Talis Weyr Final Frenzy

Tefane

The only word which could possibly describe Tefane was intense. She had beautiful peach colored skin, unmarked and unblemished. Her spun-light hair was soft as silk and kept in an interesting style. Her eyes... Her huge, yellow-colored eyes were what really tended to disturb people the most. Including her parents, who had abandoned her in a small Hold as they passed through it. Gypsies they were, or wanderers, or worse. No one quite knew, because no one had ever seen them, and certainly there were no stories of such yellow-eyed men or women about.

Any sane person would never have allowed such a beautiful child to die, and so she was taken in by the cook and her family - though almost immediately it was clear she wouldn't stay with them. The Lady of the hold was barren, and this girl might just be what she needed to keep her husband from sending her away.

Though he mistrusted this idea at first, Lord Fedail had no interest in throwing out a good woman and less of abandoning a baby that had already been abandoned once. By the time she was six turns old, Tefane stuck in his heart as surely as his wife's.

Unfortunately, that was not the case with Fedail's brother Finn. He was never at ease around the girl, whose eyes he claimed could burn holes in your back as she watched you. Also unfortunately, Finn never thought his brother should have been in charge of the Hold. Being a middle child could do that, apparently. Everyone knew but none could prove, that he murdered his brother to get the Hold under his own control. Lady Telela would have been happy to leave the place, now that her husband was gone - but Finn had plans for her. Plans that were entirely inappropriate.

Finn had a wife, and two children already. A wife who said nothing of his beatings, children who already learned their own lessons from his hard fists. Whoever he chose to lead the Hold, the other would probably do exactly as Finn had done, and murder the inheritor.

That left Tefane with a bit of a problem. She was eight now, after the upheaval of the Hold and rearranging of all she knew. Finn's boys were both in their young teens, and of course there were no other children to the Lady. Whatever happened to Telela, no one knew, but she'd vanished without a trace and without being investigated.

That left Tefane alone with this murderous man and his family. Finn's wife hardly spoke, but when she did there was nothing kind about her words. She fed and clothed Tefane because she had to, not because she wanted to. Her husband had ideas to use the girl, and Kaia would not interfere. Tefane was not even twelve when she was first traded for a night to a visiting Lord, an act which assured her there would be blood on her hands some day. She'd wondered why Finn had kept her alive, never once hitting her.

Now she knew. She was to become his whore, the Hold's entertaining wench. Well, she thought, so be it. For now.

Tefane continued to grow into a beautiful young woman, but she also began to show signs of rebellion. She would never try to run away, that would be foolish since she didn't know the area beyond what she could see from the Hold's windows. But she did test Finn's patience. She wanted to see how far he'd go - whether he would finally strike her and risk his investment, or could control himself from doing so.

She spat in his food, before serving it. Right there at the table. He sent a burly man who liked to smother his partner to her the next week.

She left soiled undergarments - the visiting Lord's, not her own - in his study. There was a sadistic Lord whose wishes were tempered only by Finn's insistance that he leave no marks on the girl - or that they'd heal within a month.

Tefane even left her own menstrual fluid in places best not mentioned to his guests. Without fail there would be another ugly, leering man come to her room for his pleasure.

Over time, these pranks became known to other Holders, and Finn began worrying that he would become the butt of jokes, or worse.

Finally he could stand it no longer, and cornered the sixteen year old in that darkened study. "You're to stop making a nuisance out of yourself, little whore," he spat, "or I will sell you to the most despicable, ugliest and worst man in the land."

That didn't even make her pause. Tefane hissed back, "then do it, Finn, sell me off to some horrible mean-hearted man. And when I strike him in his moment of ecstacy or bite his pecker off, do you think he'll stop at beating me? Such a man who would buy me from you, would be more than willing to take revenge upon the pimp who sold me to him."

Finn's jaw and fists trembled in anger. But he saw the look in her amber colored eyes, she was right. That little bitch was right. He didn't dare sell her off to some hoodlum, it would be more punishment for himself than her! Plus... he considered in the back of his squirmy mind, he'd lose his cash cow.

They reached an impasse. For the moment, Finn did nothing, and Tefane stopped her pranks. Mostly, she thought, he was letting the fervor about them die down. Apparently, though, he was thinking of something far worse than a nightly visit from some random Holder.

Far worse.

He had kept it secret, somehow, even from his wife, who would normally have curtly informed Tefane of who she'd be bedding that night. So when a dozen men appeared that afternoon for a hunt and feast... Tefane began to worry. There had never been so many here, not at once. She recognized at least two of them - they were both smelly, unkempt men who she had to force to bathe properly before she would approach them. But the others... She had to guess, they were from far and wide. Their rank and Hold badges were only faintly familiar.

