by Greg Keyes
“Like a hero? You are that. The songs are already spreading. How did you want to be treated? As an outcast, a pariah? Would that have made you feel better?” The older man smiled and reached to grip Perkar’s shoulder. “The punishment of a hero is that he is treated like one. You will see that soon enough. Go take your land, son. You have waited long enough.”
“Perhaps.”
“And think about marriage. It’s past time for that, as well. Bakume still has a finely dowered daughter…” He stopped when he saw the expression on his son’s face. He drank another cup of woti. “Ah, well then,” he said. “A father might as well try. A man can have two wives, you know.”
Perkar blinked at his sire. What had the older man seen on his face?
But he thought he knew, and that should be dealt with soon. He had put it off too long.
Hezhi woke with a start, her heart racing. Her blood pulsed chill, like roots of ice digging through her skin, but already the dread images were fading away, her nightmare painted over by the rosy sunlight falling through the higher window onto her bed. She lay there, waiting for the last of the dream to evaporate, wondering if she would ever be entirely free of such sleep terrors. Before last night, it had been almost two weeks. The mare and the swan assured her that they could protect her from her nightmares, but Hezhi felt somehow that such aid would harm her more in the end. With each passing day the horror lessened, just as the tightness of the knife scar in her side lessened under the ministrations of Perkar’s mother. The latter required bathing, stretching, and massaging the white lump with tallow; Hezhi had been assured that simply ignoring the scar would result in a stiff, unpleasant pucker that would trouble her for the rest of her days. She suspected that ignoring—or allowing her familiars to suppress—her dreams would have similar results. In the year and more since leaving Balat, the nightmares came fewer and with diminishing intensity. One day they would be all but gone.
Roosters were crowing, so Hezhi rose, dabbed her face at the washbasin, and sought out her robe, the gold-and-brown one she favored. Once dressed she trudged down the stairs to the great hall.
Perkar and his father lay there; Perkar was supine, mouth open, eyes closed. Sherye had nodded his head onto the table and remained there as if bowing to whatever god the wood had been cut from. The shadow of her nightmare was strong enough that a wave of horror washed over her, a fear that they were dead, but she saw the truth quickly enough in the woti bottle on the table, and the relief was so great she laughed. Perkar had relented at last and taken woti with his father. Perkar, too, was healing.
A soft sound caught her attention. Across the hall, Kila—Perkar’s mother—gestured for her attention. Hezhi crossed the hardwood floor, treading lightly even in bare feet, wishing to make no sound to rouse the men.
Kila was a tiny woman, smaller even than Hezhi in stature and frame, and yet she seemed larger somehow, as if time had lent her eminence. Her face reminded Hezhi of a bird—not some large, beaky bird, but something delicate, like a sparrow. Her hair, worn in three long braids that nearly reached her knees, was that strange red-brown color that Hezhi was slowly becoming accustomed to.
“Thank you,” Kila said, whispering. “Best we let them sleep. They would not be pleasant if we awakened them now. Would you come with me to feed the chickens?”
Hezhi nodded and followed the older woman out into the yard.
“Normally Aberra and her daughter feed them,” Kila explained as she opened the wooden bin that contained the grain, “but they are away right now.”
“I’ll help,” Hezhi said. She took a handful of the grain and began casting it about the yard in imitation of Kila. The red-and-gold birds appeared from every corner of the walled-in compound, converging on the two women, clucking about their feet like the courtiers who had once surrounded her father. Hezhi smiled at the image, then wondered more seriously what had become of that court, of the palace. With the River dead, did Nhol still stand? Did her father still rule? Despite herself, she felt again a longing for the city of her birth and, most surprising of all, a faint worry for her father, her mother, her sisters. Though she had barely known them, she understood now that they did matter to her in some small but real measure.
“What’s troubling you, child?” Kila asked.
“Thinking of home,” Hezhi explained.
“From what Perkar says, I wonder that you miss it.”
