The Forbidden Circle

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Damon, how and why could they allow a secret like this to be forgotten?”

  It meant that no one ever had to make the cruel choice Leonie had forced on her as a child, which other Keepers for ages past had accepted in selfless loyalty to Comyn and Towers.

  “How could they abandon this”—her words took in all the wonder and discovery of the night just past—“for that?”

  “I do not know,” Damon said sadly, “nor do I know if they will accept it now. It threatens what they have been taught, makes their sacrifices and their suffering useless, an act of folly.”

  And he felt a clutch of pain at his heart, knowing that in what he did, as with all great discoveries, there were the seeds of bitter conflict. Men and women would die to champion one or the other side in this great struggle, and he knew, with a great surge of anguish, that a daughter of his own, with the face and the name of a flower, a daughter born to him by neither of these women here in this room, would be brutally murdered for daring to try to bring this knowledge into Arilinn itself. Mercifully the knowledge blurred again; the time was now, and he dared not concern himself with past or future.

  “Arilinn, as all the other Towers, is locked into a decision our forefathers made. They may have been guided by reasons which were valid then, but are not valid now. I am not forcing the Tower circles to abandon their choice, if it is truly their choice and if, after knowing the cost, knowing there is now an alternative, they choose to keep to their own ways. But I want them to know that there is an alternative, that if I, working alone and outcast, have found one alternative, then there may be others, dozens of others, and some of these others might even be more acceptable to them than the one I have found. But I am claiming the right, for myself and my circle, to work in my own way, under such laws as seem right and proper to us.”

  It seemed so simple and so rational. How could others threaten them with death or mutilation for that? Yet Callista knew that they had threatened and they would carry out the threat.

  Andrew said to Ellemir, “I am not concerned for you, but I wish I could be sure this would not threaten your child.”

  He knew he had hit on Ellemir’s own fear. But she said steadfastly, “Do you trust Damon or not? If he felt there was danger, he would have explained it to me, and let me make the choice in full knowledge.”

  “I trust him.” But, Andrew wondered, did Damon simply feel that if they lost the coming battle it would be useless for any of them to survive anyway, including Ellemir and the baby? Firmly he cut off that line of thought. Damon was their Keeper. Andrew’s only responsibility was to decide whether or not Damon was worthy of trust and then to trust him and follow his directives, without mental reservations. So he asked, “What do we do first?”

  “We build the Tower, and we establish it firmly with all our strength. It has been there for a long time, but it is what we imagine it to be.” He added to Ellemir, “You have never been in the overworld; you have only kept watch for me here. Link with me, and I will bring you there.”

  With a strong mental thrust he was in the overworld, Ellemir beside him in the featureless grayness. Dimly at first, but with more clarity moment by moment in the overlight, he could make out the sheltering walls of their landmark.

  At first it had been a rude shelter, like a herdsman’s hut, visualized almost accidentally. But with each successive use it had grown and strengthened, and now a true, declared Tower rose around them, with great lucent blue-shining walls, as real to his touch and step as the room in Comyn Castle where they had consummated their fourfold bond. Indeed they had brought much of that world with them, because, Damon thought, the fourfold bond and its completion was in a way the most important thing that had ever happened to any of them.

  As always in the overworld he felt taller, stronger, more confident, which was the essence of it all. Ellemir, at his side, did not resemble Callista nearly as much as she did in the solid world. Physically, she and Callista were very much alike, but here where the mind determined the physical appearance, they were very unlike. Damon knew enough of genetics to wonder briefly if they were not identical twins after all. If they were not, it might mean that Callista could bear him a child without as much risk as Ellemir. But that was a thought for another time, another level of consciousness.

  After an instant Callista and Andrew joined them in the overworld. He noticed that Callista had not clothed herself in the crimson robe of a Keeper. As the thought reached her she smiled and said, “I leave that office to you, Damon.”

  For a duel between Keepers, perhaps he should be clothed in the ritual crimson sacrosanct to a Keeper, but he shrank from the blasphemy and suddenly knew why.

