The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Ankle.” Now they could see that she had been supporting as much of her weight as she could holding on to the horse; abruptly she let go and sank to the ground. Camilla came and tried to pull off her boot, but in the end they had to cut through the heavy leather to remove it. The ankle was swollen, with a great purplish-red patch on the ankle-bone.

  “This is worse than a sprain,” Camilla said. “You may have knocked a chip of bone out of the ankle.”

  Vanessa made a wry face. “I was afraid of that. Probably needs X-raying, but there’s no good thinking about that here. There are spare boots in my rucksack—”

  “You’ll never get them on,” Magda said. “Take my spares, they’re four sizes bigger. Never thought I’d be grateful for having big feet.”

  Vanessa let out her breath in a gasp as Cholayna came to examine the foot.

  “Wiggle your toes. Fine. Does it hurt when I do this?”

  Vanessa’s answer was loud, profane, and affirmative.

  “Nothing broken, I’d say. Just a really bad bruise and a lot of swelling. Are there elastic bandages in that medikit?”

  “There’s one in my pack,” Jaelle said. She went and found it, gave it to Cholayna and said, “It probably needs bathing and all kinds of things, but there’s no good trying to stop and make a fire here, so bandage it up and we’ll round up the chervines.” The beasts were scattered all up and down the next half mile of the downward trail. “Camilla, you turned an ankle too, didn’t you? Is that okay? Any other casualties?”

  Camilla’s ankle, examined, proved to be only strained a little; nevertheless, Jaelle told her to bandage it up and give it a rest.

  “Magda will help me round up the chervines. We’re not more than a couple of hours from Barrensclae. With Avarra’s mercy, we’ll be able to ride most of the way from there.”

  While they were catching and quieting the scattered pack animals, Magda spotted a scrap of something which had no business on that trail. She caught it up and called softly to Jaelle.

  “Look here.”

  Jaelle took the brightly colored scrap of plastic from her; yellow, with a torn letter at one edge. “Packaging?”

  “From standard high-altitude emergency rations, yes.”

  “Lexie’s?”

  “Who else? Anyone who saw this, though, must have known she wasn’t going out to study folk dancing. At least now we know they did come this way.”

  Jaelle nodded and thrust the scrap into a pocket. “Maybe they lost time here, too. Let’s go and find out if they’re still waiting for us. They do need the things we’re bringing—extra warm clothes, trade goods—they’ll do better in the Hellers if they wait.”

  “Then you’ll be going on, if we do catch them? You actually think they’ll find that—city?”

  “Don’t you, Magda?” Jaelle looked surprised and hurt. “You’re coming too, I thought—?”

  “I suppose so,” Magda said, slowly and not at all sure. She could deal with Rafaella, who had been both friendly and unfriendly and would probably only accept her for Jaelle’s sake, and then only if it was her best hope of continuing the search. But Lexie? Magda could hear her now.

  Hellfire, Lorne, are there any pies on this planet you don’t have your fingers in?

  * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  Barrensclae was well named, Magda thought; a high plateau, without grass or trees, rocky rubble lying loose, and a few stone ruins where once there had been houses and stockpens. She wondered why it had been abandoned, what had impelled the farmers who had lived here to pull up and go away. Or had they all been murdered by bandits in one of the blood-feuds that still raged in the Kilghard Hills?

  She put the question to Jaelle, who shrugged.

  “Who knows? Who cares? It can’t have been much or we’d have heard a hundred different stories already.”

  Camilla said, with a grim smile, “If they just went away on their own, it may have been the only sensible thing they ever did. I’d be more interested to know why they ever thought of settling here in the first place.”

  Cholayna said the obvious: “If Lexie and Rafaella were ever here, they’re not here now.”

  “They might be hunting. Or exploring.” Jaelle rode slowly toward the abandoned stockpen, near a house which still had some semblance of roof clinging to the old stones. “We slaughtered the chervines here, and slept three nights in that house. If Rafi left a message, it would be here.”

