The Oathbound

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Do you know the beggars’ quarter? Well then, it’s on the river, just downwind of the slaughterhouse and the tannery. It’s been deserted since the last acolyte died of old age—oh, nearly fifteen years ago. It’s beginning to fall apart a bit; the last time I looked at it, there didn’t seem to be any signs that anyone had entered it in all that time.”

  “Is it kept locked up?”

  “Oh, yes; not that there’s anything to steal—mostly it’s to keep children from playing where they might be hurt by falling masonry. The beggars used it for a bit as one of their meeting halls, before the acolyte died, but,” he chuckled, “One-Eye Tham told me it was ‘too perishin’ cold and damp’ and they moved to more comfortable surroundings.”

  Tarma exchanged a look with her partner; We need to talk, she hand-signed.

  Kethry nodded, ever so slightly. We could be in trouble, she signed back.

  Tarma’s grimace evidenced agreement.

  “Well, if you will allow me,” the little priest finished the last of his wine, and shoved the bench back with a scrape, “I fear I have morning devotions to attend to. As always, Sworn One, the conversation and company have been delightful, if argumentative—”

  Tarma managed a smile; it transformed her face, even if it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “My friend, we have a saying—it translates something like ‘there is room in the universe for every Way.’ You travel yours; should you need it; my sword will protect you as I travel mine.”

  “That is all anyone could reasonably ask of one who does not share his faith,” he replied, “And so, good night.”

  The two mercenary women finished their own wine and headed for their room shortly after his departure. With Warrl padding after, Kethry took one of the candles from the little table standing by the entrance to the hall, lit it at the lantern above the table, and led the way down the corridor. The wooden walls were polished enough that their light was reflected; they’d been tended to recently and Tarma could still smell the ferris-oil that had been used. The sounds of snoring behind closed doors, the homelike scents of hot wax and ferris-oil, the buzz of conversation from the inn behind them—all contrasted vividly with the horror that had been resurrected in both their minds at the mention of Thalhkarsh.

  Their room held two narrow beds, a rag rug, and a table; all worn, but scrupulously clean. They had specified a room with a window, so Warrl could come and go as he pleased; no one in his right mind would break into the room with any of the three of them in it, and their valuables were in the stable, well-guarded by their well-named warsteeds, Hellsbane and Ironheart.

  When the door was closed and bolted behind them, Kethry put the candle in its wall sconce and turned to face her partner with a swish of robes.

  “If he’s there, if it’s really Thalhkarsh, he’ll be after us.”

  Tarma paced the narrow confines of the room. “Seems obvious. If I were a demon, I’d want revenge. Well, we knew this might happen someday. I take it that your sword hasn’t given you any indication that there’s anything wrong?”

  “No. At least, nothing more than what you’d expect in a city this size. I wish Need would be a little more discriminating.” Kethry sighed, and one hand caressed the hilt of the blade she wore at her side over her sorceress’ robes in an unconscious gesture of habit. “I absolutely refuse to go sticking my nose into every lover‘s-quarrel in this town! And—”

  “Warrior’s Oath—remember the first time you tried?” Tarma’s grim face lightened into a grin with the recollection.

  “Oh, laugh, go ahead! You were no help!”

  “Here you thought the shrew was in danger of her life—you went flying in the door and knocked her man out cold—and you expected her to throw herself at your feet in gratitude—” Tarma was taking full revenge for Kethry’s earlier hilarity at her expense. “And what did she do? Began hurling crockery at you, shrieking you’d killed her beloved! Lady’s Eyes, I thought I was going to die!”

  “I wanted to take her over my knee and beat her with the flat of my blade.”

  “And to add insult to injury, Need wouldn’t let you lay so much as a finger on her! I had to go in with a serving dish for a shield and rescue you before she tore you to shreds!”

  “She could have done that with her tongue alone,” Kethry grimaced. “Well, that’s not solving our problem here....”

