They sat there for some time, until Damon, abruptly coming into the room, stopped, in dismay and shock. He opened his mouth to speak, and Andrew caught directly from his mind the frightened urgency:
Andrew! Put her down, quickly, get away from her!
Andrew raised his head angrily, but at the very real distress in Damon’s thought he acted quickly, rising and carrying Callista to her bed. She lay still, unconscious, unmoving.
“How long,” Damon said evenly, “has she been like this?”
“Only a few minutes. We were talking,” Andrew said defensively.
Damon sighed. He said, “I thought I could trust you, I thought you understood!”
“She is not afraid of me, Damon, she wanted me to hold her!”
Callista’s eyes flickered open. In the room’s pale snow-light they looked colorless. “Don’t scold him, Damon, I was weary of lying in bed. Truly, I am better. I thought tonight I would send for my harp and play a little. I am so tired of having nothing to do.”
Damon looked at her skeptically. But he said, “I will send for it, if you ask.”
“Let me go for it,” Andrew said. Surely if she felt well enough to play her harp, she must be better indeed! He went down into the Great Hall, found a steward and asked for the Lady Callista’s harp. The man brought the small instrument, not much larger than a Terran guitar, in its carved wood case.
“Shall I carry it up for you, Dom Ann’dra?”
“No, I will take it.”
One of the woman servants, behind the steward, said, “Bear our congratulations to the lady, and say that we hope she will soon be well enough to accept them in person.”
Andrew swore, unable to stop himself. Quickly he apologized—the woman had meant no harm. And what else could they have thought? She had been abed for ten days, and no one had been asked to come and nurse her, only her twin sister being allowed near. Could anyone blame them if they thought that Callista was pregnant, and that her sister and her husband were taking great care that her child did not meet the fate of Ellemir’s? At last he said, and knew his voice was unsteady, “I thank you for your . . . your kind wishes, but my wife has no such good fortune . . .” and he couldn’t go on. He accepted their murmured sympathy, and escaped quickly upstairs.
In the outer room of the suite, he stopped, hearing Damon’s voice raised in anger.
“It’s no good, Callista, and you know it. You can’t eat, you don’t sleep unless I drug you. I hoped it would all sort itself out, after your cycles came on of their own accord. But look at you!”
Callista murmured something. Andrew could not hear the words, only the protest in them.
“Be honest, Callista. You were leronis at Arilinn. If someone had been brought to you in this state, what would you do?” A brief pause. “Then you know what I must do, and quickly.”
“Damon, no!” It was a cry of despair.
“Breda, I promise you, I will try—”
“Oh, Damon, give me a little more time!” Andrew heard her sobbing. “I’ll try to eat, I promise you. I am feeling better, I sat up today for more than an hour, ask Ellemir. Damon, can’t you give me a little more time?”
A long silence, then Damon swore and came out of the room. He started to stride past Andrew without speaking, but the Terran grasped his arm.
“What’s wrong? What were you saying to get her so upset?”
Damon stared past him and Andrew had the unsettling thought that to Damon he was not really there at all. “She doesn’t want me to do what I have to do.” He caught sight of the harp in the case and said scornfully, “Do you really think she is well enough for that?”
“I don’t know,” Andew said angrily. “I only know that she asked me for it.” Abruptly, remembering what the servants had said, he felt he could endure no more.
“Damon, what is wrong with her? Every time I have asked, you have evaded me.”
Damon sighed and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. “I doubt if I can explain. You’re not matrix-trained, you haven’t the language, you don’t even have the concepts.”
Andrew said grimly, “Just put it in words of one syllable.”
“There aren’t any.” Damon sighed and was silent, thinking. Finally he said, “I showed you the channels, in Callista and in Ellemir.”
Andrew nodded, remembering those glowing lines of light and their pulsing centers, so clear in Ellemir, so inflamed and sluggish in Callista.
