by Greg Keyes
Ah, when he found her it would be such a sweet thing. No passion she had ever brought him would be as great as unraveling the threads of her life, one by one, as he also unraveled the flesh and blood surrounding her.
He forced himself to think on the things she had made him forget; memories crowded for recognition, but he had no way of sorting them out. Moss could help him do that, and so could Ghan, though the latter would do so reluctantly. He rubbed his knuckles, again chagrined at their lack of soreness. They seemed odd, as he rubbed them, unyielding, and he realized with a start that some sort of bony plate was present beneath the skin. Puzzled, he continued to inspect his body. Broad sheets of hard substance lay beneath his chest, abdomen, thighs—a massive plate lay across his shoulders, and he realized that the skin there was actually colored by the armor pressing up from beneath, a dull aquatic gray, slightly blemished, like the back of a Rivercrab.
He didn’t know whether to be amused or horrified; removed from the protecting waters of the River, his body had begun growing a shell to defend itself. Qwen Shen had hidden that from him, too. Why had she done that?
To maintain in him the illusion that he was Human, of course. To keep him from the persuasions of Lady Death and his own common sense which told him that as much as he might believe himself to be Ghe, he was not.
He couldn’t think about that. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, because he was someone, and he had the memories of a legion now to draw from, and he had his desire, his purpose, though Qwen Shen may have tainted it. And he would still have Hezhi, if not for himself, then at least for the River and for her, so that she might be the empress Moss told him she would be: Hezhi, empress of the world. And in such a world, ruled by the River and his children, might there not be some place for such as he?
Furious and bewildered, he stalked back to the rapidly breaking camp. The urge to fly ahead, alone, and confront his enemies by himself was nearly overwhelming. But he must listen to Moss now, who knew this world of magic and many gods better than he. Moss could throw his vision from him, see things far away—something Ghe found himself unable to do; when he tried, the spirit carrying his sight inevitably tried to escape, and he was usually forced to devour it entire. Moss controlled his familiars in a different way, by cajoling them, by bargaining with them; they came and went willingly. The shaman’s personal power was as nothing compared to Ghe’s, but it gave him some advantages. Moss knew where Hezhi and her captors were, knew that in a few days the paths of their forces would converge, at the base of the mountain looming west. Moss had urged Ghe to wait until then to strike. The waiting was hard, hard. Yet one thing he understood, now that Qwen Shen’s hold on him was released: he himself was a weapon, not a warrior. The River had made him thus, for it could not give him the wisdom or knowledge to know how he should strike or where. That was Moss’ task. Moss knew best how to wield him.
So perhaps—as a weapon—he spent too much time thinking. Thinking only served to confuse him, in the end.
He entered the camp, wondering what Ghan had to tell him.
Ghan stumbled to the stream, sought up it until the current was unsullied by the hooves of horses. Kneeling, he brought handfuls of the clear and incredibly cold liquid to his face, gingerly probed the cuts and bruises on his throat. So close, so close, and yet now he wondered if he had done the right thing. It might have been better if Moss were destroyed.
Well, he shouldn’t hold himself accountable for what he shrieked when Ghe had a grasp on him. Never in all of his years could he have ever imagined the forces at play, here beyond the simple and sterile world of the River. It was a terrifying world, and he feared for Hezhi. Everything seemed to hinge upon her, and a hinge swung too many times could weaken and break.
But, water take him, he was beginning to fear this unknown, unseen “Blackgod” even more than he feared Ghe. Here was a creature who had plotted and planned against this day for at least a thousand years. Such a creature might be resistant to attempts to alter its plans, and it would surely not take into account the feelings, desires, and wishes of a twelve-, no, thirteen-year-old girl. Whatever designs were laid down in the dark places of the world in the past millennia could not account specifically for Hezhi. One could not plan her—only a child like her. Hezhi had her own desires and motivations, and they might not coincide with what the gods wanted from her.
He closed his eyes, trying to imagine her face once more: chewing her lip, bent over an open book …
He opened his eyes and was startled to indeed see a woman’s reflection on the stream.
