The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  By the time she had dried the wet cloak and hood, the women were already coming into the dining room, so Magda stayed to help put bowls and mugs on the table. When everyone had been served, she slipped into her customary seat beside Jaelle.

  “Did Doria give you her message?”

  “Yes, but I cannot imagine what can be in her mind,” Jaelle said. She looked troubled. “It was the last thing I expected after all these years. We aren’t children anymore.”

  “What is wrong, Jaelle?” With her freemate so troubled, it was more than Magda could do to keep her resolve to stay entirely out of it.

  “The message was only a few words, not even written down: There is a letter for you in the old place. Magda, that goes back a long way—to when I was only a little girl, Kindra’s fosterling. Kindra used to take me with her on long trips, and Rafi and I wouldn’t see each other for long periods of time. So we used to have a secret, private letter drop at the old saddlemaker’s in the Street of the Four Winds.”

  Magda shrugged. “Why not? I suppose most children do that sort of thing at one time or another.”

  “Rafaella wasn’t a child, she was older than I—but, well, I thought it wonderful that an older girl would play games with me. Rafi and I have always been— close. You know that.”

  “Indeed I do,” Magda said. The sympathy she felt was very real. As a Terran child, isolated among Darkovans, she had always been an outsider.

  “But now we are not children, we are not even young girls, I am a grown woman with a child of my own, and Rafaella is older than you are! Why should she revert to this childish nonsense?”

  “Oh, Jaelle,” Magda said, “don’t worry so about it. Perhaps she wants to confide in you, or to assure herself that you are still close enough to her to do something silly and childish for her. A way of—re-establishing that old closeness. She doesn’t trust me not to come between you. ”

  “And that is silly and childish,” Jaelle said, still looking pale and troubled. “We’re not children, and does she truly think she can come between freemates? I am ashamed of her, Magda. She can hardly want me as a lover after all these years. But if she does not understand that I will always be her friend—then she is sillier than ever I thought her.”

  “Don’t worry,” Magda reassured her, “you’ll see, she simply has something she wants to tell you privately.”

  “But she ought to know I always respect her confidences,” Jaelle fretted. “I am really afraid she’s gotten herself into trouble of some sort—”

  Magda shrugged. “I wouldn’t think so. If she felt free to leave the city and take all her horses, leaving poor Keitha to borrow mine—”

  “What?”

  “Jaelle, didn’t you know?”

  “No, all day I have been recopying some old archives for Mother Lauria. The paper on which they are written is disintegrating, because the ink they used in those days was so acid. They are only about a hundred years old, but they are falling to pieces. And I’ve nothing else to do here. So I’ve been shut up all day in the library—”

  Briefly, Magda told the story.

  “It’s really not like Rafi to be so thoughtless. What can she be thinking of?” Jaelle’s smooth forehead drew into lines of puzzlement. “I think I should go at once to the saddlemaker’s, Magda.”

  “Tonight? You’re out of your mind,” Magda said. “Listen to the rain and wind out there!” It sounded like one of the summer gales which blow down through the pass from the Venza Mountains, striking Thendara with rain and high winds and sometimes, even in high summer, sleet or snow. Jaelle frowned, listening to the wind slamming the shutters against the windows.

  “Whatever it is, Rafi is out in it.” She pushed aside the untouched piece of nutcake on her plate and went toward the hall. Magda followed.

  “You can’t go out alone in this weather on some hen-brained notion of Rafaella’s—”

  Jaelle turned and caught her arm. “Come with me, then. I have a feeling that this may mean trouble, Magda—more trouble than Rafaella being jealous or wanting to play girl’s games.”

  With a sigh of resignation, Magda nodded, and caught up the cloak she had so painstakingly dried. Camilla appeared in the hallway behind them.

  “Going out? In this weather? Are you both quite mad?”

  Jaelle told her what had happened. Her face was pale and drawn.

  “Camilla, come with us. You are Rafi’s friend too.”

  “As much as she will allow,” Camilla said. Sighing, she took down a battered old cape. “Let’s go.”

