On the eve of midwinter-day, the long-delayed blizzard swept down from the Hellers, a thick white wilderness of snow and howling wind that effectively damped the preparations for the festival. The house-party guests had already arrived, but Lady Rohana told her guests, with some disappointment, that the usual festivities would have to be suspended. Normally, everyone who lived within a day's ride would have visited Castle Ardais at some time during the day to share in the merrymaking there.
Magda expressed polite regrets for the spoiling of the holiday, but was herself secretly relieved not to have to face more strangers. She had no personal fear. Dora Gabriel would not make trouble for his wife's guests, whoever they were; and the strong tradition of hospitality in the Hellers made it unlikely that they would meet with any personal unpleasantness. But it might well mean that other Terrans, after this, would be more carefully watched and restricted in their travel.
Lady Rohana had holiday gifts for them both: long riding-capes trimmed with fur. She also tactfully offered them garments more suitable for the festival, pointing out that they had only traveling clothes with them, and those much the worse for wear. Magda accepted with relief, Jaelle with a wry laugh. She said when Rohana had gone away, "My kinsman is cowardly, to make Rohana do his errands! Margali, you are a translator by trade; see if you can interpret this as I do! 1 may not have the words quite right, but the music is very clear, and the tune is something like this: 'I refuse to have two Amazons in trousers at my banquet-table!'"
Magda politely refrained from comment on her host, but she felt Jaelle was probably right. Jaelle was up and around now, though until today confined to her room, but she was recovering so swiftly that Magda still doubted the evidence of her own eyes. But there it was before her: the healed scar on Jaelle's collarbone, the red line-perceptible, and a little startling, but no longer disfiguring-across her cheek.
It makes Terran medical science look primitive! Magda thought.
But if it was psi force, what was the function of the blue jewel? Was it only a focus? Magda knew she would never rest till she knew the answer to these questions. The key seemed to be the strange word laran, which was colloquially translated as an art, skill, gift or talent; she surmised that a leronis was one who used laran, and that the meanings of "wise-woman" or "sorceress" were ancillary. Jaelle verified this guess, adding that laran meant an inborn gift for psi power, and that while she herself had a little of it, she had not wanted to be trained in its use. When Magda repeated Rohana's remark-that she herself seemed to have laran-Jaelle shut up and could not be persuaded to say another word.
In midafternoon the promised festival dresses arrived, brought by one of Rohana's women. Magda's was a rust-colored gown with narrow sable fur trim, and trailing sleeves lined with golden silk; it was one of the prettiest dresses she had ever seen, and fitted her well enough. She felt a twinge of regret as she put it on and brushed her dark smooth hair, thinking of the silver butterfly-clasp that she would never wear again.
Jaelle said, "Among Terran women, is close-cropped hair thought a disgrace?"
"Oh, no. Most women in Empire service wear their hair little longer than men; but I have lived on Darkover most of my life, and kept mine long to be able to mingle unnoticed with women here, so I am accustomed to long hair," Magda said. "I had half expected to be told that Amazons were not allowed to wear women's dress! Is this simply a courtesy to dom Gabriel, then, Jaelle?"
Jaelle laughed merrily. She had put on the delicate green gown Rohana had sent her. She said that it had been made for her cousin, Rohana's seventeen-year-old daughter, whose name was Elorie but who was usually called Lori. With a little pinning at the waist, it fitted Jaelle beautifully. As she brushed her own hair into a burnished coppery helmet and fastened it with a pair of gold bar-clasps from her saddlebags, she said, "Oh, no! Do you think we wear trousers compulsively, like men, you silly girl? We wear them when we have to ride, or work like men, but hi the Guild-house, or when working indoors, we wear whatever seems comfortable to us. We are not required to wear anything in particular; we simply refuse to accept the social rule that forbids women to wear any comfortable garment for reasons of modesty or custom. The only thing we may not wear-by our Charter-is a sword." Again, she laughed. "Kindra chided me, now and then, that I spent so much of what I earned on finery; I probably have as many pretty gowns as Rohana, or more, because I need not account to anyone for what use I make of my money!"
