The Forbidden Tower

Chapter Eleven

Damon felt he had never before been quite so frustrated as now. Leonie had acted for reasons which seemed good to her at the time, and he could, a little, understand her motives.

There must be a Keeper at Arilinn. All during Leonie’s life, that had been the first consideration, nothing could be allowed to supersede it. But there was no way he could explain this to Andrew.

“I’m sure if I were in your place, I should feel much the same,” he said. It was late at night Callista had dropped into an exhausted, restless sleep, but at least she was sleeping, undrugged, and Damon tried to find a shred of hope in that. “You cannot blame Leonie—”

“I can and I do!” Andrew interrupted, and Damon sighed.

“Try to understand. She did what she thought best, not only for the Towers but for Callista too, to save her the pain and suffering. She could hardly have been expected to foresee that Callista would want to marry—” He had started to say, “to marry an out-worlder.” He caught himself and stopped, but of course Andrew picked up the thought anyway. A dull red flush, half anger, half embarrassment, spread over the Terran’s face. He turned away from Damon, his face looking closed and stubborn, and Damon sighed, thinking that this had to be settled quickly or they would lose Andrew too.

The thought was bitter, almost intolerable. Since that first moment of fourfold meshing within the matrix, while Callista was still prisoner, Damon had found something he had thought irrevocably lost to him when he was sent from the Tower, the telepathic bond of the circle.

He had lost it when Leonie sent him from Arilinn, to resign himself to live without it, and then, beyond hope, he had found it again in his two girl cousins and this out-worlder… Now he would rather die than let the bond be broken again.

He said firmly, “Leonie did this, for whatever reasons, good or bad, and she must bear the responsibility for it. Callista was not strong enough to get the answer from her. But Leonie, and Leonie alone, may hold the key to her trouble.”

Andrew looked out into the black, snow-shot darkness beyond the window. “That’s no help. How far is Arilinn from here?”

“I don’t know how you would reckon the distance. We calculate it at ten days ride,” Damon said, “but I had no thought of going to her there. I shall do as Callista has done and seek her out in the overworld.” His narrowed lips sketched a bleak smile. “With Dom Esteban disabled and Domenic not yet grown, I am her nearest kinsman. I have right and responsibility to call Leonie to account.”

But who could call a Hastur to account, Hastur, and the Lady of Arilinn?

“I feel like going along with you and raising a little hell myself,” said Andrew.

“You wouldn’t know what to say to her. I promise you, Andrew, if there is an answer to be found, I’ll find it.”

“And if there isn’t?”

Damon turned away, not even wanting to think about that. Callista slept restlessly, tossing and moaning in her sleep. Ellemir was doing some needlework in an armchair, frowning over the stitches, her face bright in the oval of the lamp. Damon reached for her, feeling the quick response in her mind, a touch of reassurance and love. I need her with me, and I must go alone.

“In the other room, Andrew, we would disturb them here. Keep watch for me,” he added, leading the way into the other room, arranging himself half lying in a great chair, Andrew at his side. “Watch…”

He focused on the matrix, felt the brief, sharp shock of leaving his body, felt Andrew’s strength as he hovered briefly in the room… Then he was standing on the gray and formless plain, seeing with surprise that behind him, in the overworld, there was a landmark, a dim structure, still shadowy. Of course, he and Dezi and Andrew had built it for shelter when they worked with the frostbitten men, a refuge, a protection. My own place. I have no other now. Firmly he put that aside, searching in his bodiless formation for the glimmering beacon-light of Arilinn. Then, literally with the speed of thought, he was there, and Leonie before him, veiled.

She had been so beautiful… Again he was struck with the old love, the old longing, but he armored himself with thoughts of Ellemir. But why did Leonie veil herself from him?

“I knew when Callista came that you would not be far behind her, Damon. I know, of course, in a general way, what you want. But how can I help you, Damon?”

“You know that as well as I. It is not for myself that I need help, but for Callista.”

Leonie said, “She has failed. I was willing to release her — she has had her chance — but now she knows her only place is here. She must come back to us at Arilinn, Damon.”

“It is too late for that,” Damon said. “I think she will die first. And she is near it.” He heard his own voice tremble. “Are you saying you will see her dead before releasing her, Leonie? Is the grasp of Arilinn a death-grip, then?”

He could see the horror in Leonie, like a visible cloud, here where emotions were a solid reality. “Damon, no!” Her voice trembled. “When a Keeper is released it is because she can no longer hold the channels to a Keeper’s pattern, that they are no longer clear for psi work. I thought this could not happen with Callista, but she told me otherwise and I was willing to free her.”

“You knew you had made that impossible!” Damon accused.

“I… was not sure,” said Leonie, and the veils stirred in negation. “She said to me… she had touched him. She had… Damon, what was I to think? But now she knows otherwise. In the days when a girl was trained to Keeper before she was fullgrown, it was taken for granted that the choice was for life and there could be no return.”

“You knew this, and still made that choice for Callista?”

“What else could I do, Damon? Keepers we must have, or our world goes dark with the darkness of barbarism. I did what I must, and if Callista is even reasonably fair to me, she will admit it was with her consent.” And yet Damon heard, like an echo in Leonie’s mind, the bitter, despairing cry:

How could I consent? I was twelve years old!

Damon said angrily, “Are you saying it is hopeless, then? That Callista must return to Arilinn or die of grief?”

Leonie’s voice was uncertain; her very image in the gray world wavered. “I know that once there was a way, and the way was known. Nothing from the past can be wholly concealed. When I myself was young I knew a woman who had been treated so, and she said that a way was known to reverse this fixing of channels, but she did not tell me how and she has been dead more years than you have lived. It was known everywhere in the days when the Towers were as temples, and the Keepers as their priests. I spoke truer than I knew,” she said, abruptly putting the veil back from her ravaged face. “Had you lived in those days, Damon, you would have found your own true vocation as Keeper. You were born three hundred years too late.”

