Leonie’s face was filled with horror. She said, “The Gods witness it, child, and the holy things at Hali, you have not been neutered. But Callista, you were very young when you came to the Tower…”
Time seemed to flow backward as Leonie spoke and Callista felt herself dragged back to a time half forgotten, her hair still curling about her cheeks instead of braided like a woman’s, felt again the frightened reverence she had felt for Leonie before she had become mother, guide, teacher, priestess…
“You succeeded as Keeper when six others had failed, my child. I thought you proud of that.”
“I was,” Callista murmured, bending her head.
“But you misled me, Callista, or I would never have let you go. You made me believe — though I hardly felt it possible — that already you were responding to your lover, that if you had not lain with him it would only be a little while. And so I thought perhaps I had not really succeeded, that perhaps your success as Keeper came because you believed yourself free of such things as tormented the other women. Then, when love came into your life and you found where your heart lay, then, as has happened with many Keepers, it was no longer possible to remain unawakened. And so I blessed you, and gave you back your oath. But if this is not true, Callista, if it is not true…”
Callista remembered Damon flinging the angry taunt at her: Will you spend your life counting holes in linen towels and making herbs for spice-bread, you who were Callista of Arilinn? And Leonie heard it too, in her mind, an echo. “I said it before, my darling, now I offer it again. You can return to us. A little time, a little retraining, and you would be one of us again.”
She gestured, the air rippled, and Callista was clothed in the crimson of a Keeper, ritual ornaments at her brow and her throat.
“Come back to us, Callista. Come back.”
She said, faltering, “My husband—”
Leonie gestured that away as nothing. “Freemate marriage is nothing, Callista, a legal fiction, meaningless until consummated. What binds you to this man?”
Callista started to say “Love,” and under Leonie’s scornful eyes could not get the word out. She said, “A promise, Leonie.”
“Your promise to us came first. You were born to this work, Callista, it is your destiny. Do you remember, you consented to what was done to you? You were one of seven who came to us that year. Six young women failed, one after another. They were already grown, their nerve channels matured. They found the clearing of the channels and the conditioning against response too painful. And then there was Hilary Castamir, do you remember? She became Keeper, but every month, when her woman’s cycles came upon her, she went into convulsions, and the cost seemed too great. I was desperate, Callista, do you remember? I was doing the work of three Keepers, and my own health began to suffer. And for this reason I explained it to you, and you consented—”
“How could I consent?” Callista cried in despair. “I was a child! I did not even know what it was you asked!”
“Yet you consented, to be trained when you were not yet full-grown and the channels still immature. And so you adjusted easily to the training.”
“I remember,” Callista said, very low. She had been so proud, that she should succeed where so many failed, that she should be Callista of Arilinn, take her place with the great Keepers of legend. She remembered the exhilaration of seizing the direction of the great circles, of feeling the enormous stresses flow unhindered through her body, of seizing and directing the enormous energon rings…
“And you were so young, I thought it unlikely you would ever change. It was pure chance. But, my darling, this can all be yours again. You have only to say the word.”
“No!” Callista cried. “No! I have given back my oath — I do not want it!” And yet in a curious sense she was not sure.
“Callista, I could have forced you to return. You were virgin still, and the law permitted me to require you to come back to Arilinn. The need is still great, and I am old. Yet it is as I said, it is too heavy a burden to be borne unconsenting. I released you, child, even though I am old and this means I must struggle to bear my burden till Janine is old enough and strong enough for this work. Does this sound as if I wished you ill, or lied when I blessed you and bade you live happily with your lover? I thought you already free. I thought that in giving back your oath I bowed to the inevitable, that you were already freed in fact and there was no reason to hold to the word and torture you by the attempt to make you return, to clear your channels and force you to try again.”
Callista whispered, “I hoped… I believed I was free…”
She could feel the horror in Leonie, like a tangible thing. “My poor child, what a risk to take! How could you care so much for some man, when you have all this before you? Callista, my darling, come back to us! We will heal all your hurts. Come back where you belong—”
“No!” It was a great cry of renunciation. As if it had reverberated into the other world, she could hear Andrew’s voice, crying out her name in agony.
“Callista, Callista, come back to us…”
There was a brief, sharp shock, the shock of falling. Leonie was gone and pain arrowed through her body. She found herself lying in her bed, Andrew’s face white as death above hers.
“I thought I’d lost you for good this time,” he whispered.
“It might be better… if you had,” she murmured in torment.
Leonie was right. Nothing binds me to him but words… and my destiny is to be Keeper. For a moment, time swam out of focus and she saw herself sheltered behind a strange unfamiliar wall, not Arilinn. She seized the strands of force within her hands, cast the energon rings…
She reached out for Andrew, instinctly shrank away. Then, feeling his dismay, reached for him, disregarding the knifing, warning pain.
She said, “I will never leave you again,” and clung to his hands in desperation.
I can never go back. If there is no answer I will die, but I will never go back.
Nothing binds me to Andrew but words. And yet… words… words have power. She opened her eyes, looking directly into her husband’s, and repeated the words he had said at their wedding.
“Andrew. In good times and in bad… in wealth and in poverty… in sickness and health …while life shall last,” she said, and closed her hands over his. “Andrew, my love, you must not weep.”
Chapter Eleven
Damon felt he had never before been quite so frustrated as now. Leonie had acted for reasons which seemed good to her at the time, and he could, a little, understand her motives.
There must be a Keeper at Arilinn. All during Leonie’s life, that had been the first consideration, nothing could be allowed to supersede it. But there was no way he could explain this to Andrew.
“I’m sure if I were in your place, I should feel much the same,” he said. It was late at night Callista had dropped into an exhausted, restless sleep, but at least she was sleeping, undrugged, and Damon tried to find a shred of hope in that. “You cannot blame Leonie—”
“I can and I do!” Andrew interrupted, and Damon sighed.
“Try to understand. She did what she thought best, not only for the Towers but for Callista too, to save her the pain and suffering. She could hardly have been expected to foresee that Callista would want to marry—” He had started to say, “to marry an out-worlder.” He caught himself and stopped, but of course Andrew picked up the thought anyway. A dull red flush, half anger, half embarrassment, spread over the Terran’s face. He turned away from Damon, his face looking closed and stubborn, and Damon sighed, thinking that this had to be settled quickly or they would lose Andrew too.