  Camilla looked at the sky, lowering gray; the night’s rain would begin soon. “We’ll spend the night anyway, I suppose. No sense going much farther, and Vanessa’s ankle needs looking after. There’s something like a roof on this, too. I suggest we look inside and see if we can camp there.”

  “Any reason we shouldn’t?” Vanessa asked. “I mean, the original owners seem to be very long gone. What could stop us?”

  “Oh, just little things, like—no floor, mold, bugs, snakes, rats, bats.” Camilla ticked them over on her fingers, laughing. “On the other hand, we might just find Rafaella’s pack animals and their various belongings stored there, in which case—”

  Magda was not sure whether she hoped they would find the women there or that they would not. When they managed to swing the heavy door inward from the hinges, the place was suspiciously clear of all the things Camilla had warned against: the old stone-paved floor was dusty but not filthy, and there seemed to be nothing lurking about.

  “This place has been used recently,” Cholayna remarked. “They were here, and not long ago.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Jaelle warned, “anyone could have used this place. Travelers, bandits—it’s possible they were here, but we can’t be sure.”

  It looked to Magda like a good place for bandits: she remembered encountering bandits in a travel-shelter once, years ago. She had not thought about bandits on this trip, and wished she had not had the idea brought to her attention just now.

  There was no point in letting it worry her. Camilla could certainly manage three times their weight in bandits, and would probably rather enjoy the opportunity to try.

  “That’s not what’s worrying me,” Jaelle said. “There are only two of them, and one a Terranan greenhorn.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” Cholayna said. “Lexie had the same unarmed-combat training as Magda. And Rafaella’s no weakling.”

  “Bandits travel in packs,” Jaelle said. “Fair fights aren’t what they’re noted for.” Just the same, she brought in her saddlebags and dumped them on the stone floor. “Cholayna, why don’t you make a fire so we can look after Vanessa’s ankle.”

  Before long the fire was blazing, and Cholayna was making what use she could of the medikit. She still suspected that Vanessa had knocked a chip of bone loose from her ankle, but there was nothing they could do about it here.

  “At least there’s no shortage of ice,” Cholayna said, looking out into the snow. “Cold packs until the swelling goes down; after that, hot and cold alternately. A proper medic would put it in a cast, but it’s probably not dangerous without one. It’s going to make walking hard for a few days, but since Jaelle says we can probably ride most of the way from here, it could be worse. At least you’re not in danger of being lamed for life if you don’t get proper Terran treatment.”

  Unasked, Magda pulled out the cooking kit and started making soup from the dried meat in their supplies. A hearty aroma began to steal through the old stone house. Toasting did wonders for the hard journey-bread, too. Soup, cooked grain-porridge, and a kettle of hot bark-tea—it was the first real hot meal they had had since leaving Thendara, and it greatly revived their spirits.

  When they finally crawled into their sleeping bags, Magda soon knew all the others were sleeping peacefully. Still she lay awake, troubled without knowing why. She could not help feeling that this whole trip was somehow a reflection of her failures—with Lexie, Vanessa, Cholayna, and, perhaps especially, Rafaella. Somehow, she had made Lexie feel that she must compete with what some
people in the HQ insisted on calling the “Lorne Legend”; had said the wrong things to Vanessa and Cholayna or they would not have been here; without meaning to, she had come between Jaelle and Rafaella… But whatever the unknown dangers of the road, Jaelle was right, they could not turn back.

  The next morning, Vanessa’s ankle was swollen to the size of a peck basket, and she was running a fever. Cholayna dosed her with salicylates from the medikit, while Magda and Camilla repacked the loads to redistribute weight and Jaelle went out to search the terrain for any signs of the passage of the other women. She came back late in the day with the carcass of a chervine calf slung over her back.

  “We can all use fresh meat. Vanessa particularly needs the extra protein.” She set about skinning and butchering the carcass with an expert hand; Cholayna turned her eyes away, but Vanessa watched with fascination.

