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 animaclass="underline" 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."
"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."
"Well," he said philosophically, "I said much the same myself."
"And did you leap off a spire?"
Nihko's face was serene. "We all of us leap," he said. "It is how we know."