The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Or would he? She stopped, pulling on the reins, swinging the animal around. A sharp hallucinatory pattern burst into her mind in the midst of brilliant colors; Aleki, sprawled across the trail insensible…

  She must go back and at least check the cattle trail for marks of a solitary horseman passing. Damn the man! Hadn’t he sense enough to stay on what was clearly a road? But in the past months, among Terrans, Jaelle had seen many pictures and could now—sometimes—get a flash of what the world looked like through a Terran’s eyes. As she looked at the beaten-flat cattle trail, it began to look more and more to her like a main road— more like a road than the two small narrow roads which led off to the other sides. The cattle trail led nowhere, only back into endless, bottomless ravines into which nothing could go but the surefooted chervines, into canyons and wide open spaces. But to Aleki it would have looked like a man-made, artificially smoothed road.

  Surely they would have warned him in Thendara. But, no. He had probably looked at the aerial map and traced a straight cross-country route to Armida, and it might have seemed to him that this was the road. And if he had breathed enough of the kireseth pollen, he might even have seen it as a road.

  Hallucinated it even, as a Terran-style paved road.

  Now she was all but sure. She steered the mount on to the trail. The pony whickered, distrusting the smell of chervines, and she had to urge it on, down into the broken country, used only in summer to pasture chervines and similar cattle. There must be wild range herds out here, checked only once or twice a year, and cropped now and then for skins or for meat. There were always lush valleys tucked away in this kind of country, though she had never seen this particular stretch before, and there was certainly an inaccessible valley somewhere where the kireseth blossomed year by year, undisturbed. The sun was hot on her back, and the light dazzled, flickers of mirage along the trail, like spilled water. It would be all too easy to lose yourself in this country and never get out.

  A solitary horseman must have passed this way, not long ago. She hallucinated a brilliantly colored picture, like a small video on one of the security monitors inside the Headquarters, of Aleki, his tall lean figure wrapped in a bright blue parka, his hair blown around his head, leaning over the back of his horse in the rain. He could not now be very far ahead of her on the trail. But it was quickly replaced with an even more brilliant little picture on the inside of her eyelids, Aleki sprawled lifeless (Like Peter! Like Peter lying dead inside the HQ!) arms and legs flung wide, his head lolling against a stone while at his side the horse lazily cropped tufts of grass. What to believe? And now she could hear Magda again.

  She had better dampen the scarf. Her head felt fuzzy and the air shimmered. Picture succeeded picture, Aleki climbing a steep trail on foot, and for a moment sprawled half naked beneath a strange spiky tree like nothing that had ever grown or ever would grow on Darkover, beside the shores of a strange lake with the tree bending over him and moving in an invisible wind. He was naked, erect, and he reached out for her with an immediacy which made Jaelle start and blink and the picture was gone, Aleki? Never! Surely it was the fault of the pollen, or had she picked up some random erotic image from his mind or memory? That meant he must be quite near. But she found that her palms felt sweaty and her heart pounded with something like panic. She had never had the slightest sexual awareness of Alessandro Li, would have said she could never have had, and the fact that she had been capable of seeing that kind of mental picture, even if it was pure hallucination, terrified her. It was not hers. She would not own to it even as a vision.

  She rode for more than an hour along the trail, which slowly narrowed, and suddenly divided into six or eight narrow paths, running in every direction down into little ravines.

  If Aleki had come along here, surely he would have realized that this was a dead end, that it was not a road at all. Surely his judgment would lead him to turn back. If he still had any judgment after hours of exposure to kireseth. He must be lying down there somewhere, dead or incapacitated, or—she remembered the sudden, erotic force of the hallucination—wildly intoxicated with kireseth and not knowing what had happened to him. Had anyone warned him about scorpion-ants or greenface leaves? Certainly not. She had believed that she would be with him, to guide his first essay into the field, and had relied on that. She had made herself personally responsible for him. And now she was forsworn again.

  I have failed, failed, failed, at everything and with everyone.

