But no one said I had to do anything to her, I protested in the silence I couldn’t seem to break, throbbing under Deegor’s continued stare. They never told me I had to strike at her!
What did you think they wanted you to do? another part of my mind countered, disgust dripping from every word. Did you think besting someone meant showing off what a pretty glow your mind has, and leaving it at that? They trusted you, Terry, and they depended on you, and after everything they went through they can now thank you for their failure.
But I’m not a warrior! I nearly wailed, more sick to my stomach than the Hand of Power had made me. All the breeches and all the swords in the world won’t make me one, and they should have known that! They should have known better than to have their very lives depend on me!
The inner voice didn’t have anything to say to that, but not because there wasn’t anything to say. My sense of time suddenly shifted so that everything around me slowed nearly to a standstill, giving me all the opportunity I needed to finally admit that my failure hadn’t been one of lack of knowledge. I’d known they’d expected me to do to Farian what I’d accidentally done to that original group of conspirators, but that was the whole problem. It was Farian they wanted me to do it to!
I closed my eyes with the terrible ache I felt, knowing that if it had been Roodar instead, I would have been able to do anything necessary. I’d hated Roodar and still did, for what she’d done to me and what she’d done to Tammad, and striking at her would have been easy. Farian hadn’t exactly been sweetness and light, but although I detested everything she stood for and disliked her personally, she wasn’t even responsible for raising those male slaves. I didn’t like her, but I didn’t hate her!
Isn’t that somewhat childish? the something inside me asked, this time sounding slightly more patient. An infant has to have an emotional reason for doing or not doing something, but adults know how to deal with abstracts. And know how to accept the responsibility for their actions, without needing an excuse to point to. Farian has to be stopped for everyone else’s good, no matter how much pain-of-conscience it gives you to do it. No hate to fly along on, no grudge to blind your awareness, just the need of the people around you. Have you grown up enough to do it on that basis, with your eyes wide open and your mind free of uncertainty?
That terrible question hung in front of me, so direct that all I wanted to do was look away, and then I thought of a way out. If I let that emotionless, uncaring state take me over the way it had when I’d faced Tammad, everything would be done the way it had to be. The coldness would see to it that Farian was bested, and I wouldn’t have to get involved at—
It didn’t take the inner voice to stop that thought, and I was suddenly more ashamed than when my “master” had strapped me in front of the guard. If I let the coldness take over there would be nothing to worry about, nothing but my absolute inability to take responsibility for my own actions. I would continue to be the coward who ran away from everything, the child who always had to have someone else to blame for what she did. Tammad had given me permission to make decisions about my abilities, but not because he had continued to think of that decision as his to make; I was the one who had needed it to be spelled out, who had had to be forced away from the crutch. No one can or has to give a l’lenda permission to do anything, and at long last I really understood what that meant.
I finally looked up from my inner dialogue, and was somewhat surprised to see that no more than a minute or so could have passed. Deegor was still staring at me with pain in her eyes, the women of our group were still torn apart by the thought of what their adherence to honor was about to make them do, and turning around showed Farian well on the way to full restoration of her usual arrogance. Triumph shone out of her eyes as she began congratulating herself on her brilliant stroke, but the congratulations were just a bit premature.
I can’t honestly say I was fully confident, but there was no uncertainty in me when I projected a strong, general blast of static designed to reach everyone in the room. Silence descended faster than any amount of shouting would have accomplished, giving me a backdrop against which I took one step forward toward the woman on the platform.
“You are mistaken, Farian,” I said with something close to true calm, seeing her immediate shift to petulant anger at being disagreed with. “This challenge is not yet done, for my failure to strike was an attempt to allow you to surrender without being harmed. Should you refuse to accept this offer upon the moment, it will then be withdrawn.”
“Ah, I see,” Farian answered with a ridiculing smirk, her brows raised in amused revelation. “You failed to strike when my mind was bared, solely out of a sense of honor. Now that I have again raised denial to protect me, you call for my surrender else shall I be struck. You are a fool, girl, and shall soon be an enslaved fool. I refuse to surrender, therefore you are invited to strike.”
Her smirk was really outstanding by then, a sign of her absolute confidence in how safe she was, emboldened even further by the mutter of surprise and confused dismay coming from my own people. Farian was convinced that nothing could get through her shield, just as convinced as everyone else was, but I was betting they were all wrong.
I sent my inner sight right up to her shield just as I had done with Len, but found it considerably more of a shock than his. The oddness I’d noted when we first got to the room resolved itself into something I’d never seen before, something clearly developed by people who weren’t from Centran stock. Rather than being a sphere, Farian’s shield was more like shifting diagonal lines, fast-moving lines that seemed to allow no way through them. They weren’t really solid any more than my shield or Len’s was solid, but the overall effect of the lines made them very difficult to look at. Causing mental eyestrain seemed to be one of the ways the shield protected its possessor, and very briefly I nearly felt outclassed and defeated.
But only very briefly. What I’d thought of as the coldness was suddenly there supporting me, calming and smoothing my own emotions so that I could work without being distracted. I knew then that that was its purpose, a way of controlling myself when I really needed the control, not something that took me over and dehumanized me. It was there to be used, not allowed full control, the master of a child but the tool of an adult. I didn’t know how far I’d moved along the road toward adulthood, but a tool like that was something I truly needed right then.
Getting my own emotions out of the way let me really look at the shield, and it was then that I became aware of the time interval of the shifting. Matching the shift was the key to getting through the shield, that rather than trying to go around it. I didn’t think it was possible to go around a shield like that, and thinking about the time interval immediately set my mind into an attempt to shift in the same direction and at the same speed that the lines did. The coldness continued its support as my mind moved faster and faster—and then I was matched to the interval and sliding through.
After giving me her permission to strike, Farian had herself struck a pose, a languid stance of derision and insult meant to rub her untouchability in my face. The couple of minutes it took me to match up were enough to increase her confidence even more, and she had just begun a sneeringly dirty laugh when I passed her protection and touched her mind. If not for the coldness I would have pulled back immediately in disgust and horror, utterly repelled by the peculiar brand of madness she possessed. Farian had never been denied anything in her entire life, and rather than set her own boundaries and learn necessary self-denial where others were concerned, she had opted for going after and getting everything there was in reach. No matter what she had to do to get it. No matter whom she had to hurt. The ultimate spoiled brat who would never stop until she had it all.