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Chapter FOURTEEN

(Lew Alton’s narrative)

For three days a blizzard had raged in the Hellers. On the fourth day I woke to sunshine and the peaks behind Castle Aldaran gleaming under their burden of snow. I dressed and went down into the gardens behind the castle, standing atop the terraces and looking down on the spaceport below where great machines were already moving about, as tiny at this distance as creeping bugs, to shift the heavy layers of snow. No wonder the Terrans didn’t want to move their main port here!

Yet, unlike Thendara, here spaceport and castle seemed part of a single conjoined whole, not warring giants, striding toward battle.

“You’re out early, cousin,” said a light voice behind me. I turned to see Marjorie Scott, warmly wrapped in a hooded cloak with fur framing her face. I made her a formal bow.

Damisela.”

She smiled and stretched her hand to me. “I like to be out early when the sun’s shining. It was so dark during the storm!”

As we walked down the terraces she grasped my cold hand and drew it under her cloak. I had to tell myself that this freedom did not imply what it would mean in the lowlands, but was innocent and unaware. It was hard to remember that with my hand lying between her warm breasts. But damn it, the girl was a telepath, she had to know.

As we went along the path, she pointed out the hardy winter flowers, already thrusting their stalks up through the snow, seeking the sun, and the sheltered fruits casting their snow-pods. We came to a marble-railed space where a waterfall tumbled, storm-swollen, away into the valley.

“This stream carries water from the highest peaks down into Caer Donn, for their drinking water. The dam above here, which makes the waterfall, serves to generate power for the lights, here and down in the spaceport, too.”

“Indeed, damisela? We have nothing like this in Thendara.” I found it hard to keep my attention on the stream. Suddenly she turned to face me, swift as a cat, her eyes flashing gold. Her cheeks were flushed and she snatched her hand away from mine. She said, with a stiffness that concealed anger, “Forgive me, Dom Lewis. I presumed on our kinship,” and turned to go. My hand, in the cold again, felt as chilled and icy as my heart at her sudden wrath.

Without thinking, I reached out and clasped her wrist.

“Lady, how have I offended you? Please don’t go!”

She stood quite still with my hand clasping her wrist She said in a small voice, “Are all you valley men so queer and formal? I am not used to being called damisela, except by servants. Do you . . . dislike me . . . Lew?”

Our hands were still clasped. Suddenly she colored and tried to withdraw her wrist from my fingers. I tightened them, saying, “I feared to be burned . . . too near the fire. I am very ignorant of your mountain ways. How should I address you, cousin?”

“Would a woman of your valley lands be thought too bold if she called you by name, Lew?”

“Marjorie,” I said, caressing the name with my voice. “Marjorie.” Her small fingers felt fragile and live, like some small quivering animal that had taken refuge with me. Never, not even at Arilinn, had I known such warmth, such acceptance. She said my hands were cold and drew them under her cloak again. All she was telling me seemed wonderful. I knew something of electric power generators—in the Kilghard Hills great windmills harnessed the steady winds—but her voice made it all new to me, and I pretended less knowledge so she would go on speaking.

She said, “At one time matrix-powered generators provided lights for the castle. That technique is lost.”

“It is known at Arilinn,” I said, “but we rarely use it; the cost is high in human terms and there is some danger.” Just the same, I thought, in the mountains they must need more energy against the crueler climate. Easy enough to give up a luxury, but here it might make the difference between civilized life and a brutal struggle for existence.

“Have you been taught to use a matrix, Marjorie?”

“Only a little. Kermiac is too old to show us the techniques. Thyra is stronger than I because she and Kadarin can link together a little, but not for long. The techniques of making the links are what we do not know.”

“That is simple enough,” I said, hesitating because I did not like to think of working in linked circles outside the safety of the tower force-fields. “Marjorie, who is Kadarin, where does he come from?”

“I know no more than he told you,” she said. “He has traveled on many worlds. There are times when he speaks as if he were older than my guardian, yet he seems no older than Thyra. Even she knows not much more than I, yet they have been together for a long time. He is a strange man, Lew, but I love him and I want you to love him too.”

I had warmed to Kadarin, sensing the sincerity behind his angry intensity. Here was a man who met life without self-deception, without the lies and compromises I had lived with so long. I had not seen him for days; he had gone away before the blizzard on unexplained business.

I glanced at the strengthening sun. “The morning’s well on. Will anyone be expecting us?”

“I’m usually expected at breakfast, but Thyra likes to sleep late and no one else will care.” She looked shyly up into my face and said, “I’d rather stay with you.”

I said, with a leaping joy, “Who needs breakfast?”

“We could walk into Caer Donn and find something at a food-stall. The food will not be as good as at my guardian’s table . . . ”

She led the way down a side path, going by a flight of steep steps that were roofed against the spray from the waterfall. There was frost underfoot, but the roofing had kept the stairway free of ice. The roaring of the waterfall made so much noise that we left off trying to talk and let our clasped hands speak for us. At last the steps came out on a lower terrace leading gently downslope to the city. I looked up and said, “I don’t relish the thought of climbing back!”

“Well, we can go around by the horse-path,” she said. “You came up that way with your escort. Or there’s a lift on the far side of the waterfall; the Terrans built it for us, with chains and pulleys, in return for the use of our water power.”

A little way inside the city gates Marjorie led the way to a food-stall. We ate freshly baked bread and drank hot spiced cider, while I pondered what she had said about matrices for generating power. Yes, they had been used in the past, and misused, too, so that now it was illegal to construct them. Most of them had been destroyed, not all. If Kadarin wanted to try reviving one there was, in theory at least, no limit to what he could do with it.

If, that was, he wasn’t afraid of the risks. Fear seemed to have no part in that curious enigmatic personality. But ordinary prudence?

“You’re lost somewhere again Lew. What is it?”

“If Kadarin wants to do these things he must know of a matrix capable of handling that kind of power. What and where?”

“I can only tell you that not on any of the monitor screens in the towers. It was used in the old days by the forge-folk to bring their metals from the ground. Then it was kept at Aldaran for centuries, until one of Kermiac’s wards, trained by him, used it to break the siege of Storn Castle.”

