It was raining when they reached the travel-shelter at sunset, and as the party began to dismount, Rohana said, "I had hoped to reach Thendara today, but I have no great liking for riding half the night. It will be tomorrow for certain."
"I shall be glad to get there," Magda said, but then she began to wonder. Just what awaited her in Thendara? Even this one night's respite was welcome.
As she was unsaddling her horse, Darrill, son of Darnak, came up behind her, lifting the heavy saddle from her hands. She smiled and relinquished it, and stood beside him as he began giving their horses fodder. He waited until most of Rohana's guardsmen had withdrawn-Lady Rohana, as wife of the Lord of Ardais, could not travel without a considerable escort-then asked in a low voice, "Will you be glad to get back to your own world, Margali?"
She said, troubled, "I am not sure it is my world anymore, Darrill. I am sworn to the Free Amazons."
"But surely . . . Piedro told me that was but a disguise, a way of allowing you to travel in safety."
"Piedro does not know anything about it," Magda said, with unexpected sharpness.
"I don't think I understand."
"I am not sure that I understand it myself," she said. "It is true that I took the oath as a means to an end; not really aware of what it meant. But later I chose, of my free will, to honor it, and I will do so, whatever happens."
Slowly, he nodded. "I can understand that. But what will the Terrans say?"
That, she thought, is the question. Will I spend the rest of my life as a fugitive from the Empire's justice? "I will try to get a leave of absence to honor my obligation to the Guild-house," she said. "And after that I think I could work more effectively for the Empire. It would allow me to do many things that an ordinary woman could not do here, otherwise."
He said, very low, "Margali, when I first met with you on midwinter-night, I was very impressed with your courage and spirit. It seemed to me that no woman of our people could have so much, and I thought it must be only that you were a stranger, a Terran. Now there are times when it seems to me that you are even more like a woman of our own people. You are not like anyone I have ever known before." He raised his eyes, and looked directly into hers, and for a moment Magda thought he would kiss her. Then he swallowed hard, recalled himself, and turned a little away. He said, "Forgive me; I must finish with the horses."
As he went about his work, Magda found herself thinking, If 7 am not careful, he will be falling in love with me. And that is a complication I cannot allow now. I must be very careful. The thought made her a little regretful. 7 discovered at midwinter that 1 must find new ways of relating to my world; but before I complicate my life with another man, I must find out more about myself!
It might be flattering to have young Darrill in love with her; but it would be a cruel thing to test her new awareness of men by capturing his interest and perhaps his heart, when she was not free, could not make any permanent or serious commitment to anyone. Jaelle had defended her flirting on the grounds that she had never left any man wounded or heart-scalded by her teasing. 7 must be very careful to avoid that, too, Magda thought.
Inside the travel-shelter, which was one of the largest, the guardsmen, and Peter among them, had made their fire at one end; Rohana with her ladies, and Magda and Jaelle, at the other. As usual, Rohana sent word that Peter should come and join them at their meal. When they had finished, she looked at Peter and Jaelle, close together, their hands linked in the shadows, and said to Magda, "In common humanity, I think we should leave them alone for a few minutes." She raised her voice slightly. "Come, my ladies, I think the time has come to visit the guardsmen at the other fire and see if they are content with their rations and their comfort."
Rohana's maid, a fat and sentimental old woman, looked back with an encouraging smile at Jaelle, as they went toward the other fire, and Jaelle felt herself blushing. Then she forgot the woman, as Peter drew her into his arms for a long, passionate kiss. She sank gratefully into his arms, blessing Rohana for even this moment or two alone with her lover; it would not be more than a few minutes, but while it lasted she could reassure herself....
Finally he loosed her. "I am dizzy with wanting you! At least it will not be long; we reach Thendara tomorrow. Do you still love me, Jaelle?"
She looked up, laughing, into his face. "Can you doubt it?"
"But you avoid me."
