The Forbidden Circle Read online

  “Do you still smell danger behind every tree, Lord Damon?”

  “Yes, but I can’t say why,” Damon said, sighing. Afoot he was little more than medium height, a thin pale man with the fire-red hair of a Comyn Lord of the Seven Domains; like most of his kindred he went unarmed except for a dagger, and under his riding-cloak he wore the light tunic of an indoor man, a scholar. The Guardsman was looking at him solicitously.

  “You are unused to so much riding, Lord, and in such haste. Was there so much need for it, so swiftly?”

  “I do not know,” the Comyn Lord said quietly. “But my kinswoman at Armida sent me a message—a guarded one—begging me to come to her with all speed, and she is not of that fearful kind who start at shadows and lie awake nights fearing bandits in the courtyard when her menfolk are away. An urgent summons from the Lady Ellemir is nothing to treat lightly, so I came at once, as I must. It may well be some family trouble, some sickness in her household; but whatever it is, the matter is grave or she could deal with it on her own.”

  The Guardsman nodded slowly. “I have heard the lady is brave and resourceful,” he said, “I have a brother who is a part of her household staff. May I tell my fellows this much, Lord? They may grumble less, if they know it is grave trouble and no whim of your own.”

  “Tell them and welcome, it is no secret,” Damon said, “I would have done so myself, if I had thought to do so.”

  Reidel grinned. “I know you are no man-driver,” he said, “but none of us had heard rumors, and this is not a country any man cares to ride in without need.” He was turning away, but Damon kept him, a hand on his sleeve.

  “Not a country to ride in without need—what do you mean, Reidel?”

  Now that he was asked a direct question, the man fidgeted.

  “Unchancy,” he said at last, “and bad luck. It lies under a shadow. They call it, now, the darkening lands, and no man will ride there or travel there unless he must, and not even then unless he carries mighty protections.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You may laugh, Lord, you Comyn are protected by the Great Gods.”

  Damon sighed. “I had not thought to find you so superstitious, Reidel. You have been a Guardsman for a score of years, you were paxman to my father. Do you still think we Comyn are otherwise than other men?”

  “You are luckier,” Reidel said, his teeth clenched, “but now, when men ride into the darkening lands, they return no more, or return with their wits astray. No, Lord, do not laugh at me, it befell my mother’s brother two moons ago. He rode into the darkened lands to visit a maid he would make his second wife, having paid bride-price when she was but nine. He came not when he was expected, and when they told me he had gone forever into the shadow, I too laughed and said he had, no doubt, delayed to bed the girl and get her with child. Then one night, Lord, after overstaying his leave a full ten days, he rode into the Guardroom at Serré late one night. I am not a fanciful man, Lord, but his face—his face—” He gave up struggling for words, and said, “He looked as if he’d been looking straight down into Zandru’s seventh hell. And he said nothing that made sense, Lord. He raved of great fires, and of death in the winds, and withered gardens, and witch-food that took a man’s wits, and of girls who clawed at his soul like cat-hags; and though they sent for the sorceress, before she could come to heal his mind, he sank, and died raving.”

  “Some sickness in the mountains and foothills,” Damon said, but Reidel shook his head.

  “As you reminded me, Lord, I have been Guardsman in these hills a score of years, and my uncle twoscore. I know the sicknesses that strike men, and this was none of them. Nor do I know any sickness which strikes a man only in one direction. I myself rode a little way into the darkened lands, Lord, and I saw for myself the withered gardens and untended orchards, and the folk who live there now. It is true they live on witch-food, Lord.”

  Damon interrupted again. “Witch food? There are no such things as witches, Reidel.”

  “Call it what you will, but this is no food from grain, root, berry, or wholesome tree, Lord, nor flesh of any living thing. I would not touch a grain of it, and I think this is why I escaped unscathed. I saw it come from the air.”

  Damon said, “Those who know their business can prepare food from things which look inedible, Reidel, and it is wholesome. A matrix technician—how can I explain this? He breaks down the chemical matter which cannot be eaten with safety, and changes its structure so that it can be digested and will nourish. It is not sufficient to sustain life for many months, but it will keep life for a little while in urgency. This I can do myself, and there is no witchery to it.”

