“The decision is mine to make, not yours!” I snapped without turning to look at him. “You know nothing of the matter and therefore cannot presume to . . .”
“I know more than you believe!” he interrupted, grabbing my arm to pull me around to face his now obvious anger. “Call the guard and beg them to take your agreement to the Chama!”
“Beg them?” I blurted in outrage, staring up into the angry blue of his eyes. “For no reason other than that you command it? Am I now the loyal servant and you the denday? Has this chamber now become yours?”
“In a manner of speaking, it has indeed.” He nodded, letting go of my arm to lean his hand on the wall above me. “You may either call the guard and do as I suggest, or prepare yourself for a time of humiliation and degradation which will be known to all those about you. It is, of course, the Chama’s concept of humiliation and degradation, however it may also be yours. What is your choice?”
“How may I make a choice when I know not what the options are?” I demanded, putting my fists on my hips as he had done earlier. “You speak in circles, Daldrin, and then demand that I listen in a straight line! It cannot be done!”
“Very well, then I shall speak more plainly,” he said, but before going on he turned away from me, walked to my bed of furs, and stretched himself out on it. “The Chama has given me leave to use you,” he said, turning his head to stare in my direction. “I have said, ‘given me leave,’ and yet the truth is more that I have been commanded to do so. I, a servant who is used by others, am now to use you as though you were vastly lower than I. Is the concept of humiliation and degradation not exquisite?”
His bitterness cut at me so deeply that I flinched inwardly, feeling all anger and impatience with him drain away. Aesnil was trying to help me with my deliberations again—and undoubtedly testing again—and she didn’t care who she hurt as long as she got what she wanted.
“Do not allow her the pleasure of your pain, Daldrin,” I urged, taking a step toward him. “She is unworthy of it and seeks to shame only me.”
“Such is not the complete truth of the matter,” he denied with a headshake, staring at me soberly. “There is a thing between Aesnil and myself—which is of no moment here. Perhaps you will now be so good as to speak with the guards.”
“There is nothing I wish to say to the guards,” I informed him, feeling my chin rise. “Aesnil will .have no satisfaction from me through high-handedness.”
“Then the satisfaction is to be mine,” he nodded. “Very well, come here.”
“For what purpose?” I shrugged, reaching out to him with my mind. “You feel no desire for me.”
He snorted and was about to argue the point, but the sort of disinterest I’d fed him is hard to argue with. A frown creased his forehead as his mind registered surprise, and then, oddly enough, outrage.
“By the Sword of Gerleth, woman, what have you done to me?” he demanded, sitting up straight on the furs. “I am a man, and will not be treated so!”
“What might I have done?” I asked with wide-eyed innocence, reflecting that it was considerably easier using projections than waiting for the proper emotion to come by on its own in the subject’s mind and then enlarging on it. “I have not even approached you.”
“It is apparent you need not approach,” he said, his tone grim. “I now understand the power referred to by Aesnil—and understand, too, why another awaits you behind me.”
“Another?” I frowned, immediately suspicious. “Who might this other be?”
“The one who waits behind me is a full slave,” he said, lying back on the bed again with his hands tucked behind his bead. “He is one who must be bound in chains in order to be kept in Aesnil’s service. There are others of us bound in other ways, yet he is not one such. He, like the others enchained, has become less than a man in the pain and labor and denial forced upon him. You will undoubtedly be able to do to him as you have done to me.”
I turned away without answering, closing my eyes as my insides curled up. It might turn out to be possible to control one of those wild men, but I didn’t want to be the empath to try it. Their minds were too full of ravening self-interest to make the attempt a likely candidate for success. Damn Aesnil and her back-ups!
“You tremble,” Daldrin observed from right behind me. “Am I correct in assuming your power is not of sufficient strength to cope with the desires of a slave?”
I nodded jerkily, frustrated but unable to do anything about it. I wasn’t strong enough, and that was that.
“Then you will now speak to the guards as I suggested earlier,” he said, a gentleness having entered his tone.
I shook my head violently, up to here with being forced to do things everyone else’s way. If Aesnil didn’t like it, She could lump it!
“Why do you continue to refuse?” Daldrin demanded in a roar, pulling me around so that he might shake me with two hands. “Are you pleased by the thought of being taken by a slave? Do you wish to be thrown to a chain of them? Do you wish to spend another two days in pain-filled unconsciousness?”
“For what reason would it matter?” I shouted back, struggling against his grip but unable to break it. “Perhaps good fortune will be mine and the slave will slay me! A chain of them would surely do so! I would be foolish indeed to seek avoidance of so desirable a thing!”
Daldrin stared down at me in silence for a moment, his fingers still locked tight around my arms, then he nodded slowly.
“You have no slightest hope of rescue, then,” he said, his mind pitying me. “What of the warrior who took you from your own land? Surely he will come seeking you, demanding your release and promising vengeance for any harm done you? A l’lenda is not easily brushed aside.”
“The l’lenda no longer finds interest in me,” I said, just as though the words meant nothing. “There are more urgent tasks to his hand than the seeking of an unwanted wenda.”
“Me life dies in you when you look so.” He frowned, taking my face in his hand to raise it higher. “Speak to me of this l’lenda who no longer finds interest in you.”
“Speak to me first of who and what you were before you came here,” I countered, holding his penetrating gaze. “What name were you called by and which were the glories you made your own?”
“Your point is taken,” he said, releasing my face and stepping back away from me. “The two matters are hardly the same, yet your point is taken. You had best take your meal now. The slave will hardly be likely to allow you time to heal your hunger.”
“I have no hunger,” I said, gesturing a dismissal of the idea. “How are they to know you have not used me? Are they likely to torture the truth from you?”
“Torture would be unnecessary.” He shrugged, sitting down on the fur carpeting in front of my bed and leaning back against it. “I am scarcely used so often by the Chama’s female guests that my needs are seen to. When I leave your chamber I will be taken to a slave room and chained by guards, and then those guards will attempt to arouse me. Should they succeed, it will prove I have not had my fill of a woman.”
“Will they succeed?” I asked, feeling my face grow warm at the direction the conversation had taken. “Are you not able to resist the attempts of another man?”
“The attempts will be more than successful.” He grinned, amused by my blush—which naturally made me blush even more deeply. “I have not had a woman in so long, a seetar would be successful with me. The gown I fetched should have been pink. The color suits you.”
“I hate you!” I suddenly shouted, moving forward with fists clenched to scream down at him. “You, and every man ever born! If not for men I would not be trapped so, desperate yet knowing not what to do!”
His amusement didn’t leave him, but be moved like lightning to wrap his arms around my legs and pull me down to his lap. I yelped and tried to fight my way free, but a man doesn’t have a call himself l’lenda to be built like one.