Sword-Singer Read online

  “At least you’re human,” I croaked. “Hoolies, I hate this place.”

  But at least the snow had stopped.

  Thirty-three

  Days passed. So did the storm, but another followed on its heels. Just like the hounds on ours.

  They were always out there somewhere, slinking through the trees. The ward-whistle kept them at a distance but didn’t drive them away. It made us irritable, snappish, because we weren’t sure what they’d do, other than drive us north. It was where we wanted to go, but we wanted to do it without escort.

  Del hunched down in the snow, carefully nursing a tiny fire in an attempt to keep it burning. But wind made it difficult; wind and snow and damp wood. I did what I could to form a shield, holding up a large blanket, but knew the effort was futile.

  “Hoolies,” I said, “I’m sick of this! What I’d give for a little warmth!”

  Del hunched over the flickering flames. “What would you give?” she asked.

  “My beard?” I suggested hopefully.

  She grinned, casting me a glance as she made a windbreak with her hands. “How many times must I tell you?—you’ll do better with a beard. It’s a form of winter hair, just like the stud wears.”

  “He’s a horse, Del; I’m a man. And I prefer bare skin to a pelt, especially on my face.”

  She laughed a little, nodding. “As much hair as you’ve grown lately, I begin to think you’re half bear.”

  Well, I was. The Cantéada had given us blankets for bedding, but lately we’d taken to using them as cloaks against the increasing cold. I hadn’t cut my hair or shaved in weeks; not much of my face showed, except for my nose, the bare patches beneath my eyes, and the sandtiger scars on my cheek. Everything else was covered by hair, wool and leather.

  Del, of course, didn’t have the advantage of a beard, which meant she spent most of her time wrapped to the eyes in her blankets. Now she had set them aside; wind chafed her face rose-red and stung tears out of her eyes.

  “How much farther?” I asked.

  She glanced northward, frowning. The trees were naked save for frost, and the snow caught in crotches. The storm had begun the night before and showed no signs of letting up.

  Del sighed, shrugging a little. “In good weather, a week. But with the snow, maybe two.”

  “Too long,” I said.

  She hunched again over the fire. “I know, Tiger. I know.”

  “Won’t they give you extra time? I mean, what with all this snow…” I let it trail off; Del was shaking her head.

  “Unlikely,” she told me. “A year is more than enough time. They would merely say I left it till too late.”

  “But you’re making every effort, bascha. Won’t they give you credit for that?”

  Snow slapped her in the face, crusted in her hair. “I don’t think so, Tiger. If I’m late, I’m late.”

  The wind shifted. So did I, trying to block its strength so Del could coax the fire to life. “How long do you think this will last?”

  She muttered something in Northern, cursing the failed fire, then lurched up from her kneeling posture. “I don’t know!” she cried. “Do you think I know everything?” And then she covered her face with her hands. “Gods, oh, gods, what is happening to me? Why am I always so angry?”

  “You’re tired,” I told her flatly. “Tired and worn to the bone.” I shoved my way through calf-deep snow, hating the heaviness, draped the blanket around her shoulders and snugged the ends together. “When you came South, all you had to worry about was Jamail. Now there is much more: time, Ajani, the voca, the hounds, even bad weather. What did you expect?”

  The brief anger had spent itself. Now she was merely tired. “I don’t know what I expected. At first, I was happy just to be home. But now—now there are other concerns. The ones you’ve made me think about, like what I will do when the trial is over.”

  “Good.”

  “If they let me live.”

  “There’s no question of that.” I plowed my way through snow to the stud, tied to a tree. He had turned his rump to the wind, head hanging down; I pushed off the blanket of snow that turned him from bay to gray. “After all, with the Sandtiger as your sponsor—”

  “Tiger—look out—”

  I swung instantly, reaching for my sword, but the beast was already on me. I felt jaws closing on my left wrist, trying to gnaw through wool and leather; smelled the musky stink; heard the snarling deep in his throat. Caught completely by surprise—and cursing myself for it—I went down on one knee; felt the jaws compress my wrist.

