Andrew, caught up in his emotion, turned and put an embarrassed hand on Damon’s shoulder. He said hesitantly, aloud, “I wonder if . . . if anyone ever understands anyone? I’m trying, Damon. Give me time.”
Damon’s normal reaction would have been to embrace Andrew, but he had grown accustomed to having these natural gestures rebuffed, to knowing that they embarrassed his friend. Something would have to be done about that, too. “Just now we’re agreed on one thing, brother, we both want what’s best for Callista. Let’s get back to her.”
Andrew returned to Callista’s side. In spite of everything he had felt that Damon must be exaggerating. These were psychological things, how could they have a genuine, physical effect? Now he knew that Damon was right, Callista was dying. With a shudder of dread he realized that she no longer attempted even to move her head on the pillow, although her eyes moved to follow him.
“Damon, swear that afterward there will be a way to bring me back to . . . to normal. . . .”
“I swear it, breda.” Damon’s voice was as steady as his hands, but Andrew could see he was struggling for control. Callista, though, looked peaceful.
“I have no kirian for you, Callista.”
Andrew could sense the tensing of fear in her, but she said, “I can manage without it. Do what you have to.”
“Callista, if you want to risk it, you have kireseth flowers . . . ?”
She made a faint gesture of negation. Damon had known she would not agree to that; the taboo was absolute among the Tower-trained. Yet he wished she had been less scrupulous, less conscientious. “You said you were going to try . . .”
Damon nodded, taking out the small flask. “A tincture. I filtered off the impurities, and dissolved the resins in wine,” he said. “It might be better than nothing.”
Her laughter was soundless, no more than a breath. Andrew, watching, marveled that even now she could laugh! “I know that is not your major skill, Damon. I’ll try, but let me taste it first. If you’ve gotten the wrong resin . . .” She sniffed cautiously at the flask, tasted a few drops, and finally said, “It’s safe. I’ll try it, but—” She calculated, finally saying, showing a narrow space between thumb and forefinger, “Only about that much.”
“You’ll need more than that, Callista. You’ll never be able to stand the pain,” Damon protested. She said, “I have to be maximally aware of the lower centers and the trunk nerves. The major discharge nodes are overloaded, so you may have to do some rerouting.” Andrew felt a chill of horror at her detached, clinical tone, as if her own body were some kind of malfunctioning machine, her own nerves merely defective parts. What a hell of a thing to do to a woman!
Damon lifted her head, supported her while she swallowed the indicated dose. She stopped at precisely what she had judged, obstinately closing her mouth. “No, no more, Damon, I know my limits.”
He warned colorlessly, “It’s going to be worse than anything you’ve ever had.”
“I know. If you hit a node too close to the”—Andrew could not understand the term she used—“I may have another seizure.”
“I’ll be careful of that. How many days ago did the bleeding completely stop? Do you know how deep I’m going to have to take you?”
She sketched a grimace. “I know. I cleared Hilary twice, and I have more overload than she ever did. There is still a residue—”
Damon caught Andrew’s look of horror. He said, “Do you really want him here, darling?”
She tightened her fingers on his hand. “He has a right.”
Damon’s voice was so strained that it sounded harsh, but Andrew, still linked strongly to the other man, knew it was only the inner stress. “He’s not used to this, Callista. He’ll only know that I’m hurting you terribly.”
God! Andrew thought. Did he have to watch any more of her suffering? But he said quietly, “I’ll stay if you need me, Callista.”
“If I were bearing his child he would stay in rapport and share more pain than this.”
“Yes,” Damon said gently, “but if it were that—Lord of Light, how I wish it were!—you could reach out to him and draw on his strength with no hesitation. But now, you know this, Callista, I would have to forbid him to touch you, whatever happened. Or you, to reach out to him. Let me send him away, Callista.”
She nearly rebelled again then, through her own misery sensing Damon’s dread, his desperate unwillingness to hurt her, she reached up her hand, with a sort of pained surprise that it felt so heavy, to touch his face. “Poor Damon,” she said in a whisper. “You hate this, don’t you? Will it make it easier for you this way?”
