The Forbidden Circle (73 page)

“But,” said Leonie, “your training was given you for use within a Tower. When you were sent forth—”

“When I was sent forth, was I to spend the rest of my life without the knowledge and skill of my training? If I could not be trusted with the knowledge, why was it given? Should I live the rest of my life like a toddler in a walking-harness, not moving unless my nurse holds the reins?” He looked directly at Leonie. He did not say it aloud, but everyone there could follow it:
I should never have been sent from Arilinn. I was dismissed upon a pretext which I now know to have been false.
Aloud he said, “When I was sent away, I was set free to act upon my own responsibility, like any Comyn son.”

How dare you!
The woman put back her veil. She had, Damon thought with detachment, quite lost the last remnants of her remarkable beauty. She drew herself to her full height—an inch or two taller than Damon—and said, “I will not hear this quibbling!”

Damon said with cold, deliberate insolence, “I did not invite any of you here. Is the guardian of Alton to listen and keep his tongue behind his teeth, like a naughty child being scolded, in his own chamber?”

Leonie frowned. “Would you rather we formally lay these matters before all the Comyn in the Crystal Chamber?”

Damon shrugged and said, “Speak, then.” He nodded to chairs about the room. “Will you sit? I have no taste for discussing weighty matters while I stand shifting from one foot to another like a cadet on punishment detail. And may I offer you refreshment?”

“Thank you, no.” But they took chairs, and Damon sank into another. Andrew remained standing. Without knowing it, he had fallen into the traditional stance of a paxman behind his lord, a step behind where Damon sat. The others saw it and frowned, as Leonie began.

“When you left Arilinn, we trusted you to observe the laws, and in general we made no complaint. From time to time we followed your matrix in the monitor screens, but most of the things you had done were minor and lawful.”

“Excellent,” said Damon with sarcastic emphasis. “I am relieved to know you thought it lawful for me to use my matrix to lock my strongbox, to find my way through a wood if I mistook my path, or to stanch the bleeding of a friend’s wound!”

Rafael Aillard scowled at Damon. “If you will hear us without trying to make bad jokes, we will have done with this painful task more quickly!”

Damon said, “I am not short of time to bear what you have to say. Still, my wife is ill and pregnant, and my father-in-law at death’s very threshold, so it is true I could spend what remains of this day more profitably than listening to this pile of stable-sweepings you are mouthing at me!”

“I am sorry Ellemir is not well,” Leonie said, “but is Esteban so seriously ill as all that? In the Council chamber but this day, he was hearty and strong.”

His mouth set in hard lines, Damon said, “The news of the treachery done by the bastard son he had loved laid him low. It is possible he will live through the day, but he is not likely to see another winter’s snow.”

“So you took it on yourself to avenge him and act as Dezi’s executioner,” Leonie said. “I have no grief for him. He had not been in Arilinn a tenday before I saw such flaws in his character that I knew he would not stay.”

“And, knowing this, you took the responsibility of training him? Who picks a tool unsuited to a task should not complain if it does nothing more than cut the hand that holds it.” Remotely he realized that as recently as Midwinter, it would have been unthinkable to question the motives and decisions of any Keeper, certainly not the Lady of Arilinn.

Margwenn said impatiently, “What would you have had us do? You know it is not easy to find Comyn sons and daughters with full
laran
, and whatever Dezi’s faults, his gifts were great.”

“You would have done better to train a commoner with less of noble blood, and more of decency and character!”

Rafael said, “You know that no one not of Comyn blood can come within the Veil at Arilinn.”

“Then, damn it,” said Damon, thinking of Ferrika’s gentle touch as she monitored Ellemir, “maybe it’s time to tear down the Veil and make some changes at Arilinn!”

Leonie’s lip curled in distaste. “Where do you get these ideas, Damon? Is this what comes of taking a
Terranan
into your household?” But she gave him no time to answer.

“We did not complain when you used your matrix lawfully. Even when you took Dezi’s matrix from him, we made no complaint. But you were not content with that. You have done many things unlawful. You have taught this
Terranan
some rudiments of matrix technology. You will recall that Stefan Hastur decreed, when first they came here, that no Terran was even to be allowed to witness any matrix operation.”

