Authors: Marion Z. Bradley
"She said she was in the dark," Andrew said, "and that she did not know
precisely where she was, that if she knew precisely, she could have left the
place somehow. I didn't quite understand that. She said that since she did not
know exactly, her body-that's how she seemed to differentiate it-had to stay
where they had confined it. And she cursed them."
"Did she say who they were?" Damon asked.
"What she said made no sense to me," Andrew answered. "She said that they were
not men."
"Did she tell you how she knew that? Did she say that she had seen them?" Damon
asked eagerly.
"No," Andrew answered. "She said that she had not seen them, that she suspected
they had kept her in darkness so that she should not see them. But she suspected
they were not men because-" Again he hesitated a little, trying to find a way to
phrase it, and then thought, Oh hell, if Callista didn't mind talking about it
to a stranger it can't be anything to be so embarrassed about. "She said she
knew they were not men because none of them had attempted to rape her. She took
it for granted that any man would have done just that, which says something
funny about the men of your planet!"
Damon said, "We knew already that whoever would stoop to kidnapping a leronis, a
Keeper, would be no friend to the people of the Domains. I had surmised that she
was stolen, not as any woman might be kidnapped, for revenge, or slavery, but
quite specifically because she was a trained telepath. They could not have hoped
that she could be forced to use her Keeper's powers against her own people. But
if she was kept a prisoner, and her starstone taken from her, she could not be
used against them, either. And kidnappers, if they were men, would know that a
Keeper is always a virgin; that there was a simpler, less dangerous way to make
a Keeper powerless to use her skills against them. A Keeper in the hands of her
people's enemies would not long remain a virgin."
Carr shuddered in revulsion. What a hell of a world, where this kind of war
against women is taken for granted!
Once again Damon followed his thoughts and said, with a little wry twist of his
mouth, "Oh, it's neither that easy nor that one-sided, Andrew. The man who tries
to ravish a leronis has no easy or innocent victim, but takes his very life, not
to mention his sanity, in his hands. Callista is an Alton, and if she strikes
with her full Gift, she can paralyze, if not kill. It can be done, it has been
done, but it's a more equal battle than you would imagine. No sane man lays
hands on a Comyn sorceress except at her own desire. But to anyone who has good
reason to fear that a Keeper's powers will be used against him, it may seem
worth the danger."
"But," Ellemir said, "she has not been touched, you say."
"She said not."
"Then," Damon said, "I think my first surmise is true. Callista is in the hands
of the cat-men, and now we know why. I guessed earlier, when I spoke to Reidel,
that somewhere in the darkening lands, someone or something is experimenting
with unlicensed and forbidden matrix stones, trying to work with telepath
powers; to harness these forces outside the wardenship of the Comyn and the
Seven Domains. Men have done this before. But as far as I know, this is the
first time any nonhuman race has tried to do so."
Suddenly Damon shuddered, as if with cold or fear. He reached blindly for
Ellemir's hand, as if to reassure himself of something solid and warm.
As if, thought Andrew, he were in darkness and fear like Callista's.
"And they have done it! They have made the darkening lands uninhabitable to
mankind! They can come on us with invisible weapons, and even Leonie could not
find Callista when they had hidden her under their darkness! And they are
strong, Zandru seize them with scorpions! They are strong. I am Tower-trained,
but they flung me out of their level, into a storm I could not overcome. They
mastered me as if I were a child! Gods! Gods! Are we helpless against them,
then? Is it hopeless?"
He buried his face in his hands, shuddering. Andrew looked at him in surprise
and consternation. Then, slowly, he spoke, reaching out to lay his hand on
Damon's shoulder.
"Don't do that," he said. "That doesn't help anybody. Look, you just pointed out
that Callista still has her powers, whatever they are. And she can reach me.
Maybe, just maybe- I don't know anything about this kind of thing, or whatever
wars and feuds you have in your world, but I do know about Callista, and I-I
care a lot about her. Maybe there's some way I can find out where she is- help
get her back for you."
