Ngangata nodded slowly. “Something with big feet is walking,” he muttered. “We were attacked by Mang, as well, up at the stream. They were looking for us. They said that a prophet had seen us in a vision. Perhaps he saw you, too.”
“But Perkar knows more.”
“He does, but he was tight-lipped with me. Whatever he learned worried him.” Ngangata chewed his lip, and then went on. “I did hear Karak say that there was some connection between this gaan and the Changeling.”
A sudden bright chill crawled along Hezhi's spine. “The Changeling? The Riverr
“Call him what you will.”
“I thought he could not reach this far.”
“Not with his own fingers, perhaps,” Ngangata answered. “But perhaps with the hands of a Mang shaman he can.”
Hezhi heard her voice tremble. “He wants me back, doesn't he? He will have me back.” And she realized that, once again, the scale on her arm was itching dully. She reached to touch it.
And gasped; the room seemed to turn around, sidewise, so that she could see it all from a different angle. Tsem and Ngangata appeared hollowed out, skeletal, and the fire in its hearth was a dancing blade with laughing eyes. Perkar…
Perkar was hardly there at all. His skin glowed translucent, and at his side there lay a god. She could not look at it, at that nightmare jumble of wings and claws and keen, sharp edges. It hurt her, scratched at her inside as if there were a man in her head with a sword, swinging it. She lifted up her sight, tried to tear it away entirely, but Perkar himself riveted her attention.
On his chest crouched a blackness, a crawling, shuddering blackness. As she watched, long hairs as thick as wheatstraw grew from it, wrapped sluggishly around Perkar, and reached inside of him to seize his bones.
The blackness opened a yellow eye and stared at her, and she screamed. She screamed and ran, tripped, sprawled, and scrambled back up. Even when Tsem caught her she kept trying to run, kicking at his shins and wailing, eyes closed, shuddering.
When finally she opened them again, the room was as it had been before.
But she knew now. She had seen it.
“Tsem, go get Brother Horse,” she choked out. “Go and hurry. And let me sit outside.”
SHE flinched away from Brother Horse when he arrived, fearful that her sight would return and reveal him for what he was. She should not trust him with Perkar—she knew that—but she could think of no alternative. She did not know what to do for him, and something was wrong, terribly wrong. Brother Horse regarded her sadly for an instant and then entered the yekt. Hezhi remained on the stoop, and Tsem joined her.
“That's a big fire,” he noticed, after a moment.
Hezhi regarded the enormous bonfire from the corner of her eye, unwilling even to risk seeing the Fire Goddess. For some time, the Mang had been carrying in fuel from all directions, and flames and black smoke rose in a thick column skyward.
“I wonder where they found all of the wood,” Tsem went on when she did not answer.
Hezhi shrugged to let him know she had no idea. “I think it's for the Horse God Homesending. A ceremony they perform tonight.”
“What sort of ceremony? Have you written of it in your letter to Ghan?”
Good old Tsem, trying to distract her. “I think Ghan will never get any letter from me. Whatever we thought, these people are not our friends.”
“They needn't be our enemies, either,” Tsem pointed out. “They are like everyone, concerned for themselves and their kin before all else. You and I don't threaten them; Perkar does.”
“Does he? Perhaps his people do. I don't know. We are lost here, Tsem.”
“I know, Princess,” he replied softly. “Tell me about this ceremony.”
She hesitated a moment, closing her eyes. The village did not vanish as she hoped it might; it was still there in the vivid scent of burning wood, in the shouts of children and the wild cries of adults, the yapping of dogs. It would not go away merely because she willed it thus.
“They believe that they and their mounts are kin,” she began. Who had told her that, so long ago? Yen, of course, when he gave her the statuette. He had told her something like that anyway, and it had not been—like everything else he told her—a lie. Yen, who at least had taught her the folly of trusting anyone.
Tsem's silence suggested that he was waiting for her to finish. “You know that by now,” she murmured apologetically. “They believe that they and their mounts are descended from a single goddess, the Horse Mother. Now and then the Horse Mother herself is born into one of these horses. More often one of her immediate children is, a sort of minor god or goddess. When this happens, the Mang shamans can tell, and the horse is treated with added respect.”
“That would be hard to imagine,” Tsem noted. “They already treat their mounts with more kindness than any servant in the palace is shown.”
“The horse is never ridden. It is fed only the best grains. And then they kill it.”
“Kill it?” Tsem muttered. “That doesn't sound like a very good thing to do to a god.”
“They kill it to send it home, to be with its mother. They treat it well, and when it goes home it tells the other gods that the Mang still treat their brothers and sisters—the other horses—well.”
“That is very strange,” Tsem said.
“No stranger than putting the children of nobility beneath the Darkness Stair,” she countered.
“I suppose not.” Tsem sighed. “It's just that everything these people do seems to involve blood and killing. Even worshipping their gods.”
“Perhaps they recognize that life is about blood and killing.”
Tsem touched her shoulder lightly with his thick fingers. “Qey used to say that life was about birth and eating. And sex.”
“Qey said something about sex?” Hezhi could simply not associate the concept with the servant woman who had raised her.
Tsem chuckled. “She is, after all, a Human Being,” he reminded her.
“But sex! When? With whom?”
Tsem squeezed her shoulder. “Not often, I suppose, and with an old friend of hers in the palace. She would have been married to him, I suppose, if it had been allowed.”
“Who?”
“Oh, I shouldn't tell you that,” Tsem said, mischief creeping into his voice.
“I think you should,” she rejoined.
“Well, perhaps if you were a princess and I your slave, I would obey that command. However, since you insist that such is no longer the case …”
“Tsem.” She sighed, opening her eyes and arching her brows dangerously.
Tsem rolled his eyes and put on an exaggerated air of secrecy. He leaned very near, as if confiding a bit of court gossip. “You remember old J'ehl?”
Hezhi's mouth dropped open. “J'ehl? Qey and J'ehl? Why, he was a wrinkled little old man! He looked just like one of those turtles with soft shells and thin long noses! How could she—”
“Perhaps he had more use for such a nose than you might imagine,” Tsem remarked.
“Oh!” Hezhi cried. “No! Darken your mouth! I won't hear any more of this. You're inventing this because no one can call you a liar out here. Except me! Qey and J'ehl indeed. Qey and anyone. She was too old, too dignified—”
“Oh, yes,” Tsem said. “Do you remember that time when J'ehl came to deliver flour, and I took you into your room and sang very loudly to you, the same song, over and over?”
“The only song you knew!” Hezhi exploded. “I kept telling you to sing a different song, but you wouldn't. After a while it got to be ftin, though, me trying to put a pillow over your face, and you just singing and singing …” She stopped. “What are you saying?”