Sword Born-Sword Dancer 5 (44 page)

"There is no magic," I said aloud, "and I am no mage."

Wood creaked. Rope rubbed as it was wound.

"There are no gods," I said, "and I am no priest."

Sandtiger.

Sword-dancer.

No less.

No more.

This spire was taller than the one I had roused upon, danced atop, leaped from. This spire was wider, thicker, shaped of twists and columns and shelves and pockets and caves cut into the stone by wind, by rain. Trapped in my net I stared at the stone. Saw through the stone. Saw deep into its heart where the minerals lay, wound within and around the bones.

I blinked. The stone was stone again.

Wood creaked. Rope rubbed.

Higher by the moment.

I swung in the net. Spun in the net. Saw the sky encompass stone, stone overtake sky. I shut my eyes: saw it. Opened them: the same.

I lifted a hand. Studied it. Saw no blemishes. Saw only flesh that had existed for forty years. Not young. Not old. Somewhere in the middle, were I to survive to be as old again as I was now.

I turned the hand. The palm was lined, callused. It was a hand, not a construct. Rebirth had renewed the flesh, but not leached away the time.

The flesh of a sudden went white. Stark white, like snow. I blinked. In shock, I watched flesh thin to transparency. Saw the vessels pulsing beneath, the blood running in them; the sinew, the meat, the bone.

"Gods," I blurted, and clamped my eyes closed.

When I opened them, the hand was a hand again. Whole. Normal. The bones were decently clad in human flesh once more.

My own.

I touched my face. Felt the cheek that had borne the scars for so long. Rubbed fingers across it. Stubble had sprouted; I was not so much a child newly born that I couldn't grow a beard. I needed to shave. I needed a haircut. I needed to eat, to drink, to empty bladder and bowels--though nothing was in them--so I knew I lived again as a man is meant to live.

And I needed Del. To know I lived again as a man is meant to live.

Gods, bascha. I want you.

No scars met seeking ringers. I dug them in, scraped fingers across the stubble. No marks of the sandtiger.

I sealed my eyes with lids. Clamped a hand around the necklet. Let the claws bite into palm.

Bleed, I said. Bleed.

There was no blood.

Nihko had said I could manifest such wounds as a man might, were he given to injury.

Bleed, I said, and shut my hand the tighter.

When two mage-priests hooked me into the winch-house, undid the net, pulled me free of rope, I at last unclamped my hand and displayed the palm to Sahdri, who waited.

"Bleeding," I said.

His eyes were dark. They were not rimmed with light.

It had been a trick that night. "Then you must have wanted it so."

"I'm a man," I said. "I bleed. I can die."

"Is that what you wish?"

Blood ran down my hand. It dripped to the floor of the winch-house. I followed the droplets, saw them strike the stone. Saw them swallowed by the stone. Saw them go down and down through stone until they reached its heart, where they were consumed.

Changed to mineral.

Transfixed, I knelt upon the stone and tried to reach through it, to recapture the blood.

It was mine.

"You are very young," Sahdri said gently, "and very new. But give me time--give yourselftime--and you will understand what it is to be one of us."

I looked up at him. "I saw through it," I said. "This hand."

He smiled. "It takes some people so." He gestured briefly, indicating two shaven-headed, tattooed men with him. "This is Erastu." The man on the left. "And this is Natha." The man on the right. "They are acolytes here, as you shall become shortly. They shall assist you."

I stood. I ignored Erastu and Natha. I looked into Sahdri's face. "I can see through you."

And I could. I saw the rings in his flesh melt, saw the flesh of his face peel away, saw the bones of the skull beneath tattooed flesh glisten in a bed of raw meat. Beneath the meat, the bone, I saw the brain. And the light of his madness, pulsing as if it lived.

The shudder took me. Shook me. I fell. Pressed a bleeding palm against the stone; felt blood and substance drawn away, pulled deep.

"Lift him," Sahdri said to his acolytes. "He is far gone, farther than I expected. But he is not to merge yet. There is too much for him to learn; he is as yet soiled with too many things of the earth, and the gods would repudiate him."

Merge. Not me.

Only madmen did such things.

