Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover

  “No more than you do,” he said, rather unhappily. “Surely you know that all this ceremony is to please the family of the bride; I was told by your parents that you must have a wedding worthy of the former Keeper of Arilinn. But I confess, I do not see what difference it makes.”

  “Then we are in total agreement,” Hilary said with a breath of relief. “I was told that only a great ceremony would please you and your kin, and was made to feel ungrateful for not wanting it—as if it would dishonor you and your noble kinfolk.”

  Colin’s face lit up. “Then let us have less ceremony, by all means,” he said. “I have always thought a wedding should please bride and husband, and I was willing to go along with whatever you wished. But if it is not your true will—and if we are both agreed—?”

  “Of one thing you should be sure,” Hilary said, “My mother and father will be angry with us—or at least my mother will be. Papa will not mind, except that he will have to bear my mother’s wrath.”

  Colin sighed. “Darling, if you will forgive me for saying so, I care not a raisin for your mother’s wrath.”

  Hilary felt the most extraordinary sense of relief and lightness; she giggled helplessly and murmured, “To be perfectly truthful, neither do I, Colin, but I am not brave enough to say so!”

  He turned in the saddle to look at her. “Then, my love, I think there is nothing left to do but to decide where and when we wish to go.”

  She could not think of what she wished to do, or where they could go to do it. She did not wish to bring down her parents’ wrath upon any of the villagers who might lend them a roof. Finally she suggested in desperation that perhaps Allier would know or be able to suggest something.

  They met with Allier the following day and unfolded their dilemma to her; she listened a moment, then grinned.

  “I was wondering when you would get around to asking me. I do not fear the wrath of your family. I do not depend on anyone in your village for my livelihood but only on my Guild-mother. Rather, they dare not offend me—or who would serve the women in your village? And where would they be if my Guild refused to send them Healers or a midwife? You will borrow my cottage, of course.”

  ~o0o~

  Once it was determined, Hilary set herself to deciding what their first meal together, at their first fireside, should be. She herself knew almost nothing of kitchen arts. In the Tower, there had been servants to do everything. So she decided that she would take ready-to-eat food. By telling her mother that she and Colin planned a day’s ride, she got one of the kitchen women to pack them a generous lunch, including many of her favorite dainties. With a little glimmer of mischief, she even had them pack an apple nut cake; everyone on the estate knew it was her favorite. And now this would be her wedding cake after all, she thought with a sly smile; there would be no one to say it was not suitable.

  One of the kitchen women, who had been Hilary’s nurse when she was very small, saw the smile. “You are merry, Mistress,” she said with a hint of question.

  Hilary merely said, “If I cannot be merry on the eve of my wedding, when should I be?” She hugged the woman exuberantly. When the house folk heard that she had cheated them of their festival, at least someone would know how happy she had been.

  But she grew pensive as she and Colin rode out. For the last two or three years she had heard much from Damon of the struggle Callista had had to lay down the burden of the Tower; she had refused to join with Leonie when the folk of the Tower would have met to strip Damon of his powers.

  She was still frightened; because of Allier’s ministrations, it might be easier for her. She could probably consummate her marriage without danger; but she might be among those failed Keepers who kill their prospective husbands without meaning to, and even the bare possibility frightened her. Colin, too, was of the Tower. She had been brought up on stories which made the point that a man who takes a Keeper—even with her own consent—risks his life and sanity Did Colin fear her?

  “Not much,” he said, “but life is full of fears. If I was prone to be afraid, I would never ride a horse for fear he might slip the reins, nor hunt for fear a huntsman’s arrow would strike me, nor ever leave my fireside and go out of doors for fear stray lightning might strike me from the sky. A man cannot live his life in fear, Hilary; there is risk every time I set foot out of my bed, when it comes to that.”

  “Ah, you are braver than I,” Hilary said, “I am afraid of everything.”

