The Saga of the Renunciates

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Do you judge everybody by yourself?”

  “Unlike you, Lorne, I don’t pretend to be better than everybody else,” Lexie said, “but it doesn’t matter. When the new cooperation between Terran and Darkovan begins, it will take a whole new turn; and this time it will not be Magdalen Lorne’s name at the head of it, but Alexis Anders’s.”

  “Is that what you want more than anything else, Lexie?”

  “It’s what you wanted and what you got, isn’t it? Why say it’s unworthy of me?” Lexie demanded.

  Again Acquilara brought the talk to a halt with one of those imperative gestures. Magda, watching her carefully, realized that she was uncomfortable whenever the focus of the discussion moved away from herself.

  “Enough, I say. Magdalen Lorne—” like all speakers of casta she mangled the pronunciation of the name, diminishing her dignity; she knew it and tried to look all the more imposing, “promise me that you will help me to convince Jaelle n’ha Melora and the other comynara, the red-haired emmasca, to work with me, and I shall find a use for you too among us. It would be a good thing to have a Terran intelligence worker as one of us. This would be a truly powerful Penta Cari’yo, not a ladies’ lodging society and dinner club. Once our influence was entrenched in Thendara, it would be easy to have you as head of Terran Intelligence—”

  “What makes you think that is what I want?”

  “Damn it, Acquilara, I told you more than once, that is not the way to get anywhere with Lorne,” Lexie interrupted.

  “You presume on your importance, terranis,” snarled Acquilara. “Don’t interrupt me! Well, Magdalen Lorne, think it over.”

  “I don’t need to,” Magda said quietly. “I’m not interested in your proposition.”

  “You cannot afford to refuse me,” Acquilara said. “I am making you a very generous proposal. Terranan are not popular in these hills. I need only reveal who you are in any village to have you torn to pieces. As for your friend, the woman with the black skin, what would they think of her? A pitiful freak, to be exposed on the hills for the banshee and the kyorebni. Yet if you are one of us, you are under my powerful protection anywhere in these hills.”

  She motioned to two of the women.

  “Take her back, and let her think it over. Tomorrow you will give me your answer.” She signaled to Lexie.

  “Guard her with your weapon.”

  One of the women stepped up to Acquilara and whispered to her. She nodded.

  “You are right. If she is as powerful a leronis as we’ve heard, then she will lose no time in warning the comynaris. Give her some raivannin.”

  Raivannin! Magda thought in consternation. It was a drug which paralyzed the psi facilities and laran; sometimes it was used to immobilize a powerful telepath who was ill or delirious and could not control his or her destructive powers. She sought, quickly, to leap into the Overworld, to align herself with Jaelle, to cry out a warning, Jaelle, Camilla, beware … a few words. A few seconds of warning…

  She had underestimated these people. Someone seized her—not physically; no hand touched her—but she discovered that she was ice-cold, she could not move or speak. She felt she was falling, falling, though she knew she stood motionless; her body and mind were buffeted by raging ice, wind, as if she stood naked in a blizzard…

  She heard Lexie say, “Let me take care of her. I can set the stunner to keep her out for a few hours.”

  “No, she needs freedom for the decision,” said Acquilara smoothly. Suddenly Magda was seized by two powerful sets of hands and held motionless, physically this time. Rafaella forced her mouth open and poured something icy and cloyingly sweet down her throat.

  “Hold her about half a minute,” Acquilara said from out of the darkness. “It’s very fast-acting. After that she’ll be safe enough.”

  An incredible flush of heat pulsed across Magda’s face, making her sinuses pound and a hot flare of pain fill up her head. Only a moment, but she wanted to scream aloud with its impact. Then it ebbed slowly away, leaving her feeling dull and empty, and suddenly deaf. She blinked, letting herself lean on the women who were holding her; she could hardly find her balance; all the peripheral awarenesses were gone, she was shorn and blinded, naked in her five senses, she could see and hear and touch, but how little, how inadequate the world seemed; nothing, nothing outside herself, the universe dead… even her ordinary senses felt dulled, there as a film over her sight, sounds came dulled as if from far away, and even the cold on her skin seemed remote as if she had been dipped in something heavy and greasy, insulating her from the world.

