Дженнифер Роберсон: Sword-Born(English)

"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."

"Erastu killed himself."

"Erastu merged with his gods."

"But died doing it."

"A man without faith may choose to believe so."

"You're saying it would have happened anyway. Someday."

"Better it should happen here."

"But if he would have gone mad no matter where he was-"

"Here, he filled his hands with tasks. His mind with prayers, rites, rituals. He was a disciplined man-and thus he harmed no one."

"But himself."

"He went to his gods."

"And killed no one doing it."

Sahdri inclined his head.

In disbelief, incomprehension, I clung to one thing. "You let Nihko go. For me. In payment for me. You let him go."

Sahdri smiled. "Did we?"

THIRTY-SIX

DISCIPLINE. I learned the prayers. Said the prayers. Discipline. I learned the rites. Performed the rites. Discipline. I learned the rituals. Performed the rituals. Discipline.

I believed in no prayers, no rites, no rituals. I acknowledged and invoked one god. Whose name was Discipline.

When stubble bristled, they shaved it. Face and head. There were no claw marks now to make it difficult, lest the scarred flesh be cut. And when Sahdri saw I had learned the prayers, and said them; learned the rites, and performed them; learned the rituals, performed them, he had more holes pierced, more silver shaped, more rings set into my flesh. Two more for each brow. Two more for each ear.

Discipline.

I said nothing.

Did nothing.

Beyond what was expected.

And I forgot nothing. Beyond what was expected.

Magic, Sahdri said, was bred in my bones, knitted into flesh. Was as much a part of me as the heart that beat in my chest. No man, he said, considered the heart's task until it failed; the heart simply was. And magic was the same.

I believed in none of it. I acknowledged none of it. To do so gave power to those who wished to use it. I believed in myself. And I fell asleep each night invoking no gods, only myself. The essence of who I was, and what. Sword-dancer. Sandtiger. No more. No less.

Each night.

Discipline.

No more.

No less.

I stood atop the spire. Wind blew in my face, but it moved no hair; there was no hair to move. I waited. Feeling it. Knowing it. Hearing it in the stone.

She came. She climbed over the edge of the spire, rose, and stepped into the circle. Set both swords into the center.

Pale hair glowed in the sun. Blue eyes were ruthless.

"Dance," she commanded, in a voice of winter water.

I moved then.

Ran then.

Took up the sword.

Danced -

and nearly died, when her blade sheared into ribs.

M y eyes snapped open. I lay in my hermitage, arms and hands as always-now-tucked up against my chest. With effort I let go the tension, let the body settle. Felt the stone beneath my cheek.

The memory of steel. Of a man in the circle. Of the woman, the sword, the song.

I lay very still upon the stone, not even breathing. Tentatively I slid one hand beneath the fabric of the robe and felt the flesh of my abdomen, recalling the pain, the icy fire, the horrific weakness engendered by the wound. Touched scar tissue.

Breath rasped as I expelled it in a rush. Scar tissue, where none had been after Sahdri lifted it from me. Knurled, resculpted flesh, a rim around the crater left by the jivatma. My abdomen burned with remembered pain.

Sweat ran from me. Relief was tangible.

Magic. Power. Conjuring reality from dreams. Using it without volition even as Sahdri had warned.

But for this? Was this so bad, to find a piece of myself once taken away and make it whole again, even though this wholeness was a travesty of the flesh?

Yes. For this. For myself.

I shut my eyes. Thank you, bascha.

From the winch-house I took a length of wood, carried it to my hermitage. From the wall I took a piece of stone. Made it over into the shape of an adze. Then dropped it as I fell, as I curled upon the stone, and trembled terribly in the aftermath of a terrible magic.

Discipline.

When I could, I sat up and took the stone adze, took the wood, and began to work it. To shape a point of the narrowest end.

Discipline.

When the spear was made, I lay down upon the stone and gripped it, willing myself to sleep. Willing myself to dream.

-sandtiger-

At dawn the boy crept out of the hyort. He was to tend the goats, but he did not go there. He carried a spear

made out of a broken hyort pole, painstakingly worked with a stone, and went instead to the tumbled pile of rocks near the oasis that had shaped itself, in falling, into a modest cave.

A lair.

He knelt there before the mouth and prayed to the gods, that they might aid him. That they might give him strength, and power, and the will to do what was necessary.

Kill the beast.

Save the tribe.

Win his freedom.

He received no answer from the gods; but gods and their power, their magic, were often random, wholly unpredictable. No man might know what or when they might speak. But he put his faith in them, put his faith in the magic of his imagination, and crept into the lair.

The sandtiger had fed only the afternoon before. It was sated, sleeping. The boy moved very carefully into the cave that was also lair, and found the beast there in the shadows, its belly full of girl-child.

He placed the tip of his spear into the throat, and thrust.

And thrust.

Bore the fury, the outrage. Withstood even the claws, envenomed and precise. One knee. One cheek. But he did not let go of the spear.

When the beast was dead, he vomited. The poison was in him. Retching, he backed his way out of the lair that reeked now of the death of the beast, its effluvia, of his own vomit.

He stood up, trembling, and made his way very carefully back to the cluster of hyorts. To the old shukar, maker of magic. And claimed he had killed the beast.

No one believed him.

But when he fell ill of the poison, Sula took him in. Sula made them go. And when they came back with the dead beast and the clawed, tooth-shattered speaf she bade them cure the pelt even as she cured the chula.

When he was healed, when he could speak again despite the pain in his cheek, he asked for the sandtiger. It was brought to him. With great care, with Sula's knife, he cut each claw out of the paws, pierced them, and strung them on a thong.