Sword-Singer

by Jennifer Roberson

  “Del—”

  But she thrust herself up from the ground abruptly, ignoring the beginnings of my question. She pointed to the sword. “I swear, you can touch it. You can use it. It’s nothing but a sword.”

  Wariness made me curt. “You said that once before.”

  She pursed her lips and nodded. “Yes. I did. It was. And it is again; I promise.”

  “Then why is it glowing?”

  “Because, somehow, you keyed it. Not properly—you don’t know the rituals—but somehow you touched the soul within the blade.” Del shrugged. “There is too much I cannot tell you, because you are not ishtoya. There are secrets, Tiger, that only the an-kaidin know.”

  “You know.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I know. But I am sword-dancer, not an-kaidin; it is not for me to tell you.”

  “Then you pull it out of the ground.”

  Del sighed. “I can’t. You’ve keyed it, Tiger. Only a little—not enough to make it serve you as it served Theron—but enough to make it aware of the differences between us.” She tilted her head left, toward the hilt of Boreal. “Before you knew her name, you couldn’t touch my sword without feeling her warding power. Well, I can’t touch Theron’s sword.”

  “Then neither can I. I don’t know that thrice-cursed blade’s name any more than you do.”

  Blandly, Del smiled. “Apparently, he or she doesn’t care.”

  “‘He or she,’” I muttered blackly, and turned my back on them both.

  Del waited until I had caught the stud, who had retreated from the explosion, and was in the saddle again. “You are the Sandtiger,” she said calmly. “How will you live without a sword?”

  She knew, did Delilah, so very well how to appeal to pride in addition to masculinity. But I decided it wouldn’t work. “I’ll get another sword.”

  “Where?” With eloquent exaggeration, Del spread empty hands and looked around. “Is there a tree of them nearby? Are they sown and reaped like crops?”

  I set my teeth and forced a benign smile. “I can buy one in the next village.”

  “And if we are accosted before we reach one, what will you do then?”

  My smile died; the question made sense. “I can go back to Harquhal, where there are swords aplenty.”

  Del’s hands slapped down. “Then do it,” she said curtly. “And why not stay there, too?”

  I smiled smugly, certain of my victory. “Because you don’t want me to.”

  I had expected a reaction, but not the one I got. At my words she looked at Theron’s sword, still planted in the ground. Then switched her gaze to me. Considered something briefly; didn’t like the result. She opened her mouth, clamped it shut, muttered something to herself as she scowled toward the mountains, as if they were to blame.

  “I am enough,” she said in a grim determination. “I will be enough, no matter what they say.” And then she subsided once more into bitter silence, and shut me out again.

  Not at all what I’d expected. Something was bothering her, and it was serious. Certainly more than I thought our squabbling was worth, considering it was mostly an excuse to work off tension.

  She made up her mind. In silence I watched Del catch and mount her gelding. She pulled his questing nose away from the stud’s curling lip and aimed him northward, planting sandaled heels against the flesh of his flanks. Naturally the stud tried to follow, to regain the lead and put the gelding in his place, but I held him back. He snorted, stomped, jerked at tautened reins. Noisily swished his tail and tried to sidle his way up the hill, as if I might not notice.

  I noticed. I let him sidle. Over to the sword, still stuck in the ground. I scowled down at it, hating the pale purple glow. It reminded me of Theron, who had painted the night alive with the sword during our final dance. Now it was only the merest shadow of its former self, but that shadow was more than I wished to acknowledge.

  Del’s gelding snorted. I glanced after her and saw she was not waiting. She rode steadily north, steadily upward, intent on her destination. Willing to leave me behind.

  Ah, hoolies.

  I sighed. Glanced around. No, swords do not grow on trees, nor like crops are sown and reaped. And only the gods knew when I’d be able to get another.

  Hoolies. I hate it when Del is right.

  I leaned down and grabbed the hilt, noting absently that the hairs were stilled on my body and the itching had gone away. The feeling of wrongness abated, leaving me in relief, as if I had punctured the boil.

