“Marisela, these—I won’t name them; you know who I mean—” the picture of Acquilara was in her mind, in the curious bluish glow of her nightmare, “May I ask just one thing? Why would anyone—want to go that way? Are they the ones who, maybe, tried to—to look for the real Sisterhood and failed? And this was easier?”
“Oh, no, my dear. It takes much, much more strength and power to do evil than to do good, you see.”
“Why is that? I heard that evil was just being weak, taking the path of least resistance—”
“Goodness, no. That’s just being weak, fearful, selfish… in a word, human, imperfect. If being weak were a crime we’d all stand before the judges. That’s excusable. Terrible sometimes, but certainly excusable. The thing is, people who are good, or are trying to do good the best way they can, they’re working with nature, see? To work up the power to do positive evil, you have to go against nature, and that’s much, much harder. There are resistances, and you have to work up momentum against the whole flow of nature.”
This was a new idea to Magda, that good was simply fulfilling nature’s plan and evil was anything which worked against it. She was sure she did not entirely understand it, for Marisela was a midwife and a nurse and, taken to extremes, this could be interpreted as a prohibition against saving lives, which Marisela had spent her whole life doing. She decided she would have to talk further about it some time with her friend. She was never to have the chance.
They were taking a long dip now, along the steep trail, into a long valley below the timberline. Before they dipped into the trees, Marisela called softly to Rakhaila to halt a moment, and pointed upward. Across the valley was a long line of steep ice cliffs, shining in the crimson brilliance of the sun.
“The Wall Around the World,” she said.
They drew together, watching, stunned. Vanessa drew a long, overawed breath. But all she could find to say was, “They look—bigger than they do from a plane in M-and-Ex.”
That was an understatement. They seemed to go on forever, far past sight. Magda thought, God, we’re not going over that, not on foot, are we?
Rakhaila gestured impatiently and set off at a swinging pace that took her out of sight among the trees. Camilla and Jaelle followed, but Cholayna dropped back beside Magda and Vanessa.
“I shall be glad to be going downhill,” she said.
“Tired?”
“Not as much as I thought I should be.” Cholayna smiled at her. “In a way I am more glad than ever that I came, if I could only stop worrying about Lexie.”
“This must have been what she saw,” said Vanessa. “It was worth it, just to see this. And we’re going across it!” She made a small sound of incredulous delight.
“And in line of duty too,” Cholayna said dryly. “Who was talking about rewards and wangling a working holiday, Vanessa?”
It was a pleasure Magda could gladly have dispensed with, but she would not spoil Vanessa’s enjoyment. They were between the trees now, some growing at crazy angles on the slope below, others hanging thickly over the trail, darkening the bright sunlight; but it gave some shelter, too, from the wind. Rakhaila, with Camilla and Jaelle, were out of sight. Marisela turned back to gesture toward the three Terrans to hurry, and for a moment her face, smiling gaily, was frozen for Magda in sudden horror and then blotted out in a shower of blood. Her eyes were still staring; in a split second of shock Magda remembered reading somewhere that the eyes of a corpse could see for some twenty seconds after death.
Then somewhere Acquilara’s gloating laugh echoed in her ears and she was dragged backward and down without a chance to struggle. She heard Cholayna’s smothered gasp, the only sound she could hear—Marisela had died without a chance to scream.
I had no chance either, she thought, insanely aggrieved, before the world became dark and silent.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
« ^ »
The first thing she remembered was, Dying hurts, but death won’t. But it did, she thought. Her arms and back felt battered, and she was sure at least one leg had been skinned.
I thought, if I died, I’d find myself in the Overworld. Cleindori said she was there before she was born. Or was that a child’s dream?
Too bad. It was a beautiful idea. She was sure now that the reality would be less pleasant. But where was Marisela? If they had been killed together, shouldn’t they be together now?
After a long time there began to be an orange glow, and from the distance she heard a voice.
“You bungled it, as usual. I especially wanted the other one alive, the midwife.”
Acquilara’s voice. Of course. What else?
