Vows And Honor Book 1: The Oathbound

by The Oathbound [lit]

  He had called her "younger sister," though, which

  was an indication that he was pleased with her for

  some reason. "Mostly you tell me I don't think

  enough."

  Standing in a clear spot amid the bushes was a

  man, garbed in fighter's gear of deepest black, and

  veiled. The ice-blue eyes, the sable hair, and the

  cut of his close-wrapped clothing would have told

  most folk that he was, like Tarma, Shin'a'in. The

  color of the clothing would have told the more

  knowledgeable—since most Shin'a'in preferred a car-

  nival brightness in their garments—that he, too,

  was Sword Sworn; Sword Sworn by custom wore

  only stark black or dark brown. But only one very

  sharp-eyed would have noticed that while he stood

  amid the snow, he made no imprint upon it. It

  seemed that he weighed hardly more than a shadow.

  That was scarcely surprising since he had died

  long before Tarma was born.

  "Thinking to plan is one case; thinking to brood

  is another," he replied. "You accomplish nothing

  but to increase your sadness. You should be devis-

  ing a means of filling your bellies and those of your

  jel'suthro'edrin. You cannot reach the Plains if you

  do not eat."

  He had used the Shin'a'in term for riding beasts

  that meant "forever-younger-Clanschildren." Tarma

  was dead certain he had picked that term with

  utmost precision, to impress upon her that the wel-

  fare of Kessira and Kethry's mule Rodi were as

  important as her own—more so, since they could

  not fend for themselves in this inhospitable place.

  "With all respect, teacher, I am ... at a loss.

  Once I had a purpose. Now?" She shook her head.

  "Now I am certain of nothing. As you once told

  me—"

  "Li'sa'eer! Turn my own words against me, will

  you?" he chided gently. "And have you nothing?"

  "My she'enedra. But she is outClan, and strange

  to me, for all that the Goddess blessed our oath-

  binding with Her own fire. I know her but little.

  I—only—"

  "What, bright blade?"

  "I wish—I wish to go home—" The longing she

  felt rose in her throat and made it hard to speak.

  "And so? What is there to hinder you?"

  "There is," she replied, willing her eyes to stop

  stinging, "the matter of money. Ours is nearly gone.

  It is a long way to the Plains."

  "So? Are you not now of the mercenary calling?"

  "Well, unless there be some need for blades

  hereabouts—the which I have seen no evidence for,

  the only way to reprovision ourselves will be if my

  she'enedra can turn her skill in magic to an honor-

  able profit. For though I have masters of the best,"

  she bowed her head in the little nod of homage a

  Shin'a'in gave to a respected elder, "sent by the

  Star-Eyed herself, what measure of attainment I

  have acquired matters not if there is no market for

  it."

  "Hai'she'li! You should market that silver tongue,

  jel'enedra!" he laughed. "Well, and well. Three things

  I have come to tell you, which is why I arrive

  out-of-time and not at moonrise. First, that there

  will be storm tonight, and you should all shelter,

  mounts and riders together. Second, that because of

  the storm, we shall not teach you this night, though

  you may expect our coming from this day on, every

  night that you are not within walls."

  He turned as if to leave, and she called out, "And

  third?"

  "Third?" he replied, looking back at her over his

  shoulder. "Third—is that everyone has a past. Ere

  you brood over your own, consider another's."

  Before she had a chance to respond, he vanished,

  melting into the wind.

  Wrinkling her nose over that last, cryptic re-

  mark, she went to find her she'enedra and partner.

  Kethry was hovering over a tiny, nearly smoke-

  less fire, skinning a pair of rabbits. Tarma almost

  smiled at the frown of concentration she wore; she

  was going at the task as if she were being rated on

  the results! They were a study in contrasts, she

  and her outClan blood-sister. Kethry was sweet-

  faced and curvaceous, with masses of curling am-

  ber hair and startling green eyes; she would have

  looked far more at home in someone's court circle

  as a pampered palace mage than she did here, at

  their primitive hearth. Or even more to the point,

  she would not have looked out of place as someone's

  spoiled, indulged wife or concubine; she really

  looked nothing at all like any mage Tarma had ever

  seen. Tarma, on the other hand, with her hawklike

  face, forbidding ice-blue eyes and nearly sexless

  body, was hardly the sort of person one would ex-

  pect a mage or woman like Kethry to choose as a

  partner, much less as a friend. As a hireling,

  perhaps—in which case it should have been Tarma

  skinning the rabbits, for she looked to have been

  specifically designed to endure hardship.

