The Forbidden Tower

  Forgetting everything except her misery, Andrew reached for her; Damon touched him on the arm, shook his head firmly. Distressed, Andrew stood looking at the sobbing woman, unable to tolerate her misery, unable to do anything about it, in helpless despair.

  Ellemir went to her and turned her gently around. “Don’t lean on that old wall, love, when there are three of us here with shoulders to cry on.” She dried her sister’s tears with her long apron. “Tell us all about it. Was Leonie very horrible to you?”

  Callista shook her head, blinking her reddened eyes hard. “Oh, no, she couldn’t have been kinder…”

  Ellemir said, with a skeptical headshake, “Then why are you howling like a banshee? Here we wait, in agony lest we be told you’ll be whisked away from us and back to the Tower, and then when you come to us, saying all is well, and we are ready to rejoice with you, you start blubbering like a pregnant serving wench!”

  “Don’t—” Callista cried. “Leonie… Leonie was kind, I truly think she understood. But Father—”

  “Poor Callie,” said Damon gently. “I have felt the rough side of his tongue often enough!”

  Andrew heard the pet name with surprise and a sudden, sharp jealousy. It had never occurred to him, and the pretty abbreviation which Damon used so naturally seemed an intimacy which simply pointed up his isolation. He reminded himself that Damon, after all, had been an intimate of the household since Callista was a small child.

  Callista raised her eyes and said quietly, “Leonie freed me from my oath, Damon, and without question.” Damon sensed the anguished struggle behind her controlled calm, and thought, If Andrew makes her unhappy, I think I will kill him. Aloud he only said, “And your father, of course, was another story. Was he very terrible, then?”

  For the first time, Callista smiled. “Very terrible, yes, but Leonie is even more stubborn. She said that you cannot bind a cloud in fetters. And Father turned on me. Oh, Andrew, he said dreadful things, that you had abused hospitality, that you had seduced me—”

  “Damned old tyrant!” Damon said angrily. Andrew set his mouth in quiet wrath. “If he believes that—”

  “He does not, now,” Callista said, and her eyes held a hint of their old gaiety. “She reminded him that I was not now thirteen years old; that when the doors of Arilinn first closed behind me, he had surrendered forever all right to give or refuse me in marriage; that even if Leonie had found me unfit and sent me from the Tower before I was of legal age and declared a woman, it would have been her right, and not his, to find me a husband. And many other home truths which he did not find pleasant hearing.”

  “Evanda be praised that you are laughing again, darling,” Ellemir said, “but how did Father take these unkind truths?”

  “Well, he did not like it, as you can imagine,” Callista said, “but in the end there was nothing he could do but accept it. I think he was even glad to have Leonie to quarrel with; we have all humored him too much since he was wounded! He began to act like himself, and maybe he began to feel a little more like himself too. Then when he had grumbled himself into accepting it, Leanie set herself to charm him—told him how lucky he was to have two full-grown sons-in-law to manage the estate for him so that Domenic could take his place in Council, and two daughters to live here and bear him company. At last he said Leonie had made it clear that I needed no blessing to marry, but he bade you come to take his blessing.”

  Andrew was still angry. “If the old tyrant thinks I give a damn for his blessing, or his curse either—” he began, but Damon laid a hand on his wrist, interrupting him.

  “Andrew, this means he will accept you as a son in his house, and for Callista’s sake I think you should accept it with such grace as you can. Callie has already lost one family when she chose, for your sake, not to return to Arilinn. Unless you hate him so much you cannot dwell in peace under his roof…”

  “I don’t hate him at all,” Andrew said, “but I can care for my wife in my own world. I do not want to come to him penniless, accepting his charity.”

  Damon said quietly, “The charity, Andrew, is on your side, and mine. He may live many years, but he will never again set foot to the ground. Domenic must take his place in Council. His younger son is a child of eleven. If you take Callista from him, you leave him at the mercy of such strangers as he can hire for a price, or distant kinsmen who will come through greed to see what bones they can pick. If you remain here and help him manage this estate, and give him the companionship of his daughter, you bestow far more than you accept.”

