Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  Half a month passed at the camp, and Hezhi began to feel a certain contentment, the days settling on her shoulders like a warm coat, her fingers learning their tasks as her tongue became comfortable with the language of the Horse People. One of the young warriors began flirting with her, and she became the object of good-natured gossip, though she kept a good distance from the young man. The lesson she had learned with Yen—Ghe?—was not one she would unlearn quickly. It was one of three pains still throbbing in her. The palace and her family were already fading. They were, as the saying went, more of her skin than her heart. But she missed Qey and Ghan, feared for them. She wondered often what the letter Ghan had left her contained—it had gone with Zeq’ and his boat when he had fled.

  Toward evening of the twentieth day in camp, Hezhi was scraping clean an antelope skin when the packhorses began to pace nervously in their corral. Many of the women stopped in their tasks, gazing down the canyon to see who or what might be approaching. They soon made out two riders, and one of the older women, astute in such matters, recognized Brother Horse and Yuu’han, his nephew.

  That evening they held a celebration. Fortuitously, the hunters returned that same day, and so a deer was dressed and roasted. Brother Horse brought with him beer, candy, copper bells for the men and their horses, cloth and knives for the women. To Hezhi he gave one of the knives, a small, sharp blade.

  “They tell me you learn quickly,” he said. “Every Mang woman needs a good skinning knife.”

  “Thank you,” she said, meaning it. The knife borrowed from Duk had always been that, and she was astonished at how happy she was to have her own.

  “Well,” Brother Horse went on, when she had accepted her present. “I have something else for you, as well.” He drew forth a small bundle from his pack. “A friend of yours sent this along.”

  “A friend of mine?”

  “Yes. Yuu’han and I rode down to Nhol, to buy sugar and knives.”

  “Nhol?” She took the package, fumbled it open with eager fingers. Saltwater started in her eyes when she saw what was enclosed. There was a book—The Mang Wastes—and a ten-score roll of blank paper. The latter was accompanied by pen and powdered ink. There was a note, as well. “Hezhi,” the note began.

  I have lived a long life, but there has never been much joy in it. What pleasure I did find was usually in the paper and ink surrounding me. And so I thank you for an unaccustomed sort of happiness. I never intended to love you, you know, for I have learned that love is rarely pleasurable. It was not when I thought you dead. I cursed myself daily. Yet now I hear you live and are safe, and I no longer regret my affection. I would, of course, never say these things to you, but pen and paper may speak when I am silent.

  I know you must worry about your nurse, Qey, but she is well. The soldiers found her half dead amongst dead priests and believed her to be the victim of your crazed bodyguard as much as they. Neither has anyone pointed a finger at me. The massacre at the South Gate is little talked about, and your name is spoken only as Hezhinata.

  I have sent along a paper and pen with the Mang; I only hope they do not use it to wipe themselves with it along the way back to you. It is my hope that you will compose a letter or two to an old man, telling him of the things you see. There must yet be wonders he has not read of.

  You must not return to Nhol, Hezhi. Nothing pleasant awaits you here. I have confidence in you, know that you will make a life for yourself wherever you go. You have that in you, and it is all you, nothing of the River you leave behind. Be blessed by whatever gods there are in your travels, and try to think kindly of me, though I was never as good to you as I should have been.

  —Ghan

  She read the letter and read it again, never sure whether to laugh or cry. It did not really matter; either would have contained the same mixture of joy and melancholy. She gave Brother Horse a hug and thanked him again. Grinning, he patted her shoulder and then started to rejoin his family in drinking. He turned, though, gazed at her seriously.

  “You may become Mang, if you wish,” he said. “I will adopt you as my daughter, and we shall find a good, capable husband for you. Who knows? Now and then I see the sparkle of power in you—not like it was, of course, not enough to change you, but perhaps enough to make you a shamaness, to earn an honest living that doesn’t involve scraping hides.”

  “I’m learning to like scraping hides, thank you,” she replied. “But I thank you for your offer. It is very kind, since I know I would be a burden, at least for a time.”

