The Forbidden Circle (43 page)

“Why?”

“Because, man, when it snows in the Kilghard Hills, it
snows
. We could be weathered in for thirty to forty days. I had hoped to send to Neskaya Tower for some
kirian
—I don’t think Callista’s made any yet—in case I have to clear her channels. But no man could travel in this; I couldn’t ask it.” He slumped, exhausted, on the windowsill. Andrew exclaimed, seeing the icy wind stirring his hair, “Don’t go to sleep
there
, damn it, you’ll get pneumonia,” and closed the casement. “Go and rest, Damon. I can look after Callista. She’s
my
wife, and
my
responsibility.”

Damon sighed. “But with Esteban disabled I’m Callie’s nearest kinsman. And I put you two in rapport under the matrix. That makes it
my
responsibility; by the oath I took.” He stumbled, felt Andrew catch him by the shoulder and support him upright. He said blur rily, “But I’ll have to try to sleep or I won’t be able to help if she needs me.”

Andrew steered him toward the tumbled bed, and he caught a thread of Andrew’s thought, a troubled memory, conscience-stung, that Andrew had been for a time voyeur to Damon’s lovemaking with Ellemir. Damon wondered fuzzily why that bothered Andrew, was too tired to care. He crawled into the disheveled bed. He forced himself to clarity for a moment. “Stay near the women. Let Callista sleep, but if she wakes and she’s in pain, call me.” He rolled over on his back, trying to see the Terran’s face clear before his blurring eyes. “Don’t touch Callista . . . damnably important . . . not even if she asks you to. It could be dangerous. . . .”

“I’ll take my chances, Damon.”

“Dangerous for
her
,” Damon said urgently, thinking,
damn it, if I can’t trust him I’ll have to go back
. . . .

Andrew, picking up the thought, said, “All right, I promise. But I want you to explain that, when you can,” and Damon said, with a weary sigh, “That’s a promise,” and let himself fall into the blankness of sleep. Andrew stood beside him, watching the drawn lines of weariness smooth into sleep, then covered his friend carefully and went away. He instructed Damon’s body-servant to let him sleep, then, on an impulse, since Ellemir was always awake so early, and it would be awkward to have someone come looking for her, he told the man to send a message to the hall-steward that they had all been awake very late and no one was to disturb them until sent for.

He went back and lay down on Callista’s bed. After a time he fell asleep again. He woke suddenly, aware that he had slept for hours. It was daylight but still dark, the snow blowing and flurrying past the windows. Callista and Ellemir were lying side by side in his bed, but as he watched, Ellemir sat up, crawled carefully over Callista and tiptoed to his side.

“Where is Damon?”

“Sleeping, I hope.”

“Has no one sent for me?” Andrew explained what he had done, and she thanked him. “I must go dress. I will use Callista’s bath if you don’t mind, I don’t want to disturb Damon. I’ll borrow something of hers to wear too.” Moving like a shadow, she collected clothes from Callista’s wardrobe. Andrew watched with unfocused resentment—would she rather disturb Callista than Damon?—but evidently the familiar presence of her twin did not penetrate Callista’s heavy sleep.

Without volition, Andrew recalled Ellemir standing over Callista last night, naked and unconcerned about it. He supposed that if someone was used to having his or her mind completely open, physical nakedness would not mean all that much. But he found himself recalling a moment last night when it seemed that it was Ellemir in his arms, warm, willing, responding to him as Callista could not. . . . Disquited, he turned away. Scalding heat flooded his face, and a twinge in his body reminded him painfully of last night’s fiasco. Did Ellemir know, he wondered; that he was part of her lovemaking, was she aware of him too?

Ellemir watched him for a moment with a troubled smile, then, biting her lip, went into the bath, trailing an armful of blue and white linen.

Andrew, fighting for composure, looked down at his sleeping wife. She looked pale and tired, with great dark circles like bruises under her closed eyes. She was lying on her side, one arm partly covering her face, and Andrew recalled, with surging pain, how he had seen her lying like that, in the dim light of the overworld. Prisoner in the catmen’s hands, her body in the dark caves of Corresanti, she had come to him in spirit, in sleep; bruised, bleeding, exhausted, terrified. And he could do nothing for her. His helplessness had maddened him then; now he felt again all the torment of helplessness, at her lonely ordeal.