I whistled. The matrix had been outlawed as a weapon centuries ago. The Compact had not been made to keep us away from such simple toys as the guns and blasters of the Terrans, but against the terrifying weapons devised in our Ages of Chaos. I wasn’t happy about trying to key a group of inexperienced telepaths into a really large matrix, either. Some could be harnessed and used safely and easily. Others had darker histories, and the name of Sharra, Goddess of the forge-folk, was linked in old tales with more than one matrix. This one might, or might not, be possible to bring under control.

She said, looking incredulous, “Are you afraid?”

“Damn right,” I said. “I thought most of the talismans of Sharra-worship had been destroyed before the time of Regis Fourth. I know some of them were destroyed.”

“This one was hidden by the forge-folk and given back for their worship after the siege of Storn.” Her lip curled. “I have no patience with that kind of superstition.”

“Just the same, a matrix is no toy for the ignorant.” I stretched my hand out, palm upward over the table, to show her the corn-sized white scar, the puckered seam running up my wrist “In my first year of training at Arilinn I lost control for a split second. Three of us had burns like this. I’m not joking when I speak of risks.”

For a moment her face contracted as she touched the puckered scar tissue with a delicate fingertip. Then she lifted her firm little chin and said, “All the same, what one human mind can build, another human mind can master. And a matrix is no use to anyone lying on an altar for ignorant folk to worship.” She pushed aside the cold remnants of the bread and said, “Let me show you the city.”

Our hands came irresistibly together again as we walked, side by side, through the streets. Caer Donn was a beautiful city. Even now, when it lies beneath tons of rubble and I can never go back, it stands in my memory as a city in a dream, a city that for a little while was a dream. A dream we shared.

The houses were laid out along wide, spacious streets and squares, each with plots of fruit trees and its own small glass-roofed greenhouse for vegetables and herbs seldom seen in the hills because of the short growing season and weakened sunlight. There were solar collectors on the roofs to collect and focus the dim winter sun on the indoor gardens.

“Do these work even in winter?”

“Yes, by a Terran trick, prisms to concentrate and reflect more sunlight from the snow.”

I thought of the darkness at Armida during the snow-season. There was so much we could learn from the Terrans!

Marjorie said, “Every time I see what the Terrans have made of Caer Donn I am proud to be Terran. I suppose Thendara is even more advanced.”

I shook my head. “You’d be disappointed. Part of it is all Terran, part of it all Darkovan. Caer Donn . . . Caer Donn is like you, Marjorie, the best of each world, blended into a single harmonious whole . . . ”

This was what our world could be. Should be. This was Beltran’s dream. And I felt, with my hands locked tight in Mariorie’s, in a closeness deeper than a kiss, that I would risk anything to bring that dream alive and spread it over the face of Darkover. I said something about how I felt as we climbed together upward again. We had elected to take the longer way, reluctant to end this magical interlude. We must have known even then that nothing to match this morning would ever come again, when we shared a dream and saw it all bright and new-edged and too beautiful to be real.

“I feel as if I were drugged with kirian!”

She laughed, a silvery peal. “But the kireseth no longer blooms in these hills, Lew. It’s all real. Or it can be.”

I began as I had promised later that day. Kadarin had not returned, but the rest of us gathered in the small sitting room.

I felt nervous, somehow reluctant. It was always nerve-racking to work with a strange group of telepaths. Even at Arilinn, when the circle was changed every year, there was the same anxious tension. I felt naked, raw-edged. How much did they know. What skills, potentials, lay hidden in these strangers? Two women, a man and a boy. Not a large circle. But large enough to make me quiver inside.

Each of them had a matrix. That didn’t really surprise me since tradition has it that the matrix jewels were first found in these mountains. None of them had his or her matrix what I would call properly safeguarded. That didn’t surprise me either. At Arilinn we’re very strict in the old traditional ways. Like most trained technicians, I kept mine on a leather thong around my neck, silk-wrapped and inside a small leather bag, lest some accidental stimulus cause it to resonate.

Beltran’s was wrapped in a scrap of soft leather and thrust into a pocket. Marjorie’s was wrapped in a scrap of silk and thrust into her gown between her breasts, where my hand had lain! Rafe’s was small and still dim; he had it in a small cloth bag on a woven cord around his neck. Thyra kept hers in a copper locket, which I considered criminally dangerous. Maybe my first act should be to teach them proper shielding.

I looked at the blue stones lying in their hands. Marjorie’s was the brightest, gleaming with a fiery inner luminescence, giving the lie to her modest statement that Thyra was the stronger telepath. Thyra’s was bright enough, though. My nerves were jangling. A “wild telepath,” one who has taught himself by trial and error, extremely difficult to work with. In a tower the contact would first be made by a Keeper, not the old carefully-shielded leronis of my father’s day, but a woman highly trained, her strength safeguarded and disciplined. Here we had none. It was up to me.

It was harder than taking my clothes off before such an assembly, yet somehow I had to manage it. I sighed and looked from one to the other.

“I take it you all know there’s nothing magical about a matrix,” I said. “It’s simply a crystal which can resonate with, and amplify, the energy-currents of your brain.”

“Yes, I know that,” said Thyra with amused contempt “I didn’t expect anyone trained by Comyn to know it, though.”

I tried to discipline my spontaneous flare of anger. Was she going to make this as hard for me as she could?

“It was the first thing they taught me at Arilinn, kinswoman, I am glad you know it already.” I concentrated on Rafe. He was the youngest and would have least to unlearn.

“How old are you, little brother?”

“Thirteen this winter, kinsman,” he said, and I frowned slightly. I had no experience with children—fifteen is the lowest age limit for the Towers—but I would try. There was light in his matrix, which meant that he had keyed it after a fashion.

“Can you control it?” We had none of the regular test materials; I would have to improvise. I made brief contact. The fireplace. Make the fire flame up twice and die down.

The stone reflected blue glimmer on his childish features as he bent, his forehead wrinkling up with the effort of concentration. The light grew; the fire flamed high, sank, flared again, sank down, down . . . 

“Careful,” I said, “don’t put it out. It’s cold in here.” At least he could receive my thoughts; though the test was elementary, it qualified him as part of the circle. He looked up, delighted with himself, and smiled.

