Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover Renunciates 3 - City of Sor

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CITY OF SORCERY
Marion Zimmer Bradley
A Darkover novel - Renunciates 03
Contents
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A Note from the Author
This novel, like all Darkover novels, is complete in itself. However, for those who have followed the
chronology of Darkover,City of Sorcery takes place approximately seven years afterThendara House ,
at a time when Terran and Darkovan relationships were at their most friendly; a period which lasted until
the time when Dorilys Aillard, known as Cleindori, achieved status as Keeper in Arilinn Tower. Her
martyrdom, murder, and the subsequent swing to extreme conservatism under the Regency of Danvan
Hastur, ended this period of friendly relations between the two societies, and by the time ofThe Bloody
Sun , few Terrans and fewer Darkovans even remembered that there had been years when Terran and
Darkovan had co-existed on such amiable terms.
One of the few who remembered, afterward, that there had been such a time was Magdalen Lorne,
of Terran Intelligence; otherwise known as Margali n’Tsabet, Free Amazon, Comhi’letziis; Oath-bound
of the Guild of Renunciates.
—M. Z. B.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY in DAW Books:
Darkover LandFall
The Spell Sword
The Heritage of Hastur
The Shattered Chain
The Forbidden Tower
Stormqueen!
Two to Conquer
Hawkmistress!
Hunters of the Red Moon
Sharra’s Exile
Thendara House
With The Friends of Darkover:
Sword of Chaos
The Keeper’s Price
DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER
1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
Copyright ©, 1984, by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by James Gurney.
DAW Book Collectors’ Number 600
First Printing, October 1984
DEDICATION
To Donald A. Wollheim
This, as all my books
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although every character and event in this novel is entirely my own invention, the theme and structure
of the story were suggested by a novel by the late Talbot Mundy; THE DEVIL’S GUARD, copyright
1926 by the Ridgeway Company. I read it in 1945 or thereabout, and have felt for many years that this
kind of Ideal Search or Quest novel should be retold in a Darkovan context
Also my grateful thanks to my elder son, David Bradley, for preparation of the final manuscript.
David went above and beyond the call of duty by retyping, at an hour’s notice, from a very imperfect
print, the first 15 chapters into a second word processor after the first one had blown up in my face,
losing all the early disks and backups. This is why Darkovans are said to hate technology. And thanks to
my secretary, Elisabeth Waters, who gave up the use ofher word processor for three weeks so that we
could finish the book on time.
—M. Z. B.
CHAPTER ONE
^»
The messenger was a woman, and though she was wearing Darkovan clothing, she was not Darkovan,
and not accustomed to the streets of Thendara’s Old Town at night. She walked warily, reminding
herself that respectable women were seldom molested in the streets if they minded their own business,
acted and looked as if they had somewhere to go; did not loiter, kept moving.
She had learned this lesson so well that she strode along briskly even through the marketplace,
looking neither to one side nor the other, keeping her eyes straight ahead.
The red sun of Cottman Four, informally called the Bloody Sun by Terran Empire spaceport
workers, lingered at the rim of the horizon, casting a pleasant red-umber twilight. A single moon, like a
pale violet shadow in the sky, hung high and waning. In the marketplace, the vendors were closing the
front shutters of their stalls. A fried-fish seller was scooping up the last small crispy crumbs from her
kettle, watched by a few stray cats; she scattered the crumbs, provoking a cat-scrimmage underfoot,
which she watched, amused, for a moment before she hoisted the kettle on its side, straining the fat
through several layers of cloth. Close by, a saddlemaker slammed down the front shutters of his stall and
padlocked them shut.
Prosperous, thought the Terran woman in Darkovan clothing.He can afford a Terran metal lock .
Darkover, Cottman Four to the Terrans, was a metal-poor planet. Other vendors were tying their
shutters down with ropes and cords and trusting to the night watchman to notice any unauthorized
person fumbling with the ropes. A baker was doing a haphazard business selling the last few stale buns in
her stall; she looked up as the Terran messenger passed with her quick stride.
“Hey there! Vanessa n’ha Yllana, where are you going in such a rush?”
