Oathblood Read online

  The old man shook his head. “It’s left us alone; we’re minded to leave it alone. Don’t kill it, sword lady. Leave it bide. Deer, boar, even a mess of rabbit or bird—just—not the bear.”

  Tarma checked the condition of every arrow in her quiver before attaching it to her belt. Then she looked at Egon and frowned. “You’re not doing that beast any favor, old man.”

  Egon’s face set stubbornly. “Not the bear.”

  She shrugged. “On your head. By the time it’s trouble, we’ll be gone past calling us back.” She half-turned to face her partner. “I should be back by afternoon. One more night here, then we’ll be off in the morning, if that’s all right with you.”

  Kethry smiled. “Who am I to complain about another night under shelter? Good hunting.”

  “Thanks, Greeneyes.” The Shin‘a’in slipped out the door, leaving Kethry and the Guildmaster alone, sitting across the worktable from one another. The silence between them deepened and grew heavier by the minute. The sorceress stared at her hands, trying to decide what to say—and whether now was the right time to say it.

  Finally, when Kethry couldn’t stand it any longer, she opened her mouth.

  “About that bear—” she began.

  Egon spoke at exactly the same moment. “Lady, be you—”

  They looked at each other and laughed shakily. Kethry nodded, gesturing to Egon that he should speak first.

  “Lady, I wasn’t sure, you wearin’ steel and all, but then seemed you know Mara—be you witchy? A sorceress, belike?”

  “Yes,” Kethry said slowly, wondering if he was going to be angry at the idea of having sheltered a mage without knowing it. There were some who would be. Mages were not universally welcomed.

  “Thank the God,” Egon breathed fervently—

  Oh, terrific. He isn’t going to throw me out, but—

  “It’s that Mara, lady. I tol’ you she been pokin’ about in them ruins? Seemed like maybe she found somethin‘. Them ruins, there’s stories that the people there was witchy, too. Shape-changers.” Egon swallowed. “We—we think maybe Mara found something of theirs.”

  Kethry put fact on top of surmise, and made a guess. “You think Mara’s the bear.”

  He looked relieved, and nodded. “Aye. Exactly that. We figure maybe she found some kind of witchy thing of theirs, what let her shape-change, too. Now she’s strange, but she bain’t bad, or bain’t been before. But she’s got stranger since we started seein’ the bear. There be bear tracks about her house—she says ‘tis ’cause the bear comes to her feedin‘, that it’s harmless if it’s left be—but we don’ think so. So—I dunno lady, I dunno what t’ ask, like.”

  “You want to know if she’s dangerous?” Kethry asked. She got up from her seat and began pacing, her hands clasped behind her. “Yes, dammit, she’s dangerous all right. The more so because I don’t think she ever really listened to a single word anyone ever told her at mage-school. Do you know why most mages don’t shapechange? Why they use illusions instead?”

  Egon shook his head dumbly, his wrinkled face twisted into a knot of concern.

  “Because when you shapechange, you become the thing you’ve changed to. You’re subject to its instincts, its limitations. Including the fact that there’s not enough room in a beast’s head for a human mind. That usually doesn’t matter, much. Not so long as you don’t spend more than an hour or two as a beast. You don’t lose much of your humanity, and you can probably get it back when you revert. But it’s not guaranteed that you will, and the stronger the animal’s instincts, the more of yourself you’ll lose.”

  “She been spendin’ whole days as bear, we think. She don’ come t’ door when a body calls till after sundown,” Egon whispered hoarsely.

  “And at a time of the year when bear instincts are strongest.” Kethry twisted the Shin‘a’in oath-ring on her left hand. “No wonder she put on weight. Bears go into a feeding frenzy in the fall—and she can’t have gained as much as a bear needs to winter-sleep. No wonder she looked like hell.” Abruptly she stopped pacing, and went to her bedroll, picking up the sword-belt that held Need and strapping the blade over her breeches and tunic.

  “Lady? What be you—”

  “Oh, don’t worry, Egon.” Kethry turned to smile at him wanly. “I’m not going to use this on her.”

  For one thing, I don’t think it would let me.