Marjorie’s eyes met mine. I looked quickly away. Damn it, it’s never easy to make contact with a woman you’re attracted to. I’d learned at Arilinn to take it for granted, for psi work used up all the physical and nervous energy available. But Marjorie hadn’t learned that, and I felt shy. The thought of trying to explain it to her made me squirm. In the safe quiet of Arilinn, chaperoned by nine or ten centuries of tradition, it was easy to keep a cool and clinical detachment. Here we must devise other ways of protecting ourselves.

Thyra’s eyes were cool and amused. Well, she knew. If she and Kadarin had been working together, no doubt she’d found it out already. I didn’t like her and I sensed she didn’t like me either, but thus far, at least, we could touch one another with easy detachment; her physical presence did not embarrass me. Where, working alone, had she picked up that cool, knife-like precision? Was I glad or sorry that Marjorie showed no sign of it?

“Beltran,” I said, “what can you do?”

“Children’s tricks,” he said, “little talent, less skill. Rafe’s trick with the fire.” He repeated it, more slowly, with somewhat better control. He reached an unlighted taper from a side table and bent over it with intense concentration. A narrow flame leaped from the fireplace to the tip of the taper, where it burst into flame.

A child’s trick, of course, one of the simplest tests we used at Arilinn. “Can you call the fire without the matrix?” I asked.

“I don’t try,” he said. “In this area it’s too great a danger to set something on fire. I’d rather learn to put fires out. Do your tower telepaths do that, perhaps, in forest-fire country?”

“No, though we do call clouds and make rain sometimes. Fire is too dangerous an element, except for baby tricks like these. Can you call the overlight?”

He shook his head, not understanding. I held out my hand and focused the matrix. A small green flame flickered, grew in the palm of my hand. Marjorie gasped. Thyra held out her own hand; cold white light grew, pale around her fingers, lighting up the room, flaring up like jagged lightning. “Very good,” I said, “but you must control it. The strongest or brightest light is not always the best. Marjorie?”

She bent over the blue shimmer of her matrix. Before her face, floating in the air, a small blue-white ball of fire appeared, grew gradually larger, then floated to each of us in turn. Rafe could make only flickers of light; when he tried to shape them or move them, they flared up and vanished. Beltran could make no light at all. I hadn’t expected it. Fire, the easiest of the elements to call forth, was still the hardest to control.

“Try this.” The room was very damp; I condensed the moist air into a small splashing fountain of water-drops, each sizzling a moment in the fire as it vanished. Both of the women proved able to do this easily; Rafe mastered it with little trouble. He needed practice, but had excellent potential.

Beltran grimaced, “I told you I had small talent and less skill.”

“Well, some things I can teach you without talent, kinsman,” I said. “Not all mechanics are natural telepaths. Do you read thoughts at all?”

“Only a little. Mostly I sense emotions,” he said.

Not good. If he could not link minds with us, he would be no use in the matrix circle. There were other things he could do, but we were too few for a circle, except for the very smallest matrices.

I reached out to touch his mind. Sometimes a telepath who has never learned the touching technique can be shown, when all else fails. I met slammed, locked resistance. Like many who grow up with minimal laran, untrained, he had built defenses against tbe use of his gift. He was cooperative, letting me try again and again to force down the barrier, and we were both white and sweating with pain by the time I finally gave up. I had used a force on him far harder than I had used on Regis, to no avail.

“No use,” I said at last. “Much more of this will kill both of us. I’m sorry, Beltran. I’ll teach you what I can outside the circle, but without a catalyst telepath this is as far as you can go.” He looked miserably downcast, but he took it better than I had hoped.

“So the women and children can succeed where I fail. Well, if you’ve done the best you can, what can I say?”

It was, on the contrary, easy to make contact with Rafe. He had built no serious defense against contact, and I gathered, from the ease and confidence with which he dropped into rapport with me, that he must have had a singularly happy and trusting childhood, with no haunting fears. Thyra sensed what we had done; I felt her reach out, and made the telepathic overture which is the equivalent of an extended hand across a gulf. She met it quickly, dropping into contact without fumbling, and . . . 

A savage animal, dark, sinuous, prowling an unexplored jungle. A smell of musk . . . claws at my throat . . . 

Was this her idea of a joke? I broke the budding rapport, saying tersely, “This is no game, Thyra. I hope you never find that out the hard way.”

She looked bewildered. Unconscious, then. It was just the inner image she projected. Somehow I’d have to learn to live with it. I had no idea how she perceived me. That’s one thing you can never know. You try, of course, at first. One girl in my Arilinn circle had simply said I felt “steady.” Another tried, confusedly, to explain how I “felt” to her mind and wound up saying I felt like the smell of saddle-leather. You’re trying, after all, to put into words an experience that has nothing to do with verbal ideas.

I reached out for Marjorie and sensed her in the fragmentary circle . . . a falling swirl of golden snowflakes, silk rustling, like her hand on my cheek. I didn’t need to look at her. I broke the tentative four-way contact and said, “Basically, that’s it. Once we learn to match resonances.”

“If it’s so simple, why could we never do it before?” Thyra demanded.

I tried to explain that the art of making a link with more than one other mind, more than one other matrix, is the most difficult of the basic skills taught at Arilinn. I felt her fumbling to reach out, to make contact, and I dropped my barriers and allowed her to touch me. Again the dark beast, the sense of claws . . .  Rafe gasped and cried out in pain and I reached out to knock Thyra loose. “Not until you know how,” I said. “I’ll try to teach you, but you have to learn the precise knack of matching resonance before you reach out. Promise me not to try it on your own, Thyra, and I’ll promise to teach you. Agreed?”

She promised, badly shaken by the failure. I felt depressed. Four of us, then, and Rafe only a child. Beltran unable to make rapport at all, and Kadarin an unknown quantity. Not enough for Beltran’s plans. Not nearly enough.

We needed a catalyst telepath. Otherwise, that was as far as I could go.

Rafe’s attempts to lower the fire and our experiments with water-drops had made the hearth smolder; Marjorie began to cough. Any of us could have brought it back to brightness, but I welcomed the chance to get out of the room. I said, “Let’s go into the garden.”

