Roberson,Jennifer - Sword Dancer 05 - Sword Born

Sword Born

Book 5 of the

Sword Dancer

series

By Jennifer Roberson

PROLOGUE

SWORD PIERCED FLESH, broke bone. I felt it go in, felt the give, the tension in

my wrists as steel cut into body. Heard my own hoarse shout as I denied again

that this was what I wanted, what I meant

--

--and awoke with an awkward upward lunge that smashed the back of my skull

into wood.

One way to stop a dream, I guess: knock it clean out of your head.

Driven flat by the force of the collision, I lay belly-down on the threadbare

blanket and scrunched my face against pain and shock, locking teeth together. I

couldn't manage a word, just swore a lot in silence inside my rattled skull.

From above, warily, "Tiger?"

I didn't answer. I was too busy gripping the back of my abused skull, trying to

keep it whole.

"Are you all right?"

No, I wasn't all right, thank you very much; I'd just come close to splattering my

brains all over the tiny cabin we shared aboard a ship I'd learned to hate the day

we sailed. But to

say

I wasn't all right?

I turned my head, carefully, into a slotted streak of brassy sunlight skulking

fitfully through creaking boards bleeding dribbles of sticky pitch. "--fine." From

between gritted teeth.

Movement overhead. A moment later a wealth of fan-hair barely visible in fog-

tendriled morning light spilled over the side of the narrow bunk looming low

above me, which was precisely what I'd cracked my head against. (The bunk,

that is, not the hair.) Then the face appeared. Upside down.

Del is beautiful from any direction, in any position, wearing any expression. But

just now I was in no shape to appreciate that beauty. "Was that your

head?

"

I undamped my jaws a bit and removed my cheek from the lump of mildewed

material that served inadequately as a pillow. It stank of salt and fish and, well,

me. "I suppose I could point out that sleeping apart for months on end in bunks

barely big enough for a dog makes it hard for a man to, um,

demonstrate his

admiration and affection

--"

"Lust," she put in, stripping away euphemism neatly. "And it's only been two

weeks. Besides, we had the floor." She paused, correcting her terminology. "The

deck. Which we've used. Several times. Or have you forgotten already?"

Not to be thwarted by an annoying and convoluted interruption intended solely

to sidetrack me into defensiveness, I continued with laborious dignity. "--and

therefore I could claim it was something else entirely that smacked the underside

of your bed with such force as to make the earth move--"

"Embroidering the legend of the jhihadi, are we?"

"--but considering that I'm always an honest messiah, er, man--"

"When it suits you."

"--I'll admit that, yes, that was my head." I moved my fingers gingerly through

wiry hair. "I

think

it's still in one piece."

"Well, if it isn't, it matches the rest of you. Age does that to a man." And she

withdrew her head--and the hair--so I had nothing to glare at.

"Your fault," I muttered.

She swung down from her bunk over mine. Short, narrow bunks, too small for

either of us together or apart; Del is a tall woman. She landed lightly, bracing

herself against the ship's uneasy wallowing with a hand on the salt-crusted,

battered bunk frame. "

My

fault? That you're feeling your age? Really, Tiger--

you'd think it was always my idea that we, as you put it, 'demonstrate admiration

and affection.' "

"Hoolies," I muttered, "but I'll be glad when we're on land again. Room to

move

on land."

Del sat down on the edge of my bunk. It wasn't a comfortable position because

she had to lean forward and hunch over so she wouldn't bash

her

head against

the underside of her bunk. I rearranged bent legs, allowing her as much room as

I could; I wasn't about to sit up and risk my skull again. "Any blood?" she asked

matter-of-factly, sounding more like man than woman preparing to blithely

dismiss an injury as utterly insignificant unless a limb was chopped off.

Someone once asked me what it meant if Del was ever kind. I answered--

seriously--that likely she was sick. Or worried about me, but that wouldn't do to

say. For one, I hated fuss; for another, well, Del's kind of worrying doesn't make

for comfort. A smack on the butt is more her style of encouragement, much like

you'd slap a horse as you sent it out to pasture.

I inspected my skull again with tentative fingers, digging through salt-crusted

hair. No blood. Just a knot coming up. And itching. But too far from my heart to

kill me.

Then I dismissed head and irony altogether. I reached out and clasped her arm,

closing the wrist bones inside my hand. Not a small woman, Del, in substance or

height (or in skill and spirit); but then, neither am I a small man. The wrist fit

nicely. "I dreamed about you," I said. "And the dance. On Staal-Ysta."

