Vows And Honor Book 1: The Oathbound

by The Oathbound [lit]

Now she was alone in pitchy darkness, with only

  the rough brick wall of the corridor as a guide, and

  the faint sound of her footsteps bouncing off the

  walls to tell her that it was a corridor. She held

  back impatience and continued to feel her way with

  extreme caution—until once again her hand en-

  countered open air.

  She was suddenly awash with light, frozen by it,

  surrounded by it on all sides. She would have been

  prepared for any attack but this, which left her

  blind and helpless, with tears of pain blurring what

  little vision she had. She went automatically into a

  defensive crouch, pulling her blade over her head

  with both hands from the sheath on her back; only

  to hear a laugh like a dozen brass bells from some

  point above her head.

  "Little warrior," the voice said caressingly. "I

  have so longed for the day when we might meet

  again."

  "I can't say I feel the same about you," Tarma

  replied after a bit, trying to locate the demon by

  sound alone. "I suppose it's too much to expect you

  to stand and fight me honorably?" She could see

  nothing but angry red light, like flame, but without

  the heat; perhaps the light was a little brighter

  above and just in front of her. She tried to will her

  eyes to work, but they remained dazzled, with lances

  of pain shooting into her skull every time she

  blinked. There was a smell of blood and sex and

  something more that she couldn't quite identify.

  Her heart was racing wildly with fear, but she was

  determined not to let him see how helpless she felt.

  "Honor is for fools—and I may have been a fool

  in the past, but I am no longer quite so gullible. No,

  little warrior, I shall not stand and fight you. I shall

  not fight you at all. I shall simply—put you to

  sleep."

  A sickly sweet aroma began to weave around her,

  and Tarma recognized it after a moment as black

  tran-dust; the most powerful narcotic she knew of.

  She had only that moment of recognition before she

  felt her control over herself suddenly melt away;

  her entire body went numb in a single breath, and

  she fell face down on the floor, mind and body alike

  paralyzed, sword falling from a hand that could no

  longer hold it.

  And now that you cannot fight me, said a silky

  voice in her mind, I shall make of you what I will...

  and somewhat more to my taste than the ice-creature

  you are now. And this time your Goddess shall not be

  able to help you. I am nearly a god now myself, and the

  gods are forbidden to war upon other gods.

  The last thing she heard was his laughter, like

  bronze bells slightly out of tune with one another.

  Kethry fretted inwardly, counting down the mo-

  ments until she was supposed to try the gate. This

  was the hardest part, for certain; the waiting. Any-

  thing else she could manage with equanimity. Wait-

  ing brought out the worst fears, roused her imagi-

  nation to a fever pitch. The plan was for Tarma

  and Warrl to check the courtyard, then unlock the

  gates for her. They would precede her into the

  temple as well. They were to meet in the sanctu-

  ary, after Tarma had declared it free of physical

  hazards.

  It was a plan Kethry found herself misliking more

  with every passing moment. They were a team; it

  went against the grain to work separately. Granted,

  Warrl was with Tarma; granted that she was some-

  thing of a handicap in a skulk-and-hide situation

  like this—still, Kethry couldn't help thinking that

  she'd be able to detect dangers neither of the other

  two would notice. More than that—her place was

  with Tarma, not waiting in the wings. Now she

  began to wish she hadn't told the Shin'a'in that she

  intended to investigate this place. If she'd kept her

  mouth shut, she could have done this properly, by

  daylight, perhaps. Finally her impatience became

  too much; she felt her way along the wall to the

  wooden gates, and pushed very slightly on one of

  them.

  It moved.

  Tarma had succeeded in this much, anyway; the

  gates were now unbarred.

  She pushed a little harder, slowly, carefully. The

  gate swung open just enough for her to squeeze

  herself through, scraping herself on the wooden

  bulwarks both fore and aft as she did so.

  Before her lay the courtyard, mostly open ground.

  Remembering all Tarma had taught her, she

  crouched as low as she could, waited until the

  moon passed behind a cloud, and sprinted for the

  shelter of the dried-up fountain.

  Under the rim, in shadows, she looked around;

  watching not for objects, but for movement, any

  movement. But there was no movement, anomalous

  or otherwise. She crawled under the rim until she

  lay hidden on the side facing the temple doors.

  She watched, but saw nothing; she listened, but

  heard only crickets and toads. She waited, aching

  from the strain of holding herself still in such an

  awkward position, until the moon again went be-

  hind a cloud.

