The Saga of the Renunciates (88 page)

As I love Andrew no less because my bond with Damon is eternal and strong
… Magda could hear Callista’s thoughts, and Jaelle said softly “Is it possible—that women can love without needing to possess what they love? Every woman knows that one day her child will leave her.” And for the first time without pain, she understood her mother’s dying words, without guilt.

It was worth it all, Jaelle. You are free
. With great pain, Jaelle had seen her own daughter leave her, and had known she would some day have courage to free her, again, to live her own life and bear her own risks.

“Peter—he wanted to possess me and the child,” said Jaelle, and Magda nodded, and Callista, her face still bent over the
rryl
, said, “It was a long time before Andrew understood… and even now…” and could say no more.

Ellemir said softly, “But Damon is not like that.” And for a moment all of the women in the circle knew who would father Jaelle’s child for the Aillard clan; because he would have no need to possess woman or child, but could leave them free to their own heritage and destiny.

The silence and the crackle of the fire and the soft, absentminded sounds of Callista’s hands on her harp were broken by Andrew’s laughter.

“No, no! No more! I am not a chervine to carry you all on my back! Run to the kitchen and find some bread and honey, and let me talk to the grownups! Yes, Domenic, I promised that you and Felix should ride with me tomorrow unless the snow is too bad, and if it is, when it clears! And yes, Cassie, you may come too! Now, for the love of heaven, run along, all of you. I saw some apples in the kitchens—go and get them.”

The children scattered and Andrew came back into the hall. He said something to Damon about the stock and pasture shelters for the snow, then joined the women at the fire.

“Play for us, Callie,” he said, and she began to sing an old ballad of the hills. Damon and Ellemir were sitting close together on the foot of Jaelle’s couch, and Magda felt a moment of deep strangeness. It was as if a door had slammed between herself and the life among the Amazons that she had loved and sworn to. The Terran life, too, was gone, and she felt cold and alienated. She was sworn to Jaelle, yet she could see that this bond held no promises of security, either. And though she knew the strength of the
laran
circle, she did not know if it would be enough.

Andrew leaned over, and put a friendly arm around her.

“It’s all right,” he said, hugging her close with a brotherly smile, “Listen, girl, do you think I don’t know how you’re feeling?” Magda’s Amazon spirit recoiled at that careless “girl”; I am a woman, she thought, not a girl, but then she knew it was only Andrew’s way; like Ellemir, he had the habit of protecting. Like herself, he would have made a good mother.

Are Andrew and I going to spend the next ten years trying to decide whose business it is to protect all the rest of us here in the Forbidden Tower
? Magda wondered, and gasped at the knowledge of how much that implied.

Andrew said gently, “But that’s what the Forbidden Tower is all about, Magdalen.” He alone chose to use her full name, without shortening it. “There isn’t one of us here who hasn’t had to tear up our old lives like waste paper and start over again. Damon’s had to do it two or three times. It isn’t safety, or security. But—” his arms tightened around her for a moment again, “we’ve got each other. All of us.”

And for a moment, again, Magdalen Lorne heard the faint far calling as of distant crows—or fates?—and the rustle of wings.

A Note from the Author:

This novel, like all Darkover novels, is complete in itself. However, for those who have followed the chronology of Darkover,
City of Sorcery
takes place approximately seven years after
Thendara House
, at a time when Terran and Darkovan relationships were at their most friendly; a period which lasted until the time when Dorilys Aillard, known as Cleindori, achieved status as Keeper in Arilinn Tower. Her martyrdom, murder, and the subsequent swing to extreme conservatism under the Regency of Danvan Hastur, ended this period of friendly relations between the two societies, and by the time of
The Bloody Sun
, few Terrans and fewer Darkovans even remembered that there had been years when Terran and Darkovan had co-existed on such amiable terms.

One of the few who remembered, afterward, that there had been such a time was Magdalen Lorne, of Terran Intelligence; otherwise known as Margali n’Tsabet, Free Amazon, Comhi’letziis; Oath-bound of the Guild of Renunciates.

