The Forbidden Circle (52 page)

“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 rummagednacabinet 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.”

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 different 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!”