The Forbidden Circle (25 page)

Damon had gone without protest, for there was guilt in him. He had loved Leonie, loved her with all the despairing passion of a lonely man, but loved her chastely, without a word or a touch. For Leonie, like all Keepers, was a pledged virgin, never to be looked upon with a sensual thought, never to be touched by any man. Had Leonie somehow known this, feared that some day he would lose his control, approach her—even if only in thought—in a way no Keeper might be approached?

Shattered, Damon had fled. It seemed now, years later, that a lifetime stretched between the young Damon, thrust into an unfriendly world to build himself a new life, and the Damon of today, in command of himself, veteran of this successful campaign. The memory was still alive in him—it would be raw till his death—but Damon armed himself, as Leonie drew near, with the memory of Ellemir Lanart, who awaited him now, at Armida.

I should have wedded her before ever I came on this campaign
. He had wanted to, but
Dom
Esteban had felt that a marriage in such haste was unseemly for gentlefolk. He would not have his daughter hurried to her marriage bed like a pregnant serving wench! Damon had agreed to the delay. The reality of Ellemir, his promised bride, should now banish even the most painful of memories. Summoning the control of a lifetime, Damon finally rode forward, Eduin at his side.

“You lend us grace, kinswoman,” he said gravely, bowing from the saddle. “It is late in the year for journeying in the hills. Where do you ride at this season?”

Leonie returned the bow, with the excessive formality of a Comyn lady before outsiders.

“Greetings, Damon. I ride to Armida, and so, among other things, I ride to your wedding.”

“I am honored.” The journey from Arilinn was long, and not lightly undertaken at any season. “But surely it is not only for my wedding, Leonie?”

“Not only for that. Although it is true that I wish you all happiness, cousin.”

For the first time, momentarily, their eyes met, but Damon looked away. Leonie Hastur, Lady of Arilinn, was a tall woman, spare-bodied, with the flame-red hair of the Comyn, now graying beneath the hood of her riding cloak. She had, perhaps, been very beautiful once; Damon would never be able to judge.

“Callista sent me word that she wishes to lay down her oath to the Tower and marry.” Leonie sighed. “I am no longer young; I wished to give back my place as Keeper, when Callista was a little older and could be Keeper.”

Damon bowed in silence. This had been ordained since Callista had come, a girl of thirteen, to the Arilinn Tower. Damon had been a psi technician Callista’s first year there, and had been consulted about the decision to train her as a Keeper.

“But now she wishes to leave us to marry. She has told me that her lover”—Leonie used the polite inflection which made the word mean “promised husband”—“is an off-worlder, one of the Terrans who have built their spaceport at Thendara. What do you know of this, Damon? It seems to me fanciful, fantastic, like an old ballad. How came she to know this Terran? She told me his name, but I have forgotten. . . .”

“Andrew Carr,” Damon said as they turned their horses toward Armida, riding side by side. Their escorts and Leonie’s lady-companion followed at a respectful distance. The great red sun hung low in the sky, casting lurid light across the peaks of the Kilghard Hills behind them. Clouds had begun to gather to the north, and there was a chill wind blowing from the distant, invisible peaks of the Hellers.

“I am not certain, even now, how it all began,” Damon said at last. “I only know that when Callista was kidnapped by the catmen, and she lay alone, in darkness and fear, imprisoned in the caves of Corresanti, none of her kinsmen could reach her mind.”

Leonie shuddered, pulling her hood closer about her face. “That was a dreadful time,” she said.

“True. And somehow it happened that this Terran, Andrew Carr, linked with her in mind and thought. To this day I do not know all of the details, but somehow he came to bear her company in her lonely prison; he alone could reach her mind. And so they grew close together in heart and mind, although they had never seen one another in the flesh.”

Leonie sighed and said, “Yes, such bonds can be stronger than bonds of the flesh. And so they came to love one another, and when she was rescued, they met—”

“It was Andrew who aided most in her rescue,” Damon said, “and now they have pledged one another. Believe me, Leonie, it is no idle fancy, born of a lonely girl’s fear, or a solitary man’s desire. Callista told me, before I went on this campaign, that if she could not win her father’s consent and yours, she would leave Armida, and Darkover, and go with Andrew to his world.”

