The Blackgod

rode. He greeted her cheerfully, though since Raincaster's death his face more often fell in solemn lines.

“Hello, shizhbee” he said.

“It is well,” she answered, in Mang—her acceptance of his calling her granddaughter once again. He understood and smiled more broadly.

“I did have hopes of making a Mang out of you,” he remarked.

“I had hopes of being one,” she returned, a little more harshly than she intended. They wouldn't let me, she finished silently. But Brother Horse knew that, caught the implication, and an uneasy silence followed.

“I'm sorry,” Hezhi went on, before the quiet could entirely cocoon them. “You've been good to me, Brother Horse, better than I could have ever expected.”

“I've done no more than any other old man would do, to keep the company of a beautiful young girl.”

She actually blushed. “That's very—”

“It's true” Brother Horse insisted. “I'm like an old fisherman, come to sit down by the lake for a final time. I rest here with my feet in the water, and I know in my bones I won't be taking my catch home, not this time. Old men spend so much time thinking about the lake, about the dark journey that awaits us. The sight of beauty becomes precious—better than food, beer, or sex. And you have a glorious beauty in you, child, one that only someone with sight like mine can appreciate.”

“You aren't going to die,” Hezhi whispered.

“Of course I am.” Brother Horse snorted. “If not today, tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, the next day. But it doesn't matter, you see? There's nothing to be done about that. And this is fine company to die in.”

“I was worried that you came only because you thought you hadto.”

“What difference does that make?” Brother Horse asked.

“It's just that… I'm sorry about…” She remembered just in time that it was considered rude to name the dead until that name was passed on to another. “About your nephew,” she finished lamely.

His face did cloud then. “He was beautiful, too,” he murmured. ”What is comforting about beauty is that we know we will leave it behind us—that it goes on. When it precedes us, that's tragedy.”

He turned his face from her, and she heard a suspicious quaver in his voice when he spoke down to Heen, who trotted dolefully along the other side of his horse. “Heen says that's the problem with being as old as we are,” he muttered gruffly. “Too much goes before you.”

He reached over and ran his rough hand on her head, and she did catch a glint of moisture in his eyes. “But you won't,” he muttered. ”I'll see to that.” He straightened in the saddle and coughed. ”Now. What did you really ride over here to talk about?”

“It's not important.”

“I think it is. You've been silent as a turtle for three days, and now you choose to speak. What's on your mind?”

She sighed and tried to collect the fragments of what she had been thinking. “I was wondering how I should be feeling, going to slay my own ancestor. It should seem like murder, like patricide. Like killing my own father.”

Brother Horse looked at her oddly. “But you don't feel that way.”

“No … a little maybe. I was brought up to worship him. But then I remember my cousin, D'en, and the others below the Darkness Stair. I remember him filling me up, being inside of me, and I don't feel very daughterly at all. I want him to die. With so many gods in the world, he will hardly be missed.”

“Not true,” Brother Horse said. “His absence will be felt, but gladly. The world will be better without him. Are you afraid?”

“I was. I have been. But now I only feel excited.”

The old man smiled. “Felt that way myself, on my first raid. Just kept seeing that trophy skin in my hand, decorating my yekt. I was scared, too, but I didn't know it. The two feelings were all braided up.”

“It's like that,” she affirmed. “It's just like that. It's frustrating because I can't picture what will happen when we get there. I can't rehearse it in my mind, you see? Because I don't know what I am to do!”

“I rehearsed my first battle a hundred times,” Brother Horse said, “and it still went completely wrong. Nothing I imagined prepared me for it. You might be better off this way.”

“But why is this kept from me? Why shouldn't I know?”

“I can't guess. Maybe so no one learns it from you. Moss might be able to do that.”

“Oh.” They traveled on silently for a bit, but this time it was a comfortable pause. In that interval she reached over and touched the old man's hand. He gripped hers in return.

“If we succeed—if we slay him—I wonder, will the little gods like those who live here return to Nhol? Will the empire become like Balat?”

“No place is like Balat,” the old Mang assured her. “But I take your meaning, and yes, I think so. When he is no longer there to devour them, the gods will return.”

“That's good, then,” she said.

Two days later they reached She'leng. Its lower slopes were folded into increasingly higher ridges, and they wound up and down these, torturously seeking the place whose name she had begun to hear muttered amongst Sheldu's men. Erikwer. Her heart seemed to beat faster with each moment and passing league, filling her with frenetic energy. She could sense the fear that Brother Horse spoke of, but it could not match the growing apprehension of danger, which—rather than fear—kindled a precarious joy.

The fact that Perkar only seemed more sullen and drawn each day scarcely had meaning for her anymore. Four times before her life had changed forever: first when she discovered the library and Ghan; again when she understood the nature of her Royal Blood, its power and its curse. Thrice when she fled Nhol to live among the Mang, and again when she had stepped through the drum into the world of the lake and become a shamaness. But none of these had brought peace to her, or happiness, or even a modicum of security.

Tomorrow would. In Erikwer she would find release in one way or the other, release from the very blood in her veins by slaying or dying. And with that thought, tentative elation waxed fierce, and she remembered the statuette Yen had given her—so long ago it seemed. The statuette of a woman's torso on a horse's body, a representation of the Mang belief that mount and rider were joined together in the afterlife. She had become that statuette now. She was mare, bull, swan—but above all she was Hezhi, and she would live or die as herself. That could never be taken from her again.

Though everyone else trotted, she urged Dark into a gallop, stirring a small storm of leaves in the obscure light. The others watched her go, perhaps amused; she did not care. She wanted to run, to feel hooves pound in time with her heart. Tree branches whipped at her as the trail narrowed and steepened, but Dark was surefooted. Whooping, suddenly, she rounded a turn that plunged her down along a hillside—

And nearly collided with another rider. The horses shuddered to a halt as the other person—one of Sheldu's outriders—shot her a look that contained both anger and fear. She opened her mouth to apologize, but he interrupted.

“Mang,” he gasped. “We can't go that way.”

“What?”

“In the valley,” he insisted, waving his arms. “A whole army.” He frowned at her and then urged his mount past, disappearing up the slope.

Hezhi hesitated, her reckless courage evaporating—but not so fast as to take curiosity with it. The trail bent in a single sharp curve ahead, and through the trees bordering the trail she could see the distant slopes of another valley, far below. She coaxed Dark around that curve—hoping for just a glance of the army the outrider spoke of.

Beyond, the trees opened, and she faced down a valley furrowed so perfectly it might have been cut with a giant plow. On her right was only open air. To her left, the trail became no more than a track reluctantly clinging to the nearly sheer valley wall. So steep and narrow it was, she could hardly imagine a horse walking it without tumbling off; there were no trees on the precipitous slope to break such a fall before reaching the lower valley