The Heritage Of Hastur

Pain crashed through bis head. He felt his skull smashing, shattering into little splinters; Another blow sent him flying high, falling into darkness.

"Regis!" Again the crashing, reeling sickness of the blow

and the long spin into space. The sound was only meaningless vibration but he tried to focus on it, make it mean something. "Regis!" Who was Regis? The roaring candlefiame died to a glimmer and Regis heard himself gasp aloud. Someone was standing over him, calling his name, slapping him hard and repeatedly. Suddenly, noiselessly, the room fell into focus.

"Regis, wake up! Get up and walk around, don't drift with it!"

"Javanne ..." he said, struggling fuzzily upright to catch her hand as it was descending for another blow. "Don't, sister ..."

He was surprised at how weak and faraway his voice sounded. She gave a faint cry of relief. She was standing beside his bed, a white shawl slipping from her shoulders above her long nightgown. "I thought one of the children cried out, then heard you. Why didn't you tell me you were likely to have threshold sickness?"

Regis blinked and dropped her hand. Even without the touch he could feel her fear. The room was still not quite solid around him. "Threshold sickness?" He thought about it a moment. He'd heard of it, of course, born into a Comyn family: a physical and psychic upheaval of awakening tele‑paths in adolescence, the inability of the brain to cope with sudden overloads of sensory and extrasensory data, resulting in perceptual distortions of sight, sound, touch. ... "I never had it before. I didn't know what it was. Things seemed to thin out and disappear, I couldn't see properly, or feel..."

"I know. Get up now and walk around a little."

The room was still tilting around him; he clung to the bed‑frame. "If I do, I'll fall...."

"And if you don't, your balance centers will start drifting out of focus again. Here," she said with a faint laugh, tossing the white shawl to him, looking courteously away as he wrapped it around his body and struggled to his feet. "Regis, did no one warn you of this when your laran wakened?"

"Didn't ‑who warn me? I don't think anyone knew," he said, taking a hesitant step and then another. She was right; under the concentrated effort of getting up and moving, the room settled into solidity again. He shuddered and went toward the candle. The little lights still danced and jiggled behind his eyes, but it was candle‑sized again. How had it

grown to a raging forest fire out of childhood? He picked it up, was amazed to see how his hand shook. Javanne said sharply, "Don't touch the candle when your hand's not steady, you'll set something afirel Regis, you frightened me!"

"With the candle?" He set it down.

"No, the way you were moaning. I spent half a year at Neskaya when I was thirteen, I saw one of the girls go into convulsions in crisis once."

Regis looked at his sister as if for the first time. He could sense, now, the emotion behind her cross, brisk manner, real fear, a tenderness he had never guessed. He put his arm around her shoulders and said, wonderingly, "Were you really afraid?" The barriers were wholly down between them and what she heard was, Would you really care if something happened to me? She reacted to the wondering amazement of that unspoken question with real dismay.

"How can you doubt it? You are my only kinsman!"

"You have Gabriel, and five children."

"But you are my father's son and my mother's," she said, giving him a short, hard hug. "You seem to be all right now. Get back into that bed before you take a chill and I must nurse you like one of the babies!"

But he knew now what the sharpness of her voice concealed and it did not trouble him. Obediently he got under the covers. She sat on the bed.

"You should spend some time in one of the towers, Regis, just to learn control. Grandfather can send you to Neskaya or Arilinn. An untrained telepath is a menace to himself and everyone around him, they told me so when I was your age."

Regis thought of Danilo. Had anyone thought to warn him?

Javanne drew the covers up under his chin. He recalled now that she had done this when he was very small, before he knew the difference between elder sister and a never‑known mother. She was only a child herself, but she had tried to mother him. Why had he forgotten that?

She kissed him gently on the forehead and Regis, feeling safe and protected for the moment, toppled over the edge of a vast gulf of sleep.

The next day he felt ill and dazed, but although Javanne told him to keep to his bed, he was too restless to stay there.

"I must return at once, at once to Thendara," he insisted. "I've learned something which makes it necessary to talk to

Grandfather. You said, yourself, I should arrange to go to one of the towers. What can happen to me with three Guardsmen for escort?"

"You know perfectly well you're not able to travel! I should spank you and put you to bed as I'd do with Rafael if he were so unreasonable," she said crossly.

His new insight into her made him speak with gentleness. "I'd like to be young enough for your cosseting, sister, even if it meant a spanking. But I know what I must do, Javanne, and I've outgrown a woman's rule. Please don't treat me like a child."

His seriousness sobered her, too. Still unwilling, she sent for his escort and horses.

All that long day's ride, be seemed to move through torturing memories, repeating themselves over and over, and a growing unease and uncertainty: would they believe him, would they even listen? Danilo was out of Dyan's reach, now; there was time enough to speak if he endangered another. Yet Regis knew that if he was silent, he connived at what Dyan had done.

In midafternoon, still miles from Thendara, wet snow and sleet began to fall again, but Regis ignored the suggestions of his escort that he should seek shelter and hospitality somewhere. Every moment between him and Thendara now was a torture; he yearned to be there, to have this frightening confrontation over. As the long miles dragged by, and he grew more and more soggy and wretched, he drew his soaked cape around him, huddling inside it like a protective cocoon. He knew his guards were talking about him, but he shut them firmly away from his consciousness, withdrawing further and further into his own misery.

As they came over the top of the pass he heard the distant vibration from the spaceport, carried thick and reverberating in the heavy, moist air. He thought with wild longing of the ships taking off, invisible behind the wall of rain and sleet, symbols of the freedom he wished he had now.

He let the thickening storm batter him, uncaring. He welcomed the icy wind, the sleet freezing in layers on his heavy riding‑cloak, on his eyelashes and hair. It kept him from sliding back into that strange, hypersensitive, hallucinatory awareness.

What shall I say to Grandfather?

How did you face the Regent of Comyn and tell him his

most trusted counselor was corrupt, a sadistic pervert using his telepathic powers to meddle with a mind placed in his charge?

How do you tell the Commander of the Guard, your own commanding officer, that his most trusted friend, holding the most trusted and responsible of posts, has ill‑treated and shamefully misused a boy in his care. How do you accuse your own uncle, the strongest telepath in Comyn, of standing by, indifferent, watching the rarest and most sensitive of tele‑paths being falsely accused, his mind battered and bruised and dishonored, while he, a tower‑trained psi technician, did nothing?

The stone walls of the Castle closed about them, cutting off the biting wind. Regis heard his escort swearing as they led their horses away. He knew he should apologize to them for subjecting them to this cold, wearying ride in such weather. It was a totally irresponsible thing to do to loyal men and the fact that they would never question his motives made it worse. He gave them brief formal thanks and admonished them to go quickly for supper and rest, knowing that if he offered them any reward they would be offended beyond measuring.

The long steps to the Hastur apartments seemed to loom over him, shrinking and expanding. His grandfather's aged valet rushed at him, blurred and out of focus, clucking and shaking his head with the privilege of long service, "Lord Regis, you're soaked through, you'll be ill, let me fetch you some wine, dry clothes‑"

"Nothing, thank you." Regis blinked away the drops of ice melting on his eyelashes. "Ask the Lord Regent if he"‑he tensed to keep his teeth from chattering‑"if he can receive me."

"He's at supper, Lord Regis. Go in and join him."

A small table had been laid before the fire in his grandfather's private sitting room, and Danvan Hastur looked up, dismayed, almost comically echoing the elderly servant's dismay.

"My boy! At this hour, se wet and dripping? Marton, take his cloak, dry it at the fire! Child, you were to be with Javanne some days, what has happened?"

"Necessary‑" Regis discovered his teeth were chattering so hard he could not speak; he clenched them to get control. "To return at once‑"

The Regent shook his head skeptically. "Through a blizzard? Sit down there by the fire." He picked up the jug on his table, tilted a thick stream of steaming soup into a stoneware mug and held it out to Regis. "Here. Drink this and warm yourself before you say anything."