Leonie shook her head sorrowfully. “I have seen the Terran ships lying in the port at Thendara,” she said. “And my brother Lorill, who is on the Council and has dealings with them, says that they seem in every way men like to ourselves. But marriage, Damon? A girl of this planet, a man of some other? Even if Callista were not Keeper, pledged virgin, such a marriage would be strange, hazardous for both.”

“I think they know that, Leonie. Yet they are determined.”

“I have always felt very strongly,” Leonie said, in a strange faraway voice, “that no Keeper should marry. I have felt so all my life, and so lived. Had it been otherwise . . .” She looked up briefly at Damon, and the pain in her voice struck at him. He tried to barricade himself against it.
Ellemir
, he thought, like a charm to guard himself, but Leonie went on, sighing. “Even so, if Callista had fallen so deeply in love with a man of her own clan and caste, I would not impose my belief on her; I would have released her willingly. No—” Leonie stopped herself. “No, not willingly, knowing what troubles lie ahead for any woman trained and conditioned as Keeper for a matrix circle, not willingly. But I would, at the last, have released her, and given her in marriage with such good grace as I must. But how can I give her to an alien, a man from another world, not even born of our soil and sun? The thought makes me cold with horror, Damon! It makes my skin crawl!”

Damon said slowly, “I, too, felt so at first. Yet Andrew is no alien. My mind knows that he was born on another world, circling the sun of another sky, a distant star, not even a point of light in our sky from here. Yet he is not inhuman, a monster masquerading as a man, but truly one of our own, a man like myself. He is foreign, perhaps, not alien. I tell you, I know this, Leonie. His mind has been linked to mine.” Without being aware of the gesture, Damon placed his hand on the matrix crystal, the psi-responsive jewel he wore around his neck in its insulated bag, then added, “He has
laran
.”

Leonie looked at him in shock, disbelief.
Laran
was the psi power which set the Comyn of the Domains apart from the common people, the hereditary gift bred into the Comyn blood!
“Laran!”
she said, almost in anger. “I cannot believe that!”

“Belief or disbelief do not alter a simple fact, Leonie,” Damon said. “I have had
laran
since I was a boy, I am Tower-trained, and I say to you, this Terran has
laran
, I have linked with his mind and I can tell you he is no way different from a man of our own world. There is no reason to feel horror or revulsion at Callista’s choice. He is only a man like ourselves.”

Leonie said, “And he is your friend.”

Damon nodded, saying, “My friend. And for Callista’s rescue we linked together—through the matrix.” There was no need to say more. It was the strongest bond known, stronger than blood-kin, stronger than the tie of lovers. It had brought Damon and Ellemir together, as it had brought Andrew and Callista.

Leonie sighed. “Is it so? Then I suppose I must accept it, whatever his birth or caste. Since he has
laran
, he is a suitable husband, if any man living can truly be a suitable husband for a woman Keeper-trained!”

“There are times when I forget he is not one of us,” Damon said. “Then there are other times when he seems strange, almost alien, but the difference is one only of custom and culture.”

“Even that can make a great difference,” Leonie said. “I remember when Melora Aillard was stolen away by Jalak of Shainsa, and what she endured there. No marriage even between Domains and Dry Towns has ever endured without tragedy. And a man from another world and sun must be even more alien than this.”

“I am not so sure of that,” Damon said. “In any case Andrew is my friend and I will support him in his suit.”

Leonie slumped in her saddle. “You would not give your friendship, nor link through a matrix, with one unworthy,” she said. “But even if all you say is true, how can such a marriage be anything but disaster? Even if he were one of our own, fully understanding the grip of the Tower on a Keeper’s body and mind, it would be near to impossible. Would
you
have dared so much?”

Damon flinched away from the question. She could not have meant it, not as he thought she meant it.

They were not living in the days before the Ages of Chaos, when the Keepers were mutilated, even neutered, made less than women. Oh, yes, the Keepers were still trained, Damon knew, with a terrible discipline, to live apart from men, reflexes deeply built into body and brain. But no longer changed. And surely Leonie could not have known . . . or, Damon thought, he was the one man she would never have asked that question. Surely it was innocent, surely she never knew. He steeled himself against Leonie’s innocence, forced himself to look at her, to say in a low voice, “Willingly, Leonie, if I loved as Andrew loved.”

