The Forbidden Circle

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Ellemir smiled in the darkness. “Not many. I learned there that I liked lying with men, but I did not want to be gossiped about as they whisper scandal about Sybil-Mhari—you have heard that she takes lovers from Guardsmen or even grooms—and I did not want to bear a child I would not be allowed to rear, though Dorian pledged that if I gave Mikhail a child she would foster it. And I did not want to be married off in a hurry to someone I did not like, which I knew Father would do if there was scandal. So there are not more than two or three men who could say, if they would, that they have had more of me than my fingers to kiss at Midsummer night. Even Damon. He has waited patiently—”

  She gave an odd, excited little laugh. Callista stroked her twin’s soft hair.

  “Well, now the waiting is nearly over, love.”

  Ellemir cuddled close to her sister. She could sense Callista’s fears, her ambivalence, but she still misunderstood its nature.

  She has been pledged virgin, Ellemir thought, she has lived her life apart from men, so it is not surprising that she should be afraid. But once she has come to understand that she is free, Andrew will be kind to her, and patient, and she will come at last to happiness . . . happiness like mine . . . and Damon’s.

  They were lightly in rapport, and Callista followed Ellemir’s thoughts, but she would not trouble her sister by telling her that it was not nearly as simple as that.

  “We should sleep, breda, tomorrow is our wedding day, and tomorrow night,” she added mischievously, “Damon may not let you sleep very much.”

  Laughing, Ellemir closed her eyes. Callista lay silent, her twin’s head resting on her shoulder, staring into the darkness. After a long time she sensed, as the thread of rapport between them thinned and Ellemir moved into dreams, that her sister slept. Quietly she slid from the bed and went to the window, looking out over the moon-flooded landscape. She stood there till she was cramped and cold, until the moons set and a thin fine rain began to blur the windowpane. With the hard discipline of years, she did not weep.

  I can accept this and endure it, as I have endured so much. But what of Andrew? Can I endure what it will do to him, what it may do to his love? She stood motionless, hour after hour, cramped, cold, but no longer aware of it, her mind retreating to one of the realms beyond thought which she had been taught to enter for refuge against tormenting ideas, leaving behind the cramped, icy body she had been taught to despise.

  Rain had given way to thin sleet in the dawn hours, rattling the pane. Ellemir stirred, felt about in the bed for her sister, then sat up in consternation, seeing Callista motionless at the window. She got up and went to her, calling her name, but Callista neither heard nor stirred.

  Alarmed, Ellemir cried out. Callista, hearing the voice less than the fear in Ellemir’s mind, came slowly back to the room. “It’s all right, Elli,” she said gently, looking at the frightened face turned up to hers.

  “You’re so cold, love, so stiff and cold. Come back to bed, let me warm you,” Ellemir urged, and Callista let her sister lead her back to bed, cover her warmly, hold her close. After a long time she said, almost in a whisper, “I was wrong, Elli.”

  “Wrong? How, breda?”

  “I should have gone to Andrew’s bed when first he brought me from the caves. After so much time alone in the dark, so much fear, my defenses were down.” With an aching regret she remembered how he had carried her from Corresanti, how she had rested, warm and unafraid, in his arms. How, for a little while, it had seemed possible to her. “But there was so much confusion here, Father newly crippled, the house filled with wounded men. Still, it would have been easier then.”

  Ellemir followed her reasoning, and was inclined to agree. Yet Callista was not the kind of woman who could have done such a thing in the face of her father’s displeasure, against her Keeper’s oath. And Lord Alton would have known it, as surely as if Callista had shouted it aloud from the rooftop.

  “You were ill yourself, love. Andrew surely understood.”

  But Callista wondered: had the long illness which came upon her after her rescue been somehow a reaction to this failure? Perhaps, she thought, they had lost an opportunity which might never come again, to come together when they were both afire with passion and had no room for doubts and fears. Even Leonie thought it likely that she had done so.

  Why did I not? And now, now it is too late. . . . Ellemir yawned, with a smile of pure delight.

  “It is our wedding day, Callista!”

