Sword Born-Sword Dancer 5 (34 page)

Prima Rhannet had said it one night in her cups: there was sunlight in him, and stone.

She had not said there were tears.

I flipped the cloth over one shoulder and sat down on the wall. "Truth, Herakleio, in the name of an old woman we both of us respect: my coming here had nothing to do with hoping to replace you as heir. I knew nothing about Skandi at all, let alone that there were Stessoi, or metris, or even vineyards and wealth to inherit."

He didn't look at me, nor did he pull wind-tossed hair from his face because such a gesture would remove the shield. "Then why did you come?"

"To find out..." I let it go, thought it through, began again. "To find out if there was a home in my life where the walls were built of brick and mortar instead of air."

Herakleio turned sharply into the wind to look at me. "I have heard her say that!"

I nodded. "She said it to me earlier today, before she became ill."

He flung out an encompassing hand. "And so you came and found that these walls were made of more than brick and mortar, but also coin and power!"

"But I didn't necessarily find my home," I said. "I found a home. Her home. Your home."

He shook his head vigorously. "But you want it. Now that you know it, you want it."

I drew in a deep breath, let it fill my chest, then pushed it out again in a noisy sigh of surrender. "There is a part of me that wishes to be of it. Yes."

"You see!"

"But being of something is not the same as being that thing," I pointed out. "There is a difference, Herakleio. You are of the Stessoi, and you are a Stessa. You are these walls; your bones are made of them. It's your home."

He was clearly perplexed.

"I am my home," I said. "Where I go, that is my home. My walls are built of air. There is no substance--no brick, no mortar--except the substance I give them, and that is air. A circle drawn in the sand." I hitched a shoulder. "A man born in and of a house doesn't truly comprehend what it is to be a house. Because there is no need."

"But," he said, "you have that woman in it."

That woman. Not a woman. That one. Specifically.

Herakleio understood semantics better than I'd believed.

"Because she chooses to be in it," I said finally; and that in itself was so different from what I would have said three years before, when every part of me knew a woman was in a man's house because he put her there.

"Does she build them of air as well, those walls?"

"The walls of my home?" I shook my head. "Del is my brick. My mortar."

His intensity went up a notch. "And if she left your house, would those walls collapse?"

This time it was my turn to stare hard across the horizon. "I don't know."

For him, for that question, the answer was enough.

TWENTY-SIX

A SPIRE OF stone tore ahole in the sky, punching upward like a fist in challenge to the gods. I poised upon the foremost knuckle of that fist, aware of the breath of those gods caressing naked flesh.

Caress. Keraka. The living embodiment of the gods-descended, sealed by spell or wish into the infant's flesh before it even knew the world, was yet safe in its mother's womb.

All the colors of wine, all the shapes of the mind, staining the fragile shell before the sun so much as could warm it.

But there was none on my body. I was free of the blemish also called caress; was nothing more within or of myself than stranger, than foreigner, lacking the knowledge of gods-descended, the gifts of the Stessoi, the birthright of the Eleven.

What was I but a man born of a womb unknown to any save the woman and the man who together made a child, but who could or would not nurture that child; so that he was raised a slave in the hyorts of the Salset?

The spire beneath me shook. Bare feet grasped at stone. Wind beat into my eyes, blinded me with tears.

Skandi, they said, had been smoke made solid, then broken apart again.

If I was not to lose the spire, if I was not to let it shake me off its fist, I would have to sacrifice my own. Not to die, but to survive; not to destroy flesh, but to preserve it.

There was wind enough to do it, if I let it carry me.

There was power enough to fly, if I let myself try.

I stretched, leaned, felt the wind against my palms. Closed my eyes so I could see.

Was lifted--

"Tiger?" A hand came down on bunched, sweat-sheened shoulder. "Tiger--wake up."

The spire fell away, crumbled to dust beneath me, took me down with it--

"Tiger."

--and all the bones shattered, all the flesh split into pulp--

"Tiger--wake up!"

I lurched, twisted, sat up as the fingers closed tightly into muscle taut as wire. I stared into darkness, aware of the noise of my breathing, the protests of my heart.

