“Is it that he is too honorable,” she said harshly, “or is it that you are afraid?”
Callista felt a stab of inward pain, but she kept her voice steady. “I am not afraid.”
“Not for yourself perhaps—I acknowledge it! But for him, Callista? You can still return to Arilinn, without penalty, without harm. But if you do not return—do you want your lover’s blood on your head? You would not be the first Keeper to bring a man to death!”
Callista raised her head, opened her lips to protest, but Leonie gestured her to silence and went on mercilessly, “Have you been able even to touch his hand, even so much as that?”
Callista felt relief wash through her, a relief so great that it was like physical pain, draining her of strength. With a telepath’s whole total recall, the image in her memory returned, annihilating everything else that lay between. . . .
Andrew had carried her from the cave where the Great Cat lay dead, a blackened corpse beside the shattered matrix he had profaned. Andrew had wrapped her in his cloak and set her before him on his horse. She felt it again, in complete recall, how she had rested against him, her head on his breast, folded close into the curve of his arms, his heart beating beneath her cheek. Safe, warm, happy, wholly at peace. For the first time since she had been made Keeper, she felt free, touching and being touched, lying in his arms, content to be there. And all during that long ride to Armida she had lain there, folded inside his cloak, happy with such a happiness as she had never guessed.
As the image in her mind communicated itself to Leonie, the older woman’s face changed. At last she said, in a gentler voice than Callista had ever heard, “Is it so, chiya? Why, then, if Avarra is merciful to you, it may be as you desire. I had not believed it possible.”
And Callista felt a strange disquiet. She had not, after all, been wholly truthful with Leonie. Yes, for that little while she had been all afire with love, warm, unafraid, content—but then the old nervous constraint had come back little by little, until now she found it difficult even to touch his fingertips. But surely that was only habit, the habit of years, she told herself. It would certainly be all right. . . .
Leonie said gently, “Then, child, would it indeed make you so unhappy, to part from your lover?”
Callista found that her calm had deserted her. She said, and knew that her voice was breaking and that tears were flooding her eyes, “I would not want to live, Leonie.”
“So . . .” Leonie looked at her for a long moment, with a dreadful, remote sadness. “Does he understand how hard it will be, child?”
“I think—I am sure I can make him understand,” Callista said, hesitating. “He promised to wait as long as we must.”
Leonie sighed. After a moment she said, “Why, then, child . . . child, I do not want you to be unhappy. Even as I said, a Keeper’s oath is too heavy to be borne unconsenting.” Deliberately, a curiously formal gesture, she reached out her hands, palm up, to Callista; the younger woman laid her hands against the older woman’s, palm against palm. Leonie drew a deep breath and said, “Be free of your oath, Callista Lanart. Before the Gods and before all men I declare you guiltless and unloosed from the bond, and I will so maintain.”
Their hands slowly fell apart. Callista was shaking in every limb. Leonie took her kerchief and dried Callista’s eyes. She said, “I pray you are both strong enough, then.” She seemed about to say something more, but stopped herself. “Well, I suppose your father will have a good deal to say about this, my darling, so let us go and listen to him say it.” She smiled and added, “And then, when he has said it all, we will tell him what is to be, whether he likes it or not. Don’t be afraid, my child; I am not afraid of Esteban Lanart, and you must not be either.”
Andrew waited in the greenhouse which stretched behind the main building at Armida. Alone, he looked through the thick and wavy glass toward the outline of the faraway hills. It was hot here, with a thick scent of leaves and soil and plants. The light from the solar collectors made him narrow his eyes till he got used to it. He walked through the rows of plants, damp from watering, feeling isolated and unfathomably alone.
It struck him like this, now and again. Most of the time he had come to feel at home here, more at home than he had ever felt anywhere else in the Empire; more at home than he had felt since, at eighteen, the Arizona horse ranch where he had spent his childhood had been sold for debts, and he had gone into space as an Empire civil servant, moving from planet to planet at the will of the administrators and computers. And they had welcomed him here, after the first few days of strangeness. When they heard that he knew something of horse-breaking and horse-training, a rare and highly paid field of expertise on Darkover, they had treated him with respect, as a highly trained and skilled professional. The horses from Armida were said to be the finest in the Domains, but they usually brought their trainers up from Dalereuth, far to the South.
