Thendara House by Marion Zimmer Bradley Read Free Book Online Page B

it was isolated enough that he couldn’t make much trouble. Typical bureaucratic thinking - let him go make trouble somewhere else.”
“Particularly stupid,” Cholayna confirmed with a nod. “This planet may not have a great deal of trade potential, but because of its location, it’s an important transit point; in twenty or so years, this will be one of the major intersecting spaceports anywhere in the Galaxy. If this fellow Montray has already created trouble with the locals, as it seems, it could take centuries to repair the damage. I’ve made a start, I hope, by putting Magda on detached duty, to try and analyze how we ought to be treating Darkovans, in contrast to how we are treating them. I will want information from you too on that, Jaelle. As for you, Peter, you know you really ought to be working out of my office, not Montray’s; I hope he isn’t going to make it a status point to keep you there.”
Peter muttered something Jaelle knew to be a polite noncommittal social noise, but once again her erratic laran carried his thoughts as if he had spoken them aloud.
Not fair, dammit, I spent five years setting things up so that when Darkover got an Intelligence service I’d be at its head, and now some damned woman walks in and takes over. Bad enough playing second fiddle to Magda …
She lost the contact then, but she had heard enough to make her look at Peter in dread and dismay. She liked Cholayna, and thought she would like working with her, in spite of the strange color of the woman’s skin and her unreadable dark eyes; but if Peter felt this way, what should she do?

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CHAPTER THREE
Magda
As the doors of Thendara Guild House swung shut behind her, Magda thought, with a strange, desperate intuition, I must never look back. Whatever I was before this, I must leave it forever behind me, and look only ahead …
Around her a great hall arose, panelled in dark woods and hung with curtains which gave an effect of space and air and light. The snub-nosed young girl had opened the door for her, directed her across the hall and said “The Guild Mother Lauria is waiting for you.” She looked curiously at Magda, but only shoved her through another door, where the Guild Mother, Lauria n’ha Andrea, head of the Independent Guild of Craftswomen in Thendara, and one of the most powerful women in the city, waited for her. Lauria was a tall, sturdy woman, her gray hair shorn close about her head, one ear bearing an earring with a carved ensign and a crimson stone. She rose and extended her hand to Magda.
“Welcome, my child. You have been told, I know, that this will be your only home for half a year; until two moons past midsummer-day. During this time you will be instructed in our ways, and while you have the freedom of house and garden, you may not step outside the wall nor into the street, except on Midsummer-Festival when all rules are suspended, or under the direct orders of your oath-mother or one of the Guild Mothers.” She smiled at Magda and said, “You have shown us that you are willing to honor your oath, even though you took it unwilling; you will promise me to keep this rule, will you not? You are a woman grown, and not a child.”
“I will obey,” said Magda, but it seemed a bleak prospect, half a year, through the long, bitter Darkovan winter, oath-bound not to step outside. Well, she had wanted this, why should she complain at getting what she wanted?
“Mind you,” Mother Lauria said, “this is within reason. Should the house take fire, or some other catastrophe occur, which all Gods forbid, use your own soundest judgment; you are not pledged to lunatic obedience! You are bound to the house only so that you will not be confused by daily meetings with women who live in ways you must learn not to imitate. Do you understand?”
“I think so.” They used to call it deprogramming; women on Darkover are brainwashed by the social roles expected of them, till it is a miracle that any of them are free