The opponent this time was a man, large and strong for a male. His bearing reminded her of Hunt. His name was Laugh-at-Distance, but he was from the south, and his size gave him advantage.
He was expert, it turned out, at the style she herself had studied. Both wore light gloves, but when he lashed out at her with a thumb talon, she staggered, and the pain made her wonder if she had been cut. She was allowed, by the rules, to flutter a few talons above the ground, and she did so immediately, to return his attack. She felt she must score points soon, or lose the match—bad omen on the eve of her blood match. Slightly aloft, she grappled with him. He rolled on his back, steadying himself with his wings, and returned her clasp by taking handfuls of her breast feathers. The rules forbade tearing her flesh, but he had scored a point, and they were forced. to separate. Silver felt a chill.
She took the next point by hitting him with a talon hard enough to knock him down. Winded, he asked for time out. Silver was pleased. She could have disengaged from his feather-pulling, and she was too fast to allow him purchase on her breast cage. Her own blow had been timed too slowly to stun him, but she congratulated herself that he needed time out.
Then Laugh and Silver circled each other, feinting with talons. Laugh was quick, but not quick enough, she thought. Just then, he squatted and leapt into a glove-hand charge—or what looked like a glove-hand charge. As she came up and turned to block his glove hand, he corkscrewed into the air and landed on her neck. For a moment she panicked. Then her training came to her, and she rolled forward, jarring the unprepared Laugh’s beak. They rolled in the dust, until judges separated them.
Silver was sure she had torn a ligament in her talon hand, and considered asking the match called off. On any other day she would have risked further injury, but she did not want to postpone the Blood Trial tomorrow. She was sweating and shivering in the chill, gusty wind. Rain began to threaten. Then Laugh went to the judges and asked that the match be declared a tie. He said he thought he might have a concussion from the force of hitting the sky floor when Silver threw him.
Though relieved, Silver was not sure a tie match was a good omen for the eve of settling blood business. At that the judges conferred and gave her the victory. Laugh refused to go on, they said, so she was the winner.
Silver dipped her head and body in a winner’s curtsy, and Laugh dipped his deeper forfeit curtsy, reminding her again of Hunt. Hunt, though, never liked to fight. But the curtsy looked so like courtship. If only Hunt were here! She was sure he would be moved by her skill and daring, not to speak of her feminine grace. A worthy woman to bear his eggs! Laugh also attracted her. He fought well, and perhaps he had deliberately lost because it was the eve of her Blood Trial. That would be chivalry!
Laugh must not be married, or he would be with his wife so late in the love months. Yet she thought fondly of Hunt. However, she mustn’t think of husbands, or eggs either, until the day after tomorrow.
She lifted off the ground, leading the ceremony that vaunted her Blood Trial. A huge complicated pattern of Skybreaker Gatherers formed in the sky—a dance like courtship, but vaster, slower, more impressive. The dance reached a climax before the first drops of rain.
Laugh was a beautiful dancer, she thought as she glided down.
But she really wished Hunt were here.
Dance wished Scan would come back. She had had no answer to her letter to him; no surprise, since steering a helium ship was weather-chancy. She had not slept much. The chick woke and called from inside the egg many times during the night, and each time she had jolted awake, sure that a dark shape glided across her sky toward the nest. Yet Silver would spurn ’the instruments of night flight, conventions of a weakling civilization. Nor would Dance be able to see through the tentlike roof or the closed shutters.
Dance’s last nightmare had sent her bating against the nest walls, and she had broken two primaries. Unpreened, bleary-eyed, she found shafts of daylight through the shutters disorienting.
Wincing with pain from where she had struck against a wall, she stirred. The chick in the egg cried “Mama,” and she murmured tired reassuring sounds. She hobbled to the shutter pull and let in daylight. At least the primal horror of the night would evaporate with morning light.
Dance tugged open the east-side shutters. But the feeling of disorientation did not ease.
For one thing, the sky and the sky floor were covered with thick ice fog.