  She sprinted for the temple doors, flinging her-

  self against the wall of the temple behind a pillar

  as soon as she reached them. It was then that she

  realized that there had been something very anom-

  alous at the gate.

  The aged gates, allegedly locked for fifteen years,

  had opened smoothly and without a sound—as if

  they had been oiled and put into working order

  within the past several days.

  Something was very wrong.

  A shadow bulked in front of her, and she started

  with alarm; she pulled the sword in a defensive

  move before she realized that her "enemy" was

  Warrl.

  He reached for her arm and his teeth closed gently

  on her tunic; he tugged at her sleeve. That meant

  Tarma wanted her.

  "You didn't meet with anything?" Kethry whisp-

  ered.

  Warrl snorted. I think that they are all asleep or

  blind. A cub could have penetrated this place.

  This was too easy; all her instincts were in an

  uproar. Too easy by far. She suddenly realized what

  their easy access to this place meant. This was a

  trap!

  And now Kethry felt a shrill alarm course through

  her every nerve—a double alarm. Need was alerting

  her to a woman in the deadliest danger, and very

  nearby—

  —and the bond of she'enedran was resonating with

  soul-deep threat to her blood-sister. Tarma was in

  trouble.

  As if to confirm her fears, Warrl threw up his

  head and voiced his battle-cry, and charged within,

  leaving Kethry behind.

  And given the urgency of Need's pull, that could

  only mean one thing.

  Thalhkarsh was here—and he had the Sworn One

  at his nonexistent mercy.

  The tim
e for subterfuge was over.

  Kethry pulled her ensorcelled blade with her left

  hand, and caused a blue-green witchlight to dance

  before her with a gesture from her right; then kicked

  open the doors of the temple and flung herself

  frantically through them. She landed hard against

  the dingy white-plastered wall of a tiny, cobwebbed

  anteroom, bruising her shoulder; and found herself

  staring foolishly at an empty chamber.

  Another door stood in the opposite wall, slightly

  ajar. She inched along the wall and eased it open

  with the tip of her blade. The witchlight showed

  nothing beyond it but a brick-walled tunnel that

  led deeper into the temple proper. Warrl must al-

  ready have run down this way.

  She moved stealthily through the door, and into

  the corridor, praying to find Tarma, and soon. The

  internal alerts of both her blade and her blood-bond

  were nigh-unbearable, and she hardly dared con-

  template what that meant to Tarma's well-being.

  But the corridor twisted and turned like a kadessa-

  run, seemingly without end. With every new cor-

  ner she expected to find something—but every time

  she rounded a corner she saw only another long,

  dust-choked extension of the corridor behind her.

  The dust showed no tracks at all, not even Warrl's.

  Could she have somehow come the wrong way? But

  there were only two directions to choose—forward,

  or back the way she had come. Back she would

  never go; that left only forward. And forward was

  yard after yard of blank-walled corridor, with never

  a door or a break of any kind. She slunk on and on

  in a kind of nightmarish entrancement in which

  she lost all track of time; there was only the end-

  lessly turning corridor before her and the cry for

  help within her. Nothing else seemed of any import

  at all. As the urgings of her geas-blade Need and

  the bond that tied her to Tarma grew more and

  more frantic, she was close to being driven nearly

  mad with fear and frustration. She was being dis-

  tracted; so successfully in fact, that it wasn't until

  she'd wasted far too much precious time trying to

  thread the maze that she realized what it must

  be—

  —a magical construct, meant to delay her, aug-

  mented by spells of befuddlement.

  "You bastard!" she screamed at the invisible

  Thalhkarsh, enraged by his duplicity. He had made

  a serious mistake in doing something that caused

  her to become angry; that rage was useful, it fueled

  her power. She gathered it to her, made a force of it

  instead of allowing it to fade uselessly; sought and

  found the weak point of the spell. She sheathed

  Need, and spreading her arms wide over her head,

  palms facing each other, blasted with the white-

  heat of her anger.

  Mage-energies formed a glowing blue-white arc

  between her upraised hands; a sorcerer's wind be-

  gan to stir around her, forming a miniature whirl-

  wind with herself as the eye. With a flick of her

  wrists she reversed her hands to hold them palm-

  outward and brought her arms down fully extended

  to shoulder height; the mage-light poured from them

  to form a wall around her, then the wall expanded

  outward. The brick corridor walls about her flared

  with scarlet as the glowing wall of energy touched

  them; they shivered beneath the wrath-fired mage-

  blast, wavered and warped like the mirages they

  were. There was a moment of resistance; then,

  soundlessly, they vanished.