Damon nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was hard enough to inflict pain of that kind without having to stand up to the reactions of others who hadn’t the faintest idea what he was doing.
Resolutely, Callista looked up at Andrew. “Go away, love. Ellemir, take him away. This is a matter for trained psi technicians and with the best will in the world, you can’t help and might do damage.”
Andrew felt mingled relief and guilt—if she could endure this he should be strong enough to share it with her—but he also felt that Damon was grateful for Callista’s choice. He could sense the effort Damon was making to create in himself the same clinical, unemotional attitude Callista was trying to display. In mingled horror and guilt, together with a shamed relief, he rose quickly and hurried out of the room.
Behind him, Ellemir hesitated, glancing at Callista, wondering if this would be easier if they could all share it in rapport. But a single glance at Damon’s face decided her. This was bad enough for him. If he must inflict it on her too, it would be even worse. She deliberately broke the remaining link with Damon and Callista, and without turning to see what effect this had on the other two—but she could sense it, relief almost as great as Andrew’s—she followed him quickly across the hall of the suite. She caught up with him in the central hall.
“I think you need a drink. What about it?” She led him into the living room of their half of the suite and rummagednacabinet for a square stoneware bottle and a couple of glasses. She poured, sensing Andrew’s remorseful thoughts: Here I sit enjoying myself over a drink and God only knows what Callista’s going through.
Andrew took the drink she handed him and sipped. He had expected wine; instead it was a strong, fiery, highly concentrated liquor. He took a sip, saying hesitantly, “I don’t want to get drunk.”
Ellemir shrugged. “Why not? It might just be the best thing you can do.”
Get drunk? With Callista . . .
Ellemir’s leveled eyes met his. “That’s why,” she said. “It’s some assurance for Damon that you will stay out of this, letting him do what he has to. He hates it,” she added, and the tension in her voice made Andrew realize that she was as worried about Damon as he was about Callista.
“Not quite.” But her voice shook. “Not in quite . . . quite the same way. We can’t help, all we can do is . . . stay out of it. And I’m not . . . used to being shut out this way.” She blinked ferociously.
So like Callista and so unlike, Andrew thought. He’d grown so used to thinking of her as stronger than Callista, yet Callista had lived through that ordeal in the caves. She was no fragile maiden in distress, not half as frail as he thought she was. No Keeper could be weak. It was a different kind of strength. Even now, refusing the drug Damon offered to give her.
Ellemir said, sipping the fiery stuff, “Damon has always hated this work. But he’ll do it for Callie’s sake. And,” she added after a moment, “for yours.”
He replied in a low voice, “Damon’s been a good friend to me. I know it.”
“You seem to find it hard to show it,” Ellemir said, “but I suppose that is the way you were taught to react to people in your own world. It must be very hard for you,” she added. “I don’t suppose I can even imagine how hard it is for you here, to find everyone thinking in strange ways, with every little thing different. And I suppose the little things are harder to get us
ed to than the big ones. The big ones you get used to, you make up your mind to them. The little things come along unexpectedly, when you aren’t thinking about them, aren’t braced against them.”
How perceptive of her to see that, Andrew thought. It was, indeed, the little things. Damon’s—and Ellemir’s own—careless nudity which made him awkward and self-conscious as if all the unthinking habits of a lifetime were constrained and somehow rude; the odd texture of the bread; Damon kissing Dom Esteban, without self-consciousness, in greeting; Callista, in the early days when they had shared a room, not embarrassed when he saw her half dressed about the room or once, by accident, wholly naked in her bath, but coloring and stammering with embarrassment when once he came up behind her and lifted up the long strands of loosened hair from her bare neck. He said in a low voice, “I’m trying to get used to your customs. . . .”
She said, refilling his glass, “Andrew, I want to talk to you.”