  “Families have broad shoulders,” Brother Horse replied, “made to bear burdens.”

  “I don’t know what I will do yet,” she mused. “I think Perkar and I must speak.”

  “You are not bound to him,” Brother Horse said.

  “No, not bound exactly,” she half agreed. “But there are debts we share, responsibilities we hold together.”

  Brother Horse shook his head. “Such young people to be so serious. Enjoy yourselves, before your bones turn into dry sticks and your skin into leather.”

  Hezhi smiled. “I will try,” she promised.

  Perkar edged around the skinning frame, admiring the hide from all sides. “You’ve done a nice job with this,” he said. “One would never know you were once a princess.”

  She attempted a smile, but it fell into a flat line.

  “Sorry,” he hastened to add.

  “No,” Hezhi said. “It isn’t that. Being a princess never meant much to me. It might have, I suppose, if …” But the if hung in the air.

  He pretended to examine the skin more closely, embarrassed.

  “What are your plans, Perkar?” she asked abruptly. “Do you plan to hunt with the Mang from now on?”

  “No.” He had been thinking about that, of course. “No. I’m repaying debts right now, and I thought to begin with the closest, the ones I owe here. I’m also told that winter is hard on the western steppes. When spring comes, I’ll go back to my father’s land, to my own people. I have much to atone for there, many things to set right.”

  “Many things that I share blame for as well,” Hezhi said.

  “This has been discussed,” he told her. “I believe you to be blameless.”

  “If I am, you are as well. But if you bear responsibility, so do I, Perkar. You can’t have it both ways. We did this together, you and I. No matter what Brother Horse says, this skein was wound by the two of us, out of our fears and desires. I barely know you, but we belong together, at least for a time.”

  He tried out a chuckle and found it wanting. “How old are you?” he said. “Why not rest for a few years, be a child awhile longer?”

  The girl looked back at him wearily. “That is already lost to me,” she said quietly.

  “Lost things can be found,” he replied. But he knew what she meant. He would never again be that boy with his first sword, whooping in his father’s pasture.

  “I don’t know,” he went on, when she didn’t reply. “We have many months to think about it. It might be that you will change your mind.”

  “I might,” she conceded. “I did promise Tsem a few things. But I want you to think on this.”

  Perkar grunted. “You know,” he said, “you frighten me a bit.”

  “I? I thought you were a demon, when I first met you.”

  “Perhaps I am, when I wield Harka. I don’t know. But you …”

  “How do I frighten you?”

  “Who knows? All that time, on the River, your face the only clear thing in my mind. I can’t see you without remembering that, without remembering that I hated you for a while.”

  “You still hate me?”

  “No. It is just a memory. A clear memory.” He settled down, cross-legged.

  Hezhi hesitated for an instant, eyes turned from him. “You were going to kill me,” she blurted suddenly.

  Perkar grinned sardonically. “We were going to kill each other, weren’t we?”

  Hezhi nodded, but choked suddenly, gasp
ed with an obvious effort to fight back tears. Perkar stared at her with open dismay.

  She bit her lip and began to scrabble to her feet. Perkar, to his own vast surprise, reached his hand out gently, laid it upon her shoulder. After a tiny hesitation, he knelt and drew her to him, felt her heart beating in her slight form like a thrush’s wings. She sobbed, once, into his shoulder, and he felt a sudden tightness in his own throat.

  “I’m sorry,” he sighed, as he hugged her awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I know it hurts, all of it.”

  “I never meant to …” she mumbled, sniffling.

  “Shh. Never mind,” he soothed back. For a moment they stayed that way, and Perkar realized that though he had come half a world to find her, he had never really touched Hezhi.

  “Listen,” he said seriously, disengaging but leaving his hand on her shoulder, “all of this talk about duty and responsibility is fine, but I would be happier if we could at least like each other.”

