The Forbidden Circle

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “I should think Damon would be the logical guardian,” Ellemir said, and Callista’s lips stretched in a bleak smile. “Why, so he should, sister, but I have sat as Leonie’s surrogate in Council, and I know that to these great lords, nothing is ever simple or obvious if there is political advantage to some other way of settling it. Remember how Domenic said they were fighting over his right to command the Guards, young as he was? Valdir is younger still.”

  Ellemir quailed, with an automatic gesture laying a protective hand over her belly. She had heard old tales of bitter feuds in Comyn Council, of struggles more cruel than blood-feud because the ones who struggled were not enemies but kinsmen. As the old saying went, when bredin were at odds, enemies stepped in to widen the gap.

  “Callie! Do you think . . . do you think Domenic was murdered?”

  Callista said, faltering, “Cassilda, Mother of Seveners, I pray it is not so. If he had died by poison, or of some mysterious illness, I would fear so indeed—there was so much strife over the heirship of Alton—but struck down by Cathal in play? We know Cathal, Elli, he loved Domenic as his own life! They had sworn the oath of bredin. I would sooner believe Damon an oath-breaker than our cousin Cathal!” She added, her face white and troubled, “If it had been Dezi . . .”

  The twin sisters looked at one another, not willing to speak their accusation, yet remembering how Dezi’s malice had come close to costing Andrew’s life. At last Ellemir said in a shaking voice, “Where, I wonder, was Dezi when Domenic died?”

  “Oh, no, no, Ellemir.” Callista caught her sister close, cutting off the words. “No, no, do not even think it! Our father loves Dezi, even if he would not acknowledge him, so do not make it worse than it is! Elli, I beg you, I beg you, do not put that thought into Father’s head!”

  Ellemir knew what Callista meant: somehow she must manage to guard her thoughts, so that the careless accusation would not reach her father. But the thought troubled her, as she went about the business of preparing the women servants to care for the household in their absence. She found a moment to slip down to the chapel, laying a small garland of winter flowers before the altar of Cassilda. She had wanted her child to be born at Armida, where he would live surrounded by the heritage which must be his some day.

  All she had ever wanted in life was to be wedded to Damon, to bear sons and daughters to her clan and his. Was that so much to ask? she thought helplessly. She was not like Callista, ambitious to do laran work, to sit in Council and settle affairs of state. Why couldn’t she have that much peace? And yet she knew that in the days to come, she could not fall back on this refuge of womanhood.

  Would they demand that Damon must command the Guards in his father-in-law’s place? Like all Alton daughters, she was proud of the hereditary post of commander which her father had borne, which she had thought would be Domenic’s for years to come. But now Domenic was dead and Valdir too young, and who would it be? She looked around the chapel at the painted gods on the walls, on the representation, stiff and stylized, of Hastur, Son of Aldones, at Hali with Cassilda and Camilla. They were the forebears of the Comyn; life was easier in their day. Wearily she left the chapel and went upstairs to talk about which of the maids should come with them, which be left to care for the estate in their absence.

  Andrew too had much to occupy his mind as he talked to the old coridom—like all the other servants, stricken with grief at the news of their young master’s death—about managing the stock and the estate business during his absence. He thought that he ought to stay back, for he had no business in Thendara, and the ranch should not be left in the hands of servants. But he knew that part of his reluctance was because the Terran Empire HQ was at Thendara. He had been content that the Terrans should think him dead; he had no kin to mourn, and there was nothing there that he wanted. But now there was, unexpectedly, conflict again. He knew rationally that the Terrans had no claim on him, that they would not even know he was in the old city of Thendara, and certainly would not come after him. Just the same he felt apprehensive. And he too wondered where Dezi had been when Domenic died, and dismissed the thought as unworthy.

