged Sharp Tiger on for the first time since mounting him. Incredibly, the stallion did increase his speed in response, though Perkar would not have believed that possible. He recalled, with a sudden chill wonder, part of a song Raincaster once sang—tried to sing, anyway, in Perkar's own tongue, so that he would understand it. In Mang it had flowed glissando, one syllable to the next. In Perkar's language it had rung stilted but still powerful—wounded but not crippled.

And whosoever should kill you Bright steed, blood-girded brother Let him beware, let him fear My life, become a weapon Such that vengeance itself will Appear a small, whimpering thing. This I swear to you as I live And when buzzards pick my bones And when my bones are dust Four-hooved brother.

A man would avenge his steed as he would a relative, according to the ancient word and blood of the Horse Mother. Would a horse do the same for its rider? Would the Horse Goddess aid such a purpose?

He would find out soon enough, he was sure—if he wasn't too late. Had the Blackgod already slain Hezhi? Had her blood already destroyed the Changeling and replaced him? The sick feeling in his gut told him that deep down, he must have always known that Karak's solution would be this. What had he pictured, some sort of battle royal, them flailing at the water with their swords? A jar of the god's essence that they could simply crack? No, this was the only way that made sense. Human blood had such a powerful effect on gods, and Hezhi's blood was both Human and Changeling. It would flow down him like hemlock, numbing him as it went so that he wouldn't even know he was dead until the last drop of him reached the sea. And in his place would be Hezhi, or whatever it was that Hezhi had become—a goddess, but perhaps one that Karak and his kin could exert more influence over. A weaker River Goddess with less ambitious aims.

But Hezhi would be dead. The woman just waking in her child's face would never come fully alive; she would never read another book or see another herd of wild cattle. And she would be lost to him.

It always comes back to me, he thought angrily.

If only he weren't too late.

GHE rose from the water, trembling with power and rage at what he saw. Hezhi lay before him, her blood and life leaking out of her like a flower cut off at the stalk. Others lay about, dead or dying, and a clump of soldiers who emanated only confusion but were now turning toward him. Qwen Shen was among the dead—he regretted that bitterly, for he would have preferred to dispense her punishment himself—and Bone Eel was among the mortally wounded. Bone Eel's Human guise had been stripped bare, however, and the fading life Ghe saw was that of the guardian of the Water Temple, the foul creature who had made pets of emperors. Another regret; but Bone Eel—or whatever the thing was really named—was still fading, so perhaps there would be time to punish him.

Presiding over the massacre was what could only be the Blackgod, a maelstrom of power, standing above Hezhi like her executioner. He turned angrily at Ghe's challenge, his aura sharpening into a threat of power greater than even that of the Huntress. But he had defeated the Huntress, had he not? And the cold expanse of water below him would absorb any amount of energy he cared to take. Still, before attacking, he reached out and ate the approaching warriors as a first course.

He sprang with the speed and force of a javelin, and the Blackgod fell back. Desperately he plunged stinger and claw—both physical and arcane—through the weird flesh of the being, hoping to quickly find the artery of his strength. If the discharge burnt him, so be it.

Lightning speared him, burnt a hole in the tough plates of his belly large enough for a cat to crawl through. Every muscle in his body clenched into knots so tight that some pulled loose of the bone. Another bolt flashed, lit the underground lake with violet light, and he was torn loose from the Bird God, thrown roughly to the shingle, twitching.

The Blackgod laughed as Ghe struggled to regain control of his inhuman limbs, his strength ebbing with each instant. The water was near, but it was as if a wall had been erected between him and that source of life. Feebly he tried to crawl.

“So this is the best Brother can send against me,” the Black-god mocked, shaking his head and clucking. “Let me introduce myself, Ghe of Nhol. I am Karak, sun-bringer, storm lord, master of rain and thunder, the Raven, the Crow.”

“You are a corrupt demon,” Ghe snarled, “and you must die.” “Oh, indeed?” Karak asked, and lightning lit the cavern once again in a hideous similitude of twilight.

PERKAR beheld the tableau below, long before the lightning; Harka gave him vision in the darkness. And so it was with a sense of unbelievable helplessness that he watched the tiny figures meet and fall, not certain who any of them were. A monster rose from the water and attacked one of the shapes, and then came the lightning, and from that he knew which participant was Karak.

He and Sharp Tiger were a single turn of the spiral path from the cavern floor—perhaps the height of fifteen men from the stones—when a third peal of thunder roared up through the pit; Perkar saw, almost precisely below him, the shadowy form of the Blackgod and the blasted carcass of some fishlike monster. To his horror, he also saw Hezhi crumpled nearby, an unmistakable pool of blood spreading beneath her. Brother Horse, Yu-u'han, Ngangata, and Tsem all lay immobile on the black stones. All of the warriors who came with Karak lay still. He knew he should be angry, but all he could summon was a vague denial and a rising wind of fear. Too far, too long to complete the last turn as Karak, the clear victor, turned to Hezhi's body.

