Kethry grumbled under her breath, but put more
speed into her preparations. They sallied forth into
the late afternoon, playing parts they had often
taken before, Kethry assuming the manners of the
rank she actually was entitled to, playing the minor
noblewoman on a journey to relatives with Tarma
as her bodyguard.
As was very often the case, the marketplace was
also the gathering-place for the offspring of what
passed for aristocracy in this borderland trade-town.
Within no great span of time Kethry had garnered
invitations to dine with half a dozen would-be gal-
lants. She chose the most dissipated of them, but
persuaded him to make a party of the occasion, and
invite his friends.
A bit miffed by the spoiling of his plans (which
had not included having any competition for Kethry's
assets), he agreed. As with the common folk, the
well-born had taken to closing themselves behind
sturdy doors at the setting of the sun, and with it
already low in the west, he hastened to send a
servant around to collect his chosen companions.
The young man's father was not at home, being
off on a trading expedition. This had figured very
largely in his plans, for he had purloined the key to
his father's plushly appointed gazebo for his enter-
tainment. The place was as well furnished as many
homes: full of soft divans and wide couches, and
boasting seven little alcoves off the main room, and
two further rooms for intimate entertainment be-
sides. Tarma's acting abilities were strained to the
uttermost by the evening's events; she was hard-
put to keep from laughing aloud at Kethry's perfor-
mance and the reactions of the young men to her.
To anyone who did not know her, Kethry embodied
the very epitome of light-minded, light-skirted, ca-
pricious demi-nobility. No one watching her would
have guessed she ever had a thought in her head
besides her own pleasuring.
To the extreme displeasure of those few female
companions that had been brought to the festivi-
ties, she monopolized all the male attention in the
room. It wasn't long before she had sorted out which
of them had actually been to one of the infamous
"Rites of Dark Desires" and which had only heard
rumors. Those who had not been bold enough to
attend discovered themselves subtly dismissed from
the inner circle, and soon repaired to the gardens
or semi-private alcoves to enjoy the attentions of
the females they had brought, but ignored. Kethry
lured the three favored swains into one of the pri-
vate rooms, motioning Tarma to remain on guard at
the door. She eventually emerged; hot-eyed, con-
temptuous, and disheveled. Snores echoed from the
room behind her.
"Let's get out of here before I lose my temper and
go back to wring their necks," she snarled, while
Tarma choked back a chuckle. "Puppies! They
should still be in diapers, every one of them! Not
anything resembling a real adult among them! I
swear to you—ah, never mind. I'd just like to see
them get some of the treatment they've earned.
Like a good spanking and a long stint in a hermitage—
preferably one in the middle of a desert, stocked
with nothing but hard bread, water, and boring
religious texts!"
No one followed them out into the night, which
was not overly surprising, given the fears of the
populace.
"I hope it was worth it," Tarma said, as casually
as she could.
"It was," Kethry replied, a little cooler. "They
were all very impressed with the whole ritual, and
remembered everything they saw in quite lurid de-
tail. It seems that it is the High Priest who is the
one truly in command; from the sound of it, my
guess was right about his plans. He conducts every
aspect of the ritual; he calls the 'god' up, and he
sends him back again. The god selects those of the
females brought to him that he wants, the male
followers get what's left, or share the few female
followers he has. It's a rather unpleasant combina-
tion of human sacrifice and orgy. The High Priest
must be the magician that summoned the demon in
the first place. He's almost certainly having the
demon transform himself, since the god is almost
unbearably attractive, and the females he selects go
to him willingly—at least at first. After his initial
attentions, they're no longer in any condition to
object to much of anything. Those three back there
were positively obscene. They gloated over all the
details of what Thalhkarsh does to his 'brides,' all
the while doing their best to get me out of my
clothing so they could demonstrate the 'rites.' It
was all I could do to keep from throwing up on
them."
"You sleep-spelled them?"
"Better, I dream-spelled them, just like I did
with our 'customers' when I was posing as a whore
back when we first met. It's as easy as sleep-spelling
them, it's a very localized magic that isn't likely to
be detected, and it will keep our disguises intact.
They'll have the best time their imaginations can
possibly provide."
Kethry looked suddenly weary as they approached
their inn. "Bespeak me a bath, would you, dearheart?
