Sword-Maker, page 8
“How old are you?” I countered, knowing perfectly well. But it’s a question women hate.
Del didn’t flinch. Nor did she hesitate. “In three more days, I will have twenty-one years.”
“Hoolies,” I said in disgust, “I could be your father.”
Del’s face was serious. “He was forty when he was killed. How close are you to that?”
“Too close,” I muttered sourly, and went off to appease my bladder.
Nine
Del and I rode steadily northeast for two more days. We took it pretty easy on several counts: one, the stud; two, me; and three, Del herself. Neither of us is the kind of person who enjoys poor health. Neither of us is the kind of person who likes to talk about it, either, which meant we mostly kept our mouths shut regarding respective wounds.
But we did notice, of course. I noticed Del, she noticed me. But we each of us said nothing, because to say something meant admitting to discomfort, which neither of us was prepared to do. Call it pride, arrogance, stupidity; only the stud was completely honest, and he made no bones about it. He hurt. And he told us.
I patted his neck, avoiding healing claw scores. “I know, old man—but it’ll get better, I promise.”
Del, who rode in front of me amid bare-branched trees, twisted her head to mutter over a shoulder: “How do you know? You don’t even know where we’re going.”
“We’re going to Ysaa-den.”
“And if you find no answers there?”
That again. It had briefly been a topic of discussion the day we’d set out. She was unconvinced I had made the right decision to follow the hounds to their origins. But since all of her decisions were governed by an insatiable need for revenge, I’d told her I wasn’t so certain she could be trusted to give me an unbiased opinion regarding much of anything; she had retreated into haughty silence, as women so often do when the man catches them out, and had said nothing of it again.
Until now.
I adjusted my posture to the motion of the stud, trying to find a position that didn’t pull at healing scar tissue. “Del,” I said patiently, “you didn’t know where you were going when you went south to find your brother. I don’t notice that it stopped you, since before we met up we’d never heard of one another—well, maybe you’d heard of me—and here we are now, riding together in the North. All of which means you didn’t much care that you didn’t know where you were going. You just went.”
“That was different.”
I nodded wryly to myself; isn’t it always different?
Del peered at me over her shoulder, setting her jaw against the pain of twisting her torso. “How will you know when you’ve found whoever—or whatever—you’re looking for?”
“I just will.”
“Tiger—”
“Del, will you just stop trying to grind me into the ground in hopes I’ll give in to you? I’ve made up my mind, and I intend to carry out my promise.” I paused. “With you or without you.”
Silence. Del rode on. And then, mostly muffled, “Those beasts were never after you.”
It was half challenge, half boast. Also truth; it had become fairly clear months before the hounds wanted Del’s sword, or Del, or both.
But that was then. Things had changed. “They are now.”
Del stopped her gelding. Turned more squarely in the saddle, which hurt her, but didn’t stop her from staring back at me intently. “What?”
“I said, ‘They are now.’ Why do you think the one stole the ward-whistle?”
Del shrugged. “That was Cantéada-made. Magicked. Lure enough, I think, without thinking it was you.”
The stud reached out to sample the gelding’s bluish rump. I pulled him back, chastised him a bit, turned him off diagonally in hopes of interesting him in something else, like maybe a tree. “They came once before into my camp. All of them. And they tried to take my sword.”
“Take it!”
“Steal it,” I confirmed. “They weren’t much interested in me, just in the sword.”
Del’s frown deepened. “I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand?” I wrestled with the stud, who was showing signs of reacquainting his teeth with the roan’s rump. “Originally all they wanted was your sword, remember? And then mine … once I’d blooded it. Once I’d killed that cat.” Memory was a spasming in my belly. “Even once—” But I cut it off.
Del’s brows shot up. “‘Even once’ what?”
Memory blossomed more fully. I stood on the overlook by the lakeshore, staring down at Staal-Kithra, Place of Spirits, where Northern dead lay entombed in Northern earth, honored by barrows and stone dolmens.
