Sword Sworn

TWENTY-NINE

By Del’s tense silence, I knew she was worried. It’s not often you attempt to drop a stallion to the ground when he has no interest in going there. But Nayyib was right: the only way we could get the slash stitched up was to put the stud out of commission temporarily. He wasn’t a man; you couldn’t explain to him what needed to be done and why and expect him to agree. Nor could you get him drunk, and none of us was strong enough to knock him unconscious. So while Del and I got him unsaddled, with blankets and pouches pulled off and deposited on the ground, Nayyib calmly rigged a lip-twitch and a rope harness, winding wide strips of his spare burnous around the hemp to pad it.

"Hobble his back legs." He handed me a pair of sheepskin-padded hobbles he’d conjured from his saddlepouches. "And bind up his tail."

Very dictatorial, Nayyib, when it came to horses. But I deferred, impressed by his confidence and quick thinking. Carefully I did as he asked, snugging the padded cuffs around both back legs. They were shorter than usual, also, meant to keep the legs closer together. A long leather thong controlled the tail, which was long enough — and strong enough — to blind a man if it slashed tough horsehair across his eyes.

"Hold him a moment," Nayyib told Del quietly, and as she took the bridle the kid efficiently set about looping padded ropes around various parts of the stud’s body. "All right," he said. "Tiger, come hold his head. Del, take this rope. When I say to pull as hard as you can.

It sound risky to me. "What will you be doing?"

Nayyib’s smile was brief. "I’ll be on the other leg. If all works well, he’ll go over onto that right shoulder. Once he does, sit on his head. Hold him there. Use the twitch to take his mind off everything else." He glanced at Del. "Keep that rope snubbed tight. I’ll stitch as fast as I can. If I’m lucky, the rear hobbles will keep him from kicking my head off."

"Then what?" I asked.

"Once I’m done, I’ll clear out. Del, you’ll loosen your rope. Tiger, you get off his head. He’ll come up lunging, but the hobbles will hold him in place. All right?"

"Yes," Del said. I nodded.

Nayyib drew in a deep breath, moved to the stud’s left fore. "Pull, Del!"

She pulled. Nayyib grabbed the left leg and folded it up. The stud flung his head, which nearly decapitated me, then went down hard on the ground, rolling onto his right shoulder as the kid had hoped. I was aware of Del working swiftly to snub and hold taut her rope. Then I plopped myself down on the stud’s head up behind his ears, where the neck began, and caught hold of the rope twitch in my left hand. He was breathing hard, muscles twitching, nostrils fluttering with explosive snorts that raised puffs of dust. The visible eye rolled, displaying reddened membranes.

"Hurry up!" I gritted, gripping the twitch and bridle.

My back was to the stud’s body, so I couldn’t view anything Nayyib did. If I glanced to my right, I could see Del leaning against the rope crossing over the stud’s neck But mostly I watched his visible eye, balancing my weight evenly. With a knee on either side of him, one hand locked into the headstall of his bridle and the other tightening the rope twisted around his bottom lip, I realized my gehetties were in a rather perilous position. If he flung his head up, I’d likely be unmanned.

I swore again, spitting a faint sifting of dust from my mouth.

"How is your leg?" Del asked tightly.

"Ask me when we’re done."

Stitching seemed to take forever. But eventually Nayyib warned us to be ready. "Del, loosen the rope just a little. When Tiger gets off his head, give the stud as much slack as you can. He’ll come up hard and fast, but clumsy." He paused. "Tiger?"

"I’m ready."

"Del?"

"It’s loose."

"All right, Tiger."

I let go of twitch and bridle and pushed up and away with planted legs, propelling myself forward. I rolled, crouched, stood, hopped briefly as my left leg complained. Saw Del feeding more rope, then jumping back. Nayyib was near the stud’s head, freeing the twist of rope around his bottom lip. And indeed the stud came up hard and fast, lunging frenziedly. The padded rope slid from his neck and chest, pooled on the ground around his right leg. He wobbled a little, discovering his rear legs were still hobbled, then found his balance. He stuck his big head high in the air, eyeing me, then released a pent-up snort of severe annoyance that sprayed slime in all directions.

