Sword Maker-Sword Dancer 3 (21 page)

do it again."

It hurt. Hoolies, it hurt... but I wouldn't give in to it. I can be stubborn that way.

Chosa Dei wasn't pleased. I sensed him in the sword, testing the confines of his

prison. I wondered if he knew what had happened, if he understood his plight; if

he realized he was dead. For a man such as he, accustomed to stealing lives as

well as magic, it would be a horrific discovery to learn his life had been stolen, along with his remade magic.

He tested the blade again. I exerted my own strength of will. Felt rising curiosity; felt a need to understand.

And also felt Samiel trying to reabsorb the magic the sorcerer had borrowed.

How long? I wondered wearily. How long will this go on?

Power hesitated, then abruptly ran out again, leaving my arms numb. Slowly I unlocked my hands from around the grip and set the sword down again. I trembled

with reaction; sweat bathed face and ribs.

Chill came rushing in, the kind that eats at bones. Shakily I crawled beneath pelts again, seeking leftover warmth. I snugged fur around my chin, then tried

to relax arms and hands. When the shaking wouldn't stop, I thrust my hands between drawn-up knees and held them tightly in place. Waiting for the reaction

to diminish.

A hand touched my rigid left shoulder, though I could only just feel it through

the pelts. "Tiger--are you all right?"

I sucked in a gut-deep breath, then blew it out again. Trying to steady my voice. "I thought you were still out with Halvar and all the others."

"It's very late. Nearly dawn. I've been in bed for hours."

Hours. Then she'd seen what had happened.

"Are you all right?" she repeated.

"Just leave me alone," I told her. "Let me go back to sleep."

"You're shaking. Are you cold?"

"Go back to bed, Del. You're keeping me awake."

Shock reverberated. The hand went away. In a moment so did Del, crawling back beneath her pelts all of three feet away from my own.

I lay there sweating, shaking, trying to still my hands while my arms threatened

to cramp. I felt the strain in shoulder blades, traveling down to tie up my back. I didn't want to cramp; hoolies, don't let me cramp... I'd almost rather

be knifed. At least the pain is cleaner.

Concentrate--concentrate... slowly, the trembling subsided. I took my hands from

between my knees and felt the tendons slacken. The ghost pain of threatened cramp flowed slowly out of back and shoulders; at last I could fully relax.

The

relief was overwhelming.

I let out a rushing breath of gratitude. Then rolled over onto my left side, resettling pelts, and saw Del watching me.

She sat cross-legged on her bedding, one pelt wrapped around her body. There was

not much light in the lodge, only a little from the coals. But pale hair and paler face caught the light and magnified it; I could see her face fairly well.

I could see the expression on it.

"What?" I croaked.

She didn't answer at first, as if caught in some faraway place. She just stared

at me fixedly, focused solely on my face.

With more emphasis: "What?"

Something glistened in her eyes. "I was wrong," she said.

I stared back, speechless.

"I was wrong," she repeated.

I watched the tears spill over.

"Wrong," she said huskily. "All the reasons: wrong. All the excuses: wrong.

For

nothing other than selfishness, I betrayed your thrust."

Finally I could force something past my tight throat. "There was Kalle--"

"Wrong," Del declared. "A daughter is a daughter, and worth many sacrifices, but

to use you as I did--to make you coin with which to barter--" Her voice failed

her abruptly. She swallowed painfully. "What I did was no different, in its own

way, than what Ajani did to me. He took away my freedom... I tried to take away

yours."

Any number of responses jumped into my mouth. Each and every one of them was meant to diminish the truth of what she said, to somehow dismiss what she had done. So she would feel better. So she wouldn't cry any more. So I wouldn't feel

guilty, even though I wasn't to blame.

I choked all of them back. To give in to the impulse was to dilute the power of

her admission.

I took a deep breath. "Yes," I agreed. "What you did was wrong."

Del's tone was oddly empty. "I have done nothing I am ashamed of, save that.

