The Saga of the Renunciates (116 page)

“Twice I have encountered the Sisterhood, or so I believe,” Magda said. Kyntha’s eyes on her were oddly compelling; Magda felt it would be unthinkable to lie before those eyes. “Once they saved my life and the life of my freemate. One of these women who in your words,
trespassed
, has also, in great crisis and at the point of death, encountered these same Sisterhood. Therefore I believed that I—and perhaps she too—had been summoned. How do you know that we have
not
been summoned, but assume immediately that either of us has chosen to trespass?

“Because I read her companion’s letter,” Kyntha replied. “Even if she had been summoned, anyone who could concur in the motives of that letter would never find the place they sought. It would be for her, at that particular time, and in that particular company, an act of trespass. As for you, I have no way of knowing whether you have in fact been summoned, or whether you suffer from a delusion. If you have in truth been summoned, help will be forthcoming. And you will be left in no doubt.”

Silence. At last Jaelle said, “May I ask you a question?”

“Or a dozen. I cannot promise to answer, though. I was not sent to you for that, and I am not learned or wise.”

“Are you a member of that Sisterhood?”

“If I should claim to be so, how would you know I told you the truth? Anyone might make such a claim.”

Camilla interrupted, “There are those among us with
laran
. Enough, at any rate, to know a liar from a sooth-teller.” Her voice was hard, but Kyntha only smiled. Magda got the definite impression that she liked Camilla.

“Another question,” Jaelle said. “We met with—” She hesitated, and Magda guessed she remembered they were not to speak Aquilara’s name. “With one who presumed to try and give us commands in the name of the Goddess. Tell me, was she one of your Sisterhood?”

“Why do you question your own instincts, Shaya n’ha Melora? Will you let me counsel you a little, as much as I may?”

“Certainly,” said Jaelle.

“Then this is what I advise you. Be silent. Speak to no one of your objective, and never, thrice never, name the evil you distrust. It would be simpler for your little daughter to cross Ravensmark pass in her silken indoor slippers and armed only with a wooden spoon against the banshee, than for you to enter into that place in the wrong company. And there are some who, if you are summoned, will attempt to stop you out of jealousy, or from the sheer love of mischief-making. If help is sent to you, trust your instincts.” She bowed, somehow including all of them in the gesture.

“I wish you good fortune, whether you believe it or not,” she said, and without any more fuss or any kind of leavetaking, went away.

“Well,” said Cholayna, when it was obvious that she would not return, “what are we to make of
that
?”

“I’ve no idea,” Jaelle said. “But I wouldn’t count on hospitality from these people much longer. We’ve had our warning, we’re rested and well again, now it’s up to us to decide whether we are going on, or back.”

“I am not going back,” said Camilla. “I gather from what she said that the city we seek is near, and as for a city of Avarra’s Sisterhood, it would be safer to assume it is nearer Avarra’s holy house, than farther. She said nothing of sending us back.”

“And I think perhaps she was sent to determine how determined we are,” said Jaelle. “She certainly did her best to discourage us.”

“That wasn’t the idea I got at all,” Magda protested. She thought Kyntha had been admirably straightforward. “However, if she’s gone to make some sort of report to her superiors, maybe we ought to wait until the report’s gone through and the verdict delivered. She said help might be forthcoming, even guides.”

“I gather we all agree on one thing, that she was sent, and that she is not a member of—the
other
crew,” Vanessa said. “She acted, though, as if there was no question of letting me, or Cholayna, near the place. Just you two and maybe Magda.” She looked, mildly startled, at Magda. “I noticed she treated you as if you were one of the Darkovans yourself.”

Magda felt she should have noticed that herself.
Yes surely, she had a right to be considered among the Darkovans
. But did she really, or was that merely a flattering assumption? And why was she worrying about this, questioning her own motives, at this late date? She had surely gone too far to turn back now.

“I think we should leave as soon as we can, then,” said Jaelle.

“I think we should wait to see if the help they hinted at is offered,” Magda demurred.

“I don’t agree,” said Camilla, “and do you know the reason why? She said she could give us no help in rescuing Lexie and Rafaella. She treated Cholayna and Vanessa as if they were slightly unwelcome intruders, in spite of the kindness and hospitality they had been offered. My guess is this: if we wait for their help, it will come at the price of sending you two—” she nodded at the two Terrans, “back at once, and on abandoning all hope of rescuing Rafaella. I’m not ready to do that.”

“Nor I,” said Magda. “I think we should pack at once, and go as soon as we possibly can.” She added, diffidently, “None of us has been ready to try this, but I believe it’s our last resort; I am willing to try to follow Lexie and Rafaella with
laran
, no matter in whose hands they may now be. You, Jaelle?”

“I would be afraid of picking up—that
other
,” Jaelle said, troubled, but Camilla shook her head.