Perkar suddenly stiffened as the air rang like an iron bell, and through flesh and bone Perkar suddenly saw Sharp Tiger's heart glow like a red-hot anvil, heard the stallion scream, felt him leap into space. It was no slip, no mistake; the horse laid back his ears and jumped. Perkar's mind—already staggered—simply refused to accept what had happened for an instant, but as the fall took his weight and filled his stomach with feathers, a sudden wild elation stifled a nascent yelp. “Brave boy, Tiger,” he had time to say instead, before he and the vengeful mount of Good Thief crashed into the black-cloaked figure.

The impact robbed him briefly of his senses, but Harka would not let him plunge into true unconsciousness, shrieking alarm in his ears. It was a good thing; he regained his feet at the same moment as Karak. Sharp Tiger, unbelievably, was still alive, struggling to rise on four broken legs. With a snarl, Karak reached and slapped the stallion's skull; it split open, and the beast died. Perkar hoped—in the brief instant he had to hope—that Mang legend was true, that Sharp Tiger and Good Thief would be reunited as one on some far-off steppe. Then he had no time for thoughts of that sort or otherwise as he fell upon Karak with Harka.

The first five or so blows landed, and Karak tripped back, golden blood glistening from several wounds. Perkar howled, swinging the blade savagely, not so much like a sword as like an axe, as if he were hewing deadwood. Karak's daunting yellow eyes stayed steady on him, but he knew that he must just keep his attack going, not give the god a single pause, keep the fear from gathering tight in his chest to slow his arms.

A black fist leapt past his guard and smote him with such force that he felt bones crack in his jaw. He slapped into the ground, rolled, and came back up with his blade ready.

Karak loomed over him, still with Human form and face but glossy black save for the orbs of his eyes. He shook his head no. “Pretty thing, is this how you repay me? I am only doing what I said I would do. Stand aside and let me finish what we began together.”

“I won't let you kill her,” Perkar shouted. “Not even to slay the Changeling.”

“She won't die” Karak returned. “Only her flesh will die. She will become mightier than she ever dreamed. Otherwise, she is dead already. Her body is beyond saving.”

Perkar glanced again at Hezhi's feebly moving form, heart sinking at the sight of her pale face and the huge pool of blood. Could such a tiny creature contain so much blood? It didn't seem possible.

“Her death will be meaningless unless she bleeds her last into the Changeling,” Karak hissed urgently. “She will have died for nothing, when she needn't die at all. But we must hurry!”

Perkar turned slowly back to the Crow God, knowing that he had already done his best and failed. But the storm of dread in his belly, instead of rising to a cyclone, began to break, diminish. “Between the two of us, Karak, we have brought about the deaths of everyone I hold dear,” he said measuredly, wishing he had something more profound to offer as last words. “I have lost my Piraku and betrayed my people, and you were behind it all. So let one or both of us die today—and I hope for the sake of the world it is both. And if it is me, you may do as you will.” He raised Harka.

Karak sighed and reached to a sheath at his own side. “Very kind of you, to give me your leave. I could deal with you as I did him” he said, indicating the fish-thing. With a horrible start, Perkar saw that it had a man's face—the face of the Tiskawa, in fact. “But you I will give a chance to die with Piraku, for you have served me well, Perkar Kar Barku.” He drew his blade. ”Do you recognize this sword?”

Perkar stared, his mouth suddenly dry. “Yes,” he admitted unwillingly, haltingly. “It is my sword. The one my father gave me.”

“Is it? I found it in a pool of red blood, here in this very mountain. I had it retempered to suit me. But I must correct you in one particular; since you threw it away, it is my sword now.”

“Something very strange about that blade, ” Harka warned him, but Perkar was beyond reason. The sudden fury that filled him was greater than any he had ever known, a tenebrous joy that could not distinguish between killing and dying. He flung himself at the Blackgod, Harka curving out and down.

“HEZHI,” a voice muttered from very near. She turned to see Brother Horse, clutching a drum in one hand.

“Grandfather,” she whispered back.

“Can you see it? Can you see what you need?”

“Brother Horse, I'm dying.”

“Listen to me,” he snarled angrily. “I told you I wouldn't let you do that. Won't let you die! Listen to me …” But his eyes fluttered and he spat blood.

“What?” she asked, though she hardly felt concerned anymore—instead she felt strangely serene, light-headed.

“There.” He pointed at the thing that might have once been Ghe. “See, beneath the lake. Look beneath the lake.”

She looked. It was easy, for death was dragging her beneath anyway. She first saw Brother Horse, a fading warmth, his ghost already coming unmoored.

I can take him in, she thought. Like a god, keep him in my breast. She reached to do so.

But above the lake, his hand clutched hers. “No,” he barely whispered. “You don't have the strength for that. You need me like this.” His eyes gleamed with laughter, love, and comfort as he gripped her hand more tightly. “Tell Heen I said farewell,” he murmured. “Heen tells me he loves you …” Then his eyes lost their light as a flame surged into her, filled her with new strength.

And Brother Horse was gone, his hand already cooling, no trace of his heartstrands remaining.

Look beneath the hke, he had said, and, trembling, she did so, afraid to waste his last gift on anguish.

The “waters” closed over her. I am dying, she realized again. The Blackgod stabbed me. And, finally, she understood Karak's words, saw the use her blood would be put to, the results it would bring. She had to stop that somehow—and Brother Horse had seen how she could do it, seen some weapon she might use. He had pointed at Ghe.

