Darkover: First Contact (49 page)

In addition to the honor guard, he brought with him two sorcerers; the young
laranzu
Rory, and Melisendra herself. From childhood he had heard tales of the sorcery of the priestesses of Avarra, and he wished to have sorcery of his own to contend with them. And it would do Melisendra no harm to know that he did, indeed, have a lawful wife, and that she could expect nothing more from him!

The Island of Silence lay outside the kingdom of Asturias, in the independent shire of Marenji. Bard knew little of Marenji, except that their ruler was chosen every few years by acclamation from among the rabble; they had no standing army, and kept themselves free of any alliances with kings or rulers nearby. Once Bard’s father had entertained the Sheriff of Marenji in his Great Hall, dealing with him for some casks of their fruit wine, and making an arrangement to guard his borders.

He rode across the peaceful countryside of Marenji, with its groves of apples and pears, plums and greenberries, its orchards of nut trees and featherpod bushes. In a hilly ravine he saw a stream dammed up to give power to a felting mill where featherpod fibers were made into batting for quilts. There was a village of weavers; he recalled that they made beautifully woven tartan cloth for skirts and shawls. There was no sign anywhere of defenses.

If this place were armed, Bard thought, and soldiers quartered in the villages, it would make a splendid buffer state to hold off the armies of Serrais when they came down again toward Asturias, and in return the men of Asturias could protect them. The Sheriff of Marenji could surely be made to see reason. And if he did not, well, there was no army to show resistence. He would advise his father as soon as he returned to lose no time in quartering armies in Marenji.

As they rode, the land grew darker. They rode in the shadow of the high mountains, past lakes and misty tarns. There were fewer and fewer farms, just an isolated steading here and there. Melisendra and the boy rode close together and looked ill at ease.

Bard reviewed in his mind everything that he knew of the priestesses of Avarra. They had dwelt, as long as any living man could remember, on the island at the center of the Lake of Silence; and always the law had been that any man who set foot on that island must die. It was said that the priestesses swore lifelong vows of chastity and prayer; but in addition to the priestesses, many women, wives or maidens or widows, went to the island in grief or piety or penitence to dwell for a time under the mantle of Avarra, the Dark Mother; and whoever they were, so that they worshipped Avarra and wore the garb of the sisterhood during their sojourn there and spoke to no man and observed chastity, they might dwell as long as they wished. No man really knew what went on among them, and the women who went there were pledged never to tell.

But women in grief and despair from the loss of a child or husband, women who were barren and longed for children, women worn from childbearing who wished to petition the Goddess for health or for barrenness, women suffering from any sorrow, these went there to the shrine of Avarra to pray for the help of the priestesses, or for that of the Mother.

Once an old woman who served Lady Jerana—Bard had been so young then that he was not even chased away when women talked among themselves—had said in his hearing, “Secret of the Island of Silence? The secret is that there is no secret! I spent a season there once. The women live in their houses, in silence, chaste and alone, and speaking only when necessary, or to pray, or for healing and charity. They pray at dawn and sunset, or when the moons rise. They are pledged to give help to any woman who asks it in the name of the Goddess, whatever her griefs or burdens. They know a great deal of healing herbs and simples, and while I dwelt with them they taught me. They are good and holy women.”

Bard wondered how any women could be good, being pledged to murder any man who set foot on the island? Although, he conceded, (making a joke of it to himself, to allay his anxiety) they must at least be unlike other women if they were silent! That was always a virtue in women!

It seemed, though, wrong for women to dwell alone, unprotected; if he were Sheriff of Marenji he would send soldiers to protect the women.

They stood now on the lip of a valley, looking down at the wide waters of the Lake of Silence.

It was a quiet place and an eerie one. There was no sound, as they moved down toward the shores of the lake, except the sound of their horses’ hooves; and the cry of a water bird, her nest disturbed, flying up with a sudden squawk into the air. Dark trees bent flexible branches over the dark waters, black against the low sunset light in the sky; and as they came nearer they heard the complaining of frogs. They picked their way through the soggy swamplands along the shore, and Bard heard sucking sounds as his horse’s feet sloshed in the marsh.

