The Forbidden Tower

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  How fragile a tie, after all, bound him to Callista! And yet he knew he could never go back. He had discovered too many depths within himself, too many alien strangenesses. The old Carr, the Andrew Carr of the Terran Empire, had wholly ceased to exist on that faraway day when Damon placed them all in rapport through the matrix. He closed his fingers on it, hard and chill in the little insulated bag around his neck, and knew it was a Darkovan gesture, one he had seen Damon make a hundred times. In that automatic gesture, he knew again the strangeness of his new world.

  He could never go back. He must make a new life for himself here, or go through what years remained to him as a ghost, a nothingness, a nonentity.

  Until a few nights ago he had believed himself well on the way to building his new life. He had worthwhile work to do, a family, friends, a brother and sister, a second father, a loving and beloved wife. And then, in a blast of unseen lightning, his whole new world had crumbled around him and all the alienness had closed over him again. He was drowning in it, sinking in it… Even Damon, usually so close and friendly, his brother, had turned cold and strange.

  Or was it Andrew himself who now saw strangeness in everything and everyone?

  He saw Callista stir, and, suddenly apprehensive lest his thoughts should disturb her, gathered up his clothes and went away to bathe and dress.

  When he came back, Callista had been wakened, and Ellemir had readied her for the day, dressing her in a clean nightgown, washing her, braiding her hair. Breakfast had been brought, and Damon and Ellemir were there, waiting for him around the table where the four of them had taken their meals during Callista’s illness.

  But Ellemir was still standing over Callista, troubled. As Andrew came in, she said, and her voice held deep disquiet, “Callista, I wish you would let Ferrika look at you. I know she is young, but she was trained in the Amazon’s Guild-house, and she is the best midwife we have ever had at Armida. She—”

  “The services of a midwife,” said Callista, with a trace of wry amusement, “are of all things the last I need, or am likely to need!”

  “All the same, Callista, she is skilled in all manner of women’s troubles. She could certainly do more for you than I. Damon,” she appealed, “what do you think?”

  He was standing at the window, looking out into the snow. He turned and looked at them, frowning a little. “No one has more respect than I for Ferrika’s talents and training, Elli. But I do not know if she would have the experience to deal with this. It is not commonplace, even in the Towers.”

  Andrew said, “I don’t understand this at all! Is it still only the onset of menstruation? If it is as serious as this, perhaps,” and he appealed directly to Callista, “could it do any harm for Ferrika to look you over?”

  Callista shook her head. “No, that has ended, a few days ago. I think”—she looked up at Damon, laughing—“I am simply lazy, taking advantage of a woman’s weakness.”

  “I wish it were that, Callista,” Damon said, and he came and sat down at the table. “I wish I thought you would be able to get up today.” He watched her slowly, with lagging fingers, buttering a piece of the hot nut-bread. She put it to her mouth and chewed it, but Andrew did not see her swallow.

  Ellemir broke a piece of bread. She said, “We have a dozen kitchen maids, and if I am out of the kitchen for a day or two, the bread is not fit to eat!”

  Andrew thought the bread was much as usual: hot, fragrant, coarse-textured, the flour extended with the ground nut-meal which was the common staple food on Darkover. It was fragrant with herbs, and tasted good, but Andrew found himself resenting the strange coarse texture, the unfamiliar spices. Callista was not eating either, and Ellemir seemed troubled. She said, “Can I send for something else for you, Callista?”

  Callista shook her head. “No, truly, I can’t, Elli. I am not hungry—”

  She had eaten almost nothing in days. In God’s name, Andrew thought, what ails her?

  Damon said, with sudden roughness, “You see, Callista? It is what I told you! You have been a matrix worker how long—nine years? You know what it means when you cannot eat!”

