Gregory Keyes - Waterborn

"Now tell me," Perkar insisted, days later. A pair of boys and a girl laughed nearby, chased a wooden hoop across the red sand of the village square. Sparks swept up from the fire, twining up an invisible tree of wind to join the darkening sky. A cool dry breeze padded down from the mesa, breathed across them promises of autumn, coursed on east.

Perkar, Brother Horse, Ngangata, and a Mang warrior named Yuu'han gathered about the fire in what Brother Horse named a Wheel of Words. Hezhi sat outside of the circle as Brother Horse's eldest daughter, Duk, plaited up what little hair Qey had left her.

"Tell," Perkar repeated. "I don't believe that you just happened upon me."

"Why not?" Ngangata asked. "Isn't that the lot of a hero's friend?"

"Riding to the rescue? That sounds more like the hero to me," Perkar rejoined. "'The Song of Ngangata.' I like the sound of that."

"No songs about me, please," Ngangata said.

"Well," Brother Horse told them, "you can sing a song about me , then."

Perkar looked at both men in exasperation. Brother Horse grinned, took a drink of cactus beer, and finally relented.

"Your friend here was frantic when he discovered you gone, don't ask me why. He insisted that we follow you. I refused, of course—I am an old man, much too old to ride out against Nholish cavalry."

"To be sure," Perkar muttered sarcastically. " Much too old to ride circles around them, widdershins and back."

Brother Horse glowered at Perkar. "How long did you beg me to tell you this story?"

"My apologies, ancient one," Perkar said. "Please continue."

Brother Horse nodded with apparent satisfaction. "I did agree to take Ngangata—at great risk to my own life—as far as a village I knew of, there to bargain with my great-nieces and nephews and other assorted kin for a horse to ride to Nhol. A half day's ride, a day walking. I guessed that the Woodpecker Goddess would not notice me in such a short time."

He grinned, showing his yellowed, broken teeth to best advantage, quaffed another mouthful of beer. "Well, of course, halfway there—just past Lies-in-a-Square Rock—there came a whirlwind and a sound of feathers, and my old heart stopped dead in my chest. I was beginning a dignified defense of my actions…"

"He was on his knees, begging," Ngangata clarified.

" Dignified defense of my actions," Brother Horse repeated with a wicked glance aside to the Alwa-Man, "when I realized that the god standing before me was not Nuchünuh but a black god, feathered, yes, but not a woodpecker. It was Raven, I knew that right away.

"'Lord Raven,' said I, 'to what do I owe my great fortune?' And he said, 'No doubt you define "fortune" differently than I do,' and he stared at me with those yellow eyes of his."

"Karak? Karak came to you?"

Ngangata nodded, while Brother Horse patiently drank some more beer.

"I'll shorten this up," Brother Horse said, "because I can smell supper nearly ready. Raven-god told me he had been watching us all, from afar, because it pleased him to do so. He said that I should assist Ngangata in reaching Nhol, since he had foreseen that we would be needed. In turn, I explained my infirmities…"

"He asked Karak what was in it for him," Ngangata elucidated.

"I explained my infirmities," Brother Horse continued stubbornly. "When I was done, Raven asked me how infirm I might become if someone were to alert Nuchünuh that I was wandering about unprotected. I didn't like the tack of that conversation, I'll tell you. But then Raven made a kindly offer to speak to the Woodpecker Goddess on my behalf. He told me that she owed him many favors, and that he would spend a few so that I could live out my years among my people again. Well, you know, I hadn't really thought about it all that much, but I did miss my relatives, alone out on that island. I could also see that great things were happening, a grand adventure calling me to one last heroic task…"

"Karak convinced him to help," Ngangata summed up.

" 'You tell the rest of it then," Brother Horse grunted, lifting his beer cup.

Ngangata complied. "Brother Horse convinced some of his relatives to come along, promised them war honors if they came— and some old treasure of his, buried somewhere, I think. The rest isn't much to tell. We rode straight across the desert to Nhol, while you meandered down the Changeling."

"Yes, but how did you find me?"

"Karak told us to watch for you on land. That was cryptic and I thought not much help. We sat up on a hill where we could see the whole west side of Nhol."

"From that far away? How could you recognize us, or even see us?"

"I can see gods, remember?" Brother Horse reminded him, his voice becoming ever so slightly slurred. "I know that sword of yours, and there are no other gods in that miserable land except the Waterborn"—he looked suddenly embarrassed and winked apologetically at Hezhi—"I'm sorry, child, I don't mean to offend you."

Hezhi shrugged her little shoulders and shook her head to say that there had been no affront.

"So," Brother Horse went on, "I thought that anything I saw that looked like a god would be you, probably."

Perkar shook his head in amazement. "And so you watched that entire time? Without sleeping?"

"Ah… not exactly."

"He actually was asleep," Ngangata put in. "But then Yuu'han, here, saw a burst of light, strange godlike light."

"The ghost," Hezhi murmured, the first words she had spoken that evening. "The ghost from my blood."

Ngangata nodded agreement. "We found that out later; it was too dark for us to see anything else, really. We woke Brother Horse up, though, and after a good bit of squinting he swore he could see Perkar and a goddess, a goddess growing larger and larger."

They all glanced at Hezhi, who shifted uncomfortably and stared down at the dirt.

"You all leave the girl be," Brother Horse snapped. "She's been through enough, lost plenty. No need to keep reminding her of unpleasant things."

"It's just that I'm the cause of it all," Hezhi blurted. "All of you, traveling across the world, risking your lives, killing people, all because I made a stupid wish. It wasn't even a real wish, just an impulse. And Tsem, hurt so badly…"

Perkar watched her eyes wander off, wondered how she was not crying and wished she would. Whatever kept her from crying seemed to hurt her more than a good bawl.

"Now," Brother Horse puffed out. "Come here. Come here and sit with us."

She stared over at the fire for a long moment, her black eyes drinking away the flames. Then slowly she disengaged herself from Duk—who understood not a word of their conversation, which was in Nholish—and hesitantly approached the fire. Brother Horse patted the spot next to him.

"Don't waste your energy on that kind of thinking," he told her. "You didn't pull all of the threads that tightened up this net. You only pulled one of them. Take me. What did you have to do with my altercation with the Woodpecker Goddess? Nothing, that's what. It happened six years ago, long before all of this began. Perkar, he was tied up in something gone wrong long before your blood set the River in motion. And Raven, who knows why he does what be does? But the certain thing is he does nothing at your whim or mine. Ngangata never even knew you, and he had precious little reason to help Perkar—no offense, Perkar—but he came along anyway."

"But, Tsem," she whispered, and then sobbed. "Qey, Ghan… all of those soldiers…" She buried her face in Brother Horse's shirt and began to shudder with much-needed crying. Embarrassed, Perkar excused himself, wandering off from the fire. He went on out of the square, threading between scrubby junipers and wiry bushes, let the faint wind settle on his shoulders.