Characters / Heralds Of Valdemar Vows And Honor

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This subsection of the Heralds of Valdemar Character Sheet covers the Vows and Honor trilogy.

Tarma shena Tale'sedrin

• Action Girl: The "sword" in the Sword and Sorcerer combo.
• Bargain with Heaven: As a Kal'enedral Tarma knows the Lesser and Greater names of her goddess, the Star-Eyed, and can call on Her to try to strike a deal. When Kethry is struck down in battle and is about to die, Tarma screams the Star-Eyed's Greater Name. Time stops, and the Goddess appears and asks what price Tarma will pay to save her partner.
• Beautiful Dreamer: Kethry reflects while watching her at the start of The Oathbound that a sleeping Tarma looks very young - decidedly younger than Kethry, who at that point is nineteen - and far gentler and more at peace than she does while awake, rather more like the person she was before her clan was attacked.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: She was once renowned as a singer. When bandits attacked her clan, killing the others, Tarma was strangled and left for dead. This damaged her voice, rendering it as harsh and crow-like. She still knows all the old songs and when she's happy enough and really wants to share them with Kethry, she'll drum and "chant" them as she can no longer sing.
• Bond Creature: With Warrl (ironic since Kethry summoned him to be her Familiar).
• Born in the Saddle: Shin'a'in culture revolves around horses. Tarma's harsh affect is noted to only fully soften around children, horses, and Kethry.
• Chaste Heroine: Before she became Swordsworn Tarma had a fiance. Afterwards, as with all Swordsworn, she has no sexual interest in anything or anyone. (This does nothing to stop the rumors that she and Kethry are a couple, or at least Friends with Benefits, and they are both actually willing to foster that impression).
• Chastity Couple: The relationship between Tarma and Kethry is intense and can be read in many different ways, including romantic to some degree. In that case their Incompatible Orientations would make them this.
• Covered with Scars: So many that she shocks a young girl who sees her getting out of a bath, and that's relatively early in her career.
• Deadpan Snarker: Her humor is so dry that people don't always realize she's joking.
• Declaration of Protection: Within two months of meeting Kethry, Tarma swears blood-oath with her, making them family. Not long after that Kethry vows to have children for her and Tarma becomes increasingly protective and defensive of her partner. Kethry is happy to be with Tarma and have her back watched, but she can also take care of herself and becomes concerned that Tarma is projecting and smothering her.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: After avenging her clan, Tarma fixates hard on returning to the Plains and is extremely taken aback when asked what she'll do then. Kethry is fine with wandering around doing good deeds and learning as she goes, but Tarma needs a concrete purpose, and finds it in the triple goals of fame, fortune, and a tithe of land.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: In the Oathblood novella, she's firm but fair and all in all, a fairly kind teacher. In By the Sword, she comes down hard on Kerowyn and Daren, particularly when they bungle a tracking exercise because they refused to cooperate.
• Extra Parent Conception: Tarma is sterile, which is a problem for her as the last of her kind - Talesedrin can be rebuilt but it requires a "living core" of blood relatives of the old clan. Fortunately, as Tarma's oath-sister Kethry is also considered to be of the blood, and her children are regarded as having three parents.
• Famed In-Story: Courtesy of Leslac the Bard. Building a name for herself was her goal, but she also needed to raise funds, and being the selfless champion of the powerless doesn't put food on the table.
• Fighting for a Homeland: Tarma is the single surviving member of Clan Tale'sedrin. She's sterile, but Kethry as her oath-sister vows to have children who can be the living core of a reborn clan. The other members will come from other Shin'a'in clans, but the number and quality of the people who will join them depend entirely on how much prestige and capital she accrues. Therefore, she and Kethry become professional mercenaries, since as they represent such a range of skill and work very well together they have a good chance of becoming famous, and perhaps wealthy as well.
• Friend to All Children: Which astounds everyone who doesn't know her, considering she's quite harsh-faced by birth and is a notoriously unemotional Swordsworn, known to be as "sexless as the blades they bear." But in actuality, she has always been good with children, had wanted a large brood of children for herself, and gets one by proxy thanks to Kethry.
• Glory Seeker: Somewhat unwillingly; Tarma isn't interested in glory for herself, but has to build up her reputation in order to attract worthwhile new members to her all-but-annihilated clan.
• Got Over Rape Instantly: Thalhkarsh in his second appearance, manages to get Tarma alone, disrupt her bond with the Star-Eyed and break her divinely-imposed asexuality, transform her physically, and then gang rapes her. Kethry, thrown into a cage with her, finds her nearly catatonic. Warrl is able to call Tarma back to herself and Tarma can then fight and act, but as soon as Thalhkarsh is defeated Tarma sinks to the floor again. Kethry then appeals to the Star-Eyed, who restores the bond and asexuality - and Tarma's instantly better, even cheerful at how well the night turned out in the end. In the narration Tarma describes the sense of psychic armor being closed around her again, a coolly supportive distance blotting out many of the details and allowing her to regard the situation in a very different way.
• Heroic BSoD: In her backstory, after being gang-raped by the bandits who slaughtered her clan.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Again, with Kethry. They wear matching rings, frequently hold hands (sometimes with Intertwined Fingers) and share beds, call each other pet names in casual conversation, and address one another as "love" when it's more serious. Often they are Mistaken for Gay and will sometimes even encourage this while traveling. After they meet as teenagers, Tarma and Kethry live together for the rest of their lives.
  • When Kethry takes a mortal wound, Tarma tries to bargain with her goddess to save her and is willing to discard even the one thing she's sought most ardently, the restoration of her clan. "Take my body - take my life - let my clan be declared dead! Without Kethry to share it with me, none of it matters!" Her goddess is so pleased that Tarma's found love that the only price she takes in exchange is painful Energy Donation and some temporary exhaustion.
• Honor Before Reason: Tarma's generally regarded as the more practical of the pair. Still, at one point Need points them at an innocent woman about to be burned at the stake, who's called out for a champion to represent her in Trial by Combat. Kethry would have quite happily just rescued Lady Myria and rode off with her, but Tarma goes all in on the formal honor-traditions of a foreign people. This even though it means a succession of duels against as many men as want to fight her, and she knows that it would eventually kill her unless Kethry can find the true culprit first.
