Waterborn

Something had emerged from the hall. Its outline wavered, and so she knew it for a ghost, but it was like no ghost she had ever seen, save only in the fountain earlier that day. It was huge, twice Tsem's size. It had legs like a crab's, or a spider's, and its body was long, twisted, like a crushed centipede. A flared tail— horribly like the one on her dress—swept around frenetically behind it. Its head was a grotesque mass of chitin and tentacles, and yet there was something—its eyes—that seemed appallingly, undeniably Human. Human and hungry. She knew instinctively that it was hungering after her.

The guards seemed frozen, and for one terrible moment, Hezhi feared that no one could see the thing except her. Then it was in motion, a scuttling mass of limbs and tentacles. One of the soldiers leapt at it then, his curved sword finally flashing out, and he was in its path, a tiny creature compared to the ghost. His sword chopped but once, slicing unhindered through the thing, clanging with great force and noise onto the marbled floor. Then the ghost passed through the guard and he fell, writhing, clenched up in a little ball, a jabbering kind of noise issuing from him the like of which Hezhi never imagined a Human Being could make. The beast lunged forward, and another guard—attacking more hesitantly—went down. She had the dull realization that, like a ghost, the thing wasn't solid—but it could certainly cause harm to men. She saw the second guard die very clearly; his skin puffed and split, exuding vapor—as if the blood in his body were suddenly steam.

That was the last she saw of it. Tsem had her in both arms and was running. Her last glimpse was of the priest, broom blazing furiously, standing between them and the apparition. The rest was nightmare flashes of this corridor and that, of Tsem's pounding heart—and the images of what she had seen burning on the surface of her eyes. Tsem did not stop until they reached one of the far shrines, a place that no ghost would ever dare enter. Placing her inside, he waited at the door, fists clenched. After a long while—when nothing happened—Tsem pointed a finger at her.

'Stay here,' he said simply, and then he was gone, loping back up the way they came.

'Tsem! No, Tsem!' she shrieked, but it was too late. The half Giant was gone.

It wanted me. And it would kill Tsem as easily as it would anyone; it had no neck to snap, no body to bludgeon. She recalled the first guard, so young and brave.

Frustrated, afraid, she sat with her knees drawn up to her chin. The tail on her dress was broken, she remembered not how.

Taking deep, slow breaths, she tried to calm herself. It was then that she noticed the blood.

Her first thought was that it was Tsem's, that he was injured somehow, for surely it couldn't be hers. But there it was, little smeared drops on the floor, on her dress. Not much blood. She touched some clinging to her legs. It was sticky, certainly blood.

She understood then. It was her blood, and she was not wounded. She had begun bleeding.

She was a woman.

PART TWO

The Blessed and the Cursed

I

The Return of Steel

Perkar stood amidst the waters of a great River. The current clutched at his ankles, touching him with more urgency but far less tenderness than the goddess of the stream. Beyond the thick water lay a settlement, and the word that formed in his mind was city though cities were only a rumor to him. It was a vast thing, this city, unimaginably huge, a white hive of blocky white buildings given scale only by their myriad, antlike inhabitants.

The water swirled before him, and a girl arose. A girl, perhaps ten or twelve years old. Her dark skin, black hair, and tiny angular face bore no resemblance to his Anishu love, but she seemed to know him, to beckon for him. To whisper a name that was his own despite the fact that he did not recognize its sound. He shuddered, his feet shuffling toward her with a will of their own. Rather, the River moved them, pulling him toward the child. A panic seized Perkar, dream-panic that overwhelmed everything else, drove like a dagger between sleeping and waking, tore a rent in the wall of dream that he fell through, to lie blinking and groaning on his blanket.

 

 

'Never have I had such a dream,' Perkar told Eruka. The two of them were trudging along an animal track at the top of a ridge, hoping to run across game—the expedition's supply of meat was running low, and the Kapaka had ordered a halt for hunting.

'The city you describe—I scarcely believe that such a place exists.'

Perkar shrugged. 'It was a dream.'

'But sometimes dreams have great potency, particularly if you dream of something you have never seen. I once dreamed of my father, niece, granduncle, and a bull, all naked save for hats, dancing in a circle and singing. I think a dream of that sort means little—tiny sprites turning things already in your head inside- out. But the Great Songs speak of dreams in which heroes see unknown lands, unforged swords—those things they don't already know. Dreams like that must come from more powerful gods.'

'Your niece—how did she look, naked?'

Eruka shouldered him good-naturedly. 'My niece is more a woman than the waif in your dream city of stone towers and white streets. Much more. I can scarce reach my arms around her waist.'

Perkar grinned, but the dream image came back to him: a black-haired slip of a girl with huge eyes and skin as dusky as a Mang's. Certainly he had never seen her.

'Sst.' Eruka motioned silence. 'There is a deer!'

Perkar bobbed his head a bit, trying to see what Eruka saw. Indeed, there it was, a buck with spreading antlers.

Eruka motioned to their left and began padding that way, drawing an arrow from the ornate quiver at his side. Perkar nodded and drew his own shaft, fitted it to the sinew cord on his own bow.

Sapling, I

Bending in the hardest wind

Came along a Human man

His name was Raka

Sapling, said he

I know what you might be…

He whispered the little song the bow maker taught him under his breath; surely it would make his arrow fly more true.

The buck snapped up its head and began to run. Gasping, Perkar pulled back on the string, let the arrow fly. The shaft cut air and a few leaves—the buck was no longer to be seen.

A few moments later Eruka rejoined him, scowling. 'I thought you had hunted before.'

'I have,' Perkar answered defensively. 'But on horseback, with hounds running the beasts. With a spear, not a bow. And I've hunted mostly boar, not deer.'

'Me, too,' Eruka said, grinning sheepishly. 'I thought it would be no harder on foot.'

Perkar snorted. 'We were lucky to even see that animal, I think. I doubt we will see another.'

'If only I was a great heroic singer, like Iru Antu.' Eruka sighed. 'The kind of singer who can change the songs of things, make spirits obey his will. I could simply summon us a deer, have it stand still while we slew it.'

'The other night you boasted of just such an ability,' Perkar reminded him.

Eruka grinned back at that. 'Woti talks for me, sometimes. I can do a few songs like that—a very few. But you have to know the ins and outs of the original song before you can change it, and I know none about deer.'