  Her eyes looked frightened. She said, “I’ll try, Damon. Really I will,” and took a spoonful of the stewed fruit on her plate, choking it down reluctantly. Damon watched her, troubled, thinking that this was not what he had intended, to force her to pretend hunger when she had none. He said, staring out over the whipped-cream ridges of snow, purpling with the light, “If the weather would clear, I would send to Neskaya. Perhaps the leronis could come to look after you.”

  “It looks like clearing now,” Andrew said, but Damon shook his head.

  “It will be snowing harder than ever by tonight. I know the weather in these hills. Anyone setting forth this morning would be weathered in by midday.”

  And indeed, soon after midday the snow began to drift down from the sky again in huge white flakes, slowly at first, then more and more heavily, in a resistless flood that blotted out the landscape and the ridge of hills. Andrew watched it, as he went from barn-tunnels to greenhouses, going through the motions of supervising stewards and handymen, with outrage and disbelief. How could any sky hold so much snow?

  He came up again in late afternoon, as soon as he had completed the minimal work which was all that could be done these days. As always when he had been away from Callista for a little while, he was dismayed. It seemed that even since this morning she had grown whiter and thinner, that she looked ten years older than her twin. But her eyes blazed at him with welcome, and when he took her fingertips in his, she closed them over his hand, hungrily.

  He said, “Are you alone, Callista? Where is Ellemir?”

  “She has gone to spend a little time with Damon. Poor things, they have had so little time together lately, one or the other of them is always with me.” She shifted her body with that twinge of pain which seemed never to leave her. “Avarra’s mercy, but I am weary of lying in bed.”

  He stooped over her, lifted her in his arms. “Then I will hold you for a little while in my arms,” he said, carrying her to a chair near the window. She felt like a child in his arms, loose and limp and light. Her head leaned wearily against his shoulder. He felt an aching tenderness, without desire—how could any man trouble this sick girl with desire? He rocked her back and forth, gently.

  “Tell me what is going on, Andrew. I have been so isolated; the world could have come to an end and I would hardly have known.”

  He gestured at the white featureless world of snow beyond the window. “Nothing much has been happening, as you can see. There is nothing to tell, unless you are interested in knowing how many fruits are ripening in the greenhouse.”

  “Well, it is good to know that they have not yet been destroyed by the storm. Sometimes the windows break, and the plants are killed, but it would be early in the year for that,” she said, and leaned wearily back against him, as if the effort of talking had been too much for her.

  Andrew sat holding her, content that she did not draw away from him, that she seemed now to crave contact with him as much as she had feared it before. Perhaps she was right: now that her normal mature cycles had begun again, with time and patience, the conditioning of the Tower could be overcome. Her eyes were closed, and she seemed asleep.

  They sat there for some time, until Damon, abruptly coming into the room, stopped, in dismay and shock. He opened his mouth to speak, and Andrew caught directly from his mind the frightened urgency:

  Andrew! Put her down, quickly, get away from her!

  Andrew raised his head angrily, but at the very real distress in Damon’s thought he acted quickly, rising and carrying Callista to her bed. She lay still, unconscious, unmoving.

  “How long,” Damon said evenly, “has she been like this?”

  “Only a few minutes. We were talking,” Andrew said defensively.

  Damon sighed. He said, “I thought I could trust you, I thought you understood!”

  “She is not afraid of me, Dam
on, she wanted me to hold her!”

  Callista’s eyes flickered open. In the room’s pale snowlight they looked colorless. “Don’t scold him, Damon, I was weary of lying in bed. Truly, I am better. I thought tonight I would send for my harp and play a little. I am so tired of having nothing to do.”

  Damon looked at her skeptically. But he said, “I will send for it, if you ask.”

  “Let me go for it,” Andrew said. Surely, if she felt well enough to play her harp, she must be better indeed! He went down into the Great Hall, found a steward and asked for the Lady Callista’s harp. The man brought the small instrument, not much larger than a Terran guitar, in its carved wood case.

  “Shall I carry it up for you, Dom Ann’dra?”

  “No, I will take it”

  One of the woman servants, behind the steward, said, “Bear our congratulations to the lady, and say that we hope she will soon be well enough to accept them in person.”

