The Forbidden Circle Read online

  Andrew felt strangely embarrassed. He knew perfectly well that he had not moved from the chair, that he had not touched anything except Ellemir’s fingertips, that Damon had not touched him at all, but he had the definite feeling that something profound and almost sexual had happened among all of them, including Callista, who was not there at all. “How much of what I felt was real?” he demanded.

  Damon shrugged. “Define your terms. What’s real? Everything and nothing. Oh, the images,” he said, apparently picking up the texture of Andrew’s embarrassment. “That. Let me put it this way. When the brain—or the mind—has an experience like nothing else it’s ever experienced, it visualizes it in terms of familiar things. I lost contact for a few seconds—but I imagine you felt strong emotion.”

  “Yes,” Andrew said, almost inaudibly.

  “It was an unusual emotion, so your mind instantly associated it with a familiar but equally strong one, which just happened to be sexual. My own image is like walking a tightrope without falling off, and then finding something to hang on to, and brace myself with. But”—he grinned suddenly—“an awful lot of people think in sexual images, so don’t worry about it. I’m used to it and so is anyone who’s ever had to find their way around in direct rapport. Everybody has his own individual set of images; you’ll soon recognize them like individual voices.”

  Ellemir said, almost in a murmur, “I kept hearing voices in different pitches, that suddenly slid in to close harmony and started singing together like an enormous choir.”

  Damon leaned over and touched her cheek lightly with his lips. “So that was the music I heard?” he murmured.

  Andrew realized that somewhere in the back of his mind he too had heard something like far-off voices blending. Musical images, he thought a little wryly, were safer and less revealing than sexual ones. He looked tentatively at Ellemir, sounding out his own feelings, and found he was thinking on two levels at once. On one level he felt an intimacy with Ellemir, as if he had been her lover for a long time, a comprehensive goodwill, a feeling of sympathy and protectiveness. On another level, even clearer, he was perfectly aware that this was a girl unfamiliar to him, that he had never touched more than her fingertips, and had no intention of ever doing any more than that and it confused him.

  How can I feel this almost sexual acceptance of her, and at the same time have no sexual interest in her at all, as a person? Maybe Damon’s right and I’m just visualizing unfamiliar feelings in familiar terms. Because I have that same sort of profound intimacy and acceptance toward Damon, and that’s really confusing and disturbing . It gave him a headache.

  Damon said, “I didn’t see Callista either, and I wasn’t really in touch with her, but I could feel that Carr was.” He sighed, with the weariness of physical fatigue, but his face was peaceful.

  But the peaceful interlude was short-lived. Damon knew that, so far, Callista was well and safe. If anyone harmed her now, Andrew would know. But how long would she remain safe? If her captors had any idea that Callista had reached anyone outside, anyone who could lead rescuers to her—well, there was one obvious way to prevent that. Andrew couldn’t reach her if she was dead. And that was so simple, and so obvious, that Damon’s throat squeezed tight in panic. If they caught any hint of what he was trying to do, if they had the faintest notion that rescue was on the way, Callista might not live long enough to be rescued.

  Why had they kept her alive this long? Again Damon reminded himself not to judge the cat-men by human standards. We really know nothing of why they do anything.

  He rose, and swayed where he stood, knowing that after taxing, demanding telepathic work he needed food, sleep, and quiet. The night was far gone. The hideous need for haste beat at him. He braced himself to keep from falling and looked down at Ellemir and Andrew. Now that things have begun moving again, we must be ready to move with them, he thought. If I’m going to act as Keeper, this is my responsibility—to keep them from panicking. I’m in charge, and I’ve got to look after them.

  “We all need food,” he said, “and sleep. And we can’t do a thing until we know how badly Dom Esteban is hurt. Everything, now, depends on that.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When Damon came down into the Great Hall the next morning, he found Eduin prowling around in front of the doors, his face pale and drawn. To Damon’s question he nodded briefly. “Caradoc’s doing well enough, Lord Damon. But the Lord Istvan—”

  That told Damon all he needed to know. Esteban Lanart had awakened—and was still unable to move. So that was that. Damon felt a sickening sensation as if he stood on quicksand. What now? What now?

