It took longer than he thought it would to reach the gorge, and there he found Eruka. The flaxen-haired singer stared up at the sky with empty eye sockets, his mouth slack. The godsword was still clutched in his hand. There were two dead wolves nearby, and much blood on the stones. Tracks led to the edge of the gorge.

The Changeling had cut deep into the stone, deep indeed, and the striated walls of the ravine were sheer and unforgiving. There was no path down that he could see, only the precipice. Steeling himself, Perkar gazed over the rim and thus saw the Changeling for the first time outside of a dream.

It both did and did not resemble his visions. Even in the sunlight, the River appeared cold, shadowed, the color of a killer's gray-eyed glance. Fast-flowing, gnawing eternally at the stone, he hissed hungrily between close walls. He was not huge or wide here—not the horizon-spanning monster of Perkar's nightmares— but for being this close to his source, the Changeling was broad indeed, a faint but certain promise of the River by the white city.

How had his companions gotten down? The hunt must have stopped here, and Ngangata and the Kapaka were yet unaccounted for. They had to have descended to the River. He peered over the edge, puzzled. There were no hidden paths there, no switchback trails in the absolute verticality of the walls.

Then he saw it, on a sandbar, his explanation. The carcass of a horse. He shook his head, trying to deny what should have been obvious. A slight ticking on the stone alerted him, and he turned at the sound.

A man stood there, naked save for a long cloak of black feathers that fell from about his shoulders to midcalf. His skin was whiter than bone, where it showed. Luminous black eyes watched Perkar from beneath beetled, ebony brows and an unruly mop of hair, also black.

"I know you," Perkar whispered, drawing his sword.

"And I know you," Karak answered, his thin lips parting in a grin. "The Huntress believed you dead, but I knew better."

"Why?"

"Why, why? Mortals and gods alike ask that question more often than I care to hear it. I let you live because I like pretty things."

"You think me pretty?" Perkar asked incredulously. He tried to imagine what he might look like now, encrusted in ten kinds of gore, the blanched puckers and slashes of unnaturally healing wounds, his matted and stinking hair.

Karak smirked. "No. But that fight—you and that other Human, charging down on the hunt, killing the Huntress' own mount—that was a very pretty thing. A shame if no one survived to polish such a gem."

"I don't know that I believe you," Perkar said, keeping the sword up and steady. A hard gust of wind enfolded them, flapping Karak's long Crow-feather cloak, bathing Perkar's bare torso in coolness. "I saw you kill Apad."

"So I did. After all, you couldn't be allowed to win. But you— you should have been dead, little mortal. Even now I see your one heartstring—such a thin little thing. I'm afraid the Changeling will eat even that, if you go down to him."

"What happened to my friends?"

"The other Humans? They flew into his clutches. That was a pretty thing, too; I came to tell you about it."

"Did any of them live?"

"All but this one," Karak said, indicating Eruka, and Perkar's heart soared for an instant, until the Crow God's meaning came clear.

"All but this one; he did not fly. He stood here on the edge and waited for us. He was frightened, but less frightened of us than the edge."

"The others?"

Karak cocked his head, pointed to the base of a tree. A broken rope was tied to it.

"He stretched that rope between these trees; we did not see it, for his sword was blazing. Two wolves and a huntsman we lost, for they tripped on the rope and tumbled over the edge."

"I'm proud of him. I wish he had killed more. But what of my other friends?"

"They flew over the edge when we approached."

"They jumped, you mean."

"That isn't as pretty."

"Are they dead? All dead?" It seemed incredible that anyone could survive such a fall.

Karak shrugged, a slight movement. "I don't know. Shall we see?"

"What do you mean?"

"I can take you to the bottom of the gorge; no farther. Even I fear the Brother."

"You? Who swallowed the sun?" Perkar asked sarcastically.

"The Changeling can swallow much more than that," Karak replied softly.

Karak drew the cloak more tightly about himself, as if he were cold, and shivered in the way of gods. In an instant he was a Raven again, huge, his gleaming beak a reminder of Apad's fate. Perkar considered trying to avenge his friend, but it was a thin thought, an obligatory one that sank away into his confusion and weariness. After all, he had already died for honor once, more or less, and killed for it, too. If Karak wanted to help him, no matter how whimsical his reason, Perkar would be a fool to spurn him.

Karak flapped into the air, took a hold on Perkar's shoulders in precisely the way he had taken on Apad, before pecking into his brains.

"Best that you grip my legs," Karak said, "else I will have to dig into your shoulders too hard with my claws."

Perkar acknowledged with a nod, reached around the scaly bird legs, wrapping his arms so that both his hands and the crook of his elbow held him there. Nevertheless, when the Crow God flapped again and they took to the air, his claws bit uncomfortably into Perkar's flesh.

They floated lazily down into the gorge, Karak's wings pop-ping and snapping in the air. The Raven hugged close to the sheer stone, intent, it seemed, on not flying over the surface of the River. He deposited Perkar on a narrow shingle of gravel and fallen stone.

"I don't see your friends," he said. "But perhaps they are here. I can see nothing, this close to the River."

Indeed, Karak seemed somehow paler, his feathers less lustrous. As Perkar watched, a few actually faded to a dull gray.

"You see? This is what you wanted to battle, Perkar. Even asleep, he already begins to eat at me." The Crow hesitated and cocked his head to the side. "But a battle is coming, Perkar," he hissed softly. "A war of gods and men. You would be wise to choose the right side."

"A war?" Perkar grunted. "I'll have no more of that."

"You have no choice, pretty thing." Karak stretched his wings and beat once more at the air. His flight seemed labored, but the higher he flew, the more dextrous he became.

Perkar frowned at his retreating form. "Thank you," he called out. "But how did you know my plan to fight the Changeling?"

Karak uttered a short, harsh laugh. "With which of these did the Forest Lord arm himself against his Brother?" he called, in the mocking voice of the Lemeyi.

For an instant, Perkar's dulled brain did not understand, then fury stabbed through the fog.

"You!" he shrieked. "That was you."

"Indeed," came the diminishing voice of the Raven. "And you have everything you desired. Your enemy at hand and a weapon to kill him with. Good luck to you, Perkar. I will send you one last gift…"

And, despite Perkar's curses and imprecations, he was gone and did not return.

Perkar sat on the shingle until the sun westered and the long shadow of the gorge consumed him. Then, not knowing what else to do, he rose stiffly to his feet and began to walk along the narrow shore, downstream. He passed the sandbar, where the corpse of the horse lay, bloated and covered with flies. He recognized it, of course; the Kapaka's horse. Reluctantly Perkar waded out to it, sinking up to his waist. The water felt like any water he had ever been in, save for a faint cold tingling that might have been the result of his exhaustion. Two days' sleep, it seemed, were not enough to heal such grievous wounds as his without cost.