He was different. The parts of him charred and torn by the Huntress had grown back, but not as Human flesh. Bony plates compassed him, and he propelled himself with limbs more like flippers or fins than arms, kicked something—not legs—that he feared even to think about.

His eyes saw the River bottom and the rippling mirror of the surface, and the bare, sterile stone over which he flowed. But another eye—a deeper one—saw something far, far ahead of him.

He searched through his servants and found a few still there. The stream demon, the stalker, and the ghosts of Ghan and the blind boy. The old lord—Lengnata—was there, too, though he was weakened or perhaps terrified into an almost unthinking state. Others—the many that he had bound on the journey across the plain with Moss—were part of him no longer, destroyed or released in his battle with the Huntress. As for that one—the Beast Goddess—the River had eaten her. She was gone, utterly and without a trace.

And now he was no longer Ghe the ghoul, but Ghe the fish, the serpent, the thing. Not Ghe at all, though he knew he had never been that, not since Perkar took his head. If only he had, at least, the satisfaction of knowing for certain that the pale man was dead, too…

You are Ghe, Ghan disagreed, a disembodied voice sharing his prison of plates, stings, and spines. Despite all that the River has done, part of you is Ghe. I know that now.

Shut up, old man, Ghe thought. He did not need the scholar's lies and advice anymore. His only reason for existence was to serve the River's will.

If he could enforce his will himself he would, Ghan insisted. You saw what he did to the Huntress, how invincible he is in his own domain. If he resorts to making ghouls of dead men, it is to go places where he cannot go himself But that means that in those places, he does not control you. You can do what is right rather than what he wills.

“What he wills is what is right,” Ghe answered angrily. ”I am not capable of doubting that. You should understand by now. If you cut up a tree, and make it from a tree into a boat, it is a boat, whether you are there to sail it or not. The River made me to find Hezhi. It is the only thing I am capable of!”

If a ghost could vent an exasperated, impatient sigh, Ghan's did. VII give you a different metaphor, my friend. If a smith makes a sword, he has no assurance that the weapon he has forged cannot be turned back upon him. You have my memories and knowledge, but I can see yours, as well. I believe you can be turned, Ghan pressed. Not by me, but by yourself. I know what I know.

“You know that the Blackgod and the Ebon Priest are the same. I never saw that.” It was too hard to think the way Ghan was asking him to think.

I was going to tell you. Qwen Shen and Bone Eel took me before I could.

“I know that, too,” Ghe replied. Overhead, the light filtering through the water abruptly darkened. We are underground now, he suddenly understood.

I think Bone Eel may be the dangerous one, Ghan persisted.

“I agree,” Ghe returned. “And I think I know who he may be. But what will they do with Hezhi? What is their plan? How can the River be killed?”

I don't know, Ghan answered. But I believe Hezhi is in great danger, or I would never willingly aid you.

I know that, too.

It grew even darker, and as it did so, his other sight began to fade. It was like being beneath the Water Temple, his senses fading as his potence grew. His surety and his direction vanished, and to his enormous frustration, he felt himself becoming confused. Again.

He finally stopped swimming; the water about him was barely moving.

What do I do now? But neither Ghan nor any other part of him knew the answer to that.

And then, in the darkness, a beacon flared, one that seared him with pain, one that struck like a bolt into the River himself. Ghe turned and strained his body to swim as fast as he could, gathering his strength as he went.

“What are you doing, Karak?” Ngangata snarled.

“What I told you,” he answered. “What we came here for.”

“What—” Hezhi began again, but then something cold slid through the flesh of her ribs, and though she tried to shout with pain, her breath sucked in and closed on itself. She gazed down in shocked astonishment and saw Karak's hand gripping the hilt of a knife. As she watched, he twisted it.

