Mercedes Lackey - Oathbound

She went on, coming at last around behind the statue of the rain-god that stood at the far end of the room. The shadows were even deeper here; she slowed her pace to inch along the stuccoed wall, one hand feeling before her.

Then her hand encountered emptiness.

:A door.:

:I can tell that! A door to where?:

:To where the blood-smell is.:

:Then we take it. I'm going on ahead; you go back and fetch Kethry.:

Now she was alone in pitchy darkness, with only the rough brick wall of the corridor as a guide, and the faint sound of her footsteps bouncing off the walls to tell her that it was a corridor. She held back impatience and continued to feel her way with extreme caution -- until once again her hand encountered open air.

She was suddenly awash with light, frozen by it, surrounded by it on all sides. She would have been prepared for any attack but this, which left her blind and helpless, with tears of pain blurring what little vision she had. She went automatically into a defensive crouch, pulling her blade over her head with both hands from the sheath on her back; only to hear a laugh like a dozen brass bells from some point above her head.

"Little warrior," the voice said caressingly. "I have so longed for the day when we might meet again."

"I can't say I feel the same about you," Tarma replied after a bit, trying to locate the demon by sound alone. "I suppose it's too much to expect you to stand and fight me honorably?" She could see nothing but angry red light, like flame, but without the heat; perhaps the light was a little brighter above and just in front of her. She tried to will her eyes to work, but they remained dazzled, with lances of pain shooting into her skull every time she blinked. There was a smell of blood and sex and something more that she couldn't quite identify. Her heart was racing wildly with fear, but she was determined not to let him see how helpless she felt.

"Honor is for fools -- and I may have been a fool in the past, but I am no longer quite so gullible. No, little warrior, I shall not stand and fight you. I shall not fight you at all. I shall simply -- put you to sleep."

A sickly sweet aroma began to weave around her, and Tarma recognized it after a moment as black tran-dust; the most powerful narcotic she knew of. She had only that moment of recognition before she felt her control over herself suddenly melt away; her entire body went numb in a single breath, and she fell face down on the floor, mind and body alike paralyzed, sword falling from a hand that could no longer hold it.

And now that you cannot fight me, said a silky voice in her mind, I shall make of you what I will... and somewhat more to my taste than the ice-creature you are now. And this time your Goddess shall not be able to help you. I am nearly a god now myself, and the gods are forbidden to war upon other gods.

The last thing she heard was his laughter, like bronze bells slightly out of tune with one another.

* * *

Kethry fretted inwardly, counting down the moments until she was supposed to try the gate. This was the hardest part, for certain; the waiting. Anything else she could manage with equanimity. Waiting brought out the worst fears, roused her imagination to a fever pitch. The plan was for Tarma and Warrl to check the courtyard, then unlock the gates for her. They would precede her into the temple as well. They were to meet in the sanctuary, after Tarma had declared it free of physical hazards.

It was a plan Kethry found herself misliking more with every passing moment. They were a team; it went against the grain to work separately. Granted, Warrl was with Tarma; granted that she was something of a handicap in a skulk-and-hide situation like this -- still, Kethry couldn't help thinking that she'd be able to detect dangers neither of the other two would notice. More than that -- her place was with Tarma, not waiting in the wings. Now she began to wish she hadn't told the Shin'a'in that she intended to investigate this place. If she'd kept her mouth shut, she could have done this properly, by daylight, perhaps. Finally her impatience became too much; she felt her way along the wall to the wooden gates, and pushed very slightly on one of them.

It moved.

Tarma had succeeded in this much, anyway; the gates were now unbarred.

She pushed a little harder, slowly, carefully. The gate swung open just enough for her to squeeze herself through, scraping herself on the wooden bulwarks both fore and aft as she did so.

Before her lay the courtyard, mostly open ground.

Remembering all Tarma had taught her, she crouched as low as she could, waited until the moon passed behind a cloud, and sprinted for the shelter of the dried-up fountain.

Under the rim, in shadows, she looked around; watching not for objects, but for movement, any movement. But there was no movement, anomalous or otherwise. She crawled under the rim until she lay hidden on the side facing the temple doors.

She watched, but saw nothing; she listened, but heard only crickets and toads. She waited, aching from the strain of holding herself still in such an awkward position, until the moon again went behind a cloud.

She sprinted for the temple doors, flinging herself against the wall of the temple behind a pillar as soon as she reached them. It was then that she realized that there had been something very anomalous at the gate.

The aged gates, allegedly locked for fifteen years, had opened smoothly and without a sound -- as if they had been oiled and put into working order within the past several days.

Something was very wrong.

A shadow bulked in front of her, and she started with alarm; she pulled the sword in a defensive move before she realized that her "enemy" was Warrl.

He reached for her arm and his teeth closed gently on her tunic; he tugged at her sleeve. That meant Tarma wanted her.

"You didn't meet with anything?" Kethry whispered.

Warrl snorted. I think that they are all asleep or blind. A cub could have penetrated this place.

This was too easy; all her instincts were in an uproar. Too easy by far. She suddenly realized what their easy access to this place meant. This was a trap!

And now Kethry felt a shrill alarm course through her every nerve -- a double alarm. Need was alerting her to a woman in the deadliest danger, and very nearby --

-- and the bond of she'enedran was resonating with soul-deep threat to her blood-sister. Tarma was in trouble.

As if to confirm her fears, Warrl threw up his head and voiced his battle-cry, and charged within, leaving Kethry behind.

And given the urgency of Need's pull, that could only mean one thing.

Thalhkarsh was here -- and he had the Sworn One at his nonexistent mercy.

The time for subterfuge was over.

Kethry pulled her ensorcelled blade with her left hand, and caused a blue-green witchlight to dance before her with a gesture from her right; then kicked open the doors of the temple and flung herself frantically through them. She landed hard against the dingy white-plastered wall of a tiny, cobwebbed anteroom, bruising her shoulder; and found herself staring foolishly at an empty chamber.

Another door stood in the opposite wall, slightly ajar. She inched along the wall and eased it open with the tip of her blade. The witchlight showed nothing beyond it but a brick-walled tunnel that led deeper into the temple proper. Warrl must already have run down this way.

She moved stealthily through the door, and into the corridor, praying to find Tarma, and soon. The internal alerts of both her blade and her blood-bond were nigh-unbearable, and she hardly dared contemplate what that meant to Tarma's well-being.

But the corridor twisted and turned like a kadessarun, seemingly without end. With every new corner she expected to find something -- but every time she rounded a corner she saw only another long, dust-choked extension of the corridor behind her. The dust showed no tracks at all, not even Warrl's. Could she have somehow come the wrong way? But there were only two directions to choose -- forward, or back the way she had come. Back she would never go; that left only forward. And forward was yard after yard of blank-walled corridor, with never a door or a break of any kind. She slunk on and on in a kind of nightmarish entrancement in which she lost all track of time; there was only the endlessly turning corridor before her and the cry for help within her. Nothing else seemed of any import at all. As the urgings of her geas-blade Need and the bond that tied her to Tarma grew more and more frantic, she was close to being driven nearly mad with fear and frustration. She was being distracted; so successfully in fact, that it wasn't until she'd wasted far too much precious time trying to thread the maze that she realized what it must be --