Sword Dancer - Sword Sworn Part 39

If the sword she meant was Samiel, why were we out here in the Punja, at least two day's ride from Beit al'Shahar? I had inti-tally wanted to go get the jivatma, if possible; it was why we'd headed for the mountains in the first place, once out of Haziz. It hadn't felt like a compulsion then, merely a plan. Something I wanted to do.

Now, here, I needed to do it. Yet there was no jivatma anywhere nearby. That I knew. So maybe I was meant to find another sword, a different sword.

Unless only the woman was here for me to find. Or what was left of her.

Shaking my head, I packed the squashable bucket away, hung empty botas back on my saddle, made to remount. Then stopped. Stood there, clinging to the stud.

"What?" Del asked.

I flung up a hand, stopping her from saying more.

Silence, save for the familiar sounds of horses. They shifted position, pawed at sand, shook manes, rattled bit shanks, snorted, chewed at the metal in their mouths. I heard nothing else.

But I felt it.

Abruptly I stuck my foot in the stirrup and swung aboard, ignoring the complaints of my leg. "Turn back," I said urgently. "Simoom!"

I reined the stud around. Del and Nayyib mounted quickly and turned as well.

But that was where the storm came from. Behind us before; now ahead. The first faint haze was visible along the horizon, like a wisp of ruffled silk.

"The other way!" I shouted, sinking heels into the stud. Maybe my sense of direction was forever skewed, thanks to- whatever.

We ran, but the wind and sand ran faster. The storm spilled across the land like a vast, rolling wave, filling the sky from horizon to sun. The day grew dark.

"There's no shelter!" Nayyib's voice, pitched to cut through the first whining of the wind.

No. None. In such circ.u.mstances the best bet was to put the horses down and use them as shelter. I suspected Nayyib's horse was trained for it, if the kid had grown up on a horse farm in the South; but then Iskandar was up near the border, more soil than sand, and he might not know much about simooms. He probably knew even less about the Punja, though he had made it to Haziz. Probably paid a guide.

No guide could help us now. The leading edge of the storm was very close, collecting gouts of sand as it howled across the land. Del's gelding probably wasn't trained to lie down-I couldn't see anyone taking a blue-eyed white horse into the Punja-and the stud, after his experience earlier in the day, would likely refuse all inducements. We didn't have time to try Nayyib's trick of cross-tying and hobbling legs.

Knowledge flickered deep in my mind. Fear followed swiftly, churning in my belly.

Not me, I said. Don't expect me to do this.

But of course something did. Something inside. Something that had been teased back into awareness with the writings in Umir's book, full of spells, incantations, conjurations. Despite what I'd said, I hadn't quite read it all, but enough. More than enough.

I could build us shelter, the way I had conjured a boat on ioSkandi, to search for Del.

If I didn't do so, we'd likely all die.

Swearing, I reined the stud in. Del and Nayyib hadn't seen me and kept riding. But I had more to think about than when or if they'd realize where I was. I turned the stud loose and swung to face the storm.

It was magnificent and malevolent. Even the sun was shrouded, hazed by the towering storm. By the time I counted to ten on my hands-well, to eight-it would have us.

I went into my head, thinking. Wind was air. It was air that carried sand. Air was the impetus. If the air itself could be used, could be manipulated, I could make us shelter.

I wore no burnous, only dhoti, sandals, harness, and a sword across my back. It was not a jivatma. Was just a sword. But I was a sword-dancer, and in my hands a sword, any sword, could be made to conquer anything.

I unsheathed. Slitted my eyes against wind and sand. Shut the hilt in both hands as firmly as I could and raised the sword. Set the blade into the air over my head. Felt the wind buffet it, sand grains hissing against steel. I closed my eyes, bit into my lip. Even as I stood there, my flesh was abrading. Chest and legs stung.

I heard someone call. Del, then Nayyib. I shut them out.

Dished them away. Made myself alone. Just me-and the simoom.

I saw the spell in my head. Unraveled the words I'd read but days before, comprehending only half of them. I knew the words but not their meanings. I was but a first-level mage, as sword-dancer skill was measured. Full of potential but raw, wild, dangerous.

Abbu Bensir learned that.

We stood no chance unless I surrendered denial and accepted truth. As I had to Del, saying the word. Naming myself.

Mage. Whelped upon a spire in the Stone Forest, weeks away from here.

I gripped the sword, felt two thumbs and four fingers. Four. Slowly brought the blade down, sundering the sky.

The fabric of the storm, the heavy curtain of sand, split apart. Poured around me, roaring. Sand whirled by, carried on wind. But wind was merely air, and I could command it.

Mage I might be, but I was also the Sandtiger, and that I valued more than magic. The greatest sword-dancer legendary Alimat had ever produced. No one, and nothing, could defeat me. Not even a simoom.

Paltry, petty storm. Insignificant.

I grinned into it, knowing no sand would touch my scarred, stubbled face, scour out fragile, gelid eyes. I had parted the simoom, cut through its gritty fabric, shattered gemstones made of crystal, and gave us room to live.

In a matter of moments, the storm, like torn silk, flapped itself into shreds. The curtain of sand fell to the earth. Crystals dulled, then flared anew into dusty sunlight. Haze dissipated.

The air began to warm.

The sword was still in my hands, tip set against sand. Slowly, aware of trembling in my arms, I raised it, resheathed it, then turned to see if I was alone.

No. Three horses and two humans. A man and a woman. The latter two knelt on the sand, hands shielding their heads. But slowly the heads raised. The faces opened. Del, whose smile was as odd as it was faint, spat grit out of her mouth. Then she stood up.

"Nicely done," she observed. "That one will come in handy."

Nayyib still knelt, looking dazed as well as windblown. "That was magery?"

Del laughed. "That was Tiger."

I bent, ruffled my hair vigorously to free it of the worst of the sand. Nothing had gotten through once I'd applied myself to cutting open the storm to divert it around us, but we'd gotten a faceful before then. The horses, being horses, not foolish humans, had promptly turned their rumps to the wind. Now they shook violently, banging stirrups and botas against sandy sides.

A cloud of fine dust rose from each of them.

I staggered, laughed, cut it off sharply, lest I lose the last shreds of self-control. "Ah, yes, the wonderul 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 disinterrment. 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 a.s.sume-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 protrustions, 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 tap, 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.