Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  Vaguely she saw Moss ride into the herd, uttering a shrill, ululating cry. She expected him to fall instantly, but he did not, miraculously dodging the first few beasts. Then she lost sight of him, and her universe became only one thing: the god before her.

  The world seemed mired in torpor, captive to inertia. Ngangata had arrived, was leaning from his saddle to scoop her up in one long arm. The bull churned toward them, black dirt spraying up from his hooves, yellow flames waxing in hollow sockets. Hezhi slapped her hands together again, and the air shattered; when she spread them apart, the lake opened between them, and the mare charged through, galloping on the surge of force from her throbbing arm. The Horse God struck the bull in the heart once and he broke stride, stumbled. Twice, and he suddenly fell. At the same instant, Hezhi reached through and tore at the strands supporting the other cattle. They shredded easily. Hezhi shouted, triumphant, as Ngangata swung her up into his lap. He pivoted his mount, and then the wall of bones struck them. Mare and riders fell, but Hezhi was laughing as they hit the earth, darkly delighted.

  Perkar saw through Harka’s eyes and through his own, and he understood neither set of senses. He beheld Hezhi, standing directly before the bull, solemnly clapping her hands, as if playing some child’s game. He saw the bull, bones articulated by heartstrands of black and gold, a net of such strands cast out from him to the other revenant cattle. Then something erupting from Hezhi’s chest like a bolt of lightning, an erratic brilliance that struck into the bull. Ngangata reached her, lifted her up—and the herd came apart. Skulls separated from vertebrae that themselves spun out into falling streams of disks. Legs unjointed, and ribs flew apart like rotten cages. But the bones lost none of their momentum, and so as they collapsed, still they hurtled forward, a crashing wave of black bone and dust. The wave smacked into his two friends, and they went down beneath the leading edge of it. Shouting hoarsely, Perkar bore down on T’esh, urged him ever faster toward the bizarre scene.

  In the lake of bones that remained, only one set remained standing: the bull himself, stock-still.

  By the time Perkar reached them, it was obvious that Hezhi and Ngangata had survived the impact. They were both on their feet, as was Ngangata’s mount. Perkar dismounted, Harka drawn, and with two bounds placed himself between his companions and the Bull God.

  Only then did he realize that Hezhi was chuckling. Ngangata looked dazed.

  “How are you two?” Perkar asked frantically. “Are either of you hurt?”

  “No,” Ngangata clipped out.

  “I’m fine,” Hezhi answered, laughter subsiding. “Leave the bull to me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s mine now,” she replied. She walked around him toward the thing. It stood shorn of the illusion of flesh, a beast of black bones and fire.

  “Hezhi, don’t,” Perkar commanded, moving to keep himself between the girl and the monster.

  “She knows what she’s doing,” Harka said. “Though I would never have believed this.”

  “Believed what?”

  Hezhi walked confidently up to the thing. She tapped it in the center of its skull, the horns reaching around her like the gathering arms of some handless giant. The skeleton collapsed, and the air shivered with flame which was quickly gone.

  “What happened?” he asked Harka softly.

  “She swallowed him,” the blade answered. “Took him in. She has two gods in her damakuta now.”

  Hezhi turned to them, an insuppressible grin of triumph on her face. Behind her, the river of bones stretched off, empty of life.

  Ngangata was the first to break that strange and uncomfortable moment with words.

  “Where is Moss?” he asked.

  Raincaster was dead, an artery in his neck severed by the wicked curve of the demon bird’s beak. They left him on a natural table of stone for the predators to find, as was the Mang way.

  Of Moss they never found any trace.

  “He got away,” Perkar finally admitted. “How?”

  Hezhi crinkled her forehead in thought. “I saw him ride into them and not fall.”

  “It’s clear enough,” Brother Horse said. “The bird, that herd—they must have been sent by the gaan, the one who dreams for the Changeling. Probably he sent Moss a dream last night, telling him what to do.” He shook his head. “This is a powerful man, with powerful spirits at his beck.”

