The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “A few more days will not weaken the bond, bredhiya.” Camilla’s face relaxed and she smiled. “I would like to see her—your daughter.”

  “The journey to Armida is not so long as all that, and for all your talk of being old, Camilla, I know perfectly well that you could be off tomorrow to the Dry-Towns, or to Dalereuth, or the Wall Around the World itself, if you had some reason! Why not ride back with me when I go, and see my little Shaya?”

  Camilla smiled. “I? Among those leronyn?”

  “They are my friends and my family, Camilla. They would welcome you if only as my friend.”

  “One day, then, perhaps. Not this time, I think. Shaya—we called Jaelle so, as a child. So she is Jaelle’s namesake? What does she look like? Is she like you, your daughter?”

  “Her hair curls like mine, but not so dark; her eyes are like mine, but Ferrika thinks they will darken as she grows older. To me, she has a look of my father: I know she has his hands. Strange, is it not? We renounce our fathers when we swear the Oath, yet we cannot wholly renounce them; they reappear in the faces of our children.”

  “Perhaps it is as well I had no daughter. I would not have cared to see in her the face of the man who renounced me before ever I renounced him! Your father, though, seems to have been a remarkable man, and I dare say you have no reason to resent the likeness. But what of her father? I had assumed, of course, it was the same Lord Damon Ridenow who fathered Jaelle’s child— Comyn lords are encouraged to breed sons and daughters everywhere, as my own real father did. It’s odd that although my mother was with child by a man far above her own station and was then married off in consequence to a man far below it, still both of them were too proud to accept that I might be pregnant with the child of one of the rogues who—well, enough of that. But as I was saying—it seemed reasonable to me that it would be Lord Damon who fathered your child, as he did Jaelle’s.”

  Magda laughed. “Oh, Damon is not like that. Believe me, he is not. Jaelle chose him for her child’s father, but it was her choice. Damon is very dear to me, but he is not my lover.”

  “That Terran then? Your Andrew Carr, Lord Ann’dra? He is of your own people. I could understand that— well, as much as I could ever understand desire for a man.”

  “At least you do not condemn it, as do so many women of the Guild, as treason to the Oath.”

  Camilla chuckled. “No, I lived for years among men, as one of them, and I know that men are very like women—only not, perhaps, so free to be what they are. It’s a pity there’s no Guild-house for them. Jaelle has talked to me, a little, about Damon. But is it this Andrew, then?”

  “I love Andrew,” Magda said, “almost as much as I love Lady Callista. When first I decided that I wanted a child, we talked of it, all three of us.”

  She knew she could never have explained to Camilla what the bond was like within the Tower. It was nothing like any other bond she had ever known. In many ways she felt closer to Camilla than to any other human being; she wished that she could share this with her, too. But how could she make Camilla understand? Camilla, who had chosen to block away her laran and live forever as one of the head-blind. It hurt to feel Camilla’s mind closed to her.

  The bond of the Forbidden Tower had reached out to take her in; she had become a part, mind and body and heart, of the Tower circle there. Until Jaelle’s child was born, she had not really known how much she wanted a child of her own. They had grown so close, all of them, that for a time it had seemed natural that she too should have Damon’s child, so that her child and Jaelle’s might be truly sisters. Yet even more than with Damon, she shared a close bond with Andrew Carr: like herself, Andrew had found that the world of the Terrans could not hold him.

  “In the end, though,” Magda said, “Andrew and I decided not. It was really Andrew’s choice, not mine. He felt that he would not want to father a child that he could not rear as his own, and I would not give up that privilege to him. I chose my child’s father because, though we felt kindness toward one another, he was someone from whom I felt I could part again without too much grief.” She was silent, her eyes faraway, and Camilla wondered what she was thinking.

  “I will tell you his name, if you ask me, bredhiya. He has his own household, and sons of his own; but he promised, if I bore a son and could not care for him, that he would foster him and give him such a start in life as he could. If I had a daughter, he swore he would make no claim on her. His wife was willing—I would not do such a thing without his wife’s consent.”