  Andrew swore, unable to stop himself. Quickly he apologized—the woman had meant no harm. And what else could they have thought? She had been abed for ten days, and no one had been asked to come and nurse her, only her twin sister being allowed near. Could anyone blame them if they thought that Callista was pregnant, and that her sister and her husband were taking great care that her child did not meet the fate of Ellemir’s? At last he said, and knew his voice was unsteady, “I thank you for your… your kind wishes, but my wife has no such good fortune…” and he couldn’t go on. He accepted their murmured sympathy, and escaped quickly upstairs.

  In the outer room of the suite, he stopped, hearing Damon’s voice raised in anger.

  “It’s no good, Callista, and you know it. You can’t eat, you don’t sleep unless I drug you. I hoped it would all sort itself out, after your cycles came on of their own accord. But look at you!”

  Callista murmured something Andrew could not hear the words, only the protest in them.

  “Be honest, Callista. You were leronis at Arilinn. If someone had been brought to you in this state, what would you do?” A brief pause. “Then you know what I must do, and quickly.”

  “Damon, no!” It was a cry of despair.

  “Breda, I promise you, I will try—”

  “Oh, Damon, give me a little more time!” Andrew heard her sobbing. “I’ll try to eat, I promise you. I am feeling better, I sat up today for more than an hour, ask Ellemir. Damon, can’t you give me a little more time?”

  A long silence, then Damon swore and came out of the room. He started to stride past Andrew without speaking, but the Terran grasped his arm.

  “What’s wrong? What were you saying to get her so upset?”

  Damon stared past him and Andrew had the unsettling thought that to Damon he was not really there at all. “She doesn’t want me to do what I have to do.” He caught sight of the harp in the case and said scornfully, “Do you really think she is well enough for that?”

  “I don’t know,” Andew said angrily. “I only know that she asked me for it.” Abruptly, remembering what the servants had said, he felt he could endure no more.

  “Damon, what is wrong with her? Every time I have asked, you have evaded me.”

  Damon sighed and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. “I doubt if I can explain. You’re not matrix-trained, you haven’t the language, you don’t even have the concepts.”

  Andrew said grimly, “Just put it in words of one syllable.”

  “There aren’t any.” Damon sighed and was silent, thinking. Finally he said, “I showed you the channels, in Callista and in Ellemir.”

  Andrew nodded, remembering those glowing lines of light and their pulsing centers, so clear in Ellemir, so inflamed and sluggish in Callista.

  “Basically, what ails her is overload of the nerve channels.” He saw that Andrew did not understand. “I told you how the same channels carry sexual energies and psi forces, not at the same time, of course. When she was trained as Keeper, Callista was taught techniques which prevented her from being capable of—or even aware of—the slightest sexual response. Is that clear so far?”

  “I think so.” He pictured her whole sexual system made nonfunctional so that she could use her whole body as an energy-transformer. God, what a thing to do to a woman!

  “Well, then. In the normal adult the channels function selectively. Turning off the psi forces when the channels are needed for sexual energies, turning off sexual impulses when psi is being used. After matrix work you were impotent for a few days, remember? Normally, when a Keeper gives up her work, it is because the channels have reverted to normal levels, and normal selectivity. Then she is no longer able, as a Keeper must be able, to remain totally and completely free of the slightest trace of sexual energy remaining in the channels. Evidently Callista must have thought this had already happened in her channels, because she could feel herself reacting to you. She did for a moment, you know,” he said, looking at Andrew hesitantly, and Andrew, unwilling to remember that fourfold moment of contact, to acknowledge that Damon could have been part of it, could not raise his eyes. He only nodded, without looking up.

  “Well, then, if an ordinary Keeper—a fully functioning Keeper, with conditioning intact and channels clear—is attacked, she can protect herself. If, for instance, you had not been Callista’s husband, someone to whom she had given the right, if you had been a stranger attempting rape, she would have blasted straight through you. And you would have been very, very dead, and Callista would have been… well, I suppose she would have been shocked and sick, but after a good meal and some sleep she would not have been much the worse. But that didn’t happen.”

