The Blackgod

my Uncle Lhekezh swim about like eels. It will not be that.

I should tell you a bit about the Mang, to correct some of the more fanciful accounts in The Mang Wastes, the book you sent along to me. For one thing, they do not beat their children to make them strong; on the contrary, they are perhaps too lenient with them. They also do not live entirely on horseback, sleeping and making love in the saddle—though both occur now and then, I hear. They live for most of the year in houses of timber and clay known as yekt During certain seasons they move about in smaller groups, but even then they carry skin tents called ben' which they can erect in a few moments. The accounts of them living only upon the flesh of giant beasts with snakes for noses and long sabers of bone instead of teeth are partially true, however. I have yet to see such a beast—the Mang call them nunetuk— but I am told that they exist. Men hunt them on horseback with long lances, and it is very dangerous. More often, however, they hunt deer, bison, elk, rabbit, and so forth. (Today I saw dubechag, beasts like water oxen but much larger. They were unbelievable; they reminded me that there is wonder here.) Most of what they eat isn't hunted at all, as I should well know, for women spend days at a time picking bernes and nuts, digging up roots, making bread (they trade for the flour) and so on. They also keep goats, some of them, for milk and meat. The food is filling but bland—they don't have much salt and seem careless of spices. I miss Qeys black bread, pomegranate syrup, coffee, and River rice! Please find some way of telling Qey so, but do not endanger yourself.

My light is fading; now I write by firelight, and the women are beginning to talk about me; I suppose I should do some chores. First I must tell you something important.

Our escape plans went wrong, as you know, and only Perkar and his sword enabled us to leave Nhol. We were betrayed, Ghan, by the one called Yen. I did not tell him anything—I would not have jeopardized your life so—but Yen was not, as he claimed, a young engineer. He was, I think, an assassin, a Jik. His real name is Ghe, or so he boasted. Perkar killed him, cut his head off, so he is no danger to you. But be careful, Ghan. He may have told others about the help you gave me; he observed us so closely, I think we had no secrets from him. I am constantly surprised by the masks people wear. I trusted Yen, thought he liked me, and yet he was my worst enemy. I thought you hated me, and yet you were my most loyal friend. I miss you.

Whoever takes this letter to you will be instructed not to give it to anyone else. I've written it in the Middle Hand so that even if someone else does intercept it, they will probably have to bring it to you for trans fation!

I'll write more later.

Hezhi sighed, sprinkled powder over the wet ink, then blew it off. She waited a bit, there by the fire, for the ink to dry, meanwhile taking over the chore of stirring the stew from Grumbling Woman, the oldest of the women on the trip.

Duk, Brother Horse's granddaughter, only a year or so younger than Hezhi, sidled over and squatted next to her, shot long, obvious glances at the paper.

“What were you doing?” she asked, when Hezhi did not readily offer any explanation in response to her nonvocal query.

“Writing,” she answered, using the Nholish word. There was no such word in Mang.

“What's that?”

“Putting speech down so that someone else can see it.”

“See speech?”

“Those marks stand for words,” Hezhi explained. “Anyone who knows them can understand what I wrote.”

“Oh. Magic then,” Duk said.

For a moment, Hezhi considered explaining. But this was Duk, who was content to think that Nhol was at the very edge of the universe, that anyone sailing beyond on the River would plunge into an endless abyss.

“Yes,” Hezhi agreed. “Magic.” And she reflected that if she were ever a teacher, she would be a teacher like Ghan, accepting only the brightest. She had no patience for anyone else.

“Then you should be careful,” Duk whispered. “There are already those who say you are a witch.”

Hezhi snorted but then became more thoughtful. Being thought a witch was dangerous. It was the kind of thing that could get you killed in your sleep. She would have to think on this, certainly.

“I'm not a witch, Duk,” she said, her best response for the moment.

“I know, Hezhi. You are just very strange. From Nhol”

“Well, sugar candy and brass bells come from Nhol, too, and everyone likes them,” Hezhi replied.

“That's true,” Duk agreed. ”Oh,” she then went on. ”Mother wants us to lace together those boots.”

“Ah,” Hezhi said. That was why Duk had wanted to know what she was doing; not because she really cared, but as an overture to conscripting her. She shrugged. “Very well.”

MORNING beat the snow-covered plain into brass, and they rode straight into the glare of it. The novelty of snow was beginning to wear off for Hezhi; it was becoming the same nuisance to her that it was to everyone else.

Not long into the day, Perkar and Ngangata rode over to say their farewells. Perkar had that worried, put-upon look that she was coming to recognize instantly. Perhaps she was becoming Mang, at least in that way. In Nhol she had rarely paid much attention to what others might be thinking.

“I'll rejoin you in a few days,” Perkar told her. “Give my regards to Tsem.”

“I will,” she replied, trying to keep her voice neutral, trying to be nice.

Perkar nodded, then leaned a bit closer. “When I return, we shall race, you and I. Practice your riding!”

His attempt to sound jovial failed, but she relented and smiled—just a little smile—to let him know she didn't hate him. It was the kind of smile she used to give Qey when the old woman was on the verge of tears. Just enough, and no more.

But Perkar, the dolt, replied with a big grin, certain that he had won some victory.

“Watch him, Ngangata,” Hezhi told the half Alwa, “though by now you must be weary of that task.”

Ngangata quirked his mouth evilly. “True enough. Perhaps I will do us all a favor and 'take him hunting.' ”

Brother Horse, not far away, clipped out a little chuckle at the reference—the plot of half a dozen Mang stories in which an unwanted child was “taken hunting” in some faraway place and abandoned there.

Perkar, a bit slower than Hezhi when it came to learning Mang, looked merely puzzled by the remark and the reaction it evoked. Hezhi had to suppress an actual smile then: Perkar was at his most appealing when he looked perplexed.

Hezhi watched the two until they were black specks on the horizon, gone.

She kept to herself, after that, though Duk and Brother Horse both tried to start conversations. Hezhi, however, was thinking about her next letter to Ghan. She sorted through the things she had learned since leaving the city and lagged Dark back so that she could watch the motion of the hunting party. The Mang liked to laugh and play, but when it came time to do something, they did it. Not for the approval of some court, not to win the respect of others, but because their lives depended upon it. In the movement of the horses and their riders, little motion was wasted; packs were distributed evenly so that no one animal was burdened more than the others. Not that there were no lazy, selfish, or stupid Mang; but such persons learned to do what they must anyway, because even a mother would indulge her child only so far. What she had written to Ghan was true; children were not beaten. Their punishment consisted of being ignored, even to the point of not being fed when they were too willful. A Mang learned early that cooperation and hard work were the only secure route toward a full belly, something she herself was having a hard time adjusting to—in the palace there had never been any question about whether she would be fed or not. Still, despite the drudgery of the work, in peaceful moments it brought a subdued joy, like reading a well-written phrase, not flowery, not audacious, just saying what it should say clearly and perfectly.

She wondered what the Ben'cheen would be like, how interested Ghan might be in the goings-on there, and her heart lifted a bit more.