Sharon Green - To Battle The Gods

“Or, should it somehow learn of the warrior, it must be allowed to believe that the warrior is evil,” said I, also gaining understanding. “To believe that the warrior is evil allows the child to look down upon her, and to strive for her downfall without generating fear or envy.”

“Exactly,” said S’Heernoh with a smile of approval, looking at each of us in turn. “We can’t ask the help of your people without hurting them terribly, and can’t even use our wonders ourselves, for fear the child will see the warrior. If we were totally alien to each other we’d have less of a problem; people who don’t look like you are different, so if they have more than you do, it’s just an accident that you’ll either ignore or work hard to match, because people different from you can’t possibly be as good. It’s a prejudice that helps a race survive.”

Both Ceralt and Mehrayn now nodded with understanding, following the concepts S’Heernoh presented, yet was I aware of distraction. An inner tugging fought for my attention, as though my body sought to draw my spirit back to it from the Snows, and I knew a great desire to obey that tugging. So easily might I just slide from that place, allowing it to blur and fade about me, returning to the thing I had sought so long and eagerly . . . .

“Jalav!” came S’Heernoh’s voice with a snap. returning me to the place of gray mist, in some manner blocking me from the destination I had nearly attained. The anger rose in me at such presumption, an anger which nevertheless brought little strength, and the dark eyes of the male grew soft with pain.

“I know you don’t want to be here,” said he, compassion and hurt clear in the words. “But if you go back to your body now, still feeling the way you do, you’ll die no matter what anyone does to try to save you. I can force anyone else on this world to live whether they want to or not, but not you. Your mind is too strong to be forced, and nothing but your wholehearted cooperation will let me save you.”

“You must listen and allow it, satya,” said Ceralt, his eyes and Mehrayn’s again upon me, both echoing the pain S’Heernoh showed. “We—are now aware of the reason for your doing such a thing, and have together vowed to cause you no further grief. We will both of us go our separate ways from you, never to burden you again with our presence.”

“We would not have you seek death by cause of our love,” said Mehrayn, the green of his eyes glistening somewhat even in that all gray place. “We will not face one another but will instead ride away, so that the woman of our heart may live.”

“Won’t you two ever learn?” asked S’Heernoh with a sigh as I looked down from Belsayah and Sigurri, feeling yet further of my strength slip away. “You’ve told her you love her, you’ve each told her how terrible the other one is, you’ve demanded that she choose between you, and you’ve each sworn to fight to the death for her. Now you’re telling her that you’ve both decided to walk out of her life, but you’ve never once asked her how she feels about any of it. Don’t either of you care?”

“Most certainly am I concerned over the feelings of my beloved,” said Mehrayn, the calm of his voice now tinged faintly with insult. “What man would not be concerned so?”

“Indeed,” said Ceralt, a certain stiffness to the agreement. “How is a man to bring his wench happiness, save that he makes himself aware of her feelings?”

“Well, I’m pleased to see that she’s so much in your thoughts,” said S’Heernoh, a familiar smoothness to his words above the pleasance. “Since you seem to know how important it is for a man to thoroughly understand his woman, I’m sure you both can explain her feelings to me so that I’ll understand them as well as you do.”

A time of silence went by, while I raised my eyes to see a Mehrayn and a Ceralt who avoided the gaze of the male who looked upon them both. Mehrayn seemed troubled and Ceralt vexed, and S’Heernoh merely sat and smiled pleasantly, patiently awaiting words which were likely never to come. I knew not what foolishness the male played at, yet had I questions which he surely would find it possible to answer.

“This forcing a return to life you spoke of—” said I, drawing S’Heernoh’s immediate attention. “It was your efforts which restored Chaldrin, was it not? Never had I seen any survive such a swording, no matter their size and strength. Was it not for you, my brother would long since have fed the children of the wild.”

“I knew how much he meant to you, and knew also that part of you would die if he did,” said S’Heernoh with a nod, the false smoothness again gone from his voice. “I grabbed his mind and forced it to stay with his body, repaired just enough of the damage so that he could continue living on his own, then released him. Doing something like that takes a lot out of you, or I would have noticed sooner that you were gone. ”

“Then you did for him what the one who called herself Mida surely did for me,” said I, nodding with the very edge of understanding. “When I had walked the lines for the Silla and lay dying, I, too, was given life again.”

“She wasn’t the one who did it,” said the male, his gaze upon me wary, his words painfully slow. “I told you that the twisted children of my people were given no more than half of the education given all the rest. The half they did have covered the use of equipment of all sorts—the use of wonder but it didn’t include the most important part, the full use of the mind. Learning mind control takes a long time and a lot of hard work, and I don’t believe the twisted ones would have been able to learn it even if someone had decided to teach it to them. They could operate the mechanical units that required mind control for usage, but anyone can learn that. No, neither one of them could have helped you.”

“For what reason, then, did I not find an ending?” I demanded, nearly indignant over the denial the male had spoken. “For what reason was I not slain or terribly crippled?”

“For the reason that I wasn’t about to let either of those things happen,” said the male, again somewhat shamefaced. “I was much too far away to heal you as quickly or as thoroughly as I would have liked, but I did the best I could with what I had. You weren’t actively seeking death, then, so I had no trouble pulling you back.”

“Even then you watched over her?” asked Mehrayn, fully as surprised as Ceralt and I. “Easily am I now able to see that your assistance during our journey together was no mere happenstance, yet am I unable to comprehend the reason for such doings. For what reason did you give her such aid?”

“One of my reasons was the same reason your two Feridani wanted her dead,” said S’Heernoh as he looked upon me. “Everyone who read the Snows saw the same thing, and two of those reading it were the ones who called themselves Mida and Sigurr. The Snow said that if Jalav didn’t make the trip to Sigurr’s Peak, everyone on this planet would be lost. What that meant was— But maybe it would be better if I started from the beginning.

“When the twisted ones escaped from the shelter, they didn’t simply run in the first direction they saw. We discovered that they had picked their destinations carefully, from the records we kept of your people’s newest colonies. We knew about the upheaval taking place in their Union, had used the opportunity to look in on some of the isolated colonies, and had found some of them, for the most part the more primitive ones, of great interest. For their own twisted reasons, the twisted ones chose the colonies we had been studying, but the strongest reason was probably the knowledge that we would hesitate before showing ourselves and our strength in those places, so they were a good deal safer than anywhere else.