Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

“His mother a Giant? I think not.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Tsem nodded sadly down at his feet. “Yes, Princess, I know what you mean. You mean we are alike in what we are not, not in what we are.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t thought of it that way, but that was exactly what she had meant. Each was half Human and half … something else. What they were not was fully Human.

  “Tsem, I—” But there was nothing right to say about that now. Instead she threw up her hands in frustration. “Leave me alone for a bit,” she said at last.

  “Princess, that would be unwise.”

  “Stay near the door. If anything happens, I will cry out.”

  She thought, briefly, that he would disobey her, but he did not, and brushed open the doorflap with his enormous palm.

  Alone on the stoop, she once more contemplated the drum.

  It seemed alive; larger drums had begun thundering, out where the Mang were holding their ceremony, and the small hand drum shivered in sympathy with its brother instruments.

  She remembered Perkar, the rides they had taken together, the brightening in his eyes when he spoke of his homeland. She recalled only a few days before, when he had shown her the wild cattle, the sudden intense affection that had seized her. How could she let some black creature eat all of that, if she had the choice? Perkar said he had done terrible things—and she believed him. But she had also done terrible things. And some feeling for Perkar rested in her, she knew that now, for it had glowed hot with pain when he left her to go to see the Stream Goddess, and it lay chill in her now like a frozen bone. She had denied that it was love—and it wasn’t, not the sort of love that made you want to marry someone—but it was a fragile thing, a part of her that existed only because she knew him. And when it was not hot or chill, it was warm and pleasant. Not comfortable, but more like the itchy moment before laughing or crying with joy.

  And, even all of that aside, Perkar knew something, something important about her.

  So there was no question of letting him die; she must admit that now to herself as she had to Tsem earlier. There were few paths open to her, and that admission closed all but one for now.

  Tomorrow she would ask Brother Horse to instruct her. She did not really trust him, not anymore, and the other Mang were clearly less trustworthy even than he. Their treatment of Perkar, even after months of companionship, testified to where strangers stood among these people.

  But Perkar was dying and the River was after her. Perkar had said so, said that she must go to She’leng. She’leng, the mythical mountain from which he issued. If the River sought her, why should she fly to his very head? It made no sense to her, but Perkar had spoken to one of his gods, one that had aided their escape from Nhol, one who seemed inclined to help them. But what did it mean, and why? “Look for signs,” Perkar had whispered, but she didn’t know what that meant, either. Perhaps none of it meant anything, as sick as he was, but she had to know, had to do something. Once again she was being tossed about by forces she did not understand, and that she could not tolerate. She needed information; she needed power. All of that lay in the little drum.

  “How fares your friend?” a quiet voice asked, interrupting her thoughts. She turned, startled.

  It was the strange Mang, Moss, the one who had found her in the desert. He had come up, apparently, from behind the yekt. Sneaking up on her? She prepared to call for Tsem.

  “I mean you no harm,” the young man assured her quietly. “Really. I only meant to inquire after the stranger.”

  “What business is that of yours? He is not kin to you.” She emphasized the word in a sudden disgust for the whole concept. Her “kin” back in Nhol had never cared for her; for her worth as a bride perhaps, but never for Hezhi. They would have placed her below the Darkness Stair and forgotten her. Family were people who never earned your respect or love but demanded it nevertheless. These Mang took that to such a ridiculous extreme she wanted to shout with laughter and disdain.

  Moss did not flinch from her words or her rude, direct gaze. He only bowed slightly. “That is true, and to be honest, I will neither be happy nor sad if he dies. I will only be disappointed that the hospitality of this camp was violated.”

  “That means nothing to me. You Mang make much of your laws and traditions, but like everyone else in the world, you compromise them the moment they seem encumbering.”

  “Some do, that is true, when the danger seems great enough, when temper flares. That is not to say we ever discount our ways.”

  “Words,” Hezhi scoffed. “What do you want of me?”

  Moss’ face held nothing but concern, but Hezhi had seen that before, on the face of another young and handsome man, and she would not be fooled twice in the same lifetime in the same way.

