The Warrior Challenged

5

“Terril, waken,” the voice insisted, an accompaniment to the hands that were shaking me. “You must come awake now, wenda. You must return.”

“Go ’way,” I mumbled, moving around on something soft. I didn’t want to wake up the way the voice was insisting, I wanted to do something else, but I couldn’t quite remember what that something else was.

“Her mind is confused, yet it rouses,” another voice said, one that sounded vastly relieved. “I cannot comprehend for what reason she has done this.”

“Surely did I believe your knowledge of wendaa to be greater than that of a boy,” the first voice returned, angry and deliberately insulting. “What man would fail to know the reason his woman. attempted to take her own life?”

“The drin Dallan forgets that soon the woman will no longer be mine,” the second voice answered stiffly, offended but trying not to show it. “She wishes to be free even of the sight of me, and for this she cannot be faulted. Replace my bands with yours, and then I will go.”

“For what reason would you believe she no longer has deep feelings for you?” a third voice asked, curiosity and confusion well mixed. “I heard no words spoken to that effect. ”

“With one such as she, words are unnecessary,” the secand voice said, painful hurt hovering just beyond the edges. “She attempted to conceal her disgust and loathing at my failure, yet was I able to perceive them in her mind. So great were these feelings that she even refused to look upon me, a thing you both saw with your own eyes. She would have remained behind sooner than travel the longer in my company, and that I could not allow. I will not see her come to harm through my failure as a man.”

“Should what you have said be so, then you will find little difficulty in replying to my query,” the first voice said immediately, most of the anger gone from it. “For what reason has she attempted to take her own life?”

“I had not known such a thing was possible,” the second voice said, a shudder of near-catastrophe in him. “Had her mind not opened to me when consciousness fled, I would not have been able to deny her will with my own. Clearly does she now find such horror in my company, that she would sooner seek death than be forced to endure it even for a short while. ”

“Once I knew a wenda who loathed the very sight of me,” the first voice remarked, a musing to its tone. “So greatly did my presence outrage her that she would hurl whatever was about directly at my head whenever I appeared. Not once, however, do I recall her attempting her own life to escape me. My life she would have willingly taken-yet her own?”

“Also does it appear from the woman’s face that she has wept,” the third voice put in, filling the silence left by the second. “I had not known that detestation and loathing would bring tears, even to a wenda so lacking in fire as this one.”

“Have you taken leave of your senses, man?” the second voice demanded, suddenly outraged. “To see this woman as one without fire is to see naught of the world due to blindness! ”

“It was scarcely Cinnan who presented her as unspirited,” the first voice said, a hardness to it now. “It was not he who declared her unable to look upon one she loathed, nor was it he who saw her search for death as the sole manner of avoiding one she detested-one she knew would soon be gone. Clearly does one in this camtah consider her not only unspirited but mindless.”

“Your words have no meaning,” the second voice protested, his outrage mixing with confusion. “For what other reason would the woman seek her own life?”

“Perhaps for the reason that she believes her sadendrak’s love lost to her because of the terrible creature she has become,” the first voice answered, a bleakness beside the hardness. “Perhaps for the reason that he has proven his lack of love by declaring his intention to unband her, and then attempting to do that very thing.”

“Monster was the word used by her,” the third voice said, painfully quiet. ° “So great was her horror at what she had done that she could not face any of us. Also did she declare that none could feel love for such a monster.”

“It was self-loathing and self-detestation that you felt in her, my friend,” the first voice said to the stunned silence in the second. “Her powers are great indeed, yet does she lack the necessary training to allow her to take pleasure from victory. The strength to face challenge is hers without doubt, yet wendaa are seldom taught to steel their hearts to the necessities of battle. Your defeat touched you so strongly, then, that you were unable to see this?”

“Defeat?” the second voice asked, the mind behind it whirling like a wind of destruction. “Indeed was it a defeat, yet was it even more a failure. The woman requires strength in a man, else is she unable to consider him a man. Ever before have I been able to call up the necessary strength, yet this time naught appeared save failure. What woman of strength and power would wish a man with none?”