"Avoid you? Of course not, love," she said, with a little flicker of laughter. "You certainly do not think I could lie with you in the presence of a half dozen guardsmen and all of Rohana's maids!"
He looked away, uneasy at her directness. "That is not what I meant," he protested, "but we could be together more often on the road; you could ride at my side, spend more time in my company! All during this trip you have treated me like someone you might have met at a public dancing-class, not like your lover!" He used the word in the inflection that made its nearest meaning "promised husband," and she smiled, pressing his hand.
"You are my beloved," she said in a whisper, "and soon we shall be together as much as you wish. But I am an Amazon, Piedro. I have not told you much about our laws and customs, but one of the things we are taught is that there is only one way in which women can travel among men without causing trouble and dissension. And that is by behaving as human beings; not as sexual creatures, women whose major business in life is to attract men to protect and care for them."
"Oh, come, surely Lady Rohana and her companions-"
"Rohana is the wife of their lord, a sacred trust they must safeguard with their lives. And her ladies are covered by her-her special charisma. But I am an Amazon and I have renounced my protected status as Comynara. And I am working among them; I organized this journey. So I must not come among them as a woman who is-is free to be desired. Can't you understand?" she begged. "If I spend much time with you, show myself as your lover"-she, too, used the word in the inflection meaning "promised wife," and he pressed her hand-"then I show myself to them as a woman. And they begin to think of me as a woman, and before long they begin to compete in small ways for my favor and attention, and to show themselves before me as men, and soon there is dissension among them all, and ill feeling. So I must be just another worker, one of themselves. They must feel at ease with me, not temper their speech to a woman's ears, or feel compelled to give me their lightest work."
She did not shade her words with the faintest reproof, but Peter recalled that a few days ago she had frowned at him for helping her, unasked, with a heavy load.
He said, "Are you trying to tell me that there is no work which is beyond your strength?"
"No, no indeed!"
"I should think not," said Peter indignantly, looking at the slender girl. "And what do you do, proud Amazon, when you find something beyond your strength?"
She smiled and said, "Precisely what you do among men, when you find something too heavy to lift, or a task needing four hands to accomplish it. You are not a tremendously strong man, I imagine; when a task demands more strength than you have in your arms, I suppose you simply say to one of the other men, 'Come here and help me lift this before I strain my guts!' Well, that is exactly what I do. If I have made it obvious that I do not shirk any work within my strength, then they will help me as they would help another man with a task too heavy for him, and not with any thought of a woman who must be sheltered!"
"I hope you do not always intend to treat me that way!" he said, and she laughed and raised her hand to touch his cheek lovingly.
"When we are alone, beloved, I shall be so fragile and demanding that you will sometimes think I am Lady Rohana herself, who is not by law permitted to move as much as a day's ride without her maid and her lady companion and half a dozen guards! But you must not expect me to be anything other than I am, my love." She stood on tiptoe, pulled his head down and kissed him quickly. "Enough for now. Rohana and her women are coming back, and tomorrow we will be in Thendara."
"And tomorrow night . . ." Peter said, smiling at her, and for a moment she held herself against him, not at all unwilling to let him know she shared his eagerness. Then, sighing, they moved apart as Rohana with her ladies returned to their fire.
They rode down into Thendara a little after noon. Rohana said as they came through the gates, "What will you do now? Jaelle, you must go to the Guild-house, I know, with Margali."
Magda felt a small clutch of fear. It's here. There's no more delaying. Oh, God, I'm frightened!
Certainly, within my lifetime, Darkover will be a part of the Empire, and it will make no difference. The usual time from first contact to affiliation is about fifty years, and that's almost half over. But will that come too late to do me any good? Must I be exiled from one world to the other?
She thought this, not knowing that Darkover was to prove unique in the history of the Empire, and that not only her own lifetime but many lifetimes would pass before Darkover and the Empire were reconciled. Just the same, the curious little flash of precognition iced her blood again, and she pulled her fur-trimmed riding-cloak-Rohana's midwinter gift-about her shoulders.