Tefane knew she was in trouble. Serious trouble. For the first time in her life. Even though she'd been sold off and forced to couple with strangers, she'd managed to keep some amount of dignity about her. But now... as dinner progressed and she was kept in a tall-backed chair near the dinner table and watched by Finn's right-hand man constantly, even Kaia began to worry about the girl.

Though Tefane kept her cool, and didn't let her face betray her feelings, when Finn announced the 'pleasures of the evening' would include all of them being allowed to do whatever they would like to her, it appeared that Kaia had had enough.

"Finn, this has gone on too far," Kaia said, gruffly. She was not a beautiful woman, never even as a young lady. But she could be respected for her tolerance of Finn's antics. Respected, or perhaps, pitied. When Finn glanced at his wife with such a caustic glare, even his sons held their tongues and breath.

"Would you like to join her, then?" He said, very quietly. The drunken men at the table hooted and shouted, taunts came from all sides of the broad room. "I think you would, you've been jealous all this time of that little slut. Dressing her up like a doll, you like it too don't you? Don't you?" His voice rose to a bellow. "Have them both, tear their clothes off, tie them down, do what you want with them," Finn shrieked. The madness in his eyes was obvious, and it wasn't the drink.

His sons kept silent. Their adopted whore of a sister... they could see Finn wanting to humiliate her after what she'd done to him. Finn had not told them what was up, but they'd guessed it would be something like this. But... this was their mother. They acted quickly. One of them had a flitter, which was sent somewhere instantly - where it had gone was obvious a moment later. But in that moment... the tenseness at the table burst into action.

Kaia stood from her chair, knocking it over and screaming at her husband. Obscenities the likes of which had hardly come from a Lady's mouth, countered by more of them from Finn. The horrible laughter from the hunters and Holders almost made Tefane ill, as did the leering looks on the trio of men who were now approaching her in the corner. They grabbed her by her arms, while Finn and his wife shouted at each other, and Kaia was being grasped at by another man. The table would do - others cleared the plates and dishes off it with bold swipes of their arms even as they were unbuckling their belts.

Tefane was tossed bodily onto the hard slab, and she resisted as best she could, staring directly at the men, spitting at them, hissing and biting since they held her arms still and she could not scratch at them. One was about to try moving near her, when everything shattered with a noise the likes of which had never been heard by any of those present.

A chorus of sound, raw and loud - shook the walls. Glass fell from the table if it was still there, plates rattled in the cabinet on the wall. The very floor seemed to tremble at this noise.

It stunned some of the more drunk men, broke Finn's current tirade, and caused Kaia to faint away - not that the whole rest of the situation hadn't helped there! Half a second later, the doors to the great dining hall crashed open and three men entered. They were riders. Dragon riders.

Kalif's flitter returned to his arm, and the riders knew not to confront the young men. Nikk took that moment to push one of the Holders away from his mother's now-slumped form. Words were exchanged, words which Tefane hardly heard over her own blood pounding in her ears.

There was no point in fainting like Kaia had, though she had to admit it crossed her mind. And to her brain, refusing to move was as close as she could get to that. She slipped down onto the floor next to the table, and clutched her arms to her body. Though she'd been used and tossed aside before, this was not like those nights. She'd actually learned much in her time with those other men, she'd actually enjoyed some of it. While she could behave as they asked, she did so only to prevent them from hurting her. Apparently they had rules, between Finn and them. But this ... was different.

The dragon riders used their authority to clear out the room of drunken men - except for the three who had grasped Tefane, and the two who had been about to do the same to Kaia; and Finn and his sons. Other riders had arrived in the meantime, including ones who carried with them the legal authority of the Judges guild.

It was Kalif who knelt near Tefane, keeping his distance, and gently said, "it's over, Tef, it's over."

Tefane was around six years his younger, and had kept her distance from the boys. When the noise and motion around the dining hall subsided, Tefane finally threw herself into Kalif's arms and sobbed until she could hardly breathe.

It eventually turned out that Kalif had been monitoring this situation with more than a youthful eye. He knew that this was wrong to do to anyone, regardless of what any Lordling would assert. As this had gone on for years, Kalif and Nikk had the time to figure out that their father wasn't just a bitter, unpredictable man - he was dangerous to more than just himself. If they had told him what they planned, he'd have probably tried getting them to turn on one another. No, they would share the Hold, if there was anything left of it after all this settled.

Kalif's visits to the nearby Harper's hall a few years back - just before he found his flitter - had gotten him in contact with a rider. That rider had even brought him to a Weyr, the flitter from its sands. They were not close friends, but good, quickly established buddies. They bet on races and they threw dice together, laughing about the same girl that got away from both of them at one gather.