  “True,” Tarma conceded, sobering. She threw herself down on her bed, Warrl jumping up next to her and pushing his head under her hand. “Back to the subject. Let’s assume that the rumor is true; we can’t afford not to. If somebody has brought that particular demon back, we know he’s going to want our hides.”

  “Or worse.”

  “Or worse. Now he can’t have gotten too powerful, or everybody in town would know about him. Remember Delton.”

  Kethry shifted restlessly from foot to foot, finally going over to the window to open the shutters with a creak of hinges and stare out into the night. “I remember. And I remember that we’d better do something about him while he’s in that state.”

  “This isn’t a job for us, she‘enedra. It’s a job for priests. Powerful priests. I remember what he almost did to me. He came perilously close to breaking my bond with the Star-Eyed. And he boasted he could snap your tie to Need just as easily. I think we ought to ride up to the capital as fast as Hellsbane and Ironheart can carry us, and fetch us some priests.”

  “And come back to an empty town and a demon transformed to a godling?” Kethry turned away from the window to shake her head at her partner, her amber hair like a sunset cloud around her face, and a shadow of anger in her eyes. “What if we’re wrong? We’ll have some very powerful people very angry at us for wasting their time. And if we’re right—we have to act fast. We have to take him while he’s still weak or we’ll never send him back to the Abyssal Planes at all. He is no stupid imp—he’s learned from what we did to him, you can bet on it. If he’s not taken down now, we’ll never be able to take him at all.”

  “That’s not our job!”

  “Whose is it then?” Kethry dug her fingers into the wood of the windowframe behind her, as tense and worried as she’d ever been. “We’d better make it our job if we’re going to survive! And I told you earlier—I don’t want you cosseting me! I know what I’m doing, and I can protect myself!”

  Tarma sighed, and there was a shadow of guilt on her face as she rolled over to lie flat on her back, staring at the ceiling; her hands clasped under her head, one leg crossed over the other. “All right, then. I don’t know a damn thing about magic, and all I care to know about demons outside of a book is that they scare me witless. I still would rather go for help, but if you don’t think we’d have the time—and if you are sure you’re not getting into more than you can handle—”

  “I know we wouldn’t have the time; he’s not going to waste time building up a power base,” Kethry replied, sitting down on the edge of Tarma’s bed, making the frame creak.

  “And he may not be there at all; it might just be a wild rumor.”

  “It might; I don’t think I’d care to bet my life on waiting to see, though.”

  “So we need information; reliable information.”

  “The question is how to get it. Should I try scrying?”

  “Absolutely not!” Tarma flipped back over onto her side, her hand chopping at the pillow for emphasis. Warrl winced away and looked at her reproachfully. “He caught that poor witch back in Delton that way, remember? That much even I know. If you scry, he’ll have you on his ground. I promise I won’t cosset you any more, but I will not allow you to put yourself in jeopardy when there are any other alternatives!”

  “Well, how then?”

  “Me.” Tarma stabbed at her own chest with an emphatic thumb. “Granted, I’m not a thief—but I am a skilled scout. I can slip into and out of that temple without anyone knowing I’ve been there, and if it’s being used for anything, I’ll be able to tell.”

  “No.”

&
nbsp; “Yes. No choice, she‘enedra.”

  “All right, then—but you won’t be going without me. If he and any followers he may have gathered are there and they’re using magic to mask their presence, you won’t see anything, but I can invoke mage-sight and see through any illusions.”

  Tarma began to protest, but this time Kethry cut her short. “You haven’t a choice either; you need my skill and I won’t let you go in there without me. Dammit Tarma, I am your partner—your full partner. If I have to, I’ll follow you on my own.”

  “You would, wouldn’t you?”

  “You can bet on it.” Kethry scowled, then smiled as Tarma’s resigned expression told her she’d won the argument. Warrl nudged Tarma’s hand again, and she began scratching absentmindedly behind his ears. A scowl creased her forehead, but her mouth, too, was quirked in an almost-smile.

