Vows And Honor Book 1: The Oathbound

by The Oathbound [lit]

went surreptitiously to Kessira.

  When they had finished, the sun was gone and

  the storm building to full force. Tarma peeked out

  the curtain of tent-canvas at the front of the shel-

  ter; the fire was already smothered. Tarma noticed

  then that the light-web gave off a faint illumina-

  tion; not enough to read by, but enough to see by.

  "What is—all this?" she asked, waving a hand at

  the light-lattice. "Where'd it come from?"

  "It's a variation of the fire-shield I raised; it's

  magical energy manifesting itself in a physical fash-

  ion. Part of that energy came from me, part of it

  was here already and I just reshaped it. In essence,

  I told it I thought it was a wall, and it believed me.

  So now we have a 'wall' between us and the storm."

  "Uh, right. You told that glowing thing you

  thought it was a wall, and it believed you—"

  Kethry managed a tired giggle at her partner's

  expression. "That's why the most important tool a

  magician has is his will; it has to be strong in order

  to convince energy to be something else."

  "Is that how you sorcerers work?"

  "All sorcerers, or White Winds sorcerers?"

  "There's more than one kind?"

  "Where'd you think magicians came from any-

  way? Left in the reeds for their patrons to find?"

  Kethry giggled again.

  "No, but the only 'magicians' the Clans have are

  the shamans, and they don't do magic, much. Heal-

  ing, acting as advisors, keepers of outClan know-

  ledge—that's mostly what they do. When we need

  magic, we ask Her for it."

  "And She answers?" Kethry's eyes widened in

  fascination.

  "Unless She has a damn good reason not to. She's

  very close to us—closer than most deities are to

  their people, from what I've been able to judge. But

  that may be because we don't ask Her for much, or

  very often. There's a story—" Tarma half smiled.

  "—there was a hunter who'd been very lucky and

  had come to depend on that luck. When his luck

  left him, his skills had gotten very rusty, and he

  couldn't manage to make a kill. Finally he went to

  the shaman, and asked him if he thought She would

  listen to a plea for help. The shaman looked him up

  and down, and finally said, 'You're not dead yet.' "

  "Which means he hadn't been trying hard enough

  by himself?"

  "Exactly. She is the very last resort—and you

  had damned well better be careful what you ask

  Her for—She'll give it to you, but in Her own way,

  especially if you haven't been honest with Her or

  with yourself. So mostly we don't ask." Tarma

  warmed to Kethry's interest, and continued when

  that interest didn't flag. This was the first chance

  she'd had to explain her beliefs to Kethry; before

  this, Kethry had either been otherwise occupied or

  there hadn't been enough privacy. "The easiest of

  Her faces to deal with are the Maiden and the

  Mother, they're gentler, more forgiving; the hard-

  est are the Warrior and the Crone. Maiden and

  Mother don't take Oathbound to themselves, War-

  rior and Crone do. Crone's Oathbound—no, I won't

  tell you—you guess what they do."

  "Uh," Kethry's brow furrowed in thought, and

  she nibbled a hangnail. "Shamans?"

  "Right! And Healers and the two Elders in each

  Clan, who may or may not also be Healers or sha-

  mans. Those the Crone Binds are Bound, like the

  Kal'enedral, to the Clans as a whole, serving with

  their minds and talents instead of their hands.

  Now—you were saying about magicians?" She was

  as curious to know about Kethry's teaching as Keth

  seemed to be about her own.

  "There's more than one school; mine is White

  Winds. Um, let me go to the very basics. Magic has

  three sources. The first is power from within the

  sorcerer himself, and you have to have the Talent

  to use that source—and even then it isn't fully

  trained by anyone I know of. I've heard that up

  north a good ways they use pure mind-magic, rather

  than using the mind to find other sources of power."

  "That would be—Valdemar, no?"

  "Yes!" Kethry looked surprised at Tarma's knowl-

  edge. "Well, the second is power created by living

  things, rather like a fire creates light just by being

  a fire. You have to have the Talent to sense that

  power, but not to use it so long as you know it's

  there. Death releases a lot of that energy in one

  burst; that's why an unTalented sorcerer can turn

  to dark wizardry; he knows the power will be there

  when he kills something. The third source is from

  creatures that live in places that aren't this world,

  but touch this world—like pages in a book. Page one

  isn't page two, but they touch all along each other.

  Other Planes, we call them. There's one for each

  element, one for what we call 'demons,' and one

  for very powerful creatures that aren't quite gods,

  but do seem kindly inclined to humans. There may

  be more, but that's all anyone has ever discovered

  that I know of. The creatures of the four Elemental

  Planes can be bargained with—you can build up

  credit with them by doing them little favors, or you

  can promise them something they want from this

  Plane."

