The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “This was built only four or five years ago,” said Doria. “One of our rich patrons had it built in the house; before that, we had only the tubs on the dormitory floors! It’s very good after unarmed-combat lessons, to soak out the bruises! Rafi and Camilla are wonderful teachers, but they are rough on anyone they suspect of slacking! I’ve had lessons since I was eight years old, but Rafi is my oath-mother and my foster-mother, and she doesn’t like to teach me. Come, let’s go upstairs,” she added, and they went along another corridor to the stairs. “Here is the nursery at the top of the landing—there is no one in it now except Felicia’s little boy, and he will leave us in another moon; no male child over five may live in the Guild House. But Byrna will have a baby in another month,” she said, opening the door to the room, where a small boy was playing with some toy horses on a rug before the fire, and a young woman, sewing on something, sat in an armchair.

  “How are you today, Byrna? This is Margali n’ha Ysabet, she is new—”

  “I saw her last night at supper,” Byrna said, while Magda wondered if every woman in the house had noticed her. She rose restlessly, pacing the room. “I’m tired of dragging around like this, but Mansela said it would be at least another tenday, perhaps a whole moon. Where is Jaelle? I had hardly a minute to speak with her last night!”

  Magda realized again how popular her friend must be. “She is working in the Terran Trade City.”

  Byrna made a face. “Among the Terranan? I thought that was against the Guild House laws!” The tone of her voice made Magda realize how wise she had been to conceal her identity. She knew in general terms of the prejudice against Terrans but had never encountered it at close range before. Byrna asked, “What is your House, sister?” and Magda replied, “This one, I suppose—I am here for half a year training—

  “Well, I hope you will be happy here,” Byrna said. “I’ll try to help make you welcome when this is over—” she patted her bulging belly.

  Doria jeered. “Maybe next Midsummer you’ll sleep alone!”

  “Damn right,” said Byrna, and Magda mentally filed that away with what Mother Lauria had told her about contraceptives. “Where is she going to sleep, Doria? In your room?”

  Doria giggled. “There are five of us in there already. Mother Lauria said she’s to have Sherna’s room while Shema’s in Nevarsin.” She led Magda along the hallway, pushing open the door of a room with half a dozen beds. She said “We got permission this year for all of us to share—Mother Millea said we could all room together if we promised to be quiet so others could have their sleep. We have a lot of fun. Here are the baths—” she pushed a door, showing a room with tubs and sinks, “and here is where you put your laundry, and here is the sewing room, if anything needs mending and you can’t do it yourself. And this is Sherna’s room—yours now; she and Gwennis shared it for two years, then Gwennis moved in with her friend—” She gave the word the inflection which made it also mean lover. Well, that must be commonplace enough, Irmelin had asked it about her, casually, and gone on to make a comment about the bread dough!

  Doria pointed to a bundle on the bed. “Mother Lauria arranged with the sewing room to find you some spare clothes— nightgowns, undertunics, and a set of work clothes if you have to work in the garden or stable. I think most of them were Byrna’s—she is so pregnant now that she can’t wear any of her clothes, but by the time she has her baby and needs them back, you’ll have made your own.”

  Well, thought Magda, looking at the clothes on the bed, they were sparing no pains to make her feel welcome; they had even included a comb and hairbrush, and some extra wool socks, as well as a warm fleecy thing she presumed was a bathrobe; it was fur-lined and looked luxurious. The room was simply furnished with a narrow bed, a small carved-wood chest, and a low bench with a bootjack.

  Doria stood watching her. “You know that you and I are to take training together? But you are so much older than I—how did you come to the Amazons?”

  Magda told as much of the truth as she could. She said “A kinsman of mine was held to ransom by the bandit Rumal di Scarp; there was no one but I to ransom him, so I went alone, and wore Amazon dress to protect myself on the road; when I met with Jaelle’s band on the road I was discovered and forced to take the oath.‘’

  Dona’s eyes widened. “But I heard—was that you? It is like a romance! But I heard that Jaelle’s oath-daughter had been sent to Neskaya! Camilla told us, when she came back after escorting Sherna and Devra to Nevarsin, and bringing Maruca and Viviana home—that must be why Irmelin thought you were Jaelle’s lover, that you had come here on purpose to be with Jaelle! But Jaelle is working now in the Terran Zone, isn’t she?”

  Magda decided she had answered enough questions. “How did you come to the Amazons so young, Doria?”

  “I was fostered here,” Doria answered. “Rafaella’s sister is my mother—you know Rafaella, don’t you? Jaelle’s partner—”

  “I have not yet met her; but Jaelle has told me about her.”

  “Rafaella is a kinswoman of Jaelle’s foster-mother Kindra. Rafi bore three children, but they were all boys The third time, she and her sister were pregnant at the same time—and the father of Rafi’s child was my father, you see? So when Rafi had another boy, my mother wanted a son, so they traded the children for fosterage; Rafaella’s baby was brought up as my mother’s son and my father’s—which of course he is—and Rafaella took me, when I was not three days old, and nursed me and everything, here in the Guild House. I am really Doria n’ha Graciela, but I call myself Doria n’ha Rafaella, because Rafi is the only mother I ever really knew.”