“This does me little good now, kinswoman,” Damon said. He turned aside from Leonie’s face, seeing it waver and change before him, half Leonie as she had been when he was in the Tower, when he loved her, half the aging Leonie of today, as he had seen her at his wedding. He did not want to see her face, wished she would veil herself again.

“In the days of Rafael II, when the Towers of Neskaya and Tramontana were burned to the ground, all the circles died, with the Keepers. Many, many of the old techniques were lost then, and not all of them have teen remembered or rediscovered.”

“And I am supposed to rediscover them in the next few days? You have extraordinary confidence in me, Leonie!”

“What thought has ever moved’in the mind of humankind anywhere in this universe can never be wholly lost.”

Damon said impatiently, “I am not here to argue philosophy!”

Leonie shook her head. “This is not philosophy but fact. If any thought has ever stirred the stuff of which the universe is made, that thought remains, indelible, and can be recaptured. There was a time when these things were known, and the fabric of time itself remains…”

Her image rippled, shook like a pool into which a stone had been dropped, and was gone. Damon, alone again in the endless, formless gray world, asked, How in the name of all the Gods at once can I challenge the very fabric of time? And for an instant he saw, as from a great height, the image of a man wearing green and gold, the face half concealed, and nothing clear to Damon’s eyes except a great sparkling ring on his finger. Ring or matrix? It began to move, to undulate, to give out great waves of light, and Damon felt his consciousness dimming, vanishing. He clutched at the matrix around his neck, trying desperately to orient himself in the gray overworld. Then it was gone, and he was alone in the blankness, the formless, featureless nothingness. Finally, dim on the horizon, he perceived the faint and stony shape of his own landmark, what they had built there. With utter relief, he felt his thoughts drawing him toward it, and abruptly he was back in his room at Armida, Andrew bending anxiously over him.

He blinked, trying to coordinate random impressions. Did you find an answer? He sensed the question in Andrew’s mind, but he did not know yet. Leonie had not pledged to help, to free Callista from the bondage, body and mind, to the Tower. She could not. In the overworld she could not lie, or conceal her intention. She wanted Callista to return to the Tower. She genuinely felt that Callista had had her chance at freedom and failed. Yet she could not conceal it, either, that there was an answer, and that the answer must lie in the depths of time itself. Damon shivered, with the deathly cold which seemed to lie inside his bones, clutching his warm overtunic around his shoulders. Was that the only way?

In the overworld Leonie could not tell a direct lie. Yet she did not tell him all the truth either, he sensed, because he did not know where to look for all the truth, and there was still much she was concealing. But why? Why should she need to conceal anything from him? Didn’t she know that Damon had always loved her, that — the Gods help him — he loved her still, and would never do anything to harm her? Damon dropped his face in his hands, desperately trying to pull himself together. He could not face Ellemir like this. He knew that his grief and confusion were hurting Andrew too, and Andrew didn’t even understand how.

One of the basic courtesies of a telepath, he reminded himself, was to manage your own misery so that it did not make everyone else miserable… After a moment he managed to calm himself and get his barriers back in shape. He raised his face to Andrew and said, “I think I have a hint at the answer. Not all of it, but if we have enough time, I may manage it. How long was I out?” He stood up and went to the table where the remnants of their supper still stood, pouring himself a glass of wine and sipping it slowly, letting it warm him and calm him a little.

“Hours,” Andrew said. “It must be past midnight.”

Damon nodded. He knew the time-telescoping effect of such travel. Time in the overworld seemed to run on a different scale and was not even consistent, but something else entirely, so that sometimes a brief conversation would last for hours, and at other times a lengthy journey which, subjectively, seemed to endure for days, would flash by in the blink of an eye.

Ellemir appeared in the doorway, saying anxiously, “Good, you are still awake. Damon, come and look at Callista, I don’t like the way she keeps moaning in her sleep.”

Damon set the wineglass down, steadying himself against the table with both hands. He came into the inner room. Callista seemed asleep, but her eyes were half open, and when Damon touched her she winced, evidently aware of the touch, but there was no consciousness in her eyes. Andrew’s face was drawn. “What ails her now, Damon?”

“Crisis. I was afraid of this,” Damon said, “but I thought it would happen that first night.” Quickly he moved his fingertips over her body, not touching her. “Elli, help me turn her over. No, Andrew, don’t touch her, she’s aware of you even in her sleep.” Ellemir helped him turn her, sharing with him a moment of shock as they stripped the blankets from her body. How wasted she looked! Hovering jealously near as the lines of light built up in Callista’s body, Andrew saw the dull, faded currents. But Damon knew he did not completely understand.

“I knew I should have cleared her channels at once,” he said with hopeless anger. How could he make Andrew understand? He tried, without much hope, to put it into words:

“She needs some kind of… of discharge of the energy overload. Yet the channels are blocked, and the energy is backing up — leaking, if you like — into all the rest of her system, and is beginning to affect all her life functions: her heart, her circulation, her breathing. And before I could—”

Ellemir drew a harsh gasp of apprehension. Damon saw Callista’s body stiffen, go rigid, arch backward with a weird cry. For several seconds a twitching, shuddering tremor shook all her limbs, then she collapsed and lay as if lifeless.

“God!” Andrew breathed. “What was that?”

“Convulsion,” Damon said briefly. “I was afraid of that. It means we’ve really run out of time.” He bent to check her pulse, listen to her breathing.

“I knew I should have cleared her channels.”

“Why didn’t you?” Andrew demanded.

“I told you: I have no kirian for her, and without that I don’t know if she would be able to stand the pain.”

“Do it now, while she’s unconscious,” Andrew said, and Damon shook his head.

