The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Somewhere in a cave,” Magda answered in a whisper, “and I think Acquilara and her crew have us.”

  Vanessa crept close to them in the dark. “I have my little knife. Are you all right, Cholayna?”

  “I’m still in one piece,” Cholayna said. “I saw them kill Marisela; then they hit you over the head, Magda, and grabbed me; I think I may have stabbed one of them before they got the knife away from me. Then that damned bitch Acquilara hit me over the head with a ton of bricks, and that’s all I remember.”

  “And then we woke up here,” Vanessa summed up, clutching at them both in the darkness. “Now what?”

  Magda laughed, mirthlessly. “Well, you tried to bribe Rakhaila to bring you here. She said, be careful what you pray for, you might get it… and here we are. Right in Acquilara’s stronghold. At least, if Lexie and Rafaella are still alive, we’re in a prime position to rescue them. Or ransom them.”

  Cholayna nodded; her dark face contorted in an expression of pain and she clutched her head again and held still.

  “Who knows? Sooner or later, they’re sure to come back for us; if they thought we were all dead, they would hardly have wasted blankets on us. I don’t see Marisela laid out here awaiting proper burial, or anything so charitable.”

  Magda shuddered. “Oh, don’t,” she implored.

  Cholayna leaned toward her and held her close. “There, there, I know you loved her, we all loved her,” she said, “but there’s nothing to be done for her now, Magda. Though if ever I get that filthy sorceress at the end of my knife… but now we have to think of ourselves, and what we can do to get out of here. What about Jaelle and Camilla? Do you know if they are alive or dead?”

  Magda could remember nothing more than Marisela falling in a shower of blood. Then nothing.

  “I saw you fall, Magda, and Cholayna,” Vanessa repeated. “Jaelle and Camilla were out of sight, round a bend in the road; they may have gotten clean away, and never known we were gone until they stopped on the trail and we didn’t catch up.”

  “Do you know how long ago that was?” Cholayna asked. But neither of them had the slightest idea of elapsed time, or even whether it was night or day. Nor did they know how many their opponents were, nor how they were armed, nor what their plans might be, or whether Jaelle and Camilla were dead.

  Yet Magda had an almost totally irrational conviction… “I think I would know if they were dead,” she said. “I think, if either of them had been killed, I am sure I would know.”

  “Being sure isn’t evidence,” Vanessa said, but Cholayna interrupted her.

  “You’re wrong. Magda has had very intensive psi-tech training. Not the kind they give in the Empire, but probably even more effective. I’d say her feelings are evidence, and evidence of a very high order.”

  “You may be right,” Vanessa conceded after a moment, “but I don’t see how that helps us much, since they obviously don’t know where we are, or how to rescue us.”

  It was enough for Magda at that moment, after seeing Marisela murdered before her eyes, to be certain that both her lover and her freemate had escaped that fate. Yet she and her two Terran compatriots were in the hands of a cruel and unscrupulous woman, possibly one with some kind of laran —she remembered how Acquilara had struck down Camilla with a look.

  She would as soon kill us, too, as look at us!

  Vanessa felt the shudder and her arms tightened about Magda.

  “Are you cold? Here, put my blanket round you. We might as well relax while we can; for all we know it could be early evening and they’ll get a good night’s sleep before they come to fetch us here. We may as well try and do likewise.”

  They huddled together, silent, under the blankets. Magda could pick up the dread and apprehension of the other women, the pain that crept, with the cold, into Cholayna’s bones and muscles, as if in her own body. She wanted to shelter her, to protect them both, yet she was powerless.

  Time crawled by; they never knew how long. Perhaps an hour, perhaps two. Magda kept falling into little dozes, where she would hear incoherent words at the very edge of hearing, see blurs of light that turned into strange faces, then jerk awake and know that none of this had happened at all, that she was still huddled between Cholayna and Vanessa in the dark and cold of their prison. She thought it was another of these tiny dreams when she began to see a light, but Vanessa stiffened at her side and whispered, “Look! They’re coming!”

