Sword-Breaker

by Jennifer Roberson

  “We’ll do as he’s doing: ride out now and get a few hours’ head start. Hopefully, it’ll give us an edge in addition to leaving tracks for only one horse.” I bent down to pick up my sword. “It was a good idea. I should have thought of it my—hoolies—”

  “What now?” Del asked.

  I stared down at the fallen sword. I had put out my hand, closed fingers around the grip, lifted—and the thing had pulled free of my grasp. Once free, it had fallen. It now lay across my right foot.

  I’m a Southroner: I wear sandals. There’s not a whole lot of protection against a falling sword when you wear sandals—but then you don’t ordinarily figure you’ll drop one, either. Not if you’re a sword-dancer, and you know how to handle a sword.

  I was. I did. I hadn’t dropped the sword. The thing had pulled free.

  “Hoolies,” I murmured, very softly.

  Blood began to flow.

  “Tiger!” Del stood next to me, staring down at the mess. “Tiger—” She reached for the sword, then drew back. “I can’t touch it; you know that. I may know the name, but there is still Chosa Dei.”

  “I don’t expect you to touch it,” I muttered, pulling my foot from beneath the blade. I let the weapon lie there.

  “You’re bleeding… here—” She knelt down and began to unlace my sandal. “I’m beginning to think you are getting careless… first you cut your hand, now this—”

  I pulled my foot away. “Leave it alone. You don’t have to do that.” I rested the ball of my still-sandaled foot against the sandbreak wall and took up where Del had left off, untying leather knots. “Pack up whatever we need and saddle the stud… I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  She turned away, gathering gear and saddle-pouches, and said nothing more about carelessness, teasing or otherwise. As for me, I slipped off a sandal no longer worth very much; the blade had cut through leather straps before slicing into flesh.

  I used the hem of my burnous to sop up the blood. The cut was not very deep and the blood stopped quickly enough. It wouldn’t bother me much, although the sandal required repairing. We didn’t have the time; for now I’d simply ride barefoot.

  I stripped off the good sandal and toed through pockets of sand and webby grass patches to the stud. I tucked the sandals into one of the pouches, then turned back to stare at the sword. It lay naked in the dirt: four feet of deadly jivatma.

  Del, making a last inspection sweep of the tiny oasis, glanced at me sidelong. “Do you intend to leave it there?”

  “In a minute,” I declared. “If I could. But you’ve convinced me it would not be a wise thing to do. Look what it’s doing to me—if someone else got a hold of it…” I shook my head. “I remember all too clearly what Chosa Dei, in that sword, did to Nabir. How it unmade Nabir’s feet—” I shook off a sudden chill. “Imagine what it—he—might do if he got control of a weaker man.”

  “You’re saying Chosa—?” Del let it trail off, staring at the sword. “The tip is still black.”

  “And will be, I’m beginning to think, until it’s fully discharged. And you know what that means.”

  “Shaka Obre,” she breathed.

  “Shaka Obre,” I echoed, “and the strength to destroy Chosa Dei before he destroys me.”

  Five

  We rode for maybe an hour, heading due south. A straight line would take us into the heart of the Punja. I had no plans at that particular moment to actually enter the Punja, but then the beast is often perverse; thanks to frequent sandstorms, called simooms, the Punja is rarely where you expect it to be. Wind-powered, scouring, it moves. Anything in its way, including something so trivial as a boundary—or a city, or a tanzeer’s entire domain—is swallowed by acres of sand. Which means sometimes no matter how hard you try to avoid it, the Punja gets in your way.

  We stopped riding because I knew if we kept going we’d stand a very good chance of getting lost. Getting lost in the South is ridiculously easy, especially if you’re stupid enough to ask for it by riding too far on a night with no moon, and only stars to see by. Stars make it easy to choose a general direction, but they’re not so great at providing light enough to ride by.

  So we stopped, and Del asked why, and I explained. Somewhat testily, I’ll admit; I was not particularly happy about life, and when I am not happy I can be surly. Sometimes downright unpleasant. But not very often; I am, by nature, a particularly good-natured, even-tempered individual.

