The Saga of the Renunciates (30 page)

“
. And everybody had to carry around a little torch to thaw out what he said before he could be heard; and this man made quite a bit of money by gathering up all the frozen speeches in a barrow, and carting them around to their owners. Only he wasn't quite as careful as he should have been, to make sure that they were delivered to the right owners, and when the spring-thaw came, and all the words thawed out again, there was a tremendous amount of trouble. The mule-driver thawed out what he had yelled at his team, and found he had the words of an old lady talking to her pet birds; and the young mother scolding her little children got the mule-driver's, and the children cried half the day; and the young wife telling her husband she was to bear his first son, got what the Free Amazon said to the man who-" He broke off and turned a full red as Jaelle giggled. "My apologies, cousin!"

Jaelle said dryly, "Kinsman, I heard all the jokes there are about Free Amazons, before I had turned fifteen; and most of them I heard in the Guild-house from my sisters. I would share them with you, but most of them would shock your delicate male sensibilities." It was the turn of the others to laugh. "Finish your story, kinsman; this is one I have not heard."

Kyril tried to take up where he had left off. "The aristocratic lady entertaining her guests was delivered the chatter of the men from the lowest tavern in the village, while the Keeper instructing her youngest novice found herself hearing what the Dry-Towner bellowed at his minion...”

"Enough," dom Gabriel said, with a glance at Lady Alida. "It seems to me this is a tale for the barracks, son, not for your mother's breakfast table." He glanced up to greet the newcomers, his eyebrows raising in question as he saw the women in Amazon clothing.

Jaelle said, "Uncle, with your leave, we will ride for Thendara today; it is a long journey at this season, and my sister has duties in the Guild-house."

"Impossible," Lord Gabriel said. "This is only the snow-break, my girl; tomorrow at this hour it will be snowing harder than ever. This storm will last another ten days at the least; only the guests who live within a few hours' ride are departing today. You would be well advised to remain until the spring-thaw, at least."

"You are more than kind, Lord Ardais," said Peter, "but we could not so long trespass on hospitality."

"You couldn't possibly travel more than a day's ride before the snow blocked you again," dom Gabriel said. "It seems to me nonsense, to spend the rest of the blizzard in a tent or travel-shelter when you could stay here in comfort."

Magda and Peter knew he was right. And indeed, the weather in the Hellers at this season was proverbial; from midwinter to spring-thaw, only the mad or the desperate ventured more than an hour's ride from their own firesides.

Toward afternoon the day darkened again, and the next morning the windows were a flurry of white snow, with the wind howling around the towers of Ardais like a banshee hard on the heels of its prey. And at breakfast dom Gabriel said triumphantly, "You see? You had better stay till spring-thaw, all of you!"

Afterward, Lady Alida drew Magda aside and said, "We should arrange for your testing,
mestra,-
today; it should not be much longer delayed.”, Magda was seized by such panic that she felt it must be perceptible to the
leronis.
As soon as she could get away she went in search of Lady Rohana, and found her in her private sitting room, working on the accounts of the estate. At first this might have surprised Magda; now she knew that every thread in the running of Ardais was spun through Lady Rohana's slender six-fingered hands.

"Forgive me for disturbing you, my Lady; may I speak to you alone for a moment?"

Rohana motioned her inside and dismissed the lady companion without whom, it seemed, she could not move half a dozen steps. "Certainly; this can wait till spring-thaw, if need be. What troubles you, child?"

Magda felt an overwhelming sense of presumption; she had come to a Comyn lady to complain about one of the lady's own caste. She said hesitantly, "The Lady Alida is determined to have me tested for
laran,
and I am afraid that if she explores my mind that way it may cause trouble for all of us."

Rohana looked grave.
This is my fault; I should have sent the Terrans away.
She said, "We were both surprised
to
find you in the rapport when we were working in the matrix. Have you been trained in these powers among your own people?"

Magda shook her head. "Among us, there are not too many who even believe that such powers exist, Lady. Those who believe in them, or claim to be able to use them, are thought ignorant, superstitious, credulous."

