Waterborn

'Too bad the soldiers didn't occupy it longer,' Harka said. 'If we could have managed to get farther from the River …'

'How much farther?'

'Farther than we can get, I'm afraid. See, there it is.'

Perkar could make it out, running up one of the irrigation canals, a dancing, deadly, many-colored flame. Of course up one of the canals—the canals were part of the stinking River. He should move, fight it out in the field, where it might have less power. He glanced back at Tsem and Hezhi: They were still paralleling the watercourse, unaware. It might pass him by and follow them instead. He tightened his grip on Harka.

'Look,' Harka seemed to whisper, though the 'voice' in his ear was no softer than it ever was. 'See its heartstrings?'

'I do,' Perkar said. Seven strands of living light knotted together behind the ephemeral, monstrous form, bearing down on where he waited.

The ghost hesitated, perhaps puzzled by him. Staring at it towering over him, venomous, deadly, he saw no point in waiting for it to attack him. He shouted and slashed, Harka flaring with light, cascades of flame enveloping him. His blow went deep into nothing, until Harka's edge struck a heartstrand, and that split with a force that nearly tore the sword from his hands. Something struck into him, too, a deep flare of heat, liquid metal filling his bones, a pain unreal in its intensity.

'Fight, fight,' Harka urged frantically. 'We have two heartstrings left!'

Grimly Perkar struck back into the withering light.

 

 

Hezhi felt Tsem's blood soaking her, seeping through her clothes, sticky against her skin. Like honey. She wanted it all to stop, for Yen to be Yen and still alive, for Tsem to be unwounded, to have never even met the inhuman Perkar. She shut her eyes tight, wishing, wishing.

Tsem gasped and stumbled, nearly cried out. Two more steps, and the great legs folded them to the earth.

'Princess,' he whispered. 'I'm sorry. I have to rest, just for a moment. Keep this way, and I'll follow.' 'Tsem!' she urged. 'No, Tsem.'

He set her gently on her feet and then sank back to a sitting position. 'Go on,' he said.

Back behind them a shout rang out. Turning, she saw the ghost, a scintillating cloud, and the black shadow of a man silhouetted against it.

'This is what comes of my wishes,' she muttered. 'This.' A hot surge of anger cut through, knifing up from below her fear and helplessness. Men were dying all around her, and she was curled up, wishing it all away—when she was the one who had wished it all into existence. Her mouth set in a little line, fists clenched, she stalked back toward Perkar and the ghost. She was not helpless. She was Hezhi Yehd Cha'dune, and ancestors of hers had tumbled cities.

She suddenly felt the River, pulsing along beside her in the irrigation canal, felt as if it were part of her own bloodstream. She drank from it, her arms and legs flaring with energy, stretching out and out until she could embrace the canal, the field, Perkar, the demon. The demon she did embrace, tightly, angrily.

It knew its danger; she felt its slow mind understand, and it flickered past Perkar, a spider made of lightning. She heard Perkar groan, but her attention was not on him anymore. She was actually smiling when her hand that was more than a hand reached out and into the ghost, seized the knotted strands of light within it and squeezed. Fire rushed up her arms, a brass drum crashing in her head with each heartbeat. The demon writhed in her grip, lashed at her, died. When it died, she ate it up. It was a fine meal, demon.

Hezhi cackled gleefully as her embrace grew to include everything around her, even things she could not see. The soldiers pursuing them, the walls of the city—and it was flowing out yet, a pool spreading.

She slapped at the soldiers first, though what she really wanted were the priests. The priests, who created Yen, the betrayer, the priests who put D'en down in the dark, who held her down, naked on the bed. She could make rubble of Nhol, and she would, she would. Feeling the walls, she marveled at how easily they might crumble. The soldiers were dead now, their feeble little lights gone. With sudden delight, Hezhi sensed what must be a priest, a sort of blank place, the shadow of a person. He was standing on the wall, watching her, chanting. She danced and shouted as she pulled him apart, sent the shreds of his spirit scattering around the city.

Nearer her, Perkar was still alive. He felt strange, stronger somehow than the others. Of course he did; Yen stabbed him in the heart and he was still alive. He was probably the only one here who could stop her, she mused. And so, laughing, she turned her attention to him, as he came unsteadily toward her. Yes, there was a little knot tying him to his sword. A simple enough thing to sever…

She lived in that instant for a long while, stretched out, her head in the mountains, her body as long as the world. A hideous and beautiful cruelty saturated her, a delicious thing.

I will live awake, she reveled. I am awake! Flesh and bone could know hunger better and deeper than any spirit, any ghost. That was why gods wore flesh, was it not? And she had been sleeping, sleeping in this flesh for so long! But even the pain of denial felt wonderful—as a memory to make the feast more pleasurable.

Perkar was quite close. Best kill him quickly.

Tsem grasped her from behind gently. She hadn't noticed him, so familiar was he, so close to her.

'Do not touch me, Tsem,' she snarled.

'Princess,' he wheezed, 'Princess, please.'

How feebly Tsem's heart beat! How slowly his flame flickered. The tiniest thought from her would end it. But even with her new vision, her anger and her pristine malice, she did not desire that. Tsem should live, should be her right hand in the new city she would build. She would need one loyal servant, at least. And so instead of snuffing him out, she reached in, intent upon fixing him, strengthening his weak strands. Healing him.

And she could not. She could twist, tear, break. But she could not heal Tsem.

In that instant—that long frozen moment, Perkar still stepping toward her with glacial slowness—she stood again on the roof of the Great Hall, gazing down. How simple to jump this time, to consume herself, not with death, but with power, with complete certainty. Life without doubt or fear, if she jumped. The little girl would die, but a terrible and exquisite creature would be born in her place, a goddess.

But she was Hezhi, and she had faced this before. Suddenly the difference between death and power seemed illusory. She would have certainty, but not hope or love or longing. Only certainty and hunger. A rat had certainty and hunger, a ghost did, too. She had always, always wanted more. Love, purpose, comfort.

And so, like all of the other times, she stepped back from the precipice, and as she did so a hard, clear wind blew out of her. When it was gone, when she shrank back to what she was, the earth rushing to slap her, Tsem caught her up, hugged her to his bloody chest.

 

 

Perkar watched in astonishment as the monster suddenly writhed, clenched in upon itself, and then flew apart.

'Harka?'

'Behind us!' the sword said, snapping his head around with the force of the danger behind him. Hezhi stood there, a tiny figure in the dark. But around her, something rushed and swirled, heaved like black water. Perkar's face tingled as from a rush of cold wind. 'She will kill us,' Harka stated flatly. 'Unless you are very swift indeed.'

For an instant, Perkar's mouth worked. As in the cavern beneath Balat, everything was coming too quickly, far too quickly for him to comprehend. But Harka was showing him now—the living mass of strands within Hezhi, the rope of shuddering lightning feeding into her from the canal. Strangling a cry, he began to run.

He had been right all along. If he was meant to save Hezhi, then he should kill her. Brother Horse's words