When his time to Fight comes, Merthe tells himself the outcome doesn’t really matter. He tells himself the same lies he told Serga, trying to believe them with a child’s fervor. He fastens his boots and sets out.

  A crowd is waiting for him. As he approaches, Elgir joins him, arriving at the square from the left. They walk the last stretch together, Elgir’s children trailing from her skirt.

  “How are things going?” Merthe asks.

  “I should be the one asking that!” Elgir laughs. “Are you afraid?”

  “No.” Surprisingly, it’s the truth. He’s too wound up to be scared. “Do you still believe what you said in the forest the other day? Do you still think it’s such a good idea to swap bodies from time to time? Or has that precious woman’s changed your mind?”

  Elgir laughs. “Oh, yes, I believe it. We are trapped inside these bodies. We’ve learned since childhood that women do this or that and we never dare to break free of that mold. We’re as pitiful as the men and women down South, who only know one way of living, except that we don’t have the excuse of ignorance. But hell, it does feel good to sniff my children with this nose again. I’ll grant you that.” She turns sharply and her children squeal and take off. Obviously, “smelling the children” is a game with them.

  They turn into the square where a dozen men cheer when they see Merthe. Merthe turns around but she nods at him to go. She’s got her arms full of toddler.

  “Do your best.” Her face looks pinched. Merthe realizes that if he wins, she will lose her hunter.

  He salutes each of the four metallic pillars that mark the Fighting ground. They are made from the remnants of a ship that brought the People here from the sky. Or so the elders say. It seems impossible that people should sail through air. It is true, however, that bodies may only be exchanged within their embrace and only after Fight. Years ago, Merthe and Ita, like all newlyweds, spent some time trying to game the rules and learned that the only result was temporary impotence and a headache that lasted for hours.

  On a whim, he jumps into the Fighting square and seeks out Ita before combat begins. He stares at the judge, dares him to object, and takes Ita to the side.

  “Are you nervous?” he asks.

  She looks at him suspiciously. He sighs, takes her hand and brings the palm to his lips. Her eyes lighten up.

  “It’s just a game, Ita.”

  “Maybe it is to you. That’s why you always lose.”

  He lets go of her hand, turns to the crowd. People are coming from villages that he hasn’t even been to. He wishes he could confide in Ita, but everything he says will be used against him.

  “I’m worried about Elgir,” he blurts. “Who will hunt for her when I’m a woman?”

  Ita smiles. She thinks it’s banter. “I think you’ll be able to keep her in meat and gravy for a while yet.”

  “Really? You would not object?”

  “Are you serious?”

  It’s no use. He heads towards his corner and starts preparing.

  Roll of drums; the combatants step up to the judge. Merthe wonders whether he should try to imitate Elgir. Maybe he can just take Ita’s hits and try to snatch an advantage when he sees it. Surely, it would be a lot less tiresome that fighting. He is so tired of fighting all the time.

  But then he realizes that this is Fight, not just any fight. His verbal skills do not matter and since combatants must remain silent, Ita’s wit cannot hurt him inside the ring. Suddenly, he feels protected by those four pillars. He has a good half hour of silence ahead of him, maybe an hour if he can make the fight last. He yearns for intimacy without the burden of words. And there is nothing more intimate than violence.

  The drums are still and the crowd holds their breaths. Ita starts bouncing and jabbing, trying to circle around him and hit him when he blinks. She moves fast—al-ways a good strategy for a woman—and attempts to bring him down with repeated blows.

  Her first hit catches him unawares and he staggers back. No, Elgir’s strategy won’t work. There is blood in his mouth. He’s supposed to hold still, he knows. Maybe feint a bit, watch for patterns and fell her with one decisive blow. Those same muscles that lend force to his blows suck up his energy. Unlike Ita, he cannot jump around forever. He is supposed to preserve his strength, not to commit, strike only when he can win.

  But he is so tired of doing what he’s supposed to and maybe Elgir is right and we get caught up in patterns, live life within patterns, pushing ourselves beyond our limits because a man should lift that much, throw that far. And maybe, just maybe, Merthe realizes, we do the opposite and fall pitifully short because we’ve been told our bodies have less endurance that our wife’s.

