The Saga of the Renunciates (108 page)

“Why do you say I have renounced my womanhood, when you find me in the company of my sisters of the Guild-house?”

Acquilara seemed to sneer.

“Where else could you swagger and play the man so well? Do you think I cannot read you as a woodsman reads the tracks in the first snow? Do you dare deny that for years you lived among men as a man, and now you think you can become a woman again? Your heart is a man’s heart—have you not proven that by taking a woman lover?”

Magda watched Camilla’s face, angry and pained. Surely this woman was a
leronis
, or how could she strike so precisely at Camilla’s defenses? Yet she, who had been Camilla’s lover so long, knew better than anyone alive how unjust it was. Sexless as Camilla’s mutilated body might seem, the body of the
emmasca
, Magda knew better than any other that Camilla was all woman.

“You, who have denied the Goddess in yourself, how will you justify yourself to Her?”

Camilla was on her feet, and her hand was gripping her knife. Magda wanted to jump up, physically prevent her from whatever rash thing she might contemplate; yet she sat as if paralyzed, unable to move a muscle to warn or prevent her friend.

“I will justify myself to the Goddess when she justifies herself to me,” Camilla said. “And I will justify myself to her, not to her envoy. If you were sent to guide us to that City, then guide us. But don’t venture to test us; that is for her, not her lackeys.” She stood over the
leronis
, and for a moment it was a contest of arrogance.

Magda was never sure what happened next. There was a flash, something like blue fire, and Camilla reeled backward; she fell, rather than sat down, on her sleeping bag.

“You think you know the Goddess,” stated Aquilara, and now her voice was all contempt. “You are like the peasant women who pray to the bright Evanda to make their garden bloom, and their dairy animals to drop their calves without blight, and to bring them handsome virile lovers and healthy babies. And they pray to the sheltering Avarra to ease their pains of birth and death. But they know nothing of the Goddess. She is the Dark One, cruel and beyond the comprehension of mortal women, and her worship is secret.”

“If it is secret,” Vanessa said—all this time she had sat silent on her sleeping bag, listening but not speaking— “why do you tell us about it?”

Aquilara rose abruptly to her feet.

She said, “You girls—” the term was frankly one of contempt now, and included even the mature Cholayna in its scorn—“you think you will use the Goddess? The truth is that she will use you in ways you cannot even begin to contemplate. She is cruel. Her only truth is Necessity. But like all of us, you are grist for her mill, and she will grind you up in it. Your friend saw this, and she has begged a place for you. Be ready when she calls you!”

She turned her back without looking round, and strode out of the room. The apprentice picked up the seat without a word and followed her.

Arlinda was still cowering against the wall in an agony of fear.

“You should not have angered her,” she whispered, “she is very powerful! Oh, you should not have made her angry.”

“I don’t care if she’s the Goddess herself,” Jaelle said, brusquely, “she rubbed me the wrong way. But if she’s got Lexie and Rafaella, we’ve got to play along with her, at least for a while.”

Vanessa had resumed combing her hair and was now braiding it into half a dozen small braids, for tidiness. “Do you think she has Lexie and Rafaella, then?”

Jaelle turned to Arlinda. “Did Rafi go with her?”

Arlinda shook her head and mumbled, “Nay, how am I to know of her comings and goings? She is a
leronis
, a sorceress, whatever she wills, so she will do… ”

Magda was shocked, even horrified. Arlinda had seemed so strong, so hearty and tough, and now she was mumbling as if she were a senile old woman. Soon after, she kissed Jaelle good night and went away, and the women of the party were left alone.

“Better get to bed,” Jaelle said. “Who knows what might be up for us in this place? Keep your knives handy.”

Vanessa looked at her in shock. She said, “I thought you said we were as safe here as in the Guild-house, with Arlinda—”

“Even a Guild-house can catch fire or something. Arlinda’s changed from when I knew her ten years ago. Sitting shaking in a corner while the old beldame bullies her guests—ten years ago she’d have slung Aquilara, or whatever that so-called
leronis
calls herself, out into the street on her backside.”

“You don’t think she’s a
leronis
?” Magda asked.

“Hell, no, I don’t.” Jaelle lowered her voice, glancing cautiously around as if she thought Aquilara might be lurking unseen in a corner.

