"The Forbidden Tower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

Chapter Eight

He was lying on the floor.

Before consciousness came fully back, he was aware of that, and of the fuzzy protest, How the hell did I get here? There was a sharp pain in his head, and a worse one in his groin. Someone lifted his head. He made a noise of protest as his head exploded, and opened his eyes. Damon, stark naked, was kneeling beside him.

“Lie still,” he said sharply, as Andrew struggled to rise. “Let me wipe the blood out of your eyes, you idiot!”

Andrew’s main emotion, displacing even pain, was outrage. He pushed Damon’s hand violently away. “What the bloody hell are you doing here? How dare you? Callista and I—”

“So,” said Damon, with a wry half-smile, “were we. As you damn well know. Do you think we wanted to be interrupted like that? But better us than the servants, man, rushing up to find out who’s being murdered. In hell’s name, didn’t you hear Callista screaming?”

All Andrew could hear was a sobbing whimper, but it seemed that somewhere in his mind was an awareness, not quite a memory, of shattering screams. He struggled to his feet, disregarding Damon’s steadying hand.

“Callista! I must go to her—”

“Ellemir’s with her, and I don’t think she can face you just yet. Let me look at this.” His probing hands were so impersonal that Andrew could take no offense. “Does this hurt?”

It did. Damon looked grave, but after some more probing, said, “No permanent damage to the testicles, I guess. No, don’t try to look, you’re not familiar with wounds and it will look worse to you than it is. Can you see all right?”

Andrew tried. “Fuzzy,” he said. Damon mopped at the cut on his forehead again. “Head wounds bleed like hell, but I think that needs a stitch or two.”

“Never mind that.” Callista’s sobs tore at his consciousness. “Is Callista all right? Oh, God, did I hurt her?”

“Did you hurt her?” Ellemir said waspishly behind them. “She didn’t quite manage to kill you, this time.”

“Let her alone,” said Andrew, fiercely protective. All he remembered was passion, and violent — terrifyingly violent — interruption. “What happened, an earthquake?”

Callista was lying on her side, her face swollen from crying. Naked, she seemed so defenseless that Andrew felt heartsick. He picked up her robe and spread it gently over her bare body.

“Darling — darling, what did I do to you?”

She broke out into the frantic weeping again. “I tried so hard… and I nearly killed him, Damon, I thought I was ready and I wasn’t! I could have killed him…”

Damon smoothed her hair away from her wet face. “Don’t cry any more, breda. All the smiths in Zandru’s forges can’t mend a broken egg. You didn’t kill him, that’s what matters now.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Callista—”

“An error of judgment,” Damon said matter-of-factly. “You shouldn’t have tried without asking me to monitor her first and see if she was ready. I thought I could trust her.”

Andrew heard the echo of Callista’s words in his mind: “It isn’t you I don’t trust.” And Damon, saying, “The man who rapes a Keeper takes his life and his sanity in his hands.” Evidently Callista was still guarded by a set of completely involuntary psi reflexes, reflexes she could not control… and which made no differentiation between attempted rape and the tenderest love.

Damon said, “I’ve got to put a few stitches into Andrew’s forehead, Elli. Stay with Callista, don’t leave her for a moment.” He caught Ellemir’s eye, saying gravely, “Do you understand how important that is?”

She nodded. Andrew suddenly noticed that she was naked too, and seemed quite unconscious of it. After a moment, as if his awareness roused it in her, she turned away and slipped into a robe of Callista’s that was hanging on a chair, then sat down beside her sister, holding her hand tightly.

“Come along, let me stitch that cut,” Damon said. In the other half of the suite Damon got into a robe, unhurriedly went for a small kit in his bathroom, gestured to Andrew to sit under the lamp. He sponged the cut with something cold and wet which numbed it a little, then said, “Keep still. This may hurt a bit.” As a matter of fact it hurt far more than that, but was over so quickly that almost before Andrew had time to flinch Damon was sterilizing the needle in a candle flame and putting it away. He poured Andrew a drink, got himself one, and sat down across from him, looking at him thoughtfully. “If the other injury bothers you much tomorrow, take a couple of hot baths. Damn it, Andrew, what possessed you? To try that now, without even asking—”

“What the hell is it to you when — or whether — I sleep with my wife?”

“The answer to that,” Damon said, “would seem self-evident. You interrupted us at a critical moment, you know. I would have slammed down a barrier, but I thought it might help Callista. As it was, if I weren’t Tower-trained, we’d both have been badly hurt. I did get the backlash, so it is my business, you see. Besides,” he added, more gently, “I care a lot about Callista, and you too.”

“I thought she was simply afraid. Because she had been sheltered, protected, conditioned to virginity—”

Damon swore. “Zandru’s hells, how can things like this happen? All four of us telepaths, and not one of us with the sense to sit down and talk things over honestly! It’s my fault. I knew, but it never occurred to me that you didn’t. I thought Leonie had told you; she evidently thought I had. And I certainly thought Callista would warn you before trying — well, hell, it’s done, it can’t be undone now.”

Andrew felt total failure, total despair. “It’s no good, is it, Damon? I’m no good to Callie or anyone else. Shall I just… take myself quietly out of her life? Go away, stop trying, stop tormenting her?”

Damon reached out and gripped him hard. He said urgently, “Do you want her to die? Do you know how close she is to death? She can kill herself now with a thought, as easily as she almost killed you! She has no one else, nothing else, and she can put herself out of life with a single thought. Do you want to do that to her?”