I feel filthy—inside and out."
The next night was the night of moon-dark, the
night of one of the more important of the new
deity's rituals, and there was a pair of spies watch-
ing the streets that led to Temple Row with partic-
ular care. Those two pairs of eyes paid particularly
close attention to two women making their cautious
way through the darkened and deserted streets,
muffled head-to-toe in cloaks. Though faint squeals
and curses showed that neither of them could see
well enough to avoid the rocks and fetid heaps of
refuse that dotted the street, they seemed not to
wish any kind of light to brighten their path. Gold
peeked out from the hoods; the half-seen faces were
old before their time; their eyelids drooped with
boredom that had become habit, but their eyes re-
vealed a kind of fearful anticipation. Their destina-
tion was the Temple of Thalhkarsh. They were
intercepted a block away, by two swiftly moving
figures who neatly knocked them unconscious and
spirited them into a nearby alleyway.
Tarma spat out several unintelligible oaths. The
dim light of a heavily shuttered dark-lantern fell on
the two bodies at her feet. Beneath the cloaks, the
now unconscious women had worn little more than
heavy jewelry and a strategically placed veil or
two.
"We'll be searched, you can bet on it," she said in
disgust. "And where the bloody Hell are we going
to hide weapons in these outfits?"
>
In truth, there wasn't enough cover among the
chains and medallions to have concealed even the
smallest of her daggers.
"We can't," Kethry replied flatly. "So that leaves
—Warrl?"
Tarma pursed her lips. "Hmm. That's a thought.
Fur-face, could you carry two swords?"
The kyree cocked his head to one side, and exper-
imentally mouthed Need's sheath. Kethry took the
blade off and held it for him to take. He swung his
head from side to side a little, then dropped the
blade.
Not that way, Tarma heard in her mind. Too
clumsy. Won't balance right; couldn't run or jump—
might get stuck in a tight doorway. I want to be able to
bite—these teeth aren't just for decoration, you know!
And anyway, I can't carry two blades at the same time
in my mouth.
"Could we strap them to you, somehow?"
If you do, I can try how it feels.
Using their belts they managed to strap the
blades along his flanks, one on either side, to Ward's
satisfaction. He ran from one end of the alley to the
other, then shook himself carefully without dis-
lodging them or getting tangled by them.
It'll work, he said with satisfaction. Let's go.
They left their victims sleeping in a dead-end
alley; they'd be rather embarrassed when they woke
stark-naked in the morning. They'd come to no
harm; thanks to Thalhkarsh not even criminals
moved about the city by night, and the evening was
warm enough that they wouldn't suffer from expo-
sure. Whether or not they'd die of mortification
remained to be seen.
The partners left their own clothing hidden in
another alley farther on. Muffled in the stolen cloaks,
they approached the temple, Warrl a shadow flit-
ting behind them.
On seeing the entrance, Tarma gave a snort of
disgust. It was gaudy and decadent in the extreme,
with carvings and statuary depicting every vice
imaginable (and some she'd never dreamed existed)
encrusting the entire front face.
The single guard was a fat, homely man who
moved slowly and clumsily, as if he were under the
influence of a drug. He seemed little interested in
the men who passed him by, other than seeing that
they dropped their cloaks and giving them a cur-
sory search for weaponry. The women were an-
other case altogether. Between the preoccupation
he was likely to have once he'd seen Kethry and the
shadows cast by the carvings in the torchlight, Warrl
should have no difficulty in slipping past him.
Kethry touched the swords woman's arm slightly
as they stood in line and nodded toward the guard,
giving a little wiggle as she did so. Tarma knew
what that meant—Kethry was going to make cer-
tain the guard's attention stayed on her. The
Shin'a'in dropped her eyelids briefly in assent. When
their turn came and they dropped their cloaks,
Kethry posed and postured provocatively beneath
the guard's searching hands. He was so busy filling
his eyes—and greasy paws—with her that he paid
scant attention to either Tarma or the shadow that
slipped inside behind her.
When he'd delayed long enough that there was
considerable grumbling from those waiting their
turn behind the two women, he finally let Kethry
pass with real reluctance. They slipped inside the
smoke-wreathed portal and found themselves walk-
ing down a dark corridor, heavy with the scent of
cloying incense. When the corridor ended, they
passed through a curtain of some heavy material
that moved of itself, as if it sensed their presence,
and had a slippery feel and a sour smell to it. Once
past that last obstruction, they found themselves
blinking in the light of the temple proper.
