The Forbidden Tower

Chapter Twenty-one

For three days Esteban Lanart hung between life and death. Callista, watching at his side — Ferrika had forbidden Ellemir to sit up with him — monitoring the apparently dying man, ascertained that the great artery from the heart was partially blocked. There would be a way to reverse the damage, but she was afraid to try.

Late in the evening of the third day he opened his eyes and saw her at his side. He tried to move, and she put out a hand to prevent him.”

“Lie still, dear Father. We are with you.”

“I missed… Domenic’s funeral…” he whispered. She saw memory flood back, with a spasm of sorrow crossing his face. “Dezi,” he whispered, “wherever I was, I… I think I felt him die, poor lad. I am not guiltless…”

Callista enfolded his rough hand in her own slender fingers. “Father, whatever his crimes or wrongs, he is at peace. Now you must think only of yourself, Valdir needs you.” She could see that even this little talking had exhausted him, but under the faded lips and bluish pallor the old giant was still there, rallying. He said, “Damon…” and she knew what he wanted and reassured him quickly. “The Domain is safe in his hands and all is well.”

Satisfied, he slipped back into sleep, and Callista thought that Council must accept Damon as regent. There was no one else with the slightest claim. Andrew was a Terran; even if he had had any skills at government, they would not have accepted him. Dorian’s young husband was a nedestro of Ardais, and knew nothing of Armida, whereas it had been Damon’s second home. But Damon’s regency still hung under the shadow Leonie had threatened, and even as she wondered how soon the showdown would come, Damon opened the door in the outer suite and beckoned.

“Leave Ferrika with him and come.”

In the outer room he said, “They have sent for us in the Crystal Chamber, an hour from now, for me and Andrew. I think we should all go, Callista.”

In the bleak light her eyes hardened, no longer blue but a cold flashing gray. “Do I stand accused of oath-breaking?”

He nodded. “But as regent of Alton I am your guardian, and your husband is my sworn man. You need not face the charges unless you choose.” He grasped her shoulders between his own. “Understand this, Callista, I am going to defy them! Have you the courage to defy them too? Are you strong enough to stand by me, or are you going to collapse like a wet rag and lend strength to our accusers?”

His voice was implacable, and his hands on her shoulders hurt her. “We can have the courage of what we have done, and defy them, but if you do not, you will lose Andrew, you know, and me. Do you want to go back to Arilinn, Callista?” He put his hand up to her face and traced, with a light finger, the red nail-marks on her cheek. He said, “You have still the option, for you are still a virgin. That door remains open until you close it.”

Her hand went to the matrix at her throat. “I gave back my oath of my own free will; I never thought to break it.”

“It would have been easy to make a clear choice, once and forever,” Damon said. “It is not so easy to do when you must do now. But you are a woman and under wardship. Is it your will that I answer for you to the Council, Callista?”

She flung off his hand. “I am comynara,” she said, “and I was Callista of Arilinn. I need no man to answer for me!” She turned and walked toward the room she shared with Andrew. “I will be ready!”

Damon went toward his own room. He had roused her defiance deliberately, but he faced the knowledge that it might as easily turn against them.

His own instinct of defiance was high too. He would not face his accusers like some sneak thief dragged to judgment! He dressed in his best, tunic and breeches of leather dyed in the colors of his Domain, a jeweled dagger belted at his waist. He rummaged in his belongings for a neck-ornament set with firestones, and in a drawer came upon something wrapped in a cloth.

It was the bundle of dried kireseth blossoms he had taken from Callista’s still-room, without knowing why.

He had acted on an impulse he still did not understand, not sure whether it had been a flash of precognition or something worse. He had not been able to explain to her, or to anyone else, why he had done it.

But now, as he stood holding them in his hands, he knew. He never knew whether it was the faintest whiff of the resins from the cloth — it was widely known to stimulate clairvoyance — or whether it was just that his mind, now holding all the information, had suddenly moved to synthesize it without his conscious effort. But suddenly he knew what Varzil had been trying to tell him, and what the Year’s End ritual must have been.

