The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Rafaella was there, and spent much of the latter part of the evening talking with Jaelle; Magda did not begrudge Jaelle the company of her old friend and partner, but, watching Rafi drinking heavily of the pale wine from the mountain vineyards, she hoped Jaelle would not be led into drinking. It was late before they could get away to the room they shared—but that was just as well. The atmosphere was quieter at night, with most people sleeping; much matrix work, in the Towers and outside them, was done between sunset and sunrise.

  “What was Rafi talking about?”

  “Some new project from Mapping and Exploring—a survey in the mountains. She wanted me to promise I’d come.” Jaelle looked regretful as she pulled off her low indoor boots and untied the laces of her tunic. Magda sat on the bed to remove her own.

  “Did you promise?”

  “How could I? I told her I would have to consult you, and also the folk in the Tower. I do not think she knows we have sworn oath as freemates, and I had no opportunity to tell her.”

  “Perhaps it is as well not to tell her.”

  “You told Camilla.”

  “But Camilla is not jealous. Rafaella and I have worked out a pact for mutual co-existence—we even manage to like each other most of the time—but she is jealous of our closeness, Jaelle.”

  “Rafi and I were never lovers, Margali. At least, not since I was a little girl. She was really not much more. And now, at least, Rafaella is certainly a lover of men. What may have been between us when we were young girls does not seem that important to me, and I cannot believe it is important to her.” Jaelle shivered, standing barefoot on the icy floor, and quickly pulled her nightgown over her head.

  “That is not what she is jealous of.” Magda wondered why Jaelle could not see it. “What she envies is that we work together, that we share laran. And that is closer than any other bond.” She hurried into her warm nightgown and warmer robe, for the Guild-house was not well-heated at night. “Will you monitor, Jaelle, or do you want me to do it?”

  “I will. That’s about my level of skill.” Jaelle had no illusions about her competence working with laran. She had spent half a lifetime blocking away her psychic gift, submitting to the training only when the laran could not be excluded from her consciousness. Now, she knew, she could achieve only the minimal level of training: sufficient to keep her from being, in the phrase so often used about untrained telepaths, a menace to herself and everyone around her.

  Jaelle was, and was glad to be, an integral part of the group of telepaths and psi workers, loosely allied, who worked outside the ordinary structure of matrix workers on Darkover, and in defiance called themselves the Forbidden Tower. But she would never achieve sufficient competence to call herself matrix mechanic or technician. Sometimes when she watched Magda, born a Terran, and now the most skillful of technicians, she was painfully aware that she had cast away that birthright, and could now never recover it.

  They were both wearing warm, fur-lined robes, fur-lined slippers. Magda wrapped herself in an extra blanket. Psychic work withdrew heat from the body. If the worker stayed out too long on the astral planes known collectively as the overworld, it could result in painful chill.

  Jaelle took her matrix, from the tiny leather bag around her neck, and carefully stripped away the protecting silks. The blue stone, no larger than the nail of her little finger, glinted with pallid fires.

  She spoke aloud, though it was not really necessary; from the moment Magda had taken out her matrix, they had been in contact.

  “Match resonances—”

  Magda was aware first of the physical heat and mass of Jaelle’s body, though she did not look at the other woman; her eyes were fixed within the matrix, seeing only the moving lights in the stone. She sensed the living energy fields of Jaelle’s body near her, the pulsing spots where the life currents moved. Then, delicately, she moved to match the vibration of her stone to Jaelle’s, feeling it as a point of—was it heat, light, some indefinable energy moving in the room? Nothing so tangible as these. She felt her heartbeat altering slightly, pulsing with the ebb and flow of the energies of the matched stones, knew that the very blood in her veins and arteries moved in cadence with the other woman’s.

  She sensed, like a hand passing over her body, the monitoring touch of Jaelle, scanning her to make certain that all was well in her body before she withdrew her consciousness from it, aware of everything, even noticing the graze on her ankle where she had skidded the other day on a pebble, the slight clogging of her sinuses— she must have encountered something in the HQ today to which she was mildly allergic; she noticed it, as Jaelle moved energies to clear the condition.

