Thendara House (75 page)

“I know,” Ellemir said sorrowfully, “I have lost three; and the last only this season. Just before Midsummer.” Magda remembered Ferrika, crying in Marisela’s arms. Having been, though briefly, part of the circle, she understood the bond, and knew Ferrika was a very real part of this matrix circle - the only one on Darkover which was not hidden, guarded, shielded behind Tower walls. And Ferrika, though commoner born, was as much part of it as Lord Damon himself, or his brother Kieran, or the aristocratic Lady Hilary, who was married to Colin of Syrtis. Hilary’s one son Felix was somewhere in the circle of children around Ellemir, but Magda had forgotten which one he was.

You never wholly cease to grieve
, she had said to Jaelle.
But you learn to live with grief, and find a way through it. And you try again. And you open your heart to other children
.

Jaelle had said, very low, “As Kindra did. And as Camilla does still,” and from that day she had begun to sleep without nightmares of the little girl with red hair, walking away into the gray irrecoverable mists of the overworld.

Now Andrew came and said, “I am going to ride out and see that everything is well with the horses before the storm shuts down. Who wants to come with me, lads?”

All the boys, except the tiny one in Ellemir’s lap, raced out after him. They all called Andrew by the word which could mean Uncle, or foster-father, just as all of them - including her own two daughters - called Lady Callista by the intimate nickname meaning auntie, or foster-mother; but Lady Ellemir was simply “Mama.” Not only to her own and Ellemir’s children but to every child on the estate of Armida.

One of the girls grabbed down her cloak and demanded to be taken too. Ellemir said deprecatingly “Oh, Cassie - ” but Andrew only laughed, picking up his younger daughter.

“You shall come if you like, Cassilde n’ha Callista,” he said, setting her on his shoulder, and Callista explained, with a laugh, “She is Ferrika’s favorite, and Ferrika always said she had the making of a Renunciate! Andrew, you should not call her that, she might take it seriously!”

“Why not?” Damon asked, “We shall need rebels some day,” but Ellemir shivered. She said in a low voice, “Don’t, Damon. Time enough for that - ” and Damon patted Ellemir’s shoulder and stood close to her for a moment. It seemed to Magda that she could hear the curious rustle of the dark robes and the far echo like the calling of crows, as if the fates were flying overhead. Then Andrew went out with his brood; Ellemir called a nurse and had the other children taken upstairs to the nursery suite, and Lady Callista came to sit by the fire between Magda and Jaelle, fingering her
rryl
. She said, “Had I ever heard of the Renunciates, I think I might never have gone to Arilinn!”

Damon laughed and said, “They would not have accepted you in a Guild-house, Callie. I was in Council the year Lady Rohana stood before them and pledged herself for Jaelle, that she should be freed - “

Jaelle began dripping tears again, though she bent her head and tried to hide them, and her awareness of failure was painful to everyone in the circle around the fire. But Damon only said quietly, “Well, you must take your own seat there until you choose - what is it you say,
in your own time and season -
to bear a daughter for the Domain of Aillard. And if you do not, no doubt the Hastur-kin will survive, as they have for centuries.” But again Magda had the flickering vision of the little girl with red hair, running in a storm of autumn leaves behind the girl Ellemir had called Cassie. She did not understand it, but accepted.

Her
laran
, so recently wakened, was still not wholly under her control. She saw again the curious circle of women’s faces under their dark hoods and the sound of the crows calling far away, and her mind slipped away.

We are not concerned with the good of the Comyn, nor yet of the Terrans, nor of the Renunciates; we must think in terms of centuries. So many of the Comyn are loyal only to their own caste, and most of the Towers have become only their instruments, where once they served all for the common good. That is why the Altons and the Forbidden Tower have become our instruments for the moment. They too shall suffer for the moment, although in the centuries they shall attain perfection and enlightenment.

Magda whispered, almost aloud,
Who are you
?

You may call us the Soul of Darkover. Or the Dark Sisterhood…

“Magda, where are you?” asked Jaelle, and the vision faded swiftly, even as Magda sought to hold on to the awareness, the last fading words,
We are instruments of fate, even as you, sister
…

Callista touched Jaelle’s hand. Magda had been among them long enough to know what a rare gesture of intimacy this was. She said, “I was Keeper long enough to know how you feel, Jaelle. I did not share Ellemir’s acceptance of the duty to bear children for the Domain - “

“Duty?” declared Ellemir with a touch of annoyance. “Privilege! Anyone who would willingly refuse to have a child - well, I can only imagine she must be mad, or I am very sorry for her!”

Callista smiled affectionately at her twin. It was evidently an old argument between them. “Well, I promised you that you might bring up all of mine, and I have kept that promise,” she said, laughing. “I am fond enough of my children, and of yours too, and some day I suppose I will resign myself to give Andrew the son he wants, though it seems unfair that I, who would be richly content if I never had a child, bear them so easily, while you, who would like to have a child in your arms every ten moons - no, don’t deny it, Elli - can have them only with so much trouble and suffering.”

And loss
… They all heard it, but none of them spoke it aloud. But Ellemir said quietly, “The Alton blood is a precious heritage. I am proud to be the instrument of transmitting it.”

Jaelle said ruefully, “You sing the same song as Lady Rohana, and to the same tune. And yet you are a potential
leronis
, which must be very like being a Renunciate - having something better to do than other women - “

“I do not see how it can be better,” Ellemir said, “A racing mare, no doubt, is proud of winning all her races. Yet if she does not transmit that bloodline she might as well have stayed in her stable eating hay. We need the brood mare as well as the racing filly.”