She saw Karak still—a black thing of feathers and blue fire in the otherworld. She saw Ghe, too, knew him instantly. He still resembled some sort of inky net, with the scintillating bulbs of stolen souls bound to him like jeweled weights. But the net was rent, the pattern of his body in disarray. A few souls still glimmered there, however, and she reached, featherlight, to touch them.

Her swan and mare were still with her, though injured as she was. The swan guided her and the mare held her up, and together they brushed her fingers through the shattered remains of Ghe. One of the souls responded to her tentative inquiry, produced a voice that floated thinly to her.

“Hezhi?”itsaid.”Hezhi?”

She paused. She knew that voice. “Ghan?”

“Indeed,” he answered, gathering a bit of strength.

“Ghan, how did you—”

“I died. He captured my ghost—a fairly simple matter for him.”

“Ghan, I have so much to tell you,” she began. An image of him formed in her mind, his parchmentlike face, the knowing twinkle in his black eyes that could so often glare with irritation. She had lost Brother Horse, but here Ghan was back.

He laughed. “No time for that. No time for that at all.”

“No time for anything, I think,” she said.

“No, you are wrong. Ghe is stronger than the Blackgod knows, and I think if we can win his help, there is yet something we can do. But Hezhi, we must hurry.”

“Tell me what to do then.”

He told her.

HARKA slashed down as Karak's blade rose to meet it, and the two came together in a shower of sparks. In Perkar's ear, Harka shrieked piteously. He had never known the weapon could feel pain or fear, but now both shuddered through him, as if the blade had become his own arm, skin removed and nerves laid bare.

Karak hammered down a second blow, and Perkar raised his blade to meet it.

“No!” Harka screamed; then steel clashed and the godblade burst into a thousand bits. The hilt leapt from his hand, and in his ear, Harka's dying cry faded into nothing. Perkar swayed, weaponless, in the following silence.

“Now,” Karak said, “that silliness is over with.” He bent toward Hezhi's body.

An arrow shaft appeared in his eye. Karak shrilled and straightened, seeking his new attacker. Ngangata stood less than a score of paces away. Half of his body was soaked in red Human blood, but he raised his bow for a second shot. Karak darted forward, faster than a mortal eye could follow, and in that eye-blink his sword plunged into the halfling's chest. Ngangata snarled and yet tried to raise his weapon, but Karak twisted the blade, and Ngangata's eyes turned to Perkar. They brimmed with tears of agony, but his gaze held no self-pity or even fear—it conveyed apology. Apology—for having failed him. Perkar leapt once again, shrieking inarticulately, still unarmed, bent upon tearing the Crow God apart with his bare hands. With a flashed look of utter disdain, Karak turned and ran him through, as well, the blade sliding into his navel and out his back. He knew no shock at being impaled, because in the past year he had taken more than one such wound. But before, he might have fought up the blade, or at least quickly disengaged himself. Now he merely glared at his murderer, still refusing to admit it was over.

Karak held him up with the blade for an instant, yellow eyes bright with contempt. “See how you like that without a magic sword to heal you,” he spat.

“Ah,” Perkar moaned. Karak released the hilt. Sword still in his belly, Perkar felt his knees wobble and give way, and he sat down roughly.

He almost fell on Ngangata. The halfling was still alive, though just barely so. Karak regarded them for just a moment, then stepped toward Hezhi.

“I-I'm sorry,” Ngangata managed to stammer.

“Shut up, you dumb Brush-Man,” Perkar whispered. “You didn't do anything wrong.”

“I could have … I could have …” Ngangata seemed confused, unable to think of what he might have done.

Trembling, Perkar leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I'm the one who is sorry, brother. Piraku with you and about you.” He patted the dying halfling on the shoulder. “I've got just one more thing to do,” he said, feeling a little giddy but otherwise surprisingly well, considering. “Then I'll come join you here.”

Ngangata nodded but said nothing.

Perkar put both hands on the sword hilt, closed his eyes, and pulled.

GHE brushed his hps upon Hezhi's and felt triumph. He, a gutter scorp from Southtown, had kissed a princess. He stepped back from her, wanting to see her lovely eyes, hoping to see love there.

What he saw instead was urgency.

“Hello, Yen,” she said very seriously.

“Princess.”

“I need your help.”

Ghe noticed for the first time that there were other figures behind Hezhi. They all stood in the little courtyard above Nhol, where Hezhi had taken him once to look down at the ships. But he understood that could not be where they were as his memories—what little remained of them—returned.

“I've failed you,” he said, feeling hot, unaccustomed tears start in his eye, remembering the Blackgod carving him with a knife of living thunder.

“Not yet. There is still time,” Ghan said from behind Hezhi. The third figure was the stream demon, the woman—she sat sullenly on the bench by the cottonwood tree. Near her, looking old and defeated, stood the ancient Nholish lord he had captured in the Water Temple. Lengnata was fat, his eyes piggish little dots.

“Where are we, really?” he asked Hezhi.

“In your mansion. The place where you keep the souls you capture.”

“How did you get here?”

“I came to see you, Ghe. Because there is something you can do to save me.”

“Anything.”

“You must slay the River to do it.”

