Sword-Singer

by Jennifer Roberson

The Northerner laughed. “You are a Southroner. A sword-for-hire. You sell your soul to the highest bidder. In this case, the bidder is me…and my coin is the an-ishtoya.”

  I took a deep breath to calm myself, found it difficult. “So much offered for honor,” I said. “And yet I think you’ve thoroughly compromised your own.”

  It struck home. “What of you?” Telek demanded angrily. “What does it say of your honor when you accept the terms?”

  And I would. I wanted out of here that badly. Del wouldn’t thank me, I knew, but I hoped one day she’d understand. And I’d tell her the truth, too: I believed it would be better for Kalle. As I believed it would be better for Del, no matter what she felt.

  Besides, she’d used me for coin before; two can play her game. And I’m a fast learner.

  “When and where?” I asked curtly.

  Telek’s smile was delicately contemptuous. “First, there is the matter of a sword.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Are you? Then listen well: I have a jivatma.”

  In my head, a tocsin rang. “I don’t want a jivatma,” I said pointedly. “I want a sword, just a sword—a hilt with a blade attached. Can that be arranged? Can you just loan me a sword?”

  Telek’s smile was slow. “Go and see Kem.”

  A ripple ran down my back. “I don’t want a jivatma.”

  Telek nodded, still smiling. “Go and see Kem. Tell him what you need.”

  Forty-one

  He looked me dead in the eye, saying nothing. He read me, I knew, with a look—and then peeled back all the layers and looked deeper, deeper, until I shifted uncomfortably.

  He didn’t smile. “Let me see your hands.”

  Sighing, I held them out, palm down, showing him the sunburned backs all pitted with ore flecks and other assorted scars, courtesy of slavery.

  He caught them before I could protest. His own were huge, but his grasp was gentle. He did nothing other than hold them. Oddly, it was as if he weighed me as a man by their feel.

  “Over,” he said, loosening his grip.

  Accordingly, I turned them. The palms were tough, callused, more like hide than hands. Once again he held them, studying them, and then once again looked me dead in the eyes.

  “You should believe,” he told me flatly. “You of all people. Haven’t you felt the essence ever since you crossed the border? Haven’t you smelled it?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “The essence,” he repeated. “Magic has a smell, a taste, a feel all its own. Some of us feel it more than others. Some of us are more deeply troubled.” Slowly, he nodded. “I think you are one of them.”

  I started to protest, to ask him what in hoolies he was talking about, but he ignored me altogether, releasing my hands and moving on to another subject.

  “I can give you a sword,” he said, “‘just’ a sword, as you want…but it won’t stay that way. None of them do. But this one, matched to you…” he shrugged. “You will have to learn quickly, if you are to control it.”

  I looked at him through a gauze of acrid coalsmoke. “Telek said—”

  He didn’t let me finish. “Telek told you to come to me for a jivatma.” He nodded. “That’s what I do: make jivatmas. At least, I do the Shaping—you will do the Making, the Binding, the Naming…all the rituals.”

  It all sounded very confusing. “All I need is a sword. A plain sword, nothing more; don’t you make any of those?”

  He shook his head. “I make new blades, unnamed blades, but full of raw potential. Once blooded, they are jivatmas.”

  My disbelief was rude, but I couldn’t hide it. “Are you telling me every sword in Staal-Ysta is a blooding-blade?”

  Patiently, he explained. “No sword is ‘normal’ here, merely potential as yet untapped. My purpose is to find and shape the potential, matching it to the warrior. All come to me for that purpose; it’s what I was born to do.”

  I sighed, too tired to argue. “I need a sword. Just give me a sword. I’ll take what I can get.”

  He dipped his head. “Then I will make you a sword.”

  Kem was, of course, a Northerner, and—like all of them—tall, broad, well-built, very blond and very strong. But he was not ishtoya or an-ishtoya, kaidin or an-kaidin. He was the swordsmith, the man who probably received greater respect than anyone in Staal-Ysta.

  And now here I was in his smithy looking at lumps of iron.

  His Borderer was curt. “Don’t look: touch.”

