The Saga of the Renunciates (105 page)

It was blurred, like a nightmare, and she preferred that it should stay that way.

“We were lucky to get out of there all alive and well,” Jaelle said. “Camilla, I owe you an apology.”

“Nine times out of ten you would have been right and the place as safe as a Guild-house,” Camilla said gruffly.

“And still you insist you have no
laran
?”

Camilla’s pale narrow features flushed with anger. “Drop it, Shaya,” she said, “or I swear by my sword, I will break your neck. Even you can go too far.”

Jaelle clenched her fists and Magda felt the anger again surging up in both of them, like tangible crimson lines of force woven into the air between the women. She strained to speak, to break the tension, but realized that she could hardly sit up, hardly manage a whisper.

“Camilla—”

Jaelle let her breath go. “Hellfire, what does it matter? You heard the warning, kinswoman, call it what you will. I don’t doubt it saved all our lives. That’s what matters. Vanessa, is the tea ready?” She set a steaming mug in Magda’s hand. “Drink this. We’ll rest here till it’s light enough to see our way.”

“I’ll stand guard,” Vanessa offered. “I think I have had enough sleep for a tenday!”

“And I will stand guard with you,” said Jaelle, sipping from another mug. “These three have a fight behind them, and they deserve some rest. We’ll offload the beasts till morning, too. Cholayna, is there any dried fruit?”

Cholayna gestured toward a saddlebag. “But you can hardly be hungry, after that meal—I didn’t think any of us would be hungry for three days!”

But Magda knew, watching Jaelle gnaw on dried raisins, the fierce hunger that succeeded the depletion of
laran
. Camilla took a handful of the raisins too.

“You girls stand watch. You missed the real fun,” she said, spreading her blankets beside Magda and Cholayna. Magda suddenly felt anxious about Camilla. She was not a young woman, and that had been a dreadful fight. And Camilla had been so worried about her that she had probably not troubled to look after herself. Yet she knew if she inquired, Camilla would make it a point of honor to insist there was nothing wrong with her.

Cholayna, lowering herself to her spread blankets, hesitated.

“Shall I cover the fire? It might show us up to—to anything that’s prowling in the woods.”

“Leave it,” said Jaelle. “Anything on four legs, the fire would scare them away. Anything on two legs— Goddess forbid—we might as well see what’s coming after us. I don’t want anyone—or anything—sneaking up on me in the dark.” She laughed, nervously. “This time Vanessa and I will do the fighting and let
you
sleep.”

Magda did not feel sleepy, but knew she should rest. The healing skin on her arm itched almost to the bone. The fire sank lower. She could see Vanessa, seated on a saddlebag; Jaelle was somewhere out of her sight, but Magda could
feel
her pacing boundaries of their camp, protecting it, as if she spread brooding wings over it…
dark wings of the Goddess Avarra, sheltering them
…

For so many years she had thought of Jaelle as younger, fragile and vulnerable, to be protected as she would have protected her child; yet from the first Jaelle had assumed leadership of this journey, taken responsibility for seeing all of them safe. Her freemate had grown; it was time for Magda to stop thinking of Jaelle as less than her equal.

She is as strong as I, perhaps stronger. It is high time for me to realize that I cannot, I need not, carry all the weight alone. Jaelle, if I let her, will do her share. And more…

They took the road northward, cutting across wild country by little-known trails toward the Kadarin, avoiding main roads and villages. After five days of travel they came on a better-traveled road; Jaelle said that she would rather keep away from main roads, especially with Cholayna with them. “Even this far north, gossip may have run into the hills that among the Terrans in Thendara there are some with black skins, and I would as soon answer no questions about what we are doing with a Terran in our company. Renunciates raise enough question in these hills, without a Terran woman as well. Vanessa could pass for a mountain woman, some of the forge-folk have animal eyes. Nevertheless we must ford the Kadarin, and for that we must go to one of the main fords or ferries; last spring’s floods have made the less-traveled fords too dangerous.”

“I’ll risk anything you will,” Vanessa said.

“Never mind; Cholayna, just keep your hood around your face and don’t answer any questions. Pretend you’re deaf and dumb.”

“I should have stayed in Thendara, shouldn’t I? I’m just endangering all of you,” said Cholayna with a touch of bitterness, but Jaelle made an impatient gesture.

“Done is done. Just keep your wits about you and obey orders, that’s all I ask.”

