The Forbidden Circle (57 page)

Callista was coming up the stairs behind them. Damon paused before turning away to go to his own suite.

“Callie, you were made Keeper very young, too young, I think. Did you take training for the other grades too? Are you monitor, mechanic or technician? Or did you only work in the central relays as
tenerésteis
?” He used the archaic word usually rendered in
casta
as “Keeper” although “warden” or “guardian” would have been equally accurate.

“Why, you taught me to monitor yourself, Damon. It was my first year in the Tower and your last. By certificate I am only a mechanic; I never tried to do a technician’s work. There was no lack of technicians, and I had enough to do in the relays. Why?”

“I wanted to know what skills we had between us,” Damon said. “I reached the level of technician. I can build what lattices and screens we need, if I have the crystals and blank nodes. But I may need a mechanic, and I will certainly need a monitor, if I am to look for the answer I promised you, so be sure you don’t let yourself get out of condition to monitor if it is needed. Have you kept up your breathing?”

“I could not sleep without it. I suspect all of us trained there will do it all our lives,” she said, and Damon smiled, leaning forward and kissing her cheek very lightly.

“How well you know, sister. Sleep well. Good night, my brother,” he added to Andrew, and went away.

It was obvious that something was bothering Damon. Callista was sitting at her dressing table, braiding her long hair for the night. It reminded Andrew poignantly of another night, but he turned his thoughts away. Callista, still preoccupied with Damon, said, “He is more troubled than he wants us to know. I have known Damon for a long time. It is no use asking him anything he does not want to tell . . .”

But what could he possibly want with
kireseth?

Andrew remembered with a flicker of jealousy that she had not shrunk from Damon’s light kiss on her cheek, but he knew what would happen if he tried it. Then, against his will, Andrew found himself thinking of Damon and Ellemir, together, reunited.

She was his wife, after all, and he, Andrew, had no rights . . . none at all.

Callista put out the light and got into her own bed. Sighing, Andrew lay down, watching the four moons move across the sky. When he finally fell asleep he was not aware of it. It was as if he moved into some state of consciousness between reality and dreams. Damon had told him once that at times, in sleep, the mind moved into the overworld, without any conscious thought.

He woke with a start. Callista slept restlessly in the gray darkness of the room. He heard himself say, half aloud, “You will know what to do with them when it is time . . .” and then, wondering what he had meant, knew the words were part of Damon’s dream. Then he slept again, wandering in the gray and formless realms until dawn. Partly aware that it was not his own consciousness at all, he wondered if he were himself, or if he had somehow become entangled with Damon as well.

He found himself thinking that precognition was almost worse than having no gift at all. If it were a warning, you could be guided by it. But it was just time out of focus, and even Leonie did not understand time. And Andrew in his own awareness wished Damon would keep his damned troubling dreams to himself.

It was a cold, bitter morning, with sleet falling. Damon felt that the sky reflected his own mood.

He had avoided this work for many years, now he was being forced into it again. And he knew, now, that it was not only for Callista’s sake. He had been wrong to renounce it so completely.

He had been misled by the taboo barring telepaths from matrix work outside the Towers. That taboo might, after the Ages of Chaos, have made some sense. But now he felt, with every nerve in him, that it was wrong.

There was so much work for telepaths to do. And it was being left undone.

He had built himself a new career, of sorts, in the Guardsmen, but it had never satisfied him completely. Nor could he find, as Andrew did, satisfaction and fulfillment in helping to manage the estate of his father-in-law. He knew that for many a younger son, without an estate of his own, this would have been a perfect solution: landless himself, to have an estate where his sons would share in the heritage. But it was not for Damon. He knew that any halfway skilled steward could do his work as well. He was there simply to assure that no unscrupulous paid employee took advantage of his wife’s father.

He did not begrudge the time spent on the work of the estate. His life was here with Ellemir, and it would tear him into fragments to be parted, now, from Andrew or from Callista.

It was different for Andrew. He had grown to manhood in a world not unlike this, and for him it was recovering a world he had thought lost forever when he left Terra. But Damon now had begun to guess that
his
real work was this, the work he had been trained in the Towers to do.

“Your part and Ellemir’s,” he told Andrew, “is simply to guard us against intrusion. If there are any interruptions—though I have tried to arrange that there will be none—you can deal with it. Otherwise you must simply remain in rapport and lend me your strength.”

Callista’s work was far more difficult. At first she had been reluctant to take part in this way, but he had managed to persuade her, and he was glad, for he could trust her completely. Like himself, she was Arilinn-trained, a skilled psi monitor, and knew precisely what was wanted. She would watch over his life functions and make sure that his body continued to function as it should while his essential self was elsewhere.

She looked pale and strange, and he knew she was reluctant to return to this work she had abandoned forever, not, like himself, out of fear or distaste, but because it had been such a wrench to abandon it. Having made the renunciation, she was reluctant to compromise.