Ghe's limbs began to quake. He shuddered violently. “I can't do that. You have to know I can't do that. Even if I had the power—”

Anger wrote itself on her features. “You owe me,” she declared. “You made me think you liked me, maybe more than liked me. You owe me.”

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I don't know what that means,” she retorted, but softening. “But I know that I need your help.”

“I cannot slay the River!”

Ghan interrupted him. “Have you forgotten Li again, Ghe? We found bits of her in you, in your memory, hidden away and dimmed from your waking mind. The River tried to clean them out of you. He made you kill her, Ghe, because he would not give you what few memories you cherished.”

Hezhi held something out to him—not something physical, but fragments of his mind, like a shattered mirror. Images of an old woman, her love for him, the care that only she had ever lavished upon him. A day long ago, on the levee of the River…

“He did steal her from me, didn't he? Why did he do that?”

Hezhi reached up and brushed the hair from his eyes. “To keep you from being distracted. A real man—one with his own thoughts and motives and loves—a real man makes a poor weapon for the River. The River hates us because he will never really understand us, no matter that he wants our bodies as vessels. He hates you, Ghe, hates me, simply because he needs us. I know what it's like, to have him in me. I do.” She laid her hand on his shoulder. ”But Ghe, he made you from a man. Part of you is still a man. And despite what you did to me, you don't deserve what he has done to you. Neither of us deserves it. I am dying, Ghe. Only you can save me.”

An inchoate anger was growing in him, but still he persisted. “I… He made me so. I cannot but serve him.”

“No,” Hezhi said. “No, if you love me, you can serve me. You once told Ghan that whatever I wanted—”

“I lied! Ghan knows that.”

“You thought you lied,” Ghan said. “But I believed you because it was a deeper truth than you knew. It was the man in you, rather than the Riverghost.”

Ghe stilled his trembling, braiding his anger and his love. He reached into the secret, cold place that had helped him kill, back when he had been merely Human, when a misstep meant his own death, when compassion was a deadly thing. He wove that into the fibers, too, a warp to lay the weft through. lama blade of silver, I am a sickle of ice, he whispered, and finally, once again, he was.

“What must I do?” he heard himself say.

Hezhi leaned up and kissed the scar on his chin, the first wound he ever received. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But what you have to do is die. But we will help you.” And she gestured to the stream demon.

“Die,” he considered. “I have to die.” He focused on her again, on the exquisite shape of her face. “Will you forgive me then?”

“I already forgive you, Ghe.”

“Call me Yen.” She smiled. “Yen.”

IT took three pulls to remove the sword, each more painful than the last, and the final heave was followed by a gout of blood that he knew must surely have drained him. Nevertheless, though his legs felt like wood, he struggled to stand.

Nearby, another huge figure stood over Hezhi, which Perkar recognized as Tsem. The Giant interposed himself between the girl and the god.

“This is getting tiresome,” Karak said. “Perkar, lay down and die. Tsem … oh, never mind.” He raised his hand.

A scorpion stinger as thick as a Human leg struck the god as a nightmare jumble of limbs and plates suddenly crawled back into motion. Karak rolled his eyes—not in pain but in irritation—and struck the thing away with his hand. “And you!” he snapped. The monster with the face of the assassin from Nhol rose unsteadily on several spiderlike legs. It should have been dead—Perkar could see the hole in it, how burnt and charred it was. Only its head remained Human, and it was the Human eyes that held Perkar, not the monstrous body.

“Perkar,” the thing croaked.

He was so weak. His knees shook. He didn't even know what he imagined he would do with the sword he had just pulled from himself. Strike Karak one more useless blow? But here was this thing, the thing that had eaten the Stream Goddess …

He raised his sword, though the earth sought to drag it from his hand.

He carried his weight into the swing, knowing that if he missed it wouldn't matter anyway, he would never stand to attack again. He wondered dully why the Tiskawa tilted its head back, as if inviting the blow.

The Blackgod was perhaps more injured than he let on, for though he lunged to place himself between Perkar and the River-thing, he was too slow to avoid Tsem's broken club, which struck him in the shoulder blade and caused him to stumble. Then it was too late, and the sword Perkar's father had given him—the sword forged by the little Steel God Ko—bit deeply.

For the second time, Perkar watched Ghe's head leave its body. It was strange that the final expression to grace the assassin's face seemed to reflect victory rather than defeat.

XXXVIII Horse Mother

BLOOD geysered into the cavern, spewing from the stump of the River-thing's neck. It fell toward the lake and gouted liquid into the water, and the water burned. It caught like dry leaves in high autumn, like pitch. Glorious light of many colors gyred and capered madly in the cavern, and Perkar sank back to his knees beneath the rainbow dance of the River's death—and his own. And though wonder should have been shocked out of him, he still laughed and wept tears of joy when he saw, amongst those flames, a lithe form he had once loved, the Goddess of the Stream, hair coursing opalescent as she skated across the surface of the dying god.

“What have you done?” Karak shrieked. “What have you done?”