  “I’m going to go talk to her,” the sorceress continued. “Maybe, just maybe, I can help her.”

  She must be being torn nearly in two by now, Kethry thought unhappily, as she, in turn, slipped out into the dawn-gilded, frozen air. Caught between the bear and the woman—if I can get her to take Need, I think the blade can rebalance her body for her. I hope. I’m no Healer, and that’s what she needs most right now. That assumes she’ll let me, of course.

  She picked her way across the lumps of frozen snow to the farthest house of the cluster—a cabin, really. It had never been intended to be used for anything more than living quarters, unlike the rest of the dwellings in the settlement. That cabin was Mara‘s, so Egon had said. It looked deserted.

  Kethry pounded on the door for several moments, and got no answer.

  With my luck—

  She circled around to the back and found what she’d been dreading. The back entrance was unlatched; the cabin was empty. And among the many tracks leaving and entering the cabin from the rear, there were no human footprints among them. Only the half-melted and near-shapeless tracks of a small bear.

  Damn!

  So many tracks suggested that Mara had fallen into a pattern. And that was bad; it meant she wasn’t thinking in her bear-form, she was just acting. Then again, that she was following a pattern meant that if Kethry followed the old tracks, she’d probably be able to find Mara along the trail she’d established.

  Whether or not she’d be able to reason with her—

  I don’t have a choice, Kethry decided. That’s why Need’s been after me. Mara’s going to get trapped in her bear-shape-and she’s going to die.

  The trail took her deeply into the woods; without the trail, Kethry knew she’d have been lost. There were no signs of any habitation, no traces of the hand of man in this direction—except for certain rock outcroppings that didn’t quite look natural. Gradually, as the sun rose higher and crept toward the zenith, it dawned on Kethry that these outcroppings were becoming more frequent, as if they marked some kind of long-vanished roadway.

  She’s going out to these “ruins.” She must be going there every day. But why? And why in bear-form?

  She was never to have an answer to that question, because as she rounded the torn-up, snow-covered roots of a fallen tree, something stepped out of the shelter of a cluster of pines to block her progress.

  “You!” Mara spat. “You’ve come to steal it, haven’t you?”

  Her eyes were dull and deeply sunken; her hair was lank and unwashed. As she lumbered clumsily toward Kethry, the sorceress got a whiff of an unpleasant reek—half unwashed clothing and stale sweat, half an animallike musk.

  “Mara, I—” Kethry swallowed. If I say I haven’t got the vaguest notion what she’s talking about, she’ll know I’m lying. “—my partner and I are here by merest chance. We’re on our way down to the Dhorisha Plains. Mara, I’ll be blunt; you look awful. That’s why Egon asked me to follow you. He’s worried about you. Are you ill? Can I help?”

  Mara’s hands came up to her throat. “Liar! He wants it, too! He sent you to take it away from me!”

  Kethry raised her chin and looked squarely into those mad, glazed eyes. “Mara, Egon is a Master craftsman. He doesn’t need magic. And Idon’t need some stupid trinket to shape-change; I can do it myself. I don’t because it’s dangerous—”

  “Oh, yes, I remember you! Dear, bright, pretty Kethry! You never needed anything, did you? They gave you everything you ever wanted—power, magic, secrets—all those old men just fell over themselves to give you what they kept from me, didn’t th
ey? And the young men gave you—other things—didn’t they?” Mara’s face contorted into a snarling mask of hate. “Well, I’ve got secrets now, secrets they tell me. They made me their lover, just like those old men made you—they come to me when I change, and they make love to me, and they whisper their secrets—”

  As she babbled on about her “secrets” and her “lovers,” Kethry realized with a sense of growing horror what must have happened. She’d changed, possibly for the first time, during mating season. And now she had convinced herself that the male bears that had mated with her were the long-gone shape-changing builders of the ruins—

  Never particularly stable, perhaps it had been the shock of mating as an animal—and being unable to cope with it—that had pushed her over the edge.