  Twelve lumpy bundles, now bare of wrappings. I saw grayish, pitted metal, like bread dough only half-kneaded. Kem had lined them up in double rows of six, waiting for me to touch them.

  The smithy was small in comparison to the lodges, though mostly dwarfed by the equipment stuffed into it. Anvils, bellows, tongs, tubs and hammers and grinding stones, and countless other things, all jammed in corners and against the walls as well as hanging from rafters.

  Kem waited. His face was broad and pitted as the iron, seamed and pocked with scars. His blond hair was dulling to gray, pulled back in a single braid. He wore only a thin wool shirt, trews, boots and leather bracers.

  Kern smiled, showing crooked teeth. Idly he crossed his big arms and waited, patience personified.

  I knelt. Touched the lumps, one by one, humoring the man. Until I reached the eighth.

  Kem saw my face. Smiled. Nodded. Then lifted the lump from the hardpacked floor. “So,” he said lightly, “now I am neither a fool nor a liar, but a man who knows his trade.” He set the eighth lump onto his largest anvil and left it there, then one by one wrapped up the other eleven and put them away in a trunk.

  “It was warm,” I said in surprise. “The others all were cold.”

  “Warm, cold; it makes no difference. The iron knew your touch.”

  “But I’m a Southroner!”

  Kem shrugged big shoulders. “Do you think it cares where you were born? You touched it, and it knows. Just like the magic knows your name, your presence—your own essence.”

  “It’s only a lump of iron.”

  “Much more than that, Southron…it’s sky-born, from the gods, and full of wild magic.” Kem’s tone was stolid. “Once we’re done, it’ll be far more than a lump, and the magic will be harnessed. It’ll be a blooding-blade.”

  I watched him kneel at the edge of a shallow pit. It was filled with glowing red coals dusted by fine gray ash. Carefully he raked them, teasing them hotter yet.

  Suspiciously, I asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  “Hold that lump of iron. Cherish it like a woman. Caress it with your breath.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, Southron. Do it.”

  I had some knowledge of how swords were made, and this wasn’t part of it. But Kem didn’t seem the type to tease for the hoolies of it, having no sense of humor, and so I picked up the lump of iron and cradled it against my abdomen.

  “Is that how you fondle a woman?” Kem still knelt by his pit.

  “You don’t really—”

  “I do. Breathe on it, like I said. Put your mark on it, like a cat.”

  I looked at him suspiciously, searching for a jibe at my expense, but saw nothing in his blue eyes except utter peace and endless patience. Scowling, I stared down at the pitted, knurled lump of metal in my hands. Then lifted it to my mouth and fogged it with my breath, feeling more than a little ridiculous. It was warm in my hands, much more than cold metal, with a silky texture that belied its pitted appearance. I found myself searching for flaws, as if I really could find them before the blade was made.

  In disgust, I made myself stop. But my skin was somehow attuned to it, wanting to touch it more. Uneasily, I wondered if it had anything to do with Kem’s mutterings about essence.

  “Bring it here,” he said. I carried it over, then put it into the coals as he indicated. He raked it covered, then sat back. “What do you want in a sword?”

  I shrugged, thinking it obvious. “True temper. Proper balance. A kee
n, sharp edge that holds.”

  Kem’s eyes didn’t waver. “What do you want in a sword?”

  His tone stopped me cold. He wasn’t being facetious. He really wanted to know. I thought it was some sort of test, maybe, and I wanted badly to pass.

  “All the things a good sword should have,” I told him. “I want a sword I can trust, of course—one with a strong but flexible blade, cutting cleanly every time without snagging or turning on bone. One that knows its master, unceasingly seeking to please.” I shrugged, not knowing how to explain it. “One that is mine in my hand, unlike any other, with a personality much like my own.” I smiled wryly. “I’ve handled many swords; they all have certain tricks. I want one that understands mine.”

  After a moment, Kem smiled. “Maybe you are a sword-dancer.”

  “Just give me a sword,” I suggested cheerfully. “A sword, a circle, an opponent…that is my world, smith. And now you’re a part of it.”

