Sword Bound

Chapter 43

I PUT MY HEAD DOWN VERY CLOSE TO HERS, spoke so softly I knew no one else would hear what I said. “Bascha. Whatever happens, pretend you’re still very ill.”

Awareness and understanding flickered in her eyes. Still on my knees, I turned to Wahzir. “You said she was better. This isn’t better.”

“I said she was alive,” he clarified. “That’s all that was expected of me.”

“She can’t leave like this,” I snapped. “And we certainly aren’t staying here once I’ve done what Umir wants. What do you recommend? Can’t you heal her?”

The hunger in Wahzir’s eyes was replaced with a smoldering anger. “I kept her alive. I can kill her also.”

“Umir wouldn’t like it.” Still on my knees, I looked at Tariq and Hamzah. “One of you had best go get my sword.”

“Nonsense,” Hamzah said curtly. “There’s nothing in that sword. You just want it close enough to use if you get the chance.”

“Then ask—oh. You’re here.”

Umir came in. He carried the book almost reverently. Khalid, accompanying him, had my sword. Very helpful of him.

“That’s not wise,” Hamzah warned. “Breaking codes and oaths does not make him any less dangerous a sword-dancer.”

Umir looked at him. “You have a sword, as do Tariq and Khalid. But it doesn’t matter if the blade is here. His woman is ill, and I hold his daughter. Use sense.”

I stayed on my knees.

Despite the dimness and shadows of Wahzir’s quarters, I saw color come into Hamzah’s face. He was angry, angry and embarrassed to be ridiculed for his concern. I very carefully kept my expression blank. Annoying him was one thing, angering him was quite another. Hamzah was not impressed by Umir the way Tariq and Khalid were. That made Hamzah dangerous. And Umir, I thought, didn’t know it.

“Is my daughter safe?” I asked the tanzeer.

Umir was insulted. “Of course she is!”

“Let me have a moment with Del. Then I’ll open your book.”

“Hurry!” Wahzir cried.

I’d been kneeling and I remained so. I turned back to Del, saw her watching me expectantly. She didn’t know all the answers, but she knew what the questions were. I smiled at her, then pulled back the covers. She still wore her short leather tunic. I placed one hand over her belly. Something inside me leaped. It made me gasp. This was no kindly power.

I leaned down, rested my head against the cot frame. Shut my eyes tightly. Felt a spark of something coiled down deep unwind itself. It found my spine. Ran up the cord to my neck, then down over shoulder to arm and the hand spread beneath it. I thrummed with it. Throbbed.

I saw Del’s face. Wonder filled it. But she recalled what I’d said. She lay very still, closed her eyes, did nothing they would expect of a recovered patient.

“Finish!” Wahzir shouted.

Umir turned on him. “Be silent, or I will send you from this room, and you’ll see nothing of the book. Nothing of the spells.”

Wahzir closed his eyes, nodded. Lips trembled. I thought any moment he might faint from expectation.

“Open it.” Umir’s eyes were very cool as he looked at me. “You know the cost if you can’t. Or won’t.”

I drew in a deep breath. Stood. Gestured to the table. “Put it there.”

Wahzir leaped to the table. He pushed aside everything, knocking various bottles and other impediments out of the way. They fell to the floor, spilling contents, shattering, rolling away. Umir quietly set the locked book down. Tariq and Hamzah stood by the door. Khalid was near Del’s alcove. Umir was closest of all. Wahzir hovered.

I sat down on the bench. Touched fingertips to smooth, aged leather. Once I had read the book; once, when I had power. I knew if I opened it, I could read it again. That gift was Meteiera’s. What had been forgotten in the crumbled chimney as I poured out the magic was now remembered.

Umir’s tone was no longer as calm. “Open it!”

I put fingertips on the lock, on the hasp and latch. I let the words come up out of my soul. Spoke them very quietly.

The lock clicked and undid itself. The book fell open. As it did so, Del was up from the alcove, yanking Khalid’s sword out of its sheath. Of the items Wahzir had sent spilling from the table, one remained: a knife. And as Del killed Khalid, I grabbed the knife, flipped open the Book of Udre-Natha, dug the blade deep into the gutter between pages, and sliced down through the gut stitching holding pages to lambskin. A hard, heartfelt toss into the air sent pages flying.

Umir and Wahzir screamed in unison, terrible, stricken screams of shock, horror, denial.

Light rained upon us, blinding bright. Bursts grew tails, flashed into darkness. Pages were caught as the light began to spin, to spin and spin. The whirlpool was of writing, not of light. Words flying in the air.

