The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “It’s all right, breda,” Magda said, found the pins and gave them to Jaelle, who pinned up Camilla’s bandages, then got her own bruised leg up on the bench. “One of you, bandage this, will you?”

  Magda moved it into her lap and began smoothing the old woman’s herbal ointment on the torn and lacerated skin.

  Camilla said, with a sudden undertone of fierceness, “I will claim kin with Lady Rohana when she claims kin to me!” She rose, tested her weight on the bandaged foot, wincing, and went to shake out her sleeping bag by the fire.

  “Shall I stay awake to tend Cholayna’s steam kettle or will you?” The flat tone of her voice closed the subject completely.

  “I will,” said Magda, but Jaelle shook her head.

  “You’ve been looking after all of us all day. Go to bed, Magda, I’ll look after her now. When that candle burns out—it can only be an hour or two—I can sleep too. At least we needn’t keep watch all the time; here we are under Avarra’s protection, and all the Renunciates are under her wing.”

  Magda wanted to protest, but her eyes seemed to be closing of their own accord. She nodded agreement and spread out her sleeping bag beside Camilla’s. The fire burned low; outside she could hear the hissing of the thick snow, the wind howling like ten thousand screaming demons around the old buildings.

  At the very edge of sleep, Camilla’s head lying on her shoulder, she thought again how little she knew this woman she loved. The astonishing words rang in her mind.

  My mother was of the Aillard clan, but I was born to the name Elorie Lindir.

  And thee has donas of the Hasturs? And Camilla’s even more astonishing words: It may well be so.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The blizzard lasted for three days.

  For the first day Magda did little but sleep; after the exhaustion of the long journey, the stress and fear, her weary body and wearier mind demanded their toll, and for a night and a day and most of another night she spent the hours asleep or in a state of incomplete somnolence, rousing only to eat or drink. They were all in much the same state.

  “We thought at first that you too had taken the lung-fever,” Camilla told her later, “but that old leronis said no, it was only weariness and cold. And, the Goddess be praised, she was right.”

  This morning Magda had had the energy to wash (at an icy indoor pump where the water was a little above freezing) and to change her underclothing and socks, and to brush her hair.

  “How is Cholayna this morning?” she asked.

  “Better,” Camilla told her, “her fever is down, and she has eaten a little soup. She is still very sick, but her breathing is easier. And she spoke to me in cahuenga, which at least meant she knew who I was. What a relief after the last two days of her speaking only in some language none of us could understand, and not recognizing any of us!”

  “How are the others?”

  “Jaelle has climbed down the cliff—in this snowstorm!—to make sure the pack animals are all right. It is not that she does not trust the women here; but I think she wanted the exercise.” Camilla chuckled, and Magda laughed weakly with her. Jaelle always wearied quickly of inaction.

  “And Vanessa?”

  Camilla pointed; Vanessa was sleeping near the fire, only a few curls of dark hair showing above the top of her sleeping bag.

  “Her feet are still very sore and painful, and two toenails came away last night when she changed the bandages, but it is fortunate it is no worse. My feet were almost as bad, but they are healing better. I think it is because Vanessa used only your Terran medicine, while Jaelle and I used what that old leronis gave us.”

  Magda finished the coarse, burnt-tasting porridge, put the bowl away, and slid down wearily.

  “I am not sleepy now. But my whole body feels as if I had been beaten with wooden cudgels.”

  “Rest, then, bredhiya,” Camilla said. “No one is going anywhere in that.” The storm was still raging unabated outside; it seemed to Magda that it had raged through her sleep for the last hours and days.

  Jaelle came in presently, her outer garments covered with snow, snowflakes clinging to her eyebrows and to her auburn curls.

  “You’re awake, Margali? Good. I was beginning to worry about you. I climbed down the cliff this morning, and back up, though they said I could ride up in the basket with the grain sacks. It was wonderful even in the snow; when it is not snowing, they tell me, one can see all the way to Nevarsin Peak on the one side, and to the Wall Around the World on the other.”

