Mercedes Lackey - Oathbound

Now she felt pain, and welcomed it, for it was one more bridge to reality. Salvation lay in pain, not in the gray fog that sucked the pain and everything else away from her. She held the pain to her, cherished it, and reached for the voice in her mind.

She found that, too, and held to it, while it rejoiced fiercely that she had found it.

No -- not it. He. The kyree, the mage-beast. Warrl. The friend of her soul, as Kethry was of her heart.

As if that recognition had broken the last strand of foul magic holding her in the gray place, she suddenly found herself possessed again of a body -- a body that ached in a way that was only too familiar. A body stiff and chilled, and sitting -- from the feel of the air on her skin -- nearly naked and on a cold stone floor. She could hear nothing but the sound of someone crying softly -- and cautiously cracked her eyes open the merest slit to see where she was.

She was in a cage; she could see the iron bars before her, but unless she changed position and moved, she couldn't see much else. She closed her eyes again in an attempt to remember what could have brought her to this pass. Her memories tumbled together, confused, as she tried with an aching skull to sort them out.

But after a moment, it all came back to her, and with it, a rush of anger and hatred.

Thalhkarsh!

The demon -- he'd tricked her, trapped her -- then overpowered her, changed her, and done -- something to her to send her into that gray place. But if Thalhkarsh had taken her, then where were Warrl and Kethry?

::I'm lying on the table, mind-mate,:: said the voice, :The demon thinks he killed me; he nearly did. His magic sent me into little-death, and I decided to continue the trance until we were all alone; it seemed safer that way. There was nothing I could do for you. Your she'enedra is in the same cage as you. It would be nice to let her know the demon hasn't destroyed your mind after all. She thinks that you're worse than dead, and blames herself entirely for what was both your folly.:

Tarma moved her head cautiously; her muscles all ached. There was someone in the cage with her, crumpled in a heap in the corner; by the shaking of her shoulders, the source of the weeping -- but --

:That's not Kethry!:

:Not her body, but her spirit. The demon gave her body to the bandit.:

:What bandit?:

The kyree gave a mental growl. :It's too hard to explain; I'm going to break the trance. Tend to your she'enedra.:

Tarma licked lips that were swollen and bruised. She'd felt this badly used once before, a time she preferred not to think about.

There was something missing; something missing --

"No," she whispered, eyes opening wide with shock, all thought driven from her in that instant by her realization of what was missing. "Oh, no!"

The stranger's head snapped up; swollen and red-rimmed amethyst eyes turned toward her. "T-t-tarma?"

"It's gone," she choked, unable to comprehend her loss. "The vysaka -- the Goddess-bond -- it's gone!" She could feel her sanity slipping; feel herself going over the edge. Without the Goddess-bond --

:Take hold of yourself!: the voice in her mind snapped. :It's probably all that damn demon's fault; break his spells and it will come back! And anyway, you're alive and I'm alive and Kethry's alive; I want us all to STAY that way!:

Warrl's annoyance was like a slap in the face; it brought her back to a precarious sanity. And with his reminder that Kethry was still alive, she turned back toward the stranger whose tear-streaked face peered through the gloom at her, "Keth? Is that you?"

"You're back! Oh, Goddess bless, you're back!" The platinum-haired beauty flung herself into Tarma's arms, and clung there. "I thought he'd destroyed you, and it was all my fault for insisting that we do this ourselves instead of going for help like you wanted."

"Here, now." Tarma gulped back tears of her own, and pushed Kethry away with hands that shook. "We're not out of this yet."

"T-tarma -- Warrl -- he's -- ''

:Very much alive, thank you.: The great furry shape on the table outside their cage rose slowly to its four feet, and shook itself painfully. :I hurt. If you hurt like I hurt, we are all in very sad condition.:

Tarma sympathized with Kethry's bewilderment. "He pulled a kyree trick on us all, she'enedra. He told me that when the demon's magic hit him, it sent him into little-death -- a kind of trance. He figured it was better to stay that way until we were alone." She examined the confused countenance before her. "He also said something about you trading bodies with a bandit... and don't I know that face?"

"Lastel Longknife," she replied shakily. "He lived; he's the one that had Thalhkarsh conjured up, and I guess he got more than he bargained for, because the demon turned him into a real woman. He was the one spreading the rumors to lure us in here, I'll bet. Now he's got my body -- "

"I have the sinking feeling that you're going to tell me you can't work magic in this one."

"Not very well," she admitted. "Though I haven't tried any of the power magics that need more training than Talent."

"All right then; we can't magic our way out of this cage, let's see if we can think our way out."

Tarma did her best to ignore the aching void within her and took careful stock of the situation.

Their prison consisted of the back half of a stonewalled room; crude iron bars welded across the middle made their half into a cage. It had an equally crude door, padlocked shut. There was only one door to the room itself, in the front half, and there were no windows; the floor was of slate. In half of the room beyond their cage was a table on which Warrl -- and something else -- lay.

"Fur-face, is that Need next to you?"

:The same.:

"Then Thalhkarsh just made one big mistake," she said, narrowing her eyes with grim satisfaction. "Get your tail over here, and bring the blade with you."

Warrl snorted, picked up the hilt of the blade gingerly in his mouth, and jumped down off the table with it. He dragged it across the floor, complaining mentally to Tarma the entire time.

"All right, Keth. I saw that thing shear clean through armor and more than once. Have a crack at the latch. It'll have to be you, she won't answer physically to me."

"But -- " Kethry looked doubtfully at the frail arms of her new body, then told herself sternly to remember that Need was a magical weapon, that it responded (as the runes on its blade said) to woman's need. And they certainly needed out of this prison --

She raised the sword high over her head, and brought it down on the latch-bar with all of her strength.

With a shriek like a dying thing, the metal sheared neatly in two, and the door swung open.

* * *

"You are bold, priest," the demon rumbled.

"I am curious; perhaps foolish -- but never bold," responded the plump, balding priest of Anathei. "I was curious when I first heard the rumors of your return. I was even more curious when the two who were responsible for your defeat before were missing this morning. I will confess to being quite confused to find one of them here."

He cast a meaningful glance at the demon's companion, curled sullenly on the velvet beside him. The sorceress did not appear to be happy, but she also did not appear coerced in any way. Come to that, there was something oddly different about her....

"I repeat, you are bold; but you amuse me. Why are you here?" Thalhkarsh settled back onto his cushions, and with a flicker of thought increased the intensity of the light coming from his crimson lanterns. The musky incense he favored wafted upward toward the ceiling from a brazier at the edge of the padded platform where he reclined. This priest had presented himself at the door and simply asked to be taken to the demon; Thalhkarsh's followers had been so nonplussed by his quiet air of authority that they had done as he asked. Now he stood before Thalhkarsh, an unimpressive figure in a plain brown cassock, plump and aging, with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. And he, in his turn, did not seem the least afraid of the demon; nor did it appear that anything, from the obscene carvings to the orgy still in progress on the platform behind the demon, was bothering him the slightest bit.