The Forbidden Circle

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Damon became conscious that he was cold again, and shivering. The plain seemed to tremble under his feet. He knew that if he wished to remain in the overworld, he must move on. Speaking to Leonie had been a comfort, but he must not linger here if he hoped to carry on his search for Callista. Leonie seemed to follow his resolution, and said, “Search, then. Take my blessing.” even as she raised her hand in the ritual gesture, her form faded and Damon discovered that he had receded a great distance and was no longer standing on the familiar courtyard stones of the Tower, but had come a long way over the gray plain toward the darkness.

  The cold grew and he shuddered with the recurrent blasts, like icy winds, that beat out from that dark place. The darkening lands, he thought grimly, and against the cold he quickly visualized himself dressed in a thick gold and green cloak. The cold lessened, but only slightly, and his motion toward the darkness grew ever slower, as if some pressure from that darkness were flowing out, pushing him backward, backward. He struggled against it, calling out Callista’s name again. If she’s anywhere out on the planes, she’ll hear that, he thought. But if Leonie had sought in vain, how could he hope to succeed?

  The darkness flowed, like thick boiling cloud, and seemed suddenly peopled with dark twisted shapes, menacing half-seen faces, threatening gestures made by bodiless limbs that were seen for a moment in the darkness and vanished again. Damon felt a spasm of fear, an almost anguished longing for the solid world and his solid body and the fireplace at Armida. . . . The world seemed full of half-heard threats and cries. Go back! Go back or you will die!

  He slogged painfully onward, forcing his way hard against the pressure. Callista’s butterfly clasp, between his hands, seemed to shine, and flutter, and vibrate, and he knew that he was coming nearer to her, nearer. . . .

  “Callista! Callista!”

  For an instant the thick dark cloud thinned, and almost, for a moment, he saw her, a shadow, a wisp, in a thin, torn nightdress, her hair loose and tangled, her face dark and bruised with pain or tears. She stretched out her hands to him, in appeal, and her mouth moved, but he could not hear. Then the darkness boiled up again, and for a moment he saw flashing sword-blades, curiously shaped, slashing.

  Quickly, Damon shifted ground again, and with a swift thought, transformed the thick warm cloak into a gleaming coat of armor. None too soon. He heard the half-visible sword-blades clash against it and a nightmarish stab of pain came and went, momentarily, near his heart.

  The swords retreated into the darkness, and again he tried to press forward. Then the darkness began to boil up again, like the whirling of a tornado, and out of the thick bubbling whorl of the maelstrom of cloud came a thin, malevolent voice.

  “Go back. You cannot come here.”

  Damon stood his ground, working hard to make the feel of the surface beneath his boots solid, to formulate familiar paving stone so that he and his invisible antagonist stood on ground of his choosing. But beneath him the surface rippled and flowed like water until he felt dizzy, and again the invisible voice spoke, in tones of command.

  “Go, I tell you. Go while you still can.”

  “By what right do you tell me to go?”

  The indifferent voice said thinly, “I know nothing of right. I have the power to make you go, and I shall do so. Why provoke such a struggle without need?”

  Damon stood his ground, although it seemed as if he were swaying in a sickening up-and-down rhythm, his head pounding with pain. He said, “I will go if my kinswoman comes with me.”

  “You will go, at once, and that is all I intend to say,” the voice said, and Damon felt an enormous thrust of power, a great blow that sent his head reeling. He struggled inside the boiling darkness, and cried out, “Show yourself! Who are you? By what right do you come here?” The starstone—or its mental counterpart—was still between his fingers; he swung it over his head, like a lantern, and the darkness was illuminated by a dazzling blue glare. By that light he beheld a tall, strangely robed figure, with a savage cat’s head, and great claws. . . .

  And at that moment there was another of those savage blows. The darkness receded, into a great howling, screaming wind, and Damon found himself alone on what felt like a slippery hillside. Around him was the buffeting wind, the razor-needles of sleet driving into his face . . . the thick driving snow, the storm. . . .

