The Oathbound Read online

  “Jel‘enedra, you think too much. It makes you melancholy.”

  She recognized the faintly hollow-sounding tenor at the first word; it was her chief sword-teacher. This was the first time he’d come to her since the last bandit had fallen beneath her sword. She had begun to wonder if her teachers would ever come back again.

  All of them were unforgiving of mistakes, and quick to chastise—this one more than all the rest put together. So though he had startled her, though she had hardly expected his appearance, she took care not to display it.

  “Ah?” she replied, turning slowly to face him. Unfair that he had used his other-worldly powers to come on her unawares, but he himself would have been the first to tell her that life—as she well knew—was unfair. She would not reveal that she had not detected his presence until he spoke.

  He had called her “younger sister,” though, which was an indication that he was pleased with her for some reason. “Mostly you tell me I don’t think enough.”

  Standing in a clear spot amid the bushes was a man, garbed in fighter’s gear of deepest black, and veiled. The ice-blue eyes, the sable hair, and the cut of his close-wrapped clothing would have told most folk that he was, like Tarma, Shin‘a’in. The color of the clothing would have told the more knowledgeable—since most Shin‘a’in preferred a carnival brightness in their garments—that he, too, was Sword Sworn; Sword Sworn by custom wore only stark black or dark brown. But only one very sharp-eyed would have noticed that while he stood amid the snow, he made no imprint upon it. It seemed that he weighed hardly more than a shadow.

  That was scarcely surprising since he had died long before Tarma was born.

  “Thinking to plan is one case; thinking to brood is another,” he replied. “You accomplish nothing but to increase your sadness. You should be devising a means of filling your bellies and those of your jel‘suthro’edrin. You cannot reach the Plains if you do not eat.”

  He had used the Shin‘a’in term for riding beasts that meant “forever-younger-Clanschildren.” Tarma was dead certain he had picked that term with utmost precision, to impress upon her that the welfare of Kessira and Kethry’s mule Rodi were as important as her own—more so, since they could not fend for themselves in this inhospitable place.

  “With all respect, teacher, I am ... at a loss. Once I had a purpose. Now?” She shook her head. “Now I am certain of nothing. As you once told me—”

  “Li‘sa’eer! Turn my own words against me, will you?” he chided gently. “And have you nothing?”

  “My she‘enedra. But she is outClan, and strange to me, for all that the Goddess blessed our oath-binding with Her own fire. I know her but little. I—only—”

  “What, bright blade?”

  “I wish—I wish to go home—” The longing she felt rose in her throat and made it hard to speak.

  “And so? What is there to hinder you?”

  “There is,” she replied, willing her eyes to stop stinging, “the matter of money. Ours is nearly gone. It is a long way to the Plains.”

  “So? Are you not now of the mercenary calling?”

  “Well, unless there be some need for blades hereabouts—the which I have seen no evidence for, the only way to reprovision ourselves will be if my she‘enedra can turn her skill in magic to an honorable profit. For though I have masters of the best,” she bowed her head in the little nod of homage a Shin’a‘in gave to a respected elder, “sent by the Star-Eyed herself, what measure of attainment I have acquired matters not if there is no market for it.”

  “Hai‘she’li! You should market that silver tongue, jel‘enedra!” he laughed. “Well, and well. Three things I have come to tell you, which is why I arrive out-of-time and not at moonrise. First, that there will be storm tonight, and you should all shelter, mounts and riders together. Second, that because of the storm, we shall not teach you this night, though you may expect our coming from this day on, every night that you are not within walls.”

  He turned as if to leave, and she called out, “And third?”

  “Third?” he replied, looking back at her over his shoulder. “Third—is that everyone has a past. Ere you brood over your own, consider another’s.”

  Before she had a chance to respond, he vanished, melting into the wind.

  Wrinkling her nose over that last, cryptic remark, she went to find her she‘enedra and partner.

