Sword Sworn

THREE

Flesh has turned to leather beneath the merciless sun. Eye sockets are scoured clean. Teeth shine in an ivory rictus. Wind, sand, and time have stripped away the clothing. She wears bone, now, little more, scrubbed to match the Punja’s crystalline pallor. Modesty lies in rills of sand blown in drifts across her torso —

I woke up with a start as Del came into the room, creaking the door. Completely disoriented from the dream fragment, I stared at her blankly, slowly piecing back awareness, the recognition that I was still in the half-cask I’d ordered brought up and filled with hot water. That the water had cooled. That there was a real possibility I might never move again.

Del’s expression was quizzical as she shut the door. Her arms were full of bundles. "I can think of more comfortable places to sleep — and positions to sleep in."

With care I pulled myself upright, spine scraping against rough wood. In an hour or so I might manage to stand. Scowling, asked if she’d spent every last coin we claimed.

Del was piling bundles on the bed. "Supplies," she replied crisply. "I assume we’re leaving tomorrow, yes?"

I rearranged stiff legs with effort and hauled myself dripping out of the cask, swearing under my breath. "Yes."

Del tossed me the length of thin fabric doubling as a towel, examined my expression and movements, then frowned. "Your hands are hurting."

"Yes." I wrapped the cloth around my waist.

"Tiger-"

"Leave it, Del. I just banged them around on the stud, that’s all." I bent, carefully grasped the jar of ale I’d set on the floor beside the cask, and upended the remaining contents into my mouth.

She clearly wanted to say more, but did not. Instead she turned back to the bed and began sorting through bundles. "Food," she announced, "suitable for travel. New botas; we can fill them in the morning. Medicaments. Blankets for bedding. A griddle. Flint and steel." There was more, but she left off anounc-ing everything.

"What about a mount for you, and tack?"

"Arranged. We can collect the stud and my horse first thing tomorrow morning."

"Do we have any money left?"

"Not much," she admitted. "Refitting is costly."

I could not get the memory of the dream fragment out of my mind. I turned away from Del and dropped the towel, rooting around in my belongings for fresh dhoti and burnous. I was done with Skandic clothing. I was in the South again. Home.

Where the dead woman was.

Del held out a small leathern flask. "Liniment," she said. "One of the horse-breakers gave it to me. He said it would help."

I tied the thongs on my dhoti. "I think the stud got the better end of the deal. I’m not sure he needs any help."

"He didn’t mean it for the stud."

Ah. Trust a horse-breaker to know. And Delilah.

Sighing, I surrendered pride and annoyance and limped to the bed. "Be gentle, bascha. The old man is sore."

"It will be worse tomorrow."

I closed my eyes as she began to work aromatic liquid into my shoulders. "Thank you for that helpful reminder."

"There’s a bota of aqivi in the supplies. For the road."

My eyes flew open. "You packed aqivi?" "Only for medicinal purposes, of course." I smiled and let my eyes drift shut again. Del herself was the best medicine a man could know.

She lifts an arm. Beckons. Demands my attention. When I give it, understanding, acceding to that demand, I see that the fragile bones of her hands have begun to fall away. A thumb and three fingers remain. The fourth, the smallest, is missing.

The jaw opens then. A feathering of sand pours between dentition. Shadowed sockets beseech me.

"Come home," she says.

"I am home," I say. "I have come home."

But it is not, apparently, what the woman wants. The hand ceases its gesture. The bones drop away, collapsing into fragments. Are scattered on the sand.

"Take up the sword," her voice says, before the wind subborns it as well.

I opened my eyes. Square-cut window invited moonlight. Illumination formed a tangible bar of light slicing diagonally across the bed. Del’s hair glowed with the sheen of pearls. Her breathing was even, uninterrupted; though neither of us slept deeply in strange places, we had grown accustomed to one another’s movements and departures.

Were the dreams my heritage from Meteiera? Would I spend my life viewing the remains of a dead woman in my sleep? Was I doomed to hear her voice issuing nightly from a broken mouth?

Or was there something I was to do, some task to undertake that I didn’t yet understand?

I was too restless, too disturbed to sleep. Carefully I peeled back the threadbare blanket, warding tender stumps from rough cloth, and slipped from the bed, trying not to permit the ropes to creak. Trying not to groan about the stiffness of my body. The liniment had helped, but time and movement were the only true cures.

I halted three steps away from the bed, brought up short by a sense of — something. Something in the room. Something in the darkness. Something in the moonlight.

Something in me?

I lifted my face. Closed my eyes. Saliva ran into my mouth. Flesh prickled on my bones. Thumbs and six fingers splayed.

