Sword Singer-Sword Dancer 2 (29 page)

her, and looked.

"Poor boy," she said softly. "Poor brave boy, so torn by teeth and claws...

you've been badly used, haven't you? Asked to run and fight and run some more...

and given no chance to rest." She smiled a little as he butted against her and

rubbed harder, relieving the unpleasantness of damp hair against equally damp wool. "Poor Southron-bred boy, so tired of all the cold and rain and damp...

as

much as your rider himself, my poor beleaguered Sandtiger, so far from what he

knows."

Del glanced around, still rubbing the stud's head. She'd scraped wet hair back

from her face, which sharpened the angles of her features and robbed them of feminine softness. I realized, looking at her anew, she'd lost weight, and tension had tautened the flesh at the corners of her eyes and mouth. It aged her, made her look more determined than ever; stole away the lightheartedness of

youth to show instead the burden of responsibilities no one should ever have to

know, regardless of gender.

My poor brave Delilah, so driven by the dual needs for forgiveness and retribution.

I stepped out of the trees and went down to her, watching the alteration in her

eyes as she saw me; the brief glow of relief that said, "he is alive, he is whole, he is still the Sandtiger."

In which case, I had an image to live up to.

"Well," I said lightly, "took you long enough."

Del smiled, showing teeth. "We did consider leaving you."

"So why didn't you?"

"We needed the horse."

So we did, since five of them were dead. "How are the others?"

"Adara is tired and letting everyone know about it. Garrod is still upset over

the loss of his horses; he's a horse-speaker, after all. Massou considers it all

an adventure, and Cipriana--well--" Del shrugged. "She wanted to come along, but

Adara made her stay behind."

I scrubbed a hand over my face. "Hoolies, Del, what am I to do with her?

She's

just a girl--"

"And if she were older?" Del smiled again, arching suggestive brows. "She's not

really all that young, Tiger. I'm only five years older."

"I know, I know... don't remind me." I sighed. "Sometimes I think you're too young for me."

"Me, too." Heartlessly. "Someone like Garrod, now..." Her expression was elaborately thoughtful.

"No," I said flatly, "not Garrod. Not for you. Not a man who might have taken part in the murder of your kinfolk."

It effectively robbed the moment of humor. The ice was back in her eyes.

"Garrod

did not," she said coolly, "but plainly he knows about it. He would have to; he

has ridden with Ajani."

"Ridden with him?" I frowned. "Knowing him is one thing; riding with him is another."

"He knows him. He said so. He's ridden with him, too. But not lately, he says,

and never to murder people." Del's tone was so flat it underscored her anger more than shouting could have. "There is a distinction somewhere, but I have yet

to see it."

Garrod's habits were worth discussing, I thought, in view of his link to Ajani,

but there were more pressing matters. Like the hounds. And I said so.

Del shook her head. "For the moment, they've disappeared. But I think they'll be

back." She braced as the stud rubbed against her again. "You may be right, Tiger. I think they're after someone--or something--in particular... and I think

they're conjured beasts. They aren't natural. Otherwise they wouldn't be so selective, so single-minded. And they'd never have let you and the stud break free."

"I sort of wondered about that myself." I gathered dangling reins. "He's too tired to carry double, bascha. We'll have to walk, if you'll lead the way."

She gestured in a northerly direction. "Back that way a couple of miles. In a canyon ..." She smiled oddly a moment. "A very remarkable canyon."

"Not another trap-canyon." I started walking, leading the stud.

"No. Oh, no. And there is no danger of the beasts attacking there. The magic is

too strong."

"Magic." I stopped walking. "Magic?"

Del nodded. "A very powerful magic, like nothing you've ever seen."

I grunted. "I've seen a little in my lifetime, bascha, and I haven't liked any

of it. The hounds themselves are magic--even you admit it."

"Even I admit it," she agreed patiently. "Yes, the hounds are born of magic; and

yes, a malignant magic... but the Canteada aren't."

"The what?"

"Not what: who. The Canteada." Del sighed, looking uncharacteristically fatuous.

