Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine, Volume 2

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Mary A. Turzillo

  Hunt danced beautifully—high as a star, quick as electricity. But Silver’s answer was still no.

  “Why?” His eyes shone bright, almost the color of flame, and the flesh above his beak was red, an accent to his regal profile.

  “You know why,” said Silver, drawing her taloned writing hand into her breast feathers. She would not wear the silver jess bells he had sent her from the north.

  “A dance is not an egg.” He bated angrily, nearly losing his grip on the ledge.

  “With you, Hunt, a dance may well end in an egg. And I won’t be wanting eggs until I’ve settled this matter of honor.”

  “Silver,” he said, very quiet, “the love months are halfway gone. They’ll be over by the time you find Golden and defend your honor.” His gaze flicked away. “You’re beautiful. Even your devotion to honor is beautiful. But there are women in the sky today without lovers. I’m not blind.”

  She extended her wings, bated a powerful downstroke, folded them again. “I told you not to call me Silver. My name is Jessless.”

  Jessless was a common given name among the Sky-breaker Gathering. It meant “with no master but the Sky-breaker.” A year ago, Hunt had joined the Gathering as Silver’s pupil. His own twin had died in the egg, so he was not obliged to settle old debts of honor by challenging the “Usurper,” as Skybreaker Gatherers called their twins. They believed their world, Aeyrrhi, was growing overpopulated, that population should be controlled naturally by allowing the elder of two twins to kill the other in the nest, as happened with the lower species and with backward families in prehistory. Through Silver, Hunt had learned these doctrines. But his faith had ebbed. Yes, there were too many of his kind. Sport and work facilities often drove lower species into the high mountains. But Hunt shrank from the thought of watching his own two children (if he and Silver ever had any) tear each other to shreds.

  “Perhaps,” he said levelly, “Jessless only means ’uncivilized.”

  “I knew you didn’t believe,” she said, jerking her head away. “You’ve only been humoring me. You’re no different from the silly, soft glovewearers.”

  Hunt knew she wanted him to protest his fidelity to the Gathering. It seemed more important to her than his faithful, frustrated courtship. He raised his hand before her. He was wearing a flying glove, a soft, new one. His family had been sensible people, who had always seen that he had the best food, comfortable ledges, the best Mentor, and, yes, the best flying glove. And what would have happened if his twin had hatched and tried to kill him? They would have put one brother up for adoption. His experiences with this lovely fanatic girl began to make that look like sense.

  He bated again, lofting into the air and tightening the flying glove. Silver extended her own unclipped, ungloved hand. It was too much. “You’re right,” he screamed. “Tell the Gathering! I am apostate. And now I’m going to find myself a real wife!” He beat upward, high above her, then swooped past the ledge again.

  “With jesses!” he yelled.

  She tucked a jessless wrist into her breast feathers and watched him wheel northerly, out of her family sky, until he was less than a speck.

  Silver was stunned. They had played this game before, but she always thought that his faith, though less than hers, was firm, that he believed because she did, that he would stay with her until she had settled this matter of Blood Trial. Eventually, she would wear his silly jess bells. And if they had eggs, anything could happen. She would hate seeing a Blood Trial, a full-scale battle between two razor-beaked babies, especially if they were her own, but maybe something would happen. Maybe she would only have one egg the first time. Maybe one egg would accidentally roll out of the nest. She might even help it a little.

  The real problem was her own, real, grown-up sister.

  Dance’s family sky was blinding with spring loveliness this afternoon. As a child, she had imagined the day when she would return, a woman, to survey the family sky from this vantage. It was her favorite nest. And Scan had improved the nest so, with plumbing, storm shutters, a lightweight roof of wooden struts, leaves, and fabric, and his great hobby, electricity for heat and light. It was shady inside the nest; she had rolled the awning forward so that she could drowse, too sleepy to read or write letters.

