The Forbidden Circle Read online

  Andrew lay down on the bed, hands tucked behind his neck. He supposed sooner or later he should go down and say a few polite words to his host. He didn’t much like Dom Esteban; the man had tried hard to humiliate Damon, but the man was an invalid, and his host. Also, he felt some sense of obligation toward Ellemir. He didn’t know what he could say to her, torn as she was between fear for Callista, fear for Damon, and anxiety about her father. But if he could do anything, or say anything, to let her know he shared her anxiety, he ought to do it.

  Callista, Callista, he thought, it’s some world you brought me into. Nevertheless, he felt a curious acceptance of what he would find here.

  Callista’s starstone around his neck felt reassuringly warm, like a live thing. It’s like touching Callista herself, he thought, the nearest to touching her that I’ve ever come. Even through the silk insulation, there was an intimacy in the touch against his throat. He wondered where she was, if it was well with her, if she was crying alone in the darkness?

  Damon seemed to think I could reach her through the stone, Andrew thought, and he drew it from his shirt front. The grayish silk envelope in which it was wrapped protected it from a careless touch. Carefully, mindful of Damon’s warning, he unwrapped it with infinite caution, and a curious sense of hesitation. It’s almost as it I were undressing Callista, he thought with a tender embarrassment, and at the same time he was ready to explode with hysterical laughter at the incongruity of the idea.

  As he cradled the stone in his palm, he suddenly saw her close beside him. She was lying on her side, her lovely hair tangled—he could see her in a strange bluish light quite unlike the dim red sunlight in the room—and her face blotched and swollen as if she had been crying again. Quite without surprise, she opened her eyes and looked at him.

  “Andrew, is it you? I had wondered why you had not came to me before,” she said softly, and smiled.

  “Damon is on his way to you,” Andrew said, and the urge of resentment that he was not with them, that he would not be the one to find her, boiled over. He tried to conceal it from her and realized too late that he could not, that in this kind of close touching of minds no thought could be concealed.

  She said very tenderly, “You must not be jealous of Damon; he has been as a brother to me since we were children.”

  Andrew felt ashamed of his own jealousy. It’s no good to pretend not to be jealous, I’ll just have to get beyond thoughts like that. He tried to remember how much he had liked Damon, how close he had felt to him for a little while, that in the deepest way of all he was grateful to Damon for doing what he himself couldn’t, and he saw Callista smiling gently at him. He sensed somehow that he had overcome one of the first major barriers to acceptance on their own terms as one of themselves in a telepath culture, that because of this he was somehow less of an alien to Callista than he had been before.

  She said, “You can come to me in the overworld now.”

  He looked at her helplessly. “I don’t know how.”

  “Take the stone and look into it,” she said. “I can see it, you know. I can see it like a light in the darkness. But you must not come to me here, where my body is. If my captors should see you, they might kill me to keep me from being rescued. I will come to you.” Abruptly, without transition, the girl lying wearily on her side in the dark cave was standing before him at the foot of the bed. “Now,” she said. “Simply leave your solid body behind; step out of it.”

  Andrew focused on the stone, fighting back the faint, crawling inner nausea, the perceptible surge of terror. Callista held out her hand to him, and suddenly, with a strange, tingling sensation, he was standing upright (he had not moved at all, he thought), and below him he could see his body, clad in the heavy unfamiliar garments Damon had given him, lying motionless on the bed, the stone between his hands.

  He reached out his hand on the overworld level, and for the first time touched Callista’s. It felt faint, and ethereal, hardly a physical touch at all, but it was a touch, he could feel it, and he saw from Callista’s face that she felt it, too.

  She whispered, “Yes, you are real, you are here. Oh, Andrew, Andrew—” For an instant she let herself fall against him. It was like embracing a shadow, but still, for an instant, he felt her light weight against him, felt the warmth and fragrance of her body in his arms, the wispy feel of her hair. He wanted to crush her in his arms and cover her with kisses, but something in her—a faint sense of hesitation, a drawing away—kept him from acting on his impulse.

