none (57 page)

The paintings in the chapel.
Dom
 
Esteban’s stories, and the indignation they had roused in Ferrika,sworn to the Free Amazons, who did not marry and regarded marriage as a form of slavery. The singularillusion shared by Andrew and Callista at the time of the winter blooming, only now Damon knew it had

not
been an illusion, despite the clearing of Callista’s channels immediately afterward. And Varzil’s

advice…

The key was the taboo. Not forbidden because of uncleanness and lewd associations, as he had alwaysthought, but forbidden because of sanctity.

Page 215

Ellemir said behind him, nervously, “It is time. What have you there, beloved?”

Guilty with the memory of the taboo which had lain heavy on him since childhood, he thrust the flowersquickly into the drawer, still wrapped in their cloth. The same instinct which had prompted him to dress inhis best for his accusers had prompted her too, he was glad to see. She wore a gown fit for a festival, cutlow across the breasts. Her hair, low on her neck, was a heavy, gleaming coil. Her pregnancy wasobvious even to the most casual observer by now, but she was not ungainly. She was beautiful, a proud Comyn lady.

When he met with Andrew and Callista in the outer room of the suite, he saw that the same instinct hadprompted them all. Andrew wore his holiday suit of dull grayed satin, but Callista outshone them all.

Damon had never thought the formal crimson of a Keeper became her. She was too pale, and thebrilliant color made her look washed out, a dimmer reflection of her beautiful twin. He had never thought Callista beautiful; it confused him that Andrew thought her so. She was too thin, too much like the stiffchild he had known in the Tower, with a virginal rigidity which made her, to Damon, unattractive. At Armida, she chose her clothes carelessly, thick old tartan skirts and heavy shawls. He sometimeswondered if she wore Ellemir’s castoffs because she had so little interest in her appearance.

But for the Council she had put on a dress of grayed blue, with a veil of the same color, only thinner,woven with metallic threads that gleamed and twinkled as she moved, and her hair blazed like flame. Shehad done something to her face to conceal the long red scratches there, and there was an abnormally highcolor in her cheeks. Was it vanity or defiance which had prompted her to paint her face this way, so thather paleness would not seem the pallor of fear? Star-sapphires gleamed at her throat and she wore hermatrix bared, blazing out from among them. As they paced into the Council chamber, Damon felt proudof them all, and willing to defy all of Darkover, if need be.

It was Lorill Hastur who called them all to order, saying, “Serious charges have been laid against you all.

Damon, are you willing to answer these charges?”

Looking up at the Hastur seats, and Leonie’s implacable face, Damon knew that to explain and justify,as he had intended, would be a waste of time. His only chance was to seize and hold the initiative.

“Would any hear me, if I did?”

Leonie said, “For what you have done there can be no explanation and no excuse. But we are inclinedto be lenient, if you will submit yourself to our judgment, you and these others whom you have led intorebellion against the most sacred laws of Comyn.” She was looking at Callista as if she had never seenher before.

Through the silence Andrew thought,
 
Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say before

judgment is passed on you
 
?

It was on him that Lorill first turned his eyes.

“Andrew Carr, your offense is serious, but you acted in ignorance of our laws. You shall be turned over to your own people, and if you have broken none of
their
 
laws, you shall go free, but we will ask that you be sent off our world at once.

“Callista Lanart, you have merited a sentence equivalent to Damon’s. But Leonie has interceded for you.

Page 216

Your intended marriage, being unconsummated”—how, Damon wondered, had Lorill knownthat?—“has no force in law. We declare it null and void. You shall return to Arilinn, with Leonie makingherself personally responsible for your good behavior.

“Damon Ridenow, for your own offenses, and the offenses of these whom you have led into disobedience, you merit death or mutilation under the old laws. You are here offered a choice. You may surrender your matrix at once, with a Keeper to safeguard your life and reason, so that you may live out your life as regent of Alton, and guardian of the Alton heir your wife bears. If you refuse this, it will be taken from you by force. Should you survive, the
 
laran
 
centers of your brain will be burned away, to prevent any further abuse.”

Ellemir gave a low cry of dismay. Lorill looked at her with something like compassion, and said, “Ellemir Lanart, as for you, being misled by your husband, we impose no sentence save this: that you shall ceaseto meddle in matters outside the sphere of women, and turn your thoughts to your only duty at this time,to safeguard your coming child, who is heir to Alton. Since your father lies ill and your only survivingbrother is a minor child, and your husband under our sentence, we place you under wardship of Lord Serrais, and you shall return to Serrais to bear your child. Meanwhile, I have chosen three respectablematrons of Comyn to care for you until sentence has been carried out on your husband: Lady Rohana Ardais, Jerana, Princess of Elhalyn, and my own son’s wife, Lady Cassilda Hastur. Allow them now totake you from this chamber, Lady Ellemir. What is to come may prove disturbing, even dangerous for awoman in your condition.”

Lady Cassilda, a pretty, dark-haired woman, about Ellemir’s age, and herself heavily pregnant, held outher hand to Ellemir. “Come with me, my dear.”

Ellemir looked at Cassilda Hastur and back at Damon. “May I speak, Lord Hastur?”

Lorill nodded.

Ellemir’s voice sounded as light and childish as ever, but determined. “I thank the matrons for their kindconcern, but I decline their good offices. I will stay with my husband.”

“My dear,” Cassilda Hastur said, “your loyalty does you credit. But you must think of your child.”

“I
 
am
 
thinking of my child,” Ellemir said, “of all our children, Cassilda, yours and mine, and the life we

want for them. Have any of you bothered to think, really
 
think
 
about what Damon is doing?”

