Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover - The Shattered Chain

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THE
SHATTERED CHAIN
A Darkover Novel
Marion Zimmer Bradley
THE OATH OF THE FREE AMAZONS
From this day forth, I renounce the right to marry save as a freemate. No man shall bind me
di catenas and I will dwell in no man’s household as a barragana.
I swear that I am prepared to defend myself by force if I am attacked by force, and that I
shall turn to no man for protection.
From this day forth I swear I shall never again be known by the name of any man, be he
father, guardian, lover or husband, but simply and solely as the daughter of my mother.
From this day forth I swear I will give myself to no man save in my own time and season
and of my own free will, at my own desire; I will never earn my bread as the object of any man’s
lust
From this day forth I swear I will bear no child to any man save for my own pleasure and at
my own time and choice; I will bear no child to any man for house or heritage, clan or
inheritance, pride or 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.
From this day forth I renounce allegiance to any family, clan, household, warden or liege
lord, and take oath that I owe allegiance only to the laws of the land as a free citizen must; to the
kingdom, the crown and the Gods.
I shall appeal to no man as of right, for protection, support or succor: but shall owe
allegiance only to my oath-mother, to my sisters in the Guild and to my employer for the season
of my employment.
And I further swear that the members of the Guild of Free Amazons shall be to me, each
and every one, as my mother, my sister or my daughter, born of one blood with me, and that no
woman sealed by oath to the Guild shall appeal to me in vain.
From this moment, I swear to obey all the laws of the Guild of Free Amazons and any
lawful command of my oath-mother, the Guild members or my elected leader for the season of
my employment. And if I betray any secret of the Guild, or prove false to my oath, then I shall
submit myself to the Guild-mothers for such discipline as they shall choose; and if I fail, then
may every woman’s hand turn against me, let them slay me like an animal and consign my body
unburied to corruption and my soul to the mercy of the Goddess.
DEDICATION:
PART I: ROHANA ARDAIS, Comynara
PART II: MAGDA LORNE, Terran Agent
PART III: JAELLE n’ha MELORA, Free Amazon
For Tracy in return for telling me the joke about the spaceman, the leronis, and the three
Dry-Towners.
Twelve years elapse between the first part and the second.
Part I
ROHANA ARDAIS,
Comynara
Chapter
ONE
Night was lowering across the Dry Towns, hesitating as if, at this season, the great red sun
was reluctant to set. Liriel and Kyrrdis, pale in the lingering daylight, swung low over the walls
of Shainsa.
Inside the gates, at the outskirts of the great windswept marketplace, a little band of
travelers were making camp, unsaddling their mounts and off-loading their pack animals.
There were no more than seven or eight of them, and all were garbed in the hooded cloaks
and the heavy tunics and riding breeches of the mountain country, the faraway land of the Seven
Domains. It was hot in the desert lands of Shainsa, at this hour when the sun still burned with
some force, but the travelers still wore their hooded cloaks; and though every one of them was
armed with knife and dagger, not one of the travelers carried a sword.
This was enough to alert the crowd of Dry-Town loafers, hanging around to watch the
strangers pitch camp, to what they were. When one, sweating under the weight of laden
saddlebags, slung back hood and cloak to reveal a small shapely head, with dark hair close-
cropped as no man—or woman—of Domains or Dry Towns ever wore it, the hecklers began to
collect. So little goes on, ordinarily, in Dry-Town streets, that the watchers behaved as if the
arrival of the strangers were a free show arranged for their benefit, and they all felt free to
comment on the performance.
“Hey, there, come have a look at this! Free Amazons, they are, from the Domains!”
“Shameless bitches, that’s what they are, runnin’ around like that with no man to own to
‘em! I’d run the lot out of Shainsa before they corrupt our decent wives and daughters!”
