His deep voice bellowed out into the evening air, and three dozen Mang heads turned in their direction. Though they could not understand his words, most smiled and a few laughed, for off-key is off-key in any language.
“Abig monkey! Him love Hezhi!”
Tsem shouted on, until Hezhi was wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.
“Stop, stop,” she said. “We've too many serious things to worry about.”
“You told me to sing,” Tsem answered.
“You haven't sung that to me in a long while.”
“Well, you haven't asked me to, and when you got a bit older and started wandering about with D'en so much, Qey and J'ehl had little trouble finding time for their passions.”
“I still refuse to credit that!”
“Believe it, little Princess. I could not imagine such a thing myself were it not true.”
“I think you imagine sex all of the time!”
“Yes, but not with Qey!”
She chuckled at that, too, but her brief happiness was already waning. It amazed her that she could have forgotten her troubles for even such a trivial moment, but Tsem had always been good at that.
“You are a big monkey,” she told him. ”And I love you.”
Tsem blushed but read her sobering mood, and from long experience he made no attempt to keep her laughing.
“I know, Princess, and thank you. Out here it is good to have someone who loves you.”
Hezhi turned her face back to the bonfire. She felt braver, and dared to look at it full on. “You've never said anything truer than that,” she said.
There was a small cough behind them. Hezhi turned to see Brother Horse regarding them.
“I need to speak to you, Granddaughter.”
“Call me Hezhi,” she said, frowning.
He sighed. “Hezhi.”
“Tsem will stay with us,” she informed him.
“Very well. An old man will sit, if you don't mind.”
“I don't mind.”
Brother Horse shook his head. “Look at that. They don't need to make the fire that big! They must have burned everything for a hundred leagues.”
Hezhi frowned over at the old man to let him know that today she had no patience for the Mang propensity to chitchat before getting down to the business at hand. He caught the hint.
“Perkar is very ill,” he announced, the playfulness suddenly gone from his voice and replaced by an almost shocking weariness. “He has been witched.”
“Witched?”
“You saw the thing on his chest.”
“I saw it.”
“You are strong, or you would be mad now. What you saw was a sort of spirit—something like a ghost, or god—perhaps the offspring of a ghost and a god. We call them 'Breath Feasting,' because they eat the life in a person. Usually they eat it right away, but Perkar's sword continues to heal him.”
“I don't understand. I thought Perkar was hit with a Slap paddle.”
“It must have been a witched paddle. Such things have been known to happen.”
“You mean someone did this to him.”
Brother Horse nodded. “Of course. It would have to be a gaan, someone with the power to bind spirits.”
“Like yourself, you mean.”
The old man grunted. “No. Someone with much more power than I ever possessed. Someone who could put the Breath Feasting in a Slap paddle and command it to wait.” He turned a frank gaze on her. “I know you were frightened by what you saw in me. I know you do not trust me now, and I should have explained before you saw. But I never believed that you could see into me so easily. That is one of the hardest things to do, to see a gaan. Gods are often disguised by mortal flesh, even from the keenest gazes. You must forgive me, you see, for I never thought that even if you did see into me, it would frighten you. I forget, sometimes, what it means to be from Nhol, where there is no god but the Changeling.”
Hezhi pursed her lips in aggravation and thrust out her jaw, trying to retain her bravery of a moment before. Tsem, beside her, was a presence of enormous comfort. “Are you telling me you are some sort of god?”
“What? Oh, no. No. But there are gods in me. Very small ones, very minor ones.”
“In you? I don't understand that.”
“There are many kinds of gods,” Brother Horse began, after a moment's pause to collect his thoughts. “There are those that live in things—like trees and rocks—and there are those that govern certain places, certain areas of land. There are also the Mountain Gods, whom we call the Yai, and they are different yet again; they are the ancestors of the animals, as Horse Mother is the begetter of all horses, as Blackgod is the father of all crows, and so forth. Those are the most powerful gods, the gods of the mountain.”
“Yes, this was explained to me,” Hezhi said, uncomfortably.
He nodded. “The Mountain Gods have younger relatives who walk about. Small gods cloaked in the flesh of animals—such as those we select for the Horse God Homesending that we hold tonight.”
“I know that, as well.”
“Such gods dwell in flesh, sometimes in places, and those places are like their homes, their houses. But when their house is destroyed—when their bodies are killed or their place ruined—then they are without homes. They must return to the great mountain in the west to be reclothed in skin. However, it is possible to offer them—or sometimes compel them—to make another home, here.” He tapped his chest with a forefinger. ”That's why we call this yekchag tse'en, 'Mansion of Bone.' You saw the dwellers in my mansion, child. Two spirits live within me and serve me, though they have, like myself, grown old and weak.”
Hezhi took that in doubtfully. “And what do these gods do, living in your chest?”
“First and foremost, they dim the vision” the old man said gently. “They toughen you so that the sight of a god does not enter you like a blade, to cut out your sense. Once you have a single familiar, no matter how weak, then you can resist.”
She suddenly understood what Brother Horse was getting at, and her eyes widened in horror. “You aren't saying I have to do that? Have one of those things inside of me.”
Brother Horse examined his feet rather closely. “It isn't bad,” he said. “Most of the time you never need them or notice them.”
“No!”