  “I wanted only to explain.”

  “Why do you owe me any explanation?”

  “I do not,” Moss replied, and for the barest flicker his green-tinted eyes lit with some powerful emotion, then became carefully neutral. He was not, Hezhi reminded herself, more than two or three years older than she was herself.

  “I do not,” he repeated, “and yet I want to speak to you.”

  “Speak, then, but don’t bother to try to fool me with any false concern. It only makes me angry.”

  “Very well,” he said. He glanced back toward the western quarter of the camp; the drums were beating frantically as the fire threw new stars at the night sky.

  “Soon the Horse God goes home. That you should see, if you care to understand my people.”

  “I don’t care to understand them,” Hezhi replied. “Get to your point.”

  Moss frowned, showing irritation for the first time. “I will. You know of the war between my people and those of your friend?”

  “I know of it. It was you who brought the news, remember?”

  He nodded. “Just so. But this war is more than a war between mortals, Lady of Nhol. It is a war of gods, unlike anything the world has seen in several ages. Among my people, there are visionaries, shamans who see things in the future, who barter and truck in the world of Dream, and they have seen many ill things coming with this war.”

  She noticed then that his gaze had fastened upon her drum, and she deliberately placed it on the other side of her. “Go on,” she said.

  “It is only this,” Moss said, chewing his lower lip for a moment. “There can be war, and many men and horses and perhaps even gods will die. They are already dying, you know. I don’t know if you understand what that means.”

  “I have seen men die,” Hezhi told him. “I know death.”

  “These are my kinsmen dying,” Moss said.

  “For whom I care exactly as much as they care for me, for Perkar,” she retorted.

  Moss breathed deeply. “You wish to anger me, but my people have charged me with something to say, and I will say it. You have been seen, Hezhi, in dream. A great man has seen you, a powerful gaan who would avert the worst of this war, bring peace. But what he has seen is that only you can bring this peace.”

  “Me?” Hezhi narrowed her eyes to slits.

  Moss nodded. “You. That is what was seen. You are the only hope for peace, and the Cattle-Man, Perkar, is the bringer of death. You must go from him, come with me. I can take you to the gaan and together we can stop all of this. If you remain by the side of this man—” He gestured at the yekt. “—then it will be as a rain of fire, sweeping over the land and burning all before it.”

  “Me? Bring peace? How?”

  “I know not. I have only been told this, but the one who told me is beyond trust and deceit. It is the truth, I promise you.”

  “And of course I believe you,” Hezhi replied. She wanted to, of course. She had been the cause of so many deaths that the image of her as a peace-bringer was like a beautiful flower in a wasteland. She held on to that image wistfully but knew it had to be false. Must be false.

  “How dare you?” she said slowly. “How dare you? For twelve years
no one cared what happened to me, whether I was happy or sad, whether I lived or died. Now the whole world seems to want me, to use me like some workman’s tool. I gave up the few things I loved to escape that, but I loved those things dearly. Do you understand me? I fled my home to live with you stinking barbarians to escape. I have given everything I’m going to give, do you hear me? How dare you say this to me?” She was trembling, and her voice had risen to a shriek. Words were spilling from her mouth without any consent from her, but she did not care. The fierceness in her heart might have been panic or fury or both, it was impossible to tell, as tightly bound up and volatile as it was. “Get away from me, you hear me? If I had any of the power you people think, do you honestly believe I would help you? I would strike you down, burn you to blackened bones, scatter your ashes from here to the ends of the earth!”

  She wanted to go on then but finally caught herself, panting, reason overtaking anger. But she wanted to hurt Moss, sear that mild expression from his face, and she arrowed her remaining anger at him, as she had done in Nhol. There men had fallen, twitching and dying. Here Moss merely smiled a bit sadly.

  “I’m sorry to have upset you. I thought you would be honored to save two peoples and perhaps the world itself from so much pain and suffering. I suppose I have misjudged you.”

  “Your gods have misjudged me,” Hezhi snapped. “The very universe has misjudged me. I only want to be left alone.”

  “That is not your fate,” Moss answered placidly.

