She is not a woman for idle conversation, having little patience for small talk, and even less for excuses and explanations. Including those dealing with life and death; mine, or her own. And yet I resorted to both: excuses, explanations. Somehow, I had to.
"It wasn't my fault," I declared. "It wasn't. Did I have any choice? Did you leave me any choice?" I snorted in derision. "No, of course not--not you... you leave no choice or chance to anyone, least of all me... you just stare me down across the circle and dare me to take you, to cut you, to chop you down with my blade, because it's the only thing that will make you admit you're just as human as anyone else, and just as vulnerable. Just as fragile as anyone, man or woman, made of flesh and blood... and you bleed, Del... just like anyone else--just like me--you bleed."
She said nothing. Fair hair shone white in firelight, but blue eyes were nothing more than blackened pockets in a shadow-clad face lacking definition or expression. The beauty remained, but changed. Altered by tension, obsession, pain.
Behind me, tied to a tree, the stud snorted, stomped, pawed a thin layer of slush away from winter-brown turf. Pawing again and again, stripping away even the turf until what he dug was a hole.
Horses can't talk, not like humans; they do what they can with ears, teeth, hooves. What he told me now was he didn't want to eat. Didn't want to sleep. Didn't want to spend the night tied to a bare-branched tree, chilled to the bone by a Northern wind that wouldn't--quite--quit. What he wanted was to leave. To go on. To head south toward his desert homeland where it is never, ever cold.
"Not my fault," I repeated firmly. "Hoolies, bascha, you and that storm-born sword of yours... what did you expect me to do? I'm a sword-dancer. Put me in a circle with a sword in my hands, and I dance. For pay, for show, for honor--for all those things most men are afraid to name, for fear of showing too much... well, I'm not afraid, Del--all I know is you left me no choice but to cut you, coming at me like that with that magicked sword of yours--what did you expect? I did what I had to. What was needed, for both of us, if for different reasons." I scratched angrily at the scars in my right cheek: four deep-scored claw marks, now white with age, cutting through the beard. "I tried like hoolies to make you quit, to make you leave that thrice-cursed island before it came to something we'd both regret, but you left me no choice. You stepped into that circle all on your own, Del... and you paid the price. You found out just how good the Sandtiger is after all, didn't you?"
No answer. Of course not; she still thought she was better. But I had proven which of us was superior in the most eloquent fashion of all.
Swearing at the cold, I resettled the wool cloak I wore, wrapping it more closely around shoulders. Brown hair uncut for far too long blew into my eyes, stinging, and my mouth. It also caught on my short-cropped beard repeatedly, no matter how many times I stripped it back. Even the hood didn't help; the wind tore it from my head again and again and again, until I gave up and left it puddled on my shoulders.
"You and that butcher's blade," I muttered.
Still Del said nothing.
Wearily I scrubbed at brows, eyes, face. I was tired, too tired; the wound in my abdomen ached unremittingly, reminding me with each twinge I'd departed Staal-Ysta far sooner than was wise, in view of the sword thrust I'd taken. The healing was only half done, but I'd departed regardless. There was nothing left for me in Staal-Ysta. Nothing at all, and no one.
Deep in the cairn, flame whipped. Smoke eddied, tangled, shredded on the air. Wind carried it away, bearing word of my presence to the beasts somewhere northeast of me in darkness. The hounds of hoolies, I called them; it fit as well as any other.
I waited for her to speak, even to accuse, but she made no sound at all. Just sat there looking at me, staring at me, holding the jivatma across wool-trousered thighs. The blade was naked in the darkness, scribed with runes I couldn't--wasn't meant to--read, speaking of blood and forbidden power too strong for anyone else to key, or to control, with flesh, will, voice.
Del could control it. It was part of her personal magic; the trappings of a sword-singer.
Sword-singer. More than sword-dancer, my own personal trade. Something that made her different. That made her alien.
Whose name was Boreal.
