The Forbidden Circle (56 page)

“But among a family of telepaths, such deceit is simply not possible,” Callista said, “and I would rather know my husband was content in the arms of someone who gave us this out of love, a sister or a friend, than adven turing with a stranger.” But she was calmer, and Andrew sensed that removing their talk from an immediate problem to a distant one had made it less troubling to her. He said, “I’d rather die than hurt you.”

As he had done earlier, she lifted his fingertips to her lips and kissed them, very lightly. She said with a smile, “Ah, my husband, dying would hurt me worse than anything else you could possibly do.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Andrew rode through melting snow, a light flurry still falling. Across the valley he could see the lights of Armida, a soft twinkle against the mountain mass. Damon said these were only foothills, but to Andrew they were mountains, and high ones, too. He heard the men talking behind him in low voices and knew that they were also looking forward to food, and fire, and home, after eight days in the far pastures, noting the damage of the great blizzard, the condition of the roads, the damage to livestock.

He had welcomed this chance to be alone with those who could not read his thoughts. He had not yet grown wholly accustomed to life within a telepathic family, and he had not, as yet, quite learned to guard himself against accidental intrusion. From the men he picked up only a small, slight background trickle of thought, surface, undisturbing, inconsequential. But he was glad to be coming home. He rode through the courtyard gates and servants came to take his horse’s bridle. He accepted this now without thought, though there were times when, stopping to think, it still disturbed him somewhat. Callista ran down the steps toward him. He bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek, then discovered though it was too dark in the courtyard, that it was Ellemir he held. Laughing, sharing her amusement at his mistake, he hugged her hard and felt her mouth under his, warm and familiar. They went up the steps holding hands.

“How are all at home, Elli?”

“Well enough, though Father has grown short of breath and eats little. Callista is with him, but I would not let you go ungreeted,” she said, giving his fingers a slight squeeze. “I’ve missed you.”

Andrew had missed her too, and guilt surged in him. Damn it, why did his wife have to be twins? He asked, “How is Damon?”

“Busy,” she said, laughing. “He has been buried in the old records of the Domains, of those of our family who were Keepers or technicians at Arilinn or Neskaya Tower. I do not know what he is looking for, and he has not told me. In this last tenday I have seen little more of him than of you!”

Inside the hallway Andrew shrugged off his great riding cloak and gave it to the hall-steward. Rhodri drew off his snow-clogged boots and gave him fur-lined ankle-high indoor boots to put on. Ellemir on his arm, he went into the Great Hall.

Callista was seated beside her father, but as she came through the door she broke off, laid her harp unhurriedly on a bench and came to meet him. She moved quietly, the folds of her blue dress trailing behind her, and against his will he found himself contrasting this with Ellemir’s eager greeting. Yet he watched her, spell-bound. Every movement she made still filled him with fascination, desire, longing. She held out her hands and at the clasp of those delicate cool fingertips he was baffled again.

What the hell was love anyway? he asked himself. He had always felt that falling in love with one woman meant falling out of love with others. Which of them was he in love with anyway? His wife . . . or her sister?

He said, holding her hands gently, “I’ve missed you,” and she smiled up into his face.
Dom
Esteban said, “Welcome back, son, hard trip?”

“Not so much.” Because it was expected, he bent and kissed the old man’s thin cheek, thinking that he looked paler, not well at all. He supposed it was to be expected. “How is it with you, Father?”

“Oh, nothing ever changes with me,” the old man said as Callista brought Andrew a cup. He took it, raised it to his lips. It was hot spiced cider, and tasted wonderful after the long ride. It was good to be home. At the lower end of the hall the women were laying the table for the evening meal.

“How is it out there?”
Dom
Esteban asked, and Andrew began his report.

“Most of the roads are open again, though there are heavy drift-falls, and pack-ice at the bend in the river. All things considered, there’s not much stock lost. We found four mares and three foals frozen in the shed beyond the ford. Ice had drifted over the fodder there and they had probably starved before they froze.”

The Alton lord looked grim. “A good brood mare is worth her weight in silver, but with such a storm, we might have expected more losses. What else?”

