The Oathbound

by Mercedes Lackey

  The demon, wearing his form of a tall, beautiful human male, was the first to recover from surprise at the interruption.

  “Amusing,” he said, not appearing at all amused. “I had thought the skill of those I had paid would more than equal yours, even with that puny blade to augment it. It appears that I was mistaken.”

  Before Kethry could make a move, he had seized Tarma, and pulled her before him—not as a shield, but with evident threat.

  “Put up your blade, sorceress,” he purred bra zenly, “or I tear her limb from limb.”

  Kethry knew he was not bluffing, and Need clattered to the floor from her nerveless hand.

  He laughed, a hideous howl of triumph. “You disappoint me, my enemy! You have made my conquest too easy!” He stood up and tossed Tarma aside; she fell to the pile of cushions with the limpness of a lifeless doll, not even attempting to break her own fall. “Come forth, my little toy—” he continued, turning his back on his fallen victim and beckoning to someone lurking behind the platform.

  From out of the shadows among the hangings came a woman, and when she stepped far enough into the light that Kethry was able to get a good look at her, the sorceress reeled as if she had been struck. It couldn’t be—

  The woman was the twin of an image she herself had once worn—and that she had placed on the unconscious form of the marauding bandit Lastel Longknife by way of appropriate punishment for the women and girls he had used and murdered. It was an image she had never expected to see again; she had assumed the bandit would have been treated with brutality equaling his own by what was left of his fellows. By all rights, he should have been dead—long dead.

  “I think the bitch recognizes me, my lord,” the dulcet voice said, heavy irony in the title of subservience. Platinum hair was pushed back from amethyst eyes with a graceful but impatient hand.

  “You never expected to see me again, did you?” Her eyes blazed with helpless anger. “May every god damn you for what you did to me, woman. Death would have been better than the misery this shape put me through! If it hadn’t been for a forgotten sword and an untied horse—”

  She came closer, hands crooked into claws. “I’ve dreamed of having you in my hands every night since, gods—but not like this.” Her eyes betrayed that she was walking a very thin thread of sanity. “What you did to me was bad enough—but being trapped in this prison of a whore’s carcass is more than I can bear—it’s worse than Hell, it‘s—”

  She turned away, clenching her hands so tightly that the knuckles popped. After a moment of internal struggle she regained control over herself, and turned to the demon. “Well, since it was my tales to the priests that lured them here, the time has come for you to keep your side of the bargain.”

  “You wish to lose your current form? A pity—I had thought you had come to enjoy my attentions.”

  The woman colored; Kethry was baffled. She had only placed the illusion of being female on the bandit, but this—this was a real woman! Mage-sight showed only exactly what stood before her in normal-sight, not the bandit of the desert hills!

  “Damn you,” she snarled. “Oh, gods, for a demon-slaying blade! Yes, you bastard, I enjoy it! As you very well know, squirming like a vile snake inside my head! You’ve made me your slave as well as your puppet; you’ve addicted me to you, and you revel in my misery—you cursed me far worse than ever she did. And now, damn you, I want free of it and you and all else besides! I’ve paid my part of the bargain. Now you live up to your side!”

  Thalhkarsh smiled cruelly. “Very well, my pretty little toy—go and take her lovely throat in both your hands, and I shall free you of that body with her death.”

  One of the acolytes scuttled around behind Kethry and seized her arms, pinioning them behind her back. He needn’t have bothered; she was so in shock she couldn’t have moved if the ceiling had begun to fall in on them. The slender beauty approached, stark, bitter hatred in her eyes, and seized Kethry’s throat.

  A howl echoed from behind her; a hurtling black shape leaped over her straight at the demon. It was Warrl—who evidently had met the same kind of delaying tactics as Kethry had. Now he had broken free of them, and he was in a killing rage. This time Thalhkarsh took no chances with Warrl; from his upraised hands came double bolts of crimson lightning. Warrl was hit squarely in midair by both of them. He shrieked horribly, transfixed six feet above the floor, caught and held in midleap. He writhed once, shrieked again—then went limp. The aura of the demon’s magic faded; the body of the kyree dropped to the ground like a shot bird, and did not move again.

