Sharon Green - The Warrior Challenged

“I see,” he said, the words a good deal more neutral than his inner response. His first reaction, anger, was being held down, temporarily put to one side; he wanted to know what was going on, and why everyone was acting so strangely. His second reaction, annoyance, was just as sharp as the anger, but wasn’t being controlled as well; he hadn’t liked my keeping him from my mind, and really wanted to say something about it. “This-experimenting you have done. Why was I not told of it sooner?”

“I-had to know what there was to tell, before I could tell anyone anything,” I answered, keeping my eyes from him as I began to move around the room again. “There have been some-changes in my abilities, and some-additions.”

“Changes of what sort?” he asked, and the concern was there again, overriding everything else. “Were you given harm through the power of that storm after all?”

“I suppose that depends on how you look at it,” I said, feeling the cool marble under my bare feet as I stepped onto it from the carpet fur. “My abilities are stronger now, much stronger than they were, and they’re spreading out to allow me to do other things. Len and Garth were helping me learn to control all of it, both of them acting as subjects. Len’s mind is stronger and better trained than Garth’s, but we discovered that that made no difference. He couldn’t resist me any more than Garth could, and maybe not even as well. Len left early because we found that I could get through his shield, and he was-upset; Garth left as quickly as he did because he said something just before you came in that got me angry, and he thought I was about to—”

I broke off the jumble of words and just stood looking down into the marble bathing pool, unfortunately having no trouble feeling the whirling agitation in the mind only a few feet behind me. Tammad was nearly as upset as I was, which was really a feat.

“Garth felt you were about to touch him in some manner,” Tammad said after a moment, the whirling of his thoughts again slowing his speech. “Was his concern well founded? Were you indeed about to touch him?”

The questions had been quietly put, more gentleness than harshness in them, almost as though they were a casual attempt at information-gathering. I would have felt better if I could have reached into his mind to confirm that, but his agitation wasn’t letting me do it. I turned my head reluctantly to look at him, seeing the outward calm he usually wore like a skin, wondering how I was going to answer those questions. I’d really wanted to do something to get even with Garth for what he’d said, but would I have actually gone through with it? I opened my mouth, found nothing inspired coming out, so I closed it again. I felt like an idiot just standing there moving my lips like a wooden dummy, but I was saved from further embarrassment by a knock at the door.

At first Tammad seemed determined to ignore the knock in favor of waiting for my answer, but then he did something I’d never seen him do before. He sent his mind to find out who was at the door, the action seeming more automatic than carefully thought out and done deliberately. He was faintly startled when he reached that other mind, but I couldn’t tell if he was startled at what he’d done, or at finding that our caller was a deeply disturbed Dallan. The big barbarian turned away from me with a frown, and strode to the door to open it.

“Tammad, I have come to ask for your assistance and that of Terril,” Dallan said immediately, his pretty blue eyes showing his concern. “The guard has searched everywhere, but they have been able to find nothing. Cinnan is beside himself. ”

“They have still found nothing?” Tammad asked, stepping back to let Dallan enter the room. Dallan was just as impossibly big as Tammad, his hair as blond, his eyes as blue. Most Rimilian men were the same, blond, blue-eyed and big, but Dallan was also drin of Gerleth, prince to his father Rellis’s Chamd. Dallan had an older brother, Seddan, but Seddan was still being kept close to bed by the healers.

“I, too, find it difficult to believe,” Dallan agreed, so distracted that he didn’t even look my way. “I had not thought there were that many places in this house where a wenda might hide. Clearly, anger gives them cunning as well as strength.”

“Wendaa!” Tammad said with a growl of annoyance, shaking his head. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but since Dallan’s request for help had included me, there was no reason to stay in the dark.

“Who is it that you discuss?” I asked, walking forward away from the bathing pool, speaking Rimilian so that Dallan would understand me. “Who has been lost that you now attempt to find?”

“My cousin Aesnil again feels herself unjustly put upon,” Dallan answered, giving me something of a smile to go with the automatic hum in his mind that started as soon as his eyes touched me. “She has done so well in putting her short time of slavery from her memory, that this morning she attempted to disobey Cinnan. He, of course, refused to allow her disobedience and strapped her for it, and when the punishment was done she fled their apartment in tears. He allowed her a short time to herself before seeking her, however found himself unable to discover her whereabouts before his presence was required at the meal with my father. He then set the guard to searching in his stead, yet have they been as unsuccessful as he.”

“Perhaps he has earned such lack of success,” I suggested, thrilled that now I had something else to add to my distress. “Had he not found it so necessary to strap her, he would now find it unnecessary to search.”

“You would have had him overlook his duty?” Dallan asked with brows raised, surprised that I would question so obvious and necessary a thing. “Aesnil remains as arrogant as ever, and should Cinnan stay his hand from her punishment, those in Grelana will suffer when she resumes her place there as Chama. Have you so soon forgotten what we all of us had at her hands?”

I shook my head at his calm, sober question, not likely to ever forget what Aesnil had done to us. Dallan, her own cousin, had been declared a servant-slave in her palace, his brother Seddan declared a vendra and sent to the vendra ralle, the arena, to fight for his life. Tammad and Cinnan had also been sent to the ralle, and I—I had been forced to act as her secret weapon against her dendayy, threatened with being thrown to the wild male slaves to keep me in line. No, I wasn’t likely to forget what Aesnil had done to me—but I also remembered that she was the one who had escaped from Grelana with me.

“It may perhaps prove true that Cinnan has indeed erred in his punishment of her,” Tammad said, looking down at me rather than over at Dallan. “Should this be so, how is he to learn of it and make amends while the girl remains unfound? An exchange of words is impossible when one must exchange words with oneself.”

The calm he felt was now shielding his mind as well, but behind that calm I could feel the electric outlines of his continuing agitation. If we stayed in that room we’d be right back to our previous discussion, and that was something I wanted to avoid. A flash of annoyance touched me as I realized I was being forced to obey him in two different ways, but I also couldn’t argue with the truth in what he’d said. Aesnil did need to be found, before she did something foolish.

“Very well, I will assist you all in searching for her,” I grudged, wanting them to know I wasn’t happy about it. “The doing should not prove overly difficult.”

Both men nodded to show their approval of my agreement, and we left to begin the search. I really didn’t expect it to take long to find her, but what we found was something else entirely.