"Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Free Amazons 02 - Amazon Fragment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

Rafaella felt her stomach lurch, her knees almost too weak to hold her upright. What are they going to do to us? She wanted to cry out, beg for mercy, but before Camilla's cold, defiant face she thought she would rather die there and then, than show herself afraid. Neither of them spoke, and at last Mother Lauria shrugged.
"On your own heads, then, you silly, stupid girls! You have left us no choice. Go and fetch the chains."
Chains! Rafaella thought in horror. This is worse than I feared....
Camilla was deathly white; Rafaella wondered for a moment if she would faint. Mother Lauria said, "Make sure neither of them has any weapons."
They stood side by side, each trying to ignore the othнer's presence as they were searched to the skin. Rafaella was shaking, but before Camilla's iron control she reнsolved she would not betray any sign of her terror.
Mother Callista stretched her hand out and one of the women handed her a pair of handcuffs, joined by a short length of chain, not more than three inches. She said, "You two have refused to keep your oath of your free will, and will not pledge to live together at peace. Now you will be chained together wrist to wrist; you will eat together, sleep together, work together and live together until you have learned to live in company as sisters must do. When you discover that neither of you can take so much as a single step without her. sister's cooperation, then you will learn a lesson that whatever we do of ne-
cessity involves another. Most of us learn this lesson less painfully. Camilla, are you left-handed?"
"Yes," said Camilla reluctantly.
"Give me your right hand, then. Rafaella, are you leftнhanded?"
"Right."
"That is good; otherwise you would have had to flip a coin, and abide by the lot." Her mouth tight with angry distaste, she buckled the handcuffs on their wrists.
Some of the women watching giggled a little, nerнvously. One of them intoned, "May you be forever one," mocking the phrase of catenas marriage, and frowned at the Guild-mother's angry look.
"Leave them now," Mother Callista said, "and go up to bed, all of you. This shameful episode is finished."
Camilla said nervously, "What do we do now?"
Mother Callista said indifferently, "That is for you to decide. Together." She rose without a backward glance and went out of the room. Kindra looked at them for a moment and seemed about to speak, then she, too, turned and went up to bed.
One of the women who had witnessed the quarrel said, "Maybe now you silly brats will stop keeping us in an uproar night and dayЧand if you want to fight, you'll have all the time you want to do it where it won't bother anyone else!"
Rafaella sat with tears rolling down her face. Unfair, cruel, humiliating! How could Kindra have let them do this to me? Why didn't Kindra warn me what would hapнpen? Doesn't she love me at all? They all hate me, they're all taking Camilla's part....
She moved automatically to wipe away her tears and felt the metal cuff jerk hard on her hand, pulling Camilнla's wrist up toward her eyes. Camilla yanked hard on it and said, "Stop that, damn it!"
Rafaella began to cry, sobbing helplessly, her free hand up to her face. Camilla said coldly, "Now you may weep, when it is too late to mend matters."
"And what did you do to mend them?" Rafaella deнmanded, snuffling.
Camilla's voice was icy. "Nothing. You need not reнmind me what a fool I am."
For a long time neither of them moved. The fire burned low and the room was very dark. Rafaella saw out of the corner of her eyes that Camilla raised her hand to her face as if she was wiping away tears, but thought, Her crying? That emmasca? I don't think she's human enough to know how to cry! And indeed, Camilla made no sound or movement.
Rafaella felt weary, incapable of coherent thought. She had never been so tired in her life. How would she stand this? How long would it last? Since the Guild-mother said they would eat together and work together and sleep together, she wondered if it would be many days. How could she possibly endure it, to have her enemy always at her elbow? She shuddered, and saw Camilla turn to stare angrily at her.
She wished she was safely in her own room, her own bed. But how could she go to bed with Camilla chained to her wrist? This was worse than a beating! She would not make the first move, nor ask that they go upstairs.
Although, soon or late, I must go up to the bathroomЧ sooner, rather than later, since I have been pregnant ... well, I will not ask her.
And she felt that she had won a kind of victory when it was Camilla who finally muttered, "I suppose we canнnot sit here all night. Shall we go upstairs, then?"
"I don't mind," Rafaella said ungraciously, but it was hard to keep pace with Camilla's long steps, and Rafaнella stumbled and fell on the stairs, dragging Camilla down; Camilla swore.
"Will you break my shins, too, damn you?"
"Do you think I break my own leg to spite you, bitch?"
"How do I know what you are likely to do?"
Rafaella lapsed into furious silence. Even years later she remembered the angry humiliation of having to reнlieve herself with the other woman at her elbow, and the struggle she had not to cry. I won't give her the satisfaction! Camilla herself behaved with complete, calm aloofness, as if she were completely alone. Rafaella wonнdered how she could accept it so calmly.
(Years later Camilla said to her, "I wanted to scream, to cry for hours, to slap you. But you were so arrogant,
so aloof, as if you didn't know I was there. I felt I couldn't behave worse than you did, I had to pretend to be calm ... then, too, I had had more practice than you in enduring humiliations. You did not know, then, how much I had endured in the way of torment, that I could endure this, too....")
Rafaella said coldly, "Well, are we to sleep on the floor in the hallway here?"
"Where they can all jeer at us in the morning? Not likely!"
Rafaella said reluctantly, "There is room in my bed."
"You would like to wake all your friends, then, to jeer at me?"
Rafaella realized that the three other women who slept in her room knew nothing of what had happened. "Would you rather wake your friends?"
"What friends?" Camilla asked, "I sleep aloneЧwhich I am sure you have never done in your lifeЧand at least in my bed we will not be seen!"
Discouraged, Rafaella muttered assent. In Camilla's room she had to struggle one-handed to get off her boots. Camilla was already undressed, in the slashed, still-damp nightgown she had been wearing. Rafaella deнcided not to take off anything else.
Rafaella slept badly, in her clothes, and on an unacнcustomed side. Every time she stirred, the handcuffs jerked her awake again. When she woke, she felt abruptly the surging, uneasy nausea which she had felt only a few times before, but which the Guild-mothers had told her some women suffered in early pregnancy; she sat up, sick and retching, and Camilla grumbled, waking abruptly, "Lie down! What in the devilЧ"
"I'm sick," Rafaella mumbled miserably, and hurried off down the hall, Camilla angrily stumbling behind. She knelt over the basin, retching, sunk in hopeless misery. Devra, there early for kitchen-duty, came to wipe her face with a cold cloth.
"Poor Rafi, I hoped you would escape thisЧ" she broke off, staring in angry shock at Camilla.
"WhatЧ"
Rafaella was too sick and wretched to explain. Camilla said briefly, "We fought. This is how they punished us."
Devra stared in dismay. "But Rafi, this is terrible, when you are sickЧdoes Kindra know? Can she do this to you now?"
Rafaella could not answer she could only think, I brought it on myself. Camilla was standing there, her face turned away in angry disgust. Stumbling to the room for her boots, Rafaella found that she was crying helplessly.
"Oh, shut up," Camilla shouted. "Is that all you can think to do, cry all the time?"
"IЧI can't help itЧ"
"It's bad enough to be kept awake all night with you jerking around, and wake up with you throwing up all over everything, do I have to listen to you bawling all day, too? Shut up or I'll slap you soft-headed!"