THE SHATTERED CHAIN. A Darkover Novel MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

THE

SHATTERED CHAIN

A Darkover Novel

MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

THE

SHATTERED CHAIN

A Darkover Novel

MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

Contents

Part I

Chapter ONE

Chapter TWO

Chapter THREE

Chapter FOUR

Chapter FIVE

Part II

Chapter SIX

Chapter SEVEN

Chapter EIGHT

Chapter NINE

Chapter TEN

Chapter ELEVEN

Part III

Chapter TWELVE

Chapter THIRTEEN

Chapter FOURTEEN

Chapter FIFTEEN

Chapter SIXTEEN

Chapter SEVENTEEN

Part I

ROHANA ARDAIS,

Comynara

Chapter ONE

Night was lowering across the Dry Towns, hesitating as if, at this season, the great red sun was reluctant to set. Liriel and Kyrrdis, pale in the lingering daylight, swung low over the walls of Shainsa.

Inside the gates, at the outskirts of the great windswept marketplace, a little band of travelers were making camp, unsaddling their mounts and off-loading their pack animals.

There were no more than seven or eight of them, and all were garbed in the hooded cloaks and the heavy tunics and riding breeches of the mountain country, the faraway land of the Seven Domains. It was hot in the desert lands of Shainsa, at this hour when the sun still burned with some force, but the travelers still wore their hooded cloaks; and though every one of them was armed with knife and dagger, not one of the travelers carried a sword.

This was enough to alert the crowd of Dry-Town loafers, hanging around to watch the strangers pitch camp, to what they were. When one, sweating under the weight of laden saddlebags, slung back hood and cloak to reveal a small shapely head, with dark hair close-cropped as no man-or woman-of Domains or Dry Towns ever wore it, the hecklers began to collect. So little goes on, ordinarily, in Dry-Town streets, that the watchers behaved as if the arrival of the strangers were a free show arranged for their benefit, and they all felt free to comment on the performance.

“Hey, there, come have a look at this! Free Amazons, they are, from the Domains!”

“Shameless bitches, that’s what they are, runnin’ around like that with no man to own to ’em! I’d run the lot out of Shainsa before they corrupt our decent wives and daughters!”

“What’s the matter, Hayat, you can’t keep hold of your own wives? Mine, now, they wouldn’t run loose for all the gold of the Domains…. If I tried to cut ’em loose they’d come back cryin’, they know when they’re well off___”

The Amazons heard the remarks, but they had been warned and were prepared for this; they went quietly about the business of making camp, as if their observers were invisible and unspeaking. Emboldened by this, the Dry-Town men came closer, and the jokes flew, free and ribald; and now some of them were addressed directly to the women.

“Got everything, haven’t you, girls-swords, knives, horses, everything except what it takes!”

One of the women flushed and turned, opening her lips as if to reply; the leader of the group, a tall, slender, swift-moving woman, turned to her and said something, urgently, in a low voice; the woman lowered her eyes and turned back to the tent-pegs she was driving into the coarse sand.

One of the Dry-Town idlers, witnessing the little exchange, approached the leader, muttering suggestively: “Got your girls all right under your thumb, haven’t you, then? Why not leave ’em alone and come along with me? I could teach you things you never dreamed about-”

The woman turned, pushing back her hood to reveal, beneath graying close-cropped hair, the gaunt, pleasant face of a woman in middle years. She said in a light, clearly audible voice, “I learned everything you could possibly teach me long before you were housebroken, animal. And as for dreams, I have nightmares like everybody else, but thanks be to the Gods, I’ve always waked up so far.”

The bystanders guffawed. “One in the eye for you, Merach!” Now that they had turned their jokes on one another instead of on the women, the little band of Free Amazons went quickly about the business of setting camp: a booth, evidently for buying or selling, a couple of sleeping tents and a shelter to guard their mountain-bred horses against the fierce and unaccustomed sun of the Dry Towns.

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