  “—well, you can’t have it!” Mara shrieked at the top of her lungs. “It’s mine, it’s mine, it‘s—”

  The words blurred, the voice deepened, the shapeless bundle of fur took on a shape. The words were lost in the roar of the enraged bear that balanced manlike on hindlegs, and advanced—no longer clumsy—on Kethry.

  “Mara—Mara!”

  There was an oddly shaped metal pendant slung about the bear’s neck on a blackened thong. Kethry reached for it with her own magic, to try and nullify it—and met nothing.

  This “talisman” was not magic at all! Mara’s shape-changing was not the result of some ancient sorcery; it was only that she believed the medallion could work the change.

  And in magic, as Kethry had often told her partner, belief is the most important component.

  “Mara, I don’t want your talisman! It’s worthless—”

  The bear ignored the words, dropping to all fours and continuing to advance, saliva dripping from her snarling jaws.

  Kethry flung a sleeping-spell at the shape-changer. It was the most powerful spell she had in her depleted arsenal at the moment. She’d used so much trying to escape Wethes’ makeshift prison—

  The bear ignored the spell; ignored the mage-barrier she tried to erect to hold it off.

  She convinced herself she can change shape—sheprobably convinced herself she can defend against spells, too—

  So she really can.

  Kethry stumbled backward, stumbled and fell over the blade strapped to her side.

  Need!

  She tried to draw the sword—

  —and discovered that she couldn’t. It would not clear the sheath. It wouldn’t allow itself to be used against a woman.

  The bear reared up on hind legs again, as Kethry backed into the tangle of roots and frozen earth and found herself trapped. She drew her belt knife; a futile enough gesture, but she was not going to go down without a fight.

  And an arrow skimmed over her right shoulder to bury itself in the bear’s throat.

  The bear screamed, and pawed at the shaft, and a second joined the first—then a third, this one thudding into the shaggy chest.

  A fourth landed beside the third.

  The bear screamed again, and Kethry hid her face in her hands. When she looked again, the bear was down, its eyes glazing in death, a half-dozen arrows neatly targeting every vulnerable spot.

  “Next time you take a walk in the woods, lady,” Tarma said harshly, grabbing her by her shoulder and hauling her to her feet, “don’t go alone. I take it this isn’t what it looks like?”

  “It’s Mara,” Kethry replied, trying to control her shaking limbs. “She learned to shape-change—”

  The Shin‘a’in nodded. “Uh-huh; what I thought. Especially when you didn’t give her the business-end of Need. Hanging about with a magicker taught me enough to put two and two together once in a while on my own.” She prodded the stiffening carcass with the tip of her bow. “She going to change back? I’d hate to get strung up for murder.”

  Kethry held back tears and shook her head. “No. She froze herself into that shape—Goddess, how did you manage to get here in time?”

  “I got Egon’s deer almost before I left cleared lands; came back, and found you gone.” The Shin ‘a’in poked at the medallion around the bear’s neck. “What’s this? Is this—”

  “No,” Kethry said bitterly. “It’s just a bit of trash she found. She was so busy looking for ‘secrets’ that she never learned the secrets in her own mind. That’s what killed her, not your arrows.”

  “That could be said about an awful lot of people.” Tarma cocked an eye up at the sun. “What say we make a polite farewell and get the hell out of here?”

  “Expediency?” Kethry asked, trying not to sound harsh.

  Tarma shrugged.

  The sorceress looked down at the corpse. She’d offered Mara her help; it had been refused. Staying to be accused of murder—or worse—wouldn’t bring her back.

  Expediency.

  “Let’s go,” Kethry said.

  H TALE OF HEROES

  (Based on an idea by Robert Chilson)

  Rob Chilson and I were in a discussion at a convention about fantasy clichés; he wondered why no one ever bothered to point out the viewpoint of the poor chambermaid in all of the stories about iron-thewed, rock-headed Barbarian Swordsmen. That was an idea I couldn’t pass up. And who better to help with the concept than Tarma and Kethry?

  As for this particular chambermaid’s happy ending—well, I wouldn’t be particularly suited to Tarma’s life either. I hate camping, bugs, cold, and wet ; I don’t much care for half bumed food cooked over a campfire, and if I didn’t have some form of vision correction, I’d be legally blind. My personal idea of “the way things should be” is that all people be allowed the same opportunity for a life that suits them, period. If that happens to be becoming a mother or being an astronaut, both are important.

