She didn't respond, other than to look at them, confused. Tsem bent down and lifted her up.
"I'm sorry to spoil your beautiful clothes, Princess," Perkar heard him whisper.
They stepped over two dead priests, who appeared to have been boiled alive, and Perkar wondered how Harka could possibly protect him from that. The thing was a shimmering presence, up in front of them.
"When it finishes the priests, I'll take it, try to drive it from the tunnel," Perkar told Tsem. "Then you run, do you understand? You have no hope against a creature like that." Perkar realized that he had made his decision. Whatever murky purpose the River had proposed for him, he could not bring himself to slay Hezhi and her guardian. Tsem was too much like Ngangata. Harka was right—he always wanted things to be simple, and he did the simple things even when they did not feel right. Helping Hezhi and Tsem felt right. Helping the priests and their assassin did not. In its own way, that was simple enough for him.
Tsem nodded weary assent.
The last of the priests fell at the mouth of the tunnel, and Perkar relinquished his wildest hope—that the thing would pursue its tormentors out into the sand he could barely see beyond. He gritted his teeth and prepared to charge. Then he whooped, because the monster did glide out of the end of the tunnel. There was a furious clatter around it, which puzzled him momentarily until he placed the strange sound. Arrows, smacking into the stone surface of the duct. Soldiers, firing from outside.
Standing at the lip of the tunnel, the world yawning wide before them, Perkar quickly assessed the tableau. Ten or so soldiers were hurriedly trading bows for swords; three more were running like frightened dogs. A wisp of rose curled against the western horizon was all that remained of the day, stars and moon smothered by churning clouds. The landscape was sand, scrub, and beyond that, green fields.
Shrieks went up as the demon fell among the men, and Perkar, remembering his battle with the Huntress, felt a brief, diluted pity.
They ran. Despite Tsem's huge frame and powerful legs, his wounds and weight were taking their toll; the giant was soon staggering. The shouts behind them were still too near.
"Come on," Perkar said. "I'll carry her."
"No," Tsem gasped. "No, I have her."
"Where? Where do we go?"
"West," he said. "West into the desert."
Where the Giant came by his energy, Perkar did not know, but he kept going. He resisted the urge to look back, knowing that Harka would warn him if the god-creature came close enough to be a danger. The sounds of combat died away behind them, just as they entered one of the fields. Knee-high plants, gray in the darkness, shivered in the wind.
"Best turn, Perkar," Harka said.
Perkar slowed and drew a long breath. "Keep going," he told Tsem. "Just keep going."
Waiting, legs braced wide, he watched for the thing. "At least I'll fight some part of the Changeling," he muttered.
"Too bad the soldiers didn't occupy it longer," Harka said. "If we could have managed to get farther from the River …"
"How much farther?"
"Farther than we can get, I'm afraid. See, there it is."
Perkar could make it out, running up one of the irrigation canals, a dancing, deadly, many-colored flame. Of course up one of the canals—the canals were part of the stinking River. He should move, fight it out in the field, where it might have less power. He glanced back at Tsem and Hezhi: They were still paralleling the watercourse, unaware. It might pass him by and follow them instead. He tightened his grip on Harka.
"Look," Harka seemed to whisper, though the "voice" in his ear was no softer than it ever was. "See its heartstrings?"
"I do," Perkar said. Seven strands of living light knotted together behind the ephemeral, monstrous form, bearing down on where he waited.
The ghost hesitated, perhaps puzzled by him. Staring at it towering over him, venomous, deadly, he saw no point in waiting for it to attack him. He shouted and slashed, Harka flaring with light, cascades of flame enveloping him. His blow went deep into nothing, until Harka's edge struck a heartstrand, and that split with a force that nearly tore the sword from his hands. Something struck into him, too, a deep flare of heat, liquid metal filling his bones, a pain unreal in its intensity.
"Fight, fight," Harka urged frantically. "We have two heartstrings left!"
Grimly Perkar struck back into the withering light.
Hezhi felt Tsem's blood soaking her, seeping through her clothes, sticky against her skin. Like honey. She wanted it all to stop, for Yen to be Yen and still alive, for Tsem to be unwounded, to have never even met the inhuman Perkar. She shut her eyes tight, wishing, wishing.
Tsem gasped and stumbled, nearly cried out. Two more steps, and the great legs folded them to the earth.
"Princess," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I have to rest, just for a moment. Keep this way, and I'll follow." "Tsem!" she urged. "No, Tsem."
He set her gently on her feet and then sank back to a sitting position. "Go on," he said.
Back behind them a shout rang out. Turning, she saw the ghost, a scintillating cloud, and the black shadow of a man silhouetted against it.
"This is what comes of my wishes," she muttered. "This." A hot surge of anger cut through, knifing up from below her fear and helplessness. Men were dying all around her, and she was curled up, wishing it all away—when she was the one who had wished it all into existence. Her mouth set in a little line, fists clenched, she stalked back toward Perkar and the ghost. She was not helpless. She was Hezhi Yehd Cha'dune, and ancestors of hers had tumbled cities.
She suddenly felt the River, pulsing along beside her in the irrigation canal, felt as if it were part of her own bloodstream. She drank from it, her arms and legs flaring with energy, stretching out and out until she could embrace the canal, the field, Perkar, the demon. The demon she did embrace, tightly, angrily.
It knew its danger; she felt its slow mind understand, and it flickered past Perkar, a spider made of lightning. She heard Perkar groan, but her attention was not on him anymore. She was actually smiling when her hand that was more than a hand reached out and into the ghost, seized the knotted strands of light within it and squeezed. Fire rushed up her arms, a brass drum crashing in her head with each heartbeat. The demon writhed in her grip, lashed at her, died. When it died, she ate it up. It was a fine meal, demon.
Hezhi cackled gleefully as her embrace grew to include everything around her, even things she could not see. The soldiers pursuing them, the walls of the city—and it was flowing out yet, a pool spreading.
She slapped at the soldiers first, though what she really wanted were the priests. The priests, who created Yen, the betrayer, the priests who put D'en down in the dark, who held her down, naked on the bed. She could make rubble of Nhol, and she would, she would. Feeling the walls, she marveled at how easily they might crumble. The soldiers were dead now, their feeble little lights gone. With sudden delight, Hezhi sensed what must be a priest, a sort of blank place, the shadow of a person. He was standing on the wall, watching her, chanting. She danced and shouted as she pulled him apart, sent the shreds of his spirit scattering around the city.
Nearer her, Perkar was still alive. He felt strange, stronger somehow than the others. Of course he did; Yen stabbed him in the heart and he was still alive. He was probably the only one here who could stop her, she mused. And so, laughing, she turned her attention to him, as he came unsteadily toward her. Yes, there was a little knot tying him to his sword. A simple enough thing to sever…