  Hoolies, the thing was strong!

  I felt the stud behind me, trying to snap his rope. Heard his frantic squealing. Fell backward against his forelegs and felt him quivering, trying to avoid me. A horse hates to step on a man, but will if there’s no other choice.

  Beyond the beast, I saw Del, Boreal raised to strike. But I also saw anguish and indecision; in her haste she might strike me. In delay, the beast might kill me.

  Some choice, bascha.

  She shifted her stance. Dropped to one knee. Altered her grip on the sword and used it like a pike, thrusting into the underbelly. I was grateful she missed mine.

  Blood rained down, hot and acrid. The beast howled, writhed, released his grip on my arm to snap at the blade. His entrails were hanging out; Del had done more than thrust. She’d ripped the guts from his belly.

  I pulled away, staggered up, ran three steps past the stud simply in reaction. Swung around and looked back, panting steamclouds in exertion.

  Through the snowfall, I saw her face. Pink from exposure, but also stained with blood. She put up one gloved hand to touch her cheek, smeared blood, took it away again. Her eyes were on the beast, now lying dead in the snow.

  I caught the stud’s picket line. “Easy,” I told him, “easy.” I untied him, led him three trees away, tied him up again. He was still frightened by the beast, but I dared not tie him farther. Where there was one there were probably more.

  I trudged back through snow, marking the crimson bloodstains. Was glad it wasn’t mine.

  Del rose slowly. “Wolf,” was all she said.

  I frowned. I’d expected to see a hound, and so I had. But closer inspection proved her right. The beast was wolf, not hound.

  “The whistle,” I began, puzzled. “Shouldn’t it keep wolves away as well?”

  “The Cantéada made it for beasts shaped by sorcery. This wolf was merely a wolf, doing what wolves do in winter: feeding a family.”

  I cast her a sour glance. “Don’t sound so regretful, Del; I might have been the dinner.”

  She shrugged one shoulder, sword dripping blood to stain the snow. “He probably wanted the stud. You just got in the way.” She looked from the wolf to me. “Only rarely do they attack men, preferring other prey. But in winter, when game is scarce; when there are hungry cubs in the den, sometimes they turn to men. Or anything they can find.”

  She was, like many women, an easy mark for animals, particularly the young. I recalled her defiance of Southron custom by briefly adopting two sandtiger cubs, even knowing how deadly they’d be once poisonous claws broke free of buds and fangs replaced their milk-teeth. Luckily, we’d gotten rid of them before they could mature.

  “No,” I said flatly.

  Del frowned at me. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, bascha. You’re thinking about two or three wolflings holed up in a den nearby. Well, I say no. They’ve probably got a mother.”

  “You don’t know that, Tiger.”

  “What I do know is, we can’t waste even an hour hunting them; we’ve got no time to spare.”

  Del looked down at the butchered male. “No,” she said, “we don’t.” And turned her back on the wolf as she went to clean her sword.

  I followed a moment later. “We’ll have to break camp now. Likely the body’ll bring down other beasts. I’d rather not risk it, Del, especially so close to dark.”

 
She cleaned the blade, slid it home again. “Let me see your wrist.”

  I twitched a shoulder briefly. “It’s sore, but it’ll do. He didn’t break the skin.”

  “Let me see, Tiger. We don’t move until I do.”

  I swore, muttered, stuck out my left arm. Del peeled back the layers. “See?” I said. “No blood. Just a little swelling.”

  She touched it. I winced. “Umm hmmm,” she murmured, “I see. Swollen, as you say…” Her voice trailed off.

  I looked down on her bowed head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say something—or someone—was out to get me.”

  Del didn’t answer at once, deftly inspecting my wrist. Eventually she asked why.

  “Well, first there were the loki…then those hounds of hoolies…that water witch—and now the wolf.”

  “The North is a naturally dangerous place,” she said patiently, “like the South. There is no one trying to get you.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t been the target.”

  She glanced up sharply. “No? Do you want to split up to prove it? I’ll wager the hounds follow me. Me and my sword.”

  I thought about it. “No, let’s not split up—ouch!”

