Oathblood

Kethry put fact on top of surmise, and made a guess. 'You think Mara's the bear.'

He looked relieved, and nodded. 'Aye. Exactly that We figure maybe she found some kind of witchy thing of theirs, what let her shape-change, too. Now she's strange, but she hain't bad, or hain't been before. But she's got stranger since we started seein' the bear. There be bear tracks about her house -- she says 'tis 'cause the bear comes to her feedin', that it's harmless if it's left be -- but we don' think so. So -- I dunno lady, I dunno what t' ask, like.'

'You want to know if she's dangerous?' Kethry asked. She got up from her seat and began pacing, her hands clasped behind her. 'Yes, dammit, she's dangerous all right. The more so because I don't think she ever really listened to a single word anyone ever told her at mage-school. Do you know why most mages don't shapechange? Why they use illusions instead?'

Egon shook, his head dumbly, his wrinkled face twisted into a knot of concern.

'Because when you shapechange, you become the thing you've changed to. You're subject to its instincts, its limitations. Including the fact that there's not enough room in a beast's head for a human mind. That usually doesn't matter, much. Not so long as you don't spend more than an hour or two as a beast. You don't lose much of your humanity, and you can probably get it back when you revert. But it's not guaranteed that you will, and the stronger the animal's instincts, the more of yourself you'll lose.'

'She been spendin' whole days as bear, we think. She don' come t' door when a body calls till after sundown,' Egon whispered hoarsely.

'And at a time of the year when bear instincts are strongest.' Kethry twisted the Shin'a'in oath-ring on her left hand. 'No wonder she put on weight. Bears go into a feeding frenzy in the fall -- and she can't have gained as much as a bear needs to winter-sleep. No wonder she looked like hell.' Abruptly she stopped pacing, and went to her bedroll, picking up the sword-belt that held Need and strapping the blade over her breeches and tunic.

'Lady? What be you-'

'Oh, don't worry, Egon.' Kethry turned to smile at him wanly. 'I'm not going to use this on her.' For one thing, I don't think it would let me. 'I'm going to go talk to her,' the sorceress continued. 'Maybe, just maybe, I can help her.'

She must be being torn nearly in two by now, Kethry thought unhappily, as she, in turn, slipped out into the dawn-gilded, frozen air. Caught between the bear and the woman -- if I can get her to take Need, I think the blade can rebalance her body for her. I hope. I'm no Healer, and that's what she needs most right now. That assumes she'll let me, of course.

She picked her way across the lumps of frozen snow to the farthest house of the cluster -- a cabin, really. It had never been intended to be used for anything more than living quarters, unlike the rest of the dwellings in the settlement. That cabin was Mara's, so Egon had said. It looked deserted.

Kethry pounded on the door for several moments, and got no answer. With my luck--

She circled around to the back and found what she'd been dreading. The back entrance was unlatched; the cabin was empty. And among the many tracks leaving and entering the cabin from the rear, there were no human footprints among them. Only the half-melted and near-shapeless tracks of a small bear.

Damn!

So many tracks suggested that Mara had fallen into a pattern. And that was bad; it meant she wasn't thinking in her bear-form, she was just acting. Then again, that she was following a pattern meant that if Kethry followed the old tracks, she'd probably be able to find Mara along the trail she'd established.

Whether or not she'd be able to reason with her--

I don't have a choice, Kethry decided. That's why Need's been after me. Mara's going to get trapped in her bear-shape -- and she's going to die.

The trail took her deeply into the woods; without the trail, Kethry knew she'd have been lost. There were no signs of any habitation, no traces of the hand of man in this direction-except for certain rock out-croppings that didn't quite look natural. Gradually, as the sun rose higher and crept toward the zenith, it dawned on Kethry that these outcroppings were becoming more frequent, as if they marked some kind of long-vanished roadway.

She's going out to these 'ruins.' She must be going there every day. But why? And why in bear- form?

She was never to have an answer to that question, because as she rounded the torn-up, snow-covered roots of a fallen tree, something stepped out of the shelter of a duster of pines to block her progress.

'You!' Mara spat. 'You've come to steal it, haven't you?'

Her eyes were dull and deeply sunken; her hair was lank and unwashed. As she lumbered clumsily toward Kethry, the sorceress got a whiff of an unpleasant reek-half unwashed clothing and stale sweat, half an animallike musk.