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as was done in old days to the lady of Arilinn?”

Leonie’s face was filled with horror. She said, “The Gods witness it, child, and the holy things at Hali,you have not been neutered. But Callista, you were very young when you came to the Tower…”

Time seemed to flow backward as Leonie spoke and Callista felt herself dragged back to a time halfforgotten, her hair still curling about her cheeks instead of braided like a woman’s, felt again thefrightened reverence she had felt for Leonie before she had become mother, guide, teacher, priestess…

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“You succeeded as Keeper when six others had failed, my child. I thought you proud of that.”

“I was,” Callista murmured, bending her head.

“But you misled me, Callista, or I would never have let you go. You made me believe—though I hardly felt it possible—that already you were responding to your lover, that if you had not lain with him it would only be a little while. And so I thought perhaps I had not really succeeded, that perhaps your success as Keeper came because you
 
believed
yourself free of such things as tormented the other women. Then, when love came into your life and you found where your heart lay, then, as has happened with many Keepers, it was no longer possible to remain unawakened. And so I blessed you, and gave you back your oath. But if this is not true, Callista, if it is not true…”

Callista remembered Damon flinging the angry taunt at her:
 
Will you spend your life counting holes inlinen towels and making herbs for spice-bread, you who were Callista of Arilinn
 
? And Leonieheard it too, in her mind, an echo. “I said it before, my darling, now I offer it again. You can return to us. A little time, a little retraining, and you would be one of us again.”

She gestured, the air rippled, and Callista was clothed in the crimson of a Keeper, ritual ornaments ather brow and her throat.

“Come back to us, Callista. Come back.”

She said, faltering, “My husband—”

Leonie gestured that away as nothing. “Freemate marriage is nothing, Callista, a legal fiction, meaninglessuntil consummated. What binds you to this man?”

Callista started to say “Love,” and under Leonie’s scornful eyes could not get the word out. She said,

“A promise, Leonie.”

“Your promise to us came first. You were born to this work, Callista, it is your destiny. Do you remember, you consented to what was done to you? You were one of seven who came to us that year. Six young women failed, one after another. They were already grown, their nerve channels matured. They found the clearing of the channels and the conditioning against response too painful. And then there was Hilary Castamir, do you remember? She became Keeper, but every month, when her woman’s cycles came upon her, she went into convulsions, and the cost seemed too great. I was desperate, Callista, do you remember? I was doing the work of three Keepers, and my own health began to suffer. And for this reason I explained it to you, and you consented—”

“How could I consent?” Callista cried in despair. “I was a child! I did not even know what it was you

asked!”

“Yet you consented, to be trained when you were not yet full-grown and the channels still immature.

And so you adjusted easily to the training.”

“I remember,” Callista said, very low. She had been so proud, that she should succeed where so many failed, that she should be Callista of Arilinn, take her place with the great Keepers of legend. She remembered the exhilaration of seizing the direction of the great circles, of feeling the enormous stresses flow unhindered through her body, of seizing and directing the enormous energon rings…

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“And you were so young, I thought it unlikely you would ever change. It was pure chance. But, my

darling, this can all be yours again. You have only to say the word.”

“No!” Callista cried. “No! I have given back my oath—I do not want it!” And yet in a curious sense she

was not sure.

“Callista, I could have forced you to return. You were virgin still, and the law permitted me to require you to come back to Arilinn. The need is still great, and I am old. Yet it is as I said, it is too heavy a burden to be borne unconsenting. I released you, child, even though I am old and this means I must struggle to bear my burden till Janine is old enough and strong enough for this work. Does this sound as if I wished you ill, or lied when I blessed you and bade you live happily with your lover? I thought you already free. I thought that in giving back your oath I bowed to the inevitable, that you were already freed in fact and there was no reason to hold to the word and torture you by the attempt to make you return, to clear your channels and force you to try again.”

Callista whispered, “I hoped… I believed I was free…”

She could feel the horror in Leonie, like a tangible thing. “My poor child, what a risk to take! How couldyou care so much for some man, when you have all this before you? Callista, my darling, come back tous! We will heal all your hurts. Come back where you belong—”

“No!” It was a great cry of renunciation. As if it had reverberated into the other world, she could hear

Andrew’s voice, crying out her name in agony.

“Callista, Callista, come back to us…”

There was a brief, sharp shock, the shock of falling. Leonie was gone and pain arrowed through herbody. She found herself lying in her bed, Andrew’s face white as death above hers.

“I thought I’d lost you for good this time,” he whispered.

“It might be better… if you had,” she murmured in torment.

Leonie was right. Nothing binds me to him but words… and my destiny is to be Keeper
. For amoment, time swam out of focus and she saw herself sheltered behind a strange unfamiliar wall, not Arilinn. She seized the strands of force within her hands, cast the energon rings…

She reached out for Andrew, instinctly shrank away. Then, feeling his dismay, reached for him,disregarding the knifing, warning pain.

She said, “I will never leave you again,” and clung to his hands in desperation.

I can never go back. If there is no answer I will die, but I will never go back
.

Nothing binds me to Andrew but words. And yet… words… words have power
. She opened hereyes, looking directly into her husband’s, and repeated the words he had said at their wedding.

