The Heritage Of Hastur

Moving slowly until he knew he could rely on his body to do what he told it, he saddled the pony again and collected his belongings. He must be nearing the Aldaran lands now and there was no time to lose.

The snow had drenched the smell of forest fire and he was glad. He had not ridden more than an hour or two when he heard the sound of approaching horses and drew aside to let

them pass. Instead they confronted him, blocking the road, demanding his name and business.

He said, "I am Regis‑Rafael Hastur, and I am on my way to Castle Aldaran."

"And I," the leader, a big swarthy mountain man, said in a mincing voice that mocked Regis' careful casta accent, "am the Terran Legate from Port Chicago. Well, whoever you are, you'll go to Aldaran, and damn quick, too."

It had evidently been nearer than Regis believed; as they reached the top of the next hill he saw the castle, and beyond it the city of Gear Donn and the white Terran buildings.

Now that he was actually within sight of Aldaran bis old fears returned. No man knew‑or if they did it was the best kept secret on Darkover‑why Aldaran had been exiled from the Seven Domains.

They couldn't be that bad, Regis thought. Kennard had married into their kin. And if they were once of the Seven Domains, they too must be of the sacred lineage of Hastur and Cassilda. And why should a Hastur fear his kindred? He asked himself this as he rode through the great gates. Yet he was afraid.

Mountain men dressed in curiously cut leather cloaks took their horses. One of the guards led Regis into a hall, where he talked at length with another guard, then finally said, "We'll take you to Lord Aldaran, but if you're not who you claim you are, you'd better plan on spending the rest of the day in the brig. The old lord is ill, and none of us takes kindly to the notion of bothering him with an impostor!"

They conducted him through long stone corridors and along flights of stairs, pausing at last outside a great door. From inside they could hear voices, one low and undistin‑guishable, the other a harsh old man's voice, protesting angrily:

"Zandru's hells! Kirian, at my age! As if I were a schoolboy‑oh, very well, very well! But what you are doing is dangerous if it can have side effects like this, and I want to know more‑a great deal more‑before I let it go on!"

The guards exchanged glances over Regis* head; one of them knocked lightly and someone told them to come in.

It was a large, high‑arched stone chamber, gray with the outdoor light At the far end, a thin old man lay in a raised bed, propped on many pillows. He glared at them in angry question. "What's this now? What's this?"

"An intruder on the borders, Lord Aldaran, maybe a spy from the Domains."

"Why, he's just a boy," the old man said. "Come here, child." The guards thrust Regis forward, and the old eyes focused, hawk‑keen, on him. Then he smiled, an odd amused smile.

"Humph! No need to ask your name! If ever a man wore his lineage on his face! You might be Rafael's son. I thought his heir was still in the schoolroom, though. Which one are you, then, some nedestro or old Danvan's bastard, maybe?"

Regis lifted his chin. "I am Regis‑Rafael Hastur of Hastur!"

"Then in hell's name," said the old man testily, "what were you doing sneaking around the borders alone? Where is your escort? The heir of Hastur should have ridden up to the front gates, properly escorted, and asked to see me. I've never refused a welcome to anyone who comes here in peace! Do you think this is still a bandit fortress?"

Regis felt stung, all the more because he knew the old man was right. "My Lord, I felt there might be warfare of which I had been told nothing. If there is peace between us, what have you done with my sworn man?"

"Young Hastur? I know of no man of yours. Who?"

"My paxman and my friend, Danilo Syrtis. He was taken by armed men, in the hills near his home, men bearing your ensign, my lord."

Aldaran's face narrowed in a frown. He glanced at the tall thin man in Terran clothing who stood near the head of the bed. He said, "Bob, do you know anything at all about this matter? You usually know what Beltran's up to. What's be been doing while I've been lying here sick?"

The man raised his head and looked at Regis. He said, **Danilo Syrtis is here and unharmed, young Hastur. Beltran's men only exceeded their orders; they were told to invite him here with all courtesy. And we were told he had no reason to love the Comyn; how should we know he was your sworn man?" Regis felt unspoken contempt, And why should ‑we give a damn? But Kadarin's words were rigidly polite. "He is unharmed, an honored guest."

"I'll have a word with Beltran," Kermiac of Aldaran said. "This isn't the first time his enthusiasm has carried him away. I'm sorry, young Hastur, I didn't know we had anyone of yours here. Kadarin, take him to his friend."