  He struggled to regain his footing, knowing that out here he had met something he had never before encountered on this plane. His flesh seemed to crawl, and he tensed himself, knowing that now he must fight for his sanity, his very life. . . .

  The telepaths of Darkover were trained to work with the starstones, which had the power, assisted by the human mind, of transforming energies directly from one form to another. In the realms where their minds traveled to encompass this work, there were strange things, intelligences which were not human, or material, but came from other realms of existence. Most of them had nothing to do with humankind at all. Others were prone, when touched by human minds come seeking in the realms to which they, the alien intelligences belonged, to meddle with those human minds. A few of them, reached by human minds trained to reach their levels, remained in contact with the human levels, and were visualized as demons, or even as gods. The Ridenow Gift, Damon’s Gift, had been deliberately bred into the minds of his family, to allow them to scent and make contact with these alien presences.

  But he’d never seen one who took that form . . . the great cat. . . . It was deliberately malevolent, not just indifferent. It had thrust him here, into the level of the blizzard. . . .

  He forced himself to search for rationality. The blizzard was not real. It was a thought blizzard, solidified here by thought, and he could take refuge in other realms where it did not blow. He visualized warm sunshine, a sunlit mountainside . . . for a moment the snow-needles thinned, then began to rage with renewed force. Someone was projecting it at him . . . someone or something . The catmen? Was Callista in their power, then?

  The gusts of wind strengthened, forcing his weakening body to its knees. He struggled, slipped, and fell on rugged ice, which cut him. He felt himself bleeding, freezing, weakening. . . .

  Dying. . . .

  He thought, with icy rationality, I’ve got to get off this level, I’ve got to get back to my body. If he was trapped here, out of his body, his body would live a while, spoon-fed and helpless, slowly withering, and finally die.

  Ellemir, Ellemir, he sent out the call that sounded like a scream. Wake me, bring me back, get me out of here! Again and again he shouted, feeling the howling of the winds carry his cry away into the snow-cut needled darkness. His face was cut, his hands bleeding as he struggled again and again to get to his feet in the snow, to raise himself to his knees, to crawl even. . . .

  His struggles grew fainter and fainter, and a sense of total hopelessness, almost of resignation, came over him. I should never have trusted to Ellemir. She isn’t strong enough. I’ll never get out. It seemed he had been sliding, slipping, floundering in the nightmare blizzard for hours, days. . . .

  Agony lanced through him, and an icy pain squeezed his head. A glare of blue fire sprang up wildly around him, there was a shock like a thunderclap, and Damon, weak and gasping and exhausted, was lying in the armchair in the great hall at Armida. The fire had long burned down, and the room was icy cold. Ellemir, pale and terrified, her lips blue and chattering, looked down at him. “Damon, oh, Damon! Oh, wake up, wake up!”

  He gasped, painfully. He said, “I’m here, I’m back.” Somehow, she had reached into the nightmare of the overworld and brought him back. His head and heart were pounding; and his teeth chattering. He looked around. Daylight was beginning to steal through the long windows; outside, the courtyard lay quiet and peaceful in the daybreak; the storm was over, inside and out. He blinked and shook his head. “The blizzard,” he said, dimly.

  “Did you find Callista?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I found whatever has her, and it nearly took me too.�
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  “I couldn’t wake you—and you were blue and gasping, and moaning so. Finally I grabbed the starstone,” Ellemir confessed. “When I did, I thought you were having a convulsion. I thought I’d killed you—”

  She nearly had, Damon thought. But better that than leaving him to die in the raging blizzard of the overworld. She had been crying. “Poor girl, I must have frightened you out of your wits,” he said tenderly, and drew her down to him. She lay across his knees, still trembling; he became aware that she was nearly as cold as he was. He caught up a fur lap-robe that lay across the back of the settle, and wrapped it around them both. Soon he would mend the fire; just now it was enough to huddle within its comforting warmth, to feel the girl’s icy stiffness begin to lessen a little and her shivering quiet. “My poor little love, I frightened you, and you’re half dead with cold and fright,” he murmured, holding her tight against him. He kissed her cold, tear-wet cheeks and became aware that he had been wanting to do that for a long, long time; he let his kisses move slowly from her wet face to her cold lips, trying to warm them with his own. “Don’t cry, darling. Don’t cry.”