“God, no!”

“I believe you,” Damon said after a minute, “but you’ll have to make her believe it.” He hesitated. “I have to know. Did you penetrate her, even slightly?”

Andrew’s outrage was so great that Damon flinched, even before he said, “Look, Damon, what the hell—”

Damon sighed. “I could ask Callie, but I thought I might spare her that.”

Andrew looked at the floor. “I’m not sure. Everything’s… blurred.”

“I think if you had, you’d have been hurt worse,” Damon said.

Andrew said, with a flare of uncontrollable bitterness, “I didn’t know she was hating it so much!”

Damon laid a hand on the Terran’s shoulder. “She wasn’t. Don’t let this spoil the memory of what was good. That part was real.” He added, after a moment, “I know; I was there, remember? I’m sorry if that bothers you, but it happens, you know, with telepaths, and we’ve all been linked by matrix. It was real, and Callista loves you, and wants you. As for the rest, she simply miscalculated, must have thought she was free of it. You see, most Keepers, if they are going to leave, marry, fall in love, usually leave the Tower before their conditioning is complete. Or they find they can’t work without too much trouble and pain, so their conditioning comes unstuck and they give up and leave. The training for a Keeper is awful. Two out of three girls who try it can’t even manage it. And once it is complete, and properly done, it’s very rare for it to disappear. When Leonie gave Callista leave to marry, she must have thought it was one of those rare cases, otherwise Callista would not have wished to leave the Tower.”

Andrew turned white as he listened. “What can be done about it?”

“I don’t know,” Damon said honestly. “I’ll do what I can.” He passed a weary hand over his forehead. “I wish I had some kirian to give her. But for now, what she needs is reassurance, and only you can give her that. Come and try.”

Ellemir had washed Callista’s tear-stained face, combed and braided her hair, and put her into her nightgown. When she saw Andrew, her eyes filled with tears again.

“Andrew, I did try! Don’t hate me! I nearly… nearly…”

“I know.” He took her fingers in his. “You should have told me exactly what it was that you were afraid of, love.”

“I couldn’t.” Her eyes were full of guilt and pain.

“I meant what I said before, Callista. I love you, and I can wait for you. As long as I have to.”

She clung tightly to his hand. Damon bent over her. He said, “Elli will sleep with you tonight. I want her close to you all the time. Are you in any pain?”

She nodded, biting her lip. Damon said, “Ellemir, when you dressed her, were there any burns or blackening?”

“Nothing serious. A blackened patch on the inside of one thigh,” Ellemir said, putting aside the nightgown, and Andrew, hovering, looked with horror at the scorched mark on the flesh. Did the psi force strike like lightning, then? Damon said, “No scarring, probably. But, damn it, Callie, I hate to have to ask, but…”

“No,” she said quickly, “he did not penetrate me.”

Damon nodded, obviously relieved, and Andrew, looking at the blackened burn mark, suddenly realized, in horror, why Damon had asked.

“Andrew’s not hurt much, a bump on the head, no concussion. But if you’re having pains, I’d better check you.” At her half-voiced protest he said gently, “Callista, I was monitoring psi mechanics when you were only a child. That’s right, lie on your back. Not so much light, Elli, I can’t see much in this light.” Andrew thought that sounded odd, but as Ellemir dimmed the lights, Damon nodded approval. He beckoned Andrew close. “I wish to hell I’d had the sense to show you this a long time ago.”

He moved his fingertips over Callista’s body, not touching her, about an inch above her nightgown. Andrew blinked, seeing a soft glowing light follow his fingertips, faint swirling currents, pulsing here and there with dim clouded spirals of color.

“Look. Here are the main nerve channels — wait, I want you to see a normal pattern first. Ellemir?”

Obediently she stretched out beside Callista. Damon said, “Look, the main currents, the channels on either side of the spine, positive and negative, and branching out from them, the main centers: forehead, throat, solar plexus, womb, base of the spine, genitals.” He pointed out the spiraling centers of bright light. “Ellemir is an adult, sexually awakened woman,” he said with quiet detachment. “If she were a virgin, the currents would be the same, only these lower centers would be less bright, carrying less energy. This is the normal pattern. In a Keeper, these currents have been altered, by conditioning, to cut off the impulses from the lower channels, the same channels which carry sexual energies and psi force. In a normal telepath — Ellemir has a considerable amount of laran — the two forces arise together at puberty and after certain upheavals, which we call threshold sickness, settle down to work selectively, carrying one or the other as the need arises, and all powered by the same force in the mind. Sometimes the channels overload. Remember how I warned you when we worked in the matrix about temporary impotence? But in a Keeper, the psi forces handled are so enormous that a two-way flow would be too strong for any single body to handle unless the channels are kept completely clear for psi force. So the upper channels are separated from the lower ones, which handle sexual vitality, and there are no backflows. What we have here” — he gestured to Callista, and Andrew was absurdly reminded of a lecture-demonstrator in anatomy — “is a major overload on the channels. Normally the psi forces flow around the sexual centers, without involving them. But look here.” He gestured, showing Andrew that Callista’s lower vital centers, so clear in Ellemir, were dully luminous, pulsing like inflamed wounds, a heavy, unhealthy, sluggish swirling. “There has been sexual awakening and stimulation, but the channels which would normally carry off those impulses have been blocked and short-circuited by the Keeper’s training.” Gently he laid his hands against her body, touching one of the swirling currents. There was a definite, audible snap, and Callista moaned.