  “I will determine my fate,” Hezhi said, over the rising furor of the drums.

  Moss stepped back, his condescending little smile still in place. “I must go,” he said. “The ceremony nears completion.”

  “I have told you to go,” Hezhi retorted.

  “Just so. But I would speak of this later, when you have thought upon it.”

  “I have thought upon it,” she said. “I have thought upon it all that I will.”

  Moss shrugged, bowed, and backed away for a few paces before turning back to the fire. Hezhi watched him go, aware that her entire body was trembling uncontrollably. She heaved in several deep breaths, attempting to steady herself. After a moment she glanced around her.

  The yekt flap bulged slightly outward.

  “It’s okay, Tsem, he’s gone,” she said, and the flap relaxed.

  “And thank you, Tsem,” she finished. He, at least, was always there for her, because he loved her, and not for some mysterious thing she might be able to do.

  She took the drum back up and stared at it, her fingers still trembling. She looked out toward the fire, where the Horse God was going home.

  “Tsem, come on out here,” she called back into the yekt.

  Tsem’s huge head emerged immediately. “Yes, Princess?”

  “Do you think that the roof of this yekt will bear our weight?”

  He considered that. “I have seen many people sitting on them before. You weigh nothing, and I weigh as much as three men, but I think they can bear more weight than that.”

  Hezhi nodded, remembering the thick beams that held up the roofs.

  “Help me up onto the roof, then,” she said. “I want to watch this.”

  “As you command, O Princess,” Tsem said, “if you will explain your conversation with that barbarian to me. I could not follow all of it.”

  “I will explain, I promise,” she said. “But later.”

  Tsem nodded and came outside. Together they walked around to the back of the house, where the outside beams formed a rough ladder. Tsem boosted her up and then followed, more laboriously. Hezhi expected the roof to at least creak beneath the half Giant’s weight, but it held firm without protest.

  She stood and peered out toward the assembled Mang.

  She could indeed see better. The huge bonfire lit an encircling inner ring of excited faces, more dimly the next, until the crowd became a jumble of shadows and then darkness. The space cleared about the fire was perhaps twelve or thirteen paces in any direction. Seven drummers hammered away on drums from the size of her own to one monstrous instrument that stood as tall as the man striking it; it seemed, as well, that everyone in the crowd had some kind of noisemaker, a rattle, a string of bells, something. The drums, however, washed over these and engulfed them with thunder.

  In the circle, masked dancers capered, wearing hoods or carved wooden masks that reminded her eerily of the masks the priests had worn when they came to test her. She shivered a bit, glad that they were distant from her. One dancer stood out, a madly prancing figure in bright colors who seemed to be making fun of the other dancers, like a clown or jester in her father’s court. He wore a gaudy green shirt of Nholish satin, pantaloon breeks of some bright red cloth. His mask bore a ridiculous grin puckered out almost into a beak, and rather than hair the mask was furnished with a ruff of black feathers. The oddest thing about this dancer was his feet, which Hezhi could just make out; he wore shoes that somehow created the precise illusion that he danced upon a bird’s three-clawed feet.

  The Horse God stood nearby, and in Hezhi’s vision she shimmered, a striking mare of the rare sort the Mang named w’uzdas, the gray of a thunderstorm streaked with jagged white bolts of lightning. Bedecked in fine harness, silver and gold bells, plumes of feather and long strips of ermine woven into her tail, she coursed in and among the dancers proudly but nervously, shying from the crowd.

  “Barbaric,” Tsem muttered.

  Hezhi agreed but thought that there was a strange beauty to the spectacle, as well.

  The capering clown suddenly leapt at the mare, landed astride her, and in an instant she arched her spine, pawing at the sky with silver-shod front hooves and then reversing, planting front feet solidly and bucking her rump high into the air. The momentary rider was pitched head over heels, struck the ground, and rolled smoothly to his feet, to the appreciative roar of the crowd. The mare, furious, began to snap and paw at the other dancers and the crowd; she tore into one part of the circle, and Hezhi saw at least one person fall beneath the flashing hooves before the clown distracted her by swatting her rump. She turned to pursue him but stopped, puzzled by all of the sound and motion.

