by Greg Keyes
Ghe reached the bank and dragged himself and Ghan onto it. Already small fragments of the wreckage drifted by, seeking downstream toward the River, messengers of failure and destruction. The first lifeless corpse of many washed past, eyes staring sightlessly at the bottom of the stream.
Ghe shook his head, uncomprehending. What had happened?
He was not given time to contemplate or theorize. The water before him erupted, a spray of foam that almost instantly thickened. It became a demon, while all he could do was gape like a speared fish.
Her skin was the color of sun-bleached bone, her alien eyes winking fiery gold. Her hair hung dark and lank as that of a drowned corpse. She was naked, magnificent, and terrifying. Leveling an accusing finger at him, the demon strode imperiously across the surface, of the water, cracked out words to him as if her tongue were a whip lashing silver chimes.
“How many years have I waited for you to make a blunder of this sort?” she demanded. “Oh, how many ages? I never dreamed you would be so stupid as to give me something to hurt, to pay you back in even the smallest way.”
She was less than an arm’s reach from him now, hating him with those impossible eyes. He could see the power gathered about her, how it reached away, up- and downstream, for as far as vision reached; how her white flesh trembled to contain her puissance and her fury. Ghe shook, as well, shivered as mad fear pranced along his bones. This was the second demon he had known, and the first had killed him. He caught the vaguest glimpse of Ghan nearby, raising himself to a sitting position. Behind her lithe form, more wreckage drifted past.
“It is your arrogance,” she hissed, sibilant and venomous, “always your arrogance. You think you may go anywhere with impunity. You think because you devour me day by day, you can violate me upstream, as well.” Her eyes constricted to bare slits, and her orbs darted beneath the lids, as if searching there for a lost dream. Then she leaned close, like a sated lover, and sighed into his ear, “But here, Devourer, I am goddess. I fed your silly snakes to lure you farther in, to see how far your haughtiness would bring you. And it brought you too far.”
Ghe opened his mouth to reply—perhaps to ask her what she meant—but her hand struck for his throat, faster than even he could move. He gasped as the windpipe crumpled in and she knotted ivory fingers into his hair, lifted and swung him like a ragdoll through the air. He plunged into the water, felt again the shock of its sterility. But now he understood that it was not empty of power—it had that in plenty—it was simply power that he had not the slightest claim on. Thrashing, his feet seeking purchase on the bottom, he desperately fought to ready himself for her next attack, to chain his overwhelming panic because she was like the one Ghan named Perkar, his killer. Because nothing could be as powerful as this except the River.
She caught him by the hair again; she seemed to have doubled in size.
“Swallow me, old man,” she snarled. “Swallow!” And he gagged and bit as she forced her hand relentlessly through his mouth, pushing it down his throat into his gut. The flesh at the edges of his mouth tore like the skin of an overripe fruit, but she was doing far worse things inside of him. “Eat me up.” She laughed, and then, abruptly, he was beneath the surface of the water, shoved there by monstrously powerful hands.
How can she hate me so? his mind screamed. He tried to draw in a breath and then realized that his ability to survive without air existed only in the waters of the River. Darkness crept over everything, and he knew that he was fading. It was over; Hezhi was lost to him.
As the sights and sensations of the outer world faded, he became more aware of his “guests,” the boy and the ancient lord.
They both seemed to be shouting at him, but their words made little sense. Perhaps they, too, were remonstrating with him for sins he did not understand or remember committing.
“Reach up,” one of them was saying. “Can’t you feel it?”
He puzzled at that, but even the voices were fading.
“Reach it for me,” he muttered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Know you nothing of power? Give me your leave.”
“You have it,” Ghe said, chuckling at the absurdity of this conversation of ghosts.
That was when flame shrieked through him like a destroying wind. At first, he believed that it was simply the end; Death had returned to claim him, to force him to pay with pain for eluding her the first time. But the flame raced into his heart, and rather than consuming him, it filled him, expanded him, sent his arms and feet and fingers racing up and down the stream. He shuddered and burst from beneath the water, lungs heaving, slapping his demon opponent in the chest with sudden potence. She staggered back from him, arm glistening with gore, her gaze puzzling at him.
“What …” she gasped, and then stretched out to wrap him up again.
At first Ghe wished that the lightning channeling into him would quit, for the pain was nigh-on unbearable, but whatever the ancient lord had done would not stop. He could see it now. One of his strands was fused to the core of her, as if one of his veins had been grafted to an artery, and her lifeblood was all pumping into him now.
She struck out again, but he deflected her blows, confidence growing even as the pain did, his own nameless fury soaring to match her own. He did not speak at all, but took her lovely throat in his grip and squeezed until her flesh dissolved away into water. Even then he did not, could not stop, as the vastness of her body shrank, distilled, burned brighter and fiercer until he found a place, a strongbox in his heart and locked her there. Then he staggered to the bank and, after three lurching steps, sank to his knees. Ghan moved to help him, but he did not remain kneeling, for suddenly his body seemed as light as air and he had the unaccountable urge to laugh aloud. And so he did, for not even on the River himself had he felt so powerful, so filled with flame and purpose. The demon was in him now, but he had caught her; she was his, in the same way as the blind boy and the lord. Now he was four, but the emperor was still himself, still Ghe.
