I have lived a long life, but there has never been much joy in it. What pleasure I did find was usually in the paper and ink surrounding me. And so I thank you for an unaccustomed sort of happiness. I never intended to love you, you know, for I have learned that love is rarely pleasurable. It was not when I thought you dead. I cursed myself daily. Yet now I hear you live and are safe, and I no longer regret my affection. I would, of course, never say these things to you, but pen and paper may speak when I am silent.

  I know you must worry about your nurse, Qey, but she is well. The soldiers found her half dead amongst dead priests and believed her to be the victim of your crazed bodyguard as much as they. Neither has anyone pointed a finger at me. The massacre at the South Gate is little talked about, and your name is spoken only as Hezhinata.

  I have sent along a paper and pen with the Mang; I only hope they do not use it to wipe themselves with it along the way back to you. It is my hope that you will compose a letter or two to an old man, telling him of the things you see. There must yet be wonders he has not read of.

  You must not return to Nhol, Hezhi. Nothing pleasant awaits you here. I have confidence in you, know that you will make a life for yourself wherever you go. You have that in you, and it is all you, nothing of the River you leave behind. Be blessed by whatever gods there are in your travels, and try to think kindly of me, though I was never as good to you as I should have been.

  —Ghan

  She read the letter and read it again, never sure whether to laugh or cry. It did not really matter; either would have contained the same mixture of joy and melancholy. She gave Brother Horse a hug and thanked him again. Grinning, he patted her shoulder and then started to rejoin his family in drinking. He turned, though, gazed at her seriously.

  “You may become Mang, if you wish,” he said. “I will adopt you as my daughter, and we shall find a good, capable husband for you. Who knows? Now and then I see the sparkle of power in you—not like it was, of course, not enough to change you, but perhaps enough to make you a shamaness, to earn an honest living that doesn’t involve scraping hides.”

  “I’m learning to like scraping hides, thank you,” she replied. “But I thank you for your offer. It is very kind, since I know I would be a burden, at least for a time.”

  “Families have broad shoulders,” Brother Horse replied, “made to bear burdens.”

  “I don’t know what I will do yet,” she mused. “I think Perkar and I must speak.”

  “You are not bound to him,” Brother Horse said.

  “No, not bound exactly,” she half agreed. “But there are debts we share, responsibilities we hold together.”

  Brother Horse shook his head. “Such young people to be so serious. Enjoy yourselves, before your bones turn into dry sticks and your skin into leather.”

  Hezhi smiled. “I will try,” she promised.

  Perkar edged around the skinning frame, admiring the hide from all sides. “You’ve done a nice job with this,” he said. “One would never know you were once a princess.”

  She attempted a smile, but it fell into a flat line.

  “Sorry,” he hastened to add.

  “No,” Hezhi said. “It isn’t that. Being a princess never meant much to me. It might have, I suppose, if…” But the if hung in the air.

  He pretended to examine the skin more closely, embarrassed.

  “What are your plans, Perkar?” she asked abruptly. “Do you plan to hunt with the Mang from now on?”

  “No.” He had been thinking about that, of course. “No. I’m repaying debts right now, and I thought to begin with the closest, the ones I owe here. I’m also told that winter is hard on the western steppes. When spring comes, I’ll go back to my father’s land, to my own people. I have much to atone for there, many things to set right.”

  “Many things that I share blame for as well,” Hezhi said.

  “This has been discussed,” he told her. “I believe you to be blameless.”

  “If I am, you are as well. But if you bear responsibility, so do I, Perkar. You can’t have it both ways. We did this together, you and I. No matter what Brother Horse says, this skein was wound by the two of us, out of our fears and desires. I barely know you, but we belong together, at least for a time.”

  He tried out a chuckle and found it wanting. “How old are you?” he said. “Why not rest for a few years, be a child awhile longer?”

  The girl looked back at him wearily. “That is already lost to me,” she said quietly.

  “Lost things can be found,” he replied. But he knew what she meant. He would never again be that boy with his first sword, whooping in his father’s pasture.

  “I don’t know,” he went on, when she didn’t reply. “We have many months to think about it. It might be that you will change your mind.”