Magda felt a little relieved; she was not fond of fine clothes, in particular, but she would have felt strange to think of spending the rest of her life in rough and unattractive work clothes!
Jaelle said delightedly, when they were ready to go down, "I had no idea you were so pretty! When I first saw you, you looked like a half-frozen rabbit, and after that I have not been able to notice!"
Magda herself had been aware of Jaelle's astonishing beauty, even in rough Amazon dress; in the green gown, she was breathtaking. She saw her own opinion confirmed when Peter joined them in the hallway, outside their connecting rooms; he looked at Jaelle in delighted amazement. She smiled at him shyly, and lowered her eyes; Magda knew Jaelle was embarrassed at recalling how she had clung to him when she was weak and ill. Jaelle did not offer him her hand as she had done readily during her illness; strangely, the very omission seemed to create a greater closeness than the frank gesture. She reacted to him as a child reacts then. Now she is very aware that he is a man and she a woman, Magda thought.
Peter said softly, "I am very happy to see you recovered, Jaelle," and with something of her own constraint, turned to Magda, and offered her his arm. She took it, mostly because she sensed his embarrassment and tension and it was an old habit, to cover his indecision.
"Have you noticed how like our own celebrations this is? The halls decorated with greenery, the great fire, the exchanged gifts-even the smell of the spice-bread!"
She knew he was only saying the first thing that came into his head, to cover embarrassment; it roused an old emotion, a mixture of tenderness and exasperation, so familiar that she felt an old, inner trembling.
"You are lovely, Magda. But I miss your lovely long hair-" He put up his hand to touch the bare nape of her neck: a gesture of intimacy, permitted only to lovers. Magda felt embarrassed. She said in a low voice, "Don't, Piedro." She used his Darkovan name deliberately, to remind him of where they were. Yet she knew it had had exactly the reverse effect; it had recreated the old intimacy.
He said, "Margali," speaking her Darkovan name like a special caress. She saw Jaelle's eyes on them and dropped his hand as if it burned her, so that they went into the Great Hall side by side, but not together.
The kindled midwinter-fire burned on the great hearth, and dom Gabriel, Lord of Ardais, stood before it, a tall, soldierly man, with graying russet hair, dressed in green and scarlet. When Jaelle stepped toward him with a formal bow, he clasped her, briefly, in a kinsman's embrace, pressing his lips to her cheek.
"I rejoice that you are well enough to join us, Jaelle. A pleasant year to you, and all happiness."
"I thank you for your hospitality, for myself and my friends, Uncle," Jaelle said, and stepped along, to be warmly hugged by Rohana and to exchange greetings with her cousins. Magda and Peter stood before the Ardais lord; he bowed over her hand, raising his eyes to hers with a puzzled, kindly smile. Magda thought of what Jaelle had said: "Anything belonging to Rohana he will treat kindly-pet dogs, Free Amazons, even Terrans . . .!" It seemed to her for a moment that Jaelle had been hard on him; from the very touch of his hand she sensed he was a decent man and a kind one, if a little narrowed by the prejudices of his caste, and without much imagination. Anyway, if Rohana loved and obeyed him, he must have more virtues than Jaelle could see in him.
"Welcome, mestra, as my kinswoman's friend; a pleasant holiday to you, and a fortunate year."
Magda, recalling the New Year's greeting of her Caer Donn childhood, said, "My year will be brightened by the memory of your hospitality; may the fires of your hearth never grow cold, Lord Ardais," and saw the puzzlement grow in his eyes. As she moved on to exchange formal greetings with Rohana and her grown children, she thought, He obviously knows we are Terrans. Is he surprised that we can manage ordinary politeness? She wondered if the Ardais lord really thought that a race which could create a Galactic empire were all ignorant boors without any sense of good manners. ...
Lady Alida, at one of the long tables, raised her eyes, looked directly at Magda and beckoned; Magda could think of no polite way to ignore the invitation. The Comyn lady wore a festival gown of pale blue; her red-gold hair was coiled low on her neck. She gestured to Magda to sit next to her, and Magda felt the little prickles of "hunch" touching her again. Alida was a Comyn lady, a leronis, and gifted with psi power. A mere trace of this, in Jaelle, had given Magda away. How could she manage not to betray herself?
