Starfire Saga, page 16
I felt, rather than saw, Jemeret relax. The image was so clear on my nerves that for one breathless moment I thought my Class A talent had come back. I scanned the rest of the group, but there was nothing. Disappointed, but not really surprised, I sipped some of my wine. It proved to me that Jemeret was projecting, letting me know how he felt about what I was doing. I might have resented it; I did not.
“So you’ll be seeing all the tribes, then.” Sheridar was persistent.
I glanced sideways at his father. “Do you think I’ll need to?”
Sandalari laughed, her voice as rippling and liquid as the sound of the Tran. “No one thinks you need to, Ronica,” she said. “But some people fight the choice of the stars, instead of giving in to it.”
“Did you fight it?” I asked quickly. I think I would have gone to great lengths to get her to talk about her arrival here and her life before.
Venacrona sat up straight and pointed at me. “That’s rude,” he said, “and I tell you because you cannot be expected to know all our customs yet.”
“Let her be, Veen,” Jemeret said easily. “If Sandalari wants to answer, then she should.”
Sandalari nodded at him and replied to me, “I fell to the Genda, and with the Genda I have stayed.”
“Of course,” Clematis said smoothly, “since Ronica fell to the Honish, it’s clear she already knew she could move around.” She was a natural diplomat, and I admired her skill.
“The Honish!” Sheridar’s voice rippled with anger. Jemeret’s head came up and he looked directly at the youth for a moment, then turned to Sabaran. “Trouble?” he asked.
The big man shifted his place a little and said reluctantly, “There have been stirrings behind Reglessa Fen.”
“And you never sent a Paja messenger?” Venacrona asked. He looked, for some reason, both distressed and angry.
“We had no Paj with us,” Sabaran said. “They’d gone back for the tribal meeting before Convalee. And the Honish wouldn’t dare make trouble at Convalee.”
“But you’ve left your home behind, man,” Venacrona said sharply. “What about the Forge?”
Sabaran half rose, and Clematis laid her hand gently on his arm. His face was flushed with anger. “Do you think I’d leave the Forge unprotected?”
Venacrona made a soothing, conciliatory motion with his hand.
Jemeret broke in calmly. “I fancy the best Gendal warriors will have to miss Convalee this time, Veen. I fancy we’ll lend Sabaran a few of our warriors, if he asks.”
Sandalari laughed, and such tension as remained in the room dissolved. “I fancy he won’t have to ask,” she said.
Sabaran had calmed himself, his equanimity as quick as his temper, and now he sat back down. “From what I hear, we have nothing to fear from the Ilto, at any rate.”
To my astonishment, I found myself blushing. It was terribly inconvenient to be unable to use any of my talent, but the reserves had to be given time to heal. All of the Genda were watching me, but I hadn’t the slightest notion of what I was supposed to say. Jemeret came to my rescue. “You are well informed for a tribe without a Paj.”
“The Boru rarely move without knowing what lies in front of them,” Sabaran said. “The Genda cannot do less than likewise.”
I raised my head, my face still hot. “The Ilto tried to take what was not theirs to take.”
Venacrona put in dryly, “Their mistake was not that they tried to take it, but that they were not strong enough to keep it.”
“They underestimated their opposition,” I said to him. “People who think women are weak are destined to be unhappy with them.”
“Some women are weak,” Sandalari said, surprising me. “You must not fall into the trap of judging all women by yourself, just as you mustn’t judge all men by Evesti or by Jemeret.”
She was right, and I nodded at her. “They underestimated me.”
Sabaran laughed, and its deep boom seemed to shake the sides of the tent. “That’s not a mistake any of the Samothen will make again. No one will be foolish enough.”
Sheridar gestured with the metal jug to ask who wanted refills, and when I saw that everyone else had held their cups out, I held mine out, too, even though it was still three-quarters full. “The Elden are only a day or two behind us,” he said. “The Boru have started a fashion for coming early to Convalee.”