“What’s the matter, Hayat, you can’t keep hold of your own wives? Mine, now, they
wouldn’t run loose for all the gold of the Domains. … If I tried to cut ‘em loose they’d come
back cryin’, they know when they’re well off—”
The Amazons heard the remarks, but they had been warned and were prepared for this; they
went quietly about the business of making camp, as if their observers were invisible and
unspeaking. Emboldened by this, the Dry-Town men came closer, and the jokes flew, free and
ribald; and now some of them were addressed directly to the women.
“Got everything, haven’t you, girls—swords, knives, horses, everything except what it
takes!”
One of the women flushed and turned, opening her lips as if to reply; the leader of the
group, a tall, slender, swift-moving woman, turned to her and said something, urgently, in a low
voice; the woman lowered her eyes and turned back to the tent-pegs she was driving into the
coarse sand.
One of the Dry-Town idlers, witnessing the little exchange, approached the leader,
muttering suggestively: “Got your girls all right under your thumb, haven’t you, then? Why not
leave ‘em alone and come along with me? I could teach you things you never dreamed about—”
The woman turned, pushing back her hood to reveal, beneath graying close-cropped hair,
the gaunt, pleasant face of a woman in middle years. She said in a light, clearly audible voice, “I
learned everything you could possibly teach me long before you were housebroken, animal. And
as for dreams, I have nightmares like everybody else, but thanks be to the Gods, I’ve always
waked up so far.”
The bystanders guffawed. “One in the eye for you, Merach!” Now that they had turned
their jokes on one another instead of on the women, the little band of Free Amazons went quickly
about the business of setting camp: a booth, evidently for buying or selling, a couple of sleeping
tents and a shelter to guard their mountain-bred horses against the fierce and unaccustomed sun
of the Dry Towns.
One of the onlookers came forward; the women tensed against further insult, but he only
asked politely enough: “May one inquire your business here, vahi domnis?” His accent was
thick, and the woman addressed looked blank; but the leader understood, and answered for her:
“We have come to sell leather goods from the Domains; saddles, harness and leather clothing.
We will be here for trading at daylight tomorrow; you are all invited to come and do business
with us.”
A man in the crowd yelled, “There’s only one thing I’d ever buy from women!”
“Buy it, hell! Make them pay for it!”
“Hey, lady, you going to sell them britches you’re wearing so you can dress like a
woman?”
The Free Amazon ignored the jeers. The man who had come to question her said, “Can we
direct you to any entertainment in the city this night? Or”—he hesitated, looked appraisingly at
her, and added—”entertain you ourselves?”
She said with a faint smile, “No, thank you very much,” and turned away. One of the
younger women said in a low, indignant voice, “I had no idea it was going to be like this! And
you thanked him, Kindra! I’d have kicked his dirty teeth down his throat!”
Kindra smiled and patted the other’s arm soothingly. “Why, hard words break no bones,
Devra. He made an offer with such politeness as was in him, and I answered him the same. Next
to these”—she swept the crowd of loafers with an ironic gray glance—”he was the soul of
courtesy.”
“Kindra, are we really going to trade with these gre’zuin?”
Kindra frowned faintly at the obscenity. “Why, yes, of course. We must have some reason
for staying here, and Jalak may not return for days. If we have no apparent business here, we will
be prime objects for suspicion. Not trade? What are you wearing for a head, today? Think, child!”
She moved on to a woman who was piling saddlebags within the shelter, asking in an
undertone, “No sign yet of Nira?”
“None so far.” The woman addressed glanced uneasily around, as if fearful of being
overheard. She spoke pure casta, the language of the aristocrats from Thendara and the plains of
Valeron. “No doubt she’ll seek us out after nightfall. She would have small liking for running the
gauntlet of these folk; and for anyone dressed as a man to enter our camp openly and
unchallenged—”
“True,” Kindra said, looking at their watchers. “And she is no stranger to the Dry Towns.
Yet I cannot help being a little fearful. It goes against the grain to send any of my women in
man’s dress, yet it was her only safety here.”
“In man’s dress…” The woman repeated the words as if she felt she must have
misunderstood the other’s language. “Why, do you not all wear man’s dress, Kindra?”
