“Would you like us to prove it to you?” Kajo asked. I stared at Kajo, dumbfounded. Before I could respond, he flicked his wrist and, with the flick, my hand rose from my side and picked up the carafe I had been thinking of throwing earlier and picked it up. There was an inner will, expressing itself through me, guiding me, telling me, taunting me… Telling me to pick it up.
I watched my hand, aghast, as I picked up the carafe.
Hold it in the air… It was Kajo’s voice in my mind.
No! I was screaming at myself. Put it back down!
But, I couldn’t… I couldn’t… As hard as I fought, I held it there… The inner voice, the inner will pulsed from my chest, Kajo controlling me, manipulating my hand.
I held the carafe in the air, then plummeted it to the ground.
The glass shattered, the water flushed into the stone and rippled across the cobbles, running through the cracks and splashing up onto my boots.
My hand dropped back down to my side. It ached and quivered.
I flexed it and wiggled my fingers, feeling it anew, like it had belonged to someone else for a moment and had only been returned to me as a gift.
I stared at Kajo, then looked at Ilisa, trying to decide which I wanted to win out: the empty, craven, heartbroken annihilation of knowing I was helpless on this planet, or the fury that wanted to kill the King.
“You can’t kill me, Skarde, and you had better forget the inclination…” The voice was so clear, so easily amused in my mind that I swallowed deep and nodded at him. I knew that I couldn’t, and I didn’t really want to. I respected him. Except that he kept reading my blasted mind! “I’m sorry, forgive the violation… But, that’s all the more reason to trust Ilisa, lean into Ilisa, more than you already have…”
Ha… He must know about last night...
Kajo continued speaking to me telepathically. “Lean into her and learn our ways. Defend yourself.”
I clenched my fists again and looked at Ilisa.
“I will work with my Chosen one.”
“Good,” Kajo said, “Now, let me finish telling you about your enemies, because we are going to war soon, and you have many…”
Kajo continued to talk, but I kept my eyes locked on Ilisa as I thought about wrapping myself around her in my large canopy bed. I guess I could let her into my mind… I wanted to let myself into her body, was it only fair that I match her in the way that her people commanded?
I wondered if she were reading my mind. Maybe, someday soon, I could read hers…
Nine
Ilisa
I hadn’t been able to slip any solo time in with Skarde in the four days since our sail into the storm - and part of me wasn’t sure I wanted to. Being separated from him, busied by necessary arrangements of defenses, of briefings with Damox and Renin and my Bristolans, of side meetings with Kajo where he commanded me again and again to make sure I was impressed with how important it was to get Skarde to agree to be manipulated mentally by me, and I had again expressed my hesitation, but through the four days of separation my mind had cleared a little from the strange spell that had overcome me by the Berserker of Vailstor. What was it about him…? I had shifted significantly… He was… He was… brutal and brave and bizarre, but, oh so beautiful, too.
He was all that I had thought could never exist enough to challenge me.
The way he had held me, just in silence, a calm, soothing silence, the night before the feast, stroking my hair, warming me up from the storm, making no sexual motivation, just holding me, was so sweet and serene.
I had seen him in passing and at meetings, but we hadn’t been able to move into true defense works of the mental arts. Not one-on-one. But, that was to change tomorrow morning.
The storm had finally passed, though it had rained much of the last four days, and the crescent moon was peeking out behind the last remaining clouds as I walked along the stone castle halls between the outdoor parapets. The great training rings below were vacant. It was late. I was leaving a meeting with Cartari and Axis to discuss the role of the Bristolans in the fight. They were leaving back to Bristola tomorrow and they had been reluctant to leave my four trusted here, but I really wanted them: I had won the convincing.
A chill howl rang out from the left of me and I immediately flattened myself against the tall rampart, feeling the chill of the stone on my cheek, and peeked out over the edge. There, near the cliffs of the harbor below, was Skarde and his three Vailstorans, swords held high in the chill slivers of moonlight, fires flared around them in a circle, odd wafts of blue smoke layering the area.
Another howl rang up as Skarde threw his head back, bare chest glistening, either with oils or sweat or both, full and broad to the open air, and howled like a wolf. His long, dark hair curled back and shook around him, muscles rippling, swelling. Then he held a pipe to his mouth and inhaled. Blue smoke puffed all around him and the other Vailstorans did the same.
The flames crackled and spat blue as the smoke from the strange herb they were inhaling mixed with the oil from the torches and the four Vailstorans howled. They pranced in a circle, all bare chested, the two women with only small wraps around their breasts, their swords held aloft, then they clashed into each other and battled fiercely, their swords swinging more
