The Blackgod

“Fine,” the Huntress said, smiling. She waved toward Hezhi, and she lost consciousness.

SHE awoke in a chamber of obsidian, if “awoke” was the right word to describe her passage back to consciousness. Her “body” no longer sparked and flashed; it had faded to a faint translucence through which she could see the shadows of her bones, her organs, the faintly pulsing lines of her heart. The scale on her arm showed as a searing white spot, however, and from it whirls of color traced up her nonexistent arm, making it seem much more real than the rest of her.

“Hello!” she shrieked, but she expected no reply and got none. She wondered, dully, if the altered appearance of her ghost meant that her body had died or if it reflected some other change in quality about which she knew absolutely nothing.

She had met gods now, not just the little gods in Brother Horse and the landscape, but the Emperor of Gods, Balati, the Huntress, Karak the Raven, and the Horse Mother. Perkar had described all of them save the Horse Mother. It still seemed worse than unreal to Hezhi; it seemed like the cusp of nightmare and waking, her mind insisting that it was all illusion and night terror, assuring her that she need only keep hold of her fear until morning. How could this be real?

But the Blessed beneath the palace were real; the River was real. In a world that held those things, why not gods with antlers? Because she thought they were silly, or barbaric, or unlikely? They would kill her, no matter what she thought.

She set about exploring her prison. It was less a chamber than a glassy tube, traveling roughly upward. She wondered if she could fly, as she had before, travel up along it. She tried, but nothing happened. She attempted climbing and had better success. Her ghost body seemed to have little if any weight. The slightest purchase of her fingers was enough. Unfortunately, there was little enough purchase of any kind in her prison, and she never gained more than thrice her own height, climbing.

She was still trying, however, when a voice spoke from behind her.

“Such a determined child. The Changeling chose well when he chose you.”

She turned, lost her tenuous hold on the wall, and plummeted. She fell with a normal sort of speed, but the impact hurt her not at all.

“Who are you?”

“You should know me. Perhaps Perkar has spoken of me.”

She peered into the darkness, made out a pair of yellow eyes. “Karak?” she asked, the alien name croaking clumsily from her mouth.

“In the well-wrought flesh,” the voice answered.

“Perhaps you have come to taunt me, then,” she said. “Perkar speaks of you as a malicious god.”

“Perkar seeks to assuage his own guilt by blaming others. No matter; I am fond of Perkar, though he maligns me. Tell me, did he return to the camp yet?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he tell you of his journey?”

“Nothing. He was injured.”

The Raven stepped forward, or perhaps became somehow more visible. “What injury could prevent him from talking? He carries Harka.”

“He is ill; some sort of spirit is eating his life. That is one reason I attempted the drum.”

“To save him?”

“Yes.”

“How delightful!” Karak cackled. “But don't speak of that to anyone else here; his name is not particularly distinguished in these halls.”

“I know.”

“Well. This brings me, I think, to the point of my visit. I have decided to aid you.”

“You have?” Hezhi asked, hope kindling but kept carefully low. She did not ask why.

“Yes, as I said, I am fond of Perkar and, by extension, his friends. Actually, what you just told me clinches my decision. If he is ill in the way that you say, it will take a shaman to save him.” He changed then, went from being a bird to a tall, handsome man, though his eyes remained yellow. “Grasp my cloak and follow.”

Hezhi stared at him helplessly for a moment, but whatever he had planned for her could be no worse than remaining in this glass room for eternity. Karak had helped her once, in the past, or at least she had been told he had. Reluctantly she took hold of his long, black-feathered cape. Karak gave a little grak, became once again a bird, but this time the size of a horse, and she, she was knitted like a feather to his back. He rose effortlessly up the tube, spiraling higher and higher, until at last she saw a glimmer of light.

Karak emerged from the hole and alighted on a mountain peak, became a man again, and Hezhi was able to step away from him. If she had had breath, she would have been without it, for she had never been upon a mountain, never gazed down from the roof of the world onto it. Clouds lay out below her, like tattered carpets on a far vaster floor; they hardly obscured her vision of the surrounding peaks, marching away to the edge of the world, snowcapped, clothed in verdure elsewhere, revealing their handsome granite bones now and then. Farther down still, blue with mist, were the bowls and gashes of valleys.

She saw no streams save one: a bright, silver strand winding from the base of the mountain.

“Your kin,” Karak said, gesturing at the River.

“Then this is She'leng,” Hezhi breathed. ”Where he flows from.”

“Indeed, your people call it that. We merely call it home.”

“You keep calling him your brother. Are you kin to him, as well?”

“Indeed. I suppose that would make you a sort of niece, wouldn't it?”

“I—” But Karak was laughing, not taking himself seriously at all.

“What are those?” Hezhi asked, waving her hand.

Small lights, like fireflies, were drifting up from the valleys. From most places there were only a few, but from one direction—she was not sure of her cardinal points here—a thick stream of them wound.

“Ghosts, like yourself, coming to be reclothed. Some Human, some beast, some other sorts of gods.”

“That thick stream? Where do they come from?”

“Ah! That is the war, of course. Many are losing their clothing there.”

Losing their clothing. Hezhi had seen men die; they never seemed to her as if they were merely undressing.

“Can't you stop the war?”

“Who, me?”

“The gods,” Hezhi clarified.

“I don't know,” Karak said thoughtfully. “I doubt it. I suppose the Huntress could come down from the mountain with her beasts and her wotiru bear-men and join one side or the other; that would, I think, bring the war to an end more quickly. But I can't think of anything that would prompt her to do that—nor, I suspect, is that solution the one you were suggesting.”

“No,” Hezhi replied. “It wasn't.”

“Well, then, you have your answer.”

Hezhi nodded out at the vastness. “What of me, then? You said you were going to help me.”

“Yes, and I will. But I want you to remember something.”

“What?”

“Trust Perkar. He knows what should be done.”

“He said that I should come to the mountain. I am here.”

Karak cocked his head speculatively. “This is not what he meant. You must come here in the flesh.”

“Why?”

“I may not say, here and now. Perkar knows.”

“Perkar is very ill.”

“Ah, but you will save him, shamaness.”

“I am no—” Hezhi broke off and turned at a sound behind them.

The Horse Mother stood there, and the ghost of the horse.

“Is this the only way, Karak?” the Horse Mother asked. Hezhi could hear the suspicion in her voice.