“As do I,” Hezhi admitted. “But I worry about my family. Most of all, I wonder about Qey.”
“That’s the woman who raised you?”
“Yes.”
Kila was silent for a few moments, throwing grain out toward the weaker birds that could not bustle up to her feet. “Will you return?”
Hezhi shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I will do.”
Kila looked at her frankly. “I hope you don’t,” she said. “I hope you stay right here. I’ve never had a daughter—” Her face fell slightly. “—not one who lived, anyway. Having you around has been like having a daughter.”
Hezhi smiled. Kila meant well, and she liked the older woman, but she could remember Brother Horse, making her a similar proposition, just after she escaped from Nhol. “You could be Mang,” he had told her. And yet, despite the old man’s best intentions, that had turned out to be a false promise. She had been with Perkar’s people for longer—sixteen months now—but she still had little faith that this could be her home. At least Tsem was happier here; he was much more useful as a cowherd and at building fences than as a Mang hunter. He even seemed to enjoy the hard, outdoor work. Yes, Tsem could live here and be happy. But as more and more time passed, Hezhi wondered what her place would be—if there was one for her at all.
Kila sighed. “But even if you stay, I suppose you will marry soon enough. Already we have had two proposals for you.”
“What?” Hezhi’s head snapped up. “Proposals?”
Kila laughed. “You should have seen your expression! Yes, of course proposals. Look at you! Such a pretty young woman, and well into marrying age.”
“But who?”
“Neighbors. Sons headed off to the new lands. Men who care less about a fine dowry and more about having a beautiful bride—and a shamaness, no less.”
“I thought no man married an undowered woman.”
Kila nodded around at the chickens, satisfied that they had been provided for, and started back across the yard. A gentle morning breeze breathed down from the mountains, cool but invigorating, like a swim in springwater. “Not in normal times,” Kila answered. “But these are not normal times. Dowry is usually land and cattle, land being the most important of the two. But right now, there is land to be had for the taking. Anyway—” She shot Hezhi a mischievous grin. “—you have a dowry.”
“I do?”
“Sherye has dowered you with two bulls and thirteen cows. Did you not know?”
Hezhi was so dumbfounded she literally could not speak for a space of ten heartbeats. “When?” she finally sputtered out.
“Ten days ago, on your fifteenth birthday. Two bulls and thirteen cows. Fifteen, you see?”
“That was very nice,” Hezhi said softly, feeling faint.
“I told you that you were like a daughter to us,” Kila answered.
Perkar’s parents very much wanted her married! Hezhi was wondering just how much like a daughter they considered her, and what the greater ramifications of that were. But after more than a year in the Cattle Lands, she thought she knew.
Perkar gave another try at lifting the fence post, lost his balance, and then sat down with a bump. He hoped he wasn’t going to be sick again.
“Get up and work, Perkar,” Ngangata chirped in a cheerful—and thus evil—voice. “Sweat it out.”
From fifty paces away, Tsem boomed in, “I always wondered if that sword of yours cured hangovers, too, back when you still had it.”
“I don’t know,” Perkar grumbled, holding his head. “I never got drunk when I bore Harka. B
ut I wish I had him back, right now, so I could find out.”
“Try this instead.” Ngangata smirked, walking over to join him on the crest of the hill. Below, some fifty red cows moved lazily across the pasture. Tsem eclipsed a few of them as he, too, ceased working and labored up the slope to join Perkar and Ngangata.
Perkar eyed suspiciously the skin that Ngangata offered him. “What is it?”
“Water,” the halfling replied, inserting a broken stalk of grass between his broad, thin lips.
Perkar drank some of it. It was cool, clear springwater, tasting only of rain and snowmelt. Perkar was sure it would make him vomit. He drank it anyway and discovered that he did indeed feel somewhat better.
“Pass me that,” Tsem panted, and Ngangata transferred the skin to the huge man’s massive paws.
“We make good time on this fence,” Tsem said, his tongue still wrapping thickly around Perkar’s language.
