The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

“Indeed it did,” Byrna said, “and I still have not recovered my old balance, having carried the child so long!”

  Rafaella said directly to Keitha, “Why do you think a child is carried just there? Because it is exactly where the body is balanced and can best take the weight of a child.” She looked Keitha over with an experienced eye. “I should imagine you would carry very low—am I right?”

  Keitha said sullenly, “Yes. What of it?”

  “That is your trouble in movement,” Rafaella said. “You are trying to brace your body from the small of your back, as a man does and you should bring your weight forward—try to stand like this,” she added, readjusting Keitha with a careful hand. She looked at Magda with momentary camaraderie. “You are so tall I would judge that you carry very high, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” Magda said, “I have never been pregnant.”

  “No? Well, when you are, I am sure you will notice the change in balance,” Rafaella said. “Keitha, if you bring your weight forward—look how Margali stands—you will balance more easily.” She moved away, and Magda said, “Doria, will you try with me? I want to show them—

  Doria turned to her, taking the braced stance for practice, and Rafaella reached out and moved her roughly into position.

  “Not that way, stupid thing,” she said. “How dull you are, Doria!”

  Magda drew a deep breath, and said, carefully, “Rafaella, I think Doria would do better if you were not constantly standing over her and correcting her. She is doing well enough.”

  “She is my daughter,” Rafaella flared, “and it is not enough for her to do well enough! That is all very well for outsiders—” she looked scornfully at Keitha, “who have never been taught to believe in themselves and have to learn here what every girl should learn before she is ten years old! But Doria was brought up among us, and there is no excuse for her to be so stupid and clumsy!”

  Doria was struggling with tears again, and Magda bit her lip; Rafaella was so anxious for the girl to excel that she kept Doria constantly on the edge of hysteria. “Rafaella, forgive me, but it was you who asked me to teach Doria, and I believe it is for me to say when she is doing well or not—”

  “It is for you to say nothing!” Rafaella snapped. “You ignorant hill-woman, it is not even sure that they will let you stay among us, after what you have done!”

  Magda fought twin impulses; to turn on her heel and walk out of the Armory, to slap Rafaella harder than she had ever hit anything in her life. She felt again the terrifying surge of fury which had overcome her when she had fought for the house; she knew with her last grip on sanity that if she struck Rafaella now, with the skills she had learned in Alpha’s Intelligence School, she would kill the woman with her bare hands. Shaking, her hands gripped into fists, she walked a little away from them.

  Camilla said peacefully, “Rafaella, at Doria’s age a girl can learn better from a stranger than from her mother—”

  Rafaella put her arm around Doria and murmured, “Darling, I only want to be proud of you here in our own Guild House, that is all. It is only for your own good—” and Doria burst into tears and clung to Rafaella.

  At that moment the door opened and Mother Lauria looked in to the Armory. Her eyes widened at the scene—Doria sobbing in Rafaella’s arms, Magda with her back to them all, the rest staring—but she said only, “Is Margali here? You have a visitor in the Stranger’s Room; I am sorry to call you from your lesson—”

  “Oh, she has nothing to learn from any of us,” Rafaella said, but Mother Lauria ignored the sarcasm.

  She beckoned Magda to the door. “There is a Terran, a man, who has come and asked for you by the name you are known here.”

  Magda’s throat tightened; who could it be but Peter? And why would he come? Had something happened to Jaelle? “What is his name? What does he want?”

  Lauria said disdainfully “I cannot remember his barbarian name. You need not meet him unless you wish; I can have the girls send him away.”

  “No, I had better go and see what he wants. Thank you, Mother.” Magda was grateful that the Guild Mother had come herself to give this message; it was not usual for her to put herself out this way for anyone, rather than sending a message.

  “Please yourself,” Mother Lauria said, and went away. Magda was suddenly conscious of her hot, flushed face, her sweat-soaked tunic, her hair straggling in damp wisps about her face. She went into the room behind the armory, washed her face in cold water, stripped off the sweaty tunic and put on the fresh one she had learned to keep there after a lesson. She laced her overtunic and was combing her hak neatly back when Rafaella came in.

