The Saga of the Renunciates Read online

  Jaelle opened her unbandaged eye; her vision was blurry and unfocused. She said, "It is not love we renounce... only marriage... bondage..." she stretched out her hand, and Peter knelt beside the bed, taking her hand in his. Her eyes fell shut again, but she kept hold of him.

  He was still kneeling there when the door opened again and Lady Rohana came in, with dom Gabriel's sister, who had been described to Magda as a leronis. The title translated, usually, as "soceress" or "wise-woman"; Magda suspected it meant, in this case, "healer." Her name was Alida. She was a small, slight woman with flaming red hair, younger by some years than Rohana, and with a kind of indefinable arrogance which made Magda, for some reason, think of Lorill Hastur.

  Lady Alida inclined her head in the faintest of courteous greetings to Magda. She ignored Peter. She pulled back Jaelle's blankets and began to unfasten the cutaway nightgown; then looked, in unmistakable command, at Peter. He had been brought up in the mountains near Caer Donn and understood perfectly well; actually it was even somewhat scandalous that he should have been in the room when Magda was not fully dressed. He let go Jaelle's hand, but she quickly clasped it again, opening her eyes.

  She said, "I want him to stay!" She sounded like a child, and Magda wondered if she were delirious again.

  Lady Alida shrugged. "Stay, then, if she wants you. But take her other hand, and keep out of my way." Peter obeyed, and Alida, with some minor help from Rohana, got the bandages undone to examine the ugly wounds. Even Magda could see that they were not healing properly, but were swollen and festered. The clean slash on the face had spread and reddened, the nick in the eyelid so swollen that Jaelle's eye was shut.

  "This is a poisoned wound! How came she by it?"

  Briefly, Magda recounted their fight with the bandits. Lady Alida made a fastidious grimace. "That is no work for women!"

  Jaelle flushed with anger. She said pettishly, "I do not need to be told you do not approve of my way of life, kinswoman, but courtesy should prevent you from insulting my sister and guest before me!"

  Rohana said in haste, "Alida meant no offense-did you, kinswoman?"

  Alida paid no attention to either of them. "What has happened to your wound, mestra?"

  After a moment Magda realized that she was being addressed, and pushed up the long sleeve of the nightgown she was wearing. "It is healing."

  "But not as it should," Alida said, her light, cold fingers gently touching the red seam, still puckered and inflamed. "A cut like this should long be closed and sealed, with not even an itch remaining. This still gives you some pain, I can tell-does it not?"

  "Yes, a little," Magda said. She had so little experience with such cuts that she had thought it natural. She saw Peter looking up, in surprise and consternation, at her bare arm and the red seam there, and she pushed her sleeve down to cover it.

  Alida said, "Jaelle must have been wounded first, and got most of the poison."

  Rohana sounded anxious. "Can you help it, Alida?"

  "Oh certainly. I learned to treat such wounds at Neskaya Tower; it is nothing much. You were Tower-trained in Dalereuth as a girl; can you monitor for me?"

  Rohana nodded. "Certainly."

  But Rohana watched, faintly troubled, as Alida uncovered her matrix jewel. She knew she should send the two Terrans away. This, she knew, was one reason why Lorill Hastur had interdicted any serious contact between Terran and Darkovan; he was unwilling they should learn anything about the ancient matrix sciences. Yet, if she should make a point of dismissing Magda and Peter from the room now, she must explain why.

  She had told no one here that they were Terrans, but she was sure Gabriel guessed. When he had seen Peter's almost unbelievable likeness to their son Kyril, and heard that he was the prisoner from Sain Scarp, he must have known; but he did not really want to know, Rohana realized, that she had gone against his wishes again. Because then I would have to tell him, in so many words, that he is not the keeper of my conscience; and even now I do not think Gabriel wants to know that in a way he cannot pretend to ignore.

  And the woman, Magda, was Jaelle's oath-sister and had a right to remain. As for the man-she saw Jaelle clinging to his hand, saw the tenderness in his eyes, and knew what neither of them knew themselves, as yet.

  "Put that away. Lady Alida. I will have none of your sorcery," Jaelle said weakly.

  "I must, child. There is poison in the wound and it is spreading to your eye; it can damage your sight. If I do not treat it now..."

  "I do not care," said Jaelle in great agitation. "I will not allow – "

  Rohana said sternly, "Stop it, Jaelle. You are behaving like a frightened child who will not have a cut bandaged! I had not believed you so cowardly!"

