“Damon, don’t. Surely the Council will let you explain; they’ll know you did the only thing you could do.”
Damon only moaned in dread. It seemed that all the fears of his life, which he had been taught it was not manful to acknowledge, surged over him in one great breaking wave which was drowning him. The fears of a lonely, unwanted child, of a lonely boy in the cadets, clumsy and unloved, tolerated only as Coryn’s chosen friend; all his life holding fear at bay lest he be thought, or think himself, less than a man. The fear and self-doubt lest Leonie should somehow look beneath his control, detect his forbidden passion and desire, the guilt and loss when she had sent him from Arilinn, telling him he was not strong enough for this work, feeding the knowledge of his own weakness, the fear he had smothered always. The repressed fear of all the years in the Guards, knowing himself no soldier, no swordsman. The dreadful guilt of fleeing, leaving his Guardsmen to face death in his place…
All his life. All his life he had been afraid. Had there ever been so much as a day when he was not aware that he was a coward vainly pretending not to be afraid, pretending bravado so no one could see what a cringing worm he was, what a helpless sham, what a poor thing wearing the shape of a man? His life mattered so little to him, he would rather have faced death than expose himself as the craven, shameful weakling he was.
But now they had threatened the one thing he truly could not bear, would not bear, would not endure. It would be easier to die now, to put his knife through his throat, rather than live blinded, mutilated, a corpse walking in the pretense of life.
Slowly he became aware, through the fog of panic and dread, that Andrew was kneeling at his side, troubled and pale. He was pleading, but the words could not reach Damon through the deadly fog of fear.
How Andrew must despise him, he thought. He was so strong…
Dismayed, Andrew watched Damon’s silent struggle. He tried to reason with him, but he knew he simply wasn’t getting through. Did Damon even hear him? Trying to break through to him, he sat beside Damon, bent to put an arm around him.
“Don’t, don’t,” he said, clumsily. “It’s all right, Damon, I’m here.” And then, feeling awkward and shy as he always did at any hint of the closeness between them, he said, almost in a whisper, “I won’t let them hurt you, bredu.”
Damon’s agony of frozen terror broke, overwhelming them both. He sobbed convulsively, the last remnants of self-control gone. Shaken, Andrew tried to withdraw, thinking that Damon wouldn’t want Andrew to see him like this, then he realized that was the last vestige of his Terran thinking. He could not withdraw from Damon’s pain, because it was his own pain, a threat to Damon a threat to himself. He must accept Damon’s weakness and fear as he accepted everything else about him, as he accepted his love and concern.
Yes, love. He knew now, holding Damon sobbing against him, Damon’s terror washing through him like an invading tidal wave, he loved Damon as he loved himself, as he loved Callista and Ellemir — he was a very part of them. From the very beginning, Damon had known and accepted this, but he, Andrew, had always held back, had told himself Damon was his friend, but that there were limits to friendship, places never to be touched.
He had resented it when Damon and Ellemir had merged with his attempt to make love to Callista, had tried to isolate himself with her, feeling that his love for her was something he couldn’t, didn’t want to share. He had resented Damon’s closeness to Callista, and had never, he knew now, understood precisely what had prompted Ellemir to make the offer she had made. He had been embarrassed, shamed when Damon found him with Ellemir, even though he had taken his consent for granted. He had regarded his relationship with Ellemir as something apart from Damon, as it was apart from Callista. And when Damon had tried to share his euphoria, his overflowing love for them all, had tried to express Andrew’s own unspoken wish — I wish I could make love to you all — he had rebuffed him with unimaginable cruelty, disrupting the fragile link.
He was even wondering if they had both married the wrong women. But Andrew was the one who was wrong, he knew now.
They were not two couples, changing partners. It was the four of them, all of them. They belonged together, and the link was as strong between Damon and him as between either of them and the women.
Maybe even, and he felt the thought surface in absolute terror, daring a kind of self-knowledge he had never allowed himself before, stronger. Because they could see themselves reflected in each other. Find a kind of affirmation of the reality of their own manhood. He knew now what Damon meant when he said he cherished Andrew’s maleness as he cherished the femininity of the women. And it wasn’t what Andrew was afraid it was.
For it was just this, suddenly, that he knew he loved in Damon, gentleness and violence combined, the very affirmation of manhood. It now seemed incredible that he could ever have found Damon’s touch a threat to his manhood. It confirmed, rather, something they shared, another way of stating to one another what they both were. He should have welcomed it as a way of closing the circle, of sharing the awareness of what they all meant to one another. But he had rebuffed him, and now Damon, in the terror which he could not share with the women, could not even turn to him to find strength. And where would he turn, if not to a sworn brother?
“Bredu,” he whispered again, holding Damon with the fierce protectiveness he had felt from the first toward him, but had never known how to express. His own eyes were blinded with tears. The enormity of this commitment frightened him, but he would not turn back.
Bredin. There was nothing like this relationship on earth. Once, trying for analogy, he had mentioned to Damon the rite of blood brotherhood. Damon had shuddered with revulsion, and said, his voice trembling with loathing, “That would be the ultimate forbidden thing between us, to shed a brother’s blood. Sometimes bredin exchange knives, as a pledge that neither can ever strike at the other, since the knife you bear is your brother’s own.” Yet, trying to understand, through the revulsion, what blood brotherhood meant to Andrew, he had conceded that, yes, the emotional weight was the same. Andrew, thinking in his own symbols because he could not yet share Damon’s, thought now as he held him that he would give the last of his blood for Damon, and that would horrify him, as what Damon had tried to give him had frightened Andrew.
Slowly, slowly, all that was in Andrew’s mind filtered through to Damon. He understood now, he was one of them at last. And as Andrew held him, letting the barriers slowly dissolve, Damon’s terror receded.
He was not alone. He was Keeper of his own Tower circle, and he drew confidence from Andrew, finding his own strength and manhood again. No longer bearing the burden of all the others, but sharing the weight of what they were.
He could do anything now, he thought and, feeling Andrew’s closeness, amended out loud, “We can do anything.” He drew a long breath, raised himself, and drew Andrew to him in a kinsman’s embrace, kissing him on the cheek. He said softly, “Brother.”
Andrew grinned, patted him on the back. “You’re all right,” he said. The words were meaningless, but Damon felt what was behind them.
“What I said about blood brotherhood once,” said Andrew, struggling for words, “it’s… the same blood, as of brothers… blood either would shed for the other.”