  She said scornfully, “Are you readying yourself to meet a lover?”

  “No,” said Magda, struggling for composure against the rage that kept threatening to get out of hand again, “but I have a guest in the Stranger’s Room and I do not want him to think that a Free Amazon must be a filthy slattern from a dung-heap, either!”

  “Why are you so concerned with what a man would think of you? Is it so important to you that men must notice your beauty, your desirability?” Rafaella asked with a curl of her lip, and Magda held herself by force from answering, walking past Rafaella in silence. Some day, she thought, some day I will slap that look off her face, it would be worth whatever they did to me for it! She went down the hall to the little room at the front of the house that they called the Stranger’s Room. She was still shaking with anger, ready to fling defiance in Peter’s face—how dared he break in upon her here?

  But seated on one of the narrow chairs, she saw a complete stranger. She had seen him somewhere before, but he was certainly no one she knew well; and she fancied he looked with surprise and disdain at her tunic and breeches, her cropped hair. She said curtly, “May I ask your business here?”

  “My name is Wade Montray,” he said, “And you are Magdalen Lorne—Margali, as they call you here?” He spoke Darkovan, she noticed, and very good Darkovan at that. Language tapes, the ones she and Peter had made, no doubt. He tiptoed quietly to the door, and looked into the hall. “Nobody listening, and I doubt if they have the technology to bug a room, but you can’t be too careful.”

  Magda said frigidly, “I doubt if anyone here would trouble to intrude on a private conversation, being sufficiently busy with their own affairs. If we have to talk, by all means talk freely.” Yes, she had met this man, he was the Coordinator’s son, like herself, brought up on Darkovan. She felt immense distaste for the suspicion in his voice; had she really once been a part of the vast paranoia of the Intelligence Service?

  “I wanted to be careful not to blow your cover here, Miss Lorne. Jaelle Haldane will be down here in a few days to talk with you, so Cholayna says, and I really ought to leave it to her. But she has her job and I have mine. I have to travel into the Hellers this winter, and I understand you were there last season. Your report’s full of intriguing gaps, and I need to know more about what you know of that ruling caste—Comyn, is it? And you spent the winter at Castle Ardais as the Lady Rohana’s guest; there’s a lot you could tell us.”

  “There is nothing to tell, really, except what I put in my report,” Magda said cautiously. “I do not suppose you are interested in the menu for Midwinter-Festival feast, the names of the men with whom I danced at the Festival Ball, or the depth of snow on the day after Festival.”

  “Look, I’m interested in everything—absolutely everything,” said Wade Montray. “Your previous reports have been very full; I’m curious to know why you filed such a sketchy one about this mission!”

  “I went on leave,” Magda evaded, “and I did file a report with Cholayna Ares; check with her.”

  “I understand, but under the circumstances, I’d appreciate it if you’d come down to the HQ and file a fuller report,” said Montray. “Haldane does good work, but I don’t think he has quite the grasp of the situation that you do.”

  He was trying to butter her up now; she recognized it with distaste. The Train
ing sessions had made her very aware of the techniques which men used to get on the favorable side of a woman, and she was angry at the familiar condescension. “I remind you I am on leave, and that this is my first leave of absence in six years; you have no right to interrupt it.”

  “Oh, I’ll see that you get extra pay for breaking into your vacation time,” Montray said, and Magda was resentful suddenly at the Terran idea that her wishes could be set aside by an offer of extra pay! Were all the Terrans as mercenary as that?

  “I am sorry, I would rather not. What would you do if I had gone offplanet, as I would have had every right to do? Why should you assume I am required to be accessible?”

  “Oh, come on,” he said, and she noted that his smile was singularly sweet, “It couldn’t hurt you that much to come down on a free afternoon and fill in the gaps for me, could it? For that matter, we could get you a special bonus if you would keep a log while you’re here and file a full report on whatever happens in the Guild House, we don’t have a lot of data on the Free Amazons—excuse me, Renunciates, I did remember that—and if we’re going to be employing them for Medic and Tech training, we need all the help we can get.”

  “I absolutely refuse,” she said angrily, and he changed his tack.