  Kethry was hovering over a tiny, nearly smokeless fire, skinning a pair of rabbits. Tarma almost smiled at the frown of concentration she wore; she was going at the task as if she were being rated on the results! They were a study in contrasts, she and her outClan blood-sister. Kethry was sweet-faced and curvaceous, with masses of curling amber hair and startling green eyes; she would have looked far more at home in someone’s court circle as a pampered palace mage than she did here, at their primitive hearth. Or even more to the point, she would not have looked out of place as someone’s spoiled, indulged wife or concubine; she really looked nothing at all like any mage Tarma had ever seen. Tarma, on the other hand, with her hawklike face, forbidding ice-blue eyes and nearly sexless body, was hardly the sort of person one would expect a mage or woman like Kethry to choose as a partner, much less as a friend. As a hireling, perhaps—in which case it should have been Tarma skinning the rabbits, for she looked to have been specifically designed to endure hardship.

  Oddly enough, it was Kethry who had taken to this trip as if she were the born nomad, and Tarma who was the one suffering the most from their circumstances, although that was mainly due to the unfamiliar weather.

  Well, if she had not foreseen that becoming Kal‘enedral meant suddenly acquiring a bevy of long-dead instructors, this partnership had come as even more of a surprise. The more so as Tarma had really not expected to survive the initial confro nta tion with those who had destroyed her Clan.

  “Do not reject aid unlooked-for,” her instructor had said the night before she set foot in the bandits’ town. And unlooked-for aid had materialized, in the form of this unlikely sorceress. Kethry, too, had her interests in seeing the murderers brought low, so they had teamed together for the purpose of doing just that. Together they had accomplished what neither could have done alone—they had utterly destroyed the brigands to the last man.

  And so Tarma had lost her purpose. Now—now there was only the driving need to get back to the Plains; to return before the Tale‘sedrin were deemed a dead Clan. Farther than that she could not, would not think or plan.

  Kethry must have sensed Tarma’s brooding eyes on her, for she looked up and beckoned with her skinning knife.

  “Fairly good hunting,” Tarma hunched as close the fire as she could, wishing they dared build something large.

  “Yes and no. I had to use magic to attract them, poor things.” Kethry shook her head regretfully as she bundled the offal in the skins and buried the remains in the snow to freeze hard. Once frozen, she’d dispose of them away from the camp, to avoid attracting scavengers. “I felt so guilty, but what else was I do to? We ate the last of the bread yesterday, and I didn’t want to chance on the hunting luck of just one of us.”

  “You do what you have to, Keth. Well, we’re able to live off the land, but Kessira and Rodi can‘t,” Tarma replied. “Our grain is almost gone, and we’ve still a long way to go to get to the Plains. Keth, we need money.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re the one of us best suited to earning it. This land is too peaceful for the likes of me to find a job—except for something involving at least a one-year contract, and that’s something we can’t afford to take the time for. I need to get back to the Plains as soon as I can if I’m to raise Tale‘sedrin’s banner again.”

  “I know that, too.” Kethry’s eyes had become shadowed, the lines around her mouth showed strain. “And I know that the only city close enough to serve us is Mornedealth.”

  And there was no doubt in Tarma’s mind that Kethry would rather have died than set foot in that city, though she hadn�
�t the vaguest notion why. Well, this didn’t look to be the proper moment to ask—

  “Storm coming; a bad one,” she said, changing the subject. “I’ll let the hooved ones forage for as long as I dare, but by sunset I’ll have to bring them into camp. Our best bet is going to be to shelter all together because I don’t think a fire is going to survive the blow.”

  “I wish I knew where you get your information,” Kethry replied, frown smoothing into a wry half-smile. “You certainly have me beat at weather- witching.”

  “Call it Shin‘a’in intuition,” Tarma shrugged, wishing she knew whether it was permitted to an outland she‘enedra—who was a magician to boot—to know of the veiled ones. Would they object? Tarma had no notion, and wasn’t prepared to risk it. “Think you can get our dinner cooked before the storm gets here?”

  “I may be able to do better than that, if I can remember the spells.” The mage disjointed the rabbits, and spitted the carcasses on twigs over the fire. She stripped off her leather gloves, flexed her bare fingers, then held her hands over the tiny fire and began whispering under her breath. Her eyes were half-slitted with concentration and there was a faint line between her eyebrows. As Tarma watched, fascinated, the fire and their dinner were enclosed in a transparent shell of glowing gold mist.

