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between despair and hope!
 Karak is a poet, Horse Mother grunted.  Who would have known that
?
 Not I! Karak answered, spreading his wings and contracting them.
 He is right, little one, though he knows more of you than I do, the woman
continued, her dark eyes kind.  You will have my child. I will watch over
you.
Perkar would die without her.
She would die and be lost, a ghost, as pathetic as the apparition that once
inhabited her apartments.
 I agree, she said then.  I will be as kind as I know how to be.
 Fine, fine, Karak snarled.  Quickly, now.
Horse Mother stroked the horse. Like Hezhi, she had cooled from her flight and
now had the appearance of a gray skeleton filmed with gauzy flesh. Still,
Hezhi could sense the creature s confusion, fear.
its
 Hush, my sweet, the woman said.  This is Hezhi, and she will return with you
to the land of the living, to the pastures and the plains.
 Now? Karak snapped.
 Now, the goddess replied, reluctance still clear in her voice.
 Good, Karak answered. He pointed to Hezhi.  Cut to pieces.
Hezhi just stared at him, wondering what he meant, and then pain was all that
she could comprehend.
Something chopped her to bits, dismembered her violently; she felt each bone
wrench apart, and each individual piece ached on its own, so that even
severance added layers of agony so profound that, though she did not lose
consciousness, she quickly lost the ability to interpret anything. How long
her ordeal lasted, she had not the slightest inkling; she was only aware of
trying to scream and scream without lungs, tongue, or breath.
She had no awareness when the bits came back together, knitted solid. The
Horse Mother and Karak spoke, but she understood absolutely nothing of what
they said. After that, she had only flashes of the purple and black landscape
beyond the drum and a persistent pounding that seemed like hoofbeats. And
inside, a frightened voice, as confused as she.
When sense truly returned, it was to those same hoofbeats. She was still high
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in the air above the
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otherworld, but rather than being swept along, as she had been before, she was
running, her own hooves carrying her through the empty spaces between the
clouds.
Hooves
? She glanced at herself. As before, she was glowing like a coal, striking
sparks from the very air, but this time she had more of a form. She could see
her own arms, her hands, her naked upper body.
But below&
Hooves, the thick, layered muscles of a horse s forepart. Turning back she
could see rump and a flying tail of lightning.
I have become the statuette
! she thought.
The half-horse woman
.
But she was still herself. She could feel the Horse in her that was who ran,
who flexed the great muscles that carried them through space. But the spirit
in her was not invasive, not seeking to seduce her as the River had or
bludgeon her like the gods she had seen since escaping Nhol. Instead, she was
there, tentative, but a companion willing to learn.

Thank you
, Hezhi said. 
Thank you for coming with me
.
The Horse did not answer in words, but Hezhi understood her response, her
welcome. Together they struck lightning across the sky, and soon enough, Hezhi
knew that they had reached the village of
Brother Horse, the yekt where her body lay without her. Nearly laughing with
the pleasure of thunderous flight, ecstasy replacing their fears, Hezhi and
the Horse raced thrice about the village, above the racetrack. She could not
see the people, save as flickers of rainbow, and she wondered if any of them
could see her.
It was actually with reluctance that she approached the yekt, lit upon its
roof. She saw no one there and so descended into the house along its central
pole, whose shadow in the otherworld resembled a tall and thickly branching
tree.
The tent was the belly of a shadow, the people in it less than specters. She
saw them as frames of dark bone, cages that enclosed furnaces of yellow light.
One of the figures lay prone Perkar, of course and something squatted upon
him. Something real.
As soon as she saw it, Hezhi steeled herself for the sickening stab she had
felt before, but it did not come. It was as if a strong wind parted around
her, and she suddenly remembered what Brother Horse had told her about spirit
helpers. About how she could see now without the vision clutching her.
So she examined the thing carefully, though even so it was terrible to behold.
At first, there was no sense to what she perceived, only a jumble of coiled,
glittering sinew, scales, and polished black ivory. But then the Horse moved
in her, just a bit, and her perspective changed. It was like a snake, or more,
like a
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centipede, jointed and sheened as if with oil. It nestled a cone-shaped skull
into Perkar s chest, and a thousand smaller worms wriggled from every part of
the creature. The radiance in Perkar s breast was dim, though a stream of
orange light fed into it from the sleeping, birdlike form at his side she
guessed to be his sword.
Every now and then, the worm or perhaps mass of worms shuddered, rippled, and
broke into crawling parts that then reformed. Two yellow eyes opened on the
base of its  skull.
 Leave. He is mine, a voice told her. It was a clattery voice, like bones
snapping.
Hezhi had no reply. She just stared at the thing.
 If you have come to fight for him, shamaness, you will surely fail. Go back
to your bright world, leave this dying man to me in mine.
The monster did not gesture, but she felt her eyes drawn beyond it, as if
somehow it had directed her to look. There lay a circle of light. Through it
she saw the interior of the yekt part of a support pillar, a rug, and a hand.
Her hand. The image wavered a bit, as if it were a pool into which grains of
sand were dropping.
Hezhi hesitated. She could see plainly enough now that the thing on Perkar was
killing him. But as of the moment, she had not the faintest idea what to do
about it.
 I ll go, she muttered to the thing.
But I will return
. Then she edged up to the drum and stepped through.
In a swirl of dizziness and disorientation, she bolted up, gasping. The horse
body was gone, and she felt her own flesh upon her, suddenly so familiar, so
well fitted that she would have burst into melancholy tears at being reunited
with it.
Save that at the same moment, the body of a man slapped into the ground only
an arm s length from her;
she saw his eyes widen in surprise as the impact shattered his spine. All
around her was shouting and the harsh grating and hammering of steel on steel.
INTERLUDE
The Emperor and the Ghoul
The great door creaked faintly as the emperor pushed it open, startling the
orange-speckled house lizard on the wall into frantic though short-lived
flight. It ran only a few spans before crouching against the edge of a
tapestry, watching him with its cat-pupiled eyes. She lu felt a brief
amusement, considered flicking the tiny beast with his power. What audacity it
had, a common house lizard, entering the court
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of an emperor!
He let it go. It was told that the spotted ones were good luck, and even an
emperor needed that. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]