Vanessa was moving so swiftly that she had gone several steps past the baker’s stall before she
really heard the words. She stopped and came back, smiling tentatively at the plump woman who was
making change for a small boy with a bun in his fist.
“Sherna,” she acknowledged, “I didn’t see you. ”
“I could have imagined that,” said the baker with a grin. “Striding along as if you were on your way
to exterminate a colony of banshees, at theleast , my dear! Have a bun?” When Vanessa hesitated, she
urged, “Go on, take one, there’s no sense in hauling this lot all the way back to the Guild-house; it’s not
as if there were enough left for everyone to have one at supper!”
Thus urged, Vanessa picked up one of the leftover buns and bit into it. It was hearty, made with
nut-flour to eke out the grain, and sweet with dried fruits. She stood nibbling, moving automatically to
one side as the stall-keeper a few feet away began to bumble about with a broom, sweeping the front of
his shop.
“Were you going to the Guild-house, or on some other errand?” Sherna asked.
“To the Guild-house,” Vanessa admitted. “I should have thought to come here at once so that I could
go through the streets with you.” Secretly she was annoyed at herself; where had her mind been?
“Good,” Sherna said. “You can help me carry the baskets. But tonight is not a Bridge meeting, is it?”
“Oh, no, no, not that I remember,” Vanessa said, picking up one of the breadbaskets. “I have a
message for Margali n’ha Ysabet. I cannot see why the Guildmothers refuse to have a communicator in
the Guild-house; it would save sending messengers through the streets this way, especially after dark. ”
Sherna smiled indulgently. “YouTerranan ,” she said, laughing. “So that the noise of the thing can
invade our privacy in season and out, to save a messenger the trouble of walking a few minutes’ walk in
good weather? Ah, your poor abused feet, my heart aches for the lazy things!”
“The weather isn’t always so good,” Vanessa protested, but the argument was an old one, habitual
between the women, and the protests were good-natured.
Both women were members of the Bridge Society,Penta Cori’yo , which had been formed a few
years ago, when members of the Free Amazons—Comhi’ Letziis, the Guild of Renunciates—had been
the first Darkovans to offer themselves for work in the Terran Headquarters; as medical technicians, as
mountain guides and travel-advisers, as translators and language teachers. The Bridge Society offered a
home, a place to live, friends among Darkovan women; for Terrans who agreed to live by Renunciate
laws, but could not commit themselves fully to the Guild-house, there was even a specially modified form
of the Oath. The Bridge maintained homelike quarters for Darkovan women, mostly Renunciates,
required by their work to live in the Terran HQ.
It was open to any Darkovan woman who had worked for three of the forty-day moon cycles in the
Terran HQ or any Terran woman who spent the same time within a Guild-house. Sherna n’ha Marya, a
Renunciate from Thendara Guild-house, had worked half a year as a translator, helping to compile
standard works incasta andcahuenga , the two languages of Darkover. Vanessa ryn Erin, a graduate of
the Terran Intelligence Academy on Alpha, had now been four years on Darkover, and had lived in the
Guild-house most of the last year, preparing for field work outside Headquarters.
Sherna handed the last of the sweet buns to a woman with a small child in her arms, another clutching
her skirt. “Take them for the little ones. No, no,” she protested as the woman began to fumble for coins,
“they’d only go into the pail for the hens. So, Vanessa, we managed that well, only two loaves to carry
back, and the kitchen-women can make us a bread-pudding with them. ”
“Are we ready to go back to the Guild-house, then?”
“There’s no hurry,” Sherna said, and Vanessa had been on Darkover long enough not to protest,
despite the urgency of her errand. She helped Sherna tie up the front shutters of the bake-stall in leisurely
fashion, and collect the scattered baskets.
There was a sudden flurry of activity at one of the gates visible from the marketplace, and a caravan
of pack animals clattered over the stones. A cluster of small children playing king-of-the-mountain from
the top of an abandoned stall scampered out of the way. A tall, thin woman, clad in the ordinary garb of
a Renunciate, loose tunic and trousers tucked into low boots, carrying an Amazon knife as long as a
short sword, strode toward them.
