The Blackgod

see mighty ones on the north and west. Behind them a few trailed off, but it was the vastness of the lower steppes that struck Perkar. Though the last few days of their travel had been in hills, distance and scale crushed die most rugged of them into the imperial, awesome flatness that sheeted out and beyond the horizon, where sky and earth met in a confused haze of blue-green and brown.

Brother Horse reined his mount to a halt. “We'll offer at this cairn to the lord of the Falling Sky,” he told them. Perkar nodded as he took in the vista they had just arrived upon. Despite the bordering giants, the high plains were, if anything, flatter than anywhere below them. It seemed not so much a piece of the sky as a place where the sky had lain for a time and crushed everything level. In fact, going back over what Brother Horse told him, that might have been what the old man meant. He had not lied to Tsem in claiming his Mang was less than perfect.

Brother Horse began chanting behind him, and pungent incense seasoned the wind. He thought about joining, but he didn't know the song or the gods of this country. But soon! Despite it all, despite the dread he felt at facing his people with his crimes against them, the thought of his father's pasture and the little, unambitious gods he knew—knew the songs for, the lineages of—sixty days, and he could be there. He would not be; actually going by his father's damakuta would put them many days later getting to the mountain, days he somehow believed they could not afford. Still, the thought stirred him, not only with trepidation and sadness but also with joy.

He noticed that Hezhi had ridden out away from the rest, had her eye fixed somewhere westward. He urged T'esh toward her. To his vast surprise, Sharp Tiger followed. Since the time Perkar had adopted him, the horse had shown him, at best, disdain. When Yuu'han or Brother Horse led him, he would follow, but none was able to get upon his back. But now, as he trotted to join Hezhi, there was Sharp Tiger, two horse lengths behind—as if he wanted to hear what the two of them would say. Perkar wondered himself.

“What is that?” Hezhi asked, arm thrust out toward where the wind whipped a wall of dust along before it.

“That's wind coming down from the mountains. It may have some rain in it. See the darkness behind?”

“I don't like it,” Hezhi murmured. “It seems …” She trailed off. “Well. You rode over here for a reason, I know. You haven't spoken to me in days.”

“I know. I've been thinking a lot, feeling sorry for myself.”

“What a surprise. You feeling sorry for yourself.”

“You're angry.”

She flung her hair back over her shoulder and set her little mouth in a scowl. “What do you think you are doing with Tsem?”

“Tsem? He asked me to teach him—”

“How to fight, I know. But you shouldn't have done it without asking me.”

“And why is that, Princess! It seems to me that you told Tsem he was no longer your servant. That he was free.”

“Maybe I did. I did. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't have anything to say about him. I've known him since I was born. You barely know him at all.”

“I'm only doing what he asked. He wants to feel useful, Princess. He knows that you pity him, and it eats at his heart. Do you want to stop him from doing the one thing that might give him a sense of worth?”

“He said that? He thinks I pity him?”

“You say you have known him since you were born. What do you think? That he is so stupid he can't sense disdain?”

She looked down at her saddle pommel. “I didn't know it was so obvious,” she said. “I just don't want him to get killed.”

“Out here, he'll get killed a lot faster if he is unarmed than if he has some kind of weapon. And you saw him carrying his club today. Couldn't you see the pride in his shoulders?”

“It's false confidence,” she hissed. “We both know that branch is nothing more than a toy.”

“Princess, that—”

“Stop calling me that. You only call me that when you think I'm being stupid.”

“That's true, Princess,” Perkar snapped. “What do you know of fighting? That 'toy' of his is capable of being a very deadly weapon indeed. A weapon doesn't need an edge when it's wielded by a man the size and strength of Tsem. One blow from that thing would crush a man in full armor. Hauberks are made to turn edges, but they are no defense at all against impact. Do you honestly think I would trick him into thinking he had a real weapon when he didn't?”

Hezhi looked away unhappily. He thought she was about to reply when he heard the sudden thuttering of hooves. For a moment he paid them no mind, thinking them to be Yuu'han or Raincaster, stretching his horse's legs on the welcome flat. But then a shout went up from Yuu'han, and it did not sound like a shout of jubilation but instead one of warning. In the same instant, Heen began barking frantically.

Jump! Harka fairly shrieked in his ear, and so he did, rolling from T'esh's back as something whistled past his face. He hit the ground and rolled, coming up in time to see the collision of three horses. Sharp Tiger was not one of them; he danced nimbly aside as Moss and his mount barreled into T'esh and Dark. Hezhi shrieked and fell from Dark's back, but Moss, completely in control of his mount, caught her neatly in the crook of his arm. With an earsplitting shriek of triumph, he tore out across the plain toward the fast-approaching wind and its skirt of dust.

Harka was already in his hand. The something that sped by was returning, and he was forced to gaze at it. He had the urge to blink, but Harka wouldn't let him.

It was a black thing, like a bird, larger than most. Even at first glance, he knew it wasn't a raven—or any other normal, living creature. In Harka's vision it was yellowed bones wrapped in a tarry blackness. It whirred past Perkar, who shouted a warning. Raincaster, just mounting to chase Moss, looked up too late. Caught weaponless and with no time to dismount, he attacked in the only way possible, by punching at the thing. It struck him and he snapped back in the saddle, his face and neck drenched scarlet. The bird banked and began another pass.

An arrow intersected its flight but sailed on, though a second shaft from Ngangata hit something solid— probably a bone—and the thing rolled, missed several beats before recovering, and then dove right at Perkar. He could see a pair of immortal heartstrings, iron-colored, and Harka swept out, eager to meet them.

XXVI Demons

SLICKED in sweat, Ghe clutched at his damp bedsheets, feeling as if a hundred wasps had entered his lungs, his mouth, his very organs. He gazed at Qwen Shen beside him, knew a momentary pleasure at the faint, satisfied curve of her thick, sensuous lips. But his brain was afire, sputtering and popping like hot grease. He sat up, clutching his skull, but that was no help. Except that he suddenly understood what was wrong.

The agony emanated in stinging threads from the scar on his neck. His heart pulsed sluggishly, haltingly, and the pulling of his lungs became more difficult with each breath. But those pains were spatters of blood near a torn jugular; the source of his illness was hunger.

“Qwen Shen,” he gasped. “Get out. Leave, now!”

“What? Why? Bone Eel will be busy for some time.” The urgency in his voice seemed to have jolted her from languor but not frightened her yet. He wished she were frightened.

“No!” He struggled to form more words, an explanation, but even if his thick, clay tongue could frame it there was no time—not if she was going to survive. Within her, he could see life working, hear it, smell it.

“Quickly, go, and send someone to my cabin. Someone unimportant.”

“But—”

“Now!” His voice was actually shaking, and Qwen Shen no longer questioned his urgency. She quickly dressed and left his cabin.

He tried to stand but fell from the bed and lay clawing at the floor. What had happened? He hadn't felt hunger in…

He knew what was wrong, but he couldn't form the thoughts. His body kept asking why why why without giving his brain time for a reasonable answer. He tried to ignore the enticing fragrance of life from down the hall—Ghan—but after a short time, he simply could not. He could taste