Valdemar 05 - [Vows & Honor 02] - Oathbreakers

by Mercedes Lackey

  He stifled a sigh. Enjoy it while it lasts, old man, he told himself, trying not to be too bitter about it. The end is coming all too soon.

  As it happened, the end came sooner than they had anticipated.

  Kethry frowned, and broke off her teasing in mid-sentence.

  “Keth?” Tarma asked, giving Ironheart the signal to slow.

  “There‘s—oh Windborn! I thought I’d thrown that bastard off!” Kethry looked angry—and frightened. A gust of wind pulled her hood off and she didn’t even bother to replace it.

  “The mage,” Tarma guessed, as Jadrek brought his horse up alongside theirs.

  “The mage. He’s better than I thought. He’s waiting for us, right where the path breaks out of the hills.”

  “Ambush?”

  Kethry frowned again, and closed her eyes, searching the site with mage-senses. “No,” she said finally. “No, I don’t think so. He’s just—waiting. In the open. And he’s got all his defenses up. He’s challenging me.”

  Tarma swore. “And no way past him, as he probably damn well knows.”

  Kethry looked at her soberly, reining in Hellsbane.

  “She‘enedra, you aren’t going to like this—”

  “Probably not; what if we charge him? You mages seem to have a problem with physical opposition to magical defenses.”

  “On that narrow path? He could take us all. And in no way are we going to be able to sneak past him, not with Jadrek. I’m going to have to challenge him to a duel arcane.”

  “What?”

  “He’s an Adept, I can tell that from here. If I issue Adept’s challenge he’ll have to answer it, or lose his status.”

  “And you’ve been Adept how long? He’ll eat you for lunch!”

  “Better he eats me alone than all of us. We can’t just think of ourselves now, Stefan is depending on us. If—Tarma, he won’t take me without a fight, and if I go down, it won’t be alone. You can find another mage to disguise you. Once we get into Rethwellan, I become the superfluous member of the party.”

  “You’re not going down!” Tarma choked, as Jadrek tightened his mouth into a thin line.

  “I don’t plan on it,” Kethry said wryly. “I’m just telling you what to do if it happens. Contract, my love.”

  Tarma’s face went cold and expressionless; her heart stopped. “This is professional, right?” They lived by the mercenary code and would die by it, probably—and by that code, you didn’t argue with the terms of the contract once you’d agreed to it.

  Kethry nodded. “This is the job we’ve contracted for. We’re not being paid in money—”

  “But we’ve got to do our jobs.” Tarma nodded. “You win. I stopped trying to keep you wrapped in wool a long time ago; I’m not going to start up again. Let’s do it.” And she kicked Ironheart into a canter, with Kethry, Warrl and Jadrek following behind.

  I’ve got to do this, Kethry thought, countering her fear with determination. If I don‘t, he’ll kill them. I might escape, but I could never shield all four of us, not even at Adept level. I haven’t tapped into enough of the shielding spells to know how, yet. But he doesn’t know I’m Adept, and there aren’t that many White Winds mages around. I might well be able to surprise him with a trick or two.

  She kicked Hellsbane and sent her galloping past Tarma, up the slope of the barren hill before them, knowing that she would have to reach the waiting magician first and issue her challenge before he caught sight of the others. Otherwise he would blast first, and ask questions after.

  Her move took both Tarma and the mage by surprise, for she was able to top the rise and send up the challenge signal before either Tarma or her foe had a chance to react.

  The mage waiting below her was one of the ones she’d seen wandering about Raschar’s court; a thin man, dark of hair and eye. He was clean-shaven, which made it all the easier to note his sardonic expression, and he wore his hair loose and shoulder length. Now he wore his mage-robes; whatever his school was, it was one Kethry didn’t recognize. The robes were a dull red, and banded and embroidered in dark brown. Like hers, they were split front and back for ease in riding. The chestnut gelding he straddled appeared tired and drained, and stood quietly with head down as he sat with his reins loose.

  “A challenge?” he called incredulously. “You’d challenge me? Why in the Names of the Seven should I even bother with you, girl?”