  Andrew said numbly “God!”

  It isn’t you I don’t trust, my husband…

  “She must have believed she was ready, or she would never have risked it. And when she realized she was not ready—in that split second before she blasted you with the reflex she couldn’t control—she took a backflow through her own body. And that saved your life. If that whole flow of energy had gone through you, can you imagine what would have happened?”

  Andrew could, but discovered he would much rather not.

  “It must have been that shock which brought on her menstruation. I watched her carefully until I knew she wasn’t going into crisis, but after that I thought the bleeding, and the normal energy drain of that time in women, would carry off the overloading and clear the channels. But it hasn’t.” He frowned. “I wish I knew precisely what Leonie had done to her. Meanwhile, I asked you not to touch her. And you must not.”

  “Are you afraid she will blast me again?”

  Damon shook his head. “I don’t think she has the strength for that now. In a way it’s worse. She is reacting to you physically, but the channels are not clear so there is no way to carry off the sexual energies through the channels in the normal way. There are two sets of reflexes operating at once, each jamming the other, inhibiting either of the normal functions.”

  “I feel more muddled than ever,” Andrew said, dropping his head in his hands, and Damon set to work to simplify further.

  “A woman trained as Keeper sometimes has to coordinate eight or ten telepaths. Working in the energon rings, she has to channel all that force through her own body. They handle such enormous psi stresses, like”—he picked up the analogy neatly from Andrew’s mind—“an energy-transformer. So they can’t, they dare not, rely on the normal selectivity of the ordinary adult. They have to keep those channels totally, completely, and permanently cleared for the psi forces. Do you remember what my sister Marisela said?”

  They heard it together, an echo in Damon’s mind: In the old days the Keepers of Arilinn could not leave their posts if they would… The Keepers of Arilinn are not women but emmasca…

  “Keepers aren’t neutered anymore, of course. They rely on vows of virginity, and intensive antisexual conditioning, to keep the channels totally free. But a Keeper is, after all, a woman, and if she falls in love, she is likely to begin to react sexually, becau
se the channels have returned to normal selectivity, for psi or for sex. She has to stop functioning as a Keeper, because her channels are no longer completely clear. She could handle ordinary psi, but not the enormous stresses of a Keeper, the energon rings and relays—well, you don’t know much about that, never mind it. In practice, a Keeper whose conditioning has failed usually gives up laran work altogether. I think that’s foolish, but it’s our custom. But this is what Callista was expecting: that once she had begun to react to you, she would begin to use the channels selectively, like any normal mature telepath.”

  “So why didn’t she?” Andrew demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Damon said, in despair. “I have never seen anything like it before. I would not like to believe that Leonie had altered the channels so they could never function selectively, but I cannot think of anything else it could be. Since Leonie evidently altered her channels in some way, to keep her physically immature, I can only think it was that. But do you understand now why you must not touch her, Andrew? It’s not because she would blast you again—and probably kill you this time—for she would let herself die before she would do that. It would be so easy for her that it terrifies me to think about it. But it’s because the reflexes are still there, and she’s fighting them, and it’s killing her.”

  Andrew covered his face with his hands. “And I begged her…” he said almost inaudibly.

  “You couldn’t know,” said Damon gently. “She didn’t know either. She believed she was deconditioning normally, or she would never have risked it. She was willing to give up the psi function of the channels entirely, for you. Do you know what that meant to her?”

  Andrew muttered, “I’m not worth it. All that suffering.”

  “And so damned unnecessary!” Damon broke off. He was talking blasphemy. No law was stricter than that which prevented a Keeper, her oath once given back, her virginity lost or even suspect, from ever again doing any serious matrix work. “It was what she wanted, Andrew. To give up her work as Keeper, for you.”