Oathblood v(vah-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Gone." It would be best to tell it shortly. "We gave them the rites as soon as we found them, and brought the herds and goods back here. You are the last of the Hawk's Children."

  So her memory was correct. She stared at him wordlessly.

  At this time of year the entire Clan traveled together, leaving none at the grazing-grounds. There was no doubt she was the sole survivor.

  She was taking the news calmly -- too calmly. He did not like it that she did not weep. There was madness lurking within her; he could feel it with his Healer's senses. She walked a thin thread of sanity, and it would take very little to cause the thread to break. He dreaded her next question.

  It was not the one he had expected. "My voice -- what ails it?"

  "Something broken past mending," he replied regretfully -- for he had heard her sing less than a month ago.

  "So." She turned her head to stare again at the ceiling. For a moment he feared she had retreated into madness, but after a pause she spoke again.

  "I cry blood-feud," she said tonelessly.

  When the Healer's attempts at dissuading her failed, he brought the Clan Elders. They reiterated all his arguments, but she remained silent and seemingly deaf to their words.

  "You are only one -- how can you hope to accomplish anything?" the Clanmother said finally. "They are many, seasoned fighters, and crafty. What you wish to do is hopeless before it begins."

  Tarma stared at them with stony eyes, eyes that did not quite conceal the fact that her sanity was questionable.

  "Most importantly," said a voice from the tent door, "You have called what you have no right to call."

  The shaman of the Clan, a vigorous woman of late middle age, stepped into the healer's tent and dropped gracefully beside Tarma's pallet to sit cross-legged.

  "You know well only one Sword Sworn to the Warrior can cry blood-feud," she said calmly and evenly.

  "I know," Tarma replied, breaking her silence. "And I wish to take Oath."

  It was a Shin'a'in tenet that no person was any holier than any other, that each was a priest in his own right. The shaman might have the power of magic, might also be more learned than the average Clansman had time to be, but when the time came that a Shin'a'in wished to petition the God or Goddess, he simply entered the appropriate tent-shrine and did so, with or without consulting the shaman beforehand.

  So it happened that Tarma was standing within the shrine on legs that trembled with weakness.

  The Wise One had not seemed at all surprised at Tarma's desire to be Sworn to the Warrior, and had supported her in her demand over the protests of the Elders. "If the Warrior accepts her," she had said reasonably, "who are we to argue with the will of the Goddess? And if she does not, then blood-feud cannot be called."

  The tent-shrines of the Clans were always absolutely identical in their spartan simplicity. There were four tiny wooden altars, one against each wall of the I tent. In the East was that of the Maiden; on it was her symbol, a single fresh blossom in spring and summer, a stick of burning incense in winter and fall. To the South was that of the Warrior, marked by an ever-burning flame. The West held the Mother's altar, on it a sheaf of grain. The North was the domain of the Crone or Ancient One. The altar here held a smooth black stone.

  Tarma stepped to the center of the tent. What she intended to do was nothing less than self-inflicted torture. All prayers among the Shin'a'in were sung, not spoken; further, all who came before the Goddess must lay all their thoughts before her. Not only must she endure the physical agony of trying to shape her ruined voice into a semblance of music, but she must deliberately call forth every emotion, every too-recent memory; all that caused her to be standing in this place.

  She finished her song with her eyes tightly closed against the pain of those memories; her eyes burned and she ached with stubborn refusal to give in to tears.

  There was a profound silence when she'd done; after a moment she realized she could not even hear the little sounds of the encampment on the other side of the thin tent walls. Just as she'd realized that, she felt the faint stirrings of a breeze --

  It came from the East, and was filled with the scent of fresh flowers. It encircled her, and seemed to blow right through her very soul. It was soon joined by a second breeze, out of the West; a robust and strong little wind carrying the scent of ripening grain. As the first had blown through her, emptying her of pain, the second filled her with strength. Then it, too, was joined; a bitterly cold wind from the North, sharp with snow-scent. At the touch of this third wind her eyes opened, though she remained swathed in darkness born of the dark of her own spirit. The wind chilled her, numbed the memories until they began to seem remote; froze her heart with an icy armor that made the loneliness bearable. She felt now as if her soul were swathed in endless layers of soft, protecting bandages. The darkness left her sight -- she saw through eyes grown distant and withdrawn to view a world that seemed to have receded to just out of reach.

  The center of a whirlwind now, she stood unmoving while the physical winds whipped her hair and clothing about and the spiritual ones worked their magics within her.

  But the Southern wind, the Warrior's Wind, was not one of them.

  Suddenly the winds died to nothing. A voice that held nothing of humanity, echoing, sharp-edged as a fine blade yet ringing with melody, spoke one word. Her name.

  Tarma obediently turned slowly to her right. Before the altar in the South stood a woman.