  “Enough already,” I growled. “Get off, bascha—you’re sitting over his kidneys. And you’re not what I’d call light.”

  Del, who was seated behind me, stiffened. But, for once, did as she was told: she slid backward over the stud’s rump and then down his tail.

  “Well?” she said after a moment. “You outweigh me—are you not going to dismount?”

  Engaged in untangling my harness straps from bota thongs fastened in front of my knee—not being a fool, I had not put the harness back on where the sword might next decide to try for my neck—I did not immediately answer. The stud, for his part, snorted noisily. Then he shook himself. Violently. From head to tail.

  “Oh, hoolies—” A horse, shaking himself, spares no thought for the rider on his back. He simply shakes, like a big, wet dog, only with much more enthusiasm.

  Botas sloshed. Bridle ornaments clashed. Assorted gear rattled. As for me, every joint protested. As did my innards.

  “Jug-headed, flea-bitten goat—” I climbed down painfully, dragging harness and sword with me, and made sure my head was attached. Just when it had begun to feel better.…

  “Well?” Del asked.

  “Well what?”

  “What are we doing?”

  “What does it look like we’re doing?”

  She considered it seriously. “Stopping?”

  “Good guess!” I said heartily, then stomped off into the darkness.

  Del caught the stud before he could follow. “Where are you going?”

  Did she have to know everything? “Something I have to do.”

  “Are you sick again?”

  “No.”

  “Then what—oh. Never mind.”

  “Not that, either,” I muttered. “First things first.”

  Or last things last, depending on who you are, and what you intend to do.

  With a sword.

  My sword.

  Whose true name was Samiel: hot desert wind, with the strength of storm behind it.

  Whose name had been perverted by a man known as Chosa Dei, a sorcerer out of legend whose gift, when he could use it, was to collect powerful magic. Duly collected, its original form was unmade, and Chose Dei reshaped it to serve his own purposes.

  He had unmade many things, including much of the South. He had unmade human beings.

  And now he wanted me.

  I stripped out of burnous, clad now only in suede dhoti and the necklet of sandtiger claws. Not even sandals adorned my feet; grit lodged itself beneath toenails. For a long time I just stood there in the desert darkness, holding harnessed sword. The mere thought of pulling the blade free of the rune-scribed scabbard and summoning life to it set my bones to itching. Magic does that to me: it eats its way into my bones, making even my teeth ache, and sets up housekeeping. A belly sick on magic is worse than the biting dog who lives in a wine bota.

  Futility welled up. My voice was thick with it. “Gods-cursed, hoolies-begotten sword… why couldn’t those Northerners let me borrow a blade, instead of making me take—instead of making me ‘make’—this thrice-cursed thing called a jivatma?”

  Sweat ran down my temples; down the scarred corrugations of ribs encased in muscle and flesh. Like I said, I hadn’t had a bath in too long. I smelled me, I smelled sweat, I smelled fear. And the acrid tang of magic that coated even my teeth.

  I jerked Samiel free. In starlight, the steelglow was muted. A flash, a sheen, a shimmer. And the blackness of Chosa Dei climbing a third of the way up the blade.

  I leaned. Spat. Wished for wine, aqivi
, water. For something to cut the taste. Something to settle my belly. Something to still the itching that ached inside my bones.

  A brief shudder wracked me. Hairs writhed on arms and thighs. The back of my neck prickled.

  “I know you’re there,” I whispered tightly. “I know you’re in there, Chosa. And you know I’m out here.”

  A rolling drop of sweat threatened one eye. I wiped the salty dampness away impatiently with a brusque, thick forearm, scrubbing wrist against itching eyebrow. And clenched my jaws tightly shut as I let the memories flow in prelude to the dance.

  I recalled what I had done, in the depths of the Dragon’s gullet. How I had, pushed to the farthest extremes of strength and will and need, somehow managed to defeat Chosa Dei within the walls of his prison, deep in Dragon Mountain. By calling on all my reserves and banishing all my beliefs in things other than magic; in powers of the flesh, not of gods or sorcery. I had, because I’d had to, set aside skepticism and welcomed the Northern magic deeply seated within the steel. I’d used it, bending it this way and that, singing it, in Northern fashion; forcing it to serve me—until I was no better than Chosa, unmaking and then remaking… requenching at my need. Keying when I shouldn’t, on the brink of the gates of hoolies, and knowing why, how, how much. Knowing exactly what I did, and the woman for whom I did it.