  Oddly enough, it was Kethry who had taken to

  this trip as if she were the born nomad, and Tarma

  who was the one suffering the most from their

  circumstances, although that was mainly due to the

  unfamiliar weather.

  Well, if she had not foreseen that becoming

  Kal'enedral meant suddenly acquiring a bevy of

  long-dead instructors, this partnership had come as

  even more of a surprise. The more so as Tarma had

  really not expected to survive the initial confronta-

  tion with those who had destroyed her Clan.

  "Do not reject aid unlooked-for," her instructor

  had said the night before she set foot in the ban-

  dit's town. And unlooked-for aid had materialized,

  in the form of this unlikely sorceress. Kethry, too,

  had her interests in seeing the murderers brought

  low, so they had teamed together for the purpose of

  doing just that. Together they had accomplished

  what neither could have done alone—they had ut-

  terly destroyed the brigands to the last man.

  And so Tarma had lost her purpose. Now—now

  there was only the driving need to get back to the

  Plains; to return before the Tale'sedrin were deemed

  a dead Clan. Farther than that she could not, would

  not think or plan.

  Kethry must have sensed Tarma's brooding eyes

  on her, for she looked up and beckoned with her

  skinning knife.

  "Fairly good hunting," Tarma hunched as close

  the fire as she could, wishing they dared build

  something larger.

  "Yes and no. I had to use magic to attract them,

  poor things." Kethry shook her head regretfully as

  she bundled the offal in the skins and buried the

  remains in the snow to freeze hard. Once frozen,

  she'd dispose of them away from the camp, to avoid

  attracting scavengers. "I felt so guilty, but what

  else was I to do? We ate the last of the bread

  yesterday
, and I didn't want to chance on the hunt-

  ing luck of just one of us."

  "You do what you have to, Keth. Well, we're able

  to live off the land, but Kessira and Rodi can't,"

  Tarma replied. "Our grain is almost gone, and we've

  still a long way to go to get to the Plains. Keth, we

  need money."

  "I know."

  "And you're the one of us best suited to earning

  it. This land is too peaceful for the likes of me to

  find a job—except for something involving at least

  a one-year contract, and that's something we can't

  afford to take the time for. I need to get back to the

  Plains as soon as I can if I'm to raise Tale'sedrin's

  banner again."

  "I know that, too." Kethry's eyes had become

  shadowed, the lines around her mouth showed strain.

  "And I know that the only city close enough to

  serve us is Mornedealth."

  And there was no doubt in Tarma's mind that

  Kethry would rather have died than set foot in that

  city, though she hadn't the vaguest notion why.

  Well, this didn't look to be the proper moment to

  ask—

  "Storm coming; a bad one," she said, changing

  the subject. "I'll let the hooved ones forage for as

  long as I dare, but by sunset I'll have to bring them

  into camp. Our best bet is going to be to shelter all

  together because I don't think a fire is going to

  survive the blow."

  "I wish I knew where you get your information,"

  Kethry replied, frown smoothing into a wry half-

  smile. "You certainly have me beat at weather-

  witching."

  "Call it Shin'a'in intuition," Tarma shrugged,

  wishing she knew whether it was permitted to an

  outland she'enedra—who was a magician to boot—to

  know of the veiled ones. Would they object? Tarma

  had no notion, and wasn't prepared to risk it. "Think

  you can get our dinner cooked before the storm gets

  here?"

  "I may be able to do better than that, if I can

  remember the spells." The mage disjointed the rab-

  bits, and spitted the carcasses on twigs over the

  fire. She stripped off her leather gloves, flexed her

  bare fingers, then held her hands over the tiny fire

  and began whispering under her breath. Her eyes

  were half-slitted with concentration and there was

  a faint line between her eyebrows. As Tarma

  watched, fascinated, the fire and their dinner were

  enclosed in a transparent shell of glowing gold mist.

  "Very pretty; what's it good for?" Tarma asked

  when she took her hands away.

  "Well, for one thing, I've cut off the wind; for

  another, the shield is concentrating the heat and

  the meat will cook faster now."

  "And what's it costing you?" Tarma had been in

  Kethry's company long enough now to know that

  magic always had a price. And in Kethry's case,

  that price was usually taken out of the resources of

  the spell-caster.

  Kethry smiled at her accusing tone. "Nowhere

  near so much as you might think; this clearing has

  been used for overnighting a great deal, and a good

  many of those camping here have celebrated in one

  way or another. There's lots of residual energy here,

  energy only another mage could tap. Mages don't

  take the Trade Road often, they take the Courier's

  Road when they have to travel at all."