"I had heard that." Rohana knew that had been one of Lorill Hastur's reasons for the ban on too much mingling with the Terrans.
They do not believe in these powers; once convinced, they would be greedy to know all about them, and exploit them.

Rohana said, "Belief or not, you seem to have this kind of
laran,
child. How came you by it?"

"I do not know, Lady. All my life I have been able to use hunches, but I believed it was simply that I had a talent for adding up things which were subliminal-just a little below the conscious levels of perception. And there have been times when my dreams were not-not nonsense, but told me things I did not consciously know; so I have learned to take heed of them."

Rohana leaned her chin thoughtfully on her hands. This meant they must reevaluate most of what they had learned about the Terrans. "Lorill is committed to a belief that Terrans and Darkovans are different races of beings, and that the Terrans are inferior; and he uses their lack of
laran
as proof."

Magda said, "My Lady, I am not supposed to tell this outside the Terran Zone, either; but the Lord Hastur is mistaken. This is not a belief, but a fact that can be proved; Terran and Darkovan are one race. It is known to us beyond question that Darkover was settled by Terrans long ago by one of what we call the Lost Ships. In. an age before the faster-than-light ships that we have now, there were ships that were sent out from Terra-it was not an Empire then-and some of them were lost and never heard of again. There is evidence from your languages that it was settled by a ship whose very name I could give you, and the names of those aboard. It is most likely that this knowledge was lost to you centuries ago, Lady-probably to keep the survivors from pining too much for their lost homeland-but your people are truly Terrans."

"Then psi gifts-you have them, too?"

"It is rumored that once they were more common than now; now they are very rare, and there was a time in our history when people used to pretend them, or feign them with clever devices and machinery, so they fell into disrepute and their use was considered charlatanry. But there seems evidence that once they were known."

Rohana nodded. "There was a time in the history of the Comyn," she said, "when we did selective breeding to fix these gifts in our racial heritage; it was a time of great tyranny, and not a time we are very proud to remember. It led to its own downfall, and we of the Comyn are still suffering the aftermath; not only in the distrust the common people have for us, but in that our fertility was lowered by inbreeding; and the gifts are linked to some dangerous recessive traits. But they are powerful, and when misused can be very dangerous. Which brings me to you, child. Normally, psi gifts waken in adolescence; when they waken later there are sometimes dangerous upsets and upheavals. Have you felt any strange sensations, any unexplained sickness without physical cause, any sense of being outside of your body and unable to get back, any wild emotional upheavals?"

"No, nothing like that,” Magda said. Then she remembered the moment of altered perspective during the healing, but that had passed off quickly and of itself.

Rohana asked her a number of searching questions about her dreams and "hunches," and finally said, when Magda felt wrung out by the questioning, "It seems to me that your talents are slight, and that you have compensated for them very well. You could, if you wished, probably learn the use of
laran
with ease, and it would be interesting to see what use a Terran could make of this training. I would like to have the teaching of you; but it seems it would make more trouble than it is worth. You are committed elsewhere; and I have already gone against Lorill's will as much as seems wise. Yet," she added, almost wistfully, "if you demand this training, I could not refuse it to anyone with
laran;
and by law, birth and parentage cannot be used to refuse it to you."

Magda said firmly, "I think I have quite enough trouble without that!"

. Rohana touched her wrist very lightly, that feather-touch Magda was beginning to guess was peculiar to telepaths among their own. "So be it, dear child. But if you ever have trouble with
laran,
you must promise to come to me."

She sat looking intently at Magda for a moment. "If Lorill is wrong-if it can be proved that what he believes about your people is wrong-I do not need to tell you what it will mean for both your world and mine."

To Magda, with her heightened sensitivity, the force of what she had always called "hunch" raising her perceptions, it seemed at this moment that she caught the very image in Rohana's mind: a great barricaded door, slowly swinging open between two locked-away worlds, two peoples; opening to give a bright and sunlit view.

Magda thought,
We should be one people, not two... I would do anything for that...