It was Callista’s own phrase, and it made him somehow braced and wary. “I’m listening.”
“Callista told you that night”—instantly he knew the night she meant—“what I had offered. Why did it make you angry? Do you really dislike me as much as that?”
“Dislike you? Of course not,” Andrew said, “but—” and he stopped, literally speechless. “It hardly seems fair for you to tempt me like this.”
“Have you been fair to any of us?” she exclaimed. “Is it fair for you to insist on remaining in such a state when we all have to share it, like it or not? You are—you have been for a long time—in an appalling state of sexual need. Do you think I don’t know it? Do you think Callista doesn’t know it?”
He felt stung, invaded. “What business is that of yours?”
She flung her head back and said, “You know perfectly well why it is my affair. Yet Callista said you refused . . .”
Damn it, it had been an outrageous suggestion, but Callista at least, had had the decency to be a little different about it! And Ellemir was so like Callista that he could hardly help reacting to her very presence. He set his mouth and said tersely, “I can control it. I’m not an animal.”
“What are you? A cabbage plant? Control it? Maybe I wasn’t suggesting that otherwise you might go out and rape the first woman you see. But that doesn’t mean the need isn’t there. So in essence you are lying to us with everything you do, everything you are.”
“God almighty!” he exploded. “Is there no privacy here?”
“Of course. Have you noticed? My father hasn’t been asking any questions that would make any of us feel awkward. It really isn’t his business, you see. He won’t pry. None of us will ever know whether he knows anything about this at all. But the four of us—it’s different, Andrew. Can’t you be honest with us, at least?”
“What am I supposed to do then? Torment her for what she can’t give me?” He remembered the night when he had done just that. “I can’t do that again!”
“Of course not. But can’t you see that’s part of what’s hurting Callista? She was terribly aware of your need, so that at last she risked . . . what finally did happen, because she knew your need, and that you couldn’t accept anything else. Are you going to go on like that, adding to her guilt . . . and ours?”
Sleeplessness, worry and fatigue, and the strong cordial on an empty stomach, had hit Andrew hard, blurring his perceptions till the outrageous things Ellemir was saying almost made sense. If he had done what Callista asked, it would never have come to this. . . .
It wasn’t fair. So like Callista and so terribly unlike . . . you could strike sparks off this one! “I am Damon’s friend. How could I do that to him?”
“Damon is your friend,” she retorted, real anger in her voice. “Do you think he enjoys your suffering? Or are you arrogant enough to think”—her voice shook—“that you could make me care less for Damon because I do for you what any decent woman would want to do, seeing a friend in such a state?”
Andrew met her eyes, matching her anger. “Since we’re being so overwhelmingly honest, did it occur to you that it isn’t you I want?” Even now it was only because she was there, so like Callista as she should have been.
Her anger was suddenly gone. “Dear brother”—bredu was the word she used—“I know it is Callista you love. But it was I in your dream.”
“A physical reflex,” he said brutally.
“Well, that’s real too. And it would mean, at least, that you need no longer torment Callista for what she cannot give you.” She reached to refill his glass. He stopped her.
“No more. I’m already half drunk. Damn it, does it matter whether I torment her that way, or by going off and falling into bed with someone else?”
“I don’t understand.” He felt that Ellemir’s confusion was genuine. “Do you mean that a woman of your people, if she could not for some reason share her husband’s bed, would be angry if he found . . . comfort elsewhere? How strange and how cruel!”
“I guess most women think that if they . . . if they have to abstain for some reason, it’s only fair for the man to share the . . . the abstention.” He fumbled. “Look, if Callista’s unhappy too, and I go off to get myself laid—oh, hell, I don’t know the polite words—isn’t it pretty rotten of me to act as if her unhappiness doesn’t matter, as long as my own needs are met?”
Ellemir laid a gentle hand on his arm. “That does you credit, Andrew. But I find it hard to imagine that a woman who loved a man wouldn’t be glad to know he was satisfied somehow.”
