Sword-Singer

by Jennifer Roberson

  He blew noisily through brown nostrils and flicked a tufted ear. Then he bared his teeth in a sideways attempt to bite.

  “Affectionate as ever.” I thumbed the prehensile lip and he twisted his head away, rolling an eloquent eye.

  Del caught up the reins of her own mount—a gutless, washed-out speckledy gray-white gelding with a frazzled tail and the temperament of an aging woman who considers herself still skilled at being coy—and looked at me. “How long before we reach Harquhal?”

  “Should be by nightfall.” I shielded my eyes and squinted up at the Southron sky that seemed to shimmer in the warmth. “Of course, we’re losing time with this idiot horse.”

  “Then saddle him and let’s go.”

  “In a hurry, are we?” I took the stud back to where his gear lay and bent to gather up the bits and pieces. “The North will still be there, Del…has been for years.”

  She mounted, swinging free of her billowy white silk burnous one long leg and slender foot with its Southron sandal cross-gartered to her knee. “And it’s been six since I was there.”

  “Not quite six,” I corrected. “You’ve been with me, not counting respective captivities, for at least nine months.” I grinned as she shot me a scowl beneath sun-bleached blonde brows. “Even if it took us five and a half more years, bascha, it’d still be there.”

  “You forget yourself, Sandtiger.” Her tone was suddenly cool. I stopped saddling the stud and turned to look directly at her. “Only two months remain before Theron’s agreed-upon year is done…and then they will be sending another sword-dancer to collect the blood-debt I owe.”

  Not a laughing matter, with Del or with anyone else. What she faced was serious. If, in the specified months, Del refused to go North to face trial for that blood-debt, the task of killing her would then belong to any man, or multiples thereof. Northern, Southron, sword-dancer, soldier, bandit; it simply didn’t matter. Her killer would be rewarded for discharging the blood-debt owed for the murder of her an-kaidin.

  Del was guilty. She had killed the an-kaidin. She carried blood-guilt freely, and did not deny responsibility. It made the sentence just in the eyes of the Northern an-kaidin and all their students, the ishtoya and an-ishtoya.

  Hoolies, in a weird sort of way even I understood the reason for it.

  But anyone who wanted her would have to go through me.

  Two

  In the desert, the sunsets are glorious. I’ve never been a man for painting pictures with words, but often, at day’s end, watching, I wished I was. There is something oddly tranquil and satisfying in watching the sun slide down beyond the bright blade of the horizon, setting the ocher and umber desert ablaze with the brilliance of richer colors: copper, canary, saffron and cinnabar. The desert is transfigured into a paradise of pigments, a collection of colors on the palette of gods different from those Del knew, or created with Boreal.

  Sunset. There is something that speaks in quiet inner places about the ordering of the world, today and tomorrow, then and now, and all of the yesterdays.

  I sat my bay stud and stared westward, watching the sun go down, and knew contentment in the company I kept. Del was mute, watching as I watched; feeling, I knew, some of the same feelings, sharing the quietude. There were many things unknown between us, many things unspoken, because we had both been shaped by circumstances far beyond ken or control. We were an odd amalgam, the woman and I; sword-dancers both; dangerous, deadly, dedicated, as loyal to the rituals of the circle as to one another. And yet denying, in our own independently stubborn ways, any loyalties to one another at all; preferring, for countless ridiculous reasons, to claim ourselves invulnerable to the normal course of human wants, needs, desires.

  And knowing, perfectly well, we needed one another as much as we needed the dance.

  The sunset gilded Del’s face. She had pushed the hood off her head so the silk settled on her shoulders, baring hair and features. She was all aglow: old gold, ivory, ice-white. In profile, she was flawless; full-face, even better. Inwardly, I smiled, thinking of the bed we would share in Harquhal. A bed bed, not a blanket spread upon the sand, or the naked sand itself. We had not, yet, ever shared a proper bed, being confined for so long to the Punja.

  But now we left the deadly Punja far behind, passing out of dunes and flatlands into the scrubby, hilly high desert that presaged the borderlands. Already it was cooler than the scorching days spent on blinding sands, hiding vulnerable eyes amidst the shade of burnous hoods.

