Marion Zimmer Bradley - Glenraven

Glenraven by

MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY and HOLLY LISLE

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright 1996 by Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises PO Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-87799-2

Cover art by Clyde Caldwell

First paperback printing, September 1997

Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 96-21583

Typeset by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH Printed in the United States of America

One

Jayjay Bennington didn't want to think about her disaster any more. She tugged the brim of her rain hat further down the back of her neck, but repositioning it didn't help; water still dripped under her raincoat and ran along her spine. It was cold water, too; the summer storm that blanketed the whole of the Eastern Seaboard might have been tropical in origin, but the rain it dumped down Jayjay's back wasn't warm.

I need to get away. Go someplace where nobody knows me, where no one can find me. Someplace where I can hold my head up - and I need to get there fast, before the news gets around. A million miles wouldn't be too far; it's a pity there isn't anyplace on the planet a million miles from this rat hole.

Jayjay sloshed along McDuffie Street, walking obsessively. She'd been walking for hours, ever since her 8 a.m. discussion with Steven had turned into a screaming, chair-throwing, name-calling, door-slamming fiasco. She'd always figured that by the time she was thirty-five, her life would show some semblance of order, but that wasn't the case. Life had kicked her in the teeth again.

Keep going, she told herself. When life slams you to the ground, you get up and you keep going.

She had the sidewalk to herself; the awful weather kept saner, happier people in their cars or in the stores, but Jayjay didn't feel particularly sane at the moment.

Nobody said I had to keep going right here in Peters, though. I need to run. I need to run away from this town, and from Steven, and from all the people who know us who are going to think that somehow this is all my fault.

Tires hissed over wet pavement a street away; then the unseen car ripped through a deep puddle. Jay heard the splash and felt briefly grateful that the car hadn't been driving past her when it found that puddle. The bells from St. Dora rang the noon hour, and someone shouted greetings at a neighbor; the low-hanging clouds muffled the exact words, but the friendly tone carried well enough. Dammit! In the rain, all alone, the town still seemed friendly. Welcoming. Homey. It wouldn't be for long. After all, it was his town, not hers.

McDuffie Street led past the courthouse, past the newspaper office (The Peters Tribune - News Since 1824), past Cato's and Jenny Shee Alterations and Never-Say-Goodbye Secondhand Treasures and HairFantastic and Sandra's Diner. The light from the downtown storefronts threw puddles of artificial sunshine onto the cracked walks. The store interiors beckoned more warmly than they ever could on sunny days; they promised a dry, cozy haven from the dreary, unending rain.

Jayjay hadn't intended to go into any of the stores, but when she reached Amos W. Baldwell, Bookseller, she turned in and shoved open the glass-and-steel door. She stopped in the doorway, suddenly breathing hard.

I don't want to go here; I don't want anyone I know to see me.

She figured her eyes were probably still red from crying. Someone might ask her what was wrong, and she wouldn't be able to say anything. They would think the worst when she didn't say anything, of course; but the worst they could think wasn't as bad as the truth.

Something drew her in. She could have called it a feeling of hope, but she figured she'd used up her allotment of that a while back. But something called to her; not with anything so blatant as words. The something was a quickening of her pulse, a shiver in her belly, a sudden catching of her breath. Something. Something in there called her name, and she listened.

Baldwell's was new. Nestled in between Sandra's and the Everything $6, it sat bright and shiny and modern, its bright yellow interior and chrome-and-glass exterior out of place squeezed between the renovated brick buildings that made up the rest of the downtown.

A few customers looked up as she entered, then looked away. She didn't see anyone she knew; even better, however, she didn't see anyone who knew her. Her feet carried her past New Fiction, shelved to her right. She thought perhaps that was why she had come in - to find something to take her mind off disaster. But her feet kept going. Past Music. Past Science. To Travel.

Ahh. Travel. Perhaps her feet had known something her mind hadn't. She looked at the covers faced out, showing all the world that wasn't Peters, North Carolina, and her pulse raced faster. None of them are a million miles from here, she thought, but surely one of them will be far enough.

She gravitated to the neat row of gold-and-black Fodor's guides. Her hand cruised along the titles, not touching any of them. Waiting. Waiting for a sign.

Scotland.

No.

Australia. England.

No.

How about Ireland? Japan?

Not them, either.

Saudi Arabia. Norway.

No. All of those places seemed fine, but they didn't call to her. They weren't the reason she came into Baldwell's. Something was, though.

Switzerland?

No.

Argentina.

No.

Glenraven.

Yes, something inside her said, and she reached for the book.

Glenraven?

Jayjay frowned and picked up the Fodor's Glenraven. The cover hummed beneath her fingers, the shock of that first touch electric but wonderful. She opened the book and caressed the glossy pages; the heavy feel of the paper was sensual and compelling. And as she flipped past one of the illustrations, she fancied for a moment that she smelled wildflowers and freshly mown hay. She closed the guide again, a shivery thrill running down her spine.

"A Complete Guide to the Best Mountain Walks, Castle Tours and Feasts," the guide promised. The photo showed a delicate, airy castle built on the banks of a shimmering blue lake with craggy mountains soaring behind it. In the foreground, a smiling, black-haired, blue-eyed woman in colorful regional costume led a laden donkey along a cobbled path, and behind her the meadow that rolled down to the lake bloomed with sweeps of wildflowers in gold and scarlet and cornflower blue.

Jayjay stared at the cover. She had done some traveling. She'd seen a few castles. But she had never seen a castle that looked like that. And... Glenraven? She knew there were a lot of new countries in Europe since

the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact fell apart. She simply couldn't remember hearing anything about that one.

She opened the guide and flipped past the Foreword, past the Highlights and the Fodor's Choice sections, and stopped at the map. Glenraven was tucked into the Alps, a tiny little pocket country squeezed into the border between France and Italy like a wormian bone in the suture of a skull, about parallel with Milan and, according to the map, no bigger than Liechtenstein.

She'd never heard of it, but she didn't care. It was far away. It was off the beaten path. It looked like a good place to run away from the world for a while. And, dammit, it made her heart beat faster, and that was worth something.

Jayjay turned two more pages to the Introduction.

"For the first time in over four hundred years," it began, "Glenraven, the best-kept secret in Europe, opens its borders to a few chosen travelers from the outside world. The last outsider to see Glenraven dropped in before Christopher Columbus set out to discover a shorter route to India, and the one before him visited a hundred years earlier than that. In the centuries that have followed the complete closing of the borders, Glenraven has let wars and politics, the Industrial Revolution and the electronic age slip past without so much as edging in at its borders. It is a land hidden from time; pastoral, feudal, a tiny country where communities share their lives, where integrity and honesty and hard work are not old-fashioned values..."