Sharon Green - Terrillian 04, page 1
The Warrior Challenged
By Sharon Green
Chapter 1
I sat on the carpet fur among the cushions, my eyes closed, feeling the faint, unimaginative sadness brush at me. As sadness it was no more than mild regret, about as compelling as having missed that dull meeting you had decided to go to, but then forgot about. I sighed at the thin-bloodedness of the sadness, then shook my head.
“That wouldn’t be enough to get a blink out of a chronic hysteric,” I told him without opening my eyes. “Try it again, and this time make me cry.”
A surge of annoyance and frustration daggered through the weakling sadness, strong enough to make me flinch if I hadn’t been guarding against it, and then he made a sound that was half growl and half vexation.
“Should it be your wish to weep, wenda, there are other means of achieving that,” he said in that dangerous, deep-voiced way of his. “As my efforts in this manner fail to please you, it shall likely soon become my duty to fetch a switch. “
“Threatening the teacher isn’t allowed,” I answered with a laugh, finally opening my eyes to look at him. Tammad lay stretched out on the carpeting not far from me, one big leg bent comfortably at the knee, the rest of his giant body not as relaxed as it should have been. His swordbelt was conspicuous by its absence, leaving him nothing but the green haddin he wore wrapped around his loins, and his leather wristbands. His blond-haired head was crammed full with feelings of rebellion and resentment, feelings he wasn’t used to experiencing without being able to do something about them, and his blue eyes said his threat had been only half joking. Tammad was getting impatient with his progress-or lack of it-and was having trouble controlling that impatience.
“If this isn’t working out it’s only because you’re not trying hard enough,” I told him with feigned calm. Tammad loved me, I knew he did, but if he decided to look around for something to punish me for, he would not have to look very far. I’d only gotten my empathetic ability back a couple of days earlier, but I’d spent a good deal of that time experimenting with the changes I’d noticed.
Tammad didn’t like the idea of my experimenting, and if he found out about it I’d really be in for it.
“If this isn’t working out, it’s only because you’re not trying hard enough,”
I told him as his pretty blue eyes, looked annoyed; I was trying to sound firm and teacher-like instead of nervous. “And if you’re scandalized over being taught by a woman instead of another man, you have only yourself to blame. Len was perfectly willing to put you through these exercises, but he couldn’t do it with his head splitting apart. Which was your doing.’
“A doing which I truly regret,” Tammad said with a sigh, accepted-guilt now flowing through his mind. “To give pain to one attempting to aid you is not an action of honor, even should that action be involuntary, as mine was. I continue to have no understanding as to why it should have occurred.”
“That’s because you can’t see yourself from the outside,” I said, immediately soothing the ache I could feel in him as I pushed the skirt of my gown aside so I could crawl to him. “Your entire life has been aimed at being better than the other men around you, toward making yourself their leader. A leader dominates, always, and that’s what you were doing to Len when he tried to teach you. He can do something you can’t, but you weren’t about to allow that to keep you from being denday over him. Len isn’t strong enough to block your output without shielding, and if he shields he can’t teach you. If he doesn’t shield-well, he ends up with the kind of headache he did end up with. He knows you weren’t doing it on purpose, but he also knows that doesn’t make any difference. He doesn’t have the strength to fend you off and teach you at the same time, so you’re stuck with me.”
“A wenda who does indeed have the necessary strength,” he murmured, putting those big hands to my sides to pull me down closer to him. “For teaching as well as other, more pleasurable pursuits.”
“Indeed, hamak,” I murmured in Rimilian, Tammad’s language, putting my hands to his face. “This wenda shall ever have strength for her beloved, for he is her sadendrak, the one who gives meaning to her life in all things. Perhaps a short rest would now be advisable, to conserve the strength of one who learns, for other, more pleasurable pursuits.”