  Here there were tough, fibrous red-throated grasses, warring with other groundcover; the tangle and tang of jade-hued creosote, haphazard in its growth; vast armies of thorny trees with feathery silver-gray leaves. Even the bloom of fragile flowers, unexpectedly tenacious, climbing out of the fretwork of webby groundcover and the tassels of taller, duller grasses to wave fluted gaudy petals, like pennons, in whatever breeze they could find.

  Here there was water. Here there was game. Here there was the promise of a survival less difficult than in the arid sea of sand known as the Punja.

  Harquhal. It rises out of the desert like a blocky pile of mud, girded by sloping hills and taupe-gray abode walls to hide its many faces from the threat of capricious simooms blowing northward out of the Punja. It is a characteristic of the South that towns, villages, semipermanent habitations, as well as the countless oases, are warded with man-made walls or hills or natural rock formations so that the deadly sandstorms, called simooms, cannot sweep away what men, women and children have labored so hard to build. In the Punja, it is necessity; the sands, never sated, swallow towns and cities whole if not properly maintained, disdaining the curses of powerful tanzeers and the wretched poor alike.

  I have seen walls, left to crumble by lazy inhabitants, swept away in a matter of hours, and the dwellings within destroyed by abrasive, voracious wind. I have seen cisterns and natural springs filled permanently by choking sand, though we have none to spare, in the South, in the Punja. I have seen scoured skeletons eaten clean of even a shred of flesh; by no beast but the wind, the sand, the heat. Horse, dog, goat. Man. Woman. Child.

  There is no mercy in the South, from humans, beasts, elements. There is only the way things are, and will be forever; ceaseless, unchanging, moved by no pleas for leniency or forgiveness.

  If there are gods who hear those pleas, they pass the time with fingers planted firmly in useless ears.

  Del sighed. “I thought, when I went home again, my brother would be with me.”

  So much said with so little. Del hoarded thoughts and feelings like a merchant coin, dispensing each with grave deliberation and at unpredictable moments. She had said nothing of Jamail for weeks, locking away in tenacious silence all the pain born of a futile search.

  For five years she had meticulously prepared herself to track down and free the younger brother stolen by raiders for profitable commerce with Southron slavers who knew the true value of blue-eyed, blond-haired Northern boys in a land of dark-faced people. For five years she had apprenticed herself to a shodo—in Northern lingo, an-kaidin—to learn the requirements of sword-dancing, fashioning herself into a human weapon with the sole purpose of rescuing Jamail. Knowing it was not perceived as a woman’s task; knowing also there was no one else to do it. No one even to care; the raiders had robbed her of kin as well as innocence.

  Futile. No, not exactly. She had found Jamail, but there was little left to rescue.

  Tongueless, castrated, shaped in mind and body by years of Southron slavery, Jamail was not the ten-year-old brother she had adored. Only a boy-man who could now, never, be a man, no matter how hard he wished it; no matter how hard she did. Jamail, Delilah’s beloved brother, who desired to stay in the South with the savage tribe he had grown to love.

  I wanted to touch her, but our horses stood too distant from one another. Instead, I nodded. And after a moment, intending to lighten the mood, I smiled and shrugged. “Well, you do have me.”

  At length, she slanted me an eloquent glance fr
om the corners of her eyes without even turning her head. “That is something, I suppose.”

  “Something,” I agreed blandly, choosing to ignore Del’s tone altogether. “I am the Sandtiger, after all.”

  “After all.” She twisted her head to look north. “There is food in Harquhal. Real food; something other than dried cumfa and dates.”

  I nodded, brightening. “And aqivi as well.”

  “We don’t have the coin to spend on spirits.”

  “Do you expect me to drink goat’s milk?”

  She contemplated me a moment. “They both smell about the same. What difference would it make?”