  Kem nodded thoughtfully. “This may work after all.”

  When the lump was hot enough, he lifted it from the pit with tongs and placed it on the anvil. Then he took up his hammer. “You may hold it,” he said. “It’s your job as much as mine.”

  I held the tongs while Kem worked the iron. We fell into a ringing rhythm: hold, hammer, reheat; hold, hammer again. It was important, Kem explained, that the temperature remain fairly constant, not too hot and not too cool, or the soul of the metal would be ruined.

  The noise was deafening. And then, slowly, I became accustomed, beginning to like the sound, which had a song all its own. I thought of the Cantéada. Heard the echo of their music. Knew it was in Kem. Knew it was in the sword.

  Maybe, even, in me?

  I thought abruptly of Del’s singing, to key her blooding-blade.

  A shiver ran down my spine. “Can you leave out the magic?” I asked.

  Kem nearly missed his stroke. The rhythm returned again, but I saw the furrow in his brow as he stared at me over the hot lump of iron, sweat-faced, flushed red from reflected heat. “When we are done with this, it will be much more than a sword. And you will be much more than a sword-dancer.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck rose. “A kaidin, yes, I know…but only if I quench it.”

  Kem waved me away and returned the lump to the coals. “You are a fool,” he said. “And I am a fool as well, for wasting my time on a man who doesn’t appreciate what Northern sword-magic is…or what he himself can be.”

  It was the end of whatever rapport we might have built. Over the next two days I watched Kem hammer the lump into a bar, then begin to fold it. He took thin iron rods and twisted them around the bar, then hammered them all together, then twisted and hammered again. I lost track of how many times, though I’m sure Kem knew. He was a man who knew his art.

  The hammering continued. But now the lump was more than a bar, and the bar was more than itself. There was a shape in the iron, though it lacked its final form.

  “Do you see it?” Kem asked.

  “Point, tang—yes.”

  He grunted, still hammering. The rods were no longer visible, having been worked into the bar. The blade was a solid thing, showing no signs of its lumpy, gnarled origins or its slender, twisted cousins.

  He let it cool, stopped hammering. Then picked it up and gave it to me. “Take it to bed with you. Every night until it’s done.”

  “Do what?”

  “To bed,” he said, “each night. It’s part of the Binding ritual; the sword must know its master.”

  The unfinished blade was warm in my hands. “Am I supposed to couple with it, too?”

  Kem didn’t crack a smile. “Just bring it back each morning.”

  I took it to bed with me. I brought it back each morning. The ritual was carried out, even though I felt like a fool.

  The balance was magnificent, even without hilt, grip, pommel. Unwhetted, it still lacked edges, but the promise was inherent. The thing was alive in my hands, smooth and warm and alive. I stared at the blade in amazement.

  “So,” Kem remarked, “the skeptic begins to believe.”

  I shivered, wanting to wipe hands on woolen trews. But not daring to before him. “In your skill, absolutely. In other things, I’m not sure.”

  He took the blade away. “It’s time we made it steel.”

  Once again he heated the blade, this time until it blazed white-hot. Kem covered it with coals, left it alone, manned the bellows when I didn’t. “Almost a sword,” he crooned. “Not so long, now.”

  It was night, and very late. I heard the whir and wheeze of the bellows, Kem’s droning uplander mumble. Dragged myself out of sleep and stood up from my place by the door. “How long now?”

  “Not so long, now.” He took it out of the coals, set it on the anvil, began to hammer the edges, packing them to hold. And then he put it back in the coals and covered it one last time. “When it comes out, it’ll be done. And then I will give the blade to you, and you will take it to the lake, and you will quench it in the water.”

  Flesh prickled. “How quenched, Kem?”

  He laughed silently, showing crooked teeth. “Not that kind, Southroner. This is the gentle quenching. A baby’s first bath. Not the true quenching, or blooding yet; there will be time for that later.”

  I was immensely relieved, but too embarrassed to show it. “Easy enough just to dip it in the lake.”

  Kem’s gaze didn’t so much as waver. “And while it is being quenched, you will ask the Blessing.”

