Oathbound v(vah-1 Page 9

  She heard Tarma approaching long before she saw her; a dark shape looming back along the trail, visible only because it was moving.

  "Ho, the camp!" Tarma's hoarse voice called cheerfully.

  "Ho, yourself -- what was your luck?"

  "Good enough. From this place you take no more than you need, ally or not. Got browse?"

  Tarma appeared in the firelight, leading Kessira, something dangling from her hand.

  "Behind me about forty paces; Rodi's already tethered there, along a downed tree. If you'll give me what you've got, I'll clean it."

  "Skinning is all you need to do, I field-gutted 'em." Tarma tossed two odd creatures at Kethry's feet, the size and shape of plump rabbits, but with short, tufted ears, long claws, and bushy, flexible tails.

  "I'll go take care of Rodi and my baby, and I'll be right back." Tarma disappeared into the darkness again, and sounds from behind her told Kethry that she was unsaddling her mare and grooming both the animals. She had unsaddled Rodi but had left the rest to Tarma, knowing the Shin'a'in could tend a saddlebeast in the dark and half asleep. Rodi, while well-mannered for a mule, was too ticklish about being groomed for Kethry to do it in uncertain light.

  When Tarma returned, she brought with her their little copper traveling-kettle filled with water. "We'll have to stew those devils; they're tough as old boots after the winter," she said; then, so softly Kethry could hardly hear her, "I got a reply to my invitation. We'll have a visitor in a bit. Chances are he'll pop in out of nowhere; try not to look startled, or we'll lose face. I can guarantee he'll look very strange; in this case, the stranger the better -- if he really looks odd it will mean he's giving us full honors."

  Just at the moment the stewed meat seemed ready, their visitor appeared.

  Even though she'd been forewarned, Kethry still nearly jumped out of her skin. One moment the opposite side of the fire was empty -- the next, it was not.

  He was tall; like Tarma, golden-skinned and blueeyed. Unlike Tarma, his hair was a pure silverwhite; it hung to his waist, two braids framing his face, part of the rest formed into a topknot, the remainder streaming unconfined down his back. Feathers had been woven into it -- a tiny owlet nestled at the base of the topknot, a nestling Kethry thought to be a clever carving, until it moved its head and blinked.

  His eyes were large and slightly slanted, his features sharp, with no trace of facial hair. His eyebrows had a slight, upward sweep to them, like wings. His clothing was green, all colors of green -- Kethry thought it at first to be rags, until she saw how carefully those seeming rags were cut to resemble foliage. In a tree, except for that hair, he'd be nearly invisible, even with a wind blowing. He wore delicate jewelry of woven and braided silver wire and crystals.

  He carried in his right hand a strange weapon; a spearlike thing with a wicked, curving point that seemed very like a hawk's talon at one end and a smooth, round hook at the other. In his left he carried Tarma's medallion.

  Tarma rose to her feet, gracefully. "Peace, Moonsong."

  "And upon you, Child of the Hawk." Both of them were speaking Shin'a'in -- after months of tutoring Kethry was following their words with relative ease.

  "Tarma," the Shin'a'in replied, "and Kethry. My she'enedra. You will share hearth and meal? It is tree-hare, taken as is the law; rejected suitors, no mates, no young, and older than this season's birthing."

  "Then I share, and with thanks." He sank to the ground beside the fire with a smoothness, an ease, that Kethry envied; gracefully and soundlessly as a falling leaf. She saw then that besides the feathers he had also braided strings of tiny crystals into his hair, crystals that reflected back the firelight, as did the staring eyes of the tiny owlet. She remembered what Tarma had told her, and concluded they were being given high honor.

  He accepted the bowl of stewed meat and dried vegetables with a nod of thanks, and began to eat with his fingers and a strange, crystalline knife hardly longer than his hand. When Tarma calmly began her own portion, Kethry did the same, but couldn't help glancing at their visitor under cover of eating.

  He impressed her, that was certain. There was an air of great calm and patience about him, like that of an ancient tree, but she sensed he could be a formidable and implacable enemy if his anger was ever aroused. His silver hair had made her think of him as ancient, but now she wasn't so certain of his age. His face was smooth and unlined; he could have been almost any age at all, from stripling to oldster.

  Then she discovered something that truly frightened her; when she looked for him with magesight, he wasn't there.

  It wasn't a shielding, either -- a shield either left an impression of a blank wall or of an absolute nothingness. No, it was as if there was no one across the fire from them at all, nothing but the plants and stones of the clearing, the woods beyond, and the owlet sitting in a young tree.

  The owlet sitting in a young tree!

  It was then she realized that he was somehow appearing to her mage-sight as a part of the forest, perfectly blended in with the rest. She switched back to normal vision and smiled to herself. And as if he had known all along that she had been scanning him -- in fact, if he were practiced enough to pull off what he was doing, he probably did -- he looked up from his dinner and nodded at her.

  "The banner of the Hawk's Children has not been seen for seasons," he said breaking the silence. "We heard ill tales. Tales of ambush on the road to the Horse Fair; tales of death come to their very tents."

  "True tales," Tarma replied, the pain in her voice audible to Kethry... and probably to Moonsong. "I am the last."