  Callista closed her eyes. My wedding day. And I cannot share her gladness. I love as she loves, yet I am not glad. . . . She felt a wild impulse to tear at herself with her nails, to beat herself with her fists, to turn on and punish the beauty which was so empty a promise, the body which looked so much like a lovely and desirable woman’s body—a shell, an empty shell. But Ellemir was looking at her in troubled question, so she made herself smile gaily.

  “Our wedding day,” she said, and kissed her twin. “Are you happy, darling?”

  And for a little while, in Ellemir’s joy, she managed to forget her own fears.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  That morning Damon came to assist Dom Esteban into the rolling chair that had been made for him. “So you can be present at the wedding sitting upright, not lying flat on a wheel-bed like an invalid!”

  “It feels strange to be vertical again,” said the old man, steadying himself with both hands. “I feel as dizzy as if I were already drunk.”

  “You’ve been lying flat too long,” Damon said matter-of-factly. “You’ll soon get used to it.”

  “Well, better to sit up than go propped on pillows like a woman in childbed! And at least my legs are still there, even if I can’t feel them!”

  “They are still there,” Damon assured him, “and with someone to push your chair, you can get around well enough on the ground floor.”

  “That will be a relief,” Esteban said. “I am weary of looking at this ceiling! When spring comes, I will have workmen come here, and let them do over some rooms on the ground floor for me. You two,” he added, gestur ing Andrew to join them, “can have any of the large suites upstairs, for yourselves and your wives.”

  “That is generous, Father-in-law,” Damon said, but the old man shook his head.

  “Not at all. No room above ground level will ever be of the slightest use to me again. I suggest you go and choose rooms for yourselves now; leave my old rooms for Domenic when he takes a wife, but any others are for your own choice. If you do it now, the women can move into their own homes as soon as they are married.” He added, laughing, “And while you do that, I shall have Dezi wheel me about down here and get used to the sight of my house again. Did I thank you, Damon, for this?”

  On the upper floor, Damon and Andrew sought out Leonie. Damon said, “I wanted to ask you, out of earshot. I understand enough to know Dom Esteban will never walk again. But otherwise how is he, Leonie?”

  “Out of earshot?” The Keeper laughed faintly. “He has laran, Damon; he knows all, though perhaps he has wisely refused to understand what it will mean to him. The flesh wound has long healed, of course, and the kidneys are not damaged, but the brain no longer communicates with legs and feet. He retains some small control over body functions, but doubtless as time passes and the lower part of his body wastes away, that will go too. His greatest danger is pressure sores. You must be sure his body-servants turn him every few hours, because, since there is no feeling, there will be no pain either, and he will not know if a fold in his clothing, or something of that sort, puts pressure on his body. Most of those who are paralyzed die when such sores become infected. This process can be delayed, with great care, if his limbs are kept supple with massage, but sooner or later the muscles will wither and die.”

  Damon shook his head in dismay. “He knows all this?”

  “He knows. But his will to live is strong, and while that remains, you can keep his life good. For a while. Years, perhaps. Afterward . . .” A small, resigned shrug. “Perhaps he w
ill find some new will to live if he has grandchildren about him. But he has always been an active man, and a proud one. He will not take kindly to inactivity or helplessness.”

  Andrew said, “I’m going to need a hell of a lot of his help and advice running this place. I’ve been trying to get along without bothering him—”

  “By your leave, that is mistaken,” said Leonie gently. “He should know that his knowledge is still needed, if not his hands and his skill. Ask him for advice as much as you can, Andrew.”

  It was the first time she had addressed him directly, and the Terran glanced at the woman in surprise. He had enough rudimentary telepathy to know that Leonie was uncomfortable with him, and was troubled to feel there was something more now in her regard. When she had gone away he said to Damon, “She doesn’t like me, does she?”

  “I don’t think it is that,” Damon said. “She would feel uneasy with any man to whom she must give Callista in marriage, I think.”

  “Well, I can’t blame her for thinking I’m not good enough for Callista; I don’t think there’s any man who is. But as long as Callista doesn’t think so . . .”

