Until the day I die, I am sure I shall return in dreams to that first joyous time at Aldaran.
In my dreams, everything that came after has been wiped out, all the pain and terror, and I remember only that time when we were all together and I was happy, wholly happy for the first and last time in my life. In those dreams Thyra moves with all her strange wild beauty, but gentle and subdued, as she was during those days, tender and pliant and loving. Beltran is there, too, with his fire and the enthusiasm of the dream from which we had all taken the spark, my friend, almost my brother. Kadarin is always there, and in my dreams he is always smiling, kind, a rock of strength bearing us all up when we faltered. And Rafe, the son I shall never have, always beside me, his eyes lifted to mine.
And Marjorie.
Marjorie is always with me in those dreams. But there is nothing I can say about Marjorie. Only that we were together and in love, and as yet the fear was only a little, little shadow, like a breath of chill from a glacier not yet in sight. I wanted her, of course, and I resented the fact that I could not touch her even in the most casual way. But it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Psi work uses up so much energy and strength that there’s nothing much left. I was with her every waking moment and it was enough. Almost enough. And we could wait for the rest.
I wanted a well-trained team, so I worked with them day by day, trying to shape us all together into a functioning circle which could work together, precisely tuned. As yet we were working with our small matrices; before we joined together to open and call forth the power of the big one, we must be absolutely attuned to one another, with no hidden weaknesses. I would have felt safer with a circle of six or eight, as at Arilinn. Five is a small circle, even with Beltran working outside as a psi monitor. But Thyra and Kadarin were stronger than most of us at Arilinn—I knew they were both stronger than I, though I had more skill and training—and Marjorie was fantastically talented. Even at Arilinn, they would have chosen her the first day as a potential Keeper.
Deep warmth and affection, even love, had sprung up among all of us with the gradual blending of our minds. It was always like this, in the building of a circle. It was closer than family intimacy, closer than sexual love. It was a sort of blending, as if we all melted into one another, each of us contributing something special, individual and unique, and somehow all of us together becoming more than the sum of us.
But the others were growing impatient. It was Thyra who finally voiced what they were all wanting to know.
“When do we begin to work with the Sharra matrix? We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”
I demurred. “I’d hoped to find others to work with us; I’m not sure we can operate a ninth-level matrix alone.”
Rafe asked, “What’s a ninth-level matrix?”
“In general,” I said dryly, “it’s a matrix not safe to handle with less than nine workers. And that’s with a good, fully trained Keeper.”
Kadarin said, “I told you we should have chosen Thyra.”
“I won’t argue with you about it. Thyra is a very strong telepath; she is an excellent technician and mechanic. But no Keeper.”
Thyra asked, “Exactly how does a Keeper differ from any other telepath?”
I struggled to put it into language she could understand. “A Keeper is the central control in the circle; you’ve all seen that. She holds together the forces. Do you know what energons are?”
Only Rafe ventured to ask, “Are they the little wavy things that I can’t quite see when I look into the matrix?”
Actually that was a very good answer. I said, “They’re a purely theoretical name for something nobody’s sure really exists. It’s been postulated that the part of the brain which controls psi forces gives off a certain type of vibration which we call energons. We can describe what they do, though we can’t really describe them. These, when directed and focused through a matrix—I showed you—become immensely amplified, with the matrix acting as a transformer. It is the amplified energons which transform energy. Well, in a matrix circle, it is the Keeper who receives the flow of energons from all members of the circle and weaves them all into a single focused beam, and this, the focused beam, is what goes through the large matrix.”
“Why are Keepers always women?”
“They aren’t. There have been male Keepers, powerful ones, and other men who have taken a Keeper’s place. I can do it myself. But women have more positive energon flows, and they begin to generate them younger and keep them longer.”
“You explained why a Keeper has to be chaste,” Marjorie said, “but I still don’t understand it.”
Kadarin said, “That’s because it’s superstitious drivel. There’s nothing to understand; it’s gibberish.”
“In the old days,” I said, “when the really enormous matrix screens were made, the big synthetic ones, the Keepers were virgins, trained from early childhood and conditioned in ways you wouldn’t believe. You know how close a matrix circle is.” I looked around at them, savoring the closeness. “In those days a Keeper had to learn to be part of the circle and yet completely, completely apart from it.”
Marjorie said, “I should think they’d have gone mad.”
“A good many of them did. Even now, most of the women who work as Keepers give it up after a year or two. It’s too difficult and frustrating. The Keepers at the towers aren’t required to be virgins any more. But while they are working as Keepers, they stay strictly chaste.”
“It sounds like nonsense,” Thyra said.
“Not a bit of it,” I said. “The Keeper takes and channels all that energy from all of you. No one who has ever handled these very high energy-flows wants to take the slightest chance of short-circuiting them through her own body. It would be like getting in the way of a lightning-bolt.” I held out the scar again. “A three-second backflow did that to me. Well, then. In the body there are clusters of nerve fibers which control the energy flows. The trouble is that the same nerve clusters carry two kinds of energy; they carry the psi flows, the energons which carry power to the brain; they also carry the sexual messages and energies. This is why some telepaths get threshold sickness when they’re in their teens: the two kinds of energy, sexual energies and laran, are both wakening at once. If they aren’t properly handled, you can get an overload, sometimes a killer overload, because each stimulates the other and you get a circular feedback.”
Beltran asked, “Is that why—”
I nodded, knowing what he was going to ask. “Whenever there’s an energon drain, as in concentrated matrix work, there’s some nerve overloading. Your energies are depleted—have you noticed how we’ve all been eating?—and your sexual energies are at a low ebb, too. The major side effect for men is temporary impotence.” I repeated, smiling reassuringly at Beltran, “Temporary impotence. Nothing to worry about, but it does take some getting used to. By the way, if you ever find you can’t eat, come to one of us right away for monitoring; that can be an early-warning signal that your energy flows are out of order.”
“Monitoring. That’s what you’re teaching me to do, then?” Beltran asked, and I nodded. “That’s right. Even if you can’t link into the circle, we can use you as a psi monitor.” I knew he was still resentful about this. He knew enough by now to know it was the work usually done by the youngest and least skilled in the circle. The worst of it was that unless he could stop projecting this resentment, we couldn’t even use him near the circle. Not even as a psi monitor. There are few things that can disrupt a circle faster than uncontrolled resentments.
I said, “In a sense, the Keeper and the psi monitor are at the two ends of a circle—and almost equally important.” This was true. “Often enough, the life of the Keeper is in the hands of the monitor, because she has no energy to waste in watching over her own body.”
Beltran grinned ruefully, but he grinned. “So Marjorie is the head and I’m the old cow’s tail!”
