“But, shodan-” the girl in question began to complain.
She was cut off sternly. “Enough. I have told you, Laina, that I have a woman, the very one spoken of at the meeting. I need no others, nor would the mother of my children welcome another into our chambers.”
“Your what?” Lowden asked, more than a little surprised.
“Forgive me, uncle, but I had thought to save the telling until my parents returned. Have they yet?”
“No-no, but, Challen, why would you have her punished so harshly if you have taken her to mate?”
“Punished?” Challen became very still. “Uncle-”
But Lowden was in the throes of remorse that had to come out. “Droda, she has been worked hard enough that any child she may have conceived could well be lost,” he said in horror. “If such happens, your mother will never forgive me, she has waited so long for you to choose your life-mate. Why did you give her into my keeping, if not to be punished?”
“Did I tell you to punish her?”
“You told me to keep her busy, yet she is a challenge loser and so not under my care. I could only surmise one reason for-”
“Be easy, uncle.” Challen placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him. “The fault is mine for not explaining more fully. You did not have to-punish her more severely when she complained, did you?”
“Complained?” Lowden snorted. “I wish I had even one Darash who would work as hard and efficiently, and with not a single complaint.”
“No doubt she has saved them all for my ears. Where is she now? Perhaps my good news will take the edge off the anger she has likely reserved for me.”
“This rising she has the scrubbing of the halls.”
But she was not where Lowden had left her, and although this did not surprise him, she could not be found anywhere else in the castle either. Challen was almost beside himself with anxiety when Serren was carried in to him and was able to confess, before passing out from a wound received in his shoulder, that Tedra had convinced him to escort her to the market. There they were set upon by Kar-A-Jel warriors, Serren to be wounded, the woman, captured.
Challen was no longer worried. He was furious.
Chapter Forty
Falder La-Mar-Tel was not the pest Tedra was expecting, after Jalla’s description of him. She had pictured a barbarian gone to pot, slovenly maybe, petulant surely, with a dose of greed and craftiness thrown in. She had not imagined a giant’s giant, a warrior at least seven and a half feet tall, a solid, immovable powerhouse of a man. This was the pest who feared to face her barbarian in challenge?
But she’d seen his town on the way to his house, which was no more than a normal-size dwelling with a large hall. The town was also small in comparison to Sha-Ka-Ra. It could be assumed, then, that the shodan of Kar-A-Jel didn’t have a great many warriors under his leadership. It could also be assumed that he wasn’t very smart, if he kept nipping at the heels of a greater power to no purpose. But Jalla had said that all these two shodani did was raid each other back and forth, neither of them attacking in force that would have the makings of war behind it. They likely just supplied each other with the excuse for some warriorlike fun.
So what was behind her capture? It had been deliberate. The warriors sent after her knew whom they were taking, had heard all about her at the meeting, and she’d made it easy for them to get at her, leaving the castle like that with only one warrior to escort her. Of course, she hadn’t made the actual capture easy. Even though Challen was to have told the council of shodani that she was a warrior in her own right and what he had witnessed of her capabilities, the four warriors who set upon them had been worried only about Serren, not her. Little wonder she walked into Falder’s hall while her escort limped.
But what was behind her capture? Merely a strike at a favored nemesis? Or did the shodan of Kar-A-Jel simply want the distinction to be his of possessing the only alien on the planet? Whatever he wanted, he wasn’t pleased to see four of his mighty warriors nearly out of commission.
“Could you not have lured her out of his stronghold?” he demanded when they stood before him, two on either side of her. “Was it necessary to fight his entire-”
“The woman was outside his castle,” the warrior on her right said in their defense. “You told us not to harm her. You did not tell us how to keep from being harmed in the process.”
“Do you tell me she did this to you?”
When he got no answer but chagrined expressions, the big giant threw back his head and laughed uproariously. Tedra, bound only at the wrists, and that not even at her back, just loved how easy it was to surprise these barbarians before they took her seriously. Without even thinking about it, she hooked her foot behind Falder’s and gave him a little push. It sounded like he broke the floor. Likely it was cracked. But he wasn’t laughing anymore. He wasn’t angry either. He just looked up at Tedra from his prone position with a good deal of awe.
“So he spoke true,” Falder said as he got to his feet, slowly dusting off his bracs.
His warriors just looked on smugly as he moved to stand out of Tedra’s reach. She realized then that Challen must have done some exaggerating at that meeting. This giant of giants actually thought she could take him. Well, she’d brought him down while she was tied up and looking helpless, so she couldn’t blame him for making that assumption. And she wasn’t about to disabuse him of it.
And then a thought struck her that should have sneaked up sooner. “That pretty blond captive Challen came home with wouldn’t happen to be yours, would she?”
He heard only what he wanted to hear in that question. “So he has already returned home? Then it will not be long before he joins us.”
“To exchange captives?”
“Not at all.” The big man smiled at her now. “Laina he can keep. It is the Ly-San-Ter gaali mine that will be exchanged does he want back his woman; thus will the sky-flyers come to this warrior to trade.”
Tedra didn’t like the sound of that, not at all. “I’m the only sky-flyer there is around here, Shodan La-Mar-Tel, the only one who’s discovered your planet, so I’m the only one who’ll be making the trading deals. And what makes you think I want gaali stones?”
He kept right on smiling. “It is the only thing of true value in all of Kan-is-Tra. Living jewels you possess. What can you want with ours? Wondrous weapons you possess. What use our Toreno swords to you?”
“Didn’t Challen tell you guys that every town would benefit?”
“He lied and so I told the council. Towns without wealth will benefit nothing.”
“I get the feeling you didn’t stick around until the end of the meeting.”
“After he stole my woman nearly out of my hand? Indeed I left.”
His affronted look was really amusing, but Tedra didn’t laugh. She came up with some half-truths instead. “I hate to put a dent in your conclusions, babe, which were really quite brilliant, but gaali stones are just raw energy, and we’ve got so many sources of energy it’s not funny. I’m not saying we wouldn’t like to have some to study, but there are many other things I’ll be trading for as well, some things I see right here in your hall. For instance, those goblets on your table. Aren’t they made of gold?”
“Think you I have no sense, woman? No one would trade for cheap metal dishes.”
“Then they are not of gold?”
“Certainly they are,” he snorted. “But it is a soft, useless metal, good only for the making of jewelry and shiny vases-and dishes.”
“Ah, but that’s only your opinion, and perhaps that of your entire planet, because it’s something you people have in abundance here. Where I come from, it’s not so plentiful. My planet doesn’t need it, but there are other worlds out there whose entire economies are gold-based. You find it useless. They use it for money. And that’s not all. Once I report the discovery of Sha-Ka’an, you’ll have representatives here from every planet in the Centura League to make offers for everything from food and wine to jewels and minerals to plants and trees. Even your dirt is valuable to planets with contaminated or burned-out soils. So don’t think gaali stones are the only things worth trading around here.”