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“If you do not get drunk, you might be overeager and mishandle your bride.” Damn Domenic and his jokes! Fortunately none of them except Damon, who understood the problem, knew what he was going through.

If they did know, they’d probably think it was funny! Andrew considered. Just one more dirty joke for awedding!

Abruptly he felt distress, dismay… Callista! Callista in trouble somewhere! He hurried in her direction,letting his own telepathic sensitivity guide him.

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He found her at one end of the hall, pinned against the wall by Dezi, who had one arm at either side ofher so she could not dodge away and escape. He was leaning forward as if to kiss her. She twisted toone side and then the other, trying to avoid his lips, imploring him. “Don’t, Dezi, I do not want to defendmyself against a kinsman—”

“We are not now in the Tower,
 
domna
 
. Come now, one real kiss…”

Andrew grabbed the boy by one shoulder and plucked him away, lifting him clear of the floor.

“Damn it, leave her alone!”

Dezi looked sullen. “It was but a jest between kinfolk.”

“A jest Callista seemed not to share,” Andrew said. “Get lost! Or I’ll—”

“You’ll
 
what
 
?” Dezisneered. “Challenge me to a duel?”

Andrew looked down at the slight youngster, flushed, angry, obviously drunk. Abruptly his anger meltedaway. There was something to be said, he thought, for the Terran custom of a legal age for drinking. “Challenge, hell,” he said laughing, looking down at the angry boy. “I’ll put you over my knee and spankyou for the nasty little boy you are. Now go away and sober up and stop bothering the grown-ups!”

Dezi gave Andrew a look like murder, but he went, and Andrew realized that for the first time since thedeclaration he was alone with Callista.

“What the hell was that all about?”

She was as crimson as her light draperies, but she tried to make a joke of it. “Oh, he said that now I was Keeper no more, I was free at last to give way to the irresistible passion he is sure he must arouse in anyfemale breast.”

“I should have mopped up the floor with him,” Andrew said.

She shook her head. “Oh, no, I think he’s simply drunk a bit more than he can carry. And he is akinsman, after all. It’s not unlikely he’s my father’s son.”

Andrew had, after all, half guessed this when he saw Domenic and Dezi side by side. “But would he somisuse a girl he believes to be his sister?”

“Half-sister,” Callista answered, “and in the hills, half-brothers and half-sisters can lie together if they will, or even marry, though it is considered luckier for them to bear no children so close akin. And horseplay and dirty jokes are expected at a wedding, so what he did was only rude, not shocking. I am too sensitive, and after all he is very young.”

She still looked shaken and distressed, and Andrew still thought he should have wiped the floor up withthe boy; then, tardily, he wondered if he had been too hard on Dezi. Dezi wasn’t the first kid or the lastto drink more than he could handle and make himself obnoxious.

He said gently, looking at her tired, strained face, “This will be over soon, love.”

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“I know.” She hesitated. “You do know… the custom… ?”

“Damon told me,” he said wryly. “I gather they put us to bed together, with plenty of rough jokes.”

She nodded, coloring. “It is supposed to encourage the begetting of children, and in this part of theworld that is very important to a young family, as you can imagine. So we, must simply… make the bestof it.” She glanced at him, crimson, and said, “I am sorry. I know this will make it worse—”

He shook his head. “Actually, I don’t think so,” he said, smiling. “If anything, that kind of thing wouldtend to put me off anyhow.” He saw the flicker of guilt again in her face, and ached to comfort andreassure her.

“Look,” he said gently, “think of it this way: let them have their fun, but we can do as we please, and that

will be our secret, as it should be. In our own time. So we can sit back and ignore their nonsense.”

She sighed and smiled at him. She said softly, “If you really think of it that way…”

“I do, love.”

“I’m so glad,” she said in a whisper. “Look, Ellemir is being pulled away by all the girls.” She added quickly, at his look of dismay, “No, they’re not hurting her, it’s only the custom that a bride should struggle and fight a little. It comes from the days when girls were married off without consent, but it’s only a joke now. See, Father’s body-servants have taken my father away, and Leonie will withdraw too, so the young folk can make all the noise they like.”

But Leonie was not withdrawing; she came and stood beside them, still and somber in her crimsondraperies.

“Callista, child, do you want me to stay? Perhaps in my presence the jokes will be a little more

restrained and seemly.”

Andrew could sense how much Callista longed for this, but she smiled and touched Leonie’s hand, thefeather-touch customary among telepaths. “I thank you, kinswoman. But I… I must not start by cheatingeveryone of their fun. No bride ever died of embarrassment, and I am sure I shall not be the first.” And Andrew, looking at her, bravely steeled to endure without complaint whatever obscene horseplay theyhad created for a Keeper who gave up her ritual virginity, remembered the gallant girl who had madebrave little jokes, even when she was a prisoner, alone and terrified in the caves of Corresanti.

It is for this that I love her so
, he told himself.

Leonie said, very gently, “As you will, then, darling. Take my blessing.” She bowed gravely to them bothand went away.

As if her withdrawal had loosed the floodgates, a tide of young men and girls came surging up to them infull flood.

“Callista, Ann’dra, you waste time here, the night is wearing away. Have you nothing better to do this

night than talk?”

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He saw Damon being pulled along by Dezi; Domenic grasped his own hand and he was drawn awayfrom Callista, saw the flood of young girls surge up around her and conceal her from him. Someoneshouted out, “We’ll make sure she’s ready for you, Ann’dra, so you needn’t defile these holy robes ofhers!”

“Come along, both of you,” Domenic cried, in high good spirits. “These fellows would rather stay here

drinking all night, I am sure, but now they must do their duty, a bride must not be kept waiting.”

