The Forbidden Circle (30 page)

“I saw him at the wedding.” Their older sister Dorian had married a
nedestro
cousin of Lord Ardais’. “He seemed a kind, well-spoken young man, but I exchanged no more than, a few dozen words with him. I had seen Dorian so seldom since childhood.”

“It was that winter,” said Ellemir. “Dorian begged me to come and spend the winter with her; she was lonely, and already pregnant, and had made few friends of the mountain women. Father gave me leave to go. And later in the spring, when Dorian grew heavy, so it was no pleasure to her to share his bed, Mikhail and I had grown to be such friends that I took her place there.” She giggled a little, reminiscently.

Callista said, startled, “You were no more than fifteen!”

Ellemir answered, laughing, “That is old enough to marry; Dorian had been no more. I would have been married, had Father not wanted me to stay home and keep his house!”

Again Callista felt the cruel envy, the sense of desperate alienation. How simple it had been for Ellemir, and how right! And how different for her! “Were there others?”

Ellemir smiled in the darkness. “Not many. I learned there that I liked lying with men, but I did not want to be gossiped about as they whisper scandal about Sybil-Mhari—you have heard that she takes lovers from Guardsmen or even grooms—and I did not want to bear a child I would not be allowed to rear, though Dorian pledged that if I gave Mikhail a child she would foster it. And I did not want to be married off in a hurry to someone I did not like, which I knew Father would do if there was scandal. So there are not more than two or three men who could say, if they would, that they have had more of me than my fingers to kiss at Midsummer night. Even Damon. He has waited patiently—”

She gave an odd, excited little laugh. Callista stroked her twin’s soft hair.

“Well, now the waiting is nearly over, love.”

Ellemir cuddled close to her sister. She could sense Callista’s fears, her ambivalence, but she still misunderstood its nature.

She has been pledged virgin
, Ellemir thought,
she has lived her life apart from men, so it is not surprising that she should be afraid. But once she has come to understand that she is free, Andrew will be kind to her, and patient, and she will come at last to happiness . . . happiness like mine . . . and Damon’s
.

They were lightly in rapport, and Callista followed Ellemir’s thoughts, but she would not trouble her sister by telling her that it was not nearly as simple as that.

“We should sleep,
breda
, tomorrow is our wedding day, and tomorrow night,” she added mischievously, “Damon may not let you sleep very much.”

Laughing, Ellemir closed her eyes. Callista lay silent, her twin’s head resting on her shoulder, staring into the darkness. After a long time she sensed, as the thread of rapport between them thinned and Ellemir moved into dreams, that her sister slept. Quietly she slid from the bed and went to the window, looking out over the moon-flooded landscape. She stood there till she was cramped and cold, until the moons set and a thin fine rain began to blur the windowpane. With the hard discipline of years, she did not weep.

I can accept this and endure it, as I have endured so much. But what of Andrew? Can I endure what it will do to him, what it may do to his love?
She stood motionless, hour after hour, cramped, cold, but no longer aware of it, her mind retreating to one of the realms beyond thought which she had been taught to enter for refuge against tormenting ideas, leaving behind the cramped, icy body she had been taught to despise.

Rain had given way to thin sleet in the dawn hours, rattling the pane. Ellemir stirred, felt about in the bed for her sister, then sat up in consternation, seeing Callista motionless at the window. She got up and went to her, calling her name, but Callista neither heard nor stirred.

Alarmed, Ellemir cried out. Callista, hearing the voice less than the fear in Ellemir’s mind, came slowly back to the room. “It’s all right, Elli,” she said gently, looking at the frightened face turned up to hers.

“You’re so cold, love, so stiff and cold. Come back to bed, let me warm you,” Ellemir urged, and Callista let her sister lead her back to bed, cover her warmly, hold her close. After a long time she said, almost in a whisper, “I was wrong, Elli.”

“Wrong? How,
breda
?”