Del went very still. Then, eloquently, she took my hand and carried it to her ribs,

where she opened it and flattened the palm against the thin leather of her tunic.

"I'm whole," she said. "Alive."

I shivered. Felt older still than thirty-eight years. Or possibly thirty-nine. "You

don't know what it was like. You were

dead,

bascha--"

"No. Nearly so. But

not

dead, Tiger. You stopped the blow in time. Remember?"

I hadn't stopped the blow in time. I managed only to slow it, to keep myself--

barely--from shearing her into two pieces.

"I remember being helpless. I remember not wanting to dance with you in the

first place, and that cursed magicked sword making me fight you anyway. And I

remember cutting you." Beneath my palm I felt the warmth of flesh, the steady

beating of her heart. And the corroded crust of scar tissue mounded permanently

in the skin beneath her left breast. "I remember leaving--no,

running

--because I

thought you would die. I was sure of it... and I couldn't bear to see it, to watch

it--" I levered myself up on one elbow, reached out, and slid my free hand to the

back of her skull, urging her down with me. "Oh, bascha, you don't know what it

felt like, that morning on the cliff as I rode away from the island. From you." But

not from guilt and self-recrimination; I was sure she had only hours. While I'd

have years to remember, to wish myself dead.

I shifted again as she settled; it was too small, too cramped, for anything more

than the knotting of bodies one upon the other. "And then when you found me

later, me with that thrice-cursed sword--"

"It's over," she said; and so it was, by nearly two years. "All of it is over. I'm

alive and so are you. And neither of us has a sword that is anything

but

a

sword." She paused. "Now."

Now.

Boreal, Del's jivatma, she had broken to free me from ensorcellment. My

own sword, the one I myself had forged, folded, blooded, and named on the icy

island called Staal-Ysta, lay buried beneath tons of fallen rock. We were nothing

but people again: the sword-singer from the North, and the sword-dancer from

the South.

I flinched as she put her hand to the scar I bore in my own flesh, as gnarled and

angry as hers over ribs now healed. She'd nearly killed me in that same circle.

But it wasn't her touch that provoked the visceral response. The truth of it was, I

wasn't even a sword-dancer any more, not a proper one. The Sandtiger was now

borjuni,

a "sword without a name." And no more proud--and proudly defended--

title won in apprenticeship and mastery through the system that ruled the

ritualized combat of the South, the oaths and honor codes of men who danced

with swords within the circle and settled the wars of the tanzeers, princes of the

Punja, the South's merciless desert.

Deserted at birth, then taken in as a slave; freed of that by oaths sworn to the

man, the shodo, who taught me how to fight, to dance according to the codes;

and now deserted by others who swore the same oaths and thus had to kill me,

because I'd broken those codes.

Yet despite the price it had been easy to break them, because it was for Delilah.

For

her

oaths and honor.

And so in the South, my homeland, I was prey to be hunted by any sword-

dancer alive, to be killed without honor outside of the circle because I wasn't

part of it any more. In the North, Del's homeland, I was a man who had turned

his back on the glory of Staal-Ysta, the Place of Swords, and the sword-singers

who danced in the circle with enchanted blades.

But here, now, with her, I was just me. Sometimes, that's enough.

ONE

WE LEFT the North because Del agreed to go, if only because I forced her hand

by winning a dance in the circle according to Northern rites. But I'd forced their

hands, too, those blond and bitter people who'd sooner see Delilah dead even by

deception because of broken oaths; once healed, once reunited, once free of

Staal-Ysta and Dragon Mountain with its demon-made hounds of hoolies, we had

eventually headed South--where within a year I'd broken the oaths I'd sworn to

my

people.

Now both of us were nameless, homeless, lacking songs and honor, abandoning

our pasts in the search for a new present, but one linked uncannily to a past

older than either of us knew: a baby's begetting, a boy's birth. The woman who

had whelped me there on the Punja's crystal sands, and the man who had sired

me far away in foreign lands.

Skandi. Or so we thought. So

Del

thought, and declared; I was less certain. She

said it was only because I was a self-made man and didn't want to know the

truth of my presence in the world, for fear I was lesser or greater than what I'd

become.

