The Oathbound

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Could we strap them to you, somehow?”

  If you do, I can try how it feels.

  Using their belts they managed to strap the blades along his flanks, one on either side, to Warrl’s satisfaction. He ran from one end of the alley to the other, then shook himself carefully without dislodging them or getting tangled by them.

  It’ll work, he said with satisfaction. Let’s go.

  They left their victims sleeping in a dead-end alley; they’d be rather embarrassed when they woke stark-naked in the morning. They’d come to no harm; thanks to Thalhkarsh not even criminals moved about the city by night, and the evening was warm enough that they wouldn’t suffer from exposure. Whether or not they’d die of mortification remained to be seen.

  The partners left their own clothing hidden in another alley farther on. Muffled in the stolen cloaks, they approached the temple, Warrl a shadow flitting behind them.

  On seeing the entrance, Tarma gave a snort of disgust. It was gaudy and decadent in the extreme, with carvings and statuary depicting every vice imaginable (and some she’d never dreamed existed) encrusting the entire front face.

  The single guard was a fat, homely man who moved slowly and clumsily, as if he were under the influence of a drug. He seemed little interested in the men who passed him by, other than seeing that they dropped their cloaks and giving them a cursory search for weaponry. The women were another case altogether. Between the preoccupation he was likely to have once he’d seen Kethry and the shadows cast by the carvings in the torchlight, Warrl should have no difficulty in slipping past him.

  Kethry touched the swordswoman’s arm slightly as they stood in line and nodded toward the guard, giving a little wiggle as she did so. Tarma knew what that meant—Kethry was going to make certain the guard’s attention stayed on her. The Shin‘a’in dropped her eyelids briefly in assent. When their turn came and they dropped their cloaks, Kethry posed and postured provocatively beneath the guard’s searching hands. He was so busy filling his eyes—and greasy paws—with her that he paid scant attention to either Tarma or the shadow that slipped inside behind her.

  When he’d delayed long enough that there was considerable grumbling from those waiting their turn behind the two women, he finally let Kethry pass with real reluctance. They slipped inside the smoke-wreathed portal and found themselves walking down a dark corridor, heavy with the scent of cloying incense. When the corridor ended, they passed through a curtain of some heavy material that moved of itself, as if it sensed their presence, and had a slippery feel and a sour smell to it. Once past that last obstruction, they found themselves blinking in the light of the temple proper.

  The interior was almost austere compared with the exterior. The walls were totally bare of ornamentation; the pillars upholding the roof were simple columns and not debauched caryatids. That simplicity left the eye only one place to go—the altar, a massive black slab with manacles at each corner and what could only be blood-grooves carved into its surface.

  There was no sign of any bottle.

  There were huge lanterns suspended from the ceiling and torches in brackets on the pillars, but the walls themselves were in shadow. There were braziers sending plumes of incense into the air on either side of the door. Beneath the too-sweet odor Tarma recognized the taint of tran-dust. This was where and how the guard had acquired his dreamy clumsiness. She nudged Kethry and they moved hastily along the wall to a spot where a draft carried fresher air to them. Tran-dust was dangerous at best, and could be fatal to them, for it slowed reactions and blurred the senses. They would need both at full sharpness tonight.

  There was a drumming and an odd, wild music that was almost more felt than heard. From a doorway behind the altar emerged the High Priest, at this distance, little more than a vague shape in elaborate robes of crimson and gold. Behind him came an acolyte, carrying an object that made Kethry’s eyes widen with satisfaction; it was a bottle, red, that glowed dimly from within. The acolyte fitted this into a niche in the foot of the altar near the edge; the place all the blood-grooves drained into.

  They worked their way closer, moving carefully along the wall. When they were close enough to make out the High Priest’s features, Kethry became aware of his intensely sexual attraction. As if to underscore this, she saw eager devotion written plainly on the face of a woman standing near to the altar-place. She tightened her lips; evidently this was one aspect of domination that both high priest and demon-deity shared. She warded her own mind against beglamorment. Tarma she knew she need not protect; by her very nature as Sword Sworn she would be immune to this kind of deception.

