Sword Sworn

PROLOGUE

The sand was very fine and very pale, like Del’s hair. As her skin had been once; but first the Southron sun, followed by that of the sea voyage and its salt-laden wind — and our visit to the isle of Skandi — had collaborated insidiously to gild her to a delicate creamy peach. She was still too fair, too Northern, to withstand the concerted glare of this sun for any length of time without burning bright red, but definitely not as fair as she’d been when we first met.

Oh. That’s right. I was talking about the sand.

Anyway, it was very fine, and very pale, and I had worked carefully to smooth it with a good-sized peeling of the skinny, tall, frond- and beard-bedecked palm tree overlooking the beach, the ocean beyond, the ship I’d hired in Skandi — and then I had ruined all that meticulous smoothness by drawing in it.

A circle.

A circle.

I had thought never to enter one again.

But I smoothed the sand, and I drew the circle, and then I stepped across the line into the center. The center precisely.

Thunder did not crash. Rain did not fall. Lightning did not split the sky asunder. The gods, if any truly existed, either didn’t care that I had once again entered a circle, or else they were off gallivanting around someone else’s patch of the world.

"Hah," I muttered, indulging myself with a smirk.

"Hah, what?" she asked, from somewhere behind me.

I didn’t turn. "I have done the undoable."

"Ah."

"And nothing has smited me."

"Smitten."

"Nothing has smitten me."

"Yet."

Now I did turn. She stood hipshot in the sand, with legs reaching all the way up to her neck. They were mostly bare, those legs; she habitually wore, when circumstances did not prohibit, a sleeveless, high-necked leather tunic that hit her about mid-thigh. In the South she also wore a loose burnous over the leather tunic, so as to shield her flesh from the bite of the sun, but we were not in the South. We were on an island cooled by balmy ocean breezes, and she had left off most of such mundane accoutrements as clothing that covered her body.

I did say she had legs up to her neck. Don’t let that suggest there wasn’t a body in between. Oh, yes. There was.

"Lo, I am smitten," I announced in tones of vast masculine appreciation.

Once she might have hit me, or come up with a devastating reprimand. But she knew I was joking. Well, not entirely — I do appreciate every supple, sinuous inch of her — but that appreciation has been tempered by her, well, temper, out of unmitigated lust into mere gentlemanly admiration.

Mostly.

Del arched one pale brow. "Are you practicing languages and their tenses?"

"What?"

"Smite, smote, smitten."

I grinned at her. "I don’t need to practice. I speak them all now."

The arch in the brow flattened. Del still wasn’t sure how to take jiokes about my new status. Hoolies, joking about it was all I could do, since I didn’t understand much about the new status myself.

Del decided to ignore it. "So. A circle."

I felt that was entirely self-evident and thus regarded her in fulsomely patient silence.

Her expression was carefully blanked. "And you’re in it."

I nodded gravely. "So is my sword."

Now she was startled. "Sword?"

I hefted it illustatively.

"That’s a stick, Tiger."

I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. "And here you’ve been telling me for years I have no imagination." I pointed with said stick. "Go get yourself one. I put a few over there, by that pile of rocks."

Both brows shot up toward her hairline. "You want to spar?"

"I do."

"I thought —" But she broke it off sharply. Then had the grace to blush.

Delilah blushing is not anything approaching ordinary. I was delighted, even though the reason for it was not particularly complimentary. "What, you thought I was lying to you, or giving in to wishful thinking? Maybe fooling myself altogether about developing new skills and moves?"

She did not look away — Del avoids no truths, even the hard ones — but neither did the blush recede.

I shook my head. "I thought you understood what all the weeks of physical training have been about."

"Recovery," she said. "Getting fit."

"I have recovered, and I am fit."

She did not demur; it was true. "But you did all that without a circle."

So I had. And then some. Though I had yet to sort out how I had managed it. A man entering his fourth decade cannot begin to compete with the man in his second. But even my knees of late had given up complaining.

Maybe it was the ocean air.

Or not.

It was the ’or not’ that made me nervous.

Clearing my throat, I declared, "I will dance my own dances, Del."

"But —" Again she silenced herself.

But. A very heavy word, that ’but,’ freighted with all manner of innuendo and implication.

But.