“She has to be awake and consciously cooperating with me, or I could damage her seriously. And… and she doesn’t want me to,” he said at last.

“Why not?”

Damon said it at last, reluctantly: “Because if I clear the channels, that means she goes back to the normal state for her, a normal state for a Keeper, with the channels completely separated from the normal woman’s state — cleared for psi and fixed that way. Back to the way she was before she ever left the Tower. Completely unaware of you, sexually unable to react. In effect, back to square one.”

Andrew drew a harsh breath. “What is the alternative?”

“No alternative now, I’m afraid,” Damon said soberly. “She can’t live long like this.” He touched the cold hand briefly, then went into his room where he kept the supply of herb medicines and remedies he had been using. He hesitated, but finally chose a small vial, came back, loosened the cap and poured it between Callista’s slack lips, holding her head so that it ran down her throat.

“What is that? What are you giving her, damn it?”

“It will keep her from going into another convulsion,” Damon said, “at least for the rest of the night. And tomorrow…” But he shrank from finishing the sentence. Even when he was doing this work regularly in the Tower, he had no liking for it. He shrank from the pain he must inflict, shrank, too, from the need to face Callista with the stark knowledge that she must sacrifice what little gain had been made with her maturing, and return to the state Leonie had imposed on her, unresponsive, immature, neuter. He walked away from Callista, rinsing and replacing the vial, trying to calm himself. He sat down on the other bed, looking at Callista in dismay, and Ellemir came to his side. Andrew still knelt by Callista, and Damon thought that he should send him away, because even in sleep Callista was conscious of him, her channels reacting to his physical presence even if her mind did not. For a moment it seemed as if he could see Andrew and Callista as a series of whirling, interlocking magnetic fields, reaching out toward one another, grasping, intertwining polarities. But where the energies should reinforce and strengthen one another, the forces were swirling and backing up in Callista, draining her strength, unable to flow freely. And what was this doing to Andrew? It was draining him too. By main force Damon turned off the perception, forcing himself to come back to the surface, to see Callista just as a desperately sick woman who had collapsed after a convulsion and Andrew as a concerned man, bending over her in dread and despair.

It was for this kind of thing that Leonie sent him from the Tower, he knew. She said he was too sensitive, that it would destroy him, he recalled, and then, for the first time in his life, rebellion came. It could have been a strength, not a weakness. It could have made him even more valuable to them.

Ellemir came and sat down beside him. He stretched out a hand to her, thought, with an almost anguished need, how long it had been since they had come together in love. Yet the long discipline of the matrix mechanic held firm in his mind. It did not occur to him to think of breaking it. He drew her down, kissed her gently, and said, “I have to save my strength, darling, tomorrow is going to be demanding. Otherwise…” He laid a kiss into the palm of her hand, a private memory and a promise.

Ellemir sensed that he was pretending a cheerfulness and confidence he did not feel, and for a moment she was outraged, that Damon did not believe she knew, or that he thought he could pretend or lie to her. Then she realized the hard discipline behind that optimism, the rigid courtesies of a telepath worker. To give any mental recognition to such dread would reinforce it, create a kind of positive feedback, spiraling them down into a self-perpetuating chaos of despair. She was, she reflected with a touch of cynicism, getting some hard lessons in what it was like to be bound so closely to a working telepath. But her love and concern for Damon overflowed. She knew he did not want pity, but his greatest need, just now, was to be freed of concern about whether he would have to compensate for her dread.

She must carry her own burden of fears, she cautioned herself. She could not lay them on Damon. She took his hands in hers, leaning over to return his kiss very lightly.

Gratefully, he drew her down beside him, holding her in the curve of his arm, a comforting, wholly undemanding touch.

Andrew glanced around at them, from where he knelt beside Callista, and Damon caught his emotions: fear for Callista, dread, uncertainty — can Damon really help her? — distress at what it would mean if she were to be wholly Keeper again, all her old conditioning intact with the cleared channels. And, seeing Ellemir lying close against Damon, curled up in his arm, a confused emotion that was not, really, even jealousy. Callie and he had never had even this much… Damon’s pity for Andrew went so deep he had to cut it off, stifle it lest it tear at him and lessen his strength for what he had to do tomorrow.

“You stay close to Callista. Call me if there’s any change, no matter how slight,” he said, and saw Andrew draw a chair close to Callista, lean forward, lightly holding her limp wrist in his own.

Poor devil, Damon thought, he can’t even disturb her now. She’s too far gone for that, but he has to feel he’s doing something for her, or he’ll crack. And the comfort he felt in Ellemir’s closeness was gone. With rigid discipline, he made himself relax, lie quietly at her side, loosen his muscles and float into the calm state needed for what he had to do. At last, floating, he slept.

It was well after daylight when Callista stirred, opening her eyes in confusion.

“Andrew?”

“I’m here, love.” He tightened his fingers on hers. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, I think.” She could not feel any pain. Somewhere — a long time ago — someone had told her that was a bad sign. After the suffering of the last days she welcomed it. “I seem to have slept a long time, and Damon was worrying because I didn’t.”

Did she even know she had been drugged? Aloud he said, “Let me call Damon,” and stepped away. On the other bed Damon lay stretched out, lightly holding Ellemir with one arm. Andrew felt that cruel stab of agonized envy. They seemed so secure, so happy in the knowledge of one another. Would Callista and he ever have this? He had to believe it or die.

Ellemir’s blue eyes opened. She smiled up at him, and Damon, as she stirred, was instantly awake.

“How is Callista?”

“She seems better.”

Damon looked at him skeptically, got up and went to Callista’s side. Following him, Andrew suddenly saw Callista through Damon’s eyes: white and emaciated, her eyes deeply sunken into her cheeks.

Damon said gently, “Callista, you know as well as I what has to be done. You’re a Keeper, girl.”