  Thinking it over, Andrew realized that Damon was right. “Still, if Leonie wrung consent from him unwillingly…”

  “No, or he would never have offered his blessing,” Damon said. “I have known him all my life. If he still grudged you consent, he would have said something like take her and be damned to both of you. Would he not, Callista?”

  “Damon is right: he is terrible in anger, but no man to hold a grudge.”

  “Less so than I,” Damon said. “With Esteban, it is one flare of anger, then all’s well, and he will take you to his heart as readily as he kicked you a moment ago. You may quarrel again—you probably will—he is harsh-tempered and irritable. But he will not serve you up old grudges like stale porridge!”

  When Damon and Ellemir had gone Andrew looked at Callista and said, “Is this truly what you want, my love? I don’t dislike your father. I was only angry because he had bullied you and made you cry. If you want to stay here…”

  She looked up at him, and the closeness came over them again, the old touch that had drawn them together before they met, the touch so much more real to him than the hesitant and frightened physical touch which was all she could ever permit. “If you and Father could not have agreed, I would have followed you anywhere on Darkover, or anywhere among your Empire of the stars. But only with such grief as I could never measure. This is my home, Andrew. The dearest wish of my heart is that I should never leave here again.”

  He raised her fingertips gently to his lips. He said softly, “Then it shall be my home too, beloved. Forever.”

  By the time Andrew and Callista followed the other couple into the main house they found Damon and Ellemir seated side by side on a bench beside Dom Esteban. As they came in Damon rose and knelt before the old man. He said something Andrew could not hear, and the Alton lord said, smiling, “You have proved yourself a son to me many times, Damon, I need no more. Take my blessing.” He laid his hand for a moment on Damon’s head. Rising, the younger man bent and kissed his cheek.

  Dom Esteban looked over Damon’s head with a grim smile. “Are you too proud to kneel for my blessing, Ann’dra?”

  “Not too proud, sir. If I offend against custom, in this or anything else, Lord Alton, I ask that you take it as ignorance of what is considered proper, and not as willful offense.”

  Dom Esteban gestured them to a seat beside Damon and Ellemir. “Ann’dra,” he said, still giving the name the Darkhovan inflection, “I know nothing really bad of your people, but I know little of them that is good. I suppose they are like most people, some good and some bad, and most of them neither one nor the other. If you were a bad man, I do not think my daughter would be so ready to marry you, against all custom and common sense. But you cannot blame me if I am not quite happy about giving my best-loved child to an out-worlder, even one who has shown himself honorable and brave.”

  Andrew, next to Ellemir on the bench, felt her hands clench tight as he spoke of Callista as his best-loved child. That was cruel, he thought, in her very presence. It had been Ellemir after all who had stayed at home, a dutiful and biddable daughter, all these years. Indignation at the old man’s tactlessness made his voice cool.

  “I can only say, sir, that I love Callista and I will try to make her happy.”

  “I do not think she will be happy among your people. Do you intend to take her away?”

  “If you had not consented to our marriage, sir, I would have had no choice.” But could he
really have taken this sensitive girl, reared among telepaths, to the Terran Zone, to imprison her among tall buildings and machines, to expose her to people who would regard her as an exotic freak? Her very laran would have been regarded as madness or charlatanry. “As matters stand, sir, I will remain here gladly. Perhaps I can prove to you that Terrans are not as alien as you think.”

  “I know that already. Do you think me ungrateful? I know perfectly well that if it had not been for you, Callista would have died in the caverns, and the lands would still lie under their accursed darkness!”

  “I think that was more Damon’s doing than mine, sir,” Andrew said firmly. The old man laughed a short, wry laugh.

  “And so it is like the fairy-tale, fitting that you two should be rewarded with the hands of my daughters, and half my kingdom. Well, I have no kingdom to give, Ann’dra, but you have a son’s place here while you live, and if you wish, your children after you.”