"This is idiotic!" Peter said, looking back to make certain they were out of earshot of Rohana's women and the guardsmen. "You can't possibly do that, Magda. Somehow or other, we've got to get you out of that nonsense of spending half a year in the Guild-house. I'm sure you'd find it interesting, but we can't possibly afford to lose our only resident female expert. Come back with me now to the HQ, and let the people there think of some way to get you out of it."
Magda said, in exasperation, "Peter, you don't understand. I am oath-bound, and I will honor my oath. I will try, after, to make it right with the Empire authorities; but the obligation must be met nevertheless!"
"Oh, that," he said in contempt. "You know as well as I do that an oath taken under duress is not valid!"
Jaelle looked at him in shock and dismay; and Magda, with that new, devastating sensitivity to thoughts, knew that Peter had just shocked Jaelle to speechlessness. An oath is sacred. What kind of man could ignore it? And if he had no awareness of what the oath meant to Magda, how could he possibly know what it meant to Jaelle?
Can he ever know, Jaelle thought with desolation, that it is the very mainspring of my being? It was only a moment, then her love began to make excuses for him; soon, soon he would understand. She smiled gaily -at Peter and said to Magda, "We shall have to teach him better than that, will we not, sister?"
Rohana interrupted, sensing the strain: "The best way is for you, all three of you, to be my guests at Comyn Castle tonight. There is room in the Ardais suite for a dozen or more; and you, Piedro, can send word to your Terran supervisor that tomorrow we will all meet with Lorill Hastur. Both of them will be eager to know how this affair has ended."
They agreed to that compromise, and an hour later were all settled in comfortable quarters in the Ardais suite. Magda was tired from the long journey, and lay down for a nap, but she knew that sleep was simply another way of avoiding, for a time, the unendurable conflicts. Tomorrow, at whatever cost, they must be faced.
Peter stood for a few moments at the door of the room the women shared. He said, hurt, "Jaelle, you are avoiding me again!"
"No, my love. In a day or two we shall declare ourselves as freemates, before witnesses," she promised, standing on tiptoe to kiss him with a passion that swept away his doubts. "But just now I am Rohana's guest in Comyn Castle and for her good name I must abide, under this roof, by her laws and rules of conduct rather than my own. But I love you. Never doubt it, promise me, Piedro, promise."
"I promise," he assured her, then, in surprise, bent to wipe the tears from her eyes. "My love, my darling, why are you crying?"
"I-I don't know," she stammered, and although he knew she was evading him, there was nothing he could say. "Even though I am a Free Amazon, Piedro, you must sometimes just let me be a woman, and not always reasonable. ..."
When he had gone away, and Magda had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Jaelle wandered, restlessly, around the Ardais suite. At this time of year it was deserted; Rohana and her guests seemed to rattle around the empty rooms and corridors like a few pods on a tree stripped by a storm. At last Rohana sought her out.
"Come and sit with me for a little while, Jaelle. It may be a long time before we can spend time together like this; at Council season I have little leisure to enjoy your company, and it may be many years before you can pay me another visit at Ardais."
They sat before the fire that had been kindled in Rohana's room. For a time they said little, but at last Jaelle got out of her chair and came and sat on the hearth-rug beside her kinswoman. She laid her head for a moment on Rohana's knee; hesitantly, Rohana stroked the soft hair. As a girl Jaelle had never permitted caresses and Rohana had quickly learned not to offer them, but for once she seemed to invite them.
At last Jaelle said, "I did not tell you this, but you probably have guessed. Piedro has asked me to remain in Thendara as his freemate; and I have consented."
Rohana looked down at Jaelle with a distant sadness. She loves him so much; and I know I cannot really understand. Rohana herself had been given in marriage very young, had obediently married the man chosen by her family, without question, and had never been touched by this kind of passion. At last she asked, with a hesitant tenderness, "Have you ever regretted your oath, Jaelle?"