And for a minute Magda wondered if her freemate was actually glad to see the Terran woman, head of Intelligence, for a change taking orders rather than giving them, if Jaelle was pleased to have Cholayna under her command. Then she absolved Jaelle, mentally, of that pettiness. She herself might have felt that way, at least for a moment; Jaelle was all too obviously only worrying about the safety of the group.

And in fact there was probably less danger for any of them, even if Cholayna
was
recognized as Terran, at the large populated fords and ferries, than in some remote village where the Kadarin could be forded in secret. They had had enough of remote villages for one trip.

Half a dozen caravans were at the ford before them, and Camilla, who was wearing a short down jacket, her ragged gingery hair and scarred gaunt features hardly identifiable as a woman’s, made some excuse and rode along the stacked-up groups awaiting the ferry. She came riding back looking disappointed.

“I had hoped to see Rafi here, with the Anders woman, perhaps.”

Jaelle shook her head. “Oh, no. They are a long way ahead of us, kinswoman.”

Camilla tightened her mouth and looked away, her eyes veiled like a hawk’s. “That’s as it may be; there is always the chance. Are we going to ford, or pay the ferryman?”

“Ford, of course. I don’t want anyone getting a good look at Cholayna; there’s a proverb in these hills, inquisitive as a ferryman’s apprentice. What’s the matter, afraid to get your feet wet?”

“No more than yourself,
chiya
. But I thought we were in a hurry.”

“We’d have to wait an hour for the ferryman, with all those people ahead of us; we can ford as soon as that man and his dogs and his chervines are all across,” Jaelle said, watching the badly organized group ahead of them, a pair of young boys urging dogs and chervines into the water with sticks and menaces, women in riding-skirts clinging to their saddles and squealing; something frightened one of the nervous riding-beasts in midstream, and one of the women was out of her saddle and floundering in the water; it was an hour before the ford was clear again, and Jaelle paced the bank restlessly. Magda could see that she was itching to get out there and show the men how a well-organized caravan forded a river. Their mission permitted no such indulgence.

“Never mind,” Magda said as they started leading their pack animals into the trampled mud at the near edge of the ford, “you can get out there and show them how a Renunciate guide takes her crew across.”

Jaelle grinned, abashed. “Am I as transparent as that?”

“I’ve known you a long time,
breda mea
.”

They went in orderly fashion, Jaelle leading with the foremost of the pack animals on a lead rein, then Magda, Vanessa, Cholayna muffled like a
leronis
in Magda’s spare riding-cape, and Camilla bringing up the rear. They had, she reflected, forded the Kadarin more easily than if they had waited for the ferry, which was now caught in one of the eddies of the ford, while the ferryman and his sons, swearing and shouting, were trying to pole it free.

They left the ferry behind, and the Kadarin, and rode away into the mountains.

At first the slopes of the foothills were gentle, and they rode on well-marked trails, every slope leading between deep canyons filled with conifers and cloud. Jaelle led, setting the fastest pace the horses could endure. This was home country for the chervines, and they headed into the fiercest winds with pure pleasure.

Gradually the hills began to rise higher, the passes now leading between naked rock. Jaelle was careful not to be caught above the treeline after dark, but at night, cuddled in their doubled sleeping bags for warmth, Magda shivered at the savage shrilling cry of banshees in the frozen passes, a cry which could, she remembered, paralyze any prey within range.

“What in hell is that?” Vanessa quavered.

“Banshee. You read about them, remember? They probably wouldn’t come below the treeline except in a specially hard winter when they were starving. This is still summer, remember?”

“Some summer,” Cholayna grumbled. “I haven’t been warm since we forded the Kadarin.”

“So eat more,” Magda suggested. “Calories are heat, as well as nourishment.” Cholayna was tolerating the pace, the cold and the altitude better than Magda had hoped;
she must have been one hell of a field agent
. Though as the passes grew steeper, more like chervine trails to climb, and they were forced to dismount and walk or climb up the steeper slopes—past Nevarsin they might have to abandon the horses altogether, and ride chervines—the Terran woman’s face seemed pinched, her eyes daily deeper sunken in her head. Camilla was hardened to rough travel, and Vanessa sometimes acted as if the whole trip was something she had organized for the fun of it, her own special climbing holiday. This attitude sometimes got on Magda’s nerves, but since Vanessa’s mountaincraft had helped them over some of the worst stretches, she supposed Vanessa was entitled to enjoy herself.