“That hurt? I was afraid so,” Damon apologized. “And I can’t even clear the channels. There’s no kirian in the house, is there? You’d never be able to stand the pain, otherwise.”

This was all Greek to Andrew, but he could see the turgid, dull-red swirl which, in Callista, replaced the smooth luminous pulses he could see in Ellemir’s body.

“Don’t worry about it now,” Damon said. “It may clear itself after you’ve slept.”

Callista said faintly, “I think I could sleep better with Andrew holding me.”

Damon replied compassionately, “I know how you feel, breda, but it wouldn’t be wise. Once you have actually begun responding to him, there are two conflicting sets of reflexes trying to work at once.” He turned to Andrew, with grave emphasis. “I don’t want you to touch her, not at all, until the channels are clear again!” He added sternly to Callista, “That means both of you.”

Ellemir got into bed beside Callista, covered them both. Andrew noticed that the swirling luminous channels had faded to invisibility again and wondered how Damon had made them visible. Damon, picking up the thought, said, “No trick, I’ll show you how it’s done sometime. You have enough laran for that. Why don’t you get into Callista’s bed and try to sleep? You look as if you need it. I’m going to stay here and monitor Callista until I know she’s not going into crisis.”

Andrew lay down in Callista’s bed. It smelled, still, with the faint fragrance of her hair, the scent she always used, a delicate flowery perfume. For a time he lay awake in restless misery, thinking that he had done this to Callista. She had been right all along! He could see Damon, silent in the armchair, brooding, silent, watching over them, and it seemed for a moment that he saw Damon not as a physical being, but as a network of magnetic currents, electrical fields, a network, a crisscross of energies. At last he fell into a restless doze.

Andrew slept little that night. His head ached unendurably, and every separate nerve in his body seemed to be screaming with tension. Now and then he started awake, hearing Callista moan or cry out in her sleep, and he could not help nightmarishly reliving his failure. It was getting light outside when he saw Damon slip quietly from his chair and go toward his own room. Andrew slid out of bed and followed him. Damon, in the half-light looked exhausted and grave. “Couldn’t you sleep either, kinsman?”

“I was asleep for a while.” Andrew thought that Damon looked terrible. Damon picked up the thought and grinned wryly. “Riding all day yesterday, and all the hullabaloo last night… but I’m fairly sure she’s not going into crisis or convulsions this time, so I can slip away and get a nap.” He turned into his own half of the suite. “How do you feel?”

“I’ve got the great-granddaddy of all splitting headaches!”

“And a few other aches and pains, I should imagine,” Damon said. “Even so, you were lucky.”

Lucky! Andrew heard that, incredulous, but Damon did not explain. He went to the window and flung it wide, standing in the icy blast and looking out into the white flurry of snow. “Damn. Looks like we’re set for a blizzard. Worst thing that could possibly happen. Now, especially, with Callista—”

“Why?”

“Because, man, when it snows in the Kilghard Hills, it snows. We could be weathered in for thirty to forty days. I had hoped to send to Neskaya Tower for some kirian — I don’t think Callista’s made any yet — in case I have to clear her channels. But no man could travel in this; I couldn’t ask it.” He slumped, exhausted, on the windowsill. Andrew exclaimed, seeing the icy wind stirring his hair, “Don’t go to sleep there, damn it, you’ll get pneumonia,” and closed the casement. “Go and rest, Damon. I can look after Callista. She’s my wife, and my responsibility.”

Damon sighed. “But with Esteban disabled I’m Callie’s nearest kinsman. And I put you two in rapport under the matrix. That makes it my responsibility; by the oath I took.” He stumbled, felt Andrew catch him by the shoulder and support him upright. He said blurrily, “But I’ll have to try to sleep or I won’t be able to help if she needs me.”

Andrew steered him toward the tumbled bed, and he caught a thread of Andrew’s thought, a troubled memory, conscience-stung, that Andrew had been for a time voyeur to Damon’s lovemaking with Ellemir. Damon wondered fuzzily why that bothered Andrew, was too tired to care. He crawled into the disheveled bed. He forced himself to clarity for a moment. “Stay near the women. Let Callista sleep, but if she wakes and she’s in pain, call me.” He rolled over on his back, trying to see the Terran’s face clear before his blurring eyes. “Don’t touch Callista… damnably important… not even if she asks you to. It could be dangerous…”

“I’ll take my chances, Damon.”

“Dangerous for her,” Damon said urgently, thinking, damn it, if I can’t trust him I’ll have to go back…

Andrew, picking up the thought, said, “All right, I promise. But I want you to explain that, when you can,” and Damon said, with a weary sigh, “That’s a promise,” and let himself fall into the blankness of sleep. Andrew stood beside him, watching the drawn lines of weariness smooth into sleep, then covered his friend carefully and went away. He instructed Damon’s body-servant to let him sleep, then, on an impulse, since Ellemir was always awake so early, and it would be awkward to have someone come looking for her, he told the man to send a message to the hall-steward that they had all been awake very late and no one was to disturb them until sent for.

He went back and lay down on Callista’s bed. After a time he fell asleep again. He woke suddenly, aware that he had slept for hours. It was daylight but still dark, the snow blowing and flurrying past the windows. Callista and Ellemir were lying side by side in his bed, but as he watched, Ellemir sat .up, crawled carefully over Callista and tiptoed to his side.

