The Oathbound (15 page)

“I think so. Now what was the business about a Name?”

“The caliber of youngling you will attract will depend on the reputation you and Tarma have among the Clans. And right now—to be frank, you will only attract those with little to lose. Not the kind of youngling I would hope to rebuild a Clan with, if
I
were rebuilding Tale‘sedrin.”

“The part about income was clear enough,” Kethry said after a long moment of brooding. “We—we’d either have to sell some of the herd at a loss, or starve.”

“Are you in condition to hear advice, the pair of you?”

“I think so,” said Tarma.

“Leave the Clans; leave the Plains. There is nothing for you here, you are wasting your abilities and you are wasting away of boredom. I think there is something that both of you wish to do—and I also think that neither of you has broached the subject for fear of hurting the other’s feelings.”

“I ...” Kethry faltered. “Well, there’s two things, really. Since I’ve vowed myself to rebuilding Tale‘s-edrin—that needs a man, I’m afraid. I’ll grant you that I could just go about taking lovers but ... I want something more than that, I want to care for the father of any children I might have. And frankly, most of the men here are terribly alien to me.”

“Understandable,” the Shaman nodded. “Laudable, in fact. The Clan law holds that you, your
she‘enedra,
and your children would comprise a true Clan-seed, but I think everyone would be happier if you chose a man as a long-term partner-mate, and one with whom you have more in common than one of us. And the other?”

“If I ever manage to get myself to the stage of Adept, it’s more-or-less expected of a White Winds sorceress that she start a branch of the school. But to do that, to attract pupils, I’d need two things. A reputation, and money.”

“So again, we come to those two things, as important to you as to the Clan.”

“Well that’s odd, that you’ve been thinking of starting a school, because I’ve been playing with the same notion,” Tarma said in surprise. “I’ve been thinking I enjoyed teaching Justin and Ikan so much that it would be no bad thing to have a school of my own, one that teaches something besides swordwork.”

“Teach the heart as well as the mind and body?” the Shaman smiled. “Those are praiseworthy goals, children, and not incompatible with rebuilding Tale‘sedrin. Let me make you this proposition; for a fee, Liha’irden will continue to raise and tend your herds—I think a tithe of the yearlings would be sufficient. Do you go out before the snows close us in and see if you cannot raise both the reputation and the gold to build your schools and your Clan. If you do not succeed, you may always return here, and we will rebuild the harder way, but if you do, well, the Clan is where the people are; there is no reason why Tale‘sedrin should not first ride in outClan lands until the children are old enough to come raise the banner themselves. Will that satisfy your hungers?”

“Aye, and then some!” Tarma spoke for both of them, while Kethry nodded, more excitement in her eyes than had been there for weeks.

Kessira and Rodi remained behind with the herds when they left two weeks later. Now that they were to pursue their avocation of mercenary in earnest, they rode a matched pair of the famed Shin‘a’in battlesteeds; horses they had picked out and had been training with since spring.

Battlesteeds were the result of a breeding program that had been going on for as long as the Shin‘a’in had existed as nomadic horsebreeders. Unlike most horsebreeding programs, the Shin‘a’in had not been interested in looks, speed, or conformation. They had bred for intelligence, above all else—and after intelligence, agility, strength, and endurance. The battlesteeds were the highly successful result.

Both horses they now rode were mottled gray; they had thick necks and huge, ugly heads with broad foreheads. They looked like unpolished statues of rough granite, and were nearly as tough. They could live very handily on forage even a mule would reject; they could travel sunrise to sunset at a ground-devouring lope that was something like a wolfs tireless tracking-pace. They could be trusted with an infant, but would kill on signal or on a perceived threat. They were more intelligent than any horse Kethry had ever seen—more intelligent than a mule, even. In their ability to obey and to reason they more resembled a highly trained dog than a horse, for they could actually work out a simple problem on their own.

This was why Shin‘a’in battlesteeds were so famed—and why the Clansfolk guarded them with their very lives. Between their intelligence and the training they received, battlesteeds were nearly the equal partners of those who rode them in a fight. It was in no small part due to the battlesteeds that the Shin‘a’in had remained free and the Dhorisha Plains unconquered.

But they were rare; a mare would drop no more than four or five foals in a lifetime. So no matter how tempting the price offered, no battlesteed would ever be found in the hands of anyone but a Shin‘a’in —or one who was pledged blood-sib to a Shin‘a’in.

These horses had been undergoing a strenuous course of training for the past four years, and had just been ready this spring to accept permanent riders. They were trained to fight either on their own or with a rider—something Kethry was grateful for, since she was
nothing
like the kind of rider Tarma was. Tarma could stick to Hellsbane’s back like a burr on a sheep; Kethry usually lost her seat within the first few minutes of a fight. But no matter; Ironheart would defend her quite as readily on the ground—and on the ground Kethry could work her magics without distraction.

Both battlesteeds were mares; mares could be depended on to keep their heads no matter what the provocation, and besides, it was a peculiarity of battlesteeds that they tended to throw ten or fifteen fillies to every colt. That meant colts were never gelded—and never left the Plains.

This time when Tarma left the Liha‘irden encampment, it was with every living soul in it outside to bid her farewell. The weather was perfect; crisp and cool without being too cold. The sky was cloudless, and there was a light frost on the ground.

“No regrets?” Kethry said in an undertone as she tightened Ironheart’s girth.

“Not many,” Tarma replied, squinting into the thin sunlight, then mounting with an absentminded ease Kethry envied. “Certainly not enough to worry about.”

Kethry scrambled into her own saddle—Ironheart was nearly sixteen hands high, the tallest beast she’d ever ridden—and settled her robes about herself.

