“Perhaps it would be best if I were to leave, then,” Dallan said, looking at the group behind Leelan to find that it was strictly female. “Often a man is out of his depth in discussions such as these.”
“We have often found it so,” an older woman in the group agreed with a downright jolly smile, stopping to Leelan’s right. Most of the other women were chuckling or grinning and even Leelan seemed amused, so Dallan lost no time in bowing to them and then making his break. Once the door had been closed behind him, though, all the amusement disappeared.
“This is the one you spoke of, Leelan?” another woman asked my hostess, a woman as young as Leelan herself. Her feet were bare of probably muddy sandals, but her sword was firmly belted over the blue shirt and breeches she wore, and her frown of disapproval was set like granite. “Although rather disheveled, she would far more easily be seen as a rella wenda.”
“To purposely provoke one of unknown abilities is scarcely wise, Siitil,” Leelan answered immediately, surely aware of the way I had stiffened at the other woman’s words. After what Dallan had said I was about as far from feeling charitable as you can get, and hearing that the one called Siitil had poked at me deliberately didn’t do a thing to improve friendly relations.
“Perhaps we would do best to first make the girl’s acquaintance,” the older woman to Leelan’s right put in, her tone more firm than conciliatory as she looked at the younger Siitil. She wasn’t old by any stretch of the imagination, just older, and wore her own swordbelt over dark green breeches and shirt. She was smaller than most of the others despite the fact that she was one of the few who still had sandals on, and her long blond hair was just beginning to be touched with gray.
“With what are we to become acquainted, Deegor?” Siitil came back immediately, her eyes on me rather than on the woman she spoke to. “We were told there was one of power in our midst, one who was capable of besting Farian. Is it disappointment you would become better acquainted with?”
“Would I have called you all here had I not been certain, Siitil?” Leelan said with a touch of exasperation, her voice now more commanding than friendly, her eyes on the woman who continued to stare at me. “First you will do as Deegor suggests and become acquainted with Terril, and then you will be shown what I have seen.”
“Perhaps it is Terril who has no wish to become acquainted with Siitil,” I said before anyone else could put their oar in, reaching down to the tray for the goblet of juice I hadn’t yet tasted. “it pains me to be an ungracious guest, Leelan, yet do I ask you to take these others and go.”
“Siitil means you no personal insult, girl,” the woman Deegor said as she stepped closer, taking over for a Leelan who seemed to have run out of what to say. “She and Leelan have had a comparable loss, yet does Siitil have less of a grip upon her grief. She burns to avenge those who took the lives of her mother and father, and hoped to find the means in you. As she is unable to see that you choose to show us nothing of ability, she is understandably bitter.”
“Deegor, you say she chooses to show no ability?” Siitil pounced immediately, her rather plain face brightening with hope. “Your ability is greater than mine; what do you see?”
“I see a denial such as Farian is capable of, yet of a completely different construction,” Deegor answered, her eyes somewhat narrowed and faintly unfocused. “She is undeniably one with power, yet how great a power I am unable to say.”
“Have you truly the power, girl?” Siitil demanded, her stare turned blazing as it came back to me, her left hand tightened white around her sword hilt. “Should you have fully enough to decisively best Farian, I swear I will be one of those who cuts down the operating Hand of Power, though my life or reason will be lost in the doing! They will not be allowed to do you harm, and when you have bested Farian my blood will have been avenged! Now do I ask you in the name of decency: show us your power!”
In the name of decency. I sat sipping my juice as the young woman just stood there and waited, the burning inside her so bright I could see it with my eyes alone. I had more than half expected her to apologize when she heard I wasn’t a null after all, but that didn’t seem to be in her nature. What she’d done instead was swear to give up her life or sanity for me, if only I saw to her vengeance after she no longer could. I knew I was getting in much deeper than I could possibly handle, and for a brief moment I felt a clenching of fear.
“Withdraw your sensing,” I told her, suddenly feeling very tired. “You will not need to strain to know my power.”
“How are you able to know I—” she began, confusion making her look even younger, but Leelan’s hand on her arm ended the words. Half of the women there seemed to press closer while the other half drew back, and then there was a shared gasp in a small number of voices to mark the lowering of my shield.
“I knew you strained, for I was able to feel the touch of your mind on my-denial,” I explained, now able to spot the other touches I’d felt. Aside from Siitil and Deegor, there was another woman about Deegor’s age but stronger of mental ability, standing at the back of the crowd where I couldn’t see her. Hers was the third active mind and Leelan’s the fourth, and everyone else was watching those four.
“By the mother of us all,” Siitil breathed, staring at me now in an entirely different way, her expression close to one of shock. “The power—I cannot encompass it all!”
“Nor I,” said Deegor, her face pale although her mind was calm. “For what reason do you keep such strength behind a wall of denial, girl? Do you consider it unfitting for one such as you to share her mind with those about her?”
“I consider it unfitting to fall ill from the leakage of the Hand of Power,” I said, very briefly wondering what it would be like to associate on a regular basis with others of my kind. The thought was so unrealistic I couldn’t even imagine it, and didn’t have the time to spend on daydreams. “For what reason have you not challenged Farian?” I asked without more than an instant’s pause. “You or the fourth of your group? You each of you have a good deal of strength, and might well have had the best of her.”
“Are we to spend the lives of those who follow us on ‘might-well-haves’?” Deegor asked with a faint smile, glancing back at the momentary amusement of the woman hidden behind everyone else. I am a w’wenda and might well have risked it, yet my sister is not and she is the stronger. To be unable to raise sword beside those who follow you is a heavy burden, for it is more likely their lives which will be lost.”
“A consideration which Farian was untroubled by,” the fourth woman said, coming forward from the back to stand beside Deegor. “She, too, is naught of a w’wenda, yet generously spent the lives of those about her without a second thought when she took the place of Chama. I am Relgon, Terril, and I offer commiseration for your sensitivity. The-leakage-from the Hand of Power touches me but lightly, far too faintly to affect me as it does you.”
Her face smiled and her mind gave me welcome, and I had to smile in return when I saw that she and Deegor were identical twins. They’d kept apart as a sort of test, I saw, to find out if I could detect her presence without getting a clue from seeing her. That was before they’d felt my mind, of course, and understood that nothing short of a shield could have kept me from knowing about them.
There were ten women in the room, six of them older and four younger, and all of their minds were filled with excitement and happiness and eagerness. When Relgon finished speaking the rest of them started, most addressing and congratulating Leelan, who fairly glowed. They weren’t really loud and certainly weren’t boisterous, but suddenly Hestin was back, and you couldn’t tell that from his reaction.