Ahead of them lay the Pass of Scaravel, more than seven thousand meters high. On the fifth day past the Kadarin, they camped on the lower slope of the road up into Scaravel, after daylong travel in thin flurrying snow that cut visibility to a few horse-lengths ahead. Camilla and Vanessa had grumbled about this, but Magda was just as well pleased; she could keep her eyes on the trail and was not confronted at every turn with the sight of bottomless chasms and dizzying drops off sheer cliffs. The path was slippery in the snow, but not really dangerous, she thought, only dimly realizing how hardened she had grown to roads that would have had her sweating blood only a few tendays ago.

“There’s still light,” Vanessa argued, “it’s less than three or four kilometers to the top. We could still get across.”

“With luck. And I’m not trusting to luck any more,” Jaelle said testily. “There are banshees above the treeline here, as I have good cause to remember. Want me to introduce you to one in the dark? It’s easier to get over in daylight. And we could all do with some rest and hot food.”

Vanessa glared and for a moment Magda was sure she would continue the argument, but finally she turned away and began to unsaddle her horse.

“You’re the boss.”

“I want all the loads unpacked and redistributed before we start out tomorrow,” Jaelle ordered. “We’ve used up a considerable amount of supplies; and the less weight the animals have to carry, the easier to get across Scaravel—and through the mountains beyond. There are passes beyond Nevarsin which make Scaravel look like a hole in the ground.”

Magda came to help with the loads, while Camilla started a fire in the camp stove and Cholayna began unpacking rations. They had fallen into a regular camp routine by this time. Soon a good smell of cooking began to steal through the camp.

“Snowing harder,” Camilla said, surveying the dark sky. “We’ll need the tents. Come and help me set them up,
breda
.”

They had made it a habit that whenever they set up tents they should alternate, changing tentmates every camp; Magda would have preferred sharing quarters permanently with either Camilla or Jaelle, but she understood Jaelle’s insistence that they should not divide themselves into cliques or teams; that this had been the ruin of many expeditions. Tonight Magda was sharing the smaller tent with Vanessa, while Camilla, Cholayna and Jaelle were in the larger one. Vanessa, changing her socks before dinner, dug into her personal pack and began to attack her hair with a brush.

“I think I’d face bandits again for a chance at a bath,” she said. “My hair feels filthy and I’m grubby all over.”

Magda agreed with her that this was one of the greatest hardships of the trail. “There will be a women’s bathhouse in Nevarsin, though,” she said, “and perhaps we can find a washerwoman for some clean clothes.”

“Ready to eat, you two?”

“Just brushing my hair,” Vanessa said, tying a cotton scarf over her head. Camilla was ladling stew onto plates and handing it round; they sheltered under the tent flaps, sitting on saddlebags, to eat. Magda was hungry, and cleaned up her stew quickly, but Cholayna was simply pushing the food around on her plate.

“Cholayna, you are going to have to eat more than that,” Camilla said. “Really, you must—”

Cholayna exploded. “Damnation, Camilla, I am not a child; I have been looking after myself for the best part of sixty years, and I simply will not be badgered this way! I know you mean well, but I am sick and tired of being endlessly ordered about!”

“Then you should act as if you knew how to look after yourself as a grown woman,” Camilla snarled. “You are behaving like a girl of fifteen on her first excursion from the Guild-house! I don’t care how old you are or how experienced in other climates or among the Terrans, here you do not know how to care for yourself—or you would be doing it. And if you cannot be trusted to eat properly, then someone must make sure that you do it—”

“Hold it, Camilla—” Jaelle began, and Camilla turned on her.

“Don’t
you
start! I have been holding back from saying this for a tenday now. It is not fair; if Cholayna neglects herself and gets sick, she can endanger us all—”

“Even if this is true, it is not your place to say it—” Jaelle began, but now Camilla was in a rage.

“At this point I care nothing whose place it may be! If the leader says nothing, then I will. I have been waiting for days for you to do your duty and speak to her about this, but because this Terran woman was once your employer you have not had the courage or the common sense to speak a single word. If that is how you see your duty as head of this expedition—”

“I do my duty as I see it,” Jaelle said, at white heat, “and I am not a girl to be lessoned by you—”

“Listen to me, both of you,” Cholayna interrupted. “Settle your places in the pecking order somewhere else, and don’t use me as your excuse! I am trying to eat as much as I can of your damned filthy food, but it’s not easy for me, and I don’t need reminding all the time! I will do the best I can; leave it at that, will you?”

