Sword Singer-Sword Dancer 2 (2 page)

a Northerner's creamy color.

I am tall, broad, heavy, but considerably quicker than I look. Sword-dancing teaches even the slowest man how to move--or it teaches him how to die.

I looked at Del, because Del is good to look at. But I also looked at the sword

hilt that rode her left shoulder. I know it well now. Better than I prefer, because I had been forced to learn. All the months of watching Del wield it with

uncanny skill and grace, knowing it more than simply a sword, I had had time to

learn to respect it, even to fear it, because it was more than just a sword.

In

her hands, it was alive, and a thing of awesome power.

Boreal: born of Northern banshee-storms, blooded in the body of one of the finest sword-masters of the North. Her sword-master--her an-kaidin--a man she honored and respected, who had taken a determined fifteen-year-old girl bent on

a highly personal revenge and honed her into a weapon nearly as lethal as the one she'd eventually sheathed in him.

Boreal. Who had, in my hands (however briefly loaned) come to life at the sound

of her name, saving me, saving Del, destroying the man who meant to kill us.

But Boreal was Del's. I had no part of her. No more than I did of Theron's blade, which now replaced Singlestroke even if only temporarily.

Necessity is often distasteful.

I sheathed the sword and ignored it, accustomed to its weight across my shoulders. Then I took the stud's reins from Del's hand and led him a few steps

away.

"Look, old son," I began, "you and I have to come to an understanding. That sort

of blowup is acceptable when we're in a village or a town or an encampment and

there's money riding on the outcome, but not when it's just you and me and Del,

and that sandsick horse of hers." I patted his neck. "Understand? You could get

one of us hurt out here in the desert, and that's not such a good idea."

He blew noisily through brown nostrils and flicked a tufted ear. Then he bared

his teeth in a sideways attempt to bite.

"Affectionate as ever." I thumbed the prehensile lip and he twisted his head away, rolling an eloquent eye.

Del caught up the reins of her own mount--a gutless, washed-out speckledy gray-white gelding with a frazzled tail and the temperament of an aging woman who considers herself still skilled at being coy--and looked at me. "How long before we reach Harquhal?"

"Should be by nightfall." I shielded my eyes and squinted up at the Southron sky

that seemed to shimmer in the warmth. "Of course, we're losing time with this idiot horse."

"Then saddle him and let's go."

"In a hurry, are we?" I took the stud back to where his gear lay and bent to gather up the bits and pieces. "The North will still be there, Del... has been

for years."

She mounted, swinging free of her billowy white silk burnous one long leg and slender foot with its Southron sandal cross-gartered to her knee, "And it's been

six since I was there."

"Not quite six," I corrected. "You've been with me, not counting respective captivities, for at least nine months." I grinned as she shot me a scowl beneath

sun-bleached blonde brows. "Even if it took us five and a half more years, bascha, it'd still be there."

"You forget yourself, Sandtiger." Her tone was suddenly cool. I stopped saddling

the stud and turned to look directly at her. "Only two months remain before Theron's agreed-upon year is done... and then they will be sending another sword-dancer to collect the blood-debt I owe."

Not a laughing matter, with Del or with anyone else. What she faced was serious.

If, in the specified months, Del refused to go North to face trial for that blood-debt, the task of killing her would then belong to any man, or multiples

thereof. Northern, Southron, sword-dancer, soldier, bandit; it simply didn't matter. Her killer would be rewarded for discharging the blood-debt owed for the

murder of her an-kaidin,

Del was guilty. She had killed the an-kaidin. She carried blood-guilt freely, and did not deny responsibility. It made the sentence just in the eyes of the Northern an-kaidin and all their students, the ishtoya and an-ishtoya.

Hoolies, in a weird sort of way even I understood the reason for it.

But anyone who wanted her would have to go through me.

