affection for Kate Aldaran, and that there was no mischief in it. More, if
Gisela was as determined as she seemed to behave better, she would have to learn
to trust her more. With all the history that lay between her and Giz, it was a
startling idea, one she was not sure she could accept easily.
"I'm not sure. I seem to remember being rather concerned about all those
teeth-to a little girl even a pony seems pretty dangerous. And we rode bareback,
without reins. I just grabbed the mane-I remember it was wiry in my fingers-and
hung on for dear life." She laughed a little. "I did not tell you that, and
pretended to skills I lack," Katherine admitted.
"That is all right. It was not a lie that was intended to injure anyone, and I
do understand that being cooped up in a carriage would have been difficult for
you."
"How far is it now?"
"To the rhu fead or Carcosa?"
"Carcosa."
Marguerida glanced knowledgeably along the movement of the train. "We will reach
the town about midday, if none of the carriages loses a wheel, and if we have no
other delays, we might get to Lake Hali by nightfall." Thus far she had not told
Katherine about the possibility of an attack on the funeral train, nor that she
would have to get into a carriage when they left Carcosa. It had been hard
enough to suggest that the castle might be attacked, in order to get her to let
the children be taken to safety.
"Nightfall?" Katherine shivered in the wind, as if the prospect of riding
through the entire day was finally making itself known. "Where will we spend the
night? Is there a city there? No one has said."
"Nothing like that-the only real city, in terms you understand, on Darkover is
Thendara. There are a few largish places, like Neskaya, which are almost
cityish, but for the most part there are only villages, towns and hamlets. I
sent people ahead three days ago, to prepare things. By now I expect there is an
encampment with its own kitchens, tents for sleeping, and latrines."
"You sleep outside in tents, in this cold?"
Marguerida managed to swallow a laugh. "This is not cold, Kate, not by Darkovan
standards."
"Then what do you consider too cold for comfort?"
"Um, when the temperature is way below freezing, and there is snow up to your
eyeballs, I suppose. I've gotten so used to it now that I hardly ever think
about it. When I first returned to Darkover, I thought I would die from cold,
but I adjusted, and so will you."
"I'm not so sure of that, Marguerida. You were much younger than I am now,
weren't you?"
"Yes, I was, but I'm sure you'll become used to the climate with time."
Katherine scanned the landscape, her eyes going towards the horizon as if she
were trying to see something very distant. "Herm used to rhapsodize about
winter, and sometimes when he talked about snow, he got positively poetic. I
never understood that, and thought he was exaggerating, the way you do when you
are far away from home. I mean, when we took Amaury and Ter‚se home to Renney
nine years back, I was stunned by how small the Manse seemed, because in my
memory, it was a much bigger house than it is in reality. True, compared to the
average Federation dwelling, it was huge-seven bedrooms and two parlors. But the
ceilings seemed lower, and the rooms less spacious than I remembered. Now I
think that perhaps Herm did not even give me a true idea of how different
Darkover is-that the Hellers are taller than he said, and colder, too." She
shuddered slightly, looking north.
"You will get used to it. I did. Now I cannot imagine living in one room, or
perhaps two, as I did when I was at University. My parents had a home on Thetis,
with wide verandas facing the ocean, which I thought was very grand, but which
would have fitted into a tiny fraction of Comyn Castle without a ripple. It all
seems like a dream to me now, although a very nice one-warm and smelling of
flowers and saltwater." She let herself sigh for the world she knew she would
never see again. "We will rough it for a night, with decent cots and lots of
blankets, so I promise you will not freeze to death, or even take a chill. And,
with any luck, we will have your Hermes back, and you can bundle up with him."
"He will be very lucky if I don't make him sleep on the ground with one thin
blanket, for all the aggravation he has given me." Her deep voice was twisted
with conflicting emotions, too many for Marguerida to sort out without probing
invasively.
"I would never dare to advise you on how to conduct your marital relations,
Kate, but you must not be too hard on him. He is still a Darkovan male, and they
are reared to be high-handed, to treat their womenfolk like fragile bric-a-brac,
and to do as they please, for the most part. He can't help not consulting you,
any more than you can avoid resenting it."
"Bric-a-brac! Yes, that's how Herm made me feel once we arrived here-I just
couldn't quite get my mind around it! And I don't understand it at all."
"It's our history, Kate. Darkover has a small population, and infant mortality
has been high for centuries. Therefore women were protected fiercely-in some
places more than others. Up in the Dry Towns they are shackled like criminals.
Some of that has changed since the Federation came, but not as much as I would
like. Even today, there is not a great deal of freedom here for females, unless
they choose the Renunciate's path, which is not an easy one."
