The Blackgod

Karak—huge crow once more—ruffed his feathers, picked with his beak at them. “Can you think of another?”

“No. But I am loath to give my child like this.”

“You have many children, clothed in flesh. And it is only for a time.”

Horse Mother nodded. “I know. Still, if I discover there is some trick here …”

“All of these years, and you still cannot tell the Crow from the Raven.”

She snorted, and it sounded like a horse. “No one can.”

Hezhi followed the exchange in puzzlement. She wanted to ask what they meant, but felt she had already been too bold around such strange and powerful creatures.

The Horse Mother turned to her. “Swear that you will care for my child.”

“What do you mean?”

The woman glanced hard at Karak. “She doesn't understand.”

Karak stared at Hezhi with both yellow eyes. “To return, you must have a spirit helper. The Horse Mother proposes to give you her child, since the Huntress will part with none, nor will Balati. Your only other choice is to wait here until you die and then be reclothed in the body of some man or beast, bereft of your memories, your power,”

Hezhi frowned down at the stone of the mountain. “I might be the better without those.”

“Your choice,” the Horse Mother told her. “But if you choose life now, you must do so quickly, before the others discover us. And you must swear to treat my child kindly.” Her face hardened. “And your companion, Perkar— he has offended me, tortured one of my daughters. When the time comes, he must pay a price, and you must not stand in my way.”

Hezhi turned her startled glance back to the goddess. “Perkar? What do you mean?”

“A trivial thing—” Karak muttered.

“Not trivial. Her spirit arrived here lately, told me how shamefully he treated her. I will remember.”

“Perkar is my friend,” Hezhi said. “He saved me from a terrible fate. I cannot knowingly allow harm to come to him.”

“Not necessarily harm,” the Horse Goddess said, “but he must certainly pay a price. Tell him that.”

“I will tell him. But if you seek to harm him, I must stand between you, no matter how grateful I am.”

The goddess eyed her steadily for a long moment before finally inclining her head slightly. “I give you my child freely, with only the single condition. I understand loyalty, no matter how misguided.”

“I swear to care for your child,” Hezhi said. “But—”

Karak vented an exasperated squawk. “What now?“ he croaked.

“I don't know if I want some creature living within me. I hadn't decided when all of this—”

Karak cut her off. “Your time for making such decisions is spent. Either you take the child, go back, live, save Perkar, and fulfill your destiny, or you expire and spend your days here, first as a ghost and then eventually as a salmon or some such. It should be an easy choice.”

“None of my choices is easy,” Hezhi burst out. “I should be choosing which dress to wear to court, which suitor to allow to kiss me, what kind of bread I want for breakfast!”

“What is this nonsense? What are you babbling about? You were never destined for such humdrum choices! You walk between gods and men. Your choices are only between despair and hope!”

“Karak is a poet,” Horse Mother grunted. “Who would have known thaf!”

“Not I!” Karak answered, spreading his wings and contracting them.

“He is right, little one, though he knows more of you than I do,” the woman continued, her dark eyes kind. “You will have my child. I will watch over you.”

Perkar would die without her. She would die and be lost, a ghost, as pathetic as the apparition that once inhabited her apartments.

“I agree,” she said then. “I will be as kind as I know how tobe.”

“Fine, fine,” Karak snarled. “Quickly, now.”

Horse Mother stroked the horse. Like Hezhi, she had cooled from her flight and now had the appearance of a gray skeleton filmed with gauzy flesh. Still, Hezhi could sense the creature's confusion, its fear. “Hush, my sweet,” the woman said. “This is Hezhi, and she will return with you to the land of the living, to the pastures and the plains.”

“Now?” Karak snapped.

“Now,” the goddess replied, reluctance still clear in her voice.

“Good,” Karak answered. He pointed to Hezhi. “Cut to pieces.”

Hezhi just stared at him, wondering what he meant, and then pain was all that she could comprehend. Something chopped her to bits, dismembered her violently; she felt each bone wrench apart, and each individual piece ached on its own, so that even severance added layers of agony so profound that, though she did not lose consciousness, she quickly lost the ability to interpret anything. How long her ordeal lasted, she had not the slightest inkling; she was only aware of trying to scream and scream without lungs, tongue, or breath.

She had no awareness when the bits came back together, knitted solid. The Horse Mother and Karak spoke, but she understood absolutely nothing of what they said. After that, she had only flashes of the purple and black landscape beyond the drum and a persistent pounding that seemed like hoofbeats. And inside, a frightened voice, as confused as she.

WHEN sense truly returned, it was to those same hoofbeats. She was still high in the air above the otherworld, but rather than being swept along, as she had been before, she was running, her own hooves carrying her through the empty spaces between the clouds.

Hooves? She glanced at herself. As before, she was glowing like a coal, striking sparks from the very air, but this time she had more of a form. She could see her own arms, her hands, her naked upper body. But below …

Hooves, the thick, layered muscles of a horse's forepart. Turning back she could see rump and a flying tail of lightning.

I have become the statuette! she thought. The half-horse woman.

But she was still herself. She could feel the Horse in her—that was who ran, who flexed the great muscles that carried them through space. But the spirit in her was not invasive, not seeking to seduce her as the River had or bludgeon her like the gods she had seen since escaping Nhol. Instead, she was there, tentative, but a companion willing to learn.

“Thank you, ” Hezhi said. “Thank you for coming with me. ”

The Horse did not answer in words, but Hezhi understood her response, her welcome. Together they struck lightning across the sky, and soon enough, Hezhi knew that they had reached the village of Brother Horse, the yekt where her body lay without her. Nearly laughing with the pleasure of thunderous flight, ecstasy replacing their fears, Hezhi and the Horse raced thrice about the village, above the racetrack. She could not see the people, save as flickers of rainbow, and she wondered if any of them could see her.

It was actually with reluctance that she approached the yekt, lit upon its roof. She saw no one there and so descended into the house along its central pole, whose shadow in the otherworld resembled a tall and thickly branching tree.

The tent was the belly of a shadow, the people in it less than specters. She saw them as frames of dark bone, cages that enclosed furnaces of yellow light.

One of the figures lay prone—Perkar, of course—and something squatted upon him. Something real.

As soon as she saw it, Hezhi steeled herself for the sickening stab she had felt before, but it did not come. It was as if a strong wind parted around her, and she suddenly remembered what Brother Horse had told her about spirit helpers. About how she could see now without the vision clutching her.

So she examined the thing carefully, though even so it was terrible to behold. At first, there was no sense to what she perceived, only a jumble of coiled, glittering sinew, scales, and polished black ivory. But then the Horse moved in her, just a bit, and her perspective changed. It was like a snake, or more, like a centipede, jointed and