“By no means. Rather she’s at the top of the ladder and you’re on the ground holding it steady. You’re the lifeline.” I remembered suddenly that we had come far astray from the subject, and said, “With a Keeper, if the nerve channels are not completely clear they can overload, and the Keeper will burn up like a torch. So while the nerve channels are being used to carry these tremendous energy overloads, they cannot be used to carry any other form of energy. And only complete chastity can keep the channels clear enough.”
Marjorie said, “I can feel the channels all the time now. Even when I’m not working in the matrices. Even when I’m asleep.”
“Good.” That meant she was functioning as a Keeper now. Beltran looked at her with half shut eyes and said, “I can see them, almost.”
“That’s good, too,” I said. “A time will come when you’ll be able to sense the energy flows from across the room—or a mile away—and pinpoint any backflows or energy disruptions in any of us.”
I deliberately changed the subject. I asked, “Precisely what do we want to do with the Sharra matrix, Beltran?”
“You know my plans.”
“Plans, yes, precisely what do you want to do first? I know that in the end you want to prove that a matrix this size can power a starship—”
“Can it?” Marjorie asked.
“A matrix this size, love, could bring one of the smaller moons right down out of its orbit, if we were insane enough to try. It would, of course, destroy Darkover along with it. Powering a starship with one might be possible, but we can’t try here. Among other reasons, we haven’t got a starship yet. We need a smaller project to experiment with, to learn to direct and focus the force. This force is fire-powered, so we also need a place to work where, if we lose control for a few seconds, we won’t burn up a thousand leagues of forest.”
I saw Beltran shudder. He was mountain bred too, and shared with all Darkovans the fear of forest fire. “Father has four Terran aircraft, two light planes and two helicopters. One helicopter is away in the lowlands, but would the other be suitable for experiment?”
I considered. “The explosive fuel should be removed first,” I said, “so if anything does go wrong it won’t burn. Otherwise a helicopter might be ideal, experimenting with the rotors to lift and power and control it. It’s a question of developing control and precision. You wouldn’t put Rafe, here, to riding your fastest racehorse.”
Rafe said shyly, “Lew, you said we need other telepaths. Lord Kermiac . . . didn’t he train matrix mechanics before any of us were born? Why isn’t he one of us?”
True. He had trained Desideria and trained her so well that she could use the Sharra matrix—
“And she used it alone,” said Kadarin, picking up my thoughts. “So why does it worry you that we are so few?”
“She didn’t use it alone,” I said. “She had fifty to a hundred believers focusing their raw emotion on the stone. More, she did not try to control it or focus it. She used it as a weapon, rather, she let it use her.” I felt a sudden cold shudder of fear, as if every hair on my body were prickling and standing erect. I cut off the thought. I was tower-trained. I had no will to wield it for power. I was sworn.
“As for Kermiac,” I said, “he is old, past controlling a matrix. I wouldn’t risk it, Rafe.”
Beltran grew angry. “Damn it, you might have the courtesy to ask him!”
That seemed fair enough, when I weighed the experience he must have had against his age and weakness. “Ask him, if you will. But don’t press him. Let him make his own choice freely.”
“He will not,” Marjorie said. She colored as we all turned on her. “I thought it was my place, as Keeper, to ask him. He called it to my mind that he would not even teach me. He said a circle was only as strong as the weakest person in it, and he would endanger all our lives.”
I felt both disappointed and relieved. Disappointed because I would have welcomed a chance to join him in that special bond that comes only among the members of a circle, to feel myself truly one of his kin. Relieved, because what he had told Marjorie was true, and we all knew it.
Thyra said rebelliously, “Does he understand how much we need him? Isn’t it worth some risk?”
I would have risked the hazards to us, not those to him. At Arilinn they recommended gradual relinquishing of the work after early middle age, as vitality lessened.
“Always Arilinn,” Thyra said impatiently, as if I had spoken aloud. “Do they train them there to be cowards?”
I turned on her, tensing myself against that sudden inner anger which Thyra could rouse in me so easily. Then, sternly controlling myself before Marjorie or the others could be caught up in the whirlpool emotion which swirled and raced between Thyra and me, I said, “One thing they do teach us, Thyra, is to be honest with ourselves and each other.” I held out my hands to her. If she had been taught at Arilinn she would have known already that anger was all too often a concealment for less permissible emotions. “Are you ready to be so honest with me?”
Reluctantly, she took my extended hand between her own. I fought to keep my barriers down, not to barricade myself against her. She was trembling, and I knew this was a new and distressing experience to her, that no man except Kadarin, who had been her lover for so long, had ever stirred her senses. I thought, for a moment, she would cry. It would have been better if she had, but she bit her lip and stared at me, defiant. She whispered, half-aloud, “Don’t—”
I broke the trembling rapport, knowing I could not force Thyra, as I would have had to do at Arilinn, to go into this all the way and confront what she refused to see. I couldn’t. Not before Marjorie.
It was not cowardice, I told myself fiercely. We were all kinsmen and kinswomen. There was simply no need.
I said, changing the subject quickly, “We can try keying the Sharra matrix tomorrow, if you want. Have you explained to your father, Beltran, that we will need an isolated place to work, and asked leave to use the helicopter?”
“I will ask him tonight, when we are at dinner,” Beltran promised.
After dinner, when we were all seated in the little private study we had made our center, he came to us and told us permission had been given, that we could use the old airstrip. We talked little that night, each thinking his or her own thoughts. I was thinking that it had certainly cost Kadarin a lot to turn the matrix over to me. All along, he had expected that he and Beltran would be wholly in charge of this work, that I would be only a helper, lending skill but with no force to decisions. Beltran probably still resented my taking charge, and his inability to be part of the circle was most likely the bitterest dose he had ever had to swallow.
Marjorie was a little apart from us all, the heartbreaking isolation of a Keeper having already begun to slip down over her, forcing her away from the rest. I hated myself for having condemned her to this. With one part of myself I wanted to smash it all and take her into my arms. Maybe Kadarin was right, maybe the chastity of a Keeper was the stupidest of Comyn superstitions, and Marjorie and I were going through all this hell unnecessarily.
I let myself drift out of focus, trying to see ahead to a day when we would be free to love one another. And strangely, though my life was here and I felt I had wholly renounced my allegiance to Comyn, I still tried to see myself breaking the news to my father.
I came up to ordinary awareness and saw that Rafe was asleep on the hearth. Someone should wake him and send him to bed. Was this work too strenuous for a boy his age? He should be playing with button-sized matrices, not working seriously in a circle like this!
My eyes dwelt longest, with a cruel envy, on Kadarin and Thyra, side by side on the hearthrug, gazing into the fire. No prohibition lay between them; even separated, they had each other. I saw Marjorie’s eyes come to rest on them, with the same remote sadness. That, at least, we could share . . . and for now it was all we could share.