  "Ah. Then the blood-price -- "

  "Has been paid. I go to raise the banner again; this, my she'enedra, goes with me."

  "Who holds herds for Tale'sedrin?"

  "Liha'irden. You have knowledge of the camps this spring?

  "Liha'irden..." he brooded a moment. "At Ka'tesik on the border of their territory and yours. So you go to them. And after?"

  "I have given no thought to it." Tarma smiled suddenly, but it was with a wry twist to her mouth. "Indeed, the returning has been sufficient to hold my attention."

  "You may find," he said slowly, "that the Plains are no longer the home to you that they were."

  Tarma looked startled. "Has aught changed?"

  "Only yourself, Lone Hawk. Only yourself. The hatched chick cannot go back to the shell, the falcon who has found the sky does not willingly sit the nest. When a task is completed, it is meet to find another task -- and you may well serve the Lady by serving outlanders."

  Tarma looked startled and pale, but nodded.

  "OutClan Shin'a'in -- " He turned his attention abruptly to Kethry. "You bear a sword -- "

  "Aye, Elder."

  He chuckled. "Not so old as you think me, nor so young either. Three winters is age to a polekit, but fifty is youth to a tree. You bear a sword, yet you touched me with mage-sight. Strange to see a mage with steel. Stranger still to see steel with a soul."

  "What?" Kethry was too startled to respond politely.

  "Hear me, mate of steel and magic," he said, leaning forward so that he and the owlet transfixed her with unblinking stares. "What you bear will bind you to herself, more and more tightly with each hour you carry her. It is writ that Need is her name -- you shall come to need her, as she needs you, as both of you answer need. This is the price of bearing her, and some of this you knew already. I tell you that you have not yet reached the limit to which she can -- and will -- bind you to herself, to her goals. It is a heavy price, yet the price is worth her service; you know she can fight for you, you know she can heal you. I tell you now that her powers will extend to aid those you love, so long as they return your care. Remember this in future times -- "

  His blue eyes bored into hers with an intensity that would have been frightening had he not held her beyond fear with the power he now showed himself to possess. She knew then that she was face-to-face with a true Adept, though of a discipline alien to hers; that he was one
such as she hardly dared dream of becoming. Finally he leaned back, and Kethry shook off the near-trance he had laid on her, coming to herself with a start.

  "How did you -- "

  He silenced her with a wave of his hand.

  "I read what is written for me to see, nothing more," he replied, rising with the same swift grace he had shown before. "Remember what I have read, both of you. As you are two-made-one, so your task will be one. First the binding, then the finding. For the hearth, for the meal, my thanks. For the future, my blessing. Lady light thy road -- "

  And as abruptly as he had appeared, he was gone.

  Kethry started to say something, but the odd look of puzzlement on Tarma's face stopped her.

  "Well," she said at last, "I have only one thing to say. I've passed through this forest twenty times, at least. In all that time, I must have met Hawkbrothers ten out of the twenty, and that was extraordinary. But this -- " she shook her head. "That's more words at once from one of them than any of my people has ever reported before. Either we much impressed him -- "

  "Or?"

  "Or," she smiled crookedly, "We are in deep trouble."

  * * *

  Kethry wasn't quite sure what it was that woke her; the cry of a bird, perhaps; or one of the riding beasts waking out of a dream with a snort, and so waking her in turn.

  The air was full of gray mist that hung at waist height above the needle-strewn forest floor. It glowed in the dim blue light that signaled dawn, and the treetops were lost beyond thought within it. It was chill and thick in the back of her throat; she felt almost as if she were drinking it rather than breathing it.

  The fire was carefully banked coals; it was Tarma's watch. Kethry sighed and prepared to go back to another hour of sleep -- then stiffened. There were no sounds beyond what she and the two saddlebeasts were making. Tarma was gone.

  Then, muffled by the fog, came the sound of blade on blade; unmistakable if heard once. And Kethry had heard that peculiar shing more times than she cared to think.

  Kethry had lain down fully-clothed against the damp; now she sprang to her feet, seizing her blade as she rose. Barefooted, she followed the sound through the echoing trunks, doing her own best to make no sound.

  For why, if this had been an attack, had Tarma not awakened her? An ambush then? But why hadn't Tarma called out to her? Why wasn't she calling for help now ? What of the Hawkbrothers that were supposed to be watching out for them?

  She slipped around tree trunks, the thick carpet of needles soft beneath her feet, following the noise of metal scissoring and clashing. Away from the little cup where they had camped the fog began to wisp and rise, winding around the trunks in woolly festoons, though still thick as a storm cloud an arm's length above her head. The sounds of blades came clearer now, and she began using the tree trunks to hide behind as she crept up upon the scene of conflict.

  She rounded yet another tree, and shrank again behind it; the fog had deceived her, and she had almost stumbled into the midst of combat.

  The fog ringed this place, moving as if alive, a thick tendril of it winding out, now and again, to interpose itself between Tarma and her foe. It glowed -- it glowed with more than the predawn light. To mage-sight it glowed with power, power bright and pure, power strong, true, and -- strange. It was out of her experience -- and it barred her from the charmed circle where the combatants fenced.

