Jennifer Roberson - Sword Born

I blinked. "From ioSkandics who went back?"

Sahdri nodded, too overcome to speak.

"What happened?"

He drew in a harsh breath. "I have told you: the magic is random, the madness unpredictable. When you marry the two…" He gestured futility, helplessness. "And I have told you why we remain here."

I stared out across the vista with the wind in my hair, mentally making a map of the spires thrusting from valley floor to the sky. Marking their shapes, their placements. An alien land, alien people. Alien gods.

Desolation was abrupt. "I want to go home. "

With great compassion Sahdri said, "We all of us wish to go home. The welfare of our people lies in not doing it."

Even as I shook my head I felt myself trembling. "This is not where I belong."

"You can belong nowhere else. Not now."

I swung on him. "I’m not one of you! I wasn’t born here, wasn’t raised here… I know nothing of Skandi beyond what I have learned since I came. There is nothing of Skandi in me —"

"Your blood," he said. "Your bone. You were bred of this place, even if you were not born here. Skandi is in you; how not? How can you believe otherwise? You leaped from the spire, and survived. "

"And I don’t even remember why, let alone how!" I shouted it. Heard the echoes amid the spires.

Gently he said, "You will."

I turned away again, to stare fixedly at the Stone Forest. "There is only one life that matters, and I would never harm her."

"You may believe so. But you are wrong. Others have been wrong before."

"I would never hurt Del —" And then I stopped short. I had hurt Del. Had nearly killed Del.

"Trust me," Sahdri said, seeing my expression. "I entreat you to remain here, and I pray you will be brought to wisdom —"

I shook my head.

"Afterward," he said earnestly, "after you understand what you truly are —"

I interrupted. "Sword-dancer. There is nothing else in the world I am or wish to be."

He closed his eyes. I marveled again at the trappings of his order: ornate blue patterns tattooed into shaven skull, ring after ring piercing lips and ears, brows and nose. He glittered in the sunlight, features aglow with a haze of silver. He was not an old man, but neither was he young. Lines of character and strength of will shaped his features.

When he opened his eyes again, the darkness was rimmed with fire.

I fell back a step. Stared at him, transfixed by the expression of his face, the transcendent power in his eyes.

"Who are you?" he asked.

I swallowed. "Sword-dancer."

"Who are you?"

"Sandtiger."

"lo," he said. "lo. Who are you?"

"Sandtiger. Sword-dancer."

"lo."

"No," I said. "Not mad. Not io. "

"Kneel."

"I’m not kneel —" And I did. Without volition. One moment I was standing, but the next I knelt. I could not connect the moments, could find no bridge between them.

Sahdri stood over me and put his hands upon me. Settled them into my hair, captured the skull with his grip.

Tipped the skull up so I had no choice but to look into his face. "Who are you?"

I opened my mouth to answer: the Sandtiger. But the world was ripped away.

The bird drifted. Below it stretched the endless sands, the Southron desert known as Punja, alive and sentient. It moved by whim of wind, swallowing settlements, caravans, tribes. It left in its wake bones scoured free of flesh, and tumbled. Buried later, unburied later yet. Scattered scraps of bone, eaten of flesh; stripped by sand, by wind; clean of any taint of life.

No meal here; others had feasted before it. The bird flew on, winged shadow fleeing across the sands. And then it came to an oasis, a cluster of trees around a well framed in stone. Men were there, gathering. A circle was drawn in the sand. Blades were placed in the center, while two men stood at the inner rim, facing one another.

A man said "Dance," and so they did. Ran, took up swords, began the ritual so pure in its intent, so splendid in execution, that even the death was beautiful.

One man died. The other did not. He was a tall man, a big man, with dark hair bleached to bronze from the sun, skin baked to copper. His strength and quickness were legendary; he had come to be reckoned by many the best. There was another, but he was older. And they had never met to settle it since one bout within a training circle, beneath the eyes of the shodo. This man wondered which of them might win, were they to meet again.

With meticulous care, he cleaned his blade. Accepted the accolades of those who watched. As one they turned their backs on him and walked to their horses, to depart. He expected no more. He had killed one of their own.

One man threw down a leather pouch: it spilled a handful of coin into the sand. The victor did not immediately take it up but tended his sword instead, wiping it clean of blood. Or the leavings of the dance.

Not always to the death, the sword-dance. Infrequently

so; ritual was often enough, and the yielding. But this dance had been declared a death-dance.

He survived. He cleaned his blade, put it back in its scabbard, slid arms into harness straps. He wore only a leather dhoti, leather harness. From the ground he took the coin, took the burnous, took the reins of his horse.

He had won. Again.

The bird circled. Winged on. Watched the man, watched the dances, watched him win. So many dances. Nothing else lived in the man but the willingness to risk himself within the confines of the circle. He was the dance.

The bird circled. Winged on. North, to mountains, to water, to winter. To a circle in the lake: the island named Staal-Ysta; to the circle on the island, drawn by Northern hands. The man in the circle, dancing. The woman who danced with him.

Pain there, and grief. Desperate regret. The wish to leave the circle… the capacity to stay, because it was required. Because honor demanded it.

The man and the woman danced, hating the dance, loving one another. Each of them wounded. Each of them bleeding. Each of them reeling to fall upon the ground. Each of them believing there was no better way to die than in the circle, honoring its rituals. Honoring one another.

The circle. The sword. The dance. And the man within the circle, dancing with a sword.

Dancing against the beast. Dancing for the beast.

The sandtiger he had conjured to also conjure freedom.

The bird circled. Swung back. South to the desert, southeast to the ocean, east to the island. To the Stone Forest, and the spires of the gods.

It knew. It understood. It acknowledged.

I roused to the rattle of claws, the tautness of leather thong against my throat. I meant to set my hand to the necklet, to preserve it and my throat, but I knelt upon the stone with legs and hands made part of it, encased, and I could do nothing.

A hoarse sound escaped me. Sahdri said, "Be still." And so I was.

He took the necklet from my throat. Leather rotted to dust in his hands, was carried away by wind. All that remained were claws.

One by one he tossed them into the air. Into the skies, and down.

With each he said, " The beast is dead. "

They fell, one by one.

Were gone.

He knelt before me. Set hands into my hair, imprisoned the skull. " The beast is dead. "

Unlocked from stone, I stood as he raised me. I was hollow, empty. A husk.

"Come inside," Sahdri said. "There are rituals to be done, and the gods await."

The bird perched upon the chair. It watched as the hair was shorn, then shaved. The flesh of the skull was paler than the body, for the Southron sun had only tantalized it, never reached it. When that flesh was smooth and clean, men gathered with dye, with needles. The patterns were elaborate, and lovely. Blood and fluid welled, was blotted away. The canvas on which they painted made no sound of complaint, of comment, of question. The pupils had grown small; the eyes saw elsewhere. The house of bone and flesh was quiescent as the spirit turned away from the world and in upon itself, to consider what it was now that the beast was dead.