The Forbidden Tower

Chapter Seven

The frostbitten men were recovering, but with so many men disabled, an extra share of the actual physical work fell on Andrew, and even Damon took a hand now and then. The weather had moderated, but Dom Esteban told them this was only a break before the real winter storms would sweep down from the Hellers, layering the foothills deep in snow for months.

Damon had offered to ride to Serrais with Andrew, and bring back some surplus men from the estate there, to work for the estate through the winter, and help with the crops in the early spring. The journey would last more than a tenday. They were making plans in the Great Hall of Armida that morning. Ellemir’s morning sickness had subsided, and, as usual, she was in the kitchens, supervising the women with their work. Callista was seated beside her father when suddenly she sat upright with a look of disquiet. She said, “Oh — Elli, Elli — oh, no — !” But even before she was on her feet Damon’s chair crashed over backward and he ran toward the kitchens. At that moment there were cries of dismay from the other rooms.

Dom Esteban grumbled, “What’s wrong with those women?” but no one was listening. Callista had run toward the kitchen door. After a moment Damon came hurrying back, beckoned to Andrew,

“Ellemir has fainted. I do not want any stranger touching her now. Can you carry her?”

Ellemir lay in a crumpled heap on the kitchen floor, surrounded by staring, crowding women. Damon motioned them away, and Andrew picked up Ellemir. Her pallor was frightening, but Andrew knew nothing about pregnant women, and fainting like this, he supposed, was not so alarming.

“Carry her to her room, Andrew. I will go and call Ferrika.”

By the time Andrew laid Ellemir on her own bed Damon was there with the woman. His hands closed on Ellemir’s as he slipped into rapport with her, searching for the faint, formless contact with the unborn. Even as he felt in his own body the painful spasms racking Ellemir’s, he knew, in anguish, what was happening. He begged, “Can’t you do anything?”

Ferrika said gently, “I will do all I can, Lord Damon,” but over her bent head, Damon met Callista’s eyes. They were full of tears. She said, “Ellemir is not in danger, Damon. But it’s already too late for the baby.”

Ellemir clutched at Damon’s hands. “Don’t leave me,” she begged, and he murmured, “No, love. Never. I’ll stay with you.” This was custom; no telepath Comyn of the Domains left his wife alone while she bore their child, or shrank from sharing her ordeal. And now he must strengthen Ellemir for their loss, not for joy. Fighting back his own anguished grief, he knelt beside her, holding her in his arms, cradling her against him.

Andrew had gone downstairs again to Dom Esteban, with nothing to tell except that Damon was with her, and Callista, and they had sent for Ferrika. He felt the pall that lay over the estate, all that day. Even the maids clustered in frightened huddles. Andrew wanted to reach out for Damon, to try to strengthen him, reassure him, but what could he do or say? Once, looking up the stairs, he saw Dezi coming from the outer hall, and Dezi asked “How is Ellemir?” and Andrew’s resentment against the youngster overflowed.

“Much you care!”

“I don’t wish Elli any harm,” Dezi said, queerly subdued. “She’s the only one here who’s ever been decent to me.” He turned his back on Andrew and went away, and Andrew had the odd sense that Dezi, too, was near to tears.

Damon and Ellemir had been so happy about their baby, and now this! Andrew wondered wildly if his own ill luck had somehow proved contagious, if the trouble of his own marriage had somehow rubbed off on the other couple. Realizing that this was absolute insanity, he went down to the greenhouse and tried to lose himself in giving orders to the gardeners.

Hours later, Damon came out of the room where Ellemir lay, asleep now, pain and grief alike forgotten in one of Ferrika’s sleeping draughts. The midwife, pausing for a moment beside him, said gently, “Lord Damon, better now than for the poor little thing to live to birth and be born deformed. The mercy of Avarra takes strange forms.”

“I know you did what you could, Ferrika.” But Damon turned away, unstrung, not wanting the woman to see him weeping. She understood, and went quietly down the stairs, and Damon went blindly along the hall, shrinking from the need to tell Dom Esteban. By instinct he headed toward the greenhouse, finding Andrew there. Andrew came toward him, asking gently, “How is Ellemir? Is she out of danger?”

“Should I be here if she were not?” Damon asked, then, remembering, dropped down on a crate, covered his face with his hands, and gave way to his grief. Andrew stood beside him, his hand on his friend’s shoulder, trying without words to give Damon some support, the knowledge of his own compassion.