  Lastel was not in the least distracted by this; she tightened her hands around Kethry’s neck. Kethry struggled belatedly to free herself, managing to bring her heel down on the foot of the acolyte behind her, catching him squarely in the instep so that he yowled and dropped to the floor, clutching his ruined foot.

  But even when her arms were free, she was powerless against the bandit; she scratched at Lastel’s hands and reached for her eyes with crooked fingers—uselessly. Her own hands would not respond; her lungs screamed for air, and she began to black out.

  The demon laughed, and again raised his hands; Kethry felt as if she’d been plunged into the heart of a fire. Crackling energies surrounded both of them; her legs gave beneath her and it was only when a new acolyte caught her arms and held her up that she remained erect. With narrowing vision she stared into Lastel’s pale eyes, unable to look away—

  And suddenly she found herself staring down into her own face, with her own neck between her hands! Kethry released her grip with a cry of disbelief; stared down at at her hands, at herself, horror written plain on her own face. Lastel stared up at her out of her own eyes, hatred and black despair making a twisted mask of her face.

  The demon laughed at both of them, cruel enjoyment plain in his tone. He eased off the monstrous pile of silks and stalked proudly toward them, sweeping the bandit up onto her feet and into his arms as he came to stand over Kethry, who had sagged to her knees in shock.

  “I promised to change your form, fool—I did not promise into what image!” he chortled. “And you, witch—I have your rightful body in my keeping now—and you will never, never reverse a spell to which I and I alone hold the key!”

  He gestured at his acolyte, who dropped his hold on Kethry-now-Lastel and seized Lastel-now-Kethry’s arms instead, hauling her roughly to her feet.

  “My foolish sorceress, my equally foolish toy, how easy it is to manipulate you! Little toy, did you truly think that I would release you when you take such delight in my attentions? That I would allow such a potent source of misery out of my possession? As for you, dear enemy—I have only begun to take my revenge upon you. I shall leave you alive, and in full possession of your senses—unlike your sword-sister. No doubt you wonder what I have done with her? I have wiped her mind clean; in time I shall implant my teachings in her, so that I shall have an acolyte of complete obedience and complete devotion. It was a pity that I could not force her to suffer as you shall, but her will combined with her link to her chosen goddess was far too strong to trifle with. But now that her mind is gone, the link has gone with it, and she will be mine for so long as I care to keep her.”

  Kethry was overwhelmed with agony and despair; she stifled a moan with difficulty. She felt tears burning her eyes and coursing down her cheeks; her vision was blurred by them. The demon smiled at the sight.

  “As for you, you will be as potent a source of pain as my little toy is; know that you will feed my power with your grief and anguish. Know that your blood-sister will be my plaything, willingly suffering because I order it. Know all this, and know that you are helpless to prevent any of it! As for this—”

  He prodded the body of Warrl with one toe. His smile spread even wider as she tried involuntarily to reach out, only to have the acolytes hold her arms back.

  “I think that I shall find something suitable to use it for. Shall I have it mounted, or—yes. The fur is quite good; quite
soft and unusual. I think I shall have it tanned—and it shall be your only bed, my enemy!”

  He laughed, as Kethry struggled in the arms of his acolytes, stomach twisted and mind torn nearly in shreds by her grief and hatred of him. She subsided only when they threatened to wrench her arms out of their sockets, and hung limply in their grasp, panting with frustrated rage and weeping soundlessly.

  “Take her, and take her friend. Put them in the place I prepared for them,” Thalhkarsh ordered with a lift of one eyebrow. “And take that and that as well,” he indicated the body of Warrl and Kethry’s sword Need. “Put them where she can see them until I decide what to do with them. Perhaps, little toy, I shall give the blade to you.”

  Lastel’s hands clenched and unclenched as he attempted to control himself. “Do it, damn you! If you do, I’ll use it on you, you bastard!”

  “How kind of you to warn me, then. But come— you wear a new body now, and I wish to see how it differs from the old—don’t you?”