“Thanks to you and Ngangata,” Perkar muttered. “I’ve been useless enough today.” He glanced up speculatively at Ngangata. “How much longer will you stay?” He hesitated, then rushed on, “I didn’t think you would come back at all.”
Ngangata straightened his shoulders and gazed off at the forest, as if worried that something might lurk there. “Well, I had to make sure you hadn’t already found some new trouble to get into. In any event, I had to come see if the songs were true.”
“Songs?”
“Yes,” Ngangata answered. “In the songs I heard at Morawta, they speak of the hero Perkar standing as tall as two men together. I had to see if that was true.”
Perkar closed his eyes, but that made his head whirl the worst, and so he cracked them open again. “Tell me not of such songs.”
Ngangata sat beside him, touching his shoulder lightly. “I shouldn’t taunt you,” he admitted. “But you still owe me. Anyway, there is one thing I thought you would like to know about the new songs.”
“That being?” “The Changeling. The river who was once the Changeling has a new name.”
“A new name for a new river,” Perkar said, and despite himself he felt a little thrill. Five years ago he had promised a goddess revenge, and despite everything, he had given her that—and more. “What do they call her?”
Ngangata’s smile broadened. “Ah-hah. I knew you would want to know that.” He rubbed his hands together and cracked his knuckles, then lay back to gaze up at the lazy clouds overhead, his alien, dark eyes filmed with blue. “Well, the Mang call her Tu’da’an, the ‘River of Springtime,’ because she brought new life. Many of your own folk call her simply Itani, ‘Flowing Goddess.’ But there is another name for her.”
The half man lapsed into silence for a moment, as if suddenly listening to the sky.
“Yes?” Perkar grunted testily.
“Ah. Many call her Animiramu.”
Perkar had no answer for that, no retort. He only turned to look at the farthest tree line, toward the distant north where she flowed.
“I’m sorry,” Tsem interposed after a moment or two, “but what does that mean?”
“It means ‘The goddess he loved,’” Ngangata answered softly.
Perkar did not want the subject pursued.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he rasped, more harshly than he meant to. “How long will you stay this time?”
Ngangata considered for a moment. “I don’t know. A few days.”
Perkar massaged his head, wondering if he should try to discuss what he wanted when he felt so bad. But Tsem and Ngangata were both here, and no one else around.
“Listen, Ngangata. You, too, Tsem. I think I’m going out to claim some land in the new valleys. I think it’s time I did that.”
“Good,” Ngangata said. “You waited more than long enough.”
Perkar considered Ngangata as frankly as he could with his bloodshot eyes. “This is my idea,” he began.
“Uh-oh,” Ngangata interjected.
Perkar greeted that with a self-deprecating grimace. “Hear me out. I want you two to come with me.”
“To do all of the work, I assume,” Tsem rumbled.
“To share the land,” Perkar countered. “To each take a third of my granting.”
Ngangata stared at him silently, weighing those words. He understood what Perkar was offering, whether Tsem did or not.
“How could that be?” the halfling softly inquired. “Grantings can be made only to clan members. Tsem and I have no clan.”
“I asked a lawkeeper about this,” Perkar explained carefully. “My father and I can adopt you. You can share the land with me as if we were siblings. And your land would pass on to your sons.”
“I could own land? Like this?” Tsem asked. From his tone it was clear that he thought he misunderstood. Perkar repeated his statement in Nholish, to make certain the half Giant comprehended.
“I can have no sons,” Tsem said, his voice thick with emotion. “My sort can father no offspring. But…”
“That matters not,” Perkar said. “Pass it on to whomever you want—it would be yours.”
“After much hard work,” Ngangata added. “This is not cleared pasture we speak of. Perkar, I am a hunter, a guide, not a cattleman.”
“For many years, the most of our sustenance will come from hunting, until our herds have strength and many trees have been felled. If you never choose to do aught but hunt it, it would still be your land.”
