The Blackgod

Huntress answered.

“You wanted to eat me before,” Hezhi said, trying to summon some bravery to calm her voice.

“Yes. Perhaps I will yet, sweetmeat, but not at the moment. Karak's silly plan has finally come to my attention, and when I saw you coming, I thought to speak to you.”

“Oh?” She felt a faint relief wash over her, but kept a firm grip on her skepticism. Could she fly faster than the Huntress? Perhaps she and the bull could, but she did not want to lose the mare and the swan.

“Yes. I have some things to show you. We will travel together.”

As she said this, the mare and swan shook themselves as if waking. “Come.” The Huntress turned from them and began loping across the land. “Stay in my prints,” she called back over her feline shoulders. That commandment was simple enough to keep—the pawprints of the lion blazed the earth, blurred together into a trail of heatless flame. Hezhi rode with the bull, the swan on her shoulder, the mare just behind them so that they were really one, an eight-legged chimera with wings. Surrounded by her beasts, Hezhi felt confident again, but now she knew how illusory that confidence was, and she did not allow it to overwhelm her.

Running in the footsteps of the Huntress, their speed increased fivefold. The otherworld blurred into a void of transmuting shapes and colors.

When at last they stopped, it was upon the edge of a precipice; below stretched a plain.

“Here,” the Huntress purred. “This is as close as we dare approach—for the moment.”

“Approach whatV Hezhi asked, wondering what the Huntress could possibly fear.

“There,” the Huntress answered. “Take your swan through the lake, there, and look—but only from a distance.”

“Can I do that?“ Hezhi asked doubtfully.

“Yes. I will guide you.”

Hezhi cast another uncertain glance at the plain, and her keen eyes caught something, strange even in the otherworld. It looked something like a spider, or perhaps a spider and its web somehow become a single thing; a mass of tangled black strands and faintly multicolored bulbs that writhed aimlessly as they crept across the earth. “What is thatT Hezhi asked, pointing.

The Huntress growled, deep in her chest, before replying.

“That is what the Changeling sends to reclaim you,” she answered. “I have watched him grow from a seed of death into that mockery of gods and men that crawls where no such thing should crawl. Long have we tolerated the Changeling, for his power was so great, and, after all, he lay quiet in his bed most of the time. Now he sends things like this out and about. For that affront I have chosen to help Karak kill him.”

Hezhi turned to face the lioness. Crouching on the stone, she had changed a bit in appearance. Her fierce feline visage had crushed itself flat, so that the brilliant points of her teeth now gleamed from a face that somewhat resembled that of Ngangata or Tsem, but harsher, more brutal. The cords of leonine muscle had altered subtly so as to be more Human in appearance, as well, though Hezhi counted, with startlement, eight breasts on her tawny chest and belly.

“Why do you need usl” she asked. “I have a little power, it is true, but it is as nothing compared to yours. Perkar is handy with his enchanted weapon, but he told me of encountering you once before and how easily you dispensed with him. And yet every step of our journey has been planned by you gods. You cajole us and order us—I suspect one of you attacked Moss and the other Mang who followed us.”

“That last was one of Karak's pets,” the Huntress confessed. “But as to the other questions …” She leaned close, until the stink of rotten meat steamed in Hezhi's face. “I am not wont to answer questions. But you have been brave, and you command Hukwosha. And who knows, if all goes well you will have more power yet, before it is over, and perhaps I will ask favors of VOM. But listen, for I will not tell you a second time.” She glanced—almost furtively—back at the spidery thing on the plain and then continued. ”In the mountain, you met us all. Balati the One-Eyed Lord, Karak the Raven, Ekama the Horse Mother, and myself. But we are not separate things, and at times we do not exist at all. In all of the mountain, there is really only one god, and that is Balati. But Balati is vast, and ancient, and his tendency is to let this part of himself go this way and that part of himself go another. Karak is the one who is the most unfettered, the least like the rest of us in will and in purpose. Balati, he of the single eye, is where our true home resides—much as your spirits now reside in your heart—but he is a slow god, moving to the cycles of the earth and sky, not to the little moments and heartbeats that living things cherish. That I cherish.

“Now, this god you call the River, we call the Changeling, but we also call him 'Brother,' for he is that to us. Indeed—“ Her brow bunched and played as she considered her words. ”—it may be that he was once a part of us, just as I am. If so, he escaped entirely. And now Balati is slow to understand peril; he is still reluctant to act against his brother. He is angry, yes, but he cannot see the danger. Until recently, I was of the same mind. Only Karak knew better; Karak has labored long and secretly against the Changeling.”

“Why? Why secretly?”

The Huntress grinned a sharp, malicious grin. “If Balati is so moved, he can extinguish any one of us. Karak as Karak could cease to be, and of all of us, Karak most loves being”

“I still don't understand.”

“It's simple enough; the irony is delicious. Were it not for Karak, there would be no Changeling. That is the secret he has worked so long to keep hidden. That is why he strives so mightily and so stealthily to destroy the Brother.”

“Karak's fault? I don't understand.”

“It was a prank, at first., some joke of his that got out of hand. It is too long to tell, here and now. Suffice to say that once the Changeling was just a god like other gods, content and contained within the mountain. Karak tricked him into releasing himself, into becoming the River you know. That was long, long ages ago, but for Balati it was an eyeblink. He will not let us cut out the Changeling like the cancer he is. That is why we need you mortals. He does not notice you. When your enemies—“ She waved a pawlike hand at the plain. ”—when they invade Balat, the great forest, he will not object to my attacking them. When you enter into the mountain and find the River's source, he will not be aware of you, for Karak and I will cloak you. There you can do what must be done.”

“And what is that?” Hezhi demanded.

The Huntress raised her hand to her face and ran a large, black tongue over her fur.

“That I don't know,” she admitted. “Karak knows; he is the trickster, the sorcerer, the bringer of newness. He knows, and he will tell you. Trust that.”

“Do we have a choice in this?” Hezhi asked, not wanting to, but knowing she must.

The Huntress considered that for only an instant. “Of course. You can choose to die. Little thing, the River made you to pour himself into. The Life-Stealer down there wishes to return you to him, and if he is successful, you will show him to be the shadow that he really is. You will be much like him, but if he is a blade of grass, you will be a forest. You will devour all of the world, including all of my children, and that I will not allow. I will kill you myself, if I can.”

“If the danger is that great, I probably should die. When I come to his source, won't he take me then?”

“Not if you are strong; he can no more see himself at his source than you can see your own brain. And you have resisted him before.”

“It was too hard,” she whispered. “I nearly failed. Perhaps I should die.”

The Huntress crooned a long “noooo, ” and to Hezhi's vast surprise, she laid a now fully Human—if still furred—hand upon her shoulder. “He will only make another, in time. It may be a thousand years, but he will make another. And it is a paradox—at least this is what Karak says—that only one suited to hold him can destroy him. I don't know that this is true, but if it is, then his opportunity is also ours. Karak has apparently had his eye on this situation for many years. I despise trusting him, but here even I have no choice.” She turned a slit-pupiled eye on Hezhi. “Nor do you. Now, look.”

Hezhi felt the swan settle up higher on her head. She closed her own eyes and, when she saw again, it was through those of the bird. And in a single blink, she beheld blue sky and green grass, as those eyes slipped through the surface of the otherworld and into the more familiar colors and sounds of her own.

On the plain, where the spider-thing sat beneath the lake, an army rode, an army of Mang. She glided over