This is like autumn, he thought. Autumn, though the season stood midway through summer. Hubara, the North Wind, should be sleeping yet in her faraway mountain. But perhaps another cold wind lived in the mountain Perkar could now see, for certainly the wind came down from there, with its smell of wet cinders and falling leaves. The mountain itself was a wonder, a nearly symmetrical cone, slopes pale in the morning light, crowned with dazzling brightness. Perkar wondered if he should offer something to it, but he didn't know the Mountain God's song or even his name. But then he remembered that the Mountain God was also the Forest Lord, Balati.

So he burned some incense for Balati, though the wind took it in the wrong direction. Then he braided a little fishnet of horsetail reeds and walked down to the stream, the one that had spoken to the Alwat. There he cast the fishnet in, softly sang a little song—a greeting, since he did not know its own song.

"Thank you for your words," he told it then. "If you speak to her again, tell her I only do what I must."

He sat by the swollen stream, knowing it would not answer him, and puzzled at his dreams. Some involved Ngangata, and those dreams were painful, embarrassing, almost like dreams of finding oneself inexplicably naked at some important gathering. Perkar perceived no clear reason why his dreams had that tenor; he was always clothed in them. The mere presence of the half man seemed to trigger the feelings. Others were of her, of course, of the smell of rose petals, of her pleading, of that sharp slap across his face. Those she had sent, with the rain; they were the only ones he understood. But mixed up with those dreams were the ones about the city and the girl. Houses and halls of white stone, a dry land and a river of unthinkable size. The River he knew, as certainly as he knew anything, though he had never seen it. In one dream the River was as red as blood, thick and sluggish. And the girl, standing at a fountain, saying his name. Asking for him.

"There you are." The Kapaka looked down at him from the trail to the cave. He was grizzled and unshaven, and he looked older than Perkar believed he was. You didn't sleep well, either, Perkar thought, and wondered what dreams might trouble a king.

The Kapaka cleared his throat and came on down to the stream. "You've made an offering? Good. That's good."

Perkar only nodded.

"Perkar," the old man began reluctantly, then with more force: "this expedition is an important one. If it weren't, I wouldn't have put my old bones in the saddle and come all the way out here. No Kapaka has done this in two generations, and I certainly never had any intention to. I would vastly prefer to be at home, telling my grandchildren stories. But younger sons are starting to fight among themselves, others are arming against the Mang. That is foolishness, Perkar; whatever the old songs may make of war, it is foolishness. Piraku is cattle, children, the love of family, giving gifts. War breaks things, tears them up, kills family, destroys cattle. Can you see that, as young as you are?"

Perkar nodded. "I think so. The great heroes were always the most generous ones. The ones who settled wars rather than starting them."

"Just so. And so this trip is important to me, to all of us, you see?"

"It's important to me, as well," Perkar told him.

"I wonder. You don't seem focused on our goal, Perkar. See, there it is, the mountain in the heart of Balat. But I think you see something else."

Perkar did not deny that. He merely shrugged. "It is important to me. And I hope to serve you, Kapaka."

The old man grimaced. "This business with Ngangata, Perkar—you have to let that go. You can't judge what he says as if he were a warrior, like the rest of us. He is not a part of the warrior's code, and it is wrong to hold him accountable to something that he never benefits from. And we need him, Perkar. Who will talk to the Alwat if something happens to him? Who will guide us to the Forest Lord? Apad and Eruka are loudmouths, but I thought better of you. Bear the halfling's company for this short few days of your life, for all of us. If that isn't good enough reason, then do it because I tell you to."

Perkar nodded. "I'm sorry I made trouble. Ngangata is safe from me."

"And you from him, I hope," the Kapaka answered. "Now we should get saddled and moving. We lost time yesterday, and the sooner we get done with this, the sooner I can get back to my grandchildren."

"Agreed," Perkar said.