  There was the light of a torch, bobbing up and down as if being carried, waist-high. It moved closer. It was no illusion. It was not fire on the end of a long stick. It was a small, brilliant flashlight, and in another minute she could see who was carrying it.

  Lexie Anders bent over them and said, “All right, Lorne, get up and come with me. Do you see this?” Briefly, she showed Magda something that made Magda gasp; this was breaking every lawful arrangement between Terrans and Darkovans.

  “It’s a stunner,” Alexis explained. Magda could see all too well what it was.

  “For your information, it has a lethal setting. I would rather not be forced to use it, but I swear that if you try to make trouble, or attempt any silly heroics, I will. Get up. No, Van, you stay where you are, I don’t choose to try to handle you both at once.”

  “Anders, in heaven’s name, are you working with these people?” Cholayna sounded outraged. “Do you know what they are? Do you know they killed Marisela in cold blood?”

  “That was a mistake,” said Alexis Anders. “Acquilara was very angry about it. Marisela got in the way, that was all.”

  Cholayna said with hard anger, “I’m sure Marisela would be glad to know that.”

  “It wasn’t my doing, Cholayna, and I refuse to feel guilty about it. Marisela had no business to interfere.”

  “Interfere? Going about her lawful business… ” Magda cried.

  Lexie moved the stunner. “You don’t know a damn thing about it, Lorne, you don’t know what’s at stake here or what Marisela was involved in. So keep your mouth shut and come with me. If you’re cold, you can bring the blanket.”

  Magda crawled slowly out from between Vanessa and Cholayna. Cholayna put out a hand to hold her back.

  “For the record, Anders. Insubordination; defection; intrusion into closed territory without authorization; possession of an illegal weapon in violation of agreements between the Empire and duly constituted planetary authorities. You do know you’re throwing your career away—”

  “You’re a stubborn old bitch,” said Lexie. Shocked, Magda remembered Vanessa saying the same thing; but she had said it affectionately. “You don’t know when you’re beaten, Cholayna. You can still get out of this alive; I’m not bloodthirsty. But you’d better keep your mouth shut, because I don’t think Acquilara is particularly tolerant of Terrans. I warn you, shut up and stay shut.”

  Another peremptory gesture with the stunner. Magda touched Cholayna’s hand, saying in an undertone, “Don’t put yourself on the line for me. This is between us. I’ll see what she wants.”

  When she rose to her feet, she found that she was shaking all over. Was it the stunner pointed menacingly at her, was it the cold, was it simply that they must have struck her on the exact site of the previous concussion? She saw the glint of satisfaction in Lexie’s eyes.

  She thinks I am afraid of her and for some reason that pleases her. Well, let Lexie continue to think that. Magda realized that while she was a little bit afraid that the stunner in Lexie’s hand might go off by accident, she was not at all afraid of Lexie herself.

  She didn’t turn a hair when Cholayna was throwing that list of indictments at her. That means one of two things. Either she’s resigned to throwing her career away—or she has no intention of leaving Cholayna alive to testify against her.

  Lexie waved the stunner again.

  “This way.”

  She took Magda across the great cave filled with stalactites, gestured to her to walk down a slippery ramp, wet with falling water from somewhere, an
d pushed her through into another cave.

  This one was lighted by torches stuck in the wall and smoking upwards; randomly Magda noted the direction of the smoke and thought, there must be air coming in somewhere from outside. At the center was a fire burning; at first Magda wondered where they got wood for fire, then realized from the smell it was not a wood fire at all, but a fire of dried chervine dung; a stack of the dried pats was at one side of the fire. Around the fire was a rough circle of hooded figures, and for an instant of awful disillusionment Magda thought, is this the Sisterhood?

  Then a slender familiar figure rose from beside the fire.

  “Welcome, my dear,” she said. “I’m sorry my messengers had to use so much force. I told you to be ready when you were summoned, and if you had listened to me, you could have saved us a great deal of trouble.”

  Magda drew a deep breath, trying to compose herself.