“Yes, but I would be your brother, according to those terms,” Ngangata said, his voice thick with disgust. Perkar looked down in shocked astonishment, certain that after all of this time he and Ngangata were better friends than that…
But then he saw the halfling was biting back his laughter, and when Ngangata did release his mirth, Perkar understood that it was all right. His offer had been accepted.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Perkar asked, sweeping his arm to encompass the valley. Hezhi thought at first that the question was purely rhetorical, but then he turned his shining gray eyes on her, demanding a response.
“It is,” she agreed. And it was. The expanse of the valley was breathtaking—not awesome, like some of the landscapes she had seen in Balat—but nevertheless lovely, a panorama of rocky meadows and spruce swaying in a breeze easing down a saddle in the surrounding mountains. But it was more wonderful still in Perkar’s eyes, that was clear. Like so many things, she could never appreciate it as he did.
“I shall build my damakuta there,” he stated, indicating a gentle rise in the valley floor, “and there shall be my first pasture.” He indicated a flatter area nearby, where a stream snaked through a meadow.
“That seems reasonable,” Hezhi replied, “though I know little enough about pasture.”
He glanced at her again, and she wondered exactly what his gaze held. It looked a bit like fear.
“Come walk with me a bit,” Perkar urged, dismounting.
Hezhi watched as he tied his horse to a nearby tree, then reluctantly swung her leg over Dark’s mane and head, sliding earthward. “Where have Tsem and Ngangata gotten off to?” she asked. “They were behind us a few moments ago.”
“They’ve—ah—gone off to look at their own allotments, down the ridge,” he stammered—and blushed.
“Oh.” She felt an odd sensation in her stomach, for no reason she could clearly explain. “Where are we walking to?”
“Just walking,” Perkar replied. “We have something to discuss.”
Something serious, by his tone, and her belly tightened further. What was it he had to drag her four days’ travel from his father’s damakuta to discuss? It irritated her that Perkar was keeping secrets again. He had kept his offer of land to Tsem from her, for instance. She had been forced to drag that out of her old servant. During the journey to this place, he had barely spoken to her, as if his concealments were muzzling him. It was a side of Perkar she knew well and intensely disliked—and yet it was familiar, almost comfortable. Now, as he was about to reveal something to her at last, she
was suddenly afraid to know. Could it be that she was more frightened of Perkar’s candor than of his evasions?
“You’ve made Tsem very happy,” Hezhi said, to have something to say, to delay Perkar’s admission or whatever it was.
“Good,” Perkar answered. “He deserves happiness.”
“Indeed.” So why did she feel that Perkar was a thief, stealing her lifelong friend?
“You’ve made yourself happy, too,” she went on. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Like what?”
“Happy, I said. Excited. All you can talk about is your land and your damakuta. I’m glad you finally decided to come here. Your family is delighted. Why—” She stopped, wondering suddenly what she meant to say.
“Go on,” he prompted. They had taken a few steps into the forest, but now he turned to confront her, his eyes frank but nervous.
“Why so far out? Ngangata says this is as far as we could go and still be in the new lands. The closest holding is more than a day away from here.”
Perkar shrugged. “Not for long. These lands will fill up soon enough.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
He sighed. “The truth is, I’m not at home back there, with my people. Not really, not anymore. And Tsem and Ngangata…” He trailed off.
“Will never be at home there? Is that what you mean to say?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But out here we can be. All of us.”
“You and Tsem and Ngangata, you mean,” she replied, carefully. Just to let him know what he was leaving out.
Perkar’s shoulders visibly slumped, and though his mouth worked to say something, no sound emerged. Clearly frustrated, he leaned close, as if he must whisper what he had to say…
And kissed her. It was not what she expected, not then. A year ago, perhaps, but not now. Couldn’t Perkar get anything right?
But the kiss seemed right, after an instant, after she fought back the first swell of panic when he leaned in. It seemed careful, and sweet, and when he drew away she was surprised to feel a bit disappointed.