Oathblood by Mercedes Lackey Page A

to protect her, but to protect what she would call, so that it would know itself unthreatened.
    As she seated herself within the circle, Tarma shifted her own position until she, too, was quite comfortable. Then she removed one of her hidden daggers and began honing it with her sharpening-stone.
    Kethry had removed her sword and placed it outside the circle—something she did only when working summonings. Tarma regarded the blade, as it lay between her and her bloodsister, with a thoughtful eye.
    Kethry’s sword was no ordinary blade—it held a powerful and strange magic. “Need” was the name of the blade, and it bound its bearer to the aid of other women. To a fighter, it granted near immunity to any magics. To a magician, it conferred expertise in the wielding of it, but only to defend herself or another woman. Herself —for only a woman could use it. It had other properties as well, such as being able to speed healing or hold off death for a limited time, but those were the main gifts the blade bestowed.
    Tarma wondered how many of those arcane gifts they’d be using this time.
    There was a stirring in the circle Kethry had inscribed, and Tarma pulled her attention back to the present. Something was beginning to form mistily in front of the seated sorceress.
    The mist began to form into a miniature whirlpool, coalescing into a figure as it did so. As it solidified, Tarma could see what seemed to be a jewel-bright desert lizard, but one that stood erect, like a man. It was as tall as a man’s arm is long, and had a cranium far larger than any lizard Tarma had ever seen. Firelight winked from its scales in bands of shining colors, topaz and ruby predominating. It was regarding Kethry with intelligence and wary curiosity.
    â€œSa-asartha, n‘hellan?” it said, tilting its head to one side and fidgeting from one foot to the other. Its voice was shrill, like that of a very young child.
    â€œVede, sa-asarth,” Kethry replied in the same tongue.
    The little creature relaxed and stopped fretting. It appeared to be quite eager to answer all of Kethry’s questions. Now that the initial effort of calling it was done with, she had no trouble in obtaining all the information she wanted. Finally she gave the little creature the fruit she’d been toying with after supper. It snatched the gift greedily, trilled what Tarma presumed to be thanks, and vanished into mist again.
    Kethry rose stiffly and began to scuff the circle into random piles of dirt with the toe of her boot. “It’s about what I expected,” she said. “Someone—someone with ‘a smell of magic about him’ according to the khamsin—has organized what used to be several small bands of marauders into one large one of rather formidable proportions. They have no set camp, so we can’t arrange for the camp to be attacked while they’re ambushing us, I’m sorry to say. They have no favored ambush point, so we won’t know when to expect them. And none of the women—girls, really—survived for more than a day.”
    â€œDamn.” Tarma’s eyes were shadowed. “Well, we didn’t really expect anything different.”
    â€œNo, but you know damn well we both hoped.” Kethry’s voice was rough with weariness. “It’s up to you now, she‘enedra. You’re the tactician.”
    â€œThen as the tactician, I counsel rest for you.” Tarma caught Kethry’s shoulders to steady her as she stumbled a little from fatigue. The reaction to spell-casting was setting in fast now. Kethry had once described summoning as being “like balancing on a rooftree while screaming an epic poem in a foreign language at the top of your lungs.” Small wonder she was exhausted afterward.
    The sorceress leaned on Tarma’s supporting shoulder with silent gratitude as her partner guided her up the stairs to their rented sleeping