  As answer, she called up her Adept Manifestation. From her body rose the misty golden form of a hawk, twenty feet tall, with fiery wings; a hawk that mantled at him and opened its beak in a silent screech of defiance. “I challenge you, Adept to Adept,” she called coldly. “You will answer such a challenge; you have no choice.”

  He called up his Manifestation; a winged snake, with scales and wing membranes that glistened in shades of green and blue. Calling it was his formal answer to her formal challenge; now they were both bound to the duel. “You’re a fool, you know that,” he said matter-of-factly, dismounting, and letting his Manifestation fade away. “You can’t have been an Adept for very long; I’ve been one for ten years. You can’t hope to beat me.”

  By this time Tarma, Jadrek and Warrl had reached her on the crest of the hill. Kethry unbuckled Need, feeling strangely naked without the blade, and passed her to Tarma. “Hold her for me. Nothing’s allowed in the circle but ourselves,” she said, watching as the other mage took up a stand near the center of the tiny, barren, windswept valley and put up his half of the magical dome that would only be dispelled by the death or defeat of one of them. Then she allowed her Manifestation to dissipate, and leapt down from Hellsbane’s saddle, striding purposefully to take her stand opposite him. “That remains to be seen,” she answered him, locking all emotion down, and replying with absolute calm. “So—let it begin!”

  With those words, the dome of mage-power sealed, leaving the others helpless witnesses outside.

  For a long moment, the combatants stood, simply watching each other. Tarma took advantage of the lull to order Jadrek to station himself and Warrl on the dividing line between the two mages, and on the side of the dome opposite hers. “Warrl has some tricks—I expect you might, too,” she said distantly, trying to think like a mage. “I don’t trust this bastard not to cheat. Well, Keth won’t either; I don’t doubt she’s expecting something. But if anything should happen—”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Jadrek promised anxiously, taking out his little bag of herbs and salt from his pocket, then replacing it. “It—it isn’t likely to be much, but—”

  “Jadrek, I’ve seen a slung stone bring down a king.” She frowned in thought. “We should split up; if something does go bad, you and Warrl go for Keth, I’ll go for the mage. He can’t know how Need works, he can’t know that in my hands she protects from sorcery. I‘ll, be safe from anything he can throw, and I’ll keep him off your tail. Now, quick, before they start to do anything—”

  He limped to the opposite side of the dome; Tarma could see him dimly through the red energy-haze. Warrl crouched beside him, ready to spring in an instant.

  Tarma unsheathed the bespelled sword called Need and took her own stance; blade point down in the earth, both of her hands resting on the pommel, feet slightly apart. She was ready.

  Just in time, for within the dome of hazy red, the battle was joined in earnest.

  From the body of the stranger came a man-sized version of his Manifestation, flying upward to the top of the dome; Kethry’s met it halfway. Serpent struck at hawk and was deflected; hawk tried to seize serpent in its talons, but the serpent wriggled free, then the snake tried to wrap itself around the hawk’s body and neck. The hawk struck with beak and talon; the serpent let go. Both buffeted each other with punishing wing-blows. The battle rained glowing scales, feathers, and droplets of fluid, all of which vanished before they touched the ground.

  Both Manifestations froze for an instant, then plummeted groundward; hawk with eyes glazing and fang marks in its chest, serpent with one wing ripped f
rom its body.

  Both thinned to mist and were gone before either struck the ground. Round one: a draw, Tarma thought to herself, shifting her weight to relieve muscles that had tensed, and feeling a tiny pebble roll out from under her foot.

  Within the dome appeared two smaller domes, each covering a mage. Then all the fury of all the lightning storms Tarma had ever witnessed rolled into one broke loose within the greater dome. Lightning struck again and again on the two shields, seeking weak spots; it crawled over the surface of the little domes or rolled itself into balls that circled the perimeters without finding entrance. And all in complete silence; that was the truly frightening and eerie part. Tarma’s eyes were dazzled to the point of having trouble seeing when the lightning finally died to nothing, and the lesser domes vanished. As Tarma blinked away the spots interfering with her vision, she tried to assess the condition of both Kethry and her erstwhile rival. They both seemed equally tired.