  She was raven-haired and tawny-skinned, and the lines of her face were thin and strong, like all the Shin'a'in. She was arrayed all in black, from her boots to the headband that held her shoulder-length tresses out of her eyes. Even the chainmail hauberk she wore was black, as well as the sword she wore slung across her back and the daggers in her belt. She raised her eyes to meet Tarma's, and they had no whites, irises or pupils; her eyes were reflections of a cloudless night sky, black and star-strewn.

  The Goddess had chosen to answer as the Warrior, and in Her own person.

  When Tarma stepped through the tent flap, there was a collective sigh from those waiting. Her hair was shorn just short of shoulder length; the Clansfolk knew they would find the discarded locks lying across the Warrior's altar. Tarma had carried nothing into the tent, there was nothing within the shrine that she would have been able to use to cut it. Tarma's Oath had been accepted. There was an icy calm about her that was unmistakable, and completely unhuman.

  No one in this Clan had been Swordsworn within living memory, but all knew what tradition demanded of them. No longer would the Sworn One wear garments bright with the colors the Shin'a'in loved; from out of a chest in the Wise One's tent, carefully husbanded against such a time, came clothing of dark brown and deepest black. The brown was for later, should Tarma survive her quest. The black was for now, for ritual combat, or for one pursuing blood-feud.

  They clothed her, weaponed her, provisioned her. She stood before them when they had done, looking much as the Warrior herself had, her weapons about her, her provisions at her feet. The light of the dying sun turned the sky to blood as they brought the youngest child of the Clan Liha'irden to receive her blessing, a toddler barely ten months old. She placed her hands on his soft cap of baby hair without really seeing him -- but this child had a special significance.

  The herds and properties of the Hawk's Children would be tended and preserved for her, either until Tarma returned, or until this youngest child in the Clan of the Racing Deer was old enough to take his own sword. If by then she had not returned, they would revert to their caretakers.

  Tarma rode out into the dawn. Tradition forbade anyone to watch her departure. To her own senses it seemed as though she rode still drugged with one of the healer's potions. All things came to her as if filtered through a gauze veil, and even her memories seemed secondhand -- like a tale told to her by some gray-haired ancient.

  She rode back to the scene of the slaughter; the pitiful burial mound aroused nothing in her. Some force outs
ide of herself showed her eyes where to catch the scant signs of the already cold trail. It was not an easy trail to follow, despite the fact that no attempt had been made to conceal it. She rode until the fading light made tracking impossible, but was unable to make more than a few miles.

  She made a cold camp, concealing herself and her horse in the lee of a pile of boulders. Enough moisture collected on them each night to support some meager grasses, which Kessira tore at eagerly. Tarma made a sketchy meal of dried meat and fruit, still wrapped in that strange calmness, then rolled herself into her blanket intending to rise with the first light of morning.

  She was awakened before midnight.

  A touch on her shoulder sent her scrambling out of her blanket, dagger in hand. Before her stood a figure, seemingly a man of the Shin'a'in, clothed as one Swordsworn. Unlike her, his face was veiled.

  "Arm yourself, Sworn One," he said, his voice having an odd quality of distance to it, as though he were speaking from the bottom of a well.

  She did not pause to question or argue. It was well that she did not, for as soon as she had donned her arms and light chain shirt, he attacked her.

  The fight was not a long one; he had the advantage of surprise, and he was a much better fighter than she. Tarma could see the killing blow coming, but was unable to do anything to prevent it from falling. She cried out in agony as the stranger's sword all but cut her in half.

  She woke staring up at the stars. The stranger interposed himself between her eyes and the sky. "You are better than I thought --" he said, with grim humor, "but you are still as clumsy as a horse in a pottery shed. Get up and try again."

  He killed her three more times -- with the same nonfatal result. After the third, she woke to find the sun rising, herself curled in her blanket and feeling completely rested. For one moment, she wondered if the strange combat of the night had all been a nightmare -- but then she saw her arms and armor stacked neatly to hand. As if to mock her doubts, they were laid in a different pattern than she had left them.

  Once again she rode as in a dream. Something controlled her actions as deftly as she managed Kessira, keeping the raw edges of her mind carefully swathed and anesthetized. When she lost the trail, her controller found it again, making her body pause long enough for her to identify how it had been done.

  She camped, and again she was awakened before midnight.

  Pain is a rapid teacher; she was able to prolong the bouts this night enough that he only killed her twice.

  It was a strange existence, tracking by day, training by night. When her track ended at a village, she found herself questioning the inhabitants shrewdly. When her provisions ran out, she discovered coin in the pouch that had held dried fruit -- not a great deal, but enough to pay for more of the same. When, in other towns and villages, her questions were met with evasions, her hand stole of itself to that same pouch, to find therein more coin, enough to loosen the tongues of those she faced. She learned that all her physical needs were cared for -- always when she needed something, she either woke with it to hand, or discovered more of the magical coins appearing to pay for it, and always just enough, and no more. Her nights seemed clearer and less dreamlike than her days, perhaps because the controls over her were thinner then, and the skill she fought with was all her own. Finally one night she "killed" her instructor.