The Kapaka turned to go, but he spared Perkar one more of his iron-gray gazes, this time one carrying approval rather than reproach. "You fought well against the Wild God. That was your first battle, was it not?"

"It was," Perkar admitted.

"Be proud of that," he said. "You defended your king, and I have never seen an unblooded man fight better his first time. Be proud of that, and not of last night." The gravel crunched softly beneath his boots as he walked back up to where the horses waited.

"You should be up in front," Eruka told him. "You should be vanguard instead of Ngangata, after last night."

Perkar shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Ngangata rides in front because our Alwat guides are up there," he said. "Not because he is ranked ahead of all of us."

"We are heroes," Eruka said. "Heroes on a journey with our king. Don't you remember 'Ekar Kapaka Karak'? 'The Song of the Raven King'?"

Perkar was preparing to tell Eruka that it was too early for a song, but he wasn't quick enough; Eruka's voice rose up into the midmorning, mingled with the singing of birds and clopping of hooves.

"It will be an epic," Apad corrected. "And we might go to war."

Perkar nearly wondered aloud who would fight in this war— Eruka who had stood stock-still as a Wild God attacked his king, or Apad, shrieking and jabbing wildly—but bit the comment back. Eruka and Apad still planned to invade the Forest Lord's home and search for god-slaying weapons; well, so did he. He could use their help. And, after all, they were his friends, though Apad especially was beginning to annoy him. What had the Kapaka called the two of them—loudmouths?

They had goaded him into fighting Ngangata, too, and he was beginning to resent that. Nothing good had come from that confrontation; Ngangata rode up front, as usual, except today one of his eyes was swollen nearly shut and his lip was split and purple. The worst thing about the fight was what it had really revealed about Ngangata's position in the party. He had been thinking of Ngangata, Atti, and the Alwat as a sort of faction, one which the Kapaka nominally belonged to. Perkar had assumed that Ngangata was the head of that group. But when the moment of truth came—when a Human warrior beat a half Alwa nearly senseless—Atti had made no move to interfere, nor to express his compassion later. The Kapaka—in retrospect—had urged Perkar to leave the feud aside but not because he liked the half man, only because he thought him necessary. Even the Alwat plainly did not think of Ngangata as any relative of theirs, for none of them had made any overtures toward helping him, either.

That meant Ngangata was truly alone. It was something Perkar had to think on.

The horses trudged steadily uphill now, through a forest more evergreen than hardwood. Hemlock and spruce dominated, spicing the air with their sharp scents. The sky seemed choked with ravens, rushing about their domain on scything black wings, and he remembered that Ani Karak, the Raven God, made his home somewhere in Balat. Fitting enough that Eruka had begun one of his songs.

Perkar struggled to recall what else he could about which gods lived in the heart of the eternal forest, but nothing came to him. He wished suddenly that he could speak to Ngangata, who seemed to know much about gods, but the very thought reddened his face with shame. Why hadn't Ngangata fought back? He could not ask him that, either.

The bones of the mountains showed themselves more and more often now, outcrops and ridges of granite pushing through the earth's thin hide. Now and then, Perkar thought he saw shadowy figures crouching on these stones, but only from the corners of his vision—when he looked directly they vanished. The woods were full of ghosts. Perkar wondered if they were the spirits of past travelers or the ghosts of gods.

The rest of the day passed without much conversation, as did the next. The pace of travel became nerve-rackingly slow, the mountain hovering above them like a thunderhead, its shadow pacing over them not long after the noon hour, as if the night were rushing that much faster to meet them. When true night came, a brittle-bone cold sank down upon them, enmired them as if it were some sort of frigid syrup—the campfires they made seemed little able to hold back that damp chill. As if that were not enough, Perkar's dreams continued, growing more vivid and tumultuous as the nights passed.

The next day they began descending into a deep, creased valley; the extent of it stole his breath, for it was morning, the great mountain dreaming yellow in the rising sun, the depth below them still shadowed but starting to glimmer in the sun's fixed eye.