  He would not fight this battle by Arilinn’s laws! He was not Keeper by their cruel life-denying laws, but he was tenerézu of an older tradition, defending his right to be so! He would wear the colors of his Domain and no more.

  Andrew took up the stance of a paxman or bodyguard, just two steps behind him. Damon reached for Ellemir’s hand on his right, for Callista’s on his left, felt their fingertips lightly as a touch in the overworld always felt. He said in a low voice, “The sun rises over our Tower. Feel its strength around us. We built it here for shelter. Now it must stand here, not only for us, but as a symbol for all matrix mechanics who refuse the cruel constraints of the Towers, a shelter and a beacon for all those who will come after us.”

  It seemed to Andrew, although the lucent blue walls of the Tower rose around him, that he could see the sun of the overworld through its walls. Callista had once explained it to him:

  In the world of the overlight, where they were now, there was no such thing as darkness, because the light did not come from a solid sun. It came from the energy-net body of the sun, which could shine right through the energy-net body of the planet. To Andrew the red sun was enormous, a pale rim rising beyond and somehow through the Tower, shedding scattered crimson light, dripping bloody clouds.

  Lightning flared around them, blinding them, and for a moment it seemed that the Tower rocked, trembled, that the very fabric of the overworld shook into grayness. It has come Damon thought, the attack they awaited. Strongly linked to one another, they felt the Tower’s walls strong and sheltering around them, while Damon flicked an explanation to Andrew and Ellemir, less experienced than himself.

  They will try to destroy the Tower, but since it is our visualization of the Tower which holds it firm here, they cannot budge it unless our own perception of it falters.

  One of the games of technicians in training was to fight duels in jest in the overworld, where the thought stuff was endlessly pliable and all of their constructs could be wiped out with a thought as quickly as they had been brought into being. Although he knew it was only an illusion, Damon still felt a purely irrational twinge of physical fright as lightning bolt after lightning bolt struck the Tower, seeming to shake it with deafening thunderclaps. This could be a dangerous game, for whatever happened to the astral-world body could also happen, by repercussion, to the physical self. But behind the walls of their Tower they were safe.

  They cannot harm us. And I do not want to harm them, only to be safe with my friends . . . but he knew they would not accept that. Sooner or later the endless attack from outside must weaken them. His only defense was to attack.

  As quickly as thought they were standing together on the highest battlement of their Tower. To Andrew it felt like rock beneath his feet. He was clothed, as always in the overworld, in the grayish silvery fabric of a Terran Empire uniform, and as he became aware of it, he felt it alter. No, I am really not Terran now. He realized, with just a flicker of consciousness, that he was wearing the saddle-rubbed leather breeches and the furred riding jacket he wore for work around the estate. Well, that was now his truest self; he belonged to Armida now.

  As they stood at the top of the Tower they could see the loom of Arilinn, like a flaming beacon. How, Damon wondered, had it come so near? Then he realized it was the visualization of Leonie
and her circle, who had spoken of the forbidden Tower as built on their very threshold. To Damon it had seemed very distant, worlds away. But now they were close together, so close that he could see Leonie, a crimson veiled statue, grasp handfuls of plastic thought-stuff and hurl lightning. Damon struck it in midair with his own lightning, saw it explode, crash over the circle standing on the pinnacle of Arilinn, saw a crack in the fortress Tower of Arilinn.

  They perceive us as a threat to them! Why?

  Only a moment, and the thunder was crashing around them again, a fierce duel of lightning bolts, hurled and intercepted, and he felt a random thought—it must be Andrew’s—I feel like Jove hurling his thunders. He wondered with an infinitesimal fragment of his consciousness who or what Jove was.

  I can batter down the Tower of Arilinn, because for some reason they are afraid of us. But Leonie abruptly changed her tactics. The lightnings died and they were suddenly smothering, drowning as a rain of sickening slime cascaded over them, suffocating them, making them retch with disgust. Like dung, semen, horse manure, the trails left by the slugs who invaded the greenhouse in a wet season . . . they were drowning in foulness. Is this how they see what we have done? Damon struggled to clear his mind of sickness, wiping his face free of the—No, that was to give it reality. Quickly, linking hands and minds with his circle, he thickened the slime, made it the richness of fertilized soil, let it fall from their bodies until from its rich depths flowers and growing things sprang up, covering the roof of the Tower where they stood in the rioting life of an early spring blooming. They stood triumphant in the field of flowers, reaffirming life out of ugliness.

