Oathblood

by Mercedes Lackey

  :Usually, she thinks,: Warrl said dryly. :When I remind her to.:

  Put a gag on it, Furface, Tarma thought back at him. And she saluted Master Lenne gravely, and sent her warsteed up the last road to Hawksrest, with Kethry and Warrl keeping pace beside her.

  THE TALISMAN

  This story sprang out of a complaint that bad fantasy always seems to rely on the magic thingamajig to get the hero out of trouble. Seemed to me that a magic thingamajig could get someone into more trouble than it would get him out of. As always, Tarma and Kethry rely as much on intelligence and quick thinking as magic and swordplay to get them out of trouble.

  It was hard for Kethry to remember that winter would be over in two months at the most. The entire world seemed made up of crusted snow; it even lay along the bare branches of trees. From this vantage point, atop a rocky, scrub-covered hill, it looked as if winter had taken hold of the land and would never let go. The entire world had turned into an endless series of winter-dormant, forested hills, hills they plodded over with no sign that there was an end to them. Although the road that threaded these hills bore unmistakable signs of frequent use, they hadn’t seen a single soul in the past two days. Kethry stamped her numb feet on snow packed rock-hard and frozen into an obstacle course of ruts, trying to get a little feeling back into them. She shaded her eyes against snow glare and stared down the hillside while her mule pawed despondently at the ice crust beside the trail, hoping for a scrap of grass and unable to break through.

  She heard the creaking of Tarma’s saddle as her partner dismounted. “Goddess!” the Shin‘a’in croaked. “I’m bloody freezing!”

  “You’re always freezing,” Kethry replied absently, trying to make out if the smudge on the horizon was smoke or just another cloud. “Except when I’m roasting. Where are we? Is that smoke I’m seeing out there, or a figment of my imagination?”

  There was a rattling of paper at her right elbow as Tarma took out their map. “I could make a very bad pun, but I won‘t,” she said. “Yes, it’s smoke, and I’d guess we’re here—”

  Kethry took her watering eyes off that faraway promise of habitation, and turned to see where on the map Tarma thought they were. It wasn’t exciting. If the Shin‘a’in was right, they were about a candlemark’s ride away from a flyspeck too small even to be called a village, marked on the map only with the name “Potter,” and the symbol for “public well.”

  “No inn?” the sorceress asked wistfully.

  “No inn,” her partner sighed, folding the map and tucking it back inside the inner pocket of her coat.

  “Sorry about that, Greeneyes.”

  “Figures,” Kethry said sourly. “When we’ve finally got the money to pay for inns, we can’t find any.”

  Tarma shrugged. “That’s fate, I suppose. We’ll have to see if we can induce some householder to part with hearth- or barn-space for a little coin. Could be worse. If it hadn’t been for everything that happened in Mournedealth, we wouldn’t have the coin.”

  “True—though I can think of easier ways to have gotten it.”

  “Hmm.” Tarma made a noncommittal sound, and swung back up into her saddle. Kethry cast a glance at her out of the corner of her eye and wondered what she was thinking.

  We’re still not—quite—a team. And she worries about me a lot more than I think is necessary.

  “I don’t regret any of it,” she said then, trying to sound as if she had intended to continue the sentence. “It’s just that I’m lazy. That little set-to with my former spouse was a whole lot more work than I would have preferred!”

  Tarma’s grating laugh floated out over the hillside, and Kethry relaxed a bit.

  “I’ll try and spare you, next time,” the Sword sworn said, nudging her mare with her heels and sending Kessira picking her way through the ruts down the hill. Kethry could have sworn as they passed that the elegant little mare had her lip curled in distaste. “If you promise to give me a little more warning. This could all have been taken care of quite handily by waylaying Wethes and your brother and—ah—‘persuading’ them that everyone would be happier if we were left alone.”

  “I thought you Kal‘enedral were bound by honor,” Kethry mocked, as Rodi lurched and slipped his way down the hill in Kessira’s wake.

  “Her honor, not man’s honor,” Tarma corrected, not taking her attention from the path in front of her.

