Mercedes Lackey - Kerowyn's Ride

“They aren’t bandits, girl,” Kethry interrupted, her brow creased with a frown. “At least, that mage isn’t. Whoever, whatever he is, he’s good, he hid his presence from me right up to the time of the attack—and he wants a virgin girl for something. I would guess he was hired, and the girl is his price for this night’s work. I suspect your father made one enemy too many, and that enemy has decided to extract a complete revenge and end him and his line. Or else—” She gave Kero a sharp glance, and didn’t complete her surmise .

There’s something she knows that I don’t, Kero realized suddenly. Something she isn’t going to tell me. “I still need a weapon, Grandmother,” she persisted. “And Lordan—”

“Lordan will survive until I get there,” the sorceress said abruptly, turning so quickly that Kero’s heart jumped. “Trust me on that. And as for your going after those bandits—what makes you think you can do anything? You aren’t trained in magery or weaponry.”

“I have to try,” Kero said stubbornly. “I have to. There’s no one else, and you told me what Dierna’s uncle—”

“Why you?” Kethry repeated.

“Why not me?” Kero stood up, as tall as her shaking knees were permitting, and raised her chin defiantly. “Why not me—if you’ll help, I can do it. You did more with less when you were my age.”

She was all worked up and ready to say a lot more, but to her surprise, Kethry nodded. “There’s truth in that, child,” her grandmother said softly. “More truth than you know. And now I know who it is I’ve been waiting for all these years....”

Waiting? For—

“Stay there.” The sorceress crossed the room to one of the shadow-shrouded corners, and bent over a chest, opening it with a creak of iron hinges.

She turned with a long, slender shape in her hands, and as she moved into the light again, Kerowyn could see that it was a sword. Not a very impressive blade; the hilt was plain leather-wrapped metal, and the sheath was just as plain.

“Here,” Kethry said, holding it out to her. “Let’s see if she’ll take to you.”

She ? Kero reached forward to take the hilt without thinking, and as she clasped it, Kethry pulled away the sheath.

For a moment, no more than a breath, writing blazed up on the blade itself, as fiery and white-hot as if the sword had just come from the heart of a forge. Kero gasped, but Kethry only nodded, unsurprised.

“She wants you all right, child. You’re the only one of my daughters or granddaughters she’s spoken for. She’s yours now—or you’re hers.” Kethry slid the sheath back over the now perfectly ordinary looking blade. “Take your pick. When she speaks, I don’t think anybody denies her.”

“What did it say?” Kero asked, aware of—something—in the back of her mind. A testing—but distracted by what her grandmother had just said. Granddaughters? Daughters? I thought Mother —

“Woman’s Need calls me, as Woman’s Need made me. Her Need will I answer as my maker bade me. ” Kethry tilted her head sideways to fix Kero with a penetrating stare. “This is my sword Need, Granddaughter—the sword I wore for most of my life. Your sword, now; for well or ill, you’re bound to her like you’ll never be bound to another living thing, man or woman. But I don’t think you’ll rue the bargain.”

Kerowyn almost dropped the sword in her surprise. This was Kethry’s famous blade? Even she had heard stories about this sword. “B-b-but I don’t know how to—”

“You won’t have to,” Kethry said confidently. “She’ll take care of you. At least in this instance she will—well, you’ll see.”

Kero managed to stop gaping and slid the sheath onto her belt, removing the old blade she’d taken from Lordan’s armory. “Grandmother,” she said slowly, looking from the sword to Kethry and back again. “A few moments ago you wanted me to go back home. Now you’ve given me this —and you’re all but throwing me after those raiders. Why?”

Kethry clasped her hands behind her, and stepped back a few paces, looking Kero up and down with a distinctly satisfied expression. “I was testing you,” she said calmly. “What you’re about to do is going to change your life forever. Oh, don’t look so skeptical; I know what I’m talking about. It will. And the road you’re about to take is not for the fainthearted. But you seem to be made of stronger stuff than poor Lenore.” Kethry nodded, slowly. “Yes indeed. I think you’ll do.”

What happened ?

One moment, Kero was standing in the middle of Kethry’s Tower, staring at her grandmother. Then there was a moment of dizziness, as if the floor had dropped out from beneath her, and she found herself here, at the foot of the stairs.

She blinked, and the moonlit meadow wavered a little in front of her eyes. Dizzy—blessed Trine— She staggered two steps forward, her hand outstretched in front of her, stopping herself on Verenna’s shoulder. The mare snorted in alarm and jumped, as if she hadn’t known Kero was there until that moment.

The dizziness vanished. She looked up suddenly, only to see the light in the Tower blink out, leaving it entirely dark.

“Gods.” She stared up at the Tower, but could make nothing out in the shadows—and something told her that if she climbed all the way back up again, she could pound her fists bloody on that door and never raise a soul. She’d gotten all the answer she was going to get, at least for now.

She looked back down at the sword hanging from her belt. It was not the one she’d gotten from the Keep. It was the one she remembered her grandmother giving her.

She stroked the mare’s neck to calm her. “I think I’ve been dismissed, Verenna,” she said quietly. “I didn’t get the answer I came for—”

But maybe I got a better one, she thought slowly. And at any rate, it’s the only one I’m going to get.

She clenched her jaw, and mounted before she could turn coward. “Come on, girl,” she said to the mare, turning her back down the trail, the way they had come. “We’ve got a hard ride in front of us.”

Tarma shena Tale’sedrin, Kal’enedral warrior of the Shin’a’in Clan of the Hawk, urged her tall gray warsteed a little faster up the backtrail to Kethry’s Tower. The mare snorted an objection as she moved from an amble into a running walk; she didn’t like taking the back way at night, and she didn’t like to be rushed at the end of a journey.

“You’re going to like what’s coming up even less, old girl,” Tarma told the mare, patting her coarse-coated neck. “You only think you’re getting a warm stable and a rest. I’m afraid we’re going to be turning right back around as soon as we find out what my partner’s planning.”

:So you’re going to follow the girl?: asked a rough voice as familiar to her as her own in the back of her mind, a voice carrying overtones of approval. :Good. I like her; I’d have followed her alone if you’d refused. She has courage.:

“Oh, that, certainly. Lots of guts, not too many brains, but that’s the way of things when you’re young,” Tarma retorted to the shaggy, calf-sized beast trotting along with its head level with her stirrup.

The kyree turned its lupine head up so that his great glowing eyes met hers, and blinked. :Exactly. Reminds me very much of a certain barbarian Shin’a’in I knew many years ago.:

“ Barbarian ?” Tarma exclaimed, as her mare’s ears swiveled back with surprise. “Who’s calling who a barbarian? You’re the one who eats his meat raw. And fish-blessed Goddess, that’s a vile thought.”