“On the hillside a day’s ride north of Corresanti, a few yearlings were cut off from the rest. One with a broken leg could not get to the shelter, was covered by a snow-slide. The rest were hungry and shivering, but they’ll do well enough, all fed and tended now, and a man left to look after them. Half a dozen calves were dead in the farthest pasture, in the village of Bellazi. The flesh was frozen, and the villagers asked for the carcasses, saying the meat was still good, and that you always gave it to them. I told them to do what was customary. Was that right?”

The man nodded. “It’s custom for the last hundred years. Stock dead in a blizzard is given to the nearest village, to make what use they can of meat and hides. In return they shelter and feed any livestock that makes its way down in a storm, and bring them back when they can. If in a hungry season they slaughter and eat an extra one, I don’t worry that much about it. I’m no tyrant.”

The serving women were bringing in the meal. The men and women of the household gathered around the long table in the lower hall, and Andrew pushed
Dom
Esteban’s rolling-chair to his place at the upper table, where the family sat with a few of the upper servants and the skilled professionals who managed the ranch and the estate. Andrew was beginning to wonder if Damon would not appear at all when he suddenly thrust open the doors at the back of the hall and, apologizing briefly to Ellemir for his lateness, came to Andrew with a welcoming smile.

“I heard in the court that you were home. How did you manage alone? I kept thinking I should have come with you, this first time.”

“I managed well enough, though I would have been glad of your company,” Andrew said. He noted that Damon looked weary and haggard, and wondered what the other man had been doing with himself. Damon volunteered nothing, beginning to ask questions about stock and fodder sheds, storm damage, bridges and fords, as if he had never done anything in his life except help to manage a horse ranch. While they talked ranch business with
Dom
Esteban, Callista and Ellemir talked softly together. Andrew found himself thinking how good it would be when they were all alone together again, but he did not grudge the time spent with his father-in-law on the ranch affairs. He had feared, when he first came here, that he would be received only as Callista’s husband, penniless and alien, useless for the strange affairs of a strange world. Now he knew that he was accepted and valued as a born son and heir to the Domain would have been.

The business of repairs to buildings and bridges, of replacements for lost stock, occupied most of the meal. The women were clearing away the dishes when Callista leaned over and spoke in an undertone to her father. He nodded permission, and she stood up, rapping briefly on the edge of a metal tankard for attention. The servants moving in the hall looked at her respectfully. A Keeper was the object of almost superstitious reverence, and though Callista had given up her formal status, she was still looked on with more than ordinary respect. When the hall was perfectly quiet, she spoke in her soft, clear voice, which nevertheless carried to the furthest corners of the hall:

“Someone here, without authority, has been trespassing in my still-room and has taken some of an herb from there. If it is returned at once, and no unauthorized use made of it, I will assume that it was taken by mistake, and not pursue the matter any further. But if it is not returned to me by tomorrow morning, I will take any action I think suitable.”

There was a confused silence in the hall. A few of the people murmured to one another, but no one spoke aloud, and at last Callista said, “Very well. You may think about it overnight. Tomorrow I will use any methods at my command”—with an automatic, arrogant gesture her hand went to the matrix in its concealed place at her throat—“to discover who is guilty. That is all. You may go.”

It was the first time Andrew had seen her deliberately call upon her old authority as Keeper, and it troubled him. As she came back to her seat he asked, “What is missing, Callista?”

“
Kireseth
,” she said briefly. “It is a dangerous herb, and its use is forbidden except to the Tower-trained or under their express authority.” Her smooth brow was wrinkled with a frown. “I do not like the idea of some ignorant person going around crazed with the stuff. It is a deliriant and hallucinogen.”

Dom
Esteban protested, “Oh, come, Callista, surely not so dangerous. I know you people in the Towers have a superstitious taboo about the stuff, but it grows wild here in the hills, and it has never been—”

“Just the same, I am personally responsible for making certain that none of it is mishandled by my neglect.”

Damon raised his head. He said wearily, “Don’t trouble the servants, Callista,
I
took it.”

