Mercedes Lackey - Vows And Honor 3 - OathBlood

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Tarma and Kethry
An Introduction
Tarma and Kethry were created because heroic fantasy was finally "coming of
age," not the least because of people like Marion Zimmer Bradley and her Sword
and Sorceress anthologies, but I saw two problems.
The first-most of the stories were about brawny C*n*n types, strong like bull,
dumb like ox, iron-thewed and not something you'd invite to a nice restaurant.
The remainder were equally divided between the incredibly depressing eternally
doomed hero type, and the female counterpart to the C*n*n type. Trouble was,
the latter seemed to share her male counterpart's taste in women.
Mind you, I have no personal objection to this, but I thought it would be nice
to have at least one token heterosexual female hero. And hey, not every
fantasy hero or heroine has to be as highly sexed as most of the then-current
crop seemed to be!
So I invented Tarma and Kethry. Tarma is celibate, chaste, and altogether
asexual; Kethry isn't, and though she doesn't think with her hormones, she
definitely is fond of men.
Two books (three if you count the beginning of By the Sword) and many short
stories later, things have changed for the better, insofar as there is now a
vast cornucopia of books and stories in heroic fantasy, which incorporate a
vast spectrum of heroes and heroines, but I'm still glad I invented Tanna and
Kethry. Figuring out ways to get them in trouble and getting them out again
has been highly entertaining for all concerned.
This is the very first appearance of Tarma and Kethry, and how they met. I
distinctly remember presenting this and a second Tarma and Kethry story to
Marion in person. The occasion was just before one of her Fantasy Worlds
Festival conventions, and I had volunteered to be "go-fer mom"-I was going to
see to it that all her eager young volunteers ate and slept regularly. Which I
did, with a hammer, when necessary. But beforehand, Marion had invited me to
come to her home, I had already sold her my first professional sale (a
Darkover story), and I wanted very much to be accepted into the Sword and
Sorceress anthologies. I brought both manuscripts with me-after first asking
permission!-and presented them to her with much trepidation.
"I don't know about the first one," I said hesitantly. "It's kind of 'rape and
revenge,' and I know you're tired of that." She just waved me off and took
possession of the manuscripts.
Lisa Waters (her secretary and protegee) and I were making tea in the kitchen
when "Damn you, Misty!" rang out from the living room. Certain that I had
somehow offended her, I ran to find out what it was I had done wrong so I
could try to make amends.
As it turned out, what I had done was not wrong, but I had presented her with
a dilemma. She liked both stories, and wanted both of them, and could only
publish one!
Giddily I told her to hang on to the second one; I was certain there would be
a Sword and Sorceress IV. Since the volume numbers are now up in the high
teens, you can see that I was right. The second story was published in Volume
IV, and I later sold two Tarma and Kethry books to DAW. But this is how the
two met in the first place.
SWORD-SWORN
The air inside the gathering-tent was hot, although the evening breeze that
occasionally stole inside the closed tent flap and touched Tarma's back was
chill, like a sword's edge laid along her spine. This high-desert country
cooled off quickly at night, not like the Clan's grazing grounds down in the
grass plains. Tarma shivered; for comfort's sake she'd long since removed her
shirt and now, like most of the others in the tent, was attired only in her
vest and breeches. In the light of the lamps Tarma's Clansfolk looked like
living versions of the gaudy patterns they wove into their rugs.
Her brother-uncle Kefta neared the end of his sword-dance in the middle of the
tent. He performed it only rarely, on the most special of occasions, but this
occasion warranted celebration. Never before had the men of the Clan returned
from the Summer Horsefair laden with so much gold-it was nearly three times
what they'd hoped for. There was war a-brewing somewhere, and as a consequence
horses had commanded more than prime prices. The Shin-'a'in hadn't argued with
their good fortune. Now their new wealth glistened in the light of the oil
lamps, lying in a shining heap in the center of the tent for all of the Clan
of the Stooping Hawk to rejoice over. Tomorrow it would be swiftly converted
into salt and herbs, grain and leather, metal weapons and staves of true,
straight-grained wood for looms and arrows (all things the Shin'a'in did not
produce themselves) but for this night, they would admire their short-term
wealth and celebrate.