  “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “Leading mountain expeditions. We don’t have a lot of fancy packaged rations available,” Jaelle said, “and hunting skills are one of the first things you learn to feed yourself in the wilds. I could bring down a full-grown animal before I was fifteen years old, and if you’re killing your own meat, you have to be able to skin it and cut it up and dry it for the trail, too. We’ll eat as much of this fresh as we can. I’ll roast a haunch for supper, but it’s too small to dry properly. What we can’t eat, we’ll put out for the kyorebni before we leave.” She looked regretfully at the delicate dappled skin of the little animal. “Hate to waste this hide, I could get a nice pair of gauntlets out of it if we had the time to tan it.”

  Cholayna shuddered and kept her eyes even more averted than they had already been; but she said nothing. It must, Magda thought, be difficult for her all round, taking orders when she was accustomed to giving them, and resigning herself to being the oldest and the weakest. This assault on her ethical principles—Magda knew Cholayna had never eaten meat, or anything which had once lived, before this—must be the final trial. But she had kept silent about it, which could not have been easy.

  By the next morning, the worst of the swelling was gone from Vanessa’s ankle, and Jaelle, looking uneasily at the sky, said they should press on. Cholayna felt that Vanessa should rest her ankle for another day, but Jaelle was uneasy about the weather and studied Magda’s maps for a long time, seeking an easier route.

  “We’ll head straight north, but we’ll go around by the trail instead of going straight over the ridge. They have enough of a start on us now that it’s very unlikely we’ll catch up with them this side of the Kadarin; more probably not much before Nevarsin,” Jaelle said.

  With horses and chervines well rested, they started again, along trails that did not need to be negotiated on foot. There were flurries of snow as they rode, and it was damp and cold; they all dug out their warmest sweaters and underclothing. At night the sleeping bags were dank and clammy, and even Cholayna drank the hot meat-soup gladly.

  On the third afternoon, the trail began to rise again, each hill steeper than the last, and finally Jaelle said that on the upward slopes they must dismount and walk to spare the horses the extra weight—except for Vanessa, who was still unable to bear her weight on the injured ankle.

  “I can walk if I have to,” said Vanessa, brandishing the thick branch Camilla had cut for a walking stick that morning. “I don’t need special treatment, either!”

  “Believe me, Vanessa, I’ll tell you if it’s necessary for you to walk. Don’t try to be heroic,” Jaelle added. “If we end up carrying you, we’ll never get through.”

  They were slogging up the fourth or fifth of these hills—Magda had lost count in the dreary dripping fog— when her foot turned under her, and she lost her footing, fell full length and slipped backward, sliding down the steep path, scraping against rocks, ice and tough roots in the way. She struck her head, and in a flash of pain, lost consciousness.

  … she was wandering in the gray world; she heard Jaelle calling her, but the hideous old woman was there, laughing… wherever she turned, though she ran and ran, always the old crone was there with that terrible screaming laughter that was like the cry of some wild bird, arms outstretched to shoo her back, force her away… suddenly Camilla was there, knife drawn to protect her, facing the old woman; her knife struck blue fire…

  There was something wet on her face; cold moisture was seeping into her collar. She raised her hand—it felt heavy and cold—to push it away and it turned into a damp cloth. It was like fire on her forehead, which felt as if it had been split with an axe.

  Camilla’s face looked down into hers; she was pale, and it seemed to Magda that she had been crying. Nonsense, she thought, Camilla never cries.

  “Bredhiya,” Camilla murmured, and her hand clasped Magda’s so tightly that she winced, “I thought I had lost you. How do you feel?”

  “Like hell. Every bone in my body feels as if it had been beaten with a smith’s hammer,” Magda muttered. She discovered that she was undressed to the waist. “Hell, no wonder I’m cold! Is this standard treatment for shock?”

  She tried to make a joke of it, but Jaelle bent over her and said, “I undressed you to make sure you didn’t have any internal injuries. You scraped all the skin off one arm down to the elbow, and you may have cracked a rib. Try to sit up, if you can.”

  Magda pulled herself carefully to a sitting position. She moved her head cautiously and wished she hadn’t. “What did I hit, a mountain?”

