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.

It was argued that he was chula, and thus claimed no rights for killing the beast. But Sula insisted; how many men, how many women, how many children now would survive because of the chula?

Wearing nothing but the necklet, he stood before the tribe and was told to go.

Sula gave him clothing. Sula gave him food. Sula gave him water.

Sula gave him leave to go, to become a man.

I fell back in the dimness, gasping, cheek ablaze with pain. Blood dripped; I set the back of my hand against it, felt the sting of raw and weeping flesh. Then fingers, to seek. Examine.

I counted the fresh furrows. Four. Welcomed the pain, the tangible proof that I was I again. With or without magic.

I looked then at the sandtiger in its lair, where I had tracked it. Where I had killed it, so I might win my freedom.

Sahdri, in a rictus of astonishment, lay dead of a spear through the throat.

Sahdri, who had served his gods with absolute dedication, so absolute as to amputate fingers, pierce my flesh, tattoo my scalp.

To see nothing wrong in robbing a man of his past, his freedom, so his future would be built on the architecture of magic, and madness.

The shudder wracked me. I bent, cradled hands against me. Felt the heat running down my face to drip upon the stone. To trickle into my mouth.

I straightened slowly. Licked my lip and tasted blood. Tangible blood.

I welcomed the pain. And I gave myself leave to go, to become a man. Again.

Sword-dancer. Sandtiger. Again. Still.

In the winch-house I weighted the net and sent it plunging downward. When it reached the bottom, I tied the winch-drum into place and took hold of the rope that spilled over the lip of stone.

I had leaped from a spire. I could surely climb down a rope.

At the bottom I released the rope. Walked four paces. Saw the world reverse before me: everything light was dark, everything dark became light. Black was white, white was black. With nothing in between.

I knelt down, shut my eyes, prayed for the fit to pass.

When I could stand again, walk again, I sought and found seven of ten claws. Gathered them up. Tied them into the hem of my robe. And walked through the Stone Forest to the edge of the island.

At the ocean I looked for boats, for ships, and found none. That they came to ioSkandi, I knew; Sahdri had said there was trade of a sort. But none was present now.

Wind beat on the waves. Weary, I knelt upon the shore, let sea spray cool my burning face. Gripped the claws through linen, counting seven of ten.

I sat down then in the sand. Waves lapped, soaked me. I didn't care. I took the claws from the hem, pulled thread from the fabric, and began to string a necklet.

When I was done, when the necklet was knotted around my throat, I sat in sand, soaked by wave and wind, and gripped the curving claws. Pain flared anew in the stumps of the missing fingers. It set me to sweating.

Abdomen. Cheek. Claws. Bit by bit, I would fit the pieces of me back together again.

Magic or no.

Madness or no.

Discipline.

Sahdri and the others made of it a religion, a new and alien zealotry I could not embrace. So I embraced what I already knew, renewed in myself that zealotry: the rituals and rites of Alimat. Lost myself in the patterns of the dance, the techniques of the sword. Stepped into the circle of the mind, and won.

Discipline.

I took seawrack, driftwood, a tattered piece of linen, and after four days of desperation, futility, and multitudinous curses, vows, and promises made to nonexistent gods, I finally conjured a ship.

Discipline.

A half-day and blinding headache later it sailed me into the caldera, where I saw no blue-sailed ships. No redheaded women captains. No fair-haired Northern baschas.

They believed I was dead. All of them.

Except the one who had set the trap.

I left behind seawrack, driftwood, and tattered linen. The basin-men, the molah-men, spying the shaven, tattooed head, the rings in ears and brow, fell away from me without offering their services even at exorbitant prices. Instead they shouted, called out curses, made ward-signs against magic, madness, and the ikepra.