"Oh, Tiger, if only you could understand..."

"I'll try!" I said dryly. "Explain it to me."

Del shook her head. "Explaining won't help. You wouldn't understand. I don't think you can understand; not you."

I wasn't particularly pleased by her conviction. "How do you know that? I'm not

entirely blind--"

"Not blind," she said, interrupting, "deaf. At least deaf to music."

"Music." I sighed, scrubbing my face again. "Bascha, can't you be a bit more specific? All this jabber about music and magic--"

"All this 'jabber,' as you put it, is as specific as it gets." Del pointed north, suggesting we continue our journey.

I urged the stud forward again. "You're telling me these Canteada people are musicians."

"No," she said softly, "I'm telling you the Canteada are music."

I grunted. "Same difference."

"You are surly, aren't you?" Del shook her head. "I said you wouldn't understand."

"What I understand," I told her plainly, "is that we've been singled out by a sorcerer who's set the hounds of hoolies on us for no particular reason, as far

as I can see, except maybe for some sort of peculiar entertainment. And I don't

much like it." I scowled at her. "I don't like it, I don't like this, I don't even like this country." I sucked in a deep breath, stopped walking again, continued unabated, since she was listening, "I've been wet since we got here,

half-frozen by your sword; attacked by loki, live and dead bodies; savaged by conjured hounds, made to suffer the amorous advances of mother and daughter, all

the while being turned neatly away by you. Do you blame me for being surly?"

Del gazed at me thoughtfully. "You're tired," she said finally. "You'll feel better when you've eaten."

"Eaten, schmeaten," I snapped. "I'll feel better when we're done with whatever

it is you need to do and we can go back South again, where it's warm and bright

and dry."

Del took the reins from me. "And if we don't start moving, Tiger, we'll never go

anywhere."

Surliness, like the rain, was completely unabated; I turned on my heel and moved.

Twenty-four

To our right cut the narrow canyon the stud and I had traveled twice, once in,

once out. To our left jutted a damp, rocky wall rising well above our heads.

Its

face was gray and blue, slick and sleek with rain as it drizzled out of the sky.

The cliff wall looked like someone had hewn it out of the earth with a giant ax,

leaving it choppy and sharp and striated. But the jagged, angry face was softened by moss and fallen leaves, littered green and gold and carnelian, with

a touch of faded plum.

"The colors are different here," I said, rustling through rain-washed leaves.

Del glanced at me, then looked at the craggy cliff face, at bare-branched trees,

at leaf-softened, otter brown ground. After a moment, she nodded. "They are deeper, richer, older... not impermanent like the South."

"Impermanent." It sounded odd.

"Oh, yes. In the South the colors are subtler, more subject to whims of weather.

To simooms, blowing sand across the miles. To lack of water, sucking moisture and color out of trees and vegetation. And to the sun, stealing the life from everything, man and animal alike."

I frowned. "You told me once you liked the South."

"I respect it. I admire its strength, its fierce beauty, its determination to survive. But this--this--" One arm encompassed cliff, canyon, forest, "--is what

I have known since birth. These colors are my own; even the smell of the North,

the taste of rain-soaked ground. This is what has shaped me."

Something blossomed inside me. Such a tiny little bud, threatening to unfold.

"You sound like you mean to stay here."

Del looked at me sharply. And then glanced away.

The bud became a bloom and showed me the colors of my fear. "Bascha--when this

is all done, we're going South again. At least, I am. Aren't you?"

She still didn't look at me. "I haven't decided yet."

Women are spontaneous creatures. They don't generally think things through on a

logical level, relying mostly on emotion. They tend to make snap judgments and

stick by them stubbornly merely for the sake of appearances, to save face and salve pride, even if you show them they're utterly wrong. Rarely do they look at

all the angles, seeing only what they desire. They see, they want, they take, or

find a man to get it for them.

They talk off the top of their heads, regretting it later, always, then denying

they ever said it.

Women are fickle creatures.