I wiped muck from my chest. "Thank you,"

Nayyib held his bridle again, soothing him. Quietly he told me, "You can take those hobbles now."

Ah, and let me get my head kicked off. Smart kid. Smiling crookedly, I limped toward the stud’s rear quarters, sliding my left hand over his spine and rump so he’d know I was there. I carefully avoided the wound, marked by a curving row of neat silk-thread stitches, then bent and quickly untied the padded hobbles and tail thong. And skipped back out of the way with alacrity as the stud took to slashing his tail in indignation.

"There now," Nayyib crooned, and led him forward. "See? Not so bad. An affront to your dignity, I do know, all this abuse, but you will survive it. You are the best of all horses, a stallion among stallions — even if you are a jug-headed ugly son of a goat."

"Hey," I protested.

"Not so bad, not so bad," Nayyib continued, leading the stud in a wide circle. "You’ll have a fierce scar, you will, much like your rider. But you are much more handsome."

Del wandered over to my side. "He’s like a horse-speaker."

I remembered the fair-haired kid we’d met years before at the kymri, a gathering of peoples in the North. "I don’t think Nayyib can read their minds."

"He doesn’t have to. He knows what they need. See? The stud’s calming."

She was smiling. I watched her watching Nayyib.

Horses weren’t the only thing the kid could handle.

Nayyib brought the stud up to me. "I would recommend we go on," he said. "The cut hasn’t interfered with his muscles, so he can be ridden. But if we stay the night here, or even if we go back to the oasis, which isn’t that far, he’ll stiffen. Best to keep him moving."

Del glanced at me warily. "To Julah?"

I shrugged, taking the stud’s reins. "Let’s see what happens when I’m in the saddle again."

As Nayyib packed away his supplies again, I set about readying the stud. He was unusually subdued, as if he’d spent all of his temper and strength. Once he was saddled and loaded, I filled a canvas bucket with water from a bota and let him drink. He sucked it up greedily, lifted his dripping muzzle out of the bucket, then shoved it against my chest as if asking me to commiserate.

I smiled, scratching his jaw. "I’m sorry, old son. You didn’t deserve that. It’s me they want to kill, not you."

I packed away the bucket, turned to mount him, and discovered how much a half-crushed leg doesn’t like being asked to bear all my weight. Swearing, I managed to make it up into the saddle, left knee throbbing. So much for the healing I’d encountered at Meteiera. I’d been told any new injuries would be mine to keep; seems like I was repeating old habits.

I turned the stud. "This way. To Julah, right?"

In concert, Del and Nayyib shook their heads.

"East?" I asked reluctantly.

"East," Del confirmed.

"What’s east?" asked Nayyib.

I ran a hand over my face, trying to rein in anger and frustration. "Who in hoolies knows? Something that seems to think I need to be there." A dead woman who spoke to me in dreams. "Look, it doesn’t feel far, whatever it is. If you two want to go on to Julah, go ahead. Maybe I’m supposed to do this alone anyway.

Del shook her head. "If you go east, I go east."

I looked at Nayyib.

He hitched one shoulder in a dismissive half-shrug. "You said I could ride with you to Julah. We’re not there yet."

I sighed deeply. "Fine. Let’s go east, shall we?"

East. Toward the sunrise — and whatever else might be lurking out there.

I became dimly aware of voices. Del and Nayyib were talking quietly, as if I weren’t present. I felt rather as if I were waking up from a dream, except I hadn’t been sleeping. I was working like a human lodestone, following the compulsion that pulled me east. For the moment that compulsion had slackened, and I glanced up at the sun. By its position, I knew we’d been riding about two hours.

Then I became aware of the surroundings. A vast ocean of cream-pale sand, sparkling with crystals afire from the sun. The Punja, the deadliest of the South’s deserts.

I pulled up, stopping the stud. Del and Nayyib, reining in also, were staring at me warily. I frowned, scratched idly at facial scars, then reached to pull up a bota hanging from the saddle and slake increasing thirst.

"We need to water the horses," Del said.