"No," I managed.

"No." Sahdri's voice was gentle as the hands of Erastu and Natha were placed upon me.

"Not yet. I promise you that."

I looked into his face. It was a face again. "I'm not mad."

"Of course you are," he said. "We all of us are mad. How else could we survive? How else would we be worthy?"

"Worthy?"

"To merge." He gestured to the acolytes. "Bring him to the hermitage. We shall leave him food and water and let the sickness settle."

"Sick," I murmured. I could not walk on my own. The body refused. Natha and Erastu held me up. Natha and Erastu carried me.

Sahdri said, comfortingly, "It takes us all this way."

They took me deep into stone, beyond a door. Gave me food. Water. And left me there.

I drank. Ate. Slept.

Dreamed of Del.

And freedom.

The boy crept out of the hyort. It was near dawn; he was expected to tend the goats. But he did not go to the goats. He risked a beating for it--but no, it was no risk; he would be beaten for it. Because if he failed--but no, he would not fail. He had only dreamed of triumph.

He took with him the spear shaped painstakingly out of the remains of a hyort pole. It was too short, the spear, but better than bare hands; and they permitted him nothing else save the crook to tend the goats. A crook for goats was not meant for sandtigers; even he knew that much.

Even he who had conjured the beast.

In the hyort, Sula slept on. Mother. Sister. Lover. Wife. She had made a man of him before the others could, and had kept him so that others would not use him. He was a likely boy, she told him, and others would use him. Given the opportunity. He was fortunate they had not already

begun. But she was a respectable widow, and the husband, alive, had also been respected. The old shukar muttered over his magic and made comments to the others that she was foolish for taking to bed a chula when she might have a man; but Sula, laughing, had said that meant the old shukar wanted her for himself. And would not have her. The chula pleased her.

Son. Brother. Lover. Husband. He had been all of those things to her.

And now he would be a man. Now he would be free.

He had only to kill the beast.

I woke up with a start. Dimness pervaded; the only illumination was the sunlight through the slotted holes cut out of stone into sky. I flung myself to my feet and stumbled to the stone, hung my hands into the slots, peered out upon the world.

Sky met my eyes.

None of it a dream.

All of it: real.

I turned then, slumped against the stone. In the wall opposite was a low wooden door, painted blue.

Blue as Nihko's head. Blue as Sahdri's head. Blue as the sails of Prima Rhannet's ship.

Prima. The metri. Herakleio.

Del.

All of whom thought me dead. Had seen the body bearing my scars: the handiwork of Del's jivatma; the visible reminders that the beast conjured of dreams had been real enough to mark me. To nearly kill me.

Sula had saved me. When the sandtiger's poison took hold, she made certain the chula would live.

As the chula made certain the beast would die.

Its death had bought my freedom.

What beast need I kill to buy my freedom now?

I shut my hand upon the claws strung around my throat, and squeezed. Until the tips pierced. Until the blood ran.

When Sahdri came for me, flanked by his acolytes, I showed him my palm.

"Ah," he said, and gestured the two to take me. Natha and Erastu.

I shook myself free of their hands. "No."

His tattooed brow creased. "What language is that?"

I bared teeth at him, as I had seen the sandtiger do. "The language of 'No.' "

The brow creased more deeply. Rings glinted in slotted sunlight. "What language is that?"

"Don't you speak it?" I asked. "Don't you understand? I can understand you."

"Tongues," he said, sounding startled, even as Natha and Erastu murmured to one another. "Well, it will undoubtedly be helpful. You can read the books for us."

I stared. "Books?" This time in words he knew: Skandic. That I had not known the day before.

He gestured. "We speak many languages. But not all. There are books we cannot translate." His eyes were hungry. "What language did you speak a moment ago?"

"I don't know," I answered, because I didn't. I merely spoke. What came out, came out.

I understood it all. "What do you want with books?"

"We trade for them," he said. "We are priests, not fools. Mages, not simpletons. We were born on Skandi and raised in the ways of trade. We value books, and we trade for them."

Dark eyes glowed. "You can read them to us, those we cannot decipher."

I laughed at him. "I can't decipher anything. I never learned to read."