  Magda was furiously making mental notes. She knew that sisters frequently shared a lover or even a husband, and that fosterage was common, but this arrangement still seemed bizarre to her.

  “But I am standing here chattering instead of telling you what you ought to know. Some years we each look after our own rooms, but this year in House meeting we chose to have two women from our corridor sweep the floors every day and mop them every tenday. You must keep your boots and sandals in your chest, it is hard on the sweepers to have to sweep around and over them, so anything lying on the floor, they will pick up and throw in a big barrel in the hall and you will have to hunt for them. Do you play the harp or the ryll or the lute? Too bad; Rafi has been wishing for another musician in the house. Byrna sings well, but now she is short of breath all the time—I thought when I grew up to have no ear for music that Rafi would disown me! She has—” Doria broke off as a bell in the lower part of the house began to ring.

  “Oh, merciful Goddess!”

  “What is that, Doria? Not the dinner-bell already?”

  “No” whispered Doria, “That bell is rung only when some woman comes to take refuge with us; sometimes it does not ring twice in a year, and now we have two newcomers in one day? Come, we must go down at once!”

  She pulled Magda hastily toward the stairs and they ran down together. Magda, hurrying behind her, felt a curious little prickle which she had come to know as premonition; this is something very important to me… but dismissed it, as anxiety born of Doria’s excitement, and the stress of so many new things happening to her. Irmelin stood in the hallway, with Mother Lauria, and between them a frail-looking woman, bundled in heavy shawls and cumbered with heavy skirts. She stood swaying, clutching at the railing as if she were about to faint.

  Mother Lauria looked about the women gathering quickly in the hall; many of the women Magda had seen last night at dinner, but she did not know their names. Then she turned to the fainting newcomer. “What do you ask here?” Somehow, Magda felt, the words had the force of ritual. “Have you come to seek refuge?‘’

  The woman whispered faintly “Yes.”

  “Do you ask only shelter, my sister? Or is your will to take the oath of a Renunciate?”

  “The oath—” the woman whispered. She swayed, and Mother Lauria gestured to her to sit down.

  “You are ill; you need answer no q
uestions at present, my sister.” She looked around at the women in the hallway, and her glance singled out Magda and Doria where they stood at the foot of the stairs.

  “You two are newcome among us; you three will be together in training, should this woman take oath, so I choose you as her oath-sisters, and—” She looked around, evidently searching for someone. At last she beckoned.

  “Camilla n’ha Kyria,” she said, and Magda saw, with a curious sense of inevitability, the tall, thin emmasca who had witnessed her oath to Jaelle. “Camilla, you three take her away, cut her hair, make her ready to take the oath if she is able.”

  Camilla came and put her arm around the strange woman, supporting the frail, swaying body. “Come with me, sister,” she said, “Here, lean on me—” she spoke in the impersonal inflection, but her voice was kind. She suddenly saw Magda, and her face lighted. “Margali! Oath-sister, is it you? I thought you had gone to Neskaya! You must tell me all about it,” she said, “but later; for now we must help this woman. Here—” she gestured, “put your arm under hers; she cannot walk—”

  Magda put her arm around the apparently fainting woman, but the woman flinched and cried out, in a weak voice, drawing away from the touch. Camilla led her into a little room near Mother Lauria’s office, and lowered her into a soft chair.

  “Have you been illused?” she asked, and took away the shawl, then cried out in dismay.

  The woman’s dress—expensively cut, of richly dyed woolen cloth trimmed in fur—was cut to ribbons, and the blood had soaked through, turning the cloth to clotted black through which crimson still oozed.

  Camilla whispered, “Avarra protect us! Who has done this to you?” But she did not wait for an answer. “Doria, run to the kitchen, bring wine and hot water and fresh towels! Then see if Marisela is in the house, or if she has gone out into the city to deliver a child somewhere. Margali, come here, help me get these things off her!”

  Magda came, helping Camilla get off the cut and slashed tunic, gown, underlinen; they were all finely cut and embroidered with copper threads; she wore an expensive copper-filigree butterfly clasp in her fair hair. Magda stood by, helping and holding things, as Camilla bared the woman to the waist, sponged the dreadful cuts; what could possibly have inflicted them? The woman endured their ministrations without crying out, though they must have been hurting terribly; when they had done, Camilla put a light shift on her, tying the drawstrings loosely around her neck, and covered her with a warm robe. Doria came back, troubled, reporting that Marisela was not in the house.

  “Then find Mother Millea,” Camilla ordered, “and Domna Fiona. She is a judge in the City Court, and we must make a sworn statement about this woman’s condition, so that we may legally give her shelter. She is not strong enough to take the oath; we must put her to bed, and have her nursed—

  The woman struggled upright. “No,” she whispered, “I want to take the oath—to be here by right, not by charity—”

  Magda whispered, more to herself than to anyone else, “But what has happened to her! What could have inflicted such wounds—‘

  Camilla’s face was like stone. “She has been beaten like an animal,” the emmasca said. “I have scars much like those. Child—” she bent over the woman lying in the chair, “I know what it is to be illused. Margali—you will find scissors in the drawer of the table.” And as Magda put them into her hand, Camilla asked, “What is your name?”