  A gong began sounding; slowly, insistently. The music increased in tempo; built to a crescendo—a blood-red brightness behind the altar intensified, echoing the rising music. At the climax of both, when the altar was almost too bright to look at, something appeared, pulling all the light and sound into itself.

  He was truly beautiful; poisonously beautiful. Compared to him, the priest’s attraction was insignificant. The line of women being brought in by two more acolytes ceased their fearful trembling, sighed, and yearned toward him.

  He beckoned to one, who literally ran to him, eagerly.

  Tarma turned her eyes resolutely away from the spectacle being presented at the altar-place. There was nothing either of them could do to help the intended sacrifice; she was thanking her Goddess that Need was not at Kethry’s hand just now. The sorceress had been known once or twice to become a berserker under the blade’s influence, and she was not altogether sure how much the sword was capable of in the way of thought. It wasn’t mindless —but in a situation like this it was moot whether or not it would prefer the long term goal of destroying the demon as opposed to the short term goal of ending the sacrifice’s torment.

  At least the rest of the devotees were so preoccupied with the victim and her suffering that they scarcely noticed the two women slowly making their way closer to the altar. Tarma looked closely into one face, and quickly looked away, nauseated. Those glazed eyes—swollen lips—the panting—it would have been obvious even to a child that the man was erotically enraptured by what he was watching. Tarma caught Kethry’s eyes a moment; the other nodded, lips tightly compressed. The Shin‘a’in swordswoman was past hoping to end this quietly. She had begun to devoutly wish for a chance to cleave a few skulls around here, and she had a shrewd suspicion that Kethry felt the same.

  The young High Priest looked up from his work, and saw the anomalous—two women, dressed as devotees, but paying no attention to the rites, and seemingly immune to the magical charisma of Thalhkarsh. They had worked their way nearly to the altar itself.

  He looked sharply at them—and noted the fighter’s muscles and the faint aura of the god-touched about the thin one, then the unmistakable presence of a warding-spell on the other.

  His mind flared with sudden alarm.

  He stepped forward once—

  He was given no time to act on his suspicions. Tarma saw his alerted glance, and whistled shrilly for Warrl.

  From the crowd to the left of her came shouts—then screeches, and the sound of panic. Warrl was covering the distance between himself and Tarma with huge leaps, and was slashing out with his teeth as he did so. The worshipers scrambled to get out of the way of those awful jaws, clearing the last few feet for him. He skidded to a halt beside her; with one hand she snatched Need from her sheath and tossed her to Kethry, with the other she unsheathed her own blade, turning the operation into an expert stroke that took out the two men nearest her. Warrl took his stand, guarding Tarma’s back.

  Need had sailed sweetly into Kethry’s hand, hilt first; she turned her catch into a slash that mirrored Tarma’s and cleared space for herself. Then she found herself forced to defend against two sorts of attack; the physical, by the temple guards, and the magical, by the High Priest.

  While the demon unaccountably watched, but did nothing, the priest forced Kethry back against the wall. As bolts of force crashed against th
e shield she’d hastily thrown up, Kethry had firsthand proof that his magics had been augmented by the demon. Even so, she was the more powerful magician—but she was being forced to divide her attentions.

  Warrl solved the problem; the priest-mage was not expecting a physical attack. Warrl’s charge from the side brought him down, and in moments the kyree had torn out his throat. That left Kethry free to erect a magical barrier between themselves and reinforcements for the guards they were cutting down. She breathed a prayer of thanks to whatever power might be listening as she did so—thanks that the past few months had required so little of her talents that her arcane armaments and energy reserves were at their height.

