“She won’t talk to you.” Sula spoke with the Salset intonations I hadn’t heard in so long. “She has no mind. The mindless don’t talk.”
“It’ll pass.” More wishful thinking than anything else; sandsickness is a serious thing.
“Maybe.” Sula’s wide face didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt.
“But she’s getting good care now,” I reminded her. “She has water again and that stuff you’re giving her. The sandsickness will go away.”
Sula shrugged. “She won’t talk to you.”
I looked again at Del. She moaned and cried in her drugged stupor, whispering in her Northern tongue. I heard kaidin, over and over, but if she spoke of the sword I didn’t know the word.
Resigned, I shook my head. “Foolish little bascha. You should have stayed in the North.”
I wanted to sleep in the hyort at nights, but Sula—cognizant of Salset proprieties—wouldn’t allow it. I was an unmarried male and she an unmarried woman, who tended yet another. And so I slept outside curled up in a rug that smelled of goat and dog, evoking memories of many years before. Memories I preferred to forget, but couldn’t.
Each day I exercised, trying to work the stiffness out of my muscles and stretch the tender new skin until it fit me better. I practiced with Singlestroke for hours, amused when all the children gathered to watch with their cunning black eyes stretched wide in astonishment, and yet I sensed a restlessness within me. Apprehension. I couldn’t shake it, either. And when I walked among the hyorts and wagons, recalling my childhood with the tribe, I felt oppressed and sick and scared; scared: the Sandtiger. I wanted to get away—needed to get away—but I couldn’t go. Not without Del.
I mean, I’d made a deal with her to do a job. I had to finish it or tarnish my reputation.
The shukar came and looked at me once, studied the sandtiger scars on my face and the claws hanging around my neck and went away again, saying nothing. But not before I saw the bitterness in his eyes: his recollection of the past, the present, the future. Crafty old man. Cunning old shukar. He went away from me, but not before I saw the ugly set to his mouth.
Gods, the man hated me.
But no more than I hated him.
The men refused to speak to me, which wasn’t particularly surprising. They remembered, too. The matrons ignored me utterly: Salset custom doesn’t allow a married woman to speak to or indicate interest in another man except for traditional courtesy; I especially was not deserving of that. At least, not from those women old enough to remember me from before.
But the young women didn’t remember me at all, and the young unmarried women—having more freedom than their sisters—watched me with avid, shining eyes. And yet instead of making me feel tall and tough and strong, it made me feel small. And weak. And wary.
The Salset are an attractive race. They aren’t as dark as the Hanjii with their spiraled, dyed flesh; the Salset are golden-brown and smooth-skinned. Hair and eyes are uniformly black. They are, for the most part, short and slender, though many of the older women—like Sula—run to fat. They are supple and quick, like Del, but they aren’t a warrior race.
They are nomads. They wander. They live for each day, from dawn to dusk, and they blow with the sand; coming, going, staying. They have a tremendous sense of freedom, strong traditions, and a great love for one another that makes an outsider feel ashamed he cannot share it.
They made me feel ashamed, as they intended to, because I am not a Salset, though once I lived with them. I couldn’t be a Salset then, or now. Not with my height, my bulk, my color; my green eyes and brown hair; my strength and natural sword-skill.
I was alien to them; then, now, forever. And for the first sixteen years of my life they had tried to beat it out of me.
Eleven
Sandsickness is a frightening thing. It makes a sieve of your mind: spilling some memories, retaining others; those it loses are replaced by dreams and visions that are so real, so very real, you have to believe them, until someone tells you no.
I told Del no, but she wasn’t listening. She lay on a rug in Sula’s orange-ocher hyort and slowly healed physically, but I wasn’t certain about what she was inside her head. Her skin was lathered generously in alla paste. Sula had wrapped her in damp linen to keep the peeling skin moist. She resembled not so much a living person as a dead one, sloughing a ruined shell. But at least she breathed.
And dreamed.
I settled into a daily routine: food, general exercises, food, sword practice, companionship to Del. I sat by her for hours each afternoon, talking as if she could hear me, trying to let her know someone was with her. I don’t know if she heard me. She whispered and moaned and talked, but it was only rarely that I understood her. I don’t speak her Northern tongue.
