Woti loosened Eruka's tongue.

"My clan—Kar Kushuta—is next to nothing," he said. "My grandfather lost half of our land in a wager, and that on top of a feud with the Kar Hakiru. We were always on the losing side of that. There was no land, and it was hard for my father to make a good marriage for any of us without land or daughters."

"No daughters?"

Eruka shook his head. "They say my mother was cursed by the goddess of our apple orchard, for something she did when she was young. She has never borne daughters."

Perkar understood the problem. Sons could only receive land as dowry, through their wives. A man was more likely to give a daughter and her dowry to a clan that had recently done the same for one of his sons. In this way the total lands of the clan remained roughly similar over time. A man with little land and no daughters was unlikely to find marriages for his sons.

"So I became a singer," Eruka concluded glumly. "There is some Piraku in that, though not much."

Apad, whose eyes were already beginning to glaze, slapped Eruka on the back. "Don' worry," he slurred. "Tha' will all change soon."

As Eruka had become more talkative, the garrulous Apad had been nearly muted by the strong drink. As Perkar watched, he downed another cup. He himself was drinking only lightly—his father and he having been drunk the night before.

Eruka nodded in response to the dark-haired man's promise. "If the Forest Lord wills," he muttered.

Apad's face grew dark. "And what if he doesn't?" he demanded tersely, softly. "What if he doesn't, Perkar?"

Perkar shrugged. "I don't know."

Apad took another drink, fixed his gaze on the dancing flames, perhaps searching for the little wild fire goddess there.

"Remember the 'Song of a Mad God'? About the mountain god who came down and devoured men?"

Eruka cleared his throat.

And so I came down

I came to the villages

To the proud damakutat

The holdings on the hills

I wandered in the halls

I wondered,

How might a man taste?

I drank the blood of mortal men

Drank it but never quenched my thirst.

Eruka sang on, softly, as if afraid someone would hear. Sang about the hero Rutka, who put on the skin of a bear, posed as the brother of the Crazed God and learned his weakness.

Only by the copper blade

The axe beaten by the forge god

The one in the hall of the Forest Lord

Maker of death for gods

Rutka found the axe, after many adventures, and dispatched the blood-crazed god.

When the song was over, Apad was swaying, and Perkar feared he would fall into the fire. He wondered where Atti and Ngangata were; they should have been done with the horses by now.

"See, Perkar? They can be killed. What right has the Forest Lord to tell you and me what we may and may not have? We are Irut, true men—not like the Alwat, not like the little gods. Each of us is like Rutka. Strong! If the gods do not give us what we want, we will take it. Hey, Perkar? You're a good fellow, aren't you? Want what we want. We'll be heroes together, you and Eruka and I. We'll get what the king desires, even if the king doesn't like how we get it."

"What about Atti and Ngangata?" Perkar asked. His own head was swimming a bit now. The song made him proud, proud to be Human. He must have drunk more woti than he imagined, listening to Eruka sing.

"Heroes come only in threes and sevens," Apad snarled. "Never in fives." He reached for his cup of woti, but tipped it over with his hand. There was a giggle out in the darkness; the girls were still watching.

"Hah!" Apad muttered. "Let's see what that is!" He lurched off into the night. Grinning, Eruka followed.

Perkar watched them go. His elation was dimming, but there was something, something in the song…

Why had she slapped him? Called him a boy? Gods could be killed. If a mad god could die, so could a river. Of course they could, and the other men knew it! In the house of the Forest Lord there were things that could kill gods, surely.

The sky was clearing; tomorrow would be bright. Perkar found his way to standing, walked out across the bare ground. He waved at the tower guard as he went out the still open gate.

"Late," the man said. "I'll close the gate soon."

"I didn't want to soil the lord's yard," Perkar explained.

The shadowy figure didn't answer, but Perkar thought he saw his head incline. He walked on down the hill, relieved himself on the night-damp ground. Then he strolled a bit farther, to the willow-line he guessed marked a stream.

"And where do you go, god or goddess?" he inquired of it softly, but the stream—a rivulet, really—did not answer. Perkar thought he knew, though. They were up a neighboring valley, one that joined his own. Surely this little stream flowed down, eventually, to his father's pasture.

Perkar's head swirled, the warmth of the woti still coursing up from his belly. What could he send her, that she might know him? Know what he intended? What sacrifice could this tiny child of hers take to her?

He knew, of course. He fumbled out his little knife, the one he used for trimming leather laces. The cut went a little deeper than he intended—too much woti!—but it would not trouble him, there on the back of his hand. He washed the cut in the stream, gave it his blood. She understood blood; she would know his.

From back at the gate there was a whistle. Perkar let another drop or two fall into the water, then, satisfied and strangely happy, walked back up to the barn, and sleep.

INTERLUDE

Jik

A polished deckplank creaked beneath Ghe's foot, and he froze, waiting to see if the slight sound had been heard. After a moment he relaxed, satisfied that the little creak had been folded neatly into the hundred other wooden complaints as the barge rocked gently in the River, into the frogs and nightbirds singing in the Yellow-Haired-Swamp just downstream. The sharp features of his shadowed face quirked in a sardonic smile at his own nervousness, and he reached with his thumb to rub the little scar at the point of his pointed chin. I am a blade of silver; I am a sickle of ice, he mouthed.

He moved on, slipping past a guard nodding at his post, mesmerized, perhaps, by the distant lights of the city, or the even more distant lights of stars. Dressed in blackest shadow, Ghe moved as effortlessly as smoke, through an ostentatious arch encased in gold leaf into a spacious cabin, onto the rich carpet woven in distant and exotic Lhe. Toward the great bed, and its sheets of finest linen.

Ghe had not the faintest idea why it was his task to kill the man who slumbered there; the priesthood would never make him privy to such details. He need only know whom to kill and where to find them; the why of it didn't matter to him. As a child, he had killed for nothing more than a few copper coins. Now his skills were for the priesthood, for the River himself.

He suddenly realized that no one was in the bed, and the hackles of his neck pricked up. The lights on the barge were extinguished; he had watched from the small boat that brought him until they had all gone out. That meant his target somehow suspected something, was hiding in the dark, waiting for his death to come looking for him and find a surprise instead. Ghe turned quickly on the balls of his feet, crouching at the same moment, searching with his eyes. After a moment of that, he sighed in exasperation and relief. He had overestimated this trader, this Dunuh, just as Dunuh had overestimated himself, somehow. For there he was, asleep in a chair, silhouetted against the lights of the city.

Ghe's relief faded as quickly as it came, for there loomed another shadow, standing near the sleeping one.