  I’m not even supposed to think about a Keeper. They’re sacrosanct. Untouchable.

  She raised her shadowy fingers to lay them gently against his cheek. She said very gently, “There will be time enough to think about all that later, when I am with you—really with you, really close to you.”

  “Callista. You know I love you,” he said hesitantly, and her mouth trembled.

  “I know, and it is strange to me, and I suppose under any other conditions it would be frightening to me. But you have come to me when I was so terribly alone, and fearing death, or torment, or ravishment. Men have desired me before,” she said very simply, “and of course I have been taught, in ways I couldn’t even begin to explain to you, not to respond to them in any way, even in fancy. With some men, it has made me feel—feel sick, as if insects were crawling on my body. But there have been a few that I have almost wished—wished, as I wish now with you—that I knew how to respond to their desire; even, perhaps, that I knew how to desire them in return. Can you understand this at all?”

  “Not really,” Andrew said slowly, “but I’ll try to understand what you’re feeling. I can’t help how I feel, Callista, but I’ll try not to feel anything you don’t want me to.” To a telepath girl, he was thinking, a lustful thought must have some of the quality of a rape. Was that why it was rude to look at a young woman here? To protect them against one’s thoughts?

  “But I want you to,” Callista said shyly. “I’m not sure what it would feel like to—to love anyone. But I want you to go on thinking about me. It makes me feel less lonely somehow. Alone in the dark, I feel as if I am not real, even to myself.”

  Andrew felt an infinite tenderness. Poor child; brain-washed and conditioned against any emotion, what had they made of her? If only he could do something, anything to comfort her. . . . He felt so damned helpless, miles and miles away from her, and Callista alone in the dark and frightened. He whispered to her, “Keep up your courage, my darling. We’ll have you out of there soon,” and as the words escaped him he found himself back in his body, lying on the bed, feeling sick and faint and somehow drained. But at least he knew Callista was alive, and well—as well as she could possibly be, he amended—until Damon got her out of there.

  He lay quiet for a moment, resting. Evidently telepathic work was a lot more strenuous than physical activity; he felt about like he had when he’d been fighting his way through the blizzard.

  Fighting. But Damon was doing the real fighting. Somewhere out there, Damon had the really serious task, fighting his way through the cat-men—and from what he’d seen downstairs, when Dom Esteban’s party had dragged themselves home, wounded and broken, the cat-men were damned formidable antagonists.

  Damon had told him that it was for him to lead them to Callista, once Damon was inside the caves. He supposed he could do that, now that he knew how to step outside his body—what Callista had first called his “solid” body—and into the overworld. Then a frightening thought struck him.

  Callista was in some level of the overworld where she could not reach, or even see, Damon, or Ellemir, or any of her friends. He, Carr, could reach her, somehow; but did that mean that he was on her part of the overworld, the only one the cat-men had left open to Callista? If that was true, then he couldn’t reach Damon either! And how in hell—in that case—could he lead Damon anywhere?

  Once the thought had come into his mind it would not be dispelled. Could he reach Damon? Even through the starstone? Or would he find hi
mself, like Callista, wandering like a ghost in the overworld, unable to reach any familiar human face?

  Nonsense. Damon knew what he was doing. They had been in contact, last night, through the stones. (Again the memory of that curiously intimate moment of fusion warmed and disturbed him.)

  Just the same . . . the doubt lingered, would not be chased away. Finally he realized there was only one way to be sure, and once again he drew forth the starstone from its silk envelope. This time, he did not attempt to physically move out of his body into the overworld, but concentrated, with all his strength, on Damon, repeating his name.

  The stone clouded. Again the curious creeping sickness (Would he ever get past that stage? Would he ever be free of it?) surged up and he struggled for control, trying to focus his thoughts on Damon. Deep in the depths of the blue stone—as he had seen Callista’s face, so long ago now in the Trade City—he saw tiny figures, like riders, and he knew that he saw Damon’s party, the swirling cloak of green-gold, which Damon had told him were the colors of the Ridenow family, the two tall riders on either side. Over them, like a menace, hovered a dark cloud, a dimness, and a voice, not his own, whispered in Andrew’s thoughts: The edge of the darkening lands. Then there was a curious flare and touch, and Andrew felt himself merging with another mind—he was Damon. . . .