Me, I said little enough about it. Mild curiosity and the dictates of the moment--

the need to retreat, rethink, escape--had been diluted beneath the uncertainties

of sailing, of odd, misplaced regrets, and something akin to confusion. Even

homesickness. Except it was all very complicated, that. Because the South

maybe wasn't my home at all. My birthplace, yes. That much I knew. Southron-

born, Southron-reared. But not, we now believed, Southron-begotten. Which is

one of the reasons we were

on

this thrice-cursed boat, sailing to a place where I

could have been conceived.

Or not.

Someone might have told me, once. Sula. A woman of the tribes, of the Salset,

who'd done more than any to make me a man in all the ways one can be. While

the rest of the Salset ridiculed me as a chula, a slave, as an over-tall, long-

limbed, big-boned boy awkward in body, in mind, wholly ignorant of grace, Sula

had valued me. In her bed, to start with. Later, in her heart.

Mother. Sister. Lover. Wife. Yet neither bound by blood, rites, or ritual beyond

the one we made at night, when I was allowed to sleep somewhere other than

on a filthy, odorous goatskin flung down upon Punja sand. But Sula was dead of

a demon in her breast, and there was no one to tell me now.

We left, too, because I was, well, a messiah. Or so some people believed.

Others, of course, didn't buy any of it. People are funny that way. Some believe

because of faith, needing no evidence; others have faith only

in

evidence--and I

had not, apparently, offered any of worth.

At least, not the kind they believed in. After all, turning the sand to grass--or so

the legendary prophecy went--was not the kind of imagery that really grabs a

man, especially Southroners. It was a little too, I don't know,

pastoral

for them,

who suckled sand with their mother's milk.

Whether I was the messiah, called jhihadi, and whether I had turned the sand to

grass (or at least begun the process), was open to debate. Both were possible,

I'd decided in a fit of self-aggrandizement fostered by too much aqivi and too

little of, well, Del's admiration and affection one night beneath the moon, if one

took the magic out of it and depended on a literal faith.

That's always a problem, dealing with religion. People take imagery literally. Or

when the truth is presented as something unutterably tedious--such as digging

canals and ditches to channel water from places with it to places without it--no

one wants to listen. It's not flowery enough. Not

magical

enough.

Hoolies, but I hate magic. Even when I work it myself.

Having established once again that my bunk was not a particularly promising

location for assignations of admiration and affection--I nearly smacked my head

again, while Del cracked an elbow hard enough to provoke a string of hissed and

dramatic invective (in uplander, which saved my tender ears)--we eventually

wandered up onto the deck to greet the morning with something less than

enthusiasm, and to placate discontented bellies with the sailor's bounty the crew

called hardtack. Hard it was; anyone lacking teeth would starve to death.

Fortunately neither Del nor I did, so we managed to gag it down with a few

swallows of tepid water (Del) or a belly-burning liquor called rhuum (me). Then

we stood at the rail and stared in morosely thoughtful silence at the wind-

rumpled water, wondering when (or if) we'd ever see land again. It had been

two days since we'd left behind a string of small islands where we'd stopped long

enough to take on fresh water and fruit.

"Maybe it's not a real place," I observed, only half-serious, which, as usual with

Del, provoked a literal response.

"What--Skandi? Of course it's a real place. Or they wouldn't have taken us on as

passengers."

I slanted her a glance. Del couldn't possibly be any part of serious. "Are you any

part of serious?"

"I didn't ask about Skandi in particular." She dismissed without rancor my

unspoken suggestion that someone, somewhere, had done the impossible and

taken advantage of Delilah. "I asked where the ships were going. Nothing more.

So no, I did not play us into someone's greedy hands by planting the idea we'd

go anywhere so long as we

thought

it was Skandi. They told me this one was

going there, without prompting."

I vividly recalled the day she'd have scoured and scaled me with tongue and

temper for even hinting someone had gotten the best of her. But the bascha had

settled somewhat in the past three years, thanks to my benign influence. Now

she

explained.

Grinning, I settled once again against the rail. It creaked and gave. I moved off

it again, promptly, scowling at damp, stained, salt-crusted wood. The ocean

troughs were deepening, smacking unruly waves against the prow. So much

water out there... and so little of anything else. Like--land. "You know, I just

can't see how a pregnant woman would sail all the way to the South from a

place so far away just to have a baby."

"Maybe she didn't."

"Didn't?"

"Well, maybe she didn't leave Skandi to have her baby in the South. Maybe she

got pregnant

on

the voyage. Or maybe she got pregnant after she reached the

South." Del eyed me assessively. "After all, half of you could be Southron. You

look like a Borderer."