  “About as much difference as you swapping Boreal for Theron’s sword.” I stopped short as I saw how shock turned her to stone. And then I realized what I’d done. “Del—Del, I’m sorry—” Wondering: Oh, hoolies, how could I have been so stupid? “Del—I’m sorry—”

  She was white-faced with anger as she reined her speckledy gelding next to the stud. She didn’t seem to notice as the stud laid back ears and bared teeth stained yellow by Southron grasses and grains.

  But I noticed. I noticed also the rigid hand that reached out to catch my wrist. And closed. More tightly than was pleasant.

  “Never,” she said distinctly, “speak her name aloud again.”

  No. No, of course not. I knew better. I knew better. “Del—”

  “Never,” she said again, and took her hand away from my wrist.

  There were marks upon it. They faded even as I watched, but the sensation didn’t. Certainly the memory wouldn’t. Ever.

  I flexed my hand to see if all the fingers worked. They did; Del isn’t that strong. But strong enough; I felt guilty as well as resentful that she could command me so easily.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated, wishing there was something more I could say.

  Del’s mouth was a flat line. Its grimness ruined the symmetry of her features, but also impressed upon me the depth of her displeasure. “Her name is sacred.” It was so taut a tone as to lack definition, and yet I heard the undercurrent of shock, fear, despair.

  “Del—”

  “Sacred, Tiger.” Del released an unsteady breath and I saw some of the tension leave her body, replaced with outright anguish. “It’s all a part of the power, the magic…if you divulge her name to others, all the rituals are undone—” She stopped short, searching for comprehension in my face. “All the time, all the years, all the dedication…the sacrifice is as nothing—”

  “Del, I know—I know. You’ve told me. It was a slip, nothing more.” I shrugged, keenly uncomfortable, knowing I devalued her feelings even as I tried to assuage my guilt. “I promise, I won’t ever say her name again.”

  “If another heard it—another Northerner trained as I was trained, knowing how to tap the magic, how to destroy the jivatma—” Again she broke off, then scrubbed a hand against her face and swept fallen pale hair out of blue eyes. “I am in trouble enough because of the blood-debt. A man sent to fetch me back, to kill me, could take my skills, my strength, my blade—all with a single word.”

  “But I know her name. You told me.”

  “I told you.” The tone, now, was lifeless. “I had no choice. But you are a Southroner, lacking the magic, the power, the knowledge; you know nothing of the jivatma, and what it means. And yet you saw how it served you, how she served you, answering your need.”

  “But not as she serves you.”

  “No. No, of course not.” Distracted, frowning, she shook her head, and the curtain of hair rippled. She had not braided it lately, leaving it loose to fall over shoulders and down her back. “There are rituals—personal, private rituals…no one else may know them. Only me, when I make the sword my own.” Her eyes were on the hilt poking above my left shoulder, freed by the slit cut so deliberately in the seam of my russet burnous so that nothing would hinder me if I required it. Theron’s jivatma made powerless by his death. “Had Theron known her name, he would have killed you. Killed me—”

  “—and killed the sword.” I nodded. “I understand, Del.”

  “No,” she said, “you don’t. But I cannot expect it of you. Not now. Not yet. Not until—” And abruptly she shrugged, clearly choosing not to finish what she had begun, as if I was not prepared to hear it. “It doesn’t matter. Not the understanding; not yet. What does matter is that you never again say her name, not aloud, to anyone.”

  “No.”

  “No, Tiger.”

  I nodded. “No.”

  Her stare was so direct I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. I saw her seek some answer in my face, some expression she could trust, assurances unspoken but as binding, if not more so, than the words. There had been many things between us—death, life, survival; more than mere affection, more than simple lust—that counted for very much, but I knew, looking at her now, that nothing counted to her so much as a man who kept his word.

  After a moment she turned her gelding north, toward Harquhal. She said nothing more of the sword or my commitment to permanent silence, but I knew the slip was not forgotten. Nor ever would be.

  Hoolies, I hadn’t meant it. But an apology wasn’t enough, no matter how sincere. In the circle, it means nothing to a dead man to hear his killer’s apology.

