“Never mind,” said the old man, graciously returning the mistakenly moved piece. “You are a better player, at that, than Ellemir, though she is the only one who has patience to play with me. Damon plays well, but seldom has the time. Damon? When Andrew and I have played this out, will you play the winner?”
“Not tonight, Uncle,” said Damon, rousing himself from deep abstraction, and the old man, glancing around the hall, noted that most of the housefolk had dispersed to their beds. Only his own body-servant, yawning, lingered before the fire. The Alton lord sighed, glanced at the angle of moonlight beyond the windows.
“I am selfish. I keep you young people here talking half the night, and Andrew has had a long ride, and has been parted a long time from his wife. I sleep so badly now, and the nights seem endless with no one to keep me company, so I tend to cling to you. Go along, all of you, to your own beds.”
Ellemir kissed her father good night and withdrew. Callista lingered to say a word to the old man’s body-servant. Damon turned to follow Ellemir, then hesitated in the doorway and came back.
“Father, there is an important piece of work to be done. Can you spare us for a few days?”
“Do you need to be away?”
“No away, no,” Damon said, “but I might need to put up dampers and a barrier and isolate the four of us. I can choose what time is best, but I would rather not delay too long.” He glanced at Callista, and Andrew caught the thought he tried to guard: She will die of grief…
“We will need at least three or four days, uninterrupted. Can that be arranged?”
The old man nodded, slowly. “Take what time you need, Damon. But for any long periods of work, it would be better to wait till Midwinter is past, and until the repairs from the storm have been completed. Is that possible?”
Andrew saw Dom Esteban’s disquieted gaze at Callista, and heard what he did not say: A Keeper who has given back her oath? He knew Damon heard it too, but Damon only said, “Possible, and we will do that. Thank you, Father.” He bent and embraced the older man. He watched him, frowning a little, as his servants wheeled him out of the room.
“He misses Dezi, I think. Whatever the lad’s faults, he was a good son to the old man. For his sake, perhaps, I wish we could have forgiven Dezi.” He sighed as they went up the stairs. “He is lonely. There is no one here now who is really company for him. I think, when the spring thaw comes, we must send for some kinsman or friend to bear his company.”
Callista was coming up the stairs behind them. Damon paused before turning away to go to his own suite.
“Callie, you were made Keeper very young, too young, I think. Did you take training for the other grades too? Are you monitor, mechanic or technician? Or did you only work in the central relays as tenerésteis ?” He used the archaic word usually rendered in casta as “Keeper” although “warden” or “guardian” would have been equally accurate.
“Why, you taught me to monitor yourself, Damon. It was my first year in the Tower and your last. By certificate I am only a mechanic; I never tried to do a technician’s work. There was no lack of technicians, and I had enough to do in the relays. Why?”
“I wanted to know what skills we had between us,” Damon said. “I reached the level of technician. I can build what lattices and screens we need, if I have the crystals and blank nodes. But I may need a mechanic, and I will certainly need a monitor, if I am to look for the answer I promised you, so be sure you don’t let yourself get out of condition to monitor if it is needed. Have you kept up your breathing?”
“I could not sleep without it. I suspect all of us trained there will do it all our lives,” she said, and Damon smiled, leaning forward and kissing her cheek very lightly.
“How well you know, sister. Sleep well. Good night, my brother,” he added to Andrew, and went away.
It was obvious that something was bothering Damon. Callista was sitting at her dressing table, braiding her long hair for the night. It reminded Andrew poignantly of another night, but he turned his thoughts away. Callista, still preoccupied with Damon, said, “He is more troubled than he wants us to know. I have known Damon for a long time. It is no use asking him anything he does not want to tell…”
But what could he possibly want with kireseth?
Andrew remembered with a flicker of jealousy that she had not shrunk from Damon’s light kiss on her cheek, but he knew what would happen if he tried it. Then, against his will, Andrew found himself thinking of Damon and Ellemir, together, reunited.