“Just the same,” Vanessa said, “what they said is true, Cholayna. You act as if they had no right to say it. But on an expedition like this, politeness is not as important as the truth. If you get sick, the rest of us will have to look after you. I have told you before that at these altitudes you simply must force fluids and calories.”

“I am trying, Vanessa, but—”

Magda joined in for the first time. “Even if what you say is true, Vanessa—and you too, Camilla—do you have to be so hard on her? Remember, this is Cholayna’s first trip into the field in many years, and her first experience with this kind of climate—”

“All the more reason, then, that she should be guided by those of us with experience—” Camilla said, but Jaelle interrupted her:

“Do you think it is going to do her any good if you simply stand there and scream at her like a banshee? I don’t think I could eat a bite with you standing over me and yelling at the top of your voice!”

Magda held out her hand in a conciliating gesture.

“Shaya,
please
—”

“Damnation, Margali, will you at least keep out of this? Every time I try to settle something, you want to get into it. If Camilla and I cannot talk without you trying to jump into the gap, as if you were afraid something would slip by without your having a hand in it—”

Magda shut her mouth with an effort. It was so much like what Lexie had said:
Hellfire, Lorne, is there any pie on this planet you don’t have your fingers in
? Was this truly how she appeared to people? She started to say, I was only trying to help, and realized, if it wasn’t obvious, that she wasn’t.

Cholayna had picked up her plate and was making an effort to force down the cold, greasy meat stew.

Can’t they even see that if she tries to eat that, and she’s already half sick, it’s going to make her worse? Jaelle at
least
should be able to see that
. She opened her mouth again, knowing that she risked another set-down for interfering, but Camilla reached for the plate.

“Let me heat that up for you, Cholayna, or if you’d rather, we still have plenty of the dried porridge-powder, which may be easier for you to eat. I’ll mix it with plenty of sugar and raisins. There’s no sense wasting good meat on anyone who doesn’t appreciate it and probably can’t digest it properly anyhow. Does anyone want to share the rest of the stew with me while I make up some porridge for Cholayna?”

“And I’ve been thinking,” Vanessa volunteered, “it might be a good thing to save the special Terran high-altitude rations for her. They’re almost entirely synthetics, but they’re very high-calorie, high-fat, high-carbohydrate, and they won’t upset her; the rest of us can make do on the dried meat and fruit from natural sources. Here,” she added, handing over the porridge-powder into which Camilla had stirred sugar and raisins, and Cholayna accepted the mixture gratefully.

Magda could see that she had to force herself to eat, but at least it was simpler to force herself when it was simply disinclination to the effort of chewing and swallowing, not an attempt to overcome decades of training, both in custom and ethical preference.

It frightened her to be so aware of what Cholayna was thinking. There had been times, in her early training in the Forbidden Tower, when she had found herself unable to cut out the thoughts and emotions of her colleagues. But they had all been strong telepaths. Cholayna was head-blind and a Terran, and there should be no such involuntary spillage of emotions.

And Camilla, too, had seemed to know—and Magda stopped herself there. No one should know better than she herself that beneath Camilla’s rough-talking exterior was a singularly sensitive, even a motherly woman. There was surely no need to postulate that the stress of this trip, or something else she had no way of identifying, was bringing out latent
laran
in Camilla, or even in Cholayna.

Jaelle said sheepishly to all of them at large, “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what got into me. Camilla, forgive me, kinswoman. I meant what I said but I should have been more tactful about it. Margali—” She turned to Magda and held out her arms. “Forgive me,
breda mea
!”

“Of course!” Magda hugged her, and after a moment Camilla came to join them; then Vanessa and Cholayna were there and the five of them were joined in a group embrace that washed away all the anger.

“I can’t imagine why I started yelling,” Camilla said. “I didn’t mean to, truly, Cholayna. I don’t want you to get sick, but honestly, I didn’t mean to keep on at you about it.”

Vanessa said, “This kind of group tension on an expedition is to be expected. We should be on guard against it.”

“Maybe,” Camilla said wryly, “the Sisterhood is testing us for our worthiness to be admitted to that place?”

“Don’t laugh. We are—” Jaelle looked at them seriously. “The legend says that we
will
be tested ruthlessly, and—we—” she swallowed, searching for words, “Can’t you see? We are searching for Sisterhood, and if we cannot keep it among ourselves—” her voice trailed away into silence.

At least, Magda thought as she crept into the tent she shared with Vanessa, they were all speaking again. Magda rejoiced; it would be hard enough to cross Scaravel even with their utmost cooperation.