  Wind and rain slammed into the hall as the three women went out into the night.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  The rain poured down as the three women walked swiftly toward the marketplace. Magda was angry at herself for having allowed the hostilities between them to go on for so long. Jaelle’s small triangular face was hidden under her hood, but it seemed to Magda that she could see pale anger there.

  Camilla strode beside them, gaunt and silent, and the rain sloshed in puddles under their feet and flapped their capes around their faces. The marketplace was empty, pools of icy water making a miniature landscape of lakes and small rocky shores. Stalls, tightly locked and boarded, rose like islands over those shores.

  “She’s not here. The saddlemaker’s stall is closed,” Camilla said. “Come home, Jaelle, there’s nothing that can’t wait till tomorrow.”

  “I know where the saddlemaker lives.” Jaelle spun abruptly on her heel, heading toward a dark side street. Camilla and Magda exchanged a single despairing glance and followed her.

  Magda felt she would like to shake Rafaella until her teeth rattled. She was also angry at Jaelle, who was for catering to Rafaella by tearing off into the Old Town at this godforgotten hour.

  The wind was icy, even through their capes, striking hard down the back of her neck. Magda spared a thought for Keitha, riding outside the city. But Keitha would be warm inside a house, with a good fire they would build up for heating water. Magda had never had the slightest wish to be a Medic or even a Renunciate midwife, but at least tonight Keitha knew where she was going and why and what she was going to do when she got there. And that was more than the others knew.

  Jaelle stopped before a small weatherbeaten house, spoke briefly to someone who came to answer the bell, and after a time, a fattish old woman came to the door.

  “Why, it’s our little Jaelle, and all grown up, aren’t you? Yes, your partner left you a letter, and I brought it home here, afraid, I was, someone would put it away somewheres I couldn’t find it. Now, dear me, where’d I leave it?” The woman dug in several of her capacious pockets like an owl trimming her feathers, hunching herself and digging about. “Ah, here we are—no, that’s an order for Lady D’Amato’s saddle. This—ah, yes, here you are, chiya, won’t you come in, and your friends too, and have some sweet cakes and cider by my fireside, like you used to?”

  She held out a somewhat grimy fold of paper, sealed with a colored wafer.

  “No, I thank you, I must try and catch up with Rafi before she is too far out of the city,” Jaelle said, and turned away, her mouth set into a grim line. Magda could see her scanning the letter’s front, but it was too dark to see or read.

  “Here.” Camilla seized Jaelle’s shoulder, steered her toward the spill of light from the open door of a wineshop on the corner. The place was humming with talk, crowded with mercenary soldiers and Guardsmen, but though some greeted Camilla with a nod and a word or two, none of them attempted to hinder the tall emmasca as she led her friends to a table at the rear. A thick-bodied lamp was swinging over the table. Camilla quieted Jaelle’s attempt at protest with a word.

  “They know me here. No one will bother us. Sit down and read your letter, Shaya.” She jerked her head at the round-bodied woman who hurried toward them. “Just wine punch, and privacy at this table, Chella.” Camilla flung a coin on the table, and as the woman scurried off to obey her, said deliberately to Magda
, “She’s not much now, but you should have seen her ten years ago. Skin like rich cream, and the softest neck I ever tried to bite. Her hair was long enough to sit on, then, and the color—it made you want to hang it with silver, and believe me, she knew it. But she’s a good soul for all that.”

  The woman, coming back with the hot wine, giggled softly and ran her fingertips lightly across Camilla’s hand. Camilla smiled up at her and said, “Another time, Chella. My friends and I need to talk. Make sure nobody gets any notion that we want company, will you, Chella?”

  Jaelle tore open Rafaella’s letter and moved it under the light. As she read, she frowned, and finally said, “She’s gone raving mad.” She tossed the letter to Magda.