“Don’t call me that!” she flared at him. “Never again!”

“I know you have been released from your oath, but an oath is only a word, Callista. I tell you, there is no other way. I cannot take the responsibility—”

“I have not asked you to! I am free—”

“Free to die,” Damon said brutally.

“Don’t you think I’d rather die?” she said, and began to cry for the first time since that night, sobbing stormily. Damon watched her, his face like stone, but Andrew took her up in his arms, holding her against him, protectively.

“Damon, what in the hell are you doing to her!”

Damon’s face was red with anger. He said, “Damn it, Callista, I’m tired of being treated like a monster coming between you, when I’ve exhausted myself trying to protect you both.”

“I know that,” she wept, “but I can’t bear it. You know what this is doing to Andrew, to me, it’s killing us both!”

Andrew could feel her hands shaking as she clung to him, cradled in his arms, her body light as a child’s. From somewhere he seemed to see her as a strange web of light, a kind of electrical energy net. Where was this strange perception coming from? His body no longer seemed real, but was trembling in a nowhere, and he too was no more than a fragile web of electrical energies, sparking and sputtering, with a deathly, growing weakness…

Now he could no longer see Damon — Damon, too, was lost behind the swirling electrical nets. No, Damon was flowing, changing, glowing with anger, a dull crimson like a furnace. Andrew had seen this before, when he confronted Dezi. Like all men of easygoing temperament and flaring, easily dispelled anger, Andrew was shocked and horrified at the deep-down furnace-red glow of Damon’s. Dimly behind the shifting colors and electrical energies, the swirling pulses and lights, he knew that the man Damon walked to the window and stood, his back to them, staring out into the snowstorm, struggling, to master his wrath. Andrew could feel the rage from inside, as he felt Callista’s agony, as he felt Ellemir’s confusion. He fought to get them all solid again, all hard and human, not swirling confusions of electrical images. What was real? he wondered. Were they really nothing more than swirling energy masses, fields of energy and moving atoms in space? He fought to hold on to human preception, through Callista’s frenzied, feverish grip. He wanted to go to the window… He did go to the window and touch Damon… He did not move, anchored by the weight of Callista across his lap. Fighting for human speech, he said, entreating, “Damon, no one thinks you are a monster. Callista will do whatever you think is best. We both trust you, don’t we, Callista?”

With an effort Damon managed to control his wrath. It was rare for him to let it have even a moment’s mastery over him. He felt ashamed. At last he came to their side and said gently, “Andrew has a right to be consulted in your decision, Callista. You cannot keep doing this to all of us. If it were only your own decision—” He broke off with a gasp. “Andrew! Put her down, quickly!”

Callista had gone limp in Andrew’s arms. Shaken by the fright in Damon’s voice, Andrew made no protest when Damon lifted Callista from his arms, laid her back in bed. He motioned Andrew to move away. Puzzled, resentful, Andrew obeyed. Damon bent over the woman.

“You see? No, don’t cry again, you haven’t the strength. Don’t you know you went into crisis last night? You had a convulsion. I gave you some raivannin — you know what that means as well as I do, Callie.”

She hardly had the strength to whisper, “I think… we would all be better off…”

Damon held her wrists lightly in his hand, such slender wrists that even Damon’s hands, which were not large, could wholly encircle them. Feeling Andrew’s resentful stare, he said wearily, “She hasn’t the strength for another convulsion.”

Andrew said, at the end of endurance, “Was this my doing, too? Is it always going to be unsafe for me to touch her?”

“Don’t blame Andrew, Damon…” Callista’s voice was only a thread. “It was I who wanted…”

“You see?” Damon said. “If I keep you away from her she wants to die. If I let you touch her, the physical stress gets worse and worse. Quite apart from the emotional strain, which is tearing you both to pieces, physically she can’t endure much more. Something must be done quickly, before—” He broke off, but they all knew what he did not say: Before she goes into convulsions again and we can’t stop it this time.

“You know what has to be done, Callista, and you know how much time you have to make up your mind. Damn it, Callie, do you think I want to torment you when you’re in this state? I know you are physically in the state of a girl of twelve, but you are not a child, can’t you stop behaving like one? Can’t you somehow manage to behave like the adult professional you have learned to be? Stop being so damned emotional about it! What we have here is a physical fact! You are a Keeper—”

“I am not! I’m not!” she gasped.

“At least show some of the good sense and courage you learned as one! I’m ashamed of you. Your circle would be ashamed of you. Leonie would be ashamed—”

“Damn it, Damon,” Andrew began, but Ellemir, her eyes blazing, grabbed his arm. “Keep out of this, you fool,” she whispered. “Damon knows what he’s doing! It’s her life at stake now!”

“You are afraid,” Damon said, taunting, “you are afraid! Hilary Castamir was not fifteen, but she endured having her channels cleared every forty days for more than a year! And you are afraid to let me touch you!”

Callista lay flat on her pillows under Damon’s hard grip, her face dead white, her eyes beginning to blaze with a lambent flame none of them had ever seen in her before. Her voice, weak as it was, trembled with such rage that it was like a shout.

“You! How dare you talk to me that way, you that Leonie sent from Arilinn like a whimpering puppy because you had not the courage. Who do you think you are, to talk to me like that?”

Damon stood up, releasing her, as if, Andrew thought, he was afraid he might strangle her if he didn’t. The dull-red furnace glow of rage was around him again. Andrew clenched his hands until he could see blood beneath the nails, trying to keep them all from disintegrating into whirling fields of energy again.

