Sword-Singer

by Jennifer Roberson

  The song swelled. I heard dissonance in it, and harshness. An underlying demand. The songmaster was inflexible as he asked birthnames of the others.

  One by one, he asked them. Adara. Cipriana. Massou.

  One by one, they lied.

  The song intensified. I saw dozens of throats swelling forth, threatening to burst. I heard the high melodic wailing, the deep thrumming hum, the mid-range staccato whirring. I heard the power in the song, and knew the loki could never withstand it.

  Nothing could withstand it.

  Massou broke first. “Shedu!” he screamed. “Shedu, Shedu, Shedu!”

  The songmaster asked again.

  “Shedu!” he screamed, in a voice too deep for his throat.

  I looked at the boy, Massou. Who wasn’t Massou any longer. Whose name was Shedu instead.

  Adara’s turn. As had Shedu/Massou, she broke beneath the song. “Daeva,” the woman whispered. I saw anger in her eyes, and helplessness and despair. “Daeva,” she said again, grinding teeth into lips. Blood flowed down her chin. “Daeva!” she cried, and it echoed in the canyon.

  Lastly, I looked at Cipriana. Slender, upright Cipriana: flirtatious, demanding Cipriana, who had reminded me of Del. Who had done her best to seduce me. Who now repulsed the song with every ounce of her strength.

  The question was asked.

  “Cipriana,” she answered.

  The question was asked again.

  “Cipriana!” she snapped.

  Yet a third time it was asked.

  Pale hair stood up from her head. Rigid arms thrust into the air. “Cipriana!” she cried.

  I took a step forward. Del held me back. In silence, she shook her head.

  I waited. The song didn’t waver, didn’t break. The songmaster asked again.

  The air crackled within the circle. I saw frenzy in her eyes, and hatred and anger and fear. “Cip—Cip—Cip—” She stopped. Renewed her attack upon the name. I saw her features writhe. Heard the song intensify.

  *Birthname,* came the command.

  Lips peeled back from her teeth. The name was expelled from her mouth, hissing as it left. “Rakshasa,” she said, sounding more snake than human. “Rakshasa—Rakshasa—” Almost as soon as she said it, the crackle died out of the air. Hair settled back against shoulders, hands flopped down at her sides. “Rakshasa,” she said, but it was a final defiance.

  Shedu. Daeva. Rakshasa. I didn’t know the names, but Del clearly did.

  “Bind them,” she said, “bind them. Set the stones around them. Sing them into a captivity no one can ever break.”

  Inwardly, I winced, recalling how I’d freed them.

  “Sing it,” Del said, “sing it—” She broke off, pressed a hand over her mouth, bit into her hand.

  The song altered. I heard the change, subtle as it was, and knew Del had her wish. Especially as each Cantéada forming the circle bent slowly, placed an object against the ground, straightened again. Still holding the candles. Still singing the song.

  The objects were stones. Round, smooth stones, carved in runic patterns like the ones I’d seen on the songmaster’s walls. Wardstones, then, like the ones I’d seen on the hilltop. Like the one I’d kicked aside, breaking open the circle. Setting the loki free.

  Something thumped me in the gut. From inside, not out; I recalled, suddenly, the day Massou and Cipriana had given up their lessons. The day each of them had declared they had no more interest in the sword-dance. No interest in the circle.

  Now they were trapped in one, as they’d been before.

  “Del,” I said, “what about the others? What about Adara and the children? Are they dead?”

  Behind sweat-dried hair, pale brows meshed. “I don’t know,” she answered, troubled. “Their bodies live, but the loki inhabit them. You can’t have one without the other.”

  “Can’t the loki be driven out? They didn’t have bodies before.”

  Slowly, she shook her head. “I just don’t know.”

  I looked at the loki. No, I looked at the woman and her children. And I knew beyond a doubt the Borderers still lived. Somewhere inside where the loki couldn’t reach them lived the spirits that had made a widow and her children continue an impossible journey without the aid of a man.

  “Let’s see,” I suggested, and we went to the songmaster. He wasn’t part of the circle. He wasn’t singing the song. He had shaped it; his task was to give it to others.

