“This does me little good now, kinswoman,” Damon said. He turned aside from Leonie’s face, seeing it waver and change before him, half Leonie as she had been when he was in the Tower, when he loved her, half the aging Leonie of today, as he had seen her at his wedding. He did not want to see her face, wished she would veil herself again.
“In the days of Rafael II, when the Towers of Neskaya and Tramontana were burned to the ground, all the circles died, with the Keepers. Many, many of the old techniques were lost then, and not all of them have teen remembered or rediscovered.”
“And I am supposed to rediscover them in the next few days? You have extraordinary confidence in me, Leonie!”
“What thought has ever moved’in the mind of humankind anywhere in this universe can never be wholly lost.”
Damon said impatiently, “I am not here to argue philosophy!”
Leonie shook her head. “This is not philosophy but fact. If any thought has ever stirred the stuff of which the universe is made, that thought remains, indelible, and can be recaptured. There was a time when these things were known, and the fabric of time itself remains…”
Her image rippled, shook like a pool into which a stone had been dropped, and was gone. Damon, alone again in the endless, formless gray world, asked, How in the name of all the Gods at once can I challenge the very fabric of time? And for an instant he saw, as from a great height, the image of a man wearing green and gold, the face half concealed, and nothing clear to Damon’s eyes except a great sparkling ring on his finger. Ring or matrix? It began to move, to undulate, to give out great waves of light, and Damon felt his consciousness dimming, vanishing. He clutched at the matrix around his neck, trying desperately to orient himself in the gray overworld. Then it was gone, and he was alone in the blankness, the formless, featureless nothingness. Finally, dim on the horizon, he perceived the faint and stony shape of his own landmark, what they had built there. With utter relief, he felt his thoughts drawing him toward it, and abruptly he was back in his room at Armida, Andrew bending anxiously over him.
He blinked, trying to coordinate random impressions. Did you find an answer? He sensed the question in Andrew’s mind, but he did not know yet. Leonie had not pledged to help, to free Callista from the bondage, body and mind, to the Tower. She could not. In the overworld she could not lie, or conceal her intention. She wanted Callista to return to the Tower. She genuinely felt that Callista had had her chance at freedom and failed. Yet she could not conceal it, either, that there was an answer, and that the answer must lie in the depths of time itself. Damon shivered, with the deathly cold which seemed to lie inside his bones, clutching his warm overtunic around his shoulders. Was that the only way?
In the overworld Leonie could not tell a direct lie. Yet she did not tell him all the truth either, he sensed, because he did not know where to look for all the truth, and there was still much she was concealing. But why? Why should she need to conceal anything from him? Didn’t she know that Damon had always loved her, that—the Gods help him—he loved her still, and would never do anything to harm her? Damon dropped his face in his hands, desperately trying to pull himself together. He could not face Ellemir like this. He knew that his grief and confusion were hurting Andrew too, and Andrew didn’t even understand how.
One of the basic courtesies of a telepath, he reminded himself, was to manage your own misery so that it did not make everyone else miserable… After a moment he managed to calm himself and get his barriers back in shape. He raised his face to Andrew and said, “I think I have a hint at the answer. Not all of it, but if we have enough time, I may manage it. How long was I out?” He stood up and went to the table where the remnants of their supper still stood, pouring himself a glass of wine and sipping it slowly, letting it warm him and calm him a little.
“Hours,” Andrew said. “It must be past midnight.”
Damon nodded. He knew the time-telescoping effect of such travel. Time in the overworld seemed to run on a different scale and was not even consistent, but something else entirely, so that sometimes a brief conversation would last for hours, and at other times a lengthy journey which, subjectively, seemed to endure for days, would flash by in the blink of an eye.
Ellemir appeared in the doorway, saying anxiously, “Good, you are still awake. Damon, come and look at Callista, I don’t like the way she keeps moaning in her sleep.”