  “Have it your own way,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. You’re certainly entitled to spend your leave in peace and quiet, if you want to.”

  Peace and quiet! That’s the last thing I would find here, especially now! Against her will she smiled at the thought, not knowing that the smile transformed her face and made a mockery of her annoyance. Seeing it, he was encouraged.

  “Look, Miss Lorne, off the record—all right? I don’t want to break into your leave, but why not come out of here, where we can talk without worrying about who might overhear us,; we can have a quiet drink somewhere in the Trade City, and you can fill me in on what I need to know. I have a scriber with me; I can just put it into Records, or if you like, I’ll keep it off the record, for my ears only. No trouble, no fuss, and then I’ll leave you in peace. How about it?

  Unexpectedly, she was tempted. To go away from here, out of the perpetual atmosphere of distrust and hostility, to slip back into her familiar Terran self; even the thought of a drink, or of some Terran coffee, was intolerably tempting. She sighed, regretfully.

  “I’m really sorry, I wish I could,” she said, smiling, “but it’s quite impossible, Mr. Montray.” She had slipped into speaking Terran Standard, and suddenly realized it.

  “Mr. Montray is my father,” he said, grinning, “I’m Monty. And why is it so impossible?”

  “In the first place, even if I could go, it wouldn’t do for a Renunciate to be seen sitting around in a bar with a Terran in uniform.” Quite against her will, she realized that she was smiling; her eyes twinkled with amusement. “And I couldn’t go; I’m pledged to remain here in the house until Midsummer, and I can’t leave without permission of the Guild Mothers.”

  “And you put up with it? A free citizen of Terra? Imprisoned?”

  “No, no,” she said. “It’s part of the training system, that’s all. And you yourself said you didn’t want to blow my cover. If I, a probationary Renunciate, went off with a Terran—well, you can imagine what they would say.”

  Damn what they say; but I gave my word, and I’ll keep it or die trying.

  He took it philosophically, and rose. “If you can’t, you can’t; but I warn you, I’ll come back at Midsummer,” he said, “and I’ll get that report somehow.” He held out his hand; suddenly homesick for a familiar gesture, Magda took it. She watched him go, thinking with some regret that he was a familiar voice from a world she had renounced—and now, paradoxically, found that she missed.

  She returned to the Armory, but the lesson had ended; a few of the women were soaking in the hot tub, but Rafaella was among them, and Magda, though her hurt leg was aching and she would have enjoyed the heat of the tub, decided against joining them. She decided to take advantage of the privilege still allowed her, and go up and lie down. For the first time she was beginning to doubt her ability to endure for the half year of housebound training.

  She liked the women here, most of the time. She even liked Rafaella, or would if the woman would let her, and she liked Camilla and Doria and Keitha, very much. But it was the little things, the cold baths, the food, the stupid insistence on manual work, and now the constant friction, since that fight when she had lost her temper. She couldn’t really understand how they felt about it; the man had, after all, been attacking the House. Even if she had killed him, he would have deserved it.

  Could anyone, ever, completely renounce their world? Had she been a fool to try? Should she simply give it up, tell Mother Lauria it was too much for her, petition to have her Oath, her forced Oath, set aside after all? Maybe she would not have to make that decision; maybe, when they came to review the dreadful thing she had supposedly done, they would expel her from the Guild House and that would relieve her of the choice.

  And how would I face Jaelle, then?

  There was no regular noon-meal served in the Guild House; anyone who was hungry at mid-day went down to the kitchen to find cold bread or meat, and after a time Magda, who was used still to the Terran mealtimes, and liked a light snack at noon, went down to the kitchen. She poured out a mug of the bark-tea which always simmered in the kettle over the banked fire—it wasn’t coffee, but it was hot and the kitchen was cold, and her hands curved around the hot mug with comfort—and sliced bread from a cut loaf, spreading it with butter and soft cheese from a crock. It was too much trouble to slice the cold meat in the cool-room, and it was too cold in there anyhow. She sat nibbling, wondering where Irmelin was. The bread for supper was rising at one end of the table in a huge bowl, puffing up under a clean towel. She was brushing up the crumbs and rinsing her mug—one of the strictest rules, that anyone coming to the kitchen for food must leave it as clean as they found it—when Irmelin stuck her head in the door.