“Where is Damon?”

“Sleeping, I hope.”

“Has no one sent for me?” Andrew explained what he had done, and she thanked him. “I must go dress. I will use Callista’s bath if you don’t mind, I don’t want to disturb Damon. I’ll borrow something of hers to wear too.” Moving like a shadow, she collected clothes from Callista’s wardrobe. Andrew watched with unfocused resentment — would she rather disturb Callista than Damon? — but evidently the familiar presence of her twin did not penetrate Callista’s heavy sleep.

Without volition, Andrew recalled Ellemir standing over Callista last night, naked and unconcerned about it. He supposed that if someone was used to having his or her mind completely open, physical nakedness would not mean all that much. But he found himself recalling a moment last night when it seemed that it was Ellemir in his arms, warm, willing, responding to him as Callista could not… Disquited, he turned away. Scalding heat flooded his face, and a twinge in his body reminded him painfully of last night’s fiasco. Did Ellemir know, he wondered; that he was part of her lovemaking, was she aware of him too?

Ellemir watched him for a moment with a troubled smile, then, biting her lip, went into the bath, trailing an armful of blue and white linen.

Andrew, fighting for composure, looked down at his sleeping wife. She looked pale and tired, with great dark circles like bruises under her closed eyes. She was lying on her side, one arm partly covering her face, and Andrew recalled, with surging pain, how he had seen her lying like that, in the dim light of the overworld. Prisoner in the catmen’s hands, her body in the dark caves of Corresanti, she had come to him in spirit, in sleep; bruised, bleeding, exhausted, terrified. And he could do nothing for her. His helplessness had maddened him then; now he felt again all the torment of helplessness, at her lonely ordeal.

Slowly she opened her eyes.

“Andrew?”

“I’m here with you, my love.” He saw pain move visibly across her face, like a shadow. “How are you feeling, darling?”

“Terrible,” she said with a wry grimace. “As if I had been caught in a stampede of wild oudrakhi.” Who but Callista, he wondered, could have made a joke at this moment? “Where is Damon?”

“Sleeping, love. And Ellemir went to bathe and dress.”

She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. “And I had thought today I would be truly a bride. Evanda be praised that it was Damon and Ellemir who heard us, and not that brat Dezi with his taunts.” Andrew flinched at the thought. It had been Dezi’s jeering, indeed, which had prompted the fiasco.

He said, with emphasis, “I wish I had broken his damn neck!”

She sighed, shaking her head. “No, no, it was not his doing. We are both grown people, we know enough to make our own decisions. What he said was a rudeness. Among telepaths, you learn very quickly not to pry into such matters, and if you should learn, unwillingly, of such a private matter, there are courtesies. It was unforgivable, but he is not to blame for what happened after, my love. It was our choice.”

“My choice,” he said, lowering his eyes. She reached for his hand. Her small fingers felt cold. Again he saw the pain, moving in her face, and said, “Damon said I was to call him if you woke in pain, Callista.”

“Not yet. Let him sleep. He wearied himself for us. Andrew—”

He knelt beside her and she held out her arms. “Andrew; hold me; just for a moment. Let me lie in your arms… just let me feel you close to me…”

He moved in swift response to the words, to the appeal in them, thinking, that even after last night, she still loved him, still wanted him. Then, remembering, he drew back. He said, heartwrung, “My darling, I promised Damon I would not touch you.”

“Oh, Damon, Damon, always Damon,” she said frantically. “I’m so sick and miserable, I just want you to hold me—” She broke off and let her eyes fall shut again with a forlorn sigh. He ached with the longing to fold her in his arms, not now with desire — that had receded very far — simply to hold her close, protect her, soothe her, comfort her pain. But his promise held him motionless, and she said at last, “Oh, I suppose he’s right, damn him. He usually is.” But he saw the pain again behind her eyes; aging her, drawing her face into hollows of exhaustion. Somehow, and the thought horrified him, he could think only of Leonie’s face, worn, drawn, weary, old.

Again memory surged over him, the moment last night when for a moment they had been fully submerged in the lovemaking of Damon and Ellemir. She had wanted it, welcomed it, begun to respond to him, only after that full sharing with the other couple. Again the harsh throb of pain in his groins, the agonizing memory of failure, blurred the excitement. His love for Callista was not an atom less, but he felt an awful, indefinable sense that something had been spoiled. A breath of intrusion, as if Damon and Ellemir, dear and close as they were, had somehow come between himself and Callista.

Callista’s eyes were filled with tears. In another moment, heedless of his promise, he would have caught her into his arms, but Ellemir, fresh and rosy from her bath, dressed in something he had seen Callista wearing, came back into the room. She saw that Callista was awake and went directly to her.

“Feeling better, breda?”

Callista shook her head. “No. Worse, if anything.”

“Can you get up, love?”

“I don’t know.” Callista moved tentatively. “I suppose I must. Will you call my maid, Elli?”

“No, I won’t. No one else is to lay a finger on you, Damon said, and I won’t have those silly girls gossiping. I’ll look after you, Callie. Andrew, you had better tell Damon she’s awake.” He found Damon already up, shaving in the luxurious bath which duplicated the one in their half of the suite. He gestured to Andrew to come in. “Does Callista seem any better?”

