The Forbidden Circle Read online

  Andrew stepped forward; Damon lifted his sword only slightly, brushing the weapon aside. As the big man went off balance, the leather tip caught Carr in the chest. Then Damon relaxed, lowering the tip to the floor. He slowly shook his head. He said, “You see, my friend? And I’m no swordsman. I wouldn’t last half a dozen strokes against anyone even halfway competent; Dom Esteban, or Eduin here, would have had the sword out of my hand before I got it up.”

  “I’m sure I could learn,” Carr protested stubbornly.

  “Not in time,” Damon said. “Believe me. Andrew, I began to train with these swords before I was eight years old. Most lads begin at least a year before that. You’re strong—I can see that. You’re even fairly fast on your feet. But we couldn’t even teach you enough, in a week, to keep you from getting killed. And we haven’t got a week. We haven’t even got a day. Forget it, Andrew. You’ve got something more important to do than carrying a sword.”

  “And do you think you’re going to lead a party of swordsmen against the cat-people?” Dom Esteban asked sardonically. “Eduin here could do to you what you did to the Earthman, in seconds.”

  Damon looked around at the man lying motionless. Esteban had motioned the tray of food away, and was watching them fixedly, his eyes bright with something like anger. He said, “Show some sense, Damon. I kept you in the Guards because the men like you and you’re a good organizer and administrator. But this is a job for a master swordsman. Are you so blind to facts that you think you could go up against swordsmen who could cut down the whole castle Guard here at Armida and steal Callista right out of her bed? Am I marrying my daughter to a fool?”

  Ellemir said in a rage, “Father, how dare you! You cannot talk like that to Damon!”

  Damon motioned to her to be quiet. He faced the older man straightforwardly, and said, “I know that, kinsman. I probably know more about my own deficiencies than you do. Just the same, no man can do more than his best, and this is my right. I am now Callista’s closest kinsman, except for Domenic, and he is not yet seventeen.”

  Esteban smiled grimly. He said, “Well, my son, I admire your spirit; I wish you had the skill to go with it.” He raised his fists and beat them against the pillow, in a fit of fury. “Zandru’s hells! Here I lie, broken-down and useless as Durraman’s donkey, and all my skill and all my knowledge—” The fit subsided at last and he said, his voice weaker than before, “If I had time to teach you, you’re not so hopeless—but there’s no time, no time. You say with your starstone you can throw off their accursed illusion of invisibility?”

  Damon nodded. Eduin came forward to the bedside and knelt there. He said, “Lord Istvan. I owe the Lord Damon a life. Let me go with them to Corresanti.”

  Damon said, deeply moved, “You’re wounded, man. And you’ve been through one battle.”

  “All the same,” Eduin protested, “you have said my skill with a sword is greater than your own. Let me go to guard you, Lord Damon; your task is to bear the starstone.”

  “Merciful Avarra,” Dom Esteban said almost under his breath, “that is the answer!”

  “I will gladly have your company and your sword, if you are able,” Damon said, laying his hand on Eduin’s shoulder. In his sensitized state he was overwhelmingly aware of the man’s outpouring of loyalty and gratitude, and he felt almost abashed by it. “But you owe your service to the Lord Esteban; it is for him to give you leave to go with me.”

  Both men turned to Esteban, who lay motionless; his eyes were closed and his brow knitted as if deep in thought. For a moment Damon wondered if they had exhausted the wounded man too much, but he could feel that beneath the closed eyes there was some very active thinking going on. Esteban’s eyes suddenly flew open.

  “Just how good are you with that starstone, Damon?” he asked. “I know you have laran, you spent years in the Tower, but didn’t Leonie kick you out again? If it was for incompetence, this won’t work, but—”

  “It wasn’t for incompetence,” Damon said quietly. “Leonie did not complain of my skill, only that I was too sensitive, and my health, she felt, would suffer.”

  “Look me in the eye. Is that truth or vanity, Damon?”

  There were times, Damon thought, when he positively detested the brutal old man. He met Esteban’s eyes without flinching and said, “As I remember, you have enough laran to find out for yourself.”