  “I am curious about this paragon,” Camilla said, “but you are welcome to your secrets, my dear.” She rose again and felt the legs of Magda’s breeches. “Cover the fire. It is time, and past, that we were in bed. Even if you need not ride at daybreak, there are things I must do tomorrow.” She put her arm around Magda as they went silently up the stairs; and not until she was on the very edge of sleep did Magda realize that Camilla had really said nothing about the Sisterhood, after all.

  A day or two later, she found Marisela, the Guild-house’s senior midwife, enjoying a rare moment of solitude in the music room, idly strumming a rryl. But when Magda apologized for her intrusion and would have gone away again, Marisela set down the small lap-harp, and said, “Please don’t go. I haven’t really anything to do with myself, and I was only killing time pretending I could play. Do sit down and talk to me. We never see each other these days.”

  Magda sat down and watched as Marisela put the instrument into its case.

  “Remind me to tell Rafaella that a string has broken; I took it off, but could not replace it. Well, Margali, do you just want to chat, or do you want to ask me something?”

  Magda asked, “Do you remember when I was first in the house, during my housebound time? In my first Training Session, I saw a vision of the Goddess Avarra. I know it came from the Sisterhood. And now again I have encountered—Marisela, will you tell me something about the Sisterhood?”

  Marisela fiddled with the clasps on the instrument case.

  “There was a time,” she said after a moment, “when I felt you were ready for the Sisterhood, and would willingly have had you among us. But when you left the Guild-house, you went elsewhere for the training of your laran. For that reason, I do not feel free to discuss the secrets of the Sisterhood with you. I can tell you nothing, my dear. I am sure you are as well among the Forbidden Tower as with us, and if there was ever a time when I resented your choice, it was long ago. But I am sorry. I may not talk of this to an outsider.”

  Magda felt a sense of total frustration. She said, “If these people who call themselves the Dark Sisterhood reached out to me, how can you say I am an outsider? If they spoke to me—”

  “If they did,” repeated Marisela. “Oh, no, my dear, I am sure you are not lying, but when this happened, you were under great stress. This much I can say: the Sisterhood are those who serve Avarra; we on the plane which we call physical life, and they, the Dark Ones, on the plane of existence known as the overworld. I suppose—in such extremity—if you have the talent of reaching out into it, they might hear you from the overworld and relay a message. You are strongly gifted with laran; you may have reached Those Who Hear, and they may have answered you from where they dwell.” Deliberately, she changed the subject.

  “But now, tell me what you have been doing with yourself these last few years. I haven’t really had a chance to talk with you since your daughter was born. Is she well and thriving? Was she a big, strong baby? You told Doria that she was weaned—how long did you feed her yourself?”

  “Something less than a year,” Magda replied, not really sorry to abandon the frustrating topic, and perfectly willing to satisfy the midwife’s professional interest. “When she began to cut her teeth, I was quite ready and glad to say to her, if you are big enough to bite, you are big enough to bite bread!”

  With an unexpected pang of homesickness she missed her daughter, the small wriggling body in her arms, snuggled sleepily in her lap, struggling t
o escape being combed or dressed, scampering naked from the bath… “She is very strong and seems to me very intelligent and quick, very independent for two years old. She actually tries to put on her own clothes. Of course she can’t yet; gets stuck with her tunic over her head and yells for her nurse to come and get her loose. But she tries! She says Mama, but she doesn’t always mean me, she says it to Jaelle, to Ellemir—”

  “I have never met the Lady Ellemir, but Ferrika and Jaelle have spoken of her. I always thought you would have no trouble in bearing children. Did you have a difficult time?”

  “I had nothing to compare it with. I thought it hard,” Magda said, “but not nearly as bad as it was for Jaelle.”

  “I have never had a chance to ask Jaelle about it. Was it difficult for her? I expected that if she had one child, she would want another.”

  “She did; but Ferrika advised against it. Cleindori is thriving; she was five last Spring Festival.”

  “What a very peculiar name for a child, to name her after the kireseth flower!”