The afternoon sunshine was brilliant, melting the snow. The plants which had just this morning been thrusting up spikes through snow were already budding. I asked, “Will Kermiac be angry if we destroy a few of his flowers?”

“Flowers? No, take what you need, but what will you do with them?”

“Flowers are ideal test and practice material,” I said. “It would be dangerous to experiment with most living tissue; with flowers you can learn a very delicate control, and they live such a short time that you are not interfering with the balance of nature very much. For instance.” Cupping matrix in hand, I focused my attention on a bud full-formed but not yet opened, exerting the faintest of mental pressures. Slowly, while I held my breath, the bud uncurled, thrusting forth slender stamens. The petals unfolded, one by one, until it stood full-blown before us. Marjorie drew a soft breath of excitement and surprise.

“But you didn’t destroy it!”

“In a way I did; the bud isn’t fully mature and may never mature enough to be pollinated. I didn’t try; maturing a plant like that takes deep intercellular control. I simply manipulated the petals.” I made contact with Marjorie. Try it with me. Try first to see deep into the cell structure of the flower, to see exactly how each layer of petals is folded . . . 

The first time she lost control and the petals crushed into an amorphous, colorless mass. The second time she did it almost as perfectly as I had done. Thyra, too, quickly mastered the trick, and Rafe, after a few tries. Beltran had to struggle to achieve the delicate control it demanded, but he did it. Perhaps he would make a psi monitor. Nontelepaths sometimes made good ones.

I saw Thyra by the waterfall, gazing into her matrix. I did not speak to her, curious to see what she could do unaided. It was growing late—we had spent considerable time with the flowers—and dusk was falling, lights appearing here and there in the city below us. Thyra stood so still she hardly appeared to breathe. Suddenly the raging, foaming torrent next to her appeared to freeze motionless, arrested in midair, only one or two of the furthest droplets floating downward. The rest hung completely stopped, poised, frozen as if time itself and motion had stopped. Then, deliberately, the water began to flow uphill.

Beneath us, one after another, the lights of Caer Donn blinked and went out.

Rafe gasped aloud; in the eerie stillness the small sound brought me back to reality. I said sharply, “Thyra!” she started, her concentration broken, and the whole raging torrent plunged downward with a crash.

Thyra turned angry eyes on me. I took her by the shoulder and drew her back from the edge, to where we could hear ourselves speak above the torrent

“Who gave you leave to meddle—!”

I deliberately smothered my flare of anger. I had assumed responsibility for all of them now, and Thyra’s ability to make me angry was something I must learn to control. I said, “I am sorry, Thyra, had you never been told that this is dangerous?”

“Danger, always danger! Are you such a coward, Lew?” I shook my head. “I’m past the point where I have to prove my courage, child.” Thyra was older than I, but I spoke as to a rash, foolhardy little girl. “It was an astonishing display, but there are wiser ways to prove your skill.” I gestured. “Look, you have put their lights out; it will take repair crews some time to restore their power relays. That was thoughtless and silly. Second, it is unwise to disturb the forces of nature without great need, and for some good reason. Remember, rain in one place, even to drown a forest fire, may mean drought elsewhere, and balance disturbed. Until you can judge on planet-wide terms, Thyra, don’t presume to meddle with a natural force, and never, never, for your pride! Remember, I asked Beltran’s leave even to destroy a few flowers!”

She lowered her long lashes. Her cheeks were flaming, like a small girl lectured for some naughtiness. I regretted the need to lay down the law so harshly, but the incident had disturbed me deeply, rousing all my own misgivings. Wild telepaths were dangerous! How far could I trust any of them?

Marjorie came up to us; I could tell that she shared Thyra’s humiliation, but she made no protest. I turned and slipped my arm around her waist, which would have proclaimed us acknowledged lovers in the valley. Thyra sent me a sardonic smile of amusement beneath her meekly dropped lashes, but all she said was, “We are all at your orders, Dom Lewis.”

“I’ve no wish to give orders, cousin,” I said, “but your guardian would have small cause to love me if I disregarded the simplest rules of safety in your training!”

“Leave him alone, Thyra,” Marjorie flared. “He knows what he’s doing! Lew, show her your hand!” She seized the palm, turned it over, showing the white ridged scars. “He has learned to follow rules, and learned it with pain! Do you want to learn like that?”

Thyra flinched visibly, averting her eyes from the scar as if it sickened her. I would not have thought her squeamish. She said, visibly shaken, “I had never thought . . . I did not know. I’ll do what you say, Lew. Forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive, kinswoman,” I said, laying my free hand on her wrist. “Learn caution to match your skill and you will be a strong leronis some day.” She smiled at the word which, taken literally, meant sorceress.

“Matrix technician, if you like. Some day, perhaps, there will be new words for new skills. In the towers we are too busy mastering skills to worry about words for them, Thyra. Call it what you like.”

Thin fog was beginning to move down from the peaks behind the castle. Marjorie shivered in her light dress and Thyra said, “We’d better go in, it will be dark soon.” With one bleak look at the darkened city below, she walked quickly toward the castle. Marjorie and I walked with our arms laced, Rafe tagging close to us.

“Why do we need the kind of control we practiced with the flowers, Lew?”

“Well, if someone in the circle gets so involved in what he’s doing that he forgets to breathe, the monitor outside has to start him breathing again without hurting him. A well-trained empath can stop bleeding even from an artery, or heal wounds.” I touched the scar. “This would have been worse, except that the Keeper of the circle worked with it, to heal the worst damage.” Janna Lindir had been Keeper at Arilinn for two of my three years. At seventeen, I had been in love with her. I had never touched her, never so much as kissed her fingertips. Of course.

I looked at Marjorie. No. No, I have never loved before, never . . . The other women I have known have been nothing . . . 

She looked at me and whispered, half laughing, “Have you loved so many?”

“Never like this. I swear it—”

Unexpectedly she threw her arms around me, pressed herself close. “I love you,” she whispered quickly, pulled away and ran ahead of me along the path into the hall.