“I fancy we’ll be back to our normal schedule by the next festival. Coming early this year seemed more sensible than lingering.” Jemeret swallowed half his drink.
Everyone in the tent looked directly at Venacrona, who sighed a little and toyed with his cup. Then he looked up. “Yes, this is going to be a bad winter for storms. I’m going to advise the Marl to stay in port and cast their nets only from Salthome. The seas will be too dangerous to risk.”
Clematis leaned forward. “Will it come early, or stay long?”
“The signs say both,” the old man said almost reluctantly. “All the signs say this will be a year of Severance Storms, the first in living memory.”
I wanted to ask all sorts of questions, but decided I shouldn’t interrupt. The idea of predicting weather by signs instead of both predicting and controlling it by MI was fascinating to me.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Sheridar said. “In the year of the Foretelling, there were storms, so it’s fitting there should be storms in the year of the Fulfillment.”
That was too much to let pass. “What foretelling?” I asked.
Sandalari looked down into her cup as Clematis rounded on Jemeret. “You didn’t tell her? Jemeret, I’m amazed at you!” He grinned at her with a very little bit of sheepishness. “You may find this hard to believe, Clematis, but she really hasn’t been here that long, and there’s been a lot going on. I haven’t had a chance.”
Clematis said something under her breath that sounded rude, and Sandalari looked up swiftly. “May I tell her, Jemeret? I will be talking with her later at any event, and I’d like to. We have other things to talk of here and now.”
Jemeret nodded at her, his motion barely detectable. I suppressed my curiosity and leaned back as the men and Clematis talked about the stores needed for a winter of this magnitude. I gathered that it snowed heavily only in the high mountains, but that the rest of the land was vulnerable to water and air disturbances, and there was some discussion of who should be warned earlier than whom else, and under what circumstances. I was distracted from the conversation by the thought of speaking to Sandalari alone.
The discussion ended with a group of serving people bringing in many dishes of hot food. I realized when I smelled it that I was ravenous, and at the same time that the wardroot was starting to wear off. I tried to put that out of my mind and eat heartily, for that seemed to be the style of this tribe, or perhaps just of this tent. The food was generally richer, more sophisticated, and more highly and complexly seasoned than the food of the Boru. I found myself trying to remember when I had last had a meal as elaborate.
When we were done eating, and had consumed enough of the wine so that, while I still ached, I no longer cared, Sandalari rose gracefully to her feet and held out a hand to me. “If you will come with me now, Ronica, we can talk in my tent. I will return you to your lord’s tent before the Hour of the Moon’s Descent.”
I rose, uncertain if I should thank Sabaran and Clematis for the meal, but sensing that I should not. I nodded to each of them and followed Sandalari out into the rain.
It was only a short walk to her tent, two wagons distant, and inside she gave me a towel to dry my hair. Even before she’d taken the towel back, I burst out, “What world did you come from? Excuse me if it’s rude, but I have to know. You’re the first other outsider I’ve met here. What did you get sent here for?”
She held out her hand for the towel, seeming to debate what to say, and then she smiled at me and said the last thing I expected. “I came from your world, Ronica. I came from Werd.”
My shock must have been obvious. “How did you know?” I asked in a whisper that sounded harsh even to me. “How did you know Werd was one of my worlds?”
“Because we knew each other,” she said, the smile fading as she spoke, dissolving into something sadder and less vital. “When I was a child, my name was Sarai.”
“I don’t believe you!” It was out before I had a chance to subject it to any reasoning.
Sandalari undid the shoulder ties on her talma and pushed it and the shift down over her shoulders. She turned her back to me. Almost all of the horrible scars I remembered were gone, and the skin was smooth and healthy. But one ridge of scar tissue stood out from her left shoulder to her right kidney, left deliberately, as a symbol. Even before I saw it, I believed her, for my memory had conjured again the picture of the teary-eyed, pinch-faced little blonde, and the lines softened and flowed into the vibrant woman in front of me.