Damon, listening incredulously—he had poured his heart out to her, the night he healed the frostbittenmen, but he had not believed she really understood—heard her say:

“You know and I know how hard it is to find telepaths in these days, for the Towers. Even those who have
 
laran
 
are reluctant to give up their lives and live behind walls, and who can blame them? I would not want to do it myself. I want to live at Armida and have children to live there after me. And I do not want to see
 
their
 
lives torn by that terrible choice, either, to know that they must shirk one or the other duty to their Domain. Bu there is so much for telepaths to do, and no one is doing it. They need not all be done behind the walls of a Tower, indeed some of them
 
cannot
 
be done there. But because so many people believe that is the only way to use
 
laran
 
, the work is simply not being done at all, and the people of the Domains are suffering because it is not done. Damon has found a way to make it available to everyone.
 
Laran
 
need not be a kind of… of mysterious sorcery, hidden inside the Towers. If I, who am a woman, and uneducated, and the lesser of twins, can be taught to use it, as I have been, a little, then there must be many, many, who could do it. And—”

Page 217

Margwenn Elhalyn rose in her place. She was very pale. “Must we sit and listen to this… thisblasphemy? Must we who have given our lives to the Towers sit here and hear our choice blasphemedby this… this ignorant woman who should be home by her fireside making baby clothes, not standingbefore us prattling like a silly child of things she cannot understand!”

“Wait,” said Rohana Ardais, “wait, Margwenn. I too was Tower-trained, and the choice was forced on me, to give up this work I loved, to marry and give sons to my husband’s clan. There is some wisdom in what Lady Ellemir says. Let us hear what she is saying to us, without interrupting.”

But Rohana was silenced by outcry. Lorill Hastur called them to order, and Damon remembered with asinking heart that Lorill too had been trained in Dalereuth Tower, and had been forced to renounce itwhen he inherited the position as Council Regent. “You have no Council voice, Lady Ellemir. You maychoose to go with the matrons we have chosen to care for you, or you may remain here. You have noother options.”

She clung to Damon’s arm. “I stay with my husband.”

“Sir,” Cassilda Hastur said, troubled, “Has she the right to choose, when this choice may endanger the child she bears? She has miscarried once, and this child is heir to Alton. Is not the child’s safety more important than her sentimental wish to stay with Damon?”

“In the name of all the Gods, Cassilda!” Rohana protested. “She is not a child! She understands what is at stake here! Do you think she is a dairy animal, that by leading her out of sight of her child’s father you can make her indifferent to his fate? Sit down and let her alone!”

Rebuked, the young Lady Hastur took her seat.

“Damon Ridenow, choose. Will you surrender your matrix without protest, or must it be taken from

you?”

Damon glanced at Ellemir, holding his arm; at Callistra, blazing jeweled defiance; at Andrew, one stepbehind him. He said to them, not to Lorill, “May I speak, then, for you all? Callista, is it your will to returnto Arilinn in Leonie’s care?”

Leonie was looking at Callista with a hungry eagerness, and Damon suddenly understood.

Leonie had never allowed herself to love. But Callista, like herself a pledged virgin lifelong, Callista shemight love safely, with all the repressed hunger of her starved emotions. It was no wonder that she couldnot let Callista go, that she had made it impossible for Callista to leave the Tower. Her love for the girlhad not the faintest hint of sexuality, but it was love, nevertheless, as real as his own hopeless love for Leonie.

Callista was silent, and Damon wondered which would be her choice. Did Arilinn seem more attractiveto her than what they offered, less troubling, less painful? And then he knew that Callista’s silence wasonly compassion, reluctance to fling Leonie’s offered love and protection back into her face. Unwillingness to hurt the woman who had cherished and protected the lonely child in the Tower. Whenshe spoke there were tears in her eyes.

“I have given back my oath. I will not receive it again. I too will remain with my husband.”

Page 218

Now, indeed, they stood as one! Damon’s voice rang defiant:

“Hear me then!” He drew Ellemir close, fiercely protective. “For my wife, I thank the noble ladies of Comyn, but none but I shall care for her while I live. As for Andrew, he is my sworn man, and you yourself, Lorill Hastur, during the building of the spaceport, judged that Terrans might enter into private agreements with Darkovans, and the reverse, and these shall be treated like any other contract under Domain law. I have taken the oath of
bredin
 
with Andrew, and I shall be personally responsible for his honor as for my own. This means that as regent of Alton I shall hold his marriage to Callista to be as valid as my own. And as for myself,” and now he faced Leonie and flung the words, deliberately, straight at her, “I am Keeper, and responsible only to my own conscience.”

“You? Keeper?” Her voice was scornful. “You, Damon?”

“You yourself guided me in Timesearch, and it was Varzil the Good who named me
 
tenerézu
 
.” With

deliberation, he used the archaic male form of the word.

Lorill said, “You cannot call to witness a man who has been dead for hundreds of years.”

“You have called me to judgment on laws which have stood since those days,” Damon said, “and the structure I have built in the overworld stands for all to witness who have entry there. And this was the law and the test in those days. I am Keeper. I have established my Tower. I will abide the challenge.”

Leonie’s face paled. “That law has been dead since the Ages of Chaos.”

You live by laws which should have been dead long ago too
. He did not speak the words aloud, but Leonie heard them, and so did everyone with
 
laran
 
in the Crystal Chamber. She said, as white as a skull, “So be it. You have invoked the old test of a Keeper’s right and responsibility. You and Callista arerenegades of Arilinn, so this shall be Arilinn’s affair, to answer the challenge. It will be a duel, Damon,and you know the penalty if you fail. Not only you and Callista, but your consorts—if any of you survivethe ordeal, which is unlikely—shall be stripped of your matrices and the
 
laran
 
centers burned away, sothat you may live as an example and a warning to anyone who would stretch out his hand, unfit, for a Keeper’s place and power.”