The Forbidden Circle Read online

  Andrew took the stone from Ellemir’s outstretched fingers. He had caught Damon’s resentful thought and wondered what the slender Comyn Lord was angry about. Were all the telepaths women here, so Damon felt that being one made him less of a man? No, it couldn’t be that, or he wouldn’t have one of the stones himself, but Andrew felt there was something. The starstone felt faintly warm, even through the silk. He had somehow expected it to feel like any other jewel, cold and hard. Instead it had the warmth of a live thing in his palm.

  Damon said, in a low voice, “Now take off the silk. Very gently and slowly. Don’t look at the stone right away.”

  He unwrapped the insulating silk, and saw Ellemir flinch. She said in a low voice, “I felt that.”

  Damon said swiftly, “Cover it again, Andrew.” He obeyed, and Damon asked, “Did it hurt when he touched it?”

  Can we use Ellemir as a barometer to Callista’s reactions? Andrew thought.

  “It didn’t exactly hurt,” Ellemir said, her brow knitted, evidently trying to be very exact about her reactions. “Only—I felt it. Like a hand touching me. I’m not sure where. It wasn’t even really unpleasant. Just—somehow, intimate.”

  Damon frowned slightly. “You’re developing laran,” he said. “That’s evident. That may be helpful.”

  She looked frightened and said, “Damon! Is it—dangerous for me? I am no virgin.”

  Twin to a Keeper and so ignorant? Damon thought in exasperation, then saw that she was really afraid. He said quickly, “No, no, breda. Only for those women who work at the highest levels in the screens or with the most powerful stones. You might, if you overworked—and you were exhausted with lovemaking, or pregnant—get a bad headache or a fainting fit. Nothing worse. There are women, Tower-trained, working among us there, who need not live by a Keeper’s laws.”

  She looked relieved and faintly embarrassed. It was evidently not, Andrew thought, the kind of thing girls here usually blurted out in front of strangers. Although sexual taboos here seemed to be different than they were among Terrans, they seemed to have plenty of them.

  Damon said, “Ellemir, touch my stone a moment. Lightly—careful,” he said, gritting his teeth as he unwrapped the stone.

  Andrew, watching, thought he was braced as if for a low blow. Ellemir laid her fingertip lightly on the stone, and Damon only sighed a little.

  So Ellemir and I are keyed together somehow, he thought. It’s understandable. It always happens in sympathy like this. If we came closer still, if I took her to my bed, perhaps she could even learn to use it. Well, if I needed a good reason . . . He laughed a little, harshly, aware that once again he was broadcasting his thoughts both to the woman who was their subject and to the man who was still, by ordinary standards, a stranger. Well, they’d all better get used to it. It would be worse before it was better.

  “For what it’s worth,” he said aloud, and Andrew heard the tension and fear in his voice, “it seems Ellemir can handle my stone without hurting me. Which helps. As for you, Andrew, I think I can key you into Callista’s stone without danger to her. It’s a risk we’ll have to take. You’re our one link with her. For what we’re going to have to do—”

  Andrew looked quizzically at the older man and asked, “Precisely what are we going to do?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I can’t make definite plans until Dom Esteban wakes. Her father has a right to share in any plans we make.” Besides, Damon thought grimly, by then we’ll know whether or not he can take any part in the rescue. “But whatever we do, Callista will have to know about it. And, anyway”—he saw Ellemir flinch as he said it—“even if Callista should be hurt, or killed, we would still have to go out against whomever is doing this in the darkening lands.”

  Andrew thought, I’m only in this for Callista’s sake; I want no other part of it. But before Damon’s haggard face he could not bring himself to say so. He was still holding the wrapped stone.

  Damon sighed deeply and said, “Unwrap it again. Touch it—lightly. Ellemir?” He glanced at the woman, and she nodded.

  “Yes. I feel it when he touches it, still.”

  Andrew gingerly held the stone between his palms. He was seated on a low chair near the window, Damon standing before him. Damon said grimly, “I’d better guard against what happened last time.” He dropped cross-legged on the thick carpet, drawing Ellemir down beside him.

  Andrew, watching Damon’s face, thought, He’s afraid. Is it that dangerous?