Damon set the wineglass down, steadying himself against the table with both hands. He came into the inner room. Callista seemed asleep, but her eyes were half open, and when Damon touched her she winced, evidently aware of the touch, but there was no consciousness in her eyes. Andrew’s face was drawn. “What ails her now, Damon?”
“Crisis. I was afraid of this,” Damon said, “but I thought it would happen that first night.” Quickly he moved his fingertips over her body, not touching her. “Elli, help me turn her over. No, Andrew, don’t touch her, she’s aware of you even in her sleep.” Ellemir helped him turn her, sharing with him a moment of shock as they stripped the blankets from her body. How wasted she looked! Hovering jealously near as the lines of light built up in Callista’s body, Andrew saw the dull, faded currents. But Damon knew he did not completely understand.
“I knew I should have cleared her channels at once,” he said with hopeless anger. How could he make Andrew understand? He tried, without much hope, to put it into words:
“She needs some kind of… of discharge of the energy overload. Yet the channels are blocked, and the energy is backing up—leaking, if you like—into all the rest of her system, and is beginning to affect all her life functions: her heart, her circulation, her breathing. And before I could—”
Ellemir drew a harsh gasp of apprehension. Damon saw Callista’s body stiffen, go rigid, arch backward with a weird cry. For several seconds a twitching, shuddering tremor shook all her limbs, then she collapsed and lay as if lifeless.
“God!” Andrew breathed. “What was that?”
“Convulsion,” Damon said briefly. “I was afraid of that. It means we’ve really run out of time.” He bent to check her pulse, listen to her breathing.
“I knew I should have cleared her channels.”
“Why didn’t you?” Andrew demanded.
“I told you: I have no kirian for her, and without that I don’t know if she would be able to stand the pain.”
“Do it now, while she’s unconscious,” Andrew said, and Damon shook his head.
“She has to be awake and consciously cooperating with me, or I could damage her seriously. And… and she doesn’t want me to,” he said at last.
“Why not?”
Damon said it at last, reluctantly: “Because if I clear the channels, that means she goes back to the normal state for her, a normal state for a Keeper, with the channels completely separated from the normal woman’s state—cleared for psi and fixed that way. Back to the way she was before she ever left the Tower. Completely unaware of you, sexually unable to react. In effect, back to square one.”
Andrew drew a harsh breath. “What is the alternative?”
“No alternative now, I’m afraid,” Damon said soberly. “She can’t live long like this.” He touched the cold hand briefly, then went into his room where he kept the supply of herb medicines and remedies he had been using. He hesitated, but finally chose a small vial, came back, loosened the cap and poured it between Callista’s slack lips, holding her head so that it ran down her throat.
“What is that? What are you giving her, damn it?”
“It will keep her from going into another convulsion,” Damon said, “at least for the rest of the night. And tomorrow…” But he shrank from finishing the sentence. Even when he was doing this work regularly in the Tower, he had no liking for it. He shrank from the pain he must inflict, shrank, too, from the need to face Callista with the stark knowledge that she must sacrifice what little gain had been made with her maturing, and return to the state Leonie had imposed on her, unresponsive, immature, n
euter. He walked away from Callista, rinsing and replacing the vial, trying to calm himself. He sat down on the other bed, looking at Callista in dismay, and Ellemir came to his side. Andrew still knelt by Callista, and Damon thought that he should send him away, because even in sleep Callista was conscious of him, her channels reacting to his physical presence even if her mind did not. For a moment it seemed as if he could see Andrew and Callista as a series of whirling, interlocking magnetic fields, reaching out toward one another, grasping, intertwining polarities. But where the energies should reinforce and strengthen one another, the forces were swirling and backing up in Callista, draining her strength, unable to flow freely. And what was this doing to Andrew? It was draining him too. By main force Damon turned off the perception, forcing himself to come back to the surface, to see Callista just as a desperately sick woman who had collapsed after a convulsion and Andrew as a concerned man, bending over her in dread and despair.
It was for this kind of thing that Leonie sent him from the Tower, he knew. She said he was too sensitive, that it would destroy him, he recalled, and then, for the first time in his life, rebellion came. It could have been a strength, not a weakness. It could have made him even more valuable to them.
