“A lord and lady from Nhol, here. Then it was Ghan, wasn't it?”
Tsem nodded reluctantly, but they discussed it no further.
Not much later, Sheldu called a halt when another horse collapsed. They stopped and let the animals drink.
“Perkar and the Huntress are doing their work, I hope,” Sheldu said. “I don't hear any pursuit.”
“You won't,” Ngangata pointed out. “This gorge seals out sound from beyond itself. We won't hear them until almost they are upon us.”
“We have to rest, if just for a moment,” Brother Horse said. “Sheldu is right about that.”
Hezhi made certain that Tsem drank some water, and then she walked across the thick carpet of leaves to where Qwen Shen and Bone Eel sat against a tree bole.
When she approached, both quickly came to their feet and bowed.
“Princess,” Bone Eel said. “We are your humble servants. Forgive us for not introducing ourselves until now.”
“I have two questions, and no time for courtly protocol,” Hezhi snapped. “The first question is, why are you here?”
Qwen Shen bowed again. “Your father sent us, Princess, to save you from the agents of the priesthood.”
“My father? The priesthood?”
“Yes, Lady.”
Hezhi blew out a puff of air. “You can tell me more of that later. When you joined us, another man rode with you, a man who tumbled from his horse. Who was he?”
Bone Eel lowered his head. “I believe you knew him,” he said. “That was Ghan, the librarian. It was he who convinced the emperor of the need for our expedition. He was—we shall miss him. I'm sorry.”
Qwen Shen was nodding, and Hezhi thought she caught the sparkle of a tear in the woman's eye. She swallowed the tightness in her own throat.
“Ghan himself—why?”
“He learned of a plot to find you and kill you, or return you to the River. It was commanded by a young Jik, whom I believe you also knew.”
“I knew him in Nhol, and I have seen him more recently in a vision,” Hezhi muttered. “But he is dead. I saw him killed.”
“The priesthood has great power,” Bone Eel told her. “They can create sorcerous creatures. This 'Ghe' is not the man you knew.”
“The man I knew is not the man I knew,” she nearly snarled.
“Mount up!” Sheldu shouted. “We must continue.”
Hezhi leveled a cold gaze at the two. “I will hear more of this later, and I will know, too, how you came to be acquainted with this man Sheldu.”
“Ah,” Bone Eel began. “He is well traveled, an agent of sorts—”
“Later,” she repeated sharply. “I'm confused enough as it is. Much of what you say makes no sense. Just tell me this, quickly. You know what our mission is, here?”
Bone Eel nodded solemnly. “You seek to slay the River.”
“If you interfere, my friends will slay you, do you understand?”
“Indeed, Princess. We have no wish to interfere. It is what Ghan and the emperor agreed upon.”
Hezhi tried to keep her face neutral as she returned to Dark. They were lying, lying, lying, and she knew it. But how much of their talk was false?
Once back in the saddle, she leaned over to Tsem. “If those two do anything even slightly suspicious when we reach this place we are going,” she said softly, “I want you to kill them. Can you pass that along to Brother Horse and Yuu'han?”
Tsem's eyes widened in surprise. “Princess?”
“I mean it, Tsem. We've been through too much to allow agents of my father—or whomever they work for—to interfere. I don't trust them; they act as if they were friends of Ghan, but he would never be friends with such as they.” She paused and almost told him of Perkar's warning about Sheldu, but then she decided that it was best to give Tsem only one thing at a time to worry over.
They resumed, beneath a sky that had begun to don a cloak of dusky clouds. She thought that the rest had done the horses scant good, but the Mang and “Sheldu” probably had greater understanding of the needs of the beasts. Dark's flanks heaved and white foam matted her hair, and Hezhi worried; Dark was her first horse, a beautiful creature, and she did not want to see her die.
She regarded Sheldu as they rode along, searching for some sign of Karak in him. Could Perkar have been right? Was that what he was hiding from her? She tried to think back to what he said, but it was all confusion—at the time, her mind had been trying to understand about Ghan falling.
It had been he, but she couldn't dwell on that. Couldn't. She need only keep it back, away from her heart, for another day before allowing it to overwhelm her. She could do that. Now she had pressing things to puzzle over, important things.
She had glanced back up at “Sheldu,” intent on understanding what connection could exist between a Crow God and two nobles from Nhol, when the stream before them suddenly erupted into a fountain of sludge and spray. The nearest riders—Sheldu's vanguard—were bowled over by the explosion, and Sheldu himself was thrown from his rearing mount. Hezhi simply watched, gape-mouthed, at what took form.
Its upper part was salamander, thickly wrinkled, grayish black, with knobby little eyes and branching gills sweeping back from the sides of its head like feathery antlers. But it sprang forward on hind legs not unlike a man's, though the forelimbs were the stubby-fingered paws of an amphibian. Its toothless maw gaped open, easily wide enough to swallow a person.
GHE saw the Huntress first, felt the pulsing of power from the bizarre woman-thing. Her host was resonant with energy, too, and he realized now that Moss had not lied to him. Defeating this woman and her creatures would be no easy task. He gathered his own host within him, slashed his palm to release his black blood and potence, but even as it trailed along the ground and monsters of his making sprang up to challenge the wolves and savagely dressed men, he saw the demon descending on him.
Perkar, Ghan had called him, but to Ghe that meant only death. Shrieking, his features set in a grimly insane mask, the bone-faced man charged toward him.
Ghe wrapped himself in a cloak of wind, strengthened his living armor, knitted a shield of invisible fire for himself, and, devouring the flame of life in his horse, leapt from its back, flinging out his blood so that it formed into grass-bears and long-legged stalking things he had no name for. Let them deal with that blade, those iron-colored eyes. He himself flew like a spear toward the Huntress, certain that if he could devour her, nothing on earth could possibly stop him—not even his old death.
PERKAR screamed in frustration as the beasts spurted up around him and surrendered his rage to the song Harka sang as the sword directed his arm. He snarled with brutal satisfaction as a bear's head sprang from its massive shoulders and a gout of hot black blood struck him across the face even as Harka turned and swept like a scythe through a thin, skeletal abomination that resembled a praying mantis.
Around him, the armies came together, and the forest was suddenly a garden of death, the Mang skirling and the gods of the host venting unrecognizable sounds. From the corners of his eyes he noticed a rider and horse go down beneath the fangs and claws of a wolf; he saw a bear-man, blinded by two arrow shafts, wander into the decapitating edge of a curved Mang sword.
Claws raked against his hauberk and rings snapped with the force, and suddenly T'esh was shrieking and down; he leapt clear, and though he sought with Harka's edge to dispatch his foes, he searched with each free instant his eyes had for the Life-Eater. He finally saw him, as he stepped from the path of a dying bear; the Nholish man was a blur of flame and motion near the Huntress. Her spear had pierced him, but he strove up it, sliding the shaft through his own belly, and something like lightning cracked between them. His throat nearly raw with shouting, Perkar fought that way, and whatever came between him and the Tiskawa died.
Ghe reached the Huntress before Perkar fought his way through, however, and something like sunlight bloomed where they touched. The Huntress screamed, shrill and carrying. Perkar continued to fight, half blind, as his foes redoubled in number and ferocity, and when he again saw clearly, it was to behold the Tiskawa fight savagely from beneath a pile of rutkirul and wolves. As Perkar watched, however, these minions of the Huntress fell away, twitching, and the Tiskawa stood amongst their corpses.