Not all that the men had earned lay in that shining heap. Each man who'd
undertaken the journey had earned a special share, and most had brought back
gifts. Tarma stroked the necklace at her throat as she breathed in the scent
of clean sweat, incense, and the sentlewood perfume most of her Clan had
anointed themselves with. She glanced to her right as she did so, surprised at
her flash of shyness. Dharin seemed to have all his attention fixed on the
whirling figure of the dancer, but he intercepted her glance as if he'd been
watching for it, and his normally solemn expression vanished as he smiled
broadly. Tarma blushed, then made a face at him. He grinned even more, and
pointedly lowered his eyes to the necklace of carved amber she wore, curved
claws alternating with perfect beads. He'd brought that for her, evidence of
his trading abilities, because (he said) it matched her golden skin. That
she'd accepted it and was wearing it tonight was token that she'd accepted him
as well. When Tarma finished her sword-training, they'd be bonded. That would
be in two years, perhaps less, if her progress continued to be as rapid as it
was now. She and Dharin dealt with each other very well indeed, each being a
perfect counter for the other. They were long-time friends as well as lovers.
The dancer ended his performance in a calculated sprawl, as though exhausted.
His audience shouted their approval, and he rose from the carpeted tent floor,
beaming and dripping with sweat. He flung himself down among his family,
accepting with a nod of thanks the damp towel handed to him by his youngest
son. The plaudits faded gradually into chattering; as last to perform he would
pick the next.
After a long draft of wine he finally spoke, and his choice was no surprise to
anyone. "Sing, Tarma," he said.
His choice was applauded on all sides as Tarma rose, brushed back her long
ebony hair, and picked her way through the crowded bodies of her Clansfolk to
take her place in the center.
Tarma was no kind of beauty; her features were too sharp and hawklike, her
body too boyishly slender; and well she knew it. Dharin had often joked when
they lay together that he never knew whether he was bedding her or her sword.
But the Goddess of the Four Winds had granted her a voice that was more than
compensation, a voice that was unmatched among the Clans. The Shin'a'in, whose
history was mainly contained in song and story, valued such a voice more than
precious metals. Such was her value that the shaman had taught her the arts of
reading and writing, that she might the more easily learn the ancient lays of
other peoples as well as her own.
Impishly, she had decided to pay Dharin back for making her blush by singing a
tale of totally faithless lovers, one that was a Clan favorite. She had only
just begun it, the musicians picking up the key and beginning to follow her,
when unlooked-for disaster struck.
Audible even over the singing came the sound of tearing cloth; and armored
men, seemingly dozens of them, poured howling through the ruined tent walls to
fall upon the stunned nomads. Most of the Clan were all but weaponless-but the
Shin'a'in were warriors by tradition as well as horsebreeders. There was not
one of them above the age of nine that had not had at least some training.
They shook off their shock quickly, and every member of the Clan that could
seized whatever was nearest and fought back with the fierceness of any
cornered wild thing.
Tarma had her paired daggers and a throwing spike in a wrist sheath-the last
was quickly lost as she hurled it with deadly accuracy through the visor of
the nearest bandit. He screeched, dropped his sword, and clutched his face,
blood pouring between his fingers. One of her cousins snatched up the
forgotten blade and gutted him with it. Tarma had no time to see what other
use he made of it; another of the bandits was bearing down on her and she had
barely enough time to draw her daggers before he closed with her.
A dagger, even two of them, rarely makes a good defense against a longer
blade, but fighting in the tent was cramped, and the bandit found himself at a
disadvantage in the close quarters. Though Tarma's hands were shaking with
excitement and fear, her mind stayed cool and she managed to get him to trap
his own blade long enough for her to plant one of those daggers in his throat.
He gurgled hoarsely, then fell, narrowly missing imprisoning her beneath him.
She wrenched the sword from his still-clutching hands and turned to find
another foe.
