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patrick_morris_miller
First publication in 1976 by DAW Books (DAW Collectors #191)
Read from DAW omnibus The Saga of the Renunciates (DAW Collectors #1231)
Time period: The Renunciates
A Comynara, a Terran, and a Free Amazon walk into a patriarchy.
Rohana Ardais, a Comynara
Thirteen years ago, Rohana Ardais' cousin Melora Aillard was kidnapped by Jalak of Shainsa, a Dry Towner lord. Every attempt at rescuing her has ended with the rescuers dead, the last one - Melora's foster brother Valentine - tortured to death as she was forced to watch, his signet ring sent back to her family still on his finger.
In that time Melora has been forced to bear Jalak a daughter, Jaelle. Now Jaelle is reaching the age when Dry Towner girls are put in the chains of women - and Melora is pregnant again, with a son destined to become Jalak's heir. With her laran Melora reaches out and begs for rescue, lest her daughter become property and her son become a thug.
No man of the Domains will risk following Valentine's example, so Rohana hires a band of Free Amazons. In the guise of a group of traders - including Rohana, her hair cut short and posing as an Amazon herself - they travel to Shainsa. Under cover of darkness they enter the tyrant's home and free Melora and Jaelle - and wreak bloody revenge on Jalak; they leave him hamstrung, possibly dead, possibly soon to be killed by a rival. Nobody really cares which.
Now they must make for the Domains with all possible speed. Naturally, Melora goes into labor...
Magda Lorne, a Terran
Twelve years later...
Notorious bandit Rumal di Scarp has sent word to Castle Ardais: he has captured Rohana's son Kyril, and if he is not ransomed by Midwinter, he will be sent home in pieces. Except Kyril is safely at home, and Rumal is not known for his wit. It develops that he has actually kidnapped Peter Haldane, Terran intelligence agent, who looks almost exactly like Kyril (lacking only the sixth finger common among the Ardais).
Neither Comyn nor the Terran administration will help. Lorill Hastur is sympathetic but a Terran who leaves the Trade City is not his problem; Coordinator Russ Montray cannot rescue Peter in the secrecy Lorill demands, nor can he ransom him without informing Rumal of his mistake - which will quickly cost Peter his life.
Magda Lorne, Peter's childhood friend and freshly minted ex-wife, would do anything to save Peter, and Rohana has an idea: take the guise of a Free Amazon, make the harsh winter journey to Sain Scarp, and ransom 'Kyril'. Magda agrees without hesitation.
But on the treacherous mountain paths, she comes across a party of actual Free Amazons, led by Jaelle n'ha Melora. They quickly uncover Magda's deception. And they are not amused.
Jaelle n'ha Melora, a Free Amazon
Magda has rescued Peter, but must pay the price for her trickery; she has sworn the Oath of the Free Amazons - and now must spend half a year in training at the Guild House in Thendara. Will her Terran employers allow that?
And Peter and Jaelle have begun a torrid affair. Can a Terran man be happy loving a Darkovan woman who has forsworn anything he might recognize as marriage?
Continuity
This may be the most laran-light story yet; Jaelle has inherited her mother's abilities but has no interest in being trained, and the leronis who tests her believes she is blocking her telepathy. During Magda's Terran education her pei potiential tested high (mandatory for a Terran to be the protagonist of a Darkover story); when she witnesses Jaelle's wound being healed through laran she accidentally enters rapport with the healer - and applies the process to a wound of her own. Rohana tells Magda she could train her, but doing so might be more trouble than it would be worth.
Kyril will one day be the father of Dyan Ardais, and like his son (and father) has the characteristic Ardais psychological issues.
This novel is set just after the Terrans have moved their headquarters from Caer Donn to Thendara, and during the construction of the new starport there. We're told that when the Terrans first came to Darkover, the Aldarans lied to them that they could use their Compact-forbidden weapons against bandits. In Rediscovery (again, which I will not read nor consider too closely, and has heavy consistency issues), the Terrans go so far as to deliberately start a forest fire, disgusting foe and friend alike.
The Oath of the Amazons is stated to date to the days of Varzil the Good. Varzil will be an important character in Two to Conquer, which will also show the earliest roots of the Free Amazons.
The story ends with the Free Amazons striking a deal with the Terrans which will include being trained in Terran medicine and science; this appears to have been forgotten by the time of The Planet Savers.
Cherilly's Law - brought up in the skipped over Sword of Aldones and to be seen again in later stories - is brought up in the discussion of Peter's resemblance to Kyril; in this case it is not an instance because the two have differing numbers of fingers.
We meet Russ Montray's son Wade, who in turn becomes the father of Larry/Lerrys - and grandfather of Lew Alton.
Magda tells Rohana that it is well known to the Terrans that Darkover was settled by a lost Terran colony ship - and that she knew the name of that ship and the people aboard it, which Kadarin would consider to be something of a bombshell in The Heritage of Hastur.
Rohana talks of the times when the Comyn selectively bred themselves to fix their various Gifts. She also states that this led to the present Comyn decreased fertility, and tied dangerous traits to the Gifts (presumably including the Ardais instability which often causes trouble).
