Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover Read online

  Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover

  Edited by

  Marion Zimmer Bradley

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Publishing Cooperative

  February 25, 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-355-3

  Copyright © 1993 Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Table of Contents

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  FREE AMAZONS

  To Keep the Oath, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Bonds of Sisterhood, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  House Rules, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Knives, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  HILARY CASTAMIR

  Firetrap, by Marion Zimmer Bradley & Elisabeth Waters

  The Keeper’s Price, by Elisabeth Waters & Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The Keeper of the Inn, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Hilary’s Homecoming, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Hilary’s Wedding, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  ROHANA AILLARD

  Everything but Freedom, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  DYAN ARDAIS

  Oathbreaker, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The Hawkmaster’s Son, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  A Man of Impulse, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The Shadow, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  COPYRIGHT & CREDITS

  About Marion Zimmer Bradley

  DARKOVER® ANTHOLOGIES

  About Book View Café

  Free Sample: “The Incompetent Magician”

  Introduction

  One of the strangest things in my life as a writer has been the success of the Darkover Books—not simply as books, but the way in which the self-contained universe of Darkover has become not only self-sustaining, but has encouraged other writers to write their own stories, first about Darkover, and then, increasingly, in their own self-created universes. I was the very first, although since then, many writers, especially women—I need only name Mercedes Lackey and Jacqueline Lichtenberg—have encouraged others to write in their own universes. I think there are many reasons for this; some more feminist than others.

  Women are not and were not encouraged to create universes of their own; especially in the days when I entered fandom. In other writings I have spoken of those days in the forties and fifties when women were not only not encouraged to write, but were not encouraged even to read very much—and then nothing but Nancy Drew, Sue Barton, and various saccharine romances, meant to convey the idea that a woman’s only duty and pleasure was to secure a man—by fair means or foul didn’t much matter; she’d be accused of the foul ones anyhow. No one born in these post-Star Trek days can imagine quite how segregated all writing and, indeed, all mental activity was. And by and large, girls cooperated in this segregation, insisting that educators were right; the only degree worth having was Mrs., and a girl who wanted to work should obviously be prepared to neglect her God-given responsibilities to home and children—and to accept all kinds of abuse for so doing.

  Yet there have obviously been women in science fiction and fantasy from the beginning. The very field of science fiction was created by a woman, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. The “Gothic novels” which preceded today’s fantasy were created by one “Mrs. Radcliffe” and her imitators. The difference was simple; a woman had to be, as I was, and as most of my better known predecessors from Charlotte Bronte on were, obsessed, prepared to ignore the brainwashing given in schools to all females. One woman at a mid-seventies’ woman’s meeting I attended said that no woman could possibly escape her brainwashing. I stood up and called her a liar to her face; I was living proof, and so was everybody else in the room, that some of us had managed to escape it—or none of us would have been there.

  But, in a sense, she was right. The vast majority of girls in my school seemed brainwashed to me—and I have heard similar stories from everybody else, from Leigh Brackett and Catherine L. Moore to Joanna Russ and Diana L. Paxson. The many woman who wrote, from Ms. Bronte to me, from Leigh Brackett to C.L. Moore, were obsessed. They were prepared to ignore anything and everything, from their stern Victorian fathers to their brainwashed mothers, in order to write.

  Everyone familiar with women writers knows the famous answer of William Wordsworth to Charlotte Bronte when that lady sought his support for her writing; but anyone who, like so many of today’s teenagers, thinks the past “Irrelevant” should remember that Wordsworth told Charlotte to finish the dishes first. This, unfortunately, is an answer which we have heard ad nauseam, all of us, starting with Andre Norton and ending with the little girls who write for my anthologies, one of whom is about thirteen.

  I was the very first writer to encourage other writers to write in my universe. Not everybody approved; Lester Del Rey told me that he, for one, would never consent to read one single word of Darkover fiction written by anyone else. All I can say to that is that it is a free country and he is entitled to his opinion. It’s his loss. Most of the Darkover stories were about as good as any slush anywhere, which means not very good, at least at first; but after reading a lot of it, I came to the conclusion that a lot of it—being written by women who were obsessed with writing—was readable. If there were the kind of conspiracy in science fiction that the louder and more obnoxious feminists kept insisting, Don Wollheim—about whose masculinity no one ever had any question—would never have agreed to let me publish an anthology of fan writings.

  But he did; and here we are. For the anniversary of the tenth of these anthologies I have decided—for the benefit of Mr. Del Rey and his ilk—to publish my own shorter Darkover stories all in one place. Here they are.

  —Marion Zimmer Bradley

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  Free Amazons

  Nothing in a fairly long and eventful career as a writer has ever surprised me as much—except perhaps the success of Mists of Avalon, which I never liked that much, thinking The Inheritor a much better book—as the success of the Free Amazons; both as a concept and as individual books. I suppose I must have created an archetype or something.

  It all started while I was writing the first published—not the first written but the first published—of the commercial Darkover books; which I called Project Jason, and which the original editor called The Planet Savers, a title I did not and do not like. While writing this book I cannibalized a file drawer full of my early and unsuccessful Darkover stories; and while I was plotting the story, with the aid of an ancient textbook on writing by, I think, the late John D. McDonald—I had a dream.