I nodded as I unstoppered the bota. "Apparently I’m being allowed time to do just that. Or else whatever it is insisting I come has decided we’re far enough." I knew how it sounded, but it was the only way I could think to describe it. I sucked down water, climbed down out of the saddle, easing onto my left leg, and unhooked another bota. This I emptied into the canvas bucket and let the stud drink.

"You said it wasn’t far," Del remarked.

"I said it felt like it wasn’t far. I can’t say for sure." I shook my head, grimacing. "I sound sandsick. Hoolies, maybe I am."

"No." Del’s voice was quiet. "You have instincts I have always trusted — and now more than instincts."

Ah yes, more. Magic. Magery. I’d used a little on Umir’s book, spelling the lock, and then shied away from the idea like a spooked horse.

As the stud drank, I squinted across the expanse of sand, sheil-ding my eyes with the flat of one hand. The Punja had killed more people than would ever be counted, sucking the life from their bodies, scouring flesh from their bones. Whole villages had been swallowed by sand carried miles in dangerous simooms, burying all signs of life. Caravans, crossing from oasis to oasis, paying huge amounts of money to guides who knew the Punja, often disappeared despite their best efforts to anticipate the dangers. Sometimes you just can’t anticipate everything.

I certainly hadn’t, when Del had hired me to guide her across the Punja. I’d have never guessed a few years later we’d still be together as sword-mates, bed-mates, life-mates.

I smiled, recalling those first days. The ice-maiden from the North, summoning frigid, killing banshee storms with her magical sword. Boreal was long dead, broken and buried in the chimney formation in the mountains by Julah. Beit al’Shahar. My Nortern jivatma, Samiel, was there as well, whole and unblemished, left behind as the chimney collapsed.

"Find me," the woman had said, " and take up the sword."

If the sword she meant was Samiel, why were we out here in the Punja, at least two day’s ride from Beit al’Shahar? I had inti-tally wanted to go get the jivatma, if possible; it was why we’d headed for the mountains in the first place, once out of Haziz. It hadn’t felt like a compulsion then, merely a plan. Something I wanted to do.

Now, here, I needed to do it. Yet there was no jivatma anywhere nearby. That I knew. So maybe I was meant to find another sword, a different sword.

Unless only the woman was here for me to find. Or what was left of her.

Shaking my head, I packed the squashable bucket away, hung empty botas back on my saddle, made to remount. Then stopped. Stood there, clinging to the stud.

"What?" Del asked.

I flung up a hand, stopping her from saying more.

Silence, save for the familiar sounds of horses. They shifted position, pawed at sand, shook manes, rattled bit shanks, snorted, chewed at the metal in their mouths. I heard nothing else.

But I felt it.

Abruptly I stuck my foot in the stirrup and swung aboard, ignoring the complaints of my leg. "Turn back," I said urgently. "Simoom!"

I reined the stud around. Del and Nayyib mounted quickly and turned as well.

But that was where the storm came from. Behind us before; now ahead. The first faint haze was visible along the horizon, like a wisp of ruffled silk.

"The other way!" I shouted, sinking heels into the stud. Maybe my sense of direction was forever skewed, thanks to — whatever.

We ran, but the wind and sand ran faster. The storm spilled across the land like a vast, rolling wave, filling the sky from horizon to sun. The day grew dark.

"There’s no shelter!" Nayyib’s voice, pitched to cut through the first whining of the wind.

No. None. In such circumstances the best bet was to put the horses down and use them as shelter. I suspected Nayyib’s horse was trained for it, if the kid had grown up on a horse farm in the South; but then Iskandar was up near the border, more soil than sand, and he might not know much about simooms. He probably knew even less about the Punja, though he had made it to Haziz. Probably paid a guide.

No guide could help us now. The leading edge of the storm was very close, collecting gouts of sand as it howled across the land. Del’s gelding probably wasn’t trained to lie down — I couldn’t see anyone taking a blue-eyed white horse into the Punja — and the stud, after his experience earlier in the day, would likely refuse all inducements. We didn’t have time to try Nayyib’s trick of cross-tying and hobbling legs.

Knowledge flickered deep in my mind. Fear followed swiftly, churning in my belly.

