The Blackgod

“Fifty Mang?” Ngangata said, taking in the remaining warriors. “That is no small threat.”

“For you, perhaps. For me, if I try to maintain my disguise. But my Lord Balat is slow to waken, and I am certain now that he sleeps.” He turned to them, and his eyes were blazing now. Many of the men who followed him seemed taken a bit aback, uncertain.

“Know all of you who did not that I am Karak, the Raven, who made the earth and stole the sun to light it. This and many other things have I done for Humankind, for you are my adopted children. Many malign my intentions—” He paused and looked significantly at Ngangata. “—but you will find no tale of me that does not ultimately speak of my love and service to your kind, even in defiance of my Lord. You have all ridden with me, some knowing me, some not, to this place. You have fought and died so that I might preserve my identity until the time came to strike; that time is now, but we must hurry. I fly ahead to dispose of the brave but misguided warriors who yet stand before us; no more of you need die. But when I uncloak, when my power stands revealed, my Lord Balati will begin to wake from slumber. We must slay his Brother before that happens. Slaying him we free the land from a terrible burden and an even more terrible threat.”

“And you from a great guilt!” Brother Horse shouted.

Karak leveled his yellow gaze at the Mang. “I freely admit my fault in the matter. Even such as I can make a mistake.”

“It was no mistake,” Brother Horse shouted heatedly. “It was caprice, like most of what you do.”

Karak regarded the old man silently for a long moment.

“Were you there?” he asked softly. “Were any of you there, when the Changeling was unleashed, or do you just repeat the rumors my enemies have circulated for five millennia?“ He glared around at them. ”Well?”

“Enough!” Hezhi shouted. “Do what you must, Blackgod, and I will follow. Do you need any of the rest of them?”

Karak was still glaring angrily. “No,” he answered.

“Then go.”

For an instant longer, he remained Sheldu; and then, like a cloak turned inside out, he was suddenly a bird. At that instant, the wind rose. He beat his black wings up to a heaven now thick with gray clouds. When he was a speck, the trees began to shudder with the force of the wind.

Some hesitated, but when Hezhi kneed Dark forward, Ngangata and Tsem came after. Qwen Shen and Bone Eel followed closely, and after a moment's hesitation, all the rest.

In the middle distance, lightning began to strike and thunder to sound, a noise like the air itself shearing in halves. First one strike, then another, and then a crashing and flickering of blue light that raged continuously.

When they broke from the forest into the vast meadow, the thunder had ceased. They found the great black bird standing on a blackened corpse, pecking at its eyes. The meadow was littered with burnt and broken men. A few horses raced about aimlessly, eyes rolling.

As horrific as the sight was, Hezhi had become numb to death; what drew her attention and held it was not the corpses but the hole. It gaped in the center of the meadow like the very mouth of the earth itself, a nearly perfectly round pit that even a powerful bowshot might not cross the diameter of.

The Raven became a man, a black-cloaked man with pale skin.

“That is Erikwer,” he said. “That is the source of the Changeling, his birth—and his death.” His birdlike eyes sparkled with unconcealed glee.

“What do we do?” Hezhi asked, her heart suddenly thumping despite all of her earlier bluster and confidence.

“Why, we must descend, of course,” Karak said.

PERKAR ran desperately, Harka flapping in a sheath on his back. Without the Huntress to direct them, the host was slowly dispersing, returning to whatever haunts or fell places they issued from. They didn't bother him; she must have set some sign upon him they recognized.

But he would never reach Hezhi and the others in time, and that drove him madder each moment, each heartbeat he had to understand what Moss told him.

“Can you give me more strength, help me run faster?” he asked Harka.

“No. That is not the nature of my glamour, as you should know by now. ”

“Yes. You only keep me alive so that I can properly appreciate my mistakes.”

“ What you run toward now could very well end that little problem of yours. ”

“So be it.”

I thought you had learned fear. ”

“I have. Learned it and relearned it. It makes no difference now.”

“The Blackgod will do you no harm unless you attack him. ”

“It's moot, Harka, if we don't get there in time.”

A movement caught his attention in the wood, something large and four-legged coming toward him. He whirled, blade bared in an instant.

“Not an enemy, ” Harka said.

Perkar saw that it was not. It was a stallion, and more precisely, it was Sharp Tiger.

The stallion paced up to him and stopped, an arm's length away.

“Hello, brother,” Perkar said softly. “Let me make you a deal. You let me ride you, and I will slay he who killed your cousin.”

The horse stared at him impassively. Perkar approached, sheathed Harka, and took a deep breath. The beast was unsaddled; Perkar had long ago given up trying to ride him. Neither, in fact, did he have a bridle, but if the animal would accept him on its back, he could find a bridle and saddle from one of the dead beasts being devoured by the Hunt.

He blew out the breath and leapt upon Sharp Tiger's back, knotted his fist into the thick hair of the stallion's mane.

Nothing happened. Sharp Tiger didn't react.

“Good, my cousin,” Perkar said, after a few instants went by. “You understand. Then let me find a bridle —”

Sharp Tiger reared and pawed the air, and Perkar hung on with his legs and fists with all of the strength in him, preparing for the inevitable, bracing for being thrown. But when the fore-hooves drove to earth, the Mang horse plunged straight into a gallop so swift that the wind sang in Perkar's ears, racing in amongst the trees and cornering so tightly that Perkar lay on the stallion's neck and wrapped his arms to keep from falling.

As the horse hurtled down a steep grade, leaping and stamping hooves, slipping but almost never slowing, Perkar gasped. “I hope you know where you are going, Sharp Tiger!”

For he had not the slightest control over the beast.

* * *

THE path into Erikwer wound down the side of the hole, a vast helix carved into the living basalt of the mountainside. Hezhi tried to imagine why such a hole might exist, a black tunnel bored straight down into the bosom of the world. She traced her gaze back up the way she had come; traveling single file, the entire party still did not complete the circumference of the pit. They had been once around, and in that time the steep path had dropped them into shadow. Sunlight still dappled the walls a bit above her, and bushes and scraggly juniper trees clung in crevasses and along the side of the trail, feeding on the light. At the rim a few Human heads were limned against the sky—Karak had left most of his men to guard against any remnants of the Mang who might yet arrive. Down, she could see nothing, save a vague glimmer in her godsight, the feel and smell of water rising to greet her.

Even here, even after all this time, she could recognize the River. Images danced before her on the black rock, on Tsem's back as he strode in front of her, and behind her lids when she blinked. The sun-drenched rooftops of Nhol, the Water Temple shining as if cut from white cloud, and beyond them the River, all majesty and puissance. In her heart she had never really feared him, but only herself. In her heart, he was still Lord, still Father, still Grandfather.

But there were other images, other sensations. The monstrous ghost chasing her in the Hall of Moments, seeking the blood signaling her womanhood. Soldiers fighting and dying to stop it. D'en, her beloved cousin, twisted