City of Sorcery (42 page)

“No. Can’t you see the difference? Aquilara’s full of arrogance and - and hates you and me because we really
have laran
and she doesn’t though she wanted us to think she did. I’m thinking of - well, Marisela. She doesn’t argue about why life happens, or try to convince or convert anyone, she just does what she needs to. I want to know what it is that she knows. The legend says if you get there under your own energies they have to take you in, and if they don’t I’ll sit on their doorstep until they do.”

The idea had its attractions;
to know what life was truly all about, to fling yourself straight at the source of wisdom and demand to know
. Yet there were other duties, obligations, responsibilities.

“Would you really go after this kind of wisdom and leave me alone, Shaya?”

“You wouldn’t be alone, Margali. You’re not the kind of person to be alone. And anyway, you have Camilla - “

Magda gripped her hands tight.

“Jaelle -
bredhiya
, my love, my freemate, do you really think it’s the same thing?” Love wasn’t like that, Magda knew, it couldn’t be pigeonholed that way. “I simply cannot believe you are jealous that Camilla and I - “

“No, oath-daughter.” It was rare that Jaelle called her that now, but it came from the first of their many pledges to one another. “Never jealous, not that. Only - ” Jaelle held her hands tightly; in the reflected moonlight, snow-light, her face was very pale, her great dark-lashed eyes somber in the pale triangle of her face. It seemed for a moment that a flood of memories reached out and enfolded them.

Jaelle looking up at her like a trapped animal, awaiting the knife-stroke of the hunter; she had saved Jaelle from bandits who would have killed them both, but now Jaelle in turn was prisoner, not the captor who had forced the Amazon Oath on her unwilling; now with a single stroke of her knife Magda could free herself, she need not even kill. She need only walk away, leaving the wounded Jaelle to die of exposure.

Jaelle, in the cave where together they had faced floodwater, death, abandonment, starvation. Jaelle, for whom her
laran
had wakened. The exchange of knives, the oath of freemates
.

Jaelle, close to her in the Tower circle, bonded by the matrix link, closer than family, closer than sex, closer than her own skin…

Jaelle, clinging to her, her face covered with the sweat of hard labor, the night Cleindori was born; rapport between them so close that years later, when Shaya was born, even the stress of birth was not new to her; less conscious of agony than of fierce effort, terror, triumph and delight; Cleindori in a very real sense her own child, since she too had struggled to bring her to life
….

Whatever path she chose, always it seemed that Jaelle had been there before, and she only a clumsy follower in her steps. Even now…

Then the rapport fell away (how long had it lasted? A lifetime? Half a second?) and Jaelle said quietly, “No,
bredhiya mea, viyha mea
, not jealous of Camilla. No more than you are jealous of Damon.”

But there had been a time, Magda remembered, when she
had
been jealous of Damon, painfully, blindly, obsessively jealous of Damon. She could not bear that either, any more than she could bear, after she and Jaelle had come together as if destined, that any man could give Jaelle anything she could not. Now she was ashamed of that brief jealousy, her fear that Jaelle could love her less because she loved the father of her child. She had fought through and triumphed, still loving Jaelle, and loving Damon just as much
because
he could give Jaelle the one thing she could not, for all her love.

“The one thing that could make me hesitate would be leaving you, Margali. Even Cleindori has a dozen who would be glad to rear her if I could not. But you have something to return for. I don’t. What do I have ahead of me but to go back, take the Aillard seat in Council when Lady Rohana is gone? And why should I want to do that? In the Renunciates, and also in the Forbidden Tower, we are working so that the Domains need not depend on Councils, and Comyn, who try to keep
laran
in their own hands for their own good. The Hasturs who rule the Council don’t want independent subjects, thinking for themselves, any more than they want independent women.”

“Then isn’t it your job to take that Council seat and help them change the way they think?”

“Oh, Magda,
breda
, don’t you think I’ve been through all that in my mind? I can’t change the Council because, at heart, the Council doesn’t want to change. It has everything it wants the way it is: power, the means to work for its own greed. Now when people don’t work for it of their own free will, it bribes them with promises of power of their own, and an appeal to
their
greed.”

She turned and paced restlessly along the cliff, her face starkly moonlit. “Look what they did to Lady Rohana! They said to her, ‘It doesn’t matter to you that you are not free; you have power instead, and power is more important than freedom.’ They bribed her with power. I am so afraid that they will do that to me, Magda, find out what I want most, and bribe me with it - I simply cannot believe that all the Comyn are corrupt, but they have power, and it makes them greedy for more. Even the Towers are playing the game of power, power, power, always over other people.”

“Maybe that’s simply the way life works, Jaelle. I don’t like it either. But it’s like what you said about bargaining, haggling in the market; it makes each party think he’s getting the better of the other.” Magda’s smile was strained. “You said you liked haggling.”

“Only when it’s a game. Not when it’s real.”

