Sword Born

NINE

Did not actually drag our feet in molah muck all the way up, though it was a close call. Initially I yearned for stirrups, since dangling long legs athwart a narrow, bony back only barely padded by a thin blanket was not particularly comfortable, but I realized soon enough that stirrups would have made it worse. Riding with legs doubled up beneath my chin isn’t a favored position for a man with recalcitrant knees.

For a sailor, Nihko Blue-head rode his molah with a grace I didn’t expect; but I reflected that balancing atop the beastie wasn’t so much different from maintaining balance aboard a wallowing ship, and therefore he had an advantage. I was more accustomed than he to riding an animal, perhaps, but horses and molahs have vastly different ways of going. Horses basically stride, planting large hooves squarely on the ground. Molahs — mince. On something that feels disturbingly like tiptoes. Very rapidly, so that one ascends at a pace that can only be called a jiggle.

I reflected that perhaps Nihko had no testicles because he’d ridden a molah up this cliff once too often.

As we climbed, tippytoeing our way around people on foot, I cast glances back the way we’d come. From increasing height it became very clear just how round the island had once been. Despite all of this silly talk about gods and smoke turning into stone (and back again), there was no question that once there had been more to the island. And it struck me as oddly familiar to Southron-raised eyes: what Nihko and I climbed was the vertical rim of a circle. The interior below, a brilliant greenish blue, was where two men would meet in the center for a sword-dance.

If they could walk on water.

Me, I couldn’t, any more than I could magic weapons out of the air. What I could do was change the sand to grass.

Or so the legend went that others in the South viewed as prophecy. Of course, I put no stock in such nonsense. Even when a handful of deep Desert dwellers, led by a holy man who claimed he could see the future, claimed I was the jhihadi of the prophecy, the man meant to save the South from the devouring sands.

Horse piss, if you ask me.

And that’s precisely what gave me the idea to dig channels in the desert and bring water from where it was to places it was not. Horse piss. Thanks to the stud.

Who would have been a lot more comfortable to ride up this gods-cursed track than a stumpy-legged, bony-backed, mincing little molah.

Hoolies, I wouldn’t even mind getting bucked off if I only had the stud!

Then I shot a quick glance down the cliff. Well, maybe not.

It struck me then, as we climbed, that this was what I had come for. To see Skandi, this place I might be from, if indirectly; I’d been born in the South, but bred of bones shaped in a different land. Here? Possibly. As Del had remarked, as Prima Rhannet, as even I had noticed, Nihko and I were indeed similar in the ways our bodies were built, even in coloring, which seemed typical for Skandi.

And yet not everyone toiling up and down the track had green eyes and bronze-brown hair — or shaven heads decorated by blue tattoos, come to that. It was obvious, in fact, that not everyone walking the track was even Skandic, if Nihko and I were the prevailing body type; many were shorter, slighter, or tall and quite thin, with a wide variety in hair color and flesh tones. I’d grown accustomed to certain physical similarities in the South, where folk are predominantly shorter, slighter, darker, and in the North, where folk are as predictably taller, bigger, fairer. But here upon the cliff face walked a rainbow of living flesh.

And then I recalled that Skandi’s economy depended on slave labor, from the sound of it, and I realized why the variety in size and coloring was so immense.

A chill tickled my spine. Here I’d come to a place that could well have bred my parents, and yet it was peopled as well by those unfortunates who had no choice but to service others who had the wealth, the power, the willingness to own men and women.

I’d been owned twice already. Once for all of my childhood and youth among the Salset, then again in the mines of the tanzeer Aladar, whom Del had killed to free me.

The South is a harsh and frequently cruel land. But it was what I knew. Skandi was nothing but a name to me — and now a rim of rock afloat in the ocean — and I realized with startling and unsettling clarity that I had, with indisputably childish hope, dreamed of a place that was perfection in all things. So that I would be born of a land and people far better to its children than the South had been to me.

A sobering realization, once I got beyond the initial pinch of self-castigation for succumbing to such morbid recollection. I knew better. Dreams never come true.

I shut my eyes at that. My dream had come true. The one I’d harbored in my soul for as long as I could recall: to be a free man. And I had won that freedom at last, had dreamed it out of despair and desperation into truth, at the cost of Salset children.