After Silver’s shower and her light meal of rabbit meat (she hadn’t been hungry, but rain made her want to kill something), she settled on a protected ledge for sleep. Sprays of rain touched her, but she liked to sleep cold. Her keen muscles generated lots of heat.
The excitement of the day’s combat and the Blood Trial dance dissipated slowly. The other Gatherers chattered and laughed, flitting in the storm as if it were a summer shower, or flying up to the ledges of the temple, which, though sacred, sheltered flirtations and giddy parties.
Silver didn’t care. She was the center of attention, among friends and potential lovers. She knew, without looking, that Laugh had roosted where he could watch her. She chuckled softly and fell into a dreamless sleep.
Fog was a surprise to her when she awoke, but a sweet surprise. As a child, she had played stalking games by flying a few talons above a plain, so that she might pluck a snake or a mouse like a flower as she passed. It was harder to fly this way in fog, of course, because the ground was cold and offered no thermals. Dance, her enemy, could never have done it, Dance who was brood-sleepy and newly delivered of eggs. So Silver had learned from Gather spies. But Silver herself was strong enough to do it, keen from training, fasting, and virginity. She could steal right up to the high ground above the mountainside ledge that held Dance’s nest.
The shutters, Dance realized, did not lock. Why should they? Scan and Dance had never anticipated such an attack. With the shutters down, and tied with odd lengths of rope, the nest seemed secure enough. This Silver might tear at the slats with her sharpened talons, but they would hold until Scan returned.
But with the shutters down, Dance could not see her enemy’s approach. The fog was, after all, lifting. Dance gambled on leaving the front shutters up. Silver would have to come from the down side of the ledge, she thought.
She was wrong.
Even as Dance tied the side shutters down, Silver crouched on the high ground, clutching a dead root, only talons above the nest. She had been there since dawn, working and watching the fog lift. Now she stole forward. The shutters would stand up to strong winds, but she had a plan for getting Dance out of the nest.
She began pelting the shutters with fair-sized stones.
The stones were awkward to throw with her long, natural talons, but her aim was not to break in. She just wanted Dance’s attention.
And she wanted her out of the nest, in the air.
Dance appeared at the front of the nest, her eyes wild and unfocused.
“Golden,” said Silver lightly, “come play.”
Dance had expected the attack and hated not anticipating its direction. “Go away,” she said bravely. “You and I have no quarrel.” She cautiously drew on her flying glove and buckled it.
“We have the oldest quarrel of all!” cried Silver. “You are my twin, and we both should not live!”
Dance mustered arguments; they fell away from her. She knew Skybreaker Gatherers had answers for everything. And Silver was retreating, her expression sly wickedness.
“Go away!” Dance cried again. “My husband is returning.”
“Then I will fight your husband, too. And I hope he’s big, for a man.”
Dance could see Silver scuttling with her hands at something above the nest. Suddenly she realized that Silver had spent the morning on the slope above the nest setting a trap. That she had laboriously piled rocks and pebbles in a huge pile, held back only by a few twigs, branches, and pebbles. The whole thing could be set off easily. Rockslide!
The nest was an old picturesque
affair. It didn’t have a modem foundation. It might hold if the rockslide hit it, but maybe rocks would collapse the flimsy roof and strike the babies in their eggs.
Knowing she’d fallen into a trap, Dance leapt up, half flying, half scrabbling, toward Silver. Silver held her ground, then launched delicately into the air. “Come play,” she exulted.
Dance fluttered back toward the nest. Silver flapped higher, then dove toward the unsteady pile of rocks. Dance watched in horror as she pulled up short of dislodging them.
“The next time,” Silver said, “I push the top rocks. Just a little bit.”
“I don’t want to fight!” Dance screamed.
“But I do!” Amber fury in Silver’s eyes belied the pretense at gaiety.
Dance flew slightly above the rocks. She thought of rolling on her back and grabbing Silver’s talons on the next pass. Silver lit slightly below the rocks, above the nest. “Or I could pull this twig.” She tugged a branch.
Dance’s head spun. She launched out into the air and careened past Silver, trying to rake her across the cere without touching the rock pile or allowing her to start the rockslide.