Ellemir came and sat down beside him. He stretched out a hand to her, thought, with an almost anguished need, how long it had been since they had come together in love. Yet the long discipline of the matrix mechanic held firm in his mind. It did not occur to him to think of breaking it. He drew her down, kissed her gently, and said, “I have to save my strength, darling, tomorrow is going to be demanding. Otherwise…” He laid a kiss into the palm of her hand, a private memory and a promise.
Ellemir sensed that he was pretending a cheerfulness and confidence he did not feel, and for a moment she was outraged, that Damon did not believe she knew, or that he thought he could pretend or lie to her. Then she realized the hard discipline behind that optimism, the rigid courtesies of a telepath worker. To give any mental recognition to such dread would reinforce it, create a kind of positive feedback, spiraling them down into a self-perpetuating chaos of despair. She was, she reflected with a touch of cynicism, getting some hard lessons in what it was like to be bound so closely to a working telepath. But her love and concern for Damon overflowed. She knew he did not want pity, but his greatest need, just now, was to be freed of concern about whether he would have to compensate for her dread.
She must carry her own burden of fears, she cautioned herself. She could not lay them on Damon. She took his hands in hers, leaning over to return his kiss very lightly.
Gratefully, he drew her down beside him, holding her in the curve of his arm, a comforting, wholly undemanding touch.
Andrew glanced around at them, from where he knelt beside Callista, and Damon caught his emotions: fear for Callista, dread, uncertainty—can Damon really help her? —distress at what it would mean if she were to be wholly Keeper again, all her old conditioning intact with the cleared channels. And, seeing Ellemir lying close against Damon, curled up in his arm, a confused emotion that was not, really, even jealousy. Callie and he had never had even this much… Damon’s pity for Andrew went so deep he had to cut it off, stifle it lest it tear at him and lessen his strength for what he had to do tomorrow.
“You stay close to Callista. Call me if there’s any change, no matter how slight,” he said, and saw Andrew draw a chair close to Callista, lean forward, lightly holding her limp wrist in his own.
Poor devil, Damon thought, he can’t even disturb her now. She’s too far gone for that, but he has to feel he’s doing something for her, or he’ll crack. And the comfort he felt in Ellemir’s closeness was gone. With rigid discipline, he made himself relax, lie quietly at her side, loosen his muscles and float into the calm state needed for what he had to do. At last, floating, he slept.
It was well after daylight when Callista stirred, opening her eyes in confusion.
“Andrew?”
“I’m here, love.” He tightened his fingers on hers. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, I think.” She could not feel any pain. Somewhere—a long time ago—someone had told her that was a bad sign. After the suffering of the last days she welcomed it. “I seem to have slept a long time, and Damon was worrying because I didn’t.”
Did she even know she had been drugged? Aloud he said, “Let me call Damon,” and stepped away. On the other bed Damon lay stretched out, lightly holding Ellemir with one arm. Andrew felt that cruel stab of agonized envy. They seemed so secure, so happy in the knowledge of one another. Would Callista and he ever have this? He had to believe it or die.
Ellemir’s blue eyes opened. She smiled up at him, and Damon, as she stirred, was instantly awake.
“How is Callista?”
“She seems better.”
Damon looked at him skeptically, got up and went to Callista’s side. Following him, Andrew suddenly saw Callista through Damon’s eyes: white and emaciated, her eyes deeply sunken into her cheeks.
Damon said gently, “Callista, you know as well as I what has to be done. You’re a Keeper, girl.”
“Don’t call me that!” she flared at him. “Never again!”
“I know you have been released from your oath, but an oath is only a word, Callista. I tell you, there is no other way. I cannot take the responsibility—”
“I have not asked you to! I am free—”
“Free to die,” Damon said brutally.
“Don’t you think I’d rather die?” she said, and began to cry for the first time since that night, sobbing stormily. Damon watched her, his face like stone, but Andrew took her up in his arms, holding her against him, protectively.
