“But it is my fault.” Even in the mirror, she would not meet his eyes. “Because of what I am. It is my fault that what he said was… true.”
He thought, poignantly, of the way in which Ellemir had snuggled into Damon’s arms, the way her arms had lain around Damon’s neck while they danced. He said at last, “Well, Callie, I won’t lie to you, it’s not easy. I won’t pretend that I’m enjoying the waiting. But I promised, and I’m not complaining. Leave it now, love.”
Her small chin set in a stubborn line. “I can’t leave it like that. Can’t you understand that you… your need hurts me too, because I want you too, and I cannot, I don’t dare… Andrew, listen to me. No, let me finish, do you remember what I asked you, the day we were wedded? That if it were this hard for you, to… to take another?”
He frowned at her in the mirror, displeased. “I thought we’d settled that once and for all, Callista. In God’s name, do you think I care for any of the maids or serving women?” Had it disturbed her, that he danced with Ferrika tonight? Did she think…
She shook her head, saying faintly, “No. But if it would make any difference… I have spoken to Ellemir about this. She told me… she is willing.”
Andrew stared at her, dismay and consternation mingling in his emotions. “Are you serious?”
But she was. Her grave face told him that, and anyway she was not, he knew, capable of making that kind of joke. “Ellemir? She is the last, the very last—your own sister, Callista! How could I do such a thing to you?”
“Do you believe it makes me happy to see you so miserable, to know that a brat like Dezi can shame you that way? And how could I be jealous of my own sister?” He made a gesture of revulsion, and she put her hand out to him. “No, Andrew, listen to me. This is our custom. If you were one of us, it would be taken for granted that my sister and I should… should share in this way. Even if things were — as they should be between us, if there was a time when I was ill, or pregnant, or simply not… not wanting you… It is very old, this custom. You have heard me sing the Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda? Even there, even in the ballad, it speaks of how Camilla took the place of her breda in the arms of the God, and so died when he was set upon. It was so that the Blessed Cassilda survived the treachery of Alar, to bear the child of the God…” Her voice faded.
Andrew said flatly, “That kind of thing may be all very well in old ballads and fairy-tales. But not in real life.”
“Even if I wish it, Andrew? I would feel less guilt because every additional day I delayed was adding to… to your suffering.”
“Suppose you let me worry about that? There’s no need for you to feel guilty.” But she turned away, weary and defeated. She stood up, letting her released hair shower down to her waist, slowly took it in handfuls, separating it for braiding. She said, stifled, “I cannot endure this any longer.”
He said gently, “Then it is for you to end it, Callista.” He picked up a fine strand of her hair, pressing it to his lips, savoring the fine texture, the delicate fragrance. He felt dizzy at the touch. He had promised never to try to hurry her. But how long, how long…?
“My darling, what can I say to you? Is the thought so frightening to you, even now?”
She sounded forlorn, wretched. “I know it shouldn’t be. But I am afraid. I don’t think I’m ready—”
He put his arms around her, very gently. He said, almost in a whisper, “How will you know, Callista, unless you try? Will you come and sleep beside me? No more than that—I swear to you I won’t ask anything you’re not ready to give me.”
She hesitated, twisting a lock of her hair. She said, “Won’t it… won’t it make it worse for you, if I should decide I… I can’t, I’m not ready yet?”
“Must I swear it to you, love? Don’t you trust me?”
She said, with a heartbreaking smile, “It isn’t you I don’t trust, my husband.” The words made his breath catch in his throat.
“Then…?” He held her loosely within the circle of his arms. After a long time, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.
He gently picked her up in his arms and carried her to his bed. He said, laying her down on the pillows, “Why, then, if you feel that way, isn’t it proof that it’s time, my darling? I promise you I will be gentle with you—”
She shook her head, whispering, “Oh, Andrew, if it were only as simple as that!” Her eyes filled and flooded with tears. Suddenly she put her arms up around his neck.
“Andrew, will you do something for me? Something you may not want to do? Andrew, promise?”