Unlike Callista, he knew precisely why the use of kireseth was forbidden, except when distilled and fractioned into the volatile essence known as kirian. As Dom Esteban’s stories had reminded them, kireseth, the blue starflower traditionally given by Cassilda to Hastur in the legend — called the golden bell when the flowers hung covered with their golden pollen — kireseth, among other things, was a powerful aphrodisiac, breaking down inhibitions and controls, and now all the links in the chain were clear.

The paintings in the chapel. Dom Esteban’s stories, and the indignation they had roused in Ferrika, sworn to the Free Amazons, who did not marry and regarded marriage as a form of slavery. The singular illusion shared by Andrew and Callista at the time of the winter blooming, only now Damon knew it had not been an illusion, despite the clearing of Callista’s channels immediately afterward. And Varzil’s advice…

The key was the taboo. Not forbidden because of uncleanness and lewd associations, as he had always thought, but forbidden because of sanctity.

Ellemir said behind him, nervously, “It is time. What have you there, beloved?”

Guilty with the memory of the taboo which had lain heavy on him since childhood, he thrust the flowers quickly into the drawer, still wrapped in their cloth. The same instinct which had prompted him to dress in his best for his accusers had prompted her too, he was glad to see. She wore a gown fit for a festival, cut low across the breasts. Her hair, low on her neck, was a heavy, gleaming coil. Her pregnancy was obvious even to the most casual observer by now, but she was not ungainly. She was beautiful, a proud Comyn lady.

When he met with Andrew and Callista in the outer room of the suite, he saw that the same instinct had prompted them all. Andrew wore his holiday suit of dull grayed satin, but Callista outshone them all.

Damon had never thought the formal crimson of a Keeper became her. She was too pale, and the brilliant color made her look washed out, a dimmer reflection of her beautiful twin. He had never thought Callista beautiful; it confused him that Andrew thought her so. She was too thin, too much like the stiff child he had known in the Tower, with a virginal rigidity which made her, to Damon, unattractive. At Armida, she chose her clothes carelessly, thick old tartan skirts and heavy shawls. He sometimes wondered if she wore Ellemir’s castoffs because she had so little interest in her appearance.

But for the Council she had put on a dress of grayed blue, with a veil of the same color, only thinner, woven with metallic threads that gleamed and twinkled as she moved, and her hair blazed like flame. She had done something to her face to conceal the long red scratches there, and there was an abnormally high color in her cheeks. Was it vanity or defiance which had prompted her to paint her face this way, so that her paleness would not seem the pallor of fear? Star-sapphires gleamed at her throat and she wore her matrix bared, blazing out from among them. As they paced into the Council chamber, Damon felt proud of them all, and willing to defy all of Darkover, if need be.

It was Lorill Hastur who called them all to order, saying, “Serious charges have been laid against you all. Damon, are you willing to answer these charges?”

Looking up at the Hastur seats, and Leonie’s implacable face, Damon knew that to explain and justify, as he had intended, would be a waste of time. His only chance was to seize and hold the initiative.

“Would any hear me, if I did?”

Leonie said, “For what you have done there can be no explanation and no excuse. But we are inclined to be lenient, if you will submit yourself to our judgment, you and these others whom you have led into rebellion against the most sacred laws of Comyn.” She was looking at Callista as if she had never seen her before.

Through the silence Andrew thought, Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say before judgment is passed on you?

It was on him that Lorill first turned his eyes.

“Andrew Carr, your offense is serious, but you acted in ignorance of our laws. You shall be turned over to your own people, and if you have broken none of their laws, you shall go free, but we will ask that you be sent off our world at once.

“Callista Lanart, you have merited a sentence equivalent to Damon’s. But Leonie has interceded for you. Your intended marriage, being unconsummated” — how, Damon wondered, had Lorill known that? — “has no force in law. We declare it null and void. You shall return to Arilinn, with Leonie making herself personally responsible for your good behavior.

“Damon Ridenow, for your own offenses, and the offenses of these whom you have led into disobedience, you merit death or mutilation under the old laws. You are here offered a choice. You may surrender your matrix at once, with a Keeper to safeguard your life and reason, so that you may live out your life as regent of Alton, and guardian of the Alton heir your wife bears. If you refuse this, it will be taken from you by force. Should you survive, the laran centers of your brain will be burned away, to prevent any further abuse.”