“If they’re in
her
hands, as I have begun to suspect, we have no choice. I see Lexie and Rafaella, and I see—
her
. Shaya, is this what happens when you call it
laran
?”

But there was no leisure to answer the question. First a couple of the attendants came in, scurrying. Then the old woman who had tended Cholayna walked in with kindly assurance, and took her seat among them.

And behind her a small sturdy woman at whom they blinked for a moment, disbelieving. If the Terran Legate himself had walked in, Magda could not have felt more amazement, more disruption of everything she had expected.

“Well, this looks like a meeting of the Hellers branch of the Bridge Society,” the woman said. “Isn’t anyone even going to wish me good day?”

But they were all too astonished to speak. It was Cholayna, at last, who croaked, in a voice still hoarse and rasping, “I should have known. Hello, Marisela.”

Marisela! How did you get here?” demanded Jaelle.

“Same way you did; riding when I could, walking when I couldn’t, climbing when I had to,” Marisela said. “Of course, since I knew where I was going, I took the straight road as far as Nevarsin.

“You might have told us,” Camilla said.

“Yes,” said Marisela dryly, “I could have held your hand every step of the way. Don’t be a fool, Camilla. What I said to Margali is still true, I was not and am not free to discuss the affairs of the Sisterhood with outsiders, and that includes their abode, and the necessary search, unaided, to reach them.”

“If they demand this much effort to reach them,” Camilla asked, “how do we know it is worth this kind of suffering?”

“You don’t. No one forced you to come. Be very clear about that, Camilla. At any moment you could have turned back to safety and to known rewards and everything you have claimed for yourself from life. There is no reason to renounce any of it, and for you, less reason than most. Yet I notice that none of you chose to turn back.”

“This is all beside the point,” Vanessa said. “Whatever psychic search you are talking about, Camilla, our interest is only in finding Lexie and Rafaella.”

But it was Marisela who answered.

“Are you very sure of that, Vanessa? I notice you have not turned back, either. Have you gained nothing from this trip yourself? Is your search entirely unselfish?”

“I wish you’d stop talking in riddles,” Vanessa complained. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Everything,” said Marisela, “think carefully, now. Because on your answer may depend whether or not you are allowed to go on. Friendship may carry you far, and please don’t think I am deriding the good instinct to help your friends. But in the long run, Vanessa ryn Erin—” Magda was startled and shocked that she used, not the Guild-house name by which Vanessa was known there, and in the Bridge Society, but Vanessa’s Terran, legal name—“In the long run, nothing matters but your own motives for this quest. Have you gained nothing?”

“Is that wrong?” Vanessa asked aggressively.

Marisela hesitated and looked for a moment at the old priestess in her bundled rags, seated impassively on the stone dais. The old woman raised her eyes and looked sharply at Vanessa. For a moment Magda expected that she would attack, with those quick harsh words she could use and demolish Vanessa with some sharp answer. But the ancient’s voice was surprisingly gentle.

“She does not question thee about right or wrong, little sister. Thee seeks right, us knows that, or thee would be outside in the storm, whatever thy need; shelter is not offered here to those who actively seek to harm their fellow beings. Thy sister asks thee, of many good things, has thee found something which is thy own and to thy liking? Speak sooth now and fear nothing.”

“I can’t believe that you are asking me this,” Vanessa said impatiently. “Yes, one of the reasons I came on this trip was because I wanted to see these mountains, wanted a chance to climb some of them, and I knew I’d never get the chance otherwise, and I was prepared to put up with a lot for that chance. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t sincere about helping to find Lexie and Rafaella.”

“I didn’t know you were so fond of her,” Marisela observed.

“
Fond
has nothing to do with it,” Vanessa said angrily. “She’s not my lover or my bosom friend or confidante, I’m not—well, I know it’s the custom here and there’s nothing wrong with it, but I’m not
interested
in women as lovers. But we were in training school together, and she’s in trouble. She needs friends, and she doesn’t have many. I suppose if I was in trouble she’d give me a hand. Or what else is all your talk about sisterhood—and I don’t mean all this stuff about secret Sisterhoods and societies, either—what’s it supposed to mean, if I can’t try to help out a friend? And Rafaella, well, she’s a mountaineer. I
respect
her. Can’t you understand that kind of thing?”

The old woman was smiling, but Vanessa took no notice of her. Marisela nodded to Vanessa, almost a formal gesture of recognition.

She said, “Rafaella and I were housebound together in Thendara Guild-house; it seems a long time ago. I am worried about her myself; she was one of the reasons I came so far. She has a right to her own search, even if what she seeks is riches, but I was afraid she was getting into deep waters where she could not swim, thinking only that she was doing legitimate business. I knew Jaelle was concerned about her, and if it was only a question of bad weather and a rough trail, Jaelle, with you to help her, could have been left to the search. But there were other things involved and I hoped to keep her from getting into them without a clear idea of what she might be facing.” She sighed heavily. “So, you have not caught up with her?”