“I do believe you,” I said quickly. “I don’t even know why I said that. How—”
The overwhelming magnitude of the list of questions came flooding in on me, and I stopped as she pulled up and retied the talma. “They made me whole again,” she said, “or perhaps it was really for the first time. They valued my strengths and understood my weaknesses.”
“But you were mad,” I said. I waved as if to discount having said it, once again nothing of a diplomat, but Sandalari smiled.
“Madness is not a permanent condition. All I needed was love and acceptance. I found that here, and it made the madness unnecessary.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said, unwilling to admit but unable to hide that this subject made me very uncomfortable. “We couldn’t—Coney and Kray and I—couldn’t have helped.” It felt so good to speak their names again honestly and freely to someone who had known them.
Sandalari’s voice went very gentle. “I am a priestess of the stars now, and truth is one of our great values. So is kindness. Sometimes the most difficult task I have is choosing between the two.”
The edge to my voice wasn’t deliberate, but I recognized it. “Go ahead and say it. I’m strong.”
She took her time sitting down on the cushions, gesturing for me to do the same, and I guessed that she was choosing her words with some care. Finally she spoke. “It is your strength which has caused you your greatest harm and your greatest pain, Ronica. You have become its servant, rather than making it yours. No, let me finish.”
I hadn’t been aware that I had opened my mouth to say something.
“You are so entirely afraid of weakness,” she went on, “or have such contempt for it. You have since you were a child. All three of you were afraid of me because I was the thing you couldn’t allow yourselves to become. Coney was the best of you—at least he tried.”
“And I was the worst,” I said harshly.
Her voice was still mild. “Of course. You were the strongest. You felt you had the most to lose. When I most needed love and acceptance, you were busy shutting me out. You were afraid of me because I was needy—I needed something I couldn’t get for myself—and to you, that was weakness.” Her eyes narrowed. “You still think needing equates to weakness.”
“Thinking has nothing to do with it,” I said. “It’s a body reaction, not a mind one.”
“Your body and your mind are both part of you, part of your person, part of your wholeness. You hurt yourself when you separate them.”
Her words struck a core of something real inside me, and before I was aware of it, the reflexes took over and I had gathered to reach for the sting that wasn’t there. The pain of the gathering ripped through me on nerves already raw from the camenia ache, and I doubled over until the reflexes relaxed and the pain receded.
Sandalari laid a hand on my arm, but didn’t move or speak until it was clear that I was all right. Then she said quietly, “I had not expected my words to cause you such pain. Let’s talk of the Foretelling.”
It seemed that there was a legend among the Samothen that the High Lady would return to unite the tribes under her rule. She would again descend from the stars, and she would pass a number of tests, only some of which were known to those other than the priests and leaders of the tribes. She would be known by her power, by being honored by the animals, by being honored by the stars; the man who won her love would rule with her, and their children would make everywhere a good place to live.
“Almost the standard stuff of prophecy,” I said thoughtfully. “The difference is that this time it’s supposed to be me.”
“Time will tell,” Sandalari said. “What kind of prafax will you have here among the Genda? What was your work among the Boru?”
She waited patiently for my answer, and she had to, because I was trying to escape from the thought of the Foretelling. Then her last questions finally registered. “Among the Boru I am a warrior of the first rank.”
She smiled. For the first time since we had sat down, she looked away from me, down at her hands. “The woman warriors of the Boru are well known, and I’m certain that you must be very good, but the Genda have only men warriors. Lord Jemeret will be a Gendal warrior of the first rank while you are here.”
My head came up as if I’d been challenged. “Jemeret is going to be a warrior to Sabaran? Why?”
“Everyone in a tribe for any longer than a visit must have tribal status,” she said. “The laws of the Samoth make that necessary.”
“What about the others who came with us?”
“Venacrona is returning tomorrow to the Boru,” she said. “A tribe cannot be long without its priest. Jemeret’s guards will become warriors of the second rank. It’s you we need to find a place for.”