He said, aching with love, “I can’t think of anything in this world or any other that I wouldn’t do for you, Callie. My darling, my treasure, anything, anything that would make it easier for you.”
She looked up at him, trembling. “This, then,” she said. “Knock me unconscious. Take me by force, this time, while I cannot resist—”
Andrew drew back, looking down at her in blank horror. For a moment he literally could not speak his dismay and revulsion. At last he said stammering, “You must be mad, Callista! In God’s name, how could I do such a thing to any woman alive? And least of all to you!”
She looked up in despair. “You promised.”
Now he was angry. “What are you, Callista? What kind of mad, perverse—” Words failed him. Cold to his gentleness, did she crave his cruelty, then?
Her eyes were still flooding quiet tears. She said, picking up the thought, “No, no, I never thought you would want to. It was the only way I could think of—oh, Avarra pity me, I should have died, I should have died—”
She turned over, burying her head in the pillow, and began to cry so wildly that Andrew was terrified. He lay down beside her, tried to take her in his arms, but she wrenched violently away from him. Dismayed, in an agony almost as great as her own, Andrew picked her up, holding her against him, stroking and soothing her, trying to make contact with her mind, but she had slammed down the barrier against him. He held her, silent, letting her cry. At last she lay resistless in his arms as she had not done since he carried her out of the caves of Corresanti, and it seemed to him that some inner barrier had dissolved too. She whispered, “You’re so good to me, and I’m so ashamed.”
“I love you, Callista. But I think you’ve built this thing up in your mind, out of all proportion. I think we were wrong to wait then, and the longer we wait the worse it’s going to be.” He felt the familiar touch on his mind and he knew, now, that she welcomed it, as in that time of loneliness and fear. She said, “I wasn’t afraid then.”
He said, firmly and surely, “Nothing has changed since then except that I love you more.”
He didn’t know all that much about sexual inhibitions, but he did know there was such a state as pathological frigidity, and what little he had been told about a Keeper’s training confirmed his suspicion that this must be what had been done to her: a total conditioning against any kind of sexual response. He was not naive enough to believe that a gentle seduction would ease all her fears and turn her into a passionate and responsive wife, but it seemed that was the only place to start. It might, at least, reassure her.
They were deeply in contact now. He sensed that she felt no trace of the physical arousal which was so strong in him, but he knew that she hungered for the closeness which could end this cold constraint between them. He drew her gently to him. He wanted her, yes, but not unwilling. He wanted her to share the tempest of passion that made him tremble. There was no need for words. She drew his face down to her, laying her lips against his in a shy hesitation, and he felt a sudden disquiet. He had never known an inexperienced woman before. Yet he could feel—they were deeply in contact now— the tremendous effort she was making not to shrink from his touch. It seemed that he would burst with tenderness. She was pliant in his arms, shyly touching him, not trying to conceal her lack of response. It was not the passivity of ignorance—she evidently understood what he expected of her— but there was not the faintest hint of physical arousal
.
He reached out again for her mind. Then, through the familiar presence which was hers, he sensed a confusion, something else, alien yet familiar, strongly sexual. Ellemir? Damon and Ellemir? His first reaction was to withdraw, slam down mental barriers—I’m no voyeur!—but then, hesitant and still tentative, he could feel Callista drop into the fourway fusion, the old link among them reestablishing itself as it had done when they were all linked together within the matrix. And for the first time he felt a yielding in Callista, not a mental yielding alone, but a physical softening. She was less apprehensive, as if this was less frightening for her, shared with her twin. As he was drawn into the fourfold link, into intense participation in the lovemaking of the other couple, it seemed for an instant that it was Ellemir in his arms, that it was she who embraced him, opening herself wholly to him, warm, responsive—No, it was only that Callista had submerged herself in Ellemir’s response, and through it he could feel Callista’s shy surprise, the reassurance of Ellemir’s excitement and pleasure. He pressed his mouth to hers, in a long, searching kiss, and for the first time felt a flicker of actual response. Callista was no longer passively permitting him to do what he would, she was actually sharing in the kiss for the first time.
