“That will be soon enough,” Perkar told her, dismounting. “Here comes the lord.”

The “lord” was a rough-seeming man, tall almost to the point of being gangly, dark-haired, and as fair-skinned as Perkar. Nothing in the way he dressed signified his station to Hezhi, but she reminded herself that these were strange people with strange ways.

Perkar's people. It was the weirdest thing to see so many men—and women—who looked like him. Though she had always understood that somewhere there were whole villages and towns full of his tribe, she had always imagined that Perkar himself was somehow extreme, the strangest of even his kind. The Mang, after all, were the only other foreign people she had met, and aside from their odd dress, they much resembled the people she had grown up among. Unconsciously, she had thought of Perkar as she thought of Tsem and Ngangata—as another singular aberration.

These implicit notions of hers now vanished. Amongst the people of this damakuta she saw hair the light brown of Perkar's and some as black as her own. But two people had hair the same shocking white color as Ngangata's, and another had strands of what looked to be spun copper growing from his scalp. Eyes could be blue, green, or even amber in the case of the “lord” and two others she noted.

The damakuta—well, Perkar was right; she was disappointed. When he spoke of it in Nholish, he called it a “hall.” And so she had imagined something like a hall, or a court, like the ones in the palace. But this damakuta—first of all, it was wooden. For a wooden structure it was undoubtedly grand, and it certainly had a primitive charm with its peaked roof, hand-hewn shingles, and weirdly carved posts. To be fair, she realized that Perkar had described all of this—her mind had merely translated it into her own conceptions.

Of course, he had never mentioned the red-gold and black chickens poking about the yard, the dogs sleeping on the threshold of the damakuta, the curious and dirt-smudged children who played, more or less naked, amongst the chickens.

But Perkar was right; for all of that, it was certainly grander than a Mang yekt.

The “lord” approached and said something to Perkar that Hezhi did not understand. Perkar looked tired; the seams on his brow were deep with trouble, and whatever response he gave to the other man seemed uneasily given. He added something, as an afterthought, and then waved her and the rest to his side. Hezhi complied with a reluctance she didn't entirely understand. There was some quality about the tall man's eyes she found disquieting. When they arrived, however, he bowed to them slightly.

“Pardon the thickness of Mang speech on my tongue,” he told them. “It has been more than a day since I have spoken it.”

To Hezhi's ear there was nothing wrong with his Mang at all. Probably Brother Horse and Yuu'han could tell he was no native speaker, but she could not.

“In any event, I am known as Sheldu Kar Kwereshkan, and welcome to my damakuta. Its rooms, its wine, its food are yours for the taking, and if aught else calls a need to you, do not hesitate to pass that request on to me or mine.” He turned to her. ”Princess, I am told you have traveled far and far to be here. Be welcome.” His amber eyes lingered on her uncomfortably, but Hezhi smiled and nodded. It was probably, after all, only the alien color of his orbs that distracted her. “Brother Horse, once known as Yushnene, your name is well known to my family. You and your nephew understand that you are under our protection here, and no harm shall come to you.”

“Very generous,” Brother Horse replied, perhaps a bit stiffly.

The tall lord greeted everyone else. Hezhi gazed back around the compound, wondering what the building might be like inside. She wondered if there might be a bath.

SHE sighed, ladling more water onto the steaming rocks. The liquid danced frenetically on the porous, glowing stones, and the next breath she drew was almost unbearably hot, though delicious. Heat gripped through her muscles to her bone, and soreness seemed to ooze out of her with her sweat.

It was like no bath she had ever known, but it would certainly serve.

Several other women shared the sauna with her; unclothed they were more ghostly than ever, white as alabaster tinged here and there with pink. They were polite, but Hezhi suspected that they were inspecting her with the same bemused regard. Men used a separate steamhouse, she was told, and likely that was where Tsem and the rest were. Perkar and the lord had gone off to talk alone; Hezhi suspected that he would ask for more men to escort them to the mountain.

The mountain. She'leng. She closed her eyes against the heat as another steam tornado writhed into the air. She drew up the images of her journey through the lake to that other She'leng, which she understood was in most ways the same as the one she was moving so steadily toward.

Why must she go there corporeally? She had already been there as a spirit, but Karak insisted that she must make the journey in the flesh. She ran her finger over her scale absently. It was quiet, untroubled, and yet still it had the power to trouble her. Someone was not telling her something. She hoped it was not Perkar, and even at that thought her heart sank, a tightening in otherwise relaxed muscles. Perkar had been so good to her these past few days. She still did not know what she felt for him, exactly, but his arms around her that night had been good, comfortable. Not disgusting as with Wezh, not full of trembling, silly excitement as with Yen, but quiet, and warm, and good. If Perkar were betraying her, too…

Unfortunately, she was forced to admit, he might be—if he thought his reason was good enough. She remembered her conversation with Ngangata. But that was before—well, she knew Perkar had some sort of feelings for her.

Or he wanted something, very badly indeed.

She frowned and threw more water on the rocks, reveling this time more in the sting of pain from the cloudy effervescence than in its more soothing results. No, she wouldn't think that way. She would trust Perkar, as much as she could. She had to trust someone.

And if Perkar were plotting against her, what chance did she have?

What a silly thought that was, she admonished herself. As if she were without power. She had never been in the habit of trusting those around her with her life; why should she start now, when she had more resources within her than ever before? Had refusing her heritage from the River broken some self-reliant part of her? These past months she had counted on people more than she ever had in her life. Yet back in Nhol, when her very existence had been in danger, it had been she who found the answers in the library, in the tunnels beneath the city. Ghan and Tsem had helped, but it been her own initiative and hunger that saved her. Her only moment of weakness had been in summoning Perkar, in wishing for a hero. She had not known that her blood would mingle with the River and bring that about. She had not consciously been at fault. But her sin had been in wishing for someone else to help her, when real experience proved again and again that she could rely only on herself, in the end.

But Perkar had saved her then. Without him, Yen would have murdered her.

She tried to relax back into the steam, reclaim her peace in long-deserved luxury, but it was gone. Once again, she did not know enough about her own destiny. In Nhol, the library had given her the key to surviving, a golden key of information better than any lockpick.

Here books were of no use to her, but tonight she would invoke other ways of learning. She would have some answers before taking another step toward She'leng.