  Damon had told him that Thendara was not much more than a day’s ride for a single man on a fast horse, in good weather, traveling alone. But for a large party, with servants, baggage, a pregnant woman and an elderly cripple who must travel in horse-litters, it might take four or five times that. Much of the work of readying the party’s horses and baggage came to Andrew, and he felt wearied but satisfied when at last the party rode forth between the great gates. Dom Esteban was in a litter drawn between two horses; another awaited Ellemir when she was weary of riding, but now she rode beside Damon, shrouded in a green riding cloak, her eyes swollen with crying. Andrew remembered Domenic teasing Ellemir at the wedding, and felt deeply saddened; he had had so little time to know this merry brother who had so quickly accepted him.

  Then there was a long straggle of pack animals, servants riding the antlered beasts which had a surer gait on the mountain roads than most horses, and half a dozen Guardsmen at the rear to protect them against the dangers of travel in the hills. Callista looked tall, pale, other-worldly in her black riding cape. Looking at her haunted face under the dark hood, it was hard to remember the laughing girl in the golden flowers. Had it been only yesterday?

  And yet, beneath the mourning solemnity of her dark garments and her pale face, she was still that laughing woman who had given and received his kisses with such unsuspected passion. Some day—soon, soon, he pledged himself fiercely!—he would free her and have her always with him. He looked at her bent head and she raised her face with a wan smile.

  The journey took four cold and exhausting days. On the second day Ellemir took to her litter and did not ride horseback again till just before they entered the city gates. In the notched pass which overlooked the city she insisted on leaving the horse-litter and mounting again.

  “The litter jolts me, and the baby, worse than Shirina’s gait,” she insisted pettishly, “and I will not be carried into Thendara as if I were a spoiled queen or a cripple. I want them to know my child is no weakling!” Ferrika, appealed to, said that Ellemir’s comfort was more important than anything else, and if she felt comfortable and able to ride, ride she should.

  Andrew had never seen the Comyn Castle except distantly from the Terran Zone. It stood high above the city, immense and ancient, and Callista told him how it had stood there since before the Ages of Chaos, how it had not been built by human hands at all. The stones had been lifted into place by matrix circles from the Towers, working together to transform the forces.

  Inside it was a labyrinth, with enormous long corridors, and the rooms to which they were shown—rooms, Callista told him, reserved since time immemorial for the Altons at Council season—were almost as spacious as the adjoining suites they occupied at Armida.

  Outside the Alton suite the castle seemed deserted. “But Lord Hastur is here,” Callista told him. “He remains in Thendara most of the year, and his son Danvan is helping to command the Guards. I suppose they will summon council to act on the heirship of Alton. There are always questions, and Valdir is so young.”

  As Dom Esteban was carried into the main hall of the Alton rooms, a slender, sallow boy with a sharp, intelligent face and hair so dark it hardly seemed red, about twelve years old, came forward to meet him.

  “Valdir.” Dom Esteban held out his arms, and the boy knelt at his feet.

  “You are so young, my boy, but you will have to be a grown man already!” As the boy rose, he clasped him close. “Do you know what has become of your brother’s . . .” He choked on the word. Young Valdir said quietly, “He rests in the chapel, Father, and his paxman is with him. I did not know what I ought to do, but”—he gestured, and Dezi came hesitantly into the main room—“my brother Dezi has been such a help to me, since I came from Nevarsin.”

  Damon thought, uncharitably, that Dezi had lost no time, now that his protector was dead, in worming him
self into the good graces of the next heir. Next to the thin, sallow Valdir, Dezi, with his bright red hair and freckled face, looked far more like a member of the family than did the legitimate son. Dom Esteban embraced Dezi, weeping.

  “My dear, dear boy—”

  Damon wondered how he could deprive the old man of the comfort of his only other remaining son, deprive Valdir of his only living brother? It was a true saying, bare is back without brother. In any case, Dezi, deprived of his matrix, was harmless.

  Valdir came and hugged Ellemir. “I see you finally did marry Damon. I thought you would.” But before Callista he hung shyly back. Callista held out her hands, explaining to Andrew, “I went to the Tower when Valdir was an infant in arms; I have seen him only a few times since, and not since he was a tiny child. I am sure you have forgotten me, brother.”

  “Not quite,” said the boy, looking up at his tall sister. “I seem to remember a little. We were in a room with colors, like a rainbow. I must have been very small. I fell and hurt my knee, and you took me on your lap and sang to me. You were wearing a white dress with something blue on it.”