  “Warrior’s Oath! I would tie myself to a head-strong, stubborn, foolish, reckless, crazed mage—”

  “Who loves her bond-sister and won’t allow her to throw her life away.”

  “—who is dearer to me than my own life.”

  Kethry reached out at almost the same moment as Tarma did. They touched hands briefly, crescent-scarred palm to crescent-scarred palm, and exchanged rueful smiles.

  “Argument over?”

  “It’s over.”

  “All right then,” Tarma said after poignant silence, “Let’s get to it now, while we’ve still got the guts for it.”

  Ten

  Tarma led the way, as soft- and sure-footed in these dark city streets as she would have been scouting a forest or creeping through grass on an open plain.

  The kyree Warrl served as their scout and their eyes in the darkness. The uninformed would have thought it impossible to hide a lupine creature the size of Warrl in an open street—a creature whose shoulder nearly came as high as Tarma’s waist; but Warrl, although somewhere close at hand, was presently invisible. Tarma could sense him, though—now behind them, now in front. From time to time he would speak a single word (or perhaps as many as three) in her mind, to tell her of the results of his scouting.

  There was little moonlight; the moon was in her last quarter. This was one of the poorest streets in the city, and there were no cressets and no torches to spare to light the way by night—and if anyone put one up, it would be stolen within the hour. The buildings to either side were shut up tight; not with shutters, for they were in far too poor a state of repair to have working shutters, but with whatever bits of wood and cloth or rubbish came to hand. What little light there was leaked through the cracks in these makeshift curtainings. The street itself was rutted mud; no wasting of paving bricks on this side of the river. Both the mercenaries wore thin-soled boots, the better to feel their way in the darkness. Kethry had abandoned her usual buff-colored, calf-length robe; she wore a dark, sleeved tunic over her breeches. Kethry’s ensorcelled blade Need was slung at her side; Tarma’s nonmagical weapon carried in its usual spot on her back. They had left cloaks behind; cloaks had a tendency to get tangled at the most inopportune moments. Better to bear with the chill.

  They had slipped out the window of their room at the inn, wanting no one to guess where they were going—or even that they were going out at all. They had made their way down back alleys with occasional detours through fenced yards or even across roofs. Although Kethry was no match for Tarma in strength and agility, she was quite capable of keeping up with her on a trek like this one.

  Finally the fences had begun to boast more holes than entire boards; the houses leaned to one side or the other, almost as though they huddled together to support their sagging bones. The streets, when they had ventured out onto them, were either deserted or populated by one or two furtively scurrying shadows. This dubious quarter where the abandoned temple that their priestly friend had told them of stood—this was hardly a place either of them would have chosen to roam in daylight, much less darkness. Tarma was already beginning to regret the impulse that had led her here—the stubbornness that had forced her to prove that she was not trying to shelter her partner unduly. Except that ... maybe Kethry was right. Maybe she was putting a stranglehold on the mage. But Keth was all the Clan she had....

  Tarma’s nose told her where they were; downwind of the stockyards, the slaughterhouse, and the tannery. The reek of tannic acid, offal, half-tanned hides and manure was a little short of unbreathable. From far off there came the intermittent lowing and bleating of the miserable animals awaiting the doom that would come in the morning.

  “Something just occurred to me,” Kethry whispered as they waited, hidden in shadows, for a single passerby to clear the street.

  “What?”

  “This close to the stockyard and slaughterhouse, Thalhkarsh wouldn’t necessarily need sacrifices to build a power base.”

  “You mean—he could use the deaths of the beasts?”

  “Death-energy is the same for man and beast. Man just has more of it, and of higher quality.”

  “Like you can get just as drunk on cheap beer as on distilled spirits?”

  “Something of the sort.”

  “Lady’s Blade! And he feeds on fear and pain as well—”

  “There’s plenty of that at the slaughterhouse.”

  “Great. That’s just what I needed to hear.” Tarma brooded for a moment. “Tell me something; why’s he taking on human shape if he wants to terrify? His own would be better for that purpose.”

