City of Sorcery (49 page)

“Listen to me, Margali,” said Rafaella earnestly. “We are sisters in Bridge Society - perhaps we haven’t been as good friends sometimes as we might, but just the same, we’re working for the same objectives, aren’t we?”

“Are we? I don’t think so. It seems to me that if your motives are the same as the Bridge Society you would have brought your proposal to Cholayna, or to me, or even to Jaelle or Camilla herself. Lieutenant Anders - ” she used Lexie’s official rank deliberately, “is
not
a member of Bridge. Why go to
her
?”

“It was she who came to me with this proposal. And if you do not know why she would not come to you or to Cholayna with it - I should have known, of course, you would never admit anything could be done, in Bridge, or in the Empire, without your being a part of it.” Rafaella’s words were an angry torrent, but a brief gesture from Acquilara cut her off.

“Enough. Tell her what the proposal is. I am not interested in your personal grievances against her.”

“Jaelle has had some training in the Forbidden Tower but these women can complete her training until she is more powerful than Leonie of Arilinn. Camilla, too, will be trained to the maximum of which she is capable. If she truly has Hastur blood, she may be the most powerful
leronis
for many years. Real power awaits them - “

“What makes you think that is what they are looking for?”

It was Acquilara who answered. “For what else did they come into these hills in search of the old crow-goddess in her abandoned shrine? Was it not to seek the full potential of what powers they might one day have? They may not know it, but that is what they were doing. This is the end of every quest; to become what you are, and this means power, real power, not philosophy and moral lectures. From the crow-people they will get austerities without number, and at the end, a pledge never to use or indulge their powers. They will be told that the end of all wisdom is to know and to refrain from doing, for actually
doing
anything would be black sorcery.” Acquilara’s face was savage with contempt. “I can offer them better than that.”

“While if they are taught here by Acquilara,” said Rafaella, “at the end of their training they will be sent back to Thendara, armed with the means to make some real changes in their world, to turn it to their own real advantage. Jaelle on the Council, as she could have been,
should
have been all along. And Camilla - there’s no end to what Camilla might do. She could rule all the Towers in the Domains.”

“That’s not what Camilla wants.”

“It is what, as a Hastur, she ought to want. And when I am done with her, she will want it,” said Acquilara with unshakable confidence.

This woman had power. Magda could feel it in her very stance, her gestures, Acquilara gestured to Lexie to go on.

“You are very naïve, Lorne,” Lexie added. “That is why you have meddled in so many things and never achieved anything real. Have you seen your file in personnel at HQ? I have. Do you know what they say of you? You could be in a real position of power… “

Magda found her voice.

“I can’t presume to tell you what Camilla and Jaelle want,” she said, “but I can tell you that power, in that form anyhow, is not what I want.”

“And I can tell you that you are a liar,” Lexie said. “For all the talk, there is really only one real game, only one thing anyone wants, and that is power. Pretend, be a hypocrite if you like, deny it, lie about it, I know better; that is what
everybody
wants.”

“Do you judge everybody by yourself?”

“Unlike you, Lorne, I don’t pretend to be better than everybody else,” Lexie said, “but it doesn’t matter. When the new cooperation between Terran and Darkovan begins, it will take a whole new turn; and this time it will not be Magdalen Lorne’s name at the head of it, but Alexis Anders’s.”

“Is that what you want more than anything else, Lexie?”

“It’s what you wanted and what you got, isn’t it? Why say it’s unworthy of me?” Lexie demanded.

Again Acquilara brought the talk to a halt with one of those imperative gestures. Magda, watching her carefully, realized that she was uncomfortable whenever the focus of the discussion moved away from herself.

“Enough, I say. Magdalen Lorne - ” like all speakers of
casta
she mangled the pronunciation of the name, diminishing her dignity; she knew it and tried to look all the more imposing, “promise me that you will help me to convince Jaelle n’ha Melora and the other comynara, the red-haired
emmasca
, to work with me, and I shall find a use for you too among us. It would be a good thing to have a Terran intelligence worker as one of us. This would be a truly powerful
Penta Cari’yo
, not a ladies’ lodging society and dinner club. Once our influence was entrenched in Thendara, it would be easy to have you as head of Terran Intelligence - “

“What makes you think that is what I want?”

“Damn it, Acquilara, I told you more than once, that is not the way to get anywhere with Lorne,” Lexie interrupted.

“You presume on your importance,
terranis
,” snarled Acquilara. “Don’t interrupt me! Well, Magdalen Lorne, think it over.”

“I don’t need to,” Magda said quietly. “I’m not interested in your proposition.”

“You cannot afford to refuse me,” Acquilara said. “I am making you a very generous proposal.
Terranan
are not popular in these hills. I need only reveal who you are in any village to have you torn to pieces. As for your friend, the woman with the black skin, what would they think of her? A pitiful freak, to be exposed on the hills for the banshee and the
kyorebni
. Yet if you are one of us, you are under my powerful protection anywhere in these hills.”

She motioned to two of the women.

“Take her back, and let her think it over. Tomorrow you will give me your answer.” She signaled to Lexie.