—M. Z. B.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Although every character and event in this novel is entirely my own invention, the theme and structure of the story were suggested by a novel by the late Talbot Mundy; THE DEVIL’S GUARD, copyright 1926 by the Ridgeway Company. I read it in 1945 or thereabout, and have felt for many years that this kind of Ideal Search or Quest novel should be retold in a Darkovan context

Also my grateful thanks to my elder son, David Bradley, for preparation of the final manuscript. David went above and beyond the call of duty by retyping, at an hour’s notice, from a very imperfect print, the first 15 chapters into a second word processor after the first one had blown up in my face, losing all the early disks and backups. This is why Darkovans are said to hate technology. And thanks to my secretary, Elisabeth Waters, who gave up the use of
her
word processor for three weeks so that we could finish the book on time.

—M. Z. B.

The messenger was a woman, and though she was wearing Darkovan clothing, she was not Darkovan, and not accustomed to the streets of Thendara’s Old Town at night. She walked warily, reminding herself that respectable women were seldom molested in the streets if they minded their own business, acted and looked as if they had somewhere to go; did not loiter, kept moving.

She had learned this lesson so well that she strode along briskly even through the marketplace, looking neither to one side nor the other, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

The red sun of Cottman Four, informally called the Bloody Sun by Terran Empire spaceport workers, lingered at the rim of the horizon, casting a pleasant red-umber twilight. A single moon, like a pale violet shadow in the sky, hung high and waning. In the marketplace, the vendors were closing the front shutters of their stalls. A fried-fish seller was scooping up the last small crispy crumbs from her kettle, watched by a few stray cats; she scattered the crumbs, provoking a cat-scrimmage underfoot, which she watched, amused, for a moment before she hoisted the kettle on its side, straining the fat through several layers of cloth. Close by, a saddlemaker slammed down the front shutters of his stall and padlocked them shut.

Prosperous
, thought the Terran woman in Darkovan clothing.
He can afford a Terran metal lock
. Darkover, Cottman Four to the Terrans, was a metal-poor planet. Other vendors were tying their shutters down with ropes and cords and trusting to the night watchman to notice any unauthorized person fumbling with the ropes. A baker was doing a haphazard business selling the last few stale buns in her stall; she looked up as the Terran messenger passed with her quick stride.

“Hey there! Vanessa n’ha Yllana, where are you going in such a rush?”

Vanessa was moving so swiftly that she had gone several steps past the baker’s stall before she really heard the words. She stopped and came back, smiling tentatively at the plump woman who was making change for a small boy with a bun in his fist.

“Sherna,” she acknowledged, “I didn’t see you. ”

“I could have imagined that,” said the baker with a grin. “Striding along as if you were on your way to exterminate a colony of banshees, at the
least
, my dear! Have a bun?” When Vanessa hesitated, she urged, “Go on, take one, there’s no sense in hauling this lot all the way back to the Guild-house; it’s not as if there were enough left for everyone to have one at supper!”

Thus urged, Vanessa picked up one of the leftover buns and bit into it. It was hearty, made with nut-flour to eke out the grain, and sweet with dried fruits. She stood nibbling, moving automatically to one side as the stall-keeper a few feet away began to bumble about with a broom, sweeping the front of his shop.

“Were you going to the Guild-house, or on some other errand?” Sherna asked.

“To the Guild-house,” Vanessa admitted. “I should have thought to come here at once so that I could go through the streets with you.” Secretly she was annoyed at herself; where had her mind been?

“Good,” Sherna said. “You can help me carry the baskets. But tonight is not a Bridge meeting, is it?”

“Oh, no, no, not that I remember,” Vanessa said, picking up one of the breadbaskets. “I have a message for Margali n’ha Ysabet. I cannot see why the Guildmothers refuse to have a communicator in the Guild-house; it would save sending messengers through the streets this way, especially after dark. ”

Sherna smiled indulgently. “You
Terranan
,” she said, laughing. “So that the noise of the thing can invade our privacy in season and out, to save a messenger the trouble of walking a few minutes’ walk in good weather? Ah, your poor abused feet, my heart aches for the lazy things!”

