Sword Born ss-5

by Jennifer Roberson

  No food, no water, no way down.

  Why this?

  Why not a clean kill, a body tossed off the cliff?

  I don’t believe in gods.

  I don’t believe in magic.

  I don’t believe in the power of a man to float above a wall, to move without indication of it.

  Yet I had witnessed the latter.

  I had witnessed magic.

  I had worked magic.

  I don’t believe in gods.

  I believe in myself.

  I put my hand upon the necklet of sandtiger claws, counted them out. None was missing. Only the silver brow ring Nihko had attached, and I had reattached when it came clear to me that no matter how much I wished to disbelieve in its efficacy against magic, it made every difference.

  They had cut it from the necklet the night before.

  No, the night before that.

  Or the night before that ?

  How many days had I been here?

  Two.

  That I knew about.

  Two, in which I was conscious.

  Before that?

  Before that?

  I was hungry. Thirsty. Weakening.

  More days than two.

  How many?

  Did it matter.

  If I were to find a way down, it mattered.

  If there were a way down.

  How had I come up? How had they brought me up?

  Sahdri. Sahdri, who could float above a wall, who could move across a terrace with no indication of it.

  Sahdri’s voice, bidding them toss the body over.

  What would Prima say, to learn her first mate was dead?

  What would Del say, to learn I was missing?

  To learn I was dead?

  More days than two.

  How many?

  How many left?

  How long?

  How many days before she accepted I was gone?

  And unlikely to come back.

  We had never, not once, discussed it. Because we knew, both of us, what was necessary. What I had done before, believing she would die; believing she was dead despite the breath left in her body.

  I could not now recollect what emotions had led to that decision, had permitted me to leave her. Certainty that she was dead; certainty that to see that death would destroy me. But the emotions of the moment were long banished, and unsummonable. I recalled that I had felt them, but not how they felt beyond the memory of anguish, guilt, grief, and indescribable pain.

  I had stood upon the cliff overlooking Staal-Kithra, lumpy with barrows, dolmens, and passage graves, and beyond it Staal-Ysta, the island in the glass-black lake flanked white-on-white in winter, stark peaks against bleak sky. I had bidden her good-bye; had apologized in my own fashion. Had thrust the sword’s blade into turf, into soil, into the heart of the North.

  I had named the sword to her, spoken that name aloud, so she would know it: Samiel. Now that Northern sword lay buried beneath Southron rock, drained at last of the sorcerer that had infested it. I was free of sorcerer, free of sword.

  Free to die alone on ioSkandi, abandoned atop a towering spire punching a hole into the sky.

  Piercing, one might hope with forgivable bitterness, the liver of the gods whom others worshiped by leaping off the spires.

  That instant, with startling clarity, I knew. Understood what was expected.

  I was to merge.

  I wondered, with no little cynicism, who it was that collected all the bones found at the bottom, shattered into bits. Or were they simply left there, ignored, ground into ivory powder beneath the feet of priest-mages come to rejoice in the merging?

  I tipped my head back and back, gazing up into the sky. For the first time since awakening atop the rock, I spoke.

  "You’re not mine!" I shouted. "You are not my gods!"

  Because I had none. Worshiped none. Believed in none.

  "Not!"

  The wind whispered, No?

  No.

  No and no.

  Had none, worshiped none, believed in none.

  Gods, and magic.

  Magic.

  Had none, worked none, believed in none.

  Liar, the wind whispered.

  Gods, but I was thirsty.

  And then I laughed. Because even a man who believes in no gods believes in the concept of them, believes that others believe. Or he would not rely upon a language that embraces the presence of gods.

  Habit. Nothing more. One grows accustomed to others saying it, praying it, believing it. One need not believe it himself. One need not pray himself.

  Would praying get me off the top of this rock?

  The wind curled around me. Hypocrite.

  Would magic get me off the top of this rock?

  The wind asserted itself, but offered no answer.