  “It will likely bruise by morning.” Smiling sweetly, she worked the hand and wrist before I could flex it stiff. “Maybe sprained, Tiger, but then that will never bother a big, strong man like you.” She yanked the layers of leather and wool back down, rose, slapped me on the shoulder. “Get the stud and let’s go.”

  So much for sympathy. Glumly, I went for the horse.

  Two days later, the track took us above the timberline, into the snowy mountains. Del called them the Heights.

  “This is Reiver’s Pass,” she said. “From here, Staal-Ysta is maybe a week. We might make it yet.”

  We stood on a treeless escarpment: Del, the stud, and I. Behind us tumbled the uplands, farther yet the downlands, below that the borderlands and the plateaus close to Harquhal. The snowstorm had finally died, but the cold was colder yet. I shivered inside my woolen blankets, wishing I was a bear. Because then I’d be hibernating, oblivious to the cold.

  There were mountains yet before us, blasted by wind and filmed with ice. They glittered in meager sunlight like sand crystals in the Punja. My eyes were dazzled by the light; I put up a hand to block it.

  “A good day,” Del said. “The clouds are thin, and the sun shines through. See the ring around it? It’s widening, not contracting; it means the weather will be good. The blessing of the gods.”

  “Hunh.” I wasn’t so sure. “How do you live up here? How do you survive the winters?”

  “You’re surviving one.” Del grinned at me, scraping back wind-tangled hair. “Man adapts, Tiger…even a man like you. Once you’ve adjusted—”

  “Adjusted, nothing,” I said rudely. “Once you’re done with this trial, I’m heading South again.”

  Too quickly, Del looked away. “We should go on, Tiger. I want to avoid another storm.”

  “You just said the weather would be good.”

  “Maybe I lied.”

  I sighed. Glanced back the way we had come. “I don’t see the hounds.”

  Del turned. “The ward-whistle’s still working.”

  “Then why don’t they just give up?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Tiger. Maybe they’re like me…maybe their song hasn’t ended yet.”

  I glanced at her sharply. Being cryptic, again; as always, it annoyed me. “I hardly think beasts—”

  “I would,” she interrupted, “if someone has given them one to sing.”

  “Oh, Del, come on.”

  She thrust out a pointing hand that indicated the treeline far below our tracks against the snow. “Someone set them on us, Tiger…someone told them to stay with us. The ward-whistle keeps them at bay, but it doesn’t send them away. Have you any other explanation?”

  “Maybe they’re just hungry.”

  She cast me a withering glance.

  I turned to the stud and swung up, suppressing a wince of pain. The wrist was still very sore, but I wouldn’t tell her that. She’d only use it to claim some sort of odd, obscure victory of woman over man.

  “Are you coming?” I asked.

  Del grabbed my wrist, which hurt, and swung up, settling onto a furry rump. The stud had lost weight since we’d first picked up our shadows, particularly carrying two, but he was tough and stubborn and valiant and I knew he’d never give up.

  No more than Delilah would.

  Thirty-four

  Del leaned sideways and forward, all at once, to press against my back. One arm curved around me, pointing. “There,” she said. “Staal-Ysta.”

  I stared. I gaped; what she pointed at was a lake, a cold, glass-black lake, huddled amidst the mountains. In its center swam an island. “That?” I asked succinctly.

  “That,” she agreed. “There’s a pathway down to the shoreline.”

  So there was, winding down; I wasn’t sure I wanted to take it. The lake looked bottomless, and I can’t swim. “Bascha—”

  But Del was off the stud, striding forward to pause at the head of the path. Here the wind blew constantly, though not at gale force; it did, however, strip the ground we stood on free of snow, baring dark earth and darker rubble. She stood there, hair blowing back from her face, and stared down at the Place of Swords. What she saw I couldn’t say, except to see what it did to her.

  I slid off the stud and let him graze; the tough, fibrous turf growing in swollen patches here and there would keep him from wandering. I stepped in behind Del and put my hands on her shoulders. Strands of hair caught in my beard, blonde on brown; smiling wryly, I pulled them away.