Del crossed swords with Hamzah. Tariq was so taken aback by the suddenness of events that he hadn’t yet unsheathed. Khalid was down, dead. Beneath the body lay my sword. I shoved Khalid’s body aside, grabbed the sword, and took on Tariq as he finally unsheathed. He fell back out of the doorway, bleeding badly from the gut wound that would kill him.

Hamzah was good. But Del was better. She left him unarmed, wounded, and spun to face Umir. “No more!” she shouted. “No more of you!”

Delilah took his head.

All dead now, save Wahzir. He was grabbing page after page, holding them close to his chest as he bent and bent, trying to grab more. He chanted something under his breath. Somehow, he looked pitiful.

Then the chanting stopped. The clutching at pages stopped. He opened his mouth in wonder. And then he screamed with joy. “Whole again!”

Oh, hoolies.

“Run,” I told Del, who wasted no time doing precisely that. She leaped Tariq’s body, half-turned to look for me. I leaped as well, aware of singing in my bones.

“—not empty—!” Wahzir shouted.

Del and I ran down the corridor to the large, domed entryway.

“Sula,” she gasped. “I know where she is—”

“Go. I’ll get horses for us.”

Del ran, sword blade flashing. I turned toward the massive front door. Just as I reached for the heavy latch, something caught me and threw me down. I slammed into the marble floor. Every bone in my body felt shattered.

I made it to hands and knees. Everything in me was filled with light, with sound. Hair rose up on my flesh. Fingernails bled light instead of blood. My eyes burned in sockets.

“Tiger!”

Del was back. I tried to see her, but the light wouldn’t permit it. I saw nothing but blinding bursts. On hands and knees, I shuddered. The light within was singing.

“Tiger!”

It was difficult to hear her through the song.

I felt her hand on my shoulder. “I’ve got Sula. Tiger—let’s go!”

I vomited. Light fell out of my mouth.

“—I want it all—” Wahzir screamed, echoing down the corridor. “Don’t go to him!”

Don’t go to him. Don’t go to—him?

Magic attracts magic. Wahzir knew the only person in the palace who had any magic was me. Some of the power he’d tried to claim while clutching at pages had escaped him. Wild magic, coming to me. Strings of words, writhing through the air.

“Go!” I shouted hoarsely at Del. “Get out of here!”

Del yanked open the heavy front door. Through a scrim of brilliant light I saw Sula in her arms. Then both of them were gone.

The Book of Udre-Natha was a grimoire, a compendium of magic, of arcane knowledge and spellcraft written down over centuries. I’d learned as I read it two years before. Learned so much. But now the power in the book, attracted to magic, came flying to the foreign magic born of ioSkandi. Words. Lines of printing. Diagrams. I had an idea now why mages went mad and leaped from spires.

“Come back!” Wahzir screamed.

“Fight later,” I said breathlessly to both the magics within me. “If I’m dead, you’re dead.”

Inside my body I felt a pause. Light winked out of my eyes. I grabbed my fallen sword, scrabbled to my feet, ran through the open doorway. Del was on her white gelding with Sula in front of her. She ponied by lead-rope a buckskin already saddled and bridled. The spray of the fountain put droplets in his mane. Both horses bore saddle pouches and botas.

“Alric’s horse?” she asked.

“He can’t go,” I said. “Not again. I’ll have to take another.”

Del looked beyond me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I turned. Wahzir stood in the doorway. His eyes bled light.

Oh, hoolies.

I ran to Alric’s horse, threw myself into the saddle, and turned him hard toward the gate. “I’m sorry,” I said. And to Del, “Go!”

Go she did.

I knew when we were free: Del, my daughter, and I. I felt Wahzir’s questing attenuate, die. He claimed magic now, was no longer an empty man. He wanted what I had, wanted the rest of the magic, but we were free of him for now, and he had other things to deal with.

I told her we were free. And so Del wanted to know everything, and everything took us all the way to the big oasis. There we went about our usual chores: found a tree, untacked the horses, unrolled our blankets, watered the horses, relieved ourselves, sorted through pouches. What we had never done before, at the oasis, was keep an eye on Sula.

You would never have known she’d been abducted. She didn’t know she’d been abducted. She was fine. She was Sula. She spilled the water I gave her and proceeded to play in the resultant wet sand. Well, a considerable improvement over horse piss.

Del sat cross-legged on her blanket, watching our daughter’s sheer joy in becoming dirty. I tended Alric’s buckskin. He was tired clear through, not unexpectedly. We had only galloped away from Umir’s palace a brief distance, as I knew the buckskin couldn’t do more. After that we walked. Khalid and Tariq were dead. Umir was dead. Hamzah may have survived, but he was wounded, and there was no reason to chase after me. No Umir meant no bounty.