  Gritting my teeth, I jerked. The glow dimmed, then died. The blade slid free of the earth. It was only a sword again.

  And I was a fool. Again.

  Seven

  At sunset we turned off the road and made camp against the shoulder of a hill, avoiding established campsites, in a wind-smoothed hollow carved out of thick turf. We settled in like ticks into a dog, staking out the horses, laying a fire, dragging dinner from saddle-pouches: dried cumfa, sticky dates, a loaf of pressed bread, a bota of sour wine. None of it was particularly appetizing, but it served. And it was Southron; I felt a strange urgency to keep myself to what I knew for as long as I possibly could. Soon, too soon, I would know nothing at all.

  I ate, drank, sat huddled on my blanket as the last shred of sunlight faded out of the sky. Decided to make conversation; it was better than Northern silence. “A bumpy place, the North.”

  Del stopped squirting wine into her mouth. She frowned, bemused. “Bumpy?”

  I lifted a single shoulder. “Bumpy. Hilly.” I made an undulating gesture with one hand. “No level ground.”

  “Here, no,” she agreed. “We are in the foothills, the downlands. Soon we will be in the uplands…after that, the mountains. But there are meadows, and valleys…enough level ground on which to build and dwell.” She wiped a trickle from her chin, sighing, straying from me even as she spoke, though physically she went nowhere. “To see the forests again, and the grass, and know the whiteness of the snow—”

  “Snow?” I turned my head to look at her. “We’re going into snow?”

  “Yes, of course…we are bound for the mountains beyond Reiver’s Pass.”

  She was incredibly matter-of-fact. Uplands, downlands, mountains and Reiver’s Pass…I debated pointing out to her that I knew nothing of her Northern geography, nor of Northern snow.

  I took the bota as she handed it over, sucked down wine, handed it back. Del accepted it but did nothing with it, watching me instead. “You’re still upset, aren’t you?”

  Upset. Well, that was one way of putting it. All I knew was that something yet again was causing my hairs to stand on end.

  I sighed in annoyance and stabbed a foot at turf, thrusting sandal into soil. “I swear, there’s something here.”

  “I thought you were feeling better.”

  “I was. It’s come back.” It had, about the time we’d spread our blankets. Unease built steadily. I’d tried to shake it off, but all it did was intensify. “Look, Del, I know how it sounds—how do you think I like it?—but I don’t know what to tell you. I just sense something, feel something…” I shook my head, breaking it off. “It’s like being in the circle with a dangerous opponent. You don’t know what he’ll do, but you know he’s going to do it.”

  “Superstitious Southroner.” Del grinned and shook her head. “I don’t mean to make fun of you, Tiger—not really. But you have said much the same to me a time or two, when I have spoken of something I can’t properly explain. You used to call me witch, remember? Northern sorceress.” She tilted her head a little. “But what am I to call you?”

  “A fool,” I said irritably. “Why not? I begin to think I am one.”

  “Not a fool,” Del mused. “No, something more, I think. Something entirely different.”

  I snapped my head around. “What?”

  She shrugged a little, plugging and unplugging the bota. “What you did with Theron’s sword…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Well?” I sat upright. “Yes?” />
  Del was frowning again. “I could lie, and say it was nothing. But it was something, Tiger.”

  I swore with distinct succinctness. “And do you plan on telling me what it was?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t know myself. Just that—well…you say you feel something here, and obviously you tapped it.”

  “Tapped it.” I nodded. “I see—I tapped it. With that sword.”

  “I don’t know how—”

  “Hoolies, Del, seems like there’s a lot you don’t know.” I flopped down on my blanket.

  She sighed. “Always, it comes to stories…tales of this and that. Who knows what is truth or falsehood, or if there is a difference?”

  I scowled. “Stories have their uses. Just look at that boy, Bellin, wanting to travel with us…and who are you to deny their effectiveness? I don’t doubt men are always talking about the blonde, blue-eyed bascha who wields a sword like a man.”

