“Terril seems unable to recall Tammad, Leelan,” Ashton put in when I didn’t add to my muttering, her mind spreading out to soothe the agitation of just about everyone in hearing. “We believe that she clung to the memory of him so tightly that our enemies had a great deal of difficulty in taking it, therefore was it more thoroughly erased than other matters. She will surely recover that memory along with the others, and yet will it just as surely find its own time in coming.”
“Unfortunately it will likely not be soon enough to spare us the need to calm the fury of a l’lenda,” another of the women in the crowd said with a sigh, an older woman who wasn’t wearing a sword. Relgon, I remembered her name was, and her twin sister was Deegor, a w’wenda. Relgon wasn’t a woman warrior, but her mind was stronger than Deegor’s. “To say it was difficult bearing his worry, is to say one was unable to perceive his mind; when he discovers that his beloved is no longer even familiar with the sound of his name, his need to spill the blood of those responsible will surely take the senses from all in the city with the power.”
“His strength is that great?” Ashton asked, her surprise evident. “We were told his mind was discovered to be awakened, yet no mention was made of such . . .”
She broke off in the middle of what she was saying to watch the arrival of more Rimilians, this time an all-male group. The men were a good deal larger than the women, broad-shouldered and wide-chested with body cloths called haddinn wrapped around them, barefoot but with swordbelts closed tightly around each set of hips. They all seemed to be moving at a good pace, but there was one out in front leading the pack, larger than most of the others and striding faster than they were. The crowd of women melted away from the path of that relatively calm stampede, which meant there were suddenly no obstructions blocking off sight of me.
The giant of a man seemed to pause between steps as his head came up, the expression on his face more a matter of the relief of ended pain than something to be called a smile. His mind surged powerfully behind a cloud of very thick calm, joyous elation dominating what I could make out through the whirling, and then he was moving forward again, directly toward me. His arms began to rise from his sides as he walked, thickly muscled arms that undoubtedly had no trouble swinging that great bar of a sword which hung at his side, and all of a sudden I noticed something very important about him.
He was blond and blue-eyed, just like Kel-Ten, and a large part of his mind was filled with the same sense of-possession—the First Prime had felt.
I’d had to accept the attitude in the complex, there had been no choice about accepting it, but I was no longer in the complex and was no longer turned off. He was still ten or fifteen feet away when I straightened where I stood and let the curtain fall from my mind.
“Terrilian, don’t, he’s not going to hurt you!” Ashton hissed fast from my right, her hand wrapping itself tightly around my arm.
“Terril, no, that is Tammad there before you!” Leelan blurted from my left, her thoughts completely taken aback.
“Terril, child, there is no battle before you that requires such a gathering of power!” Relgon said hurriedly, and it came to me that her face had gone as pale as those of a number of the women around us. They all had active minds, those women, with Leelan being an odd partial exception, and were therefore all aware of the banishing of my curtain.
The man who had been striding so quickly toward me also had an active mind, and what I’d done had stopped him a second time, bewilderment and confusion pushing away everything else he’d been feeling. There was also something of pain inside him, but the heavy calm he was holding to with both fists didn’t let him experience much of it. His face was completely expressionless as he began walking toward me again, this time a good deal more slowly, and when Leelan moved out to stop him about five feet away he seemed only partially aware of her.
“Tammad, those who stole her from us also stole her memories,” the big woman told him with a lot of compassion, her hand going to his arm. “She has not given over her love for you, merely has she forgotten it for a time. Those who accompany her say the forgetfulness is not forever, therefore is she certain to come to know you again. Do you hear the words I speak?”
He did hear her, that I could tell from the movement of his thoughts, but those very blue eyes hadn’t moved an inch from me since the time they’d first found me. I felt as though he were drinking me in, using me the way a man dying of thirst would use a large jug of water, and his thoughts had begun taking on a definite tinge of stubbornness. He’d heard everything said to him, all right, but there wasn’t any way on that world he was about to accept it.
“Tammad, my friend, I would have preferred being able to prepare you for this,” Murdock said in Centran, materializing out of the crowd to the right, his two helpers trailing behind him. “Is there somewhere we may go to speak privately?”
“As the tongue you speak is understood by very few here, you have already achieved what privacy you desire,” the big Rimilian answered, also in Centran, making no attempt to look at the man he addressed. “What words does the Murdock McKenzie imagine would give preparation for so outrageous a doing as this?”
“My friend, we none of us knew this would happen,” Murdock said in a calm his mind wasn’t sharing almost as though he could feel the growing anger in the other man. “She was taken by those who are enemies to us all, but their flagrant disregard of the honorable commitment made you will now be their downfall. What I wish to speak to you about is the need for patience on your part, obviously for the sake of the woman. She was not treated well by those who took her, and to now expect her to accept a man who is a stranger to her . . . ”
“They gave her harm?” the big man growled, his gaze turned to ice as his mind flared crimson with fury and rage, finally moving his head to look at Murdock. Most of those around us flinched at the level of projection he was managing, Ashton drawing her breath in sharply due to the unexpectedness of what she felt, and I quietly retrieved my curtain. The man seemed to be totally untrained but with more raw power than could easily be held off, and protecting myself with the curtain wasn’t like blocking everything out with a shield. I could still drop the curtain or even work through it if I had to, something I wasn’t convinced I would not have to do.
“In what manner did these mondarayse give her harm?” the man demanded of Murdock, his big hands fists at his sides, his body held still through sheer will power. “I shall first assure myself that she returns to full health, and then you and I will speak of where I might find those who have beseeched their own deaths. When once my l’lendaa and I have done with them, they will no longer even find- it possible to look upon the wendaa of others.”
“You must forgive me, my friend, if I say taking their lives and positions from them is a privilege first due me and mine,” Murdock answered, his coldly courteous reply probably the only thing that could have penetrated the rage and fury coming at him. “Far too many have suffered the fate so narrowly escaped by Terrilian, and even more has been done to those who are ours. You’re certainly welcome to join us if you wish, but you may not take the pleasure for yourself alone. When we leave here, we will rejoin those waiting for us and complete the plans for attack which have already been begun.”
Murdock stared up at the giant of a man, his cold gray eyes directly on him, his twisted body in no way flinching back from the promise of violence that was looming over him. The Rimilian could have exploded in anger and killed him, but it wasn’t possible to doubt that anything less would affect or move him, not on the subject they had just been discussing. Despite the emotions screaming around inside him the big warrior had no difficulty understanding and accepting that, and after firmly pushing his impatience to one side he nodded his head.