I stood by the overlook by the lakeshore, staring down at Staal-Ysta, Place of Swords, the island floating in water dyed black by winter’s embrace. And I had thrust a naked blade into the earth.
Naked when it went in. Rune-scribed when it came out.
A chill pinched my spine. “They’ve known since I named it.”
Del waited.
“They must have,” I mused. “They were one large group originally—I followed the spoor for days … and then the group split up. Some tracks went on. Others circled back …” I frowned. “Those hounds must have known.”
After a moment, she nodded. “Names are powerful things. With jivatmas, one must be careful. Names must be closely guarded.” And then her expression softened. “But you know that. You would never tell anyone the name of your blooding-blade.”
“I told you.”
Del was astonished. “Told me! When? You have said nothing of it to me. Nothing of its name.”
I scowled at the stud’s ears. “There on the overlook, above the island. After I pulled it free. I just saw the runes, read the name—and told you.” I squirmed slightly, knowing how foolish it sounded. “I didn’t really expect you to hear. I mean, I wasn’t even sure you were still alive—” I cut that off abruptly. “I just—said it. There on the overlook … for you.” I paused, needing to explain. “You’d told me the name of your sword. I thought I should do the same. So we’d be even.” I exhaled heavily. “That’s all. That’s why. So we’d be even.”
Del didn’t say a word.
The memory was so clear. “There it was,” I told her. “Spelled out. His name … in the runes. Just as you and Kem had promised.”
“Runes,” Del echoed. “Runes you don’t know how to read.”
I opened my mouth. Shut it.
It had not occurred to me. The runes had looked so familiar I hadn’t even thought about it. Not ever. I had just looked at them—and known. The way a man knows the shape and texture of his jaw when he shaves every morning. The way his body knows the fit of a woman’s without requiring lessons.
Oh, hoolies.
Abruptly I unsheathed. Balanced the blade across the pommel of my saddle and stared at alien runes.
Stared hard. Until my eyes blurred and the shapes ran together. The shapes that had not existed in the blade originally. Not when Kem had given it to me. Not when I had dipped it in the water, asking, very cynically, the blessings of Northern gods.
Not when I had sheathed it in Northern earth, at the brink of the overlook.
Only after I had drawn it out.
Del sat next to me on her blue roan. Like me, she stared at the blade. But she was smiling, if only a little; all I did was glare.
“So,” she said, “once again the Sandtiger walks his own path. Makes his own path, as you have made that sword.”
My tone was curt. “What?”
“Do you recall when Kem nicked your hand and had you bathe the blade in blood?”
I nodded sourly; I hadn’t liked it much.
“It is part of the Naming ceremony. Ordinarily the runes show themselves then. Mine did; all jivatmas do.” She paused. “Except, of course, for yours.”
I recalled Kem saying something of the sort. I also recalled him saying something about belief being a requisite; that until I fully believed in the magic of a jivatma, its true name could not be known. Which was why, at that specific moment, there had been no runes.
But there on the overlook, so frightened Del was dead, I had believed. Because it had been the sword, not me, that had tried so hard to kill her.
And so, in that moment of belief, the sword had revealed its true name. In runes I couldn’t read.
I said something very rude. Very violent. It had to do with things I would like to do with the sword. Do to it; things that would give me great pleasure, great relief; things that would resolve all potential future problems because if I did them—one, or even all of them—there would be no future for the sword.
“Yes,” Del agreed. “It is difficult to accept the second soul—especially when that soul was once cat, not man. But you will.” She smiled; a bit smugly, I thought, which was altogether unnecessary as well as unappreciated. “It knows you, now. It has told you what it must be. What it wants most of all.”
“To kill,” I muttered.
Del’s tone was even. “Isn’t that what you do? Isn’t that what you are?”
I stared at the blade. The runes remained. Familiar shapes. But nothing I could read.