Regis started to say he did not want it, but he had to take it to keep it from falling from the old man's hand. The hot fragrant steam was so enticing that he began to sip it, slowly. He felt enraged at his own weakness and angrier at his grandfather for seeing it His barriers were down and he had a flash of Hastur as a young man, a commander in the field, knowing his men, judging each one's strengths and weaknesses, knowing what each one needed and precisely how and when to get it to him. As the hot soup began to spread warmth through his shivering body he relaxed and began to breathe freely. The heat of the stoneware mug comforted his fingers, which were blue with cold, and even when he had finished the soup he held it between his hands, enjoying the warmth.

"Grandfather, I must talk to you.**

"Well, I'm listening, child. Not even Council would call me out in such weather."

Regis glanced at the servants moving around the room. "Alone, sir. This concerns the honor of the Hasturs."

A startled look crossed the old man's face and he waved them from the room. "You're not going to tell me Javanne has managed to disgrace herself!"

Even the thought of his staid and fastidious sister playing the wanton would have made Regis laugh, if he could have laughed. "Indeed not, sir, all at Edelweiss is well and the babies thriving." He was not cold now, but felt an inner trembling he did not even recognize as fear. He put down the empty mug which had grown chill in his hands, shook his head at the offer of a refill. "Grandfather. Do you remember Danilo Syrtis?** "Syrtis. The Syrtis people are old Hastur folk, your father's paxman and bodyguard bore that name, old Dom Felix was my hawk‑master. Wait, was there not some shameful thing in the Guards this year, a disgraced cadet, a sword‑breaking? What has this to do with the honor of Hastur, Regis?"

Regis knew he must be very calm now, must keep his voice steady. He said, "The Syrtis men are our wards and paxmen, sir. From their years of duty to us, is it not our duty

to safeguard them from being attacked and abused, even by Comyn? I have learned ... Danilo Syrtis was wrongfully attacked and disgraced, sir, and it's worse than that. Danilo is a ... a catalyst telepath, and Lord Dyan ill‑used him, contrived his disgrace for revenge‑"

Regis' voice broke. That searing moment of contact with Danilo flooded him again. Hastur looked at him in deep distress.

"Regis, this cannot possibly be true!"

He doesn't believe me! Regis heard his voice crack and break again. "Grandfather, I swear‑"

"Child, child, I know you are not lying, I know you better than that!"

"You don't know me at all!" Regis flung at him, almost hysterical.

Hastur rose and came to him, laying a concerned hand on his forehead. "You are ill, Regis, feverish, perhaps delirious."

Regis shook the hand off. "I know perfectly well what I am saying. I had an attack of threshold sickness at Edelweiss, it's better now."

The old man looked at him with startled skepticism. "Regis, threshold sickness is nothing to take lightly. One of the symptoms is delusion, hallucination. I cannot accuse Lord Dyan of the wild ravings of a sick child. Let me send for Kennard Alton; he is tower‑trained and can deal with this kind of illness."

"Send to Kennard indeed," Regis demanded, his voice wavering, "he is the one man in Thendara who will know for a fact that I am neither lying nor raving! This was by his contrivance, too; he stood by and watched Danilo disgraced and the cadet corps shamed!"

Hastur looked deeply troubled. He said, "Can it not wait‑" He looked at Regis sharply and said, "No. If you rode through a blizzard at this hour to bring me such news, it certainly cannot wait. But Kennard is very ill, too. Can you possibly manage to go to him, child?"

Regis cut off another angry outburst and only said, with tight control, "I am not ill. I can go to him."

His grandfather looked at him steadily. "If you are not ill you will soon be so, if you stand there shivering and dripping. Go to your room and change your clothes while I send word to Kennard."

He was angry at being sent like a child to change bis

clothes but he obeyed. It seemed the best way to convince his grandfather of his rationality. When he returned, dry‑clad and feeling better, his grandfather said shortly, "Kennard is willing to talk to you. Come with me."

As they went through the long corridors, Regis was aware of his grandfather's bristling disapproval. In the Alton rooms, Kennard was seated in the main hall, before the fire. He rose and took one step toward them and Regis saw with deep compunction that the older man looked terribly ill, his gaunt face flushed, his hands looking hugely swollen and shapeless. But he smiled at Regis with heartfelt welcome and held out the misshapen hand. "My lad, I'm glad to see you."

Regis touched the swollen fingers with awkward carefulness, unable to blur out Kennard's pain and exhaustion. He felt raw‑edged, hypersensitive. Kennard could hardly stand!

"Lord Hastur, you honor me. How may I serve you?"

"My grandson has come to me with a strange and disturbing story. It's his tale, I'll leave him to tell it."

Regis felt consuming relief. He had feared to be treated like a sick child dragged unwilling to a doctor. For once he was being treated like a man. He felt grateful, a little disarmed.

Kennard said, "I cannot stand like this long. You there‑" He gestured to a servant "An armchair for the Regent Sit beside me, Regis, tell me what's troubling you."

"My lord Alton‑"

Kennard said kindly, "Am I no longer Uncle, my boy?"

Regis knew if he did not resist that fatherly warmth with all his strength, he would sob out his story like a beaten child. He said stiffly, "My lord, this is a serious matter concerning the honor of the Guardsmen. I have visited Danilo Syrtis at his home‑**

"That was a kindly thought, nephew. Between ourselves, that was a bad business. I tried to talk Dyan out of it, but he chose to make an example of Dani and the law is the law. I couldn't have done anything if Dani had been my own son."

"Commander," Regis said, using the most formal of Kennard's military titles, "on my most solemn word as a cadet and a Hastur, there has been a terrible injustice done. Danilo was, I swear, wrongly accused, and Lord Dyan guilty of something so shameful I hardly dare name it. Is a cadet forced to submit‑"

"Now you wait a minute," Kennard said, turning blazing

eyes on him. "I had this already from Lew. I don't know what those three years among the cristoforos did to you, but if you're going to come whining to me about the fact that Dyan likes young lads for lovers, and accuse‑"

"Uncle!" Regis protested in shock. "What kind of ninny do you think me? No, Commander. If that had been all‑" He stopped, hunting for words, hi confusion.

He said, "Commander, he would not accept refusal. He persecuted him day and night, invaded his mind, used laran against him...."

Kennard's eyes sharpened. "Lord Hastur, what do you know of this wild tale? The boy looks ill. Is he raving?"

Regis stood up with a surge of violent anger that matched Kennard's own. "Kennard Alton, I am a Hastur and I do not liel Send for Lord Dyan if you will, and question me in his presence!"

Kennard met his eyes, not angry now, but very serious. He said, "Dyan is not in the city tonight. Regis, tell me, how do you know this?"

"From Danilo's own lips, and from rapport with his mind, Regis said quietly. "You of all men know there is no way to lie to the mind."

Kennard did not release his eyes. "I did not know you had laran."

Regis held out his hand to Kennard, palm upward, a gesture he had never seen before, yet instinct guided him to it He said, "You have. You will know. See for yourself, sir."

He saw dawning respect in the older man's gaunt, feverish face in the instant before he felt, with a thrill of fear, the touch on his mind. He heard Lew saying in Kennard's memory, Tve known grown men who dared not face that test. Then he felt Kennard's touch, the shock of rapport ... the moment he had stood before Danilo in the orchard, reeling with the shock of Danilo's anger and shame ... his own liking for Dyan, the moment of half‑shamed response to him ... Kennard's own memories of Dyan blurring his own, a younger Dyan, a slender, eager boy, to be loved and protected and cherished . . . Danilo's sick, stunned terror, the flood of nightmarish dreams and cruelties he had shared with Danilo, the weeping hi the dark, the harsh hawklike laughter. ...