  “I might,” she conceded. “I did promise Tsem a few things. But I want you to think on this.”

  Perkar grunted. “You know,” he said, “you frighten me a bit.”

  “I? I thought you were a demon, when I first met you.”

  “Perhaps I am, when I wield Harka. I don’t know. But you…”

  “How do I frighten you?”

  “Who knows? All that time, on the River, your face the only clear thing in my mind. I can’t see you without remembering that, without remembering that I hated you for a while.”

  “You still hate me?”

  “No. It is just a memory. A clear memory.” He settled down, cross-legged.

  Hezhi hesitated for an instant, eyes turned from him. “You were going to kill me,” she blurted suddenly.

  Perkar grinned sardonically. “We were going to kill each other, weren’t we?”

  Hezhi nodded, but choked suddenly, gasped with an obvious effort to fight back tears. Perkar stared at her with open dismay.

  She bit her lip and began to scrabble to her feet. Perkar, to his own vast surprise, reached his hand out gently, laid it upon her shoulder. After a tiny hesitation, he knelt and drew her to him, felt her heart beating in her slight form like a thrush’s wings. She sobbed, once, into his shoulder, and he felt a sudden tightness in his own throat.

  “I’m sorry,” he sighed, as he hugged her awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I know it hurts, all of it.”

  “I never meant to…” she mumbled, sniffling.

  “Shh. Never mind,” he soothed back. For a moment they stayed that way, and Perkar realized that though he had come half a world to find her, he had never really touched Hezhi.

  “Listen,” he said seriously, disengaging but leaving his hand on her shoulder, “all of this talk about duty and responsibility is fine, but I would be happier if we could at least like each other.”

  Hezhi nodded, reached up to brush at the dampness beneath her black eyes. “I can do that,” she said, her tone a shade less certain than her words.

  Perkar smiled, but boyishly this time, with none of his world-weary hardness. “I can do that, too. Maybe…” He crinkled his brow. “Maybe we need each other to heal from this; I don’t know. But when I go home, I hope you will come with me.”

  “I would like that,” she replied.

  Suddenly embarrassed, Perkar turned his attention back to the skinning frame. “I thought I might go for a ride,” he confided. “I like this horse the Mang gave me. He reminds me of one I used to have.” He glanced over at the girl. “Would you like to come with me?”

  Hezhi surveyed her work. Overhead, a late flight of geese arrowed through the turquoise sky.

  “Yes,” she said, her eyes distant. “Yes, I think I would.”

  He rose and offered her his hand, but she stood on her own before taking it, grinning.

  “Where shall we ride to?” she asked.

  It was his turn to smile. “Anywhere,” he said. “Wherever we choose.”

  They turned together toward where the horses waited.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Chosen of the Changeling series

  I

  The Mang Wastes

  Hezhi Yehd Cha’dune, once-princess of the empire of Nhol, yelped as what weight her small body possessed was suddenly stolen from her in an explosion of force and wind as the thief—her horse Dark—shook all four hooves free of the earth. For a moment they hung almost still above the uneven slope of shattered stone and snow, but Hezhi knew—knew in her belly—that when they struck back down the mare would just keep falling, tumbling head-over-tail down what seemed almost a sheer grade. She doubled her hands in Dark’s mane and leaned against her neck, straining to hang on to the barrel-shaped torso with her legs, but when the horse’s hooves were reunited with the ground—first front and then thunderously rear—she slapped back into the saddle with such force that one leg kicked unwillingly free of its stirrup. The surrounding landscape blurred into jolting white, gray, and blue nonsense as she ignored the free-flapping stirrup and just held on. Then, suddenly, the earth was flat again and Dark really ran, digging her head into the wind, hammering across the half-frozen ground like a four-limbed thunder god. The mare’s flat-out run was so smooth, Hezhi’s fear began to evaporate; she found the stirrup, caught the rhythm of the race, and her tightly held breath suddenly released itself in a rush that quickly became triumphant laughter. Never before had she completely given the Mang-bred horse her head, but now that she had, the chocolate-and-coffee-striped mare was gaining on the four riders ahead of her. When one of them—perhaps hearing her laughter—turned his head to look back, she was near enough to see the surprise register in his unusual gray eyes.

