Oathbound v(vah-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  "And now?" Kethry asked, when Need was safely back on her belt.

  "Now that's odd," Tarma said thoughtfully. "If he's using an illusion, he should have gone back to the way he looked before, but he didn't. He's still mousy and ratty, but my eyes feel funny -- like something's pulling at them -- and he's blurred a bit around the edges. It's almost as if his face was trying to look different from what I'm seeing."

  "Uh-huh. Mind-magic," Kethry said, with satisfaction. "So that's why I wasn't able to detect any spells! It's not a true illusion like I'm holding on us. They practice mind-magic a lot more up north in Valdemar -- I think I must have told you about it at some time or other. I'm only marginally familiar with the way it works, since it doesn't operate quite like what I've learned. If what I've been told is true, his mind is telling your mind that you know him, and letting your memory supply an acceptable face. He could very well look like a different person to everyone in the caravan, but since he always looks familiar, any of them would be willing to vouch for him."

  "Which is how he keeps sneaking into the packtrains. He looks different each time, since no one is likely to 'see' a man they know is dead. Very clever. You say this isn't a spell?"

  "Mind-magic depends on inborn abilities to work; if you haven't got them, you can't learn it. It's unlike my magic, where it's useful to have the Gift, but not necessary. Was he the same one you were watching?"

  "He is, indeed. So your True Sight spell works on this 'mind-magic' too?"

  "Yes, thank the gods. I'm glad now I didn't rely on mage-sight; he would have fooled that. What tipped you off to him?"

  "Nothing terribly obvious, just a lot of little things that weren't quite right for the ordinary guard he's pretending to be. His sword is a shade too expensive. His horse has been badly misused, but he's a gelding of very good lines; he's of much better breeding than a common guard should own. And lastly, he's wearing jewelry he can't afford."

  Kethry looked puzzled. "Several of the other guards are wearing just as much. I thought most hired swords wore their savings."

  "So they do. Thing is, of the others, the only ones with as much or more are either the guard-chief, or ones wearing mostly brass and glass; showy, meant to impress village tarts, but worthless. His is all real, and the quality is high. Too damned high for the likes of him."

  "Now that we know who to watch, what do we do?"

  "We wait," Tarma replied with a certain grim satisfaction. "He'll have to signal the rest of his troupe to attack us sooner or later, and one of us should be able to spot him at it. With luck and the Warrior on our side, we'll have enough warning to be ready for them."

  "I hope it's sooner." Kethry sipped at the wellwatered wine which was all she'd allow herself when holding spells in place. Her eyes were heavy, dry, and sore. "I'm not sure how much longer I can hold up my end."

  "Then go to sleep, dearling," Tarma's voice held an unusual gentleness, a gentleness only Kethry, Warrl, and small children ever saw. "Fur-face and I can take turns on night watch; you needn't take a turn at all."

  Kethry did not need further urging, but wrapped herself up in her cloak and a blanket, pillowed her head on her arm and fell asleep with the suddenness of a tired puppy. The illusions she'd woven would remain intact even while she slept. Only three things could cause them to fail. They'd break if she broke them herself, if the pressure of spells from a greater sorcerer than she were brought to bear on them, or if she died. Her training had been arduous, and quite thorough; as complete in its way as Tarma's sword training had been.

  Seeing her shiver in her sleep, Tarma built up the fire with a bit more dried dung (the leavings of previous caravans were all the fuel to be found out here) and covered her with the rest of the spare blankets. The illusions were draining energy from Kethry, and she got easily chilled; Tarma didn't expect to need the other coverings. She knew she'd be quite comfortable with one blanket and her cloak; and if that didn't suffice, Warrl made an excellent "bedwarmer."

  Warrior, guard her back, she prayed, as she had every night lately. I can guard my own -- but keep her safe.

  But the night passed uneventfully, despite Tarma's vague worries.

  * * *

  Morning saw them riding deeper into the stony hills that ringed the desert basin they'd spent the day before passing through. The road was considerably less dusty now, but the air held more of a chill. Both Tarma and Kethry tried to keep an eye on their suspect guard, and shortly before noon their vigilance was rewarded. Both of them saw him flashing the sunlight off his armband in what could only be a deliberate series of signals.

  Even with advance warning, they hadn't much time to ready themselves.

  Bandits charged the packtrain from both sides of the road, screaming at the tops of their lungs. The guards were taken completely by surprise. The three apprentice traders accompanying the train flung themselves down on their faces as their master Grumio had ordered them to do in hopes that they'd be overlooked. To the bandit master at the rear of the train, it seemed that once again all had gone completely according to plan. Until Kethry broke her illusions.

  The brigands at the forefront of the pack found themselves facing something they hadn't remotely expected. Gone were the helpless, frightened women on high-bred steeds too fearful to run. In their place sat a pair of well-armed, grim-faced mercenaries on schooled warbeasts. With them was an oversized and very hungry-looking kyree.

  The pack of bandits milled, brought to a halt by this unexpected development.

