Bradley, Marion Zimmer - The Forbidden Tower

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The Forbidden Tower

Marion Zimmer Bradley

the forbidden circle 02 - a darkover novel

ELF digital back-up edition 1.0

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Contents

|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|Epilogue

DAW BOOKS, INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER

1301 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N. Y. 10019

Cover art by Richard Hescox.

FIRST PRINTING, SEPTEMBER 1977

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

Forbidden Tower

DEDICATION

For DIANA PAXSON, who asked the question which directly touched off this book;

and

for THEODORE STURGEON, who first explored the questions which, directly or

indirectly, underlie almost everything I have written.

Chapter One

^ »

Damon Ridenow rode through a land cleansed.

For most of the year, the great plateau of the Kilghard Hills had lain under the evil

influence of the catmen. Crops withered in the fields, under the unnatural darkness which

blotted out the light of the sun; the poor folk of the district huddled in their homes, afraid

to venture into the blasted countryside.

But now men worked again in the light of the great red sun of Darkover, garnering their

harvests against the coming snows. It was early autumn, and the harvests were mostly in.

The Great Cat had been slain in the caves of Corresanti and the giant illegal matrix which

he had found and put to such frightful use had been destroyed with his death. Such

catmen as still lived had fled into the far rain forests beyond the mountains, or fallen to

the swords of the Guardsmen that Damon had led against them.

The land was clean again and free of terror, and Damon, most of his army dismissed to

their homes, rode homeward. Not to his ancestral estates of Serrais; Damon was an

unregarded younger son and had never felt Serrais his home. He rode now to Armida, to

his wedding.

He sat his horse now at the side of the road, watching the last few men separate

themselves according to their way. There were uniformed Guardsmen bound for

Thendara, in their green and black uniforms; there were a few men bound northward to

the Hellers, from the Domains of Ardais and Hastur; and a few riding south to the plains

of Valeron.

“You should speak to the men, Lord Damon,” said a short, gnarled-looking man at

Damon’s side.

“I’m not very good at making speeches.” Damon was a slight, slender man with a

scholar’s face. Until this campaign he had never thought himself a soldier and was still

surprised at himself, that he had led these men successfully against the remnants of the

catmen.

“They expect it, lord,” Eduin urged, and Damon sighed, knowing what the other man said

was true. Damon was Comyn of the Domains; not Lord of a Domain, or even a Comyn

heir, but still Comyn, of the old telepathic, psi-gifted caste which had ruled the Seven

Domains from time unknown. The days were gone when Comyn were treated as living

gods, but there was still the respect, near to awe. And Damon had been trained to the

responsibilities of a Comyn son. Sighing, he urged his horse to a spot where the waiting

men could see him.

“Our work is done. Thanks to you men who have answered my call, there is peace in the

Kilghard Hills and in our homes. It only remains for me to give you my thanks and

farewell.”

The young officer who had brought the Guardsmen from Thendara rode toward Damon,

as the other men rode away. “Will Lord Alton ride to Thendara with us? Shall we await

him?”

“You would have long to wait,” Damon said. “He was wounded in the first battle with the

catmen, a small wound, but the spine was injured past healing. He is paralyzed from the

waist down. I think he will never ride anywhere again.”

The young officer looked troubled. “Who will now command the Guardsmen, Lord

Damon?”

It was a reasonable question. For generations the command of the Guardsmen had lain in

the hands of the Alton Domain; Esteban Lanart of Armida, Lord Alton, had commanded

for many years. But Dom Esteban’s oldest surviving son, Lord Domenic, was a youth of

seventeen. Though a man by the laws of the Domains, he had neither the age nor the

authority for command. The other remaining Alton son, young Valdir, was a boy of

eleven, a novice at Nevarsin Monastery, being schooled by the brothers of St.-Valentine-

of-the-Snows.

Who would command the Guards, then? It was a very reasonable question, thought

Damon, but he did not know the answer. He said so, adding, “It will be for Comyn

Council to decide next summer, when Council meets in Thendara.” There had never been

war in winter on Darkover; there never would be. In winter there was a fiercer enemy, the

cruel cold, the blizzards which swept down across the Domains from the Hellers, No

army could move against the Domains in winter. Even bandits were kept close to their

own homes. They could wait for the next Council season to name a new commander.

Damon changed the subject.

“Will you reach Thendara by nightfall?”