Kindra said, “Here you betray only your ignorance of our customs, Lady Rohana; I beg you
to keep your voice low when we might be overheard. Do you truly believe I wear man’s dress?”
She sounded affronted, and the Lady Rohana said quickly, “I meant no offense, believe me,
Kindra. But your dress is certainly not that of a woman—not, at least, a woman of the Domains.”
Deference and annoyance mingled in the Free Amazon’s voice as she said, “I have no
leisure now to explain to you all the customs and rules of our Guild, Lady Rohana. For now, it is
enough—” She broke off at another outbreak of guffaws from the bystanders. Devra and another
of the Free Amazons were leading their saddle horses toward the common well at the center of
the marketplace. One of them paid the watering fee in the copper rings that passed as currency
anywhere east of Carthon, while the other led the animals to the trough. As she returned to help
Devra with the watering, one of the idlers in the crowd laid hands on her waist, pulling her
roughly against him.
“Hey, pretty, why don’t you leave these bitches and come along with me? I’ve got plenty to
show you, and I’ll bet you never—eeyah!” His words broke off in a howl of rage and pain; the
woman had whipped a dagger from its sheath, slashing swiftly upward, laying open his filthy and
tattered clothing to expose bare, unhealthy flesh, a line of red creeping upward along the quarter-
inch-deep slash from lower belly to collarbone. He stumbled back, staggering, falling into the
dust; the woman gave him a contemptuous kick with one sandaled foot, saying in a low, fierce
voice, “Take yourself off, bre’sui! Or next time I’ll spill your guts, and your cuyones with ‘em!
Now get the hell out of here, you filthy bastards, or you won’t be fit for anything but selling for
he-whores in the Ardcarran bordellos!”
The man’s friends dragged him away, still moaning more with shock than pain. Kindra
strode toward the woman, who was wiping her knife. She raised her eyes, grinning with innocent
pride at how well she had defended herself. Kindra slapped the knife out of her hand.
“Damn you, Gwennis! Now you’ve made us all conspicuous! Your pride in knife-play
could cost us our mission! When I asked for volunteers on this trip, I wanted women, not spoiled
children!”
Gwennis’ eyes filled with tears. She was no more than a girl, fifteen or sixteen. She said,
her voice shaking, “I am sorry, Kindra. What should I have done? Should I have let the filthy
gre’zu paw me?”
“Do you really think you were in danger, here in daylight and before so many? You could
have freed yourself without bloodshed and made him look ridiculous, without ever drawing your
knife. Your skills were taught you to guard against real danger of rape or wounding, Gwennis,
not to protect your pride. It is only men who must play games of kihar, my daughter; it is beneath
the dignity of a Free Amazon.” She picked up the knife where it had fallen in the dust, wiping the
remnant of blood from the blade. “If I return it to you, can you keep it where it belongs until it is
needed?”
Gwennis lowered her head and muttered, “I swear it.”
Kindra handed it to her, saying gently, “It will be needed soon enough, breda.” She laid an
arm around the girl’s shoulders for an instant, adding, “I know it is difficult, Gwennis. But
remember that our mission is more important than these stupid annoyances.”
She left the women to finish the watering, noticing with a grim smile that the crowd of idle
watchers had evaporated as if by magic. Gwennis deserved every harsh word I gave her. But I am
still glad she rid us of those creatures!
The sun sank behind the low hills, and the small moons began to climb the sky. The square
was deserted for a while, then some of the Dry-Town women, wrapped in their cumbersome
skirts and veils, began to drift into the marketplace to buy water from the common well, moving,
each of them, with the small metallic clash of chains. By Dry-Town custom, each woman’s hands
were fettered with a metal bracelet on each wrist; the bracelets were connected with a long chain,
passed through a metal loop on her belt, so that if the woman moved either hand, the other was
drawn up tight against the loop at her waist.
