The Oathbound (35 page)

But it was Tarma transformed; she wore the face and body the demon had given her when he had first tried to seduce her to his cause. Though smaller and far frailer, she was still recognizably herself—but with all her angularities softened, her harshness made silken, her flaws turned to beauty. Her clothing was in rags, and she had the bruises and the look of a woman who has been passed from one brutal rape to another. That was bad enough, but that was not what had struck Kethry like a dagger to the heart; it was the absence of any mind or sense in Tarma’s blank blue eyes.

Tarma had survived rape before; were she still aware and in charge of herself, she would still be fighting. Mere brutal use would not have forced her mind from her, not when the slaughter of her entire Clan as well as her own abuse had failed to do that when she was a young woman and far more innocent than she was now. No—this
had
to be the work of the demon. Knowing he would be unable to break her spirit, Thalhkarsh had stolen Tarma’s mind; stolen her mind or somehow forced her soul out of her body.

The demon, wearing his form of a tall, beautiful human male, was the first to recover from surprise at the interruption.

“Amusing,” he said, not appearing at all amused. “I had thought the skill of those I had paid would more than equal yours, even with that puny blade to augment it. It appears that I was mistaken.”

Before Kethry could make a move, he had seized Tarma, and pulled her before him—not as a shield, but with evident threat.

“Put up your blade, sorceress,” he purred bra zenly, “or I tear her limb from limb.”

Kethry knew he was not bluffing, and Need clattered to the floor from her nerveless hand.

He laughed, a hideous howl of triumph. “You disappoint me, my enemy! You have made my conquest too easy!” He stood up and tossed Tarma aside; she fell to the pile of cushions with the limpness of a lifeless doll, not even attempting to break her own fall. “Come forth, my little toy—” he continued, turning his back on his fallen victim and beckoning to someone lurking behind the platform.

From out of the shadows among the hangings came a woman, and when she stepped far enough into the light that Kethry was able to get a good look at her, the sorceress reeled as if she had been struck. It couldn’t be—

The woman was the twin of an image she herself had once worn—and that she had placed on the unconscious form of the marauding bandit Lastel Longknife by way of appropriate punishment for the women and girls he had used and murdered. It was an image she had never expected to see again; she had assumed the bandit would have been treated with brutality equaling his own by what was left of his fellows. By all rights, he should have been dead—long dead.

“I think the bitch recognizes me,
my lord,”
the dulcet voice said, heavy irony in the title of subservience. Platinum hair was pushed back from amethyst eyes with a graceful but impatient hand.

“You never expected to see me again, did you?” Her eyes blazed with helpless anger. “May every god damn you for what you did to me, woman. Death would have been better than the misery this
shape
put me through! If it hadn’t been for a forgotten sword and an untied horse—”

She came closer, hands crooked into claws. “I’ve dreamed of having you in my hands every night since, gods—but
not like this.”
Her eyes betrayed that she was walking a very thin thread of sanity. “What you did to me was bad enough—but being trapped in this prison of a whore’s carcass is more than I can bear—it’s worse than Hell, it‘s—”

She turned away, clenching her hands so tightly that the knuckles popped. After a moment of internal struggle she regained control over herself, and turned to the demon. “Well, since it was my tales to the priests that lured them here, the time has come for you to keep
your
side of the bargain.”

“You wish to lose your current form? A pity—I had thought you had come to enjoy my attentions.”

The woman colored; Kethry was baffled. She had only placed the
illusion
of being female on the bandit, but this—this was a real woman! Mage-sight showed only exactly what stood before her in normal-sight, not the bandit of the desert hills!

“Damn you,” she snarled. “Oh, gods, for a demon-slaying blade! Yes, you
bastard,
I enjoy it! As you very well know, squirming like a vile snake inside my head! You’ve made me your slave as well as your puppet; you’ve addicted me to you, and you revel in my misery—you cursed me far worse than ever she did. And now, damn you, I want free of it and you and all else besides! I’ve paid my part of the bargain. Now you live up to your side!”

