He said, “I must go back and see to your comrades, the ones who are worst hurt. Dezi—”
The red-haired boy looked up, and Damon said, “When these men are taken care of, come and talk to me, will you?”
Dezi nodded, and bent over the man whose feet he was smearing with strong-smelling salve and bandaging. Damon noticed that his hands were deft and that he worked quickly and with skill. Damon stopped beside Ellemir, who was winding a length of bandage around frozen fingers, and said, “Be careful not to work too hard, my darling.”
Her smile was quick and cheery. “Oh, it is only early in the morning that I am ill. Later in the day, like this, I have never felt better! Damon, can you do anything for those poor fellows in there? Darrill and Piedro and Raimon played with Callista and me when we were little girls, and Raimon is Domenic’s foster-brother.”
“I did not know that,” Damon said, shaken. “I will do all I can for them, love.”
He came back to where Ferrika was working with the worst of the hurt men, and joined her in the preliminary bandaging and soaking, giving them strong drugs to ease or blunt the worst of the pain. But this, he knew, was only a beginning. Without more help than Ferrika and her herb-medicines could give, they would die or be crippled for life. At the very best they would lose toes, fingers, lie helpless and lamed for months.
Callista had recovered her cool self-possession now, and was working with Ferrika, helping to put hot-packs about the injured men. Restoring the circulation was the only way to save any of their feet, and if feeling could be restored in any part of their limbs, it was a victory. Damon watched her with a remote sadness, not really blaming her. He found it hard to overcome his own disquiet at the need for returning to matrix work.
Leonie had told him that be was too sensitive, too vulnerable, that if he went on, it would destroy him.
She also said that if he had been a woman, he would have made a good Keeper.
He told himself firmly that he hadn’t believed it then and that he refused to believe it now. Any good matrix mechanic could handle a Keeper’s work, he reminded himself. He felt a chill of dread at doing this work outside the safe confines of a Tower.
But here was where it was needed, and here was where it must be done. Perhaps there was more need for matrix mechanics outside a Tower than within. . . . Damon realized where his random thoughts were taking him, and shuddered at the blasphemy. The Towers—Arilinn, Hali, Neskaya, Dalereuth, the others scattered about the Domains—were the way in which the ancient matrix sciences of Darkover had been made safe after the terrible abuses of the Ages of Chaos. Under the safe supervision of the Keepers—oath-bound, secluded, virgin, passionless, excluded from the political and personal stresses of the Comyn—every matrix worker was trained carefully and tested for trustworthiness, every matrix monitored and guarded against misuse.
And when a matrix was used illegally, outside a Tower and without their leave, then such things happened as when the Great Cat cast darkness through the Kilghard Hills, madness, destruction, death. . . .
He let his fingers stray to his own matrix. He had used it, outside a Tower, to destroy the Great Cat and cleanse the Hills of their terror. That had not been misuse. And this healing he was about to do, this was not misuse; it was legitimate, sanctioned. He was a trained matrix worker, yet he felt queasy and ill at ease.
At last all the men, slightly or seriously hurt, had been salved, bandaged, fed, and put to bed in the back halls. The worst ones had been dosed with Ferrika’s pain-killing potions, and Ferrika, with some of her women, stayed to watch over them. But Damon knew that while many of the men would recover, with no more treatment than good nursing and healing oils, there were a few who would not.
A noonday hush had settled over Armida. Ferrika watched over the hurt men; Ellemir came to play cards with her father, and at Dom Esteban’s request, Callista brought her harp, laid it across her lap and began tuning the strings. Damon, watching her closely, saw that while she seemed calm, her eyes were still red, and her fingers less steady than usual as she struck the first few chords.
What sound was that upon the moor?
Hear, O hear!
What sound was that in the darkness here?
It was the wind that rattled the door,
Child, do not fear.
Was that the noise of a horseman’s hoof,
Hear, O hear!
Was it the sound of a rider near?
It was but branches, astrike on the roof,
Child, do not fear!
