Oathbound

Ten

Tarma led the way, as softand sure-footed in these dark city streets as she would have been scouting a forest or creeping through grass on an open plain.

The kyree Warrl served as their scout and their eyes in the darkness. The uninformed would have thought it impossible to hide a lupine creature the size of Warrl in an open street -- a creature whose shoulder nearly came as high as Tarma's waist; but Warrl, although somewhere close at hand, was presently invisible. Tarma could sense him, though -- now behind them, now in front. From time to time he would speak a single word (or perhaps as many as three) in her mind, to tell her of the results of his scouting.

There was little moonlight; the moon was in her last quarter. This was one of the poorest streets in the city, and there we're no cressets and no torches to spare to light the way by night -- and if anyone put one up, it would be stolen within the hour. The buildings to either side were shut up tight; not with shutters, for they were in far too poor a state of repair to have working shutters, but with whatever bits of wood and cloth or rubbish came to hand. What little light there was leaked through the cracks in these makeshift curtainings. The street itself was rutted mud; no wasting of paving bricks on this side of the river. Both the mercenaries wore thin-soled boots, the better to feel their way in the darkness. Kethry had abandoned her usual buffcolored, calf-length robe; she wore a dark, sleeved tunic over her breeches. Kethry's ensorcelled blade Need was slung at her side; Tarma's nonmagical weapon carried in its usual spot on her back. They had left cloaks behind; cloaks had a tendency to get tangled at the most inopportune moments. Better to bear with the chill.

They had slipped out the window of their room at the inn, wanting no one to guess where they were going -- or even that they were going out at all. They had made their way down back alleys with occasional detours through fenced yards or even across roofs. Although Kethry was no match for Tarma in strength and agility, she was quite capable of keeping up with her on a trek like this one.

Finally the fences had begun to boast more holes than entire boards; the houses leaned to one side or the other, almost as though they huddled together to support their sagging bones. The streets, when they had ventured out onto them, were either deserted or populated by one or two furtively scurrying shadows. This dubious quarter where the abandoned temple that their priestly friend had told them of stood -- this was hardly a place either of them would have chosen to roam in daylight, much less darkness. Tarma was already beginning to regret the impulse that had led her here -- the stubbornness that had forced her to prove that she was not trying to shelter her partner unduly. Except that... maybe Kethry was right. Maybe she was putting a stranglehold on the mage. But Keth was all the Clan she had....

Tarma's nose told her where they were; downwind of the stockyards, the slaughterhouse, and the tannery. The reek of tannic acid, offal, half-tanned hides and manure was a little short of unbreathable. From far off there came the intermittent lowing and bleating of the miserable animals awaiting the doom that would come in the morning.

"Something just occurred to me," Kethry whispered as they waited, hidden in shadows, for a single passerby to clear the street.

"What?"

"This close to the stockyard and slaughterhouse, Thalhkarsh wouldn't necessarily need sacrifices to build a power base."

"You mean -- he could use the deaths of the beasts?"

"Death-energy is the same for man and beast. Man just has more of it, and of higher quality."

"Like you can get just as drunk on cheap beer as on distilled spirits?"

"Something of the sort."

"Lady's Blade! And he feeds on fear and pain as well -- "

"There's plenty of that at the slaughterhouse."

"Great. That's just what I needed to hear." Tarma brooded for a moment. "Tell me something; why's he taking on human shape if he wants to terrify? His own would be better for that purpose."

"Well -- this is just a guess -- you have to remember he wants worship and devotion as well, and he won't get that in his real shape. That might be one reason. A second would be because what seems to be familiar and proves to be otherwise is a lot more fear-inducing than the openly alien. Lastly is Thalhkarsh himself -- most demons like the Abyssal Planes, and their anger at being summoned is because they've been taken from home. They look on us as a lower form of life, a species of animal. But Thalhkarsh is perverse; he wants to stay here, he wants to rule over people, and I suspect he enjoys physically coupling with humans. The Lady only knows why."

"I... don't suppose he can breed, can he?"

"Windborn! Thank your Lady, no. Thank all the gods that demons even in human form are sterile with humans, or we might have more than Thalhkarsh to worry about -- he might be willing to produce a malleable infant. But the only way he can reproduce is to bud -- and he's too jealous of his powers here to bud and create another on this Plane with like powers and a mind of its own. He won't go creating a rival, that much I'm sure of."

"Forgive me if I don't break out into carols of relief."

They peered down the dark, shadow-lined street in glum silence. The effluvium of the stockyards and tannery washed over them, causing Tarma to stifle a cough as an acrid breath seared the back of her throat a little.

The street is clear, a voice rang in Tarma's head.

"Warrl says it's safe to go," Tarma passed the word on, then, crouching low, crossed the street like one of the scudding shadows cast on the street by high clouds against the moon.

She moved so surely and so silently from the shadows of their own building to the shadows below the one across the street that even Kethry, who knew she was there, hardly saw her. Kethry was an instant behind her, not quite so sure or silent, but furtive enough. Warrl was already waiting for them, and snorted a greeting before slipping farther ahead of them in the direction of the temple.