  Tarma grinned maliciously as a wall of fire sprang up at Kethry’s command, cutting them off from the rest of the temple. Now there were only two acolytes, the remaining handful of guards, and the oddly inactive demon to face.

  “Hold. ”

  The voice was quiet, yet stirred uneasiness in Tarma’s stomach. She tried to move—and found that she couldn’t. The guards were utterly motionless, as lifeless as statues. Only the acolytes were able to move, and all their attention was on the demon.

  His gaze was bent on Kethry.

  Tarma heard a rumbling snarl from behind the altar. Before she could try to prevent him, Warrl leaped from the body of the high priest in a suicidal attack on the demon.

  Thalhkarsh did not even glance in the kyree’s direction; he intercepted Warrl’s attack with a seemingly negligent backhanded slap. The kyree yelped as the hand caught him and sent him crashing into the wall behind Tarma, limp and silent.

  “Woman, I could use you.” The demon’s voice was low and persuasive. “Your knowledge is great, the power you command formidable, and you have infinitely more sense than that poor fool your familiar killed. I could make you a queen among magicians. I would make you my consort.”

  Tarma fumed in impotence as the demon reached for her oathkin.

  Kethry’s mind bent beneath the weight of the demon’s attentions. It was incredibly difficult to think clearly; all her thoughts seemed washed out in the red glare of his gaze. Her enchantments to counter beguilement seemed as thin as silk veils, and about as protective.

  “You think me cruel, evil. Yet what ever have I done save to give each of these people what he wants? The women have but to see me to desire me; the men lust for what women I do not care to take—all my worshipers want power. All these things I have given in exchange for worship. Surely that is fair, is it not? It would be cruelty to withhold these things, not cruelty to bestow them.”

  His voice was reasoned and persuasive. Kethry found herself wavering from what she had until now thought to be the truth.

  “Is it the bonds with that scrap of steel that trouble you? Fear not—it would be the work of a single thought to break them. And think of the knowledge that would be yours in the place at my side! Think of the power ...”

  His eyes glowed yet more brightly and seductively, and they filled her vision.

  “Think of the pleasure ...”

  Pain lancing across her thoughts woke her from the dreams called up by those eyes. She looked down at the blood trickling along her right hand—she’d clenched it around the bare blade of her sword with enough force to cut her palm. And with the pain came the return of independent thought. Even if everything he said were true, and not the usual truth-twisting demons found so easy, she was not free to follow her own will.

  There were other, older promises that bound her. There was the geas she had willingly taken with the fighting-gifts bestowed by Need, and the pledge she had made as a White Winds sorceress to use her powers for the greater good of mankind. And by no means least, there was the vow she had made before all of Liha‘irden; pledging Tarma that one day she would take a mate (or mates) and raise a clutch of children to bear the banner and name of Tarma’s lost Clan. Only death itself could keep her from fulfilling that vow. And it would kill Tarma should she violate it.

  She stared back at the demon’s inhuman eyes, defiance written in every fiber.

  He flared with anger. “You are the more foolish, then!” he growled—and backhanded her into the wall as casually as he had Warrl.

  She was halfway expecting such a move, and managed to relax enough to take the blow limply. It felt rather like being hit with a battering ram, but the semiconsciousness she displayed as she slid into a heap was mostly feigned.

  “You will find you have ample leisure to regret your defiance later!” he snarled in the same petulant tones as a thwarted spoiled child.

  Now he turned his attentions to Tarma.

  “So—the nomad—”

  Tarma did her best to simulate a fascination with the demon that she did not in the least feel.

  “It seems that I must needs petition the swordswoman. Well enough, it may be that you are even more suitable than your foolish companion.”

  The heat of his gaze was easily dissipated by the cool armoring of her Goddess that sheathed Tarma’s heart and soul. There simply was nothing there for the demon to work on; the sensual, emotional parts of her nature had been subsumed into devotion to the Warrior when Tarma had Sworn Sword-Oath. But he couldn’t know that—or could he?