• Image Song: "Advice To Would-be Heroes"
• Important Haircut: Part of giving the oath to become Swordsworn; the cut hair indicates that the oath has been accepted (The oath is traditionally performed in a place with no sharp objects in it and made without any blades on one's person, so it isn't possible for the oathtaker to cut his/her hair unless the oath is accepted). She repeats it with less supernatural interference in The Oathbound as part of her ritual preparations to face Trial by Combat as Lady Myria's champion.
• Lack of Empathy: Tarma loves Kethry, but at the start of The Oathbound when Kethry painfully confesses her horrific backstory Tarma plays devil's advocate, asking if Kethry's brother, who sold her to 'marry' a wealthy pedophile when she was twelve, wasn't just trying to give her a better life, and is generally rather casual about the story.
• Lean and Mean: Tarma is on the thin side and while she'll be sweet to Kethry, children, and horses, she's sardonic and inclined towards being dismissive with anyone else. Even to her friends she's generally somewhat arch.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Not quite a marriage, but to Tarma's people being oath-siblings is the most profound and closest tie two people can have outside of a lifebond. The first time she takes Kethry to the Plains, they encounter a number of Shin'a'in who are upset that she has an outlander for a partner and claim Kethry has tricked her and just here to steal from them, which infuriates Tarma to the point of nearly attacking them. Everyone settles down after the Star-Eyed Goddess sends a sign.
• Mindlink Mates: Since their bonding was blessed by the Star-Eyed, Tarma and Kethry are sometimes able to share emotions. When they're apart, each knows if something's happened to the other.
• Morality Chain: Tarma's neutral-to-contemptuous about most people outside of the Shin'a'in and doesn't like to stick her neck out without getting paid for it. The more softhearted Kethry is bound to help women in trouble and more willing to care besides, so Tarma's grudgingly dragged into altruistic acts again and again to keep Kethry from having to face danger alone. Some of Tarma's indifference is a front and she is interested in addressing the fantasy equivalent of a Toxic, Inc. situation, but she still would walk away from a lot of the situations they find themselves in if Kethry wasn't so willing to step in.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: Tarma is lean but quite toned. When Thalhkarsh captures and transforms her body into a softer and more curvaceous version, she struggles in a fight until she gets her hands on Need, who undoes the change for her.
• Older and Wiser: In By The Sword.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Stoic and sardonic, while Tarma has a soft side she only weeps a couple of times in the trilogy. When Kethry is almost killed, Tarma cries openly and inelegantly.
• Prayer Is a Last Resort: Shin'a'in have an unusually close relationship to their Goddess, but they aren't supposed to appeal to Her for help except in the most dire of extremity, after exhausting their other options. As a Sword-Sworn Tarma's a kind of priest and knows two of the Star-Eyed's names, the lesser and the greater - when Kethry's bleeding out in the dust, Tarma screams the greater name to initiate a Bargain with Heaven.
• Proverbial Wisdom: She has a Shin'a'in proverb for all kinds of occasions, and passes this on to her final student, Kerowyn. When a spirit Kalen'edral heavily implied to be Tarma appears in Storm Breaking, she tells Karal a succession of proverbs about wariness until in desperation he counters with "He who is wises speaks least!"
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: They have Incompatible Orientations but Tarma and Kethry love each other to a degree where it's easy to see them as having a romantic connection.
• Rape as Backstory: Except for those readers familiar with the Sword and Sorceress anthology novels in the 1980s, the first most readers will see of Tarma is in The Oathbound, which does not start with her origin story, but six months after she's avenged herself and her clan and bonded with Kethry.
• Rape and Revenge: The initial reason she became Kal'enedral was to avenge the ones who assaulted her and butchered her Clan, a story that can be found in Oathbreakers. The accompanying asexuality helps her recover from the trauma, but it also complicates the requirement to rebuild the Clan from her own blood.
• Rape Leads to Insanity: In Sword Sworn, the bandits who slaughter Tarma's clan also pull down her breeches and assault her before leaving her for dead. Tarma manages to climb onto a horse and ride to tell another clan what happened, and they tend her injuries. Then Tarma becomes Sword Sworn and enters a kind of fugue state that lasts for a year as she follows the bandits' trail.
  • Being attacked by Thalhkarsh and his followers, who strip Tarma's bond from her, leaves Tarma sitting nearly catatonic in a cage, her eyes vacant, until Warrl manages to recall her to herself. Once the threat is dealt with she collapses again and is oblivious to the world until Kethry can restore her connection to the Star-Eyed.
• Remembered I Could Fly: Whenever Tarma takes up Need, Need grants her perfect immunity to all magic cast on Tarma without her consent, letting her curbstomp any mages that she faces. Any mages; even Thalhkarsh is rendered ineffectual. She never seems to remember that she can just ask for Need for a few minutes before entering a confrontation with a mage, it always happens in a moment of desperation without planning for it.
• Retired Badass: In By The Sword.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After her clan is killed, Tarma spends a year tracking the bandits responsible, and then with Kethry spends a couple of months picking them off before storming their stronghold. Tarma would have happily died finishing them off, but Kethry saves her.
• Song of Prayer: Shin'a'in prayers are generally sung, which Tarma struggles with after her throat is injured.
• Spirit Advisor: Swordsworn are taught by the spirits of past Swordsworn; several of Tarma's "teachers" appear throughout her books, and she herself is implied to have joined their number by The Mage Winds, in which a spirit-Swordsworn calls Elspeth "student of my student."
  • In Storm Breaking, a spirit-Swordsworn talking to Karal mentions that Kerowyn is the spirit's kinswoman. It's not proven to be Tarma, but it's certainly suspicious.
• Suicide by Cop: Tarma takes a full year to catch up to the bandits who slaughtered her clan, at which point they're well ensconced in a town. She's willing to just immediately confront them, but Kethry persuades her to accept her help and they whittle the bandits down until there's just a core left. Tarma is prepared to die taking them down, but Kethry saves her again and asks why she wanted to die.
• Sword and Sorcerer: The sword to Kethry's sorcerer.
• Sworn Brothers: With Kethry. Specifically they are "she'enedra" or oath-sisters to each other, and the Goddess blessed their oath by instantly healing the bloody palms they clasped together, leaving crescent-shaped scars. This provides a loophole when Tarma's sexlessness makes it impossible to provide the core blood to rebuild her Clan.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Kethry's girly girl. Though amusingly, she's far better with children than Kethry is.

