The Saga of the Renunciates (115 page)

Whatever path she chose, always it seemed that Jaelle had been there before, and she only a clumsy follower in her steps. Even now…

Then the rapport fell away (how long had it lasted? A lifetime? Half a second?) and Jaelle said quietly, “No,
bredhiya mea, viyha mea
, not jealous of Camilla. No more than you are jealous of Damon.”

But there had been a time, Magda remembered, when she
had
been jealous of Damon, painfully, blindly, obsessively jealous of Damon. She could not bear that either, any more than she could bear, after she and Jaelle had come together as if destined, that any man could give Jaelle anything she could not. Now she was ashamed of that brief jealousy, her fear that Jaelle could love her less because she loved the father of her child. She had fought through and triumphed, still loving Jaelle, and loving Damon just as much
because
he could give Jaelle the one thing she could not, for all her love.

“The one thing that could make me hesitate would be leaving you, Margali. Even Cleindori has a dozen who would be glad to rear her if I could not. But you have something to return for. I don’t. What do I have ahead of me but to go back, take the Aillard seat in Council when Lady Rohana is gone? And why should I want to do that? In the Renunciates, and also in the Forbidden Tower, we are working so that the Domains need not depend on Councils, and Comyn, who try to keep
laran
in their own hands for their own good. The Hasturs who rule the Council don’t want independent subjects, thinking for themselves, any more than they want independent women.”

“Then isn’t it your job to take that Council seat and help them change the way they think?”

“Oh, Magda,
breda
, don’t you think I’ve been through all that in my mind? I can’t change the Council because, at heart, the Council doesn’t want to change. It has everything it wants the way it is: power, the means to work for its own greed. Now when people don’t work for it of their own free will, it bribes them with promises of power of their own, and an appeal to
their
greed.”

She turned and paced restlessly along the cliff, her face starkly moonlit. “Look what they did to Lady Rohana! They said to her, ‘It doesn’t matter to you that you are not free; you have power instead, and power is more important than freedom.’ They bribed her with power. I am so afraid that they will do that to me, Magda, find out what I want most, and bribe me with it—I simply cannot believe that all the Comyn are corrupt, but they have power, and it makes them greedy for more. Even the Towers are playing the game of power, power, power, always over other people.”

“Maybe that’s simply the way life works, Jaelle. I don’t like it either. But it’s like what you said about bargaining, haggling in the market; it makes each party think he’s getting the better of the other.” Magda’s smile was strained. “You said you liked haggling.”

“Only when it’s a game. Not when it’s real.”

“But it is a game, Shaya. Power, politics, whatever you call it—it’s simply the way life works. Human nature. Romantics among the Terrans think the Darkovans are immune to it because you aren’t part of an interstellar Empire, but people
do
operate because of profit, and greed, as you say—”

“Then I don’t want any part of it, Magda. And I know they will try to bully me into taking that Aillard seat in Council, and within ten years I should be as bad as any of them, using power because they have convinced me that I am doing good with it… ”

“I think you would be incorruptible, Jaelle—” Magda began, but Jaelle shook her head with a wise sadness.

“Nobody’s incorruptible, not if they let themselves be tricked into trying to play those power games. The only thing to do is to stay outside them. I think maybe the
leroni
of Avarra, the Sisterhood of the Wise, could show me how to stay outside. Maybe they know why the world works that way. Why good and evil work the way they do.”

Jaelle turned restlessly, her cloak flying.

“Look at Camilla. She has a right to hate—worse than Acquilara. Did you hear her say she was a Hastur, at least that she had Hastur
laran
? And look what they did to her! But she’s such a good person, such a
loving
person. And Damon, too. Life has treated him badly— but he still can love. The world is so rotten to people, and people keep saying it isn’t fair—”

Magda murmured, “The
cristoforos
say it: ‘Holy one, why do the wicked flourish like mushrooms on a dead tree, while the righteous man is everywhere beset with thorns… ?’”

