You live by laws which should have been dead long ago too. He did not speak the words aloud, but Leonie heard them, and so did everyone with laran in the Crystal Chamber. She said, as white as a skull, “So be it. You have invoked the old test of a Keeper’s right and responsibility. You and Callista are renegades of Arilinn, so this shall be Arilinn’s affair, to answer the challenge. It will be a duel, Damon, and you know the penalty if you fail. Not only you and Callista, but your consorts—if any of you survive the ordeal, which is unlikely—shall be stripped of your matrices and the laran centers burned away, so that you may live as an example and a warning to anyone who would stretch out his hand, unfit, for a Keeper’s place and power.”
“I see you know the consequences, Leonie,” said Callista. “Would that you had known them equally well when I was made Keeper.”
Leonie ignored her, staring fixedly into Damon’s eyes.
“I will abide the ordeal and its penalties, Leonie,” Damon said, “but you do realize, Leonie, that you invoke them on yourself and all of Arilinn, should you fail to conquer.”
She said, furiously, “I think we would all risk more than that, to punish the insolence of those who would build a forbidden Tower on our threshold!”
“Enough!” Lorill held out his hands to silence them. “I declare challenge and ordeal between Arilinn Tower and its Keeper, Leonie Hastur, and”—he hesitated a moment—“and the forbidden tower with him who stands self-proclaimed as its Keeper, Damon Ridenow. It shall begin at sunrise tomorrow.”
Leonie’s face was like stone. “I shall await the ordeal.”
“And I,” said Damon. “Until sunrise, Leonie.”
He gave a hand to Ellemir, the other to Callista. Andrew paced one step behind them. Without looking back, they left the Crystal Chamber.
Until sunrise. He had spoken bravely. But could they face Leonie, and all the forces of Arilinn?
They must, or die.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Damon’s first act, when they returned to the Alton suite, was to fetch a telepathic damper and isolate Dom Esteban’s room behind it. He gently told Ferrika what he was doing.
“At sunrise there may be a . . . a telepathic disturbance,” he warned her, thinking how ridiculously inadequate the words were. “This will make certain he will not be drawn into it, for he is too weak for any such thing. I leave him in your care, Ferrika, I trust you.”
He found himself wishing he could isolate Ellemir too behind such a safe barrier, with her unborn baby. He told her this when he returned to the rooms they shared with Callista and Andrew, and she smiled wanly.
“Why, you are no better than the ladies of Comyn Council, my husband, feeling I must be shielded and excused because I am a woman, and bearing. Don’t you think I realize that we are all fighting together, for the right to live together and bring up our children to a better life than most Comyn sons and daughters can have? Do you think I want him”—she laid her hand, with that expressive gesture, on her pregnant body—“to face the crippling choice you faced, or Callista, or Leonie? Do you think I am unwilling to fight, as well as you?”
He held her close, realizing her intuition was sounder than his own. “My darling, all the Gods forbid I should be the one to deny you that right.”
But as they rejoined Callista and Andrew, he realized that the coming battle was more than life and death. If they lost—and survived—they would be worse than dead.
“It will be fought in the overworld,” he warned, “like the last battle with the Great Cat. We must all be very sure of ourselves, because only our own thoughts can defeat us.”
Ellemir sent for food and wine and they dined together, trying to make it a festive occasion, forgetting they were strengthening themselves for the ordeal of their lives. Callista looked pale, but Damon was relieved to see that she ate heartily.
There were two of them Keeper-trained, he thought, Keeper-strong. But that also roused an uncomfortable thought. If they lost, it would be all the same, but if they won there was a matter still unsettled.
“If we win,” he said, “I shall have won the right to work as I will with my chosen circle, then Ellemir as my wife, and Andrew as my sworn man, are beyond the reach of Council meddling. But you, Callista, you are close to the heirship of Comyn; nearer than you are only two children, and one is still unborn. Council will argue that my duty as regent of Alton is to have you married off to some suitable man, someone of Comyn blood. A woman of your years, Callista, unless actually working in a Tower, is usually married.”