Sometimes, neither of us spoke at all. We shared long private silences—Sula had tribal chores—while Del slept and I stared at the woven walls of the hyort, trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to reconcile my presence once again among the Salset. It had been more than sixteen years since I’d left the tribe, thinking (hoping) never to see the Salset again. But not much had changed in the intervening years. Sula was a middle-aged widow instead of the young woman I recalled. The children all had grown to adulthood, reflecting the traditional biases and beliefs of the tribe, rearing their children as they themselves had been reared. The old shukar also was the same, oddly unchanged in his strange, ageless fashion: fierce, austere, bitter—tight as a wineskin filled to bursting with an impotent anger whenever he looked at me.
But I recalled the years it hadn’t been impotent.
Sitting in Sula’s hyort, I thought about how time changed all things except the Punja and everything which lived in it. How time had changed me.
Time, and a relentless desperation.
Sula entered silently. I paid no attention to her, accustomed to her quiet comings and goings, but this time she dropped a leather-wrapped bundle into my lap and I glanced at her in surprise.
She was swaddled in a rich, cobalt-blue; the blue of a starless Punja night. Black hair, greased back from her face, held a tracery of silver. “I kept them for you,” she said. “I knew I’d see you again before I died.”
I looked into her golden face and saw the sunlines clustered around her eyes, the sag at her jowls, the heaviness of hips, breasts, shoulders. But most of all, I saw the calmness in her black Salset eyes and realized Sula had accepted me for what I had made of myself and not what I had been.
Slowly, I unwrapped the bundle and freed both items. The short spear, blunted at one end and pointed at the other, painstakingly sharpened by a piece of broken stone and hands too big for the boy who used them. Now the spear was about the length of my arm; once it had been half my height.
The wood was darker than I recalled, until I realized it still bore bloodstains, blackened by the years. The lopsided, unbalanced point was scarred with claw and bite marks. Holding it in my hands again, sensing the ambiance of memory recalled, I felt all over again the emotions I’d experienced so many years before.
Wonder. Determination. Desperation. Fear, of course. And pain.
But mostly the blind, fierce defiance that had so nearly killed me.
The other item was exactly as I recalled it. A piece of bone, carved in the shape of a beast. A sandtiger, to be precise. Four stumpy legs, a nub of a tail, snarling mouth agape to show the tiny fangs. Time had weathered the bone to a creamy yellow-brown, almost the color of a real sandtiger. The incised eyes and nose were worn down almost to smoothness. But I could still see traces of the features.
My hands were bigger now. The bone tiger fit into the palm of my right hand easily. I could close my fingers over the toy and hide it from sight. But sixteen or so years before, I couldn’t. And so I had stroked it every night, whispering the magical words into the tiny bone ears as the wizard had told me to do, and dreaming of a wicked beast come to eat my enemies.
Oh yes, I believe in magic. I know better than to doubt it. Alth
ough much of it is little more than tricks and sleight of hand practiced by charlatans, there are genuine magicians in the world. And genuine magic with such power as to completely alter a life in dire need of it.
But that kind of power carries its own cost.
I shut the toy in my right hand, pressing the smooth yellowed bone against the palm that bore the ice-brand of the Northern sword, and looked at Sula.
I saw the compassion in her eyes; a complete comprehension of the emotions the spear and toy recalled. And I put them both back into her hands. “Keep them for me … to recall the good nights we shared.”
She accepted them, but her mouth tightened. “I’m surprised you can say there were good nights, after the bad days—”
I cut her off. “I choose to put away the days. I’m the Sandtiger now. The days before are forgotten.”
She was unsmiling. “The days before are not forgotten. They can’t be. Shouldn’t be. Not by the shukar, not by me, not by the tribe … not by you. The days before are what made you the Sandtiger.”
I made the sharp gesture of negation. “A shodo made me the Sandtiger. Not the Salset.” Inwardly, I knew better. And chose to deny it. “No one here tells me what to remember, to think, to speak … to wish for.” I scowled at her fiercely. “Not—any—more.”
