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Ellemir struggled for composure. She said, “I have had a room made ready for you, my lady, andanother for your companion. Dezi will see to the housing of your escort, won’t you, cousin?” Damonnoted that Ellemir spoke to Dezi in the familiar mode, that of family intimacy; he had also noticed that Callista did not. Damon said, “We’ll see to it, Ellemir,” and went with Dezi to make the arrangements.

Ellemir led Leonie and her lady-companion (without whom it would have been scandalous for a womanof Comyn blood to travel so far) up the stairs and through the wide halls of the ancient house. Leonieasked, “Do you manage this great estate all alone, child?”

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“Only in Council season, when I am alone here,” Ellemir said, “and our
 
coridom
 
is old and well

experienced.”

“But you have no responsible woman, no kinswoman nor companion? You are too young to bear such a

weight alone, Ellemir!”

“My father has not complained,” Ellemir said. “I have kept house for him since my older sister was

married; I was fifteen then.” She spoke with pride, and Leonie smiled.

“I was not accusing you of any lack of competence, little cousin. I meant only that you must be very lonely. If Callista does not stay with you, I think you must have some kinswoman or friend come and live here for a time. You are overburdened already, now that your father needs so much care, and how would you manage if Damon made you pregnant at once?”

Ellemir colored faintly and said, “I had not thought of that…”

“Well, a bride must think of that, soon or late,” Leonie said. “Perhaps one of Damon’s sisters could

come to bear you company—Child, is
 
this
 
my room? I am not used to such luxury!”

“It was my mother’s suite,” Ellemir said. “There is another room there where your companion can sleep, but I hope you brought your own maidservant, for Callista and I have none to send you. Old Bethiah, who was our nurse when we were little, was killed in the raid when Callista was kidnapped, and we have been too heartsore to put anyone else in her place as yet. There are only kitchen-women and the like on the estate now.”

“I keep no maidservant,” Leonie said. “In the Tower, the last thing we wish for is the presence of

outsiders near to us, as I am sure Damon must have told you.”

“No, he never speaks of his time in the Tower,” Ellemir answered, and Leonie said, “Well, it is true, we keep no human servants, even if the price is having to look after ourselves. So I will manage very well, child.” She touched the girl’s cheek lightly, a feather-touch in dismissal, and Ellemir went down the stairs, thinking, in surprise,
 
She’s kind: I like her
 
! But many things Leonie had said troubled her. She was beginning to be aware that there were things about Damon she did not know. She had taken it for granted that Callista did not want servants about, and humored her twin sister, but now she realized that Damon’s years in the Tower, those years of which he never spoke—and she had learned that it made him unhappy if she asked about them—would always lie like a barricade between her and Damon.

And Leonie had said, “If Callista does not stay with you.” Was there a question? Could Callista actuallybe sent back to Arilinn, persuaded against her will that her duty lay there? Or—Ellemir shivered—was itpossible that Leonie would refuse to release Callista from the Tower, that Callista would be forced tocarry through her threat, desert Armida and even Darkover, and run away with Andrew to the worlds ofthe Terrans?

Ellemir wished she had even a flash of the occasional precognition which turned up, now and again, inthose of Alton blood, but the future was blank and closed to her. Try as she would to throw her mindforward, she could see nothing but a disquieting picture of Andrew, his face covered with his hands, bent,weeping, his whole body shaken with unendurable grief. Slowly, worried now, she turned toward thekitchen, seeing forgetfulness among her neglected pastries.

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A few minutes later, the lady-companion—a dim and colorless woman named Lauria—came to say,deferentially, that the Lady of Arilinn wished to speak alone with
 
Domna
 
Callista. Reluctantly Callistarose, stretching her fingertips to Andrew. Her eyes were frightened, and he said in a grim undertone, “You don’t have to face her alone if you don’t want to. I won’t have that old woman frightening you! Shall I come and speak my mind to her?”

Callista moved toward the staircase. Outside the room, in the hall, she turned back to him and said, “No, Andrew, I must face this alone. You cannot help me now.” Andrew wished he could take her in hisarms and comfort her. She seemed so small, so fragile, so lost and frightened. But Andrew had learned,painfully and with frustration, that Callista was not to be comforted like that, that he could not even touchher without arousing a whole complex of reactions he did not yet understand, but which seemed to terrify Callista. So he said gently, “Have it your way, love. But don’t let her scare you. Remember, I love you. And if they won’t let us marry here, there’s a whole big world outside Armida. And a hell of a lot ofother worlds in the galaxy beside this one, in case you’d forgotten that.”

She looked up at him and smiled. Sometimes she thought that if she had first seen him in the ordinaryway, rather than as she had come to know him, through his mind-link with hers in the matrix, he wouldnever have seemed handsome to her. She might even have thought him ill-favored. He was a big, broadman, fair-haired as a Dry-Towner, tall, untidy, awkward, and yet, beyond this, how dear he had becometo her, how safe she felt in his presence. She wished, with a literal ache, that she could throw herself intohis arms, hold herself to him as Ellemir did so freely with Damon, but the old fear held her motionless. Butshe laid her fingertips, a rare gesture, lightly across his lips. He kissed them and she smiled. She saidsoftly, “And I love you, Andrew. In case you’ve forgotten
 
that
 
,” and went away up the stairs to where Leonie was waiting for her.

