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enormous machines and smoothed to an eerie, unnatural flatness. Part of the area had
been paved, and buildings were sprouting in strange, unlikely shapes. I have heard
that our world is at a crossroad of their travel roads among the stars; they seem to have
trade caravans between the many worlds as we have between the towns in the Lake
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Country. I don t know what their trade may be, no one has bothered to tell me, though
I think Gabriel knows. She fancied a look of contempt from Kindra. Why should I be
content with ignorance? Oh, damn these Amazons, they are making me question
everything: myself, Gabriel, my very life!
It made her voice edgy. These people, they call themselves the Terran Empire,
came first to Caer Donn, near Aldaran, and began a spaceport a small one, they could
not build so wide in the mountains there and dealt with the accursed Aldarans.
Hastur offered them a place here to build their spaceport where the climate would be
more to their liking I have heard that to them our world seems cold and so we can
keep watch over their doings; but of course we have nothing to do with them. .
Why not? asked Kindra. I should think that a race which can travel from star
to star as readily as I can ride from here to Nevarsin would have a great deal to teach
us.
Rohana said stiffly, I do not know; Hastur has willed it so.
How fortunate are the men of the Domains, that they have the son of Hastur to
teach them, said Kindra, her gray eyebrows lifting. A stupid woman like myself
would have felt that a race which can make trade caravans among the stars might
outreach even a Hastur in wisdom.
Rohana was annoyed by the sarcasm, but she felt too deeply indebted to Kindra
to take her to task for it. I have heard it explained thus: Hastur feels there is much in
their way of life that might be more of a threat than we can know at once. They have,
for a beginning, leased the spaceport here for five hundred years, so that we will have
plenty of time to choose what we can learn from them.
I see, said Kindra, and was silent, thinking it over, studying the enormous slash
on the horizon, where strange machines crawled and unknown shapes grew against the
horizon.
Rohana, too, was silent. As they rode this last mile, it seemed that she was, in a
curious way, changing worlds. For near to forty days she had lived in a world as alien
to her as the world of the Terrans below; then she had grown used to it, and now she
must again change worlds, make ready to reenter her own.
At first the world in which the Amazons lived had seemed hard and comfortless,
strange and lonely. Then she had realized that most of the strangeness was not the
physical lack of comfort at all. It was quite different. It was easy to get used to long
hours of riding, to unfamiliar and ugly clothes, to bathing as one could in stream or
river, to sleeping in tents or under the sky.
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But it was not nearly so easy to give up the familiar support of known
protections, known ways of thinking. Until she came on this journey, she had never
quite realized how much all her decisions, even small personal ones, had been left to
her father and brothers, or, since she married, to her husband. Even such small things
as Shall I wear a blue gown or a green? Shall I order fish or fowl for the table tonight
had been dictated less by her own tastes and preferences than Gabriel s wishes. She had
not realized, until Jaelle and the newborn Val were hers for fostering, how much even
what she had said to the children or done for them had been based, openly or not, on
how well Gabriel would think of her for her dealings with them.
A strange, painful, almost traitorous thought kept returning: Now that I know
how to make my own decisions, will I ever be content again to let Gabriel decide for
me?
Or, if I do go back, is it only because it is so much easier to do exactly what is
expected of a woman of my caste?
They had ridden through the great city gates of Thendara now, and people came
out to stare at the sight of a Comyn lady in the company of an Amazon band. Inside
the city Kindra dismissed most of the Free Amazons to the Guild-house in Thendara.
Accompanied only by Kindra, Jaelle, and the wet nurse with the baby, Rohana rode on
to the Comyn Castle.
In the suite that had belonged to the Ardais clan for uncountable years, Rohana
summoned the skeleton staff of servants who remained there all year round most of
the Ardais retainers returned home to Castle Ardais, with their masters, when
Council season was over and ordered that comfortable quarters be found for the wet-
nurse and the baby; that Kindra be treated as an honored guest; and that Jaelle, whom
she introduced as her foster-daughter without going into details, be made comfortable
in a room near her own, and provided with suitable clothing.
Then she dispatched a message to the Princess Consort announcing her return,
and summoned her own personal maid, bracing herself for the inevitable: the woman s
shocked reaction to her hacked-off hair, her completely unsuitable clothes, the state of
her hands and complexion, roughened with riding and outdoor living.
It will be worse than this, when I return to Ardais. Why should I need to be
always beautiful? I am not a dancer, or a lyric performer. And I have long ago made my
good marriage. But there are those who would think Melora s rescue too dearly bought
at the cost of my hair and my complexion!
Just the same, even while she chafed at the woman s duckings and scoldings for
getting herself in such a state, it was good to lie again at full length in a hot bath,
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scented with balsam; good to soothe her roughened and chapped skin with creams and
healing lotions, to be dressed again in soft feminine garments.
When she was ready, word had come that the Lady Jerana would receive them;
and that the Lord Lorill Hastur wished to receive the Free Amazon leader as well.
When Rohana relayed this royal command for, though veiled in exquisite courtesy,
that was what it was Kindra smiled wryly.
No doubt he wishes to be certain I have not committed the Domains to war
with the Dry Towns.
Nonsense, said Rohana irritably. He is Melora s kinsman too; I am sure he
wants to thank you!
Well, Lady, whatever it is, it is for me to obey the Lord Hastur, said Kindra,
so we shall see.
When Jaelle was brought to them, Rohana drew breath in amazement at the
child s surprising beauty. The grime of travel, and her ill-assorted cast-off garments,
had obscured it before. She was tall for her age, her skin very pale, dusted with a few
faint amber freckles; her hair had been washed and hung below her waist, the color of
new copper. She had been prettily dressed in a delicate green gown, just the color of
her eyes. Truly, Rohana thought, a daughter of whom any Comyn household could be
proud. But would they see it? Or would they see only that she was Jalak s daughter?
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