Roberson, Jennifer - Sword Dancer 02 - Swordsinger

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Sword SingerSword Singer

Book 2 of the Sword Dancer series.

By Jennifer Roberson

Sword Singer

Table of Contents

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve,

Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty,

Twenty-one, Twenty-two, Twenty-three, Twenty-four, Twenty-five, Twenty-six,

Twenty-seven, Twenty-eight, Twenty-nine, Thirty, Thirty-one, Thirty-two,

Thirty-three, Thirty-four, Thirty-five, Thirty-six, Thirty-seven, Thirty-eight,

Thirty-nine, Forty, Forty-one, Forty-two, Forty-three, Forty-four

One

"Flea-bitten... jug-headed... lop-eared--" I sucked in a deeper breath,

"--thrice-cursed son of a Sahet goat!"

Or similar sentiments. Trouble was, I was mostly incoherent, being somewhere on

the delicate edge of discomfort and disaster.

He didn't answer. At least, not verbally. Physically, yes, and fervently; he

humped and hopped and squealed, then buried his nose in the sand. Since he

simultaneously elevated eloquent hindquarters with a powerful precision, I

didn't stand much of a chance.

My saddle does not, thank valhail, have much of a pommel on it, being little

more than a hummock of rigid leather shaped to fit the stud's back and my rump.

I'd bought it thinking mostly of comfort for the long, hot hours spent crossing

the Punja on one job or another. But now I blessed myself for picking it; a man

in imminent danger of taking a nosedive off a horse--headfirst, belly-down,

scraping over the shoulders and neck--doesn't much want to leave the best part

of himself hung up on the front of a saddle while the rest of him sprawls in the

sand.

Of course, I did have other worries. Like where my sword might end up. Even the

most active sword-dancer doesn't generally entertain his opponent upside down in

the circle; this meant there existed the possibility my borrowed sword might end

up out of its sheath and in something else entirely, possibly even me.

Or--(just give me half a chance)--in the stud himself.

Face-first, I slid over the sloping front of my saddle (sucking up belly and

everything else I could) and proceeded to dangle, however briefly, in the

vicinity of his head.

To which the stud took an immediate dislike, not being an animal who much cares

to have a large, cursing man shrouding his head like a glop of half-cooked egg.

The hindquarters came back down. It was the head's turn to elevate itself.

Because I knew what was likely to happen if I didn't take immediate action, I

wrapped arms and legs around whatever equine parts I could grab, and hugged.

Hard.

I'm big. I'm strong. It might have worked.

Unfortunately, the stud had the benefit of panic.

A horse's head is harder than a man's belly. A horse is stronger than a man. But

I discovered just how hard and how strong as he tossed me aside like a wad of

soiled silk.

--airborn--

Ah, hoolies.

I landed mostly on a tucked right shoulder, but also on the side of my face and

the business end of my sword, sheathed and slung diagonally across my back in

harness. Which meant that while it didn't dig too deeply into the sand, the

blade did provide just enough leverage, as I rolled purposefully toward my

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shoulder blades, to tip me back over onto face and belly.

I sucked up enough sand to seed a new desert and proceeded to cough up my lungs

all over the border between my land, the South, and Del's, the North.

Del. Some help she was. While I hacked and gagged and retched and discovered I

had a bitten, bloody lip, she dismounted (in the normal fashion) and went off to

fetch back the stud, who was wandering in a northwesterly direction for no

discernible reason.

"--flea-bitten--" I spat out sand. "--jug-headed--" More sand. "--lop-eared--"

Blood, this time. I touched my lip with a tentative finger, felt the sting of

salt and sand in the wound. "--thrice-cursed son of a Salset goat!"

I sat up. Scowled horrifically at Del as she brought back the stud. Her

expression was bland, noncommittal; innocence personified. (She is very good at

that.) Certainly she appeared neither amused nor particularly concerned or

sympathetic. But a closer look at guileless blue eyes told me she only bided her

time.

I tongued my lip. "Ought to leave him staked out for the cumfa." I had to pick

my way with words gingerly around the swelling lip, but the intent was clear

enough.

"Long ride on a single horse." So bland. So infuriatingly casual.

I glared. Del began examining the stud for injury.

"He's fine." I paused. "He's fine."

"Just checking."

I glared at her some more, absently admiring the clean lines of her face, so

intent on the stud's condition. Couldn't see much more of her, as she was

swathed in a white silk burnous that pretty well hid arms and legs and all of

her womanly curves, spectacular as they were. In the South, that's the point of

a burnous on a woman: to hide the lady from masculine eyes that might otherwise

become inflamed with lust at the sight of a shapely ankle.

Trouble was, the custom caused difficulties, rather than avoiding them; a

shapely ankle, promising other related anatomical niceties, becomes little more

than an invitation to fantisize about the rest of the woman.

Of course with Del, it took a lot less than an ankle. One glance out of those

blue, blue eyes, and I was... well...

Ah, hoolies. Me and every other male.

Deftly, gently, she ran hands down forelegs, briefly examined tendons, led him

forward a few steps to observe his action, then proceeded to strip off the

saddle, pouches and blankets to look at his back. He was wet where the gear had

been, but that was to be expected.

"He does this," I told her. "You know that. You've seen him do it before."

She pursed lips, raised pale brows. "Bit more violent this time."

"So am I." I got up, winced, rolled my head from side to side. "Del--"

"The stud's all right." She turned. "How are you, Tiger?"

Now she asks. "Fine." Flexed wrists, fingers, wriggled shoulders up and down.

Then I unsheathed the sword to make sure all was well with my weapon, as any

sword-dancer will do, and as often as necessary.

Hoolies. This thrice-cursed Northern butcher's blade.