The metri's heart was ailing. And I might be her grandson.

"What is it?" Del asked.

All around me on the ground the stone of the spire was broken.

She got up then, crawled over me, got out of bed, fumbled around in the darkness, hissed a brief oath as she fumbled again. But I heard the metallic strike-and-scratch, smelled the tang, saw the first flare of spark as she used flint and steel to light the candle in its pottery cup.

She held the cup up high so the light spilled over me. "Gods," she whispered, "what's wrong with you?"

I blinked then, and squinted, then shook my head to banish the visions. "Bad dream."

"You look scared out of your wits," Del said dubiously. "Rather like the stud when he's really spooked: all white of eye, and stiff enough to shatter his bones."

Shattered bones.

"Don't," I said simply, then swung my legs over the edge of the bed so my feet were flat on the floor. I hunched there, elbows set into thighs, the heels of my hands scouring out my eyes. "Just--a bad dream."

Del set the candle-cup down on the linens chest, then came to sit beside me. "What was it?"

I shook my head. "I don't know." I looked up then, still squinting against the flame. "I've had rather a lot to think about, lately."

"Magic," she said grimly.

I began to object--magic was not something I gave much thought to--then refrained.

Magic was part of it; Nihkolara was more than priest, and he had proved it. Time and time again, simply by putting his hand on me. Time and time again my body had warned me before he touched me, and I had refused to listen.

Some people, the priest-mage had said, were more sensitive to magic. It made them ill, he said, like certain foods or herbs.

"Magic," I muttered, and closed my hand around the necklet with its weight of sandtiger claws, and one silver ring.

Del was silent a long moment. Then, very quietly, "Do you believe he's right?"

I knew whom she meant. "No."

"In your heart."

The pounding, spasming heart. "No."

"All right--in your soul."

I laughed a little. "Just how many pieces of my anatomy do you want me to consult before you get the answer you want?"

"How about in your earlobe?"

I grinned, leaned into her with a shoulder even as she leaned back. "He has rings in his earlobes, our blue-headed first mate."

She nodded. "You always swear you don't believe in magic--"

"I said I don't like it. There's a difference."

"So, you mean you don't believe in this magic. This specific magic."

"I don't necessarily believe I have it, no."

"But--"

"But," I said, overriding her, "if what Nihko says is true, it doesn't mean I have it. It means I'm sensitive to it."

"But he has called you ioSkandic."

"I suspect Nihko has called me a lot of things."

"Besides all that. You have a history of personal experience with magic. Shall I name all the incidents?"

"Let's not," I suggested; likely it would fill six volumes to do so. "But reacting to magic doesn't mean I have any magic myself."

"Even after hosting Chosa Dei?"

"Hosting a sorcerer does not make the body of itself powerful. Only powerful by proxy."

I looked at my fingernails, which had often indicated the state of my body while infested with the sorcerer who considered himself a god. They were whole, normal, not black or curling, or missing. "I can't work any kind of spells, Del. You know that."

"You sang your jivatma to life."

"So did you sing yours to life," I reminded her. "Does that make you a sorceress; or is the tool--in this case, the sword--the embodiment of magic?"

"No," Del said decisively. "I am not a sorceress."

"There you are, bascha. You don't like the idea any more than I do."

"But what if it were true? That you have magic?"

"Then I guess I'd be a sorcerer."

"You say that so lightly."

Because I had to, or admit how much the prospect frightened me. "Do you want me to say it in a hushed whisper? Shall I go out onto the terrace, thrust my right fist and sword into the air and shout 'I have the power!'? like some melodramatic fool?"

"Well," she said, "I suppose being melodramatic is better than being mad."

"Which is the problem," I pointed out. "Here in Skandi, anyone with magic is considered mad, and sent away to this lazaret place."

"Is that what you're afraid of?"

"What, being mad? Oh, hoolies, some people would swear I am even without benefit of Skandic blood--if I have any--"

"Oh, Tiger, of course you're Skandic!"

