“Completely unacceptable,” the man called Hestin stated, looking down at me with steady blue eyes while I glared at Leelan. She’d told on me without the slightest hesitation, and did no more than grin at my silent promise to get even.
“Indeed is such a thing unacceptable,” Dallan agreed from where he stood to Hestin’s right, between the newcomer and Leelan, his disapproval even sharper. “Now that we are here, it shall quickly be set to rights.”
“There is but one thing I wish set to rights,” I said, finding it difficult not to feel like a naughty child among grown-ups. “Release my arm immediately, for I wish to cover myself.”
I looked at the man Hestin as I spoke, really trying to ignore the others, and was therefore able to see his surprise.
“You need not feel disturbed over my presence, wenda,” he said, beginning to move me very slowly back to the bed. “There is no call for embarrassment for I am a healer, and have come for no other purpose than to see how you fare. Sit here now, and I will assist you in lying down.”
“I need no assistance, nor do I wish to lie down,” I said, pulling out of his grip as soon as it loosened, this time managing to scramble successfully. As soon as I had the cover fur over me I looked up at him again, ignoring the new surprise he showed. “What I would find joy in having is solitude for I also have no need of a healer.”
“Indeed do you seem so far improved that I am amazed,” he said, crouching so that his handsome face was more nearly on a level with mine. “As to your continuing need for a healer, that remains to be seen. I will first know how you truly fare, and then the decision will be made. Put the fur aside so that I may examine you.”
There was a deep sense of quiet and calm in him that I could feel even with my shield closed, and his blue eyes reflected that for all the world to see. He was big and blond as were most Rimilian males and he wore a dark blue haddin, but above it he had on a long, wide-sleeved, open-fronted gray robe, and there was no sword belted around his waist. In calm consideration there was nothing about him at all alarming, but for some completely undefined reason I still felt vaguely uneasy.
“Perhaps you misunderstand,” I said, trying hard not to be insulting. “You have my thanks for having aided me when I required it, yet I no longer require such aid. I, too, have some measure of healing ability, and prefer now to see to myself.”
“For what reason does my presence disturb you?” he asked, just as though I’d spoken my feelings aloud, his calm quiet untouched and undisturbed. “There is a trembling I feel deep within you, one which was not present when first I tended you, one which has naught to do with the marking of your body. The trembling is a recognition of sorts, I believe, yet not of myself. Whom do you see when you look upon me, treda?”
“I see no one,” I answered immediately, too deeply upset to resent being called, “girl child,” trying to hide the fact that I was lying. He did remind me of someone, someone I couldn’t dredge up from my memory, but someone I also couldn’t forget.
“You should not have exerted yourself so far, treda,” he said, raising one big hand to smooth my hair, his eyes unmoving from my face. “Your lovely cheeks have paled, and the trembling has now come to your hands. You must know well enough that you have no cause to fear me. I have come to bring healing rather than hurt, and shall certainly do you no harm.”
He smiled then, a warm, encouraging smile, and suddenly I knew exactly who he reminded me of. I closed my eyes as the pain and illness rose high, and wished I had the ability to make myself instantly unconscious.
“The knowledge has now returned to you,” Hestin said, no doubt at all in the statement, a comforting sense of support in his voice. “Lie back now, until you are able to speak of it. ”
I felt his hands easing me back onto the bed furs, and then I was lying flat on my tangled hair, my eyes still closed, my hands still tight on the fur spread over me. It was really too warm to be covered in furs, and the smell of ointments and salves was still more alien than familiar; right then I was more homesick for Central than I could ever remember being. On Central my abilities were usually taken away from me, suppressed by conditioning, and that’s what I missed more than anything else.
“You begin to exert control over the thing,” Hestin said with quiet approval, his big hand smoothing my hair. “Soon you will be able to speak of it, and once spoken of it will disturb you no longer.”
“You are mistaken,” I answered in as steady a voice as I could manage, opening my eyes to look at his face. Hestin did look like him, quite a bit, but the differences were what really counted. There was no true ability for violence in the healer, not the way there was in a warrior, but there was less of a difference between healer and warrior than there was between Hestin and him.
“Mistaken in what manner?” Hestin asked, and I discovered that his calm and quiet patience were beginning to rub me the wrong way.
“Mistaken in believing that to speak of the thing will bring forgetfulness,” I said, shaking my head against his hand in an effort to make him take it away. “When the memory ceases to give me pain, it then brings anger. I would appreciate your leaving me now.”
“You return to yourself so quickly,” he observed, ignoring me again in favor of what he was interested in. “Despite the hurt given your body your spirit remains untouched, and reasserts itself as the need arises.”
“What you see as spirit, I see as temper,” I told him, holding his blue eyes with no effort at all. “Should you persist in remaining here to spout philosophical observations, that temper will quickly rise even higher than it currently stands. I now politely ask you to leave for a third time; should I find the need to ask again, the request will contain no politeness whatsoever.”
“Terril, do not,” Dallan began in upset, taking one step forward, and, “Hestin, take care not to provoke her!” Leelan said in a matching upset, and their individual but almost identical reactions finally got through to the healer the way my own efforts hadn’t. He turned to look at them both over his right shoulder, his brows raised in surprise and questioning, and Leelan, after a glance at Dallan, found a shrug to send back.
“The girl possesses more of the power than any I have ever seen,” she explained, sounding almost apologetic. “I feel certain she would not harm another unless provoked and perhaps not even then, and yet—I also feel that her word has not been idly given. Perhaps we would do best in leaving her now.”
“How strange that I feel no least vestige of the power in her,” Hestin said, turning back to put those clear, innocent eyes on me again. This time it was Leelan he was ignoring, still using that sense of mystical wisdom to get his own way, and I’d had enough of it. It looked like everyone else around him was impressed, but I wasn’t.
This time I simply dropped my shield without bothering with the curtain, automatically resisting and ignoring the leakage from the Hand of Power. Doing it while flat on my back was fractionally easier, but only because I still had to pay attention in order to stay upright. Leelan drew her breath in softly, her mind excited and pleased despite her nervousness; Dallan hovered with faint disturbance, and Hestin-Hestin’s eyes suddenly went wide as he stared down at me. He wasn’t in any way reading or receiving me and I couldn’t really tell what he was doing, but in some way he was even more completely aware of my abilities than Leelan.
“Are you able to feel some vestige now?” I asked, still looking up at him. “To fail to display a sword is not to imply lack of sword skill.”
“Now I am not alone in spouting philosophical observations,” he said, exercising that pretty smile again. “You do indeed possess a power beyond any I have ever sensed, treda, yet does such a power not preclude the need to be tended. You have done much toward healing yourself, yet is there only so much one may do for oneself. I would see what remains to be done.”