The blur of memories and impressions was gone. Kennard had covered his eyes with his hands. His eyes were dry and

blazing, but just the same Regis got the impression that the older man was weeping in dismay. He said in a whisper, "Zandru's hells, Dyan!" Regis could feel the knifing anguish in the words. Kennard sank down on the bench again and Regis knew that he would have fallen if he had ‑not, but for the first time Regis felt the iron strength and control with which a tower‑trained telepath can control himself when he must. He had a frightening flash of agony, as if Kennard were holding his hand steadily in a fire, but Kennard only drew a deep breath and said, "So Danilo has laran. Lew did not tell me, nor did he tell me Dani had awakened you." A long silence. "That is a crime, and a terrible one‑to use laran to force the win. I trusted Dyan; I never thought to question him. We were bredin. It is my responsibility and I will bear the guilt"

He looked shattered, dazed. "Aldones, Son of Light! I trusted him with my cadets! And Lew tried to warn me and I would not hear. I sent my own son from me in wrath because he tried to make me hear.... Hastur, what shall we do?"

Hastur looked grieved. "All the Ardais are unstable," he said. "Ddm Kyril has been mad these twenty years. But you know the law as well as I do. You forced us to name Lew your heir with that same law. There must be one in the direct line, male and healthy, to represent every Domain, and Dyan has appointed no heir. We cannot even dismiss him from Comyn Council, as we did with Kyril when he began to rave. I do not know how we can send him from Council even long enough to heal his mind, if he is truly mad. Is he sane enough even to choose an heir?"

Regis felt angry and bruised. They seemed to care only about Dyan. Dani was nothing to them, no more than he was to Dyan. He said aggressively, "What of Danilo? What of his disgrace and his suffering? He has the rarest of the Comyn gifts, and the way he has been treated dishonors us all!"

Both men turned to look at him as if they had forgotten him. He felt like a noisy rude child intruding on the counsels of his elders, but he stood his ground, watching the torchlight make flickering patterns on the antique swords over the fire, saw Dyan, the sharp foil in hand, plunging it into his breast....

"Amends shall be made," Hastur said quietly, "but you must leave it to us."

"I'll leave Dyan to you. But Dani is my responsibility! I pledged him my sworn word. I am a Hastur, and the heir to a Domain, and I demand‑"

"You demand, do you?" said his grandfather, swinging around to face him. "I deny your right to demand anything! You have told me you wish to renounce that right, to go off‑world. It took all I had even to extract your promise to give the minimum duty to the cadets! You have refused, even as Dyan refused, to give an heir to your Domain. By what right do you dare criticize him? You have renounced your heirship to Hastur; by what right do you stand here in front of us and make demands? Sit down and behave yourself or go back to your room and leave these things to your betters!"

"Don't you treat me like a child!"

"You are a child," said Hastur, his lips pressed tightly together, "a sick, silly child."

The room was flickering in and out of focus with the firelight. Regis clenched his fists, fighting for words. "An injury to anyone with laran .., dishonors us all." He turned to Kennard, pleading. "For the honor of the Guards ... for your own honor ..."

Kennard's crippled hands touched him gently; Regis could feel pain ripping through those swollen hands as he wrenched them away. He felt himself sliding in and out of his body, unable to bear the jangle and confusion of all their thoughts. He thought with wild longing of being aboard a starship outward bound, free, leaving this little world behind with all its intrigue. He stood for a moment in Kennard's memory on the faraway surface of Terra, struggling with the pull of honor and duty against all he longed for, back to the heritage laid out for him before he was born, a path he must walk whether he would or not ... felt his grandfather's anguish, Rafael, Rafael, you would not have deserted me like this . .. heard Dyan's slow cynical voice, a very special stud animal whose fees are paid to Comyn ...

It forced him physically to his knees with the weight of it. Past, present, future spun together, whirling, he saw Dani's hand meet his on the hilt of a gleaming sword, felt it rip his mind open, overshadowing him. Son of Hastur who is the Son of Light! He was crying like a child. He whispered, 'To the House of Hastur ... I swear ..."

Kennard's hands, hot and swollen, touched his temples; he felt for an instant that Kennard was holding him upright

Gradually the seething flood of emotion, foreknowledge, memory, receded. He heard Kennard say, "Threshold sickness. Not crisis, but he's pretty sick. Speak to him, sir."

"Regis ..."

Regis struggled, whispered, "Grandfather, Lord Hastur ... I swear, I wilt swear ..."

His grandfather's arms enfolded him gently. "Regis, Regis, I know. But I cannot accept any pledge from you now. Not in your present state. The Gods know I want to, but I cannot You must leave this to us. You must, child. We will deal with Dyan. You have done all you need to do. Just now your task is to go, as Kennard says, to Neskaya, to teach yourself to control your gift."

He tried again to fight his way upright... kneeling on cold stones, crystal lights around him. Words came slowly, painfully, yet he could not escape them: / pledge my life and honor . . . to Hastur, forever . . . and terrible pain, knowing he spoke into a closing door, he gave away his life and his freedom. He could not get a word out, not a syllable, and he felt his body and brain would explode with the words bursting in him. He whispered and knew no one could hear him, as his senses slipped away, "... swear ... honor ..."

His grandfather's eyes met his briefly, a momentary anchor over a swaying darkness where he hung. He heard bis grandfather's voice, deep and compassionate, saying firmly, "The honor of the Comyn has been safe in my hands for ninety years, Regis. You can leave it to me now."

Regis let them lay him, nearly senseless, on the stone bench.

He let himself slip away into unconsciousness like a little death.

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 herel

Yet, unlike Thendara, here spaceport and castle seemed part of a single conjoined whole, not waning 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, damiselal 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, hi 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 then‑ metals from the ground. Then it was kept at Ald‑aran 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 hi 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 con‑

trol 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 whiter?"

"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‑sea‑

, son. 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 bead. "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, reluct I want 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 as‑

sembly, 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 womaa you're attracted to. I'd learned at Arilinn to take it for granted, for psi worked 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 skffl."

"Well, some things I can teach you without talent, kins‑

man," 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 fafl. 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

THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR 207

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 tele‑paths 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 vour 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, domf I have no authority too 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 He 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 ft 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." 1 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 ail, and I have a circle ready to my hand."

"You do not mean to use it alone, then, or with the Dar‑riell 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 Ar‑ilinn."

"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, bewarel 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 un‑burnt, 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 DO 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 die 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 Tightness 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 Ter‑ran 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 Darriell's are an old, old family in these hills, and the last of them, old Rakbal‑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 kiresetk still grows in some of the far valleys‑he would wander crazed hi 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 hi 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 mem‑

ories 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 hi 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 lit‑

tle 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 hi 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 Aritinn, 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‑De‑sideria! 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‑"

Marion Zimmer Bradley

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 hi mindr

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 bad 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 tele‑path'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?1*

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,"

Chapter FIFTEEN

For ten days the storm had raged, sweeping down from tlie Hellers through the Kilghard Hills and falling on Then‑dara with fury almost unabated. Now the weather was clear and fine, but Regis rode with his head down, ignoring the bright day.

He'd failed, he felt, having made a pledge and then doing nothing. Now he was being packed off to Neskaya in Gabriel's care, like a sick child with a nanny! But he raised his head in surprise as they made the sharp turn that led down the valley toward Syrtis.

"Why are we taking this road?"

"I have a message for Dom Felix," Gabriel said. "Will the few extra miles weary you? I can send you on to Edelweiss with the Guards...."

Gabriel's careful solicitude set him on edge. As if a few extra miles could matter! He said so, irritably.

