Sharon Green - The Warrior Challenged

I turned my head to look at him, seeing the haddinn and swordbelt both he and Garth wore, realizing that they really didn’t understand completely. Or maybe they were just seeing it from the wrong side of the fence.

“If you don’t know why I’m upset, then why did you laugh?” I asked in turn, including them both in the question. “Tammad knows exactly how humiliated I’d feel wheedling him for something and so do you, otherwise you wouldn’t have laughed. How would you two have enjoyed wheedling someone for those swords you’re so proud of? And how well would you do learning to use them, if you’d had to get them in that particular way?”

“I think I preferred you as an unreasonable brat,” Len answered wryly, his tone matching Garth’s look of discomfort. “Being cooly logical and reasonable makes you difficult to argue with.”

“But, Terry, you’re not a man,” Garth protested, less able to understand than Len. “What would be absolutely demoralizing for us shouldn’t be nearly that bad for you. And maybe learning to use a sword isn’t as important as you think it is. What will happen if you don’t learn?”

“I don’t know what will happen,” I answered glumly, turning away to seat myself among the blue and white cushions the room held. “I don’t even really understand why I should need to learn something that-violent and senseless. There’s just no confusion to the feeling: I do need to learn it. ”

“But you don’t even know if you can depend on this new ability of yours,” Garth said, following me over to the cushions to crouch beside me, the disturbance in his mind reflected in his eyes. “It’s making you believe you need to do something without giving you any reasons for the belief. What if you’re misinterpreting the whole thing?”

“Then I’d be making a fool out of myself for nothing,” I answered with a shrug, feeling the annoyance and frustration rising inside me again. “But you have no idea how strong the feeling is, practically to the level of compulsion. You called it a new ability; Garth, I’m not even sure it is! What am I going to do?”

“The first thing you have to do is stop putting out that static,” Len interrupted before Garth could say anything, coming over to seat himself to my left with an expression of mild pain on his face. “It was a lot worse when we first got here, and you’re starting to slide back to it again. The power behind it is so much higher now- Terry, you’re going to have to learn to control yourself a good deal better than you have.”

“I don’t want to learn to control myself,” I muttered, with rebellion added to what Len called static, my eyes drawn down to the small-linked bronze chains around my wrists, two of the five that made me Tammad’s. “I don’t want to control myself, I don’t want to be stronger, and I don’t want anything to do with new abilities. Why can’t it all just leave me alone!”

“It won’t leave you alone,” Len pursued, his voice relentless despite the strain in it, his mind fighting against the urge to shield itself from my output. “Your abilities are growing both in size and strength, and you can’t pretend they aren’t. All you can do is learn to control them, before someone gets hurt. Like me, for instance.”

I looked up to see the sweat on his face and the tension in his body, outward signs of the way he was trying to fight me off without using his shield. When I purposely moved into his mind he flinched, expecting more pain, then relaxed with a sigh when he felt the soothing of pain control instead. I hadn’t wanted to hurt Len, but that seemed to be all my increased abilities were good for. Hurting people and making me feel like a fool.

“Stop pouting,” Garth said, holding his sword out of the way as he changed his crouch to a sitting position, his gray eyes annoyed. “Very few are born with everything in life; most of us have to work hard to earn whatever we have. Since you have more than most, you should be feeling grateful instead of resentful. You’re not an infant, Terry; stop acting like one.”

“I’ll act like anything I please,” I replied with all the surliness I was feeling, tired of trying to be reasonable. It isn’t possible to be reasonable when you’re constantly surrounded by infuriating unreason, and I was discovering I resented Garth’s lack of jealousy. Almost everyone around him was an empath, either active or latent, but Garth didn’t feel left out. He knew the problems of being an empath, understood them from having seen them, and was inordinately pleased that they weren’t his problems. I envied the sure self-acceptance that was his, and wished I could figure out how he did it.

“Well, I feel like acting like someone about to eat,” Len put in, rising to his feet then heading toward one of the trays. “How are Tammad’s lessons coming, Terry? I’ll bet he’s taking it easier with you than he did with me.”

“He’s not,” I denied with a headshake, looking down at my wristbands again, ignoring the small sound of vexation that came from Garth before he rose to join Len at the tray. “He’s trying to stop himself from feeling insulted over having to take lessons from a woman, but it keeps getting away from him. If I couldn’t filter it out I’d have the same headache you had, and that would be the end of the lessons. If Tammad thought he was hurting me, he’d refuse to let it continue.”

“I wish to hell I could figure out how you do that filtering,” Len said with heavy frustration in both mind and voice, bringing back a bowl of fried meat strips to the place he’d taken earlier. “You said it’s like letting down a thin curtain, but I can’t detect it when you use it. Do you get it the way you get the shield you showed me how to form?”

“No,” I said, moving the bottom of my gown aside so that I might stroke the bands on my ankles. “It came when I needed it, just the way it did when I was struggling with that intruder in the resting place of the sword of Gerleth. If I need it it forms, but I can’t form it if I don’t need it. Do you want to try needing it?”

“I have to think about that,” Len muttered, a glance confirming the unease his mind was evincing, his hand just holding a meat strip without his seeing it. “It didn’t form when I needed it with Tammad, so there’s no reason to believe it will against you. Maybe there’s a trigger for it that we don’t know about.”

“That’s a very pretty gown you’re wearing, Terry,” Garth said suddenly, only a small portion of his attention on the meat chunks and vegetables he’d brought back. “You really do look good in pink, which is probably why Tammad enjoys seeing you in it. When are you going to tell him about the experimenting we’ve been doing, the experimenting you’ve had to do to find the limits of your new abilities?”

Garth had kept most of his question casual, tying it into his easy observation about my gown, but there was nothing casual about the alertness in his mind or the look in his gray eyes. I found I was staring at him intently, the distress in my mind so suddenly intensified that I had to fight to keep it inside, and Len choked where he sat to my left, then waved a hand at Garth.

“Give me a break, will you?” he gasped, putting one hand to his head even though his shield had formed almost immediately. “If you’re going to do that to her, how about warning me first? If you were trying to find out if I could form that filter curtain, the answer is no.”

“I’m sorry, Len, I didn’t mean to cause you pain,” Garth apologized, but his eyes hadn’t moved from my face. “I was just testing a theory I had, and the test turned out positive. It looks like Terry is worried again over her relationship with Tammad, afraid of what he’ll do if he finds out her abilities have increased. Don’t you think it’s about time you learned to trust him, Terry?”