  “I wield it because of a man.” Del stared down at the bota, hunching one shoulder. “By now, probably—had the raiders never found us—I would be married, bearing babies, tending a household, tending a man…doing all the things a woman usually does.” She raised her head and stared across the fire into the blackness beyond. “But who is to say I would be happier in that life, instead of the one I have?”

  “But this life was born of tragedy.”

  “Yes. And if giving up this life was a way to bring all my kinfolk back, I would. Like this.” She snapped her fingers. “But it would not; I am what I am and have what I have. There is no turning back.”

  I propped myself up on one elbow. “What if there is, Del? What if your blood-guilt is pardoned? You left Jamail behind. There is no more kin-debt facing you. What would you do then?”

  Her face was hidden by hair. “I am a sword-dancer, Tiger. It is my life; I chose it.”

  “For a purpose,” I said quietly, “and that purpose is nearly over.”

  She turned her head to look at me. “And if I said the same to you?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t apply, Del. I became a sword-dancer—”

  “—out of a desire for revenge,” she finished evenly. “Don’t lie to yourself, Tiger, any more than to me. You are what you are because you hated enough to survive, to acknowledge that hatred, and to use it.” She frowned intently, trying to find the words. “What the raiders did to me was not so different from what slavery did to you. It broke us, warped us, remade us, shaping dedication out of destruction…defiance out of despair.” She drew in a breath, released it. “I thought I would never say this—it is not a thing of which to be proud, in the face of kin-blood spilled—but I will say it plainly, to you, who should understand: I am the better for it, regardless of the cause.”

  I thought, briefly, of all the years of slavery. It was so easily done. I had been free longer, now, than I had ever been a slave, but the memories remained. I would never forget them.

  I am whatever I am, I said. I am what I have made me, regardless of the reasons.

  But I could not say it to her.

  I rose, rearranged the fit of my burnous, snicked the sword against its sheath. “Think I’ll take a look around.”

  Del looked after me but made no move to follow. I turned and started the climb to the top of the hill.

  The downlands, she had called them. Mere foothills, insignificant in comparison to the mountains. But already I was aware of an oppression bearing down upon my spirit. I was accustomed to the vast reaches of the Southron desert, the wasteland of sand and sun. Here there was vegetation in abundance, rich, aromatic earth that sang with the promise of a life I’d never known, even air that smelled and tasted different. All around me the downlands rose in perverse opposition to their name.

  I looked out across the distances, disliking the thickness of the night. In the South, even full dark seems bright enough. It is because the moon, spilling illumination across the miles of flattened sand, knows no obstacles. Light, unhindered, runs forever along the ground. But here, where there are hills and mountains and trees, the moonlight contests for dominance, and nearly always loses.

  I shivered. “I don’t like it,” I said quietly. “And yes, I have a reason…I just don’t know it, yet.”

  Below me, the stud whickered. Talking to me, or to the gelding, or maybe to himself. The sound carried clearly, sounding closer than it was. Looking down, I could see the fire, and the black blot of Del’s silhouette, hunched contentedly before the flames.

  Well, she would be content. She was, at last, home, after too many years.

  Something goosed me in the spine. I swore. Swung around. Lost myself in the sudden shadows and stumbled over a stone. Swore again against the pain in my big toe. The stone rolled, clacked, stopped against another. There it rested. I saw it clearly, cheek-by-jowl with the second. And a third, and a fourth…I stopped counting at twenty-seven.

  Rocks. Just rocks. But oddly rounded, smooth, as if they had been shaped and carefully polished. One after another poured out in a long curving line, like a necklet of Punja crystals. Black in the light of a waning moon; by daylight, by sunlight, perhaps a different color. I followed them around until the last met the first—or would have, had I not knocked it out of its bed.

  The symmetry was pleasing. I was a sword-dancer, born of a Southron circle, and here I faced another. Northern instead of Southron, made of rocks instead of a line drawn in the sand, but nonetheless a circle. It made me feel better. Considerably better.

  It made me feel intensely good.