  Damon’s gray eyes met the Earthman’s, as he said, “Don’t deceive yourself; yes, it is. People who use these skills without adequate training can do immense harm. I ought to tell you there’s some risk to you, too. Usually the business of keying anyone into a matrix is handled by a Keeper. I’m not.” Leonie said, if I had been born a woman, I’d have made a Keeper. For the first time this thought did not bring Damon the usual ration of self-contempt, doubt of his own manhood. Instead, he felt faintly grateful. It could save all their lives.

  Andrew leaned over him, Callista’s stone still cradled in his hands, and said, “Damon. You know what you’re doing, don’t you? If I didn’t trust you, I’d never have let you start this. Let’s take the risk for granted and go on from there.”

  Damon sighed and said, “I guess that’s the only thing we can do. I wish—” but he did not finish the sentence.

  I wish there was time to send for Leonie, bring her here. But would she approve of what I am doing—keying in a stranger, a Terran, into a Keeper? Even to save Callista’s life? Callista knew what risks a Keeper must take, before ever she pledged to the Tower. Leonie does not know this Earthman as I do, as Callista does.

  I have never done anything against Leonie’s will, in all my life. Yet she set me free to use my own judgment, and that is exactly what I must do now.

  Andrew said, in a low voice, “Exactly what do I have to do? Don’t forget I don’t know a damned thing about these psychic things.” His fingers moved unsteadily on the starstone; remembering Damon’s caution, he carefully relaxed his fingers. He thought, It’s as if—I must be as cautious as if it were Callista’s own life I were holding between my hands. The thought filled him with an inexpressible tenderness, and Ellemir raised her head and her gray eyes met his in a brief moment of sympathy. She is more like Callista than I thought.

  Damon said, “I’m going to go into your mind—make my brain waves, the electrical force-field of my brain, resonate in the same wavelength as yours, if it’s easier to understand it that way—and then try to adjust the field of your brain to that of Callista’s stone, so that you’ll be able to function on that exact frequency. This will put you in closer contact with her, so that, perhaps, you can lead us to her.”

  “You don’t know where she is?”

  “I know only in a general way,” Damon said. “You told me she spoke of dripping water and darkness. That sounds to me like the caves of Corresanti; they are the only caves within a day’s ride, and they would not dare to keep her aboveground and in the light of the sun. And the village of Corresanti is within the borders of the darkening land. But if you are keyed into her starstone, you will be able to use it as a beacon, and find out exactly where they have hidden her. And then you can tell us.”

  Andrew followed all this with some difficulty. He said, “You are evidently an expert with these stones. Why can’t you find her with it?”

  “Two reasons,” Damon said. “Whoever’s holding her prisoner is not only holding her body prisoner, and in darkness, but they’ve managed to barrier her mind on a level of the overworld none of us can reach. Don’t ask me how they did it. Whoever’s doing this is evidently using a very powerful matrix himself.” The Great Cat I saw, he thought. Well, maybe we’ll singe his whiskers for him.

  “Second reason. She’s evidently in very close touch with you, emotionally. So that half our work is done already. If we had a blank stone for you, I could simply key your frequencies into it, and you could lead us to Callista because you are already in touch
with her. But since we must use Callista’s own stone, which is keyed into her, body and brain, we must take into account that only someone in deep sympathy with her can use it without danger. Without you, I might have tried it with her twin. But the fact that Callista can come directly to you means you are the logical one.” Abruptly Damon said, “I’m putting it off again. Look into the stone.”

  Andrew lowered his eyes to the flashing luminescence of blue. Deep inside the stone small ribbons and worms of color moved, slowly, like a beating heart. Callista’s heart.

  “Ellemir. You’ll have to monitor us both.” Damon longed, with an almost physical longing, for the trained women from the Tower Circles, who knew this work and could keep in touch, almost automatically, with up to seven or eight telepaths working in the Circle at once. Ellemir was new to laran, just awakened, and untrained. “If either of us forgets to breathe, if we seem to be in any deep physical distress, you’ll simply have to bring us out of it.”

  She looked scared, too. “I’ll—try.”