For a time, everyone's attention was on the small delicacies of the table: a clear soup with golden slices of some delicious mushroom floating in it; small, hot savory tidbits of different kinds; spicebread in all sorts of ornamental shapes, gilded and decorated. But as these were taken away, and the servants-in their holiday garments, and joining in the feast they helped to serve-brought the main courses, Alida turned to Magda and said, "While your sworn sister was ill and needed your care, I would not call you from her side, mestra. But now she is well," and she looked at Jaelle, laughing between Peter and her cousin and obviously teasing them about their resemblance. "I wanted a word with you. Have you never been tested for laran, Margali?"
"No. Never."
"But surely you were aware of your inborn talent, were you not?"
"No," Magda said again, and a faint frown furrowed the lady's high pale forehead.
"But surely ... as you know, it wakes normally at adolescence; had you no hint of this gift? Or were you committed so early to the life of a Free Amazon that you did not ask for this testing?"
That would have been a good escape, but the lie was too easily discovered; it was a matter of record that she had only recently been made a Free Amazon. She fell back on the literal truth. "Until the other day, my Lady, I had no idea that I had the faintest trace of laran. It came as a great surprise to me."
"Well, when Midwinter Festival is over, we must have you properly tested," Alida said, as if the matter were settled. How, Magda wondered, would she get out of this? With definite relief, she remembered something else. She never would have believed herself capable of putting this forth with positive pleasure. "After midwinter, Lady, my duties commit me to the Guild-house."
Lady Alida brushed that aside. "Something will be arranged. An untrained telepath is a danger to herself and everyone around her, and that would apply to all your sisters of the Guild-house." She said no more, politely calling her guest's attention to the musicians who had come to entertain them, and would play later for the dancing.
But enough had been said to ruin Magda's appetite. What was she going to do now?
When the meal ended, the older guests gathered around the midwinter-fire for gossip and reminiscence (Magda knew these house parties, held when the weather brought all outdoor work to a standstill, were reunions of friends who often did not meet from year to year) while the younger people descended into the lower hall for dancing. Magda had learned to dance as a child-a girl could not reach her eighth year in Caer Donn without learning to dance, and to dance well- and knew most of these dances.
Although she took part with pleasure when Jaelle and Lori drew her into a ring-dance with a dozen other girls, she did not know what the rules of Amazon etiquette were for dancing with men after the group dances gave way to dancing in couples. But after a time, seeing Jaelle laughing and flirting and dancing with all comers, she grew less hesitant. She accepted the invitations, enjoying it on two levels: the Terran agent making mental notes (But would she ever really be that again?), and, to her own surprise, the young girl she had been in Caer Donn, mingling for the first time with young men. It was, literally, the first time since childhood when she had felt herself actually in the company of her own kind.
Magda had never realized until this moment quite how much her curious, between-worlds childhood had robbed her of the ability to mingle with people her own age. Childhood in Caer Donn had prepared her, emotionally and socially, for adolescence and maturity in the same world; instead, before adolescence, she had been torn away and isolated in the Terran Zone with children whose background was only that of the Empire; and at sixteen she had been sent off-world for training. She had felt isolated and completely at a loss with girls or boys her own age in the Empire. Later, when she could mingle with Darkovans in the course of her work, there were many inhibitions against allowing any purely personal contacts; and in any, case Darkovan women met men only in their homes and under the proper sponsorship of their families.
But now, as Rohana's guest, she could join in freely. // I had been exposed to a little of this when I was twenty I would never have married Peter. The thought troubled her for some reason, and she was glad to turn to a young man of dom Gabriel's household who came up to her, asking for a dance. After a time he said, "Is your name-Margali?"
"Yes, that is what they call me."
"I thought so! You had another name, but none of us could pronounce it, so we called you by that one. You are Toroku Lome's daughter, are you not?" The title was the equivalent of "learned" man" or "professor," and had been given her father by the local children. "I knew you when we were children; you used to have dancing lessons with my sisters, Tara and Renata. I am Darrill, son of Darnak."
