Sword Singer-Sword Dancer 2 (9 page)

After a moment he quit and turned away, dropping his head to forage in hummocky,

turfy grass. Del paid no mind. She merely climbed up past the cairn and drew Boreal from her sheath.

She faced north. Behind and below her, I could see nothing but Del's back, all

swathed in creamy silk. She lifted the jivatma, held it crosswise to the sun so

that light danced off the blade, then brought it down and kissed the steel once,

twice, thrice, in a gesture of homage and dedication.

"Sulhaya," she said aloud, thanking her Northern gods.

I shivered. In the sun, it was warm, but I was cold to the bone. And then it passed and I was warm again, left with a nagging memory of something I could not

explain.

Sunlight glinted off Boreal's naked blade. Del had not keyed the jivatma, and yet I saw the palest bloom of salmon-silver. As if the sword as well as Del knew

she had come home at last.

Uneasily, I shifted my rump in the saddle. "Bascha--"

Del turned. Her face and posture were transfigured. I did not speak again.

She slid the sword home. The moment had passed; she was Del again, but with a new smile on her lips. A smile I had never seen, and wished it was meant for me.

"So," she said, "I am home. Now it is your decision."

"My decision?"

She gestured at the cairn. "There lies the border."

I had figured as much. But I glared at the cairn anyway; it represented a vast

unknown. A place where sandtigers never roamed.

Her voice was very quiet. "I would understand."

I looked at her. I saw comprehension and compassion in her eyes. She was not quite twenty-one, significantly younger than I in years, far older than I in insight. Sometimes, I hated her for it; now I hated myself. "Would you?"

Judiciously, after a moment, she suggested, "Perhaps not."

Hoolies. Yes she did. As much as I myself did.

And so, perversely, if only to prove her wrong, I rode across the border.

And wished at once I hadn't; there was something wrong here.

Del, apparently oblivious, walked down to catch her grazing gelding. She turned

him, led him up to the stud, mounted silently. And then she looked at me and thanked me, using the Northern word.

"What?" I was distracted.

"Thank you," she repeated, this time in Southron.

Something clammy ran down my spine. "You don't need me." Born of belligerence and discomfort, it came out rather more curtly than I'd intended. (Sometimes the

truth, all tangled in unnamed feelings, makes me a tad bit sullen.) "You don't

need me. Not really. We both know that. You don't need anyone. Not while you carry that sword."

Del frowned a little. And then a corner of her mouth twitched. "In your own special way, you are as invaluable as my sword."

"Uh-huh." I kneed the stud into a walk. "Tell me another one, bascha."

"No," she answered readily. "Because you are fishing, Tiger, and we are nowhere

near a lake."

"Doing what?"

She opened her mouth, shut it, considered me a moment, then opened her mouth again, and told me what fishing was. And what fish were, for that matter.

"You eat them?" I was aghast; fish sounded like revolting creatures, all scales

and fins and gills.

A line drew her brows together. "In all your travels from Harquhal to Julah, surely you must have tasted fish. Julah, I think, is not so far from the ocean... and Harquhal is not so far from the North. Don't men go fishing?"

I scowled. "I've never spent much time in Harquhal... and as for Julah, how should I know how close it is to an ocean? I've never gone past the mountains."

Astonishment parted pale brows and sent them arching toward her hairline.

"Have

you never looked at maps?"

"Of course I've looked at maps. I know the Punja, don't I? I know where all the

domains are, don't I?--and the permanent villages, and all the waterholes. I know--"

Del raised a hand. "Yes. I see. Indeed, forgive me; I do not doubt your wisdom."

So bland her tone, so serene her expression. Which meant she didn't mean any of

what she said, and said it merely for effect. (Or to shut me up.) "I only meant

it seemed odd you are so uncertain of the borders and what lies beyond them."

"And I suppose you are certain."

"I was taught," she said calmly. "It was a part of my apprenticeship, to know the land I meant to traverse. I have put it all up here." She tapped her head.