Guilt stirred, and unease. And then I thought again what I might have been had I remained with the Salset, and what I had become since earning my freedom.

As for what I was now — well, who knows? Sword-dancer, once. Now borjuni to some people. And, others would say; others had said: messiah.

Who was, just at this moment, captive to a man wearing a vast complement of rings in his eyebrows.

Eventually we reached the top of the cliff. Gratefully I began to hoist a leg across the molah’s round little rump, but Nihko fixed me with a quelling look and told me to wait.

If he thought I was preparing to leap off the molah and sprint for freedom, he was wrong. I just wanted to stand on my own two feet again — and to be certain I hadn’t permanently squashed my gehetties on the way up. I contemplated dismounting anyway — it was a breath-taking drop of three whole inches — but took a look around and decided I’d better not. I was barefoot, after all, and we had just arrived in a clifftop area full of molahs (and their muck), throngs of people, yelping dogs (and their muck), a handful of chickens, and a dozen or so curly-coated goats. And their muck.

All of whom saw Nihko aboard his molah and abruptly melted away.

Well, the people did; the chickens, goats, and dogs remained pretty much as they were. They were also a lot louder, now that every person within earshot had fallen utterly silent.

I saw widened eyes, surprise-slackened mouths, and a flurry of hand gestures. About the time I opened my mouth to ask Nihko what in hoolies was going on, he spoke. A single word only, very crisp and clipped, in a language I didn’t know; I assumed it was Skandic. When a stirring ran through the crowd, he repeated it, then followed up the word with a brief sentence. Quick, furtive glances were exchanged, different hand gestures were now made close to the body so they weren’t as obvious. But no one spoke. That is, except for one hoarse shout issued by someone I couldn’t see.

A path was instantly cleared through the crowd. A man in a thin-woven, sun-bleached tunic came toward us. He carried a stamped metal basin in both hands. Lengths of embroidered cloth were draped across his arms, and strung over his shoulders was a wax-plugged, rope-netted clay bottle glazed blue around the lip. Puzzled, I watched as he knelt there in the dirt and muck and carefully set down the basin. He unhooked the bottle, unstoppered it, poured water into the basin, murmured something that sounded like an invocation, then dipped the cloth in, meticulously careful that no portion of the fabric slipped over the side of the basin into the dirt.

All very strange — and it got stranger. He came to Nihko, bobbed his head briefly, deftly removed Nihko’s shoes, and began to wash his feet.

Astounded, I stared. When finished, the man slipped the shoes back on Nihko’s feet, rinsed the cloth in the basin, set it aside into a rolled-up, draining ball, then approached me with yet another embroidered length.

"Uh —" I began.

"You will allow it," Nihko said curtly.

I considered drawing my feet away, if only to spite the first mate. I considered sliding off the molah. I considered telling the basin-man with tone if not in a language he knew that I was fine with dirty feet; he didn’t need to wash them for me; I’d take care of it myself when I found a public bath.

But I was in a strange place, ignorant of customs and their potential repercussions, and self-preservation prevailed. I clamped my mouth shut and let the man wash my feet.

He said something very quietly as he worked; remarking, I thought, over the healing cuts and scrapes. His hands were unexpectedly gentle, diffident. When I didn’t answer, he glanced up at me briefly, waiting expectantly; when I shook my head once, he looked away immediately and completed his task without further speech. It became clear he was perplexed by my lack of shoes.

Nihko said something to him. The man blanched, collected the balled-up, soiled cloths, basin, and clay bottle, and hastily lost himself in the crowd.

I wiggled my clean toes, shot a glance at the first mate. "Wouldn’t it make more sense to wash our feet after we get where we’re going?"

Nihko smiled, but there was nothing of humor in it. "If you touch the ground with cleansed feet, you will seal yourself as one of them."

Them. "And I take it that is not a good thing?"

"Not if you wish to be sealed as heir to the Stessa metri."

I sighed. "What, are these Stessas too good to walk the streets like everyone else?" I looked pointedly at his feet. "Are you?"

"Oh, but I am not expected to walk anywhere," he said casually. "I am ioSkandic, and I am expected to fly."

I blinked. "Well, that would certainly save you the ride up the cliff."

One corner of his mouth quirked, but he offered no comment.

