Marion Bradley - The Forbidden Tower

“Should I be here if she were not?” Damon asked, then, remembering, dropped down on a crate, covered his face with his hands, and gave way to his grief. Andrew stood beside him, his hand on his friend’s shoulder, trying without words to give Damon some support, the knowledge of his own compassion.

“The worst of it is,” Damon said at last, raising his ravaged face, “Elli thinks she has failed me, that she could not carry our daughter safely to life. If there is fault it is mine, who left her to care for this great house alone. Mine in any case! We are too near akin, doubly cousins, and in such close kinship there is often a heritage of death in the blood. I should never have married her! I should never have married her! I love her, I love her, but I knew she wanted children, and I should have known it was not safe, we were such close kin… I do not know if I will dare to let her try again.” Damon finally quieted a little, and stood up, Saying wearily, “I should go back. When she wakes, she will want me beside her.” For the first time since Andrew had known him, he looked his full age.

And he had envied Damon his happiness! Ellemir was young, they could have other children. But with this weight of guilt?

Later he found Callista in the small stone-floored still-room, her hair tied up in the faded cloth she wore to keep away the herb-smells. She raised her face to him and he saw that it still bore the traces of tears. Had she shared that ordeal with her twin? But her voice had the remote calm he had grown to expect in Callista, and somehow it jarred on him now.

“I am making something which will lessen the bleeding; it must be freshly made or it is not so effective, and she must have it every few hours.” She was pounding some thick grayish leaves in a small mortar. She scraped the mash into a cone-shaped glass and set it to filter through layers of closely woven cloth, carefully measuring and pouring a colorless liquid over it.

“There. That must filter before I can do anymore.” She turned to him, raising her eyes. He asked, “But Elli — she will recover? And she can have other children, in time?”

“Oh, yes, I suppose so.”

He wanted to reach out and take her in his arms, comfort the grief she shared with her twin. But he dared not even touch her hand. Aching with frustration, he turned away.

My wife. And I have never even kissed her. Damon and Ellemir have their shared sorrow; what have I shared with Callista?

Gently, pitying the grief in her eyes, he said, “Dear love, is it really such a tragedy? It’s not as if she had lost a real baby. A child ready for birth, yes, but a fetus at this stage? How can it be so serious?”

He was not prepared for the horror and rage with which she turned on him. Her face was white, her eyes blazing like the flame beneath the retort. “How can you say such a thing?” she whispered. “How dare you? Don’t you know that for twice a tenday, both Damon and Ellemir had been in contact with — with her mind, had come to know her as a real presence, their own child ?” Andrew flinched at her anger. He had never thought of it, that in a family of telepaths, an unborn child would certainly be a presence. But so soon? So quickly? And what kind of thoughts could a fetus hardly more than a third of the way through pregnancy — But Callista picked up the scorn in that thought. She flung back at him, shaking, “Will you say, then, it is no tragedy if our son — or daughter — should die before he was strong enough to live outside my body?” Her voice trembled. “Is nothing real that you cannot see, Terranan ?”

Andrew raised his head for an angry retort: It seems we are never likely to know; you are not very likely to bear me a child as things are now . But her white, anguished face stopped him. He could not return taunt for taunt. That thoughtless Terranan had hurt, but he had pledged her that he would never try to hurry her, never put her under the slightest pressure. He bit the angry words back, then saw, in the dismay that swept across her face, that she had heard them anyway.

Of course. She is a telepath. The taunt I did not speak was as real to her as if I had actually shouted it.

“Callista,” he whispered, “darling, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

“I know.” She stumbled against him, clung there, her bright head against him. She stood, shaking, within the circle of his arm. “Oh, Andrew, Andrew, I wish we had even that …” she whispered, and sobbed aloud.

He held her, hardly daring to move. She felt taut, feather-like, like some wild bird which had flown to him and would take flight again at a word or an incautious move. After a moment her sobs quieted, and it was the old, still, resigned face she turned to him. She moved away, so gently that he hardly felt forsaken.

“Look, the liquid has all filtered through. I must finish the medicine I am making for my sister.” She laid her fingertips lightly against his lips, in the old gesture; he kissed them, realizing that in an odd way this quarrel had drawn them closer.

How much longer? In the name of all the Gods at once, how much longer can we go on like this ? And even as the thought tore through his mind, he realized he was not sure whether it was his own or Callista’s.

Three days later, Andrew and Damon rode out, as planned, for Serrais. Ellemir was out of danger, and there was nothing more that Damon’s presence could do for her. Nothing, Damon knew, could help Ellemir now but time.

Andrew felt strangely relieved, although he would have been ashamed to say so, to get away. He had not realized how the tension between himself and Callista, the aura of silent grief, had weighed down on him at Armida.

The wide high plains, the mountains in the distance, all this could have been the Arizona horse ranch of Andrew’s childhood. Yet he had only to open his eyes to see the great red sun, gleaming like a bloodshot eye through the morning fogs, to know that he was not on Terra, that he was nowhere on Earth. It was midmorning, but two small shadowy moons, pale violet and dim lime green, swung low beyond the crest of the hill, one nearing the full, another a waning crescent. The very smell of the air was strange, and yet it was his home now, his home for the rest of his life. And Callista. Callista, waiting for him. His mind’s eye retained the memory of her face, pale, smiling from the top of the steps as he rode away. He cherished the smile in memory, that with all the grief their marriage had brought to her, she could still smile at him, give him her fingertips to kiss, bid him ride with the Gods in the soft speech he was beginning to understand: “ Adelandeyo .”

Damon, too, brightened perceptibly as the miles lengthened under their horses’ hooves. The last few days had put lines in his face that had never been there before, but he no longer looked old, weighted down with anguish. At midday they dismounted to eat their noon meal, tying their horses to graze on the new grass poking up sturdy leaves through the remnants of the last blizzard’s snow. They found a dry log to sit on, surrounded by flower buds casting their snow-pods and breaking out in riotous bud and leaf as if it were spring. But when Andrew asked about it, Damon said blankly, “Spring? Zandru’s Hells, no, it’s not even full winter yet, not till after Midwinter feast! Oh, the flowers?” He chuckled. “With the weather here, they bloom whenever there’s a day or two of sun and warmth. Your Terran scientists have a phrase for it, evolutionary adaptation. In the Kilghard Hills, there are only a few days in high summer when it doesn’t snow, so the flowers bloom whenever they get a little sun. If you think it looks odd here, you should go into the Hellers, and see the flowers and fruits that grow around Nevarsin. We can’t grow ice-melons here; you know. It’s too warm — they’re a plant of the glaciers.” And indeed, Damon had taken off his fur riding cape, and was riding in shirt-sleeves, though Andrew was still muffled against what seemed a cold, biting day.