Come with me, darling, it won’t hurt them to wait until you are ready. She led her into the inner room, telling her, This is your real wedding night, Callista, and there will be no crude horseplay and jokes.
Pliant as a child, and to Ellemir she seemed almost like a child, Callista allowed her twin to undress her, to remove the paint with which she had concealed the red marks on her face, to brush out her long hair over her shoulders, put her into a nightgown. The touch laid them open to one another, Ellemir’s guard also going down under the growing influence of the kireseth. She felt the flood of memories her twin had not been able to share when they had tried, on the night before their wedding, to exchange hesitant confidences.
Ellemir felt and experienced, with Callista, the conditioning to withdrawal, the harsh discipline against even a random touch of any other human hand. With overwhelming horror, she looked at the small healed scars on Callista’s wrists and hands, awash with the physical and emotional anguish of those first terrible years in the Tower. And Damon had a part in this! For a moment she shared Callista’s agonized resentment, the rage never given voice or outlet, poured into a tension and force whose only outlet was through the focused energy of the matrix screens and relays.
She reexperienced with Callista the slow, inexorable deadening of normal physical responses, the numbing of bodily reflexes, the hardening of tensions in mind and body into a rigid armoring. Callista, by the third year in Arilinn, had no longer been lonely, had no longer craved human contact or emotional nourishment.
She was a Keeper.
It was a miracle, Ellemir realized, that she had any human compassion, any real feeling left at all. In a few more years it would have been too late; even kireseth could not have dissolved away the hard armor of the years, the imprint in the mind of so much tension.
But the kireseth had dissolved the patterning in Callista, leaving her a trembling child. Her mind was freed, and her body was no longer bound by the inexorable reflexes of the training, but with it had gone all the intellectual acceptance and maturity with which Callista had overlaid her inexperience, and she was a frightened little girl. Essentially, Ellemir thought with deep compassion, Callista was younger than she herself had been when she took her own first lover.
After being freed like this, Callista should have had a year or two to grow up normally, to come first to emotional and then to physical awareness of love. But she did not have that much time. She had only tonight, to cross a gulf of years.
With anguished empathy, cradling the shaking girl in her arms, Ellemir wished she could give Callista some of her own acceptance. Callista did not lack courage—no one who had been able to endure that kind of training could be thought lacking in courage. She would harden herself, go through with the consummation, so that she could face the Council tomorrow and swear that it had been done, but, Ellemir feared, it would be an ordeal, a test of courage, not the joyous thing it should have been.
It was cruel, Ellemir decided. They were asking a child to consent to her own rape—for in essence that was what it would be!
She would not be the first. So many women of Comyn were married, almost as children, to men they hardly knew and did not love. Callista had courage, so she would not rebel. And she really loved Andrew. But still, Ellemir thought, it would be a wretched wedding night for her, poor child.
Time was the one thing she needed, and the one thing Ellemir could not give her.
She felt Callista’s tentative touch on her mind, a reaching for reassurance, and suddenly realized that there was a way to share her own experience with her twin. They were both telepaths. Ellemir had always been doubtful, hesitant about her own laran, but under the kireseth she too was discovering a new potential, a new growth.
Confidently, holding Callista’s hands in hers, she let her mind drift back to her fifteenth year, the time of Dorian’s pregnancy, her growing closeness to Dorian’s young husband, the agreement of the sisters that Ellemir should take Dorian’s place in his bed. Ellemir had been a little afraid, not of the experience itself, but that Mikhail might think her ignorant or childish, too young, too inexperienced, not a fit substitute for Dorian. When he first came to her, and Ellemir had not remembered this in years, she had been paralyzed with fright, almost as frightened as Callista was now. Would he find her awkward, ugly?
And yet how easy it had been, how simple and pleasant, after all, how foolish her apprehension had seemed. When Dorian’s child was born and the time was at an end, she had regretted it.
Slowly she moved forward in time, blending her awareness with Callista’s, sharing the growth of her love for Damon. The first time they had danced together in Thendara, at Midsummer festival, he had seemed middle-aged to her, only one of her father’s officers, silent, withdrawn, showing attention to his cousin out of politeness, no more. Not until Callista was imprisoned among the catmen and she had sent for him in panic, had it occurred to her that Damon was anything but a friendly older kinsman, the friend of her long-dead elder brother. And then she had known what he meant to her. She shared with Callista, as she could never have done in words, the growing frustration of waiting, the dissatisfaction with kisses and chaste embraces, the ecstasy of their first coming together. If I could have known then, Callie, how to share this with you!
She reexperienced, with mingled joy and the memory of dread, her first suspicion of pregnancy: happiness, the fear and sickness, the turmoil of her body which had turned into a hostile strange thing, but through it all, the joyfulness. She felt herself sobbing again uncontrollably as she relived the day the fragile link had given way and Damon’s daughter had died unborn. And then, more hesitantly—are you able to accept this? Do you resent it?—she felt again her growing awareness of Andrew’s need, welcoming him into her bed, for a little almost fearing it would lessen her closeness to Damon; again the delight of learning that it heightened it, because now it was a matter of choice and not merely custom, that her relationship with Damon had developed even more deeply with what she had learned about herself and her own desires from Andrew.
