And a twice-man-sized thing rose from the barren earth behind Kethry.
No -- oh no -- that bastard, he had that thing hidden there; he's had this planned from the start! Tarma recognized the krakash, the mage-construct, from Jadrek's descriptions. She started to sprint for the edge of the dome, even knowing she wouldn't be able to pass it.
Kethry turned to meet it, first making frantic motions with her hands, then groping for a blade she did not have. The thing reached for her with the two upper arms, missing, but raking her from neck to knee with its outsized talons. She collapsed, clutching herself with pain; it seized her as she fell with the lower two of its four arms. It lifted her as she fought to get free -- and broke her back across its knee, as a man would break a dry branch.
"No.'"
Tarma heard her own voice, crying the word in anguish, but it didn't seem to belong to her.
The whirlwind died to a stirring of dust on the ground; the dome thinned to red mist, and vanished.
Tarma's mind and heart were paralyzed, but her body was not. She reacted to the disaster as she had planned, charging the mage at a dead run, while Jadrek sprinted fearlessly for the thing.
The startled wizard saw her coming, and threw blasts of pure energy at her -- spheres of blinding ball-lightning which traveled unerringly toward her, hit, and did nothing, leaving not even a tingle behind as they dissipated. The mage had just enough time to realize that she was protected before she reached him.
While part of her sobbed with anguish, another part of her coolly calculated, and brought Need about in a shining, swift arc, as she allowed her momentum to carry her past him. She saw his eyes, filled with fear, saw his hands come up in a futile attempt to deflect the sword -- then felt the shock along the blade as she neatly beheaded him, a tiny trail of blood-droplets streaming behind the point of the sword as it finished its arc.
Before his body had hit the ground she whirled and made for Jadrek, cursing the fate that had placed mage and construct so many paces apart. The old man hadn't a chance.
As she ran, she could see that the Archivist had something in his hands. He ducked under the grasp of the horrid creature's upper two arms with an agility Tarma never dreamed to see in him. And with the courage she had known he possessed, came up in the thing's face, casting one handful of powder into its eyes and the second into its mouth.
The thing emitted a shriek that pierced Tarma's ears --
Then it crumbled into a heap of dry earth before she had made more than a dozen steps in its direction. As it disintegrated, it dropped Kethry into the brown dust like a broken, discarded toy.
Tarma flung herself down on her knees at Kethry's side, and tried to stop the blood running from the gashes the thing's talons had left. Uselessly -- for Kethry was dying even as she and the Archivist knelt in the dust beside her.
Jadrek made a choking sound, and took Kethry into his arms, heedless of the blood and filth.
Tarma rumbled the hilt of Need into her hands, but it only slowed the inevitable. Need could not mend a shattered spine, nor could she Heal such ghastly wounds; all the blade could do was block the pain. It was only a matter of time -- measured in moments -- before the end.
"Well ..." the mage whispered, as Jadrek supported her head and shoulders in his arms, silent tears pouring from his eyes, and sobs shaking his shoulders. "I... always figured ... I'd never ... die in bed."
Tarma clenched both of her hands around the limp ones on Need's hilt, fiercely willing the blade to do what she knew in her heart it could not. "Damn it, Keth -- you can't just walk out on us this way! You can't just die on us! We -- " she could not say more for the tears that choked her own throat.
"Keth -- please don't; I'll do anything, take my life, only please don't die -- " Jadrek choked out, frantically.
"Don't... have much choice ..." Kethry breathed, her eyes glazing with shock, her life pumping out into the dust. "Be brave ... she'enedra ... finish the contract. Then go home ... make Tale'sedrin live ... without me."
"No!" Tarma cried, her eyes half-blind with tears. "No,'" she wrenched her hands away, leaping to her feet. "It's not going to end this way! Not while I'm Kal'enedral! By the Warrior, I swear NO.'"
Thrusting a blood-drenched fist at the sky, she summoned all the power that was hers as Kal'enedral, as priestess, as Swordsworn Warrior -- power she had never taken, never used. She flung back her head, and screamed a name into the uncaring, gray sky, a name that tore her throat even as her heart was torn.
The Warrior's Greater Name --
The harsh syllables of the Name echoed and reechoed, driving her several paces backward, then sending her to her knees in the dust. Then -- silence. Silence as broodingly powerful as that in the eye of the hurricane. Tarma looked up, her heart cold within her. For a moment, nothing changed.
Then everything ceased; time stopped. The very tears on Jadrek's cheeks froze in their tracks. Sound died, the dust on the breeze hung suspended in little immobilized eddies.
Tarma alone could move; she got to her feet, and waited for Her - to learn what price she would be asked to pay for the gift of Kethry's life.
A single shaft of pure, white light lanced into the ground, practically at Tarma's feet, accompanied by an earsplitting shriek of tortured air. Tarma did not turn her eyes away, though the light nearly blinded her and left her able to sec nothing but white mist for long moments. When the mist cleared from her vision, She was standing where the light had been, Her face utterly still and expressionless, Her eyes telling Tarma nothing.
They faced one another in silence for long moments, the Goddess and her votary. Then She spoke, Her voice still melodious; but this time, the music was a lament.
*That you call My Name can mean only that you seek a life, jel'enedra,* She said. *The giving of a life -- not the taking.*
"As is my right as Kal'enedral," Tarma replied, quietly.
*As is your right,* She agreed. *As it is My right to ask a sacrifice of you for that life.*
Now Tarma bowed her head and closed her eyes upon her tears, for she could not bear to look upon that face, nor to see the shattered wreck that had been her dearest friend lying beyond. "Anything," she whispered around the anguish.
*Your own life? The future of Tale'sedrin? Would you release Kethry from her vow if I demanded it and have Tale'sedrin become a Dead Clan?*
"Anything." Tarma defiantly raised her head again, and spoke directly to those star-strewn eyes, pulling each of her words out of the pain that filled her heart. "Keth-she's worth more to me than anything. Ask anything of me; take my body, make me a cripple, take my life, even make Tale'sedrin a Dead Clan, it doesn't matter. Because without Kethry to share it, none of that has any meaning for me."
She was weeping now for the first time in years; mostly when she hurt, she just swallowed the tears and the pain, and forced herself to show an impas-sive face to the world. Not now. The tears scalded her cheeks like hot oil; she let them.
*Do you, Kal'enedral, feel so deeply, then?* Tarma could only nod.