Traitor's Sun (66 page)

Marguerida knew she was thinking of the trip to Neskaya because of the bandits they had encountered up in the mountains. She had killed two men during the fray, and used the Command Voice to stop the battle, much to her dismay and surprise. And now, if they were attacked as Herm and Nico thought they would be, she would probably slay more. The Aldaran Gift had visited her briefly that morning, offering her the sight of blasted corpses on a seared hillside. It had been frightening and useless, since she could not see the faces, and had no idea of their identity or what had been the cause of their deaths. And it had come and gone so quickly, a flicker more than a real vision.

Everything depended on Mikhail, on his matrix, and on hers as well. What had seemed quite plausible in the security of the Crystal Chamber seemed less so now. Was it really a plan, or just a foolish hope, that they could overcome an armed force in the way they believed? She tingled with anticipation and chill, acknowledging her own fears with as much calmness as she could muster. This was no time to have second thoughts. She glanced at the grim faces of the Guardsmen around them and made a silent prayer to the thousand gods from a hundred planets whose names she knew.

Still, it was very good to be on the road, riding toward whatever destiny awaited them. A sense of ease began to seep into her, unexpected and welcomed. She turned and smiled at Mikhail.

“That’s better,
caria
. Your frets were giving my nerves a workout.”

“Oh, dear—was I that loud?”

“Only to me, I think. Actually you have yourself well in hand, my love. I don’t know if I could have done this thing without you at my side. I wonder what is happening back in Thendara?”

“With any luck, absolutely nothing. That would disappoint my father, who really wants Belfontaine to do something foolish, so he can hang him out to dry in a cold wind. And Val, too.”

Mikhail chuckled softly. “Yes, she was practically rubbing her hands together with glee when we left. How is Katherine holding up?”

“Pretty well, but she is as anxious to see Herm as I am to see Nico. Perhaps I should drop back for the present and ride beside her.”

“Yes. We know that the attack, if it comes, will be beyond Carcosa, so there is no danger right now. She is a very brave woman, Marguerida.”

“I know. I’m not sure I could handle being headblind as well as she has. Her painting helps, I think. And her friendship with Gisela, too—do you know, I never would have imagined that happening. She seems to have turned Giz into another person, and I don’t really know what to make of it. Still, I am very glad of it. Very glad.”

Marguerida pulled her reins and turned back two horse lengths, causing the Guards on either side to shift their positions. She rode back, past the catafalque, and pulled alongside of Katherine’s rather pokey mount. Herm’s wife claimed to be able to ride, but no one would call her a good horsewoman. She held her reins too tightly, and her knees were clasped tautly against the sides of the animal. She would have been in one of the carriages but for her insistence that the close confines of the vehicle would make her ill.

“Kate, the horse will not run away with you. You will be exhausted if you keep hanging on for dear life like that. Let go of the pommel, relax your knees, and take a deep breath.”

“I am sure that is excellent advice, and I will try to obey it. I haven’t been on a horse since I was five, and that was a moor pony, and much lower to the ground! We don’t have real horses on Renney, just barrel-bellied ponies with shaggy coats and docile dispositions. They are used to pull wagons, and for children to ride as treats.”

“Did you enjoy it?” Marguerida was determined to put Katherine at ease. It gave her something to focus on besides her own worries and those of the woman beside her. Those were a constant murmur of thoughts of Herm, and about the safety of her children. She felt sorry for Kate, torn by two competing loyalties. If Gisela had not offered to take the children, she would have had a harder time of it. And now, in hindsight and less weary than the day before, Marguerida felt that her sister-in-law’s decision had been genuine, founded on her real affection for Kate Aldaran, and that there was no mischief in it. More, if Gisela was as determined as she seemed to behave better, she would have to learn to trust her more. With all the history that lay between her and Giz, it was a startling idea, one she was not sure she could accept easily.

“I’m not sure. I seem to remember being rather concerned about all those teeth—to a little girl even a pony seems pretty dangerous. And we rode bareback, without reins. I just grabbed the mane—I remember it was wiry in my fingers—and hung on for dear life.” She laughed a little. “I did not tell you that, and pretended to skills I lack,” Katherine admitted.

