The Shattered Chain (39 page)

Jaelle raised her flushed face. “I feel now that I would,” she said in anguish, “but how can I be sure? How can I know he will love me in the evil times that come to everyone? How can I even know what
I
will be then? And yet—it seems that it is worth even this. Did you never love anyone, Rohana? Did you never want to give up everything—everything, your pledged way of life, your honor,
everything
because you could not—could not part from—” She put her head down on Rohana’s knees, and cried desperately again.

Rohana’s heart ached for her, and for a long-healed wound that Jaelle’s words had torn.
Yes, there was a time when I would have given up everything: my children, the life I had made for myself, Gabriel
—
yet the price seemed all too heavy to pay.
At last she said, faltering, “There is nothing in this world that is not bought for a price. Even Kindra; she never regretted her oath, but she grieved to the day of her death for the children she had abandoned. It seems to me that is the one flaw in the Amazon oath; you women who take it guard yourselves from the risks all women take willingly. Perhaps it is only that every woman must choose what risks she will bear.”

Jaelle listened, and the words fell heavy on her heart.
I came too young to the Amazon oath; most women make these renunciations in grief, knowing that they are real privations. To me it seemed only that I renounced slavery and embraced freedom. I did not weep when I took the oath. I could never truly understand why so many women made the oath only with tears …

“You love Piedro. Will you stay with him?”

“I—I must, I cannot leave him now.”

“Will you bear his children, darling?”

“If he—if he wants them.”

“But your oath binds you to bear them only if
you
want them,” Rohana said. “You must choose, and perhaps it is that which I feel so wrong; that you women claim the right to choose.”

“I will never believe that,” Jaelle flared at her. “A woman not free to choose is truly a slave.”

“But even the freedom to choose does not always guarantee happiness,” Rohana said, capturing the cold hands again and caressing them. “I have heard old Amazons lamenting their childlessness, when it was too late to change their minds. And I—”She swallowed hard, for she had never said this to any living being; not to Gabriel, not to Melora, not to Kindra, who for so long had shared her innermost thoughts. “I did not want children, Jaelle. Every time I knew myself pregnant, I wept and raged. You weep because you are not to bear a child, but I cried more when I knew I was. Once I flung a silver bowl at Gabriel’s head, and I hit him, too, and I shrieked at him that I wished I had killed him and he could never do this to me again. I hated being pregnant, I hated having little children around to trouble me, I feared childbirth worse, I think, than you feared the sword that gave you this.” With light fingers she traced the still-crimson scar across Jaelle’s smooth cheek. “Had I been free to choose, I would never have borne a child. And yet now that the children are grown, and I see that they are a part of Gabriel and myself which will survive when we are gone—now, when it would have been too late to change my mind, I find I am glad that the laws of my caste forced me to bear them, and after all these years, I have forgotten—or forgiven—all the unhappiness.”

Jaelle said hoarsely, not wanting to show how much this had moved her, “I think, again, that you know it is too late for regrets; so you tell yourself that you have none.”

“I did not say that I had no regrets, Jaelle,” said Rohana, very low, “only that everything in this world has its price, even such serenity as I have found after so many years of suffering.”

“You truly believe that you have paid a price? I thought you told me now that you had everything a woman could desire!”

Rohana lowered her eyes. She swallowed hard, and for a moment she remembered a day, years ago, when she had looked into Kindra’s gray eyes and known the price she would pay. She could not face Jaelle; she did not want to cry. She said, “Everything but freedom, Jaelle. I think that would have been too dearly bought. But I am not sure.” Her voice broke. “Nothing in this world is sure but death and next winter’s snow. Maybe I do not want to be sure. The price I have paid is my freedom. You have your freedom; you are oath-bound to take it even now when you no longer want it. But at what price, Jaelle?”

Chapter

SEVENTEEN

Magda woke at twilight, to see Jaelle sitting on the foot of her bed. She looked pale, as if she had been crying; but she was calm.

“Sister,” she said, “I know that you took our oath unwillingly; in a sense it was forced from you. Normally that would not matter; but you are a Terran, and you took it without the knowledge of what it truly implied. Do you want to petition for release from your oath, Margali? If you do, I will speak for you before the Guild-mothers.”

Magda knew that this would solve some of her deep inner conflicts; more, it would free her from the fear of Terran retribution, not directed toward herself alone, but toward those who had aided her to desert her original loyalties. She considered it for a moment, but then she was seized by revulsion. Go back to her life in the Terran Zone, and the narrow, sterile world she had lived there, circumscribed by the little work of importance that a woman could do? She realized now that even through her tears and terror when she had taken the oath, it had still seemed a major decision in her life; and more, a genuine decision.
Here is a way I can follow. This is what I want, whatever the price I must pay.

I was not forced to abandon Peter to death. Jaelle saved me from paying this price. But sooner or later I knew there would be a day of reckoning; and now I will meet it, whatever it may be.

She used the formal Amazon phrase. “Oath-mother,” she said, “I told you: I chose of my free will to honor my oath, and I will keep it, until death take me or the world end.”

“Even if it makes trouble for you with your own people, Margali?”

She said what she had said to Darrill on the journey: “I am not so sure they are my own people anymore.
^”
Her voice was not quite steady. “I have renounced allegiance to—
to family, clan, warden or liege lord.”

Jaelle took her hands; suddenly she leaned forward and kissed her, as she had done when she accepted her oath. She said, “Allegiance for allegiance, my sister. We are sworn. But I think you must face the fact—we must face it together—that it may make grave trouble for you.”