“The worst of it is,” Damon said at last, raising his ravaged face, “Elli thinks she has failed me, that she could not carry our daughter safely to life. If there is fault it is mine, who left her to care for this great house alone. Mine in any case! We are too near akin, doubly cousins, and in such close kinship there is often a heritage of death in the blood. I should never have married her! I should never have married her! I love her, I love her, but I knew she wanted children, and I should have known it was not safe, we were such close kin… I do not know if I will dare to let her try again.” Damon finally quieted a little, and stood up, Saying wearily, “I should go back. When she wakes, she will want me beside her.” For the first time since Andrew had known him, he looked his full age.

And he had envied Damon his happiness! Ellemir was young, they could have other children. But with this weight of guilt?

Later he found Callista in the small stone-floored still-room, her hair tied up in the faded cloth she wore to keep away the herb-smells. She raised her face to him and he saw that it still bore the traces of tears. Had she shared that ordeal with her twin? But her voice had the remote calm he had grown to expect in Callista, and somehow it jarred on him now.

“I am making something which will lessen the bleeding; it must be freshly made or it is not so effective, and she must have it every few hours.” She was pounding some thick grayish leaves in a small mortar. She scraped the mash into a cone-shaped glass and set it to filter through layers of closely woven cloth, carefully measuring and pouring a colorless liquid over it.

“There. That must filter before I can do anymore.” She turned to him, raising her eyes. He asked, “But Elli — she will recover? And she can have other children, in time?”

“Oh, yes, I suppose so.”

He wanted to reach out and take her in his arms, comfort the grief she shared with her twin. But he dared not even touch her hand. Aching with frustration, he turned away.

My wife. And I have never even kissed her. Damon and Ellemir have their shared sorrow; what have I shared with Callista?

Gently, pitying the grief in her eyes, he said, “Dear love, is it really such a tragedy? It’s not as if she had lost a real baby. A child ready for birth, yes, but a fetus at this stage? How can it be so serious?”

He was not prepared for the horror and rage with which she turned on him. Her face was white, her eyes blazing like the flame beneath the retort. “How can you say such a thing?” she whispered. “How dare you? Don’t you know that for twice a tenday, both Damon and Ellemir had been in contact with — with her mind, had come to know her as a real presence, their own child?” Andrew flinched at her anger. He had never thought of it, that in a family of telepaths, an unborn child would certainly be a presence. But so soon? So quickly? And what kind of thoughts could a fetus hardly more than a third of the way through pregnancy — But Callista picked up the scorn in that thought. She flung back at him, shaking, “Will you say, then, it is no tragedy if our son — or daughter — should die before he was strong enough to live outside my body?” Her voice trembled. “Is nothing real that you cannot see, Terranan?”

Andrew raised his head for an angry retort: It seems we are never likely to know; you are not very likely to bear me a child as things are now. But her white, anguished face stopped him. He could not return taunt for taunt. That thoughtless Terranan had hurt, but he had pledged her that he would never try to hurry her, never put her under the slightest pressure. He bit the angry words back, then saw, in the dismay that swept across her face, that she had heard them anyway.

Of course. She is a telepath. The taunt I did not speak was as real to her as if I had actually shouted it.

“Callista,” he whispered, “darling, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

“I know.” She stumbled against him, clung there, her bright head against him. She stood, shaking, within the circle of his arm. “Oh, Andrew, Andrew, I wish we had even that…” she whispered, and sobbed aloud.

He held her, hardly daring to move. She felt taut, feather-like, like some wild bird which had flown to him and would take flight again at a word or an incautious move. After a moment her sobs quieted, and it was the old, still, resigned face she turned to him. She moved away, so gently that he hardly felt forsaken.

“Look, the liquid has all filtered through. I must finish the medicine I am making for my sister.” She laid her fingertips lightly against his lips, in the old gesture; he kissed them, realizing that in an odd way this quarrel had drawn them closer.

How much longer? In the name of all the Gods at once, how much longer can we go on like this? And even as the thought tore through his mind, he realized he was not sure whether it was his own or Callista’s.

Three days later, Andrew and Damon rode out, as planned, for Serrais. Ellemir was out of danger, and there was nothing more that Damon’s presence could do for her. Nothing, Damon knew, could help Ellemir now but time.

Andrew felt strangely relieved, although he would have been ashamed to say so, to get away. He had not realized how the tension between himself and Callista, the aura of silent grief, had weighed down on him at Armida.

The wide high plains, the mountains in the distance, all this could have been the Arizona horse ranch of Andrew’s childhood. Yet he had only to open his eyes to see the great red sun, gleaming like a bloodshot eye through the morning fogs, to know that he was not on Terra, that he was nowhere on Earth. It was midmorning, but two small shadowy moons, pale violet and dim lime green, swung low beyond the crest of the hill, one nearing the full, another a waning crescent. The very smell of the air was strange, and yet it was his home now, his home for the rest of his life. And Callista. Callista, waiting for him. His mind’s eye retained the memory of her face, pale, smiling from the top of the steps as he rode away. He cherished the smile in memory, that with all the grief their marriage had brought to her, she could still smile at him, give him her fingertips to kiss, bid him ride with the Gods in the soft speech he was beginning to understand: “Adelandeyo.”

