"Bradley,.Marion.Zimmer.-.Darkover.Anthology.11.-.Darkover.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

"As you like," Rafaella was quiet as they climbed into bed and shifted about for a comfortable place. Rafaella woke suddenly, hearing her companion scream aloud, moan, start upright, wildly flailing her hands.
"Don't. It's all right, Camilla—it is only me, there is no one to harm you...."
Camilla started and shivered, staring at her in the darkness.
"Oh—Rafi—I am sorry I woke you—"
"I am only sorry you cannot sleep without nightmares."
Camilla said after a long minute, "I was afraid. I— there was a time when I was tied—like an animal—and beaten like an animal, too. Mercifully, I have forgotten much, but sometimes I still have nightmares...."
"Why, this must be worse for you than for me, then," Rafaella said, compassionately. Tied like an animal... beaten like an animal... what can have come to her?
"Camilla," she said at last, "I am sorry. Our quarrel was my fault; I splashed you with dirty water and I should have apologized and never let it come to this. Tomorrow I will go to Kindra and tell her, and ask that I alone should be punished. You can be freed, then, and need not have nightmares of being tied up."
Camilla bent her head. She said, "You make me ashamed. I knew you would apologize and I didn't want

that, because that would mean you were better than I. I think if you had apologized I would have pretended not to hear, so I need not acknowledge it."
"Then we are both to blame," Rafaella said, hesitating, "Will you—will you exchange forgiveness with me, Camilla?"
"Willingly—oath-sister." Camilla used the ritual phrase, com'hi-letzis.
Rafaella leaned over and lightly kissed her on the lips; wondering, touched Camilla's face with her fingertips. No one in the Guild House had ever seen Camilla cry. Even when she had been brought in from the battle in the hills with a great wound in her leg and it had to be cleansed and cauterized with acid, she did not cry out or weep!
Camilla said, "I always wanted to be your friend. You were Kindra's kinswoman, and for that alone I would have loved you. And yet I could not refrain from making a quarrel with you and bringing this upon you.. .." her voice broke. "And because you are beautiful and everyone loves you, and because you are pregnant."
"But you are the best fighter in the house, everyone admires your courage and your strength."
"I am a freak," Camilla said, her voice shaking, "An emmasca, not a woman at all."
"But Camilla, Camilla—" Rafaella protested, dismayed, putting her arms around the older woman; it had never occurred to her that Camilla, who had, after all, chosen to undergo the neutering operation, could possibly feel like this. She was not to know for many years why Camilla had had this choice forced upon her, but she sensed tragedy and it made her gentle.
"I thought you despised my womanhood; you taunted me for being pregnant—"
"Taunted you? If I did, it was only out of envy—" Camilla said, choking.
Rafaella said incredulously, "Envy? Of this insane— insane trouble I have gotten myself into? And I have been hating myself for being such a fool, vulnerable...."
"Envy because you are to have a child," Camilla said, "and I never shall, now ... nor, I suppose, really want

to, though sometimes it seems to me hard ... nor could I ever, I suppose, make myself vulnerable in such a way. Is it worth it, Rafaella? Is it really such a delight to you, what you do with men, enough to make Up for all the risks?"
"I suppose you would not think it so," Rafaella said, trying not to remember that her reasons had been quite otherwise, "you who are so defiant about being a lover of women."
"Defiant?" Camilla shrugged. "Perhaps, If you had had my experience, you would not think so much, perhaps, of what men desire of women." She turned her eyes away, but Rafaella, thinking of the terrible scars Camilla bore, guessed at something too dreadful to be spoken. She put her arms around the older woman in silent sympathy, but Camilla was rigid, unmoving. She said, "I did not die. That is what I cannot forgive myself. To live with the memory. That is what none of my kinswomen could forgive me; that I lived when a decent woman would have died." She pulled herself free of Rafaella's arms. "Don't touch me, Rafaella, I'm not fit to live."
"Don't say that, Camilla, don't—" Rafaella said, holding her.
After a moment the older woman shuddered and said "I'm sorry. I get like that sometimes. And when I heard you were pregnant, it seemed I could not bear my hate— that you were young, lovely, cherished ... but it was myself I hated ... for all the things I would never have or enjoy...." She smiled, bleakly, in the dark. "It is all born of nightmares. Forgive me, Rafaella."
"I think," Rafaella said, subdued, turning her hand within the chain so that her hand lay within Camilla's, "that I should ask you to forgive me instead, breda."
"We will forgive one another, then," Camilla said, squeezing the soft hands. "Come, you must sleep, it is not good for a woman with child to lose sleep this way. Here, will you sleep better like this?" She eased the pillow under Rafaella's side and neck. "Lie quite still, and when you wake up tomorrow, maybe you will not be sick and I can sleep a little longer."
They were chained together for another three days;

but now they had learned to help one another, and it cemented a friendship which was to endure lifelong, and to go so deep that in years after, neither could ever remember why they had quarreled.

House Rules
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
"Here is my book, Mama," Loren said. "Will you hear me read?"
"Certainly." Lora felt the skinny little boy leaning against her knee and felt the tears welling up again inside her. Two more months and then Loren must be sent to his father. To be made into the kind of man I despise, the kind of man who fills Amazon Guild Houses. Because of the rules of the Guild House that a boy child may not live among women, and Loren was no longer a baby.
Janna came bursting in, her hair long and messy around her shoulders. "Mama, what's for dinner?"
"I haven't thought about it yet, Janni," Lora said. "Why don't you go out in the kitchen and see if there are any potatoes left; I'll fry them in goose fat."
"I'm tired of potatoes," Janna said, "When will we have meat again?"
"When we can afford it." Lora said. "Janna, why are you wearing your holiday smock?"
"Because it's the only decent dress I have," Janna whined. "Am I supposed to go around in breeches all the time like you and Marji?"
"Why not? What is wrong with them? You can work properly in them," Lora said, but she might as well have spoken to the wind.
It is Cara's doing. We should never have taken her into the House; she was very bad for Janni, Lora thought. She hardly knew her nice obedient child in this sullen brat who seemed to spend all her day arranging her hair and painting her nails, who would not work in the barn or the fowl house because she hated to get her hands dirty, and last week she had caught Janni, hardly

ten years old, lingering at the gate, twisting her curls and simpering as she talked to young Raul of King's Head Farm. Ten, and already making eyes at the lads. What did we do wrong, Marji and I? Janna was one of the reasons I fled from Darren, a few days after Loren was born ... so Janna would not be pushed into being a stick in a pretty frock, good for nothing but to dress up, simper at boys, and giggle and talk about boys.
Marji called from the back door, "Lora? Are you home?" and Lora pushed her unwilling daughter into the kitchen.
"Take the skins from the potatoes and slice them," she ordered, and Janna sulked.
"I spend all my time in kitchen work. If I lived with Papa at least there would be kitchen-women to do the work for me. I am a kitchen slave, that's all. And I have to be one because you and Marji—"