Mercedes Lackey - Vows And Honor 01 - The Oathbound

Vows And Honor Book 1: The Oathbound

by Mercedes Lackey

Introduction

This is the tale of an unlikely partnership, that

of the Shin'a'in swordswoman and celibate

Kal'enedral, Tarma shena Tale'sedrin and the nobly-

born sorceress Kethry, member of the White Winds

school, whose devotees were sworn to wander the

world using their talents for the greatest good. How

these two met is told in the tale "Sword Sworn,"

published in Marion Zimmer Bradley's anthology

SWORD AND SORCERESS III. A second of the accounts

of their wandering life will be seen in the fourth

volume of that series. But this story begins where

that first tale left off, when they have recovered

from their ordeal and are making their way back to

the Dhorisha Plains and Tarma's home.

One

The sky was overcast, a solid gray sheet that

seemed to hang just barely above the treetops,

with no sign of a break in the clouds anywhere.

The sun was no more than a dimly glowing spot

near the western horizon, framed by a lattice of

bare black branches. Snow lay at least half a foot

thick everywhere in the forest, muffling sound. A

bird flying high on the winter wind took dim notice

that the forest below him extended nearly as far as

he could see no matter which way he looked, but

was neatly bisected by the Trade Road immedi-

ately below him. Had he flown a little higher (for

the clouds were not as low as they looked), he

might have seen the rooftops and smokes of a city

at the southern end of the road, hard against the

forest. Although the Trade Road had seen enough

travelers of late that the snow covering it was packed

hard, there were only two on it now. They had

stopped in the clearing halfway through the forest

that normally saw heavy use as an overnighting

point. One was setting up camp under the shelter

of a half-cave of rock and tree trunks piled together—

partially the work of man, partially of nature. The

other was a short distance away, in a growth-free

pocket just off the main area, picketing their beasts.

The bird circled for a moment, swooping lower,

eyeing the pair with dim speculation. Humans some-

times meant food—

But there was no food in sight, at least not that

the bird recognized as such. And as he came lower

still, the one with the beasts looked up at him

suddenly, and reached for something slung at her

saddlebow.

The bird had been the target of arrows often

enough to recognize a bow when he saw one. With a

squawk of dismay, he veered off, flapping his wings

with all his might, and tracing a twisty, convoluted

course out of range. He wanted to be the eater, not

the eaten!

Tarma sighed as the bird sped out of range, un-

strung her bow, and stowed it back in the saddle-

quiver. She hunched her shoulder a little beneath

her heavy wool coat to keep her sword from shift-

ing on her back, and went back to her task of scrap-

ing the snow away from the grass buried beneath it

with gloved hands. Somewhere off in the far dis-

tance she could hear a pair of ravens calling to each

other, but otherwise the only sounds were the sough

of wind in branches and the blowing of her horse

and Kethry's mule. The Shin'a'in place of eternal

punishment was purported to be cold; now she had

an idea why.

She tried to ignore the ice-edged wind that seemed

to cut right through the worn places in her nonde-

script brown clothing. This was no place for a

Shin'a'in of the Plains, this frozen northern forest.

She had no business being here. Her garments, more

than adequate to the milder winters in the south,

were just not up to the rigors of the cold season

here.

Her eyes stung, and not from the icy wind.

Home—Warrior Dark, she wanted to be home! Home,

away from these alien forests with their unfriendly

weather, away from outClansmen with no under-

standing and no manners . .. home. ...

Her little mare whickered at her, and strained

against her lead rope, her breath steaming and her

muzzle edged with frost. She was no fonder of this

chilled wilderness than Tarma was. Even the

Shin'a'in winter pastures never got this cold, and

what little snow fell on them was soon melted. The

mare's sense of what was "right" was deeply of-

fended by all this frigid white stuff.

"Kathal, dester'edra," Tarma said to the ears that

pricked forward at the first sound of her harsh

voice. "Gently, windborn-sister. I'm nearly finished

here."

Kessira snorted back at her, and Tarma's usually

solemn expression lightened with an affectionate

smile.

"Li'ha'eer, it is ice-demons that dwell in this place,

and nothing else."

