The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Jaelle also presented Arlinda with a full packload of the trade goods she had brought for Rafaella. “Rafi won’t need them past here; there’s nothing to trade and almost nobody to trade with,” she said, “though I kept a load of things we might use for gifts or bribes if there are any villages up here; sweets and candies, small tools, mirrors and the like. And the Guild-house needs to be on good terms with Arlinda’s establishment; it’s the only decent place for Renunciates to stay in Nevarsin.”

  “I’m not so sure of that, if Arlinda’s being watched or dominated by Aquilara’s people,” said Camilla, packing the fresh supplies into a saddlebag. “We ought to trade off the horses here, and take only chervines into the high country. Horses don’t have the stamina.”

  “Cholayna and Vanessa can’t ride chervines,” said Magda, “and I’m not sure I could. The mountain horses can go almost anywhere a chervine can go. I suspect if we reach any country too rough for a horse, it will be too rough for us.”

  While they were loading the saddlebags, Camilla drew Magda aside for a moment and gave her a pair of embroidered gloves, made of the fine leather from the shops covered by Arlinda’s establishment. Ever since they had been lovers, Camilla had enjoyed surprising her with little gifts like this, and Magda’s eyes filled with tears.

  “But these are expensive, Camilla, you shouldn’t—”

  “I found a few mountain men in the taverns who liked to play at darts and would not believe any woman, even an emmasca who had been a mercenary soldier, could throw a knife as well as they could. And when their pride, and their love of gambling, had prompted one man to wager more than he could pay, I generously accepted these in settlement of the debt. I suppose he had bought them for his wife or his lady friend, but she will have to teach her man not to gamble on his masculine pride!” She chuckled, low in her throat. “They are foolish and frivolous for this mountain city—your hands would freeze in them—but you can wear them when we return to a gentler climate!”

  And for a moment Magda felt cheered, aware of optimism again; they would return to the comparatively benign climate of Thendara. She had hardly realized till this moment how much her world had narrowed to ice, cold, frostbitten fingers, frozen boots. The thin, frivolous little beaded gloves reminded her of flowers, sunshine, a world where it was possible to dance in the streets till dawn in midsummer; not this austere monastic city where snow lay in the streets all year round.

  She pressed Camilla’s hand, and Camilla put an arm around her waist. Jaelle looked up and saw them, and as the kitchen-women entered with the dinner they had ordered, Magda saw her frown slightly, as when she was planning some bit of mischief. Then she embraced Vanessa deliberately and leaned over to kiss her on the mouth. Vanessa looked startled, but Magda heard— though she was too far away to hear and knew she was reading the thought behind the whisper, “Play along, silly! Or do you think I am seriously trying to seduce you?”

  Vanessa blinked in surprise, but did not protest; she put up her arms around Jaelle, who kissed her long and hard, then turned languidly to the women unloading trays and dishes.

  “Don’t disturb us till the fifth hour after the monastery bells ring for Morning Prayer,” she said, and went on to describe an elaborate breakfast, and pay for it, adding a generous tip. When the women went away, full of promises about the expensive delicacies Jaelle had ordered, Vanessa pulled herself free of Jaelle, her face crimson.

  “Have you gone mad? What will they be thinking?”

  “Exactly what I want them to think,” Jaelle said, “that we will be long lying abed tomorrow, in various combinations. It will never occur to them to suspect that we are intending to leave the city before the bells ring for Night Office; they won’t know we are gone until they bring that fancy breakfast when the sun is high.”

  “And if Aquilara’s spy is not among the kitchen workers but among the girls in the stable?” Vanessa asked.

  “Then I will have embarrassed you for nothing,” Jaelle said. With a mischievous shrug, she pulled her close and kissed her again. “Did you really object as much as all that? I saw no sign of it.”

  Vanessa only giggled. A few days ago, Magda thought, she would have been angry.

  At least she no longer feels that we are a threat to her.