I looked away from the sword into Del’s face. “Samiel,” I told her.
Del drew in a startled breath.
“Samiel,” I repeated. “You couldn’t hear me the first time. Now you can. Now you know what it is.”
I saw her mouth the name. I saw her look at my sword. I saw her think of her own; of what the “honor” entailed.
She turned her horse and rode on.
At sundown, Del watched pensively as I tended the stud, feeding him handfuls of grain and talking to him quietly. I didn’t think anything of it; people riding alone often talk to their horses. And she’d seen me do it before, though admittedly not as much. She had talked to her silly speckledy gelding during the ride north; now she had the blue roan, but I doubted she’d change her ways.
She handed me the bota when I returned to the cairn and arranged myself on my bedding, wrapping myself in cloak and pelts. Quietly, she said, “You care for him very much.”
I sucked amnit, swallowed, shrugged. “He’s a horse. Good as any other, better than most. He’ll do in a pinch.”
“Why have you never named him?”
I tossed the bota back. “Waste of time, names.”
“You named your sword. Both of them; your Southron sword, Singlestroke, and then your Northern sword.” But she didn’t say the name. “And you have a name yourself, honorably won. After years of having none.”
I shrugged. “Just never got around to it. It seemed sort of silly, somehow. Sort of—womanish.” I grinned at her expression. “He doesn’t really need one. He knows what I mean.”
“Or is it a reminder?”
She asked it mildly enough, implying nothing by it other than genuine curiosity; Del isn’t one to purposely ask for hostilities, in words or with weapons. But it seemed an odd question.
I frowned. “No. I have a couple of good reminders: these scars and my necklet.” I pulled the leather cord from beneath the woolen tunic and rattled curving claws. “Besides, I got him years later, long after I was free.”
Del looked at her gelding, tied a prudent distance from the stud. “They gave him to me,” she said, “to encourage a swifter departure.”
Her tone was even enough, but I’ve learned how to read the nuances. More than the wound hadn’t healed, and wouldn’t for a while.
I let my necklet drop. “You did the right thing.”
“Did I?” Now bitterness was plain. “I deserted my daughter, Tiger.”
I saw no sense in diplomacy. “You did that five years ago.”
It snapped her head around. She stared at me angrily. “What right have you—”
“The one you gave me,” I told her evenly, “when you pledged me to Staal-Ysta—without my permission, remember?—to buy time with Kalle. Even though you’d given her up five years before.”
I didn’t intend to criticize her for it; it had been her decision. But by now she was so defensive she considered any comment at all a questioning of her motives. Which meant, as before, she was questioning them herself.
It is not something Del likes to do.
“I had no choice.” Her tone was implacable. “I had made oaths. Blood oaths. All oaths should be honored.”
“Maybe so,” I agreed patiently, “and you’re doing a fine job … but losing Kalle was the price. It was the choice you made.”
Del turned her head and looked at me. “Another thing,” she said quietly, “worth killing Ajani for.”
I think there is no way a man can fully share or understand a woman’s feelings for her child; we are too different. Not being a father—at least, not as far as I know—I couldn’t even imagine what she felt. But I had been a child without kin of any kind, trapped in namelessness and slavery, feeling myself unwhole. Del’s daughter had a family, even if not of her blood, and I thought that relationship justified the price.
Even if the mother did not.
“It’s done,” I said quietly. “You’ve been exiled from Staal-Ysta. But at least you’re alive.”
Del stared hard into darkness. “I lost Jamail,” she said, “when he chose to stay with the Vashni. And now I have lost Kalle. Now I have no one at all.”
“You have you. That ought to be enough.”
Del’s look was deadly. “You are ignorant.”
I arched eyebrows. “Am I?”
“Yes. You know nothing of Northern kin customs. Nothing at all of family. Yet so quickly you undervalue things I hold very dear.”