Untroubled by exaggerated distinctness, Sula smiled. In her face was the serenity I had always associated with her. But in her eyes was a bittersweet knowledge. “The Sandtiger no longer walks alone?”
She meant Del. I looked at the linen-draped, sunburned Northern girl and opened my mouth to tell Sula the Sandtiger—human or animal—always walks alone (being an exceedingly solitary beast); then I recalled, oddly, how I had killed a male sandtiger attempting to protect his mate, his cubs.
I smiled. “This one only temporarily walks with the Northern woman.”
Sula, kneeling, wrapped spear and bone in the leather binding again. She tilted her head assessively as she studied Del. “She’s very ill. But she’s also strong; others less burned and not so ill have died, while she hasn’t. I think she’ll recover.” Sula glanced at me. “You had sand in your head to bring a Northern woman into the Punja.”
“Her decision.” I shrugged. “She offered me gold to lead her across to Julah. A sword-dancer never says no to gold—especially when he’s been out of work for a while.”
“Neither does a chula say no to gold—or to a dangerous, tragic endeavor—if it buys him the freedom he craves.” Sula rose and ducked out of the hyort before I could summon an answer.
I felt the faintest breath of a touch on my leg and glanced down in surprise to find Del’s eyes open and locked on my face. “What does she mean?”
“Bascha! Del—don’t talk—”
“My voice isn’t burned.” She formed the words carefully, a little awkwardly; her lips were still blistered, still cracked. No smile—she couldn’t manage it—but I saw it in her eyes.
Blue eyes, bluer than I recalled; lashes and hair bleached whiter by the sun. New skin, vividly pink, showed in the rents of peeling flesh.
I scowled. “Concentrate on resting. Not talking.”
“I will survive, Tiger—even if it means you have sand in your head for bringing me into the Punja.”
“You heard Sula.” Accusation.
“I heard it all,” she answered. “I haven’t been asleep the whole time.” And suddenly there were tears in her eyes; embarrassed, she tried to hide them from me.
“It’s all right,” I told her. “I don’t think you’re weak—at least, not weak weak. Just tired from your bout with sandsickness.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed heavily. Old skin cracked. “Even when I was lost and wandering, I knew you were here. And—something told me you’d be here even when I found myself again.”
I shrugged, discomfited. “Yes, well … I owed you that much. I mean, you’re paying me to get you to Julah. I can hardly go off and leave you; it plays hoolies with the reputation.”
“And a sword-dancer never says no to gold.” Irony; a little.
I grinned at her, feeling better than I had in days. “You realize I’ll have to raise my price, don’t you? I told you I charge based on how many times I have to save your life.”
“This is only once.”
“Three times.”
“Three!”
I ticked them off on my fingers. “Sandtiger. Hanjii. Now this rescue.”
She glared as much as she was able to. “You got us lost in the first place.”
“That was the Hanjii. Not my fault.”
“You had nothing to do with the Salset finding us,” she pointed out. “That was the will of the gods.” She paused. “Mine.”
I scowled. “We’ll argue about it when we reach Julah. And besides, I may have to save you a few more times—in which case my price climbs even higher.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something? The Hanjii took all my gold.” Her eyes glinted. “I can’t pay you any more.”
“Well then, we’ll just have to work out another arrangement.” I gave her a slow, suggestive smile.
She hissed something at me in her unintelligible Northern tongue. Then, weakly, she laughed. “Perhaps we will have to make another arrangement. Some day.”
Anticipating it, I nodded consideringly. Smiling.
Del sighed. “Northern, Southron—you’re all alike.”
“Who is?”
“Men.”
“That’s sandsickness talking.”
“That’s experience talking,” she retorted. Then, more softly, “Will you tell me about it?”
“Tell you about what?”
Her eyes didn’t move from my face. “Your life with the Salset.”