When she figured that she had enough of the

grass cleared off to at least help to satisfy her mare's

hunger, she heaped the rest of her foragings into

the center of the area, topping the heap with a

carefully measured portion of mixed grains and a

little salt. What she'd managed to find was poor

enough, and not at all what her training would

have preferred—some dead seed grasses with the

heads still on them, the tender tips from the

branches of those trees and bushes she recognized

as being nourishing, even some dormant cress and

cattail roots from the stream. It was scarcely enough

to keep the mare from starving, and not anywhere

near enough to provide her with the energy she

needed to carry Tarma on at the pace she and her

partner Kethry had been making up until now.

She loosed little Kessira from her tethering and

picketed her in the middle of the space she'd cleared.

It showed the measure of the mare's hunger that

she tore eagerly into the fodder, poor as it was.

There had been a time when Kessira would have

turned up her nose in disdain at being offered such

inferior provender.

"Ai, we've come on strange times, haven't we,

you and I," Tarma sighed. She tucked a stray lock

of crow-wing-black hair back under her hood, and

put her right arm over Kessira's shoulder, resting

against the warm bulk of her. "Me with no Clan

but one weirdling outlander, you so far from the

Plains and your sibs."

Not that long ago they'd been just as any other

youngling of the nomadic Shin'a'in and her saddle

mare; Tarma learning the mastery of sword, song,

and steed, Kessira running free except when the

lessoning involved her. Both of them had been safe

and contented in the heart of Clan Tale'sedrin—

true, free Children of the Hawk.

Tarma rubbed her cheek against Kessira's furry

shoulder, breathing in the familiar smell of clean

horse that was so much a part of what had been

home. Oh, but they'd been happy; Tarma had been

the pet of the Clan, with her flute-clear voice and

her perfect memory for song and tale, and Kessira

had been so well-matched for her rider that she

almost seemed the "four-footed sister" that Tarma

frequently named her. Their lives had been so close

to perfect—in all ways. The king-stallion of the

herd had begun courting Kessira that spring, and

Tarma had had Dharin; nothing could have spoiled

what seemed to be their secure future.

Then the raiders had come upon the Clan; and

all that carefree life was gone in an instant beneath

their swords.

Tarma's eyes stung again. Even full revenge

couldn't take away the ache of losing them, all,

all-

In one candlemark all that Tarma had ever known

or cared about had been wiped from the face of the

earth.

"What price your blood, my people? A few pounds

of silver? Goddess, the dishonor that your people

were counted so cheaply!"

The slaughter of Tale'sedrin had been the more

vicious because they'd taken the entire Clan un-

awares and unarmed in the midst of celebration;

totally unarmed, as Shin'a'in seldom were. They

had trusted to the vigilance of their sentries.

But the cleverest sentry cannot defeat foul magic

that creeps upon him out of the dark and smothers

the breath in his throat ere he can cry out.

The brigands had not so much as a drop of honor-

able blood among them; they knew had the Clan

been alerted they'd have had stood the robbers off,

even outnumbered as they were, so the bandit's

hired mage had cloaked their approach and stifled

the guards. And so the Clan had fought an unequal

battle, and so they had died; adults, oldsters, chil-

dren, all....

"Goddess, hold them—" she whispered, as she

did at least once each day. Every last member of

Tale'sedrin had died; most had died horribly. Ex-

cept Tarma. She should have died; and unaccount-

ably been left alive.

If you could call it living to have survived with

everything gone that had made life worth having.

Yes, she had been left alive—and utterly, utterly

alone. Left to live with a ruined voice that had once

been the pride of the Clans, with a ravaged body,

and most of all, a shattered heart and mind. There

had been nothing left to sustain her but a driving

will to wreak vengeance on those who had left her

Clanless.

She pulled a brush from an inside pocket of her

coat, and began needlessly grooming Kessira while

the mare ate. The firm strokes across the familiar

chestnut coat were soothing to both of them. She

had been left Clanless, and a Shin'a'in Clanless is

one without purpose in living. Clan is everything to

a Shin'a'in. Only one thing kept her from seeking

oblivion and death-willing herself, that burning need

to revenge her people.

