The Shattered Chain (33 page)

There was a moment of silence, then Jaelle whispered as if to herself, “In my own time and season,” and smiled, tightening her arms around Magda; and Magda knew that somehow, by instinct, she had hit on precisely the right thing to say. She felt Jaelle’s lips against her cheek for a moment; then, without a word, Jaelle pressed her hand, and went, on noiseless feet, to the connecting door, which closed a moment later behind her. She did not return.

Chapter

FOURTEEN

Day after day the snow fell, pouring from gray skies as if it had forgotten how to stop. Then, ten days after midwinter, Magda was awakened by Jaelle, sitting on her bed.

“Wake up, sister, the sun is shining!”

Magda ran to the window. The sky was filled with thick, low, puffy clouds through which erratic sunshine spilled; in the courtyard below, pathways were being cleared by bundled men with long shovels; and horses, their breath streaming in the cold, were being brought around for departing guests.

Magda dressed hastily in her traveling garments, not at all sorry to resume them. Every day their stay was prolonged meant another chance of revealing who they were.

Jaelle began slowly to dress. Since midwinter, she had spent her nights at Peter’s side, although she had been careful not to be found there in the morning by dom Gabriel’s servants. When Magda teased her gently about what seemed like hypocrisy, she had said, “I do not care a
sekal’s
worth what dom Gabriel thinks of me; he is not my guardian and I owe no man any account of my acts. I care still less what his servants think of me. The servants know, of course; they always know such things. But if no one of them sees me there, then there will be no one whose business it is to inform dom Gabriel. And although he probably knows, too—he is not a fool, and he has seen us looking at one another—if his servants told him in so many words, he would feel compelled to ask Rohana to reprimand me for putting the women of the Comyn to shame by sharing a commoner’s bed. And for his peace of mind Rohana would feel she had to come and scold me, even though she and I agreed together when I was sixteen that she was not my guardian and no longer the keeper of my conscience. And she would try not to offend me because she knows that I am a grown woman and by law the mistress of my own acts, and I would try not to be rude to her because I love her. And when we had all forced ourselves to say all these things, I would still go on sleeping with Peter whenever I chose; so it seems to me wiser not to start all that in motion.”

That reasoning seemed complicated to Magda, but she had to admit that it probably saved trouble for all of them. It was even possible that dom Gabriel, if it were brought directly to his notice, might feel compelled to call Peter personally to account. By the Amazon oath, Jaelle had declared her independence of his guardianship, but Magda had heard from Jaelle that some men still refused to recognize the Amazon Charter.

Peter joined them in the hallway; he took Jaelle’s hand in his as they went down the corridor, and Magda, watching, thought that the trip back to Thendara, with just the three of them, was likely to be awkward in more ways than one. She did not grudge Jaelle a single moment of her happiness—and that they were happy, no one who saw them together could possibly doubt—but it
was
going to be awkward, and she, Magda, would bear most of the awkwardness!

The immediate family of Ardais, with a bare handful of the house-party guests, and estate officials, usually had their meals in a small breakfast room away from the Great Hall. As they came in they heard a burst of laughter. Dom Kyril was telling a funny story, which was one of the commonest midwinter pastimes, at this season when all outdoor work came to a dead stop.

“…And everybody had to carry around a little torch to thaw out what he said before he could be heard; and this man made quite a bit of money by gathering up all the frozen speeches in a barrow, and carting them around to their owners. Only he wasn’t quite as careful as he should have been, to make sure that they were delivered to the right owners, and when the spring-thaw came, and all the words thawed out again, there was a tremendous amount of trouble. The mule-driver thawed out what he had yelled at his team, and found he had the words of an old lady talking to her pet birds; and the young mother scolding her little children got the mule-driver’s, and the children cried half the day; and the young wife telling her husband she was to bear his first son, got what the Free Amazon said to the man who—” He broke off and turned a full red as Jaelle giggled. “My apologies, cousin!”

Jaelle said dryly, “Kinsman, I heard all the jokes there are about Free Amazons, before I had turned fifteen; and most of them I heard in the Guild-house from my sisters. I would share them with you, but most of them would shock your delicate male sensibilities.” It was the turn of the others to laugh. “Finish your story, kinsman; this is one I have not heard.”

Kyril tried to take up where he had left off. “The aristocratic lady entertaining her guests was delivered the chatter of the men from the lowest tavern in the village, while the Keeper instructing her youngest novice found herself hearing what the Dry-Towner bellowed at his minion …”

“Enough,” dom Gabriel said, with a glance at Lady Alida. “It seems to me this is a tale for the barracks, son, not for your mother’s breakfast table.” He glanced up to greet the newcomers, his eyebrows raising in question as he saw the women in Amazon clothing.

Jaelle said, “Uncle, with your leave, we will ride for Thendara today; it is a long journey at this season, and my sister has duties in the Guild-house.”

“Impossible,” Lord Gabriel said. “This is only the snow-break, my girl; tomorrow at this hour it will be snowing harder than ever. This storm will last another ten days at the least; only the guests who live within a few hours’ ride are departing today. You would be well advised to remain until the spring-thaw, at least.”

“You are more than kind, Lord Ardais,” said Peter, “but we could not so long trespass on hospitality.”

“You couldn’t possibly travel more than a day’s ride before the snow blocked you again,” dom Gabriel said. “It seems to me nonsense, to spend the rest of the blizzard in a tent or travel-shelter when you could stay here in comfort.”