“Unless something should delay us by the way.”

“Then don’t let me delay you further,” Damon said, and bowed. “The command of these

men is yours, kinsman.”

The young officer could not conceal a smile. He was very young, and this was his first

command, brief and temporary as it was. Damon watched with a thoughtful smile as the

boy mustered his men and rode away. The boy was a born officer, and with Dom Esteban

disabled, competent officers could expect promotions.

Damon himself, though in command of this mission, had never thought of himself as a

soldier. Like all Comyn sons he had served in the cadet corps, and had taken his turn as

an officer, but his talents and ambitions had been far otherwise. At seventeen he had been

admitted to the Arilinn Tower as a telepath, to be trained in the old matrix sciences of

Darkover. For many, many years he had worked there, growing in strength and skill,

reaching the rank of psi technician.

Then he had been sent from the Tower. No fault of his own, his Keeper had assured him,

only that he was too sensitive, that his health, even his sanity might be destroyed under

the tremendous stresses of matrix work.

Rebellious but obedient, Damon had gone. The word of a Keeper was law, never to be

questioned or resisted. His life smashed, his ambitions in ruins, he had tried to build

himself a new life in the Guardsmen, though he was no soldier, and knew it. He had been

cadet master for a time, then hospital officer, supply officer. And on this last campaign

against the catmen he had learned to bear himself with confidence. But he had no desire

to command, was glad to relinquish it now.

He watched the men ride away until their forms were lost in the dust of the roadway.

Now for Annida and home…

“Lord Damon,” Eduin said at his side, “there are riders on the road.”

“Travelers? At this season?” It seemed impossible. The winter snows had not yet begun,

but any day the first of the winter storms would sweep down from the Hellers, blocking

the roads for days at a time. There was an old saying, Only the mad or the desperate

travel in winter. Damon strained his eyes to make out the distant riders, but he had been

somewhat shortsighted since childhood, and could make out only a blur.

“Your eyes are better than mine. Are they armed men, do you think, Eduin?”

“I do not think so, Lord Damon; there is a lady riding with them.”

“At this season? That seems unlikely,” Damon said. What could bring a woman out into

the uncertain traveling of the approaching winter?

“It is a Hastur banner, Lord Damon. Yet Lord Hastur and his lady would not leave

Thendara at this season. If for some reason they rode to Castle Hastur, they would not be

on this road. I cannot understand it.”

Yet even before he finished, Damon knew the identity of the woman who rode with the

little party of Guardsmen and escorts toward him. Only one woman on Darkover would

ride alone beneath a Hastur banner, and only one Hastur would have reason to ride this

way.

“It is the Lady of Arilinn,” he said at last, reluctantly, and saw Eduin’s face light up with

wonder and awe.

Leonie Hastur. Leonie of Arilinn, Keeper of the Arilinn Tower. Damon knew that in

courtesy he should ride to meet his kinswoman, to welcome her, yet he sat his horse as if

frozen, fighting for self-mastery. Time seemed annihilated. In a frozen, timeless, echoing

chamber of his mind, a younger Damon stood trembling before the Keeper of Arilinn,

head bowed to hear the words which shattered his life:

“It is not that you have failed us or displeased me. But you are all too sensitive for this

work, too vulnerable. Had you been born a woman, you would have been a Keeper. But

as things stand now… I have watched you for years. This work will destroy your health,

destroy your reason. You must leave us, Damon, for your own sake.”

Damon had gone without protest, for there was guilt in him. He had loved Leonie, loved

her with all the despairing passion of a lonely man, but loved her chastely, without a

word or a touch. For Leonie, like all Keepers, was a pledged virgin, never to be looked

upon with a sensual thought, never to be touched by any man. Had Leonie somehow

known this, feared that some day he would lose his control, approach her—even if only

in thought—in a way no Keeper might be approached?

Shattered, Damon had fled. It seemed now, years later, that a lifetime stretched between

the young Damon, thrust into an unfriendly world to build himself a new life, and the

Damon of today, in command of himself, veteran of this successful campaign. The

memory was still alive in him—it would be raw till his death—but Damon armed

himself, as Leonie drew near, with the memory of Ellemir Lanart, who awaited him now,

at Armida.

I should have wedded her before ever I came on this campaign. He had wanted to, but

Dom Esteban had felt that a marriage in such haste was unseemly for gentlefolk. He

would not have, his daughter hurried to her marriage bed like a pregnant serving wench!