  Did I blame her? No. She’d have done the same for me. Months before we’d met in combat to determine her fate, and mine; we’d both of us lost, but neither had surrendered. And when it came down to it, we’d each of us do it again. But at that moment in Chosa’s cave, in the heart of Dragon Mountain, I’d called up all the power and remade my Northern jivatma into something more than sword. Something more than magic.

  And something less than good.

  I let the harness fall from my left hand. Now I held only the sword, as a sword is always held: firmly, by the grip, fingers wrapped around knotted leather; twenty-year-old palm calluses settling into familiar patterns of flesh and leather and steel. Into patterns of soul and spirit, and the thing that makes a man whatever the man is supposed to be.

  Nearly half my sword was black, charred as if by fire. But the flame was cold as death, and lived inside the steel. Coexisting unpleasantly with what the sword should be: a jivatma named Samiel, progenitor of storms much as Del’s own Boreal. Her storms were Northern-cold. Mine were Southron-hot.

  But Chosa lived there, too. Chosa filled every strand of the magic laced throughout the blade. The invisible net pulsed, turgid in its poison. If Chosa were not destroyed, if the blade were not discharged, Samiel would die. And Chosa, breaking free, would require the nearest body in order to house himself. The sword-dancer known as Sandtiger would simply cease to exist. In his place would be Chosa Dei, aged six-hundred and forty-two years.

  Or was it forty-three?

  Hoolies, but time flies.

  I lifted the sword and plunged it deep into Southron sand, sinking it halfway down. I heard the hiss of grit displaced; the entry of steel through soil. Then I knelt and encased the leather-wrapped grip in a hard, callused prison. Another prison for Chosa.

  One he’d already begun to destroy.

  Six

  The roar broke free of my throat. For the moment I didn’t care; it was enough merely to shout, to scrape my throat hoarse with will and strength expended in an effort to beat Chosa.

  But the roar died almost instantly, and so did comprehension. I knew only I held the sword, or it held me, and that was the whole of it.

  He was strong, was Chosa Dei. And so very, very angry. He hated being entrapped within a prison of Northern steel. He hated the sword itself, for daring to hold him. And he hated me as well, much deeper and far stronger, with a cold, abiding strength. I was the one. I was the man. I was the enemy who had stolen away his soul and lodged it in a sword.

  The thin slice in the webbing of thumb and forefinger stung. So did the cut across my foot. And I knew, with perfect certainty, that such clumsy “accidents” wouldn’t stop. If anything, they’d get worse. Eventually, even deadly. Chosa had learned a little something of Samiel. Now he exerted himself, stretching the boundaries, doing whatever he could to harm me. To make the sword as dangerous to me as to my enemies.

  So now it was up to me to show him who was boss.

  Easier said than done. In addition to smelling so bad, magic also hurts.

  I clung to the grip with all my strength, hands locked around steel and leather. I shook, and the sword shook with me, cutting down through Southron sand. I felt the strain envelop wrists, forearms, then shoulders, setting muscles into knots. Tendons, like taut ropes, stood up all over my body. I gritted teeth and hissed violent Salset curses, spewing all the invective the tribe had bestowed upon me as I labored in Southron bondage, too big in body to break, too small in spirit to fight.

  Now I fought. The Salset had merely beaten me. Chosa Dei would unmake me.

  Sweat ran down my face, dripping onto a dusty chest. Unencumbered by sandals, toes dug spasmodically into sand. I itched all over. Bile tickled my throat, leaving behind its acrid taste.

  “—not—” I said. “—NOT—”

  It was all I could manage.

  Starlight flickered. Or was it my eyes? Speckles of white and black, altering vision into a patchwork curtain of pitch-soaked darkness and blinding, frenzied light.

  I smelled the stink of magic; of power so raw and wild only a fool would try to control it. Only a fool would summon it.

  A fool, or a madman. A man like Chosa Dei.