  Reidel frowned. “Sorcery of your starstone—”

  “Sorcery be damned,” Damon said testily. “A skill.”

  “Then why can no one do it but you Comyn?”

  He sighed. “I cannot play upon the lute; my ears and fingers have neither the inborn talent nor the training. But you, Reidel, were born with the ear, and the fingers were trained in childhood, and so you make music as you wish. So it is with this. The Comyn are born with talent, as it might be a talent for music, and in childhood we are trained to change the structure of matter with the help of these matrix stones. I can do only a few small things; those well-trained can do much. Perhaps someone has been experimenting with such imitation food in those lands, and not knowing his skill full well, has wrought poison instead, a poison which sets men’s wits running wild. But this is a matter for one of the Keepers. Why has no one brought this to them for their mending, Reidel?”

  “Say what you like,” the Guardsman said, and his clenched and stubborn face said volumes. “The darkened lands lie under some evil, and men of goodwill should avoid them. And now, if it pleases you, Lord, we should be a-horse again if we would reach Armida before nightfall. For even if we stay clear of the darkening lands, this is no road to ride by night.”

  “You are right,” said Damon, and mounted, waiting while his escort gathered again. He had plenty to think about. He had, indeed, heard rumors about the lands at the fringes of the cat-country, but nothing, as yet, like this. Was it all superstition, rumor based on the gossip of the ignorant? No; Reidel was no fanciful man, nor was his uncle, a hard-bitten soldier for twenty years, any man to fall prey to vague shadows. Something very tangible had killed him; and he’d have bet the old fellow would have taken a lot of killing.

  They had topped the summit of the hill, and Damon looked down into the valley, alert for any sign of ambush; for his sense of being watched, pursued, had grown to an obsession by now. This would be a good place for an ambush, as they came up over the hill.

  But the road and the valley lay bare before them in the cloudy sunlight, and Damon frowned, trying to loosen his tense muscles by an act of will.

  You’re getting to where you jump at shadows. Much good you’ll be to Ellemir, unless you can get your nerves in order.

  His gloved hand went to the chain about his neck; there, wrapped in silk inside a small pouch of leather, he could feel the hard shape, the curious warmth of the matrix he carried. Given to him when he had mastered its use, the “starstone” Reidel had spoken about, it was keyed to his mind in a way no one but a Darkovan—and Comyn-telepath could ever understand. Long training had taught him to amplify the magnetic forces of his brain with the curious crystalline structure of the stone; and now the very touch of it quieted his mind to calm; the long discipline of the highly trained telepath.

  Reason, he told himself, all things in order. As the disquiet lessened, he felt the quiet pulse and slow euphoria which meant his brain had begun to function at what the Comyn called basic, or “resting,” rhythm. From this moment of calm, above himself, he looked at his fears and Reidel’s. Something here to be examined, yes; but not to be chewed over restlessly from confused tales as he rode. Rather, something to be set aside, thought about, then systematically investigated, with facts rather than fears, happenings rather than gossip.

  A wild shout r
ipped into his mind, crashing his artificial calm like a stone flung through a glass window. It was a painful, shattering shock, and he cried aloud with the impact of fear and agony on his mind, half a moment before he heard a hoarse male scream—a fearful scream, a scream which comes only from dying lips. His horse plunged and reared upward beneath him; his hand still clutching the crystal at his throat, he hauled desperately at the reins, trying to get control of his pitching mount. The animal stopped short under him, standing stiff-legged and trembling, as Damon stared in amazement, watching Reidel slide slowly to the ground, limp and unmistakably dead, his throat a single long gash, from which blood still spouted in a crimson fountain.

  And no one was near him! A sword from nowhere, an invisible claw of steel to rip out the throat of a living, breathing man.

  “Aldones! Lord of Light deliver us!” Damon whispered to himself, clutching the hilt of his knife, struggling for self-control. The other Guardsmen were fighting, their swords sweeping in great gleaming arcs against them.

  Damon clutched the crystal in his fingers, fighting a silent battle for mastery of this illusion—for illusion it must be! Slowly, as through a thick veil in his mind, he saw shadowy forms, strange and hardly human. The light seemed to shine through them, and his eyes went in and out of focus, trying hard to keep them before him.