  Round two; another draw.

  Kethry might have looked tired, but she also looked slightly pleased. Maybe a draw is good—Warrior bless, I hope so—

  Even more encouraging, the other mage looked slightly worried.

  Kethry initiated the next round; throwing (literally) daggers of light at the red-robed sorcerer, daggers which he had to deflect, dodge, or absorb. He returned in kind, but he was not as good in this contest as Kethry; his blades tended to go awry. Hers never failed to reach their mark, and frequently hit.

  Where they hit, they left real wounds, wounds that smoked and bled. The red mage managed to keep from being hit anywhere vital, but the daggers were taking a steady toll.

  After being hit one too many times, he suddenly threw up his hands, and a wall of flame sprang up in front of him, a wall that devoured the daggers when they reached it.

  The fire grew until it reached the top of the dome, cutting him off from Kethry. Arms of flame began to lick from the wall, reaching toward her.

  Fighting fire with fire might not work, here, Keth, Tarma thought, biting her lip a little. You could both end up scorched by your own powers—

  But Kethry chose not to fight with fire, but with air; a whirlwind, a man-high tornado of milky white sprang up in front of her, sucking in those reaching arms of flame. And every time it ate one of those arms, it grew a little larger. Finally, it reached nearly to the top of the dome—and it began to move on the red-robed mage and his fiery protective wall.

  Star-Eyed! If it got bigger just by eating a couple of licks of flame, what’ll it do when it hits the fire-mother?

  Evidently the same thought occurred to the mage, for his eyes had gone white-rimmed with panic. He backed into the restraining wall of the protective dome, then began shouting and waving his hands wildly.

  And a twice-man-sized thing rose from the barren earth behind Kethry.

  No—oh no—that bastard, he had that thing hidden there; he’s had this planned from the start! Tarma recognized the krakash, the mage-construct, from Jadrek’s descriptions. She started to sprint for the edge of the dome, even knowing she wouldn’t be able to pass it.

  Kethry turned to meet it, first making frantic motions with her hands, then groping for a blade she did not have. The thing reached for her with the two upper arms, missing, but raking her from neck to knee with its outsized talons. She collapsed, clutching herself with pain; it seized her as she fell with the lower two of its four arms. It lifted her as she fought to get free—and broke her back across its knee, as a man would break a dry branch.

  “No!”

  Tarma heard her own voice, crying the word in anguish, but it didn’t seem to belong to her.

  The whirlwind died to a stirring of dust on the ground; the dome thinned to red mist, and vanished.

  Tarma’s mind and heart were paralyzed, but her body was not. She reacted to the disaster as she had planned, charging the mage at a dead run, while Jadrek sprinted fearlessly for the thing.

  The startled wizard saw her coming, and threw blasts of pure energy at her—spheres of blinding ball-lightning which traveled unerringly toward her, hit, and did nothing, leaving not even a tingle behind as they dissipated. The mage had just enough time to realize that she was protected before she reached him.

  While part of her sobbed with anguish, another part of her coolly calculated, and brought Need about in a shining, swift arc, as she allowed her momentum to carry her past him. She saw his eyes, filled with fear, saw his hands come up in a futile attempt to deflect the sword—then felt the shock along the blade as she neatly beheaded him, a tiny trail of blood-droplets streaming behind the point of the sword as it finished its arc.

  Before his body had hit the ground she whirled and made for Jadrek, cursing the fate that had placed mage and construct so many paces apart. The older man hadn’t a chance.

  As she ran, she could see that the Archivist had something in his hands. He ducked under the grasp of the horrid creature’s upper two arms with an agility Tarma never dreamed to see in him. And with the courage she had known he possessed, came up in the thing’s face, casting one handful of powder into its eyes and the second into its mouth.

  The thing emitted a shriek that pierced Tarma’s ears—

  Then it crumbled into a heap of dry earth before she had made more than a dozen steps in its direction. As it disintegrated, it dropped Kethry into the brown dust like a broken, discarded boy.