  “But when you are married to me,” Colin said, “you will not need to be afraid, for you will have nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I hope not,” Hilary replied as they drew up their horses in front of Allier’s cottage. She evidently was not within; but she had left the latchstring out for them. Hilary went in while Colin tied the horses and gave them hay. The cottage consisted only of one big room which served as kitchen, living room, and bedroom. A large four-poster bed took up a good deal of the space. Hilary had not found the bed remarkable when she was here before, but now she could not take her eyes from it.

  Colin came in and she went at once to build up the fire. He bent beside her and said, “Let’s build it together—our first fireside . . . .”

  In spite of the fire, Hilary felt cold. Perhaps, she thought, she would feel better with something warm to drink. She found a saucepan hanging over the hearth and poured the cider into it. Within minutes it was steaming away merrily. She unpacked the nut cake and borrowed Colin’s knife to cut two generous wedges.

  “Our wedding feast is ready, Colin,” she said. Colin turned around and placed the treats and cider on the big bed.

  “Come here, Hilary,” he said matter-of-factly, and offered his hand to help her onto the patchwork quilt. Then he sat beside her, and put his arm around her. “So,” he said quietly, holding the mug to her lips, “it is done. We have shared a bed, a hearth, and a meal; you are my wife. There is time enough for everything else when we have leisure and we are ready. Don’t you think I know how you were worrying about that, Hilary?”

  “You do understand everything, Colin,” she whispered. “Let us ride home to Syrtis, then, where we can share all these things under your family’s roof.”

  She would still have to face her mother’s wrath; but now, she could face even that. Ahead of her was a life as Colin’s wife. She smiled at Colin, and thought she would never be afraid of anything again.

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  Rohana Aillard

  Lady Rohana Ardais is one of only two characters in any of my books that I did not consciously create. (The other was Damon Ridenow.) She walked full-blown, like Athena from the head of Zeus, into my first full-length Free Amazon novel, later called The Shattered Chain (a title which Don Wollheim, not I, created; I called it Free Amazons of Darkover), which was supposed to be about Kindra. But Rohana Ardais walked into the book, absolutely uninvited, took it over, and turned out to be one of the most popular characters of all.

  Here is “Everything But Freedom,” which was one of the few longer stories I wrote which were not quite novel length; though when I first wrote Sword of Aldones, it might almost have been a “Cover Novel” for Startling Stories, which just goes to show you what novels were like in those days.

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  Everything but Freedom

  Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Prologue

  “I did not say that I had no regrets, Jaelle,” Rohana said, very low, “only that everything in this world has its price . . . .”

  “So you truly believe that you have paid a price? I thought you told me but now that you had had everything a woman could desire.”

  Rohana did not face Jaelle; she did not want to cry. “Everything but freedom, Jaelle.”

  —The Shattered Chain, 1976

  I

  “Look,” Jaelle cried, leaning over the balcony, “I think they are coming.”

  Lady Rohana Ardais followed her from inside the room, her steps slowed somewhat by pregnancy. She move
d slowly to the edge of the balcony to join her foster-daughter Jaelle and leaned to peer down from the balcony, trying to see past the bend in the tree-lined mountain road that led upward to Castle Ardais.

  “I cannot see so far,” she confessed, and Jaelle, troubled by the angle of the older woman’s leaning forward, seized her round the waist and pulled her back from the edge.

  Rohana moved restlessly to free herself, and Jaelle confessed, “I am still afraid of these heights. It makes my blood curdle, to see you standing so close to the edge like that. If you should fall—” She broke off and shuddered.

  “But the railing is so high,” said the third woman who had followed them from the inner room, “she could not possibly fall, not even if she wished! Look, even if I climbed up here—” Lady Alida made a move as if to climb up on the railing, but Jaelle’s face was whiter than her shift, and Rohana shook her head. “Don’t tease her, Alida. She’s really afraid.”

  “I’m sorry—did that really bother you, chiya?”