Slowly she opened her eyes.

“Andrew?”

“I’m here with you, my love.” He saw pain move visibly across her face, like a shadow. “How are you feeling, darling?”

“Terrible,” she said with a wry grimace. “As if I had been caught in a stampede of wild
oudrakhi
.” Who but Callista, he wondered, could have made a joke at this moment? “Where is Damon?”

“Sleeping, love. And Ellemir went to bathe and dress.”

She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. “And I had thought today I would be truly a bride. Evanda be praised that it was Damon and Ellemir who heard us, and not that brat Dezi with his taunts.” Andrew flinched at the thought. It had been Dezi’s jeering, indeed, which had prompted the fiasco.

He said, with emphasis, “I wish I had broken his damn neck!”

She sighed, shaking her head. “No, no, it was not his doing. We are both grown people, we know enough to make our own decisions. What he said was a rudeness. Among telepaths, you learn very quickly not to pry into such matters, and if you should learn, unwillingly, of such a private matter, there are courtesies. It was unforgivable, but he is not to blame for what happened after, my love. It was our choice.”

“My choice,” he said, lowering his eyes. She reached for his hand. Her small fingers felt cold. Again he saw the pain, moving in her face, and said, “Damon said I was to call him if you woke in pain, Callista.”

“Not yet. Let him sleep. He wearied himself for us. Andrew—”

He knelt beside her and she held out her arms. “An drew; hold me; just for a moment. Let me lie in your arms . . . just let me feel you close to me. . . .”

He moved in swift response to the words, to the appeal in them, thinking that, even after last night, she still loved him, still wanted him. Then, remembering, he drew back. He said, heartwrung, “My darling, I promised Damon I would not touch you.”

“Oh, Damon, Damon, always Damon,” she said frantically. “I’m so sick and miserable, I just want you to hold me—” She broke off and let her eyes fall shut again with a forlorn sigh. He ached with the longing to fold her in his arms, not now with desire—that had receded very far—simply to hold her close, protect her, soothe her, comfort her pain. But his promise held him motionless, and she said at last, “Oh, I suppose he’s right, damn him. He usually is.” But he saw the pain again behind her eyes; aging her, drawing her face into hollows of exhaustion. Somehow, and the thought horrified him, he could think only of Leonie’s face, worn, drawn, weary, old.

Again memory surged over him, the moment last night when for a moment they had been fully submerged in the lovemaking of Damon and Ellemir. She had wanted it, welcomed it, begun to respond to him, only after that full sharing with the other couple. Again the harsh throb of pain in his groins, the agonizing memory of failure, blurred the excitement. His love for Callista was not an atom less, but he felt an awful, indefinable sense that something had been spoiled. A breath of intrusion, as if Damon and Ellemir, dear and close as they were had somehow come between himself and Callista.

Callista’s eyes were filled with tears. In another moment, heedless of his promise, he would have caught her into his arms, but Ellemir, fresh and rosy from her bath, dressed in something he had seen Callista wearing, came back into the room. She saw that Callista was awake and went directly to her.

“Feeling better,
breda
?”

Callista shook her head. “No. Worse, if anything.”

“Can you get up, love?”

“I don’t know.” Callista moved tentatively. “I suppose I must. Will you call my maid, Elli?”

“No, I won’t. No one else is to lay a finger on you, Damon said, and I won’t have those silly girls gossiping. I’ll look after you, Callie. Andrew, you had better tell Damon she’s awake.”

He found Damon already up, shaving in the luxurious bath which duplicated the one in their half of the suite. He gestured to Andrew to come in. “Does Callista seem any better?”

Then he noticed Andrew’s hesitation. “Hell, I never thought . . . are there nudity taboos in the Empire?”

Andrew felt oddly that it was he and not Damon who ought to be embarrassed. “Some cultures, yes. Mine among them. But I’m in your world, so I guess it’s up to me to get used to your customs, not you to mine.”

It was stupid to feel embarrassed, Andrew knew, or angry, outraged at the memory of Damon last night, standing naked over Callista, looking down on her fragile bare battered body.