  Now four women with spears emerged from the crowd, and Hezhi felt her throat tighten; but they did not move toward the mare, instead joining in the dance.

  Hezhi glanced at Tsem, noticed that he was rapt, riveted by the spectacle. For no reason she could explain, she removed her own drum from its case. In watching the ceremony, in not thinking, she had completed her decision. From her skinning kit, a little leather purse dangling at her side, she removed a bone awl.

  The dancing became more furious, the thrumming of the drums joining into a kind of breathless rushing with no space between their beats. Hezhi gripped the awl in her right hand and pressed it to her finger, felt the sharp point and tried to force it forward.

  It hurt, and the thought of drawing her own blood suddenly sickened her; she bit her lip in frustration, wishing she had more courage. Why can’t I do it? She pressed a bit harder, still not hard enough to draw blood.

  Then the night seemed to rupture; the drums and beaters crashed with a terrible furor and then died away; Hezhi gasped and started in surprise, pricking the bone awl into her finger. Her gasp turned into a little hiss of pain, as, in the same instant, the women plunged their spears into the mare.

  The horse shrieked, screamed in a thoroughly inhuman and yet horribly Human way. She seemed almost to fly forward and flail at one of her attackers, catching one of the women in the shoulder with a sharp hoof, and Human blood joined the spectacle. The other spearwomen scrambled away, and the crowd was hushed as the mare started after one of them, stumbled, blood pouring from four wounds, three of the spears remaining in her. Her front legs buckled and she sank as if bowing, worked for a moment to regain all four feet, and then, as if suddenly resigned, slumped to the dark earth, rolling onto one side, flank heaving.

  The dancers ran to her. One took the dying beast’s head in her lap
, another laid one hand on the mare’s breast and stretched the other high. Hezhi watched, her own pricked finger forgotten.

  The kneeling woman began moving her raised hand, beating a slow rhythm in the firelight. Tentatively the smallest drum began taking up that beat, and then the others joined, a slow, faltering rhythm, throoom, throoom, throoom, throoom.

  “It’s her heartbeat!” Hezhi told Tsem, and he but nodded. In her hand, Hezhi’s drum was shivering again, shaken by the very air. People began emerging from the crowd, laying presents about the dying horse, gifts of food, incense, beer and fermented mare’s milk, jewelry. Brother Horse had told Hezhi of this part; each Mang was whispering prayers for the Horse God to take home, back to the mountain. The mountain? She’leng!

  Hezhi was dizzied by the sudden revelation. The River and the greatest gods of the Mang issued from the same place! It had to be true. There could be only one such place, one such mountain. The drumbeat slowed, faltered under the direction of the woman pressing near the mare’s heart. A final beat shuddered into the night, and then profound silence. Hezhi took in a quivering breath, wishing she understood. The pain in her finger reminded her of what she had done, and she glanced down. She dully realized that several drops of her blood had found their way onto the rawhide drumhead.

  Well, that is done, she thought. Perhaps doing it at such an auspicious moment would lend her more power later, though she doubted it.

  The drums boomed, shivered the earth, and Hezhi looked up, startled. They struck again and again, irregular at first, then gaining speed. Hezhi stared wildly, not understanding, and a peculiar panic seized her. She felt the hammering of her own heart, wildly fast, out of time with the increasing frequency of the percussion. If the drums had been the mare’s dying heartbeats, then what was this? The quickening of the god, the ghost, the spirit?

  And, all of a sudden, the drumming matched her own thudding heartbeat, and the little instrument in her hand suddenly came alive, not merely humming in harmony with the ceremony but awake, speaking in the same tones as her heartbeat as if actually drummed by the blood in her veins. The itch of her scale became a searing, livid pain and Hezhi turned into fire, a cyclone. The drum opened up a doorway into utter nothingness. Tsem was reaching for her, mouth agape, but he seemed to move slowly, so very slowly, as, like a storm seeking a vacuum to fill, she rushed through the doorway, screaming.