But Cholayna spoke with equal composure. “It is not. I have known such cases of heavy-metal poisoning, but my skin was this way at birth; I am from a far country where all men and women are like me.”
The eyes of the leronis flickered and jolted abruptly to Cholayna again. Her face was so motionless otherwise that Magda knew they had really taken her by surprise. We were meant to be impressed and we spoiled that for her. Arrogance was a part of the woman. Somehow Magda had expected that envoys from the mysterious Sisterhood would be like Marisela, benevolent and unassuming.
Was this some form of test? The words formed in her mind without volition. She looked at her freemate, trying to send her a warning; Be careful, Jaelle!
But she knew Jaelle had not received the warning, her brain felt dead, the air in the room an empty void that would not carry thought. So we have had a demonstration of her powers, if not the one she expected.
Arlinda was still cowering by the wall, and Magda looked at the old Amazon with displeasure, not at Arlinda for her fear, but at the arrogant leronis for imposing it. Why should an envoy from the Sisterhood try to terrify them? Suddenly Magda remembered the old woman of her dream in Ravensmark Pass. But she was more afraid of this Aquilara than she had been of that old woman.
Acquilara began again.
“I have heard that you are searching for a certain City.”
Jaelle did not waste words. “Have you been sent to take us there?”
Magda knew, without being sure how she knew, that Jaelle had displeased the woman. Aquilara shifted her position; after her stillness this motion was as surprising as if she had leaped up and yelled aloud.
“Do you know what you are asking? There are dangers—”
“If we were afraid of the dangers,” Jaelle retorted, “we would not have come so far.”
“You think you know something of dangers? I tell you, girl, the dangers you have met on the road— banshees, bandits, all the demons of the high passes— they are nothing, I tell you, nothing beside the dangers you still must face before you are taken into that City. It is not I who impose that test on you, believe me. It is the Goddess I serve. You call upon that Goddess, you Renunciates. But will you dare to face Her, if She should come?”
“I have no reason to fear her,” Jaelle said.
“You think you know something of fear?” Acquilara looked at Jaelle with contempt, and turned to Camilla.
“And you. You are seeking that City? What for? This is a City of women. How shall you, who have renounced your womanhood, be admitted there?”
Camilla’s pale face flushed with anger, and Magda suddenly thought of the Training Sessions in the Guild-house, when the young women, newly admitted to the Guild, were incited to anger and put on the defensive, to force them to clarify their real thoughts; to get beyond what they had been taught as young girls that they ought to think and feel. Were they being subjected to some such process now, and why? And why at the hands of this woman, this leronis, if she was a leronis at all?
“Why do you say I have renounced my womanhood, when you find me in the company of my sisters of the Guild-house?”
Acquilara seemed to sneer.
“Where else could you swagger and play the man so well? Do you think I cannot read you as a woodsman reads the tracks in the first snow? Do you dare deny that for years you lived among men as a man, and now you think you can become a woman again? Your heart is a man’s heart—have you not proven that by taking a woman lover?”
Magda watched Camilla’s face, angry and pained. Surely this woman was a leronis, or how could she strike so precisely at Camilla’s defenses? Yet she, who had been Camilla’s lover so long, knew better than anyone alive how unjust it was. Sexless as Camilla’s mutilated body might seem, the body of the emmasca, Magda knew better than any other that Camilla was all woman.
“You, who have denied the Goddess in yourself, how will you justify yourself to Her?”
Camilla was on her feet, and her hand was gripping her knife. Magda wanted to jump up, physically prevent her from whatever rash thing she might contemplate; yet she sat as if paralyzed, unable to move a muscle to warn or prevent her friend.
“I will justify myself to the Goddess when she justifies herself to me,” Camilla said. “And I will justify myself to her, not to her envoy. If you were sent to guide us to that City, then guide us. But don’t venture to test us; that is for her, not her lackeys.” She stood over the leronis, and for a moment it was a contest of arrogance.