In The World Wreckers the term emmasca was used for chieri currently in an ungendered state; here for the first time it is used for women who have surgically been de-gendered, a matrix procedure that is long illegal but sometimes still performed; women who have undergone it typically become Free Amazons, as Darkovan society is not welcoming to them in any other role.
Portions of the Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda are sung, including the line where Cassilda gives Hastur a kireseth flower; this will be very important in The Forbidden Tower. Am I the only one who sees the influence of the Lay of Leithian here?
Consent issues
As I quipped above the cut, this is a novel length exploration of spheres of patriarchy on Darkover - the Dry Towns and the Comyn, plus a brief visitation of Terran attitudes - plus one stated escape, the Guild of Renunciates - commonly known as the Free Amazons.
(The Towers form an uneasy combination of patriarchy and escape; this will be delved into deeply in The Forbidden Tower.)
The Dry Towns are a misogynist dystopia, in which the status of women as possessions is made visible by the chaining of all women who have reached marriageable age - chains from one wrist, through a loop on a belt, to the other wrist, and short enough to make many tasks requiring both hands difficult or impossible. Here girls are taught to 'play' at adulthood by tying ribbons around their own wrists, and the future they can expect is to be owned by their father, then their husband. (And then by their sons in widowhood? It's not explored but it's been a common pattern here on Terra.)
And the text is aware of how deeply this abuse can run in the psyche; Rohana tells Jaelle that were the Amazons to form an army and free the women of the Dry Towns, as many would resent the interference in their lives and return to their chains as would take their freedom.
A Comynara is nearly as enchained, by custom if not by metal; a woman of the telepathic class (who does not enter a Tower, which has its own issues) is expected to marry and bear heirs. And in a formal marriage, or marriage di catenas (which must be approved by the Comyn Council), bride and groom both don matching bracelets, called catenas - a word ultimately descended from the Latin for "chains" - and do I remember correctly that in older ages, the partners' bracelets were literally locked together during the wedding ceremony?
(Omitted is a treatment of the life of women not of the Comyn. Expect that in Hawkmistress!.)
Meanwhile among the Terrans: if the Terran Bill of Rights is still governing law, it has somewhat weak force on Darkover; Magda is far more familiar with Darkovan culture than most other Terrans but denied even the official position of translator, since on Darkover that is not a job women do. And Magda lives in Terran HQ's "unmarried women's quarters", as if this was a university in the US during the in loco parentis era.
And as for the 'escape': the Free Amazons are an order recognized by law (though not by all Darkovan men) of women who renounce the constraints of Darkovan culture... at the price of renouncing all familial connections, renouncing both marriage di catenas and the status of barragana ('kept woman'), and swearing loyalty to sister and to Guild mother, and accepting the necessity to defend themselves, for they forswear calling on any man to protect them - when Magda swears the Oath and becomes Margali n'ha Ysabet, Jaelle must be persuaded not to force her to immediately present herself at Thendara and allow Peter to die.
The Oath explicitly permits the third Darkovan form of marriage, that of freemates - informal, and lasting as long as both partners will it - but there is still the common conception both outside the Order and in that Free Amazons are sexless - Jaelle believes that she must not act as one 'free to be desired'; Magda infers that Amazons are not even allowed to take notice of men; Melora believes that the Renunciates renounce womanhood itself.
(And there is a common subcurrent defining 'womanhood' in the biological and reproductive manner; women who choose to become emmasca are referred to as 'feeling that womanhood is too great a burden to be borne', a sentiment that may even extend to those who simply use surgical contraception. And Rohana is surprised when emmasca Camilla shows tenderness for Jaelle - "a neuter... could hardly have maternal feelings".
(I'm the wrong person to make the statement that this novel, or its author, either IS or IS NOT feminist, but there seems to me that there is as much conflict with the feminism of 1976 here as there is a championing.)
On a more personal scale, Kyril is a perfect little shit who all but forces himself on Jaelle (and was little better years ago when he and Jaelle were both in their teens), though he finally - if extremely nastily - takes no for an answer when Jaelle reminds him that a Free Amazon learns to defend herself.
And there's plenty of victim blaming to be had; Free Amazon Kindra feels even a Dry Towner woman could escape if she really wanted to.
Collected miscellanea
This is the first story to be set after the Terran recontact (because Rediscovery does not exist), and the groundwork for decades - maybe longer - of distrust between Darkovan and Terran has already been laid.
It's stated that Hasturs' hair often goes white at an early age, and looking backward, in The Planet Savers - post The Heritage of Hastur, but in many ways at odds with the rest of the corpus - Regis Hastur still has red hair. He's still got plenty of hell to go through before he's completely white in The World Wreckers - he hasn't seen the last of the Sharra matrix.
The Ardais domain manufactures paper; as they trade woth the Dry Towns for sulfur, presumably they use the kraft process. It seems likely that Ardais has the Tacoma Aroma.
Concluding thoughts
It's hardly surprising that a 1976 treatment of feminism (especially by this author, of all people) is not quite satisfying in 2026. But let us remember the impact this novel had at the time - to the point that some women took Free Amazon names, either informally or through legal process - some officially published third party Darkover fiction is credited to such names. Clearly some people thought this work said things that needed saying!
As mentioned, this novel barely addresses the ways in which the Towers both liberate and mistreat women, and this will be examined closely in the next work.
