Sword-Sworn

by Jennifer Roberson

  I staggered, laughed, cut it off sharply, lest I lose the last shreds of self-control. “Ah, yes, the wonderful 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 disinterment. 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 protrusions, 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.

  THIRTY

  THE VOICE was the voice of a stranger, yet also mine. I heard it inside my head; heard it in my ears. In fits and starts, stumbling to find its way, it told the story the bone had guarded for years.

  “The caravan was small, short-handed, traveling too late in the season. Its master was not well respected, and those with enough experience or money hired others to get them across the deadly Punja. But those who lacked both, those unaccustomed to the South, to the desert, and certainly to the Punja, knew nothing more than that the man promised to take them where they wished to go: from Haziz through Julah and then across the Punja to where South met North and formed the borderlands, cooler than the desert, warmer than the mountains. The most temperate of all locales but dangerous because of its raiders, both Southron and Northern.”

  I sat on sand, cross-legged, left hand hanging limply in my lap, right hand holding bone. My eyes were open, but blind.

  “The caravan, being small, short-handed, traveling too late in the season, and led by a man who prized coin over lives, was caught by a storm. The simoom was but an immature version of its larger relatives, but it was enough. The beasts were made to lie down, and the people took shelter in their wagons, trying to save the canvas that formed their roofs. Eventually the simoom blew itself out, and it was discovered by the folk, as they dug themselves free, that no lives were lost.

  “The road, however, was.”

  I choked, coughed, drew in breath. I felt shivers course my body, but I could not stop. It needed to be told.

  “The caravan master and his guide, trusting to their questionable instincts to find the right way, led the caravan on, and into disaster. A party of borjuni, taking advantage of the storm and its aftereffects, swept down upon the wagons. Men and children, being worth nothing, were killed outright. The women were taken to be sold as slaves or kept as camp whores. The horses, mules, and danjacs were rounded up. Everything of value easily carried was taken; everything requiring too much effort, or beasts to haul it, was left.”

  I was dimly aware of being wet with sweat, but cold. Shivers coursed my flesh. Someone’s hand was on my knee, urging me to stop. But I could not.

  “And also left was the foreign woman big with child, deemed too much trouble to take with them but worth some sport. That sport left her half-dead and in labor. The borjuni, finding it amusing, deserted her as she bled into the sand, deserting also the body of her husband, who had brought her out of Skandi to find a new life where a man and a woman, despite differences in birth, might settle and be content. Alone, beaten, raped, the woman who had been raised the privileged daughter of the Stessoi, one of Skandi’s Eleven Families, found her dead husband, wept for him, then crawled under their wagon and, in a river of blood, bore hi
m a son. She managed to take that son to her breast, to suckle him, to cover him with the scraps of her torn clothing. And died before she could name him aloud to the gods that had surely forsaken him.

  “The child lived. He grew hungry, emitting wailing cries, and grew weak when the cries were not answered. But there was strength in him yet, and when the desert tribe that named itself Salset came across the caravan, he cried again. Was found. Was taken.”

  I swallowed, aware of pain in my throat, of exhaustion, of fever.

  “The child, when judged old enough, was made a slave. His name was chula.”

  “Tiger… Tiger, stop now. Please. Please stop.”

  I stopped, because I could. Because the tale was told. The truth was known.

  I opened eyes that had, at some point, closed. No longer did I sit on the sand, cross-legged. Now I lay on the sand with my head in a woman’s lap. Her hands were on my forehead, fingers stroking.

  “Tiger, come back. It’s done. It’s over. It happened a long time ago.”

  “Forty years,” I rasped.

  Del took the rib bone from my hand. “Enough. Enough.”

  “She didn’t abandon me.” A hollow, hoarse voice. “Neither did he.”

  “No one abandoned you,” she said. “Never. They wanted you. You would have brought them great joy.”

  “The Salset told me I was abandoned.”

  “They would never say, even had they known, that you were the grandson of the Stessa metri, of one of the most powerful of Skandi’s Eleven Families.”

  “I was a chula.”

  “But not anymore. Not for many years.” Del’s fingers stroked. “You should be happy, Tiger. I have crooned to you, soothed your tender temples. After I said I would not.”

  I grinned weakly. “You never could keep your hands off me.”

  She smiled. Laughed. Her eyes were the blue of Northern lakes, glistening with unshed tears, her hair pale as Punja sand.

  I shivered. Realized the sun was down. Someone had thrown a blanket over me as I lay with my head in Del’s lap. I turned my head, saw a fire. “Where’d that come from?” We were in the Punja, in a sea of sand; there were no trees.

  “Neesha made a fire with the wood from the wagon.”

  It felt odd to think that the wagon might even be the one my mother and father had bought in Haziz. Now set on fire to warm the son neither had ever known.

  Nayyib came close, squatted down next to me. His color seemed pale, though it was difficult to tell in shadows and firelight. “What you saw—what you said you saw… your mother?”

  “Mother. Father.”

  “Did the bone take you there?”

  A smile twitched my lips, but I was too weary to hold it. “Memories, Neesha. The bones know what happened. I can conjure up the memories if I hold a bone. I can walk my dreams to find out what they mean.”

  I had said too much. Nayyib’s gaze slid away, avoiding mine; talk of magic bothered him. Then his eyes returned. “Was she a mage, then? Your mother?”

  “No. Well, not that I know of. There is magery in some of the Eleven Families of Skandi, and apparently in the Stessoi, if I’m any indication… but in males, not females.” And it drove them mad. But that I wouldn’t say. Not to him. Not to Del.

  “Then it could have come through your father.”