  Thought you could leave me back farther than that, didn’t you, Perkar? she thought, with more pride than anger. Her self-esteem doubled when the young man’s expression of amazement became one of respect. She felt her own lips bow in glee and then promptly felt stupid for beaming so, like one of those useless creatures back in the palace or some brainless child. Still, it felt wonderful. Though she was only thirteen years of age, it had been many years since she felt anything at all like a child, good or bad. It couldn’t hurt to smile and laugh if she felt like it, could it?

  She clapped Dark’s flanks harder and was rewarded by a burst of even greater speed from her steed—and was consequently nearly thrown over the mare’s head when the animal quickly stamped to a halt to avoid crashing into Perkar and the others, who had stopped suddenly.

  “What?” Hezhi sputtered. “Are you trying—”

  “Hsst, Princess,” Perkar stage-whispered, holding up a finger. “Yuu’han thinks our quarry is over the next rise.”

  “And?” she shot back, though lowering her voice, too.

  “We should walk from here, or we may panic them,” another man answered. Hezhi switched her regard to the second speaker, who was dismounting. He swung his right leg over his mount’s head and let his thick, compact body slide to the ground; his boots crunched in the thin layer of snow. He was clothed in heavy breeks and an elkskin parka tanned white. In the hood, his face was paler than the coat, like bone, and his thick hair fell from one side in a milky braid. His eyes, on the other hand, were black, set deeply in his head beneath cavernous brows and a forehead that sloped back rather sharply from them, the legacy of his unhuman father.

  “Thank you, Ngangata, for explaining that,” she replied, “though I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about.”

  “It’s what we brought you to see,” Perkar explained, also dismounting. His hood was down, his short chestnut hair in wind-combed disarray. He was slighter than Ngangata, narrower in every dimension though nearly as bleached looking to Hezhi’s eyes, many shades fairer than her own sienna complexion. Lighter by far than their other two companions, Yuu’han and Raincaster, who were both Mang tribesmen, flesh burned copper brown by the fierce sun of their native deserts and plains.

  “You brought me to see nothing!” Hezhi answered. “Indeed, you tried to leave me behind.” She gestured back toward the hills they had just spilled down, where the highlands crumbled into the more gradually rolling plains the Mang called huugau. But even as she said this, she blushed; Perkar was grinning broadly and Ngangata not at all, but the two Mang were both studiously looking down and away from her. After half a year among the Mang, she knew what that meant. They were trying to keep her from seeing their smiles, which meant Perkar was telling the truth. They had intentionally goaded her into following and let her catch them.

  She pursed her lips and made to wheel Dark about.

  “No, wait!” Perkar shouted, forgetting his own admonition to silence. “We just wanted to see how well you can ride.”

  “You could have merely asked,” she replied icily. But she was curious. “What did you decide?”

  “That you have learned to ride as well in six months as even many Mang do not in six years,” Raincaster answered, turning his youthful, aquiline features frankly on her. That startled her. The Mang never dissembled when they spoke of riding skill.

  “I—” She frowned in frustration. Was she supposed to be angry or not?

  She decided not, and dismounted. On the ground, her legs felt wobbly, and the snow immediately began leaking cold into her feet to match the numbness of her nose. “What am I supposed to be seeing, anyway?”

  Perkar gestured in the direction they had been riding. Here the huugau was gently rolling, as if a sky god had pressed down on the hills with a great palm. The ridges and valleys were still there, but they were so gradual that one could be fooled into thinking their high places merely represented the distant horizon; this was especially true, Hezhi found, when they were blanketed with snow. “Over the ridge,” Perkar explained, and the Mang nodded their slight but clear assurances.

  “Very well,” Hezhi said. “Let us go, then.” And with that she marched past the men, striding quickly toward the ridge.

  Perkar stood rooted for an instant as Hezhi brushed past him, the hem of her long vermilion riding coat trailing imperiously behind her, short bob of obsidian hair bouncing with her stride.