  She stirred a little against him, not in protest but in returning awareness, and said, almost sleepily, “The servants are still abed. We should make up the fire, call them—”

  “Damn the servants.” He didn’t want anyone interrupting this new awareness, this new and beautiful closeness. “I don’t want to let you go, Ellemir.”

  She lifted her lips and kissed him on the mouth. “You don’t have to,” she said softly, and they lay quietly, close together in the great fur robe, barely touching, but warmed by the contact. Damon was conscious of deathly weariness and of hunger, the terrible depletion of nervous force which was the inevitable penalty of telepathic work. Rationally he knew he should get up, mend the fire, have some food brought, or he might pay in hours or days of lassitude and illness. But he could not bring himself to move, was deeply reluctant to let Ellemir out of his arms. For a moment, letting the exhaustion have its way, he lapsed into brief sleep or unconsciousness.

  Ellemir was shaking him, and in the bright hall there was a pounding, a sound, a strange shouting. “Someone is at the door,” Ellemir said dazedly. “At this hour? And the servants . . . ? What—”

  Damon untangled himself from the robe and stood up, going through the hall to the inner court and through that to the great bolted outer doors. Stiffly, with unpracticed fingers, he struggled with the bolt and drew it back.

  On the doorstep stood a man, wrapped in a great fur coat of an unfamiliar pattern, clad in ragged and strange clothing. He said, and his accent was strange and alien, “I am a stranger and lost. I am with the mapping expedition from the Trade City. Can you give me shelter, and send a message to my people?”

  Damon looked at him confusedly for a moment. He said at last, slowly, “Yes, come in, come in, stranger; be welcome.” He turned to Ellemir and said, “It is only one of the Terrans from Thendara. I have heard of them, they are harmless. It is the wish of Hastur that we show them hospitality when needful, though this one is far astray indeed. Call the housefolk, breda; he is probably in need of food and fire.”

  Ellemir collected herself and said, “Come in; be welcome to Armida and the hospitality of the Alton Domain, stranger. We will help you as we may—” She broke off, for the stranger was staring at her with wide, frightened eyes. He said shakily, “Callista! Callista! You are real!”

  She stared at him, as confused as he. She stammered, “No. No, I am not Callista, I am Ellemir. But what can you—what can you possibly know of Callista?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I may as well tell you at once that I don’t believe a word of it,” the girl who called herself Ellemir said.

  It’s still hard to accept that she isn’t Callista. They are so damned alike!, thought Andrew Carr. He sat back on the heavy wooden bench before the fire, drinking in the growing warmth. It was good to be inside a real house again, even though the storm was over. He could smell food cooking somewhere, and that was wonderful too. It could have been entirely wonderful, except for the girl, who looked so much like Callista and so strangely wasn’t; she was standing in front of him, looking down with bleak hostility and repeating, “I don’t believe it.”

  The slender red-haired man, kneeling on the hearth to feed the gnawing fire (he looked tired, too, and cold, and Carr wondered if he were ill), said without raising his head, “That is unfair, Ellemir. You know what I am. I can tell when I am being lied to, and he’s not lying. He recognized you. Therefore he must have seen either you, or Callista. And where would one of the Terranan have seen Callista? Unless, as he says, his story is true.”

  Ellemir’s face was stubborn. She said, “How do we know that it is not his people who have imprisoned Callista? He comes to us with a wild story that Callista has somehow reached him, guided him when he was lost in the mountains, and saved him from the storm. Are you trying to make me believe that Callista could reach this outworlder, this stranger, when you could not find her in the overworld, and when she could not come through to me, her twin sister? I’m sorry, Damon, I simply cannot believe it.”