  She looked at the sky, slitting her eyes to see it through what looked like spiderwebs of color. Clouds were rushing across the sun. The day was far advanced; somehow she had lost time. She looked around wildly, knowing that she could search all her life long in this broken country and never find a solitary man and his horse. He could starve or die out here. She had lost him. Failed again. And the sky looked as if the rain might start again, harder than ever. At least that would settle the kireseth, and her mind would clear. Trying to see what was really there through the layers of strange colors, she saw canyon walls rising on either side. There were caves up there. She could try to shelter against the rain, perhaps even build a fire—she had food with her and could brew some bark tea; it might clear her head. If she could manage to climb, or get her pony up the trail. Yet urgency nagged at her. Aleki, lying down in one of those ravines, unconscious but still alive

  If she had only allowed Lady Rohana to train her laran. She could have used it to track Aleki, to see which way he had gone. She had been selfish and arrogant, wanting none of the duties and responsibilities of Comyn.

  If I get out of this alive, I will go to Rohana and beg her to teach me. It would have made it possible for me to do my duty. I have always believed I had so little laran, yet now I know that I could have learned to use what I have. I killed Peter, I sacrificed Aleki’s life, because I would not accept what I was. It seemed that she was looking back over her whole life and finding failures everywhere, from the moment she turned away… turned away…

  She was standing on desert sand, and the sun was rising… a great patch of blood lay red like the rising sun, and for the first time in her waking life, Jaelle saw, in waking consciousness, her mother’s face. And she was caught up in her mother’s pain and terror, and with a frantic effort she made it all go dead and silent…

  From that moment I blocked away my laran, because I could not bear the terrible pain of her death. She died, she abandoned Jalak’s house knowing that she would die, so that I would not be brought up in chains. She died that I could be free, and I could not accept that I was the cause of her death.

  She freed me. But I chained myself again with that guilt…

  And now I do not know how to open what I closed away.

  I killed Peter because I could not bear to remember. I struck out blindly at him, and I killed him. As I killed my mother…

  She forced herself to climb into the saddle again, though the effort made her whole body tremble with pain. She ached all over: she had not ridden in so long, and now she had been in the saddle for the best part of three days. This can’t be the best thing for the baby, either, she thought. But then it was too late to worry about the baby. She should have thought about the baby before it was conceived. Or before she killed its father…

  Oh, stop worrying. You were brought up on Camilla’s story of how Rafaella was caught out on the trail and barely had time to get her breeches off before she dropped the baby and rode home. The baby can take care of herself, she’s nice and snug inside there. And yet it seemed that somewhere the baby was crying. Poor baby. Nobody wants her. Her father wanted her but her father is dead. What will become of her?

  Surely Aleki would have gone back to the main trail, or tried to. But if he had made it back to the trail she would have seen him. No doubt he was lying down in one of the canyons, dead, or drugged with kireseth, or thrown by his horse and unconscious… she must go down there too, and search for him, it was the least she could do, it was her sworn duty. She ignored the rat
ional voice that told her that the search for a single leaf in a forest of nut trees would be simple by contrast. She rode forward, desperately trying to force her mind ahead to see Aleki.

  No. She must get back to the trail, to the main trail. If she reached one of the small villages she could bring out a search party to find him. And yet she could hear Magda calling her…

  No. It was the rising wind. Long trails of cloud were stretching across the sky, the trees moaning and whipping around; a branch slapped across her face; she was back on one of the smaller trails leading upward along the canyon wall. Why? What had made her choose this trail? There was only one thought in her mind, that Aleki was somewhere ahead of her, that instead of going down into the hundred little valleys of the canyon floor he had chosen to ride upward, to get a view of the valley and find out where he had lost the road. Intelligent. But if he had been intelligent enough he would never have come out alone, but would have waited for her to guide him, knowing she was sworn on her honor to keep him safe.