“I am married,” she flared at him.
“Breda, the marriage will not stand if anyone contests it. Do you really trust Council not to contest it? Old Dom Gabriel of Ardais has already spoken to me about marrying you to his son Kyril—”
“Kyril Ardais?” Her nostrils flared in disdain. “I had as soon marry some bandit of the Hellers and be done with it! I have not spoken with him since he was a bully intimidating us all at children’s parties, but I do not suppose he has improved by aging!”
“Still, it is a marriage Council would approve. Or they might follow through on Father’s wish and give you, as he meant to give Ellemir, to Cathal. But marry you off they certainly will. You know the law about freemate marriage as well as I do, Callista.”
She did. Freemate marriage was legal upon consummation and could be annulled by act of Council, as long as it was childless.
“Avarra’s mercy,” she said, looking around the table at them all, “this is worse than being put to bed in the sight of half the Domain of Alton, and I thought that was embarrassing!”
She laughed, but it was not a mirthful sound. Ellemir said gently, “Why do you think a woman is put to bed so publicly? So that all may see and know that the marriage is a legal fact. But in your case a question has been raised. I do not doubt Dezi has talked freely on the matter, damn him!”
“I doubt not he is already damned,” Damon said, “but the mischief is done.”
“Are you telling us,” Andrew said, laying his hand over Callista’s, and noting with dread that she drew it away, with the old automatic reflex, “that Dezi’s taunt was true after all and our marriage is not lawful?”
Reluctantly Damon nodded. “While Domenic lived and Dom Esteban was healthy, no one would question what his daughters did, far away in the Kilghard Hills. But the situation has changed. The Domain is in the hands of a child and a dying man. Even if Callista were still Keeper, legally they could not force her to marry, but any persuasion short of force would be used. And since she has already given back her oath, and publicly refused to return to Arilinn, her marriage is a legitimate concern of Council.”
“Have I no more rights in the matter than a horse led to the marketplace?” Callista demanded.
“Callie, I did not make the laws,” he said tenderly. “I will unmake some of them, if I can, but I cannot do it overnight. The law is what it is.”
“Callista’s father agreed to give her to me,” Andrew said. “Does that decision have no legal merit?”
“But he is a dying man, Andrew. He may die tonight, and I am only warden of Alton under the Council, no more.” He looked deeply troubled. “Only if we could go to Council with an established marriage under the Law of Valeron—”
“What is that?” Andrew demanded, and Callista said tonelessly, “A woman of the Aillard Domain, from the plains of Valeron, won a Council decision which has served as a precedent ever since. Whether the marriage is freemate or otherwise, no woman can be separated unwilling from the father of her child. Damon means that if you could take me to bed—and preferably make me pregnant at once—we would have a way to contest the Council.” She made a face. “I do not want a child yet—still less do I want it at the bidding of Council like this, like a mare being taken to stud—but better that, than that I should marry someone chosen by Council for political reasons, and to bear his children.” She looked miserably from Damon to Andrew and said, “But you know that it is imposs
ible.”
Damon said quietly, “No, Callista. This marriage, and you know it, stands or falls on whether you can go before Council tomorrow and swear that the marriage has been consummated.”
She cried out, trapped, terrified, “Do you want me to kill him this time?” and buried her face in her hands.
Damon came around the table, gently turned Callista to face him. “There is another way, Callista. No, look at me. Andrew and I are bredin. And I am stronger than you. You could hit me with everything you threw at Andrew, and more, and you could not hurt me!”
She turned away, sobbing, “If I must. If I must. But, oh, merciful Avarra, I wanted that to come in love, when I was ready, not in a battle to the death!”
There was a long silence, with only Callista’s stifled weeping. The sound tore at Andrew’s heart, but he knew he must trust Damon to find a way for them. At last Damon said quietly, “Then there is only one way, Callista. Varzil told me that the answer for you was to free your mind from the imprint of years as Keeper on your body. I can free your mind, and your body will be freed, as it was in the winter blooming.”