  Raivannin. It had sheared away all her expanded senses, leaving her head-blind. A powerful dose; once she had taken it when she was ill and Callista felt she should be shielded from a Tower operation; but it had only blunted her awareness of the matrix work going on around her, so that she could shut it out if she chose. Nothing like this total insulation, this closing and clogging of her senses.

  “You gave her too much,” said one of the women holding her—even her voice sounded indistinct, or was this the way ordinary voices sounded, un-enhanced by the psychic awareness of their meaning? “She can hardly stand up. She may never recover her laran, after a dose like that.”

  Acquilara shrugged. Magda realized, in despair, that she could not even hear the malice and falseness in Acquilara’s voice any more, it sounded like anybody’s voice, she even sounded pleasant, how did the head-blind ever know whom to trust?

  “Small loss. We can manage without her, and she might be easier to handle that way. Take her away, back to the others.”

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  As the women hauled her away from the ring of firelight and back to the first cave where she had waked in captivity, Magda was conscious only of despair. She could not even warn Jaelle or Camilla.

  She tried to convince herself that she should not be worrying. Jaelle and Camilla did not know where she was, or even where to look. Now that she was drugged with raivannin they could not even hunt for her with laran.

  And if Acquilara tried to persuade them to join her plans, they could always refuse. There would be no way to force them, and no danger that Jaelle or Camilla would find Acquilara’s offer tempting enough to be worth deserting their own principles. So why was she worrying?

  They dumped her unceremoniously in the first cave and went away. Magda huddled down on the floor in misery.

  Lexie is certainly intending to kill Cholayna or have her killed, or she would not have dared to speak that way to her.

  Cholayna raised her head as Magda slumped down on the floor.

  “Magda, are you all right? What did they want?”

  “To make me an offer, of no particular interest to me,” Magda said dully. “Nothing’s wrong. I told them, in essence, to go to hell. Go to sleep, Cholayna.”

  She had made a fatal error of strategy. She should have pretended to play along, pretended to be impressed with Acquilara’s plans; then they would have left her free, and she could have put herself in touch with Jaelle or Camilla with her laran. Now it was too late.

  “You’re shaking all over,” said Vanessa. “I don’t think you’re all right at all. What did they do to you, really? Here, come under my blanket, get yourself warm. You look like hell.”

  “Nothing. Nothing you’d understand. Let me alone, Vanessa.”

  “Like hell,” said Vanessa, pulling Magda by main force under her blanket and wrapping it around her. She took Magda’s hands in hers and said, “They’re burning hot! Come on, Lorne, what did they do to you? I’ve never seen you like this before!”

  Magda felt dulled, exhausted, and yet she just wanted to cry and cry until she dissolved in tears. Vanessa’s hands on hers felt like a stranger’s hands, no sensation but the raw physical touch. What must it be like to have only this to share with another person, however dear; how could you tell friend from stranger or lover? And she could be like this forever. It would have been better to die. She let h
erself fall against Vanessa, and to her despair and shame she was aware that she was sobbing helplessly.

  Vanessa held her and patted her back.

  “Sssh, sssh, don’t cry, it’s going to be all right, nothing’s so bad it can’t be helped. We’re here, right here… ” and Cholayna, hearing them, arose and took Magda’s burning hands in hers, rubbing them.

  “Come on, tell us, what did they do to you? You’ll feel better if you tell us, whatever it was. Let us help you.”

  “There’s nothing anyone can do,” Magda muttered, despairing, through her sobs. “They—they drugged me. With raivannin.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It—it shuts down—laran. So that—I couldn’t—it’s like being deaf and blind—” Magda felt her own words stumbling on her tongue, lifeless, conveying nothing of her real personality or her true thoughts, dead noises, like the mournings of an idiot.

