Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  “Hard to be free of what you are,” Tsem said, and Hezhi knew that, at least to that extent, he understood.

  Hezhi wrote later:

  This is what they call the Ben’cheen. It is a winter gathering, in which many of the Mang tribes come together. They feast, play games, and make sacrifices to the gods. I expect it to be very interesting. So far it is noisy, this festival, barbaric. The newcomers look very strangely at Tsem and me but are generally not unfriendly. However, Brother Horse had to dissuade some of the young warriors from challenging Tsem to fight—they have legends of the Giants, who live to the northeast, and in their legends they are great fighters. A warrior who proves himself against them is considered very brave. Brother Horse tells them that Tsem is still recovering from injuries—which, of course, he is—and that it would thus be inhospitable to challenge him openly. Fighting is something Mang men love, on horseback or off. One of their sports is called bech’iinesh, which I think just means “Slapping.” What they slap each other with, however, are long-handled wooden paddles with just enough padding to keep them from always being lethal. They charge at each other on horseback and try to knock each other from the saddle. On foot, they like to wrestle and box. I believe that they would be sorry if they wrestled Tsem. He doesn’t know the use of weapons, but I have seen him fight with bare hands, and it is difficult for me to believe that even one of these wild warriors would have a chance against him.

  In a few days they will hold their main festival, as I understand it. It is named the “Horse God Homesending,” but other than that, I know nothing of it. I will write more afterward, when I do.

  It seems my studies did not leave off when I left you. Brother Horse believes that I must learn something of being a gaan, if I am to live with my godsight. These gaan are something like priests, using drums and singing to talk to their gods. Brother Horse became one, long ago, though now he rarely “sings.” It sounds barbaric, superstitious, worse than the silly witchery of fishwives. It is difficult to adjust to how different the world is, away from the River, how different the truth of things is. That the world can be as full of gods as it is of rocks and trees seems ludicrous. Yet I know that what Brother Horse says is true—he knows these places, where the River does not hold sway, where he has not devoured all of the little gods these people know. I wish these Mang had books; I would rather go somewhere alone and read about these gods, about the ways of the gaan. Instead I must learn by listening to Brother Horse talk. Hearing people talk all of the time is tiring. I am not used to listening so much, as you may remember.

  One observation which may interest you: This word gaan—it reminds me of what I call you; Ghan, “teacher,” and also of Ghun, “priest.” Many of their words bear this sort of similarity to Nholish. I suspect that they learned to speak from our ancestors, but that being barbarians they learned everything wrong, pronounced the words incorrectly. For instance, when we say nuwege, they say nubege—and both mean “eye.” I hope you will find this peculiar and interesting, for I intend to make a list of their words to send you. Perhaps you can find some evidence in the library that the Mang learned to speak in Nhol—perhaps they were slaves who escaped, long ago. Their legends say nothing of this, but they have no books and so their histories cannot be very accurate.

  Hezhi looked thoughtfully at the paper, considered beginning the list right away. There were other things she should be doing, however, and she didn’t want people to think she was shirking. She blew on the ink. When it was dry, she would go find Duk and help with the afternoon meal. She wondered, idly and with some annoyance, where Perkar was. According to Yuu’han, he and Ngangata should have returned by now. There had been no more snow—in fact, the snow on the ground was melting—so bad weather had not slowed them. Still, she was determined not to worry. Perkar would return soon enough, and she could ask him what he knew of this witchery she was supposed to learn about. He would know something, after all his dealings with gods and demons.

  “There you are.” Brother Horse’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts. She looked up, a bit startled to see the old man, who had been busy constantly since their return to the village—greeting strangers, settling minor disputes, arranging marriages. He smiled down at her, gaudy in a long vermilion coat nearly covered with copper coins, gold-embroidered felt breeks, and a tiger-pelt underjacket. In one hand he held an otterskin bag that bulged around something round and flat. Behind him lolled Heen, dustier than usual, ears twitching as if offended by the raucousness around him. Hezhi tentatively returned the smile.