The interior was almost austere compared with
the exterior. The walls were totally bare of orna-
mentation; the pillars upholding the roof were sim-
ple columns and not debauched caryatids. That
simplicity left the eye only one place to go—the
altar, a massive black slab with manacles at each
corner and what could only be blood-grooves carved
into its surface.
There was no sign of any bottle.
There were huge lanterns suspended from the
ceiling and torches in brackets on the pillars, but
the walls themselves were in shadow. There were
braziers sending plumes of incense into the air on
either side of the door. Beneath the too-sweet odor
Tarma recognized the taint of tran-dust. This was
where and how the guard had acquired his dreamy
clumsiness. She nudged Kethry and they moved
hastily along the wall to a spot where a draft car-
ried fresher air to them. Tran-dust was dangerous
at best, and could be fatal to them, for it slowed
reactions and blurred the senses. They would need
both at full sharpness tonight.
There was a drumming and an odd, wild music
that was almost more felt than heard. From a door-
way behind the altar emerged the High Priest, at
this distance, little more than a vague shape in
elaborate robes of crimson and gold. Behind him
came an acolyte, carrying an object that made
Kethry's eyes widen with satisfaction; it was a
bottle, red, that glowed dimly from within. The
acolyte fitted this into a niche in the foot of the
altar near the edge; the place all the blood-grooves
drained into.
They worked their way closer, moving carefully
along the wall. When they were close enough to
make out the High Priest's features, Kethry became
aware of his intensely sexual attraction. As if to
underscore this, she saw eager devotion written
plainly on the face of a woman standing near to the
altar-place. She tightened her lips; evidently this
was one aspect of domination that both high priest
and demon-deity shared. She warded her own mind
against beglamorment. Tarma she knew she need
not protect; by her very nature as Sword Sworn
she would be immune to this kind of deception.
A gong began sounding; slowly, insistently. The
music increased in tempo; built to a crescendo—a
blood-red brightness behind the altar intensified,
echoing the rising music. At the climax of both,
when the altar was almost too bright to look at,
something appeared, pulling all the light and sound
into itself.
He was truly beautiful; poisonously beautiful.
Compared to him, the priest's attraction was insig-
nificant. The line of women being brought in by
two more acolytes ceased their fearful trembling,
sighed, and yearned toward him.
He beckoned to one, who literally ran to him,
eagerly.
Tarma turned her eyes resolutely away from the
spectacle being presented at the altar-place. There
was nothing either of the
m could do to help the
intended sacrifice; she was thanking her Goddess
that Need was not at Kethry's hand just now. The
sorceress had been known once or twice to become
a berserker under the blade's influence, and she
was not altogether sure how much the sword was
capable of in the way of thought. It wasn't mindless
—but in a situation like this it was moot whether or
not it would prefer the long term goal of destroying
the demon as opposed to the short term goal of
ending the sacrifice's torment.
At least the rest of the devotees were so preoccu-
pied with the victim and her suffering that they
scarcely noticed the two women slowly making their
way closer to the altar. Tarma looked closely into
one face, and quickly looked away, nauseated. Those
glazed eyes—swollen lips—the panting—it would
have been obvious even to a child that the man was
erotically enraptured by what he was watching.
Tarma caught Kethry's eyes a moment; the other
nodded, lips tightly compressed. The Shin'a'in
swordswoman was past hoping to end this quietly.
She had begun to devoutly wish for a chance to
cleave a few skulls around here, and she had a
shrewd suspicion that Kethry felt the same.
The young High Priest looked up from his work,
and saw the anomalous—two women, dressed as de-
votees, but paying no attention to the rites, and seem-
ingly immune to the magical charisma of Thalhkarsh.
They had worked their way nearly to the altar itself.
He looked sharply at them—and noted the fight-
er's muscles and the faint aura of the god-touched
about the thin one, then the unmistakable presence
of a warding spell on the other.
His mind flared with sudden alarm.
He stepped forward once—
He was given no time to act on his suspicions.
Vows And Honor Book 1: The Oathbound Page 22