  Reluctantly, Magda took the letter and read:

  Dearest Shaya,

  I’ve been trying to get you to come back to work with me long enough. Now it’s time to stop talking about it, and do something. I’m leaving this at the old place as a way of reminding you of the good times, but this is bigger in every way. There might even be a chance at the special expedition we used to talk about. Lieutenant Anders thinks she is using me for the big discovery she thinks she can make. It’s the other way round, really. But I’ll give the woman value for her money, and so will you.

  Remember when we were girls, Kindra’s old legends of the secret city far away in the Hellers, where an ancient Sisterhood watches over the affairs of humankind? There’s a chance it may not be legend after all. Remember the legends used to say that if you found your way there, and you were sufficiently virtuous, they would teach you all the wisdom of the universe. I wouldn’t give a catman’s tooth for wisdom, and I probably don’t have the virtue to qualify, either.

  It could be a dangerous business, but the legends all agree on one thing: they won’t, or aren’t allowed to interfere in human affairs, and if you find them, they aren’t allowed, by their laws, to kill. Their city is supposed to be filled with copper and gold and rare old books of wisdom. They say all the wisdom of the cristoforos came from them, but the cristoforos only got a little of it. Yet everyone says the cristoforos are the custodians of all wisdom!

  So I don’t have to tell you what I’m doing. The Terran woman wants information for HQ, which she says will make her famous. As for me, I’m betting on some of that copper coin and gold. Forget the wisdom. If I get there, and get out again, I guarantee I’ll have something a lot better than some old books and fancy words. But I need your help. I can’t do this alone, and there aren’t that many women in the Guild-house now that I can rely on, except you.

  I need trade supplies, extra-warm clothing, and a few more horses and pack animals. Try to persuade a couple of the Guild-sisters to come along, too—not goody-goodies like Doria or Keitha, but someone who can travel hard, live rough, chew leather and take orders. And whatever you do, don’t run and blab all this to Margali! For once, love, keep something good to yourself. Remember your old partner— and bring all the horses and trade goods you can get your hands on. It will be a rough trip, but believe it, it will be worth your while. Think of making your daughter independent of her father, even if he is Comyn!

  I’ll wait for you for three days where we had to slaughter the chervines that time with Kindra. Don’t fail me! Get on the road at once, so we can be over the Kadarin before the weather breaks.

  I know you, and I know how you must be longing to be on the road again. I’ll be waiting for you, Oath-Sister! With my love,

  Rafi

  Magda dropped the letter on the table and took up the smoking cup of hot wine punch that the bar woman had set before her.

  She said, “It’s not Rafi who’s gone mad, it’s Lexie Anders.”

  “Most likely both of them.” Camilla picked up the letter, raised an eyebrow toward Jaelle. “May I?”

  “Please do.”

  As she read, Camilla snorted. At last she said, “Legends! Why doesn’t she go off looking for the Hidden City, the one with the spicebread trees all hung with candied fruit… I thought Rafi had more sense.”

  “She’s going to get herself into terrible trouble,” Magda said. “Of course the responsibility is Lexie’s, but that doesn’t mean Rafaella can get away with this. Even if such a place had ever existed—”

  “Oh, it may well exist,” said Jaelle unexpectedly, and Magda turned on her.

  “You never said that when Callista and I were talking about strange leronyn from other parts of the Overworld—”

  “To be perfectly truthful, Magda, I hadn’t associated the two. I never thought of the Sisters of Wisdom as robed figures with calling crows. When I was a little girl in the Guild-house, and first heard of the Sisterhood, I used to wonder if they came from the Hidden City. Kindra talked of it to me a time or two, when we were traveling together—a city inhabited by wise-women, perhaps descended from the old priestesses of Avarra. The city is said to be on an island, or it was, once, when the climate was different from today’s. If you find it, they have to take you in. They can tell you everything you need to know—how to make a fortune, if that’s what you want, or mystical wisdom about the purpose of your life, if that’s what you want. Kindra said she had met women who had been there, so it never occurred to me that it was a legend. If you put all the stories together, there may well be something to them. That doesn’t mean I think the place is accessible. According to Kindra, they would do everything they could to keep anyone from finding it. Everything except kill, Camilla’s right about that part of the legend. And if you actually did find it, they were obligated—oh, none of this makes any sense, I can’t imagine why the Terrans should meddle with any of it, or why Rafi would have anything to do with it if they did!”