  “What do you want, Acquilara?”

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  But Acquilara did not do business that way. Magda should have known.

  “You are hurt; let us bandage your wounds. And I am sure you are cold and cramped. Would you like some tea?”

  Magda sensed that to accept any offers from the black sorceress would be to yield to her power. She started to say proudly, No, thank you, I want nothing you can give. She never knew what stopped her.

  The most serious obligation she had now was to stay as strong as possible, so that she could get away, could help get Vanessa and Cholayna out of this. She said deliberately, “Thank you.” Someone handed her a foaming cup of tea. It was faintly bitter, and smelled of the dung-fire, and a lump of butter had been stirred into it, which gave it a peculiar taste, but added, in the bitter chill, to its strengthening quality. Magda drank it down and felt it warming her all through. She accepted a second cup.

  Two women came from the ring around the fire to help bandage her wounds. On the surface they were somewhat more prepossessing than the women of the hermitage of Avarra; they seemed clean enough and wore under their long, hooded cloaks the ordinary dress of village women from the mountains, long tartan skirts, thick overblouses and tunics, heavy felted shawls and hoots. The bandages they used were rough, but seemed clean. Magda realized that skin had been stripped from her leg—she never knew how it happened, though she surmised that in the fight she must have rolled down a slope covered with sharp rocks. There were abrasions on her face too; she had not noticed them before.

  With the scrapes and bruises salved and bandaged, she did feel better, and the tea, even with its faintly nauseating taste, had strengthened her so that she felt prepared to meet whatever might come next.

  “Feeling better?” Acquilara was almost purring. “Now let us sit down together and discuss this like civilized women. I am sure we can come to some agreement.”

  Agreement? When you have murdered my friend, imprisoned my companions, and for all I know you may have killed my freemate and my lover? Never!

  But Magda had more common sense than to say this aloud. If this woman was half the leronis she claimed to be, she would sense Magda’s antipathy and know how little likely Magda would be to accede to her plan.

  “What do you want with me, Acquilara? Why have you, as you put it, summoned me?”

  “I am the servant of the Great Goddess whom you seek—”

  Magda started to say, Nonsense, you’re no such thing, but decided not to antagonize her.

  “Very well then, tell me what your Goddess wants with me.”

  “We should be friends,” Acquilara began. “You are a powerful leronis of the Tower called Forbidden, which has refused to play into the hands of the Hasturs, or to submit to that terrible old teneresteis Leonie of Arilinn, who keeps all the people of the Domains paralyzed under the iron rule of the Arilinn Tower. As one who has helped to free our brothers and our sisters, you are my ally and my comrade and I welcome you here.”

  And Marisela? But Magda said nothing. Perhaps if she waited long enough Acquilara would tell her what really was going on. As Camilla had pointed out, even an “evil sorceress” did not go to all this trouble simply to amuse herself.

  “Your friend has told me that you are from another world, and she has said something about the Empire,” Acquilara began over again. Magda’s eyes strayed to Lexie where she stood in the corner. She had put the stunner out of sight. “You are a powerful leronis, but you owe nothing to the Comyn. And among your companions are two others of Comyn blood. Am I not right?”

  “You have been correctly informed,” she said. Casta was a stiff language and Magda wasted none of its formality.

  “Nevertheless, I cannot imagine what all this has to do with the fact that you have murdered one of my friends and imprisoned others.”

  “I told you, Acquilara, you wouldn’t get anywhere with her that way,” said a voice from the shadows where Lexie stood. Rafaella n’ha Doria did not have a stunner, or any weapon Magda could see except for the usual long knife of a Renunciate.

  “Let me talk to her. In a word, Margali, she knows you have had laran training in your Forbidden Tower, or whatever it may be. But you are Terran. On the other hand, Jaelle, born Comyn, has renounced her Comyn heritage, and as a Renunciate she is free to use her powers as she will.”

  She stood waiting for Magda to confirm what she said; instead, Magda burst out in anger.