“As you can see, we have not,” Camilla said dryly. “As if you did not know, being a
leronis
… ”

“I’m no more omniscient than you are, Camilla. Until I actually came here, I still hoped. But if she was not safe
here
during that great storm, there are two possibilities; either she is safe
somewhere else
… ” she spoke the words with a careful intonation and a hesitant glance at the old woman, and Magda knew suddenly that she was speaking of Acquilara and her followers, “or she is dead. For there was no other shelter and nothing could have lived unsheltered in these hills. I can’t bear to think they could be in the hands of—” She blinked angrily, and Magda noticed she was trying hard to stifle uncontrollable tears.

The old woman bent toward her and said soothingly, touching Marisela’s hand, “Thee may hope she is safe dead, granddaughter.”

Cholayna, who had been following all this with close, concentrated attention—Magda, who had been through the same kind of training, knew what effort it would take her to follow this conversation in the language they were using, though Cholayna had had the best and most effective language training in the whole of the Empire— spoke up for the first time.

“Marisela, I’m like Vanessa, I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Are these people so jealous that they’d really hope Lexie and Rafaella are
dead
, rather than involved with some religious heresy? I’ve heard of religious bigotry, but this beats anything I ever heard of! I’m not ungrateful to these people. They saved my life, saved Vanessa from being lamed for life—they saved us all. But I still think that’s
terrible
!”

It was the old woman who spoke, slowly, as if—she were trying to make Cholayna understand across an insurmountable barrier.

“Thee is ignorant. This old one canna’ give thee a lifetime wisdom in a few minutes on this floor. But if thee canna’ imagine worse than simple dyin’ thee is worse than ignorant. Are there na’ things thee would die rather than do? Those whose names we would not speak—” she stopped, frowned, shook her head in frustration almost tangible.

“How to say to thee? Would thee rather die, or torture a helpless child? Would thee rather die, or betray thy innermost honor? It is their joy, those ones, to see others do that which they thought they would rather die than do, out of their weak fear of dyin’ because they know nothing an’ believe less about death.” Her head shook with wrath. “An’, an’, to speak their name is to invite them into thy mind. Think this old one hates thee, that she takes that risk for thee and thy ignorance, sister, to try an’ teach thee a crumb’s worth of wisdom.”

Magda looked at Jaelle, and for one blazing instant, whether it was
laran
or something deeper, it all came together in her mind. It was all one with what Jaelle had said the night before:
We’re all going to die anyway
.

Magda was remembering dreadful things done, in the history of the human race, by men to their fellow men—and women—because they so feared death: guards who had forced their fellow creatures to death in concentration camps; the immense slaughter of war where the killer justified himself by fear of being killed in turn; infinite terrible betrayals out of that most ignoble fear—
I’ll do anything, anything, I don’t want to die
… It was bad enough to do these evils because in some demented way you thought they were good, like the religious monsters who burned, hanged or slaughtered others to save their souls. But what possible justification could there be for anyone who did these things because the alternative was personal death? In a single blazing moment, Magda felt a fierce joy. It suffused her with a flush, an almost physical rush of total awareness, knowing how strong was life and how little death had to do with it.

In a great rush she felt totally involved and caught up in it; aware of her intense love for Jaelle,
of course, this was why I risked my life for her;
her wholly different love for Camilla. Love reached out for no reason even to encompass that ridiculous old woman,
she doesn’t even know Cholayna and she is risking what she thinks of as a very real spiritual death for her, she fears she’s inviting Aquilara and her crew into her very head to play games with her, and because she loves us
…

They could only kill me, and that wouldn’t matter. Dying hurts, but death won’t.

And then she snapped out of it, astonished at her own thoughts. There was no question—nobody had asked her to die for anything!
What’s wrong with me? I don’t want to die any more than anyone else, why am I indulging myself in heroics
?

And then she wondered if it had all been imagination; for Cholayna was saying, with polite strained patience, that she didn’t really think the question had any application here.

“No one has offered me that choice. And with all respect, I find it hard to believe that these rival sisterhoods, or whatever they are, will behave like some old legendary dictator or brainwashing expert and offer them a choice between death or dishonor. How absurdly melodramatic!” Then Cholayna bent toward the old woman, very serious.

“Whenever I hear anyone say there are things more important than life or death, I find myself wondering whose life they are planning to risk. I find it is seldom their own.”

The old woman’s toothless smile was gentle, almost despairing.

“Thee means well, but thee is ignorant, daughter of Chandria. ’Varra grant thee lives long enough that thee may one day learn wisdom to match thy good strength and will.”