“Rafi,” Sherna greeted her. “I didn’t know you’d be back tonight. ”
“Neither did I,” said Rafaella n’ha Doria. “These people have been bumbling about the pass for three
days. I think the pack animals smelled home, or they’d still be wandering up there looking at the green
grass growing and hunting for mushrooms on apple trees. Let me go and pick up my pay. I’d have left
them at the city gates, but I’m sure they’d have lost themselves between here and their stables, judging
by the way they’ve behaved all along. And Zandru whip me with scorpions if I ever again accept a
commission before it’s firmly understood who’s bossing the trail! Believe me—I could tell you some
stories—” She hurried off to talk briefly with the head of the caravan. Some money changed hands.
Vanessa saw Rafaella carefully stop to count it—even the Terran woman knew what an insult that was,
in an open marketplace. Then Rafi came back to them; greeted Vanessa with a casual nod, swung the
last of the wicker breadbaskets to her shoulder, and the three women set off together through the
cobbled streets.
“What are you doing here, Vanessa? News from HQ?”
“Not much,” Vanessa said evasively. “One of our planes from Map and Ex is down in the Hellers. ”
“Maybe there will be work for us, then,” Rafaella said. “Last year, when they sent us out on a
salvage contract for a downed plane, there was plenty for everyone to do.” Rafaella was a
travel-organizer, and was in considerable demand among Terrans who must venture into the little-known
and trackless mountains of the northern Domains.
“I don’t know if that’s what they have in mind. I don’t think it’s where anyone can salvage it,”
Vanessa said. The women walked along silently through one of the quieter streets of the city, and paused
before a large building of stone, turning a windowless front wall on the street. A small placard on the
front door said:
THENDARA GUILD-HOUSE
SISTERHOOD OF RENUNCIATES
Sherna and Vanessa were laden with the baskets; Rafaella alone had a free hand to ring the bell. In
the front hall, a heavily pregnant woman let them in, closing and locking the door after them. “Oh,
Vanessa, is it the night for the Bridge Society? I had forgotten.” But she gave Vanessa no chance to
answer. “Rafi, your daughter is here!”
“I thought Doria was still busy among theTerranan ,” said Rafaella, not very graciously. “What is she
doing here, Laurinda?”
“She is giving a lecture, with the box which makes lighted pictures on the wall, to seven women who
are to be trained as healing assistants, beginning next tenday,” said Laurinda. “ ‘Nurses,’ theTerranan
call them, isn’t that a funny word? It sounds as if they were going to work breast-feedingTerranan
babies, and that’s not what they’re being trained for at all. Just caring for the sick and bedridden, and
looking after wounds and the like. They must be nearly finished now; you could go in and speak to her. ”
Vanessa asked, “Is Margali n’ha Ysabet within the house? I am here with a message for her. ”
“You are fortunate,” the woman said, “she is to set out tomorrow morning for Armida, with Jaelle n’
ha Melora. They would have gone today, before noon, but one of the horses cast a shoe and by the time
the smith had done with her work, it was threatening rain; so they put off their departure till tomorrow. ”
“If Jaelle is still in the house,” Rafaella said, “I should like to speak with her. ”
“She is helping Doria with the lecture; we all know she has worked among theTerranan ,” Laurinda
said.
“Why don’t you look inside and see? They’re in the music room. ”
“I will go and put away my baskets first,” said Sherna, but Vanessa followed Rafaella toward the
music room at the back of the building, and opened the door, quietly slipping inside.
A young woman, her hair cropped Renunciate style, was just finishing a slide lecture; she ticked off
several points on her fingers, clicking off a colored slide as the women entered.
“You will be expected to write accurately; they will expect you to read well, and to remember what
you read, and to write it down precisely. You will be given preparatory lectures in anatomy, in personal
hygiene, in scientific observation and how to record what you observe, before ever you are allowed
even to bring a patient a tray of food or a bedpan. You will work as assistants and aides, helping the
qualified nurses to care for patients, from the very first day of your lectures; and as soon as you are
taught any nursing procedures you will be allowed to do them at once on the wards. Not until your
second half year of training will you be allowed to assist the surgeons, or to study midwifery. It is hard,
dirty work, but I found it very satisfying, and I think you will too. Any questions?”
