by Greg Keyes
“Good-bye, Goddess,” he answered, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice from shaking.
“Fare you well, Hezhi,” Ghan said, as the two of them began to collapse back into the water they were formed of. “Perhaps you will burn incense for me someday.”
Then he and the goddess were gone. The five mortals silently watched the bright play of the river for a time, before Tsem cleared his throat.
“Ah …” he began.
“Yes, Tsem?” Hezhi asked.
“Do you think it would be, ah … disrespectful if we were to take a bath, you know—here?”
Perkar, oddly enough, was the first to start laughing. It was more joyful than their nervous tittering back in Erikwer, almost exuberant.
“I could use a bath,” he replied, when he could. “I’m all for that, and I don’t think she would mind at all.”
They did bathe, then, and climbed back up, and afterward Perkar and Ngangata hunted, returning with a small antelope. They set it to roasting on the flame that Yuu’han, Hezhi, and Tsem had built in their absence. They cooked the meat, and later, licking the grease from their fingers, they watched the sun go down.
“Well, what now?” Tsem sighed. “What do we do now?”
“Now,” Perkar said, “we go back to my people. We tell them about the new bargain with the Forest Lord, about the new valleys he has opened for colonization.”
“That will end the war?” Yuu’han asked a little harshly.
Perkar turned a concerned gaze on the Mang. “I know a lot of your people have died,” he said softly. “Saying I’m sorry means nothing, I know.”
“They were warriors,” he responded. “They chose their deaths. But I have to know, after all of this, after aiding you even against my own, that it was worth it.”
“It was worth it,” Ngangata answered. “The war will end. Perkar’s people talk a lot about fighting and glory, but they would actually much rather tend their cows in peace. In the lands they have taken from your people, they would never know peace.”
“That is true,” Yuu’han conceded. “We would fight for the plains our horses graze upon until none of us were left alive.”
“And we know that,” Perkar assured him. “Only desperation drove my people to attack yours. Now they can settle peacefully in lands that are more suited to cattle, anyway. You can return to your folk and tell them the war will end, my friend.”
“That pleases me. It would please my uncle, as well.”
“Your uncle was a good man, a great man,” Perkar said. “I’m sorry for what happened to him.”
Yuu’han smiled faintly. “He knew he would die. He knew that he would die as soon as he left his island. He had a vision.”
“Then why …” Hezhi began.
“He was old, but he was still a man,” Yuu’han explained. “Still Mang. If he had lived much longer, he might have lost that, might have become another pack for his clan to carry about with them. We would have done that, for he was dear to us. But he would have hated it. He saw a path that would bring his death, but also much glory, many songs.”
“Piraku,” Perkar said.
“As you call it. He died quickly, with little pain, but valiantly. And he cared about you all, was willing to give his life.” He looked uncomfortable. “As was I. I only ask that you remember where he died, honor his spirit now and then.”
“I don’t think we will soon forget Erikwer,” Ngangata replied. “And I’m certain your uncle will soon wear other clothes; perhaps those of a stallion or a hawk.”
“It may be. Or perhaps he roams with his old mount, Firehoof, in the plains of the Ghostland. Either way, I’m sure he is just the same as he was, a noisy, perverse old man.”
“Almost certainly.”
“In any event, we will remember him,” Perkar promised, “and I will send him plenty of woti and beer, wherever he dwells now. Starting when we get home, and I have something to send him. You will join me in some woti, I hope. In a toast to him.”
“I think I will return along the river,” Yuu’han said, shaking his head. “It will be quicker and easier than traveling through the mountains, and now the Changeling is … friendlier.”
“When will you leave?”
“In the morning, I think.”
“That will be a long journey alone,” Ngangata said.
Yuu’han shrugged. “I will not be alone. My cousin will be with me.” He jerked his head toward his mount, Huu’yen.
“Of course. But we will miss you,” Perkar said.
“And I all of you.”
They talked a bit longer, of inconsequential things, watching the red-eyed Fire Goddess in her hearth of stones, and one by one they fell asleep, and though Ngangata stood sentinel, even he was blissfully snoring when the new morning dawned.
EPILOGUE
A Different-Colored Spring
The warm vapor of black woti carried up into Perkar’s nostrils, a delicious scent. The promise of its taste tugged powerfully at him, pulling him back across the years to his first sip of the dark, warm drink, and for an instant he felt anew everything he had known then: pride, joy, love, and above all, hope. The promise that his life had just begun, that the great fields of the world were stretched out before him. Had the sunlight really ever seemed so golden, so untarnished?
That had been only five years ago. This was the fifth anniversary of his manhood rite, of the day when his father had trounced him so soundly before his whole family, when he had been given his first sword.
“Drink it, son,” his father exhorted. “You have been home for more than a year; time enough has passed. Put away your mourning and drink.”
Perkar hesitated, still. The smell was so fine. What had he told Karak, a year and some months ago? You have made me like a ghost, able to appreciate only the smell, never the taste …
Something like that. He smiled thinly, raised the cup to his father. He had never thought of Sherye as old before, but he seemed old now. In the two years Perkar had been gone, his sire looked as if he had aged ten. His hair was more than half gray, his eyes compassed by seams of pain and worry.