I

have killed men. Many men. Men who got in my way, in the circle and out. I excuse none of those deaths; all were necessary. But what I offered Staal-Ysta,

even for only a year, was not necessary. It was not my right to offer. It was not my life to give."

"No," I said softly.

Del drew in a noisy breath. "If you want me to go, I will. You have finished the

task you set out to do. You have fulfilled your promise. It is left to me to finish mine; to end my song. Ajani is not your responsibility."

No. He never had been. But I know I hated the man at least half as much as Del,

for what he'd done to her.

I thought about riding alone again. Just the stud and me. No female complications. No mission of vengeance. No obsession. Just riding through the South trying to scare up work. Trying to make a living. Growing older by the day, with nothing to show for it.

And no Northern bascha with whom to pass the time, in argument or in the circle.

I cleared my throat. "I've got nothing to do."

"After what I have done--"

"I'll get over it."

It was abrupt. Off-handed. Casual. It was also enough. We're neither of us good

at putting feelings into words.

Del pulled furs into place and lay down on her bedding again. Her back was toward me, right shoulder jutting toward the roof. "I would like that," she said.

I lay there thinking about it, overwhelmed with new feelings. But I was exhausted from the sword, and it took too much effort to think about emotions.

Del had made her admission. Del had fulfilled the task I required of her. So now

all I had to do was just shut my eyes and let it go, sliding away. Tumbling into

darkness. The pain was gone for good, and the lure of sleep beckoned.

Beckoned.

Beckoned--

It was pleasant drifting there, just at the edge of the eddy... at the point of

dropping off--

"You're not old," Del said. Very low, but distinct.

Sleep retreated a moment. I smiled and yanked it back.

Going home, I thought, and slid off the edge of the world.

Part II

One

"Tiger," she said, "you're whistling."

"No, I'm not."

"Not now, no--but you were."

"I don't whistle, bascha--too much like music."

"Whistling is music," she pointed out, "and you were doing it."

"Look," I said patiently, "I don't sing, I don't hum, I don't whistle. I don't

do anything even remotely connected with music."

"Because you're tone-deaf. But that doesn't mean you can't do any of those things. It just means you do all of them badly." She paused. "And you do."

"Why would I whistle? I've never done it before."

"Because, thanks to the Canteada and your jivatma, you have a better understanding of what power music holds... and maybe because you're happy."

Well, I was happy. I'd been happy ever since Del had made her admission.

Happier

ever since we'd traded uplands for downlands and then downlands for border country; before an hour was up we'd be out of the North for good.

But I don't know that it made me whistle.

I drew in a deep breath, then exhaled in satisfaction. "Smell that? That's air,

bascha... good, clean air. And warm air, too . . no more frozen lungs."

"No," she agreed, "no more frozen lungs... now we can breathe Southron air and

have our lungs scorched."

I just grinned, nodded, rode on. It felt good to be aboard the stud again, riding down out of hills and plateaus into the scrubby borderlands between the

North and Harquhal. It felt so good I didn't even mind Del's steadfast silences,

or the dry irony of her tone when she did speak. All I knew was that with each

stride closer to the border, I was closer to home. To warmth and sun and sand.

To cantinas and aqivi. To all the things I'd known so well for the last twenty-some-odd years of my life, once I was free to know them.

"Hah!" I said. "See? There's the marker now." Without waiting for an answer, I

booted the stud into a startled, lunging run and galloped the distance remaining

between me and the South. I sent him past the stone cairn, then rolled him back,

held him in check, watched Del negotiate the same distance at a much more decorous pace.

Or was it reluctance in place of decorum?

"Come on, Del," I called. "The footing's good enough. Let that blue horse run!"

Instead she let him walk. All the way to the cairn. And then she reined in, slid

off, looped his reins around the pile of stones. Saying nothing, Del walked a short distance away and turned her back to me, staring steadfastly toward the north.

Oh. That again.