Then he noticed Andrew’s hesitation. “Hell, I never thought… are there nudity taboos in the Empire?”

Andrew felt oddly that it was he and not Damon who ought to be embarrassed. “Some cultures, yes. Mine among them. But I’m in your world, so I guess it’s up to me to get used to your customs, not you to mine.”

It was stupid to feel embarrassed, Andrew knew, or angry, outraged at the memory of Damon last night, standing naked over Callista, looking down on her fragile bare battered body.

Damon shrugged, saying casually, “There aren’t many taboos like that here. A few among the cristoforos, or for the presence of nonhumans or across generations. I wouldn’t willingly appear naked in a group of my father’s contemporaries, or Dom Esteban’s, for instance. It’s not forbidden, though, certainly not embarrassing the way you seem to be embarrassed. I wouldn’t walk out naked among a group of the maid-servants for no reason either, but if the house was afire, or something, I wouldn’t hesitate. A man my own age, married to my wife’s sister…” He shrugged helplessly. “It never occurred to me.”

Andrew realized he should have guessed last night, when Ellemir never seemed to notice.

Damon splashed water on his face, followed it with some green, pleasant-smelling herbal lotion. The smell reminded Andrew poignantly of Callista’s little still-room. Damon laughed, shrugging his shirt over his shoulders. He said, “As for Elli, you ought to be relieved. It means she has accepted you as part of the family. Would you want her to be embarrassed about you, and carefully keep herself covered in your presence, as if you were a stranger?”

“Not unless you would.” But did that mean she did not see Andrew as a male at all, he wondered. A subtle way of unmanning him?

“Give yourself time,” Damon said, “it will all sort itself out.” He was getting unconcernedly into his clothes. “Is it still snowing?”

“Harder than ever.”

Damon went to look, but when he cracked the casement to look out, the howling wind tore through the room like a hurricane. He hastily slammed it shut. “Callie’s awake? Who’s with her? Good, I’d hoped Ellemir would have sense enough to keep the maids away. In her condition, the presence of any nontelepath would be pretty nearly unendurable. That’s why we never had human servants in the Towers, you know.” He turned to the door. “Have any of you had anything to eat?”

“Not yet,” Andrew said, realizing that it was past noon and he was very hungry.

“Go down, will you, and ask Rhodri to send something up. I think we all ought to stay near Callista,” he said, then hesitated. “I’m going to put off a messy job on you. You’ll have to go and give Dom Esteban some kind of explanation. One look at me and he’d know the whole story — he’s known me since I was nine years old. I don’t think he’ll probe you for explanations. You’re enough of a stranger that he still feels a little reserved with you. Do you really mind? I can’t face explaining to him.”

“I don’t mind,” Andrew said. He did, but he knew that some kind of explanation to the crippled Lord Alton was no more than courtesy. It was long past the hour when Ellemir should have been about the house, and Dom Esteban was accustomed to Callista’s company.

He told the hall-steward that they had all been up very late and would breakfast in their rooms. Remembering what Damon had said about the presence of nontelepaths, he stipulated that no one should go into the suite, but the food should be set outside. The man said, “Certainly, Dom Ann’dra,” without a nicker of curiosity, as if the request were commonplace.

In the Great Hall, Dom Esteban was in his wheeled-chair by the window, the guardsman Caradoc keeping him company. Andrew saw with relief that Dezi was nowhere to be seen. Dom Esteban and Caradoc were playing a board game something like chess that Damon had once tried to teach Andrew. It was called castles and had pawns of carved crystal which were not set in order on the board but shaken at random and moved from the spot where they fell, according to certain complex rules. Dom Esteban took a red crystal piece from the board, grinned triumphantly at Caradoc, then looked with raised eyes at Andrew.

“Good morning, or do I mean good evening? I trust you slept well?”

“Well enough, sir, but Callista is… is a little indisposed. And Ellemir is staying with her.”

“And you’re both staying with them, quite right and proper,” said Dom Esteban, grinning.

“If there is anything which should be done, Father-in-law… ?”

“In this?” The old man gestured at the snowstorm. “Nothing, no need to apologize.”

Andrew remembered that the old man was also a powerful telepath. If last night’s disturbance had disrupted Damon and Ellemir even in their marriage bed, had it disturbed the old man too? But if so, not a flicker of the Alton lord’s eyelids betrayed it. He said, “Give Callista my love, and tell her I hope she is well soon. And tell Ellemir to look after her sister. I have plenty of company, so I can manage without any of you for a day or so.”

Caradoc made some remark in the thick mountain dialect about the blizzard season being the right time to stay indoors and enjoy the company of one’s wife. Dom Esteban guffawed, but the joke was a little obscure for Andrew. He was grateful to the old man, but he felt raw-edged, indecently exposed. No one with a scrap of telepathic force could have slept through all that last night, he felt. It must have waked telepaths up all the way to Thendara!

Upstairs, food had been brought, and Damon had carried it to Callista’s bedside. Callista was in bed again, looking white and worn. Ellemir was coaxing her to eat, in small bites as she would have coaxed a sick child. Damon made room for Andrew at his side, handed him a hot roll. “We didn’t wait for you. I was hungry after last night. The servants probably think we’re having an orgy up here!”

Callista said, with a small wry laugh, “I wish they were right. It would certainly be an improvement over present conditions.” She shook her head as Ellemir proffered her a bite of hot bread, spread with the aromatic mountain honey. “No. really, I can’t.”

