I said, “They can’t marry you off to Beltran, just like that! You are Head of a Domain and Keeper—”
“So I thought,” she said dispassionately. “But if I were not Head of a Domain, he would not want me—I do not think it is me he wants. If he simply wanted to marry into the Comyn, there are other women as close to the center of power; Derik’s sister Alanna was widowed last year. As for my being Keeper—I do not think the Council wants a Keeper in power there, either. And if I marry—” she shrugged. “There’s the end of that.”
I remembered the old stories that a Keeper maintains her power only through her chastity. It’s drivel, of course, superstitious rubbish, but like all superstitions, it has a core of truth. Laran, in a Comyn telepath, is carried in the same channels as the sexual forces of the body. The main side effect, for men, is that prolonged or heavy work in the matrixes temporarily closes off the channels to sex, and the man undergoes a prolonged period of impotence. It’s the first thing a man, working in the Towers, has to get used to, and some people never learn to handle it. I suppose for many people it would seem a high price to pay.
A woman has no such physical safeguard. While a woman is working at the center of a circle, holding the tremendous forces of the amplified linked matrixes, she must keep the physical channels clear for that work, or she can burn up like a torch. A three-second backflow, when I was seventeen years old, had burned a scar in my hand that had never really healed, the size of a silver coin. And the Keeper is at the very center of those flows. While she is working at the center of the screens, a Keeper remains chaste for excellent and practical reasons which have nothing to do with morality. It’s a heavy burden; few women want to live with it, more than a year or two. In the old days, Keepers were vowed to hold their office lifelong, were revered and treated almost as Goddesses, living apart from anything human. In this day and age, a Keeper is simply required to retain her chastity while she is actively working as a Keeper, after which she may lay down her post, conduct her life as she pleases, marry and have children if she wishes. I had always assumed that Callina would elect to do this; she was, after all, the female Head of the Domain, and her oldest daughter would hold the Domain of Aillard.
She followed my thoughts and shook her head. She said wryly, “I have never had any wish to marry, nor met any man who would tempt me to leave the Tower. Why should I bear a double burden? Janna of Arilinn—she was your Keeper, was she not?—left her post and bore two sons, then fostered them away, and came back to her work. But I have served my Domain well; I have sisters, Linnell will soon be married, even Merryl, I suppose, will some day find a woman who will have him. There is no need…” but she sighed, almost in despair. “I might marry if there was another who could take my place— but not Beltran. Merciful Avarra, not Beltran!”
“He’s not a monster, Callina,” I said. “He’s very like me, as a matter of fact.”
She turned on me with wild anger, and her voice caught in her throat. “So you’d have me marry him too? A man who would bring an army against Thendara, and blackmail my kinsmen into giving him the most powerful woman in the Council for his own purposes? Damn you! Do you think I am a thing, a horse to be sold in the market, a shawl to be bartered for?” She stopped, bit her lip against a sob, and I stared at her; she had seemed so cold, remote, dispassionate, more like a mechanical doll than a woman; and now she was all afire with passion, like a struck harp still vibrating. For the first time I knew it; Callina was a woman, and she was beautiful. She had never seemed real to me, before this; she had only been a Keeper, distant, untouchable. Now I saw the woman, trapped and frantic behind that barricade, reaching out— reaching out to me.
She dropped her face into her hands and wept. She said, through her tears, “They have put it to me that if I do not marry Beltran it will plunge the Domains into war!”
I could not stop myself; I reached out, drew her into my arms.
“You shall not marry Beltran,” I said, raging. “I will kill him first, kinswoman!” And then, as I held her against me I knew what had happened to us both. It was not as kinswoman that I had vowed to shelter and protect her. It went deeper than that; it went back to the time when she had been the only woman in the Comyn who understood my rebellion against my father, to the time when she had fought to save Marjorie’s life and had shared my agony and despair. She was Tower-trained, she was a memory of the one good time in my entire life, she was home and Arilinn and a time when I had been happy and real and felt my life worthy; a time when I had not been damned.