  “I think you may have questions for me,” he said. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been around to talk to you.” “I needed to think anyway,” Hezhi replied. “You think a lot. That is good, considering. And what have you decided?”

  “That I don’t know enough to decide anything.”

  “Wise,” he said, shaking his head. “I never waited until I knew enough. Which makes it a miracle that I am an old man and not a young ghost.” He extended his hand. “Walk with me a bit, child.”

  Hezhi hesitated. “Now?”

  Brother Horse nodded. “It’s important.”

  Hezhi sighed. “I don’t think I’m ready.” She rubbed absently at the dully tingling scale on her arm, the one physical sign of her magic.

  The old man grimaced. “I would give you more time if you had it. But soon—tomorrow—we will slay the Horse God and send him home. Without some preparation, if you see him—”

  “I will go mad,” Hezhi finished.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  “I see,” she muttered. She checked to see that her ink was dry, and, assured that it was, carefully rolled up the paper and replaced it in its bone case.

  They walked out from the village, pausing as riders thundered by on the racetrack that encircled the houses. Felt and horsehide tents crowded the landscape; the village scarcely resembled the one she had come to know—though it was nothing like a city, of course. The air was thick with smoke from burning wood and dung, half-charred meat, other scents she could not place. A pack of children—screaming and batting a ball along the ground with bent sticks—nearly ran over them, but when they saw Brother Horse, they parted and streamed around, like a school of fish effortlessly negotiating a snag in the River. Heen paused at the village edge—apparently disapproving of their direction of travel—but after it became apparent that they were ignoring his tacit advice, he followed regardless.

  It seemed a long time before they were in the open desert, with the cries, laughter, and music of the Swollen Tents behind them. Patches of rusty sand glared through thawing white drifts. Here and there, muddy trails marked the paths in from elsewhere, from wherever the Mang tribes came.

  “I’m sorry for your sake that I have to help you with this,” Brother Horse stated. “It has been a long time since I was a singer. Years. I wish there was a younger one around who could help you, but Cedar went off into the mountains a month ago, and I trust none of the others with you.” He paused for a few heartbeats and went on. “When it happened to me—the sight—I was a bit older than you. A warrior. It nearly ruined me; I was sick for days after my first sight of a god.”

  “I was sick.”

  “For a short time. You are very strong, Hezhi.”

  “Tell me more about yours,” she appealed, “your first sight.”

  He seemed to consider that, and for a few tens of steps the only sound was that of their boots crunching through the melted and refrozen surface of the snow.

  “I first saw Ch’egl, the god of a small spring. A very minor god indeed, much less imposing than he whom you saw.”

  “And?”

  “It was after a raid. My companions and I scattered to divide the pursuit. We were to all meet at the water hole. I reached the place first, and I saw Ch’egl. They found me wandering in the desert, nearly dead of thirst, as mad as a shedding snake.”

  “But you recovered.”

  “Only after my friends took me to a gaan.
He sang a curing song for me. But then he told me that if I wanted to live, I would have to apprentice to him.”

  “And so you did.”

  “No! I wanted to be a warrior. I felt certain I would never have such a vision again. But I did, of course. Fortunately, that time I had companions with me.”

  Hezhi glanced up at him. “What? What happened that time?”

  “That time I saw Tu Chunuleen. The great god you call ‘the River.’ Perkar calls him the ‘Changeling.’ Your ancestor, Hezhi.”

  “Oh.”

  “He was asleep. He is almost always asleep. But he dreams, always. When I saw him—” He stopped, fumbled with the ties of his shirt. At first, Hezhi thought he was stopping his story to relieve himself—the Mang showed no hesitation or shame in doing such things. But he did not. Instead, he raised the shirt up so that she could see an ugly, jagged scar.

