I poised there, a man at the edge of a stone circle, the only sword available the one I made of myself.
Shadow winged over me.
' Anneeeeeeaallllll meeeeeeeeeeeeee!'
No gods.
Only me.
Only me.
The shadow within unfurled.
The wind came again. I felt it in my eyes, my nostrils, my mouth; felt it enter throat and lungs and belly. Felt it bind my bones, so brittle, so hollow, so light.
And imminence arrived.
And power.
Comprehension.
Acknowledgment.
I whelped it there upon the rock; gave birth to the child I had carried for more than three decades, now labored in pain to bear upon the spire in the skies. The child I might have been had I been born in Skandi. The child thrown away in the sands of the Southron desert. The child I was never permitted to be; the child I never permitted myself to be. To conceive. To bear.
I whelped it there upon the rock and screamed out the pain and rage: that the choice was taken from me. Decades after the vessel had been shaped of a man and a woman, the child was born at last. The vessel was annealed. The flesh was strong enough at last to contain the child.
Oh, it wanted freedom!
I spun then and ran.
Ran.
To the edge of the circle.
The edge of the spire.
The edge of the world.
And beyond.
No gods.
Only me.
Leaping into the day.
The shadow passed across the spire, flitted down the sheer sides. A bird.
The shadow soared, circled, returned, drifted closer. The body was a body, unbroken. The skull was whole, the face recognizable, the limbs untwisted.
The shadow fled across the body, turned back.
It had leaped near the edge, arid 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 spire's footing. No human eyes beheld it, but animal nose smelled it. The odor of impending death was something every animal recognized, and avoided. Unless it was a carrion-eater.
Molahs were not. And so when the molah pulling the cart rebelled, its molah-man looked, and the body was found. It was recognized for its nakedness, for the scars on its body, for the shape of its face and skull. It might be one of them. It might not. But it was indisputably alive.
THIRTY-THREE
SOUND. THE WIND, rustling vegetation. Lifting sand and dirt. The scratch of grit, rolling. The tickle of air in the hairs on arms, and legs, and head. I could hear it. Hear the hairs rising.
Could feel it.
Feel.
In a single spasmodic inhalation my lungs filled, expanded my chest; I was afraid to let it go again, lest it never be repeated.
My head was filled with light.
Breath whooshed out again. Came back, like a dog, when I called it.
I breathed.
Sound. The clink of stone on stone, the dig of hoof into soil, the whuffing snort of an animal.
And a person, walking.
Eyelids cracked. Daylight filled my eyes; I lay on my back. I saw the animal: molah. Saw the shape: male. Black against the sun.
The molah was stopped. The man tied its lead-rope to a scrubby tree, then came to me. Knelt down beside me. Inspected me, though he put no hands upon me.
'For forty years,' he said, 'you have been dead. Only now are you born. Only now are you whole.'
Forty?
Had I so many years?
No one had known. No one had told me. All of it a guess.
Forty.
'Only now are you whole,' he repeated.
I realized then he was speaking Skandic.
And that I understood it.
His smile was ironic. 'I know,' he said. 'But now you comprehend what a newborn baby encounters. So much of a new world. So much to overwhelm it.'
I opened my eyes fully. Saw the shaven, tattooed head; green eyes in sun-bronzed skin; the glint of rings in his brows.
'Dead,' I said.
'You were,' he agreed.
'You.'
'Ah.' The ironic smile deepened. 'No.'
'Saw it.'
'You saw a body. It was dark, you were in some distress-and the magic was in your body, once they took this from your necklet.' A finger indicated the healed cut where the ring had once resided; had been sliced out. 'A body,' he said. 'Nothing more. A dead man, and convenient: your height, your weight, your coloring; we are all of us similar.'
'You?'
'Me they pulled from the molah; I was in no position to argue.'
No. He had been drugged to insensibility by his captain.
'Why?' I asked. 'Why present a body?'
'Because of your woman,' he answered.
Del?
'If she believed you lived, she would search for you. They wish her gone.'
'Who?'
And how many?
'Sahdri, lest she come looking. The metri, lest she become what Herakleio desires. Prima, because- because she hopes in grief Del might turn to her.'
'Who did this?'
'Any one of them.'
'You.'
'No.'
