Tiger and Del Series

A return to the vivid fantasy world of the highly popular Sword-Dancer saga, featuring iconic characters Tiger and Del.

Sword-Bearer marks a return to the vivid world of Jennifer Roberson’s highly popular Sword-Dancer saga, featuring iconic characters Tiger—the South’s most famous and gifted sword-dancer—and Del, a Northern-born woman and expert sword-singer. 
 
Tiger and Del have settled into semi-retirement to raise their daughter, establishing a school for those who wish to become sword-dancers, part of a highly ritualized rite in which specially trained sword-fighters are hired to settle feuds among rich and powerful desert princes. Death-dances are few and far between; the goal is simply to win within the confines of “the circle.”
 
But Tiger is an outcast, a man who attained the highest level of achievement at the training school he attended faster than anyone before him, only to voluntarily break all oaths in order to save Del. By doing so, he made himself a target of men formerly his colleagues, now sworn enemies. He is constantly challenged to death-dances where rules, and oaths, no longer apply.
 
Now, with the world around them falling victim to a malignant Northern-born magic, Tiger gathers Del and his adult son, Neesha, to end the magic threatening the world—and discovers, along the journey, yet another element of magecraft within himself. Yet even as Tiger learns more about his gifts, Del comes face to face with the daughter she left behind so many years before.
 
Fans of Roberson’s bestselling series should enjoy this wildest of rides alongside the Sandtiger and Delilah.

After years of deadly quests and dangerous enemies,Tiger and Del have finally found relative saftey in a secluded desert canyon. They enjoy a settled, if somewhay less exciting, life raising their daughter, Sula, and training Tiger’s son, Neesha. They also train all those who manage to find them, thus forming their own school of sword-dancing.

But the manhunt for Tiger has not ended, for he is still an outcast from the brotherhood of sword-dancers for breaking the oaths of honor codes of Alimat, and his deadly brethren seek to kill him. To add to the threats, an old enemy, Umir the Ruthless, has offered substantial bounty for anyone bringing Tiger to him alive. Umir possesses a powerful grimoire–a book of spells that Tiger had locked by magic–and he is determined to use any means at his disposal to force Tiger to unlock this deadly book.

The sixth book in the Sword-Dancer saga continues the legendary adventures of Tiger and Del, magic wielders and skilled warriors

The South had always been Tiger’s home. Left as an infant to die in the desert, his real origins were unknown. When he won his freedom from the tribe who enslaved him by slaying a deadly sandtiger, he joined the elite brotherhood of Southron sword-dancers, swearing a lifelong oath to abide by their code of honor.

Del was a woman of the North. She had seen her family brutally murdered and her brother carried away to the South to be sold into slavery. Motivated by revenge, she studied with the greatest of Northern sword-masters and became the deadliest sword-singer in the North.

Together these two legendary fighters had forged an unlikely partnership of equals, sharing adventures, danger, and eventually love. But when Tiger forfeited an important sword dance to rescue Del, he broke his sworn code of honor—and his sentence was death.

Fugitives from both the North and the South, Tiger and Del flee to the distant island of Skandi. Tiger has been told he resembles the people who comes from this remote land, and now, Tiger seeks his true identity. But Skandi proves no safe haven.

Abducted by priest-mages, altered in mind and body, Tiger is forced to acknowledge that he possesses his own special brand of magic. A personal magic that carries its own price: Tiger will only have ten or twelve more years to live.

But as Tiger and Del struggle to escape, Tiger’s long-dormant power begins to manifest. He falls victim to visions he cannot dismiss, dreams of a dead woman luring him into the crystal sands of the Punja, the South’s deadliest desert. “Find me,” she bids him, “and take up the sword.”

Initially, Tiger rebels, refusing the siren song of his dreams. But at last, helpless to deny the compulsion in his own blood, Tiger must accept his magic and his fate. Yet can he avoid paying the terrible price that they threaten to extract?

The fifth book in the Sword-Dancer saga continues the legendary adventures of Tiger and Del, magic wielders and skilled warriors

In the three years since Tiger and Del’s fateful meeting, these mismatched companions have become true partners, their alliance forged by blood, magic, danger, adventure…and something more.

Exiled from both the North and the South, the two have now set sail to search for Tiger’s homeland—but no journey is ever without complications for Tiger and Del. Shipwrecked, nearly drowned, abducted by pirates, bedeviled by magic, the Southron sword-dancer and the Northern sword-singer finally do arrive at their destination.

But before the mystery of his origins can be solved, Tiger must face another truth about himself that may prove more dangerous than any sword-dance. His own personal brand of magic, long denied by Tiger, is manifesting. And because of its very uniqueness, Tigers awakening power may prove his undoing!

The fourth book in the Sword-Dancer saga continues the legendary adventures of Tiger and Del, magic wielders and skilled warriors

Accused of murdering a man the Southron tribes believe to be their messiah, but who is actually the slayer of Del’s family, Tiger and Del flee across the deadly Punja desert, hunted by religious zealots and sword-dancer assassins. But evading death by assassins’ blades is only one of the challenges they face. For Tiger’s sword, Samiel, has been possessed by the spirit of the deadly sorcerer Chosa Dei—a wizard out of legend with thepower to unmake the entire world, a master of evil who seeks to mold Tiger into his ultimate weapon of destruction.
 
Tiger and Del have one hope left—to find and gain the help of Chosa Dei’s equally powerful counterpart and sworn enemy, Shaka Obre. But Shaka Obre has not been seen in the world for hundreds of years, and it may be beyond even the combined magical abilities of Tiger and Del to find this wizard who is their only chance for salvation….

The third book in the Sword-Dancer saga continues the legendary adventures of Tiger and Del, magic wielders and skilled warriors

Sword-sworn to track down the hounds of hoolies, yet inescapably haunted by his memories of Del, Tiger, now master of Northern and Southron sword skills, is relentlessly following the trail that will lead him to Ysaa-den. Yet before him wait perils far deadlier than any hounds. For in Ysaa-den, he is hailed as a champion come to stop the force that has been wreaking destruction upon the villagers, a force which many claim is a dragon of unimaginable strength. 

As the trail of hounds and “dragon” now seem intertwined, Tiger has no choice but to climb the mountain to the place known as Dragon’s Lair. And it is here that he comes face to face with a challenge that may prove beyond even the mastery of Northern and Southron sword magic—the challenge of Chosa Dei, a wizard out of legend with the power to unmake all that opposes him….

Sword-Singer once again unites Del and Tiger–she among the greatest of Northern sword masters, he a Southron warrior of legendary skills–on a new and perilous journey into the North, to the Place of Swords, where Del must submit to trial-by-combat for the slaying of her sword-master.

The first book in the Sword-Dancer saga introduces the legendary adventures of Tiger and Del, magic wielders and skilled warriors

He was Tiger, born of the desert winds, raised as a slave and winning his freedom by weaving a special kind of magic with a warrior’s skill. Now he was an almost legendary sword-dancer, ready to take on any challenge—if the price was right.

She was Del, born of ice and storm, trained by the greatest of Northern sword masters. Now, her ritual training completed, and steeped in the special magic of her own runesword, she had come South in search of the young brother stolen five years before.

But even Del could not master all the dangers of the deadly Punja alone. And meeting Del, Tiger could not turn back from the most intriguing challenge he’d ever faced—the challenge of a magical, mysterious sword-dancer of the North….