  Sahdri, who could float above a wall. Who could move with no indication of it. Who could require that Nihkolara Andros hurl himself off a spire to merge with the gods he had repudiated… but there had been no Ritual of Unsoiling, and thus Nihkolara Andros had been hurled. Not from the spire, not from ioSkandi where priest-mages served, worshiped, and went mad, but from the caldera clifftop.

  Ikepra. Abomination.

  What then was I?

  I laughed again. "Fool."

  The wind engulfed, embraced, tugged. I went with it; let it take me to the edge. I knelt there, supplicant to the sky. And refused.

  A shadow drifted over me, across the spire. Unfurled wings. I looked up. Saw the bird. Felt something inside myself respond. My belly cramped. Genitals clenched. I bent at the waist, folding upon myself. Something within me stirred.

  Grew.

  Unfolded.

  Felt imminent.

  I shook upon the rock, knees ground into stone. Flesh stood up on my bones; the hair stood up on my flesh. Against my will my arms snapped out, palms flattened, fingers spread. Breath was noisy in my throat. Was expelled from my mouth, and sucked in again. Loudly. And as loudly expelled.

  Sweat ran from me. I felt it roll down flesh; saw it splash against the stone. Every inch of that flesh itched. I knelt there, shuddering, aware of the rattling of my bones, the quailing of my spirit.

  So easy to let go.

  So easy to lean forward.

  So easy to tip myself off the rim of the world.

  So easy to fall.

  So easy to end.

  "Del!" I shouted. Louder, again, "Dellllllllll!"

  She was my walls. My house.

  Did Herakleio want her so badly? So easy. To let go. To fall. To end.

  Light found me there. Kneeling. Denying the gods. Repudiating magic.

  Putting my faith in Del. Find me. Find me. Find me. Bascha. Please. Find me?

  I lay atop the spire, spine pressed into stone. I was heavy. All of me, heavy. And yet it seemed impossible that I should be so, because there was no food, no water. Only wind. Only sun. Only endless skies, and endless days, and nights that fed me on stars.

  In the South, I would have died days before. Here, with moisture in the air, with morning dew, with the breath of seawater against my flesh, death was tardy. But it came. The carrion bird above me, inside me, assured me of that.

  Del hadn’t come.

  Couldn’t.

  Did not know where, or how.

  Or even if I lived.

  Had anyone else died atop the spire? Did the carrion bird feast upon the body, scattering the bones? Did the wind blow them off?

  Could the wind lift a body?

  Carry it?

  Could the bird lift a body?

  Carry it?

  Could I rise and try the skies?

  Flesh itched. Bones burned.

  Emptiness abounded, save for the imminence.

  I was glass, and I would break.

  Lift me, carry me, drop me, and I would shatter.

  Better I lift me. Better I carry me.

  Better I shatter myself.

  Hollowness.

  S
pirit honed to an edge no one could see, but it would cut; oh, yes, it would cut through the flesh before anyone knew.

  And kill.

  Cut. Slice. Pierce.

  Like a sword.

  I was a sword.

  I was the sword.

  The sword.

  Conceived in the skies, of the metal made into steel; given birth above the earth.

  Falling.

  Falling.

  Found later, and smelted. Folded. Hammered. Heated. Cooled in the waters, and blessed. And honed.

  Wielded.

  Jhihadi. Messiah. Slave. Sword-dancer.

  Wielded.

  Broken?

  And heated again. Folded again.

  Hammered.

  Honed.

  Wielded.

  My eyes snapped open. I stared up into the skies, aware of but not blinded by the sun. A shadow passed across it, across me. Wings unfurled.

  The noise I made sounded not unlike the cry of a carrion-eater.

  I rose from the stone and stood upon it for the first time in days. Gazed upon the doubled circle and the world beyond it, the endless skies filled with wind, and gods.

  And a bird.

  Conceived in the skies, found later, and smelted. So that the essence of me was retained, worked, heated and hammered and honed.