"Never before this, never for a moment," Jaelle said. Then, forcing the words out, "Just the same, I think you were right, years ago, when you said I was too young for such a choice."
That struck to Rohana's heart, almost with physical pain. Merciful Goddess, I gave her freedom, the freedom that had been denied to me. Was I so wrong? For a moment time slipped out of focus, past and present blending together, and it seemed to Rohana that it was again the last day of Jaelle's long visit to Castle Ardais, in her fifteenth year. Rohana had known Jaelle was not happy there: she detested Kyril and had no great liking for Rohana's younger son and daughter; she thought Gabriel a petty tyrant; she had chafed at the need to wear skirts even for riding; and on the last day of her visit she had come to Rohana like this and told her, defiantly, that she would take the Amazon oath on the very day she was legally free to do so.
Rohana had foreseen this, but had still been dismayed by the actuality. She felt Jaelle had as yet no idea what she was renouncing.
She had said: "Be very sure, Jaelle; very sure. This is no game, it is your whole life. Don't throw it away like this!" And then she had begged: "Jaelle, will you give me three years, more time, as you gave Kindra, to prove to you that my life is no less happy than hers?"
She knew Jaelle was remembering, too (Or did the girl's awakening laran share her thoughts?), when Jaelle said softly, "Three years seemed a lifetime then; longer than I could bear to wait. And-forgive me, Rohana- you wanted to prove your life was happy; and yet I knew you were not happy. So it seemed-hypocrisy." 4 Rohana bowed her head. No, she had not been happy then, but she thought she had concealed it more carefully from Jaelle. She had felt harried then, trapped by the life she led, after her brief taste of freedom. She had been much beset with her adolescent children, and with the three-year-old Valentine, who was at the most active and troublesome age. And at that time she had been pregnant again with a fourth child she did not want; that had been the price she paid for Gabriel's final forgiveness. And though she had not wanted the child, Rohana was too much a woman to bear a child for most of a year and see it die without anguish. So when it had been stillborn, she had grieved as bitterly as if she had longed for it. But she had carried the child, that year, in anger and desperate rebellion, feeling that perhaps she had paid too high a price for Gabriel's goodwill and peace in her home. Now, before Jaelle grown to womanhood, she bowed her head and said, almost inaudibly, "You were right; I was not happy then. Now I feel more guilty than ever that because of my unhappiness you rushed to take the Amazon oath."
Jaelle laid her cheek against Rohana's hand. "Don't blame yourself; I don't think it would have made any difference. Even Kindra said I was stubborn and headstrong; she, too, urged me to delay a little. Perhaps"- she smiled fleetingly-"I am my father's daughter, too, though I do not like to think so."
Never before this day had Jaelle spoken her father's name in Rohana's hearing. She had some idea of what it had cost Jaelle to say this. She was silent, asking after a long time, "Then you will stay with your Terran lover?"
"I_I think so."
But she is not sure. "Is it fair to any man, Jaelle, to give him so little of yourself as a freemate gives?"
"Rohana, I give him what he wants of me! The Terrans do not make their women slaves to their will!"
"Just the same-don't be angry, Jaelle-it seems to me that a freemate gives little more than a prostitute." She used the coarse word grezalis, knowing that on her decorous lips it would shock Jaelle into listening. "It seems to me that it is no marriage unless you commit yourself to a man for all times: good and bad, in happiness or misery. You know that when I was wed, Gabriel was nothing to me but a burden I had to bear, because I had been born Comyn, and the laws of my caste required me to marry within my clan and bear him children with laran."
"And you can call me whore? When you were sold like a slave for your family's pride of position, and I -choose to give myself freely to the man I love and desire?"
Rohana put out a hand to stop her. "Jaelle, Jaelle darling, I did not call you a whore, or anything like it! I said: this was how my marriage seemed at the beginning, a grave burden I must bear for my family's sake. Yet now Gabriel is the very center of the world we have built together. A freemate says to her lover, because of this storm of desire, I will remain with you while it suits my pleasure; but if we lose our happiness I will leave you, sacrificing the happiness we have had and the good times that may come in the future, all because of the unhappiness of a year or two. There is no obligation to remain together and work to turn the evil times into good again."
