“You had best return now, wenda,” a quiet voice said out of the darkness, a calm shadow coming up to loom at the side of the road. “Dallan insists that I deliver you without bands, and now waits impatiently by the fire. Once he has banded you ( will depart, and you will no longer find the need to run from my presence.”
I looked up at his towering outline, hearing the deadness of his voice and feeling the same in his mind. He had absolutely no interest in doing anything other than unbanding me, no object to his entire life other than that. I closed my eyes at the stabbing I felt again in my chest, totally unable to speak, wishing I could will every organ in my body to stop functioning. Most people can continue on if their life mates are taken from them, and I knew that if I made the effort, I could, too. But I, like that small number of others, had no wish to continue on, not without the one who makes life worth living.
“Have you heard me, wenda?” he asked, still standing in the same place. “Let us return now so that I may be gone as soon as possible.”
Gone as soon as possible. That idea was so very warming and attractive in the chilling dark. I lay huddled on the ground, the short, stiff grass stabbing at my cheek, my gaze seeking again and finding the giant dark shadow standing not far from me. Everything was growing hazy and soft around the edges, comforting like the thickest of furs, vague like the onset of drugged sleep. Farewell, my love, I will never forget you, not even in the vastness of forever. Without me your life will be full and happy; without you mine is already done.
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?”