  Or a fool like me?

  Hoolies, but I hurt. The dull headache flared anew, pounding behind wide-stretched eyes. I felt the labored repetition of my heart, squirming behind my breastbone; the annoying tickle of fine hair stirring on arms and thighs and groin; the deep, hollow cramping of a belly soured by fear.

  A hissing, breathy rasp: in and out, in and out, forcing lungs to work. Trying to clear a befogged head battered by a hoof as well as the presence of alien magic, and the promise of Chosa’s power.

  If I could just prove to him that mine was the stronger soul—

  Inwardly, I laughed. Scornful and derisive, clogged with self-contempt. Who in hoolies was I? An aimless, aging man with aching knees and much-scarred hide who sold his sword for a living, honoring only the skill sheer desperation had forged, and the need to be someone better—someone more—than a nameless Southron slave deserted as an infant by a mother too jaded to care.

  Uncertainty flickered briefly. Del had said once there was no proof. That perhaps the Salset had lied. That maybe I hadn’t been left to die, at least not intentionally.

  But I could never know. The only link to my past willing to speak of it had died but days before, ridiculed by her people because a jealous old magician, stripped of fading power, had said she deserved punishment for succoring me. And though no one had actually killed her, the disease had been as much of the spirit as of the flesh.

  Sula. Who had, without fail, always believed in me.

  Self-contempt melted away.

  I drew in a guts-deep breath and gave myself over to the power gathering in answer to my summons. In answer to Chosa Dei. Both of us wanted it. Both of us needed it. But only one could wield it. Only one could win.

  Into my head came a song. A tiny, quiet song. I snatched at its edges, fraying with every moment, and wove it back together. Tied all the ties, knotted all the knots. Then made it whole again. Made it mine again.

  A breeze began to blow. Sand kissed my cheek greedily, lodged in my teeth, forced tears to wide-open eyes. But I didn’t give up my song.

  The world turned white. I stared, blinked, stared again. I could see nothing. Nothing but all the white.

  Steel trembled in my hands. It warmed, softening, until I felt it flowing freely, squeezing its way between leather wrappings and the unsealed grasp of rigid fingers. I clutched more tightly, trying to push the steel back in, but it continued to flow. It dripped from fisted hands, spotting the star-washed
sand.

  If Chosa unmade the sword—

  “—not—” I said again.

  The breeze blew harder, but I could see none of it. Only white, nothing but white—

  And then, abruptly, red. The red of an enemy’s blood; the red of eyes bleeding inside from the strain of staring too hard. Of trying so fiercely to conquer.

  The sword trembled. Runes flared brass-bright, then blazed briefly blood-red before fading once again into silver. Where the blade met the sand, I saw an ashy bubble burst. And then the quiet explosion of dust and grit and soil; the silver-gilt bloom of crystals from deep beneath the surface.

  Translucent Punja crystals, deadly in Southron sunlight.

  Sand bubbled away until most of the blade was naked, baring its charred black stain. It had climbed a finger’s-width higher.

  “Can’t go down,” I muttered. “—have to come up, to me—”

  But of course, I wouldn’t let him.

  I clung to the song, wrapping myself in its power. Del says I can’t sing, that mostly I croak discordantly, not knowing how to shape notes or melody, but that didn’t matter to me. Samiel doesn’t care about skill, only about focus, and the strength to sing the magic before Chosa unmade it all.

  Noiselessly, a thin line fractured the pan of sand. I watched it trickle outward from the blade tip, then spread. The silence of it was eerie. A fissure here, a fissure there, until I knelt in the center of a webwork tracery spreading in every direction, black in the light of the stars.

  It did not, as you might expect, fold in upon itself, sucking sand this way and that. It held, flat as glass: a complex netting of fracture lines spilling out into the desert.

  “Can’t unmake it,” I gritted. “—can’t unmake me—”

  I clenched my hands more tightly. Sang my song more strongly, if tucked away inside my head. And felt the power wax.

  Smoke. A puff at first, a wisp, like warm breath on a cold Northern morning. Expelled from the fracture lines.

  Smoke, followed by fire.

  But only a little bit.