Now she remembered Darrill, and his sisters. She had once spent midwinter-night with Renata when she was quite small; she had played with them, visited in their home, and brought them to her own home in the HQ. Darrill had been an older boy, out of their orbit.
He said, "I thought all of you Terrans had gone to Thendara and would not return to the Hellers. What are you doing here?"
"I am Lady Rohana's midwinter guest-or rather, the guest of her kinswoman Jaelle."
Darrill" demanded, "Do they know who you really are? I am dom Gabriel's sworn man, and if you are here under false pretenses, Lord Ardais should know!"
Magda said, trying to control her inner trembling, "My true name and my purposes are known to Lady Rohana; you may ask her if you wish. And I suppose, since she knows, that dom Gabriel knows as well."
He said with a faint grin, "I suppose so; but if the lady knows, it does not really matter whether dom Gabriel knows or not, since it is well known from here to the Kadarin that the lady rules the estate, with dom Gabriel's assistance when he feels so inclined."
She asked after his sisters; he told her the names of their husbands, and how they fared. She wondered if it was really safe to spend time with anyone who knew who and what she really was. But it might be worse to make a point of avoiding him; that would be suspicious conduct indeed. His fear that she was a spy once overcome, he seemed to accept it as quite normal that she be here.
It ought to be normal! Darkovans and Terrans should have a chance to be together, then they will not have a chance to build barriers of ignorance and distrust! Lorill Hastur is wrong, wrong, wrong!
When he had left her-it seemed, with reluctance- she found herself standing next to Jaelle, who had paused, breathless, after a fast, romping dance.
"I think Camilla was right," she said, laughing. "There are men who find scars irresistible on a woman! I have never been so popular!"
"I had half expected to find that Amazons were not allowed to take any notice of men-after Camilla warned me so sternly not even to look at them!" Magda could laugh about this memory now.
"Oh, this is only when there is work to be done, or the men are such as might consider a glance some sort of-of invitation," and Jaelle. "There have been times when I worked with men and they took no more notice of me than of another workman. We learn not to cause trouble-you will learn it, in the Guild-house-so that an Amazon can travel alone in a band of a dozen men, and will be accepted as one of them. But I also know how to behave when I want them to accept me as a woman-at Midwinter Festival, for instance! Or midsummer, when the dances-in Thendara, for instance-go on all night, and extend into the gardens! And you know the old proverb: 'What is done under the four moons need not be remembered when they have set.' Although for my part I have never had any taste for waiting forty days after, to see if I would bear a child in the spring-" She broke off, saying gently, "I am sorry-it is like talking with Rohana; I forget sometimes that she has been trained to the politenesses of women's speech. I did not mean to shock you, sister!"
Magda had not, of course, been shocked at the words; but she realized that she did not know Jaelle at all, in this madcap mood. And she herself had been brought up to observe the fairly straitlaced sexual taboos of the mountain women. This had been confusing to her during her off-world training and had tended to throw her, more and more, into the company of Peter; he respected them, to some degree shared them.
Jaelle said, "In any case, no one cares much what happens at such festivals; even dom Gabriel will turn a blind eye to whatever happens in the galleries and dark corners, or when the fires burn low.... Usually the old people go off to bed early and leave the young people to do as they please." She leaned close to Magda, and whispered, her eyes glowing with mischief, "There is a saying that you never master a language completely till you have learned to make love in it! I saw Darrill looking at you-I am sure he would be happy to teach "you."
Magda felt her cheeks flaming, and Jaelle gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder. "T should not tease you, sister. Someday you will know how to take our jests, too. Here is Piedro, come to dance with you at last!"
Instead he took Magda lightly by the elbow, and said, "I want to talk to you for a minute." He guided her toward the refreshment table, dipped himself up some wine from the great cut-crystal bowl there. He said in an undertone, "What did Darrill say to you?"
"Only that he recognized me," she said, "and asked if dom Gabriel knew who I was."
"He asked me the same," said Peter. "I told him that since Lady Rohana knew who I was, I was quite sure dom Gabriel knew it also." He hesitated, about to fill her glass.
"No, I've had enough. I'm feeling a little dizzy," and she nibbled on a bit of cake instead.