“I should have gone to Andrew’s bed when first he brought me from the caves. After so much time alone in the dark, so much fear, my defenses were down.” With an aching regret she remembered how he had carried her from Corresanti, how she had rested, warm and unafraid, in his arms. How, for a little while, it had seemed possible to her. “But there was so much confusion here, Father newly crippled, the house filled with wounded men. Still, it would have been easier then.”

Ellemir followed her reasoning, and was inclined to agree. Yet Callista was not the kind of woman who could have done such a thing in the face of her father’s displeasure, against her Keeper’s oath. And Lord Alton would have known it, as surely as if Callista had shouted it aloud from the rooftop.

“You were ill yourself, love. Andrew surely understood.”

But Callista wondered: had the long illness which came upon her after her rescue been somehow a reaction to this failure? Perhaps, she thought, they had lost an opportunity which might never come again, to come together when they were both afire with passion and had no room for doubts and fears. Even Leonie thought it likely that she had done so.

Why did I not? And now, now it is too late
. . . . Ellemir yawned, with a smile of pure delight.

“It is our wedding day, Callista!”

Callista closed her eyes.
My wedding day. And I cannot share her gladness. I love as she loves, yet I am not glad
. . . . She felt a wild impulse to tear at herself with her nails, to beat herself with her fists, to turn on and punish the beauty which was so empty a promise, the body which looked so much like a lovely and desirable woman’s body—a shell, an empty shell. But Ellemir was looking at her in troubled question, so she made herself smile gaily.

“Our wedding day,” she said, and kissed her twin. “Are you happy, darling?”

And for a little while, in Ellemir’s joy, she managed to forget her own fears.

CHAPTER FIVE

That morning Damon came to assist
Dom
Esteban into the rolling chair that had been made for him. “So you can be present at the wedding sitting upright, not lying flat on a wheel-bed like an invalid!”

“It feels strange to be vertical again,” said the old man, steadying himself with both hands. “I feel as dizzy as if I were already drunk.”

“You’ve been lying flat too long,” Damon said matter-of-factly. “You’ll soon get used to it.”

“Well, better to sit up than go propped on pillows like a woman in childbed! And at least my legs are still there, even if I can’t feel them!”

“They are still there,” Damon assured him, “and with someone to push your chair, you can get around well enough on the ground floor.”

“That will be a relief,” Esteban said. “I am weary of looking at this ceiling! When spring comes, I will have workmen come here, and let them do over some rooms on the ground floor for me. You two,” he added, gestur ing Andrew to join them, “can have any of the large suites upstairs, for yourselves and your wives.”

“That is generous, Father-in-law,” Damon said, but the old man shook his head.

“Not at all. No room above ground level will ever be of the slightest use to me again. I suggest you go and choose rooms for yourselves now; leave my old rooms for Domenic when he takes a wife, but any others are for your own choice. If you do it now, the women can move into their own homes as soon as they are married.” He added, laughing, “And while you do that, I shall have Dezi wheel me about down here and get used to the sight of my house again. Did I thank you, Damon, for this?”

On the upper floor, Damon and Andrew sought out Leonie. Damon said, “I wanted to ask you, out of earshot. I understand enough to know
Dom
Esteban will never walk again. But otherwise how is he, Leonie?”

“Out of earshot?” The Keeper laughed faintly. “He has
laran
, Damon; he knows all, though perhaps he has wisely refused to understand what it will mean to him. The flesh wound has long healed, of course, and the kidneys are not damaged, but the brain no longer communicates with legs and feet. He retains some small control over body functions, but doubtless as time passes and the lower part of his body wastes away, that will go too. His greatest danger is pressure sores. You must be sure his body-servants turn him every few hours, because, since there is no feeling, there will be no pain either, and he will not know if a fold in his clothing, or something of that sort, puts pressure on his body. Most of those who are paralyzed die when such sores become infected. This process can be delayed, with great care, if his limbs are kept supple with massage, but sooner or later the muscles will wither and die.”

Damon shook his head in dismay. “He knows all this?”