I leaned down to put my lips on his, feeling again that I would never get enough of him no matter what, and he wasted no time putting his hand behind my head and returning the kiss. I could feel the growl of desire beginning in him, just as it usually did when he looked at me or put his hands on me, but then the heavy calm swirled into his mind, the calm he used as both a shield and a control over his own emotions. He took full pleasure out of the kiss we shared, but when it was over he simply lifted me away from his chest.
“As this one must learn, best would be that we continue with the lessons,” he said, his light eyes showing the calm behind them, his mind firmly made up.
“As I must depart soon to join the Chamd Rellis for a meal, we must leave other things for another time. For what reason were you displeased with my efforts?”
“If you had made the effort, I wouldn’t be displeased,” I muttered, staring at him darkly from where I sat on the carpeting, hating the way he could ignore me as I’d never been able to ignore him. “Does Rellis mean more to you than I do?”
“The Chamd Rellis is our host, wenda,” he answered gently with only the hint of a grin in his eyes, one hand stroking my arm. “To refuse the invitation of one’s host to a meal, or even to appear later than the appointed time, is to give insult to one who has given hospitality. That you find great joy in squirming beneath me is known to me, yet were you given such joy when we awoke, and will be given the same again later. Might Rellis not be given a small portion of the attention which is rightfully yours, in return for the welcome we have had in his house?”
The grin had by that time spread to his face, most likely due to the way I was blushing I wouldn’t have described my enjoyment quite the way he had, and it was enough to make me back off in embarrassment just the way he’d wanted me to do. I was learning that he didn’t have to hand out orders to make me obey him, and the revelation was less of an interesting discovery than a nasty surprise.
“I’m thinking about hating you,” I stated as I leaned both arms on his chest to look straight down at him, trying to put a growl in my voice. “I’m also thinking about raping you.”
“Should you find it possible, you have my permission to do so,” he came back with a broadened grin and a chuckle, his eyes shining. “I am now aware that you would find the first as difficult to achieve as the second. Are you prepared as yet to discuss the reason for your displeasure with my efforts to learn?”
“I’ll be glad to discuss my reasons,” I agreed with annoyance, wishing I could find a way to rape that big hulk of a warrior. “Your efforts were unacceptable because they didn’t have any-” I quickly lowered my face to his shoulder, sank my teeth into it hard enough for him to feel, then raised my head to his startled outrage and finished, “-bite.”
“Perhaps, woman, it would be best if I were to fetch a switch after all,” he growled angrily. The look in his eyes hardened as he began projecting that deadly promise effect, but I’d been expecting it and was already shielding.
“There, that’s what you were missing!” I pounced, my pointing finger startling him out of the anger. “You have enough strength to project any emotion you like, but the only ones that get that strength are the emotions of violence.
You have to learn to push behind the others just as you do with anger and outrage; otherwise you’re wasting your time.”
“I dislike your manner of evoking the reactions you seek,” he grumbled, bringing one hand up to rub at his bitten shoulder, his eyes still displeased with me but lacking that you’ve-had-it outrage which usually means I’m in trouble. “How am I to put strength behind those feelings which normally have no strength of their own?”
“All emotions have strength of their own,” I retorted, leaning down again to kiss the place where I’d bitten, at the same time using pain control. There hadn’t been that much pain to begin with, but kissing-it-to-make-it-better takes on new meaning when a Prime empath indulges in it, something that made Tammad chuckle again.
“An emotion doesn’t have to be strong to have strength,” I continued, looking down into his eyes as I toyed with the blond hair on the unbelievably broad chest I rested against. “What you gave me for sadness was this,” and I replayed the faint regret, “when you should have given me this.” I reshaped the emotion and brushed him with it, the feeling of loss that one has been expecting yet nevertheless deeply regrets. “Or this,” I added, making the loss unexpected and moving, the sort to bring tears to your eyes. Then I changed it to an opportunity gone that might have been more than worthwhile if it had been acted on, and the broad body under me squirmed in discomfort, the swirling calm trying ineffectively to block me out. “When you’re sending an emotion, don’t try to imagine it, fee! it. Let it touch you before sending it on its way, even if it’s an emotion a l’lenda doesn’t usually allow himself to feel. If a person doesn’t believe the emotion you’re projecting he won’t feel it the way you want him to, so you -have to make it real. The more real it is to the two of you, the more it will be felt.”
