Thendara House

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  By the time the soup was done, smelling reasonably edible, she knew she dared wait no longer. Already it was snowing hard, and she hesitated again; if the snow got harder yet, they could be lost in whiteout blizzard. Yet what was the alternative? To be snowed in here until they died? She drank some of the hot soup herself, and ate a handful of nuts, then poured the cooled soup into a cup and bent over Jaelle to shake her awake.

  “Jaelle. Shaya, love, wake up and drink some soup. I’ve got to get you out of here; it’s snowing and we’ve got to try and get out of this canyon while we still can.”

  Jaelle stared at her vacantly, and Magda’s heart sank.

  “Kindra?” Jaelle whispered, “It hurts. I’m bleeding. Am I going to die, Kindra?”

  “Jaelle!” Roughly, Magda shook her. “Stop that! You’re here with me! It’s Magda! Wake up, damn it! Here, drink this!” She held the soup to Jaelle’s mouth, tilting the cup; Jaelle swallowed a mouthful obediently, then pushed it away; when Magda swore at her, shoving the cup against her mouth, she stared, not knowing what Magda wanted, letting it dribble down her chin. Magda felt like slapping her.

  But it’s not her fault. She’s sick; she doesn’t even know who I am. She checked the folds of improvised bandages. Jaelle was bleeding again. If she loses any more blood… and Magda realized that if she made Jaelle get up and walk now or ride, it would probably kill her. Her face was fire-hot, and Magda had no medicines to give her.

  She could be dying. Magda looked at the heavy snow outside the cave and thought, If we wait another hour or two it might be too late to get out before the storm, but I can’t move her now.

  She tucked the blankets around Jaelle again, feeling desperate. Did she have to sit here and let Jaelle die? If only she had a way to reach Lady Rohana, who could use her starstone…

  If she had a way to reach Lady Rohana…

  But she did. She had laran. She was not sure how to use it, but she might reach somebody. The blue-gowned red-haired leronis who had healed her feet on the fire lines—what was her name, Hilary? Lady Callista? Ferrika, who was an Amazon herself?

  Anybody. But how do you do it? I was a fool. I should have let Lady Rohana teach me…

  How do you yell for help with laran? And as she formulated the question in her mind, from somewhere the answer formed in her desperation. You just do it. You just yell. Help!

  Well, help! Help, anybody! Magda crouched on the floor of the cave, covering her eyes with her hands, trying desperately to recapture the sureness of that moment when she had seen the whole world around her as part of herself. Jaelle is very sick. We are marooned here by floodwater. Jaelle is sick, maybe dying, she’s bleeding, we are running out of fuel… Oh, help, somebody, help!

  She repeated this again and again, concentrating with agonizing intensity, trying to visualize the call going out, farther and farther, spreading in widening circles as if she had dropped a stone into the quiet around the cave.

  There was a little stir in the air of the cave. Magda looked up. Dimly sketched on the air, she seemed to see faces. Woman’s faces, none of them familiar.

  And then, without real surprise, she saw Marisela’s face on the dimness.

  You promised me you would do nothing rash until I could talk to you, child…

  Magda said aloud, wondering if she was crazy, “I couldn’t let Jaelle go off like that alone—”

  I suppose you could not. It seemed now that Marisela was standing there, though she was shadowy and Magda felt that she could see the wall of the cave through the woman’s body. Is she really here or have I flipped out after all this trouble? And then Marisela was gone, wholly gone, and Magda was no surer than ever that she had ever seen her. And if she had been there, Magda thought in indignation, well, I must say that wasn’t a lot of help, just scolding me for going away alone and vanishing again! She could at least have given me some telepatheic advice about what I ought to do for Jaelle. She’s the midwife! The snow was making a soft swishing sound outside. It was just as well they had not gone into it. She should go out and get the horses inside; they probably could not endure this weather either. Wasn’t there some serious disease, tetanus or something, carried by horse droppings? It was probably too late to worry about that.

  She and Jaelle had been handling horses enough that if she was going to get it, she’d get it. She herself had been vaccinated; she hoped Jaelle had been through a good Medic checkup lately.