She saw with fear that the invaders were easily winning the unequal battle;
that despite a gallant defense with such improvised weapons as rugs and hair
ornaments, despite the fact that more than one of the bandits was wounded or
dead, her people were rapidly falling before their enemies. The bandits were
armored; the Shin'a'in were not. That was making a telling difference. Out of
the corner of one eye she could see a pair of them dropping their weapons and
seizing women-and around her she could hear the shrieks of children, the
harsher cries of adults-
But there was another fighter facing her now, his face blood- and
sweat-streaked, and she forced herself not to hear, to think only of the
moment and her opponent as she'd been taught.
She parried his thrust with the dagger she still held and made a slash at his
neck. The fighting had thinned now, and she couldn't hope to use the same
tactics that had worked before. He countered it in a leisurely fashion and
turned the counter into a return stroke with careless ease that sent her
writhing out of the way of the blade's edge. She wasn't quite fast enough-he
left a long score on her ribs. The cut wasn't deep or dangerous, but it hurt
and bled freely. She stumbled over a body-friend or foe, she didn't notice,
and only barely evaded his blade a second time. He toyed with her, his face
splitting in an ugly grin as he saw how tired she was becoming. Her hands were
shaking now, not with fear, but with exhaustion. She was so weary she failed
to notice the little circle of three or four bandits that had formed around
her, and that she was the only Shin'a'in still fighting. He made a pass;
before she had time to realize it was merely a feint, he'd gotten inside her
guard and swatted her to the ground as the flat of his blade connected with
the side of her head, the edges cutting into her scalp, searing like hot
irons. He'd swung the blade full-force-she fought off unconsciousness as her
hands reflexively let her weapons fall and she collapsed. Half-stunned, she
tried to punch, kick, and bite (in spite of nausea and a dizziness that kept
threatening to overwhelm her): he began battering at her face and head with
heavy, massive fists.
He connected one time too many, and she felt her legs give out, her arms fall
helplessly to her sides. He laughed, then threw her to the floor of the tent,
inches away from the body of one of her brothers. She felt his hands tearing
off her breeches; she tried to get her knee into his groin, but the last of
her strength was long gone. He laughed again and settled his hands almost
lovingly around her neck and began to squeeze. She clawed at the hands, but he
was too strong; nothing she did made him release that ever-tightening grip.
She began to thrash as her chest tightened and her lungs cried out for air.
Her head seemed about to explode, and reality narrowed to the desperate
struggle for a single breath. At last, mercifully, blackness claimed her even
as he began to thrust himself brutally into her.
The only sound in the violated tent was the steady droning of flies. Tarma
opened her right eye-the left one was swollen shut-and stared dazedly at the
ceiling. When she tried to swallow, her throat howled in protest, she gagged,
and nearly choked. Whimpering, she rolled onto one side. She found she was
staring into the sightless eyes of her baby sister, as flies fed greedily at
the pool of blood congealing beneath the child's head.
She vomited up what little there was in her stomach, and nearly choked to
death in the process. Her throat was swollen almost completely shut.
She dragged herself to her knees, her head spinning dizzily, her stomach
threatening to empty itself again of what it didn't contain. As she looked
around her, and her mind took in the magnitude of disaster, something within
her parted with a nearly audible snap.
Every member of the Clan, from the oldest gray-hair to the youngest infant,
had been brutally and methodically slaughtered. The sight was more than her
dazed mind could bear. Most of her ran screaming to hide in a safe, dark,
mental corner; what was left coaxed her body to its feet.
A few rags of her vest hung from her shoulders; there was blood running down
her thighs and her loins ached sharply, echoing the pounding pain in her head.
More blood had dried all down one side, some of it from the cut along her
ribs, some that of her foes or her Clansfolk. Her hand rose of its own accord
to her temple and found her long hair sticky and hard with dried blood matting
it into clumps. The pain of her head and the nausea that seemed linked with it
overwhelmed any other hurt, but as her hand drifted absently over her face, it
felt strange, swollen and puffy. Had she been able to see it, she would not
have recognized even her own reflection, her face was so battered. The part of
her that was still thinking sent her body to search for something to cover her
nakedness. She found a pair of breeches-not her own, they were much too big-
and a vest, both flung into corners as worthless. Her eyes slid unseeing over
the huddled, nude bodies that might have been the previous wearers. Then the
thread of direction sent her to retrieve the clan banner from where it still
hung on the centerpole.
