“Wait, wait!” cried Ceralt, his agitation overflowing into words. “We are to believe that you are the Serene Oneness? I am to believe—Jalav! He has said that your Mida is no goddess! Will you merely sit there and accept such a thing as truth without protest?”
“Perhaps—I have suspected the thing for some time,” I informed him with a shrug, looking to the upset in the blue of his eyes. “Often in my kalod have I called to Mida—yet never was I truly answered till the answering came from one of evil, one I would not have had be Mida even if Mida were to be no more. One finds it great comfort to call upon the goddess, yet did I triumph when the need arose without such calling. Perhaps Mida is truly a goddess and caused those before us to name their gathering after herself—and perhaps she is no more than the yearnings of those who need to follow one greater than themselves. What matters it, when it is we, ourselves, who do what must be done? Should the doing be honorable, what difference if it be done in Mida’s name, or Sigurr’s—or in the name of the Serene Oneness?”
Ceralt stared upon me with brow furrowed, Mehrayn did the same, and S’Heernoh with a smile of great warmth. My words appeared to have affected all of the males, yet S’Heernoh seemed affected the least.
“Yes, to behave honorably is the important part,” said he, nodding in agreement. “I hope you understand that that’s exactly what I was trying to do—no matter how upset you get with me.”
I frowned and attempted to question the male, yet did he wave a hand in dismissal.
“You’ll understand what I’m talking about in just a little while,” said he, and the amusement which was so much a part of him twinkled again in his eyes. “I kept myself out of the doings of this world for quite a while, indulging in nothing more than observing and studying, and then one day I got the urge to walk a planet again for a short while. There was nothing unusual in the feeling, I’d had it before and had indulged it before, but this time I suddenly found myself riding the part of your world that starts south of the Dennin river. At the time I didn’t realize what I was doing, thought I was just out to stretch some muscles that had gotten rusty from lack of use—and then I came on a raiding party of men who had cornered a handful of Midanna and were trying to capture them. As soon as I saw the Midanna I knew I ought to get out of there, but they were badly outnumbered, and I was already there . . . .
“Needless to say, I didn’t turn around and ride away. I joined the fight on the side of the Midanna, and when it was all over the raiders were either dead or gone, and I had managed to get myself wounded. Probably by trying to fight and stare at the women both at the same time. I wasn’t so badly hurt that I couldn’t heal myself, but I didn’t want to do it in front of the women and start talk that could end anywhere, and the women refused to let me simply ride away. I’d been wounded trying to help them, and they were honor-bound to return the favor. We all mounted up, and they took me back to their home tents.
“One of the five warriors took me into her own tent and saw to my wound, then made sure I didn’t need anything while I was recovering. She had black hair and green eyes, and was absolutely the most delightful female I’d ever spent any extended time with. At first we just talked, then we went hunting together, cooked together—and finally made love. Not just sex, mind you, but love. I wanted to stay forever, and she wanted me to stay, so we both knew it was time for me to leave. She rode part of the way with me, kept a hand raised in farewell as long as I could see her—and never mentioned that I’d left something behind it had never occurred to me I might. Her name was Jadin, and her clan was the Hosta.”
With great confusion did I stare upon the male who sat with head bowed, lost in the pain of memory, for Jadin had been the name of she who had borne me. Indeed had she had black hair and green eyes, and yet—
“Your seed!” exclaimed Ceralt, again looking strangely upon S’Heernoh. “It was your seed you left! Then Jalav is—”
“My daughter,” said S’Heernoh, raising his head once more to smile despite the glistening in his eyes. “A daughter who was able to take my revenge for me from those who had brutally slain my beloved who was her mother. I watched it all, her birth and growing up, her becoming war leader, the beginning of the search for the crystal— My people have developed a greater strength and speed than yours, and my daughter inherited enough of that to make her a better warrior than anyone else on the planet. Do you wonder now why the computer gave her the probability it did? Or why it was so sure I’d never let her be hurt?”
“I see,” said I of a sudden, recalling the words spoken to me by Rilas, when she had first been shown S’Heernoh in Bellinard. “It was for that reason that Rilas recalled you, yet not as one unskilled and swordless. Clearly were you pointed out to her as she was told of what you had done. Yet you assured Rilas that you and she had never met.”
“I wasn’t lying,” said he, a twinkle again in the dark of his eyes. “I told the keeper that I had never before been introduced to her, which was the literal truth. I saw her once when she visited the clan, obviously the same time she saw me, but we were never introduced.”
“And now do I see a thing as well,” said Mehrayn, a chuckling beginning in him. “I had thought it fear of myself and Ceralt that had caused you to refuse to attend the wench in Bellinard, yet when I saw your blade skill with the Feridani, it came to me to wonder upon the thing. Now do I understand the doing completely.”
“Indeed,” said Ceralt with a similar chuckle, S’Heernoh joining them both, yet was I unable to see what amused them.
“As you all are aware of a thing I am not, perhaps you would care to enlighten me,” I said rather stiffly, disliking such amusement of males even at a time such as that. “I shall undoubtedly find the reason for a male’s refusal of a war leader most—enlightening.”
“Satya, he could do no other thing than refuse you,” said Ceralt with a laugh of disbelief, Mehrayn also mockingly amused. “Have you not heard his words? It was he who fathered you.”
“Well aware am I of the fact that it was he who was the sthuvad who served she who bore me,” said I with a nod which was also quite stiff. “Am I to believe him so badly overtired from the doing that he is unable to now do the same again? Do you take me for a credulous city female?”
Ceralt and Mehrayn looked upon me gape-mouthed, for some reason unable to find words with which to reply to my queries, yet S’Heernoh was not the same. The gray-haired male threw his head back and laughed so gustily that tears came to his eyes, a doing which occupied some few reckid. When at last the great mirth began to leave him, he looked upon the other two males and shook his head.
“Have you forgotten that the word ‘father’ means nothing to Midanna?” he asked the others, bringing wry looks to them. “It isn’t surprising her mother told her nothing about me; as a child she wouldn’t have understood what her parents had come to mean to each other. As far as she’s concerned I’m just someone who happened to know her mother, even if that applies in every sense of the word. Midanna share their men, so why shouldn’t she have her share of me? I don’t expect her to understand the point, any more than I expect her to listen to what I say without a good deal of struggle.”
“You know she refuses to obey men,” said Mehrayn slowly, looking upon S’Heernoh with a stare of thoughtfulness. “Also was there a question of hers which you have not yet answered. I had thought the omission an oversight, yet does it now seem— The time in the caves, the time of the storm, when I addressed her lady and asked to possess her. It was not the Feridani female who caused the life sign to glow. The doing was yours.”