Even before she finished speaking, I had made the decision, as though it had taken almost no conscious effort on my part. “No, I don’t think we do,” I said. “Sandalari, I’d like to speak with Jemeret, please.”
She rose instantly and went to the tent flap. I don’t know who she spoke with, but someone dashed away into the now heavier rain. She turned back to face me as I got to my feet. “Is it because of the things I said to you?” she asked me. “I gather you don’t want to stay with us, and I would like to know if my being here is part of the cause of that.”
Her words astonished me, because my thoughts had been in another place entirely, so I spoke with less discretion and more fervor than I might otherwise have done. “No, not at all, Sandalari. It hasn’t anything to do with you. Jemeret must not make himself less than he is, not for me, not for any reason.”
Jemeret came in then, cloaked and hooded against the rain, but his hair was still plastered down on his forehead. He seemed as calm as usual, and I was glad to see him. “You wanted to talk to me, Ronica?”
“There is no need for us to stay here for any length of time,” I said to him, “or for any more time at all, really. I will become a Boru.”
His gray eyes were suddenly filled with a warmth the like of which I hadn’t seen before, and I had to look away from him because of the abruptness of my trembling.
“We will welcome you to the tribe,” he said. “We ride back in the morning.”
Because we had been returned to the status of guests, the Genda put Jemeret and me in a tent near the edge of the encampment. We made plans to assemble with the rest of our party at the ridge above the Tran at dawn, and then Jemeret and I were closed into the unfamiliar dimness, with the sound of the rain beating on the tent roof.
I realized that my trembling had grown worse, and that I was having trouble looking at him, but how much of the arousal was because of my camenia and how much was prompted naturally, from his strong presence, I didn’t know. I had come, somehow, to want him, and I was afraid of wanting him, because I couldn’t understand it, and I wasn’t sure I could control it; because it smacked of need, and Sandalari had been correct about me and need.
He lit the lamp. The tent was smaller than Gundever and Variel’s, no more than a sleeping area, really. There were no furs, just a pile of thin rugs under a blanket of woven material. Jemeret dropped his cloak to the floor and stripped out of his boots, but did not remove his tunic or leggings. Instead he sat down on the bed. “I want you to tell me why you made this decision now.”
I couldn’t conquer my restlessness, so I paced a little at the bed’s edge, then said honestly, “Because you would have had to make yourself less. Why would you have become a warrior of the Genda for me?”
“Some things have high prices,” he answered, “and I believe you are worth whatever price I have to pay for you.”
“But I’m not a Class A any longer!”
His voice was harsh. “Ronica, you persist in thinking that your worth is caused by your power.”
“It always has been,” I said. “All my life—”
He rose swiftly and put his arms around me, holding me still against the trembling that I was simply ignoring now. Only part of it was the unusable reflexes, reacting in fear, but I couldn’t have told him that. “I want you to think that all your life has gotten you here,” he said. “Here is where you must begin to do things differently.”
I shook my head. “My worth to you is because of my talent.”
“Partly,” he said, stroking my shoulders. “But only partly. The rest is because of who you are inside your power.” I didn’t want to listen, and he actually shook me a little to make certain I could hear him. “The power in me may seek out the power in you, but the person I am under the power is what seeks out the person you are. I want you to think about that.”
I couldn’t explain the anger that washed over me, and I didn’t try; I just gave in to it. “Why are you doing all this?” I shouted at him, pulling away. “What possible difference can it make to you whether or not I do or think about any number of things?”
And he said quietly, “It makes a difference to me because I love you.”
My breath went out of me in a whoosh, the anger dissolving, and I looked at him with what must have been absolute wonder. There is no doubt that I believed him, that I drank in the words so thirstily that I instantly mistrusted myself. And mistrusting myself, I mistrusted everything. I knew instinctively that this love was different from what Coney and Kray had felt for me. Jemeret was more than my equal, and just as I couldn’t allow him to be less than his potential, he couldn’t allow it in me. And yet I was less.