Then several things happened at once. Tsem repeated Ngan-gata's question, stepping even closer. Ngangata suddenly exploded into action, whipping an arrow from the sheath on his back and setting it to his bow in a single motion. As the pain from the twisting knife hazed her vision, Brother Horse and Yu-u'han drew swords and swung at Bone Eel, who was in the act of pointing a white tube of some sort at Ngangata. Hezhi saw all of this in an incredible blaze of light and lucidity as a single drop of her blood squirted from off Karak's blade and struck the surface of the water; a column of white flame leapt up and ignited the very air.

Then the pain truly caught her, and she realized that there was steel in her, and without a single thought she lashed at Karak.

What happened then wasn't clear to her, save that the knife wrenched out and she was shoving her fist into the hole in her side. Karak stumbled away from her, sheeted in blue flame—while she was hurled back onto the shingle. She hit and slid, able to think only about the blood that soaked her dress with preposterous speed. She had done something to Karak; he was clutching his eyes—

Her heart reached hummingbird pitch, and the motion around her seemed to slow, so that she could almost leisurely pick out the details of the strange dance being performed for her benefit, there in a Stygian courtyard that only a god could imagine. But she could do nothing, say nothing, because her thoughts were all gushing from her side with the waters of her life.

Tsem hit the Blackgod with his club, and the god pitched back, an arrow appearing in him at almost the same moment. Qwen Shen shrieked as Yuu'han hewed into her, the sorcerous flowers of energy gathering on her fingertips suddenly withering. Brother Horse struck his sword through Bone Eel, but Hezhi could see a coiled serpent of power in the nobleman, revealed as it was unleashed. All of his strands surged into the pointed bone tube he held. As Brother Horse stepped back to gather for a second swing, Bone Eel turned faster than a snake, and the tube he was holding suddenly telescoped, shot out like an improbably fast-growing stalk of grass; it passed all the way through Brother Horse, who stood transfixed for a moment before dropping his sword. Heen, worrying at Bone Eel's leg, went flying, yelping, through the air.

Hezhi choked on a scream, kicking away from it all, crawling back over the black stones, life leaking out of the hole in her.

The light from the burning blood was fading, but she could see perfectly well as Tsem hit the Blackgod again, and again, and again, until his club broke. Ngangata rushed toward her, but Bone Eel turned and the weird thing he held suddenly lanced out again, passed through the halfling's shoulder. He gasped and collapsed, bow clattering to the ground.

He's killing my friends, she realized. Why?

Hukwosha answered her. Does it matter? Release me. I shall deal with him.

“Release you?” Hezhi muttered. The scene was wavering. She felt very weak. “Very well.”

And she did.

His first charge lifted the puny thing from its feet, rammed him into the stone wall. Fierce energies rained upon him, attacks gnawed at his heart, and given time they might have succeeded; but he twisted the immortal heartstrands on his horns and snapped them, sent all of Bone Eel's potence out into the air to fade. Then he shook the impudent, broken thing from him.

When he turned, there was Karak, rising up over the body of Tsem like the shadow of the carrion bird he was. Karak appeared unhappy.

“Hezhi,” he snarled. “You fool. You are wasting your blood, don't you know that? It is the only thing that can slay him!”

“My blood?” Hukwosha snarled.

“You will slay him and take Misplace, Hezhi. You will not die, you will become a goddess. But you must stop fighting me.” Then his face hardened further. ”Or fight me, it matters not.”

Hukwosha lowered his horns to charge again, but sudden weakness jolted through him. He became aware of the gash in his side, shifted his hand in it in the vague hope that the blood would stop pouring out, wondering where his horns and hooves and might had all run off to.

“Hukwosha—” Hezhi began, but Karak reached out with an impossibly long talon and ripped Hukwosha from her, tore the great bull into shards of light, scattered them on the water. He fixed what remained—her—with the suddenly argent orb of one eye.

“Now, child, your blood. It is for the best. There must be a River, you know. It just need not be him.”

