Though she fought the sensation, Hezhi quickly felt hemmed in. The realization that she could not rise up, even to a crouch, was accompanied by the overwhelming desire to do so. Her breath became rapid, and she tried to move along more quickly, as if racing with her lungs. Images of the tube being blocked at the other end kept coming into her mind. Then she would be forced to back out, something she was not certain was possible. She began to tremble. What was she doing? This was insane! The shaft was becoming smaller as she went along!
The air seemed bad, too, thick, and her lungs had no room to fill completely.
Hezhi was close—very close—to screaming when she finally saw the end of the duct. She scrambled toward it so frantically that she extinguished the lamp. She did not stop to relight it, but wriggled on and on, until at last her head emerged into a larger space. There she gasped, drawing deep, full breaths, trying to calm down. She relit the lamp with her last two matches.
She knew where she should be, but this was another instance of paper not preparing one for reality.
The ancient Grand Hall was still magnificent. Even with water standing deep on its floor, even with piles of rubble sloping down from the walls, it was awesome. The ceiling arched up, its roof unreachable by her tiny light. Thick, ornate pillars rose to help the buttresses in the corner support that vast midnight, strips of gold and lapis here and there glittering dully beneath coats of muck. The Chakunge's dais was a many-tiered pyramid, rising above the water, still impressive in ruin. At each corner of each step crested an alabaster wave, frozen forever in the act of curling back down to the River. The tube opened above the first step emerging from the unrippling real water that filled the cavern. Carefully, quietly, she lowered herself onto the dais. She took up her little lamp.
"I'm here, D'en," she whispered. "Where are you?"
Her voice trembled in the magnificent abyss.
XI
The Cursed
Perkar awoke to morning light. He had been dreaming of the city and the girl, of the River. He was cold.
A chill mist was settling down from the hills; a few birds were chattering in the trees. Perkar was thirsty, his mouth as dry as cotton. He felt for his waterskin and found it, drained what remained there. The water burned terribly going down, and then he remembered his throat, reached up to feel for the hole. There was much blood there, clotted and congealed, but the wound had closed.
"One heartstring left. You are a lucky man."
"I don't feel lucky," he tried to mutter, but only a strangling noise emerged from his throat. The dead lioness lay across most of his body, and she was heavy. It took much wriggling and squirming to extract himself. Her weight had shoved the arrow in his chest all the way through, and so saved him the effort of doing it himself. He reached back and grasped it on the shaft below the protruding head and pulled it on out. The one in his ribs he was able to extract more easily; the hauberk had all but stopped it.
Removing his armor was actually more painful than extracting the arrows; many of the bright rings were crusted to his rapidly healing wounds, which began bleeding afresh as he removed the ruined hauberk. Freed of that, he felt a bit better; lighter anyway. One heartstring left.
"Surely she knew," he gasped, managing a faint whisper this time.
"Who knows? Gods can be fully as careless as mortals. Perhaps she did not know me."
"Should she have?"
"She has never wielded me or met me in battle."
Grimacing with a hundred pains, Perkar staggered to his feet, leaned against a scrubby tree for support. Mang—or what the wolves had left of Mang—lay not far away. He wondered why they had not eaten him, as well. Apad had not been spared that fate; Perkar could see his savaged body a few strides away, along with the two Bear-Men he had killed. Three dead wolves and the lioness were the only other testimony to their battle.
The sword Apad had been wielding lay near him, quiet now. For a moment, Perkar considered taking it; it seemed in many ways more powerful than the one he bore. But it hadn't saved Apad, and the jade sword had saved him, for better or worse. He arranged the curved blade on Apad's chest and left it there, regretting he had no time to bury his friend. He had to go, though. He might still be of some use to the Kapaka. He did spare the time to sing the "Ghost Homecoming Song" for Apad. He burned the last of his incense while singing; some for Apad, some for Mang, and after a moment's hesitation, some for his slain enemies.
Return to Your Mountain
Ani Waluka, Rutkirul,
Lioness.
Don new armor
Walk forth anew
We may meet again
As friends…
Feeling a bit stronger, he turned and, for the second time, began ascending the last ridge before the River, following the tracks of the hunt.
Perkar found the Alwat at the top of the hill where he had left them. They had acquitted themselves well, armed only with cane spears. He wished he could have seen them fight. Five dead wolves were mute testimony to their determination. Digger lay curled around her torn throat, one hand still grasping her spear; the other end of it was fixed in the mouth of a wolf; the point emerged at the base of its skull. Inexplicably, tears started in his eyes, though years later he could not explain why he chose that moment to cry and not one earlier or later. He sank to his knees, sobbing. For himself, he supposed, for Digger, for Apad, for the nameless woman back in the cave.
Still blinking back tears, Perkar started down the slope. Gravel and scrub soon gave way to sloping expanses of red, sandy rock. It was, in fact, a plateau of solid stone, though soil filled low places and creases in it, giving tenuous purchase to the roots of short thick pines and cedars. Occasional deeper depressions held horsetails and willow, small wet islands of green amidst the rust.
Even on stone, the tracks of the hunt were clear, scratches in the rock, the shed hair of beasts, a stray arrow here and there. He strained his senses for some audible sign of the hunt or his companions, but, try as he might, he heard nothing save the wind; the world seemed all silence and blue sky, the clouds and thunder that rode with the hunt now flown far away.
At least he had seen no other Human bodies. The rest of the expedition had made it this far. He suddenly wondered if he had lain as dead for a single night or many. He asked the sword.
"Two nights. This is the third day since your battle."
Then his remaining companions were dead or escaped, proba-bly the former. But surely he would find their bodies; the Huntress had not made trophies of Apad or himself.
It took longer than he thought it would to reach the gorge, and there he found Eruka. The flaxen-haired singer stared up at the sky with empty eye sockets, his mouth slack. The godsword was still clutched in his hand. There were two dead wolves nearby, and much blood on the stones. Tracks led to the edge of the gorge.
The Changeling had cut deep into the stone, deep indeed, and the striated walls of the ravine were sheer and unforgiving. There was no path down that he could see, only the precipice. Steeling himself, Perkar gazed over the rim and thus saw the Changeling for the first time outside of a dream.
It both did and did not resemble his visions. Even in the sunlight, the River appeared cold, shadowed, the color of a killer's gray-eyed glance. Fast-flowing, gnawing eternally at the stone, he hissed hungrily between close walls. He was not huge or wide here—not the horizon-spanning monster of Perkar's nightmares— but for being this close to his source, the Changeling was broad indeed, a faint but certain promise of the River by the white city.
How had his companions gotten down? The hunt must have stopped here, and Ngangata and the Kapaka were yet unaccounted for. They had to have descended to the River. He peered over the edge, puzzled. There were no hidden paths there, no switchback trails in the absolute verticality of the walls.