  Merthe starts bouncing. His feet know the way. Women fight like they dance, his mother taught him, and he was always such a good dancer.

  Ita’s rhythm lets up in surprise and he jabs, but she ducks in time and starts bouncing again. He loves her technique and mirrors her as they spin round and round. Merthe is the ugly sibling, echoing heir elder’s every move, struggling to copy what can only be born of natural grace.

  Ita doesn’t know how to hit a moving target. She hasn’t fought with a mobile partner for a long time.

  His breath is labored; she hardly breaks a sweat. She starts sweating; the pain in his chest won’t let up. She pants and swerves; his vision clouds but he sees the gap in her defense and punches through.

  She crashes down and he falls right after. For a second, he wonders if she’s all right. He put himself in that blow, his loves, his wants, his strengths and weaknesses. He wonders if it was too much for her. But she groans and sits up, spits blood and, of all things, laughs.

  “Well, you got me there.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “Oh no, you’re not. You won.”

  He lies back, head spinning. Yes, he won.

  His chest still hurts and he wonders how bad it is.

  The bell rings. She crawls up against him, sets her palm against his and they’re off into the limbo of joy. Her mind rises up to him. For a second, both of them are in his and hers hangs, limp, behind. He creeps in, wondering if the beams still hold in this castle which he’s left so long ago. Merthe draws a breath which is oh, so sweet. She smells the male sweat of Ita next to her.

  But no. Two women need a hunter and a young androgen needs to learn that being a man isn’t so bad. She pushes back into the old body. He regains control and shoves Ita into hers. She was so fond of her female form that it seems a pity to tear her from it. Plus, she made a terrible husband.

  Ita tumbles away from him and he sees disbelief in her eyes.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “You’re leaving me! You’re leaving with her!”

  It takes a moment for him to understand what she’s saying. But, of course, she

  cannot fathom why anyone would want to be a man. The only explanation that she will consider is that Merthe plans to start a new life with Elgir and that he needs a man’s for that.

  “I’m not going with her.” He doesn’t say he’s not leaving, though, because he’s not quite sure what he’ll do. He can support both women, but he doesn’t have the strength for either. He needs time, alone, in silence. He knows just the place for that.

  The judge walks up and hesitates before signaling the end of the transition. The elders squirm, then shrug their shoulders. Merthe has won: he may do as he likes. That night, there’s scratching at the door of the shed. “Does your mother know you’re here?” he asks a trembling Serga standing by the doorway. “No. I think. I don’t think so, she was asleep.” Merthe lets heir in, moves his quilts to a corner and places a stack of blankets next to the fire for heir to sleep in. Shei stomps heir feet all the way to bed, and Merthe stays awake until the shivering melts into regular breathing and only soft childish hairs peek out from beneath the covers. He’ll wake heir before sunrise and make heir go back to bed inside the house. Ita mustn’t know that shei’s fled to him for comfort after their separation. Merthe may be too confused to know what he wants just yet, but he doesn’t want to hurt Ita. Whether he can live with her or not is a different matter.

  SYLGARMO’S PROCLAMATION

  LUCIUS SHEPARD

  From a second-story window of the Kampaw Inn, near the center of Kaspara Viatatus, Thiago Alves watched the rising of the sun, a habit to which many had become obsessively devoted in these, the last of the last days. A faltering pink ray initiated the event, probing the plum-colored sky above the Mountains of Magnatz; then a slice of crimson light, resembling the bloody fingernail of someone attempting to climb forth from a deep pit, found purchase in a rocky cleft. Finally the solar orb heaved aloft, appearing to settle between two peaks, shuddering and bulging and listing like a balloon half-filled with water, its hue dimming to a wan magenta.