“But wouldn’t she feel as if I didn’t love her enough to wait for her?”
“Do you think you would love Callista less if you were to lie with me?”
He returned her gaze steadily. “Nothing in this world could make me love Callista less. Nothing.”
She shrugged slightly. “So how could she be hurt? And think about this, Andrew. Suppose that someone other than yourself could help Callista break the bonds she did not seek and cannot break. Would you be angry with her, or love her less?”
Touched on the raw, Andrew remembered the moment when it seemed that Damon had come between them, his almost frantic jealousy. “Do you expect me to believe a man wouldn’t mind that, here?”
“You told me only now that nothing could make you love her less. Would you forbid her, then?”
“Forbid her? No,” Andrew said, “but I might wonder how deep her love went.”
Ellemir’s voice was suddenly shaking. “Are you Terrans like the Dry-Towners, then, who keep their women behind walls and in chains so that no other man will touch them? Is she a toy you want to lock in a box so that no one else can play with it? What is marriage to you, then?”
“I don’t know,” Andrew said drearily, his anger collapsing. “I’ve never been married before. I’m not trying to quarrel with you, Elli.” He fumbled with the pet name. “I . . . just . . . well, we were talking, before, about things being strange to me, and this is one of them. To believe Callista wouldn’t be hurt . . .”
“If you had abandoned her, or if you had forced her to consent, unwilling—as with Dom Ruyven of Castamir, who forced Lady Crystal to harbor his barragana wife and to foster all the bastards the woman bore—then, yes, she might have cause to grieve. But can you believe it is cruelty, that you do her will?” She met his eyes, reached out, gently, and took his hand between her own. She said, “If you are suffering, Andrew, it hurts all of us. Callista too. And . . . and me, Andrew.”
His barriers were down. The touch, the meeting of their eyes, made him feel wholly exposed to her. No wonder she had no hesitation in simply walking around without her shift, he realized. This was the real nakedness.
He had reached that particular stage of drunkenness where preconceptions blur and people do outrageous things and believe them commonplace. He could see Ellemir, now as herself, now as Callista, now as a visible sign of a contact he was only beginning to understand, the four-way link between them. She bent and laid her mouth against his. It went through his bo
dy like a jolt of electricity. All his aching frustration was behind the strength with which he pulled her into his arms.
Is this happening, or am I drunk, and dreaming about it again? Thought blurred. He was aware of Ellemir’s body in his arms, slender, naked, confident, with that curious matter-of-fact acceptance. In a moment’s completely sober insight, he knew that this was her way of cutting off awareness of Damon too. It was not only his need, but hers. He was glad of that.
He was naked, with no memory of shedding his clothes. She was warm, pliant in his arms. Yes, she has been here before, for a moment, the four of us, blended, just before catastrophe struck. . . . At the back of her mind he sensed a warm, welcoming amusement: No, you are not strange to me.
Through growing excitement came a sad strange thought: It should have been Callista. Ellemir felt so different in his arms, so solid somehow, without any of the shy fragility which so excited him in Callista. Then he felt her touch, rousing him, blotting out thought. He felt memory blurring and wondered for a moment if this were her doing, so that for now the kindly haze obscured everything. He was only a feeling, reacting body, driven by long need and deprivation, aware only of an accepting, responding body in his arms, of excitement and tenderness matching his own, seeking the deliverance so long denied. When it came it was so intense that he thought he would lose consciousness.
After a time he stirred, carefully shifting his weight. She smiled and brushed her hair from his face. He felt calm, released, grateful. No, it was more than gratitude, it was a closeness, like . . . yes, like the moment they had met in the matrix. He said, quietly, “Ellemir.” Just a reaffirmation, a reassurance. For the moment she was clearly herself, not Callista, not anyone else. She kissed him lightly on the temple, and suddenly exhaustion and release of long denial all fell together at once, and he slept in Ellemir’s arms. An indefinable time later he woke to see Damon looking down at them.
The Forbidden Circle Page 40