“Shall we kill this one now, then?”
“No. I can find a use for her.”
After a measurable interval Magda thought, but they’re talking about me.
The next thought came also after a perceptible time. If they are considering killing me, then, obviously, I’m not dead.
And then she did not remember anything more for a long time.
When she woke again she was afraid she was blind. Darkness surrounded her, and silence except for a faraway dripping of water. Magda listened carefully, and after a time she heard soft raspy breathing. There was someone else beside her, sleeping. Sleeping, she thought indignantly, when Marisela has been killed, when I have been captured and beaten. How can they sleep? Then she remembered she had been sleeping or unconscious herself for a considerable time. Maybe she wasn’t blind. Maybe it was dark where she was, she and the other sleeper. She didn’t know… her eyes were closed.
As soon as that thought occurred to her, she opened her eyes.
She was lying in a cave. Above her great pale stalactites stabbed down from the roof, shadowing each other for as far as she could see, like pillars of some great Temple. In the distance there was a glow of fire flickering and throwing strange images and shadows.
She was covered with a thick fur blanket, but not tied up, as far as she could tell. That made sense. Who could run away, where could anyone go in this climate? She turned over; by the dim flickering light she could make out two blanket-wrapped forms sleeping beside her on the floor. Captors? Or fellow captives? There was not really enough light to recognize anyone. She felt at her waist and found that her dagger was gone.
“Shaya?” she whispered, and one of the motionless bundles stirred.
“Who is it? Is there someone else here?”
“Vanessa, it’s Magda,” she whispered. “Did they get all of us?”
“They have Cholayna. She hasn’t stirred; I think they may have hit her too hard.” Magda could tell that Vanessa had been crying. “I can’t hear her breathing. Oh, Magda, they killed Marisela!”
“I know. I saw.” Magda’s throat was tight. Marisela had been her friend since almost the very first day in Thendara Guild-house; they had worked together to found the Bridge Society. She could not believe the suddenness with which that innocent life had been snuffed out.
Why. why?
She said they were evil. She was right. I cannot remember that Marisela ever harmed anyone, or so much as spoke an unkind word; not in my hearing, anyhow.
And now they might have killed Cholayna as well. She crawled closer to Vanessa. “Are you hurt, breda?” She wondered why she had never called Vanessa by this simple sisterly word before this.
“I’m—not sure. Not badly, I think, but there’s a lump on my head. They must have hit me just hard enough to put me out. As far as I can tell most of my reflexes are intact. Everything works when I wiggle it.”
Magda’s eyes stung. How practical, and how like Vanessa. “Are any of the others here?”
“If they are, I can’t see them. They could—” again Vanessa’s voice quavered and Magda knew she was crying again, “they could all be dead, except us. If they’d kill Marisela—”
Magda hugged her gently in the dark. “Don’t cry, breda. It’s terrible, they’re terrible, but we can’t do her any good now with cryi
ng. Let’s just make sure they don’t have a chance to do any more killing. Did they take your knife?”
Vanessa managed to stop crying. She can cry for Marisela, Magda thought. I can’t. Yet I loved her. She knew she had not yet really begun to feel the loss. And she faced the knowledge that Jaelle and Camilla might be dead as well. All the more reason to care for Vanessa, and Cholayna if she was still alive. She repeated softly, “Did they take your knife? They took mine.”
“They have the knife I was wearing in my belt. I have a little one in my coat pocket and as far as I know they haven’t got that one, not yet,”
“Look and see,” Magda whispered back urgently, “and I’ll see if Cholayna is—is breathing.”
Vanessa began groggily searching her pockets, while Magda crept toward the inert bundle that was Cholayna Ares.
“Cholayna!” She touched the woman’s hand warily. It was icy cold. The chill of a corpse? Then it occurred to Magda that it was very cold in the cave—though not nearly as cold as outside in the wind—and her own hands were nearly freezing. She fumbled to open Cholayna’s coat, thrust her hand inside and felt warmth, living warmth. She bent her head close, and could hear, very faintly, the sound of breathing.