  Tarma flung herself down on her knees at Kethry’s side, and tried to stop the blood running from the gashes the thing’s talons had left. Uselessly—for Kethry was dying even as she and the Archivist knelt in the dust beside her.

  Jadrek made a choking sound, and took Kethry into his arms, heedless of the blood and filth.

  Tarma fumbled the hilt of Need into her hands, but it only slowed the inevitable. Need could not mend a shattered spine, nor could she Heal such ghastly wounds; all the blade could do was block the pain. It was only a matter of time—measured in moments—before the end.

  “Well ...” the mage whispered, as Jadrek supported her head and shoulders in his arms, silent tears pouring from his eyes, and sobs shaking his shoulders. “I ... always figured ... I’d never ... die in bed.”

  Tarma clenched both of her hands around the limp ones on Need’s hilt, fiercely willing the blade to do what she knew in her heart it could not. “Damn it, Keth—you can’t just walk out on us this way! You can’t just die on us! We—” she could not say more for the tears that choked her own throat.

  “Keth—please don’t; I’ll do anything, take my life, only please don’t die—” Jadrek choked out, frantically.

  “Don’t ... have much choice ...” Kethry breathed, her eyes glazing with shock, her life pumping out into the dust. “Be brave ... she‘enedra ... finish the contract. Then go home ... make Tale’sedrin live ... without me.”

  “No!” Tarma cried, her eyes half-blind with tears. “No!” she wrenched her hands away, leaping to her feet. “It’s not going to end this way! Not while I’m Kal‘enedral! By the Warrior, I swear NO!”

  Thrusting a blood-drenched fist at the sky, she summoned all the power that was hers as Kal‘enedral, as priestess, as Swordsworn warrior—power she had never taken, never used. She flung back her head, and screamed a name into the uncaring, gray sky, a name that tore her throat even as her heart was torn.

  The Warrior’s Greater Name—

  The harsh syllables of the Name echoed and reechoed, driving her several paces backward, then sending her to her knees in the dust. Then—silence. Silence as broodingly powerful as that in the eye of the hurricane. Tarma looked up, her heart cold within her. For a moment, nothing changed.

  Then everything ceased; time stopped. The very tears on Jadrek’s cheeks froze in their tracks. Sound died, the dust on the breeze hung suspended in little immobilized eddies.

  Tarma alone could move; she got to her feet, and waited for Her—to learn what price she would be asked to pay for the gift of Kethry’s life.

  A single shaft of pure
, white light lanced into the ground, practically at Tarma’s feet, accompanied by an earsplitting shriek of tortured air. Tarma did not turn her eyes away, though the light nearly blinded her and left her able to see nothing but white mist for long moments. When the mist cleared from her vision, She was standing where the light had been, Her face utterly still and expressionless, Her eyes telling Tarma nothing.

  They faced one another in silence for long moments, the Goddess and her votary. Then She spoke, Her voice still melodious; but this time, the music was a lament.

  *That you call My Name can mean only that you seek a life, jel‘enedra,* She said. *The giving of a life—not the taking.*

  “As is my right as Kal‘enedral,” Tarma replied, quietly.

  *As is your right,* She agreed. *As it is My right to ask a sacrifice of you for that life.*

  Now Tarma bowed her head and closed her eyes upon her tears, for she could not bear to look upon that face, nor to see the shattered wreck that had been her dearest friend lying beyond. “Anything,” she whispered around the anguish.

  *Your own life? The future of Tale‘sedrin? Would you release Kethry from her vow if I demanded it and have Tale’sedrin become a Dead Clan?*

  “Anything.” Tarma defiantly raised her head again, and spoke directly to those star-strewn eyes, pulling each of her words out of the pain that filled her heart. “Keth—she’s worth more to me than anything. Ask anything of me; take my body, make me a cripple, take my life, even make Tale‘sedrin a Dead Clan, it doesn’t matter. Because without Kethry to share it, none of that has any meaning for me.”