  Neither spoke, but she picked it up as Jaelle finished:

  Ready?

  I’m going out.

  Magda let her consciousness slip free of her body and looked down, seeing herself lying apparently unconscious on the bed they shared. Jaelle, blanket-wrapped, sat beside her. With total irrelevance, she thought. That old robe of mine is really getting too old and grubby, I shall have to have a new one before long. What a pity I hate sewing so much. She could have requisitioned a new one from Supplies, in the Terran HQ, but she had lived in the Guild-house too long to see that as a workable solution.

  Then she was up and out of the room, finding herself alone in the gray and featureless plain of the overworld. After a moment, Jaelle stood beside her. As always in the overworld, Jaelle seemed smaller, slighter, more fragile, and Magda wondered, as she had wondered before, whether what she saw was a projection of the way Jaelle saw herself, or whether it reflected the way in which, for some reason, she had always felt protective, as if Jaelle were younger and weaker than herself.

  Around them stretched grayness in every direction, colorless and without, form. In the distance, figures drifted. Some of them, Magda knew, were their fellow pilgrims on the non-physical planes of existence; some had merely strayed from their bodies in dreams or meditation. She could see none of them clearly as yet, for she had not yet marked her own path with will and purpose.

  Now, in the clearing dimness as what looked like fog dispersed, she could see faint landmarks in the gray. First, foremost, she saw a shining structure, rising tall on the plain, which she knew to be the landmark made on these planes by the thought-form called the Forbidden Tower—shelter from the nothingness of the astral world. Her home, the home she had found for her spirit, shared with those who meant more to her even than the Sisterhood of the Guild-house. She still observed meticulously every provision of the Renunciate Oath; she was a Free Amazon not only in word but in spirit. But the Guild-house could no longer contain the fullness of her being.

  With the speed of thought—for what she imagined in the overworld was literally true—she was standing beside the Tower itself. Simultaneously she was inside it, in what appeared to be, complete in every detail, the upstairs suite in the Great House of Armida. She had come so late to this work that she had never quite accustomed herself to how time and space behaved on this plane.

  All four of the rooms were empty—she could see them all at once, in a way she did not understand—but somewhere, there was the blue glow of a matrix where someone of the Tower kept watch. And then, without a moment of transition, Callista Lanart-Carr was beside her.

  Magda knew rationally that Callista was not as beautiful in body as she looked in the overworld. In this case at least she was seeing Callista through the eyes of the spirit and through the eyes of her love and veneration for this woman who was at the center of the heart and spirit of the Forbidden Tower. In reality (but what, after all, was reality, and which was the illusion?)—on the material plane of existence, Callista Lanart-Carr, once Keeper at Arilinn, was a tall, frail-looking woman, her red hair faded almost to silvery gray, though she was not much past thirty; her body was sagging from the three children she had borne, and her face was lined and careworn. Yet on this plane, at least for Magda, Callista had the radiant beauty of early youth.

  Magda knew that
she did not speak, but speech and sound were irrelevant here. It seemed to her that Callista cried out a joyful greeting.

  “Magda! Jaelle! Oh, we have been expecting to see you—”

  And suddenly they were surrounded by the others of the Tower circle, Ellemir and Andrew and Damon, summoned quickly from dreams or sleep. Damon’s brother Kieran was there too, and Kieran’s son Kester, and Lady Hilary Castamir-Syrtis, who like Callista had once been Keeper in Arilinn. It seemed to both Magda and Jaelle that for a moment they were encompassed in an instant love-feast of greeting, made up of all the kisses and embraces and tenderness they had ever known, without time or the limits of the body, and it lasted (in reality, Magda knew, a spirt second or less) a long time.