Damon, too, brightened perceptibly as the miles lengthened under their horses’ hooves. The last few days had put lines in his face that had never been there before, but he no longer looked old, weighted down with anguish. At midday they dismounted to eat their noon meal, tying their horses to graze on the new grass poking up sturdy leaves through the remnants of the last blizzard’s snow. They found a dry log to sit on, surrounded by flower buds casting their snow-pods and breaking out in riotous bud and leaf as if it were spring. But when Andrew asked about it, Damon said blankly, “Spring? Zandru’s Hells, no, it’s not even full winter yet, not till after Midwinter feast! Oh, the flowers?” He chuckled. “With the weather here, they bloom whenever there’s a day or two of sun and warmth. Your Terran scientists have a phrase for it, evolutionary adaptation. In the Kilghard Hills, there are only a few days in high summer when it doesn’t snow, so the flowers bloom whenever they get a little sun. If you think it looks odd here, you should go into the Hellers, and see the flowers and fruits that grow around Nevarsin. We can’t grow ice-melons here; you know. It’s too warm — they’re a plant of the glaciers.” And indeed, Damon had taken off his fur riding cape, and was riding in shirt-sleeves, though Andrew was still muffled against what seemed a cold, biting day.

Damon unwrapped the bundle of food Callista had given them for their journey, and broke out laughing. “Callista says — and is very apologetic — that she knows very little of housekeeping. But we are in luck, since she has not yet learned what is suitable food to give to travelers!” There was a cold roast fowl, which Damon divided with the knife at his belt, and a loaf of bread still faintly warm from the oven, and Andrew could not imagine why Damon was laughing.

He said, “I don’t see what’s funny about it. She asked me what I thought I would like to eat during a long ride, and I told her .”

Damon laughed, handing Andrew a generous portion of the roast meat. It was fragrant with spices which the Terran had not yet learned to identify by name. “For some reason, just custom, I suppose, about all the food one can ever get for the road would be hard journey-bread, dried meat rolls, dried fruits and nuts, that sort of thing.” He watched Andrew slicing up the bread, making a neat sandwich of the roast meat. “That looks good. I think I shall try it. And — will wonders never cease! — she gave us fresh apples too, from the cellar. Well, well!” He was laughing as he bit with gusto into the leg of the roast fowl. “It would never have occurred tof me to question traveler’s food and it would never have occurred to Elli to ask me if it was what I wanted! Maybe we can use some new ideas on our world!”

He sobered, lost in thought as he watched Andrew eating the sliced meat and bread. He himself had had heretical thoughts about matrix work outside the Towers. There ought to be a way. But he knew if he broached that to Leonie, she would be horrified, as horrified as if they were in the days of Regis the Fourth.

She would have known he was using a matrix, of course. Every legitimate matrix keyed to a Comyn telepath was monitored from the great screens in the Arilinn Tower. They could have identified Damon from his matrix, and Dezi, and, perhaps, though Damon was not sure, even Andrew.

If anyone had been watching. There was a shortage of telepaths for such inessential jobs as monitoring the matrix screens, so probably no one had noticed. But the monitor screens were there, and every matrix on Darkover was legally subject to monitoring and review. Even those like Domenic, who had been tested for laran and given a matrix, but never used it, could be followed.

That was another reason why Damon felt they should not waste such a telepath as Dezi. Even if his personality did not fit into the intimacy of a circle — and Damon was ready to admit Dezi would be hard to live with — he could be used to monitor a screen.

He thought wryly that today he was full of heresies. Who was he to question Leonie of Arilinn?

He finished off the leg of roast fowl, thoughtfully watching the Terran. Andrew was eating an apple, staring off thoughtfully at the far range of hills.

He is my friend. Yet he came here from a star so far away that I cannot see it in the sky at night. And yet, the very fact that there are other worlds like ours, everywhere in the universe, is going to change our world.

He looked at the distant hills, and thought, I do not want our world to change, then bleakly laughed at himself. He sat here planning a way to alter the use of matrices on Darkover, thinking of ways to reform the system of ancient Towers which guarded the old matrix sciences of his world, guarded them in safe ways established generations ago.

He said, “Andrew, why are you here? On Darkover?”

Andrew shrugged. “I came here almost by accident. It was a job. And then, one day, I saw Callista’s face — and here I am.”

“I don’t mean that,” Damon said. “Why are your people here? What does Terra want with our world? We are not a rich world to be exploited. I know enough about your Empire to know that most of the worlds they settle have something to give. Why Darkover? We are a world with few heavy metals, an isolated world with a climate your people find, I gather, inhospitable. What do the Terrans want with us?”