  "Was that what I saw fighting beside you when

  you took out that wizard back in Brether's Cross-

  roads ? Other-whatsit creatures ?"

  "Exactly—and that fight is why my magic is so

  limited at the moment—I used up all the credit I

  had built with them in return for that help. Fortu-

  nately I didn't have to go into debt to them, or we'd

  probably be off trying to find snow-roses for the

  Ethereal Varirs right now. There is another way of

  dealing with them. You can coerce them with magi-

  cal bindings or with your will. The creatures from

  the Abyssal Plane can be bought with pain-energy

  and death-energy—they feed off those—or coerced

  if your will is strong enough, although the only way

  you can 'bind' them magically is to hold them to

  this Plane; you can't force them to do anything if

  your own will isn't stronger than theirs. The crea-

  tures of the Sixth Plane—we call it the 'Empyreal

  Plane'—can't be coerced in any way, and they'll

  only respond to a call if they feel like it. Any

  magician can contact the Other-Planar creatures,

  it's just a matter of knowing the spells that open

  the boundaries between us and them. The thing

  that makes schools of magic different is their eth-

  ics, really. How they feel about the different kinds

  of power and using them."

  "So what does yours teach?" Tarma lay back

  with her arms stretched along Kessira's back and

  neck; she scratched gently behind the mare's ears

  while Kessira nodded her head in drowsy content-

  ment. This was the most she'd gotten out o
f Kethry

  in the past six months.

  "We don't coerce; not ever. We don't deal at all

  with the entities of the Abyssal Planes except to

  send them back—or destroy them if we can. We

  don't deliberately gain use of energy by killing or

  causing pain. We hold that our Talents have been

  given us for a purpose; that purpose is to use them

  for the greatest good. That's why we are wander-

  ers, why we don't take up positions under perma-

  nent patrons."

  "Why you're dirt-poor and why there're so few of

  you," Tarma interrupted genially.

  " 'Fraid so," Kethry smiled. "No worldly sense,

  that's us. But that's probably why Need picked

  me."

  "She'enedra, why don't you want to go to Morne-

  dealth?"

  "I---"

  "And why haven't you ever told me about your

  home and kin?" Tarma had been letting her spirit-

  teacher's last remark stew in the back of her mind,

  and when Kethry had begun giving her the "les-

  son" in the ways of magic had realized she knew

  next to nothing about her partner's antecedents.

  She'd been brooding on her own sad memories, but

  Kethry's avoidance of the subject of the past could

  only mean that hers were as sorry. And Tarma

  would be willing to bet the coin she didn't have

  that the mystery was tied into Mornedealth.

  Kethry's mouth had tightened with an emotion

  Tarma recognized only too well. Pain.

  "I'll have to know sooner or later, she'enedra. We

  have no choice but to pass through Mornedealth,

  and no choice but to try and raise money there, or

  we'll starve. And if it's something I can do any-

  thing about—well, I want doubly to know about it!

  You're my Clan, and nobody hurts my Clan and

  gets away with it!"

  "It—it isn't anything you can deal with—"

  "Let me be the judge of that, hmm?"

  Kethry sighed, and visibly took herself in hand.

  "I—I guess it's only fair. You know next to nothing

  about me, but accepted me anyway."

  "Not true," Tarma interrupted her, "She accepted

  you when you oathbound yourself to me as blood-

  sib. That's all I needed to know then. She wouldn't

  bind two who didn't belong together."

  "But circumstances change, I know, and it isn't

  fair for me to keep making a big secret out of where

  I come from. All right." Kethry nodded, as if mak-

  ing up her mind to grasp the thorns. "The reason I

  haven't told you anything is this; I'm a fugitive. I

  grew up in Mornedealth; I'm a member of one of

  the Fifty Noble Houses. My real name is Kethryveris

  of House Pheregrul."

  Tarma raised one eyebrow, but only said, "Do I

  bow, or can I get by with just kissing your hand?"

  Kethry almost smiled. "It's a pretty empty title

  —or it was when I ran away. The House estates

  had dwindled to nothing more than a decaying man-

  sion in the Old City by my father's time, and the

  House prerequisites to little more than an invita-

  tion to all Court functions—which we generally

  declined graciously—and permission to hunt the

  Royal Forests—which kept us fed most of the year.

  Father married mother for love, and it was a disas-

  ter. Her family disowned her, she became ill and

  wouldn't tell him. It was one of those long declin-

  ing things, she just faded bit by bit, so gradually

  that he, being absent-minded at best, really didn't

  notice. She died three years after I was born. That

  left just the three of us."