But vengeance and blood-feud were denied the

Shin'a'in—the ordinary Shin'a'in. Else too many of

the people would have gone down on the knives of

their own folk, and to little purpose, for the God-

dess knew Her people and knew their tempers to

be short. Hence, Her law. Only those who were the

Kal'enedral of the Warrior—the Sword Sworn,

outClansmen called them, although the name meant

both "Children of Her Sword" and "Her Sword-

Brothers"—could cry blood-feud and take the trail

of vengeance. That was because of the nature of

their Oath to Her—first to the service of the God-

dess of the New Moon and South Wind, then to the

Clans as a whole, and only after those two to their own

particular Clan. Blood-feud did not serve the Clans

if the feud was between Shin'a'in and Shin'a'in;

keeping the privilege of calling for blood-price in

the hands of those by their very nature devoted to

the welfare of the Shin'a'in as a whole kept interClan

strife to a minimum.

"If it had been you, what would you have chosen,

hmm?" she asked the mare. "Her Oath isn't a light

one." Nor was it without cost—a cost some might

think far too high. Once Sworn, the Kal'enedral

became weapons in Her hand, and not unlike the

sexless, cold steel they wore. Hard, somewhat aloof,

and totally asexual were the Sword Sworn—and

this, too, ensured that their interests remained Hers

and kept them from becoming involved in interClan

rivalry. So it was not the kind of Oath one involved

in a simple feud was likely to even consider taking.

But the slaughter of the Tale'sedrin was not a

matter of private feud or Clan against Clan—this

was a matter of more, even, than personal ven-

geance. Had the brigands been allowed to escape

unpunished, would that not have told other wolf-

heads that the Clans were not invulnerable—would

there not have been another repetition of the slaugh-

ter? That may have been Her reasoning; Tarma

had only known that she was able to find no other

purpose in living, so she had offered her Oath to

the Star-Eyed so that she could pledge her life to

revenge her Clan. An insane plan—sprung out of a

mind that might be going mad with grief.

There were those who thought she was already

mad, who were certain She would accept no such

Oath given by one whose reason was gone. But

much to the amazement of nearly everyone in the

Clan Liha'irden who had succored, healed, and pro-

tected her, that Oath had been accepted. Only the

shamans had been unsurprised.

She had never in her wildest dreaming guessed

what would come of that Oath and that quest for

justice.

Kessira finished the pile of provender, and moved

on to tear hungrily at the lank, sere grasses. Be-

neath the thick coat of winter hair she had grown,

her bones were beginning to show in a way that

Tarma did not in the least like. She left off brush-

ing, and stroked the warm shoulder, and the mare

abandoned her feeding long enough to nuzzle her

rider's arm affectionately.

"Patient one, we shall do better by you, and soon,"

Tarma pledged her. She left the mare to her graz-

ing and went to check on Kethry's mule. That sturdy

beast was capable of getting nourishment from much

coarser material than Kessira, so Tarma had left

him tethered amid a thicket of sweetbark bushes.

He had stripped all within reach of last year's

growth, and was straining against his halter with

his tongue stretched out as far as it would reach for

a tasty morsel just out of his range.

"Greedy pig," she said with a chuckle, and moved

him again, giving him a bit more rope this time,

and leaving his own share of grain and foraged

weeds within reach. Like all his kind he was a

clever beast; smarter than any horse save one

Shin'a'in-bred. It was safe enough to give him plenty

of lead; if he tangled himself he'd untangle himself

just as readily. Nor would he eat to foundering, not

that there was enough browse here to do that. A

good, sturdy, gentle animal, and even-tempered, well

suited to an inexperienced rider like Kethry. She'd

been lucky to find him.

His tearing at the branches shook snow down on

her; with a shiver she brushed it off as her thoughts

turned back to the past. No, she would never have

guessed at the changes wrought in her life-path by

that Oath and her vow of vengeance.

"Jel'enedra, you think too much. It makes you

melancholy."

She recognized the faintly hollow-sounding tenor

at the first word; it was her chief sword-teacher.

This was the first time he'd come to her since the

last bandit had fallen beneath her sword. She had

begun to wonder if her teachers would ever come

back again.

All of them were unforgiving of mistakes, and

quick to chastise—this one more than all the rest

put together. So though he had startled her, though

she had hardly expected his appearance, she took

care not to display it.

"Ah?" she replied, turning slowly to face him.