  There was nothing left of me but steel.

  Sword-dancer.

  Dancer.

  Sword.

  Imminence was a presence.

  Wings unfurled.

  Shadow passed, darkening my eyes.

  Heal me.

  Anneal me.

  Wings within unfurled.

  Anneal me.

  I stood on the edge of the spire and unfurled arms, palms, fingers. Felt the wind upon my flesh. Felt it enwrap, enfold, engulf.

  Anneal me.

  Heels lifted from the stone. Toes gripped. Clung. Balanced.

  Anneal me.

  Skull tipped back. Sun warmed my face; wind kissed it. Seduced, I let the lids drop closed; saw the red brilliance behind them, filling my head with light.

  Comprehension.

  Acknowledgement.

  I poised there, a man at the edge of a stone circle, the only sword available the one I made of myself.

  Shadow winged over me.

  " Anneeeeeeaallllll meeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

  No gods.

  Only me.

  Only me.

  The shadow within unfurled.

  The wind came again. I felt it in my eyes, my nostrils, my mouth; felt it enter throat and lungs and belly. Felt it bind my bones, so brittle, so hollow, so light.

  And imminence arrived.

  And power.

  Comprehension.

  Acknowledgment.

  I whelped it there upon the rock; gave birth to the child I had carried for more than three decades, now labored in pain to bear upon the spire in the skies. The child I might have been had I been born in Skandi. The child thrown away in the sands of the Southron desert. The child I was never permitted to be; the child I never permitted myself to be. To conceive. To bear.

  I whelped it there upon the rock and screamed out the pain and rage: that the choice was taken from me. Decades after the vessel had been shaped of a man and a woman, the child was born at last. The vessel was annealed. The flesh was strong enough at last to contain the child.

  Oh, it wanted freedom!

  I spun then and ran.

  Ran.

  To the edge of the circle.

  The edge of the spire.

  The edge of the world.

  And beyond.

  No gods.

  Only me.

  Leaping into the day.

  The shadow passed across the spire, flitted down the sheer sides. A bird.

  The shadow soared, circled, returned, drifted closer. The body was a body, unbroken. The skull was whole, the face recognizable, the limbs untwisted.

  The shadow fled across the body, turned back.

  It had leaped near the edge, arid so the body was not immediately visible from any angle. Bereft of clothing, the brown skin blended with the soil, the rocks, the small plots of vegetation trying valiantly to cling to the spire’s footing. No human eyes beheld it, but animal nose smelled it. The odor of impending death was something every animal recognized, and avoided. Unless it was a carrion-eater.

  Molahs were not. And so when the molah pulling the cart rebelled, its molah-man looked, and the body was found. It was recognized for its nakedness, for the scars on its body, for the shape of its face and skull. It might be one of them. It might not. But it was indisputably alive.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Sound. The wind, rustling vegetation. Lifting sand and dirt. The scratch of grit, rolling. The tickle of air in the hairs on arms, and legs, and head. I could hear it. Hear the hairs rising.

  Could feel it.

  Feel.

  In a single spasmodic inhalation my lungs filled, expanded my chest; I was afraid to let it go again, lest it never be repeated.

  My head was filled with light.

  Breath whooshed out again. Came back, like a dog, when I called it.

  I breathed.

  Sound. The clink of stone on stone, the dig of hoof into soil, the whuffing snort of an animal.

  And a person, walking.

  Eyelids cracked. Daylight filled my eyes; I lay on my back. I saw the animal: molah. Saw the shape: male. Black against the sun.

  The molah was stopped. The man tied its lead-rope to a scrubby tree, then came to me. Knelt down beside me. Inspected me, though he put no hands upon me.

  "For forty years," he said, "you have been dead. Only now are you born. Only now are you whole."

  Forty?

  Had I so many years?

  No one had known. No one had told me. All of it a guess.

  Forty.

