Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  “I don’t know,” Perkar grumbled, holding his head. “I never got drunk when I bore Harka. But I wish I had him back, right now, so I could find out.”

  “Try this instead.” Ngangata smirked, walking over to join him on the crest of the hill. Below, some fifty red cows moved lazily across the pasture. Tsem eclipsed a few of them as he, too, ceased working and labored up the slope to join Perkar and Ngangata.

  Perkar eyed suspiciously the skin that Ngangata offered him. “What is it?”

  “Water,” the halfling replied, inserting a broken stalk of grass between his broad, thin lips.

  Perkar drank some of it. It was cool, clear springwater, tasting only of rain and snowmelt. Perkar was sure it would make him vomit. He drank it anyway and discovered that he did indeed feel somewhat better.

  “Pass me that,” Tsem panted, and Ngangata transferred the skin to the huge man’s massive paws.

  “We make good time on this fence,” Tsem said, his tongue still wrapping thickly around Perkar’s language.

  “Thanks to you and Ngangata,” Perkar muttered. “I’ve been useless enough today.” He glanced up speculatively at Ngangata. “How much longer will you stay?” He hesitated, then rushed on, “I didn’t think you would come back at all.”

  Ngangata straightened his shoulders and gazed off at the forest, as if worried that something might lurk there. “Well, I had to make sure you hadn’t already found some new trouble to get into. In any event, I had to come see if the songs were true.”

  “Songs?”

  “Yes,” Ngangata answered. “In the songs I heard at Morawta, they speak of the hero Perkar standing as tall as two men together. I had to see if that was true.”

  Perkar closed his eyes, but that made his head whirl the worst, and so he cracked them open again. “Tell me not of such songs.”

  Ngangata sat beside him, touching his shoulder lightly. “I shouldn’t taunt you,” he admitted. “But you still owe me. Anyway, there is one thing I thought you would like to know about the new songs.”

  “That being?” “The Changeling. The river who was once the Changeling has a new name.”

  “A new name for a new river,” Perkar said, and despite himself he felt a little thrill. Five years ago he had promised a goddess revenge, and despite everything, he had given her that—and more. “What do they call her?”

  Ngangata’s smile broadened. “Ah-hah. I knew you would want to know that.” He rubbed his hands together and cracked his knuckles, then lay back to gaze up at the lazy clouds overhead, his alien, dark eyes filmed with blue. “Well, the Mang call her Tu’da’an, the ‘River of Springtime,’ because she brought new life. Many of your own folk call her simply Itani, ‘Flowing Goddess.’ But there is another name for her.”

  The half man lapsed into silence for a moment, as if suddenly listening to the sky.

  “Yes?” Perkar grunted testily.

  “Ah. Many call her Animiramu.”

  Perkar had no answer for that, no retort. He only turned to look at the farthest tree line, toward the distant north where she flowed.

  “I’m sorry,” Tsem interposed after a moment or two, “but what does that mean?”

  “It means ‘The goddess he loved,’” Ngangata answered softly.

  Perkar did not want the subject pursued.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he rasped, more harshly than he meant to. “How long will you stay this time?”

  Ngangata considered for a moment. “I don’t know. A few days.”

  Perkar massaged his head, wondering if he should try to discuss what he wanted when he felt so bad. But Tsem and Ngangata were both here, and no one else around.

  “Listen, Ngangata. You, too, Tsem. I think I’m going out to claim some land in the new valleys. I think it’s time I did that.”

  “Good,” Ngangata said. “You waited more than long enough.”

  Perkar considered Ngangata as frankly as he could with his bloodshot eyes. “This is my idea,” he began.

  “Uh-oh,” Ngangata interjected.

  Perkar greeted that with a self-deprecating grimace. “Hear me out. I want you two to come with me.”

  “To do all of the work, I assume,” Tsem rumbled.

  “To share the land,” Perkar countered. “To each take a third of my granting.”

  Ngangata stared at him silently, weighing those words. He understood what Perkar was offering, whether Tsem did or not.

  “How could that be?” the halfling softly inquired. “Grantings can be made only to clan members. Tsem and I have no clan.”

  “I asked a lawkeeper about this,” Perkar explained carefully. “My father and I can adopt you. You can share the land with me as if we were siblings. And your land would pass on to your sons.”

  “I could own land? Like this?” Tsem asked. From his tone it was clear that he thought he misunderstood. Perkar repeated his statement in Nholish, to make certain the half Giant comprehended.