  Magda wondered at her freemate’s idea of fun. She remembered that only a few weeks before her daughter was born, Jaelle had insisted on accompanying Damon to the far ends of Armida for the horse-roundup, saying that she knew perfectly well that she had time enough to return before her child was born. She had been in the saddle again before Cleindori was forty days old. Magda herself had been tired and lethargic all during her pregnancy, content to stay indoors and allow Ellemir and Callista to cosset her.

  But before she had much time to reflect on it, the door opened and the ancient wise-woman who had welcomed them and brought medicines for Cholayna, came in. She barely nodded to the women but went directly to Cholayna, knelt and felt her forehead; bent her head to listen to her heart and the sounds of her breathing.

  “Thee is stronger this morning, daughter.”

  Cholayna awoke, looked at the wild hair and ragged clothing of the ancient woman, and struggled to sit up. Magda came quickly to her side, so that Cholayna could see that she was not alone and at the mercy of a stranger.

  Cholayna demanded weakly, “Where are we? What is happening?”

  The old woman spoke a few soothing words but they were in the strange mountain dialect and Cholayna did not understand them.

  “Who are you? What is going on?” As the old woman brought out the bottle of medicine and spoon, gesturing to Cholayna to open her mouth, she demanded shakily, “What’s this, what are you giving me?” She moved her head from side to side in panicky denial. “What is it? Magda, help me, tell me, isn’t anyone listening to me?”

  There was real terror in her face, and Magda knelt quickly at her side, taking Cholayna’s hands in hers.

  “It’s all right, Cholayna, you have been very ill, but she has been nursing you. I don’t know what she is giving you, but it has made you better. Take it.”

  Cholayna opened her mouth docilely enough and swallowed the medicine, but she still looked confused. “Where are we? I don’t remember coming here.”

  Questions flooded from her in Terran Standard as she struggled to sit upright, staring wildly about her.

  Magda reassured her quickly in the same language.

  “Cholayna, no one will hurt you. These people have been very good to us… we’re safe here—”

  “Who is this strange woman? Is she one of Aquilara’s people, did they follow us here? I—I think I have been dreaming; I thought Aquilara had captured us, brought us here—”

  “Tell un, must not talk, lie down, rest, be warm,” the old woman commanded. Magda laid her hand over Cholayna’s wrist, gently forcing her back on the pillows.

  “You mustn’t talk. Lie still and rest, and I’ll explain.”

  Coughing, Cholayna let herself sink back. Her eyes followed the attendants as they rigged again the improvised steam tent. She listened to Magda’s simplified explanations, without question; Magda suspected she was simply so weak that she took everything for granted.

  At last she whispered, “Then these are not Aquilara’s servants? You are sure of that?”

  “As sure as I have ever been of anything,” Camilla reassured her. “She has been coming in every few hours to make sure your fever was under control. But now you really must lie down and rest, don’t think of anything except getting well.”

  Cholayna closed her eyes again weakly, and the old woman raised her head, glaring at Camilla.

  “A name was spoken that is forbidden in ’Varra’s holy house. What
ha’ ye to do wi’ that one?”

  “Who? Acquilara?”

  The old woman gestured angrily. “Silence! Speak not the names of evil omen! This one said, when thy sickness and weariness should be healed, thy story would be heard. Now perhaps is the very time for that hearing; what do ye in these wilds where no women come save in search of Her blessing?”

  “Margali will tell thee, Grandmother,” said Camilla in the mountain dialect. Magda wondered when she had learned it, and saw in Camilla’s mind there was a flash of memory, a year spent as an abused and beaten child, enslaved in a bandit encampment…

  “We come in search of Her blessing too.” Magda found in her memory the night when first she had seen the image of Avarra during the first meeting of the Sisterhood. “We seek a City said to be inhabited by the Sisterhood of the Wise. Two of our companions were seeking it, and had gone before. We thought, when we saw your lights in the wilderness, that perhaps we had found that place, and perhaps our comrades also.”

  “This one has read thy mind and memory in thy weakness, granddaughter. We are only sheltering in the shadow of Her wings, chiya, and are not of Her sisterhood. Yet thy search does make thee sacred here, where thy companions have not come.”