"You mean those women at the rear of the train? Gisela told me a little about
them. We even joked that if things didn't work out with Herm, I could join them.
They look tough as nails."
"Yes, those are Renunciates."
"There is so much I do not understand, which infuriates me and makes me feel
even more . . . no matter. Tell me about this rhu fead. If it is such an
important place, why is there no city or large town nearby? And, for that
matter, why bury your kings there, instead of Thendara, if it is, as you say,
the chief city? It doesn't make any sense to me, and I am driving myself to
distraction trying to make heads or tails out of this planet my husband has
plunked me down on."
Marguerida laughed aloud and nodded. "That seems perfectly reasonable to me,
dear Kate. The short answer is tradition. Everything important on Darkover is
done according to hoary traditions that no one remembers the reasons for any
longer. One of these is that our dead rulers will be interred in the rhu fead,
which is a very peculiar place to begin with. It stands near the shore of Lake
Hali." She paused and took a slow breath. "I once spent several weeks submerged
in the waters-except they are not really waters-of Lake Hali, and I know no more
about it than I did before. So it is no good asking me about it. I wish I could
tell you more. Just understand that Hali is a sacred place, and that Darkover is
a planet which tends to be traditional rather than innovative." She grinned.
"They don't examine their ideas much, and I think if you asked a hundred people
at random why things were done in a certain way, ninety of them would just
answer that if
it was good enough for their grandfather, it is good enough for
them."
"Oh, a religious site. Well, there is no explaining those sorts of things, is
there? Even when you grow up with the beliefs, you never really understand them.
I think that religion is just a box into which real mysteries are dropped, like
old clothing."
Marguerida gave Kate a look of pleasure. She had nearly forgotten how delightful
it was to have a discussion about ideas, for there were very few people on
Darkover who had the education and intellectual curiosity she craved. And, until
now, it had not occurred to her that Katherine might be a woman with unusual
ideas of her own. "Now, that is a very interesting attitude. I never thought if
it that way before, but you make good sense. I had the impression from a few
things you said that Renney had a pretty complex religious life-your sacred
groves and all. Don't you accept those things any longer?"
"Maybe my years living in the Federation have left me a bit cynical." Katherine
gave a thoughtful sigh. "We have goddesses on Renney, and the people there
believe in them. A day does not go by that my Nana doesn't offer her prayers and
do her small rituals. When I was a child, they seemed to me to be wonderful, but
when we went back there, so Nana could meet Ter‚se, I was . . . almost
embarrassed, I suppose. It seemed so backward and superstitious, and just a
little silly. I would never suggest such a thing to her, of course. My Nana may
be old, but she is still capable of reducing me to jelly without overly exerting
herself." Katherine chuckled. "After living in the Federation for years,
observing and being exposed to dozens of religions-the followers of which all
insist that theirs is the only true religion-well, it all started to seem
ridiculous to me. It is very hard to go on believing in the power of goddesses
when you have never seen one, and are surrounded by people who believe so many
diverse and contradictory things."
Marguerida did not answer, thinking about her own experiences. Her memory swept
back to the moment when she married Mikhail, in the presence of Varzil the Good
and another, the goddess Evanda. She had never doubted the actuality of that,
but she found herself reluctant to share the experience with her new friend. It
was a very personal remembrance, and even now, years after the fact, it was so
awesome that she could not bring herself to speak of it to anyone except
Mikhail.
At last she said, "The Darkovan mythology is fairly simple-two gods, two
goddesses and no theology to speak of. They are more like forces of nature,
invoked ceremonially on occasion, and otherwise not given much attention. There
are other deities, lesser ones, as well. But I think that the general attitude
of the people is that if the gods do not actively interfere in their lives, then
they should just leave well enough alone." She paused for a second. "Up in
Nevarsin there is a cult called the cristoforos. Their beliefs are monotheistic
and not shared by most of the people of Darkover, but they have been a center of
learning for centuries. In the past, many of the sons of the Comyn were sent
there to be educated-including Regis Hastur. That custom has faded in recent
years, although Gisela's oldest son, by her first marriage, went there and
appears to have decided to join them. I can say, however, that there has never
been a religious war on Darkover, although we have had several of the more
ordinary sort."
"What about those men at the funeral yesterday-weren't they priests?"
"A good question, the answer to which is 'not quite.' The Servants of Aldones
serve what on most worlds would be a priestly function, being the celebrants on
certain important occasions, such as the Midsummer Festival. Where they differ
from other religious bodies I have encountered is that they never tell the
people what to believe or how to worship. There are no temples or churches on
Darkover as you might know such places."
