"The Alwat must call another guide," he told them.
Perkar dismounted heavily. After days in the high reaches of foothills, the thicker air of the valley felt like water in his lungs. He sat down, rested his back against the frayed trunk of a cedar, and watched the Alwat.
At first, he thought that they were building a fire. They gathered branches, sorting them according to size. But then Digger, the young female, brought in hoops of grapevines and long, slender willow branches. The Alwat clustered around these things, chattering in low voices; one began striking a pair of sticks together—rather arrhythmically, Perkar thought—and chanting a song of two notes.
"Keep watch, Perkar," Apad said, nudging him. "We could be in danger." Apad was nervously fingering the hilt of his sword.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you think Ngangata and his kin will let your fight go unavenged?"
Perkar frowned, watched the stocky man-creatures continue their ritual. They had lashed the willow branches into a small tower, of sorts, the base ends of the shafts thrust into the moist earth, the tops tied together. Now they were weaving more of the grapevines in and out of the frame thus formed. The branches of various sizes went into this, as well.
One of the Alwat spat some gibberish at Ngangata, who nodded and walked over to the Kapaka; the two conversed in tones too low for the others to make out. After a moment, however, the king joined the Alwat, tentatively adding branches to the bizarre construction.
When the Alwat finally came away from the thing, gently tugging the Kapaka with them, it was the size and shape of a tall man. Twin branches projecting from the crown of the structure resembled the antlers of a stag.
"I don't like it," Eruka muttered, and Perkar silently agreed.
The oldest Alwa was still singing; the two notes had become three, and though Perkar certainly could not understand them, he could tell that what she was singing were words and not merely syllables. Now, more than ever, he wished that he could ask Ngangata what was happening, and he gritted his teeth at his self-imposed ignorance.
Leaves stirred on the forest floor, took tentatively, then joyfully, to the air, swirling around the Alwat creation as if it were the center of a whirlwind. The woven saplings began to quiver. A god was coming, Perkar could see that easily enough; the air began to tremble, blurring the image of the Alwat standing behind their construction.
When it happened, it was rather sudden, as in the moment when something hidden is recognized. Perkar had experienced such a feeling before, staring at a tangled maze of branches and tree trunks that did not so much hide as camouflage a deer. Once the deer was seen, you realized it had always been there, wondered why you hadn't seen it before. It was in this manner that the goddess appeared; Perkar suddenly saw that she had been there all along, amongst the Alwat-woven branches.
In form, she was much like a rather tall Alwa, but her limbs and torso were covered more thickly and evenly by coarse black hair. The hair on her face was even more pronounced, black but with faint gray markings. From her head, antlers spread proudly. And yet Perkar could see that the antlers were still wooden rather than horn. That this was a goddess was more than clear; she was unclothed—though she bore a sheaf of arrows and a bow—and obviously female. She smiled a wide, enigmatic Alwat smile.
"Welcome, Kapaka, Prince of the Human People," she said. Her voice was a burring kind of sound, filled with vibration and resonance.
"Thank you, Goddess," the Kapaka said. "I have brought gifts for you, and for the Lord of the Forest."
"Our Lord will distribute whatever gifts you bring," the goddess said. "As for me, this form you have provided me is a fine gift—rare that I am incarnate in this fashion, and it pleases."
"You are more than welcome," the Kapaka said. "But still, I would offer you something, if you are to guide us to…"
"I shall take you to him," she interrupted, seeming amused. "Worry not. The Alwat know to call upon me, and not some more feckless god."
"I regret," the Kapaka told her, "that I know not your name nor any song of yours. But I have brought a singer along." He indicated Eruka, who might have shrunk back just a bit. "He can learn one, if you will teach him, and we will sing it in our damakutat through the winter months."
"You may call me Paker," she said, and now there was certainly humor in her expression; her generous lips parted to reveal a row of sharp, shining teeth. "You may call me Apa, Bari, Ngati. Or you may call me Huntress. I care not."
"Those are other names for the Forest Lord," Eruka whispered, so that Perkar—but surely not she—could hear. Even so, her smile broadened.
"And here," she said, stepping away from the Kapaka and toward the other Humans. "What is this? What scent is this?" She walked to Perkar, growing taller, it seemed, as she came. She reached out with one furred, long-fingered hand and very, very lightly touched his cheek.
"How sweet," she said. "How very sweet." But her grin was carnivore, a tiger sizing up a meal. Stepping away from Perkar, she seemed, for an instant, lost in thought, until her head snapped back up and around, black eyes flashing suddenly yellow and green, iridescent.
"Come now," she said.
The rest of the journey was dreamlike; Perkar remembered striding over chasms on the woven backs of branches, groves parting for them, dark hollows that seemed more like cists beneath the earth than anyplace aboveground. At last they descended farther still, into what amounted to a huge bowl-shaped depression, a valley within a valley. The walls were of crumbling stone, and the dark mouths of caves gaped at them as they passed.
"Are these the dwellings of the Forest Lord?" Perkar asked.
The Huntress shrugged. "I suppose. He dwells in them at times."
"Damp, dank places," another voice said. Startled, Perkar turned toward it.
It was a raven that spoke, a raven the size of a large dog. He sat, grinning, on a low branch, eyes glittering like jewels in deep water.
"Huntress, what do you bring me?" the Raven asked their guide.
"Pretty things," she said. "Pretty little things to line your nest with, to show the other gods when you come to the feasts."
The Raven lifted one leg nervously from his branch, clenched his claws closed, then flexed them open, renewed his grip on the limb.
"I see no pretty things," he complained. "Nothing pretty at all."
"As you say, then," the Huntress said. "And so we shall bid you good day."
"Wait," the Raven croaked, cocking his head suspiciously. "Perhaps they have pretty things with them."
The Huntress sighed and turned to the Kapaka. "Best give him something, I think. He can be childish at times."
The Kapaka nodded and opened his treasure bag, felted and embroidered with clouds and feathers. He searched about for a moment.
"Here is this," he said at last. He held up a sparkling brooch, silver with a blood red garnet.
"Pretty," said the Raven. "Yes, pretty. Perhaps you have more."
"I know you," Eruka interrupted. The Raven looked puzzled— he tried to shift his glance to Eruka but at the same time seemed unwilling to take his regard from the jewelry.
"Know me?" the Raven asked.
"Yes," Eruka told him. He coughed and then sang:
I swallowed the Sun
A pretty light
Thus I was, thus I am
I brought up land
And spread it out
Thus I was, thus I am
I carry Lightning
To glitter at night
Thus I was, thus I am
I painted the birds
Who sing in flight
Thus I was, thus I am…
"Thus I was, thus I am," the Raven repeated. "An old song, sung long ago. Almost I have forgotten it."
"You are Karak, the Crow God," Eruka said.
"I know who I am," the bird replied testily.
"Yes, and I know who you are, as well," the Huntress put in. "And if you do not cease your prattling and let us be on our way, I will add another feather to you—on the end of a hard, straight shaft."