So Kalif sent his flit to that man, with the most urgent form of emotion he could muster. The flitter too had sensed the intensity of the mood, and since the rider knew exactly where this flitter was from, he recognized that there could only be something terribly wrong going on. Carefully, as calmly as could be managed, Kalif and his brother told the Justice about things here. Tefane finally came to her senses, after sipping at a glass of chilled wine and washing it down with cold water.

"Why did you not run away, girl?" The justice asked, "I mean... why?" He waved his hand, looking at the aftermath of the night.

"A gilded cage is still gilded, sir," was her reply.

"I imagine you won't want to stay here, any longer," Kalif said, and Tefane nodded.

"You can come with us," his rider friend said, "it's not right for you to stay here... Do you have anything you want to take? We can leave now."

Tefane passed Kaia on her way into her small room, and her yellow eyes narrowed to slits. "I hope they put you in a cell with him," she spat at the woman's face, who cried silently.

Tefane put some of the things she'd preferred to wear into the single blanket that she had since she was a child. It reminded her of her adopted mother Telela, of better times. Folding it up and tying it off, she handed it to the rider, who would find a secure place to put it in his harness. Tefane stood before Finn one last time, as the others watched in a tense pause.

"Was it worth killing your own brother, for this end, Finn? Because I still win, you should have killed me like you did mother." Again she spat directly at him, he was too exhausted from the brawl with the riders to do more than growl.

The riders took her upon the back of what was surely the most grand brown shaded mount, and up away from the only place she'd known her whole life. She looked down at it, from behind the rider, and spat at it too.

***

She got used to life in the Weyr reasonably quickly. Surprising the healers, she'd never gotten pregnant in the dozens of times she'd been bedded, though she seemed fertile enough. Also surprising, was that she harbored no particular fear nor ill will toward men in general. At least one other female rider proclaimed that she'd have run away, and a third pointed out that that trick hardly worked when the men in question were truly determined. Somewhere in there, in a womanly discussion among drudge and rider alike, it came out that two of those present had been raped by a man and that there were ways to make them pay that didn't involve death or even mutilation. Tefane knew those ways. She dearly hoped that Finn would pay day and night.

It was while she was walking the halls, learning the layout of this Weyr - so strange to be in a place where she could walk where she wanted, talk when she felt like it, and didn't get sour looks or angry shouts in reply - the rider who had come to help her out called her over. "They've passed judgement on Finn and his men," he said, "though I'm sure it's not enough for you."

"Tell me he'll at least be imprisoned," she said, allowing the desperate edge of anger into her voice.

"Oh, he will, he'll be lucky if he doesn't get murdered in there. His wife will be jailed but let out in a few years. The other men, well, they've gotten fined, that's all."

"That's not terrible," Tefane said, looking downward. "What about Kalif and Nikk?"

"Well, they did play roles in keeping you, but ... they weren't excatly responsible."

"That's all right," Tefane nodded. "I wish they'd done something earlier. But... it's done. There's nothing more for me there, and Finn won't be able to get to me ever again."

"That's the spirit," the rider smiled. "Um... and... well, I hadn't told you when we were taking you out of there, because it was all so chaotic. But... I think you should stand for a dragon."

Tefane blinked twice, and twice again. "What?"

"I think you should stand! You'd make a good rider, you're sure of yourself and practical, my dragon says you've got a good clear mind." He paused and then shot a strange sideways glance at the dragon who obviously wasn't in the hall with them, and grumbled, "don't you even start about my mind being foggy, you great brown lump."

Tefane gave a giggle, the first she'd done in years. "Well... I will stand then. But I don't even know the first thing about dragons."

"You'll learn," he promised.

She did - within days she was being prepared in the candidate classes, and then rather abruptly flown off with many others to a place that was called Talis. It was there she finally could close the book on her past and old life - it was there that a minty colored green dragon peeked over her shell, sped past another green on the sands, and plopped down before her. Cimomoth was her name, the impression was true.

The question was, what would she do as a rider? She wasn't remarkably strong or big, she'd hardly had the kind of education that could qualify her as a diplomat or a recordskeeper... She was fantastically pretty, and she did put up with a ton of guff before hitting her snapping point. But fighting Thread? She was not afraid to admit that she didn't want to do that.

Dragonhope accomodated her, though - and got one particular thing out of her that even she didn't expect. When she glanced over a Threadfall chart, and looked at the starchart next to it, she realized that there was a gap in coverage over a bleak but populated portion of the Weyr's flight area! From then on, she was given the task of making certain that everyone was where they were needed. She technically flew with the Zamin Pankh, the healers and ground forces, but was hardly out and about unless it was to scout overland and make sure the skies were clear.

She loved flying, though, and over the next few years she developed a taste for challenging other riders to treasure hunts, across the country side. Even the Weyrling masters enjoyed these outings, trying to locate things she and others had hidden, based only on hidden clues and riddles.