  "Three?"

  Kethry hadn't ever mentioned any sibs before.

  "Father, my brother Kavin—that's Kavinestral—

  and me. Kavin was eight years older than me, and

  from what everyone said, the very image of Father

  in his youth. Handsome—the word just isn't ade-

  quate to describe Kavin. He looks like a god."

  "And you worshiped him." Tarma had no trouble

  reading that between the lines.

  It wasn't just the dim light that was making

  Kethry look pale. "How could I not? Father died

  when I was ten, and Kavin was all I had left, and

  when he exerted himself he could charm the moss

  off the wall. We were fine until Father died; he'd

  had some income or other that kept the house going,

  well, that dried up when he was gone. That left

  Kavin and me with no income and nowhere to go

  but a falling-down monstrosity that we couldn't

  even sell, because it's against the law for the Fifty

  Families to sell the ancestral homes. We let the few

  servants we had go—all but one, my old nurse Tildy.

  She wouldn't leave me. So Tildy and I struggled to

  run the household and keep us all clothed and fed.

  Kavin hunted the Royal Forests when he got hun-

  gry enough, and spent the rest of his time being

  Kavin. Which, to me, meant being perfection."

  "Until you got fed up and ran away?" Tarma

  hazarded, when Kethry's silence had gone too long.

  She knew it it wasn't the right answer, but she

  hoped it would prod Kethry back into speaking.

  "Hardly." Kethry's eyes and mouth were bitter.

  "He had me neatly twined 'round his finger. No,

  things went on like that until I was twelve, and

  just barely pubescent. Two things happened then

  that I had no knowledge of. The first was that

  Kavin himself became fed up with life on the edge,

  and looked around for something to make him a lot

  of money quickly. The second was that on one of

  his dips in the stews with his friends, he acciden-

  tally encountered the richest banker in Mornedealth

  and found out exactly what his secret vice was.

  Kavin may have been lazy, but he wasn't stupid.

  He was fully able to put facts together. He also

  knew that Wethes Goldmarchant, like all the other

  New Money moguls, wanted the one thing that all

  his money couldn't buy him—he wanted inside the

  Fifty Families. He wanted those Court invitations

  we declined; wanted them so badly it made him

  ache. And he'd never get them—not unless he some-

  how saved the realm single-handedly, which wasn't

  bloody likely."

  Kethry's hands were clenched tightly in her lap,

  she stared at them as if they were the most fasci-

  nating things in the universe. "I knew nothing of

  all this, of course, mewed up in the house all day

  and daydreaming about finding a hidden cache of

  gold and gems and being able to pour them in Kavin's

  lap and make him smile at me. Then one day he did

  smile at me; he told me he had a surprise for me. I

  went with him, trusting as a lamb. Next thing I

  knew, he was handing me over to Wethes; the mar-

  riage ceremony had already taken place by proxy.

  You see, Wethes' secret vice was little girls—and

  with me, he got both his ambition and his lust

  satisfied. It was a bargain too good for either of

  them to resist—"


  Kethry's voice broke in something like a sob;

  Tarma leaned forward and put one hard, long hand

  on the pair clenched white-knuckled in her part-

  ner's lap.

  "So your brother sold you, hmm? Well, give him a

  little credit, she'enedra; he might have thought he

  was doing you a favor. The merchant would give

  you every luxury, after all; you'd be a valued and

  precious possession."

  "I'd like to believe that, but I can't. Kavin saw

  some of those little girls Wethes was in the habit of

  despoiling. He knew what he was selling me into,

  and he didn't care, he plainly did not care. The

  only difference between them and me was that the

  chains and manacles he used on me were solid gold,

  and I was raped on silk sheets instead of linen. And

  it was rape, nothing else! I wanted to die; I prayed

  I would die. I didn't understand anything of what

  had happened to me. I only knew that the brother I

  worshiped had betrayed me." Her voice wavered a

  moment, and faded against the howl of the storm-

  winds outside their shelter. Tarma had to strain to

  hear her.

  Then she seemed to recover, and her voice streng-

  thened again. "But although I had been betrayed, I

  hadn't been forgotten. My old nurse managed to

  sneak her way into the house on the strength of the

  fact that she was my nurse; nobody thought to deny

  her entry. When Wethes was finished with me, she

  waited until he had left and went inquiring for me.

  When she found me, she freed me and smuggled

  me out."

  Kethry finally brought her eyes up to meet her

  partner's; there was pain there, but also a hint of

  ironic humor. "You'd probably like her; she also

  stole every bit of gold and jewelry she found with