And so, in general, he had been happy here, in the weeks since he had come, as Callista’s pledged husband. His Terran birth was known only to Damon and Dom Esteban, to Callista and Ellemir; the others simply thought him a stranger from the lowlands beyond Thendara. Beyond belief, he had found here a second home. The sun was huge and blood-tinged, the four moons that swung at night in the curiously violet sky were strangely colored and bore names he did not yet know, but beyond all this, it had become his home. . . .
Home. And yet there were moments like this, moments when he felt his own cruel isolation, knew it was only Callista’s presence that made it home to him. Under the noonday glare of the greenhouse, he had one of those moments. Lonely for what? There was nothing in the world he had been taught to call his own, the dry and barren world of the Terran HQ, nothing he wanted. But would there be a life for him here after all, or would Leonie snatch Callista back to the alien world of the Towers?
After a long time, he realized that Damon was standing behind him, not touching him—Andrew was used to that now, among telepaths—but close enough that he could sense the older man as a comforting presence.
“Don’t worry this way, Andrew. Leonie’s not an ogre. She loves Callista. The bonds of a Tower circle are the closest bonds we know. She’ll know what Callista really wants.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Andrew said through a dry throat. “Maybe Callista doesn’t know what she wants. Maybe she turned to me only because she was alone and afraid. I’m afraid of that old woman’s hold on her. The grip of the Tower—I’m afraid it’s too strong.”
Damon sighed. “Yet it can be broken. I broke it. It was hard—I can’t begin to tell you how hard—yet I have built another life at last. And if you should lose Callista that way, better now than when it’s too late to return.”
“It’s already too late for me,” Andrew said, and Damon nodded, with a troubled smile.
“I don’t want to lose you either, my friend,” Damon said, but to himself he thought: You are part of this new life I have built with so much pain. You, and Ellemir, and Callista. I cannot endure another amputation. But Damon did not speak the words; he only sighed, standing beside Andrew. The silence in the greenhouse stretched so long that the red sun, angling from the zenith, lost strength in the greenhouse and Damon, sighing, went to adjust the solar collectors. Andrew flung at him, “How can you wait so calmly? What is that old woman saying to her?”
Yet Andrew had already learned that telepathic eavesdropping was considered one of the most shameful crimes possible in a caste of telepaths. He dared not even try to reach Callista that way. All his frustrations went into pacing the greenhouse floor.
“Easy, easy,” Damon remonstrated. “Callista loves you. She won’t let Leonie persuade her out of that.”
“I’m not even sure of that anymore,” Andrew said in desperation. “She won’t let me touch her, kiss her—”
Damon said gently, “I thought I had explained that to you; she cannot. These are . . . reflexes. They go deeper than you could imagine. The habit of years cannot be undone in
a few days, yet I can tell that she is trying hard to overcome this . . . this deep conditioning. You know, do you not, that in a Tower, it would be unthinkable for her to take your hand, as I saw her do, to let you kiss even her fingertips. Have you any idea what a struggle that must have been, against years of training, of conditioning?”
Against his will Damon was remembering a time in his life he had taught himself, painfully, not to remember: a lonely struggle, all the worse because it was not physical at all, to quench his own awareness of Leonie, to control even his thoughts, so that she should never guess what he was concealing. He would never have dared to imagine a fingertip-touch such as Callista bestowed on Andrew in the hall, just before she went up to Leonie.
With relief, he saw that Ellemir had come into the greenhouse. She walked between the rows of green plants, knelt before a heavily laden vine. She rose with satisfaction, saying, “If there is sunlight for another day, these will be ripened for the wedding.” Then her smile slid off as she saw Damon’s strained face, Andrew’s desperate quiet. She came and stood on tiptoe, putting her arms around Damon, sensing he needed the comfort of her presence, her touch. She wished she could comfort Andrew too, as he said in distress, “Even if Leonie gives her consent, what of her father? Will he consent? I do not think he likes me much. . . .”
