The Blackgod

“Why? Who made that decision?” he asked.

Hezhi pursed her lips. “You don't remember telling me to go there?”

“No.”

“Was it just your madness then? Did the Raven not instruct you to escort me to the mountain?”

Perkar felt a wave of irritation. “Did Ngangata tell you that?”

Hezhi frowned further, and her voice frosted a bit. “No. He told me that you spoke with the Blackgod, but he knew little of the substance of what you said to each other.”

Perkar took a deep breath, using it to cool his growing angst. What was upsetting him? “I'm sorry, Hezhi,” he said. “What I told you—though I don't remember telling it—is true. Karak says we are to go to the mountain in the heart of Balat.”

“He told me the same thing.”

“You spoke with Karak? Where?”

Hezhi couldn't suppress a grin when she answered.

“Another story I need to hear,” Perkar said, dazed. He felt as if he had awakened sliding down the slick side of a mountain of ice with only one foot under him. After the meeting with Karak, he thought he knew what to do, but the world had moved on without him as he lay among the dead.

“After,” Hezhi insisted a bit forcefully. “First you tell me: why must we go to the mountain?”

If she had spoken to Karak, why hadn't the Crow God told her that! Perkar brushed at T'esh's mane thoughtfully. She deserved to know. Particularly she deserved to know after saving his life from the Breath Feasting. But his people—possibly his father and his brother—were dead and dying. It was his fault, and he must weigh that into all of his decisions. Piraku insisted that he put the higher cause first. At least, he thought it did.

“Karak was vague,” Perkar answered carefully. “But he said that if we went to the mountain, to the very headwaters of the River, we could slay him.”

“Slay him? Slay the River?” Hezhi's voice was thick with incredulity. “Haven't you already stumbled drunkenly down that path? Haven't I heard this story?”

“It sounds insane,” Perkar admitted. “I abandoned that ambition long ago. But Karak—Karak tells me we can do it, and moreover that we must? That you can do it, he thought guiltily. But she had to be convinced a bit at a time.

“And Karak is trustworthy?” Hezhi asked.

“No, but Karak is a god of the same sort as the River, one of the ancient gods who created the world. And he has no love for the River—”

“You used to scoff at that. When you tried to explain about all of the gods out here, you were skeptical of their claims.”

“I am less skeptical now,” Perkar admitted. Deep down, he knew that he was overstating the case. He still doubted Karak rather deeply, but he believed his assertion that they could slay the River. He believed it because of Hezhi and the power he had seen her gathering about her, back at Nhol.

“I will not go near the River, Perkar,” Hezhi insisted quietly.

“It may not be necessary that you go,” Perkar lied. ”But please, hear me out. I don't know the entirety of Karak's plan. It may be that it will make more sense as we near the mountain. It will be a long journey, and Karak promised to leave signs. In the meantime, where else should we go?”

“He told me, too,” Hezhi muttered. “He told me to go there.” ”Tell me of that. Of your conversation with the Crow God.

Perhaps we can piece more together from both stories than from

either.”

HEZHI agreed, and told of her improbable journey. In telling it, she realized how ridiculous it sounded and for the first time really began to doubt the truth of it. It might, she realized, have been some sort of vivid dream.

Save for the goddess living in her chest. She could hardly doubt that anymore.

Perkar's recovery had loosened some of the despair in her heart, and with a little time she thought she might cough some of it up and spit it out. She understood that much of her depression came from powerlessness, from being swept along by events, with no part in shaping her own fate. The reality of her new powers cast all of that in a different light. That new light filtered through a shattered crystal, producing more than one image and color—she was in many ways as terrified of what she had done as she was elated. But she remained herself and yet wielded power—in the end, the direction of the journey had been her decision, and that felt good. The power she had been offered before—the power of the River—would have been immeasurably greater, but such puissance would mean the end of her, Hezhi. She understood now that though the world of the “lake” was strange and terrifying—still, the spirit that moved there was her own. The Mountain Gods had trapped her, they would have killed her—but even they had no wish to transform her.

Brother Horse, Ngangata, Yuu'han, and Raincaster all looked at her with more respect now, she was certain of that. And Perkar was back, alive, and best of all, she had played a major role in saving him. Now perhaps the debt he pretended she did not owe him would be mitigated, at least somewhat. Perhaps without that between them, they could really become friends. When he understood her part in saving him—and she thought she had minimized her role—he had thanked her, humbly and sincerely. She captured that moment like a butterfly, enjoying the motion of its wings while it lived. Knowing Perkar, she thought a bit sourly, it was not likely to live long. He was too preoccupied with his own worries, his own guilt—what, together, he called “destiny.”

Did he really believe he could slay the god of the River, merely because some self-styled Crow God told him so? Well, perhaps it was true. Perhaps that was the only way she could ever be truly safe from the River God. But she knew his power, knew it the way a child knows the fists of a father who beats her, and she did not believe he could die. If there was anything in the universe that was eternal, it was the River.

But perhaps nothing in the universe was eternal. She had read cogent arguments in several books to that effect.

For the moment, it seemed reasonable—insomuch as anything seemed reasonable— to pursue the course that, after all, she had chosen: to go on to She'leng. But unless she learned much about this plan of the Blackgod, particularly its execution and its likely aftereffects, she would not actually commit to approaching the source. The scale upon her arm told her just how dangerous that could be.

Perhaps her new gaan powers could help, however. She would have to ask Brother Horse, then consider all of the information available.

That night they had no choice but to sleep in the open, so they camped in the lowest spot they could find and ranged the horses about so that they might serve as sentinels. There was no sunset, for the sky had gone leaden, and the day faded pitifully away. Hezhi felt cheated; each sunset and sunrise usually seemed more spectacular than the last in the Mang Wastes, as if there must be some compensation for the lack of splendid palaces, gold filigree, and books.

As she closed her eyes, she wondered what Ghan was doing right then. She speculated, briefly, whether she could send her spirit abroad to Nhol, but the answer to that seemed obvious. If she went near him—or sent the Horse—they would be eaten. Brother Horse had done nothing in the lands of the River but watch, with his vision, if she remembered his story. He had never loosed his wolf or sent his senses out. She added that to her list of things to ask him about.

But she could picture Ghan, bent over a book by flickering lamplight, tracing the sublime curves of the ancient hand, certain of each stroke. She missed him.

I shall have to write him another letter soon. Though, of course, she had never managed to send the last. In fact, she realized with considerable chagrin, the earlier one was still in the yekt at the Mang camp.

Mentally composing its replacement, she drifted into sleep.

IN her sleep came a hurricane. Wind shrieked across a darkling plain, the colors of which were indigo, black, and beetle green. Rainbow lightning brightened the sky so that it resembled the stained glass Hall of Moments, back in the palace, save that here the glass shattered and re-formed in every instant. Images formed and faded in the trails the light burned on her eyes.