Ugh, what a dismal place! Carlina should be grateful that he had come to take her away from it! Perhaps she had shown good sense in taking refuge here, so that no other marriage could be forced on her for political reasons, but surely seven years was long enough to spend in piety and prayer, apart from all men! Her life as the Princess Carlina, wife to the Commander of the King’s Armies, would be very different!

And now there was fog, rising in swirls from the surface of the lake, thick wisps of it, swirling and streaming toward them until Bard could hardly see the path before him. The men were grumbling; the very air seemed thick and oppressive! Small Rory, on his pony at Bard’s side, raised a pale, frightened face.

“Please,
vai dom,
we should go back. We will be lost in the fog. And they do not want us here, I can feel it!”

“Use the Sight,” Bard commanded. “What do you see?”

The child took out the seeing-stone and obediently looked into it, but his face was contorted, as if he were trying not to cry.

“Nothing. I see nothing, only the fog. They are trying to hide from me, they say it is impious for a man to be here.”

Bard jeered, “Do you call yourself a man?”

“No,” said the child, “but
they
call me one and say I must not come here. Please, my Lord Wolf, let’s go back! The Dark Mother has turned her face to me, but she is veiled, she is angry—oh, please, my lord, we are forbidden to come here, we must turn and go away again or something terrible will happen!”

Furious, frustrated, Bard wondered if those witches on the island thought they could frighten him by playing their witch tricks on a harmless little boy with a seeing-stone. “Hold your tongue and try to act like a man,” he told the boy severely, and the child, sniffling, wiped his face and rode in silence, shaking.

The fog thickened and grew darker still. Was it an oncoming storm? Strange; for on the hill above the lake, the weather had been fine and bright. Probably it was the dampness from that unhealthy marsh.

What a superstitious lot his men were, grumbling that way about a little fog!

Suddenly the fog swirled and flowed and began to shape itself into a pattern; he felt his horse nervously step aside, as directly before him, it flowed, moved within itself and became the form of a woman. Not a fog ghost, but a woman, solid and real as he was himself. He could see every strand of the white hair, braided in two braids down the side of her face, covered, all but a few inches, by a thick, woven black veil. She wore a black skirt and the thickly knitted black shawl of a country woman, simple and unadorned over some form of chemise of coarse linen. Around her waist was a long belt, woven in colored patterns, from which hung a sickle-shaped knife with a black handle.

She held up her hand in a stern gesture.

“Go back,” she said. “You know that no man may set foot here; this is holy ground, sacred to the Dark Mother. Turn your horses and go back the way you came. There is quicksand here, and other dangers about which you know nothing. Go back.”

Bard opened his mouth and had a little trouble finding his voice. At last he said, “I mean no harm or disrespect, Mother, not to you or to any of the devout servants of Avarra. I am here to escort home my handfasted wife, Carlina di Asturien, daughter of the late King Ardrin.”

“There are no handfasted brides here,” said the old priestess. “Only the sworn sisters of Avarra, who live here in prayer and piety; and a few penitents and pilgrims who have come to dwell among us for a season for the healing of their hurts and burdens.”

“You are evading me, old Mother. Is the Lady Carlina among them?”

“No one here bears the name Carlina,” said the old priestess. “We do not inquire what name our sisters bore when they dwelt in the world; when a woman comes here to take vows among us, the name she bore is lost forever, known only to the Goddess. There is no woman here you may claim as your wife, whoever you are. I admonish you most sincerely: do not commit this blasphemy, or bring on yourself the wrath of the Dark Mother.”

Bard leaned forward over his saddle. “Don’t you threaten me, old lady! I know that my wife is here, and if you do not deliver her up to me, I will come and take her, and I will not be responsible for what my men may do.”

“But,” said the old woman, “you will certainly be held responsible, whether you take responsibility for it or not.”

“Don’t chop words with me! You would do better to go and tell her that her husband has come to take her away; and if you will do that, I will commit no blasphemy, but await her here outside your holy precincts.”

