8
It wasn’t waking up, precisely, not with remembering what had happened before you’d slept and knowing what was going on right then. I opened my eyes and was in a rather large room, with quite a few people all around. I had an odd taste in my mouth, knew I lay on something hard, and my right shoulder and arm were hurting, throbbing in protest and feeling banged and scraped. There was sunlight in the room, and refreshing air, but with all the people looking down at me I wasn’t feeling very refreshed.
“Sit up, and then stand,” one of the people looking at me said, a large woman wearing cloth breeches and shirt, leather sandals and headband, and a sword. It came to me then that all of the people looking at me were women, and I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand any of it, but I sat up and then got to my feet.
“You should have been wiser than to come here so, girl,” another voice said, also a female voice but sleeker than the first and filled with endless self-confidence. “Your pitiful trace of the power has given you too high an opinion of yourself, which has caused you to reach above your proper place. You will come to regret such impertinence.”
I looked over to where the voice was coming from, and then had to look up. At the top of a wide platform a woman lounged upon cushions and furs, an attractive woman with blond hair and blue eyes. She was dressed in golden silk breeches and shirt with matching silk foot coverings, and the silk was decorated with jewels and trimmed with fur. Behind the platform she lay on was an entire wall of windows, all of them thrown wide to the air and sunshine. I put my hand to my forehead as I looked at her, trying to remember what I’d wanted to say, and then I had a piece of it.
“Pitiful trace of power?” I got out, feeling a compulsion to speak the truth. “No, you are mistaken.”
“Mistaken, am I?” snorted the woman, sitting straight among her comforts to look her scorn down at me. “From Aesnil’s words concerning you and the comments of those who brought her I thought you the possessor of a great power indeed, yet did it take nearly as long to down you as it did to down the empty man. Even the one with the beginnings of the power succumbed more quickly, proving again that the greater the power, the greater the sensitivity-save for the greatest of all, such as myself. It is now no wonder that he has been able to make you slave to him, yet is that scarcely an excuse.”
“Excuse?” I echoed, not following anything she was saying, wishing that constant buzz in my mind would go away. The room I stood in was certainly large enough, but I still felt surrounded and hemmed in.
“For one with even a trace of the power to allow any man to enslave her is totally inexcusable,” I was told severely, anger and disgust obvious in the words and the snapping blue eyes. “Such a woman clearly relishes that enslavement, begging for it and then flaunting it as though it had great merit! Had you not accompanied these men, with your dark hair and green eyes and slave bands, we would not have known them, yet was such service to us scarcely voluntary. You will be given no reward for it, for you have earned something other than reward.”
I don’t understand, I wanted to say, unable to take my eyes off her, but her disapproval and anger had frightened me and made my lips tremble. I was going to be punished for what I’d done wrong, I knew, but I couldn’t quite remember what that was.
“We must now see if there are any here who wish these two,” the woman announced, looking somewhere behind me at whatever was there. “There are other matters, more important matters, I must attend to this day, therefore do I expect a speedy claiming.”
“I would have this one,” a voice said, also behind me, a voice filled with interest. “The Chama Aesnil has spoken of his ability to give pleasure, and I would see the thing for myself.”
I turned slowly to find out what was going on, and saw the rest of the large room I’d opened my eyes in. All of white stone it was, with pillars of the same along both side walls and beautiful paintings and things on the walls themselves between the pillars. About ten feet behind me were two men half surrounded by large, armed women, and staring at them briefly showed them to be Cinnan and Tammad. They stood with their arms behind them as if they were tied, there were bright bronze rings circling their necks, their bodies were covered with plain brown cloth hung like very short skirts, their eyes looked unfocused, and they were unarmed. A woman about my size in yellow cloth breeches and green cloth shirt stood in front of Cinnan looking up at him, her left hand resting on the hilt of the sword she wore.
“You may have him, sister, yet must you recall the need for caution,” the woman who had scolded me said, taking her turn at speaking from behind me. “You must be certain that Aesnil does not see him, for we have not as yet converted her completely to our cause. Also must he be kept well drugged, for we would not wish him or the other to escape and return with more of their sort. Our w’wendaa would not find it difficult to defeat them, yet would it then be known what we attempt.”
“The word of the Chama Farian is to be obeyed,” the woman in front of Cinnan acknowledged, immediately turning away from him to bow to the woman on the platform. “It shall be done as you command.”
“I, too, shall do the same,” said a third female voice, and a woman stepped forward from among those who surrounded the two men. “With my Chama’s permission, I would have the other.”
“To teach him proper behavior, Roodar?” the woman on the platform asked with a chuckle, her voice amused. “It was clear he annoyed and angered you from the moment he first appeared. ”
“Indeed he did, Chama,” the woman agreed with very little expression on her face, turning her head to look at Tammad. “Should you grant him to me, I will quickly teach him how great an error he has made. For his insolence he will squirm on his belly when he comes to greet me, and beg me with tears in his eyes to take pleasure from him.”
The woman called Farian chuckled again, enjoying the picture the w’wenda Roodar had painted, but even through the buzzing mush in my mind I was disturbed. There was something about Tammad, something I had to remember, and then I had it.
“No,” I said to Roodar, immediately drawing her eyes, wishing I didn’t feel as though I were all wrapped up in invisible cotton. “You may not have him. He is mine.”
“Yours, is he?” growled the very large woman, pacing forward to stop and stare down at me. Her cloth breeches and shirt were the same shade of yellow as all the guard w’wendaa wore, but hung from her neck on a golden chain was a round red disk that sparkled in the sunlight. I couldn’t remember seeing it before, and wondered why she hadn’t been wearing it when she’d escorted us into the palace.
“Yours, is he?” she said, still expressionless as she stared down at me. “That would be more likely the other way about, yet shall I accept the statement. As he is yours and I wish to possess him, we must face one another. Give her a sword. ”
I stared in mindless, uncomprehending shock as the woman stepped back to wait while one of the other guard w’wendaa came forward with a blade she’d just unsheathed. My hand was raised and a hilt was pressed into it, and then Roodar reached toward her own weapon.