Lady Kethryveris "Kethry" of House Pheregul

• Abdicate the Throne: 'Throne' is overstating it, but as of the end of the first story in The Oathbound Kethry states her disinterest in her noble House, title and manor included, and as they've been stripped from her brother allows distant cousins to take both. Afterwards she does sometimes use her title while very far from her hometown of Mornedealth because it can be useful to be seen as a traveling noble.
• Action Mom: She retires as a mercenary at the end of Oathbreakers and settles down to have children, but that doesn't mean she can't still rise to the occasion, as she does in Wings of Fire and Oathblood. As an old lady in By the Sword, though, she's quite arthritic and doesn't participate in her granddaughter Kerowyn's first adventure and subsequent training as actively as Tarma does.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Kethry is more openly empathic than her partner Tarma, not as willing to shrug and move on from other peoples' problems - but she can be nasty when her anger is roused, and while Tarma's just inclined to kill someone, Kethry can get... creative.
• Blessed with Suck: Need may grant her absolute blade mastery and heal any wound, including those of her loved ones, but it also forces her to come to the aid of any woman in need (hence the name). It wasn't a big problem until Leslac publicized it and they had to rescue so many women (for free!) that they didn't have time for paying work.
  • Additionally, Need won't allow herself to be used to attack other women. Once their bond is mature, the sword itself would kill Kethry if she put it down and took the life of another woman using other means. It rarely comes up but is a major problem when it does - fortunately, Need doesn't prevent Tarma at Kethry's side from killing female enemies.
• Blue Blood: She's minor nobility, one of the Fifty Families, and as a child had basically the title and a run-down mansion they couldn't afford to maintain and were contractually unable to sell.
• Big Brother Worship: As a child Kethry adored her older brother Kavin, right up until she was twelve and he sold her to a pedophile.
• Chained to a Bed: Kethry bitterly recounts a bit about the "wedding night" she had when she was twelve. The chains were gold and the sheets were silk.
• Cursed with Awesome: Whether Need is curse or blessing is entirely a matter of opinion. A Hawkbrother tells Kethry that Need binds her soul more closely with every hour and demands a heavy price, which is worth it for the services she provides. Tarma, being more pragmatic and focused on gaining renown and money to rebuild her clan, dislikes Need and would rather she was gone, even when Kethry points out that Need has healed Tarma of such serious wounds as a blade to the lung. Most of the time Kethry thinks Need's worth it, likes helping women who are as desperate as she was once, and doesn't even really mind that the sword lashes her with psychic pain when things are urgent. As she says, Need brought her and Tarma together.
  • Additionally, Need's demands grow less frequent and inexorable as Kethry grows older. She spent several years being yanked around, even into author's setting at one point, but by the time she and Tarma join the Sunhawks Need is often quiet for months at a stretch and can be coaxed into Healing injured female Sunhawks. When Need activates in the novella Oathblood, Kethry hasn't heard anything from her in years - and Need activates to demand Kethry help two of her and Tarma's students who had been secretly kidnapped on their way home, whose deaths would have upset both of them greatly.
• Dirty Harriet: Sometimes passes as a sex worker for one reason or another, including taking and servicing clients - though Kethry actually bespells them to have vivid dreams of enacting their fantasies instead of touching them herself.
• Excalibur in the Rust: While climbing through a mountain pass, she and Tarma find a long-dead corpse curled up besides a a sword. Tarma, examining the sword and finding evidence that gold and gems had been stripped from the hilt, determines that it's a useless dress sword that can't hold an edge and throws it down in disgust. Kethry, about to drive it point down to serve as a grave marker, instead decides to take it with her - and good thing too, since it proves to be the Sword That Sings.
• Fake Relationship: She and Tarma sometimes deliberately foster this impression with quite a lot of enthusiasm, including having Tarma bodily pick Kethry up and "passionately" kissing each other. They actually have to change their behavior more whenever they're in a place where it's dangerous for two women to be seen as lovers.
• Famed In-Story: By the same bard as Tarma. In the Mage Winds books, years after her death, Clanmother Kethry is still spoken of with clear respect and affection by members of Tale'sedrin, a majority of which are related to her by blood or marriage and often bear names that reflect hers.
• The Fettered: Kethry is bound in three ways that keep her from just doing as she wants, which she reminds herself of when a demon tries to tempt her. As a White Winds mage, she's bound to use her magic to help others, make the world a better place, and one day either join or found a magic school and teach others. As Need's bearer, she 'serves need' and must try to protect and avenge desperate women, even if it means going far out of her way. And she vowed to Tarma before the entire Clain Liha'irden and the Elders of multiple others that one day she will have children for her.
• Guile Hero: She prefers a less direct approach than Tarma, best shown in the short story where they meet - in Sword Sworn, Tarma tracks down her clan's murderers to a town they had taken over, and she would have just gone after the lot of them and gotten killed. Kethry, hired by the town's residents to handle their bandit infestation, stops her and persuades her to accept her help, taking it more slowly and changing the odds. They use everything from scorpions to 'accidents' to back-alley stabbings to whittle the bandits' numbers down a few at a time over the course of two months, Kethry showing a degree of ingenuity that impresses Tarma. Then, with the odds much better and the handful left refusing to leave, Kethry agrees that it's time to storm their base.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Amber-haired. When she's not being extremely cynical and showing a Lack of Empathy towards enemies or more feminine women, Kethry is certainly the kinder and more compassionate of the two, and usually doesn't mind Need compelling her to wander the countryside helping desperate women all that much.
