Starfire Saga, page 35
First, that my Class A talent had been gone. But did “gone” mean it had been truly missing, or fluctuant, or did it mean that I simply could not access it? If it was fluctuant or gone, how had Jemeret known so positively that we had reached the point where he could access it for me? If it was merely inaccessible, how had it been made so?
Because I knew, second, that a fully developed Class A talent, one that was not fluctuant, could not be shut down without its physical destruction. Its reserves could be exhausted, its wielder could be killed, but it could not just be frozen in the presence of reserves. And yet, my sting had been gone.
I frowned, looking at Jemeret in confusion. “But no outside force—” I began, and then it hit me. I started to automatically reject the insight, in horror, pain, and instantaneous denial, but Jemeret overrode it.
“Don’t shut it out! Say it!”
At the same time, he was stinging me with feelings of security and love, laying a ground on which I could finish my broken thought. I squeezed the chair arms so tightly that one of them split under my hand with a crack that echoed around the room. I held on just as tightly to the feelings he was sending me, forcing myself to slow my breathing and open my throat, which had closed so tightly as to make speaking impossible.
“No outside force can destroy an individual’s power,” I stammered.
“Which means...” he prompted.
I was sweating at the effort, but I found I could say it after all. “Which means I did it to myself.”
His face didn’t change into the smile I felt him projecting. “If I draw back the sting, can you bear it alone?”
I tested myself gingerly, the new knowledge entirely unsettling, and I found that now that I had faced it, had said it, it was bearable—if still infinitely painful. I nodded quickly, not trusting myself to speak again.
Gradually Jemeret stopped projecting, and I realized that, even without his using the sting, even without me making a deliberate effort to read him, he still gave me love and support.
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath and explored the pain at its edges. He had said, when he caught the blow I’d tried to direct at the wall between me and my memories, that he didn’t want me to hurt myself, but I already had. I had turned against myself, and he had known it. For reasons I still could not fathom, I had hurt myself worse than anyone outside could have hurt me. I had removed from myself the thing that made me special, that made me different from anyone in the universe except—I thought then—Jasin Lebec. I let myself cry for a while. This time Jemeret did not take me in his arms or comfort me, but only watched me, reading the surface of my reaction, not its depth.
At last I blotted the tears with the sleeve of my robe. “How did you know?”
His answer was absolutely the last thing I expected, at a moment when I believed nothing could surprise me any longer. “I did it to myself once,” he said calmly. “If I had any more evidence, I would think it was just a brutal part of growing up with this kind of power.”
“There really aren’t very many of us, are there?” I asked.
“Not that I’ve ever heard.”
“Why did you cut off your power?”
He rolled the stem of his goblet between his fingers. “Probably for the same reason you did,” he said maddeningly.
“But I don’t remember why I did it!”
He said nothing.
I frowned at him. “How did you know I would let you show me where it was and bring it back? If I’m the one who took it away, how did you know I’d let it come back?”
He studied me. “You were ready,” he said at last. “When you apologized to Mekonet—Coney—I knew you were ready. You only needed guidance, and I thought I could provide it.”
We ate for a time in silence, and I reached tentatively, almost fearfully, for the sting a hundred times. It was there every single time, just as it had been every time I’d reached for it before I crashed here. I wore out my reserves casting sensory scouts into the village, finding and identifying some of the Boru I knew, touching Coney without letting him know, lingering a moment, voyeuristically, as Variel responded to Gundever’s lovemaking, and then sliding away, embarrassed.
Jemeret didn’t interfere with any of the explorations until it became obvious that I was straining. Then he said, “Don’t weaken yourself too much. It’ll still be there if you leave it alone for a while.”
I started to ask him a question, but I was overcome by a yawn.
He smiled. “Go back and get some more sleep,” he said. “We need to transfer a great deal of the winter fodder from one of the storage sheds tomorrow. We’re expecting another Severance Storm, probably by tomorrow night.”
I got up and started to leave, obedient to the direction, then remembered that Numima wasn’t in the house and took the dishes to the kitchen. He watched me do it, neither stopping me nor helping me. When I was done, I was very weary, and tapping the edges of my reserves showed me that the emotional drain on them was as debilitating as the physical drain had been.
As tired as I was, lying in bed, I could not turn my brain off to sleep. Why, I wondered, would I have built a wall between my sting and myself? Cowardice, faced with graduation and the true beginning of my career? Unlikely. I had looked forward to being a graduate Class A and a free citizen for too long, and it had filled me with too much pride. Overload of some sort? Even less likely. The Com would always monitor and prioritize the incidents demanding my services. Had I tried something and failed? That was more worth considering, because I would abominate failure—I, who had always been taught the critical value of succeeding at all costs. Two months before, I would not have even been able to consider this reason. Failure would have seemed more than an abomination, it would have seemed an impossibility. Now I could speculate about it. But something in me did not accept it as an answer.
What choices were left? Why should I withhold my finest power?
The word formed in my mind before I was aware it was there, and with my sting active again, I knew Jemeret had not projected it at me.
Punishment.
