His audience rustled. In some stories Khadi, one of the gentler Gunni forms of Kina, had had a husband, Bhima, who also counted the Destroyer among his many names.
All Gunni Gods have bunches of names. They get a little hard for an outsider to keep straight because when they change their names they also change their attributes. It gets particularly confusing when you have two aspects of the same god getting into an ass-kicking contest with each other.
"And this Chevi has what to do with Kina's origins?" Sleepy demanded.
"Oh, he's the one who did all the mean things to her, like chopping her up and scattering the pieces all over. But she also kills him. And brings him back to life."
"Murgen. I'm considering sending you back to the Taglians for some more rework."
"All right. Chevi has more than one wife. But there used to be only one. That was Camundamari, who has several other names, naturally. Camundamari was very dark-skinned. The other gods mocked her and called her Blackie."
Interesting. Both Khadi and Kina can mean black in some Taglian usages, though "syam" is the common and conventional word.
Murgen continued, "When Chevi himself started taunting her she flew into a huge rage, tore her skin off, and turned into Ghowrhi, the Milky One. The shed skin became Kalikausiki, which filled itself up on blood sucked from demons, then became Khat-hi, the Black One."
"Kina is a skinwalker!" Suvrin cried, startling everyone. Skinwalkers were a demonic terror little known outside Suvrin's homeland. Skinwalkers killed a man, sucked out his flesh and bones, put on his skin and stole his life. The details are pretty gruesome. Skinwalker folklore strikes me as a way for ignorant people to explain radical and bizarre changes in personality. Shifts I believe are due to poorly understood diseases. Or maybe just due to getting old.
Murgen was startled by Suvrin's outburst. Which seemed excessive to me, too. "Not a skinwalker in the way you mean," Murgen said.
Was there something in Suvrin's background?
The concept of a monster able to steal someone else's identity that way is particularly grotesque. I have seen a lot of strange and ugly things. Tobo's hidden folk are only the latest on a long list. But Skinwalkers are one horror that just seems too terrible to be true.
Like the gods themselves of late there have been no manifestations before reliable witnesses. We were talking ancient legends tonight. Suvrin had referenced one of the most obscure.
I said, "Believe me, Suvrin, if there were any real skinwalkers down your way you can bet the Shadowmasters would've rooted them out and used them up. What a weapon, eh?"
"I guess," Suvrin admitted. Reluctantly.
"That's wonderful," Sleepy grumped. "Ghost-story time is over, boys. Now we let Murgen finish. He is going to finish, isn't he? Because I want to get back to what this meeting is supposed to be all about." She swung a deadly finger. "Don't you even think about puking up another wisecrack, Willow."
Swan grimaced. He had live ammunition and no ready target. Then he grinned. A time would come.
I said, "Murgen?"
"There isn't much more. Baladitya says most of the high points of the mythology agree. There's more of a death goddess to her nature over there. She's always referenced as living in a cemetery."
"She does that here, doesn't she?" I asked. "When Sleepy and Lady and you, especially, talk about your nightmares, that place you go with all the bones? That could be a Gunni style cemetery."
The Gunni burn their dead to purify them before their souls line up for reassignment in the next life. But the fires are never hot enough to consume the major bones. If a burning ground is near a major river the leftovers are generally deposited there. But a lot of places are not near a major river. And some are not near a source of firewood. And some families never save up enough to buy wood that is available.
Bones pile up.
These places are not often seen by anyone but the priests who attend them, the men in yellow who revere Majayama but watch over their shoulders because Kina and her pack of pet demons supposedly lived beneath the bone piles. Even though Kina is known to be chained up under the glittering plain until the Year of the Skulls.
I said, "I've got a lot of time to think these days. One of the things I've been pondering is why there are so many different stories about Kina. And I think I've figured it out."
My ego got a boost. Even Sleepy seemed interested, despite herself. My wife, perhaps less enthralled, suggested, "Do go on," in a tone implying that she knew there would be no stopping me anyway.
"In those days the Company... "
"Croaker!"
"Sorry. Just seeing if you were listening. What clued me was the fact that there isn't any uniform Gunni doctrine. There isn't much of an hierarchy amongst Gunni priests, either, except locally. There's no central arbiter of what constitutes acceptable or unacceptable dogma. Kina isn't alone in being the subject of a hundred conflicting myths. The whole pantheon is. Pick any god you want. When you travel from village to village you'll find him wearing different names, different myths, getting mixed up with other gods, and on and on and on. We see the confusion because we're travelers. But up until the Shadowmaster wars almost nobody in these parts ever went anywhere. Generation after generation, century after century, people were born, lived and died in the same few square miles. You only had a few gem traders and the Strangler bands moving around. Ideas didn't travel with them. So every myth gradually mutates according to local experience and prejudice. Now first the Shadowmasters and then we land in the middle of all this... "
We? A glance around showed me just three other people who had not grown up in this end of the world. For a moment I felt ancient and out of place and found myself recalling an old piece of poetry that said something to the effect: "Soldiers live. And wonder why." Meaning, why am I the one, of all those who marched with the Company when I was young, who is still alive and kicking? I do not deserve it any more than any of those men. Maybe less than some.
You always feel a little guilty when you think about it. And a little glad it was somebody else, not you.
"That's it. We're travelers. That's why it all seems alien and contradictory. Wherever we are, most of us are outsiders. Even when we do belong to the majority religion." A glance around showed me that hardly any of my audience were Gunni, either. "Well, that's my piece."
"All right, then," Sleepy said. "Back to practical problems. How do we deal with the Daughter of Night and the Goblin thing?"
"That's practically the same thing as a skinwalker," Suvrin said. "Kina put him on like a suit of clothes." Suvrin had skinwalkers on the brain tonight.
"The Daughter of Night!" Sleepy snapped. "I want to hear about the Daughter of Night. Not about Kina. Not about skinwalkers. Not about old Voroshk sorcerers, not about old librarians and not about anything else. And, Lady, if you really don't want the girl killed, then come up with an idea for disarming her that's better than any idea for taking her out. Because you're the only one here letting emotion get in the way."
77
Above Ghoja: Seeking the One Safe Place
Goblin and the girl both rode, though their mounts remained skittish and frightened and Goblin's had to be kept in blinders so that it could not see its rider. Neither animal was allowed to look back. Goblin himself wore a rag to protect his damaged but nearly healing eyes.