The Forbidden Tower

  She said, twisting her slender fingers in her lap. “Only if you had truly… truly abandoned me. Stopped caring. Stopped loving me.”

  He thought that it was such an intimate thing, it could not help but bring him closer to Ellemir, make even more distance between Callista and himself.

  His barriers were down, and Callista, following the thought, flared up in outrage. “Do you want me only because you thought I would give you more pleasure in our bed than my sister?”

  He turned a dull red. Well, he had wanted directness; he had it. “God forbid! I never thought of it that way at all. It’s only… if you think I am going to be wanting you any less, I would rather forget the whole thing. Do you really think that because I sleep with Ellemir I have stopped wanting you?”

  “No more than I have stopped wanting you, Andrew. But… but now we are equal.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Now your need of me is like mine for you.” Her eyes were level and tearless, but he sensed that inside she was weeping. “A… a thing of the mind and heart, a grief like mine, but not a… a torment of the body. I wanted you to be content, because”—she wet her lips, struggling against inhibitions which had lasted for years—“that was so terrible to me, to feel your need, your hunger, your loneliness. And so I tried to… to share it and I… I nearly killed you.” The tears spilled over, but she did not cry, flicked the tears away angrily. “Do you understand? It is easier for me when I need not feel that in you, so I would do anything, risk anything to quiet it…”

  The desolation in her face made him want to weep too. He ached to take her in his arms and comfort her, though he knew he could not risk anything but the lightest touch. Gently, almost respectfully, he lifted her slender hand to his lips and laid the lightest breath of a kiss on the fingertips. “You are so generous you put me to shame, Callista. But there is no woman in the world who can give me what I want from you. I am willing to… to share your suffering, my darling.”

  This was such a strange thought that she stopped and looked at him in amazement. He meant that, she thought with a queer excitement. His world’s ways were different, she knew, but in their terms he was really trying to be unselfish. It was the first awareness she had ever had of his total alienness, and it came as a deep, wrenching shock. She had always seen only their similarities; now she was faced, shockingly, with their differences.

  He was trying to say, she realized, that because he loved her, he was willing to suffer all that pain of deprivation… Perhaps he did not even know, that night, how much his need had tormented her, could still torment her.

  She tightened her fingers on his hand, remembering in despair that for a little while she had known what it was to desire him, but now she could not even remember what it had been like. She spoke, trying to match his gentleness: “Andrew, my husband, my love, if you saw me bearing a heavy burden, would you weigh me down with your own burden as well? It will not lighten my suffering if I must endure yours too.”

  Again the shock, strangeness, amazement, and Andrew realized, with sudden insight that in a telepathic culture, it meant something different, to share suffering.

  She said, with a quick smile, “And don’t you realize that Damon and Ellemir are part of this too, and that they will also be miserable, if they have to share your misery?”

  He was slowly making his way through that, like a labyrinth. It wasn’t easy. He had thought he had shed a great deal of his cultural prejudice. Now, like an onion, stripping off one layer seemed only to reveal a deeper layer, thick and impregnable.

  He remembered waking in Ellemir’s bed to find Damon standing over him, had expected, almost craved Damon’s reproaches. Perhaps he wanted Damon to be angry because a man of his own world would have been angry, and he wanted to feel something familiar. Even guilt would have been welcome…

  “But Ellemir. You simply expected this of her. No one consulted her, or asked if she was willing.”

  “Has Ellemir complained?” Callista asked, smiling.

  Hell, no, he thought. She seemed to enjoy it. And that bothered him too. If she and Damon were all that happily married, how could she seem to get so much pleasure—damn it, so much fun—out of going to bed with him? He felt angry and guilty, and it was all the worse because he knew Callista didn’t understand that either.

  Callista said, “But of course, when Elli and I married and agreed to live under one roof, we took that for granted. Certainly you know that if either of us had married a man the other could not… could not accept, we would have made certain—”

  Somehow that rang a warning bell in Andrew. He did not want to think about the obvious implications of that.