The Free Amazon camp was filled with a smell of cooking from their small fires; some of
the Dry-Town women came close and stared at the strange women with curiosity and contempt:
their cropped hair, their rough mannish garb, their unbound hands, breeches and low sandals. The
Amazons, conscious of their stares, returned the gaze with equal curiosity, not unmingled with
pity. The woman called Rohana finally could bear no more; leaving her almost-untouched plate,
she got to her feet and went into the tent she shared with Kindra. After a moment the Amazon
leader followed her inside, saying in surprise, “But you have eaten nothing, my Lady. May I
serve you, then?”
“I am not hungry,” said Rohana, stifled. She put back her hood, revealing, in the dim light,
hair of the flame-red color that marked her a member of the telepath caste of the Comyn: the
caste that had ruled the Seven Domains from time unknown and unknowable. It had been
cropped short, indeed, but nothing could conceal its color, and Kindra frowned as the Comyn
woman went on:
“The sight of those women has destroyed my appetite; I feel too sick to swallow. How can
you endure to watch it, Kindra, you who make so much of freedom for women?”
Kindra said with a slight shrug, “I feel no very great sympathy for them. Any single one of
them could be free if she chose. If they wish to suffer chains rather than lose the attentions of
their men, or be different from their mothers and sisters, I shall not waste my pity on them, far
less lose sleep or appetite. They endure their captivity as you of the Domains, Lady, endure
yours; and, truth to tell I see no very great difference between you. They are, perhaps, more
honest, for they admit to their chains and make no pretense of freedom; while yours are
invisible—but they are as great a weight upon you.”
Rohana’s pale face flushed with anger. She said, “Then I wonder you ever agreed to this
mission! Was it only to earn your pay?”
“There was that, of course,” Kindra said, unruffled. “I am a mercenary soldier; within
reason, I go where I am hired to go, and do what I am best paid to do. But there is more,” she
added in a gentler tone. “The Lady Melora, your kinswoman, did not connive at her own
captivity, nor choose her form of servitude. As I understand what you told me, Jalak of Shainsa—
may his manhood wither!—fell upon her escort, slew her guards, and carried her away by force;
wishing, for revenge or sheer lust of cruelty, to keep a leronis of the Comyn enslaved and captive
as his wife—or his concubine, I am not certain.”
“In the Dry Towns there seems no great difference,” said the Lady Rohana bitterly, and
Kindra nodded. “I see no very great difference anywhere, vai domna, but I do not expect you to
agree with me. Be that as it may, Lady Melora was carried away into a slavery she had not
chosen, and her surviving kinsmen could not, or did not, choose to avenge her.”
“There were those who tried,” Rohana said, her voice shaking. Her face was almost
invisible in the darkened tent, but there were tears in her roughened voice. “They vanished
without trace, until the third; he was my father’s youngest son, my half-brother; and had been
Melora’s foster-brother, reared as her playmate.”
“That tale I have heard; Jalak sent back the ring he wore still on his fingers,” Kindra said,
“and boasted he would do so, and more, to any other who came to avenge her. But that was ten
years ago, Lady, and if I were in the Lady Melora’s slippers, I would not have lived to endanger
any more of my kinfolk. If she has dwelled for twelve years in Jalak’s household, surely she
cannot be in any great need, by now, of rescue. By this time, one would imagine she must be
resigned to her fate.”
Rohana’s pale face stained with color. “So in truth we believed,” she said. “Cassilda pity
me, I, too, reproached her in thought, wishing her dead rather than living on in Jalak’s house as a
shame to us all.”
“Yet you are here now,” Kindra said, and although it was not a question, Lady Rohana
answered. “You know what I am: leronis, Tower-trained; a telepath.