“I know that,” said Magda, and could not keep from trembling a little. “If it had not been for Lady Rohana, I think Peter would have insisted on taking me to the Terran Headquarters, even if he had to do so by force, and under arrest.”

“A beautiful reward for your loyalty to him,” Jaelle said angrily, “But for you, he would be dead in Sain Scarp this moment!”

Magda felt compelled to defend Peter’s point of view. “He is a Terran agent,” she said. “To him, I think, loyalty to the Empire transcends any loyalty to persons.”

“That is not right,” Jaelle said, troubled.

Magda thought,
It’s not a point of view any Darkovan can understand; so in many ways Peter is worse off than I. He is Darkovan in so many ways, he can never live at peace within the Empire; but he will never be free to renounce those very things which would prevent him from being wholly at home in Darkover … and he will always be torn, an exile. …

“Jaelle,” she said, “you told me once that the Free Amazons were allowed to accept any lawful work. If the Terran authorities would give me a leave of absence to honor my obligation to the Guild-house for their training, then when I had completed it, would I be allowed to continue the work I have been doing for the Terrans?”

“Do you mean that you would spy on us?”

“No, of course not,” Magda said; the very idea was repellent. “But to build a bridge between our worlds; to help my people better understand all the small ways of your society, your language, your laws and customs—even if I did nothing more than my old work, to keep our translators from unwittingly offending against your customs; and I think I could do more, much, much more.”

“That would not violate your oath,” Jaelle said. “By our Charter you may accept any lawful work anywhere. That means that as a sworn Amazon you may work for the Terrans—” She broke off, as if she had seen a blazing light, and said almost in a whisper, “And so can I.”

“How would that be arranged, Jaelle?”

“However you wish,” Jaelle said. “By our Charter’s laws, you must pay a portion of your earnings to the Guild. We renounce family and home, but this means that we have the protection of home and family always. Whenever you are sick, pregnant, unable to work or in a strange city, you can always turn to the Guild-house or to any Amazons there, and find a home where you can be cared for. Your tithes go to maintain the Guild-houses, and you have always sisters and friends there, and you have a lawful right to them. You need never live within a Guild-house unless you choose, although if you choose to live there you are expected to help with the maintenance of the house, to take your turn at housekeeping or gardening or whatever needs to be done. But it is our true home, where we come as others come to their family homes, wherever else we may go.”

Magda had known no family life since her father’s death; she and Peter had never seriously tried to make a home together. The thought of having a true home, a Darkovan home, to which she could go not as a stranger or a guest, but as of right, gave her a sense of warmth she had not known for years.

Jaelle said, “We can go there in old age when we are past work, or have our children fostered there.”

“You bear children, then?”

“If we wish,” Jaelle said, and the memory of Rohana’s words brought a fleeting sadness to her face. “Did you think we took Keeper’s vows? Our daughters can be fostered in the Guild-house till they are grown, when they can choose for themselves whether to join the Guild or to marry. Our sons are usually given to their fathers to rear, after they are weaned, but if your child’s father is unwilling, or you think him unfit to raise your child, or if you do not know who fathered your child—then you can arrange to have him fostered as you wish; though no boy over five years old may live in the Guild-house.” She was thinking out loud; suddenly she came back to the present. “Well, you will learn all that during your Guild-house training, sister.”

Was it possible that she could share her two worlds? It seemed almost too good to be true. Magda said, hesitating, “You know that Lorill Hastur has forbidden contact between the Terran Zone and his people. It is easy to defy him in the Hellers, Jaelle; but here in Thendara?”

“Yes, that is one of the gravest difficulties,” Jaelle said, “but Rohana is pledged to speak to Lorill. Her heart dwells in two worlds, too, and I think it is larger than either of them. And I think it is time that the people of Darkover, not the Comyn lords alone, knew something of the Terrans, and what they can do for our world. You heard Gabriel speak about Lorill’s ban on trade. Hastur’s will is not the voice of God, even to the Comyn! Let us find out what some of the others think. Will you come with me now to the Guild-house, sister, and see what we can do to settle this, before we meet tomorrow with Lord Hastur—and with your Terrans? Then we will know where we stand.”

Magda hesitated. Then, knowing this was the moment of choice, she nodded.

“Yes, I will.”

The next morning, the Lady Rohana sat beside Lorill Hastur in the small Council chamber, awaiting the arrival of the Terran coordinator. Peter Haldane sat across from them, looking both apprehensive and angry. Rohana could not read his thoughts, but she did not have to. This morning, Magda and Jaelle had vanished, and she was certain they had taken refuge in Thendara Guild-house. But they had left a message saying they would appear before Hastur at the Council, and it was not Rohana’s duty to explain further when they had not.

Hastur leaned over and asked her in an undertone, “This was the man taken by Sain Scarp? Is he truly identical to Kyril? The resemblance is extraordinary; are we dealing here with Cherillys’ Law?”

Rohana laughed. “I have not remembered Cherillys’ Law since I was a psi monitor in Dalereuth Tower with you and Melora and Leonie,” she said, “But no, it is not that; the Terran has only five fingers on either hand.”

“Still, a remarkable likeness, and it goes to bear out what you said about a single race; although it seems fantastic to believe that our people could have come from another star,
or
that we would ever have permitted ourselves to forget such an heritage. And you told me that the woman has
laran.
May I ask how you found that out? I gave orders that no Terran was to witness a matrix operation.”