The Forbidden Circle (66 page)

He flinched at the joke. How could she make jokes about the way in which her body had been held, immature, and yet, he realized soberly, it was her very ability to find something funny, even in this, which had saved them all from despair.

They reached the valley with the old stone bridge, where the twin foals had been born. Together they rode up the long slope, tethered their horses to a tree, and dismounted.

“
Kireseth
is a flower of the heights,” Callista said. “It does not grow in the tilled valleys, and probably it is a good thing. Men sometimes even weed it out when it grows on the lower slopes, because the pollen causes trouble: when it blooms, even horses and cattle are likely to behave like mad things, stampede, attack one another, mate out of season. But it is very valuable, for we make the
kirian
from it. And look, it is beautiful,” she said, pointing to the lone grassy slope, covered with a cascade of blue flowers, shimmering with their golden stamens. Some were still blue, others like bells of gold, covered with the golden pollen.

She tied a piece of thin cloth, like a mask, over the lower part of her face. “I am trained to handle it without reacting much,” she said, “but even so, I do not want to breathe too much of it.”

He watched while she made preparations to gather the flowers, but she warned him away. “Don’t come too close, Andrew. You have never been exposed to it before. Everyone who lives in the Kilghard Hills has been through a Ghost Wind or two and knows how they will react, but it does very strange things. Stay here under the trees with the horses.”

Andrew demurred, but she repeated her injunction firmly. “Do you think I need help picking a few flowers, Andrew? I brought you with me to have your company on the long ride, and to soothe my father’s fears about bandits or robbers lurking in the hills with intent to rob me of the jewels I am not wearing, or to attempt rape, which might,” she added, with a touch of grim laughter, “be worse for them to attempt than for me to suffer.”

Andrew turned his face away. He was glad Callista could find some amusement, but that particular joke struck him as being in questionable taste.

“It will not take long for me to gather what I need of the flowers; they are already blooming and are heavy with the resin. Wait here for me, my love.”

He did as she said, watching her move away from him and into the flowers. She stooped and began cutting the flower heads, putting them into a thick bag she had brought. Andrew lay down on the grass beside the horses and watched her moving lightly through the field of gold and blue flowers, her red-gold hair falling in a single braid down her back. The sun was warm, warmer than he could remember for any day on Darkover. Bees and insects buzzed and whirred softly in the field of flowers, and a few birds swooped down overhead. Around him, with sharpened senses, he could smell the horses and their saddle leather, the heavy scent of the resin-trees, and a sweet, sharp, fruity smell which, he supposed, must be the scent of the
kireseth
flowers. He could feel it filling his head. Remembering that Damon had warned him against handling or smelling even the dried flowers, he conscientiously moved the horses a little further away. It was a still, windless day, with not the slightest breeze blowing. He drew off his riding jacket and wadded it under his head. The sun made him drowsy. How graceful Callista was, as she bent over the flowers, cutting a blossom here and one there, stowing them in her bag. He closed his eyes, but behind his eyelids it seemed he could still see sunlight, splintering into brilliant colors and prisms. He knew he must have had a whiff of the resin; Damon had said it was an hallucinogen. But he felt relaxed and content, with no impulse to do any of the dangerous things he had been warned that men and animals did under its influence. He was completely content to lie here on the warm grass, dimly conscious of the shifting rainbow colors behind his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, the sunlight seemed brighter, warmer.

Then Callista was coming toward him, the mask fallen from her face, her hair flowing. She seemed to wade, waist deep, through shimmering golden waves of the star-shaped flowers, a delicate girlish woman in a cloud of bright copper hair. For a moment her form shimmered and wavered as if she were not there at all, not his wife in a riding skirt, but the ghostly image he had seen while her body lay prisoner in the caves of Corresanti and she could come to him only in insubstantial form in the overworld. But she was real. She sat beside him on the grass, bending her glowing face over him with a smile so tender that he could not forbear to draw her down to him and kiss her lips. She returned his kiss with an intensity which dimly surprised him . . . although, half asleep and his senses half sharpened, half dulled by the pollen, he could not remember quite why this should surprise him so much.