  But he did not trust her oath either. She was a Darkovan and he looked down at her as a native from the height of his own prejudices. No wonder he had left without her. Now, when it was too late, it seemed she understood him. She had been one of those who had obstructed him from what he perceived as his duty, finding out what had happened to the man Carr, and how that fit into the peculiar patterns which Darkover made, alien to other uncivilized planets when the Empire came in.

  But it was my fault, Jaelle. I mentioned Carr in his presence, put Aleki on Carr’s trail; I thought Carr was Intelligence, and perfectly undercover, and I spoke out of turn. Truly, it was my fault and not yours. The voice was so clear in her mind that Jaelle actually turned and was confused not to see Magda riding at her side. She could even hear the hoofs of Magda’s horse. The trail led upward, and the wind was hot in her face, like the desert wind of that journey from Shainsa that she had never wanted to remember. Kindra and Rohana had carried her little brother, wrapped in the fragments of her mother’s cloak. They had tried to get her to carry him. to play with him, she would not touch him. She had never remembered that journey before, but now she remembered lying, a terrified whimpering bundle, in Kindra’s arms. She had been bleeding. She had forgotten that. She only remembered that it meant she would be chained, but she could not even manage to tell them of her fears. She was only afraid they would find it out. It went away in a day or two, even before they were in Thendara and by the time it happened again they were in the Amazon house and she had lost her fear and forgotten that it had happened before; she had learned enough, by then, to be proud that it meant she was a woman. Why did I forget all this until this very day?

  My little brother. He must now be sixteen or eighteen, I have lost track… I cannot remember ever looking upon his face. He has neither mother, father, nor sister; truly he is orphaned. What was it Rohana said about him? That he was sworn paxman to Valdir Alton. But if I live I must go to my brother and get his forgiveness too… and for the first time she remembered words Rohana had spoken on that same journey, words barricaded by her own terrible fear.

  Will you not try and comfort your baby brother? You had your mother for eleven whole years. He has no one. I could have helped him. I could have been at least a sister to him, if not a mother. I have failed at every human relationship in my life, and now I have killed Peter. It would have been enough to leave him. And now it is too late. Too late for everything.

  The sky was filled now with billowing clouds which seemed to move on their own, independent of any wind.

  This way, Jaelle. When the rain comes there will be flood down there. Keep your horse climbing. Once again she turned to look at Magda and found her friend was not there. She was hallucinating again. She had failed with Magda too, if she had actually led Magda out to follow her here, into the wild trackless range country, where she would die.

  Then she saw them.

  She heard their hooves before she saw the riders, sweeping down toward her. A Legion of mounted men, rank after rank, riding at full gallop, and over them flew Comyn banners, rippling in the rainbow wind. The colors of their robes were whirling around their horses’ flanks, and they raced across the sky, their hooves pounding on the cloud as if it were the canyon floor. She could hear the pounding, the thunder of a million hooves, digging into the whirling air and sending little sprays of cloud up like dust. Then the Aillard banner stretched across the sky, and now she could see the young woman who rode beneath it.

  She was tall and red-haired, magnificent, clad in blue with golden hair like a bell of the kireseth itself, like the painting of Cassilda in the ancient chapel. Yet somehow through and over the blue shimmered the crimson robes of a Keeper. My child, my daughter, did I bear you for this? So terribly young, so perfect in her virgin austerity. And behind her pounded the men of the Comyn, led by another leronis in crimson, men and women in Tower robes of green and blue and crimson and white, racing on to drive her down, flashing knives pursuing her, driving her up the canyon, the man who rode at her side went down beneath their hooves, she saw his head explode in blood which splashed her robe… She could see the horses now, hear the pounding of their hooves and smell their rank sweat, but she sat frozen, unable to take her eyes from the face of the young girl…

  Pain jarred through her; a cloud of dust—real dust—suddenly choked her and the world came back into focus; from nowhere a rider, kerchief tied across the face, lean and swift, swooped out on the trail, grabbed her elbow, pulled at her horse.

