Sword-Singer

by Jennifer Roberson

  “There is power in a circle; it is the line that knows no ending, only continuance. It is life, Tiger…the cycle personified.” She lay back on the ground as I did, crossing ankles casually and threading fingers across her flat belly. “I have always found it odd that the sword-dance, which brings death to many, is played out in a circle.”

  “Because while one dies, the other lives.” I shrugged. “I don’t know, bascha…I never thought about it.” I rolled over, reached out, caught a wrist. “And I can think of other things that might prove more diverting.”

  The wrist remained limp in my hand. “Not so close to the loki.”

  I froze. “What?”

  She rolled her head and looked at me earnestly. “Loki are attracted to strong emotions, like flies to rotting meat. Coupling is the strongest emotion of all…it is well known that a man and woman, in congress, draw the loki near. They invite the loki to take possession of them.” She shook her head. “Better to avoid the risk.”

  I recalled the urgency I had felt, the need to find release, as if the earth had been a woman. Loki? No. I thrust it firmly aside; how could manifestations of evil have influences over such an incredibly human drive? “Are you telling me that we can’t—”

  “Not tonight,” she said. “Maybe next week.”

  “Next week—”

  “Loki like to lie with men and woman,” Del told me plainly, “for the emotions they can experience through flesh instead of vicariously. Often, they trick you into it. It is the easiest way to gain control, to gain a human body—”

  “I’d like to gain a human body…” I glared. “Hoolies, Del, you’re human and I’m human, and—so far as I can tell—there aren’t any loki around. So why don’t we just forget about them and think about us.”

  “I am thinking about us, Tiger.” She sounded infinitely patient, as if I were a child. “I’m thinking about us staying alive—and sane—so that when the time is right we can enjoy being bedmates again, without concern for loki.”

  I thrust myself off the ground, hooking the bota beneath one arm. “Hoolies, woman…you’re sandsick.”

  Del levered herself up on one elbow. “Where are you going?”

  “To sit with the stud. I think he’ll be better company.”

  “Or the loki will.”

  “Loki, shmoki,” I muttered. “Right now, just about anything would be welcome. Even an amorous female loki…at least I’d be getting something out of it.”

  “Maybe the last thing you’d ever get, Tiger.”

  I hadn’t thought she could hear me. “Yes, well…I’ve always thought it might be an interesting way to die. If I had to, I mean.”

  “You’d have to,” she called. “That’s the way it works with loki.”

  I sighed. “Great.” I stopped, patted the stud, sat down, shoved away a curious nose as I unplugged the bota. “Well, old man, how’s it going with you?”

  Del, rudely, laughed.

  Nine

  I woke up at sunrise, because I was cold. No, not cold—freezing; somehow, during the night, I’d lost my blanket to Del, who now slept wrapped in two. The theft was nothing particularly new, although familiarity did not make me any happier. Ordinarily I’d have simply retrieved my blanket and tried to go back to sleep, but the rising sun prevented me.

  It didn’t really do anything, the sun, but I couldn’t ignore it anyway, not even to recapture a stolen blanket. Its passage into the sky was something to behold, so I beheld it. Shivering, freezing, all abump from morning chill, I watched it climb above the horizon and set the world afire.

  And what a world it was…all uplands and downlands and everything in between, high and low, sloped and flat, aslant from grassy floor to distant sawtoothed mountaintops. In the South, the colors are predominantly browns and golds and oranges; here it was blue and gray and lavender, gilded with silver and gold. Del and I, thanks to the stud, were cradled in a soft bowl of a valley, crushed green velvet, all aglow from morning light. We were, however briefly, swathed in Southron silks begemmed with Northern dew.

  I have seen dew once or twice, in the borderlands by Harquhal. But I’d told Del the truth; my experience did not extend so far north as the border town or anything beyond. The Punja was my domain, and all the encampments, oases and walled city-states that made up the puddle of sand that had birthed me. To sit and watch while the sun climbed into the sky above Northern mountains was nothing short of amazing.

  Or discomfiting.