Ellemir gave a low cry of dismay. Lorill looked at her with something like compassion, and said, “Ellemir Lanart, as for you, being misled by your husband, we impose no sentence save this: that you shall cease to meddle in matters outside the sphere of women, and turn your thoughts to your only duty at this time, to safeguard your coming child, who is heir to Alton. Since your father lies ill and your only surviving brother is a minor child, and your husband under our sentence, we place you under wardship of Lord Serrais, and you shall return to Serrais to bear your child. Meanwhile, I have chosen three respectable matrons of Comyn to care for you until sentence has been carried out on your husband: Lady Rohana Ardais, Jerana, Princess of Elhalyn, and my own son’s wife, Lady Cassilda Hastur. Allow them now to take you from this chamber, Lady Ellemir. What is to come may prove disturbing, even dangerous for a woman in your condition.”

Lady Cassilda, a pretty, dark-haired woman, about Ellemir’s age, and herself heavily pregnant, held out her hand to Ellemir. “Come with me, my dear.”

Ellemir looked at Cassilda Hastur and back at Damon. “May I speak, Lord Hastur?”

Lorill nodded.

Ellemir’s voice sounded as light and childish as ever, but determined. “I thank the matrons for their kind concern, but I decline their good offices. I will stay with my husband.”

“My dear,” Cassilda Hastur said, “your loyalty does you credit. But you must think of your child.”

“I am thinking of my child,” Ellemir said, “of all our children, Cassilda, yours and mine, and the life we want for them. Have any of you bothered to think, really think about what Damon is doing?”

Damon, listening incredulously — he had poured his heart out to her, the night he healed the frostbitten men, but he had not believed she really understood — heard her say:

“You know and I know how hard it is to find telepaths in these days, for the Towers. Even those who have laran are reluctant to give up their lives and live behind walls, and who can blame them? I would not want to do it myself. I want to live at Armida and have children to live there after me. And I do not want to see their lives torn by that terrible choice, either, to know that they must shirk one or the other duty to their Domain. Bu there is so much for telepaths to do, and no one is doing it. They need not all be done behind the walls of a Tower, indeed some of them cannot be done there. But because so many people believe that is the only way to use laran, the work is simply not being done at all, and the people of the Domains are suffering because it is not done. Damon has found a way to make it available to everyone. Laran need not be a kind of… of mysterious sorcery, hidden inside the Towers. If I, who am a woman, and uneducated, and the lesser of twins, can be taught to use it, as I have been, a little, then there must be many, many, who could do it. And—”

Margwenn Elhalyn rose in her place. She was very pale. “Must we sit and listen to this… this blasphemy? Must we who have given our lives to the Towers sit here and hear our choice blasphemed by this… this ignorant woman who should be home by her fireside making baby clothes, not standing before us prattling like a silly child of things she cannot understand!”

“Wait,” said Rohana Ardais, “wait, Margwenn. I too was Tower-trained, and the choice was forced on me, to give up this work I loved, to marry and give sons to my husband’s clan. There is some wisdom in what Lady Ellemir says. Let us hear what she is saying to us, without interrupting.”

But Rohana was silenced by outcry. Lorill Hastur called them to order, and Damon remembered with a sinking heart that Lorill too had been trained in Dalereuth Tower, and had been forced to renounce it when he inherited the position as Council Regent. “You have no Council voice, Lady Ellemir. You may choose to go with the matrons we have chosen to care for you, or you may remain here. You have no other options.”

She clung to Damon’s arm. “I stay with my husband.”

“Sir,” Cassilda Hastur said, troubled, “Has she the right to choose, when this choice may endanger the child she bears? She has miscarried once, and this child is heir to Alton. Is not the child’s safety more important than her sentimental wish to stay with Damon?”

“In the name of all the Gods, Cassilda!” Rohana protested. “She is not a child! She understands what is at stake here! Do you think she is a dairy animal, that by leading her out of sight of her child’s father you can make her indifferent to his fate? Sit down and let her alone!”

Rebuked, the young Lady Hastur took her seat.

“Damon Ridenow, choose. Will you surrender your matrix without protest, or must it be taken from you?”