“You castigate yourself for failing to have a power to match hers?” the first voice demanded, his incredulity nearly drowning out the painful inadequacy of the second. “Now do I truly give thanks that your new-found abilities are not mine, for what man would wish to become a fool? And one, moreover, who has taken to seeing his own beliefs as truth, rather than looking upon the world as it is?”

“You forget yourself,” the second voice came back coldly, deeply insulted. “No man may speak to me so, save with a sword in his fist.”

“Sword?” echoed the first, pretending to great surprise. “One without strength of any sort would consider the use of a sword? One who is no other thing than a failure would think to face a prince and warrior?”

“The woman has ever seemed to suffer from deep feelings of inadequacy,” the third voice mused, ignoring the crackling anger flashing between the other two. “Think you there is a link between the power and such feelings, one which must be watched closely to keep it from affecting a man’s usual reason?”

“More does it seem a matter of misinterpretation,” said the first voice, his mind immediately diving into the question. “The woman feels what others do, yet does she see those feelings in light of her own. Her difference touches her profoundly, and many of her actions seem to arise from that. Tell me: would you have ridden from her as you did had you not touched her thoughts?”

“No,” the second voice admitted, a glum depression having taken the place of insult. “This new power twists me about, and although I attempt to keep myself from its use, the thing is more readily decided upon than done. More easily is it able to unman me than a life threat, and I know not how it may be conquered.”

“Allowing it its way with you will not give you victory over it,” the first voice said, refusing to show even a hint of compassion. “You must learn again to look upon all things as once you did, and harden your heart to necessity as she is unable to do. The woman requires the strength you deem inadequate, finding it more than sufficient for her purposes. Will you refuse her your aid?”

“For what reason must love make fools of otherwise able men?” the second voice asked, beginning to sound disgusted with itself. “Of what use is it, when it blinds a man to what occurs about him? I had thought to aid the woman by departing from her, and instead nearly drove her to self-destruction. I must apply myself to the lessons she teaches, so that I will not falter a second time. I will have the strength she demands, else shall I fall to never rise again.”

“Apparently love also causes a man to speak strangely,” the first voice observed, clearly amused. “You believe it likely that another failure to withstand her power will cause you to fall and never again to rise?”

“Had you felt what I did, brother, you would not find the need to ask,” the second voice said with a rueful chuckle, now aware of how melodramatic it had just sounded. “Never before has her power seemed so overwhelming, so undeniable. It will take a good deal to resist it, yet do I mean to do no other thing.”

“A more modest aim, yet surely more fitting to one who is l’lenda,” the first voice said, and then it paused before adding, “The denday Tammad seems now to have returned to himself, do you not agree, wenda?”

I had been lying there with my eyes closed and completely unmoving, but Dallan had had no trouble realizing that I was fully awake. The lack of surprise in Cinnan’s mind showed he’d known the same, which left only the barbarian. He alone started then began to move to me, but even the loving encouragement in his mind didn’t supply me with the nerve to open my eyes and look at them.

“Indeed,” I agreed in a heavy voice, wishing I were still lying on stiff, wet grass instead of furs which gave such comfort. “Indeed has the denday Tammad returned to himself.”

“And you have done the same, hama,” the barbarian said, putting one hand to my face. “For what reason do you not sit up and open your arms to me?”

“For the reason that I’m too disgusted with myself,” I answered in Centran, turning my face to the left to escape the touch of his hand. “I’ve really managed to ruin your life completely, haven’t I?”

“In what manner do you believe you have brought ruin to my life?” he asked, still sticking with Rimilian, the calm in him faintly tinged with upset but not uncertainty. “To find and band the woman he has ever sought may scarcely be considered a man’s ruin.”

“But the powers of an empath can be,” I countered, turning completely onto my left side. “If I hadn’t let you band me you never would have found out about your own powers, and would not now have to fight your way back to normalcy. You said you were going to unband me. Do it.”

