Their guides thrust them along a sort of corridor between two of the immense buildings, and abruptly through a great door, into a room where a fire was burning; a tiny fire in a stone fireplace, which hardly lighted the immense dark spaces and comers of the room.
Near the fire, a dark figure shrouded in coarse shawls and veils crouched in the hearth. The women shoved them forward.
“Kiya,” said one, using the word of courtesy used for any female relative of a mother’s generation, usually meaning in context something like Aunt, or Foster-mother. “Here be strangers, and a sick one for your blessin’.”
The woman before the fire rose and slowly put back the hood from her face. She was a tall old woman, her face swarthy, with wide-spaced eyes under slender gray eyebrows, and she turned her eyes from one to the other of them slowly.
“A good evening to you, sisters,” she said at last. She spoke the same mountain dialect as the other women, but she spoke it slowly, as if the language was unfamiliar to her. However, the pronunciation was clearer and less barbarous. “This is the holy house of Avarra, where we live in seclusion seeking Her blessing. All women are welcome to shelter at need; ye who share our search are blessed. What can this person offer thee the night?” Her voice was deep contralto, so deep it hardly sounded like a woman’s voice at all.
Jaelle said, “We seek shelter against the storm; and one of us is ill.”
The woman looked them over, one by one. Cholayna coughed in the silence; the old woman beckoned her forward, but Cholayna seemed too weak and lethargic to see the gesture, far less obey it, so the woman went to her.
“What ails thee, sister?” But she did not await an answer. “One knows from thy cough; thee is from lowlands and the mountain air sickens they breath. It is so?” She came and opened Cholayna’s jacket, laying her gray head against Cholayna’s chest. She listened a moment, then said, “We can cure this, but thee will not travel for a handful of days.”
She beckoned to Vanessa. “And thy fingers be frozen, and chance be thy feet as well. My sisters will bring thee hot soup and hot water in a little time, and show ye all a place to sleep safe and dry.” Her eyes went to Jaelle and it seemed they sharpened with sudden interest.
“Thy name, daughter?”
“I am Jaelle n’ha Melora—”
“Na’, thy true name. Once this one who bespeaks thee dwelt in lowland country and she does well know a Renunciate may call herself to her liking. Thy name of birth, chiya.”
“My mother was Melora Aillard,” Jaelle said. “I do not acknowledge my father; am I a racehorse to be judged by the blood of my sire and dam?”
“Plenty, girl, will judge thee by less than that. Thee does wear thy Comyn blood in thy face like a banner.”
“If you know me for a Renunciate, old mother, you know I have renounced that heritage.”
“Renounce the eyes in thy head, daughter? Comyn thee is, and with the donas”—she used the archaic word, meaning gift rather than the more common term laran—“of that high house. And thy brother-sister there?”
She beckoned to Camilla, and said, “Why break laws of thy clan, half-woman?” The words were sharp, but for some reason they did not sound offensive, as the question of the blind gatekeeper had been. “Will thee entrust this old one with thy birth name, Renunciate?”
She looked straight into Camilla’s eyes.
Camilla said, “Years ago I swore an oath never again to speak the name of those who renounced me long before I renounced them. But that was long ago and in another country. My mother was of the Aillard Domain, and in childhood I bore the name Elorie Lindir. But Alaric Lindir did not father me.”
Magda barely managed to stifle a gasp. Not even to her, not even to Mother Lauria, had Camilla ever spoken that name. That she did so now betokened a change so deep and overpowering that Magda could not imagine what it meant.
“And thee has donas of the Hastur clan?”
“It may be,” said Camilla quietly. “I know not.”
“Well ye are come to this house, daughters.” The tall woman inclined her head to them courteously. “Time may be for this one to speak wi’ ye again, but this night thy needs are for rest and warmth. Make known to these whatever else may be given.” She beckoned to the women who had brought them, gave a series of low-voiced instructions in their peculiar dialect. But Cholayna swayed and leaned against her, and Magda did not listen to what she said.