"How can you do that? Do you not live with constant regret for the years of unhappiness you had to share, with no possibility of escape?"
"Not really," Rohana said. "It has taken us a long time to outlive unhappiness, but we have forged a bond that will last till death. And beyond," she added, smiling, "if there is anything beyond."
"You say this bravely," said Jaelle, "but I think . . . oh, Rohana, I do not want to make you angry."
"The truth could not make me angry, Jaelle. Only remember, darling, that it is your truth, and not necessarily my truth."
"Then I think," said Jaelle, "that because it is too late for regrets, you tell yourself you have never had them. I think you simply would not give up your power and position as wife to the lord of the Domain of Ardais."
"Perhaps," said Rohana, unoffended, "a marriage is spun of many small threads. Gabriel is only a part of my life, but not a part I would willingly renounce now. I did not love him when we were wed, but it would rend my heart into a thousand fragments to be parted from him now."
Jaelle, remembering Rohana's face as she knelt beside the unconscious man, knew dimly that this was true; but it seemed to her that this was only slavery to an ideal, and nothing like the overwhelming passion that had caught her up, almost unwillingly, into Peter's life. She said, trembling, "That is not what I call love!"
"No, I suppose not, dear," said Rohana, taking the small cold hands in hers, "but it is real, and it has lasted."
"Then you think love-love as I know it-means nothing? It seems to me you think marriage can be made by any two, however they feel about one another, as if-for the first time hi a dozen years, Jaelle spoke her mother's name-"as if Melora and Jalak . . . as if my mother, even in rape and captivity, could have built lasting happiness."
"Even that, under some circumstances, darling. But I went consenting to my marriage, with my family's support and blessing; Melora was torn by force from all her kin. But even then; had Jalak and Melora chosen one another, had she run away with him of her own will, or even, afterward, had he loved and cherished her for herself, and not as a pawn to his evil pride, and a memento to his hatred of her folk of the Domains- even then, perhaps, she could have found some peace; not happiness, perhaps, but content."
"Even in chains?"
"Even so, my darling. Had Melora loved Jalak, and willed to please him, she would have known that the chains were a game he played for his pride before all men, and she would have worn them to play the game with him, willingly . . .. Jaelle, if your Amazons made up an army and marched to free the women of the Dry Towns from their chains, no doubt there are some who would hail you as their saviors; but there are others, I am sure, who would bid you turn around and march home again, and not meddle in their affairs. Would you not wear chains to please your lover, Jaelle?"
She said, "He would never ask," but dropped her eyes, remembering her play with the ribbon; the fantasy game she had played as a little girl in the Dry Towns. She said, angry at the memory, "Had you no pity for my mother?"
"Only the Gods know how much," Rohana said. "I risked the anger of Hastur, and came near to destroying what happiness I had found with Gabriel, to bring her away before she bore Jalak a son; and to set you free, because she said she would kill you rather than leave you chained in Jalak's Great House. Do you not remember that?" Her eyes flamed with the beginning of anger.
Jaelle took her hand, and after a moment kissed it. Rohana said quietly, "Jaelle, many women wear their chains as I wear the catenas." She thrust out her arm, showing her the ceremonial marriage-bracelet, whose twin was locked on Gabriel's arm. "A token of something that would be locked upon my heart forever, even if I refused, as you will refuse, to wear the outward symbol."
Jaelle said softly, "The Amazon oath binds me not to marry di catenas. I never thought I would want to," and her head went down on Rohana's knees, the slender shoulders shaking with the violence of her sobs. "I don't, Rohana! I don't!"
Rohana thought, Then why are you crying so? But she did not say so, sensing, through the feel of the girl's head against her knees, the very real heartbreak. She only stroked Jaelle's soft hair, tenderly. At last she asked, "Are you pregnant, darling?"
