Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Thrusting into the comfort of Kindra’s touch was a familiar, unwanted touch, a sullen glow of suspicion in it as Gabriel’s eyes rested on her hand in Kindra’s.

  “You gave us all a scare, me dear,” Gabriel said, and to Rohana the tenderness in his voice was smooth and false. “But ye’re safe now. Shall we send away all these people so you and I can get on wi’ our work? Annina, o’course, can stay, that’s her business, but none o’ these others—right, love?”

  With a painful shock, Rohana surfaced from the carefully held focus on the contractions. One of them got a head start on her, and galloped across her consciousness so that it took all her effort to keep from screaming aloud.

  She took a great breath, bracing herself against the next.

  “No!” she cried out, “No! Go away, Gabriel! I won’t have you here!” And with her last strength, a great blast of voiceless rejection, Go away!

  “Oh, you mustn’t talk like that,” Alida crooned at her. “Gabriel, she doesn’t know what she’s saying. Never mind, Rohana, he’s not angry at you, are you, Gabriel? Of course not, at a time like this—”

  “O’ course not,” said Gabriel, and held a cup of wine, from which he had already taken a sip, to her lips. “Here, love, drink some o’ this, now, it’ll make you feel better—”

  With dull amazement she remembered that this ritual had actually been welcomed at Kyril’s birth and Rian’s. Now it filled her with such disgust she thought she would vomit. Serve him right if I did, all over his best shirt, she thought and did not know whether to cry or giggle or weep. She thrust the wine back at him, spilling it all over his hand.

  “No, I want some tea, Annina. Tea, do you hear? Gabriel, get out of here, out, out, OUT!” She was screaming now and knew she sounded hysterical; the blast of revulsion, purely automatic and without thought, reached Gabriel and Alida. Alida looked pale and rushed outside; Rohana heard her vomiting just outside the shelter.

  Well, she got the message, Rohana thought; I wish Gabriel were half that sensitive; it would save me a lot of trouble. For Gabriel was still kneeling beside her smiling stupidly.

  “Never mind, me dear. I know she don’ know what she’s sayin’,” he confided in the midwife, “I wouldn’t leave her for a thing like that—”

  “If you don’t—” she said, trying to aim her fury and revulsion at him alone, “I will—”

  I will faint, I will die, I will vomit all over him, I will get up and run screaming out of here and have my child in the deep woods alone and after dark where we will be eaten by banshees . . . .

  She saw with definite satisfaction that Gabriel turned a dirty-white color and rushed outside. This would be a tale creating scandal through the Domain and the Kilghard Hills, but she felt she absolutely could not bear his presence. Her fingers tightened on Kindra’s, and the other woman gently patted her hand.

  Well, that’s over, she thought, without any sense of triumph, simply that now she could breathe freely without the oppression of Gabriel’s presence, now let’s get this over with . . . .

  X

  The night wore on, endlessly; the lantern burned low and was refilled; Rohana seemed to float outside her body, conscious only of Kindra’s presence like a lifeline.

  Why do I want to survive this anyhow? Gabriel will never forgive me. I have lived long enough; my older children no longer need me; better to die than to make the decision to walk away from Ardais and Gabriel forever, yet if I live I cannot return to the kind of life I have been living these last few years. Nor will I ever again agree to bear a child for Gabriel’s pride of fatherhood or for the Domain . . . .

  That reminded her of the phrase in the Renunciate Oath; never to bear a child for any man’s pride, position, clan or heritage . . .

  I should never have returned to Gabriel when I returned from the Dry Towns, I should have stayed with the Free Amazons; Kindra at least would have welcomed me . . . and I should not be here fighting for the life of a child who should have never been conceived, a child I do not want . . . .

  Then she realized sharply; it is not only the child’s life for which I am fighting; it is mine. My own life. But what good is my life to me now? That was the question she could not answer. Why should I live to nurse a drunkard? My own son is a worse monster than his father, so it is no good saying I am keeping the Domain for Kyril. And whoever comes after Kyril, for all I know, may be worse yet. Why not let the Domain collapse now, as it would do if I died, as it would have done a dozen years ago if I had not married Gabriel. The Domains will survive, as they survived without the Aldarans. Or it will go to the Terrans who are so eager to claim it . . . to map it, to know all about it.