  The old woman’s hand fell on Magda’s shoulder. “Yet tell, what of that other name she spoke now twice?”

  “She came to us by night, promised that she could lead us to our comrades.”

  “And why did thee not follow her?”

  “It seemed to us,” Camilla said slowly, “that truth was not to be found in her mouth, and that to follow such a guide was worse than to wander unguided.”

  “Yet thy companion cried out to her in her unknown tongue—”

  “Cholayna was afraid of her,” Magda corrected sharply. “Read her mind and memory if you can, Old Mother, and you will know I speak truth.”

  Jaelle asked Magda in Standard, “What’s the trouble?”

  “She says Rafi and Lexie haven’t been here. Which may mean they have fallen into—” she started to say, Aquilara’s hands, then looked at the old woman’s face and didn’t. “I fear, then, that the two we seek may have fallen into the hands of those we count as enemies.”

  The old woman looked from one to another of them, then said slowly, “Thy friend is better, but still very sick. Watch thee by her a handful of days more,” and went away.

  Camilla and Jaelle looked at Magda and demanded, “Now what was that all about?”

  The old woman did not return that day, nor the next, nor the next. Silent attendants came in three times a day, bringing them food: rough porridge morning and noon, thick and nourishing soup in the evening. The enforced rest was good for all of them; Magda recovered her strength, Vanessa’s frozen feet healed, and even Cholayna began to sit up for a time during the day.

  On the fifth or sixth morning—Magda had lost count of the days, as they slid by with nothing to distinguish them—the snow stopped and the sound of silence woke Magda; the wind was no longer wailing and screaming around the buildings. She stepped out into a bright world, the sun dazzling on roofs and the sky so clear that it seemed she could see across an endless landscape of snowy peaks and valleys far below them.

  Perhaps Cholayna would be able to travel soon. Magda began mentally sorting through their possessions for gifts they could make to the old woman and to the Sisterhood in return for their hospitality. She trembled at the thought of the return journey down the cliff in the basket. And how much farther must they go? Perhaps the old woman could tell them something about Lexie and Rafaella; at least she seemed to know something of Aquilara’s people and despised them.

  Cholayna was sitting up this morning, and had actually eaten some porridge. She looked better, healthier; she had asked for water to wash her face and dug into her personal pack for a hairbrush; but she was too weak to sit up for so long, so Vanessa had come and taken the brush, and was trying to ease the tangles out of the shock of pale hair.

  “I can see that you are feeling better,” Magda said, kneeling beside her, and Cholayna smiled.

  “I am beginning to feel halfway human again; I can breathe again without knives through my chest! And the snow seems to have stopped. Tell me, Magda, how long have we been here?”

  “Five or six days. As soon as you are well enough to travel, we will go on. I think perhaps these people know something of the City. Perhaps, if we ask in the right way, they will tell us.”

  “But what is the right way?” asked Vanessa.

  “One thing we know,” Camilla said, joining them, “they aren’t in league with—” she stopped, and Magda could read in Camilla’s mind the memory of the exaggerated anger the old woman had displayed when she spoke Aquilara’s name.

  It was as if someone not present spoke, not in words:

  The name of evil can summon it and be used as a link…

  “They aren’t in link with that woman who came and tried to bully us in Nevarsin, in Arlinda’s house,” Magda said. “They have an unholy horror of her very name, though, so they evidently know what’s going on.”

  “I wish I did,” Vanessa complained. “That old woman gives me the creeps! Inhuman!”

  Jaelle protested, “She saved Cholayna’s life, and you could have been permanently lamed. Don’t be ungrateful!”

  “I know what Vanessa means, though,” Camilla said. “Have you noticed, Margali? I don’t expect Vanessa to understand it, she doesn’t know the language as well as you do; you learned it in Caer Donn as a child. You noticed she never says I at all; just stands aside and speaks of herself as someone else. I don’t begin to understand it.”