I knew you wanted me to do this, Callista, but I couldn’t help wondering if it was because you really did not know what it meant to me.
Callista sat up in bed, put her arms around Ellemir and kissed her, reassuringly. Her eyes were wide with wonder and awe. Ellemir was struck by her beauty. She knew Damon loved Callista too, sharing something with her that Ellemir never could. Yet she could accept it, as she knew Callista accepted that Ellemir and not she herself would give Andrew his first child. Independently she came to the conclusion Andrew had reached: they were not two couples changing partners now and then, like some figure in a complicated dance. They were something else, and each of them had something unique to give the others.
She knew Callista’s fear had gone, that she was eager to become part of this thing they were, and she did not need to raise her eyes to know that Andrew and Damon had come to join them. For a moment she wondered if she and Damon should withdraw, leaving Andrew alone with Callista, then almost laughed at herself for the idea. They were all a part of this.
For a little the contact was only of their minds, as Damon began to reach out and weave the fourfold rapport among them, close, intertwining, complete as it had never been before. Ellemir thought in musical images, and to her it was like blending voices, Callista’s clear and golden like the singing to the harp, Andrew’s a strong bass undercurrent, Damon’s a curiously many-voiced harmony, her own weaving them together, blending with each. Even as she visualized this rapport as music, as harmony, she shared the images of the others: a sunburst of blending colors in Callista’s mind; the close tactile sense of Andrew’s private imagery, so that for a little it seemed that they all curled naked together in a strange darkness, touching everywhere; sparkling spiderweb threads from Damon’s consciousness, weaving them all into one. For a long time they seemed to need no more than this. Callista, floating in the glowing colors, was faintly amused to feel Damon’s touch
and knew he had kept enough separate awareness to monitor her channels. Then, as he touched her, the emotional rapport deepened, became a stronger awareness in her body, something new and strange, but not frightening.
Vaguely, at the edge of her mind, she remembered her father’s stories. Kireseth was given to reluctant brides. Well, she was reluctant no more. Was the effect of the resin on body or mind? Was it the opening of the mind which had freed her to be so aware of her body, of the closeness to Ellemir, who was roused and aware of all of them? Or was it the body’s hunger for closeness which opened the mind to the deeper communion of minds? Did it matter? She knew Andrew was still afraid to touch her. Poor Andrew, she had hurt him so much. She reached out to him, drawing him into her arms, felt him cover her with kisses. This time she gave herself up to them, feeling as if she were drowning in the ecstatic shimmer of lights, and at the same time woven into a trembling darkness.
In a sudden bewilderment of sensuality it was simply not enough to be in Andrew’s arms. She did not move away from him, but she reached for Damon, felt his touch, kissed him and suddenly, in a flash, remembered how she had found herself wanting to do this during her first year in the Tower, had stifled the memory in a frenzy of terror and shame. Touching both hard male bodies, she felt her fingertips tracing down the curve of her sister’s breast, down the pregnant body, letting her consciousness sink deeper, just touching the faint, faint stir of the unborn child’s dreamless sleep. Somehow she felt enfolded like that, safe, surrounded by love, and she knew she was ready for the rest too.
Andrew, sharing this with her, knew that for Callista, Ellemir’s accepting sexuality would always be the key, that it had bridged the gap for Callista as it had almost done on their first catastrophic attempt. He knew that if he had welcomed the rapport, even then Ellemir might have managed to bring them all safely through. But he had wanted to be alone with Callista, separate.
If I could only have trusted Ellemir and Damon then . . . and through his regret felt Damon’s thoughts, That was then, this is now, we have all changed and grown.
And that was the last moment of separate awareness for any of them. Now, as it had almost been at Midwinter, the rapport was complete. None of them ever knew or wanted to know, none of them ever tried to separate out or untangle isolated sensations. Details did not matter at that point—whose thighs opened or clasped, whose arms held close, who moved away for a moment, only to come closer, who kissed, probing, whose lips opened to the kiss, who penetrated or was penetrated. It seemed that for a little while they all touched everywhere, sharing every closeness so deeply that there was no separate consciousness at all. Callista was never sure, afterward, whether she had shared Ellemir’s awareness of the act of love or had experienced it for herself, and for a little while, briefly dropping into rapport with one of the men, saw and embraced herself—or was it her twin? She felt one of the men explode into orgasm, but was not sure whether or not she had participated in it. Her own consciousness was too diffuse. She felt her own awareness expanding, with Damon and Andrew and Ellemir like more solid spots in her own body, which had somehow expanded to take up all the space in the room, pulsing in multiple rhythms of excitement and awareness. Whether she herself had known pleasure or whether she had simply shared the intense pleasure of the others, she was never wholly sure; she did not want to know. Nor did any of them ever know which of them had first possessed Callista’s body. It did not matter; none of them wanted to know. They floated, they submerged in ecstasy, so blended from sensuality and the sharing of intense love that such things were irrelevant. Time had gone completely out of focus. It seemed to have gone on for years.