  Damon laughed. “I suppose no man on his wedding day feels worthy of his bride. I must keep reminding myself that Ellemir has agreed to this marriage! Come along, we must find rooms for our wives!”

  “Shouldn’t it be up to them to choose?”

  Damon recalled that Andrew was a stranger to their customs. “No, it is custom for the husband to provide a home for his wife. In courtesy Dom Esteban is giving us a way to find such a place and ready it before the wedding.”

  “But they know the house—”

  Damon replied, “So do I. I spent much of my boyhood here. Dom Esteban’s oldest son and I were bredin, sworn friends. But you, have you no kinsmen in the Terran Zone, no servants sworn to you and awaiting your return?”

  “None. Servants are a memory out of our past; no man should serve another.”

  “Still, we’ll have to assign you a few. If you’re going to be managing the estate for our kinsman”—Damon used the word usually translated as “uncle”—“you won’t have leisure to handle the details of ordinary life, and we can’t expect the women to do their own cleaning and mending. And we don’t have machines as you do in the Terran Zone.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re not rich in metals. Anyhow, why should we make people’s lives useless because they cannot earn their porridge and meat at honest work? Or do you truly think we would all be happier building machines and selling them to one another as you do?” Damon opened a door off the hallway. “These rooms have not been used since Ellemir’s mother died and Dorian was married. They seem in good repair.”

  Andrew followed him into the spacious central living room of the suite, his mind still on Damon’s question. “I’ve been taught it is degrading for one man to serve another, degrading for the servant—and for the master.”

  “I’d find it more degrading to spend my life as servant to some kind of machine. And if you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it and spend your time serving it.” He thought of his own relationship to the matrix, and every psi technician’s on Darkover, to say nothing of the Keepers’.

  Instead, he opened doors all around the suite. “Look, on either side of this central living room is a complete suite: each with bedroom, sitting room and bath, and small rooms behind for the women’s maids when they choose them, dressing rooms and so forth. The women will want to be close together, and yet there’s privacy too, for when we want it, and other small rooms nearby if we need them someday for our children. Does this suit you?”

  It was far more space than any young couple would have been assigned in Married Personnel HQ. Andrew agreed, and Damon asked, “Will you have the left-hand or right-hand suite?”

  “Makes no difference to me. Want to flip a coin?”

  Damon laughed heartily. “You have that custom too? But if it makes no difference to you, let us have the left-hand suite. Ellemir, I have noticed, is always awake and about with the dawn, and Callista likes to sleep late when she can. Perhaps it would be better not to have the morning sun in your bedroom window.”

  Andrew blushed with pleasant embarrassment. He had noticed this, but had not carried it far enough in his mind to think ahead to the mornings when he would be waking in the same room as Callista. Damon grinned companionably.

  “The wedding’s only hours away, you know. And we’ll be brothers, you and I—that’s a good thought too. It seems sad, though, that you should not have a single kinsman or friend at your wedding.”

  “I’ve no friends on this planet anyway. And no living relatives anywhere.”

  Damon blinked in dismay. “You came here without family, without friends?”

  Andrew shrugged. “I grew up on Terra—a horse ranch in a place called Arizona. When I was eighteen or so, my father died, and the ranch was sold for his debts. My mother didn’t live long after that, and I went into space as a civil servant, and a civil servant goes where he’s sent, more or less. I wound up here, and you know the rest.”

  “I thought you had no servants among you,” Damon said, and Andrew got into a tangle of words trying to explain to the other man the difference which made a civil servant other than a servant. Damon listened skeptically and finally said, “A servant, then, to computers and paperwork! I think I had rather be an honest groom or cook!”

  “Aren’t there cruel masters who exploit their servants?”

  Damon shrugged. “No doubt, just as some men ill-treat their saddle horses and whip them to death. But a reasoning man may some day learn the error of his ways, and at the worst, others may restrain him. But there is no way to teach a machine wisdom after folly.”

  Andrew grinned. “You know, you’re right. We have a saying, you can’t fight the computer, it’s right even when it’s wrong.”

