“Here. Lean on me.”
“I can manage,” said Cholayna, forcing herself to stand without Magda’s support, glaring at her with her teeth bared like an animal. She took an unsteady step, another. But at least she was walking. Magda put her arm around her again, and this time Cholayna did not draw away from the offered support.
Jaelle was in the lead; Vanessa struggling with the horses just behind her. Camilla had caught up with the roped chervines, and was clinging to a saddle-strap as Cholayna had done for so long, and Magda longed to go to her; yet she knew Camilla could, if she must, manage without her help, and Cholayna needed her.
Somewhere below them there was the thunder of an avalanche and the mountain shook. Magda gasped and Cholayna clutched at her; but it was far below, and subsided after a few moments.
We’ve got to get across this stretch; it could all go, any minute!
“Look,” Jaelle called wildly from a few dozen steps above them. “Look, Vanessa! Across the slope, up there! Do you see? Lights! Lights, over there! It’s the settlement marked on the map! It’s really there, and we’ve found it!”
Magda drew in a breath of relief. It hurt her dry throat, and the icy air burned in her lungs, but it had come just at the right time. Now they could go on. It did not even matter that it was starting to snow. With Cholayna clinging to her arm, they struggled up the last steps to the peak, and they all clustered there, staring at the faint glimmer of lights across the valley. From here it was downhill, and at least part of the way, they could ride.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
« ^ »
Partway down the slope, it began to snow; they rode through the deepening dusk as the snow thickened, Cholayna and Camilla riding, Jaella leading on foot with Magda and Vanessa behind her. The extra horses and the chervines came after, jostling on the narrow downhill trail. From the position of the lights, Magda could tell that they were well above the valley’s floor, and she hoped there would be a road or trail upward. She did not know how Cholayna would fare on another mountain path.
As they went down, the road was lined more thickly with trees, sometimes blotting out the distant lights. The snow fell more and more heavily, and the wind began to rise.
Suppose we cannot reach the village in this snow; suppose it becomes a full blizzard? Suppose they will not take us in, or they are a village of robbers like that one past Barrenscae? But Magda was really too weary to care, to think any further than those welcoming lights. Lower and lower they descended, sheltered somewhat from the fierce wind and snow by the twisted trees lining the road, and there was a faint smell of resins; Magda was so chilled that it was a long time before she could be sure she smelled anything. Down and still down, and then she was certain she smelled smoke and the faint far smell of food cooking, so delicious that it made her eyes stream. The lights flickered faintly far above them, but they seemed too near to be across the valley, as if they were floating in the air.
Magda could no longer see the lights. Then she bumped softly into Camilla’s horse, and all the animals jostled together at the foot of a cliff. It was as dark as the inside of a pocket.
“Somebody, strike a light?” It was Camilla’s voice. Cholayna was coughing. Jaelle fumbled in the dark and then there was a tiny flare. Gradually, by its light, Magda began to see why they had been so abruptly halted.
They were clustered at the foot of a cliff which rose sheer before them. Someone a long time ago had cut steps into the sheer face, too steep, too far apart, for climbing, as if the original designers had been not quite human.
But beside the steps hung a long rope, with a handle, a plain chunk of wood wrapped in greasy rope. With a quick glance round, Jaelle pulled at it, and heard, a long way above them, the sound of a bell.
Then for a long time nothing happened at all. At least they were in the shelter of the cliff, and out of the wind; but the cold was still fierce and biting. Jaelle and Vanessa stamped about, striking their boots hard against the rock underfoot. Magda knew she should do the same, but had not the necessary strength of will to force herself. Cholayna was coughing and wheezing again, huddled in her down jacket, a thick scarf muffling her face and the sound of her breathing. Magda shivered and waited.
“Do you hear anything, Jaelle? Should you ring the bell again?”
“Something. Up there.” Jaelle stepped back away from the cliff, trying to look through the thick darkness and whirling snow. Now they could all hear it, a rough scraping sound.
