The touch of her flesh against mine granted me all the peace I knew, all the impetus for survival and triumph a man might know, were he to trust a woman the way I trusted Del. Together we stood at the edge of the crown of stone, arms outstretched, and let the wind have us. Let it tip us, take us, carry us down and down, where we walked again upon the earth as we were meant to do.

I turned to her, to embrace her, to kiss her, and felt stone against my mouth.

I sat up into wind, into light, and watched the day replace night. Dew bathed the spire, and me. Sweat joined it, welling up beneath hair to bathe my skull, my face; to sheen the fragile flesh stretched over brittle bone.

No food, no water, no way down.

Why this?

Why not a clean kill, a body tossed off the cliff?

I don't believe in gods.

I don't believe in magic.

I don't believe in the power of a man to float above a wall, to move without indication of it.

Yet I had witnessed the latter.

I had witnessed magic.

I had worked magic.

I don't believe in gods.

I believe in myself.

I put my hand upon the necklet of sandtiger claws, counted them out. None was missing. Only the silver brow ring Nihko had attached, and I had reattached when it came clear to me that no matter how much I wished to disbelieve in its efficacy against magic, it made every difference.

They had cut it from the necklet the night before.

No, the night before that.

Or the night before that ?

How many days had I been here?

Two.

That I knew about.

Two, in which I was conscious.

Before that?

Before that?

I was hungry. Thirsty. Weakening.

More days than two.

How many?

Did it matter.

If I were to find a way down, it mattered.

If there were a way down.

How had I come up? How had they brought me up?

Sahdri. Sahdri, who could float above a wall, who could move across a terrace with no indication of it.

Sahdri's voice, bidding them toss the body over.

What would Prima say, to learn her first mate was dead?

What would Del say, to learn I was missing?

To learn I was dead?

More days than two.

How many?

How many left?

How long?

How many days before she accepted I was gone?

And unlikely to come back.

We had never, not once, discussed it. Because we knew, both of us, what was necessary. What I had done before, believing she would die; believing she was dead despite the breath left in her body.

I could not now recollect what emotions had led to that decision, had permitted me to leave her. Certainty that she was dead; certainty that to see that death would destroy me. But the emotions of the moment were long banished, and unsummonable. I recalled that I had felt them, but not how they felt beyond the memory of anguish, guilt, grief, and indescribable pain.

I had stood upon the cliff overlooking Staal-Kithra, lumpy with barrows, dolmens, and passage graves, and beyond it Staal-Ysta, the island in the glass-black lake flanked white-on-white in winter, stark peaks against bleak sky. I had bidden her good-bye; had apologized in my own fashion. Had thrust the sword's blade into turf, into soil, into the heart of the North.

I had named the sword to her, spoken that name aloud, so she would know it: Samiel. Now that Northern sword lay buried beneath Southron rock, drained at last of the sorcerer that had infested it. I was free of sorcerer, free of sword.

Free to die alone on ioSkandi, abandoned atop a towering spire punching a hole into the sky.

Piercing, one might hope with forgivable bitterness, the liver of the gods whom others worshiped by leaping off the spires.

That instant, with startling clarity, I knew. Understood what was expected.

I was to merge.

I wondered, with no little cynicism, who it was that collected all the bones found at the bottom, shattered into bits. Or were they simply left there, ignored, ground into ivory powder beneath the feet of priest-mages come to rejoice in the merging?

I tipped my head back and back, gazing up into the sky. For the first time since awakening atop the rock, I spoke.

"You're not mine!" I shouted. "You are not my gods! "

Because I had none. Worshiped none. Believed in none.

"Not!"

The wind whispered, No?

No.

No and no.

Had none, worshiped none, believed in none.

Gods, and magic.

Magic.

Had none, worked none, believed in none.

Liar, the wind whispered.

Gods, but I was thirsty.

And then I laughed. Because even a man who believes in no gods believes in the concept of them, believes that others believe. Or he would not rely upon a language that embraces the presence of gods.

Habit. Nothing more. One grows accustomed to others saying it, praying it, believing it. One need not believe it himself. One need not pray himself.

Would praying get me off the top of this rock?

The wind curled around me. Hypocrite.

Would magic get me off the top of this rock?

The wind asserted itself, but offered no answer.

Sahdri, who could float above a wall. Who could move with no indication of it. Who could require that Nihkolara Andros hurl himself off a spire to merge with the gods he had repudiated … but there had been no Ritual of Unsoiling, and thus Nihkolara Andros had been hurled. Not from the spire, not from ioSkandi where priest-mages served, worshiped, and went mad, but from the caldera clifftop.

Ikepra. Abomination.

What then was I?

I laughed again. "Fool."

The wind engulfed, embraced, tugged. I went with it; let it take me to the edge. I knelt there, supplicant to the sky. And refused.

A shadow drifted over me, across the spire. Unfurled wings. I looked up. Saw the bird. Felt something inside myself respond. My belly cramped. Genitals clenched. I bent at the waist, folding upon myself. Something within me stirred.

Grew.

Unfolded.

Felt imminent.

I shook upon the rock, knees ground into stone. Flesh stood up on my bones; the hair stood up on my flesh. Against my will my arms snapped out, palms flattened, fingers spread. Breath was noisy in my throat. Was expelled from my mouth, and sucked in again. Loudly. And as loudly expelled.

Sweat ran from me. I felt it roll down flesh; saw it splash against the stone. Every inch of that flesh itched. I knelt there, shuddering, aware of the rattling of my bones, the quailing of my spirit.

So easy to let go.

So easy to lean forward.

So easy to tip myself off the rim of the world.

So easy to fall.

So easy to end.

"Del!" I shouted. Louder, again, "Dellllllllll! "

She was my walls. My house.

Did Herakleio want her so badly? So easy. To let go. To fall. To end.

Light found me there. Kneeling. Denying the gods. Repudiating magic.

Putting my faith in Del. Find me. Find me. Find me. Bascha. Please. Find me?

I lay atop the spire, spine pressed into stone. I was heavy. All of me, heavy. And yet it seemed impossible that I should be so, because there was no food, no water. Only wind. Only sun. Only endless skies, and endless days, and nights that fed me on stars.

In the South, I would have died days before. Here, with moisture in the air, with morning dew, with the breath of seawater against my flesh, death was tardy. But it came. The carrion bird above me, inside me, assured me of that.

Del hadn't come.

Couldn't.

Did not know where, or how.

Or even if I lived.

Had anyone else died atop the spire? Did the carrion bird feast upon the body, scattering the bones? Did the wind blow them off?

Could the wind lift a body?

Carry it?

Could the bird lift a body?

Carry it?

Could I rise and try the skies?