Hezhi stumbled back, but all of the bull's strength was gone. “I don't want to be a goddess,” she murmured, as if trying to explain something simple to a child.

“You have no choice. Only his blood can slay him—and you we can control. We will not make the same mistake we made with him. Perhaps Balati need never know at all, once you wear the Changeling's clothing.”

He stepped forward.

“Not just yet,” shouted something as it arose from the water.

He remembered the last time he had entered Balat, what seemed like centuries ago. Could he really have been so proud, so arrogant, so absolutely sure of himself? It didn't seem possible. When he entered the mountain, he had been a boy, full of dreams and ideals and hopes higher than the stars. When he left he had felt old, used, and worn. Scores of days had passed before the first glimmer of light had entered back into his soul. One such glimmer had been Brother Horse, when he met the old man, hiding on an island in the Changeling. Another had been Ghaj, the widow near Nhol who taught him that he could find pleasure with other than a goddess. But in the end, in the aftermath, it had been Hezhi who brought real joy back to him.

Why hadn't he ever admitted that? Because he would rather force her to share blame for his crimes than enjoy her company? Because he feared she could never care for a killer and a fool?

His scalp prickled and he urged Sharp Tiger on for the first time since mounting him. Incredibly, the stallion did increase his speed in response, though Perkar would not have believed that possible. He recalled, with a sudden chill wonder, part of a song Raincaster once sang—tried to sing, anyway, in Perkar's own tongue, so that he would understand it. In Mang it had flowed glissando, one syllable to the next. In Perkar's language it had rung stilted but still powerful—wounded but not crippled.

And whosoever should kill you Bright steed, blood-girded brother Let him beware, let him fear My life, become a weapon Such that vengeance itself will Appear a small, whimpering thing. This I swear to you as I live And when buzzards pick my bones And when my bones are dust Four-hooved brother.

A man would avenge his steed as he would a relative, according to the ancient word and blood of the Horse Mother. Would a horse do the same for its rider? Would the Horse Goddess aid such a purpose?

He would find out soon enough, he was sure—if he wasn't too late. Had the Blackgod already slain Hezhi? Had her blood already destroyed the Changeling and replaced him? The sick feeling in his gut told him that deep down, he must have always known that Karak's solution would be this. What had he pictured, some sort of battle royal, them flailing at the water with their swords? A jar of the god's essence that they could simply crack? No, this was the only way that made sense. Human blood had such a powerful effect on gods, and Hezhi's blood was both Human and Changeling. It would flow down him like hemlock, numbing him as it went so that he wouldn't even know he was dead until the last drop of him reached the sea. And in his place would be Hezhi, or whatever it was that Hezhi had become—a goddess, but perhaps one that Karak and his kin could exert more influence over. A weaker River Goddess with less ambitious aims.

But Hezhi would be dead. The woman just waking in her child's face would never come fully alive; she would never read another book or see another herd of wild cattle. And she would be lost to him.

It always comes back to me, he thought angrily.

If only he weren't too late.

GHE rose from the water, trembling with power and rage at what he saw. Hezhi lay before him, her blood and life leaking out of her like a flower cut off at the stalk. Others lay about, dead or dying, and a clump of soldiers who emanated only confusion but were now turning toward him. Qwen Shen was among the dead—he regretted that bitterly, for he would have preferred to dispense her punishment himself—and Bone Eel was among the mortally wounded. Bone Eel's Human guise had been stripped bare, however, and the fading life Ghe saw was that of the guardian of the Water Temple, the foul creature who had made pets of emperors. Another regret; but Bone Eel—or whatever the thing was really named—was still fading, so perhaps there would be time to punish him.

Presiding over the massacre was what could only be the Blackgod, a maelstrom of power, standing above Hezhi like her executioner. He turned angrily at Ghe's challenge, his aura sharpening into a threat of power greater than even that of the Huntress. But he had defeated the Huntress, had he not? And the cold expanse of water below him would absorb any amount of energy he cared to take. Still, before attacking, he reached out and ate the approaching warriors as a first course.

