I didn’t need Irin’s arm tightening around me to know how ragged my emotions had grown, a condition that cut me off from the man I’d been looking at. Only one small part of me refused to admit I didn’t want him near me any longer, but that one part probably enjoyed the pain I’d been given. The rest of me didn’t want him any longer, or the pain either.
“Is it possible my daughter speaks the truth, denday Tammad?” Rissim asked in the ragged silence while Irin urged me to put my head down on her shoulder. “Most of those seated with us feel appalled, yet do I hear naught of protest even from you. Can it be this lack of words speaks more clearly than a score of voices?”
“No!” Tammad denied immediately, his emotions trying to rampage out of his control of them. “I am l’lenda, and when I came upon an unbanded woman I desired, I took her for my own! The price I gave for her possession was more than dinga, yet did I give it gladly! My heart was hers nearly from the first moment I beheld her, yet was it necessary that I labor long and strenuously before hers was mine as well. Was there never a time we quarreled, never a time when despair drove me to offering her pain rather than due punishment? Most certainly there were such times, yet not beyond the moment we truly looked upon one another. Are you able to deny there was a time such as that, woman? Did we not come to terms with our differences, and find happiness in each other’s arms?”
“How much happiness did we find when I told you I didn’t want to go with you to the Chama’s palace in Vediaster, but you forced me to go anyway?” I countered, closing my eyes to help keep my voice steady. “I asked you to let me go with Dallan instead, but you decided it would be foolish to pamper a woman’s groundless fears. Didn’t that happen after that coming-to-terms time? Have you any idea what was done to me because you were too high and mighty a l’lenda to listen to a lowly wenda?”
“In my own capture I was fully informed of what had become of you,” he answered in the newest, deepest silence, his voice now dead, his mind overflowing with self-condemnation. “I-begged-to have the agony of such torture given instead to me, yet such as those who held us take what they wish and give naught in return. So now we have come to the true reason you no longer wish knowledge of me, and I find myself suddenly bereft of the ability to seek argument against your choice. You have cause to feel disgust in my presence, hama sadendra, a fact which I cannot deny.”
Even without opening my eyes I knew that his head was bowed low, the mighty l’lenda who was never ashamed to shed tears when the pain he felt was great enough. I knew exactly how much pain he felt; I could reach it even through the cloud of calm he used in place of a shield. He’d sworn to protect me and had instead been the cause of my capture and torture, and that was something he would never be able to forgive himself for. I pressed my cheek into Irin’s shoulder, fighting to keep myself from soothing away that guilt, struggling to show nothing of what was really inside me. If I could just hold out long enough it would all be over, and neither one of us would ever have to cry again.
“And yet, Tammad, it was fear for your safety and the need for your freedom which filled her thoughts at all times,” Dallan said suddenly out of the blue, sounding as though he were doing no more than thinking aloud. “When she first awoke in Leelan’s house, she would have immediately gone seeking you in the palace had she found herself able to stand. Hestin and I together were unable to hold off her determination past the time she was able to stand. Had it proven necessary, she would surely have gone to the palace alone rather than in the company of w’wendaa, with others poised without the walls awaiting the time to strike. Can those be the actions of one who condemns her memabrak for having placed her in jeopardy?”
There were no comments made aloud to that, but Hestin’s firm agreement couldn’t be missed any more than Tammad’s sudden confusion. I was so tired I wanted to give it all up and run, but Len had been right about the futility of running. I’d been trying to make sure there would be no pursuit when I finally took to my heels, but it wasn’t working out at all the way I’d wanted it to.
“Also do I now recall a comment which was made at the time,” Dallan went on, warming to his subject apparently without noticing everyone’s reaction to what he was saying. “It was pointed out by my sister Terril that although she had somehow known danger lay in wait for her and the others, she had failed to realize that it was her dark hair and green eyes which would betray them to their enemies. Had this understanding come to her soon enough for her to speak to you of it, brother, would you have continued refusing to give heed to her insistences? Somehow I think not.”
“It is among my own recollections that this treda longed for you even when asleep, Tammad,” Hestin said, speaking as comfortably as Dallan had. “There was fury in her for none save those responsible for many outrages, naught of anger for those who fell victim to them. I feel that the sharpness of her recent words have as their source part of the pain which continues to hold her so tightly, a pain which I cannot read save for knowing of its presence. There is more here than meets the eye, my friend, and I believe we would be wise to delve more deeply into it. ”
“Hama, what words are these that they speak to me?” Tammad asked, still feeling confused but with his head no longer down. I could see him so clearly even with my eyes closed, just as I had always been able to do, but what difference did that make? Back to the beginning of time people had been able to see clearly the far horizon and long for it, but that didn’t mean they were ever able to reach it and make it theirs.
“Daughter, you too must speak to us in explanation,” Rissim said, his tone very gentle but not one that would let itself be ignored. “No more than truth has been uttered by you thus far, yet is it a strange truth seen from a view others fail to share. Should you remain mute, I will have little choice save to return you to the bands of this man who is your memabrak.”
“You can’t return me to him because he isn’t my memabrak,” I said, beginning to feel dizzy and even more tired despite the loving support being sent me by Irin. “When he heard they wanted me to be Chama of Vediaster he decided to give me up for the sake of those who claimed to need me so badly, sacrificing his own claim for the sake of a city full of people. That wasn’t the first time he decided to give me up and it looks like he changed his mind again, but this time I’m not going to let him change it back. This time he’s going to go through with it.”
If the earlier noise in the room was mental, what broke out right then was mostly physical. Rissim rumbled something in outrage, Len and Garth immediately began throwing questions around, and Tammad’s own words were buried under everyone else’s. Emotions flew behind the gabble like attacking ghosts, every feeling ready to go for the throat of all the others, and I don’t know how long it would have continued if thick, heavy serenity and calm didn’t suddenly appear in the middle of it all to force its way outward. I opened my eyes as the raging riot settled down then faded to nothing, and so was able to see the faint smile on the face of Lamdon.