It seemed like months or years since I’d done it last, but very deliberately I reached around my curtain to touch my beloved with a kiss. It had been almost a joke between us, a private gesture that no one else was aware of, and all I could do was hope that he would notice and remember. It was so light a thing, and his mind was in such a turmoil, and I couldn’t let my curtain go so that he would be able to feel me there. That second woman had known when the Hand had begun broadcasting again, which meant she was sensitive enough to detect my presence if she were to feel my unshielded mind. All I had to work with was a kiss, and I could feel the soundless scrape of my sword hilt as I pressed my body harder against the wall that separated me from everything that made life worth living.
At first, Tammad didn’t seem to notice the sensation of lips on his as he stood there with his eyes closed, but then, just as the second woman reached the frame, his head came up and a frown took him. I kissed him again, afraid to put too much strength into the sensation to keep it from registering as something other than what it had to be, and this time his eyes opened to show shocked disbelief. I could feel his mind darting around searching for me, the hope rising inside him—but my curtain was still in place and the woman with the drug had already reached him.
“Drink it now, slave!” the first woman ordered in an ugly voice as the second raised the bowl high enough for him to reach, both of them displeased with the way their victim was apparently ignoring them. “Drink it this instant, else shall Roodar have the dark-haired slave brought here, and whipped to crimson ribbons before your eyes!”
The woman’s viciously spoken threat brought the agony of fear to a man who had never before felt fear over anything, and he immediately lowered his head to the bowl and started to drink it down as commanded. There was nothing I could do to stop it, nothing at all—and that’s exactly what I did. Frantically I hit Tammad with absolute denial, hard enough to rattle his teeth, loud enough to make him think someone had screamed, “No!” at the top of their lungs, right into his ear.
His head jerked up again as he cried out with the ringing ache, startling the two women, and that was all I had been waiting for.
Stripping the curtain from my mind, I flashed my thoughts and will and feelings right straight toward the strongly droning Hand of Power. Five minds awaited me where they sat, hands linked together to help with their thought link, five minds opened wide in a pentagram of projection. They really were strong together, much stronger than individual power could account for, but my blast of hatred and fury and frustration and rage hit them so hard and so unexpectedly that they instantly blanked from all sense of perceiving. One instant they were there and the next they were gone, to what fate I had no idea, nor did I care. I’d done what had to be done, and now was free to do as I pleased.
“Leelan, now!” Deegor said excitedly as I looked through the opening at the two guards again. “The Hand is no more! Open the way!”
With a burst of triumph Leelan pushed at the wall in front of us, and then we were stepping out face-to-face with the two shocked guards. The first woman paled and drew her sword, but the second, the one with the bowl, just stood there staring at me, wide-eyed and shaken. My mind was totally unshielded and she could feel the strength and fury in it, and then she felt something else. The first woman had come toward her and put a hand on her shoulder, and then that first woman dropped her sword and snatched the bowl out of the second woman’s hand. The raging thirst she was feeling would let her do nothing else, and before the second woman could shout a warning, the first had already swallowed what she had so desperately needed.
There was a puzzled silence among those who stood with me as the first woman happily wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and the second watched in horror, but that was only because the people with me didn’t know what the drug would do. And then the woman who had been so thirsty frowned, one hand lifting to her head, her eyes widening, her whole body trembling. She was beginning to be very confused and very unsure of herself, and the fear was starting to creep into every part of her, making all the rest of it that much worse. She had seemed to have a very good opinion of the drug while it was still in the bowl; once it was inside her instead, she slid to her knees and began trying to make herself very, very small.
“Amazing,” Deegor breathed from beside me, watching the kneeling woman trying to melt into the carpet fur. “I felt a stirring in the air a moment before the Hand was done, and with this one was aware of no more than that she had been touched. Never before have I seen such precision of control, Terril. ”
“Leelan!” the second guard breathed, finally dragging her eyes away from her former companion and bringing them to the leader of our group. “What has happened to the Hand of Power? What do you do here?”
“What has become of the Hand of Power, I am as yet unable to say,” Leelan answered with a shrug, looking at the other woman coldly. “As for the meaning of my presence, that should surely be obvious. Farian’s time as Chama draws to an end.”
“You will not find it possible to best her,” the woman said, making the effort to pull herself together. “With Roodar beside her, Farian will not be taken even with the aid of one such as that.”
The last word the guard spoke clearly referred to me, but I hadn’t been paying more than token attention to conversation since the first woman had gone cringing to her knees. I’d been moving toward someone who’d had his eyes on me the entire time, and by then I was standing in front of him and gently reaching around his body to hold him as tightly as I’d been dreaming about so long. My mind spread out to smother him with the love I was feeling in the same way my body tried to smother his, drawing a wide, fuzzy-edged feeling of love in response, and the only way it could have been better was if he’d been freed of the chains so that his arms could hold me as well.
“You believe Farian’s power to be a match to Terril’s?” Deegor asked the woman, her voice sounding amused. “The Chama will no more find it possible to withstand her than your sister was able to do.”
“And now we must see to you,” Leelan told the woman, drawing her eyes again. “There are things we must be about, therefore have we little time to dally. We will have your surrender, else will we have your life.”
“To surrender is not done by a true w’wenda,” the woman answered, drawing herself up. “Have at me, then, all of you, in the name of battle against the Chama.”
“We are not Farian, to fall upon a single blade in numbers,” Leelan said disgustedly, her eyes unmoving from the woman, the entire tableau visible to me where I stood. “You shall be given the honor due a w’wenda, and may choose which of us you will face.”
“As I now have your word upon the matter, I shall do exactly that,” the woman answered, her smirk so clear I could see it even with her back to me. “It will please me a great deal when your honor is compromised, O daughter of a dead Chama, for you shall have to do no other thing in order to save the life of one quite close to you. I have been told I might face any among you, none excepted, and to withdraw the offer would be to show dishonor. The one I choose to face is Relgon.”
The woman’s voice rang out triumphantly, her mind viciously delighted that she had found it possible to strike so hard a blow at the opposition. If Leelan honored her word she would lose a close friend and adviser; if she saved her friend’s life by refusing, she would be soiling her own sense of the proper. The woman had it all figured out, and therefore felt nothing but continuing delight when Leelan and her “friend” exchanged looks of surprise.