Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  He sat by the swollen stream, knowing it would not answer him, and puzzled at his dreams. Some involved Ngangata, and those dreams were painful, embarrassing, almost like dreams of finding oneself inexplicably naked at some important gathering. Perkar perceived no clear reason why his dreams had that tenor; he was always clothed in them. The mere presence of the half man seemed to trigger the feelings. Others were of her, of course, of the smell of rose petals, of her pleading, of that sharp slap across his face. Those she had sent, with the rain; they were the only ones he understood. But mixed up with those dreams were the ones about the city and the girl. Houses and halls of white stone, a dry land and a river of unthinkable size. The River he knew, as certainly as he knew anything, though he had never seen it. In one dream the River was as red as blood, thick and sluggish. And the girl, standing at a fountain, saying his name. Asking for him.

  “There you are.” The Kapaka looked down at him from the trail to the cave. He was grizzled and unshaven, and he looked older than Perkar believed he was. You didn’t sleep well, either, Perkar thought, and wondered what dreams might trouble a king.

  The Kapaka cleared his throat and came on down to the stream. “You’ve made an offering? Good. That’s good.”

  Perkar only nodded.

  “Perkar,” the old man began reluctantly, then with more force: “this expedition is an important one. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have put my old bones in the saddle and come all the way out here. No Kapaka has done this in two generations, and I certainly never had any intention to. I would vastly prefer to be at home, telling my grandchildren stories. But younger sons are starting to fight among themselves, others are arming against the Mang. That is foolishness, Perkar; whatever the old songs may make of war, it is foolishness. Piraku is cattle, children, the love of family, giving gifts. War breaks things, tears them up, kills family, destroys cattle. Can you see that, as young as you are?”

  Perkar nodded. “I think so. The great heroes were always the most generous ones. The ones who settled wars rather than starting them.”

  “Just so. And so this trip is important to me, to all of us, you see?”

  “It’s important to me, as well,” Perkar told him.

  “I wonder. You don’t seem focused on our goal, Perkar. See, there it is, the mountain in the heart of Balat. But I think you see something else.”

  Perkar did not deny that. He merely shrugged. “It is important to me. And I hope to serve you, Kapaka.”

  The old man grimaced. “This business with Ngangata, Perkar—you have to let that go. You can’t judge what he says as if he were a warrior, like the rest of us. He is not a part of the warrior’s code, and it is wrong to hold him accountable to something that he never benefits from. And we need him, Perkar. Who will talk to the Alwat if something happens to him? Who will guide us to the Forest Lord? Apad and Eruka are loudmouths, but I thought better of you. Bear the halfling’s company for this short few days of your life, for all of us. If that isn’t good enough reason, then do it because I tell you to.”

  Perkar nodded. “I’m sorry I made trouble. Ngangata is safe from me.”

  “And you from him, I hope,” the Kapaka answered. “Now we should get saddled and moving. We lost time yesterday, and the sooner we get done with this, the sooner I can get back to my grandchildren.”

  “Agreed,” Perkar said.

  The Kapaka turned to go, but he spared Perkar one more of his iron-gray gazes, this time one carrying approval rather than reproach. “You fought well against the Wild God. That was your first battle, was it not?”

  “It was,” Perkar admitted.

  “Be proud of that,” he said. “You defended your king, and I have never seen an unblooded man fight better his first time. Be proud of that, and not of last night.” The gravel crunched softly beneath his boots as he walked back up to where the horses waited.

  “You should be up in front,” Eruka told him. “You should be vanguard instead of Ngangata, after last night.”

  Perkar shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Ngangata rides in front because our Alwal guides are up there,” he said. “Not because he is ranked ahead of all of us.”

  “We are heroes,” Eruka said. “Heroes on a journey with our king. Don’t you remember ‘Ekar Kapaka Karak’? ‘The Song of the Raven King’?”

  Perkar was preparing to tell Eruka that it was too early for a song, but he wasn’t quick enough; Eruka’s voice rose up into the midmorning, mingled with the singing of birds and clopping of hooves.