“He likes you well,” Ellemir said, “but you must understand that he is a proud man. He thought me too good for Damon, but I am old enough to do my own will. If he had offered me to Aran Elhalyn, who warms the throne at Thendara, Father would still have thought him not good enough. For Callista, no man ever born of woman would be good enough, not if he was rich as the Lord of Carthon, and born bastard to a god! And of course, even in these days, it is a great thing to have a child at Arilinn. Callista was to be Keeper at Arilinn, and it will go hard with him, to renounce that.” Andrew felt his heart sink. She said, “Don’t worry! I think it will be all right. Look, there is Callista now.”
The door at the top of the steps opened, and Callista came down into the greenhouse. She held out her hands toward them, blindly.
“I am not to return to Arilinn,” she said, “and Father has given his consent to our marriage—”
She broke down then, sobbing. Andrew held out his arms, but she turned away from him and leaned against the heavy glass wall, hiding her face, her slender shoulders heaving with the violence of her weeping.
Forgetting everything except her misery, Andrew reached for her; Damon touched him on the arm, shook his head firmly. Distressed, Andrew stood looking at the sobbing woman, unable to tolerate her misery, unable to do anything about it, in helpless despair.
Ellemir went to her and turned her gently around. “Don’t lean on that old wall, love, when there are three of us here with shoulders to cry on.” She dried her sister’s tears with her long apron. “Tell us all about it. Was Leonie very horrible to you?”
Callista shook her head, blinking her reddened eyes hard. “Oh, no, she couldn’t have been kinder. . . .”
Ellemir said, with a skeptical headshake, “Then why are you howling like a banshee? Here we wait, in agony lest we be told you’ll be whisked away from us and back to the Tower, and then when you come to us, saying all is well, and we are ready to rejoice with you, you start blubbering like a pregnant serving wench!”
“Don’t—” Callista cried. “Leonie . . . Leonie was kind, I truly think she understood. But Father—”
“Poor Callie,” said Damon gently. “I have felt the rough side of his tongue often enough!”
Andrew heard the pet name with surprise and a sudden, sharp jealousy. It had never occurred to him, and the pretty abbreviation which Damon used so naturally seemed an intimacy which simply pointed up his isolation. He reminded himself that Damon, after all, had been an intimate of the household since Callista was a small child.
Callista raised her eyes and said quietly, “Leonie freed me from my oath, Damon, and without question.” Damon sensed the anguished struggle behind her controlled calm, and thought, If Andrew makes her unhappy, I think I will kill him. Aloud he only said, “And your father, of course, was another story. Was he very terrible, then?”
For the first time, Callista smiled. “Very terrible, yes, but Leonie is even more stubborn. She said that you cannot bind a cloud in fetters. And Father turned on me. Oh, Andrew, he said dreadful things, that you had abused hospitality, that you had seduced me—”
“Damned old tyrant!” Damon said angrily. Andrew set his mouth in quiet wrath. “If he believes that—”
“He does not, now,” Callista said, and her eyes held a hint of their old gaiety. “She reminded him that I was not now thirteen years old; that when the doors of Arilinn first closed behind me, he had surrendered forever all right to give or refuse me in marriage; that even if Leonie had found me unfit and sent me from the Tower before I was of legal age and declared a woman, it would have been her right, and not his, to find me a husband. And many other home truths which he did not find pleasant hearing.”
“Evanda be praised that you are laughing again, darling,” Ellemir said, “but how did Father take these unkind truths?”
“Well, he did not like it, as you can imagine,” Callista said, “but in the end there was nothing he could do but accept it. I think he was even glad to have Leonie to quarrel with; we have all humored him too much since he was wounded! He began to act like himself, and maybe he began to feel a little more like himself too. Then when he had grumbled himself into accepting it, Leonie set herself to charm him—told him how lucky he was to have two full-grown sons-in-law to manage the estate for him so that Domenic could take his place in Council, and two daughters to live here and bear him company. At last he said Leonie had made it clear that I needed no blessing to marry, but he bade you come to take his blessing.”