I turned my hand over and looked with detached sorrow at the mark tattooed on my right wrist, the seal of Comyn. The sign that I was laran heir to a Domain. My father had sworn for me, before that mark was set there, for service to Comyn, loyalty to my people.
I looked at the scar from my first year at Arilinn. It ached whenever I was doing matrix work like this; it ached now. That, not the tattoo mark of my Domain, was the real sign of my loyalty to Darkover. And now I was working for a great rebirth of knowledge and wisdom to benefit all our world. I was breaking the law of Arilinn by working with untrained telepaths, unmonitored matrices. Breaking their letter, perhaps, to restore their spirit all over Darkover!
When, yawning wearily, Rafe and the women went their way to bed, I detained Kadarin for a moment. “One thing I have to know. Are you and Thyra married?”
He shook his head. “Freemates, perhaps, we never sought formal ceremonies. If she had wished I would have been willing, but I have seen too many marriage customs on too many worlds to care about any of them. Why?”
“In a tower circle this would not arise; here it must be taken into account,” I said. “Is there any possibility that she could be carrying a child?”
He raised his eyebrow. I knew the question was an inexcusable intrusion, but it was necessary to know. He said at last, “I doubt it. I have traveled on so many worlds and been exposed to so many things . . . I am older than I look, but I have fathered no children. Probably I cannot. So I fear if Thyra really wants a child she will have to have it fathered elsewhere. Are you volunteering?” he asked, laughing.
I found the question too outrageous even to think about. “I only felt I should warn you that matrix circle work could be dangerous if there was the slightest chance of pregnancy. Not so much for her, but for the unborn child. There have been gruesome tragedies. I felt I should warn you.”
“I should think you’d have done better to warn her,” he said, “but I appreciate your delicacy.” He gave me an odd, unreadable look and went away. Well, I had done no more than my duty in asking, and if the question distressed him, he would have to absorb and accept it, as I absorbed my frustration over Marjorie and accepted the way Thyra’s physical presence disturbed me. My dreams that night were disturbing, Thyra and Marjorie tangling into a single woman, so that again and again I would see one in dreams and suddenly discover it was the other. I should have recognized this as a sign of danger, but I only knew that when it was too late.
The next day was gray and lowering. I wondered if we would have to wait till spring for any really effective work. It might be better, giving us time to settle into our work together, perhaps find others to fit into the circle. Beltran and Kadarin would be impatient. Well, they would just have to master their impatience.
Marjorie looked cold and apprehensive; I felt the same way. A few lonesome snowflakes were drifting down, but I could not make the snow an excuse for putting off the experiment. Even Thyra’s high spirits were subdued.
I unwrapped the sword in which the matrix was hidden. The forge-folk must have done this; I wondered if they had known, even halfway, what they were doing. There were old traditions about matrices like this, installed in weapons. They came out of the Ages of Chaos, when, it is said, everything it’s possible to know about matrices was known, and our world nearly destroyed in consequence.
I said to Beltran, “It’s very dangerous to key into a matrix this size without a very definite end in mind. It must always be controlled or it will take control of us.”
Kadarin said, “You speak as if the matrix was a live thing.”
“I’m not so sure it’s not.” I gestured at the helicopter, standing about eighty feet away at the near edge of the deserted airfield, the snow faintly beginning to edge its tail and rotors. “What I mean is this. We cannot simply key into the matrix, say ‘fly’ and stand here watching that thing take off. We must know precisely how the mechanism works, in order to know precisely what forces we must exert, and in what directions. I suggest we begin by concentrating on turning the rotor blade mechanism and getting enough speed to lift it. We don’t really need a matrix this size for that, nor five workers. I could do it with this.” I touched the insulated bag which held my own. “But we must have some precise way of learning to direct forces. We will discover, then, how to lift the helicopter and, since we don’t want it to crash, we’ll limit ourselves to turning the rotors until it lifts a few inches, then gradually diminish the speed again until we set it down. Later we can try for direction and control in flight.” I turned to Beltran. “Will this demonstrate to the Terrans that psi power has material uses, so they’ll give us help in developing a way to use this for a stardrive?”
It was Kadarin who answered, “Hell yes! If I know the Terrans!”
Marjorie checked Rafe’s mittened hands. “Warm enough?” He pulled away indignantly, and she admonished, “Don’t be silly! Shivering uses up too much energy; you have to be able to concentrate!” I was pleased at her grasp of this. My own chill was mental, not physical. I placed Beltran at a little distance from the circle. I knew it was a bitter pill to swallow, that the twelve-year-old Rafe could be part of this and he could not, and I was intensely sorry for him, but the first necessity of matrix work was to know and accept for all time your own limitations. If he couldn’t, he had no business within a mile of the circle.
There was really no need for a physical circle, but I drew us close enough that the magnetic energy of our bodies would overlap and reinforce the growing bond.
I knew this was folly, a partly trained Keeper, a partly trained psi monitor . . . an illegal, unmonitored matrix . . . and yet I thought of the pioneers in the early days of our world, first taming the matrices. Terran colonists? Kadarin thought so. Before the towers rose, before their use was guarded by ritual and superstition. And it was given to us to retrace their steps!
I separated hilt and blade, taking out the matrix. It was not yet activated, but at its touch the old scar on my palm contracted with a stab of pain. Marjorie moved with quiet sureness into the center of the circle. She stood facing me, laying one hand on the blue stone . . . a vortex seeking to draw me into its depths, a maelstrom . . . I shut my eyes, reaching out for contact with Marjorie, steadying myself as I made contact with her cool silken strength. I felt Thyra drop into place, then Kadarin; the sense of an almost-unendurable burden lessened with his strength, as if he shifted a great weight onto his shoulders. Rafe dropped in like some small furry thing nestling against us.
I had the curious sense that power was flowing up from the stone and into the circle. It felt like being hooked up to a powerful battery, vibrating in us all, body and brain. That was wrong, that was very wrong. It was curiously invigorating, but I knew we must not succumb to it even for a moment. With relief I felt Marjorie seize control and with a determined effort direct the stream of force, focusing it through her, outward.
For a moment she stood bathed in flickering, transparent flames, then for an instant she took on the semblance of a woman . . . golden, chained, kneeling, as the forge-folk depicted their goddess . . . I knew this was an illusion, but it seemed that Marjorie, or the great flickering fire-form which seemed to loom around and over and through her, reached out, seized the helicopter’s rotors and spun them as a child spins a pinwheel. With my physical ears I heard the humming sound as they began to turn, slowly at first under the controlling force, then winding to a swift spinning snarl, a drone, a shriek that caught the air currents. Slowly, slowly, the great machine lifted, hovering lightly a foot or so above the ground.