Was that a face at the window there?
Hear, O hear!
A strange dark face . . .
Damon rose silently, beckoned to Dezi to follow him. As they withdrew into the corridor, he said, “Dezi, I know perfectly well that one never asks why someone left a Tower, but would you care to tell me, in complete confidence, why you left Arilinn?”
Dezi’s face was sullen. “No, I wouldn’t. Why should I?”
“Because I need your help. You saw the state those men were in, you know that with nothing more than hot water and herb-salves, there are at least four of them who will never walk again, and Raimon, at least, will die. So you know what I am going to have to do.”
Dezi nodded, and Damon went on: “You know I will need someone to monitor for me. And if you were dismissed for imcompetence, you know I could not dare use you.”
There was a long silence. Dezi stared at the slate-colored slabs of the floor, and inside the Great Hall they heard the sound of the harp, and Callista singing:
Why lies my father upon the ground?
Hear, O hear!
Stricken to death with a foeman’s spear . . .
“It was not incompetence,” Dezi said at last. “I am not sure why they decided I must go.” He sounded sincere, and Damon, enough of a telepath to know when he was being lied to, decided he probably was sincere. “I can only think that they didn’t like me. Or perhaps”—he raised his eyes, with an angry steel glint in them—“they knew I was not even an acknowledged nedestro, not good enough for their precious Arilinn, where blood and lineage are everything.”
Damon thought that no, the Towers didn’t work that way. But he was not so sure. Arilinn was not the oldest of the Towers, but it was the proudest, claiming more than nine hundred generations of pure Comyn blood, claiming too that the first Keeper had been a daughter of Hastur’s self. Damon didn’t believe it, for there was too little history which had survived the Ages of Chaos.
“Oh, come, Dezi, if you could pass the Veil they would know you were Comyn, or of Comyn blood, and I don’t think they would care that much.” But he knew nothing he said could get past the boy’s wounded vanity. And vanity was a dangerous flaw for a matrix mechanic.
The Tower circles depended so much on the character of the Keeper. Leonie was a proud woman. She was when Damon knew her, with all the arrogance of a Hastur, and she had grown no less so in the years between. Perhaps she was personally intolerant of Dezi’s lack of proper pedigree. Or perhaps he was right, and they simply didn’t like him. . . . In any case, it made no difference here. Damon had no choice. Andrew was a powerful telepath, but essentially untrained. Dezi, if he had lasted even half a year in a Tower, would have had meticulous training in the elemental mechanics of the art.
“Can you monitor?”
Dezi said, “Try me.”
Damon shrugged. “Try, then.”
In the hall, Callista’s voice rose mournfully:
What was that cry that rent the air?
Hear, O hear!
What dreadful shriek of dark despair,
A widow’s curse and an orphan’s prayer . . .
“Zandru’s hells,” Dom Esteban exploded, at the top of his voice, “why such a doleful song, Callista? Weeping and mourning, death and despair. We are not at a funeral! Sing something more cheerful, girl!”
There was a brief harsh sound, as if Callista’s hands had struck a dissonance on the harp. She said, and her voice falter
ed, “I fear I am not much in the mood for singing, Father. I beg you to excuse me.”
Damon felt the touch on his mind, swift and expert, so perfectly shielded that if Damon had not been watching Dezi, he would not have known by whom he had been touched. He felt the faint, deep probing, then Dezi said, “You have a crooked back tooth. Does it bother you?”
“Not since I was a boy,” Damon said. “Deeper?”
Dezi’s face went blank, with a glassy stare. After a moment he said, “Your ankle—the left ankle—was broken in two places when you were quite young. It must have taken a long time to heal; there are scars where bone fragments must have worked out for some time afterward. There is a fine crack in your third—no, the fourth—rib from the breastbone. You thought it was only a bruise and did not tell Ferrika when you returned from the wars with the catmen last season, but you were right, it was broken. There is a small scar—vertical, about four inches long—along your calf. It was made by a sharp instrument, but I do not know whether knife or sword. Last night you dreamed—”
Damon nodded, laughing. “Enough,” he said, “you can monitor.” How in the name of Aldones had they been willing to let Dezi go? This was a telepath of surpassing skill. With three years of Arilinn training, he would have matched the best in the Domains! Dezi picked up the thought and smiled, and again Damon had the moment of disquiet. Not lack of competence, or lack of confidence. Was it his vanity, then?