"Hoolies," I muttered aloud in disgust, and raised the leather bota yet again to squirt Northern amnit deep into my throat. I sucked it down, gulp after gulp, pleased by the burning in my belly and the blurring of my senses. And waited for her to say something about drink curing nothing. About how a drinking man is nothing more than a puppet to the bota. About how dangerous it is for a sword-dancer, a man who lives by selling sword and skill, to piss away his edge when he pisses liquor in the morning.
But Del said none of those things.
I wiped amnit from my mouth with the back of a hand. Glared at her blearily across the guttering fire. "Not my fault," I told her. "Do you think I wanted to cut you?" I coughed, spat, drew in breath too deep for the half-healed wound. It brought me up short, sweating, until I could breathe again, so carefully, meticulously measuring in- and exhalations. "Hoolies, bascha--"
But I broke it off, confused, because she wasn't there.
Behind me, the stud dug holes. And he, like me, was alone.
I released all my breath at once, ignoring the clutch of protest from my ribs. The exhalation was accompanied by a string of oaths as violent as I could make them in an attempt to overcome the uprush of black despair far worse than any I'd ever known.
I dropped the bota and rose, turning my back on the cairn. Went to the stud, so restless, checking rope and knots. He snorted, rubbed a hard head against me, ignored my grunt of pain, seeking release much as I did. The darkness painted him black; by day he is bay: small, compact, strong, born to the Southron desert.
"I know," I said, "I know. We shouldn't even be here." He nibbled at a cloak brooch: garnet set in gold. I pushed his head away to keep curious teeth from wandering to my face. "We should go home, old son. Just head south and go home. Forget all about the cold and the wind and the snow. Forget all about those hounds."
One day he would forget; horses don't think like men. They don't remember much, except what they've been taught. Back home again in the South, in the desert called the Punja, he would recall only the grit of sand beneath his hooves and the beating heat of the day. He'd forget the cold and the wind and the snow. He'd forget the hounds. He'd even forget Del.
Hoolies, I wish I could. Her and the look on her face as I'd thrust home the steel in her flesh.
I was shaking. Abruptly I turned from the stud and went back to the cairn. Leaned down, caught up the sheath and harness, closed my fist around the hilt. In my hand the cold metal warmed at once, sweet and seductive; gritting teeth, I yanked the blade free of sheath and bared it in firelight, letting flame set steel to glowing. It ran down the blade like water, pausing only briefly to pool in the runes I now knew as well as I knew my name.
I was shaking. With great care, I took the sword with me to one of the massive piles of broken boulders, found a promising fissure, wedged the blade into it. Tested the seating: good. Then locked both hands around the hilt, meaning to snap it in two. Once and for all, to break it, for what it had done to Del.
Samiel sang to me. A small, private song.
He was hungry, still so hungry, with a thirst that knew no bounds. If I broke him, I would kill him. Was I willing to run that risk?
I tightened my hands on the hilt. Gritted teeth--shut my eyes--
And slid the blade, ringing, very carefully out of the fissure.
I turned. Sat. Slumped, leaning against the boulders. Cradling the deadly jivatma; the one I had made my own.
I rested my temple against the pommel of the twisted-silk hilt. It was cool and soothing, as if it sensed my anguish.
"I must be getting old," I muttered. "Old--and tired. What am I now--thirty-four? Thirty-five?" I stuck out a hand and, one by one, folded thumb and fingers absently. "Let's see... the Salset found me when I was half a day old... kept me for--sixteen years? Seventeen? Hoolies, who can be sure?" I scowled into distance. "Hard to keep track of years when you don't even have a name." I chewed my lip, thinking. "Say, sixteen years with the Salset. Easiest. Seven years as an apprentice to my shodo, learning the sword... and thirteen years since then, as a professional sword-dancer." The shock was cold water. "I could be thirty-six."
I peered the length of my body, even slumped as I was. Under all the wool I couldn't see anything, but I knew what was there. Long, powerful legs, but also aching knees. They hurt when I walked too much, hurt after a sword-dance. Hurt when I rode too long, all thanks to the Northern cold. I didn't heal as fast as the old days, and I felt the leftover aches longer.
Was I getting soft around the middle?