  Esteban’s lips flicked in that mirthless grin again. He said, “From somewhere, you’ve gotten courage enough to stand up to me, kinsman, and that’s a good sign. As a lad you were afraid of me. Is it only because I’ll never move out of this bed again that you’ve got courage to confront me now?” He returned Damon’s gaze for an instant—a harsh touch like a firm grip—and then said tersely, “My apology for doubting you, kinsman, but this is too important to spare anyone’s feelings, even my own. Do you think I like confronting the fact that someone else will rescue my favorite daughter? Just the same. You are skilled with a starstone. Have you ever heard the story of Regis the Fifth? The Hasturs were kings in those days; it was before the crown passed into the Elhalyn line.”

  Damon frowned, searching in memory of old legends. “He lost a leg in the battle of Dammerung Pass—?”

  “No,” said Dom Esteban, “he lost a leg by treachery, when he was set on in his bed by assassins; so that he could not fight in a duel and would forfeit a good half of the Hastur lands. Yet he sent his brother Rafael to the battle, and Rafael, who was a monkish man with little knowledge of swordplay, nevertheless fought in single combat with seven men and killed them all. To this day Castle Hastur stands in Hastur hands at the edge of the mountains. And this he could do because, as Regis lay in his bed not yet able to rise and hobble about on crutches, he made contact through his brother’s starstone with his sword, and the monkish Rafael bore the sword of Regis into the fight, wielding it with all of Regis’ skill.”

  “A fairy tale,” said Damon, but he felt a strange prickle go up and down his spine.

  Dom Esteban moved his head as much as he could for the sandbags and said vehemently, “By the honor of the Alton Domain, Damon, it is no fairy tale. The skill was known in the old times, but in these days few of the Comyn have the strength or the wish to dare so much. In these days the starstones are left mostly to women. Yet, if I thought you had the skills of our fathers with such a stone—”

  With a slow prickle of wonder, Damon realized what Dom Esteban was suggesting. He said, “But—”

  “Are you afraid? Do you think you could stand the touch of the Alton Gift?” Dom Esteban demanded. “If it enabled you to fight your way through the cat-men with my own skill?”

  Damon shut his eyes. He said honestly, “I’d have to think about it. It wouldn’t be easy.”

  Yet—might it be Callista’s one chance?

  Dom Esteban was the only living man to cut his way out of a cat-man ambush. He himself had run like a rabbit from them, leaving his men to die. He had to be sure about this. He knew it was the kind of decision no one else could make for him. For a moment no one else in the room existed but Esteban and himself.

  He stepped close to the bed and looked down at the prostrate man. “If I refuse, kinsman, it is not because I am afraid, but because I doubt your power to do this, sick and wounded as you are. I knew not that you had the Alton Gift, bred true.”

  “Oh, yes, I have it,” said Esteban, staring up with a fearful intensity, “but in such days as I am living in, I always believed, I needed no gift other than my own strength and skill with weapons. Where do you suppose Callista got it in such measure that she was chosen from all the girls of the Domains to be Keeper? The Alton Gift is the ability to force rapport, and I had some training in my own youth. Try me, if you will.”

  Ellemir came and slid her hand into Damon’s. She said, “Father, you can’t do this dreadful thing.”

  “Dreadful? Why, my girl?”

  “It’s against the strongest law of the Comyn: that no man may dominate another’s mind and soul.
”

  “Who said anything about his mind and soul?” asked the old man, his gray bushy eyebrows crawling up like giant caterpillars to his hairline. “It’s his sword-arm and reflexes I’m interested in dominating, and I can do it. And I’ll do it by his free will and consent, or not at all.” He began to reach out, winced, and lay still between the sandbags. “It’s your choice, Damon.”

  Andrew looked pale and worried; Damon himself felt much the same way, and Ellemir’s hand, tucked in his, was trembling. He said slowly, “If it’s Callista’s best chance, I’d agree to more than that. If you are strong enough, Lord Esteban.”

  “If my damned useless legs would only move, I’ve fought with worse wounds than this,” Dom Esteban said. “Take the practice sword. Eduin, you take the other.”

  Damon slipped on the basketwork headpiece, turned his right side to Eduin. The Guardsman saluted, standing very casually, legs apart, sword-tip resting on the ground. Damon felt a sharp spasm of fear.