Magda was never sure what happened next. There was a flash, something like blue fire, and Camilla reeled backward; she fell, rather than sat down, on her sleeping bag.
“You think you know the Goddess,” stated Aquilara, and now her voice was all contempt. “You are like the peasant women who pray to the bright Evanda to make their garden bloom, and their dairy animals to drop their calves without blight, and to bring them handsome virile lovers and healthy babies. And they pray to the sheltering Avarra to ease their pains of birth and death. But they know nothing of the Goddess. She is the Dark One, cruel and beyond the comprehension of mortal women, and her worship is secret.”
“If it is secret,” Vanessa said—all this time she had sat silent on her sleeping bag, listening but not speaking— “why do you tell us about it?”
Aquilara rose abruptly to her feet.
She said, “You girls—” the term was frankly one of contempt now, and included even the mature Cholayna in its scorn—“you think you will use the Goddess? The truth is that she will use you in ways you cannot even begin to contemplate. She is cruel. Her only truth is Necessity. But like all of us, you are grist for her mill, and she will grind you up in it. Your friend saw this, and she has begged a place for you. Be ready when she calls you!”
She turned her back without looking round, and strode out of the room. The apprentice picked up the seat without a word and followed her.
Arlinda was still cowering against the wall in an agony of fear.
“You should not have angered her,” she whispered, “she is very powerful! Oh, you should not have made her angry.”
“I don’t care if she’s the Goddess herself,” Jaelle said, brusquely, “she rubbed me the wrong way. But if she’s got Lexie and Rafaella, we’ve got to play along with her, at least for a while.”
Vanessa had resumed combing her hair and was now braiding it into half a dozen small braids, for tidiness. “Do you think she has Lexie and Rafaella, then?”
Jaelle turned to Arlinda. “Did Rafi go with her?”
Arlinda shook her head and mumbled, “Nay, how am I to know of her comings and goings? She is a leronis, a sorceress, whatever she wills, so she will do… ”
Magda was shocked, even horrified. Arlinda had seemed so strong, so hearty and tough, and now she was mumbling as if she were a senile old woman. Soon after, she kissed Jaelle good night and went away, and the women of the party were left alone.
“Better get to bed,” Jaelle said. “Who knows what might be up for us in this place? Keep your knives handy.”
Vanessa looked at her in shock. She said, “I thought you said we were as safe here as in the Guild-house, with Arlinda—”
“Even a Guild-house can catch fire or something. Arlinda’s changed from when I knew her ten years ago. Sitting shaking in a corner while the old beldame bullies her guests—ten years ago she’d have slung Aquilara, or whatever that so-called leronis calls herself, out into the street on her backside.”
“You don’t think she’s a leronis?” Magda asked.
“Hell, no, I don’t.” Jaelle lowered her voice, glancing cautiously around as if she thought Aquilara might be lurking unseen in a corner.
“She took a lot of pains to impress us with how much she knew about us already. About Camilla having lived as a man, for instance. Anything she could have used against us, she would have used to put us at a disadvantage.” Jaelle stopped and glanced from Cholayna to Vanessa.
“But she couldn’t ev
en guess that you three were Terrans. What the hell kind of leronis is that!”
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
« ^ »
You’re right.” Magda frowned, trying to decide what this might mean. “She misses things that even Lady Rohana would have picked up. This ‘great leronis’ would appear to be rather lacking in mental abilities, although,” she added grimly, “she obviously has some physical ones.”
Camilla was still sitting on her bedroll looking stunned. Magda went to her.
“Breda, did she hurt you?”
For a frightening minute Camilla did not reply and Magda had a brief memory picture of Arlinda, maundering suddenly like a senile old woman. Then Camilla drew a long breath and let it out.
“No. Not hurt.”
Vanessa asked, “What precisely did she do to you, Camilla? I could not see… ”
“How should I know? That devil-spawn in the shape of a woman but pointed her finger at me, and it seemed that my legs would no longer hold me up; I was falling through an abyss torn by all the winds of the world. Then I found myself sitting here without wit to open my eyes or speak.”