  She went on. “Until a few hundred years ago, marriage as we know it now simply did not exist. And it was not considered right for a woman to have more than one or two children by the same man. Do the words genetic pool mean anything to you? There was a period in our history when some very valuable gifts, hereditary traits, were almost lost. It was thought best for children to have as many different genetic combinations as possible, to guard against the accidental loss of important genes. Bearing children to only one man can be a form of selfishness. And so we didn’t have marriage then, in the sense that we do now. We do not, as the Dry-Towners do, force our wives to harbor our concubines, but there are always other women to share. What do you Terrans do when your wives are pregnant, if a woman is too far advanced in pregnancy, too heavy, or weary, or ill? Would you demand that a woman violate her instincts for your comfort?”

  If it had been Ellemir asking this, Andrew would have felt he had scored a point, but as Callista said it there was no challenge. “Cultural prejudices aren’t rational. Ours is against sleeping with other women. Yours, against sex in pregnancy, makes no sense to me, unless a woman is really ill.”

  She shrugged. “Biologically, no pregnant animal desires sex; most will not endure it. If your women have been culturally conditioned to accept it as the price of retaining a husband’s sexual interest, I can only say I am sorry for them! Would you demand it of me after I had ceased to take pleasure in it?”

  Andrew suddenly found that he was laughing. “My love, of all our worries, it seems that one is the easiest to put off until it is at hand! Do you have a saying… can we cross that bridge when we come to it?”

  She laughed too. “We say we will ride that colt when he has grown to bear a saddle. But truly, Andrew, do you Terran men—”

  He said, “God help me, love, I don’t know what most men do. I doubt if I could ask you to do anything you didn’t want to. I’d probably… probably take the rough with the smooth. I guess some men would go elsewhere, but make damn sure their wives didn’t find it out. There’s another old saying: what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.”

  “But among a family of telepaths, such deceit is simply not possible,” Callista said, “and I would rather know my husband was content in the arms of someone who gave us this out of love, a sister or a friend, than adventuring with a stranger.” But she was calmer, and Andrew sensed that removing their talk from an immediate problem to a distant one had made it less troubling to her. He said, “I’d rather die than hurt you.”

  As he had done earlier, she lifted his fingertips to her lips and kissed them, very lightly. She said with a smile, “Ah, my husband, dying would hurt me worse than anything else you could possibly do.”

  * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  « ^ »

  Andrew rode through melting snow, a light flurry still falling. Across the valley he could see the lights of Armida, a soft twinkle against the mountain mass. Damon said these were only foothills, but to Andrew they were mountains, and high ones, too. He heard the men talking behind him in low voices and knew that they were also looking forward to food, and fire, and home, after eight days in the far pastures, noting the damage of the great blizzard, the condition of the roads, the damage to livestock.

  He had welcomed this chance
to be alone with those who could not read his thoughts. He had not yet grown wholly accustomed to life within a telepathic family, and he had not, as yet, quite learned to guard himself against accidental intrusion. From the men he picked up only a small, slight background trickle of thought, surface, undisturbing, inconsequential. But he was glad to be coming home. He rode through the courtyard gates and servants came to take his horse’s bridle. He accepted this now without thought, though there were times when, stopping to think, it still disturbed him somewhat. Callista ran down the steps toward him. He bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek, then discovered, though it was too dark in the courtyard, that it was Ellemir he held. Laughing, sharing her amusement at his mistake, he hugged her hard and felt her mouth under his, warm and familiar. They went up the steps holding hands.

  “How are all at home, Elli?”

  “Well enough, though Father has grown short of breath and eats little. Callista is with him, but I would not let you go ungreeted,” she said, giving his fingers a slight squeeze. “I’ve missed you.”

  Andrew had missed her too, and guilt surged in him.

  Damn it, why did his wife have to be twins? He asked, “How is Damon?”