  And he was unarmed! No swordsman at best—

  He gripped the reins of his horse, struggling against the impulse to rush in against the invisible opponents. Red fury pulsed in his blood, but an icy wave of reason told him, coldly, that he was unarmed, that he could only plunge in and die with his men, and that his duty to his kinswoman now came first. Was her house besieged by some such invisible terrors? Were they, perchance, lying in wait to keep any of her kinfolk from coming to her aid?

  His men were fighting wildly against the invisible assailants; Damon, clutching the matrix, wheeled his mount and swerved, dashing away from the attackers at a hard gallop, and down the path. His throat seemed to crawl. For all he knew some invisible blade might sweep out of empty air and strike his head from his shoulders. Behind him the hoarse cries of his men were like a knife in his heart, clutching at him, clawing at his conscience. He rode, head down, cloak clutched about him, as if indeed demons pursued him; and he did not slacken pace until he came to a halt, his horse trembling and streaming sweat, his own breath coming in great ragged heaving gasps, on the next hill rise, two or three miles below the ambush, and above him the high gates of Armida.

  Dismounting, he drew the crystal from its protective leather pouch and unwrapped the silk within. Naked, this could have saved us all, he thought, looking down despairingly at the blue stone with the strange, curling gleams of fire within; his trained telepathic power, enormously amplified by the resonating magnetic fields of the matrix, could have mastered the illusion; his men might have had to fight, but they would have fought free of illusions, against foes they could see, who could match them fairly. He bowed his head. A matrix was never carried bare; its resonating vibrations had to be insulated from what was around it. And by the time he could have freed it from its insulation, his men would have been dead, anyway, and him with them.

  Sighing, and thrusting the crystal back into the silk, he patted his exhausted horse on the flank, and, not mounting to spare the gasping, trembling beast any further exertion, he led him slowly up the rise toward the gates. Armida was not besieged, it seemed. The courtyard lay quiet and bare in the dying sunlight, and the nightly fog was beginning to roll in from the surrounding hills; serving men came to take his horse and cried out in alarm at the state of it.

  “Were you pursued? Lord Damon, where is your escort?”

  He shook his head slowly, not trying to answer. “Later, later. Tend my horse, and let him not drink until he is cooled; he has ridden too far at a gallop. Send for the Lady Ellemir to tell her I have come.”

  If this mission is not of grave importance, he said to himself grimly, we shall quarrel. Four of my faithful men dead, and horribly. Yet she is under no siege or trouble.

  Then he became aware of the grim quiet that lay over the courtyard. Surely there were splotches of blood on the stones. A strange disquiet, a sickening unease—which he knew was in his mind, sensed from something not on this mundane level at all—crept slowly over him.

  He raised his eyes to see Ellemir Lanart standing before him.

  “Kinsman,” she said half audibly. “I heard something—not enough to be sure. I thought it was you, too—” Her voice failed, and she threw herself into his arms.

  “Damon! Damon! I thought you were dead, too!”

  Damon Ridenow held the girl gently, stroking the shaking shoulders. Her bright head dropped heavily for a moment against him, and she sighed then, fighting for control, raised her head. She was very tall and slender, her fire-red hair proclaiming her a member of Damon’s own telepath caste; her features were delicate, her eyes brilliant blue.

  “Ellemir, what has happened here?” he asked, his apprehension growing. “Are you under attack? Has there been a raid?”

  She lowered her head. “I do not know,” she said “All I know is that Callista is gone.”

  “Gone? In God’s name what do you mean? Carried off by bandits? Run away? Eloped?” Even as he spoke he knew that was madness; Ellemir’s twin sister Callista was a Keeper, one of those women trained to handle all the power of a circle of skilled telepaths; they were vowed to virginity, and surrounded with a circle of awe which meant no sane man on Darkover would raise his eyes to one. “Ellemir, tell me! I thought her safe in the Tower at Arilinn. Where? How?”

  Ellemir was fighting for self-control. “We cannot talk here on the doorstep,” she said, withdrawing from him and regaining her self-possession. Damon felt a moment of regret—her head against his shoulder had seemed to belong there somehow. He told himself incredulously that this was neither the time nor the place for such thoughts, and resisted the impulse to touch her hand lightly again, following her at a sedate pace into the great hall. But she was barely inside before she turned to him.