  I looked at Del. She was the meat in a sausage-casing of woven goathair blankets, corners sucked down somewhere beneath determined hips and shoulders. Pale hair straggled free, hiding much of her face, but I saw the cut of her browbone above closed eyes, the sunbleached, feathery brows, the tiny tracery of sunlines at the corners of blue-veined lids. In the South, women go veiled for vanity as well as modesty; Del, so free and easy, subjected herself to the same sort of damage Southron men did, and suffered for it more than any of us could. Northern flesh does not thrive beneath our angry sun.

  Except it was no longer Southron sun and Northern flesh, but the other way around. We had changed places, Del and I, and now I suffered for it, shivering in the chill.

  I rose, swore softly; cracked, rolled and popped stiffened joints and sinews. It is a hazard of any professional sword-dancer—bones do take a beating, and after awhile they protest with great regularity—but I’d never experienced quite the same degree of stiffness. It made me feel downright old.

  I scowled down at Del, still sleeping. Then I leaned over to scoop up harness and sword.

  Just as well I did—with a bloodcurdling scream that echoed all over the valley, a noisy group of riders came pouring over the nearest hill.

  Bent on murder, certainly. All their swords were out.

  It was a bizarre beginning to the morning. Here was I, here was Del (she awakens quickly, thank valhail, when our lives are on the line), spine to spine, swords drawn, feet spread, teasing the air with blade tips, and all the while trying to figure out what was going on, and why. We were afoot and outnumbered—it was four to two—but we’d fought worse odds and won, and under worse conditions, too.

  But they did not, at first, attack. They came running and yelling, all swathed in bright silks and shiny brass ornamentation, blades bared and glinting, but they did not move to kill us. Instead, they circled, hemming us in, tying us up in a living knot of horseflesh. And then they slowed. And stopped.

  Dark Southron faces. Black hair, brown eyes, white teeth. Lots of white teeth; they grinned down at us from atop snorting horses, patently pleased with themselves.

  Borjuni, pure and simple, lacking a conscience of any sort. Why they were north of the border I didn’t know, but I had a feeling they’d tell me.

  Hoolies, I said to myself, they’ll want to play with us first.

  Del began to tremble. It was not fear, I knew, but an emotion far more powerful than that. “They are,” she whispered. “Oh, yes, they are…I remember their ugly faces.”

  The only way to win this game was to take it away from them. But I couldn’t if Del’s desire for revenge got in the way. “Bascha,” I said, “wait. Please be patient; I promise, you will have your chance.”

  “Tiger—”

  “Just wait.” But I didn’t. Instead, I smiled up at the Southron scavengers in a friendly fashion. “Out of Harquhal?” I asked casually. “Hunting anyone in particular?”

  One of them nodded. He had a mashed nose and a scar across one cheek. “The female killed a comrade.”

  “In the street, or in the circle?”

  He twisted his head, spat.

  My turn to nod. “In the circle,” I said lightly. “Sits in your throat, doesn’t it—that a woman could beat a man? That this woman defeated your friend?”

  “Tiger—”

  “Wait, Del. For the moment, this is between Southron men.” I felt her stiffen, but she held her silence. I smiled back at the mash-nosed spokesman. “Well? Are you here on business
? Or personal pleasure?”

  Four men exchanged glances.

  “More to the point,” I said, “did Ajani send you?”

  The scar-faced borjuni leader spat again. “Ajani need not trouble himself with a son of a goat like you. We will take care of you.”

  “Think again,” I suggested. “Would Ajani thank you for stealing a fight from the Sandtiger?”

  This time they exchanged longer, startled glances. All four began to frown. I had touched borjuni pride, which might be my only weapon.

  I tilted my head in Del’s direction. “It was a fair dance, in the circle, between your friend and this woman. He knew it, I knew it, and so did everyone else. She is a sword-dancer, as am I; our dances are always fair.”

  They were displeased. Dark faces scowled down at us. Horses stomped and fidgeted, clattering bright brasses.