Something was here. Begging for recognition.

It sang in my body. The mantra of the mages.

Discipline.

Nihkolara, blue-headed mage of Meteiera — and apparent relative — had told me denying the magic was impossible. That to do so was to invite the madness, to commit self-murder.

I had no inclination to do either.

They had tried to steal my name, the priest-mages, and my knowledge of self, there atop the stony spires. Very nearly had succeeded. But something in me, something more insistent than burgeoning power, despite its insidious seduction, had given me the strength to throw off the infection. At least, enough that I retained my name, rediscovered knowledge of self.

I am Sandtiger.

I am sword-dancer.

More than enough, for me. I needed nothing more.

Even if I had it.

Sweat filmed my body. Soreness remained, bruises had bloomed. But such petty things as discomfort are bearable when weighed against the greater needs of the world.

Or the dictates of magic.

I took up the new sword. In the midst of the moonlight, with eloquent precision, I began yet again to dance, to hone the flesh that sheathed the bones. And the mind that controlled them.

So that I could control it.

I was, as expected, still stiff in the morning, though the midnight dance had helped. Del and I dressed respectively in tunic and dhoti, donned sandals, gauze burnouses, and buckled on harnesses over the clothing. Once we’d merely split the left shoulder seams to allow sword hilts freedom, but that was when challenges were to dance, not to die. Now we didn’t have that luxury. We packed up the balance of our belongings and headed out to the livery to collect and tack out our mounts, grabbing something to eat from a vendor along the way.

The stud, when led out into the stableyard square in the kindling sun of early morning, gifted me with a sublimely serene expression suggesting he was nothing but a big, sleepy pussycat. Though one of the horse-boys offered, I saddled him myself to give my body the chance to get used to movement. I took my time examining the fit of new tack, including bridle, bit, long cotton reins knotted at each end, and of course the saddle. Satisfied, I loaded my share of the supplies, checked the weight distribution, tossed a colorful woven blanket over the new saddle, and turned to see what progress Del was making.

"What is that?" I blurted.

She glanced up from assessing stirrup length. "I think he’s reminiscent of you after a particularly drunken cantina fight." She paused. "A little pale, with two black eyes."

A little pale? He was white. And she didn’t mean his actual eyes were black, because they weren’t, but the two circles painted around them. The actual eyes were blue, and looked even lighter peering out from black patches.

"Why in hoolies did you pick him? "

"Beggars," she declared succinctly, "cannot be choosers."

Well, no. But… "A white, blue-eyed horse in the desert?" Actually, he was a pink-and-white, blue-eyed horse, because he lacked pigmentation. His nostrils and lips were a fine, pale pink.

’That is why I’ve put grease around his eyes," she explained. It will cut down on the sun’s glare reflecting off his face. And I slathered alia paste on his nose and lips."

Del, this is a horse, not a woman painting her face."

Yes," she agreed equably, continuing to tack out the gelding.

Do you know what you’re doing?"

"Yes."

Are you sure? We’ve got the Punja to get through."

’I had a white dog when I was a child," Del remarked casually after a moment. "He had blue eyes and no pigmentation. My father wanted to put him down, but I insisted he be mine. I was told that with the sun reflecting off the snow, he might in time go blind. So I mixed up grease with charcoal, and painted around his eyes. He lived to be an old, old dog. And he never went blind."

"Is that why you bought this horse? Because he reminds you of your dog?"

"I bought him because he was the only gelding." She glanced up. "Would you want to risk another stallion anywhere near yours?"

"There are mares."

"I tried that before. Your horse, as I recall, spent most of his time trying to breed her. Sometimes when I was on her."

I recalled that, too. "There are other liveries in town, I suspect. With other geldings."

"But not with one we can afford. I did look." Del reached up and tied something onto the left side of the gelding’s headstall, then ran it beneath his forelock to the other side.

My mouth dropped open. " Tassels? "

"Fringe," she corrected.

"You’re putting fringe on a horse?"

"It will help shade his eyes."

First she painted black patches around his eyes, now she hung fringe across his brow. Gold fringe, no less.

I shook my head in disbelief. "Where in hoolies did you find that?"

"I bought it from a wine-girl in one of the cantinas. I don’t know what it once was. I was afraid to ask."

"You went into a cantina by yourself?"

"Yes."

"Kind of risky, bascha. Dangerous, even."

"Tiger, I was in a cantina by myself when I met you."

"Well, I said it could be dangerous."

Del slipped a foot into the left stirrup and swung up, settling herself into the blanketed saddle with ease. "Now, do you want to spend all morning arguing about horses, or shall we actually ride them?"