Thyra smiled knowingly at me as we came in, but I didn’t care. You had to learn to take that kind of thing for granted. She swung around toward the window, looking into the gathering darkness and mist. We were still close enough that I followed her thoughts. Kadarin, where was he, how did he fare on his mission? I began to draw them together again, Marjorie’s delicate touch, Rafe alert and quick like some small frisking animal, Thyra with the strange sense of a dark beast prowling.

Kadarin. The interlinked circle formed itself and I discovered to my surprise, and momentary dismay, that Thyra was at the center, weaving us about her mind. But she seemed to work with a sure, deft touch, so I let her keep that place. Suddenly I saw Kadarin, and heard his voice speaking in the middle of a phrase:

“ . . . refuse me then, Lady Storn?”

We could even see the room where he was standing, a high-arched old hall with the blue glass windows of almost unbelievable antiquity. Directly before his eves was a tall old woman, proudly erect, with gray eyes and dazzling white hair. She sounded deeply troubled.

“Refuse you, dom? I have no authority to give or refuse. The Sharra matrix was given into the keeping of the forge-folk after the siege of Storn. It had been taken from them without authority, generations ago, and now it is safe in their keeping, not mine. It is theirs to give.”

Kadarin’s deep exasperation could be felt by all of us—stubborn, superstitious old beldame! as he said, “It is Kermiac of Aldaran who bids me remind you that you took Sharra’s matrix from Aldaran without leave—”

“I do not recognize his right.”

“Desideria,” he said, “let’s not quarrel or quibble. Kermiac sent me to bring the Sharra matrix back to Aldaran; Aldaran is liege-lord to Storn and there’s an end to it.”

“Kermiac does not know what I know, sir. The Sharra matrix is well where it is; let it lie there. There are no Keepers today powerful enough to handle it. I myself called it up only with the aid of a hundred of the forge-folk, and it would be ill done of me to deprive them of their goddess. I beg you say to Kermiac that by my best judgment, which he trusted always, it should stay where it is.”

“I am sick of this superstitious talk of goddesses and talismans, lady. A matrix is a machine, no more.”

“Is it? So I thought when I was a maiden,” the old woman said. “I knew more of the art of a matrix at fifteen, sir, than you know now, and I know how old you really are.” I felt the man flinch from her sharp, steady gaze. “I know this matrix, you do not. Be advised by me. You could not handle it. Nor could Kermiac. Nor could I, at my age. Let it lie, man! Don’t wake it! If you do not like the talk of goddesses, call it a force basically beyond human control in these days, and evil.”

Kadarin paced the floor and I paced with him, sharing a restlessness so strong it was pain. “Lady, a matrix can be no more good or evil in itself than the mind of the man who wields it. Do you think me evil, then?”

She waved that away with an impatient gesture. “I think you honest, but you will not believe there are some powers so strong, so far from ordinary human purpose, that they warp all things to evil. Or to evil in ordinary human terms, at least. And what would you know of that? Let it be, Kadarin.”

“I cannot. There is no other force strong enough for my purposes, and these are honest. I have safeguarded all, and I have a circle ready to my hand.”

“You do not mean to use it alone, then, or with the Darriell woman?”

That foolhardy I am not. I tell you, I have safeguarded all. I have won a Comyn telepath to aid me. He is cautious and skilled,” Kadarin said persuasively, “and trained at Arilinn.”

“Arilinn,” said Desideria at last “I know how they were trained at Arilinn. I did not believe that knowledge still survived. That should be safe, then. Promise me, Kadarin, to place it in his hands and leave all things to his judgment, and I will give you the matrix.”

“I promise you,” Kadarin said. We were so deeply in rapport that it seemed it was I myself, Lew Alton, who bowed before the old Keeper, feeling her gray eyes search my very soul rather than his.

It is in the memory of that moment that I will swear, even after all the nightmare that came later, that Kadarin was honest, that he meant no evil . . . 

Desideria said, “Be it so, then, I will entrust it to you.” Again the sharp gray eyes met his. “But I tell you, Robert Kadarin, or whatever you call yourself now, beware! If you have any flaw, it will expose it brutally; if you seek only power, it will turn your purposes to such ruin as you cannot even guess; and if you kindle its fires recklessly, they will turn on you, and consume you and all you love! I know, Kadarin! I have stood in Sharra’s flame and though I emerged unburnt, I was not unscarred. I have long put aside my power, I am old, but this much I can still say—beware!

And suddenly the identity swirled and dissolved. Thyra sighed, the circle dropped like strands of cobweb and we stood, staring at one another dazed, in the darkening hallway.

Thyra was white with exhaustion and I felt Marjorie’s hands trembling on mine.

“Enough,” I said firmly, knowing that until it was certain who was to take the centerpolar place, until we knew which of us was Keeper, it was my responsibility to safeguard them all. I motioned to the others to separate, draw apart physically, to break the last clinging strands of rapport. I let Marjorie’s hands go with regret. “Enough. We all need rest and food. You must learn never to overtax your physical strength.” I spoke deliberately, in a firm, didactic manner, to minimize any emotional contact or concern. “Self-discipline is just as important as talent, and far more important than skill.”

But I was not nearly as detached as I sounded, and I suspected they knew it.

Three days later, at dinner in the great lighted hall, I spoke of my original mission to Kermiac. Beltran, I knew, felt that I had wholly turned my back on Comyn. It was true that I no longer felt bound to my father’s will. He had lied to me, used me ruthlessly. Kadarin had spoken of Compact as just another Comyn plot to disarm Darkover, to keep the Council’s rule intact. Now I wondered how my elderly kinsman felt about it. He had ruled many years in the mountains, with the Terrans ever at hand. It was reasonable he should see everything differently from the Comyn lords. I had heard their side; I had never been given opportunity to know the other view.

When I spoke to him of Hastur’s disquiet about the violations of Compact and told him I had been sent to find out the truth, he nodded and frowned, thinking deeply. At last he said, “Danvan Hastur and I have crossed words over this before. I doubt we will ever really agree. I have a good bit of respect for that man: down there between the Dry Towns and the Terrans he has no bed of roses, and all things considered he’s managed well. But his choices aren’t mine, and fortunately I’m not oath-bound to abide by them. Myself, I believe the Compact has outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any, which I’m no longer sure of.”