Peter said, almost jealously, "I saw you dancing with Darrill. You certainly seem to be enjoying yourself!"
"I am. Aren't you? I've never had a chance to do this kind of thing before! And I've missed it!"
"It never occurred to me you would want to," Peter said. "I have gone to the Midsummer Festivals in Thendara these last three years; if I had thought of it I could have taken you. But"-he hesitated-"at the public festivals-not the ones in private houses like this, where everything is very decorous-but the public dances, where all comers mingle, the party sometimes gets a little wild. Dancing till dawn, pairing off in the gardens and all that; I didn't think you’d want to come."
Magda suddenly felt a violent resentment; he felt it was suitable to go himself, even if the party got a little ... wild. Yet he had decided, without consulting her, that that kind of entertainment was not suitable for her! She said dryly, "You might have let me decide it for myself."
He raised his hand to touch the nape of her neck again; a suggestive touch, arousing memories she had tried to forget. He whispered, "I was jealous, darling."
She felt a sudden, almost completely irrational anger. How dared he make that decision for her? Had he felt free, then, to take a casual sweetheart for himself at these festivals-a privilege he felt himself justified in denying to her, as it he were her tulher or guardian?
He was still bending close to her, fondling her neck; she could feel his warm breath. He was a little drunk; not much. Like herself, he had been taught to take great care with alcohol or other mind-altering drugs, and he knew and watched his own limits carefully. He was a good agent, she thought, a gifted agent, and felt the old fondness surge through her, so that she did not move away when he put his arm around her and drew her into the shadow of the draperies at one side. He bent his head, murmured to her.
She tensed in his arms and said sharply, "Speak casta; have you forgotten where we are?"
He brought his lips down on hers and kissed her. "It's good to be alive!" he said violently. "It's midwinter-night-and I knew I was going to die. I knew there was no hope of rescue. Oh, Magda, Magda, Magda..." His voice faded out. He kissed her, hard enough to hurt. "And I'm alive, and you're here, and we're together again."
At first she did not protest, thinking it was a mere surge of gratitude, awareness of life instead of death; but his embrace grew quickly more demanding, more personal.
"Do you have any idea how much I want you, need you, how damnably I've missed you?"
Gently she tried to put a little space between herself and his demanding caresses, but he whispered against her throat, "You feel it, too, I know you do! You want me as much as I want you, or you'd never have come so far for me."
Against her will she felt herself responding; but a cold rational voice was saying in the back of her mind: Now that you are free of him, do you truly want to start the whole miserable thing over again? The excitement of the festival, a few drinks, the general atmosphere of license and the straitlaced rules relaxed for once, the fact that he'd been alone a long time and wanted a woman-that's what it was and that's all it was. She wouldn't be fooled into thinking it was more than that. Gently, but inexorably, she removed his hands from her.
"I'm sorry, Peter."
"Mag, Mag, I need you so. Don't you know we belong together?"
"I'm sorry, truly I am," she said with a sigh. "Until a little while ago, I thought so, too. But now I just don't feel guilty about you anymore. Now I'm just sorry I can't give you what you want.''
"Is there someone else? That Darrill-"
"No, no. Nothing like that. Don't be foolish, Peter. I haven't seen him since I was nine years old!"
There had never been anyone else. Until now she would have sworn there never could be.
"Mag, you know there can never be anyone else, not for either of us, not on this world."
That, she thought, was partly true; they had shared the Darkovan childhood, the isolation from their peers, which had kept them from finding satisfactory mates elsewhere; drawn together by the knowledge that they were the only ones available for one another. Now she resented this; and resented, even more, how much he took it for granted.
"No, Peter. Whatever you're asking-no."
"I want you," he said, as if in pain. "I want you for always. I want to marry you again. And I want you now. Magda, Magda, come with me now! Our rooms are together, it's as if it had been intended-"
She said quietly, "You know I am not free to marry. Now."
"Oh, that! This Amazon game you are playing-"
"It's not a game." The very softness with which she spoke accentuated the finality of the words.
His voice was bitter. "Have you cut off your womanhood with your hair?"
"No," she said. "I don't think so. But I don't think womanhood means I have to go to bed with you just because you're lonely"-she had begun to use a ruder word-"and want a woman."