Andrew clasped his hands around his knees. He said, “There is an old story on my world. Someone asked an explorer why he chose to climb a mountain. And all he said was, ‘Because it’s there!’ ”

“That hardly seems enough reason to build a spaceport,” Damon said.

“I don’t understand all of it. Hell, Damon, I’m no empire-builder. I’d rather have stayed on Dad’s horse ranch. The way I understand it, it’s location. You do know that the galaxy is in the form of a giant spiral?” He picked up a twig and drew a pattern in the melting snow. “This is the upper spiral of the galaxy, and this is the lower arm, and here is Darkover, making it an ideal place for traffic control, passenger transfers, understand?”

“But,” Damon argued, “the travel of Empire citizens from one end of the Empire to the other doesn’t mean anything to us.”

Andrew shrugged. “I know. I’m sure Empire Central would have preferred an uninhabited world at the crossroads, so they needn’t have worried about who lived there. But here you are, and here we are.” He shrank from Damon’s frown. “I don’t make their policy, Damon. I’m not even sure I understand it. That’s just the way it was explained to me.”

Damon’s laugh was mirthless. “And I was startled by Callista giving us roast meat and fresh apples for journey-food! Change is relative, I suppose.” He saw Andrew’s troubled look and made himself smile. None of this was Andrew’s fault. “Let’s hope the changes are all for the better, like Callie’s roast fowl!” He got off the log and carefully buried the apple core in a small runnel of snow behind it. Pain struck at him. If things had gone otherwise, he might have been planting this apple for his daughter. Andrew, with that uncanny sensitivity which he exhibited now and then, bent beside him, in silence, to bury his own apple core. Not till they were in the saddle again did he say, gently, “Some day, Damon, our children will eat apples from these trees.”

They were away from Armida more than three tendays. In Serrais, it took time to find ablebodied men who were willing to leave their villages, and perhaps their families, to work on the Armida estate for anywhere up to a year. Yet they could not take too many single men, or it would disrupt the life of the villages. Damon tried to find families who had ties of blood or fosterage with people at Armida lands. There were many of them. Then Damon wished to pay a visit to his brother Kieran, and to his sister Marisela and her children.

Marisela, a gentle, plump young woman who looked like Damon, but with fair hair where his was red, expressed grief at the news of Ellemir’s miscarriage. She said kindly that if they had no better fortune in a year or two, Damon should have one of their children to foster, an offer which surprised Andrew, but which Damon took for granted.

“Thank you, Mari. It may be needful, at that, since the children of double cousins seldom thrive. I have no great need for an heir, but Ellemir’s arms are empty and she grieves. And Callista is not likely to have a child very soon.”

Marisela said, “I do not know Callista well. Even when we were all little maidens, everyone knew she was destined for the Tower, and she did not mingle much with the other girls. People are such gossips,” she added vehemently. “Callie has a perfect right to leave Arilinn and marry if she chooses, but it is true we were all surprised. I know Keepers from the other Towers often leave to marry, but Arilinn? And Leonie has been there since I can remember, since our mother can remember. We all thought she would step directly into Leonie’s shoes. There was a time when the Keepers of Arilinn could not leave their posts if they would…”

“That day is hundreds of years gone,” Damon said impatiently, but Marisela went on, unruffled. “I was tested for laran in Neskaya when I was thirteen, and one of the girls told me that if she was sent to Arilinn she would refuse, since the Keepers there were neutered. They were not women but emmasca, as the legend says that Robardin’s daughter was emmasca and became woman for the love of Hastur…”

“Fairy-tales!” said Damon, laughing. “That has not been done for hundreds of years, Marisela!”

“I am only telling you what they told me,” Marisela said, injured. “And surely Leonie looks near enough to an emmasca, and Callista — Callista is thinner than Ellemir, and she looks younger, so you cannot blame me for thinking she might not be all woman. Even so, that would not mean she could not marry if she wished, although most do not want to.”

“Marisa, child, I assure you that Andrew’s wife is no emmasca!”

Marisela turned to Andrew and inquired, “Is Callista pregnant yet?”

Andrew laughed and shook his head. It was not the slightest use in being cross; standards of reticence differed enormously between cultures, and why should he blame Marisela, who was after all Callista’s cousin, for asking what everyone wanted to know about a bride? He remembered what Damon had said about Ellemir and repeated it.

“I am content that she should have a year or two to be free of such cares. She is still very young.”

But later he asked Damon in private, “What in the world is an emmasca?”

