Sword-Singer Read online

  RITE OF POWER—

  Del sang and the sword came alive in her hands.

  At first, I did not believe it. Moonlight is often fickle; clouds, I thought, moving across the crescent to alter the intensity of its light. But if anything, the moon paid homage to the sword. Its light was clearly diluted by the luminance of the blade.

  It started at the tip. First, the merest speck of light. A spark, steadfast and unflagging, welling like a drop of blood on a thorn-pricked fingertip. It pulsed, as if it breathed. And then it crept upward, finger by finger, bead by bead, slowly, like a necklet of Punja crystals. Frowning, I watched one become some become many, until the double-edged blade was ablaze with light, sparks joining to form a whole.

  Pulsing. Bright—brighter—brilliant…then dimming nearly to absence, until it renewed itself.

  Del sang on, and the blade burst into flame.…

  DAW titles by Jennifer Roberson

  KARAVANS

  KARAVANS

  DEEPWOOD

  THE WILD ROAD

  THE SWORD-DANCER SAGA

  SWORD-DANCER

  SWORD-SINGER

  SWORD-MAKER

  SWORD-BREAKER

  SWORD-BORN

  SWORD-SWORN

  SWORD-BOUND

  SWORD-BEARER

  CHRONICLES OF THE CHEYSULI

  Omnibus Editions

  SHAPECHANGER’S SONG

  LEGACY OF THE WOLF

  CHILDREN OF THE LION

  THE LION THRONE

  THE GOLDEN KEY

  (with Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott)

  ANTHOLOGIES

  (as editor)

  RETURN TO AVALON

  HIGHWAYMEN: ROBBERS AND ROGUES

  Sword-Singer

  Jennifer Roberson

  D A W B O O K S , I N C .

  DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM

  SHEILA E. GILBERT

  PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 1988 by Jennifer Roberson O’Green.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-64744-8

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Kathy Wyatt.

  Map by Elizabeth T. Danforth

  DAW Book Collectors No. 755

  The scanning, uploading and distribution via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA.

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  For Barry Malzberg:

  Who discovered me in the Scott Meredith slush pile and helped my dream come true

  (while warning me it might;)

  and

  Mark O’Green:

  Who made me write it again and again, (and again),

  until I got it right.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  One

  “Flea-bitten…jug-headed…lop-eared—” I sucked in a deeper breath, “—thrice-cursed son of a Salset goat!”

  Or similar sentiments. Trouble was, I was mostly incoherent, being somewhere on the delicate edge of discomfort and disaster.

  He didn’t answer. At least, not verbally. Physically, yes, and fervently; he humped and hopped and squealed, then buried his nose in the sand. Since he simultaneously elevated eloquent hindquarters with a powerful precision, I didn’t stand much of a chance.

  My saddle does not, thank valhail, have much of a pommel on it, being little more than a hummock of rigid leather shaped to fit the stud’s back and my rump. I’d bought it thinking mostly of comfort for the long, hot hours spent crossing the Punja on one job or another. But now I blessed myself for picking it; a man in imminent danger of taking a nosedive off a horse—headfirst, belly-down, scraping over the shoulders and neck—doesn’t much want to leave the best part of himself hung up on the front of a saddle while the rest of him sprawls in the sand.

  Of course, I did have other worries. Like where my sword might end up. Even the most active sword-dancer doesn’t generally entertain his opponent upside down in the circle; this meant there existed the possibility my borrowed sword might end up out of its sheath and in something else entirely, possibly even me.

  Or—(just give me half a chance)—in the stud himself.

  Face-first, I slid over the sloping front of my saddle (sucking up belly and everything else I could) and proceeded to dangle, however briefly, in the vicinity of his head.

  To which the stud took an immediate dislike, not being an animal who much cares to have a large, cursing man shrouding his head like a glop of half-cooked egg.

  The hindquarters came back down. It was the head’s turn to elevate itself. Because I knew what was likely to happen if I didn’t take immediate action, I wrapped arms and legs around whatever equine parts I could grab, and hugged.

  Hard.

  I’m big. I’m strong. It might have worked.

  Unfortunately, the stud had the benefit of panic.

  A horse’s head is harder than a man’s belly. A horse is stronger than a man. But I discovered just how hard and how strong as he tossed me aside like a wad of soiled silk.

  —airborne—

  Ah, hoolies.

  I landed mostly on a tucked right shoulder, but also on the side of my face and the business end of my sword, sheathed and slung diagonally across my back in harness. Which meant that while it didn’t dig too deeply into the sand, the blade did provide just enough leverage, as I rolled purposefully toward my shoulder blades, to tip me back over onto face and belly.

  I sucked up enough sand to seed a new desert and proceeded to cough up my lungs all over the border between my land, the South, and Del’s, the North.

  Del. Some help she was. While I hacked and gagged and retched and discovered I had a bitten, bloody lip, she dismounted (in the normal fashion) and went off to fetch back the stud, who was wandering in a northwesterly direction for no discernible reason.