Melora and I dwelt together, as young girls, in the Dalereuth Tower. Neither of us chose to
remain life-long, but before I left the Tower to marry, our minds were joined; we learned to reach
one another’s thoughts. Then came her tragedy. In the years between, I had indeed all but
forgotten; learned to think of Melora as dead, or at least gone far beyond my reach, far, far
beyond my touch or my thoughts. Then—it was not more than forty days ago—Melora came to
me across the distances; came to me in thought, as we had learned to do when we were little
maidens in the Tower at Dalereuth. …”
Her voice was distant, strange; Kindra knew that the red-haired woman was no longer
speaking to her, but to a memory; a commitment. “I hardly knew her,” Rohana said,” she had
changed so greatly. Resigned to her place as Jalak’s consort and captive? No; simply unwilling to
cause”—Rohana’s voice faltered—”more death and torment; I learned then that my brother, her
foster-brother, had been tortured to death before her eyes, as a warning lest she seek rescue. … ”
Kindra grimaced with horror and revulsion. Rohana went on, steadying her voice with a
fearful effort. “Melora told me that at last, after so many years, she bore a son to Jalak; that she
would die before giving him an heir of Comyn blood. She did not ask rescue for herself, even
then. I think—I think she wants to die. But she will not leave her other child in Jalak’s hands.”
“Another child?”
“A daughter,” Rohana said quietly, “born a few months after she was taken. Twelve years
old. Old enough”—her voice shook—”old enough to be chained.” She sobbed, turning her face
away. “For herself she asked nothing. Only she begged me to get her daughter away; away, out of
Jalak’s hands. Only so—only so could she die in peace.”
Kindra’s face was grim. Before I bore a daughter to live in the Dry Towns, captive,
chained, she thought, I would lay hands on myself and the life within me, or strangle the babe as
she came forth from my womb! But the women of the Domains are soft, cowards all! None of this
showed in her voice, however, as she laid a hand on Rohana’s shoulder, saying quietly, “I thank
you for telling me this, Lady. I did not understand. So our mission is not so much to rescue your
kinswoman as to free her daughter; that is what she asked. Although, if Melora can be freed…”
“Well, my band and I are pledged to do all we can,” Kindra said, “and I think any of us
would risk our lives to save a young girl from living chained. But for now, Lady, you will soon
need all your strength, and there is neither courage nor wisdom in an empty belly; it is not fitting
that I should lay commands on a Comynara, but will you not join my women now and finish your
meal?”
Rohana’s smile wavered a little. Why, beyond her harsh words, she’s kind! She said aloud,
“Before I joined you, mestra, I pledged myself to conduct myself in all ways as one of your band,
and so I am bound to obey you.”
She went out of the tent, and Kindra, standing in the doorway, watched her take a place by
the fire, and accept a plateful of the stewed meat and beans.
Kindra did not follow at once, but stood thinking of what lay ahead. If it came to Jalak’s
ears that anyone of the Domains was in his city, he might be already on guard. Or would he so
despise the Free Amazons that he would not trouble to guard against them? She should have
insisted that the Lady Rohana dye her hair. If any spy of Jalak’s should see a redheaded Comyn
woman … I never thought she would be witting to cut it.
Maybe courage is relative; for her, maybe it took as much courage to cut her hair as for me
to draw knife on a foeman …
It is worth risk, to take a young maiden from Jalak’s hands, from chains to freedom.
… Or such freedom as any woman can have in the Domains.
Kindra raised her hand, in an automatic gesture, to her cropped, graying hair. She had not
been born into the Guild of Free Amazons; she had come to it through a choice so painful that the
memory still had power to make her lips tighten and her eyes grow grim and faraway. She looked
at Rohana, sitting in the ring of Amazons around the fire, eating, and listening to the women talk.
I was once very like her: soft, submissive to the only life I knew. I chose to free myself. Rohana
chose otherwise. I do not pity her, either.
But Melora was given no choice…Nor her daughter.
She thought, dispassionately, that it was probably too late for Melora. There could not, after
ten years in the Dry Towns, be much left for her. But there was evidently enough left, of what she
had been, to spur her to an enormous effort to get freedom for her daughter. Kindra knew only a
little of the telepathic powers of the Comyn; but she knew that for Melora to reach Lady Rohana,
over such distance, after so long a separation, must have taken enormous and agonizing effort.