  For a child adopted by an elderly, barren couple, Dance had done well. Her career as a Comforter had gone well; Catch Vixen, her patient for the last two years, had improved so much and had gifted her with rings, jesses, and glove ornaments, plus gaming rights in her family sky. In a letter Catch Vixen had hinted that she might also be a wife this season. Dance’s Mentor, Praise, had been so pleased that she had sent Dance home early for the love months. And her old friend Scan had also grown the light-colored, mature feathers. She had prophesied right when in childhood she had thought they might be lovers. He was a lusty, graceful dancer, full of humor, surprises, passion. And now she brooded two creamy speckled eggs.

  But she was lonely right now. Business was supposed to stop when the love months were this far along, but Scan had volunteered to steer a dirigible north, where lumber was needed to repair an ancient nest that, after years and years of occupancy by a venerable family, had collapsed of its own weight.

  Dance drowsed. She dreamed of the day of her marriage. Scan had rested the day before on an open mountain, preened and adorned with jess trinkets. He had come at evening to hunt. He had observed where the family ground turkeys nested, stalking them quietly, picking one out for the wedding feast. She saw him there in her family sky, though he floated silently on thermals, never opening his throat.

  In the dream, as in her memory, she waited all the next morning for him. Tradition was that he would come when least expected. She oiled her glove and waxed the gauntlet, twisting greenery around its wrist. From her talon wrist dangled a gold jess with ornate bells and rainbow ribbons. Occasionally she would slip off the ledge and wheel slow circles, then light and rest again on the highest point on the floor of her sky, riffling her wings, spreading them to cool them or to bask in the late winter sun.

  Then she saw the far speck. She whipped her head about, alert, scanning the whole sky. The sky-born dot was vales away, a mote to rodent or simian eyes, when she recognized the streaks in the fair belly feathers, the characteristic flight gestures.

  As the dream went on (she knew she was dreaming, but settled in luxury to finish the dream), she screamed welcome, crouched, and launched into the air. Scan screamed back his love and folded his wings, plunging down and down and down before he pulled out of his first display. She cried out a strong, gay laugh for his aerial skip, and again as he climbed, rolling, flaunting strength and joy. She beat harder upward and gained his height.

  Together, in her dream as in her memory, they flew, wingtips almost touching, sometimes brushing. He began a dive and she followed; he began to dive and rise, dive and rise; she followed his undulating pattern, her wingtips never more than a talon from his. He threw off his flying glove and beat upward, ahead of her, luffing in the wind. She stripped off her glove and tossed it down, noticing where it landed, far, far below, on rocks, amid blue winter flowers.

  She rolled, turned, and began flying on her back. Scan, now behind and above her, drew in his wings and dove toward her. She extended her talons up toward him and he locked hands with her. Together they flew, face-to-face, she upside down. Slowly Scan started a roll. She yielded her weight outward, still soaring upside down. The two began to cartwheel through the sky.

  Her silk-and-beaded jess ribbons tangled in his talons. He laughed and pulled away, nearly tearing the elaborate jewelry. She rolled upright into soaring position and flaunted under him. Before she sensed his intention, he pulled in his wings and mantled her, making real love now.

  They plunged through the cold sunlight, tumbling, locked in love, heedless of their airy fall. And consummated their union, only a span from the rocks of the meadow. And spread wings, beating upward, defying death with courtship and lov
e.

  Dance stirred in her dream.

  The eggs under her were too warm; she balanced on her talon hand and turned them to a cool side. Scan had installed an electric incubator. Aside from the discomfort of a hot brood patch, Dance could almost have gone with Scan. But a broody sleepiness had overtaken her, along with maternal possessiveness.

  Her wings felt cramped. When the eggs had first been laid, and she was light again, knowing the eggs to be fertile, children of hers and Scan’s, she felt free, empty like a leather jess wallet. She had left Scan warming the new eggs and flapped all around the canyon and far downriver. Then, suddenly protective, she had streaked back upriver and pushed him off them. Scan had been amused.

  Now she extended her wings a little, pushing feathers lightly against the egg cup wall. Stretch any farther and she would break a feather. She’d have to get somebody to come up and imp it for her. Self-coddling, she preened, wishing she had some scented oil left. Maybe Scan would think to bring a jar.

