Free Thendara House by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page A

and her sister were pregnant at the same time - and the father of Rafi’s child was my father, you see? So when Rafi had another boy, my mother wanted a son, so they traded the children for fosterage; Rafaella’s baby was brought up as my mother’s son and my father’s - which of course he is - and Rafaella took me, when I was not three days old, and nursed me and everything, here in the Guild House. I am really Doria n’ha Graciela, but I call myself Doria n’ha Rafaella, because Rafi is the only mother I ever really knew.”
Magda was furiously making mental notes. She knew that sisters frequently shared a lover or even a husband, and that fosterage was common, but this arrangement still seemed bizarre to her.
“But I am standing here chattering instead of telling you what you ought to know. Some years we each look after our own rooms, but this year in House meeting we chose to have two women from our corridor sweep the floors every day and mop them every tenday. You must keep your boots and sandals in your chest, it is hard on the sweepers to have to sweep around and over them, so anything lying on the floor, they will pick up and throw in a big barrel in the hall and you will have to hunt for them. Do you play the harp or the ryll or the lute? Too bad; Rafi has been wishing for another musician in the house. Byrna sings well, but now she is short of breath all the time - I thought when I grew up to have no ear for music that Rafi would disown me! She has - ” Doria broke off as a bell in the lower part of the house began to ring.
“Oh, merciful Goddess!”
“What is that, Doria? Not the dinner-bell already?”
“No” whispered Doria, “That bell is rung only when some woman comes to take refuge with us; sometimes it does not ring twice in a year, and now we have two newcomers in one day? Come, we must go down at once!”
She pulled Magda hastily toward the stairs and they ran down together. Magda, hurrying behind her, felt a curious little prickle which she had come to know as premonition; this is something very important to me … but dismissed it, as anxiety born of Doria’s excitement, and the stress of so many new things happening to her. Irmelin stood in the hallway, with Mother Lauria, and between them a frail-looking woman, bundled in heavy shawls and cumbered with heavy skirts. She stood swaying, clutching at the railing as if she were about to faint.
Mother Lauria looked about the women gathering quickly in the hall; many of the women Magda had seen last night at dinner, but she did not know their names. Then she turned to the fainting newcomer. “What do you ask here?” Somehow, Magda felt, the words had the force of ritual. “Have you come to seek refuge?‘’
The woman whispered faintly “Yes.”
“Do you ask only shelter, my sister? Or is your will to take the oath of a Renunciate?”
“The oath - ” the woman whispered. She swayed, and Mother Lauria gestured to her to sit down.
“You are ill; you need answer no questions at present, my sister.” She looked around at the women in the hallway, and her glance singled out Magda and Doria where they stood at the foot of the stairs.
“You two are new-come among us; you three will be together in training, should this woman take oath, so I choose you as her oath-sisters, and - ” She looked around, evidently searching for someone. At last she beckoned.
“Camilla n’ha Kyria,” she said, and Magda saw, with a curious sense of inevitability, the tall, thin emmasca who had witnessed her oath to Jaelle. “Camilla, you three take her away, cut her hair, make her ready to take the oath if she is able.”
Camilla came and put her arm around the strange woman, supporting the frail, swaying body. “Come with me, sister,” she said, “Here, lean on me - ” she spoke in the impersonal inflection, but her voice was kind. She suddenly saw Magda, and her face lighted. “Margali! Oath-sister, is it you? I thought you had gone to Neskaya! You must