  Damon’s body sat his horse with careless, automatic skill; no one who did not know him well would have realized that his body was empty of consciousness, that Damon himself rode somewhere above, his mind sweeping over the land before him, seeking, seeking.

  The shadow rose before him, a thick darkness to his mind as it had been to his eyes, and again he felt the memory of fear, the apprehension which he had felt on leading his men into ambush, unawares. . . . Is this fear for now, or a memory of that fear? Briefly, dropping back into his body, he felt Dom Esteban’s sword, which lay loosely held in his right hand, twitch slightly, and knew he must control himself and react only to real dangers. It was Dom Esteban’s sword, rather than Damon’s own, because, as Dom Esteban put it, “I have carried it in a hundred battles. No other sword would come so ready to my hand. It knows my ways and my will.” Damon had carried out the old man’s wishes, remembering how the silver butterfly Callista wore in her hair carried the mental imprint of her personality. How much more, then, a sword on which Dom Esteban had depended for his very life, for over fifty years spent in battles, feuds, raiding parties?

  In the hilt of the sword, Damon had set one of the small, unkeyed first-level matrixes which he had dismissed, at first, as being only fit to fasten buttons; small as it was, it would resonate in harmony with his own starstone and allow Dom Esteban to maintain contact not only with the energy-nets of his muscles and nerve centers, but with the hilt of his sword.

  Spell sword, he thought, half derisively. But the history of Darkover was full of such weapons. There was the legendary Sword of Aldones in the chapel at Hali, a weapon so ancient and so fearful—that no one alive knew how to wield it. There was the Sword of Hastur, in Castle Hastur, of which it was said that if any man drew it save in defense of the honor of the Hasturs it would blast his hand as if with fire. And that in turn reminded him of the Lady Mirella, whose body and hands had been burned and blackened as if with fire. . . .

  His hand trembled faintly on the hilt of Dom Esteban’s sword. Well, he was as well prepared for such a battle as any living man could be; Tower-trained, strong enough that Leonie had said that as a woman he would have been a Keeper. And as for the rest—well, he was riding in defense of his own kinswoman, taking up a duty for his father-in-law-to-be, and thus safeguarding the honor of his future wife’s family.

  And as for being a virgin, Damon thought wryly, I’m not, but I’m as nearly chaste as any adult male my age could be. I didn’t even bed Ellemir, although Evanda the Fair knows that I would have liked to. To himself he recited the Creed of Chastity taught him at Nevarsin Monastery, where he had been schooled, like many sons of the Seven Domains, in childhood. The creed was adhered to by men working in the Tower Circles: never to lay hands on any unwilling woman, to look never with lewd thoughts on child or pledged virgin, to spend oneself never on such women as are common to all.

  Well, I learned it so thoroughly in the Tower that I never unlearned it, and if it makes it safer for me on what is, basically, work for a Keeper—well, so much the better for me and so much the worse for the cat-men, Zandru seize them for his coldest hell!

  He dropped back into his body, opened his eyes, and watched the land ahead of him. Then, carefully and slowly, he raised his consciousness again, leaving his body to react with long habit to the motion of the horse. He used the link of those open, staring eyes to send himself out over the physical landscape ahead, still brooding beneath that dark mist.

  It was as darker clots of blackness just at the edge of that shadow that he saw them first; then the fine web of force that bound them to some other power, hidden in a depth of shadow that neither his eyes nor the power of the starstone could yet pierce.

  Then he could see the furred bodies that those forces hid, crouched silent and motionless among little shrubs which could hardly have hidden them, visible.

  Cats. Stalking mice. And we’re the mice. He could see his own little group of men, moving steadily toward that ambush. He began to lower himself toward his body again. Change their route. Avoid that ambush.

