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 r
unning 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,
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
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 hal
ter 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.