Thalhkarsh smiled cruelly. “Very well, my pretty little toy—go and take her lovely throat in both your hands, and I shall free you of that body with her death.”

One of the acolytes scuttled around behind Kethry and seized her arms, pinioning them behind her back. He needn’t have bothered; she was so in shock she couldn’t have moved if the ceiling had begun to fall in on them. The slender beauty approached, stark, bitter hatred in her eyes, and seized Kethry’s throat.

A howl echoed from behind her; a hurtling black shape leaped over her straight at the demon. It was Warrl—who evidently had met the same kind of delaying tactics as Kethry had. Now he had broken free of them, and he was in a killing rage.
This
time Thalhkarsh took no chances with Warrl; from his upraised hands came double bolts of crimson lightning. Warrl was hit squarely in midair by both of them. He shrieked horribly, transfixed six feet above the floor, caught and held in midleap. He writhed once, shrieked again—then went limp. The aura of the demon’s magic faded; the body of the kyree dropped to the ground like a shot bird, and did not move again.

Lastel was not in the least distracted by this; she tightened her hands around Kethry’s neck. Kethry struggled belatedly to free herself, managing to bring her heel down on the foot of the acolyte behind her, catching him squarely in the instep so that he yowled and dropped to the floor, clutching his ruined foot.

But even when her arms were free, she was powerless against the bandit; she scratched at Lastel’s hands and reached for her eyes with crooked fingers—uselessly. Her own hands would not respond; her lungs screamed for air, and she began to black out.

The demon laughed, and again raised his hands; Kethry felt as if she’d been plunged into the heart of a fire. Crackling energies surrounded both of them; her legs gave beneath her and it was only when a new acolyte caught her arms and held her up that she remained erect. With narrowing vision she stared into Lastel’s pale eyes, unable to look away—

And suddenly she found herself staring down into her own face, with her own neck between her hands! Kethry released her grip with a cry of disbelief; stared down at at her hands, at herself, horror written plain on her own face. Lastel stared up at her out of her own eyes, hatred and black despair making a twisted mask of her face.

The demon laughed at both of them, cruel enjoyment plain in his tone. He eased off the monstrous pile of silks and stalked proudly toward them, sweeping the bandit up onto her feet and into his arms as he came to stand over Kethry, who had sagged to her knees in shock.

“I promised to change your form, fool—I did not promise into what image!” he chortled. “And you, witch—I have your rightful body in my keeping now—and you will never, never reverse a spell to which I and I alone hold the key!”

He gestured at his acolyte, who dropped his hold on Kethry-now-Lastel and seized Lastel-now-Kethry’s arms instead, hauling her roughly to her feet.

“My foolish sorceress, my equally foolish toy, how easy it is to manipulate you! Little toy, did you truly think that I would release you when you take such delight in my attentions? That I would allow such a potent source of misery out of my possession? As for you, dear enemy—I have only begun to take my revenge upon you. I shall leave you alive, and in full possession of your senses—unlike your sword-sister. No doubt you wonder what I have done with her? I have wiped her mind clean; in time I shall implant my teachings in her, so that I shall have an acolyte of complete obedience and complete devotion. It was a pity that I could not force her to suffer as you shall, but her will combined with her link to her chosen goddess was far too strong to trifle with. But now that her mind is gone, the link has gone with it, and she will be mine for so long as I care to keep her.”

Kethry was overwhelmed with agony and despair; she stifled a moan with difficulty. She felt tears burning her eyes and coursing down her cheeks; her vision was blurred by them. The demon smiled at the sight.

“As for you, you will be as potent a source of pain as my little toy is; know that you will feed my power with your grief and anguish. Know that your blood-sister will be my plaything, willingly suffering because I order it. Know all this, and know that you are helpless to prevent any of it! As for this—”

He prodded the body of Warrl with one toe. His smile spread even wider as she tried involuntarily to reach out, only to have the acolytes hold her arms back.

“I think that I shall find something suitable to use it for. Shall I have it mounted, or—yes. The fur is quite good; quite soft and unusual. I think I shall have it tanned—and it shall be your only bed, my enemy!”