It was ridiculous. We were bound for the Punja and all its merciless miseries, including unceasing sun. Del herself certainly knew the risks; she had once been so sunburned I was afraid she’d never recover. A blue-eyed, white horse lacking pigmentation was a burden we couldn’t afford.

But Del was right: neither could we afford something better. I suspected we had only a few coins left from Del’s shopping expedition. If we didn’t take the gelding, we asked the stud to carry two across the searing Punja, or we’d have to take turns riding and walking, which was slower going yet. Besides, if the gelding dropped dead on us from sunstroke, we could always eat him.

On that cheerful note, I mounted the uncommonly cooperative stud, winced at the creaking of my body, and began the careful process of relaxing complaining muscles fiber by fiber. Eventually my body remembered how it was supposed to sit a horse, and some of the soreness bled away. The stumps of my missing fingers were still a trifle tender, but once the stud hit his pace and settled, it wouldn’t take more than index and middle fingers to grasp the soft cotton reins.

Del, mounted atop her white folly, leaned down to hand the horse-boy a few copper coins. Likely our last. I sighed, turned the stud, and aimed him out of the stableyard into the narrow alley between livery and adjoining building. He sucked himself up into stiff condescension as the gelding came up beside him, snorting pointed disdain. Then he caught a glimpse of one sad blue eye peering at him out of a circle of black greasepaint coupled with dangling gold fringe and shied sideways toward the nearest wall.

I planted a heel into his ribs, driving him off the wall before my foot could collide with adobe brick. "Let’s not."

The stud took my hint and kept off the wall. Now he turned sideways, head bent back around so he could keep both worried eyes on Del’s gelding. Ears stabbed toward the white horse like daggers. The accompanying snort was loud enough to drown out the sound of hooves.

Del began to laugh.

"What?" I asked irritably, trying to point the stud back into a straight line as we exchanged alley for street.

"I think he’s afraid of him!"

"A lot of horses are afraid of the stud —"

"No! I mean the stud’s afraid of my horse!"

"Now, bascha, do you really think —" But I broke off because the stud, now freed of the confines of the narrow alley, took three lunging steps sideways into the center of the street and stopped dead, stiff-legged, snorting wetly and loudly through widened nostrils. Fortunately it was early enough that the street was not yet crowded, and no one was in his way.

Del was still laughing.

"Maybe you should have gotten a mare after all," I muttered. "Look, bascha, just go ahead. I’ll bring up the rear."

Grinning, she took my advice. The stud eased after a moment, ears flicking forward as Del departed. "What, you like the view from behind better?" I asked him. "Fine. Can we go now?"

And indeed we might have gone beyond the first two strides, except someone stopped dead in front of us. On foot. It was either ride over the top of him, or halt yet again.

I reined in sharply, swearing, and looked down upon the interruption. A young man in an russet-gold burnous, a Southroner, with smooth dark skin, longish dark hair, strong but striking features, and the kind of liquid, thick-lashed, honey-brown eyes that can melt a woman’s heart. It might have been happenstance that he stepped in front of the stud, impeding my way, except that one hand was on a rein, holding the stud in place — and the other held a sheathed sword.

"You are the Sandtiger," he declared, raising his voice. Plainly he wanted an audience.

I might have denied his opening salvo in the interests of saving time, except I’d nearly lost myself in Meteiera and would never hide from my name again. I merely stared down at him.

Expressive eyes challenged me. "Will you dance? Will you step into the circle?"

I opened my mouth to explain I couldn’t dance, not the way he so clearly wanted, with a circle drawn in sand and all the honor codes. Instead I said, "Not today," and jammed heels into the stud’s ribs.

Startled, he jumped forward. The young man, equally startled, lost his grip on the rein. With agile alacrity he leaped aside so as not to be ridden over, and I heard his fading curses as I struck a crisp long-trot to the end of the street.

Del waited there atop her quiet gelding. The stud took one look at him, considered spooking again, but was convinced otherwise when I cracked the long reins across his broad rump. There was no further dissent as Del fell in beside us.

"So," she said calmly, "the secret of your return is out."

"Yes and no."

She frowned. "Why do you say that?"

"He isn’t a sword-dancer. Just a kid trying to make a reputation."

"How do you know?"

"He invited me to dance. A sword-dancer won’t. They all know what elaii-ali-ma means: that there is no dance, no circle, merely a fight to the death. There’s a huge difference."

"And every sword-dancer in the South will know this?"

"Everyone sworn to the honor codes, yes."

"But he recognized you."

"That," I said, "is likely more a result of the swordsmith spreading gossip."

"You think he recognized you?"