“Who am I?” Damon shouted. “I am your nearest kinsman, and I am your technician, and you know very well what else I am. And if I cannot make you see reason, if you will not use your knowledge and good judgment, then I swear to you, Callista of Arilinn, that I shall have Dom Esteban carried up here and let you try your tantrums on him! If your husband cannot make you behave, and if a technician cannot, then, my girl, you may try conclusions with your father! He is old, but he is still Lord Alton, and if I explain to him—”

She said, white with fury, “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Try me,” Damon retorted, turning his back and standing firm, ignoring all of them. Andrew stood by, uneasy, looking from Damon’s turned back to Callista, white and raging against her pillows, holding to consciousness by that very thread of rage. Could either give way, or would they remain locked in that terrible battle of wills till one of them died? He caught a random thought — from Ellemir? — that Damon’s mother was an Alton, he too had the Alton gift. But Callista was the weaker, Andrew knew she could not long sustain this fury which was destroying them all. He must break this impasse and do it quickly. Ellemir was wrong. Damon could not break her will that way, even to save her life.

He went to Callista and knelt at her side again. He begged, “Darling, do what Damon wants!”

She whispered, the cold anger breaking so that he could see the terrible grief behind it, “Did he tell you it would mean I could not… that he would lose even what little we have had?”

“He told me,” Andrew said, trying desperately to show somehow the aching tenderness that had swallowed up everything else in him. “But my darling, I came to love you before I had ever set eyes on you. Do you think that is all I want of you?”

Damon turned around slowly. The anger in him had melted. He looked down at them both with a deep and anguished pity, but he made his voice hard. “Have you found enough courage for this, Callista?”

She said, sighing, “Oh, courage? Damon, it is not that I lack. But what is the reason for it? You say it will save my life. But what life have I now that is worth keeping? And I have involved you all in it. I would rather die now before I bring you all to where I am.”

Andrew was aghast at the bottomless despair in her voice. He made a move to take her in his arms again, remembered that he endangered her by the slightest touch. He stood paralyzed, immobilized by her anguish. Damon came and knelt beside him. He did not touch Callista, either but nevertheless he reached for her, reached for both of them, and drew them all around him. The slow gentle pulse, the ebb and flow of matched rhythms, naked in the moving dark, closely entangled them in an intimacy closer than lovemaking.

Damon said in a whisper, “Callista, if it were only your own decision, I would let you die. But you are so much a part of all of us that we cannot let you go.” And from one of them, Andrew never knew whether himself or another, the thought wove through the multiplex joining that was their linked circle: Callista, while we have this, surely it is worth living in the hope that somehow we will find a way to have the rest.

Like surfacing from a very deep dive, Andrew came back to separate awareness again. Damon’s eyes met his, and he did not shrink from the intimacy in them. Callista’s eyes were so bruised, so dilated with pain that they looked black in her pallid face, but she smiled, stirring faintly against his arm.

“All right, Damon. Do what you have to. I’ve hurt you all… too much already.” Her breath faded and she seemed to struggle for awareness. Ellemir brushed a light kiss over her sister’s brow.

“Don’t try to talk. We understand.” Damon rose and drew Andrew out of the room with him.

“Damn it, this is work for a Keeper. There were male Keepers once, but I haven’t the training.”

“You don’t want to do this at all, do you, Damon?”

“Who would?” His voice was shaking uncontrollably. “But there’s nothing else to do. If she goes into convulsions again she might not live through the day. And if she did, there might be enough brain damage that she’d never know us again. The overload on all life functions — pulse, breathing — and if she deteriorates much further… well, she’s an Alton.” He shook his head despairingly. “What she did to you would be nothing to what she might do to all of us, if her mind stopped functioning, and all she knew was that we were hurting her…” He flinched with dread. “I’ve got to hurt her so damnably. But I have to do it while she’s aware, and able to control and cooperate intelligently.”

“What is it you’re afraid of? You can’t really hurt her, can you, using — what is it, psi? — on those channels? They aren’t even physical, are they?”

Damon shut his eyes for a moment, an involuntary, spasmodic movement. He said, “I won’t kill her. I know enough not to do that. That’s why she has to be conscious, though. If I make any miscalculations, I could damage some of the nerves, and they are centered around the reproductive organs. I could damage them just enough to impair her chances of ever bearing a child, and she can tell me better than I can myself just where the main nerves are.”

“In God’s name,” Andrew said in a whisper, “can’t you do it while she’s unconscious? Does it matter if she can have children?”

Damon looked at him in shock and horror. “You can’t possibly be serious!” he said, desperately making allowances for his friend’s distress. “Callista is Comyn, she has laran. Any woman would die before risking that. This is your wife, man, not some woman of the streets!”

Before Damon’s real horror, Andrew fell silent, trying to conceal his absolute bafflement. He’d stomped all over some Darkovan taboo again. Would he ever learn? He said stiffly, “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, Damon.”

“Offended? Not exactly, but… but shocked.” Damon was bewildered. Didn’t Andrew even think of this as the most precious thing she could give him, the heritage, the clan? Was his love only a thing of rut and selfishness? Then he was bewildered again. No, he thought, Andrew had endured too much for her; it was not only that. Finally he thought, in despair: I love him, but will I ever understand him?

Andrew, caught up in his emotion, turned and put an embarrassed hand on Damon’s shoulder. He said hesitantly, aloud, “I wonder if… if anyone ever understands anyone? I’m trying, Damon. Give me time.”

Damon’s normal reaction would have been to embrace Andrew, but he had grown accustomed to having these natural gestures rebuffed, to knowing that they embarrassed his friend. Something would have to be done about that, too. “Just now we’re agreed on one thing, brother, we both want what’s best for Callista. Let’s get back to her.”

Andrew returned to Callista’s side. In spite of everything he had felt that Damon must be exaggerating. These were psychological things, how could they have a genuine, physical effect? Now he knew that Damon was right, Callista was dying. With a shudder of dread he realized that she no longer attempted even to move her head on the pillow, although her eyes moved to follow him.

