Shield's Lady

and a woman who live together for years. Except in bed, of course, where it stays unique. But with us it was there almost from the beginning. It’s sporadic at this point, but it’s also very strong. I think it’s going to eventually grow even stronger.”
    Sariana thought of the image of her backside that had popped into her mind while she was on the river sled. She tugged on her lower lip and gazed into the fire while she considered it. Experimentally she tried projecting it toward Gryph, just as she had projected her passionate demands the night before. She glanced at Gryph.
    “You see what I mean?” he said with an understanding expression.
    “We would have no privacy at all,” Sariana said in shock as she considered the ramifications.
    He shook his head reassuringly. “I don’t think it will work like that. I think we will have to be actively projecting in order to send anything even remotely comprehensible. Just like working prisma.”
    “Well, what about that—that lewd picture of myself that just appeared in my head yesterday?”
    He grinned, showing his teeth in the firelight. “I was bored. For once you didn’t seem inclined to talk so I decided to do a little experimenting. I just wanted to see what would happen if I tried projecting a scene into your mind. This is the first time you’ve admitted you picked up on it. Until now I had no way of knowing whether or not you had received it. Which should tell you something.”
    “What does it tell me?” Sariana asked automatically. Then she leaped to the obvious conclusion. “Oh, I see. I didn’t send anything back to you so you had no way of knowing if I had gotten the message.”
    “Right. I’ll admit I don’t know much about telepathy. Shields and their mates have always just skirted the edges of anything that could be labeled genuine telepathy. But judging from what I’ve learned by working prisma,
    I’d say it’s not a passive process. It takes strength and a deliberate focus.”
    “And both factors come into play automatically under conditions of extreme stress, is that it?”
    “And under conditions of passion,” he added blandly. “Don’t fret, Sariana, I can’t read your mind any more than any other man can read a woman’s mind.”
    “Well, that’s a relief,” she tried to say lightly. The truth was she was feeling extremely nervous about the whole matter. She rose and settled herself onto a convenient rock. “What are we going to do now?”
    “That’s my Sariana,” he said approvingly. “Back to business when things get sticky. Now, thanks to you, I’ve got a fix on a large source of prisma somewhere in this gorge. Tomorrow morning I will stash you safely here in this cove and then I will see if I can track the beams to their point of origin.”
    She didn’t like the casual way he said that. “Then what?”
    Gryph shrugged in that gracefully negligent manner all westerners seemed to be born with. “Then I’ll decide what to do about it. If I think there’s enough time, I’ll wait until Delek and the others arrive. If there isn’t time, I’ll try to neutralize the weapons on my own.”
    “Can one Shield neutralize a whole shipload of the prisma weapons?”
    “If he’s strong enough. And if the ship is a small one.”
    “How strong are you, Gryph?” Sariana asked quietly.
    “I don’t know,” he told her. “No Shield learns the limits of his own strength until he actually confronts a weapon ship. I’ve never even seen a ship.”
    “Oh.” She sat in silence for a while, thinking over what he had said. “If it turns out you aren’t strong enough to neutralize the weapons and if you have no backup, what happens?”
    “You worry too much, Sariana,” he said calmly. He got to his feet and began banking the fire. “We have a lot to do tomorrow morning. I think we’d better get to bed.”
    Sariana started to demand an answer to her question, but she stopped, realizing she could guess the answer from his evasive response. Whatever happened to a Shield who lacked sufficient strength to neutralize his target, it wasn’t pleasant. Perhaps it meant death. Or insanity. Sariana shivered and folded her cloak more tightly about her.
    The scarlet-toe on her shoulder yawned sleepily as Sariana reached up to pat it with the tip of her finger. Gryph moved around the fire, his actions efficient and economical as he made preparations for securing the campsite.
    “How close do you think that ship is?” Sariana