She was his wife, after all, and he, Damon, had no rights… none at all.
Callista put out the light and got into her own bed. Sighing, Andrew lay down, watching the four moons move across the sky. When he finally fell asleep he was not aware of it. It was as if he moved into some state of consciousness between reality and dreams. Damon had told him once that at times, in sleep, the mind moved into the overworld, without any conscious thought.
It seemed to him that he left his body behind and moved through the formless grayness of the overworld. Somewhere, everywhere, he could see and be aware of Damon and Ellemir making love, and while he knew they would welcome it if he joined them, linked with their joyous rapport and closeness, he kept turning away his eyes and his mind from the sight. He wasn’t a voyeur; he wasn’t that depraved, not yet, not even here.
After a long time he found the structure they had built for working with the frostbitten men. He was afraid he would find them there too, as they seemed to be everywhere at once, but Ellemir was sleeping and Damon was sitting on a log, dejectedly, a bunch of dried kireseth flowers lying at his side.
He asked, “What did you want with them, Damon?” and the other man said, “I am not sure. Why do you think I could not explain it to Callista? It is forbidden. Everything is forbidden. We should not be here at all.”
Andrew said, “But we are only dreaming about it, and how can anyone forbid dreaming?” But he knew, guiltily, that a telepath must be responsible even for his dreams, and that even in dreams he could not go to Ellemir as he longed to do. Damon said, “But I told you, it is only a part of being what we are,” and Andrew turned his back on Damon and tried to get out of the structure, but the walls shut him in and enclosed him. Then Callista—or was it Ellemir? He could no longer be sure anymore, which of them was his wife—came to him, with a bunch of the kireseth flowers in her hand, and said, “Take them. Our children will eat of these fruits some day.”
Forbidden fruit. But he took them in his hand, biting the blossoms which were soft as a woman’s breasts, and the smell of the flowers was like a sting inside his mind.
Then lightning struck the walls, and the structure began to tremble and shake asunder, and through the collapsing walls Leonie was cursing them, and obscurely Andrew knew that it was all his fault because he had taken Callista away from her.
And then he was alone on the gray plain, and the landmark was very far away on the horizon. Although he walked for eternities, days, hours, aeons, he could not reach it. He knew that Damon and Callista and Ellemir were all inside, and they had found the answer and they were happy, but he was alone again, a stranger, never to be part of them again. As soon as he drew near the grayness expanded, elastic, and he was far away and the structure was on the far horizon again. And yet somehow at the same time he was inside his walls, and Callista was lying in his arms—or was it Ellemir, or somehow was he making love to them both at once?— and it was Damon who was wandering outside on the horizon, struggling to come near to the landmark, and never reaching it, never, never… He said to Ellemir, “You must take him some of the kireseth flowers,” but she turned into Callista, and said, “It is forbidden for the Tower-trained,” and he could not decide whether he was there, lying between the two women, or whether he was outside, wandering on the distant horizon… Somehow he knew he was trapped inside Damon’s dream, and he could not get out.
He woke with a start. Callista slept restlessly in the gray darkness of the room. He heard hims
elf say, half aloud, “You will know what to do with them when it is time…” and then, wondering what he had meant, knew the words were part of Damon’s dream. Then he slept again, wandering in the gray and formless realms until dawn. Partly aware that it was not his own consciousness at all, he wondered if he were himself, or if he had somehow become entangled with Damon as well.
He found himself thinking, that precognition was almost worse than having no gift at all. If it were a warning, you could be guided by it. But it was just time out of focus, and even Leonie did not understand time. And Andrew in his own awareness wished Damon would keep his damned troubling dreams to himself.
It was a cold, bitter morning, with sleet falling. Damon felt that the sky reflected his own mood.
He had avoided this work for many years, now he was being forced into it again. And he knew, now, that it was not only for Callista’s sake. He had been wrong to renounce it so completely.
He had been misled by the taboo barring telepaths from matrix work outside the Towers. That taboo might, after the Ages of Chaos, have made some sense. But now he felt, with every nerve in him, that it was wrong.