Chapter Three

«^»

The two Keepers of Arilinn, the young and the old, faced one another. Callista stood considering Leonie’s appearance: never beautiful, perhaps, except for the lovely eyes, but with serene, regularfeatures; her body flat and spare, sexless as any
 
emmasca;
 
the face pale and impassive as if carved inmarble. Callista felt a faint shiver of horror as she knew that the habit of years, the discipline which hadgone bone-deep, was smoothing away her own expression, turning her cold, remote, as withdrawn as Leonie. It seemed that the face of the old Keeper was a mirror of her own across the many dead yearswhich lay ahead.
 
In half a century I will look exactly like her… But no! No! I will not, I will not
 
!

Like all Keepers, she had learned to barricade her own thoughts. She knew, with an odd clairvoyance,that Leonie was expecting her to break down and weep, to beg and plead like an hysterical girl, but itwas Leonie herself who had armored her, years ago, with this icy calm, this absolute control. She was Keeper, Arilinn-trained; she would not show herself unfit. She laid her hands calmly in her lap andwaited, and finally it was Leonie who had to speak first.

“There was a day,” she said, “when a man who sought to seduce a Keeper would have been torn on

hooks, Callista.”

“That day is centuries past,” Callista replied in a voice as passionless as Leonie’s own, “nor did Andrew

seek to seduce me; he has offered honorable marriage.”

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Leonie gave a slight shrug. “It is all one,” she said. She was silent for a long time, the silence stretchinginto minutes, and again Callista felt that Leonie was willing her to lose control, to plead with her. But Callista waited, motionless, and it was again Leonie who had to break the silence.

“Is this, then, how you keep your oath, Callista of Arilinn?”

For a moment Callista felt pain clutch at her throat. The title was used only for a Keeper, the title shehad won at such terrible cost! And Leonie looked so old, so sad, so weary!

Leonie is old
, she told herself.
 
She wishes to lay aside her burden, give it into my hands. I wastraind so carefully, since I was a child. Leonie has worked and waited so patiently for the day Icould step into the place she prepared for me. What will she do now
 
?

Then, instead of pain, anger came, anger at Leonie, for playing so on her emotions. Her voice was calm.

“For nine years, Leonie, I have borne the weight of the Keeper’s oath. I am not the first to ask leave to

lay it down, nor will I be the last to do so.”

“When I was made Keeper, Callista, it was taken for granted that it was a lifetime decision. I have borne

my oath lifelong. I had hoped you would be willing to do no less.”

Callista wanted to weep, to cry out
I cannot
 
, to plead with Leonie. She thought, with a forlorndetachment, that it would be better if she could. Leonie would be readier to believe her unfit, to free her. But she had been taught pride, had fought for it and armored herself with it, and she could not nowsurrender it.

“I was never told, Leonie, that I must give my oath lifelong. It was you who told me that it is too heavy a

burden to be borne unconsenting.”

With stony patience, Leonie said, “That is true. Yet I had believed you stronger. Well, then, tell meabout it. Have you lain with your lover?” The word was scornful; it was the same she had used before,meaning “promised husband,” but this time Leonie used the derogatory inflection which gave it, instead,the implication of “paramour,” and Callista had to stop and steady her voice before she could summon upcalm enough to speak quietly.

“No. I have not yet been given back my oath, and he is too honorable to seek it. I asked leave to marry,

not absolution for betrayal, Leonie.”

“Truly?” Leonie said, disbelief in the word, and her cold face scornful. “Having resolved to break your

oath, I wonder you waited for my word!”

It took all of Callista’s self-control, this time, to keep from bursting into angry defense of herself, of Andrew—then she realized that Leonie was baiting her, testing to see if she had indeed lost control of hercarefully disciplined emotions. This game she knew from her earliest days at Arilinn, and relief at thememory made her want to laugh. Laughter would have been as unthinkable as tears in this solemnconfrontation, but there was merriment in her voice, and she knew Leonie was aware of it, as she saidwith calm amusement, “We keep a midwife at Armida, Leonie; send for her, if you wish, and let hercertify me virgin.”

It was Leonie who lowered her eyes, saying at last, “That will not be necessary, child. But I came hereprepared to face, if need be, the knowledge that you had been raped.”

Page 14

“In the hands of nonhumans? No, I suffered fear, cold, imprisonment, hunger, abuse, but rape I was

spared.”

“It would not really have mattered, you know,” Leonie said, and her voice was very gentle. “Of course, a Keeper need not, in general, have to fear rape very much. You know as well as I that any man who lays hands on a Keeper trained as you have been trained takes his life in his hands. Yet rape is possible. Some women have been overpowered by sheer might, and some fear at the last moment to invoke that strength to protect themselves. So it was this, among other things, I came to tell you: even if you had truly been raped, you still had a choice, my child. It is not the physical act which makes the difference, you know.” Callista had
not
 
known, and was vaguely surprised.

Leonie went on, dispassionately: “If you had been taken unwillingly, wholly without consent, it wouldmake no difference that could not be quickly overcome by a little time in seclusion, for the healing of yourfears and hurts. But even if it was not a question of rape, if you had lain with your rescuer afterward, ingratitude or kindness, without any genuine involvement—as you might well have done—even that neednot be irrevocable. A time of seclusion, of retraining, and you could be as before, unchanged, unharmed,still free to be Keeper. This is not widely known; we keep it secret, for obvious reasons. But you stillhave a choice, child. I do not want you to think that you are cast out from the Tower for all time becauseof something which happened without your will.”