  This was one of the few dreams I can remember clearly from an entire lifetime of fairly lucid dreams. In it, a group of adolescents—not unlike the ones I went to school with—were engaged, as so many of the young people were then, in 1956 or thereabouts—in playing complex war games; in the dream I was a member of a girls’ band of soldiers. I was captured by a gang of boys and I was asked who we were. I made the answer that many girls liked to be a boy with the boys, but that most of us—and I have no idea where this came from; it didn’t describe me, at any rate—preferred to be a girl with the boys. Half asleep, chewing over the dream, I came up with the phrase “I’m not neutered, though some of us are,” a phrase I was later to apply in the words of Kyla, the first Free Amazon, who wasn’t; and later to apply to Camilla n’ha Kyria, one of my later free Amazons, who WAS.

  Here is my own favorite of the early Free Amazon stories; “To Keep the Oath.” “Amazon Fragment,” [later re-titled “Bonds of Sisterhood”] which follows, was the first appearance of Camilla, a fragment intended to be part of the first Free Amazon novel, which was meant to center on Camilla and for which Kindra was invented. The next s
tory, “House Rules,” arises from a controversy arising from a somewhat stupid and not very well-thought-out idea I had based on a local household of feminists which had the policy—which I stupidly adopted for my Amazon households—that no male over five could live in an Amazon household. And lastly one of my best short stories—I am not a very good short story writer—”Knives,” which I think was the first to embody the idea that something which seems at the time to destroy one’s own life can be a blessing in disguise. I often say that I never know what my stories are about till years after I write them; “Knives” was the first of my stories for which I figured out the underlying “message” within 20 years.

  Return to Table of Contents

  To Keep the Oath

  Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The red light lingered on the hills; two of the four small moons were in the sky, green Idriel near to setting, and the tiny crescent of Mormallor, ivory pale, near the zenith. The night would be dark. Kindra n’ha Mhari did not, at first, see anything strange about the little town. She was too grateful to have reached it before sunset—shelter against the rainswept chill of a Darkovan night, a bed to sleep in after four days of traveling, a cup of wine before she slept.

  But slowly she began to realize that there was something wrong. Normally, at this hour, the women would be going back and forth in the streets, gossiping with neighbors, marketing for the evening meal, while their children played and squabbled in the street. But tonight there was not a single woman in the street, nor a single child.

  What was wrong? Frowning, she rode along the main street toward the inn. She was hungry and weary.

  She had left Dalereuth many days before with a companion, bound for Neskaya Guild-house. But unknown to either of them, her companion had been pregnant; she had fallen sick of a fever, and in Thendara Guild-house she had miscarried and still lay there, very ill. Kindra had gone alone to Neskaya; but she had turned aside three days’ ride to carry a message to the sick woman’s oath-mother. She had found her in a village in the hills, working to help a group of women set up a small dairy.

  Kindra was not afraid of traveling alone; she had journeyed in these hills at all seasons and in all weathers. But her provisions were beginning to run low. Fortunately, the innkeeper was an old acquaintance; she had little money with her, because her journey had been so unexpectedly prolonged, but old Jorik would feed her and her horse, give her a bed for the night, and trust her to send money to pay for it—knowing that if she did not, or could not, her Guild-house would pay, for the honor of the Guild.

  The man who took her horse in the stable had known her for many years, too. He scowled as she alighted. “I don’t know where we shall stable your horse, and that’s certain, mestra, with all these strange horses here . . . Will she share a box stall without kicking, do you suppose? Or shall I tie her loose at the end?” Kindra noticed that the stable was crammed with horses, two dozen of them and more. Instead of a lonely village inn, it looked like Neskaya on market-day!

  “Did you meet with any riders on the road, mestra?”

  “No, none,” Kindra said, frowning a little. “All the horses in the Kilghard Hills seem to be here in your stable—what is it, a royal visit? What is the matter with you? You keep looking over your shoulder as if you expect to find your master there with a stick to beat you—where is old Jorik, why is he not here to greet his guests?”

  “Why, mestra, old Jorik’s dead,” the old man said, “and Dame Janella is trying to manage the inn alone with young Annelys and Marga.”

  “Dead? Gods preserve us,” Kindra said. “What happened?”

  “It was those bandits, mestra. Scarface’s gang; they came here and cut Jorik down with his apron still on,” said the old groom. “Made havoc in the town, broke all the ale-pots, and when the menfolk drove ’em off with pitchforks, they swore they’d be back and fire the town! So Dame Janella and the elders put the cap round and raised copper to hire Brydar of Fen Hills and all his men to come and defend us when they come back; and here Brydar’s men have been ever since, mestra, quarrelling and drinking and casting eyes on the women until the townsfolk are ready to say the remedy’s worse than the sickness! But go in, go in, mestra, Janella’s ready to welcome you.”