  Then it was up to him. He realized, hardening his jaw, that he had really known this all along. From the moment of premonition (You will see him sooner than you think and it will not be well for any of you) he had known that in the end it would be his task. He was still not sure how, but at least he knew he could not let the burden slide onto the stronger shoulders of his kinsman.

  “Does he know, Eduin?”

  Eduin’s hawklike face twisted in a grimace of compassion, and he said briefly, “Do you think anyone’d need to tell him? Aye. He knows.”

  And if he didn’t, he’d know the minute he saw me. Damon began to push aside the doors to enter, but Eduin gripped his arm.

  “Can’t you do for his wound what you did for Caradoc’s, Lord Damon?”

  Pityingly, Damon shook his head. “I’m no miracle worker. To stop the flow of blood is nothing. That done, Caradoc would heal. I healed nothing; I did only what Caradoc’s wound would have done of itself if anyone could have reached it. But if the spinal nerve is severed—no power on this world could repair it.”

  Eduin’s eyes closed briefly. “That I feared,” he said. “Lord Damon! Is there news of the Lady Callista?”

  “We know she is safe and well, at this moment,” Damon said, “but there is need for haste. So I must see Dom Esteban at once, and make plans.”

  He pushed the door open. Ellemir was kneeling by her father’s bedside; the other wounded men had evidently been moved out to the Guardroom, except for Caradoc, who lay under blankets far at the back of the Hall, and seemed fast asleep. Esteban Lanart lay flat, his heavy body immobilized in sandbags so that he could not turn from side to side. Ellemir was feeding him, not very expertly, with a child’s spoon. He was a tall, heavy, red-faced man, with the strongly aquiline features of all his clan, his long sideburns and bushy eyebrows graying but his beard still brilliantly red. He looked angry and incongruous with drops of gruel in his beard; his fierce eyes moved to Damon.

  “Good morning, kinsman,” Damon said.

  Dom Esteban retorted, “Good, you say! When I lie here like a tree struck by lightning and my daughter—my daughter—” He raised a clenched fist in rage, struck the spoon, upset more of the gruel, and snarled, “Take that filthy stuff away! It’s not my belly that’s paralyzed, girl!” He saw her stricken face and moved his hand clumsily to pat her arm. “Sorry, chiya. I’ve cause enough for anger. But get me something decent to eat, not that baby-food!”

  Ellemir raised helpless eyes to the healer-woman who stood by; she shrugged, and Damon said, “Give him anything he wants, Ellemir, unless he’s feverish.”

  The girl rose and went out, and Damon came to the bedside. It seemed inconceivable that Dom Esteban would never again rise from that bed. That harsh face should not lie on a pillow, that powerful body should be up and moving about in its usual brisk military way.

  “I won’t ask you how you feel, kinsman,” Damon said. “But are you in much pain now?”

  “Almost none, strange as it seems,” said the wounded man. “Such a little, little wound to lay me low! Hardly more than a scratch. And yet—” His teeth clenched in his lip. “I’ve been told I’ll never walk again.” His gray eyes sought out Damon’s, in an agony of pleading so great that the younger man was embarrassed. “Is it true? Or is the woman as much a fool as she seems?”

  Damon bent his head and did n
ot answer. After a moment the older man moved his head in weary resignation. “Tragedy stalks our family. Coryn dead before his fifteenth year, and Callista, Callista—so I must seek help, humbly, as befits a cripple, from strangers. I have no one of my own blood to help me.”

  Damon knelt on one knee beside the old man. He said deliberately, “The gods forbid you should seek among strangers. I claim that right—father-in-law.”

