none (5 page)

Leonie still spoke quietly, almost impassively, but Callista knew she was pleading. Callista said, wrungwith pity and pain, “No, it is not like that, Leonie. What has happened between us… It is quite different. I came to know him, and love him, before I ever saw his face in this world. But he is too honorable toask that I break an oath given, without leave.”

Leonie raised her eyes, and the steel-blue gaze was suddenly like a glare of lightning.

“Is it that he is too honorable,” she said harshly, “or is it that you are afraid?”

Callista felt a stab of inward pain, but she kept her voice steady. “I am not afraid.”

“Not for yourself perhaps—I acknowledge it! But for him, Callista? You can still return to Arilinn, without penalty, without harm. But if you do not return—do you want your lover’s blood on your head? You would not be the first Keeper to bring a man to death!”

Callista raised her head, opened her lips to protest, but Leonie gestured her to silence and went onmercilessly, “Have you been able even to touch his hand, even so much as that?”

Callista felt relief wash through her, a relief so great that it was like physical pain, draining her of strength. With a telepath’s whole total recall, the image in her memory returned, annihilating everything else that laybetween…

Andrew had carried her from the cave where the Great Cat lay dead, a blackened corpse beside theshattered matrix he had profaned. Andrew had wrapped her in his cloak and set her before him on hishorse. She felt it again, in complete recall, bow she had rested against him, her head on his breast, foldedclose into the curve of his arms, his heart beating beneath her cheek. Safe, warm, happy, wholly atpeace. For the first time since she had been made Keeper, she felt free, touching and being touched, lyingin his arms, content to be there. And all during that long ride to Armida she had lain there, folded insidehis cloak, happy with such a happiness as she had never guessed.

Page 15

As the image in her mind communicated itself to Leonie, the older woman’s face changed. At last shesaid, in a gentler voice than Callista had ever heard, “Is it so,
 
chiya
 
? Why, then, if Avarra is merciful toyou, it may be as you desire. I had not believed it possible.”

And Callista felt a strange disquiet. She had not, after all, been wholly truthful with Leonie. Yes, for thatlittle while she had been all afire with love, warm, unafraid, content— but then the old nervous constrainthad come back little by little, until now she found it difficult even to touch his fingertips. But surely thatwas only habit, the habit of years, she told herself. It would certainly be all right…

Leonie said gently, “Then, child, would it indeed make you so unhappy, to part from your lover?”

Callista found that her calm had deserted her. She said, and knew that her voice was breaking and thattears were flooding her eyes, “I would not want to live, Leonie.”

“So…” Leonie looked at her for a long moment, with a dreadful, remote sadness. “Does he understand

how hard it will be, child?”

“I think—I am sure I can make him understand,” Callista said, hesitating. “He promised to wait as long

as we must.”

Leonie sighed. After a moment she said, “Why, then, child… child, I do not want you to be unhappy. Even as I said, a Keeper’s oath is too heavy to be borne unconsenting.” Deliberately, a curiously formalgesture, she reached out her hands, palm up, to Callista; the younger woman laid her hands against theolder woman’s, palm against palm. Leonie drew a deep breath and said, “Be free of your oath, Callista Lanart. Before the Gods and before all men I declare you guiltless and unloosed from the bond, and I willso maintain.”

Their hands slowly fell apart. Callista was shaking in every limb. Leonie took her kerchief and dried Callista’s eyes. She said, “I pray you are both strong enough, then.” She seemed about to say somethingmore, but stopped herself. “Well, I suppose your father will have a good deal to say about this, mydarling, so let us go and listen to him say it.” She smiled and added, “And then, when he has said it all,we will tell him what is to be, whether he likes it or not. Don’t be afraid, my child; I am not afraid of Esteban Lanart, and you must not be either.”

Andrew waited in the greenhouse which stretched behind the main building at Armida. Alone, he lookedthrough the thick and wavy glass toward the outline of the faraway hills. It was hot here, with a thickscent of leaves and soil and plants. The light from the solar collectors made him narrow his eyes till he gotused to it. He walked through the rows of plants, damp from watering, feeling isolated and unfathomablyalone.