  Arrayed behind me

  All of my bright-edged heroes

  All of my caparisoned heroes

  First in their ranks

  Rode Waluka my Wolf-Warrior

  My Warrior of most standing

  Trotting behind him

  Laga in his bronze-chased mail

  With his honey-colored axe

  Behind Laga’s roan

  The Stallion of white-maned Nika

  Nika with his three-layered hauberk …

  “This isn’t an epic,” Perkar reminded him. “We aren’t going to war.”

  “It will be an epic,” Apad corrected. “And we might go to war.”

  Perkar nearly wondered aloud who would fight in this war—Eruka who had stood stock-still as a Wild God attacked his king, or Apad, shrieking and jabbing wildly—but bit the comment back. Eruka and Apad still planned to invade the Forest Lord’s home and search for god-slaying weapons; well, so did he. He could use their help. And, after all, they were his friends, though Apad especially was beginning to annoy him. What had the Kapaka called the two of them—loudmouths?

  They had goaded him into fighting Ngangata, too, and he was beginning to resent that. Nothing good had come from that confrontation; Ngangata rode up front, as usual, except today one of his eyes was swollen nearly shut and his lip was split and purple. The worst thing about the fight was what it had really revealed about Ngangata’s position in the party. He had been thinking of Ngangata, Atti, and the Alwal as a sort of faction, one which the Kapaka nominally belonged to. Perkar had assumed that Ngangata was the head of that group. But when the moment of truth came—when a Human warrior beat a half Alwa nearly senseless—Atti had made no move to interfere, nor to express his compassion later. The Kapaka—in retrospect—had urged Perkar to leave the feud aside but not because he liked the half man, only because he thought him necessary. Even the Alwal plainly did not think of Ngangata as any relative of theirs, for none of them had made any overtures toward helping him, either.

  That meant Ngangata was truly alone. It was something Perkar had to think on.

  The horses trudged steadily uphill now, through a forest more evergreen than hardwood. Hemlock and spruce dominated, spicing the air with their sharp scents. The sky seemed choked with ravens, rushing about their domain on scything black wings, and he remembered that Ani Karak, the Raven God, made his home somewhere in Balat. Fitting enough that Eruka had begun one of his songs.

  Perkar struggled to recall what else he could about which gods lived in the heart of the eternal forest, but nothing came to him. He wished suddenly that he could speak to Ngangata, who seemed to know much about gods, but the very thought reddened his face with shame. Why hadn’t Ngangata fought back? He could not ask him that, either.

  The bones of the mountains showed themselves more and more often now, outcrops and ridges of granite pushing through the earth’s thin hide. Now and then, Perkar thought he saw shadowy figures crouching on these stones, but only from the corners of his vision—when he looked directly they vanished. The woods were full of ghosts. Perkar wondered if they were the spirits of past travelers or the ghosts of gods.

  The rest of the day passed without much conversation, as did the next. The pace of travel became nerve-rackingly slow, the mountain hovering above them like a thunderhead, its shadow pacing over them not long after the noon hour, as if the night were rushing that much faster to meet them. When true night came, a brittle-bone cold sank down upon
them, enmired them as if it were some sort of frigid syrup—the campfires they made seemed little able to hold back that damp chill. As if that were not enough, Perkar’s dreams continued, growing more vivid and tumultuous as the nights passed.

  The next day they began descending into a deep, creased valley; the extent of it stole his breath, for it was morning, the great mountain dreaming yellow in the rising sun, the depth below them still shadowed but starting to glimmer in the sun’s fixed eye.

  “What a fine holding this would be,” he could not help but breathe. No matter that it would spend half the day in shadow from the mountain, no matter that it was the deepest, most haunted forest in the world. It was a valley such as a king might dream of for his children and their children.

  “Put such thoughts away,” the Kapaka told him. “This is our destination. This is where Balati, the Forest Lord, makes his dwelling.”

  Perkar nodded. It was a valley for a king.