  He looked to the other men, but Ngangata was fighting a grin while the Mang studied the earth.

  “I’ll watch the horses,” Yuu’han assured them, and Perkar nodded, started at a jog to catch up with Hezhi. She heard him coming, though, and broke into a run.

  “No, Princess!” He tried to whisper loud enough for her to hear him, but it sounded only like steam escaping a kettle—and she heeded it no more than that. But then she reached the crest of the hill, and her booted feet slowed. Perkar came alongside of her just as she halted completely.

  “By the River,” she gasped, and Perkar had but to agree. In fact, the vista before them reminded him of the River, the Changeling, upon whose banks Hezhi had been born, a watercourse so wide one could scarcely see its far bank. But this river—the one before them—was of meat and bone, not water. It flowed brown and black, tinted reddish on the woolen crests of its waves, the humps where the great muscles of the beasts piled high behind their massive heads.

  “Akwoshat,” Perkar breathed in his own tongue, despite himself. “Wild cattle. More cattle than all of the stars in heaven.”

  “I have never seen anything…” Hezhi trailed off, shaking her head. Her black eyes shimmered with wonder, and her mouth was pursed as if to say “oh!” She was very pretty, Perkar thought. One day she would be a beautiful woman.

  “There’s your Piraku, Perkar,” Ngangata said softly, padding up behind them. “Drive a herd of those back to your pastures…”

  Perkar nodded. “Would that it were possible. Look at them. They are the most magnificent beasts I have ever seen.”

  Raincaster had arrived, as well. “You would never tame them, Cattle-Man,” he whispered. “They are like the Mang, untameable.”

  “I believe it,” Perkar acknowledged. At this distance it was hard to comprehend the proportions of the individual animals, but they seemed to be at least half again the size of the cattle he knew, and the proud, sharp horns of the largest could probably fit his body between them. These were the cattle of giants, of gods, not of Human Beings. But they were beautiful to behold.

  “You really brought me to see this?” Hezhi asked, and Perkar suddenly understood that she was speaking to him, not to all of them.

  “Yes, Princess, I really did.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she said.

  “Hezhi, then.”

  To his surprise, she reached over and squeezed his hand. “Thank you. I forgive you for trying to make me break my neck riding down from the hill. Although we could have seen this just as easily coming down here at a leisurely pace.”

  “That’s true. But admit it—you love riding. I’ve watched you learn.”

  “I admit it,” she said, releasing his hand.

  They stood there silently for a time, watching the slow progress of the herd. Now and then one of the beasts would bellow, a proud, fierce trumpet that sent chills straight to Perkar’s bones. The wind shifted in their direction, and the smell of the wild cattle swirled about them, powerful and musky. He literally trembled with homesickness then, with such a fierce desire to see his father’s damakuta and pastures—and the man himself—that he nearly wept. Flexing and unflexing his hands to warm them, he was only absently aware of the arrival of other riders behind them, of the soft crunch of boots approaching.

  “Ah, well,” a reedy voice piped. “Look at this, Heen. My nephew Raincaster has no more sense than to let our guests stray onto the open plain.”

  Raincaster turned to the new arrival and shrugged. “As soon hold the wind as this one,” he replied, gesturing to Perkar. “Yuu’han and I thought it best to go with them—keep them in our sight.”

  “Heen,” Perkar said, shaking himself from reverie to confront Raincaster’s accuser, “tell Brother Horse that I have no time to travel at the pace of an old man.”

  Heen—a tired-looking spotted mutt—looked up when Perkar said his name, wagged his tail slightly, and then sniffed at the scent of cattle. If he conveyed Perkar’s message to the old man who stood beside him, Perkar did not notice. Nonetheless, the old man—Brother Horse—glared at him. He was shorter than Perkar, most of the difference in height coming in his bandy, bowed legs. It was remarkable, Perkar thought, how the man’s wide mouth could be downturned and still somehow convey a sly grin. It was, perhaps, the guileful twinkle in his dark eyes or, more likely still, the memory of a thousand smiles etched into the brown leather of his heavy square face.

 

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