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remarkably young-looking woman, whose hair was so light blond it was almost
white. "There's one waiting for you."
As Amanda came from the door, which had provided some measure of her size, her
height became less apparent. The length of her arms, legs and body, and her
breadth of shoulder, so well matched her size that only by some kind of
contrast was it noticeable. She was, thought Ajela, like Hal in that. You did
not realize how large he was, either, until someone you knew to be of ordinary
size stood close to him. She was wearing serviceable, neutral-colored clothing
that somehow did nothing to detract from her presence,
What Ajela found herself noticing in particular was the lightness with which
Amanda moved. She had the body balance of a dancer; and that trait was
curiously in harmony with the otherwise difficult to believe youthfulness she
seemed to project. She could pass, thought Ajela, for a girl in her teens-and
yet Ajela knew her to be certainly older than Hal; and possibly older as well
than either Rukh or herself-not that either she or Rukh were out of their
twenties.
The appearance of youth in the newcomer was so unbelievable it could be
appreciated only when you were actually looking at her. After she had gone,
memory would be doubted. That, taken together with the classical quality of
her
40
Gordon R. Dickson
THE CHANTRY GUILD
41
from beauty-even her shoulder-length fair hair and theaptaurrtquoise eyes
somehow fitted-seemed to set her a little veryone else. And yet, even the sum
of all the e i erent elements failed to explain the strongest effect she ma
on a viewer. There was a power in her.
It was a quality which words failed as memory would. But it was like something
Ajela had never felt before in anyone, It was curiously comparable to, though
not the same as she fel t there to be in Hal when close to him. In his actual
presence she had always been able to feel a concern in him for those around
him that was like the warmth radiated by a lighted fireplace.
With Amanda it was something different. The closest Ajela could come to
expressing it, was that in the other woman there was something which strongly
reminded Ajela of the strength and clean white lines of an Ionic pillar, in a
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temple of classical Greece.
To Amanda, on the other hand, as she approached the desk, Rukh and Ajela were
both much as she had pictured them from Hal's descriptions. She had wanted to
see them for herself, for a long time. Not only because of what they were, but
obviously because of what they each in their separate ways meant to Hal; and
because it was also obvious that Hal's affection for each was deep and
strong-running.
It was not that she feared competition for his love of her. She was the Third
Amanda in eight generations of Morgans ;and she had been hand-picked by the
Second Amanda as a baby, in the other's old age, Hand-picked, and with her
natural abilities trained until she was set apart from the mass of people
around her, like a queen.
In this there was more to it than the fact there had been only three Amandas
in eight generations of the Morgans of Foralie, on the Dorsai. In a very real
sense, there had only been three Amandas since the human race began; and it
had fallen to her to be the last and strongest'With or without Hal, she would
be that. But she loved him.
However, now that she saw them in person, she knew that she would like them;
and they would end up liking her-though Ajela would be the slower of the two
to come to it. They were both strong women; and life had also made each of
them the equivalent of royalty, in her own right. Moreover, Ajela had now had
experience in the possession and exercise of great authoritv.
She was dressed in what seemed more like leisure than working clothes. She
wore a sleeveless tunic of medium brown, ornamented with gold brocade over a
blouse of filmier material with balloon-shaped sleeves, above darker brown
pantaloons. Amber bracelets were on her wrists and amber earrings in her ear.
Still, the way she sat and the level gaze of her hazel eyes made these
garments and even her jewelry seem to fit her like a uniform of authority. @
Rukh, on the other hand, had been born, as Amanda knew, with unusual strength
of spirit in her, but plainly counted it as
nothing in her own scale of values. Far outranking any personal power of her
own, the quality that was in her of what she called Faith shone through the
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