'Now don't forget what I told you,' Kethry said firmly, from her superior position above the Master's head, where she perched in Hellsbane's saddle. 'I may have pulled most of the poison from you with that spell, but you're still sick. You're suffering the damage it caused, and that isn't going to go away overnight.'
Master Lenne nodded earnestly, shading his eyes against the morning sun, and handed Kethry a saddleroll of the finest butter-soft leather to fasten at her cantle. Leather like that -- calfskin tanned to the suppleness and texture of fine velvet -- was worth a small fortune. Tarma already had an identical roll behind her saddle.
'I plan to rest and keep my schedule to a minimum,' Lenne said, as obedient as a child. 'To tell you the truth, now that I no longer have to worry about Karden taking my trade and exerting his influence on the Guild as a whole--'
'So tragic, poisoning himself with his own processes,' Tarma said dryly. 'I guess that will prove to the Guild that the safe old ways are the best.'
Master Lenne flushed and looked down for a moment. When he looked back up, his eyes were troubled. 'I suppose it would do no good to reveal the truth, would it?'
'No good, and a lot of harm,' Kethry said firmly. 'If you must, tell only those you trust. No one else.' She looked off into the distance. 'I don't like taking the law into my own hands--'
'When the law fails, people of conscience have to take over, Greeneyes,' Tarma said firmly,. 'It's either that, or lie down and let yourself be walked on. Shin'a'in weave rugs; we don't imitate them.'
'I don't like it either, ladies,' Master Lenne said quietly. 'Even knowing that my own life hung on this. But--'
'But there are no easy answers, Master,' Tarma interrupted him. 'There are cowards and the brave. Dishonest and honest. I prefer to foster the latter and remove the former. As my partner would tell you, Shin'a'in are great believers in expediency.' She leveled a penetrating glance at her partner. 'And if we're going to make Hawk's Nest before sundown, we need to leave now.'
Master Lenne took the hint, and backed away from the horses. 'Shin'a'in--' he said suddenly, as Tarma turned her horse's head. 'I said that poison was a woman's weapon. You have shown me differently. A woman's weapon is that she thinks -- and then she acts, without hesitation.'
THE TALISMAN
This story sprang out of a complaint that bad fantasy always seems to rely on the magic thingamajig to get the hero out of trouble. Seemed to me that a magic thingamajig could get someone into more trouble than it would get him out of. As always, Tarma and Kethry rely as much on intelligence and quick thinking as magic and swordplay to get them out of trouble.
It was hard for Kethry to remember that winter would be over in two months at the most. The entire world seemed made up of crusted snow; it even lay along the bare branches of trees. From this vantage point, atop a rocky, scrub-covered hill, it looked as if winter had taken hold of the land and would never let go. The entire world had turned into an endless series of winter-dormant, forested hills, hills they plodded over with no sign that there was an end to them. Although the road that threaded these hills bore unmistakable signs of frequent use, they hadn't seen a single soul in the past two days. Kethry stamped her numb feet on snow packed rock-hard and frozen into an obstacle course of ruts, trying to get a little feeling back into them. She shaded her eyes against snow glare and stared down the hillside while her mule pawed despondently at the ice crust beside the trail, hoping for a scrap of grass and unable to break through.
She heard the creaking of Tarma's saddle as her partner dismounted. 'Goddess!' the Shin'a'in croaked. 'I'm bloody freezing!'
'You're always freezing,' Kethry replied absently, trying to make out if the smudge on the horizon was smoke or just another cloud. 'Except when I'm roasting. Where are we? Is that smoke I'm seeing out there, or a figment of my imagination?'
There was a rattling of paper at her right elbow as Tarma took out their map. 'I could make a very bad pun, but I won't,' she said. 'Yes, it's smoke, and I'd guess we're here-'
Kethry took her watering eyes off that faraway promise of habitation, and turned to see where on the map Tarma thought they were. It wasn't exciting. If the Shin'a'in was right, they were about a candlemark's ride away from a flyspeck too small even to be called a village, marked on the map only with the name 'Potter,' and the symbol for 'public well'
'No inn?' the sorceress asked wistfully.