  “Songmaster,” I said, “there is something left to be done. Those names you heard before—those are the names of real people. Those are the names of a woman and her children. Names that deserve to survive.”

  His crest trembled, stilled. *Bindsong binds.*

  “Yes,” Del said, “we know. But the loki have named their true names, reclaiming them; they have freed the other names. The power has been dispersed. Can’t the woman and her children reclaim their names?”

  The Cantéada frowned.

  I wet dry lips. “You are the songmaster,” I said. “Surely you can shape a song that will give them back their freedom.”

  His expression was troubled. *Dreamsong powerful.*

  I looked at familiar faces that had loki living behind them. “I think it’s worth the risk.”

  Like me, he looked at them. And then he fluttered delicate fingers, indicating the entrance to his cave. There was command in the gesture that I didn’t dare deny.

  “Bascha,” I said, “let’s go.”

  She was already running.

  Thirty

  Garrod stood before the entrance tunnel to the songmaster’s cave. I saw his expression of baffled curiosity as well as stunned incomprehension. Del brushed by him quickly, hardly noticing him, and ducked into the arched doorway. Garrod moved aside, then swung back to face me.

  “I heard screaming,” he said. “Screaming—and singing—”

  “Not now,” I said curtly, waving his words away. Like Del, I brushed by him, but this time he followed us in.

  The tunnel was incredibly confining. I wanted nothing more than to be free of the weight of stone and out in the open again, in the desert, beneath the Southron sky. But I knew, deep in my gut, now was the time for hiding.

  Free of the tunnel at last, I entered the songmaster’s cave. I was dazzled once again by the brilliance of light glinting off metal and glass, the lush richness of rugs. Painted knots and patterns made the walls into more than stone.

  “Del—” But there was nothing left to say. I saw her face as she sat huddled against the wall, taut-wrapped in a blue-gray blanket. I saw the dirt and blood and tension, but mostly I saw the fear.

  So did Garrod. “What is it?” he asked sharply, but by then it was too late for either of us to answer because the Cantéada sang.

  It staggered me. Physically, it staggered me, sending me reeling against the wall. Left shoulder met it, scraped wool and leather, rang sword hilt against the stone. I hung there a moment, in shock, then slid down upon my knees.

  Not knowing music, nor paying much attention, I’d never understood what harmony was. But now, hearing the full-throated singing of the Cantéada, I understood.

  All the voices blended together, swooped upward, downward, tangled, drew apart; slurred through incredible ranges of notes, high and low and in between, blurring the sounds, but delicately, so that the ear heard the differences but couldn’t really identify any of them.

  Hoolies, what glorious sound!

  And then it altered. No longer was it sound, but much more. It wasn’t even a song. It was the music of memories, dragged angrily out of the soul. Music that slid into the cracks of my life and rediscovered all the nightmares I’d tried to forget.

  Some of them, I had. But now I remembered them all.

  —a boy, maybe six, green-eyed and brown-haired, sprawling facedown with a mouth full of sand. Trying not to cry as the shukar applies the lash in punishment for heresy: I’d said there were no gods, because why else would I be a slave?

  Such questions
are not tolerated any more than heresy is.

  —now twelve, being beaten yet again, this time by a father for looking too long and longingly at his daughter. The girl has teased him into it, but now claims innocence, tears streaming down her face. But behind the tears she smiles.

  Behind the blood, he doesn’t.

  —now a young man at fifteen, larger on the outside than most of the men but made tiny inside by ridicule and humiliation. Hands and feet promise further physical growth; Salset treatment promises continued spiritual shrinkage.

  Until he makes hatred his god.

  —sixteen, now become a man in the eyes and hyorts of the women, who have the right to use him as they might use hide to soften their beds. And it is in their hyorts, in their beds, that he learns he has some value; that he learns he can, however briefly, be more than a slave in a woman’s arms.

  And it is in the arms of one particular woman that he concocts a plan to escape.

  The plan that nearly kills him.