“There are no emotions a l’lenda refuses to feel,” he corrected, reaching up to brush a strand of hair from my shoulder. “Should a man refuse to allow
“You’re not finding difficulty with it,” I corrected in turn, producing a sharpened look in the blue eyes watching me. “When someone says they’re having trouble with something, that usually means they’re trying but not making it.
You, on the other hand, are not making it because you’re not trying. You think what I’m teaching you is dishonorable.”
“Indeed do I feel it dishonorable,” he grudged, not happy with the admission but not wanting to lie. “I continue to feel that to invade the being of another is completely lacking in honor, yet was I given this-gift-without having been consulted. I must learn the control of it so that I do not intrude without being aware of it.”
Only two days earlier, when I had regained my empathetic abilities after thinking they were gone forever, my brother empath Len Phillips had discovered that Tammad, the man who had banded me, was a strong, natural empath himself.
Tammad was trying to hide the bitterness he felt, the deep-down despair that something like that had to happen to him, and I knew exactly how he felt.
Asking, Why me? had filled a large portion of my self-dialogue in the months just past, and knowing it had to be someone didn’t do a damned thing to make acceptance easier.
“There are other reasons to learn that you should like better,” I said, putting my hand to his face as I let my compassion touch him so that I might share his pain. “Once you have the control you need, you not only won’t intrude accidently, the choice will be entirely yours whether you intrude at all. And don’t forget that if Len’s guess is right, most of the men on this world are empaths. If you happen to run into one who can control the ability, you won’t be at a disadvantage. Learning control will be just like getting better with a sword. There’s nothing dishonorable about getting better with a sword, is there?”
“No, hama, there is nothing dishonorable in increasing one’s ability with a sword,” he agreed with a soft smile, accepting not so much what I’d said as the reason I’d said it. He knew as well as I that he would have to come to terms with his doubts by himself, but I’d also wanted him to know I was there to help him, to make the time as easy and acceptable as possible. He did know that now, in a way untalented people could never experience, and when I touched him with the love I felt, he fumbled briefly to copy the emotion and send it back to me before drawing me closer for another kiss. There was no desire in that kiss, only the sort of pure love we had touched each other with, and when I raised my head to look at him again, we were both smiling.
“And that’s another benefit in learning control,” I said, spreading my hands out to enjoy the hard-muscled feel of his shoulders and arms. “You can tell someone you love them even in a crowd of people, and no one else has to know about it. Or, at least, I can do that. You still haven’t learned to narrow your projection enough. If anyone else had been in this room a minute ago, they would have felt awfully well loved. Your projection was fat.”
“Fat!” he repeated in mock outrage, his eyes twinkling as he shook his head at me. “I show the woman the size of my love, and she deems it overfleshed! I shall be certain to bring a switch when I return.”
“Don’t you dare!” I laughed, knowing this time he was doing nothing more than teasing me, and then it came to me that that might be just the time I’d been looking for to ask him about the strange urge I’d had lately. I didn’t know what his reaction would be, but I’d known from the first that even the asking would have to be carefully timed.
“I think I had best be on my way now,” he said before I could get my request phrased just right, stretching where he lay. “Sit up now, hama, so that I might rise and retrieve my sword. “
“Tammad, wait,” I blurted, reluctant to let the opportunity slip away.
“There’s something I want to ask you first.”
“My answer is what it was, wenda,” he said with a grin, reaching one big hand out to stroke my bottom. “When I return I will give you the joy you crave.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I protested, upset all over again at the new blush I could feel in my cheeks. I also wanted to push his stroking hand away from my bottom, but that was something I knew he’d never allow. “What I want to know is if you would be willing to teach me something in return for what I’m teaching you. A trade of skills, so to speak, so that both of us will benefit.”