  “I don’t know if it’s ever possible to understand an alien religious practice,” Cholayna said thoughtfully. “Perhaps we should just be grateful that she’s well-disposed toward us.”

  “We need more than that, though,” Jaelle said. “We’ve come to the end of the trail. I don’t know of anything beyond here and there’s nothing on the maps. If they can’t tell us where to go on, I don’t know where we can go.”

  “And the old woman hasn’t been near us for days,” Camilla said. “When you spoke—” again the hesitation, “a certain name, you seemed to put her off. She’d been so friendly before that, and then—nothing. Not a sign nor a sight of her.” Her smile was bleak.

  “Maybe when she found out that some of us had laran she decided we could find our own way from here.”

  “But,” Magda said, “that would mean there’s something to find. And that it would be possible to find it from this place.”

  That night when the attendants came in to rig Cholayna’s steam tent again—they indicated by signs that she should sleep in it, even if she could breathe well enough during the day—Jaelle went with them down to see to the animals again. When she came back, she beckoned them all close to her.

  “Tomorrow, they said, someone will come to talk with us. I gathered, from what the blind woman—her name is Rakhaila, by the way, that’s Hellers dialect for Rafaella—from what she said, there are women here who come and go from—” Jaelle hesitated—“the place we may be looking for. I have a feeling we should be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”

  “Cholayna’s not able to travel yet,” Vanessa protested.

  “That’s another thing we have to talk about. I think perhaps we must send Cholayna back; or leave her here to recuperate further. From something Rakhaila said, this could lead us out beyond the Wall Around the World. There’s no way Cholayna’s fit enough to make that kind of trip.”

  Cholayna said doggedly, “We had this all out before. I can manage. I’ll do it if it kills me.”

  “That’s what we’re afraid of, you stubborn old wretch,” Vanessa said. “What good would it do to kill yourself on the trip? Would that do Lexie any good, or you?”

  But Magda was not so sure. “We’ve come this far together. I don’t think it would be right to abandon Cholayna here. I think we all go together, or none of us.” She did not know why she was s
o certain.

  But when Cholayna had been settled for the night, Jaelle touched Magda’s arm.

  “Breda, we need to talk. Come outside with me for a minute.”

  They went out into the long corridor between the buildings. Jaelle led the way to a spot at the very edge of the cliff. The pulleys and baskets hung there awaiting the journey down.

  “The steps aren’t so bad,” Jaelle said. “I’ve been down them twice now.”

  “Better you than me,” Magda said. “Well, Jaelle, do you remember in Thendara you were saying you wanted a year off to go to the mountains? You’ve had your adventure, haven’t you?”

  Above them the sky was sprinkled with the stars of a rare, clear Darkovan night. Jaelle looked away north, to where, Magda knew, the Wall Around the World rose, the end of the known world of the Domains. She said, “Maybe it’s only beginning.”

  Magda smiled indulgently. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  It was almost a joke; but Jaelle was completely serious. She said, “Yes. Terrible as this trip has been, I loved every minute of it. I wish I hadn’t dragged you along, because I know you’ve hated it—”

  Magda said, “No.” She surprised herself with the word. “I wouldn’t have wanted to miss—parts of it.”

  The sudden sense of self-mastery when she had accomplished what she had never believed she could do. Cholayna and Vanessa, friends only in the limited sense of co-workers; now, she knew, they were as close as the sisters she had never known. Would she have wanted to miss that? And in a very real sense it was her quest. From the day she had first seen the robed figures in their circle, first heard the sound of calling crows, she had known that she must follow them, even if the search led over the roof of the known world.

  For a moment she knew this, then practicality took over again. “Would you go off to this City out of Kindra’s legends, and stay there?”

  “I don’t know if they’d have me. I think you have to—well, to study and prepare yourself a long time first. There seems to be a college of this kind of wisdom and I’m still in kindergarten. But if I decided I wanted to try preparing to be worthy of it? Or if anything happened that I couldn’t go back. On a trip like this, one false step—we’ve all come that close to the edge, Margali. If I didn’t make it back, you’d look after Cleindori for me, wouldn’t you?”