I pressed a stiff hand against my belly.
Not so you could tell, though the wound had sucked weight and tone. And then there was the wound itself: bad, yes, and enough to put anyone down for a couple of weeks, but I'd been down for nearly a month and still was only half-healed.
I scratched the bearded cheek riven by scars. Old, now; ancient. Four curving lines graven deeply into flesh. For months in the beginning they'd been livid purple, hideous reminders of the cat who had nearly killed me, but I hadn't minded at all. Not even when people stared. Certainly not when women fussed, worried about the cause. Because the scars had been the coinage that bought my freedom from the Salset. I'd killed a marauding sandtiger who was eating all the children. No more the nameless chula. A man, now, instead, who named himself the Sandtiger in celebration of his freedom.
So long ago. Now the scars were white. But the memories were still livid.
So many years alone, until Del strode into my life and made a mockery of it.
I scratched the scars again. Bearded. Long-haired. Unkempt. Dressed in wool instead of silk, to ward off Northern wind. So the aches wouldn't hurt so much.
The sword, in my hands, warmed against my flesh, eerily seductive. The blade bled light and runes. Also the promise of power; it flowed up from tip to quillons, then took the twisted-silk grip as well. Touched my fingers, oh so gently, lingering at my palm. Soft and sweet as a woman's touch: as Del's, even Del's, who was woman enough to be soft and sweet when the mood suited her, knowing it something other than weakness. An honest woman, Delilah; in bed and in the circle.
I flung the sword across the cairn into the darkness. Saw the flash of light, the arc; heard the dull ringing thump as it landed on wind-frosted turf.
"I wish you to hoolies," I told it. "I want no part of you."
And in the dark distances far beyond the blade, one of the beasts bayed.
Part I
One
Only fools make promises. So I guess you can call me a fool.
At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. The hounds that dogged Del and me to Staal-Ysta, high in Northern mountains, were vicious, magic-made beasts, set upon our trail by an unknown agency. For weeks they merely stayed with us, doing nothing other than playing dogs to sheep, herding us farther north. Once there, they'd done much more; they attacked a settlement on the lakeshore, killing more than thirty people. Some of them were children.
Now, I'm no hero. I'm a sword-dancer, a man who sells his sword and services to the highest bidder. Not really a glorious occupation when you think about it; it's a tough, demanding job not every man is suited for. (Some may think they are. The circle makes the decision.) But it's a job that often needs doing, and I'm very good at it.
But it doesn't make me a hero.
Men, I figure, are pretty good at taking care of themselves. Women, too, unless they stick their pretty noses into the middle of something that doesn't concern them; more often than not it doesn't, and they do. But children, on the other hand, don't deserve cruelty. What they deserve is time, so they can grow up enough to make their own decisions about whether to live or die. The hounds had stolen that time from too many settlement children.
I owed nothing to Staal-Ysta, Place of Swords, which had, thanks to Del, tried to steal a year of my life in the guise of honorable service. I owed nothing to the settlement on the lakeshore, except thanks for tending the stud. But no one owed me anything, either, and some had died for me.
Besides, my time on the island was done. I was more than ready to leave, even with a wound only halfway healed.
No one protested. They were as willing to see me go as I was to depart. They even gave me gifts: clothing, a little jewelry, money. The only problem was I still needed a sword.
To a Northerner, trained in Staal-Ysta, a jivatma--a blooding-blade--is a sacred thing. A sword, but one forged of old magic and monstrous strength of will. There are rituals in the Making, and countless appeals to gods; being Southron, and apostate, I revered none of them. And yet it didn't seem to matter that I held none of the rituals sacred, or disbelieved (mostly) in Northern magic. The swordsmith had fashioned a blade for me, invoking the rituals, and Samiel was mine.
But he didn't--quite--live. Not as the others lived. Not as Del's Boreal.
To a Northerner, he was only half-born, because I hadn't properly keyed him, hadn't sung to forge the control I needed in order to wield the power promised by the blessing, by the rituals so closely followed. But then, clean, well-made steel is deadly enough on its own. I thought Northern magic redundant.
