"Her? Her who?" She didn't answer him, and he said, a little more sharply. "Who, Keth? Keth?"
She shook her head as if to clear it, and resumed her seat at the table, but he could see that her hands were trembling before she clasped them in front of her on the table to conceal the fact.
"Keth?" he repeated gently, but insistently.
"It's -- it's the she'enearan bond between us," she said at last. "We each can feel things the other does, sometimes. Jadrek, she's in a killing rage; she's just barely keeping herself under control! And I can't tell why."
She looked up at him, and he could see fear, the mirror to his own, in her eyes. "I've never felt anything like this out of her; she's usually so controlled, even when I'm ready to spit nails. It has to be something Char said or did -- but what could bring her to the brink like this? There's enough rage resonating down the bond that I'm half prepared to go kill something!"
"I don't know," he said slowly. "And I'm almost afraid to find out."
They stared at each other helplessly, until finally he reached out and laid his hand over her clenched ones, offering what little comfort he had to give.
After that, it was just the deadly waiting.
Finally, after both of them had fretted themselves into a state of nervous exhaustion, they heard Warrl's nails clicking on the wooden steps outside. Tanna's presence was revealed only by the creaking of the two trick boards, one in the fifth step, one in the eighth -- otherwise she never made a sound. Kethry jumped to her feet, ran to the door and flung it open.
Tarma/Arton stood in the light streaming from the door, so very still that for a moment Jadrek wasn't entirely certain she was breathing. She remained in the doorway for a long, long moment, her face utterly expressionless -- except for the eyes, which burned with a rage so fierce Kethry stepped back an involuntary pace or two.
Warrl came up from behind her and nudged Tarma's hand with his nose; only then did she seem to realize where she was, and walk slowly inside, stopping only when she came to the table.
She did not take a seat as she usually did; she continued to stand, half-shrouded in shadows, and looked from Jadrek to Kethry and back again. Finally she spoke.
"I've found out what happened to Idra."
"... so once Char had downed a full bottle of brandy to enhance the tran, he'd gotten himself into a mood where he was talkative, but wasn't really thinking about what he was saying."
Kethry tensed, feeling Tarma's anger burning within her, a half-mad fire at the pit other stomach.
Tarma spoke in a tonelessly deadly voice, still refusing to seat herself. "Alcohol and tran have that effect in combination -- connecting the mind to the mouth without letting the intellect have any say in what comes out. And as I'd been hoping, his suspicious nature kept him from wanting to confide in any of his courtiers. And there was good old Arton, so sympathetic, so reliable, always dependable. So he threw his rump-kissers out, and began telling me how everybody abused him, everybody turned on him. Especially his sister."
She shifted her weight a little; the floorboard creaked beneath her, and Kethry could feel the anger rising up her spine. Channel that -- she told herself, locking her will into Adept's discipline. There's enough pure rage here to bum half the city down, if you channel it. Use the anger -- don't let it use you!
With that invocation of familiar discipline came a certain amount of relief; the fires were partially contained, harvested against future need. It wasn't perfect; she was still trembling with emotion, but at least the energy wasn't being all wasted.
And there will he future need --
"Then he told me about how his sister had first supported him, then betrayed him. How he had known from the first that the hunt for the lost sword had been nothing more than a ruse to get her across the border and into contact with Stefan. He carried on about that for long enough to just about put me to sleep; what an ungrateful, cold bitch she was, how she deserved the worst fate anyone could imagine. He was pretty well convinced she was she'chorne, too, and you know how they feel about that here -- I had just about figured that was all I was going to get out of him, when suddenly he stopped raving,"
Kethry felt a prickle of fear when the bond of she'enedran between herself and Tarma transmitted sent another surge of the incredibly cold rage her oathsister was feeling. I've never known anyone who could sustain that kind of emotion/or this long without berserking. Had Tarma been anything other than Kal'enedral -- someone, or several someones, would be long dead by now, hacked into many small pieces....
" 'I fixed her,' he said. 'I fixed her properly. I planned it all so beautifully, too. I had Zaras bespell one of his apprentices to look like me, and sent the apprentice off with the rest of the Court on a three day hunt. Then Zaras and I waited for the bitch in the stables; I distracted her, he hit her from behind with a spell, and when she woke up, her body belonged to Zaras. He had her saddle up and ride out just as if it were any other day, but this time her destination was my choice. We took her to the old tower on the edge of Hielmarsh; it's deserted, and the rumors I had spread about hauntings keep the clods away.' "
From there, what Tarma told them horrified even Kethry, inured to the brutality of warfare as she was. And she, of the three of them, had been the least close to the Captain; Tarma's own internal torment was only too plain to her oathsister, who was continuing to share in it -- and Jadrek's expression could not be described.
Idra's torture and "punishment" had begun with the expedient most commonly used to break a woman -- multiple rape. Rape in which her own brother had been the foremost participant. Char's methods and means when that failed became more exotic. Jadrek excused himself halfway through the toneless recitation to be audibly sick. When he returned, pale, shaking and sweating with reaction, Tarma had nearly finished. Kethry's stomach was churning and her throat was choked with silent weeping.
"His own sister -- " Kethry shuddered, her eyes burning and blurring with her tears. "No matter how much he hated her, she was still his sister!"
Tarma came closer, looming over the table like a dark angel. She took the dagger from her belt, and held it out into the light of the table-candle. She held it stiffly, point down, in a fist clenched so tightly on the hilt that her knuckles were white.
"Oathbreaker, I name him," Tarma said, softly, but with all the feeling that she had not given vent to behind the words of the ages-old ritual of Outcasting. "Oathbreaker he, and all who stand by him. Oathbreaker once -- by the promises made to kin, then shattered. Oathbreaker twice -- by the violation of king-oath to liegeman. Oathbreaker three times -- Oathbreaker a thousand times -- by the violation of every kin-bond known and by the shedding of shared blood."
"Oathbreaker, I name him" Kethry echoed, rising to place her cold hand over Tarma's, taking up the thread of the seldom-used passage from the Mercenaries' Code, She choked out her words around a knot of black anger and bleak mourning, both so thick and dark that she could barely manage to speak the ritual coherently through the chaos of her emotions -- She was still channeling, but now she was channeling the emotion through the words of the ritual. Emotion was power; that was what made a death-curse so potent, even in the mouth of an untutored peasant. This may well once have been a spell -- and it was capable of becoming one again. She knew that even though she was no priest, channeling that much emotion-energy through it had the potential of making the Outcasting into something more than "mere ritual."