  Hezhi nodded, reached up to brush at the dampness beneath her black eyes. “I can do that,” she said, her tone a shade less certain than her words.

  Perkar smiled, but boyishly this time, with none of his world-weary hardness. “I can do that, too. Maybe …” He crinkled his brow. “Maybe we need each other to heal from this; I don’t know. But when I go home, I hope you will come with me.”

  “I would like that,” she replied.

  Suddenly embarrassed, Perkar turned his attention back to the skinning frame. “I thought I might go for a ride,” he confided. “I like this horse the Mang gave me. He reminds me of one I used to have.” He glanced over at the girl. “Would you like to come with me?”

  Hezhi surveyed her work. Overhead, a late flight of geese arrowed through the turquoise sky.

  “Yes,” she said, her eyes distant. “Yes, I think I would.”

  He rose and offered her his hand, but she stood on her own before taking it, grinning.

  “Where shall we ride to?” she asked.

  It was his turn to smile. “Anywhere,” he said. “Wherever we choose.”

  They turned together toward where the horses waited.

  Acknowledgments

  Ken Carleton, Veronica Chapman, Tom Deitz, Pat Duffy, Nell Keyes, Charles Hudson, and Nancy Ridout Landrum

  The Blackgod

  For My Mother

  Nancy Ridout Landrum

  PROLOGUE

  Death

  Ghe plunged his steel into the pale man’s belly, watched the alien gray eyes widen in shock, then narrow with terrible satisfaction. He yanked to withdraw his blade and, in that flicker of an instant, realized his mistake. The enemy edge, unimpressed by its wielder’s impalement, swept down toward his exposed neck.

  Li, think kindly of my ghost, he had time to think, before his head fell into the dirty water. Even then, for just a moment, he thought he saw something strange; a column of flame, leaping out of the muck, towering over Hezhi. Then something inexorable swallowed him up.

  Death swallowed him and took him into her belly. Dark there, and wet, he swirled about, felt that last, bright blow like a line of ice laid through his neck flutter again and again and again, hummingbird-wings of pain. It was most of what remained of him, though not all. The little spaces between the memory of that blade stroke were like a doorway into nothing, opening and closing with greater and greater speed, and through that portal danced images, dreams, remembered pleasures—danced through and were gone. Soon all would gambol away like fickle ladies at a ball, and he would be complete again, just the memory of his death, and then not even that.

  But then it seemed as if the sword shattered, raced up and down his spine like rivers of crystal shards; and the belly of death was no longer dark, but alive with light, charged with heat and lightning, burning, pouring in through that doorway. The light he recognized; he had seen its colors blossoming from the water as his head parted from his body. The doorway gaped and wrapped around him, bringing not darkness, not oblivion, but remembrance.

  Remembrance carried hatred, bitterness, but most of all hunger. Hunger.

  Ghe remembered also a word, as strands met and were torturously yanked into crude knots within him, tied hurriedly, without care.

  No, he remembered. Ah, no!

  No, and he fought to hands and knees he could suddenly feel again, though they felt like wood, though they jerked and quivered with unfamiliar weakness. He could see nothing but color, but he remembered where he wanted to go and had no need of vision. Down, he knew, and so he crawled, blind, whimpering, hungrier by the moment.

  Down for he knew not how long, but after a time he fell, slid, fell again, and then plunged into water that scalded so terribly that it must have been boiling.

  For a while, he could think of nothing but boiling water, for pain had returned to him, as well.

  No. The pain went into him like a seed, grew, spread roots, sent limbs out through his eyes and mouth, shoots from his fingers, and then, very suddenly, ceased to be pain. He sighed, sank down into the water, which now enfolded him like a womb, utterly comforting and utterly without compassion; just a womb, a thing for him to grow in, but no mother or love wrapped around that. There he waited, content for a while, and after he was sure the pain was gone, he looked about for what had not blown through that dark doorway into nothingness—what remained of him.