“But it is a game, Shaya. Power, politics, whatever you call it - it’s simply the way life works. Human nature. Romantics among the Terrans think the Darkovans are immune to it because you aren’t part of an interstellar Empire, but people
do
operate because of profit, and greed, as you say - “

“Then I don’t want any part of it, Magda. And I know they will try to bully me into taking that Aillard seat in Council, and within ten years I should be as bad as any of them, using power because they have convinced me that I am doing good with it… “

“I think you would be incorruptible, Jaelle - ” Magda began, but Jaelle shook her head with a wise sadness.

“Nobody’s incorruptible, not if they let themselves be tricked into trying to play those power games. The only thing to do is to stay outside them. I think maybe the
leroni
of Avarra, the Sisterhood of the Wise, could show me how to stay outside. Maybe they know why the world works that way. Why good and evil work the way they do.”

Jaelle turned restlessly, her cloak flying.

“Look at Camilla. She has a right to hate - worse than Acquilara. Did you hear her say she was a Hastur, at least that she had Hastur
laran
? And look what they did to her! But she’s such a good person, such a
loving
person. And Damon, too. Life has treated him badly - but he still can love. The world is so rotten to people, and people keep saying it isn’t fair - “

Magda murmured, “The
cristoforos
say it: ‘Holy one, why do the wicked flourish like mushrooms on a dead tree, while the righteous man is everywhere beset with thorns… ?’”

“Magda, did you ever think? Maybe the world isn’t
supposed
to be a better place? Maybe it goes on the way it does so that people can
choose
what’s really important.” Jaelle spoke passionately, striding to and fro into the face of the wind, her auburn curls flying from under the hood of her cloak. She had forgotten the cold and the jet-stream wind.

“Let the Council, and the Terrans, play power games with each other. Andrew walked out and did what he could somewhere else. Let the Towers have their political struggles, under that horrible old hag Leonie Hastur - I don’t care what Damon says, he may love her, but I know she is a tyrant as cruel and domineering as her twin brother who rules the Council! Between the Council, and the Towers, where is there a place for the use of
laran
? But Hilary and Callista found another way, even though the Towers were corrupt. Let women wear chains in the Dry Towns, or be good wives in the Domains, unless they have the courage to get out of it - real courage, not my kind that’s just lack of imagination. Courage - to get out of the Dry Towns, or their own chains, the way my mother or Lady Rohana did, or the way you did when you found the Guild-house - “

“But your mother didn’t get out of it, Jaelle. She died.” For years, Magda knew, Jaelle had concealed this knowledge from herself.

“Sure she died. So did yours. So will you and I some day. Since we’re all going to die anyhow, no matter what we do or don’t do, what sense does it make to go around scared all the time, crawling, and putting up with a lot of rotten stuff just to hang on a little longer? Look at Cholayna. She could have stayed nice and safe in Thendara, or accepted your offer to send her back from Nevarsin. Even if she died here, wouldn’t it have been better than turning back at Ravensmark and knowing she’d failed in what she set out to do? Living is taking risks. You could have stayed in the Guild-house and obeyed orders. My mother could have stayed in the Dry Towns and worn chains all her life. She might have died when Valentine was born even though, but she’d have died in comfort, and I’d still be there. In chains.” She looked pensively at her bare wrists.

“It’s all there is, Magda. We can’t change life. There’s too much greed and profit and - and
safety
. Human nature, like you said. We can only get out of it. Like Damon when he founded the Forbidden Tower. He could have been
blinded
- his
laran
burned out, because he wouldn’t back down and promise to use his
donas
only in the way the others, the ones with the power, said he should. But if he’d done that he’d have been blinded anyway; he’d have done it to himself. And he knew it.”

Magda knew Damon’s story. She knew she did not have that kind of strength.
Except, sometimes, when Jaelle forces me to follow her into some mad challenge
…

“So don’t you see, Magda? I can go back and play dreary games of power in the Council, or I can go
ahead
, to whatever these
leroni
can teach me - “

“You said that courage was needed to set up the Forbidden Tower, and we have a place there - “

“That was Damon’s trial of integrity, Margali. Not mine.” Jaelle turned and faced her freemate. “Only I can’t go if it’s going to hurt you
that
much. That’s the one thing that could stop me. I won’t do it over your - your dead body.”

There was such a lump in Magda’s throat she could hardly speak. She didn’t have to; she gave Jaelle her hands again.

Shaya, my love, my treasure, do what you must do.

And you’ll come too, Margali?

Suddenly Magda knew that Jaelle’s quest had become her own. But she had, perhaps, stronger ties. A weakness, now, not a strength, but:

I don’t know. I must see Cholayna safe. I brought her here and I cannot abandon her now. I’m not sure, Jaelle. But I won’t try and hold you back
.

“I had hoped we could go together,” Jaelle said aloud as they turned back toward the buildings. “Margali, we must go in, we’ll freeze.” And indeed it was growing colder, the cold no longer bracing and stimulating but deadly. “I suppose you’re right; if you’re not ready, it wouldn’t be right for you. But, oh,
breda
, I want to say, we go together or not at all. I couldn’t bear to leave you behind.”

But always, Magda thought, Jaelle was that one step ahead of her.

“Lead on,” she said lightly, “and I’ll follow as far as I can. But just now I’d prefer to follow you in out of the cold.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Magda was dreaming…