Sword Dancer - Sword Sworn Part 29

Something built up in my chest. Something that twisted. Something that threatened to burst.

I felt as if I were on the verge of a firestorm.

Oh, hoolies. Oh, G.o.ds, no ...

Del's tone changed. No longer was there challenge. Now there was expectation. "How to what, Tiger?"

I couldn't speak. The heat, the pressure increased. Pain filled my chest.

Her tone was almost a whisper. "Say it."

I took the step into conflagration. Denial kindled, exploded, then crisped into ash. Was blown away. Comprehension, confession, slow and painful, began to come into its place.

I couldn't say it.

"He did this," she said. "The Vashni. He did something to you. Now do you understand why I wanted to leave?"

Years of being stubbornly, selectively blind and deaf to certain impulses and speculations had created habits I found comforting. Habits that I could live with. Denial afforded me freedom. But I had stopped denying it in Oziri's presence. Had accepted it.

"Say it, Tiger. What he was teaching you. Admit it."

A spasm ran through my body. The words, slow, halting, laden with need, seem to come from someone else. "How to work magic."

Oh, hoolies . . . Memories came back then, came pouring back, tumbling one over the other like stones in a flash flood. I took what I could of them and fitted them into a whole. Hours.

Days, weeks. All had been lost to the dream-walks, the learning of the art. Now I understood Del's concern. Del's fear. Her desperation.

The Vashni had indeed done something to me: stolen sense, taken time. Turned me from my course. Set me on a new one.

Nihko had begun the process. Sahdri had explained it. Oziri had advanced it.

Oh, but it was so much easier to disbelieve, when faced with a terrible truth. A truth I could not accept, because the fear of it would overpower me. Incapacitation. I might as well be dead.

And I would be dead, according to the priest-mages of ioSkandi. To Umir's book.

Why would any man wish to be a mage, if the cost was so high?

Why would I?

I wished it because I'd wanted it. Needed it in the nights of my childhood, desperate to escape the Salset and the life of a chula: dreaming of a sandtiger, making it come to life; dreaming of Del atop the stone spire, who replaced a stolen scar and thus ident.i.ty; dreaming of a boat to carry me to Skandi.

The intent had not been magic. Never. I had only ever, a very few times, wished to make a miracle to change what I could not bear.

Messiahs made miracles. Mages made magic.

Maybe one and the same.

I swore, then drew up my knees and leaned over them, elbows planted, clenching taut fingers in my short hair. I wanted to pull it out by the roots, as if that would erase the knowledge of what Oziri had done. Of what I had become.

Dreams could merely be dreams. But dreams could also be more. Now I walked them.

Began to understand them. Summoned the magic within them, using the power Oziri sought, and found, and rekindled within my bones.

Nihko had told me. Sadri had told me. I had denied them both. But somehow, with Oziri, I had not. Maybe it was because enough time had pa.s.sed since my "whelping" atop the spire.

Maybe it was because I was in the South again, and my walls were down. Or maybe it was because Oziri forced the issue. Whatever the reason, he had made me understand what I was.

What I could do. What I had done.

But not what I might yet do.

My walls were down now, shattered upon the sand. Del, who realized it, released a long breath of eloquent relief and set down her sword. Knelt beside me. Put one hand on my own where they viciously gripped my hair.

I closed my eyes. I closed them very tightly. I thought my teeth might crumble.

The hand closed, offering comfort. Her tone was meditative; as a Northerner, she had never feared or denied magic. Nor refused to employ it herself. "From when I met you, I knew.

There were signs of it ... but you denied it. Refused to believe, despite evidence. Even when I showed you Northern magic. Even when you worked it."

I said nothing.

"I learned my magic," she said. "It's part of being a sword-singer, part of Staal-Ysta. That's what jivatmas are. We sing the power into being, to wield the blade."

She had told me this before. I wanted her to stop. Wanted not to listen.

"I have no magic," she said. "Only the sword. Only the song." Her fingers traced the back of one hand. "But you . . . you need nothing but yourself."

I shook my head.

"It's a part of you, Tiger. Just like your sword skill. Don't deny it."

Eventually I untangled fingers and looked at her. "I have to."

"No."

If I don't ..." But I let it go. I shook my head again, releasing pent breath. "It's too late for that, isn't it?"

"I think so, yes."

I sighed heavily, scrubbed wearily at my face. My eyes felt gritty. The beginnings of a headache throbbed at the base of my neck. "Did you really bury the necklet?"

'I cut the wire into pieces with my knife, then buried each bone in a different place."