“Magda, did you ever think? Maybe the world isn’t
supposed
to be a better place? Maybe it goes on the way it does so that people can
choose
what’s really important.” Jaelle spoke passionately, striding to and fro into the face of the wind, her auburn curls flying from under the hood of her cloak. She had forgotten the cold and the jet-stream wind.

“Let the Council, and the Terrans, play power games with each other. Andrew walked out and did what he could somewhere else. Let the Towers have their political struggles, under that horrible old hag Leonie Hastur—I don’t care what Damon says, he may love her, but I know she is a tyrant as cruel and domineering as her twin brother who rules the Council! Between the Council, and the Towers, where is there a place for the use of
laran
? But Hilary and Callista found another way, even though the Towers were corrupt. Let women wear chains in the Dry Towns, or be good wives in the Domains, unless they have the courage to get out of it—real courage, not my kind that’s just lack of imagination. Courage—to get out of the Dry Towns, or their own chains, the way my mother or Lady Rohana did, or the way you did when you found the Guild-house—”

“But your mother didn’t get out of it, Jaelle. She died.” For years, Magda knew, Jaelle had concealed this knowledge from herself.

“Sure she died. So did yours. So will you and I some day. Since we’re all going to die anyhow, no matter what we do or don’t do, what sense does it make to go around scared all the time, crawling, and putting up with a lot of rotten stuff just to hang on a little longer? Look at Cholayna. She could have stayed nice and safe in Thendara, or accepted your offer to send her back from Nevarsin. Even if she died here, wouldn’t it have been better than turning back at Ravensmark and knowing she’d failed in what she set out to do? Living is taking risks. You could have stayed in the Guild-house and obeyed orders. My mother could have stayed in the Dry Towns and worn chains all her life. She might have died when Valentine was born even though, but she’d have died in comfort, and I’d still be there. In chains.” She looked pensively at her bare wrists.

“It’s all there is, Magda. We can’t change life. There’s too much greed and profit and—and
safety
. Human nature, like you said. We can only get out of it. Like Damon when he founded the Forbidden Tower. He could have been
blinded
—his
laran
burned out, because he wouldn’t back down and promise to use his
donas
only in the way the others, the ones with the power, said he should. But if he’d done that he’d have been blinded anyway; he’d have done it to himself. And he knew it.”

Magda knew Damon’s story. She knew she did not have that kind of strength.
Except, sometimes, when Jaelle forces me to follow her into some mad challenge
…

“So don’t you see, Magda? I can go back and play dreary games of power in the Council, or I can go
ahead
, to whatever these
leroni
can teach me—”

“You said that courage was needed to set up the Forbidden Tower, and we have a place there—”

“That was Damon’s trial of integrity, Margali. Not mine.” Jaelle turned and faced her freemate. “Only I can’t go if it’s going to hurt you
that
much. That’s the one thing that could stop me. I won’t do it over your— your dead body.”

There was such a lump in Magda’s throat she could hardly speak. She didn’t have to; she gave Jaelle her hands again.

Shaya, my love, my treasure, do what you must do.

And you’ll come too, Margali?

Suddenly Magda knew that Jaelle’s quest had become her own. But she had, perhaps, stronger ties. A weakness, now, not a strength, but:

I don’t know. I must see Cholayna safe. I brought her here and I cannot abandon her now. I’m not sure, Jaelle. But I won’t try and hold you back
.

“I had hoped we could go together,” Jaelle said aloud as they turned back toward the buildings. “Margali, we must go in, we’ll freeze.” And indeed it was growing colder, the cold no longer bracing and stimulating but deadly. “I suppose you’re right; if you’re not ready, it wouldn’t be right for you. But, oh,
breda
, I want to say, we go together or not at all. I couldn’t bear to leave you behind.”

But always, Magda thought, Jaelle was that one step ahead of her.

“Lead on,” she said lightly, “and I’ll follow as far as I can. But just now I’d prefer to follow you in out of the cold.”