“The word used to mean one of the ancient race of the forests. They never mingle with mankind now, but there is said to be chieri blood in the Comyn, especially in the Hellers; some of the Ardais and Aldaran have six fingers on either hand. I am not sure I believe that tale — any horse-breeder will tell you that a half-breed is sterile — but the story goes that there is chieri blood in the Comyn, that the chieri in days past mingled with mankind and mixed their blood. It was believed that a chieri could appear as a man to a woman, or as a woman to a man, being both, or perhaps neither. So they say that in the old days some of the Comyn too were emmasca, neither man nor woman, but neuter. Well, that was very long ago, but the tradition remains that these were the first Keepers, neither man nor woman. Later, when women took on the burden of being Keeper, they were made emmasca — surgically neutered — because it was thought safer for a woman to work in the screens if she had not the burden of womanhood. But in living memory — and I can say this positively, knowing the laws of Arilinn — no woman has been neutered, even at Arilinn, to work in the Towers. A Keeper’s virginity serves to guard her against the perils of womanhood.”

“I still don’t understand why that is,” Andrew said, and Damon explained. “It’s a matter of nerve alignment. The same nerves in the body carry both laran and sex. Remember that after we worked with the matrices we were all impotent for days? The same nerve channels can’t carry both sets of impulses at once. A woman doesn’t have that particular safety valve, so the Keepers, who have to handle such tremendous frequencies and coordinate all the other telepaths, have to keep their channels completely clear for laran alone. Otherwise they can overload their nerves and burn out. I’ll show you the channels sometime, if you’re interested. Or you can ask Callista about it.”

Andrew, didn’t pursue the subject. The thought of the way in which Callista had been conditioned still roused an anger in him so deep that it was better not to think about it at all.

They rode to Armida after a long trip home, broken three times by bad weather which forced them to stay overnight in different places, sometimes housed in luxurious rooms, sometimes sharing a pallet on the floor with the family’s younger children. Andrew, looking down at the lights of Armida across the valley, thought with a strange awareness, that he was truly coming home. Half a galaxy away from the world where he was born, yet this was home to him, and Callista was there. He wondered if all men, having found a woman to give meaning to life, defined home in that way: the place where their loved one was waiting for them. Damon, at least, seemed to share that feeling; he seemed as glad to return to Armida as he had been, almost thirty days before, to leave it. The great sprawling stone house seemed familiar now, as if he had lived there always.

Ellemir ran down the steps to meet Damon in the courtyard, letting him catch her up in his arms with an exuberant hug. She looked cheerful and healthy, her cheeks bright with color, her eyes sparkling. But Andrew had no time to spare for Ellemir now, for Callista was waiting for him at the top of the steps, still and grave. When she gave him her little half-smile, it somehow meant more to him than all Ellemir’s overflowing gaiety. She gave him both her hands, letting him raise them to his lips and kiss one after the other, then, her finger-tips still lying lightly in his, she led him inside. Damon bent and greeted Dom Esteban with a filial kiss on the cheek, turned to Dezi with a quick embrace. Andrew, more reserved, bowed to the old man, and Callista came to sit close beside him while he gave Dom Esteban a report on their journey.

Damon asked after the frostbitten men. The less hurt ones had recovered and been sent to their families’ care; the seriously wounded ones, the ones he had healed with the matrix, were still recovering. Raimon had lost two toes on his right foot; Piedro had never recovered feeling in the outer fingers of his left hand, but they were not wholly crippled, as had been feared.

“They are still with us,” Ellemir said, “because Ferrika must dress their feet night and morning with healing oils. Did you know Raimon is a splendid musician? Almost every night, we have him up in the hall to play for us to dance, the servant girls and the stewards, and Callista and Dezi and I dance too, but now that you are back with us…” She snuggled against Damon’s side, looking up at him with happy eyes.

Callista followed Andrew’s gaze and said softly, “I have missed you, Andrew. Perhaps I cannot show it as Elli does. But I am more glad than I can tell you, that you are here with us again.”

After dinner in the big hall, Dom Esteban said, “Shall we have some music, then?”

“I shall send for Raimon, shall I?” Ellemir said, and went to summon the men, and Andrew said softly, “Will you sing for me, Callista?”

Callista glanced at her father for permission. He motioned to her to sing, and she took her small harp and struck a chord or two.

Dezi made a formless sound of protest. Looking at his troubled face as she returned, Ellemir said, “Callista, sing something else!” At Andrew’s surprised, questioning look, she said, “It is ill luck for a sister to sing that in a brother’s hearing. It tells the tale of a brother who slew all his kinfolk save one sister alone, and she was forced to pronounce the outlaw-word on him.”

Dom Esteban scowled. He said, “I am not superstitious, and no son of mine sits in this hall. Sing, Callista.”

Troubled, Callista bent her head over her harp, but she obeyed.

