The entire community gathered for their evening meal in the great hall on the first floor. Penrys and Zandaril joined Zongchas and Vladzan at the head table, and Penrys was amused when she noticed the covert glances their presence brought from the rest of the diners.
As in the Collegium, light was provided by devices mounted at head height along the walls, where torches might be expected. Penrys was itching to examine one up close, since they didn’t feel as though they operated on the same principles as the kind she was familiar with. When one dimmed, she noticed a young wizard who rose from his seat to tend to it, taking it down from the wall, then rehanging it again once it had brightened. Charging its power-stone? The task of apprentices, to teach them technique?
She tried to get a sense for the mood in the room, both apprehensive and hostile. The students all wore armbands in several colors. Rank, maybe? Student colors were used in the Collegium.
Many of the people without sashes wore similar clothing, male and female. Priests. I’ve seen those garments in illustrations about Rasesdad. There were three whose clothing reminded her of Pyalshrog, the hill-tribe leader from yesterday’s parley, all skins and sashes.
Once again there was no pretense of speaking at the table in Kigali-yat for Zandaril’s benefit. She translated for him, but she could feel his frustration.
“Tonight,” she said to him, as they waited for the meal to end. “You will learn the sharing of language tonight.”
“Too bad,” he murmured, for her ear alone. “I had other plans.”
“I have an idea about that,” she answered. “Tonight you will start to learn Rasesni, from me, and I promise you will be happy about it.”
He raised an eyebrow, but she refused to elaborate.
Zongchas rose, and everyone in the hall quieted as they saw him.
He glanced throughout the space, catching eyes in every corner, until he had the attention of all.
“Today we have welcomed two wizards from the Kigaliwen, who are not Kigaliwen themselves. They have seen our enemy, recently. He is not far away.”
At that there was a rising hubbub throughout the hall, and he waited for it to subside.
“We have a plan to help us, all of us, defeat him. We begin tomorrow.”
He raised his hand to request silence after the resulting outburst, and beckoned to his guests.
Penrys rose and walked to stand next to him, where she would be clearly visible, and Zandaril joined her.
She pitched her voice to carry throughout the hall, and spoke in Rasesni, translating for Zandaril via mind-speech. “My name is Penrys, and this is my colleague, Zandaril. As you can see from his face and his robes, he is from sarq-Zannib.”
She paused. “I am not.” She pulled at the collar of her shirt until it was spread wide and the thick chain around her neck was clearly visible.
Not entirely to her surprise, people actually stood up from their seats to get a better look, and conversation broke out everywhere.
Zongchas leaned down and pounded the table with the butt of his knife. “Silence!” It took a few moments before she could speak again and expect to be heard.
“I do not know your enemy,” she said, “but it may be that I share in some of his abilities. I hope so, for you’re going to learn how to fight me and we’ll see if a motivated and organized group of wizards can defeat him and take their revenge.”
She raised her voice as she spoke to penetrate the rising response, until the final words came out in a shout, and it was impossible to say more.
Penrys noticed that several of the older wizards were close-mouthed and unresponsive, and nodded to herself. Skeptics weren’t a bad thing—they gave her something to concentrate on. The young ones were easy. If she could convince the others, then maybe they all had a chance.
A sudden assault against her shield got her attention. One of the people in front of her wanted her dead, now. He was young, about Zandaril’s age, and weaker than she was. She fended him off easily, but others joined him.
The crowd was growing aware of the attack. Some watched in silence, monitoring its progress, and many actively cheered it on.
The head table beside her remained neutral. Penrys heard Zongchas mutter, “We should stop this,” but someone else, Nyagchos she thought, responded calmly, “Let’s see what happens.”
With a wry smile, she thought, I should have expected this. So let’s give them a show, since they insist.
Despite the situation, she enjoyed using her strength without worrying about who saw her.
She pushed back against her attackers, evicted them casually, and waited for the cheers of their partisans to falter before taunting, “Don’t you want to learn how to do that right? If you can’t beat me, how will you beat the Voice?”
She walked off to the side of the head table so that she could face it, too, and include it in her speech. They were none of them her friends here, except Zandaril, but they all needed to work together, and if she couldn’t make them accept her, there was no hope for them.
“Better learn how to work together instead of dying alone.”
She could feel their outrage. Some cried out the names of people taken by the Voice, friends or relatives she presumed.
She let them, for a few moments. “Don’t you want them back?” She gestured to indicate Zandaril, who remained standing at his place. “We saw many of them alive.”
That silenced them all. Penrys looked at the dirty dishes along the table, the servants frozen against the walls.
“Let’s do this now, since that’s what you want. Who’s the strongest among you?”
From different points in the hall three people stood up and glanced challengingly at each other, while anyone else still standing resumed their seat, barring Zandaril. Clearly there’s some disagreement among them about who is best.
With an inner smile, she waved the implicit dispute aside. “Altogether, then. Try me.”
There was little attempt at cooperation and they made no impression upon her shields. She overpowered each of them, and the audience monitoring had no trouble following the details.
She nodded at them, then glanced at the entire room. “Let me know when you want to learn how to do it better.”
Turning, she walked out and felt Zandaril follow her. The noisy buzz rising behind them told her all she needed to know.