“Damon, what in the hell are you doing to her!”
Damon’s face was red with anger. He said, “Damn it, Callista, I’m tired of being treated like a monster coming between you, when I’ve exhausted myself trying to protect you both.”
“I know that,” she wept, “but I can’t bear it. You know what this is doing to Andrew, to me, it’s killing us both!”
Andrew could feel her hands shaking as she clung to him, cradled in his arms, her body light as a child’s. From somewhere he seemed to see her as a strange web of light, a kind of electrical energy net. Where was this strange perception coming from? His body no longer seemed real, but was trembling in a nowhere, and he too was no more than a fragile web of electrical energies, sparking and sputtering, with a deathly, growing weakness…
Now he could no longer see Damon—Damon, too, was lost behind the swirling electrical nets. No, Damon was flowing, changing, glowing with anger, a dull crimson like a furnace. Andrew had seen this before, when he confronted Dezi. Like all men of easygoing temperament and flaring, easily dispelled anger, Andrew was shocked and horrified at the deep-down furnace-red glow of Damon’s. Dimly behind the shifting colors and electrical energies, the swirling pulses and lights, he knew that the man Damon walked to the window and stood, his back to them, staring out into the snowstorm, struggling, to master his wrath. Andrew could feel the rage from inside, as he felt Callista’s agony, as he felt Ellemir’s confusion. He fought to get them all solid again, all hard and human, not swirling confusions of electrical images. What was real? he wondered. Were they really nothing more than swirling energy masses, fields of energy and moving atoms in space? He fought to hold on to human preception, through Callista’s frenzied, feverish grip. He wanted to go to the window… He did go to the window and touch Damon… He did not move, anchored by the weight of Callista across his lap. Fighting for human speech, he said, entreating, “Damon, no one thinks you are a monster. Callista will do whatever you think is best. We both trust you, don’t we, Callista?”
With an effort Damon managed to control his wrath. It was rare for him to let it have even a moment’s mastery over him. He felt ashamed. At last he came to their side and said gently, “Andrew has a right to be consulted in your decision, Callista. You cannot keep doing this to all of us. If it
were only your own decision—” He broke off with a gasp. “Andrew! Put her down, quickly!”
Callista had gone limp in Andrew’s arms. Shaken by the fright in Damon’s voice, Andrew made no protest when Damon lifted Callista from his arms, laid her back in bed. He motioned Andrew to move away. Puzzled, resentful, Andrew obeyed. Damon bent over the woman.
“You see? No, don’t cry again, you haven’t the strength. Don’t you know you went into crisis last night? You had a convulsion. I gave you some raivannin—you know what that means as well as I do, Callie.”
She hardly had the strength to whisper, “I think… we would all be better off…”
Damon held her wrists lightly in his hand, such slender wrists that even Damon’s hands, which were not large, could wholly encircle them. Feeling Andrew’s resentful stare, he said wearily, “She hasn’t the strength for another convulsion.”
Andrew said, at the end of endurance, “Was this my doing, too? Is it always going to be unsafe for me to touch her?”
“Don’t blame Andrew, Damon…” Callista’s voice was only a thread. “It was I who wanted…”
“You see?” Damon said. “If I keep you away from her she wants to die. If I let you touch her, the physical stress gets worse and worse. Quite apart from the emotional strain, which is tearing you both to pieces, physically she can’t endure much more. Something must be done quickly, before—” He broke off, but they all knew what he did not say: Before she goes into convulsions again and we can’t stop it this time.
“You know what has to be done, Callista, and you know how much time you have to make up your mind. Damn it, Callie, do you think I want to torment you when you’re in this state? I know you are physically in the state of a girl of twelve, but you are not a child, can’t you stop behaving like one? Can’t you somehow manage to behave like the adult professional you have learned to be? Stop being so damned emotional about it! What we have here is a physical fact! You are a Keeper—”
“I am not! I’m not!” she gasped.