Waterborn

'You puzzle me,' Harka told him.

'I puzzle myself, but go on.'

'All of that trouble to escape the Changeling, and yet you still follow the course he plotted for you.'

'I said I would finish this, and I will,' he replied. 'But on my terms. That's important to me, to do things because I choose to.'

'Perhaps that is the chief difference between Humans and gods,' Harka offered. 'We almost always do things because we must, because it is our nature.'

'No difference,' Perkar said. 'Neither gods nor Humans like to be told what to do. Both follow their natures, and both want to be left alone to do it.'

'Human nature changes notoriously quickly, however. The nature of gods changes only slowly, through many passing seasons.'

'Like the Changeling,' Perkar noted.

'He may not be the best example.'

'Once I hoped to kill him,' Perkar said. 'Now it is enough for me merely to frustrate him. He wants something of me in Nhol. Very well, I will go to Nhol. But when I get there, I will be my own man. I will judge the situation for myself.'

'Ngangata is right. You are most dangerous when you think.'

'Perhaps. But in Nhol, I do not care whom I kill. I have no kin there, no friends.'

'There is always me,' Harka reminded him.

Perkar was forced to smile at the perversity of that. 'If you die,' he said, 'I will most certainly be dead, too, and so I will not care. No, my only concern in Nhol is that I kill only those the Changeling does not want me to.'

'Easier said than done.'

'Not at all. I haven't felt even a flicker of guilt for killing those thieves a few days ago.' That wasn't quite true, but to his own surprise, it was almost true.

'That isn't what I mean,' Harka said. 'How can you pretend to know what the Changeling wants?'

Perkar finished the fish and stood. 'This girl who calls me. I think she must be one of these Waterborn. I think he wants me to save her from something. And so I will not.'

'Perhaps he wants you to kill her. Perhaps it is she who wants to be saved.'

'We'll see. We'll see when we get there. Right now I feel good, Harka, so keep your doubts to yourself. I choose to do this now—on the River I was compelled. I could walk back home if I wanted, I could go live with the Mang or become a fisherman. I pick my own doom from now on.'

'Let us hope,' Harka replied, 'that is merely a euphemism and not a prophecy.'

He grinned. 'I care not!' he shouted, and brandished Harka above his head before returning him to his scabbard.

 

 

He reached the city walls not long before dusk, and found that while his dreams might have been competent to teach him a strange language, they were less adept at preparing him for the sight of the city. The walls alone were larger than any Human-made structure he had ever seen, dwarfing the largest damakuta a hundred times over. To that fact he added that they were clearly made of stone and not wood, and the effort put into building the stupendous stockade was, to him, even more difficult to envision than the artificial streams. As he approached it from a distance, he kept expecting that size to be an illusion that would resolve itself when he got closer, reveal that the city was not really as large as it seemed, that the towers and great rising blocks of buildings that peered at him from over that great wall must be of more reasonable dimensions. And yet, the more closely he approached, the clearer it was that he was in a place where magnificent, impossible things were done. He began to understand, with a sinking feeling, why these people insisted on calling his own 'barbarians.' What he saw here made the difference between the dwellings of the Alwat and his father's damakuta seem insignificant. Small wonder that the people of Nhol thought of his people in much the same way as his thought of the Alwat. And yet that thought gave him a bit of comfort, because he now understood— finally—that what people built didn't make them any more or less brave, worthy, or deserving. No man he had ever heard of had died any better than Digger and her kin or deserved more praise.

The gatehouse was a white-plastered cube the size of his father's stables; Perkar wondered how many warriors it might hold. He was greeted by only two; they looked at him as if he might be something the River had pulled in, something less than savory. Which, in its own way, was true enough.

'That kitchen knife of yours stays in its sheath here, do you understand?' The soldier spoke slowly, as if he thought Perkar might not comprehend him. 'If you go near the great temple, any of the fanes, or within four streets of the palace, you may not wear it at all, unless you are employed by a member of the royal family to do so.'

'I understand,' he replied. 'I am seeking employment for my sword, actually. Can you direct me to someone whose business it is to hire?'

The second guard rolled his eyes. 'You barbarians. Never been in a city before in your life, have you?'

'No,' he confessed.

'Take my advice. Get a job on the docks, if you need money. That's good, honest work. The nobles don't usually hire foreign bodyguards, and when they do it's usually not very good for your continued well-being, if you understand me.'

'I'm not sure I do,' he said.

'Too bad,' said the first guard, smiling in a way that didn't seem very genuine. 'That's all the free advice we'll give today.'

Perkar shrugged, a little put off by their rudeness, but still too overwhelmed by the city to take it personally.

'Go down to the docks, near South town,' the second guard called after him anyway. 'If someone wants your sword, they'll come looking for you there.'

'Thank you,' he shouted back, meaning it.

Passing through the thick, plastered walls, he entered a maze of confusion. His first instinct was to go back out, take several deep breaths, and reconsider his course of action. How could anyone find anything in such cluttered bedlam?

People were everywhere, as thick as ants on a piece of meat. They clustered in bunches or darted about, called to each other, all talking at once, it seemed. Beyond the gate was a small, cobbled square, buildings bunched at every side of it, enclosing it so that it more resembled a canyon than a yard. The only exits— save for the gate, of course—were a multitude of claustropho-bically narrow paths between the buildings, cobbled like the square. Cobbled paths? Once again, he felt dismay at the sheer scale of Nhol.

He also felt horribly out of place. People were staring at him, rudely and openly. Some—particularly the children—even pointed and laughed. He grimaced uncomfortably. He was a stranger here, of exceedingly strange appearance, undoubtedly, though he had hoped the clothes Ghaj had given him would help. However, he noted that though the people swirling around him were dressed in a similar manner, most wore much more colorful clothing, and though the sun had darkened his skin considerably, it was many shades lighter than any other he saw.

He had not the faintest idea which of the little paths to take, and so he walked down the broadest one; as near as he could tell it led southeast, and the man had said something about Southtown.

The street was crowded, despite the late hour; night seemed to come quickly in the city, and Perkar was reminded of being at the bottom of the gorge at the River's headwaters. The buildings around him rose far above his head, perhaps four or five times his height. Balconies jutted off of these clifflike faces, here and there, and often people stood or sat out on them. Without fail, all of these upper observers followed Perkar's progress closely, and he wondered at first if they might be watchmen of some sort; but most were actually women, some of them rather old. It occurred to him that they might—strange as it seemed—live in those lofts, though