Andrew was still angry. “If the old tyrant thinks I give a damn for his blessing, or his curse either—” he began, but Damon laid a hand on his wrist, interrupting him.
“Andrew, this means he will accept you as a son in his house, and for Callista’s sake I think you should accept it with such grace as you can. Callie has already lost one family when she chose, for your sake, not to return to Arilinn. Unless you hate him so much you cannot dwell in peace under his roof . . .”
“I don’t hate him at all,” Andrew said, “but I can care for my wife in my own world. I do not want to come to him penniless, accepting his charity.”
Damon said quietly, “The charity, Andrew, is on your side, and mine. He may live many years, but he will never again set foot to the ground. Domenic must take his place in Council. His younger son is a child of eleven. If you take Callista from him, you leave him at the mercy of such strangers as he can hire for a price, or distant kinsmen who will come through greed to see what bones they can pick. If you remain here and help him manage this estate, and give him the companionship of his daughter, you bestow far more than you accept.”
Thinking it over, Andrew realized that Damon was right. “Still, if Leonie wrung consent from him unwillingly . . .”
“No, or he would never have offered his blessing,” Damon said. “I have known him all my life. If he still grudged you consent, he would have said something like take her and be damned to both of you. Would he not, Callista?”
“Damon is right: he is terrible in anger, but no man to hold a grudge.”
“Less so than I,” Damon said. “With Esteban, it is one flare of anger, then all’s well, and he will take you to his heart as readily as he kicked you a moment ago. You may quarrel again—you probably will—he is harsh-tempered and irritable. But he will not serve you up old grudges like stale porridge!”
When Damon and Ellemir had gone Andrew looked at Callista and said, “Is this truly what you want, my love? I don’t dislike your father. I was only angry because he had bullied you and made you cry. If you want to stay here . . .”
She looked up at him, and the closeness came over them again, the old touch that had d
rawn them together before they met, the touch so much more real to him than the hesitant and frightened physical touch which was all she could ever permit. “If you and Father could not have agreed, I would have followed you anywhere on Darkover, or anywhere among your Empire of the stars. But only with such grief as I could never measure. This is my home, Andrew. The dearest wish of my heart is that I should never leave here again.”
He raised her fingertips gently to his lips. He said softly, “Then it shall be my home too, beloved. Forever.”
By the time Andrew and Callista followed the other couple into the main house they found Damon and Ellemir seated side by side on a bench beside Dom Esteban. As they came in Damon rose and knelt before the old man. He said something Andrew could not hear, and the Alton lord said, smiling, “You have proved yourself a son to me many times, Damon, I need no more. Take my blessing.” He laid his hand for a moment on Damon’s head. Rising, the younger man bent and kissed his cheek.
Dom Esteban looked over Damon’s head with a grim smile. “Are you too proud to kneel for my blessing, Ann’dra?”
“Not too proud, sir. If I offend against custom, in this or anything else, Lord Alton, I ask that you take it as ignorance of what is considered proper, and not as willful offense.”
Dom Esteban gestured them to a seat beside Damon and Ellemir. “Ann’dra,” he said, still giving the name the Darkhovan inflection, “I know nothing really bad of your people, but I know little of them that is good. I suppose they are like most people, some good and some bad, and most of them neither one nor the other. If you were a bad man, I do not think my daughter would be so ready to marry you, against all custom and common sense. But you cannot blame me if I am not quite happy about giving my best-loved child to an out-worlder, even one who has shown himself honorable and brave.”
Andrew, next to Ellemir on the bench, felt her hands clench tight as he spoke of Callista as his best-loved child. That was cruel, he thought, in her very presence. It had been Ellemir after all who had stayed at home, a dutiful and biddable daughter, all these years. Indignation at the old man’s tactlessness made his voice cool.
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