  “Isn’t Ajani a fair man?” I heard Del’s gasp of outrage. “Doesn’t he savor an honorable fight?” I knew as long as I kept them talking, any action would be delayed. I wanted to catch them offstride so we would stand a better chance. “I have heard he admires courage no matter what form it takes.”

  They could hardly disagree. Flattery has its uses.

  Scowls deepened. The leader muttered something to the others, then kneed his mount forward a single step. “Ajani is fair. Ajani is courageous. He likes nothing better than an honorable fight—”

  “Even between men and women?”

  He glared at Del. “Ajani does not fight women—”

  “No…he only steals them.” I smiled, tapping a signaling heel against Del’s foot. “So much for Ajani’s honor.”

  “Ajani’s honor is no better now than it was six years ago,” Del said curtly, on cue, “nor is any of yours.” She took a single step forward, away from me, and glared at them over her blade. “Don’t you remember the young girl who got away almost six years ago? The innocent Northern bascha Ajani selected for himself, and later lost because he grew complacent, thinking she was cowed?”

  They said nothing, staring. I could see their memories working.

  “You should.” Her voice was thick with hatred. “You fought over me, each one of you, after the others were dead, until Ajani overruled you and kept me for himself.” Del’s turn to spit; in the South, a decided insult. “Because of you, I am here. Because of you, your friend is dead. Lay no blame for his death—or your own—on anyone but yourselves.”

  In five years, a girl becomes a woman. She changes mightily. Del too had altered, of course, but in ways beyond those of a normal woman, forced to it by adversity, shaped by determination. By rage and hatred. As well as by memory.

  Now that memory had stepped forward and slapped her in the face. Slapped them in the face, as well; to a man, they knew her.

  The years spilled away.

  “Where is Ajani?” she asked softly. “He is the one I want. You are goat dung to me.”

  Faces darkened. Eyes flashed. Southron insults spilled from lips. But when they did not answer, as I did not expect them to, Del began to sing.

  A small song, a soft song; a deadly, crooning song, full of significance. I had heard it before, in dreams and not-dreams, knowing it for what it was. Deathsong. Lifesong. The promise of beginning and ending, all at once, for the one who faced the woman.

  She sang, and they moved, as she intended them to. But they were slow. Too slow. Boreal was alive in Del’s hands, and it was too late for men with normal swords. For men with normal hatreds. Much too late for men who had never faced a jivatma.

  Too late, even, for me. Because Del and her sword set fire to the valley and split the air apart, calling down a raging banshee-storm from out of deadly Northern heights where winter holds dominance.

  —cold—

  No, Del, I said, not me. I am not enemy.

  But if she heard me, if she knew me, she gave no indication. Her world was Boreal.

  My world was pain. Pain and stiffness, and fire in the bones, running through all my joints and every muscle, even rigid flesh. I was so hot I shook, and shivered, and spasmed, biting through bottom lip to teeth, not caring that blood spilled into mouth, down my chin, dripped against my neck. It was hot, the blood, so hot—

  “Tiger.”

  I jerked. Bones rattled, teeth clenched, blood spilled afresh.

  “Tiger, please…it’s over. I’m finished. I promise.”

  Familiar voice. Familiar hand on my brow, pushing back hair, wiping away sweat, smoothing out deep-carved lines. A second hand, touching mine, touching both of them; working the skin to relax upstanding tendons and rigid flesh. Soothing, smoothing, sending the spasms away, gentling the unpredictability of my fingers, locked so tightly around the hilt of Theron’s sword.

  “Let it go,” she said. “They are dead. There is no more need. You may release the sword.”

  Not yet.

  “Tiger—” She stopped. Tried again. “It was my fault. I forgot—forgot everything but what they had done to my kinfolk, those men; seeing only the deaths, the rapes, the mutilations—” She stopped again. And began, again. “I thought of my kin, and of me, and of them. I did not think of you.”

  I was so hot—

  “Tiger, I swear, I did not mean to harm you…not with her. You know that. You know I would never use Boreal against you. Not intentionally.”

  I cracked burning eyelids. “I don’t much care if you kill me intentionally or unintentionally. The end result is the same.”

