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

They helped each other undress; but although Camilla did not remove her under-tunic, as she turned to get out of her trousers, Rafaella saw what she had not seen that morning when the other woman dressed, the terrible scars all along Camilla's shoulders and back. She drew a long breath of consternation.
This must be why she never bathes in the common room, why she always sleeps alone. How came she by those dreadful scars?
Camilla said, very low, "Now you have seen. Now you can spread the tale of myЧmy degradation, of how I am doubly mutilated... "
Rafaella turned away. She said, "Hell, no. I have trouнbles enough of my own to worry about."
Camilla drew a long breath. "I had thought... Kindra
would have spoken to you of this. It is told from here
to Dalereuth, I suppose, in the Guild Houses; how I had
to be stripped naked at my oath-taking because I had
nothing like to a woman's form, andЧand they would
not believe me a woman "
Rafaella said "You wrong Kindra if you think she would spread such a tale. Nor has any woman who saw you stripped spoken of it to me. But how came you so scarred, Camilla?"
"IЧI would rather not speak of it," Camilla said. "I was very young, but I do not like to remember it ... perhaps some day I will tell you. But IЧI cannot talk about it."
"As you like," Rafaella was quiet as they climbed into bed and shifted about for a comfortable place. Rafaella woke suddenly, hearing her companion scream aloud, moan, start upright, wildly flailing her hands.
"Don't. It's all right, CamillaЧit is only me, there is no one to harm you...."
Camilla started and shivered, staring at her in the darkness.
"OhЧRafiЧI am sorry I woke youЧ"
"I am only sorry you cannot sleep without nightmares."
Camilla said after a long minute, "I was afraid. IЧ there was a time when I was tiedЧlike an animalЧand beaten like an animal, too. Mercifully, I have forgotten much, but sometimes I still have nightmares...."
"Why, this must be worse for you than for me, then," Rafaella said, compassionately. Tied like an animal... beaten like an animal... what can have come to her?
"Camilla," she said at last, "I am sorry. Our quarrel was my fault; I splashed you with dirty water and I should have apologized and never let it come to this. Tomorrow I will go to Kindra and tell her, and ask that I alone should be punished. You can be freed, then, and need not have nightmares of being tied up."
Camilla bent her head. She said, "You make me ashamed. I knew you would apologize and I didn't want
that, because that would mean you were better than I. I think if you had apologized I would have pretended not to hear, so I need not acknowledge it."
"Then we are both to blame," Rafaella said, hesitatнing, "Will youЧwill you exchange forgiveness with me, Camilla?"
"WillinglyЧoath-sister." Camilla used the ritual phrase, com'hi-letzis.
Rafaella leaned over and lightly kissed her on the lips; wondering, touched Camilla's face with her fingertips. No one in the Guild House had ever seen Camilla cry. Even when she had been brought in from the battle in the hills with a great wound in her leg and it had to be cleansed and cauterized with acid, she did not cry out or weep!
Camilla said, "I always wanted to be your friend. You were Kindra's kinswoman, and for that alone I would have loved you. And yet I could not refrain from making a quarrel with you and bringing this upon you.. .." her voice broke. "And because you are beautiful and everyone loves you, and because you are pregnant."
"But you are the best fighter in the house, everyone admires your courage and your strength."
"I am a freak," Camilla said, her voice shaking, "An emmasca, not a woman at all."
"But Camilla, CamillaЧ" Rafaella protested, disнmayed, putting her arms around the older woman; it had never occurred to her that Camilla, who had, after all, chosen to undergo the neutering operation, could possiнbly feel like this. She was not to know for many years why Camilla had had this choice forced upon her, but she sensed tragedy and it made her gentle.
"I thought you despised my womanhood; you taunted me for being pregnantЧ"
"Taunted you? If I did, it was only out of envyЧ" Camilla said, choking.
Rafaella said incredulously, "Envy? Of this insaneЧ insane trouble I have gotten myself into? And I have been hating myself for being such a fool, vulnerable...."
"Envy because you are to have a child," Camilla said, "and I never shall, now ... nor, I suppose, really want
to, though sometimes it seems to me hard ... nor could I ever, I suppose, make myself vulnerable in such a way. Is it worth it, Rafaella? Is it really such a delight to you, what you do with men, enough to make Up for all the risks?"
"I suppose you would not think it so," Rafaella said, trying not to remember that her reasons had been quite otherwise, "you who are so defiant about being a lover of women."
"Defiant?" Camilla shrugged. "Perhaps, If you had had my experience, you would not think so much, perнhaps, of what men desire of women." She turned her eyes away, but Rafaella, thinking of the terrible scars Camilla bore, guessed at something too dreadful to be spoken. She put her arms around the older woman in silent sympathy, but Camilla was rigid, unmoving. She said, "I did not die. That is what I cannot forgive myself. To live with the memory. That is what none of my kinsнwomen could forgive me; that I lived when a decent woman would have died." She pulled herself free of Rafaella's arms. "Don't touch me, Rafaella, I'm not fit to live."
"Don't say that, Camilla, don'tЧ" Rafaella said, holdнing her.
After a moment the older woman shuddered and said "I'm sorry. I get like that sometimes. And when I heard you were pregnant, it seemed I could not bear my hateЧ that you were young, lovely, cherished ... but it was myself I hated ... for all the things I would never have or enjoy...." She smiled, bleakly, in the dark. "It is all born of nightmares. Forgive me, Rafaella."
"I think," Rafaella said, subdued, turning her hand within the chain so that her hand lay within Camilla's, "that I should ask you to forgive me instead, breda."
"We will forgive one another, then," Camilla said, squeezing the soft hands. "Come, you must sleep, it is not good for a woman with child to lose sleep this way. Here, will you sleep better like this?" She eased the pillow under Rafaella's side and neck. "Lie quite still, and when you wake up tomorrow, maybe you will not be sick and I can sleep a little longer."
They were chained together for another three days;
but now they had learned to help one another, and it cemented a friendship which was to endure lifelong, and to go so deep that in years after, neither could ever remember why they had quarreled.