  Not that Eduin could hurt me much with these wooden swords, not that I care so much for a few bumps and bruises. But all my life that damnable old man has been baiting me about my lack of skill. To make a fool of myself before Ellemir . . . to let him humiliate me once again. . . .

  Esteban said in a strange, faraway voice, “Your starstone is insulated, Damon. Uncover it.”

  Damon fumbled with the leather pouch, drew it off, letting the warm heaviness of the matrix jewel rest against the base of his throat. He gave the pouch to Ellemir to hold, and the quick brush of her warm fingers against his was a reassurance.

  Esteban said, “Stand back, Ellemir. And you too, Terranan. By the door, and see that no servants come in here. They can’t do much harm with the practice foils, but even so—”

  They withdrew slowly, and the two men faced one another, the heavy wooden swords in hand, circling slowly. Damon was faintly conscious of the harsh grip-touch that was Dom Esteban’s (What did I tell Andrew, you get to recognize people by their images as well as by their voices?) and felt a strange droning in his ears, a sense of harsh pressure. He saw Eduin’s sword come up, and before he knew what he was doing, he felt the flexing of his own knees, his arm moving without his knowledge in a quick whirling stroke. He heard the rapid-fire whack! whack! whack! of wood-and-leather clashing, then saw an incongruous whirl of images: Eduin’s astonished face, with its seamed raw wound; Andrew’s flare of amazement; his own arm coming up and a rapid backward step and feint; Eduin’s sword flying out of his hand and across the room, landing almost at Andrew Carr’s feet. The Earthman bent and picked it up as the droning suddenly receded from Damon’s head.

  Esteban said quietly, “Now do you believe me, kinsman? Have you ever been able to touch Eduin before, let alone disarm him?”

  Damon realized that he was breathing fast and his heart beating like a smith’s hammer at the forge. He thought, I never moved that fast in my life, and felt a mingled fear and resentment. Someone else’s hand, someone else’s mind . . . in control . . . control of my very body.

  And yet—To get back at the damned cat-things who killed his Guardsmen, Dom Esteban would have been the logical choice to lead swordsmen against them. And he would if he could.

  Damon had never especially wanted to be a swordsman. It wasn’t his game. Just the same, he owed the cat men something. His men were relying on him, and he’d left them to die. And Reidel had been his friend. If with Dom Esteban’s help he could do it, did he have the right to refuse?

  Esteban was lying quite still, passive between his sandbags, just flexing and unflexing his fingers thoughtfully. He did not speak, only met Damon’s eyes with a look of triumph.

  Damon thought, Damn the man, he’s enjoying this. But after all, why shouldn’t he? He’s proved to himself that he’s not completely useless, after all.

  He put down the practice sword. From the naked jewel against his throat he was picking up flashing impressions, wonder and terror from Eduin, a sort of be musement from Andrew, dismay from Ellemir. He tried to shut them all out, and went toward the bed again.

  He said slowly, steadily—but he had to force the words out—“I agree, then, kinsman. When can we start?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  They started later that day, near to high noon, and Andrew, watching them ride away from the roof of Armida, thought they were a small party to go up against an army of nonhumans. He said so to Ellemir, who stood beside him wrapped to the earlobes in a heavy plaid shawl of green and blue. She shook her head, saying in an odd faraway voice, “Force alone wouldn’t get them through. Damon has the only weapon that matters—the starstone.”

  “It looks to me like he’ll be doing some fairly tough fighting—or your father will,” Andrew said.

  Ellemir answered, “Not really. That will just—if he’s lucky—keep him from getting killed. But swordsmen have failed, before this, to get into the darkening lands. The cat-men know it, too. I am sure they took Callista in the hope of capturing her starstone as well. The cat people who are using a matrix unlawfully must have discovered that she was here—in a general way one matrix-user can spy out another—and hoped to gain her stone. Perhaps they even hoped they could force her to use it against us. Men would have known better—they would have known that any Keeper would die first. But the cat-people are apparently just beginning to learn about these things—which is why there is still some hope.”