“You told me that was only an illusion . . .” She faltered.
“I was wrong,” Damon said quietly. “I did not put everything together until a little while ago. I wish, for your sake, that you and Andrew had been able to trust your instincts. But now . . . I have some kireseth flowers, Callista.”
Her hands flew to her mouth in apprehension, terror, understanding. “It is taboo, forbidden to anyone Tower-trained!”
“But,” Damon said, and his voice was very gentle, “our Tower does not live by the laws of Arilinn, breda, and I am not a Keeper by those laws. Why do you think it became taboo, Callista? Because, under the impact of the kireseth—as you have seen—even a Keeper could not retain her immunity to passion, desire, human need. It is a telepathic catalyst drug, but it is much, much more than that. After the training given to Keepers in the Towers, it is frightening, unthinkable, to admit that there is no reason for a Keeper to be chaste, except temporarily, for strenuous work. Certainly there is no need for such lifetime loneliness and withdrawal. The Towers have imposed cruel and needless laws on their Keepers, Callista, from the Ages of Chaos, when the Year’s End ritual was lost. I think it must have been at the time of Midsummer festival then. At our festival, all through the Domains, women are given flowers and fruit in commemoration of Cassilda’s gift to Hastur, but how is the Lady of the Domains always pictured? With the golden bell of Kireseth in her hands. This was the ancient ritual, so that a woman might work as Keeper in the matrix circles, with her channels clear, and then return to normal womanhood when she chose.”
He took her two hands in his. She tried, in the old, automatic way, to draw them away, but he held them firmly in his own, controlling her. “Callista, have you the courage to turn your back on Arilinn and explore, with us, a tradition which will allow you to be Keeper and woman at once?”
He had struck the right note when he appealed to her courage. Together they had tested it to the outermost limits. She bowed her head, consenting. But when he brought the kireseth flowers, folded into a cloth, she hesitated, holding the bundle in her hands.
“I have broken every law of Arilinn save this. Now I am truly outcaste,” she said, near to tears again.
Damon said, “They have called us both renegades. I will not ask you to do anything I am not willing to do first, Callista.”
He took the cloth from her hand, unfolded it and raised it to his face, deeply inhaling the dizzying scent. Fear rushed through him—the forbidden thing, the taboo—but he recalled Varzil’s words:
“This is why we instituted the old sacramental rite of Year’s End. . . . You are her Keeper; it is for you to be responsible.”
Callista was white and shaking, but she took the kireseth from Damon’s hands, breathing in deeply. Damon meanwhile thought of the Arilinn circle, which would strike them at sunrise. Was he making a tragic mistake?
During his years there, when serious work was contemplated any kind of stress was prohibited, anything like sexual contact above all. They would spend this night in solitary concentration, preparing for the battle ahead of them.
But Damon was not working along those lines. He knew he could not defeat Arilinn by doing what they did. His Tower was building something wholly new, built upon their fourfold rapport. It was only right that they should spend this night in completing the bond, helping Callista to be part of it, to share it fully.
Andrew took the flowers from Callista’s hands. As he breathed their scent—dried, powdery, but still reminiscent of the field of golden flowers under the crimson sunlight—he seemed to see Callista coming through the field of flowers again, and the memory made him faint with longing. As Ellemir took them in her turn, he felt moved to protest—was this safe for her, in her condition? But she had the right to choose. She should share whatever this night brought them.
Damon felt a rush of expanding outward consciousness, a heightened awareness. It seemed that the matrix at his throat was flickering, throbbing like a live thing. He cradled it in his hand and it seemed to speak to him, and for the moment he wondered if the matrices were, after all, a form of alien life, experiencing time at a fantastically different rate, symbiotic with mankind?
