The Forbidden Circle (75 page)

“Damon Ridenow, for your own offenses, and the offenses of these whom you have led into disobedience, you merit death or mutilation under the old laws. You are here offered a choice. You may surrender your matrix at once, with a Keeper to safeguard your life and reason, so that you may live out your life as regent of Alton, and guardian of the Alton heir your wife bears. If you refuse this, it will be taken from you by force. Should you survive, the
laran
centers of your brain will be burned away, to prevent any further abuse.”

Ellemir gave a low cry of dismay. Lorill looked at her with something like compassion, and said, “Ellemir Lanart, as for you, being misled by your husband, we impose no sentence save this: that you shall cease to meddle in matters outside the sphere of women, and turn your thoughts to your only duty at this time, to safeguard your coming child, who is heir to Alton. Since your father lies ill and your only surviving brother is a minor child, and your husband under our sentence, we place you under wardship of Lord Serrais, and you shall return to Serrais to bear your child. Meanwhile, I have chosen three respectable matrons of Comyn to care for you until sentence has been carried out on your husband: Lady Rohana Ardais, Jerana, Princess of Elhalyn, and my own son’s wife, Lady Cassilda Hastur. Allow them now to take you from this chamber, Lady Ellemir. What is to come may prove disturbing, even dangerous for a woman in your condition.”

Lady Cassilda, a pretty, dark-haired woman, about Ellemir’s age, and herself heavily pregnant, held out her hand to Ellemir. “Come with me, my dear.”

Ellemir looked at Cassilda Hastur and back at Damon. “May I speak, Lord Hastur?”

Lorill nodded.

Ellemir’s voice sounded as light and childish as ever, but determined. “I thank the matrons for their kind concern, but I decline their good offices. I will stay with my husband.”

“My dear,” Cassilda Hastur said, “your loyalty does you credit. But you must think of your child.”

“I
am
thinking of my child,” Ellemir said, “of all our children, Cassilda, yours and mine, and the life we want for them. Have any of you bothered to think, really
think
about what Damon is doing?”

Damon, listening incredulously—he had poured his heart out to her, the night he healed the frostbitten men, but he had not believed she really understood—heard her say:

“You know and I know how hard it is to find telepaths in these days, for the Towers. Even those who have
laran
are reluctant to give up their lives and live behind walls, and who can blame them? I would not want to do it myself. I want to live at Armida and have children to live there after me. And I do not want to see
their
lives torn by that terrible choice, either, to know that they must shirk one or the other duty to their Domain. But there is so much for telepaths to do, and no one is doing it. They need not all be done behind the walls of a Tower, indeed some of them
cannot
be done there. But because so many people believe that is the only way to use
laran
, the work is simply not being done at all, and the people of the Domains are suffering because it is not done. Damon has found a way to make it available to everyone.
Laran
need not be a kind of . . . of mysterious sorcery, hidden inside the Towers. If I, who am a woman, and uneducated, and the lesser of twins, can be taught to use it, as I have been, a little, then there must be many, many, who could do, it. And—”

Margwenn Elhalyn rose in her place. She was very pale. “Must we sit and listen to this . . . this blasphemy? Must we who have given our lives to the Towers sit here and hear our choice blasphemed by this . . . this ignorant woman who should be home by her fireside making baby clothes, not standing before us prattling like a silly child of things she cannot understand!”

“Wait,” said Rohana Ardais, “wait, Margwenn. I too was Tower-trained, and the choice was forced on me, to give up this work I loved, to marry and give sons to my husband’s clan. There is some wisdom in what Lady Ellemir says. Let us hear what she is saying to us, without interrupting.”

But Rohana was silenced by outcry. Lorill Hastur called them to order, and Damon remembered with a sinking heart that Lorill too had been trained in Dalereuth Tower, and had been forced to renounce it when he inherited the position as Council Regent. “You have no Council voice, Lady Ellemir. You may choose to go with the matrons we have chosen to care for you, or you may remain here. You have no other options.”

She clung to Damon’s arm. “I stay with my husband.” “Sir,” Cassilda Hastur said, troubled, “Has she the right to choose, when this choice may endanger the child she bears? She has miscarried once, and this child is heir to Alton. Is not the child’s safety more important than her sentimental wish to stay with Damon?”