  I fought the Great Cat from outside the Tower, and I triumphed. As if to affirm the act which had brought him the awareness of his own psi power, undiminished by the years he had spent outside the Tower, he called up the Great Cat, pouring their linked minds into the image, sending it out to hover over the heights of Arilinn. While the Great Cat ravaged the Kilghard Hills and brought darkness and terror and hunger to all our people, you sat safe in Arilinn and you did nothing to help them!

  The two Towers stood now so close that he could see Leonie’s face through her veil, shining with wrath and despair. In the overworld, Damon thought detachedly, she was still as beautiful as she had ever been. But he could see her for only a moment, for her face vanished in a swirling darkness which wiped out sight of her circle. Where Leonie had stood, a dragon reared upward, roaring and breathing flame. Golden-scaled, golden-clawed, towering to the sky above Arilinn, its fire showered down on the forbidden Tower. Damon felt the blistering heat, felt as if his body were crisping and withering in the fire, heard Callista cry out in agony, felt Ellemir’s terror, and for a moment wondered if Leonie must succeed after all in driving them from the overworld, forcing them back into their physical bodies. . . .

  But with the flame he also felt the awareness of a legend in Andrew’s mind: Burn us and we will rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. . . . Reaching with all his last strength through the fire and the burning which threatened to drive them all from the overworld, Damon linked them closer still. Together they poured all their psychic force into the shifting stuff of the overworld, linking into a giant bird, feathers blazing, burning up in the ecstatic union which consumed them, their four linked minds joined. In Andrew’s mind Damon felt them curled naked together, inside a darkness; inside an unhatched egg, while the flames wholly consumed them, burned them down into ash. Then, in an ever-expanding ecstasy, the shell around them broke and they burst upward from the ashes, spreading mighty wings in a single, linked burst of flaming energy, soaring over Arilinn, triumphant. . . . From the phoenix beak came thunder, lightning, shaking and rumbling the Tower of Arilinn. Damon saw, as if far below, the small forms of Leonie and her circle, watching in despair and dread.

  Leonie! You cannot destroy us! I ask truce.

  Damon knew that he did not wish to destroy Arilinn. It had been his home. He had suffered there unendurably, as Callista had suffered, yet he had been trained there too, disciplined, taught to use the utmost strength and control. His training in Arilinn was at the basis of what he was now, of what he might eventually become. Arilinn should stand forever, in overworld and real world, a home for telepaths, a symbol of what Tower training had been and might some day be again. The strength and power of the Domains.

  But Leonie’s voice was shaken, almost inaudible.

  “No, Damon, strike us down. Destroy us utterly, as you have destroyed all we stand for.”

  “No, Leonie.” And now, suddenly, they stood facing one another on the gray plain of the overworld. And he knew—and knew that Leonie shared the thought—that he could never harm her. He loved her, had always loved her, would always love her.

  “And I love you too,” Callista said tenderly at his side. She stretched her hands to Leonie, then, as she had never done in the real world, she took Leonie in her arms, holding the woman against her in a tender, loving embrace. “But Leonie, my beloved foster-mother, can you not see what it is that Damon has done?”

  Leonie said, shaking, “He has destroyed the Towers. And you, Callista, you have betrayed us all!” She shrank from the girl, staring at her in horror. Damon, linked with her now, knew that she could see what had happened to Callista, that she was a woman, loving, loved, fulfilled—not Keeper in the old sense at all, yet wielding the full power of her training and her strength. “Callista, Callista, what have you done?”

  Damon answered, gently but unyielding, “We have discovered the old way of working, where a Keeper need not sacrifice life and all the joy of living.”

  Then my life was useless, my sacrifice needless. And, with a despair Damon could neither measure nor endure: Let me die now.