She stared at him in astonishment. “You, Damon? Whatever did you want with it?”

“Will it be enough for you to know that I had my reasons, Callista?”

“But why, Damon?” she insisted. “If you had asked, I would have given it to you, but—”

“But you would have asked why,” Damon said, his face drawn into lines of exhaustion and pain. “No, Callie, don’t try to read me.” His eyes were suddenly hard. “I took it for reasons that seemed good to me, and I am not going to tell you what they are. I may not need it, and if I do not I will return it to you, but for the moment I believe I may have a use for it. Leave it there,
breda
.”

She said, “Of course, if you insist, Damon.” She raised her cup and sipped, watching Damon with a troubled look. Her thoughts were easy to read:
Damon is trained in the use of
kirian,
but he cannot make it, so what could he want with the raw herb? What can he possibly be going to do with it? I cannot believe he would misuse it, but what does he intend?

The servants dispersed.
Dom
Esteban asked if someone would care to play cards with him, or castles, the chess-like game Andrew was learning to play. Andrew agreed and sat studying the small cut-crystal pawns with surface absorption, but his mind was busy elsewhere. What could Damon have wanted with the
kireseth
? Damon had warned him not to handle or smell it, he remembered. Moving a pawn, and losing it to his father-in-law, it seemed that he could feel Damon’s thoughts leaking around the perimeter of his own emotions. He knew how much Damon hated and feared the matrix work he had been trained to do, had been forced to renounce, and had returned to against his will.
Until Callista is free. And even then . . . There is so much that a telepath can do, so much undone. . . .
Cutting off Damon’s thoughts by main force, Andrew forced himself to concentrate on the board before him, lost three pawns in rapid succession, then made a major mistake in moving which cost him the major piece called the dragon. He conceded, saying apologetically, “Sorry, the shapes of those two still confuse me a little.”

“Never mind,” said the old man, graciously returning the mistakenly moved piece. “You are a better player, at that, than Ellemir, though she is the only one who has patience to play with me. Damon plays well, but seldom has the time. Damon? When Andrew and I have played this out, will you play the winner?”

“Not tonight, Uncle,” said Damon, rousing himself from deep abstraction, and the old man, glancing around the hall, noted that most of the housefolk had dispersed to their beds. Only his own body-servant, yawning, lingered before the fire. The Alton lord sighed, glanced at the angle of moonlight beyond the windows.

“I am selfish. I keep you young people here talking half the night, and Andrew has had a long ride, and has been parted a long time from his wife. I sleep so badly now, and the nights seem endless with no one to keep me company, so I tend to cling to you. Go along, all of you, to your own beds.”

Ellemir kissed her father good night and withdrew. Callista lingered to say a word to the old man’s body-servant. Damon turned to follow Ellemir, then hesitated in the doorway and came back.

“Father, there is an important piece of work to be done. Can you spare us for a few days?”

“Do you need to be away?”

“No away, no,” Damon said, “but I might need to put up dampers and a barrier and isolate the four of us. I can choose what time is best, but I would rather not delay too long.” He glanced at Callista, and Andrew caught the thought he tried to guard:
She will die of grief . . .

“We will need at least three or four days, uninterrupted. Can that be arranged?”

The old man nodded, slowly. “Take what time you need, Damon. But for any long periods of work, it would be better to wait till Midwinter is past, and until the repairs from the storm have been completed. Is that possible?”

Andrew saw
Dom
Esteban’s disquieted gaze at Callista, and heard what he did not say:
A Keeper who has given back her oath?
He knew Damon heard it too, but Damon only said, “Possible, and we will do that. Thank you, Father.” He bent and embraced the older man. He watched him, frowning a little, as his servants wheeled him out of the room.

“He misses Dezi, I think. Whatever the lad’s faults, he was a good son to the old man. For his sake, perhaps, I wish we could have forgiven Dezi.” He sighed as they went up the stairs. “He is lonely. There is no one here now who is really company for him. I think, when the spring thaw comes, we must send for some kinsman or friend to bear him company.”