Sword Singer-Sword Dancer 2 (41 page)

Carefully, Del cleaned her sword. Rose. Stepped out of the circle. Sheathed her

sword and put on the harness, then bent to collect his things, including the now-dull jivatma.

She gazed past me to the east. "They're coming for the stud."

I turned. Saw two children, a girl and a boy; the girl was maybe twelve, the boy

a year or two younger. Tow-headed like them all.

"What did he say?" I asked.

Del stared at me. A new and frosty austerity was in her eyes, as much as had been in Bron's. "That I was to honor my an-kaidin."

I frowned. "That's all?"

"All that was necessary." She looked down at the harness and sword, briefly caressing silver studs. "Bron and I were swordmates for as long as I was here.

His an-kaidin was mine; we were his favorite an-ishtoya."

Privacy has its place, but her manner was too rigid. "What else, bascha?"

Del looked at me. "He told me the name of his sword."

"Told you--" I stared. "But I thought you said a Northerner never does that...

that it destroys all the magic--lessens the power, or something."

"It was a gift to me," she said bleakly, "to mark the things we once shared as

ishtoya and an-ishtoya. And so they would know he forgave me the blood-debt; one

is enough, he said."

"Del," I said, "I'm sorry."

After a moment, she nodded. "Sulhaya, Sandtiger. I know what you tried to do...

how you tried to stop the dance." She shrugged a little, stark-faced. "But if you break one ritual, one oath, the others become as worthless. The bindings come undone."

The children had finally reached us. I pulled the peg, looped the rope so the stud wouldn't trip, handed the rein to the boy, who reminded me of Massou.

Who

reminded Del of Jamail.

I turned back to her. "What about the body?"

The impersonality of it rocked her. "Bron--" But she stopped; hardened her tone,

said the voca would send someone to give him burial in Staal-Kithra.

I nodded. Looked at the island, floating on winter water. "I don't know how to

row."

"That's all right. I do." Resolutely, Del turned toward the lake.

Staal-Ysta. A stark, bleak place, afloat in the center of a glass-black lake: a

deep-cut cauldron filled with too-dark wine, all hedged with white-flanked mountains. Born of the desert, such an abundance of water was incomprehensible

to me. But here it was, everywhere: the lake, the snow, even the touch of the air. Everything was wet, in an odd, indefinable way.

I looked at Del's face as she rowed. She had masked herself to me, but I had learned to peel it back and discover what lay beneath. The tension of arrival at

last at the place of her training had taken its own toll. Bron's death--and the

manner of it--made it even worse.

She had built her wall again, the old familiar wall employed as a shield before,

when we'd first met, made of harshness, coldness, ruthlessness. The angles of her face were sharp as glass; I expected the cheekbones to cut through flesh.

I am not a man for leaving a thing unsaid if I want to say it, no matter what the situation. But this time, under these circumstances, seeing her face, I held

my silence. Del was somewhere else. When she wanted me, when she needed me, I'd

be available.

She brought the boat in deftly, snugging it up into the cove out into the edge

of the island itself. Holding the rope as well as Bron's harness and sheathed sword, she jumped out onto the shore, setting the boat to trembling and grating

against the bottom, and waited for me to join her. She said nothing.

I rose carefully, made my way forward, judiciously selected the best place to land, and leaped. I landed in mushy, lake-wet turf and mud, slipped to one knee,

got up with a muttered curse. Del anchored the rope beneath a stone, then swung

around and headed inland.

There was, I saw, a pathway cut through the trees. Feeble sunlight caught on naked branches and wet dark trunks, playing vague shadows against snow and bare

brown turf. Mine, blurred, walked with me, stretched taller by elongation. A bearded, bearlike man made of wool and leather and hair, with a sword strapped

to his back.

The trees gave way abruptly to a large oblong field, cleared of stumps and vegetation, where wooden lodges skirted edges in curving symmetry. Smoke threaded the air from each, gray on gray, and bluish. Long, rectangular lodges,

cracks stuffed with turf and mud and bits of wood to keep out the winter cold.

