Jennifer Roberson - Sword Born

When the patterns were complete, rings were set into his flesh. The lobe of each ear was pierced three times and silver rings hooked through. Three rings also were put through each eyebrow. Then the man was taken out upon the spire, was shown the wind, the world. He was made to kneel again; was blessed there by the others. Was made to lie facedown upon the stone. The arms were pulled away from his sides and placed outstretched upon the stone, palms down.

He lay in silence, rapt. Seeking the beast perhaps; but the beast was dead.

Shadow winged across the man’s back. His head was blue, and bloody.

The bird circled. It watched as the fingers of the hands were spread with deft precision. Saw how the thumbs and first three fingers were sealed into stone; how the small finger on each hand was left as flesh, and free.

Two knives were brought. Two men, Natha and Erastu, priests and mages, knelt beside the man who lay upon the stone.

At Sahdri’s brief nod, they cut off the smallest finger of each hand.

At Sahdri’s brief nod, they lifted the severed fingers and gave them into his keeping.

He turned to the rim of the world, to the wind, invoked the blessing of the gods, and threw the fingers away.

One by one they fell.

Were gone.

The man upon the stone made no sound until Sahdri knelt beside him, put a hand upon his neck, and let it be known what had been done to him.

The man upon the stone, rousing into awareness, into comprehension, began to cry out curses upon them all.

" Be at peace," Sahdri said kindly. "The beast is dead, and you are now a living celebration of the gods. "

The man upon the stone — shaven, tattooed, flesh pierced and amputated — continued to cry out curses. To scream them at Sahdri, at the brothers, at the gods.

The bird winged higher, to catch and ride the wind.

I roused into fever, into pain. And when the fever was gone, I lived with pain. The stumps were sealed, so there was no blood, but pain remained. As much was of knowledge as of physical offense.

For days I lay upon the floor of the hermitage. I was given food and water; wanted neither. But eventually I drank, though I spurned the food. And when I drank, cup held in shaking hands now lacking a finger each, I tasted blood and bitter gall.

Sahdri said they had killed the beast. The sandtiger. The animal that freed me, that gave me identity and purpose, a name. The animal I was in the stories of the South: the Sandtiger, shodo-trained seventh-level sword-dancer from legendary Alimat; the man who lost no dances; who had, as a boy, defeated Abbu Bensir.

I was all of those things, and none of them. I understood what was done, and why: rob a man of his past, of the ability to live in it, to continue it through present into future, and he has no choice. He becomes something else. Other.

But understanding came fitfully. There were other times it deserted me. Times when I deserted me, left the abused body and went into the stone, plunged my spirit into the blood and bone of it, seeking escape. It was not difficult to do. I detached from the body, and left it.

And while the spirit was housed in stone one day, men came and took up the body.

It walked with them. The flesh of the skull had healed, no longer wept blood and fluid. The scabs of the brow piercings had fallen away, so the rings shone clean and bright; the earlobes were no longer swollen. The hands still trembled, still curled themselves, still pressed themselves high against the chest, crossed as if in ward because the stumps were yet tender, but the flesh there healed as well. The body went with them out onto the spire and saw how they restrained one brother. How he fought to be free; how he cried to be released.

When all of them gathered there upon the spire beneath the vault of heaven, the brother was released. Sobbing his joy, Erastu thrust both arms up into the skies in tribute to the gods, and ran.

And leaped.

And fell.

The priest-mages of the iaka, the First House, of the Stone Forest of Meteiera on ioSkandi, sang blessings unto the gods, begging their acceptance of the newly merged spirit.

The body knelt. Was still. And the others left it there as they left the spire, went back into the dwelling still singing blessings. To gather together and worship. To conduct rites and rituals.

The body, alone atop the world, remained. And when I let the spirit flow back out of the stone and into the flesh, I knelt there alone atop the world.

For the first time I looked at my hands. They were — unbalanced. Out of true, lacking symmetry. Four fingers were three, and no counterbalance to the thumbs.

I had no sword. No broom handle. Not even a stick, here atop the spire. But I had two wrists.

I stretched out my left arm. Placed my right palm against it, from underneath. Both hands trembled; the spirit quailed from anticipated pain. But I closed the thumb and three fingers of my right hand around my wrist.

Imagining a hilt.

Imagining grip, and balance.

Imagining a sword.

Imagining a dance.

"You will forget," Sahdri said.

Startled, I stiffened. Gripped the wrist, and hissed against the pain.

"You will forget."

"I can’t."

"The beast is dead."

"No."

"The memory survives, for now. But that, too, will die."

"No."

"You have a very strong will," Sahdri said. "Stronger than I expected. To be stripped of the beast… to be stripped of the means to be the beast within the circle —"

I snapped my head around to look at him. "You’re saying I am the beast?"

"The sandtiger," he said, "And so you were, since the day you conjured and killed it. But it is dead, that beast. And the man who killed it, who became it, will forget what he was. He will be what he is. "

"And what am I?"

"Mage," Sahdri answered.

"What?" I arched eyebrows; felt the alien weight of rings depending from flesh. "Not priest?"

"Not yet. But that will come."

"When I’m willing to ’merge’ as Erastu did?"

"Oh, long before. You will understand why it is necessary, and you will accept it. Willingly."

"I will, will I? Willingly?"

"Within a year."

"So certain of me, are you?"

"Certain of the magic. The madness." Sahdri’s robes whipped in the wind. "Surely you understand the need for discipline."

"Discipline!"

"The beast," Sahdri said, "learned of rules, and codes, and rituals and rites. Was circumscribed by such things, even as it was circumscribed by the circle. As it was taught by its shodo."

I stared at him as I knelt upon the stone.

"It understood that without the rules, the codes, lacking rituals and rites, it had no discipline. And without discipline, it was merely a beast. A boy." He paused. "A chula."

I flinched.

"Discipline," Sahdri said, "is necessary. Tasks, to fill the hands. Prayers, to fill the mind. Rituals and rites. All of the things we do here, how we fill our days, our nights, our minds." His eyes gazed beyond me. "To keep the madness at bay."

I sat back on my heels. " That’s why —"

"With discipline," he said before I could finish my comment, "we may last a decade. Possibly even fifteen years, as I have. But without it…" He looked once more beyond me, stared into wind and sky. "Without it, we have only power without control, without purpose, and the madness that will loose it."

"Wild magic," I murmured, thinking of seeing through flesh, through bone; of seeing the heart of the stone from the inside.

"If you let it," Sahdri said, "it will consume you. Burn you up. And in the doing, you may well harm others. Magic and madness, married, is calamity, given form. It is catastrophe. But here upon the spires, with rituals and rites, with discipline, we keep it contained. Lest there be tragedy of it."