Free The Forbidden Circle by Marion Zimmer Bradley

do is to keep watch over my body while I am out of it hunting for Callista. When I first go out , I will feel cold to your touch, and my heart and pulse will slow slightly. That is normal; don’t be afraid. But if we are interrupted, don’t let anyone touch me; Above all, don’t let anyone move me. If my pulse begins to quicken and race, or if the veins at my temples swell, or my body begins to grow either deathly cold or very waxen, then you must wake me.”
    “How do I do that?”
    “Call my name, and put your whole force behind it,” Damon said. “You don’t have to speak aloud, just project your thoughts at me, calling my name. If you cannot wake me, and it gets worse—for instance, if I show any difficulty in breathing—wake me at once ; don’t delay any further. At the last, but only if you cannot wake me any other way, touch the stone.” He winced as he said it. “Only as a last desperate expedient, though; it is painful and might throw me into shock.” He felt her hands tremble as they gripped his wrists, and felt her fear and hesitation like a faint fog obscuring the clarity of his own thought.
    Poor child. I shouldn’t have to do this to her. Damn the luck. If Callista had to get herself into trouble —He forced himself to be fair, and tried to still his pounding heart. This wasn’t Callista’s fault either. He should save his curses for her kidnappers.
    Ellemir said timidly, “Don’t be angry, Damon,” and he thought, It’s a good sign she can feel that I’m angry . He said aloud, “I’m not angry at you, breda .” He used the intimate word which could mean simply kinswoman or, more closely, darling . He settled himself as comfortably as he could, sensitizing himself to the feel of Callista’s hair-clasp between his hands, the starstone above it, pulsing gently in unconscious rhythm with his own nerve currents. He tried to blur everything else, every other sensation, the feel of Ellemir’s cold hands on his wrists and her warm breath against his throat, the faint woman-scent of her closeness; he blotted these out, blotted out the flicker of fire and candle beyond them, dimmed the shadows of the room, let vision sink into the blue pulsing of the starstone. He sensed, rather than physically felt, the relaxing of his muscles as his body went insensible. For an instant nothing existed except the vast blue of the starstone, pulsing with the beating of his heart, then his heart stopped, or at least he was no longer conscious of anything except the expanding blueness: a glare, a blue flame, a sea rushing in to drown him. . . .
    With a brief, tingling shock, he was out of his body and standing over it, looking down from above, with a certain ironic detachment, on the thin, slumped body in the chair, the frail, frightened-looking girl kneeling and grasping its wrists. He was not really seeing, but perceiving in some strange, dark way through closed eyelids.
    In the overlight forming around him he cast a swift downward look. The body in the chair had been wearing a shabby jerkin and leather riding breeches, but as always when he stepped out he felt taller, stronger, more muscular, moving with effortless ease as the walls of the great hall thinned and moved away. And this body, if it could be called a body, was wearing a glimmering tunic of gold and green that flickered with a faint firelight glow. Leonie had told him once, “this is how your mind sees itself.” He was bare-armed and barefoot, and he felt an incongruous flicker of amusement. To go out in the blizzard like this? But of course the blizzard was not here , not at all, although if he listened, he could hear the faint howl of the wind, and he knew the violence of the storm must be intense indeed if even its echo could penetrate into the overworld. As he formulated that thought he felt himself begin to shiver and quickly dismissed the thought and memory of the blizzard; his consciousness of it could solidify it on this plane and bring it