  Finally one of the bigger ones growled a challenge at Tarma, who only grinned evilly at him. Kethry saluted them with mocking gallantry -- and the pair moved into action explosively.

  They split up and charged the marauders, giving them no time to adjust to the altered situation. The bandits had hardly expected the fight to be carried to them, and reacted too late to stop them. Their momentum carried them through the pack and up onto the hillsides on either side of the road. Now they had the high ground.

  * * *

  Kethry had drawn Need, whose magic was enabling her to keep herself intact long enough to find a massive boulder to put her back against. The long odds were actually favoring the two of them for the moment, since the bandits were mostly succeeding only in getting in each other's way. Obviously they had not been trained to fight together, and had done well so far largely because of the surprise with which they'd attacked and their sheer numbers. Once Kethry had gained her chosen spot, she slid off her horse, and sent it off with a slap to its rump. The mottled, huge-headed beast was as ugly as a piece of rough granite, and twice as tough, but she was a Shin'a'in-bred and trained warsteed, and worth the weight in silver of the high-bred mare she'd been spelled to resemble. Now that Kethry was on the ground, she'd attack anything whose scent she didn't recognize -- and quite probably kill it.

  Warrl came to her side long enough to give her the time she needed to transfer her sword to her left hand and begin calling up her more arcane offensive weaponry.

  In the meantime, Tarma was in her element, cutting a bloody swath through the bandit horde with a fiercely joyous gleam in her eyes. She clenched her mare's belly with viselike legs; only one trained in Shin'a'in-style horse-warfare from childhood could possibly have stayed with the beast. The mare was laying all about her with iron-shod hooves and enormous yellow teeth; neither animal nor man was likely to escape her once she'd targeted him. She had an uncanny sense for anyone trying to get to her rider by disabling her; once she twisted and bucked like a cat on hot metal to simultaneously crush the bandit in front of her while kicking in the teeth of the one that had thought to hamstring her from the rear. She accounted for at least as many of the bandits as Tarma did.

  Tarma saw Kethry's mare rear and slash out of the corner of her eye; the saddle was empty --

  She sent a brief, worried thought at Warrl.

  :Guard yourself, foolish child; she's doing better than you are!: came the mental rebuke. Tarma grimaced, realizing she should have kn
own better. The bond of she'enedran made them bound by spirit, and she'd have known if anything was wrong. Since the mare was fighting on her own, Kethry must have found someplace high enough to see over the heads of those around her.

  As if to confirm this, things like ball-lightning began appearing and exploding, knocking bandits from their horses, clouds of red mist began to wreath the heads of others (who clutched their throats and turned interesting colors), and oddly formed creatures joined Warrl at harrying and biting at those on foot.

  When that began, especially after one spectacular fireball left a pile of smoking ash in place of the bandit's second-in-command, it was more than the remainder of the band could stand up to. Their easy prey had turned into hellspawn, and there was nothing that could make them stay to face anything more. The ones that were still mounted turned their horses out of the melee and fled for their lives. Tarma and the three surviving guards took care of the rest.

  As for the bandit chief, who had sat his horse in stupefied amazement from the moment the fight turned against them, he suddenly realized his own peril and tried to escape with the rest. Kethry, however, had never once forgotten him. Her bolt of power -- intended this time to stun, not kill -- took him squarely in the back of the head.

  * * *

  By late afternoon the heads of the bandits had been piled in a grisly cairn by the side of the road as a mute reminder to their fellows of the eventual reward of banditry. Their bodies had been dragged off into the hills for the scavengers to quarrel over. Tarma had supervised the cleanup, the three apprentices serving as her workforce. There had been a good deal of stomach-purging on their part at first -- especially after the way Tarma had casually lopped off the heads of the dead or wounded bandits -- but they'd obeyed her without question. Tarma had had to hide her snickering behind her hand, for they looked at her whenever she gave them a command as though they feared that their heads might well adorn the cairn if they lagged or slacked.

  She herself had seen to the wounds of the surviving guards, and the burial of the two dead ones.

  One of the guards could still ride; the other two were loaded into the now-useless cart after the empty boxes had been thrown out of it. Tarma ordered the whole caravan back to town; she and Kethry planned to catch up with them later, after some unfinished business had been taken care of.

  Part of that unfinished business was the filling and marking of the dead guards' graves.

  Kethry brought her a rag to wipe her hands with when she'd finished. "Damn. I wish -- oh, hellspawn; they were just honest hired swords," she said, looking at the stone cairns she'd built with remote regret. "It wasn't their fault we didn't have a chance to warn them. Maybe they shouldn't have let themselves be surprised like that, not with what's been happening to the packtrains lately -- but still, your life's a pretty heavy price to pay for a little carelessness...."

  Kethry, her energy back to normal now that she was no longer being drained by her illusions, slipped a sympathetic arm around Tarma's shoulders. "Come on, she'enedra. I want to show you something that might make you feel a little better."

  While Tarma had gone to direct the cleanup, Kethry had been engaged in stripping the bandit chief down to his skin and readying his unconscious body for some sort of involved sorcery. Tarma knew she'd had some sort of specific punishment in mind from the time she'd heard about the stolen girls, but she'd had no idea of what it was.