  “—flea-bitten—” I spat out sand. “—jug-headed—” More sand. “—lop-eared—” Blood, this time. I touched my lip with a tentative finger, felt the sting of salt and sand in the wound. “—thrice-cursed son of a Salset goat!”

  I sat up. Scowled horrifically at Del as she brought back the stud. Her expression was bland, noncommittal; innocence personified. (She is very good at that.) Certainly she appeared neither amused nor particularly concerned or symp
athetic. But a closer look at guileless blue eyes told me she only bided her time.

  I tongued my lip. “Ought to leave him staked out for the cumfa.” I had to pick my way with words gingerly around the swelling lip, but the intent was clear enough.

  “Long ride on a single horse.” So bland. So infuriatingly casual.

  I glared. Del began examining the stud for injury.

  “He’s fine.” I paused. “He’s fine.”

  “Just checking.”

  I glared at her some more, absently admiring the clean lines of her face, so intent on the stud’s condition. Couldn’t see much more of her, as she was swathed in a white silk burnous that pretty well hid arms and legs and all of her womanly curves, spectacular as they were. In the South, that’s the point of a burnous on a woman: to hide the lady from masculine eyes that might otherwise become inflamed with lust at the sight of a shapely ankle.

  Trouble was, the custom caused difficulties, rather than avoiding them; a shapely ankle, promising other related anatomical niceties, becomes little more than an invitation to fantisize about the rest of the woman.

  Of course with Del, it took a lot less than an ankle. One glance out of those blue, blue eyes, and I was…well…

  Ah, hoolies. Me and every other male.

  Deftly, gently, she ran hands down forelegs, briefly examined tendons, led him forward a few steps to observe his action, then proceeded to strip off the saddle, pouches and blankets to look at his back. He was wet where the gear had been, but that was to be expected.

  “He does this,” I told her. “You know that. You’ve seen him do it before.”

  She pursed lips, raised pale brows. “Bit more violent this time.”

  “So am I.” I got up, winced, rolled my head from side to side. “Del—”

  “The stud’s all right.” She turned. “How are you, Tiger?”

  Now she asks. “Fine.” Flexed wrists, fingers, wriggled shoulders up and down. Then I unsheathed the sword to make sure all was well with my weapon, as any sword-dancer will do, and as often as necessary.

  Hoolies. This thrice-cursed Northern butcher’s blade.

  It is not mine. Not really, although I use it when I have to. It is borrowed, taken from a dead man who had no further use for it. I hated him, dead as he was; hated it, although the latter emotion was more than a little silly. But looking at the sword, touching it, wearing it, using it in my profession, reminded me time and again that my own shodo-blessed, blued-steel blade was dead as the man I’d killed in the circle beneath the moon.

  Singlestroke.

  Well, no sense crying when the aqivi’s been spilled.

  But I hated the thing. No sense, either, in denying it. Or in denying it frightened me in some weird, indefinable way.

  The sword was Northern. Not Southron, as Singlestroke had been; as I am. Northern-forged, Northern-blooded; a jivatma, what Del called a blooding-blade, because the man who had made it his own had sought out a respected enemy in order to quench the blade, to blood it, in some unknown Northern ritual. Here in the South, it’s different.

  Sunlight ran down the blade. Alien runes worked into equally alien metal took life in the light and writhed, though it was only an illusion…or so I’ve always maintained. For me, there is no magic; I am not Theron, who quenched the blade, and I don’t know its name or the key to bring the sword to life.

  But he had, in the circle before I killed him. He had, and I’d seen all the brilliant lights of what Del called the palette of the gods: purples, violets, magentas, all lurid luminescence. Each sword had a soul (for lack of a better word) as well as a name, and that soul marked its passing in a glowing tracery of light, a delicate lattice of visible color. Generally only when keyed, but a little of it showed in the blade even when quiescent: Del’s was salmon-silver, Theron’s palest purple.

  Or had been, before he died.

  It had been a magnificent dance, while it lasted; a test of skill, strength, training and, on one side, treachery. How we danced, did Theron and I, in the name of a Northern woman.

  A sword-dancer called Delilah.

  Mouth grim-set, I sighed, expelling the air through my nose. The twisted hilt was cool in the heat of the day. Too cool; not even when we’d been riding in the blazing Southron sun for hours on end did the unprotected metal grow warm. An odd, eerie silver, ice-white/blue-white, like the snowstorms Del had described. But snow and snowstorms, like the sword, are alien to me. Born of the Southron sun, knowing heat and sand and simooms, I couldn’t begin to comprehend (or even envision) the things she told me existed in her cold, Northern land.

  All I know is the circle.

  “One day,” she said, “you will have to make your peace with Theron’s sword.”

  I shook my head. “Once we can spare the time for me to seek out the shodo who trained me—or one of his apprentices—I’m trading this thing in on a real sword, a Southron sword, something I can trust.”