"No-no. He has spared me that."
"And do you really want to be spared, my precious?"
Jaelle couldn't answer; she was unable to speak. At last Rohana asked, very gently, "Will you stay with him in sorrow as in joy, Jaelle?"
Jaelle raised her flushed face. "I feel now that I would," she said in anguish, "but how can I be sure? How can I know he will love me in the evil times that come to everyone? How can I even know what 7 will be then? And yet-it seems that it is worth even this. Did you never love anyone, Rohana? Did you never want to give up everything-everything, your pledged way of life, your honor, everything because you could not-could not part from-" She put her head down on Rohana's knees, and cried desperately again.
Rohana's heart ached for her, and for a long-healed wound that Jaelle's words had torn. Yes, there was a time when I would have given up everything: my children, the life I had made for myself, Gabriel-yet the price seemed all too heavy to pay. At last she said, faltering, "There is nothing in this world that is not bought for a price. Even Kindra; she never regretted her oath, but she grieved to the day of her death for the children she had abandoned. It seems to me that is the one flaw in the Amazon oath; you women who take it guard yourselves from the risks all women take willingly. Perhaps it is only that every woman must choose what risks she will bear."
Jaelle listened, and the words fell heavy on her heart. I came too young to the Amazon oath; most women make these renunciations in grief, knowing that they are real privations. To me it seemed only that I renounced slavery and embraced freedom. I did not weep when I took the oath. I could never truly understand why so many women made the oath only with tears . . ..
"You love Piedro. Will you stay with him?"
"I-I must, I cannot leave him now."
"Will you bear his children, darling?"
"If he-if he wants them."
"But your oath/binds you to bear them only if you want them," Rohana said. "You must choose, and perhaps it is that which I feel so wrong; that you women claim the right to choose."
"I will never believe that," Jaelle flared at her. "A woman not free to choose is truly a slave."
"But even the freedom to choose does not always guarantee happiness," Rohana said, capturing the cold hands again and caressing them. "I have heard old Amazons lamenting their childlessness, when it was too late to change their minds. And I-"She swallowed hard, for she had never said this to any living being; not to Gabriel, not to Melora, not to Kindra, who for so long had shared her innermost thoughts. "I did not want children, Jaelle. Every time I knew myself pregnant, I wept and raged. You weep because you are not to bear a child, but I cried more when I knew I was. Once I flung a silver bowl at Gabriel's head, and I hit him, too, and I shrieked at him that I wished I had killed him and he could never do this to me again. I hated being pregnant, I hated having little children around to trouble me, I feared childbirth worse, I think, than you feared the sword that gave you this." With light fingers she traced the still-crimson scar across Jaelle's smooth cheek. "Had I been free to choose, I would never have borne a child. And yet now that the children are grown, and I see that they are a part of Gabriel and myself which will survive when we are gone-now, when it would have been too late to change my mind, I find I am glad that the laws of my caste forced me to bear them, and after all these years, I have forgotten-or forgiven-all the unhappiness."
Jaelle said hoarsely, not wanting to show how much this had moved her, "I think, again, that you know it is too late for regrets; so you tell yourself that you have none."
"I did not say that I had no regrets, Jaelle," said Rohana, very low, "only that everything in this world has its price, even such serenity as I have found after so many years of suffering."
"You truly believe that you have paid a price? I thought you told me now that you had everything a woman could desire!"
Rohana lowered her eyes. She swallowed hard, and for a moment she remembered a day, years ago, when she had looked into Kindra's gray eyes and known the price she would pay. She could not face Jaelle; she did not want to cry. She said, "Everything but freedom, Jaelle. I think that would have been too dearly bought. But I am not sure." Her voice broke. "Nothing in this world is sure but death and next winter's snow. Maybe I do not want to be sure. The price I have paid is my freedom. You have your freedom; you are oath-bound to take it even now when you no longer want it. But at what price, Jaelle?"