  Andrew was thinking, grimly, that was lucky; if they had known more about Keepers, the cat-people would not have kidnapped Callista, but simply left her lying with her throat cut, in her bed. He saw from Ellemir’s grimace of horror that she had followed his thoughts.

  The woman said in a low voice, “Damon blames himself for running away and leaving his men to be slaughtered. But it was the right thing to do. If they had captured him, and his starstone—alive—”

  “I thought no one could use another’s stone except under very special circumstances.”

  “Not without hurting its owner terribly. But do you think the cat-men would have hesitated to do that?” she asked, almost with contempt, and was silent.

  The riders had virtually disappeared now, only three small dots on the horizon: Damon and two swordsmen of the guard.

  Andrew thought bitterly, I should have been with them. Rescuing Callista is my job; instead I sit here at Armida, no more use than Dom Esteban. Less. He’s fighting along with them.

  He had wanted to go. He had thought until the last that he would ride with them, that he would be needed to guide them to Callista, at least when they got inside the caves. After all, he was the only one who could reach her. Damon, even with his starstone, couldn’t. But Damon had absolutely refused.

  “Andrew, no, it’s impossible. The best bodyguard in the world wouldn’t be able to ensure you against getting killed accidentally. You are absolutely helpless to defend yourself, let alone help anyone else. It’s not your fault, my friend, but all our energies have to go to getting inside the caves and getting Callista out. The spare minute we might take to defend you might make the difference between getting out alive—or not. And—let me remind you—if we get killed,” he said, his lips tightening, “someone else can try. If you get killed, Callista will die inside the caves, from starvation, or ill-treatment, or with a knife in her throat when they discover she’s no good to them.” Damon had laid his hand on Andrew’s shoulder, regretfully. “Believe me, I know how you feel. But this is the only way.”

  “And how will you find her without me there? You can’t, even with your starstone; you just said so!”

  “With Callista’s starstone,” Damon said. “You have access to the overworld. And you can reach me, too. Once I am inside the caves, you can lead us to her through the starstone.”

  Andrew still wasn’t sure how that would be done. He had, in spite of yesterday’s demonstration, only the fog giest notion of how it worked. He had seen it work, he had felt it work, but twenty-eight years of not believing in such things weren’t wiped away in twe
nty-eight hours.

  At his side, on the parapet, Ellemir shivered and said, “They’re gone. There’s no sense standing out here in the cold.” She turned and went in through the doorway that led into the upper corridor of Armida, and slowly, Carr followed.

  He knew Damon was right—or more accurately, he had faith that Damon knew what he was doing—but it was still galling. For days now, ever since he had realized that if he lived through the storm, somehow he would find Callista and rescue her, he had sustained himself with a mental picture of Callista, alone in the darkness of her prison, of himself coming to her side and sweeping her up in his arms, and carrying her away. . . . Some damn romantic dream, he thought sourly. Where’s the white horse to carry her away?

  He had never envisioned a world where men took swords seriously. For him a sword was either something to look at on the wall of a museum, or something to play with for exercise. He had wished for a gun or a blaster—that would make short work of a cat-man, he’d bet—but when he had said so, Damon had looked at him with as much horror as if he’d suggested gang-rape, cannibalism, and genocide, and mentioned something called the Compact. Before signing his contract with the Empire on Cottman IV, Andrew had fuzzily noted that they did have something there called the Compact, which as near as he could understand—he hadn’t paid much attention to it, you never paid much attention to technicalities of native culture—forbade any lethal weapons which didn’t bring the user within an equal risk of being killed in return. Damon had spoken of it, saying it had been universally accepted on Darkover, which seemed to be his name for the planet, for either a few hundred years or a few thousand. Andrew wasn’t sure which; his command of the language was improving, but still wasn’t perfect. So guns were definitely out, although swordplay had become a fine art.

  No wonder they start training their kids in fighting before they’re out of short pants. He wondered, in view of the ghastly cold weather on this planet, if children ever wore short pants at all, and cut off the thought with impatience. He went into the guest-room they had assigned him earlier and walked to the window, drawing aside the curtain to see if he could still catch a glimpse of Damon’s party disappearing. But evidently they had ridden away past the crest of the hill.