  The bushy eyebrows went up, almost into the hairline. At last Dom Esteban said, “So the wind blows from that quarter? I had other plans for Ellemir, but—” A brief pause, then, “Nothing goes, I believe, as we plan it, in this imperfect world. Be it so, then. But the road will be no easy one, even if you can find Callista. Ellemir has told me something—a confused tale of Callista and a stranger, a Terran, who has somehow gained rapport with her and has offered his sword, or his services, or some such thing. He must talk of it with you, whoever he is, although it seems strange that one of the Terranan should show proper reverence for a Keeper.” He scowled fiercely. “Curse those beasts! Damon, what has been happening in these hills? Until a few seasons ago the cat-men were timid folk who lived in the hills, and no one thought them wiser than the little people of the trees! Then, as if some evil god had come among them, they attack us like fiends, they stir up the Dry Towns against us—and lands where our people have lived for generations lie under some darkness as if bewitched. I’m a practical man, Damon, and I don’t believe in be witchments! And now they come invisible out of the air, like wizards from some old fairy tale.”

  “All too real, I fear,” Damon said, and knew his face was grim. “I met them, crossing the darkening lands, and only too late did I realize that I could have made them visible with my starstone.” His hand sought the leather pouch about his throat. “They slaughtered my men. Eduin said you saved them, that almost alone you cut your way out of the ambush. How—?” Damon felt suddenly awkward.

  Dom Esteban lifted the long, squarish swordsman’s hand from the bed and looked at it, as if puzzled. “I hardly know,” he said slowly, looking at his hand and moving the fingers back and forth, turning it to look at the palm, and then back again. “I must have heard the other sword in the air—” He hesitated and an odd note of wonder crept into his voice as he spoke again. “But I didn’t. Not till I had my sword out and up to guard.” He blinked, puzzled. “It’s like that sometimes. It’s happened before. You suddenly turn, and block, and there’s an attack coming that you’d never have seen unless you’d found yourself guarding it.” He laughed again, raucously. “Merciful Avarra! Listen to the old man bragging.” Suddenly the fingers knotted into fists. His arm trembled with anger. “Boast? Why not? What else can a cripple do?”

  From the greatest swordsman in the Domains to a helpless invalid—horrible! And yet, Damon thought reluctantly, there was an element of justice in it. Dom Esteban had never been tolerant of the slightest physical weakness in anyone else. It had been in proving his courage to his father, climbing the heights he feared, that Coryn had fallen to his death. . . .

  “Zandru’s hells,” the old man said after a moment. “The way my joints have stiffened, these last three winters, the bone-aches would have done it in another year or so, anyway. Better to have one last terrific fight.”

  “It won’t be forgotten in a hurry,” Damon said, and turned quickly away so the old man would not see the pity in his eyes. “Zandru’s hells, how we could use your sword now against the accursed cat-men!”

  The old man laughed mirthlessly. “My sword? That’s easy—take it and welcome,” he said with a bitter grimace meant to be a grin. “Afraid you’ll have to use it yourself, though. I can’t go along and help.”

  Damon caught the unspoken contempt—There’s no sword ever forged could make a swordsman of you—but at the moment he felt no anger. Dom Esteban’s only remaining weapon was his tongue. Anyway, Damon had never prided himself on his skill at arms.

  Ellemir was returning with a tray of solid food for her father; she set it down beside the bed and began cutting up the meat. Dom Esteban said, “Just what are your plans, Damon? You’re not planning to go up against the cat-men?”

  He said quietly, “I see no alternative, Father-in-law.”

  “It will take an army to wipe them out, Damon.”

  “Time enough for that next year,” Damon said. “Just now our first problem is to get Callista out of their hands, and for that we have no time to raise an army. What’s more, if we came up against them with an army, their first move would be to kill her. Time presses. Now that we know where she is—”

  Dom Esteban stared, forgetting to chew a mouthful of meat and gravy. He swallowed, choked a little, gestured to Ellemir for a drink, and said, “You know. Just how did you manage that?”

  “The Terranan,” said Damon quietly. “No, I don’t know how it happened either. I never knew any of the strangers had anything like our laran. But he has it, and he is in contact with Callista.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Esteban said. “I met some of them in Thendara when they negotiated to build the Trade City. They are more like us. I heard a story that Terra and Darkover are of common stock, far back in history. They rarely leave their city, though. How did this one come here?”

  “I will send for him and you can hear it from his own lips,” said Ellemir. She beckoned a servant and gave the message, and after a little while Andrew Carr came into the Great Hall. Damon, watching the Earthman bowing to Dom Esteban, thought that at least these people were no savages.