Straining to be gone . . .
Hold it there! I was directing the power outward as Marjorie formed and shaped it; I could feel all the others pressed tightly against me, though physically none of us were touching. As I trembled, feeling the vast outflow of that linked conjoined power, I saw in a series of wild flashes the great form of fire I had seen before, Marjorie and not Marjorie, a raw stream of force, a naked woman, sky-tall with tossing hair, each separate lock a streamer of fire . . . I felt a curious rage surging up and through me. Take the helicopter, hanging there useless a few inches high, hurl it into the sky, high, high, fling it down like a missile against the towers of Castle Aldaran, burning, smashing, exploding the walls like sand, hurling a rain of fire into the valley, showering fires on Caer Donn, laying the Terran base waste . . . I struggled with these images of fire and destruction, as a rider struggles with the bit of a hard-mouthed horse. Too strong, too strong. I smelled musk, a wild beast prowled the jungle of my impulses, rage, lust, a constellation of wild emotions . . . a small skittering animal bolting up a tree in terror . . . the shriek of the rotor blades, a scream, a deafening roar . . .
Slowly the noise lessened to a whine, a drone, a faint whir, silence. The copter stood vibrating faintly, motionless. Marjorie, still flickering with faint glimmers of invisible fire, stood calm, smiling absently. I felt her reach out and break the rapport, the others slipping away one by one until we stood alone, locked together. She withdrew her hand from the matrix and I stood cold and alone, struggling against spasms of lust, raging violence spinning in my brain, out of control, my heart racing, the blood pounding in my head, vision blurred . . .
Beltran touched me lightly on the shoulder; I felt the tumult subside and with a shudder of pain managed to withdraw my consciousness. I covered the matrix quickly and drew my aching hand over my forehead. It came away dripping,
“Zandru’s hells!” I whispered. Never, not in three years at Arilinn, had I even guessed such power. Kadarin, looking at the helicopter thoughtfully, said, “We could have done anything with it.”
“Except maybe controlled it.”
“But the power is there, when we do learn to control it,” Beltran said. “A spaceship. Anything.”
Rafe touched Marjorie’s wrist, very lightly. “For a minute I thought you were on fire. Was that real, Lew?”
I wasn’t sure if this was simply an illusion, the way generations upon generations of the forge-folk had envisioned their goddess, the power which brought metal from the deeps of the earth to their fires and forges. Or was this some objective force from that strange otherworld to which the telepath goes when he steps out of his physical body? I said, “I don’t know, Rafe. How did it seem, Marjorie?”
She said, “I saw the fire. I even felt it, a little, but it didn’t burn me. But I did feel that if I lost control, even for an instant, it would burn up inside and . . . and take over, so that I was the fire and could leap down and . . . and destroy. I’m not saying this very well . . . ”
Then it was not only me. She too had felt the weapon-rage, the lust for destruction. I was still struggling with their physical aftereffects, the weak trembling of adrenalin expended. If these emotions had actually arisen from within me, I was not fit for this work. Yet, searching within myself, with the discipline of the tower-trained, I found no trace of such emotion within me now.
This disquieted me. If my own hidden emotions—anger I did not acknowledge, repressed desire for one of the women, hidden hostility toward one of the others—had been wrested out of my mind to consume me, then it was a sign I had lost, under stress, my tower-imposed discipline. But those emotions, being mine, I could control. If they were not mine, but had come from elsewhere to fasten upon us, we were all in danger.
I said, “I’m more disturbed than ever about this matrix. The power’s there, yes. But it’s been used as a weapon . . . ”
“And it wants to destroy,” Rafe said unexpectedly, “like the sword in the fairy tale; when you drew it, it would never go back into the scabbard until it had had its drink of blood.”
I said soberly, “A lot of those old fairy tales were based on garbled memories of the Ages of Chaos. Maybe Rafe’s right and it does want blood and destruction.”
Thyra, her eyes brooding, asked, “Don’t all men, just a little? History tells us they do. Darkovans and Terrans too.”
Kadarin laughed. “You were brought up in the Comyn, Lew, so I’ll forgive you for being superstitious.” He put his arm around my shoulders in a warm hug. “I have more faith in the human mind than in forge-folk superstitions.” We were still linked; again I felt the strength that lifted a great weight from my shoulders. I let myself lean against him. He was probably right. My mind had been filled from childhood with these old gods and powers. The science of matrix mechanics had been formulated to get rid of that. I was a skilled technician; why was I letting imagination run away with me?
Kadarin said, “Try again. Now that we know we can control it, it’s all a matter of learning how.”
“It’s always up to the Keeper to decide that,” I said. It troubled me that Marjorie still deferred to me. It was natural enough, for I had trained her, but she must learn that the initiative was hers, to lead, not follow.
She stretched her hand to me, setting up the primary line of force. One by one she brought us into the circle, each of us dropping into his appointed place as if we were scouts on a battlefield. This time I felt her touch Beltran, too, and place him so that he could maintain rapport just outside the circle. This time the force was easier to carry . . . chained fire, electricity firmly stored in a battery, a firmly bridled racehorse . . . I saw the fire leap up around Marjorie, but this time I could see through it. It wasn’t real, just a way of visualizing a force with no physical reality.
We stood linked, holding the pulsing power suspended. If the Terrans will not give us what we need and deserve, we can force them to it, we need not fear their bombs nor their blasters. Do they think we are barbarians armed with swords and pitchforks?
Clearly now, as the form of fire built up, I saw a woman, a sky-tall goddess clothed in flame, restlessly reaching to strike.
. . . fire raining on Caer Donn, smashing the city into rubble, starships falling like comets out of the sky . . .
Firmly Marjorie reached for control, like at one of those riding-exhibitions where a single rider controls four horses with one rein, bringing us back to the physical airfield. It shimmered around us, but it was there. The helicopter blades began to hum again, to turn with a clattering roar.
We need more power, more strength. For a moment I clearly saw my father’s face, felt the strong line of rapport. He had awakened my gift; we were never wholly out of touch. I felt the amazement, the fear with which he felt the matrix touch him, momentarily draw him in . . . He was gone. Had never been there. Then I felt Thyra reach out with a sure touch and draw Kermiac within the circle as if he had been physically present. For an instant the circle expanded with his strength, burning brilliantly, and the helicopter rose easily from the ground, hung there quivering, rotors spinning with emphasis and force. I saw, I felt Kermiac crumple, withdraw. The lines of force went ragged . . . Kadarin and I locked hard together, supporting Marjorie as she controlled the wavering forces, lowering, lowering . . . The helicopter bumped, hard, and the sound shattered the link. Pain crashed through me. Marjorie collapsed, sobbing. Beltran had seized Thyra by the shoulders, was shaking her like a dog shaking a rodent. He swung back his hand and slapped her full in the face. I felt—we all felt—the stinging pain of that blow.