As hard as he fought to keep his voice steady and impassive, something of his inward struggle communicated itself to Leonie. She looked up, quickly and for a bare moment, a second or less. Their eyes met, but Leonie quickly looked away.

Ellemir
, Damon reminded himself desperately.
Ellemir, my beloved, my promised wife
. But his voice was calm. “Try to meet Andrew without prejudice, Leonie, and I think you will see that he is such a man as you would willingly have given Callista in marriage.”

Leonie had mastered herself again. “All the more for your urging, Damon. But even if all you say is true, I am still reluctant.”

“I know,” Damon said, looking down the road. They were now within sight of the great front gates of Armida, the hereditary estate of the Domain of Alton. Home, he thought, and Ellemir waiting for him. “But even if all
you
say is true, Leonie, I do not know what we can do to stop Callista. She is no silly young girl in the grip of infatuation; she is a woman grown, Tower-trained, skilled, accustomed to having her own way, and I think she will do her will, regardless of us all.”

Leonie sighed. She said, “I would not force her back unwilling; the burden of a Keeper is too heavy to be borne unconsenting. I have borne it a lifetime, and I know.” She seemed weary, weighed down by it. “Yet Keepers are not easy to come by. If I can save her for Arilinn, Damon, you know I must.”

Damon knew. The old psi gifts of the Seven Domains, bred into the genes of the Comyn families hundreds or thousands of years ago, were thinned now, dying out. Telepaths were rarer than ever before. It could no longer be taken for granted that even the sons and daughters of the direct line of each Domain would have the gift, the inherited psi power of his House. And now, not many cared. Damon’s elder brother, heir to the Ridenow family of Serrais, had no
laran
. Damon, himself, was the only one of his brothers to possess
laran
in full measure, and he had been in no way specially honored for it. On the contrary, his work in the Tower had made his brothers scorn him as something less than a man. It was hard to find telepaths strong enough for Tower work. Some of the ancient Towers had been closed and stood dark, no longer teaching, training, working with the ancient psi sciences of Darkover. Outsiders, those with only minimal Comyn blood, had been admitted to the lesser Towers, though Arilinn kept to the old ways and allowed only those closely related by blood to the Domains to come there. And few women could be found with the strength, the psi skill, the stamina—and the courage and willingness to sacrifice almost everything which made life dear to a woman of the Domains—to endure the terrible discipline of the Keepers. Whom would they find to take Callista’s place?

Either way, then, was tragedy. Arilinn must lose a Keeper—or Andrew a wife, Callista a husband. Damon sighed deeply and said, “I know, Leonie,” and they rode in silence toward the great gates of Armida.

CHAPTER TWO

From the outer courtyard of Armida, Andrew Carr saw the approaching riders. He summoned grooms and attendants for their horses, then went into the main hall to announce their coming.

“That will be Damon coming back,” Ellemir said in excitement and ran out into the courtyard. Andrew followed more slowly, Callista close at his side.

“It is not only Damon,” she said, and Andrew knew, without asking, that she had used her psi awareness to guess at the identity of the riders. He was used to this now, and it no longer seemed uncanny or frightening.

She smiled up at him, and once again Andrew was struck by her beauty. He tended to forget it when he was not looking at her. Before he ever set eyes on her, he had come to know her mind and heart, her gentleness, her courage, her quick understanding. He had come to know, and value, her gaiety and wit, even when she was alone, terrified, imprisoned in the darkness of Corresanti.

But she was beautiful too, very beautiful, a slender, long-limbed young woman, with coppery hair loosely braided down her back, and gray eyes beneath level brows. She said as she walked at his side, “It is Leonie, the
leronis
of Arilinn. She has come, as I asked.”

He took her hand lightly in his own, though this was always a risk. He knew she had been trained and disciplined, by methods he could never guess, to avoid the slightest touch. But this time, although her fingers quivered, she let them lie lightly in his, and it seemed that the faint trembling in them was a storm which shook her, inwardly, through her schooled calm. He could just see, faintly, on the slender hands and wrists, a number of tiny scars, like healed cuts or burns. Once he had asked her about them. She had shrugged them away, saying only, “They are old, long healed. They were . . . aids to memory.” She had not been willing to say more, but he could guess what she meant, and horror shook him again. Could he ever truly know this woman?