Jaelle struck another light; then into the tiny circle of flame, crossed with thick-falling flakes of snow, a booted foot descended, then another, quickly followed by trousered legs and a body wrapped in what looked like an assortment of thick heavy shawls. This was surmounted by a face half concealed by matted, ice-rimed white hair, thick and wild, snow lingering on the bushy white eyebrows.
“Ye’ll have to lave yer riden’ beasts down yere,” said a rasping voice in thick mountain dialect. “We got na way to bring dem up. Be ye men or women, strangers?” And in the last sputtering light of the match Magda saw that the deep-sunken eyes were clotted with thick white film. Nevertheless for a shocking instant Magda thought it was the old woman she had seen in the Overworld.
“I am Jaelle n’ha Melora, a Renunciate of Thendara Guild-House,” Jaelle said, “and these four women are my Oath-sisters. We are all travel-weary and one of our number is ill. We beg shelter for the night.”
“Ay, usn’ll shelter ye the night, na worrit to that,” said the blind woman. “Shelter ye even be ye men, but men sleep in by the stable wi’ dey beasts. This be the hermitage of Avarra, daughters. Men here be curst if dey try to enter, but ye may come up and sleep sound. Bide here just.”
She tilted her head upward and gave out a long, shrill, wordless call that resonated in the snow-filled air for a long time. For a minute Magda thought it was a word in her nearly incomprehensible dialect, then realized it was a signal. It was followed by a harsh scraping sound, and then, on a rope, swaying from side to side, a dark shape descended. After a minute Magda realized that it was a great heavy basket, woven of something like wicker, bumping against the edge of the cliff as it came down.
The blind woman gestured.
“Get ye in, girlies. Usn’ll stable dey beasts.” And indeed as the basket descended farther, Magda could see inside the slender shape of what looked like an adolescent boy but was probably a girl, wrapped in shapeless garments like those of the woman.
Camilla asked, “Shouldn’t I stay with the horses?”
The blind woman swiveled her head round quickly at the voice; came and felt about Camilla’s head and shoulders, her narrow body.
“Here, ye, be ye woman? Tha’ hands be more fit for sword and tha’ got nae tits—”
That settled one question, thought Magda dispassionately; this was not the hidden city of the Sorceresses; the woman had no laran. Her throat ached with awareness of Camilla’s humiliation, but Camilla said quietly: “I am emmasca, old mother, and made so as a young girl. Yet I was born a woman, and so I remain. Is there a law of this place that a woman may not bear a sword?”
“Hrrmmphh!” It was an untranslatable sound; Magda did not know whether it was contempt or simply acceptance. The blind woman stood with her hands still on Camilla’s shoulders. Then she said, “Na, na, her above shall judge ye, I be not one to do dat. Get ye in.” She signaled toward the basket; the young girl climbed down out of it and held it tilted for Camilla to climb in, followed by the others. The blind woman steadied Cholayna with both hands as she clambered shakily into the basket, then sent up that long reverberating shriek of a signal again. It was answered by a similar cry from above, and then the basket began to move upward.
During that terrible bouncing, swaying ascent, up and up on creaking pulleys invisible in the dark above them, the rope jiggled and the basket bumped heavily against the cliff, jostling loose and beginning again the slow creaking ascent. The wind buffeted the basket, setting it swa
ying and spinning with sickening lurches every few feet. Cholayna peered over the edge with frank curiosity, trying to pierce through the darkness, but Magda clung with both hands to the edge of the basket and hid her eyes in her cloak.
Cholayna murmured, “Fascinating!”
Magda noted, with wonder, that although the Terran woman’s breath was still rasping, her voice weak and shaky, she had recovered her curiosity and interest in what was happening around her. She murmured to Magda, “Do you suppose this is the City of the Sorceresses?”
Magda whispered back, “I don’t think so.” She explained why.
“But the old blind woman is only a kind of gatekeeper or something like that. The people inside might be quite different,” Jaelle murmured under her breath.
Magda didn’t answer. The motion of the basket was making her sick.
