Kethry’s breath hissed softly, and Tarma swallowed an oath.
“Your knowledge of what interests us is very accurate, merchant,” Tarma said after a long pause. “I congratulate you.”
“You—you accept?” Discipline could not keep hope out of his voice.
“I pray you are not expecting us to rescue your lost ones,” Kethry said as gently as she could. “Even supposing that the bandits were more interested in slaves to be sold than their own pleasure—which in my experience is not likely—there is very, very little chance that any of them still live. The sheltered, the gentle, well, they do not survive—shock—successfully.”
“When we knew they had not reached their goal, we sent agents to comb the slave markets. They returned empty-handed,” he replied with as much stoicism as he could muster. “We will not ask the impossible of you; we knew when we sent for you there was no hope for them. No, we ask only that you wipe out this viper’s den, to ensure that this can never happen to us again—and that you grant us revenge for what they have done to us!”
His words—and more, the tight control of his voice—struck echoes from Tarma’s own heart. And she did not need to see her partner to know her feelings in the matter.
“You will have that, merchant-lord,” she grated, giving him the title of respect. “We accept your job—but there are conditions.”
“Swordlady, any conditions you would set, I would gladly meet. Who am I to contest the judgement of those who destroyed Tha—”
“Hush!” Kethry interrupted him swiftly, and cast a wary glance over her shoulder. “The less that is said on that subject, the better. I am still not altogether certain that what you were about to name was truly destroyed. It may have been merely banished, and perhaps for no great span of time. If the second case is true, it is hardly wise to call attention to one’s self by speaking Its name.”
“Our conditions, merchant, are simple,” Tarma continued unperturbed. “We will, to all appearances, leave on the morrow. You will tell all, including your fellow merchants, that you could not convince us. Tomorrow night, you—and you alone, mind—will bring us, at a meeting place of your choosing, a cart and horse . . .” Now she raised an inquiring eyebrow at Kethry.
“And the kind of clothing and gear a lady of wealth and blood would be likely to have when traveling. The clothing should fit me. I will be weaving some complicated illusions, and anything I do not have to counterfeit will be of aid to me and make the rest stronger. You might include lots of empty bags and boxes,” Kethry said thoughtfully.
Tarma continued: “The following morning a fine lady will ride in and order you to include her with your next packtrain. You, naturally, will do your best to dissuade her, as loudly and publicly as possible. Now your next scheduled trip was—?”
“Coincidentally enough, for the day after tomorrow.” Grumio was impressed. These women were even cleverer than he’d thought.
“Good. The less time we lose, the better off we are. Remember, only you are to be aware that the lady and the packtrain are not exactly what they seem to be. If you say one word otherwise to anyone—”
The merchant found himself staring at the tip of a very sharp dagger a scant inch from his nose.
“—I will personally remove enough of your hide to make both of us slippers.” The dagger disappeared from Tarma’s hand as mysteriously as it had appeared.
Grumio had been startled, but had not been particularly intimidated; Tarma gave him high marks for that.
“I do not instruct the weaver in her trade,” he replied with a certain dignity, “nor do I dictate the setting of a horseshoe to a smith. There is no reason why I should presume to instruct you in your trade either.”
“Then you are a rare beast indeed, merchant.” Tarma graced him with one of her infrequent smiles. “Most men—oh, not fellow mercenaries, they know better; but most men we deal with—seem to think they know our business better than we simply by virtue of their sex.”
The smile softened her harsh expression, and made it less intimidating, and the merchant found himself smiling back. “You are not the only female hire-swords I have dealt with,” he replied. “Many of my trade allies have them as personal retainers. It has often seemed to me that many of those I met have had to be twice as skilled as their male counterparts to receive half the credit.”
“A hit, merchant-lord,” Kethry acknowledged with open amusement. “And a shrewd one at that. Now, where are we to meet you tomorrow night?”