  Another leisurely bath; then a plentiful dinner, served in their rooms, and they settled down to sleep as long as they could. But for Magda sleep was slow in coming, even though, with the room sealed against intrusion, she had no fear of nightmares. She was lying between Jaelle and Camilla; after the older woman slept, she tossed and turned and finally Jaelle whispered, “Can’t you sleep either? What’s the matter? It’s going to be a rough trip, but even Cholayna seems better; I think she can make it. You’re not still worrying about that old witch Aquilara, are you? I think we’ve shaken her off. I think Lexie and Rafaella managed to get free of her too.”

  “I’m not so sure, Shaya. What bothers me is—who are they? What would they want with us, and why?”

  “I thought you had a theory about that. That they probably wanted to keep us away from the real Sisterhood.”

  “But again, why? What would they get out of it? Just for sheer love of mischief-making? I cannot believe that. It must take as much talent and energy to run whatever it is this Aquilara is doing as it takes us to gather and work with the Forbidden Tower.”

  “So?” Jaelle asked. “Perhaps it is simply hatred and jealousy of the powers of the Sisterhood; she does not seem to have very many powers herself, in spite of what she managed to do to Camilla.”

  “But even if she hated the Sisterhood… no, Jaelle. We have a reason to exist, Jaelle. Damon, Callista, Andrew, Hilary, all of us—we’re working to bring the good of laran to people born outside the Towers, people who don’t wish to deny their gifts, but will not live in the Towers, cut off from the real world. We’re trying to bring laran into the world, prove that it’s not necessary to be born Comyn, or aristocrat, or even Darkovan, to have and to use these gifts. We have purpose in what we’re doing, but it’s hard work, sometimes even painful work, I can’t believe she’d go to that much trouble, just to impress us.”

  “I don’t know what her motive could be, Magda. Does it matter? I want nothing to do with her, or with her powers, and I do know this much, that if you go on thinking of her you will pick her up telepathically, and all our precautions will be useless.”

  Magda knew Jaelle was right, and she tried to compose herself to sleep as best she could. She thought of her faraway home, of putting her little girl to bed at Armida; Shaya in her nightgown, her soft dark curls tousled. She had not known she remembered so many of the Darkovan folk songs and hill ballads that it had been her mother’s lifework to collect, until she began singing them to Shaya as lullabies. Elizabeth Lorne, she knew, had loved her work, and had died thinking that her daughter Magdalen cared nothing for it, knew nothing of it. How pleased she would have been to hear me singing to Shaya those old ballads from the Hellers and the Kilghard Hills which she so loved. Some day when Shaya is grown, she shall see her grandmother’s collected songs and ballads—eight volumes of them, or something like that—in Records, and know a little about her work.

  Perhaps Shaya would be a musician; she remembered that her darkhaired daughter could carry a tune, clearly and sweetly, even before she could talk plain.

  Cleindori in the Overworld; I was surprised when Aunty Ellemir told me where babies come from. I thought they came from the gray world. What a fascinating light on the relationship of sex education to metaphysics. She was all grown up. and then she was a baby and I couldn’t talk to her, except here in the Overworld. The Overworld was barred to Magda now, because of the sorcery of Aquilara; or she could reach her child, hold her once more. If I should die on this trip, she thought, I should never see Shaya again.

  But if what Cleindori said is true, and I have no reason not to believe it, then death might not make any difference either. Curious, that I should learn faith from a ch
ild five years old.

  She was sliding off to sleep, hearing in the distance the reassuring sound of the calling of crows.

  It seemed only moments later that Jaelle woke her.

  “The monastery bells have just rung the Night Office. Wake Cholayna; there is bread and dried fruit from supper, which we will eat on the trail.” Jaelle was pulling on long wool leggings under her breeches. Magda got into her clothes swiftly, bending to whisper to Cholayna. The Terran woman was sleeping heavily, and it occurred to Magda that if they had wanted to leave her behind, they could have stolen away and left her here sleeping, to be wakened only when the kitchen women came in with the unnecessary breakfast.

  No. She is our sister, too. We have to be honest with her, Magda thought, but sighed, wishing Cholayna had agreed to remain here in comparative safety or return to Thendara with Vanessa. She almost wished she were heading south herself, to Armida and family of the Tower and to her child, even to Thendara and her sisters of the Guild-house. She pulled on an extra layer of warm sweater, wordlessly handed Camilla another.