His black mare, sure‑footed, picked her way down the path. Despite bis disclaimer to Gabriel, he felt sick and faint, as he had felt most of the time since his collapse in Ken‑nard's rooms. For a day or two, delirious and kept drugged, he had had no awareness of what was going on, and even now much of what he remembered from the last few days was illusion. Danilo was there, crying out in wild protest, being roughly handled, afraid, in pain. It seemed that Lew was there sometimes too, looking cold and stern and angry with him, demanding again and again, What is it that you're afraid to know? He knew, because they told him afterward, that for a day or two he had been so dangerously ill that his grandfather never left his side, and when, waking once between sick intervals of fragmented hallucinations, he had seen his grandfather's face and asked, "Why are you not at Council?" the old man had said violently, "Damn the Council!" Or was that another dream? He knew that once Dyan had come

into the room, but Regis had hidden his face in the bedclothes and refused to speak to him, gently though Dyart spoke. Or was that a dream, too? And then, for what seemed like years, he had been on the fire‑lines at Armida, when they had lived day and night with terror; during the day the hard .manual work kept it at bay, but at night he would wake, sobbing and crying out with fear. . . . That night, his grandfather told him, his half‑conscious cries had grown so terrified, so insistent, that Kennard Alton, himself seriously ill, had come and stayed with him till morning, trying to quiet him with touch and rapport. But he kept crying out for Lew and Kennard couldn't reach him.

Regis, ashamed of this childish behavior, had finally agreed to go to Neskaya. The blur of memory and thought‑images embarrassed him, and he didn't try to sort out the truth from the drugged fantasies. Just the same, he knew that at least once Lew had been there, holding him in his arms like the frightened child he had been. When he told Kennard so, Kennard nodded soberly and said, "It's very likely. Perhaps you were astray in time; or perhaps from where he is, Lew sensed that you had need for him, and reached you as a telepath can. I had never known you were so close to him." Regis felt helpless, vulnerable, so when he was well enough to ride, he had meekly agreed to go to Neskaya Tower. It was intolerable to live like this....

Gabriel's voice roused him now, saying in dismay, "Look! What's this? Dom Felix‑"

The old man was riding up the valley toward them, astride Danilo's black horse, the Armida‑bred gelding which was the only really good horse at Syrtis. He was coming at what was, for a man his age, a breakneck pace. For a few minutes it seemed he would ride full tilt into the party on the path, but just a few paces away he pulled up the black and the animal stood stiff‑legged, breathing hard, its sides heaving.

Dom Felix glared straight at Regis. "Where is my son? What have you thieving murderers done with him?"

The old man's fury and grief were like a blow. Regis said in confusion, "Your son? Danilo, sir? Why do you ask meT*

"What have you vicious, detestable tyrants done with him? How dare you show your faces on my land, after stealing from me my youngest‑"

Regis tried to interrupt and quell the torrent of words. "Dom Felix, I do not understand. I parted from Danilo some

days ago, in your own orchard. I have not laid eyes on him since; I have been ill‑" The memory of his drugged dream tormented him, of Danilo being roughly handled, afraid, in pain....

"Liar!" Dom Felix shouted, his face red and ugly with rage and pain. "Who but you‑"

"That's enough, sir," said Gabriel, breaking in with firm authority. "No one speaks like that to the heir to Hastur. I give you my word‑"

"The word of a Hastur lickspittle and toady! 7 dare speak against these filthy tyrants! Did you take my son for your‑" He flung a word at Regis next to which "catamite" was a courtly compliment. Regis paled against the old man's rage.

"Dom Felix‑if you will hear me‑"

"Hear you! My son heard you, sir, all your fine words!"

Two Guardsmen rode close to the enraged old man, grasping the reins of his horse, holding him motionless,

"Let him go," Gabriel said quietly. "Dom Felix, we know nothing of your son. I came to you with a message from Kennard Alton concerning him. May I deliver it?"

Dom Felix quieted himself with an effort that made his eyes bulge. "Speak, then, Captain Lanart, and the Gods deal with you as you Comyn dealt with my son."

"The Gods do so to me and more also, if I or mine harmed him," Gabriel said. "Hear the message of Kennard, Lord Alton, Commander of the Guard: 'Say to Dom Felix of Syrtis that it is known to me what a grave miscarriage of justice was done in the Guards this year, of which his son Danilo‑Felix, cadet, may have been an innocent victim; and ask that he send his son Danilo‑Felix to Thendara under any escort of his own choosing, to stand witness in a full investigation against men in high places, even within Comyn, who may have misused their powers.'" Gabriel paused, then added, "I was also authorized to say to you, Dom Felix, that ten days from now, when T have escorted my brother‑in‑law, who is in poor health at this moment, to Neskaya Tower, that I shall myself return and escort your son to Thendara, and that you are yourself welcome to accompany him as his protector, or to name any guardian or relative of your own choosing, and that Kennard Alton will stand personally responsible for his safety and honor."

Dom Felix said unsteadily, "I have never had reason to

doubt Lord Alton's honor or goodwill. Then Danilo is not in Thendara?"

One of the Guards, a grizzled veteran, said, "You know me, sir, I served with Rafael in the war, sixteen years gone. I kept an eye on young Dani for his sake. I give you my word, sir, Dani isn't there, with Comyn conniving or without it"

The old man's face gradually paled to its normal hue. He said, "Then Danilo did not run away to join you, Lord Regis?"

"On my honor, sir, he did not. I saw him last when we parted in your own orchard. Tell me, how did he go, did he leave no word?"

The old man's face was clay‑colored. "I saw nothing. Dani had been hunting; I was not well and had kept my bed. I said to him I had a fancy for some birds for supper, the Gods forgive me, and he took a hawk and went for them, such a good obedient son‑" His voice broke. "It grew late and he did not return. I had begun to wonder if his horse had gone lame, or he'd gone on some boy's prank, and then old Mauris and the kitchen‑folk came running into my chamber and told me, they saw him meet with riders on the path and saw him struck down and carried away. . . ."

Gabriel looked puzzled and dismayed. "On my word, Dom Felix, none of us had art, part or knowledge of it What hour was this? Yesterday? The day before?"

"The day before, Captain. I swooned away at the news. But as soon as my old bones would bear me I took horse to come and hold . .. someone to account. . . ." His voice faded again. Regis drew his own horse close to Dom Felix and took his arm. He said impulsively, "Uncle," using the same word he used to Kennard Alton, "you are father to my friend; I owe you a son's duty as well. Gabriel, take the Guards, go and look, question the house‑folk." He turned back to Dora Felix, saying gently, "I swear I will do all I can to bring Danilo safely back. But you are not well enough to ride. Come with me." Taking the other's reins in his own hands, he turned the old man's mount and led him down the path into the cobbled courtyard. Dismounting quickly, he helped Dom Felix down and guided his tottering steps. He led him into the hall, saying to the old half‑blind servant there, "Your master is ill, fetch him some wine."

When it had been brought and Dom Felix had drunk a little, Regis sat beside him, near the cold hearth.

"Lord Regis, your pardon . .."

"None needed. You have been sorely tried, sir."

"Rafael . . ."

"Sir, as my father held your elder son dear, I tell you Danilo's safety and honor are as dear to me as mv own." He looked up as the Guardsmen came into the hall. "What news, Gabriel?"

"We looked over the ground where he was taken. The ground was trampled and he had laid about him with his dagger."

"Hawking, he had no other weapon.**

"They cut off sheath and all." Gabriel handed Dom Felix the weapon. He drew it forth a little way, saw the Hastur crest on it. He said, "Dom Regis‑"

"We swore an oath," said Regis, drawing Danilo's dagger from his own sheath where he wore it, "and exchanged blades, in token of it." He took the dagger with the Hastur crest, saying, "I will bear this to restore to him. Did you see anything else, Gabriel?"

One of the Guardsmen said, "I found this on the ground, torn off in the fight. He must have fought valiantly for a young lad outnumbered." He held out a long, heavy cloak of thick colorless wool, bound with leather buckles and straps. It was much cut and slashed. Dom Felix sat up a little and said, "That fashion of cloak has not been worn in the Domains in my lifetime; I believe they wear them still in the Hellers. And it is lined with marl‑fur; it came from somewhere beyond the river. Mountain bandits wore such cloaks. But whv Dani? We are not rich enough to ransom him, nor important enough to make him valuable as a hostage."

