Thendara House

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “You can have my share, and welcome,” Magda said, trying to hide her bitterness. Here was Jaelle, home, feasting and laughing and enjoying herself as if she’d been locked in solitary confinement on bread and water. While in the Terran Zone Jaelle had fifteen choices at every meal, and didn’t even have to help cook them, music from several different planets, all the books ever written, rounds of parties and visiting among Base personnel—as Peter’s wife she would be required to attend most of the official functions—sports, swimming (and in an indoor, properly heated pool at that), and all kinds of games and recreation. And here I am, struggling with stable brooms, and in disgrace at that… and fed on tripe stew, dammit!

  Magda found a bowl of something which tasted faintly like baked yams or pumpkin—and helped herself. Then someone passed her the leftover dish, filled with some mixture of grain baked with cheese and reheated in milk. “I saved this just for you, Margali.” Magda gritted her teeth, knowing that this was intended as a subtle insult; most of the women considered the stuff barely fit to eat even when it was served fresh, but it made its appearance on the table, because it was cheap, all too often since the House had been let in for the enormous cash indemnity by the man Magda had wounded. She told herself not to be hypersensitive—everyone knew how much she disliked the tripe stew—and helped herself without comment. But just last night, the girl who had “saved” it for her had made, just too loud, a comment about how their food budget had suffered, and why.

  She was buttering herself a piece of bread when Jaelle said quietly, “You don’t have to eat that reish, Margali!”

  The word she had used meant literally, stable-sweepings; horseshit. Magda took a spoonful.

  “Never mind, I like it, really, better than the tripe stew.”

  “You couldn’t! Listen, breda, you’re my oath-daughter, you don’t have to take that kind of treatment from anybody! Not in my own house!” Now it seemed that, from the light touch of Jaelle’s hand on her wrist, the woman’s own rage flowed into Magda, she was filled with fury, how dared they treat her that way! A grain of sanity insisted in Magda that it was all very silly, she really liked the grain-and-cheese dish as well as anything else they served here, but through her own sanity she felt Jaelle’s fury, a slight to her oath-daughter was a slight to Jaelle as well. Jaelle took the dish in her hand, and stood over the woman who had handed it to Magda.

  “That’s very generous of you, Cloris, but knowing how much you like it, we couldn’t possibly deprive you of it!” Jaelle said, eyes flashing, and dumped the whole soggy mess on Cloris’s plate. Magda knew—and Cloris did, too—that she had come very close to dumping it on Cloris’s cropped curls. “A present— from my oath-daughter!” She put enough emphasis on the words that Cloris bent her head, color rising in her round cheeks, and put a fork into the mess, choking down a spoonful. Jaelle stood over her, triumphant, for a moment, then came back to her seat, where Magda was pretending to eat the baked-pumpkin stuff, and picked up her own fork.

  Slowly, the tension in the room dissolved. Camilla and Doria were asking a hundred questions about the Terran Zone; they spoke a rapid-fire Cahuenga that Magda could hardly follow, but she did sense Jaelle’s anger melting away as she talked on, and after a time it was the old Jaelle, merrily regaling her friends with larger-than-life adventures in faraway places; all the little foibles of the Terrans grew and seemed hysterical.

  Magda felt a stab of resentment. Jaelle wasn’t telling them anything she couldn’t have told them, yet she was honor bound, oath-bound, to say nothing about it. She had made the wrong decision. If they had known she was Terran, they might have accepted her differences and blamed her less, they would have excused her blunder in the sword-fight as unfamiliarity with custom, not dishonorable negligence. She had been so proud of her own ability to pass as a Darkovan; Peter had warned her once that it would destroy her! Magda blinked back tears of self-pity, and pushed the food around listlessly on her plate. Jaelle had forgotten her, and the only two people in the house who really liked her, Doria and Camilla, were so wrapped up in Jaelle that neither of them had a word to say to her. The hall, which was large and drafty, seemed colder than ever; there was a cold draft blowing on the back of her neck where her hair used to be, she’d probably have a cold tomorrow, and these people didn’t have a decent antiviral drug in the house!