  “It does. Not as badly as when I first came here, but—Perhaps it is foolish—”

  “No,” Rohana said, “not really. You were desert-bred and never accustomed to the mountain heights.” Jaelle had been born and reared in the Dry Towns; her mother a kidnapped woman of the Comyn, her father a desert chieftain who was, by Comyn standards, little better than a bandit. Four years before, a daring raid by Free Amazon mercenaries had freed Melora and the twelve-year-old Jaelle; but Melora had died in the desert, bearing the Dry Town chief’s child. Rohana had wished to foster Melora’s children; but Jaelle had chosen to go to the Amazon Guild House as fosterling to the Free Amazon Kindra n’ha Mhari.

  Jaelle peered cautiously over the railing again. “Now they are past the bend in the road,” she said. “You can see—yes, that is Kindra; no other woman rides like that.”

  “Alida,” Rohana said, “Will you go down and make certain that guest-chambers are made ready?”

  “Certainly, sister.” Alida, many years younger than Lady Rohana, was the younger sister of Rohana’s husband, Dom Gabriel Ardais. She was a leronis, Tower trained, and skilled in all the psychic arts of the Comyn, called laran.

  “You will be glad to see your foster-mother again, Jaelle?” Alida asked.

  “Of course, and glad to be going home,” proclaimed Jaelle, heedless of the pain which flashed across Rohana’s face.

  Rohana said gently “I had hoped that in this year, Jaelle, this might have become your home, too.”

  “Never!” Jaelle said emphatically. Then she softened, coming to hug Rohana impulsively. “Oh, please, kinswoman, don’t look like that! You know I love you. Only, after being free, living here has been like being chained again, like living in the Dry Towns!”

  “Is it really as bad as all that?” Rohana asked. “I do not feel I have lost my freedom.”

  “Perhaps you do not really mind being imprisoned, but I do.” Jaelle said. “You will not even ride astride, but when you ride you burden the horse with a lady’s saddle—an insult to a good horse. And—” she hesitated, “Look at you! I know, even though you do not say it, that you did not really want another child, with Elorie already twelve years old and almost a woman, and Kyril and Rian all but grown men. Kyril is seventeen now, and Rian as old as I am!”

  Rohana winced, for she had not realized that her fosterling understood this. But she replied quietly, “Marriage is not a matter for one person to decide everything. It is a matter for mutual decision. I have had many choices of my own. Gabriel wished for another child, and I did not feel that I could deny it to him.”

  “I know better than that,” Jaelle replied curtly; she did not like her kinsman Gabriel, Lord Ardais, and did not care who knew it. “My uncle was angry with you because you had brought my brother Valentine here to foster, and I know that he said that if you could bring up one baby who was not even of your own blood, there was no reason you should not give him another.”

  “Jaelle, you do not understand these things,” Rohana protested.

  “No, and I hope I never do.”

  “What you do not understand is that Gabriel’s happiness is very important to me,” Rohana said, “and it is worth bearing another child to make him happy.”

  But secretly Rohana felt rebellious. Jaelle was right; she had not wanted another child now that she was also burdened with Melora’s son. Little Valentine was now nearly four years old. Her own sons had not been happy about having an infant foster-brother, even though her daughter treated the baby—now a hearty toddler—like a special pet, a kind of living doll to play with. Rohana was grateful that Elorie loved her fosterling. She herself found it a heavy burden, having a little child around again when she had already reared all of her own children past adolescence. And now, at an age where she had hoped childbirth and suckling all behind her, she must undergo all that again; and she was no longer strong and tireless as she had been when she was younger.

  She sought to change the subject, although for one equally filled with tension.

  “Are you still determined to take the Renunciate Oath as soon as possible?”

  “Yes, you know I should have taken it a year ago,” Jaelle said sullenly. “You stopped me then, but now I am fully of age and I cannot be prevented in law.”

  Jaelle knew it had not been only Rohana’s disagreement that had prevented her from taking the Oath which would make her a Free Amazon—a member of the Sisterhood of Renunciates. It had been Kindra herself. She remembered, as she watched Kindra riding toward Castle Ardais, how they had ridden up this road together a year ago, Jaelle sullen and furious.