  “Keitha—” the word was only a whisper.

  “Keitha, the laws require that you must show your intent by cutting a single lock of your hair; if you have the strength to do this, I will do the rest for you.”

  “Give me—the scissors.” She sounded resolute, but her fingers hardly had strength to grasp them. She struggled to get them into her hands. She grabbed a lock of her hair, which had been arranged in two braids, and fumbled to cut it; struggled hard with the scissors, but had not the strength to cut through the braid. She gestured, whispering “Please—”

  At the gesture Camilla unraveled the braid, and Keitha snipped fiercely, chopping off two ragged handfuls of hair. “There!” she said wildly, tears starting from her eyes. “Now—let me take the oath—”

  Camilla held a cup of wine to her lips. “As soon as you are strong enough, sister.”

  “No! Now …” Keitha insisted; then her hands released the scissors, which slithered softly to the floor, and she fell back, unconscious, into Camilla’s arms.

  Mother Lauria said quietly, “Take her upstairs,” and Magda, following Camilla’s soft command, helped Camilla to carry the unconscious woman up the stairway and into an empty room.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  The waterhole lay dark, oozing black mud and darker shadows; but behind the rocks, the crimson sun was rising. She was old enough to know what was happening on the other side of the fire, she was twelve years old, and in Shainsa a girl of twelve was old enough to be chained, old enough to be near at hand in the birthing rooms. But these women with unchained hands, these Amazons, they had sent her away as if she was only a child herself. Beyond the fire, in the growing sunrise, she could hear her mother’s voice, feel the pain thrusting through her own body like knives, see the carrion birds circling lower and lower as the sun rose; and now the sunlight was like the blood poured out on the sands, like the stabbing feel of knives and her mother’s anguish, pouring through her body and her mind…

  Jaelle! Jaelle, it was worth it all, you are free, you are free… but her hands were chained, and she was struggling, screaming, crying out…

  “Hush, love, hush…” and Peter was patiently untangling her flailing hands from the bedclothes, cradling her in his arms. “It’s only a nightmare, it’s all right—”

  Only another nightmare. Another. God above, she’s been having them every night. I don’t know what to do for her.

  Jaelle squirmed away from him, not quite sure why, only knowing that she did not want to be too close just now. She sought his face, frowning, troubled, for the hostility she could not find in his gentle voice.

  “Kyril—” she muttered. “No. For a moment I thought you— you were my cousin Kyril—”

  He laughed softly. “That would give anybody nightmares, I guess. Here, count my fingers. Only five.” He pressed his hand against hers and she smiled faintly at the old joke between them. He was so like her cousin, Kyril Ardais, save for the six-fingered hands Kyril had inherited from his mother, Lady Rohana.

  Kyril’s hands, fumbling about her all that summer, until she had finally, sobbing with wrath and humiliation, had to use on him the Amazon training which made a trained Renunciate almost impossible to dominate. A Renunciate, they used to say, can be killed, but never raped.

  For Rohana’s sake she had not wanted to hurt him…

  “Honey, are you all right?” Peter asked. “Should I go and get a Medic? You’ve been having these nightmares every night… how long is it now? Ten days, eleven?”

  She tried to focus on his words. They seemed to have some strange echo that ached in the palms of her hands, reverberated in her sinuses. The edges of the room seemed to be outlined with fuzzy lights, swelling up and shrinking and swelling again to loom over her. Her eyes hurt, and she jumped up with a wavering surge of nausea, dashing for the bath. The retching spasms shattered the last remnants of dream; she could not remember now what she had been dreaming, except for a curious taste and smell of blood in her mouth. She swallowed the flat sickly water from the shower, trying in vain to rinse it away, and Peter, troubled, went into the refreshment console and dialled her some kind of cool drink. He held it to her lips.

  “I am going to take you to a Medic tomorrow, love,” he said, watching her finish the drink, which bubbled and stung her lips; when she put it away he shook his head.

  “Finish it, it will settle your stomach. Better?” He examined the headset on the pillow; somehow she had torn it loose in the dream. “There must be something wrong with the language program they gave you, or
the D-alpha is out of synch—that can mess up your balance centers,” he mused, holding it. “Or maybe it just stirred up something in your subconscious. Take it up to Medic tomorrow, and ask them to adjust it on the EEC file they have for you.” He might, she thought distantly, just as well have been speaking in some language from another Galaxy; she didn’t know what he was talking about and didn’t care. He held the earpiece to his temple, shrugged. “It sounds all right to me, but I’m no expert. Come on back to bed, sweetheart.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, without thinking, “I’m not sleeping under that damned thing again!”

  “But, love, it’s just a machine,” he said, “even if it is out of adjustment, it won’t really hurt you. Baby, don’t be unreasonable,” he added, his arm around her shoulders, “You’re not some ignorant native, from out in—oh, the Dry Towns—to get all shaky, just at a piece of machinery, are you?” He pulled her down on the pillow. “None of us could get along without the sleeplearner tapes.”