Two

In the desert, the sunsets are glorious. I've never been a man for painting pictures with words, but often, at day's end, watching, I wished I was. There is

something oddly tranquil and satisfying in watching the sun slide down beyond the bright blade of the horizon, setting the ocher and umber desert ablaze with

the brilliance of richer colors: copper, canary, saffron and cinnabar. The desert is transfigured into a paradise of pigments, a collection of colors on the palette of gods different from those Del knew, or created with Boreal.

Sunset. There is something that speaks in quiet inner places about the ordering

of the world, today and tomorrow, then and now, and all of the yesterdays.

I sat my bay stud and stared westward, watching the sun go down, and knew contentment in the company I kept. Del was mute, watching as I watched; feeling,

I knew, some of the same feelings, sharing the quietude. There were many things

unknown between us, many things unspoken, because we had both been shaped by circumstances far beyond ken or control. We were an odd amalgam, the woman and

I; sword-dancers both; dangerous, deadly, dedicated, as loyal to the rituals of

the circle as to one another. And yet denying, in our own independently stubborn

ways, any loyalties to one another at all; preferring, for countless ridiculous

reasons, to claim ourselves invulnerable to the normal course of human wants, needs, desires.

And knowing, perfectly well, we needed one another as much as we needed the dance.

The sunset gilded Del's face. She had pushed the hood off her head so the silk

settled on her shoulders, baring hair and features. She was all aglow: old gold,

ivory, ice-white. In profile, she was flawless; full-face, even better.

Inwardly, I smiled, thinking of the bed we would share in Harquhal. A bed bed,

not a blanket spread upon the sand, or the naked sand itself. We had not, yet,

ever shared a proper bed, being confined for so long to the Punja.

But now we left the deadly Punja far behind, passing out of dunes and flatlands

into the scrubby, hilly high desert that presaged the borderlands. Already it was cooler than the scorching days spent on blinding sands, hiding vulnerable eyes amidst the shade of burnous hoods.

Here there were tough, fibrous red-throated grasses, warring with other groundcover; the tangle and tang of jade-hued creosote, haphazard in its growth;

vast armies of thorny trees with feathery silver-gray leaves. Even the bloom of

fragile flowers, unexpectedly tenacious, climbing out of the fretwork of webby

groundcover and the tassles of taller, duller grasses to wave fluted gaudy petals, like pennons, in whatever breeze they could find.

Here there was water. Here there was game. Here there was the promise of a survival less difficult than in the arid sea of sand known as the Punja.

Harquhal. It rises out of the desert like a blocky pile of mud, girded by sloping hills and taupe-gray abode walls to hide its many faces from the threat

of capricious simooms blowing northward out of the Punja. It is a characteristic

of the South that towns, villages, semipermanent habitations, as well as the countless oases, are warded with man-made walls or hills or natural rock formations so that the deadly sandstorms, called simooms, cannot sweep away what

men, women and children have labored so hard to build. In the Punja, it is necessity; the sands, never sated, swallow towns and cities whole if not properly maintained, disdaining the curses of powerful tanzeers and the wretched

poor alike.

I have seen walls, left to crumble by lazy inhabitants, swept away in a matter

of hours, and the dwellings within destroyed by abrasive, voracious wind. I have

seen cisterns and natural springs filled permanently by choking sand, though we

have none to spare, in the South, in the Punja. I have seen scoured skeletons eaten clean of even a shred of flesh; by no beast but the wind, the sand, the heat. Horse, dog, goat. Man. Woman. Child.

There is no mercy in the South, from humans, beasts, elements. There is only the

way things are, and will be forever; ceaseless, unchanging, moved by no pleas for leniency or forgiveness.

If there are gods who hear those pleas, they pass the time with fingers planted

firmly in useless ears.

Del sighed. "I thought, when I went home again, my brother would be with me."

So much said with so little. Del hoarded thoughts and feelings like a merchant

coin, dispensing each with grave deliberation and at unpredictable moments.

She

had said nothing of Jamail for weeks, locking away in tenacious silence all the

pain born of a futile search.