“She took a lot of pains to impress us with how much she knew about us already. About Camilla having lived as a man, for instance. Anything she
could
have used against us, she would have used to put us at a disadvantage.” Jaelle stopped and glanced from Cholayna to Vanessa.

“But she couldn’t even guess that you three were Terrans. What the hell kind of
leronis
is
that
!”

You’re right.” Magda frowned, trying to decide what this might mean. “She misses things that even Lady Rohana would have picked up. This ‘great
leronis
’ would appear to be rather lacking in mental abilities, although,” she added grimly, “she obviously has some physical ones.”

Camilla was still sitting on her bedroll looking stunned. Magda went to her.

“
Breda
, did she hurt you?”

For a frightening minute Camilla did not reply and Magda had a brief memory picture of Arlinda, maundering suddenly like a senile old woman. Then Camilla drew a long breath and let it out.

“No. Not hurt.”

Vanessa asked, “What precisely did she do to you, Camilla? I could not see… ”

“How should I know? That devil-spawn in the shape of a woman but pointed her finger at me, and it seemed that my legs would no longer hold me up; I was falling through an abyss torn by all the winds of the world. Then I found myself sitting here without wit to open my eyes or speak.”

Vanessa said, “If
that
was a representative of your Sisterhood, I do not think very highly of them.”

Cholayna, in her guise as a professional, was doing a mental analysis. “You say, Jaelle, that she hasn’t the mental abilities one would expect from most of the Comyn. The physical abilities she displayed could be duplicated by a stunner. She seemed to rely on presence and the old ‘I know what you’re thinking’ trick. She reminded me of someone running a confidence game.”

“You’re right,” Vanessa agreed. She drew herself up and solemnly intoned, “Trust me, dear children! I am the personal representative of the One True Goddess; I see all, know all; you see nothing, know nothing.” She dropped the pose and looked thoughtful. “She said we would be
summoned
. What do you suppose she meant by that?”

“I have no idea,” said Jaelle, “but I would go nowhere—not out of this house, not to the next room, not to the
cristoforo
heaven itself—at
her
summoning.”

“I don’t see that we have a choice,” Cholayna said. “If she, whoever and whatever she is, has Anders and Rafaella, or even knows where they are… ”

Jaelle nodded bleakly. “Right. But we’ll hang on here as long as we can. For the moment we should get some rest, be ready for whatever it is they may be planning for us. Want me to take first watch?”

Cholayna put away the little book in which she had been writing. Vanessa tied her braided hair into a scarf and snuggled down in her sleeping bag. Camilla backed herself up against the one wall of the room where there were no doors, and said to Magda in an undertone, “I feel like a fool; yet for the first time in many years I am afraid to be alone. Come and sleep here beside me.”

“Gladly,” Magda said, positioning her sleeping bag so that Camilla lay protected between her and the wall. “I’m sure that creature—I refuse to call her
leronis
— would send us nightmares if she could manage it.”

The fire burned low; Jaelle had kept one of the lamps lit, and she was sitting up on her sleeping bag, hand ready to her knife. Magda touched the hilt of her own knife… Jaelle’s knife; years ago, they had exchanged knives, in the age-old Darkovan ritual binding them to one another. It was familiar now as her own hand.

She thought, now that we are safe here I should try and let them know, in the Forbidden Tower, that we are safe. And I would like to know that the children are well and content. She composed herself for sleep, one hand touching the silken bag at her throat where her matrix rested. Drowsing, she let her mind start to range outward. An instant later she was in the Overworld, looking down through grayness at her apparently sleeping form, the motionless bodies of her four companions.

But although she tried to move outward, into the gray world seeking the landmarks of the Forbidden Tower, something seemed to hold her in the room. She hung there motionless, vaguely sensing that something was wrong. She found herself glancing toward each of her companions in turn, tensed for flight but held there by some force she could not overcome. She was not accustomed to this, and while, out of her body, she was free of physical sensation, she felt an anxiety, a hovering fear that simulated real pain.

What could be wrong? All seemed normal; Jaelle, sitting quietly alert; Vanessa and Cholayna, the older woman lying on her side, her face hidden in the pillow and only the pale shock of hair visible, Vanessa burrowed under her blankets like a child. Camilla was asleep too, tossing and turning unquietly and muttering to herself, her face twisted into a frown. Magda silently damned Matera in every language she could think of.