Rohana said, slowly, more as if she were thinking aloud than speaking, and yet Magda knew she was meant to share the woman's thoughts, "Does it not seem to you, Margali, that there is a design of some sort in this? That of all the Terrans on our world, it should be your friend, who could be so easily mistaken for my son, who should be taken by Rumal di Scarp? I myself, in a quick look, can still be deceived, and must look at their ringers and hands to be certain, until one of them speaks. Does it not seem fantastic to you that of all the Amazons of Darkover, you should fall into Jaelle's hands, and that the two of you should be so tested that you have become sworn friends as well?"

Magda felt uneasy. She said, "Coincidence, Lady."

"One coincidence, perhaps. Two, maybe. But so many, like beads strung on a necklace? No, this is more than coincidence, my friend; or if it is coincidence, then coincidence itself is only another word for a design intended by whatever force it is that shapes the fates of man." She smiled, and seemed to come back to the practical world, saying, "Now I must ask something of you, child. Will you take care in what you say to your friends, and to your superiors in the Terran Zone, at least until I have had a chance to speak with Lorill?"

"Indeed I will," Magda said, smiling a little at the thought of Montray's face if She should ever try to tell him about the matrix operation that had healed Jaelle's wound within a few minutes, or that Lady Rohana had said that she herself had
laran.
If this was ever to be brought up between Darkovan and Terran, she was quite willing it should be someone other than herself who should do it-and she hoped there would be a more receptive audience than Russell Montray!

Rohana rose, and said, "Go now, Margali. I must think this over and decide what to do."

Magda hesitated just a moment. "But what shall I tell Lady Alida?"

"Don't worry about her. I will tell her that I have tested you myself," Rohana said, and her smile was droll. "Don't you realize that is what I have been doing?"

The blizzard lasted for another ten days-almost exactly as dom Gabriel had predicted-and when the weather finally cleared, the roads and passes lay blocked with drifts so deep that the three guests at Ardais were readily persuaded to remain for a few more days. Yet Magda had begun to brace herself, mentally, for their departure, and for whatever lay ahead. She could not return to her old life inside the Terran Zone, venturing outside it only in disguise; she knew the disguise had become her truest self. But what she could do instead-that she did not know either.

She found herself thinking again and again of what Rohana had said about a design in the chain of coincidences that had brought them together; even in the peculiar pattern that had drawn Peter and Jaelle together as lovers. If the Empire was to remain on Darkover indefinitely, sooner or later there would be-as on all planets inhabited by different groups of humans-entanglements, romances, liaisons, and eventually marriages, even children who belonged to both worlds. And someone had to be the first.

Of course, one day Darkover would be an Empire planet. It was inevitable. The Empire did not conquer; but once the contacted planet saw the pattern of the Galactic Empire, and what it could mean to be part of it, the rulers always asked to be affiliated. When that time came, Terran and Darkovan would all be Empire citizens, and such affairs and romances would concern no one but the two people involved, and perhaps their families. But now it could cause only complications.

Magda hoped their departure would not be too long delayed. Jaelle and Peter were beginning to be a little less careful, and Magda wondered what the end would be. Again and again, seeing them together, she felt the small, indefinable pricklings of "hunch"-or precognition.
Sooner or later, this meant danger...
Yet how could she speak to Jaelle, warn her, without the younger girl thinking that she was jealous, or grudged her the happiness she had found with her lover? Still less was it possible to remonstrate with Peter. So she only watched them with growing disquiet and anxiety.

In anticipation of their imminent departure she began to sort and put together her possessions; Jaelle found her occupied by this, and suggested that most of their traveling clothes were in need of repair, and that they might profitably spend the day in putting them in order. Magda was surprised to find that Jaelle was an expert needlewoman; somehow this had seemed too feminine an art for an Amazon. Magda herself, accustomed to the readily replaceable, cheap synthetics of the Terran Zone, had never mastered the art; had, in fact, been taught to scorn it as being a pointless way of passing time for women who had no useful work to do.