  “I did that myself,” he explained. “With my skinning knife. I nearly spilled my guts all over the ground, before my friends stopped me. I have never come closer to death. I did not want to live, not after seeing him. A gaan had to follow my soul halfway to the Ghost Mountain before he could save me.”

  As he spoke they reached a low line of red rock, a shelf where the land dropped down the height of a tall man. Part of the upper level hung over like a roof, and Hezhi could see a little hearth of stones on the floor of the natural shelter. Cold prickles ran up her back, and she had a sudden, vivid memory of the priests, back in Nhol, waiting for her that day. Though many months in the past, the pain and humiliation of that experience stained her like red wine.

  “What are we doing?” she demanded. “What is this?”

  Brother Horse laid a hand on her shoulder. “We are only talking, as of now. Only talking, little one, away from the madness of the town.”

  Despite the comforting words, Hezhi felt panic rise in her chest. They had tied her down, naked, drugged her—awakened that thing in her belly, in her blood. This seemed somehow like that, another trick, something thrust upon her. The similarity between ghun and gaan flashed once more through her mind. Priest, shaman, what was the difference to her?

  “Wh-what will you do?” she stuttered.

  “Nothing. Nothing without your leave. Indeed, Hezhi, there is nothing I can do. You must do it, though I can guide you, help you along the way.”

  “There must be something else,” she insisted. “Some way to be rid of him forever.”

  They stepped beneath the slight natural roof, the enormous sky halved by the red stone. It was oddly comforting to Hezhi, making the world seem smaller, more manageable. Brother Horse motioned her toward a flat stone and lowered himself by degrees onto another, as if his joints were rusted metal. He placed his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands with thumbs together, and pointed skyward. He looked first at the cold stone and charcoal between them, but then raised his gaze frankly to meet hers.

  “No way that I know of, child. My hope for you was that the ember in you would die away without the River nearby to strengthen it. But it has caught, you see? Even without him, it will burn inside of you. Not as the Changeling planned for it to; it will not transform you as you have told me it did your kin. Still, unless you bank it, bring it under your control, that little flame will yet consume you.”

  Hezhi considered that she did know one way; she could fling herself from a cliff, break her body, and release her curse with her spirit. But even that might not work; more likely she would become a monstrous ghost, the sort that had once attacked her in Nhol. The Mang spoke often of ghosts, as well. However different the lands beyond the River were, they were not so different that death was a certain escape.

  “What then?” she asked. “What must I do?”

  Brother Horse reached over to stroke her hair. “It may not be so bad as you think,” he said. “But I won’t promise you that it will be easy.”

  “Nothing is, for me, it seems,” she replied dully.

  “It may even make you happier,” he went on. “I’ve watched you, these past months. You took to camp work pretty well. In time, I think you could even be good at it. But you would never love it, would you? The only things that I know you love—that I can see you love—are your paper and your ink, your book. The thought of books.”

  “What does this have to do with that?” she muttered.

  “Mystery,” he answered simply. And in that small word, Hezhi caught a glimmer of something. Hope, possibilities—something to fill the growing emptiness in her heart.

  “Mystery,” she repeated, a question really. Brother Horse nodded affirmation.

  “That is what you find in your books, am I right? Questions that you had not thought of yourself? Visions you could not imagine unaided? I can offer you the same.”

  “It frightens me,” she admitted. “What lives in me frightens me.”

  “It always will, unless you master it,” he said. “And probably even then, if you have sense, which I believe you do. But did your books bring you only comfort?”

  She quirked an insincere smile at that. “No, not comfort,” she answered.

  “Well, then,” the old man said. “Why do you hesitate?”

  “Because I’m tired,” she snapped. “Weary of new things, of being frightened, of being sick, of losing what I know! Tired of these things happening to me …”

  He waited until she was done, until she chewed down on her lip, panting, fury replacing fear.

  “What then?” she asked again, this time sharply, insistently. “How do we start this?”

  The old man hesitated, then reached into a pouch at his waist. He withdrew a small dagger, its blade keen and silver in the shadowed shelter.