Damon raised his face, white and drawn, and looked at the Earthman in wild
surmise. "You know," he said to Andrew, "you're right. I hadn't thought of that.
You can still reach Callista. I don't know why, or how, it happened, or even
what we can do with it, but it's the one hope we have. You can reach Callista.
And she can come to you, when another Keeper can't reach her, when her own twin
is barred away from her. It may not be completely hopeless after all."
He reached out and gripped Andrew's hands, and somehow the Terran sensed that
for him this was a very unusual thing, that touch, among telepaths, was reserved
for close intimacy. It put him almost unendurably in touch with Damon for an
instant-Damon's exhaustion and fear, his desperate worry about his young
cousins, his own deeper doubts and terrors about his own inability to meet this
challenge, his horror of the overworld, his deep and desperate doubts of his
very manhood. For a moment Andrew wanted to withdraw, to reject this undesired
intimacy which Damon, at the end of his endurance, had thrust on him; then he
met Ellemir's eyes, and they were so much like Callista's now, pleading, no
longer scornful, so full of fear for Damon (Why, she loves him, Andrew thought
in a flash; he doesn't seem much of a man to me either, but she loves him, even
if she doesn't know it) that he could not refuse their plea. They were
Callista's people, and he loved Callista, and for better or worse he was
entangled in their affairs. I'd better get used to it now, he thought, and in a
clumsy surge of something almost like affection, he put his arm around Damon's
shoulders and hugged the other man roughly. "Don't you worry so much," he said.
"I'll do what I can. Sit down, now, before you collapse. What in the hell have
you been doing to yourself, anyway?"
He shoved Damon down on the bench before the fire. The unendurable contact
lessened, dropped away. Andrew felt confused and a little dismayed at the
intensity of the emotion that had surged up. It was like having a kid brother,
he thought, cloudily. He's not strong enough for this kind of thing. It struck
him that Damon was older than he was and far more experienced in these curious
contacts, but he still felt older, protective.
Damon said, "I'm sorry. I was out all night in the over-world, searching for
Callista. I-I failed."
He sighed, with a sense of utter relief. He said, "But now we know where she is,
or at least how to get into contact with her. With your help-"
Andrew warned, "I know nothing about these things."
"Oh, that." Damon shrugged it aside. He looked completely exhausted. He said, "I
should have more sense; I'm not used to the overworld anymore. I'll have to rest
and try again. Just now, I haven't any more strength. But when I can try
again"-he straightened his back-"the damned cat-men had better look to
themselves! I know, now, I think, what we can do."
And that, Andrew thought, is one hell of a lot more than I know. But I guess
Damon knows what he's doing, and that's enough for me, for now.
Damon Ridenow woke and lay for a moment staring at the ceiling. Day was waning;
after the strenuous all-night search within the overworld, and the confrontation
with Andrew Carr, he had slept most of the day. His weariness was gone, but
apprehension was still there, deep within. The Earthman was their one link with
Callista, and this seemed so unlikely, so bizarre, that one of these men from
another world should be able to make this subtle telepathic contact with one of
their own. Terrans, with Comyn laran powers! Impossible! No, not impossible: it
had happened.
He felt no revulsion for Andrew personally, only for the idea that the man was
an alien, an off-worlder. As for the man himself, he was inclined rather to like
him. He knew that was, at least in part, a consequence of the mental rapport
they had, for an instant, shared. In the telepath caste, it was often the
accident of possessing laran, the specific telepath Gift, which determined how
close a relationship would come. Caste, family, social position, all these
became irrelevant compared to that one compelling fact; one had, or one did not,
that inborn power, and in consequence one was stranger or kinsfolk. By that
criterion alone, the most important one on Darkover, Andrew Carr was one of
them, and the fact that he was an Earthman was a small random fact without any
real importance.
Ellemir, too, had suddenly taken on a new importance in his life.