  “I’m all right, Margali, don’t fuss so!”

  She stared Camilla down, and the older woman, grumbling, pulled it over her head. Camilla was so thin, she would be glad of the warmth when they got into the pass.

  Cholayna was shivering in the chill of the big room; they had allowed the fire to burn down. Wasting fuel and warmth were a major crime in the Hellers. The breakfast they had ordered would be eaten by somebody, and would be none the worse for being consumed by someone other than the travelers who had paid for it, but keeping a blazing fire all night was a waste the mountain-bred Magda and Camilla could not condone, even though it meant they must sleep under all their blankets. A thin skin of ice had formed over the pitcher of water at the table where they had eaten their supper, and frost rimed the single high, narrow window of the room.

  Jaelle muttered in an undertone, “My brother told me once that the novices in the monastery sleep naked in the snow, wearing only their cowls, and run barefoot. I wish I had their training.”

  “I suppose it is one of your psychic powers,” Vanessa said.

  “Valentine says not; only use and habit, and convincing the mind to do its task of warming the body.”

  Cholayna raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I am not convinced. Hypothermia has killed and continues to kill many people. How can they overcome that?”

  “Val would have no reason to lie to me; he says that one of the tests for the higher degrees among the monks is to bathe in a mountain stream from the glacier on Nevarsin Summit, and then to dry, with his body heat, the cowl he wears. He has seen it done.”

  “A conjuring trick to impress the novices with their power?”

  “What reason would they have for that?”

  “Nevertheless,” Vanessa said, “I heard it too when I went into Mapping and Exploring. It has been told before this, in the old days on Terra; before the Empire. Some of the men who lived on the high plateaus, at four thousand meters or more, had lung capacity greater than those who lived at sea level, and their bodies were so adapted that they became ill in the lowlands. I do not doubt that the Nevarsin brethren can learn to do these things. The human animal is amazingly adaptable. Many people would consider your native planet, Cholayna, too hot for human habitation. I visited there once and thought I would die with the heat. Man is not intended to live where the ambient temperature of the air is normally higher than blood heat.”

  “Maybe not,” said Cholayna, forcing on her narrow boot over three layers of thick socks, “but I would rather be there than here.” She pulled her heavy wind-breaker over her jacket. “Ready?”

  Carrying their personal packs over their shoulders, they stole through the quiet halls, and down a long corridor, away from the living quarters, into the stables. The heavy doors creaked, but there was no other sound, except for Cholayna, who went into a sudden spasm of coughing.

  “Quiet,” Jaelle snarled, half-aloud, and Cholayna tried to muffle the sound in her sleeve, without much success, her whole body shaking with effort.

  Their horses and chervines, and their loads, reduced considerably from what they had been when they left Thendara, were stacked in a corner of the same stable.

  Jaelle whistled softly with relief. “I suspect Arlinda understood what I meant when I talked with her. Last night, these were stowed away in another set of cupboards in a different stable.”

  Saddling up her horse, Magda found herself next to Vanessa. She asked in an undertone, “What do you think? Is Cholayna fit for travel?”

  “Who can tell? But I checked her as best I could; her lips are a healthy color and her lungs seem to be clear; that ghastly cough is just throat irritation from the dry air and wind at these heights. All we can do is to hope for the best.”

  They hoisted loads on to the backs of chervines, and in whispers settled their order of march. Jaelle, who knew the city well, was leading; Camilla, who knew it almost as well, bringing up the rear. Magda delayed at the end to help Camilla shove the heavy stable door together and brace it; but they could not bolt it from the inside, and finally Camilla whispered, “Wait, Margali, I will be with you in a moment.” She slipped back inside; Magda heard the heavy bolt slide. She waited in the street so long that she had begun to wonder if Camilla had been captured by one of Acquilara’s spies in the house. We should have left the door alone, she thought, but just as she was about to try and follow Camilla inside, the tall emmasca reappeared from a window. She slid down, turned briefly to blow a kiss, then hurried down the street after Jaelle.

