Oathblood by Mercedes Lackey Page B

room.
    â€œIt’s us, Warrl,” Tarma called softly at the door. A muted growl answered her, and they could hear the sound of the bolt being shoved back. Tarma pushed the door open with one foot, and picked up one of the unlit tallow candles that waited on a shelf just inside with her free hand. She lit it at the one in the bracket outside their door, and the light from it fell on the head and shoulders of a huge black wolf. He stood, tongue lolling out in a lupine grin, just inside the room. His shoulders were on a level with Tarma’s waist. He sniffed inquisitively at them, making a questioning whine deep in his throat.
    â€œYes, we took the job—that’s our employer you smell, so don’t mangle him when he shows up tomorrow night. And Kethry’s been summoning, of course, so as usual she’s half dead. Close the door behind us while I put her to bed.”
    By now Kethry was nearly asleep on her feet; after some summonings Tarma had seen her pass into unconsciousness while still walking. Tarma undressed her with the gentle and practiced hands of a nurse-maid and got her safely into bed before she had the chance to fall over. The wolf, meanwhile, had butted the door shut with his head and pushed the bolt home with his nose.
    â€œAny trouble?” Tarma asked him.
    He snorted with derision.
    â€œWell, I didn’t really expect any either. This is the quietest inn I’ve been in for a long time. The job is bandits, hairy one, and we’re all going to have to go disguised. That includes you.”
    He whined in protest, ears down.
    â€œI know you don’t like it, but there’s no choice. There isn’t enough cover along the road to hide a bird, and I want you close at hand, within a few feet of us at all times, not wandering out in the desert somewhere.”
    The wolf sighed heavily, padded over to her, and laid his heavy head in her lap to be scratched.
    â€œI know. I know,” she said, obliging him. “I don’t like it any more than you do. Just be grateful that all we’ll be wearing is illusions, even if they do make the backs of our eyes itch. Poor Kethry’s going to have to ride muffled head-to-toe like a fine lady.”
    Warrl obviously didn’t care about poor Kethry.
    â€œYou’re being very unfair to her, you know. And you’re supposed to have been her familiar, not mine.”
    She and Kethry had gone deep into the Pelagir Hills, the site of ancient magical wars, and a place where traces of old magic had changed many of the animals living there into something more than dumb creatures. Kethry had intended to attract a familiar, and she’d done everything perfectly, had gone through a day and a night of complicated spellcast ing—only to have Warrl appear, then choose Tarma instead.
    â€œYou’re a magic beast; born out of magic. You belong with a spell-caster, not some clod with a sword.”
    Warrl was not impressed with Tarma’s logic.
    :She doesn’t need me ,: he spoke mind-to-mind with the swordswoman. : She has the spirit-sword. You need me .: And that, so far as Warrl was concerned, was that.
    â€œWell, I’m not going to argue with you. I never argue with anyone with as many sharp teeth as you’ve got. Maybe being Swordsworn counts as being magic.”
    She pushed Warrl’s head off her lap and went to open the shutters to the room’s one window. Moonlight flooded the room; she seated herself on the floor where it would fall on her, just as she did every night when there was a moon and she wasn’t ill or injured. Since they were within the walls of a town and not camped, she would not train this night—but the Moonpaths were there, as always, waiting to be walked. She closed her eyes and found them. Walking them was, as she’d often told Kethry, impossible to describe.
    When she returned to her body, Warrl was lying patiently at her back, waiting for her. She ruffled his fur