The Forbidden Circle (24 page)

Below them, in the valley, Damon could see the lights of Armida. He wondered if Ellemir knew he was returning, with Callista safe, and the darkening lands cleansed. Damon smiled faintly. The old man must be fretting himself sick with impatience to know what had happened since he lost contact with Damon at the barrier. Dom Esteban probably believed—he had been contemptuous of Damon for so long as a weakling—that he, Damon, had been cut down seconds after. Well, it would be a pleasant surprise for the old man, and Dom Esteban would need a few pleasant surprises to make up for the inevitable shock he’d get when he found out about Callista and Andrew. That wasn’t going to be pleasant, but the old man owed them something, and Damon was going to twist his arm until he gave in. He realized, with a deep and profound pleasure, that he was looking forward to it, that he wasn’t afraid of Dom Esteban anymore. He wasn’t afraid of
anything
anymore. He smiled, and dropped back to ride by Eduin and Rannan who shared a horse’s broad back, having given up a mount to Andrew and Callista.

Andrew Carr did not even notice Damon go. Callista was warm in his arms, and his heart was so full that he could hardly think clearly. He whispered, “Are you cold, beloved?”

She nestled closely against him. “A little,” she said softly. “It’s all right.”

“It won’t be long, and we’ll have you where it’s warm, and Ellemir will look after you.”

“I’d rather be cold in the clean air, than be warm in those foul, stinking caves! Oh, the stars!” she said almost ecstatically.

He tightened his arm around her, aware that she was so weary that she might fall. He could see the lights of Armida, warm and beckoning, below.

She murmured, “It won’t be easy. My father will be angry. He thinks of me as a Keeper, not a woman. And he would be angry if I chose to lay down my post and marry anyone, anyone at all, and it will be that much harder, since you are a Terran.” But she smiled and curled closer to him. “Well, he’ll just have to get used to the idea. Leonie will be on our side.”

They were taking it all for granted, Andrew thought. Somehow, he would have to send a message to the Trade City that he was alive—that would be easy enough—and a message that he wouldn’t be coming back. That wouldn’t be so easy. With this new ability he had discovered—well, somehow or other he’d have to learn how to use it. After that—well, who could tell? There must be something he could do, to hasten the day when Terrans and Darkovans no longer looked on each other as alien species.

They
couldn’t
be so alien. The names alone must tell him that. Callista. Damon. Edwin. Caradoc. Esteban. He could buy a lot of coincidence, but that he couldn’t believe in. He wasn’t a linguist, but he simply refused to accept that these people could independently have evolved names so identical with Terran names. Even
Ellemir
was not outlandish; the first time he heard it, he’d thought it was
Eleanor
. Not only Terran names, but Western European ones, from the days when those distinctions applied on Terra.

Yet this planet had been discovered by the Terran Empire less than a hundred years ago, and the Trade City built less than fifty years ago. The little he knew about this planet showed him that its history was longer than that of the Empire.

So what was the answer? There were stories of “Lost Ships,” taking off from Terra itself in the days before the Empire, thousands of years ago, disappearing without trace. Most of them had been believed destroyed—the ships of those days had been ridiculous contraptions, running on primitive atomic or matter-antimatter drives. But one of them
might
somehow have survived. He faced the fact that he’d probably never know, but he had the rest of his life to find out. Anyway, did it matter? He knew all he needed to know.

He clasped Callista closer in his arms; she made a small involuntary movement of protest, then smiled and deliberately moved against him. He thought,
I really know nothing about her
. Then, remembering that incredible four-way moment of fusion and total acceptance, he realized that he knew all he needed to know about her, too. Already he had noticed that she no longer shrank from a casual touch. He thought, with great tenderness, that if she had been conditioned against desire or sensual response, at least the conditioning was not irrevocable, and they had time enough to wait. Already, he suspected, it had been breached by days of terror alone in the darkness, and by her hunger for any other human presence. But they already belonged to one another in the way that mattered most. The rest would come in time. He was sure of that, and he found himself wondering, whimsically, if precognition was among the new psi talents he’d be exploring.

As they rode through the great looming gates of Armida, a light snow had begun to fall; and Andrew remembered that less than a week ago he had been lying on a ledge in a howling storm, waiting to die.

Callista shivered—did she remember it too?—and he bent down and murmured tenderly, “We’re almost home, my beloved.” And already it did not seem strange to think of it as home.

He had followed a dream, and it had brought him here.

CHAPTER ONE

Damon Ridenow rode through a land cleansed.

For most of the year, the great plateau of the Kilghard Hills had lain under the evil influence of the catmen. Crops withered in the fields, under the unnatural darkness which blotted out the light of the sun; the poor folk of the district huddled in their homes, afraid to venture into the blasted countryside.

But now men worked again in the light of the great red sun of Darkover, garnering their harvests against the coming snows. It was early autumn, and the harvests were mostly in.

The Great Cat had been slain in the caves of Corresanti and the giant illegal matrix which he had found and put to such frightful use had been destroyed with his death. Such catmen as still lived had fled into the far rain forests beyond the mountains, or fallen to the swords of the Guardsmen that Damon had led against them.

The land was clean again and free of terror, and Damon, most of his army dismissed to their homes, rode homeward. Not to his ancestral estates of Serrais; Damon was an unregarded younger son and had never felt Serrais his home. He rode now to Armida, to his wedding.

He sat his horse now at the side of the road, watching the last few men separate themselves according to their way. There were uniformed Guardsmen bound for Thendara, in their green and black uniforms; there were a few men bound northward to the Hellers, from the Domains of Ardais and Hastur; and a few riding south to the plains of Valeron.