For the first time, Kindra felt a moment of genuine sympathy for Melora. She had accepted
captivity for herself rather than allow any more of her kinsmen to risk death by torture. But she
would risk anything, to give her daughter a choice; so that her daughter would not live and die
knowing nothing but the chained world, the slave world, of the Dry-Town women.
Lady Rohana did well to come to me. After so many years, no doubt, her Comyn kin wished
Melora dead, wished to forget she dwelt in slavery, a reproach to them.
But that is why the Free Amazons exist, in the final analysis. So that every woman may, at
least, know there is a choice for them … that if they accept the restrictions laid upon women, on
Darkover, they may do so from choice and not because they cannot imagine anything else. …
Kindra was about to leave the tent, to return to the fireside and have her own meal, when
she heard a small, strange sound: the whistle of a rain-bird; such a bird as never cried here, in the
Dry Towns. Quickly she turned, nervously alert, seeing the small, slight form that wriggled under
the back flap of the tent. It was very dark, but she knew who it must be. She said in a whisper,
“Nira?”
“Unless you think some rain-bird has gone mad and flown here to die,” said Nira, rising to
her feet.
Kindra said, “Here, get out of those clothes; another woman around our fire will never be
noticed, but in men’s clothes you would collect another crowd here. We had quite enough of that
while we were off-loading.”
“I heard,” Nira said wryly, slipping out of her boots, unbuckling the short sword she
wore—contrary to Domain law—and concealing it in the clutter of the tent. Kindra flung the
younger woman a shirt and loose Amazon trousers, saw that she was very faintly silhouetted by
firelight, and turned the tiny lamp lower still until they were in darkness. Nira was folding up her
disguise; as she stepped into her clothes, Kindra came and asked in a whisper, “Was there any
trouble? What news, child?”
“No trouble; I passed for any trader’s lad from the mountains, any apprentice; they thought
me a beardless boy with his voice still unbroken. For news I have only gossip of the marketplace,
and some from the servants at Jalak’s door. The Voice of Jalak, who keeps his Great House when
the Lord is away, has received a message that Jalak, and his wives and concubines and all his
household, will return before noon tomorrow; and one of the slave-girls told me that they would
have returned tonight, except that his Lady is heavy with child, and could not ride so far this day.
Jalak has sent word for the midwives to be in readiness at any time after his return, and his
servants are making bets about whether this will be the son he wants … it seems he has begotten
nothing but girls, whether by wife, concubine or slave-girl, and that he has promised that the first
of his women to bear him a son shall have rubies from Ardcarran and pearls brought from the
sea-towns at Temora. Some old midwife says that she can tell by the way Lady Melora carries
her child, low and broad, that it is a son; and Jalak will do nothing to endanger her while he has
this hope. … ”
Kindra’s face twisted in distaste. She said: “So Jalak is camped in the desert? How far
away?”
Nira shrugged. “No more than a few miles, I gathered. Maybe we should have arranged to
attack his tents. …”
Kindra shook her head. “Madness. Have you forgotten? The Dry-Towners are paranoid;
they live by feud and combat. On the road, take my word, Jalak will be guarded so that three
cadres of City Guardsmen could not come at him. In his own house he may be a little more
relaxed. In any case, we cannot stand against open attack. A quick strike, a guard or two killed,
and ride like hell; that’s the only kind of chance we have.”
“True.” Nira had dressed in her own clothes again; they were about to leave the tent when
Nira laid her hand on Kindra’s arm, detaining her. “Why must we have the Lady Rohana with us?
She rides but poorly; she will be no use at all in a fight—she hardly knows which end to take
hold of a knife—and if she is recognized we are all dead women. Why did you not demand that
摘要：

THESHATTEREDCHAINADarkoverNovelMarionZimmerBradleyTHEOATHOFTHEFREEAMAZONSFromthisdayforth,Irenouncetherighttomarrysaveasafreemate.NomanshallbindmedicatenasandIwilldwellinnoman’shouseholdasabarragana.IswearthatIampreparedtodefendmyselfbyforceifIamattackedbyforce,andthatIshallturntonomanforprotection....

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