“Slain the River, I think,” Perkar answered, dropping his blade so he could lower himself to the floor with one hand and clutch his belly with the other. It was starting to hurt now, a slow burning that he knew would consume him for a long time before finally killing him. “Not as I planned, pretty thing,” Karak snarled. “Nevertheless, I think he is dead.” “Perhaps,” Karak said. “I don't see how, but—” “It is true; you know it. I have done it for you.” “It is not as I wished it to be,” Karak complained, his voice becoming a trifle petty.

“Karak, please. I know you can heal Hezhi and Ngangata, if they are not dead. Please. We did what you wanted. The Changeling is no more.”

“But what is in his place?” Karak snarled. “That I do not know. Perhaps he will be as bad as the Brother.”

That seemed wrong to Perkar, but it was just a feeling. And it was too much trouble to argue. “Save them,” he repeated instead.

“What of you, pretty thing? You don't want to die, do you?”

“No,” he answered, knowing at last that it was the truth. “No, I don't. But they should come first.”

“How sweet. But seeing as how you acted contrary to my wishes, I will heal none of you.”

“As if you ever acted in accord with anyone's wishes,” a voice boomed, shuddering the very stone beneath their feet. ”As if you ever accomplished the goal without twisting the intent.”

Karak and Perkar turned as one at the low, grating voice, a voice nearly below Perkar's hearing.

“Balati,” Karak said, almost a groan, almost an imprecation.

It was, indeed, the Forest Lord. His single black eye reflected the glimmering flames upon the water, but the rest of him seemed to drink in the light, a mass of fur and shadow and antlers that were really, Perkar could see now, trees that reached up and up, never ceasing to rise and branch. Near him stood a mare with a coat of gold and rust, the most magnificent mare Perkar had ever beheld. As Balati spoke again, the horse turned and sniffed first at the still form of Sharp Tiger, then at Hezhi.

“You have played a merry prank on me, Crow,” Balati muttered, his voice as solid and unyielding as stone. “You have killed my Brother.”

“He was dangerous,” Karak hissed. “In another thousand years—when it was far too late, and he was eating you—you would have understood that yourself.”

“That is what VW are for, Karak,” Balati said. ”That is my use for you, and you have performed it well. My Brother was ill—dead even. He was the ghost of a god, envying the living.”

“Ah!” Karak brightened. “It is well then—you do understand. In that case, perhaps I should fly and see precisely what has been wrought here. The new River God, like the old, has no sentience in Erikwer, but when he emerges from the cavern—”

“Oh, no, I think not,” Balati said, almost gently. “You need humbling, I believe, and I need you with me for a time, so that I can quicken enough to understand all of this.”

“Lord,” Karak said, “there is much I need to be about, much to be done in the world as it shall become.”

“Yes, I'm sure. But we will let mortals do it for a while, and the little gods of the land.”

Karak suddenly transformed into a crow and took wing, but as he flew, he shrank, and the Forest Lord reached out a massive paw and closed it upon him. Perkar heard a single, pitiful grawk and then saw no more of the Raven.

“L-Lord Balati—” Perkar stammered.

“I know you,” Balati said. “You slew my guardian, stole my things.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But I—and I alone of these here, and of my people—” Perkar groaned through thickening pain. “I was to blame, no one else.”

Balati cocked his head slowly to one side. Unlike the Raven, unlike the Huntress or indeed any other god Perkar had known, there was nothing Human in the gaze of Balati. He was the world before men or Alwat, the forest and the land before the forest came alive. There was no mercy, no compassion—nor hatred nor envy nor greed—to be understood in that nebulous single orb. “You wanted something before,” he rumbled. “What was it?”

Perkar blinked. “Before… ?”

“When you stole my things.”

A year ago, Perkar realized, when Apad and Eruka and the Kapaka and the Alwat all died. “We… we came to request more land for pasture, so that we need not fight the Mang.”

Balati gazed down at him for some time. “That is reasonable,” he said. “You may have them.”

“Have them?”

“Two valleys, the two which lie along west of the rim of Agir-uluta. You know the place?”

“Yes, Lord,” Perkar muttered faintly. “I know it. Thank you.”

But the Forest Lord no longer stood before him.

Now only the mare remained, stood near where Tsem crouched, weeping, beside Hezhi. The mare walked toward him, and as she did so, she became a woman, Mang-seeming, handsome. She looked angry.

“The girl Hezhi still has some life in her, and since she is the house my little colt lives in, I have healed her. Your friend will live.”

“Thank you,” Perkar murmured.

“Do not thank me yet.” She knelt nearby and put her hand to Ngangata's throat. Then she turned to him again. ”You slew one of my children in a foul and vicious way. You cut her legs from under her and left her to suffer.”

“I did,” Perkar admitted. “I have no excuse.”

“No, you don't. And so as punishment, I will give you a choice. I will either heal the halfling or you, but not both.”

Perkar closed his eyes. He did want to live. His goal was accomplished, and suddenly he could imagine a life that might have Piraku and perhaps even joy in it. He might once again sip woti, own cattle—and with Hezhi alive, he might even find a companion. And he was afraid', afraid of the hours of torture that lay before him, of the oblivion to come …

“You are cruel,” he said. ”Of course you must save my friend.”

The Horse Mother hesitated. “Perhaps I should do the contrary then. If you really want this one to live, then he shall die.”

His mouth worked, but he couldn't manage an objection, realizing the mistake he had made. After all, hadn't he used the same logic against the River long ago? Tried to guess his desire and then frustrate it?