And yet some of it existed. I felt it living in the steel each time I unsheathed the weapon. Tasting Del's blood had roused the beast in the blade, just as her blade, free of the sheath, had roused the trailing hounds.
I did not leave the sword lying in dirt and turf throughout the night. Old habits are hard to break; much as I hated the thing, I knew better than to ignore it. So I fetched it, felt the ice replaced with warmth, shoved it home in its sheath. I slept poorly, when at all, wondering what the hounds would do once I caught up to them, and if I'd be called on to use the sword. It was the last thing I wanted to do, after what Del and others had told me.
She had said it so plainly, trying to make me see: "If you go out there tomorrow and kill a squirrel, that is a true blooding, and your sword will take on whatever habits that squirrel possesses."
It had, at that moment, amused me; a blade with the heart of a squirrel? But my laughter had not amused her, because she knew what it could mean. Then, I hadn't believed her. Now, I knew much better.
In the darkness, in my bedding, I stared bitterly at the sword. "You're gone," I told it plainly, "the moment I find another."
Unspoken were the words: "Before I have to use you."
A man may hate his magic, but takes no chances with it.
The stud had his greeting ready as I prepared to saddle him. First he sidled aside, stepping neatly out from under the saddle, then shook his head violently and slapped me with his tail. Horsehair, lashed hard, stings; it caught me in an eye, which teared immediately, and gave me cause to apply every epithet I could think of to the stud, who was patently unimpressed. He flicked ears, rolled eyes, pawed holes in turf. Threatened with tail again.
"I'll cut it off," I promised. "As far as that goes, maybe I'll cut more than your tail off... it might be the making of you."
He eyed me askance, blowing, then lifted his head sharply. Ears cut the air like blades. He quivered from head to toe.
"Mare?" I asked wryly.
But he was silent except for his breathing. A stallion, scenting a mare, usually sings a song loud enough to wake even the dead. He'd do the same for another stallion, only the noise would be a challenge. This was something different.
I saddled him quickly, while he was distracted, untied and mounted before he could protest. Because of his alarm I nearly drew the sword, but thought better of it. Better to let the stud run than to count on an alien sword; the stud at least I could trust.
"All right, old man, we'll go."
He was rigid but quivering, breathing heavily. I urged him with rein, heels, and clicking tongue to vacate the clearing, but he was having none of it.
It was not, I thought, the beasts I'd christened hounds. The stink of them was gone; had been ever since I'd left Staal-Ysta. Something else, then, and close, but nothing I could name. I'm not a horse-speaker, but I know a little of equine habits; enough to discard humans or other horses as the cause of the stud's distress. Wolves, maybe? Maybe. One had gone for him before, though he hadn't reacted like this.
"Now," I suggested mildly, planting booted heels.
He twitched, quivered, sashayed sideways, snorted. But at least he was moving; insisting, I aimed him eastward. He skittered out of the clearing and plunged through sparse trees, splattering slush and mud. Breathing like a bellows through nostrils opened wide.
It was an uneasy peace. The stud was twitchy, jumping at shapes and shadows without justification. Most times, he is a joy, built to go on forever without excess commentary. But when he gets a bug up his rump he is a pain in mine, and his behavior deteriorates into something akin to war.
Generally, the best thing to do is ride it out. The stud has been a trustworthy companion for nearly eight years, and worth more than many men. But his actions now jarred the half-healed wound, putting me decidedly out of sorts. I am big but not heavy-handed; he had no complaints of his mouth. But there were times he tempted me, and this was one of them.
I bunched reins, took a deeper seat, and slammed heels home. He jumped in surprise, snorting, then bent his head around to slew a startled eye at me.
"That's right," I agreed sweetly. "Are you forgetting who's boss?"
Which brought back, unexpectedly, something I'd heard before; something someone had said regarding the stud and me. A horse-speaker, a Northerner: Garrod. He'd said too much of our relationship was taken up in eternal battling over which of us was master.
Well, so it was. But I hate a predictable life.