"So what do they do when they are not officiating at funerals?"
"They keep vigil over certain artifacts in a little chapel in the rhu fead, an
eternal flame and some other things I don't know about. Yesterday was the first
time I ever saw them in my life, even though I was the one who sent the message
to them to come to Thendara."
"But they do not have religious authority?"
"No, they don't. For some reason I have never learned, the Darkovans have not
developed a public religious structure. For them it is a private and almost a
family matter."
"Marguerida, have you ever noticed that you speak of the Darkovans as if they
were another people, not your own?"
"Do I? Yes, I suppose I do. For all that I have lived here for nearly seventeen
years, I still feel a bit removed, something of an alien. Or perhaps it is the
habit of scholarship, that I tend to try to assess everything as objectively as
I can. Except for music. All I have there is passion, and Mik gets slightly
jealous sometimes."
Katherine laughed. "Herm is the same about my painting, although he pretends
otherwise. Once, when I was working in our apartment, the whole of which would
almost fit into the studio space you gave me, and was staring at the canvas,
trying to decide if a bit of vermilion would make the shadows better, he came
in. I barely registered his presence, so after a few minutes, he cleared his
throat and nearly scared me to death. 'You never look at me like that,' he said,
and I wanted to clout him over the head, but I didn't. He is right, you know. As
much as I adore him, from the top of his shiny pate to his extremely well-formed
feet, there is a part of me that belongs only to my work. He never has to worry
about infidelity, but he does have a rival."
"Yes. I know about that." Marguerida let herself sigh into the wind. "I was
writing an opera for Regis' birthday when he died. I wanted to do something as
grand as your ancestor's The Deluge of Ys, using the legend of Hastur and
Cassilda, which is a very famous song cycle here. Now I don't know if I will
ever be able to bring myself to complete it." It cost her a great deal to admit
this, but somehow speaking the words eased an ache in her chest she had not
noticed until it left her. She remembered the freshly copied pages of score, and
how the ink had flowed over them when Regis had his stroke.
"You must, Marguerida. If you don't finish it, it will eat away at your guts and
make you miserable."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I am an artist, and because I remember Amedi Korniel."
"I've been wanting to ask you about him, but it never seemed the right time,"
she answered, almost relieved that the topic had shifted away from gods and
goddesses, or her feeling alienated on the world of her birth.
"Ask away-this is as good a time as any."
"What was he like, and why did he stop composing in his sixties?"
"My great-uncle was a very cantankerous man, who had an opinion about
everything. He was in his mid-eighties when I was born, and he died just before
I left Renney. Nana adored him, he was her older brother, but even she found h
im
maddening sometimes. He was a complete egotist, and thought the world should
revolve around him. And he did not stop composing-just refused to let any of his
work after Ys be performed. There are boxes of his compositions sitting in the
Manse."
"But why?" Marguerida's heart leaped at the thought of these unpublished
compositions by one of her favorite musicians, then sank as she realized that
she would never have the opportunity to see them. Years before, she had resigned
herself to never leaving Darkover again, and the desire to travel to other
worlds had left her, but now she found herself aching to go to Renney and rescue
the works of Amedi Korniel. She shook the feeling away sharply, but it lingered
like the aftertaste of some bitter fruit.
"He was never satisfied with anything he did after the success of that opera,
Marguerida. And it ate at him, like some terrible disease. He was paralyzed by
the fear that his next work would not be as good. So learn from his mistake.
Don't let your music get corrupted by Regis' death, or anything else!"
Marguerida was moved by the fervor in Katherine's voice, and it gave her a sense
of kinship as well. "I never realized until this second how much I have wanted
another artist of some kind to talk to about . . . my work, Katherine. And you
are right, of course, it would eat at me." And then she realized it was more
than just having similar drives. At last there was someone who understood her
need for the music, for as much as Mikhail loved her, he had never been able to
know that part of her mind. Even her friends in the Musicians Guild could not
share the urgency of her work, regarding her only as a well-born amateur.
"I wish we could travel faster," Kate said.
"If it were not for the wagons and carriages, we could. Mikhail and I covered
the distance from the gates of Thendara to the ruins of Hali Tower in about four
hours of hard riding, long ago, in the middle of the night, too, with a
snowstorm coming in!"
"That sounds very exciting."
"If being cold and terrified and under a compulsion is exciting, then yes, it
was. Don't fuss. We will get to Carcosa soon enough, and you can ring a peal
over Herm's head as much as you please."
"And will you do the same with Domenic?"
"Probably not. I will just be so glad to have him back in my maternal clutches