  Kethry’s last sight of the demon was as he swept Lastel up onto the platform, then she and Tarma were hustled down another brick-lined corridor, and shoved roughly into a makeshift cage that took up the back half of a stone-lined storage room. Warrl’s carcass and Need were both dumped unceremoniously on the slate table in front of the cage door.

  The room lacked windows entirely, and had only the one door now shut and (from the sounds that had come after her guards had shut it), locked. Light came from a single torch in a holder near the door. The cage was made of crudely-forged iron bars welded across the entire room, with an equally crude door of similar bars that had been padlocked closed. There was nothing whatsoever in the cage; she and Tarma had only what they were wearing, which in Tarma’s case was little more than rags, and in hers, the simple shift and breeches Lastel had been wearing. Though she searched, she found no weapons at all.

  Tarma sat blank-eyed in the corner of the cage where she’d been left, rocking back and forth and humming tunelessly to herself. The only thing that the demon hadn’t changed was her voice; still the ruined parody of what it had been before the slaughter of her Clan.

  Kethry went to her and knelt on the cold stone at her side. “Tarma?” she asked, taking her she‘enedra’s hand in hers and staring into those blank blue eyes.

  She got no response for a moment, then the eyes seemed to see her. One hand crept up, and Tarma inserted the tip of her index finger into her mouth.

  “Tarma?” the Shin‘a’in echoed ingenuously. And that was all of intelligence that Kethry could coax from her; within moments her eyes had gone blank again, and she was back to her rocking and tuneless humming.

  Kethry looked from the mindless Tarma to the body of the kyree and back again, slow tears etching their way down her cheeks.

  “My god, my god—” she wept, “Oh, Tarma, you were right! We should have gone for help.”

  She tried to take her oathkin in her arms, but it was like holding a stiff, wooden doll.

  “If I hadn’t been so damned sure of myself—if I hadn’t been so determined to prove you were smothering me—it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault! What have I done? What has my pride done to you?”

  And Tarma rocked and crooned, oblivious to everything around her, while she wept with absolute despair.

  Eleven

  You lied to me, you bastard!“ Green eyes blazed passionately with anger.

  “You didn’t listen carefully enough,” Thalhkarsh replied to the amber-haired hellion whom he had backed into a corner of his “couch.” “I said I would change your form; I never said what I would change it into.”

  “You never had any intention of changing me back to a man!” Lastel choked, sagging to the padded platform, almost incoherent with rage.

  “Quite right.” The demon grinned maliciously as he sat himself cross-legged on the padded platform, carefully positioning himself so as to make escape impossible. “Your emotions are strong; you are a potent source of power for me, and an ever-renewable source. I had no intention of letting you free of me while I still need you.” He arranged himself more comfortably with the aid of a cushion or two; he had Lastel neatly pinned, and his otherworldly strength and speed would enable him to counter any move the woman made.

  “Then when?”

  “When shall I release you? Fool, don’t you ever think past the immediate moment?” For once the molten-bronze face lost its mocking expression; the glowing red-gold eyes looked frustrated. “Why should you want release? What would you do if I gave you back your previous form—where would you go? Back to your wastelands, back to misery, back to petty theft? Back to a life with every man’s hand against you, having to hide like a desert rat? Is that what you want?”

  “I—”

  “Fool; blind, stupid fool! Your lust for power is nearly as great as my own, yet you could accomplish nothing by yourself and everything with my aid!” the demon rose to his feet, gesticulating. “Think—for one moment, think! You are in a mage-Talented body now; one in which the currents of arcane power flow strongly. You could have me as a patron. You could have all the advantages of being my own High Prelate when I am made a god! And you wish to throw this all away? Simply because you do not care for the responses of a perfectly healthy and attractive body?”

  “But it isn’t mine! It’s a woman!” Lastel shrank back into the corner, wailing. “I don’t want this body—”

  “But I want you in it. I desire you, creature I have made; I want you in a form attractive to me.” The demon came closer and placed his hands on the walls to either side of Lastel, effectively rendering her immobile. “Your emotions run so high, and taste so sweetly to me that I sometimes think I shall never release you.”