  She smiled. “I remember now, it was when you were presented in the Crystal Chamber, as every Comyn son must be so that they may be sure he has no hidden defect or deformity, when later he is pledged for marriage. I was only a psi monitor then. But you were not even five years old; I am surprised you should even remember the blue veil. This is my husband, Andrew.”

  The child bowed courteously but did not offer Andrew his hand, retreating to Dezi’s side. Andrew bowed coldly to Dezi; Damon gave him a kinsman’s embrace, hoping the touch would dispel the suspicions he could not be rid of. But Dezi was well barricaded against him. Damon could not read his mind even a little. Then Damon admonished himself to be fair. At their last meeting he had tortured Dezi, nearly killed him; how could he greet Damon with much friendship?

  Dom Esteban was taken to his rooms. He looked pleadingly at Dezi, and the young man followed his father. When they had gone Andrew said with a grimace, “Well, I thought we were rid of him. But if it comforts our father to have him near, what can we do?”

  Damon thought it would not be the first time that a bastard son, rascally in his youth, had become the prop and mainstay of a father who had lost his other children. He hoped for Dom Esteban’s sake, and for Dezi’s own, that it might prove to be so.

  He joined Andrew and Callista, saying, “Will you come with me to the chapel, to see what has been done with Domenic? If all is seemly, we can spare our father this, and Ellemir. Ferrika has put her to bed. She knew Domenic best . . . there is no need to harrow her feelings more.”

  The chapel was in the deepest part of the Comyn Castle, carved from the living rock of the mountain on which it stood. It had the cold, earthy chill of an underground cavern. Domenic lay in the echoing silence on a long trestled bier, before the carved image Andrew could already recognize as the Blessed Cassilda, mother of the Domains. In the carved stone figure Andrew fancied he could actually see a faint likeness to Callista’s own features, and to the cold and lifeless face of the young man who lay dead.

  Damon bowed his head, burying his face in his hands. Callista gently bent and kissed the cold brow, murmuring something Andrew could not hear. A dark form, crouched kneeling beside the bier, suddenly stirred and rose. It was a short, sturdily built young man, disheveled and heavy-eyed, his eyelids reddened with long weeping. Andrew knew who he must be, even before Callista held out her hands.

  “Cathal, dear cousin.”

  He stared at them pitifully for a moment before he found his voice. “Lady Ellemir, my lords . . .”

  “I am not Ellemir, but Callista, cousin,” she said quietly. “We are grateful that you should have remained with Domenic till we could come. It is right there should be someone near who loved him.”

  “So I felt, and yet I felt guilty, I who was his murderer—” His voice broke. Damon embraced the shaking lad.

  “We all know it was mischance, kinsman. Tell me how it happened.”

  The red-eyed stare was pitiable. “We were in the armory, working with wooden practice swords as we did every day. He was a better swordsman than I,” Cathal said, and his face came apart. He too, Andrew noticed, had Comyn features; “cousin” was not just politeness.

  “I didn’t know I had hit him so hard, truly I didn’t. I thought he was shamming, teasing me, that he would spring up and laugh—he did that so often.” His face twisted. Damon, remembering a thousand pranks during Domenic’s cadet year, wrung Cathal’s hand. “I know, my boy.” Had the lad gone like this, uncomforted, burdened since the death?

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I shook him.” Cathal was white with horror. “ I said, ‘Get up, you silly donkey, stop playing the fool.’ And then I took off his mask and I saw he was unconscious. But even then I didn’t think much about it—someone is always getting hurt.”

  “I know, Cathal, I was knocked senseless half a dozen times in my cadet years, and look, my middle finger is still crooked where Coryn broke it with a practice sword. But what did you do then, lad?”

  “I ran off to fetch the hospital officer, Master Nicol.”

  “You left him alone?”

  “No, his brother was with him,” Cathal said. “Dezi was putting cold water on his face, trying to bring him around. But when I came back with Master Nicol he was dead.”

  “Are you sure he was alive when you left him, Cathal?”

