Magda’s first reaction was, Oh, is that all? Jaelle saw the relief in her face, for her voice hardened. “Don’t dare to take it lightly,” she said, “for if you swear it, and later betray it, any Free Amazon on Darkover may kill you where you stand; you are a dead woman the moment you put your nose out your own window!”
It flashed across Magda’s mind: An oath under duress is not valid. That was the Terran Magda; in the next moment the Darkovan girl Margali, who had grown up at Caer Donn, absorbing the way of life, the codes, the beliefs of her Darkovan playmates almost more deeply than those of her parents, thought, An oath I cannot betray; how can I do this?
The conflict was terrible; she felt as if she were being wrenched apart. I have come and gone between two worlds with impunity; now I must pay the price, and I do not know if I can! She put her hands over her face, in a futile attempt to conceal her emotions. // 7 refuse, will they kill me here and now?
“Will you take the oath?”
Magda said, “What choice have I?”
“None, I fear. I owe it to my women, and to every woman of the Guild, that none shall invade us and carry our secrets outside. If you will not swear, we will simply have to carry you, as prisoner, back to the nearest Guild-house, and there keep you until you are willing to be sworn, or until midwinter-night when all our Guild meet in reunion and our judges can hear your story and decide what is to be done with you. It may be that no penalty will be exacted, that you will be sworn to secrecy about what you have seen and you will be allowed to depart.”
“To that much I will swear willingly,” said Magda, and meant it.
“But I am not empowered to take that oath from you. That can be given only by a judge, and at midwinter-night, and only after hearing everything that bears upon the case; if, for instance, you had several young children and there were none else to assume their care, or you had already sworn a Keeper’s oath to a Tower. If you prefer, then, we can take you now to Neskaya Guild-house-it is only a tenday ride from here-and leave you to be judged at midwinter.”
And by that time Peter would be dead by torture!
I guess I’ll have to take their damned oath. It will give me time to decide what to do….
Probably all it entailed-she remembered the few Darkovan oaths whose content and form she had heard-was a pledge not to harm any Free Amazon, and not to betray any of their secrets. And I don’t know any of them, so that’s safe enough to promise! I can do that much honorably.
But if there is more? She felt a kind of despair. “I will take the oath,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady.
Jaelle nodded. “I thought you would,” she said. “Come, let us get it over with, then; we are all Weary, and you more than any, I should imagine. Come here to the fire and stand among us.”
Magda obeyed. Jaelle was standing directly before the fire, her back to the flames; Magda noticed again how very young she looked. How old could she be? Twenty-two, twenty-three … hardly more than that! The women made a circle around them. Camilla came to Jaelle and said in an undertone, “You are young for this; do you want me to take her oath?”
Jaelle patted the lined old cheek. “Dear aunt, you are always ready to spare me or shield me, but if I am old enough to be elected leader of a band, surely I am old enough to punish intruders, or to take an oath.”
She said to Magda, “Bare your breasts before us.”
Startled, confused, Magda fumbled with the laces of her torn tunic. Part of her, at this moment, the trained agent who never stopped taking mental notes for later use, was excited-the graduate anthropologist participating hi an unusual and secret tribal custom; but the rest of her was just a frightened girl, ashamed as any girl reared in Caer Donn would have been ashamed, to stand with her body bared before strangers. She fumbled with the laces; Sherna came and pulled the tunic down so that she stood before them, bare to the waist, shivering. She clenched her fists at her sides, resisting the impulse to cover herself with her hands, as one by one the women came and solemnly inspected her bare breasts.