Magda was dreaming…

There was a circle of robed figures around a fire; dark hooded figures, gathered around something that lay at their center. Magda could not see what it was, nor see what they were doing to it; only that there was a sound like the screaming of hawks, and with every cry of the hawks there was a pitiable crying, so that for a moment Magda thought in horror,
it is Shaya, they have my little Shaya there, they are hurting her
. The fire at the center shot up and surged high, and Magda could see that it was no child, but the naked figure of a woman, lying bound in their circle.

Magda tried to rush forward to her, but it seemed that she was held in place by invisible bonds; chains like the chains of a Dry-Town woman.

“For the love of God, help me, Lorne! You got me into this, now you have a duty to get me out of it!
”

It was Lexie’s voice. She had known all along somehow that it was Lexie lying there helpless, and that she had been responsible for the act or omission that had landed Lexie there.

She struggled against her bonds, but the hawks went on screaming. She could see what they were doing now; with every surge upward of the flame, the hawks swirled, borne on the currents of fire, and swooped over Lexie’s inert figure, and with every downward swoop they tore into her naked flesh, carrying away great dripping hunks of blood and skin, while Lexie screamed, terrible screams that reminded Magda horribly of the time she and Jaelle had been marooned in a cave with rising floodwater, and Jaelle had miscarried Peter Haldane’s child. She had been delirious, not fully aware what was happening much of the time, and in her delirium she had screamed like that, as if she were being torn asunder, and Magda had not been able to help her. They had come so close to dying there.

And now it was Lexie screaming. And it is my fault; she was competing with me, and that was how she got into this.

Again Magda strained against her bonds to rush forward to Lexie, but there was a curious blue fire in the air, and in that evil glow she could see the face of the black sorceress Aquilara.

“Yes, you always want to ease your own conscience by being so ready to help other people. But now it is your task to learn detachment; that her troubles are not of your making, and that she must take the consequences of her own actions,” Aquilara explained callously. It sounded so rational, so reasonable, and yet the screams tore at her as if every stroke of the razor talons and cruel bloody beaks fell on her own heart.

“Yes, that is what they are doing,” Aquilara went on explaining. “They will tear and tear at that false and sentimental conscience of yours which you think of as your heart, until it is gone from your breast.” And Magda, looking down, saw a great bleeding hole opening in her chest, from which a screaming hawk carried away a piece of flesh…

No. Think. This is a dream
. Slowly a sense of reality penetrated Magda’s mind; slowly, slowly. She felt herself pull free, free of the invisible bonds, raised her arms, jerked herself up, and found herself sitting bolt upright in her cold sleeping bag. Her heart was still pounding with the nightmare. She heard Jaelle cry out, and reached over to shake her freemate awake.

“Shaya, Shaya, are you having a nightmare too?”

“Zandru’s hells,” Jaelle whispered, “it was a dream, a dream, I was only dreaming—Aquilara’s sorceresses. They were torturing Rafaella, and they had chained me up to Rafi’s big
rryl
and were making me play ballads on it, and she was screaming—ah, how she was screaming, like a girl of fourteen in childbirth—and the demons all kept yelling, ‘Louder, play louder, so we cannot hear her scream… ’ ” She shuddered and buried her head against Magda’s shoulder.

Magda stroked Jaelle’s soft hair, comprehending what had happened. Even the themes in the nightmares they had shared had been all but identical.

She wondered if Camilla and the others were suffering nightmare too. She was almost afraid to try to sleep again. “I thought this place was guarded,” she said, “that even the names of that witch and her people could not be spoken here… ”

“I think that was only while we were sick and exhausted,” Jaelle ventured. “Now that we are well again, and there are decisions to be made, nightmares can move in our minds, those demons—” she hesitated, said tentatively “… torturing us?”

But Magda could not attend to the question. A wave of horror swept through her, making her physically ill with its impact.