  "So?"

  "So there's more than enough energy here not

  only to cook dinner but to give us a little more

  protection from the weather than our bit of canvas."

  Tarma nodded, momentarily satisfied that her

  blood-sister wasn't exhausting herself just so they

  could eat a little sooner. "Well, while I was scroung-

  ing for the hooved ones, I found a bit for us, too—"

  She began pulling cattail roots, mallow-pith, a

  few nuts, and other edibles from the outer pockets

  of her coat. "Not a lot there, but enough to supple-

  ment dinner, and make a bit of breakfast besides."

  "Bless you! These bunnies were a bit young and

  small, and rather on the lean side—should this stuff

  be cooked?"

  "They're better raw, actually."

  "Good enough; want to help with the shelter,

  since we're expecting a blow?"

  "Only if you tell me what to do. I've got no

  notion of what these winter storms of yours are

  like."

  Kethry had already stretched their canvas tent

  across the top and open side of the enclosure of

  rocks and logs, stuffed brush and moss into the

  chinks on the inside, packed snow into the chinks

  from the outside, and layered the floor with pine

  boughs to keep their own bodies off the snow. Tarma

  helped her lash the canvas down tighter, then

  weighted all the loose edges with packed-down snow

  and what rocks they could find.

  As they worked, the promised storm began to

  give warning of its approach. The wind picked up

  noticeably, and the northern horizon began to darken.

  Tarma cast a wary eye at the darkening clouds. "I

  hope you're done cooking because it doesn't look

  like we have too much time left to get under cover."

  "I think it's cooked through."

  "And if not, it won't be the first time we've eaten

  raw meat on this trip. I'd better get the grazers."

  Tarma got the beasts one at a time; first the

  mule, then her mare. She backed them right inside

  the shelter, coaxing them to lie down inside, one on

  either side of it, with their heads to the door-flap

  just in case something should panic them. With the

  two humans in the space in the middle, they should

  all stay as close to warm as was possible. Once

  again she breathed a little prayer of thankfulness

  for the quality of mule she'd been able to find for

  Kethry; with a balky beast or anything other than

  another Shin'a'in-bred horse this arrangement would

  have been impossible.

  Kethry followed, grilled rabbit bundled into a

  piece of leather. The rich odor made Tarma's mouth

  water and reminded her that she hadn't eaten since

  this morning. While Kethry wormed her way in

  past her partner, Tarma lashed the door closed.

  "Hold this, and find a comfortable spot," the

  mage told her. While Tarma snuggled up against

  Kessira's shoulder, Kethry knelt in the space re-

  maining. She held her hands just at chin height,

  palms facing outward, her eyes completely closed

  and her face utterly vacant. By this Tarma knew

  she was attempting a much more difficult bit of

  magery than she had with their dinner.

  She began an odd, singsong chant, swaying a lit-

  tle in time to it. Tarma began to see a thin streak of

  weak yellow light, like a watered-down sunbeam,

  dancing before her. In fact, that was what she prob-

  ably would have taken it for—except that the sun

  was nearly down, not overhead.

  As Kethry chanted, the light-beam increased in

  streng
th and brightness. Then, at a sharp word

  from her, it split into six. The six beams remained

  where the one had been for a moment, perhaps a

  little longer. Kethry began chanting again, a differ-

  ent rhythm this time, and the six beams leapt to

  the walls of their shelter, taking up positions spaced

  equally apart.

  When they moved so suddenly, Tarma had nearly

  jumped out of her skin—especially since one of

  them had actually passed through her. But when

  she could feel no strangeness—and certainly no harm

  from the encounter—she relaxed again. The ani-

  mals appeared to be ignoring the things, whatever

  they were.

  Now little tendrils of light were spinning out

  from each of the beams, reaching out until they met

  in a kind of latticework. When this had spread to

  the canvas overhead, Tarma began to notice that

  the wind, which had been howling and tugging at

  the canvas, had been cut off, and that the shelter

  was noticeably warmer as a result.

  Kethry sagged then, and allowed herself to half-

  collapse against Rodi's bulk.

  "Took less than I might think, hmm?"

  "Any more comments like that and I'll make you

  stay outside."

  "First you'd have to fight Kessira. Have some

  dinner." Tarma passed her half the rabbit; it was

  still warm and amazingly juicy and both of them

  wolfed down their portions with good appetite, nib-

  bling the bones clean, then cracking them and suck-

  ing out the last bit of marrow. With the bones

  licked bare, they finished with the roots of Tarma's

  gleaning, though more than half of Tarma's share