  Harquhal is representative of most towns in the South. Adobe walls ward it against the wind, showing handprints and other geometric patterns laid in at construction. Cracks are plugged with fresh gobs of claylike mud, meticulously fingered into place, denying the wind and sand even subtle means of entry. But walls, like intentions, are transitory; tents and stalls and wagons clustered haphazardly around the perimeter of the walls like chicks around a hen, ignoring the possibilities of such things as simooms and smaller sister storms.

  Harquhal is also representative of most border towns. Serving Northerners and Southroners alike, it has no nationality, and fewer loyalties. Ostensibly Southron, Harquhal pays only haphazard allegiance to the land I call my home. Here, wealth holds dominance.

  Del and I had little. In the weeks since we had left Jamail with the Vashni in the mountains near Julah, we had survived on wagers won and a few odd jobs here and there; collections for a Punja-mite of a greedy merchant who then tried to cheat us out of our commission; effecting the rescue of the kidnapped son of a powerful tanzeer who embraced the Hamidaa religion, which proselytized the uncleanliness of women, while all the time the kidnapped “son” was in reality a daughter; escort duty for a caravan bound from one domain to another; other assorted employments.

  Nothing, certainly, requiring remarkable ability with sword or guile. Nothing that added to the reputation of the Sandtiger, the legendary Southron sword-dancer, whose skill in the circle was matched by no man.

  Unfortunately, now there was a woman. And she had displayed remarkable abilities with a sword, relieving a renegade sword-dancer of his life. As for guile, Del had little; she was blunt-spoken, straightforward, intolerant of Southron word courtesies that often did little more than waste time. And time was her enemy.

  The worst part of our journey was done. The Punja lay far behind us. What we faced now, once free of Harquhal, was the North.

  Hoolies. I was a Southroner—what did I want with the North?

  Nothing. Except Del, who had more than casual ties with the land of snow and banshee-storms.

  More than casual ties with powerful Northern magic.

  Glumly, I swung down off the stud in front of a lopsided adobe cantina roofed with a lattice of woven boughs, and tied tasseled reins to a knobby post set crookedly in the ground. I heard the sounds of laughter and merriment inside, male and female; smelled the pungent stink of huva weed, the aroma of roasting mutton, the tang of wine and aqivi.

  Also the sweet-sour smell of urine; the stud was relieving himself.

  Swearing, I skipped back and nearly stumbled over my own sandaled feet, not wanting my burnous splattered. The stud rolled an eye in my direction and wrinkled a pale-brown muzzle forested with whiskers.
I began again my endless litany of unflattering equine appellations.

  Del avoided the steaming puddle as she dismounted and tied her gelding to another post. Absently she hooked a left hand up to the exposed hilt of her sword, snicked it twice against the lip of the hidden sheath to check ease of movement, nodded once. I’d seen her do it before, many times. It is a habit, though varied in execution, all sword-dancers develop.

  We all have idiosyncrasies. Some of them keep us alive.

  “I take it you want to leave at first light.” I waited for her to fall into step beside me.

  She shrugged. “There are things we much purchase first. Food, clothing—”

  “Clothing!” I frowned. “I admit we could use cleaner apparel, but why spend good coin on things we already have?”

  She pulled aside the threadbare vermilion curtain at the door. “If you wish to go north with nothing more to wear than a dhoti and burnous and freeze your gehetties off, you may. But I have no intention of freezing to death.” And she ducked in, forgetting, as usual, that I require more room than she does in entrances built for shorter men.

  I jerked the curtain off my face and scowled after her as I followed. Then I coughed; huva smoke packed the exposed rafters of the cantina, drifting in slow, eddying, malodorous ocher-green wreaths. The vice is one I abhor since a sword-dancer needs all his faculties in the circle. Of course Del had taken my opinion as somewhat tainted by the fact I drink aqivi with great abandon, pointing out that a man with a gut full of aqivi is no less likely to die than a man with a head full of huva dreams.

  (Well, Del and I don’t always agree on everything. Sometimes we don’t agree on anything.)

  She squinted and waved a hand in front of her face, peering irritatedly through the smoke as she sought an open table. And, as is common when Del walks into a cantina (or any place, for that matter), desultory conversation devolved into a muddle of hissed comments, muttered questions, unsubtle speculation.