Lackey's The Oathbound: Thalhkarsh the Demon

One of the more difficult foes Tarma and Kethry have to fight in the book The Oathbound (Vows and Honor series) is Thalhkarsh, a demon summoned by accident by a young sorcerer trying to conjure up an imp. He mispronounces the imp's name, and gets a demon instead.

The sorcerer is killed by the demon, who then uses the sorcerer's apprentice to get out into the world. He sets up a temple where the demon can be worshiped as a god by means of sex orgies and the human sacrifice of local whores. Thalhkarsh believes that with enough worship he can become an actual god.

Tarma and Kethry are compelled to fight Thalhkarsh because of the geas on Kethry's sword, Need, which compels her to aid women in distress. After nearly being defeated by the demon twice, T & K are victorious and the demon is transformed into a lovely, fragile woman who is handed into the care of magery-skilled priests who will preach goodness and light at her until it sticks.

Demons make the ultimate villains for fantasy and horror precisely because they are pure evil, intentionally. They are pure spirits without the passions of humans, which means, I understand, that once they have set out on the course of evil they are wholly unable to turn back--- that's why Christ didn't die on the cross to save Satan and the fallen angels from hell, their nature makes it impossible for them to repent. Even outside the Christian context, as in Mercedes Lackey's work, there is the sense that demons are the kind of bad that won't be fixed and won't ever show mercy.

The nearest comparison to the demon in realistic fiction is the sociopathic character. A sociopath does not have empathy--- not in the sense that he cannot detect the nonverbal clues to what other people are feeling, but in the sense that when he knows, he just plain doesn't care.

But while it may not be possible to fix a sociopath, it is possible for a sociopath to decide it is in his best interest to do the right thing, or to show mercy. A demon on the other hand has an unquenchable hunger for evil--- he wants to eat your soul for dinner. On toast.

Tarma and Kethry as Role Models

It ain't easy being different. At a time in my life when the being different was really starting to hurt, I discovered Tarma and Kethry, the swordswoman and sorceress characters from Mercedes Lackey's Vows and Honor series.

This series is set in Velgarth, the same fantasy world which houses the land of Valdemar, home of the Heralds and Companions, but in kingdoms other than Valdemar.


Tarma is from the Shin'a'in people--- nomads from the Dhorisha Plains. She is the sole survivor of a massacre that killed the rest of her clan. In order to seek blood vengeance against the killers of her clan, she has no other choice, under the traditions of her people, than to become one of the Sword-Sworn.

Kethry was born into an impoverished but noble house. When in her early teens, her brother sold her into an arranged marriage with a brute. When she escaped, it was discovered that she had mage-talents, and she trained in the White Winds school of sorcery. When she left the school, she was given a magical sword, Need, which was bespelled to aid women. It enables her to fight like a trained swordswoman.

Kethry and Tarma met while Tarma was seeking her revenge against the killers of her clan. They were bound by a blood-oath, accepted by the Goddess of Tarma's people, and are thereafter Oath-sisters, bound with a magical bond.

What appealed to me (and many others I assume) was that Tarma and Kethry were, in a sense, a couple. They loved one another dearly. Each was the 'significant other' in the other's life. Yet they were a chaste couple, since Tarma as a Sword-Sworn was not only vowed to chastity but had been rendered essentially sexless by her Goddess.

As Time Marched On, a lot of folks I think came to believe that Mercedes Lackey was a bit cowardly for not making Tarma and Kethry an 'out' Gay couple--- assuming, I  guess, that ML had intended her characters to be Gay but had backed off fearing that the controversy would hurt book sales. (It could be that she meant to have her characters be saying something about friendship between women, rather than about Gay pride.)

I think, though, that for a lot of us that adopted Tarma and Kethry as an ersatz Gay couple, the fact that they were not officially Gay was actually a good thing. Many of us weren't quite ready to be identifying with Gay characters quite that strongly! And straight readers often needed to be eased into things--- at the time Gay main characters were not as common in fiction as they are today.

Tarma and Kethry helped me (and a lot of others) cope with discovering same-sex attraction/Gay identity in ourselves. The bit about them being chaste helped way more than I was ready to admit at the time. Let's face it--- if you are Gay, you are going to be spending a lot of time being attracted to people who turn out to be straight.

It's not so much that I needed characters like Tarma and Kethry (or Vanyel in the Last Herald Mage series) to preach me a cheery Gay-is-OK message. It's more like just getting a drop of hope when dealing with the 'can-I-be-as-weird-as-THIS-and-still-have-a-life' question.

And now, I'm a Christian. Who knew THAT was going to happen? I'm committed to chastity for the sake of the Kingdom. Where can you find fictional characters that speak to THAT? There aren't, really, (until I create some), but Tarma and Kethry are a place to start.