“He knows. But his will to live is strong, and while that remains, you can keep his life good. For a while. Years, perhaps. Afterward . . .” A small, resigned shrug. “Perhaps he will find some new will to live if he has grandchildren about him. But he has always been an active man, and a proud one. He will not take kindly to inactivity or helplessness.”

Andrew said, “I’m going to need a hell of a lot of his help and advice running this place. I’ve been trying to get along without bothering him—”

“By your leave, that is mistaken,” said Leonie gently. “He should know that his knowledge is still needed, if not his hands and his skill. Ask him for advice as much as you can, Andrew.”

It was the first time she had addressed him directly, and the Terran glanced at the woman in surprise. He had enough rudimentary telepathy to know that Leonie was uncomfortable with him, and was troubled to feel there was something more now in her regard. When she had gone away he said to Damon, “She doesn’t like me, does she?”

“I don’t think it is that,” Damon said. “She would feel uneasy with any man to whom she must give Callista in marriage, I think.”

“Well, I can’t blame her for thinking I’m not good enough for Callista; I don’t think there’s any man who is. But as long as Callista doesn’t think so . . .”

Damon laughed. “I suppose no man on his wedding day feels worthy of his bride. I must keep reminding myself that Ellemir has agreed to this marriage! Come along, we must find rooms for our wives!”

“Shouldn’t it be up to them to choose?”

Damon recalled that Andrew was a stranger to their customs. “No, it is custom for the husband to provide a home for his wife. In courtesy
Dom
Esteban is giving us a way to find such a place and ready it before the wedding.”

“But they know the house—”

Damon replied, “So do I. I spent much of my boyhood here.
Dom
Esteban’s oldest son and I were
bredin
, sworn friends. But you, have you no kinsmen in the Terran Zone, no servants sworn to you and awaiting your return?”

“None. Servants are a memory out of our past; no man should serve another.”

“Still, we’ll have to assign you a few. If you’re going to be managing the estate for our kinsman”—Damon used the word usually translated as “uncle”—“you won’t have leisure to handle the details of ordinary life, and we can’t expect the women to do their own cleaning and mending. And we don’t have machines as you do in the Terran Zone.”

“Why not?”

“We’re not rich in metals. Anyhow, why should we make people’s lives useless because they cannot earn their porridge and meat at honest work? Or do you truly think we would all be happier building machines and selling them to one another as you do?” Damon opened a door off the hallway. “These rooms have not been used since Ellemir’s mother died and Dorian was married. They seem in good repair.”

Andrew followed him into the spacious central living room of the suite, his mind still on Damon’s question. “I’ve been taught it is degrading for one man to serve another, degrading for the servant—and for the master.”

“I’d find it more degrading to spend my life as servant to some kind of machine. And if you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it and spend your time serving it.” He thought of his own relationship to the matrix, and every psi technician’s on Darkover, to say nothing of the Keepers’.

Instead, he opened doors all around the suite. “Look, on either side of this central living room is a complete suite: each with bedroom, sitting room and bath, and small rooms behind for the women’s maids when they choose them, dressing rooms and so forth. The women will want to be close together, and yet there’s privacy too, for when we want it, and other small rooms nearby if we need them someday for our children. Does this suit you?”

It was far more space than any young couple would have been assigned in Married Personnel HQ. Andrew agreed, and Damon asked, “Will you have the left-hand or right-hand suite?”

“Makes no difference to me. Want to flip a coin?”

Damon laughed heartily. “You have that custom too? But if it makes no difference to you, let us have the left-hand suite. Ellemir, I have noticed, is always awake and about with the dawn, and Callista likes to sleep late when she can. Perhaps it would be better not to have the morning sun in your bedroom window.”

Andrew blushed with pleasant embarrassment. He had noticed this, but had not carried it far enough in his mind to think ahead to the mornings when he would be waking in the same room as Callista. Damon grinned companionably.

“The wedding’s only hours away, you know. And we’ll be brothers, you and I—that’s a good thought too. It seems sad, though, that you should not have a single kinsman or friend at your wedding.”

“I’ve no friends on this planet anyway. And no living relatives anywhere.”