Damon had agreed to the delay. Hie reality of Ellemir, his promised bride, should now

banish even the most painful of memories. Summoning the control of a lifetime, Damon

finally rode forward, Eduin at his side.

“You lend us grace, kinswoman,” he said gravely, bowing from the saddle. “It is late in

the year for journeying in the hills. Where do you ride at this season?”

Leonie returned the bow, with the excessive formality of a Comyn lady before outsiders.

“Greetings, Damon. I ride to Armida, and so, among other things, I ride to your

wedding.”

“I am honored.” The journey from Arilinn was long, and not lightly undertaken at any

season. “But surely it is not only for my wedding, Leonie?”

“Not only for that. Although it is true that I wish you all happiness, cousin.”

For the first time, momentarily, their eyes met, but Damon looked away. Leonie Hastur,

Lady of Arilinn, was a tall woman, spare-bodied, with the flame-red hair of the Comyn,

now graying beneath the hood of her riding cloak. She had, perhaps, been very beautiful

once; Damon would never be able to judge.

“Callista sent me word that she wishes to lay down her oath to the Tower and marry.”

Leonie sighed. “I am no longer young; I wished to give back my place as Keeper, when

Callista was a little older and could be Keeper.”

Damon bowed in silence. This had been ordained since Callista had come, a girl of

thirteen, to the Arilinn Tower. Damon had been a psi technician Callista’s first year there,

and had been consulted about the decision to train her as a Keeper.

“But now she wishes to leave us to marry. She has told me that her lover”—Leonie used

the polite inflection which made the word mean “promised husband”—“is an off-worlder,

one of the Terrans who have built their spaceport at Thendara. What do you know of this,

Damon? It seems to me fanciful, fantastic, like an old ballad. How came she to know this

Terran? She told me his name, but I have forgotten…”

“Andrew Carr,” Damon said as they turned their horses toward Armida, riding side by

side. Their escorts and Leonie’s lady-companion followed at a respectful distance. The

great red sun hung low in the sky, casting lurid light across the peaks of the Kilghard

Hills behind them. Clouds had begun to gather to the north, and there was a chill wind

blowing from the distant, invisible peaks of the Hellers.

“I am not certain, even now, how it all began,” Damon said at last. “I only know that

when Callista was kidnapped by the catmen, and she lay alone, in darkness and fear,

imprisoned in the caves of Corresanti, none of her kinsmen could reach her mind.”

Leonie shuddered, pulling her hood closer about her face. “That was a dreadful time,” she

said.

“True. And somehow it happened that this Terran, Andrew Carr, linked with her in mind

and thought. To this day I do not know all of the details, but somehow he came to bear

her company in her lonely prison; he alone could reach her mind. And so they grew close

together in heart and mind, although they had never seen one another in the flesh.”

Leonie sighed and said, “Yes, such bonds can be stronger than bonds of the flesh. And so

they came to love one another, and when she was rescued, they met—”

“It was Andrew who aided most in her rescue,” Damon said, “and now they have pledged

one another. Believe me, Leonie, it is no idle fancy, born of a lonely girl’s fear, or a

solitary man’s desire. Callista told me, before I went on this campaign, that if she could

not win her father’s consent and yours, she would leave Armida, and Darkover, and go

with Andrew to his world.”

Leonie shook her head sorrowfully. “I have seen the Terran ships lying in the port at

Thendara,” she said. “And my brother Lorill, who is on the Council and has dealings with

them, says that they seem in every way men like to ourselves. But marriage, Damon? A

girl of this planet, a man of some other? Even if Callista were not Keeper, pledged virgin,

such a marriage would be strange, hazardous for both.”

“I think they know that, Leonie. Yet they are determined.”

“I have always felt very strongly,” Leonie said, in a strange faraway voice, “that no

Keeper should marry. I have felt so all my life, and so lived. Had it been otherwise…”

She looked up briefly at Damon, and the pain in her voice struck at him. He tried to

barricade himself against it. Ellemir, he thought, like a charm to guard himself, but

Leonie went on, sighing. “Even so, if Callista had fallen so deeply in love with a man of

her own clan and caste, I would not impose my belief on her; I would have released her

willingly. No—” Leonie stopped herself. “No, not willingly, knowing what troubles lie

ahead for any woman trained and conditioned as Keeper for a matrix circle, not willingly.