  Tarma's eyes were bright with utter concentration, her face expressionless as a sheet of polished marble. Kethry had never seen her quite like this, except when in the half-trance she induced when practicing or meditating. She was using both sword and dagger to defend herself --

  Against another Shin'a'in.

  This man was unmistakably of Tarma's race. The tawny gold skin of hands and what little Kethry could see of his face showed his kinship to her. So did the strands of raven hair that had been bound out of his face by an equally black headband, and ice-blue eyes that glinted above his veil.

  For he was veiled; this was something Tarma never had worn for as long as Kethry had known her. Kethry hadn't even known till this moment that a veil could be part of a Shin'a'in costume, but the man's face was obscured by one, and it did not have the feeling of a makeshift. He was veiled and garbed entirely in black, the black Tarma had worn when on the trail of those who had slaughtered her Clan. Black was for blood-feud -- but Tarma had sworn that there was never blood-feud between Shin'a'in and Shin'a'in. And black was for Kal'enedral -- three times barred from internecine strife.

  There was less in their measured counter and riposte of battle than of dance. Kethry held her breath, transfixed by more than the power of the mist. She was caught by the deadly beauty of the weaving blades, caught and held entranced, drawn out of her hiding place to stand in the open.

  Tarma did not even notice she was there -- but the other did.

  He stepped back, breaking the pattern, and motioned slightly with his left hand. Tarma instantly broke off her advance, and seemed to wake just as instantly from her trance, staring at Kethry with the startled eyes of a wild thing broken from hiding.

  The other turned, for his back had been to Kethry. He saluted the sorceress in slow, deliberate ceremony with his own blade. Then he winked slowly and gravely over his veil, and -- vanished, taking the power in the magic fog with him.

  Released from her entrancement, Kethry stared at her partner, not certain whether to be frightened, angry or both.

  "What -- was -- that -- " she managed at last.

  "My trainer; my guide," Tarma replied sheepishly. "One of them, anyway." She sheathed her sword and stood, to all appearances feeling awkward and at a curious loss for words. "I... never told you about them before, because I wasn't sure it was permitted. They train me every night we aren't within walls... one of them takes my watch to see you safe. I... I guess they decided I was taking too long to tell you about them; I suppose they figured it was time you knew about them."

  "You said your people didn't use magic -- but he -- he was alive with it! Only your Goddess -- "

  "He's Hers. In life, was Kal'enedral; and now -- " she lifted up her hand, " -- as you saw. His magic is Hers -- "

  "What do you mean, 'in life'?" Kethry asked, an edge of hysteria in her voice.

  "You mean -- you couldn't tell?"

  "Tell what?"

  "He's a spirit. He's been dead at least a hundred years, like all the rest of my teachers."

  It took Tarma the better part of an hour to calm her partner down.

  * * *

  They broke out of the trees, as Tarma had promised, just past midafternoon.

  Kethry stared; Tarma sat easily in Kessira's saddle, and grinned happily. "Well?" she asked, finally.

  Kethry sought for words, and failed to find them.

  They had come out on the edge of a sheer dropoff; the mighty trees grew to the very edge of it, save for the narrow path on which they stood. Below them, furlongs, it seemed, lay the Dhorisha Plains.

  Kethry had pictured acres of grassland, a sea of green, as featureless as the sea itself, and as flat.

  Instead she saw beneath her a rolling country of gentle, swelling rises; like waves. Green grass there was in plenty -- as many shades of green as Kethry had ever seen, and more -- and golden grass, and a faint heathered purple. And flowers -- it must have been flowers that splashed the green with irregular pools of bright blue and red, white and sunny yellow, orange and pink. Kethry took an experimental sniff and yes, the breeze rising up the cliff carried with it the commingled scents of growing grass and a hundred thousand spring blossoms.

  There were dark masses, like clouds come to earth, running in lines along the bottoms of some of the swells. After a long moment Kethry realized that they must be trees, far-off trees, lining the watercourses.

  "How -- " she turned to Tarma with wonder in her eyes, "how could you ever bear to leave this?"

  "It wasn't easy, she'enedra," Tarma sighed, deep and abiding hunger stirring beneath the smooth surfac
e of the mask she habitually wore. "Ah, but you're seeing it at its best. The Plains have their hard moments, and more of them than the soft.

  Winter -- aye, that's the coldest face of all, with all you see out there sere and brown, and so barren all the life but the Clans and the herds sleeps beneath the surface in safe burrows. High summer is nearly as cruel, when the sun burns everything, when the watercourses shrink to tiny trickles, when you long for a handsbreadth of shade, and there is none to be found. But spring -- oh, the Plains are lovely then, as lovely as She is when She is Maiden -- and as welcoming."

  Tarma gazed out at the blowing grasslands with a faint smile beginning to touch her thin lips.

  "Ah, I swear I am as sentimental as an old granny with a mouthful of tales of how golden the world was when she was young," she laughed, finally, "and none of this gets us down to the Plains. Follow me, and keep Rodi exactly in Kessira's footsteps. It's a long way down from here if you slip."