"What a fine holding this would be," he could not help but breathe. No matter that it would spend half the day in shadow from the mountain, no matter that it was the deepest, most haunted forest in the world. It was a valley such as a king might dream of for his children and their children.

"Put such thoughts away," the Kapaka told him. "This is our destination. This is where Balati, the Forest Lord, makes his dwelling."

Perkar nodded. It was a valley for a king.

After another moment's survey, they continued the descent. The slope was steep, and the conifers of the upper ridges were soon replaced by mixed hardwoods, the heady fragrance of the mountains becoming the more familiar smell of decaying leaves and wet moss. The moss, indeed, was thick, and here and there they crossed what seemed like meadows of it, shaded from the sun by branches that steepled above them like the rafters and roof beams of a vast damakuta. Ferns grew so high and thick that the hooves and legs of their horses vanished into them; there was no path visible to his eyes, and yet the Alwat never seemed to doubt where they were going.

As they neared the valley floor, but before the land grew level, the Alwat halted, and after a few exchanges, Ngangata tersely explained that the party must wait there.

"The Alwat must call another guide," he told them.

Perkar dismounted heavily. After days in the high reaches of foothills, the thicker air of the valley felt like water in his lungs. He sat down, rested his back against the frayed trunk of a cedar, and watched the Alwat.

At first, he thought that they were building a fire. They gathered branches, sorting them according to size. But then Digger, the young female, brought in hoops of grapevines and long, slender willow branches. The Alwat clustered around these things, chattering in low voices; one began striking a pair of sticks together—rather arrhythmically, Perkar thought—and chanting a song of two notes.

"Keep watch, Perkar," Apad said, nudging him. "We could be in danger." Apad was nervously fingering the hilt of his sword.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you think Ngangata and his kin will let your fight go unavenged?"

Perkar frowned, watched the stocky man-creatures continue their ritual. They had lashed the willow branches into a small tower, of sorts, the base ends of the shafts thrust into the moist earth, the tops tied together. Now they were weaving more of the grapevines in and out of the frame thus formed. The branches of various sizes went into this, as well.

One of the Alwat spat some gibberish at Ngangata, who nodded and walked over to the Kapaka; the two conversed in tones too low for the others to make out. After a moment, however, the king joined the Alwat, tentatively adding branches to the bizarre construction.

When the Alwat finally came away from the thing, gently tugging the Kapaka with them, it was the size and shape of a tall man. Twin branches projecting from the crown of the structure resembled the antlers of a stag.

"I don't like it," Eruka muttered, and Perkar silently agreed.

The oldest Alwa was still singing; the two notes had become three, and though Perkar certainly could not understand them, he could tell that what she was singing were words and not merely syllables. Now, more than ever, he wished that he could ask Ngangata what was happening, and he gritted his teeth at his self-imposed ignorance.

Leaves stirred on the forest floor, took tentatively, then joyfully, to the air, swirling around the Alwat creation as if it were the center of a whirlwind. The woven saplings began to quiver. A god was coming, Perkar could see that easily enough; the air began to tremble, blurring the image of the Alwat standing behind their construction.

When it happened, it was rather sudden, as in the moment when something hidden is recognized. Perkar had experienced such a feeling before, staring at a tangled maze of branches and tree trunks that did not so much hide as camouflage a deer. Once the deer was seen, you realized it had always been there, wondered why you hadn't seen it before. It was in this manner that the goddess appeared; Perkar suddenly saw that she had been there all along, amongst the Alwat-woven branches.

In form, she was much like a rather tall Alwa, but her limbs and torso were covered more thickly and evenly by coarse black hair. The hair on her face was even more pronounced, black but with faint gray markings. From her head, antlers spread proudly. And yet Perkar could see that the antlers were still wooden rather than horn. That this was a goddess was more than clear; she was unclothed—though she bore a sheaf of arrows and a bow—and obviously female. She smiled a wide, enigmatic Alwat smile.

