But you don’t cry. To cry means using moisture, and by now you have none left.
Del stumbled. Nearly fell. Stopped.
“Bascha—?”
Her hair was white against the livid redness of her skin, which had formed blisters and spilled now-caking fluids down her flesh. I saw how she trembled from pain and exhaustion.
“Tiger …” It was little more than a breath of sound. “This is not a good way to die.”
I looked down and saw how her toes curled up away from the sand; how she shifted her weight continually: foot to foot, hip to hip, until she fell into a rhythm she could focus on. I’d seen it before. Some people, with the sun beating on their brains, lose touch with their physical coordination. Del didn’t look that far gone yet, but close. Too close.
I reached out and pushed some hair from her face. “Is there a good way to die?”
She nodded a little. “In battle, honorably. Bearing a child who will be better, stronger. When the heart and soul and body weaken after years and years of life. In the circle, following all the rituals. Those are good ways. But this—” an outthrust hand, trembling, encompassed all we could see of the Punja, “—this is like burning a perfectly good candle until it’s all gone, leaving you with nothing …” Her breath rasped in her throat. “Waste—waste—”
I stroked her hair. “Bascha, don’t rail at it so. It sucks the heart out of you.”
She looked at me angrily. “I don’t want to die like this!”
“Del—we’re a long way from dying.”
Unfortunately, we were.
In the desert, without water, your lips crack until they bleed, and you lick at the moisture with a swollen tongue. But blood tastes like salt and it makes you thirsty, and you curse the sun and the heat and the sand and the helplessness and the absolute futility of it all.
But you go on, you go on.
When you see the oasis, you don’t believe in it, knowing it’s a mirage; wondering if it’s real. This is the edge of torture, honed sword-sharp; it slides in painlessly and then, as you stare in surprise, it opens you from guts to gullet, and what’s left of your spirit spills out into the sand.
The oasis will be the saving of you; it will be the killing of you.
It moves as you move, shifting on the burning sands: first near, then far, then but inches from your feet.
Finally you cry out, and then you fall onto your blistered, weeping knees when the vision fades and leaves you with a mouthful of hot sand that clogs your throat and makes you sick.
But being sick is an impossibility because there is nothing in your belly to bring up.
Nothing.
Not even bile.
When I went down, I pulled Del down with me. But she got up again almost immediately and staggered onward. I watched her go. On hands and knees, half-delirious, I watched the Northern girl go on stumbling through the sand.
Southward. Unerringly.
“Del,” I croaked. “Bascha—wait—”
But she didn’t. And that got me up on my feet again.
“Del!”
She didn’t even glance around. I felt a flicker of disbelief that she could leave me behind so easily (a man likes to think he inspires at least a little loyalty), but it was replaced with the hollowness of fear. It punched me full in the gut and drove me into a staggering run.
“Del!”
Still she stumbled on: bobbing, weaving, nearly falling, but continually moving southward. Toward Julah. Toward whatever news she could learn of her brother; poor, pretty boy (if he was anything like his sister), whose probable fate was the ugliest of all.
Better to die, I thought grimly.
But I wasn’t about to tell his sister that.
I caught up to her easily enough; for all I was near delirium from the heat and the sand and the sun, I wasn’t as bad off as Del. Not nearly as bad off.
And when she swung around to face me, I knew she was worse than that.
Del’s face was swollen, crusty, seared so badly she could hardly see. Her eyelids were giant, puckered blisters, stretching the skin out of shape until they broke, sealed over, broke again, until she wept without shedding tears.
But it was what lay behind the lids that chilled my soul: the first touch of coldness I’d felt since daybreak. Her eyes, so blue, so bright an alien hue, were filled with emptiness.
“Hoolies,” I croaked in despair, “you’re sandsick.”
She stared at me blindly. Maybe she didn’t even recognize me. But as I put out a hand to touch her arm, meaning to urge her down onto the sand before she ran amok from all the pain and delirium, she tried to jerk her sword from its sheath.
There was no grace in her movement, no flexibility. Just an awkward, ragged motion as she tried to drag the sword from her harness.