Damon glanced at Ellemir, holding his arm; at Callistra, blazing jeweled defiance; at Andrew, one step behind him. He said to them, not to Lorill, “May I speak, then, for you all? Callista, is it your will to return to Arilinn in Leonie’s care?”

Leonie was looking at Callista with a hungry eagerness, and Damon suddenly understood.

Leonie had never allowed herself to love. But Callista, like herself a pledged virgin lifelong, Callista she might love safely, with all the repressed hunger of her starved emotions. It was no wonder that she could not let Callista go, that she had made it impossible for Callista to leave the Tower. Her love for the girl had not the faintest hint of sexuality, but it was love, nevertheless, as real as his own hopeless love for Leonie.

Callista was silent, and Damon wondered which would be her choice. Did Arilinn seem more attractive to her than what they offered, less troubling, less painful? And then he knew that Callista’s silence was only compassion, reluctance to fling Leonie’s offered love and protection back into her face. Unwillingness to hurt the woman who had cherished and protected the lonely child in the Tower. When she spoke there were tears in her eyes.

“I have given back my oath. I will not receive it again. I too will remain with my husband.”

Now, indeed, they stood as one! Damon’s voice rang defiant:

“Hear me then!” He drew Ellemir close, fiercely protective. “For my wife, I thank the noble ladies of Comyn, but none but I shall care for her while I live. As for Andrew, he is my sworn man, and you yourself, Lorill Hastur, during the building of the spaceport, judged that Terrans might enter into private agreements with Darkovans, and the reverse, and these shall be treated like any other contract under Domain law. I have taken the oath of bredin with Andrew, and I shall be personally responsible for his honor as for my own. This means that as regent of Alton I shall hold his marriage to Callista to be as valid as my own. And as for myself,” and now he faced Leonie and flung the words, deliberately, straight at her, “I am Keeper, and responsible only to my own conscience.”

“You? Keeper?” Her voice was scornful. “You, Damon?”

“You yourself guided me in Timesearch, and it was Varzil the Good who named me tenerézu.” With deliberation, he used the archaic male form of the word.

Lorill said, “You cannot call to witness a man who has been dead for hundreds of years.”

“You have called me to judgment on laws which have stood since those days,” Damon said, “and the structure I have built in the overworld stands for all to witness who have entry there. And this was the law and the test in those days. I am Keeper. I have established my Tower. I will abide the challenge.”

Leonie’s face paled. “That law has been dead since the Ages of Chaos.”

You live by laws which should have been dead long ago too. He did not speak the words aloud, but Leonie heard them, and so did everyone with laran in the Crystal Chamber. She said, as white as a skull, “So be it. You have invoked the old test of a Keeper’s right and responsibility. You and Callista are renegades of Arilinn, so this shall be Arilinn’s affair, to answer the challenge. It will be a duel, Damon, and you know the penalty if you fail. Not only you and Callista, but your consorts — if any of you survive the ordeal, which is unlikely — shall be stripped of your matrices and the laran centers burned away, so that you may live as an example and a warning to anyone who would stretch out his hand, unfit, for a Keeper’s place and power.”

“I see you know the consequences, Leonie,” said Callista. “Would that you had known them equally well when I was made Keeper.”

Leonie ignored her, staring fixedly into Damon’s eyes.

“I will abide the ordeal and its penalties, Leonie,” Damon said, “but you do realize, Leonie, that you invoke them on yourself and all of Arilinn, should you fail to conquer?”

She said, furiously, “I think we would all risk more than that, to punish the insolence of those who would build a forbidden Tower on our threshold!”

“Enough!” Lorill held out his hands to silence them. “I declare challenge and ordeal between Arilinn Tower and its Keeper, Leonie Hastur, and” — he hesitated a moment — “and the forbidden Tower, with him who stands self-proclaimed as its Keeper, Damon Ridenow. It shall begin at sunrise tomorrow.”

Leonie’s face was like stone. “I shall await the ordeal.”

“And I,” said Damon. “Until sunrise, Leonie.”

He gave a hand to Ellemir, the other to Callista. Andrew paced one step behind them. Without looking back, they left the Crystal Chamber.

Until sunrise. He had spoken bravely. But could they face Leonie, and all the forces of Arilinn?

They must, or die.