There was a bone-deep, bone-hard truth to the word that struck an immediate chord in me. I sat up slowly in the darkness and tested some still unknown reality. I had punished myself for something. Something I had done? Something I had not done? I was too tired to wrench at the blocked memory, but I wanted to. What had merited such drastic punishment? And if I had done it to myself, what had forced them to expel me—a trained, graduated Class A—out of the Com entirely?
Still puzzling on it, I slept at last, and for the first time since we had come to Stronghome, I wasn’t aware if or when Jemeret came to bed.
I was able to push the speculation to the back of my mind when I awoke the next morning. The level of activity in Stronghome had accelerated to a just-below fever pitch. Every able-bodied person—Sammod, Sammat, or child—deserted any normal tasks that did not involve food for either the Boru or their stock of animals. All morning, we worked transferring supplies—six days’ worth of food to each private cottage, the houses of men and women, the temple, the dralg sheds, the fowl pens. By noontime we’d shifted just more than half of what we needed to, since the snow made the use of wagons impractical and we had to make a chain of people, winding from the storehouses across the pasture to the houses. At the very end of the morning we began the job of transferring bales of fodder to the tivong stables, where the line passed into the buildings and up into the lofts that had been emptied in the first storm.
I’d noticed that Shenefta, who was working in the loft just above my place on one of the ladders, had cast several long, appraising looks at Coney, who was one of the men lifting bales into the stable itself. I was not, therefore, surprised when she sat down beside me on a bale to eat her bread and cheese and asked, “Will you introduce me to your friend?”
I grinned. “Does everyone in the tribe know that we knew one another before?”
“After what happened on the practice field?” She sounded as if I were an idiot even to have asked the question. “All day yesterday, people were saying Lord Jemeret didn’t let you out of the house because you and Mekonet had been best friends.”
“But you didn’t think so.”
“I didn’t care much,” she corrected. “I just think he looks awfully nice, and I want a chance at him before any of the others move in. Do you think he’d like me?” It all ran together into sudden self-doubt that made me remember she was only fifteen.
“I think he’ll like you very much,” I said honestly, glancing around to see where Coney had sat, and finding him so deep in conversation with Jemeret that I didn’t want to interrupt them. I did want to listen, to find out what they were talking about, but the stable was full of people, all of them talking at once, and expanding my hearing only made the cacophony more intense.
Instead I reached out with the sting, touching at the edges of their feelings. They liked and respected each other, and while that didn’t surprise me, the depth of the emotions was entirely unexpected. These were two men who had only known one another for three days—or, if Jemeret’s four-day absence had been to follow a fireball down and retrieve its occupant, at most for seven days—and yet they appeared to have bonded very quickly.
I wondered why.
Shenefta drew my attention back again, chattering about Sejineth and the women he was tentatively and sequentially sharing meals with, perhaps thinking of sleeping with. Suddenly curious, I asked, “Have you thought of sleeping with anyone?”
“Me?” She seemed stunned.
“Of course, you. You’re an adult now.”
“But I’m only fifteen. I haven’t even—rounded out yet.” She actually blushed. “No man would claim me yet.”
“Do women ever claim men?” I wondered that I had never asked that question before.
She ate some of her meal before she answered. “I’ve heard that they do among the Dibel and the Paj, but not here. I don’t know if those tribes have the custom because their chiefs are women, or because they’re pacifistic, or just because that’s how it is.” She thought about it for a moment, finishing her meal along with the contents of a water bottle we were sharing. Then, with a grin, she said, “Of course, you can order everyone to take up the custom when you become High Lady.”
I was astounded by the realization that I had forgotten I was supposed to become the High Lady of the Samothen. The reminder almost disoriented me, and then I accepted it without acknowledging anything to Shenefta. Now that I had the sting back, I felt more equipped to cope with the notion than I had before. As a Class A, I could do far more than anyone else, except, of course, my lord—and he could not become High Lady.
My glance strayed again to the two men, and I was struck by a strange sense of the inevitable. All my life, until I was sent here, there had been three of us—Coney and Kray and me. Now there were three of us again, but this time I wasn’t the strongest, nor did I care to be. This time I would not be sleeping with Coney. And yet we were three; I could see that just in the way the men sat together, could feel it in their strangely rapid rapport.
Sejineth, in charge of the activities in the stables in his capacity as tivong trainer, gave the signal that the break was over. We all stuffed the remains of our food away and rose. “Come to dinner,” I said quickly to Shenefta. “I’ll invite Con—Mekonet, too.” She flashed me a fast grin as we went back to work.
Because the storm was predicted to strike early in the evening, making passage between the houses impossible, we had to delay the dinner for Shenefta and Coney. It would have been awkward for all of us to be trapped together by the storm. But I did introduce them, Shenefta grinning with pleasure and Coney solemnly polite and secretly amused.
Jemeret sent me back to the house about a quarter of an hour before the storm was expected, to make certain the shutters were closed, the fire built up, and the dampers adjusted. I paused on the porch in the rising wind to look around for Tynnanna, whom I had not seen in several days. There was no sign of him, and I didn’t call.