“That is all right. It was not a lie that was intended to injure anyone, and I do understand that being cooped up in a carriage would have been difficult for you.”

“How far is it now?”

“To the
rhu fead
or Carcosa?”

“Carcosa.”

Marguerida glanced knowledgeably along the movement of the train. “We will reach the town about midday, if none of the carriages loses a wheel, and if we have no other delays, we
might
get to Lake Hali by nightfall.” Thus far she had not told Katherine about the possibility of an attack on the funeral train, nor that she would have to get into a carriage when they left Carcosa. It had been hard enough to suggest that the castle might be attacked, in order to get her to let the children be taken to safety.

“Nightfall?” Katherine shivered in the wind, as if the prospect of riding through the entire day was finally making itself known. “Where will we spend the night? Is there a city there? No one has said.”

“Nothing like that—the only real city, in terms you understand, on Darkover is Thendara. There are a few largish places, like Neskaya, which are almost cityish, but for the most part there are only villages, towns and hamlets. I sent people ahead three days ago, to prepare things. By now I expect there is an encampment with its own kitchens, tents for sleeping, and latrines.”

“You sleep outside in tents, in this cold?”

Marguerida managed to swallow a laugh. “This is not cold, Kate, not by Darkovan standards.”

“Then what do you consider too cold for comfort?”

“Um, when the temperature is way below freezing, and there is snow up to your eyeballs, I suppose. I’ve gotten so used to it now that I hardly ever think about it. When I first returned to Darkover, I thought I would die from cold, but I adjusted, and so will you.”

“I’m not so sure of that, Marguerida. You were much younger than I am now, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was, but I’m sure you’ll become used to the climate with time.”

Katherine scanned the landscape, her eyes going towards the horizon as if she were trying to see something very distant. “Herm used to rhapsodize about winter, and sometimes when he talked about snow, he got positively poetic. I never understood that, and thought he was exaggerating, the way you do when you are far away from home. I mean, when we took Amaury and Terése home to Renney nine years back, I was stunned by how small the Manse seemed, because in my memory, it was a much bigger house than it is in reality. True, compared to the average Federation dwelling, it was huge—seven bedrooms and two parlors. But the ceilings seemed lower, and the rooms less spacious than I remembered. Now I think that perhaps Herm did not even give me a true idea of how different Darkover is—that the Hellers are taller than he said, and colder, too.” She shuddered slightly, looking north.

“You will get used to it. I did. Now I cannot imagine living in one room, or perhaps two, as I did when I was at University. My parents had a home on Thetis, with wide verandas facing the ocean, which I thought was very grand, but which would have fitted into a tiny fraction of Comyn Castle without a ripple. It all seems like a dream to me now, although a very nice one—warm and smelling of flowers and saltwater.” She let herself sigh for the world she knew she would never see again. “We will rough it for a night, with decent cots and lots of blankets, so I promise you will not freeze to death, or even take a chill. And, with any luck, we will have your Hermes back, and you can bundle up with him.”

“He will be very lucky if I don’t make him sleep on the ground with one thin blanket, for all the aggravation he has given me.” Her deep voice was twisted with conflicting emotions, too many for Marguerida to sort out without probing invasively.

“I would never dare to advise you on how to conduct your marital relations, Kate, but you must not be too hard on him. He is still a Darkovan male, and they are reared to be high-handed, to treat their womenfolk like fragile bric-a-brac, and to do as they please, for the most part. He can’t help not consulting you, any more than you can avoid resenting it.”

“Bric-a-brac! Yes, that’s how Herm made me feel once we arrived here—I just couldn’t quite get my mind around it! And I don’t understand it at all.”

“It’s our history, Kate. Darkover has a small population, and infant mortality has been high for centuries. Therefore women were protected fiercely—in some places more than others. Up in the Dry Towns they are shackled like criminals. Some of that has changed since the Federation came, but not as much as I would like. Even today, there is not a great deal of freedom here for females, unless they choose the Renunciate’s path, which is not an easy one.”