Regis thought grimly that Dyan's men came from the Hellers. Aloud he said only, "Mountain men act for whoever pays them well. Have you enemies, Dom Felix?"

"No. I have dwelt in peace, farming my acres, for fifteen years." The old man sounded stunned. He looked at Regis and said, "My lord, if you are sick‑"

"No matter," Regis said. "Dom Felix, I pledge you by the oath no Hastur may break that I shall find out who has done this to you, and restore Dani to you, or my own life stand for it." He laid his hand over the old man's for a moment. Then he straightened and said, "One of the Guardsmen shall remain here, to look after your lands in your son's absence. Gabriel, you ride back with the escort to Thendara and carry

THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR 227

this news to Kennard Alton. And show him this cloak; he may know where in the Hellers it was woven." "Regis, I have orders to take you to Neskaya." "In good time. This must come first," Regis said. "You are a Hastur, Gabriel, if only by marriage‑right, and your sons are Hastur heirs. The honor of Hastur is your honor, too, and Danilo is my sworn man."

His brother‑in‑law looked at him, visibly wavering. There were good things about being heir to a Domain, Regis decided like having your orders obeyed without question. He said impatiently, "I shall remain here to bear my friend's father company, or wait at Edelweiss."

"You cannot stay here unguarded," Gabriel said at last. "Unlike Dani, you are rich enough for ransom, and important enough for a hostage." He stood near enough to Comyn to be undecided. "I should send a Guardsman with you to Edelweiss," he said. Regis protested angrily. "I am not a child! Must I have a nanny trotting at my heels to ride three miles?"

Gabriel's own older sons were beginning to chafe at the necessity of being guarded night and day. Finally Gabriel said, "Regis, look at me. You were placed in my care. Pledge me your word of honor to ride directly to Edelweiss, without turning aside from your road unless you meet armed men, and you may ride alone."

Regis promised and. taking his leave of Dom Felix, rode away. As he rode toward Edelweiss, he thought, a little triumphantly, that he had actually outwitted Gabriel. A more experienced officer would have allowed him, perhaps, to ride to Edelweiss on his promise to go directly . . . but he would also have made Regis give his pledge not to depart from there without leave!

His triumph was short‑lived. The knowledge of what he must do was tormenting him. He had to find out where‑and how‑Danilo was taken. And there was only one way to do that: his matrix. He had never touched the jewel since the ill‑fated experiment with kirian. It was still in the insulated bag around his neck. The memory of that twisting sickness when he looked into Lew's matrix was still alive in him, and he was horribly afraid.

Surprisingly for these peaceful times, the gates of Edelweiss were shut and barred, and he wondered what alarm had sealed them. Fortunately most of Javanne's servants

knew his voice, and after a moment Javanne came running down from the house, a servant‑woman puffing at her heels. "Regis! We had word that armed men had been seen in the hills! Where is Gabriel?"

He took her hands. "Gabriel is well, and on his way to Thendara. Yes, armed men were seen at Syrtis, but I think it was a private feud, not war, little sister."

She said shakily, "I remember so well the day Father rode to war! I was a child then, and you not bora. And then word came that he was dead, with so many men, and the shock killed Mother...,"

Javanne's two older sons came racing toward them, Rafael and Gabriel, nine years old and seven, dark‑haired, well‑grown boys. They stopped short at the sight of Regis and Rafael said, "I thought you were sick and going to Neskaya. What are you doing here, kinsman?"

Gabriel said, "Mother said there would be war. Is there going to be war, Regis?"

"No, as far as T know, there is no war here or anywhere, and you be thankful for it," Regis said. "Go away now, I must talk with your mother."

"May I ride Melisande down to the stables?" Gabriel begged, and Regis lifted the child into the saddle and went up to the house with Javanne.

"You have been ill; you are thinner," Javanne said. "I had word from Grandfather you were on your way to Neskaya. Why are you here instead?"

He glanced at the darkening sky. "Later, sister, when the boys are abed and we can talk privately. I've been riding all the day; let me rest a little and think. I'll tell you everything then."

Left alone, he paced his room for a long time, trying to steel himself to what he knew he must do.

He touched the small bag around his neck, started to draw it out, then thrust it back, unopened. Not yet.

He found Javanne before the fire in her small sitting room; she had just finished nursing the smaller of the twins and was ready for dinner. "Take the baby to the nursery, Shani," she told the nurse, and tell the women I'm not to be disturbed for any reason. My brother and I will dine privately."

"Su serva, domna," the woman said, took the baby and went away. Javanne came and served Regis herself. "Now tell me, brother. What happened?"

"Armed men have taken Danilo Syrtis from his home."

She looked puzzled. "Why? And why should you disturb yourself about it?"

"He is my paxman; we have sworn the oath of bredin? Regis said, "and it may well be private revenge. This is what I must find out." He gave her such an edited version of the affair in the cadet corps as he thought fit for a woman's ears. She looked sick and shocked. "I have heard of Dyan's ... preferences, who has not? At one time there was talk he should marry me. I was glad when he refused, although I, of course, was offered no choice in the matter. He seems to me a sinister man, even cruel, but I had not thought him criminal as well. He is Comyn, and oath‑bound never to meddle with the integrity of a mind. You think he took Dani, to silence him?"

"I cannot accuse him without proof," Regis said. "Javanne, you spent time in a tower. How much training have you?"

"I spent one season there," she said. "I can use a matrix, but they said I had no great talent for it, and Grandfather said I must marry young."

He drew out his own matrix and said, "Can you show me how to use it?"

"Yes, no great skill is needed for that. But not as safely as they can at Neskaya, and you are not yet wholly well. I would rather not."

"I must know now, at once, what has come to Danilo. The honor of our house is engaged, sister." He explained why. She sat with her plate pushed aside, twirling a fork. At last she said "Wait" and turned away from him, fumbling at the throat of her gown. When she turned back there was something silk‑wrapped in her hands. She spoke slowly, the troubled frown still on her features‑ "I have never seen Danilo. But when I was a little maiden, and old Dom Felix was the hawk‑master, I knew Dom Rafael well; he was Father's bodyguard and they went everywhere together. He used to call me pet names and take me up on his saddle and give me rides.... I was in love with him, as a little girl can be with any handsome man who is kind and gentle to her. Oh, I was not yet ten years old, but when word came that he had been killed, I think I wept more for him than I did for Father. I remember once I asked him why he had no wife and he kissed my cheek and said he was waiting for me to grow up to be a woman." Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes

far away. At last she sighed and said, "Have you any token of Danilo, Regis?"

Regis took the dagger with the Hastur crest. He said, "We both swore on this, and it was cut from his belt when he was taken."

"Then it should resonate to him," she said, taking it in her hands and laying it lightly against her cheekbone. Then, the dagger resting in her palm, she uncovered the matrix. Regis averted his eyes, but not before he got a glimpse of a blinding blue flash that wrenched at his gut. Javanne was silent for a moment, then said in a faraway voice, "Yes, on the hillside path, four men‑strange cloaks‑an emblem, two eagles‑cut away his dagger, sheath and all‑Regisl He was taken away in a Terran helicopter!" She raised her eyes from the matrix and looked at him in amazement.

Regis1 heart felt as if a fist were squeezing it. He said, "Not to Tbendara; the Terrans there would have no use for him. AldaranT

Her voice was shaking. "Yes. The ensign of Aldaran is an eagle, doubled . . . and they would find it easy to beg or borrow Terran aircraft‑Grandfather has done it here in urgency. But why?"

The answer was clear enough. Daniio was a catalyst tele‑path. There had been a time when Kermiac of Aldaran trained Keepers in his mountains, and no doubt there were ways he could still use a catalyst.

Regis said in a low voice, "He has already borne more than any untrained telepath was meant to bear. If further strain or coercion is put on him his mind may snap. I should have brought him back with me to Thendara instead of leaving him there unguarded. This is my fault."