I held her, trembling with fright, against me; clumsily, I touched her wet eyes. There was something else, some deeper, more terrible fear behind her.
I murmured, “Can’t Ashara protect you? She is Keeper of the Comyn. Surely she would not let you be taken from her like this.”
We were deeply in rapport now; I felt her rage, her dread, her outraged pride. Now there was terror. She whispered, her voice only a thread, as if she feared that she would be heard, “Oh, Lew, you don’t know—I am afraid of Ashara, so afraid… I would rather marry Beltran, I would even marry him to be free of her…” and her voice broke and strangled. She clung to me in terror and despair, and I held her close.
“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered, and felt the shaking tenderness I had thought I would never know again. Burned and ravaged as I was, scarred, mutilated, too deeply haunted by despair to lift my one remaining hand to save myself—still, I felt I would fight to the death, fight like a trapped animal, to save Callina from that fate.
… still there was something between us. I dared not kiss her; was it only that she was still Keeper and the old taboo held me? But I held her head against my breast, stroking her dark hair, and I knew I was no longer rootless, alone, without kin or friends. Now there was some reason behind my desperate holding on. Now there was Callina, and I promised myself, with every scrap of will remaining to me, that for her sake I would fight to the end.
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
« ^ »
There’s only one good thing about Council season,” said Regis sleepily, “I get to see you now and then.”
Danilo, barefoot and half-dressed at the window, grinned back at him. “Come now, is that the spirit in which to face the final day of Council?”
Regis groaned and sat up. “I suppose you had to remind me. Shall I send for breakfast?”
Danilo shook his head, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I can’t stay; Lord Dyan asked me to dine with him last night, he even said I could bring you if I wished; but I told him I’d be engaged elsewhere.” He smiled at his friend. “So he said breakfast would do. I suppose, too, that I’ll have to wear Council robes.” He made a wry face. “Without disrespect to our worthy forefathers, did you ever see any robes as ugly as full Council ceremonial dress? I am sure the cut and fashion have not changed since the days of Stephen the Fourth!”
Regis chuckled, swinging his feet out of bed. “Longer than that, surely—I am certain they were designed by Zandru’s great-grandmother.”
“And she made him wear them as punishment when he was more wicked than usual,” laughed Danilo. “Or do you suppose they were designed by cristoforos, so that while we sit at Council we will be doing suitable penance for our sins?”
“Sitting in Council is penance enough,” said Regis glumly.
“And the Ardais colors—gray and black, how dismal! Do you suppose that is why Dyan is so morose—the result of wearing black and silver in Council for so many years? If I were no more than your paxman, at least I could wear blue and silver!”
“We shall have to design you a special robe for your divided loyalties,” said Regis, mock-serious. “Patchwork of black and blue. Suitable enough, I suppose, for anyone who comes under Dyan’s influence—like my ribs when he was my arms-master!” After all these years, Regis could make a joke of it. But Danilo frowned.
“He spoke again of my marriage, a day or two ago. It seems his nedestro son is three year
s old, and looks healthy, and likely to live to grow up; he wants me to foster the boy, he said. He has neither time nor inclination to bring him up himself—and to do this I must have a household and wife. He said that he understood why I was reluctant—”
“He should, after all,” said Regis dryly.
“Nevertheless, he said it was my duty, and he would take care to find me a wife who would not trouble me too much.”
“Grandfather speaks in the same vein—”
“I think,” Danilo said, “that I shall take one who will find herself a devoted Lady-companion; and after I have given her a child or two to raise, she will not weep if I absent myself from her bed and fireside. Then we should both be content.”
Regis pulled on tunic and breeches, slid his feet into indoor boots. “I must breakfast with Grandfather; time enough to haul myself into ceremonials later. There seems little sense in attending Council—most of the speeches I will hear today I could say over from memory!”
Danilo sighed. “There are times when I think Lord Dyan— and some others I could mention—would rather see the Ages of Chaos come again than wake up to realities! Regis! Does your grandsire really think the Terrans will go away if we pretend they are not there?”