Hugging the rough wood and stone of the walls, they inched their way down the street, trying not to wince when their feet encountered unidentifiable piles of something soft and mushy. The reek of tannery and stockyard overwhelmed any other taint. From within the buildings occasionally came sounds of revelry or conflict; hoarse, drunken singing, shouting, weeping, the splintering of wood, the crash of crockery. None of this was carried into the streets; only fools and the mad walked the streets of the beggar's quarter at night.

Fools, the mad, or the desperate. Right now Kethry had both of them figured for being all three.

Finally the walls of buildings gave way to a single stone wall, half again as tall as Tarma. This, by the descriptions she'd gotten, would be the wall of the temple. Beyond it, bulking black against the stars, Kethry could see the temple itself.

* * *

Tarma surveyed the wall, deciding it would be no great feat to scale it.

:You go over first, Fur-face,: she thought.

:My pleasure,: Warrl sent back to her, overtones of irony so strong Tarma could almost taste the metallic emotional flavoring. He backed up six or seven paces, then flung himself at the wall. His forepaws caught the top of it; caught, and held, and with a scrambling of hindclaws that sounded hideously loud to Tarma's nervous ears, he was over and leaping down on the other side.

Now it was her turn.

She backed up a little, then ran at the wall, leaping and catching the top effortlessly, pulling herself up onto the stones that were set into the top with ease. She crouched there for a moment, peering through the darkness into the courtyard beyond, identifying the odd-shaped shadows by what she'd been told to expect there.

In the middle there stood a dried-out fountain, its basin broken, its statuary mostly missing limbs and heads. To the right were three stone boxes containing earth and dead trees. To the left had been a shrine, now a heap of rubble, that had been meant for those faithful who felt unworthy to enter the temple proper. All was as it should be; nothing moved.

:I'd tell you if anything was here, wouldn't I?: Warrl grumbled at her lack of trust.

She felt one corner of her mouth twitch at his reply. :I can take it that all's well?:

:Nothing out of the ordinary outside.:

:It's inside I'm worried about.:

She saluted Kethry briefly, seeing the strained, anxious face peering whitely up at her in the moonshadows, then slipped over the top to land on catquiet feet in the temple courtyard.

She slid carefully along the wall, left foot testing the ground at the base of it for loose pebbles that might slip underfoot or be kicked away by accident.

The moon was behind her; so her side of the wall was entirely in shadow so long as she stayed close to it. Five steps -- twenty -- fifty -- her outstretched hand encountered a hinge, and wood. She'd come to the gate.

She felt for the bar and eased it along its sockets until one half of the gate was freed. That gave Kethry her way in; now she would scout ahead.

She waited for another of those scudding cloudshadows; joining it as it raced across the courtyard. Cobblestones were hard and a trifle slippery beneath her thin-soled boots; she was glad that the first sole was of tough, abrasive sharkskin. Dew was already beginning to collect on the cold stones, making them slick, but the sharkskin leather gave her traction.

She reached the shelter of the temple entrance without incident; Warrl was waiting for her there, a slightly darker shadow in the shadows of the doorway.

:Ready?: she asked him. She felt his assent.

She reached for the door, prepared to find it locked, and was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't. She nudged it open a crack; when nothing happened, she opened it enough to peer carefully inside.

She saw nothing but a barren antechamber. Warrl stuck his nose inside, and sniffed cautiously.

:Nothing here -- but something on the other side of the door beyond; people for sure -- and, I think, blood and incense. And magic, lots of magic.:

Tarma sighed; it would have been nice if this had been a false alarm. :Sounds like we've come to the right place.:

:Shouldn't we wait for Kethry?:

:You go after her; I want to make sure there isn't anyone on guard in there.:

:Not yet. I want to know you aren't biting off more than you can swallow.: Warrl waited for her to move on, one shadow among many.

She slipped in through the crack in the door, Warrl a hairsbreadth behind her. Moonlight shone down through a skylight above. The door on the other side of the antechamber stood open; between it and the door she had entered through was nothing but untracked dust.

She hugged the wall, easing carefully around the doorpost. Once inside the sanctuary she could barely see her own hands; she continued to hug the wall, making her way by feel alone. She came to a corner, paused for a moment, and tried to see, but could only make out dim shapes in the small amount of light that came from various holes in the ceiling of the sanctuary. It was impossible to tell if those sources of light were more skylights, or the evidence of neglect. Dust filled the air, making her nose itch; other than that, lacking Ward's senses, she could only smell damp and mildew. The stones beneath her hands were cold and slightly moist. Beneath the film of moisture they were smooth and felt a little like polished granite.

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 --

-- a magical construct, meant to delay her, augmented by spells of befuddlement.