Grumio paused to think. “I have a farmstead—deserted now that the harvest is in—which is at the first lane past the crossroad at the south edge of town. No one would think it odd for me to pay a visit to it, and the barn is a good place to hide horses and gear.”
“Well enough,” Tarma replied. All three rose as one—Grumio caught the faint clink of brigandine mail from Tarma’s direction, though there was no outward sign that she wore any such thing beneath her worn leather tunic, brown shirt, and darker breeches.
“Merchant—” Tarma said suddenly.
He paused halfway through the door.
“I, too, have known loss. You will have your revenge.” He shivered at the look in her eyes, and left.
“Well?” Tarma asked, shutting the door behind him and leaning her back up against it.
“Magic’s afoot here. It’s the only answer to what’s been going on. I don’t think it’s easy to deceive this merchant—he caught on to our ‘divide and conquer’ trick right away. He’s no soft money-counter either.”
“I saw the sword-calluses.” Tarma balanced herself on one foot and folded her arms. “Did he tell us all he knew?”
“I think so. I don’t think he held anything back after he played his high card.”
“The niece? He also didn’t want us to know how much he valued her. Damn. This is a bad piece of business.”
“He’d rather we thought the loss of goods and trade meant more to him,” Kethry replied. “They’re a secretive lot in many ways, these traders.”
“Almost as secretive as sorceresses, no?” One corner of Tarma’s thin lips quirked up in a half-smile. The smile vanished as she thought of something else.
“Is there any chance that any of the women survived?”
“Not to put too fine a point upon it, no. This—” Kethry patted the hilt of her sword, “—would have told me if any of them had. The pull is there, but without the urgency there’d be if there was anyone needing rescue. Still, we need more information, so I might as well add that to the set of questions I intend to ask.”
Concern flickered briefly in Tarma’s eyes. “An unprepared summoning? Are you sure you want to risk it? If nothing else, it will wear you down, and you have all those illusions to cast.”
“I think it’s worth it. There aren’t that many hostile entities to guard against in this area, and I’ll have all night to rest afterward—most of tomorrow as well, once we reach that farmstead.”
“You’re the magic-worker.” Tarma sighed. “Since we’ve hired this room for the whole evening, want to make use of it? It’s bigger than our sleeping room.”
At Kethry’s nod, Tarma pushed the table into a comer, stacking the benches on top of it, while Kethry set the oil lamp on the mantelpiece. Most of the floor space was now cleared.
“I’ll keep watch on the door.” Tarma sat on the floor with her back firmly braced against it. Since it opened inward, the entrance was now solidly guarded against all but the most stubborn of intruders.
Kethry inscribed a circle on the floor with powders from her belt-pouch, chanting under her breath. She used no dramatic or spectacular ceremonies, for she had learned her art in a gentler school than the other sorcerers Tarma had seen. Her powers came from the voluntary cooperation of other-planar entities, and she never coerced them into doing her bidding.
There were advantages and disadvantages to this. She need not safeguard herself against the deceptions and treacheries of these creatures—but the cost to her in
terms of her own energies expended was correspondingly higher. This was particularly true at times when she had no chance to prepare herself for a summoning. It took a great deal of power to attract a being of benign intent—particularly one that did not know her—and more to convince it that her intent was good. Hence, the circle—meant not to protect her, but to protect what she would call, so that it would know itself unthreatened.
As she seated herself within the circle, Tarma shifted her own position until she, too, was quite comfortable. Then she removed one of her hidden daggers and began honing it with her sharpening-stone.
Kethry had removed her sword and placed it outside the circle—something she did only when working summonings. Tarma regarded the blade, as it lay between her and her bloodsister, with a thoughtful eye.
Kethry’s sword was no ordinary blade—it held a powerful and strange magic. “Need” was the name of the blade, and it bound its bearer to the aid of other women. To a fighter, it granted near immunity to any magics. To a magician, it conferred expertise in the wielding of it, but only to defend herself or another woman. Herself—for only a woman could use it. It had other properties as well, such as being able to speed healing or hold off death for a limited time, but those were the main gifts the blade bestowed.
