’ . . . clearly shows that you have transgressed the more,” he said to Dallan while swinging his arm back and striking again. “You dare to consider the girl yours, as though you might be worthy of a female of my people. One of ours will never belong to the pale darayse of your lands, and this you will know before you die. You will end in the agony of the lash, having learned too late how far you have overstepped yourself.”
Dallan uttered a strangled roar, half very intense pain, half insanity at the helplessness of his position. The whip continued to cut at him over and over, freeing his blood to run down his body, and I strained against the leather holding me to the stone, bathed in sweat from his pain and mine, frantically trying to get loose. I’d suddenly become convinced that if I could just put my hands over my ears, I could do whatever had to be done and everything would be all right. I felt the leather cutting into my wrists without really noticing it, panting with the unsuccessful effort to free myself, close to insanity myself. I had to get loose but I couldn’t, and then I gasped at what Tammad did. He had started himself swinging back and forth, not very far and not very fast, but suddenly he lashed out at the monster with both of his bound feet, and the small amount of arc he’d achieved helped him reach his target. The monster staggered when Tammad’s feet struck him, missing the next stroke at Dallan and almost striking himself, and outrage dominated his mind.
“You dare!” he hissed, jerking around to the barbarian, who still swung slowly back and forth. “For that it will be you who is the first to die!”
With that his arm went back and then came forward again, sending the lash against Tammad with all his strength, immediately drawing more blood among the lines already there. The new touch of the whip joining the older streaks was more than the barbarian could stand; despite the iron control he had always shown, despite the denial he was still working for, the pain touched him and reached him and hurt him! That was the point that near insanity became true insanity for me.
The feel of the stone beneath my back and the clasp of leather on my wrists, the raging of the storm outside and the groaning in Dallan’s semi-conscious mind, the pain and fear I felt and the terrible desperation—all faded into shadows as though a curtain had been dropped. The dark-haired monster stood spotlighted in my attention, and attention was the least of what I wanted to give him. My mind opened wide and flowed into his, thrusting aside preferences and prejudices and inclinations alike, searching for the core and essence of him. It was like wading thigh deep through dark slime and twisting putrescence, but his insanity no longer repelled me. I knew there would be a large store of buried fear lying untapped and nearly forgotten, and the monster staggered physically when I reached it, forgetting the whip in his hand as his mind began to fight mine. He seemed to know what I was after and was frantic to keep me from it, but he had no more chance against me mentally than I had against him physically. I released the fears he couldn’t face, letting them flood his mind, and then I began to help them.
The monster screamed as his face paled, fear of everything in the world covering him like a second skin. His whip fell forgotten to the stone of the floor as he went to his knees, his mind surprisingly fighting back harder than it had. The phantoms surrounding and possessing him bowed his head and caused his fists to clench, closing his eyes as he continued to scream and fight. I’d been supporting his fears and keeping them free of his restraint, but rather than trying to resuppress them he was actually conquering them, just as he obviously would have if he’d faced them sooner. If I allowed him to go on much longer he’d win and be free of the fears entirely, and that would also free him to take up where he had so recently left off with that whip. That was the last thing I would allow, no matter the pity I might have felt for him under other circumstances.
Personal fears really are personal, things that others, learning of them, might well laugh at; to the individual involved, the last thing those fears are is laughable. The single footstep in the darkness which immediately becomes the nightmare ghoul you were just reading about; the total lack of light below the last step of a stair which might be a bottomless pit instead; the small, dark, distant cloud, which might be a hungry swarm of ravening insects heading right for you; the squeak of a rodent, the click of a lock, the leap of a flame, the smell of salt water, the reek of stale air. To people with deeply buried terror experiences, these are all real, possible happenings which engender the pounding pulse and thumping heart, the shivering limbs and weakened bowels, the pumping lungs and dizzied mind. The monster kneeling on the stone was nearly to the point of besting all his fears when I gave him my lot, amplified by my power and driven in unceasingly, wave after wave of fear without name, terror and horror I left him to put a face on. The chill-tingle-up-the-spine fear, the semi-paralyzed quaking fear, the breathless-need-to-scream fear. all of it full volume and roaring in. Behind the shadow curtain containing all distractions, I became aware of the increasing violence of the thunderstorm outside, but although the curtain rattled and shook I couldn’t afford to let it distract me. The monster had to be slain, and I was the only one left to do it.
The dark-haired hunter-turned-victim was down on his side on the stone, mewling and cringing and gasping for breath, but still trying to fight inside. His mind darted around looking for a corner of the fear to grasp even as it searched for a place to hide, crying and crawling but still trying to resist. I couldn’t afford to wonder how much strength I had left, any more than I could afford to ease up on the way I was pressing him; if I did, the battle was lost. Hand-away-from-fire fear, and falling-into-nothingness, fear, and attacked-without-warning fear, strengthened and rolling in one after the other, followed by claustrophobia fear and acrophobia fear and xenophobia fear. A shadow-curtain-failing fear snuck in before I realized it, my own fear transmitting itself to him even while I admitted deep down that it was more a certainty than a fear. The shadow curtain was fading even as I fought to deny it, and I knew damned well what was on the other side. Dallan’s pain and Tammad’s rage, the monster’s suffering—and the thunderstorm. Emotion and pain as large and heavy as the mountain around us, and if I closed my shield to protect myself, the monster would break free. I heard a whimpering noise and I knew I made it, felt the pain of stone scrapes on my flesh, became aware of leather digging excruciatingly into my wrists and ankles, saw the shadow curtain flickering madly. In another minute I was going to lose it, the protection of the curtain, the battle I fought, the very fabric of my entire existence. Terror gripped me so strongly that I knew I would die of it, and when the curtain collapsed all I could do in the blinding explosion was scream hysterically with pain. I heard myself scream, and thought I heard an echo of that scream, and then there was nothing else.
11
My head hurt. It seemed as though my head had been hurting for quite some time, even before I awoke. I looked around vaguely at the small, closed-in room, sure I was still dreaming. I’d been in such pain and discomfort for so long that it didn’t seem possible it could be over and done with. I didn’t know where I was or what had happened to make my head hurt so, but as soon as I stirred on the pile of furs and groaned, a woman was at my side with a softly steaming bowl in her hands. She helped me sit up to sip at the bowl, let me swallow each mouthful of broth before offering more, then took the bowl away when I’d had all I could hold. By that time I was asleep again, and hadn’t even realized that the scene should have felt familiar from recent repetition. The next time I awoke my head still hurt, but the mists of confusion were already fading—and I had a visitor in place of the woman I remembered. Rellis sat among the few cushions the small room boasted, sipping from a goblet that smelled as though it held drishnak, his eyes already on me by the time I noticed him. His smile was warm and sincere as he sat up, and he raised his goblet to me.