How high up is this place anyway? she wondered. It seemed to her that the basket had been making its slow, bumpy way upward for at least half an hour, though she knew realistically it could not possibly be so high. The next time I volunteer to go on a journey in the mountains, she told herself, I shall try to remember that I suffer from acrophobia.
But even the apparently endless journey bumped and wobbled and swayed at last to stillness. There were lights, mostly crude torches of tar, which flared and smoked and smelled to high heaven. They were held by women, mostly clothed in coarse skirts and shawls, their hair ragged and uncombed.
“If these are the chosen of the Goddess,” whispered Vanessa in Terran Standard—not to be overheard or understood—“I do not think much of them. I never saw such a filthy crew.”
Magda shrugged. “Not much fuel or water here for washing. The first thing they did in the robbers’ village was to offer us a bath; you can’t judge by that.”
A pair of the women steadied the swaying basket so that the occupants could climb out. Magda was grateful for the darkness around the torches so that she need not see the long dizzy drop up which they had come.
“Tha’ all well come to Goddess’s holy house,” said one in that barbarous dialect. “May Lady shelter ye safe. Get ye in fra’ the snow and wind.” Surrounding them, they guided them up a long steep cobblestoned path, into the shadow of a cluster of buildings. The hiss of the storm blew around between the buildings and howled in the cornerstones, but in their lee they were out of the falling snow and sheltered from the wind. Magda remembered seeing the gray cluster of stones from the distance and guessed at their size; they were not built on human scale at all, any more than those steps down which the blind woman had clambered alone in the darkness of the storm.
Their guides thrust them along a sort of corridor between two of the immense buildings, and abruptly through a great door, into a room where a fire was burning; a tiny fire in a stone fireplace, which hardly lighted the immense dark spaces and comers of the room.
Near the fire, a dark figure shrouded in coarse shawls and veils crouched in the hearth. The women shoved them forward.
“Kiya,” said one, using the word of courtesy used for any female relative of a mother’s generation, usually meaning in context something like Aunt, or Foster-mother. “Here be strangers, and a sick one for your blessin’.”
The woman before the fire rose and slowly put back the hood from her face. She was a tall old woman, her face swarthy, with wide-spaced eyes under slender gray eyebrows, and she turned her eyes from one to the other of them slowly.
“A good evening to you, sisters,” she said at last. She spoke the same mountain dialect as the other women, but she spoke it slowly, as if the language was unfamiliar to her. However, the pronunciation was clearer and less barbarous. “This is the holy house of Avarra, where we live in seclusion seeking Her blessing. All women are welcome to shelter at need; ye who share our search are blessed. What can this person offer thee the night?” Her voice was deep contralto, so deep it hardly sounded like a woman’s voice at all.
Jaelle said, “We seek shelter against the storm; and one of us is ill.”
The woman looked them over, one by one. Cholayna coughed in the silence; the old woman beckoned her forward, but Cholayna seemed too weak and lethargic to see the gesture, far less obey it, so the woman went to her.
“What ails thee, sister?” But she did not await an answer. “One knows from thy cough; thee is from lowlands and the mountain air sickens they breath. It is so?” She came and opened Cholayna’s jacket, laying her gray head against Cholayna’s chest. She listened a moment, then said, “We can cure this, but thee will not travel for a handful of days.”
She beckoned to Vanessa. “And thy fingers be frozen, and chance be thy feet as well. My sisters will bring thee hot soup and hot water in a little time, and show ye all a place to sleep safe and dry.” Her eyes went to Jaelle and it seemed they sharpened with sudden interest.
“Thy name, daughter?”
“I am Jaelle n’ha Melora—”
“Na’, thy true name. Once this one who bespeaks thee dwelt in lowland country and she does well know a Renunciate may call herself to her liking. Thy name of birth, chiya.”
“My mother was Melora Aillard,” Jaelle said. “I do not acknowledge my father; am I a racehorse to be judged by the blood of my sire and dam?”
“Plenty, girl, will judge thee by less than that. Thee does wear thy Comyn blood in thy face like a banner.”