  Alida's voice was kinder. "I know you were afraid of me when you were a child, Jaelle, but I hoped you had outgrown your fear."

  "I am not afraid," Jaelle said, shaking with anger, "but I will not have you meddling with my mind! Once is enough for a lifetime!"

  Suddenly Rohana recalled what Jaelle was talking about. On that single extended visit to Ardais, which she had demanded before allowing Jaelle to take the Amazon's oath, she had insisted that Jaelle be tested for laran; Melora's child, and with the flame-colored hair that marked the telepath strain, would surely have one of the Comyn gifts. Jaelle had been frightened and helplessly reluctant, but on this point Rohana would not be moved. Alida had done the testing, and Jaelle had come away white as a corpse and looking deathly ill. It was the only time since her mother's death that Rohana had ever seen Jaelle in tears. When Rohana had sent her away, a little calmed and comforted, Alida had said:

  "Yes, she has laran; I think she is a powerful telepath, but for some reason she is blocking it. I could break her defenses, of course; but whether I could ever put them together again afterward-that is another matter. And since you have allowed her to be fostered among the Amazons, I think she would find life intolerable in a Tower. Let her take her own way."

  Rohana had left it at that. She had complied with the law that every child of Comyn blood-legitimate or illegitimate; and in law Jaelle was illegitimate-must be tested. More was not necessary. She was sure it was the shock of rapport with her dying mother that had forced Jaelle to barricade her own laran, but she had not tried to find out. But was Jaelle's fear still so acute? Domna Alida only said, unoffended, when Jaelle swore at her, "You are ill, Jaelle. You do not know what you are saying. Shall I really put you to the indignity of having your hands tied?"

  Magda almost cried out: "No, you mustn't!"

  "Jaelle," Rohana persuaded, "you are not one of those Amazons who makes a great thing of swaggering and comparing scars."

  Alida said coolly, "If she wishes to end her days looking like a battle-scarred veteran of the campaigns at Corresanti, that is her affair; I am only concerned about her eyesight!"

  Peter was still holding Jaelle's hand in his. He raised his free hand to Jaelle's cheek, caressed the smooth skin below the red slash. He said, as if there were no one in the room but himself and Jaelle, "You are so beautiful. It would be so dreadful to let that beauty be spoiled."

  Jaelle moved her other hand, clumsily, toward his; and Magda knew-they all knew-that she would not protest further.

  That wasn't fair, Magda thought. Jaelle is too vulnerable. Peter should not have done it...

  Lady Alida moved her hand, and Magda could see the blue stone in it-a jewel? A brilliant flash, a twisting, sickening glare... Magda turned her eyes away, unable to endure the sight. The leronis said.quietly, "You were too busy cursing me to let me explain, Jaelle, but I need not touch your mind for this. I am going to be doing some very delicate cell-reconstruction work, so you must lie as quietly as possible, and try to make your mind as blank as you can, so that your thoughts will not interfere. You can sleep if you wish; it will be all the better if you do. I do not think you will feel any pain, but if you do you must tell me at once, so that your pain will not blur what I am doing."

  Magda listened, in
amazed curiosity. Hypnosis? All that about making her mind a blank...?

  "Rohana, you must monitor," Alida instructed. "And you must warn me if I come too close to the nerves, or to the small muscles near the corner of the eye," Alida warned, and again the blue jewel flashed in her hand. Magda felt a little, twisting ripple deep in her body, almost a sickness. Alida looked up, her face now remote and mask like, looking at Magda without really seeing her.

  "Do not look directly at the matrix, mestra; many people cannot endure the sight."

  Magda turned her eyes away, but found them drawn back. Fakery, nonsense; but what are they going to do to Jaelle?

  Rohana approached Jaelle, bending over her; ignoring Peter, who still knelt on the far side of the bed, holding Jaelle's hands. Jaelle's eyes had fallen shut again. Rohana ran her fingertips along Jaelle's face, not quite touching her; down across the bared shoulder and the swollen, horribly festered wound there. It seemed to Magda that a line of light followed Rohana's fingertips, began to glow along Jaelle's skin ... As if I could see the bones through the skin...

  Rohana said,-No, not the bones, the nerve currents that lie among them... But Rohana had not spoken, not raised her head; she was bending intently over Jaelle.