So it was as simple as that? Regis felt vague disquiet Kadarin said, "There's no need for such haste. Lew Alton talked to the Syrtis boy for hours last night, I'm sure he knows now that he's not a prisoner. Lord Regis, would you like to speak with your kinsman?"

"Is Lew still here? Yes, I would like to see him."

Kermiac looked at Regis' travel‑stained garments. He said, "But this is a long journey alone for a boy. You are exhausted. Let us take you to a guest chamber, offer you some refreshment‑a meal, a bath‑"

Both of them sounded almost unendurably attractive, but Regis shook his head. 'Truly, I need nothing now. I am deeply concerned about my friend."

"As you wish, then, lad." He held out a withered old hand, seeming to have trouble moving as he wished. "Damned if I'm going to call a boy your age lord anything! That's half what's wrong with our world!"

Regis bent over it as he would have done over his grandfather's. "If I have misjudged you, Lord Aldaran, I implore your pardon. Let anxiety for my paxman be my excuse."

"Humph," Aldaran said again, "it seems to me that we of Aldaran owe you some apology as well, my boy. Bob, send Beltran to me‑at once!"

"Uncle, he is very much occupied with‑"

"I don't give a damn what he's occupied with, bring himi And fast!" He released Regis' hand, saying, "I'll see you again soon, lad. You are my guest, remain here in peace, be welcome."

Dismissed and ushered out of Aldaran's presence, Kadarin striding through the halls at his side, Regis felt more confused than ever. What was going on here? What had Lew Alton to do with this? It was warm in the hallway and he wished he had taken off bis riding‑cloak; he felt suddenly very tired and hungry. He had not had a hot meal, or slept in a bed, for more days than he could reckon, and during his sickness he had completely lost count.

Kadarin turned into a small room, saying, "I think Lew is here with Beltran." Regis blinked in astonishment, seeing, in the first moment, only the blazing fire, the floor inlaid with the mosaic of white birds! Fantasies spun in his mind. Danilo was not here, as in bis dream, but Lew was standing near the fire, his back to Regis. He was looking down at a woman who had a small harp across her knees. She was playing and singing. Regis had heard the song at Nevarsin; it was immeasurably old, and had a dozen names and a dozen tunes:

How came this blood, on your right hand,

Brother, tell me, tell me. It is the blood of an old gray wolf Who lurked behind a tree.

The song broke off in mid‑chord; Lew turned, and looked at Regis in amazement.

"Regis!" he said, coming quickly toward the door. "What are you doing here?" He held out his arms to embrace him, then, seeing him clearly, took nun by the shoulders, almost holding his upright. He said savagely, "If this is any more of Beltran's‑"

Regis drew himself upright. He wanted to let himself collapse into Lew's arms, lean on him, break down with fatigue and long drawn out fear‑but not before these strangers. "I came here in search of Danilo; Javanne saw in her crystal that he had been taken by men of Aldaran. Had you any hand in this?"

"God forbid," said Lew. "What do you think I am? It was a mistake, I assure you, only a mistake. Come and sit down, Regis. You look tired and ill. Bob, if he's been mishandled, I'll have someone's head for it!"

"No, no," said Kadarin. "Lord Kermiac welcomed him as his own guest, and sent him to you right away."

Regis let Lew lead him to the bench by the fire. The woman touched the harp again, in soft chords. Another woman, this one very young, with long straight red hair and a pretty, remote face, came and took his cloak, looking at him with bold eyes, straight at him. No girl in the Domains would look at him like that! He had an uncomfortable feeling that she knew what he was thinking and was greatly amused by it Lew said the women's names but Regis was in no condition to pay attention. He was introduced to Beltran of Aldaran, too, who almost immediately left the room. Regis wished they would all go away. Lew sat beside him, saying, "How came you to ride this long road alone, Regis? Only for Danilo's sake?"

"I am sworn to him, we are bredin" Regis said faintly, "He is truly unharmed, not a prisoner?"

"He is housed in luxury, an honored guest. You shall see him as soon as you like."

"But I do not understand all this, Lew. You came on a mission from Comyn, yet I find you here entangled in their affairs. What is this all about?" As soon as their hands

Marion Zimmer Bradley

touched they had fallen into rapport, and Regis found himself wondering, Has Lew turned traitor to Comyn'! In answer Lew said quietly, "I am no traitor. But I have come to believe that perhaps service to Comyn and service to Darkover are not quite the same thing."

The woman had begun the song again, softly.

No wolf would prowl at this hour of the day,

Brother, tell me, tell me! It is the blood of my own brothers twain Who sat at the drink with me.