“Wenda, I cannot unband you,” he answered, a gentle strength in the hand that followed to touch my arm. “Only the belief that you no longer cared for me allowed me to consider such a thing to begin with, and that consideration brought greater pain than I knew was possible. As I cannot leave you, will you instead attempt to leave me?”

The question was entirely neutral, the calm in his mind telling me nothing, the panic in my own mind saying it all. I tried to talk myself into it, tried to convince myself that it was for his own good, but all my life I’d been encouraged to be selfish, and I couldn’t seem to break the habit. Instead of answering immediately I sat up and looked at him, then shook my head.

“I can’t,” I said, finding it impossible to keep from putting my fingertips to his face. “If I had any honor at all I would change the love you feel to complete indifference, then watch while you sold me to someone else and rode away. That’s what I ought to do—but I can’t.”

“Most certainly you cannot,” he agreed with a laugh, lifting me off the fur and into his lap. “It would not be possible for you to change my love to another thing, and even should it be possible, you have not my permission to do so. Such a doing would not be honor but dishonor.”

“Are you again concerned with honor, wenda?” Dallan asked from where he sat to the left of the furs, close to the tent flaps. A single candle burned in the camtah, and Cinnan crouched farther to the right, beyond Tammad. The drin of Gerleth was staring at me in disapproval.

“For what reason should I not be concerned with honor?” I asked, switching back to Rimilian. “I know well enough how little of it there is in remaining with one who would do far better with none of my sort to plague him, and yet do I nevertheless remain. Would you do the same, or would you have the courage to go?”

“I would certainly do what was best, Terril,” he said, suddenly watching his words very carefully. “For you, best would be to remain with your memabrak, obedient to his will.”

“And yet, such a best is scarcely honorable,” I pursued, putting my arms as far around the barbarian as possible and laying my head on his chest, all the while continuing to hold Dallan’s gaze. “I have discovered that the one I care most for in all the worlds there are would fare far better if I were not beside him. Also do I know that the power is mine to free him from his love for me. Should I use that power it will be his will to ride from me and never look back, and yet should I do so, life will no longer have meaning for me. Which will am I to obey, Dallan? Which would you obey?”

“It matters not which he would obey,” came the words from the chest I lay on, so close to being a growl that the anger in the mind above was an unnecessary addition. Dallan had developed a frustrated look and hadn’t known what to say, but Tammad took care of that for him. “The drin Dallan has not been commanded to a certain obedience, the while the wenda Terril has indeed been so commanded. The choice has not been given you, wenda, only the command. Will you obey, or will you be punished?”

Only then did I realize that his arms were around me as I held to him, circling me a good deal more firmly than I was able to accomplish. I could then also feel his eyes on me, and the way his mind had hardened. I knew I was still somewhat confused, but I should have been able to follow what was happening a lot more closely than I was.

“I cannot understand your meaning,” I said, lifting my head to look up into his eyes. “After what has occurred, you cannot be speaking of punishment again. Have I not proven myself able to halt you? Have I not earned respect in the manner you demanded?”

“Indeed you have, wenda,” he agreed, lifting one hand to smooth my hair. “The respect that was earned is yours, freely given as was not earlier done. You have proven yourself fully able to halt me, yet do you no longer have my permission to use the power of your mind against me. Will you touch me so without my permission?”

He looked at me with nothing but calm, but I could feel what was waiting behind that calm, something I had never quite been able to stand up to. He knew I had the ability to stop any punishment even before it began, but he had calmly decided not to let me use that ability. It was outrageous, but he was forcing me to obey him again!

“You miserable barbarian!” I hissed, hitting him so hard with a fist in the side that it actually registered faintly somewhere at the back of his mind. “You know I’m at the point where I can’t bring myself to touch anyone without their permission! You’re cheating to make me obey you!”

“Indeed,” he said with a laugh filled with amusement, his grin so wide his face was in danger of splitting. “A man must use what is available to him if he is to hold his own with his wenda. Is the thought of parting from me perhaps becoming more attractive?”