“Come ye wi’ us,” said one of the women, and led them through the drafty corridors again, then, and into an empty, spacious, echoing old building, stone-floored, stone-walled, with birds nesting in high corners and small rodents scurrying in the straw underfoot which had been laid for warmth. The only furnishings were a few ancient benches of carven stone, and a huge bedstead, really no more than a stone dais. One of the ragged crew laid a fire in the grate and touched her torch to it.
“Be warm an’ safe yere,” she said in her crude dialect, at the same time making a surprisingly formal gesture. “Usn’ will bring ye hot soup from the even’ meal, an’ medicines for thy frozen feet an’ for the sick one.” She went away, leaving the women alone.
“They are more generous with fire for us than they were with that old woman, their priestess or whoever she was,” Vanessa remarked.
“Of course,” said Jaelle, “they are mountain folk; hospitality is a sacred duty to them. The old one who welcomed us—she has probably taken vows of austerity: but they would give us of their best, even if their best was half a moldy pallet and a handful of nut porridge.”
“Jaelle, who are these people?” Vanessa asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Whoever they are, they have saved our lives, this night. If someone told me that Avarra, or the Sisterhood, guided us to them, I would not argue the point.” She looked round and saw that Cholayna had collapsed on one of the benches.
“Vanessa, bring the medikit,” she said, then hesitated, looked sharply at Vanessa, who had slumped down at once on another of the stone benches and was huddled over, in pain.
“Can you walk?”
“More or less. But I think I have frozen my feet,” Vanessa confessed. The words were almost an apology. “They don’t hurt. Not quite. But—” she clamped her lips together, and Jaelle said quickly, “You’d better get your boots off and attend to them as quickly as you can. How did you come to do that?”
“I think there may have been a hole in one of my boots—it was cut on the rocks,” Vanessa said, as Jaelle helped her off with her boots. “Yes—see there?”
Jaelle shook her head at the cold white toes. She said, “They told us they’d be bringing hot water in a few minutes. Go near the fire, but not too close. No, don’t rub them, you’ll damage the skin. Warm water will do it better.” She glanced around, at Cholayna lying collapsed and oblivious on the stone dais, at Camilla, who was pulling at her boot carefully, and finally pulled out a knife to slit it.
“How many of us are out of commission? Cholayna’s probably the worst,” Jaelle said. “Magda, you’re one of the more able-bodied ones right now. Get her into a sleeping bag—as close to the fire as possible. The old woman said she would send medicines, and hot water, and hot soup—all of which we can certainly use.”
“Now, that one—I would willingly believe her a leronis,” Camilla said, cutting the boot away to reveal a foot dreadfully swollen, with purplish blood-colored blisters and patches of white. Magda glanced up and saw it, shocked; she wanted to go to her, but at the moment Cholayna was even worse, semi-conscious, her forehead, when Magda touched it, burning hot. As Magda touched her she muttered, “I’m all right. Just let me rest a little. It’s so cold in here,” and she shivered, deep down.
“We’ll have you warm in a few minutes,” Magda said gently. “Here, let me pull off your coat—”
“No, I want it on, I’m cold,” Cholayna said, resisting.
“Keep it, then, but let’s get out of those boots,” Magda said, easing Cholayna down on her sleeping b
ag and bending to help her pull them from her feet. Cholayna tried to protest, but her weakness overcame her; she sank back, only half conscious, and let Magda take off her boots and her outer clothes and wrap her in blankets.
“Hot soup and some of that blackthorn tea will help her, if we can’t get anything better,” Magda said. She did not confess her real fear, which was that Cholayna was in the early stages of pneumonia. “What other injuries do we have? Jaelle, that leg you hurt when Dancer fell on you; you’ve been walking on it. How bad is it? No, let me see it, at once.”
Jaelle’s shin was bruised and bloody, but nothing seemed to be broken. It was, however, unlikely that she would walk in comfort for several days; she had already overstrained the damaged muscles and tendons. In addition, there were Vanessa’s frozen feet, and patches of white on her hands as well. Camilla’s foot was swollen and painful; Magda suspected that one or two of the small bones in the foot were broken.