But then the Horse Mother laid her hands on Ngangata. “No,” she said. “I haven't the heart for that sort of cruelty. I was just taunting you. Ngangata will live. But I will not help you—I will not go so far.”

“Thank you,” he managed.

And then she, like the Forest Lord, was gone.

He lay there for a moment, watched the now steady rise and fall of Ngangata's chest.

“Tsem,” Perkar whispered. Perhaps the half Giant could be persuaded to kill him quickly. But before he could utter another word, a sudden, sharper pain took him into oblivion.

IT took everything he had to stand still while the white-faced demon swung his sword again. But this time the pain and the shock meant very little to him. He was almost thankful to Perkar. To Hezhi and Ghan, he was thankful. “Good-bye, Hezhi,” he sighed, as shade descended.

He was a little boy, walking along the levee, looking for a dead fish, anything to eat. His feet were cut and bleeding from fleeing across broken shards of pottery; the soldiers had seen him taking a merchant's purse of gold, and of course he had dropped it in the pursuit.

Ahead on the levee he saw an old woman, basking in the sunshine. She had an apple and a salted catfish before her on a red cloth. And bread, warm black bread that he could smell, even on the fetid breeze from the marsh. He felt about in his pocket again—but his knife was really gone. He walked toward the old woman anyway, thinking hard.

She saw him and frowned—but then she waved him over.

“I saw you looking at my food,” she said. He nodded sullenly.

“I've seen you before, on Red Gar Street.”

He shrugged, unable to take his eyes from the fish.

“We'll play a game,” the old woman said. She reached into a little bag and withdrew three clay cups and a copper soldier. She lined the cups up, placed the copper under one of them, and then moved them about quickly.

“Keep your eye on the copper,” she said. “Now, tell which cup the coin is under, and Fll give you my bread.”

“It isn't under a cup,” he said. “It's in your hand.”

She opened her hand, and there it was. “How did you know that?” she asked.

“I've seen you on Red Gar Street, too.”

She laughed. “Take the fish and the bread.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I like you,” she answered.

“That's no reason to give me something,” he said, but he took the food anyway, as she watched through narrowed eyes.

“My name is Li,” she told him, as he swallowed a huge hunk of the bread.

He stopped chewing then. “Really? Are you really Li?”

The old woman smiled thinly and shook her head. “No, child, not really, no more than there was a soldier under those cups. But I can take you to where she is.”

“You're the Lady.”

“Yes.”

“Shouldn't I be afraid of you?” “Yes and no. Are you?” Ghe shrugged. “A little. Will I disappear?” The Lady smiled. “Now that would be telling. Why don't we go see?”

Ghe nodded. “May I finish the bread first? I'm still hungry.” “Of course, child. Finish the fish, too.”

HEZHI awoke, cradled in Tsem's arms. The pain in her side was still present, but when she felt for the wound, that was gone, though her clothes were sticky—in some places stiff—with dried blood. She remembered—knew—that it was her own.

Tsem stirred, tilting his coarse features down to look at her. They also were smeared with dried blood—a cut marked the summit of a huge gray lump above one massive brow—and caked further with dirt. Below his eyes, tears had cut runnels through blood and dirt, but he was dry-eyed now.

“I'm tired,” she muttered. “Thirsty. Tsem, are you all right?”

“I have a headache, and I was worried about you. The Black-god knocked me down and I hit my head. I guess he was too busy to bother with killing me.”

“Where is the Blackgod now?”

“Gone.”

She tried to look around. “Is anyone dead?”

Tsem nodded his head sadly. “You almost were, but a horse healed you. I know that sounds stupid.”

“No, it makes sense,” she told him. “Who is dead?”

“Brother Horse. Bone Eel, Qwen Shen. Lots of soldiers.”

“Perkar? Ngangata?”

“Ngangata is fine. He's doing what he can for Perkar.”

“Perkar? Is he badly hurt?”

“Very badly, Princess. He will probably die.”

“I should—maybe I can help him.” But she knew that she could not. Brother Horse had never taught her how to mend a torn body, only how to cast off possession. And neither of her remaining familiars had such arts. And they, too, were weak. But Perkar! Added to Brother Horse and Ghan …

“Take me to him,” she pleaded.

Tsem nodded, lifted her up, and carried her to where Perkar lay.

He was near death, she could see that. Ngangata had bound up his belly, but blood still leaked through the bandage, and he must be bleeding inside, for she could see his spirit ebb.

“She healed me but not him,” Ngangata muttered when they arrived.

“Who?”

“The Horse Mother.”

Hezhi took a deep breath, fighting back tears. “She said he offended her—” she began.

Ngangata laughed harshly. “Yes, he did. That's Perkar, always offending some god or other.” He tried to smile, with small success.

“But his sword. Can't his sword heal him?”

“The Blackgod destroyed Harka,” Ngangata explained.

“What do we do?” Tsem asked quietly.

“Wait, I suppose,” Ngangata replied stiffly.