“But I do not fear your threats,” the ancient priestess said. “Nor does the Great Mother.” And the fog swirled up around her face, and suddenly there was no one where she had been standing, only empty swirls of mist rising from the reeds at the water’s edge.

Bard gasped. How had she vanished? Had she ever been there at all, or only an illusion? Perversely, he was more sure than ever that Carlina was there, and that they were hiding her from him. Why had the old lady not seen the sense of doing as he bade her, going to Carlina and telling her that he had come in peace, willing no harm or blasphemy, to take her home to his fireside and his bed? She was, after all, his lawful wife. Must he be forced, then, to commit a blasphemy?

He turned and drew up his horse beside Melisendra.

“Now is the time to use your sorcery,” he said, “unless we are all to be caught in quicksand. Is there quicksand here?”

She drew out her starstone and gazed into it, her face taking on that same distant, abstracted look be had seen so often on Melora’s face.

“There is quicksand near, though not dangerously near, I think. Bard, are you resolved on this folly? Truly, it is unwise to brave the wrath of Avarra. If Carlina wished to come to you, she would come; she is not held prisoner there.”

“I have no way of knowing,” Bard said. “These are madwomen, who try to live alone, putting chastity and prayer into the place of those things which are proper for women—”

“Do you think chastity and prayer improper for women?” she inquired, sarcastically.

“By no means; but surely a woman can pray as much as she wishes by her own fireside, and no wedded wife has the right to commit herself to chastity against the will of her lawful husband! What good are these priestesses to anyone if they flout the laws of nature and of man this way?”

He had meant the question rhetorically, but Melisendra took it literally. “I am told that they do many good works,” she said. “They know much of herbs and medicines, and they can make the barren fertile; and prayer is always a good thing.”

Bard ignored her. They had come through the fog and out on to a small sandy beach, free of the reeds that lined the lakeshore elsewhere; and there was a small hut there, and a tethered boat.

Bard got down from his horse and shouted.

“Hi! Ferryman!”

A small slouched figure, wrapped in shawls, came out of the hut. Bard was outraged to discover that it was no ferryman but a little old woman, crippled and gray and bent.

“Where is the ferryman?”

“I keep this ferry,
vai dom,
for the good ladies.”

“Take me across this lake here to the island, quickly!”

“I can’t do that, sir. It’s forbidden. Now the lady there, if
she
wants to go over, I’ll take her. But no man, it’s not allowed, the Goddess forbids it.”

“Rubbish,” Bard said. “How dare you pretend to know what the immortals want, even assuming that there are any gods, or any goddesses either? And if the priestesses don’t like it, well, there’s nothing they can do about it.”

“I won’t be responsible for your death,
vai dom
.”

“Don’t be foolish, old dame. Get into that boat and take me over, at once!”

“Don’t call names like fool, sir; you don’t know what you’re talking about. That boat won’t take you over to the other shore. Me, yes; the lady, yes; but it won’t take you, not at all.”

Bard decided the woman was a halfwit. Probably the priestesses had given her the task of ferrying, out of charity, but her main task was to scare people away. Well, he didn’t scare. He drew his dagger.

“See this? Get into the boat! Now!”

“Can’t do it,” she wailed. “Indeed I can’t! The water’s not safe except when the priestesses want it to be! I never come over unless they call me from the other side!”

Frowning, Bard remembered the spelled ford near Moray’s mill, where a quiet, shallow stream had suddenly become a torrent. But he gestured, menacing, with his dagger.

“The boat!”

She took a step and then another, shaking, then collapsed, sobbing, a sodden bundle of rags. “Can’t,” she wailed. “Can’t!”

Bard felt like kicking her. Instead, his jaw set, he stepped over her cowering body and got into the boat, picking up the paddle and driving it, with a few long, strong strokes, out into the water.

The lake water was rough, with a savage undertow unlike anything Bard had ever felt before, tossing the little boat around like a cork; but Bard was very strong, and had learned to handle small boats on the troubled waters of Lake Mirion. He drove the boat through the water with firm strokes. . . .