Sword Born-Sword Dancer 5 (41 page)

--and there was a man in front of me.

Three men. Five.

A whole swarm of men.

Ah, hoo--

Something slammed into the small of my back and then into my ankles, driving me to my knees against the molah even as I reached for the sword hooked to my sash. Hands were on me, imprisoning me, digging into shoulders, throat, hair, wrists, dragging me away from the little animal with its load of Nihkolara; a knife threatened the back of my neck as I was forced to kneel there, head held by dint of a handful of hair snugged up tight, much as Del had imprisoned Prima Rhannet. But they didn't kill me immediately.

They just held me.

Then they began to strip me of my clothing.

"Now, wait--" I managed, before an elbow was slammed into my mouth. The next thing that came out of it was blood.

It is somewhat disconcerting to be thrown down in the dirt as men strip the clothes off your body. It is even more unsettling when they also inspect all of your parts, as if to make certain you're truly a man. At the first touch of a hand where only my own or Del's ever went, I heaved myself up with an outraged shout expelled forcefully from my mouth, and made a real fight of it.

Something caught at my throat. My necklet. I saw the gleam of a blade in the moonlight, gritted teeth against the anticipated stab or slice even as I heaved again, roaring, attempting to break loose of the swarm. The necklet of claws pulled briefly taut, then, released, slapped down against my throat. And then abruptly everything in my body seized up as if turned to stone, and I fell facedown into the dirt.

"Throw him over," a familiar voice said in a language I understood.

I wanted to tense against the hands that would grasp, lift, heave. But nothing worked.

Nothing at all--except my belly. Which relieved itself with vivid abruptness of the meal I'd eaten earlier.

Ah, hoolies, not this again.

"Throw him over," the voice repeated, and I heard a muttered complaint from Nihko.

From the dregs of darkness, from the misery of my belly and the helplessness of my body lying sprawled in muck left by molahs, goats, chickens--and me--and through a haze of blood, inhaling that and dust, I dimly saw the naked body on the ground grasped, lifted, heaved over the cliff. It fell slackly out of sight before I could even blink.

Thoughts fragmented as I saw the body go. The first thing through my mind: Prima was right--

Or else it was as much a trap for Nihko as for me.

Herakleio--?

But why would he have Nihko killed?

Then someone touched cool fingers to the back of my neck and I went down into darkness wondering if Nihko was conscious as he fell, and if I would wake up before I hit the bottom.

THIRTY-TWO

THE SHADOW passed across the cliff, flitted down the sheer face with its convoluted track folding back upon itself from harbor to clifftop. A bird.

The shadow soared, circled, returned, drifted closer. The body was a body, but broken.

The skull was pulped, the face smashed beyond recognition, limbs twisted into positions no limb was supposed to go; nowhere was it whole.

The shadow fled across the body, turned back.

It had been heaved over the edge near the track, but not on it; and 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 cliff's face. No human eyes beheld it, but animal nose smelted it. It was too soon for rot to set in, but the odor of death was something every animal recognized, and avoided. Unless it was a carrion-eater.

Molahs were not. And so when a string of molahs being led down the track rebelled, their molah-man called out to another man to search lest a body be found, some drink-sodden fool fallen from the cliff after stumbling out of a winehouse; it had happened before. And so men looked, and the body was found. It was remarked upon for its nakedness, for the scars on its body, for the ruin of its face and skull, but it was not recognized. It might be one of them. It might not. But it was indisputably dead.

The bird, deprived of its meal, soared east away from the caldera, crossed the ocean, crossed the valley, found other prey atop a stone spire piercing the sky, and there the bird drifted again, judging its meal.

And then of a sudden the bird stopped. Dropped. Hurtled out of the skies with no attempt to halt its plummet, and crashed into the body that lay sprawled atop the spire, naked of clothing, naked of consciousness; a shell of flesh and bone empty of awareness or comprehension.

The body opened, accepted the bird, closed again.

I awoke abruptly, startled out of senselessness into the awareness that I lived after all. I sat up, poised to press myself upright, saw the sky spin out from under me. I was conscious of a vast gulf of air, of a blue so brilliant as to be overwhelming, and the physical awareness of nothingness. The body understood the precariousness of its place even if the mind did not.

I rolled, flopped down upon my belly, realized an arm-span away the surface beneath me fell away utterly into sky.

Stone bit into the flesh of my face. Naked, I was not comfortable. Genitals protested until I eased them with a shift of position, though I did little more than alter the angle of one hip. I breathed heavily, puffing dust from beneath my face. I tasted it. And blood.

Beyond one outstretched hand lay the edge of the world, such as what I knew. In that moment what I knew was what I felt beneath me, what I saw. Sky and sky. Nothing more.

I lifted my head with immense care. Rotated it so that my chin touched the stone. Saw the edge of the world stretching before me, its horizon distant.