"In addition to learning the sword-dance, we must also learn mathematics, languages and geography."

Well, it explained why Del and one or two other Northern sword-dancers I'd met

spoke my language so well. Southron is easy to learn, but Desert--the idiom of

the Punja--is not. Del had required me to translate. She knew a little now, having picked it up from me, but mostly we conversed in Southron. It had seemed

natural enough to me.

As for mathematics and geography, the words were completely foreign, nothing more than sounds. My apprenticeship had been given over to the sword-dance only,

to the physical forms and rituals that made sword-dancing so complete. I had spent my years learning how to move, how to fight, how to kill; there had been

room for nothing else.

I shrugged. "We're different people, bascha... born of different customs."

After a moment, she nodded pensively. "Sometimes, I forget. There is always the

circle for us, and the dance... it is difficult to recall there is more to us than swords and circles and dancing. In those ways, we are so alike... in others, so very different."

Downright voluble, was Del. Crossing the border into the North apparently unlocked a lot of the privacy she hoarded so carefully, freeing her to speak of

things we neither of us usually brought up.

"Yes, well, you're a woman and I'm a man," I pointed out affably. "There are bound to be differences."

Del's face was expressionless. "Bound to be," she agreed, "even when there should be none."

"Oh, Del--now, let's not start that. You know I'm the first one to give you credit for what you've accomplished. Hoolies, bascha, I'm the one who spars with

you, remember? I know what you're capable of. Do I hold back? Do I give way?

Do

I treat you differently because you're a woman?"

She considered it a moment. "Not as much as you used to."

"Sulhaya," I said sourly, and subsided into silence.

Del didn't say much, either, the rest of the day. She seemed to cherish every step of the gelding that took her farther away from the South, while I caught myself, every now and then, looking back over my shoulder. Soon, too soon, the

vastness of the desert was replaced with the immediacy of the North; there was

no longer anything I could claim familiarity with. I was truly a stranger, cut

off from the things I knew.

I hunched on the stud and lost myself to thought, so accustomed to his rhythms

that I could ignore him with impunity, except when he chose otherwise. For the

moment, he didn't; he plodded onward, upward, ears flicking in all directions,

brass bridle ornamentation jangling with every bob of his head.

All around us the ground swelled like boils on a butt. Above us crouched the mountains, waiting to hem us in.

I shivered once. Shifted in the saddle. Shifted again, scowling northward toward

the mountains. Opened my mouth to say something to Del but shut it again, with a

snap, and disliked myself intensely for nearly speaking aloud.

But something here was wrong.

It lifted the hairs on my body. Something stirred against my scalp. It itched in

response and I scratched viciously, knowing perfectly well it wasn't a nagging

pest but something unknown. Something undefinable. And something that might, in

Del's eyes, make me an utter fool.

I drew in a deep breath, trying to shake off the increasing sensation of wrongness. I meant only to blow air out again, but words spilled free instead.

"I just don't like it."

It surprised even me, slipping out that way, so clipped and definitive. Del snapped her head around and stared at me, upper body moving with the subtle rhythms of her mount. "Don't like what?"

I scowled down at the clipped mane of the stud. My fingers, of their own volition, picked at the loose weave of braided cotton reins. I saw wide fingernails, some curiously ridged, others squashed, and scarred, ore-pocked knuckles. The weight I'd lost in captivity had returned with a decent diet, but

the scars were reminders of a more permanent sort. It hadn't been all that long

since Del and I had escaped the tanzeer Aladar's imprisonment: me, from his gold

mine; Del from unwanted attentions. A matter of months, only.

"Tiger--what don't you like?"

There it was again. And I had no better answer. "I don't know," I said grudgingly. "It."

"It," she echoed blankly, after a startled consideration.

I lifted shoulders and rolled them, testing the fit of the harness and the weight of my sword. No, not mine; Theron's. "Bascha--don't you feel something?"

"Oh, yes," she answered readily.

It relieved me immeasurably. "There. See? I'm not crazy. There is something odd... something uncanny--"

"Odd?" she asked. "I think not. What I feel is home."