He swept his gaze around, at the debris, the nearby plains, and at Ghan’s openmouthed gaze.
“What happened?” The old man gaped. “Where did she go? What happened?”
“I believe,” Ghe said, grinning at the peals of triumph ringing in his own words, “that I have just eaten a goddess.”
Ghan was too numbed by the torrent of events to feel either triumph or despair, though he had good reason to feel both. His unspoken suspicion that the dragons were mere distillations of the River and not “real” had been borne out spectacularly, and all of his subtle and overt urging that the barge be taken up the tributary had, as he intended, crippled the expedition. Of the soldiers, only twenty-five were well enough to travel. The majority of the provisions were ruined or missing, as were all of his own books and maps. Most devastating of all, the horses were all dead. Without them for mounts and pack animals, the future effectiveness of the expedition would be severely limited. And incredibly, he had not spent his own life in achieving this. Yet.
But Ghe was still alive, and neither Qwen Shen nor Bone Eel numbered among the dead. Ghe was more powerful than ever, and his will to find Hezhi was fundamental. Ghan had hoped that as they departed the influence of the River, the ghoul would lose some of his sense of purpose, but the River had built him well, selecting only those parts of him that remembered and liked Hezhi, leaving other parts of him out. He wondered if Ghe understood that, the nature of his poor memory.
They passed the night in crude shelters, cold and damp. Some blankets and tarps had been salvaged but they were soaked through.
They ate horsemeat that night and the next day. Qwen Shen pointed out that the meat would spoil sooner than the retrieved rations. Some of the surviving soldiers argued for burying the dead, but Ghe, Qwen Shen, and Bone Eel dismissed that as a waste of effort. Instead, they moved upstream, away from the stench that would soon pollute the air.
After the move, as the men were working upon new shelters, Ghe cam
e to speak to him for the first time since the catastrophe.
“Well, old man,” he began, squatting next to where Ghan slouched against a tree. “Shall I make the coming journey easier by carrying you inside of me?”
“Do what you will,” Ghan told him dully. “I care not.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Ghe replied. “But I do. And I think I would rather see you walk on those frail old legs.”
Ghan shrugged indifferently.
“Because you knew,” Ghe went on. “You knew that would happen.”
“No,” Ghan corrected. “I only hoped it would.”
“Well, you got your wish. But nothing can stop me, old man. I’ve eaten one of these ‘gods’ and I’ll eat more. I’ll send them out to serve me and bring them back in. If I tire of one, I will feast on him entirely.”
Ghan set his jaw stubbornly, about to retort, when a shout went up from the soldier watching the plains. Both men turned at the cry.
The horizon was dark with riders, savagely dressed and bristling with spears, swords, and bows.
“Well,” Ghan remarked. “I told you I would bring you to the Mang. Here they are.”
XXVII
Stormherd
As Harka struck the bird, violent numbness raced up Perkar’s arm, an agonizing tingling that chattered his teeth and jerked his heart weirdly in his breast. He caught a sharp whiff of decay and something burnt as the demon bird shrilled and clacked its cruel beak; Harka had severed one of its immortal strands. It climbed into the air and circled once; Perkar braced to meet the dive, only dimly cognizant of the blood oozing from his scalp.
It did not dive. Instead, it lifted a wing as if to salute the east and flew off toward the approaching storm.
Something in the storm, too, Harka told him. Perkar ignored the sword, scrambling for T’esh. Moss and his captive were already dwindling figures. Raincaster was down, Yuu’han at his side, and Brother Horse was still watching everything with mouth wide open. Ngangata had stayed to shoot at the demon bird, but as Perkar bounded onto T’esh, the halfling was already dug into his saddle, his mount at full gallop.
What did Moss think he was doing? Weighed down like that—fighting Hezhi—he could see her kicking and squirming furiously, even at this distance—how could he hope to outdistance them for long?
Perkar realized that was the least important question. A much more pertinent one was how Moss had managed to free his bonds without anyone noticing. Even more pressing was the matter of the demon bird and its origins. Had it been sent to aid Moss, or had he merely noticed it about to attack and snatched his opportunity? If Moss had one supernatural ally, did he have more?
It was obvious that Moss hoped to reach the approaching cloud of obscuring dust, use it to confuse them, and thus escape; but Ngangata was closing the gap at such a rate that it was clear Moss would be caught before entering his hoped-for refuge, though only by moments.
But Harka was buzzing in his ear, frantically trying to tell him something.
“What?” he snarled, over the rush of wind on his face.
“Look. Just look, will you?”
And then he saw, and wished he had not. Behind the dust storm indeed followed rain, boiling black clouds torn by lightning skating over the rims of the mountains. But while it might be the windy edge of the tempest that was swirling the black dust about in the air, it was hooves kicking it up. The wonder was that he only now felt the earth tremoring up through T’esh, thunder burrowing underground.
