Waterborn

Trotting behind him

Laga in his bronze-chased mail

With his honey-colored axe

Behind Laga's roan

The Stallion of white-maned Nika

Nika with his three-layered hauberk…

'This isn't an epic,' Perkar reminded him. 'We aren't going to war.'

'It will be an epic,' Apad corrected. 'And we might go to war.'

Perkar nearly wondered aloud who would fight in this war— Eruka who had stood stock-still as a Wild God attacked his king, or Apad, shrieking and jabbing wildly—but bit the comment back. Eruka and Apad still planned to invade the Forest Lord's home and search for god-slaying weapons; well, so did he. He could use their help. And, after all, they were his friends, though Apad especially was beginning to annoy him. What had the Kapaka called the two of them—loudmouths?

They had goaded him into fighting Ngangata, too, and he was beginning to resent that. Nothing good had come from that confrontation; Ngangata rode up front, as usual, except today one of his eyes was swollen nearly shut and his lip was split and purple. The worst thing about the fight was what it had really revealed about Ngangata's position in the party. He had been thinking of Ngangata, Atti, and the Alwat as a sort of faction, one which the Kapaka nominally belonged to. Perkar had assumed that Ngangata was the head of that group. But when the moment of truth came—when a Human warrior beat a half Alwa nearly senseless—Atti had made no move to interfere, nor to express his compassion later. The Kapaka—in retrospect—had urged Perkar to leave the feud aside but not because he liked the half man, only because he thought him necessary. Even the Alwat plainly did not think of Ngangata as any relative of theirs, for none of them had made any overtures toward helping him, either.

That meant Ngangata was truly alone. It was something Perkar had to think on.

The horses trudged steadily uphill now, through a forest more evergreen than hardwood. Hemlock and spruce dominated, spicing the air with their sharp scents. The sky seemed choked with ravens, rushing about their domain on scything black wings, and he remembered that Ani Karak, the Raven God, made his home somewhere in Balat. Fitting enough that Eruka had begun one of his songs.

Perkar struggled to recall what else he could about which gods lived in the heart of the eternal forest, but nothing came to him. He wished suddenly that he could speak to Ngangata, who seemed to know much about gods, but the very thought reddened his face with shame. Why hadn't Ngangata fought back? He could not ask him that, either.

The bones of the mountains showed themselves more and more often now, outcrops and ridges of granite pushing through the earth's thin hide. Now and then, Perkar thought he saw shadowy figures crouching on these stones, but only from the corners of his vision—when he looked directly they vanished. The woods were full of ghosts. Perkar wondered if they were the spirits of past travelers or the ghosts of gods.

The rest of the day passed without much conversation, as did the next. The pace of travel became nerve- rackingly slow, the mountain hovering above them like a thunderhead, its shadow pacing over them not long after the noon hour, as if the night were rushing that much faster to meet them. When true night came, a brittle-bone cold sank down upon them, enmired them as if it were some sort of frigid syrup—the campfires they made seemed little able to hold back that damp chill. As if that were not enough, Perkar's dreams continued, growing more vivid and tumultuous as the nights passed.

The next day they began descending into a deep, creased valley; the extent of it stole his breath, for it was morning, the great mountain dreaming yellow in the rising sun, the depth below them still shadowed but starting to glimmer in the sun's fixed eye.

'What a fine holding this would be,' he could not help but breathe. No matter that it would spend half the day in shadow from the mountain, no matter that it was the deepest, most haunted forest in the world. It was a valley such as a king might dream of for his children and their children.

'Put such thoughts away,' the Kapaka told him. 'This is our destination. This is where Balati, the Forest Lord, makes his dwelling.'

Perkar nodded. It was a valley for a king.

After another moment's survey, they continued the descent. The slope was steep, and the conifers of the upper ridges were soon replaced by mixed hardwoods, the heady fragrance of the mountains becoming the more familiar smell of decaying leaves and wet moss. The moss, indeed, was thick, and here and there they crossed what seemed like meadows of it, shaded from the sun by branches that steepled above them like the rafters and roof beams of a vast damakuta. Ferns grew so high and thick that the hooves and legs of their horses vanished into them; there was no path visible to his eyes, and yet the Alwat never seemed to doubt where they were going.

As they neared the valley floor, but before the land grew level, the Alwat halted, and after a few exchanges, Ngangata tersely explained that the party must wait there.

'The Alwat must call another guide,' he told them.

Perkar dismounted heavily. After days in the high reaches of foothills, the thicker air of the valley felt like water in his lungs. He sat down, rested his back against the frayed trunk of a cedar, and watched the Alwat.

At first, he thought that they were building a fire. They gathered branches, sorting them according to size. But then Digger, the young female, brought in hoops of grapevines and long, slender willow branches. The Alwat clustered around these things, chattering in low voices; one began striking a pair of sticks together—rather arrhythmically, Perkar thought—and chanting a song of two notes.

'Keep watch, Perkar,' Apad said, nudging him. 'We could be in danger.' Apad was nervously fingering the hilt of his sword.

'What do you mean?'

'Do you think Ngangata and his kin will let your fight go unavenged?'

Perkar frowned, watched the stocky man-creatures continue their ritual. They had lashed the willow branches into a small tower, of sorts, the base ends of the shafts thrust into the moist earth, the tops tied together. Now they were weaving more of the grapevines in and out of the frame thus formed. The branches of various sizes went into this, as well.

One of the Alwat spat some gibberish at Ngangata, who nodded and walked over to the Kapaka; the two conversed in tones too low for the others to make out. After a moment, however, the king joined the Alwat, tentatively adding branches to the bizarre construction.

When the Alwat finally came away from the thing, gently tugging the Kapaka with them, it was the size and shape of a tall man. Twin branches projecting from the crown of the structure resembled the antlers of a stag.

'I don't like it,' Eruka muttered, and Perkar silently agreed.

The oldest Alwa was still singing; the two notes had become three, and though Perkar certainly could not understand them, he could tell that what she was singing were words and not merely syllables. Now, more than ever, he wished that he could ask Ngangata what was happening, and he gritted his teeth at his self-imposed ignorance.

Leaves stirred on the forest floor, took tentatively, then joyfully, to the air, swirling around the Alwat creation as if it were the center of a whirlwind. The woven saplings began to quiver. A god was coming, Perkar could see that easily enough; the air began to tremble, blurring the image of the Alwat standing behind their construction.

When it happened, it was rather sudden, as in the moment when something hidden is recognized. Perkar had experienced such a feeling before, staring at a tangled maze of branches and tree trunks that did not so much hide as camouflage a deer. Once the deer was seen, you realized it had always been there, wondered why you hadn't seen it before. It was in this manner that the goddess appeared; Perkar suddenly saw that she had been there all along, amongst the Alwat-woven branches.

In form, she was much like a rather tall Alwa, but her limbs and torso were covered more thickly and evenly by coarse black hair. The hair on her face was even more pronounced, black but with faint gray markings. From her head, antlers spread proudly. And yet Perkar could see that the antlers were still wooden rather than horn. That this was a goddess was more than clear; she was unclothed—though she bore a sheaf of arrows and a bow—and obviously female. She smiled a wide, enigmatic Alwat smile.