  And if those same people don’t make the most of the opportunities that are given them, that’s their own problem.

  “Miles out of our way, and still not a sign of anything out of the ordinary,” Tarma grumbled, her harsh voice carrying easily above the clopping of their horses’ hooves. “For certain no sign of any women in distress. Are you—”

  “Absolutely certain,” Kethry, the swordswoman’s partner, replied firmly, eyes scanning the fields to either side of them. Her calf-length buff-colored robe, mark of the traveling sorceress, was covered in road dust, and she squinted in an attempt to keep that dust out of her eyes. The chilly air was full of the scent of dead leaves and dried grass. “It’s not something I can ignore, you know. If my blade Need says there are women in trouble in this direction, there’s no chance of doubt: they exist. Surely you know that by now.”

  It had been two days since they diverted from the main road onto this one, scarcely wider than a cart track. The autumn rains were sure to start before long; cold rains Tarma had hoped to avoid by getting them on the way to their next commission well ahead of time. Since they’d turned off the caravan road, they’d seen little sign of habitation, only rolling, grassy hills and a few scattered patches of forest, all of them brown and sere. The bright colors of fall were not to be found in this region. When frost came, the vegetation here muted into shades more like those of Tarma’s worn leathers and Kethry’s traveling robes than the carnival-bright colors of the farther north. In short, the trip thus far had been uneventful and deadly dull.

  “I swear, sometimes that sword of yours causes more grief than she saves us from,” Tarma snorted. “Magicians!”

  Kethry smiled; she knew very well that the Shin‘a’in swordswoman was only trying to get a rise out of her. The magic blade called “Need” that she carried had saved both their lives more than once. It had the peculiar property of giving weapons’ expertise to a mage, or protecting a swordswoman from the worst magics; it could heal injuries and illness in a fraction of normal time—but it could only be used by a female. And, as with all magics, there was a price attached to Need’s gifts. Her bearer must divert to aid any woman in need of help, no matter how far out of her intended way the sword pulled her. “You weren’t saying that a few weeks ago, when
Need and I Healed that lung-wound of yours.”

  “ ‘That was then, this is now,’ ” her hawk-visaged partner quoted. “ ‘The moment is never the same twice.’ ” A bit of fresher breeze carried the dust of the road away, but chilled both of them a little more.

  Kethry shook amber hair out of her eyes, her round face full of amusement. “O wise sister-mine, do you have a proverb for everything?”

  Tarma chuckled. “Damn near—Greeneyes, these fields are cultivated—left to go fallow just this year. I think there’s a farm up ahead. Want to chance seeing if the owner’ll let us pass the night in his barn? Looks like rain, and I’d rather sleep dry without you having to exhaust magics to keep us that way.”

  Kethry scanned on ahead of them for possible danger, using magic to smell out magic. “It seems safe enough—let’s chance it. Maybe we can get some clue about what Need’s calling us to. I don’t like the way the air’s chilling down, sybarite that I am. I’d rather sleep warm, if we can.”

  Their ugly, mottled-gray battlemares smelled the presence of other horses, even as the sorceress finished her sentence. Other horses meant food and water at the least, and a dry and warm stable at best. With the year being well into autumn a warm stable was nothing to scorn. They picked up their pace so abruptly that the huge black “wolf” that trotted by the side of the swordswoman’s mount was left behind in the dust. He barked a surprised protest and scrambled to catch up.

  “That’s what you get for daydreaming, lazybones,” Tarma laughed, her ice-blue eyes slitted against the rising dust. “Don’t just look stupid. Get up here, or we’ll leave you!”

  The lupine creature—whose shoulder easily came as high as Tarma’s waist—gathered himself and sprang. He landed on the carrying pad of stuffed leather just behind her saddle; the mare grunted at the impact, but was unsurprised at it. She simply waited for the beast to settle himself and set his retractile claws into the leather pad, then moved into a ground-devouring lope. The sorceress’ mount matched her stride for stride.