  She rose quietly and slipped toward the door. No one would know or care that she was gone. But as she paused on the threshold, Mother Lauria rose in her place.

  “Before you all go off to your evening tasks or to rest,” she said, “Jaelle will be leaving at first light tomorrow; so there will be a few minutes in the music room, if you wish to greet her, before house meeting. Remember, the meeting is obligatory for everyone tonight.” Her eyes locked for a moment with Magda’s, and Magda felt the old tightness in her throat.

  House meetings were somewhat less disturbing than the training sessions, whose very purpose, of course, was to upset and humiliate the probationers, breaking old patterns—to teach us, Keitha had said once, to be women, not girls or ladies. Keitha usually came away from them in tears, but Magda had not yet been reduced to tears, though she usually lay awake for hours afterward turning over all the things she knew she should have said, or suffered racking nightmares. The meetings, by contrast, were usually routine affairs—the last one had taken up two hours complaining that the women who cleaned the third floor did not keep the baths stocked with towels or menstrual supplies! But Magda knew that in this meeting, her Oath was to be called into question. Rafael la had all but told her so this afternoon in the Armory. She knew she would never be able to face the psychological assault troops, and remembered Marisela’s words, with dismay. Are they never going to be satisfied until they can get me to break down and cry in front of them all, was that what they were waiting for? Magda shoved the curtain aside and fled, running up the wide stairway, taking the steps three at a time; half sobbing, she stumbled, slid down a couple of steps, scrambled up, and gained the upper hallway, locking herself into the second-story bath by the simple expedient of blocking the door with a stool. She felt nausea rising, the very walls seemed to bulge outward around her, blurring before her aching eyes.

  Jaelle found her there, sitting on the floor, clutching a towel over her eyes, swaying back and forth, unable even to cry. “Chiya,” said Jaelle, kneeling on the floor beside her, “What is it? What have we done?”

  Magda let the towel drop and for a moment it seemed that Jaelle’s words, her very presence, held the bulging walls in place, forced the words into solidity. Of course, she is Comyn, a catalyst telepath, an Ardais, she thought, and irritably wondered what the words meant and where they had come from. She was battling the impulse to throw herself into Jaelle’s arms, cling there and cry herself senseless, to enfold the other woman within herself, cling to her strength… then inside her, a spark of defiance flared. Jaelle had the strength to face the Terran Zone’s culture shock, to make jokes about it at supper, then come up and offer solace to Magda because she couldn’t! She could not display weakness—not before Jaelle, of all people. She bit her lip, tasting blood in her mouth as she fought for control.

  Jaelle, seeing the unfocused eyes, the beads of sweat filming Magda’s brow under the clinging curls, thought quite logically that Magda was simply afraid; she knew her Oath would be challenged tonight, and, knowing what the Oath had cost Magda, she ached for her friend. But Jaelle had been a soldier before anything else. Kindra and Camilla had schooled her to hard stoicism, reinforcing the rigid strength of a desert-born woman, and the last months had been, for her, the hardest fight of her life! And Magda was not facing the machines and dehumanizing life of the Terran Zone, she was here surrounded by the love and concern of all the Guild House sisters!

  She said, with a sting of harshness meant to be as bracing as the first touch of cold water in the morning, “Margali n’ha Ysabet, listen to me!” Magda’s Amazon name rang out like the clash of a sword. “Are you a w
oman, or a whimpering girl? Would you disgrace your oath-mother in our own House?”

  Magda’s rising pride grabbed that and held on to it, I can do anything she can do, anything any Darkovan woman can do! It gave her the strength to pull herself to her feet, and say through set teeth, “Jaelle n’ha Melora, I will not disgrace you!”

  Jaelle knew, with the knowledge which she could never control, but which, from time to time, thrust itself on her undesired, that the spiteful tone was armor against total nervous disintegration; all the same, the cold tone hurt. She said icily, “Downstairs in the music room, before the clock strikes again,” turned her back and added, with chilly detachment, “You had better wash your face first.” She turned and went, fighting the awareness that what she really wanted to do was put Magda into a hot bath, rub her back until the tension went out of her, then tuck her up comfortably in bed and comfort her, as she would have done for Doria when the child had gotten into one of the inevitable fights that faced an Amazon fosterling in the Thendara streets from the street girls—and boys.