“Basically, what ails her is overload of the nerve channels.” He saw that Andrew did not understand. “I told you how the same channels carry sexual energies and psi forces, not at the same time, of course. When she was trained as Keeper, Callista was taught techniques which prevented her from being capable of—or even aware of—the slightest sexual response. Is that clear so far?”
“I think so.” He pictured her whole sexual system made nonfunctional so that she could use her whole body as an energy-transformer. God, what a thing to do to a woman!
“Well, then. In the normal adult the channels function selectively. Turning off the psi forces when the channels are needed for sexual energies, turning off sexual impulses when psi is being used. After matrix work you were impotent for a few days, remember? Normally, when a Keeper gives up her work, it is because the channels have reverted to normal levels, and normal selectivity. Then she is no longer able, as a Keeper must be able, to remain totally and completely free of the slightest trace of sexual energy remaining in the channels. Evidently Callista must have thought this had already happened in her channels, because she could feel herself reacting to you. She did for a moment, you know,” he said, looking at Andrew hesitantly, and Andrew, unwilling to remember that fourfold moment of contact, to acknowledge that Damon could have been part of it, could not raise his eyes. He only nodded, without looking up.
“Well, then, if an ordinary Keeper—a fully functioning Keeper, with conditioning intact and channels clear—is attacked, she can protect herself. If, for instance, you had not been Callista’s husband, someone to whom she had given the right, if you had been a stranger attempting rape, she would have blasted straight through you. And you would have been very, very dead, and Callista would have been . . . well, I suppose she would have been shocked and sick, but after a good meal and some sleep she would not have been much the worse. But that didn’t happen.”
Andrew said numbly “God!”
It isn’t you I don’t trust, my husband. . . .
“She must have believed she was ready, or she would never have risked it. And when she realized she was not ready—in that split second before she blasted you with the reflex she couldn’t control—she took a backflow through her own body. And that saved your life. If that whole flow of energy had gone through you, can you imagine what would have happened?”
Andrew could, but discovered he would much rather not.
“It must have been that shock which brought on her menstruation. I watched her carefully until I knew she wasn’t going into crisis, but after that I thought the bleeding, and the normal energy drain of that time in women, would carry off the overloading and clear the channels. But it hasn’t.” He frowned. “I wish I knew precisely what Leonie had done to her. Meanwhile, I asked you not to touch her. And you must not.”
“Are you afraid she will blast me again?”
Damon shook his head. “I don’t think she has the strength for that now. In a way it’s worse. She is reacting to you physically, but the channels are not clear so there is no way to carry off the sexual energies through the channels in the normal way. There are two sets of reflexes operating at once, each jamming the other, inhibiting either of the normal functions.”
“I feel more muddled than ever,” Andrew said, dropping his head in his hands, and Damon set to work to simplify further.
“A woman trained as Keeper sometimes has to coordinate eight or ten telepaths. Working in the energon rings, she has to channel all that force through her own body. They handle such enormous ps
i stresses, like”—he picked up the analogy neatly from Andrew’s mind—“an energy-transformer. So they can’t, they dare not, rely on the normal selectivity of the ordinary adult. They have to keep those channels totally, completely, and permanently cleared for the psi forces. Do you remember what my sister Marisela said?”
They heard it together, an echo in Damon’s mind: In the old days the Keepers of Arilinn could not leave their posts if they would. . . . The Keepers of Arilinn are not women but emmasca. . . .
“Keepers aren’t neutered anymore, of course. They rely on vows of virginity, and intensive antisexual conditioning, to keep the channels totally free. But a Keeper is, after all, a woman, and if she falls in love, she is likely to begin to react sexually, because the channels have returned to normal selectivity, for psi or for sex. She has to stop functioning as a Keeper, because her channels are no longer completely clear. She could handle ordinary psi, but not the enormous stresses of a Keeper, the energon rings and relays—well, you don’t know much about that, never mind it. In practice, a Keeper whose conditioning has failed usually gives up laran work altogether. I think that’s foolish, but it’s our custom. But this is what Callista was expecting: that once she had begun to react to you, she would begin to use the channels selectively, like any normal mature telepath.”