He reached for her, drew her down beside him in the grass. He held her in his arms, kissing her passionately, and she gave him back his kisses without hesitation or withdrawal.

A random thought crossed his mind, like a flicker of wind stirring the glowing flowers:
Did I ever dream that I had married the wrong woman?
This new, responsive Callista in his arms, glowing with tenderness, made the very thought absurd. He knew that she shared the thought—he no longer cared to try to conceal it from her, no longer cared to conceal
anything
from her—and that it amused her. He could feel the little glimmering ripples of laughter through the waves of desire which swept them both.

He knew, positively, that now he could do what he would and she would not protest, but compunction stayed him from anything further than this, the kisses she shared and gave back so intensely. Whatever she felt, it might be dangerous for her. That night . . . she had wanted him then too. And that had ended in catastrophe and near-tragedy. He would not risk it again until he was certain, more for her sake than his own.

He knew she was beyond fear, but she accepted this, as she had accepted the kisses, the caresses. Strangely, there seemed no compulsion to go further, no ache of frustration. He was also swept with ripples of laughter which seemed somehow to heighten the ecstatic quality of this moment, of sun and warmth and flowers and singing insects in the grass all around him, a laughter, a mirth which shook Callista too, along with desire.

His wife and he were perfectly content to lie here in the grass beside her, with his clothes on, and she hers, and do nothing more than kiss her, as if they were children in their teens. . . . It was absurdly hilarious and delightful.

The politest of the Darkovan words for sex was
accandir
which meant simply to lie down together and was so noncommittal that it could be used in the presence of young children. Well, he thought, again swept by the little ripples of mirth, that was what they were doing. He never knew how long they lay there side by side in the grass, kissing or gently caressing one another, while he played with the strands of her hair or watched the soft prisms of color behind his eyes crawl across her glowing face.

It must have been hours later—the sun had begun to angle down from noon—when a cloud darkened the sun and a wind sprang up, blowing Callista’s hair across her face. Andrew blinked and sat up, looking down at her. She lay resting on one elbow, her under-tunic opened at the throat, bits of grass and flowers caught in her hair. It was suddenly cold, and Callista looked at the sky regretfully. “I am afraid we must go, or we will be caught in the rain. Look at the clouds.” With reluctant fingers she fastened her tunic-laces, picked leaves from her hair, and braided it loosely. “Just enough for decency,” she said, laughing. “I do not want to look as if I had been lying down in the fields, even with my own husband!”

He laughed, gathering up the bag of flowers at her side, laying it on the pommel of her saddle. What happened to them? he wondered. The sun, the pollen, what was it? He was ready to lift her on her horse when she delayed, suddenly catching at him, putting her arms around his neck.

She said, “Andrew, oh, please—” and glanced at the edge of the field, the shelter of the trees. He knew her thoughts; there was no need to put them into words.

“I want to . . . I want to be all yours.”

His hands tightened about her waist, but he did not move.

He said, very gently, “Darling, no. No risks.”

It seemed that it would be all right, but he was not sure. If the channels overloaded again . . . He could not bear to see her suffer that way. Not again.

She drew a long, deep breath of disappointment, but he knew she accepted his decision. When she raised her eyes to him again they were filled with tears, but she was smiling.
I will cast no shadow on this wonderful day by asking for more, like a greedy child
.

He put her riding cloak around her shoulders, for a sharp wind was blowing from the heights and it was cold. As he lifted her into the saddle he could see the field of flowers, now chill blue, without the golden shimmer that had been on them. The sky was darkening into a drizzle of rain. He lifted Callista into her saddle, and beyond her, as he mounted, could see that on the other slope across the valley the horses were beginning to bunch up, moving restlessly, looking for shelter also.

The ride back was silent, Andrew feeling let down, distressed. He felt that he had been a fool. He should have taken advantage of Callista’s yielding, the sudden disappearance of fear or hesitation. What stupid compunction had made him hesitate?