Damon watched her with disquiet. She had drunk a few sips of milk, but had refused to eat, as if the very effort of swallowing was too much for her. He said at last, “You’ve taken over the still-room, Callista, have you made any kirian?”

She shook her head. “I’d been putting it off, and there’s no one here who needs it, with Valdir in Nevarsin. And it’s troublesome to make, having to be distilled three times.”

“I know. I’ve never made it, but I’ve watched it being done,” Damon said, looking sharply at her as she shifted weight. “You’re still in pain?”

She nodded, saying in a small voice, “I’m bleeding.”

“That, too?” Wasn’t she to be spared anything? “How much before the regular time is it? If it’s only a few days, it might be simply the shock.”

She shook her head. “You still don’t understand. There is no… no regular time for me. This is the first time—”

He stared at her in shock, almost disbelieving. He said, “But you had turned thirteen when you first went to the Tower, were your woman’s cycles not yet established?”

It seemed to Andrew that she looked embarrassed, almost ashamed. “No. Leonie said it was a good thing that they had not yet begun.”

Damon said angrily, “She should have waited for that to begin your training!”

Callista looked away, turning red. “She told me… beginning so young, some of the normal physical processes would be disrupted. But she said it would make it easier for me if I was spared that altogether.”

Damon said, “I thought that was a barbarism from the Ages of Chaos! For generations it has been taken for granted that a Keeper should be a woman grown!”

Callista rushed to the defense of her foster-mother. “She told me that six other girls had tried, and failed, to make the adjustments, that it would be easier for me, with less pain and trouble…”

Damon frowned, sipping at a glass of wine, staring into the depths as if he had seen something unpleasant there.

“Tell me, and think carefully. In the Tower, were you given any kind of drug to suppress your menses?”

“No, it was never necessary.”

“I cannot think it of Leonie, but did she ever work with a matrix, on your body currents?”

“Only in the ordinary pattern-training, I think,” Callista said doubtfully. Andrew broke in. “Look here, what is this all about?”

Damon’s face was grim. “In the old days, a Keeper in training was sometimes neutered — Marisela said something like that, remember? I cannot believe — I cannot believe,” he added with emphasis, “that Leonie would have blighted your womanhood that way!”

Callista said, stricken, “Oh, no, Damon! Oh, no! Leonie loves me, she would never…” But her voice faded out. She was afraid.

Leonie had been so sure that her choice was lifelong, had been so reluctant to release her -

Andrew reached for Callista’s cold hand. Damon said, frowning, “No, I know you were not neutered, of course not. If your cycles have come on, your clock is running again. But it was done sometimes in the old days, when they felt virginity was less of a burden to a girl still immature.”

“But now it’s begun, she’ll be all right, won’t she?” Ellemir asked anxiously, and Damon said, “We’ll hope so.” Perhaps the arousal of last night, abortive as it had been, had reawakened some of those blocked pathways in her body; if she had suddenly matured, it might be that her illness and physical discomfort might be the normal troubles of early development. He remembered from his years in the Tower that young women in Keeper’s training, or for that matter any women working with psi mechanics above the level of monitor, were subject to recurrent and occasionally excruciating menstrual difficulties. Callista, following his thought, laughed a little and said, “Well, I have handed out golden-flower tea and such remedies to other women at Arilinn, and always thought myself lucky that I was immune to their miseries. It seems I have joined the ranks of normal women in that respect at least! I know we have golden-flower tea in the still-room; Ferrika gives it to half the women on the estate. Perhaps a dose of that will be all I need.”

Ellemir said, “I’ll go and fetch you some,” and after awhile she came back with a small cup of some steaming hot brew. It had a pungent herbal smell, strongly aromatic. Callista’s voice held, for a moment, an echo of her old gaiety.

“Would you believe I have never tasted this? I hope it’s not too dreadful a potion!”

Ellemir laughed. “It would serve you right if it were, you wretched girl, if you hand out such decoctions with no idea of what they taste like! No, actually, it’s rather nice tasting. I never minded taking it. It will make you sleepy, though, so lie down and let it do its work.”

Obediently Callista drank off the steaming stuff and settled down under her blanket. Ellemir brought some needlework and sat beside her, and Damon said, “Come along, Andrew, they’ll be all right now,” and let him out of the room.

Downstairs, in the stone-floored still-room, Damon began to look through Callista’s supply of herbs, essences, distilling equipment. Andrew, looking at the oddly shaped flasks, the mortars and pestles and the bottles ranged on shelves, the bunches of dried herbs, leaves, stalks, pods, flowers, seeds, asked, “Are these all drugs and medicines?”

“Oh, no,” Damon said absently, pulling a drawer open. “These” — he gestured to some crushed seeds — “are cooking spices, and she makes incense to sweeten the air, and some cosmetic lotions and perfumes. None of the stuff you can buy in the towns is half as good as what’s made here by the old recipes.”

“What was that stuff Ellemir gave her?”

Damon shrugged. “Golden-flower? It’s a smooth muscle tonic, good for cramps and spasms of all kinds. It can’t hurt her; they give it to pregnant women and to babies with the colic too.” But, he wondered, frowning, if it could help Callista. Such serious interference with the physical processes… how could Leonie have done such a thing?

Andrew picked up the thought, as clearly as if Damon had spoken it aloud. “I knew Keepers underwent some physical changes. But this?”

