Oath of Gold

by Elizabeth Moon

  Paks's mouth was dry as dust. She took a deliberate sip of the white wine, and said, "It's not for me to forgive, lady; you meant no offense." The wine seemed to go straight to her head; her vision blurred. As if she looked through smoke, she peered up the table and met Lady Arvys's eyes. They changed from green to flat black as she looked. Paks felt the jolt in her head; she looked toward Venner as if someone pulled her head on a string. He was watching her, lips folded under at the corners, like someone satisfied but wary. Her sense of wrong seemed to grab her whole body and shake it. Half-stupefied by the wine (how could one swallow be so strong?) she looked from one face to the other. Of course. Venner had been her escort. Even so, what was happening?

  She might have sat there longer, but Venner spoke. "Ah . . . do you find the wine too strong for you, Paks? Are you still feeling ill?"

  A flicker of anger touched her, and with it a warning. The anger, too, was wrong. It felt alien, as if it came from someone else. She reached deep inside for her own sense of self, and found not only that but a call for guidance. Her tongue felt clumsy, but she formed the words: "In the High Lord's name—"

  Venner's face contracted; black malice leaped from his eyes. At once the hall was plunged into darkness. Stinking lamp smoke flavored a cold wind that scoured the room. Without thought Paks asked light, and found herself lined with glowing brilliance. She leaped up, looking for Venner. She could hear the scrape of chairs on the floor, the exclamations of the others—and a curse from Venner's sister. The Duke gasped; she knew without looking that he'd been wounded somehow. At Venner's end of the table, nothing could be seen but a whirl of darkness.

  "You fool," said his voice out of that darkness. "You merely make yourself a target." Something struck at her, a force like a thrown javelin. She staggered a little, but the light repelled it. She looked at the captains: they sat sprawled in their chairs, eyes glittering in the spell-light, but unmoving. "They won't help you," Venner went on. "They can't. And you are unarmed, but I—" She saw the darkness move to the wall, saw it engulf the terrible notched blade she'd seen there. "While she takes care of the Duke, I will kill you with this—as I killed before—and again no one will know. When I let these captains free, it will seem that you went wild—as Stephi did before you—and killed the Duke, while I tried to save his life."

  Paks was already moving, clearing herself of the chair. She had picked up a bronze platter—the largest thing on the table—and looked now to the walls for a weapon of her own. She was nearly too late. Venner had taken more than the notched sword: out of the darkness the battleaxe whirled at her. She flung out the platter, and it folded around the axe, slowing it and spoiling the blow. She had her dagger in hand now—far too short against an unseen opponent. The ragged edge of Venner's sword caught the dagger and nearly took it out of her hand. She jumped back.

  "You can't escape," his voice said, out of the blackness. "You—"

  Paks saw a glow on one wall and leaped for it. The notched blade clattered against the wall just behind her. But she had a sword in her hand—the sword with the green stone. Its blade glowed blue as she took it. Before she could turn, Venner struck again. She felt the black sword open a gash along her side; she tucked and rolled away, and came up ready to fight.

  Now she could sense, within the darkness, a core—more like the skeleton of a man than a man entire. One thin arm held the dark blade; the other held a dagger almost half as long. Paks thrust at the dark blade. Her own sword rang along it. Venner countered, stabbing with the dagger. Paks swept it aside, and attacked vigorously, beating him back and back.

  "You can't see me!" screamed Venner. "You can't—"

  But she could. Dark within dark, his shape grew clearer as they fought. Suddenly the dark was gone, as if Venner had dropped a black cloak. Paks stared, uncertain. He had disappeared; she could see the wall and floor where he should be. A blade came out of nowhere to strike her arm; she felt rather than saw the flicker of movement and managed to counter it. Now she sensed him as a troubling thickness in the air, a nearly transparent glimmer, barely visible in her own brilliant spell-light. She kept after him. The sword she held seemed to move almost of its own will, weightless and perfectly balanced in her hand. Venner retreated again, toward the head of the table. Paks followed. She had not expected the Duke's steward to be much of a swordsman—she hadn't thought of it at all—but he was skillful.

