“Yes, I know,” Ngangata assured him.
“What? What does he mean?”
“He is perhaps delirious.”
“Tell me what he said,” Hezhi insisted, and then to Perkar, in Nholish: “Perkar! Tell me.”
Perkar's eyes opened wider, but his voice dropped away.
“He seeks you,” the faint breath from his mouth said. “The River seeks you. You must go to She'leng, the mountain. Look for signs …” His mouth kept working, but even the semblance of sound failed.
“His body seems a bit stronger,” Ngangata remarked after a moment. “But he should be well now. What did Brother Horse tell you?”
“That he has had a witching placed on him.”
“No more?”
“More,” Hezhi admitted, “but I must think on it.”
“Think quickly, then,” the half man urged, “if there is anything you can do.”
Behind her, Tsem growled. “Have a care, creature,” he said, the Mang thudding clumsily, like stones from his mouth.
Ngangata frowned but did not reply. Nor did he relinquish the hold of his gaze on her for several more heartbeats.
“I will think quickly,” she said, and left the tent. Tsem followed her, but not without casting a hard glance back.
“Thank you, Tsem,” she told him once they were outside, “but Ngangata is right. I can't let him die.”
“You could. It might save us a lot of trouble.”
“No, Tsem, you know I can't.”
He grumbled incoherently and shrugged a bit.
“Ngangata is like you, you know.”
“His mother a Giant? I think not.”
“You know what I mean.”
Tsem nodded sadly down at his feet. “Yes, Princess, I know what you mean. You mean we are alike in what we are not, not in what we are”
“Oh.” She hadn't thought of it that way, but that was exactly what she had meant. Each was half Human and half… something else. What they were not was fully Human.
“Tsem, I—” But there was nothing right to say about that now. Instead she threw up her hands in frustration. “Leave me alone for a bit,” she said at last.
“Princess, that would be unwise.”
“Stay near the door. If anything happens, I will cry out.”
She thought, briefly, that he would disobey her, but he did not, and brushed open the doorflap with his enormous palm.
Alone on the stoop, she once more contemplated the drum.
It seemed alive; larger drums had begun thundering, out where the Mang were holding their ceremony, and the small hand drum shivered in sympathy with its brother instruments.
She remembered Perkar, the rides they had taken together, the brightening in his eyes when he spoke of his homeland. She recalled only a few days before, when he had shown her the wild cattle, the sudden intense affection that had seized her. How could she let some black creature eat all of that, if she had the choice? Perkar said he had done terrible things—and she believed him. But she had also done terrible things. And some feeling for Perkar rested in her, she knew that now, for it had glowed hot with pain when he left her to go to see the Stream Goddess, and it lay chill in her now like a frozen bone. She had denied that it was love—and it wasn't, not the sort of love that made you want to marry someone—but it was a fragile thing, a part of her that existed only because she knew him. And when it was not hot or chill, it was warm and pleasant. Not comfortable, but more like the itchy moment before laughing or crying with joy.
And, even all of that aside, Perkar knew something, something important about her.
So there was no question of letting him die; she must admit that now to herself as she had to Tsem earlier. There were few paths open to her, and that admission closed all but one for now.
Tomorrow she would ask Brother Horse to instruct her. She did not really trust him, not anymore, and the other Mang were clearly less trustworthy even than he. Their treatment of Perkar, even after months of companionship, testified to where strangers stood among these people.
But Perkar was dying and the River was after her. Perkar had said so, said that she must go to She'leng. She'leng, the mythical mountain from which he issued. If the River sought her, why should she fly to his very head? It made no sense to her, but Perkar had spoken to one of his gods, one that had aided their escape from Nhol, one who seemed inclined to help them. But what did it mean, and why? “Look for signs,” Perkar had whispered, but she didn't know what that meant, either. Perhaps none of it meant anything, as sick as he was, but she had to know, had to do something. Once again she was being tossed about by forces she did not understand, and that she could not tolerate. She needed information; she needed power. All of that lay in the little drum.
“How fares your friend?” a quiet voice asked, interrupting her thoughts. She turned, startled.
It was the strange Mang, Moss, the one who had found her in the desert. He had come up, apparently, from behind the yekt. Sneaking up on her? She prepared to call for Tsem.
“I mean you no harm,” the young man assured her quietly. “Really. I only meant to inquire after the stranger.”
“What business is that of yours? He is not kin to you.” She emphasized the word in a sudden disgust for the whole concept. Her “kin” back in Nhol had never cared for her; for her worth as a bride perhaps, but never for Hezhi. They would have placed her below the Darkness Stair and forgotten her. Family were people who never earned your respect or love but demanded it nevertheless. These Mang took that to such a ridiculous extreme she wanted to shout with laughter and disdain.
Moss did not flinch from her words or her rude, direct gaze. He only bowed slightly. “That is true, and to be honest, I will neither be happy nor sad if he dies. I will only be disappointed that the hospitality of this camp was violated.”
“That means nothing to me. You Mang make much of your laws and traditions, but like everyone else in the world, you compromise them the moment they seem encumbering.”
“Some do, that is true, when the danger seems great enough, when temper flares. That is not to say we ever discount our ways.”
“Words,” Hezhi scoffed. “What do you want of me?”
Moss' face held nothing but concern, but Hezhi had seen that before, on the face of another young and handsome man, and she would not be fooled twice in the same lifetime in the same way.
“I wanted only to explain.”
“Why do you owe me any explanation?”
“I do not,” Moss replied, and for the barest flicker his green-tinted eyes lit with some powerful emotion, then became carefully neutral. He was not, Hezhi reminded herself, more than two or three years older than she was herself.
“I do not,” he repeated, “and yet I want to speak to you.”
“Speak, then, but don't bother to try to fool me with any false concern. It only makes me angry.”
“Very well,” he said. He glanced back toward the western quarter of the camp; the drums were beating frantically as the fire threw new stars at the night sky.