  My life is over anyhow . . . .

  Then, opening her eyes for a moment between pains, she looked directly into Kindra’s encouraging gaze; and thought, even now, if I live, this need not be the end of my life; but for certain if I die, there will be nothing more; and I will never know what might have happened.

  She began to listen again to the insistent suggestions of the midwife, to her murmured instructions. No, she would not die; she would fight to live, fight for the life of this child. Outside the shutters the light was growing, and the wind had dropped so that she could hear the hissing of the snow.

  Later, she knew that Gabriel had stood outside the shelter all night in the snow, lest he should be summoned, believing that she would die, praying that he could speak to her before she died, that she might speak a word of forgiveness. That was much later; for now she did not want to know.

  She was conscious only of endless pain and struggle, effort which seemed to demand more fight than it would have been to die.

  More and more seemed to be demanded of her. “I can’t”—she whispered, and without words the challenge came: You must . . . .

  And then at the very end of endurance there was a moment of surcease, of rest; and she knew (from experience) that she should now feel relieved and triumphant; and she heard the midwife cry out in triumph.

  “A boy! A son for Ardais!”

  Not for me? Rohana found herself wondering and wished she could fall asleep; but there was Gabriel, his face flushed (and, all the Gods at once be thanked, still sober) his shaking hands gently holding the boy—bending to kiss her carefully and clumsily, holding the small wrinkled infant wrapped in an old baby blanket she had knitted for Elorie twelve years ago. She thought Elorie had taken it long since for swaddling her dolls.

  “Won’t you look at our son, Rohana? A third son. Aren’t you glad now that I wanted this, now that it’s all over?”

  “Over for you,” she said. “For me it is only beginning, Gabriel, fifteen years or more of trouble. Must I bring this one up, too, to fear and despise his father?”

  He said shakily “No. I swear it, Rohana, by whatever Gods you wish. This night—this night I knew if I had lost you, I would have lost the only good thing ever to come into my life.”

  Yes, but you have sworn before this, too . . . so many oaths, she thought, but did not bother to speak aloud. She took the blanketed baby into her arms, holding him close, and snuggled him against her bare breasts. Almost at once, with the single-minded obsession she remembered from her other confinements, she struggled to undo the blanket, to count every precious finger and toe, memorizing them, then to count them again in case she had missed one, to run her hands lovingly over the softness of the little round head. She remembered the old story she had been told in Arilinn—that for the first hour after their birth, babies remembered their past lives, before the veil of forgetfulness was lowered again. He was awake, looking at her with watery blue eyes.

  Gabriel said “He’s a pretty child, Rohana. But, boy, if you ever give your mother this much trouble again, I’ll box your little ears—”

  “Oh, fie, Gabriel, what a way to greet the poor babe—threatening to beat him,” she murmured, not really listening, focused on the child. She murmured to him, carefully edging the words with the strongest touch she dared of telepathi
c rapport.

  “Hello, my darling; I’m your mother. You will meet your father later . . . he was holding you but I’m afraid you didn’t notice him.”

  Just as well, she thought, but tried to shield the thought; he was not old enough to face hostility. “You have two brothers—I’m afraid they won’t be much good to you . . . and a sister; she at least will love you; she loves all babies. I have decided to name you Keith . . . I hope you like the name. It is a very old name in my family, but as far as I know, not used in Gabriel’s . . . .”

  She could not think of anything else to tell him, so she returned to smoothing his little body with her hands memorizing him, feeling such a flood of helpless love she felt she could not endure it. To think I didn’t want you! It was like the monitor’s touch she had learned so long ago . . . .

  Over and over his tiny body went her loving hands, as if she could enfold him forever in her tenderest love and keep him forever safe. But already she knew the truth, and knew the very instant when her youngest and last child slipped away from the touch and left her holding a lifeless bundle of chilling flesh.