After all, if it was Callista’s response to him which overloaded the channels, there had already been as much of that as if he had actually taken her. As she had wished! What a fool he had been, he thought, what a damnable fool!

Callista was silent, also, glancing now and then at him with an inexpressible look of guilt and dread. He picked up her fear, fear that came to wipe out the gladness.

I am glad I have known, again, what it was to desire him, to return his love . . . but I am afraid.
And he could feel the paralyzing texture of her fear, the memory of pain when she had allowed herself, before, to respond to him.
I couldn’t endure that again. Not even with
kirian.
And it would be dreadful for Damon too. Merciful Avarra, what have I done?

It was raining hard by the time they reached Armida, and Andrew lifted Callista from the saddle, sensing with dismay the way her body stiffened against his touch. Again? He kissed her wet face under the soaked hood. She did not draw away from the kiss, but she did not return it, either. Puzzled, but trying to be sympathetic—she was afraid, poor girl, and who could blame her after that awful ordeal?—Andrew carried her up the steps and set her on her feet.

“Go and dry yourself, my precious, don’t wait for me. I must make sure the horses are properly seen to.”

Callista went slowly and regretfully up the stairs. Her gaiety had vanished, leaving her feeling tired and sick with apprehension. One of the strongest taboos in Arilinn was that which made the raw
kireseth
plant, untreated, a thing wholly forbidden. Although she was no longer bound by those laws, she felt guilty and ashamed. Even when she knew she was being affected by the flowers, she had remained to enjoy the effect, not moving out of range or withdrawing. And through the guilt was fear. She did not feel as she had felt with channel overload before—she had seldom felt better—but knowing what she did about herself, she was deathly frightened.

She went in search of Damon, and he guessed at once what had happened. “Were you exposed to
kireseth
, Callista? Tell me.”

Stumbling, ashamed, frightened, she managed to convey to Damon a little of what had happened. Damon, listening to the faltering words, thought in an anguished empathy that she sounded as shamed as a repentant harlot, not a married woman who had spent the day innocently with her own husband. But he was troubled. After the events of the early winter, Andrew would never have approached her like this, without an explicit invitation.
Kireseth
, as a matter of fact, had quite a reputation for breaking down inhibitions. But whatever the cause, she might again have overloaded her channels with two conflicting sets of responses. “Well, let us see what harm has been done.”

But after monitoring her briefly, he felt confused. “Are you
sure
, Callista? Your channels are a Keeper’s, undisturbed. What sort of joke is this?”

“Joke? Damon, what do you mean? It happened just as I said.”

“But that is impossible,” Damon said. “You could
not
react like that. If you had, your channels would be overloaded and you would be very ill. What do you feel now?”

“Nothing,” she said wearily, defeated, “I feel nothing, nothing,
nothing
!” For a moment he thought she would burst into tears. She spoke again, her voice tight with unshed tears. “It is gone, like a dream, and I have broken the laws of the Tower. I am outcaste for nothing.”

Damon did not know what to think. A dream, compensating for the deprivations of her life? The
kireseth
was, after all, an hallucinogenic drug. He stretched his hands to her. Her automatic withdrawal from the touch verified his guess: she and Andrew had merely shared an illusion.

Later he questioned Andrew, which he could do more thoroughly and specifically, discussing the physical responses involved. Andrew was distressed and defensive, though he willingly admitted he would have been responsible if Callista had been harmed. Zandru’s hells, Damon thought, what a tangle! Andrew already had so much guilt about wanting Callista when she could not respond to him, and now he must be deprived even of the illusion. Laying his hand on his friend’s shoulder, he said, “It’s all right, Andrew. You didn’t hurt her. She’s all right, I tell you, her channels are still wholly clear.”

Andrew said stubbornly, “I don’t believe it was a dream, or an illusion, or anything like that. Damn it, I didn’t invent the leaves in my hair!”