Sword-Maker(30)

“Yes,” she answered evenly, without hesitation. “Because I know you, Tiger. I know your strengths, your power. Your own share of power, from deep inside … do you think I would ever doubt you?”

She should. I would.

I flung damp hair out of my eyes. “Del, I can’t dance with you. Not now. Maybe never. Because each time I try, I’ll see it all over again. You, on the ground … with blood all over the circle. With blood all over my sword.”

Del looked at my blade. Then at her own. Recalling, perhaps, that Boreal had been bloodied also? That someone other than herself had left his share of blood in the circle?

She drew in a deep breath. Shut her eyes briefly, as if she fought some inner battle; then opened them and looked at me. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I am—different. For a purpose. I put behind me what may be disturbing to others. Again, for a purpose; memories can turn you from your path. But—you should know it was not easy for me to cut you.” She frowned a little, as if the words hadn’t come out the way she meant them. “You should know that I was afraid, too … that you were dead. That I had killed you.”

“I can’t,” I said again. “Not now. Not yet. Maybe never. I know I promised. I know you need someone to dance with, so you can face Ajani. But—well …” I sighed. “Maybe what you should do is head south. Go on to the border. Harquhal, maybe—you should find someone there who will dance with you. Sword-dancers will do anything for coin.” I shrugged. “Even dance against a woman.”

“It will pass,” she told me. “Perhaps—if I made you angry?”

I grinned. “You make me angry a lot, bascha—it doesn’t mean I want to settle it with swords.”

“It will pass,” she said again.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe what—” I stopped.

Del frowned. “What is it?”

My belly rolled. All the hairs on my arms stood up. A grue rippled through flesh and muscle. “Magic,” I said curtly. “Can’t you smell it?”

Del sniffed. “I smell smoke.” She frowned, assessing, identifying. “Smoke—and something else. Something more.” She glanced around, brow creased. “It is gone now—”

“Magic,” I repeated. “And no, it’s not gone. It’s there. It’s there, bascha—I promise.” It was all I could do not to shudder again. Instead I contented myself with rubbing fingers through wool to flesh, scrubbing a prickling arm. “Not the hounds—not quite the hounds … something different. Something more.”

Del stared northeast. “We are but a day away from Ysaa-den—”

“—and in clear, cold air like this, smells travel; I know. But this is more.”

“Smoke,” she said again, musingly, and then moved away from the circle. Away from me. Like a hunting hound tracking prey, Del sifted through trees and shadows until she found a clearing open to the sky, unscreened by trees. “There,” she said as I came up beside her. “Do you see?”

I looked beyond her pointing hand. There was not much to see other than the jagged escarpments of a mountainside, and the blade-sharp spine of the highest peak, all tumbled upon itself into bumps and lumps and crevices, some dark, some shining white in the sunlight.

“Clouds,” I said.

“Smoke,” Del corrected. “Much too dark for clouds.”

I stared harder at the peak. She was right. It wasn’t a cloud I saw, rolling down from the heights to swath the peak, but smoke rising from the mountainside itself. Ash-gray, gray-black; it trailed against the sky like a damp cookfire in the wind.

“Ysaa-den,” she murmured.

I frowned. “Then that little mountain village is a lot bigger than I was told. That’s enough smoke for a city half the size of the Punja—”

Del interrupted. “No, not the village. The name. Ysaa-den.”

I sighed. “Bascha—”

“Dragon’s Lair,” she said. “That’s what the words mean.”

I scowled up at the mountain. “Oh, I see—now I’m supposed to believe in dragons?”

Del pointed. “You should. There it is.”

“That’s a mountain, Del—”

“Yes,” she agreed patiently. “Look at the shape, Tiger. Look at the smoke.”

I looked. At the smoke. At the mountain. And saw what she meant: the shape of the mountain peak, so harsh and jagged and shadowed, did form something like the head of a lizardlike beast. You could see the ridged dome of the skull, the overhanging brows, the undulating wrinkles of dragon-flesh peeled back from bared teeth. Only the teeth were spires of stone, as was the rest of the monstrous beast.