Vanessa said, “If that was a representative of your Sisterhood, I do not think very highly of them.”
Cholayna, in her guise as a professional, was doing a mental analysis. “You say, Jaelle, that she hasn’t the mental abilities one would expect from most of the Comyn. The physical abilities she displayed could be duplicated by a stunner. She seemed to rely on presence and the old ‘I know what you’re thinking’ trick. She reminded me of someone running a confidence game.”
“You’re right,” Vanessa agreed. She drew herself up and solemnly intoned, “Trust me, dear children! I am the personal representative of the One True Goddess; I see all, know all; you see nothing, know nothing.” She dropped the pose and looked thoughtful. “She said we would be summoned. What do you suppose she meant by that?”
“I have no idea,” said Jaelle, “but I would go nowhere—not out of this house, not to the next room, not to the cristoforo heaven itself—at her summoning.”
“I don’t see that we have a choice,” Cholayna said. “If she, whoever and whatever she is, has Anders and Rafaella, or even knows where they are… ”
Jaelle nodded bleakly. “Right. But we’ll hang on here as long as we can. For the moment we should get some rest, be ready for whatever it is they may be planning for us. Want me to take first watch?”
Cholayna put away the little book in which she had been writing. Vanessa tied her braided hair into a scarf and snuggled down in her sleeping bag. Camilla backed herself up against the one wall of the room where there were no doors, and said to Magda in an undertone, “I feel like a fool; yet for the first time in many years I am afraid to be alone. Come and sleep here beside me.”
“Gladly,” Magda said, positioning her sleeping bag so that Camilla lay protected between her and the wall. “I’m sure that creature—I refuse to call her leronis— would send us nightmares if she could manage it.”
The fire burned low; Jaelle had kept one of the lamps lit, and she was sitting up on her sleeping bag, hand ready to her knife. Magda touched the hilt of her own knife… Jaelle’s knife; years ago, they had exchanged knives, in the age-old Darkovan ritual binding them to one another. It was familiar now as her own hand.
She thought, now that we are safe here I should try and let them know, in the Forbidden Tower, that we are safe. And I would like to know that the children are well and content. She composed herself for sleep, one hand touching the silken bag at her throat where her matrix rested. Drowsing, she let her mind start to range outward. An instant later she was in the Overworld, looking down through grayness at her apparently sleeping form, the motionless bodies of her four companions.
But although she tried to move outward, into the gray world seeking the landmarks of the Forbidden Tower, something seemed to hold her in the room. She hung there motionless, vaguely sensing that something was wrong. She found herself glancing toward each of her companions in turn, tensed for flight but held there by some force she could not overcome. She was not accustomed to this, and while, out of her body, she was free of physical sensation, she felt an anxiety, a hovering fear that simulated real pain.
What could be wrong? All seemed normal; Jaelle, sitting quietly alert; Vanessa and Cholayna, the older woman lying on her side, her face hidden in the pillow and only the pale shock of hair visible, Vanessa burrowed under her blankets like a child. Camilla was asleep too, tossing and turning unquietly and muttering to herself, her face twisted into a frown. Magda silently damned Matera in every language she could think of.
Softly at first, then louder, she heard a small sound in the silence of the overworld; it was the calling of crows. Then she could see them, hooded forms, misty images gradually becoming more defined. For an instant she had a formless sense of well-being. Yes, this is the right path. We are doing what we were born to do.
Then the uneasiness came back, stronger than before; the crows squawked their alarm cry, raucous, shrilling through the overworld. Then a sharper scream rang through the room which was not really the room at all. Hawks! From somewhere, dozens of hawks were in the room, angling, stooping down on the crows in every direction. A great wave of emotion, combined of anger, frustration, and jealousy, emanated from the hawks—it reminded Magda of the Terran legend of Lucifer and his fallen angels, cast out from heaven and forever trying to keep others from what they had lost for themselves.