I scowled. "You’re serious."

"Am I?" His expression was privately amused. "And do you know me so well that you may judge such things?"

Ah, hoolies, it wasn’t worth the breath to debate. "When exactly are we supposed to go to this infamous household?" I paused. "And do we walk, ride, or fly?"

His mouth twitched again. "Even in ignorance, you ridicule possibilities."

"No, I ridicule you. There’s a difference."

"Ah. I am remiss in my comprehension." Without glancing around to see if anyone noticed, Nihko made a slight gesture. The crowd, which had begun to speak quietly among themselves, noticed. It fell silent once again. Once again, people flowed out of the way. This time it wasn’t the man with basin and embroidered cloths who came to us, but an entirely different man, a wiry man on foot leading two dust-colored molahs hitched to a kind of bench-chair on wheels.

"What in hoolies is that contraption?"

"Transportation," Nihko answered.

"And here I thought you could fly."

"But you can’t. Good manners require me to travel as you travel."

"Good manners? Or because I’m your prisoner?"

"Ah, but you are my prisoner only because you have not learned the ways to avoid such things." He gestured again. The man with the molah-cart came up to us, stopped his animals, then set about collecting a rolled mat from the underside of the cart, which he unrolled and spread upon the ground. "As my companion, you may go first." Nihko paused. "And do not soil your feet."

It was clear to me that after the ritual washing, followed by the laying out of the mat, it was vital I do as Nihko said. Despite the seeming meekness of the crowd, for all I knew any transgression would earn me a quick journey over the edge of the cliff, whereupon I would descend in a faster and more painful way than on molah-back, which was bad enough. So I got off the stumpy little beastie, making certain I ended up in the center of the woven mat, and moved toward the cart. Which, from up close, looked more like a bench-chair than ever. It was woven of twisted vine limbs, bound with thin, braided rope. The bench was padded with embroidered cushions, while the back was made of knotted limbs that once must have been green and flexible, but now were dried and tough.

The ground beneath me swayed. I reached out and caught hold of the bench, gripping tightly. I didn’t feel sick, but my balance was definitely off. And yet no one around me seemed to notice that the ground beneath them was moving.

Nihko swung off his molah onto the mat with the ease of familiarity. He strode past me and stepped into the cart without hesitation, beckoning me to join him.

I clung a moment longer, still unsettled by poor balance. I saw Nihko’s ring-weighted brows rise, and then he smiled. "The sea has stolen your legs," he said briefly, "but she will give them back."

Ah. Neither magic nor sickness. With an inward shrug I climbed into the cart. Good thing the molahs could carry four times their weight; Nihko and I together likely weighed close to five hundred pounds.

"Akritara," he said only, and I heard the murmuring of the crowd.

The molah-man rolled up his mat, slid it into a narrow shelf beneath the bench, and went to his animals. With a jerk and a sway the molahs began to move, and I wrapped fingers around twisted limbs. Two wheels did not make for stability; the balance was maintained by the rope-and-wood single-tree suspended between molah harness and the bench itself.

"So," I began as we jounced along, "just why is it we’re not supposed to walk anywhere?"

"Oh, we will walk. But only on surfaces that have been blessed."

"Blessed?"

"By the priests."

"You have priests who bless your floors?"

"Priests who weave the carpets in the patterns of the heavens." He glanced skyward briefly.

I made a sound of disgust. "Let me guess: they’re blue."

Nihko smiled. "Only their heads."

Of course I’d meant the rugs, but’that no longer mattered in view of his comment. And his head. "Don’t tell me you’re a priest!"

His expression was serene. "If you can be a messiah, surely I can be a priest."

That shut me up. But only for a moment. "So, your Order makes a nice living supplying men to destroy ships, steal booty, and kill passengers?" I arched brows elaborately. "A rather violent priesthood, wouldn’t you say?"

That earned me a baleful glance. And silence.

"So, what becomes of the mats at the end of the day? Doesn’t the blessing wear out? Or does this poor man have to scrub the mat each night, before picking up passengers tomorrow?"

"He will scrub it, yes. And each first-day he will take it to the nearest priest to have the blessing renewed."

"Once a week."

"So I said."

"For a price, I assume."

"Do you know of anything in this life that bears no cost?"