But, she wanted to ask, how does a man properly grip a sword when he’s missing the little fingers on both hands? But, how does he keep that grip if a blade strikes his? But, how can he hope to overcome an opponent in the circle? How can he win the dance? How can he, who carries a price on his head, win back his life in the ritualized combat of the South, when he has been cast out of it by his own volition? When the loss of the fingers precludes all former skill?

But.

I saw the assumption in her eyes, the slight flicker of concern.

"I have every intention of dancing," I said quietly, "and none at all of dying." For as long as possible.

"Can you?" she asked, frank at last.

"Dance? Yes. Win? Well, we’ve never properly settled that question, have we? Some days you’ll win, other days I will." I shrugged. How many of those days I had left was open to interpretation. "As for the others I’ll dance with… well, we’ll just have to wait and see." . "Tiger-"

In the distance, the stud neighed ringingly. I blessed him for his timing, though he wouldn’t have much luck finding the mare he wanted. "Get the ’sword,’ Del."

She held her ground. "If I win this dance, will you stop?"

"If you win this dance, I’ll just have to practice harder."

"Then you still mean to go back to the South."

"I told you that. Yes." I studied her. "What, did you think I meant to live out my life here on this benighted island?" Which had nonetheless,. saved our lives in more ways than one.

"I don’t know." Her tone was a mixture of frustration, annoyance, and helplessness. "I have no inkling as to what you will or will not do, Tiger. You’re not predictable any more."

Any more. Which implied that once I had been.

I bared my teeth at her. "Well, good. Then I’m not boring." Once again I waved my stick. "The sooner we get to it, the sooner we’ll know."

Her expression suggested she already knew. Or thought she did.

"Not predictable," I reminded her. "Your own words, too."

Del turned on her heel and stalked over to the tree limbs I’d groomed into smooth shafts. There was no point, no edge, no crosspiece, no grip, no proper pommel. They were not swords. They were sticks. But whichever one she chose would do.

"Hurry up," I said. "We’re burning daylight, bascha."

The world, through glass, is magnified. Small made large. Unseen made visible. Dreams, bound by ungovernable temperaments and unpredictabilities, may do the same, altering one’s vision. One’s comprehension. The known made unknowable.

Grains of sand, slightly displaced. Gently jostled one against another. Gathered. Tumbled. Herded.

I blink. The world draws back. Large is made small; immense becomes insignificant. And I see what moves the sand.

Not water. Not wind.

Blood.

First, they rape her. Then slash open her throat. Twice, possibly thrice. The bones of her spine, left naked to the day in the ruin of her flesh, gleam whitely in the sun.

Blood flows. Gathers sand. Makes mud of malnourished dust. Is transformed by the sun into nothingness.

Even blood, in the desert, cannot withstand the ceaseless heat.

It will take longer for the body, for flesh and bone are not so easily consumed. But the desert will win. Its victories are boundless.

They might have left her alive, to die of thirst. It was their mercy to kill her swiftly. Their laughter was her dirge. Their jest was to leave a sword within reach, but she lacked the strength to use it against herself.

As the sun sucks her dry, withering flesh on bone, she turns her head upon the sand and looks at me out of eyes I recognize.

"Take up the sword," she says.

I jerk, gasping out of sleep into trembling wakefulness, tasting sand in my mouth. Salt. And blood.

"It’s time," she says.

Her breath, her death, is mine.

"Find me," she says, "and take up the sword."

Del felt me spasm into actual wakefulness. She turned toward me and sleepily inquired, "What is it?"

I offered no answer. I couldn’t.

"Tiger?" She propped herself up on an elbow. "What is it?"

I stared up at the dark skies. Something was in me, something demanding I answer. I felt very distant. I felt very small. "It’s time." Echoing the dream.

"Time?"

The words left my mouth without conscious volition. "To go home." To go home. To take up the sword.

After a moment she asked, "Are you all right? You don’t sound like yourself."

I didn’t feel like myself.

She placed a hand upon my chest, feeling my heart beat. "Tiger?"

"I just — I know. It’s time." No more than that. It seemed sufficient.

Find me.

"Are you sure?"

Take up the sword.

"I’m sure."

"All right." She lay down again. "Then we’ll go."

I could feel her tension. She didn’t think it was a good idea. But that didn’t matter. What mattered is that it was time.