Andrew, seeing Dezi’s smoldering eyes, felt a wave of sadness for the boy, for the gratuitous insult Dom Esteban had put on him. Callista sought Dezi’s eyes as if in apology, but the youngster rose and went out of the room, slamming the door into the kitchens. Andrew thought he should do something, say something, but what?

Later Raimon came hobbling into the hall on his canes and began to play a dance tune. The strain vanished as the men and women of the estate crowded into the center of the room, men in the outer ring, women in the inner, dancing a measure which wove into circles and spirals. One of the men brought out a drone-pipe, an unfamiliar instrument which, Andrew thought, made an unholy racket, for a couple of others to dance a sword-dance. Then they began to dance in couples, though Andrew noticed that most of the younger women danced only with one another. Callista was playing for the dancers; Andrew bowed to Ferrika and drew her into the dance.

Later he saw Ellemir and Damon dancing together, her arms around his neck, her smiling eyes lifted to her husband’s. It reminded him of his attempts to dance with Callista, against custom, at their wedding. Well, nothing forbade it now. He went in search of Callista, who had yielded up her harp to another of the women and was dancing with Dezi. As they drew apart, he came toward them and held out his arms.

She smiled gaily and moved toward him, but Dezi stepped between them. He spoke in a voice which could not be heard three feet away, but there was no mistaking the sneering malice in his tone: “Oh, we can’t let you two dauce together yet, can we?”

Callista’s hands dropped to her sides and the color drained from her face. Andrew heard a clatter of broken dishes and the shatter of a wineglass somewhere, under the terrifying impact of her mental cry of pain. Evidently everyone in the room with a scrap of telepathic awareness had picked up her outrage. Andrew didn’t stop to think. His fist smashed, hard, into Dezi’s face, sending the boy reeling.

Slowly Dezi picked himself up. He wiped the streaming blood from his lip, his eyes blazing fury. Then he flung himself at Andrew, but Damon had grabbed him around the waist, holding him back by force.

“Zandra’s hells, Dezi,” he breathed, “are you mad? Blood-feud for three generations has been declared for an insult less than you have put on our brother!”

Andrew looked around the ring of staring, shocked faces until he saw Callista, her eyes staring and lost in her drawn face. Abruptly she put her hands up to her face, turned her back, and hurried out of the room. She did not sob aloud, but Andrew could feel, like tangible vibration, the tears she could not shed.

Dom Esteban’s angry voice, cut through the lengthening, embarrassed silence.

“The most charitable explanation of this, Deziderio, is that you have again had more to drink than you can handle! If you cannot hold your drink like a man, you had better limit yourself to shallan with your dinner, as the children do! Apologize to our kinsman, and go sleep it off!”

That was the best way to pass it off, Andrew thought. Judging by their confusion, most of the people in the room did not even know what Dezi had said. They had simply picked up Callista’s distress.

Dezi muttered something — Andrew supposed it was an apology. He said quietly, “I don’t care what insults you put on me, Dezi. But what kind of man should I be if I let you speak offensively to my wife?”

Dezi glanced over his shoulder at Dom Esteban — to make sure they were out of earshot? — and said in a low, vicious tone, “Your wife? Don’t you even know that freemate marriage is legal only upon consummation? She’s no more your wife than she is mine!” Then he went quickly past Andrew and out of the room.

All semblance of jollity had gone from the evening. Ellemir hastily thanked Raimon for his music and hurried out of the room. Dom Esteban beckoned Andrew and asked if Dezi had apologized. Andrew, averting his eyes — the old man was a telepath, how could he lie to him? — said uneasily that he had, and to his relief the old man let it pass. What could he do anyway? He could not declare blood-feud on his wife’s half-brother, a drunken adolescent with a taste for insults that hit below the belt.

But was it true, what Dezi had said? In their own suite he put the question to Damon, who, though he shook his head looked troubled.

“My dear friend, don’t worry about it. No one would have any reason to question the legality of your marriage. Your intentions are clear, and no one is worrying about the fine points of the law,” he said, but Andrew felt that Damon had not even convinced himself. Inside their room he could hear Callista crying. Damon heard too.

“I would like to break our Dezi’s neck for him!”

Andrew felt the same way. With a few vicious words, the boy had taken all the joy out of their reunion.

Callista had stopped crying when he came in. She stood before her dressing table, slowly unfastening the butterfly-clasp she wore at the nape of her neck, letting her hair fall down about her shoulders. She turned and said, wetting her lips, as if it were a speech she had rehearsed many times, “Andrew, I am sorry… I am sorry you were exposed to that. — It is my fault.”