He sprang with the speed and force of a javelin, and the Blackgod fell back. Desperately he plunged stinger and claw—both physical and arcane—through the weird flesh of the being, hoping to quickly find the artery of his strength. If the discharge burnt him, so be it.

Lightning speared him, burnt a hole in the tough plates of his belly large enough for a cat to crawl through. Every muscle in his body clenched into knots so tight that some pulled loose of the bone. Another bolt flashed, lit the underground lake with violet light, and he was torn loose from the Bird God, thrown roughly to the shingle, twitching.

The Blackgod laughed as Ghe struggled to regain control of his inhuman limbs, his strength ebbing with each instant. The water was near, but it was as if a wall had been erected between him and that source of life. Feebly he tried to crawl.

“So this is the best Brother can send against me,” the Black-god mocked, shaking his head and clucking. “Let me introduce myself, Ghe of Nhol. I am Karak, sun-bringer, storm lord, master of rain and thunder, the Raven, the Crow.”

“You are a corrupt demon,” Ghe snarled, “and you must die.” “Oh, indeed?” Karak asked, and lightning lit the cavern once again in a hideous similitude of twilight.

Perkar suddenly stiffened as the air rang like an iron bell, and through flesh and bone Perkar suddenly saw Sharp Tiger's heart glow like a red-hot anvil, heard the stallion scream, felt him leap into space. It was no slip, no mistake; the horse laid back his ears and jumped. Perkar's mind—already staggered—simply refused to accept what had happened for an instant, but as the fall took his weight and filled his stomach with feathers, a sudden wild elation stifled a nascent yelp. “Brave boy, Tiger,” he had time to say instead, before he and the vengeful mount of Good Thief crashed into the black-cloaked figure.

The impact robbed him briefly of his senses, but Harka would not let him plunge into true unconsciousness, shrieking alarm in his ears. It was a good thing; he regained his feet at the same moment as Karak. Sharp Tiger, unbelievably, was still alive, struggling to rise on four broken legs. With a snarl, Karak reached and slapped the stallion's skull; it split open, and the beast died. Perkar hoped—in the brief instant he had to hope—that Mang legend was true, that Sharp Tiger and Good Thief would be reunited as one on some far-off steppe. Then he had no time for thoughts of that sort or otherwise as he fell upon Karak with Harka.

The first five or so blows landed, and Karak tripped back, golden blood glistening from several wounds. Perkar howled, swinging the blade savagely, not so much like a sword as like an axe, as if he were hewing deadwood. Karak's daunting yellow eyes stayed steady on him, but he knew that he must just keep his attack going, not give the god a single pause, keep the fear from gathering tight in his chest to slow his arms.

A black fist leapt past his guard and smote him with such force that he felt bones crack in his jaw. He slapped into the ground, rolled, and came back up with his blade ready.

Karak loomed over him, still with Human form and face but glossy black save for the orbs of his eyes. He shook his head no. “Pretty thing, is this how you repay me? I am only doing what I said I would do. Stand aside and let me finish what we began together.”

“I won't let you kill her,” Perkar shouted. “Not even to slay the Changeling.”

“She won't die” Karak returned. “Only her flesh will die. She will become mightier than she ever dreamed. Otherwise, she is dead already. Her body is beyond saving.”

Perkar glanced again at Hezhi's feebly moving form, heart sinking at the sight of her pale face and the huge pool of blood. Could such a tiny creature contain so much blood? It didn't seem possible.

“Her death will be meaningless unless she bleeds her last into the Changeling,” Karak hissed urgently. “She will have died for nothing, when she needn't die at all. But we must hurry!”

