They stayed that way for a moment, then he fell; she braced herself and pulled at the same time, and the blade came free of his falling body. He never even made another sound.
Then, just as suddenly as she had lost control, she regained it. She was the one who staggered two trembling steps away from the carcass, mouth open with shock, heart thudding against her ribs. She was the one who very nearly turned and ran, ran all the way back to the copse where she’d left Verenna to take her and ride home at a gallop—
Only the knowledge that if she did, they would probably hear her and kill her, kept her from doing just that.
I’ve killed a man, she thought, legs shaking, sour taste of bile in the back of her throat. Her gorge rose. I’ve killed a man, myself—
Except that she didn’t know the blow that had killed him. If it had been her doing, she’d have just hit him from behind with the pommel. Nothing like that was in anything Dent had taught her.
It was the sword. It had to be. Only a magic sword would have been able to manipulate her like a puppet. And Need was, of course, a magic sword, and had been described as giving Kethry the same power it had just apparently given Kero.
I never thought it would happen like that—just take me over like that. I thought—I thought it would just sort of show me how to do things—
This wasn’t what she’d planned at all. She looked at the blade in her hand and the blood on it with revulsion. She wanted to drop it right there—
But then, just before she did, another thought occurred to her.
I was going to ask Grandmother for a weapon, or a demon. Would this bandit be any less dead if I’d hit him with a lightning bolt, or let a demon eat him? What makes it any better if I kill him with my own hands, or do it from a distance?
It wasn’t better, of course—
And he hurt and killed my people. Maybe even somebody I knew. She steeled herself, steadied her hands, and forced herself to clean the blade on his tunic. He could have chosen an honest living. He’s helping keep Dierna captive. He had a choice, he made it. And I’m making mine.
She went back on hands and knees and eased through the brush toward the camp, making as little sound as possible. Her hands were getting full of stickers, and her knees were bruised by rocks—but it was no worse than some of the injuries she’d picked up berrying or training Verenna. So far.
So far, thanks to the sword, she’d been lucky.
Thanks to the sword. It still made her skin crawl to think how it would probably take her over again. She didn’t have a choice, not if she was going to rescue Dierna, but she didn’t like it at all. It just takes over with no warning. And what else does this thing do that I don’t know about? What if it turns me into some kind of monster?
But her grandmother trusted it.
There’s no reason not to trust it, I guess, she thought, as a cramp seized her leg. She stopped and eased her leg out straight, waiting for a moment until it went away. But I can’t help but wonder how much Grandmother really knew about it. Maybe it hid things from her, too.
A cheerful thought.
Just then she reached the edge of a drop-off, with a screening of brush at the edge. Bright yellow firelight silhouetting the bushes warned her that the camp was just beyond them. She wormed her way under the shelter of one of the biggest (and prickliest) of them. It was not an easy job. Tiny twigs caught in her hair and scratched her face; exposed roots caught on her belt and tunic-lacings and held her back.
Finally she reached the edge. The branches of the bushes drooped here, down over the drop-off, making a kind of screen of leaves and twigs between her and the fire. Lifting one branch out of the way, cautiously, she peered down at the camp below, blinking against the sudden light.
Closest to her and about a length below her were a half-dozen men, roaring drunk, playing some kind of game with dice or knucklebones. Two were standing; the rest were sitting or kneeling in a rough circle, watching one of their number cast and cast again. They had tossed their armor aside in a heap right below her, up against the side of the low bluff she hid on. They were filthy, unshaven, and dressed in a motley collection of clothing, some of which had probably been very fine at one time, all of which was now stained, tattered, and so dirty she wouldn’t have used it to clean the stable floor.
Beyond them was another collection of similar scum sprawled at fireside, sharing the contents of a wineskin, and squabbling over a heap of loot from the Keep. Then came the fire—badly built, part of it smoking, part roaring—and beyond the fire—
Dierna.
Her bright scarlet dress made a brilliant splash of color that attracted Kero’s eyes immediately. She lay half on her side, her pretty face a frozen mask of fear, tumbled at the feet of a tall, thin man in long red robes, the skirt of his robes split fore and aft for riding. He sat on a boulder, sharpening a knife, paying no attention to the antics of his men. Nor, strangely enough, to Dierna, although her legs were exposed to the thigh by the way her dress had torn and fallen open when she’d collapsed (or been flung) at his feet.
He reached down, as Dierna shrank away from him, and grabbed a lock of her long, unbound dark hair. He yanked her back toward him with it tangled cruelly in his fingers—Kero watched her clench her teeth and wince—and cut the lock off with a single stroke of his knife.
Kero bit her lip with sudden speculation. That was not what she’d expected him to do.
As she watched, he rose from his impromptu seat, kicking Dierna out of the way impatiently, and took the lock of hair to a flat rock just inside the ring of firelight.
Maybe one of these bastards will go for his back, she thought hopefully. Having a girl within reach must be driving them mad. If one of them tries something, makes a move for her, that’s sure to start a fight. Either the man holding her will react, or one of the others—either way, once a fight starts, it’s bound to spread. If that happens, maybe I can get in there and get her out while the fighting is going on.
But the bandits ignored the robed man; ignored Dierna, which was even odder. Even if this strange man—
Mage. This has to be the mage.