I glared at him in disgust for a minute, seriously considering what my answer should be, but I didn’t have much choice there either.

“No, it isn’t,” I said with very little grace, knowing I would probably be stuck with that answer for the rest of my life. “You’re a beast and I hate you, but you have me trapped. ”

“And ever shall I keep the walls of that trap unbreachable,” he murmured, putting his hand under my chin to raise my face. “Without you beside me, wenda, I have not the will to go on, therefore shall I never free you.”

He lowered his lips to mine, then, giving me tenderness rather than passion, and I couldn’t help but think again how much better he would do without a monster at his side. He could have the will to go on without me, if only I had the courage . . . .

“Are we as yet prepared to take our meal?” Dallan asked in the middle of my beautiful kiss, the plaintiveness in his voice causing Tammad to raise his head with a laugh, and Cinnan to chuckle. “Should the meat not have burned itself to ashes in the fire, I will give fervent and very sincere thanks. ”

“And should it indeed have been burned, your saddle seetar will give thanks,” I told him, annoyed that he’d broken things up so quickly. “Already the poor beast weeps and struggles to bear you.”

“Your observation is scarcely amusing, wenda,” he said with a stare of annoyance while Tammad and Cinnan both laughed aloud. Dallan had been eating everything in sight ever since we’d started the trip, but he was still about as far from fat as you can get. His giant frame could have carried a good deal more weight than it currently did, and he still would have been trim, hard and well muscled.

“An urgent need for a great deal of food has been mine since my time as a slave in Aesnil’s palace,” he went on, shifting to an injured, put-upon air of silent bravery. “The healer tells me such a happening is not unusual and will soon disappear, yet am I to cater to it the while it remains. Would you have me disobey the healer?”

“Certainly not,” Cinnan said rather gravely, only his mind showing his amusement. “A man who wishes to regain his health and strength must ever obey a healer.”

“Indeed,” the barbarian agreed, also straight-faced, his hand on my neck beneath my hair. “We will soon be out of these mountains, therefore will it be possible to replenish our ravaged stores with little difficulty. I would, however, were I you, keep myself from that which is carried for the seetarr. Their understanding and compassion is most often great, yet not when they wish to feed.”

“I have not eaten that great an amount,” Dallan stated as he glared at all of us, annoyed again at being teased. “As the matter disturbs you all so, I shall be the first to hunt for us as soon as we are down out of this pass.”

“It would be best to locate something large,” I suggested, also keeping my face expressionless. “So that there will be some meat left upon it by your return to the camp, you understand. ”

My comment was too much for Tammad and Cinnan. The two of them threw their heads back and roared, nearly weeping tears of laughter at the thought of Dallan’s nibbling at his kill during the ride back to camp. Dallan looked at them in disgust, glared at me in disapproval, then dropped a subject he was beginning to find awkward by turning and leaving the tent.

By the time the rest of us made it outside, the meat was ready to eat. Tammad had put it aside away from the fire when he’d come after me, so it hadn’t been burned after all. Dallan divided it with his knife, very deliberately taking the largest piece for himself, and the other two men spent almost as much time chuckling as eating. I’d been faintly surprised that no one had yelled at me for starting to tease Dallan and then continuing with it, but then it came to me that that had to be part of the respect I’d earned. I’d shown what I was capable of and had been given full marks for it, and was now permitted to joke with the others as though I were one of them. It felt good to have that sort of freedom, but I still didn’t like what I’d had to do to earn it. I sat on the ground near the fire, my arms wrapped about me against the chill of the darkness, feeling the quiet background emotions of the others filter through the curtain over my mind. Why was it necessary to knock Rimilians down and stomp on them before they became willing to give respect? Why couldn’t they just take someone’s word for it the way civilized people did’?