  She flung herself into Kindra’s arms and wept, hardly knowing it when they lifted her into the cart and carried her through the falling snow down to Ardais and into her own room and her own bed, still holding the little blanketed bundle, trying to soothe him and search out where her lonely baby had gone, alone into the snowstorm . . . When they took him from her, she let him go without protest and heard Gabriel weeping, too. But why should he cry? He had not really known the child as she had even in that single hour of his life.

  “No, my lord,” said the midwife firmly. “It would have happened even had the child been born here in her own bed, on her own cushions. It was nothing she did, certainly nothing mestra Kindra did, nothing anyone could have known or prevented. His heart was not formed to beat properly.”

  Rohana was still crying; she knew she would never stop crying again until she died . . . .

  ~o0o~

  She cried for two days; toward the end of the second day Elorie came in, crying too, and Rohana hugged her fiercely, thinking, this then is my baby, the youngest child I shall ever have.

  “Do you mind if he is buried in your doll blanket, Elorie? I had no time to make him one of his own; it was what he wore while he lived, the only thing I could give him . . . .”

  Elorie said, subdued (her eyes were red; had she been crying, too? What had she to cry about?) “No. I don’t mind; let him have it. I’m so sorry, Mother, I’m really so sorry.”

  Yes, she is; she wanted another baby to play with. I’m sorry she didn’t get it. When she had gone, Rohana lay in her somnolent daze, not wanting to move—it hurt too much—or to do anything except lie there and remember the few minutes she had held the living child in her arms, vainly needing time to stop so that she could hold on to them and to him. But already the fleeting moments were fading from her mind, and Keith was only a fading dream. He had gone where the dead go, and she could not follow.

  Life goes on, she thought drearily. I don’t know why it has to, but it does. Now she was remembering the nebulous half-plans she had made before the birth; when this is over, I shall go South, away from here. Painfully she realized that, sincerely as she mourned, deeply as her body and soul hungered for the child who had gone from her, now she was free to make plans which did not involve being tied to a frail newborn for at least a year. This realization was slow and guilty, as if by realizing that freedom was welcome, she had somehow created the situation and was guilty of desiring it.

  I did not want this child; now when I do not have him, I ought to rejoice, she thought; but her grief was too new, too raw, too real to accept that yet. Nevertheless, she was beginning to accept that when the shock of birth and loss faded, she would indeed be grateful; that her state at the moment was a purely physical state of shock.

  Accepting this, the next time one of her women came tiptoeing in to ask if she wanted anything, she made the fierce effort of dragging herself upright in bed and said, “Yes; I want to be washed and I want some soup.”

  The women brought the things, and with Kindra’s help she managed to wash herself and to eat some soup. She realized that Kindra had not left her for more than a few seconds since the birth and that she had taken this for granted; now she was aware of it and grateful again, now that she could look a little outside the circle of anguished pain and preoccupation of the last couple of days. It was like surfacing from a very deep dive, clearing her lungs and mind of water at last . . . .

  She said, “As soon as I am better, I must travel South. Perhaps for the Council; but in any case I cannot stay here. Shall I travel with you, then, Kindra? You will not be sorry, I think, to get away from here.”

  “I will not,” Kindra confessed, “Not of course that you have failed in any way in hospitality . . . .”

  Rohana laughed dryly. “The hospitality of this place I think is cursed,” she said. “I swear I shall never impose it on any other.”

  Kindra smiled at her.

  “I have said before this that you have the spirit that would make you a notable Free Amazon, Rohana. I wish you might return with me to the Guild House and there take Oath as one of us . . . .”

  Rohana said through a dry mouth, “I am trying to decide if there is any way in which I can in honor do exactly that, Kindra. It is clear to me that I am not needed nor wanted here.”

  Kindra’s eyes glowed. She said softly, “I have prayed for days that you would see how right that would be. If you are not wanted by anyone here, you would be so welcome there.” She added, almost in a whisper “More than this . . . I would swear an oath to you.”