“You mean those women at the rear of the train? Gisela told me a little about them. We even joked that if things didn’t work out with Herm, I could join them. They look tough as nails.”

“Yes, those are Renunciates.”

“There is so much I do not understand, which infuriates me and makes me feel even more . . . no matter. Tell me about this
rhu fead
. If it is such an important place, why is there no city or large town nearby? And, for that matter, why bury your kings there, instead of Thendara, if it is, as you say, the chief city? It doesn’t make any sense to me, and I am driving myself to distraction trying to make heads or tails out of this planet my husband has plunked me down on.”

Marguerida laughed aloud and nodded. “That seems perfectly reasonable to me, dear Kate. The short answer is tradition. Everything important on Darkover is done according to hoary traditions that no one remembers the reasons for any longer. One of these is that our dead rulers will be interred in the
rhu fead
, which is a very peculiar place to begin with. It stands near the shore of Lake Hali.” She paused and took a slow breath. “I once spent several weeks submerged in the waters—except they are not really waters—of Lake Hali, and I know no more about it than I did before. So it is no good asking me about it. I wish I could tell you more. Just understand that Hali is a sacred place, and that Darkover is a planet which tends to be traditional rather than innovative.” She grinned. “They don’t examine their ideas much, and I think if you asked a hundred people at random why things were done in a certain way, ninety of them would just answer that if it was good enough for their grandfather, it is good enough for them.”

“Oh, a religious site. Well, there is no explaining those sorts of things, is there? Even when you grow up with the beliefs, you never really understand them. I think that religion is just a box into which real mysteries are dropped, like old clothing.”

Marguerida gave Kate a look of pleasure. She had nearly forgotten how delightful it was to have a discussion about ideas, for there were very few people on Darkover who had the education and intellectual curiosity she craved. And, until now, it had not occurred to her that Katherine might be a woman with unusual ideas of her own. “Now, that is a very interesting attitude. I never thought if it that way before, but you make good sense. I had the impression from a few things you said that Renney had a pretty complex religious life—your sacred groves and all. Don’t you accept those things any longer?”

“Maybe my years living in the Federation have left me a bit cynical.” Katherine gave a thoughtful sigh. “We have goddesses on Renney, and the people there believe in them. A day does not go by that my Nana doesn’t offer her prayers and do her small rituals. When I was a child, they seemed to me to be wonderful, but when we went back there, so Nana could meet Terése, I was . . . almost embarrassed, I suppose. It seemed so backward and superstitious, and just a little silly. I would never suggest such a thing to her, of course. My Nana may be old, but she is still capable of reducing me to jelly without overly exerting herself.” Katherine chuckled. “After living in the Federation for years, observing and being exposed to dozens of religions—the followers of which all insist that
theirs
is the only true religion—well, it all started to seem ridiculous to me. It is very hard to go on believing in the power of goddesses when you have never seen one, and are surrounded by people who believe so many diverse and contradictory things.”

Marguerida did not answer, thinking about her own experiences. Her memory swept back to the moment when she married Mikhail, in the presence of Varzil the Good and another, the goddess Evanda. She had never doubted the actuality of that, but she found herself reluctant to share the experience with her new friend. It was a very personal remembrance, and even now, years after the fact, it was so awesome that she could not bring herself to speak of it to anyone except Mikhail.

At last she said, “The Darkovan mythology is fairly simple—two gods, two goddesses and no theology to speak of. They are more like forces of nature, invoked ceremonially on occasion, and otherwise not given much attention. There are other deities, lesser ones, as well. But I think that the general attitude of the people is that if the gods do not actively interfere in their lives, then they should just leave well enough alone.” She paused for a second. “Up in Nevarsin there is a cult called the
cristoforos
. Their beliefs are monotheistic and not shared by most of the people of Darkover, but they have been a center of learning for centuries. In the past, many of the sons of the Comyn were sent there to be educated—including Regis Hastur. That custom has faded in recent years, although Gisela’s oldest son, by her first marriage, went there and appears to have decided to join them. I can say, however, that there has never been a religious war on Darkover, although there have been several of the more ordinary sort.”