  The wind, she noticed, was picking up. It was northerly. It might hasten Scan back a day sooner. Fast-blown clouds dappled the sunlight; she huddled closer to the eggs. It would not snow, surely, but it would be a cloudy afternoon, and colder, too. Eyes half-closed, she dreamed again, dreams less to her liking, dreams of struggling, of combat with a lower bird. She dreamed she had gone to hunt for the babies’ dinner, a small turkey hen. She had picked it out and flushed it, on it too close to back off, when it flew at her, slashed at the flesh above her beak, at her eyes. A huge hawk, frantic to kill. She closed with it, grappling it behind the head. But it turned and squeezed her own neck.

  She jolted awake. The day had turned cold; the lightweight roof rattled in the wind. Turning the incubator on, she ambled toward the front of the nest.

  There was a speck in the sky.

  It was not Scan.

  A long time Silver, who called herself Jessless, stood in the Skybreaker shrine. But for her slightly erect hackles, she seemed enraptured in meditation. Her glove hand, naked, was drawn up into the plumage of her breast; her eyes were fixed on the twin figures in the icon above. She was unadorned now, except for the two slashes of paint, one on her writing-side cheek, the mark of childhood, for she, was virgin, old enough for a husband, but denying herself for the sake of her mission, her Blood Trial. She also wore a slash of paint on her talon-side cheek, red extending her eye. The meaning of that mark was holy, secret. It was called the Mark of the Elder, but Silver’s was for a younger twin bent on redressing a wrong, the wrong of having been denied her trial of childhood.

  After a long time, she extended her glove hand and placed it on the head of the sacrificed rabbit doe. Her talons, grown too long to write or manipulate tools of any trade, so long that she needed no flying glove to grasp perches or hunt her own food, those talons fit around the skull of the doe. She squeezed; blood ran on the shrine’s floor.

  Even as the Skybreaker will on the last day take the egg of Aeyrrhi in his talons and crush it like a clod of dirt, thought Silver. He will heed me. It will surely be his will that I so crush the breast cage of the sister who should never have lived. He will surely mantle in joy over this sacrifice, over the body of the Usurper, my twin. He will grant me the victory. He will surely be pleased with me. A small voice said, But you were the younger. You live only by chance. But that voice was only in her head. She paid no attention to it.

  When the messenger came, Dance had been nearly awake. She realized her strange dreams came from two things: the rising wind and a tiny sound within one egg, the first callings of her firstborn. “Mama, Mama,” it would call. Then it would rest. Then it would strain against the shell and call again, “Mama, Mama.” It was beginning to crack a tiny hole in the shell. The entire hatching would take two days, while the baby strengthened and grew vigorous from its struggles.

  But somebody was outside—not Scan—different flight gestures altogether. But somebody she knew. She found her glove and, without putting it on, crossed the crooked flooring. She spoke soothingly to the unhatched chick, then dropped from the front of the nest ledge and climbed upward. The talon blades of the glove clanked in the wind, and she drew it on and fastened it with her talon hand as she flew. It felt stiff; she hadn’t worn it for almost a day.

  Yes, the intruder was someone she knew: Hover, from her Mentor’s sky, a Glovemaker Gatherer who waited on the blind Mentor. “Friend,” Hover cried over the wind. Dance pitched forward, beating faster to meet him.

  “It’s Praise,” he said, breathless with fighting the wind, now that they planed together, spiraling downward.

  “Is she dying?” Dance cried. “Did she send to say good-bye?”

  “No,” Hover answered. “It isn’t her. It’s you. She says, ‘Beware. Fight to the death, because she means death to you.’ ”

  The wind drove Dance back. Hover tossed a parcel to her and she nearly missed it in her surprise.

  “Don’t try to fly to Praise,” Hover screamed. “Come afterward, if you can. Be careful!” He extended his wings and beat awkwardly upward, now against the first drops of rain.

  Dance labored upward, wings straining, to a familiar dead tree. She lit there, squeezing the wood with her sharp glove blades, holding the package with her talon hand, unnatural reversal. Be careful, Hover had said. He was flying gracelessly now, swiftly north again. The rain might down him, but he’d left the message. Perhaps the blind Mentor Praise was after all dying, or he’d have invoked hospitality. But no, Hover had always been proud, chaste, and alone more than the laity of the Glovemaker Gathering.