One of the young women curled up on the floor listening raised her hand.
“Mirella n’ha Anjali?”
“Why must we have lessons in personal hygiene? Do those Terrans think that Darkovan people are
dirty or slovenly, that they must teach us this?”
“You must not take it personally,” said Doria. “Even their own women must learn new and different
ways of cleanliness when they study nursing; cleanliness for everyday use, and surgical cleanliness for
when they must work around people who are very ill, or who have unhealed wounds, or are exposed to
disease germs and contagion, are not at all the same, as you will learn. ”
Another woman asked, “I have heard that theuniforms —” she stumbled over the unfamiliar word,
“worn by the Terran workers are as immodest as the wear of a prostitute. Must we wear them, and will
it violate our Oath?”
Doria indicated the white tunic and trousers she was wearing. She said, “Customs differ. Their
standards of modesty are different from ours. But the Bridge Society has been successful in creating a
compromise. Darkovan women employed by Medic wear a special uniform designed not to offend our
standards, and it’s so comfortable and warm that many of the Terran nurses have chosen to adopt it.
And before you ask, the symbol on the breast of the uniform—” She indicated the red emblem, a staff
with entwined snakes. “It’s a very old Terran symbol indicating Medical service. You will be expected
to know a dozen such symbols in order to find your way around the HQ. ”
“What does it mean?” one young girl, not more than fifteen, asked.
“I asked my own teacher this. It is supposed to be the symbol of a very old Terran God of Healing.
No one now worships him, but the symbol has remained. Any other questions?”
“I have heard,” said one woman, “that the Terrans are licentious, that they regard Darkovan women
as being—being like the women of the spaceport bars. Is this true? Must we carry knives to protect
ourselves there?”
Doria chuckled. She said, “Jaelle n’ha Melora lived among them for a time. 1 will let her answer that.
”
A small woman with flaming red hair stood up at the back of the room. “I cannot speak for all Terran
men,” she said, “even among the Gods, Zandru and Aldones have not the same attributes, and a
cristoforo monk behaves differently than a farmer in the Valeron plains. There are boorish men and
roughnecks among the Terrans as well as on the streets of Thendara. But I can assure you that among
the Terrans in the Medic Department, you need not fear discourtesy or molestation; their Medics are
sworn by oath to treat everyone, patients of professional associates, with proper courtesy. In fact, it may
disturb you that they will not seem to take any note of whether you are a man, a woman, or a piece of
machinery, but will treat you as if you were novice Keepers. As for carrying knives, it is not the custom
among the Terrans, and you will not be allowed to bring any weapons for defense into the Medic
Department. But then, the Terrans will not be carrying them either: it is forbidden by their regulations.
The only knives you will see anywhere in Medic are the surgeon’s scalpels. Are there any other
questions?”
Vanessa realized that the questions could go on until the bell rang for the evening meal. She said,
from where she stood by the door, “I have a question. Is Margali n’ha Ysabet within this room?”
“I have not seen her since noonday,” Doria said, then saw Rafaella in the doorway beside Vanessa.
“Mother,” she called, and hurried to Rafaella, enveloping her in an enormous hug. Jaelle, smiling,
came to her old friend, and the three women stood for a moment embracing.
“It’s wonderful to see you, Jaelle. Damn, how long has it been? For the past three years we’ve kept
missing each other; whenever I’m in Thendara, you’re out at Armida, and whenever you come to the
city, I’m likely to be somewhere north of Caer Donn!”
“It’s only luck this time; Margali and I were supposed to leave at noon,” Jaelle said. “I have been
away from my daughter for a pair of tendays. ”
“She must be a big girl now, Dorilys n’ha Jaelle,” said Rafaella, laughing. “Five, isn’t she, or six by
now? Old enough to bring her to the house for fostering. ”
“There’s time enough for that,” said Jaelle, and looked away, greeting Vanessa with a nod. “I know I
met you a few days ago at the Bridge Society meeting, but I have forgotten your name. ”
“Vanessa,” Doria reminded her.
“I am sorry to break up your lecture,” Vanessa said, looking at the young women who were putting
away the cushions and scattering about the room, but Doria shrugged.