But I would, at the last, have released her, and given her in marriage with such good

grace as I must. But how can I give her to an alien, a man from another world, not even

born of our soil and sun? The thought makes me cold with horror, Damon! It makes my

skin crawl!”

Damon said slowly, “I, too, felt so at first. Yet Andrew is no alien. My mind knows that

he was born on another world, circling the sun of another sky, a distant star, not even a

point of light in our sky from here. Yet he is not inhuman, a monster masquerading as a

man, but truly one of our own, a man like myself. He is foreign, perhaps, not alien. I tell

you, I know this, Leonie. His mind has been linked to mine.” Without being aware of the

gesture, Damon placed his hand on the matrix crystal, the psi-responsive jewel he wore

around his neck in its insulated bag, then added, “He has laran.”

Leonie looked at him in shock, disbelief. Laran was the psi power which set the Comyn

of the Domains apart from the common people, the hereditary gift bred into the Comyn

blood! “Laran!” she said, almost in anger. “I cannot believe that!”

“Belief or disbelief do not alter a simple fact, Leonie,” Damon said. “I have had laran

since I was a boy, I am Tower-trained, and I say to you, this Terran has laran, I have

linked with his mind and I can tell you he is no way different from a man of our own

world. There is no reason to feel horror or revulsion at Callista’s choice. He is only a man

like ourselves.”

Leonie said, “And he is your friend.”

Damon nodded, saying, “My friend. And for Callista’s rescue we linked together—

through the matrix.” There was no need to say more. It was the strongest bond known,

stronger than blood-kin, stronger than the tie of lovers. It had brought Damon and Ellemir

together, as it had brought Andrew and Callista.

Leonie sighed. “Is it so? Then I suppose I must accept it, whatever his birth or caste.

Since he has laran, he is a suitable husband, if any man living can truly be a suitable

husband for a woman Keeper-trained!”

“There are times when I forget he is not one of us,” Damon said. “Then there are other

times when he seems strange, almost alien, but the difference is one only of custom and

culture.”

“Even that can make a great difference,” Leonie said. “I remember when Melora Aillard

was stolen away by Jalak of Shainsa, and what she endured there. No marriage even

between Domains and Dry Towns has ever endured without tragedy. And a man from

another world and sun must be even more alien than this.”

“I am not so sure of that,” Damon said. “In any case Andrew is my friend and I will

support him in his suit.”

Leonie slumped in her saddle. “You would not give your friendship, nor link through a

matrix, with one unworthy,” she said. “But even if all you say is true, how can such a

marriage be anything but disaster? Even if he were one of our own, fully understanding

the grip of the Tower on a Keeper’s body and mind, it would be near to impossible.

Would you have dared so much?”

Damon flinched away from the question. She could not have meant it, not as he thought

she meant it.

They were not living in the days before the Ages of Chaos, when the Keepers were

mutilated, even neutered, made less than women. Oh, yes, the Keepers were still trained,

Damon knew, with a terrible discipline, to live apart from men, reflexes deeply built into

body and brain. But no longer changed. And surely Leonie could not have known… or,

Damon thought, he was the one man she would never have asked that question. Surely it

was innocent, surely she never knew. He steeled himself against Leonie’s innocence,

forced himself to look at her, to say in a low voice, “Willingly, Leonie, if I loved as

Andrew loved.”

As hard as he fought to keep his voice steady and impassive, something of his inward

struggle communicated itself to Leonie. She looked up, quickly and for a bare moment, a

second or less. Their eyes met, but Leonie quickly looked away.

Ellemir, Damon reminded himself desperately. Ellemir, my beloved, my promised wife.

But his voice was calm. “Try to meet Andrew without prejudice, Leonie, and I think you

will see that he is such a man as you would willingly have given Callista in marriage.”

Leonie had mastered herself again. “All the more for your urging, Damon. But even if all

you say is true, I am still reluctant.”

“I know,” Damon said, looking down the road. They were now within sight of the great

front gates of Armida, the hereditary estate of the Domain of Alton. Home, he thought,

and Ellemir waiting for him. “But even if all you say is true, Leonie, I do not know what

we can do to stop Callista. She is no silly young girl in the grip of infatuation; she is a

woman grown, Tower-trained, skilled, accustomed to having her own way, and I think

she will do her will, regardless of us all.”

