Valdemar 05 - [Vows & Honor 02] - Oathbreakers Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Appendix One - Dictionary of Shin‘a’in Terms

  Appendix Two - Songs and Poems

  THIS COULD NOT BE HAPPENING!

  But it was. A spirit-Kal‘enedral was manifesting before Tarma’s and Kethry’s astonished eyes, a spirit which was violating every precept to appear.

  He seemed to be fighting against something; his form wavered in and out of visibility as he held out frantic, empty hands to her, and he seemed to be laboring to speak. Kethry saw with mage-sight the veil of sickly white power that was encasing the spirit like a filthy web, keeping him from full manifestation.

  “There‘s—Goddess, there’s a counterspell—” Kethry started out of her entrancement. “It’s preventing any magic from entering this room! He can’t manifest! I—I have to break it, or—”

  “Don‘t!” Tarma hissed. “You break a counterspell and they’ll know one of us is a mage!”

  Tarma turned back to the spirit to see that he had given up the effort to speak—and she saw that his hands were moving. “Keth—his hands—”

  As Kethry’s eyes were again drawn to the wavering figure, Tarma read his message. Death-danger, she read, and assassins....

  NOVELS BY MERCEDES LACKEY

  available from DAW Books:

  THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

  ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

  ARROW’S FLIGHT

  ARROW’S FALL

  THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

  MAGIC’S PAWN

  MAGIC’S PROMISE

  MAGIC’S PRICE

  THE MAGE WINDS

  WINDS OF FATE

  WINDS OF CHANGE

  WINDS OF FURY

  THE MAGE STORMS

  STORM WARNING

  STORM RISING

  STORM BREAKING

  VOWS AND HONOR

  THE OATHBOUND

  OATHBREAKERS

  OATHBLOOD

  THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES

  FOUNDATION

  BY THE SWORD

  BRIGHTLY BURNING

  TAKE A THIEF

  EXILE’S HONOR

  EXILE’S VALOR

  VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:

  SWORD OF ICE

  SUN IN GLORY

  CROSSROADS

  MOVING TARGETS

  Written with LARRY DIXON:

  THE MAGE WARS

  THE BLACK GRYPHON

  THE WHITE GRYPHON

  THE SILVER GRYPHON

  DARIAN’S TALE

  OWLFLIGHT

  OWLSIGHT

  OWLKNIGHT

  OTHER NOVELS

  THE BLACK SWAN

  THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

  JOUST

  ALTA

  SANCTUARY

  AERIE

  THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

  THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

  THE GATES OF SLEEP

  PHOENIX AND ASHES

  THE WIZARD OF LONDON

  RESERVED FOR THE CAT

  And don’t miss:

  THE VALDEMAR COMPANION

  Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

  Copyright © 1989 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Interior maps by Larry Warner

  For color prints of Jody Lee’s paintings, please contact:

  The Cerridwen Enterprise

  P.O. Box 10161

  Kansas City, MO 64111

  Phone: 1-800-825-1281

  All songs © 1987 by Firebird Arts & Music Inc., Lyrics by Mercedes Lackey.

  For further information on these songs,

  send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to

  FIREBIRD ARTS & MUSIC, INC.

  P.O. Box 14785

  Portland, OR 97214-9998

  Phone: 1-800-752-0494

  DAW Book Collectors No. 768.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-12789-6

  First Printing, January

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Dedicated to:

  Betsy, Don and Elsie

  The real magic-makers

  Thanks, folks.

  One

  It was a dark and stormy night....

  :Pah!: Warrl said with disgust so thick Tarma could taste it. :Must you even think in cliches?:

  Tarma took her bearings during another flash of lightning, tried and failed to make out Warrl’s shaggy bulk against watery blackness, then thought back at him, Well it is, damnit!

  Tarma shena Tale‘sedrin, who was Shin’a‘in nomad, Kal’enedral (or, to outClansmen, a “Sword- sworn”), and most currently Scoutmaster for the mercenary company called “Idra’s Sunhawks” was not particularly happy at this moment. She was sleet-drenched, cold and numb, and mired to her armpits; as was her companion, the lupine kyree Warrl. The Sunhawks’ camp was black as the inside of a box at midnight, for all it was scarcely an hour past sunset. Her hair was plastered flat to her skull, and trickles of icy water kept running into her eyes. She couldn’t even feel the ends of her fingers anymore. Her feet hurt, her joints ached, her nose felt so frozen it was like to fall off, and her teeth were chattering hard enough to splinter. She was not pleased, having to stumble around in the dark and freezing rain to find the tent she shared with her partner and oathbound sister, the White Winds sorceress, Kethry.

  The camp was dark out of necessity; even in a downpour sheltered fires would normally burn in the firepits in front of each tent, or a slow-burning torch would be staked out in the lee of every fourth, but that was impossible tonight. You simply couldn’t keep a fire lit when the wind howled at you from directions that changed moment by moment, driving the rain before it; and torches under canvas were a danger even the most foolhardy would forgo. A few of the Sunhawks had lanterns or candles going in their tents; but the weather was foul enough that most preferred to go straight to sleep when not on duty. It was too plaguey cold and wet to be sociable. For heat, most stuck to the tiny charcoal braziers Idra had insisted they each pack at the beginning of this campaign. The Sunhawks had known their Captain too well to argue about (what had seemed at the time) a silly burden; now they were grateful for her foresight.