  At last, reluctantly, the intensity of loving communion ebbed (although Magda knew in some deeper reality that it would always be a part of her, always renewed and reassuring), and Ellemir said, “But my dears, we expected to have you here more than a tenday ago. I know the weather in Thendara is harsh sometimes, but I have heard of no storms, even in the pass. What has happened?”

  With a humorous question from someone—Kester? —wanting to know what pleasures of the big city kept them away, friends, lovers—something like a swift reprimand for this intrusion from Damon—Ellemir’s ill-concealed wonder that anything could keep two mothers from their children—Andrew’s special enfolding of Magda in something that was very private between them, a bond of shared experiences stronger than love—

  “Cholayna had need for me, and Jaelle stayed to keep me company,” Magda told them, and swiftly shared the knowledge of the downed plane in the Hellers. Something might have drifted through into the overworld.

  She felt Andrew’s surge of anger like a dull flame of colors, crimson and burnt orange, surrounding the outline of his body; she could sometimes see this even when they were both in their bodies. Here it was unmistakable.

  “They should not have asked it of you, Magda.” Damn the Anders woman, nothing was worth doing that to you. That is like the Terrans, their damnable Need to Know, regardless. They have no idea of human needs—

  “That’s too strong, Andrew. Cholayna made a point of telling me I could refuse.”

  Andrew dismissed that. “You should have refused. I’ll bet you didn’t find out anything worth knowing.”

  “I did bring Lexie back,” Magda defended herself. “She might have stayed like that indefinitely! And there was more.” On an impulse, she shared quickly with Callista the image with which she had come away from Lexie’s mind.

  Robed figures, deep hoods. The sound of crows calling, drifting through a silence deeper than the depths of the overworld…

  Momentarily she could sense that Callista did not find it new, not quite.

  I have encountered strange leroni in the overworld, now and again, Callista’s memory reached them all at once. Not often, and only a glimmering. Once when I was very ill—her mind edged away from the ordeal in which she had been made Keeper at Arilinn—and again when I was trapped in the other planes of the overworld and could reach nothing familiar. I remember the calling of strange birds, and dark forms, and little more. Your friend—Alexis?—if, in extremity, she teleported herself from the crashed plane, she may have crossed some strange places in the overworld. I truly do not think it was more than that, Margali.

  “But what of the crashed plane? And no trace of it found—”

  “I have a theory for that, too,” said Damon, and the familiar sensation of warmth, strength, protection (their Keeper, closer than a lover, the figure around whom the Forbidden Tower had gathered, the only one in all the Domains who had had the courage for this, to restore Hilary and Callista to full strength in spite of the laws which forbade a failed Keeper from ever again taking up her laran, their shelter and their strength and their lover and their father all at once)…

  Again the disparity from what Magda knew as “reality” and how Damon appeared here in the overworld: in real life, a small, darkhaired, insignificant-looking man with fading hair and tired eyes, showing his age—he was a good twenty years older than Andrew, who was somewhat older than Ellemir or Callista. But here where the things of the spirit were made manifest, Damon appeared to be a tall, strong and imposing man, who gave the impression of a warrior. It had taken a warrior to resist the power of Leonie Hastur, the Keeper of Arilinn, who ruled all the Towers in the Domains with the same iron hand with which her twin brother, Lorill Hastur, ruled the Domains. Damon had won from Leonie, in a psychic battle against terrible odds, the right to establish what was now called, defiantly, the Forbidden Tower.

  “I have a theory about the disappearance of your plane,” Damon said. “If the Anders woman truly summoned up, from latency in her mind, a new psi skill and teleported herself—and that’s not impossible, I saw Callista do it when we were imprisoned among the catmen—the pure energy had to come from somewhere. She did not, of course, have a matrix,” Damon added. The matrix stones were crystals which had the curious property of transforming thought-waves into energy without transition by-products.

  “Somehow, as she summoned the strength to translocate, to teleport herself, she used the kinetic mass of the Terran airplane for the energy requirement. That energy couldn’t have come from nowhere, after all. In effect, she disintegrated and atomized the plane and utilized that immense energy for the strength to make the teleportation possible. No wonder they couldn’t locate the plane, even with satellites. It doesn’t exist anymore. It’s disintegrated.”

