asked, a horrible thought occurring to her. "I mean,
if he's really a woman now . .."
"Bright Lady, what an awful paradox we'd have!"
Kethry laughed, easing Tarma's mind considerably.
"We punish him for what he's done to women by
turning him into a woman—but as a woman, we'd
now be honor-bound to protect him! No, don't worry.
Under the illusion—and it's a very complete illu-
sion, by the way, it extends to all senses—he's still
quite male."
She gave the horse's rump a whack, breaking the
light enchantment that had held it quiet, and it
bucked a little, scrabbling off into the barren hills.
"The last of the band went that way," she said,
pointing after the beast, "And the horse he's on
will follow their scent back to where they've made
their camp. Of course, none of his former followers
will have any notion that he's anything other than
what he appears to be."
A wicked smile crept across Tarma's face. It
matched the one already curving Kethry's lips.
"I wish I could be there when he arrives," Tarma
said with a note of viciousness in her harsh voice.
"It's bound to be interesting."
"He'll certainly get exactly what he deserves."
Kethry watched the horse vanish over the crest of
the hill. "I wonder how he'll like being on the
receiving end?"
"I know somebody who will like this—and I can't
wait to see his face when you tell him."
"Grumio?"
"Mm-hmm."
"You know," Kethry replied thoughtfully, "this
was almost worth doing for free."
"She'enedra!" Tarma exclaimed in mock horror.
"Your misplaced honor will have us starving yet!
We're supposed to be mercenaries!"
"I said almost." Kethry joined in her partner's
gravelly laughter. "Come on. We've got pay to col-
lect. You know—this just might end up as some
bard's song."
"It might at that," Tarma chuckled "And what
will you bet me that he gets the tale all wrong?"
"Not only that—but given bards, I can almost
guarantee that it will only get worse with age."
Nine
The aged, half-blind mage blinked confused,
rheumy eyes at his visitor. The man—or was it
woman?—looked as awful as the mage felt. Blood-
shot and dark-circled eyes glared at him from un-
der the concealing shelter of a moth-eaten hood and
several scarves. A straggle of hair that looked first
to be dirty mouse-brown, then silver-blond, then
brown again, strayed into those staring eyes. Nor
did the eyes stay the same from one moment to the
next; they turned blue, then hazel, then back to
amethyst-blue. Try as he would, the mage could
not make his own eyes focus properly, and light
from a lanthorn held high in one of the visitor's
hands was doing nothing to alleviate his befuddle-
ment. The mage had never seen a human that pre-
sented such a contradictory appearance. She (he?)
was a shapeless bundle of filthy, lice-ridden rags;
what flesh there was to be seen displayed the yellow-
green of healing bruises. Yet he had clearly seen
gold pass to the hands of his landlord when that
particular piece of human offal had unlocked the
mage's door. Gold didn't come often to this part of
town—and it came far less often borne by a hand
clothed in rags.
He (she?) had forced his (her?) way into the
verminous garret hole that was all the mage could
call home now without so much as a by-your-leave,
shouldering the landlord aside and closing the door
firmly afterward. So this stranger was far more
interested in privacy than in having the landlord
there as a possible backup in case the senile wizard
proved recalcitrant. That was quite enough to be-
wilder the mage, but the way his visitor kept shift-
ing from male to female and back again was bidding
fair to dizzy what few wits still remained to him
and was nearly leaving him too muddled to speak.
Besides that, the shapeshifting was giving him
one gods-awful headache.
"Go 'way—" he groaned feelingly, shadowing his
eyes both from the unsettling sight and from the
too-bright glare of the lanthorn his visitor still held
aloft. "—leave an old man alone! I haven't got a
thing left to steal—"
He was all too aware of his pitiful state; his robe
stained and frayed, his long gray beard snarled and
unkempt, his eyes so bloodshot and yellowed that
no one could tell their color anymore. He was housed
in an equally pitiful manner; this garret room had
been rejected by everyone, no matter how poor,
except himself; it was scarcely better than sleeping
in the street. It leaked when it rained, turned into
an oven in summer and a meat-locker in winter,
and the wind whistled through cracks in the walls
big enough to stick a finger in. His only furnishings
were a pile of rags that served as a bed, and a
rickety stool. Beneath him he could feel the ram-
shackle building swaying in the wind, and the move-
ment was contributing to his headache. The boards
of the walls creaked and complained, each in a
different key. He knew he should have been used to
it by now, but he wasn't; the crying wood rasped
his nerves raw and added mightily to his disorien-
tation. The multiple drafts made the lanthorn flame
flicker, even inside its glass chimney. The resulting
dancing shadows didn't help his befuddlement.