Softly at first, then louder, she heard a small sound in the silence of the overworld; it was the calling of crows. Then she could see them, hooded forms, misty images gradually becoming more defined. For an instant she had a formless sense of well-being.
Yes, this is the right path. We are doing what we were born to do
.

Then the uneasiness came back, stronger than before; the crows squawked their alarm cry, raucous, shrilling through the overworld. Then a sharper scream rang through the room which was not really the room at all. Hawks! From somewhere, dozens of hawks were in the room, angling, stooping down on the crows in every direction. A great wave of emotion, combined of anger, frustration, and jealousy, emanated from the hawks—it reminded Magda of the Terran legend of Lucifer and his fallen angels, cast out from heaven and forever trying to keep others from what they had lost for themselves.

A pair of hawks, feathers falling, speckled with blood, made a dive at Camilla, and Magda snapped back into her body as Camilla woke screaming.

Or had there been any sound at all? Camilla was sitting bolt upright in her sleeping bag, her eyes wild, her arms outstretched to ward off some invisible menace. Magda touched her shoulder, and Camilla blinked and truly woke.

“Goddess guard me,” she whispered. “I saw them; ten thousand devils… and then you came, Margali, with… ” she stopped and frowned, and at last said in a confused whisper, “
Crows
?”

“You were dreaming, Kima.” The rarely used, rarely permitted nickname was the measure of Magda’s disturbance.

Camilla shook her head. “No. Once before you spoke of the emissaries of the Dark Lady as taking crow form. I am not sure I understand it… ”

“I don’t either.” But as she spoke Magda had a sudden vision of Avarra, Lady of Death, mistress of the forces which break down and carry away that which is past usefulness; crows, scavengers and carrion birds, cleaning up the debris of the past.

Hawks; raptors, preying on the living…

Vanessa mumbled in protest, burrowing deeper into her sleeping bag. Magda glanced with compunction at her companions. She should not disturb them. She got up and went to the fireside, kneeling beside Jaelle.

She asked in a whisper, “Did you see anything?” and Jaelle started from an unquiet doze.

“Ayee—! What a guardian I am! We could all have been murdered in our beds here!” She made a nervous gesture at the fire. “I saw in the flames… women, robed and hooded, with the faces of hawks, circling about us… Margali, I do not like your Sisterhood.”

Magda beckoned Camilla forward.

“We saw. Both of us. I think the hawks are—are Aquilara’s crew, if that makes any sense to you, and that they have nothing to do with the
real
Sisterhood. But the real ones are near us. They will protect us, if we listen. But if we listen to Aquilara and her threats and summonings… ”

“Yes,” said Camilla gruffly, “I too have had a warning. If we stay here, we might better have died at the hands of the robbers. It is not our bodies in danger this time; they strike at the inner bastions of our minds. Our souls, if you will. It is not Arlinda or her girls that I fear, but they have somehow let this place be opened… ” she stopped and said in confusion, “I do not know what I am talking about. Is this what you two mean when you speak of
laran
?”

Jaelle looked from one to the other, dismayed. She said, “What do you suggest that we do?”

“Get the hell out of here,” Camilla said, “not even waiting for daylight.”

“A poor return for hospitality,” Jaelle said, hesitant.

“Hospitality indeed,” Camilla said dryly, “loosing such a sorceress—I will not give her the honorable title of
leronis
— upon us.”

But Jaelle was still troubled.

“Cholayna was so far right,” she said. “If Aquilara has Rafi—and Lieutenant Anders—I do not see how we can afford to leave them in her power. If she can guide us to them—”

“I think she lied, to deceive us into following her,” Camilla said.

“But in the name of the Goddess herself, for what reason?” Magda asked. “What would she want with us, and why would she try to deceive us anyhow?”

“I don’t know,” Camilla said, “but I wouldn’t believe a word she said. If she told us Liriel was rising on the eastern horizon I would look at the sky to be certain.”

For seven years it has distressed me that Camilla would not use the
laran
to which she was born. Now when she does I am trying to argue with her
, Magda thought. Yet from Jaelle she picked up the very real concern; on their actions in the next few hours, the very lives of Lexie and Rafaella could depend.

