The room the other women were waiting in was a large one, with curtained terrace windows all along the back wall and a big fireplace in the wall to the right. A fire was crackling in the hearth in competition with the steady patter and pour of the rain against the windows and also had the distinction of being the only light source in the dim, not-quite-chilly room. Leelan and her guests had made themselves comfortable on the dark red floor fur among blue and purple cushions, and just about all of them were holding goblets. When I appeared, Leelan rose and dismissed the servant, found a goblet to hand to me, then led me into the midst of still-excited and expectant minds.
“You do seem much improved now,” she admitted as she looked down at me with half a frown, gesturing to me to find a seat on the floor. “Your walk and movements are not those of one who needs to be abed.”
“You must learn, Leelan, not to give heed to the maunderings of men,” I told her as I sat, glad she couldn’t feel how achy I still was. “They have the ability to pester the life out of those wendaa about them, and for that reason must wendaa ever ignore them.”
“You have more the sound of w’wenda to you than wenda,” Siitil said with a faint smile while everyone else chuckled, her mind still very slightly put off by the way I looked. Siitil was more comfortable with plainer women, and if she hadn’t had a damned strong reason for staying, she would have walked out a lot earlier. “We must now speak of when the attack upon the palace is to be.”
“My attack upon the palace will be this very darkness,” I answered, sipping from my goblet to find that it held nothing but juice, something the other goblets were not filled with. I looked at Leelan and discovered that she was already grinning at me, her mind as firm on the point as Tammad’s would have been. I was up and bathed and dressed, but wine was something I’d be doing without.
“This darkness?” Siitil echoed in disbelief, her immediate outrage distracting me from my annoyance. “We could not attack this darkness even were we to begin spreading the word this very moment! Those who mean to fight beside us would be prepared, yet what of supplies to be arranged for, and healers for the wounded, and outer patrols to be seen to? The palace will not fall till we have entered it, and we will not find it possible to enter for quite some time.”
“I mean to enter as I left it,” I told her, sipping again at my juice. “Swiftly, quietly, and without notice I shall return, free those who are being held captive, and then withdraw again. The rain will do well in covering our escape.”
“The rain will do well in increasing your difficulties,” Leelan contradicted, leaning forward where she’d put herself on the carpet fur to my left, speaking above the exclamations of upset from the others. “A time of rain is ever a time of increased vigilance at the palace, for in rain one does well to expect attack. Also in rain are there a greater number of w’wendaa about, rather than out upon business of their own. Also, these captives will be held in the thrall of potions; how quickly and alertly will they traverse the corridors, avoiding all other living beings? How silently will they slip through the mud, making no sound for others to hear? How easily will you direct them all, and watch for unexpected attack, and defend against what attack does come? Your own escape was a combination of skill and fortune, Terril; to expect such fortune again would be the height of folly.”
She sat looking at me with her mind wide open, letting me see that she believed every word she said. The buzz of the leakage from the Hand of Power was starting to give me a headache again, but I made no effort to replace my shield.
“What fortune fails to come, I will do without,” I told her in a voice gone cold and unyielding, making sure I kept my mind from hers. “Should you and your followers attack the palace, there will soon be no captives to seek the release of. They hold one who means more than life to me, and I will not permit any to stand in the way of his freedom.”
“Terril, please, we do not mean to prevent you!” Relgon gasped, her voice low and ragged. “Please—the pain-!”
I looked away from Leelan in surprise, then gasped in shock to see what was happening. Siitil and Deegor were collapsed on the floor fur, crumpled and boneless and looking as if they were dead. Relgon was down on her back with clawed hands to her head, and four of the other six women were pulling at their collars or moaning and writhing, while the last two looked as flat and dead as Siitil and Deegor. I snapped my shield shut immediately, so shaken that my hands were trembling uncontrollably, and Leelan grabbed my shoulder while rising to one knee.
“What has happened’?” she demanded, fear and confusion shaking her voice like an earthquake. “Terril, what has happened to them?”
“The one you mindlessly thought of as a leader happened to them,” I told her numbly, feeling so sick I wanted to throw up. “You spoke of creatures as though you knew them, Leelan, yet you have never known a creature such as I.”
I put my goblet aside and pulled away from her hand, then got to my feet and hurried over to the fireplace. Behind me I could hear Leelan calling her servants in to help, and then their exclamations of shock as soon as they entered. It must have looked like a massacre to them, and that was exactly what it had been. I’d been angry at Leelan while I was arguing with her, so I’d been careful to keep my mind away to be sure not to accidentally hurt her. What I’d forgotten was everyone else in the room, all the others I wasn’t keeping my mind from. The flaring fury I’d been feeling had lashed straight out at them, and I hadn’t even known I was doing it! I went to my knees in front of the fire with my arms wrapped around myself, too cold ever to be warmed again. I really was a creature, a monster dangerous to everyone around her, one somebody ought to kill so that normal people could be safe. I knelt trembling in front of the fire, hating every continuing breath I took, wishing my sadendrak had already been freed so that someone could come and put me out of my misery. I couldn’t live with the burden much longer, not and continue to stay sane, not with the way it hurt.
It took quite a while for Leelan’s servants to get everyone back to consciousness or calmed down, to get the spilled wine mopped up, to stop trying to find out what had happened. Someone had suggested calling Hestin in to check the fallen, but Leelan had vetoed the idea and it wasn’t raised again. After a while I was caught in the hypnotic quality of the fire, staring at it while imagining I wasn’t different from everyone else, imagining I was happy and loved and really wanted somewhere. When the fire jumped and crackled into nothing but silence I didn’t know it at first, not until a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I came back to the room with a start, wondering if they’d already come for me, confused because it was still too soon. Tammad hadn’t been freed yet, but after that . . . .
“No Terril, do not stiffen so,” Relgon’s voice came, as soothing as the arm she immediately put around my shoulders. “We have none of us been harmed beyond an aching in our heads, and the fault, in any event, was not yours.”
“Then surely the fault was Dallan’s,” I said, looking into the fire rather than at the woman who crouched to my left. “Perhaps it would be best if he were sent for, so that all might remonstrate with him.”
“The l’lenda is also innocent,” she said, playing the game with a little chuckle. “The one who is at fault is my sister, and we all of us shall certainly remonstrate with her.”