I had known he felt this way, yet I felt shocked. From childhood I had been taught to think of Compact as the first ethical code of civilized men.

“Stop and think,” he said. “Do you realize that we are a part of a great galactic civilization? The days when any single planet could live in isolation is over forever. Swords and shields belong to that day and must be abandoned with it. Do you realize what an anachronism we are?”

“No, I don’t realize that, sir. I don’t know that much about any world but this one.”

“And not too much even about this one, it seems. Let me ask you this, Lew, when did you learn the use of weapons?”

“At seven or eight, more or less.” I had always been proud that I need fear no swordsman in the Domains—or out of them.

“I, too,” said the old man. “And when I came to rule in my father’s high seat, I took it for granted that I would have bodyguards following me everywhere but my marriage-bed! Halfway through my life I realized I was living inside a dead past, gone for centuries. I sent my bodyguards home to their farms, except for a few old men who had no other skills and no livelihood. I let them walk around looking important more for their own usefulness than mine, and yet I sit here, untroubled and free in my own house, my rule unquestioned.”

I felt horrified. “At the mercy of any malcontent—”

He shrugged. “I am here, alive and well. By and large, those who give allegiance to Aldaran want me here. If they did not, I would persuade them peacefully or step aside and let them try to rule better. Do you honestly believe Hastur keeps authority over the Domains only because he has a bigger and better bodyguard than his rivals?”

“Of course not. I never heard him seriously challenged.”

“So. My people too are content with my rule, I need no private army to enforce it.”

“But still . . . some malcontent, some madman—”

“Some slip on a broken stair, some lightning-bolt, some misstep by a frightened or half-broken horse, some blunder by my cook with a deadly mushroom for a wholesome one . . . Lew, every man alive is divided from death by that narrow a line. That’s as true at your age as mine. If I put down rebellion with armed men, does it prove me the better man, or only the man who can pay the better swordsmen or build the bigger weapons? The long reign of Compact has meant only that every man is expected to settle his affairs with his sword instead of his brains or the rightness of his cause.”

“Just the same, it has kept peace in the Domains for generations.”

“Flummery!” the old man said rudely. “You have peace in the Domains because, by and large, most of you down there are content to obey Comyn law and no longer put every little matter to the sword. Your celebrated Castle Guard is a police force keeping drunks off the streets! I’m not insulting it, I think that’s what it should be. When did you last draw your sword in earnest, son?”

I had to stop and think. “Four years ago bandits in the Kilghard hills broke into Armida, stealing horses. We chased them back across the hills and hanged a few of them.”

“When did you last fight a duel?”

“Why, never.”

“And you last drew your sword against common horse-thieves. No rebellions, wars, invasions from nonhumans?”

“Not in my time.” I began to see what he was driving at.

“Then,” he said, “why risk law-abiding men, good men and loyal, against horse-thieves, bandits, rabble who have no right to the protection given men of honor? Why not develop really effective protection against the lawless and let your sons learn something more useful than the arts of the sword? I am a peaceful man and Beltran will, I think, have no reason to force himself on my people by armed force. The law in the Hellers states that no man given to breach of the peace may own any weapon, even a sword, and there are laws about how long a pocketknife he may carry. As for the men who keep my laws, they are welcome to any weapon they can get. An honest man is less threat to our world with a Terran’s nerve-blaster than a lawless one with my cook’s paring knife or a stonemason’s hammer. I don’t believe in matching good honest men against rogues, both armed with the same weapons. When I left off fairy tales I left off believing that an honest man must always be a better swordsman than a horse-thief or a bandit. The Compact, which allows unlimited handweapons and training in their use to good men and criminals alike, has simply meant that honest men must struggle day and night to make themselves stronger than brutes.”

There was certainly some truth in what he said. Now that my father was so lame, Dyan was certainly the best swordsman in the Domains. Did that mean if Dyan fought a duel, and won, that his cause was therefore just? If the horse-thieves had been better swordsmen than ours at Armida, would they have had a right to our horses? Yet there was a flaw in his logic too. Perhaps there was no flawless logic anywhere.

“What you say is true, Uncle, as far as it goes. Yet ever since the Ages of Chaos, it’s been known that if an unjust man gets a weapon he can do great damage. With the Compact, and such a weapon as he can get under the Compact, he can do only one man’s worth of damage.”

Kermiac nodded, acknowledging the truth of what I said. “True. Yet if weapons are outlawed, soon only outlaws can get them—and they always do. Old Hastur’s heir so died. The Compact is only workable as long as everybody is willing to keep it. In today’s world, with Darkover on the very edge of becoming part of the Empire, it’s unenforceable. Completely unenforceable. And if you try to make an unworkable law work and fail, it encourages other men to break laws. I have no love for futile gestures, so I enforce only such laws as I can. I suspect the only answer is the one that Hastur, even though he pays lip service to Compact, is trying to spread in the Domains: make the land so safe that no man seriously needs to defend himself, and let weapons become toys of honor and tokens of manhood.”

Uneasily I touched the hilt of the sword I had worn every day of my adult life.

Kermiac patted my wrist affectionately. “Don’t trouble yourself, nephew. The world will go as it will, not as you or I would have it. Leave tomorrow’s troubles for tomorrow’s men to solve. I’ll leave Beltran the best world I can, but if he wants a better one he can always build it himself. I’d like to think that some day Beltran and the heir to Hastur could sit down together and build a better world, instead of spitting venom at one another between Thendara and Caer Donn. And I’d like to think that when that day comes you’ll be there to help, whether you’re standing behind Beltran or young Hastur. Just that you’ll be there.”

He picked up a nut and cracked it with his strong old teeth. I wondered what he knew of Beltran’s plans, wondered too how much of what he said was straightforward, how much meant to reach Hastur’s ears. I was beginning to love the old man, yet unease nagged at my mind. Most of the crowd at dinner had dispersed; Thyra and Marjorie were gathered with Beltran and Rafe near one of the windows. Kermiac saw the direction of my eyes and laughed.

“Don’t sit here among the old men, nephew, take yourself along to the young folk.”