  After another moment’s survey, they continued the descent. The slope was steep, and the conifers of the upper ridges were soon replaced by mixed hardwoods, the heady fragrance of the mountains becoming the more familiar smell of decaying leaves and wet moss. The moss, indeed, was thick, and here and there they crossed what seemed like meadows of it, shaded from the sun by branches that steepled above them like the rafters and roof beams of a vast damakuta. Ferns grew so high and thick that the hooves and legs of their horses vanished into them; there was no path visible to his eyes, and yet the Alwal never seemed to doubt where they were going.

  As they neared the valley floor, but before the land grew level, the Alwal halted, and after a few exchanges, Ngangata tersely explained that the party must wait there.

  “The Alwal must call another guide,” he told them.

  Perkar dismounted heavily. After days in the high reaches of foothills, the thicker air of the valley felt like water in his lungs. He sat down, rested his back against the frayed trunk of a cedar, and watched the Alwal.

  At first, he thought that they were building a fire. They gathered branches, sorting them according to size. But then Digger, the young female, brought in hoops of grapevines and long, slender willow branches. The Alwal clustered around these things, chattering in low voices; one began striking a pair of sticks together—rather arrhythmically, Perkar thought—and chanting a song of two notes.

  “Keep watch, Perkar,” Apad said, nudging him. “We could be in danger.” Apad was nervously fingering the hilt of his sword.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think Ngangata and his kin will let your fight go unavenged?”

  Perkar frowned, watched the stocky man-creatures continue their ritual. They had lashed the willow branches into a small tower, of sorts, the base ends of the shafts thrust into the moist earth, the tops tied together. Now they were weaving more of the grapevines in and out of the frame thus formed. The branches of various sizes went into this, as well.

  One of the Alwal spat some gibberish at Ngangata, who nodded and walked over to the Kapaka; the two conversed in tones too low for the others to make out. After a moment, however, the king joined the Alwal, tentatively adding branches to the bizarre construction.

  When the Alwal finally came away from the thing, gently tugging the Kapaka with them, it was the size and shape of a tall man. Twin branches projecting from the crown of the structure resembled the antlers of a stag.

  “I don’t like it,” Eruka muttered, and Perkar silently agreed.

  The oldest Alwa was still singing; the two notes had become three, and though Perkar certainly could not understand them, he could tell that what she was singing were words and not merely syllables. Now, more than ever, he wished that he could ask Ngangata what was happening, and he gritted his teeth at his self-imposed ignorance.

  Leaves stirred on the forest floor, took tentatively, then joyfully, to the air, swirling around the Alwat creation as if it were the center of a whirlwind. The woven saplings began to quiver. A god was coming, Perkar could see that easily enough; the air began to tremble, blurring the image of the Alwal standing behind their construction.

  When it happened, it was rather sudden, as in the moment when something hidden is recognized. Perkar had experienced such a feeling before, staring at a tangled maze of branches and tree trunks that did not so much hide as camouflage a deer. Once the deer was seen, you realized it had always been there, wondered why you hadn’t seen it before. It was in this manner that the goddess appeared; Perkar suddenly saw that she had been there all along, amongst the Alwat-woven branches.

  In form, she was much like a rather tall Alwa, but her limbs and torso were covered more thickly and evenly by coarse black hair. The hair on her face was even more pronounced, black but with faint gray markings. From her head, antlers spread proudly. And yet Perkar could see that the antlers were still wooden rather than horn. That this was a goddess was more than clear; she was unclothed—though she bore a sheaf of arrows and a bow—and obviously female. She smiled a wide, enigmatic Alwat smile.

  “Welcome, Kapaka, Prince of the Human People,” she said. Her voice was a burring kind of sound, filled with vibration and resonance.

  “Thank you, Goddess,” the Kapaka said. “I have brought gifts for you, and for the Lord of the Forest.”

  “Our Lord will distribute whatever gifts you bring,” the goddess said. “As for me, this form you have provided me is a fine gift—rare that I am incarnate in this fashion, and it pleases.”

