But for the Council she had put on a dress of grayed blue, with a veil of the same color, only thinner, woven with metallic threads that gleamed and twinkled as she moved, and her hair blazed like flame. She had done something to her face to conceal the long red scratches there, and there was an abnormally high color in her cheeks. Was it vanity or defiance which had prompted her to paint her face this way, so that her paleness would not seem the pallor of fear? Star-sapphires gleamed at her throat and she wore her matrix bared, blazing out from among them. As they paced into the Council chamber, Damon felt proud of them all, and willing to defy all of Darkover, if need be.
It was Lorill Hastur who called them all to order, saying, “Serious charges have been laid against you all. Damon, are you willing to answer these charges?”
Looking up at the Hastur seats, and Leonie’s implacable face, Damon knew that to explain and justify, as he had intended, would be a waste of time. His only chance was to seize and hold the initiative.
“Would any hear me, if I did?”
Leonie said, “For what you have done there can be no explanation and no excuse. But we are inclined to be lenient, if you will submit yourself to our judgment, you and these others whom you have led into rebellion against the most sacred laws of Comyn.” She was looking at Callista as if she had never seen her before.
Through the silence Andrew thought, Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say before judgment is passed on you?
It was on him that Lorill first turned his eyes.
“Andrew Carr, your offense is serious, but you acted in ignorance of our laws. You shall be turned over to your own people, and if you have broken none of their laws, you shall go free, but we will ask that you be sent off our world at once.
“Callista Lanart, you have merited a sentence equivalent to Damon’s. But Leonie has interceded for you. Your intended marriage, being unconsummated” — how, Damon wondered, had Lorill known that? — “has no force in law. We declare it null and void. You shall return to Arilinn, with Leonie making herself personally responsible for your good behavior.
“Damon Ridenow, for your own offenses, and the offenses of these whom you have led into disobedience, you merit death or mutilation under the old laws. You are here offered a choice. You may surrender your matrix at once, with a Keeper to safeguard your life and reason, so that you may live out your life as regent of Alton, and guardian of the Alton heir your wife bears. If you refuse this, it will be taken from you by force. Should you survive, the laran centers of your brain will be burned away, to prevent any further abuse.”
Ellemir gave a low cry of dismay. Lorill looked at her with something like compassion, and said, “Ellemir Lanart, as for you, being misled by your husband, we impose no sentence save this: that you shall cease to meddle in matters outside the sphere of women, and turn your thoughts to your only duty at this time, to safeguard your coming child, who is heir to Alton. Since your father lies ill and your only surviving brother is a minor child, and your husband under our sentence, we place you under wardship of Lord Serrais, and you shall return to Serrais to bear your child. Meanwhile, I have chosen three respectable matrons of Comyn to care for you until sentence has been carried out on your husband: Lady Rohana Ardais, Jerana, Princess of Elhalyn, and my own son’s wife, Lady Cassilda Hastur. Allow them now to take you from this chamber, Lady Ellemir. What is to come may prove disturbing, even dangerous for a woman in your condition.”
Lady Cassilda, a pretty, dark-haired woman, about Ellemir’s age, and herself heavily pregnant, held out her hand to Ellemir. “Come with me, my dear.”
Ellemir looked at Cassilda Hastur and back at Damon. “May I speak, Lord Hastur?”
Lorill nodded.
Ellemir’s voice sounded as light and childish as ever, but determined. “I thank the matrons for their kind concern, but I decline their good offices. I will stay with my husband.”
“My dear,” Cassilda Hastur said, “your loyalty does you credit. But you must think of your child.”
“I am thinking of my child,” Ellemir said, “of all our children, Cassilda, yours and mine, and the life we want for them. Have any of you bothered to think, really think about what Damon is doing?”
Damon, listening incredulously — he had poured his heart out to her, the night he healed the frostbitten men, but he had not believed she really understood — heard her say:
“You know and I know how hard it is to find telepaths in these days, for the Towers. Even those who have laran are reluctant to give up their lives and live behind walls, and who can blame them? I would not want to do it myself. I want to live at Armida and have children to live there after me. And I do not want to see their lives torn by that terrible choice, either, to know that they must shirk one or the other duty to their Domain. Bu there is so much for telepaths to do, and no one is doing it. They need not all be done behind the walls of a Tower, indeed some of them cannot be done there. But because so many people believe that is the only way to use laran, the work is simply not being done at all, and the people of the Domains are suffering because it is not done. Damon has found a way to make it available to everyone. Laran need not be a kind of… of mysterious sorcery, hidden inside the Towers. If I, who am a woman, and uneducated, and the lesser of twins, can be taught to use it, as I have been, a little, then there must be many, many, who could do it. And—”
Margwenn Elhalyn rose in her place. She was very pale. “Must we sit and listen to this… this blasphemy? Must we who have given our lives to the Towers sit here and hear our choice blasphemed by this… this ignorant woman who should be home by her fireside making baby clothes, not standing before us prattling like a silly child of things she cannot understand!”
“Wait,” said Rohana Ardais, “wait, Margwenn. I too was Tower-trained, and the choice was forced on me, to give up this work I loved, to marry and give sons to my husband’s clan. There is some wisdom in what Lady Ellemir says. Let us hear what she is saying to us, without interrupting.”
But Rohana was silenced by outcry. Lorill Hastur called them to order, and Damon remembered with a sinking heart that Lorill too had been trained in Dalereuth Tower, and had been forced to renounce it when he inherited the position as Council Regent. “You have no Council voice, Lady Ellemir. You may choose to go with the matrons we have chosen to care for you, or you may remain here. You have no other options.”
She clung to Damon’s arm. “I stay with my husband.”
“Sir,” Cassilda Hastur said, troubled, “Has she the right to choose, when this choice may endanger the child she bears? She has miscarried once, and this child is heir to Alton. Is not the child’s safety more important than her sentimental wish to stay with Damon?”
“In the name of all the Gods, Cassilda!” Rohana protested. “She is not a child! She understands what is at stake here! Do you think she is a dairy animal, that by leading her out of sight of her child’s father you can make her indifferent to his fate? Sit down and let her alone!”
Rebuked, the young Lady Hastur took her seat.
“Damon Ridenow, choose. Will you surrender your matrix without protest, or must it be taken from you?”
Damon glanced at Ellemir, holding his arm; at Callistra, blazing jeweled defiance; at Andrew, one step behind him. He said to them, not to Lorill, “May I speak, then, for you all? Callista, is it your will to return to Arilinn in Leonie’s care?”