Perkar turned slowly back to the Crow God, knowing that he had already done his best and failed. But the storm of dread in his belly, instead of rising to a cyclone, began to break, diminish. “Between the two of us, Karak, we have brought about the deaths of everyone I hold dear,” he said measuredly, wishing he had something more profound to offer as last words. “I have lost my Piraku and betrayed my people, and you were behind it all. So let one or both of us die today—and I hope for the sake of the world it is both. And if it is me, you may do as you will.” He raised Harka.

Karak sighed and reached to a sheath at his own side. “Very kind of you, to give me your leave. I could deal with you as I did him” he said, indicating the fish-thing. With a horrible start, Perkar saw that it had a man's face—the face of the Tiskawa, in fact. “But you I will give a chance to die with Piraku, for you have served me well, Perkar Kar Barku.” He drew his blade. ”Do you recognize this sword?”

Perkar stared, his mouth suddenly dry. “Yes,” he admitted unwillingly, haltingly. “It is my sword. The one my father gave me.”

“Is it? I found it in a pool of red blood, here in this very mountain. I had it retempered to suit me. But I must correct you in one particular; since you threw it away, it is my sword now.”

“Something very strange about that blade, ” Harka warned him, but Perkar was beyond reason. The sudden fury that filled him was greater than any he had ever known, a tenebrous joy that could not distinguish between killing and dying. He flung himself at the Blackgod, Harka curving out and down.

“Can you see it? Can you see what you need?”

“Brother Horse, I'm dying.”

“Listen to me,” he snarled angrily. “I told you I wouldn't let you do that. Won't let you die! Listen to me …” But his eyes fluttered and he spat blood.

“What?” she asked, though she hardly felt concerned anymore—instead she felt strangely serene, light-headed.

“There.” He pointed at the thing that might have once been Ghe. “See, beneath the lake. Look beneath the lake.”

She looked. It was easy, for death was dragging her beneath anyway. She first saw Brother Horse, a fading warmth, his ghost already coming unmoored.

I can take him in, she thought. Like a god, keep him in my breast. She reached to do so.

But above the lake, his hand clutched hers. “No,” he barely whispered. “You don't have the strength for that. You need me like this.” His eyes gleamed with laughter, love, and comfort as he gripped her hand more tightly. “Tell Heen I said farewell,” he murmured. “Heen tells me he loves you …” Then his eyes lost their light as a flame surged into her, filled her with new strength.

And Brother Horse was gone, his hand already cooling, no trace of his heartstrands remaining.

Look beneath the hke, he had said, and, trembling, she did so, afraid to waste his last gift on anguish.

The “waters” closed over her. I am dying, she realized again. The Blackgod stabbed me. And, finally, she understood Karak's words, saw the use her blood would be put to, the results it would bring. She had to stop that somehow—and Brother Horse had seen how she could do it, seen some weapon she might use. He had pointed at Ghe.

She saw Karak still—a black thing of feathers and blue fire in the otherworld. She saw Ghe, too, knew him instantly. He still resembled some sort of inky net, with the scintillating bulbs of stolen souls bound to him like jeweled weights. But the net was rent, the pattern of his body in disarray. A few souls still glimmered there, however, and she reached, featherlight, to touch them.

Her swan and mare were still with her, though injured as she was. The swan guided her and the mare held her up, and together they brushed her fingers through the shattered remains of Ghe. One of the souls responded to her tentative inquiry, produced a voice that floated thinly to her.

“Hezhi?”itsaid.”Hezhi?”

She paused. She knew that voice. “Ghan?”

“Indeed,” he answered, gathering a bit of strength.

“Ghan, how did you—”

“I died. He captured my ghost—a fairly simple matter for him.”

“Ghan, I have so much to tell you,” she began. An image of him formed in her mind, his parchmentlike face, the knowing twinkle in his black eyes that could so often glare with irritation. She had lost Brother Horse, but here Ghan was back.

He laughed. “No time for that. No time for that at all.”

“No time for anything, I think,” she said.

“No, you are wrong. Ghe is stronger than the Blackgod knows, and I think if we can win his help, there is yet something we can do. But Hezhi, we must hurry.”