  “You are more than welcome,” the Kapaka said. “But still, I would offer you something, if you are to guide us to …”

  “I shall take you to him,” she interrupted, seeming amused. “Worry not. The Alwat know to call upon me, and not some more feckless god.”

  “I regret,” the Kapaka told her, “that I know not your name nor any song of yours. But I have brought a singer along.” He indicated Eruka, who might have shrunk back just a bit. “He can learn one, if you will teach him, and we will sing it in our damakutat through the winter months.”

  “You may call me Paker,” she said, and now there was certainly humor in her expression; her generous lips parted to reveal a row of sharp, shining teeth. “You may call me Apa, Bari, Ngati. Or you may call me Huntress. I care not.”

  “Those are other names for the Forest Lord,” Eruka whispered, so that Perkar—but surely not she—could hear. Even so, her smile broadened.

  “And here,” she said, stepping away from the Kapaka and toward the other Humans. “What is this? What scent is this?” She walked to Perkar, growing taller, it seemed, as she came. She reached out with one furred, long-fingered hand and very, very lightly touched his cheek.

  “How sweet,” she said. “How very sweet.” But her grin was carnivore, a tiger sizing up a meal. Stepping away from Perkar, she seemed, for an instant, lost in thought, until her head snapped back up and around, black eyes flashing suddenly yellow and green, iridescent.

  “Come now,” she said.

  The rest of the journey was dreamlike; Perkar remembered striding over chasms on the woven backs of branches, groves parting for them, dark hollows that seemed more like cists beneath the earth than anyplace aboveground. At last they descended farther still, into what amounted to a huge bowl-shaped depression, a valley within a valley. The walls were of crumbling stone, and the dark mouths of caves gaped at them as they passed.

  “Are these the dwellings of the Forest Lord?” Perkar asked.

  The Huntress shrugged. “I suppose. He dwells in them at times.”

  “Damp, dank places,” another voice said. Startled, Perkar turned toward it.

  It was a raven that spoke, a raven the size of a large dog. He sat, grinning, on a low branch, eyes glittering like jewels in deep water.

  “Huntress, what do you bring me?” the Raven asked their guide.

  “Pretty things,” she said. “Pretty little things to line your nest with, to show the other gods when you come to the feasts.”

  The Rave
n lifted one leg nervously from his branch, clenched his claws closed, then flexed them open, renewed his grip on the limb.

  “I see no pretty things,” he complained. “Nothing pretty at all.”

  “As you say, then,” the Huntress said. “And so we shall bid you good day.”

  “Wait,” the Raven croaked, cocking his head suspiciously. “Perhaps they have pretty things with them.”

  The Huntress sighed and turned to the Kapaka. “Best give him something, I think. He can be childish at times.”

  The Kapaka nodded and opened his treasure bag, felted and embroidered with clouds and feathers. He searched about for a moment.

  “Here is this,” he said at last. He held up a sparkling brooch, silver with a blood red garnet.

  “Pretty,” said the Raven. “Yes, pretty. Perhaps you have more.”

  “I know you,” Eruka interrupted. The Raven looked puzzled—he tried to shift his glance to Eruka but at the same time seemed unwilling to take his regard from the jewelry.

  “Know me?” the Raven asked.

  “Yes,” Eruka told him. He coughed and then sang:

  I swallowed the Sun

  A pretty light

  Thus I was, thus I am

  I brought up land

  And spread it out

  Thus I was, thus I am

  I carry Lightning

  To glitter at night

  Thus I was, thus I am

  I painted the birds

  Who sing in flight

  Thus I was, thus I am …

  “Thus I was, thus I am,” the Raven repeated. “An old song, sung long ago. Almost I have forgotten it.”

  “You are Karak, the Crow God,” Eruka said.

  “I know who I am,” the bird replied testily.

  “Yes, and I know who you are, as well,” the Huntress put in. “And if you do not cease your prattling and let us be on our way, I will add another feather to you—on the end of a hard, straight shaft.”

  “Give me the pretty thing,” Karak grumbled pettishly.

  The Kapaka stretched up, offered the coal-dark bird the silver brooch. The Raven took it in his beak.