  He collapsed exactly as she would have expected a man run through the heart to collapse. He lay unmoving --

  "A good attack, but your guard was sloppy," said a familiar voice behind her. She whirled, her sword ready.

  He stood before her, his own sword sheathed. She risked a glance to her rear; the body was gone.

  "Truce, you have earned a respite and a reward," he said. "Ask me what you will, I am sure you have many questions. I know I did."

  "Who are you?" she cried eagerly. "What are you?"

  "I cannot give you my name, Sworn One. I am only one of many servants of the Warrior; I am the first of your teachers -- and I am what you will become if you should die while still under Oath. Does that disturb you? The Warrior will release you at any time you wish to be freed. She does not want the unwilling. Of course, if you are freed, you must relinquish the blood-feud."

  Tarma shook her head.

  "Then ready yourself, Sworn One, and look to that sloppy guard."

  There came a time when their combats always ended in draws or with his "death." When that had happened three nights running, she woke the fourth night to face a new opponent -- a woman, and armed with daggers.

  Meanwhile she tracked her quarry, by rumor, by the depredations left in their wake, by report from those who had profited or suffered in their passing. It seemed that what she tracked was a roving band of freebooters, and her Clan was not the only group to have been made victims. They chose their quarry carefully, never picking anyone the authorities might feel urged to avenge, nor anyone with friends in power. As a result, they managed to operate almost completely unmolested.

  When she had mastered the use of sword, dagger, bow, and staff, her trainers appeared severally rather than singly; she learned the arts of the single combatant against many.

  Every time she gained a victory, they instructed her further in what her Oath meant.

  One of those things was that her body no longer felt the least stirrings of sexual desire. The Sword-sworn were as devoid of concupiscence as their weapons.

  "The gain outweighs the loss," the first of them told her. After being taught the disciplines and rewards of the meditative trance they called "The Moonpaths," she agreed. After that, she spent at least part of every night walking those paths, surrounded by a curious kind of ecstasy, renewing her strength and her bond with her Goddess.

  Inexorably, she began to catch up with her quarry. When she had begun this quest, she was months behind them; now she was only days. The closer she drew, the more intensely did her spirit-trainers drill her.

  Then one night, they did not come. She woke on her own and waited, waited until well past midnight, waited until she was certain they were not coming at all. She dozed off for a moment, when she felt a presence. She rose with one swift motion, pulling her sword from the scabbard on her back.

  The first of her trainers held out empty hands. "It has been a year, Sworn One. Are you ready? Your foes lair in the town not two hours' ride from here, and the town is truly their lair, for they have made it their own."

  So near as that? His words came as a shock, ripping the protective magics that veiled her mind and heart, sending her to her knees with the shrilling pain and raging anger she had felt before the winds of the Goddess answered her prayers. No longer was she protected against her own emotions, and the wounds were as raw as they had ever been.

  He regarded her thoughtfully, his eyes pitying above the veil. "No, you are not ready. Your hate will undo you, your hurt will disarm you. But you have little choice, Sworn One. This task is one you bound yourself to, you cannot free yourself of it. Will you heed advice, or will you throw yourself uselessly into the arms of Death?"

  "What advice?" she asked dully.

  "When you are offered aid unlocked for, do not cast it aside," he said and vanished.

  She could not sleep; she set out at first light for the town , and then hovered about outside the walls until just before the gates were closed for the night. She soothed the ruffled feathers of the guard with a coin, offered as "payment" for directions to the inn.

  The inn was noisy, hot, and crowded. She wrinkled her nose at the unaccustomed stench of old cooking smells, spilled wine, and unwashed bodies. Another small coin bought her a jug of sour wine and a seat in a dark corner, from which she could hear nearly everything said in the room. It did not take long to determine from chance-dropped comments that the brigand-troop made their headquarters in the long-abandoned mansion of a merchant who had lost everything he had to their depredations, including his life. Their presence was very unwelcome. They seemed to regard the townsfolk as their lawful prey; having been f
reed from their attentions for the past year, their "chattels" were not pleased with their return.

  Tarma burned with scorn for these soft townsmen. Surely there were enough able-bodied adults in the place to outnumber the bandit crew several times over. If by nothing else, by sheer numbers the townsmen could probably defeat them, if they'd try.

  She turned her mind toward her own quest, trying to develop a plan that would enable her to take as many of the enemy down into death with her as she could manage. She was under no illusion that she could survive this. The kind of frontal assault she planned would leave her no path of escape.

  A shadow came between Tarma and the fire.

  She looked up, startled that the other had managed to come so close without her being aware of it. The silhouette was that of a woman, wearing the calf-length, cowled brown robe of a wandering sorceress. There was one alarming anomaly about this woman -- unlike any other magic-worker Tarma had ever seen, this one wore a sword belted at her waist.