  "Only now are you whole," he repeated.

  I realized then he was speaking Skandic.

  And that I understood it.

  His smile was ironic. "I know," he said. "But now you comprehend what a newborn baby encounters. So much of a new world. So much to overwhelm it."

  I opened my eyes fully. Saw the shaven, tattooed head; green eyes in sun-bronzed skin; the glint of rings in his brows.

  "Dead," I said.

  "You were," he agreed.

  "You."

  "Ah." The ironic smile deepened. "No."

  "Saw it."

  "You saw a body. It was dark, you were in some distress — and the magic was in your body, once they took this from your necklet." A finger indicated the healed cut where the ring had once resided; had been sliced out. "A body," he said. "Nothing more. A dead man, and convenient: your height, your weight, your coloring; we are all of us similar."

  "You?"

  "Me they pulled from the molah; I was in no position to argue."

  No. He had been drugged to insensibility by his captain.

  "Why?" I asked. "Why present a body?"

  "Because of your woman," he answered.

  Del?

  "If she believed you lived, she would search for you. They wish her gone."

  "Who?"

  And how many?

  "Sahdri, lest she come looking. The metri, lest she become what Herakleio desires. Prima, because — because she hopes in grief Del might turn to her."

  "Who did this?"

  "Any one of them."

  "You."

  "No."

  Certainty. "Del will come."

  "But she believes you are dead. Your body was found."

  "Not mine."

  "They believe it is yours."

  "They?"

  "The metri. Herakleio. Prima."

  Disbelief was manifest. "Prima?"

  He did not smile. "She believes you are dead. She is meant to believe it, as are the others."

  "But she knows you’re alive."

  "No."

  "No?"

  "I disappeared."

  "How convenient."
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  "They assume I am dead. They know you are."

  "Not Del."

  "And Del."

  "No."

  "They are priests," he said gently, "and mages. Do you believe a body would be found that did not resemble yours even in certain details?" For the first time he touched me. It was brief, impersonal, without intent beyond indication. "Here." The travesty of an abdomen reshaped by Del’s jivatma. "And here." The claw marks graven deeply into my cheek. "Not much skull left, nor face, but enough for the scars."

  "I don’t believe it. Neither will anyone else." Certainly not Del. "Even a smashed body bears specific blemishes."

  "They are mages," he said with infinite precision. "This is not beyond them. They simply lifted the scars from you and set them into another man’s flesh."

  It robbed me of breath. "Lifted — ?"

  "No scars," he said, "beyond those they left you. A dead man bears them. And so you are dead."

  I wanted desperately to move, to lift a hand to my cheek, but the body betrayed me.

  "Dead," he repeated. "To everyone who knew you."

  "You know me."

  Nihko smiled sadly. "But I am a priest, and I am a mage, and I am a madman."

  "Ikepra."

  "Not any more."

  "How?"

  "Payment," he said, "for this."

  "For — ?"

  "This."

  "This?"

  "The first steps," he said, "following birth. You have ten years. Possibly twelve. You are a candle now, burning brighter and hotter than any other. You will consume yourself with the heat of your spirit, with the power in your bones. You have no time to crawl, but must be made to walk."

  I lay sprawled against the ground, unable to move. "Am I — whole?"

  "Better than whole," he answered. "Now you are complete."

  I knew what I was. "Sword-dancer."

  Nihko said, "Not any more."

  "I danced atop the spire."

  "You had no sword."

  "I am the sword."

  "No."

  "You can’t take that from me."

  "I will not. They will."

  "No one can."

  "You are a child," he said kindly. "The magic is wild. These are men who have learned its nature and how to control it. Trust me in this: you will do as they say, become what they decree."

  "You didn’t."

  "And they would kill me for it."

  "You’re alive."

  "Payment," he said. "For this."

  I laughed then; was shocked that I could. "I’m dead. Really dead. This is not real. You’re dead, and I’m dead, and this is not real."