  “And in matters where Her honor has no bearing, we’re bound by expediency. I’m rather fond of expediency. It saves a world of problems.”

  “Except when you have to explain your notion of ‘expedient’ to the City Guard.” Rodi took the last of the slope in a rush that made Kethry grit her teeth and cling to the saddle-bow, hoping the mule knew what he was doing.

  “You have a point,” the Shin‘a’in admitted.

  It took most of the remaining daylight—not the single candlemark the map promised—to get to the cluster of houses alongside the road. That was because of the condition of the road itself; as hum-mocked and rutted as the hill had been. Tarma didn’t want to push the beasts at all, for fear they’d break legs misstepping. So they picked their way to “Potter” with maddening slowness.

  So maddening that at first Kethry did not note the increasing pressure of her geas-blade “Need” on her mind.

  She was tightly bound to the sword; as bound to it as she was to her partner, and that binding had the blessing of Tarma’s own Goddess on it. The sword repaid that binding by healing her of anything short of a death-wound in an incredibly short period of time, and by granting her a master’s ability at wielding it—a fact that had saved Tarma’s skin now and again, since no one expected blade-expertise from a mage. But Kethry paid for those gifts—for any time there was a woman in need of help within the blade’s sensing-range—and Kethry had not yet determined the limits of that range—she had to help. Regardless of whether or not helping was a prudent move—or going to be repaid.

  Hardly the most ideal circumstances for a would-be mercenary.

  Need’s “call” was like the insistent pressure of a headache about to happen—except when the situation was truly life-or-death critical, in which case it had been known to cause pressure so close to pain as made no difference. Tarma must have learned to read or sense that in the few months they’d been together—she suddenly looked back over her shoulder almost as soon as Kethry herself became aware of the blade’s prodding, and frowned.

  “Tell me that expression on your face isn’t what I think it is,” the hawk-faced Shin‘a’in said plaintively.

  “I would,” Kethry sighed, “but I’d be lying.” Tarma shook her head, and turned her ice-blue eyes to the settlement ahead of them. “Joyous. Well, at least there shouldn’t be much trouble figuring out who and what. If there’re more than a dozen females down there, I’ll eat a horseshoe.”

  Kethry urged her mule forward until she rode knee-to-knee with her brown-clad partner. “I’ll say what you’re undoubtedly thinking. If there’s a problem in so small a settlement, everybody is likely to know about it. Which means everybody may well have a vested interest in keeping it quiet. Or may like things the way they are.” The vague splotch beside the road ahead of them resolved itself into a cluster of buildings as their beasts brought them nearer. A few moments more, and they could make out the red-roofed wellhouse, set apart from the rest of the buildings.

  “Or may simply resent outsiders interfering,” Tarma finished glumly. “There are times—heads up, she‘enedra. We’re being met.”

  They were indeed. Even as Tarma spoke, something separated itself from the side of the wellhouse. Shrouded in layers of clothing, for a moment it looked more bearlike than human. But as they neared, they could see that waiting beside the public well was a stoop-shouldered old man, gnarled and weathered as a mountain tree, with a thick thatch of snow-white hair tucked under a knitted cap the same bright red as the wellhouse roof.

  “Evening,” Tarma returned the greeting, crossing her wrists on
her saddlebow and leaning forward-though not dismounting. “What kind of hospitality could a few coins purchase a tired traveler around here, goodman?”

  He looked them up and down with bright black eyes peeping from beneath brows like overhanging snowbanks—eyes that missed nothing. “Well-armed travelers,” he observed mildly.

  Tarma laughed, and a startled crow flapped out of the thatch of one of the houses. “Travelers who aren’t fools, goodman. And two women traveling alone who couldn’t take care of themselves would be fools.”

  The old man chuckled. “Point taken, point taken.” He edged a little closer. “Be any good with that bow?”

  Tarma considered this for a moment. “A fair shot,” she acknowledged.

  “Well, then,” the oldster replied tugging his knit cap a bit farther down over his ears. “Coin we got no use for till spring an’ the traders come—but a bit of game, now—that’d be welcome. Say, hearth and meal for hunting?”