  Magda, heartsick, said, “I’m afraid that’s my fault. Lexie, I think, would do anything, anything at all now, to get ahead of me, to make her mark in Terran Intelligence in a way I couldn’t hope to equal. I swear I never intended to set myself up as a legend, I wasn’t trying to grab any glory! She accused me of wanting it all, once, saying I didn’t leave anything for anyone else to accomplish—”

  “Oh, the woman’s a fool,” Camilla said, “you did what was set in front of you. If she can’t understand that you aren’t competing with her—”

  It was something very different that was troubling Jaelle. “If she does this, Rafaella will end by being blackballed by the Terrans. She would never work for them again. And what will happen to Lieutenant Anders, Magda, if she does this against official advice?”

  “The best she could hope for would be to be shipped offworld,” Magda said. “At worst, she could be thrown out of the service, and serve her right. Unless she made such a major discovery that they’ll—that must be what she’s hoping for, to make a discovery for M-and-Ex that’s so spectacular they’ll overlook her disobeying Standard Orders. That’s not unknown in the history of the service, either. Peter told me she was thinking of doing this, but I told him it could hardly be done, even with all the resources of the Empire behind her.”

  “Evidently,” Camilla said, “she’s not trying it with them behind her. Which is just as well, Terrans aren’t welcome in the Hellers, and a big expedition wouldn’t find anything, except, probably, more trouble than they could manage. But half a dozen women, well-provisioned, with good luck and good weather, might manage it. Kindra always said she’d like to try it, Jaelle, but when she took you in as a fosterling, she waited for you to grow up, and died before she ever had the chance.” After a minute, Camilla added, “Rafaella would know about that. Rafi was her kinswoman. I’m surprised that she’d try to take a Terran on such a trip, though.”

  “I’m not,” Magda said. “The Terrans have the resources, the money, maps and so forth, to mount expeditions like that. If, in all these years, Rafi hasn’t found any women, even in the Guild-house, who were willing to try, I’m not surprised that when a woman of the Empire brought it up, she’d be excited about the possibility. I am surprised Lexie dragged Jaelle into it. And I’d want more evidence, that it
was real, not just an old story.”

  But had Lexie been able to provide more evidence than Magda had read in her mind? Magda realized, with sudden horror, that she was jealous; that she was thinking, This should not have been brushed aside by the Terrans, this should have been given to me, Magda Lorne! She was, after all, the first woman to do underground fieldwork on Darkover. If something this big was in the wind, what right did they have to let Lexie take over?

  Magda was shocked at herself. This was the very kind of thing which had precipitated Lexie Anders’s hostility in the first place. And far from sending Lexie off on an exciting chase for a legendary city, Peter Haldane had specifically refused to authorize any such thing.

  Or had he? Maybe calling Magda in with a blunt prohibition from the Legate’s office would be the perfect cover-up for Terran Intelligence to go out looking for the same thing. Was it even ethical for Magda, sworn to the Guild-house, to see Terrans led into the heart of the most carefully guarded women’s secret on Darkover?

  No, this was nonsense, she was only giving credence to Marisela’s absurd intimations of mystical sisterhoods and cosmic secrets.

  “I don’t know why I am worrying about it,” she said. “It’s impossible. Suicide. Even with luck and good weather—neither of which are easy to find in the Hellers—it can’t be done.”

  And even if it were possible, even if Cholayna sent for her and asked her to take it over, she would have refused. “Totally impossible,” she repeated, again, hunting for conviction in the words.

  “I don’t know about that,” Camilla said. “Assuming Kindra was right, and there really is such a place—if it has ever been done, ever—it could be done again. But I don’t think Rafi could do it. You might, Jaelle. Or might have, once. I don’t know if you’ve still got it in you, after seven years of soft living out at Armida.”