  There was a soft sound like the calling of crows; she felt a curious swirling in the air and looked up. The snow was suddenly gone; she was standing in a fire-blue haze—she thought of Lady Rohana’s starstone—and around her were shadowy figures, dark-robed women; she recognized none of their faces.

  She is one of the pivot points of history, said a voice in her mind. She knew it was not really there.

  Remember; we dare show no compassion for individuals. We are concerned only with centuries, and some must suffer and die…

  Magda thought; I am hallucinating that conversation Mother Lauria had with Cholayna. Only I wasn’t even there. It was Jaelle.

  There will be no lack of suffering, but neither must die now; she is not important, but the blood of the Aillard is important, for one day the rule of Arilinn must be broken…

  Then will the Forbidden Tower fail?

  All those who work for the hour must fail. But we must think in terms of centuries…

  A Terran’s child in Arilinn would break their rule and their stranglehold…

  Do you dare presume to deny her free will? She chose not to bear the Terran’s child, thinking thus to avert suffering; she has not yet learned, and so she will suffer threefold…

  This time we will save them both for you. But remember; it is not personal compassion for any individual. It is only that this is a point where destiny intersects with the humane thing to do. We would all rather save lives. But we cannot interfere.

  Then the words dissolved into the calling of crows; and Magda found that she was standing motionless in the heavy snow, falling thickly on her face and into her eyes, blurring her vision.

  She fought her way through the blinding snow. It was just as well Jaelle had not tried to ride, they could never have gotten back to the main road in this. But the horses were not where she had left them, and in panic, Magda went down farther than she had intended on the slope; her foot slipped on the wet, slushy ground and she rolled down toward the canyon’s floor, crying out in protest.

  Her riding cloak and breeches were soaked now, and she could see no sign of the horses. In the thick snow she could not see the cave mouth. Jaelle! I must get back to Jaelle! Shading her face against the thickening snow she finally made out a tiny thread of smoke where their cave opened, and struggled back up the steep grade, without the horses.

  Then before her, Ferrika’s snub-nosed face appeared, with eyes blue and compassionate.

  Don’t be frightened, sister. You have been heard in the Forbidden Tower, and someone will come to you. Don’t be frightened.

  And Ferrika’s face was gone. Magda blinked, remembering the fragments of conversation she had heard, Lord Damon, Regent of Armida, and something about an illegal Tower. Well, they were already in trouble with the Terran authorities, if Jaelle had really killed Peter; they might as well be in trouble with the Darkovan authorities too. From what she had heard this particular Tower wasn’t in very good odor with the regular Towers.

  Any port in a storm, kid. She blinked, thinking that someone had spoken to her in Terran Standard. Am I losing my mind? I had better get inside out of the snow! Jaelle was still lying where Magda had left her, stuporous, her face burning.

  Who are you?

  You know who I am. I said you had guts enough for three. Make that thirty-three, kid.

  Ann’dra—Andrew Carr?

  I’m not great at this kind of receiving. I ought to let Callista try to reach you. No time. I saw the smoke. Don’t worry. And then a picture in her mind, men turning and riding down the canyons, s
warming out from what looked like a great center of blue fire… no, she couldn’t be right… she couldn’t expect telepathic reception to come in like television, for heaven’s sake! Jaelle was muttering and moaning and throwing herself around, and Magda mended the fire and went and sat by Jaelle and drew the girl into her arms, holding her and rocking her. Jaelle muttered, “Mama? I thought you were dead. Mama. Who are these women? I’m scared, I don’t want to go. Oh, Mother, it hurts—” and Magda stroked her hair and tried to soothe her.

  “It’s all right, Shaya. It will be all right, I promise you. They’re coming, they know we’re here. It’s all right.”

  Jaelle looked at her quite clearly and said, and her voice was almost rational, “But Amazons don’t wait to be rescued. We’re supposed to do the rescuing. The way we did before, Margali,” and dropped off into vacancy.

  Magda patted her cheek. She said gently, “Even Amazons are only human, Jaelle. It’s taken me a year to find that out.”

  But she knew the sick woman could neither hear nor understand her. The fire was dying; she crawled into the blankets and tried to warm Jaelle, holding her closely in her arms. And at last, unbelievably, she slept.