  “Ask Dom Esteban’s hall-steward, or the estate midwife Ferrika, if they feel ill-used or exploited,” Damon said. “You’re telepath enough to know if they’re telling the truth. And then, perhaps, you’ll decide you can honorably let some man earn his wages as your body-servant and your groom.”

  Andrew shrugged. “No doubt I will. We have a saying, When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Rome, I think, was a city on Terra; it was destroyed in a war or an earthquake, centuries ago, only the proverb remains. . . .”

  Damon said, “We have a similar saying; it runs, Don’t try to buy fish in the Dry Towns.” He walked around the room he had chosen for his bedroom and Ellemir’s. “These draperies have not been aired since the days of Regis the Fourth! I’ll get the stewards to change them.” He pulled a bell-rope, and when the steward appeared, gave orders.

  “We’ll have it done by tonight, my lord, so you and your ladies can move in when you like. And, Lord Damon, I was asked to let you know that your brother, Lord Serrais, has come to witness your wedding.”

  “Very good, thank you. If you can find Lady Ellemir, ask her to come and approve what arrangements we have made,” Damon said. When the servant went away, he grimaced.

  “My brother Lorenz! Such good will as he has for my wedding, I suspect, could be dropped into my eyes without pain! I had hoped for my brother Kieran, at least, or my sister Marisela, but I suppose I should be honored, and go to say a word of thanks to Lorenz.”

  “Have you many brothers?”

  “Five,” Damon said, “and three sisters. I was the youngest son, and my father and mother had already too many children when I was born. Lorenz—” He shrugged. “I suppose he is relieved that I have taken a bride of family so good that he need not haggle about patrimony and a younger son’s portion. I am not wealthy, but I have never wished for much wealth, and Ellemir and I will have enough for our needs. My brother Lorenz and I have never been overly friendly. Kieran—he is only three years older than I—Kieran and I are bredin; Marisela and I are only a year apart in age, and we had the same foster-mother. As for my other brothers and sisters, we are civil eno
ugh when we meet in Council season, but I suspect none of us would grieve over much if we never met again. My home has always been here. My mother was an Alton, and I was fostered near here, and Dom Esteban’s oldest son went with me into the Cadets. We swore the oath of bredin.” It was the second time he had used this word, which was the intimate or family form of brother. Damon sighed, looking into space for a moment.

  “You were a cadet?”

  “A very poor one,” Damon said, “but no Comyn son can escape it if he has two sound legs and his eyesight. Coryn was like all Altons, a born soldier, a born officer. I was something else.” He laughed. “There’s a joke in the cadet corps about the cadet with two right feet and ten thumbs. That was me.”

  “Awkward squad all the way, huh?”

  Damon nodded, savoring the phrase. “Punishment detail eleven times in a tenday. I’m right-handed, you see. My foster-mother—she was midwife to my mother—used to say I was born upside-down and ass-backward, and I’ve been doing everything that way ever since.”

  Andrew, who had been born left-handed into a right-handed society and only on Darkover had found things arranged in a way that made sense to him, everything from silverware to garden tools, said, “I can certainly understand that.”

  “I’m a bit short-sighted, too, which didn’t help, though it was a help in learning to read. None of my brothers have any clerical skills, and they can’t do much more than spell out a placard or scrawl their names to a deed. But I took to it like a rabbithorn to the snow, so when I finished in the cadets I went to Nevarsin, and spent a year or two learning to read and write and do some map-making and the like. That was when Lorenz decided I’d never make a man. When they accepted me at Arilinn, it only confirmed him in his decision: half monk, half eunuch, he used to say.” Damon was silent, his face set in lines of distaste. Finally he said, “But for all that he was no better pleased when they sent me from the Tower, a few years ago. For Coryn’s sake—Coryn was dead then, poor lad, killed in a fall from the cliffs—but for his sake, Dom Esteban took me into the Guards. I was never much of a soldier, though, hospital officer, cadet-master for a year or two.” He shrugged. “And that’s my life, and enough of that. Listen, the women are coming, we can show our wives around before I have to go down and try to be polite to Lorenz!”