Hezhi nodded and took one of Perkar's cool, bloody hands in hers. The smell of iron and water was strong, but the cavern was quiet now, and the last of the flames on the water had dwindled to a pale glow. Hezhi began, at long last, to cry—for Ghan, for Perkar, for Brother Horse—even for Ghe. She cried until a light appeared, high above them, a disk of gray and then blue; beyond Erikwer, the sun had risen.

EVEN in Perkar's dream, the pain remained—a nest of ants burrowing in his intestines—but it was, at least, muted. He lay in a grassy meadow, high in the mountains. Nearby, cattle lowed softly. It was an unusually vivid dream; he smelled the sweetness of the grass and the resin of spruce needles, even the almost-forgotten scent of cows. Wishing fervently that it were real, he knew it wasn't. Only the pain was real, the hole in his body. The rest was just his mind trying to ease his death.

“Oh, no, it's real,” a voice assured him. He turned at the words and smiled, despite the pain. There, perched on a branch, as regal as any lord of the air, sat the most magnificent eagle he had ever seen. It was a bluebolt, body feathered in black and white with a crown of almost velvety indigo feathers. Its eyes were fierce, the eyes of a warrior, a predator.

“Harka,” he said. “I must say you are more attractive in that form than as a sword.”

“It's been long and long since I enjoyed a form like this, felt the wind in my pinions,” the eagle answered in precisely Harka's voice. “I had actually forgotten, you know, what I was until that day you asked my name. I had forgotten having ever been anything but a sword.”

“And now?”

“Now the Forest Lord will clothe me like this. I can spend a few years in a mortal skin and then perhaps take up residence in the mountain. It will be good, feasting on rabbit and fox again!”

“I'm happy for you. I thought the Blackgod destroyed you entirely.”

“Not at all, though I admit I thought I was dead; having my body broken like that really hurt. But in the end he did me a favor, freeing me. Though I hated to abandon you, Perkar—believe it or not, I developed a real fondness for you.”

Perkar regarded the huge bird. “As I said,” he finally said, “I'm happy for you. But I wonder…”

“Yes?” Harka sounded almost eager.

“Can you tell me what happened? Exactly? It all went so fast.”

“Oh.” The god's voice fell a bit, as if disappointed. “Of course.” He cocked his head. “Karak believed that only the River's own blood could destroy him, and only at his source. That was probably true enough. But that thing—the Tiskawa the River made to seek Hezhi out—contained many things, many kinds of blood and soul. The ghost of an ancient Nholish lord, your old love the Stream Goddess, other, smaller gods—all were given puissance and life by the River. A potent combination, one that served the same purpose as true Waterborn blood. The death of the Tiskawa performed the same task as Hezhi's own was meant to: killed him deader than a bone.”

“You are certain?”

“I am certain. I have flown over him, and I have seen. His death follows him downstream; when these waters reach the sea, nothing will remain of the Changeling.”

“And the River will be without a god. What a strange, strange thought.”

“Without a god, yes,” Harka said. “But not without a goddess.”

Perkar turned to him so sharply that, even in his dream the pain was suddenly exquisite. “What?” he gasped in both astonishment and agony.

“Well, there was one spirit inside of the Tiskawa uniquely qualified to take over in the capacity of lord of the river.”

“The Stream Goddess?”

“None other.”

Perkar sank back and stared up at the sky, happy despite the fact that he was dying.

“What a glorious world,” he muttered.

“Ah, yes, and that brings up the point of my visit—besides coming to say good-bye. In fact, if you weren't so thick, you would know why I'm here.” The eagle hopped down, flexed its wings, and moved a pace closer. ”You are about to leave this glorious world—unless you have changed your feelings about me.”

“About what?”

“More than once you cursed me for healing you. You asked me to let you die. Do you still want that?”

“You aren't my sword anymore.”

The bird lifted its wings to the wind. “No, but I could do one last favor for a friend, if he wanted.”

Perkar chuckled. “Fine, Harka. I take it all back. I'm glad you never let me die.”

“Does that mean you'll take my help, or would you rather expire as a hero, before you can make another mistake and start things all over again?”

Perkar shook his head ruefully, “I think I will take that chance, if your offer is genuine.”

“Of course it is.”

“Then I accept, and I wish you well in your travels, Harka. You were my only companion at times, and I was ungrateful more often than not—certainly more than I should have been.”

“Indeed you were,” Harka said. “Now, close your eyes.”

He closed them, and when he opened them, it was to Hezhi and Ngangata kneeling over him, each of his hands held by one of them.

The pain was gone.

“Perkar?” Hezhi asked.

“Hello,” he said. He turned to Ngangata. “Hello,” he repeated, wanting to say more, to explain to each of them what he felt, but the sheer joy of seeing them both alive and whole—and knowing that he himself would live—was more than he could contain. His words came out as sobs, and when Tsem joined them—he had been only a few paces away—they all clasped in a knot, wordless, gripping hands and shoulders and bloody chests. Behind them, Yuu'han watched—apart, his face expressionless.

It was finally Tsem who stated the obvious, after a few long moments.

“We should all bathe now,” he mumbled, and it could hardly be doubted that he was right. Hezhi laughed at that, and they all joined her. It was perhaps not the healthiest of laughter—more than tinged with hysteria—but it served.