She was lying on the ground, chained hand and foot at the center of a ring of robed and hooded figures… no; they were men, scarred bandits, wielding knives, naked, their gross hairy bodies and erect phalluses touching her everywhere, intruding into her everywhere, and they were like razors, like knives shearing off her breasts, invading her womb, tearing her womanhood from her. One of them, an evil hawk-faced man with a scar, held up the body of a naked, bleeding child, a fetus half-formed, shrieking
, “Here is the Heir to Hastur that she may never bear!”
Slowly, slowly, the face of the bandit changed, became, not gross and scarred, but noble, pale, detached, the face of the sorceress Leonie… No; it was a man’s face. The face of the regent, Lorill Hastur
. “How can I acknowledge as my own child a girl who has been so treated, so scarred?”
he asked coldly, and turned away
…

“Magda!” Jaelle clutched at her in horror; Magda freed herself from the terrible paralysis of nightmare. Once before during the waking of her own
laran
she had become a part of Camilla’s nightmares. A dreadful time; and the worst of it had been Camilla’s horror and shame, that she could not barricade these memories and horrors from her friend and lover.

She bent over Camilla and shook her awake.

“You were crying out in your sleep, love. Were you having a bad dream?”

Magda had seen this before: how Camilla struggled up from the paralysis of terror. With shaking hands, she wiped the sweat of nightmare from her face, fighting to compose herself.

“Aye,” she whispered at last. “My thanks for waking me, oath-sisters.” She knew, and she knew they knew, what she had been dreaming. But she could trust them to ask no questions, and she was grateful.

The next morning, Cholayna’s color was good, and her breathing so easy that the women who came to bring the breakfast porridge dismantled the steam tent and took it away. Cholayna sat up and dressed herself, all except her boots, saying she felt perfectly well.

But Magda knew this raised again the question they had been avoiding while Cholayna’s life was in danger, and she found herself dreading the debate. Cholayna could face no more rough weather and exposure.

Yet how likely was it that she would agree to go back, and could she turn over the search for Lexie to Vanessa and Magda?
Would
she? Magda doubted it.

So they carefully avoided the subject, and Magda felt the enforced silence fraying away at her nerves. It was a fine bright day, and Vanessa went out to walk along the cliffs, trying to scan out a route ahead. Magda walked with her a little way.

“Tell me, Vanessa, did you have bad dreams last night?”

Vanessa nodded, but she turned her face away, her cheeks crimson, and did not volunteer to say what she had dreamed, and Magda did not ask. They were under attack again; the Sisterhood of the Wise was most effectively guarded by the Sisterhood of the Dark or so it seemed… or could it be that the two were inextricably intertwined? Her own nightmare and Jaelle’s had come from their own inner demons and flaws, not from anything anyone had imposed on them from the outside.

But Camilla? This was no nightmare based on something she had done wrong, no background of mistake or cruelty or omission coming back to haunt her, as with Jaelle and Magda, but something done to an innocent child who had no way deserved any of it…

Jaelle had asked the unanswerable question:
Why do the wicked flourish
? But even the
cristoforos
had no answer to that question; they framed the question itself in poetic language and called it a mystery of their God.

Vanessa was involved at the moment not in philosophical speculations, but practical realities.

“We’ll have to go on from here, on foot. A couple of chervines might make it, but I can’t imagine taking a horse over those trails.”

“Do you think Cholayna can make it?”

“Hellfire, Lorne, I’m no mind reader. But she’ll insist on trying, and I don’t think I’d be able to stop her. You want to try convincing her? No? I thought not.”

When they went back to the building where they had spent the last few nights, Camilla was on her feet, bowing to someone in the lee of the fireplace. Magda and Vanessa came in, and Jaelle said, as if completing an introduction she had begun, “and these are our companions Vanessa ryn Erin and Margali n’ha Ysabet.”

Magda came around the fire and saw a small, slight young woman, with her hair in a long braid down her back, as the countrywomen around Caer Donn wore it. She wore a simple knee-length tunic, dark saffron-color, embroidered at neck and sleeves with a childish pattern of leaves and flowers, and simple unadorned brown riding breeches. Otherwise she wore no jewelry or ornament except for a plain copper ring in her left ear.

She said, “My name is Kyntha.” She spoke the ordinary
casta
of the hill country, but slowly and carefully.

“I have been sent for, and I must go soon. Tell me why you have come into this country, so far beyond Nevarsin?”