“Andrew. In good times and in bad… in wealth and in poverty… in sickness and health …while life shall

last,” she said, and closed her hands over his. “Andrew, my love, you must not weep.”

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Chapter Eleven

«^»

Damon felt he had never before been quite so frustrated as now. Leonie had acted for reasons whichseemed good to her at the time, and he could, a little, understand her motives.

There must be a Keeper at Arilinn. All during Leonie’s life, that had been the first consideration, nothingcould be allowed to supersede it. But there was no way he could explain this to Andrew.

“I’m sure if I were in your place, I should feel much the same,” he said. It was late at night Callista had dropped into an exhausted, restless sleep, but at least she was sleeping, undrugged, and Damon tried to find a shred of hope in that. “You cannot blame Leonie—”

“I can and I do!” Andrew interrupted, and Damon sighed.

“Try to understand. She did what she thought best, not only for the Towers but for Callista too, to save her the pain and suffering. She could hardly have been expected to foresee that Callista would want to marry—” He had started to say, “to marry an out-worlder.” He caught himself and stopped, but of course Andrew picked up the thought anyway. A dull red flush, half anger, half embarrassment, spread over the Terran’s face. He turned away from Damon, his face looking closed and stubborn, and Damon sighed, thinking that this had to be settled quickly or they would lose Andrew too.

The thought was bitter, almost intolerable. Since that first moment of fourfold meshing within the matrix,while Callista was still prisoner, Damon had found something he had thought irrevocably lost to him whenhe was sent from the Tower, the telepathic bond of the circle.

He had lost it when Leonie sent him from Arilinn, to resign himself to live without it, and then, beyondhope, he had found it again in his two girl cousins and this out-worlder… Now he would rather die thanlet the bond be broken again.

He said firmly, “Leonie did this, for whatever reasons, good or bad, and she must bear the responsibilityfor it. Callista was not strong enough to get the answer from her. But Leonie, and Leonie alone, may holdthe key to her trouble.”

Andrew looked out into the black, snow-shot darkness beyond the window. “That’s no help. How far is

Arilinn from here?”

“I don’t know how you would reckon the distance. We calculate it at ten days ride,” Damon said, “but I had no thought of going to her there. I shall do as Callista has done and seek her out in the overworld.” His narrowed lips sketched a bleak smile. “With
 
Dom
 
Esteban disabled and Domenic not yet grown, I am her nearest kinsman. I have right and responsibility to call Leonie to account.”

But who could call a Hastur to account, Hastur, and the Lady of Arilinn?

“I feel like going along with you and raising a little hell myself,” said Andrew.

“You wouldn’t know what to say to her. I promise you, Andrew, if there is an answer to be found, I’ll

find it.”

“And if there isn’t?”

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Damon turned away, not even wanting to think about that. Callista slept restlessly, tossing and moaningin her sleep. Ellemir was doing some needlework in an armchair, frowning over the stitches, her facebright in the oval of the lamp. Damon reached for her, feeling the quick response in her mind, a touch ofreassurance and love.
 
I need her with me, and I must go alone
 
.

“In the other room, Andrew, we would disturb them here. Keep watch for me,” he added, leading the

way into the other room, arranging himself half lying in a great chair, Andrew at his side. “Watch…”

He focused on the matrix, felt the brief, sharp shock of leaving his body, felt Andrew’s strength as hehovered briefly in the room… Then he was standing on the gray and formless plain, seeing with surprisethat behind him, in the overworld, there was a landmark, a dim structure, still shadowy. Of course, heand Dezi and Andrew had built it for shelter when they worked with the frostbitten men, a refuge, aprotection.
 
My own place. I have no other now
 
. Firmly he put that aside, searching in his bodilessformation for the glimmering beacon-light of Arilinn. Then, literally with the speed of thought, he wasthere, and Leonie before him, veiled.

She had been so beautiful… Again he was struck with the old love, the old longing, but he armoredhimself with thoughts of Ellemir. But why did Leonie veil herself from him?

“I knew when Callista came that you would not be far behind her, Damon. I know, of course, in a

general way, what you want. But how can I help you, Damon?”

“You know that as well as I. It is not for myself that I need help, but for Callista.”

Leonie said, “She has failed. I was willing to release her— she has had her chance—but now she knowsher only place is here. She must come back to us at Arilinn, Damon.”

“It is too late for that,” Damon said. “I think she will die first. And she is near it.” He heard his own voice tremble. “Are you saying you will see her dead before releasing her, Leonie? Is the grasp of Arilinn a death-grip, then?”

He could see the horror in Leonie, like a visible cloud, here where emotions were a solid reality. “Damon, no!” Her voice trembled. “When a Keeper is released it is because she can no longer hold thechannels to a Keeper’s pattern, that they are no longer clear for psi work. I thought this could not happenwith Callista, but she told me otherwise and I was willing to free her.”

“You knew you had made that impossible!” Damon accused.

“I… was not sure,” said Leonie, and the veils stirred in negation. “She said to me… she had touched him. She had… Damon, what was I to think? But now she knows otherwise. In the days when a girl was trained to Keeper before she was fullgrown, it was taken for granted that the choice was for life and there could be no return.”