For five years she had meticulously prepared herself to track down and free the

younger brother stolen by raiders for profitable commerce with Southron slavers

who knew the true value of blue-eyed, blond-haired Northern boys in a land of dark-faced people. For five years she had apprenticed herself to a shodo--in Northern lingo, an-kaidin--to learn the requirements of sword-dancing, fashioning herself into a human weapon with the sole purpose of rescuing Jamail.

Knowing it was not perceived a woman's task; knowing also there was no one else

to do it. No one even to care; the raiders had robbed her of kin as well as innocence.

Futile. No, not exactly. She had found Jamail, but there was little left to rescue.

Tongueless, castrated, shaped in mind and body by years of Southron slavery, Jamail was not the ten-year-old brother she had adored. Only a boy-man who could

now, never, be a man, no matter how hard he wished it; no matter how hard she did. Jamail, Delilah's beloved brother, who desired to stay in the South with the savage tribe he had grown to love.

I wanted to touch her, but our horses stood too distant from one another.

Instead, I nodded. And after a moment, intending to lighten the mood, I smiled

and shrugged. "Well, you do have me."

At length, she slanted me an eloquent glance from the corners of her eyes without even turning her head. "That is something, I suppose."

"Something," I agreed blandly, choosing to ignore Del's tone altogether. "I am

the Sandtiger, after all."

"After all." She twisted her head to look north. "There is food in Harquhal.

Real food; something other than dried cumfa and dates."

I nodded, brightening. "And aqivi as well."

"We don't have the coin to spend on spirits."

"Do you expect me to drink goat's milk?"

She contemplated me a moment. "They both smell about the same. What difference

would it make?"

"About as much difference as you swapping Boreal for Theron's sword." I stopped

short as I saw how shock turned her to stone. And then I realized what I'd done.

"Del--Del, I'm sorry--" Wondering: Oh, hoolies, how could I have been so stupid?

"Del--I'm sorry--"

She was white-faced with anger as she reined her speckledy gelding next to the

stud. She didn't seem to notice as the stud laid back ears and bared teeth stained yellow by Southron grasses and grains.

But I noticed. I noticed also the rigid hand that reached out to catch my wrist.

And closed. More tightly than was pleasant.

"Never," she said distinctly, "speak her name aloud again."

No. No, of course not. I knew better. I knew better. "Del--"

"Never," she said again, and took her hand away from my wrist.

There were marks upon it. They faded even as I watched, but the sensation didn't. Certainly the memory wouldn't. Ever.

I flexed my hand to see if all the fingers worked. They did; Del isn't that strong. But strong enough; I felt guilty as well as resentful that she could command me so easily.

"I'm sorry," I repeated, wishing there was something more I could say.

Del's mouth was a flat line. Its grimness ruined the symmetry of her features,

but also impressed upon me the depth of her displeasure. "Her name is sacred."

It was so taut a tone as to lack definition, and yet I heard the undercurrent of

shock, fear, despair.

"Del--"

"Sacred, Tiger." Del released an unsteady breath and I saw some of the tension

leave her body, replaced with outright anguish. "It's all a part of the power,

the magic... if you divulge her name to others, all the rituals are undone--"

She stopped short, searching for comprehension in my face. "All the time, all the years, all the dedication... the sacrifice is as nothing--"

"Del, I know--I know. You've told me. It was a slip, nothing more." I shrugged,

keenly uncomfortable, knowing I devalued her feelings even as I tried to assuage

my guilt. "I promise, I won't ever say her name again."

"If another heard it--another Northerner trained as I was trained, knowing how

to tap the magic, how to destroy the jivatma--" Again she broke off, then scrubbed a hand against her face and swept fallen pale hair out of blue eyes.

"I

am in trouble enough because of the blood-debt. A man sent to fetch me back, to

kill me, could take my skills, my strength, my blade--all with a single word."

"But I know her name. You told me."

"I told you." The tone, now, was lifeless. "I had no choice. But you are a Southroner, lacking the magic, the power, the knowledge; you know nothing of the

jivatma, and what it means. And yet you saw how it served you, how she served you, answering your need."

"But not as she serves you."