“Garth felt you were about to touch him in some manner,” Tammad said after a moment, the whirling of his thoughts again slowing his speech. “Was his concern well founded? Were you indeed about to touch him?”
The questions had been quietly put, more gentleness than harshness in them, almost as though they were a casual attempt at information-gathering. I would have felt better if I could have reached into his mind to confirm that, but his agitation wasn’t letting me do it. I turned my head reluctantly to look at him, seeing the outward calm he usually wore like a skin, wondering how I was going to answer those questions. I’d really wanted to do something to get even with Garth for what he’d said, but would I have actually gone through with it? I opened my mouth, found nothing inspired coming out, so I closed it again. I felt like an idiot just standing there moving my lips like a wooden dummy, but I was saved from further embarrassment by a knock at the door.
At first Tammad seemed determined to ignore the knock in favor of waiting for my answer, but then he did something I’d never seen him do before. He sent his mind to find out who was at the door, the action seeming more automatic than carefully thought out and done deliberately. He was faintly startled when he reached that other mind, but I couldn’t tell if he was startled at what he’d done, or at finding that our caller was a deeply disturbed Dallan. The big barbarian turned away from me with a frown, and strode to the door to open it.
“Tammad, I have come to ask for your assistance and that of Terril,” Dallan said immediately, his pretty blue eyes showing his concern. “The guard has searched everywhere, but they have been able to find nothing. Cinnan is beside himself. ”
“They have still found nothing?” Tammad asked, stepping back to let Dallan enter the room. Dallan was just as impossibly big as Tammad, his hair as blond, his eyes as blue. Most Rimilian men were the same, blond, blue-eyed and big, but Dallan was also drin of Gerleth, prince to his father Rellis’s Chamd. Dallan had an older brother, Seddan, but Seddan was still being kept close to bed by the healers.
“I, too, find it difficult to believe,” Dallan agreed, so distracted that he didn’t even look my way. “I had not thought there were that many places in this house where a wenda might hide. Clearly, anger gives them cunning as well as strength.”
“Wendaa!” Tammad said with a growl of annoyance, shaking his head. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but since Dallan’s request for help had included me, there was no reason to stay in the dark.
“Who is it that you discuss?” I asked, walking forward away from the bathing pool, speaking Rimilian so that Dallan would understand me. “Who has been lost that you now attempt to find?”
“My cousin Aesnil again feels herself unjustly put upon,” Dallan answered, giving me something of a smile to go with the automatic hum in his mind that started as soon as his eyes touched me. “She has done so well in putting her short time of slavery from her memory, that this morning she attempted to disobey Cinnan. He, of course, refused to allow her disobedience and strapped her for it, and when the punishment was done she fled their apartment in tears. He allowed her a short time to herself before seeking her, however found himself unable to discover her whereabouts before his presence was required at the meal with my father. He then set the guard to searching in his stead, yet have they been as unsuccessful as he.”
“Perhaps he has earned such lack of success,” I suggested, thrilled that now I had something else to add to my distress. “Had he not found it so necessary to strap her, he would now find it unnecessary to search.”
“You would have had him overlook his duty?” Dallan asked with brows raised, surprised that I would question so obvious and necessary a thing. “Aesnil remains as arrogant as ever, and should Cinnan stay his hand from her punishment, those in Grelana will suffer when she resumes her place there as Chama. Have you so soon forgotten what we all of us had at her hands?”
I shook my head at his calm, sober question, not likely to ever forget what Aesnil had done to us. Dallan, her own cousin, had been declared a servant-slave in her palace, his brother Seddan declared a vendra and sent to the vendra ralle, the arena, to fight for his life. Tammad and Cinnan had also been sent to the ralle, and I—I had been forced to act as her secret weapon against her dendayy, threatened with being thrown to the wild male slaves to keep me in line. No, I wasn’t likely to forget what Aesnil had done to me—but I also remembered that she was the one who had escaped from Grelana with me.
“It may perhaps prove true that Cinnan has indeed erred in his punishment of her,” Tammad said, looking down at me rather than over at Dallan. “Should this be so, how is he to learn of it and make amends while the girl remains unfound? An exchange of words is impossible when one must exchange words with oneself.”
The calm he felt was now shielding his mind as well, but behind that calm I could feel the electric outlines of his continuing agitation. If we stayed in that room we’d be right back to our previous discussion, and that was something I wanted to avoid. A flash of annoyance touched me as I realized I was being forced to obey him in two different ways, but I also couldn’t argue with the truth in what he’d said. Aesnil did need to be found, before she did something foolish.
“Very well, I will assist you all in searching for her,” I grudged, wanting them to know I wasn’t happy about it. “The doing should not prove overly difficult.”
Both men nodded to show their approval of my agreement, and we left to begin the search. I really didn’t expect it to take long to find her, but what we found was something else entirely.
Aesnil had disappeared from Gerleth, and she hadn’t gone alone.
2
“How is one to take the word of a seetar?” Cinnan demanded, so upset that all he could do was pace back and forth across the room. “How is a seetar to know what occurs in the world of men?”
“The ability of seetarr was discovered by us when we searched for Terril among the Hamarda,” Tammad said for the third time, trying to convince Cinnan with calm and patience. “With Lenham’s aid, we found that my own seetar was able to follow Terril across the sand, and thence to Aesnil’s palace in Grelana. Do you doubt that we were able to find Terril?”
“No, certainly not,” Cinnan denied with a gesture of dismissal, but the gesture referred only to finding, not to believing. “I continue to find difficulty in understanding not how a seetar may follow, but how it may speak of what occurs about it. How is such a thing possible?”
“I know not,” Tammad admitted with a sigh, then his eyes came to me where I sat. “The woman has great facility with seetarr, and perhaps her own words will aid our understanding. ”
All the eyes in the room came to me then, most of them questioning. Tammad, Cinnan, and I were in Rellis’s entertaining room, and the Chamd and his son Dallan were there with us. We all sat relaxing against cushions in the gold, red and marble room, goblets in our hands, all, that is, except for Cinnan. He carried his goblet of drishnak around with him, the same drink all the men had. I was the only one drinking a gentle golden wine, something I wasn’t quite as happy about as I’d once been.
“The seetar whose mind I touched was yours, Cinnan,” I explained, privately wondering how much good the explanation would do. “His concern for Aesnil is yours, as it is from your mind that he took it. He felt surprise at her appearance in the stabling cavern without you, displeasure that the sweets he had had from the two of you in the past days were not forthcoming, then curiosity as to what she was about. He was indignant that she chose another mount rather than taking her place behind you upon his own back, then saddened that she rode away without once having greeted him. That he felt no worry concerning her well-being indicated that she was accompanied, an indication confirmed by the disappearance of two further seetarr. The-discussion I held with your seetar was a good deal less clear than the manner in which I present it to you, yet am I certain of the interpretation I have made. The word you have is mine, not that of a seetar. ”