Tarma wondered how many of those arcane gifts they’d be using this time.
There was a stirring in the circle Kethry had inscribed, and Tarma pulled her attention back to the present. Something was beginning to form mistily in front of the seated sorceress.
The mist began to form into a miniature whirlpool, coalescing into a figure as it did so. As it solidified, Tarma could see what seemed to be a jewel-bright desert lizard, but one that stood erect, like a man. It was as tall as a man’s arm is long, and had a cranium far larger than any lizard Tarma had ever seen. Firelight winked from its scales in bands of shining colors, topaz and ruby predominating. It was regarding Kethry with intelligence and wary curiosity.
“Sa-asartha, n‘hellan?” it said, tilting its head to one side and fidgeting from one foot to the other. Its voice was shrill, like that of a very young child.
“Vede, sa-asarth,” Kethry replied in the same tongue.
The little creature relaxed and stopped fretting. It appeared to be quite eager to answer all of Kethry’s questions. Now that the initial effort of calling it was done with, she had no trouble in obtaining all the information she wanted. Finally she gave the little creature the fruit she’d been toying with after supper. It snatched the gift greedily, trilled what Tarma presumed to be thanks, and vanished into mist again.
Kethry rose stiffly and began to scuff the circle into random piles of dirt with the toe of her boot. “It’s about what I expected,” she said. “Someone—someone with ‘a smell of magic about him’ according to the khamsin—has organized what used to be several small bands of marauders into one large one of rather formidable proportions. They have no set camp, so we can’t arrange for the camp to be attacked while they’re ambushing us, I’m sorry to say. They have no favored ambush point, so we won’t know when to expect them. And none of the women—girls, really—survived for more than a day.”
“Damn.” Tarma’s eyes were shadowed. “Well, we didn’t really expect anything different.”
“No, but you know damn well we both hoped.” Kethry’s voice was rough with weariness. “It’s up to you now, she‘enedra. You’re the tactician.”
“Then as the tactician, I counsel rest for you.” Tarma caught Kethry’s shoulders to steady her as she stumbled a little from fatigue. The reaction to spell-casting was setting in fast now. Kethry had once described summoning as being “like balancing on a rooftree while screaming an epic poem in a foreign language at the top of your lungs.” Small wonder she was exhausted afterward.
The sorceress leaned on Tarma’s supporting shoulder with silent gratitude as her partner guided her up the stairs to their rented sleeping room.
“It’s us, Warrl,” Tarma called softly at the door. A muted growl answered her, and they could hear the sound of the bolt being shoved back. Tarma pushed the door open with one foot, and picked up one of the unlit tallow candles that waited on a shelf just inside with her free hand. She lit it at the one in the bracket outside their door, and the light from it fell on the head and shoulders of a huge black wolf. He stood, tongue lolling out in a lupine grin, just inside the room. His shoulders were on a level with Tarma’s waist. He sniffed inquisitively at them, making a questioning whine deep in his throat.
“Yes, we took the job—that’s our employer you smell, so don’t mangle him when he shows up tomorrow night. And Kethry’s been summoning, of course, so as usual she’s half dead. Close the door behind us while I put her to bed.”
By now Kethry was nearly asleep on her feet; after some summonings Tarma had seen her pass into unconsciousness while still walking. Tarma undressed her with the gentle and practiced hands of a nurse-maid and got her safely into bed before she had the chance to fall over. The wolf, meanwhile, had butted the door shut with his head and pushed the bolt home with his nose.
“Any trouble?” Tarma asked him.
He snorted with derision.
“Well, I didn’t really expect any either. This is the quietest inn I’ve been in for a long time. The job is bandits, hairy one, and we’re all going to have to go disguised. That includes you.”
He whined in protest, ears down.
