The Warrior Challenged by Sharon Green

Author:Sharon Green [Green, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780886771447
Google: 1Hu7DFGZ_0AC
Publisher: Sharon Green Books
Published: 1986-09-15T05:47:02+00:00

Chapter 8

It wasn't waking up, precisely, not with remembering what had happened before you'd slept and knowing what was going on right then. I opened my eyes and was in a rather large room, with quite a few people all around. I had an odd taste in my mouth, knew I lay on something hard, and my right shoulder and arm were hurting, throbbing in protest and feeling banged and scraped. There was sunlight in the room, and refreshing air, but with all the people looking down at me I wasn't feeling very refreshed.

"Sit up, and then stand," one of the people looking at me said, a large woman wearing cloth breeches and shirt, leather sandals and headband, and a sword.

It came to me then that all of the people looking at me were women, and I didn't understand. I didn't understand any of it, but I sat up and then got to my feet.

"You should have been wiser than to come here so, girl," another voice said, also a female voice but sleeker than the first and filled with endless self-confidence. "Your pitiful trace of the power has given you too high an opinion of yourself, which has caused you to reach above your proper place.

You will come to regret such impertinence."

I looked over to where the voice was coming from, and then had to look up. At the top of a wide platform a woman lounged upon cushions and furs, an attractive woman with blond hair and blue eyes. She was dressed in golden silk breeches and shirt with matching silk foot coverings, and the silk was decorated with jewels and trimmed with fur. Behind the platform she lay on was an entire wall of windows, all of them thrown wide to the air and sunshine. I put my hand to my forehead as I looked at her, trying to remember what I'd wanted to say, and then I had a piece of it.

"Pitiful trace of power?" I got out, feeling a compulsion to speak the truth.

"No, you are mistaken."

"Mistaken, am I?" snorted the woman, sitting straight among her comforts to look her scorn down at me. "From Aesnil's words concerning you and the comments of those who brought her I thought you the possessor of a great power indeed, yet did it take nearly as long to down you as it did to down the empty man. Even the one with the beginnings of the power succumbed more quickly, proving again that the greater the power, the greater the sensitivity-save for the greatest of all, such as myself. It is now no wonder that he has been able to make you slave to him, yet is that scarcely an excuse."

"Excuse?" I echoed, not following anything she was saying, wishing that constant buzz in my mind would go away. The room I stood in was certainly large enough, but I still felt surrounded and hemmed in.

"For one with even a trace of the power to allow any man

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