  “And I to you,” Rohana whispered, almost inaudibly; but Kindra heard and impulsively kissed her. Rohana remembered that moment—now it seemed a lifetime ago—when Gabriel had burst into her room with unspeakable accusations; now she did not care what he said or what he thought.

  Who would not prefer Kindra’s affection and her company, to his? And if he chose to make of that choice something evil or perverted, that was only evidence of his own foul mind.

  But I must not detain Kindra selfishly here; she has work and duties of her own, which she has generously sacrificed to stay with me while I needed her so much. She tried to say what she felt for Kindra, but the woman said only, “There is nothing that cannot wait until you are able to travel, and then we will go together.”

  “Together.” Rohana repeated it like a pledge. Oh, to be free of the burden and weight of the Domain, of knowing that the welfare of every soul from Scaravel to Nevarsin was in her keeping; of managing everything from the planting to the stud-books—well, now Alida would manage all that, and be glad of the chance.

  She began to think for the first time in many years of what things she would take with her, if she were going south not only for the handful of tendays of Council season, but for an indefinite stay—perhaps forever, whether to her family’s Domains in Valeron—surely there would be some place to go—or to a Guild House where she would no longer be Lady Rohana of Aillard and Ardais, but simply Rohana, daughter of Lhane. She would have no regrets about laying down the larger identity; she had borne it too long. There were not many possessions; her clothing, (and little enough of that, for most of what she had would not be suitable for a Renunciate; a few riding suits and some changes of under-linen) her matrix stone, locks of the children’s hair . . . no; not that, no keepsakes; she must put the Rohana who had been Lady of Ardais wholly behind her. The Lady of Ardais will disappear forever; will anyone ever know or care what has become of me? Surely it would never occur to anyone to seek within a Guild House . . . .

  And I who for years have sat in Council, dealing the laws of this land, who will sit in my place, who will speak for Ardais? Will there be anyone to speak for my people? Will they be left to Gabriel’s whim or Kyril’s selfishness? Or Alida’s cold, self-interested pride?

  That is nothing to me; for eighteen years I have borne tha
t burden which is not even mine, simply because Gabriel would not or could not—it matters not which. Now he must do his destined work or it will go undone; he can no longer shift this burden, unwanted, to my shoulders. I have served long enough, I will serve no more.

  That afternoon she felt stronger, and when Gabriel came to see her, she told the women to let him in. He was still, to her mild surprise, sober; this had been his longest sober stretch in years. Well, she no longer cared whether he were drunk or sober; what he did was now nothing to her. But she wondered numbly why he had never attempted this when it had mattered so much to her, when she had wrung herself inside out trying to keep him sober enough and strong enough to deal even with the smallest matters of the estate, when this sobriety would have meant so much to her; when she had loved him.

  His hands were shaking, but he was beginning to look a little more like the handsome young Dom Gabriel she had married eighteen years ago. His eyes were clearing; she had not remembered how blue they were.

  “You look better, Rohana.”

  “Thank you, my dear; I am better. Physically at least.”

  “Too bad,” he said bluntly, “I was kind of looking forward to havin’ a little feller around again. Somebody else to think about.” He added with great bitterness, “Somebody to try an’ stay sober for. You don’ care any more, do you?”

  The directness of that made her flinch, but this new sober Gabriel deserved honesty.

  “No, Gabriel, I’m afraid I don’t. I’m sorry; I wish I did.” She added after a moment, “Elorie cares, my dear. Her father means a great deal to her.”

  He said broodingly “I suppose it makes no sense to try. Sooner or later . . .”

  Sooner or later he would begin having seizures again, and only drink would ease the pain and formless fears. And there was no reason to care. It was too late to begin again. If the child had lived . . . perhaps there might have been some reason to try again to rebuild a life together. They might have done so with a child to begin again. Even so, it was probably too late for Gabriel. He could not endure the pangs of returning to sobriety, to a decency he would only see as deprivation. With the child they would have had a reason to try. Now there was no reason and she was free; the pain she felt was only the pain of a closing door.