The Blackgod

“Ghan himself—why?”

“He learned of a plot to find you and kill you, or return you to the River. It was commanded by a young Jik, whom I believe you also knew.”

“I knew him in Nhol, and I have seen him more recently in a vision,” Hezhi muttered. “But he is dead. I saw him killed.”

“The priesthood has great power,” Bone Eel told her. “They can create sorcerous creatures. This 'Ghe' is not the man you knew.”

“The man I knew is not the man I knew,” she nearly snarled.

“Mount up!” Sheldu shouted. “We must continue.”

Hezhi leveled a cold gaze at the two. “I will hear more of this later, and I will know, too, how you came to be acquainted with this man Sheldu.”

“Ah,” Bone Eel began. “He is well traveled, an agent of sorts—”

“Later,” she repeated sharply. “I'm confused enough as it is. Much of what you say makes no sense. Just tell me this, quickly. You know what our mission is, here?”

Bone Eel nodded solemnly. “You seek to slay the River.”

“If you interfere, my friends will slay you, do you understand?”

“Indeed, Princess. We have no wish to interfere. It is what Ghan and the emperor agreed upon.”

Hezhi tried to keep her face neutral as she returned to Dark. They were lying, lying, lying, and she knew it. But how much of their talk was false?

Once back in the saddle, she leaned over to Tsem. “If those two do anything even slightly suspicious when we reach this place we are going,” she said softly, “I want you to kill them. Can you pass that along to Brother Horse and Yuu'han?”

Tsem's eyes widened in surprise. “Princess?”

“I mean it, Tsem. We've been through too much to allow agents of my father—or whomever they work for—to interfere. I don't trust them; they act as if they were friends of Ghan, but he would never be friends with such as they.” She paused and almost told him of Perkar's warning about Sheldu, but then she decided that it was best to give Tsem only one thing at a time to worry over.

They resumed, beneath a sky that had begun to don a cloak of dusky clouds. She thought that the rest had done the horses scant good, but the Mang and “Sheldu” probably had greater understanding of the needs of the beasts. Dark's flanks heaved and white foam matted her hair, and Hezhi worried; Dark was her first horse, a beautiful creature, and she did not want to see her die.

She regarded Sheldu as they rode along, searching for some sign of Karak in him. Could Perkar have been right? Was that what he was hiding from her? She tried to think back to what he said, but it was all confusion—at the time, her mind had been trying to understand about Ghan falling.

It had been he, but she couldn't dwell on that. Couldn't. She need only keep it back, away from her heart, for another day before allowing it to overwhelm her. She could do that. Now she had pressing things to puzzle over, important things.

She had glanced back up at “Sheldu,” intent on understanding what connection could exist between a Crow God and two nobles from Nhol, when the stream before them suddenly erupted into a fountain of sludge and spray. The nearest riders—Sheldu's vanguard—were bowled over by the explosion, and Sheldu himself was thrown from his rearing mount. Hezhi simply watched, gape-mouthed, at what took form.

Its upper part was salamander, thickly wrinkled, grayish black, with knobby little eyes and branching gills sweeping back from the sides of its head like feathery antlers. But it sprang forward on hind legs not unlike a man's, though the forelimbs were the stubby-fingered paws of an amphibian. Its toothless maw gaped open, easily wide enough to swallow a person.

GHE saw the Huntress first, felt the pulsing of power from the bizarre woman-thing. Her host was resonant with energy, too, and he realized now that Moss had not lied to him. Defeating this woman and her creatures would be no easy task. He gathered his own host within him, slashed his palm to release his black blood and potence, but even as it trailed along the ground and monsters of his making sprang up to challenge the wolves and savagely dressed men, he saw the demon descending on him.

Perkar, Ghan had called him, but to Ghe that meant only death. Shrieking, his features set in a grimly insane mask, the bone-faced man charged toward him.

Ghe wrapped himself in a cloak of wind, strengthened his living armor, knitted a shield of invisible fire for himself, and, devouring the flame of life in his horse, leapt from its back, flinging out his blood so that it formed into grass-bears and long-legged stalking things he had no name for. Let them deal with that blade, those iron-colored eyes. He himself flew like a spear toward the Huntress, certain that if he could devour her, nothing on earth could possibly stop him—not even his old death.

PERKAR screamed in frustration as the beasts spurted up around him and surrendered his rage to the song Harka sang as the sword directed his arm. He snarled with brutal satisfaction as a bear's head sprang from its massive shoulders and a gout of hot black blood struck him across the face even as Harka turned and swept like a scythe through a thin, skeletal abomination that resembled a praying mantis.

Around him, the armies came together, and the forest was suddenly a garden of death, the Mang skirling and the gods of the host venting unrecognizable sounds. From the corners of his eyes he noticed a rider and horse go down beneath the fangs and claws of a wolf; he saw a bear-man, blinded by two arrow shafts, wander into the decapitating edge of a curved Mang sword.

Claws raked against his hauberk and rings snapped with the force, and suddenly T'esh was shrieking and down; he leapt clear, and though he sought with Harka's edge to dispatch his foes, he searched with each free instant his eyes had for the Life-Eater. He finally saw him, as he stepped from the path of a dying bear; the Nholish man was a blur of flame and motion near the Huntress. Her spear had pierced him, but he strove up it, sliding the shaft through his own belly, and something like lightning cracked between them. His throat nearly raw with shouting, Perkar fought that way, and whatever came between him and the Tiskawa died.

Ghe reached the Huntress before Perkar fought his way through, however, and something like sunlight bloomed where they touched. The Huntress screamed, shrill and carrying. Perkar continued to fight, half blind, as his foes redoubled in number and ferocity, and when he again saw clearly, it was to behold the Tiskawa fight savagely from beneath a pile of rutkirul and wolves. As Perkar watched, however, these minions of the Huntress fell away, twitching, and the Tiskawa stood amongst their corpses.

Perkar recognized him now, though his glimpse of the man—when he still was a man—had been brief, in the shadows beneath the streets of Nhol. He had been a worthy enough swordsman— without Harka, in fact, Perkar would never have beaten him.

His face aside, there was much about the Tiskawa that no longer seemed Human. Most of his clothing hung in shreds upon him, so the weird colors of his flesh and the bony unnatural lines of his torso and shoulders were revealed. His eyes held a kind of black fire as he pushed up through the slain beasts and gods to confront him. Perkar wondered where the Huntress was, and then forgot worry as he remembered this thing devouring the Stream Goddess. He howled and leapt.

Much faster moved the Tiskawa, fading away from the blow, even though he rose from an awkward position.

“You!” it snarled. “This time you cannot have my head.”

Perkar didn't answer. He kept Harka in a guard position. When the monster suddenly lunged, darting forward and slashing down with hooked talons, even Harka had difficulty moving his arm quickly enough. He struck for the neck, but an upflung arm interposed itself. Unbelievably, the godblade did not bite but slid instead down the forearm, skinning the flesh from it and revealing the yellow plate beneath. He twisted Harka and stumbled back, carried the blow on into the ribs of the Life-Eater, and there the edge finally parted flesh and bone, cut from the lowest rib through the spine, down to the pelvis. Then the claws swiped across his face and he felt sudden numbness at the same moment that a furious heat seemed to consume him. Like a child burnt by a coal, he shrieked and leapt backward. The Tiskawa tried to follow, but its body sagged crazily as the legs understood the spine that animated them was severed.

Scrambling back farther, Perkar put his hand to his own neck and felt a jet of warm fluid, realized that one of the arteries there had been torn, but even as he did so, the flow diminished as Harka closed his wound.