Thendara House (44 page)

Reluctantly, Keitha went back to the fire, and Magda lay on her blanket, trying to get into a comfortable position on the hard ground. After a time she fell into an uneasy drowse, waking when the sky was crimson with sunset. Keitha came to give her more of the hot herb-tea and a plate of stew, but Magda could hardly swallow, though Camilla came and skillfully propped her up, and would have fed her with a spoon if Magda had let her.

“No, no, I am not hungry, I can’t swallow,” she said, “I am only thirsty, very thirsty - “

“That is good; you must drink as much as you can, even if you cannot eat,” said Ferrika, standing over them, and they looked up to see the slight, dark aristocrat who had been called Lord Damon.

“
Mestra
,” he said to Magda, “I am sorry for your injuries; I sent you into danger, not even knowing you were a woman.”

She said, “I am a Renunciate,” proudly, at the same moment that Ferrika protested, “You know better than that!”

She spoke without the slightest hint of deference and Lord Damon grinned at her. He looked tired and disheveled; he was chewing on a strip of smoked meat, half-heartedly, as if he were too tired to sit down and eat properly. His face was still grimed with smoke, but Magda noted that his hands were scrubbed clean, as he set the meat aside and said, “Let me look at your wounds,
mestra;
I too have something of the healer’s arts.”

And after a whole day fighting fire on the lines he still must go around the camp and see who is wounded… well, what would you expect of Damon
? For a moment Magda thought someone had spoken the words aloud, but she realized that she had heard them as she was beginning to hear unspoken thoughts. She saw Lord Damon’s face contract slightly as he unwrapped the bandages, and knew, without being told, that he felt, physically, the pain he caused her for a moment.
Perhaps he is too tired to shut it out
. Then it was gone, and he said quietly, “Painful, I am sure, but not really dangerous. But be careful not to let the bandages get wet or dirty; otherwise the burns will become infected; do you understand that this is important? You must not try to be brave and walk on them, you must let your sisters carry you everywhere; and drink as much as you can, even if it means you must let them carry you to the latrines every hour or two; the burns create poisons in your body and you must rid yourself of them.” His manner was as courteous and impersonal as a Terran Medic’s, and Magda was astonished.

He straightened to go. “Carry my compliments to the Guild-Mothers in Thendara and tell them that again I have cause to be grateful to the Sisterhood.”

Rafaella bowed deeply. “You honor us,
vai dom
.”

“It is you who honor us,” Damon said, and touched Ferrika lightly on the shoulder. “I will leave you with your sisters for the moment; you know how to get in touch with me if you need me,” he said and walked away. Ferrika went to look at one of the women who had scalded her hand on a stew kettle, and from across the circle of the camp Magda heard her ordering others who had inhaled smoke to drink more of the tea which was kept boiling on great kettles over the cookfires.

“He doesn’t treat her like a servant,” Keitha said, and there was the faintest hint of criticism in her voice. One of the strange women said, “Maybe she isn’t.”

“You do not know Ferrika,” said Camilla coldly, “if you are hinting that she is his concubine. She is a Renunciate.”

“Maybe,” Magda said, “she’s just his friend.” The others gave her skeptical looks, but what Magda had sensed between the Comyn aristocrat - what were the Comyn anyhow? - and the Renunciate was an easy acceptance, a kind of equality she had not yet seen given by any man to a woman on Darkover.

Someone called from another fire “
Mestra’in
, we have heard that there is a minstrel among you; will it please you to come and play and sing for us? We have worked hard for our music!”

Rafaella rummaged in the packs they had slung across their horses. Magda had not known that she had brought her small
rryl
. “I will play for you with pleasure, but my throat is too thick with smoke to do anything but croak; anyone who still has breath to sing, may sing!”

She went toward the fire. Camilla explained, “A new crew of men has been sent out from Neskaya, and they are on the lines; so there is some leisure in the camp tonight; though all of us may be called out if there is another turn for the worse like this afternoon!”

Magda lay silent, listening to the
rryl’s
sound. One or two of the Renunciates had gone to listen to the music, though Camilla stayed near Magda in case she should want anything. Magda shut her eyes and tried to sleep; the older woman had been working hard all day, too hard, and Magda was worried about her. Magda knew it would be no use to try and urge her to work less tomorrow.

But silence had fallen over the camp, and Rafaella had come back to the fire and spread her blankets beside Keitha’s, when there was a stir and a flare of torches and the sound of riders. From a distance Magda heard the voice of Damon Ridenow, as she had heard it when he came to their fires, and other voices; then at the center of the camp there was a bustle of sound and several riders were sliding down from their horses. Magda sat up and looked at them; men and women in long bright cloaks, some in the blue and silver of Hastur, others in the same green and black of the cadets of the City Guard. Camilla sat up and said, “Altons of Armida, yes - “

“The
leronyn
from the Tower,” someone said.

“Now, perhaps someone will have this fire under control - ” another voice said somewhere, “If they have gathered the clouds they can bring rain to drown the fires…”

Magda sat upright to watch. She saw the tall man they had called Ann’dra, and Lord Damon, and a slender woman whose hair blazed like brilliant copper under the blue and silver hood. She looked round quickly and came toward the fire where the Renunciates were camped together.

She said in a clear voice, speaking the pure
casta
of Nevarsin and Arilinn, “Where is the Renunciate who was wounded on the lines today?‘’

Magda cleared her throat and said, “It is I, but I am better - “

She came and stood by Magda’s blankets. At her side was a somewhat taller woman, in a green and black cape; Magda could see that she was pregnant, though she carried it well, almost with careless ease.