  He was Ghe, the Jik, one of the elite assassin-priests who served the River and the River’s Children. Born in Southtown, the lowest of the low, he had risen—the memory stirred!—he had kissed a princess! Ghe clenched and unclenched his unseen hands as he felt the ghost of his lips brushing hers. He realized, dully, that he had kissed many women, but that the only actual, particular kiss he could remember was hers.

  Why was that? Why Hezhi?

  They had sent him to kill her, of course, because she was one of the Blessed. His task had been to kill her, and he had failed. Yet he had kissed her …

  Abruptly his memory offered mirror-sharp images, a scene from his past—how long ago? But though his mind’s sight was keen, the voices floated to him as if from far away, and though he saw through his own eyes, it was as if he watched strangers dance a dance to which he knew only a few steps.

  He was in the Great Water Temple, in the interior chamber. Plastered white, the immense corbeled vault above him seemed to drink up the pale lamplight in the center of the room. More real, somehow, was the illumination washing down from the four corridors that met in the chamber, though it was dimmer still than the flame. He knew it for daylight, rippling through sheets of falling water that cascaded down the four sides of the ancient ziggurat in whose heart they stood, curtains of thunder concealing the doorways of the temple. In that coruscating aquamarine and the flickering of the lamp, the priest before him seemed less real than his many shadows, for they constantly moved as he stood still.

  On his knees, Ghe yet remembered thinking of the priest standing over him, You shall bow to me one day.

  “There are things you must know now,” the priest told him, in his soft, little-boy voice; like all full priests, he had been castrated young.

  “I listen for the fall of water,” Ghe acknowledged.

  “You know that our emperor and his family are descended from the River.”

  Ghe suppressed an urge to rise up and strike the fool down. They think because I am from Southtown I know nothing, not even that. They think I am no more than a throat-slitter from the gutter, with the brains of a knife! But he held that inside. To betray his feeling was to betray himself, and betraying himself would betray Li—Ghe-in-the-water wondered who Li was.

  “Know,” the priest went on, “that because they carry his water in their veins, the River is a part of them. He can live through them, if he chooses. The power of the Waterborn has but one source, and that is the River.”

  Then why do you hate them so? Ghe wondered. Because they are part of the River, as you will never be? Because they need not have their balls cut off to serve him?

  Th
e priest wandered over to a bench and sat down, taking his quivering shadows with him. He did not sign for Ghe to arise, and so he remained there, prostrate, listening.

  “Some of the Waterborn are blessed with more,” the man went on. “They are born with rather more of the River in them than others. Unfortunately, the Human body can contain only a certain amount of power. After that …”

  The priest’s voice dropped to a whisper, and Ghe suddenly realized that this was no mere rote litany any longer. This was something real to the priest, something that frightened him.

  “After that,” he went on, sounding like nothing so much as an eight-year-old boy confiding some terrible childhood discovery, “after that, they change.”

  “Change?” Ghe asked, from the floor. Here was something he did not know, at last.

  “They are distorted by their blood, lose Human form. They become creatures wholly of the River.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ghe replied.

  “You will. You will see,” he answered, his voice rising to a firmer, more dissertative pitch. “When they change—the signs are discovered in childhood, usually by the age of thirteen—when they change, we take them to dwell below, in the ancient palace of our ancestors.”

  For a moment, Ghe wondered if this was some silly euphemism for murder, but then he remembered the maps of the palace, the dark underways beneath it, the chambers at the base of the Darkness Stair behind the throne. Ghe suddenly felt a chill. What things dwelt there, below his feet? What horror would disturb a priest merely to discuss it?

  “Why?” Ghe asked cautiously. “If they are of the Blood Royal …”

  “It is not only their shape that changes,” the priest explained. He looked squarely at Ghe, his pale eyes lapis shards of the light shimmering down the facing hall. “Their minds change, become inhuman. And their power becomes great, without control. In times past, some River Blessed have passed unprotected; we have missed them. One was even crowned emperor before we knew he was Blessed. He destroyed most of Nhol in fire and flood.”