“Guard her with your weapon.”

One of the women stepped up to Acquilara and whispered to her. She nodded.

“You are right. If she is as powerful a
leronis
as we’ve heard, then she will lose no time in warning the
comynaris
. Give her some
raivannin
.”

Raivannin
! Magda thought in consternation. It was a drug which paralyzed the psi facilities and
laran;
sometimes it was used to immobilize a powerful telepath who was ill or delirious and could not control his or her destructive powers. She sought, quickly, to leap into the Overworld, to align herself with Jaelle, to cry out a warning,
Jaelle, Camilla, beware
… a few words. A few seconds of warning…

She had underestimated these people. Someone seized her - not physically; no hand touched her - but she discovered that she was ice-cold, she could not move or speak. She felt she was falling, falling, though she knew she stood motionless; her body and mind were buffeted by raging ice, wind, as if she stood naked in a blizzard…

She heard Lexie say, “Let me take care of her. I can set the stunner to keep her out for a few hours.”

“No, she needs freedom for the decision,” said Acquilara smoothly. Suddenly Magda was seized by two powerful sets of hands and held motionless, physically this time. Rafaella forced her mouth open and poured something icy and cloyingly sweet down her throat.

“Hold her about half a minute,” Acquilara said from out of the darkness. “It’s very fast-acting. After that she’ll be safe enough.”

An incredible flush of heat pulsed across Magda’s face, making her sinuses pound and a hot flare of pain fill up her head. Only a moment, but she wanted to scream aloud with its impact. Then it ebbed slowly away, leaving her feeling dull and empty, and suddenly deaf. She blinked, letting herself lean on the women who were holding her; she could hardly find her balance; all the peripheral awarenesses were gone, she was shorn and blinded, naked in her five senses, she could see and hear and touch, but how little, how inadequate the world seemed; nothing, nothing outside herself, the universe dead… even her ordinary senses felt dulled, there as a film over her sight, sounds came dulled as if from far away, and even the cold on her skin seemed remote as if she had been dipped in something heavy and greasy, insulating her from the world.

Raivannin
. It had sheared away all her expanded senses, leaving her head-blind. A powerful dose; once she had taken it when she was ill and Callista felt she should be shielded from a Tower operation; but it had only blunted her awareness of the matrix work going on around her, so that she could shut it out if she chose. Nothing like this total insulation, this closing and clogging of her senses.

“You gave her too much,” said one of the women holding her - even her voice sounded indistinct, or was this the way ordinary voices sounded, un-enhanced by the psychic awareness of their meaning? “She can hardly stand up. She may never recover her
laran
, after a dose like that.”

Acquilara shrugged. Magda realized, in despair, that she could not even hear the malice and falseness in Acquilara’s voice any more, it sounded like anybody’s voice, she even sounded pleasant, how did the head-blind ever know whom to trust?

“Small loss. We can manage without her, and she might be easier to handle that way. Take her away, back to the others.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

As the women hauled her away from the ring of firelight and back to the first cave where she had waked in captivity, Magda was conscious only of despair. She could not even warn Jaelle or Camilla.

She tried to convince herself that she should not be worrying. Jaelle and Camilla did not know where she was, or even where to look. Now that she was drugged with
raivannin
they could not even hunt for her with
laran
.

And if Acquilara tried to persuade them to join her plans, they could always refuse. There would be no way to force them, and no danger that Jaelle or Camilla would find Acquilara’s offer tempting enough to be worth deserting their own principles. So why was she worrying?

They dumped her unceremoniously in the first cave and went away. Magda huddled down on the floor in misery.

Lexie is certainly intending to kill Cholayna or have her killed, or she would not have dared to speak that way to her.

Cholayna raised her head as Magda slumped down on the floor.

“Magda, are you all right? What did they want?”

“To make me an offer, of no particular interest to me,” Magda said dully. “Nothing’s wrong. I told them, in essence, to go to hell. Go to sleep, Cholayna.”

She had made a fatal error of strategy. She should have pretended to play along, pretended to be impressed with Acquilara’s plans; then they would have left her free, and she could have put herself in touch with Jaelle or Camilla with her
laran
. Now it was too late.

“You’re shaking all over,” said Vanessa. “I don’t think you’re all right at all. What did they do to you, really? Here, come under my blanket, get yourself warm. You look like hell.”

“Nothing. Nothing you’d understand. Let me alone, Vanessa.”

“Like hell,” said Vanessa, pulling Magda by main force under her blanket and wrapping it around her. She took Magda’s hands in hers and said, “They’re burning hot! Come on, Lorne, what did they do to you? I’ve never seen you like this before!”

Magda felt dulled, exhausted, and yet she just wanted to cry and cry until she dissolved in tears. Vanessa’s hands on hers felt like a stranger’s hands, no sensation but the raw physical touch. What must it be like to have only this to share with another person, however dear; how could you tell friend from stranger or lover? And she could be like this forever. It would have been better to die. She let herself fall against Vanessa, and to her despair and shame she was aware that she was sobbing helplessly.

Vanessa held her and patted her back.