"I'm not here to steal, old fraud."
Even the voice of the visitor was a confusing
amalgam of male and female.
"I've brought you something."
The other hand emerged from the rags, bearing
an unmistakable emerald-green bottle. The hand
jiggled the bottle a little, and the contents sloshed
enticingly. The rags slipped, and a trifle more of
his visitor's face was revealed.
But the mage was only interested now in the
bottle. Lethe! He forgot his perplexity, his befogged
mind, and his headache as he hunched forward on
his pallet of decaying rags, reaching eagerly for the
bottle of drug-wine that had been his downfall.
Every cell ached for the blessed/damned touch of
it—
"Oh, no." The visitor backed out of reach, and
the mage felt the shame of weak tears spilling down
his cheeks. "First you give me what I want, then I
give you this."
The mage sagged back into bis pile of rags. "I
have nothing."
"It's not what you have, old fraud, it's what you
were."
"What... I.. .was...."
"You were a mage, and a good one—or so they
claim. That was before you let this stuff rob you of
your wits until they cast you out of the Guild to
rot. But there damn well ought to be enough left of
you for my purpos
es."
By steadfastly looking, not at the visitor, but at
the bottle, the mage was managing to collect his
scattering thoughts. "What purpose?"
The visitor all but screamed bis answer. "To take
off this curse, old fool! Are your wits so far gone you
can't even see what's in front of you?"
A curse—of course! No wonder his visitor kept
shifting and changing! It wasn't the person that
was shifting, but his own sight, switching errati-
cally between normal vision and mage-sight. Nor-
mal vision showed him the woman; when the rags
slipped a little more, she seemed to be a battered,
but still lovely little toy of a creature—amethyst-
eyed and platinum-haired—
Mage-sight showed him an equally abused but far
from lovely man; sallow and thin, battered, but by
no means beaten—a man wearing the kind of smol-
dering scowl that showed he was holding in rage by
the thinnest of bonds.
So the "curse" could only be illusion, but a very
powerful and carefully cast illusion. There was some-
thing magic-smelling about the man-woman, too;
the illusion was linked to and being fueled by that
magic. The mage furrowed his brow, then tested
the weave of the magic that formed the illusion. It
was a more than competent piece of work; and it
was complete to all senses. It was far superior to
anything the mage had produced even in his best
days. In his present condition—to duplicate it so
that he could lay new illusion over old would be
impossible; to turn it or transfer it beyond even his
former level of skill. He never even considered trying
to take it off. To break it was beyond the best mage
in Oberdorn, much less the broken-down wreck he
had become.
Eyeing the bottle with passionate longing and
despair, he said as much.
To his surprise the man accepted the bad news
with a nod. "That's what they told me," he said.
"But they told me something else. What a human
mage couldn't break, a demon might."
"A ... demon?" The mage licked his lips; the
bottle of Lethe was again within his grasp. "I used
to be able to summon demons. I still could, I think.
But it wouldn't be easy." That was untrue; the
summoning of demons had been one of his lesser
skills. It was still easily within his capabilities. But
it required specialized tools and ingredients he no
longer had the means to procure. And it was pro-
scribed by the Guild....
He'd tried to raise a minor impling to steal him
Lethe-wine when his money had run out; that was
when the Guild had discovered what he'd fallen
prey to. That was the main reason they'd cast him
out, destroying his tools and books; a mage brought
so low as to use his skills for personal theft was no
longer trustworthy. Especially not one that could
summon demons. Demons were clever and had the
minds of sharp lawyers when it came to wriggling
out of the bonds that had been set on them; that
was why raising them was proscribed for any single
mage of the Guild, and doubly proscribed for one
who might have doubts as to his own mental com-
petence at the time of the conjuration.
Of course, he was no longer bound by Guild laws
since he was outcaste. And if this stranger could
provide the wherewithal, the tools and the sup-
plies, it could be easily done.