  “As always,” Brother Horse replied. “With blood.”

  Hezhi turned the knife over and over in her hand, as if inspecting it would allay her fears. Instead, she only grew more nervous as Brother Horse kindled a small fire in the stone hearth.

  She was distracted by the process of fire-making itself, which relied not upon matches—the only way she had ever seen fire “made”—but upon a dubiously simple device. He placed a flat piece of wood on the shelter floor; the wood had grooves cut along one side, and these shallow cuts terminated in blackened depressions. In one of these depressions he placed a stick, about the length of her forearm, and began to twirl it briskly with his palms, starting at the top of the stick and working quickly to its base, returning his palms to the top again, and so on. In moments a coil of smoke sought up from the juncture of the two pieces of wood. The smoke grew thicker and thicker until Brother Horse removed the stick and blew upon the hole he had been twirling it in. Astonished, Hezhi saw a small red coal there.

  “Hello, Fire Goddess,” Brother Horse said. “Welcome to my hearth. I will treat you well.” He shook the coal onto a small wad of shredded dry material of some sort, held it delicately in his fingers, and breathed upon it. In an instant, he held flame between his fingers. With that small blossom, he ignited a pile of twigs leaning together like a little tent and, as they caught, added larger pieces of wood on top. Heen, sleeping with his head between his paws, opened a single eye halfway at the scent of smoke, then closed it once more, singularly unimpressed by the birth of a goddess.

  “Can you teach me that?” she breathed.

  “To waken the Fire Goddess? Of course. It is simply done. I’m surprised you haven’t seen it happen.”

  “The women would never let me near, at the hunting camp; not when they made fire.”

  “Women have some odd taboos about the goddess,” Brother Horse informed her, then added, “and about foreigners, as well.”

  “That I know.” The wood crackled gleefully. Hezhi cocked her head and even smiled, despite the threatening edge of the knife in her hand, the nervous twitching in her belly. “I never thought of fire as a miracle before,” she breathed.

  “See her in there?” Brother Horse asked. “Look closely.” He gestured with his lips, his gnarled brown fingers feeding bits of juniper t
wigs to the flame.

  “No,” Hezhi said, suddenly understanding what she was being asked to do. She averted her eyes from the little tongues of light.

  “The Fire Goddess is different,” Brother Horse reassured her gently. “She has lived with Human Beings for a long time—at least this aspect of her. Look, child. I will help you.”

  He reached over and took hold of her hand; trembling a bit, she turned her gaze back to the fire. The evergreen tang of juniper smoke wrapped her as the wind shifted, and her eyes squinted over the sting and tears. Brother Horse tightened his grip on her, and in that instant the fire seemed to rush up, open like the shutters of a window. As through a window, she could suddenly see through it, to another place.

  Once again, alien thoughts crowded her mind, and the scale upon her arm pulsed madly. She gasped and jerked to release herself from Brother Horse, but he kept his grip, and when she turned her head it was to no avail; the goddess was still there.

  But after the first instant, her beating heart began to slow. Seeing the god at the cairn had been terrible, like suddenly understanding that she had pushed her hands into a nest of stinging worms, the shock before the pain. There was nothing of her in that experience, only the promise of dread and power.

  The Fire Goddess was different. Hezhi saw warmth and comfort, an offer of aid rather than of power, an acceptance of her will and self that she did not fear. The Cairn God had threatened to sweep her away, like the River. The Fire Goddess only filled her with light and hope. It was still uncomfortable, but it was not terrible, not unbearable.

  “Oh,” Hezhi murmured as comprehension waxed. She glanced at Brother Horse, to show him she understood, and her jaw dropped.

  Brother Horse still sat watching her, but his body had gone gray, insubstantial, and within it, dark shapes swam about. She got the fleeting impression of fangs, of flickering yellow eyes, of hunger. There was also something there that reminded her of raw fish, of fish in the kitchen, just after Qey gutted them for steaming.