“It’s just as well. All the serious questions had been answered. But, they are nervous about their new
work, and would have kept thinking up silly questions to be answered until the supper-bell!” She went
back to the center of the room, and began packing up her slides and the projector. “How fortunate you
came. You can return these to Medic for me tonight, and save me a trip through the streets at night. I
borrowed them from the Chief of Nursing Education. You’ll take them back when you go, won’t you?
Or are you spending the night?”
“No, I came here with a message for Margali—”
Doria shrugged again. “I am sure she’s somewhere in the House. It’s nearly time for the supper-bell.
You will be sure to see her there!”
Vanessa had been long enough on Darkover, and lived long enough in Guild-houses, to be
accustomed to this casual attitude about time. She was still Terran enough to feel that they really should
have sent someone to fetch Margali, or at least told her where to go and find her, but she was on the
Darkovan side of town, now; resigning herself, she told Doria that she would be glad to return the slide
equipment to the Medic Department for her—actually, she felt it was a considerable imposition, and she
was a little annoyed at Doria for asking. But Doria was a sister in the Guild, and there was no courteous
way to refuse a request of this sort.
“Is there any news yet about the plane that’s down in the Hellers?” Doria asked.
Vanessa was saved from answering by a scornful sound from Rafaella.
“FoolishTerranan ,” Rafaella said. “What do they expect? Even we poor benighted souls without the
benefit of Terran science—” She made the words sound like a gutter obscenity—“know that it is folly to
travel past the Hellers, at any season, and even a Terran should know there’s nothing north of Nevarsin
to the Wall Around the World, but frozen wasteland! I say, good riddance to bad rubbish! If they send
their foolish planes there, they must expect to lose them!”
“I think you are too hard on them, Rafi,” Doria said. “Is the pilot anyone I know, Vanessa?”
“She is not a member of the Bridge Society. Her name is Anders. ”
“Alexis Anders? I have met her,” said Jaelle. “They have not recovered the plane? How dreadful!”
Rafaella put an arm around Jaelle’s waist. “Let’s not waste time talking of the Terrans,Shaya , love,
we have so little time together these days. Your daughter is such a big girl now, when will you bring her
to the Guild-house for fostering? And then perhaps you will come back too. ”
Jaelle’s face clouded. “I don’t know if I can bring her here at all, Rafi. There are—difficulties. ”
Rafaella’s quick temper flared. “So it is true. I did not believe it of you, Jaelle, that you would go
meekly back to your high-born Comyn kindred, when they had cast you off! But then, perhaps it was
always certain that the Comyn would never let you go, certainly not when you bore a child to one of
them! I wonder that no one has yet called your Oath in question!”
Now Jaelle’s face, too, bore the high color of anger; she had, Vanessa thought, the temper
associated traditionally, by Terrans, with her flaming red hair.
“How dare you say that to me, Rafaella?”
“Do you deny that the father of your child is the Comyn lord Damon Ridenow?”
“I deny nothing,” Jaelle said angrily, “but what of that? You of all people, to reproach me with that,
Rafi! Have you not three sons?”
Rafaella quoted from the Oath of the Renunciates:
“Men dia pre‘ zhiuro, from this day forth, I swear I will bear no child to any man for house or
heritage, place nor posterity; I swear that I alone will determine rearing and fosterage of any child I bear,
without regard to any man’s place, position, or pride. ”
“How dare you quote the Oath to me in that tone and imply that I have broken it? Cleindori ismy
child. Her father is Comyn; if you knew him, you would know how little that means to him. My daughter
is an Aillard; the house of Aillard, alone among the Seven Domains, have counted lineage, from the times
of Hastur and Cassilda themselves, in the mother’s line. I bore my daughter for my own house, not for
any man’s! What Amazon has not done the same, unless she is so persistent a lover of women that she
will not let any man touch her even for that purpose.” But Jaelle’s anger ebbed; she put her arm around
Rafaella again. “Oh, let’s not quarrel, Rafi, you are almost my oldest friend, and do you think I have
forgotten the years when we were partners? But you are not the keeper of my conscience. ”
Rafaella still held herself spitefully aloof.
