Sharon Green - The Warrior Rearmed

“My thanks, l’lenda,” Loddar nodded, then turned to the four men with him. “Do you hasten to this pond and search out Lenham,” he directed in a low voice. “When you have returned with him, bring word to the denday of how he fares.”

“Plittar,” answered one of the four for all of them, a casual word carrying the general meaning of “anything you say,” with uncaring shrug appended, a word never used to a denday. They turned then and left the palace, stretching their stride but not really hurrying. If I’d had the breath I would have screamed at them to move faster, and then I remembered I didn’t need to shout or scream. I reached out to their four minds and planted a strident sense of urgency in front of their attention, and had the pleasure of hearing their steps turn into a trot before Loddar’s voice brought me back to the palace corridor.

“Is that where you had taken yourself, wench?” he was asking, the disapproval he felt carefully missing from his tone. “You did not ask the denday’s permission before departing, nor were you properly escorted. Tammad will not be pleased.”

I could have answered him if I’d had to, but I used my continuing need to take deep breaths of air to maintain a momentary silence. Loddar had been better to me than most people on that world—not good, but better—and didn’t really deserve the sort of answer I’d been about to snap at him. I drew in three breaths, then a fourth, then finally nodded at him.

“You are surely correct in all that you say,” I agreed, keeping my tone as unaccusing as his had been. “Now, as there are other matters awaiting me, I must leave you.”

I began to turn away from him, prepared to leave things as they stood as long as he did, but he didn’t leave them that way long. Even before I was fully turned away, his hand came to my arm.

“Wenda, there is no more than one matter awaiting you,” he said, his still-calm tone tinged with the beginnings of annoyance. “Tammad awaits you, and will be kept waiting no longer than the time required for me to take you to his chambers. What awaits you beyond that is for the denday to speak of.”

I turned my head back to look at him, letting no expression show on my face. The first and easiest step was to soothe his annoyance, and then I was able to work. His strong sense of duty needed accomplishment-already-attained to weaken it, but once that was done the unconcern and indifference were slid in its place without his fighting them. Loddar’s emotions were of a chore successfully accomplished, and his uncritical, reasoning mind followed right along, accepting the feelings as natural and unarguable. His hand left my arm as he turned away, already forgetting about me, looking toward the doorway out as though considering the idea of following the men he’d sent after Len. I turned again in the opposite direction and walked up the corridor, aware of the stares and fear coming from the three door guards, but too weary and disgusted to worry about them. The guards had undoubtedly heard stories about me from others of the palace guard, about my secret powers and how I’d used them for their Chama Aesnil. That fearful people often removed the object of their fear with violence made the situation a dangerous one, but at that point I couldn’t have cared less. I was so upset and confused, it was a miracle I’d been able to work through it.

The palace corridors were large and airy and beautiful, but I saw little more than my own inner turmoil as I walked, my outer awareness touching only the route I took to the destination I’d decided on. Tammad was probably in the apartment which had originally been mine, and he was the last one I wanted to see just then. I needed a quiet place to sort out my thoughts and try to understand what was happening to me; quiet was not what I’d find around Tammad. I walked the smoothly polished stone of the corridors, passing silent guards and hurrying slaves, ignoring them all as I ignored the walls and rooms and courtyards I passed. I was intent on only one room, a room I’d appropriated once before, and it was a good distance away from the entrance I’d come in by.

Reaching the room and slipping inside was both a relief and a surprise, the surprise centering around the fact that I’d met no others of Tammad’s men on the way. I didn’t know how many of them he’d sent out looking for me, but even the ones who hadn’t been sent out would have known enough to stop me if they saw me. I leaned on the door to make sure it was closed, then walked toward the lightly curtained windows.

The room wasn’t as large as the suite Aesnil had given me, but the pale yellow fur carpeting on the floor was thick and soft, the number of fat brown cushions scattered around and piled nest-fashion more than adequate, the wide, deep pile of bed-furs invitingly comfortable, the windows wide and tall and streaming yellow sunshine behind the sheer yellow curtains. It was a warm, attractive room, designed to please the senses, but there was no pleasure in me as I walked through it and stopped in front of the windows. Putting a hand out parted the sheer curtains enough to let me see the chasm the room looked out over, a drop of more than a hundred feet through empty air to a bottom I couldn’t quite see. I felt as though I were falling through all that air, helpless to stop or change direction, a victim of forces totally beyond my control. Abruptly I turned away from the windows, hurried with head down to the nest of brown cushions, then let myself drop into the middle of them.

“What if he’s dead?” I whispered aloud, closing my eyes against the terrible pain the question produced inside me. “What will I do if I killed him?”

The empty room gave me no more of an answer than my own mind did, the total silence increasing the illness I felt. Len had been trying to help me and I’d hurt him, possibly even destroyed him. I didn’t know what to do with the power that was growing so strong within me, didn’t know how to control it to keep the people around me safe. If I hadn’t had so many things upsetting me I might have had a chance to learn, but it had been so long since I’d felt anything remotely like calm, I almost couldn’t remember what the emotion was like. Everything worked against me on that world, the people, the dangers, the involvements, everything! I picked up a cushion and hugged it to me, watching the window curtains begin to move to the urgings of a breeze, more miserable than I’d ever thought it possible to be. If Len was dead I’d have to kill myself—if I could find the nerve to do the right thing in the midst of all the blunders I’d made. I lay back and put the cushion I was holding over my head, hiding myself from the sort of world I’d never wanted to be a part of.

I didn’t fall asleep, but time passed in long strides without my noticing it, more than an hour slipping away behind non-thinking semi-oblivion. It would have been good continuing on like that forever, but the sound of the door opening dragged me back to unpleasant reality. I knew instantly that it was Tammad who came in, but didn’t move or speak even to demand how he’d found me. His emotions were a blend of relief and annoyance and concern and a few other things I couldn’t resolve, and all I could feel was disgust with myself. After all that had happened, the first thing I did when someone else showed up was reach out to touch them with my mind. I had long since begun sweating under the cushion over my head, but I didn’t move it away even when Tammad stopped in front of me, cutting off some of the strengthened breeze from the windows.

“Terril, what do you do here?” his voice came after a minute, his mind working toward making his tone sound calm. “Lenham has awakened with a great ache in his head, yet his first words were a questioning concerning your wellbeing. For what reason was he concerned with your well-being?”