“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 where the grade lessened and trees grew. Nevertheless, a group of Sheldu's men stood, dismounted, farther down the trail, and far below them another knot of men and horses struggled up the track. Below them, through the gaps in spruce and birch, sunlight blazed on steel in a thousand places, as if a swarm of metallic ants were searching the narrow valley for food.
But they were not ants; they were men and horses: Mang.
Yes, it was time to return to the group. She wondered how long it would take the army to climb the trail, and if the riders already coming up the slope were friend or foe. They were dark, like Mang, but even with her god-enhanced sight they were difficult to make out, though one seemed familiar.
That was when her name reached her ears, borne by wind, funneled up to her by the valley walls.
“Hezhi!” Very faintly, but she recognized the voice. And then it came again. Gaping, she turned Dark back toward the approaching army.
XXXIII The Steepening Trail
GHE'S fingers tightened around his throat, and Ghan felt that his eyes were about to pop from his skull. Fighting for the merest sip of breath, he scarcely had leisure to understand that all around him, men were dying, throwing themselves between Moss and the demons Ghe had summoned from his veins. Ghan wondered, inanely, if the men could really fight and die in such grim silence, or if it was the roaring of blood in his ears that kept him from hearing them.
He clawed at the talons biting into his windpipe, but he might as well have pried at steel bolts set in marble.
“Now, what lie were you about to tell me, old man?” the ghoul snapped at him. “Why were you calling me a fool? Or shall I just find out by opening you up and peering inside?”
Ghan answered him the only way he could: by beating feebly against his attacker's chest. Ghe looked puzzled for an instant and then roughly pushed him back. Blood and breath roared back into his head, and he fell, ears full of ocean sound.
He probably had only instants, but his throat was still closed up. Ghe had paused to examine his self-inflicted wound, the one the grass-bears had sprung from; it had stopped bleeding.
“I remember now,” Ghe told him, eyes suddenly mild.
Ghan grunted; it was the best he could do.
“When I died. Hezhi's mouth was bleeding, and her blood was turning into something.” He settled his feet onto the ground. “Blood, you see, gives spirit shape. Did you know the stream-demon I took in? She had Human form because a Human girl bled to death in her. And my blood is so many things now.”
“She's driven you mad,” Ghan shouted urgently. “Qwen Shen has you on a rope, like a dog, Ghe. Like a mongrel cur from
Southtown.”
“Shut up, old man,” Ghe gritted. “No more lies from you.” “It's true. Did you know you call Hezhïs name when you
sleep with Qwen Shen? She owns you, bends your soul to her devices.”
Snake-quick, Ghe was there, slapping him with an open palm.
The earth rippled like a sheet waving in the wind. Another slap, and Ghan saw only night.
WHEN he awoke, Ghe was daubing his mouth with a wet rag. He spluttered, raising his arms reflexively to defend himself. Ghe shook his head, a silent no that served only to deepen Ghan's confusion.
Moss stood behind Ghe. He looked weary, and one arm hung in a sling.