  “Very pretty; what’s it good for?” Tarma asked when she took her hands away.

  “Well, for one thing, I’ve cut off the wind; for another, the shield is concentrating the heat and the meat will cook faster now.”

  “And what’s it costing you?” Tarma had been in Kethry’s company long enough now to know that magic always had a price. And in Kethry’s case, that price was usually taken out of the resources of the spell-caster.

  Kethry smiled at her accusing tone. “Nowhere near so much as you might think; this clearing has been used for overnighting a great deal, and a good many of those camping here have celebrated in one way or another. There’s lots of residual energy here, energy only another mage could tap. Mages don’t take the Trade Road often, they take the Couriers’ Road when they have to travel at all.”

  “So?”

  “So there’s more than enough energy here not only to cook dinner but to give us a little more protection from the weather than our bit of canvas.”

  Tarma nodded, momentarily satisfied that her blood-sister wasn’t exhausting herself just so they could eat a little sooner. “Well, while I was scrounging for the hooved ones, I found a bit for us, too—”

  She began pulling cattail roots, mallow-pitch, a few nuts, and other edibles from the outer pockets of her coat. “Not a lot there, but enough to supplement dinner, and make a bit of breakfast besides.”

  “Bless you! These bunnies were a bit young and small, and rather on the lean side—should this stuff be cooked?”

  “They’re better raw, actually.”

  “Good enough; want to help with the shelter, since we’re expecting a blow?”

  “Only if you tell me what to do. I’ve got no notion of what these winter storms of yours are like.”

  Kethry had already stretched their canvas tent across the top and open side of the enclosure of rocks and logs, stuffed brush and moss into the chinks on the inside, packed snow into the chinks from the outside, and layered the floor with pine boughs to keep their own bodies off the snow. Tarma helped her lash the canvas down tighter, then weighted all the loose edges with packed-down snow and what rocks they could find.

  As they worked, the promised storm began to give warning of its approach. The wind picked up noticeably, and the northern horizon began to darken. Tarma cast a wary eye at the darkening clouds. “I hope you’re done cooking because it doesn’t look like we have too much time left to get under cover.”

  “I think it’s cooked through.”

  “And if not, it won’t be the first time we’ve eaten raw meat on this trip. I’d better get the grazers.”

  Tarma got the beasts one at a time; first the mule, then her mare. She backed them right inside the shelter, coaxing them to lie down inside, one on either side of it, with their heads to the door-flap just in case something should panic them. With the two humans in the space in the middle, they should all stay as close to warm as was possible. Once again she breathed a little prayer of thankfulness for the quality of mule she’d been able to find for Kethry; with a balky beast or anything other than another Shin‘a’in-bred horse this arrangement would have been impossible.

  Kethry followed, grilled rabbit bundled into a piece of leather. The rich odor made Tarma’s mouth water and reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since this morning. While Kethry wormed her way in past her partner, Tarma lashed the door closed.

  “Hold this, and find a comfortable spot,” the mage told her. While Tarma snuggled up against Kessira’s shoulder, Kethry knelt in the space remaining. She held her hands just at chin height, palms facing outward, her eyes completely closed and her face utterly vacant. By this Tarma knew she was attempting a much more difficult bit of magery than she had with their dinner.

  She began an odd, singsong chant, swaying a little in time to it. Tarma began to see a thin streak of weak yellow light, like a watered-down sunbeam, dancing before her. In fact, that was what she probably would have taken it for—except that the sun was nearly down, not overhead.

  As Kethry chanted, the light-beam increased in strength and brightness. Then, at a sharp word from her, it split into six. The six beams remained where the one had been for a moment, perhaps a little longer. Kethry began chanting again, a different rhythm this time, and the six beams leapt to the walls of their shelter, taking up positions spaced equally apart.