He and Damon were hauled up the stairs, shoved into the living room of the suite they had prepared thismorning. “Don’t get them mixed up now,” the Guardsman Caradoc called out drunkenly. “When thebrides are twins, how is a mere husband, and drunk at that, to know if he lies in the arms of the rightwoman?”

“What difference does it make?” asked a strange young man. “That is for them to settle among themselves, is it not? And when the lamp is out, one woman is like another. If they are confused between left hand and right, what difference does it make?”

“We must start with Damon. He has lost so much time that he must make haste to do his duty to his clan,” Domenic said gaily. Damon was quickly stripped of his clothing and wrapped in a long robe. The bedroom door was opened with ceremony and Andrew could see Ellemir, thinly gowned in spider-silk, her copper hair unbound and streaming over her breasts. She was red-faced, giggling uncontrollably, but Andrew sensed that it was on the ragged edge of hysterical sobbing. It was enough, he thought. It was too much. Everyone should get out and leave them alone.

“Damon,” Domenic said solemnly, “I have made you a gift.”

Andrew saw with relief that Damon was just drunk enough to be good-natured. “That is kind of you,brother-in-law. What is your gift?”

“I have made you a calendar, marked with the days and the moons. If you do your duty this night, see, I

have marked in crimson the date when your first son will be born!”

Damon was red with stifled laughter. Andrew could see that he would rather have thrown it at Domenic’s head, but he accepted it, let them ceremoniously help him into bed at Ellemir’s side. Domenicsaid something to Ellemir which made her duck down and smother her face in the sheets, then conductedthe watchers to the door, with mock solemnity.

“And now, so that we may pass our night in peaceful drinking, undisturbed by whatever goes on beyond these doors, I have another gift for the happy couple. I shall set up a telepathic damper just inside your doors—”

Damon sat up in bed and flung a pillow at them, finally losing patience. “Enough is enough,” he shouted.

“Get the hell out of here and leave us in peace!”

As if that had been what they were waiting for—perhaps it was—the whole crowd of men and womenbegan to withdraw quickly toward the doors. “Really,” Domenic rebuked, drawing his face intoreproving lines, “can you not contain your impatience a little longer, Damon? My poor little sister, at themercy of such unseemly haste!” But he closed the door, and behind him Andrew heard Damon come tothe door and bolt it. At least there was a limit to the jokes considered proper, and Damon and Ellemirwere alone.

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But now it was his turn. There was, he thought grimly, only one good thing about all this. By the time thedrunken men were finished with their horseplay, he was going to be too tired—and too damn mad—foranything except sleep.

They thrust him into the room where Callista waited, surrounded by the young girls, friends of Ellemir,their own servants, young noblewomen from the surrounding countryside. They had taken away hersomber crimson draperies, put her into a thin gown like Ellemir’s, her hair unbraided, streaming over herbare shoulders. She looked quickly up at him, and somehow it seemed to Andrew for a moment that shelooked much younger than Ellemir: young, lost, and vulnerable.

He sensed that she was fighting to keep back tears. Shyness and reluctance were part of the game, but ifshe really broke down and cried, he knew, they would be ashamed and resentful of her for spoiling theirfun. They would despise her for her inability to join in the game.

Children could be cruel, he told himself, and so many of these girls were only children. Young as shelooked, Callista was a woman. She was, perhaps, never a child; she had her childhood stolen by the Tower… He steeled himself against whatever was coming, knowing that however rough it was for him, itwas worse for Callista.

How soon can I get them out of here
, he wondered,
 
before she breaks down and cries, and hatesherself for it? Why should she have to endure this nonsense
 
?

Domenic took him firmly by the shoulders and turned him around, facing away from Callista.

“Pay attention,” he admonished. “We have not finished with you yet, and the women have not yet made Callista ready for you. Can you not wait a few minutes?” And Andrew let Domenic do as he would, preparing to give courteous attention to the jokes be did not understand. But he thought longingly of the time when he and Callista would be alone.

Or would that be worse? Well, whether or not there was this to get through, somehow, first. He let

Domenic and the men lead him into the adjoining room.

Chapter Six

«^»

There were times when it seemed to Andrew that Damon’s contentment was a visible thing, somethingwhich could be seen and measured. At such times, as the days lengthened and winter came on, in the Kilghard Hills, Andrew could not help feeling a bitter envy. Not that he grudged Damon a moment of hishappiness; it was only that he longed to share it.

Ellemir too looked radiant. It made him cringe, sometimes, to think that the servants at Armida,strangers,
 
Dom
 
Esteban himself, noticed this difference and blamed him, that forty days after theirmarriage Ellemir looked so joyous, while day by day Callista seemed to grow more pale and grave, moreconstrained and sorrowful.

It was not that Andrew was unhappy. Frustrated, yes, for it was sometimes nerve-racking to be so closeto Callista—to endure the good-natured jokes and raillery which were the lot, he supposed, of everynewly married man in the galaxy—and to be separated from her by an invisible line he could not cross.

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And yet, if they had come to know one another by any ordinary route, there would have been a longtime of waiting. He reminded himself that they had married when he had known her less than forty days. And this way he could be with her a great deal, coming to know the outward girl, Callista, as well as hehad come to know her inwardly, in mind and spirit, when she had been in the hands of the catmen,imprisoned in darkness within the caves of Corresanti. Then, when for some strange reason she couldreach no other mind on Darkover save Andrew Carr’s, their minds had touched, so deeply that years ofliving together could have created no closer bond. Before he had ever laid eyes on her in the flesh he hadloved her, loved her for her courage in the face of terror, for what they had endured together.