  In the cave, still bound by song, my hand strayed to my face. Fingers sought, found, traced out the curving scars cut so deeply into my cheek that stubble doesn’t grow through them. The sandtiger had marked me well, but he had also given me freedom. Even as I’d stolen his in a slow river of warm, bright blood.

  Mine as well as his.

  —final memory of chula made man in place of slave. No more the nameless thing, but a free man to name himself. A man who has killed the cat who has eaten Salset men and children, ignoring the shukar’s magic. What I’ve done is a powerful thing. I deserve a powerful name.

  And so I pay honorable tribute to the cat who provided the means to escape.

  Sandtigers born of the Punja are not owned by any one. Not by man. By woman. Nor god.

  My fingers still touch the scars, but now there are also tears.

  And the Cantéada sing on.

  Drained, I let the wall hold me up. I had no strength to move or even to blink my eyes. So I let them shut, shut tightly, and tried to master myself.

  The dreamsong was finished. Now all I heard, distantly, was the faint glory of the wardsong keeping the hounds at bay.

  I looked at Del. Still she sat wrapped in the blanket, pulled in tightly against her neck to keep herself safe from harm. But the wool couldn’t have done it; only deafness might. And I doubted even that would suffice in the face of such powerful magic.

  Hoolies, I hate magic. You just can’t trust it.

  I heard movement. Not Del. Garrod. I’d forgotten all about him. And realized, looking at his face, he’d been as trapped as Del and I, maybe more so; he’d expected nothing. Del and I had at least been partly prepared. The horse-speaker had known nothing.

  Like me, like Del, he sat huddled on the floor of the songmaster’s cave. But he moved, a little, wrapping hands around long pale braids. Wrapping, locking, tugging, as if he meant to rip out his hair by the roots.

  Dimly, I realized he might.

  I stirred. Crawled. Reached Garrod, caught a wrist, held it. “No,” I said gently.

  Lips were peeled back from teeth. He stared at me out of white-lashed, ice-water eyes. “What I have done,” he said. “What I have done in this world.”

  “No,” I said again.

  “What I have done in this world!”

  “I know,” I told him evenly. “Do you think I’m less guilty than you? Cleaner of blood than you?” I let go of his wrist and showed him my palm. “No bloodstains,” I said, “but I’ve spilled more than my share in this world.”

  He still clutched the braids, but no longer tugged them taut. “Horse-speaker,” he said. “I am a horse-speaker, which is a true gift, a magic of its own, here in the North, and yet I have made myself no better than the whores, selling themselves to the man who will pay her price. I am the whore, I am the whore, trading in thievery and trickery, turning my back on what they have done if only to make a profit. To profit even from murder.” His eyes were fixed on my face. “I am an unworthy man. I have besmirched my gift.”

  Wearily, I sighed. “Sword-dancer, horse-speaker…do you think it really matters? Neither of us is clean.”

  Garrod stared at me blankly, lost within his own thoughts. And then, without warning, he pushed me aside, went to Del, knelt in front of her.

  “I have never killed a man who did not first intend to kill me, and no man fully innocent. Never a woman or child. I have taken horses from Ajani to sell. I have sold him horses in return. I have taken his stolen money and I have made profit from it, counting myself clever. But I am a horse-speaker. Horse-speaker. Not murderer. Not raider. Not Ajani’s man.”

  His braids dragged on the rugs. He waited for her answer.

  Del gazed back at him. “Does it matter what I think?”

  Garrod bowed his head.

  Her smile was very faint. “You need it as much as I do.” Then, very gently, she touched the crown of his head. I don’t know what more she said because she said it in upland Northern, but Garrod seemed content. He rose and went out of the cave.

  I still felt shaky, too shaky to stand. The dreamsong, as we’d been warned, had been incredibly painful. Not physically, but emotionally; sometimes the worst kind of pain, though men only rarely acknowledge it. Emotions belong to women.

  I sat hunched on the rugs and looked at Del. Then, slowly, I made my way over to her, turning to rest my spine against the wall. To sit next to her in silence, offering and taking nothing. Being together was enough.

