you are vowed to the Shin'a'in, not to any single Clan. Let the banner be buried with the rest of the dead.'
'No!' Tarma's left hand closed convulsively on the hilt of her dagger, and her face was as white as marble. 'Sooner than that I would die with them! Tale'sedrin lives!'
'It lives in me.' Kethry laid one restraining hand on Tarma's left and then stepped between her and the Council. 'I am she'enedra to the Sworn One -- does this not make me Shin'a'in also? I have taken no vows of celibacy; more, I am a White Winds sorceress, and by my arts I can prolong the period of my own fertility. Through me Tale'sedrin is a living, growing thing!'
'How do we know the bond is a true one?' One of the group of five, a wizened old man, asked querulously.
Kethry held up her right hand, palm out, and reached behind her to take Tarma's right by the wrist and display it as well. Both bore silvered, crescent-shaped scars.
'By the fact that She blessed it with Her own fire, it can be nothing but a true bond -- ' Tarma began, finding her tongue again.
'Sheka!' the old man spat, interrupting her. 'She says openly she is a sorceress. She could have produced a seeming sign -- could have tricked even you!'
'For what purpose?'
'To steal what outClan have always wanted; our battlesteeds!'
Tarma pulled her hand away from Kethry's and drew her sword at that venomous accusation.
'Kethry has saved my life; she has bled at my side to help me avenge Tale'sedrin,' Tarma spat, holding her blade before her in both hands, taking a wide-legged, defensive stance. 'How dare you doubt the word of Kal'enedral? She is my true she'enedra by a Goddess-blessed vow, and you will retract your damned lie or die on my blade!'
Whatever tragedy might have happened next was forestalled by the battle scream of a hawk high in the sky above Kethry. For some reason -- she never could afterward say why -- she flung up her arm as Tarma had to receive the hawk in the forest.
A second scream split the air, and a golden meteor plummeted down from the sun to land on Kethry's wrist. The vorcel-hawk was even larger than Moonsong's had been, and its talons bit into Kethry's arm as it flailed the air with its wings, mantling angrily at the Council. Pain raced up her arm and blood sprang out where the talons pierced her, for she had no vambrace such as Tarma wore. Blood was dying the sleeve of her robe a deep crimson, but Kethry had endured worse in her training as a sorceress. She bit her lip to keep from crying out and kept her wrist and arm steady.
The members of the Council -- with the exception of the Clan Chief, the Shaman and the Healer of Liha'irden -- stepped back an involuntary pace or two, murmuring.
Tarma held out her arm, still gripping her blade in her right hand; the hawk lifted itself to the proffered perch, allowing Kethry to lower her wounded arm and clutch it to her chest in a futile effort to ease the pain. Need would not heal wounds like these; they were painful, but hardly lifethreatening. She would have to heal them herself when this confrontation was over; for now, she would have to endure the agony in silence, lest showing weakness spoil Tarma's bid for the attention of the Council.
'Is this omen enough for you?' Tarma asked, in mingled triumph and anger. 'The emblem of Tale'sedrin has come, the spirit of Tale'sedrin shows itself -- and it comes to Kethry, whom you call outClan and deceiver! To me, she'enedra!'
Again, without pausing for second or third thoughts, Kethry reached out her wounded right hand and caught Tarma's blade-hand; the hawk screamed once more, and mantled violently. It hopped along Tarma's arm until it came to their joined hands, hands that together held Tarma's blade outstretched, pointing at the members of the Council. There it settled for one moment, one foot on each wrist.
Then it screamed a final time, the sound of its voice not of battle, but of triumph, and it launched itself upward to be lost in the sun.
Kethry scarcely had time to notice that the pain of her arm was gone, before the young Healer of Liha'irden was at her side with a cry of triumph of his own.
'You doubt -- you dare to doubt still?' he cried, pulling back a sleeve that was so soaked with blood that beneath it the flesh was surely pierced to the bone. 'Look here, all of you -- look!'
For beneath Kethry's sleeve her arm was smooth and unwounded, without so much as a scar.
Five
The gathering-tent was completely full; crowded with gaudily garbed Shin'a'in as it was, it would have been difficult to find space for even a small child. Tarma and Kethry had places of honor near the center and the firepit. Since the confrontation with the Council and their subsequent vindication, their credit had been very high with the Liha'irden.
