"Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Rohanna - Everything But Freedom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

Everything But Freedom
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
"I did not say that I had no regrets, Jaelle," Rohana said, very low, "only that everything in this world has its price...."
"So you truly believe that you have paid a price? I thought you told me but now that you had had everyнthing a woman could desire."
Rohana did not face Jaelle; she did not want to cry.
"Everything but freedom, Jaelle."
ЧThe Shattered Chain, 1976.
I
"Look," Jaelle cried, leaning over the balcony, "I think they are coming."
Lady Rohana Ardais followed her from inside the room, her steps slowed somewhat by pregnancy. She moved slowly to the edge of the balcony to join her foster-daughter Jaelle and leaned to peer down from the balcony, trying to see past the bend in the tree-lined mountain road that led upward to Castle Ardais.
"I cannot see so far," she confessed, and Jaelle, trouнbled by the angle of the older woman's leaning forward, seized her round the waist and pulled her back from the edge.
Rohana moved restlessly to free herself, and Jaelle confessed, "I am still afraid of these heights. It makes my blood curdle, to see you standing so close to the edge like that. If you should fallЧ" She broke off and shuddered.
"But the railing is so high," said the third woman who had followed them from the inner room, "she could not possibly fall, not even if she wished! Look, even if I
climbed up hereЧ" Lady Alida made a move as if to climb up on the railing, but Jaelle's face was whiter than her shift, and Rohana shook her head. "Don't tease her, Alida. She's really afraid."
"I'm sorryЧdid that really bother you, chiya?"
"It does. Not as badly as when I first came here, butЧ Perhaps it is foolishЧ"
"No," Rohana said, "not really; you were desert-bred and never accustomed to the mountain heights." Jaelle had been born and reared in the Dry Towns; her mother a kidnapped woman of the Comyn, her father a desert chieftain who was, by Comyn standards, little better than a bandit. Four years before, a daring raid by Free Amaнzon mercenaries had freed Melora and the twelve-year-old Jaelle; but Melora had died in the desert, bearing the Dry Town chief's child. Rohana had wished to foster Melora's children; but Jaelle had chosen to go to the Amazon Guild House as fosterling to the Free Amazon Kindra n'ha Mhari.
Jaelle peered cautiously over the railing again. "Now they are past the bend in the road," she said. "You can seeЧyes, that is Kindra; no other woman rides like that."
"Alida," Rohana said, "Will you go down and make certain that guest-chambers are made ready?"
"Certainly, sister." Alida, many years younger than Lady Rohana, was the younger sister of Rohana's husнband, Dom Gabriel Ardais. She was a leronis, Tower-trained, and skilled in all the psychic arts of the Comyn, called laran.
"You will be glad to see your foster-mother again, Jaelle?" Alida asked.
"Of course, and glad to be going home," proclaimed Jaelle, heedless of the pain which flashed across Rohaнna's face.
Rohana said gently, "I had hoped that in this year, Jaelle, this might have become your home, too."
"Never!" Jaelle said emphatically. Then she softened, coming to hug Rohana impulsively. "Oh, please, kinsнwoman, don't Took like that! You know I love you. Only, after being free, living here has been like being chained again, like living in the Dry Towns!"
"Is it really as bad as all that?" Rohana asked. "I do not feel I have "lost my freedom."
"Perhaps you do not really mind being imprisoned; but I do," Jaelle said. "You will riot even ride astride, but when you ride you burden the horse with a lady's saddleЧan insult to a good horse. AndЧ" she hesitated, "Look at you! I know, even though you do not say it, that you did not really want another child, with Elorie already twelve years old and almost a woman, and Kyril and Rian all but grown men. Kyril is seventeen now, and Rian as old as I am!"
Rohana winced, for she had not realized that her fosнterling understood this. But she replied quietly, "Marнriage is not a matter for one person to decide everything. It is a matter for mutual decision. I have had many choices of my own; Gabriel wished for another child, and I did not feel that I could deny it to him."