She sat down before the table and slowly took up her carved ivory brush, running it slowly along the length of her hair. Andrew knelt beside her, wishing desperately that he could take her in his arms and comfort her. “Your fault, love? How are you to blame for that wretched boy’s malice? I won’t tell you to forget it — I know you can’t — but don’t let it trouble you.”

“But it is my fault.” Even in the mirror, she would not meet his eyes. “Because of what I am. It is my fault that what he said was… true.”

He thought, poignantly, of the way in which Ellemir had snuggled into Damon’s arms, the way her arms had lain around Damon’s neck while they danced. He said at last, “Well, Callie, I won’t lie to you, it’s not easy. I won’t pretend that I’m enjoying the waiting. But I promised, and I’m not complaining. Leave it now, love.”

Her small chin set in a stubborn line. “I can’t leave it like that. Can’t you understand that you… your need hurts me too, because I want you too, and I cannot, I don’t dare… Andrew, listen to me. No, let me finish, do you remember what I asked you, the day we were wedded? That if it were this hard for you, to… to take another?”

He frowned at her in the mirror, displeased. “I thought we’d settled that once and for all, Callista. In God’s name, do you think I care for any of the maids or serving women?” Had it disturbed her, that he danced with Ferrika tonight? Did she think…

She shook her head, saying faintly, “No. But if it would make any difference… I have spoken to Ellemir about this. She told me… she is willing.”

Andrew stared at her, dismay and consternation mingling in his emotions. “Are you serious?”

But she was. Her grave face told him that, and anyway she was not, he knew, capable of making that kind of joke. “Ellemir? She is the last, the very last — your own sister, Callista! How could I do such a thing to you?”

“Do you believe it makes me happy to see you so miserable, to know that a brat like Dezi can shame you that way? And how could I be jealous of my own sister?” He made a gesture of revulsion, and she put her hand out to him. “No, Andrew, listen to me. This is our custom. If you were one of us, it would be taken for granted that my sister and I should… should share in this way. Even if things were — as they should be between us, if there was a time when I was ill, or pregnant, or simply not… not wanting you… It is very old, this custom. You have heard me sing the Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda? Even there, even in the ballad, it speaks of how Camilla took the place of her breda in the arms of the God, and so died when he was set upon. It was so that the Blessed Cassilda survived the treachery of Alar, to bear the child of the God…” Her voice faded.

Andrew said flatly, “That kind of thing may be all very well in old ballads and fairy-tales. But not in real life.”

“Even if I wish it, Andrew? I would feel less guilt because every additional day I delayed was adding to… to your suffering.”

“Suppose you let me worry about that? There’s no need for you to feel guilty.” But she turned away, weary and defeated. She stood up, letting her released hair shower down to her waist, slowly took it in handfuls, separating it for braiding. She said, stifled, “I cannot endure this any longer.”

He said gently, “Then it is for you to end it, Callista.” He picked up a fine strand of her hair, pressing it to his lips, savoring the fine texture, the delicate fragrance. He felt dizzy at the touch. He had promised never to try to hurry her. But how long, how long…?

“My darling, what can I say to you? Is the thought so frightening to you, even now?”

She sounded forlorn, wretched. “I know it shouldn’t be. But I am afraid. I don’t think I’m ready—”

He put his arms around her, very gently. He said, almost in a whisper, “How will you know, Callista, unless you try? Will you come and sleep beside me? No more than that — I swear to you I won’t ask anything you’re not ready to give me.”

She hesitated, twisting a lock of her hair. She said, “Won’t it… won’t it make it worse for you, if I should decide I… I can’t, I’m not ready yet?”

“Must I swear it to you, love? Don’t you trust me?”

She said, with a heartbreaking smile, “It isn’t you I don’t trust, my husband.” The words made his breath catch in his throat.

“Then…?” He held her loosely within the circle of his arms. After a long time, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

He gently picked her up in his arms and carried her to his bed. He said, laying her down on the pillows, “Why, then, if you feel that way, isn’t it proof that it’s time, my darling? I promise you I will be gentle with you—”

She shook her head, whispering, “Oh, Andrew, if it were only as simple as that!” Her eyes filled and flooded with tears. Suddenly she put her arms up around his neck.

“Andrew, will you do something for me? Something you may not want to do? Andrew, promise?”

He said, aching with love, “I can’t think of anything in this world or any other that I wouldn’t do for you, Callie. My darling, my treasure, anything, anything that would make it easier for you.”

She looked up at him, trembling. “This, then,” she said. “Knock me unconscious. Take me by force, this time, while I cannot resist—”

Andrew drew back, looking down at her in blank horror. For a moment he literally could not speak his dismay and revulsion. At last he said stammering, “You must be mad, Callista! In God’s name, how could I do such a thing to any woman alive? And least of all to you!”

She looked up in despair. “You promised.”