  “Yes,” Cathal said positively. “I could hear him breathing, and I felt his heart.”

  Damon shook his head, sighing. “Did you notice his eyes. Were the pupils dilated? Contracted? Did he react to light in any way?”

  “I . . . I didn’t notice, Lord Damon, I never thought to look.”

  Damon sighed. “No, I suppose not. Well, dear lad, head injuries do not always follow the rules. A Guardsman in my year as hospital officer was knocked against a wall in a street fight, and when they picked him up he seemed quite well, but at supper he went to sleep with his head on the table, and never woke, but died in his sleep.” He stood up, his hand resting on Cathal’s shoulder.

  “Set your mind at rest, Cathal. There was nothing you could have done.”

  “Lord Hastur and some of the others, they questioned and questioned me, as if anyone could ever believe I could hurt Domenic. We were bredin—I loved him.” The boy went and stood before the statue of Cassilda, saying vehemently, “The Lords of Light strike me here if I could ever harm him!” Then he turned and knelt for a moment at Callista’s feet. “Domna, you are a leronis , you can prove at will that I held no malice toward my dear lord, that I would have died myself to shield him, would that my hand had withered first!”

  Tears had begun to flow again. Damon bent and raised him, saying firmly, “We know that, my lad, believe me.” Grief and guilt flooded him. The boy was wide open to Damon’s mind, but the guilt was only for the careless blow, there was no guile in Cathal. “Now a time has come when more weeping is only self-indulgence. You must go and rest. You are his paxman; you must ride at his side when he is laid in the earth.”

  Cathal drew a long breath, looking up into Damon’s face. “You do believe me, Lord Damon. Now, now I really think I can sleep.”

  He watched the boy turn away, sighing. Whatever reassurances he might give, Cathal would live the rest of his life with the knowledge that he had slain his kinsman and his sworn friend by evil chance. Poor Cathal. Domenic died quickly and without pain. Cathal would suffer for years.

  Callista was standing before the bier, looking down at Domenic, dressed in the colors of his Domain, his curly hair combed unnaturally smooth, his eyes peacefully closed. She felt at his throat.

  “Where is his matrix? Damon, it should be buried with him.”

  Damon frowned. “Cathal?”

  The boy, at the very threshold of the chapel, stopped. “Sir?”

  “Who laid him out for burial? Why did they take his matrix from his body?”


  “Matrix?” The blue eyes were uncomprehending. “I heard him say often enough that he had no interest in such things. I didn’t know he had one.”

  Callista’s fingers strayed to her throat. “He was given one when he was tested. He had laran, though he used it but seldom. When I last saw him it was around his neck, in a little bag like this.”

  “Now I remember,” Cathal said. “He did have something around his neck, I thought it a lucky charm or some such thing. I never knew what it was. Perhaps whoever laid him out for burial thought it too shabby a trinket to bury with him.”

  Damon let Cathal go. He would ask who had prepared Domenic’s body for burial. Surely it should be buried with him.

  “How could anyone take it?” Andrew asked. “You have told me, and shown me, that it is not safe to touch another’s matrix. When you took Dezi’s, it was nearly as painful for you as for him.”

  “In general, when the owner of a keyed matrix dies, the stone dies with him. After that it is only a dead piece of blue crystal, without light. But it is not suitable that it should remain to be handled.” The chances were overwhelming that some servant had simply thought it, as Cathal said, a shabby trinket not fit to bury with a Comyn heir.

  If Master Nicol, not understanding, had touched it, perhaps loosened it, trying to give Domenic air, that could have killed him, but no, Dezi was there. Dezi would have known, being Arilinn-trained. If Master Nicol had tried to remove the matrix, Dezi, who, as Damon had cause to know, could do a Keeper’s work, would surely have chosen to handle it himself, as he could do so safely.

  But if Dezi had taken it . . .

  No. He would not believe that. Whatever his faults, Dezi had loved Domenic. Domenic alone in the family, had befriended him, had treated Dezi like a true brother, had insisted on his rights.

  Brother had slain brother before this, but no. Dezi had loved Domenic, he loved his father. It would have been hard, indeed, not to love Domenic.