A long time later Callista knew she was drowsing, in tremendous content, still surrounded by them all. Ellemir was asleep with her head on Andrew’s shoulder. Callista felt weary, strange, and blissful, dropping now into Damon’s consciousness, now into Andrew’s, now submerging for minutes at a time into Ellemir’s sleep. Drifting between past and future, aware of her own body as she had never been since childhood, she knew she would be able to go into Council and swear her marriage had been consummated, and then, with a reluctance which actually made her laugh a little, that she had come from this night pregnant. She did not really want a child, not yet. She had wanted a little time to learn about herself, to know the kind of growth Ellemir had known, to explore all the new and unexplained dimensions in her life.
But I’ll live through it, women do, she thought with secret laughter, and the laughter spilled over to Damon. He reached out, enlacing her fingers with his.
Thank the Gods you can laugh about it, Callie!
It isn’t as if it had to be a choice, as I feared. As if I could never use my own particular skills again. It’s a broadening of what I am, not a narrowing of choices.
She still resented the need to have a child by the Council’s choice and not her own—she would never forgive the Council for their attitude—but she accepted the necessity and knew she would easily manage to love the unwanted child, enough to hope that the coming daughter would not know, until she was old enough to understand, just how very much she had been unwanted.
But I want never to know who fathered it. . . . Please, Elli, even in monitoring, never, never let me be sure. And they promised one another, silently, that they would never try to know whether the child conceived this night was Damon’s daughter or Andrew’s. They might suspect, but they would never know for certain.
For hours they lay dozing, resting, sharing the fourfold rapport, feeling it come and go. Although all the others had drifted into sleep toward morning, Damon found himself wakeful and a little fearful. Had he weakened them, or himself, for the coming battle? Could Callista clear her channels quickly enough?
And then, dropping into Callista’s consciousness, he knew that they would always be wholly clear, for whichever force she chose to use them. She would not need the kireseth; now she knew within herself how it felt to switch them over from sexual messages to the full strength of laran. And Damon knew, with surging confidence, that he could meet whatever came.
And then he knew, reluctantly, why the use of kireseth had been abandoned. As a rare and sacramental rite, it was safe and necessary, helping the Keepers reaffirm their common humanity, reaffirming the close bond of the old Tower circles, the closest bond known, closer than kin, closer than sexual desire.
But it could all too easily become an escape, an addiction. Would men, with this freedom accessible, ever accept the occasional periods of impotence after demanding work? Would women accept the discipline of learning to keep the channels clear? Kireseth, with overuse, was dangerous. A thousand stories of the Ghost Winds in the Hellers made that clear. And the temptation to overuse it would be almost irresistible.
So it had first fallen into a taboo, for rare and sacramental use, later the taboo being enlarged to total disuse and disrepute. With regret for what he would always remember as one of the peak experiences of his life, Damon knew that even as a Year’s End ritual it might be too tempting. It had brought them, undamaged, through the last barrier to their completion, but in future they must rely on discipline and self-denial.
Self-denial? Never, when they had one another.
And yet, if all of time coexisted at once, this magical hour would always be present and real to them as it was now.
Sadly, lovingly, feeling their presence all around him and regretting the necessity to separate, he sighed. One by one, he woke them.
“Sunrise is near,” he said soberly. “They will observe the terms precisely, but they will not give us a moment’s advantage, so we must be ready for them. It is time to prepare for the challenge.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was the thin darkness which preceded the dawn. Damon, standing at the still-dark window, not even grayed with the coming light, felt ill at ease. The exultation was still with him, but there was a small gnawing insecurity.
Had this, after all, been the wrong thing to do? By all the laws o
f Arilinn, this should have weakened them, made them unfit for the coming conflict. Had he made the most tragic and irrevocable of all mistakes? Had he, loving all of them, condemned them to death and worse?
No. He had staked all their lives on the rightness of what they were doing. If the old laws of Arilinn were right after all, then they all deserved to die and he would accept that death, if not gladly, at least with a sense of justice. They were working in a new tradition, less cruel and crippling than the one he had rejected, and his belief that they were right must triumph.
He had wrapped himself in a warm robe against the cold of the overworld. Callista had done the same, and had wrapped a fluffy shawl around Ellemir’s shoulders. Andrew, shrugging into his fur riding cloak, asked, “What exactly is going to happen, Damon?”
“Exactly? There’s no way I can tell you that,” Damon said. “It is the old test for a Keeper: we will build our Tower in the overworld, and they will try to destroy it, and us with it. If they cannot destroy it, they must acknowledge that it is lawful and has a right to be there. If they destroy it . . . well, you know what will happen then. So we must not allow them to destroy it.”
Callista was looking pale and frightened. He took her face gently between his hands.
“Nothing can hurt us in the overworld unless you believe that it can.” Then he knew what was troubling her: all her life she had been conditioned to believe that her power rested in her ritual virginity.
“Take your matrix,” he commanded gently.
She obeyed hesitantly.
“Focus on it. See?” he told her, as the lights slowly gathered in the stone. “And you know your channels are clear.”
They were. And it was not only the kireseth. Freed of the enormous tensions and armoring of the Keeper’s training, the channels were no longer frozen. She could command their natural selectivity. But why had no instinct told her this?
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