  “One of them is now at mine,” Hezhi reminded him. Brother Horse could not cloak the wonder from his eyes. He plainly believed her. A worry awoke in Perkar. He remembered her, back in Nhol, filled with power. She had laughed then, too. It had sounded much like her laugh earlier today, when she stopped the god and his ghost herd. Wasn’t her power supposed to be diminished, away from the River? Was it diminished, or merely no longer under the Changeling’s command? He would have to watch her even more closely than before.

  But after that moment of sardonic glee, she seemed to return to being Hezhi.

  “I don’t see any point in tracking him,” Ngangata said, apparently in response to a suggestion by Yuu’han that Perkar had missed. “He’ll be returning to the gaan, probably, and probably with more aid of the sort we just saw.”

  Perkar nodded. “Right. We have to go on.”

  “He knows where we’re going,” Hezhi said. “He heard our talk about the mountain. He may not know why, but he knows that is our destination.”

  “Is it?” Tsem asked. “I heard of this only recently, Princess.”

  Hezhi shrugged. “Perkar and the Blackgod both insist we should go. I’m not afraid to now.”

  Brother Horse cocked his head at that. “Princess,” he said, “what we have just seen is astonishing. You stopped and tamed a powerful god. But as powerful as he is, he is still nothing compared to the gods of the mountain, less still to the Changeling. The Changeling could swallow both of your guardians like small morsels and still have plenty of hunger for us.”

  “Nevertheless, I won’t spend the rest of my life being chased and hounded by the likes of Moss. Perkar is right; whether we like this or not, he and I must see this through to the end.”

  “Raincaster won’t be seeing it through to the end,” Tsem observed.

  Perkar felt a familiar lump rise in his throat, and Hezhi’s face twisted in anguish. In an odd way, that was comforting, to see this girl who had just defeated a god mourn a Human Being. To know that, at least to that extent, she was what she appeared to be—a thirteen-year-old girl. Perkar cleared his throat into the silence following Tsem’s remark. “You all see what faces us now,” he said. “The skein of this destiny was wound from Hezhi and myself. The rest of you may have entered the tapestry knowingly or unknowingly. Either way, none of you needs face another god, another gaan, or another battle. Raincaster died for us, and others have done the same. I wouldn’t blame any of you or think you lacking in Piraku if you were to leave us now. In fact, I even ask that of you.” He glanced at Hezhi, and she nodded in agreement, her little mouth set and certain. In that instant, he wanted to place his arm about her, stand with her as if they were a single tree. But he did not—or could not.

  The others watched them blankly for a moment, all but Tsem, who looked as if he would erupt at any time. It was Brother Horse who answered Perkar, however. Except that he spoke not to Perkar but to Ngangata. “How long do you think these two would last on their own, halfling?” He cleared some dust from his throat and spat it out on the dry earth.

  Ngangata seemed to consider that. “Well, let’s see,” he considered heavily. “Between them they have a godsword, a shaman’s drum, and two guardian godlets—have I left anything out?”

  “Three Mang horses, including Sharp Tiger,” Brother Horse added.

  “Yes, I should have mentioned them. I don’t know; they might make it seven or eight days with all of that.”

  Brother Horse shook his head in disagreement. “No. I think they would either be so busy arguing or avoiding each other or just prancing along in self-sati
sfaction that they would ride right off a cliff without noticing—in the first day or so.”

  Ngangata nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. I withdraw my estimate.”

  After that, both men sat their horses and just smiled thinly at Hezhi and him.

  Perkar glanced over at the girl. “This ought to make us mad,” he said.

  “It does make me mad,” she snapped. “But I suppose they’ve made their point?” She balled her fists on her hips and stared up at the others expectantly.

  Tsem finally sighed hollowly. “If we’re going, shouldn’t we go? Before Moss can go tell every other monster or god or whatever where we are?”

  “I have to sing a dirge for Raincaster,” Yuu’han insisted softly. “Then we can go.”

  “Yuu’han …” Brother Horse began, but his nephew flashed dagger-eyes at him.