“May he rest in peace,” Damon said, “but I am not willing to give to a dead man the right to be the warden of my conscience.”

Rafael said angrily, “Should we reject the wisdom of our fathers?”

“No, but they lived as they chose when they were alive, and did not consult me about my wishes and needs, and I shall do the same with them. Certainly I will not enshrine them as gods, and treat their lightest word as the
cristoforos
treat the nonsense from their Book of Burdens!”

“What is your excuse for training this
Terranan
?” Margwenn asked.

“What excuse do I need? He has
laran
, and an untrained telepath is a menace to himself and to everyone around him.”

“Was it he who encouraged Callista to break her sworn word? She had pledged to lay down her work forever.”

“I am not the warden of Callista’s conscience either,” Damon said. “The knowledge is in her mind, I cannot take it from her.” Again, with great bitterness, he flung the question at Leonie: “Should she spend her life counting holes in linen towels, and making spices for herb-bread?”

Margwenn grimaced with contempt. “It seems that was Callista’s choice. She was not forced to give back her oath. She was not even raped. She made a free choice, and she must live with it.”

You are all fools
, Damon thought wearily, and made no effort to conceal the thought. He saw it reflected in Leonie’s eyes.

“One charge is so serious that it makes all the others trivial, Damon. You have built a Tower in the overworld. You are working an unlawful mechanic’s circle, Damon, outside a Tower built by Comyn decree, and outside the oaths and safeguards ordained since the Ages of Chaos. The penalty for that is a dreadful one. I am reluctant to impose it on you. Will you, then, dissolve the links of your circle, destroy the forbidden Tower you have made, and swear to us that you will do so no more? If you will pledge this to me, I will ask no further penalty.”

Damon rose to his feet. He was standing braced, as he had done when he faced Dezi’s murderous onslaught
This
, he thought,
I face standing up
.

“Leonie, when you sent me from the Tower, you ceased to be my Keeper, even the keeper of my conscience. What I have done, I have done on my own responsibility. I am a matrix technician, trained at Arilinn, and I have lived all my life under the precepts taught to me there. My conscience is clear, I will make no such pledge as you ask.”

“Since the Ages of Chaos,” Leonie said, “it has been forbidden for any circle of matrix workers to operate except in a Tower sanctioned by Comyn decree. Nor can we allow you to take into your circle a woman who once was Keeper and who has given back her oath. By the laws handed down since the days of Varzil the Good, this is not allowed. It is unthinkable, it is obscene! You must destroy the Tower, Damon, and pledge me never to work with it again. As regent of Alton, and Callista’s guardian, I call upon you to make certain that she never again violates the conditions upon which her oath was given back.”

Damon said, keeping his voice steady with an effort, “I do not accept your judgment.”

“Then I must invoke a worse,” Leonie said. “Do you wish me to lay this before the Council, and the workers in all the Towers? You know the penalty if you are adjudged guilty there. Once all this is set in motion, even I cannot save you,” she added, looking directly at him for the first time since the conversation had begun. “But I know that if you give your word, you will not break it. Give me your word, Damon, to break this unlawful circle, to withdraw all force from your Tower in the overworld, and pledge me personally to use your matrix from this day forth only for such things as are lawful and come within the limits allotted; and I give you my word in turn that I will proceed no further, whatever you have done.”

It was like a blow in the face. The Keeper turned pale. Her voice was trembling. “You defy me, Damon?”

“I do,” he said. “You have never inquired into my motives, you have chosen to ignore them. You talk of Varzil the Good. I do not think you know half as much about him as I do. Yes, I defy you, Leonie. I will answer these charges at the proper time. Lay them before the Council, if it pleases you, or before the Towers, and I will be ready to answer them.”

Her face was deathly white.
Like a skull
, Damon thought.