  “Her name is Dorilys; it is a family name among the Ardais, I understand, and Lady Rohana was Jaelle’s foster-mother. But she is golden-haired, and her nurse dresses her always in blue, so that Ferrika said one day, she looks like a bell of the flower all covered in golden pollen. She is so pretty no one can deny her anything, so of course she’s dreadfully spoiled; but she has such a sweet disposition, it seems to have done her no harm. She is very quick and clever, too, already the other girls pet and spoil her, and the boys all treat her as a little queen.”

  “And I dare say you do homage, too,” Marisela said, laughing, and Magda admitted it.

  “Oh, she has always been my special darling. When Shaya was born, I expected Cleindori to be jealous, but she isn’t. She insists that this is her very own little sister, and wants to share everything with her. When Shaya was only two months old we found her trying to dress the baby up in her own best Holiday tunic, and I have forgotten how many times we had to remind her that it was very nice to be generous, but that Shaya could not eat spicebread or nutcake till she had her teeth!”

  “Better that the natural rivalry should take that form, than jealousy,” remarked Marisela. “She has decided to rival you as mother, instead of Shaya as baby.” It was not the first time Magda had been surprised at the woman’s psychological insight. It had been a salutary lesson for Magda, who had thought for a long time that a non-technological culture would have no advanced psychological knowledge. But of course, if Marisela belonged to the Sisterhood, whose special province was to train the laran and psi skills of those outside the normal system of the Towers, it was not at all surprising. Magda’s own awareness of mental processes had increased a thousandfold when she began to explore her laran.

  “And the father,” Marisela asked, “did he follow custom and stay with you for the birth?”

  “He would have done, if I had asked him,” Magda said, “but since he agreed to make no claim, it was Jaelle I asked to be with me; Jaelle, and Lady Callista.” She had never told anyone—although Marisela would certainly have understood—that in the profound helplessness and power of birth, it had somehow been Camilla she had wanted with her. She would never tell that to anyone, not even to Camilla. Instead, she changed the subject.

  “But tell me now what our sister Keitha is doing. I understand she studied midwifery both at Arilinn and with the Terrans—”

  “And she will go next month to Neskaya, to teach the midwives the new skills she learned from the Terrans; and after that, to Nevarsin, to establish a Guild-house of midwives in that city. The cristoforo brethren do not like it, but there is nothing they can do. They can hardly say that they wish women to die in childbirth when they can be saved, can they?”

  Magda agreed that they could not, although they might like to; but the choice of subject was an unfortunate one, as it reminded her of what Camilla had said of the Sisterhood: that they had been formed to do for women, in the darkest years of the Ages of Chaos, what the cristoforo brethren had done for men—to keep a little learning alive despite Chaos and ignorance. And it also reminded her that Marisela had refused to tell what she knew.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  There’s no reason you should have to stay here,” Magda said. “This is my problem, and Cholayna doesn’t need you. You could go back to Armida and to the children.”

  Jaelle shook her head. “No, breda. As long as you have to stay, do you think I would leave you here alone?”

  “It’s not as if I were exactly alone,” Magda pointed out to her. “I have Cholayna, and everybody in Bridge if I need them, not to mention a whole Guild-house full of our sisters. I’d really feel better about it if I knew you were with the children, Shaya.”

  Jaelle n’ha Melora laughed. “Margali, of all the arguments you might have given me, that is the one least likely to make any impression! How much time do I spend with either of the children? I should be there to give her an admiring hug at bedtime? As long as Ellemir is there, and her nurse, and Ferrika—with a whole houseful of nurses and nannies, with Ellemir to supervise them and Andrew to spoil them, I doubt if they know we are gone.”

  This was true, more or less, and Magda knew it. If anything, Jaelle was far less domestic, and less interested in little children, than was Magda herself. Jaelle loved Cleindori—as who did not?—but since the little girl had been weaned, spent little time in her daughter’s company.

  She thought again, as she had thought before, that Jaelle had really changed very little since they had met: a small, slight woman with hair only slightly faded from its early tint of new-minted copper; she had the fragile look of many Comyn—Damon had it, and Callista—but Magda knew it was deceptive, and concealed the delicate strength of ancient forged steel.