• Happily Married: At the end of Oathbreakers
  • Babies Ever After: And has seven children. In an author's note Mercedes Lackey calls Kethry a "fecund little devil".
• Heroic BSoD: In her backstory, after being rescued from the "husband" who raped her.
• Heroic Vow: By becoming a White Winds mage, Kethry swore to do what good in the world she could and to try to pass on what she learns, when she's built the skill and power to do so. In taking on Need, she's implicitly sworn that she will not kill women lest Need retaliate. When she meets Tarma's people she also vows to have children in Tarma's place, who will become the living core of the rebuilt Tale'sedrin.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Tarma. Kethry is entirely willing to have children for Tarma to be raised as Shin'a'in. She repeatedly offers to give up her ambitions to find a husband and found a White Winds school in order to dedicate herself to growing Clan Tale'sedrin with the contributions of one-night stands and friends, though Tarma values Kethry's happiness too much to take her up on that. They care very much and very obviously about each other and live together for their whole lives.
  • Even when they have the resources to not have to share beds, when Kethry is anxious she'll climb into one and look pleadingly at Tarma in invitation to join her.
• Humble Hero: White Winds mages are encouraged to charity and generosity, which Tarma snarks means they never have any money. In her mercenary years Kethry owns a dress neatly folded up and usually brings it out and augments it and any possessions with illusions if she thinks it's useful to appear to be A Lady. Otherwise she's in a "walking-robe", and while she's certainly willing to get paid she's not really interested in money or fame except for Tarma's sake.
• Image Song: "Advice to Young Magicians"
• Impoverished Patrician: House Pheregul hadn't been much of a noble house for years by the time she was born. One loyal servant stayed with them, Kethry's nursemaid Tilly. After their parents died, her older brother decided to sell her to a very wealthy banker who wanted a title and "liked 'em young."
• Lack of Empathy: As is not uncommon with Lackey's writing, even though Kethry's kinder than Tarma they both tend to be scornful and contemptuous towards traditionally feminine women unless these women are self-sacrificing, faithful even to terrible husbands, and have unfeminine interests. In The Oathbound they have a passing encounter with a young girl unhappily married off to an ugly old man, and Kethry doesn't bother realizing that she was in a similar position herself or considering the girl's perspective, instead considering her a spoiled creature. When they rescue a servant girl and have to take her with them, it turns out that the girl has never gone camping before and is bad at it; even Kethry considers her as a kind of helpless pet to be foisted off on a local loveable misogynist.
• Lonely Together: Tarma essentially proposes becoming oath-sisters to her because they worked so well together and neither had anyone else.
  "She suddenly felt all Tarma's loneliness and her own as well, and in the darkness of the night it is sometimes possible to say things that are too intense and too true for daylight."
• Mal Mariée: Her brother arranged for her to marry when she was twelve, and her "husband" chained her to the bed to keep control of her.
• Mama Bear: In Oathblood, two of her and Tarma's young female students are kidnapped and her oldest daughter Jadrie accompanies them on their rescue mission, and has to be protected herself. With Need's vengeful outrage accentuating Kethry's own feelings, Jadrie finds her mother's fury and lack of mercy to be quite unsettling.
• Marry for Love: Kethry's specific goals aren't as defined or urgent as Tarma's and she repeatedly says she's willing to forgo finding a man she can love and marry before having children, but she does want a loving marriage, with someone who won't be put off by how close she is to Tarma. Eventually she has Jadrek and is quite happy with him.
• May–December Romance: Kethry with Jadrek. Unsurprisingly, she outlives him by quite a margin, particularly since mages in this setting usually live longer than other people.
• Metaphorically True: In Sword Sworn, Kethry takes a guise as a High-Class Call Girl, the better to get closer to some enemies, and takes johns that she bespells rather than actually touching. Watching one moan in a happy trance, Tarma says she thought sorcerors couldn't lie.
  "I didn't lie. I promised him - all of them - an hour to match their wildest dreams. That's exactly what they're getting. Besides, nothing I'd be able to do could ever match what they're conjuring up for themselves!"
• Mindlink Mates: Because the Star-Eyed Goddess blessed their bond, she and Tarma have a limited degree of emotion-sharing. Tarma's mostly just able to sense if Kethry's in trouble when they're apart. Kethry, as a mage and more used to certain kinds of self-examination, is a bit more able to pick up on Tarma's emotions in general.
• Mistaken for Gay: When she and Tarma pass back through her old hometown, Kethry's brother and "husband" both notice and immediately assume she and the swordswoman are lovers.
• Mugging the Monster: Kethry arranges for this when she and Tarma are burdened with a cursed amulet that has to be passed on to someone who takes it willingly - she goes on ahead looking pathetic, bandits jump at her and grab her coinpurse with the amulet inside, and then Warrl, the battlesteeds, and Tarma charge in and chase the bandits, still holding the amulet and its curse, away.