“To your Piraku, Father,” Perkar said. He lifted the small cup and drank. The wine seemed to rush into his head, filling it with smoke and honey before it burned its way, pleasantly, to his belly.
“To your Piraku, my son,” his father answered, and drank his own. The older man then poured them both another cup.
“Perhaps I am flesh again now,” Perkar murmured, and this time when he smiled, it felt more genuine.
“What do you mean?” his father asked.
“Nothing.” Perkar shook his head. “Something best forgotten.”
Sherye measured him with iron-gray eyes and smiled ruefully. “My son goes away and returns with a mouthful of cryptic remarks. But at least he returns. And today he is a man for five years.” He raised the second cup in salute. Together they drank.
The warmth from the first cup was beginning to reach into Perkar’s blood, and finally he felt his shoulders begin to relax. He sagged back a bit on his pillow. They sat alone, his father and he, in the banquet hall of the damakuta where Perkar had been born. Only a handful of candles burnished the walls of polished red cedar, while above, the steep pitch of the ceiling climbed into darkness. The low table before them held only the bowl of hot water, the pitcher of woti it warmed, and their cups.
“I feel that I have been a man for only a year,” Perkar admitted. “Two at best. I don’t know. I only know that I was not a man when I set out with the Kapaka.”
Sherye barked out a short, harsh laugh as he poured yet more woti. “We are never men when we say we are, son—it’s only later, when we question our worth, that we stand some chance of finding it.” He tossed down the third cup, waited for Perkar to do likewise, and then poured a fourth.
“You intend for us to get drunk tonight, don’t you, Father?” Perkar asked, already beginning to feel somewhat light-headed.
“Very drunk,”
his father conceded. “Very.”
Six drinks later they were well on their way. Perkar felt his face numbing and softening, and to his horror, tears welled behind his eyes. In his months of self-enforced temperance, he had forgotten the power of woti to draw out the hidden, to release things best bound—to make hardened men bawl like mouseling infants.
His father swayed back and forth when he next spoke, the rustling of his rust-and-black quilted robe the only other sound.
“When will you take the land, son? When will you build your own home? Your younger brother—Henyi—is already gone four months.”
Perkar bit his lip. He had tried to remain silent on this issue, keep it in. But suddenly he felt the words bolt past his lips like a willful steed.
“When all have chosen,” he cried, louder than he wished. “When all whom I wronged have picked the choicest land for pasture. Then I will go.”
His father waved his hand impatiently. “Many whom you wronged are dead.”
“Their children, then.”
“How many generations will you pay, my son? You have redressed your misdeeds—stopped the war with the Mang and haggled new land for the Cattle Folk. Truth to tell, none of us would have known your blame, had you not returned to tell us of what happened. Yours is not the first expedition to go into Balat and not return.”
“Yes,” Perkar said. “I have heard some accused the Alwat—Akera and his brothers even went to hunt them.”
“And found none,” his father pointed out. “No harm was done.”
It seemed to Perkar that harm had been done, if the reputation of the Alwat had been further blemished. And even though the truth of the matter was now widely known, men like Akera would still count the imaginary grudge in a tally against the Alwat. Thus truth was the servant of desire. But the blame against the Alwat was not the worst distortion. “The most embarrassing thing is the way people treat me,” Perkar muttered.
“Like a hero? You are that. The songs are already spreading. How did you want to be treated? As an outcast, a pariah? Would that have made you feel better?” The older man smiled and reached to grip Perkar’s shoulder. “The punishment of a hero is that he is treated like one. You will see that soon enough. Go take your land, son. You have waited long enough.”
“Perhaps.”
“And think about marriage. It’s past time for that, as well. Bakume still has a finely dowered daughter …” He stopped when he saw the expression on his son’s face. He drank another cup of woti. “Ah, well then,” he said. “A father might as well try. A man can have two wives, you know.”
Perkar blinked at his sire. What had the older man seen on his face?
But he thought he knew, and that should be dealt with soon. He had put it off too long.
Hezhi woke with a start, her heart racing. Her blood pulsed chill, like roots of ice digging through her skin, but already the dread images were fading away, her nightmare painted over by the rosy sunlight falling through the higher window onto her bed. She lay there, waiting for the last of the dream to evaporate, wondering if she would ever be entirely free of such sleep terrors. Before last night, it had been almost two weeks. The mare and the swan assured her that they could protect her from her nightmares, but Hezhi felt somehow that such aid would harm her more in the end. With each passing day the horror lessened, just as the tightness of the knife scar in her side lessened under the ministrations of Perkar’s mother. The latter required bathing, stretching, and massaging the white lump with tallow; Hezhi had been assured that simply ignoring the scar would result in a stiff, unpleasant pucker that would trouble her for the rest of her days. She suspected that ignoring—or allowing her familiars to suppress—her dreams would have similar results. In the year and more since leaving Balat, the nightmares came fewer and with diminishing intensity. One day they would be all but gone.
Roosters were crowing, so Hezhi rose, dabbed her face at the washbasin, and sought out her robe, the gold-and-brown one she favored. Once dressed she trudged down the stairs to the great hall.