  Magda ran after her. “Camilla, what—”

  “My gambling friend. Let’s not waste any more time; I heard the monastery bell. Let’s go.” But she snickered as she hurried after Jaelle.

  “I wonder what they’ll think when they find us gone and the stable still locked from the inside?”

  There was no way to silence the hooves of the horses and chervines on the cobbled streets, but leading them was quieter than riding. Still they struck hard, the metal shoes of the horses drawing flinty sparks in the cold. It was icy and clear; stars blinked above the darkened city, and high above, the only faint lights were from the dimmed windows of Saint Valentine’s monastery. Bells rang loud in the predawn stillness.

  As they climbed the rocky streets, the stars paled above them, and the sky began to flush with the dawn. Magda could see her own breath, the breath of her companions and of the animals, as little white clouds before her. Her hands were already cold inside her warm gloves, and her feet chilly in her boots, and she thought, regretfully, of that breakfast Jaelle had ordered and never intended them to eat.

  Upward and upward, the streets growing steeper and steeper; but Magda had been on the road so long now that she was hardly short of breath at the top of the steepest hills, and even Cholayna was striding along at the quick pace Jaelle set.

  The northern gate was at the very top of the city, and the road beyond led over the very summit of Nevarsin Pass. At the gates were two men, cristoforos by their somber clothing, though not monks, who opened the wide gates to let them through.

  “You are abroad early, my sisters,” one of them said as he stepped back to let their animals pass through.

  “We follow two of our sisters who came this way the morning before last,” said Camilla in the exceptionally pure casta of a mountain-bred woman. “Did you perhaps let them out this very gate two mornings ago, as early as this, my brother?”

  The cristoforo guard blew on his bare knuckles to warm them. His breath too was a cloud and he spoke through it, scowling disapprovingly at the emmasca.

  “Aye, it was I. One of them—a tall woman, darkhaired, a soldier like you, mestra, with a rryl slung over her shoulder—was she your sister?”

  “My Guild-sister; have you news of her, brother, in the name of him who bears the burdens of the world?”

  He scowled again, his disapproval of emmasca and Renunciate contradicting the inborn freemasonry am
ong soldiers, cristoforo or no. And there was no halfway polite way to refuse a request in the very name of the cristoforo saint.

  “Aye. She had another woman with her, so small I thought for a moment she was travelin’ with her daughter like a proper woman. A little thing, wrapped up so I couldn’t see much of her but the big blue eyes.”

  Lexie. So they were still together and Lexie safe and well as recently as two days ago. Magda heard Cholayna’s soft sigh of relief. They might even overtake them somewhere in the pass.

  “She asked me—the tall one, your sister—if it was a bad year for banshees. I had to tell her, yes, a terrible one; we heard one howling right outside this gate a tenday ago in the last storm. Go carefully, sisters, try to get over the high part before the sun’s down again,” he warned them. “And saints ride with you. Aye, you’ll need them if you take this road by night.” He stepped back to let them through, closed the heavy city gate behind them.

  Ahead the road led upward, stony and steep, ankle-deep in snow, with heavy drifts to right and to left. Jaelle mounted and signaled to the others to do likewise, and they climbed into their saddles. From the heights far above, like a warning, they heard the shrill distant cry of a banshee.

  “Never mind,” said Jaelle, “the sun will be up long before we reach the pass, and they’re nocturnal. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Three days later, Magda sat on a packsaddle looking at a dried-meat bar in her hand. She was almost too weary to think about eating it; the effort necessary to chew and swallow seemed more than she could imagine.

  The harsh winds of Nevarsin summit had blown away such extraneous fears as the thought of sorceresses or psychic attack; none of them had had a moment to think about anything but the raw mechanics of survival. Narrow ledges, a snowstorm which blew away their last remaining tent and left them to huddle in a hastily scooped hole in the snow, fierce winds which stripped away the last pretense of courage or fortitude, and always in the night the terrible paralyzing cries of the lurking banshee.