I caught her left arm. “Bascha—no.”
The other arm continued to move. I saw the futile cross-reaching of her right hand, clawing at the silver hilt that stood up behind her left shoulder. As always, the sunlight flashing off the blade nearly blinded me. But squinting hurt too much.
I caught her other arm. I felt her instant withdrawal: my touch, lighter than normal, was still too much for her blistered flesh. Her indrawn breath of pain hissed in the stillness of the desert.
“Del—”
“Sword.” There was no shape to the word; no recognizable tone with inflections. Just—noise. A ragged, whispered word.
A plea. “Bascha—”
“Sword.” Her eyes were out of focus, like the stare of a sandtiger cub. It was eerie, and for a moment I nearly let her go.
I sighed. “No, bascha, no sword. Sandsickness makes you crazy—no telling what you’d do. Probably cut out my heart.” I tried to smile, but the motion cracked my lips and made them bleed again.
“Sword.” Pitifully.
“No,” I told her gently, and she began to cry.
“Kaidin said—an-kaidin said—” She could hardly speak in her incoherence. “An-kaidin said—sword—”
I caught the difference at once. An-kaidin, not kaidin. “No sword.” Gently, I overrode her. “Tiger says no.”
Tears welled up into her eyes again; the right one spilled its weight of moisture in a single drop that rolled down her cheek. But the tear didn’t reach her chin. Her skin sucked it up immediately.
“Bascha,” I said unevenly, “you have to listen to me. You’re sandsick, and you’ll have to do as I tell you.”
“Sword,” she said, and jerked both wrists from my grasp.
Seared flesh broke, leaking fluid mixed with blood. But her hands were on the hilt of her sword, closing, jerking it up and then over when she forced it to extension; a travesty of her normally supple unsheathing. But however awkward the motion, the fact remained that Del had a sword in her hands.
I’m no fool: I fell back a step. Men say I’m fearless in the circle; let them. It helps the reputation. But I wasn’t in the circle now; what I faced was a woman full of sandsickness with a glittering sword in her hands.
Her grip shifted. The blade pointed downward, parallel to her body. Both hands gripped the hilt by the curving crosspiece; she lifted the sword slowly toward her face, and then she pressed the pommel against her cracked, blistered lips.
“Sulhaya,” she whispered, and shut her eyes.
I watched her warily. I wanted to take the weapon from her, but she was too unpredictable. What skill she claimed made her doubly dangerous: no man risks himself against a blade and a sandsick woman. Not even against a woman without any sword-skill at all.
She whispered something to the sword. I frowned, disturbed by the note in her voice; I’ve seen sandsickness before, and I know how it can strip a man—or woman—of a mind, leaving nothing behind but madness. Generally it’s fatal, because about the only time people get it is when they’re stuck in the desert without water or shelter or any hope of rescue.
Just like Del and me.
“Bascha—” I began again.
&nbs
p; She turned away from me. Awkwardly, she lowered herself and the sword to the ground, kneeling: angry red flesh against sepia sand. The suede tunic she wore was taut against her body—a sheath around a blade—and yet for once I didn’t consider what the supple body could do for my own. I just watched her, feeling despair rise up within me, as the girl gave in to the imbecility of the sandsick.
Hoolies, what a waste.
She knelt, but did not crouch. Her spine was straight. Carefully she put the tip of the blade into the sand and pushed downward on the hilt, trying to seat it firmly. But she was too weak, the sand too firm; it was me, finally, who leaned on the pommel and pushed it into the ground so that the sword stood upright like a standard.
But not before I felt the pain that seared my palm. It ran up my arm to the shoulder, thrumming so hard I shook with it, and it was only as I wrenched my hand away that the eerie sensation abated.
“Del,” I said sharply, shaking my tingling hand. “Bascha—what in hoolies is this sword—?”
I felt a bit of a fool for asking—a sword, after all, is a sword—but the remembered explosion of pain in my hand confirmed that, indeed, the Northern blade was more than merely a piece of steel coaxed into the shape of a lethal weapon. My palm itched; I looked at it suspiciously, rubbed it violently with my other hand, and glared at Del.