Yet this was her own true work, Damon knew. It was what she was born and trained to do. It was wrong and cruel that a woman could not do this work without renouncing womanhood. For anything less than working among the great relays and screens, Callista would be completely qualified, were she married a dozen times and as many times a mother! Yet she was lost to the Towers, and it was no less a loss to her. It was a foolish notion, he considered, that with the loss of virginity she would be deprived of all the skills so painstakingly trained into her, and all the knowledge learned at such cost during all those years in Arilinn!

He thought,
I do not believe it
, and caught his breath. This was blasphemy, sacrilege unthinkable! Yet he looked at Callista and thought defiantly,
Nevertheless, I do not believe it!

Yet he was violating the Tower taboo even in using her as a monitor. How stupid, how appallingly stupid!

Of course, legally he was doing nothing wrong. Callista, though she had declared intent to marry by a freemate ceremony, was not, in fact, Andrew’s wife. She was still a virgin, and therefore qualified. . . . How stupid the whole thing was! How tragically stupid!

Something was wrong, he thought once again, terrribly and tragically wrong with the whole concept of training telepaths on Darkover. Because of the abuses of the Ages of Chaos, because of the crimes of men and women dead so long that even their bones were dust, other men and women were condemned to a living death.

Callista asked gently, “What’s wrong, Damon? You look so angry!”

He could not explain it to her. She was still bound by the taboos, deep in her bones. He said, “I’m cold,” and left it at that. He had wrapped himself in a loose robe, which would at least protect his body from the awful chilling of the overworld. He noted that Callista had also substituted a long, warm wrapper for her ordinary housedress. He lay back in a padded armchair, while Callista made herself comfortable on a cushion at his feet. Andrew and Ellemir were a little further away, and Ellemir said, “When I kept watch for you, you had me stay physically in contact with the pulse spots.”

“You’re untrained, darling. Callista has been doing this work since she was a little girl. She could even monitor me from another room, if she had to. You and Andrew are basically superfluous, though it’s a help to have you both here. If something should interrupt us—I’ve given orders, but if, the Gods forbid, the house should take fire or
Dom
Esteban fall ill and need help—you can deal with it, and protect Callista and me from disturbance.”

Callista had her matrix in her lap. He noted that she had fastened it to the pulse spot with a bit of ribbon. There were different ways of handling a matrix, and at Arilinn everyone was encouraged to experiment and find the way most congenial. He noted that she contacted the psi jewel without physically looking into the stone, while he himself gazed into the depths of his own, seeing the swirling lights slowly focus. . . . He began to breathe more and more slowly, sensing it when Callista made contact with his mind, matching the resonances of her body’s field to his own. More dimly and at a distance he felt her bring Andrew and Ellemir into the rapport. For a moment he relaxed into the content of having them all around him, close, reassuring, in the closest bond known. At this moment he knew that he was closer to Callista than to anyone in the world. Closer than to Ellemir, whose body he knew so well, whose thoughts he had shared, who had so briefly and heartbreakingly sheltered their child. Yet Callista was close to him as twin to unborn twin, and Ellemir somewhere in the outside distance. Beyond her he sensed Andrew, a giant, a rock of strength, protecting them, safeguarding them. . . .

He felt the walls of their sheltering place enclosing them, the astral structure he had built while he worked with the frostbitten men. Then, with that curious upward thrust, he was in the overworld, and he could
see
the walls taking shape around them. When he had built it with Andrew and Dezi it had resembled a travel-shelter of rough brown stone, perhaps because he had regarded it as temporary. Structures in the overworld were what you thought they were. He noticed that the rough brick and stone had now become smooth and lucent, that there was a slate-colored stone floor beneath his feet, not unlike that of Callista’s little still-room. From where he stood, in the green and gold colors of his Domain, he could see an array of furnishings. Noticed like this, they looked curiously transparent and insubstantial, but he knew that if he tried to sit on them they would take on strength and solidity. They would be comfortable and would, furthermore, provide whatever surface he wanted—velvet or silk or fur at his own will. On one of these Callista lay, and she too looked oddly transparent, though he knew she would solidify too, as they were here longer. Andrew and Ellemir looked more dim, and he saw that they were asleep on the other furniture, because they were here only in his mind, not conscious on the overworld level at all. Only their thoughts, drifting through his in the rapport where Callista held them, were strong and present. They were passive here, lending all their strength to Damon. He floated for a moment, enjoying the comfort of a support circle, knowing it would keep him from some of the awful draining he had known before. He noted how Callista held in her hands a series of threads like a spiderweb, and he knew this was how she visualized the control she was keeping over his body where it lay in the more solid world. If his breathing faltered, if his circulation was impaired by the cramped position, if, even, he developed an itch which could disturb his concentration here in the overworld, she could repair the damage long before he was conscious of it. Guarded by Callista, his body was safe, here behind the shelter of their landmark.