  “You’d better do more than try. You have the talent. Use it, Ellemir, as you value your sister’s life. Or mine. If you had training, you could step in and regulate our breathing and our heartbeats if they began to go astray; but I’ll manage if you can just bring us up to surface if that happens.”

  “Don’t scare her,” Andrew said gently. “I know she’ll do the best she can.”

  Damon drew a deep breath, focused deeply on the stone. Fear surged up like a struck flame on flint, and he felt his heartbeat catch, then he forced it back. I can do this. I used to. Leonie said I could. He felt his breathing quiet as he relaxed, felt his heartbeats quiet into the slow pulsing rhythm of the stone. He began to try to formulate his instructions to Andrew. Watch the lights in the stone. Try to quiet your mind, to feel your whole body pulsing in that rhythm.

  Andrew felt the thought—pick up the beat—and wondered exactly how it was done. Could you change your own heartbeat that way? Well, in the Medic and Psych Center he’d been taught on a biofeedback machine to initiate alpha rhythms for sleep or deep relaxation. This wasn’t all that different. He watched, trying to relax, as he tried to feel and sense the exact rhythmic pulse of the stone. It’s like feeling Callista’s heartbeat. He became conscious of his own heartbeat, of the rhythm of the blood in his temples, of all the small interior noises and feelings and rhythms. The pulse of the starstone between his palms quickened and brightened, quickened and brightened, and he was conscious of his own internal rhythms in a definite, out-of-phase counterpoint. I guess what I have to do is match those rhythms. He began breathing deep and slow, trying to match his breathing, at least, to the rhythm of the starstone. Callista’s rhythm? Don’t think. Concentrate. He managed to match his breathing to the exact rhythm of the stone. For an instant it faltered, went ragged, and he felt the spurt of adrenalin through him—Callista?—and realized that Ellemir had drawn a deep breath, audible, almost a gasp. He steeled himself to quiet again, tried to pick up the ragged rhythm, slowly returned it to normal. To his own detached wonder, he saw that as his breathing quieted the pulse in the starstone quieted, too.

  Now breathing and the pulse of the stone were one rhythm, but his heartbeat was a strong counter-rhythm against the matched beat of stone and breath. Concentrate. Pick up the beat. His eyes were aching, and a wave of nausea rippled through him. The stone was spinning—he squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the surging sickness, but the light and the crawling colors persisted through his closed eyelids.

  He moaned aloud, and the sound broke the growing beat to fragments. Damon quickly raised his head, and Ellemir looked up in apprehension.

  “What’s wrong?” Damon asked softly, and Andrew muttered with difficulty, “Seasick.” The room seemed to be swinging in slow circles around him and he held out one hand to brace himself. Ellemir looked pale, too.

  Damon wet his lips and said, “That happens. Damn. You’re too new to this. I wish—Aldones! I wish we had some kirian. Failing that—Ellemir, are you sure there is none here?”

  “I honestly don’t think so.”

  Damon thought, I’m not feeling so good myself. It’s not going to be easy.

  Andrew asked him, “Why should it have that effect?” Then he felt Damon’s surge of impatience: Is this the time for asking foolish questions? His anger, Andrew thought in slow incredulity, looked like a pale red glow around him. “The room’s—ragged,” he said, and leaned back, closing his eyes.

  Damon forced himself to be calm. This was not going to be easy even if they were all in total harmony. If they started arguing, it wasn’t even going to be possible. And he couldn’t expect Andrew, doing a difficult and unexpected thing with total strangers, and struggling against the sickness and pain of having the unused psi centers of his brain forced open, to stay in control. The job of staying in control was strictly up to him. That was a Keeper’s job, holding everyone in rapport. A woman’s job. Well, man or woman, right now it’s my job.

  He forced himself to relax, deliberately quieted his breathing. He said, “I’m sorry, Andrew. Everybody goes through it sometime or other. I’m sorry it’s so rough on you; I wish I could help. You’re feeling sick because, first, you’re using part of your brain that you usually don’t use. And, second, because your eyes, and your balance centers, and all the rest of it, are reacting to your effort to bring some—well, some automatic functions under deliberate, voluntary control. I don’t mean to be irritable. There’s a certain degree of physical irritability I can’t quite control either. Try not to focus your eyes on anything, if you can help it, and lie back against the cushions. The sickness will probably go away in a few minutes. Do the best you can.”