Clutching it in one hand, she found herself outside the gathering-tent. She
stood dumbly in the sun for several long moments, then moved trancelike toward
the nearest of the family tents. They, too, had been ransacked, but at least
there were no bodies in them. The raiders had found little to their taste
there, other than the odd bit of jewelry. Only a Shin'a'in would be interested
in the kinds of tack and personal gear of a Shin'a'in-and anyone not of the
Clans found trying to sell such would find himself with several inches of
Shin'a'in steel in his gut. Apparently the bandits knew this.
She found a halter and saddlepad in one of the nearer tents. The rest of her
crouched in its mind-corner and gibbered. She wept soundlessly when it
recognized the tack by its tooling as having been Dharin's.
The brigands had not been able to steal the horses-the Shin'a'in let them run
free and the horses were trained nearly from birth to come only to their
riders. The sheep and goats had been scattered, but the goats were guardian
enough to reunite the herds and protect them in the absence of shepherds-and
in any case, it was the horses that concerned her now, not the other animals.
Tarma managed a semblance of her whistle with her swollen, cracked lips;
Kessira came trotting up eagerly, snorting with distaste at the smell of blood
on her mistress. Her hands, swollen, stiff, and painful, were clumsy with the
harness, but Kessira was patient while Tarma struggled with the straps, not
even tossing her gray head in an effort to avoid the hackamore as she usually
did.
Tarma somehow dragged herself into the saddle; there was another Clan camped
less than a day's ride away. She lumped the banner in front of her, pointed
Kessira in the right direction, and gave her the set of signals that meant
that her mistress was hurt and needed help. That accomplished, the dregs of
directing intelligence receded into hiding with the rest of her, and the
ghastly ride was endured in a complete state of blankness.
She never knew when Kessira walked into the camp with her broken, bleeding
mistress slumped over the Clan banner. No one there recognized her- they only
knew she was Shin'a'in by her coloring and costume. She never realized that
she led a would-be rescue party all the way back to the ruined camp before
collapsing over Kessira's neck. The shaman and Healers eased her off the back
of her mare, and she never felt it, nor did she feel their ministrations. For
seven days and nights she lay silent, never moving, eyes either closed or
staring fixedly into space. The Healers feared for her life and sanity, for a
Shin'a'in Clanless was one without purpose.
But on the morning of the eighth day, when the Healer entered the tent in
which she lay, her head turned and the eyes that met his were once again
bright with intelligence.
Her lips parted. "Where-?" she croaked, her voice uglier than a raven's cry.
"Liha'irden," he said, setting down his burden of broth and medicine. "Your
name? We could not recognize you, only the banner-" he hesitated, unsure of
what to tell her.
"Tarma," she replied. "What of-my Clan- Deer's Son?"
"Gone." It would be best to tell it shortly. "We gave them the rites as soon
as we found them, and brought the herds and goods back here. You are the last
of the Hawk's Children."
So her memory was correct. She stared at him wordlessly.
At this time of year the entire Clan traveled together, leaving none at the
grazing-grounds. There was no doubt she was the sole survivor.
She was taking the news calmly-too calmly. He did not like it that she did not
weep. There was madness lurking within her; he could feel it with his Healer's
senses. She walked a thin thread of sanity, and it would take very little to
cause the thread to break. He dreaded her next question.
It was not the one he had expected. "My voice- what ails it?"
"Something broken past mending," he replied regretfully-for he had heard her
sing less than a month ago.
"So." She turned her head to stare again at the ceiling. For a moment he
feared she had retreated into madness, but after a pause she spoke again.
"I cry blood-feud," she said tonelessly.
When the Healer's attempts at dissuading her failed, he brought the Clan
Elders. They reiterated all his arguments, but she remained silent and
seemingly deaf to their words.
"You are only one-how can you hope to accomplish anything?" the Clanmother
said finally. "They are many, seasoned fighters, and crafty. What you : wish
to do is hopeless before it begins."
Tarma stared at them with stony eyes, eyes that did not quite conceal the fact
that her sanity was questionable.