Gathered outside of the lodges, bared blades glinting dully in the dull light of

a blue-gray day, were more than a hundred Northern warriors, and a handful of equally fair-haired women. All with swords. All in silence. All watching as we

approached.

Del wore her own jivatma, snugged home in its leather sheath slung in a slant across her back. In her hands she carried Bron's, harness straps wrapped like swaddling around the sheath. She carried it like a woman would a baby, with care

and pride and honor.

I let her go before me, taking precedence over the man. In the South, when required--and it had been, all too often--she had done the same for me.

Del walked directly to the end of the oblong circle, paying no mind to those who

watched. And when she reached the end, facing the ten men who waited before it,

she paid no homage to anyone but stood straight and tall and proud. Delilah to

the bone.

"He died well," she told them, in clear Borderer for my benefit. "He honored his

an-kaidin."

Ten men. The voca, I knew. Strong men all, of all sizes, some gray, others blond, one even with light brown hair. They were scarred, hard men, accustomed

to hard lives, and unlikely to be softened by her sex. If anything, made tougher; I could see it in their eyes.

One of them said something in pure uplander. He looked past her to me, undoubtedly questioning my presence.

Again in Borderer, Del told him I was her sponsor.

He changed languages adroitly. The oldest of them all, I thought, with snowy braids and wind-reddened skin. But he was at least as tall as I, and nothing about him spoke of weakness. "A blade without a name is due no trial, and therefore due no sponsor."

Del's tone was stiffly formal. "Three days," she said. "I have known such trials

to take three weeks, when left to the voca. Am I not due consideration for the

weather? For hardships? For sorcery leveled against us?"

That sharpened ten pairs of eyes, all shades of blue and gray. A pale race, the

Northerners; I felt sun-charred by comparison, copper-brown with bronze-streaked

hair.

"What manner of sorcery?" the old man asked.

Del shrugged. "Hounds. Beasts. Even now they wait across the water... unless they know how to swim."

Lids flickered. He started to glance at the others, changed his mind. Clearly it

was something to be considered. And since Del hadn't told them about the ward-whistle, I wasn't about to, either. It's nice to have an advantage.

"Trial," he said at last. "Beginning at dawn tomorrow."

Another of them spoke. "You know the rituals, the constraints. You are not to go

out of Staal-Ysta. Not to bare your jivatma. Not to invoke its power. You are to

remain closeted until the trial. Not a guest, but neither a prisoner; nor will

your sponsor be dishonored, so long as he honors the customs of Staal-Ysta."

He

was younger than the others; brown-haired, gray-eyed. Something softened the line of his mouth. "Kalle is there," he told her, and nodded toward a lodge.

Del looked down at the harness and sword in her hands. For a long moment she didn't move. And then, slowly, she knelt. Placed Bron's jivatma on the boot-trampled ground. One hand touched the hilt. She looked up at the watching

voca.

"It was enough to send Bron," she said tightly. "More than enough. You could give me no punishment as hard or harder than that, even naming my execution."

The old man's expression didn't change. "It was why we sent him."

Del rose. Turned on her heel and marched away. Heading straight for the lodge the younger man had indicated.

Those in front of it parted, let her through, said nothing as she opened the wooden door. I saw hard features and harder eyes. I saw anger, grief and resentment. But I also saw respect.

The door scraped against dirt. Del forced it, went inside. I pulled it closed and latched it.

The interior of the lodge was mostly dark, lighted only by vents and the smoke

hole, as well as a single lantern depending from the roof beam. The lodge was wide, squat, divided down the center by two rows of posts, evenly spaced to provide a corridor without walls. On either side of the post rows were compartments, something like large box stalls. In them I saw women and children,

as well as dogs and cats. The earthen floor was hardpacked and covered with straw for warmth. It was like nothing I was accustomed to.

More than ever I missed the South.

"Kalle," Del said quietly.

No one answered. No one moved. And then one of the women bent, whispered something to a small girl, sent her forward to greet Del.