  “I would not have believed it if they had told me, Rafi! You, whom she loves as a sister, to sell her out this way! And Camilla, too, calls you her friend!”

  “You don’t know what you are talking about,” Rafaella said angrily. “Sell her out? Never! It is you who have induced her to betray herself, and I am trying to remedy that.” She came all the way forward and stood facing Magda.

  “You have not even let Acquilara tell you what she is offering. No harm is intended to Shaya, or even to Camilla—”

  “That is the red-headed emmasca?” Acquilara nodded with satisfaction. “She has Comyn powers, perhaps Alton, perhaps Hastur, there is no way of telling but to test her. That’s easily enough done. She may balk a little at the testing, but there are ways of handling that.”

  The words of the Monitor’s Oath flashed through Magda’s mind: enter no mind save to help or heal and only by consent. These people had never heard of this obligation. The thought of Camilla, forced unwilling to enter, undesired, that painful openness, made her shake with rage. At that moment, if she had had a weapon, she could cheerfully have killed Rafaella.

  Did Rafaella even know what she was proposing or how painful it would be?

  “Listen to me, Margali,” said Rafaella earnestly. “We are sisters in Bridge Society—perhaps we haven’t been as good friends sometimes as we might, but just the same, we’re working for the same objectives, aren’t we?”

  “Are we? I don’t think so. It seems to me that if your motives are the same as the Bridge Society you would have brought your proposal to Cholayna, or to me, or even to Jaelle or Camilla herself. Lieutenant Anders—” she used Lexie’s official rank deliberately, “is not a member of Bridge. Why go to her?”

  “It was she who came to me with this proposal. And if you do not know why she would not come to you or to Cholayna with it—I should have known, of course, you would never admit anything could be done, in Bridge, or in the Empire, without your being a part of it.” Rafaella’s words were an angry torrent, but a brief gesture from Acquilara cut her off.

  “Enough. Tell her what the proposal is. I am not interested in your personal grievances against her.”

  “Jaelle has had some training in the Forbidden Tower but these women can complete her training until she is more powerful than Leonie of Arilinn. Camilla, too, will be trained to the maximum of which she is capable. If she truly has Hastur blood, she may be the most powerful leronis for many years. Real power awaits them—”

  “What makes you think that is what they are looking for?”

  It was Acquilara who answered. “For wha
t else did they come into these hills in search of the old crow-goddess in her abandoned shrine? Was it not to seek the full potential of what powers they might one day have? They may not know it, but that is what they were doing. This is the end of every quest; to become what you are, and this means power, real power, not philosophy and moral lectures. From the crow-people they will get austerities without number, and at the end, a pledge never to use or indulge their powers. They will be told that the end of all wisdom is to know and to refrain from doing, for actually doing anything would be black sorcery.” Acquilara’s face was savage with contempt. “I can offer them better than that.”

  “While if they are taught here by Acquilara,” said Rafaella, “at the end of their training they will be sent back to Thendara, armed with the means to make some real changes in their world, to turn it to their own real advantage. Jaelle on the Council, as she could have been, should have been all along. And Camilla—there’s no end to what Camilla might do. She could rule all the Towers in the Domains.”

  “That’s not what Camilla wants.”

  “It is what, as a Hastur, she ought to want. And when I am done with her, she will want it,” said Acquilara with unshakable confidence.

  This woman had power. Magda could feel it in her very stance, her gestures, Acquilara gestured to Lexie to go on.

  “You are very naïve, Lorne,” Lexie added. “That is why you have meddled in so many things and never achieved anything real. Have you seen your file in personnel at HQ? I have. Do you know what they say of you? You could be in a real position of power… ”

  Magda found her voice.

  “I can’t presume to tell you what Camilla and Jaelle want,” she said, “but I can tell you that power, in that form anyhow, is not what I want.”

  “And I can tell you that you are a liar,” Lexie said. “For all the talk, there is really only one real game, only one thing anyone wants, and that is power. Pretend, be a hypocrite if you like, deny it, lie about it, I know better; that is what everybody wants.”