  In many ways, Jaelle is the strongest of us all. They say the Aillard women have always been the best Keepers; perhaps the post of Keeper was designed for their kind of strength. But Jaelle’s strength was not laran. Perhaps they did not yet know what her true strength would be.

  We are both at the age, Magda thought, at which a woman should have decided what she wants to do with her life. I have outgrown first love, first marriage, early ideals. I have a child, and have recovered my strength and health. I have work I love. I have made some decisions—I know many of the things I do not want to do with my life. I have developed my laran and I know that my love and my strongest emotions are given to women. But I am not yet really sure what it is given to me to do with my life. And this disturbed her so much that she had no heart to argue with Jaelle.

  “Stay if you wish. But I can’t imagine wanting to stay in the City when you could be out in the country, at Armida.”

  Jaelle looked up toward the skyline, where the Venza Mountains overshadowed the pass that led down into the city. “You feel it too? I would like to be out again on the trail. I have done my duty to clan and family, and when Dori is only a little older, I shall send her to be fostered as a daughter of Aillard. And then—oh, Magda, aren’t you eager to be in the field again, traveling in the mountains? Rafaella wants me to come back to work with her; she’s talking about some new special project for the Terrans, but won’t tell me any details until I promise I’ll join her. It would be hard to leave the Tower, and I would miss it, but—couldn’t I take a year away, just to travel again? It’s been so long! I never spent so long in one place in my whole life as I have spent at Armida! Five years, Magda!”

  Magda smiled indulgently. “I’m sure they would give you leave to spend a year in the mountains if you wished.”

  “I heard the other day that there is an expedition going to climb High Kimbi. It’s never been climbed—”

  “And probably never will be,” Magda said. “Not by cither of us, in any case. You know as well as I do they wouldn’t have women along, not even as guides. If there are still men who think women unfit to be part of anything facing danger or demanding courage, they are the men who go out climbing m
ountains.”

  Jaelle snorted. “I led a trade caravan over the Pass of Scaravel when I was not yet eighteen!”

  “Breda, I know what you can do on the trail. And Rafaella is listed in Intelligence Services as the best mountain guide in the business! But there are still men who won’t use women guides. The more fools they.”

  Jaelle shrugged philosophically. “I guess if we want to climb High Kimbi, or Dammerung Peak, we’ll have to organize our own expedition.”

  Magda laughed. “Forget the we part, Jaelle. You would have to do it. That one trip across Scaravel was enough to last me a lifetime.” Even remembering, she shivered at the thought of the cliffs and chasms of the Pass of Scaravel.

  “Talk to Camilla. She’d probably be delighted to go out and climb anything inaccessible you can find.”

  “And knowing you, you’ll be right beside her.” Jaelle laughed. “You talk about being timid, but when you’re actually in the field—I know you better than you know yourself.”

  “Whether or no,” Magda said, “for the moment we are in Thendara, and here we will stay, for the next few days, at least.”

  “We should relay a message to Armida, though. They’ll be expecting us,” Jaelle reminded her. “They should be told that we are all right—not murdered by bandits on the trail, or something of that sort.”

  “No,” Magda said morosely, “only murdered here in Thendara, by bureaucratic nonsense! Shall we get in touch with them tonight?”

  “You do it, Magda, you’re a far better telepath than I am.”

  “But they will want to hear from us both,” Magda said, and Jaelle nodded soberly.

  “Tonight, then, when it’s quiet.”

  But that night there was an Oath-taking in the house. Although neither the new Renunciate nor her Oath-sisters were known to Magda or Jaelle, they could not in decency absent themselves from such festivities in their own house. Afterward there was a party with cakes and wine; Magda, knowing what lay ahead of her, drank sparingly. She spent most of the evening with Camilla and Mother Lauria, and found herself agreeing how very young the new Renunciates appeared. It seemed that the woman who had taken the Oath tonight, and her friends who had witnessed the Oath, were just children. Had she and Jaelle ever been as young as that? Apart from the Oath-mother, an older woman was always chosen to witness the ceremony, and it seemed incredible to see Doria, whom Magda remembered as a girl of fifteen sharing her own housebound time, described as an older woman.