Damon said quietly, “No, Callista. This marriage, and you know it, stands or falls on whether you can go before Council tomorrow and swear that the marriage has been consummated.”
She cried out, trapped, terrified, “Do you want me to kill him this time?” and buried her face in her hands.
Damon came around the table, gently turned Callista to face him. “There is another way, Callista. No, look at me. Andrew and I are bredin. And I am stronger than you. You could hit me with everything you threw at Andrew, and more, and you could not hurt me!”
She turned away, sobbing, “If I must. If I must. But, oh, merciful Avarra, I wanted that to come in love, when I was ready, not in a battle to the death!”
There was a long silence, with only Callista’s stifled weeping. The sound tore at Andrew’s heart, but he knew he must trust Damon to find a way for them. At last Damon said quietly, “Then there is only one way, Callista. Varzil told me that the answer for you was to free your mind from the imprint of years as Keeper on your body. I can free your mind, and your body will be freed, as it was in the winter blooming.”
“You told me that was only an illusion…” She faltered.
“I was wrong,” Damon said quietly. “I did not put everything together until a little while ago. I wish, for your sake, that you and Andrew had been able to trust your instincts. But now… I have some kireseth flowers, Callista.”
Her hands flew to her mouth in apprehension, terror, understanding. “It is taboo, forbidden to anyone Tower-trained!”
“But,” Damon said, and his voice was very gentle, “our Tower does not live by the laws of Arilinn, breda, and I am not a Keeper by those laws. Why do you think it became taboo, Callista? Because, under the impact of the kireseth — as you have seen — even a Keeper could not retain her immunity to passion, desire, human need. It is a telepathic catalyst drug, but it is much, much more than that. After the training given to Keepers in the Towers, it is frightening, unthinkable, to admit that there is no reason for a Keeper to be chaste, except temporarily, for strenuous work. Certainly there is no need for such lifetime loneliness and withdrawal. The Towers have imposed cruel and needless laws on their Keepers, Callista, from the Ages of Chaos, when the Year’s End ritual was lost. I think it must have been at the time of Midsummer festival then. At our festival, all through the Domains, women are given flowers and fruit in commemoration of Cassilda’s gift to Hastur. but how is the Lady of the Domains always pictured? With the golden bell of Kireseth in her hands. This was the ancient ritual, so that a woman might work as Keeper in the matrix circles, with her channels clear, and then return to normal womanhood when she chose.”
He took her two hands in his. She tried, in the old, automatic way, to draw them away, but he held them firmly in his own, controlling her. “Callista, have you the courage to turn your back on Arilinn and explore, with us, a tradition which will allow you to be Keeper and woman at once?”
He had struck the right note when he appealed to her courage. Together they had tested it to the outermost limits. She bowed her head, consenting. But when he brought the kireseth flowers, folded into a cloth, she hesitated, holding the bundle in her hands.
“I have broken every law of Arilinn save this. Now I am truly outcaste,” she said, near to tears again.
Damon said, “They have called us both renegades. I will not ask you to do anything I am not willing to do first, Callista.”
He took the cloth from her hand, unfolded it and raised it to his face, deeply inhaling the dizzying scent. Fear rushed through him — the forbidden thing, the taboo — but he recalled Varzil’s words:
“This is why we instituted the old sacramental rite of Year’s End. You are her Keeper; it is for you to be responsible.
Callista was white and shaking, but she took the kireseth from Damon’s hands, breathing in deeply. Damon meanwhile thought of the Arilinn circle, which would strike them at sunrise. Was he making a tragic mistake?
During his years there, when serious work was contemplated any kind of stress was prohibited, anything like sexual contact above all. They would spend this night in solitary concentration, preparing for the battle ahead of them.
But Damon was not working along those lines. He knew he could not defeat Arilinn by doing what they did. His Tower was building something wholly new, built upon their fourfold rapport. It was only right that they should spend this night in completing the bond, helping Callista to be part of it, to share it fully.
Andrew took the flowers from Callista’s hands. As he breathed their scent — dried, powdery, but still reminiscent of the field of golden flowers under the crimson sunlight — he seemed to see Callista coming through the field of flowers again, and the memory made him faint with longing. As Ellemir took them in her turn, he felt moved to protest — was this safe for her, in her condition? But she had the right to choose. She should share whatever this night brought them.
Damon felt a rush of expanding outward consciousness, a heightened awareness. It seemed that the matrix at his throat was flickering, throbbing like a live thing. He cradled it in his hand and it seemed to speak to him, and for the moment he wondered if the matrices were, after all, a form of alien life, experiencing time at a fantastically different rate, symbiotic with mankind?
Then he seemed to rush backward as he had done during Timesearch, and experience, with curious clairvoyance, what he had heard of the history of the Towers, at Arilinn and at Nevarsin. After the Ages of Chaos, centuries of decadence, corruption, and conflicts which had decimated the Domains and raged over half a world, the Towers had been rebuilt and the Compact formed, forbidding all weapons save those within hand’s reach of the wielder, and forcing anyone who would kill to take an equal chance at death. Matrix work had been relegated to the Towers and to those of Comyn blood, sworn to the Towers and the Keepers. The Keepers, vowed to chastity and without allegiance even to family ties, were required to be disinterested, without political or dynastic interest in the rule of the Domains. The training of Tower workers was based on strong ethical principles and the breaking of all other bonds, creating strength and integrity in a world corrupt and laid waste.
And the Keepers were sworn to protect the Domains, to guard against further misuse of the matrix stones. Without political power, they had nevertheless taken on tremendous personal and charismatic force, priestesses, sorceresses, with a vital spiritual and religious ascendancy, controlling all the matrix workers on Darkover.
But had this in itself become an abuse?
It seemed to Damon that he was in telepathic contact across the centuries with his distant kinsman Varzil — or was it a faint racial memory? When had the Towers abandoned the Year’s End ritual which kept them in touch with their common humanity? The ritual had allowed a Keeper, celibate by harsh necessity for her incredibly difficult and demanding work — and in those days, at the height of the Towers, it had been far more demanding still — to become periodically aware of her common humanity, sharing the instincts and desires of her fellow men and women.