“Vicious bitch! Damned she-devil,” Beltran shouted. “How dare you, damn you, how dare you—”
Kadarin grabbed him, pulled him from Thyra by main force. Beltran was still fighting, struggling. Cold terror clutching at me, I reached out for Kermiac. Uncle, have they killed you? After a moment, sick with relief, I felt his presence, a thread of life, weak, collapsed, but alive. Alive, thank God!
Kadarin was still holding Beltran off Thyra; he let him go, flinging him violently to the ground. He said, raging, “Lay a hand on her again, Beltran, and I’ll kill you with my own hands!” He hardly looked human at all now.
Marjorie was crying, trembling so violently I feared she would fall senseless. I caught and supported her. Thyra put a hand to her bruised face. She said, trying to be defiant, “What a fuss about nothing! He’s stronger than any of us!”
My fear for Kermiac had turned to anger almost as great at Beltran’s own. How dared Thyra do this against his will and Marjorie’s judgment? I knew I couldn’t trust her, damned sneaking bitch! I turned on her, still holding Marjorie with one arm; she shrank away as if from a blow. That shocked me back to my senses. Strike a woman? Slowly, lowering my head, I thrust the wadding around the matrix. This rage was ours. It was as dangerous as what Thyra did.
Marjorie could stand alone now. I put the matrix in her hand and went toward Thyra. I said, “I’m not going to hurt you, child. But what possessed you to do such a thing?” One of the strongest laws of every telepath was never to force another’s will or judgment . . .
The defiance was gone from her face. She fingered the cheek Beltran had struck. “Truly, Lew,” she said, almost in a whisper, “I don’t know. I felt we needed someone, and in days past this matrix had known the Aldarans, wanted Kermiac—no, that doesn’t make sense, does it? And I felt that I could and I must because Marjorie wouldn’t . . . I couldn’t stop myself, I watched myself do it and I was afraid . . . ” She began to cry helplessly.
I stepped forward and took her into my arms, holding her against me, her face wet on my shoulder. I felt a shaking tenderness. We had all been helpless before that force. My own emotion should have warned me, but I was too distressed to feel alarm. The feel of her warm body in my arms should have warned me, too, at that stage, but I let her cling to me, sobbing, for a minute or two before I patted her shoulders tenderly, wiped her tears away and turned to help Beltran rise. He stood up stiffly, rubbing his hip. I sighed and said, “I know how you feel, Beltran. It was a dangerous thing to do. But you were in the wrong, too, losing your temper. A matrix technician must have control, must at all times.”
Defiance and contrition warred in his face. He fumbled for words. I should have waited for them—I was responsible for this whole circle—but I felt too sick and drained to try. I said curtly, “Better see if any harm was done to the helicopter when it crashed.”
“From three inches off the ground?” He sounded contemptuous now. That also troubled me but I was too tired to care. I said, “Suit yourself. It’s your craft. If this is what comes of having you in the circle, I’ll make damned sure you’re a good long way away from it.” I turned my back on him.
Marjorie was leaning on Rafe. She had stopped crying but her eyes and nose were red. Absurdly I loved her more than ever like that. She said in a small shaking voice, “I’m all right now, Lew. Honestly.”
I looked at the ground at our feet. It was covered with more than an inch of snow. You always lost track of time inside a matrix. It was snowing harder than ever, and the sky was darkening. The shaking of my own hands warned me. I said, “We all need food and rest. Run ahead, Rafe, and ask the servants to have a meal ready for us.”
I heard a familiar clattering roar and looked up. The other helicopter was circling overhead, descending. Beltran was walking away toward it. I started to call after him, summon him—he too would be drained, needing the replenishment of food and sleep. At that moment, though, my only thought was to let him collapse. It would do him good to learn this wasn’t a game! We left him behind.
I’d have an apology to make to Kermiac, too. It didn’t matter that it had been done against my orders. I was operating the matrix. I had trained this circle. I was responsible for everything that happened to it.
Everything.
Everything. Aldones, Lord of Light . . . everything: Ruin and death, a city in flames and chaos, Marjorie . . .
I shook myself out of the maelstrom of misery and pain, staring at the quiet path, the dark sky, the gently falling snow. None of it was real. I was hallucinating. Merciful Avarra, if, after three years at Arilinn, any matrix ever built could make me hallucinate, I was in trouble!
Kermiac’s servants had laid a splendid meal for us, though I was so hungry I could as readily have eaten bread and milk. As I ate the drained weakness receded, but the vague, formless guilt remained. Marjorie. Had she been burned by the flare of fire? I kept wanting to touch her and make sure she was there, alive, unhurt. Thyra ate with tears running down her face, the bruise gradually swelling and darkening until her eye was swollen shut. Beltran did not come. I supposed he was with Kermiac. I didn’t give a damn where he was. Marjorie self-consciously thrust aside her third plateful, saying, “I’m ashamed to be so greedy!”
I began to reassure her. Kadarin did it instead. “Eat, child, eat, your nerves are exhausted, you need the energy. Rafe, what’s the matter, child?” The boy was restlessly pushing his food around on his plate. “You haven’t touched a bite.”
“I can’t, Bob. My head aches. I can’t swallow. If I try to swallow anything I’m afraid I’ll be sick.”
Kadarin met my eyes. “I’ll take care of him,” he said. “I know what to do, I went through it when I was his age.” He lifted Rafe in his arms and carried him, like a small child, out of the room. Thyra rose and went after them.
Left alone with Marjorie, I said, “You should rest, too, after all that.”
She said in a very small voice, “I’m afraid to be alone. Don’t leave me alone, Lew.”
I didn’t intend to, not until I was sure she was safe. A Keeper in training has stresses no other matrix mechanic suffers, and I was still responsible for her. Although emotional upheavals were common enough when first keying into one of the really big matrices, such frightful blowups as this between Beltran and Thyra were not common. Fortunately. No wonder we were all literally sick from it.
I had never seen Marjorie’s room before. It was at the top of a small tower, isolated, reached by a winding stair, a wedge-shaped room with wide windows. In clear weather it would have looked out on tremendous mountain ranges. Now it was all a dismal gray, gloomy, with hard beating snow rattling and whining against the glass. Marjorie slipped off her outdoor boots and knelt by the window, looking into the storm. “It’s lucky we came in when we did. I’ve known the snow to come up so quickly you can lose your way a hundred paces from your own doorway. Lew, will Rafe be all right?”