  Andrew stayed still, eyes closed, until the swaying sickness receded a little. He’s trying to help. The physical sensations were like bad side effects of some drug, a nausea that wasn’t even definite enough to be relieved by vomiting, a strange sensation of crawling in his very bowels, strange flashes of light against the inside of his eyes. Well, it wouldn’t kill him; he’d had bad hangovers that were worse. “I’m all right,” he said, and caught Damon’s surprised, grateful glance.

  “Actually it’s a good sign you should be sick at this stage,” he said. “It means something’s actually happening . Ready to try again?”

  Andrew nodded and, without instructions this time, tried to focus on the beat and rhythm within the matrix stone. It was easier now. He realized he did not have to look into the stone; he could sense the pulsation through the tips of his fingers. No, the sensation was not exactly physical; he tried to identify exactly where it came from and lost it again. Did it matter where it came from? The important thing was to stay open to it. He picked it up again (A part of my brain I’ve never used before?) and felt how quickly the breathing went into synchronization with the invisible pulsation. After a short, slow time, during which he felt as if he were groping in the dark for an elusive rhythm, the heartbeat followed.

  He fought in the dark for what seemed a long time against the elusive cross-rhythms which seemed now to be inside him, now outside. No sooner would he tame one rhythm of the multiplex percussion orchestra and subdue it into the pervasive harmony, than another would escape him and start up a rebellious tickety-tock pattern against it; then he had to listen and analyze them and, somehow, delicately, try to fasten on where in his body the alien rhythm was beating, and try to tune it, beat by rebellious beat, into the proper harmony. After a long, long time he was conscious of beating all in one pulsation, other rhythms quieted, swaying up and down as if cradled inside the vast ticking heart, swaying in a ceaseless, tideless sea, his body and brain, his flowing pulsing blood, the incessant motion of the cells inside his muscles, the slow gentle pulse inside his sexual organs, all pulsing in rhythm. . . . As if I were inside the jewel, flowing with all the little lights. . . .

  Andrew—the most delicate of whispers, part of the great rhythm.

  Callista? Not a question. No answer needed. As if we lay c
radled together in a vast swaying darkness. Yes, that will come too. Cradled like twins in one womb. He had no conscious thoughts at that moment, lying deep below the level of thought where there was only a sort of unfocused awareness. With a small detached level of fragmentary thought, he wondered if this was what was meant by being attuned to someone else’s mind. Not conscious of the answer as a separateness, he knew, yes, he was close in contact with Callista’s mind. For an instant he sensed Ellemir, too, and without really willing it, a thought tangled through his mind, a flash of faintly disturbing intimacy, as if in this pulsating darkness he lay naked, stripped as he had never been, entangled in intimacy that was like a pounding rhythm of sex. He was aware of both women, and it seemed completely natural, a part of reality without surprise or embarrassment. Then he slipped one notch farther up into awareness and knew his body was there again, cold and soaked in sweat. At that moment he was aware of Damon close by, a disturbing intimacy, not wholly welcome because it thrust between his intense emotional closeness to Callista. He didn’t want to be that close to Damon: it wasn’t the same, his texture was different somehow, disturbing. For an instant he struggled and felt himself gasp, almost retching, and it was as if the heart between his hands struggled and beat hard for an instant, and then, abruptly, there was a short bright flare of light and a fusion. (For an instant he saw Damon’s face and it felt terrifyingly like looking into a mirror, a swift touch and grip and flare.) Then, abruptly and without transition, he was fully conscious of his body again and Callista was disappearing.

  Andrew lay back in his chair, aware that he still felt sick. But the acute sickness was gone. Damon was kneeling upright beside him, looking down into his eyes with anxious concern.

  “Andrew, are you all right?”

  “I’m—fine,” he managed to say, feeling a tardy embarrassment. “What the hell—”

  Ellemir—he realized suddenly that her hand lay in his, and the other hand in Damon’s—gave his fingers a soft little squeeze. She said, “I couldn’t see Callista. But she was there for a moment. Andrew, forgive me for doubting you.”