“If you cry out,” she whispered, “if you make the faintest of sounds, you will die. Do you understand that?”
Ghan turned to Qwen Shen and nodded. Bone Eel stood a small distance behind her. He looked grim.
“You will come back to the horses with me, and you will mount, and you will offer no resistance. If you do those things, you will not only live, but you will see your darling pupil again.”
Ghan shrugged, though he found it impossible to conceal his expression of anger. He followed her to the horses.
Surely Moss or Ghe would sense them somehow, find them.
But half a day later, as their horses lathered and panted beneath them, and they entered the bosom of the enormous forest, he was forced to admit that perhaps he was mistaken about that. About midday, Bone Eel called them to a walk, so that their mounts might not die beneath them.
“You are a fool,” Bone Eel told him casually.
Ghan turned sharply in his saddle. There was something in Bone Eel’s voice that sounded different, somehow.
“Am I?”
“You revealed us. We had the ghoul under our control, and you gave him the means to slip. You cannot imagine what you have released.”
“I think I can. I wonder if you can?”
Qwen Shen uttered a harsh laugh. “My husband has endured much,” she said. “He has pranced and played for your amusement, so that you would focus all of your attention upon me and never watch him. But do not be deceived. I have witchery enough, but—”
“Hush, beloved,” Bone Eel said, a cord of command strung through the words. “Giving this one knowledge is like giving an assassin weapons. Or perhaps like giving broken glass to a small child, I am not certain which. In any case, he needs to know little enough.”
“I know that you are servant of the Blackgod, who in Nhol we name the Ebon Priest,” Ghan snapped.
“Do you?” Bone Eel said easily. “Well, I must admit I would be sorely disappointed in you if you had not reasoned at least that much. Tell me more, prince of words and books.”
“The whole priesthood serves this Blackgod. But you are not priests. She is a woman and you are not castrated.”
“Right again. You are indeed clever, Master Ghan. Perhaps we were wrong in urging Ghe to swallow you up.”
“No,” Qwen Shen snapped. “We would still control the ghoul if we had persuaded that. What I endured from him, and then you render it all for naught!”
“Now, beloved,” Bone Eel sighed, wagging his finger at her. “You know that you enjoyed him well. Lie not to me.”
Qwen Shen opened her mouth to protest but when she met her husband’s gaze, a devilish look flashed upon her features. “Well, after all, my lord, on the River you were less than your usual self.”
“Hush, I said,” Bone Eel snapped, and this time Ghan caught real anger in his tone.
Qwen Shen obeyed, and the three rode in sullen silence for a bit.
“May I ask where we are going?” Ghan asked.
“You may, and I may even answer,” Bone Eel replied.
“Well?”
“We go to rendezvous with Hezhi and her retinue,” he answered.
“At best, you can only hope to reach them hours before Ghe and Moss. Less, if Ghe takes to the air. He can fly now, you know.”
“I know. Well, you can thank yourself for this mess. The balance was easily tipped in our favor when we had some control o
f Ghe. Now we have none, and the outcome of this shall be messy, at best. I seek the advice of someone wiser and more powerful than myself. Leaving Nhol, I left much of my power and wisdom behind,” Bone Eel confided.
“You seek Perkar, who rides with Hezhi?”
“Perkar? The barbarian dolt? No. Actually, you will be pleased to meet him in person, since you have thought so hard upon him.”
“The Blackgod?” Ghan grunted. “You’re telling me that Hezhi rides in the company of a god?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. I can only barely see them. But I would bet my last copper soldier that he is near if he is not among them.” He shrugged. “Either way, in a day or so you will witness a battle such as this world has not seen in many, many ages. The rotten stump has been kicked, and termites pour out!” He laughed, genuinely and loudly, and the peals of it rang weirdly in the vast roof of the forest.