He, as were his acolytes, was astonished. "Never?"

"Maps," I conceded. Any man in the South who wishes to survive learns to read a map.

"But you have the gift of tongues," Sahdri said. "It has manifested. Undoubtedly you can read." He paused. "Now."

A new thought. It stunned me.

Rings glinted as the flesh of his face altered into a smile of immense compassion. "Did you believe it would be terrible, our magic? That all of it should be painful?"

With difficulty I said, "I saw the bones of your skull break open. I saw what lay beneath."

"Control," Sahdri soothed. "A matter of control. The gift is beautiful. The power is--transcendent."

"I don't want it." The truth.

Ring-weighted brows arched delicately. "Surely once in your life you wished for magic.

For a power that would give you the aid you required. Everyone does."

Testily--because he was so cursed right--I asked, "And does everyone get what they wish for?"

"Only some of us." He gestured. Natha and Erastu laid hands upon me. "There is much for you to learn. We had best begin now."

I struggled, but could not move the hands. "Just what is it I'm supposed to be learning?"

"Who you were. Who you are." He stepped aside so the young men might escort me out of the chamber he'd called the hermitage. "Did the ikepra not tell you?"

"He told me he's not ikepra anymore."

"Ah. But he is ikepra. He will always be ikepra. He turned his back on the gods."

"Maybe," I said tightly, "he didn't want to merge."

"Then he will only die. Alone. Quite mad." He shook his head; rings glinted. "All men must die, but only we are permitted to merge. It is the only way we know ourselves worthy, and welcomed among the gods."

"That was his payment," I said. "Freedom. Wasn't it? For bringing me to you."

Sahdri offered no answer.

"He's free now, isn't he? No longer subject to your beliefs, your rules."

The priest-mage's tone was severe. "He does not believe in the necessity."

"Neither do I!"

"Most of us do not," he agreed, "when first we come here. But disbelief passes--"

"It didn't for Nihko."

"--and most of us learn to serve properly, until we merge."

Abruptly I recoiled, even restrained by strong hands. My lips drew back into a rictus.

"You stink of it," I said. "It fills me up."

Sahdri studied me intently. "What do you smell?"

"Magic." The word was hurled from my mouth. "It's--alive."

"Yes," he agreed. "It lives. It grows. It dies."

"Dies?"

He reconsidered. "Wanes. Waxes anew. But we none of us may predict it. The magic is wild. It manifests differently in every man. We are made over into mages, but until the moment arrives we cannot say what we are, or what we may do."

"At all?"

His expression was kind. He glanced at the acolytes. "Natha, do you know what each moment holds?"

"I know nothing beyond the moment," the man answered.

"Erastu, do you know what faces you the next day?"

"Never," Erastu said. "Each day is born anew, and unknown."

I shook my head. "No one knows what each moment or day holds."

"This is the same."

"But magic gives you power!"

"Magic is power," he corrected gently. "But it is wholly unpredictable."

"Nihko can change flesh. Nihko can halt a heart."

"As can I," Sahdri said. "It takes some of us that way. It may take you that way."

"You don't know?"

"I know what I may do today, this moment," he answered. "But not what I may be able to do tomorrow."

" 'It grows,' " I quoted.

"As the infant grows," the priest-mage said gently. "On the day the child is born, no one knows what may come of it. Not its mother, who bore it. Not its father, who sired it.

Certainly not the child. It simply lives every hour, every day, every year, and becomes."

"You're saying I'm one thing now, this moment, here before you---but may be something else tomorrow?"

"Or even before moonrise."

"And I'll never know?"

"Not from one moment to the next."

"That's madness!" I cried. "How can a man be one thing one moment, and something else the next? How can he survive? How can he live his life?"

"Here," Sahdri said, "where such things belong to the gods. Where what he is this moment, this instant, here and now, need not reflect on his next, or shape it. Where a day is not a day, a night is not a night, and a man lives his life to merge with the gods."

"I don't want to merge with anyone!"

"But you will," he told me. "You have leaped from the spire once, with no one there to suggest it, to force it, to shape your mind into the desire. Do you really think there will fail to come another day when you wish to leap again?"