“I will do my duty,” said Jaelle quietly. “I know, now, why I must.” The women around the fire seemed very close; to Magda it was like the peace that sometimes came at the end of Training Session, when they had argued and cried and fought their way to peace. Callista, she sensed, had fought longer and harder battles than any Renunciate, yet she seemed even more serene.

“And yet you are sworn to Jaelle, Margali,” said Callista. “Will it not trouble you if she turns from you to a man - since, as yet, there is no other way to bear a child, and Jaelle has promised this?” Callista was rehearsing in her mind the Oath of the Amazons, wishing there had been some such way for her as a young woman, and at last it burst out of her.

“Andrew and Damon are bound to one another, I think, by a stronger bond than to either of us. Men may swear such oaths. And yet for women, such an oath is always taken, it seems, as a thing for untried girls, and means only,
I shall be bound to you only so long as it does not interfere with duty to husband and children
. …”

Jaelle turned and took Magda’s hand. Memory flamed between them of the bond tested by the very edge of survival in the canyon; and of a night, during Jaelle’s convalescence, when they had turned to one another and each, taking her Amazon knife, had exchanged it with the other; the strongest bond known to women. Close as Rafaella was to Jaelle, and even though they had been lovers for a time, they had never exchanged knives in this way, and Magda knew it was a bond as close as marriage.

“Only one bond is closer,” said Ellemir, just audibly.

Callista’s fingers began to stray over her
rryl
again, and she said at last, “Can it be that a woman’s bond to a woman is not overturned by her commitments to others, just as her bond to a single child is not overturned when she bears another? I thought, when I bore Hilary, though I had not wanted her, that I loved her as I had never loved even Andrew, or you, Elli. And yet when Cassie was born, I loved her no less…”

As I love Andrew no less because my bond with Damon is eternal and strong
… Magda could hear Callista’s thoughts, and Jaelle said softly “Is it possible - that women can love without needing to possess what they love? Every woman knows that one day her child will leave her.” And for the first time without pain, she understood her mother’s dying words, without guilt.

It was worth it all, Jaelle. You are free
. With great pain, Jaelle had seen her own daughter leave her, and had known she would some day have courage to free her, again, to live her own life and bear her own risks.

“Peter - he wanted to possess me and the child,” said Jaelle, and Magda nodded, and Callista, her face still bent over the
rryl
, said, “It was a long time before Andrew understood… and even now…” and could say no more.

Ellemir said softly, “But Damon is not like that.” And for a moment all of the women in the circle knew who would father Jaelle’s child for the Aillard clan; because he would have no need to possess woman or child, but could leave them free to their own heritage and destiny.

The silence and the crackle of the fire and the soft, absent-minded sounds of Callista’s hands on her harp were broken by Andrew’s laughter.

“No, no! No more! I am not a chervine to carry you all on my back! Run to the kitchen and find some bread and honey, and let me talk to the grown-ups! Yes, Domenic, I promised that you and Felix should ride with me tomorrow unless the snow is too bad, and if it is, when it clears! And yes, Cassie, you may come too! Now, for the love of heaven, run along, all of you. I saw some apples in the kitchens - go and get them.”

The children scattered and Andrew came back into the hall. He said something to Damon about the stock and pasture shelters for the snow, then joined the women at the fire.

“Play for us, Callie,” he said, and she began to sing an old ballad of the hills. Damon and Ellemir were sitting close together on the foot of Jaelle’s couch, and Magda felt a moment of deep strangeness. It was as if a door had slammed between herself and the life among the Amazons that she had loved and sworn to. The Terran life, too, was gone, and she felt cold and alienated. She was sworn to Jaelle, yet she could see that this bond held no promises of security, either. And though she knew the strength of the
laran
circle, she did not know if it would be enough.

Andrew leaned over, and put a friendly arm around her.

“It’s all right,” he said, hugging her close with a brotherly smile, “Listen, girl, do you think I don’t know how you’re feeling?” Magda’s Amazon spirit recoiled at that careless “girl”; I am a woman, she thought, not a girl, but then she knew it was only Andrew’s way; like Ellemir, he had the habit of protecting. Like herself, he would have made a good mother.

Are Andrew and I going to spend the next ten years trying to decide whose business it is to protect all the rest of us here in the Forbidden Tower
? Magda wondered, and gasped at the knowledge of how much that implied.

Andrew said gently, “But that’s what the Forbidden Tower is all about, Magdalen.” He alone chose to use her full name, without shortening it. “There isn’t one of us here who hasn’t had to tear up our old lives like waste paper and start over again. Damon’s had to do it two or three times. It isn’t safety, or security. But - ” his arms tightened around her for a moment again, “we’ve got each other. All of us.”

And for a moment, again, Magdalen Lorne heard the faint far calling as of distant crows - or fates? - and the rustle of wings.

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[scanned anonymously]

[July 17, 2003 - v1 html proofed and formatted by Luthor for ELF]

A note from the publisher concerning:

THE FRIENDS OF DARKOVER

So popular have been the novels of the planet Darkover that an organization of readers and fans has come into being, virtually spontaneously. Several meetings have been held at major science fiction conventions, and more recently specially organized around the various “councils” of the Friends of Darkover, as the organization is now known.