Ahead, Ngangata waved his hand and pointed; he, too, had seen. It was a wall, not of air and dust, but of wild cattle, charging almost shoulder to shoulder. They ran in bleak, eerie silence. Though the ground trembled, there was no bellowing, no chill cries of calves going down, overrun. Perkar redoubled his speed; surely Moss did not intend to fly into the face of that monstrous herd? If so, his hope must be to kill Hezhi, even if it meant his own life. The shape of the lead bull emerged as Perkar raced toward the herd, and he suddenly beheld the spectacle with a new, razor-edged lucidity. In his chest, comprehension rapidly gave birth to a nest of stinging worms that immediately attacked his heart.
The gargantuan shoulders of the bull bunched and pulled a tall man’s height from his hooves. He was black, blacker than charcoal, but for his eyes, which were hollows of yellow fire. His black horns were bent earthward, and if the bull were to stumble, the twin furrows he dug would be more than a horse length apart. There was no flesh on his skull.
“Harka, what is that? What is it?” T’esh fought to turn aside, and though his mount did not outright refuse to continue forward, Perkar knew that soon even this Mang-bred stallion would balk at racing into the horns of that.
“A god. It is certainly a god.”
“Do you know him, recognize him?”
“Something familiar … not one of the Mountain Gods, like Karak …”
“What can we do?”
“Ride the other way. Quickly.”
“Moss is trying to kill her. He’s riding straight into them.” He realized that they might catch Moss in time, but never with enough leisure to escape the hooved death bearing down upon them. All four of them were going to die.
The squirming panic had gnawed deeply into his heart by now; how could Moss do this? And then T’esh suddenly took his own nose, turned sidewise to the beasts. Perkar realized that he had slackened his control without even thinking, as if hoping his horse would balk. Grimly he cinched up on the reins. Ngangata hadn’t slowed in the least.
His resolve wasn’t firm enough, and T’esh knew it. The stallion made a frantic attempt to wheel about at full gallop as Perkar hauled with all of his might on the reins. The result was a sickening lurch as the steed lost his footing, and then both of them slammed to earth. T’esh rolled over him, and Perkar felt his leg twist oddly. The horse was heavy.
Somehow he kept hold of the reins and, though his blood hammered so violently in his temples that he feared his skull would burst, he struggled to remount while T’esh reared, his eyes rolling with madness. Across the plain, tiny figures were limned against the unearthly stampede, and though he knew he should be fighting T’esh back into control, he watched them helplessly instead. Ngangata stood in his saddle, bow in hand. Moss was crouched low in his, avoiding the halfling’s shafts. Hezhi—where was Hezhi?
He saw her then, a tiny, colorful creature in her red-and-black skirt and yellow blouse. Her black hair streamed with the wind running before the lead bull as she stood to face him. Grimly Perkar doubled his fists into T’esh’s reins and yanked down on them.
“Hey!” he shrieked. “Stop it. Stop it!” The stallion quit rearing, but his eyes were still frantic. Perkar took the horse’s head into the crook of his arm. “Come on, boy,” he whispered. “Never forget that you are Mang! Don’t forget that. Your ancestors are watching.”
T’esh was still trembling when Perkar remounted. “Come on,” he said, and then shouted, the closest approximation of a Mang war cry he could produce. The stallion spurted forward then, and when Perkar shrieked again, he put his heart into the charge, though it took him to the horns of the bull. A Mang horse, Perkar knew in his heart, would never balk if its rider was brave.
He still was not brave, but his old fatalism had seized him; his path was set, and to his knowledge there was only one way to go. Without Hezhi, all of his trails came to an end. Without Ngangata …
But it was far, far too late. Cowardice had already betrayed hope. His only ambition now was to reach them in time to die with them.
Hezhi looked up dully at the approaching mass of beasts. Her sight already told her that they were not what they seemed; stripped of the god who animated them, they were nothing more than bones. That meant nothing to her; bones could crush her as easily as real flesh and blood. She was still stunned from her fall. Moss had never had a secure hold on her, and despite his superior strength, he had also had to concentrate to keep his balking horse pointed into the stampede. The two goals had proven incompatib
le when Hezhi managed to swing her legs around and kick him in the face. Now she realized that she had been fortunate not to break her neck or shatter her skull in the fall.
Moss wheeled, a look of terrible distress on his face, but two arrow shafts whizzed by him, and he grimly turned instead into the skeletal cattle.
What could she do? Running was pointless. Ngangata would reach her too late, and Perkar was farther back still. If she crouched, might they run around her?
It was amazing how calm she felt. It was as if the coolness of the otherworld, the lake, had come over her. But she did not have her drum, and so that was impossible.
She frowned. Perhaps when the otherworld was manifest, already in front of her, she did not need a drum. She had a few instants to find out. Searching herself, she found no fear, but there was certainly waking anger, and there was her mare.
Help me, she said, and then she clapped her hands, once, twice, thrice. The lead bull was so close she could make out the cracked nostrils of his skull, the architecture of his skeleton beneath manifested flesh. She could see him, inside, a furnace burning gold and black. A web flowed out from him, and she knew in that instant that there were not thousands of beasts bearing down on her but only one, this one, whose horns lifted toward her.