  “Why?” Lastel whispered. “Why me, why this? And why here? I thought all your kind hated this world.”

  “Not I.” The demon’s eyes smoldered as his expression turned thoughtful. “Your world is beautiful in my eyes; your people have aroused more than my hunger, they have aroused my desire. I want this world, and I want the people in it! And I will have it! Just as I shall have you.”

  “No—” Lastel whimpered.

  “Then I ask in turn, why? Or why not? What have I done save rouse your own passions? You are well fed, well clothed, well housed—nor have I ever harmed you physically.”

  “You’re killing me!” Lastel cried, his voice breaking. “You’re destroying my identity! Every time you look at me, every time you touch me, I forget what it was ever like, being a man! All I want is to be your shadow, your servant; I want to exist only for you! I never come back to myself until after you’ve gone, and it takes longer to remember what I was afterward—longer every time you do this to me.”

  The demon smiled again with his former cruelty, and brought his lips in to brush her neck. “Then, little toy,” he murmured, “perhaps it is something best forgotten?”

  Tarma was lost; without sight, without hearing, without senses of any kind. Held there, and drained weak past any hope of fighting back. So tired—too tired to fight. Too tired to hope, or even care. Emptied of every passion—

  Wake UP!

  The thin voice in her mind was the first sign that there was any life at all in the vast emptiness where she abode, alone. She strained to hear it again, feeling ... something. Something besides the apathy that had claimed her.

  Mind-mate, wake!

  It was familiar. If only she could remember, remember anything at all.

  Wake, wake, wake!

  The voice was stronger, and had the feel of teeth in it. As if something large and powerful was closing fangs on her and shaking her. Teeth—

  In the name of the Star-Eyed! the voice said, frantically. You MUST wake!

  Teeth. Star-Eyed. Those things had meant something, before she had become nothing. Had meant something, when she was—

  Tarma.

  She was Tarma. She was Tarma still, Sworn One, kyree-friend, she‘enedra.

  Every bit of her identity that she r
egained brought more tiny pieces back with it, and more strength. She fought off the gray fog that threatened to steal those bits away, fought and held them, and put more and more of herself together, fighting back inch by inch. She was Shin‘a’in, of the free folk of the open plains—she would not be held and pri soned! She—would—not—be—held!

  Now she felt pain, and welcomed it, for it was one more bridge to reality. Salvation lay in pain, not in the gray fog that sucked the pain and everything else away from her. She held the pain to her, cherished it, and reached for the voice in her mind.

  She found that, too, and held to it, while it rejoiced fiercely that she had found it.

  No—not it. He. The kyree, the mage-beast. Warrl. The friend of her soul, as Kethry was of her heart.

  As if that recognition had broken the last strand of foul magic holding her in the gray place, she suddenly found herself possessed again of a body—a body that ached in a way that was only too familiar. A body stiff and chilled, and sitting—from the feel of the air on her skin—nearly naked and on a cold stone floor. She could hear nothing but the sound of someone crying softly—and cautiously cracked her eyes open the merest slit to see where she was.

  She was in a cage; she could see the iron bars before her, but unless she changed position and moved, she couldn’t see much else. She closed her eyes again in an attempt to remember what could have brought her to this pass. Her memories tumbled together, confused, as she tried with an aching skull to sort them out.

  But after a moment, it all came back to her, and with it, a rush of anger and hatred.

  Thalhkarsh!

  The demon—he’d tricked her, trapped her—then overpowered her, changed her, and done—something to her to send her into that gray place. But if Thalhkarsh had taken her, then where were Warrl and Kethry?

  I’m lying on the table, mind-mate, said the voice, The demon thinks he killed me; he nearly did. His magic sent me into little-death, and I decided to continue the trance until we were all alone; it seemed safer that way. There was nothing I could do for you. Your she‘enedra is in the same cage as you. It would be nice to let her know the demon hasn’t destroyed your mind after all. She thinks that you’re worse than dead, and blames herself entirely for what was both your folly.