  Venner swept the table suddenly with his left arm, sent food and dishes flying between them. Paks slipped on a greasy hunk of mutton. Venner stabbed wildly with the sword. She rolled aside and let the thrust pass. Her sword caught him in the ribs; she heard a rasping gurgle, and he was visible, hand held against his side. Paks lunged at him. He dropped the sword, and dodged. While she was still off balance, he grappled with her, trying to rake her with the dagger. She could see the brown stain along it, surely poison.

  "You stinking kellich!" he snarled. "You Girdish slut! You'll die the same as she did, and Achrya will revel in this hall—"

  Paks could not use her sword in close; she dropped it and dug her strong fingers into his wrist. Red froth bubbled from his mouth as they wrestled on the floor. He was surprisingly strong.

  "Arvys!" he cried suddenly. "Arvys! Help me!" Paks heard noise around the room—chairs and boots scraping on the stone, voices—but she was too busy to listen. Venner had both hands on the dagger hilt, and she had to use both hands to hold it off. "Achrya," he said viciously, glaring at Paks. "You found before you could not stand against her. She will bind you in burning webs forever, you Gird's dog—"

  "By the High Lord," said Paks suddenly, "neither you nor Achrya will prosper here, Venner. His is the power, and Gird gave the blessing—"

  "You will die," repeated Venner. "All in this hall—and she will reward me, as she did before—" But he was weakening, and Paks managed to force him back. She could feel the sinews in his wrist slackening. She closed her own fingers tighter, and all at once his hand sagged open, releasing the dagger. It clattered on the floor. Paks kicked it far aside, and shifted one hand from Venner's left wrist to her own dagger, dropped nearby.

  "Now," she said, "we will hear more of this—"

  "I spit at you, Gird's dog. I laugh—" But he was choking, and he sagged heavily under her hands.

  "Paks! Hold!" Arcolin's voice. She held her dagger to Venner's throat, and waited. "What's—"

  "The Duke!" Master Simmitt, this time. "By the gods—"

  "He's dead—or dying—" Arvys's voice was savage. "And Achrya will have his soul—and yours—" she broke off in a scream.

  "Not yet," said Cracolnya. "Don't you know you can't knife a man in mail?" Paks's attention was diverted for an instant. Venner surged up against her hold; without thinking she slammed her hand down. Her dagger ripped his throat, and he died.

  She scrambled up to see what else had happened. Shadows fled before her spell-light. Simmitt leaned over the Duke, who was slumped in his seat. On the other side, Cracolnya held Arvys, her arms twisted behind her.

  "Light," snapped the surgeon. "Come here, Paks, if that's you making a light." She came around the table. She saw Dorrin working with flint and steel to relight the lamps. The Duke's face was gray; a slow pulse beat in his neck. He seemed to gasp for breath. Visanior too had reached the Duke's seat; the two surgeons maneuvered him from the chair to the tabletop. Simmitt slit his tunic and spread it. There on the left side was a narrow wound—Paks glanced at Arvys and saw the sheath of a small dagger dangling from her wrist.

  "That's close—" commented Visanior.

  "Poison, or in the heart?" Simmitt bent close to listen to the Duke's heart.

  "Poison, and close to it." Visanior turned away. "I've a few drops of potion in my quarters—"

  "Too late," hissed Arvys. "You won't save him—or yourselves. Nothing you've got will touch that—and your precious Duke, as you call him, will never take his rightful seat—" Cracolnya tightened his hold, and she gasped.

  Paks reached out
to touch the Duke's shoulder.

  "Get back, Paks—you're no surgeon, and I don't have time—"

  "Let her." Dorrin brought a lamp near, its light golden next to the white spell-light. "She alone saw Venner's nature; she alone could free herself to fight him. Perhaps—" She looked at Paks, her own hand going to the tiny Falkian symbol at her throat. "Perhaps you learned more than we knew, is that so?"

  Paks felt a pressure in her head, and could not answer. She only knew she had to touch the Duke—had to call what powers she could name. As she laid her hand on his shoulder, the spell-light dimmed except along that arm. She closed her eyes against it: she had no time to study what was happening.

  Touching the Duke was like laying her hand on the skin of running water: she felt a faint resistance, a surface tension, and a strong sense of moving power underneath. Without realizing it, she brought her other hand to his other shoulder. She felt within herself the same moving power that she sensed in the Duke, although in her it ran swifter, lighter. She tried to bring the two powers together.