"Most importantly," said a voice from the tent door, "You have called what you
have no right to call."
The shaman of the Clan, a vigorous woman of late middle age, stepped into the
healer's tent and dropped gracefully beside Tarma's pallet to sit
cross-legged.
"You know well only one Sword Sworn to the Warrior can cry blood-feud," she
said calmly and evenly.
"I know," Tarma replied, breaking her silence. "And I wish to take Oath."
It was a Shin'a'in tenet that no person was any holier than any other, that
each was a priest in his own right. The shaman might have the power of magic,
might also be more learned than the average Clansman had time to be, but when
the time came that a Shin'a'in wished to petition the God or Goddess, he
simply entered the appropriate tent-shrine and did so, with or without
consulting the shaman beforehand.
So it happened that Tarma was standing within the shrine on legs that trembled
with weakness.
The Wise One had not seemed at all surprised at Tarma's desire to be Sworn to
the Warrior, and had supported her in her demand over the protests of the
Elders. "If the Warrior accepts her," she had said reasonably, "who are we to
argue with the will of the Goddess? And if she does not, then blood-feud
cannot be called."
The tent-shrines of the Clans were always absolutely identical in their
spartan simplicity. There were four tiny wooden altars, one against each wall
of the I tent. In the East was that of the Maiden; on it was her symbol, a
single fresh blossom in spring and summer, a stick of burning incense in
winter and fall. To the South was that of the Warrior, marked by an
ever-burning flame. The West held the Mother's altar, on it a sheaf of grain.
The North was the domain of the Crone or Ancient One. The altar here held a
smooth black stone.
Tarma stepped to the center of the tent. What she intended to do was nothing
less than self-inflicted torture. All prayers among the Shin'a'in were sung,
not spoken; further, all who came before the Goddess must lay all their
thoughts before her. Not only must she endure the physical agony of trying to
shape her ruined voice into a semblance of music, but she must deliberately
call forth every emotion, every too-recent memory; all that caused her to be
standing in this place.
She finished her song with her eyes tightly closed against the pain of those
memories; her eyes burned and she ached with stubborn refusal to give in to
tears.
There was a profound silence when she'd done; after a moment she realized she
could not even hear the little sounds of the encampment on the other side of
the thin tent walls. Just as she'd realized that, she felt the faint stirrings
of a breeze-
It came from the East, and was filled with the scent of fresh flowers. It
encircled her, and seemed to blow right through her very soul. It was soon
joined by a second breeze, out of the West; a robust and strong little wind
carrying the scent of ripening grain. As the first had blown through her,
emptying her of pain, the second filled her with strength. Then it, too, was
joined; a bitterly cold wind from the North, sharp with snow-scent. At the
touch of this third wind her eyes opened, though she remained swathed in
darkness born of the dark of her own spirit. The wind chilled her, numbed the
memories until they began to seem remote; froze her heart with an icy armor
that made the loneliness bearable. She felt now as if her soul were swathed in
endless layers of soft, protecting bandages. The darkness left her sight-she
saw through eyes grown distant and withdrawn to view a world that seemed to
have receded to just out of reach.
The center of a whirlwind now, she stood unmoving while the physical winds
whipped her hair and clothing about and the spiritual ones worked their magics
within her.
But the Southern wind, the Warrior's Wind, was not one of them.
Suddenly the winds died to nothing. A voice that held nothing of humanity,
echoing, sharp-edged as a fine blade yet ringing with melody, spoke one word.
Her name.
Tarma obediently turned slowly to her right. Before the altar in the South
stood a woman.
She was raven-haired and tawny-skinned, and the lines of her face were thin
and strong, like all the Shin'a'in. She was arrayed all in black, from her
boots to the headband that held her shoulder-length tresses out of her eyes.
Even the chainmail hauberk she wore was black, as well as the sword she wore
slung across her back and the daggers in her belt. She raised her eyes to meet
Tarma's, and they had no whites, irises or pupils; her eyes were reflections
of a cloudless night sky, black and star-strewn.
The Goddess had chosen to answer as the Warrior, and in Her own person.