“You should speak to the men, Lord Damon,” said a short, gnarled-looking man at Damon’s side.

“I’m not very good at making speeches.” Damon was a slight, slender man with a scholar’s face. Until this campaign he had never thought himself a soldier and was still surprised at himself, that he had led these men successfully against the remnants of the catmen.

“They expect it, lord,” Eduin urged, and Damon sighed, knowing what the other man said was true. Damon was Comyn of the Domains; not Lord of a Domain, or even a Comyn heir, but still Comyn, of the old telepathic, psi-gifted caste which had ruled the Seven Domains from time unknown. The days were gone when Comyn were treated as living gods, but there was still the respect, near to awe. And Damon had been trained to the responsibilities of a Comyn son. Sighing, he urged his horse to a spot where the waiting men could see him.

“Our work is done. Thanks to you men who have answered my call, there is peace in the Kilghard Hills and in our homes. It only remains for me to give you my thanks and farewell.”

The young officer who had brought the Guardsmen from Thendara rode toward Damon, as the other men rode away. “Will Lord Alton ride to Thendara with us? Shall we await him?”

“You would have long to wait,” Damon said. “He was wounded in the first battle with the catmen, a small wound, but the spine was injured past healing. He is paralyzed from the waist down. I think he will never ride anywhere again.”

The young officer looked troubled. “Who will now command the Guardsmen, Lord Damon?”

It was a reasonable question. For generations the command of the Guardsmen had lain in the hands of the Alton Domain; Esteban Lanart of Armida, Lord Alton, had commanded for many years. But
Dom
Esteban’s oldest surviving son, Lord Domenic, was a youth of seventeen. Though a man by the laws of the Domains, he had neither the age nor the authority for command. The other remaining Alton son, young Valdir, was a boy of eleven, a novice at Nevarsin Monastery, being schooled by the brothers of St.-Valentine of-the-Snows.

Who would command the Guards, then? It was a very reasonable question, thought Damon, but he did not know the answer. He said so, adding, “It will be for Comyn Council to decide next summer, when Council meets in Thendara.” There had never been war in winter on Darkover; there never would be. In winter there was a fiercer enemy, the cruel cold, the blizzards which swept down across the Domains from the Hellers. No army could move against the Domains in winter. Even bandits were kept close to their own homes. They could wait for the next Council season to name a new commander. Damon changed the subject.

“Will you reach Thendara by nightfall?”

“Unless something should delay us by the way.”

“Then don’t let me delay you further,” Damon said, and bowed. “The command of these men is yours, kinsman.”

The young officer could not conceal a smile. He was very young, and this was his first command, brief and temporary as it was. Damon watched with a thoughtful smile as the boy mustered his men and rode away. The boy was a born officer, and with
Dom
Esteban disabled, competent officers could expect promotions.

Damon himself, though in command of this mission, had never thought of himself as a soldier. Like all Comyn sons he had served in the cadet corps, and had taken his turn as an officer, but his talents and ambitions had been far otherwise. At seventeen he had been admitted to the Arilinn Tower as a telepath, to be trained in the old matrix sciences of Darkover. For many, many years he had worked there, growing in strength and skill, reaching the rank of psi technician.

Then he had been sent from the Tower. No fault of his own, his Keeper had assured him, only that he was too sensitive, that his health, even his sanity might be destroyed under the tremendous stresses of matrix work.

Rebellious but obedient, Damon had gone. The word of a Keeper was law, never to be questioned or resisted. His life smashed, his ambitions in ruins, he had tried to build himself a new life in the Guardsmen, though he was no soldier, and knew it. He had been cadet master for a time, then hospital officer, supply officer. And on this last campaign against the catmen he had learned to bear himself with confidence. But he had no desire to command, was glad to relinquish it now.

He watched the men ride away until their forms were lost in the dust of the roadway. Now for Armida and home. . . .

“Lord Damon,” Eduin said at his side, “there are riders on the road.”

“Travelers? At this season?” It seemed impossible. The winter snows had not yet begun, but any day the first of the winter storms would sweep down from the Hellers, blocking the roads for days at a time. There was an old saying, Only the mad or the desperate travel in winter. Damon strained his eyes to make out the distant riders, but he had been somewhat shortsighted since childhood, and could make out only a blur.

“Your eyes are better than mine. Are they armed men, do you think, Eduin?”

“I do not think so, Lord Damon; there is a lady riding with them.”

“At this season? That seems unlikely,” Damon said. What could bring a woman out into the uncertain traveling of the approaching winter?

“It is a Hastur banner, Lord Damon. Yet Lord Hastur and his lady would not leave Thendara at this season. If for some reason they rode to Castle Hastur, they would not be on this road. I cannot understand it.”

Yet even before he finished, Damon knew the identity of the woman who rode with the little party of Guardsmen and escorts toward him. Only one woman on Darkover would ride alone beneath a Hastur banner, and only one Hastur would have reason to ride this way.

“It is the Lady of Arilinn,” he said at last, reluctantly, and saw Eduin’s face light up with wonder and awe.

Leonie Hastur. Leonie of Arilinn, Keeper of the Arilinn Tower. Damon knew that in courtesy he should ride to meet his kinswoman, to welcome her, yet he sat his horse as if frozen, fighting for self-mastery. Time seemed annihilated. In a frozen, timeless, echoing chamber of his mind, a younger Damon stood trembling before the Keeper of Arilinn, head bowed to hear the words which shattered his life:

“It is not that you have failed us or displeased me. But you are all too sensitive for this work, too vulnerable. Had you been born a woman, you would have been a Keeper. But as things stand now . . . I have watched you for years. This work will destroy your health, destroy your reason. You must leave us, Damon, for your own sake.”