By the afternoon, he was no longer laughing. They entered a high, narrow valley and began hurrying their exhausted mounts up one slope of it. It was steep, very steep, and none of them was an accomplished horseman. Below, the lean shapes of mounted Mang began to appear, outriders or actual pursuit, it did not matter, for they clearly understood who rode ahead of them—whoops of discovery and triumph echoed through the vale. Perhaps Qwen Shen and Bone Eel had some priestly trick for muddling Ghe’s and Moss’ supernatural senses, but they could not fool the keen eyes of born hunters and warriors.
Cursing, Bone Eel brayed at his horse for more speed as Ghan noticed a strange hissing sound.
Something brushed through the forest to his right, moving much faster than a bird, and a black shaft appeared in a tree trunk.
“They’re shooting at us,” Ghan shouted.
“I know that, you fool,” Bone Eel snapped back.
“He is coming. He is near,” Qwen Shen added.
“I know that, too. The two of you darken your mouths and ride, if you’ve nothing useful to say.”
A few more arrows hissed by, but they must be at extreme range—or the Mang would not be missing them.
It took all of Ghan’s strength and recently acquired riding skills to remain in the saddle; the way twined tortuously through trees, rising and falling, though in the main it rose. He kept his hands clenched in his mount’s mane and his head buried there, as well, above the heaving neck, and more often than not his eyes were clenched shut, too. They were closed when the angle of flight changed sickeningly, as if his beast’s head were pointed straight at the sky. A different horse—not his own—suddenly shrieked. He opened his eyes to find that they were scrambling up an incline so steep that Qwen Shen and her mount had fallen and were sliding. Cursing, she managed to remount. Bone Eel paid her no mind, but urged his own beast the more.
These are horses, not mountain goats, Ghan thought, heart thudding madly. But then the trail became just less steep enough that the horse could find a gait, a tortured trot often broken by stumbles. The trees around them thinned and were gone, unable to find purchase on the rocky slope.
When he looked down, a few moments later, he wished he hadn’t. The path his horse continued to slip upon seemed less than a handspan wide, and it wound up the side of a mountain—the mountain, he supposed—so that to the right was a nearly sheer cliff rising to greet the sky and to the left—to the left was a steep plunge that left him dizzy. Below that, the valley was filling with Mang, and from them lifted scores of black missiles, clattering into the hillside around them.
“There!” he heard Bone Eel shout furiously. Ghan looked about wildly and then saw them: a trio of horsemen above, blocking the way up.
“Surrender,” Ghan hissed. “We’re doomed otherwise.”
“No! Look!” And Bone Eel pointed again at the men above.
Ghan did see, then. They were not Mang; beneath their helms, pallid faces gleamed, and the cut of their clothing and armor was strange. They were—had to be—Perkar’s people.
His horse slipped, and a stone flew from beneath its hooves, out and down. Ghan hoped it struck one of their pursuers on his helmeted head. He glanced up again. Would they make it? It was so steep, so far …
Beyond the three riders was a fourth, very small, not dressed in armor at all but in some sort of yellow skirt. The distance was too great for him to make out any features, only the delicate brown wedge of her face. But he knew. He knew!
“Hezhi!” he shouted with all of the strength in his lungs, and he heard his voice repeating in the hollows of the mountain. The rider paused, but as her name began to come back to him, she suddenly spurred back into action, plunging dangerously down the trail toward them. “Hezhi!” he shouted again, clapping his beast’s flanks with real force now, his old heart suddenly new with fierce determination. He was here now, she was alive, and even with an army below them there was hope; he knew it as surely as he knew her.
He felt a twinge of pain in his back, wondered why his old joints had protested no more than this up until now. He could make out her eyes now, though the light seemed to be fading. Were there clouds blocking the sun?
The pain in his back was worse, and an odd numbness spread through his limbs, dizziness. He reached back and felt the stickiness of blood, the wooden shaft sunken into his kidneys.
“Bone Eel …” he began. He wanted to tell someone how surprising it was, to have something in you. He had always imagined the pain would be greater.