  “We can go,” Yuu’han repeated, and then walked over to the corpse of his cousin. Presently they heard singing, and Hezhi began to weep. Perkar felt salt sting his own eyes.

  Soon after that, they started out across the high plains.

  INTERLUDE

  A Letter to Ghan

  Ghan, it has been long since I have written. Two moons have waxed and waned as we travel across the wildlands, since we were driven from the village of the Mang. Too much has happened for a pen to capture, and I must be brief, for one cannot write in the saddle, and that is where the most of my days are spent.

  The world is stranger and more varied than I ever believed possible. Living in the palace, I knew that I was confined, that my world was small—cut off from even the city—but a part of me never really understood what a tiny universe that was. It may be that the part of me that is River—that can only comprehend himself and never understand what lies beyond his banks—was stronger in me than I thought.

  Now I have traveled far from the palace, far from Nhol, mercifully far from the River. Fifty days I have ridden with my companions across vast plains, through jagged mountains, through forests that I am told are green even in the harshest weather. In leaving Nhol, I have lost my greatest love—the library—but here, in a sense, I find compensation: discovery, at least, and as one of my friends put it, mystery.

  My new calling is shrouded in both of these, and it terrifies me as often as it elates me, I must admit, but I am coming to accept it. I have become what the Mang call a gaan, a person who talks with ghosts and gods, who cajoles them into doing favors and occasionally whips them to it. It is power, and until recently I thought I was happy to leave power back with the River. The strength that he offered was infinitely more potent than what I have acquired on the shaman’s path, but the price that came along with the River’s strength was more than I will ever be willing to pay. The cost of becoming a gaan is much lower, and one I believe I can afford. I strike bargains, most often, with my servants; all but one of them serves me because they wish, rather than because they must. Three gods dwell with me now—I acquired my latest tenant only a half-score of days ago. The first who came to live in my “mansion”—this is what they call the place within us where the gods rest—was the ghost of a horse, and the story of that is too long to tell here, and not very typical of how a gaan normally works. The second case is even more extraordinary: that one was a strong, passionate spirit sent to attack us, and him I took by force. When I did that, Ghan, my power did feel like that moment by the River, for it gave me the ability to command. I liked it; when that dread god knelt before me and sullenly entered into my service it made me feel like the princess I should have been. However, I shall not use force again, for now that he is there, within me, I fear him. I do not fear him so much as the things he offers; he coaxes me, promising that with his aid, no spirit can escape my power to bind, swears that I can become a shaman such as the world has not seen in a thousand years. I feel that this is true—I believe him—and so am tempted, for with enough power I could crush all of my enemies and the dangers to my friends, as well. I am tired of running, of battles, of death. And so when Hukwosha—that is the name of the Bull God—when he offers me such power, I want it. But I fear it, because it is merely another path back to what I avoided when I left the River. Ultimately my power comes from him, even this power I have to be a gaan; it is not my wish to become like him, an eater of gods. It is not my desire to become lost in dreams of conquest. I only want to live, to be free, to be left alone.

  Forgive me when I digress, but writing of my feelings helps me to comprehend them.

  This last god I have acquired as a companion is—according to my teacher, Brother Horse—a more typical shaman’s helper than the other two. This one I call Swan, because that is how she appeared to me. I found her in a lonely valley of ghosts, guarding their tombs. How long ago she was set there to ward them, I cannot say, and she had little sense of passing time; but all of the ghosts had departed, and Swan had nothing left to do—and yet could not herself depart. In this case there was no battle, no danger, and no desperation—only a lonely god. I offered her a place in my mansion, explaining what sort of service I would expect from her, and she agreed more than readily. After the capture of the bull, it was a great relief, and though the swan is not a powerful or ferocious helper, she comforts me in a way the others do not.

