Jaelle said hoarsely, not wanting to show how much this had moved her, “I think, again, that you know it is too late for regrets; so you tell yourself that you have none.”
“I did not say that I had no regrets, Jaelle,” said Rohana, very low, “only that everything in this world has its price, even such serenity as I have found after so many years of suffering.”
“You truly believe that you have paid a price? I thought you told me now that you had everything a woman could desire!”
Rohana lowered her eyes. She swallowed hard, and for a moment she remembered a day, years ago, when she had looked into Kindra’s gray eyes and known the price she would pay. She could not face Jaelle; she did not want to cry. She said, “Everything but freedom, Jaelle. I think that would have been too dearly bought. But I am not sure.” Her voice broke. “Nothing in this world is sure but death and next winter’s snow. Maybe I do not want to be sure. The price I have paid is my freedom. You have your freedom; you are oath-bound to take it even now when you no longer want it. But at what price, Jaelle?”
Chapter SEVENTEEN
Magda woke at twilight, to see Jaelle sitting on the foot of her bed. She looked pale, as if she had been crying; but she was calm.
“Sister,” she said, “I know that you took our oath unwillingly; in a sense it was forced from you. Normally that would not matter; but you are a Terran, and you took it without the knowledge of what it truly implied. Do you want to petition for release from your oath, Margali? If you do, I will speak for you before the Guild-mothers.”
Magda knew that this would solve some of her deep inner conflicts; more, it would free her from the fear of Terran retribution, not directed toward herself alone, but toward those who had aided her to desert her original loyalties. She considered it for a moment, but then she was seized by revulsion. Go back to her life in the Terran Zone, and the narrow, sterile world she had lived there, circumscribed by the little work of importance that a woman could do? She realized now that even through her tears and terror when she had taken the oath, it had still seemed a major decision in her life; and more, a genuine decision. Here is a way I can follow. This is what I want, whatever the price I must pay.
I was not forced to abandon Peter to death. Jaelle saved me from paying this price. But sooner or later I knew there would be a day of reckoning; and now I will meet it, whatever it may be.
She used the formal Amazon phrase. “Oath-mother,” she said, “I told you: I chose of my free will to honor my oath, and I will keep it, until death take me or the world end.”
“Even if it makes trouble for you with your own people, Margali?”
She said what she had said to Darrill on the journey: “I am not so sure they are my own people anymore.” Her voice was not quite steady. “I have renounced allegiance to-to family, clan, warden or liege lord.”
Jaelle took her hands; suddenly she leaned forward and kissed her, as she had done when she accepted her oath. She said, “Allegiance for allegiance, my sister. We are sworn. But I think you must face the fact-we must face it together-that it may make grave trouble for you.”
“I know that,” said Magda, and could not keep from trembling a little. “If it had not been for Lady Rohana, I think Peter would have insisted on taking me to the Terran Headquarters, even if he had to do so by force, and under arrest.”
“A beautiful reward for your loyalty to him,” Jaelle said angrily, “But for you, he would be dead in Sain Scarp this moment!”
Magda felt compelled to defend Peter’s point of view. “He is a Terran agent,” she said. “To him, I think, loyalty to the Empire transcends any loyalty to persons.”