“It happens that such a thing is exactly in accordance with my wishes,” Farian said with a smirk, her anger at being called wenda quickly swallowed. “You think to face my good right arm, and then allow Relgon there to strive to her utmost against me. What will truly occur, however, is that first my good right arm will strike you down, decisively yet no so far that you will be unable to see me best your chosen power, and then the two of you will be slain. After that those others will be taken, and will be clearly taught the consequences of the folly they engaged in. Let it begin now.”
Farian raised her arms in a theatrical gesture designed to look more impressive than ridiculous, and when Roodar immediately began descending the steps toward Leelan, that was the way everyone took it. The gesture said it was the Chama who was allowing the fight to start, and no matter how angry that made Leelan, there was nothing she could do about it but step forward and draw her sword.
Roodar unsheathed her blade a good deal more slowly, at first looking at everyone in our group except Leelan, her expression completely calm and unconcerned. There was no recognition in her eyes when her gaze swept past me, but when it touched Tammad she smiled very faintly, as though pleased that someone had thought to bring something of hers along. Deegor’s hand on my shoulder showed me I’d actually taken one step forward in mindless rage, but no one else seemed to have noticed, especially not Roodar. She had already turned her full attention to Leelan, and so had everyone else. All I could do was stand there with fists clenched, staring at that so-called w’wenda, wishing with everything inside me that it could have been me facing her with swords instead of someone else doing it.
The someone else named Leelan, however, was more than pleased with the arrangement. She and Roodar were both big women, and the swords they held in their fists were held with strength and skill. Roodar wore the yellow of the guard and Leelan was dressed in shirt and breeches of green, but that seemed to be the only difference between them. Both were young, both had long blond hair held back with leather headbands, both stared at one another with blue eyes, and both were eager to get down to cases.
Almost no time at all was spent in circling before the first ring of blades came, a vicious overhand cut initiated by Roodar. Leelan blocked it and swung in answer, and Roodar was the one who had to move fast to keep from getting chopped. The yellow-clad w’wenda retaliated with a series of blows designed to get through to her opponent with speed and strength, but Leelan stopped the attack with strength and skill, then began an attack of her own. The two were very well matched, but the elation in the thoughts of the people around me led me to believe that it was clear, even in the few minutes the fight had been in progress, that Leelan was Roodar’s superior and would soon prove it.
Which turned out to be a conclusion reached by someone other than the people who were on Leelan’s side. I, like everyone else, was so intent on watching the fight that when Leelan stumbled and almost dropped her guard, all I could do was gasp in dismay, expecting to see the fight ended immediately but in the wrong way. Roodar moved in to attack without hesitation, almost as though she’d been expecting something like that, and if Leelan had been any slower she would have died. She’d gone to one knee to catch her balance, her mind clanging with confusion and lack of understanding, and managed to bring her sword up barely in time to keep her head from being opened. She took two or three blows like that before being able to regain her feet, and the minds around me were no longer as confident as they had been.
I suppose it was the confusion in Leelan’s mind that first made me suspicious, a confusion that said as clearly as words that there had been no real reason for the w’wenda to have lost her balance. Leelan was shaken by not understanding why it had happened, and that made me take my attention away from the fight to look around, something no one else was doing. For that reason no one else noticed that some of the guard w’wendaa to our left seemed to be just regaining their own balance, as though what had happened to Leelan was a sickness that had struck them as well. For a moment I couldn’t understand at all why that should be, and then it suddenly came to me that they had been in a direct line behind Leelan when she had been struck. That fact still made no sense-until I remembered how impressed everyone had been over my being able to touch Hestin without also touching the people behind him.
My eyes went to Farian then, where she stood with languid ease watching the ongoing fight, a faint smile on her pretty face and anticipated victory in her eyes. Her shield still seemed to be firmly in place, but I was ready to bet any amount named that it had dropped briefly to allow her to touch Leelan-with a spillover onto the people behind her target. Farian was no more capable of precise control than anyone else on that world, and was determined to win no matter what had to be done to guarantee it.
I stirred where I stood next to Deegor, angry but also confused. The way the guard w’wendaa were acting showed the spillover clearly, but if Farian had so little precision control, how had she missed Roodar? Her “good right arm” had been directly in the line of fire, so to speak, so whatever had happened to Leelan should also have happened to the other woman-only it hadn’t. There was something there that I was missing, something I wasn’t taking into account—and then a very unpleasant thought occurred to me. I moved my eyes from Farian to Roodar, the woman I’d so wanted to face, and couldn’t keep from shuddering.
Roodar was still completely engaged with Leelan, and when I reached out to touch her mind, she wasn’t any more aware of it than her opponent was. I could feel a very faint play of thoughts in her mind, the sort that were usually accompanied by any number of emotions, but in her case the accompaniment wasn’t there. Roodan wasn’t incapable of feeling emotions, at least not the stronger emotions like hate and envy and desire and pleasure, but wherever she felt them, on whatever level of her mind, it wasn’t a place accessible to empaths. Roodar was a null, and totally untouchable by mind power.
I put an unsteady hand to my head as I continued to watch the furious exchange between the two women warriors, just as shaken as I’d been the first time I’d touched a null. There weren’t many of them, happily, but to an empath that was still much too many. Nulls seemed to live on a different plane from everyone else, to look at things with alien eyes, and I’d never been able to accept their differences with anything even approaching calm. Even as I stood there I felt a terrible sense of impending disaster, a conviction that something horrible was going to happen, all no doubt due to my aversion to nulls. It was no longer any wonder why Tammad had been unable to touch her during his lucid periods, and no longer odd that Farian treated her the way she did. Roodar had to be the one who had helped Farian overcome the former Chama and the one she expected to help her overcome her present challenger. It came to me then that I was that challenger, and that if Roodar bested Leelan, the most skilled w’wenda among us, the next target for the big guard woman’s sword would be me.
Or, worse than that, she would simply treat me the way she had the last time, making me a slave who could never get free. The thought of such a fate made me tremble uncontrollably, giving me a sense of nakedness and helplessness despite the breeches and shirt I wore, despite the weapon at my side, despite the strength of my mind. If Leelan fell then I did too, much lower than to mere death, and that wasn’t something I could allow to happen. I was afraid, very much afraid, and found to my surprise that sometimes fear gave you a strength that was only supposed to come from courage.