'Time enough, and more, great warrior -- I am sure you have not the taste for common tumblings that are all you can find in this backward place." She slid around to the front of him, urging him down onto the room's single stool, a water-beaded cup in her hand. "Refresh yourself first, great lord. The vintage is of mine own bringing -- you shall not taste its like here-"
It was just Kethry's bad luck that he had been the official "taster" to a high lordling during his childhood of slavery. He sipped delicately out of habit, rather than gulping the wine down, and rolled the wine carefully on his tongue-and so detected in the cup what he should not have been able to sense.
"Bitch!" he roared, throwing the cup aside and seizing Kethry by the throat.
Kethry's panic-filled scream warned Tarma that the plan had gone awry. She wasted no time in battering at the door -- the man was no fool and would have bolted it behind him. It would take too long to break it down. Instead, she sprinted through the crowded inn and out the back through the kitchen. A second cry -- more like a strangled gurgle than a scream, which recalled certain things sharply to her and gave her strength born of rage and hatred -- fell into the stableyard from the open window of Kethry's room. Tarma swarmed up the stable door onto the roof of the building, and launched herself from there in through that window. Her entrance was as unexpected as it was precipitate.
Kethry slowly regained consciousness in her bed in the rented room. She hurt from top to toe -- her assailant had been almost artistic, if one counted the ability to evoke pain among the arts. Oddly enough, he hadn't raped her -- she would have expected that, been able to defend herself arcanely. He'd reacted to the poisoned drink instead by throwing her to the floor and bearing her with no mercy. She'd had no chance to defend herself with magic, and her sword had been left back at the brothel at Tarma's insistence.
Tarma was bathing and tending her hurts. One look at her stricken eyes, and any reproaches she might have uttered died on Kethry's tongue.
"It's all right," she said as gently as she could with swollen lips. "It wasn't your fault."
Tarma's eyes said that she thought otherwise, but she replied gruffly, "Looks like you need a keeper more than I do, lady-mage."
It hurt to smile, but Kethry managed. "Perhaps I do, at that."
Four evenings later, all but three of the bandits marched in force on the inn, determined to take revenge on the townsfolk for the acts of the invisible enemy in their midst. Halfway there, they were met by two women blocking their path. One was an amber-haired sorceress with a bruised face and a blackened eye. The other was a Shin'a'in swords-woman.
Only those two survived the confrontation. "We have no choice now," Kethry said grimly. "If we wait, they'll only be stronger-and I'm certain that sorcerer has been watching. They're warned, they know who and what we are."
"Good," Tarma replied. "Then let's bring the war to their doorstep. We've been doing things in secret long enough, and it's more than time that this thing was finished. Now. Tonight." Her eyes were no longer quite sane.
Kethry didn't like it but knew there was no other way. Gathering up her magics about her, and resting one hand on the comforting presence of he sword, she followed Tarma to the bandit stronghold.
The three remaining were waiting in the courtyard. At the forefront was the bandit-chief, a red-faced, shrewd-eyed bull of a man. To his right was his second in command, and Tarma's eyes narrowed as she recognized the necklace of amber claws he wore. He was as like to a bear as his leader was to a bull. To his left was the sorcerer, who gave a mocking bow in Kethry's direction.
Kethry did not return the bow, but launched an immediate magical attack. Something much like red lightning flew from her outstretched hands.
He parried it -- but not easily. His eyes widened in surprise; her lips thinned in satisfaction. They settled down to duel in deadly earnest. Colored lightnings and weird mists swirled about them, sometimes the edges of their shields could be seen, straining against the impact of the sorcerous bolts. Creatures out of insane nightmares formed themselves on his side, and flung themselves raging at the sorceress, before being attacked and destroyed by enormous eagles with wings of fire, or impossibly slim and delicate armored beings with no faces at their helm's openings, but only a light too bright to look upon.
Tarma meanwhile had flung herself at the leader with the war cry of her clan -- the shriek of an angry hawk. He parried her blade inches away from his throat, and answered with a cut that took part of her sleeve and bruised her arm beneath the mail. His companion swung at the same time; his sword did no more than graze her leg. She twisted to parry his second stroke, moving faster than either of them expected her to. She marked him as well, a cut bleeding freely over his eyes, but not before the leader gashed her where the chainmail shirt ended.
There was an explosion behind her; she dared not turn to look, but it sounded as though one of the two mages would spin spells no more.
She parried a slash from the leader only barely in time, and at the cost of a blow from her other opponent that did not penetrate her armor, but surely broke a rib. Either of these men was her equal; at this rate they'd wear her down and kill her soon -- and yet, it hardly mattered. This was the fitting end to the whole business, that the last of the Tale'sedrin should die with the killers of her Clan. For when they were gone, what else was there for her to do? A Shin'a'in Clanless was a Shin'a'in with no purpose in living. And no wish to live. Suddenly she found herself facing only one of them, the leader. The other was battling for his life against Kethry, who had appeared out of the mage-smokes and was wielding her sword with all the skill of one of Tarma's spirit-teachers.
Tarna had just enough thought to spare for a moment of amazement. Everyone knew sorcerers had no skill with a blade -- they had not the time to spare to learn such crafts.
Yet -- there was Kethry, cutting the man to ribbons. Tarma traded blows with her opponent; then saw her opening. To take advantage of it meant she must leave herself wide open, but she was far past caring. She struck -- her blade entered his throat in a clean thrust. Dying, he swung; his sword caving in her side. They fell together.
Grayness surrounded Tarma, a gray fog in which the light seemed to come from no particular direction, the grayness of a peculiarly restful quality. She found her hurts had vanished, and that she felt no particular need to move from where she was standing. Then a warm wind caressed her, the fog parted, and she found herself facing the first of her instructors.
"So --" he said, hands (empty, for a change, of weapons) on hips, a certain amusement in his eyes. "Past all expectation, you have brought down your enemies. Remarkable, Sworn One, the more remarkable as you had the sense to follow my advice."
"You came for me, then?" It was less a question than a statement.
"I, come for you?" He laughed heartily behind his veil. "Child, child, against all prediction you have not only won, but survived! No, I have come to tell you that your aid-time is over, though we shall continue to train you as we always have. From this moment, it is your actions alone that will put food in your mouth and coin in your purse. I would suggest you follow the path of the mercenary, as many another Sworn One has done when Clanless. And--" he began fading into the mist, "--remember that one can be Shin'a'in without being born into the Clans. All it requires is the oath of she'enedran."