  Carr looked straight at the girl. He said, “If you’re going to call me a liar, do it to me, not over my head. This story of mine, as you call it, is no pleasure to be telling. Do you think I like to sound like a madman? At first I thought the girl was a ghost, as I told you; or that I was dead already and seeing whatever it is that comes after. But when she saved me from falling with the plane, and then when she guided me to a safe place to wait out the storm, I believed that she was real. I had to believe it. I don’t blame you for doubting me. I doubted myself, long enough. But it’s true. And I suppose you are Callista’s kinsfolk; heaven knows you look enough like her for a twin.”

  Too bad, he found himself thinking, that this one hasn’t a little of Callista’s sweet disposition. Well, at least the man seemed to believe his story.

  Damon stood up, leaving the fire to fend for itself now that it was burning well, and turned to Carr. He said, “I apologize for my cousin’s lack of courtesy, stranger. She has endured some difficult days since her sister was taken away, in the night and unseen. It is not easy for her to accept what you say, that Callista could reach your mind when she could not reach her own twin; the bond of the twin-born is believed to be the strongest bond known. I cannot explain it either, but I am old enough to know that there are too many things in this life for any man, or any woman either, to understand them all. Perhaps you can tell us more.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell you,” Carr said. “I don’t understand it either.”

  “Perhaps you know something you don’t realize you know,” Damon said. “But for now, stop badgering him, Ellemir. Whoever and whatever he is, or whatever the many truths of all this may be, he is a guest, and weary and cold, and until he has had his fill of warmth and food, and sleep if he needs it, it is a failure in hospitality to question him. You do the Alton Domain no honor, kinswoman.”

  Carr followed all this sketchily; there were words that he only partially understood, though in Thendara he had been taught to speak the lingua franca of the Trade City, and he could make himself understood well enough. Nevertheless, he realized that Damon was upbraiding the girl who looked like Callista; and she flushed to the roots of her coppery hair. She said (speaking slowly, so that he would be sure to understand), “Stranger, I meant no offense. I am sure that any misunderstandings will become clear in time. For now, accept the hospitality of our house and Domain. Here is fire; food will be brought to you as soon as it is cooked. Have you any other need I have neglected to supply?”

  “I’d like to get out of this wet coat,” Carr said. It was beginning to steam and drip in the growing warmth of the fire. Damon came to help him unwrap it, and laid it aside. He said, “None of your clothing is fit for the storms of our mountains, and those shoes, now, are fit only for the trashpile. They were never built for traveling in the mountains.”


  Carr said, with a wry grimace, “I wasn’t exactly planning on this trip. As for this coat, it belongs to a dead man, but I was damned glad to have it.”

  Damon said, “I was not intending to insult your manner of dress, stranger. The fact remains that you are unsuitably clothed, even indoors, and dangerously ill-clad for any return journey. My own clothes would hardly fit you”—Damon looked up with a laugh at the tall Earthman, a head taller than he was and probably half again his weight and girth—“but if you have no objection to wearing the clothes of a servant or one of the stewards, I think I can find something which will keep you warm.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Andrew Carr said. “I’ve been wearing these since the crash, and a change wouldn’t feel bad at all. I could use a wash, too.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Very few, even of those who live in the mountains, survive being caught out in our mountain storms,” Damon said.

  “I wouldn’t have lived through it, if it hadn’t been for Callista,” he answered.

  Damon nodded. “I believe it. The very fact that you, a stranger to our world, survived one of our storms, says much for the truth of what you have told us. Come with me, and I’ll find you fresh clothes and a bath.”

  Andrew followed Damon through the broad corridors and spacious rooms and up a long flight of shallow stairs. He conducted him at last into a suite of rooms with wide windows, covered with heavy woven draperies against the cold. Opening from one of the rooms was a large bathroom with a huge stone tub, sunk deep in the floor. Steam was rising from a fountain in the middle of the room.

  “Have a hot bath, and wrap up in a blanket or something,” Damon said. “I’ll go wake up a few more of the servants, and find some clothes to fit you. Shall I send someone to help you bathe, or can you manage by yourself? Ellemir keeps few servants, but I am sure I can find someone to wait on you.”