“In the name of all the Gods, Cassilda!” Rohana protested. “She is not a child! She understands what is at stake here! Do you think she is a dairy animal, that by leading her out of sight of her child’s father you can make her indifferent to his fate? Sit down and let her alone!”

Rebuked, the young Lady Hastur took her seat.

“Damon Ridenow, choose. Will you surrender your matrix without protest, or must it be taken from you?”

Damon glanced at Ellemir, holding his arm; at Callista, blazing jeweled defiance; at Andrew, one step behind him. He said to them, not to Lorill, “May I speak, then, for you all? Callista, is it your will to return to Arilinn in Leonie’s care?”

Leonie was looking at Callista with a hungry eagerness, and Damon suddenly understood.

Leonie had never allowed herself to love. But Callista, like herself a pledged virgin lifelong, Callista she might love safely, with all the repressed hunger of her starved emotions. It was no wonder that she could not let Callista go, that she had made it impossible for Callista to leave the Tower. Her love for the girl had not the faintest hint of sexuality, but it was love, nevertheless, as real as his own hopeless love for Leonie.

Callista was silent, and Damon wondered which would be her choice. Did Arilinn seem more attractive to her than what they offered, less troubling, less painful? And then he knew that Callista’s silence was only compassion, reluctance to fling Leonie’s offered love and protection back into her face. Unwillingness to hurt the woman who had cherished and protected the lonely child in the Tower. When she spoke there were tears in her eyes.

“I have given back my oath. I will not receive it again. I too will remain with my husband.”

Now, indeed, they stood as one! Damon’s voice rang defiant:

“Hear me then!” He drew Ellemir close, fiercely protective. “For my wife, I thank the noble ladies of Comyn, but none but I shall care for her while I live. As for Andrew, he is my sworn man, and you yourself, Lorill Hastur, during the building of the spaceport, judged that Terrans might enter into private agreements with Darkovans, and the reverse, and these shall be treated like any other contract under Domain law. I have taken the oath of
bredin
with Andrew, and I shall be personally responsible for his honor as for my own. This means that as regent of Alton I shall hold his marriage to Callista to be as valid as my own. And as for myself,” and now he faced Leonie and flung the words, deliberately, straight at her, “I am Keeper, and responsible only to my own conscience.”

“You? Keeper?” Her voice was scornful. “You, Damon?”

“You yourself guided me in Timesearch, and it was Varzil the Good who named me
tenerézu
.” With deliberation, he used the archaic male form of the word.

Lorill said, “You cannot call to witness a man who has been dead for hundreds of years.”

“You have called me to judgment on laws which have stood since those days,” Damon said, “and the structure I have built in the overworld stands for all to witness who have entry there. And this was the law and the test in those days. I am Keeper. I have established my Tower. I will abide the challenge.”

Leonie’s face paled. “That law has been dead since the Ages of Chaos.”

You live by laws which should have been dead long ago too.
He did not speak the words aloud, but Leonie heard them, and so did everyone with
laran
in the Crystal Chamber. She said, as white as a skull, “So be it. You have invoked the old test of a Keeper’s right and responsibility. You and Callista are renegades of Arilinn, so this shall be Arilinn’s affair, to answer the challenge. It will be a duel, Damon, and you know the penalty if you fail. Not only you and Callista, but your consorts—if any of you survive the ordeal, which is unlikely—shall be stripped of your matrices and the
laran
centers burned away, so that you may live as an example and a warning to anyone who would stretch out his hand, unfit, for a Keeper’s place and power.”

“I see you know the consequences, Leonie,” said Callista. “Would that you had known them equally well when I was made Keeper.”

Leonie ignored her, staring fixedly into Damon’s eyes.

“I will abide the ordeal and its penalties, Leonie,” Damon said, “but you do realize, Leonie, that you invoke them on yourself and all of Arilinn, should you fail to conquer.”

She said, furiously, “I think we would all risk more than that, to punish the insolence of those who would build a forbidden Tower on our threshold!”

