“Hama, what occurs here?” the barbarian asked, his voice gently puzzled. “Lenham, why has she run to me in this way?”
“She didn’t care for certain parts of my conversation,” Len answered as he came up, obviously having followed right after me. “There doesn’t seem to be much I can do for her, except to recommend that she rest as much as possible while she still has that headache. The more active she is, the worse it gets.”
“If I could just walk around, spend some time outside, I’m sure it would go away,” I said, looking up into Tammad’s concerned face. “Being cooped up like that is making it worse, and I thought we could . . . . ”
“She needs to rest,” Len insisted, his tone pure calm and sweet reason. “If she doesn’t, it can only get worse.”
“Then she will rest,” the barbarian said, inarguable decision clear in the way he picked me up. “You may walk about when the pain has gone from you, memabra.”
“No, please—” I began, but it was already too late to keep him from carrying me back toward his rooms. I thought I might be able to get him to listen to me once we were alone, but hadn’t counted on the sudden waves of sleepiness washing over me. The sleepiness—sent by a grinning Len—wasn’t strong enough to put me out, but it did make me yawn uncontrollably, adding to the impression that rest really was what I needed. Despite my protests Tammad put me to bed, then set with me until a meat soup was brought by the woman who was dressed in white. I didn’t know whose idea that was, but the soup contained that subtle sweetness that said it was medicated. Len stood looking on while Tammad fed it to me, and the last thing I saw before my eyes closed was Len’s expressionless face surrounding deeply satisfied eyes.
When I awoke the room was empty, and the gown that Tammad had taken from me was gone. I spent a few minutes cursing out Len, but all that did was send ripples through the headache that was still with me. It was pretty clear Len thought he was helping me by interfering, but that didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want his help. He had no right appointing himself the one to Set Things Straight, and had no right telling my I was wrong not to want my abilities back. If I was happier as I was, who was he to tell me I should try putting things back as they had been? All my abilities had ever done was make trouble for me, and I was tired of trouble. If Len was right and they needed my encouragement to come back, then they were gone forever.
I tried getting comfortable in the bed furs, but it was only afternoon, I was all slept out, and I was bored. When the door to the room opened I thought it was Tammad coming back, but I was terribly wrong. Len and Garth came in instead, big, friendly smiles on their faces, and insisted on visiting with me for a while. I discovered that the sight of Garth’s dark hair upset me, but that didn’t make them leave. As a matter of fact, nothing I said made them leave. I knew when Len soothed my upset at the sudden memory of the intruder, but I wasn’t grateful and didn’t care to be manipulated that way. Len just grinned and began telling Garth how alive he felt when tie was awakened, and Garth helped out by asking interested questions. I put my hands over my ears and buried myself under the cover fur, but was saved from suffocation by the arrival of Tammad. He didn’t press me when I said I couldn’t tell him what was wrong, but he didn’t need the details to know that Len and Garth were responsible for the way I felt. He overrode their attempts at explanation and just sent them away, then spent a satisfyingly long time making love to me and holding me. I quickly forgot all about Len and Garth, and didn’t think about them again.
Until the next day. Telling an untalented person to stay away from someone who doesn’t want them around usually solves the problem, but the same can’t be done with an empath. Len didn’t have to be in the same room with me to reach me, and reach me he did.
The new day was as pretty as the one before had been, but I started out feeling depressed that the headache wasn’t gone and went downhill from there. My depression deepened until I cried like a baby, feeling heartbroken and all alone. Then, for some reason, the depression lightened, and kept lightening until I felt bubbly and deliriously happy. I left the bed furs and danced around the room, laughing like an idiot and giggling over nothing. Tammad came in just then, and I pulled him to the bed furs, made him sit, then danced for him. He was absolutely delighted with the dance, his eyes consuming me with every movement, but when he stood up to take his swordbelt off, I suddenly realized how shy and frightened I felt. He was so big and unstoppable that I felt like a child in his presence, and I ran from him with a squeak of alarm, making him chase me all over the room. It didn’t take long before he caught me, and I was carried over his shoulder back to the bed furs, where he completed the game by raping me. I didn’t realize he thought it was a game until later, when it was all over and I had come to understand why I’d been acting so strangely. Len must have exhausted himself, but he’d forced me into showing Tammad I could dance, and then had gotten me raped. I couldn’t tell Tammad about what Len was doing without discussing Len’s theories, and I didn’t want to do that. I also couldn’t protect myself from Len, which was surely his purpose in doing what he did. If I got desperate enough to protect myself I’d have to try getting my shield back, which would surely bring the rest back if it were at all possible. Len was trying to make me want my abilities back, but his plan wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t want them back no matter what he did to me.
I spent the rest of the day gritting my teeth and jumping at mental shadows, but the worst thing that happened was that Tammad made me dance for him again before he would let me eat the final meal of the day. I’d spent a lot of time and energy keeping him from knowing I could dance, and while it gave me pleasure to give him pleasure, his reactions to my dancing also made me uneasy, just as I’d known they would. Tammad wasn’t a civilized man who would smile politely and applaud with moderate enthusiasm when the dance was over, coming up to me to pat my shoulder and congratulate me. He lay stretched out on one elbow in the carpet fur among the cushions, his eyes following every gesture of my hands, every slide of my hips, every turn of my feet. After a few minutes I couldn’t take being stared at like that any longer and turned to dance with my back to him, but that was a mistake. I suddenly found him right behind me, his hands sliding down my upstretched arms to my sides and then to my breasts and belly, his haddin no longer encumbering him, his appreciation already reaching for me. I gasped as he lifted me off my feet and took me down to the carpeting with him, but he didn’t hurt me the way I feared he might. He kept a tenuous but adequate control of himself while he loved me, but that meant duration rather than intensity. I was given a good deal of pleasure in return for the dancing, but by the time I was able to get to the food, it was cold. Tammad made up for that by warming me again, and it was quite some time before we got to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning, the headache was gone.
I stood by one of the tall, ribbed windows and looked out, aware of the warm, sweet breeze but paying no attention to it. I was more aware of something else, and that something else was making me sick inside. When the throb of the headache had faded, it was as though a curtain had been lifted, showing me something that had been there all along but obscured by the throb. The shield I was used to using covered my entire mind, but what I could feel then was a smaller shield, surrounding one small part of my mind. It was most likely the gap Len had encountered, and somehow I knew that I could now thrust it aside without effort, and my abilities would be back as though they’d never been gone. They hadn’t been gone, only recuperating from the battering they’d taken, the key to the shield hidden from me so that I couldn’t expose them until they were ready to withstand use again. Instead of being legitimately blind, I had become a sighted person with eyes held closed, a pretend cripple who didn’t want to be whole instead of a handicapped person going on despite that handicap. I expected to feel cheap and small and I did, but I was also afraid. “Once a pawn, always afraid” should have been an old saying, and it wasn’t just my relationship with Tammad that I was afraid for. My abilities were the sort that would interest anyone with an urge to influence and control his fellow man, which would put me up for grabs again. I may have felt bored from all the lying around I’d done, but being the center of that sort of interest wasn’t my idea of something to do to chase away boredom.