And not so different from men. Which meant I knew what Del's evasiveness indicated, regardless of what she said.

She said she hadn't decided, which meant, of course, she had.

I stopped walking abruptly, which stopped the stud. "Do you mean to tell me you've dragged me all the way up here on some thrice-cursed mission of forgiveness, yet you have no intention of going home?"

She didn't answer at once. Then, softly, she said, "I am home, Tiger."

Hoolies. So she was.

My tone was curt. "Del--"

"I said I hadn't decided."

"And when will you decide?"

She shrugged. "When I do."

That was helpful. I scratched at my scars, dragging broken nails across the distinctive claw marks. I hadn't been able to shave for a couple of days and the

stubble was driving me crazy. "And when, do you think, might that be?"

"I don't know!" Her shout echoed in the canyon, climbed the cliff wall, lost itself in trees. The stud flicked his ears.

"Ah," I said, "I see."

Del's face bloomed angrily. "How am I to know?" she asked tightly. "How am I to

know if I will even have a life to live until I have faced the ishtoya and an-ishtoya, the kaidin and an-kaidin? I must go before them and abase myself, ask their forgiveness, their judgment, their penance. How can I say what I will

do with my life when they may not let me keep it?"

"Oh. I think they'll let you keep--"

"You don't know that, Tiger!"

Clearly I had upset her. "Now, Del--"

"Don't!" she said furiously. "Don't patronize me. Don't dismiss my fear as if it

has no validity. Don't pat me on the head and say you'll make it better.

Don't

promise to chase away the shadows because you don't know what they are,"

Well, no, I couldn't. Unless she told me, which she hadn't.

"I don't want to lose you," I said. Then regretted it instantly.

Luckily, Del only bristled. "You don't have me, Tiger."

"No," I agreed, "not lately. You and your loki obsession--"

She said something nasty about the loki in succinct, scatalogicat Southron.

"I imagine they'd like that," I pointed out. "After, all, you're the one who explained it to me... how they're attracted to men and women 'in congress,'

as

you put it."

"They are." Only her lips moved; her teeth were tightly locked.

"Well, then, we don't have anything to worry about," I smiled sweetly. "Do we?"

Del swung around and walked.

It was the stud who warned us. Maybe by then Del and I both were sick of walking, saying nothing but thinking a lot; we simply didn't notice. But the stud did, luckily.

Ears snapped forward. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled noisly, as horses do when

they're unsure. And then he stopped dead in his tracks, popping the reins taut

in my hand.

I smelled them before I saw them. I remembered the smell well--the putrid, musky

stench of death--from brief captivity in the canyon. "I thought you said the hounds were gone."

"They were." Steel sang as Del unsheathed her sword. "They went back through the

canyon after you, then simply disappeared."

"Well, they're back now."

We weren't following a path, exactly, just making our way on the strip of ground

between canyon and cliff wall. Trees hedged both sides thickly, close-grown or

more widely scattered, while rain dripped from bare branches. There was little

coverage, but the hounds knew how to use what of it there was.

Wet leaves don't make as much noise as dry ones. Water muffles sound, glues them

together, provides a soggy carpet. But they aren't soundless, either, and I heard the hounds around us. Front and sides and back.

No trap-canyon, this time. This time they didn't need it.

It was, as always--at least to me--a day of grays: ash, iron, olive. And now the

hounds as well, dull slate and dappled silver, at one with the rain and at one

with the cliff, paying mind to neither. In silence they slipped through the trees, heads dipped low, tails tucked, manes flopping on big shoulders.

One-handed, I drew my sword. "What in hoolies do they want?"

"Us," she said.

"You."

Del glanced at me sharply. "You don't mean--"

"I do. You went up that trap-canyon wall and they came in after you. It wasn't

me they wanted. They only chased me because you were already gone. Even then, they were rather halfhearted about it. What are there--thirty? Forty? Fifty?

More than enough to pull the stud down, and yet they really did nothing at all."

"Nothing," she echoed. "I've seen the stud, Tiger, and I've seen you. That's not