  She woke to hear voices. Andrew Carr’s voice, calling out in the dialect of the Kilghard hills, halloing wildly.

  “Not here—not this one! No, damn it, I tell you there’s got to be another cave, there are two sick women out here! Keep looking! Try lower down, along the slope! Eduin, come up here with two men and stretchers, this man has a broken leg!”

  They’ve found Aleki. Thank God, he’s alive. A picture came into her mind, as she had seen it before, Alessandro Li, the elegant Terran diplomat, disheveled, filthy, sprawled on the cave floor, his leg bundled in an improvised splint, looking up with an open mouth as Carr grinned down at him.

  “Ambassador Li, I presume. Heard you’ve been looking for me,” he said, and offered a Terran handshake. Li stammered “You—you—you—” and the picture winked out.

  Magda crawled out of the blankets. The fire was dead, they could not see the smoke; it was very cold in the cave, but Jaelle was breathing and seemed all right. She pulled her riding cloak over her head and hurried to the door of the cave. The slopes were alive with men and horses and she could see a group of men, crowded around the dark mouth of a cave down the slope— about half a Terran kilometer, she supposed. She could see Carr now, a tall man with a shock of fair hair, standing a good head taller than the other men.

  She shouted, knowing he could not hear her over the intervening space but knowing that he could hear her somehow.

  “Ann’dra! Andrew! Up here!”

  He started as if galvanized, looked and pointed; raised his hand to her in a wave, a signal.

  Okay, hang on, I see you.

  And Magda collapsed in the mouth of the cave, in the mud and dirt there, and began to cry. She cried and cried, as if she would never stop, knowing suddenly what Marisela had meant.

  Some day you will cry and be healed.

  She was almost unaware when a man, quiet and deferential in the Ridenow colors, came up the slope; but she heard him call “They’re here, vai dom! Both of them.” He cleared his throat, “Mestra—” and she quickly scrambled to her feet, clutching some dignity, some remnants of composure. A poor pretense, she knew; her face was blotched and swollen.

  “Mestra, are you all right?”

  She said quickly, “My friend. She is sick; you will have to get a stretcher to move her, too. There is nothing wrong with me.”

  “We have a stretcher,” he said. “Down there. As soon as we can get him into a horse-litter, we will come up and move her,” and Magda saw, at the cave mouth farther down the slope, men carrying a prone form on the litter, carrying it down the hill to waiting horses and men. And then Andrew Carr was striding up the slope to the very mouth of the cave.

  He smiled at Magda, a good-natured grin and said quietly, so that the man could not hear, “It’s all right. They know I’m Terran and they don’t really care. I’ve been racking my brains to figure out who you could possibly be. Lorne of Intelligence, aren’t you? I knew you by reputation, but I don’t think we ever actually met each other—”

  And, incongruously, they shook hands.

  Then he was bending over Jaelle.

  “Miscarried, has she? Well, we’ll have her down where they can look after her. Ferrika’s still in Thendara for Midsummer, but mestra Allier from Syrtis can look after her. God knows Lady Hilary’s had enough of that kind of trouble. We’ll take her to Syrtis, and when she’s well again we can move her to Armida.” He laughed. “Somehow I think you and I have a lot to say to each other. But it can wait.”

  He bent and scooped up Jaelle in his arms. He was so tall he lifted her like a child. She could see, without knowing why, the picture in his mind of a beloved woman who had recently suffered such a loss, and his compassion and enduring sadness; but when Jaelle cried out in pain and fear he spoke gently to her, and Jaelle quieted at the touch of his hands and perhaps, Magda thought, of his laran.

  The other man’s hand was on her arm.

  “Mestra, let me help you—”

  She started to say, “I can walk,” and then realized she couldn’t. She let herself lean on him, and stumbled toward the horses in the valley. She should be there when Jaelle recovered consciousness.

  * * *

  EPILOGUE

  « ^

  Alessandro Li, still holding himself erect between two crutches, managed to give the impression, though he hardly moved his head, of bowing deeply over Magda’s hand.

