Bradley, Marion Zimmer Darkover 09 Renunciates 1 The Shattered Chain

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linen, a fur-lined over tunic and riding-cloak. She had even measured Magda s foot and
sent a servant to buy boots in the marketplace. Magda laced the high boots and led her
animals outside, feeding them from the stacked fodder in the nearby shed and slipping
the prescribed amount of coins into the padlocked box there. She led them one by one
to the watering trough, breaking the ice there with the small hammer on her saddle.
While they munched and drank, she went inside, quickly made a small fire and boiled
some water, stirring it into the precooked, powdered mixture of grains and nuts that
made a kind of instant porridge. Mixed with a few shreds of dried fruit, it was edible
when you were used to it.
The ransom was safely hidden in her saddlebags, converted into the copper bars
that were the standard Darkovan currency. In Terran exchange it was no more than a
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couple of months salary for a good agent; they probably wouldn t even bother to take
it out of Peter s hazard pay.
Why am I doing this? Peter s a grown man, able to take his own risks. I m not his
guardian. I m not even his wife anymore. I don t love him that much, not anymore, not
now. So why? But she had no answer, and it nagged at the back of her mind as she set
off down the trail. She stopped at the indicator post near the travel-shelter, locating the
next three shelters along this trail. One was at a reasonable distance for a large caravan
with heavily laden pack animals; a second was located at a good day s ride for a party
traveling at an easy pace but without much gear; the third was about at the limit of a
long day s hard ride for a solitary traveler. Maybe I can sleep there tonight & She
turned from the post and started along the trail, feeling a faint unease she could not
identify; then it came to her.
I m out of character, reading the travel-post. Most Darkovan women can t read
Literacy even among men on Darkover was by no means universal, though most men
could spell out a placard or scrawl their own names; among women it was extremely
rare, and her small Darkovan playmates at Caer Donn had been astonished and slightly
shocked and a little envious when they discovered that Margali could read, that her
own father had taught her. Out of character. Damn it, this whole trip is out of
character.
Magda clucked to her horse, and started along the trail. Rohana had warned her:
I traveled with the Free Amazons, but not as one of them; I do not deceive myself
that I know all of their ways and customs. If I were you, I would avoid any meeting
with real Amazon groups; but most of the folk in the hills where you will travel know
nothing at all about them. So no one will question your disguise, if you are careful.
And in seven days she had not been challenged, though once she had had to share
the travel shelter with two men, traders from the far hills. By law and custom, these
shelters, put up centuries ago, and kept inspected and stocked even in wartime by the
border patrols, were sacred places of neutrality, and must be shared by all comers;
anything else would have condemned other travelers to die of cold and exposure. By
law, even blood feuds were suspended in the shelters, as Magda had heard was the
custom during forest fires. The men had glanced briefly at Magda s short hair and
Amazon clothing, spoken a few formally courteous words, and ignored her entirely
after that.
But since then she had met no one; the advanced season had sent most travelers
home to their own firesides. The clouds had thinned and gone, and the great red sun of
Darkover, which some poet in the Terran Zone had christened The Bloody Sun, was
rising between the peaks, flooding the high snowfields with flaming crimson and gold.
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As she rode up into the pass, it seemed that a sea of flame bathed the high snowcaps, a
brilliance of solitude that exhilarated and excited her.
But the sunrise subsided, and there was nothing but the lonely silence of the trail.
Silence, and too much time to think, to ask herself again and again: Why am I doing
this? Am I still in love with the bastard?
Pride, maybe, that a man who shared my bed however briefly should be
abandoned and left to die, with no one to help him?
Or maybe, when we were growing up in Caer Donn, just the few of us among all
the Darkovan children, we absorbed their codes, their ethics. Loyalty, kinship s dues.
To the Empire, Peter is only an employee, expendable. To me, to any Darkovan, that s
an outrageous notion, an obscenity.
She crossed the path before the sun was more than an hour high in the sky, her
ears aching with the altitude, and began to descend into the next valley. At noon she
stopped at a little mountain village and indulged herself by buying a mug of hot soup
and a few fried cakes at a food-stall. Some curious children gathered around, and
Magda guessed, from their eagerness, that they saw very few outsiders; she gave them
some sweets from her saddlebags, and lingered, resting her animals before the climb to
the next pass, enjoying her first taste of fresh food since she had left Thendara.
They were all curious as kittens; they asked where she had come from, and when
she told them Thendara, they stared as if she had said From world s end. She
supposed that to these children, never out of their own hills, Thendara was the world s
end. But when they asked her business, she smiled and said it was a secret of her
patroness. Lady Rohana had given her permission to use her name. I will give you my
safe-conduct, too, under my seal. In the foothills there are many who owe service to
Gabriel and to me. She had also cautioned her against any but the most casual contact
with genuine Amazons, but had advised her that if she met any by chance, she would
be asked for her Guild-house, and for the name of the woman who had received her
oath. In this case, you may say Kindra n ha Mhari; she is dead these three years and
a fleeting sadness had touched Rohana s eyes but she was my dear friend, and I do
not think she would grudge this use of her name. But if the Gods are kind you will get
to Sain Scarp, and, hopefully, back again, without using it.
She had finished eating, and was watering her animals at the village trough when
she saw a pair of men riding into the square. By the cut of their cloaks she knew they
were from the far Hellers; they were bearded, and wore wicked-looking knives in their
belts. They looked at Magda and, she fancied, at her laden saddlebags, with a regard
that made her uneasy. She cut short the watering, clambered hastily into her saddle,
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and took the trail out of town. She hoped they would stop there for a good, long rest,
and she would not see them again.
For a long time the trail led upward between heavily wooded slopes. The ice and
snow were melting in the noon sun and the trail was slushy underfoot; Magda let her
horse find its own pace, and when the road grew steepest, dismounted to lead it. She [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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