“You have some, though?” she persisted.

“I just wish I knew this was the right course we’re taking ... I guess,” Tarma laughed at herself, “I guess I’m looking for another omen.”

“Lady Bright, haven’t you had
enough—”
Kethry was interrupted by a scream from overhead.

The Shin‘a’in about them murmured in excitement and pointed—for there, overhead, was a vorcel-hawk. It might have been the same one that had landed on Kethry’s arm when Tarma had been challenged; it was certainly big enough. This time, however, it showed no inclination to land. Instead, it circled the encampment overhead, three times. Then it sailed majestically away northward, the very direction they had been intending to take.

As it vanished into the ice-blue sky, Kethry tugged her partner’s sleeve to get her attention.

“Do me a favor, hmm?” she said in a voice that shook a trifle.
“Stop asking for bloody omens!”

 

“Why I ever let you talk me into this—” Tarma stared about them uneasily. “This place is even weirder than they claim!”

They were deep into the Pelagir Hills—the
true
Pelagirs. There was a track they were following; dry-paved, it rang under their mares’ hooves, and it led ever deeper into the thickly forested hills and was arrow-flight straight. To either side of them lay the landscape of dreams... or maybe nightmare.

The grass was the wrong color for fall. It should have been frost-seared and browning; instead it was a lush and juicy green. The air was warm; this was fall, it should have been cool, but it felt like summer, it smelled like summer. There were even flowers. Tarma disliked and distrusted this false, magic-born summer. It just wasn’t
right.

The other plants besides the grass—well, some were normal (or at least they seemed normal), but others were not. Tarma had seen plants whose leaves had snapped shut on unwary insects, flowers whose blooms glowed when the moon rose, and thorny vines whose thorns dripped some unnamable liquid. She didn’t know if they were hazardous, but she wasn’t about to take a chance; not after she saw the bones and skulls of small animals littering the ground beneath a dead tree laden with such vines.

The trees didn’t bear thinking about, much. The least odd of them were as twisted and deformed as if they’d grown in a place of constant heavy winds. The others ...

Well, there was the grove they’d passed of lacy things that sang softly to themselves in childlike voices. And the ones that pulled away from them as they passed, or worse, actually reached out to touch them, feeling them like blind and curious old women. And the sapling that had torn up its roots and shuffled away last night when Tarma thought about how nice a fire would feel ...

And by no means least, the ones like they’d spent the night in (though only after Kethry repeatedly assured her nervous partner that it was perfectly harmless). It had been hut-sized and hut-shaped, with only a thatch of green on the “roof”—and hollow. And inside had been odd protrusions that resembled stools, a table, and bed-platforms to a degree that was positively frightening. A lovely little trap it would have made—Tarma slept restlessly that night, dreaming about the “door” growing closed and trapping them inside, like those poor bugs the flowers had trapped.

“I’m at the stage where I could use a familiar,” Kethry replied, “I’ve explained all this before. Besides, a familiar will be able to take some of the burden of night-watch off both of us, particularly if I can manage to call a
kyree.”

Tarma sighed.

“It’s only fair.
I
came with you to the Plains. I took a battlesteed at your insistence.”

“Agreed. But I don’t have to like this place. Are you sure there’s anything here you can call? We haven’t seen so much as a mouse or a sparrow since things started looking weird.”

“That’s because they don’t want you to see them. Relax, we’re going to stop soon; we’re almost where I wanted to go.”

“How can you tell, if you’ve never been here?”

“You’ll see.”

Sure enough, Tarma
did
see. The paved road came to a dead end; at the end it widened out into a flat, featureless circle some fifty paces in diameter.

The paved area was surrounded by yet another kind of tree, some sort of evergreen with thin, tangled branches that started a bit less than knee-high and continued straight up so that the trees were like green columns reaching to the sky. They had grown so closely together that it would have been nearly impossible for anything to force its way between them. That meant there was only one way for anything to get into the circle—via the road.

“Now what?”

“Find someplace comfortable and make yourself a camp wherever you feel safest—although I can guarantee that as long as you stay inside the trees you’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Myself? What about you?”

“Oh, I’ll be here, but I’ll be busy. The process of calling a familiar is rather involved and takes a long time.” Kethry dismounted in the exact center of the pavement and began unloading her saddle-bags from Ironheart’s back.

“How long is ‘a long time’?” The paved area really took up only about half of the circular clearing. The rest was grass and scattered boulders, a green and lumpy rim surrounding the smooth gray pavement. There was plenty of windfall lying around the grassy area, most of it probably good and dry, dry enough to make a fire. And there was a nice little nook at the back of the circle, a cluster of boulders that would make a good firepit. Somehow Tarma didn’t want even the slightest chance of fire escaping from her. Not here. Not after that walking sapling; no telling what its mother might think about fire, or the makers of fire.

“Until sunset tomorrow night.”

“What
?
”

“I told you, it’s very complicated. Surely you can find something to do with yourself ...”

“Well, I’m going to have to, aren’t I? I’m certainly not going to leave you alone out here.”

Kethry didn’t bother to reply with anything more than an amused smile, and began setting up her spell-casting equipment. Tarma, grumbling, took both mares over to the side of the paved area and gave them the command to stay on the grass, unsaddled and unharnessed them, and began grooming them to within an inch of their lives.

When she slipped a look over at her partner, Kethry was already seated within a sketched-in circle, a tiny brazier emitting a spicy-scented smoke beside her. Her eyes were closed and from the way her lips were moving she was chanting. Tarma sighed with resignation, and hauled the tack over to the area where she intended to camp.