Now he was angry. “What are you, Callista? What kind of mad, perverse—” Words failed him. Cold to his gentleness, did she crave his cruelty, then?

Her eyes were still flooding quiet tears. She said, picking up the thought, “No, no, I never thought you would want to. It was the only way I could think of — oh, Avarra pity me, I should have died, I should have died—”

She turned over, burying her head in the pillow, and began to cry so wildly that Andrew was terrified. He lay down beside her, tried to take her in his arms, but she wrenched violently away from him. Dismayed, in an agony almost as great as her own, Andrew picked her up, holding her against him, stroking and soothing her, trying to make contact with her mind, but she had slammed down the barrier against him. He held her, silent, letting her cry. At last she lay resistless in his arms as she had not done since he carried her out of the caves of Corresanti, and it seemed to him that some inner barrier had dissolved too. She whispered, “You’re so good to me, and I’m so ashamed.”

“I love you, Callista. But I think you’ve built this thing up in your mind, out of all proportion. I think we were wrong to wait then, and the longer we wait the worse it’s going to be.” He felt the familiar touch on his mind and he knew, now, that she welcomed it, as in that time of loneliness and fear. She said, “I wasn’t afraid then.”

He said, firmly and surely, “Nothing has changed since then except that I love you more.”

He didn’t know all that much about sexual inhibitions, but he did know there was such a state as pathological frigidity, and what little he had been told about a Keeper’s training confirmed his suspicion that this must be what had been done to her: a total conditioning against any kind of sexual response. He was not naive enough to believe that a gentle seduction would ease all her fears and turn her into a passionate and responsive wife, but it seemed that was the only place to start. It might, at least, reassure her.

They were deeply in contact now. He sensed that she felt no trace of the physical arousal which was so strong in him, but he knew that she hungered for the closeness which could end this cold constraint between them. He drew her gently to him. He wanted her, yes, but not unwilling. He wanted her to share the tempest of passion that made him tremble. There was no need for words. She drew his face down to her, laying her lips against his in a shy hesitation, and he felt a sudden disquiet. He had never known an inexperienced woman before. Yet he could feel — they were deeply in contact now — the tremendous effort she was making not to shrink from his touch. It seemed that he would burst with tenderness. She was pliant in his arms, shyly touching him, not trying to conceal her lack of response. It was not the passivity of ignorance — she evidently understood what he expected of her — but there was not the faintest hint of physical arousal.

He reached out again for her mind. Then, through the familiar presence which was hers, he sensed a confusion, something else, alien yet familiar, strongly sexual. Ellemir? Damon and Ellemir? His first reaction was to withdraw, slam down mental barriers — I’m no voyeur! — but then, hesitant and still tentative, he could feel Callista drop into the fourway fusion, the old link among them reestablishing itself as it had done when they were all linked together within the matrix. And for the first time he felt a yielding in Callista, not a mental yielding alone, but a physical softening. She was less apprehensive, as if this was less frightening for her, shared with her twin. As he was drawn into the fourfold link, into intense participation in the lovemaking of the other couple, it seemed for an instant that it was Ellemir in his arms, that it was she who embraced him, opening herself wholly to him, warm, responsive — No, it was only that Callista had submerged herself in Ellemir’s response, and through it he could feel Callista’s shy surprise, the reassurance of Ellemir’s excitement and pleasure. He pressed his mouth to hers, in a long, searching kiss, and for the first time felt a flicker of actual response. Callista was no longer passively permitting him to do what he would, she was actually sharing in the kiss for the first time.

Had she needed this kind of reassurance, then? At his urging whisper, she pressed herself warmly against him. He knew she was deeply merged now in Ellemir’s consciousness, sharing Ellemir’s response, letting it take over her own body. He could feel Damon too, and that was disquieting, or was it only that he could also feel and share Ellemir’s response to Damon’s strange, provokingly sensual mixture of gentleness and violence?

For a moment it seemed to him that this was enough for now, to drift on the surface of their passionate embrace, to seek no more, to let himself merge in this warm, welcoming multiple consciousness. But it was still too strange for him, and his own body, demanding now, urgent, insisted on completion. Like a swimmer coming up for air he gasped, trying to disentangle himself from the multiple mind-link, to narrow his consciousness down to Callista alone, Callista in his arms, fragile, vulnerable, wholly pliant, wholly yielding.

Suddenly, with unimaginable violence, the fragile mesh of consciousness shattered. All at once he felt a tearing, burning pain in his genitals. Shocked, crying out, he heard Callista scream in despair and wild protest and felt himself torn from her arms, hurtling through the air. His mind spun dizzily. This couldn’t be real! His head struck something sharp, and in a blaze of pain, crimson lights exploding like bombs inside his head, he lost consciousness.