“It pleases me that you wish to learn, Terril,” he said, and I could feel the strong approval in his mind. “There are, however, those who are far more qualified than I to teach cooking and such. Best would be that you await the return to our city, where there are sufficient wendaa to teach you what …
. “
“You don’t understand-” I interrupted, forcing myself to get the words out before I lost my nerve. “Oh, I do want to learn how to cook and do other things for you, but first I’d like to learn how to—use a sword.”
I mumbled the last three words, so I wasn’t sure he heard me, especially since there was no immediate reaction. Those blue, blue eyes stared at me for a long minute, the mind behind them practically motionless with surprise, and then he was fighting hard to keep laughter from erupting.
“So you would learn the use of a sword,” he said, his hand back to moving in a circle over my bottom, his voice even and his eyes studying me, just as though he were seriously considering my proposal. “And what would you do with such a skill once you had acquired it?”
“Don’t know,” I admitted, wishing I could make him stop touching me like that so that I could think. “Please don’t laugh at me, hamak, it really means a lot to me. Couldn’t you find a-smaller sword that you could teach me how to use?”
“Indeed would you require a smaller sword than mine,” he said, grinning as he remembered the time I discovered I couldn’t even lift his sword. “Perhaps it would be best if I were to consider your request for a time before voicing a decision. And should you truly wish this thing, you also may take a time to consider how best to please me. A man who is pleased will often allow the things his wenda asks.”
I began to protest that I’d been offering a trade, not asking a favor, but even if he hadn’t moved me aside so that he could stand up, the words would never have gotten said. When I’d accepted Tammad’s bands I’d also been agreeing to do things his way, the way everyone else on that world did them.
That meant that whatever help I gave him was due him, just as his love and protection were due me. If I wanted anything above the basics of food, shelter, clothing and protection, I had to ask for it in the way he wanted to be asked. The thought of wheedling a man for something I wanted was so humiliating I didn’t know how the women of that world could do it, but I knew well enough that they did. I’d agreed to try doing things Tammad’s way without anyone twisting my arm, but to wheedle and beg-!
“It is a thing you must become accustomed to, hama, should you truly wish what you have asked for,” Tammad said, interrupting my thoughts as he reached down to lift me to my feet, obviously knowing what I was feeling. “Should you find yourself unable to act so, we will merely allow memory of so-unusual a request to slip from us, and speak no more upon it. I will return when the meal with Rellis is done.”
He leaned down to kiss me then, impossibly tall and impossibly broad, and then, as he had already replaced his swordbelt, he simply left. I stood in the middle of the large blue and white room, the high-arched windows behind me, and tried to keep remembering how much I loved that overgrown barbarian. I did love him, I really did, but sometimes he made me so mad I could spit!
“Damn him!” I muttered with what was nearly a growl, my hands clenched to furious fists at my sides, the anger filling my mind so completely I was almost to the point of projecting it. He was trying to make me obey him again, and I was angry because I couldn’t see a way to get out of it.
I turned and started toward the windows, stopped abruptly as I changed my mind, turned toward the stack of furs Tammad and I used as a bed, changed my mind again, then furiously kicked at one of the white pillows on the carpet-fur. He hadn’t laughed aloud because he hadn’t wanted to insult me, but that didn’t mean Tammad didn’t consider my asking to learn how to use a sword comical. He also didn’t approve of something that ridiculous, but he didn’t want to hurt me by coming up with a flat no. That was why he’d said he’d think about it, to give me the chance to back out on my own-with a little help from him. He’d told me I had to convince him to agree, all the while knowing how humiliating I’d find doing something like that, fully expecting me to find it impossible. When I discovered I couldn’t wheedle and beg he’d let me forget all about the silliness I’d asked for, and that would be the end of an awkward situation-without his having to refuse. He had it all neatly tied and wrapped-which was what made me so absolutely furious.
