The Saga of the Renunciates (87 page)

She fought her way through the blinding snow. It was just as well Jaelle had not tried to ride, they could never have gotten back to the main road in this. But the horses were not where she had left them, and in panic, Magda went down farther than she had intended on the slope; her foot slipped on the wet, slushy ground and she rolled down toward the canyon’s floor, crying out in protest.

Her riding cloak and breeches were soaked now, and she could see no sign of the horses. In the thick snow she could not see the cave mouth.
Jaelle! I must get back to Jaelle
! Shading her face against the thickening snow she finally made out a tiny thread of smoke where their cave opened, and struggled back up the steep grade, without the horses.

Then before her, Ferrika’s snub-nosed face appeared, with eyes blue and compassionate.

Don’t be frightened, sister. You have been heard in the Forbidden Tower, and someone will come to you. Don’t be frightened.

And Ferrika’s face was gone. Magda blinked, remembering the fragments of conversation she had heard, Lord Damon, Regent of Armida, and something about an illegal Tower. Well, they were already in trouble with the Terran authorities, if Jaelle had really killed Peter; they might as well be in trouble with the Darkovan authorities too. From what she had heard this particular Tower wasn’t in very good odor with the regular Towers.

Any port in a storm, kid
. She blinked, thinking that someone had spoken to her in Terran Standard.
Am I losing my mind? I had better get inside out of the snow
! Jaelle was still lying where Magda had left her, stuporous, her face burning.

Who are you?

You know who I am. I said you had guts enough for three. Make that thirty-three, kid.

Ann’dra
—
Andrew Carr
?

I’m not great at this kind of receiving. I ought to let Callista try to reach you. No time. I saw the smoke. Don’t worry
. And then a picture in her mind, men turning and riding down the canyons, swarming out from what looked like a great center of blue fire… no, she couldn’t be right… she couldn’t expect telepathic reception to come in like television, for heaven’s sake! Jaelle was muttering and moaning and throwing herself around, and Magda mended the fire and went and sat by Jaelle and drew the girl into her arms, holding her and rocking her. Jaelle muttered, “Mama? I thought you were dead. Mama. Who are these women? I’m scared, I don’t want to go. Oh, Mother, it hurts—” and Magda stroked her hair and tried to soothe her.

“It’s all right, Shaya. It will be all right, I promise you. They’re coming, they know we’re here. It’s all right.”

Jaelle looked at her quite clearly and said, and her voice was almost rational, “But Amazons don’t wait to be rescued. We’re supposed to do the rescuing. The way we did before, Margali,” and dropped off into vacancy.

Magda patted her cheek. She said gently, “Even Amazons are only human, Jaelle. It’s taken me a year to find that out.”

But she knew the sick woman could neither hear nor understand her. The fire was dying; she crawled into the blankets and tried to warm Jaelle, holding her closely in her arms. And at last, unbelievably, she slept.

She woke to hear voices. Andrew Carr’s voice, calling out in the dialect of the Kilghard hills, halloing wildly.

“Not here—not this one! No, damn it, I tell you there’s got to be another cave, there are two sick women out here! Keep looking! Try lower down, along the slope! Eduin, come up here with two men and stretchers, this man has a broken leg!”

They’ve found Aleki. Thank God, he’s alive
. A picture came into her mind, as she had seen it before,
Alessandro Li, the elegant Terran diplomat, disheveled, filthy, sprawled on the cave floor, his leg bundled in an improvised splint, looking up with an open mouth as Carr grinned down at him
.

“
Ambassador Li, I presume. Heard you’ve been looking for me,” he said, and offered a Terran handshake. Li stammered “You
—
you
—
you
—”
and the picture winked out
.

Magda crawled out of the blankets. The fire was dead, they could not see the smoke; it was very cold in the cave, but Jaelle was breathing and seemed all right. She pulled her riding cloak over her head and hurried to the door of the cave. The slopes were alive with men and horses and she could see a group of men, crowded around the dark mouth of a cave down the slope— about half a Terran kilometer, she supposed. She could see Carr now, a tall man with a shock of fair hair, standing a good head taller than the other men.

She shouted, knowing he could not hear her over the intervening space but knowing that he could hear her
somehow
.

“Ann’dra!
Andrew
! Up here!”

He started as if galvanized, looked and pointed; raised his hand to her in a wave, a signal.

Okay, hang on, I see you.

And Magda collapsed in the mouth of the cave, in the mud and dirt there, and began to cry. She cried and cried, as if she would never stop, knowing suddenly what Marisela had meant.

Some day you will cry and be healed.

She was almost unaware when a man, quiet and deferential in the Ridenow colors, came up the slope; but she heard him call “They’re here,
vai dom
! Both of them.” He cleared his throat, “
Mestra
—” and she quickly scrambled to her feet, clutching some dignity, some remnants of composure. A poor pretense, she knew; her face was blotched and swollen.