  But no. He blinked, staring between his horse’s ears, realizing that the prowling cat-men would, doubtless, follow after them; and if another ambush lay ahead, they would be trapped between the two parties. He contented himself with turning his head to Eduin and warning, tersely, “Cat-men ahead. Better be ready.”

  Then he willed out of his body once more, focused deep on the starstone, and was again floating above the cat-men, studying the tenuous nets of force that hid their bodies from his physical eyes, noting the way those strands fanned out from the shadow. Just where and when could those webs be broken?

  He saw it, reflected in the tension of the cat bodies which he could see clearly in the overworld, when he and his men came into view. He saw them drawing short, curved swords—like claws. And still he waited, till the crouching cat-men came up to their feet and began to run quietly and swiftly over the snow, noiseless on their soft pads. Then he drew deep into the starstone and hurled a sudden blast of energy like a lightning bolt, focused on the carefully spun net of energies, ripping it apart.

  Then he was back in his body as the cat-men, not yet realizing that their magical invisibility was gone, came running toward them over the snow. But before he regained full control of his body, his horse reared and screamed in terror, and Damon, reacting a split second too late to the horse’s movement, slid off into the snow. He saw one of the cat-men bounding toward him, and felt a tightening surge of something—not quite fear—as he fumbled his hand into the basket hilt of Dom Esteban’s sword .

  . . . Miles away, in the Great Hall at Armida, Dom Esteban Lanart stirred in his sleep. His shoulders twitched, and his thin lips curled back in a smile—or a snarl—that had been seen on countless battlefields. . . .

  Damon found himself rolling to his feet, his hand whipping the sword from its sheath in a long slash. His point ripped through the white-furred belly and there was blood on the blade outstretched beyond, the blade that was already pointed at a second cat-man.

  As that one slashed at his middle, he saw and felt his wrist turn slightly to move his point down, into the path of the cut; as steel rang, he felt his leg jerk in a little kick step, and suddenly his point was buried in the furred throat.

  He caught a brief glimpse of Eduin and Rannan, superb horsemen like all the men of the Alton Domain, whirling their frightened horses, slashing down at the gray furred bodies surrounding them. One went down under a kick from Rannan’s horse, but he had no more time to spare for them; wide green eyes glared at him, and a mouth of needlelike fangs opened in a menacing hiss. Tufts of black fur twitched atop the wide ears as the creature wh
ipped its blade around to knock his point aside, and spun on, the scythe-blade flashing toward his eyes. Damon felt a spasm of terror, but his own blade had already whirled at the head; the two swords clashed and he saw a spark leap in the cold. The snarling cat face lurched forward at him, and for a second he was fighting empty air.

  It flickered in and out of visibility; whatever power lurked behind the dark edge of shadow was trying to hide its minions again. Stark terror and despair clawed at him for a moment, so painfully that he half wondered if he had been wounded. Then, with a deep breath, he realized what he had to do, and focused on the starstone. As he abandoned his body wholly to Esteban’s skill, he prayed momentarily that the link would hold. Then he forgot his body (either it was safe with Esteban or it wasn’t, either way he couldn’t help much) and hurled himself upward into the overworld.

  The shadow lay blank and terrible before him, and from it questing tendrils were weaving, seeking to cloak the angry red shadows of the cat things that fought there.

  He reached blindly into the energy-nets and found that without conscious thought he had brought a blade of pure force into his hand. He brought it down on the fine shadow-stuff and the half-woven net of darkness shriveled and burned away. Severed tendrils, quivering, recoiled into the shadow, and their ends faded and vanished. The shadow swirled and eddied, drew back, and out of the midst of the darkness a great cat-face glared at him.

  He raised his glowing blade and stood fronting that great menace. Somewhere near his feet he was dimly aware of tiny forms fighting below him, four cats tinier than kittens, three little men, and one of those men . . . surely it was Dom Esteban, surely that was his sidestep, his twirling disengage . . . ?