  “Quick! This way! Jaelle! Jaelle, wake up, hurry! Can’t you see… ” insanely, it was Magda’s voice. This was another hallucination, surely, but Magda sounded angry, she had better go with her to keep her happy. Jaelle dug her heels into the pony’s flank, pushed on upward on the trail. The thunder of hoofs was still there, but the riders in the sky were gone; the noise was below her, and her horse was scrambling for footing on the steep trail at the side of the gorge. But as Jaelle tried to speak, to protest this madness, the thunder and sound overwhelmed them. Chervines. Thousands of them, stampeding down the canyon floor, pounding, flying, a sea of cattle driven by the narrowing ravine into an impassible flood of horns, jammed bodies, hooves, right where she had been sitting her pony in the center of the trail!

  The stampede poured past, on and on. Jaelle was shaking. I could have been killed, I would have sat there drugged by the kireseth vision and let them ride right over me… And Madga. Magda. She is really here and once again she has saved my life.

  The last of the herd roared past, bleating and shoving. A last straggler bawled. A few of the beasts, driven and pushed to the edges, plunged off the trail and out of sight. Then they were gone, though the noise of their passing still shook the ground. And as the sound dulled to a distant thunder, the rain began, pouring as if the heavens had opened and dumped buckets on them.

  Magda put out a hand in the sudden downpour. She said, “Up this way. I saw a cave.”

  The light was already going as they climbed, and by the time they reached it, it was only a darkness against the cliffside, and Jaelle slid, still shaking, from her pony, and led it in. Magda followed her. She said, in a high terrified voice, “I saw you— and you were just sitting there—and the chervines coming down the canyon like the wind…”

  “What made them—stampede like that?” Jaelle heard herself say. “The kireseth … ?”

  “Was that what it was? I didn’t know. But there is floodwater above, pouring down into the ravine,” Magda said, and put her head out. “Look.”

  Down where they had been riding, a wall of water was sweeping down the canyon, almost a river. Would the chervines be drowned or would they make it to higher ground? Magda thrust her head out till Jaelle was frightened as she hung over the canyon wall from the mouth of the cave, then pulled back inside.

  “The high-water mark is a good four feet below us,” she said. “We’ll be safe here.” She pulled her saddle and saddlebags off the horse. “Well, breda, it’s bett
er than the pass of Scaravel. At least I doubt if we’ll meet any banshees here.”

  Jaelle’s legs would hardly hold her upright. She stood holding on to her horse, unable to move. Magda turned to say sharply, “Better get your saddle off and get into dry clothes if you have any. And have you anything to light a fire? There’s plenty of dry wood stacked back there—and look at the fire-ring; this place must be a regular place of resort for herd-men.”

  But still Jaelle’s legs would not move, and finally Magda came and pushed her down on her spread cloak. “Lie down, then. Keep out of my way while I build a fire.”

  I am shirking again. I have failed my duty. Even Magda, even Magda I have led into my failures. My mother died for me. I failed Rohana when she would have given me my heritage of laran. I failed my brother. And my oath-sisters. And my baby. And Peter…

  Magda had spread a blanket across the entrance for a windbreak, and was kneeling by the ring of stones, kindling a fire. Her dark hair was soaked, clinging in little wisps to her face. She had stripped off her soaked shirt and undertunic. Jaelle coughed on the smoke as the fire caught and began to blaze upward. A rough chimney had been guided through a hole in the roof of the cave. Soon Magda had a small pot rigged and was brewing bark-tea. She brought a small clay cup of the stuff to Jaelle and held it to her lips. Jaelle tasted it; it was sickeningly sweet and she shoved it away. Magda pushed it against her mouth and said sharply, “Drink it. You’re in shock and sugar is the best thing for that.”

  Obediently Jaelle swallowed, and felt her head clear a little. She said after a minute, “You’ve saved my life again. How did you happen to turn up just in time?”

  “I’ve only been trailing you for two days,” Magda said grimly. “What possessed you to take off like that—alone, pregnant, a storm coming up? You must have been crazy.”

  “That’s what Peter said,” Jaelle whispered. “He threatened to have me drugged. Chained—”