  At any rate her attempt to counterfeit the same bemused rapture his brides had shown was apparently successful.

  “You are no beauty; well, then—look into my eyes, and see the face and body that might be yours as my priestess.”

  Tarma looked—she dared not look away. His eyes turned mirrorlike; she saw herself reflected in them, then she saw herself change.

  The lovely, lithe creature that gazed back at her was still recognizably Tarma—but oh, the differences that a few simple changes made! This was a beauty that was a match for Thalhkarsh’s own. For a scant second, Tarma allowed herself to be truly caught by that vision.

  The demon felt her waver—and in that moment of weakness, exerted his power on the bond that made her Kal‘enedral.

  And Tarma realized at that instant that Thalhkarsh was truly on the verge of attaining godlike powers, for she felt the bond weaken—

  Thalhkarsh frowned at the unexpected resistance he encountered, then turned his full attention to breaking the stubborn strength of the bond.

  And that changing of the focus of his attention in turn released Tarma from her entrapment. Not much—but enough for her to act.

  Tarma had resisted the demon with every ounce of stubbornness in her soul, augmenting the strength of the bond, but she wasn’t blind to what was going on around her.

  And to her horror she saw Kethry creeping up on the demon’s back, a fierce and stubborn anger in her eyes.

  Tarma knew that no blow the sorceress struck would do more than anger Thalhkarsh. She decided to yield the tiniest bit, timing her moment of weakness with care, waiting until the instant Need was poised to strike at the demon’s unprotected back.

  And as Thalhkarsh’s magical grip loosened, her own blade-hand snapped out, hilt foremost, to strike and break the demon’s focus-bottle.

  At the exact moment Tarma moved, Kethry buried Need to the hilt in the demon’s back, as the sound of breaking glass echoed and re-echoed the length and breadth of the temple.

  Any one of those actions, by itself, might not have been sufficient to defeat him; but combined—

  Thalhkarsh screamed in pain, unanticipated, unexpected, and all the worse for that. He felt at the same moment a good half of his stored power flowing out of him like water from a broken bottle—

  —a broken bottle!

  His focus—was gone!

  And pain like a red-hot iron seared through him, shaking him to the roots of his being.

  He lost his carefully cultivated control.

  His focus was destroyed, and with it, the power he had been using to hold his followers in thrall. And the pain—it could not destroy him, but he was not used to being the recipient of pain. It took him by surprise, and broke his concentration and cost him yet more power.r />
  He lost mastery of his form. He took on his true demonic aspect—as horrifying as he had been beautiful.

  And now his followers saw for the first time the true appearance of what they had been calling a god. Their faith had been shaken when he did nothing to save the life of his High Priest. Now it was destroyed by the panic they felt on seeing what he was.

  They screamed, turned mindlessly, and attempted to flee.

  His storehouse of power was gone. His other power-source was fleeing madly in fear. His focus was destroyed, and he was racked with pain, he who had never felt so much as a tiny pinprick before. Every spell he had woven fell to ruins about him.

  Thalhkarsh gave a howling screech that rose until the sound was nearly unbearable; he again slapped Kethry into the wall. Somehow she managed to take her blade with her, but this time her limp unconsciousness as she slid down the wall was not feigned.

  He howled again, burst into a tower of red and green flame, and the walls began to shift.

  Tarma dodged past him and dragged Kethry under the heavy marble slab of the altar, then made a second trip to drag Warrl under its dubious shelter.

  The ground shook, and the remaining devotees rushed in panic-stricken confusion from one hoped-for exit to another. The ceiling groaned with a living voice, and the air was beginning to cloud with a sulfurous fog. Then cracks appeared in the roof, and the trapped worshipers screeched hopelessly as it began to crumble and fall in on them.

  Tarma crouched beneath the altar stone, protecting the bodies of Kethry and Warrl with her own—and hoped the altar was strong enough to shelter them as the temple began falling to ruins around them.