  “She was here for a visit,” Ellemir said in a shaking voice. “The Lady Leonie has sought to lay down her Keeper’s place and return to her home at Valeron, and Callista was to take her place in the Tower; but she came for a visit to me first, and she wished to persuade me to come to Arilinn and stay there with her, that she might not be so terribly alone. In any case, to see me for a little before she must be isolated for the making of the Tower Circle. All went well, although she seemed uneasy. I am no trained telepath, Damon, but Callista and I were twin-born and our minds can touch, a little, whether we will it or not. So I sensed her unease, but she said only that she had evil dreams of cat-hags and withering gardens and dying flowers. And then one day—” Ellemir’s face paled and, hardly knowing what she did, she reached her hand to Damon’s, gripping desperately as if to lean her weight upon him.

  “I woke, hearing her scream; but no one else had heard any sound, even a whisper. Four of our people lay dead in the court, and among them—among them was our old foster mother Bethiah. She had nursed Callista at her breasts as a babe and she slept always on a cot at her feet, and she lay there with her eyes—her eyes clawed out of their sockets, still just alive.” Ellemir was sobbing aloud now. “And Callista was gone! Gone, and I could not reach her—I could not reach her even with my mind! My twin, and she was gone, as if Avarra had snatched her alive into some otherworld.”

  Damon’s voice was hard; he kept it that way with a fierce effort. “Do you think she is dead, Ellemir?”

  Ellemir met his eyes with a level blue gaze.

  “I do not. I did not feel her die; and my twin could not die without my sharing her death. When our brother Coryn died in a fall from the aerie, taking hawks, both Callista and I felt him pass from life into death; and Callista is my twin. She lives.” Then Ellemir’s voice broke and she wept wildly.

  “But where? Where? She is gone, gone, gone as if she had never lived! A
nd only shadows moving since then—only shadows. Damon, Damon, what shall I do, what shall I do?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  He would never have thought that going downhill could be so difficult.

  All day Andrew Carr had climbed, scrambled, and slid around on the sharp rocks of the slope. He had looked down into an incredibly deep ravine where the remnants of the mapping plane lay smashed, and written off any lingering hope of salvaging food, protective clothing, or the identity disks of his companions. Now, as darkness fell and a light fall of snow began to drift across the slopes, he huddled inside the thick fur coat and sucked the last few of the sweets he had with him. He scanned the horizon below him for lights or any other signs of life. There must be some. This was a thickly inhabited planet. But out in the mountains here, it might be miles or even hundreds of miles between settled areas. He did see pale gleams against the horizon, one clustered group of lights which might even have been a town or village. So his only problem was to get down to it. But that might take some doing. He knew nothing—less than nothing, really—of woodcraft or survival skills. Finally, remembering something he had read, he half buried himself in a heap of dead leaves and pulled the flap of the fur coat over his head. He wasn’t warm, and he found his thoughts dwelling lovingly on food, great steaming platefuls of it, but finally he did sleep; after a fashion, waking almost hourly to shiver and pull himself more deeply into his heap of leaves, but he did sleep. Nor did he see, anywhere in his confused dreams, the face of the ghostly girl he identified with his vision.

  All the next day, and the day after, he struggled his way through, and down, a long slope covered with dense thorny underbrush, twice lost his way in the thickly wooded valley at the bottom, and finally toiled his way up the far side of the slope. From the bottom of the valley he had no way to ascertain which way he should be going, and from there, he saw no sign of human or other habitation. Once he came across remnants, in extreme disrepair, of a split-rail fence, and wasted a couple of hours walking its length—the existence of a fence usually postulated something to be fenced in, or kept out. But it lead him only into thick, tangled dry vines and he decided that whatever strange kind of livestock had been fenced in at one time, both the stock and their keeper had been long, long gone. Near the spot where he had first found the fence was a dry creek bed, and he surmised that he could probably follow it down out of the mountains. Civilizations, especially farmlands, had always built their settlements along watercourses, and he believed that this planet would hardly be an exception. If he followed the stream down along its natural course, it would certainly lead him out of the hills and probably to the abodes of whatever people had built the fence and herded the stock. But after a few miles the course of the dry stream bed was obscured by a rock slide, and try as he might, he could not find it on the other side. Maybe that was why the fence-builders had moved their livestock.