“More like it!” Silver was delighted. She launched out in chase, and the two sisters closed in hand-to-hand combat, locking talons as they tumbled in the air.
In the nest, inside the elder egg, a nameless child tried to straighten his back. The shell was so tight. It hurt. He wanted to stretch out; the egg bound him. He wanted to breathe; the egg stifled him. He wanted to reach forth his hands; the egg seemed to tighten around him.
“Mama,” he called tentatively, kicking, tossing his beak against the stony shell. “Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama!” There was no response. He had heard his mother’s heartbeat and felt her warmth; she had murmured things to him in words he tried to understand. Where was she? He was getting cold, too.
He dashed his beak against the hard shell. It scraped. He tensed his small neck and back and pushed. Nothing. He subsided and began to drowse. The feeling of being cramped roused him again. Something on the top of his beak felt really good when he ground it against the shell.
Outside the nest, Dance was fighting in panic. Every time she disengaged, Silver dove toward the rock pile. Dance knew her own weakness, but worse still, she had no killer instinct. Yet there seemed no way out but to kill.
Silver had noticed Dance’s concern about the roof of the nest. She lit on it and began to tear with her sharpened talons at the fabric, leaves, and wooden struts. Every time Dance flew at her, she crouched low on the roof, daring Dance to strike and dislodge parts of the roof. Already it bowed in, ready to collapse. Dance was exhausting herself and could not harry Silver away from the fragile structure.
Why, oh, why, had they not built a sturdier roof? It did little more than keep rain off. Of course nothing in its right mind ever attacked a nest. The sentients of Aeyrrhi were masters of their world. Nothing dared approach their nests.
Nothing except their own twins.
Silver crowed as she tore out talons full of fabric and leaves. Some of the struts that held these up were already broken. With a cry of macabre delight, Silver fell through the structure. She emerged a moment later.
“Mama! Mama!” screamed the chick in a steady, hysterical rhythm. Movement. Fear of falling.
Silver had the egg. Dance went cold with fear, rage, outrage. Silver flew out over the canyon, the egg clenched in her bare talons. She was crushing the egg, the live chick screaming in fear and pain in her hands. Dance beat desperately almost on top of Silver. Rage gave her power. She rolled under the other, flying belly up, and grabbed at the egg, hoping to snatch it and fly free.
And flinched a second too long, fearing her steel flying-glove blades would pierce the child’s flesh. She beat up above Silver again, ready for a second pass. But at that moment, Silver howled in triumph and dropped the egg.
Even this was not the end, for without hesitation Dance went into a power dive that could surely overtake the egg, though if it did not, it would dash her to bones and feathers on the canyon floor. But Silver had anticipated her dive and followed her, fastening naked talons on her back. Dance tried to free herself, ’but it was too late.
What good, she thought with a stab of agony, are these sharp eyes, if they can see THAT, the crushed body of my child? She had never seen the child alive, only heard it. Now, outside the egg, it was dead.
Her brain, sight, blood, and talons exploded as she tore loose of Silver and plunged to the sky floor where the child lay dead. Perhaps she meant to dash herself against the rocks. Silver had not thought beyond the murder of the child. She had thought only that it was the ultimate revenge. After all, one chick should have been killed by its twin, just as should have happened with her and Dance. She thought somehow Dance would see this, collapse with grief, give up, and allow herself to be torn apart. The egg theft had been spontaneous, not part of her original plan. Maybe, too, she thought it would goad Dance into an earnest fight. Maybe Silver, being the younger, unconsciously wanted to die.
But Dance was beyond logic, too, and pulled out of her suicidal dive only talons from the canyon floor. Fury had turned to despair. Not soft, resigned despair like that of patients she had treated, but white-hot despair that opened her throat in a scream and gave her breast muscles fiery strength to climb back up to that speck, the evil speck in her sky that was Silver, a speck she planned to pluck out and squeeze to death as she would a presumptuous starling marring her blue sky.
