Jennifer Roberson - Sword Born

" Nihko has no desire to leap."

"He will leap," the priest-mage said. "One day it will come upon him, and he will leap. As it will come to Natha and Erastu."

They inclined tattooed heads in silent assent. Rings in their flesh glinted.

"Then why does it matter?" I asked. "Why does it matter where a man lives?"

The dark eyes were steady. "A man such as we may love his child one moment, and kill it the next. It is better such a man lives here, where he may serve the gods as he learns to control his power. Where he may harm no one."

It was inconceivable. "I don’t believe that. What about Nihko? Why did you let him go if you believe he will harm someone?"

"He keeps himself aboard ship. He sets no foot upon the earth of Skandi. He may harm himself, or his captain, or his crewmates — but mostly he harms the people he robs." His tone made it an insult: "He is a renegada. "

"You’re saying anyone with this magic is capable of doing anything, even something he finds abhorrent?"

Unexpectedly, tears welled in Sahdri’s eyes. "Why do you think we come here?" he asked. "Why do you think we desert our families — our wives, our mothers, our children? Why do you think we never go back?"

I scowled at him. "Except to gather up a lost chick."

"That lost chick," Sahdri said plainly, "may murder the flock. May bring down such calamity as you cannot imagine." His expression was peculiar. "Because if you do imagine it, it will come to be."

"You’re saying you come here willingly, but only after you’ve been driven out by the people on Skandi."

"We do not at first understand what is happening. When the magic manifests. It is others who recognize it. A wife. Perhaps a child." He gestured. "It is unpredictable, as I have said. We know only that symptoms begin occurring with greater frequency as we approach our fortieth year."

"What symptoms?"

He shrugged beneath dark robes. "Any behavior that is not customary. Visions. Acute awareness. A talent that increases for no apparent reason. Or one may imagine such things as no one has imagined before."

Such as turning the sand to grass.

Such as conjuring a living sandtiger out of dreams.

Such as knowing magic was present and so overwhelming as to make the belly rebel.

Sensitivity, Nihko had called it. When the body manifested a reaction to something it registered as too loud, too bright, too rich.

Too powerful.

My voice rasped. "And once here, you make a decision never to go back. To stay forever. Willingly."

"Would you kiss a woman," he asked, "if you knew she would die of it?"

"But —"

"If you knew she would die of it? "

I stared at Sahdri, weighing his convictions. He was serious. Deadly serious.

I would not kiss a woman if I knew she would die of it. Not if I knew. How could I? How could any man?

"Know this," Sahdri said clearly. "We are sane enough to comprehend we are mad. And mad enough to welcome that comprehension —"

" Why? "

"Because it keeps us apart from those we may otherwise harm."

Desperation boiled over. "I’m not a priest! I don’t believe in gods! I’m not of your faith!"

Sahdri said, "Faith is all that preserves us," and gestured to the acolytes.

Too much, all at once. Too bright, too loud, too painful. I ached from awareness. Trembled from comprehension.

Not to know what one might do one moment to the next.

Not to know what one was capable of doing.

Not to know if one could kill for wishing it, in that moment of madness.

Understood fear: Imagination made real.

It ran in my bones, the power. I felt it there. Felt it invading, infesting, infecting.

How much would I remember?

How much would I forget?

How many years did I have before I leaped from the spire?

"You will find peace," Sahdri said. "I promise you that. Only serve the gods as they deserve, and the day will come when you will be at rest."

Erastu and Natha put hands upon me. This time I let them.

The winch-house was built into a cave in the side of the spire, whose mouth opened to the skies. The hermitage was also a cave, but lacking a mouth: it was a stone bubble pierced on one side with slotted holes to let the light in, and closed away by a door. From these places Sahdri took me up to the top of the spire, into and through a proper dwelling built of brick and mortar and tile. So closely did the dwelling resemble the spire itself that it seemed to grow out of it, a series of angled, high-beamed rooms that perched atop the surface like a clutch of chicks, interconnected as the metri’s household was.

Men filled it. Men with shaven, tattooed heads, faces aglint with rings. All seemed to be my age, or older, but none appeared to be old. They attended prayers, or had the ordering of the household. Some worked below in the valley, going down each day by rope net, or crude ladders, to work in the gardens, the fields, to conduct the trade that came in from foreign lands.

The crown of this spire was much wider than the one I had leaped from. There was room for the dwelling. Room for a terrace. Room for a man to walk upon the stone without fearing he might fall off.

Room for a man, standing atop it, to realize how very small he is. How utterly insignificant.

I walked to the edge and stood there with the wind in my face, stripping hair from my eyes and tangling the robes around my body. I gazed across the lush, undulant valley with its multitude of spires springing up from the ground like mushrooms. The valley itself was rumpled, cloaked in greenery; we were far from the sere heat of the South, the icy snows of the North. Here there was wind, and moisture, the tang of earth and seasalt, the brilliance of endless skies. A forest of stone, like half-made statuary stripped of intended images.

"Beauty," Sahdri said from behind. "But outside."

Distracted, I managed. "What else is there?"

"Inside," he said. "The beauty of the spirit, when it works to serve the gods."

I looked at the clustered spires, the inverted oubliettes. "Are there people in all of them?"

"In and on many of them, yes. This is the iaka, the First House, the dwelling of those who must learn what they are, what they are to be. How to control the magic. How to serve the gods."

"And if one doesn’t?"

"One does."

"Nihko," I said, denying it.

"Ikepra."

I signed. "Fine. Let’s say I’m ikepra, too —"

He came up beside me and shut his hand upon my wrist. "Say nothing of the sort!"

"But I might be," I said mildly, trying with annoyance to detach my arm, and failing. "I may make that choice."

"Do you think you are the only one who has pleaded with the gods?" As if aware of my discomfort, he released my arm. "Those who go home die of it."

"Die of what?"

"Of going home."

I turned to look into his face. "But Nihko is free. Alive."

Sahdri’s expression was still. "The ikepra will die. He has two years, perhaps three. But he will not stay on Skandi, and so he does not risk harm to his people."

Because it mattered, I said, "Skandi isn’t my home. I would go there only so long as it took to collect Del, and leave. What risk is there in that?"

"She believes you are dead."

I grinned. "Faced with the flesh, she might be convinced otherwise."

From stillness, Sahdri turned upon me a face of unfettered desperation. "You would risk their lives? All the folk of Skandi?"

It burst from me, was torn upon the wind. "How do you know I would? How can you swear I am a danger to them?"

His expression was anguished. Unevenly he said, "There has been tragedy of it before."