  * * *

  Now before her was a bizarre sight. Tied to the back of one of the bandit's abandoned horses was -- apparently -- the unconscious body of the highborn lady Kethry had spelled herself to resemble. She was clad only in a few rags, and had a bruise on one temple, but otherwise looked to be unharmed.

  Tarma circled the tableau slowly. There was no flaw in the illusion, if indeed it was an illusion.

  "Unbelievable," she said at last. "That is him, isn't it?"

  "Oh, yes, indeed. One of my best pieces of work."

  "Will it hold without you around to maintain it?"

  "It'll hold all right," Kethry replied with deep satisfaction. "That's part of the beauty and the justice of the thing. The illusion is irretrievably melded with his own mind-magic. He'll never be able to break it himself, and no reputable sorcerer will break it for him. And I promise you, the only sorcerers for weeks in any direction are quite reputable."

  "Why wouldn't he be able to get one to break it for him?"

  "Because I've signed it." Kethry made a small gesture, and two symbols appeared for a moment above the bandit's head. One was the symbol Tarma knew to be Kethry's sigil, the other was the glyph for "Justice." "Any attempt to probe the spell will make those appear. I doubt that anyone will ignore the judgment sign, and even if they were inclined to, I think my reputation is good enough to make most sorcerers think twice about undoing what I've done."

  "You really didn't change him, did you?" Tarma asked, a horrible thought occurring to her. "I mean, if he's really a woman now..."

  "Bright Lady, what an awful paradox we'd have!" Kethry laughed, easing Tarma's mind considerably. "We punish him for what he's done to women by turning him into a woman -- but as a woman, we'd now be honor-bound to protect him! No, don't worry. Under the illusion -- and it's a very complete illusion, by the way, it extends to all senses -- he's still quite male."

  She gave the horse's rump a whack, breaking the light enchantment that had held it quiet, and it bucked a little, scrabbling off into the barren hills.

  "The last of the band went that way," she said, pointing after the beast, "And the horse he's on will follow their scent back to where they've made their camp. Of course, none of his former followers will have any notion that he's anything other than what he appears to be."

  A wicked smile crept across Tarma's face. It matched the one already curving Kethry's lips.

  "I wish I could be there when he arrives," Tarma said with a note of viciousness in her harsh voice. "It's bound to be interesting."

  "He'll certainly get exactly what he deserves."

  Kethry watched the horse vanish over the crest of the hill. "I wonder how he'll like being on the receiving end?"

  "I know somebody who will like this -- and I can't wait to see his face when you tell him."

  "Grumio?"

  "Mm-hmm."

  "You know," Kethry replied thoughtfully, "this was almost worth doing for free."

  "She'enedra!" Tarma exclaimed in mock horror. "Your misplaced honor will have us starving yet! We're supposed to be mercenaries!"

  "I said almost." Kethry joined in her partner's gravelly laughter. "Come on. We've got pay to collect. You know -- this just might end up as some bard's song."

  "It might at that," Tarma chuckled "And what will you bet me that he gets the tale all wrong?"

  "Not only that -- but given bards, I can almost guarantee that it will only get worse with age."

  Nine

  The aged, half-blind mage blinked confused, rheumy eyes at his visitor. The man -- or was it woman? -- looked as awful as the mage felt. Bloodshot and dark-circled eyes glared at him from under the concealing shelter of a moth-eaten hood and several scarves. A straggle of hair that looked first to be dirty mouse-brown, then silver-blond, then brown again, strayed into those staring eyes. Nor did the eyes stay the same from one moment to the next; they turned blue, then hazel, then back to amethyst-blue. Try as he would, the mage could not make his own eyes focus properly, and light from a lanthorn held high in one of the visitor's hands was doing nothing to alleviate his befuddlement. The mage had never seen a human that presented such a contradictory appearance. She (he?) was a shapeless bundle of filthy, lice-ridden rags; what flesh there was to be seen displayed the yellowgreen of healing bruises. Yet he had clearly seen gold pass to the hands of his landlord when that particular piece of human offal had unlocked the mage's door. Gold didn't come often to this part of town -- and it came far less often borne by a hand clothed in rags.

  He (she?) had forced his (her?) way into the ver
minous garret hole that was all the mage could call home now without so much as a by-your-leave, shouldering the landlord aside and closing the door firmly afterward. So this stranger was far more interested in privacy than in having the landlord there as a possible backup in case the senile wizard proved recalcitrant. That was quite enough to bewilder the mage, but the way his visitor kept shifting from male to female and back again was bidding fair to dizzy what few wits still remained to him and was nearly leaving him too muddled to speak.

  Besides that, the shapeshifting was giving him one gods-awful headache.

  "Go 'way -- " he groaned feelingly, shadowing his eyes both from the unsettling sight and from the too-bright glare of the lanthorn his visitor still held aloft. " -- leave an old man alone! I haven't got a thing left to steal -- "