Read Online The Shattered Chain by Marion Zimmer Bradley - Free Book Online

you were taken; Aran Elhalyn keeps the throne warm from year to year, and as usual the Lord of Hastur is the true ruler; not old Istvan, he is senile, but Lorill Hastur, who was his heir. You recall that Lorill and his sister Leonie were with us at the Dalereuth Tower, when we were girls; I thought perhaps Lorill would move against Jalak for your sake—”
    Melora sighed. She said, “Even I knew better than that; the Hasturs must think of more important things than the cause of kin, or how are they better than the Dry-Towners with all their feuds and little wars? There is peace otherwise?”
    “Peace, yes … Lorill has brought the Terrans from Aldaran to Thendara; they are building a spaceport there, and he has defended his move before the Council; some of them fought it all the way, but Lorill prevailed, as the Hasturs usually do.”
    “The Terrans,” said Melora, slowly. “Yes, I had heard; men like us from another world, come on great ships from the stars. Jalak told such tales only to laugh at them; in the Dry Towns they do not know that the stars are suns like ours, lighting worlds not unlike our own, and Jalak loved to scoff at such tales and say these so-called off-worlders must be clever rogues indeed to fool the Seven Domains, but that no sensible man from the Drylands would be caught so. … ” She shut her eyes, and Rohana thought, for a moment, that she slept; and was grateful. Knowing that she, too, should try to rest, she closed her eyes, but a shadow fell across her face, and she opened them to see Jaelle standing there, looking down at them. She said in a whisper, “It is you who are my—our kinswoman, Lady Rohana?”
    Rohana sat up and held out her arms; Jaelle gave her a quick, shy embrace. “How does my mother, kinswoman? Is she asleep?”
    “Asleep; and very weary,” said Rohana, rising quickly to her feet. She drew the child away so the sound of their voices would not disturb Melora.
    “I will not waken her, but I wanted to see—” and her voice trembled. Rohana looked down at the small serious face, the wide green eyes.
    Comyn, she thought; she does not look like Melora, but her Comyn blood is unmistakable. It would have been wrong, entirely wrong, to leave her in Jalak’s hands… not only inhuman but wrong!
    Jaelle said, almost in a whisper, “She should not ride now; the baby will be born so soon. … ”
    “I know that, dear. But we are not safe here, except for a little rest. When we reach Carthon, we will be back in Domain country; and out of Jalak’s reach forever,” Rohana said quietly.
    “But—what will it do to her? The riding, the weariness—” Jaelle began hesitantly, then dropped her eyes and looked away. Rohana thought, Has she laran? Even in the telepath caste of the Comyn, the Gift did not begin to show itself much before adolescence; a trained leronis could make educated guesses about a child Jaelle’s age, but it had been so long since Rohana had used her telepath training that she could not even guess about Jaelle. Now, when I need to know, the Gift deserts me. … Why must women have to choose between the use of laran and all the other things of a woman’s life?
    She looked down at Melora, wiped out in exhausted sleep, and thought of the time when they had been young girls together, in the Tower at Dalereuth, learning the use of the matrix jewels that transformed energies; working as psi monitors, in the relay nets that kept communications alive in the vast spaces of Darkover, learning the technology of the Seven Domains.
    There had been three of them, all the same age: Rohana, and Melora, and Leonie Hastur, sister to that Lorill Hastur who ruled now behind the throne at Thendara. Rohana’s family had insisted that she marry, and she had left her work in the Tower—not without regrets—and gone to marry the heir to the Ardais Domain, to supervise the great estate there, to bear sons and a daughter to that clan. Leonie had been selected Keeper; a telepath