When Tarma stepped through the tent flap, there was a collective sigh from
those waiting. Her hair was shorn just short of shoulder length; the Clansfolk
knew they would find the discarded locks lying across the Warrior's altar.
Tarma had carried nothing into the tent, there was nothing within the shrine
that she would have been able to use to cut it. Tarma's Oath had been
accepted. There was an icy calm about her that was unmistakable, and
completely unhuman.
No one in this Clan had been Swordsworn within living memory, but all knew
what tradition demanded of them. No longer would the Sworn One wear garments
bright with the colors the Shin'a'in loved; from out of a chest in the Wise
One's tent, carefully husbanded against such a time, came clothing of dark
brown and deepest black. The brown was for later, should Tarma survive her
quest. The black was for now, for ritual combat, or for one pursuing
blood-feud.
They clothed her, weaponed her, provisioned her. She stood before them when
they had done, looking much as the Warrior herself had, her weapons about her,
her provisions at her feet. The light of the dying sun turned the sky to blood
as they brought the youngest child of the Clan Liha'irden to receive her
blessing, a toddler barely ten months old. She placed her hands on his soft
cap of baby hair without really seeing him-but this child had a special
significance.
The herds and properties of the Hawk's Children would be tended and preserved
for her, either until Tarma returned, or until this youngest child in the Clan
of the Racing Deer was old enough to take his own sword. If by then she had
not returned, they would revert to their caretakers.
Tarma rode out into the dawn. Tradition forbade anyone to watch her departure.
To her own senses it seemed as though she rode still drugged with one of the
healer's potions. All things came to her as if filtered through a gauze veil,
and even her memories seemed secondhand-like a tale told to her by some
gray-haired ancient.
She rode back to the scene of the slaughter; the pitiful burial mound aroused
nothing in her. Some force outside of herself showed her eyes where to catch
the scant signs of the already cold trail. It was not an easy trail to follow,
despite the fact that no attempt had been made to conceal it. She rode until
the fading light made tracking impossible, but was unable to make more than a
few miles.
She made a cold camp, concealing herself and her horse in the lee of a pile of
boulders. Enough moisture collected on them each night to support some meager
grasses, which Kessira tore at eagerly. Tarma made a sketchy meal of dried
meat and fruit, still wrapped in that strange calmness, then rolled herself
into her blanket intending to rise with the first light of morning.
She was awakened before midnight.
A touch on her shoulder sent her scrambling out of her blanket, dagger in
hand. Before her stood a figure, seemingly a man of the Shin'a'in, clothed as
one Swordsworn. Unlike her, his face was veiled.
"Arm yourself, Sworn One," he said, his voice having an odd quality of
distance to it, as though he were speaking from the bottom of a well.
She did not pause to question or argue. It was well that she did not, for as
soon as she had donned her arms and light chain shirt, he attacked her.
The fight was not a long one; he had the advantage of surprise, and he was a
much better fighter than she. Tarma could see the killing blow coming, but was
unable to do anything to prevent it from falling. She cried out in agony as
the stranger's sword all but cut her in half.
She woke staring up at the stars. The stranger interposed himself between her
eyes and the sky. "You are better than I thought-" he said, with grim humor,
"but you are still as clumsy as a horse in a pottery shed. Get up and try
again."
He killed her three more times-with the same nonfatal result. After the third,
she woke to find the sun rising, herself curled in her blanket and feeling
completely rested. For one moment, she wondered if the strange combat of the
night had all been a nightmare-but then she saw her arms and armor stacked
neatly to hand. As if to mock her doubts, they were laid in a different
pattern than she had left them.
Once again she rode as in a dream. Something controlled her actions as deftly
as she managed Kessira, keeping the raw edges of her mind carefully swathed
and anesthetized. When she lost the trail, her controller found it again,
making her body pause long enough for her to identify how it had been done.
She camped, and again she was awakened before midnight.
Pain is a rapid teacher; she was able to prolong the bouts this night enough
that he only killed her twice.
It was a strange existence, tracking by day, training by night. When her track
ended at a village, she found herself questioning the inhabitants shrewdly.