Impatiently I watched as she unsheathed, balanced blade and hilt across both hands, then thrust the sword above her head as if she offered it to her gods.

It

brought back the night she'd called colors out of the sky and painted the night

with rainbows. It brought back the night I'd realized she wasn't dead; that I realized I hadn't killed her.

Impatience faded. Del was saying good-bye to her past and her present. No more

Staal-Ysta. No more Kalle. No more familiar life. As much as I was pleased to see the South again, it wasn't the same for her. It never could be, either, regardless of circumstances.

The stud stomped, protesting inaction. I stilled him with a twitch of the reins

and a single word of admonishment; for a change, he paid attention. Then he swung his head around as far as he could swing it, staring toward still-invisible Harquhal, and snorted. With feeling.

"I know," I told him. "Just a moment or two more... you can wait that long, even

if you don't like it."

He shook his head, clattered bit shanks, slashed his tail audibly. It needed cutting badly; I knew almost instantly because the ends of coarse horsehair stung me across one thigh.

"Keep it up," I suggested. "I'll cut your gehetties off, too, and then where would you be?"

Del came back down to the blue roan and pulled reins free of the rock, leading

him toward me. She still carried a naked blade, and showed no signs of putting

it away.

I frowned. Reined in the stud as he seriously considered greeting the roan with

a nip. Tried to ask a question, but was overridden by Del.

"It's time," she said simply.

Eyebrows rose. "Time?"

Sunlight glinted off Boreal. "Time," Del agreed, "to face one another in a circle."

It had been three weeks since the last time the subject had come up, just before

reaching Ysaa-den. Del said nothing about sparring, and I'd been content to let

the matter rest. I'd hoped it could rest forever.

I glanced down at the hilt of my own jivatma, riding quietly next to my left knee in a borrowed sheath buckled onto my saddle. Halvar had been generous enough to give me the sheath he'd used for his old bronze sword; it didn't really suit me, since it was only a scabbard and not the sheath-and-harness as I

preferred, but I'd needed something to carry the weapon in. I couldn't lug it around bare-bladed.

"I don't think so," I told her.

Del's brow furrowed. "Are you still afr--"

"You don't know this sword."

She looked at the hilt. Considered what I'd said. Sighed a little and tried valiantly to hang onto waning patience. "I need to practice, Tiger. So do you.

If we're to earn a living while we try to track down Ajani, we've got to get fit

again. We've got to spar against one another to recover timing, strength, stamina--"

"I know all that," I said, "and you're absolutely right. But I'm not stepping into a circle against you so long as Chosa Dei's in this sword."

"But you can control it. You can control him; I've seen you. Not just that night

in Halvar's lodge, but all the other times on the way here--"

"--and it's all those other times that make me refuse now," I told her plainly.

"This sword wasn't exactly easy to control before I requenched it in Chosa Dei... do you think I really want to risk losing whatever control I've learned

while you and I spar?" I shook my head. "Chosa Dei wanted your sword. He wanted

to drain the magic, to reshape it--remake it--for his own specific needs. As far

as I can tell, I think he still does."

Del was plainly startled. "How can he still--?" She shook her head, breaking it

off. "He's in a sword, Tiger."

"And do you, not knowing what he's capable of, really want to risk letting him

make contact with Boreal?"

"I don't think--" She stopped. Frowned. Stared pensively at Samiel's hilt poking

up beside my knee. Then made a gesture of acknowledgment. "Maybe you're right.

Maybe if your sword and mine ever met, he'd steal my jivatma's magic. And then--" She broke off again, staring at me in realization. "If he bound your magic and mine together, what would that make him? What kind of man would he be?"

I shook my head. "There's no way of knowing what could happen. Your jivatma is

different from others, bascha. You've known that all along, though you say little about it. But it's become obvious even to me, now that I've seen a few others. Now that I know how they're made, and what goes into them." I shrugged.

"You blooded her in Baldur and completed your rituals, sealing all your pacts with those gods you revere so much, and then you sang your own personal song of