Magda and Peter knew he was right. And indeed, the weather in the Hellers at this season was proverbial; from midwinter to spring-thaw, only the mad or the desperate ventured more than an hour’s ride from their own firesides.

Toward afternoon the day darkened again, and the next morning the windows were a flurry of white snow, with the wind howling around the towers of Ardais like a banshee hard on the heels of its prey. And at breakfast dom Gabriel said triumphantly, “You see? You had better stay till spring-thaw, all of you!”

Afterward, Lady Alida drew Magda aside and said, “We should arrange for your testing,
mestra,—
today; it should not be much longer delayed.”, Magda was seized by such panic that she felt it must be perceptible to the
leronis.
As soon as she could get away she went in search of Lady Rohana, and found her in her private sitting room, working on the accounts of the estate. At first this might have surprised Magda; now she knew that every thread in the running of Ardais was spun through Lady Rohana’s slender six-fingered hands.

“Forgive me for disturbing you, my Lady; may I speak to you alone for a moment?”

Rohana motioned her inside and dismissed the lady companion without whom, it seemed, she could not move half a dozen steps. “Certainly; this can wait till spring-thaw, if need be. What troubles you, child?”

Magda felt an overwhelming sense of presumption; she had come to a Comyn lady to complain about one of the lady’s own caste. She said hesitantly, “The Lady Alida is determined to have me tested for
laran,
and I am afraid that if she explores my mind that way it may cause trouble for all of us.”

Rohana looked grave.
This is my fault; I should have sent the Terrans away.
She said, “We were both surprised
to
find you in the rapport when we were working in the matrix. Have you been trained in these powers among your own people?”

Magda shook her head. “Among us, there are not too many who even believe that such powers exist, Lady. Those who believe in them, or claim to be able to use them, are thought ignorant, superstitious, credulous.”

“I had heard that.” Rohana knew that had been one of Lorill Hastur’s reasons for the ban on too much mingling with the Terrans.
They do not believe in these powers; once convinced, they would be greedy to know all about them, and exploit them.

Rohana said, “Belief or not, you seem to have this kind of
laran,
child. How came you by it?”

“I do not know, Lady. All my life I have been able to use hunches, but I believed it was simply that I had a talent for adding up things which were subliminal—just a little below the conscious levels of perception. And there have been times when my dreams were not—not nonsense, but told me things I did not consciously know; so I have learned to take heed of them.”

Rohana leaned her chin thoughtfully on her hands. This meant they must reevaluate most of what they had learned about the Terrans. “Lorill is committed to a belief that Terrans and Darkovans are different races of beings, and that the Terrans are inferior; and he uses their lack of
laran
as proof.”

Magda said, “My Lady, I am not supposed to tell this outside the Terran Zone, either; but the Lord Hastur is mistaken. This is not a belief, but a fact that can be proved; Terran and Darkovan are one race. It is known to us beyond question that Darkover was settled by Terrans long ago by one of what we call the Lost Ships. In. an age before the faster-than-light ships that we have now, there were ships that were sent out from Terra—it was not an Empire then—and some of them were lost and never heard of again. There is evidence from your languages that it was settled by a ship whose very name I could give you, and the names of those aboard. It is most likely that this knowledge was lost to you centuries ago, Lady—probably to keep the survivors from pining too much for their lost homeland—but your people are truly Terrans.”

“Then psi gifts—you have them, too?”

“It is rumored that once they were more common than now; now they are very rare, and there was a time in our history when people used to pretend them, or feign them with clever devices and machinery, so they fell into disrepute and their use was considered charlatanry. But there seems evidence that once they were known.”

Rohana nodded. “There was a time in the history of the Comyn,” she said, “when we did selective breeding to fix these gifts in our racial heritage; it was a time of great tyranny, and not a time we are very proud to remember. It led to its own downfall, and we of the Comyn are still suffering the aftermath; not only in the distrust the common people have for us, but in that our fertility was lowered by inbreeding; and the gifts are linked to some dangerous recessive traits. But they are powerful, and when misused can be very dangerous. Which brings me to you, child. Normally, psi gifts waken in adolescence; when they waken later there are sometimes dangerous upsets and upheavals. Have you felt any strange sensations, any unexplained sickness without physical cause, any sense of being outside of your body and unable to get back, any wild emotional upheavals?”

“No, nothing like that,” Magda said. Then she remembered the moment of altered perspective during the healing, but that had passed off quickly and of itself.

Rohana asked her a number of searching questions about her dreams and “hunches,” and finally said, when Magda felt wrung out by the questioning, “It seems to me that your talents are slight, and that you have compensated for them very well. You could, if you wished, probably learn the use of
laran
with ease, and it would be interesting to see what use a Terran could make of this training. I would like to have the teaching of you; but it seems it would make more trouble than it is worth. You are committed elsewhere; and I have already gone against Lorill’s will as much as seems wise. Yet,” she added, almost wistfully, “if you demand this training, I could not refuse it to anyone with
laran;
and by law, birth and parentage cannot be used to refuse it to you.”

Magda said firmly, “I think I have quite enough trouble without that!”

. Rohana touched her wrist very lightly, that feather-touch Magda was beginning to guess was peculiar to telepaths among their own. “So be it, dear child. But if you ever have trouble with
laran,
you must promise to come to me.”