  She leaned down to brush lips against my forehead. “Sulhaya,” she said, but she said it to someone else.

  Hair tickled my nose. I shivered from head to toe, and finally let go of the sword. “What in hoolies happened?”

  Del sighed and sat upright again, hooking hair behind her ears. “I keyed the sword. Completely. I held nothing back, allowing Boreal her freedom, the chance to show her true power. And she did. She killed them all, and nearly you.”

  “Why is it so hot?”

  “It’s not. You’re cold…it’s part of the jivatma’s power.”

  “To freeze people?”

  “To use all the power at her disposal.” Del’s face showed strain; so, she had been worried. “There are many things I can’t tell you about my blooding-blade; too many things are sacred, all part of the rituals and training, but you know each one taps a very specific power. Boreal is—special. The rituals were demanding and difficult—I might have failed at any time, and died. But I didn’t fail, and she didn’t break, and when the blooding was done, Boreal was whole. She was awake…” Her voice trailed off. She shrugged. “She is of the North, my jivatma. More so than I am, or any other human. She is the North, Tiger…and she can use any facet of her strength at my bidding.”

  “Your bidding.” I didn’t try to move, other than to work fingers still cramped from gripping the hilt. “Your bidding, bascha.”

  “Yes. Of course. She will do the bidding of no other.”

  “But I know her name.”

  Del nodded. “It is something. A little. More than any other knows. But you do not know her.” She frowned, trying to find the words. “It matters, the knowing. It does matter, Tiger.”

  “I guess so.” I wiped my chin and lip gently with the back of one hand, tasting blood. “Don’t ever introduce me, bascha. Not formally. I don’t think we’d get along, your angry sword and I.”

  Del’s expression was troubled. “Now is not the time, perhaps…it could be better, I think, at another, but I can’t set it aside any longer…not when you deserve better, as you do, for all you have done…and will do, I hope.”

  An odd, twisty little speech, and mostly incomprehensible. I frowned. “What?”

  Del sucked in a deep breath, held it, let it out all at once. “Will you come with me?”

  I blinked. “I thought I was sort of doing that already.”

  “I mean—come with me. To the far North. To the uplands, and beyond…all the way to the roof of the world. Where it is very cold, and very dangerous.”<
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  “It’s already cold, and already dangerous.” I scrubbed at a sore face. “What in hoolies did you do to me?”

  Del looked away. “Nearly killed you. The same way I killed the others.”

  I tried to sit up, decided lying still was just as good an option. Maybe even better. I stifled a groan and settled down again. “Am I in one piece?”

  “Yes. But—” She shut up.

  I didn’t much like that. “But? You said ‘but’? But what, Del?”

  “The stud ran away.”

  I sat upright, wished I hadn’t. Swore softly. Stared out at where the stud had been staked.

  She was right. He was gone.

  So were the borjuni.

  Well, no. They weren’t gone, precisely. Not altogether. Parts of them remained. Maybe all of them, for that matter, but Del and Boreal had done a decisive job in dividing them up. I didn’t bother to count the limbs or try to put them back with the proper heads and torsos. It would have taken too much time. All of the parts were frozen solid, rimed with glittering ice. The ground was white with frost, though it had begun to melt in the sun.

  Del had moved me or made me move myself apart from the bits and pieces. All I could see were lumps in the distance. “What happened to their mounts?”

  “They ran off.”

  I lay back down again and thought about what I’d seen.

  “Tiger—I’m sorry about the stud.”

  But was she sorry about the men? Probably not; I wasn’t sure I was, either. “Tell me that again after we’ve been walking a few days.”

  “I know he meant a lot to you—”

  “Mashed toes, bitten fingers, bashed head, bumps, bruises.” I shrugged. “I can survive quite nicely without any of those.”

  “But—”

  “Forget it, Del. He’s gone. At least, for now. Who’s to say he won’t show up again later? He’s done it before.”

  She nodded, but didn’t look particularly happy. “I must have an answer, Tiger. Before we go any farther, I must know.”

  “Know if I’ll go with you to the roof of the world?”