  But Margali is a woman; my oath-daughter, but she is not a child, I must not treat her like one!

  Left alone, Magda had an insane impulse to change into Terran uniform and confront them on that basis, fling their damned oath into their faces and storm out before they could throw her out. If I had a uniform in the building, I might, she thought, then was glad she had not, knowing she would regret it all her life. Magda was Darkovan enough to guard the integrity of her given oath with her very life; yet a traitorous part of her self persisted, as she washed her swollen mouth, in knowing that she might be going back in the morning to the Terran Zone with Jaelle—or without her. Either way, it would not be her fault, she would not have given up. All the tension, which had been building to impossible heights since the sword fight, would be over. Painful as the breaking would be, it could not help but be better.

  In the music room, Jaelle and several others were clustered around Rafaella, begging her to sing.

  “Rafi, I have had no music since I went to the Terran Zone; nobody plays there, nobody sings, the music comes out of little metal screens, and is only sound to mask the sound of machines, not real music at all… sing something, Rafi, sing ‘The Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda…’ ”

  “We should be here all night, and Mother Lauria has called us for House Meeting,” Rafaella protested, but she took up the small rryl which looked to Magda like a cross between a guitar and a zither, and began softly tightening the pegs, bending her ear close as she tuned the instrument. Then she sat down, holding it across her lap, and began to sing softly, a ballad Magda had heard in Caer Dorm as a child. Her mother had told her it was immeasurably old, perhaps even of Terran origin.

  When the day wears away,

  Sad I wander by the water,

  Where a man, born of sun.

  Wooed the chieri daughter;

  Ah, but there is something wanting,

  Ah, but I am weary,

  Come, my fair and bonny love,

  Come from the hills to cheer me…

  And a curious, haunting refrain in a language Magda did not know; she would like to ask Rafaella where she had learned the song, what was the language of the ancient refrain, to check it against the Terran language banks… but she held aloof. Surely Jaelle had confided in her best friend how she had found Magda in the bathroom having hysterics, they were all waiting for her, the last to arrive… yet the old song recalled her childhood, her mother, who had always worn Darkovan clothes for warmth in the frigid hills of the Hellers, wrapped in a tartan shawl; the very sound of the rryl was like the one her mother had played, and Magda had tried for a time to learn the chords;

  Why should I sit and sigh,

  All alone and weary…

  The soft arpeggios of the accompaniment died; Mother Lauria came up behind Magda and laid a warm, dry hand on her shoulder. Magda turned, and the old woman said softly, “Courage, Margali.” But the kindness in her voice was blurred in Magda’s ears. Magda only thought, does she think I am going to disgrace them all by breaking down? Damn her anyhow! Mother Lauria read the defiance in her face, and sighed, but she only propelled Magda into the center of the group, where the women were finding seats, on chairs and benches and on the floor on cushions.

  Rafaella put the rryl carefully into its case and sat down cross-legged beside Jaelle, as silence fell on them all. Mother Lauria said, “Shall we begin? I will take the meeting myself, tonight.”

  They brought an armchair for the Guild Mother and placed it at the center, and Magda felt a renewed stab of misgiving. Usually the Guild Mothers or elders presiding over the meeting sat on the floor, informally, like everyone else. Normally there were house meetings only every forty days, and the trainees were not allowed to speak at all in them; they were gripe sessions, or serious discussions of house finances, policies, visiting hours and work assignments.

  Magda wondered if she was building up nightmares out of nothing. After all, the woman was old and had a lame knee; she was the oldest of the Guild Mothers and her knee would not let her sit on the floor for a long meeting!

  Lauria opened soberly, “The House has been alive with talk and gossip for more than a tenday. That is not the way to handle troubles, with talk and secret slander! Tonight we must talk of violence, and other things; but first let us have this trouble in our House spoken openly, not whispered in corners like naughty children talking smut! Rafaella, you have had the most to say, let us hear your grudge openly!”