Sent her forward to meet her mother.

A single glance told me. There was no need for an explanation. And Del offered

me none. She simply turned the girl to face me, turned to face me herself, let

flesh and bones tell the story.

"Kalle," she said simply. "The result of Ajani's lust."

Oh. Hoolies. Bascha.

"Well," I said inanely, "at least she takes after her mother."

Slowly, Del shook her head. "Mother and father. Ajani's a Northerner."

Thirty-six

She was five years old, and magnificent. Small, delicate, shyly beautiful, like

a fragile, pristine blossom. But she was also clearly a child: active, awkward,

blunt. Plainly she stated her preference, which was to be with her mother, not

Del.

Del let her go, binding her to nothing. She made no claims on the girl's loyalty, since there was no foundation for it. She made no claims on courtesy,

either, understanding a child's thinking. She simply let Kalle go outside with

the woman she knew as her mother, in name if not in blood, and sat down in a corner compartment the rest left conspicuously empty for the blade without a name.

She knelt. Unbuckled harness and jivatma, set both aside in silence. Then pulled

a blue-speckled pelt over her legs and looked up at me, still standing, too full

of thinking to sit.

Del pulled up legs, clasped her arms around pelted knees, sighed a little, wearily. "When I escaped from Ajani and his men, I had nowhere to go. All of my

kin were dead, except for Jamail, and him they took south almost at once. I knew

better than to try and rescue him without weapons, without proper training...

I'd have failed. He'd have been sold anyway, and probably me as well... so I went north. North to the Place of Swords."

"A difficult journey, alone."

Del scooped tangled hair back from her face. "By the time I arrived, I was heavily pregnant. But I had made up my mind, and nothing would turn me from my

course. I didn't want the child, I couldn't love the child; it was nothing more

than the result of casual seed spilled by a wolf's-head Northerner... why should

I want his byblow?"

Why, indeed; the question made sense. Yet it sounded so horribly cold.

"The voca refused to turn me away, offering succor to someone in need, but neither would they admit me as ishtoya. It was only once I swore to prove myself

after the birth of the child that they agreed to even consider admitting me as a

probationer. And so I bore Kalle in the dead of winter, and when I was physically able I showed the voca I knew how to handle a sword." She sighed.

"Not as well as I needed to, for my purposes, but enough to convince them of my

worth. And so they admitted me."

Del and I had been together nearly a year. Prior to that she'd been in Staal-Ysta for five. But she'd also borne a child; it meant she'd had, at most,

four and a half years of training.

I sat down across from her, leaning against the divider. "So very good," I said

quietly, "in so very short a time."

She didn't avoid my gaze. "I had a need," she said. "A great and terrible need.

You have seen the result."

"Revenge."

"Rescue," she countered, "that first, always. Revenge later, yes. I want to collect the blood-debt Ajani owes me."

"As the voca wants to collect the one you owe Staal-Ysta."

"Once again, a choice," Del said. "In killing Theron, you gave me the rest of the year to live in freedom from the blood-guilt. Even then, I might have ignored the summons and remained in the South, free of the voca, declared a blade without a name." Fingers smoothed the pelts stretched over her knees.

"But

I have a name, a true name, and I won't let them strip it from me."

"And if death strips it from you?"

Slowly, she shook her head. "I will be buried in Staal-Kithra, with Bron and others like him. An honorable death; my name will be carved into the dolmens and

sung in all the songs."

My mouth twisted wryly. "Immortality, such as it is."

Del sighed. "A Southroner wouldn't understand--"

"I understand death," curtly, I interrupted. "I understand permanence. Your name

might live on forever, but I'd rather you did, too."

Too abruptly, she changed the subject. "There is amnit," she said, "if you want

it. And food. We're not prisoners, as Stigand said; we have the freedom to do and say what we want, so long as it is in here."

"Stigand being the old man?"

"Yes. The other, the youngest, was Telek." She smiled, but only briefly, as if

too weary to hold it. "When I left, he was but newly made an-kaidin. At least it