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…”
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.
CITY OF SORCERY
* * *
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.
* * *
Chapter One
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.
The Saga of the Renunciates Page 79