When her provisions ran out, she discovered coin in the pouch that had held
dried fruit-not a great deal, but enough to pay for more of the same. When, in
other towns and villages, her questions were met with evasions, her hand stole
of itself to that same pouch, to find therein more coin, enough to loosen the
tongues of those she faced. She learned that all her physical needs were cared
for-always when she needed something, she either woke with it to hand, or
discovered more of the magical coins appearing to pay for it, and always just
enough, and no more. Her nights seemed clearer and less dreamlike than her
days, perhaps because the controls over her were thinner then, and the skill
she fought with was all her own. Finally one night she "killed" her
instructor.
He collapsed exactly as she would have expected a man run through the heart to
collapse. He lay unmoving-
"A good attack, but your guard was sloppy," said a familiar voice behind her.
She whirled, her sword ready.
He stood before her, his own sword sheathed. She risked a glance to her rear;
the body was gone.
"Truce, you have earned a respite and a reward," he said. "Ask me what you
will, I am sure you have many questions. I know I did."
"Who are you?" she cried eagerly. "What are you?"
"I cannot give you my name, Sworn One. I am only one of many servants of the
Warrior; I am the first of your teachers-and I am what you will become if you
should die while still under Oath. Does that disturb you? The Warrior will
release you at any time you wish to be freed. She does not want the unwilling.
Of course, if you are freed, you must relinquish the blood-feud."
Tarma shook her head.
"Then ready yourself, Sworn One, and look to that sloppy guard."
There came a time when their combats always ended in draws or with his
"death." When that had happened three nights running, she woke the fourth
night to face a new opponent-a woman, and armed with daggers.
Meanwhile she tracked her quarry, by rumor, by the depredations left in their
wake, by report from those who had profited or suffered in their passing. It
seemed that what she tracked was a roving band of freebooters, and her Clan
was not the only group to have been made victims. They chose their quarry
carefully, never picking anyone the authorities might feel urged to avenge,
nor anyone with friends in power. As a result, they managed to operate almost
completely unmolested.
When she had mastered the use of sword, dagger, bow, and staff, her trainers
appeared severally rather than singly; she learned the arts of the single
combatant against many.
Every time she gained a victory, they instructed her further in what her Oath
meant.
One of those things was that her body no longer felt the least stirrings of
sexual desire. The Sword-sworn were as devoid of concupiscence as their
weapons.
"The gain outweighs the loss," the first of them told her. After being taught
the disciplines and rewards of the meditative trance they called "The
Moonpaths," she agreed. After that, she spent at least part of every night
walking those paths, surrounded by a curious kind of ecstasy, renewing her
strength and her bond with her Goddess.
Inexorably, she began to catch up with her quarry. When she had begun this
quest, she was months behind them; now she was only days. The closer she drew,
the more intensely did her spirit-trainers drill her.
Then one night, they did not come. She woke on her own and waited, waited
until well past midnight, waited until she was certain they were not coming at
all. She dozed off for a moment, when she felt a presence. She rose with one
swift motion, pulling her sword from the scabbard on her back.
The first of her trainers held out empty hands. "It has been a year, Sworn
One. Are you ready? Your foes lair in the town not two hours' ride from here,
and the town is truly their lair, for they have made it their own."
So near as that? His words came as a shock, ripping the protective magics that
veiled her mind and heart, sending her to her knees with the shrilling pain
and raging anger she had felt before the winds of the Goddess answered her
prayers. No longer was she protected against her own emotions, and the wounds
were as raw as they had ever been.
He regarded her thoughtfully, his eyes pitying above the veil. "No, you are
not ready. Your hate will undo you, your hurt will disarm you. But you have
little choice, Sworn One. This task is one you bound yourself to, you cannot
free yourself of it. Will you heed advice, or will you throw yourself
uselessly into the arms of Death?"
"What advice?" she asked dully.
摘要：

TarmaandKethryAnIntroductionTarmaandKethrywerecreatedbecauseheroicfantasywasfinally"comingofage,"nottheleastbecauseofpeoplelikeMarionZimmerBradleyandherSwordandSorceressanthologies,butIsawtwoproblems.Thefirst-mostofthestorieswereaboutbrawnyC*n*ntypes,stronglikebull,dumblikeox,iron-thewedandnotsometh...

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