The Forbidden Tower

Epilogue

You are a fool, Damon,” said Lorenz, Lord of Serrais, with deep disgust. “You have always been a fool and you will always be a fool! You could have been regent of Alton and commanded the Guards long enough to break the hold of the Altons on that office and give it to the Domain of Serrais!”

Damon laughed good-naturedly. “But I do not want to be commander,” he said, “and now there is no need. Dom Esteban is likely to live as long as needful to bring Valdir to manhood, and perhaps more.”

Lorenz looked at him with suspicion and distrust. “How did you do that? We had heard he was at death’s door!”

“Exaggerated,” Damon said with a shrug, knowing that this would be his lifework, to study the ways of healing with matrix and monitor.

The principle once vindicated, it had not been difficult to go into the damaged heart, remove the blockages and restore the heart to full function. Esteban Lanart, Lord Alton, would be paralyzed for the rest of his life, but a man could command the Guards from a wheeled chair. When it was needful to take the field, young Danvan Hastur or Kieran Ridenow could command in his place. Damon was regent of the Domain only in name now, as a contingency against accident or ill luck. Precognition was not the main gift of either Alton or Ridenow, but he had a flash of it now, knowing that Valdir would assume the wardship of Alton as a grown man, and that he would be one of the most innovative Altons ever to rule the Domain.

Lorenz said in disgust, “Have you no ambition at all, Damon?”

“More ambition than you can imagine,” Damon said, “but it takes a different form than yours, Lorenz. And now, I fear, we must part, since we have a long way to ride. We are returning to Armida. Ellemir’s child is next heir to the Domain, and he must be born there.”

Lorenz bowed with an ill grace. Andrew, riding just behind Damon, he ignored, but he saluted Ellemir courteously, and Callista with something like real respect. Damon turned to embrace his brother Kieran.

“You will visit us at Armida in the autumn, when you return to Serrais?”

“I will indeed,” Kieran said, “and I hope then to see Ellemir’s son. Who knows, he may command the Guards someday!” He dropped back, leaving the Guardsmen who were to accompany Damon and his party on their journey to ride ahead of them. Damon was about to give the signal for the rest to ride when he saw a slender woman, cloaked and hooded as was seemly for a comynara before this great company, coming down the stairs from the courtyard of Comyn Castle. Instinct told him who she was, or was it only that nothing now could have hidden Leonie of Arilinn from his sight?

So he did not mount, but signaled to his groom to hold the horse ready and went toward her, meeting her at the foot of the steps.

“Leonie,” he said, bowing over her hand.

“I came to say farewell, and to give Callista my blessing,” she said quietly.

Andrew bowed deeply as Damon led her past, toward Callista, who stood ready to mount her gray mare. Leonie raised her head, and it seemed to Andrew that the old woman’s eyes burned out from the depths of a skull, blazing resentment at him, but she inclined her head formally, saying, “Good fortune attend you.” She reached out her hands then, and Callista just touched her fingertips, the faint feather-touch of telepath to telepath.

Leonie said quietly, “Take my blessing, child. You know now how deeply I mean it, and how much good fortune I wish for you.”

“I know,” Callista whispered. The resentment had gone. What Leonie had done had been difficult to endure, but it had made this deeper breakthrough possible, had brought her to what she now knew was the deepest possible fulfilment. She and Andrew might have come together without harm, and lived together happily, but she would have given up her laran forever, as it was always assumed a Keeper must do. She knew now that she would have lived the rest of her life only half alive. She raised Leonie’s fingertips to her lips and kissed them, reverently and with deep love.

It was too late for Leonie, Callista knew, but now she no longer grudged their happiness.

Leonie turned to Ellemir, making a gesture of blessing. Ellemir bowed her head, accepting without returning the greeting, and Leonie turned to Damon. Again, in silence, he bowed over her hand, not raising his eyes to hers. It had all been said; there was nothing further to be said or done between them. He knew they would not meet again. Enormous, uncrossable distances lay between Arilinn and the forbidden Tower, and it had to be so. From Damon’s work a whole new science of matrix mechanics would spring, to remove the terrible burden from the Towers. She made the gesture of blessing again, and turned away.

Damon mounted his horse in silence and they rode through the gates, Andrew riding with Callista at the head of the party, then servants, retainers, and banner-bearers. At the end rode Damon, with Ellemir at his side. He felt that his heart would break. He had his happiness, such happiness as he had never deemed possible. But his happiness was built on the lives of Leonie and others like her, who had kept the knowledge alive. Cassilda, mother of the Domains, he prayed, grant that we never forget, or hold their sacrifice lightly…

He rode with his head bent, grieving, until he saw Ellemir’s sorrowful eyes on his and knew that he must not continue to sorrow like this.

For the rest of his life he would remember and regret, but it must be a private grief, almost a secret luxury. Now his face must be turned firmly toward the future.

There was work to do. Work perhaps too trivial for the Towers, but important: work like the repair to Dom Esteban’s heart, like the work he had done to save the feet and hands of the frostbitten men. And more important still, testing the outer limits of who could actually be matrix-trained. Callista, as promised, had already taught Ferrika to monitor. She was an apt pupil and would learn more. And in the years to come there would be others.

Ellemir shifted her weight in the saddle and Damon said anxiously, “You must not tire yourself, my love. Should you truly ride now?”

Ellemir laughed gaily. “Ferrika is waiting to order me into the horse-litter, but for now I will ride in the sunshine.”

Together they rode forward, past the servants, the piled pack animals, to where Callista and Andrew rode side by side.

As they went through the pass, Andrew took a last, fleeting look at the Terran spaceport. He might never see it again, but surely the Terrans would be there for the rest of his life. Perhaps Valdir’s attitude toward the Terrans would be different, because he had known Andrew well, not as a strange alien, but a man like themselves, the husband of his sister.

But all that was the future. He turned his eyes from the spaceport without a backward look. His world lay elsewhere now.

They rode down from the pass and the spaceport was gone. But Callista could hear the thunder of one of the great ships, and trembled a little. It made her think, too much, of the changes which had come to Darkover, of all the changes which would come, whether she knew of them or not. But she thought that if she could have endured all the changes of the last year, surely she could face what would come after this. She also had work to do, sharing Damon’s work, and thinking, as well, of her coming child.

She too is being called unwanted into a world she does not want, even as I was…

But the coming world would be for her children to face. All she could do was prepare them, and try to make a better world for them to live in. She had already begun. She reached for Andrew’s hand, enjoying the simple awareness that it could lie in hers and she felt no need or desire to pull it away. As Damon and Ellemir joined them, she smiled. Whatever changes would come, they would face them together.