There was so much work for telepaths to do. And it was being left undone.
He had built himself a new career, of sorts, in the Guardsmen, but it had never satisfied him completely. Nor could he find, as Andrew did, satisfaction and fulfillment in helping to manage the estate of his father-in-law. He knew that for many a younger son, without an estate of his own, this would have been a perfect solution: landless himself, to have an estate where his sons would share in the heritage. But it was not for Damon. He knew that any halfway skilled steward could do his work as well. He was there simply to assure that no unscrupulous paid employee took advantage of his wife’s father.
He did not begrudge the time spent on the work of the estate. His life was here with Ellemir, and it would tear him into fragments to be parted, now, from Andrew or from Callista.
It was different for Andrew. He had grown to manhood in a world not unlike this, and for him it was recovering a world he had thought lost forever when he left Terra. But Damon now had begun to guess that his real work was this, the work he had been trained in the Towers to do.
“Your part and Ellemir’s,” he told Andrew, “is simply to guard us against intrusion. If there are any interruptions— though I have tried to arrange that there will be none—you can deal with it. Otherwise you must simply remain in rapport and lend me your strength.”
Callista’s work was far more difficult. At first she had been reluctant to take part in this way, but he had managed to persuade her, and he was glad, for he could trust her completely. Like himself, she was Arilinn-trained, a skilled psi monitor, and knew precisely what was wanted. She would watch over his life functions and make sure that his body continued to function as it should while his essential self was elsewhere.
She looked pale and strange, and he knew she was reluctant to return to this work she had abandoned forever, not, like himself, out of fear or distaste, but because it had been such a wrench to abandon it. Having made the renunciation, she was reluctant to compromise.
Yet this was her own true work, Damon knew. It was what she was born and trained to do. It was wrong and cruel that a woman could not do this work without renouncing womanhood. For anything less than working among the great relays and screens, Callista would be completely qualified, were she married a dozen times and as many times a mother! Yet she was lost to the Towers, and it was no less a loss to her. It was a foolish notion, he considered, that with the loss of virginity she would be deprived of all the skills so painstakingly trained into her, and all the knowledge learned at such cost during all those years in Arilinn!
He thought, I do not believe it, and caught his breath. This was blasphemy, sacrilege unthinkable! Yet he looked at Callista and thought defiantly, Nevertheless, I do not believe it!
Yet he was violating the Tower taboo even in using her as a monitor. How stupid, how appallingly stupid!
Of course, legally he was doing nothing wrong. Callista, though she had declared intent to marry by a freemate ceremony, was not, in fact, Andrew’s wife. She was still a virgin, and therefore qualified… How stupid the whole thing was! How tragically stupid!
Something was wrong, he thought once again, terribly and tragically wrong with the whole concept of training telepaths on Darkover. Because of the abuses of the Ages of Chaos, because of the crimes of men and women dead so long that even their bones were dust, other men and women were condemned to a living death.
Callista asked gently, “What’s wrong, Damon? You look so angry!”
He could not explain it to her. She was still bound by the taboos, deep in her bones. He said, “I’m cold,” and left it at that. He had wrapped himself in a loose robe, which would at least protect his body from the awful chilling of the over-world. He noted that Callista had also substituted a long, warm wrapper for her ordinary housedress. He lay back in a padded armchair, while Callista made herself comfortable on a cushion at his feet. Andrew and Ellemir were a little further away, and Ellemir said, “When I kept watch for you, you had me stay physically in contact with the pulse spots.”
“You’re untrained, darling. Callista has been doing this work since she was a little girl. She could even monitor me from another room, if she had to. You and Andrew are basically superfluous, though it’s a help to have you both here. If something should interrupt us—I’ve given orders, but if, the Gods forbid, the house should take fire or Dom Esteban fall ill and need help—you can deal with it, and protect Callista and me from disturbance.”
