Thendara House by Marion Zimmer Bradley

enough to rebel and join the Renunciates. She remembered hearing Jaelle say once, Every Renunciate has her own story and every story is a tragedy . In such a traditional society as Darkover, only the desperately rebelling would dare break away.
I have rebelled against my home world and my adopted world too … but she cut off that thought as self-pity and turned to the older woman, who beckoned her into a chair.
“I suppose you are hungry and weary? But you do not want to face everyone just now in the dining room for the noon meal, do you? I thought not…” and she touched a little bell. The snub-nosed girl who had let Magda inside, appeared in the door.
“Bring something from the dining room, for me and for our new sister,” she said, and as the little girl went out - she could not, Magda thought, be more than thirteen - Mother Lauria gestured to a chair beside the fireplace - no fire was burning, at this time of year. “Sit down and let us talk awhile; there are decisions to be made.”
At the far end of the office was a great wooden door with copper panels; the door was hacked about as if with an axe, and partially burnt. Magda stared at the battered relic, and Mother Lauria followed her eyes.
“It has been here for more than a hundred years,” she said. “The wife of a wealthy merchant in Thendara ran away to us, because her husband had ill-used her in ways too gross to repeat, and had finally required her to sleep in the attic and to wait on her husband and his new concubine in her own bed. The woman took oath with us; but her husband hired an army of mercenaries and we were forced to fight; he swore he would raze this house over our heads. Rima - this was her name - offered to return to him; she said she would not be the cause of our deaths. But we were not fighting for her alone, but for the right to live without male sufferance. We fought three days - you can see the marks of the battle.”
Magda shivered; the slashed, burnt door looked as if, at one point, an axe had chopped halfway through it.
“And you stood against them?”
“If we had not, neither you nor I should be here,” said Lauria. “All Gods grant that one day we shall all enjoy our freedom as of right, without keeping it at sword’s point; but until that day we are prepared to defend our rights with the sword. Now, tell me a little more about yourself. I have heard the story from Jaelle, of course. Your name is - “she stumbled over it. “Mak-ta-lin Lor-ran?” She made a wry face. “Will it suit you if you use Jaelle’s name for you, Margali?”
“That is my name,” Magda said. “The name my father and mother gave me; I was born in Caer Donn. I was never called Magda except in the Terran Zone.”
“Margali, then. And I see you speak the language of the Hellers, and are fluent in casta; can you speak Cahuenga as well?”
“I can,” Magda replied in that language, “though my accent is not good.”
“Your accent is no worse than any other newcomer to the City. Jaelle has told me you can read and write; is this in Standard only, or in casta ?”
“I can read and write casta ,” she said. “For my father was an expert in languages, and he wrote the - ” she hesitated, groping for a Darkovan way to explain a dictionary. “A compilation of your language for strangers and foreigners. And my mother was a musician, and made many transcriptions of folk songs and music of the Hellers.”
Mother Lauria pushed a pen and a scrap of paper toward her. “Let me see you copy this,” she said, and Magda looked at the scroll and began to copy the top line; she recognized the scroll as a poem her mother had set to music. She was not used to Darkovan pens, which were not as smooth as the ones she used for her own work. When she finished, Mother Lauria took the paper in her hand.
“A clumsy hand and girlish,” she said severely, “but at least you are not illiterate; many women when they come to us can only spell out their names. You have not