Perhaps asleep, perhaps unconscious but Cholayna was alive. She relayed this information to Vanessa in a whisper.
“Oh, thank God,” Vanessa whispered, and Magda feared that she would begin to cry again.
She said hastily, “We can’t do anything until we know what kind of shape she’s in. I’ll try to wake her.”
With a possible head injury she did not dare shake her. She murmured her name repeatedly, stroked her face, chafed the icy hands between her own, and finally Cholayna stirred a little, with a painful catch of breath. She opened her eyes and stared straight at Magda without recognition.
“Let go of me—! You murdering devils—” It was obvious that Cholayna was trying to scream at the top of her voice; but the scream was no more than a pitiful whisper. It was equally obvious to Magda that if she did manage to scream, she would alert their captors, who could not be far off. She hugged Cholayna in her arms, trying to restrain the woman’s struggles, saying softly and insistently, “It’s all right, Cholayna. Be quiet, be quiet, I’m here with you, Vanessa’s here, we won’t let anyone hurt you.” She repeated this over and over until at last Cholayna stopped fighting her and recognition came into her eyes
“Magda?” She blinked, put her hand to her head. “What’s happened? Where are we?”
“Somewhere in a cave,” Magda answered in a whisper, “and I think Acquilara and her crew have us.”
Vanessa crept close to them in the dark. “I have my little knife. Are you all right, Cholayna?”
“I’m still in one piece,” Cholayna said. “I saw them kill Marisela; then they hit you over the head, Magda, and grabbed me; I think I may have stabbed one of them before they got the knife away from me. Then that damned bitch Acquilara hit me over the head with a ton of bricks, and that’s all I remember.”
“And then we woke up here,” Vanessa summed up, clutching at them both in the darkness. “Now what?”
Magda laughed, mirthlessly. “Well, you tried to bribe Rakhaila to bring you here. She said, be careful what you pray for, you might get it… and here we are. Right in Acquilara’s stronghold. At least, if Lexie and Rafaella are still alive, we’re in a prime position to rescue them. Or ransom them.”
Cholayna nodded; her dark face contorted in an expression of pain and she clutched her head again and held still.
“Who knows? Sooner or later, they’re sure to come back for us; if they thought we were all dead, they would hardly have wasted blankets on us. I don’t see Marisela laid out here awaiting proper burial, or anything so charitable.”
Magda shuddered. “Oh, don’t,” she implored.
Cholayna leaned toward her and held her close. “There, there, I know you loved her, we all loved her,” she said, “but there’s nothing to be done for her now, Magda. Though if ever I get that filthy sorceress at the end of my knife… but now we have to think of ourselves, and what we can do to get out of here. What about Jaelle and Camilla? Do you know if they are alive or dead?”
Magda could remember nothing more than Marisela falling in a shower of blood. Then nothing.
“I saw you fall, Magda, and Cholayna,” Vanessa repeated. “Jaelle and Camilla were out of sight, round a bend in the road; they may have gotten clean away, and never known we were gone until they stopped on the trail and we didn’t catch up.”
“Do you know how long ago that was?” Cholayna asked. But neither of them had the slightest idea of elapsed time, or even whether it was night or day. Nor did they know how many their opponents were, nor how they were armed, nor what their plans might be, or whether Jaelle and Camilla were dead.
Yet Magda had an almost totally irrational conviction… “I think I would know if they were dead,” she said. “I think, if either of them had been killed, I am sure I would know.”
“Being sure isn’t evidence,” Vanessa said, but Cholayna interrupted her.
“You’re wrong. Magda has had very intensive psi-tech training. Not the kind they give in the Empire, but probably even more effective. I’d say her feelings are evidence, and evidence of a very high order.”
“You may be right,” Vanessa conceded after a moment, “but I don’t see how that helps us much, since they obviously don’t know where we are, or how to rescue us.”