“No, that office is now filled by that he-keeper of the Forbidden Tower—Damon Ridenow, is that
his name? How can I possibly compete with that?”
Jaelle shook her head. “Whatever you think, Rafi, I keep my Oath.” Rafaella still looked skeptical,
but at that moment a mellow-chimed bell sounded through the hall, announcing that in a few minutes
dinner would be served.
“Dinner, and I am still wearing all the muck of the pack animals and the marketplace! I must go and
wash, even if I am not to be one of Doria’s nurses! Come along up with me, Shaya. Let’s not quarrel,
after all, I see you so seldom now, we have no time to waste in arguing about what we can’t change.
Vanessa, will you come with us?”
“I think not, I must look for Margali n’ha Ysabet.” Vanessa watched Jaelle and her friend run up the
stairs, and went toward the door of the dining room. There was a good smell of cooking, something hot
and savory, the yeasty smell of fresh bread just taken from the oven, and a clatter of dishes where the
women helping in the kitchen were setting out bowls and cups on the tables.
If Magdalen Lorne, known in the Guild-house as Margali, was in the Guild-house at all, she must
pass through here on her way to dinner. Vanessa wondered if she would know her by sight. She had
met her only three or four times, the last time only a tenday ago at a meeting of the Bridge Society within
this House.
At that moment, she looked up and saw Magdalen Lorne coming toward her, along the hall from the
greenhouse at the back of the Guild-house. Her arms were full of early melons. At her side, also carrying
melons, was a tall, scarred, rangy woman—anemmasca , a woman who had undergone the dangerous,
illegal and frequently fatal neutering operation. Vanessa knew the woman’s name, Camilla n’ha Kyria;
knew that she had once been a mercenary soldier, was now a teacher of sword-play in the Guild-house,
and knew that she was reputed to be Magdalen Lorne’s lover. That still embarrassed Vanessa a little,
though not as much as it would have done before she had dwelt for months in the Guild-house and knew
how commonplace and unremarkable it was. It no longer seemed to her mysterious and perverse; but
she was Terran, and it embarrassed her.
Even before she had come to Darkover, since first she had gone into training for Intelligence work,
Vanessa ryn Erin had known of the legendary Magdalen Lorne. She knew most of the story: that she
had been born on Darkover, in the mountains near Caer Donn, before the building of Thendara
Spaceport, so that Magda had been brought up with Darkovan children and learned the language as a
native. She knew that Magda had been trained, like herself, in the Intelligence Academy on Alpha, by
Vanessa’s own chief, Cholayna Ares, who had at that time been head of Intelligence Training, and had
only later come to Darkover. She knew that Magda had, for a time, been married to the present Terran
Legate, Peter Haldane, and that she had been the first woman to do Intelligence Fieldwork on
Darkover; one of the very few women who had ever done so. She knew that Magda had been the first
to infiltrate the Guild of Renunciates, had even managed to take the Oath, and had quixotically insisted
on keeping it, even to serving the full housebound time, which, before the creation of the Bridge Society,
had been required in unmitigated form even of Terrans. She knew that, a few years ago, Magda had left
the Guild-house and was on some mysterious detached duty at Armida. This she had known of the
legend. But she had met the living woman only a few days ago, and still was not accustomed to her.
Somehow she had expected her to be larger than life.
In the Guild-house, courtesy demanded that she use only Lorne’s Darkovan name.
“Margali n’ha Ysabet? May I speak with you for a minute?”
“Vanessa? How nice to see you.” Magda Lorne, Margali, seemed tall, though she was not much
over average height; in her middle thirties, with heavy dark hair cropped short in Renunciate style,
shadowing her forehead; she had deep-set, lively gray eyes which rested on Vanessa curiously. “Here,
take some of these, will you?” She shoved some of the armload of melons into Vanessa’s hands; sniffed,
and made a wry face. “Smells like tripe stew. You can have my share. Will I ever forget how I hated it,
my first few months here? But maybe you like it, some people do. Never mind, there’ll be plenty of
bread and cheese, and melons for dessert. Camilla, give her some of those, if you drop them here in the
hall we’ll be chasing them all over the place— and if any of them smash open, what a mess to clean
away! And I, for one, don’t feel like scrubbing floors this week!”