"I know better than that," Jaelle replied curtly; she did not like her kinsman Gabriel, Lord Ardais, and did not care who knew it. "My uncle was angry with you because you had brought my brother Valentine here to foster, and I know that he said that if you could bring up one baby who was not even of your own blood, there was no reason you should not give him another."
"Jaelle, you do not understand these things." Rohana protested.
"No, and I hope I never do."
"What you do not understand is that Gabriel's happiнness is very important to me," Rohana said, "and it is worth bearing another child to make him happy." But secretly Rohana felt rebellious: Jaelle was right; she had not wanted another child now that she was also burнdened with Melora's son. Little Valentine was now nearly four years old. Her own sons had not been happy about having an infant foster-brother, even though her daughter treated the babyЧnow a hearty toddlerЧlike a special pet, a kind of living doll to play with. Rohana was grateful that Elorie loved her fosterling; she herself found it a heavy burden, having a little child around again when she had already reared all of her own chilнdren past adolescence. And now, at an age where she had hoped childbirth and suckling all behind her, she
must undergo all that again; and she was no longer strong and tireless as she had been when she was younger.
She sought to change the subject, although for one equally filled with tension.
"Are you still determined to take the Renunciate Oath as soon as possible?"
"Yes; you know I should have taken it a year ago," Jaelle said sullenly. "You stopped me then, but now I am fully of age and I cannot be prevented in law."
Jaelle knew it had not been only Rohana's disagreeнment that had prevented her from taking the Oath which would make her a Free AmazonЧa member of the Sisнterhood of Renunciates. It had been Kindra herself. She remembered, as she watched Kindra riding toward Casнtle Ardais, how they had ridden up this road together a year ago, Jaelle sullen and furious.
"I am of age, Kindra," she protested. "I am fifteen; I have a legal right to take the Oath; and I have been two years within the Guild House, I know what I want. The law allows it. Why should you stop me?"
"It is not a matter of law," Kindra protested. "It is a matter of honor. I gave the Lady Rohana my word; is my word nothing, is my honor nothing to you, foster-daughter?"
"You had no right to give such a word when it inнvolved my freedom," Jaelle protested angrily.
"Jaelle, you were born daughter to the Comyn, Melora Aillard's daughter; nearest heir to the Domain of Aillard," Kindra reminded her, "Even so, the Council has not forbidden you to become a Renunciate. But they have insisted that you must live for one year the life of a daughter of the Comyn, if only to be certain we have not kidnapped you nor unlawfully denied you your heritage."
"Who could believe that?" Jaelle demanded.
"Many who know nothing of the Renunciate way, who do not trust in our honor," Kindra said. "It was a pledge I was forced to make as the price of having you for a fosterling in the Guild House; that when you were of age to be married, you should be sent to Ardais, there to live at least a yearЧthey tried to argue for threeЧas
a daughter of the Comyn, to knowЧnot as a child, but as an adultЧjust what heritage and inheritance it was that you were renouncing. You should not, they felt, cast it away sight unseen and unexperienced."
"What I know of the heritage of Comyn, I do not want, nor respect, nor accept," Jaelle said stormily. "My life is here among the Guild-sisters, and I swear I shall never know any other."
"Oh, hush," Kindra implored. "How can you say so when you know nothing of what it is that you have renounced?"
"What good was it to my mother that she was Comyn?" Jaelle demanded. "They let her fall into my father's hands and dwell there as no better than concuнbine or slaveЧ"
"What else could they do? Would you have had them plunge all the Domains into a war with the Dry Towns? Over a single womanЧ"
"Had Jalak of the Dry Towns kidnapped the heir to Hastur, they would not have hesitated a moment to make war on his account; I know that much," Jaelle argued, and Kindra sighed, knowing that what Jaelle said was true. Kindra herself had no great love for the Comyn, although she genuinely admired and respected Lady Rohana. It had taken much persuasion for Jaelle to agree to spend a year at Ardais as Rohana's foster-daughter, to learn what it was to be born daughter to the Comyn.
Now the year was ended; and Kindra was coming, as she had promised, to take her back to the Guild House, to take the Oath and live forever as a free woman of the Guild, independent of clan or heritage.