“Of course. Just stress, maybe a touch of threshold sickness. Beltran’s tantrum didn’t help any, but it won’t last long.” Once a telepath gained full control of his matrix, and to do this he must have mastered the nerve channels, recurrences of threshold sickness were not serious. Rafe was probably feeling rotten, but it wouldn’t last.
Marjorie leaned against the window, pressing her temples to the cold glass. “My head aches.”
“Damn Beltran anyway!” I said, with violence that surprised me.
“It was Thyra’s fault, Lew. Not his.”
“What Thyra did is Thyra’s responsibility, but Beltran must bear the responsibility for losing control, too.”
My mind slid back to that strange interval within the matrix—whether it had been a few seconds or an hour I had no way of knowing—when I had sensed my father’s presence. It occurred to me to wonder if at any of the towers, Hali or Arilinn or Neskaya, they had sensed the wakening of this enormous matrix, stirring to life. My father was an extraordinary telepath; he had served in Arilinn under the last of the old-style Keepers. He must have felt Sharra’s wakening.
Did he know what we were doing?
As if following my thoughts Marjorie said, “Lew, what is your father like? My guardian has always spoken well of him.”
“I don’t want to talk about my father, Marjorie.” But my barriers had been breached and that furious parting came back to me, with all the old bitterness. He had been willing to kill me, to have his own way. He cared no more for me than a . . .
Mariorie said in a low voice, “You’re wrong, Lew. Your father loved you. Loves you. No, I’m not reading your mind. You were . . . broadcasting. But you are a loving person, a gentle person. To be so loving, you must have been loved. Greatly loved.”
I bent my head. Indeed, indeed, all those years I had been so secure in his love, he could never have lived a lie. Not to me. We had been open to one another. Yet somehow that made it worse. Loving me, to risk me so ruthlessly . . .
She whispered, “I know you, Lew. You could not have lived—would you have wanted to be without laran? Without the full potential of your gift? He knew your life wouldn’t have been worth living without it. Blind, deaf, crippled . . . so he let you risk it. To become what he knew you were.”
I laid my head on her knees, blind with pain. She had given me back something I never knew I had lost; she had returned to me the security of my father’s love. I couldn’t look up, couldn’t let her see my face was contorted, that I was crying like a child. She knew anyway. I supposed this was my form of throwing a tantrum. Thyra disobeyed orders. Rafe got threshold sickness, Kadarin and Beltran started slamming each other . . . I started crying like a child . . .
After a time I lifted her hand and kissed the slender fingertips. She looked worn and exhausted. I said, “You must rest too, darling.” I was deeply proud of the skill with which she had seized control. She lay back against her pillows. I bent and, as I would have done at Arilinn, ran my fingertips lightly along her body. Not touching her, of course, simply feeling out the energy flows, monitoring the nerve centers. She lay quietly, smiling at the touch that was not a touch. I felt that she was still depleted, drained of energy, but that would not last. The channels were clear. I was glad she had come through this strenous beginning so well, so undamaged.
I was not, at the moment, actively suffering because she was forbidden to me, that even a kiss would have been unthinkable. I was remotely aware of her but there was no sexual element in it. I simply felt an intense and overwhelming love such as I had never known for anyone alive. I didn’t have to speak of it. I knew she shared it.
If I couldn’t have reached Marjorie’s mind I’d have gone mad with wanting her, needing her with every nerve in me. But we had this, and it was enough. Almost enough, and we had the promise of the rest.
I knew the answer, but I wanted to say the words aloud.
“When this is over, you will marry me, Marjorie?”
She said, with a simplicity that made my heart turn over, “I want to. But will the Comyn let you?”
“I won’t ask them. By then the Comyn may have learned it’s not for them to arrange everyone’s life!”
“I wouldn’t want to make trouble, Lew. Marriage doesn’t mean that much to me.”
“It does to me,” I said fiercely. “Do you think I want our children to be bastards? I want them at Armida after me, without the struggle my father had to get it for me . . . ”
Her laugh was adorable. Quickly, she sobered. “Lew, Lew, I’m not laughing at you, darling. Only it makes me so happy, to think that it means all this to you—not just wanting me, but thinking of all that will come afterward, our children, our children’s children, a household to stand into the future. Yes, Lew. I want to have your children, I’m sorry we have to wait so long for them. Yes, I’ll marry you if you want me to, in the Comyn if they’ll have it, if not, then any way we can, any way you choose.” For a moment, a feather-touch, she laid her lips against the back of my hand.
My heart was so full I could bear no more. I had desired women before, but never with this wholeness, going far beyond any moment of desire, stretching into the future, all our lives. For a moment time went out of focus again . . .
. . . I was kneeling beside the cot of a little girl, five or six perhaps, a tiny child with a heart-shaped face and wide eyes fenced in long lashes, golden eyes just the color of Marjorie’s . . . I felt a strange wonder, pain in my right hand, dismayed, torn with anguish.
Marjorie whispered, “What is it, Lew?”
“A flash of precognition,” I said, coming back to myself, strangely shaken. “I saw—I saw a little girl. With your eyes.” But why had I felt so bewildered, so agonized? I tried to see it again, but as these flashes come unbidden, so they can never be recalled. I felt Marjorie’s thoughts, and hers were wholly joyful: It will be all right then. We will be together as we wish, we will see that child. Her lashes were dropping shut with weariness and, kneeling beside her, I looked into her face again. She thought drowsily, We should have a son first, and I knew she had seen the child’s face in my mind. She smiled with pure happiness and her lids slipped shut. Her hand tightened on my own.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, half asleep.
“Never. Sleep, beloved.” I stretched out beside her, holding her fingers in mine, my love encircling her sleep. After a moment, I slept too, in the deepest happiness I had ever known.
Or was ever to know again.
It was dark when I woke, the snow still rattling the windows. Kadarin was standing above us, holding a light. Marjorie was still deeply asleep. His glance at her was filled with a deep tenderness that warmed me to him as nothing else could have done.
And then, for a moment, I felt his face wrenched, contorted with rage . . . It was gone. He said softly, “Beltran sent to ask if you would come down. Let Margie sleep if you like, she’s very tired.”
I slid from the bed. She stirred, made a faint protesting noise—I thought she had murmured my name. I covered her gently with a shawl, picked up my boots in my hand and noiselessly went out, feeling her sink back into deep sleep.
“Rafe?”