  Tarma nodded, and seemed satisfied with the tentative bargain, for she dismounted. Kethry was only too glad to follow her example.

  “I can’t conjure game out of an empty forest, old man,” Tarma said warningly as he led them to a roomy shed that already sheltered a donkey and three goats.

  “There’s game, there’s game. I wouldn’t set ye to a fool’s task. Just we be no hunters here.” He helped them fork hay into the shed; for bedding the mare and the mule would have to make do with the bracken already layering the floor.

  “Not hunters?” Kethry said, puzzled, as they took their packs and followed their guide into the nearest house. “Out here in the middle of nowhere? What on earth do you—”

  The answer to her question was self-evident as soon as the old man opened the door. The house was a single enormous room, combining sleeping, living and working space. It was the working space that occupied the lion’s share of the dwelling. In one corner stood a huge sink and pump, several wooden boxes of clay, and a potter’s wheel. Various ceramic items were ranged on two long wooden tables in the center of the room according to what stage they were in, from first drying to final glazing. The back wall was entirely brick, with several iron doors in it. It radiated heat even at this distance; it had to be a kiln of some sort, Kethry reckoned. Most of the windows were covered with oiled parchment, but there was a single glass window in the wall opposite; directly beneath that was a smaller workbench with pots and brushes, and a half-painted vase. The rest of the living arrangements were scattered haphazardly about, wherever there was room for them.

  It was, to Kethry’s mind, stiflingly warm, but Tarma immediately threw off her coat with a sigh of pure bliss.

  “Put yer bedrolls wherever, ladies,” the old man said. “There’s porridge as supper.”

  Kethry rummaged out a packet of some of their dried fruit and tossed it to the oldster, who caught it deftly, grinned his thanks, and added it to the pot just inside one of those iron doors.

  “Directly supper’s finished, we’ll be gettin’ visitors,” their host told them, as they found places to spread their bedrolls on the clay-stained, rough board floor. “I be Egon Potter; rest of the folks out here be kin or craft-kin.”

  Kethry’s curiosity had turned her attention to the half-finished pottery. It was more than simple pots and bowls, she realized as soon as she had a good look at it. It was really exquisite work, the equal or superior of anything she’d ever seen for sale in Mournedealth.

  “Why—” she began.

  “—are we way out here, back of the end of the world?” Egon interrupted her. “The clay, lady. No match for it anywhere else. Got three kinds of clay right here; got fuel for the kilns; got all winter t‘work on the fancy stuff an’ all summer t’ trade. What else we need?”

  Tarma laughed. “Not a damned thing else, Guildmaster.” At his raised eyebrow and quirky, half-toothless grin she laughed again. “I’ve always wondered where the best of the Wrightguild porcelain and stoneware came from—it certainly wasn’t being made in Kata‘shin’a‘in. You think I can’t recognize the work of the Master when I see it?”

  “Then there be more about you than shows on th’ surface, swordlady. But you tol’ me that, didn’ ye?”

  “Oh, aye, that I did.” They matched grins in some kind of wordless exchange that baffled Kethry, then the Shin‘a’in edged her way past the crowded worktable to the oldster’s side. “Here. Let me give you a hand with that porridge.”

  As darkness fell, Kethry came to appreciate old Egon’s craftsmanship even more, for he lit oil lamps around the room with shades of porcelain so thin that the light glowed through it easily. And when the first of the lamps was alight, the rest of the inhabitants of the little settlement began to arrive.

  They crowded about the newcomers, treating them with friendly reserve, asking questions, but free enough with their own answers. Fairly soon everyone had found space on the hearth, and Kethry was able to examine them at her leisure. They seemed amiable enough. None of the women seemed to be in any distress. In fact, it didn’t look to Kethry as if there were anything at all wrong here—and this despite Need’s unvarying pressure on the back of her mind.

  Finally, while Tarma entertained the company with some Shin‘a’in tale or other, the sorceress edged over to where old Egon was sitting alone a little off to one side.

  He nodded to her, but waited for her to speak. She cleared her throat a little, then said, trying not to sound awkward, “Egon, is everyone in your settlement here?”

  He seemed surprised by her question. “Oh, aye; all but the little ones. Well—barring one.”