A pair of hawks, feathers falling, speckled with blood, made a dive at Camilla, and Magda snapped back into her body as Camilla woke screaming.
Or had there been any sound at all? Camilla was sitting bolt upright in her sleeping bag, her eyes wild, her arms outstretched to ward off some invisible menace. Magda touched her shoulder, and Camilla blinked and truly woke.
“Goddess guard me,” she whispered. “I saw them; ten thousand devils… and then you came, Margali, with… ” she stopped and frowned, and at last said in a confused whisper, “Crows?”
“You were dreaming, Kima.” The rarely used, rarely permitted nickname was the measure of Magda’s disturbance.
Camilla shook her head. “No. Once before you spoke of the emissaries of the Dark Lady as taking crow form. I am not sure I understand it… ”
“I don’t either.” But as she spoke Magda had a sudden vision of Avarra, Lady of Death, mistress of the forces which break down and carry away that which is past usefulness; crows, scavengers and carrion birds, cleaning up the debris of the past.
Hawks; raptors, preying on the living…
Vanessa mumbled in protest, burrowing deeper into her sleeping bag. Magda glanced with compunction at her companions. She should not disturb them. She got up and went to the fireside, kneeling beside Jaelle.
She asked in a whisper, “Did you see anything?” and Jaelle started from an unquiet doze.
“Ayee—! What a guardian I am! We could all have been murdered in our beds here!” She made a nervous gesture at the fire. “I saw in the flames… women, robed and hooded, with the faces of hawks, circling about us… Margali, I do not like your Sisterhood.”
Magda beckoned Camilla forward.
“We saw. Both of us. I think the hawks are—are Aquilara’s crew, if that makes any sense to you, and that they have nothing to do with the real Sisterhood. But the real ones are near us. They will protect us, if we listen. But if we listen to Aquilara and her threats and summonings… ”
“Yes,” said Camilla gruffly, “I too have had a warning. If we stay here, we might better have died at the hands of the robbers. It is not our bodies in danger this time; they strike at the inner bastions of our minds. Our souls, if you will. It is not Arlinda or her girls that I fear, but they have somehow let this place be opened… ” she stopped and said in confusion, “I do not know what I am talking about. Is this what you two mean when you speak of laran?”
Jaelle looked from one to the other, dismayed. She sai
d, “What do you suggest that we do?”
“Get the hell out of here,” Camilla said, “not even waiting for daylight.”
“A poor return for hospitality,” Jaelle said, hesitant.
“Hospitality indeed,” Camilla said dryly, “loosing such a sorceress—I will not give her the honorable title of leronis— upon us.”
But Jaelle was still troubled.
“Cholayna was so far right,” she said. “If Aquilara has Rafi—and Lieutenant Anders—I do not see how we can afford to leave them in her power. If she can guide us to them—”
“I think she lied, to deceive us into following her,” Camilla said.
“But in the name of the Goddess herself, for what reason?” Magda asked. “What would she want with us, and why would she try to deceive us anyhow?”
“I don’t know,” Camilla said, “but I wouldn’t believe a word she said. If she told us Liriel was rising on the eastern horizon I would look at the sky to be certain.”
For seven years it has distressed me that Camilla would not use the laran to which she was born. Now when she does I am trying to argue with her, Magda thought. Yet from Jaelle she picked up the very real concern; on their actions in the next few hours, the very lives of Lexie and Rafaella could depend.
She thought, damn them both, and quickly retracted the thought. She had known for years that a thought was a very real thing. She did not have the laran of the Alton Domain, where a murderous thought could kill, but she realized wearily that she did not want any harm to come to Rafaella, who was Jaelle’s oldest friend. She felt that she would like to box Lexie’s ears, but she did not really want to see her hurt or killed. What they had done was unwise, foolish, and tiresome, but death or damnation would be too great a penalty.
What then was the answer?
“Just supposing that she told the truth—even if her purpose could have been to confuse us like this,” Magda said, “and that she really does have Lexie and Rafaella? What do we do then?”