"--simply because I have the gehetties to suggest I am the messiah who is to change the sand to grass," I finished. "Remember Mehmet? And the old hustapha? That deep-desert tribe more than willing to believe I am the one they worship?"

"And my brother," she said glumly. "Who was, according to Southron belief, the Oracle."

"Meant to announce the coming of the jhihadi." I nodded. "And so he announced me.

And look at what it got him. They murdered him."

Del sighed deeply. "Likely they'd murder you, too."

"If we went back South? Oh, absolutely. If the religious zealots didn't get me, if the borjuni didn't kill me for whatever reward there must be on my head, surely the sword-dancers would track me down."

"Abbu Bensir?"

"I have dishonored the codes of Alimat, not to mention betrayed the faith and trust of our shodo," I said. "Abbu would call me out in the blink of an eye, except there'd be no circle drawn, no dance, no rituals of honor. He'd just do his best to execute me as quickly as possible."

"And if he failed?"

I shrugged. "Someone else would step forward."

Her voice was very quiet. "But if you had magic, no one could defeat you."

"I have magic," I declared firmly. "Sword magic. Just give me a blade, and I'll wield it."

"Then why," Del began, "are you so afraid?"

"Am I?"

"You didn't see your face just now when I lighted the candle."

"Bad dreams bring out the worst in anyone, bascha. Remember who it is I sleep with? I could tell you all the times she's had bad dreams. I never suggested she was afraid of anything... likely because she'd have knifed me in the gullet."

Del scoffed. "I'd have done no such thing." She thought it over. "Maybe planted an elbow."

"At the very least. Anyway, the point is I don't believe I have any magic, be it Skandic magic, Southron magic, or even Northern magic--which is buried with my jivatma anyway, back beneath those heaps of rocks in the middle of the Punja."

"You could always dig it up."

"I don't want to dig it up. I don't want any magic. I don't want to be a messiah, or mad, or anything other than what I am, which is a--" And I stopped.

"Sword-dancer," Del finished softly, with something akin to sorrow. Because she understood what it meant, to know myself other than what I had been after laboring so long to become more than a chula. "In Skandi," she said, "you may be a grandson, and heir to wealth, power, position. No magic is necessary, any more than a sword-dance."

"You're telling me to stay. To let the metri name me her heir."

"I'm pointing out potentials."

"Herakleio may have something to say about that."

"Herakleio is a boy."

"Herakleio is--" The door opened abruptly, and there he was. "--here," I finished. Then,

"Knocking would be nice."

"Knocking wastes time," he replied. "Come out onto the terrace. Simonides has set the torches out for us."

"That must be very charming," I said, "but why am I to go out to the terrace, and why has he set torches out there for us?"

"The better to see by," he retorted, "while we dance." The wooden practice blade was in his strong young hand. Green eyes glinted hazel in candlelight. "Come out, Sandtiger.

The metri wishes you to make me a man. Perhaps it is time I permitted you to try."

" 'Try'?" I asked dryly. "Are you suggesting you may fail in the attempt?"

He displayed good teeth. "I may already be a man. Shall we go and discover it?"

"It takes more than one dance, you know."

"Of course," he agreed, "as it takes more than one man in her bed for a woman to fully understand what it is to be a woman."

I felt Del stiffen beside me into utter immobility. That kind of comment had gotten me into plenty of trouble during the early days of our relationship. But then she had been the one who hired me, and had the right to disabuse me of such notions as she saw fit; now she was a guest in the metri's house and would not abuse the hospitality by insulting the woman's kin.

There are more ways than verbal of insulting another. I stood up, grabbed my practice blade from where it was propped against the wall. "Fine," I said. "Let's dance."

Imagine a sheet of ice, pearlescent in moonglow. Imagine a rim of rock made over into a wall surrounding the sheet of ice. Imagine a necklet of flames spaced evenly apart like gemstones on a chain, whipped into flaring brilliance by the breeze coming out of the night. Imagine the humped and hollowed angles of domes and arches and angles, demarcations blurred by wind-whipped torches into impression, not substance. Imagine the solidified wave of the world running outward beyond the wall as if upon a shore, then pouring off the invisible edge into the cauldron of the gods.