“So why didn’t she?” Andrew demanded.
“I don’t know,” Damon said, in despair. “I have never seen anything like it before. I would not like to believe that Leonie had altered the channels so they could never function selectively, but I cannot think of anything else it could be. Since Leonie evidently altered her channels in some way, to keep her physically immature, I can only think it was that. But do you understand now why you must not touch her, Andrew? It’s not because she would blast you again—and probably kill you this time—for she would let herself die before she would do that. It would be so easy for her that it terrifies me to think about it. But it’s because the reflexes are still there, and she’s fighting them, and it’s killing her.”
Andrew covered his face with his hands. “And I begged her . . .” he said almost inaudibly.
“You couldn’t know,” said Damon gently. “She didn’t know either. She believed she was deconditioning normally, or she would never have risked it. She was willing to give up the psi function of the channels entirely, for you. Do you know what that meant to her?”
Andrew muttered, “I’m not worth it. All that suffering.”
“And so damned unnecessary!” Damon broke off. He was talking blasphemy. No law was stricter than that which prevented a Keeper, her oath once given back, her virginity lost or even suspect, from ever again doing any serious matrix work. “It was what she wanted, Andrew. To give up her work as Keeper, for you.”
“So what’s to be done?” Andrew demanded. “She can’t go on like this, it will kill her!”
Damon said reluctantly, “I will have to clear her channels. And this is what she does not want me to do.”
“Why not?”
Damon did not answer at once. Finally he said, “It’s usually done under kirian, and I have none to give her. Without it, it’s hellishly painful.” This made Callista sound like a simple coward, and he was reluctant to give that impression, but he did not feel capable of explaining to Andrew what Callista’s real objection was. His eyes fell with relief on the rryl in its case.
“But if she is well enough to ask for that, perhaps she is really better,” he said with a glimmer of hope. “Take it to her, Andrew. But,” and he paused, said at last, reluctantly, “don’t touch her. She’s still reacting to you.”
“But isn’t that what we want?”
“Not with the two systems overloading and jamming,” Damon said, and Andrew bent his head, saying in a low voice, “I promise.”
He went past Damon, into the room where Callista lay—and stopped in shock. Callista lay silent, unmoving, and for a dreadful moment he could not see her breathing. Her eyes were open, but she did not see him, and her eyes did not move to follow him as his shadow fell between her and the light. A terrible fear gripped him; he felt a soundless scream tightening his throat. He whirled to shout for Damon, but Damon had already picked up the telepathic impact of his panic and was running into the room. Then a great sigh of relief, almost a sob, burst from Damon.
“It’s all right,” he said, catching at Andrew as if dizzy, “she’s not dead, she’s . . . she’s left her body. She’s in the overworld, that’s all.”
Andrew whispered, staring at the wide-open sightless eyes, “What can we do for her?”
“In her present physical state she won’t be able to stay long,” Damon said, trouble, concern, and hope mingling in his voice. “I did not even know she was strong enough for this. But if she is . . .” He did not say it aloud, but they could both hear what he did not say: If she is, perhaps it is not as bad as we fear.
Moving in the gray spaces of the overworld, Callista sensed their cries and their fear, but dimly, like a dream. For the first time in an eternity, she was free from pain. She had left her racked body behind, stepping out of it like a too-large garment, slipping on to the familiar realms. She felt herself formulate in the gray spaces of the overworld, her body cool and quiet and at peace as it had been before. . . . She saw herself wrapped in the airy translucent folds of her Keeper’s robe, a leronis, a sorceress. Do I still see myself like this? she wondered, deeply troubled. I am not a Keeper, but a wedded woman, in thought and heart if not in fact. . . .
The emptiness of the gray world frightened her. She reached out, almost automatically, for a landmark, and saw in the gray distance the faint glimmer that was the energy-net equivalent, in this world, of the Arilinn Tower.