“A moment,” I said. “Beltran calls them foster-sisters; are they your kinswomen too?”

“Thyra and Marguerida? That’s an odd story,” Kenniac said. “Some years ago I had a bodyguard in my house, a Terran named Zeb Scott, while I still indulged in such foolishness, and I gave him Felicia Darriell to wife—Does this long tale weary you, Lew?”

“By no means.” I was eager to know all I could about Marjorie’s parentage.

“Well, then. The Darriells are an old, old family in these hills, and the last of them, old Rakhal—Rafe’s true name is Rakhal, you know, but my Terrans find that hard to say—old Rakhal Darriell dwelt as a hermit, half mad and all drunk, in his family mansion, which was falling to ruins even then. And now and then, when he was maddened with wine or when the Ghost Wind blew—the kireseth still grows in some of the far valleys—he would wander crazed in the forests. He’d tell strange tales, afterward, of women astray in the forests, dancing naked in the winds and taking him to their arms—such a tale as any madman might tell. But a long time ago, a very long time now, old Rakhal, they say, came to Storn Castle bearing a girl-child in his arms, saying he had found her like this, naked in the snow at his doorway. He told them the babe was his child by one of the forest-folk, cast out to die by her kin. So the lady of Storn took her in for, whatever the babe was, human or of the forest-folk, old Rakhal could not rear her. She fostered her with her own daughters. And many years after, when I was married to Lauretta Storn-Lanart, Felicia Darriell, as she was called, came with Lauretta among her ladies and companions. Felicia’s oldest child—Thyra there—may well be my daughter. When Lauretta was heavy with child it was Felicia, by her wish, that I took to my bed. Lauretta’s first child was stillborn and she took Thyra as a fosterling. I have always treated her as Beltran’s sister, although nothing is certain. Later, Felicia married Zeb Scott, and these two, Rafe and Marguerida, are half-Terran and none of your kin. But Thyra may well be your cousin.”

He added, musing, “Old Rakhal’s tale may well have been true. Felicia was a strange woman; her eyes were very strange. I always thought such tales mere drunken babble. Yet, having known Felicia . . . ” He was silent, lost in memories of time long past. I looked at Marjorie, wondering. I had never believed such tales, either. Yet those eyes . . . 

Kermiac laughed and dismissed me. “Nephew, since your eyes and heart are over there with Marguerida, take the rest of yourself along over there too!”

Thyra was gazing intently out into the storm; I could feel the questing tendrils of her thought and knew she was searching, through the gathering darkness, for her lover. Now Thyra, I could well believe, was not all human.

But Marjorie? She reached her hands to me and I caught them in one of mine, circled her waist with my free arm. Beltran said, joining us, “He’ll be here soon. What then, Lew?”

“It’s your plan,” I said, “and Kadarin is certainly enough of a telepath to fit into a circle. You know what we want to do, though there are limits to what can be done with a group this size. There are certainly technologies we can demonstrate. Road-building and surfacing, for instance. It should convince the Terrans we are worth watching. Powered aircraft may be more difficult. There may be records of that at Arilinn. But it won’t be fast or easy.”

“You still feel I’m not fit to take a place in the matrix circle.”

“There’s no question of fitness, you’re not able. I’m sorry, Beltran. Some powers may develop. But without a catalyst . . . ”

He set his mouth and for a moment he looked ugly. Then he laughed. “Maybe some day we can persuade the young one at Syrtis to join us, since you say he does not love the Comyn.”

There had been no sound I could hear, but Thyra turned from the window and went out of the hall. A few moments later she came back with Kadarin. He held in his arms a long, heavily wrapped bundle, waving away the servants who would have taken it.

Kermiac had risen to leave the table; he waited for Kadarin at the edge of the dais while the other people in the hall were leaving. Kadarin said, “I have it, kinsman, and a fine struggle I had with the old lady, too. Desideria sends you her compliments.” He made a wry face. Kermiac said, with a bleak smile, “Aye, Desideria ever had a mind of her own. You didn’t have to use strong persuasion?”

There was sarcasm in Kadarin’s grin. “You know Lady Storn better than I. Do you really think it would have availed much? Fortunately, it was not needed. I have small talent for bullying womenfolk.”

Kermiac held out his hand to take it, but Kadarin shook his head. “No, I made her a pledge and I must keep it, kinsman, to place it only in the hands of the Arilinn telepath and be guided by his judgment.”

Kermiac nodded and said, “Her judgment is good; honor your pledge, then, Bob.”

Kadarin laid the long bundle on the bench while he began removing his snow-crusted outer wear. I said, “You look as if you’d been out in the worst weather in the Hellers, Bob. Was it as bad as that?”

He nodded. “I didn’t want to linger or be stormbound on the way, carrying this.” He nodded at the bundle, accepted the hot drink Marjorie brought him and gulped it thirstily. “Season’s coming in early; another bad storm on the way. What have you done while I was away?”

Thyra met his eyes and I felt, like a small palpable shock, the quick touch and link as he came into the circle. It was easier than long explanations. He set down the empty cup and said, “Well done, children.”

“Nothing’s done,” I said, “only begun.”

Thyra knelt and began to unfasten the knots in the long bundle. Kadarin caught her wrist. “No,” he said, “I made a pledge. Take it, Lew.”

“We know,” said Thyra, “we heard you.” She sounded impatient.

“Then will you set my word at nothing, wild-bird?” His hand holding hers motionless was large, brown, heavy-knuckled. Like the Ardais and the Aillards, he had six fingers on his hand. I could easily believe nonhuman blood there, too. Thyra smiled at him and he drew her against him, saying, “Lew, it’s for you to take this.”

I knelt beside the bundle and began to unfasten the heavy wrappings. It was longer than my arm and narrow, and had been bundled into layer on layer of heavy canvas cloth, the layers bound and knotted with embroidered straps, Marjorie and Beltran came to look over my shoulder as I struggled with the knots. Inside the last layer of heavy canvas was a layer of raw colorless silk, like the insulation of a matrix. When I finally got it unrolled, I saw that it was a ceremonial or ornamental sword, forged of pure silver. An atavistic little prickle went down to the ends of my spine. I had never set eyes on this before. But I knew what it was.