"Just tell me what you need, old man—I'll get it
for you." The haggard, grimy face was avid, eager.
"You bring me a demon to break this curse, and the
bottle's yours."
Two days later, they stood in the cellar of the
old, rotten mansion whose garret the mage called
home. The cellar was in no better repair than the
rest of the house; it was moldy and stank, and
water-marks on the walls showed why no one cared
to live there. Not only did the place flood every
time it rained, but moisture was constantly seeping
through the walls, and water trickled down from
the roof-cisterns to drip from the beams overhead.
Bright sparks of light glinted just beyond the circle
of illumination cast by the lanthorn, the gleaming
eyes of starveling rats and mice, perched curiously
on the decaying shelves that clung to the walls.
The scratching of their claws seemed to echo the
scratching of the mage's chalks on the cracked slate
floor.
The man-woman sat impatiently on the remains
of a cask off to one side, careful not to disturb the
work at hand. It had already cost him dearly—in
gold and blood. Some of the things the mage had
demanded had been bought, but most had been
stolen. The former owners were often no longer in
a condition to object to the disposition of their
property.
From time to time the mage would glance search-
ingly up at him, make a tiny motion with his hand,
frown with concentration, then return to his drawing.
After the fourth time this had happened, the
stranger wet his lips with a nervous tongue, and
asked, "Why do you keep doing that? Looking at
me, I mean."
The mage blinked and stood up slowly, his back
aching from the strain of staying bent over for so
long. His red-rimmed, teary eyes focused to one
side of the man, for he still found it difficult to look
directly at him.
"It's the spell that's on you," he replied after a
moment to collect his thoughts. "I don't know of a
demon strong enough to break a spell that well
made."
The man jumped to his feet, reaching for a sword
he had left back in the mage's room because the old
man had warned him against bearing cold steel into
a demon's presence. "You old bastard!" he snarled.
"You told me—"
"I told you I could call one—and I can. I just
don't know one. Your best chance is if I can call a
demon with a specific grudge against the maker of
the spell—"
"What if there isn't one?"
"There will be," the mage shrugged. "Anyone
who goes about laying curses like yours and leaving
justice-glyphs behind to seal them is bound to have
angered either a demon or someone who commands
one. At any rate, since you want to know, I've been
testing the edges of your curse to make the mage-
rune appear. I'm working that into the summoning.
Since I don't know which demon to call, the sum-
moning' will take longer than usual to bear fruit,
but the results will be the same. The demon will
appear, one with a reason to help you, and you'll
bargain with it for the breaking of your curse."
"Me?" The stranger was briefly taken aback. "Why
me? Why not you?"
"Because it isn't my curse. I don't give a damn
whether it's broken or not. I told you I'd summon a
demon—I didn't say I'
d bind him. That takes more
skill—and certainly more will—than I possess any-
more. My bargain with you was simple—one de-
mon, one bottle of Lethe. Once it's here, you can do
your own haggling."
The man smiled; it was far more of a grimace
than an expression of pleasure. "All right, old fraud.
Work your spell. I'd sooner trust my wits than yours
anyway."
The mage returned to his scribbling, filling the
entire area lit by the lanthorn suspended overhead
with odd little drawings and scrawls that first
pulled, then repelled the eyes. Finally he seemed
satisfied, gathered his stained, ragged robes about
him with care, and picked a dainty path through
the maze of chalk. He stood up straight just on the
border of the inscriptions, raised his arms high,
and intoned a peculiarly resonant chant.
At that moment, he bordered on the impressive—
though the effect was somewhat spoiled by the
water dripping off the beams of the ceiling, falling
onto his balding head and running off the end of
his long nose.
The last syllable echoed from the dank walls.
The man-woman waited in anticipation.
Nothing happened.
"Well?" the stranger said with slipping patience,
"Is that all there is to it?"
"I told you it would take time—perhaps as much
as an hour. Don't fret yourself, you'll have your
demon."
The mage cast longing glances at the shadow-
shrouded bottle on the floor beside his visitor as he
mopped his head with one begrimed, stained sleeve.
The woman-man noted the direction his atten-
Vows And Honor Book 1: The Oathbound Page 28