  At first it seemed that the surface between them thickened, resisting. The Duke's rhythm slowed and cooled, as if some moving liquid stiffened into stone. But her plea to the High Lord and Gird brought a vision of movement, of sinking through the surface as a hand sinks in water. She let herself drift deeper. In that thicker substance, that cooling stream, she loosed her own fiery essence, the flames that had danced deep within since the night of the Kuakgan's magic fire.

  Slowly the Duke responded. Whatever the flow might be, it flowed more swiftly—it moved lightly on its way, with returning joy. Paks followed the flow, to find a source of stagnation—some evil essence. She felt herself touch it, and it dissolved, running away, overtaken by her flame, and then gone. With that, the Duke's body swung back to its own balance. She felt the restored health, and the rejection, at the same instant, and pulled herself back into her own body just ahead of it.

  His eyes were open. Blank for a moment, then fully aware: startled and intent all at once. Paks stepped back, shaken by her gift. Simmitt stared at her. They all did. The room's light was golden from lamps; her spell-light had disappeared.

  "What—?" The Duke had his head up now, raking the room with his glance. His hand lay over his ribs, where the dagger had gone in.

  "My lord, it was Venner—"

  "This so-called lady—"

  "Paks was the only one who could—"

  "Quiet." Arcolin's voice cut through them, and brought order. "Cracolnya, Valichi—guard her: nothing else. My lord Duke, it seems your steward was a traitor of some sort. Paks has killed him. The rest of us were somehow spellbound, unable to move, though we heard enough. Kessim is dead. And that—" he paused and glared at Arvys.

  "She stabbed me," said the Duke calmly. "I remember that. Some kind of argument, and then darkness, and then I felt a blade in my side." He sat up on the edge of the table, and looked down at the blood that streaked his skin and clothes. "Heh. No mark now. Who had the healing potion so handy?" He looked at Visanior and Simmitt.

  "Not us, my lord. Paksenarrion."

  "You heal, as well as fight?" The Duke looked at Paks. She met his eyes.

  "With the High Lord's permission, my lord, I have been able to. Sometimes."

  He looked at Arvys, and his face hardened. "You," he said, and stopped. "You—will you say why? You were willing, you said, to share my name—why kill, then?"

  She said nothing until Cracolnya shifted behind her, then gasped. "You—petty, base-born lout! Duke, you call yourself—that's not the title you should bear. I was willing to share your name, as long as it served my Lady's purpose. But you'd have had a blade in your heart someday, as you still shall."

  He raised an eyebrow. "Your Lady? And who is that? Is the Queen that angry with me?"

  She laughed, a harsh, forced laughter. "Queen! What do you know of queens, who call a mortal human queen? When you see her webs around you, and feel her poison, who has enmeshed those far higher than humans, then you will know a queen. I speak of the webmistress Achrya, whose power no man can withstand."

  "And yet I live, and you are captive. Was Venneristimon also her agent?"

  "Why should I answer you?"

  "Because your mistress is far away, and I am here. You may wish an easy death, though you would deal a hard one."

  "Kill as you please," she answered. "Whatever you do, my Lady will avenge me, and him, and give you endless torment."

  "I doubt that." The Duke looked among the litter of things swept to the floor and picked up a small narrow-bladed dagger, hardly as long as his hand. "This is yours, is it not? Would you wish to taste your own brew?"

  "As you will." She seemed to droop in Cracolnya's arms; Paks and the others stared, surprised at her. Then Paks gasped as her face changed, shifting from the fair-skinned soft curves she had shown to something older and more perilous. Their cries warned Cracolnya, who gripped more tightly as she shriveled in his hold, her red-gold hair turning gray and her rounded limbs wiry and gnarled. She struggled; Valichi moved to help Cracolnya. Paks hunted on the floor for the sword she had dropped, and scooped it up. By the time the transformation was complete, and Cracolnya held a wizened muscular hag instead of an attractive young widow, she had the tip of that sword at the hag's throat.

  "Here's something you will like less well," said Paks. "An elf-blade."