“Tell me what to do then.”

He told her.

“No!” Harka screamed; then steel clashed and the godblade burst into a thousand bits. The hilt leapt from his hand, and in his ear, Harka's dying cry faded into nothing. Perkar swayed, weaponless, in the following silence.

“Now,” Karak said, “that silliness is over with.” He bent toward Hezhi's body.

An arrow shaft appeared in his eye. Karak shrilled and straightened, seeking his new attacker. Ngangata stood less than a score of paces away. Half of his body was soaked in red Human blood, but he raised his bow for a second shot. Karak darted forward, faster than a mortal eye could follow, and in that eye-blink his sword plunged into the halfling's chest. Ngangata snarled and yet tried to raise his weapon, but Karak twisted the blade, and Ngangata's eyes turned to Perkar. They brimmed with tears of agony, but his gaze held no self-pity or even fear—it conveyed apology. Apology—for having failed him. Perkar leapt once again, shrieking inarticulately, still unarmed, bent upon tearing the Crow God apart with his bare hands. With a flashed look of utter disdain, Karak turned and ran him through, as well, the blade sliding into his navel and out his back. He knew no shock at being impaled, because in the past year he had taken more than one such wound. But before, he might have fought up the blade, or at least quickly disengaged himself. Now he merely glared at his murderer, still refusing to admit it was over.

Karak held him up with the blade for an instant, yellow eyes bright with contempt. “See how you like that without a magic sword to heal you,” he spat.

“Ah,” Perkar moaned. Karak released the hilt. Sword still in his belly, Perkar felt his knees wobble and give way, and he sat down roughly.

He almost fell on Ngangata. The halfling was still alive, though just barely so. Karak regarded them for just a moment, then stepped toward Hezhi.

“I-I'm sorry,” Ngangata managed to stammer.

“Shut up, you dumb Brush-Man,” Perkar whispered. “You didn't do anything wrong.”

“I could have … I could have …” Ngangata seemed confused, unable to think of what he might have done.

Trembling, Perkar leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I'm the one who is sorry, brother. Piraku with you and about you.” He patted the dying halfling on the shoulder. “I've got just one more thing to do,” he said, feeling a little giddy but otherwise surprisingly well, considering. “Then I'll come join you here.”

Ngangata nodded but said nothing.

Perkar put both hands on the sword hilt, closed his eyes, and pulled.

“Hello, Yen,” she said very seriously.

“Princess.”

“I need your help.”

Ghe noticed for the first time that there were other figures behind Hezhi. They all stood in the little courtyard above Nhol, where Hezhi had taken him once to look down at the ships. But he understood that could not be where they were as his memories—what little remained of them—returned.

“I've failed you,” he said, feeling hot, unaccustomed tears start in his eye, remembering the Blackgod carving him with a knife of living thunder.

“Not yet. There is still time,” Ghan said from behind Hezhi. The third figure was the stream demon, the woman—she sat sullenly on the bench by the cottonwood tree. Near her, looking old and defeated, stood the ancient Nholish lord he had captured in the Water Temple. Lengnata was fat, his eyes piggish little dots.

“Where are we, really?” he asked Hezhi.

“In your mansion. The place where you keep the souls you capture.”

“How did you get here?”

“I came to see you, Ghe. Because there is something you can do to save me.”

“Anything.”

“You must slay the River to do it.”

Ghe's limbs began to quake. He shuddered violently. “I can't do that. You have to know I can't do that. Even if I had the power—”

Anger wrote itself on her features. “You owe me,” she declared. “You made me think you liked me, maybe more than liked me. You owe me.”

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I don't know what that means,” she retorted, but softening. “But I know that I need your help.”

“I cannot slay the River!”

Ghan interrupted him. “Have you forgotten Li again, Ghe? We found bits of her in you, in your memory, hidden away and dimmed from your waking mind. The River tried to clean them out of you. He made you kill her, Ghe, because he would not give you what few memories you cherished.”