Magda herself had a patch or two of frostbite on her face, but, although her nose was streaming and her sinuses ached, and she felt she would like to lie down and sleep for at least three days, she seemed to be the only one who had no serious illness or injury at the moment.
Presently the old doors creaked open. Snow and wind blew distantly into the room as a pair of women came in, carrying a couple of great cauldrons of water, with basins and kettles and bandages, and a third followed them with a great pot of steaming soup, which she promptly hung over the fireplace. They smiled shyly at the strangers but did not speak and went away at once, ignoring Magda’s attempt to thank them in what she knew of the mountain dialect.
Magda, who was the only one who could walk properly, set herself to get into their saddlebags and ladle hot soup into mugs—first Jaelle and Camilla and Vanessa. Then she got Vanessa’s feet into a basin of steaming water—at this altitude, she remembered, water boiled at a temperature quite tolerable to frostbitten or frozen skin.
“This is going to hurt. But keep on with it, otherwise you could—”
“Could lose toes or even fingers. I spent three years learning about altitude injuries and sickness on Alpha, Margali, I know what’s at stake here. Believe me.” She sipped soup, holding the mug in her uninjured hand— the other was in the hot water—and Magda saw her jaw tighten with pain, but she said with assumed nonchalance, “Damned good soup. What’s in it, I wonder?”
“Might be better not to ask,” Camilla said. “Ice-rabbit, probably; that’s about the only game you find at this altitude, unless somebody’s figured out how to cook a banshee.”
Magda propped Cholayna’s head up and tried to get her to swallow some of the hot soup, but the older woman was unconscious now, her breath rattling through her throat so loudly that Magda had a panicky moment of wondering if Cholayna was really dying.
“If she does have pneumonia,” Vanessa said, so quickly that Magda wondered if Vanessa was reading her thoughts, “there are some wide-spectrum antibiotics in the medikit. Hand it here—I’m a little tied down at the minute.” She rummaged in the tubes and vials. “Here. This ought to do. I don’t think she can swallow, but there’s a force-injection dispenser which you can give without any special medical knowledge—”
But before Magda could get the injection device loaded, the door opened again, and, warded by two reverential young women, the old woman who had welcomed them in the entrance chamber came in.
By the flickering firelight she seemed anyone’s idea of a witch. But, Magda thought, not the ordinary Terran notion of a witch; something older, more archaic and benevolent, a primitive cave-mother of the human race, the ancient sorceress, priestess, clan-ruler in the days when “mother” meant at once grandmother, ancestress, queen, goddess. The wrinkles in her face, the gleam of the deep-sunken eyes beneath the witchlike disorder of her white hair, seemed wise, and her smile comforting.
She went with ponderous deliberation to Cholayna and squatted down on the dais beside her. Peripherally Magda noted that she was the first person on all their travels who had not shown the faintest surprise at Cholayna’s black skin. She touched Cholayna’s burning forehead, bent to listen again to her breathing, and then looked up at Magda, bent anxiously beside them. Her smile was wide and almost, Magda noticed, toothless, but when she spoke her voice was so gentle it made Magda want to cry.
“Thy friend be hot wi’ the lung-sick,” she said, “but fear none, chiya, this we can help. Get thee some soup for thysen’, thee is so busy with thy friends’ ills thee has not tended tha’ own. This one is wi’ her now; go thee and eat.”
Her eyes were stinging; but Magda said, “I was about to give her some medicine, old mother—” she used the title in the most respectful mode—“then I will go and eat.”
“Na. Na,” said the old woman, “this be better for her than thy outland medicine; strangers here come wi’ the lung-sick, but this will help her more.” She pulled, from somewhere about her wrapped garments, a small vial and an ancient wooden spoon. Swiftly, she raised Cholayna’s head on her arm, pried her mouth open and poured a dose between her lips. “Eat,” she said to Magda, gently but with such definiteness that Magda reacted like a child scolded; she went quickly to the big pot and dipped herself a mug of soup. She sat on the bench beside Vanessa and raised it to her lips. It tasted wonderful, hot and rich and comforting, though she had no idea what was in it.
“I don’t care if it is stewed banshee,” she said in an undertone.