  “I can have no sons,” Tsem said, his voice thick with emotion. “My sort can father no offspring. But …”

  “That matters not,” Perkar said. “Pass it on to whomever you want—it would be yours.”

  “After much hard work,” Ngangata added. “This is not cleared pasture we speak of. Perkar, I am a hunter, a guide, not a cattleman.”

  “For many years, the most of our sustenance will come from hunting, until our herds have strength and many trees have been felled. If you never choose to do aught but hunt it, it would still be your land.”

  “Yes, but I would be your brother, according to those terms,” Ngangata said, his voice thick with disgust. Perkar looked down in shocked astonishment, certain that after all of this time he and Ngangata were better friends than that …

  But then he saw the halfling was biting back his laughter, and when Ngangata did release his mirth, Perkar understood that it was all right. His offer had been accepted.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Perkar asked, sweeping his arm to encompass the valley. Hezhi thought at first that the question was purely rhetorical, but then he turned his shining gray eyes on her, demanding a response.

  “It is,” she agreed. And it was. The expanse of the valley was breathtaking—not awesome, like some of the landscapes she had seen in Balat—but nevertheless lovely, a panorama of rocky meadows and spruce swaying in a breeze easing down a saddle in the surrounding mountains. But it was more wonderful still in Perkar’s eyes, that was clear. Like so many things, she could never appreciate it as he did.

  “I shall build my damakuta there,” he stated, indicating a gentle rise in the valley floor, “and there shall be my first pasture.” He indicated a flatter area nearby, where a stream snaked through a meadow.

  “That seems reasonable,” Hezhi replied, “though I know little enough about pasture.”

  He glanced at her again, and she wondered exactly what his gaze held. It looked a bit like fear.

  “Come walk with me a bit,” Perkar urged, dismounting.

  Hezhi watched as he tied his horse to a nearby tree, then reluctantly swung her leg over Dark’s mane and head, sliding earthward. “Where have Tsem and Ngangata gotten off to?” she asked. “They were behind us a few moments ago.”

  “They’ve—ah—gone off to look at their own allotments, down the ridge,” he stammered—and blushed.

  “Oh.” She felt an odd sensation in her stomach, for no reason she could clearly explain. “Where are we walking to?”

  “Just walking,” Perkar replied. “We have something to discuss.”

  Something serious, by his tone, and her belly tightened further. What was it he had to drag her four days’ travel from his father’s damakuta to discuss? It irritated her that Perkar was keeping secrets again. He had kept his offer of land to Tsem from her, for instance. She had been forced to drag that out of her old servant. During the journey to this place, he had barely spoken to her, as if his concealments were muzzling him. It was a side of Perkar she knew well and intense
ly disliked—and yet it was familiar, almost comfortable. Now, as he was about to reveal something to her at last, she was suddenly afraid to know. Could it be that she was more frightened of Perkar’s candor than of his evasions?

  “You’ve made Tsem very happy,” Hezhi said, to have something to say, to delay Perkar’s admission or whatever it was.

  “Good,” Perkar answered. “He deserves happiness.”

  “Indeed.” So why did she feel that Perkar was a thief, stealing her lifelong friend?

  “You’ve made yourself happy, too,” she went on. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Happy, I said. Excited. All you can talk about is your land and your damakuta. I’m glad you finally decided to come here. Your family is delighted. Why—” She stopped, wondering suddenly what she meant to say.

  “Go on,” he prompted. They had taken a few steps into the forest, but now he turned to confront her, his eyes frank but nervous.

  “Why so far out? Ngangata says this is as far as we could go and still be in the new lands. The closest holding is more than a day away from here.”

  Perkar shrugged. “Not for long. These lands will fill up soon enough.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  He sighed. “The truth is, I’m not at home back there, with my people. Not really, not anymore. And Tsem and Ngangata …” He trailed off.

  “Will never be at home there? Is that what you mean to say?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “But out here we can be. All of us.”

  “You and Tsem and Ngangata, you mean,” she replied, carefully. Just to let him know what he was leaving out.

  Perkar’s shoulders visibly slumped, and though his mouth worked to say something, no sound emerged. Clearly frustrated, he leaned close, as if he must whisper what he had to say …

  And kissed her. It was not what she expected, not then. A year ago, perhaps, but not now. Couldn’t Perkar get anything right?

  But the kiss seemed right, after an instant, after she fought back the first swell of panic when he leaned in. It seemed careful, and sweet, and when he drew away she was surprised to feel a bit disappointed.

  “I—uh—I’ve wanted to do that for some time,” he admitted.

