“For all to speak at once is possible, yet only among those with no interest in listening,” he said, looking around to make sure everyone understood it was he who had quieted the room. “As the girl’s words have clearly caused a great deal of agitation, best would be to speak in turn so that all may hear what is being said. Which of you will begin the thing?”
“I will begin,” Tammad jumped in before any of the others could, anger flashing from his light blue eyes. “I have no understanding of the reason which would cause so patently false an accusation to be leveled at me! The girl has been through much, I know, yet to lower herself to such absurd . . . ”
“Absurd?” Len interrupted with a snort, so coldly angry and aggressive that I almost didn’t recognize him. “How many times is she supposed to go through the same thing with you before her refusal to do it again isn’t absurd? Are you trying to claim you never did decide to give her up and then changed your mind, or are you saying two or three times isn’t enough to complain about? I agreed to follow you, Tammad, so why don’t you make the effort to show one of your followers just how honorable you are?”
Len was staring at Tammad with Garth to Len’s right wearing the exact same expression, two minds filled with bitter disappointment over seeing their idol crumble. The big barbarian returned their stare with the anger fading inside him, having no trouble understanding that the two weren’t challenging him. They both knew he could draw his sword and end them without either of them being able to stop him, but they didn’t particularly care if he did just that. They were too full of hurt and bewilderment to care, but all Tammad felt himself was confused.
“It did indeed seem, on more than one occasion, that best for the woman would be my unbanding of her,” he allowed, trying to be gentle with the two men despite his own upset. “Each time I found that life without her would be no more than death in truth, therefore did I strive to give her understanding rather than unbanding. This last instance, however, did not occur, for I would not have . . .”
“Tammad, my friend, the incident was spoken of to me at the time,” Dallan interrupted in embarrassment, obviously trying to keep his chosen brother from outright lying. “The woman cannot be accused of speaking falsely, for I saw with my own eyes the shattered bones of her contentment, the meaninglessness her victory had become. She walked and breathed, yet true life was no longer within her.”
“Dallan, it cannot be so,” Tammad protested, even more confused than he had been, his eyes now resting on the man who looked back at him in discomfort. “If such a thing was told you, why was the matter never spoken of to me? Is a man to stand condemned through accusation alone, in no manner permitted to speak upon his own behalf?”
“I would certainly have discussed the matter with you, had Terril’s disappearance not driven us all to distraction,” Dallan answered, no more than the faintest hint of defensiveness in his tone as he straightened just a little where he sat to my left. “As you may recall you spent much of the time wrapped in the sleep of healing given you by Hestin, and when you awoke there was occasion to speak of naught save the disappearance. We all of us were so fully engaged with that, the earlier matter simply slipped from my memory.”
“There cannot have been an earlier matter such as that,” the barbarian insisted, vexation now flaring from his mind as his eyes shifted to me. “It cannot be, wenda, it simply cannot be! You must surely have mistaken whatever words were spoken to you, giving them meaning they were not to have.”
“You said, ‘I may not have you,’” I quoted without letting the memory tear me the way it wanted to, leaning on Irin and my mind-tool of strength alike. “ ‘There are others who now need you more,’ you said, ‘and such things must be understood and accepted.’ That’s word for word what you told me, and I’d like to know how else it was supposed to be interpreted. I have no idea why you changed your mind again, but more to the point is the fact that I don’t care. Those few words hurt me more than anything Farian’s people would ever have found it possible to do, and I’ll never let myself be hurt that way again. As far as I’m concerned I don’t know you, and anyone who tries to change that will be in line for hurting of his or her own.”
I let my eyes close again to cut off sight of his stunned, almost open-mouthed expression, the newest silence in the room feeling really good. Most of the minds around me were maintaining a matching silence, too shocked to think or feel, Irin being the only exception. The woman who held me so tightly to her was fiercely glad I’d done as I had, and was more than ready to help me argue with anyone who disagreed.
“Treda, there is a point here which eludes my understanding,” Hestin said after a minute, faint confusion even in his voice. “These words which were spoken to you by your memabrak, words I have no doubt you truly heard-in what place and time were they uttered? Are you able to recall that?”
“It was right after I defeated Farian,” I said, too tired to try refusing him an answer on a dead issue. I, too, felt the next thing to dead, and all I wanted was a final end to the episode. “You should remember the time yourself, Hestin. It wasn’t long after that that you showed up and took him somewhere else. You and Dallan put him to bed, I think.”
“Yes, I do indeed recall the time,” the healer said, his usually calm voice now back to normal. “I had thought that the time you referred to, yet was it necessary that I be certain. Treda-you must hear the words I speak, and also must you find belief in them. It was not possible for your memabrak to have chosen to unband you just then, for it was not possible for him to utter choices of any sort. His mind and sense of self were-elsewhere due to the urgings of the potion within him, the same potion which had held him as slave for so long. It was not possible for him to do other than accept the will of those about him.”
“And-possibly the words of others as well,” Dallan said in a tone of slow revelation as I opened my eyes in shocked disbelief to stare at Hestin. Dallan sat between us to my left, and I could see his elated expression even though I wasn’t looking directly at him. “I had not earlier thought upon the point, yet now I do recall how odd Tammad seemed when we freed him. What was said to him was not commented upon by him but repeated back, as though there were no thoughts of his own filling his head. When he awoke he had no clear memory of what had occurred after his release, therefore was it certainly not by his own choice that he spoke. Likely was he spoken to in such a manner earlier, and then merely echoed what he was able to recall of it.”
Dallan’s triumphant summation caused a burst of low-voiced comments to be exchanged between Len and Garth, but I had no idea what they were saying to each other. I straightened away from Irin in deep shock, remembering all too clearly how that slave drug worked from my own experience with it. It had only been possible to resist it a little when its hold began weakening, not at all when it was fully in control. That one swallow Tammad had had of it before I could interfere-it must have combined with the residue of drug in his system to throw him right back under its full control-without my noticing it more than marginally—and hadn’t Deegor said something to him not long before
“I see, hama, that we both voiced the truth,” Tammad said with joyful gladness, drawing my gaze to a face covered with loving happiness. “You did indeed hear what was in no manner said by me, and now there is naught further to stand between us. Come to my arms, sadendra mine, and share my vow that we will never again be parted.”
He opened his arms to me in the way he had always done, his love and desire rolling at me in waves, adding terribly to the whirling dizziness trying to push its way out of my head. I felt hot and cold both at the same time, queasiness twisting at me along with the dizziness, and there was no way in hell I could stand it any more.