  “Busy,” she said, laughing. “He has been buried in the old records of the Domains, of those of our family who were Keepers or technicians at Arilinn or Neskaya Tower. I do not know what he is looking for, and he has not told me. In this last tenday I have seen little more of him than of you!”

  Inside the hallway Andrew shrugged off his great riding cloak and gave it to the hall-steward. Rhodri drew off his snow-clogged boots and gave him fur-lined ankle-high indoor boots to put on. Ellemir on his arm, he went into the Great Hall.

  Callista was seated beside her father, but as she came through the door she broke off, laid her harp unhurriedly on a bench and came to meet him. She moved quietly, the folds of her blue dress trailing behind her, and against his will he found himself contrasting this with Ellemir’s eager greeting. Yet he watched her, spellbound. Every movement she made still filled him with fascination, desire, longing. She held out her hands and at the clasp of those delicate cool fingertips he was baffled again.

  What the hell was love anyway? he asked himself. He had always felt that falling in love with one woman meant falling out of love with others. Which of them was he in love with anyway? His wife… or her sister?

  He said, holding her hands gently, “I’ve missed you,” and she smiled up into his face.

  Dom Esteban said, “Welcome back, son, hard trip?”

  “Not so much.” Because it was expected, he bent and kissed the old man’s thin cheek, thinking that he looked paler, not well at all. He supposed it was to be expected. “How is it with you, Father?”

  “Oh, nothing ever changes with me,” the old man said as Callista brought Andrew a cup. He took it, raised it to his lips. It was hot spiced cider, and tasted wonderful after the long ride. It was good to be home. At the lower end of the hall the women were laying the table for the evening meal.

  “How is it out there?” Dom Esteban asked, and Andrew began his report.

  “Most of the roads are open again, though there are heavy drift-falls, and pack-ice at the bend in the river. All things considered, there’s not much stock lost. We found four mares and three foals frozen in the shed beyond the ford. Ice had drifted over the fodder there and they had probably starved before they froze.”

  The Alton lord looked grim. “A good brood mare is worth her weight in silver, but with such a storm, we might have expected more losses. What else?”

  “On the hillside a day’s ride north of Corresanti, a few yearlings were cut off from the rest. One with a broken leg could not get to the shelter, was covered by a snow-slide. The rest were hungry and shivering, but they’ll do well enough, all fed and tended now, and a man left to look after them. Half a dozen calves were dead in the farthest pasture, in the village of Bellazi. The flesh was frozen, and the villagers asked for the carcasses, saying the meat was still good, and that you always gave it to them. I told them to do what was customary. Was that right?”

  The man nodded. “It’s custom for the last hundred years. Stock dead in a blizzard is given to the nearest village, to make what use they can of meat and hides. In return they shelter and feed any livestock that makes its way down in a storm, and bring them back when they can. If in a hungry season they slaughter and eat an extra one, I don’t worry that much about it. I’m no tyrant.”

  The serving women were bringing in the meal. The men and women of the household gathered around the long table in the lower hall, and Andrew pushed Dom Esteban’s rolling-chair to his place at the upper table, where the family sat with a few of the upper servants and the skilled professionals who managed the ranch and the estate. Andrew was beginning to wonder if Damon would not appear at all when he suddenly thrust open the doors at the back of the hall and, apologizing briefly to Ellemir for his lateness, came to Andrew with a welcoming smile.

  “I heard in the court that you were home. How did you manage alone? I kept thinking I should have come with you, this first time.”

  “I managed well enough, though I would have been glad of your company,” Andrew said. He noted that Damon looked weary and haggard, and wondered what the other man had been doing with himself. Damon volunteered nothing, beginning to ask questions about stock and fodder sheds, storm damage, bridges and fords, as if he had never done anything in his life except help to manage a horse ranch. While they talked ranch business with Dom Esteban, Callista and Ellemir talked softly together. Andrew found himself thinking how good it would be when they were all alone together again, but he did not grudge the time spent with his father-in-law on the ranch affairs. He had feared, when he first came here, that he would be received only as Callista’s husband, penniless and alien, useless for the strange affairs of a strange world. Now he knew that he was accepted and valued as a born son and heir to the Domain would have been.