The mountain wheeled around him, as if his mount had begun to fly and roll about in the air. It seemed to him that he should cling tightly to something, but his hands had lost their ability to grip. The whirling became floating, and he watched, astonished, as his horse, Bone Eel, Qwen Shen, and the other riders seemed to fly away from him, and only then did he guess that he had fallen, that he was plummeting down the mountainside.
Then he struck something unyielding, and light vanished. Oddly he could still hear a sort of grinding and snapping, a vague and distant pummeling, and then that faded away, as well.
XXXIV
The Teeth of the Host
“Ghan isn’t dead,” Hezhi explained to herself in a hushed voice. “Ghan is in the library, with his books. Nothing could ever compel him to leave them.”
Then who was it she had seen? Whose toy-like figure had pitched almost comically off of the trail, bounced thrice on the rough slope before vanishing into the growth of the lower valley?
Not Ghan, that was certain, though she heard someone mention his name—one of the newcomers, dressed in Nholish fashion—gibbering like everyone else in some incoherent tongue.
Why don’t you all learn to speak? she thought bitterly. They probably weren’t even saying Ghan. It was probably gan or gaan or kan or ghun. Who cared, anyway? They kept saying “Mang” a lot, too, but that was unambiguous; she saw Mang warriors clustering at the base of the slope, heard their far-off whoops of challenge.
One of the white men took her gently from her horse and placed her up on his. She let him; she was too busy thinking to ride, and it seemed that they were in a hurry. Thinking about who that could have been, who so resembled her teacher. Because he was safe in Nhol.
“Is she wounded? What’s wrong?” Perkar shouted, when he saw Hezhi’s blank expression, and that she was mounted not on Dark but up behind one of Karak’s people.
“No,” the warrior replied. “She isn’t hurt. She just saw someone die.”
Perkar had already dismounted and was rushing toward her, but Tsem beat him to it, plucking her from the back of the mare. She was mumbling something to the half Giant, as if trying to explain to him the most important thing in the world. Tsem only looked puzzled.
Two strangers came behind Hezhi, a man and a woman. Both were striking, beautiful even, and both—as far as he could discern, from his limited experience—were dressed in the fashion of Nhol: colorful kilts and blouses. The man wore a cloth wrapped upon his head, though it was so disheveled that it hung nearly off one side. When that man saw Karak, he quickly dismounted and knelt.
&n
bsp; “Get up, you fool,” Karak—still, of course, in the guise of Sheldu—commanded.
Looking a bit confused, the man straightened and waved up the woman who had also begun to bow.
A man and woman from Nhol who recognized and bowed before Karak. What did that mean?
He was tempted not to care, and it seemed he had little time for it anyway.
“Mang, blocking the valley. I’m sure some will come up for us.”
“Single file,” Karak said. “They can be slaughtered easily.”
“Until the rest of them work up the more charitable slope behind us,” Ngangata shouted as he rode over. “They can be here before the sun has moved another span.”
“This is the quickest way,” Karak insisted.
“Only if we get there. How many Mang? A few hundred? Thirty-five of us, Sheldu. We must go over the spine and ride to our destination through another valley.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Ngangata knows these lands, Sheldu,” Perkar interrupted.
“As do I!” Karak roared, his eyes flashing dangerously yellow.
“Yes,” Perkar hissed meaningfully, striding close. “But Ngangata knows these lands from horseback!”
“Oh.” Karak blinked. “Oh.”
Perkar turned to see Ngangata smirking at the exchange. He was certain the half man knew by now who their “guide” was.
“Over the spine,” Perkar grunted. He turned to Karak. “Unless you are ready to be more than guide.”
The Crow God slowly shook his Human-seeming head. “Not yet. Not until we are too close for him to stop us.”
“Then Ngangata and I lead; the place you describe can be reached other ways than the one we are going. If the way is longer, then we must go now rather than argue. Leave a few of your men here with plenty of arrows to stop the Mang from coming up that trail. Tell them to give us a good head start and then leave, before they can be surrounded.”
Karak pursed his lips, annoyance plain on his face, but then he nodded brusquely and shouted the orders, moving off to choose his men.