The latter was precious and irreplaceable; she had used it only to haul heavy game and her water up the side of her tower.
"Are you going to eat that raw?" Need demanded. She licked her lips thoughtfully; she was very hungry and had been considering doing just that. But the way the question had been phrased-and the fact that her teacher had asked the question at all-made her pause.
"Why?" she asked. "Is there something wrong with that?" If the sword could have moved, it would have shrugged. "Not intrinsically," Need replied. "But it gives the impression that you are more beast than human. that is not the impression we are trying to give." Nyara did not trouble to ask just who would be there to observe her.
True, there was no one except herself and her mentor at the moment, but she sensed that Need did not intend either of them to be hidden away in the wilderness forever.
She doesn't want me to seem more beast than human. Need had been trying to reverse the physical changes Nyara's father had made to her; now she had an inkling of why. Need wanted to make her look Less like an animal. Perhaps she should have been offended when that thought occurred to her, and she was, in a way, but rather than making her angry with Need, it made her angry at her father. He was the one who had made so many changes to her body and mind that Need had been incoherent with rage for days upon discovering them. He was the "father" that had made her into a warped slave, completely in thrall to him, often unable even to act in her own defense.
Need had done her best to reverse those changes; some she had, but they were all internal. There was no mistaking her origin; the slitted eyes alone shouted "Changechild." If the world saw a beast-the world would kill the beast. It was not fair, but very little in Nyara's life had ever been fair. At least this was understandable. Predictable.
Mornelithe Falconsbane had never been that, ever.
No one was here to see her now except Need, but when she finished plucking the pheasant, instead of tearing off a limb and devouring it raw as her stomach demanded, she gutted and cleaned it as neatly as any Tayledras hunter or hertasi cook, and set it aside.
She tried not to think about how loud her stomach was complaining as she uncovered the coals in her firepit and fed them twigs until she had a real flame. Once she had a fire, she spitted her catch, and made a token effort to sear it.
Once the outer skin had been crisped, she lost all patience; she seized the spit and the bird, and began gnawing.
Need made an odd little mental sound, and Nyara had the impression that she had winced, but the sword said nothing, and Nyara ignored her in favor of satisfying her hunger.
But when she had finished, sucking each bone clean and neatly licking her fingers dry, the blade sighed. "Tell me how the hunt went," she said.
And show me."
"I saw the cock-pheasant break cover beside the stream," she said, Picturing it clearly, as she had been taught. "I knew that the flock would be somewhere behind him.. - ." The stalk had taken some time, but the end of the hunt came as swiftly as even Need could have wanted. She had lost only one of her carefully rounded shot, which splintered on a rock, and took one of the juvenile males with the second. She felt rather proud of herself, actually, for Need was no longer guiding her movements in hunting, or even offering advice. Although the blade could still follow her mentally if she chose, it was no longer necessary for her to be in physical contact with her bearer to remain in mental contact.
When Nyara had fled from the Tayledras as well as her father, she had no clear notion of where she was going or what she would do. She had only known that too many things were happening at once, and too many people wanted her. Their reasons ran from well-intentioned to darkly sinister, and she had no real way of telling which from which. So she ran, and only after she had slipped out of Darkwind's ken had she discovered herself in possession of Elspeth's sword. She honestly had no memory of taking it; the blade later confessed to having influenced her to bear it off, making her forget she had done so.
At first she had been angry and afraid, expecting pursuit; the blade was valuable enough that her father had wanted it very badly. But pursuit never came, and she realized that Elspeth was actually going to relinquish the blade to her. Such unexpected generosity left her puzzled.
It would not be the last time that she was to be confused over matters in which Need was involved.
Nyara had found the tower after a great deal of searching for a defensible lair. Need had rebuilt the upper story with her magic, strengthening it and making it habitable. It still looked deserted, and both of them had been very careful to leave no signs of occupancy. Any refuse was taken up to the flat roof and left there; vultures carried off bones and anything else edible, and the rest was bleached by the sun and weathered by wind and rain. Eventually the wind would carry it away, and it would be scattered below with the dead leaves.
"You're doing well," the sword said, finally. "Even if you do eat like a barbarian. I don't suppose table deportment is going to matter anytime soon, though." Nyara was silent for a moment; now that her stomach was full and the little chamber warmed by the fire, she had leisure to consider the blade's remarks, and feel a bit of resentment. Nyara appreciated all that Need had done for her, attempting to counter the effects of twenty years of twisting and abuse, teaching her what she needed to survive. Still, sometimes the sword's thoughtless comments hurt.
"I'm not a barbarian," she said aloud, a little resentfully. "I've seen Darkwind bolt his meals just like I did."
"Darkwind is fully human. You are not. You are clever, intelligent, resourceful, but you are not human. Therefore you must appear to be better than humans." Once again, Nyara was struck by the injustice of the situation, but this time she voiced her protest. "That's not fair," she complained.
"There's no reason why I should have to act like some kind of-of trained beast to prove that I'm just as human as anyone else."
"You were a trained animal, Nyara," Need replied evenly. "You aren't any longer. And we both know why." Nyara shuddered, but did not reply. Instead, she cleaned up the remains of her meal, saving a few scraps to use as fishing bait on the morrow, and took everything up to the roof. As Need had mentioned, the vultures had been there already; there was little sign of yesterday's meal.
Although the wind was cold, Nyara lingered to watch the sunset, huddled inside her crude fur tunic with her feet tucked under her. Need was right. She had been little more than a trained animal. Her father had controlled her completely, by such clever use of mingled mindmagic, pain and pleasure that a hint of punishment would throw her into uncontrollable, mindless lust, a state in which she was incapable of thinking.
Need had freed her from that; Need had worked on her for hours, days, spending her magic recklessly in that single area, to heal her and release her from that pain-pleasure bondage. Need had watched the nomad Healer working on the Tayledras Starblade from afar, studying all that the woman did and applying the knowledge to Nyara.
In this much, she was free; she would no longer be subject to animal rut. Although Need had not been able to "cure" her tufted ears, pointed canines, or slit-pupiled eyes, the blade had put her in control of her emotional and physical responses.