“Damon, swear that afterward there will be a way to bring me back to… to normal…”

“I swear it, breda.” Damon’s voice was as steady as his hands, but Andrew could see he was struggling for control. Callista, though, looked peaceful.

“I have no kirian for you, Callista.”

Andrew could sense the tensing of fear in her, but she said, “I can manage without it. Do what you have to.”

“Callista, if you want to risk it, you have kireseth flowers… ?”

She made a faint gesture of negation. Damon had known she would not agree to that; the taboo was absolute among the Tower-trained. Yet he wished she had been less scrupulous, less conscientious. “You said you were going to try…”

Damon nodded, taking out the small flask, “A tincture. I filtered off the impurities, and dissolved the resins in wine,” he said. “It might be better than nothing.”

Her laughter was soundless, no more than a breath. Andrew, watching, marveled that even now she could laugh! “I know that is not your major skill, Damon. I’ll try, but let me taste it first. If you’ve gotten the wrong resin…” She sniffed cautiously at the flask, tasted a few drops, and finally said, “It’s safe. I’ll try it, but—” She calculated, finally saying, showing a narrow space between thumb and forefinger, “Only about that much.”

“You’ll need more than that, Callista. You’ll never be able to stand the pain,” Damon protested. She said, “I have to be maximally aware of the lower centers and the trunk nerves. The major discharge nodes are overloaded, so you may have to do some rerouting.” Andrew felt a chill of horror at her detached, clinical tone, as if her own body were some kind of malfunctioning machine, her own nerves merely defective parts. What a hell of a thing to do to a woman!

Damon lifted her head, supported her while she swallowed the indicated dose. She stopped at precisely what she had judged, obstinately closing her mouth. “No, no more, Damon, I know my limits.”

He warned colorlessly, “It’s going to be worse than anything you’ve ever had.”

“I know. If you hit a node too close to the” — Andrew could not understand the term she used — “I may have another seizure.”

“I’ll be careful of that. How many days ago did the bleeding completely stop? Do you know how deep I’m going to have to take you?”

She sketched a grimace. “I know. I cleared Hilary twice, and I have more overload than she ever did. There is still a residue—”

Damon caught Andrew’s look of horror. He said, “Do you really want him here, darling?”

She tightened her fingers on his hand. “He has a right.”

Damon’s voice was so strained that it sounded harsh, but Andrew, still linked strongly to the other man, knew it was only the inner stress. “He’s not used to this, Callista. He’ll only know that I’m hurting you terribly.”

God! Andrew thought. Did he have to watch any more of her suffering? But he said quietly, “I’ll stay if you need me, Callista.”

“If I were bearing his child he would stay in rapport and share more pain than this.”

“Yes,” Damon said gently, “but if it were that — Lord of Light, how I wish it were! — you could reach out to him and draw on his strength with no hesitation. But now, you know this, Callista, I would have to forbid him to touch you, whatever happened. Or you, to reach out to him. Let me send him away, Callista.”

She nearly rebelled again then, through her own misery sensing Damon’s dread, his desperate unwillingness to hurt her, she reached up her hand, with a sort of pained surprise that it felt so heavy, to touch his face. “Poor Damon,” she said in a whisper. “You hate this, don’t you? Will it make it easier for you this way?”

Damon nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was hard enough to inflict pain of that kind without having to stand up to the reactions of others who hadn’t the faintest idea what he was doing.

Resolutely, Callista looked up at Andrew. “Go away, love. Ellemir, take him away. This is a matter for trained psi technicians and with the best will in the world, you can’t help and might do damage.”

Andrew felt mingled relief and guilt — if she could endure this he should be strong enough to share it with her — but he also felt that Damon was grateful for Callista’s choice. He could sense the effort Damon was making to create in himself the same clinical, unemotional attitude Callista was trying to display. In mingled horror and guilt, together with a shamed relief, he rose quickly and hurried out of the room.

Behind him, Ellemir hesitated, glancing at Callista, wondering if this would be easier if they could all share it in rapport. But a single glance at Damon’s face decided her. This was bad enough for him. If he must inflict it on her too, it would be even worse. She deliberately broke the remaining link with Damon and Callista, and without turning to see what effect this had on the other two — but she could sense it, relief almost as great as Andrew’s — she followed him quickly across the hall of the suite. She caught up with him in the central hall.

“I think you need a drink. What about it?” She led him into the living room of their half of the suite and rummaged in a cabinet for a square stoneware bottle and a couple of glasses. She poured, sensing Andrew’s remorseful thoughts: Here I sit enjoying myself over a drink and God only knows what Callista’s going through.

Andrew took the drink she handed him and sipped. He had expected wine; instead it was a strong, fiery, highly concentrated liquor. He took a sip, saying hesitantly, “I don’t want to get drunk.”

Ellemir shrugged. “Why not? It might just be the best thing you can do.”

Get drunk? With Callista…

Ellemir’s leveled eyes met his. “That’s why,” she said. “It’s some assurance for Damon that you will stay out of this, letting him do what he has to. He hates it,” she added, and the tension in her voice made Andrew realize that she was as worried about Damon as he was about Callista.

“Not quite.” But her voice shook. “Not in quite… quite the same way. We can’t help, all we can do is… stay out of it. And I’m not… used to being shut out this way.” She blinked ferociously.

So like Callista and so unlike, Andrew thought. He’d grown so used to thinking of her as stronger than Callista, yet Callista had lived through that ordeal in the caves. She was no fragile maiden in distress, not half as frail as he thought she was. No Keeper could be weak. It was a different kind of strength. Even now, refusing the drug Damon offered to give her.

Ellemir said, sipping the fiery stuff, “Damon has always hated this work. But he’ll do it for Callie’s sake. And,” she added after a moment, “for yours.”