Bleakly, struggling against a horrible fear, he raised his head. "I must rescue him. I am sworn. Javanne, you must help me key into the matrix. I bave no time to go to Neskaya."

"Regis, is there no other way?"

"None, Grandfather, Kennard, the council‑Dani is nothing to them. If it had been Dyan they might have exerted themselves. If Aldaran's men had kidnapped me, they'd have an army on the road! But Danilo? What do you think?"

Javanne said, "That nedestro heir of Kennard's. He was sent to Aldaran and he's kin to them. I wonder if he had a hand in this."

"Lew? He wouldn't."

Javanne looked skeptical. "In your eyes he can do no wrong. As a little boy you were in love with him as I with Dom Rafael; I have no child's passion for him, to blind me to what he is. Kennard forced him on Council with ugly tricks."

"You have no right to say so, Javanne. He is sealed to Comyn and tower‑trained!"

She refused to argue. "In any case, I can see why you feel you must go, but you have no training, and it is dangerous. Is there such need for haste?" She looked into bis eyes and said after a moment, "As you will. Show me your matrix,"

His teeth clenched, Regis unwrapped the stone. He drew breath, astonished: faint light glimmered in the depths of the matrix. She nodded. "I can help you key it, then. Without that light, you would not be ready. I'll stay in touch with you. It won't do much good, but if you ... go out and can't get back to your body, ft could help me reach you." She drew a deep breath. For an instant then he felt her touch. She had not moved, her head was lowered over the blue jewel so that he saw only the parting hi her smooth dark hair, but it seemed to Regis that she bent over bim, a slim childish girl still much taller than he. She swung him up, as if he were a tiny child, astride her hip, holding him loosely on her arm. He had not thought of this in years, how she had done this when he was very little. She walked back and forth, back and forth, along the high‑arched hall with the blue windows, singing to him in her husky low voice.... He shook his head to clear it of the illusion. She still sat with her head bent over the matrix, an adult again, but her touch was still on him, close, protective, sheltering. For a moment he felt that he would cry and cling to her as he had done then.

Javanne said gently, "Look into the matrix. Don't be afraid, this one isn't keyed to anyone else; mine hurt you because you're out of phase with it. Look into it, bend your thoughts on it, don't move until you see the lights waken inside it..."

He tried deliberately to relax; he realized that he was tensing every muscle against remembered pain. He finally looked into the pale jewel, feeling only a tiny shock of awareness, but something inside the jewel glimmered faintly. He bent his thoughts on it, reached out, reached out ... deep, deep inside. Something stirred, trembled, flared into a living spark.

Then it was as if he had blown his breath on a coal from the fireplace: the spark was brilliant blue fire, moving, pulsing with the very rhythm of his blood. Excitement crawled in him, an almost sexual thrill.

"Enough!" Javanne said. "Look away quickly or youTl be trapped!"

No, not yet . . . Reluctantly, he wrenched his eyes from the stone. She said, "Start slowly. Look into it only a few minutes at a time until you can master it or it will master you. The most important lesson is that you must always control it, never let it control you."

He gave it a last glance, wrapped it again with a sense of curious regret, feeling Javanne's protective touch/embrace withdraw. She said, "You can do with it what you will, but that is not much, untrained. Be careful. You are not yet immune to threshold sickness and it may return. Can a few days matter so much? Neskaya is only a little more than a day's ride away."

"I don't know how to explain, but I feel that every moment matters. I'm afraid Javanne, afraid for Danilo, afraid for all of us. I must go now, tonight. Can you find me some old riding‑clothes of Gabriel's, Javanne? These will attract too much attention in the mountains. And will you have your women make me some food for a few days? I want to avoid towns nearby where I might be recognized."

"I'll do it myself; no need for the women to see and gossip." She left him to his neglected supper while she went to find the clothing. He did not feel hungry, but dutifully stowed away a slice of roast fowl and some bread. When she came back, she had his saddlebags, and an old suit of Gabriel's. She left him by the fire to put them on, then he followed her down the hall to a deserted kitchen. The servants were long gone to bed. She moved around, making up a package of dried meat, hard bread and crackers, dried fruit She put a small cooking‑kit into the saddlebags, saying it was one which Gabriel carried on hunting trips. He watched her silently, feeling closer to this little‑known sister than he had felt since he was six years old and she left their home to marry. He wished he were still young enough to cling to her skirts as he had then. An ice‑cold fear gripped at him, and then the thought: before going into danger, a Comvn heir must himself leave an hen‑. He had refused even to think of it, as Dyan had refused, not wanting to be merely a link in a

chain, the son of his father, the father of his sons. Something inside him rebelled, deeply and strongly, at what he must do‑Why bother? If he did not return, it would all be the same, one of Javanne's sons named his heir.... He could do nothing, say nothing....

He sighed. It was too late for that, he had gone too far. He said, "One thing more, sister. I go where I may never return. You know what that means. You must give me one of your sons, Javanne, for my heir."

Her face blanched and she gave a low, stricken cry. He felt the pain in it but he did not look away, and finally she said, her voice wavering, "Is there no other way?"

He tried to make it a feeble joke. "I have no time to get one in the usual way, sister, even if I could find some woman to help me at such short notice."

Her laughter was almost hysterical; it cut off in the middle, leaving stark silence. He saw slow acceptance dawning in her eyes. He had known she would agree. She was Hastur, of a family older than royalty. She had of necessity married beneath her, since there was no equal, and she had come to love her husband deeply, but her duty to the Hasturs came first. She only said, her voice no more than a thread, "What shall I say to Gabriel?"

"He has known since the day he took you to wife that this day might come," Regis said. "I might well have died before coming to manhood."

"Come, then, and choose for yourself." She led the way to the room where her three sons slept in cots side by side. By the candlelight Regis studied their faces, one by one. Rafael, slight and dark, close‑cropped curls tousled around his face; Gabriel, sturdy and swarthy and already taller than his brother. Mikhail, who was four, was still pixie‑small, fairer than the others, his rosy cheeks framed in light waving locks, almost silvery white. Grandfather must have looked like that as a child, Regis thought. He felt curiously cold and bereft Javanne had given their clan three sons and two daughters. He might never father a son of his own. He shivered at the implications of what he was doing, bent his head, groping through an unaccustomed prayer. "Cassilda, blessed Mother of the Domains, help me choose wisely...."

He moved quietly from cot to cot. Rafael was most like him, he thought. Then, on some irresistible impulse, he bent over Mikhail, lifted the small sleeping form in his arms.

"This is my son, Javanne."

She nodded, but her eyes were fierce. "And if you do not return he will be Hastur of Hastur; but if you do return, what then? A poor relation at the footstool of Hastur?"

Regis said quietly, "If I do not return, he will be nedestro, sister. I will not pledge you never to take a wife, even in return for this great gift. But this I swear to you: he shall come second only to my first legitimately born son. My second son shall be third to him, and I will take oath no other nedestro heir shall ever displace him. Will this content you, bredaT

Mikhail opened his eyes and stared about him sleepily, but he saw his mother and did not cry. Javanne touched the blond head gently, "It will content me, brother."

Holding the child awkwardly in unpracticed arms, Regis carried him out of the room where his brothers slept "Bring witnesses," he said, "I must be gone soon. You know this is irrevocable, Javanne, that once I take this oath, he is not yours but mine, and must be sealed my heir. You must send him to Grandfather at Thendara."

She nodded. Her throat moved as she swallowed hard, but she did not protest "Go down to the chapel," she said. "I will bring witnesses."

It was an old room in the depths of the house, the four old god‑forms painted crudely on the walls, lights burning before them. Regis held Mikhail on his lap, letting the child sleepily twist a button on his tunic, until the witnesses came, four old men and two old women of the household. One of the women had been Javanne's nurse in childhood, and his own.

He took his place solemnly at the altar, Mikhail in his arms.