  “Then why did you wait until now?” she asked, unable to keep a little of the bitterness out of her voice.

  Perkar’s eyes lit with surprised chagrin. “I didn’t think …”

  “Oh, no, of course not. Of course you didn’t think.” She felt some heat rising in her voice. “You didn’t think that while your mother was planning my wedding to some cowherd I never met and everyone was busily discussing your marriage to some cattle princess and Tsem—” She choked off, bit her lip, and went on. “You didn’t think to give me any sign of what you were thinking or felt—for more than a year.” She snapped her mouth closed, feeling she had said too much.

  Perkar looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I thought it was clear.”

  “The only clear thing to me is that no one cares to see you and me together.”

  “I just kissed you.”

  “That could mean a lot of things,” Hezhi snapped.

  “And you kissed me.”

  “That could mean a lot of things, too,” she responded, but her voice wavered, because he was moving closer again.

  “What it means to me,” he said, his voice barely a breath, “is that I love you.”

  Hezhi wanted to retort sarcastically to that, too, to tell him it was too late, to hurt him just a little.

  But what she said was “Oh.”

  He shrugged. “Another reason for being this far out. I love my family, but I want none of their matchmaking. If there is anything that I’ve realized in all of this, it is that the most precious Piraku is that which you find. And despite everything, I was lucky to find you. It is the only thing I have to thank the Changeling for.”

  Hezhi clenched her eyelids, but the tears squirted out anyway. “This is a fine time to start this,” she murmured, “just when I had resigned myself to leaving.”

  “Leaving?” He gaped, as if the thought had never occurred to him. “To go where?”

  “Perhaps back to Nhol, perhaps to somewhere I’ve never been. I don’t know; just away.”

  “Back to Nhol?”

  “Yes, of course. What is there for me here?”

  “I’ve just told you.”

  “Yes, I guess you have. But I don’t know that I’m ready to become a wife. I know I’m fifteen, but for me there was never a childhood, Perkar. How can I become a woman when I was never a child?”

  Perkar reached and took her hand. “I haven’t asked you to marry me,” he replied. “I only told you I love you, something I thought you already knew. You did know, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, wiping her tears. “Yes, but you never said it.”

  “Well, we are two of a kind then,” Perkar rejoined mildly.

  “Oh,” she snapped, “of course I love you, you idiot.”

  “Then stay here, with Tsem and Ngangata and me. With your family.”

  Hezhi drew in a long breath and looked at him, this man she had first seen in dreams, and as she did so, she realized that her tears had stopped. “Well,” she said at last. “I do want to stay here, with you. I do. But I am not ready for marriage. I’m just not, despite my age. I want …” She drew her brows together and gazed defiantly up at him. “I want to be courted for a time. I want more stories about two-headed cows. I want to separate what we feel from what we went through together—just a little.”

  “I remind you that I didn’t ask for your hand—” Perkar started, but she shushed him with her finger.

  “But you will, Perkar Kar Barku. You will. And when you do, I want to give the right answer.”

  Perkar smiled then and took her hand. “Good enough, then. How do I go about this courting business?”

  Hezhi wiped what remained of her tears and felt an almost impish grin touch her lips. “Well,” she said. “I suppose you can kiss me once more, and then we should really find my chaperone.”

  Wind rustled the trees and dapples of sunlight streamed through the leaves above. It was a long kiss.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For Moral Support:

  John Keyes, Tim Keyes, Earl Ridout, Helen Ridout

  For Criticism:

  Ken Carleton, Veronica Chapman, Gene Crawford,

  Tom Deitz,

  Pat Duffy, Nell Keyes

  And for Hard Work:

  Christine Levis

  About the Author

  Greg Keyes was born in 1963 in Meridian, Mississippi. When his father took a job on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, Keyes was exposed at an early age to the cultures and stories of the Native Southwest, which would continue to influence him for years to come. He earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Mississippi State University and a master’s degree from the University of Georgia. While pursuing a PhD at UGA, he wrote several novels, including The Waterborn and its sequel, The Blackgod. He followed these with the Age of Unreason books, the epic fantasy series Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, and tie-in novels for numerous franchises, including Star Wars, Babylon 5, the Elder Scrolls, and Planet of the Apes. Keyes lives and works in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife, Nell; son, Archer; and daughter, Nellah.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Waterborn copyright © 1996 by J. Gregory Keyes

  The Blackgod copyright © 1997 by J. Gregor
y Keyes

  Cover design by Cameron Shepler

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-4983-2

  This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10038

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