Ngangata watched her expectantly.
“I don't know,” she said at last. “I'm not sure what is going on.”
“You've heard about the war?”
She nodded. “Yes, just today. Some men came in earlier. They found me out in the desert—”
“Found you?”
Hezhi helplessly realized that she was only making things more confused. “I was walking over in the cliffs,” she explained. “Two Mang men from the west found me.”
“Found you in the cliffs? What were they doing over there?”
“I don't…” She didn't know. “That's a good question,” she finished. “It isn't on their way, is it?”
“Leave that for a moment,” Ngangata said. “What have you heard about the war?”
“Not much. Just that there is one, Perkar's people and the Mang. There was an argument between those men and Brother Horse. He told them they were not to attack the two of you. I guess he doesn't have much authority over them.”
“It's too bad he didn't have even less,” Ngangata said wryly. “If they had simply attacked Perkar, he would have killed them with his sword; that much is a fact. As it was, they challenged him to a 'game'—you see the outcome.”
“I don't know,” Hezhi said. “You know more about bar—about these people than I do. If there were a real fight, with swords and everything, wouldn't others join in?”
Ngangata nodded. “Probably. It might have even turned into a little war, with Brother Horse's closest kin trying to protect his hospitality. All in all it was probably best this way. His sword will still heal him.”
Tsem returned with a damp cloth and a basin. She reached for it, but he gently held her away and began sponging Perkar's chest himself. Hezhi started to protest, but realized that Tsem probably knew more of what he was about than she did.
“I've seen him with worse wounds and still capable of walking and talking,” she commented. “Worse looking, anyway.”
“As have I,” Ngangata agreed, and Hezhi thought she caught a deep worry in his burring voice. He did not, however, offer anything further.
Tsem wiped Perkar's face, and the young man hacked again, moaning a bit.
“Did he find what he went looking for?” she asked.
“I suppose. I think he learned much. We learned about the war, at any rate.”
“From this goddess of his?”
“And from another god. From Karak, the Raven.”
Hezhi pursed her lips. “Perkar told me of that one. It was he who set you and Brother Horse to watching for us, when we fled the city.”
“Yes. It was also he who tricked Perkar and his friends into betraying our king. He is a strange, willful god.”
Hezhi sighed and shook her head. “I know nothing of these gods. They are all strange to me.” Monsters, she finished inwardly.
“I don't know everything he learned from Karak,” Ngangata went on. He seemed to want to tell her something, but was trying to work to it carefully.
“Weren't you there?”
“I didn't hear the conversation. But afterward, Perkar was eager to return here, to find you. I think Karak told him something about you, something important.”
“Oh?”
Tsem growled low in his throat. “I like this not at all, Princess,” he muttered. “Too much, happening too fast. Too many people wanting you again.”
“I know, Tsem.”
“What do you mean?” Ngangata queried. “What is this?”
“Those Mang who met me in the desert. They acted as if they wanted something from me, too.”
“And they found you in the cliffs, though no trail from the west passes near. That means they were looking for you.”
Hezhi tried to deny that with a little shake of her head. “They might have seen me run into the cliffs.” But they hadn't. She knew that, somehow. “No, you're right, Ngangata. They were looking for me. And Brother Horse put me in this yekt, as soon as we returned, and set his nephews to guard me. He could tell something was wrong.” She did not add that she was worried even about Brother Horse's intentions. No one who could not see into him would understand, would merely think she had become mad with paranoia.
Ngangata nodded slowly. “Something with big feet is walking,” he muttered. “We were attacked by Mang, as well, up at the stream. They were looking for us. They said that a prophet had seen us in a vision. Perhaps he saw you, too.”
“But Perkar knows more.”
“He does, but he was tight-lipped with me. Whatever he learned worried him.” Ngangata chewed his lip, and then went on. “I did hear Karak say that there was some connection between this gaan and the Changeling.”
A sudden bright chill crawled along Hezhi's spine. “The Changeling? The Riverr
“Call him what you will.”
“I thought he could not reach this far.”
“Not with his own fingers, perhaps,” Ngangata answered. “But perhaps with the hands of a Mang shaman he can.”
Hezhi heard her voice tremble. “He wants me back, doesn't he? He will have me back.” And she realized that, once again, the scale on her arm was itching dully. She reached to touch it.
And gasped; the room seemed to turn around, sidewise, so that she could see it all from a different angle. Tsem and Ngangata appeared hollowed out, skeletal, and the fire in its hearth was a dancing blade with laughing eyes. Perkar…
Perkar was hardly there at all. His skin glowed translucent, and at his side there lay a god. She could not look at it, at that nightmare jumble of wings and claws and keen, sharp edges. It hurt her, scratched at her inside as if there were a man in her head with a sword, swinging it. She lifted up her sight, tried to tear it away entirely, but Perkar himself riveted her attention.
On his chest crouched a blackness, a crawling, shuddering blackness. As she watched, long hairs as thick as wheatstraw grew from it, wrapped sluggishly around Perkar, and reached inside of him to seize his bones.
The blackness opened a yellow eye and stared at her, and she screamed. She screamed and ran, tripped, sprawled, and scrambled back up. Even when Tsem caught her she kept trying to run, kicking at his shins and wailing, eyes closed, shuddering.
When finally she opened them again, the room was as it had been before.
But she knew now. She had seen it.
“Tsem, go get Brother Horse,” she choked out. “Go and hurry. And let me sit outside.”