Callista had her matrix in her lap. He noted that she had fastened it to the pulse spot with a bit of ribbon. There were different ways of handling a matrix, and at Arilinn everyone was encouraged to experiment and find the way most congenial. He noted that she contacted the psi jewel without physically looking into the stone, while he himself gazed into the depths of his own, seeing the swirling lights slowly focus… He began to breathe more and more slowly, sensing it when Callista made contact with his mind, matching the resonances of her body’s field to his own. More dimly and at a distance he felt her bring Andrew and Ellemir into the rapport. For a moment he relaxed into the content of having them all around him, close, reassuring, in the closest bond known. At this moment he knew that he was closer to Callista than to anyone in the world. Closer than to Ellemir, whose body he knew so well, whose thoughts he had shared, who had so briefly and heartbreakingly sheltered their child. Yet Callista was close to him as twin to unborn twin, and Ellemir somewhere in the outside distance. Beyond her he sensed Andrew, a giant, a rock of strength, protecting them, safeguarding them…
He felt the walls of their sheltering place enclosing them, the astral structure he had built while he worked with the frostbitten men. Then, with that curious upward thrust, he was in the overworld, and he could see the walls taking shape around them. When he had built it with Andrew and Dezi it had resembled a travel-shelter of rough brown stone, perhaps because he had regarded it as temporary. Structures in the overworld were what you thought they were. He noticed that the rough brick and stone had now become smooth and lucent, that there was a slate-colored stone floor beneath his feet, not unlike that of Callista’s little still-room. From where he stood, in the green and gold colors of his Domain, he could see an array of furnishings. Noticed like this, they looked curiously transparent and insubstantial, but he knew that if he tried to sit on them they would take on strength and solidity. They would be comfortable and would, furthermore, provide whatever surface he wanted—velvet or silk or fur at his own will. On one of these Callista lay, and she too looked oddly transparent, though he knew she would solidify too, as they were here longer. Andrew and Ellemir looked more dim, and he saw that they were asleep on the other furniture, because they were here only in his mind, not conscious on the overworld level at all. Only their thoughts, drifting through his in the rapport where Callista held them, were stro
ng and present. They were passive here, lending all their strength to Damon. He floated for a moment, enjoying the comfort of a support circle, knowing it would keep him from some of the awful draining he had known before. He noted how Callista held in her hands a series of threads like a spiderweb, and he knew this was how she visualized the control she was keeping over his body where it lay in the more solid world. If his breathing faltered, if his circulation was impaired by the cramped position, if, even, he developed an itch which could disturb his concentration here in the overworld, she could repair the damage long before he was conscious of it. Guarded by Callista, his body was safe, here behind the shelter of their landmark.
But he could not linger here, and even as he was aware of it he felt himself move through the impalpable walls of the shelter. His thoughts provided exit, though no outsider could ever enter, and he was out on the gray and featureless plain of the overworld. In the distance he could see the peaks of the Arilinn Tower, or, rather, the duplicate of that Tower in the overworld.
For a thousand years, perhaps, the thoughts of every psi-technician who moved into the overworld had created Arilinn as a safe landmark. Why was it so far away? Damon wondered, then knew: this was Callista’s visualization, working in link with his own, and to her Arilinn seemed very far indeed. But here in the overworld space had no reality and with the swiftness—literally—of thought, he stood before the gates of Arilinn.
He had been driven forth. Could he get in now if he tried? With the thought he was inside, standing on the steps of the outer court, Leonie before him in her crimson robes, veiled.
“I know why you have come, Damon. I have searched everywhere for the records you want, and I have learned, in these days, more of the history of Arilinn than I had ever guessed. I had known, indeed, that in the first days of the Towers, many Keepers were emmasca, of chieri blood, neither man nor woman. I had not known that when such births grew rare, as the chieri mingled less and less with humankind, some of the earliest Keepers were neutered to resemble them. Did you know, Damon, that not only neutered women, but castrated males were used at some times for Keepers? What a barbarism!”