It is not mine. Not really, although I use it when I have to. It is borrowed,

taken from a dead man who had no further use for it. I hated him, dead as he

was; hated it, although the latter emotion was more than a little silly. But

looking at the sword, touching it, wearing it, using it in my profession,

reminded me time and again that my own shodo-blessed, blued-steel blade was dead

as the man I'd killed in the circle beneath the moon.

Singlestroke.

Well, no sense crying when the aqivi's been spilled.

But I hated the thing. No sense, either, in denying it. Or in denying it

frightened me in some weird, indefinable way.

The sword was Northern. Not Southron, as Singlestroke had been; as I am.

Northern-forged, Northern-blooded; --a jivatma, what Del called a

blooding-blade, because the man who had made it his own had sought out a

respected enemy in order to quench the blade, to blood it, in some unknown

Northern ritual. Here in the South, it's different.

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Sunlight ran down the blade. Alien runes worked into equally alien metal took

life in the light and writhed, though it was only an illusion... or so I've

always maintained. For me, there is no magic; I am not Theron, who quenched the

blade, and I don't know its name or the key to bring the sword to life.

But he had, in the circle before I killed him. He had, and I'd seen all the

brilliant lights of what Del called the palette of the gods: purples, violets,

magentas, all lurid luminescence. Each sword had a soul (for lack of a better

word) as well as a name, and that soul marked its passing in a glowing tracery

of light, a delicate lattice of visible color. Generally only when keyed, but a

little of it showed in the blade even when quiescent: Del's was salmon-silver,

Theron's palest purple.

Or had been, before he died.

It had been a magnificent dance, while it lasted; a test of skill, strength,

training and, on one side, treachery. How we danced, did Theron and I, in the

name of a Northern woman.

A sword-dancer called Delilah.

Mouth grim-set, I sighed, expelling the air through my nose. The twisted hilt

was cool in the heat of the day. Too cool; not even when we'd been riding in the

blazing Southron sun for hours on end did the unprotected metal grow warm. An

odd, eerie silver, ice-white/blue-white, like the snowstorms Del had described.

But snow and snowstorms, like the sword, are alien to me. Born of the Southron

sun, knowing heat and sand and simooms, I couldn't begin to comprehend (or even

envision) the things she told me existed in her cold, Northern land.

All I know is the circle.

"One day," she said, "you will have to make your peace with Theron's sword."

I shook my head. "Once we can spare the time for me to seek out the shodo who

trained me--or one of his apprentices--I'm trading this thing in on a real

sword, a Southron sword, something I can trust."

"Trust that one," she told me calmly. "Never doubt it, or yourself; in your

hands, it knows no magic. With Theron dead, it's only a sword. You know that.

I've told you."

Told me, yes, because she knew how I felt about it. About the loss of

Singlestroke. To a sword-dancer, a man who makes his living with the sword, a

good blade is more than just a piece of steel. It's an extension of himself, as

much a part of him as hand or foot, though decidedly deadlier. Your weapon

lives, breathes, takes precedence over so much, because without it you are

nothing.

For me, it was less than nothing; Singlestroke had given me freedom.

Theron's sword, I knew, was not precisely dead, but neither did it live. Not as

Del's blade did. But there was something about it, something odd; when I put my

hands upon the twisted hilt, I always felt a stranger, a usurper, little better

than a thief. And I always felt a funny little twitch in the hilt, a recoiling,

as if the sword, too, was startled by my touch. As if it expected another's

flesh touching its own in that odd intercourse of man and sword. More than once

I'd wanted to mention it to Del, but I never had. Something kept me from it.

Pride, maybe. Or maybe just an unwillingness to admit I felt anything; I am not

a man who puts much stock in magic, and the last one to admit I sensed such

power in a sword. Even if it was mostly dissipated. For one, she might tell me I

was imagining things.

For another, she might tell me I wasn't.

Del understands swords. Like me, she is a sword-dancer, improbable as it sounds.

(Hoolies, it had taken me long enough to admit it; even now I still flinch a

little when she steps into the circle to spar with me. I'm just not used to

facing a woman--at least, not in the circle.) Our customs are so different, too

different here in the South, where the sun and sand hold dominance. Del had done

her best to alter my perceptions (and continues to alter them on a daily basis),

but parts of me still view her as a woman, not a sword-dancer.

Of course just about the last thing a man might want of Del is a sword-dance.

Dancing, yes, but not in the circle. Not with a steel blade... or whatever other

kind of metal the jivatma was.

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In the South, a woman has nothing to do with weapons of any kind. She tends the

house, the hyort, the wagon; tends the children, the chickens, the goats; tends

the man who calls her his.

But Del is Northern, not Southron. Del has no house or hyort or wagon, no

children, chickens or goats. And she does not, most emphatically, have a man who

calls her his, because Del belongs solely to Delilah.

Of course, I know better than to try.

I know better. But I try.

I looked at Del, knowing better than most what lay under the burnous; beneath

the sleeveless, thigh-length, rune-stitched leather tunic hidden by glossy silk.

She is tall. Slender, but sinewy. Narrow-waisted, but wide-shouldered. Tough.

Fit. Far stronger than an ordinary woman. There is nothing at all of fragility

about Del, though she is all female, and all the pieces are quite distinctly in

the proper places.

Blue-eyed, fair-haired, fair-skinned bascha, although after a few years under

the Southron sun the hair is nearly white and the skin a tawny, creamy gold.

We are so different, Delilah and I. I am a true son of the desert: skin burned

dark as a copper piece, dark brown hair bleached on top a streaky bronze, green

eyes couched in a fan of sun-baked creases that, when spread, display the color

I was at birth, thirty-some-odd years ago. Paler then, though darker still than

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

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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;

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