Not me, I said. Don’t expect me to do this.

But of course something did. Something inside. Something that had been teased back into awareness with the writings in Umir’s book, full of spells, incantations, conjurations. Despite what I’d said, I hadn’t quite read it all, but enough. More than enough.

I could build us shelter, the way I had conjured a boat on ioSkandi, to search for Del.

If I didn’t do so, we’d likely all die.

Swearing, I reined the stud in. Del and Nayyib hadn’t seen me and kept riding. But I had more to think about than when or if they’d realize where I was. I turned the stud loose and swung to face the storm.

It was magnificent and malevolent. Even the sun was shrouded, hazed by the towering storm. By the time I counted to ten on my hands — well, to eight — it would have us.

I went into my head, thinking. Wind was air. It was air that carried sand. Air was the impetus. If the air itself could be used, could be manipulated, I could make us shelter.

I wore no burnous, only dhoti, sandals, harness, and a sword across my back. It was not a jivatma. Was just a sword. But I was a sword-dancer, and in my hands a sword, any sword, could be made to conquer anything.

I unsheathed. Slitted my eyes against wind and sand. Shut the hilt in both hands as firmly as I could and raised the sword. Set the blade into the air over my head. Felt the wind buffet it, sand grains hissing against steel. I closed my eyes, bit into my lip. Even as I stood there, my flesh was abrading. Chest and legs stung.

I heard someone call. Del, then Nayyib. I shut them out.

Dished them away. Made myself alone. Just me — and the simoom.

I saw the spell in my head. Unraveled the words I’d read but days before, comprehending only half of them. I knew the words but not their meanings. I was but a first-level mage, as sword-dancer skill was measured. Full of potential but raw, wild, dangerous.

Abbu Bensir learned that.

We stood no chance unless I surrendered denial and accepted truth. As I had to Del, saying the word. Naming myself.

Mage. Whelped upon a spire in the Stone Forest, weeks away from here.

I gripped the sword, felt two thumbs and four fingers. Four. Slowly brought the blade down, sundering the sky.

The fabric of the storm, the heavy curtain of sand, split apart. Poured around me, roaring. Sand whirled by, carried on wind. But wind was merely air, and I could command it.

Mage I might be, but I was also the Sandtiger, and that I valued more than magic. The greatest sword-dancer legendary Alimat had ever produced. No one, and nothing, could defeat me. Not even a simoom.

Paltry, petty storm. Insignificant.

I grinned into it, knowing no sand would touch my scarred, stubbled face, scour out fragile, gelid eyes. I had parted the simoom, cut through its gritty fabric, shattered gemstones made of crystal, and gave us room to live.

In a matter of moments, the storm, like torn silk, flapped itself into shreds. The curtain of sand fell to the earth. Crystals dulled, then flared anew into dusty sunlight. Haze dissipated. The air began to warm.

The sword was still in my hands, tip set against sand. Slowly, aware of trembling in my arms, I raised it, resheathed it, then turned to see if I was alone.

No. Three horses and two humans. A man and a woman. The latter two knelt on the sand, hands shielding their heads. But slowly the heads raised. The faces opened. Del, whose smile was as odd as it was faint, spat grit out of her mouth. Then she stood up.

"Nicely done," she observed. "That one will come in handy."

Nayyib still knelt, looking dazed as well as windblown. "That was magery?"

Del laughed. "That was Tiger."

I bent, ruffled my hair vigorously to free it of the worst of the sand. Nothing had gotten through once I’d applied myself to cutting open the storm to divert it around us, but we’d gotten a faceful before then. The horses, being horses, not foolish humans, had promptly turned their rumps to the wind. Now they shook violently, banging stirrups and botas against sandy sides. A cloud of fine dust rose from each of them.

I staggered, laughed, cut it off sharply, lest I lose the last shreds of self-control. "Ah, yes, the wonderul sensation of bones turned to water. And one hoolies of a headache." I shut my eyes, pressed the heels of my hands to either side of my head. "Why don’t they warn you about this part of it? The book didn’t say a word."

Del came to me, put one hand on my arm. "Are you all right?"