It was enough for Magda at that moment, after seeing Marisela murdered before her eyes, to be certain that both her lover and her freemate had escaped that fate. Yet she and her two Terran compatriots were in the hands of a cruel and unscrupulous woman, possibly one with some kind of laran —she remembered how Acquilara had struck down Camilla with a look.
She would as soon kill us, too, as look at us!
Vanessa felt the shudder and her arms tightened about Magda.
“Are you cold? Here, put my blanket round you. We might as well relax while we can; for all we know it could be early evening and they’ll get a good night’s sleep before they come to fetch us here. We may as well try and do likewise.”
They huddled together, silent, under the blankets. Magda could pick up the dread and apprehension of the other women, the pain that crept, with the cold, into Cholayna’s bones and muscles, as if in her own body. She wanted to shelter her, to protect them both, yet she was powerless.
Time crawled by; they never knew how long. Perhaps an hour, perhaps two. Magda kept falling into little dozes, where she would hear incoherent words at the very edge of hearing, see blurs of light that turned into strange faces, then jerk awake and know that none of this had happened at all, that she was still huddled between Cholayna and Vanessa in the dark and cold of their prison. She thought it was another of these tiny dreams when she began to see a light, but Vanessa stiffened at her side and whispered, “Look! They’re coming!”
There was the light of a torch, bobbing up and down as if being carried, waist-high. It moved closer. It was no illusion. It was not fire on the end of a long stick. It was a small, brilliant flashlight, and in another minute she could see who was carrying it.
Lexie Anders bent over them and said, “All right, Lorne, get up and come with me. Do you see this?” Briefly, she showed Magda something that made Magda gasp; this was breaking every lawful arrangement between Terrans and Darkovans.
“It’s a stunner,” Alexis explained. Magda could see all too well what it was.
“For your information, it has a lethal setting. I would rather not be forced to use it, but I swear that if you try to make trouble, or attempt any silly heroics, I will. Get up. No, Van, you stay where you are, I don’t choose to try to handle you both at once.”
“Anders, in heaven’s name, are you working with these people?” Cholayna sounded outraged. “Do you know what they are? Do you know they killed Marisela in cold blood?”
“That was a mistake,” said Alexis Anders. ?
??Acquilara was very angry about it. Marisela got in the way, that was all.”
Cholayna said with hard anger, “I’m sure Marisela would be glad to know that.”
“It wasn’t my doing, Cholayna, and I refuse to feel guilty about it. Marisela had no business to interfere.”
“Interfere? Going about her lawful business… ” Magda cried.
Lexie moved the stunner. “You don’t know a damn thing about it, Lorne, you don’t know what’s at stake here or what Marisela was involved in. So keep your mouth shut and come with me. If you’re cold, you can bring the blanket.”
Magda crawled slowly out from between Vanessa and Cholayna. Cholayna put out a hand to hold her back.
“For the record, Anders. Insubordination; defection; intrusion into closed territory without authorization; possession of an illegal weapon in violation of agreements between the Empire and duly constituted planetary authorities. You do know you’re throwing your career away—”
“You’re a stubborn old bitch,” said Lexie. Shocked, Magda remembered Vanessa saying the same thing; but she had said it affectionately. “You don’t know when you’re beaten, Cholayna. You can still get out of this alive; I’m not bloodthirsty. But you’d better keep your mouth shut, because I don’t think Acquilara is particularly tolerant of Terrans. I warn you, shut up and stay shut.”
Another peremptory gesture with the stunner. Magda touched Cholayna’s hand, saying in an undertone, “Don’t put yourself on the line for me. This is between us. I’ll see what she wants.”
When she rose to her feet, she found that she was shaking all over. Was it the stunner pointed menacingly at her, was it the cold, was it simply that they must have struck her on the exact site of the previous concussion? She saw the glint of satisfaction in Lexie’s eyes.
She thinks I am afraid of her and for some reason that pleases her. Well, let Lexie continue to think that. Magda realized that while she was a little bit afraid that the stunner in Lexie’s hand might go off by accident, she was not at all afraid of Lexie herself.