"I swear before Aldones, Lord of Light and my divine forefather, that Hastur of Hasturs is this child by unbroken blood line, known to me in true descent. And in default of any heir of my body, therefore do I, Regis‑Rafael Felix Alar Hastur y Elhalyn, choose and name him my nedestro hen" and swear that none save my first‑born son in true marriage shall ever displace him as my heir; and that so long as I live, none shall challenge his right to my hearth, my home or my heritage. Thus I take oath hi the presence of witnesses known to us both. I declare that my son shall be no more called Mikhail Regis Lanart‑Hastur, but‑" He paused, hesitating among old Comyn names for suitable new names which

THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR 235

would confirm the ritual. There was no time to search the rolls for names of honor. He would commemorate, then, the desperate need which had driven him to this. "I name him Danilo," he said at last. "He shall be called Danilo Lanart Hastur, and I will so maintain to all challenge, facing my father before me and my sons to follow me, my ancestry and my posterity. And this claim may never be renounced by me while I live, nor in my name by any of the heirs of my body." He bent and kissed his son on the soft baby lips. It was done. They had a strange beginning. He wondered what the end would be. He turned his eyes on his old nurse.

"Foster‑mother, I place you hi charge of my son. When the roads are safe, you must take him to the Lord Hastur at Thendara, and see to it that he is given the Sign of Comyn."

Javanne was dropping slow tears, but she said nothing except, "Let me kiss him once more," and allowed the old woman to carry the child away. Regis followed them with his eyes. His son. It was a strange feeling. He wondered if he had laran or the unknown Hastur gift; he wondered if he would ever know, would ever see the child again.

"I must go," he said to his sister. "Send for my horse and someone to open the gates without noise." As they waited together in the gateway, he said, "If I do not return‑"

"Speak no ill‑omen!" she said quickly.

"Javanne, do you have the Hastur gift?"

"I do not know," she said. "None knows till it is wakened by one who holds it. We had always thought that you had no laran. . . ."

He nodded grimly. He had grown up with that, and even now it was too sore a wound to touch.

She said, "A day will came when you must go to Grandfather. who holds it to waken in his heir, and ask for the gift.

Then, and only then, you will know what it is. I do not know myself," she said. "Only if you had died before you were declared a man, or before you had fathered a son, it would have been wakened in me so that, before my own death, I might pass it to one of my sons."

And so it might pass, still. He heard the soft clop‑clop‑clop of hooves in the dark. He prepared to mount, turned back a ?‑ moment and took Javanne briefly in his arms. She was '; crying. He blinked tears from his own eyes. He whispered, '& "Be good to my son, darling." What more could he say? | She kissed him quickly in the dark and said, "Say you'll

come back, brother. Don't say anything else." Without waiting for another word, she wrenched herself free of him and ran back into the dark house.

The gates of Edelweiss swung shut behind him. Regis was alone The night was dark, fog‑shrouded. He fastened his cloak about his throat, touching the small pouch where the matrix lay. Even through the insulation he could feel it, though no other could have, a small live thing, throbbing. . . , He was alone with it, under the small horn of moon lowering behind the distant hills. Soon even that small light would be

braced himself, murmured to his horse, straightened his back and rode away northward, on the first step of his unknown journey.

Chapter SIXTEEN

(Lew Alton's narrative)

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 hi 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 to‑

gether to open and call forth the power of the big one, we must be absolutely attuned to one another, with no bidden 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 Kad‑arin 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, hi 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 ener‑gons 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 hi 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 start there. 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 tram 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 hi 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 hi 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 :vas here and I felt I had wholly renounced my allegiance to Comyn, I still tried to see myself breaking the news to my father 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 accpeted 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 fly1 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 littie 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, be had no business within a mfle 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 then‑ 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 de~ picted their goddess. ... I knew this was an illusion, but it seemed that Marjorie, or the great nickering 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. Mar‑jorie, 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 hi 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 1 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 bad envisioned then‑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 bum 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 tbeir 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 Rale'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 hi 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 bad 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. // 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 be 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 . . . Kad‑arin 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. Bel‑tran had seized Thyra by the shoulders, was shaking her like a dog shaking a rodent. He swung back his hand and slapped her full hi 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 kitted 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 hi 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 hi 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, II! 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 troublel

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 hi 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 laranl 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, bund 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 precognitioo," 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 wil! 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 Traflles, 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 wUl 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 ter‑rifled 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 hi 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. 'Tve 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 hi the hands of the Comyn and the towers? And they can tram me to do whatever they want me to do."

"That's true hi 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. 'Tm 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," be 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 Beltrao 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 con‑

sent. 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 bim 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 ArdaisI"

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!

Chapter SEVENTEEN

Regis rode slowly, head down against the biting wind. He told himself that if he ever got out of these mountains, no place on Darkover would ever seem cold to him again.

A few days ago he had stopped in a mountain village and traded his horse for one of the sturdy little mountain ponies. He felt a sort of despairing grief at the necessity‑the black mare was Kennard's gift and he loved her‑but this one attracted less attention and was surer‑footed along the terrible trails. Poor Melisande would surely have died of the cold or broken a leg on these steep paths.

The trip had been a long nightmare: steep unfamiliar trails, intense cold, sheltering at night in abandoned barns or shepherd's huts or wrapped in cloak and blanket against a rock wall, close curled against the horse's body. He tried in general to avoid being seen, but every few days he had gone into a village to bargain for food and fodder for his pony. He aroused little curiosity; he thought life must be so hard in these mountains that the people had no time for curiosity about travelers.

Now and again, when he feared losing his way, he had drawn out the matrix, trying by furious concentration to fix his attention on Danilo. The matrix acted like one of those Terran instruments Kennard had once told him about, guiding him, with an insistent subliminal pull, toward Aldaran and Danilo.

By now he was numbed to fear, and only determination kept him going, that, and the memory of his pledge to Dani's father. But there were times when he rode in a dark dream, losing awareness of Danilo and the roads where he was. Images would spin in his mind, which seemed to drink up pictures and thoughts from the villages he passed. The thought of looking again into the matrix filled him with such a crawling sickness that he could not force himself to draw it out. Threshold sickness again. Javanne had warned him. At

the last few villages he had simply inquired the road to Aldaran.

All the morning he had been riding up a long slope where forest fires had raged a few seasons ago. He could see miles of scorched and blackened hillside, ragged stumps sticking up gaunt and leafless through the gullied wasteland. In his hyper‑suggestible state the stink of burned woods, ashes and soot swirling up every time Ms pony put a hoof down, brought him back to that last summer at Armida and his first turn on the fire‑lines, the night the fire came so close to Armida that the outbuildings burned.

That evening he and Lew had eaten out of the same bowl because supplies were running short. When they had laid down the stink of ashes and burned wood was all around them. Regis had smelled it even in his sleep, the way he was smelling it now. Toward midnight something woke him, and he had seen Lew sitting bolt upright, staring at the red glow where the fire was.

And Regis had known Lew was afraid. He'd touched Lew's mind, and felt it: his fear, the pain of his burns, everything. He could feel it as if it had been in his own mind. And Lew's fear hurt so much that Regis couldn't stand it. He would have done anything to comfort Lew, to take his mind off the pain and the fear. It had been too much. Regis couldn't shut it out, couldn't stand it

But he had forgotten. Had made himself forget, till now. He had blocked away the memory until, later that year, when he was tested for laran at Nevarsin, he had not even remembered anything but the fire.

And that, he realized, was why Lew was surprised when Regis told him he did not have laran,...

The mountain pony stumbled and went down. Regis scrambled to his feet, shaken but unhurt, taking the beast by the bridle and gently urging him to his feet. He ran his hand up and down the animal's legs. No bones were broken, but the pony flinched when Regis touched his rear right hock. He was limping, and Regis knew the pony could not bear his weight for a while. He led him along the trail as they crested the pass. The downward trail was even steeper, black and mucky underfoot where recent rains had soaked the remnants of the fire. The stench in his nostrils was worse than ever, restimulating again the memories of the earlier fire and the shared fear. He kept asking himself why he forgot, why he made himself forget.

