“Why do you stand with your hands before you?” he asked me, the amusement in his voice stinging terribly. “Come and place yourself before me, your arms at your sides, so that I may have the pleasure of looking upon my belonging.”
It took a great effort to force myself to motion, an even greater effort to put my arms down. When I stopped in front of him, the whirling of my emotions was nearly enough to make me dizzy. I didn’t want to be looked at like that, like nothing more than a barbarian’s possession, like something to be owned and used! The presence of the bands on me, around my wrists and ankles and throat, was pure indignity, tightening my hands into fists at my sides.
“Again I see nothing of eagerness in you,” he said, annoyed. “It is clearly foolish to be patient with you, wenda, for patience does no more than encourage your disobedience. Be informed that my patience is now at an end. Kneel before me.”
I felt another frown take me as I slowly went to my knees in front of him, seeing the anger in his eyes and feeling it push against me. He was unhappy with the way I was reacting to being put on display, but what else did he expect? He stared at me briefly from the cross-legged position he had taken among the cushions, and then his hand flashed out to take me painfully by the hair.
“Again I feel the tendrils of your mind slipping close to mine!” he growled, ignoring the gasp of shock and pain torn from me. “Though to you it is ostensibly the same as looking upon me, to me it is unconscionable invasion. It seems you require a more constant reminder to induce proper behavior. Kneel and bow in the manner you were taught among the Hamarda. ”
My fists flew to my forehead as his hand forced my head to the carpeting, my heart thudding loud enough to be heard at the other end of the room. I hadn’t been probing him, merely picking up the strongest of his emotions, but I couldn’t have told him that even if he hadn’t insisted on my silence. Being defiant when he wasn’t angry seemed to come naturally to me, just as naturally as fright when he was angry. No, it wasn’t simply fright that I felt, though fright was a part of it; the emotion was much more complex, and I couldn’t seem to resolve it. I heard him stand up and walk away from the cushions, pause somewhere else in the room, then return.
“I will have eager service from you, wenda, and I will have it now,” he said, sitting down among the cushions again. “Should I find myself displeased with your service, you will be immediately punished. Raise yourself again so that you are merely kneeling. ”
I straightened myself again as he had commanded, flinching away from the renewed calm he was projecting. He was too close, and his mind was too strong, for me to be able to stay away from him completely. I decided I had to explain the problem no matter what he had said about my not speaking, but sight of what he was holding put the words right out of my mind.
“This cloth about your eyes will keep memory of required obedience clearly before you,” he said, finishing up the folding of the dark cloth in his hands. That, in itself, was bad enough, but the length of thick leather on the cushion to his right made things considerably worse.
“You can’t be serious!” I blurted, staring in horror at the cloth and leather. “Tammad, this is all insanity! I can understand your being angry and wanting to punish me, but can’t you see how useless this all is? Things will never be the way you want them to be, no matter what you do to me! Blindfolding me and then tying me the way the Hamarda did won’t change any of the important things standing between us, the things that will always keep us apart! None of this is from my world, none of it something I can relate to! Please let me go back to my people!”
He stared at me in silence for a moment. The words I had spoken were true representatives of the way I felt, and he seemed to know that. I’d tried playing the game his way, tried easing the feelings of invasion he’d had, but it had all been for nothing. There was a certain point beyond which I couldn’t go without being truly humiliated, and that was it. His stare and silence stretched out a bit longer, then his hands came to my arms to draw me gently into his lap.
“Terril, though the difficulty seems truly great for you, you must strive to understand and accept the realities about you,” he said, his soft voice calm. “You cannot be returned to your people for you are already among your people, here on Rimilia. You are my belonging and will remain so, therefore must you learn to obey me properly. This matter of your agreement to do as I wish was merely idle foolishness, merely a manner in which I might measure the depth of your failure to understand what place you stood in. You will obey me whether there is agreement within you or not, wenda, for only through obedience will you survive here if I do not. Should another take you and band you, he will not feel the patience my love for you brings far too often than is wise. I will not see your life lost through lack of proper action on my part.”
He turned me around in his lap then, ignoring the stumbling, tongue-tied arguments I tried to put forward, then placed the dark cloth around my eyes. I didn’t understand what was going on, didn’t want to understand, but when the dark cloth cut off all light and vision the understanding began to creep up on me, until I thrust it away again. He was wrong about where I belonged and about obedience and survival, and what did he mean by saying he might not live? What did he know about his meeting with Daldrin that he wasn’t telling me? He tightened the blindfold with an extra knot, pulling my hair slightly, leaving me with no more awareness of things than that and the bare thigh my own bare flesh rested upon. I felt again as though I were falling through empty air, helpless in the grip of gravity, and reached up to tear the blindfold away. Instead of reaching the cloth, however, my hands reached only his.
“You may not remove it,” he said, his hands everywhere that my hands tried to go. “You must also learn not to impose with your powers, for that sooner than any other thing will end your life. Your reality is here, hama, among those who are larger and stronger than you. You must learn quickly, else you will find no other thing than punishment.”
I shook my head; about to protest what he’d said, but I wasn’t given the chance. The hands that had kept me from removing the blindfold were suddenly at my waist, lifting me from the thigh I sat on and placing me belly-down over the other. I struggled, not knowing what was happening, but a big hand in the middle of my back kept me from rising again.
“You were also mistaken in believing I intended to do as the Hamarda,” he said, his mind throwing off the distaste of the suggestion. “I do not bind females in leather, merely do I punish them with it for the disobediences they commit. I shall take care not to bring further harm to your back, yet must you recall that you were instructed to remain silent.
I barely had time to understand and believe that he was going to punish me before the first stroke came, sharp and stinging, across my bottom. Five strokes came in all, five hard, measured, punishing strokes with the strength of his arm behind them, each one causing me to cry out in pain. Tears welled under the blindfold and wet the cloth, tears that would have otherwise run down my cheeks. He was actually punishing me, and despite the fact that he had done it before, I found myself shocked. Didn’t he know I was the one who had helped him survive Aesnil’s arena? Didn’t he realize I was growing stronger every day? When he was done he lifted me off his thigh and set me back on the carpeting on my knees, and then his hand came to my chin to raise my face.