  Cholayna put her arms around Magda, holding her tight. “What a ghastly thing to do! Can’t you see, Vanessa? It was so that she couldn’t warn Jaelle, or even reach her—do you understand? What a fiendish thing to do to anyone with psychic talent! Oh, Magda, Magda, my dear, I know I can’t really understand what it means to you, I can’t really imagine it, but I can understand just a little what it must mean to you!”

  Magda was completely discomposed; but, held warmly and comforted between her friends, she managed after a time to stop crying.

  “It might even be a help somehow,” Vanessa said in a whisper. “I notice that when they brought you back they didn’t bother to send Lexie and her stunner. They evidently thought that with your laran inoperative you couldn’t be dangerous to them. I get the feeling that they didn’t even bother to worry about us—me and Cholayna—because we didn’t have any kind of psychic powers.”

  Magda had not thought of that. She had been, she realized, so deeply in shock that she had not thought of anything.

  Have I, she wondered, come to rely so deeply on my laran that I forget everything else? That’s not right, either.

  “You’re right,” she said, pulling herself together and sitting upright, wiping her tears on her sleeve. What Vanessa said was true; they were unguarded. Something might be done. Without food, packs, or maps, and not even knowing whether it was daylight or dark outside, escape would be difficult; but it need not be impossible.

  Vanessa had her knife, a small affair, razor sharp, with a blade as long as her hand; it folded up, and perhaps they had not even recognized it as a knife. Cholayna was unarmed.

  “But I’m not afraid of anyone I can see,” she said grimly, making a gesture Magda recognized; she too had been trained in unarmed combat. Magda had not, until they were attacked in the robber’s village, used it to kill; but she had been impressed with Cholayna’s fighting skill.

  “It must be night outside,” she said, making an effort to rally her ordinary strengths. They might have disabled her laran, but after all, she had lived almost twenty-seven years without any hint that she possessed it; there was more to Magdalen Lorne than just laran.

  “Acquilara told them to guard me—at first—so that I could think over my answer till tomorrow; I had the idea they were winding things up for the night. Sooner or later, even this crew must sleep; they’re not some sort of Unsleeping Eye of Evil, they’re just women with some nasty powers and nastier ideas about using them. If we’re going to make a move, it should be while they’re sleeping.”

  “We might not even have to kill them,” Cholayna said. “We might be able to sneak out past them… ”

  “If we knew the way out,” Magda said, “and I suspect there will be guards, unless they are dangerously over-confident—”

  “They just might be,” Cholayna said. “Think of it, Magda, the psychology of power. This cave is isolated in the most godforgotten part of these isolated and godforgotten mountains. No one knows the way here. No one ever comes here at all. They probably guard it psychically from the rival crew, the Wise Sisterhood, but I’d bet a month’s pay that there won’t be any physical guards at all. They’ve immobilized you. They’ll take precautions about the rival Sisterhood tracking them down by laran. But they don’t even bother to guard Vanessa and me. Just you, and just your laran.”

  Cholayna was right. So they had only two problems: to wait until Acquilara and her cohorts were sleeping, so that they could find their way out of the cave (she had felt a draft of outside air blowing from the outer cave where they had challenged her, so it must be nearer the exit) and second, how to survive outside.

  The second was the most important. Vanessa was already ahead of her: “Supposing we do get out? We don’t have food, outer clothing, survival equipment—”

  “There’s sure to be food and clothing somewhere in these caves—” Cholayna protested.

  “Sure. Want to go to Acquilara and ask her to give us some?”

  “Another thing, even more important,” said Cholayna with a quiet determination, “Lexie. I’m not going to leave without her.”

  “Cholayna, you saw,” Vanessa protested. “She held a gun on us. Rescue, hell, she’s one of them!”

  “How do you know that there wasn’t a gun, or something worse that we couldn’t see, being held on her? I’d want to hear from her own lips that she wasn’t coerced before I’d abandon her here,” Cholayna said. “And Rafaella—did you see her, Magda, is she alive?”