Vanessa whispered, “Magda, should we just let that old tribeswoman pour God-knows-what-kind of folk remedies down Cholayna without even asking what they are?”
“They couldn’t survive in a place like this without knowing what they’re doing,” Magda whispered back. “Anyway, I trust her.”
She turned to watch what the old woman was doing now; with her two attendants, they were raising Cholayna, piling thick bolsters behind her so that she was half-sitting, and spreading blankets over her for a crude sort of tent, under which they introduced one of the steaming kettles, while one of their number moved a burning brazier under the kettle, so that it was an improvised steam tent. Already, or so it seemed to Magda, between the steam and the old woman’s unknown drug, Cholayna’s breathing was easier.
The woman took a stick from the fire and with the burning tip lighted a curiously colored candle; it had a strong, astringently pungent smell as its smoke stole into the room.
Then she went to where Magda sat beside Vanessa, checked the hot-water basin where the latter was soaking her feet, and nodded.
“The daughters ha’ brought thee bandages and medicine; when the skin is all pink again, bandage wi’ this ointment. Use it also for thy bruises,” she added, stopping beside Jaelle and Camilla. “It will help the skin heal clean. As for thy friend—” she gestured toward Cholayna—“while that candle burns, keep the pot on a hard boil, that she may breathe hot steam, and here be herbs to strew in the water. The candle will make thy breathing easier as well. When candle burns down, gi’ her one more spoon of this—” she produced the small bottle and spoon ”—and let her sleep covered warm. Sleep thee also; she will do well enough now.”
For a brief moment she bent and peered into Magda’s face, as if something she saw there puzzled her; then she straightened up and said, to all of them, somehow even including the semi-conscious Cholayna, “ ’Varra bless ’ee all, the night an’ ever,” and went away.
Vanessa turned the little bottle in her hand, studying it. It was lumpy greenish glass, hand-blown, with many flaws. She worked out the stone stopper and breathed the strong herbal smell.
“Obviously, a powerful decongestant,” she ventured. “Listen; already Cholayna’s breathing easier. And the steam tent is more of the same. About the candle, I couldn’t say, but it does seem to make it easier to breathe.”
“How are your feet?” Magda asked.
Vanessa grimaced, but passed it off lightly. “Hot water does miracles. I was lucky. This time.” Magda, who had experienced frostbite in the K
ilghard Hills many times during her travels and knew the agony of returning circulation, took that for what it was worth.
“Don’t forget the ointment she gave you, when you bandage them.”
“Thanks. But I think I’ll stick to the antibiotics in the medikit.”
“I’ve had experience of both,” Jaelle said, reaching out for the small jar the old woman had left, “and I think I’ll use this. Magda, you’re up, will you get me another mug of soup?” And as Magda complied, she added, “The priestesses of Avarra are legendary; according to Kindra, they have been healers for centuries and have a long tradition in healing arts. Some of them have laran, too.”
And as if that reminded her of that surprising first interview with the old woman, Jaelle turned to Camilla, who was trying to wrap her foot in bandages. She took the foot into her own lap and took over the bandaging.
“So, you are my kinswoman, Camilla?”
Camilla said, very softly—and to Magda’s astonishment she spoke in almost the identical mountain dialect— “Truly, did thee not know, chiya?”
Jaelle shook her head mutely. “Rohana said something once which made me suspect; though I do not think she knew it was you. Just that a daughter of Aillard had—had disappeared, under mysterious circumstances—”
“Oh, yes,” Camilla said grimly, “the fate of Elorie Lindir was a scandal for at least half a year in the Kilghard Hills, till they had something else to wonder at, some other poor girl raped and forgotten, or some Hastur lord acknowledging some other bastard—why, think you, did I live so long as a man, save that I sickened at the gossip of housebound ladies—? Rohana is not so bad as most, but those snows were melted twenty winters past. Leave it, Shaya.”
“You are her kinswoman too, Camilla.” She stretched her hand to Magda and said, “I hate to keep ordering you around like this, but you can walk and I can’t; can you get a couple of pins from my personal kit?”
The Saga of the Renunciates Page 105