  When they moved so suddenly, Tarma had nearly jumped out of her skin—especially since one of them had actually passed through her. But when she could feel no strangeness—and certainly no harm from the encounter—she relaxed again. The animals appeared to be ignoring the things, whatever they were.

  Now little tendrils of light were spinning out from each of the beams, reaching out until they met in a kind of latticework. When this had spread to the canvas overhead, Tarma began to notice that the wind, which had been howling and tugging at the canvas, had been cut off, and that the shelter was noticeably warmer as a result.

  Kethry sagged then, and allowed herself to half-collapse against Rodi’s bulk.

  “Took less than I might think, hmm?”

  “Any more comments like that and I’ll make you stay outside.”

  “First you’d have to fight Kessira. Have some dinner.” Tarma passed her half the rabbit; it was still warm and amazingly juicy and both of them wolfed down their portions with good appetite, nibbling the bones clean, then cracking them and sucking out the last bit of marrow. With the bones licked bare, they finished with the roots of Tarma’s gleaning, though more than half of Tarma’s share went surreptitiously to Kessira.

  When they had finished, the sun was gone and the storm building to full force. Tarma peeked out the curtian of tent-canvas at the front of the shelter ; the fire was already smothered. Tarma noticed then that the light-web gave off a faint illumination; not enough to read by, but enough to see by.

  “What is—all this?” she asked, waving a hand at the light-lattice. “Where’d it come from?”

  “It’s a variation of the fire-shield I raised; it’s magical energy manifesting itself in a physical fashion. Part of that energy came from me, part of it was here already and I just reshaped it. In essence, I told it I thought it was a wall, and it believed me. So now we have a ‘wall’ between us and the storm.”

  “Uh, right. You told that glowing thing you thought it was a wall, and it believed you—”

  Kethry managed a tired giggle at her partner’s expression. “That’s why the most important tool a magician has is his will; it has to be strong in order to convince energy to be something else.”

  “Is that how you sorcerers work?”

  “All sorcerers, or White Winds sorcerers?”

  “There’
s more than one kind?”

  “Where’d you think magicians came from anyway ? Left in the reeds for their patrons to find?” Kethry giggled again.

  “No, but the only ‘magicians’ the Clans have are the shamans, and they don’t do magic, much. Healing, acting as advisors, keepers of outClan knowledge—that’s mostly what they do. When we need magic, we ask Her for it.”

  “And She answers?” Kethry’s eyes widened in facination.

  “Unless She has a damn good reason not to. She’s very close to us—closer than most deities are to their people, from what I’ve been able to judge. But that may be because we don’t ask Her for much, or very often. There’s a story—” Tarma half smiled. “—there was a hunter who’d been very lucky and had come to depend on that luck. When his luck left him, his skills had gotten very rusty, and he couldn’t manage to make a kill. Finally he went to the shaman, and asked him if he thought She would listen to a plea for help. The shaman looked him up and down, and finally said, ‘You’re not dead yet.’ ”

  “Which means he hadn’t been trying hard enough by himself?”

  “Exactly. She is the very last resort—and you had damned well better be careful what you ask Her for—She’ll give it to you, but in Her own way, especially if you haven’t been honest with Her or with yourself. So mostly we don’t ask.” Tarma warmed to Kethry’s interest, and continued when that interest didn’t flag. This was the first chance she’d had to explain her beliefs to Kethry; before this, Kethry had either been otherwise occupied or there hadn’t been enough privacy. “The easiest of Her faces to deal with are the Maiden and the Mother, they’re gentler, more forgiving; the hardest are the Warrior and the Crone. Maiden and Mother don’t take Oathbound to themselves, Warrior and Crone do. Crone’s Oathbound—no, I won’t tell you—you guess what they do.”

  “Uh,” Kethry’s brow furrowed in thought, and she nibbled a hangnail. “Shamans?”

  “Right! And Healers and the two Elders in each Clan, who may or may not also be Healers or shamans. Those the Crone Binds are Bound, like the Kal‘enedral, to the Clans as a whole, serving with their minds and talents instead of their hands. Now—you were saying about magicians?” She was as curious to know about Kethry’s teaching as Keth seemed to be about her own.