“He’s fine. I gave him a few drops of kirian, got him to drink some hot milk and honey, left him asleep.” Kadarin wore his sad, tender smile on his face. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. After all your warnings, I never expected—it was Thyra who suggested you might be with Marjorie.” He laughed. “But I hadn’t expected to find you in her bed!” I said stiffly, “I assure you—”
“Lew, in the name of all the damned obscene gods of the Dry-Towners, do you think it matters a damn to me?” He was laughing again. “Oh, I believe you, you’re just scrupulous enough, and bound hand and foot with your own idiot superstitions! I think you’re putting a considerable strain on human nature, myself—I wouldn’t trust myself to lie down with a woman I loved and never touch her—but if you happen to enjoy self-torture, that’s your own choice. As the Dry-Towner said to the cralmac . . . ” And he launched into a long, good-humored and incredibly obscene tale which took my mind off my embarrassment as nothing else could have. Not a word of it was suitable for repeating in polite company, but it was exactly what the situation demanded.
When we reached the fireside room, he said, “You heard the helicopter land this afternoon?”
I was still chuckling at the adventures of the Dry-Towner, the spaceman and the three nonhumans; the sudden gravity of his voice shocked me back to normal.
“I saw it, yes. Has it to do with me?”
“A special guest,” Kadarin said. “Beltran feels you should speak with him. You told us he is a catalyst telepath with no reason to love the Comyn, and Beltran sent to persuade him—”
Seated on one of the stone benches near the fire, his dark hair awry, looking cold and ruffled and angry, was Danilo Syrtis. Beltran said, “Perhaps you can explain that we mean no harm, that he is not a prisoner, but an honored guest.”
Danilo tried to sound defiant, but despite his best efforts I could hear that his voice was shaking. “You carried me off with armed men and my father will be ill with fright! Is this how you mountain men welcome guests, taking them away in infernal Terran machines?” He looked no older than Rafe.
I called “Danilo—” and his mouth dropped open. He sprang up. “They told me you were here, but I thought it was just another of their lies.” The childish face hardened. “Was it by your orders they had me kidnapped? How long will the Comyn persecute me?”
I shook my head. “Not my orders, nor Comyn. Until this moment I had no idea you were here.”
He turned on Beltran in childish triumph. His voice, still unbroken, sounded shrill. “I knew you were lying, when you told me Lew Alton ordered me brought here—”
I swung toward Beltran and said in real anger, “I told you Danilo might be persuaded to join us! Did you take that as license to kidnap him?” I held out both hands to the boy and said, “Dani, forgive me. It is true I told them of you and your laran; I suggested that one day they might seek you out and persuade you to join us in what we are doing.” His hands felt cold. He had been badly frightened. “Don’t be afraid. I swear on my honor, no one will hurt you.”
“I am not afraid of such rabble,” he said scornfully, and I saw Beltran wince. Well, if he was going to behave like some Brynat Scarface or Cyrillon des Trailles, he must expect to be called uncomplimentary names! Danilo added, his voice shaking, “My father is old and feeble. He has already suffered my disgrace. Now to lose me again . . . he will surely grieve himself to death.”
I said to Beltran, “You fool, you utter fool! Send a message at once, send it through the Terran relays if you must, that Danilo is alive and well, and that someone must inform his family that he is here, an honored guest! Do you want a friend and ally, or a mortal enemy?”
He had the grace to look ashamed. He said, “I gave no orders to hurt or frighten him or his father. Did anyone lay rough hands on either of you, lad?”
“I was certainly issued no polite invitation, Lord Aldaran. Do you disarm all your honored guests?”
I said, “Go and send that message, Beltran. Let me talk to him alone.” Beltran went and I mended the fire, leaving Danilo to recover his composure. At last I asked, “Tell me the truth, Danilo, have you been ill-treated?”
“No, though they were not gentle. We were some days riding, then the sky-machine. I do not know its name . . . ”
The helicopter. I had seen it land. I knew I should have gone after Beltran. If I had been there when Danilo was brought from it—well, it was done. I said, “A helicopter is safer, in the peaks and crossdrafts of the Hellers, than any ordinary plane. Were you very frightened?”
“Only for a little, when we were forced down by weather. Mostly I feared for my father.”
“Well, a message will be sent. Have you had anything to eat?”
“They offered me something when we first landed,” he said. He did not say he had been too shaken and frightened to eat, but I surmised that. I called a servant and said, “Ask my uncle to excuse me from his table, and say that Lord Beltran will explain. Then send some food here for my guest and myself.” I turned back to the boy. “Dani, am I your enemy?”
“Captain, I—”
“I’ve left the Guards,” I said. “Not captain, now.”
To my amazement he said, “Too bad. You were the only officer everybody liked. No, you’re not my enemy, Lew, and I always thought your father was my friend. It was Lord Dyan—you do know what happened?”
“More or less,” I said. “Whatever it may have been this time, I know damn well that by the time you drew your dagger he’d given you enough provocation for a dozen duels anywhere else. You don’t have to tell me all the nasty little details. I know Dyan.”
“Why did the Commander—”
“They were children together,” I said. “In his eyes Dyan can do no wrong. I’m not defending him, but didn’t you ever do anything you thought was wrong, for a friend’s sake?”
“Did you?” he asked. I was still trying to think how to answer when our supper was brought. I served Dani, but found I was not hungry and sat nibbling at some fruit while the boy satisfied his appetite. I wondered if they had fed him at all since his capture. No, boys that age were always hungry, that was all.
While he ate I worried what Marjorie would think when she woke and found herself alone. Was Rafe really all right, or should I go and make certain? Had Kermiac suffered any lasting ill-effects from Thyra’s rashness? I didn’t approve of what Beltran had done, but I knew why he had been tempted to do it. We needed someone like Danilo so badly that it terrified me.
I poured Dani a glass of wine when he had finished. He merely tasted it for courtesy’s sake, but at least now he was willing to go through the motions of courtesy again. I took a sip of mine and set it aside.
“Danilo, you know you have laran. You also have one of the rarest and most precious Comyn gifts, one we’ve thought extinct. If Comyn Council finds out, they’ll be ready and willing to make all kinds of amends for the stupid and cruel thing Dyan did to you. They’ll offer you anything you want, up to and including a seat in Comyn Council if you want that, marriage with someone like Linnell Aillard—you name it, you can probably have it. You attended that Council meeting among the Terrans. Are you interested in power of that sort? If so, they’ll be lining up two and three deep to offer it to you. Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “I never thought about it. I expected, after I finished in the cadets, to stay quietly at home and look after my father while he lived.”
“And then?”
“I hadn’t thought about that either. I suppose I thought when that time came, I’d be grown up, and then I’d know what I wanted.”
I smiled wryly. Yes, at fifteen I too had been sure that by the time I was twenty or so my life would have arranged itself in simple patterns.
“That’s not the way it happens when you have laran,” I said. “Among other things, you must be trained. An untrained telepath is a menace to himself and everyone around him.”
He made a grimace of revulsion. “I’ve never wanted to be a matrix technician.”
“Probably not,” I said. “It takes a certain temperament.” I couldn’t see Danilo in a tower; I, on the other hand, had never wanted anything else. I still didn’t. “Even so, you must learn to control what you are and what gifts you have. All too many untrained telepaths end up as madmen.”