“Ah, an excellent meal,” Dallan observed from where he sat, patting the material of his shirt that covered his flat middle. “I believe I shall now retire to my camtah. Come, wenda. ”

I looked at him blankly as he got to his feet, wondering what he was talking about, feeling the same reaction in Tammad, who sat to my left.

“For what reason do you summon my wenda, Dallan?” he asked, his voice puzzled. “I had thought to sit awhile by the fire before retiring to my furs, and the woman may do the same. ”

“Your intentions are certainly yours to determine, Tammad,” Dallan replied with pleasantness and amusement, his mind chuckling. “The woman, however, was earlier given to me for the darkness. Have you forgotten my request—and your own complete agreement to it?”

The barbarian stared up at Dallan with stunned shock, clearly remembering their earlier exchange when he thought he would be leaving forever, but I was more frantic. I didn’t want to spend the night with Dallan, I wanted to be with Tammad, letting his arms and lips and body help me to forget the doubts I was still feeling.

“Hamak, tell him it was a mistake,” I said at once to the barbarian, turning fast to put my hands on his arm. “Tell him it was a misunderstanding, and that I don’t have to go with him. You know how I feel about that, and you said you’d think about my side of it before doing it again. Please, Tammad. ”

“Hama, I cannot,” he answered heavily, speaking Centran as I had while he looked down into my eyes. “I agreed to the request which was made, and now cannot retrieve that agreement. I must honor my word, and you, too, must honor it. You must go to him and give him pleasure.”

“I hate the word ‘honor,’” I told him, furious that he felt bound to do such a thing to me, turning again to glare up at Dallan. He knew how I felt about being given to other men, and was deliberately trying to humiliate me.

“I believe you have been told you must accompany me, Terril,” the beast said mildly, grinning as he offered me a hand. “My camtah will be fully warmed this darkness, and other things as well. Come, now.”

I threw the barbarian a last-hope glance as I got to my feet, but his emotions told me I was wasting my time. He was disappointed that I would not be there to give him pleasure that night, but he was already shrugging off the disappointment with a sense of, “Well, what can you do?” Handing women around was a usual thing to those barbarians, but that didn’t make me hate it any less.

Dallan lit a candle in the fire, then led the way to his camtah. By the time I bent through the tent flaps he was already setting the candle firmly on a brace, and then he turned to me with a grin.

“How odd that your excellent sense of humor is no longer in evidence, wenda,” he said, looking down at me as he began to remove his swordbelt. “Have you no other amusing observations it would please you to make?”

“So you’ve taken me to serve you because of feelings of insult,” I grumbled, finally seeing the point. “Do you also mean to take the others to your furs?”

“The others are by no means as attractive as you, wenda,” he answered with a laugh, keeping his eyes on me as he put his sword aside. “I shall therefore allow you to make reparation for the group.”

“And if I should refuse?” I asked, seething with the unfairness of it all. “You feel desire for me now, yet the state need not continue.”

“I am aware of the fact that you are able to take the desire from me.” he said with a calm nod, reaching for the bottom of his shirt to pull it off over his head. “Should one face attack, one is well within one’s rights to raise a skillful defense, and I shall ever recall the time you did indeed take my desire. And yet, your memabrak has given me his word. Will you shame him with a refusal of either body or mind’?”

He tossed the shirt away and simply stood looking down at me, his fingers on his hips, his blue eyes calm, his mind comfortable and completely undisturbed. He wasn’t in the least afraid of what I might do to him, and that despite the fact that he’d had more than one taste of what an empath’s self-defense could consist of. I suddenly began feeling very strange, an emotion I couldn’t define flooding all through me, one I had, until then, felt only with Tammad. It wasn’t love or anything like that, and it made me very uncomfortable.

“You know well enough that I will not shame him,” I muttered, looking down at my twisting fingers at my waist.

“You may do as you will, yet shall I find only a small part of the pleasure I find with him. I have no desire to be here, and will not lie with a pretense of eagerness.”