  The business of repairs to buildings and bridges, of replacements for lost stock, occupied most of the meal. The women were clearing away the dishes when Callista leaned over and spoke in an undertone to her father. He nodded permission, and she stood up, rapping briefly on the edge of a metal tankard for attention. The servants moving in the hall looked at her respectfully. A Keeper was the object of almost superstitious reverence, and though Callista had given up her formal status, she was still looked on with more than ordinary respect. When the hall was perfectly quiet, she spoke in her soft, clear voice, which nevertheless carried to the furthest corners of the hall: “Someone here without authority, has been trespassing in my still-room and has taken some of an herb from there. If it is returned at once, and no unauthorized use made of it, I will assume that it was taken by mistake, and not pursue the matter any further. But if it is not returned to me by tomorrow morning, I will take any action I think suitable.”

  There was a confused silence in the hall. A few of the people murmured to one another, but no one spoke aloud, and at last Callista said, “Very well. You may think about it overnight. Tomorrow I will use any methods at my command”—with an automatic, arrogant gesture her hand went to the matrix in its concealed place at her throat—“to discover who is guilty. That is all. You may go.”

  It was the first time Andrew had seen her deliberately call upon her old authority as Keeper, and it troubled him. As she came back to her seat he asked, “What is missing, Callista?”

  “Kireseth,” she said briefly. “It is a dangerous herb, and its use is forbidden except to the Tower-trained or under their express authority.” Her smooth brow was wrinkled with a frown. “I do not like the idea of some ignorant person going around crazed with the stuff. It is a deliriant and hallucinogen.”

  Dom Esteban protested, “Oh, come, Callista, surely not so dangerous. I know you people in the Towers have a superstitious taboo about the stuff, but it grows wild here in the hills, and it has never been—”

  “Just the same, I a
m personally responsible for making certain that none of it is mishandled by my neglect.”

  Damon raised his head. He said wearily, “Don’t trouble the servants, Callista, I took it.”

  She stared at him in astonishment. “You, Damon? Whatever did you want with it?”

  “Will it be enough for you to know that I had my reasons, Callista?”

  “But why, Damon?” she insisted. “If you had asked, I would have given it to you, but—”

  “But you would have asked why,” Damon said, his face drawn into lines of exhaustion and pain. “No, Callie, don’t try to read me.” His eyes were suddenly hard. “I took it for reasons that seemed good to me, and I am not going to tell you what they are. I may not need it, and if I do not I will return it to you, but for the moment I believe I may have a use for it. Leave it there, breda.”

  She said, “Of course, if you insist, Damon.” She raised her cup and sipped, watching Damon with a troubled look. Her thoughts were easy to read: Damon is trained in the use of kirian, but he cannot make it, so what could he want with the raw herb? What can he possibly be going to do with it? I cannot believe he would misuse it, but what does he intend?

  The servants dispersed. Dom Esteban asked if someone would care to play cards with him, or castles, the chess-like game Andrew was learning to play. Andrew agreed and sat studying the small cut-crystal pawns with surface absorption, but his mind was busy elsewhere. What could Damon have wanted with the kireseth? Damon had warned him not to handle or smell it, he remembered. Moving a pawn, and losing it to his father-in-law, it seemed that he could feel Damon’s thoughts leaking around the perimeter of his own emotions. He knew how much Damon hated and feared the matrix work he had been trained to do, had been forced to renounce, and had returned to against his will. Until Callista is free. And even then… There is so much that a telepath can do, so much undone… cutting off-Damon’s thoughts by main force, Andrew forced himself to concentrate on the board before him, lost three pawns in rapid succession, then made a major mistake in moving which cost him the major piece called the dragon. He conceded, saying apologetically, “Sorry, the shapes of those two still confuse me a little.”