  Grinning, I bent and scooped up the displaced stone. It was cool, silky, soothing, nestled into the palm of my hand. Its touch sucked away the last residue of unease and put pleasure in its place, an intense, abiding pleasure that made me fondle the stone. Reluctantly, I bent and put it back into the nakedness of the pocket I had uncovered. Satisfied, I nodded; the symmetry was repaired.

  A surge of well-being filled me. No longer was I oppressed or depressed but filled with a virulent satisfaction.

  And a need for sharing it.

  I straightened. “Hey, Del!” Echoes abounded. “Feel like sparring? There’s just enough light to make it interesting—and someone kindly left us a circle.” I entered, stepping over the stone I had handled, and unsheathed Theron’s sword. The pale purple glow was gone, but the moonlight set the silver afire. In the glint I saw the runes etched into the blade and sensed again a strangeness working. But the discomfort was gone entirely; what I felt was complacent joy, an anticipation of true pleasure. It was almost sexual. “Come on, Del…you could use the exercise!”

  She topped the hill slowly, a shadow amid other shadows. “Why are you shouting?” she asked crossly. “I was enjoying the peace of the night, and you are destroying it with your noise.”

  I gestured. “See the circle? I thought we could spar a little.”

  Del frowned. “What circle—” And then she shut up, abruptly, biting off the inflection of her question. “Come out,” she said plainly. “Come out of there now!”

  “What in hoolies for?”

  She ignored my question entirely. “Did you touch anything? Anything in or of the circle?”

  “I moved a rock back after I accidentally kicked it aside. Why?”

  Del swore. Pale hair was aglow in the wan moonlight. Her eyes were hidden in pockets of shadow. “It’s a loki ring, Tiger. I can’t come in, not now—but you can still come out. Do it now, before they are awakened.”

  “Bascha, you’re being ridiculous. There’s nothing here—”

  There was now. And I felt it coming.

  Something jerked me to my knees. The sword fell out of my hands as I flopped forward, splaying fingers against the turf. Something had me, and yet I could feel nothing at all. No fingers, no ropes, no traps. Merely a power, and that power was dragging me down into an obscene intercourse with the earth.

  I lay flat, stretched out, belly-down, and pinned. My face, turned sideways, ground into the turf and through i
t, into dirt, into a cold, clammy darkness that invaded eyes and nose and mouth.

  I meant to cry out, but all I did was swallow dirt and turf.

  Writhing, I tried to pull free. Tried to wrench myself from the grip that held me with unrelenting strength. Dimly I heard Del shouting, but her words made no sense. My ears were stopped up with turf.

  I hacked and coughed, trying to breathe, trying to spit out choking dirt and dampness. I was aware of an almost obscene urgency in my body, a need to release myself into the earth, like a man into a woman. It made me want to vomit.

  The turf was alive. It made way for my body, then linked roots and blades with hair, fingers, toes. It tickled mouth and nostrils, tried to invade my eyes as it wove itself into my lashes. I squeezed lids shut and tried to shout again, but the opened mouth merely made way for encroaching grass. I gagged as coy blades caressed the back of my throat.

  Hoolies, bascha, do something!

  She did. She snatched off the necklet she wore and threw it into the circle. “Take that instead!” she shouted. “Take it and leave me the man!”

  I was, I knew, little more than a man-shaped mound against the earth, half consumed by soil and turf. A moment longer, there would be nothing left of me at all. But something contemplated the choice. Considered Del’s words. Assessed the gift she offered.

  And accepted.

  I wrenched free in a gout of dirt and turf, hearing the protests of ripping roots and shredded grass. I staggered, fell, thrust myself up again, trying to throw myself over the ring of rocks.

  “The sword,” Del shouted. “Don’t leave them a jivatma!”

  Somehow I caught it, clutched it, carried it out of the circle, where Del grabbed my wrist. I was weak and disoriented, wool-witted; she began to haul me away.

  “Bascha—”

  “We must repack and resaddle as quickly as we can, and pray the necklet will be enough for now,” she said firmly. “Later, I can speak to the gods and ask their intervention.”