  “Well—this is just a guess—you have to remember he wants worship and devotion as well, and he won’t get that in his real shape. That might be one reason. A second would be because what seems to be familiar and proves to be otherwise is a lot more fear-inducing than the openly alien. Lastly is Thalhkarsh himself—most demons like the Abyssal Planes, and their anger at being summoned is because they’ve been taken from home. They look on us as a lower form of life, a species of animal. But Thalhkarsh is perverse; he wants to stay here, he wants to rule over people, and I suspect he enjoys physically coupling with humans. The Lady only knows why.”

  “I ... don’t suppose he can breed, can he?”

  “Windborn! Thank your Lady, no. Thank all the gods that demons even in human form are sterile with humans, or we might have more than Thalhkarsh to worry about—he might be willing to produce a malleable infant. But the only way he can reproduce is to bud—and he’s too jealous of his powers here to bud and create another on this Plane with like powers and a mind of its own. He won’t go creating a rival, that much I’m sure of.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t break into carols of relief.”

  They peered down the dark, shadow-lined street in glum silence. The effluvium of the stockyards and tannery washed over them, causing Tarma to stifle a cough as an acrid breath seared the back of her throat a little.

  The street is clear, a voice rang in Tarma’s head.

  “Warrl says it’s safe to go,” Tarma passed the word on, then, crouching low, crossed the street like one of the scudding shadows cast on the street by high clouds against the moon.

  She moved so surely and so silently from the shadows of their own building to the shadows below the one across the street that even Kethry, who knew she was there, hardly saw her. Kethry was an instant behind her, not quite so sure or silent, but furtive enough. Warrl was already waiting for them, and snorted a greeting before slipping farther ahead of them in the direction of the temple.

  Hugging the rough wood and stone of the walls, they inched their way down the street, trying not to wince when their feet encountered unidentifiable piles of something soft and mushy. The reek of tannery and stockyard overwhelmed any other taint. From within the buildings occasionally came sounds of revelry or conflict; hoarse, drunken singing, shouting, weeping, the splintering of wood, the crash of crockery. None of this was carried into the streets; only fools and the mad walked the streets of the beggars’ quarter at night.

  Fools, the mad, or the desperate. Right now Kethry had both of them figured for b
eing all three.

  Finally the walls of buildings gave way to a single stone wall, half again as tall as Tarma. This, by the descriptions she’d gotten, would be the wall of the temple. Beyond it, bulking black against the stars, Kethry could see the temple itself.

  Tarma surveyed the wall, deciding it would be no great feat to scale it.

  You go over first, Fur face, she thought.

  My pleasure, Warrl sent back to her, overtones of irony so strong Tarma could almost taste the metallic emotional flavoring. He backed up six or seven paces, then flung himself at the wall. His forepaws caught the top of it; caught, and held, and with a scrambling of hindclaws that sounded hideously loud to Tarma’s nervous ears, he was over and leaping down on the other side.

  Now it was her turn.

  She backed up a little, then ran at the wall, leaping and catching the top effortlessly, pulling herself up onto the stones that were set into the top with ease. She crouched there for a moment, peering through the darkness into the courtyard beyond, identifying the odd-shaped shadows by what she’d been told to expect there.

  In the middle there stood a dried-out fountain, its basin broken, its statuary mostly missing limbs and heads. To the right were three stone boxes containing earth and dead trees. To the left had been a shrine, now a heap of rubble, that had been meant for those faithful who felt unworthy to enter the temple proper. All was as it should be; nothing moved.

  I’d tell you if anything was here, wouldn’t I? Warrl grumbled at her lack of trust.

  She felt one corner of her mouth twitch at his reply. I can take it that all’s well?

  Nothing out of the ordinary outside.

  It’s inside I’m worried about.

  She saluted Kethry briefly, seeing the strained, anxious face peering whitely up at her in the moon-shadows, then slipped over the top to land on cat-quiet feet in the temple courtyard.