  Thiago grimaced to see such a pitiful display and turned his back on the window. He was a powerfully constructed man, his arms and chest and thighs strapped with muscle, yet he went with a light step and could move with startling agility. Though he presented a formidable (even a threatening) image, he had a kindly, forthright air that the less perceptive sometimes mistook for simple-mindedness. Salted with gray, his black hair came down in a peak over his forehead, receding sharply above the eyes—a family trait. Vanity had persuaded him to repair his cauliflower ears, but he had left the remainder of his features battered abd lumped by long years in the fighting cage. Heavy scar tissue thickened his orbital ridges, and his nose, broken several times during his career, had acquired the look of a peculiar root vegetable; children were prone to pull on it and giggle.

  He dressed in leather trousers and a forest green singlet, and went downstairs and out onto the Avenue of Dynasties, passing beneath several of the vast monuments that spanned it; a side street led him through a gate in the city wall. Swifts made curving flights over the River Chaing and a tall two-master ran with the tide, heading for the estuary. He walked briskly along the riverbank, stopping now and again to do stretching exercises; once his aches and pains had been mastered by the glow of physical exertion, he turned back toward the gate. The city’s eccentric spires—some capped by cupolas of gold and onyx, with decorative finials atop them; others by turrets of tinted glass patterned in swirls and stripes; and others yet by flames, mists, and blurred dimensional disturbances, each signaling the primary attribute of the magician who dwelled beneath—reduced the backdrop of lilac-colored clouds to insignificance.

  In the Green Star common room of the Kampaw, a lamplit, dust-hung space all but empty at that early hour, with carved wainscoting, benches and boards, and painted-over windows depicting scenes of golden days and merrymaking through which the weak sun barely penetrated, Thiago breakfasted on griddlecakes and stridleberry conserve, and was contemplating an order of fried glace 1 to fill in the crevices, when the door swung open and four men in robes and intricately tiered caps crowded inside and hobbled toward his table. Magicians, he assumed, judging by the distinctive ornaments affixed to their headgear. Apart from their clothing, they were alike as beans, short and stringy, with pale, round faces, somber expressions and close-cropped black hair, varying in height no more than an inch or two. After an interval a fifth man entered, closed the door and leaned against it, a maneuver that struck Thiago as tactical and put him on the alert. This man differed from his fellows in that he walked without a limp, moving with the supple vigor of youth, and wore loose-fitting black trousers and a high-collared jacket; a rakish, wide-brimmed hat, also black, shadowed his features.

  “Have I the pleasure of addressing Thiago Alves?” asked one of the magicians, a man whose eyes darted about with such an inconstancy of focus, they appeared on the verge of leaping out of his head.

  “I am he,” Thiago said. “As to whether it will be a pleasure, much depends on the intent of your youthful associate. Does he mean to block my means of egress?”

  “Certainly not!”

  The magican made a shooing gesture and the youth stepped away from the door. Thiago caught sight of several knives belted to his hip and remained wary.

  “I am Vasker,” the magician said. “And this worthy on my left is Disserl.” He indicated a gentleman whose hands roamed restlessly over his body, as if searching for his wallet. “Here is Archimbaust.” Archimbaust nodded, then busied himself with a furious scratching at his thigh. “And here Pelasias.” Pelasias emitted a humming noise that grew louder and louder until, by dint of considerable head-shaking and dry-swallowing, he managed to suppress it.

  “If we may sit,” Vasker went on, “I believe we have a proposal that will profit you.”

  “Sit if you like,” said Thiago. “I was preparing to order glace and perhaps a pot of mint tea. You have my ear for as long as it will take to consume them. But I am embarked upon a mission of some urgency and cannot listen to distractions, no matter how profitable.”

  “And would it distract you to learn . . . ” Archimbaust paused in his delivery to scratch at his elbow. “ . . . that our proposal involves your cousin. The very one for whom you are searching?”

  “Cugel?” Thiago wiped his mouth. “What of him?”

  “You seek him, do you not?” asked Disserl. “As do we.”

  “Yet we have an advantage,” said Vasker. “We have divined his whereabouts.”

  Thiago wiped his mouth with a napkin and glared at him. “Where is he?”

  “Deep within the Great Erm. A village called Joko Anwar. We would travel there ourselves and secure him, but as you see we lack the physical resources for such a task. It requires a robust individual like yourself.”

  The young man made a sound—of disgust, thought Thiago—and looked away.