Simple tricks and nonsense, designed for gullible people. But I’m not a gullible man.
And, though I’m quick enough to scoff, I know the smell of real magic when it clogs the air I breathe.
Like now.
Del didn’t answer me; I wasn’t certain she had heard me. Her eyes were fixed on the hilt that was level with her face. She said something—a sentence in her Northern tongue—repeating it four times. She waited: nothing (or so it appeared to me); she repeated the sentence again.
“Del, this is ridiculous. Knock it off.” I reached out to yank the sword from the sand. Didn’t. My hand stopped several inches away as I recalled the sickening feeling of numb weakness, the irritating, painful itch that had run through my veins like ice.
Some sort of spell?
Possibly. But that would make Del a witch … or something like.
Still, I couldn’t touch the hilt. I couldn’t make myself, though nothing was preventing me. Nothing, that is, except an extreme unwillingness to experience the weirding again.
Del bent, curling her body downward toward the sand. Her hands pressed flat, fingers spread. Her brow touched the sand three times. A glance at the sword. Then the homage was repeated.
The blonde braid, now bleached white, slapped against the sand. I saw the grains adhering to the blistered flesh across her forehead; to her nose, her lips. And as she bent again in obscene obeisance to the sword, I saw how her raspy exhalations stirred the dust beneath her face.
Puff … puff … puff—
Dust drifted: ivory-umber.
I said nothing. She was beyond any words from a human mouth.
She knelt in complete obeisance. And then, awkwardly, she stretched out until she lay prostrate on the sand. She wrapped her hands around the shining blade just above the level of the sand. I saw how the blistered knuckles, burned red, turned white from the tension in her hands.
“Kaidin, kaidin, I beg you—” Half the words were in Southron, the other half in Northern. So the sense of things was lost. “An-kaidin, an-kaidin, I beg you—”
Her eyes were closed. Her lashes were gummed by leakage and sand. It crusted on her face, where the swelling rawness obliterated the lovely lines of her flawless bones. And I felt such a rage build up in me that I bent down, pulled her hands from the sword, and—steeling myself for the weirding—jerked the blade from its makeshift altar in the sand.
Pain ran up my arm and into my chest. Ice-cold. Sharp as a dagger though nothing cut into my skin. It was just cold, so cold, as if it would freeze my blood, my bones, my flesh.
I shuddered. My hand seemed fixed upon the hilt, even as I tried to let go the sword. Light filled up my head, coruscating light, all purple and blue and red. Blinded, I stared into the desert and saw nothing but the light.
I shouted something. Don’t ask me what. But as I shouted it, I hurled away the sword with all the strength I had left. Which, at the moment, wasn’t very much.
My hand, thank valhail, came unstuck. Several layers of flesh were peeled away in ridges, still adhering to the hilt. In my hand remained the pattern of the hilt, the twisted, alien shapes of Northern beasts and runes. Beads of moisture sprang up into the patterns seared into my hand. Dried. Cracked. Sloughed away with an additional layer of skin.
I was shaking. I gripped my right wrist with my other hand, trying to hold it still; trying to dull the ringing pain. Hot metal burned. Seared. I’d seen cautery before. But this—this was something different. Something more. This was sorcery. Ice-cold sorcery. The North personified.
“Hoolies, woman!” I shouted. “What kind of sorceress are you?”
Still prostrate, Del stared up at me. I saw the complete incomprehension in her eyes. Utter bewilderment. Her mouth hung open. Elbows shifted, rising; she pressed herself up from the ground, though she very nearly didn’t make it. She knelt on one knee, bracing herself with a shaking hand thrust against the sand.
“The magic,” she said in despair, “the magic wouldn’t come …”
“Magic!” I was disgusted. “What power does that—that thing hold? Can it make the day cooler? Can it soothe our blistered flesh? Can it turn the sun’s face from us and give us shade instead?”