  “Trust that one,” she told me calmly. “Never doubt it, or yourself; in your hands, it knows no magic. With Theron dead, it’s only a sword. You know that. I’ve told you.”

  Told me, yes, because she knew how I felt about it. About the loss of Singlestroke. To a sword-dancer, a man who makes his living with the sword, a good blade is more than just a piece of steel. It’s an extension of himself, as much a part of him as hand or foot, though decidedly deadlier. Your weapon lives, breathes, takes precedence over so much, because without it you are nothing.

  For me, it was less than nothing; Singlestroke had given me freedom.

  Theron’s sword, I knew, was not precisely dead, but neither did it live. Not as Del’s blade did. But there was something about it, something odd; when I put my hands upon the twisted hilt, I always felt a stranger, a usurper, little better than a thief. And I always felt a funny little twitch in the hilt, a recoiling, as if the sword, too, was startled by my touch. As if it expected another’s flesh touching its own in that odd intercourse of man and sword. More than once I’d wanted to mention it to Del, but I never had. Something kept me from it. Pride, maybe. Or maybe just an unwillingness to admit I felt anything; I am not a man who puts much stock in magic, and the last one to admit I sensed such power in a sword. Even if it was mostly dissipated. For one, she might tell me I was imagining things.

  For another, she might tell me I wasn’t.

  Del understands swords. Like me, she is a sword-dancer, improbable as it sounds. (Hoolies, it had taken me long enough to admit it; even now I still flinch a little when she steps into the circle to spar with me. I’m just not used to facing a woman—at least, not in the circle.) Our customs are so different, too different here in the South, where the sun and sand hold dominance. Del had done her best to alter my perceptions (and continues to alter them on a daily basis), but parts of me still view her as a woman, not a sword-dancer.

  Of course just about the last thing a man might want of Del is a sword-dance. Dancing, yes, but not in the circle. Not with a steel blade…or whatever other kind of metal the jivatma was.

  In the South, a woman has nothing to do with weapons of any kind. She tends the house, the hyort, the wagon; tends the children, the chickens, the goats; tends the man who calls her his.

  But Del is Northern, not Southron. Del has no house or hyort or wagon, no children, chickens or goats. And she does not, most emphatically, have a man who calls her his, because Del belongs solely to Delilah.

  Of course, I know better than to try.

  I know better. But I try.

  I looked at Del, knowing better than most what lay under the burnous; beneath the sleeveless, thigh-length, rune-stitched leather tunic hidden by glossy silk.

  She is tall. Slender, but sinewy. Narrow-waisted, but wide-shouldered. Tough. Fit. Far stronger than an ordinary woman. There is nothing at all of fragility about Del, though she is all female, and all the pieces are quite distinctly in the proper places.

  Blue-eyed, fair-haired, fair-skinned bascha, although after a f
ew years under the Southron sun the hair is nearly white and the skin a tawny, creamy gold.

  We are so different, Delilah and I. I am a true son of the desert: skin burned dark as a copper piece, dark brown hair bleached on top a streaky bronze, green eyes couched in a fan of sun-baked creases that, when spread, display the color I was at birth, thirty-some-odd years ago. Paler then, though darker still than a Northerner’s creamy color.

  I am tall, broad, heavy, but considerably quicker than I look. Sword-dancing teaches even the slowest man how to move—or it teaches him how to die.

  I looked at Del, because Del is good to look at. But I also looked at the sword hilt that rode her left shoulder. I know it well now. Better than I prefer, because I had been forced to learn. All the months of watching Del wield it with uncanny skill and grace, knowing it more than simply a sword, I had had time to learn to respect it, even to fear it, because it was more than just a sword. In her hands, it was alive, and a thing of awesome power.

  Boreal: born of Northern banshee-storms, blooded in the body of one of the finest sword-masters of the North. Her sword-master—her an-kaidin—a man she honored and respected, who had taken a determined fifteen-year-old girl bent on a highly personal revenge and honed her into a weapon nearly as lethal as the one she’d eventually sheathed in him.

  Boreal. Who had, in my hands (however briefly loaned) come to life at the sound of her name, saving me, saving Del, destroying the man who meant to kill us.

  But Boreal was Del’s. I had no part of her. No more than I did of Theron’s blade, which now replaced Singlestroke even if only temporarily.

  Necessity is often distasteful.

  I sheathed the sword and ignored it, accustomed to its weight across my shoulders. Then I took the stud’s reins from Del’s hand and led him a few steps away.

  “Look, old son,” I began, “you and I have to come to an understanding. That sort of blowup is acceptable when we’re in a village or a town or an encampment and there’s money riding on the outcome, but not when it’s just you and me and Del, and that sandsick horse of hers.” I patted his neck. “Understand? You could get one of us hurt out here in the desert, and that’s not such a good idea.”