She thought,
damn them both
, and quickly retracted the thought. She had known for years that a thought was a very real thing. She did not have the
laran
of the Alton Domain, where a murderous thought could kill, but she realized wearily that she did not want any harm to come to Rafaella, who was Jaelle’s oldest friend. She felt that she would like to box Lexie’s ears, but she did not really want to see her hurt or killed. What they had done was unwise, foolish, and tiresome, but death or damnation would be too great a penalty.

What then was the answer?

“Just supposing that she told the truth—even if her purpose could have been to confuse us like this,” Magda said, “and that she really does have Lexie and Rafaella? What do we do then?”

“Wait perhaps till she comes back, and I will guarantee to get it out of her,” Camilla said; she put her hand on her knife, then let it fall, her face grim. “I was not so good at getting it out of her that way, was I?”

Jaelle said, “No. We can’t fight her like that. I think that kind of fighting would be the worst thing we could do. She would be able to use the—the emotion of it against us. Do you know what I am trying to say, Magda?”

“She could make us fight among ourselves. Against each other. That may be all the mental power she has, but I am sure she could do that or something worse. Look what she seems to have done to Arlinda.”

“But in the name of all the Gods and Goddesses there ever were,” demanded Camilla, “what would her
reasons
be? You cannot tell me that she came into our lives, lied to us and sent her demons against us just for amusement! Even if she has a bizarre sense of humor and a taste for lying, what could she possibly hope to gain? Evil she may be, but I cannot believe in the evil sorceress who indulges in wickedness and mischief-making for no reason whatsoever. What does she think she can get from us? If it was theft she had in mind, she would not need to resort to this rigmarole. It would be simpler to bribe Arlinda’s dogs and watchwomen.”

“Maybe,” said Jaelle tentatively, after a long time, “it’s a way of keeping us away from the real ones. The real Sisterhood.”

Camilla said scornfully, “I can just about manage to believe in one Sisterhood of wise priestesses watching over humankind in the name of the Dark Lady.
Two
of them would strain my credulity well past the limit, Shaya.”

“No, Camilla. Seriously. The legends all say we will be tested. If they are what people say, they must have enemies. Real enemies, or why would they be so secret in their doings? To me it is not hard to believe that there might be—well, others, a rival Sisterhood, maybe, who hate everything they stand for and will stop at nothing to try to keep anyone from getting through to them. And the real Sisterhood let it go on because it—well, it makes it harder for the serious aspirants to get through to them. I mean, I can’t imagine they would want to be bothered with the kind of people who would listen to Aquilara, or her kind.”

“You have missed your profession, Jaelle. You should be a ballad-singer in the marketplace; never have I heard such inventive melodrama,” Camilla said.

Jaelle shrugged. “Whether or no,” she said, “it leaves our main question still unanswered. Whatever this Aquilara may be, liar, thief, mischief-maker or representative of some rival Sisterhood, the problem facing us is still the same. Does she have Rafaella and Lexie, or was she lying about that too? And if she does, what can we do about it, and how can we tell the difference? If either of you has any answer to
that
question, melodrama or no, I will listen with great willingness. I am reluctant to leave here without knowing for certain whether Rafaella is in that woman’s hands.”

It always came back to that, Magda thought in frustration. They were beginning to go around and around without getting anywhere, and she said so.

“You might as well get some sleep, Jaelle. Camilla and I are not likely to sleep much after that—” she hesitated for a word, reluctant to say
attack;
it might have, after all, been a dream shared among the three of them and born of their mistrust and fear of this place. But Jaelle picked it up.

She said hesitating, “It is not really late. If we had not all traveled so far, none of us would try to sleep this early. Arlinda’s apprentices may well be awake, perhaps drinking or dancing in their common-room, or even lounging in the bath, and I will go and try to talk with them. Perhaps one of them spoke with Rafi while she was here.”

“A fine idea. Let me go with you,
chiya
,” Camilla suggested, but Jaelle shook her head.

“They will speak more freely to me if I’m alone. Most of them are my age or younger, and there are two or three of them I used to trust. I’ll see if they’re still there and if they’ll talk to me.” She slid her feet into boots, said, “I’ll try to be back before midnight,” and slipped away.