  He could see through her, with the new sight of a Keeper, and he saw in horror what she had done to herself. Why had he never guessed? She had sent him from the Tower to remove forever the temptation that he might lose control and reveal his desire for her. But to remove her own temptation? The laws forbade the neutering of a Comyn woman, and she had stopped short of that with Callista.

  But for herself?

  He said with an anguished compassion, “Not needless, Leonie. You and all those like you have kept the tradition alive, kept the matrix sciences of Darkover alive, so that some day this rediscovery might be made. Your heroism has made it possible for our children and grandchildren to use the old sciences without so much suffering and tragedy. I do not want to destroy the Towers, only to take some of the burden from you, to make it possible to train others outside the Towers, so that you need not give up your lives, so that the price need not be so cruelly high. You, and all of us who have come from Arilinn and the other Towers, have kept the flame alive, even though you fed it with your own flesh and blood.” He stood disarmed before them all, knowing they could strike him down now, but also knowing, with that deep inner knowledge, that now they heard what he said.

  “Now the living flame can be rekindled, and it need not feed on your very lives. Leonie”—he turned to her again, his hands held out in pleading—“if you could break under the strain, you, a Hastur, and Lady of Arilinn, then it is surely a burden too heavy for any mortal man or woman. No one alive could have borne it without breaking. Let us work, Leonie, let us go on as we have begun, so that a day will come when once again the men and women who come to the Towers can find joy in their work, not endless sacrifice and a living death!”

  Slowly Leonie bowed her head. She said, “I acknowledge you Keeper, Damon. You are beyond harm or vengeance at our hands. We merit any penalty you choose to invoke.”

  He said, his heart aching, “I can inflict on you no penalty greater than you have laid on yourself, Leonie, the self-chosen sentence you must continue to bear until another generation is strong enough to carry it. Avarra grant in her mercy that you will be the last Keeper of Arilinn to face such a living death, but Keeper of Arilinn you must remain, until Janine can bear the burden alone.”

  And your o
nly punishment will be to know that for you it is too late. Torn with Leonie’s agony, he knew it had always been too late for her. It was too late when, at fifteen, she went into the Dalereuth Tower under the vows of a Keeper. He saw her receding, further and further, like a star dimming out in the morning light. He saw the Tower of Arilinn itself receding on the fluid horizon of the overworld, till it dwindled in the distance, shone with a faint blue light, was gone. Damon and Andrew, Ellemir, and Callista were alone in the forbidden Tower, and then, with a sharp shock, the overworld too was gone, and they were in the suite in Comyn Castle. The peaks beyond the window were flooded with sunlight, but the great red sun had barely cleared the horizon.

  Sunrise. And the fate of the four of them, and the fate, perhaps, of all the telepaths on Darkover, had been settled in an astral battle lasting less than a quarter of an hour.

  EPILOGUE

  “You are a fool, Damon,” said Lorenz, Lord of Serrais, with deep disgust. “You have always been a fool and you will always be a fool! You could have been regent of Alton and commanded the Guards long enough to break the hold of the Altons on that office and give it to the Domain of Serrais!”

  Damon laughed good-naturedly. “But I do not want to be commander,” he said, “and now there is no need. Dom Esteban is likely to live as long as needful to bring Valdir to manhood, and perhaps more.”

  Lorenz looked at him with suspicion and distrust. “How did you do that? We had heard he was at death’s door!”

  “Exaggerated,” Damon said with a shrug, knowing that this would be his lifework, to study the ways of healing with matrix and monitor.

  The principle once vindicated, it had not been difficult to go into the damaged heart, remove the blockages and restore the heart to full function. Esteban Lanart, Lord Alton, would be paralyzed for the rest of his life, but a man could command the Guards from a wheeled chair. When it was needful to take the field, young Danvan Hastur or Kieran Ridenow could command in his place. Damon was regent of the Domain only in name now, as a contingency against accident or ill luck. Precognition was not the main gift of either Alton or Ridenow, but he had a flash of it now, knowing that Valdir would assume the wardship of Alton as a grown man, and that he would be one of the most innovative Altons ever to rule the Domain.