Unfair that he had used his other-worldly powers

to come on her unawares, but he himself would

have been the first to tell her that life—as she well

knew—was unfair. She would not reveal that she

had not detected his presence until he spoke.

He had called her "younger sister," though, which

was an indication that he was pleased with her for

some reason. "Mostly you tell me I don't think

enough."

Standing in a clear spot amid the bushes was a

man, garbed in fighter's gear of deepest black, and

veiled. The ice-blue eyes, the sable hair, and the

cut of his close-wrapped clothing would have told

most folk that he was, like Tarma, Shin'a'in. The

color of the clothing would have told the more

knowledgeable—since most Shin'a'in preferred a car-

nival brightness in their garments—that he, too,

was Sword Sworn; Sword Sworn by custom wore

only stark black or dark brown. But only one very

sharp-eyed would have noticed that while he stood

amid the snow, he made no imprint upon it. It

seemed that he weighed hardly more than a shadow.

That was scarcely surprising since he had died

long before Tarma was born.

"Thinking to plan is one case; thinking to brood

is another," he replied. "You accomplish nothing

but to increase your sadness. You should be devis-

ing a means of filling your bellies and those of your

jel'suthro'edrin. You cannot reach the Plains if you

do not eat."

He had used the Shin'a'in term for riding beasts

that meant "forever-younger-Clanschildren." Tarma

was dead certain he had picked that term with

utmost precision, to impress upon her that the wel-

fare of Kessira and Kethry's mule Rodi were as

important as her own—more so, since they could

not fend for themselves in this inhospitable place.

"With all respect, teacher, I am ... at a loss.

Once I had a purpose. Now?" She shook her head.

"Now I am certain of nothing. As you once told

me—"

"Li'sa'eer! Turn my own words against me, will

you?" he chided gently. "And have you nothing?"

"My she'enedra. But she is outClan, and strange

to me, for all that the Goddess blessed our oath-

binding with Her own fire. I know her but little.

I—only—"

"What, bright blade?"

"I wish—I wish to go home—" The longing she

felt rose in her throat and made it hard to speak.

"And so? What is there to hinder you?"

"There is," she replied, willing her eyes to stop

stinging, "the matter of money. Ours is nearly gone.

It is a long way to the Plains."

"So? Are you not now of the mercenary calling?"

"Well, unless there be some need for blades

hereabouts—the which I have seen no evidence for,

the only way to reprovision ourselves will be if my

she'enedra can turn her skill in magic to an honor-

able profit. For though I have masters of the best,"

she bowed her head in the little nod of homage a

Shin'a'in gave to a respected elder, "sent by the

Star-Eyed herself, what measure of attainment I

have acquired matters not if there is no market for

it."

"Hai'she'li! You should market that silver tongue,

jel'enedra!" he laughed. "Well, and well. Three things

I have come to tell you, which is why I arrive

out-of-time and not at moonrise. First, that there

will be storm tonight, and you should all shelter,

mounts and riders together. Second, that because of

the storm, we shall not teach you this night, though

you may expect our coming from this day on, every

night that you are not within walls."

He turned as if to leave, and she called out, "And

third?"

"Third?" he replied, looking back at her over his

shoulder. "Third—is that everyone has a past. Ere

you brood over your own, consider another's."

Before she had a chance to respond, he vanished,

melting into the wind.

Wrinkling her nose over that last, cryptic re-

mark, she went to find her she'enedra and partner.

Kethry was hovering over a tiny, nearly smoke-

less fire, skinning a pair of rabbits. Tarma almost

smiled at the frown of concentration she wore; she

was going at the task as if she were being rated on

the results! They were a study in contrasts, she

and her outClan blood-sister. Kethry was sweet-

faced and curvaceous, with masses of curling am-

ber hair and startling green eyes; she would have

looked far more at home in someone's court circle

as a pampered palace mage than she did here, at

their primitive hearth. Or even more to the point,

she would not have looked out of place as someone's

spoiled, indulged wife or concubine; she really

looked nothing at all like any mage Tarma had ever

seen. Tarma, on the other hand, with her hawklike

face, forbidding ice-blue eyes and nearly sexless

body, was hardly the sort of person one would ex-

pect a mage or woman like Kethry to choose as a

partner, much less as a friend. As a hireling,

perhaps—in which case it should have been Tarma

skinning the rabbits, for she looked to have been

specifically designed to endure hardship.

