As for the bandit chief, who had sat his horse in stupefied amazement from the moment the fight turned against them, he suddenly realized his own peril and tried to escape with the rest. Kethry, however, had never once forgotten him. Her bolt of power-intended this time to stun, not kill-took him squarely in the back of the head.
'The bandits growl a challenge, But the lady only grins. The sorceress bows mockingly, And then the fight begins. When it ends, there are but four Left standing from that horde- The witch, the wolf, the traitor, And the woman with the sword. Three things never trust in- The maiden sworn as pure, The vows a king has given And the ambush that is 'sure.' '
By late afternoon the heads of the bandits had been piled in a grisly cairn by the side of the road as a mute reminder to their fellows of the eventual reward of banditry. Their bodies had been dragged off into the hills for the scavengers to quarrel over. Tarma had supervised the cleanup, the three apprentices serving as her work force. There had been a good deal of stomach purging on their part at first- especially after the way Tarma had casually lopped off the heads of the dead or wounded bandits-but they'd obeyed her without question. Tarma had had to hide her snickering behind her hand, for they looked at her whenever she gave them a command as though they feared that their heads might well adorn the cairn if they lagged or slacked.
She herself had seen to the wounds of the surviving guards, and the burial of the two dead ones.
One of the guards could still ride; the other two were loaded into the now-useless cart after the empty boxes had been thrown out of it. Tarma ordered the whole caravan back to town; she and Kethry planned to catch up with them later, after some unfinished business had been taken care of.
Part of that unfinished business was the filling and marking of the dead guards' graves.
Kethry brought her a rag to wipe her hands with when she'd finished. 'Damn. I wish- Hellspawn, they were just honest hire-swords,' she said, looking at the stone cairns she'd built with remote regret. 'It wasn't their fault we didn't have a chance to warn them. Maybe they shouldn't have let themselves be surprised like that, not with what's been happening to the packtrains lately-but still, your life's a pretty heavy price to pay for a little carelessness....'
Kethry, her energy back to normal now that she was no longer being drained by her illusions, slipped a sympathetic arm around Tarma's shoulders. 'Come on, she'enedra. I want to show you something that might make you feel a little better.'
When Tarma had gone to direct the cleanup, Kethry had been engaged in stripping the bandit chief down to his skin and readying his unconscious body for some sort of involved sorcery. Tarma knew she'd had some sort of specific punishment in mind from the time she'd heard about the stolen girls, but she'd had no idea of what it was.
Now before her was a bizarre sight. Tied to the back of one of the bandit's abandoned horses was- apparently-the unconscious body of the high-bom lady Kethry had spelled herself to resemble. She was clad only in a few rags, and had a bruise on one temple, but otherwise looked to be unharmed.
Tarma circled the tableau slowly. There was no flaw in the illusion-if indeed it was an illusion.
'Unbelievable,' she said at last. 'That is him, isn't it?'
'Oh, yes, indeed. One of my best pieces of work.'
'Will it hold without you around to maintain it?'
'It'll hold, all right,' Kethry replied with deep satisfaction. 'That's part of the beauty and the justice of the thing. The illusion is irretrievably melded with his own mind-magic. He'll never be able to break it himself, and no reputable sorcerer will break it for him. And I promise you, the only sorcerers for weeks in any direction are quite reputable.'
'Why wouldn't he be able to get one to break it for him?'
'Because I've signed it.' Kethry made a small gesture, and two symbols appeared for a moment above