Then he seemed to rush backward as he had done during Timesearch, and experience, with curious clairvoyance, what he had heard of the history of the Towers, at Arilinn and at Nevarsin. After the Ages of Chaos, centuries of decadence, corruption, and conflicts which had decimated the Domains and raged over half a world, the Towers had been rebuilt and the Compact formed, forbidding all weapons save those within hand’s reach of the wielder, and forcing anyone who would kill to take an equal chance at death. Matrix work had been relegated to the Towers and to those of Comyn blood, sworn to the Towers and the Keepers. The Keepers, vowed to chastity and without allegiance even to family ties, were required to be disinterested, without political or dynastic interest in the rule of the Domains. The training of Tower workers was based on strong ethical principles and the breaking of all other bonds, creating strength and integrity in a world corrupt and laid waste.
And the Keepers were sworn to protect the Domains, to guard against further misuse of the matrix stones. Without political power, they had nevertheless taken on tremendous personal and charismatic force, priestesses, sorceresses, with a vital spiritual and religious ascendancy, controlling all the matrix workers on Darkover.
But had this in itself become an abuse?
It seemed to Damon that he was in telepathic contact across the centuries with his distant kinsman Varzil—or was it a faint racial memory? When had the Towers abandoned the Year’s End ritual which kept them in touch with their common humanity? The ritual had allowed a Keeper, celibate by harsh necessity for her incredibly difficult and demanding work—and in those days, at the height of the Towers, it had been far more demanding still—to become periodically aware of her common humanity, sharing the instincts and desires of her fellow men and women.
When had they abandoned it? Even more, why had they abandoned it? At some time during the Ages of Chaos had it become a kind of debauchery? For whatever reasons, good or bad, it was gone, and with it the knowledge of how to unlock the channels frozen for psi work at such a high level. So the Keepers, no longer neutered, had been forced to rely on a kind of training basically inhuman, and the power of the Keepers lay in the hands of such women who were capable of withdrawing themselves thus completely from their instincts and desires.
It seemed to Damon, as he traversed the years, that he could feel within himself all the suffering of these men and women, alienated, despairing, many failing because they could not so fully separate themselves from the human lot. And those who succeeded had had to adopt impossible standards for themselves, training of an inhuman rigor, total alienation even from their own circles. But what choice had they had?
But now they would rediscover what the old rite could
have done. . . .
He was not looking at Callista but he felt her frozen decorum dissolving, felt the lessening physical rigidity, tension running out of her like running water. She had dropped into a chair. He turned and saw her smiling, stretching like a cat, holding out her arms to Andrew. Andrew went and knelt beside her, and Damon watched, thinking with longing of a lovely child in the Tower, all her exquisite spontaneity leaving her day by day, slowly changing to a prim tense silence. Now, his heart aching, he could see a little of that child in the sweet smile Callista gave Andrew. Andrew kissed her hesitantly, then with growing passion. As the fourfold rapport began to weave among them again, they all shared, for a moment, in the kiss. But Andrew, his own inhibitions broken by the kireseth, moved a little too quickly. His arms tightened around Callista, crushing her against him, and the growing demand of his kisses frightened her. In sudden panic she broke away from him, thrusting him away with the full strength of her arms, her eyes wide with dread.
Damon felt the double texture of her fear: partly she feared that what had happened before would happen again, that the reflex she could not control would strike Andrew, hurt him, kill him; partly she feared her own arousal, strange, unfamiliar. She looked at Andrew with something like terror, stared at Damon with a numb, trapped look which bewildered him.
Ellemir’s thoughts moved quickly through the growing rapport. Have you forgotten how young she is?
Andrew stared at her without comprehension. After all, Callista was Ellemir’s twin!
Yes, and after so many years as a Keeper, in some ways she is older, but all of that is gone from her mind now. She is, essentially, the little girl of thirteen who went to the Tower. For her, sex is still a memory of terror and pain, and how she nearly killed you. She has nothing good to remember except a few kisses among the flowers. Leave her to me for a little, Andrew.
Reluctantly Andrew drew away from Callista, and Ellemir put an arm around her twin’s shrinking shoulders. None of them needed to speak aloud now, and didn’t bother.
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