“I am shocked too,” said Damon, turning a bunch of white thornleaf in his hands. “It’s certainly not customary these days. I had believed it was against the laws. Of course Leonie’s intentions couldn’t have been better. You saw the alterations in the nerve currents. Some of the girls do have a dreadful time with their woman’s cycles, and Leonie probably could not bear to see her suffering. But what a price to pay!” He scowled and began opening drawers again. “If Callista had freely chosen… but Leonie didn’t tell her! That is what I find hard to understand, or to forgive!”

Andrew felt an insidious dismay, a physical horror. Why should it, after all, shock him so much? Physical modification was not, after all, anything so unheard of. Most of the women who crewed Empire starships — they were made sterile by deep space radiations anyway — were spared the nuisance of menstruation. Hormone treatments made it unnecessary for women not actively engaged in childbearing. Why should it shock him so? It wasn’t shocking, except that Damon found it so! Would he ever get used to this goldfish-bowl life? Couldn’t he even think his own thoughts?

Damon was turning over bunches of herbs. He said, “You must understand. Callista is past twenty. She’s a grown woman who has been doing difficult, highly technical work as a matrix mechanic for years. She’s an experienced professional in the most demanding work on Darkover. Now none of her previous training, none of her skills, nothing is any good to her at all. She’s struggling with deconditioning, and with sexual awakening, and she has all the emotional problems of any bride. And now, on top of all that, I discover that physically she’s been held in the state of a girl of twelve or thirteen! Evanda! If I had only known…”

Andrew looked at the floor. More than once, since the terrible fiasco of last night, he had felt as he imagined a rapist must feel. If Callista was, physically, an unawakened girl in her early teens — He felt a spasm of horror.

Damon said gently, “Don’t! Callista didn’t know it herself. Remember, for six years she’s been functioning as an adult, experienced professional.” Yet he knew this was not entirely true, either. Callista must have been aware of the enormous and ineradicable gulf between her and the other women. Leonie might have spared her protegeé some physical suffering, but at what price?

Well, it was a good sign that the menstrual cycle had spontaneously reinstated itself. Perhaps other barriers would disappear with nothing more than time and patience. He picked up a bunch of dried blossoms and cautiously sniffed. “Good, here we are. Kireseth — no, don’t smell it, Andrew, it does funny things to the human brain.” He felt the faint guilt of memory. The taboo against the kireseth, among psi workers, was absolute, and he felt as if he had committed a crime in handling it. He said, speaking more to himself than Andrew, “I can make kirian from this. I don’t know how to distill it as they do in Arilinn, but I can make a tincture…” His mind was busy with possibilities: a strong solution of the resins dissolved out in alcohol. Perhaps with Ferrika’s help he could make a single distillation. He put the stuff down, fancying that the smell of it was going to the roots of his brain, destroying controls, breaking barriers between mind and body…

Andrew paced restlessly in the still-room. His own mind was filled with horrors. “Damon, Callista must have known what could happen.”

“Of course she knew,” said Damon, not really listening to him. “She learned that before she was fifteen years old, that no man can touch a Keeper.”

“And if I could hurt or frighten her so terribly — Damon!” Suddenly he was overcome by the horror and revulsion which had gripped him last night. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you know what she wanted me to do? She asked me to… to knock her unconscious and rape her when she… when she could not resist.” He tried to convey some of the horror that had awakened in him; but Damon only looked thoughtful.

“It just might have worked, at that,” he said. “It was intelligent of Callista to think of it. It shows she has some grasp of the problems involved.”

Andrew could not keep back a horrified “Good God! And you can say it like that, so calmly.”

Damon, turning, suddenly realized that the younger man was at the edge of his endurance. He said gently, “Andrew, you do know what saved you from being killed, don’t you?”

“I don’t know anything any more. And what I do know doesn’t help much!” He felt ragged despair. “Do you really think I could have—”

“No, no, of course not, bredu. I understand why you couldn’t. I don’t think any decent man could!” Gently, he laid a hand on Andrew’s wrist. “Andrew, what saved you — saved you both — was the fact that she wasn’t afraid. That she loved you, wanted you. So all she hit you with was the physical reflex she couldn’t control. She didn’t even knock you out; it was hitting your head on the furniture that did that. If she had been terrified and fighting you, if you had really been trying to take her unwilling, can you imagine what she would have thrown at you?” he demanded. “Callista is one of the most powerful telepaths on Darkover, and trained as a Keeper in Arilinn! If she had hated it, if she had thought of it as rape, if she had felt any… any fear or revulsion against your desire, you’d have been dead!” He repeated for emphasis, “You’d be dead, dead, dead!”

But she was afraid, Andrew thought, until Damon and Ellemir made contact… It was the awareness of Ellemir’s pleasure that made her want to share it! Even more disturbing was the thought of Damon, aware of Callista as he had been aware of Ellemir. Damon, sensing his distress, was for a moment shocked, experiencing it as a rebuff. They had all been so close, didn’t Andrew want to be part of what they were? He laid his hand on Andrew’s shoulder, a rare touch for a telepath, natural enough at this moment in the awareness of the intimacy they had shared. Andrew shrank from it, and Damon withdrew, troubled and a little saddened. Must he stay at such a distance? How long? How long? Was he brother or stranger?

But he said gently, “I know it’s new to you, Andrew. I keep forgetting that I grew up as a telepath, taking this sort of thing for granted. It will be all right, you’ll see.”

