“What's troubling you, child?” Kila asked.
“Thinking of home,” Hezhi explained.
“From what Perkar says, I wonder that you miss it.”
“As do I,” Hezhi admitted. “But I worry about my family. Most of all, I wonder about Qey.”
“That's the woman who raised you?”
“Yes.”
Kila was silent for a few moments, throwing grain out toward the weaker birds that could not bustle up to her feet. “Will you return?”
Hezhi shrugged. “I don't know. I don't know what I will do.”
Kila looked at her frankly. “I hope you don't,” she said. “I hope you stay right here. I've never had a daughter—” Her face fell slightly. “—not one who lived, anyway. Having you around has been like having a daughter.”
Hezhi smiled. Kila meant well, and she liked the older woman, but she could remember Brother Horse, making her a similar proposition, just after she escaped from Nhol. “You could be Mang,” he had told her. And yet, despite the old man's best intentions, that had turned out to be a false promise. She had been with Perkar's people for longer—sixteen months now—but she still had little faith that this could be her home. At least Tsem was happier here; he was much more useful as a cowherd and at building fences than as a Mang hunter. He even seemed to enjoy the hard, outdoor work. Yes, Tsem could live here and be happy. But as more and more time passed, Hezhi wondered what her place would be—if there was one for her at all.
Kila sighed. “But even if you stay, I suppose you will marry soon enough. Already we have had two proposals for you.”
“What?” Hezhi's head snapped up. “Proposals?”
Kila laughed. “You should have seen your expression! Yes, of course proposals. Look at you! Such a pretty young woman, and well into marrying age.”
“But who?”
“Neighbors. Sons headed off to the new lands. Men who care less about a fine dowry and more about having a beautiful bride—and a shamaness, no less.”
“I thought no man married an undowered woman.”
Kila nodded around at the chickens, satisfied that they had been provided for, and started back across the yard. A gentle morning breeze breathed down from the mountains, cool but invigorating, like a swim in springwater. “Not in normal times,” Kila answered. “But these are not normal times. Dowry is usually land and cattle, land being the most important of the two. But right now, there is land to be had for the taking. Anyway—” She shot Hezhi a mischievous grin. “—you have a dowry.”
“I do?”
“Sherye has dowered you with two bulls and thirteen cows. Did you not know?”
Hezhi was so dumbfounded she literally could not speak for a space of ten heartbeats. “When?” she finally sputtered out.
“Ten days ago, on your fifteenth birthday. Two bulls and thirteen cows. Fifteen, you see?”
“That was very nice,” Hezhi said softly, feeling faint.
“I told you that you were like a daughter to us,” Kila answered.
Perkar's parents very much wanted her married! Hezhi was wondering just how much like a daughter they considered her, and what the greater ramifications of that were. But after more than a year in the Cattle Lands, she thought she knew.
PERKAR gave another try at lifting the fence post, lost his balance, and then sat down with a bump. He hoped he wasn't going to be sick again.
“Get up and work, Perkar,” Ngangata chirped in a cheerful—and thus evil—voice. “Sweat it out.”
From fifty paces away, Tsem boomed in, “I always wondered if that sword of yours cured hangovers, too, back when you still had it.”
“I don't know,” Perkar grumbled, holding his head. “I never got drunk when I bore Harka. But I wish I had him back, right now, so I could find out.”
“Try this instead.” Ngangata smirked, walking over to join him on the crest of the hill. Below, some fifty red cows moved lazily across the pasture. Tsem eclipsed a few of them as he, too, ceased working and labored up the slope to join Perkar and Ngangata.
Perkar eyed suspiciously the skin that Ngangata offered him. “What is it?”
“Water,” the halfling replied, inserting a broken stalk of grass between his broad, thin lips.
Perkar drank some of it. It was cool, clear springwater, tasting only of rain and snowmelt. Perkar was sure it would make him vomit. He drank it anyway and discovered that he did indeed feel somewhat better.
“Pass me that,” Tsem panted, and Ngangata transferred the skin to the huge man's massive paws.
“We make good time on this fence,” Tsem said, his tongue still wrapping thickly around Perkar's language.
“Thanks to you and Ngangata,” Perkar muttered. “I've been useless enough today.” He glanced up speculatively at Ngangata. “How much longer will you stay?” He hesitated, then rushed on, “I didn't think you would come back at all.”
Ngangata straightened his shoulders and gazed off at the forest, as if worried that something might lurk there. “Well, I had to make sure you hadn't already found some new trouble to get into. In any event, I had to come see if the songs were true.”
“Songs?”
“Yes,” Ngangata answered. “In the songs I heard at Morawta, they speak of the hero Perkar standing as tall as two men together. I had to see if that was true.”
Perkar closed his eyes, but that made his head whirl the worst, and so he cracked them open again. “Tell me not of such songs.”
Ngangata sat beside him, touching his shoulder lightly. “I shouldn't taunt you,” he admitted. “But you still owe me. Anyway, there is one thing I thought you would like to know about the new songs.”
“That being?”
“The Changeling. The river who was once the Changeling has a new name.”
“A new name for a new river,” Perkar said, and despite himself he felt a little thrill. Five years ago he had promised a goddess revenge, and despite everything, he had given her that—and more. “What do they call her?”
Ngangata's smile broadened. “Ah-hah. I knew you would want to know that.” He rubbed his hands together and cracked his knuckles, then lay back to gaze up at the lazy clouds overhead, his alien, dark eyes filmed with blue. “Well, the Mang call her Tu'da'an, the 'River of Springtime,' because she brought new life. Many of your own folk call her simply Itani, 'Rowing Goddess.' But there is another name for her.”
The half man lapsed into silence for a moment, as if suddenly listening to the sky.
“Yes?” Perkar grunted testily.
“Ah. Many call her Animiramu.”
Perkar had no answer for that, no retort. He only turned to look at the farthest tree line, toward the distant north where she flowed.
“I'm sorry,” Tsem interposed after a moment or two, “but what does that mean?”
“It means 'The goddess he loved,' ” Ngangata answered softly.
Perkar did not want the subject pursued.
“You didn't answer my question,” he rasped, more harshly than he meant to. “How long will you stay this time?”
Ngangata considered for a moment. “I don't know. A few days.”
Perkar massaged his head, wondering if he should try to discuss what he wanted when he felt so bad. But Tsem and Ngangata were both here, and no one else around.
“Listen, Ngangata. You, too, Tsem. I think I'm going out to claim some land in the new valleys. I think it's time I did that.”
“Good,” Ngangata said. “You waited more than long enough.”
Perkar considered Ngangata as frankly as he could with his bloodshot eyes. “This is my idea,” he began.