It struck him like this, now and again. Most of the time he had come to feel at home here, more at homethan he had ever felt anywhere else in the Empire; more at home than he had felt since, at eighteen, the Arizona horse ranch where he had spent his childhood had been sold for debts, and he had gone intospace as an Empire civil servant, moving from planet to planet at the will of the administrators andcomputers. And they had welcomed him here, after the first few days of strangeness. When they heardthat he knew something of horse-breaking and horse-training, a rare and highly paid field of expertise on Darkover, they had treated him with respect, as a highly trained and skilled professional. The horses from Armida were said to be the finest in the Domains, but they usually brought their trainers up from Dalereuth, far to the South.

Page 16

And so, in general, he had been happy here, in the weeks since he had come, as Callista’s pledgedhusband. His Terran birth was known only to Damon and
 
Dom
 
Esteban, to Callista and Ellemir; theothers simply thought him a stranger from the lowlands beyond Thendara. Beyond belief, he had foundhere a second home. The sun was huge and blood-tinged, the four moons that swung at night in thecuriously violet sky were strangely colored and bore names he did not yet know, but beyond all this, ithad become his home…

Home. And yet there were moments like this, moments when he felt his own cruel isolation; knew it wasonly Callista’s presence that made it home to him. Under the noonday glare of the greenhouse, he hadone of those moments. Lonely for what? There was nothing in the world he had been taught to call hisown, the dry and barren world of the Terran HQ, nothing he wanted. But would there be a life for himhere after all, or would Leonie snatch Callista back to the alien world of the Towers?

After a long time, he realized that Damon was standing behind him, not touching him—Andrew was usedto that now, among telepaths—but close enough that he could sense the older man as a comfortingpresence.

“Don’t worry this way, Andrew. Leonie’s not an ogre. She loves Callista. The bonds of a Tower circle

are the closest bonds we know. She’ll know what Callista really wants.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Andrew said through a dry throat. “Maybe Callista doesn’t know what she wants. Maybe she turned to me only because she was alone and afraid. I’m afraid of that old woman’s hold on her. The grip of the Tower—I’m afraid it’s too strong.”

Damon sighed. “Yet it can be broken. I broke it. It was hard—I can’t begin to tell you how hard—yet Ihave built another life at last. And if you should lose Callista that way, better now than when it’s too lateto return.”

“It’s already too late for me,” Andrew said, and Damon nodded, with a troubled smile.

“I don’t want to lose you either, my friend,” Damon said, but to himself he thought:
 
You are part of this new life I have built with so much pain. You, and Ellemir, and Callista. I cannot endure another amputation
 
. But Damon did not speak the words; he only sighed, standing beside Andrew. The silence in the greenhouse stretched so long that the red sun, angling from the zenith, lost strength in the greenhouse and Damon, sighing, went to adjust the solar collectors. Andrew flung at him, “How can you wait so calmly? What is that old woman
saying
to her?”

Yet Andrew had already learned that telepathic eavesdropping was considered one of the most shamefulcrimes possible in a caste of telepaths. He dared not even try to reach Callista that way. All hisfrustrations went into pacing the greenhouse floor.

“Easy, easy,” Damon remonstrated. “Callista loves you. She won’t let Leonie persuade her out of that.”

“I’m not even sure of that anymore,” Andrew said in desperation. “She won’t let me touch her, kiss

her—”

Damon said gently, “I thought I had explained that to you; she
 
cannot
 
. These are… reflexes. They godeeper than you could imagine. The habit of years cannot be undone in a few days, yet I can tell that sheis trying hard to overcome this… this deep conditioning. You know, do you not, that in a Tower, it wouldbe unthinkable for her to take your hand, as I saw her do, to let you kiss even her fingertips. Have you

Page 17

any idea what a struggle that must have been, against years of training, of conditioning?”