  She saw she was standing in what had been the

  outer, common sanctuary; an enormous room, sup-

  ported by two rows of pillars whose tops were lost

  in the shadows of the ceiling. Tracks in the dust

  showed she had been tracing the same circling path

  all the time she had thought she was traversing the

  corridor. Her anger brightened the witchlight; the

  green-blue glow revealed the far end of the sanctuary

  —the forgotten god stood there, behind his altar.

  The statue of the gentle god of rains had a forlorn

  look; he and his altar were covered with a blanket

  of dust and cobwebs. Dust lay undisturbed nearly

  everywhere.

  Nearly everywhere—she was not the expert tracker

  Tarma was, but it did not take an expert to read

  the trail that passed from the front doors to some-

  where behind the god's statue. And in those dust

  tracks were paw prints.

  Desperate to waste no more time, she pulled her

  blade again and broke into a run, her blue-green

  witchlight bobbing before her, intent on following

  that trail to wherever it led. She passed by the

  neglected altar with never a second glance, and

  found the priests' door at the end of the trace in

  the dust; it lay just behind and beneath the statue.

  It had never been intended to be concealed, and

  besides stood wide open. She sent the witchlight

  shooting ahead of her and sprinted inside, panting

  a little.

  But the echoes of running feet ahead of her as

  she passed into another brick-walled corridor told

  her that her spell-breaking had not gone unnoticed.

  Common sense and logic said she should find a

  corner to put her back against and make a stand.

  Therefore she did nothing of the kind.

  As the first of four armed mercenaries came

  pounding into view around a corner ahead, she took

  Need in both hands and charged him, shrieking at

  the top of her lungs. Her berserk attack took the

  demon-hireling by surprise; he stopped dead in his

  tracks, staring, and belatedly raised his own weapon.

  His hesitation sealed his doom. Kethry let the el-

  dritch power of Need control her body, and the

  bespelled blade responded to the freedom by mov-

  ing her in a lightning blow at his unprotected side.

  Screaming in pain, the fighter fell, arm sheared off

  at the shoulder.

  The second hired thug was a little quicker to

  defend himself, but he, too, was no match for Need's

  spell-imparted skill. Kethry cracked his wooden

  shield in half with a strength far exceeding what

  she alone possessed, and swatted his blade out of

  his hands after only two exchanges, sending it clat-

  tering against the wall. She ran him through before

  he could flee her.

  The third and fourth sought to take her while—

  they presumed—Kethry's blade was still held fast

  in the collapsing body. They presumed too much;

  Need freed itself and spun Kethry around to meet

  and counter both their strokes in a display of swords-

  manship a master would envy. They saw death

  staring at them from the witchlight reflected on

  the blood-dripping blade, from the hate-filled green

  eyes.

  It was more than they had the stomach to face—

  and their lives were worth far more to them than

  their pay. The
y turned and fled back down the way

  they had come, with Kethry in hot pursuit, too

  filled with berserk anger now to think that a charge

  into unknown danger might not be a wise notion.

  There was light ahead, Kethry noticed absently,

  allowing her rage to speed her feet. That might

  mean there were others there—and perhaps the

  demon.

  The hirelings ran to the light as to sanctuary;

  Kethry followed—

  She stumbled to a halt, at first half-blinded by

  the light; then when her eyes adjusted, tripped on

  nothing and nearly fell to her knees, her mind and

  heart going numb at what she saw.

  This had once been the inner temple; Thalh-

  karsh had transformed it into his own perverted

  place of unholiness. It had the red-lit look of a

  seraglio in hell. It had been decorated with the

  same sort of carvings that had ornamented the de-

  mon's temple back in Delton. The subject was sex-

  ual; every perversion possible was depicted, provided

  that it included pain and suffering.

  The far end of the room had been made into a

  kind of platform, covered in silk and velvet cush-

  ions, plushly upholstered. It was a cliched setting;

  an overdone backdrop for an orgy. The demon cer-

  tainly enjoyed invoking pain, but it appeared that

  he himself preferred not to suffer the slightest dis-

  comfort while he was amusing himself. The plat-

  form was occupied by a clutch of writhing nude

  and partially clothed bodies. Only now were some

  of those on the platform beginning to disengage and

  take notice of the hirelings fleeing for the door on

  the opposite side. Evidently not even the demon

  foresaw that Kethry would be able to get this far on

  her own.