  “Alive and well,” said Magda grimly. “She held me while they poured the drug down my throat. And I’ll guarantee nobody had a gun on her, or anything like that. She explained to me at considerable length what Acquilara was doing and why Jaelle and Camilla ought to be convinced to join them rather than the Sisterhood. I wasn’t convinced, but she seemed to be. I honestly don’t think we ought to waste time trying to rescue them, I got the impression that they were exactly where they wanted to be and it would be no use at all to try to persuade them to leave.”

  “I can’t believe that of Alexis,” said Cholayna in despair. “But then, I would never have believed she would hold a stunner on me, either.”

  Even without laran Magda could feel Cholayna’s sorrow. How hard it must be, to accept that Lexie was not a prisoner here, but a willing accomplice.

  But Cholayna brought herself sternly back to duty, and was searching her pockets. She brought out from the depths a wrapped package.

  “Emergency field rations. We need the fuel.” She broke the bar into three parts. “Eat.”

  Magda shook her head. “They gave me some hot tea with butter in it; I’m all right. You two share it.” She accepted only a mouthful of the dry, flavorless, but high-calorie ration, chewing it slowly. I’ll never complain about the taste of this stuff again, after butter-flavored tea smelling of dung-fire.

  Vanessa opened her little knife, had it ready. They folded up the blankets and slung them across their backs; they might need them as basic shelter, if they found their way out of the caves. Their eyes had adapted so well to the faintest of light within this cave that they could see the glow that came from the outer cave which was apparently the meetingplace and headquarters of Acquilara and the women of her cult.

  Magda was wondering: Acquilara’s people, where do they come from? Do they live here all year round, or meet here occasionally? They can’t live in these wilds, because there’s nothing to live on.

  There was no reason to waste time now in speculation. Magda didn’t care if they came here out of necessity, imitation, or sheer perversity, or because like Vanessa they had a passion for climbing mountains.

  They stole noiselessly toward the orange glow of the fires in the outer cave. Magda was aware of the dung-fire smell, of a flow of cool air on her cheek—these caves were well ventilated. This might in part explain why there was so little marked on the map in the Hellers, if some inhabitants lived in caves. But people needed more than simple shelter; they needed fire, clothing, food or some place to grow it. If there were many people living in this area, there would be more signs than this.
She did not for a single moment believe Lexie’s theory about a city in these wastelands, made invisible to observers by some unknown technology. A few isolated hermits, withdrawn here for spiritual purposes, perhaps. Not any great population.

  There were a couple of intermediate caves, one with steps leading downward into a vague glow. Probably torchlight somewhere, Magda thought. She had once seen a geological survey indicating that there were several active volcanoes in the Kilghard hills—which would have been obvious anyway from the presence of hot springs all through the countryside. There must be dormant ones here too, but nobody would be living in them.

  Vanessa whispered, “We should search these caves. There might be storerooms of food and clothing.”

  “Can’t risk it,” Cholayna said in an undertone. It was surprising, Magda thought, the way in which Cholayna, without discussion, had become their leader. “We could stumble on all them, sleeping down there. We need to get out fast and not be weighed down. We’ll manage somehow. Straight out, fight our way if we have to; don’t kill unless there’s no alternative, but don’t mess around, either.” She adjusted the blanket she had strapped across her back, making sure her arms and legs could move freely, and Magda remembered how she had dealt with the robbers in the village.

  Another few steps and they were in the rear mouth of the main cavern, or at least what Magda supposed to be so; the great cavernous room where she had spoken to Rafaella and Lexie under Acquilara’s eyes. She looked at the ring of scattered coals which had once been a fire, and shuddered, here they had held her… drugged her, a violation worse than rape, afflicting her very selfhood…

  “Steady.” Vanessa gripped her shoulder. “Easy, Lorne, you’re all right now.”

  Vanessa did not understand, but Magda firmly took hold of herself. They had stopped her, wounded her, but she was alive and still in possession of her senses, her self, her integrity.

  Yet if Acquilara was right, if they overdosed me to the point where I am permanently blinded of laran…