“
Mestra
, are you all right?”

She said quickly, “My friend. She is sick; you will have to get a stretcher to move her, too. There is nothing wrong with me.”

“We have a stretcher,” he said. “Down there. As soon as we can get him into a horse-litter, we will come up and move her,” and Magda saw, at the cave mouth farther down the slope, men carrying a prone form on the litter, carrying it down the hill to waiting horses and men. And then Andrew Carr was striding up the slope to the very mouth of the cave.

He smiled at Magda, a good-natured grin and said quietly, so that the man could not hear, “It’s all right. They know I’m Terran and they don’t really care. I’ve been racking my brains to figure out who
you
could possibly be. Lorne of Intelligence, aren’t you? I knew you by reputation, but I don’t think we ever actually met each other—”

And, incongruously, they shook hands.

Then he was bending over Jaelle.

“Miscarried, has she? Well, we’ll have her down where they can look after her. Ferrika’s still in Thendara for Midsummer, but
mestra
Allier from Syrtis can look after her. God knows Lady Hilary’s had enough of that kind of trouble. We’ll take her to Syrtis, and when she’s well again we can move her to Armida.” He laughed. “Somehow I think you and I have a lot to say to each other. But it can wait.”

He bent and scooped up Jaelle in his arms. He was so tall he lifted her like a child. She could see, without knowing why, the picture in his mind of a beloved woman who had recently suffered such a loss, and his compassion and enduring sadness; but when Jaelle cried out in pain and fear he spoke gently to her, and Jaelle quieted at the touch of his hands and perhaps, Magda thought, of his
laran
.

The other man’s hand was on her arm.

“
Mestra
, let me help you—”

She started to say, “I can walk,” and then realized she couldn’t. She let herself lean on him, and stumbled toward the horses in the valley. She should be there when Jaelle recovered consciousness.

Alessandro Li, still holding himself erect between two crutches, managed to give the impression, though he hardly moved his head, of bowing deeply over Magda’s hand.

“I am truly grateful to you. Jaelle, I hope your recovery is swift and complete.” He spoke a polite phrase which Magda recognized as a formal farewell in his own language, but it was one of the Empire languages of which she had only a smattering. “My Lord—” another of the gestures which somehow implied a deep formal bow, to Damon, “I am thankful for your hospitality.”

The Great Hall of Armida, with its massive beams and the huge fireplace, was warm and snug around them; but a chilly draft entered the hall as the doors opened. Outside it was snowing softly. Andrew murmured, “This way, sir,” and Aleki followed him, hobbling on the crutches, two or three men on either side. They would escort him to Neskaya, where he would be picked up by Terran helicopter.

Lady Callista said quietly to Magda as the door closed behind him “I hope he will not make trouble in the Empire,” and Andrew, striding back into the hall, said, smiling, “He won’t.”

“How can you know? What he did while he was a guest in this house might be very different—”

Andrew chuckled. “Don’t worry about Li,” he said. “I know his kind. He’ll dine out on the story for the rest of his life, about his hairbreadth escape on a primitive planet, and enjoy being thought the expert on Cottman Four—which means he’ll have to tell himself how wonderful it all was.”

“But he did promise to get rid of Coordinator Montray,” Magda said quietly, “and to put in a Legate who knows the planet and appreciates it. He even offered to put in a word for me if I wanted the job.”

“You should take it, if only to spite them,” Jaelle said. She was lying on a sofa, wrapped in a frilly soft blue house robe which looked very unlike her. She had some color in her face again, but it had been a long, hard fight against weakness and infection, and even earlier that day, Aleki had tried to persuade her to come back to the Terran Zone so that the Medics could give her a thorough going-over. “We owe you that,” he had protested, but Jaelle smiled and told him that by now she was perfectly well again, and Magda had heard the unspoken part of that as well as Jaelle; that she had not the slightest intention of returning to the HQ, now or ever.

Magda did not believe that she was perfectly well—only when she was flat on her back and delirious could Jaelle ever admit any weakness at all—but she was over the worst. She had been desperately ill when they carried her down to Syrtis, and for all they could do for her, she seemed to have lost the will to live.

She had begun to recover only when Magda, knowing at last what was troubling her, gathered with the
leronis
. They called Lady Callista, the Regent, Lord Damon, and Andrew, at their invitation, and gone out in their
laran
circle to seek out Peter Haldane’s fate in the Terran Zone. He was alive; he had been found lying in a coma and carried down to the Hospital floor, but now he was recovering

“You struck him with your mind as well as your hands,” Lord Damon had said soberly to Jaelle. “You could easily have killed him; it was only an accident that you did not. Perhaps it was the grace of some God with whom you are on better terms than you know.”