Perkar and his father lay there; Perkar was supine, mouth open, eyes closed. Sherye had nodded his head onto the table and remained there as if bowing to whatever god the wood had been cut from. The shadow of her nightmare was strong enough that a wave of horror washed over her, a fear that they were dead, but she saw the truth quickly enough in the woti bottle on the table, and the relief was so great she laughed. Perkar had relented at last and taken woti with his father. Perkar, too, was healing.
A soft sound caught her attention. Across the hall, Kila—Perkar’s mother—gestured for her attention. Hezhi crossed the hardwood floor, treading lightly even in bare feet, wishing to make no sound to rouse the men.
Kila was a tiny woman, smaller even than Hezhi in stature and frame, and yet she seemed larger somehow, as if time had lent her eminence. Her face reminded Hezhi of a bird—not some large, beaky bird, but something delicate, like a sparrow. Her hair, worn in three long braids that nearly reached her knees, was that strange red-brown color that Hezhi was slowly becoming accustomed to.
“Thank you,” Kila said, whispering. “Best we let them sleep. They would not be pleasant if we awakened them now. Would you come with me to feed the chickens?”
Hezhi nodded and followed the older woman out into the yard.
“Normally Aberra and her daughter feed them,” Kila explained as she opened the wooden bin that contained the grain, “but they are away right now.”
“I’ll help,” Hezhi said. She took a handful of the grain and began casting it about the yard in imitation of Kila. The red-and-gold birds appeared from every corner of the walled-in compound, converging on the two women, clucking about their feet like the courtiers who had once surrounded her father. Hezhi smiled at the image, then wondered more seriously what had become of that court, of the palace. With the River dead, did Nhol still stand? Did her father still rule? Despite herself, she felt again a longing for the city of her birth and, most surprising of all, a faint worry for her father, her mother, her sisters. Though she had barely known them, she understood now that they did matter to her in some small but real measure.
“What’s troubling you, child?” Kila asked.
“Thinking of home,” Hezhi explained.
“From what Perkar says, I wonder that you miss it.”
“As do I,” Hezhi admitted. “But I worry about my family. Most of all, I wonder about Qey.”
“That’s the woman who raised you?”
“Yes.”
Kila was silent for a few moments, throwing grain out toward the weaker birds that could not bustle up to her feet. “Will you return?”
Hezhi shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I will do.”
Kila looked at her frankly. “I hope you don’t,” she said. “I hope you stay right here. I’ve never had a daughter—” Her face fell slightly. “—not one who lived, anyway. Having you around has been like having a daughter.”
Hezhi smiled. Kila meant well, and she liked the older woman, but she could remember Brother Horse, making her a similar proposition, just after she escaped from Nhol. “You could be Mang,” he had told her. And yet, despite the old man’s best intentions, that had turned out to be a false promise. She had been with Perkar’s people for longer—sixteen months now—but she still had little faith that this could be her home. At least Tsem was happier here; he was much more useful as a cowherd and at building fences than as a Mang hunter. He even seemed to enjoy the hard, outdoor work. Yes, Tsem could live here and be happy. But as more and more time passed, Hezhi wondered what her place would be—if there was one for her at all.
Kila sighed. “But even if you stay, I suppose you will marry soon enough. Already we have had two proposals for you.”
“What?” Hezhi’s head snapped up. “Proposals?”
Kila laughed. “You should have seen your expression! Yes, of course proposals. Look at you! Such a pretty young woman, and well into marrying age.”
> “But who?”
“Neighbors. Sons headed off to the new lands. Men who care less about a fine dowry and more about having a beautiful bride—and a shamaness, no less.”
“I thought no man married an undowered woman.”
Kila nodded around at the chickens, satisfied that they had been provided for, and started back across the yard. A gentle morning breeze breathed down from the mountains, cool but invigorating, like a swim in springwater. “Not in normal times,” Kila answered. “But these are not normal times. Dowry is usually land and cattle, land being the most important of the two. But right now, there is land to be had for the taking. Anyway—” She shot Hezhi a mischievous grin. “—you have a dowry.”
“I do?”
“Sherye has dowered you with two bulls and thirteen cows. Did you not know?”
Hezhi was so dumbfounded she literally could not speak for a space of ten heartbeats. “When?” she finally sputtered out.
“Ten days ago, on your fifteenth birthday. Two bulls and thirteen cows. Fifteen, you see?”
“That was very nice,” Hezhi said softly, feeling faint.
“I told you that you were like a daughter to us,” Kila answered.
Perkar’s parents very much wanted her married! Hezhi was wondering just how much like a daughter they considered her, and what the greater ramifications of that were. But after more than a year in the Cattle Lands, she thought she knew.
Perkar gave another try at lifting the fence post, lost his balance, and then sat down with a bump. He hoped he wasn’t going to be sick again.
“Get up and work, Perkar,” Ngangata chirped in a cheerful—and thus evil—voice. “Sweat it out.”
From fifty paces away, Tsem boomed in, “I always wondered if that sword of yours cured hangovers, too, back when you still had it.”