"You’re sidestepping," I accused, "like someone in the circle who doesn’t want to start the dance. So, this man pays to have his mat blessed each week so that blue-headed folk like you don’t have to walk in the dirt." I nodded. "Sounds like a racket to me."

Nihko scowled blackly. "You would name faith and service to the gods a racket?"

"Sure I would. Because it is."

His expression was outraged. "You blaspheme."

"But only if there are gods. And only if they care about such things." I shrugged. "I’m not certain they give a sandrat’s patootie about anything we do. If they exist."

"You are disrespectful, Southroner."

"I am many things, Blue-head. So far the gods haven’t bothered to complain."

"You are a fool."

"That, too."

With a mutter of disdain, he subsided into silence. I sighed and twisted to look back the way we’d come. Already the edge of the cliff receded. Beyond it I could see nothing but a blindingly blue sky, and wisps of steam rising from the smoking islands in the middle of the cauldron of blue-green sea.

Oh, bascha, I wish you were here. As much to share Skandi with me as to be free of Prima Rhannet.

After wending through the twists and turns of narrow, packed cart- and walkways, we left Skandi-the-City behind entirely. In its place was a rumpled land of worn, rocky hillocks made of dark, thin soil and heaps of pocked, crumbly stone. The top of the island swelled from the cliff toward the sunrise, crowned with a bulbous but smooth-flanked rise that could not possibly qualify as a mountain, and yet was paramount nonetheless. Between the city and the soft-browed peak stretched acres of land that had broken out in a plague of rounded, basketlike heaps of greenery. A rash of wreaths, set out in amazingly symmetrical rows. As we passed the field nearest the road, I leaned somewhat precariously over the edge of the cart to get a closer look.

Baskets. Big baskets. Big living baskets; the vine limbs had literally been woven into a circle and groomed to grow that way permanently. I realized the cart-bench itself was made of the same vine.

I had seen many strange plants in my life, having been North and South, but never vines coiled upon the ground into gigantic wooden pots. "What in hoolies are those?"

Nihko spared the edge of the track a glance. "Grapes."

"Grapes?" It astonished me. Every vineyard I’d ever seen boasted upright vines trained to grow along the horizontal, like a man standing with arms outstretched.

"Skandi is a land of winds," Nihko answered absently. "The vines here are too tender to be grown as other vines are, lest the wind strip them away. So they are cultivated low upon the ground."

There wasn’t so much wind right now as to risk the vines. A breeze blew steadily, but it wasn’t hearty enough to shred vegetation. The baskets of woven grape vines, crouched upon the ground, barely stirred.

"So," I said, "just why is it we can’t walk on the ground? Unless it’s blessed, that is. Didn’t you and I walk off the ship and across the quay to the bottom of the cliff?"

"The wind and saltwater rots the mats," Nihko explained, "or we would not be required to tolerate that soiling. Thus the custom of cleansing at the top of the cliff."

"But why would we be soiled just by walking?"

He glanced at me sidelong. "In your land, do your priests or kings set bare flesh to muck-laden ground?"

"We don’t have kings," I said absently, "and all of the holy men I ever saw were willing to walk anywhere."

Nihko made a soft sound of disgust. "But they are foreign priests. I should not be surprised."

"You walk on the boat, priest. Or have you somehow had it blessed?"

"Ship," he corrected automatically. "And that is not Skandi. Nowhere is Skandi but Skandi."

"Ah. Doesn’t count, then, what you do elsewhere, only what you do here." I nodded sagely. "Very convenient."

He hissed briefly. "Convenience has nothing to do with it!"

I laughed at him. "Here you are refusing to soil yourself by setting foot to ground that hasn’t been properly blessed, and yet you carve open the bellies of men and spill out their innards, or lop their heads off. Isn’t that just a little messy?"

Nihko sealed up his mouth again into a thin, retentive seam. He opened it only to say something curtly to the molah-man, whose head was turned slightly in our direction as if he listened closely. The man’s head snapped back around in response to Nihko’s tone. I saw him make a hand gesture, and then he tugged at the molahs to encourage a faster pace.

Something to be learned of Nihko Blue-head, it seemed. And if I got lucky, maybe it was something I could use against him.

Smiling, I relaxed against the woven-limb back and let the sun beat on my face.