And from that day Jaelle had begun to sleep without nightmares and to eat and gain back a little of the weight she had lost.

That hour within the matrix circle—and Magda knew she had taken a full part in it—had somehow made her part of them; Andrew and Callista treated her like a sister and brother, and she felt as if she had known Damon all her life. She felt somewhat less close to the pretty Lady Ellemir, who said forthrightly that for these years while the children were young she wished to give them her full time and attention. She was sitting now at the far end of the hall, the children of the household gathered around her. Magda still did not have them all straight, though she knew that the seven-year-old, curly-haired redhead they called Domenic was the oldest son of Damon and Ellemir, and her only surviving child. Lady Callista had two daughters somewhere between four and seven, one dark and serious—Magda thought her name was Hilary, a name she remembered because of the
leronis
who had healed her feet—and one fair-haired and giggly, but Magda never could remember her name. There were several other children who were explained offhandedly as fosterlings of the House; the smallest of them Callista explained blandly as Andrew’s
nedestro
son, which seemed strange—no one could possibly mistake the deep devotion between Callista and Andrew; Magda had never seen such a devoted couple—and the others were small redheads who had, Damon explained with equal casualness, some Comyn blood somewhere, had been born to small-holders and farmers, and were being brought up where they could be properly trained when their
laran
surfaced. Magda and Jaelle too were astonished at the way in which this was taken for granted. Ellemir mothered all the children indiscriminately.

“It is pure self-indulgence,” she admitted, “but they are little only such a short time, and Callista is my twin—she has
laran
enough for two, so for these precious years while they are so tiny, I take delight in them while I can. We come from a long-lived family; I shall have forty or fifty years to come back into the circle and master my
laran
after they are grown.” Now she was telling them all some kind of story, the littlest one on her lap, the others clustered around her knees.

Jaelle sighed as the sound of Ambassador Li’s escort died away outside. She said, “I do not suppose Peter will make any trouble—now—about giving me a divorce. Aleki promised to set it up so that I need not—go back.” Her eyes were shadowed, and Magda knew without needing to touch her mind what she was thinking. Jaelle was still easily depressed, and cried easily, but Ellemir had privately assured Magda that it would pass in time.

“I know,” Ellemir said sorrowfully, “I have lost three; and the last only this season. Just before Midsummer.” Magda remembered Ferrika, crying in Marisela’s arms. Having been, though briefly, part of the circle, she understood the bond, and knew Ferrika was a very real part of this matrix circle—the only one on Darkover which was not hidden, guarded, shielded behind Tower walls. And Ferrika, though commoner born, was as much part of it as Lord Damon himself, or his brother Kieran, or the aristocratic Lady Hilary, who was married to Colin of Syrtis. Hilary’s one son Felix was somewhere in the circle of children around Ellemir, but Magda had forgotten which one he was.

You never wholly cease to grieve
, she had said to Jaelle.
But you learn to live with grief, and find a way through it. And you try again. And you open your heart to other children
.

Jaelle had said, very low, “As Kindra did. And as Camilla does still,” and from that day she had begun to sleep without nightmares of the little girl with red hair, walking away into the gray irrecoverable mists of the overworld.

Now Andrew came and said, “I am going to ride out and see that everything is well with the horses before the storm shuts down. Who wants to come with me, lads?”

All the boys, except the tiny one in Ellemir’s lap, raced out after him. They all called Andrew by the word which could mean Uncle, or foster-father, just as all of them—including her own two daughters—called Lady Callista by the intimate nickname meaning auntie, or foster-mother; but Lady Ellemir was simply “Mama.” Not only to her own and Ellemir’s children but to every child on the estate of Armida.

One of the girls grabbed down her cloak and demanded to be taken too. Ellemir said deprecatingly “Oh, Cassie—” but Andrew only laughed, picking up his younger daughter.

“You shall come if you like, Cassilde n’ha Callista,” he said, setting her on his shoulder, and Callista explained, with a laugh, “She is Ferrika’s favorite, and Ferrika always said she had the making of a Renunciate! Andrew, you should not call her that, she might take it seriously!”

“Why not?” Damon asked, “We shall need rebels some day,” but Ellemir shivered. She said in a low voice, “Don’t, Damon. Time enough for that—” and Damon patted Ellemir’s shoulder and stood close to her for a moment. It seemed to Magda that she could hear the curious rustle of the dark robes and the far echo like the calling of crows, as if the fates were flying overhead. Then Andrew went out with his brood; Ellemir called a nurse and had the other children taken upstairs to the nursery suite, and Lady Callista came to sit by the fire between Magda and Jaelle, fingering her
rryl
. She said, “Had I ever heard of the Renunciates, I think I might never have gone to Arilinn!”