My hands almost refused to take it, despite the thing of beauty the forge-folk had made to cover and guard it. Then I forced myself back to sanity. Was I as superstitious as Thyra thought me? I took the hilt in my hand, sensing the pulsing life within. I seized the sword in both hands and gave the hilt a hard twist.

It came off in my hand. Inside lay the matrix itself, a great blue stone, with an inner glimmer curling fires which, trained as I was, made my head reel and my vision blur.

I heard Thyra gasp aloud. Beltran had quickly turned away. If it made me, after three seasons in Arilinn, fight for control, I could imagine what it had done to him. I quickly wadded it up in the silk, then took it gingerly between my fingers. I was immensely reluctant to look, even for a moment, into those endlessly live depths. Finally I bent my eyes to it. Space wrenched, tore at me. For a moment I felt myself falling, saw the face of a young girl shrouded in flame, crimson and orange and scarlet. It was a face I knew somehow—Desideria! The old woman I had seen in Karadin’s mind! Then the face shifted, shrouded, was no more a woman but a looming, towering form of fire, a woman’s form, chained in gold, rising, flaming, striking, walls crumbling like dust . . . 

I wrapped it in the silk again and said, “Do you know what this is?”

Kadarin said, “It was used of old by the forge-folk to bring metals from the deeps of the ground, to their fires.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “Some of the Sharra matrices were used that way. Others were . . . less innocent. I’m not sure this is a monitored matrix.”

“All the better. We want no Comyn eyes spying on what we do.”

“But that means it’s essentially uncontrollable,” I said. “A monitored matrix has a safety factor: if it gets out of hand the monitor takes over and breaks the circle. Which is why I still have a right hand.” I held out the ugly scar. He flinched slightly and said, “Are you afraid?”

“Of this happening again? No, I know what precautions to take. But of this matrix? Yes, I am.”

“You Comyn are superstitious cowards! All my life I’ve heard about the powers of the Arilinn-trained telepaths and mechanics. Now you are afraid—”

Anger surged through me. Comyn, was I? And cowardly? It seemed that the anger pulsed, beat within me, surging up my arm from the matrix in my fist. I thrust it back into the sword, sealing it there. Thyra said, “Nothing’s gained by calling names. Lew, can this be used for what Beltran has in mind?

I found I had an incomprehensible desire to take the sword in my hand again. The matrix seemed to call me, demanding that I take it out, master it . . . It was almost a sensual hunger. Could it really be dangerous, then? I put the canvas wrappings around it and gave Thyra’s question some thought.

Finally I said, “Given a fully trained circle, one I can trust, yes, probably. A tower circle is usually seven or eight mechanics and a Keeper, and we seldom handle more than fourth- or fifth-level matrices. I know this one is stronger than that. And we have no trained Keeper.”

“Thyra can do that work,” Kadarin said.

I considered it for a moment. She had, after all, drawn us all around her, taking the central position with swift precision. But finally I shook my head.

“I won’t risk it. She’s worked wild too long. She’s self-taught and her training could come apart under stress.” I thought of the prowling beast I had sensed when the circle formed. I felt Thyra’s eyes on me and was painfully embarrassed, but I had been disciplined to rigid honesty within a circle. You can’t hide from one another, it’s disaster to try.

“I can control her,” Kadarin said.

“I’m sorry, Bob. That’s no answer. She herself must be in control or she’ll be killed, and it’s not a nice way to die. I could control her myself, but the essence of a Keeper is that she does the controlling. I trust her powers, Bob, but not her judgment under stress. If I’m to work with her, I must trust her implicitly. And I can’t. Not as Keeper. I think Marjorie can do it—if she will.”

Kadarin was regarding Marjorie with a curious wry smile. He said, “You’re rationalizing. Do you think I don’t know you’re in love with her, and want her to have this post of honor?”

“You’re mad,” I said. “Damn it, yes, I’m in love with her! But it’s clear you know nothing about matrix circles. Do you think I want her to be Keeper in this circle? Don’t you know that will make it impossible for me to touch her? As long as she’s a functioning Keeper, none of us may touch her, and I least of all, because I love her and want her. Didn’t you know that?” I drew my fingers slowly away from Marjorie’s. My hand felt cold and alone.

“Comyn superstition,” Beltran said scornfully, “driveling nonsense about virgins and purity! Do you really believe all that rubbish?”

“Belief has nothing to do with it,” I said, “and no, Keepers don’t have to be sheltered virgins in this day and age. But while they’re working in the circles they stay strictly chaste. That’s a physical fact. It has to do with nerve currents. It’s no more superstition than what every midwife knows, that a pregnant woman must not ride too fast or hard, nor wear tight lacing in her dresses. And even so, it’s dangerous. Terribly dangerous. If you think I want Marjorie to be our Keeper, you are more ignorant than I thought!”

Kadarin looked at me steadily, and I saw that he was weighing what be said. “I believe you,” he said at last. “But you believe Marjorie can do it?”

I nodded, wishing I could lie and be done with it. A telepath’s love life is always infernally complicated. And Marjorie and I had just found each other. We had had so very little, so very little . . . 

“She can, if she will,” I said at last, “but she must consent. No woman can be made Keeper unwilling. It is too strong a weight to carry, except by free will.”

Kadarin looked at us both then and said, “So it all hangs on Mariorie, then. What about it, Margie? Will you be Keeper for us?

She looked at me and, biting her lip, she stretched out her hands to mine. She said, “Lew, I don’t know . . . ”

She was afraid, and small wonder. And then, like a compelling, magical dream, I remembered the morning when we had walked together through Caer Donn and shared our dreams for this world. Wasn’t this worth a little danger, a little waiting for our happiness? A world where we need not feel shame but pride for our dual heritage, Darkovan and Terran? I felt Marjorie catch the dream, too, as without a word, she slowly loosed her hand from mine and we drew apart. From this moment until our work was ended and the circle dissolved, Marjorie would stand inviolate, set apart, alone. The Keeper.

No words were necessary, but Marjorie spoke the simple words as if they were an oath sealed in fire.

“I agree. If you will help me, I will do what I can.”



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