Camilla, who was even taller than Magda, loaded Vanessa’s arms with some of the melons she was
carrying. They smelled sweet and fragrant, with the earthy smell of the greenhouse, but Vanessa resented
the intrusion on her mission. Camilla saw her frown.
“What are you doing here, Vanessa? If it is Bridge Society night, I had forgotten. ”
Vanessa thought, irritably, that if one more person said that to her she would swear out loud. “No—
but I have a message for you, Margali, from Cholayna n’ha Chandria.” Vanessa used the Guild-house
name, and Magda shook her head in puzzlement.
“Damn the woman, what can she want? I talked with her three days ago, and she knew I was
leaving. Jaelle and I should have gone this afternoon. In case you’d forgotten, we have children at
Armida. ”
“It’s an assignment. She said it was important, possibly a matter of life or death, ” Vanessa told her.
Camilla said, “Cholayna doesn’t exaggerate. If she saidlife or death , she meant it. ”
“I’m sure of it, ” Magda said, frowning. “But do you have any idea what it’s all about, Vanessa? I
don’t want to get hung up here. As I said, I’m needed at Armida. Jaelle’s daughter is old enough to be
left, but Shaya’s not quite two years old, and if I stay much longer in the city she’ll forget what I look
like!”
“I couldn’t say, ” Vanessa evaded, carefully not saying that she didn’t know. She had been briefed
on why Magda had left the Guild-house, and something from the most secret and classified files had
been made available to her about Magda’s work at Armida, but not nearly enough to understand it.
She could not imagine any conceivable reason why an Intelligence Agent of Magda’s status should
want to burden herself with a half-Darkovan child, and like all women who are childless by choice, she
judged Magda harshly. Although she admired the legend, she was not yet accustomed to the living reality
of the woman. Walking at Magda’s side, it confused her to note that Magda was actually an inch or two
shorter than she was herself.
“It’s not all that late. Have we time for dinner here? No, I suppose if Cholayna said life or death, she
means exactly that. Let me go and tell Jaelle n’ha Melora that I may not be able to leave at first light,
after all.” But her face was grim as she started up the stairs.
“Let me tell you, Vanessa, if this is a nonsense of some sort, Cholayna will wish she had never
learned the way to the Guild-house. I’m leaving tomorrow, and that’s that!”
She smiled suddenly as she started up the stairs, and for the first time, Vanessa sensed, behind the
matter-of-fact woman, the powerful personality who had become the legend.
“Oh, well, if it had to come, what better time? At least I’ll miss the tripe stew. ”
CHAPTER TWO
«^»
It was pitch-dark now, and raining, spits and slashes of sleet in the nightly rain. The streets were all but
empty when Magda and Vanessa finally crossed the square facing the entrance to the Terran HQ and
gave passwords to the Spaceforce man in black leather uniform. He was bundled to the neck in a black
wool scarf, which was not regulation, and there was a heavy down jacket over the uniform which was
not regulation either, but on this particular planet, at night, should have been. Magda knew they winked
at it, but that wasn’t enough; they should have changed the rules to authorize it.
And they think the Darkovan people are unwilling to change their primitive ways!
Magda did not know most of the new Spaceforce people now. Even a year ago, she would have
introduced herself; now it seemed pointless. She would be going back to Armida in the morning; that
was where her life was laid now. She had remained accessible to Cholayna to help in the founding and
implementing of the Bridge Society, but now it was working well on its own. And now she had a child to
bind her further to Armida and the Forbidden Tower. Cholayna Ares, Head of Intelligence on Cottman
Four, would simply have to get along without her.
If she thinks she can send me into the field at a moment’s notice, she can simply think again.
Magda had lived so long under the Darkovan sun that she flinched at the bright yellow Earth-normal
lights as they came on inside the main HQ building. But she stepped into the elevator without hesitation.
摘要：

CITYOFSORCERYMarionZimmerBradleyADarkovernovel-Renunciates03 Contents|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29|30|31|ANotefromtheAuthorThisnovel,likeallDarkovernovels,iscompleteinitself.However,forthosewhohavefollowedthechronologyofDarkover,CityofSorcerytakesplac...

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