He touched her softly, intensely, and she hated her own arousal. He said, in triumph, "You want me, too. You know you do!"
"If I do," she said, suddenly angry, "that is my affair and not yours, unless 7 choose to make it so! Oh, God, Peter, why can't you understand? Do you want me just to be kind to you?"
He said, trying to hold her, "I'd settle for that," but she wrenched herself free.
"But I won't, and that's final! Peter, let me go. Jaelle is watching us!"
She moved away; only a few inches, but with such finality she might as well have been on one of the moons. Seeing the angry flush of offended pride lying along his cheekbones, she felt almost regretful; but nothing kinder would ever have made him believe her. He swallowed hard, and turned away; she watched him go toward Jaelle, saw the girl hold out her hand, with none of the shyness now she had shown earlier this evening. Peter took the slender fingers in his own, and although Magda could not hear what they said, she saw them move away together.
She watched them circle the dance floor, with a certain sadness. She was really free of Peter now. And suddenly, with her new dimension of awareness, she knew what she had done.
She had seen it, as they left Sain Scarp. Perhaps it was only chemistry, perhaps it was something more; but it had been immediate and unmistakable. Jaelle's weakness and collapse had misdirected Peter's response into protective kindness, self-effacing chivalry.
But it had been there, all the time, behind the kindness and the gentle, impersonal protectiveness. She had seen it again, when Jaelle had clung to Peter in her delirium. And now, feeling almost humiliated, she knew why Peter had come to her tonight; and it was not because he found her irresistible.
Peter was, first of all, a Terran agent; and he knew the rules. And one of them, a major one, was this: never, never-never-get seriously and deeply involved with any native woman on any planet where you're assigned. Casual liaisons were condoned, if not approved (every, spaceport in the Empire had a red-light district), but anything more serious was forbidden.
And whatever it was between Peter and Jaelle, it was very real, and it was serious. Peter had been trying, a desperate last-ditch attempt, to protect himself against this involvement which could be so disastrous to the rules under which he lived. Magda was safe, Magda was one of his own. And yet... not quite.
He's like me; his sexuality somehow got to be Darkovan, just as mine did. He doesn't react to other •women. But I'm near enough so that somehow he can be content with me. As I was with him. For a while.
If Magda had come with him, tonight, he could have resisted his own powerful, and dangerous, desire for Jaelle. But Magda had driven him away, with a blow to his masculine pride; and Peter had gone straight to Jaelle to heal that wound.
Now, with sudden dread, Magda found herself worrying about them both. Peter could risk his career for Jaelle. And Jaelle-what would she risk? She was no girl of the spacesport bars, but a woman of the Comyn, and, if Magda was any judge, deeply in love.
Irritably, Magda tried to dismiss the whole matter from her mind. It was definitely not her affair. Jaelle was no child; she was only a year or two younger than Magda herself, and, judging by the way she had been talking earlier, quite sophisticated enough to take care of herself. As for endangering Peter's career, Jaelle was not free to marry.
But even while she stood and watched a group of men dancing with torches, an ancient sworddance, she wondered where in the lowering shadows Peter and Jaelle had gone....
Somehow, the savor had gone from the evening. At midnight or thereabouts, dom Gabriel, Rohana and Lady Alida, with most of the older people, said good night and withdrew, hospitably bidding their younger guests to remain and enjoy themselves as late as they chose.
Darrill sought Magda out again, and urged her to accompany him into one of the long galleries where, he said, there were some very fine ancient murals. From the way he touched her, and spoke, Magda was perfectly sure that he had no more interest in the murals than she did herself. She made some tactful excuse, and when he had gone away, she wondered why she had not taken up the challenge. Peter and Jaelle had" long since disappeared and not returned; she wondered what gallery they were exploring. From what Jaelle had said, Magda knew it was not regarded as particularly reprehensible to share a good deal of casual kissing-or more, if she wished-on midwinter-night.
Sooner or later, now that I'm free of Peter, I must find out how I react to other men . . ..
Then, angry with herself, she thought, Damn it, before I complicate my life with another manr I want to know more about myself! I want to know what I am to myself, not always have to see myself through a man's eyes!