I cannot go there, she thought, I have renounced it, yet with the thought she felt a passionate longing for the world she had left forever behind her. As if the longing had created its own answer, she saw it brighten, then, almost with the swiftness of thought, and she was there, within the Veil, in her own secret retreat, the Garden of Fragrance, the Keeper’s Garden.
Then she saw the veiled form before her, slowly taking shape. She did not need to see Leonie’s face to recognize her here.
“My darling child,” Leonie said. Callista knew it was only a tenuous contact in thought, but so real was their presence to one another in this familiar realm that Leonie’s voice sounded rich, warm, tenderer than ever in life. Only on this nonphysical plane, she knew, could Leonie risk this kind of emotion. “Why have you come to us? I had thought you gone forever beyond our reach, chiya. Or have you strayed here in a dream?”
“It is no dream, Kiya.” Anger washed through her, like a cold shock bathing every nerve. She controlled it, as she had been taught from childhood, for the anger of the Altons could kill. Her voice cold and demanding, rejecting Leonie’s tenderness, she stated, “I came to seek you, to ask you why you spoke a blessing without truth! Why did you lie to me?” Her own voice was like a scream in her ears. “Why did you bind me in bonds I could not break, so that when you gave me in marriage it was mockery? Do you grudge me happiness, who knew none of your own?”
Leonie flinched. Her voice was filled with pain. “I had hoped you happy and already a bride, chiya.”
“You know what you had done to make that impossible! Can you swear that you have not neutered me, as was done in old days to the lady of Arilinn?”
Leonie’s face was filled with horror. She said, “The Gods witness it, child, and the holy things at Hali, you have not been neutered. But Callista, you were very young when you came to the Tower. . . .”
Time seemed to flow backward as Leonie spoke and Callista felt herself dragged back to a time half forgotten, her hair still curling about her cheeks instead of braided like a woman’s, felt again the frightened reverence she had felt for Leonie before she had become mother, guide, teacher, priestess. . . .
“You succeeded as Keeper when six others had failed, my child. I thought you proud of that.”
&nbs
p; “I was,” Callista murmured, bending her head.
“But you misled me, Callista, or I would never have let you go. You made me believe—though I hardly felt it possible—that already you were responding to your lover, that if you had not lain with him it would only be a little while. And so I thought perhaps I had not really succeeded, that perhaps your success as Keeper came because you believed yourself free of such things as tormented the other women. Then, when love came into your life and you found where your heart lay, then, as has happened with many Keepers, it was no longer possible to remain unawakened. And so I blessed you, and gave you back your oath. But if this is not true, Callista, if it is not true. . . .”
Callista remembered Damon flinging the angry taunt at her: Will you spend your life counting holes in linen towels and making herbs for spice-bread, you who were Callista of Arilinn? And Leonie heard it too, in her mind, an echo.
“I said it before, my darling, now I offer it again. You can return to us. A little time, a little retraining, and you would be one of us again.”
She gestured, the air rippled, and Callista was clothed in the crimson of a Keeper, ritual ornaments at her brow and her throat.
“Come back to us, Callista. Come back.”
She said, faltering, “My husband—”
Leonie gestured that away as nothing. “Freemate marriage is nothing, Callista, a legal fiction, meaningless until consummated. What binds you to this man?”
Callista started to say “Love,” and under Leonie’s scornful eyes could not get the word out. She said, “A promise, Leonie.”
“Your promise to us came first. You were born to this work, Callista, it is your destiny. Do you remember, you consented to what was done to you? You were one of seven who came to us that year. Six young women failed, one after another. They were already grown, their nerve channels matured. They found the clearing of the channels and the conditioning against response too painful. And then there was Hilary Castamir, do you remember? She became Keeper, but every month, when her woman’s cycles came upon her, she went into convulsions, and the cost seemed too great. I was desperate, Callista, do you remember? I was doing the work of three Keepers, and my own health began to suffer. And for this reason I explained it to you, and you consented—”
The Forbidden Circle Page 37