"No, but I’ll likely survive it." I opened my eyes and looked at her. "Maybe you can put cool cloths on my brow and croon to me, the way Nayyib crooned to the stud. Lay me down, cradle my poor, aching head in your lap, stroke my tender temples, and tell me repeatedly I am a man among men."

Del brushed a rime of sand from my forehead. "I rather think not."

"A mage among mages?"

"No more that than the other."

"Why not?" I asked plaintively. "Didn’t I just save your life?"

Del opened her mouth to answer, but Nayyib’s voice intruded. "Come look at this!"

Del turned. I took my hands away from my temples. "What?"

He stood several paces away, staring at something. At several somethings, actually: odd, lumpy shapes uncovered by the storm. Simooms swallowed, but they also uncovered.

Del and I walked over. It was a scattered graveyard of wood boards, scoured smooth like gray satin over years of burial and disinterrment. The Punja, goaded by storm, had tossed back one of its victims.

Nayyib knelt, fingering a section of wood. An edge showed, and inches of a flat surface. He locked fingers around it, pulled up with effort. The board broke free, showering sand. Nayyib sat down hastily, then held up the section of wood. "What is it from, do you think?"

I took it from him, studying it. "Looks like part of a wagon." I gestured to the other remnants poking above the sand, like tilted grave markers. "Likely the rest of it is still buried."

"Would it be whole?" Del asked. "If we dug it up?"

Aside from the fact that we couldn’t do that, lacking shovels, I doubted it. "It’s probably been here for years, bascha. The weight of the sand has broken it apart. We’d only find pieces."

Nayyib feigned deep disappointment. "No treasure?"

"Well, likely borjuni on a raid took everything of value and left the wagon — along with the people in it, I’d assume — or a simoom got them. Either way, there’d be nothing left worth digging for." I tossed the board aside. "For all we know, there could be a whole caravan buried under the sand."

Del had wandered to the far side of the wagon remnants. I saw her stop, roll something over with the toe of her sandal, then drop to her knees. She picked up something, examined it, blew a feathering of sand from it, then set it aside. Hastily she began brushing sand away with her hands, but carefully, as if whatever she’d found was fragile.

Curious, I went to see what had caught her attention. Nayyib was still playing with the exposed wood, digging up fragments and sections of boards, stacking them like cordwood.

I stopped next to Del. "What did you find?"

She set it into my hand. Said nothing.

It lay in my palm. Grains of sand remained caught against my flesh, flecks of mineral, a tracery of Punja crystal. The wind- and sand-polished fragment lay atop it, with a faint oily sheen of pearl. It had three worn protrustions, and a hole through the middle.

My hand clamped shut.

"Bone," Del said.

Human bone.

Find me, the woman had begged.

I looked down at Del’s excavations. I didn’t recognize the hoarse timbre of my voice. "What else is there?"

She bent close to the sand, blew it away from the suggestion of a shape. She picked it out of the sand, smoothed and blew it free of dust and crystal, then offered it to me.

Time-weathered, sand-polished bone. A slender piece perhaps five inches long. Curved.

In one hand: vertebra. In the other: rib.

I fell down to my knees. "She’s here. She’s here. We’ve found her."

Del asked, "Who?" Then she stilled. "You think — the woman you dreamed about? The skeleton?"

I displayed both palms. "Bone."

Del’s eyes were full of wonder as she lightly touched the rib in my right hand. "This is what brought you here?"

"I think so."

Her eyes lifted to mine. "Who do you think she was? A mage?"

"I don’t know," I said. I locked eyes with Del. "But I can find out."

"How can you — ?" She broke it off. "Oh, Tiger. No."

"I did it back at the Vashni encampment."

Her face was pale. "It’s dangerous. Remember what Oziri did to you?"

I closed my hands. The bones were warm. "This is the woman in my dreams. The one who told me to find her. Now I have, and I have to know who — and what — she was."

"Tiger," she begged, "don’t do it. You worked magic only a matter of moments ago. You’re weak — you said so yourself. You have a ’hoolies of a headache.’ "

I sat down on the sand. Opened my hands. Gazed at the pearls of the desert. "I have to do this."

So I shut my eyes, and did it.