When their chuckles faded off into strained silence, Perkar dizzily found his feet, and with Tsem's help struggled over to where Brother Horse lay. Heen licked the old man's face, clearly puzzled as to why his master refused to awaken.

“Brother Horse said to tell you good-bye, Heen,” Hezhi explained, from behind Perkar. The dog looked up at his name, but then turned his attention back to the old man.

“Good-bye, Shutsebe,” Perkar said.

THE next few hours were something of a blur, and later none of them remembered very much about them. They carried Brother Horse's body up and out of Erikwer and found that Karak's men had vanished, presumably fled. Perkar could hardly blame them, if they had witnessed even the smallest part of what transpired below.

At Yuu'han's direction they laid the body out, and sang the songs, and burned a flame for offerings, though they had little enough to give. Yuu'han had cut an ear from the corpse of Bone Eel, and he offered that to be taken to his uncle by the goddess in the flame. When Yuu'han sang his personal grief, Hezhi happened to hear, though she stayed a respectful distance away. One line stayed with her to the end of her days.

When they number the horses When they count the sires and foals Father, we shall know each other …

When Yuu'han was done, he departed, and then Hezhi went there. The old man's face had fallen into its most accustomed lines, so that she seemed to read a smile upon it. Heen already lay with him, his head propped on Brother Horse's feet, eyes puzzled. Hezhi knelt down and stroked the ancient dog's coarse, dirty fur.

“He said to tell you,” Hezhi murmured to Heen. “But you already know.”

But she told him anyway, and Heen licked her hand, and together they sat there for a time.

Night came, and they built a larger fire to huddle about. Unwilling to bathe in Erikwer, they still reeked of blood and sweat and other, more offensive scents. Perkar passed the night restlessly, barely sleeping, suspecting that the others rested at least as poorly.

He napped briefly, before dawn, and when he awoke, he knew why his rest had been so uneasy.

“I don't believe it,” he confessed to Hezhi. “I don't believe that the Changeling is dead, even after all of this, all of our sacrifices.”

“I felt him die,” Hezhi answered, “but I don't believe it either.”

“Then there is one more thing we must do, before leaving Balat.”

Hezhi nodded reluctantly. “Yes. One last thing.”

XXXIX The Goddess

PERKAR placed his feet carefully on the broken red stone, though the way down into the chasm was neither steep nor particularly dangerous seeming. But after all that they had been through—and after searching for the better part of a day for a safe way down the mostly sheer cliffs of the ravine—it would be ridiculous and embarrassing to trip and break his arm or neck.

Below them the river churned spray into the air that the bright sun rendered into a million shattering diamonds and that imparted a wonderful cool dampness to the ordinarily dry atmosphere.

“It's true,” Perkar said, speaking up to his companions still perched on the rim. ”It is true. This is not the same Changeling I once knew.”

“Not at all,” Ngangata agreed.

Hezhi felt her own trepidation melt away. The scale on her arm reacted to the presence of the river not at all, nor did any part of her. This was just water, flowing through a narrow canyon of red and yellow stone. “It's hard to believe that this narrow stream is really the river,” she said.

“This is where I first saw him,” Perkar answered. “This is where my journey to you began—our journey,” he corrected as Ngangata came level to him on the trail. He patted the half Alwa on the shoulder.

“Well,” he called back up to Hezhi. “Come on down.”

“Wouldn't you rather I stayed up here?” she asked.

“No. I would rather have you with me,” he answered, offering his hand to steady her for the next step.

With only a little slipping and sliding, they all reached the bottom of the gorge easily—even Tsem, though Hezhi noticed the half Giant kept casting uneasy glances back up, probably dreading the return climb to the top.

“Before you could feel his coldness, his hunger,” Perkar explained. ”Now…”

“Now it feels like something living,” Ngangata finished for him.

Perkar nodded and shuffled his feet on the narrow stone beach, suddenly nervous. Nevertheless, he reached into a small sack at his waist and produced a handful of flower petals, which he sprinkled into the quieter eddies near shore. He cleared his throat and sang—tentatively, but gradually with more confidence and volume:

“Stream Goddess I

Long hair curling down from the hills

Long arms reaching down the valley

Reposing in my watery dwelling

On and on go I

In the same manner, from year to year…”

Perkar sang on, the song of the Stream Goddess as she had taught it to his father's father, many years past. When he had sung it before, it had been to a quiet stream in his clan's pasture, a little stream he could almost leap across. Here, the crash of the rapids almost seemed to add a rhythm to his words, and then new words entirely, so that seamlessly, he was singing verses to the Song of the Stream Goddess that had never been before. And then, almost without him noticing, he was not singing at all, but the song continued, and from the nearest eddy, a head rose, long black hair swirling in the agitated water, ancient, amber eyes in the face of a young woman gazing up at them with what appeared to be humor.

“… then came a mortal man,” she sang.

“His mother named him for the oak

For the spot where his caul was buried

In the very place I flowed

He grew like a weed

And he came to love me—”

Perkar stood, more and more embarrassed as the song continued, but by now it was a story they all knew. She sang of his foolishness, she sang of her anger, she sang of death. But in the end she finished:

'On and on go I

But not the same now, year to year.

The Old Man eats me not

No longer quickens he with my pain

By foolishness I was saved

By the love of mortal man I was redeemed