The house was empty. Numima had expressed a desire to spend the storm with her daughter, who was expecting a child at any moment, and Jemeret had gladly given his permission. That meant he and I would have the time of the storm to ourselves. I trembled a little to think about it, but put it out of my mind, tossed my cloak onto a couch and went from window to window, securing the latches. Then I moved to the three fireplaces—living area, bedroom, and kitchen—setting the dampers, and at the same time carefully feeding the fires. By the time I’d lighted the lamps, Jemeret had come in, laying his cloak on mine and sealing the door.
He barely beat the first blast of wind, which made the house jump and filled the air outside with howling and moaning. He smiled at me, and I smiled back and went to pour us some clogny. We were both tired after the full day, as were, I supposed, the rest of the Boru, for everyone believed in exhausting themselves when an approaching storm would mean enforced idleness.
Jemeret had washed his face and hands and sat back on one of the couches. I brought the goblets and gave him one before I sat down across from him, rather than beside him. He raised an eyebrow, curiously watching me, as he sipped some of the liquor.
“I haven’t seen Tynnanna for a while,” I said.
“I’m sure he’s all right. He’ll probably be back when the storm clears.”
I took a long swallow of clogny. He rubbed his eyes wearily, then fastened them on me again. “What is it?”
“Can you help me remember—what I can’t remember?” It was a far harder question to ask than I’d thought it would be. “Before Coney came, I thought it was just—a night, a single night, the night of graduation. But—two years. So much time gone, so much time—” I had begun to tremble, and I gathered and controlled it.
He watched me, his eyes strangely reflexive. He seemed to analyze my question—which I thought could not have been completely unexpected—for a very long while, but I knew he was not reading me, because I would have felt him now that my sting was back. At last he said, “You’re not ready to remember yet.”
The words were quiet and even, but charged with meaning.
“How do you know?” I tried not to be angry or demanding, tried to hold on to my impatience.
“I know.”
For a moment we regarded each other across the space between the couches. Then I said, “I want to probe you.”
He lowered the goblet and crossed his arms. “Come in, love.”
But before I could enter his mind, I was frozen into the past by my first new memory in weeks, completely unexpected—another door opening, the missing time getting infinitesimally shorter.
Nothing had happened in my suite in the few hours of night remaining after the graduation gala. But Jasin Lebec had come to my rooms just before dawn. I hadn’t slept, still riding on the adrenaline rush of the night before, and I felt no need of sleep. I had bathed and, still naked, was packing for my trip with Coney and Kray to Nanseda. I sensed his commanding presence before he actually tapped on my door, and pulled on a wrapper. As soon as he knocked, I opened the door, smiling at him, for now—I believed—we were truly equals at last.
“I didn’t see you at the party,” I said by way of greeting.
“I wasn’t there,” he said mildly. “Would you sit with me for a few minutes?”
“Of course,” I said, and joined him on my couch, a little miffed that he had not congratulated me. “What are you still doing here? I should have thought the Com would not want us both to be in the same place at the same time now.”
He studied me for a moment or two, his dark eyes sparkling. “It is necessary for me to probe you again,” he said unexpectedly.
I was immediately wary, guarded. “I thought all that was over last night. I’m a graduate Class A and a free citizen.”
He started to say something, then changed his mind. “You may probe me first, if you would prefer.”
A thrill of apprehension ran through me. I had stung many people in my training, but I had never done a full probe on anyone with anything like the shielding ability of Jasin Lebec. The idea of probing him was as terrifying as it was exciting. The lure was also, as he knew it would be, irresistible. I nodded, and he made one quick, palms-up gesture that said, “Well?”
I began a normal read, enhanced it, and directed it into a probe. Most normal brains can be pictured as a sea of restless waves, moving, passing into and through one another, sometimes breaking on the shores of consciousness. Inner energy created the power of the tidal motion; in some people the water was shallow and serene, or barely disturbed, while in others it was almost wild.
In Jasin Lebec, the sea was unfathomably deep, and currents ran strongly on many levels. Yet, despite its complexity, there was a purity, a wholeness to the sea which was almost overwhelming. I could find no backwashes, no crosscurrents, no treacherous undertows, no shoals or reefs. The strength and power of the waves were undeniable and, in their own way, exquisite. I could feel the neural bases propelling them, but I did not linger to explore, because I was certain I would find no tangles there either. Tangles left shadows upon the currents, and there were no shadows in the sea of this man’s mind.
With a sigh, I withdrew.
Jasin Lebec nodded. “Very well done for a first attempt at this level,” he said. “It could have been a little less protracted, but on the whole it was quite skillful.”
“Yes, I could have done it faster,” I admitted readily enough, “but I didn’t want to.”
He understood at once; I felt it. And I wondered for the first time what kind of sea he would find when he probed me, which he did at once, swiftly and without any sense of intrusion. When he was finished, he stood, leaned down to me, and kissed me once on the forehead and once on the lips. “Serve well, and with all your heart,” he said.
The memory died, leaving me still on the couch in the house at Stronghome. I had no idea if any time had passed, or if the memory had come in a timeless flash of insight. Jemeret’s expression did not appear to have altered. “Have you forgotten how?” he asked.