“I don’t know what my grandfather thinks, but I know what he will say if I do not breakfast with him,” Regis said, fastening his tunic-laces. “And now that I think of it, Council may not be so predictable as all that—it seems we are to have seven Domains again, after all. Did you know Beltran has brought and quartered an army above Thendara?”
“I heard he was calling it an honor-guard,” said Danilo. “I would not have thought, when we were his guests—” he gave the word an ironic inflection,— “at Aldaran, that he had so much honor as all that to guard.”
“I would say, rather, he needs an army to keep what little honor he has from escaping him,” said Regis, remembering the time when he and Danilo had been imprisoned in Castle Aldaran. “Are they really going to accept him in Council, I wonder?”
“I don’t think they have much choice,” said Danilo. “Whatever his reasons, I don’t like it.”
“Then, if you are given a chance to speak in Council you had better say so,” Regis said. “Dyan is expecting you, and Grandfather, no doubt, awaiting me. You had better go.”
“Is this the hospitality of the Hasturs?” Danilo teased. But he gave Regis a quick, hard hug, and went. Regis stood in the door of his room, watching Danilo cross the outer hallway of the suite, and briefly come face to face with Lord Hastur.
Danilo bowed and said cheerfully, “A good morning to you, my lord.”
Danvan Hastur scowled in displeasure, grunting the barest of uncivil greetings; it sounded like “H’rrumph!” He went on without raising his head. Danilo blinked in surprise, but went out the door without speaking. Regis, his mouth tightening with exasperation, went to comb his hair and ask his valet to lay out his ceremonial garb for Council.
Through the window the fog was lifting; high across the valley he could see the Terran HQ, a white skyscraper reddened with the glint of the red sun. His body-servant was fussing with the robes. Regis looked at them in distaste.
I am weary of doing things for no better reason than that the Hasturs have always done them that way, he thought, and the man flinched nervously as if Regis’s uneasy thoughts could reach him. Maybe they could.
He stared morosely at the skyscraper, thinking: if his grandfather had been wise, he should have had the same kind of Terran education as poor Marius. If his grandfather indeed perceived the Terrans as the enemy, all the more so, then— a wise man will take the measure of his enemy, and know his powers.
Regis stopped, the comb halfway to his hair. Suddenly he knew why Danvan Hastur had not done just that.
Grandfather is sure that anyone who had a Terran education would, of necessity, choose the ways of Terra. He does not trust me, or the strength of what I have been taught. Are the Terrans and their ways so attractive, then?
His grandfather, in the little breakfast room, was still scowling as Regis drew up his chair. Regis said a polite good morning and waited until the servant had gone.
“Grandsire, if you cannot be courteous to my sworn man, I will find quarters elsewhere.”
“Do you expect me to approve?” asked the old man in frigid displeasure.
“I expect you to admit I am a grown man with the right to choose my own companions,” Regis said hotly. “If I brought a woman here for the night, and she was any sort of respectable woman, you would show her civility, at least. Danilo is as well born as I—or you yourself, sir! If I spoke like that to one of your friends, you would say I deserved a beating!”
Old Hastur clamped his lips tight, and even a non-telepath could have read his thoughts: that was different.
Regis said angrily, “Grandfather, it is not as if I were carousing in common taverns, disgracing the Hastur name by letting myself be seen in brothels and such places as the Golden Cage, or keeping a perfumed minion as the Dry-towners do—”
“Silence! How dare you speak of such things to me?” Hastur clamped his lips in anger. He gestured to the breakfast table. “Sit down and eat; you will be late for Council.” As Regis hesitated he commanded dryly, “Do as you are told, boy. This is no time for tantrums!”
Regis clenched his fists. The quick wave of anger almost dizzied him. He said icily, “Sir, you have spoken to me as if I were a child for the last time!” He turned and went out of the room, disregarding his grandfather’s shocked “Regis!”