"Welcome, Kapaka, Prince of the Human People," she said. Her voice was a burring kind of sound, filled with vibration and resonance.

"Thank you, Goddess," the Kapaka said. "I have brought gifts for you, and for the Lord of the Forest."

"Our Lord will distribute whatever gifts you bring," the goddess said. "As for me, this form you have provided me is a fine gift—rare that I am incarnate in this fashion, and it pleases."

"You are more than welcome," the Kapaka said. "But still, I would offer you something, if you are to guide us to…"

"I shall take you to him," she interrupted, seeming amused. "Worry not. The Alwat know to call upon me, and not some more feckless god."

"I regret," the Kapaka told her, "that I know not your name nor any song of yours. But I have brought a singer along." He indicated Eruka, who might have shrunk back just a bit. "He can learn one, if you will teach him, and we will sing it in our damakutat through the winter months."

"You may call me Paker," she said, and now there was certainly humor in her expression; her generous lips parted to reveal a row of sharp, shining teeth. "You may call me Apa, Bari, Ngati. Or you may call me Huntress. I care not."

"Those are other names for the Forest Lord," Eruka whispered, so that Perkar—but surely not she—could hear. Even so, her smile broadened.

"And here," she said, stepping away from the Kapaka and toward the other Humans. "What is this? What scent is this?" She walked to Perkar, growing taller, it seemed, as she came. She reached out with one furred, long-fingered hand and very, very lightly touched his cheek.

"How sweet," she said. "How very sweet." But her grin was carnivore, a tiger sizing up a meal. Stepping away from Perkar, she seemed, for an instant, lost in thought, until her head snapped back up and around, black eyes flashing suddenly yellow and green, iridescent.

"Come now," she said.

The rest of the journey was dreamlike; Perkar remembered striding over chasms on the woven backs of branches, groves parting for them, dark hollows that seemed more like cists beneath the earth than anyplace aboveground. At last they descended farther still, into what amounted to a huge bowl-shaped depression, a valley within a valley. The walls were of crumbling stone, and the dark mouths of caves gaped at them as they passed.

"Are these the dwellings of the Forest Lord?" Perkar asked.

The Huntress shrugged. "I suppose. He dwells in them at times."

"Damp, dank places," another voice said. Startled, Perkar turned toward it.

It was a raven that spoke, a raven the size of a large dog. He sat, grinning, on a low branch, eyes glittering like jewels in deep water.

"Huntress, what do you bring me?" the Raven asked their guide.

"Pretty things," she said. "Pretty little things to line your nest with, to show the other gods when you come to the feasts."

The Raven lifted one leg nervously from his branch, clenched his claws closed, then flexed them open, renewed his grip on the limb.

"I see no pretty things," he complained. "Nothing pretty at all."

"As you say, then," the Huntress said. "And so we shall bid you good day."

"Wait," the Raven croaked, cocking his head suspiciously. "Perhaps they have pretty things with them."

The Huntress sighed and turned to the Kapaka. "Best give him something, I think. He can be childish at times."

The Kapaka nodded and opened his treasure bag, felted and embroidered with clouds and feathers. He searched about for a moment.

"Here is this," he said at last. He held up a sparkling brooch, silver with a blood red garnet.

"Pretty," said the Raven. "Yes, pretty. Perhaps you have more."

"I know you," Eruka interrupted. The Raven looked puzzled— he tried to shift his glance to Eruka but at the same time seemed unwilling to take his regard from the jewelry.

"Know me?" the Raven asked.

"Yes," Eruka told him. He coughed and then sang:

"You are Karak, the Crow God," Eruka said.

"I know who I am," the bird replied testily.

"Yes, and I know who you are, as well," the Huntress put in. "And if you do not cease your prattling and let us be on our way, I will add another feather to you—on the end of a hard, straight shaft."

"Give me the pretty thing," Karak grumbled pettishly.