“Then whether I’m interested in Comyn Council or not, what choice do I have? Isn’t this training only in the hands of the Comyn and the towers? And they can train me to do whatever they want me to do.”
“That’s true in the Domains,” I said. “They do draw all telepaths to their service there. But you still have a choice.” I began to tell him about Beltran’s plan, and a little about the work we had begun.
He listened without comment until I had finished. “Then,” he said, “it seems I have a choice between taking bribes for the use of my laran from the Comyn—or from Aldaran.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. We’re asking you to come into this of your own free will. If we do achieve what we want, then the Comyn will no longer have the power to demand that all telepaths serve them or be left prey to madness. And there would be an end to the kind of power-hunger that left you at the mercy of a man like Dyan.”
He thought that over, sipping the wine again and making a childish wry face. Then he said, “It seems as if something like that’s always going to be happening to people like me, like us. Someone’s always going to be bribing us to use our gifts for their good, not our own.” He sounded terribly young, terribly bitter.
“No, some of us may have a choice now. Once we are a legitimate part of the Terran Empire—”
“Then I suppose the Empire will find some way to use us,” Danilo said. “The Comyn makes mistakes, but don’t they know more about us and our world than the Terrans ever could?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Are you willing to see them stay in power, controlling all our lives, putting corrupt men like Dyan in charge—”
“No, I’m not,” he said, “nobody would want that. But if people like you and me—you said I could have a seat on the Council if I wanted it—if people like you and me were on the Council, the bad ones like Dyan wouldn’t have everything their own way, would they? Your father’s a good man but, like you said, Dyan can do no wrong in his eyes. But when you take a seat on the Council, you won’t feel that way, will you?”
“What I want,” I said with concealed violence, “is not to be forced to take a seat on the Council, or do all the other damned things the Comyn wants me to do!”
“If good men like you can’t be bothered,” said Danilo, “then who’s left, except the bad ones who shouldn’t!”
There was some truth in that, too. But I said vehemently, “I have other skills and I feel I can serve my people better in other ways. That’s what I’m trying to do now, to benefit everyone on Darkover. I’m not trying to smash the Comyn, Dani, only to give everyone more of a choice. Don’t you think it’s an ambition worth achieving?”
He looked helpless. “I can’t judge,” he said. “I’m not even used to thinking of myself as a telepath yet. I don’t know what I ought to do.”
He looked up at me with that odd, trustful look which made me think somehow, of my brother Marius. If it were Marius standing here before me, gifted with laran, would I try to persuade him to face Sharra? A cold chill iced my spine and I shivered, even though the room was warm. I said, “Can you trust me, then?”
“I’d like to,” he said. “You never lied to me or hurt me. But I don’t think I’d trust any of the Aldarans.”
“Is your mind still full of schoolroom bogeymen?” I asked. “Do you believe they are all wicked renegades because they have an old political quarrel with Comyn? You have reason to distrust the Comyn too, Danilo.”
“True,” he said. “But can I trust a man who begins by kidnapping me and frightening my father to death? If he had come to me, explained what he wanted to do, and that you and he together thought my gift could be useful, then asked my father to give me leave to visit him . . . ”
The hell of it was, Dani was entirely right. What had possessed Beltran to do such a thing? “If he had consulted me, that is exactly how I would have suggested he should do it.”
“Yes, I know,” Dani said. “You’re you. But if Beltran isn’t the kind of man to do it that way, how can you trust him?”
“He’s my kinsman,” I said helplessly. “What do you expect me to say? I expect his eagerness got the better of him. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
Dani raged. “You’re talking just the way you said your father did about Lord Dyan!”
It wasn’t the same, I knew that, but I couldn’t expect Danilo to see it. Finally I said, “Can’t you look beyond personalities in this, Dani? Beltran was wrong, but what we’re trying to do is so enormous that maybe it blinds people to smaller aims and ends. Keep your eyes on what he’s doing, and forgive him. Or are you waiting,” and I spoke deliberately, with malice, to make him see how cynical it sounded, “for the Comyn to make a better offer?”
He flushed, stung to the depths. I hadn’t overestimated either his intelligence or his sensitivity. He was a boy still, but the man would be well worth knowing, with strong integrity and honor. I hoped with all my heart he would be our ally.
“Danilo,” I said, “we need you. The Comyn cast you out in disgrace, undeserved. What loyalty do you owe them?”
“The Comyn, nothing,” he said quietly. “Yet I am pledged and my service given. Even if I wanted to do what you ask, Lew, and I’m not sure, I am not free.”
“What do you mean?”
Danilo’s face was impassive, but I could sense the emotion behind his words. “Regis Hastur sought me out at Syrtis,” he said. “He did not know how or why, but he knew I had been wronged. He pledged himself to set it right.”
“We’re trying to set many wrongs right, Dani. Not just yours.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But we swore an oath together and I pledged him my sword and my service. I am his paxman, Lew, so if you want me to help you, you must ask his consent. If my lord gives me leave, then I am at your service. Otherwise I am his man: I have sworn.”
I looked at the solemn young face and knew there was nothing I could say to that. I felt a quite irrational anger at Regis because he had forestalled me here. For a moment I wrestled with strong temptation. I could make him see it my way . . .
I recoiled in horror and shame at my own thoughts. The first pledge I had sworn at Arilinn was this: never, never force the will or conscience of another, even for his own good. I could persuade. I could plead. I could use reason, emotion, logic, rhetoric. I could even seek out Regis and beg him for his consent; he too had reason to be disaffected, to rebel against the corruption in the Comyn. But further than this I could not go. I could not. That I had even thought of it made me feel a little sick.
“I may indeed ask Regis for your aid, Dani,” I said quietly. “He too is my friend. But I will never force you. I am not Dyan Ardais!”
That made him smile a little. “I never thought you were, Lew. And if my lord gives me leave, then I will trust him, and you. But until that time shall come, Dom Lewis”—he gave me my title very formally, though we had been using the familiar mode before this—“have I your permission to depart and return to my father?”
I gestured at the snow, a white torrent whipping the windows, sending little spits of sleet down the chimney. “In this, lad? Let me at least offer you the hospitality of my kinsman’s roof until the weather suits! Then you shall be given proper escort and company out of these mountains. You cannot expect me to set you adrift in these mountains, at night and in winter, with a storm blowing up?” I summoned a servant again, and requested that he provide proper lodging for a guest, near my own quarters. Before Danilo went away to his bed, I gave him a kinsman’s embrace, which he returned with a childlike friendliness that made me feel better.
But I was still deeply troubled. Damn it, I’d have a word with Beltran before I slept!