Damon laughed and said, “They would not have accepted you in a Guild-house, Callie. I was in Council the year Lady Rohana stood before them and pledged herself for Jaelle, that she should be freed—”

Jaelle began dripping tears again, though she bent her head and tried to hide them, and her awareness of failure was painful to everyone in the circle around the fire. But Damon only said quietly, “Well, you must take your own seat there until you choose—what is it you say,
in your own time and season—
to bear a daughter for the Domain of Aillard. And if you do not, no doubt the Hastur-kin will survive, as they have for centuries.” But again Magda had the flickering vision of the little girl with red hair, running in a storm of autumn leaves behind the girl Ellemir had called Cassie. She did not understand it, but accepted.

Her
laran
, so recently wakened, was still not wholly under her control. She saw again the curious circle of women’s faces under their dark hoods and the sound of the crows calling far away, and her mind slipped away.

We are not concerned with the good of the Comyn, nor yet of the Terrans, nor of the Renunciates; we must think in terms of centuries. So many of the Comyn are loyal only to their own caste, and most of the Towers have become only their instruments, where once they served all for the common good. That is why the Altons and the Forbidden Tower have become our instruments for the moment. They too shall suffer for the moment, although in the centuries they shall attain perfection and enlightenment.

Magda whispered, almost aloud,
Who are you
?

You may call us the Soul of Darkover. Or the Dark Sisterhood…

“Magda, where are you?” asked Jaelle, and the vision faded swiftly, even as Magda sought to hold on to the awareness, the last fading words,
We are instruments of fate, even as you, sister
…

Callista touched Jaelle’s hand. Magda had been among them long enough to know what a rare gesture of intimacy this was. She said, “I was Keeper long enough to know how you feel, Jaelle. I did not share Ellemir’s acceptance of the duty to bear children for the Domain—”

“Duty?” declared Ellemir with a touch of annoyance. “Privilege! Anyone who would willingly refuse to have a child— well, I can only imagine she must be mad, or I am very sorry for her!”

Callista smiled affectionately at her twin. It was evidently an old argument between them. “Well, I promised you that you might bring up all of mine, and I have kept that promise,” she said, laughing. “I am fond enough of my children, and of yours too, and some day I suppose I will resign myself to give Andrew the son he wants, though it seems unfair that I, who would be richly content if I never had a child, bear them so easily, while you, who would like to have a child in your arms every ten moons—no, don’t deny it, Elli—can have them only with so much trouble and suffering.”

And loss
… They all heard it, but none of them spoke it aloud. But Ellemir said quietly, “The Alton blood is a precious heritage. I am proud to be the instrument of transmitting it.”

Jaelle said ruefully, “You sing the same song as Lady Rohana, and to the same tune. And yet you are a potential
leronis
, which must be very like being a Renunciate—having something better to do than other women—”

“I do not see how it can be better,” Ellemir said, “A racing mare, no doubt, is proud of winning all her races. Yet if she does not transmit that bloodline she might as well have stayed in her stable eating hay. We need the brood mare as well as the racing filly.”

“I will do my duty,” said Jaelle quietly. “I know, now, why I must.” The women around the fire seemed very close; to Magda it was like the peace that sometimes came at the end of Training Session, when they had argued and cried and fought their way to peace. Callista, she sensed, had fought longer and harder battles than any Renunciate, yet she seemed even more serene.

“And yet you are sworn to Jaelle, Margali,” said Callista. “Will it not trouble you if she turns from you to a man—since, as yet, there is no other way to bear a child, and Jaelle has promised this?” Callista was rehearsing in her mind the Oath of the Amazons, wishing there had been some such way for her as a young woman, and at last it burst out of her.

“Andrew and Damon are bound to one another, I think, by a stronger bond than to either of us. Men may swear such oaths. And yet for women, such an oath is always taken, it seems, as a thing for untried girls, and means only,
I shall be bound to you only so long as it does not interfere with duty to husband and children
. …”

Jaelle turned and took Magda’s hand. Memory flamed between them of the bond tested by the very edge of survival in the canyon; and of a night, during Jaelle’s convalescence, when they had turned to one another and each, taking her Amazon knife, had exchanged it with the other; the strongest bond known to women. Close as Rafaella was to Jaelle, and even though they had been lovers for a time, they had never exchanged knives in this way, and Magda knew it was a bond as close as marriage.

“Only one bond is closer,” said Ellemir, just audibly.

Callista’s fingers began to stray over her
rryl
again, and she said at last, “Can it be that a woman’s bond to a woman is not overturned by her commitments to others, just as her bond to a single child is not overturned when she bears another? I thought, when I bore Hilary, though I had not wanted her, that I loved her as I had never loved even Andrew, or you, Elli. And yet when Cassie was born, I loved her no less…”