  Callista’s eyes were brimming. She slipped off the bench and knelt beside her father. She whispered, “Thank you,” and his hand rested, for a moment, on her fine, copper-shining braids. Over her bent head he said, “Well, come, Ann’dra, kneel for my blessing.” The harsh voice was kind.

  With a sense of confusion, half embarrassment, half ineradicable strangeness, Andrew knelt beside Callista. On the surface of his mind were random thoughts, such as how damn silly this would seem at Headquarters, and when in Rome… but on a deeper level, something in him warmed to the gesture. He felt the old man’s square, calloused hand on his head, and with the still-strange, newly opened telepathic awareness with which he had not yet wholly made his peace, picked up a strange melange of emotions: misgivings, blended with a tentative, spontaneous liking. He was sure that what he sensed was what the old man felt about him; and to his own surprise, it was not too unlike what he himself felt for the Comyn lord.

  He said, trying to keep his voice neutral, though he was perfectly sure the old man could read his thoughts in turn, “I am grateful, sir. I will try to be a good son to you.”

  Dom Esteban said gruffly, “Well, as you can see, I’m going to need a couple of good ones. Look here, are you going to keep calling me sir for the rest of our lives, son?”

  “Of course not, kinsman.” He used the intimate form of the word now, as Damon did. It could mean “uncle,” or any close relative of a father’s generation. He rose, and as he moved away he encountered the curious stare of the boy Dezi, silent behind Esteban, filled with an angry intensity— yes, and what Andrew could feel as resentment, envy.

  Poor kid, he thought. I come here a stranger, and they treat me like family. He’s family—and the old man treats him like a servant, or a dog! No wonder the kid’s jealous!

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  « ^ »

  It had been decided that the marriage would take place four days hence, a quiet one, with only Leonie for honored guest, and a few neighbors who lived on nearby estates to celebrate with them. The brief interval allowed just time for word to be sent to Dom Esteban’s heir, Domenic, at Thendara, and for one or more of Damon’s brothers to come from Serrais if they wished.

  On the night before the wedding, the twin sisters lay awake late, in the room they had shared as children, before Callista went to the Arilinn Tower. Ellemir said at last, a little sadly, “I had always believed that on my marriage day there would be much feasting, and fine gowns, and all our kinfolk to celebrate with us, not a hasty marriage with a few countryfolk! Well, with Damon for husband I can manage without the rest, but still…”

  “I am sorry too, Elli, I know it is my fault,” Callista said. “You are marrying a Comyn lord of the Ridenow Domain, so there is no reason you should not be married by the catenas, with all the festivity and merrymaking you might wish. Andrew and I have spoiled this for you.” A Comyn daughter could not marry di catenas, with the old ceremony, without permission of Comyn Council, and Callista knew there was no chance whatever that Council would give her to a stranger, a nobody—a Terran! So they had chosen the simpler form known as freemate marriage, which could be solemnized by a simple declaration before witnesses.

  Ellemir heard the sadness in her sister’s voice and said, “Well, as Father is so fond of saying, the world will go as it will, and not as you or I would have it. In the next Council season, Damon has promised, we shall journey to Thendara and there will be enough merrymaking for everyone.”

  “And by that time,” Callista added, “my marriage to Andrew will be so long established that nothing can alter it.”

  Ellemir laughed. “It would be just my ill fortune to be heavy with child then, and unable to enjoy it! Not that I would think it ill fortune, to have Damon’s child at once.”

  Callista was silent, thinking of the years in the Tower, where she had put aside, unregretted because unknown, all the things a young girl dreams of. Hearing these things in Ellemir’s voice now she asked, hesitating, “Do you want a child at once?”

  Ellemir laughed. “Oh, yes! Don’t you?”

  “I had not thought about it,” Callista said slowly. “There were so many years when I never thought of marriage, or love, or children… I suppose Andrew will want children, soon or late, but it seems to me that a child should be wanted for herself, not only because it is my duty to our clan. I have lived so many years in the Tower, thinking only of duty toward others, that I think I must first have a little time to think only of myself. And of… of Andrew.”