Or had it been only some personality clash, someone there who felt unable or unwilling to work with the youngster? The Tower circles were so intimate, a closer bond than lovers or kinfolk, that the slightest emotional dissonance could be exaggerated into torture. Damon knew that Dezi’s personality could be abrasive—he was young, touchy, easily offended—so perhaps he had simply come at the wrong time, into a group already so intimate that they could not adapt to any outsider, and not enough in need of another worker that they would work hard enough at the necessary personal adjustments.
It might not have been Dezi’s fault at all, Damon considered. Perhaps, if he did well at this, another Tower would take him. There was a crying need for strong natural telepaths, and Dezi was gifted, too gifted to waste. He saw the smile of pleasure, and knew Dezi had picked up the thought, but it didn’t matter. A moment’s reproving thought, that vanity was a dangerous flaw for a matrix technician, knowing that Dezi picked that up too, seemed enough.
“All right,” he said, “we’ll try. There’s no time to lose. Do you think you can work with me and Andrew?”
Dezi said sulkily, “Andrew doesn’t like me.”
“You’re too ready to think people don’t like you,” Damon reproved gently, thinking that it was bad enough for Dezi to know he chose him because Callista refused. But he could not betray Callista’s grief. And Ellemir should not try to do this work, so early in pregnancy. Pregnancy was about the only thing which could seriously interrupt a matrix worker’s capability, with its danger to the unborn child. And in the last day or two, linked with Ellemir, he had begun to pick up the first, faintest emanations of the developing brain, still formless, but there, real, enough to make their child a distinct separate presence to him.
He thought that there ought to be a way to compensate for this too, to protect a developing child. But he didn’t know of any, and he wasn’t going to experiment with his own! So it was himself, Andrew, and Dezi.
Andrew, a little while later, when Damon broached the subject, frowned and said, “I can’t say I’m crazy about the idea of working with Dezi.” But, at Damon’s remonstrance, admitted it was hardly worthy of an adult, to hold a grudge against a boy in his teens, a youngster who had, admittedly, been drunk at the time of the offense.
“And Dezi’s young for his age,” Damon told Andrew. “If he’d been acknowledged nedestro, he would have been given responsibilities to equal his privileges, all along. A year or two in the cadets would have made all the difference, or a year of good, hard, monkish discipline at Nevarsin. It’s our fault, not Dezi’s, that he’s turned out the way he has.”
Andrew did not protest further, but he still felt disquiet. No matter whose fault it was, if Dezi had flaws of character, Andrew did not feel right about working with him.
But Damon must know what he was doing. Andrew watched Damon making his preparations, remembering when he had first been taught to use a matrix. Callista had been part of the linkage of minds then, though she was still prisoner in the caves, and he had never seen her with his physical eyes. And now she was Keeper no more, and his wife. . . .
Damon held his own matrix cradled between his hands, finally saying aloud, with an ironic smile, “I am always afraid to do this outside a Tower. I never lose the fear that it is not safe. An absurd fear, perhaps, but a real one.”
Dezi said gently, “I am glad you are afraid too, Damon. I am glad to know it is not only me.”
Damon said, in a shaking voice, “I think anyone who is not afraid to use this kind of force probably should not be trusted with it at all. The forces were so misused in the Ages of Chaos that Regis Hastur the Fourth decreed that from his day, no matrix circle should presume to use the great screens and relays outside the established Towers. That law was not made for such work as this, but there is still the sense of . . . of violating a taboo.” He turned to Andrew and said, “How would they treat frostbite in your world?”