• My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Textually averted; when Kethry offers to have children in Tarma's stead to give the new Talesedrin a living core, she says that as a mage she can extend the period of her own fertility. The latter parts of her adventures with Tarma, when they're probably in their thirties, feature both of them Feeling Their Age a little bit as scars and the strain of their hard physical lives makes it harder to be mercenaries, but Kethry's not concerned on this front at least.
• Nobility Marries Money: Very much against her will. When she disparagingly refers to Wethes as her "husband" Tarma objects, and in that story it turns out that marriages of adults to minors aren't actually legal in Jkatha, plus being "separated" from him for several years would have annulled it anyway.
• Noodle Incident: She mentions currying favor with Ethereal Varirs before calling them to her aid in battle, because otherwise she'd have to go on a quest for snow roses afterwards.
• No Periods, Period: When she and Tarma pick up a bad luck amulet, Kethry's stricken with menstrual cramps painful enough to prevent her from spellcasting; normally, her monthlies are a lot more mild and are otherwise unmentioned.
• Not Afraid Of You Any More: She has this revelation regarding Wethes after realizing that his penchant for little girls is because he's afraid of adult women - and she terrifies him now that she's grown.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Kethry often plays the part of Tarma's pretty, dim lover or hanger-on, being much better at looking harmless than her partner is.
• Older and Wiser: In By The Sword.
• Out of Focus: She's certainly important and a major character who consistently has plenty to say and do, but in The Oathbound after revisiting her hometown and overcoming the associated fears, Kethry is the major secondary character to Tarma's main character. This is doubtless because Tarma needs a purpose in life and focuses on it after finding it. Meanwhile Kethry is happy to drift and tag along to help her.
• Platonic Co-Parenting: Kethry's children essentially have three parents and call Tarma "Clanmother".
• The Power of Hate: When the Sunhawks come to avenge their beloved Captain Idra, they are of course pissed. Kethry is able to harness the power of their grief and rage and use it to help power her spells, including piercing the veil between life and death so Idra can take Resurrection Revenge on her brother.
• Rape and Revenge: Oddly, considering the violence with which she and Tarma usually address rapists, Kethry is content leaving her brother and Wethes unharmed and with much of their money, counting public humiliation of both of them, and their terror of her now that she's not a helpless child, to be punishment enough.
• Rejected by the Empathic Weapon: When she has Need in hand and is facing Lastel Longknife, Need doesn't help her as much as usual and only defends, not attacking. Tarma and Kethry believe it's because, thanks to Thalhkarsh's trickery, Lastel is in the body of a woman. Kethry throws Need down and prepares to blast Lastel with magic. Tarma has the intuition - confirmed by Thalhkarsh gloating to a priest - that if Kethry kills him Need will kill her, and doesn't let it happen.
• Runaway Bride: After being married off by proxy by her brother to a wealthy pederast. Unfortunately for her, she wasn't able to get away until after the wedding night, when an old servant was able to literally unchain her.
• Squishy Wizard: Need makes up a lot of the difference and is a very skilled fighter who grants brief super strength, but Kethry's own strengths are very much in magic rather than physical combat. She is still in pretty good shape and struggles in a "Freaky Friday" Flip involving a body that hasn't been traveling and riding horses for years.
• Summon Magic: Much of Kethry's magic involves calling elementals and other spirits to help her, whether in combat or to gather information. As part of the White Winds tradition of magic she doesn't coerce them, which means more effort is put into befriending and pleasing them but also means she has no fear of them turning on her.
• Summoning Ritual: Most notably in Oathbreakers, when she calls up the restless spirit of Captain Idra.
• Sword and Sorcerer: The sorcerer to Tarma's sword, though Kethry does also have a sword of her own.
• Sworn Brothers: With Tarma. This makes her Tale'sedrin by blood and her children the core of the rebuilt Clan.
• There Is Only One Bed: In the early stories, when they tend to be strapped for cash, they get told things like this and don't even blink before agreeing to share.
• Threesome Subtext: Kethry wants to find a man she can love and have a permanent relationship with before trying to repopulate Clan Tale'sedrin, but that's going to mean a man who's both fine with all of her children spending time on the Plains and with her closeness with Tarma. Fortunately, Jadrek comes to love them both in different ways and respects the Shin'a'in highly.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The girly girl to Tarma's tomboy. While she's no less down to earth and practical than her partner, Kethry dresses more feminine, has a more conventionally attractive appearance in general, is typically happier to stop and help strangers, and has a kinder, more approachable demeanor.
• Training the Gift of Magic: As a practitioner of the White Winds tradition of magic, it's expected of Kethry that if she reaches a certain level of skill and power she should join or found a school and continue the practice. When she and Tarma put Stefansen on the throne he grants them some property, and they do set up a school. Tarma and a few other retiring mercenary friends teach fighters, Jadrek teaches a few scholars, and Kethry teaches magic. Decades later when she retires from that, one of her sons takes over the school and moves it to a city.
  • Her books also make it clear that magic is an innate ability in this 'verse, but not completely. In The Oathbound she says that pain and death create magic energy that even those without Gifts can use. Later, when Thalhkarsh body-swaps her with a non mage, she can't use magic with any ease or precision as the body she's using isn't capable of channeling it, but thanks to her training she would still be able to blast an enemy at very close range.
• Undercover as Lovers: She and Tarma take this guise regularly, sometimes covering Tarma with an illusion that makes her appear to be a man, sometimes not.