"You bastard!" she screamed at the invisible Thalhkarsh, enraged by his duplicity. He had made a serious mistake in doing something that caused her to become angry; that rage was useful, it fueled her power. She gathered it to her, made a force of it instead of allowing it to fade uselessly; sought and found the weak point of the spell. She sheathed Need, and spreading her arms wide over her head, palms facing each other, blasted with the whiteheat of her anger.

Mage-energies formed a glowing blue-white arc between her upraised hands; a sorcerer's wind began to stir around her, forming a miniature whirlwind with herself as the eye. With a flick of her wrists she reversed her hands to hold them palmoutward and brought her arms down fully extended to shoulder height; the mage-light poured from them to form a wall around her, then the wall expanded outward. The brick corridor walls about her flared with scarlet as the glowing wall of energy touched them; they shivered beneath the wrath-fired mageblast, wavered and warped like the mirages they were. There was a moment of resistance; then, soundlessly, they vanished.

She saw she was standing in what had been the outer, common sanctuary; an enormous room, supported by two rows of pillars whose tops were lost in the shadows of the ceiling. Tracks in the dust showed she had been tracing the same circling path all the time she had thought she was traversing the corridor. Her anger brightened the witchlight; the green-blue glow revealed the far end of the sanctuary -the forgotten god stood there, behind his altar. The statue of the gentle god of rains had a forlorn look; he and his altar were covered with a blanket of dust and cobwebs. Dust lay undisturbed nearly everywhere.

Nearly everywhere -- she was not the expert tracker Tarma was, but it did not take an expert to read the trail that passed from the front doors to somewhere behind the god's statue. And in those dust tracks were paw prints.

Desperate to waste no more time, she pulled her blade again and broke into a run, her blue-green witchlight bobbing before her, intent on following that trail to wherever it led. She passed by the neglected altar with never a second glance, and found the priests' door at the end of the trace in the dust; it lay just behind and beneath the statue. It had never been intended to be concealed, and besides stood wide open. She sent the witchlight shooting ahead of her and sprinted inside, panting a little.

But the echoes of running feet ahead of her as she passed into another brick-walled corridor told her that her spell-breaking had not gone unnoticed.

Common sense and logic said she should find a corner to put her back against and make a stand.

Therefore she did nothing of the kind.

As the first of four armed mercenaries came pounding into view around a corner ahead, she took Need in both hands and charged him, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Her berserk attack took the demon-hireling by surprise; he stopped dead in his tracks, staring, and belatedly raised his own weapon. His hesitation sealed his doom. Kethry let the eldritch power of Need control her body, and the bespelled blade responded to the freedom by moving her in a lightning blow at his unprotected side. Screaming in pain, the fighter fell, arm sheared off at the shoulder.

The second hired thug was a little quicker to defend himself, but he, too, was no match for Need's spell-imparted skill. Kethry cracked his wooden shield in half with a strength far exceeding what she alone possessed, and swatted his blade out of his hands after only two exchanges, sending it clattering against the wall. She ran him through before he could flee her.

The third and fourth sought to take her while -- they presumed -- Kethry's blade was still held fast in the collapsing body. They presumed too much; Need freed itself and spun Kethry around to meet and counter both their strokes in a display of swordsmanship a master would envy. They saw death staring at them from the witchlight reflected on the blood-dripping blade, from the hate-filled green eyes.

It was more than they had the stomach to face -- and their lives were worth far more to them than their pay. They turned and fled back down the way they had come, with Kethry in hot pursuit, too filled with berserk anger now to think that a charge into unknown danger might not be a wise notion.

There was light ahead, Kethry noticed absently, allowing her rage to speed her feet. That might mean there were others there -- and perhaps the demon.

The hirelings ran to the light as to sanctuary; Kethry followed --

She stumbled to a halt, at first half-blinded by the light; then when her eyes adjusted, tripped on nothing and nearly fell to her knees, her mind and heart going numb at what she saw.

This had once been the inner temple; Thalhkarsh had transformed it into his own perverted place of unholiness. It had the red-lit look of a seraglio in hell. It had been decorated with the same sort of carvings that had ornamented the demon's temple back in Delton. The subject was sexual; every perversion possible was depicted, provided that it included pain and suffering.

The far end of the room had been made into a kind of platform, covered in silk and velvet cushions, plushly upholstered. It was a cliched setting; an overdone backdrop for an orgy. The demon certainly enjoyed invoking pain, but it appeared that he himself preferred not to suffer the slightest discomfort while he was amusing himself. The platform was occupied by a clutch of writhing nude and partially clothed bodies. Only now were some of those on the platform beginning to disengage and take notice of the hirelings fleeing for the door on the opposite side. Evidently not even the demon foresaw that Kethry would be able to get this far on her own.

The demon and his followers had been interrupted by her entrance at the height of their pleasures. And it was the sight of the demon's partner that had stricken Kethry to the heart -- for the one being used by the demon himself was Tarma.

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 brazenly, "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 normalsight, not the bandit of the desert hills!

"Damn you," she snarled. "Oh, gods, for a demonslaying 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.