  “Oh, Margali? You weren’t in your room. I hoped you would be here,” she said. “Will you take hall-duty? Byrna is nursing the baby.”

  Magda shrugged. “Certainly,” she said, and started for the hall, but Irmelin held her back, the chubby woman’s face alive with curiosity.

  “Are you not Jaelle n’ha Melora’s oath-daughter?”

  “Yes, I am,” Magda said, and Irmelin nodded. “I thought so; she is here to see Mother Lauria, and they have been closeted in her office for hours—” Her eyes widened, and she added, “I suppose Mother Lauria sent for her to discuss what they’re going to do about you! I hope they let you stay, Margali! I think Camilla was too hard on you—we can’t all know the honor code of mercenary soldiers, and I don’t know why we should!”

  With her very kindness she had managed, again, to destroy Magda’s peace of mind. Was it so serious that they would send for Jaelle from the Terran Zone? But Irmelin added fussily, “Go, now, sit in the hall to let people in, I have to knead down the bread and get it into the pans for tonight’s dinner, and if Shaya will be here I want to make some spicebread.”

  Magda sat in the hall, listlessly plaiting the belt, and remembering against her will the last time she had worked on it. When the doorbell rang again she was braced for trouble, and when she found a man, in the green and black uniform of a Guardsman, on the doorstep, she set her chin aggressively.

  “What do you want?”

  “Is Byrna within?”

  “You can see her in the Stranger’s Room, if you wish,” Magda said.

  “Oh, I am glad she is up again,” the young man said.

  “May I tell her who is asking for her?”

  “My name is Errol,” he said, “and I am the father of her son.” He was a very large, very young man, his cheeks still downy with the first shadow of beard. “My sister has just had a baby and she has offered to nurse this one with her own, so I came to take him away.”

  So soon. He is only a tenday old. Oh, poor Byrna. Her dist
ressed look must have reached the very young man, for he said uncertainly “Well, she told me she didn’t want to keep him, so I thought the sooner I took him off her hands, the better it would be for her.”

  “I will go and tell her.” She showed the young man into the Stranger’s Room, and hesitated, wondering what to do now; but the doorbell rang again and fortunately, Marisela stood on the steps.

  “What shall I do, Marisela? The father of Byrna’s baby is in there—” she pointed, “and wants to take him away—”

  Marisela sighed; but she only said, “Better now than later. I will tell her, Margali; go back to the hall, child.”

  Magda obeyed; and after a considerable time she saw Errol coming from the Stranger’s Room, carrying a thickly wrapped bundle in his arms, with the clumsiness of a man not accustomed to handling babies. Marisela, at his side, was talking attentively to him, and she left Marisela to let him out; it struck her that probably, at this moment, Byrna was in need of some sympathetic company. If anyone came to the door, they could just knock until Irmelin, in the kitchen, heard them and could leave her bread-rolls long enough to let them in!

  She found Byrna in her room, flung across her bed, crying bitterly. Magda didn’t speak; she only sat down beside Byrna and took her hand. Byrna raised her tear-blurred face, and flung herself, sobbing, into Magda’s arms. Magda hugged her, not trying to talk. She had had half a dozen things ready to say; but none of them seemed worth the trouble.

  They shouldn’t have let him take the baby. It’s too soon. Everything we know tells us that at this stage, Byrna needs her baby as much as he needs her! It’s cruel, it’s not right… and through the woman’s trembling in her arms, it seemed that somehow she could feel the vast pain and despair. She said nothing, just held Byrna and let her cry herself into exhaustion, then laid her gently down on her pillow.

  “He’s too little,” Byrna sobbed, “he needs me, he really needs me—but I promised, I didn’t know when I promised how much it would hurt—”

  There was nothing Magda could say; she was relieved when the door opened and Marisela came in, Felicia at her side. “I hoped someone would come to stay with her. Merciful Avarra, how I wish Ferrika had come back!” She bent over Byrna, said gently, “I have something to make you sleep, breda.”