  “Margali,” said Rafaella, turning to look at her, and Magda felt all the eyes of the women turning to follow, “She has disgraced us; she has brought a heavy indemnity upon us, she has dishonored her steel, and she does not even seem to realize the gravity of what she had done.”

  “That’s not true,” Magda cried out. “What makes you think I don’t realize it? But what would you have me do? Weep night and day?”

  Mother Lauria said, “Margali—” but Jaelle had already silenced Magda with a hand on her shoulder. “Hush, chiya. Let us handle this.”

  A girl called Dika—Magda did not know her full name—said, “See, even now she has not learned manners! And it’s common knowledge that her oath was irregular, taken on the trail! She should have been questioned in a Guild House before she was ever allowed to come among us!”

  “And she sits there brazen, not caring,” Janetta said, and Magda suddenly realized—distantly, intellectually—what they meant. It was a cultural reaction she was lacking. Yes, she spoke the language, had learned it as a child—but she had been separated from the Darkovans who were native to her at an early age, she did not have the right body language, the right subtle signals to show her very real remorse and guilt; they were expecting a reaction she did not know how to give, and that was why they were so hostile all the time. All, that was, except Mother Lauria, who knew she could not be expected to react quite as she should, and knew why. She understood her guilt, in their framework, but she didn’t know how to show them that she knew it!

  This has always been my curse; too much Darkovan to be Terran, too much Darkovan ever to be happy in the Terran Zone… I came to the Amazons to find my own freedom to be what I really am, but I don’t know what that is, and how can I find it if I do not know what it is I must find here?

  Mother Lauria said, “There has been too much gossip and too little truth about the irregularity of Margali’s oath. Jaelle, she took the oath at your hands, and Camilla, you witnessed it; let us hear the truth from your lips, before us all.”

  Magda listened while they told the story, mentioning that she had been traveling under safe-conduct from Lady Rohana Ardais; there were small murmurs all round the room at this, for Lady Rohana was a much-loved and respected patron of the Thendara Guild House. Camilla told how they had administered the oath under threat, as the Amazon charter required, and why. Mother Lauria heard her out in silence, then asked formally, “Tell us, Margali, did you take the oath unwillingly?”

/>   Mother Lauria knew that perfectly well; she had been at the Council where it had been discussed in full. She gulped down her misgivings, and said, hearing her voice thin and childish under the high ceiling, “At first—yes. It was something I had to do, before I could be free to keep my pledge to my kinsman. I was afraid I would have to make promises I could not, in conscience, keep.” Should she tell them, here, that she was Terran and that by Terran law an oath under duress was invalid? No; there was enough trouble here between Terran and Darkovan without her adding to that old quarrel. “But as Jaelle said the oath to me, I—I seemed to find the words of the oath engraved somewhere upon my heart—believe me, the oath is now at the very center of my being…” Her throat tightened and for a moment she felt again that she could cry.

  Jaelle’s hand was on Magda’s shoulder, reassuring. “Have I not told this company how Margali fought for me, when she could have held her hand, and my death would have freed her from all obligation? She abandoned the mission which meant so much to her because she would not leave me wounded, to freeze or die alone. She brought me across the Pass of Scaravel, under attack by banshees, and later brought the three of us to Castle Ardais under little more than the strength of her own will.” Jaelle fingered the narrow red scar on her cheek and said vehemently, “No woman here has an oath-daughter more faithful under trial!”

  “But,” said Rafaella, “Camilla has told us how she first failed to defend herself against a gang of drunken bandits. And did she not kill that one who wounded you in a fever of blood-lust and revenge, rather than disciplined self-defense? I submit that she is unstable and unfit to bear steel, and that she has proved it again in this house, not a tenday past.”

  Jaelle said angrily, “Rafi, who among us comes to this house fit to bear a sword? Why do we have training sessions, if not to teach us what we do not know? Would you send Keitha, or Doria, to defend this house at sword’s point?”