Free City of Sorcery by Marion Zimmer Bradley

wants to do with her life. I have outgrown first love, first marriage, early ideals. I have a child, and have recovered my strength and health. I have work I love. I have made some decisions - I know many of the things I do not want to do with my life. I have developed my laran and I know that my love and my strongest emotions are given to women. But I am not yet really sure what it is given to me to do with my life . And this disturbed her so much that she had no heart to argue with Jaelle.
“Stay if you wish. But I can’t imagine wanting to stay in the City when you could be out in the country, at Armida.”
Jaelle looked up toward the skyline, where the Venza Mountains overshadowed the pass that led down into the city. “You feel it too? I would like to be out again on the trail. I have done my duty to clan and family, and when Dori is only a little older, I shall send her to be fostered as a daughter of Aillard. And then - oh, Magda, aren’t you eager to be in the field again, traveling in the mountains? Rafaella wants me to come back to work with her; she’s talking about some new special project for the Terrans, but won’t tell me any details until I promise I’ll join her. It would be hard to leave the Tower, and I would miss it, but - couldn’t I take a year away, just to travel again? It’s been so long! I never spent so long in one place in my whole life as I have spent at Armida! Five years, Magda!”
Magda smiled indulgently. “I’m sure they would give you leave to spend a year in the mountains if you wished.”
“I heard the other day that there is an expedition going to climb High Kimbi. It’s never been climbed - “
“And probably never will be,” Magda said. “Not by cither of us, in any case. You know as well as I do they wouldn’t have women along, not even as guides. If there are still men who think women unfit to be part of anything facing danger or demanding courage, they are the men who go out climbing mountains.”
Jaelle snorted. “I led a trade caravan over the Pass of Scaravel when I was not yet eighteen!”
“ Breda , I know what you can do on the trail. And Rafaella is listed in Intelligence Services as the best mountain guide in the business! But there are still men who won’t use women guides. The more fools they.”
Jaelle shrugged philosophically. “I guess if we want to climb High Kimbi, or Dammerung Peak, we’ll have to organize our own expedition.”
Magda laughed. “Forget the we part, Jaelle. You would have to do it. That one trip across Scaravel was enough to last me a lifetime.” Even remembering, she shivered at the thought of the cliffs and chasms of the Pass of Scaravel.
“Talk to Camilla. She’d probably be delighted to go out and climb anything inaccessible you can find.”
“And knowing you, you’ll be right beside her.” Jaelle laughed. “You talk about being timid, but when you’re actually in the field - I know you better than you know yourself.”
“Whether or no,” Magda said, “for the moment we are in Thendara, and here we will stay, for the next few days, at least.”
“We should relay a message to Armida, though. They’ll be expecting us,” Jaelle reminded her. “They should be told that we are all right - not murdered by bandits on the trail, or something of that sort.”
“No,” Magda said morosely, “only murdered here in Thendara, by bureaucratic nonsense! Shall we get in touch with them tonight?”
“You do it, Magda, you’re a far better telepath than I am.”
“But they will want to hear from us both,” Magda said, and Jaelle nodded soberly.
“Tonight, then, when it’s quiet.”
 
But that night there was an Oath-taking in the house. Although neither the new Renunciate nor her Oath-sisters were known to Magda or Jaelle, they could not in decency absent themselves from such festivities in their own house. Afterward there was a party with cakes and wine; Magda, knowing what lay ahead of her, drank sparingly. She spent