It seemed a long time before they were in the open desert, with the cries, laughter, and music of the Swollen Tents behind them. Patches of rusty sand glared through thawing white drifts. Here and there, muddy trails marked the paths in from elsewhere, from wherever the Mang tribes came.

“I'm sorry for your sake that I have to help you with this,” Brother Horse stated. “It has been a long time since I was a singer. Years. I wish there was a younger one around who could help you, but Cedar went off into the mountains a month ago, and I trust none of the others with you.” He paused for a few heartbeats and went on. “When it happened to me—the sight—

I was a bit older than you. A warrior. It nearly ruined me; I was sick for days after my first sight of a god.”

“I was sick.”

“For a short time. You are very strong, Hezhi.”

“Tell me more about yours,” she appealed, “your first sight.”

He seemed to consider that, and for a few tens of steps the only sound was that of their boots crunching through the melted and refrozen surface of the snow.

“I first saw Ch'egl, the god of a small spring. A very minor god indeed, much less imposing than he whom you saw.”

“And?”

“It was after a raid. My companions and I scattered to divide the pursuit. We were to all meet at the water hole. I reached the place first, and I saw Ch'egl They found me wandering in the desert, nearly dead of thirst, as mad as a shedding snake.”

“But you recovered.”

“Only after my friends took me to a gaan. He sang a curing song for me. But then he told me that if I wanted to live, I would have to apprentice to him.”

“And so you did.”

“No! I wanted to be a warrior. I felt certain I would never have such a vision again. But I did, of course. Fortunately, that time I had companions with me.”

Hezhi glanced up at him. “What? What happened that time?”

“That time I saw Tu Chunuleen. The great god you call 'the River.' Perkar calls him the 'Changeling.' Your ancestor, Hezhi.”

“Oh.”

“He was asleep. He is almost always asleep. But he dreams, always. When I saw him—” He stopped, fumbled with the ties of his shirt. At first, Hezhi thought he was stopping his story to relieve himself—the Mang showed no hesitation or shame in doing such things. But he did not. Instead, he raised the shirt up so that she could see an ugly, jagged scar.

“I did that myself,” he explained. “With my skinning knife. I nearly spilled my guts all over the ground, before my friends stopped me. I have never come closer to death. I did not want to live, not after seeing him. A gaan had to follow my soul halfway to the Ghost Mountain before he could save me.”

As he spoke they reached a low line of red rock, a shelf where the land dropped down the height of a tall man. Part of the upper level hung over like a roof, and Hezhi could see a little hearth of stones on the floor of the natural shelter. Cold prickles ran up her back, and she had a sudden, vivid memory of the priests, back in Nhol, waiting for her that day. Though many months in the past, the pain and humiliation of that experience stained her like red wine.

“What are we doing?” she demanded. “What is this?”

Brother Horse laid a hand on her shoulder. “We are only talking, as of now. Only talking, little one, away from the madness of the town.”

Despite the comforting words, Hezhi felt panic rise in her chest. They had tied her down, naked, drugged her—awakened that thing in her belly, in her blood. This seemed somehow like that, another trick, something thrust upon her. The similarity between ghun and gaan flashed once more through her mind. Priest, shaman, what was the difference to her?

“Wh-what will you do?” she stuttered.

“Nothing. Nothing without your leave. Indeed, Hezhi, there is nothing I can do. You must do it, though I can guide you, help you along the way.”

“There must be something else,” she insisted. “Some way to be rid of him forever.”

They stepped beneath the slight natural roof, the enormous sky halved by the red stone. It was oddly comforting to Hezhi, making the world seem smaller, more manageable. Brother Horse motioned her toward a flat stone and lowered himself by degrees onto another, as if his joints were rusted metal. He placed his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands with thumbs together, and pointed skyward. He looked first at the cold stone and charcoal between them, but then raised his gaze frankly to meet hers.

“No way that I know of, child. My hope for you was that the ember in you would die away without the River nearby to strengthen it. But it has caught, you see? Even without him, it will burn inside of you. Not as the Changeling planned for it to; it will not transform you as you have told me it did your kin. Still, unless you bank it, bring it under your control, that little flame will yet consume you.”

Hezhi considered that she did know one way; she could fling herself from a cliff, break her body, and release her curse with her spirit. But even that might not work; more likely she would become a monstrous ghost, the sort that had once attacked her in Nhol. The Mang spoke often of ghosts, as well. However different the lands beyond the River were, they were not so different that death was a certain escape.

“What then?” she asked. “What must I do?”

Brother Horse reached over to stroke her hair. “It may not be so bad as you think,” he said. “But I won't promise you that it will be easy.”

“Nothing is, for me, it seems,” she replied dully.

“It may even make you happier,” he went on. “I've watched you, these past months. You took to camp work pretty well. In time, I think you could even be good at it. But you would never love it, would you? The only things that I know you love—that I can see you love—are your paper and your ink, your book. The thought of books.”

“What does this have to do with that?” she muttered.

“Mystery,” he answered simply. And in that small word, Hezhi caught a glimmer of something. Hope, possibilities—something to fill the growing emptiness in her heart.

“Mystery,” she repeated, a question really. Brother Horse nodded affirmation.

“That is what you find in your books, am I right? Questions that you had not thought of yourself? Visions you could not imagine unaided? I can offer you the same.”

“It frightens me,” she admitted. “What lives in me frightens me.

“It always will, unless you master it,” he said. “And probably even then, if you have sense, which I believe you do. But did your books bring you only comfort?”

She quirked an insincere smile at that. “No, not comfort,” she answered.

“Well, then,” the old man said. “Why do you hesitate?”

“Because I'm tired” she snapped. “Weary of new things, of being frightened, of being sick, of losing what I know! Tired of these things happening to me …”

He waited until she was done, until she chewed down on her lip, panting, fury replacing fear.

“What then?” she asked again, this time sharply, insistently. “How do we start this?”

The old man hesitated, then reached into a pouch at his waist. He withdrew a small dagger, its blade keen and silver in the shadowed shelter.

“As always,” Brother Horse replied. “With blood.”

HEZHI turned the knife over and over in her hand, as if inspecting it would allay her fears. Instead, she only grew more nervous as Brother Horse kindled a small fire in the stone hearth.

She was distracted by the process of fire-making itself, which relied not upon matches—the only way she had ever seen fire “made”—but upon a dubiously simple device. He placed a flat piece of wood on the shelter floor; the wood had grooves cut along one side, and these shallow cuts terminated in blackened depressions. In one of these depressions he placed a stick, about the length of her forearm, and began to twirl it briskly with his palms, starting at the top of the stick and working quickly to its base, returning his palms to the top again, and so on. In moments a coil of smoke sought up from the juncture of the two pieces of wood. The smoke grew thicker and thicker until Brother Horse removed the stick and blew upon the hole he had been twirling it in. Astonished, Hezhi saw a small red coal there.