The Kapaka stretched up, offered the coal-dark bird the silver brooch. The Raven took it in his beak.

"I swallowed the sun," he muttered. "You would think people would remember that."

"Oh, we remember," the Huntress said. "We remember that we had to slit you open before you would give it up."

"How rude," Karak said crossly, and, lifting his great wings, flew off into the forest. Perkar could hear the heavy beat of his wings long after losing sight of him.

"Is that true?" Perkar asked. "Did he really do those things?"

The Huntress smiled. "The world was much different in those days. Perhaps they never really happened at all."

"What do you mean?"

"The only difference between a story and the truth is how often the story is told," she replied.

Perkar didn't understand that, either, but he didn't say so. He was used to gods; they lived everywhere. He was not used to gods who claimed to have created the world or swallowed the sun. That seemed ridiculous, beyond the power of anything. Yet these were the old gods, the gods of the mountain, rarely spoken of, rarely sung about. After all, better to sing about the god of your pasture who would hear you, consider your requests.

These Mountain Gods frightened him, but they fanned a flagging spark, as well. His dreams were not just fantasy. Gods who could swallow the sun would have weapons to match their power. Such weapons could slay other gods, could they not?

The Huntress led them down the steep trail, and eventually to a meadow, nestled deep in the mountainside. The moss there was a carpet; Perkar's feet sprang upon it as they walked. In the center of the meadow was a tree, its girth greater than that of his father's damakuta. The tree—it looked like an oak—soared upward, enormous, shadowing out the sun entirely.

"Here," the Huntress said. "Here we wait."

Wait they did. Once or twice, Apad made overtures to a conversation, but the words died, eaten by the silence the magnificent tree seemed to cast about itself. Birdsong rang out, but it was far away, the memory of song. The tree seemed to be the still point of the world. So still it was that, despite himself, Perkar began drifting in and out of dozing, his head lolling over onto one shoulder, then jerking awake. Attempting to remain alert, he contemplated the tree, walking over to its spreading base, and gazing up its trunk, trying to count the layers of branches he could see, guess those he could not. Soon enough, however, he returned to sitting, and his eyelids began to droop once more.

All of his companions seemed to be having similar troubles; only the Huntress seemed alert, crouched in the clearing, unmoving as a statue, bright quick eyes darting here and there. The Alwat, Perkar suddenly realized, were nowhere to be seen.

A moment arrived, and Perkar no longer felt sleepy. The tree, the moss, everything around them suddenly unfocused, blurred into colors without much form and no detail. At first he believed the trouble was with his eyes, blurring vision to trick him into sleep; but then he heard the gasps around him. The world had gone strange, had faded. Perkar wondered if it would return. His mind turned over a conversation his father had had, long ago, with a shamaness who came to visit them, a relative of his mother's. She said something that reminded Perkar of this blurring. "The world of gods and the world of Humans is the same world," she said. "They are both like a damakuta; but the world of gods is like the whole damakuta and the world of Humans is the paint on the outside of it. We live in that paint, see only what is painted there. The gods are visible to us sometimes—they are like carvings on the beams of the damakuta, and if the painter painted those carvings we know that they are there. Of course, the gods may choose to paint and then unpaint themselves, when it suits them…"

A god was painting himself, and in doing so he was smearing the paint already present.

This went on for longer than was comfortable, but finally the greens and browns congealed into what they were before: the great tree, the meadow, the surrounding forest and cliffs.

Save that now Balati, the Forest Lord, was among them. He stood where the Huntress had been crouching; she was gone.

At first glance, the Forest Lord was mostly Bear, an enormous shaggy mass reared up on hind legs. But Perkar quickly realized that he was not a bear, but something older than bears or men or Alwat, something that they were all dim reflections of. Huge, furred, with legs and paws like the boles of trees. Like the Huntress he was horned, but these were not horns of wood; they were great elk antlers, that measured, from tip to tip, more than Mang's body length. A powerful smell of black soil and beast permeated the air, nearly overpowered him with its intensity. Equally overpowering was the Forest Lord's single eye. It was bird and panther, deer and snake, flashing, changeable. Compelling and frightening. Its companion was a dark and empty socket.