I'd heard that before, from others. I wasn't right for pure Southron blood,

because the desert men were small, neat, and trim, dark-eyed, and swarthier

than I. By the same token, I was too dark for a Northerner, who were routinely

much fairer of hair than my bronze-brown. I was somewhere in the middle: tall

and big-boned as Del's people, but much darker in skin and hair; too big, but not

dark enough for a Southroner, and green-eyed to boot. Borderers, however,

were halfbreeds, born primarily to folk who lived either side of the border

between the North and the South. It made perfect sense that I was a Borderer.

Which meant I wasn't Skandic at all, and this entire voyage of discovery was

sheer folly.

But a man in Julah, where Del and I had stopped before going over-mountain to

Haziz-by-the-ocean-sea, had thought I was of his people. Had spoken to me in

his tongue. And he

was

Skandic. Or so he seemed, and so Del believed; she'd

sworn he looked enough like me to be my brother. Which was possible--if I was

Skandic, and

he

was--if not probable when considering the odds. Still, it was

better odds than I'd been offered before beyond a dance in the circle--which I

couldn't do anymore, thanks to me breaking the oaths and codes of Alimat. And

departing the South altogether. It was as good an excuse as any to leave a place

where men who'd trained as I had, where men as good as I was, were hunting

my head.

So. Here we were on a ship bound for Skandi. Where maybe I was from. Or not.

"Scared?" Del asked, following my thoughts.

Yes. "No."

She smiled slightly. Still following. "You are."

"Scared of what, bascha? I've fought I don't know how many men in the circle,

killed a dozen or more fools outside of it; ridden to a standstill a stud-horse who

kills

other

fools, fought off hounds of hoolies, an evil sorcerer who wanted to

steal my body and my soul--or maybe just my body; we've argued enough about

whether I

have

a soul--survived numerous deadly simooms bad enough to strip

the flesh from my bones, withstood afreets and loki, sandtigers and cumfa, not

to mention various tribes wanting to sacrifice me to some god or another;

escaped murderous women and angry husbands... and I share your bed.

Regularly." I paused. "What's to be scared

of,

after all that?"

"Knowing," she said. "Or--not."

Oh. That.

She waited, wind stripping unbound hair from her flawless face. Such blue eyes,

had Delilah.

I spread legs, bent knees, set my balance to ride the lalloping sway of the boat

and crossed arms against my chest. Tightly. Somehow, this mattered. "I suppose

you

wouldn't be.

Scared. Of knowing. Or--not."

"I am scared of many things," she said simply, "and not the least of them is of

losing you."

That shut me up in a hurry. After a moment I even managed to close my mouth.

Del, strangely satisfied, merely glanced sidelong at me, smiling, then looked

across the bow again. "Ship," she said lightly.

So there was. With blue-painted sails. Behind us, above us, the crew of our own

ship noticed the other also.

Well, it wasn't land, but it was better than empty ocean. At least, until the crew

swarmed like sandstingers over all the sails and ropes and timber. Next I knew,

we were turning. Hard.

"Hey--" I grabbed the rail and latched on, not happy to hear it creak again

ominously, but even less happy to feel the accompanying protests of the boards

beneath my feet. Sandals slid, scraping on dampness and salt. The shift in wind

filled my mouth with hair; I spat and stripped it out, then tucked it behind my

ear, which did no good at all. Swearing inwardly, I resolved to have Del cut it as

soon as possible. Or to hack it off myself.

Del also grabbed at the rail as we swung heavily through the choppy waves,

grasping wood firmly. Even as she opened her mouth to make a comment or ask

a question, a babble of shouting behind us pretty much answered it. I knew fear

when I heard it. The whole crew suddenly stank of it.

"Trouble," I observed, wiping the slick of foamy spray off my face. Salt stung in

my eyes.

The crewman nearest us looked away from the blue sails long enough to gesture

urgently. "Below," he said. "Below.

Below.

"

"Trouble," Del agreed.

Of course, the last place I wanted to be was immured in a tiny cabin near the

waterline as the ship wallowed and bucked. I hung onto the creaking rail,

maintaining a now-precarious balance against the violent undulance, and

scowled at the sailor.

"I'll go," she said.

Startled, I stared at her. "Wouldn't you rather stay on deck and see what we're

facing?"

