Free Resenting the Hero by Moira J. Moore Page B

difficulty.
    Don’t think about it.
    My name was called again. I approached the benches, and I found myself facing my would-be protector, the one who “knew about Shields.” So he was that good, was he?
    I looked him over. Very good build. Quite a bit taller than me. Elegant feet, for a man. He was soaked with sweat and breathing hard, as I was. He was also trembling, as I was not. Apparently the music didn’t fortify him as it did me. That was my advantage.
    I could take him.
    We mounted the benches. The drums rolled. The bars rose to slightly above knee level—for me—and crashed together. I had to leap higher than he did to avoid them. One foot went down on the off beat, the other came up. I grit my teeth and forced exhausted muscles to move.
    I refused to lose. I concentrated on the music, willing it to take me over. I reminded myself what the timpani did to me, and I felt a roll shiver through me. I felt it coat the pain a little. Good enough.
    I sneaked a look at my opponent. He wasn’t landing on the benches well, wasn’t quite centered. His trembling was even more pronounced. I could practically feel it. Or maybe that was me I was feeling. I had started to wobble, too.
    My opponent got caught. He shifted his weight too heavily to his down foot and he couldn’t shift it back again. Two bars tried to meet and found their course obstructed by his knee. I was jarred back to the benches, and he screamed as wood crushed bone and cartilage.
    He collapsed to the ground and rolled onto his back, digging his hands into the ground to keep them from clutching his shattered knee. There were calls for the healer, who was mysteriously absent. No one went near him. No one knew what to do for him, and no worried companion came out of the crowd to comfort him.
    I dropped onto the ground, barely on my feet, watching it all through a haze. Sweat was running into my eyes, my heart was pounding in my ears, and my chest heaved in a desperate attempt to suck air into my lungs. The music had stopped, and I was shaking so hard I thought something might fall off.
    I saw Karish force his way through the crowd, a goblet in one hand. Wine, I supposed. He knelt beside my victim, insinuating an arm under the man’s back and raising him enough to sip at the wine.
    Then I felt it, even through my own raging senses. Those tiny releases, those subtle adjustments that meant only one thing. He was channeling. He was channeling? Right then? What the hell was he thinking? We weren’t on duty, and I was exhausted.
    He was channeling. That meant I had to Shield. I cleared my head of my heartbeat and forced myself to pay attention to his.
    Only there was no real rush of power through him, not like before. Just an odd rambling trickle that curled in on itself and barely made it past the Shields I’d erected. His blood wasn’t racing, his mind was calm, it was almost like he wasn’t really channeling at all. But he was doing something. I could feel it. I could see the tension flowing from the body of my opponent, the breath easing.
    The healer arrived. Finally. She was rummaging through her sack as she ran, pulling out a small bag as she knelt beside my opponent. I watched her take out a small leaf, which she stuck into her patient’s mouth. He chewed on it and waited for the sedative to take hold.
    The small flow moving through Karish grew weaker, and weaker still, and trickled off into nothing. Karish’s own internal protections snapped back into place. I let my Shields drop.
    I nearly dropped with them, but Van Staal, who had snuck up behind me, caught me when I would have collapsed. “You’ll ruin your clothes,” I warned him. I was glad I could speak at all. Shielding hadn’t been much of a challenge that time, but it had eliminated what reserves the dancing had left me.
    â€œToo late,” Van Staal said, hooking an arm around my waist and helping me across the sands. I