  “I think that’s a little far-fetched, Damon,” Andrew argued. “Where would she get the strength, let alone the knowledge, to do that? If she was a trained psi-tech, even from some other world and some other tradition, I suppose she might have managed it. But a complete novice—possibly head-blind? I can’t imagine it. She would have needed help.”

  “Maybe she had help, from those stray leroni Callista mentioned; she might have crossed someplace in the overworld, and there found such help,” suggested Kieran.

  “Does it matter?” Ellemir asked practically. She was always the pragmatic one. “It’s gone, and I suppose it doesn’t matter how or why unless the Terrans get a bee in their bonnet about mounting a salvage operation to try to find if there’s a record in—what did you call it, the black box?—of whatever it was she spotted beyond the Wall.”

  “They’d have a lot of fun with that,” Andrew said, with dry irony. “I used to work for M-and-Ex. There’s nothing out there, nothing at all.”

  “Let them look,” Lady Hilary said with the equivalent of a shrug. “It will keep them busy and out of trouble. Some of the Terrans may be very nice people—” and her affectionate look encompassed both Magda and Andrew. “But what do we care what foolish quests they may attempt? When are you coming back to us, dear sisters? We miss you. And the children—”

  She broke off, for the little group where they were gathered had suddenly been enlarged by two others.

  Kiha Margali—it was like a gentle tug at Magda’s arm, and Cassilde, a girl of fourteen, fair-haired and blue-eyed, was immediately enfolded in Magda’s embrace.

  And Magda felt the surprise in the circle. None of them had known that Callista’s eldest daughter had gained access to the overworld. Young children did not, as a usual thing, have much laran—although Cassilde was approaching the age at which any latent laran she might have would be surfacing at any time.

  Am I dreaming, Mother? Kiha—am I dreaming? Or are you all really here?

  “Perhaps you are only dreaming, chiya,” Damon said gently, and again his thought, wordless, embraced them all. But she is old enough, we must begin teaching her properly.

  But even as their warm welcome enfolded young Cassie, there was a cry and a clamor for attention.

  Mama! Oh, I called you, and see, you have come—

  Jaelle enfolded Cleindori in her arms, but the child’s confusion astonished them all. Cassilde, at the very verge of puberty, might well have gained access to these non-mat
erial planes of thought and spirit; that Cleindori could have done so at five years old was preposterous.

  Cassie, my darling, even if you have skill for this, you should not attempt it until you learn the proper way to safeguard yourself, Callista admonished her, gently; and Andrew added, in his kindest and most fatherly tone, Even if you can come here, child, you should not bring Cleindori with you.

  “I didn’t,” Cassie began, and simultaneously Cleindori clamored, “Cassie didn’t bring me, I came all by myself, I love Auntie Ellemir, love her lots, but I wanted you, Mama, and you stayed away so long, so long! I called you and you came, and I can too come here without Cassie bringing me, I come here lots, I can even bring Shaya here, look!” Cleindori was crying with loud anger.

  And Magda saw her two-year-old daughter, nightgowned, her dark hair tousled from the pillow; she said sleepily, “Mama?”

  Half-unbelieving, Magda took the child into a close embrace. Although their bodies were separated by a three days’ journey, it felt as if she were holding the actual child in her arms, the snuggling warmth of the little body, the small sleepy head on her shoulder. Ah, she had missed her, how she had missed her! But Shaya, at least, was here only in a dream. She would wake tomorrow, remembering that she had dreamed of her mother; Magda hoped she would not cry.

  “Now this is enough!” said Ellemir, with firm authority. “We see what you have done, Cleindori, but this is not allowed. Take Shaya back to bed at once. And you, Cassie, you should go back to bed, too, you are not strong enough to stay out of your body this long. Tomorrow, I promise you, if no one else here will teach you to do it properly, I will do so myself. But for now, you must go back.”