Had she needed this kind of reassurance, then? At his urging whisper, she pressed herself warmly against him. He knew she was deeply merged now in Ellemir’s consciousness, sharing Ellemir’s response, letting it take over her own body. He could feel Damon too, and that was disquieting, or was it only that he could also feel and share Ellemir’s response to Damon’s strange, provokingly sensual mixture of gentleness and violence?
For a moment it seemed to him that this was enough for now, to drift on the surface of their passionate embrace, to seek no more, to let himself merge in this warm, welcoming multiple consciousness. But it was still too strange for him, and his own body, demanding now, urgent, insisted on completion. Like a swimmer coming up for air he gasped, trying to disentangle himself from the multiple mind-link, to narrow his consciousness down to Callista alone, Callista in his arms, fragile, vulnerable, wholly pliant, wholly yielding.
Suddenly, with unimaginable violence, the fragile mesh of consciousness shattered. All at once he felt a tearing, burning pain in his genitals. Shocked, crying out, he heard Callista scream in despair and wild protest and felt himself torn from her arms, hurtling through the air. His mind spun dizzily. This couldn’t be real! His head struck something sharp, and in a blaze of pain, crimson lights exploding like bombs inside his head, he lost consciousness.
* * *
Chapter Eight
« ^ »
He was lying on the floor.
Before consciousness came fully back, he was aware of that, and of the fuzzy protest, How the hell did I get here? There was a sharp pain in his head, and a worse one in his groin. Someone lifted his head. He made a noise of protest as his head exploded, and opened his eyes. Damon, stark naked, was kneeling beside him.
“Lie still,” he said sharply, as Andrew struggled to rise. “Let me wipe the blood out of your eyes, you idiot!”
Andrew’s main emotion, displacing even pain, was outrage. He pushed Damon’s hand violently away. “What the bloody hell are you doing here? How dare you? Callista and I—”
“So,” said Damon, with a wry half-smile, “were we. As you damn well know. Do you think we wanted to be interrupted like that? But better us than the servants, man, rushing up to find out who’s being murdered. In hell’s name, didn’t you hear Callista screaming?”
All Andrew could hear was a sobbing whimper, but it seemed that somewhere in his mind was an awareness, not quite a memory, of shattering screams. He struggled to his feet, disregarding Damon’s steadying hand.
“Callista! I must go to her—”
“Ellemir’s with her, and I don’t think she can face you just yet. Let me look at this.” His probing hands were so impersonal that Andrew could take no offense. “Does this hurt?”
It did. Damon looked grave, but after some more probing, said, “No permanent damage to the testicles, I guess. No, don’t try to look, you’re not familiar with wounds and it will look worse to you than it is. Can you see all right?”
Andrew tried. “Fuzzy,” he said. Damon mopped at the cut on his forehead again. “Head wounds bleed like hell, but I think that needs a stitch or two.”
“Never mind that.” Callista’s sobs tore at his consciousness. “Is Callista all right? Oh, God, did I hurt her?”
“Did you hurt her?” Ellemir said waspishly behind them. “She didn’t quite manage to kill you, this time.”
“Let her alone,” said Andrew, fiercely protective. All he remembered was passion, and violent—terrifyingly violent— interruption. “What happened, an earthquake?”
Callista was lying on her side, her face swollen from crying. Naked, she seemed so defenseless that Andrew felt heartsick. He picked up her robe and spread it gently over her bare body.
“Darling—darling, what did I do to you?”
She broke out into the frantic weeping again. “I tried so hard… and I nearly killed him, Damon, I thought I was ready and I wasn’t! I could have killed him…”
Damon smoothed her hair away from her wet face. “Don’t cry any more, breda. All the smiths in Zandru’s forges can’t mend a broken egg. You didn’t kill him, that’s what matters now.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Callista—”
“An error of judgment,” Damon said matter-of-factly. “You shouldn’t have tried without asking me to monitor her first and see if she was ready. I thought I could trust her.”
Andrew heard the echo of Callista’s words in his mind: “It isn’t you I don’t trust.” And Damon, saying, “The man who rapes a Keeper takes his life and his sanity in his hands.” Evidently Callista was still guarded by a set of completely involuntary psi reflexes, reflexes she could not control… and which made no differentiation between attempted rape and the tenderest love.