I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Talking with Sula about my past was one thing—she’d been a part of it—but telling it to a stranger was something I had no intention of doing. Even Sula skirted the edges of the topic, knowing how delicate it was. But with Del’s blue eyes fixed on me in calm expectation (and knowing she’d just lived through her own sort of hoolies), I thought perhaps I should tell her.
I opened my mouth. I shut it almost immediately.
“Personal,” I muttered.
“She said the past had made you what you are. I know what you are. I want to know what you were.”
Tension gripped my body. Muscles knotted. Belly churned. Sweat broke out on my new skin. “I can’t.”
Her eyes drifted closed, lids too heavy to keep raised. “I’ve trusted my life to you. You’ve honored that trust. I know what you want from me, Tiger—what you’re hoping for—because you mask your face but not your eyes. Most men don’t even bother.” The corners of her mouth moved a little, as if she wanted to smile wryly. “Tell me who you were so I can know who you are.”
“Hoolies, Del—it’s not the sort of thing that makes for polite conversation.”
“Whoever said you were polite?” A definite smile, though somewhat tentative. “These are your people, Tiger. Aren’t you happy to see them again?”
I recalled how close Northern kinship circles were. It’s what had brought her here, against odds most would never face, man or woman. “I’m not a Salset,” I told her flatly, figuring I owed her that much. “Nobody knows what I am.”
“Well—the Salset raised you. Doesn’t that matter?”
“It matters. It matters.” It spilled out of my mouth unexpectedly, a flood of virulent bitterness. “Yes, the Salset raised me … in hoolies, Del. As a chula.” I wanted to spit out the word so I’d never know its foul taste again. “It means slave, Del. I didn’t even have a name.”
Her eyes snapped open. “Slave!”
I looked at her shocked, pitiful face and saw a horror as eloquent as my own. But not disgust (in the Punja slavery is a stigma you escape only in death). Empathy, instead; honest, open empathy, as well as astonishment.
Maybe in the north they don’t believe in slavery (or else they don’t consider it a horrible fate
), but slavery in the South—especially the Punja—guarantees a lifetime of utter misery. Complete humiliation. A slave is unclean. Tainted. Locked into a life that is less than a life. In the South, a slave is a pack-animal. A slave is a beast of burden forced to withstand beatings, curses, degradation. It is a bondage of the spirit as well as the body. A slave is not a person. A slave is not a man. He is less than a dog. Less than a horse. Less than a goat.
A slave develops self-hatred.
In the South, a slave is a simply a thing.
A pile of dung upon the ground.
Which is where I had learned to sleep, when I could sleep at all.
I heard the indrawn hissing of Del’s sucked-in breath and realized I had said the words aloud. And I wanted to take them back, grinding them up between my teeth and swallowing them back down my throat where they could remain hidden away, not vomited out like foul, malodorous bile.
But it was too late. I’d said them. They couldn’t be unsaid.
I shut my eyes and felt the stark desolation fill up my soul again, as it had so often in childhood. And the anger. Frustration. The rage. All the insane fear that gave a boy the courage to face a full-grown male sandtiger with only a crude wooden spear.
No. Not courage. Desperation. Because that boy knew he could win his freedom if he killed the beast.
Or if he let the beast kill him.
“And so you killed it.”
I looked at Del. “I did more than kill it, bascha … I conjured the tiger.”
Del’s lips parted. I saw her start to form a question, and then she didn’t. As if she had begun to comprehend.
I drew in a deep breath. And for the first time in my life, I told a woman the story of how I had won my freedom.
“There was a man. A wizard. And the Salset honored him, as they honored anyone with power.” I shrugged a little. “For me, he was more than that. He was a god come to life before me because he promised me absolute freedom.” I recalled his voice very well: calm, smooth, soothing—telling me I could be free. “He said a man always knows his freedom in what he can make for himself, in how he conjures dreams and turns them into reality; that if I believed in myself hard enough, I could become anything I desired; that magic such as his was known only to a few, but the kind I needed was available to anyone.” I drew in a deep breath, remembering all he had told me. “And so when I took to following him around, even though I was beaten for it, he knew my misery, and did what he could to ease it. He gave me a toy.”
Sword-Dancer Page 12