All right? Andrew asked himself. To know that only the fact that he had become an involuntary voyeur kept his wife from killing him? To know that Damon — and Ellemir — both took this kind of thing for granted, expected it, welcomed it? Did Damon resent his wanting Callista all to himself? He remembered the suggestion that Callista had made, remembered the feel of Ellemir in his arms, warm, responsive — as Callista could not be. Shocked, in desperate confusion, he turned away from Damon, blundering with horror to get out of the room. He was overloaded with shame and horror. He wanted — needed — to get away, anywhere, anywhere out of here, away from Damon’s too revealing touch, from the man who could read his most intimate thoughts. He did not know that he was virtually ill, with a very real illness known as culture shock. He only knew he felt sick, and the sickness took the form of furious rage against Damon. The heavy scent of the herbs made him afraid he would vomit. He said thickly, “I’ve got to get some air,” and pushed the door open, stumbling through the deserted kitchens and into the yard. He stood with the heavy snow falling all around him, and damned the planet where he had come and the chances that had brought him here.

I should have died when the plane went down. Callie doesn’t need me… I’m never going to do anything but hurt her.

Damon said behind him, “Andrew, come and talk to me. Don’t go off like this alone and try to shut it all out.”

“Oh, God,” Andrew said, drawing a breath like a sob, “I have to. I can’t talk any more. I can’t take it any more. Let me alone, damn it, can’t you just let me alone for a little while?”

He felt Damon’s presence like a sharp physical pain, a pressure, a compulsion. He knew he was hurting Damon; refused to know, to turn, to look… Finally Damon said very gently, “All right, Ann’dra. I know you’ve had all you can take. A little while, then. But not too long.” And Andrew knew without turning that Damon was gone. No, he thought with a shudder of horror, Damon had never been there at all, was still back in the little stone-floored still-room.

He stood in the courtyard, heavy snow blowing around him, its fury only a little abated by the enclosing walls. Callista. He reached for the reassurance of her touch, but she was not there, only a faint pulse, restless, and he dared not disturb her drugged sleep.

What can I do? What can I do? To his dismay and horror he began to weep, alone in the wilderness of snow. He had never felt so alone in his life, not even when the plane went down and he found himself alone on a strange planet, beneath a strange sun, in trackless unmapped mountains…

Everything I ever knew is gone, useless, meaningless or worse. My friends are strangers, my wife the most alien of all. My world is gone, renounced. I can never go back; they think me dead.

He thought, I hope I catch pneumonia and die, then, aware of the childishness of that, realized he was in very real danger. Drearily, not from any sense of self-preservation, but the remnant of vague duty, he turned and went inside. The house looked alien, strange, not a place where any Terran could manage to live. Had it ever seemed welcoming, home? He looked with profound alienation around the empty hall, glad it was empty. Dom Esteban must be taking his midday rest. The maids were gossiping in soft voices. He sank down wearily on a bench, let his head rest in his arms, and stayed there, not asleep, but in retreat, hoping that if he stayed very quiet it would all go away somehow and not be real.

A long time later someone put a drink in his hands. He swallowed it gratefully, found another, and another, blurring his senses. He heard himself babbling, pouring it all out to a suddenly sympathetic ear. There were more drinks. He knew, and welcomed it, when he passed out.

There was a voice in his mind, worming its way past his barriers, deep into his unconscious, past his resistance.

No one wants you here. No one needs you here. Why not go away now, while you can, before something dreadful happens. Go away now, back where you came from, back to your own world. You’ll be happier there. Go now. Go away now. No one will know or care.

Andrew knew there was some flaw in his reasoning. Damon had given him some good reason why he should not go, then he remembered that he was angry with Damon.

The voice persisted, gentle, cajoling:

You think Damon is your friend. Don’t trust Damon. He will use you, when he needs help, and then turn on you. There was something familiar about the voice, but it wasn’t a voice at all. It was somehow inside his mind! He tried in panic to shut it out, but it was so soothing.

Go away now. Go away now. No one needs you here. You will be happy when you go back to your own people. You will never be happy here.

With fumbling steps, Andrew went out into the side hall. He found his riding cloak, fastened it around his shoulders. Someone was helping him, buckling it around him. Damon, was it? Damon knew he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t trust Damon. He would be happy with his own people. He would get back to Thendara, back to the Trade City and the Terran Empire where his mind was his own…

Go now. No one wants you here.

Even thickly drunk and blurred as he was, the violence of the storm struck him hard enough to take his breath away. He was about to turn back, but the voice pounded inside his head.

Go now. Go away. No one wants you here. You’ve failed. You’re only hurting Callista. Go away, go to your own people.

His boots floundered in the snow, but he kept on, lifting and dropping them with dogged determination. Callista doesn’t need you. He was drunker than he realized. He could hardly walk. He could hardly breathe, or did the flurrying snow take his breath away, snatch it, refuse to give it back?

Go away. Go back to your own people. No one needs you here.

He came a little to himself, with a final desperate attempt of self-preservation. He was alone in the storm, and the lights of Armida had vanished in the darkness. He turned desperately, stumbling, falling to his knees, realizing he was drunk, or mad. He stumbled to his feet, felt his mind blurring, fell full length in the snow. He must get up, go on, go back, get to shelter — but he was so tired.

I will just rest here for a minute … just a minute…

Darkness covered his mind and he lost consciousness.