"Lord Balati," the Kapaka said, and he bowed. The towering figure regarded him impassively.

"Balati," the Kapaka continued, after a suitable interval, in which Perkar found himself on his knees, as well. "We sing songs of you, down in the pasturelands, in the valleys, in our hill holdings. We remember you well, and the ancient pacts you made with our fathers and their fathers."

Balati shifted back his shoulders, and a low growl issued from him, so profound that it was more a rumbling in the earth than a real sound. And yet there was sense in it; there were words.

"It is good," Balati said. "It is good that you remember. Tell me of something. Tell me something you remember."

There was silence; Perkar saw that all of his companions were bowed down, Eruka on both knees, Apad, grim-faced, on only one. Both looked as frightened as he felt.

"Eruka!" the Kapaka prompted, after a moment. "Sing an Ekar!"

Eruka looked up slowly, as if he were having difficulty understanding his king's command. Perkar feared he would not sing— that his voice would be as frozen as his body had been when the Wild God spoke to them. But after a moment, Eruka cleared his throat.

Dreaming on and on

I watched my brother grow bitter

He was scarcely aware when the earth began to rumble with the Forest Lord's speech.

"It is good," Balati intoned. "We can add another verse to this song. What will that verse be about?"

The Kapaka stood, spoke a trifle too loudly, a king of instants confronting a lord of epochs. "In the Human lands, more and more sons go landless. We begin to turn on ourselves, and I fear troubled times. The local gods tell us that you have asked them not to bargain, as in days of old. They tell us that we must petition you for new lands and holdings to cherish and worship. So here we have come."

The Forest Lord seemed to swell larger, like a shadow moving farther from the sun. Above them, the sky darkened with twilight.

"It is good that you heeded my word," Balati said. "It is good. Many valleys and hills, many gods have I given into your care, and you into theirs. It has been well enough, but Balat is smaller than it was, and I will only give so much. You understand this; you are a lord of your kind."

"Yes. I understand. But I must request it."

"You have respect, you honor the memories of your fathers," Balati said. "We will talk, you and I. We will talk here, tonight, and we will decide. But I will tell you, I cannot give you much. Not much."

He hunched down, became a hillock of darkness, horned, single eye of flickering foxfire. A nighthawk cried, somewhere.

"Come," a voice whispered, and a gentle tug at his sleeve. "Come, Ngangata says we must leave them." It was Atti. The Alwat were visible again, at the edge of the clearing; they seemed to be waiting. Ngangata was already walking toward them, leading his horse.

"Come," Atti repeated.

"And leave the Kapaka with that?" Apad demanded.

But the Kapaka was waving them away, as well. Perkar rose up reluctantly, went to recover Mang. He let Atti go ahead, lagged back to make sure Apad and Eruka would follow. Behind them, neither the Kapaka nor the Forest Lord spoke; it was clear now that they were waiting for the others to leave.

"I don't care for this at all," Eruka said.

"It doesn't sound good," Apad said. "Did you hear him? He won't give us anything. We'll have to fight, as we planned."

"Shhh." Eruka gasped. "We might be overheard. Who knows what gods might lurk here? Or even Ngangata and the Alwat."

Apad nodded tersely, in agreement, acknowledging his mistake.

But Perkar leaned very close to Apad's ear. "The caves, Apad. We must look in the caves. We have the time, and we must take it."

Apad did not meet Perkar's eager gaze. "Yes," he answered. "I suppose…"

"Hurry," Eruka urged. "The Alwat will lose us here if we don't keep up."

Perkar nodded and quickened his pace, but he marked everything in his mind, tried to paint a map as they moved away from the clearing. He must find the trail up to the caves, in the dark. With or without his friends.