Silver, without plan, banked and hovered, terrified at the very battle she had sought. Too late, she made to dive left and evade Dance’s rushing wings. But Dance coursed above her. Silver tried to twist still higher, but Dance, talons and glove blades fully extended, had begun her dive. Silver rolled to the left and dodged the razor-sharp weapons. She thought surely Dance would carry through her dive and be so far below that she could climb higher and thus turn to attack.
But now, Dance’s despair and Dance’s steel-bladed glove, symbol to Silver of decadence and over-civilization, were the very instruments of Silver’s undoing.
* * *
Dance knew that she would attack again and again. To be able to check her dive just under Silver did slightly diminish the power of her dive. But she knew by now that Silver’s two natural talon hands were no match for a natural talon hand and a steel-bladed glove. Dimly she was aware that Silver had made puncture wounds in her back. Hysteria had nearly closed off the blood vessels. She had an insane plan, built out of despair.
She knew she was going to kill Silver. Yes, Silver meant also to kill her. But where Silver had planned a conventional Blood Trial, with one survivor, Dance didn’t really care if the fight was fair, or even if she herself survived. The child’s death had released a juggernaut within her. She planned to dive at Silver, check, beat up to diving height again, and repeat the cycle until Silver killed her—or until Silver misjudged and allowed herself to be caught in flesh and steel. And Dance knew that once she had caught Silver, she would never, never let go. Until she had tightened her talons and cut, with her steel-bladed glove, through feather, flesh, and bone, severing Silver’s spine.
Dance needed only one more pass. Silver yawed back and started to roll on her back, presenting talons. But she misjudged. Dance too misjudged, and her steel-bladed talons raked Silver’s face. Dance barrel-rolled and, feeling purchase, tightened her glove hand, puncturing Silver’s right eye and squarely slicing the other. Automatically she tightened her taloned fist; then realizing in horror the sit of her grasp, she released and fluttered away. But it was too late; Silver flapped in aimless panic. She was not dead. She was blind.
Later, after Scan returned, some Skybreaker Gatherers came to carry Silver away. She would be a virgin Mentor to them, as Praise was to Glovemaker Gatherers.
In the evening, a young tercel, just coming into adulthood, flew over Dance’s and Scan’s sky floor. It was Hunt. He flew close enough for them to see his flame-colored eyes. They were sad.
> About Janet Kagan and “What a Wizard Does”
Janet Kagan is a lifelong reader of science fiction, so when she found out that books were actually written by people, she made up her mind then and there that she’d write some too. She’s delighted to discover that people seem to have as much fun reading her work as she has writing it. So far she has accumulated as evidence of this three Asimov’s Readers’ Poll Awards, first place in the Cauldron vote for issue 10 of MZB’s Fantasy Magazine in which this story first appeared, a Nebula nomination, and a Hugo.
She lives in New Jersey with her husband Rick and a pride of cats. Her novels include Uhura’s Song, Hellspark, and Mirabile, and she’s currently working on a novel about Nellie Bly. It will be interesting to see how she makes that into science fiction, but as this story shows, she has the sort of mind that looks around corners and turns ideas inside out.
What a Wizard Does
Janet Kagan
Sable rose from the comfort of her goose-down pillow to stalk to the streaked window yet again. It had been raining steadily for a week now. She had spent some of that time profitably—rousting sniggets from the rugs or (her fur dry-spelled) catching such mice and moles as the wet brought to the surface. Of itself, rain did not bother her.
What did bother her—what set her tail twitching like a black and venomous snake—was the stench of misery that coiled from the village below to seep into every corner of the house she shared with Glory Two-Eyes. This morning it would have overpowered even the best of smells Glory could conjure.
It was the stench of children trapped—kept indoors for fear of colds. Base superstition, Glory called that. Likely, it had more to do with the desire to keep the children’s clothing from being muddied. In which case, Sable thought, it would be sensible to send them out without the clothing. It was certainly warm enough for most creatures (even those lacking her superb coat and her dry-spells) to go “unprotected.”
Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine, Volume 2 Page 6