Yes, well, she would. But me, I didn't. I felt decidedly discomfited. "Del--"

She halted her speckledy gelding. Accordingly, the stud also stopped. Del set the flat of her hands against the low pommel of her saddle and leaned forward on

stiffened arms, shifting weight from rump to wrists. "What you feel," she said,

"is frightened."

"Fri--"

"Frightened," she repeated, overriding my startled protest. "You have never been

out of the South before. You have never left home before."

"Del, I'm not a child--"

"Children adapt to change more easily than adults." Her face was serious. "I know what you feel. I felt it myself, when I went south to find Jamail. Once I

crossed the border from my land into yours, I knew I could not go back again until the job was finished. I knew myself cut off, denied my former life; that

what I had to do was more important than anything else in my life--"

"But I don't have a job." Rudely, I interrupted. "I'm just here because I felt

like coming along."

Del sighed and tucked a fallen lock of hair behind an ear.

I set my teeth and tried to be patient, "There's something else," I told her.

"Something more. Tell me I'm crazy if you want, but I feel it. I know it's here."

Del looked around. Each step took us a little higher, rising steadily out of the

vast flatness of the South. Here, spangled with hills and rises and hollows, it

was hard to believe the Punja even existed. "It might rain," she offered at last. "Perhaps that's what you feel."

"Hooiies, bascha, we're not talking rain, here--we're talking something else entirely, something serious." I glared at her. "And if you don't feel it, you're

deaf, dumb and blind."

Her jaw tautened. "Am I?"

I drew in a deep breath. Shoved silken sleeve to elbow and bared a muscled forearm. Sure enough, the dark hairs were standing on end. "Well?" I asked.

Del looked at my arm. Looked at me. Something was in her face, some form of inner turmoil that she fought to keep from showing itself too freely. I watched

how carefully she considered the words she intended to use, and I saw her decide

on them. "I think perhaps you have convinced yourself there is something odd--"

"Convinced myself?" I didn't let her finish. "Oh, no, bascha, this took no convincing. This is real. I'm not imagining anything."

Del sighed a little. "You yourself have told me you don't believe in magic, that

for you, it doesn't exist--"

"What I've told you is that I don't like it," I said clearly. "Oh, it exists, all right. How, why or in what forms, I can't explain. All I know is that most

people don't understand how to use it, and so they use it wrong." I shook my head, glancing around uneasily. "There is something about the North--"

"There is nothing about the North," she interrupted curtly. "It is about you.

About the Sandtiger, who puts no stock in what others may believe, ridiculing their emotions. And now he can't deal with his own." She unhooked a foot and threw a leg over the saddle, sliding down to wait for me on the ground. "Come down, Tiger, and I will show you what you feel are superstitions."

"What?"

She stared up at me. "We will settle this, Tiger, once and for all, so I don't

have to listen to your muttering." She stabbed a finger at the ground. "Come down here."

I considered pointing out that her tone left something to be desired--she might

have asked, instead of commanding--but I decided arguing wasn't worth it. So I

stepped off the stud and waited.

Del walked away from the horses and gestured for me to follow. I did, grudgingly, and halted as she did, in a hollow between two hummocky little mounds.

"Well?" I asked.

"Unsheathe the sword and plant it in the ground." She didn't smile. "Pretend it's a man's belly."

I looked warily at the ground, then at her. "What's supposed to happen?"

"Nothing," Del said, between set teeth. "Nothing at all will happen, and then you'll see you're spouting nonsense."

I sighed. "Fine. Just fine, bascha... take a man at his word."

"I'll take the sword's word."

I scowled at her. She was being purposely obscure simply to irritate me. (It nearly always does, too.) But this time I refused to let Del win; I unsheathed

Theron's dead sword and plunged the blade into the earth.

Nothing happened.

"There," Del said, "you see--"

Indeed, I did see, for as long as I was able. And then the ground around us exploded.

For a single insane moment, I wanted to laugh out loud. I wanted to rub her face