  But with the rain coming down first in cascades, then in waterwalls, Tarma couldn’t see the faint glow of candles or lanterns shining through the canvas walls that would have told her where the tents were. So she slogged her way through the camp mostly by memory and was herself grateful to Idra for insisting on an orderly camp, laid out neatly, in proper rows, and not the hugger-mugger arrangement some of the other mere officers were allowing. At least she wasn’t tripping over tent ropes or falling into firepits.

  :I can smell Keth and magic,: Warrl said into her mind. :You should see the mage-light soon.:

  “Thanks, Furball,” Tarma replied, a little more mollified; she knew he wouldn’t hear her over the howl of the wind, but he’d read the words in her mind. She kept straining her eyes through the tempest for a sight of the witchlight Keth had promised to leave at the front—to distinguish their tent from the two hundred odd just like it.

  They were practically on top of it before she saw the light, a blue glow outlining the door flap and brightening the fastenings. She
wrestled with the balky rawhide ties (the cold made her fingers stiff) and it took so long to get them unfastened that she was swearing enough to warm the whole camp before she had the tent flaps open. Having Warrl pressed up against her like a sodden, unhappy cat did not help.

  The wind practically threw Tarma into the tent, and half the sleet that was knifing down on their camp tried to come in with her. Warrl remained plastered against her side, not at all helpful, smelling in the pungent, penetrating way only a wet wolf can smell—even if Warrl only resembled a wolf superficially. The kyree was not averse to reminding Tarma several times a day (as, in fact, he was doing now) that they could have been curled up in a cozy inn if they hadn’t signed on with this mercenary company.

  She turned her back to the occupant of the tent as soon as she got past the tent flaps; she needed all her attention to get them laced shut against the perverse pull of the wind. “Gods of damnation!” she spat through stiff lips, “Why did I ever think this was a good idea?”

  Kethry, only just now waking from a light doze, refrained from replying; she just waited until Tarma got the tent closed up again. Then she spoke three guttural words, activating the spell she’d set there before drowsing off—and a warm yellow glow raced around the tent walls, meeting and spreading upward until the canvas was bathed in mellow light and the temperature within suddenly rose to that of a balmy spring day. Tarma sighed and sagged a little.

  “Let me take that,” Kethry said then, unwinding herself from the thick wool blankets of her bedroll, rising, and pulling the woolen coat, stiff with ice, from Tarma’s angular shoulders. “Get out of those soaked clothes.”

  The swordswoman shook water out of her short-cropped black hair, and only just prevented Warrl from trying the same maneuver.

  “Don’t you dare, you flea-bitten cur! Gods above and below, you’ll soak every damned thing in the tent!”

  Warrl hung his head and looked sheepish, and waited for his mindmate to throw an old threadbare horse blanket over him. Tarma enveloped him in it, head to tail, held it in place while he shook himself, then used it to towel off his coarse gray-black fur.

  “Glad to see you, Greeneyes,” Tarma continued, stripping herself down to the skin, occasionally wincing as she moved. She rummaged in her pack, finding new underclothing, and finally pulling on dry breeches, thick leggings and shirt of a dark brown lambswool. “I thought you’d still be with your crew—”

  Kethry gave an involuntary shudder of sympathy at the sight of her partner’s nearly-emaciated frame. Tarma was always thin, but as this campaign had stretched on and on, she’d become nothing but whipcord over bone. She hadn’t an ounce of flesh to spare; no wonder she complained of being cold so much! And the scars lacing her golden skin only gave a faint indication of the places where she’d taken deeper damage—places that would ache de monically in foul weather. Kethry gave her spell another little mental nudge, sending the temperature of the tent a notch upward.

  I should have been doing this on a regular basis, she told herself guiltily. Well—that’s soon mended.

  “—so there’s not much more I can do.” The sweet-faced sorceress gathered strands of hair like sun-touched amber into both hands, twisting her curly mane into a knot at the back of her neck. The light from the shaded lantern which hung on the tent’s crossbar, augmented by the light of the shielding spell, was strong enough that Tarma noted the dark circles under her cloudy green eyes. “Tresti is accomplishing more than I can at this point. You know my magic isn’t really the Healing kind, and on top of that, right now we have more wounded men than women.”

  “And Need’ll do a man about as much good as a stick of wood.”

  Kethry glanced at the plain shortsword slung on the tent’s centerpole, and nodded. “To tell you the truth, lately she won’t heal anybody but you or me of anything but major wounds, so she isn’t really useful at all at this point. I wonder sometimes if maybe she’s saving herself—Anyway, the last badly injured woman was your scout Mala this morning.”

  “We got her to you in time? Gods be thanked!” Tarma felt the harpwire-taut muscles of her shoulders go lax with relief. Mala had intercepted an arrow when the scouts had been surprised by an enemy ambush; Tarma had felt personally responsible, since she’d sent Warrl off in the opposite direction only moments before. The scout had been barely conscious by the time they’d pounded up to the Sunhawk camp.