He replied in a low voice, “Damon’s been a good friend to me. I know it.”

“You seem to find it hard to show it,” Ellemir said, “but I suppose that is the way you were taught to react to people in your own world. It must be very hard for you,” she added. “I don’t suppose I can even imagine how hard it is for you here, to find everyone thinking in strange ways, with every little thing different. And I suppose the little things are harder to get used to than the big ones. The big ones you get used to, you make up your mind to them. The little things come along unexpectedly, when you aren’t thinking about them, aren’t braced against them.”

How perceptive of her to see that, Andrew thought. It was, indeed, the little things. Damon’s — and Ellemir’s own — careless nudity which made him awkward and self-conscious as if all the unthinking habits of a lifetime were constrained and somehow rude; the odd texture of the bread; Damon kissing Dom Esteban, without self-consciousness, in greeting; Callista, in the early days when they had shared a room, not embarrassed when he saw her half dressed about the room or once, by accident, wholly naked in her bath, but coloring and stammering with embarrassment when once he came up behind her and lifted up the long strands of loosened hair from her bare neck. He said in a low voice, “I’m trying to get used to your customs…”

She said, refilling his glass, “Andrew, I want to talk to you.”

It was Callista’s own phrase, and it made him somehow braced and wary. “I’m listening.”

“Callista told you that night” — instantly he knew the night she meant — “what I had offered. Why did it make you angry? Do you really dislike me as much as that?”

“Dislike you? Of course not,” Andrew said, “but—” and he stopped, literally speechless. “It hardly seems fair for you to tempt me like this.”

“Have you been fair to any of us?” she exclaimed. “Is it fair for you to insist on remaining in such a state when we all have to share it, like it or not? You are — you have been for a long time — in an appalling state of sexual need. Do you think I don’t know it? Do you think Callista doesn’t know it?”

He felt stung, invaded. “What business is that of yours?”

She flung her head back and said, “You know perfectly well why it is my affair. Yet Callista said you refused…”

Damn it, it had been an outrageous suggestion, but Callista at least, had had the decency to be a little diffident about it! And Ellemir was so like Callista that he could hardly help reacting to her very presence. He set his mouth and said tersely, “I can control it. I’m not an animal.”

“What are you? A cabbage plant? Control it? Maybe I wasn’t suggesting that otherwise you might go out and rape the first woman you see. But that doesn’t mean the need isn’t there. So in essence you are lying to us with everything you do, everything you are.”

“God almighty!” he exploded. “Is there no privacy here?”

“Of course. Have you noticed? My father hasn’t been asking any questions that would make any of us feel awkward. It really isn’t his business, you see. He won’t pry. None of us will ever know whether he knows anything about this at all. But the four of us — it’s different, Andrew. Can’t you be honest with us, at least?”

“What am I supposed to do then? Torment her for what she can’t give me?” He remembered the night when he had done just that. “I can’t do that again!”

“Of course not. But can’t you see that’s part of what’s hurting Callista? She was terribly aware of your need, so that at last she risked… what finally did happen, because she knew your need, and that you couldn’t accept anything else. Are you going to go on like that, adding to her guilt… and ours?”

Sleeplessness, worry and fatigue, and the strong cordial on an empty stomach, had hit Andrew hard, blurring his perceptions till the outrageous things Ellemir was saying almost made sense. If he had done what Callista asked, it would never have come to this…

It wasn’t fair. So like Callista and so terribly unlike… you could strike sparks off this one! “I am Damon’s friend. How could I do that to him?”

“Damon is your friend,” she retorted, real anger in her voice. “Do you think he enjoys your suffering? Or are you arrogant enough to think” — her voice shook — “that you could make me care less for Damon because I do for you what any decent woman would want to do, seeing a friend in such a state?”

Andrew met her eyes, matching her anger. “Since we’re being so overwhelmingly honest, did it occur to you that it isn’t you I want?” Even now it was only because she was there, so like Callista as she should have been.

Her anger was suddenly gone. “Dear brother” — bredu was the word she used — “I know it is Callista you love. But it was I in your dream.”

“A physical reflex,” he said brutally.

“Well, that’s real too. And it would mean, at least, that you need no longer torment Callista for what she cannot give you.” She reached to refill his glass. He stopped her.

“No more. I’m already half drunk. Damn it, does it matter whether I torment her that way, or by going off and falling into bed with someone else?”

“I don’t understand.” He felt that Ellemir’s confusion was genuine. “Do you mean that a woman of your people, if she could not for some reason share her husband’s bed, would be angry if he found… comfort elsewhere? How strange and how cruel!”

“I guess most women think that if they… if they have to asbtain for some reason, it’s only fair for the man to share the… the abstention.” He fumbled. “Look, if Callista’s unhappy too, and I go off to get myself laid — oh, hell, I don’t know the polite words — isn’t it pretty rotten of me to act as if her unhappiness doesn’t matter, as long as my own needs are met?”

Ellemir laid a gentle hand on his arm. “That does you credit, Andrew. But I find it hard to imagine that a woman who loved a man wouldn’t be glad to know he was satisfied somehow.”

“But wouldn’t she feel as if I didn’t love her enough to wait for her?”

“Do you think you would love Callista less if you were to lie with me?”

He returned her gaze steadily. “Nothing in this world could make me love Callista less. Nothing.”

She shrugged slightly. “So how could she be hurt? And think about this, Andrew. Suppose that someone other than yourself could help Callista break the bonds she did not seek and cannot break. Would you be angry with her, or love her less?”

Touched on the raw, Andrew remembered the moment when it seemed that Damon had come between them, his almost frantic jealousy. “Do you expect me to believe a man wouldn’t mind that, here?”

“You told me only now that nothing could make you love her less. Would you forbid her, then?”

“Forbid her? No,” Andrew said, “but I might wonder how deep her love went.”