Warrl the Kyree

• Bond Creature: With Tarma. Amusingly, Warrl joins the duo when Kethry decides it's time she called a familiar - after answering the summons, Warrl declares that Kethry doesn't need him and attaches himself to her partner instead.
• Deadpan Snarker: Just as much as Tarma, if not moreso. He's still going strong by the By the Sword era.
• Famed In-Story: Among his clan, at least. Rris, a kyree in the Mage Winds trilogy, constantly name-drops his 'famous cousin Warrl'.
• Intellectual Animal: Human-level intelligence (at least) but still a very canine way of looking at the world.
• Mistaken Death Confirmation: Thalhkarsh thinks he's killed him in their second encounter, but Warrl has just gone into a brief coma and revives himself to help Tarma and Kethry in their darkest hour.
• No Biological Sex: Technically neuter, which is a natural third sex for kyree, but referred to by male pronouns. It's never stated whether he is male in gender, since the question of sex vs. gender hadn't really been raised when Lackey was writing him.
• Noble Wolf: Kyree are an Uplifted Animal species that resemble large wolves but have human-level intelligence, magical or psychic powers, and extended lifespans. Warrl is an entirely rational creature who can call on the skills and instincts of a predator.
• Out of Focus: He joins them quite early on but generally has less to do than the two women and in many of the stories is basically just present, never evidencing having his own motivations. He does get more involved in the plot in By the Sword, where he teaches Mindspeech to Kerowyn (not least because he's the only one who can).
• Pragmatic Hero: Willing to do what works. He's annoyed that Kero doesn't want to learn the Mind Control side of Mindspeech, not understanding why she would think it an unfair use of her Gift.
• The Worf Effect: In both encounters with Thalhkarsh he's swatted aside and almost dies.

Thalhkarsh

"Tarma and Kethry's greatest foe", a demon who appears in two short stories in The Oathbound.

• A God Am I: Sets himself up as a god in both appearances. In the first, he raises a temple covered in lewd carvings in a town and starts holding "services", combining Human Sacrifice with orgies for his followers. Town leaders and anyone who might object are all soon either killed or in on it. In the second story he's more subtle about it but still takes an abandoned temple as his base and styles himself as a god.
• Bad Boss: He sees all humanity as far beneath him. His followers and "priests" can share in his rapine but if, say, angry women with swords arrive and start carving them up he doesn't lift a finger to help them. In his first appearance, seeing that he watches and does nothing as Tarma and Kethry kill his "high priest" mid service shakes the congregation's worship of him.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Tarma, comparing notes with a priest, notes that it's weird that Thalhkarsh has sex with humans and that most demons wouldn't consider it, the way most humans don't want to have sex with dogs. She concludes that the sadism is probably part of it.
• Color Me Black: Fantastic Racism edition. Attracted to human women though he might be, he was extremely dismissive of them as well and utterly horrified to find himself transformed.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Transformed permanently into a delicate, waifish human woman with most of his capacities locked away, and imprisoned by a powerful religious sect which intends to sing, preach, sermonize, and debate him into true redemption, even if that takes hundreds of years.
• Eat the Summoner: The mage who summoned him intended to summon a minor imp with a similar name but got the pronounciation wrong. Thalhkarsh broke free of the mage's protections, transformed into a form his prey found irresistibly attractive, and then played with him before eating him.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: He doesn't swap himself, but he makes Kethry and Lastel (some time after making Lastel's body and the illusion put on it one and the same) switch places.
• Deal with the Devil: After eating his summoner, Thalhkarsh noticed the summoner's apprentice cowering and offered him power, pleasure, and (of course) the chance to live if he became Thalhkarsh's "high priest" and got him all the sacrifices he wanted, terms the apprentice was only too glad to agree to. When Tarma and Kethry interrupt one of the "services" he offers a deal, promising pleasure and power and to make both of them very good looking, but he doesn't seem to be as all-powerful as that trope often suggests. Later, Kethry confesses that she had been afraid that Tarma would accept the offer if it was to bring her clan Back from the Dead, but Tarma says they're beyond his reach anyway.
• Depraved Bisexual: Years before Mornelithe Falconsbane and his various incarnations, Thalhkarsh is very much in the same mold. He has a clear preference for women, but he's quite willing to seduce and assault men as well.
• First Law of Gender Bending: The spells he casts to turn people into conventionally attractive women are intended to be lifelong, which also means that when he's hit by his own spell, he's not getting out of it.
• Forced Transformation: Turns Lastel Longknife into the woman Kethry cursed him to resemble, and Tarma into a curvier, less powerful woman.
• Gender Bender Angst: Screams in horror and shuts down on finding himself transformed into a human woman, making it conveniently easy for him to be captured and imprisoned.
• Glamour: Likes to take on a large, mostly human form that's extremely good looking. When he sets up a cult around himself that includes public Human Sacrifice of "brides", the first "bride" runs to him willingly, though the others... stop being as willing as they see what that means.
• Glamour Failure: When Need stabs him he loses control of his handsome shape and reverts to his true demonic appearance. This isn't described, but is horrific enough that his cult breaks and runs.
• Post-Rape Taunt: Lastel Longknife, a bandit who Kethry forced to resemble a woman as punishment for his own proclivities, survived and summoned Thalhkarsh for help and Revenge. Revenge, Thalhkarsh liked, but in the mean time he also liked to play with Lastel and taunt him about his reactions.
• Serial Escalation: The second story to feature him involves some retconning of his first appearance to make him seem more powerful and fearsome - Tarma says she'd nearly fallen for his temptation rather than largely faking interest, and that all of his "brides" ran willingly to him even after seeing what he was doing to them.
• Sex God: Certainly how he talks about himself to Lastel, who miserably admits that yes it does feel good, damn you.
• Sexual Harassment and Rape Tropes: He fits quite a few of these tropes, as a demon whose primary motivations are rape and sadism.
• Succubi and Incubi: He's the closest Velgarth has to one of these, since apparently demons don't normally find humans attractive.