  “Only just; an arrow in the gut is not something even for a Master-Healer to trifle with, and all we have is a Journeyman.”

  “Teach me to steal eggs, why don’t you? Tell me something I don’t know,” Tarma snapped, ice-blue eyes narrowed in irritation, harsh voice and craggy-featured scowl making her look more like a hawk than ever.

  Oops. A little too near the bone, I think.

  “Temper,” Kethry cautioned; it had taken years of partnership for them to be able to say the right thing at the right time to each other, but these days they seldom fouled the relationship. “Whatever happened, you can’t undo it; you’d tell me that if the case were reversed. And Mala’s all right, so there’s no permanent harm done.”

  “Gah—” Tarma shook her head again, then continued the shake right down to her bare feet, loosening all the muscles that had been tensed against cold and anger and frustration. “Sorry. My nerves have gone all to hell. Finish about Mala so I can tell the others.”

  “Nothing much to tell; I had Need unsheathed and in her hands when they brought her inside the camp. The arrow’s out, the wound’s purified and stitched and half-healed, or better. She’ll be back dodging arrows—with a little more success, I hope!—in about a week. After that all I could do that was at all useful was to set up a jesto-vath around the infirmary tent—that’s a shielding spell like the one I just put on ours. After that I was useless, so I came back here. It was bad enough out there I figured a jesto-vath on our tent was worth the energy expense, and I waited for you to get in before putting it in place so I wouldn’t have to cut it. Can’t have the Scoutmaster coming down with a fever.” She smiled, and her wide green eyes sparkled with mischief. “Listen to you, though—two years ago, you wouldn’t have touched a command position, and now you’re fretting over your scouts exactly the way Idra fusses over the rest of us.”

  Tarma chuckled, feeling the tense muscles all over her body relaxing. “You know the saying.”

  “Only too well—‘That was then, this is now; the moment is never the same twice.’ ”

  “You’re learning. Gods, having a mage as a partner is useful.”

  Tarma threw herself onto her bedroll, rolling over onto her back and putting her hands behind her head. She stared at the canvas of the tent roof, bright with yellow mage-light, and basked in the heat.

  “I pity the rest of the Hawks, with nobody to weatherproof their tents, and nothing but an itty bitty brazier to keep it warm. Unless they’re twoing, in which case I wish them well.”

  “Me too,” Kethry replied with a tired smile, sitting crosslegged on her own bedroll to fasten the knot of hair more securely, “though there’s only a handful really twoing it. I rather suspect even the ones that aren’t will bundle together for warmth, though, the way we used to when I wasn’t capable of putting up a jesto-vath.”

  “You must be about Master-grade yourself by now, no?”

  Tarma cracked her left eye open enough to see Kethry’s face. The question obviously caught the mage by surprise.

  “Uh—”

  “Beyond it?”

  “I—”

  “Thought so.” Tarma closed her eyes again in satisfaction. “This job should do it, then. Through Idra we’ll have contacts right up into the Royal ranks. If we can’t wangle the property, students and wherewithal for our schools after this, we’ll never get it.”

  “We’d have had it before this if it hadn’t been for that damned minstrel!” Now it was Kethry’s turn to snap with irritation.

  “Must you remind me?” Tarma groaned, burying her face in the crook of
her arm. “Leslac, Leslac, if it weren’t for Bardic immunity I’d have killed you five times over!”

  “You’d have had to stand in line,” Kethry countered with grim humor. “I’d have beat you to it. Bad enough that he sings songs about us, worse that he gets the salient points all bass-ackwards, but—”

  “To give us the reputation that we’re shining warriors of the Light is too damned much!”

  They had discovered some four or five years ago that there was a particular Bard, one Leslac by name, who was making a specialty of creating ballads about their exploits. That would have been all to the good, for it was certainly spreading their name and reputation far and wide—except that he was also leaving the impression that the pair of them were less interested in money than in Just Causes.

  Leslac had stressed and overstressed their habit of succoring women in distress and avenging those who were past distress. So now anyone who had an ax to grind came looking for them—most particularly, women. And usually they came with empty pockets, or damned little in the way of payment to offer, while the paying jobs they would rather have taken had been trickling away to others—because those who might have offered those jobs couldn’t believe they’d be interested in “mere money.”

  And to add true insult to injury, a good half of the time Kethry’s geas-blade Need would force them into taking those worthless Just Causes. For Need’s geas was, as written on her blade, “Woman’s Need calls me/As Woman’s Need made me./Her Need will I answer/As my maker bade me.” By now Kethry was so soul-bonded to the sword that it would have taken a god to free her from it. Most of the time it was worth it; the blade imparted absolute weapons expertise to Kethry, and would Heal anything short of a death wound on any woman holding it. And after the debacle with the demon-godling Thalhkarsh, Need had seemed to quiet down in her demands, unless directly presented with a woman in dire trouble. But with all those Just Causes showing up, Need had been rapidly turning into something more than a bit expensive to be associated with, thanks to Leslac.