The sun was hidden behind thick clouds. A few drifting snowflakes, not many but relentless, began to fall as he went down toward the valley. He guessed it was about midday. He felt a little hungry, but not enough to stop and dig into his pack and get out something to eat.

He hadn't been eating much lately. The villagers had been kind to him, often refusing to take payment for food, which was tasty, though unfamiliar. He was usually on the edge of nausea, though, unwilling to start up that reflex again by actually chewing and swallowing something. Hunger was less painful.

After a time he did dig some grain out of his pack for the horse. The trail was well‑traveled now; there must be another village not far away. But the silence was disturbing. Not a dog barked, no wild bird or beast cried. There was no sound but his own footsteps and the halting rhythm of the lame pony's steps. And, far above, the unending wind moaning in the gaunt snags of the dead forest.

It was too much solitude. Even the presence of a bodyguard would have been welcome now, or two, chatting about the small chances of the trail. He remembered riding in the hills around Armida with Lew, hunting or checking the herdsmen who cared for the horses out in the open uplands. Suddenly, as if the thought of Lew had brought him to mind again, Lew's face was before him, lighted with a glow‑not forest fire now! It was aglow, blazing in a great blue glare, space‑twisting, gut‑wrenching, the glare of the matrix! The ground was reeling and dipping under his feet, but for a moment, even as Regis dropped the pony's reins and clapped his hands over his tormented eyes, he saw a great form sketch itself on the inside of his eyelids, inside his very brain,

. . . a woman, a golden goddess, flame‑clothes, flame‑crowned, golden‑chained, burning, glowing, blazing, consuming . . .

Then he lost consciousness. Over his head the mountain pony edged carefully around, uneasily nuzzling at the unconscious lad.

It was the pony's nuzzling that woke him, some time later. The sky was darkening, and it was snowing so hard that when he got stiffly to his feet, a little cascade of snow showered off him. A fauit sickening smell told him that he had vomited as he lay senseless. What in Zandru's hells happened to me?

He dug his water bottle from his saddlebag, rinsed his mouth and drank a little, but was still too queasy to swallow much.

It was snowing so hard that he knew he must find shelter at once. He had been trained at Nevarsin to find shelter in unlikely places, even a heap of underbrush would do, but on a road as well‑traveled as this there were sure to be huts, barns, shelters. He was not mistaken. A few hundred feet further on, the outline of a great stone barn made a dark square against the swirling whiteness. The stones were blackened with the fire that had swept over it and a few of the roof slates had fallen in, but someone had replaced the door with rough‑hewn planking. Drifted ice and snow from the last storm was banked against the door, but he knew that in mountain country doors were usually left unfastened against just such emergencies. After much struggling and heaving Regis managed to shove the rough door partway open and wedge himself and the pony through into a gloomy and musty darkness. It had once been a fodder‑storage bam; there were still a few rodent‑nibbled bales lying forgotten against the walls. It was bitterly cold, but at least it was out of the wind. Regis unsaddled his pony, fed him and hobbled him loosely at one end of the barn. Then he raked some more of the moldy fodder together, laid his blankets out on it, crawled into them and let sleep, or unconsciousness, take him again.

This long sleep was more like shock, or suspended animation, than any normal sleep. Regis could not know it was the mental and physical reaction of a telepath hi crisis. Now it only seemed that he wandered for eternities‑certainly for days‑in restless nightmares. At times he seemed to leave his aching body behind and wander in gray formless space, shouting helplessly and knowing he had no voice. Once or twice, coming up to dim semiconsciousness, he found his face wet and knew he had been crying in his sleep. Time disappeared. He wandered in what he only dimly knew was the past or the future: now in the dormitories of Nevarsin where the memory of cold, loneliness and an aching frustration held him aloof, frightened, friendless; now by the fireside at Armida, then bending with Lew and an unknown fair‑haired girl over the bedside of an apparently dying child, again wandering through thick forests while strange aliens, red‑eyed, peered at them through the trees.

Again he was fighting with knives along a narrow ledge,

the ragged red‑eyed aliens thrusting at him, trying to kick him off. He sat in the Council chamber and heard Terrans arguing; in the Guard hall of Comyn Castle he saw Danilo's sword breaking with that terrible sound of shattering glass. He was looking down with a sense of aching tragedy at two small children, pale and lifeless, lying side by side in their coffins, dead by treachery, so young, so young, and knew they were his own. Again he stood in the armory, numb and shamed into immobility while Dyan's hands ran along his bare bruised body, and then he and Danilo were standing by a fountain in the plaza at Thendara, only Danilo was taller and bearded, drinking from wooden tankards and laughing while girls threw festival garlands down from windows above them.

After a time he began to filter these random awarenesses more critically. He saw Lew and Danilo standing by a fireplace in a room with a mosaic pattern of white birds on the floor, talking earnestly, and he felt insanely jealous. Then it seemed as if Kennard was calling his name in the gray dim spaces, and he could see Kennard drifting far off hi the dimness. Only Kennard was not lame now, but young and straight‑backed and smiling as Regis could hardly remember him. He was calling, with a mounting sense of urgency, Regis, Regis, where are you? Don't hide from mef We have to find you! All Regis could make of this was that he had left the Guards without leave and the Commander wanted to have him brought back and punished. He knew he could make himself invisible here in these gray spaces, so he did, running from the voice full speed over a gray and featureless plain, though by this time he was perfectly well aware that he was lying half‑conscious in the abandoned fodder‑barn. And then he saw Dyan in the gray spaces, only Dyan as a boy his own age. Somehow he dimly realized that, in this gray world where bodies did not come but only minds, every man appeared as he saw himself in his own mind, so of course Kennard looked well and young. Dyan was saying, / can't find him, Kennard, he is nowhere in the overworld, and Regis felt himself laughing inside and saying, I'm here but I don't have to let you see me here. Then Kennard and Dyan were standing close together, their hands joined, and he knew that together they were seeking him out. Their faces and figures disappeared, they were only eyes in the grayness, seeking, seeking. He knew he must leave the gray world or they would find him now. Where could he go? He didn't want to

go back! He could see Danilo in the distance, then they were both back in the dark barracks room‑that night!‑and he was bending over his friend, touching him with aching solicitude. And then that terrible, strained whisper, the shock more mental than physical as he thrust him away: Come near me again, you filthy ombredin, and I'll break your neck . . .

But I was only trying to reach him, help him. Wasn't I? Wasn't I? And with a shuddering gasp Regis sat up, fully awake at last, staring into the dim light that filtered through a broken roof‑slate above him. He was shaking from head to foot and bis body ached as if he had been battered and beaten. He was completely conscious, though, and his mind was clear. At the far end of the barn the pony was stamping restlessly. Slowly, Regis got to his feet, wondering how long he bad been there.

Far too long. The pony had eaten every scrap of the ample fodder and nosed the floor clear of chaff as far as he could reach.

Regis went to the door and swung it open. It had stopped snowing long since. The sun was out, and melted snow dripped in runnels from the roof. Regis was aware of a raging thirst, but like all lifelong horsemen he thought first of his pony. He led the horse to the door and released him; after a moment the pony made off, deliberately, around the corner to the rear of the building, Regis followed, finding an old well there, covered against the snow, with a workable though creaky and leaking bucket assembly. He watered the pony and drank deeply, then, shivering, stripped off his clothes. He was grateful for the austere discipline of Nevarsin, which made it possible for him to wash in the icy water of the well. His clothes smelled of sweat and sickness; he got fresh ones from his pack. Shivering, but feeling immensely better, he sat down on the well‑side and chewed dried fruit Cold as he was, the ulterior of the building seemed to reek of his nightmares and echo with the voices he had heard in his delirium, if it had all been delirium. What else could it have been?