Sharon Green - To Battle The Gods

With great confusion did I stare upon the male who sat with head bowed, lost in the pain of memory, for Jadin had been the name of she who had borne me. Indeed had she had black hair and green eyes, and yet—

“Your seed!” exclaimed Ceralt, again looking strangely upon S’Heernoh. “It was your seed you left! Then Jalav is—”

“My daughter,” said S’Heernoh, raising his head once more to smile despite the glistening in his eyes. “A daughter who was able to take my revenge for me from those who had brutally slain my beloved who was her mother. I watched it all, her birth and growing up, her becoming war leader, the beginning of the search for the crystal— My people have developed a greater strength and speed than yours, and my daughter inherited enough of that to make her a better warrior than anyone else on the planet. Do you wonder now why the computer gave her the probability it did? Or why it was so sure I’d never let her be hurt?”

“I see,” said I of a sudden, recalling the words spoken to me by Rilas, when she had first been shown S’Heernoh in Bellinard. “It was for that reason that Rilas recalled you, yet not as one unskilled and swordless. Clearly were you pointed out to her as she was told of what you had done. Yet you assured Rilas that you and she had never met.”

“I wasn’t lying,” said he, a twinkle again in the dark of his eyes. “I told the keeper that I had never before been introduced to her, which was the literal truth. I saw her once when she visited the clan, obviously the same time she saw me, but we were never introduced.”

“And now do I see a thing as well,” said Mehrayn, a chuckling beginning in him. “I had thought it fear of myself and Ceralt that had caused you to refuse to attend the wench in Bellinard, yet when I saw your blade skill with the Feridani, it came to me to wonder upon the thing. Now do I understand the doing completely.”

“Indeed,” said Ceralt with a similar chuckle, S’Heernoh joining them both, yet was I unable to see what amused them.

“As you all are aware of a thing I am not, perhaps you would care to enlighten me,” I said rather stiffly, disliking such amusement of males even at a time such as that. “I shall undoubtedly find the reason for a male’s refusal of a war leader most—enlightening.”

“Satya, he could do no other thing than refuse you,” said Ceralt with a laugh of disbelief, Mehrayn also mockingly amused. “Have you not heard his words? It was he who fathered you.”

“Well aware am I of the fact that it was he who was the sthuvad who served she who bore me,” said I with a nod which was also quite stiff. “Am I to believe him so badly overtired from the doing that he is unable to now do the same again? Do you take me for a credulous city female?”

Ceralt and Mehrayn looked upon me gape-mouthed, for some reason unable to find words with which to reply to my queries, yet S’Heernoh was not the same. The gray-haired male threw his head back and laughed so gustily that tears came to his eyes, a doing which occupied some few reckid. When at last the great mirth began to leave him, he looked upon the other two males and shook his head.

“Have you forgotten that the word ‘father’ means nothing to Midanna?” he asked the others, bringing wry looks to them. “It isn’t surprising her mother told her nothing about me; as a child she wouldn’t have understood what her parents had come to mean to each other. As far as she’s concerned I’m just someone who happened to know her mother, even if that applies in every sense of the word. Midanna share their men, so why shouldn’t she have her share of me? I don’t expect her to understand the point, any more than I expect her to listen to what I say without a good deal of struggle.”

“You know she refuses to obey men,” said Mehrayn slowly, looking upon S’Heernoh with a stare of thoughtfulness. “Also was there a question of hers which you have not yet answered. I had thought the omission an oversight, yet does it now seem— The time in the caves, the time of the storm, when I addressed her lady and asked to possess her. It was not the Feridani female who caused the life sign to glow. The doing was yours.”

Ceralt joined Mehrayn’s stare with a frown and I did the same, only then recalling that S’Heernoh had indeed failed to speak upon the point of my having been given to Mehrayn. The gray-haired male looked up toward me from beneath his brows, his head somewhat lowered.

“I think I’m caught,” said he at last, his entire attitude an admission of guilt. “I was hoping none of you would pick up on that, but— The whole affair was so painfully unnecessary that I couldn’t stand to let it go on. You were sending Mehrayn away from you to protect him, Jalav, but he wasn’t in the danger you thought he was. I kept track of him while we rode through the forest, gently guiding his kan where I wanted it, coaxed those lenga into our path to make us turn aside, then stole that storm from elsewhere and set it over us. Getting you and me into the same cave wasn’t hard, nor was bringing Mehrayn in after us. If you had been reasonable about things I never would have played that trick with your life sign, but you weren’t being reasonable, and I became annoyed, and then Mehrayn asked his favor—” The male shrugged, a corner of his grin slipping through, his gaze now directly upon me. “The next time your father suggests something to you, you might recall what happens when he becomes annoyed. ”

Great outrage and indignation took me then, the sort which sent my left palm to seek a hilt which was no longer upon me, yet Mehrayn saw none of it. His gaze had remained locked to S’Heernoh, and of a sudden a great happiness took him.

“You are father to her, and you granted her to me!” the Sigurri exclaimed in sudden revelation, straightening where he sat. “Blessed Sigurr sustain me, for I had never thought to see it so.”

“Hold, hold,” protested Ceralt in distress as S’Heernoh turned to look upon Mehrayn. “I, too, was granted the wench, and that before you. Has he not said that he watched over her? In my village did I draw her from the circle, proclaiming her mine, and naught was done to prevent it. I, too, was granted her, only first!”

There came then a great babble of words as Mehrayn and Ceralt both spoke at once, yet had I already looked down to my hands, so that I need not allow the thing to touch me. No longer did I need to concern myself, for S’Heernoh had said I might not be forced from the path I had chosen. A long moment passed all wrapped in the babble, and then did a silence ensue.

“It seems you two still haven’t learned to ask my daughter what she wants,” came S’Heernoh’s voice, far graver than it had been. “Everyone else has had their say, Jalav. Why don’t you take your turn?”

“Jalav deserves no other thing than the rest promised her by Chaldrin’s spirit,” said I, continuing to look down and away from those I had no wish to look upon. “Release her now, male, so that her weariness might at last be seen to.”

Again a silence fell, one containing the feel of motion upon the air, and then a sigh came which was clearly S’Heernoh’s.

“That wasn’t Chaldrin’s spirit, daughter mine,” said he, the weariness within me apparently having touched him as well. “I needed something to pull you out of that uncaring horribly wounded and defeated mood you’d fallen into, so I used an image of Chaldrin to reach you. Give me just a little while longer, and maybe we can get this worked out.”

The male paused after having spoken softly, yet when his words resumed, even I looked up in surprise.

“I’ve had more than enough of this childish bickering!” he snapped, his anger unquestionably directed toward Ceralt and Mehrayn, the sternness of his glare bringing a wilting to the two, as though they were possessed of too few kalod to stand their ground against him. “Are you men in name alone, that you act so foolishly? Don’t you know what you’re doing to the girl you claim to love?”