Oath of Swords

“Alive?” Tothas blinked, and the horror retreated-a little-as his face recovered some of its normal determination. “Aye,” he said softly. “She would be. She is! They won’t kill her here-they’ll take her home for that!”

“Who, man? Who?! ”

“I don’t know-not for certain.” Tothas shook himself again, harder. “You’re right. Tomanak knows we should have told you sooner, but My Lady was afraid that-” He drew a deep breath, then stood and faced the two hradani.

“I ask you to believe,” he said in a deep, formal voice, “that we kept it from you out of no distrust. It was My Lady’s decision, and she meant it for the best-for you, as well as for her.”

“Meant what?” Brandark asked flatly.

“My Lady . . . misled you. She is, indeed, the Lady Zarantha Huraka, and her father is Caswal of Huraka, but few know them by that name. Huraka is an all but dead clan- she, her father, and her sisters are its only members-but Lord Caswal is also lord of Clan Jashan, and most know him as Caswal of Jashan, Duke Jashan.”

“Duke?! ” Brandark blurted.

“Aye, the highest noble of the South Weald after Grand Duke Shaloan himself.”

“Phrobus!” the Bloody Sword whispered, and Bahzell’s eyes went flint hard as he stared into Tothas’ face.

“Are you after telling me the second noble of the South Weald sent his oldest daughter overland to the Empire of the Axe with naught but a single maid and three armsmen?!”

“No. Oh, he sent her overland, but we had an escort of sixty men for the trip. Rekah and I-and Arthan and Erdan, Isvaria keep them-stayed with her in Axe Hallow when the others returned home.”

“And what were you doing there?”

“My Lady is a mage,” Tothas said simply. Bahzell heard Brandark gasp and sat down abruptly, his ears flat in shock.

There’d been a time when “mage” and “wizard” meant one and the same thing, but those days were long past. Bahzell had never met a mage-so far as he knew, there’d never been any of hradani blood-yet he’d heard of them. They were said to have appeared only since the Fall, men and women gifted with strange powers of the mind. Some said they could heal with a touch, read thoughts a hundred leagues away, vanish in the blink of an eye, or any of a thousand other strange abilities, but they were trusted as much as wizards were hated, for they were sworn to use their powers only to help, never to harm except in self-defense. More, they were mortal enemies of black sorcery, pledged before their patron deity Semkirk to fight it wherever they found it.

“A mage,” Bahzell said finally, very softly, and Tothas nodded.

“Aye, and there was the problem, for we’ve never had a Spearman mage that lived to come into his powers. You see, when a mage’s powers first wake, he suffers something called a ‘mage crisis.’ I don’t know much about it-it’s only been in the last few years we even knew what to watch for-but no one has ever survived it in the empire. Or, if they have, someone else killed them.”

“Why?” Brandark asked, and Tothas turned to him.

“Because of the Oath of the Magi. Only the Axeman mage academies know how to train a mage. Give them their due, they’ve always offered the training to anyone, be they Axeman or not, but they require mage oath as the price of their help. Oh,” he waved a hand as both hradani stiffened, “My Lady had no objection! For the most part it’s no more than an oath never to abuse their powers-d’you think My Lady would refuse that? ” He glared fiercely at his listeners, and Bahzell shook his head.

“But it’s also a promise to seek out and destroy black sorcery. No mage can match a wizard unaided. None of them have more than three or four-at most six-of the mage talents, and they can draw only on their own energy, not steal it from the world about them. But every mage can sense wizardry, and a group of them has the power to do something about it.”

“Which wouldn’t make them so popular with wizards,” Bahzell murmured, eyes dark as he recalled the wreckage of Zarantha’s room.

“Exactly,” Tothas said grimly. “My Lady and her father believe that’s the true reason no Spearman mage has ever survived mage crisis. It’s not that severe for most magi, or so I’m told. The more talents a mage has-and the more powerful they are-the more severe the crisis, but surely at least one mage should have survived in a thousand years!”

“Unless someone was after helping them to die.”

“Exactly,” Tothas repeated. “So when My Lord Duke’s daughter showed early signs of talent, he was terrified for her. He had to send her to the Axemen-and quickly and in secret-if he wanted her to live.”

“And Lady Zarantha? How was she feeling about it?”

“She wanted it, Bahzell. She wanted it with all her heart and soul, and not just for the power of it. She wanted to come home, build our own mage academy under Duke Jashan’s protection. If we’ve been so poisoned by black sorcery that it can reach out and kill the talented while they’re still helpless, we need our own magi. Her father begged her to stay with the Axemen where she’d be safe, but she- Well, she’s a mind of her own.”

“But why overland? Why not by ship?” Brandark asked.

“My Lady had a . . . a feeling .” Tothas shook his head. “One of her talents is something called ‘precognition.’ I don’t understand how it works, and it’s one of her weaker talents, erratic and hard to control. But it’s let her see the future a time or two, and she dared not pass through the Lands of the Purple Lords. She thought that was the source of the wizardry, and the Purple Lords control all shipping from Bortalik Bay to Robanwar in the East Weald. If she’d gone by ship-”

Bahzell nodded. If one of the half-elven Purple Lords was killing magi, the last thing Zarantha could have done was pass through their hands.

“But was she going to try to sneak home with no more than three armsmen?” Brandark asked.

“No. We were to come down through the Axemen’s South Province and meet our escort in Kolvania. Fifty men should have been there at least a month before we arrived, but no one had heard of them when we got there. We waited another week, and then My Lady got another ‘feeling’ and we took ship to Riverside. I think she was already considering hiding her identity and trying to get home unrecognized, but then the dog brothers killed Arthan and Erdan.”

“Dog brothers?! ” both hradani exclaimed, and Tothas nodded miserably.

“I know she told you it was illness, but it was poison, and wicked stuff. They ate before me-I was waiting upon My Lady and came to supper late-and that saved my own life, for the symptoms came on them first. It was too late for them, but My Lady’s a healer. I don’t know how she kept me alive-I was out of my head and raving-but she and Rekah got us into that miserable place you met us in, and the two of them nursed me through the worst of it.”

“And the dog brothers missed you?” Brandark said skeptically.

“Aye. My Lady’s a powerful mage, with three major talents and two minor, and one of the minors lets her confuse the eye. She hid our going, then made certain no one looked closely at her whenever she left the inn. Rekah and I stayed hidden while she made her way about town, searching for a way to get home. I didn’t like it, but the strain of hiding more than one person is wicked, and she wouldn’t let me come with her.”

“So why didn’t she just ‘confuse the eye’ all the way home?”

“It only confuses the eye. It won’t work if there’s no one else to direct it to, and out on the high road-” Tothas shrugged again, unhappily, and looked at Bahzell. “That was why that scum cornered her in the alley, Bahzell. She was alone on the street when they spied her.”

The Horse Stealer nodded, and Tothas sucked in another deep breath.

“After that-with ni’Tarth hunting her as well as the dog brothers-she dared not stay in Riverside. She’d used a name no one would recognize, but if ni’Tarth was part of the Assassins Guild, they were bound to realize who she truly was when he set them on her.”

“But why didn’t she just tell us the truth?” Brandark asked.