Andrew had gone downstairs again to Dom Esteban, with nothing to tell except that Damon was with her, and Callista, and they had sent for Ferrika. He felt the pall that lay over the estate, all that day. Even the maids clustered in frightened huddles. Andrew wanted to reach out for Damon, to try to strengthen him, reassure him, but what could he do or say? Once, looking up the stairs, he saw Dezi coming from the outer hall, and Dezi asked “How is Ellemir?” and Andrew’s resentment against the youngster overflowed.
“Much you care!”
“I don’t wish Elli any harm,” Dezi said, queerly subdued. “She’s the only one here who’s ever been decent to me.” He turned his back on Andrew and went away, and Andrew had the odd sense that Dezi, too, was near to tears.
Damon and Ellemir had been so happy about their baby, and now this! Andrew wondered wildly if his own ill luck had somehow proved contagious, if the trouble of his own marriage had somehow rubbed off on the other couple. Realizing that this was absolute insanity, he went down to the greenhouse and tried to lose himself in giving orders to the gardeners.
Hours later, Damon came out of the room where Ellemir lay, asleep now, pain and grief alike forgotten in one of Ferrika’s sleeping draughts. The midwife, pausing for a moment beside him, said gently, “Lord Damon, better now than for the poor little thing to live to birth and be born deformed. The mercy of Avarra takes strange forms.”
“I know you did what you could, Ferrika.” But Damon turned away, unstrung, not wanting the woman to see him weeping. She understood, and went quietly down the stairs, and Damon went blindly along the hall, shrinking from the need to tell Dom Esteban. By instinct he headed toward the greenhouse, finding Andrew there. Andrew came toward him, asking gently, “How is Ellemir? Is she out of danger?”
“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.”