Another rotation of the skull, to the left. Again, sky; but this time land as well: stone, and soil, and the scouring of the wind.

Even now it touched me, teased at my flesh, insinuated itself beneath the hollows of my body at ankles, knees, hips; the pockets under arms. It caught my hair, blew it into my eyes, altered vision. I saw hair and stone dust and sky.

My belly cramped. There was nothing to expel, but that wasn't the intent. From deep inside, rising from genitals, something squeezed.

I wondered briefly if it was fear.

As swiftly as it seized me, the cramp released me. Surely fear would last longer?

A tremor wracked me from skull to toes, grinding flesh into stone.

I shut my eyes, let my head drop. I lay there very still, save for in- and exhalations; was relieved to manage that much.

I knew where I was. I just didn't know why.

Meteiera.

Stone Forest.

IoSkandi.

Where madmen were sent to die, while they made an acquaintanceship with magic.

Not me.

Surely not me.

Wind crept beneath my body, insistent. It shifted the stone dust, drove it into the sweat-slicked creases of my flesh. I itched.

The tremor wracked me again.

I painted a portrait: me atop the spire. I lay at the edge; to my right, the world fell away. To my left, it stretched itself like an indolent cat, the bones beneath lean flesh hard and humped as stone.

It was stone.

This cat was neither indolent, nor stone. This cat was flesh, and afraid.

I painted a portrait. I knew where I was. Comprehended the risks, and where the dangers lay. To my right, an arm-span away. To my left, much farther.

The body gathered itself, rose onto naked buttocks, moved away from the edge of the world. It stopped when it sensed stone encompassing it: an island in the center of the sky. It sat there, arms wrapped around gathered knees, and made itself small.

Wind buffeted.

I shut my eyes against it. Hair was stripped from my face. Sweat evaporated as the wind wicked it away. Buttocks and the soles of my feet clutched at the stone.

All around me was sky, and sky, and sky.

And, according to io- and Skandic alike, gods.

It occurred to me, finally, to wonder why.

Why this?

Why not simply heave me over the edge of the caldera cliff, as they had Nihko?

Why this?

And then, belatedly, wondered how.

If there was a way up, there was also a way down.

I smiled then, into the face of the wind.

The spire's crown was not so small as I had initially believed. It was, in fact, approximately the surface area of two full circles, a good thirty paces across. This afforded me the latitude to move without fearing I'd fall off the edge: I'd spent half my life--or possibly longer--learning how to stay inside a circle, and two of them was a surfeit.

Eventually I stood up against the wind. I let it curl around me, buffet me, try to drive me down or off the edge. But I understood my place now, and how to deny the wind purchase. I used weight and awareness, and comprehension. I learned what to expect of it, to respect it, to use it. By the time I paced out the crown of stone I was no longer afraid of the wind, that it might blow me off into the sky.

By the time I had inspected every edge of the spire's crown, I knew no ropes existed.

As the sun went down, I sat atop the tower of stone and made note of the valley below, the distant glow of lanternlight, of cookfires. My spire was not the only one. I counted as many as I could see, clustered throughout the valley, suspecting there might be more beyond. No two spires were alike: some were thick, knobbed with protuberances, shelves, cave-pocked. In the dying of the day I saw light sprout atop other spires; saw the arches and angles of dwellings built there; the wooden terraces clinging to shelves and cave-mouths. As the light faded, plunging the valley into darkness, I lost definition and saw only the wavery glimmers of lanterns, the dark blocky bulwarks of stone against moon and stars.

There was no lamplight for me, no lantern, no cookfire. Only what I took for myself out of the luminance of the skies. Doubtless a priest-mage would say the moon and stars were a gift of the gods.

Before he merged with them.

I shivered. The sun took warmth with it, and I had no clothes to cut the wind. I was hungry, thirsty, and confused.

If there was a way up, there was also a way down.

Wasn't there?

Eventually I lay down atop the stone.

Eventually I slept.

In my dream Del found me. She sailed to ioSkandi, walked into the Stone Forest, came to the proper spire, found a way up and climbed over the edge to rise and stand beside me. We linked hands, stood together against the wind, and knew ourselves inviolable.

The touch of her flesh against mine granted me all the peace I knew, all the impetus for survival and triumph a man might know, were he to trust a woman the way I trusted Del. Together we stood at the edge of the crown of stone, arms outstretched, and let the wind have us. Let it tip us, take us, carry us down and down, where we walked again upon the earth as we were meant to do.

I turned to her, to embrace her, to kiss her, and felt stone against my mouth.

I sat up into wind, into light, and watched the day replace night. Dew bathed the spire, and me. Sweat joined it, welling up beneath hair to bathe my skull, my face; to sheen the fragile flesh stretched over brittle bone.

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.