“The weather isn’t always so good,” Vanessa protested, but the argument was an old one, habitual between the women, and the protests were good-natured.

Both women were members of the Bridge Society,
Penta Cori’yo
, which had been formed a few years ago, when members of the Free Amazons—
Comhi’ Letziis
, the Guild of Renunciates—had been the first Darkovans to offer themselves for work in the Terran Headquarters; as medical technicians, as mountain guides and travel-advisers, as translators and language teachers. The Bridge Society offered a home, a place to live, friends among Darkovan women; for Terrans who agreed to live by Renunciate laws, but could not commit themselves fully to the Guild-house, there was even a specially modified form of the Oath. The Bridge maintained homelike quarters for Darkovan women, mostly Renunciates, required by their work to live in the Terran HQ.

It was open to any Darkovan woman who had worked for three of the forty-day moon cycles in the Terran HQ or any Terran woman who spent the same time within a Guild-house. Sherna n’ha Marya, a Renunciate from Thendara Guild-house, had worked half a year as a translator, helping to compile standard works in
casta
and
cahuenga
, the two languages of Darkover. Vanessa ryn Erin, a graduate of the Terran Intelligence Academy on Alpha, had now been four years on Darkover, and had lived in the Guild-house most of the last year, preparing for field work outside Headquarters.

Sherna handed the last of the sweet buns to a woman with a small child in her arms, another clutching her skirt. “Take them for the little ones. No, no,” she protested as the woman began to fumble for coins, “they’d only go into the pail for the hens. So, Vanessa, we managed that well, only two loaves to carry back, and the kitchen-women can make us a bread-pudding with them. ”

“Are we ready to go back to the Guild-house, then?”

“There’s no hurry,” Sherna said, and Vanessa had been on Darkover long enough not to protest, despite the urgency of her errand. She helped Sherna tie up the front shutters of the bake-stall in leisurely fashion, and collect the scattered baskets.

There was a sudden flurry of activity at one of the gates visible from the marketplace, and a caravan of pack animals clattered over the stones. A cluster of small children playing king-of-the-mountain from the top of an abandoned stall scampered out of the way. A tall, thin woman, clad in the ordinary garb of a Renunciate, loose tunic and trousers tucked into low boots, carrying an Amazon knife as long as a short sword, strode toward them.

“Rafi,” Sherna greeted her. “I didn’t know you’d be back tonight. ”

“Neither did I,” said Rafaella n’ha Doria. “These people have been bumbling about the pass for three days. I think the pack animals smelled home, or they’d still be wandering up there looking at the green grass growing and hunting for mushrooms on apple trees. Let me go and pick up my pay. I’d have left them at the city gates, but I’m sure they’d have lost themselves between here and their stables, judging by the way they’ve behaved all along. And Zandru whip me with scorpions if I ever again accept a commission before it’s firmly understood who’s bossing the trail! Believe me—I could tell you some stories—” She hurried off to talk briefly with the head of the caravan. Some money changed hands. Vanessa saw Rafaella carefully stop to count it—even the Terran woman knew what an insult that was, in an open marketplace. Then Rafi came back to them; greeted Vanessa with a casual nod, swung the last of the wicker breadbaskets to her shoulder, and the three women set off together through the cobbled streets.

“What are you doing here, Vanessa? News from HQ?”

“Not much,” Vanessa said evasively. “One of our planes from Map and Ex is down in the Hellers. ”

“Maybe there will be work for us, then,” Rafaella said. “Last year, when they sent us out on a salvage contract for a downed plane, there was plenty for everyone to do.” Rafaella was a travel-organizer, and was in considerable demand among Terrans who must venture into the little-known and trackless mountains of the northern Domains.

“I don’t know if that’s what they have in mind. I don’t think it’s where anyone can salvage it,” Vanessa said. The women walked along silently through one of the quieter streets of the city, and paused before a large building of stone, turning a windowless front wall on the street. A small placard on the front door said: