“Damon, don’t. Surely the Council will let you explain; they’ll know you did the only thing you could do.”
Damon only moaned in dread. It seemed that all the fears of his life, which he had been taught it was not manful to acknowledge, surged over him in one great breaking wave which was drowning him. The fears of a lonely, unwanted child, of a lonely boy in the cadets, clumsy and unloved, tolerated only as Coryn’s chosen friend; all his life holding fear at bay lest he be thought, or think himself, less than a man. The fear and self-doubt lest Leonie should somehow look beneath his control, detect his forbidden passion and desire, the guilt and loss when she had sent him from Arilinn, telling him he was not strong enough for this work, feeding the knowledge of his own weakness, the fear he had smothered always. The repressed fear of all the years in the Guards, knowing himself no soldier, no swordsman. The dreadful guilt of fleeing, leaving his Guardsmen to face death in his place…
All his life. All his life he had been afraid. Had there ever been so much as a day when he was not aware that he was a coward vainly pretending not to be afraid, pretending bravado so no one could see what a cringing worm he was, what a helpless sham, what a poor thing wearing the shape of a man? His life mattered so little to him, he would rather have faced death than expose himself as the craven, shameful weakling he was.
But now they had threatened the one thing he truly could not bear, would not bear, would not endure. It would be easier to die now, to put his knife through his throat, rather than live blinded, mutilated, a corpse walking in the pretense of life.
Slowly he became aware, through the fog of panic and dread, that Andrew was kneeling at his side, troubled and pale. He was pleading, but the words could not reach Damon through the deadly fog of fear.
How Andrew must despise him, he thought. He was so strong…
Dismayed, Andrew watched Damon’s silent struggle. He tried to reason with him, but he knew he simply wasn’t getting through. Did Damon even hear him? Trying to break through to him, he sat beside Damon, bent to put an arm around him.
“Don’t, don’t,” he said, clumsily. “It’s all right, Damon, I’m here.” And then, feeling awkward and shy as he always did at any hint of the closeness between them, he said, almost in a whisper, “I won’t let them hurt you, bredu.”
Damon’s agony of frozen terror broke, overwhelming them both. He sobbed convulsively, the last remnants of self-control gone. Shaken, Andrew tried to withdraw, thinking that Damon wouldn’t want Andrew to see him like this, then he realized that was the last vestige of his Terran thinking. He could not withdraw from Damon’s pain, because it was his own pain, a threat to Damon a threat to himself. He must accept Damon’s weakness and fear as he accepted everything else about him, as he accepted his love and concern.
Yes, love. He knew now, holding Damon sobbing against him, Damon’s terror washing through him like an invading tidal wave, he loved Damon as he loved himself, as he loved Callista and Ellemir—he was a very part of them. From the very beginning, Damon had known and accepted this, but he, Andrew, had always held back, had told himself Damon was his friend, but that there were limits to friendship, places never to be touched.
He had resented it when Damon and Ellemir had merged with his attempt to make love to Callista, had tried to isolate himself with her, feeling that his love for her was something he couldn’t, didn’t want to share. He had resented Damon’s closeness to Callista, and had never, he knew now, understood precisely what had prompted Ellemir to make the offer she had made. He had been embarrassed, shamed when Damon found him with Ellemir, even though he had taken his consent for granted. He had regarded his relationship with Ellemir as something apart from Damon, as it was apart from Callista. And when Damon had tried to share his euphoria, his overflowing love for them all, had tried to express Andrew’s own unspoken wish— I wish I could make love to you all—he had rebuffed him with unimaginable cruelty, disrupting the fragile link.
He was even wondering if they had both married the wrong women. But Andrew was the one who was wrong, he knew now.
They were not two couples, changing partners. It was the four of them, all of them. They belonged together, and the link was as strong between Damon and him as between either of them and the women.
Maybe even, and he felt the thought surface in absolute terror, daring a kind of self-knowledge he had never allowed himself before, stronger. Because they could see themselves reflected in each other. Find a kind of affirmation of the reality of their own manhood. He knew now what Damon meant when he said he cherished Andrew’s maleness as he cherished the femininity of the women. And it wasn’t what Andrew was afraid it was.
For it was just this, suddenly, that he knew he loved in Damon, gentleness and violence combined, the very affirmation of manhood. It now seemed incredible that he could ever have found Damon’s touch a threat to his manhood. It confirmed, rather, something they shared, another way of stating to one another what they both were. He should have welcomed it as a way of closing the circle, of sharing the awareness of what they all meant to one another. But he had rebuffed him, and now Damon, in the terror which he could not share with the women, could not even turn to him to find strength. And where would he turn, if not to a sworn brother?
“Bredu,” he whispered again, holding Damon with the fierce protectiveness he had felt from the first toward him, but had never known how to express. His own eyes were blinded with tears. The enormity of this commitment frightened him, but he would not turn back.
Bredin. There was nothing like this relationship on earth. Once, trying for analogy, he had mentioned to Damon the rite of blood brotherhood. Damon had shuddered with revulsion, and said, his voice trembling with loathing, “That would be the ultimate forbidden thing between us, to shed a brother’s blood. Sometimes bredin exchange knives, as a pledge that neither can ever strike at the other, since the knife you bear is your brother’s own.” Yet, trying to understand, through the revulsion, what blood brotherhood meant to Andrew, he had conceded that, yes, the emotional weight was the same. Andrew, thinking in his own symbols because he could not yet share Damon’s, thought now as he held him that he would give the last of his blood for Damon, and that would horrify him, as what Damon had tried to give him had frightened Andrew.
Slowly, slowly, all that was in Andrew’s mind filtered through to Damon. He understood now, he was one of them at last. And as Andrew held him, letting the barriers slowly dissolve, Damon’s terror receded.
He was not alone. He was Keeper of his own Tower circle, and he drew confidence from Andrew, finding his own strength and manhood again. No longer bearing the burden of all the others, but sharing the weight of what they were.
He could do anything now, he thought and, feeling Andrew’s closeness, amended out loud, “We can do anything.” He drew a long breath, raised himself, and drew Andrew to him in a kinsman’s embrace, kissing him on the cheek. He said softly, “Brother.”
Andrew grinned, patted him on the back. “You’re all right,” he said. The words were meaningless, but Damon felt what was behind them.
“What I said about blood brotherhood once,” said Andrew, struggling for words, “it’s… the same blood, as of brothers… blood either would shed for the other.”
Damon nodded, accepting. “Kin-brother,” he said gently, “Blood brother, if you wish. Bredu. Only it is life we share, not blood. Do you understand?” But the words didn’t matter, nor the particular symbols. They knew what they were to one another, and it didn’t need words.
“We have got to prepare the women for this,” Damon said. “If they bring those charges in Council—and make those threats—and Ellemir is not warned, she could miscarry or worse. We must decide how we will face this. But the important thing”—his hand went out to Andrew again—“is that we face it together. All of us.”
* * *
Chapter Twenty-one
« ^ »
For three days Esteban Lanart hung between life an
d death. Callista, watching at his side— Ferrika had forbidden Ellemir to sit up with him—monitoring the apparently dying man, ascertained that the great artery from the heart was partially blocked. There would be a way to reverse the damage, but she was afraid to try.
Late in the evening of the third day he opened his eyes and saw her at his side. He tried to move, and she put out a hand to prevent him.”
“Lie still, dear Father. We are with you.”
“I missed… Domenic’s funeral…” he whispered. She saw memory flood back, with a spasm of sorrow crossing his face. “Dezi,” he whispered, “wherever I was, I… I think I felt him die, poor lad. I am not guiltless…”
Callista enfolded his rough hand in her own slender fingers. “Father, whatever his crimes or wrongs, he is at peace. Now you must think only of yourself, Valdir needs you.” She could see that even this little talking had exhausted him, but under the faded lips and bluish pallor the old giant was still there, rallying. He said, “Damon…” and she knew what he wanted and reassured him quickly. “The Domain is safe in his hands and all is well.”
Satisfied, he slipped back into sleep, and Callista thought that Council must accept Damon as regent. There was no one else with the slightest claim. Andrew was a Terran; even if he had had any skills at government, they would not have accepted him. Dorian’s young husband was a nedestro of Ardais, and knew nothing of Armida, whereas it had been Damon’s second home. But Damon’s regency still hung under the shadow Leonie had threatened, and even as she wondered how soon the showdown would come, Damon opened the door in the outer suite and beckoned.
“Leave Ferrika with him and come.”
In the outer room he said, “They have sent for us in the Crystal Chamber, an hour from now, for me and Andrew. I think we should all go, Callista.”
In the bleak light her eyes hardened, no longer blue but a cold flashing gray. “Do I stand accused of oath-breaking?”
He nodded. “But as regent of Alton I am your guardian, and your husband is my sworn man. You need not face the charges unless you choose.” He grasped her shoulders between his own. “Understand this, Callista, I am going to defy them! Have you the courage to defy them too? Are you strong enough to stand by me, or are you going to collapse like a wet rag and lend strength to our accusers?”
His voice was implacable, and his hands on her shoulders hurt her. “We can have the courage of what we have done, and defy them, but if you do not, you will lose Andrew, you know, and me. Do you want to go back to Arilinn, Callista?” He put his hand up to her face and traced, with a light finger, the red nail-marks on her cheek. He said, “You have still the option, for you are still a virgin. That door remains open until you close it.”
Her hand went to the matrix at her throat. “I gave back my oath of my own free will; I never thought to break it.”
“It would have been easy to make a clear choice, once and forever,” Damon said. “It is not so easy to do when you must do now. But you are a woman and under wardship. Is it your will that I answer for you to the Council, Callista?”
She flung off his hand. “I am comynara,” she said, “and I was Callista of Arilinn. I need no man to answer for me!” She turned and walked toward the room she shared with Andrew. “I will be ready!”
Damon went toward his own room. He had roused her defiance deliberately, but he faced the knowledge that it might as easily turn against them.
His own instinct of defiance was high too. He would not face his accusers like some sneak thief dragged to judgment! He dressed in his best, tunic and breeches of leather dyed in the colors of his Domain, a jeweled dagger belted at his waist. He rummaged in his belongings for a neck-ornament set with firestones, and in a drawer came upon something wrapped in a cloth.
It was the bundle of dried kireseth blossoms he had taken from Callista’s still-room, without knowing why.
He had acted on an impulse he still did not understand, not sure whether it had been a flash of precognition or something worse. He had not been able to explain to her, or to anyone else, why he had done it.
But now, as he stood holding them in his hands, he knew. He never knew whether it was the faintest whiff of the resins from the cloth—it was widely known to stimulate clairvoyance—or whether it was just that his mind, now holding all the information, had suddenly moved to synthesize it without his conscious effort. But suddenly he knew what Varzil had been trying to tell him, and what the Year’s End ritual must have been.
Unlike Callista, he knew precisely why the use of kireseth was forbidden, except when distilled and fractioned into the volatile essence known as kirian. As Dom Esteban’s stories had reminded them, kireseth, the blue starflower traditionally given by Cassilda to Hastur in the legend—called the golden bell when the flowers hung covered with their golden pollen—kireseth, among other things, was a powerful aphrodisiac, breaking down inhibitions and controls, and now all the links in the chain were clear.
The paintings in the chapel. Dom Esteban’s stories, and the indignation they had roused in Ferrika, sworn to the Free Amazons, who did not marry and regarded marriage as a form of slavery. The singular illusion shared by Andrew and Callista at the time of the winter blooming, only now Damon knew it had not been an illusion, despite the clearing of Callista’s channels immediately afterward. And Varzil’s advice…
The key was the taboo. Not forbidden because of uncleanness and lewd associations, as he had always thought, but forbidden because of sanctity.
Ellemir said behind him, nervously, “It is time. What have you there, beloved?”
Guilty with the memory of the taboo which had lain heavy on him since childhood, he thrust the flowers quickly into the drawer, still wrapped in their cloth. The same instinct which had prompted him to dress in his best for his accusers had prompted her too, he was glad to see. She wore a gown fit for a festival, cut low across the breasts. Her hair, low on her neck, was a heavy, gleaming coil. Her pregnancy was obvious even to the most casual observer by now, but she was not ungainly. She was beautiful, a proud Comyn lady.
When he met with Andrew and Callista in the outer room of the suite, he saw that the same instinct had prompted them all. Andrew wore his holiday suit of dull grayed satin, but Callista outshone them all.
Damon had never thought the formal crimson of a Keeper became her. She was too pale, and the brilliant color made her look washed out, a dimmer reflection of her beautiful twin. He had never thought Callista beautiful; it confused him that Andrew thought her so. She was too thin, too much like the stiff child he had known in the Tower, with a virginal rigidity which made her, to Damon, unattractive. At Armida, she chose her clothes carelessly, thick old tartan skirts and heavy shawls. He sometimes wondered if she wore Ellemir’s castoffs because she had so little interest in her appearance.
But for the Council she had put on a dress of grayed blue, with a veil of the same color, only thinner, woven with metallic threads that gleamed and twinkled as she moved, and her hair blazed like flame. She had done something to her face to conceal the long red scratches there, and there was an abnormally high color in her cheeks. Was it vanity or defiance which had prompted her to paint her face this way, so that her paleness would not seem the pallor of fear? Star-sapphires gleamed at her throat and she wore her matrix bared, blazing out from among them. As they paced into the Council chamber, Damon felt proud of them all, and willing to defy all of Darkover, if need be.
It was Lorill Hastur who called them all to order, saying, “Serious charges have been laid against you all. Damon, are you willing to answer these charges?”
Looking up at the Hastur seats, and Leonie’s implacable face, Damon knew that to explain and justify, as he had intended, would be a waste of time. His only chance was to seize and hold the initiative.
“Would any hear me, if I did?”
Leonie said, “For what you have done there can be no explanation and no excuse. But we are inclined to be lenient, if you will submit yourself to
our judgment, you and these others whom you have led into rebellion against the most sacred laws of Comyn.” She was looking at Callista as if she had never seen her before.
Through the silence Andrew thought, Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say before judgment is passed on you?
It was on him that Lorill first turned his eyes.
“Andrew Carr, your offense is serious, but you acted in ignorance of our laws. You shall be turned over to your own people, and if you have broken none of their laws, you shall go free, but we will ask that you be sent off our world at once.
“Callista Lanart, you have merited a sentence equivalent to Damon’s. But Leonie has interceded for you. Your intended marriage, being unconsummated”—how, Damon wondered, had Lorill known that?—“has no force in law. We declare it null and void. You shall return to Arilinn, with Leonie making herself personally responsible for your good behavior.
“Damon Ridenow, for your own offenses, and the offenses of these whom you have led into disobedience, you merit death or mutilation under the old laws. You are here offered a choice. You may surrender your matrix at once, with a Keeper to safeguard your life and reason, so that you may live out your life as regent of Alton, and guardian of the Alton heir your wife bears. If you refuse this, it will be taken from you by force. Should you survive, the laran centers of your brain will be burned away, to prevent any further abuse.”
Ellemir gave a low cry of dismay. Lorill looked at her with something like compassion, and said, “Ellemir Lanart, as for you, being misled by your husband, we impose no sentence save this: that you shall cease to meddle in matters outside the sphere of women, and turn your thoughts to your only duty at this time, to safeguard your coming child, who is heir to Alton. Since your father lies ill and your only surviving brother is a minor child, and your husband under our sentence, we place you under wardship of Lord Serrais, and you shall return to Serrais to bear your child. Meanwhile, I have chosen three respectable matrons of Comyn to care for you until sentence has been carried out on your husband: Lady Rohana Ardais, Jerana, Princess of Elhalyn, and my own son’s wife, Lady Cassilda Hastur. Allow them now to take you from this chamber, Lady Ellemir. What is to come may prove disturbing, even dangerous for a woman in your condition.”