  After a moment, she stirred. Pulled the blanket away from her body and offered a corner of it to me. I took it. Shifted closer, so that hips and shoulders touched. Settled the weight across legs and lap. In silence we shared the violence of our songs, knowing no words were necessary.

  Eventually, Del tipped her head to the side and rested it against my shoulder. The weight was negligible, but the trust in the gesture immense. It touched the edges of raw emotions and made them quiver in response.

  Quietly, she said: “I thought it would be Ajani. I thought it would be the deaths.”

  I frowned; so had I. Both had shaped the woman from girl into sword-dancer. “What, then, bascha?”

  “When I killed my an-kaidin.”

  So. There was more to Del’s scars. Deeper than even I’d thought.

  “That song—” I began, but Del’s tone cut me off.

  “It was easy,” she said. “Easy. I thought it would be hard. I thought it should be hard…but it was easy, Tiger.”

  After a moment, I nodded. “The mechanics of death aren’t so difficult when you’ve been properly trained. You were. So I think—”

  Del’s head rolled slightly against my shoulder. “I don’t mean the mechanics of death. I mean the death itself. When I took the an-kaidin’s life. When I took him into my sword.” She paused. “When Boreal became mine, truly mine, as a jivatma must become…a blood-thirsty, blooded jivatma.”

  I could see little of her face. Mostly tangled hair. But her tone said more than enough. “Bascha—”

  Yet again, she cut me off. She sat up, throwing off the blanket from us both, then lurched upward to her knees. A quick glance slanted my way told me to be still; I was. And Del drew the sword.

  In the cave, it rang. It sang, as much as a Cantéada. And I realized, in that moment, that the world was made of music. Lifesong, deathsong, dreamsong. The cycle personified.

  “Sword-singer,” I said.

  Del twitched, holding the sword. Turned her head to look at me over a shoulder.

  “Sword-singer,” I repeated. “The dance requires a song.”

  Delilah began to smile.

  “It’s what you do, isn’t it?” I asked. “Sing. To your sword. Your opponent. Your gods. To pay tribute to the world.” I nodded slowly. “I remember the old man’s words…the old Northerner in Harquhal, who sold you the leathers and furs and wool.” Again, I nodded. “He told you to sing well.”

  Del dragged in a breath. “No dance is danced in silence.”

  �
��And it’s how you key the sword.”

  “Part of it,” she agreed. “There is more to it than that, but yes…the true name, the song—all is required.”

  “And I suppose the song must be special, like the name? A personal song? Something no one else can know?” I frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense, bascha. If someone hears you sing, the song is no longer secret.”

  Del turned, still holding the sword. Still on her knees. And then she tucked heels beneath buttocks and sat, laying the jivatma across her thighs. One hand on the hilt. One hand on the blade. With infinite gentleness.

  “You make a new one,” she said, “each time. You touch yourself—what you are, what you were, what you can be—and shape it into a song. It’s as much you as your hand on the hilt, but drawn from a deeper level. From the you no one else may know.” Behind dirt and blood and tangled hair, the flawless face was somber. “You sing yourself into the sword, so the sword becomes part of you.”

  “Then why bother to blood it?” I asked. “Why all this nonsense about blooding it by taking the life of an honored enemy?” I straightened a little, frowning. “What happens if the enemy isn’t honored? What happens if you have to kill before you’re ready?”

  Del’s tone was steady. “A sword requires blood. First blood is part of the ritual; it is a rite of passage.” Gently, she fingered the blade. “A boy becomes a man. A girl becomes a woman. A sword becomes a jivatma. Until then, it isn’t whole.”

  “You didn’t kill an enemy. You killed a friend instead.”

  She didn’t so much as twitch. But then I saw blood on her fingers. Blood running into the runes.

  “In the name of my need, I killed,” she said. “I killed my honored an-kaidin, and took him into my sword.”

  “And are you content with it?”

  Steadfastly, she stared at the blade. “It was what I had to do.”

  “And are you content with it?”

  Her hand tightened on the hilt. Tendons stood up in the flesh. “There are times I hate this sword. There are times I hate myself.”

  “Do you regret what you have done?”