“
Enough!
” Lorill held out his hands to silence them. “I declare challenge and ordeal between Arilinn Tower and its Keeper, Leonie Hastur, and”—he hesitated a moment—“and the forbidden tower with him who stands self-proclaimed as its Keeper, Damon Ridenow. It shall begin at sunrise tomorrow.”

Leonie’s face was like stone. “I shall await the ordeal.”

“And I,” said Damon. “Until sunrise, Leonie.”

He gave a hand to Ellemir, the other to Callista. Andrew paced one step behind them. Without looking back, they left the Crystal Chamber.

Until sunrise. He had spoken bravely. But could they face Leonie, and all the forces of Arilinn?

They must, or die.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Damon’s first act, when they returned to the Alton suite, was to fetch a telepathic damper and isolate
Dom
Esteban’s room behind it. He gently told Ferrika what he was doing.

“At sunrise there may be a . . . a telepathic disturbance,” he warned her, thinking how ridiculously inadequate the words were. “This will make certain he will not be drawn into it, for he is too weak for any such thing. I leave him in your care, Ferrika, I trust you.”

He found himself wishing he could isolate Ellemir too behind such a safe barrier, with her unborn baby. He told her this when he returned to the rooms they shared with Callista and Andrew, and she smiled wanly.

“Why, you are no better than the ladies of Comyn Council, my husband, feeling I must be shielded and excused because I am a woman, and bearing. Don’t you think I realize that we are all fighting together, for the right to live together and bring up our children to a better life than most Comyn sons and daughters can have? Do you think I want
him
”—she laid her hand, with that expressive gesture, on her pregnant body—“to face the crippling choice you faced, or Callista, or Leonie? Do you think I am unwilling to fight, as well as you?”

He held her close, realizing her intuition was sounder than his own. “My darling, all the Gods forbid I should be the one to deny you that right.”

But as they rejoined Callista and Andrew, he realized that the coming battle was more than life and death. If they lost—and survived—they would be worse than dead.

“It will be fought in the overworld,” he warned, “like the last battle with the Great Cat. We must all be very sure of ourselves, because only our own thoughts can defeat us.”

Ellemir sent for food and wine and they dined together, trying to make it a festive occasion, forgetting they were strengthening themselves for the ordeal of their lives. Callista looked pale, but Damon was relieved to see that she ate heartily.

There were two of them Keeper-trained, he thought, Keeper-strong. But that also roused an uncomfortable thought. If they lost, it would be all the same, but if they won there was a matter still unsettled.

“If we win,” he said, “I shall have won the right to work as I will with my chosen circle, then Ellemir as my wife, and Andrew as my sworn man, are beyond the reach of Council meddling. But you, Callista, you are close to the heirship of Comyn; nearer than you are only two children, and one is still unborn. Council will argue that my duty as regent of Alton is to have you married off to some suitable man, someone of Comyn blood. A woman of your years, Callista, unless actually working in a Tower, is usually married.”

“I am married,” she flared at him.

“
Breda
, the marriage will not stand if anyone contests it. Do you really trust Council not to contest it? Old
Dom
Gabriel of Ardais has already spoken to me about marrying you to his son Kyril—”

“Kyril Ardais?” Her nostrils flared in disdain. “I had as soon marry some bandit of the Hellers and be done with it! I have not spoken with him since he was a bully intimidating us all at children’s parties, but I do not suppose he has improved by aging!”

“Still, it is a marriage Council would approve. Or they might follow through on Father’s wish and give you, as he meant to give Ellemir, to Cathal. But marry you off they certainly will. You know the law about freemate marriage as well as I do, Callista.”

She did. Freemate marriage was legal upon consummation and could be annulled by act of Council, as long as it was childless.

“Avarra’s mercy,” she said, looking around the table at them all, “this is worse than being put to bed in the sight of half the Domain of Alton, and I thought
that
was embarrassing!”

She laughed, but it was not a mirthful sound. Ellemir said gently, “Why do you think a woman is put to bed so publicly? So that all may see and know that the marriage is a legal fact. But in your case a question has been raised. I do not doubt Dezi has talked freely on the matter, damn him!”