Oddly enough, it was Kethry who had taken to

this trip as if she were the born nomad, and Tarma

who was the one suffering the most from their

circumstances, although that was mainly due to the

unfamiliar weather.

Well, if she had not foreseen that becoming

Kal'enedral meant suddenly acquiring a bevy of

long-dead instructors, this partnership had come as

even more of a surprise. The more so as Tarma had

really not expected to survive the initial confronta-

tion with those who had destroyed her Clan.

"Do not reject aid unlooked-for," her instructor

had said the night before she set foot in the ban-

dit's town. And unlooked-for aid had materialized,

in the form of this unlikely sorceress. Kethry, too,

had her interests in seeing the murderers brought

low, so they had teamed together for the purpose of

doing just that. Together they had accomplished

what neither could have done alone—they had ut-

terly destroyed the brigands to the last man.

And so Tarma had lost her purpose. Now—now

there was only the driving need to get back to the

Plains; to return before the Tale'sedrin were deemed

a dead Clan. Farther than that she could not, would

not think or plan.

Kethry must have sensed Tarma's brooding eyes

on her, for she looked up and beckoned with her

skinning knife.

"Fairly good hunting," Tarma hunched as close

the fire as she could, wishing they dared build

something larger.

"Yes and no. I had to use magic to attract them,

poor things." Kethry shook her head regretfully as

she bundled the offal in the skins and buried the

remains in the snow to freeze hard. Once frozen,

she'd dispose of them away from the camp, to avoid

attracting scavengers. "I felt so guilty, but what

else was I to do? We ate the last of the bread

yesterday, and I didn't want to chance on the hunt-

ing luck of just one of us."

"You do what you have to, Keth. Well, we're able

to live off the land, but Kessira and Rodi can't,"

Tarma replied. "Our grain is almost gone, and we've

still a long way to go to get to the Plains. Keth, we

need money."

"I know."

"And you're the one of us best suited to earning

it. This land is too peaceful for the likes of me to

find a job—except for something involving at least

a one-year contract, and that's something we can't

afford to take the time for. I need to get back to the

Plains as soon as I can if I'm to raise Tale'sedrin's

banner again."

"I know that, too." Kethry's eyes had become

shadowed, the lines around her mouth showed strain.

"And I know that the only city close enough to

serve us is Mornedealth."

And there was no doubt in Tarma's mind that

Kethry would rather have died than set foot in that

city, though she hadn't the vaguest notion why.

Well, this didn't look to be the proper moment to

ask—

"Storm coming; a bad one," she said, changing

the subject. "I'll let the hooved ones forage for as

long as I dare, but by sunset I'll have to bring them

into camp. Our best bet is going to be to shelter all

together because I don't think a fire is going to

survive the blow."

"I wish I knew where you get your information,"

Kethry replied, frown smoothing into a wry half-

smile. "You certainly have me beat at weather-

witching."

"Call it Shin'a'in intuition," Tarma shrugged,

wishing she knew whether it was permitted to an

outland she'enedra—who was a magician to boot—to

know of the veiled ones. Would they object? Tarma

had no notion, and wasn't prepared to risk it. "Think

you can get our dinner cooked before the storm gets

here?"

"I may be able to do better than that, if I can

remember the spells." The mage disjointed the rab-

bits, and spitted the carcasses on twigs over the

fire. She stripped off her leather gloves, flexed her

bare fingers, then held her hands over the tiny fire

and began whispering under her breath. Her eyes

were half-slitted with concentration and there was

a faint line between her eyebrows. As Tarma

watched, fascinated, the fire and their dinner were

enclosed in a transparent shell of glowing gold mist.

"Very pretty; what's it good for?" Tarma asked

when she took her hands away.

"Well, for one thing, I've cut off the wind; for

another, the shield is concentrating the heat and

the meat will cook faster now."

"And what's it costing you?" Tarma had been in

Kethry's company long enough now to know that

magic always had a price. And in Kethry's case,

that price was usually taken out of the resources of

the spell-caster.

Kethry smiled at her accusing tone. "Nowhere

Mercedes Lackey - Vows And Honor 01 - The Oathbound

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