  “No. He wasn’t one of the Eleven Families. It had to have come through my mother.” I remembered the metri, my grandmother, dismissing me out of hand when she was done with me, swearing her daughter had died before I was born. I swallowed heavily against the dryness in my throat. “Is there water?”

  “Here.” Del picked up the bota by her knee. “Don’t drink too much at once.”

  I drank as much as I could, until she took it away. I sighed, closed my eyes. “… tired.”

  “Sleep,” she said. “You went far away, and came back the long road.”

  I let go a trembling breath. Felt her take the bone from my slack hand. “I still have to find the sword.”

  “But not tonight.”

  Ah. Good.

  I faded then, slipping bit by bit out of reality, out of consciousness, as Del, with gentle fingers, smoothed the lines from my forehead.

  “Will he die?” Nayyib asked.

  “Oh, no.” Her voice seemed to smile. “Not for a long, long time.”

  Ten years. Twelve.

  Then darkness took me.

  I awoke sometime later, feeling limp as shredded rags, still covered by the blanket. I lay on bedding; wondered if Nayyib and Del had simply rolled me onto it. I had no memory of waking to put myself there. Not good for a sword-dancer. But obviously something in my mind believed I was safe in their care, not to stir at all when they moved me.

  I stared up at the sky. Still night, still dark, wreathed in brilliant stars. The fire had died to embers. It was very quiet; even the horses slept.

  Del was close beside me. I sensed her there even without looking, as if every part of my awareness was attuned to her presence. She slept as she often did, coiled on her left side with a fold of blanket pulled over her ear. Loosened hair fell across her face and strayed onto bedding.

  I wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel the silk. But it felt good just to lie here unmoving, letting the night bathe me.

  Oh bascha, I don’t want to die in ten or twelve years. I don’t want to lose you. I want to be with you, to see you grow old even as I do.

  Nayyib slept on the other side of the fire. I knew he was attracted to Del; I wondered if he thought he might win her from me. If maybe he considered me too old for her, wondering what she saw in a forty-year-old man. He was her age: young, strong, athletic, undeniably attractive. He had a gentleness about him coupled with strength of mind, a quiet confidence that set him apart from other young men. Maybe it came from working with horses, from understanding their needs and fears, their moments of inexplicable recalcitrance. Or maybe it was just him.

  What would Del do when I was gone? Find another?

  Find Neesha?

  I had no way of knowing what to expect when my time approached. Nihko and Sahdri had said nothing of that, merely that a Skandi-born mage went mad if he didn’t learn to control his magic, and that the magic would eventually burn him out merely by its presence. If I refused to use it, I might die that much sooner.

  Well, I had used it. With Oziri, learning to dream-walk; spelling Umir’s book; dividing the sandstorm; reading the bones of the woman who was my mother.

  Had used it even in childhood, conjuring the living sandtiger out of a carved one, in order to find freedom.

  I wanted none of it.

  It appeared to want me.

  I sat up, suppressing a groan. Everything ached, even my skin. I didn’t feel forty; I felt sixty. An age I would never reach.

  Slowly I pushed myself to my feet, wavered a moment, steadied, then picked my way across the sand to the dozing horses. The stud roused as I touched him, whickering softly. I felt his warm breath against my hand. Then I turned, went a few steps away and attended to my business, aware of a clenching deep in my kidneys. Maybe mages died early because they used themselves up, aging their organs ahead of time.

  I turned, took three steps, found Del waiting at the stud’s head. Maybe she’d heard my joints grinding as I walked across the sand.

  I saw the question in her eyes. Smiling faintly, I hooked an arm around her neck and stood next to her. “I’m fine.”

  I heard the pent breath expelled. For a moment we just stood there side by side, staring across the Punja glowing faintly in moon- and starlight.

  She spoke very quietly. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  I kept my voice as low, not wanting to wake Nayyib. “What? You mean Neesha hasn’t won you from me with a glance of those eloquent eyes?”

  “Neesha’s eyes may indeed work wonders on other women, but not on me.”

  “Are you immune?”

  “Oh, no. He is a beautiful young man.”

  “
Beautiful?”

  “As a man may be,” she clarified. “Not like a woman. He isn’t pretty. But the bones of his face are well suited to one another, and he moves very well. He understands his body.”

  I hadn’t really asked for that much explanation. But I’d never thought about how women view men, other than appreciating that many of them seemed to view me with favor. “What do you look at in a man? Women, I mean. Not just you.”

  Del’s breath of laughter was a quiet expulsion of air. “We don’t all necessarily see or want the same thing. There are pretty men, and handsome men, and men who lack the features that most would name attractive but claim a sense of presence that makes looks unimportant. There is no describing that. It simply is. Tall, short, heavy, thin… it doesn’t matter.”

  I thought of brutal Ajani, long dead. Handsome, huge, filled with undeniable presence. Yet he had used the power to rape and kill, to alter forever the life of the woman next to me. “But there are handsome men who have it.”

  “Yes. And those are the men that turn a woman’s knees to water and her brain to mush.”

  “I, of course, exude it.”

  “There are also men who are too confident, too certain of themselves and their appeal, and who believe they may blind women to their faults.”

  “Thanks very much for that.”

  “But I, however, am not so easily blinded.”

  “I sort of figured that.”

  “Some men may begin that way but are trainable when in the hands of the right woman. Other men are hopeless.”

  I wasn’t certain either of those attributes was something I aspired to.

  “And age doesn’t matter,” Del said. “Not when a woman meets the right man.”

  “Even if she’s young enough to be his daughter?”

  “Lo, even then.”

  I had been curious a long time. Now I asked her. “When did you know you wanted to sleep with me?”

  “Oh, within days. But you were such a pig-headed, insufferably male Southroner that I was appalled by my response.”

  “Thank you very much!”