I stared at Sahdri, weighing his convictions. He was serious. Deadly serious.

I would not kiss a woman if I knew she would die of it. Not if I knew. How could I? How could any man?

"Know this," Sahdri said clearly. "We are sane enough to comprehend we are mad. And mad enough to welcome that comprehension-"

"Why? "

"Because it keeps us apart from those we may otherwise harm."

Desperation boiled over. "I'm not a priest! I don't believe in gods! I'm not of your faith!"

Sahdri said, "Faith is all that preserves us," and gestured to the acolytes.

Too much, all at once. Too bright, too loud, too painful. I ached from awareness. Trembled from comprehension.

Not to know what one might do one moment to the next.

Not to know what one was capable of doing.

Not to know if one could kill for wishing it, in that moment of madness.

Understood fear: Imagination made real.

It ran in my bones, the power. I felt it there. Felt it invading, infesting, infecting.

How much would I remember?

How much would I forget?

How many years did I have before I leaped from the spire?

"You will find peace," Sahdri said. "I promise you that. Only serve the gods as they deserve, and the day will come when you will be at rest."

Erastu and Natha put hands upon me. This time I let them.

THIRTY-FIVE

THE WINCH-HOUSE WAS built into a cave in the side of the spire, whose mouth opened to the skies. The hermitage was also a cave, but lacking a mouth: it was a stone bubble pierced on one side with slotted holes to let the light in, and closed away by a door. From these places Sahdri took me up to the top of the spire, into and through a proper dwelling built of brick and mortar and tile. So closely did the dwelling resemble the spire itself that it seemed to grow out of it, a series of angled, high-beamed rooms that perched atop the surface like a clutch of chicks, interconnected as the metri's household was.

Men filled it. Men with shaven, tattooed heads, faces aglint with rings. All seemed to be my age, or older, but none appeared to be old. They attended prayers, or had the ordering of the household. Some worked below in the valley, going down each day by rope net, or crude ladders, to work in the gardens, the fields, to conduct the trade that came in from foreign lands.

The crown of this spire was much wider than the one I had leaped from. There was room for the dwelling. Room for a terrace. Room for a man to walk upon the stone without fearing he might fall off.

Room for a man, standing atop it, to realize how very small he is. How utterly insignificant.

I walked to the edge and stood there with the wind in my face, stripping hair from my eyes and tangling the robes around my body. I gazed across the lush, undulant valley with its multitude of spires springing up from the ground like mushrooms. The valley itself was rumpled, cloaked in greenery; we were far from the sere heat of the South, the icy snows of the North. Here there was wind, and moisture, the tang of earth and seasalt, the brilliance of endless skies. A forest of stone, like half-made statuary stripped of intended images.

"Beauty," Sahdri said from behind. "But outside."

Distracted, I managed. "What else is there?"

"Inside," he said. "The beauty of the spirit, when it works to serve the gods."

I looked at the clustered spires, the inverted oubliettes. "Are there people in all of them?"

"In and on many of them, yes. This is the iaka, the First House, the dwelling of those who must learn what they are, what they are to be. How to control the magic. How to serve the gods."

"And if one doesn't?"

"One does."

"Nihko," I said, denying it.

"Ikepra."

I signed. "Fine. Let's say I'm ikepra, too-"

He came up beside me and shut his hand upon my wrist. "Say nothing of the sort!"

"But I might be," I said mildly, trying with annoyance to detach my arm, and failing. "I may make that choice."

"Do you think you are the only one who has pleaded with the gods?" As if aware of my discomfort, he released my arm. "Those who go home die of it."

"Die of what?"

"Of going home."

I turned to look into his face. "But Nihko is free. Alive."

Sahdri's expression was still. "The ikepra will die. He has two years, perhaps three. But he will not stay on Skandi, and so he does not risk harm to his people."

Because it mattered, I said, "Skandi isn't my home. I would go there only so long as it took to collect Del, and leave. What risk is there in that?"

"She believes you are dead."

I grinned. "Faced with the flesh, she might be convinced otherwise."

From stillness, Sahdri turned upon me a face of unfettered desperation. "You would risk their lives? All the folk of Skandi?"

It burst from me, was torn upon the wind. "How do you know I would? How can you swear I am a danger to them?"

His expression was anguished. Unevenly he said, "There has been tragedy of it before."

I blinked. "From ioSkandics who went back?"

Sahdri nodded, too overcome to speak.

"What happened?"

He drew in a harsh breath. "I have told you: the magic is random, the madness unpredictable. When you marry the two…" He gestured futility, helplessness. "And I have told you why we remain here."

I stared out across the vista with the wind in my hair, mentally making a map of the spires thrusting from valley floor to the sky. Marking their shapes, their placements. An alien land, alien people. Alien gods.

Desolation was abrupt. "I want to go home. "

With great compassion Sahdri said, "We all of us wish to go home. The welfare of our people lies in not doing it."

Even as I shook my head I felt myself trembling. "This is not where I belong."

"You can belong nowhere else. Not now."

I swung on him. "I'm not one of you! I wasn't born here, wasn't raised here … I know nothing of Skandi beyond what I have learned since I came. There is nothing of Skandi in me-"

"Your blood," he said. "Your bone. You were bred of this place, even if you were not born here. Skandi is in you; how not? How can you believe otherwise? You leaped from the spire, and survived. "

"And I don't even remember why, let alone how!" I shouted it. Heard the echoes amid the spires.

Gently he said, "You will."

I turned away again, to stare fixedly at the Stone Forest. "There is only one life that matters, and I would never harm her."

"You may believe so. But you are wrong. Others have been wrong before."

"I would never hurt Del-" And then I stopped short. I had hurt Del. Had nearly killed Del.

"Trust me," Sahdri said, seeing my expression. "I entreat you to remain here, and I pray you will be brought to wisdom-"

I shook my head.

"Afterward," he said earnestly, "after you understand what you truly are-"

I interrupted. "Sword-dancer. There is nothing else in the world I am or wish to be."

He closed his eyes. I marveled again at the trappings of his order: ornate blue patterns tattooed into shaven skull, ring after ring piercing lips and ears, brows and nose. He glittered in the sunlight, features aglow with a haze of silver. He was not an old man, but neither was he young. Lines of character and strength of will shaped his features.

When he opened his eyes again, the darkness was rimmed with fire.

I fell back a step. Stared at him, transfixed by the expression of his face, the transcendent power in his eyes.

"Who are you?" he asked.

I swallowed. "Sword-dancer."

"Who are you?"

"Sandtiger."

"lo," he said. "lo. Who are you?"

"Sandtiger. Sword-dancer."

"lo."

"No," I said. "Not mad. Not io. "