Oathbound

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.