  “It is possible to dispatch you to the vicinity of Joko Anwar within minutes,” said Archimbaust. “Why risk a crossing of the Wild Waste and endure the discomfort and danger of a voyage across the Xardoon Sea?”

  “Should you travel by conventional means, you may not achieve your goal,” Disserl said. “If Sylgarmo’s recent projections are correct, we might have as little as a handful of days before the sun quits the sky.”

  The wizards began debating the merits of Sylgarmo’s Proclamation. Vasker adhered to the optimistic estimate of two and a half centuries, saying the implications of Sylgarmo’s equations were that there would soon be a solar event of some significance, yet not necessarily a terminal one. Archimbaust challenged Sylgarmo’s methods of divination, Disserl held to the pessimistic view, and Pelasias offered a vocabulary of dolorous hums and moans.

  To silence them, Thiago banged on the table—this also had the effect of summoning the serving girl and, once he had given her his order, he asked the magicians why they sought Cugel.

  “It is a complex issue and not easily distilled,” said Vasker. “In brief, Iucounu the Laughing Magician stole certain of our limbs and organs. We set Cugel to retrieve them, armed with knowledge that would put an end to Iucounu for all time. Our limbs and organs were restored, but they were returned to us in less than perfect condition. Thus we limp and scratch and shake, and poor Pelasias is forced to communicate his dismay as might a sick hound.”

  It seemed to Thiago that Vasker had summarized the matter quite neatly. “And you blame Cugel? Why not Iucounu or one of his servants? Perhaps the manner in which the limbs and organs were stored is at fault. It may be that an impure concentrate was used. Your explanation does not ring true.”

  “You fail to comprehend the full scope of Cugel’s iniquity. I can . . . ”

  “I know him as well as any man,” said Thiago. “He is spiteful, greedy, and uses people without conscience or concern. Yet never has he acted without reason. You must have done him a grievous injury to warrant such vindictiveness.”

  Led by Pelasias’ groaning commentary, the magicians vehemently protested this judgment. Archimbaust was eloquent in their defence. “Our last night together we toasted one another with Iucounu’s wine and feasted on roast fowl from his pantry,” he said. “We sang ribald tunes and exchanged amusing anecdotes. Indeed, Pelasias performed the Five Amiable Assertions, thus consecrating the moment and binding us to friendship.”

  “If that is the case, I would counsel you to think well before you dissemble further.” The serving girl set down his tea and Thiago inhaled the pungent steam rising from the pot. “I have little tolerance for ordinary liars and none whatsoever for duplicitous magicians.”

  The four men withdrew to the doorway and talked agitatedly among themselves (Pelasias giving forth with plaintive whimpers). After listening for a minute or so, the young man hissed in apparent dissatisfaction. He doffed his hat, releasing a cloud of dark hair, and revealed himself to be a young woman with comely features: a pointy chin and lustrous dark eyes and cunning little mouth arranged in a sullen pout. She would have been beautiful, but her face was so etched with scars, she resembled a patchwork thing. The largest scar ran from the hinge of her jaw down her neck and was wider than the rest, looking as though the intent had been not to disfigure, but to kill. She came toward Thiago and spoke in an effortful hoarse whisper that he assumed to be a byproduct of that wound.

  “They claim that while taking inventory of Iucounu’s manse, Cugel happened upon a map made by the magician Pandelume, who dwells on a planet orbiting a distant star,” she said. “The map marks the location of a tower. Within the tower are spells that will permit all who can master them to survive the sun’s death.”

  “Cugel’s behavior becomes comprehensible,” said Thiago. “He wished to disable his pursuit.”

  The magicians hobbled over from the door. Vasker cast a sour glance at the young woman. “This, then, is our offer,” he said to Thiago. “We will convey you and Derwe to a spot near Joko Anwar, the site of Pandelume’s tower. There you wil . . . ”

  “Who is this Derwe?”

  “Derwe Coreme of the House of Domber,” the woman said. “I ruled in Cil until I ran afoul of your cousin.” She gave the word a loathing emphasis.

  “Was it Cugel who marked you so?”