  The short flight back taxed her. Rain drizzled off her feathers on the uneven flooring in the front of the nest. The roofing, flimsy though it was, kept the nest dry. Dance took off her glove, closed the shutters, and returned to the eggs. They were warm, slowly turning. Scan had made a good incubator. The elder egg was quiet, the chick resting between calls.

  The sodden parcel Hover had brought was a message, kept dry with waxed rags.

  She read:

  No time for tact. Yes, this is a blood matter. I invoke the Glovemaker’s true name; you know it was Kill-near-the-Eyrie. You know the story: how he himself, in blind infant rage, killed his twin. How when he married, his own elder child killed the younger, then died of its wounds. How his wife dove onto rocks, killing herself in grief How then he called himself Glovemaker, implying one who brings civilization. Do not forget this, Dance! Blood Trial was instinct even with the Glovemaker!

  Among the Skybreaker Gather, one woman rises as an adult to fight the Blood Trial she was denied as a child. This one is Silver, the younger sister whose older twin was given to strangers to adopt that the two might not kill one another. Silver wants now to fight that primal battle. She seeks her sister. Silver is strong, clever, and dangerous, Dance.

  Still I call you Dance. Do you not know that sometime in the naming-game, parents name twins in two consecutive throws? The names, then, come out so people know the two are twins. For your own good, the naming-game was played a second time for you by your foster parents, and you were named Dance. But the first time the game was played, by your first parents, you had a different name. I know that name, and I have kept it secret. But now, in this blood matter, I tell you your true, first name. You were called Golden.

  Silver is your younger twin. She means to kill you today or tomorrow. Do not let her. Strike first if you can. Forget your pacifism. She will make no peace with you. You are nest-bound, brooding, and cannot escape. She will die, or you will.

  I am tired Hover waits to carry this. A storm is coming.

  Dance’s pinions prickled. How would she know this Silver? Her twin? Yet paint and circumstance might hide resemblances. Better to harry off anyone who came uninvited.

  Dance’s brood sleepiness was upon her; she missed Scan. Perhaps his errand was concocted by Skybreaker Gatherers. For protection against such violence, there were ritual peacekeepers, Glovemaker Gatherers, but in a society so ritually territorial that
there was no word for war, violence was always personal and considered a blood matter, to be settled within the family where it arose.

  Aeyrrhi was not a violent world, but if you were determined, it was very easy to murder someone.

  Back in her nest, Dance composed and sent telegrams to her neighbors. It was not good to involve strangers in blood matters, but she was frightened and defenseless.

  She wrote to Scan. Later, she would carry the letter to the post at the other end of her sky. Anyway, since he was steering a lighter-than-air vehicle, the message could reach him only by chance. The elder egg called briefly, then seemed to fall asleep. Exhausted, Dance pulled the shutters closed against the wind and tried to sleep.

  In her dream, she was playing a children’s game of drop-stone-and-dive. She was very good at it. She had better be good, because the stones were eggs.

  Silver spent the morning in exercise. She played the stone game with a quick novice, faster than she was because he was male and therefore smaller, but she did well, missing only once during the entire morning. The Gathering knew her special mission of the next day, so after a short noon rest she had a fresh practice opponent for unarmed combat. This was another woman, older and well muscled. Not as fast as her morning’s opponent, but strong and full of cunning. Silver had chosen to specialize in Skytalon, a form of aerial combat, but she was familiar with several wrestling techniques to be used with a grounded combatant—or one who had grounded her. Her practice opponent, Rends-Horse-Sinew, was more versatile and clever with the cunning of middle age, but speed carried the day, and Silver triumphed. They played with thin leather gloves, of course, to avoid slashes or stab wounds. The older woman had not sharpened her talons, but Silver kept hers at razor points.

  Again Silver rested. The games-sky was bright all forenoon and the floor of the sky dusty. A wind was rising. Silver threw dust on herself, then preened it off quickly. The coaches, after consulting with a Mentor, had decided her afternoon practice would be ground combat, wrestling. She reviewed quickly in her mind the style she had studied, aware that her opponent might be, like Rends-Horse-Sinew, skilled in several styles.