Hezhi held something out to him—not something physical, but fragments of his mind, like a shattered mirror. Images of an old woman, her love for him, the care that only she had ever lavished upon him. A day long ago, on the levee of the River…

“He did steal her from me, didn't he? Why did he do that?”

Hezhi reached up and brushed the hair from his eyes. “To keep you from being distracted. A real man—one with his own thoughts and motives and loves—a real man makes a poor weapon for the River. The River hates us because he will never really understand us, no matter that he wants our bodies as vessels. He hates you, Ghe, hates me, simply because he needs us. I know what it's like, to have him in me. I do.” She laid her hand on his shoulder. ”But Ghe, he made you from a man. Part of you is still a man. And despite what you did to me, you don't deserve what he has done to you. Neither of us deserves it. I am dying, Ghe. Only you can save me.”

An inchoate anger was growing in him, but still he persisted. “I… He made me so. I cannot but serve him.”

“No,” Hezhi said. “No, if you love me, you can serve me. You once told Ghan that whatever I wanted—”

“I lied! Ghan knows that.”

“You thought you lied,” Ghan said. “But I believed you because it was a deeper truth than you knew. It was the man in you, rather than the Riverghost.”

Ghe stilled his trembling, braiding his anger and his love. He reached into the secret, cold place that had helped him kill, back when he had been merely Human, when a misstep meant his own death, when compassion was a deadly thing. He wove that into the fibers, too, a warp to lay the weft through. lama blade of silver, I am a sickle of ice, he whispered, and finally, once again, he was.

“What must I do?” he heard himself say.

Hezhi leaned up and kissed the scar on his chin, the first wound he ever received. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But what you have to do is die. But we will help you.” And she gestured to the stream demon.

“Die,” he considered. “I have to die.” He focused on her again, on the exquisite shape of her face. “Will you forgive me then?”

“I already forgive you, Ghe.”

“Call me Yen.” She smiled. “Yen.”

IT took three pulls to remove the sword, each more painful than the last, and the final heave was followed by a gout of blood that he knew must surely have drained him. Nevertheless, though his legs felt like wood, he struggled to stand.

Nearby, another huge figure stood over Hezhi, which Perkar recognized as Tsem. The Giant interposed himself between the girl and the god.

“This is getting tiresome,” Karak said. “Perkar, lay down and die. Tsem … oh, never mind.” He raised his hand.

A scorpion stinger as thick as a Human leg struck the god as a nightmare jumble of limbs and plates suddenly crawled back into motion. Karak rolled his eyes—not in pain but in irritation—and struck the thing away with his hand. “And you!” he snapped. The monster with the face of the assassin from Nhol rose unsteadily on several spiderlike legs. It should have been dead—Perkar could see the hole in it, how burnt and charred it was. Only its head remained Human, and it was the Human eyes that held Perkar, not the monstrous body.

“Perkar,” the thing croaked.

He was so weak. His knees shook. He didn't even know what he imagined he would do with the sword he had just pulled from himself. Strike Karak one more useless blow? But here was this thing, the thing that had eaten the Stream Goddess …

He raised his sword, though the earth sought to drag it from his hand.

He carried his weight into the swing, knowing that if he missed it wouldn't matter anyway, he would never stand to attack again. He wondered dully why the Tiskawa tilted its head back, as if inviting the blow.

The Blackgod was perhaps more injured than he let on, for though he lunged to place himself between Perkar and the River-thing, he was too slow to avoid Tsem's broken club, which struck him in the shoulder blade and caused him to stumble. Then it was too late, and the sword Perkar's father had given him—the sword forged by the little Steel God Ko—bit deeply.

For the second time, Perkar watched Ghe's head leave its body. It was strange that the final expression to grace the assassin's face seemed to reflect victory rather than defeat.