"And I'd rather have swords to face it

with,

" she declared. "That's where they

are. Below."

Ah. So they were. "Bring mine, bascha."

"I had planned on it."

The sailor saw her go, looked relieved, then noticed I remained at the bow. His

eyes bulged as the ship continued its wallowing, graceless turn. "Below!"

No,

not

below, thank you ... but as we swung around, the blue-sailed ship fell

out of line of sight from my spot at the bow. I let the sailor believe I was

following his suggestion; instead I made my way aft, moving so as to keep my

eye on the other ship even as I clutched the rail, cursing in disgust as I caught a

toe against a coil of prickly rope and nearly fell. This thrice-cursed boat, in rough

seas, was harder to ride than the stud when he pitched a fit.

Still, I considered it curious that our captain would turn

around

rather than

sailing on, especially as we were two days away from the last island, which

meant there was no safe harbor within reach; but we'd been heading into the

wind, which slowed us down. Now we moved

with

it. The sails bellied, cracking

against the sky as the crew worked rapidly. Wind shoved us along the way we

had come, but more swiftly than before. The question now was whether the

blue-sailed ship truly wanted us enough to chase us--and, if it did, was it faster?

Well, yes. The latter was obvious by the time Del came up beside me at the

stern. She'd braided her hair back into a pale rope hanging down her spine.

Naked now of everything save intent, her face and expression were clean and

lethal as a new-honed blade. I took the hilt she offered, felt better for having a

sword in my hand. "Our captain seems to place no faith in the fighting abilities of

his crew."

"You've sailed with them for two weeks," she said, squinting against spray-laden

wind. "Would you?"

They spent more time drinking, dicing, and swapping lies than anything else.

Point taken. "Well, he might have faith in

us." I

paused. "You did tell him we hire

out for this sort of thing, didn't you?"

"He's seen you smack your head or trip over ropes and nets about nine times a

day, Tiger. Why should he have any faith in you?"

This sounded suspiciously as if our captain viewed me pretty much the way I

viewed his crew. I was stung into a retort--especially as I had acquired any

number of scrapes and bruises since coming aboard. "I'm taller than he is!"

"And clumsier, he seems to think. Although

I

don't believe it." She patted my

arm briefly, absently, as if comforting a child--which of course was exactly how

she wanted me to feel. "It's catching up."

She meant the pursuing ship. "I wasn't made for water," I said aggrievedly, "or

boats.

Ships,

" I amended, before she could correct me; the crew had been

explicit. "I'm too big, or they're too small--"

"The world," she said gently, "is too small for you."

That stopped me cold. I eyed her, examined her expression closely, tried to

figure out what in hoolies she was talking about.

Del burst out laughing. "Don't look so worried, Tiger! I only meant that you are

large in all the ways so many men are small--"

"Thank you very much.

Many

men?"

"In all ways," she repeated, smiling peculiarly--and offering no answer. "Now,

what were you saying?"

What

was

I saying--? "Well, look, bascha ... I only mean I need land, something

solid, something that stays put when I plant my feet--"

"Like the stud?"

Who was below, and not privy to this conversation. "Now that you mention it, I'd

like to see what our esteemed captain, who thinks I'm so clumsy, would do on

the stud..."

"Poor odds.

No

odds."

I scratched briefly at the salt-rimed scars in my face, four long clawmarks that

scored me from cheekbone to jaw beneath a week's worth of stubble. "And

anyway, the question now is not whether I'm clumsy on board a creaking hunk

of flattened trees, but whether those fine folks would have come after us if we'd

held our course--"

"The captain seems to think so."

"--or if we made ourselves look more attractive than we are

because

we turned

tail and ran."

"The captain must have believed we had a chance at outrunning them."

"Or else he's just running scared."

"As well he might," Del observed as the blue sails swelled against the horizon.

"We're losing the race."

I squinted across the narrowing gulf. "Maybe I should have a word with the

captain about the benefits of standing your ground ..."

"Unfortunately, as you've pointed out, there isn't any ground to stand

on.

"

I spat hair out of my mouth again. "Well,

I'd

rather decide when there's to be a

sword-dance than let the other man choose it," I reminded her. "There's merit to

a good offense."

"Let me go," she suggested. "He's not much impressed by you. Me, he's

impressed by; he comes up on deck to watch every morning when I loosen up."

Roberson, Jennifer - Sword Dancer 05 - Sword Born

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