The Blackgod

Perkar smiled thinly in response. “Indeed,” he agreed. “Why not?”

Together they rode out to join the company of warriors.

Perkar wondered idly if “Sheldu's” bondsmen knew who their lord really was, but decided that it did not matter. They were a brave company, well armed, and they seemed fit for anything. Thirty men now, plus his original six. Would the Forest Lord notice them and stop them? Perkar understood from experience that against the Huntress and her host, they would be as nothing. Then again, Karak rode with them, though disguised. Perkar hated to admit it, but it was a huge relief; with a god riding at their fore, he no longer had to worry about whether he was making the right decisions, leading them down the correct path. As when he had been caught on the River, he had nothing to say about where he was going—only about what he did when he got there.

“Why haven't you traveled with us since the beginning?” he wondered to Karak aloud.

“I had things to do and I would have been noticed” was the reply—not explaining who would notice, of course, or what things he had to do. “Now—well, we are about to enter my home. Even now, however, I must remain disguised. Do not expect much overt help from me. I am your guide, not your protector, though the closer we get to Erikwer, the more help I can be.”

“Erikwer?”

“His source; the place in the mountain from which he flows,” Karak answered. After that, the Crow God rode up front to talk to one of his men.

So Perkar allowed T'esh to lag back. The stallion's coat gleamed, and Perkar himself had bathed, been dressed in fine new clothes, and a shining steel hauberk rode packed on Sharp Tiger. He should feel new and refreshed.

But two days before, riding and laughing next to Hezhi, smiling at her wonder at the mountains, he had felt a hundred times better. He realized, with some astonishment, that he had actually been happy. Odd that happiness was something one only identified when it was entirely absent.

The sun cast gold on bright new leaves and the upturned faces of wildflowers, but each moment only brought him closer to despair and doom.

He tried to brighten when Hezhi rode up but failed utterly.

“What's the matter?” she asked. For an instant he almost explained; it hung at his tongue. But the chill remained in him, and when he shrugged instead of answering her he could almost palpably feel her pulling back from him, retreating behind her own walls against hurt and closeness.

“Well, then,” she said awkwardly. “I came over because I need to tell you some things.” Her eyes wandered from her skirt briefly to his face and back down before she went on. “I journeyed last night. I saw an army of Mang riding to meet us. An army much larger than this one.”

“Oh?” he said. Karak had not shown him an army, though now that he thought of it, he had alluded to one.

“Yes. They are led by Moss.”

“Moss?”

“Moss is the gaan—though I suppose we should have known that. I should have seen it.”

“Brother Horse says that gaan can hide their natures, even from one another.”

“Yes. Still; when he came to me, in that dream, he was attacked by something I never saw—something commanding lightning. The next day you found Moss, wounded. I never made the obvious connection.”

Perkar held up one hand helplessly, not sure what to say. Moss was just a boy—who would expect him to be the leader of hosts of Mang warriors? But then, he was older than Hezhi, and not much younger than Perkar himself.

“This army also has someone else with it,” Hezhi said. “Someone impossible.”

“Impossible?”

He listened intently as she outlined her vision, and when he understood that she had seen the destroyer who had murdered the Stream Goddess, his chest tightened until he thought it might rip itself apart. But then she explained who he was, and he remembered.

“I chopped his head off,” Perkar said incredulously. “Off. ”

“This is the River at work,” she replied dully. “I'll fight you no more about going to She'leng, Perkar. I just want you to know that. You need not coax me any longer.”

“I was never—”

“Don't lie,” she answered, and with chagrin he saw real anguish in her eyes. “Yen lied to me, and now … now he's coming for me again. He may not have ever been human. All I understand is this: when one of you comes close to me, holds my hand, kisses me, it's only because he wants something besides me. Maybe if I live long enough, I can learn whatever secret it is, whatever magic exists that will let me survive that, but for now I've had enough of it. You and I will see this through; we will slay the River or die trying. But I don't trust you, Perkar, because I know you've lied to me. I am certain, at least, that there are things the Blackgod told you that you haven't chosen to share. So I'm not doing this because I trust you, Perkar, but because it is the only thing I can see to do. And I don't know that I like you very much, either.”

He listened to all of that helplessly, desperate to respond, but without anything to say. Because it was all true—all, save the implication that their recent closeness was no more than a ploy on his part. But he could see that it seemed that way, and besides, he didn't have the energy to argue. If she wanted it this way, it would only make things easier should they reach an impasse later on.

So instead of arguing, he only lowered his head, knowing that she would take that as a sign that everything she said was true. And after a moment she rode off to where Tsem, Brother Horse, and Yuu'han traveled in a little clump.

IN two days they entered the dark majesty of Balat. Hezhi was awestruck by the trees, for though she had seen them in dreams long ago in Nhol, the dreams failed to do justice to their sheer, overwhelming majesty. Some were two horse-lengths in diameter, and the canopy those gargantuan columns supported was like distant green stained glass, the occasional real rays of sunlight that actually fell through that imperial ceiling shining like diamonds amongst the ferns and dead leaves of the forest floor.

Her godsight showed her many things skulking just beyond the edge of vision: ghosts, and gods of a hundred descriptions. Balat was alive in a way that she had never imagined. Despite her resentment—despite having been herself threatened—she began to understand why the Huntress strove so implacably to protect this place. She saw now that Nhol and its empire rested on merely the corpse of a land. The only things that thrived there were Human Beings and the plants and animals thralled to them—as the Humans were thralled to the River. Balat was as the whole world had been, once—alive. The “monsters” her ancestors had destroyed lived here still, and they gave breath to the world.

Though to be fair to her ancestors, being rid of such creatures as the Blackgod and the Huntress could at times seem desirable.

Five evenings later they capped a hill and she saw She'leng. She realized, with a start, that she had seen it earlier that day and believed it to be nothing more than a remote cloud, for it was so distant that it was only just darker than the sky. Nothing could be that far away and yet fill so much of the sky except a cloud. But when the sun touched it, and red-gold blood quickened on the outline of the peak, it stood revealed, like a ghost suddenly re-imbued with life and substance. It was still so far distant as to only be a shadow, but what a shadow! Its perfect cone filled the western quarter of the horizon. Truly such a place might give birth to gods, might humble even the likes of the River.

Throughout the journey, Perkar had become more and more distant, and though Hezhi wept about it once, secretly, she hardened her heart against him. She had given him the opportunity to dispute her, to tell her she was wrong, that he felt something more than some offensive mixture of anger and duty regarding her. He had refused the opportunity, and she would not give him the chance to hurt her again.

Besides, as the mountain waxed in the following days, recognition of the sheer audacity of what they were about grew proportionally, and that brought with it not only fear but a thriving excitement that she hadn't expected. Once she had stood on the edge of the palace, proposing her own death. Now she proposed to kill a god, the god of her ancestors—her ancestor.

Feeling an awkward need to express such feelings, she reluctantly guided her mount to where Brother Horse