  “I am truly grateful to you. Jaelle, I hope your recovery is swift and complete.” He spoke a polite phrase which Magda recognized as a formal farewell in his own language, but it was one of the Empire languages of which she had only a smattering. “My Lord—” another of the gestures which somehow implied a deep formal bow, to Damon, “I am thankful for your hospitality.”

  The Great Hall of Armida, with its massive beams and the huge fireplace, was warm and snug around them; but a chilly draft entered the hall as the doors opened. Outside it was snowing softly. Andrew murmured, “This way, sir,” and Aleki followed him, hobbling on the crutches, two or three men on either side. They would escort him to Neskaya, where he would be picked up by Terran helicopter.

  Lady Callista said quietly to Magda as the door closed behind him “I hope he will not make trouble in the Empire,” and Andrew, striding back into the hall, said, smiling, “He won’t.”

  “How can you know? What he did while he was a guest in this house might be very different—”

  Andrew chuckled. “Don’t worry about Li,” he said. “I know his kind. He’ll dine out on the story for the rest of his life, about his hairbreadth escape on a primitive planet, and enjoy being thought the expert on Cottman Four—which means he’ll have to tell himself how wonderful it all was.”

  “But he did promise to get rid of Coordinator Montray,” Magda said quietly, “and to put in a Legate who knows the planet and appreciates it. He even offered to put in a word for me if I wanted the job.”

  “You should take it, if only to spite them,” Jaelle said. She was lying on a sofa, wrapped in a frilly soft blue house robe which looked very unlike her. She had some color in her face again, but it had been a long, hard fight against weakness and infection, and even earlier that day, Aleki had tried to persuade her to come back to the Terran Zone so that the Medics could give her a thorough going-over. “We owe you that,” he had protested, but Jaelle smiled and told him that by now she was perfectly well again, and Magda had heard the unspoken part of that as well as Jaelle; that she had not the slightest intention of returning to the HQ, now or ever.

  Magda did not believe that she was perfectly well—only when she was flat on her back and delirious could Jaelle ever admit any weakness at all—but she was over the worst. She had been desperately ill when they carried her down to Syrtis, and for all they could do for her, she seemed to have lost the wil
l to live.

  She had begun to recover only when Magda, knowing at last what was troubling her, gathered with the leronis. They called Lady Callista, the Regent, Lord Damon, and Andrew, at their invitation, and gone out in their laran circle to seek out Peter Haldane’s fate in the Terran Zone. He was alive; he had been found lying in a coma and carried down to the Hospital floor, but now he was recovering

  “You struck him with your mind as well as your hands,” Lord Damon had said soberly to Jaelle. “You could easily have killed him; it was only an accident that you did not. Perhaps it was the grace of some God with whom you are on better terms than you know.”

  And from that day Jaelle had begun to sleep without nightmares and to eat and gain back a little of the weight she had lost.

  That hour within the matrix circle—and Magda knew she had taken a full part in it—had somehow made her part of them; Andrew and Callista treated her like a sister and brother, and she felt as if she had known Damon all her life. She felt somewhat less close to the pretty Lady Ellemir, who said forthrightly that for these years while the children were young she wished to give them her full time and attention. She was sitting now at the far end of the hall, the children of the household gathered around her. Magda still did not have them all straight, though she knew that the seven-year-old, curly-haired redhead they called Domenic was the oldest son of Damon and Ellemir, and her only surviving child. Lady Callista had two daughters somewhere between four and seven, one dark and serious—Magda thought her name was Hilary, a name she remembered because of the leronis who had healed her feet—and one fair-haired and giggly, but Magda never could remember her name. There were several other children who were explained offhandedly as fosterlings of the House; the smallest of them Callista explained blandly as Andrew’s nedestro son, which seemed strange—no one could possibly mistake the deep devotion between Callista and Andrew; Magda had never seen such a devoted couple—and the others were small redheads who had, Damon explained with equal casualness, some Comyn blood somewhere, had been born to small-holders and farmers, and were being brought up where they could be properly trained when their laran surfaced. Magda and Jaelle too were astonished at the way in which this was taken for granted. Ellemir mothered all the children indiscriminately.