“Be it so then, Damon. You know the penalty. You will be stripped of your matrix, and so that you cannot do as Dezi has done, the
laran
centers of your brain will be burned away. On your own head be it, Damon, and all of these may bear witness that I tried to save you.”

She turned, moving out of the chamber. The others followed in her wake. Damon stood unmoving, his face rigid and unyielding, till they were gone. He managed to maintain the cold dignity until the sound of their steps in the outer rooms had died away. Then, moving like a drunken man, he reeled into the inner room of the suite.

He heard Andrew cursing, a steady stream of expletives in what he supposed was Terran—he did not know a word of the language—but no one with
laran
could possibly misunderstand their meaning. He moved past Andrew, flung himself facedown on a divan, and lay there, his face in his hands, not moving. Horror surged in him; his stomach heaved with nausea.

All his defiance now seemed a child’s bravado. He
knew
, beyond doubt or question, that he would find no way to answer the charges, that they would find him guilty, that he would incur the penalty.

Blinded. Deafened. Mutilated. To go through life without
laran
, prisoner forever in his own skull, intolerably alone forever . . . to live as a mindless animal. He clutched himself in agony. Andrew came and stood beside him, troubled, only partially aware what was distressing him.

“Damon, don’t. Surely the Council will let you explain; they’ll know you did the only thing you could do.”

Damon only moaned in dread. It seemed that all the fears of his life, which he had been taught it was not manful to acknowledge, surged over him in one great breaking wave which was drowning him. The fears of a lonely, unwanted child, of a lonely boy in the cadets, clumsy and unloved, tolerated only as Coryn’s chosen friend; all his life holding fear at bay lest he be thought, or think himself, less than a man. The fear and self-doubt lest Leonie should somehow look beneath his control, detect his forbidden passion and desire, the guilt and loss when she had sent him from Arilinn, telling him he was not strong enough for this work, feeding the knowledge of his own weakness, the fear he had smothered always. The repressed fear of all the years in the Guards, knowing himself no soldier, no swordsman. The dreadful guilt of fleeing, leaving his Guardsmen to face death in his place. . . .

All his life. All his life he had been afraid. Had there ever been so much as a day when he was not aware that he was a coward vainly pretending not to be afraid, pretending bravado so no one could see what a cringing worm he was, what a helpless sham, what a poor thing wearing the shape of a man? His life mattered so little to him, he would rather have faced death than expose himself as the craven, shameful weakling he was.

But now they had threatened the one thing he truly could not bear, would not bear, would not endure. It would be easier to die now, to put his knife through his throat, rather than live blinded, mutilated, a corpse walking in the pretense of life.

Slowly he became aware, through the fog of panic and dread, that Andrew was kneeling at his side, troubled and pale. He was pleading, but the words could not reach Damon through the deadly fog of fear.

How Andrew must despise him, he thought. He was so strong. . . .

Dismayed, Andrew watched Damon’s silent struggle. He tried to reason with him, but he knew he simply wasn’t getting through. Did Damon even
hear
him? Trying to break through to him, he sat beside Damon, bent to put an arm around him.

“Don’t, don’t,” he said, clumsily. “It’s all right, Damon, I’m here.” And then, feeling awkward and shy as he always did at any hint of the closeness between them, he said, almost in a whisper, “I won’t let them hurt you,
bredu
.”

Damon’s agony of frozen terror broke, overwhelming them both. He sobbed convulsively, the last remnants of self-control gone. Shaken, Andrew tried to withdraw, thinking that Damon wouldn’t want Andrew to see him like this, then he realized that was the last vestige of his Terran thinking. He
could not
withdraw from Damon’s pain, because it was his own pain, a threat to Damon a threat to himself. He must accept Damon’s weakness and fear as he accepted everything else about him, as he accepted his love and concern.

Yes, love. He knew now, holding Damon sobbing against him, Damon’s terror washing through him like an invading tidal wave, he loved Damon as he loved himself, as he loved Callista and Ellemir—he was a very part of them. From the very beginning,
Damon
had known and accepted this, but he, Andrew, had always held back, had told himself Damon was his friend, but that there were limits to friendship, places never to be touched.