Jadrek

• Amazon Chaser: Kethry's not particularly Amazonian, but they're both well aware that she's much stronger and more physically hale than he is and could "break him in half", which he's pretty happy with.
• Bookworm: It's part of the job, as an archivist.
• Disabled Snarker: Jadrek is one of the few truly good people at Raschar's court but he's been scorned all his life for his physical difficulties, and sometimes allows a bit of bitterness to show.
• Heroic Suicide: He drugs himself asleep during the trip through the mountains into Valdemar, intending to let himself die of cold rather than continue to burden Tarma and Kethry if they can't find sufficient shelter. Fortunately, Roald shows up in time to keep it from being an issue.
• Image Song: "The Archivist"
• Non-Action Guy: As someone suffering chronic pain since boyhood he's got no combat experience whatsoever and slows Tarma and Kethry down when traveling with them. The closest thing he has to an action moment is after Kethry is felled in a sorcerors' duel, when he runs up to the enemy mage's creature to shove herbs in its face, taking it out, and then takes Kethry in his arms.
• Threesome Subtext: Jadrek only marries and sleeps with Kethry, but Kethry's criteria for love interests included being fine with Tarma having such a strong presence in their lives - and Jadrek's not just fine with it, he confesses to loving Tarma, too, which makes her very happy.
• Throwing Off the Disability: Downplayed. Traveling with Kethry would have been even harder on him except that she has Need, and Need heals people who Kethry loves and who love her in return. Even though it means living through some pretty adverse conditions, until they actually started climbing into an icy mountain pass Jadrek benefited from Need's proximity and felt less pain and greater strength than he was used to.
• Virgin-Shaming: An inverse - while having sex with Jadrek for the first time, Kethry realizes he's very inexperienced, possibly a virgin, and takes a whole paragraph in the narration to hate all the women he's known who haven't slept with him and given him more confidence.

Herald Roald

• Like Brother and Sister: He and Tarma are initially suspicious of one another but after the Star-Eyed Goddess appears to them they have a moment of intense and joyful communion and hold hands while gazing into each other's eyes. In her narration Tarma takes pains to say there's nothing remotely sexual about their connection, it's just the feeling of finding a sibling to her soul.
• Modest Royalty: He claims he's just another Herald and "not that important" so long as his parents are still alive and ruling.
• Really Royalty Reveal
• You Didn't Ask: He doesn't really do anything to hide the fact that he's the heir to the throne of Valdemar, but no one actually sees fit to mention it until Kethry challenges his ability to make good on his promises.

Captain Idra

• Abdicate the Throne: She was second in line to the throne of Rethwellen but chose to abdicate any hope of succession, preferring the freedom of being a mercenary and soon becoming the much-beloved captain of the Sunhawks. Unfortunately, she still gets called back to help decide which of her brothers gets the throne when their father dies.
• Driven to Suicide: After days of physical, mental, and sexual torture by her own brother and his servants, she manages to get free, get a hold of a knife, and kill herself to end the pain and deny her brother the satisfaction of killing her.
• Image Song: "The Price of Command", which is also a Chains Of Commanding song.
• Lady of War: As an abdicated and middle-aged princess who became the head of a mercenary company, she's more poised and less coarse than the women in the rank and file.
• Mistaken for Gay: Her brother Raschar thinks she's a lesbian and despises her for it. Her actual sexuality is unknown, but she seems to have a close connection of some sort to her (male) second in command.
• A Mother to Her Men: Part of her popularity. When Kethry's spell allows her to ride briefly back into the world of the living, her Sunhawks are awed and briefly terrified, but she smiles at them.
  "We've ridden with Idra through things you can't imagine; she's stood by us through fear and flood and Hellfire itself. How could we have been afraid of her?"
• Rebellious Princess: She was one before she left home to join a mercenary company.
• Resurrection Revenge: Using the Sunhawks' love of her and rage at her death, and the ancient spell against an oathbreaker king, Kethry tears open a portal between the worlds and Idra rides through to smile at her loyal forces and quite horribly kill her brother. She returns to the afterlife once that's done, though.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: Soon after seeing Raschar crowned and Stefan exiled Idra has second thoughts and decides to go after her younger brother, but claims she's going to go out and search for the long-lost Sword That Sings. She's captured before she can make progress in either.
• Too Cool to Live: We barely see her before she goes home to help with her brothers' succession crisis and subsequently dies.
• Universally Beloved Leader: So much, that upon news of her death, her active company, new recruits, and retired members converge by the hundreds and execute a brutal coup to avenge her.