"Probably not. As I said, Haziz isn’t a place many sword-dances go, unless specifically hired. But as you pointed out before, we don’t exactly fit in with the rest of the crowd. All it would take is a description, and anyone who’d seen or heard about us would know."

"So. It begins."

"It begins." I glanced sideways at the long equine face with its black-painted eye circles, the wine girl’s dangling golden fringe — I wondered briefly if Del had told her what she intended to do with it — and mournful blue eyes. "That horse is a disgrace to his kind."

Del put up her brows. "Just because your horse is afraid of him is no cause to insult him."

"He looks ridiculous!"

"No more than yours did when he stood rooted to the ground, trembling like a leaf."

Probably not. Scowling, I said, "Let’s go, bascha. It’s a long ride to Julah —"

"— and we’re burning daylight."

Well. We were.

Del and I stopped burning daylight when the sun went down. Then it lost itself in its own conflagration, a panoply of color so vivid as to nearly blind you. Desert orange, blazing red, yellow, vermillion, raisin purple, lavender, the faint burnished shadow of blue fading to silver-gilt. Out here twilight dies gently, shading slowly into darkness.

We were beyond the last oasis between Haziz and Julah, so there was no place in particular we wanted to bed down. We ended up settling for a series of conjoined hummocks carpeted in a fibrous, red-throated groundcover bearing tiny white blossoms, and the threadbare shelter of a thin grove of low, scrubby trees boasting a bouquet of woody limbs bearing dusty green leaves. Within weeks the leaves would dry out, curl up, and drop off, when summer seared them to death, but for now there was yet enough moisture in the mornings for the leaves to remain turgid. Mixed in with the groundcover were taller-growing desert grasses with frizzy, curled topknots.

"This’ll do," I said, reining in even as Del dismounted.

Since the stud was not always trustworthy when picketed close to other horses, I led him to a tree eight paces away and had a brief discussion about staying put as I hobbled him. Del and I busied ourselves with untacking and grooming both mounts, swapping out bridles and bits for halters, pouring water into the squashable, flat-bottomed oiled canvas bags doubling as buckets, and offering them grain as a complement to the grasses. It wasn’t particularly good grazing, but it would do; and the next night we’d be in Julah where they’d eat well.

Our dinner consisted of dried cumfa meat, purple-skinned tubers, and flat, tough-crusted journey-bread. Del drank water, I had a few mouthfuls of aqivi from the goatskin bota. Sated, we sprawled loose-limbed on our bedrolls and digested, blinking sleepily up into the deeping sky as the first stars kindled to life.

"That," Del observed after amoment, "was one huge sigh."

I hadn’t noticed.

"Of contentment," she added.

I considered it. Maybe so. For all there were risks attendant to returning South, it was home. I’d been North with Del once, learning what real forests were, and true mountains, and even snow; had sailed to Skandi and met my grandmother on a wind-bathed, temperate island in the midst of brilliant azure seas, but it was here I was most at ease. Out in the desert beneath the open skies with nothing on the horizon but more horizon. Where a man owed nothing to no one, unless he wished to owe it.

Unless he was a slave.

Del lay very close. She set her head and one shoulder against mine, hooking ankle over ankle. And I recalled that I was man, not child; free, not slave. That’d I’d been neither child nor chula for years.

I remembered once telling Del, as we prepared to take ship out of Haziz, that there was nothing left for me in the South. In some ways, that was truth. In others, falsehood. There were things about the South I didn’t care for, things I might not be cognizant of had Del not come along, but there were other things that meant more than I expected. Maybe it was merely a matter of being familiar with such things, of finding ease in dealing with what I knew rather than challenging the unexpected; or maybe it was that I’d met and overcome the challenges I’d faced and did not wish to relegate them to insignificance.

Then again, maybe it was merely relief that I was alive to return home, after nearly dying in a foreign land.

I grinned abruptly. "You know, there is one thing I really miss about Skandi."

Del sounded drowsy. "Hmmmm?"

"The metri’s tiled bathing pool. And what we did in it."

"We can do that without the metri’s bathing pool. In fact, I think we have."

"Not like we did there."

"Is that all you think about?"

I yawned. "No. Just most of the time."

After a moment she said reflectively, "It would be nice to have a bathing pool like that."

"Umm-hmm."

"Maybe you can build one at Alimat."

"I think I have to rebuild Alimat itself before building a bathing pool."

"In the meantime…" But her voice trailed off.

"In the meantime?"

"You’ll have to make do with this." Whereupon she squirted the contents of a bota all over me.

The resultant activity was not even remotely similar to what we’d experienced mostly submerged in the metri’s big, warm bathing pool. But it sufficed.

Oh, indeed.