  Prompted by Damon, Carr gave a brief account of how he had come into contact with Callista. Esteban looked grave and thoughtful.

  “I cannot say that I approve of this,” he said, “For a Keeper to make such close contact with a stranger from outside her own caste is unheard-of, and scandalous. In the old days of the Domains, wars were fought on Darkover for less than this. But times change, whether we like the changes or not, and perhaps as things stand now it is more important to save her from the cat-men than from the disgrace of such a rapport.”

  “Disgrace?” Andrew Carr said, flushing deeply. “I mean her no harm or dishonor, sir. I wish her nothing but the best, and I have offered to risk my life to set her free.”

  “Why?” Esteban asked curtly. “She can be nothing to you, man; a Keeper is pledged a virgin.”

  Damon hoped Carr would have sense enough not to say anything about his own emotional attachment to Callista; but not trusting Andrew to hold his tongue, he said, “Dom Esteban, he has already risked his life to make contact with her; for a man of his age, untrained, to work through a starstone is no light matter.” He scowled at Andrew, trying to convey “Shut up, let well enough alone.”

  In any case, Dom Esteban, whether from pain or worry, did not pursue the topic, but turned to Damon. “You know, then, where Callista is?”

  “We have reason to believe she is in the caves of Corresanti,” Damon said, “and Andrew can lead us to her.”

  Dom Esteban snorted. “There’s a lot of countryside between here and Corresanti, and all of it chock full of cat-men, and blasted villages,” he said. “It lies half a day’s ride into the darkening lands.”

  “That can’t be helped,” Damon said. “You managed to get through them, which proves it can be done. At least they cannot come on us veiled by invisibility, while I have my starstone.”

  Esteban thought about that; nodded slowly. “I had forgotten you were Tower-trained,” he said. “What about the Earthman? Will he come with you?”

  Andrew said, “I’m going. I seem to be the only link to Callista. Besides, I swore to her that I would rescue her.”

  Damon shook his head. “No, Andrew. No, my friend. Just because you are the only link with Callista, we dare not risk you. If you were killed, even accidentally, we might never make our way to her, or recover only her dead body, too late. You stay at Armida, and maintain contact with me, through the starstone.”

  Stubbornly, Carr shook his head. “Look, I’m going,�
�� he said. “I’m a lot bigger and tougher than you think. I’ve knocked around on half a dozen worlds. I can take care of myself, Damon. Hell, man, I’d make two of you!”

  Damon sighed, and thought, Maybe he can; he got here through the blizzard. I couldn’t have done that well if I were lost on a strange world. “Possibly you’re right,” he said. “How good are you with a sword?”

  Damon saw the faint surprise and hesitation in the Earthman’s face. “I don’t know. My people don’t use them except for sport. I could learn, though. I learn fast.”

  Damon raised his eyebrows. “It’s not that easy,” he said. His people use swords only for sport? How do they defend themselves, then? Knives, like the Dry-Towners, or fists? If so, they may be stronger than we are. Or have the Terrans gone beyond the Compact, and banned all weapons that can kill at all?

  He said, “Eduin,” and the big Guardsman, lounging near the door, sprang to attention. “Vai dom?”

  “Step over to the armory, and get a couple of practice swords.”

  After a moment Eduin returned, bearing two of the wood-and-leather weapons used for training in swords manship. Damon took one in his hand, extended the other to Carr. The Earthman looked curiously at the long blunt stick of springy wood, with braided leather covering the edge and tip, then experimentally gripped it in his palm. Damon, frowning at the unpracticed grip, asked bluntly, “Have you ever touched a sword before in your life?”

  “A little fencing for sport. I’m no champion.”

  I can well believe that, Damon thought, slipping on the leather headpiece. He looked at Carr over his right shoulder through the grillwork that protected his face: the practice swords bent easily enough that there was not much danger of damaging a bone or an internal organ, but eyes and teeth were more vulnerable. Carr faced him straight on. Chest exposed, Damon thought, and he handles the thing as if he were poking the fire.