  Plump Janella looked paler and thinner than Kindra had ever seen her. She greeted Kindra with unaccustomed warmth. Under ordinary conditions, she was cold to Kindra, as befitted a respectable wife in the presence of a member of the Amazon Guild; now, Kindra supposed, she was learning that an innkeeper could not afford to alienate a customer. Jorik, Kindra knew, had not approved of the Free Amazons either; but he had learned from experience that they were quiet guests who kept to themselves, caused no trouble, did not get drunk and break bar-stools and ale-pots, and paid their reckoning promptly. A guest’s reputation, Kindra thought wryly, does not tarnish the color of his money.

  “You have heard, good mestra? Those wicked men, Scarface’s fellows, they cut my good man down, and for nothing—just because he flung an ale-pot at one of them who laid rough hands on my little girl, and Annelys not fifteen yet! Monsters!”

  “And they killed him? Shocking!” Kindra murmured, but her pity was for the girl. All her life, young Annelys must remember that her father had been killed in defending her, because she could not defend herself. Like all the women of the Guild, Kindra was sworn to defend herself, to turn to no man for protection. She had been a member of the Guild for half her lifetime; it seemed shocking to her that a man should die defending a girl from advances she should have known how to ward off herself.

  “Ah, you don’t know what it’s like, mestra, being alone without the goodman. Living alone as you do, you can’t imagine!”

  “Well, you have daughters to help you,” Kindra said, and Janella shook her head and mourned. “But they can’t come out among all those rough men, they are only little girls!”

  “It will do them good to learn something of the world and its ways,” Kindra said, but the woman sighed. “I wouldn’t like them to learn too much of that.”

  “Then, I suppose, you must get you another husband,” Kindra said, knowing that there was simply no way she and Janella could communicate. “But indeed I am sorry for your grief. Jorik was a good man.”

  “You can’t imagine how good, mestra,” Janella said plaintively. “You women of the Guild, you call yourselves free women, only it seems to me I have always been free, until now, when I must watch myself night and day, lest someone get the wrong idea about a woman alone. Only the other day, one of Brydar’s men said to me—and that’s another thing, these men of Brydar’s. Eating us out of house and home, and just look, mestra, no room in the stable for the horses of our paying customers, with half the village keeping their horses here against bandits, and those hired swords drinking up my good old man’s beer day after day—” Abruptly she recalled her duties as landlord. “But come into the common-room, mestra, warm yourself, and I’ll bring you some supper; we have a roast haunch of chervine. Or would you fancy something lighter, rabbithorn stewed with mushrooms, perhaps? We’re crowded, yes, but there’s the little room at the head of the stairs, you can have that to yourself, a room fit for a fine lady, indeed Lady Hastur slept here in that very bed, a few years gone. Lilla! Lilla! Where’s that simpleminded wench gone? When I took her in, her mother told me she was lack-witted, but she has wits enough to hang about talking to that young hired sword, Zandru scratch them all! Lilla! Hurry now, show the good woman her room, fetch her wash-water, see to her saddlebags!”

  Later, Kindra went down to the common-room. Like all Guild-women, she had learned to be discreet when traveling alone; a solitary woman was prey to questions, at least, so they usually journeyed in pairs. This subjected them to raised eyebrows and occasional dirty speculations, but warded off the less palatable approaches to which a lone woman traveling on Darkover was subject. Of course, any woman of the Guild could protect herself if it went past rude words, but that could cause trouble for all the Guild. It wa
s better to conduct oneself in a way that minimized the possibility of trouble. So Kindra sat alone in a tiny corner near the fireplace, kept her hood drawn around her face—she was neither young nor particularly pretty—sipped her wine and warmed her feet, and did nothing to attract anyone’s attention. It occurred to her that at this moment she, who called herself a Free Amazon, was considerably less constrained than Janella’s young daughters, going back and forth, protected by their family’s roof and their mother’s presence.

  She finished her meal—she had chosen the stewed rabbithorn—and called for a second glass of wine, too weary to climb the stairs to her chamber and too tired to sleep if she did.

  Some of Brydar’s hired swords were sitting around a long table at the other end of the room, drinking and playing dice. They were a mixed crew; Kindra knew none of them, but she had met Brydar himself a few times, and had even hired out with him, once, to guard a merchant caravan across the desert to the Dry Towns. She nodded courteously to him, and he saluted her, but paid her no further attention; he knew her well enough to know that she would not welcome even polite conversation when she was in a roomful of strangers.

  One of the younger mercenaries, a young man, tall, beardless and weedy, ginger hair cut close to his head, rose and came toward her. Kindra braced herself for the inevitable. If she had been with two or three other Guild-women, she would have welcomed harmless companionship, a drink together and talk about the chances of the road, but a lone Amazon simply did not drink with men in public taverns, and, damn it, Brydar knew it as well as she did.

  One of the older mercenaries must have been having some fun with the green boy, needling him to prove his manhood by approaching the Amazon, amusing themselves by enjoying the rebuff he’d inevitably get.

  One of the men looked up and made a remark Kindra didn’t hear. The boy snarled something, a hand to his dagger. “Watch yourself, you—!” He spoke a foulness. Then he came to Kindra’s table and said, in a soft, husky voice, “A good evening to you, honorable mistress.”