“All those, yes. In the North.” She swallowed and I saw the blistered flesh of her throat crack. “Kaidin said—”
“I don’t care what your sword-master told you!” I shouted. “It’s just a sword. A weapon. A blade. Meant for cutting through flesh and bone, shearing arms and legs and necks—to take the life from a man.” And yet even as I denied the power I’d felt, I looked at my hand again. Branded with the devices of the North. Ice-marked by the magic.
Del wavered. I saw the trembling in her arm. For a moment there was sense in her eyes. And bitterness. “How could a Southroner know what power lies in a sword—”
I reached up and caught Singlestroke’s heated hilt with one broad hand, ignoring the twinge in my newly-scarred hand, and jerked him free of his sheath. I presented the tip of the blade to her just inches from her nose. “The power in a sword lies in the skill of the man who wields it,” I said distinctly. “There isn’t anything else.”
“Oh yes,” she said, “there is. But I doubt you will ever know it.”
And then her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she crumpled bonelessly to the sand.
“Hoolies,” I said in disgust, and put Singlestroke away.
I heard the horses first. Snorts. The squeak of leather. Clattering bits and shanks. The creak of wood, and voices.
Voices!
Del and I lay sprawled on the sand like cloth dolls, too weak to go on; too strong to die. We lay an arm’s-length apart. When I turned my head and looked at her, I saw the curve of hip and the spill of her sun-bleached braid; long, firm, blistered legs, with white striations across the knees.
And sand, crusted on her sun-crisped flesh.
When I could manage it, I turned my head the other way. I saw a dark-faced woman wrapped in a blue burnous, and I knew her.
“Sula.” It came out on a croak that died on my swollen tongue.
I saw her black eyes widen. Her wide face expressed utter astonishment. And then it shifted to urgency.
She turned, shouting, and a moment later other wagons pulled up. People gathered around us. I heard the surprised exclamations as I was identified. My name was passed around from man to woman, woman to woman, woman to children.
My old name, which isn’t a name at all.
Nomads like the Salset understand the desert. With very few words of instruction necessary, they wrapped Del and me in cool, wet cloths and brought the wagons closer to throw some shade upon us. Camp
was established immediately. The Salset are good at that: a hyort here, one there, until there’s a huddled bunch of them packed onto a tiny stretch of desert. And they call it home.
I couldn’t speak, though I wanted to tell Sula and the other women to tend Del first. My tongue was too thick and heavy in my dehydrated mouth, and when I breathed it took great effort. Finally, after Sula kept shushing me, I gave in to silence and let them do the work.
When the cloths dried on my scorched body, Sula dampened them again from the wooden barrels of water lashed to the wagons. After the fifth application of wet linen, she called for alla paste and I sank into blissful numbness as the cool salve soaked crusted tissue and leached away the pain. And Sula, thank the gods of valhail, lifted my head and gave me my first drink of water in two days.
My last coherent thought was for Del, recalling how oddly she had behaved. As if the sword was more than merely a sword. As if she expected the sword to get us out of our predicament.
Singlestroke, much as I respect and admire him, is only a sword. Not a god. Not a man. Not a magical being.
A sword.
But also my deliverance.
* * *
I’ve always healed fast, but even so it took me days before I felt like a living being again. My skin was peeling off in clumps and layers that left me feeling like a cumfa in molt, but regular applications of alla paste kept the new skin underneath moist and soft until it could toughen normally. The Sandtiger, who had always been dark as a copper piece, emerged looking like some unfortunate woman had birthed a full-grown baby; I was splotchy and pink all over, except where the dhoti had covered me.
And since that’s a part of my body I’m rather attached to, in more ways than one, I was significantly grateful.
Del, however, was very ill. She lay in Sula’s little orange-ocher hyort, lost in sandsickness delirium and the black world of the infusion Sula poured into her several times daily. Even the alla paste couldn’t entirely assuage her pain.
I stood just inside the door-slit, staring down at the shape beneath the saffron-dyed cotton coverlet. All I could see was her face. Still burned. Still blistered. Still peeling.
Sword-Dancer Page 11