“Now, Del—”
Del’s impatience was manifest. “I will tell you once. A last time. I will tell you so you know, and then perhaps you will understand.”
“I think—”
“I think you should be quiet and listen to my words.”
I shut my mouth. Sometimes you have to let women talk.
Del drew in a steadying breath. “In the North kin circles are very close. They are sacred … every bit as sacred as a circle is to a sword-dancer. Generations live within a single lodge, sometimes as many as four if the gods are generous in portioning out our lives.” Briefly she nodded. “When a man marries, the woman comes into his lodge—unless he has no kin, and then he goes into hers—and so the circle widens. Children are born, and still the circle widens. And when sickness comes and the old ones die, or even the newborn babies, the circle grows small again, so we may support one another. So we may share in the pain and the grief and the anguish, and not try to withstand it alone.”
I waited, saying nothing.
“Brothers and sisters and cousins, aunts and uncles and grandfolk. Sometimes the lodges are huge. But always filled with laughter. Always filled with song. Even when people die, so the soul departs in peace.”
I thought back to the lodges on Staal-Ysta. Big wooden lodges overflowing with people. So different from what I knew. So alien in customs.
Del spoke very softly. “When anything of substance happens, kinfolk always share. Courtships, weddings, birthings. And deaths. The songs are always sung.”
She paused, swallowing, frowning, then continued. “A father begins one for the lost child, and the mother takes it up, and then the brothers, the sisters, the aunts, the uncles, the cousins, the grandfolk … until the child is sung to sleep forever. If it is a husband, the wife begins. A wife, and the husband begins, and so on. The song is always sung, so the newly passed know a life beyond the world. So that there is no darkness, but only light. The light of a day, the light of a fire … the light of a star in the night, or the glint from a jivatma. Light, Tiger, and song, so there is no need for fear.” She drew in an unsteady breath. “But now, for me, there will be no song. There is no one to sing it for me.” She controlled her voice with effort. “No one for whom I may sing it; Jamail and Kalle are gone.”
It called for something. Something of compassion. Something of understanding. But I found myself lacking the words, the tact, the necessary understanding, because I had known the need for revenge. The need for spilling blood.
And so I blurted the first words I stumbled upon because they were easiest. Because they required no compassion—only quiet, deadly passion. “Then let’s rid the world of these hounds, bascha … let’s rid it of Ajani.”
Del blinked heavily. But her tone was very steady. “Will you dance with me, Tiger? Will you step into the circle?”
I looked at my sword, lying quietly in its sheath. I thought of its power. I thought of a man named Ajani, and the woman once called Delilah. “Any time you like.”
Lips parted. I knew what she wanted. To say here, now, this moment. The temptation was incredibly strong, but she denied it. And made herself all the stronger.
“Not now,” she said quietly. “Not even tomorrow. Perhaps the day after.”
She knew as well as I even the day after was too soon. But by the time that day arrived, we could put it off again.
Or not.
I rolled forward onto my knees, pulled one of my pouches close, dug down into its depths and pulled from it the ash-dappled pelt. I tossed it gently at her.
Del caught it. Let it unfurl, exhibiting all its glory. And looked to me for an explanation.
“Your birthday,” I told her. Then, feeling awkward, “I’ve got no use for it.”
Del’s hands caressed it. Much of her face was hidden behind loose hair. “A fine pelt,” she said softly. “The kind used for a newborn’s cradle.”
Something pinched my belly. I sat up straighter. “You trying to tell me something?”
Del frowned. “No. No, of course—” And then she understood exactly what I meant. She tossed back pale hair and looked me straight in the eye. “No, Tiger. Not ever.”
“What do you mean, not ever?” And then I thought about how some women couldn’t have children, and regretted asking the question. “I mean—no, never mind. I don’t know what I mean.”
“Yes, you do.” Del smiled, if only faintly. “I mean, not ever. Only Kalle. I made it so.”
“What do you mean, you made it—” And, hastily, “No, never mind.”