As he walked through the labyrinthine corridors of Comyn Castle, his fists were clenched, and he felt as if a weight were pressing inward on his chest. It had been only a matter of time; this quarrel had been building for years, and it was just as well it should be in the open.
In all save this I have been an obedient grandson, I have done everything he asked of me; I am sworn to obey him as the Head of the Domain. But I will not be spoken to as if I were ten years old—never again. When he entered the Ardais apartments he was still fighting back a wholly uncharacteristic fury. The servant who let him in said an automatic, “Su serva, dom…” and broke off to ask, “Are you ill, sir?”
Regis shook his head. “No—but ask Lord Danilo if he will see me at once.”
The message was carried, but answered by Danilo himself coming to the outer room. “Regis! What are you doing here?”
“I came to ask if I may join you at breakfast,” said Regis, more calmly than he felt, and Dyan, appearing in the doorway, already in the ceremonial black and silver of Council, said quickly, “Yes, come and join us, my dear fellow! I wanted a chance to speak with you, in any case.”
He went back toward the breakfast room, and Danilo murmured in an undertone, “What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you later, if I may. Grandfather and I had words,” Regis muttered, “Leave it for now, will you?”
“Set another place for Dom Regis,” Dyan ordered. Regis took a seat. Danilo looked at him, a swift questioning look, as he unfolded a napkin, but asked nothing aloud, and Regis was grateful.
He must know that I quarreled with Grandfather, and why. But he said nothing more, except for a complimentary remark about the food. Dyan himself ate sparingly, a little bread and fruit, but he had provided an assortment of hot breads, broiled meat and fried cakes; when Danilo commented on this, Dyan said, with a comical emphasis, “I am quite experienced at judging the—appetites—of young men.” He caught Regis’s eye for a moment, and Regis looked at his plate.
When they had finished and were idling over some fruits, Dyan said, “Well, Dani, I’m glad Regis joined us; I really wanted to talk to both of you. Most of the business of the Council has finished; this will be the final session, and because of the mourning for Kennard, everything’s been put off to this last session. And there’s much to be done. The heritage of Alton has to be settled—”
“I thought it was settled when Lew came back,” Regis said, his heart sink
ing as he realized what Dyan was driving at.
Dyan sighed. “I know he is your friend, Regis, but look at realities, will you, without sentiment? It’s a pity Kennard died without formally disinheriting him—”
“Why would he do that?” Regis asked, resentfully.
“Don’t be a fool, lad! If he hadn’t been mortally wounded and ill, you know as well as I that he’d have stood trial before the Comyn for treason, for that Sharra business, and been formally exiled. I don’t have any ill will toward him—” but Dyan’s glance slid uneasily away as Regis faced him, “and I’ve no desire to see Kennard’s son cast out or stripped of wealth and power. Lew has no son, nor is likely to have, from something I heard—no, don’t ask me where. A compromise might be worked out whereby he could have Armida, or its revenues, or both, for his lifetime, but—”
“I suppose you want to set up Gabriel in his place,” Regis said. “I heard that song from Grandfather; I didn’t think you would sing it too!”
“With Marius dead, it seems reasonable, doesn’t it? I have no wish to see Alton heritage in Hastur hands. But there is an Alton child. Fostered in a good, loyal Domain—perhaps even in the care of Prince Derik and Linnell—that child could be trusted to bring back the honor of the Alton Domain.”
“A child of Marius? Or of Kennard?”
“I’d rather not say anything about it until arrangements have been made,” Dyan evaded, “but I give you my word of honor, the child’s an Alton, and with potential laran. Regis, you are Lew’s friend; can’t you persuade him to step down and hand over the Domain in return for an assurance that during his lifetime he’ll have Armida unquestioned? What do you think of that plan?”
It stinks to high heaven, Regis thought, but he cast about for some more diplomatic way of saying it. “Why not put it up to Lew? He’s never been ambitious, and if this child is an Alton, he might perfectly well agree to adopt him and name the youngster his Heir.”