Relief was palpable. Then comprehension followed, and amus.e.m.e.nt. No wonder it had taken her so long to find the appropriate bush. I wasn't certain anything in the necklet had controlled me or was meant to control me, but self-awareness had returned only with distance from Oziri and separation from the necklet.

"Good." I could not meet her eyes, so I stared hard at the stars for a long time. I heard the coals settling, the faintest of breezes skimming the surface of the soil, the restless s.h.i.+ftings of the stud and Del's gelding. "Four weeks," I said. "Give or take a day."

Del was puzzled. "What?"

"Since the sandtiger attack." I was certain of it, as much as I could be. It felt-right.

Del smiled. "Yes."

"There's something I have to tell you. Something you must understand." I swallowed heavily, aware of pain in my throat, the fear she couldn't, or wouldn't, accept it. "Bascha-you really were there. Atop the spire in the Stone Forest. With me."

Her tone frayed. "Tiger-"

"In my dreams," I told her. "And that's what saved me. That's what kept me sane. So long as I could hold onto the memory of you, could conjure you in dreams, I knew I would survive.

I lost myself for a while, even lost two fingers-but I came back from ioSkandi, came back from the spires." I took a deep breath. "I'll come back from this."

It was Del's turn for silence.

"I don't-I don't remember what Oziri did. What he told me, or taught me. Enough, obviously, to find and refine whatever was born in me, what bubbled up from time to time before going dormant again, until Meteiera. Apparently he brought it back into the open." I laughed sharply. "If I couldn't remember what day it was, how can I be expected to remember what he did? But what I don't understand is why."

Del pondered it. "Perhaps he realized what was in you, and wanted it for himself," she said.

"I think as long as you denied what you were, he could use you. Perhaps he felt your magic might augment his, make him something more than he was. But if you knew what he wanted, you would have resisted."

"Would I?"

"Oh, yes. You let no man use you, Tiger. Not Nihko, not Sah-dri, not Oziri."

"But they have. Each of them." Others as well, over the long years. "For a time."

"And you have walked away from them all."

Or been dragged away by a very determined woman. I sighed. "So, you think if I admit what I am, I'll be safe from manipulation?"

"Maybe."

I scowled. "That's not much of a guarantee."

Del's brows arched. "With the kind of lives we lead, that's the best I can offer."

True enough. I ran a hand through my hair, scrubbing at the chill that crept over my scalp.

"Dangerous."

"What is?"

"A man with a sword who lacks proper training." I grimaced, said what I meant: "A man with magic who lacks proper training."

Sahdri had said it, atop the spires. Umir's book set it into print. Oziri had proved it.

"Unless he is strong enough to find his own way."

I grunted. "Maybe."

Del smiled. "I will offer a guarantee."

I laughed, then let it spill away. "I can't believe that all dreams are bad, bascha. Everyone dreams. You dream."

"But I am not a mage."

She had said it was born in me. So had Nihkolara, and Sahdri. Oziri. Even Umir's book.

Dormancy until Skandi, from birth until age forty-except for a sensitivity to magic so strong it made me ill; until ioSkandi, when Nihko took me against my will to Met-eiera, to the Stone Forest; to others like him, like me. Where, atop a spire, a full-blown mage was born.

Denial bloomed again, faded. Was followed by the only logical question there could be.

What comes next?

TWENTY-THREE.

I AWOKE with a start, staring up into darkness lighted only by stars and the faintest sliver of moon. Sweat bathed my body. I swore under my breath and rubbed an unsympathetic hand over my face, mas.h.i.+ng it out of shape.

"What is it?" Del's voice was shaded by only a trace of sleepiness.

We lay side-by-side in our bedrolls with the dying fire at our feet. Desert nights are cool; I yanked the blanket up to my shoulders. Muttering additional expletives, I shut my eyes and draped an elbow over my face. "I was dreaming, curse it."

After a moment, with careful neutrality, she queried, "Yes?"

"I'd just as soon not, after my recent experiences." I removed the arm and looked again at the stars, shoving both forearms under my head. "How in hoolies am I supposed to go through life without dreaming?"

"I don't think you can not dream," Del observed, s.h.i.+fting beneath her blanket. "You'll just have to get used to it."

I grunted sourly.

"Well-unless you can learn to control them. Make them stop." She was silent a moment.

"And perhaps you can. Being you."

I chewed on that for a moment, then s.h.i.+ed away from the concept. That "being you" part carried an entirely new connotation, now.

"What was this dream about?"

I scowled up at darkness. "Actually, it was a piece of one I had before. At least, I'm a.s.suming it was a dream. Before, that is. You swore up and down it didn't happen."

"I did?"

"The dance," I said. "The dance where you walked away."