Against his will Damon was remembering a time in his life he had taught himself, painfully,
 
not
 
toremember: a lonely struggle, all the worse because it was not physical at all, to quench his own awarenessof Leonie, to control even his thoughts, so that she should never guess what he was concealing. He wouldnever have dared to imagine a finger-tip-touch such as Callista bestowed on Andrew in the hall, justbefore she went up to Leonie.

With relief, he saw that Ellemir had come into the greenhouse. She walked between the rows of greenplants, knelt before a heavily laden vine. She rose with satisfaction, saying, “If there is sunlight for anotherday, these will be ripened for the wedding.” Then her smile slid off as she saw Damon’s strained face, Andrew’s desperate quiet. She came and stood on tiptoe, putting her arms around Damon, sensing heneeded the comfort of her presence, her touch. She wished she could comfort Andrew too, as he said indistress, “Even if Leonie gives her consent, what of her father? Will
 
he
 
consent? I do not think he likesme much…”

“He likes you well,” Ellemir said, “but you must understand that he is a proud man. He thought me too good for Damon, but I am old enough to do my own will. If he had offered me to Aran Elhalyn, who warms the throne at Then-dara, Father would still have thought him not good enough. For Callista, no man ever born of woman would be good enough, not if he was rich as the Lord of Carthon, and born bastard to a god! And of course, even in these days, it is a great thing to have a child at Arilinn. Callista was to be Keeper at Arilinn, and it will go hard with him, to renounce that.” Andrew felt his heart sink. She said, “Don’t worry! I think it will be all right. Look, there is Callista now.”

The door at the top of the steps opened, and Callista came down into the greenhouse. She held out herhands toward them, blindly.

“I am not to return to Arilinn,” she said, “and Father has given his consent to our marriage—”

She broke down then, sobbing. Andrew held out his arms, but she turned away from him and leanedagainst the heavy glass wall, hiding her face, her slender shoulders heaving with the violence of herweeping.

Forgetting everything except her misery, Andrew reached for her; Damon touched him on the arm,shook his head firmly. Distressed, Andrew stood looking at the sobbing woman, unable to tolerate hermisery, unable to do anything about it, in helpless despair.

Ellemir went to her and turned her gently around. “Don’t lean on that old wall, love, when there are threeof us here with shoulders to cry on.” She dried her sister’s tears with her long apron. “Tell us all about it. Was Leonie very horrible to you?”

Callista shook her head, blinking her reddened eyes hard. “Oh, no, she couldn’t have been kinder…”

Ellemir said, with a skeptical headshake, “Then why are you howling like a banshee? Here we wait, inagony lest we be told you’ll be whisked away from us and back to the Tower, and then when you cometo us, saying all is well, and we are ready to rejoice with you, you start blubbering like a pregnant servingwench!”

“Don’t—” Callista cried. “Leonie… Leonie was kind, I truly think she understood. But Father—”

“Poor Callie,” said Damon gently. “I have felt the rough side of his tongue often enough!”

Page 18

Andrew heard the pet name with surprise and a sudden, sharp jealousy. It had never occurred to him,and the pretty abbreviation which Damon used so naturally seemed an intimacy which simply pointed uphis isolation. He reminded himself that Damon, after all, had been an intimate of the household since Callista was a small child.

Callista raised her eyes and said quietly, “Leonie freed me from my oath, Damon, and without question.” Damon sensed the anguished struggle behind her controlled calm, and thought,
If Andrew makes herunhappy, I think I will kill him
 
. Aloud he only said, “And your father, of course, was another story. Was he very terrible, then?”

For the first time, Callista smiled. “Very terrible, yes, but Leonie is even more stubborn. She said thatyou cannot bind a cloud in fetters. And Father turned on me. Oh, Andrew, he said dreadful things, thatyou had abused hospitality, that you had seduced me—”

“Damned old tyrant!” Damon said angrily. Andrew set his mouth in quiet wrath. “If he believes that—”