The stud swished his tail noisily, shook his head hard enough to clatter brasses hanging from his headstall, then fell out of his stiff-legged, rump-jarring gait into a considerably more comfortable long-walk.
Tension eased, pain bled away; I allowed myself a sigh. "Not so hard, is it?"
The stud chose not to answer.
East, and a little north. Toward Ysaa-den, a settlement cradled high in jagged mountains, near the borderlands. It was from Ysaa-den that reports of beast-caused deaths had been brought to Staal-Ysta, to the voca, who had the duty to send sword-dancers when Northerners were in need.
Others had wanted the duty. But I, with my shiny new Northern title, outranked those who requested the duty. And so it was given to me. To the Southron sword-dancer who was now also a kaidin, having earned the rank in formal challenge.
I tracked the hounds by spoor, though with slush dwindling daily there was little left to find. Prints in drying mud were clear, but snowmelt shifted still-damp mud and carried the tracks away. I rode with my head cocked sideways, watching for alterations, but what I saw was clear enough: the beasts cut the countryside diagonally northeast with no thought to their backtrail, or anything set on it. Ysaa-den was their target as much as Del had been.
We had come down from above the timberline, now skirting the hem of upland forests, slipping down from bare-flanked peaks. Uplands, downlands; all terms unfamiliar to me, desert-born and bred, until Del had brought me north. Only two months before; it seemed much longer to me. Years, maybe longer. Too long for either of us.
The turf remained winter-brown and would, I thought, for a while. Spring in the uplands was soft in coming, tentative at best. I knew it could still withdraw its favor, coyly turning its back to give me snow in place of warmth. It had happened once before, all of a week ago, when a storm had rendered the world white again and my life a misery.
The trees were still bare of leaves, except for those with spiky green needles. The sky between them was blue, a brighter, richer blue, promising warmer weather. Beyond lay jagged mountains scraping color out of the sky. Pieces of the peaks lay tumbled on the ground, rounded by time into boulders scattered loosely here and there, or heaped into giant cairns like piles of oracle bones. Chips and rubble fouled the track, making it hard to read. The stud picked his way noisily, hammering iron on stone. Stone, as always, gave.
In the South, spring is different. Warmer, certainly. Quicker with its favors. But much too short for comfort; in weeks it would be summer, with the Punja set to blazing beneath the livid eye of the sun. It was enough to burn a man black; me, it baked copper-brown.
I lifted a hand and looked at it. My right hand, palm down. Wide across the palm, with long, strong fingers; creased and ridged with sinew. Knuckles were enlarged; two of them badly scarred. The thumbnail was spatulate, corroded by weeks in a goldmine when I'd been chained to a wall. In places I could see bits of ore trapped in flesh; my days in the North had bleached some of the color out, but beneath it I was still darker than a Northern-born man or woman. Sunburned skin, bronze-brown hair, eyes green in place of blue. Alien to the North, just as Del had been to me.
Ah, yes, Delilah: alien to us all.
Men are fools when it comes to women. It doesn't matter how smart you are, or how shrewd, or how much experience you've had. They're all born knowing just what it takes to find a way to muddle up your head. And given the chance, they do.
I've known men who bed only whores, wanting to make no better commitment, saying it's the best way to avoid entanglements. I've known men who marry women so as not to buy the bedding. And I've known men who do both: bed whores and wives; sometimes, with the latter, their own.
I've even known men who swear off women altogether, out of zeal for religious purity or desire for other men; neither appeals to me, but I'll curse no man for it. And certainly, in the South, I've known men who have no choice in the matter of bedding women, having been castrated to serve tanzeers or anyone else who buys them.
But I've known no man who, drunk or sober, will not, at least once, curse a woman, for sins real or imagined. A woman; or even women.
With me, it was singular.
But it wasn't Del I cursed. It was me, for being a fool.
It was me, for proving once and for all which of us was better.
Bittersweet victory. Freedom bought with blood.
The stud stiffened, snorted noisily, then stopped dead in his tracks.
I saw movement in the trees, coming down from tumbled gray rocks. Nothing more, just movement; something flowing through oracle throws made of ...
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