The Blackgod

suddenly she could feel the power there, latent in the pool. It lay quietly, stupidly, unlike the River she knew, but it was he, without doubt. If she wanted the power she need only reach for it, but it would not enter her against her will, not like before. She would become a goddess only by choice and if she had not chosen it before, she would certainly not choose it now.

“What do I do?” she whispered. They had moved far from the torches, though Tsem and Ngangata kept edging after them.

“What are you doing, Karak?” Ngangata snarled.

“What I told you,” he answered. “What we came here for.”

“What—” Hezhi began again, but then something cold slid through the flesh of her ribs, and though she tried to shout with pain, her breath sucked in and closed on itself. She gazed down in shocked astonishment and saw Karak's hand gripping the hilt of a knife. As she watched, he twisted it.

Then several things happened at once. Tsem repeated Ngan-gata's question, stepping even closer. Ngangata suddenly exploded into action, whipping an arrow from the sheath on his back and setting it to his bow in a single motion. As the pain from the twisting knife hazed her vision, Brother Horse and Yu-u'han drew swords and swung at Bone Eel, who was in the act of pointing a white tube of some sort at Ngangata. Hezhi saw all of this in an incredible blaze of light and lucidity as a single drop of her blood squirted from off Karak's blade and struck the surface of the water; a column of white flame leapt up and ignited the very air.

Then the pain truly caught her, and she realized that there was steel in her, and without a single thought she lashed at Karak.

What happened then wasn't clear to her, save that the knife wrenched out and she was shoving her fist into the hole in her side. Karak stumbled away from her, sheeted in blue flame—while she was hurled back onto the shingle. She hit and slid, able to think only about the blood that soaked her dress with preposterous speed. She had done something to Karak; he was clutching his eyes—

Her heart reached hummingbird pitch, and the motion around her seemed to slow, so that she could almost leisurely pick out the details of the strange dance being performed for her benefit, there in a Stygian courtyard that only a god could imagine. But she could do nothing, say nothing, because her thoughts were all gushing from her side with the waters of her life.

Tsem hit the Blackgod with his club, and the god pitched back, an arrow appearing in him at almost the same moment. Qwen Shen shrieked as Yuu'han hewed into her, the sorcerous flowers of energy gathering on her fingertips suddenly withering. Brother Horse struck his sword through Bone Eel, but Hezhi could see a coiled serpent of power in the nobleman, revealed as it was unleashed. All of his strands surged into the pointed bone tube he held. As Brother Horse stepped back to gather for a second swing, Bone Eel turned faster than a snake, and the tube he was holding suddenly telescoped, shot out like an improbably fast-growing stalk of grass; it passed all the way through Brother Horse, who stood transfixed for a moment before dropping his sword. Heen, worrying at Bone Eel's leg, went flying, yelping, through the air.

Hezhi choked on a scream, kicking away from it all, crawling back over the black stones, life leaking out of the hole in her.

The light from the burning blood was fading, but she could see perfectly well as Tsem hit the Blackgod again, and again, and again, until his club broke. Ngangata rushed toward her, but Bone Eel turned and the weird thing he held suddenly lanced out again, passed through the halfling's shoulder. He gasped and collapsed, bow clattering to the ground.

He's killing my friends, she realized. Why?

Hukwosha answered her. Does it matter? Release me. I shall deal with him.

“Release you?” Hezhi muttered. The scene was wavering. She felt very weak. “Very well.”

And she did.

HUKWOSHA sprang into the frail and wounded body with a terrible shout of triumph, a bellow to shake the heavens. Too long had he been bound by first this godling and then that, and finally, humihation upon humiliation, by mortal Man and Woman! But wounded and half out of her mind, this one had released him, and he did not intend to pass the opportunity by. Before him lay an entire world, as it had in the beginning, in the darkling plain even before Karak brought the sun. What cared he for these scheming gods and their demented brother?

But it nagged him to run. Hezhi wanted him to stop the man with the tube—he had killed Brother Horse and Ngangata! No, he saw that that wasn't true; the old man was fumbling with his drum, albeit feebly. Yet what did he, Hukwosha, care for the old man, for Hezhi's desires? He bunched his muscles and prepared to go—as an attack struck him, the point of Bone Eel's jumping spear-bone turning on his hide. His fierceness overwhelmed his reason then. He turned on the man—ahi not a man, but a Lemeyi, one of those silly half-god sorcerers. He lowered his horns. Little creature, Hukwosha thought, you've made a singular mistake.

His first charge lifted the puny thing from its feet, rammed him into the stone wall. Fierce energies rained upon him, attacks gnawed at his heart, and given time they might have succeeded; but he twisted the immortal heartstrands on his horns and snapped them, sent all of Bone Eel's potence out into the air to fade. Then he shook the impudent, broken thing from him.

When he turned, there was Karak, rising up over the body of Tsem like the shadow of the carrion bird he was. Karak appeared unhappy.

“Hezhi,” he snarled. “You fool. You are wasting your blood, don't you know that? It is the only thing that can slay him!”

“My blood?” Hukwosha snarled.

“You will slay him and take Misplace, Hezhi. You will not die, you will become a goddess. But you must stop fighting me.” Then his face hardened further. ”Or fight me, it matters not.”

Hukwosha lowered his horns to charge again, but sudden weakness jolted through him. He became aware of the gash in his side, shifted his hand in it in the vague hope that the blood would stop pouring out, wondering where his horns and hooves and might had all run off to.

“Hukwosha—” Hezhi began, but Karak reached out with an impossibly long talon and ripped Hukwosha from her, tore the great bull into shards of light, scattered them on the water. He fixed what remained— her—with the suddenly argent orb of one eye.

“Now, child, your blood. It is for the best. There must be a River, you know. It just need not be him.”

Hezhi stumbled back, but all of the bull's strength was gone. “I don't want to be a goddess,” she murmured, as if trying to explain something simple to a child.

“You have no choice. Only his blood can slay him—and you we can control. We will not make the same mistake we made with him. Perhaps Balati need never know at all, once you wear the Changeling's clothing.”

He stepped forward.

“Not just yet,” shouted something as it arose from the water.

PERKAR'S fingers tingled as he loosened his death grip on Sharp Tiger's mane. That wasn't easy to do, for the Mang stallion continued down the narrow spiral trail, if not at a fall gallop, well beyond a canter. No horse could be so surefooted, but Sharp Tiger seemed either unaware of or unconcerned about that simple fact. Still, Perkar knew he would need feeling in his hands soon, feeling enough to wield Harka one last time, and so he unknotted his fingers from the thick black hair and let his legs hold him on, allowed himself a moment of reluctant humor at the memory of the expressions on the faces of Karak's men as he and the stallion crashed from the woods, through their ranks, and into the pit.

He wondered how much farther down he had to travel; night had fallen, and he could no longer make out the opening to the sky, nor tell how fast and far he had already descended.

He remembered the last time he had entered Balat, what seemed like centuries ago. Could he really have been so proud, so arrogant, so absolutely sure of himself? It didn't seem possible. When he entered the mountain, he had been a boy, full of dreams and ideals and hopes higher than the stars. When he left he had felt old, used, and worn. Scores of days had passed before the first glimmer of light had entered back into his soul. One such glimmer had been Brother Horse, when he met the old man, hiding on an island in the Changeling. Another had been Ghaj, the widow near Nhol who taught him that he could find pleasure with other than a goddess.