The Blackgod

—and withdrew her drum.

“Can't that wait?” the half Giant asked.

“Wait forever, you mean? Tsem, try to understand.”

“Tsem always try to understand, Princess. Tsem just not very bright.”

Hezhi could not tell if Tsem was trying to make her smile or rebuke her with his “dumb act,” the one he had used in the palace so often.

“You'll be right beside me.”

“I was right beside you before, when your spirit left your body. You almost fell off the roof and broke your neck.”

“I was foolish. I didn't know what I was doing.”

“And now you do,” he replied sarcastically.

She didn't answer. Ngangata was returning with Brother Horse. The old Mang man knelt and touched Perkar's brow.

“Yes,” he muttered. “We should do this now.”

“How?”

“I will do it. You will lend me the strength I need.”

“I don't understand. You told me you couldn't heal him.”

“I can't—not without you. I don't have the strength. On the other hand, you don't have the knowledge, and I don't have time to teach it to you; that would take months of apprenticeship.”

“What do I do, then?”

“Tap your drum; follow me and watch what I do.”

“What will you do?”

He spread his hands expressively. “We must fight and defeat the Breath Feasting. We will use our spirit helpers. Watch how I call mine forth, and then call yours forth in the same manner.”

“The Horse, you mean—the spirit of the Horse.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Of course,” Hezhi repeated, not at all certain things were as obvious as Brother Horse seemed to think them. “I'm ready.”

“The rest of you be silent and do not touch us,” the old man warned. “Do you understand? Giant, do you understand?”

“If anything ill befalls her, I will break your neck.”

Brother Horse sighed and shook his head slowly at the cave floor. “If, when we get started here, you interfere, you may have no need to break either of our necks. The Breath Feasting may do it for you.”

Tsem glowered but protested no more.

They sat and after a still, silent moment, Brother Horse began scratching the surface of his drum with his nails, faintly, faintly. Soon he began to tap it, and Hezhi joined in, also tapping with the nail of her index finger. The effect was nearly immediate; though almost negligible, the vibration of the taut rawhide tremored up her finger and into her bones and blood, filled it with rhythm. She moved to a pulse not her own, pumped not by her heart but by the skin head, by the scale on her arm. She was only remotely aware when Brother Horse began to chant, a wordless incantation at first, a droned note repeated over and over and an occasional odd rise in pitch. But in time, the meaningless syllables resolved into words, and these she caught as they drifted by.

Wake up, my guest You have slept long In the house of my ribs, The house of my heart Wake up now, See through my eyes, Walk with my feet, Yush, my old friend

As he sang, Brother Horse began to shiver, wavering like flame in high wind. In that uncertainty of form, his face was the face of a wolf and his own at once, and she gathered from his limbs a sense of lean gaunt grayness that was not wholly Human. He chanted on, speaking to the spirit in him, and the air about Hezhi began to dream, to fill with the colors from behind closed eyelids. Tsem, Ngangata, and the others became shadowed, dimmed away as the real and the unreal traded their substance. Brother Horse continued to spread, became two shapes, wolf and man, though they were not entirely separate.

“Now,” the old man told her, though he still chanted when he said it, “sing as I sang. Call up your helper.”

Hezhi closed her eyes, rocking. It no longer seemed as if her finger moved the cadence of the drum; rather, it seemed to move itself. Hezhi's sight turned inward, and there she saw the horse-child, waiting for her call. She appeared as she had in life, iron gray with blazing white stripes, mane whipped by a fierce wind, racing upon a limitless, grassy field.

This is in me, Hezhi realized. The Horse's world nested within her, a world of hooves pounding and strong, willful blood.

Come on out. Come out and help me, she thought. Her lips formed the same chant that Brother Horse had recited, but this inner speech seemed more important than the formal words. It was her wish that the mare responded to, not the syllables in Mang. The mare came gladly, the thunder of her hooves shaking the drum so violently that Hezhi very nearly dropped it.

Hezhi opened her eyes. Brother Horse was talking again, perhaps to her. He seemed to be speaking urgently, but in her dreamlike state she felt sluggish, too lazy to puzzle at his meaning. She was more interested in the spirit emerging from her; it was almost as if she were giving birth—or at least, the way she had imagined giving birth might be. Far away, she heard a dog barking frantically. Heen? He was never frantic about anything.

Then she noticed Perkar standing, facing her, bending toward her. The almond molds of his eyes were entirely black, seething, bubbling like boiling tar. He grinned oddly, and his teeth were black, too. His sword squirmed in a white-knuckled grip, now a blade, now an eagle, now a single long beak or claw.

“I told you,” Perkar said. “I warned you.” He lifted the sword to point at her throat slowly, as if it were heavy and he was having trouble raising it.

A feral swirl of gray and teeth and claws smacked into Perkar and his black grin turned to a snarl. He staggered beneath the onslaught, swiping clumsily about him with his weapon. Brother Horse still sat, hands tapping the drum, as the wolf that had emerged from him tore with white teeth at Perkar.

Hezhi stared, gaping. Were they to kill Perkar? If the price of evicting the Breath Feasting from his body was to kill him, what was the point? But Perkar did not seem in danger of losing. One hand gripped the wolf by the throat now, and though it squirmed and shifted shapes from wolf to serpent to man, still he held it and brought the godsword around. The wolf split nearly in half, and its yowl was deafening. Perkar tossed it aside and advanced upon Brother Horse.

“Old man, you should have stayed away from this. He has been given to me by one much stronger than you.”

“By whom?” Brother Horse asked. His eyes remained on Hezhi, however.

“I will take your ghost to him, and he will have some use for it, I think.”

“I regret that I cannot accompany you.”

Hezhi noticed that the two halves of the wolf were still joined by a thread of life, and the doglike creature was obstinately dragging itself across the cave floor toward Perkar. It would never reach him before the Perkar-thing reached Brother Horse, however. Only Heen stood, teeth bared, between the old gaan and death—but if a wolf god fell so quickly, how long could an ordinary dog stand?

Hezhi hesitated just an instant longer. What if Brother Horse was the enemy, and this all a trick to kill Perkar once and for all? She still, despite all of her experience, had only his word that he was on her side. But watching him sit there, calmly, facing something that looked like Perkar but was not, not really—

“Come, Goddess, ” she cried. “There is your enemy!”

And the spirit bolted from her chest, like a heartbeat escaping, heart and all. It was not unlike the feeling of terrible sadness or joy, tightened beneath the tiny bones of her breast, suddenly bursting out, and of the two, more like joy. The gates of her heart swung open, and the Horse God sprang out.

Perkar turned at the sound, gaping wider than humanly possible. In fact, his whole head hinged open, almost comically. Black flame coiled out from an open mouth framing sharklike teeth. He brought his blade up, but he was too late. The mare erupted into existence, fury and passion rolling in her eyes, and her hooves slashed with more speed and force than summer lightning. They caught Perkar in the head and his skull split, burst into shards like a