  This sounded a little more promising. “One?” she prompted.

  His eyes went wary. “Well—she bain’t a guilds-man. Stranger. Settled here, oh, three or four winters ago. She don’t have much t’ do with us, we don’t have much t’ do with her. Unchancy sort.” Egon blinked, slowly. “Trades with us, betimes. I think she be grubbin’ about in the ruins, yonder. Bits of metal she trades, old stuff, gone t’ powder mostly, but good for makin’ glazes.”

  Something about this “stranger” evidently made Egon more than a little uneasy. Kethry could read that in his shuttered expression, and the careful choice he made of his words.

  “Are the ruins forbidden, or something?” she asked, trying to pinpoint his uneasiness.

  “Forbidden?” He flashed her a startled glance, and chuckled. “Great Kernos, no! It’s just—she seems witchy, like, but she ain’t never done nothin’ witchy.” He gave her a sidelong glance, as if gauging her response to that. “It’s like she was looking for something out there and mad as hops ‘cause she ain’t finding it. ’Cept lately she been acting like she had. Her name‘s—”

  The door opened, and a bundled figure half-stepped, and was half-windblown, into the circle of light. She blinked for a moment, her eyes sunken into pale, pudgy cheeks, her flabby arms hugging her fur cloak tightly about her.

  She’d put on so much weight since Kethry had last seen her that at first she didn’t recognize her former schoolmate.

  Then—“Mara?” she said into the silence the woman’s abrupt arrival had imposed on the group.

  The woman whirled; peered past the heads of those nearest her at Kethry. Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment; one plump, pasty hand flew to her throat—then she turned and bolted back the way she had come in a clumsy run.

  The door slammed behind her. The rest of those gathered sat in embarrassed silence.

  Finally Egon self-consciously cleared his throat. “ ‘Tis a bit late, and we all have work, come the morning light. . . .”

  His kin and fellow guildsmen were not slow at taking the hint. Before too very long the house was silent, and empty of all but Egon and the two women.

  There seemed no way to break that silence, and after a few halfhearted attempts at conversation, Egon excused himself and went to bed.

  Kethry took a long while falling asleep, and not because of the unfamiliar surroundings. Mara Yveda was the last person she expe
cted to see out here.

  I wondered where she went, after she’d disappeared from White Winds. Poor Mara. She was so certain that we were hiding something from her—thatcontrol of magic was just a matter of knowing the right words, having the right talisman....

  I’ll never forget the night she ran off. Right after she stole Master Loren’s staff—then found out the only thing that was unusual about it was that it was cut to exactly the right height to most comfortably help him with his lame leg.

  She broke it in two when it wouldn’t magic anything up for her. And then—sheran away.

  She would never believe that power isn’t a matter of “magic,” it’s a matter of discipline....

  She’s the one that’s in trouble. She’s found something, I know she has, and she’s gotten into trouble over it. What’s more, Egon knows it, too.

  So what do I do about it?

  She fell asleep finally, without being able to come to any conclusion.

  Kethry watched her partner dress the next morning, still in a decidedly unsettled state of mind.

  “Swordlady,” Egon said hesitantly, as Tarma prepared to set off at dawn to make good her side of the bargain, “there’s something I need to tell you. About the game.”

  Tarma didn’t even stop lacing up her boots. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m listening.”

  “There’s a bear about.”

  Now she left her lacing, to raise her head and stare at him. “A what? Are you sure? That—that‘s hardly usual.”

  “Aye,” the old man replied, shifting from one foot to the other. “But we’ve seen it about, not more than a day or two ago.”

  Tarma took a moment to secure the lacings, and straightened up, her face dead sober. “Do you have any notion what that means, that there’s a bear, awake and walking this deep into winter?”

  Egon shook his head.

  “That is a very sick bear, Egon. Either it didn’t eat enough to keep it going through winter-sleep, or something woke it far too early, and only illness can do that. In either case, its body is trying to make it go down for sleeping, and it’s going completely against those instincts. It’s going to die, Egon—but before it does, it’ll be half mad with starvation. It could be very dangerous to you and yours.”