  Alida was holding the jewel stone before her eyes with one hand, her face set in an almost inhuman calm. Now Magda could see, around the two wounds, a dull pulsing, a kind of glow around the inflamed flesh.

  Alida said, "Now," and Rohana began to move her fingertips along the wound in the collarbone and shoulder. She did not touch Jaelle, but as the small lines of light followed her fingers, the swollen flesh seemed to move and ripple, dull colors swirling inside it; to heave, tremble and change color, from angry inflamed red to thick festering purple and then, almost, to a dull black, the lights in the flesh dimming, pulsing. Magda caught her breath; was this some ghastly hypnotic illusion? Blood oozed from the wound.

  "Careful," Rohana said tonelessly.

  The rippling surface of the open wound slowly paled, turned purple again, and as the lights around it brightened, turned red, then a smooth, healthy pink...

  Rohana shifted her hands, drawing her fingertips above the repulsive open gash across Jaelle's face. Alida brought the blue jewel stone close, and Magda, seeing it without sickness this time, found herself caught up in what was happening. She saw with a curious double vision those nerve currents under the skin, the slashed and broken and infected layers of skin and muscle and escaped, oozing blood, the seeped poison around the eye... she felt, with an inner itch and tension inside her mind, what Alida was doing: lowering her consciousness farther and farther, into the cells, exerting the tiniest pressures (How! How?) on each cell, so that she actually felt the blood and poison as pressures against the light-lines of the nerves, sensed the tiny, delicate membranes, the pressures against them...

  "Careful," Rohana said again, a low soft neutral sound, but to Magda, deep inside Alida's awareness, it was like a shriek of warning; and with infinite caution, Alida eased the carefully intricate pressures, moved her touch away from a small ruptured blood vessel, felt and almost saw the tiny tensions of fluids so near the eyeball, the glowing inner mechanism of the eyeball and tear ducts, so near, dangerously near. Ease up just there... Something in the back of Magda's mind said, Psychokinesis: the power of the mind to exert delicate cellular changes. Her consciousness seemed wholly sunk inside that light, bending pressure. She looked at Jaelle from a great distance. As if I were up somewhere near the ceiling and looking down... Giddy shifts of perspective.

  Magda thought, somewhere back in her mind, I can do that, too, and found her attention focused on the healing slash in her own arm, sensed the inner pressures, somehow wrenched them into consciousness, feeling a faint sting of violent pain, somehow outside herself, which vanished without trace...

  She shook her head as if to clear it. She was standing firmly on her own feet, and Alida had covered the blue stone. She blinked as if dizzy, and looked down at Jaelle in amazement and shock. There was now no hideous, festering slash crisscrossing Jaelle's cheek; only a narrow, bright red seam, still jagged and raw, from which one drop of clean blood oozed. The nick in the eyelid was gone, and the closed eye, beneath its fringe of lashes, was no longer swollen.

  Alida drew a long sigh of weariness. Mechanically Magda pushed up her sleeve, staring in puzzlement at where the bandit had gashed her arm with his poisoned blade. There was no puckered red line there now; only a firm white scar, which looked long healed. Did I dream it?

  Alida thrust the wrapped stone inside the front of her dress. She looked at Magda, with a questioning frown, but did not speak to her. "Jaelle?"

  Rohana touched Jaelle's forehead lightly. "She is asleep, I think."

  "Good; while she sleeps 'the healing will be finished," Alida said, and gestured to Peter. "Leave her."

  He tried gently to withdraw his hand, but the fingers were locked around it. He settled himself into a comfortable position on the floor and said, "I'll stay."

  Magda tiptoed to Jaelle's side and drew the nightgown up over the girl's bare shoulder and breast, covered her with a blanket, then followed Rohana and Alida out of the room. Alida stumbled, almost fell against the door; Rohana caught and steadied her on her feet. She said, "Go and rest, Alida. And I thank you for Jaelle's sake."

  Magda's mind was whirling. It was not illusion! That terrible, festering wound, like a great open, oozing sore... and now, as she covered Jaelle with her nightgown, it had not even needed a bandage, but was clean and almost healed. There was also her own arm-it looked like a scar a year old. And somehow, with the aid of the blue jewel, this had all been done through the powers of the mind. Psi power. I never believed in it, not really. But I saw it-

  Rohana saw Magda trembling, reached out and gently steadied her as she had done with Alida. She said, "Rest, my girl, that is strenuous work. Why did you not tell us you had laran?"

