In the Great Hall, Dom Esteban was in his wheeled-chair by the window, the guardsman Caradoc keeping him company. Andrew saw with relief that Dezi was nowhere to be seen. Dom Esteban and Caradoc were playing a board game something like chess that Damon had once tried to teach Andrew. It was called castles and had pawns of carved crystal which were not set in order on the board but shaken at random and moved from the spot where they fell, according to certain complex rules. Dom Esteban took a red crystal piece from the board, grinned triumphantly at Caradoc, then looked with raised eyes at Andrew.
“Good morning, or do I mean good evening? I trust you slept well?”
“Well enough, sir, but Callista is… is a little indisposed. And Ellemir is staying with her.”
“And you’re both staying with them, quite right and proper,” said Dom Esteban, grinning.
“If there is anything which should be done, Father-in-law… ?”
“In this?” The old man gestured at the snowstorm. “Nothing, no need to apologize.”
Andrew remembered that the old man was also a powerful telepath. If last night’s disturbance had disrupted Damon and Ellemir even in their marriage bed, had it disturbed the old man too? But if so, not a flicker of the Alton lord’s eyelids betrayed it. He said, “Give Callista my love, and tell her I hope she is well soon. And tell Ellemir to look after her sister. I have plenty of company, so I can manage without any of you for a day or so.”
Caradoc made some remark in the thick mountain dialect about the blizzard season being the right time to stay indoors and enjoy the company of one’s wife. Dom Esteban guffawed, but the joke was a little obscure for Andrew. He was grateful to the old man, but he felt raw-edged, indecently exposed. No one with a scrap of telepathic force could have slept through all that last night, he felt. It must have waked telepaths up all the way to Thendara!
Upstairs, food had been brought, and Damon had carried it to Callista’s bedside. Callista was in bed again, looking white and worn. Ellemir was coaxing her to eat, in small bites as she would have coaxed a sick child. Damon made room for Andrew at his side, handed him a hot roll. “We didn’t wait for you. I was hungry after last night. The servants probably think we’re having an orgy up here!”
Callista said, with a small wry laugh, “I wish they were right. It would certainly be an improvement over present conditions.” She shook her head as Ellemir proffered her a bite of hot bread, spread with the aromatic mountain honey. “No. really, I can’t.”
Damon watched her with disquiet. She had drunk a few sips of milk, but had refused to eat, as if the very effort of swallowing was too much for her. He said at last, “You’ve taken over the still-room, Callista, have you made any kirian?”
She shook her head. “I’d been putting it off, and there’s no one here who needs it, with Valdir in Nevarsin. And it’s troublesome to make, having to be distilled three times.”
“I know. I’ve never made it, but I’ve watched it being done,” Damon said, looking sharply at her as she shifted weight. “You’re still in pain?”
She nodded, saying in a small voice, “I’m bleeding.”
“That, too?” Wasn’t she to be spared anything? “How much before the regular time is it? If it’s only a few days, it might be simply the shock.”
She shook her head. “You still don’t understand. There is no… no regular time for me. This is the first time—”
He stared at her in shock, almost disbelieving. He said, “But you had turned thirteen when you first went to the Tower, were your woman’s cycles not yet established?”
It seemed to Andrew that she looked embarrassed, almost ashamed. “No. Leonie said it was a good thing that they had not yet begun.”
Damon said angrily, “She should have waited for that to begin your training!”
Callista looked away, turning red. “She told me… beginning so young, some of the normal physical processes would be disrupted. But she said it would make it easier for me if I was spared that altogether.”
Damon said, “I thought that was a barbarism from the Ages of Chaos! For generations it has been taken for granted that a Keeper should be a woman grown!”
Callista rushed to the defense of her foster-mother. “She told me that six other girls had tried, and failed, to make the adjustments, that it would be easier for me, with less pain and trouble…”
Damon frowned, sipping at a glass of wine, staring into the depths as if he had seen something unpleasant there.
“Tell me, and think carefully. In the Tower, were you given any kind of drug to suppress your menses?”
“No, it was never necessary.”
“I cannot think it of Leonie, but did she ever work with a matrix, on your body currents?”
“Only in the ordinary pattern-training, I think,” Callista said doubtfully. Andrew broke in. “Look here, what is this all about?”
Damon’s face was grim. “In the old days, a Keeper in training was sometimes neutered — Marisela said something like that, remember? I cannot believe — I cannot believe,” he added with emphasis, “that Leonie would have blighted your womanhood that way!”
Callista said, stricken, “Oh, no, Damon! Oh, no! Leonie loves me, she would never…” But her voice faded out. She was afraid.
Leonie had been so sure that her choice was lifelong, had been so reluctant to release her -
Andrew reached for Callista’s cold hand. Damon said, frowning, “No, I know you were not neutered, of course not. If your cycles have come on, your clock is running again. But it was done sometimes in the old days, when they felt virginity was less of a burden to a girl still immature.”
“But now it’s begun, she’ll be all right, won’t she?” Ellemir asked anxiously, and Damon said, “We’ll hope so.” Perhaps the arousal of last night, abortive as it had been, had reawakened some of those blocked pathways in her body; if she had suddenly matured, it might be that her illness and physical discomfort might be the normal troubles of early development. He remembered from his years in the Tower that young women in Keeper’s training, or for that matter any women working with psi mechanics above the level of monitor, were subject to recurrent and occasionally excruciating menstrual difficulties. Callista, following his thought, laughed a little and said, “Well, I have handed out golden-flower tea and such remedies to other women at Arilinn, and always thought myself lucky that I was immune to their miseries. It seems I have joined the ranks of normal women in that respect at least! I know we have golden-flower tea in the still-room; Ferrika gives it to half the women on the estate. Perhaps a dose of that will be all I need.”
Ellemir said, “I’ll go and fetch you some,” and after awhile she came back with a small cup of some steaming hot brew. It had a pungent herbal smell, strongly aromatic. Callista’s voice held, for a moment, an echo of her old gaiety.
“Would you believe I have never tasted this? I hope it’s not too dreadful a potion!”
Ellemir laughed. “It would serve you right if it were, you wretched girl, if you hand out such decoctions with no idea of what they taste like! No, actually, it’s rather nice tasting. I never minded taking it. It will make you sleepy, though, so lie down and let it do its work.”
Obediently Callista drank off the steaming stuff and settled down under her blanket. Ellemir brought some needlework and sat beside her, and Damon said, “Come along, Andrew, they’ll be all right now,” and let him out of the room.