  Del drew in a breath. “Nearly six years ago I came here, alone, because it was a thing I had to do. There was no other to avenge my family’s murder; no son, no brother, no cousin. Only me, a fifteen-year-old girl who knew enough of the sword to know it could be her deliverance, and her brother’s, if she chose to take it up.” Her tone hardened. “I chose. Then, I chose. But now I am back, with my song unfinished, to have my choice made for me: do I live? Or do I die?”

  I stared out at the flanks of snowy mountains, ranked in rows around the lake. The island in the center was scalloped at the edges, like lace, thorny with bare-limbed trees, veiled in bluish vegetation impervious to the cold. The colors were smudgy and dull, like the winterscape: smoke blue, steel gray, indigo black, all swathed in the pristine white of mourning. From here the island looked quite small. But from there, so did we. If they could see us at all.

  I squeezed her shoulders briefly. “Let’s go down, Delilah. You’ve waited long enough.”

  Down. We walked, leading the stud, because the way was steep and he was weary of carrying two. Del preceded me, I him; he seemed grateful, bobbing his head with the downward motion.

  Down and down and down, until we reached the bottom, and the shoreline curved before us, left and right, butting up against treeless mountain slopes, wearing only snow.

  I frowned. “What are all these lumps?”

  Del didn’t answer at once. Wrapped in her borrowed blankets, she walked forward, toward the shoreline, oblivious to the lumps.

  The turf was winter-brown, but thriving. It crawled from the shoreline to the path we’d just descended, even over the oblong lumps, like a cloak. It softened all the edges; velvet over stone.

  Halfway to the shoreline, Del stopped. Turned back to look at me. “Not lumps,” she said, “barrows. See the stones? Cairns and dolmens, marking the passage graves.”

  I stopped so short the stud walked into me. He snorted, shook his head, nudged my elbow.

  Hoolies. Graves.

  I drew in a breath. The lumps—barrows—closest to me had no stones, being merely turf-covered, oblong mounds. But those closer to Del, closer to the lake, boasted conical piles of weathered dark stone, or large, flat rock caps, some standing on end, others resting across them like a table top. There were, I saw, runes,
carved into the standing stones.

  “Staal-Kithra,” Del said quietly. “Place of Spirits.”

  I shivered. “How do we get to the island? There’s no boat. And I don’t plan on swimming—particularly as I can’t.”

  “There will be a boat.” Del stared out at the island. “There’s something I must do, first. And then we will see if we’re given leave to go to Staal-Ysta, or if it is too late.”

  In the distance, I heard the whinnying of a horse. So did the stud; he lifted his head and answered, pealing the sound through clear winter air.

  “Someone’s coming,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Not yet. Someone will come for the stud, yes, but not until it’s time.” She nodded her head eastward, along the shoreline. “The horses are kept over there, a mile, maybe two, at the settlement. They’re tended by the children, who take turns. It’s a way of teaching them responsibility. But there are adults, as well; families of the ishtoya and an-ishtoya. Those of higher rank may keep their families on the island.”

  “Why so far? Why not here?”

  “Staal-Kithra,” Del said simply. “Only the dead live here.”

  The stud whinnied again, smelling mares; other stallions. I gathered slack rein and kept him close even as he protested, not wanting to lose him now. I might need him again. And soon.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Tell the voca I am here.” Del peeled back her blankets, slipped them, folded them carefully and placed them on the ground. Wind rippled the wool of her tunic and gaitered trews, plucking at leather fringe and knots. “It shouldn’t take long, Tiger.”

  Standing amidst the barrows and cairns and dolmens of Staal-Kithra, Place of Spirits, Del drew Boreal from her sheath and held up the jivatma as she had done before, on the border between North and South, balancing hilt and blade on the open palms of both hands, offering Boreal to the skies, to the gods, to her kin. Maybe to the spirits.

  Or maybe to the voca who waited to pass judgment.

  Then, without speaking, she shifted her stance. Brought the sword down, altered her grip, plunged the blade into the ground so the hilt stood boldly upright.