VIII Tales of the Changeling
PERKAR sat staring at the Blackgod for a long while. He noticed and understood Ngangata's occasional glances warning him to be cautious. Perkar felt he hardly needed such a warning, but then again, the record of his Ufe seemed to register one mistake after another. The Blackgod simply gazed at the fire, his lips moving every now and then, as if he were speaking to the Fire Goddess, but otherwise he remained cryptic—as unknown and unfathomable to Perkar as the marks that Hezhi made on her long white leaves.
Good Thief added nothing to the silence. He ate the dried meat they gave him without speaking; he seemed to have expended his energy not only for threats and self-recrimination but for everything else. More than once Perkar thought he had fallen asleep, but his eyes always fluttered back open.
Destroy the Changeling. Perkar had spent months denying to himself that such a thing was within his power. Good people had died when he believed it was. His king had died, and a war with the Mang had begun because a single, stupid boy had believed he could slay the unslayable.
Now a god who claimed to have created the world told him it was possible, that it had been a part of things all along.
And he was afraid to ask the vital question—afraid to ask how.
Because if Karak told him, he might believe. And if he believed…
Across the fire, the Blackgod raised his weird yellow eyes. He smiled, and Perkar saw, in the spooled lights and images of his memory, a great black bird, gripping Apad's shoulders, plunging his beak down into brain and blood, only to come up wearing the grin of a Crow.
“How?” he asked, knowing the question would damn him.
“How?” the Blackgod repeated, blinking at Perkar.
“No,” Ngangata stated flatly. “Perkar, let it go. Whatever he plans—whether he tells the truth now or not—it will not go well for «s.”
“You can ride away,” Perkar said. “In fact, I beg you to ride away. You have shared enough of my burdens, my friend.”
Ngangata worried at the fire with a stick, banked it a bit. “We should both ride away.”
Karak softly clucked with his tongue. “There is so much Alwat in you,” he said to Ngangata. “Always ready to let things be. Always satisfied with the way things are.”
“Things could certainly be worse,” Ngangata retorted.
The Blackgod nodded. “Alwat through and through. But your friend, here, is Human—through and through. Better, he is a hero.”
“Perkar knows my opinion of heroes,” Ngangata replied.
“Enough,” Perkar snapped. “Tell me. Explain to me how I can destroy a god who lies across the entire breadth of the world.”
“Oh, you cannot,” Karak said.
Perkar blushed with fury. “Then why did you say that I could?”
“Well, you can certainly help to slay him. It is within your power to bring about his destruction.”
“Karak—”
“Blackgod. ”
“Blackgod, then,” Perkar snapped. “Perhaps the gods enjoy such quibbling. Perhaps immortality twists you so. But I want no part of it. Speak to me plainly or do not speak to me at all.”
Karak's eyes flashed red and then white hot. A snarl curled his handsome lip, and he bolted to his feet. Perkar, suddenly filled with Harka's sense of danger, reached for the blade, but his hand never reached it.
The Blackgod clapped his hands together and lightning was born. Thunder came in the same instant, to shatter the very air around them. Perkar was flung back roughly, dazed by the blinding light and deafening noise. Both throbbed in his head. He was only dimly aware of being lifted bodily off the ground as someone took a double fistful of his shirt. A great river of flame still ran across his vision, and he was not even certain whether his eyes were open or closed. He fumbled again for Harka, but an iron claw closed around his sword wrist and held it with absolute strength.
He dangled there, held in the air by chest and arm, until the brightness across his eyes faded and he could make out the Blackgod's face, set and grim, inhuman. The brassy roar in his ears lingered.
The Blackgod was now white. His skin was ivory, his hair a cascade of thistledown, his eyes pearly slits with a single blue pinpoint to mark their pupils. His face was still essentially Human, but his nose had become a sharp alabaster beak, a dagger aimed between Perkar's eyes. Ngangata and Good Thief sprawled behind Karak, and Perkar could not tell if they were alive or not.
“Know this,” the god hissed, his voice cutting somehow through the crashing in Perkar's injured ears. “There are limits to the insolence I will tolerate from such as you. You will treat me with respect. You will do this, or I will turn your companion inside out. I will flay his skin, and then I will have yours.”
With that the god released Perkar. He tumbled roughly to the ground, dizzy, on the verge of violent illness.
“Now,” Karak said, in a more reasonable tone. “Now you can let me answer your question or you may politely ask me to leave. All other options include pain for you and yours. Do you understand this? Are you now aware of our respective positions?”
Perkar realized dully that blood was drizzling from his ears and down his neck. He wiped ineffectually at it.
“Y-yes,” he managed to stammer, though he could not hear even his own voice as well as he could that of the god.
“Fine. Now listen carefully. Long ago, the Brother of the Forest Lord did not walk long across the land as he does now. Long ago, he kept to a certain place, kept all of his water about him, contained. He was only tricked into releasing it, you see. But once he was running free, he became hungry. He became insatiable. He began to grow then, to eat everything.
“Until now, at least he has been lying in one bed, and so he eats only what he can reach from it. But he tries to throw pieces of himself out, toss them away but keep hold of them, too. This is so that he can wander where he does not flow and eat what is there, as well. He wants it all, you see?”
Perkar nodded, even as he coughed. The pain in his ears was sharpening, and he could not tell if that was Harka healing him or just the fading of shock and the return of sensation.
“Well, this girl Hezhi is such a piece of him. But you and I, Perkar—we took her away from him before she could be whole. Before she could be him. It was a near thing; you don't even know how near.”
“But now she is safe?”
“Safe? Oh, no, pretty thing. No, now he wants her back. She is his best hope and his most terrible danger. He is awake now—you awakened him—and he bends his huge will to reclaiming her. And he knows you, too, of course.”
“This Mang gaan, then. He serves the River?”
“Yes, in a sense. The River sends him dreams, shows him visions of greatness. He is one tool the River wields now.”
“There are others?”
“I can't see them well. They are still in his shadow, where my vision has trouble walking, with him awake. But something waits there in Nhol, ready to spring out across the plains. When it comes, it will be a whirlwind.”
“What then?” Perkar groaned. “What am I to do?”
“She can slay him,” the Blackgod answered, eyes narrowed to milky slits. “She must be brought to his source, to the spot he was born. There she can slay him.”
“Hezhi?”
“Good. You understand. Take her to his source.”
“And then?”
“Then she will slay him.”
“How?”
“That is not your concern. Suffice to say she will do so.”
Perkar opened his mouth to speak again and then thought better of it. He was afraid, and he realized that it was a sensation that bearing Harka had muted for some time. He searched for his earlier disdain, his passionate anger, and found it buried beneath terror.
“Take her to his source,” he said, repeating the Blackgod's words. “How shall we find it?”