Leonie sighed. She said, “I would not force her back unwilling; the burden of a Keeper is

too heavy to be borne unconsenting. I have borne it a lifetime, and I know.” She seemed

weary, weighed down by it. “Yet Keepers are not easy to come by. If I can save her for

Arilinn, Damon, you know I must.”

Damon knew. The old psi gifts of the Seven Domains, bred into the genes of the Comyn

families hundreds or thousands of years ago, were thinned now, dying out. Telepaths

were rarer than ever before. It could no longer be taken for granted that even the sons and

daughters of the direct line of each Domain would have the gift, the inherited psi power

of his House. And now, not many cared. Damon’s elder brother, heir to the Ridenow

family of Serrais, had no laran. Damon, himself, was the only one of his brothers to

possess laran in full measure, and he had been in no way specially honored for it. On the

contrary, his work in the Tower had made his brothers scorn him as something less than a

man. It was hard to find telepaths strong enough for Tower work. Some of the ancient

Towers had been closed and stood dark, no longer teaching, training, working with the

ancient psi sciences of Darkover. Outsiders, those with only minimal Comyn blood, had

been admitted to the lesser Towers, though Arilinn kept to the old ways and allowed only

those closely related by blood to the Domains to come there. And few women could be

found with the strength, the psi skill, the stamina—and the courage and willingness to

sacrifice almost everything which made life dear to a woman of the Domains—to endure

the terrible discipline of the Keepers, Who would they find to take Callista’s place?

Either way, then, was tragedy. Arilinn must lose a Keeper—or Andrew a wife, Callista a

husband. Damon sighed deeply and said, “I know, Leonie,” and they rode in silence

toward the great gates of Armida.

Chapter Two

« ^ »

From the outer courtyard of Armida, Andrew Carr saw the approaching riders. He

summoned grooms and attendants for their horses, then went into the main hall to

announce their coming.

“That will be Damon coming back,” Ellemir said in excitement, and ran out into the

courtyard. Andrew followed more slowly, Callista close at his side.

“It is not only Damon,” she said, and Andrew knew, without asking, that she had used her

psi awareness to guess at the identity of the riders. He was used to this now, and it no

longer seemed uncanny or frightening.

She smiled up at him, and once again Andrew was struck by her beauty. He tended to

forget it when he was not looking at her. Before he ever set eyes on her, he had come to

know her mind and heart, her gentleness, her courage, her quick understanding. He had

come to know, and value, her gaiety and wit, even when she was alone, terrified,

imprisoned in the darkness of Corresanti.

But she was beautiful too, very beautiful, a slender, long-limbed young woman, with

coppery hair loosely braided down her back, and gray eyes beneath level brows. She said

as she walked at his side, “It is Leonie, the leronis of Arilinn. She has come, as I asked.”

He took her hand lightly in his own, though this was always a risk. He knew she had been

trained and disciplined, by methods he could never guess, to avoid the slightest touch.

But this time, although her fingers quivered, she let them lie lightly in his, and it seemed

that the faint trembling in them was a storm which shook her, inwardly, through her

schooled calm. He could just see, faintly, on the slender hands and wrists, a number of

tiny scars, like healed cuts or burns. Once he had asked her about them. She had shrugged

them away, saying only, “They are old, long healed. They were… aids to memory.” She

had not been willing to say more, but he could guess what she meant, and horror shook

him again. Could he ever truly know this woman?

“I thought you were Keeper of Arilinn, Callista,” he asked now.

“Leonie has been Keeper since before I was born. I was taught by Leonie to take her

place one day. I had already begun to work as Keeper. It is for her to release me, if she

will.” Again there was the faint shivering, the quickly withdrawn glance. What hold did

that terrible old woman have over Callista?

Andrew watched Ellemir running toward the gate. How like she was to Callista—the

same tall slenderness, the same coppery-golden hair, the same gray eyes, dark-lashed,

level-browed—but so different, Ellemir, from her twin! With a sadness so deep he did not

know it was envy, Andrew watched Ellemir run to Damon, saw him slide from his saddle

and catch her up for a hug and a long kiss. Would Callista ever be free enough to run to

him that way?

Callista led him toward Leonie, who had been carefully assisted from her saddle by one

of her escorts. Callista’s slim fingers were still resting in his, a gesture of defiance, a

deliberate breaking of taboo. He knew she wanted Leonie to see. Damon was presenting

Ellemir to the Keeper.

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