The smaller woman in blue said, “I am Hilary Castamir-Syrtis, and it was our land you risked your life to save, as Ann’dra has told us. We owe you a debt,
mestra
. Will you undo the bandages?” she said to Camilla, and the old woman began to untie and unfasten them.

Lady Hilary knelt beside her, and as Ferrika had done earlier, passed the palm of her hand two or three inches above the soles of Magda’s feet. “What is your name,
mestra
?”

“Margali n’ha Ysabet,” she said.

“Trust me; I will not hurt you,” she said, and touched a leather thong about her throat. Magda remembered Rohana’s gesture, when Jaelle had been so terribly wounded in Castle Ardais, and it seemed suddenly to Magda that through the layers of leather and silk she could see the blue shimmer of a matrix stone. Lady Hilary closed her eyes for a moment and it seemed to Magda that she could feel a blue shimmer. Abruptly her feet felt as if they had been seared afresh with fire; she gasped with the pain, but it passed quickly and the blue haze was gone.

“Your feet will be healed now,
mestra
, I think you will have little trouble; but the new skin is very tender and you must be very, very careful not to walk on them for a day or two, or break the skin and allow them to become infected. I have other injuries to heal, or I would stay and speak with you; I too have reason to be grateful to the Renunciates. I wish you a good night,” she said, and went away, at her side the woman in the green cloak, who had not spoken a word.

Magda looked, by the firelight, at her feet. As she had half expected - she had seen this healing from Lady Rohana when Jaelle was wounded - there was no sign of bleeding nor blackening where fire had seared and bare ground and brambles had torn. Her feet were covered with a layer of grayish scarring with patches, between the scars, of pink thin baby skin, very tender and painful when she touched it with a tentative finger. But it had been healed.

One of the women said scornfully, “They are no proper Comyn, and not a proper Tower. Do you know what they call them in Arilinn? Forbidden Tower… they work under the ban of Arilinn! They even say - ” she lowered her voice as if whispering delicious scandal, and Magda did not hear what she said, but she heard small shocked exclamations.

Camilla said clearly, “What good are the Towers to those of us outside the Comyn? Except for these, who will come out of their walls to help and to heal.”

“I don’t care what you say,” one of the men at the next fire said, “it’s not right for a
leronis
to go about the countryside with common folk! And both the Lady Hilary and the Lady Callista were thrown out of Arilinn Tower by the old Sorceress and she wouldn’t do that without good reason. They’d ought to live quietly at home if they couldn’t live decent in the Tower - riding all around the countryside putting out fires and healing the common folk - ” he spat, and the sound was eloquent. “We’re doing all right with the fire, we don’t need their sorcery to come and put it out for us!”

“I say nothing against the Lady Leonie,” Camilla said quietly. “Once she was kind to me when I greatly needed kindness. But perhaps the Lady knows little, cloistered as a sacred virgin within her Tower in Arilinn, of the needs of those who must live in the world, and do not know how, or would be too much in awe of them, to seek them out for help or healing.”

“I’ve even heard - my sister is a steward’s helper at Armida - that they’re teaching the common folk
laran
,” said one woman with scorn. “If it can be taught to the likes of us, what good is it? The Comyn are descended from the Gods! Why should they come and meddle in our lives?”

Camilla said scornfully, “I cannot talk to such ignorance.”

“They’re like you Renunciates,” said the woman with a concentrated spite. “Won’t stay in your place, won’t marry and have children, no wonder you want the Hastur kinfolk to come out of
their
proper place too! Want to turn the world upside down, all you folk, make the masters servants and the servants masters! The old ways were good enough for my father and they’re good enough for my husband and me! No men of your own, so you want to come out here brazen in your breeches, trying to show off your legs and get them away from us… well,
mestra
, I’m telling you,
my
husband wouldn’t touch you with a hayfork, and if he did I’d scalp him! And if I see you waggling your tits at him I’ll scratch out your eyes!”

Camilla chuckled. “If all men but your husband vanished from the earth, dame, I would sleep with the house-dog. You are heartily welcome to your husband’s attentions for all I care to contest them.”

“You Amazons are all filthy lovers of women - “

“Hold!” said an authoritative voice. “No brawling in the camp; fire-truce holds here, too!” It was Ferrika’s voice, and the strange woman moved away in the dark. Ferrika said, “Go to sleep, my sisters; ‘the man who argues with the braying of the donkey or the barking of his dog will win no cases before the high courts.’ “

Silence settled around the Amazons fire, but Camilla still seemed ruffled as she drew off her boots to sleep.

“I have met with the old
leronis
of Arilinn - I do not say where, but it was when I was very young,” she said in a low voice to Magda. “She healed me when I had much need of healing, mind and body - I told you some of this. But the folk of Arilinn know nothing of the needs of common people. If what befell me had happened to a commoner maiden, the Lady would have shrugged and told my folk to marry me off to whatever man would have damaged goods. Because I was one of her own, she had pity on me - ” abruptly she broke off. “What has come to me that I babble like this?”

Magda pressed her hand in the darkness. “Whatever you say to me I will never repeat, I promise you, sister.”

“That woman called me lover of women as if it were the worst insult she could imagine,” Camilla said. “I am not ashamed to hear it spoken… except when I am among women who use it as the worst abuse they can imagine - “