  And Magda could only stammer, confused and dismayed, "I don't even know what the word means!"

  Chapter Thirteen

  On the eve of midwinter-day, the long-delayed blizzard swept down from the Hellers, a thick white wilderness of snow and howling wind that effectively damped the preparations for the festival. The house-party guests had already arrived, but Lady Rohana told her guests, with some disappointment, that the usual festivities would have to be suspended. Normally, everyone who lived within a day's ride would have visited Castle Ardais at some time during the day to share in the merrymaking there.

  Magda expressed polite regrets for the spoiling of the holiday, but was herself secretly relieved not to have to face more strangers. She had no personal fear. Dora Gabriel would not make trouble for his wife's guests, whoever they were; and the strong tradition of hospitality in the Hellers made it unlikely that they would meet with any personal unpleasantness. But it might well mean that other Terrans, after this, would be more carefully watched and restricted in their travel.

  Lady Rohana had holiday gifts for them both: long riding-capes trimmed with fur. She also tactfully offered them garments more suitable for the festival, pointing out that they had only traveling clothes with them, and those much the worse for wear. Magda accepted with relief, Jaelle with a wry laugh. She said when Rohana had gone away, "My kinsman is cowardly, to make Rohana do his errands! Margali, you are a translator by trade; see if you can interpret this as I do! I may not have the words quite right, but the music is very clear, and the tune is something like this: 'I refuse to have two Amazons in trousers at my banquet-table!'"

  Magda politely refrained from comment on her host, but she felt Jaelle was probably right. Jaelle was up and around now, though until today confined to her room, but she was recovering so swiftly that Magda still doubted the evidence of her own eyes. But there it was before her: the healed scar on Jaelle's collarbone, the red line-perceptible, and a little startling, but no longer disfiguring-across her cheek.

  It makes Terran medical science look primitive! Magda though
t.

  But if it was psi force, what was the function of the blue jewel? Was it only a focus? Magda knew she would never rest till she knew the answer to these questions. The key seemed to be the strange word laran, which was colloquially translated as an art, skill, gift or talent; she surmised that a leronis was one who used laran, and that the meanings of "wise-woman" or "sorceress" were ancillary. Jaelle verified this guess, adding that laran meant an inborn gift for psi power, and that while she herself had a little of it, she had not wanted to be trained in its use. When Magda repeated Rohana's remark-that she herself seemed to have laran-Jaelle shut up and could not be persuaded to say another word.

  In midafternoon the promised festival dresses arrived, brought by one of Rohana's women. Magda's was a rust-colored gown with narrow sable fur trim, and trailing sleeves lined with golden silk; it was one of the prettiest dresses she had ever seen, and fitted her well enough. She felt a twinge of regret as she put it on and brushed her dark smooth hair, thinking of the silver butterfly-clasp that she would never wear again.

  Jaelle said, "Among Terran women, is close-cropped hair thought a disgrace?"

  "Oh, no. Most women in Empire service wear their hair little longer than men; but I have lived on Darkover most of my life, and kept mine long to be able to mingle unnoticed with women here, so I am accustomed to long hair," Magda said. "I had half expected to be told that Amazons were not allowed to wear women's dress! Is this simply a courtesy to dom Gabriel, then, Jaelle?"

  Jaelle laughed merrily. She had put on the delicate green gown Rohana had sent her. She said that it had been made for her cousin, Rohana's seventeen-year-old daughter, whose name was Elorie but who was usually called Lori. With a little pinning at the waist, it fitted Jaelle beautifully. As she brushed her own hair into a burnished coppery helmet and fastened it with a pair of gold bar-clasps from her saddlebags, she said, "Oh, no! Do you think we wear trousers compulsively, like men, you silly girl? We wear them when we have to ride, or work like men, but in the Guild-house, or when working indoors, we wear whatever seems comfortable to us. We are not required to wear anything in particular; we simply refuse to accept the social rule that forbids women to wear any comfortable garment for reasons of modesty or custom. The only thing we may not wear-by our Charter-is a sword." Again, she laughed. "Kindra chided me, now and then, that I spent so much of what I earned on finery; I probably have as many pretty gowns as Rohana, or more, because I need not account to anyone for what use I make of my money!"