  “I am of age, Kindra,” she protested. “I am fifteen. I have a legal right to take the Oath, and I have been two years within the Guild House. I know what I want. The law allows it. Why should you stop me?”

  “It is not a matter of law,” Kindra protested. “It is a matter of honor. I gave the Lady Rohana my word; is my word nothing, is my honor nothing to you, foster-daughter?”

  “You had no right to give such a word when it involved my freedom,” Jaelle protested angrily.

  “Jaelle, you were born daughter to the Comyn, Melora Aillard’s daughter, nearest heir to the Domain of Aillard,” Kindra reminded her. “Even so, the Council has not forbidden you to become a Renunciate. But they have insisted that you must live for one year the life of a daughter of the Comyn, if only to be certain we have not kidnapped you nor unlawfully denied you your heritage.”

  “Who could believe that?” Jaelle demanded.

  “Many who know nothing of the Renunciate way, who do not trust in our honor,” Kindra said. “It was a pledge I was forced to make as the price of having you for a fosterling in the Guild House: that when you were of age to be married, you should be sent to Ardais, there to live at least a year—they tried to argue for three—as a daughter of the Comyn, to know—not as a child, but as an adult—just what heritage and inheritance it was that you were renouncing. You should not, they felt, cast it away sight unseen and inexperienced.”

  “What I know of the heritage of Comyn, I do not want, nor respect, nor accept,” Jaelle said stormily. “My life is here among the Guild-sisters, and I swear I shall never know any other.”

  “Oh, hush,” Kindra implored. “How can you say so when you know nothing of what it is that you have renounced?”

  “What good was it to my mother that she was Comyn?” Jaelle demanded. “They let her fall into my father’s hands and dwell there as no better than concubine or slave—”

  “What else could they do? Would you have had them plunge all the Domains into a war with the Dry Towns? Over a single woman—”

  “Had Jalak of the Dry Towns kidnapped the heir to Hastur, they would not have hesitated a moment to make war on his account; I know that much,” Jaelle argued, and Kindra sighed, knowing that what Jaelle said was true. Kindra herself had no great love for the Comyn, although she genuinely admired and respected Lady Rohana. It had taken much persuasion for Jaelle to ag
ree to spend a year at Ardais as Rohana’s foster-daughter, to learn what it was to be born daughter to the Comyn.

  Now the year was ended; and Kindra was coming, as she had promised, to take her back to the Guild House, to take the Oath and live forever as a free woman of the Guild, independent of clan or heritage.

  She brushed hastily past Rohana and ran down the stairs; as she reached the great front door, Kindra was just riding up the long path. Jaelle, cursing the hated skirts which she had to wear at Ardais, bundled them up in her hands and sped down the front pathway to fling herself at Kindra even before the woman dismounted, almost jerking her from her saddle.

  “Gently! Gently, my child,” Kindra admonished, dismounting and taking Jaelle into her arms. Then, seeing that Jaelle was weeping, she held her off at arm’s length and surveyed her seriously.

  “What is the matter?”

  “Oh. I’m just so—so glad to see you!” Jaelle sobbed, hastily drying her eyes.

  “Come, come, child! I cannot believe that Rohana has been unkind to you, or that you could have been so miserable as all this!”

  “No, it’s not Rohana—no one could possibly have been kinder—but I’ve been counting the days! I can’t wait to be home again!”

  Kindra hugged her tight. “I have missed you, too, foster-daughter,” she said, “and we shall all be glad to have you home to us again. So you have not chosen to remain with the Domains and marry to suit your clan?”

  “Never!” Jaelle exclaimed. “Oh, Kindra, you don’t know what it’s been like here! Rohana’s women are so stupid; they think of nothing but pretty clothes and how to arrange their hair, or which of the guardsmen smiled or winked at them in the evenings when we dance in the hall—they are so stupid! Even my cousin, Rohana’s daughter—she is just as bad as any of them!”

  Kindra said gently, “I find it hard to believe that Rohana could have a daughter who was a fool.”