Damon said, “I’ve got to put a few stitches into Andrew’s forehead, Elli. Stay with Callista, don’t leave her for a moment.” He caught Ellemir’s eye, saying gravely, “Do you understand how important that is?”
She nodded. Andrew suddenly noticed that she was naked too, and seemed quite unconscious of it. After a moment, as if his awareness roused it in her, she turned away and slipped into a robe of Callista’s that was hanging on a chair, then sat down beside her sister, holding her hand tightly.
“Come along, let me stitch that cut,” Damon said. In the other half of the suite Damon got into a robe, unhurriedly went for a small kit in his bathroom, gestured to Andrew to sit under the lamp. He sponged the cut with something cold and wet which numbed it a little, then said, “Keep still. This may hurt a bit.” As a matter of fact it hurt far more than that, but was over so quickly that almost before Andrew had time to flinch Damon was sterilizing the needle in a candle flame and putting it away. He poured Andrew a drink, got himself one, and sat down across from him, looking at him thoughtfully. “If the other injury bothers you much tomorrow, take a couple of hot baths. Damn it, Andrew, what possessed you? To try that now, without even asking—”
“What the hell is it to you when—or whether—I sleep with my wife?”
“The answer to that,” Damon said, “would seem self-evident. You interrupted us at a critical moment, you know. I would have slammed down a barrier, but I thought it might help Callista. As it was, if I weren’t Tower-trained, we’d both have been badly hurt. I did get the backlash, so it is my business, you see. Besides,” he added, more gently, “I care a lot about Callista, and you too.”
“I thought she was simply afraid. Because she had been sheltered, protected, conditioned to virginity—”
Damon swore. “Zandru’s hells, how can things like this happen? All four of us telepaths, and not one of us with the sense to sit down and talk things over honestly! It’s my fault. I knew, but it never occurred to me that you didn’t. I thought Leonie
had told you; she evidently thought I had. And I certainly thought Callista would warn you before trying—well, hell, it’s done, it can’t be undone now.”
Andrew felt total failure, total despair. “It’s no good, is it, Damon? I’m no good to Callie or anyone else. Shall I just… take myself quietly out of her life? Go away, stop trying, stop tormenting her?”
Damon reached out and gripped him hard. He said urgently, “Do you want her to die? Do you know how close she is to death? She can kill herself now with a thought, as easily as she almost killed you! She has no one else, nothing else, and she can put herself out of life with a single thought. Do you want to do that to her?”
“God, no!”
“I believe you,” Damon said after a minute, “but you’ll have to make her believe it.” He hesitated. “I have to know. Did you penetrate her, even slightly?”
Andrew’s outrage was so great that Damon flinched, even before he said, “Look, Damon, what the hell—”
Damon sighed. “I could ask Callie, but I thought I might spare her that.”
Andrew looked at the floor. “I’m not sure. Everything’s… blurred.”
“I think if you had, you’d have been hurt worse,” Damon said.
Andrew said, with a flare of uncontrollable bitterness, “I didn’t know she was hating it so much!”
Damon laid a hand on the Terran’s shoulder. “She wasn’t. Don’t let this spoil the memory of what was good. That part was real.” He added, after a moment, “I know; I was there, remember? I’m sorry if that bothers you, but it happens, you know, with telepaths, and we’ve all been linked by matrix. It was real, and Callista loves you, and wants you. As for the rest, she simply miscalculated, must have thought she was free of it. You see, most Keepers, if they are going to leave, marry, fall in love, usually leave the Tower before their conditioning is complete. Or they find they can’t work without too much trouble and pain, so their conditioning comes unstuck and they give up and leave. The training for a Keeper is awful. Two out of three girls who try it can’t even manage it. And once it is complete, and properly done, it’s very rare for it to disappear. When Leonie gave Callista leave to marry, she must have thought it was one of those rare cases, otherwise Callista would not have wished to leave the Tower.”
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