Jaelle leaned forward and whispered so softly that no one else could hear, “This is the woman Rakhaila told me about.” Aloud she said, “We came after friends of ours. Now we have cause to think they have met with catastrophe, or captivity.”

Kyntha said nothing, and Jaelle dug into a pocket and pulled out Rafaelle’s letter, which had started them on their travels.

“I do not know if it is the custom in your country for women to read and write—”

“I can read, yes,” said Kyntha, stretching out her hand for the letter. She read it slowly and carefully, her lips moving as if it were in some other language.

Then she said, “What do you want of me? If it is the Sisterhood of the Wise that your friend seeks, I think you know she failed before she started.”

“Can you help us rescue her?” Jaelle asked.

“No.” It was flat, final, left no room for discussion or argument, and had more impact than a dozen protestations or excuses.

“Nevertheless, for the sake of our friendship, I must attempt it,” said Jaelle.

“If you must, you must. But beware of being dragged into the causes which she set in motion. And if you save her from the effects of her own folly, what then? Will you safeguard her all her life lest she fall again into error?”

Vanessa began, “If she has trespassed unwittingly on your sacred Sisterhood, would you punish her for ignorance?”

“Does the snow punish the child who strays into it without cloak or hood or boots? Is the child less frozen for that?”

That was, Magda thought, another conversation-stopper. At last Jaelle asked, “Can you help us find the way to the City where the Sisterhood dwells?”

Kyntha said, even more deliberately:

“If I knew the way to that place, I should be sworn never to tell. I think you know this much. Why then do you ask?”

“Because I know that there are some who have come and gone,” Jaelle said, “and why should I look for a key to a strange lock when, perhaps, knocking politely on the door will gain me entrance?”

Kyntha smiled fleetingly for the first time.

“Some have gained entrance there. It is not for me to say you would not be welcomed. Who told you of that place?”

“My foster-mother, for one,” Jaelle said. “Though I never thought I would seek it. But now it seems to me that the time has come.”

“And your companions? Do you speak for them?”

Jaelle opened her mouth, then shut it again. Finally she said, “No. I will let them speak for themselves.”

“Good.” Kyntha looked at each of them in turn, but there was a perceptible silence. At last Cholayna said, “I have no wish to trespass upon your City. My interest is in one of the young women mentioned in the letter.”

“Is she your daughter or your lover? Or is she a child that you seek to keep her from the consequences of her own actions, daughter of Chandria?” Magda was surprised that Kyntha, after the hasty mass introductions, remembered Cholayna’s name.

“None of those. But she was my student; I trained her. I accept responsibility for her failure.”

“Arrogance,” Kyntha said. “She is a grown woman. The choice to fail was her own, and she is entitled to bear her own mistakes.”

Vanessa interrupted in an argumentative tone, “If it is forbidden to help a friend in your city, I hope I may never go there. Dare you tell us that it is forbidden, or unlawful by your rules, to help a friend?”

Kyntha’s eyes met Vanessa’s for a long moment.

Then she said in the same serious manner, “Your motives are good. So with the child who wanted to help the tigercat move her kits to a warm and cozy den in his own bed. You do not know what you are doing, and you will not be spared because your motives were admirable.”

Her eyes moved on to Camilla. “Do you seek the City, or are you here only from an ill-conceived desire to share the fate of your friends?”

“If you scoff at friendship, or even at love,” Camilla retorted, “then I care not what you think of me. My reasons for seeking that city are my own, and you have not yet convinced me that I should entrust them to you. What evidence have I that the key is in your hands?”

“Good,” Kyntha remarked. “There are many who know the way to that place, but some of those who offer to show you the way do not know it as well as they think they do. It is not impossible that permission would be granted for you, and perhaps for this one—” she indicated Jaelle with a faint movement of her head. “I don’t know. If it is ordained that you shall be allowed to seek that end to your journey, then you may be guided or even helped. But many have been offered help and turned back, and some who persevered could not finish the journey, for one reason or another. You must be wise and wary.” She turned to Magda and said, “And you?”