Prince Stefansen

• Cain and Abel: Abel to Raschar's Cain.
• Ladykiller in Love: Though it all takes place off-screen; by the time he shows up he and the lady in question are Happily Married.
• Noble Fugitive: With Raschar's crowning he was gently exiled from court to live comfortably in a mansion in the countryside. Raschar soon had other ideas, and Stefan fled to Valdemar.
• Really Gets Around: Formerly. Before his exile from court, he's referred to as 'jumping into bed with anything that wriggled their hips at him'. In fact, he was exiled because his sex life caused so much mayhem!
• Rightful King Returns: The Sword That Sings activates for him, which means he's the true heir to the throne and instating him in place of his brother is actually possible.
• Spare to the Throne: Could be why he was such a dilettante. Stefan credits his wife for his turnaround, saying she taught him to consider kingship seriously.
• Youngest Child Wins: Ends the trilogy as king and the only one of his siblings to survive.

King Raschar

• Brother–Sister Incest: though it's very unwilling on his sister's part.
• Cain and Abel: Cain to Stefansen's Abel. And Idra's Abel for that matter.
• The Caligula: He's got shades of this, between his Decadent Court, personal paranoia, and having imprisoned and raped his sister, which he boasts about to a disguised Tarma.
• Fate Worse than Death: Has this inflicted on him by Tarma and Kethry when Kethry completes the Outcasting ritual with a spell that "brings all the broken oaths home to roost". Idra kills him in an unspecified fashion. When the Sunhawks take his corpse back to fling at the feet of his court, there's just enough of him left to be recognizable.
• The Oath-Breaker: Formally, even! After Tarma finds out what he did to her Captain she, Kethry, and Jadrek complete a ritual where a priest, a mage, and a man of the common people identify and name him as an oathbreaker and swear to bring him down.
• Princeling Rivalry: Even though Idra initially supported his claim to the throne and had sworn off ever pursuing it herself, Char knew she could challenge his rule like no one else could.
• The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: The oldest of three siblings. Idra supports him over Stefan because when she came to choose which of her brothers would become king, Stefan didn't have ambitions beyond bed games wheras Raschar had been dealing for years with wealthy merchants, which she thought meant he was more ready for power. However even in her short stay in the capital she had doubts, which unfortunately he noticed.

Leslac the Bard.

• Abhorrent Admirer: Tarma and Kethry get tired of his attentions fairly quickly, especially after they realize he's making it harder for them to make a living. Ironically, there's even a song about it: "There's Always a Reason (A Curse Upon All Bards)" Tarma finds him exceptionally trying, since he persists under the delusion he can defrost the asexual ice queen by singing "That song" under her window.
• Author Avatar: Of a sort. His name is a reference to Lackey and fellow filksinger Leslie Fish. Definitely a bit of Self-Deprecation as Tarma and Kethry can barely tolerate him at best, and Leslie Fish provides the singing voice for Tarma who outright hates him.
• Cursed with Awesome (If only from Tarma and Kethry's viewpoint): his songs are "true in the main, if wrong in the details" and make them out to be heroes. Unfortunately, they're also catchy, so now everyone expects them to work for free.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Leslac's hopes for Tarma as spelled out in the song "The Swordlady, Or: 'That Song'". He's wrong, of course; doesn't stop him from trying.
• Self-Proclaimed Love Interest: If not for this, Tarma would dislike him less.
• Shotgun Wedding: Tarma eventually bribes Stefanson to arrange one for him to get the man to leave her alone.
• The Unfought: He appears himself and even has some POV in the short story "The Leslac Version", in Oathblood, but while Tarma and Kethry complain about him at length and he's present in Oathbreakers they never actually speak to or confront him on page, let alone attack him as they jokingly(?) want to do.
• Unreliable Narrator: He is determined to turn his tales of Tarma and Kethry into heroic epics worthy of his talent — whatever it takes — despite the dubious nature of some of the actual events that inspired them. Amusingly, the most inaccurate of his songs about their deeds was about one that he actually witnessed — he couldn't bring himself to write a song about how Tarma hit a belligerent drunk (who happened to be a highly unpopular local nobleman) with a broom, resulting in him accidentally hitting the fireplace with his head and dying, so he wrote a song about how she heard about Viden's evil overlord, called him out, and cut him down in an epic duel instead.
  • Word of God is that his ultimate purpose is to be an unreliable narrator: Mercedes Lackey wrote some of the Tarma and Kethry songs before she wrote the stories they were about, resulting in her forgetting some of the details she put in the songs and causing inconsistencies. So she created a bard who is the in-universe composer of the songs to justify the mistakes: Leslac either failed to properly research the story before writing the song, or deliberately changed details to make things more dramatic.