I scrubbed and brushed Alric’s horse. As much as I could, I rid him of salty sweat stains and walked him around. When he felt cool and his breathing eased, I took him to the spring and repeatedly poured water over him with the communal bucket, which resulted in more than a few people expressing annoyance because mud and rivulets now surrounded the spring. I considered explaining that I’d just escaped an evil tanzeer who wanted my sword because of the magic in it, but decided I didn’t really feel like making up a story for people to embroider as it was passed around. I just finished pouring water over the buckskin and walked him back to our tree. Picketed him, collapsed upon my blanket.

Once collapsed, I saw Sula staggering off toward another tree. Someone had a dog. Sula liked dogs. Del went after her, caught a hand, turned her around and brought her back. Sula had no plans to stay with us when a dog was nearby, so Del dug through pouches and came up with a twist of stick cinnamon. She gave it to Sula, told her she could only have it if she stayed on the blanket, whereupon our distractible daughter became very well-behaved.

Del moved close to me. She leaned a shoulder into mine. “Tiger.”

I shifted, putting that arm around her. “What?”

She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I think we should get her a dog.”

I found that utterly baffling. “Why?”

“Because if we don’t, we’ll never keep track of our daughter. I can’t carry cinnamon and sweets with me everywhere she goes. Neither can you.”

Well, no. That was true.

“It can stay outside.”

I remembered Alric telling me their new dog would stay outside. She eventually slept in a big tumbled pile with all the children. Inside.

“Alric’s bitch has puppies.”

“I know Alric’s bitch has puppies. They keep coming over to our house.”

“If Sula had her own, maybe the others would stay away.”

“I don’t think—wait. Wait a moment—” I got up, took three long strides, caught our daughter as she left the blanket at as fast and steady a run as she could manage. Which wasn’t very fast or steady. I bent down, swept her up, carried her back to the blanket. “Your mother said you should stay right here, remember? She gave you a sweet for it.” I looked at Del. “You know, that’s bribery. Do we really want to teach our daughter about bribery?”

“Either that, or put a lead-rope on her.” Del paused. “Or get her a puppy and put a lead-rope on it.”

I set Sula down, looked for the cinnamon stick. Found it in the puddle she’d made earlier. I wiped it off on my burnous, blew at granules, but the sand was too wet to be completely evicted. I sighed and tossed it to Del.

She stretched out on her back, ankles crossed, arms thrust under her head. “Why don’t you take her for a walk?”

“Why?”

“Wear her down so she’ll go to sleep. There’s too much for her to look at here. She’s too excited. She’ll never sleep. Which means we will never sleep.”

“Can I put her on a lead-rope?”

Del laughed. I took my daughter’s small wet hand and led her off the blanket. She fought the restraint and eventually I released her, planning to scoop her up if she headed for trouble. My legs were considerably longer than hers. She did attempt to run off here and there because something caught her eye, thereupon received multiple rescues by her father. It was not a terribly productive walk. She was, as Del had observed, too excited.

But when her steps finally appeared to be a bit more unsteady, I picked her up, cradled her, lugged her back to our camp. I set her down between us and told Del, whose eyes were closed, that she was right.

Del opened her eyes. “Right about what?”

“She needs a dog. Of her own. So she doesn’t try to make friends with every damn dog at every damn oasis.”

In the deepest hour of the night, I woke up. Del slept. Sula slept. Except for insects and snuffling from various types of livestock, it appeared the whole oasis slept. I got up carefully, quietly, looked down at Del and my daughter, then walked off into the darkness.

Out from under trees I saw the entire night sky. Black and black, and so many stars. Thousands and thousands of them. But only one moon. Tonight, it was full. A single baleful eye, glaring down at me.

I drew in a deep breath. Tipped my head back. Closed my eyes.

“I’m just a man,” I said. “Just a sword-dancer. Why in hoolies do you want me?”

A starburst was born behind closed lids. I saw it slash across my vision, trailing smoke and light.

“Why do both of you want me?”

Writing rose within my eyes. Blood-red ink, yellowed page, scratches shaping words. A list of ingredients. A spell to cast.

I had a book inside me. And whatever else was sharing space with it. Light and darkness. Silence and sound.

I closed my hands into fists. Felt all ten fingers where eight used to be. That, I found good. But the rest? Who could say? I couldn’t. I am not a god. I’m just a sword-dancer.

The magics within me laughed.