Ellemir had sunk to the floor, moaning with shock and dread. Andrew’s first thought was for her. He hurried to her, holding her, trying to pour his strength into her as he had poured it into Damon. Damon slowly picked himself up, staring into nowhere. Callista was staring at her matrix, in horror.
“Now I am truly forsworn…” she whispered. “I had given back my oath… and I used it to kill…” She began to scream wildly, beating at herself with her fists, tearing at her face with her nails. Andrew thrust Ellemir gently into a low chair, ran to Callista. He tried to grasp her flailing arms. There was a shower of blue sparks and he landed, stunned, against the opposite wall. Callista, looking at him, her eyes wide and half mad with horror, shrieked again, and her nails ripped down her cheeks, blood following them in a thin, scarlet line.
Damon sprang forward. He grasped her wrists in one hand, held the struggling, screaming woman immobile, and with his open hand slapped her, hard, across the face. The screams died in a gasp. She slumped and he held her upright, cradling her head on his shoulder.
Callista began to sob. “I had given back my oath,” she whispered. “I could not refrain… I moved against him as Keeper. Damon, I am still Keeper despite my oath… my oath!”
“Damn your oath!” said Damon, and shook her. “Callista! Stop that! Don’t you even know you saved all our lives?”
She stopped crying, but her face, ghastly with streaked blood and tears, was drawn into a mask of horror. “I am forsworn. I am forsworn.”
“We’re all forsworn,” Damon said. “It’s too late for that! Damn it, Callie, pull yourself together! I have to see if that bastard has managed to kill your father too. And Ellemir—” His breath caught in his throat. Shocked into compliance, Callista went quickly to where Ellemir lay motionless in the chair.
After a moment she raised her head. “I do not think the child has suffered. Go, Damon, and see if all is well with our father.”
Damon moved toward the other rooms of the suite. But he knew without moving that Dom Esteban was so near death that nature had provided its own shield. He had been spared all knowledge of that battle to the death. Damon, however, needed a moment alone, to come to terms with this new knowledge.
Without thought, he had moved against a Keeper, an Alton, had moved, automatically, to shake her out of her hysteria, to take the full responsibility.
It is I who am Keeper of these four. Whatever we may do, it is on my responsibility.
Before long, he knew, he would be called to account for what he had done. Every telepath from Dalereuth to the Hellers must have witnessed that death.
And already he had alerted them to what was happening among the four of them, when with Andrew and Dezi he had built that landmark in the overworld, to heal the frostbitten men. Sorrow gnawed at him again, for the boy so terribly and tragically dead. Aldones, Lord of Light… Dezi, Dezi, what a waste, what a tragic waste of all his gifts…
But even sorrow gave way to the knowledge of what he had done, and what he had become.
Exiled from Arilinn, he had built his own Tower. And Varzil had hailed him as tenerézu. Keeper. He was Keeper, Keeper of a forbidden Tower.
Chapter Twenty
Damon had known it would not be long in coming, and it was not.
Ellemir had quieted. She sat in the chair where Andrew had laid her, only gasping a little with shock. Ferrika, summoned, looked at her with dismay.
“I don’t know what you have been doing, my lady, but whatever it is, unless you want to lose this baby too, you had better go to bed and stay there.” She began gently to move her hands over Ellemir’s body. To Damon’s surprise, she did not touch her, keeping an inch or two between Ellemir’s body and her fingertips, finally saying with a faint frown, “The baby is all right. In fact, you are in worse case than he is. I will send for a hot meal for you, and you eat it and go to—” She broke off, staring at her hands in astonishment and awe.
“In the name of the Goddess, what am I doing!”
Callista, recalled to responsibility, said, “Don’t worry, Ferrika, your instinct is good. You have been around us so much, it is not surprising. If you had a trace of laran it would surely have wakened. Later I will show you how to do it very precisely. On a pregnant woman it is a little tricky.”
Ferrika blinked, staring at Callista. Her round, snub-nosed face looked a little bewildered, and she took in the dreadfully bloody scratches down Callista’s face, blinking. “I am no leronis.”
“Nor am I now,” Callista said gently, “but I have been taught, as you shall be. It is the most useful of skills for a midwife. I am sure you have more laran than you know.” She added, “Come, let us take Ellemir to her room. She must rest, and,” she added, raising her hands to her bleeding face, “I must see to these, too. And when you send for food for Ellemir, Damon, send for some for me too; I am hungry.”
Damon watched them go. He had long suspected Ferrika had some laran, but he was grateful it was Callista who had decided to take the responsibility for teaching her.
There was no reason that any person with the talent should not have the training, Comyn or no. Because things had been done this way since the Ages of Chaos was no reason they must continue to be done this way till Darkover sank into the Last Night! Andrew had become one of them, and he was a Terran. Ferrika had been born on the Alton estates, a commoner and, worse, a Free Amazon. But she had everything that was needful to make her one of them too: she had laran.
Comyn blood? Look what it had done for Dezi!
Aware that after the terrific matrix battle he too was famished, he sent for some food and when it came he ate it without caring what it was, watching Andrew do the same. Neither spoke of Dezi. Damon thought that at some future time Dom Esteban would have to know that the bastard son he had cherished and defended had died for his crimes. But he need never know the dreadful details.
Andrew ate without tasting, aware of the terrible hunger and draining of matrix linking, but he felt sick even while his starved body put away the food with mechanical intensity. His thoughts ran bitter counterpoint; he saw again Damon shaking Callista, holding her against self-mutilation. The memory of Callista’s bleeding face made him sick.
He had left it to Damon to care for her, thinking of no one but Ellemir. Elli, bearing his child. He had touched Callista and she had thrown him across the room. Damon had grabbed her like a caveman, and she had quieted right down. He wondered, despairing, if they had both married the wrong women.
After all, he thought, his mind plodding miserably along an all too familiar track, they were both Tower-trained, both top-rank telepaths, understanding each other. Elli and he were on a different level, just ordinary people, not understanding these things. He glanced at Damon with a sense of resentful inferiority.
He killed a boy this morning. Horribly. And he sat there calmly eating his dinner!
Damon was aware of Andrew’s resentment, but did not try to follow his thoughts. He knew and accepted that there were times, perhaps there would always be times, when Andrew, for no reason he could understand, suddenly went apart from them, no longer a beloved brother but a desperately alienated stranger. He knew it was part of the price they both paid for the attempt to extend their brotherhood across two conflicting worlds, two very different societies. It might always be this way. He had tried to bridge the gap, and it always made things worse. Now all he could do, and he knew it sadly, was to leave it to run its course.