  Tsem became a warrior three days ago; he is very proud. Perkar and the others have fashioned him an enormous wooden mace and a shield with a wooden frame covered in elkhide. We were set upon by creatures Perkar names Lemeyi, which are half god and half something else. These three had the appearance of long-legged wolves. They paced us for a day before attacking, shouting with Human speech. I could have taken one—as I did the bull—but the thought repelled me. Instead I sent out the mare to attack, and she dispensed with one. Perkar dispatched a second, but it was Tsem who broke the spine of the third. It writhed and cursed at him in Nholish, scored deep claw marks into his shield, but he hit it again and again, until it did not move.

  I protested when Perkar began teaching Tsem to fight with weapons, but now I admit that he was right to do so. The Lemeyi was trying to reach me, and Tsem would have interposed himself in any case, armed or not. These creatures had claws like sickles and fangs like daggers. He would have died. As it is, he came to my rescue. He knows it, too, and walks more proudly, makes jokes readily for the first time since leaving Nhol.

  The encounter with the Lemeyi affected Perkar more than the rest of us. He has brooded almost without words since that fight. Ngangata says that Perkar was once tricked by the Blackgod in the guise of a Lemeyi. This is yet another instance that makes me wonder how much I can trust either Perkar or the Blackgod whom he names Karak.

  We began this journey in the southern Mang country, a place where only the skeletons of mountains remain. Now we are in places where mountains are in the prime of life, mountains such as I never dreamed could be. It astonishes me that a peak more magnificent than those I have seen can exist, and yet I know that it can, for ahead of us, in a forest Perkar calls Balat, She’leng awaits. I have seen it before, in the otherworld of the lake, but the memory of that place fades like a dream; the colors and shapes are difficult to remember—exactly like a dream, in fact, since Brother Horse calls dreaming “floating on the surface of the lake.” We shamans do not merely float—we dive—but those deeper dreams are often as nonsensical as the ones at the water’s edge.

  My fourteenth birthday is four moons away, and I wonder often if I shall ever see it. I think that I won’t. Just as my blood moved the River to pull Perkar and me together, something is moving us all again. It seems as if, instead of a mountain, She’leng must be a vast pit—an ant-lion trap. For months we have been skittering down the widest, least sloping part of that funnel, digging in our heels sometimes, now rushing down in great leaps. The Blackgod told Perkar that what awaits us at that bottom place is the death of the River, the end of a war. Perkar believes that the war which will end will be that of his father’s people against the Mang. That may be. But it seems to me that a larger conflict rages, and
neither side much cares about us save in how we might be used.

  I wish you were here. An enemy lately taunted me with the possibility of your presence. It was the only thing he offered that held temptation for me. It may be that he was telling the truth about you, and in that case I am sorry, for you have been drawn into this deepening pit with us. Perhaps we will have a chance to meet again and talk, before we reach the bottom.

  PART THREE

  The Gods of She’leng

  XXVIII

  The Drum Scout

  A few ravens took to the air as Ngangata led the way into the field, but most remained where they were, glutting themselves on the corpses that lay broken on the rough ground.

  “Harka?” Perkar murmured.

  “All dead. No one hiding in the woods.”

  Nevertheless, Perkar joined the others in scanning the far tree line. It kept his gaze from touching the hollow regard of the dead, and, in any event, survivors of the battle could not be far distant, for the ruins of two yekts still smoldered nearby.

  Brother Horse and Yuu’han rode out impatiently, studying the dead and muttering to one another the names of their clans.

  Two bodies belonged to no Mang clan at all. They were clad in hauberk and helms like his own folk, and from beneath their steel caps bushed hair the color of wheatstraw. Perkar sighed heavily and dismounted.

  Studying their ruined faces, he felt a selfish relief in not knowing either of the men, though the bloodied embroidery on their shirts identified them as being of the Kar Herita or some closely affiliated clan.

  How often had he imagined this moment, when he would first see one of his own people again? From before the start of the journey home, of course, but in the last few days his every waking moment seemed plagued by visions of this first encounter. In his dreams—sleeping and waking—it was the broken body of his father or his younger brother he found first. For once, at least, his imaginings were more painful than the reality.