Damon shrugged, saying casually, “There aren’t many taboos like that here. A few among the
cristoforos
, or for the presence of nonhumans or across generations. I wouldn’t willingly appear naked in a group of my father’s contemporaries, or
Dom
Esteban’s, for instance. It’s not forbidden, though, certainly not embarrassing the way you seem to be embarrassed. I wouldn’t walk out naked among a group of the maid-servants for no reason either, but if the house was afire, or something, I wouldn’t hesitate. A man my own age, married to my wife’s sister . . .” He shrugged helplessly. “It never occurred to me.”

Andrew realized he should have guessed last night, when Ellemir never seemed to notice.

Damon splashed water on his face, followed it with some green, pleasant-smelling herbal lotion. The smell reminded Andrew poignantly of Callista’s little still- room. Damon laughed, shrugging his shirt over his shoulders. He said, “As for Elli, you ought to be relieved. It means she has accepted you as part of the family. Would you want her to be embarrassed about you, and carefully keep herself covered in your presence, as if you were a stranger?”

“Not unless you would.” But did that mean she did not see Andrew as a male at all, he wondered. A subtle way of unmanning him?

“Give yourself time,” Damon said, “it will all sort itself out.” He was getting unconcernedly into his clothes. “Is it still snowing?”

“Harder than ever.”

Damon went to look, but when he cracked the casement to look out, the howling wind tore through the room like a hurricane. He hastily slammed it shut. “Cal lie’s awake? Who’s with her? Good, I’d hoped Ellemir would have sense enough to keep the maids away. In her condition, the presence of any nontelepath would be pretty nearly unendurable. That’s why we never had human servants in the Towers, you know.” He turned to the door. “Have any of you had anything to eat?”

“Not yet,” Andrew said, realizing that it was past noon and he was very hungry.

“Go down, will you, and ask Rhodri to send something up. I think we all ought to stay near Callista,” he said, then hesitated. “I’m going to put off a messy job on you. You’ll have to go and give
Dom
Esteban some kind of explanation. One look at me and he’d know the whole story—he’s known me since I was nine years old. I don’t think he’ll probe you for explanations. You’re enough of a stranger that he still feels a little reserved with you. Do you really mind? I can’t face explaining to him.”

“I don’t mind,” Andrew said. He did, but he knew that some kind of explanation to the crippled Lord Alton was no more than courtesy. It was long past the hour when Ellemir should have been about the house, and
Dom
Esteban was accustomed to Callista’s company.

He told the hall-steward that they had all been up very late and would breakfast in their rooms. Remembering what Damon had said about the presence of non-telepaths, he stipulated that no one should go into the suite, but the food should be set outside. The man said, “Certainly,
Dom
Ann’dra,” without a flicker of curiosity, as if the request were commonplace.

In the Great Hall,
Dom
Esteban was in his wheeled-chair by the window, the guardsman Caradoc keeping him company. Andrew saw with relief that Dezi was nowhere to be seen.
Dom
Esteban and Caradoc were playing a board game something like chess that Damon had once tried to teach Andrew. It was called castles and had pawns of carved crystal which were not set in order on the board but shaken at random and moved from the spot where they fell, according to certain complex rules.
Dom
Esteban took a red crystal piece from the board, grinned triumphantly at Caradoc, then looked with raised eyes at Andrew.

“Good morning, or do I mean good evening? I trust you slept well?”

“Well enough, sir, but Callista is . . . is a little indisposed. And Ellemir is staying with her.”

“And you’re both staying with them, quite right and proper,” said
Dom
Esteban, grinning.

“If there is anything which should be done, Father-in-law . . . ?”

“In this?” The old man gestured at the snowstorm. “Nothing, no need to apologize.”

Andrew remembered that the old man was also a powerful telepath. If last night’s disturbance had disrupted Damon and Ellemir even in their marriage bed, had it disturbed the old man too? But if so, not a flicker of the Alton lord’s eyelids betrayed it. He said, “Give Callista my love, and tell her I hope she is well soon. And tell Ellemir to look after her sister. I have plenty of company, so I can manage without any of you for a day or so.”

Caradoc made some remark in the thick mountain dialect about the blizzard season being the right time to stay indoors and enjoy the company of one’s wife.
Dom
Esteban guffawed, but the joke was a little obscure for Andrew. He was grateful to the old man, but he felt raw-edged, indecently exposed. No one with a scrap of telepathic force could have slept through all that last night, he felt. It must have waked telepaths up all the way to Thendara!