He laughed, as Kethry struggled in the arms of his acolytes, stomach twisted and mind torn nearly in shreds by her grief and hatred of him. She subsided only when they threatened to wrench her arms out of their sockets, and hung limply in their grasp, panting with frustrated rage and weeping soundlessly.

“Take her, and take her friend. Put them in the place I prepared for them,” Thalhkarsh ordered with a lift of one eyebrow. “And take
that
and
that
as well,” he indicated the body of Warrl and Kethry’s sword Need. “Put them where she can see them until I decide what to do with them. Perhaps, little toy, I shall give the blade to you.”

Lastel’s hands clenched and unclenched as he attempted to control himself. “Do it, damn you! If you do, I’ll use it on you, you
bastard!”

“How kind of you to warn me, then. But come— you wear a new body now, and I wish to see how it differs from the old—don’t you?”

Kethry’s last sight of the demon was as he swept Lastel up onto the platform, then she and Tarma were hustled down another brick-lined corridor, and shoved roughly into a makeshift cage that took up the back half of a stone-lined storage room. Warrl’s carcass and Need were both dumped unceremoniously on the slate table in front of the cage door.

The room lacked windows entirely, and had only the one door now shut and (from the sounds that had come after her guards had shut it), locked. Light came from a single torch in a holder near the door. The cage was made of crudely-forged iron bars welded across the entire room, with an equally crude door of similar bars that had been padlocked closed. There was nothing whatsoever in the cage; she and Tarma had only what they were wearing, which in Tarma’s case was little more than rags, and in hers, the simple shift and breeches Lastel had been wearing. Though she searched, she found no weapons at all.

Tarma sat blank-eyed in the corner of the cage where she’d been left, rocking back and forth and humming tunelessly to herself. The only thing that the demon hadn’t changed was her voice; still the ruined parody of what it had been before the slaughter of her Clan.

Kethry went to her and knelt on the cold stone at her side. “Tarma?” she asked, taking her
she‘enedra’s
hand in hers and staring into those blank blue eyes.

She got no response for a moment, then the eyes seemed to see her. One hand crept up, and Tarma inserted the tip of her index finger into her mouth.

“Tarma?” the Shin‘a’in echoed ingenuously. And that was all of intelligence that Kethry could coax from her; within moments her eyes had gone blank again, and she was back to her rocking and tuneless humming.

Kethry looked from the mindless Tarma to the body of the kyree and back again, slow tears etching their way down her cheeks.

“My god, my god—” she wept, “Oh, Tarma, you were right! We should have gone for help.”

She tried to take her oathkin in her arms, but it was like holding a stiff, wooden doll.

“If I hadn’t been so
damned
sure of myself—if I hadn’t been so determined to prove you were smothering me—it’s all my fault, it’s
all
my fault! What have I done? What has my pride done to you?”

And Tarma rocked and crooned, oblivious to everything around her, while she wept with absolute despair.

Y
ou lied to me, you bastard!“ Green eyes blazed passionately with anger.

“You didn’t listen carefully enough,” Thalhkarsh replied to the amber-haired hellion whom he had backed into a corner of his “couch.” “I said I would change your form; I never said
what
I would change it into.”

“You never had any intention of changing me back to a man!” Lastel choked, sagging to the padded platform, almost incoherent with rage.

“Quite right.” The demon grinned maliciously as he sat himself cross-legged on the padded platform, carefully positioning himself so as to make escape impossible. “Your emotions are strong; you are a potent source of power for me, and an ever-renewable source. I had no intention of letting you free of me while I still need you.” He arranged himself more comfortably with the aid of a cushion or two; he had Lastel neatly pinned, and his otherworldly strength and speed would enable him to counter any move the woman made.

“Then
when?”

“When shall I release you? Fool, don’t you
ever
think past the immediate moment?” For once the molten-bronze face lost its mocking expression; the glowing red-gold eyes looked frustrated. “Why should you
want
release? What would you do if I gave you back your previous form—where would you go? Back to your wastelands, back to misery, back to petty theft? Back to a life with every man’s hand against you, having to hide like a desert rat? Is that what you
want?”