  This was puzzling to Ellemir. How could anyone think of her husband without thinking first of her desire to give him a child? But she sensed that it was otherwise with Callista. In any case, she thought with unconscious snobbery, Andrew was not Comyn; it did not matter so much that Callista should give him an heir at once.

  “Remember, Elli, I spent so many years thinking I was not to marry at all…”

  Her voice was so sad and strange that Ellemir could not bear it. She said. “You love Andrew, and your choice was freely made,” but there was a hint of question too. Had Callista chosen to marry her rescuer only because it seemed the simplest thing?

  Callista followed that thought, and said, “No, I love him, more than I can tell you. Yet there is another old saying, I never knew till now how true: no choice goes wholly unregretted, either way will bring more, both of joy and sorrow, than we can foresee. My life had seemed unchanging to me, already settled, so simple: I would take Leonie’s place in Arilinn and serve there until death or age freed me from the burden. And that too seemed a good life to me. Love, marriage, children—these things were not even daydreams to me!”

  Her voice was trembling. Ellemir got out of bed and went to sit on the edge of her sister’s, taking her hand in the darkness. Callista moved, an unconscious, automatic gesture, to draw it away, then said ruefully, more to herself than Ellemir, “I suppose I must learn not to do that.”

  Ellemir said gently, “I do not think Andrew will appreciate it.”

  She felt Callista flinch from the words. “It is a… reflex. I find it as hard to break as it was hard to learn.”

  Ellemir said impulsively, “You must have been very lonely, Callista!”

  Callista’s words seemed to come up from some barricaded depth. “Lonely? Not always. In the Tower we are closer than you can imagine. So much a part of one another. Even so, as Keeper I was always apart from them, separated by a… a barrier no one could ever cross. It would have been easier, I think, to be truly alone.” Ellemir felt that her sister was not speaking to her at all, but to remote and unsharable memories, trying to put words to something she had never been willing to speak about.

  “The others in the Tower could… could give some expression to that closeness. Could touch. Could love. A Keeper learns a double separateness. To be close, closer than any other, to each mind within the matrix circle, and yet never… never quite real to them. Never a woman, never even a living, breathing human being. Only… only part of the screens and relays.” She paused, her mind lost in th
at strange, barricaded, lonely life which had been hers for so many years.

  “So many women try it, and fail. They become involved, somehow, with the human side of the other men and women there. In my first year at Arilinn, I saw six young girls come there, to be trained as Keeper, and fail. And I was proud because I could endure the training. It is… not easy,” she said, knowing the words ridiculously inadequate. They gave no hint of the months of rigid physical and mental discipline, until her mind was trained to unbelievable power, until her body could endure the inhuman flows and stresses. She said at last, softly and bitterly, “Now I wish I had failed too!” and stopped, hearing her own words and horrified by them.

  Ellemir said softly, “I wish we hadn’t grown so far apart, breda.” Almost for the first time, she spoke the word for sister in the intimate mode; it could also mean darling. Callista responded to the tone, rather than the word.

  “It was never that I didn’t… didn’t love you, or remember you, Ellemir. But I was taught—oh, you can’t imagine how!—to hold myself apart from every human contact. And you were my twin sister—I had been closest to you. For my first year, I cried myself to sleep at night because I was so lonely for you. But later… later you came to seem like all the rest of my life before Arilinn, like someone I had known only in a dream. And so, later, when I was allowed to see you now and again, to visit you, I tried to keep you distant, part of the dream, so that I would not be torn apart with every new separation. Our lives lay apart and I knew it must be so.”

  Her voice was sadder than tears. Impulsively, eager to comfort, Ellemir lay down beside her sister and took her in her arms. Callista went rigid against the touch, then, sighing, lay still; but Ellemir sensed the effort her sister was making not to pull away from her. She thought, with a violent surge of anger, How could they do this to her? It’s deforming, as if they’d made her a cripple or a hunchback!