“I know you don’t like it, but there’s no choice. There isn’t enough cover along the road to hide a bird, and I want you close at hand, within a few feet of us at all times, not wandering out in the desert somewhere.”
The wolf sighed heavily, padded over to her, and laid his heavy head in her lap to be scratched.
“I know. I know,” she said, obliging him. “I don’t like it any more than you do. Just be grateful that all we’ll be wearing is illusions, even if they do make the backs of our eyes itch. Poor Kethry’s going to have to ride muffled head-to-toe like a fine lady.”
Warrl obviously didn’t care about poor Kethry.
“You’re being very unfair to her, you know. And you’re supposed to have been her familiar, not mine.”
She and Kethry had gone deep into the Pelagir Hills, the site of ancient magical wars, and a place where traces of old magic had changed many of the animals living there into something more than dumb creatures. Kethry had intended to attract a familiar, and she’d done everything perfectly, had gone through a day and a night of complicated spellcast ing—only to have Warrl appear, then choose Tarma instead.
“You’re a magic beast; born out of magic. You belong with a spell-caster, not some clod with a sword.”
Warrl was not impressed with Tarma’s logic.
:She doesn’t need me,: he spoke mind-to-mind with the swordswoman. :She has the spirit-sword. You need me.: And that, so far as Warrl was concerned, was that.
“Well, I’m not going to argue with you. I never argue with anyone with as many sharp teeth as you’ve got. Maybe being Swordsworn counts as being magic.”
She pushed Warrl’s head off her lap and went to open the shutters to the room’s one window. Moonlight flooded the room; she seated herself on the floor where it would fall on her, just as she did every night when there was a moon and she wasn’t ill or injured. Since they were within the walls of a town and not camped, she would not train this night—but the Moonpaths were there, as always, waiting to be walked. She closed her eyes and found them. Walking them was, as she’d often told Kethry, impossible to describe.
When she returned to her body, Warrl was lying patiently at her back, waiting for her. She ruffled his fur with a grin, stood, stretched stiffened muscles, then stripped to a shift and climbed in beside Kethry. Warrl sighed with gratitude and took his usual spot at her feet.
“Three things see no end—
A flower blighted ere it bloomed,
A message that was wasted
And a journey that was doomed.”
The two mercenaries rode out of town in the morning, obviously eager to be gone. Grumio watched them leave, gazing sadly at the cloud of dust they raised, his houndlike face clearly displaying his disappointment. His fellow merchants were equally disappointed when he told them of his failure to persuade them; they had all hoped the women would have solved their problem.
After sundown Grumio took a cart and horse out to his farmstead, a saddled riding beast tied to the rear of it. After making certain that no one had followed him, he drove directly into the barn, then peered around in the hay-scented gloom. A fear crossed his mind that the women had tricked him and had truly left that morning.
“Don’t fret yourself, merchant,” said a gravelly voice just above his head. He jumped, his heart racing. “We’re here.”
A vague figure swung down from the loft; when it came close enough for him to make out features, he started at the sight of a buxom blonde wearing the swordswoman’s clothing.
She grinned at his reaction. “Which one am I? She didn’t tell me. Blonde?”
He nodded, amazed.
“Malebait again. Good choice, no one would ever think I knew what a blade was for. You don’t want to see my partner.” The voice was still in Tarma’s gravelly tones; Grumio assumed that that was only so he’d recognize her. “We don’t want you to have to strain your acting ability tomorrow. Did you bring everything we asked for?”
“It’s all here,” he replied, still not believing what his eyes were telling him. “I weighted the boxes with sand and stones so that they won’t seem empty.”
“You’ve got a good head on you, merchant.” Tarma saluted him as she unharnessed the horse. “That’s something I didn’t think of. Best you leave now, though, before somebody comes looking for you.”
He jumped down off the wagon, taking the reins of his riding beast.
“And merchant—” she called as he rode off into the night, “—wish us luck.”
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