  That I knew something of; even my Southron sword, Singlestroke, had been blessed during its making. But it hadn’t been asked by me. The shodo had simply done it.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The Blessing,” he repeated. “You will ask it of the gods while the blade is in the water. It must be quickly done; if you leave it in too long, the blade will cool too much.”

  I sighed, humoring him. “What happens if the gods don’t bless it, Kem?”

  He shrugged. “Then the steel will be flawed. The sword will fail you…probably when you most need it.”

  I scratched through beard to chin. “I don’t believe in gods.”

  The Northerner just nodded. “Tell them that,” he suggested. “I’m sure it will amuse them.”

  In the end, I took the hot blade to the lake, dipped it into the water, squinted against the steam as I held onto the tongs. Black water roiled and bubbled, sucking the heat away.

  Ask the Blessing, Kem had said.

  Well, I owed the man that much.

  “Gods,” I said aloud, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to ask, other than this Blessing. So why not give it to me, if only to please Kem?”

  It was, I thought, enough; I lifted the blade from the water. The steel glowed wine-red. It smoked in cold air.

  I took it back to Kem.

  He nodded, pleased. “Now,” he said, “into that trough; the water isn’t so cold.”

  I saw the trough he indicated, a long iron pan filled with water. I set the bar into it, let it rest, handed the tongs to Kem. “What now?”

  “We wait,” he said succinctly.

  We waited. And then at last Kem stirred and used the tongs, plucking the blade from the trough. “Done,” he said, “for now. All that’s left is the Shaping…the Whetting…First Keying when you blood it.”

  “First Keying,” I echoed. “What is that?”

  He looked down at the blade. “You quench your jivatma in flesh and blood…that is the true quenching, the first blooding, when the magic is first roused, first acknowledged and harnessed. But it’s in the sword, not in you—you need a way to tap it…a way to focus yourself. That’s what the singing is for—to focus you as you tap the power. You key the sword to tap it, or else the magic goes wild.”

  I wanted to scratch the back of my prickling neck. “But if you don’t sing, it’s just a sword…right?”

  He sighed. “They have taught you nothing.”

  “I’m a Southr
oner, remember?”

  Kem picked his teeth. “You can’t key it until it’s truly blooded in living flesh. Quenching rouses the power, keying it controls it. But if you want only a whisper of power, not much more than simple sword skill, you don’t bother to sing.”

  I thought back to all the times Del and I had sparred in practice circles. Never had she keyed the sword, not even a little; I couldn’t remember her singing. Only against the enemy. Only when she needed the power.

  I remembered the question he hadn’t answered. “What is First Keying?”

  Kem bit off a nail. “You can’t key until it’s blooded; it doesn’t know you till then, not as it needs to know you. So the magic is wild. But the first song you sing thereafter becomes the focus for First Keying; after that the power is yours.”

  My interest rose considerably. “So, if I don’t sing—even if I kill someone in the circle—the sword never becomes a true jivatma?”

  Kem spat out the nail. His tone was very gentle, as if he spoke to a child. “You may pink someone in the circle, and the sword will remain unblooded. You may even cut him severely; the sword will remain unblooded. But if you kill anyone, anyone at all, you have quenched the sword, and the sword becomes a jivatma, with the dead man’s skills and attributes; a piece of the dead man’s soul.” He shrugged. “If later you sing to key it, that soul is yours to tap…that and the Northern magic.”

  It seemed clear enough. So long as I could get South and sell it without having to kill anyone, I could keep the sword a sword. And even if something came up and I did have to kill someone, I’d never, ever sing while doing it. The jivatma would never be keyed.

  I peered suspiciously at the blade. It was steel, no longer iron. With a bright, shining skin like nothing else in the world. The edges were blunt as yet, but visible, waiting for the rest.

  “Take it,” Kem said.

  Warily, I took it. No tongs, just the blade. It was cool from the water, but I felt the deeper warmth, like blood running through veins. I swear, there was life in this sword—

  Sweating, I rang it down on the anvil. “I don’t want this thing.”

  Kem’s face didn’t change. “You have made it yours.”