“If you know me for a Renunciate, old mother, you know I have renounced that heritage.”
“Renounce the eyes in thy head, daughter? Comyn thee is, and with the donas”—she used the archaic word, meaning gift rather than the more common term laran—“of that high house. And thy brother-sister there?”
She beckoned to Camilla, and said, “Why break laws of thy clan, half-woman?” The words were sharp, but for some reason they did not sound offensive, as the question of the blind gatekeeper had been. “Will thee entrust this old one with thy birth name, Renunciate?”
She looked straight into Camilla’s eyes.
Camilla said, “Years ago I swore an oath never again to speak the name of those who renounced me long before I renounced them. But that was long ago and in another country. My mother was of the Aillard Domain, and in childhood I bore the name Elorie Lindir. But Alaric Lindir did not father me.”
Magda barely managed to stifle a gasp. Not even to her, not even to Mother Lauria, had Camilla ever spoken that name. That she did so now betokened a change so deep and overpowering that Magda could not imagine what it meant.
“And thee has donas of the Hastur clan?”
“It may be,” said Camilla quietly. “I know not.”
“Well ye are come to this house, daughters.” The tall woman inclined her head to them courteously. “Time may be for this one to speak wi’ ye again, but this night thy needs are for rest and warmth. Make known to these whatever else may be given.” She beckoned to the women who had brought them, gave a series of low-voiced instructions in their peculiar dialect. But Cholayna swayed and leaned against her, and Magda did not listen to what she said.
“Come ye wi’ us,” said one of the women, and led them through the drafty corridors again, then, and into an empty, spacious, echoing old building, stone-floored, stone-walled, with birds nesting in high corners and small rodents scurrying in the straw underfoot which had been laid for warmth. The only furnishings were a few ancient benches of carven stone, and a huge bedstead, really no more than a stone dais. One of the ragged crew laid a fire in the grate and touched her torch to it.
“Be warm an’ safe yere,” she said in her crude dialect, at the same time making a surprisingly formal gesture. “Usn’ will bring ye hot soup from the even’ meal, an’ medicines for thy frozen feet an’ for the sick one.” She went away, leaving the women alone.
“They are more generous with fire for us than they were with that old woman, their priestess or whoever she was,” Vanessa remarked.
“Of course,” said Jaelle, “they are mountain folk; hospitality is a sacred duty to them.
The old one who welcomed us—she has probably taken vows of austerity: but they would give us of their best, even if their best was half a moldy pallet and a handful of nut porridge.”
“Jaelle, who are these people?” Vanessa asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Whoever they are, they have saved our lives, this night. If someone told me that Avarra, or the Sisterhood, guided us to them, I would not argue the point.” She looked round and saw that Cholayna had collapsed on one of the benches.
“Vanessa, bring the medikit,” she said, then hesitated, looked sharply at Vanessa, who had slumped down at once on another of the stone benches and was huddled over, in pain.
“Can you walk?”
“More or less. But I think I have frozen my feet,” Vanessa confessed. The words were almost an apology. “They don’t hurt. Not quite. But—” she clamped her lips together, and Jaelle said quickly, “You’d better get your boots off and attend to them as quickly as you can. How did you come to do that?”
“I think there may have been a hole in one of my boots—it was cut on the rocks,” Vanessa said, as Jaelle helped her off with her boots. “Yes—see there?”
Jaelle shook her head at the cold white toes. She said, “They told us they’d be bringing hot water in a few minutes. Go near the fire, but not too close. No, don’t rub them, you’ll damage the skin. Warm water will do it better.” She glanced around, at Cholayna lying collapsed and oblivious on the stone dais, at Camilla, who was pulling at her boot carefully, and finally pulled out a knife to slit it.
“How many of us are out of commission? Cholayna’s probably the worst,” Jaelle said. “Magda, you’re one of the more able-bodied ones right now. Get her into a sleeping bag—as close to the fire as possible. The old woman said she would send medicines, and hot water, and hot soup—all of which we can certainly use.”