Ellemir’s voice was suddenly shaking. “Are you Terrans like the Dry-Towners, then, who keep their women behind walls and in chains so that no other man will touch them? Is she a toy you want to lock in a box so that no one else can play with it? What is marriage to you, then?”

“I don’t know,” Andrew said drearily, his anger collapsing. “I’ve never been married before. I’m not trying to quarrel with you, Elli.” He fumbled with the pet name. “I… just… well, we were talking, before, about things being strange to me, and this is one of them. To believe Callista wouldn’t be hurt…”

“If you had abandoned her, or if you had forced her to consent, unwilling — as with Dom Ruyven of Castamir, who forced Lady Crystal to harbor his barragana wife and to foster all the bastards the woman bore — then, yes, she might have cause to grieve. But can you believe it is cruelty, that you do her will?” She met his eyes, reached out, gently, and took his hand between her own. She said, “If you are suffering, Andrew, it hurts all of us. Callista too. And… and me, Andrew.”

His barriers were down. The touch, the meeting of their eyes, made him feel wholly exposed to her. No wonder she had no hesitation in simply walking around without her shift, he realized. This was the real nakedness.

He had reached that particular stage of drunkenness where preconceptions blur and people do outrageous things and believe them commonplace. He could see Ellemir, now as herself, now as Callista, now as a visible sign of a contact he was only beginning to understand, the fourway link between them. She bent and laid her mouth against his. It went through his body like a jolt of electricity. All his aching frustration was behind the strength with which he pulled her into his arms.

Is this happening, or am I drunk, and dreaming about it again? Thought blurred. He was aware of Ellemir’s body in his arms, slender, naked, confident, with that curious matter-of-fact acceptance. In a moment’s completely sober insight, he knew that this was her way of cutting off awareness of Damon too. It was not only his need, but hers. He was glad of that.

He was naked, with no memory of shedding his clothes. She was warm, pliant in his arms. Yes, she has been here before, for a moment, the four of us, blended, just before catastrophe struck,… At the back of her mind he sensed a warm, welcoming amusement: No, you are not strange to me.

Through growing excitement came a sad strange thought: It should have been Callista, Ellemir felt so different in his arms, so solid somehow, without any of the shy fragility which so excited him in Callista. Then he felt her touch, rousing him, blotting out thought. He felt memory blurring and wondered for a moment if this were her doing, so that for now the kindly haze obscured everything. He was only a feeling, reacting body, driven by long need and deprivation, aware only of an accepting, responding body in his arms, of excitement and tenderness matching his own, seeking the deliverance so long denied. When it came it was so intense that he thought he would lose consciousness.

After a time he stirred, carefully shifting his weight. She smiled and brushed her hair from his face. He felt calm, released, grateful. No, it was more than gratitude, it was a closeness, like… yes, like the moment they had met in the matrix. He said, quietly, “Ellemir.” Just a reaffirmation, a reassurance. For the moment she was clearly herself, not Callista, not anyone else. She kissed him lightly on the temple, and suddenly exhaustion and release of long denial all fell together at once, and he slept in Ellemir’s arms. An indefinable time later he woke to see Damon looking down at them.

He looked weary, haggard, and Andrew thought, in shock, that here was the best friend he had ever had, and here he was, in bed with his wife.

Ellemir sat up quickly. “Callista — ?”

Damon’s sigh seemed dragged up from the roots of his body. “She’s going to be all right. She’s asleep.” He stumbled and almost fell on top of them. Ellemir held out her arms, gathering him to her breast.

Andrew thought he was in the way there, then, sensing Damon’s exhaustion, how near the older man was to collapse, realized that his preoccupation with himself was selfish, irrelevant. Clumsily, wishing there was some way to express what he felt, he put his arm around Damon’s shoulders.

Damon sighed again, and said, “She’s better than I dared hope for. She’s very weak, of course, and exhausted. After all I put her through…” he shuddered, and Ellemir drew his head to her breasts.

“Was it so terrible, beloved?”

“Terrible, yes, terrible for her,” Damon muttered, and even then — Ellemir sensed it with heartbreak — he was trying to shield her, shield them both from the nakedness of his own memory. “She was so brave, and I wouldn’t bear having to hurt her like that.” His voice broke. He hid his face on Ellemir’s breasts and began to sob, harshly, helplessly.

Andrew thought he should leave, but Damon reached out for Andrew’s hand, clinging to it with an agonized grip. Andrew, putting aside his own discomfort at being present at such a moment, thought that right now Damon needed all the comfort he could get. He only said very softly, when Damon had quieted, “Should I be with Callista?”

Damon caught the overtone in the words: You and Ellemir would rather be alone. In his worn, raw-edged state it was painful, a rebuff. His words were sharp with exhaustion.

“She won’t know whether you’re there or not. But do as you damn please!” and the unspoken part of his words were as plain as what he said aloud: If you just can’t wait to get away from us.

He still doesn’t understand …

Damon, how could he? Ellemir hardly understood herself. She only knew that when Damon was like this it was painful, exhausting. His need was so much greater than she could meet or comfort in any way. Her own inadequacy tormented her. It was not sexual — that she could have understood and eased — but what she sensed in Damon left her exhausted and helpless because it was not any recognizable need which she could understand. Some of her desperation came through to Andrew, though all she said was, “Please stay. I think he wants us both with him now.”

Damon, clinging to them both with a desperate, sinking need for physical contact which was not, though it simulated, the real need he felt, thought, No, they don’t understand. And, more rationally, I don’t understand it either. For the moment it was enough that they were there. It wasn’t complete, it wasn’t what he needed, but for the moment he could make it do, and Ellemir, holding him close in despair, thought that they could calm him a little, like this. But what was it he really needed? Would she ever know? She wondered. How could she know when he didn’t know himself?