  “Just a rock, Miss Lorne,” Vanessa said. It sounded so absurd; Magda had meant to protest before this. Vanessa asked, “Are you cold?” and put her shirt onto her. Her arm, she discovered, was bandaged heavily over some slick and foul-smelling ointment.

  Camilla draped a warm cloak around her. “It will be easier than trying to get your jacket on over the bandages and won’t rub the sore spots so much,” she said, pulling Magda’s jacket around her own lean frame. “Do you feel sleepy?”

  Magda tried again to shake her head and didn’t. “No. Sleepy is the last thing I am.”

  “Do you think you can go on?” Jaelle asked. “There’s no place to camp here, but if you can’t—”

  Magda managed to pull herself upright with Camilla’s help. Her head was still splitting, and she asked for some of Cholayna’s painkillers, but Cholayna shook her head.

  “Not until we know how serious your concussion is. If you’re still wide awake when we stop for the night, you can have some. Till then, nothing that might depress your breathing.”

  “Miserable sadist,” Magda grumbled; but she too had had basic emergency training, and knew about head injuries.

  “Look on the bright side,” said Cholayna, “now you get to ride uphill along with Vanessa, while the rest of us slog along on foot.”

  Magda found it almost impossible to haul herself into her saddle, even with Camilla’s help, and when the horse began to move, she wished she were walking; the motion was nearly intolerable. The snow was wet now, half rain and half snow, and clung thickly, soaking through her cloak. She rode in dreary misery, every footfall of her horse jolting as if the beast were actually stepping on her head; and the uphill path was so steep that again she felt as if she were slipping backward off her saddle. Without being asked, Camilla came close and took the reins from her hand.

  “Bredhiya, you just hang on, I’ll guide your horse. Just a little further now. Poor love, I wish I could carry you.”

  “I’m all right, Camilla. Really I am, it’s only a headache. And I feel so foolish, falling like that and delaying all of you this way.”

  “Look, here we are at the top of the ridge. Now we can all ride again, and if you can’t sit in your saddle, bredhiya, you can ride double with me. My horse will carry two and all you need to do is lean against me. Do you want to do that?”

  “No, no, really, I’m all right,” Magda said; and though she knew it was unfair, the older woman’s solicitude embarrassed her—partly because she knew that it must be embarrassing to the other women,
especially Vanessa, who could not understand the bond between them. “Please don’t fuss over me so, Camilla. Just let me alone, I’m fine.”

  “Please yourself, then.” Camilla touched her heels to her horse’s side, and went to the head of the line beside Jaelle. As soon as she was gone, Magda regretted her words and wished Camilla was still beside her; what, after all, did it matter to her what anyone thought, after all these years? Discouraged, her head aching, she clung to the reins and let her horse find his own way down the hill.

  As she rounded a turn in the downhill road, past a huge stand of conifers, she could see lights below. A little village huddled in the valley, just a crossing of the narrow road; first an outlying farm or two, then a forge and a stream dammed for a mill, with a granary warehouse, a windmill and a few small stone houses, each surrounded by a patch of garden.

  “I wonder if there is an inn in this place?” Camilla asked.

  Children and women and even a few men had come out to the roadside to watch as they passed; a sure sign, Magda knew from her years in the field, that the place was so isolated that the appearance of any stranger was a major event.

  Jaelle asked one of the women, heavy-set, imposing, in clothing somewhat less coarse than the rest, “Is there an inn where we can spend the night and command supper?”

  She had to repeat the question several times, in different dialects, before she could make herself understood, and when the woman finally answered, her own dialect was so rude a patois of cahuenga that Magda could hardly understand her. She asked Camilla, who had returned to ride beside her, “What did she say? You know more of the mountain languages than I do.”

  “She said there is no inn,” Camilla said—speaking pure casta so that they would not be understood if they were overheard. “But there is a good public bathhouse, she said, where we could bathe. She also offered us the use of a barn which is empty at this time of year. They look like a fine lot of ruffians to me, and I would just as soon not trust any of them, but I don’t know what alternatives we have.”