Being what he was, born telepath and Tower-trained telepath, the touching of
minds created closeness, above and beyond anything else. He had felt this for
Leonie- twenty years his senior, pledged by law to remain virgin, never
beautiful. During his time in the Tower, and for long after, he had loved her
deeply, hopelessly, with a passion that had spoiled him for other women. If
Leonie had known this-and she could hardly have helped knowing, being what she
was-it had never made any difference to her. Keepers were trained, by methods
incomprehensible to normal men or women, to be unaware of sexuality.
Thinking of that brought him around to thinking again of Callista-and of
Ellemir. He had known her most of her life. But he was almost twenty years older
than she was. His parents had many times urged him to marry, but the devotion of
his first youth had gone up in the white heat of smokeless flame for the
unattainable Leonie. Later he had never thought of himself as having much to
offer any woman. The intimacy he had known with the others, men and women, in
the Tower Circle, minds and hearts open to one another-seven of them come
together in a closeness where nothing, however small, could be hidden-and
nothing refused or rejected, had spoiled him for any contact lesser than this.
Cast out of the Tower, he had known such a desolate loneliness that nothing
could dispel it.
Lonely, lonely, all my life alone. And I never dreamed. Ellemir, my kinswoman,
but a child, only a little girl.
Rising swiftly from his bed, he strode to the window and looked down into the
courtyard. So young Ellemir was not. She was old enough to care for this vast
Domain when her kinsmen were away at Comyn Council. She must be nearly twenty
years old. Old enough to have a lover; old enough, if she chose, to marry. She
was Comynara in her own right, and her own mistress.
But young enough to deserve someone better than I; torn by fear and
incompetence.
He wondered if she had ever thought of him as a lover, if perhaps she had known
other lovers. He hoped so. If Ellemir cared for him, he hoped it was built on
awareness, experience, knowledge of men: not the infatuation of an unawakened
girl, which might well dissipate when she knew other men. He wondered. Twin
sister to a Keeper, she might somehow have picked up some of Callista's
conditioned unawareness of men.
In any case, it was now a full-blown thing between them which had to be faced.
The sensitivity, the almost-sexual awareness between them, was something they
could no longer ignore, and there was not, of course, any reason to ignore it.
It would also heighten their ability to work together in whatever lay ahead;
they were committed to find Callista, and the rapport between them would only
heighten their contact and strength. Afterward-well, they might never be able to
get free of one another. Smiling gently, Damon faced the knowledge that they
would probably have to marry; they might never be able to remain apart after
this. Well, that would not displease him too much either, unless Ellemir was for
some reason unhappy about it.
The awareness of this was still on the surface of his mind when he went
downstairs, but the moment he saw Ellemir in the Great Hall it was no longer an
apprehension. Even before she raised her serious eyes to his, he knew that all
this was something she too had come to realize and accept. She dropped the
needlework in her hands and came up to him, snuggling in his arms without a
word. He drew a deep breath of absolute relief. After a long time, during which
neither of them spoke aloud, standing with linked fingers before the fire, he
said, "You don't mind, breda-that I'm nearly old enough to be your father?"
"You? Oh, no, no-only if you had been too old to father children, like poor
Liriel when they married her off to old Dom Cyril Ardais; that would trouble me
a little. But you, no, I've never stopped to think whether you were old or
young," she said, very simply. "I do not think I would want a lover who could
not give me children. That would be too sad."
Damon felt an incongruous ripple of inner laughter. That he had never thought
about; trust a woman to think of the important things. It was not an unpleasant
thought, and it would please his family. He said, "I think we need not worry
about that, preciosa, when the proper time comes."
"Father will be displeased," Ellemir said slowly, "with Callista in the Tower. I
think he had hoped I would stay here and keep his house while he lived. But I
have completed my nineteenth year, and by Comyn law I am free to do as I will."
Damon shrugged, thinking of the formidable old man who was the father of the
twins. "I have never heard that Dom Esteban disliked me," he said, "and if he
cannot bear to lose you, it matters little where we choose to live. Love." He
broke off, then with swift apprehension, "Why are you crying?"