A strange man came and asked her to dance again; she pleaded extreme fatigue, left the Great Hall and went up to the room she shared with Jaelle. Jaelle had not returned. Magda took off her beautiful gown, readied herself for bed and lay down. She expected to lie awake, worrying about Peter and Jaelle; instead she fell at once into a heavy sleep.
Hours later, she woke to see Jaelle standing in the doorway, barefoot, her face flushed, her short hair tousled. Her eyes were very bright. She came across the room and sat on Magda's bed.
Magda said lightly, "I didn't expect you back until later."
Magda could smell the girl's sweet heavy breath, and knew she had been drinking; was not sober now Jaelle said, "Oh, don't be angry with me, sister. I didn't want this to happen, I know how you feel."
"Angry?" Magda sat up and put her arms around Jaelle. "Darling"-the word she used was breda- "what right have I to be angry? Do you think-" Abruptly, it dawned on her just what Jaelle did think. "Do you think I'm jealous?"
• Jaelle said with a nervous giggle, "This kind of thing is easier at midsummer when there are gardens. We have spent most of the night in the long galleries." Her teeth were chattering, whether with cold or nervous excitement Magda could not tell. "I-I should have gone with him as he asked me." She looked at the connecting door into Peter's room. "But-but I wanted to be sure, I don't like deciding things in a hurry and," she added after a moment, looking at Magda in appeal, "I did not want to-to tread on the hem of your garment."
Incongruously Magda realized that she was still making mental notes about the curious idiom. She hugged the trembling girl tight, and said, "Jaelle, anything between Peter Haldane and me was a long, long time ago." As she said it, she knew that it was really true. "Do you love him, breda?"
"I don't know," Jaelle said. "I'm not sure. I've never felt like this before."
Magda found herself wondering if Jaelle were a virgin. From her flippant jokes, and sophisticated comments, she had not thought so; but could an experienced woman be so uncertain? As if Jaelle he’d picked up the thought directly from her mind-and by now Magda was almost ready to believe that-Jaelle said in a low voice, looking down, "It's foolish, isn't it? I've come near to it many times. Before I took the oath, when Kindra saw that I liked to-to laugh with men and to flirt with them, she told me that before I bound myself, I should take a lover, test myself that way; she said that it might someday seem hard to me that I was bound by law never to marry. But somehow there was never anyone I could-could trust that much."
She added defensively, "So it never came to more than laughter or foolishness. Nor did I ever leave any man wounded by my teasing, or heart-scalded. But now"-she looked and sounded forlorn-"I have no more laughter. I think I am more afraid now, when I-when I love him, when I want him, than when I was a girl and the very thought of giving myself to any man seemed frightening, an open door to bondage and slavery. ... I don't know myself anymore!" Her voice was snaking and she was very close to tears. "I don't know what I want! Oh, Margali, Margali-sister, what shall I do?"
Magda felt wrung, helpless. What can I say to her? She could understand that to Jaelle, brought up as she had been among women close-bound to one another by oath, it seemed completely natural to turn to another woman for comfort or counsel. I am bound to treat every woman as my mother, sister, daughter.... but I've always lived by such different laws. . God help me, I don't know what to say to her! If one of her own friends in the Terran Zone-Bethany, for instance-• had come to her with such a question, Magda could have turned it off with a casual or even a crude joke. But she could not do that to Jaelle.
What would Rohana have said to her? Finally, in a voice shaking as much as Jaelle's, she said, "Darling, I can't advise you. I don't know if anyone could. You must do what you feel is right." Then, to her own surprise, she found herself whispering the words of the oath of the Free Amazons: "I swear I will give myself to no man save in my own time and season and of my own free will. ..."
There was a moment of silence, then Jaelle whispered as if to herself, "In my own time and season," and smiled, tightening her arms around Magda; and Magda knew that somehow, by instinct, she had hit on' precisely the right thing to say. She felt Jaelle's lips against her cheek for a moment; then, without a word, Jaelle pressed her hand, and went, on noiseless feet, to the connecting door, which closed a moment later behind her. She did not return.