Andrew answered thoughtfully, “The best treatment is arterial injection of neural stimulators: acetylcholine or something similar. Possibly transfusion, but medicine isn’t really my field.”
Damon sighed and said, “I seem to have been thrust into such work more often than I intended. Well, let us get on with it.” He let his mind sink deep into the matrix, reaching out for contact with Andrew. They had been linked before, and the old rapport quickly reestablished itself. For a moment there was a shadow-touch from Ellemir, only a hint, like the faint memory of a kiss, then she dropped gently out of the rapport at Damon’s admonition: she must guard herself and their child. For an instant Callista too lingered, a fragmentary touch, in the old closeness, and Andrew clung to the contact. For so long she had not touched even his hand, and now they were linked together, close again—then, with a poignant sharpness, she broke the link, dropping away. Andrew felt empty and cold without the touch of her mind, and he sensed the wrenching aftertaste of grief. He was glad, for a moment, that Dezi was not yet in the rapport. Then Damon reached out and Andrew felt Dezi in the linkage, was momentarily aware of him, barriered, yet very much there, a cool firm strength, like a handclasp.
The threefold link persisted for a moment, Damon getting the feel of the two men with whom he must work so closely linked. With his eyes closed as always in a circle, he saw behind them the blue crystalline structure of the matrix gems which held them linked together, amplifying and sending out the individual, definite, electronic resonances of their brains, and beyond that, the purely subjective feel of them. Andrew was rocklike and strong, protective, so that Damon felt with a sigh of relief that his own lack of strength did not matter, Andrew had plenty for both of them. Dezi was a quick, darting precision, an awareness flicking here and there like reflections of light playing from a prism. Damon opened his eyes and saw them both; it was difficult to reconcile the actual physical presence with the mental feel within the matrix.
Dezi was so much—physically—the image of Coryn, his long-dead friend, his sworn brother. For the first time Damon let himself wonder how much of his love for Ellemir arose from that memory, the brother-friend he had loved so deeply when they were children, whose death had left him alone. Ellemir was like Coryn, and yet unlike, uniquely herself—He cut off the thought. He must not think of Ellemir in this strong link or he would be picking her up telepathically, and this strong rapport, this flow of energons, could overpower and deform their child’s developing brain. Quickly, picking up the contact with Dezi and Andrew, he began to visualize—to create on the thought-level where they would work—a strong and impregnable wall ar
ound them, so that no other person within Armida could be affected by their thoughts.
When we work with the men, healing them, we will bring them one by one behind this wall, so that nothing will overflow to damage Ellemir or the child, or trouble Callista’s peace, or disturb the sleep of Dom Esteban.
It was only a psychological device, he knew, nothing like the strong electrical-mental net around Arilinn, strong as the wall of the Tower itself, to keep out intruders in body or mind. But it had its own reality on the level where they would be working: it would protect them from outside interference, shielding those in Armida who might pick up their thoughts, and dilute or distort them. It would also focus the healing on the ones who needed it.
“Before we start, let’s have it clear what we’re going to do,” he said. Ferrika had some rather well drawn anatomical charts. She had been giving classes in basic hygiene to the women in the villages, an innovation of which Damon completely approved, and he had borrowed the charts she used, discarding the ones she used to teach pregnant women, but keeping the one which diagramed the circulation. “Look here, we have to restore circulation and healthy blood flow into the legs and feet, liquefy the frozen lymph and sluggish blood, and try to repair the nerve fibers damaged by freezing.”
Andrew, listening to the matter-of-fact way in which Damon spoke, in much the same way as a Terran medic would have described an intravenous injection, looked uneasily at the matrix between his hands. He did not doubt that Damon could do everything he said he could, and he was perfectly willing to help. But he thought they were a most unlikely hospital team.
The men were lying in the room where they had been taken. Most of them were still in their drugged sleep, but Raimon was awake, his eyes bright with fever, flushed and pain-racked.
The Forbidden Circle Page 28