  "You farm-bred brat!" Her voice, as a hag, chilled the blood. "You saved your precious Duke, eh? Did you? And you will take him to his appointed end, I daresay. Do you think he'll thank you for that? When he dies in the bed you make for him?" Her head turned, and more than one in the room flinched from her vicious eyes. "Tell her, Duke Phelan, how you come by your name. Tell her what happened to the last yellow-haired girl to hold that sword." Her voice shrilled higher. "Or shall I? Shall I tell her how the thriband knew where your wife and children would ride that day? And who suggested that trail, where the wildflowers bloomed? He is safe from your wrath, mighty Duke, but your children will never return." She laughed, a hideous laugh. "You, Duke Kieri Phelan—no, let us use it all—Kieri Artfiel Phelan—you harbored that woodworm and trusted it as your pet. Your wife it was who suggested he be assistant to the steward—and then—"

  Paks pushed the blade gently on the hag's skin. "Be still. You have nothing worth listening to."

  "Have I not? You are eager to kill, little peasant girl. Little runaway daughter of a sheepherder—how many times have you run away? Do you guess that I can tell them? The Duke doesn't know the worst, does he? The men in Seameadow? The time you ran from the sheepdog—not even a wolf—in Arnbow?" She stopped, and wheezed a moment. Then: "I know many things that you would be better knowing—and him, too—before he trusts you—" and she stopped and clamped her lips together.

  "Ward of Falk," murmured Dorrin, behind them. "Against an evil tongue."

  "In the High Lord's name," said Paks. The hag's eyes glittered but she said nothing.

  The Duke had come near, and stood looking from one to another. "When one stabs, and another heals," he said, "I know which to trust."

  "You! You are no true duke, and she will take you to your end, if you are unfortunate enough not to meet another."

  "I'll chance that. Paks, you had scruples before about such things: how should she be killed?"

  Paks did not look away from the point of her blade. "Quickly, my lord, as may be."

  "I'll save you the trouble," gasped the hag, and she lunged forward, managing to scrape her arm on the dagger the Duke still held. Almost at once she sagged.

  "I don't believe it," said Cracolnya. "Paks—or Val—finish her."

  Paks ran the sword quickly into her chest, feeling between the ribs for her heart. The limp form in Cracolnya's hold shuddered again, this time shifting from that of a hag to no human shape at all: a great belly swelling below, bursting out of the blue gown Arvys had worn, the upper body falling in to become a hard casing that extended suddenly into more legs. Cracolnya l
urched back, loosing his hold. The thing was free, hampered only slightly by the remnants of clothes. The head—no longer human at all—turned a row of emerald eyes on Paks; fangs dripped. Paks alone was able to move; she hardly saw what was happening before her arm went up and a long stroke took off that terrible head. The body twitched; gouts of sticky fluid spurted from the barely formed spinnerets on the belly, but did not reach anyone.

  "Gods above," muttered Cracolnya. "What is that? A spider demon?"

  "A high servant of Achrya," said Paks, watching the body on the floor. "They have that power, to change to her form at will."

  "Is that what you faced in Kolobia?" asked Arcolin. "Tir's gut, I couldn't—" He stopped, choking.

  The Duke himself was white. "Paksenarrion, again—you have gone far beyond our thanks—" He shook himself like a wet dog, and looked around the room. "Captains, we must know what all this means, but for now we must be sure where we are. If I understood any of that—if any of it can be believed—this stronghold is in danger, even with them dead. We'll double the watch. Arcolin, you have been here since we built the place: take some of the older veterans, who know it as well, and start looking for—" He stopped, and rubbed his hand through his hair. "I don't know what, but anything out of ordinary. Dorrin, are there any of the soldiers from Aarenis that still worry you?"

  Dorrin thought a moment. "Not in my cohort, my lord. That Kerin fellow, in Arcolin's—"

  "Arcolin, turn him out." Arcolin nodded. "Any more, Dorrin?"

  "No, my lord."

  "See to it, then. About the house servants—"

  "And why haven't they come in?" Valichi looked around, worried.

  "I don't know. Venner hired them; I don't know if they are innocent or his agents. Bring in a squad—no, two—and we'll go through this end as well. Paks—" he looked at her again, and his eyes dropped to the sword in her hand. "By the—you've got her sword!"

  "My lord?" Paks looked at the sword in her hand.

  "Tamarrion's—my—my wife's—"