“I am no such thing!” I spat, still refusing to look at him, but discovering that my eyes had opened anyway. “There’s not a thing to be jealous about, not a single thing! The two of you finding interest in each other is nothing more than normal on this world, nothing that would upset anyone with sense. If it doesn’t make you jealous to give me away to all those men,why should I care what you do with anybody else?”
I was looking down at the shadowy hands in my lap my head still against the tent wall, feeling so miserable that I wanted to cry. But I also didn’t want to cry, and was determined not to, even if the burning in my throat strangled me. I hated everything and everyone around me, but most of all I hated that burning.
“I see now that if you had not been affected so strongly, you would not have left so abruptly,” he said, and I could feel the touch of his thoughts on my shield, trying to reach through to mine. “Come into my lap and arms, hama, so that I might hold you.”
“Don’t touch me!” I told him hoarsely, shaking off the big hand that came to my shoulder. “I don’t want to be held, and especially not by you!”
I should have known he wouldn’t listen, he had never listened to anything I ever said. The hand I had shaken off came back to wrap itself around my arm, and when I pulled against it and struggled, his free arm circled my back, trying to get a better, more all-around grip. The only problem was that his stupid, oversized hand touched my side at rib height, and I couldn’t keep from yelping at the pain.
“What is it?” he demanded, immediately pulling both hands off me but letting them hover. “For what reason did you cry out so? How were you hurt?”
“I must have turned wrong,” I muttered, trying not to shiver because of the flashing ache. “If Cinnan is waiting to get his tent back, let’s give it to him.”
I began moving toward the tent flaps, intending to pass him on the right where he sat facing the wall I’d been leaning against, but he refused to let me by. He lifted me below my thighs and shoulders as he turned toward the candle, sat me gently in his lap, then started taking off my imad. He was very careful of my struggling while he untied ties and pulled the blouse off over my head, then began examining me with a grim look on his face. It didn’t take him long to get to my side, and when he saw the large, ugly bruise his jaw tightened.
“One would find it difficult to turn in any manner which was not wrong with a bruise such as that,” he said, raising cold and angry eyes to mine. “How deeply I wish that Dallan had not slain that virenj-see! Why did you not say you were hurt?”
“It looks worse than it is,” I answered, lowering my eyes from his as I wrapped my arms around my half-bare body. “Give me my imad back.”
“You will have it back when I wish to give it to you,” he said, his voice harder than it had been. “For what reason did you not speak of this hurt?”
“Maybe because it was no one else’s business!” I flared, but still didn’t raise my eyes again. “Maybe because I think of it more as a reward than a punishment. I took this without wanting to hurt him back, and would have taken a lot more! This is what I got for not being a monster and a thing, and it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as stopping him would have! I’m learning to be human, I really am—but I wish he had killed me.
I was able to hold back until his arms came gently around me, and then I let my face fall to his chest, needing the contact desperately. It hurt my side to sit like that, but it hurt even more deep inside me. I would have done anything to be human instead of a monster, but I was afraid that somehow it wouldn’t turn out that way.
“Hama, I cannot understand this confusion that you speak,” Tammad said after a short time of simply holding me against him. “For what reason do you believe that to accept pain is to be human? And for what reason must you see yourself as monstrous when others do not see you so? Dallan tells me he believes you kept the sadarayse from slaying the woman of Vediaster after she had been downed from behind. Surely a doing such as that cannot disturb you.”
“But don’t you see that even that was wrong?” I nearly begged, raising my face to look at him. “What was the difference between what I did and what that other man did to Leelan? He snuck up on her from a place where she couldn’t see him, and struck without warning; how was I seen, and what warning did I give? Using my abilities against unsuspecting people is wrong, you know it is! How many times have you told me that, over and over? How many times has Garth said it, and Len? I know it’s wrong, but I can’t stop doing it; I tell myself it’s natural to use my abilities, foolish to wish I didn’t have them. At the beginning of this trip you said I couldn’t use them, but did I listen? No, I had to hurt you first, and that still didn’t stop me, just the way it wouldn’t stop any other monster. You have to beat me harder, and maybe then I’ll learn.”
I put my head against his chest again, too filled with self-hatred to do any more, and his hand came to the side of my face as he held me tighter. By rights he should have walked away from me in disgust and horror, and I didn’t know why he hadn’t
“I see, hama, that I should have given more thought and attention to you than I have,” he said with a sigh, leaning down to put his lips briefly to my hair. “So deeply immersed was I in my own difficulties and intentions, that I saw no part of your own. Proper teaching should have been given you a long time past, yet did I err in seeing you as no more than a wenda. Sit up now, so that we may begin.”
In confusion I let him urge me away from his chest, understanding nothing of what he was talking about. His blue eyes looked at me soberly where I sat in his lap, and his big hand came to smooth my hair.
“Even had you been born a wenda of this world, you would not have been given the teachings of a boy,” he said. “You would, however, have a closer understanding of the necessary, having been taught to share your life with one who must bear the burden. In this instance is it you who bears the burden, and though I attempted to take it from your shoulders, I should have known that such a thing is impossible. It must be my duty, instead, to strengthen you for that burden. Will you hear my words and know them as truth?”
I nodded hesitantly, still not understanding, but he smiled gently, as though my agreement had been enthusiastic.
“On this world, all male children are prepared for the wielding of weapons,” he said, keeping his eyes only on my face. “A number of them grow to be merchants or shopkeepers or healers who will do little with the swords they are taught to use, yet many will grow to be l’lendaa and some few even dendayy. As it is impossible to know from the very beginning what each of them will be, they are all taught the same with no distinctions. The first thing they are taught is that a weapon, any weapon, is not to be used without reason. To do so is to be less than a man, for a true man has reason and is able to distinguish between right and wrong.
“Wrong is to use a weapon merely because one is able, merely because it gives one pleasure to do so,” he said. “One must think of oneself among others, and consider if one would find approval in being attacked so by another, merely because that other has greater skill. Should one find a thing wrong when it is done to oneself, it is equally wrong to do the same to others.”
“But that’s what I’ve been saying!” I objected, the confusion I felt making me even more upset. “I’ve been doing terrible wrong, and it doesn’t stop!”
“Hush, wenda,” he scolded gently, briefly putting one hand under my chin. “This is but the first lesson taught a child, and although it is greatly important, it is not the only lesson.
“Once a boy’s teaching with a sword has begun, he must then learn the lesson of patience,” he continued. “When one bears a fine new weapon one has just begun to learn to use, one is eager to test that weapon and learning. There are many contests and trials of skill in which these young l’lendaa are allowed to participate, yet are they forbidden to draw sword at any other time. They are told that one does not bare a blade without using it, therefore are they made to shed a small amount of their own blood if ever they are found with weapon in hand without a proper reason for its being there.”