“That is only as it should be, wenda,” he said gently, putting his hand under my chin to raise my face to him. “No man takes another man’s woman with the belief that her pleasure will be as full with him as it is with her chosen. And yet do I sense an oddness here, centering about your great concern to speak the truth. Can it be you seek to shame not Tammad but me, with the intimation that I intrude between two who should be in the arms of no others save each other’? Am I now to release you from your obligation, and gallantly return you to the side of your hamak?”

The amusement in his mind was about of the same intensity as the twinkle in his eyes, and as dim as the tent was it still wasn’t too dim for him to see the sudden blush in my cheeks. I might not have been free to touch his mind, but there was nothing to keep me from trying to manipulate him with words-nothing, that is, but that damnable talent of his for seeing through to the truth of things no matter how little data he had to work with.

“I expect nothing in the way of gallantry from Rimilian beasts!” I snapped, jerking my face out of his hand. “You seek only to humiliate me in revenge for what was said of you, and I shall never forgive you for taking your revenge only upon me!”

“But I do not take revenge only upon you,” he said, laughing, suddenly throwing his arms around me and bearing me down to his sleeping furs with him. “My brother Cinnan’s yearning for Aesnil has given his body the belief that he has not had a woman for days without number, and seeing you sent to me was very painful for him. My brother Tammad, on the other hand, had wished to do no more than hold his wenda, to remove the memory of nearly having lost her. Retention of that memory will do best for him, I believe, therefore have I callously taken you from him for this darkness. ”

“How do you know all this?” I demanded, immediately checking the minds of those we’d left outside. Cinnan sat moping at the fire with his mind groaning, his body so badly in need that he should have been up in flames. Tammad, however, was sunk deep in thought, and there was a definite emptiness shaping and tinging those thoughts. It was painful for me to sense him feeling that way, and I automatically began struggling against the wide arms holding me, trying to get free to go to him.

“No, wenda, to spare him the pain would be no service,” Dallan insisted, holding me tighter against my struggles. “A man must learn to know the consequences of his actions, so that his decisions may be made on a basis of thought rather than feeling. No denday may act as hastily and thoughtlessly as Tammad has, a thing he has forgotten in the face of his new-found abilities. He must relearn the lesson of thought, Terril, and in such an instance you may not aid him.”

“How do you know all of these things?” I asked again, staring up at his sober face, endlessly upset that he refused to release me. “Almost does it seem that you are able to read them as easily as I.”

“Cinnan’s state I know of from his own lips,” Dallan said, his careful calm an obvious attempt to soothe me. “He spoke of Aesnil, referred obliquely to his needs, and from those things his condition became obvious. Tammad’s feelings, too, were obvious, largely from the manner in which he bade you accompany me. His lack of anger and discomfort were clear to any with eyes, and am I not familiar with his thoughts upon what occurred between you and the difficulty he has had with his strengthening abilities? What need have I of your power, wenda, when these things are all so clear to me without it?”

Everything he said was completely logical, but something still seemed to be wrong with his explanations. I wanted to look into it further, question him more thoroughly, but the upset was growing in me instead of lessening, especially when I saw him look at me in a very strange way.

“And you, wenda, you, too, require this darkness with me,” he said, rolling over to hold me down with his body while his hands smoothed my hair back, “You cannot deny that you continue to think upon the matter of aiding your memabrak by making it possible for him to leave you, and such a thing should not be. You must see for yourself what life would be, should he allow another to band you. You would not find it possible to deny that other save with your power, a doing which may now be beyond you. You have not yet grown to the height all l’lendaa must have—an inner height from which vantage point a warrior may see the pleasure in victory.”

I began to protest what he’d said, tried to tell him as sincerely as possible that he was wrong, but he wasn’t wrong and we both knew it. He used that night to show me what it would be like to belong to someone other than Tammad, what it would be like to be used by a man who was fond of me and had no intentions of hurting me, but who cared about little other than his own pleasure. Dallan had never before made me give him everything while he gave back almost nothing, but one thing I didn’t let him take—I waited until he was asleep before I hid my face in my hands and shuddered.