How came ye fight with your own blood kin,

Brother, tell me, tell me, Your father's sons and your mother's sons Who dwelled in peace with thee.

Lew was still talking, through the sound. "The Comyn has been too often unjust. They threw Danilo aside like a piece of rubbish, for no better reason than that he had offended a wicked and corrupt man who should never have been in power. Danilo is a catalyst telepath. I suggested they bring him here‑I had no idea they would take him by force‑and his services be enlisted to a larger loyalty. I had it in mind he could serve all our world, not a sick, power‑mad clique of aristocrats bent on keeping themselves hi power at whatever cost...."

The mournful harp‑chords were very soft, the woman's voice very sweet.

We sat at feast, we fought in jest,

Sister, I vow to thee; A berserker's rage came in my hand, And I slew them shamefully.

Lew said, "Enough of this, you are tired and anxious about Dani, and you must have some rest. When you are well recovered, I want you to know all about what we are doing. Then you will know why those who are really loyal to Darkover may serve us all best by putting some check on the Comyn powers."

Regis could feel Lew's sincerity through the touch on his hand, yet there was some hesitation too. He slid his hand up Lew's arm to touch the tattooed mark there. He said, "You're

not completely sure of this either, Lew. You are sworn, sealed to Comyn."

Lew took his hand away, saying bitterly, "Sworn? No. Vows in which I had no part were sworn for me when I was five years old. But come, we'll talk of this another time. If you've been imagining Danilo a prisoner it will reassure you to find him in the best guest suite, the only one, I suppose, fit to entertain a Hastur. If he's your sworn man he should be lodged with you."

He turned, briefly making his excuses to the women. In his sensitized state Regis could feel their emotions, too: sharp resentment from the older, the singer. The younger one seemed aware of nothing but Lew. Regis didn't want to be part of these complexities! He was glad when they were alone in the corridor.

"Regis, what's really wrong with you? You're ill!"

Regis tried‑he knew he didn't succeed too well‑to cut off the rapport entirely. He knew that if he told Lew he had threshold sickness on the road, Lew would be immensely concerned. Even Javanne had treated it as a serious matter. For some reason he was anxious to avoid this. He said, "Nothing much; I'm very tired. I'm not used to mountain riding and I may have a chill." Actively he resisted Lew's solicitude. He could feel his kinsman's anxiety about him, and it made him irritible for some unknown reason. He wasn't a child nowl And he could sense the bafflement with which Lew gently but definitely withdrew.

Lew paused at an ornate double door, scowling at the guard stationed there. "You guard a guest, sir?"

"Safeguard, Dom Lewis. Lord Beltran ordered me to see that no one disturbed him. Everybody's not friendly to the valley folk here. See?" the guard said, thrusting the door open. "He's not locked in."

Lew went in and called, "Danilo?" Regis, following him, took in at a glance the luxurious old‑fashioned surroundings. Danilo came from an inner room, stopped short.

Regis felt overwhelming relief. He couldn't speak. Lew smiled. "You see," he said, "alive and well and unharmed."

Danilo flung back his head in an aggressive gesture. He said, "Did you send to have him captured, too?"

"How suspicious you are, Dani," Lew said. "Ask him yourself. I'll send servants to look after you."

He touched Regis lightly on the arm. "My own honor

pledged on it, no harm shall come to either of you, and you shall depart unharmed when you are able to travel." He added, "Take good care of him, Dani," and withdrew, closing the door.

Chapter EIGHTEEN

When I came back to the fireside room, Thyra was still playing her harp, and I realized how short a time I had been away; she was still singing the ballad of the outlaw berserker.

And when will you come back again,

Brother, tell me, tell me?

When the sun and the moon rise together in the West, And that shall never be.

It must be immeasurably old, I thought, and alien, to speak of one moon instead of four! Beltran had returned and was gazing into the fire, looking angry and remote. He must have gotten the scolding he deserved from Kermiac. Before this, the old man's illness had kept any of us from telling Kermiac what Beltran had done. I was distressed because Beltran was distressed‑I couldn't help it, I liked him, I understood what had prompted his rash orders. But what he had done to Danilo was unforgivable, and I was angry with him, too.

And he knew it. His voice, when he turned to me, was truculent.

"Now that you've put the child to bed‑"

"Don't mock the lad, cousin," I said. "He's young, but he was man enough to cross the Hellers alone. I wouldn't."

Beltran said, "I've had that already from Father; he had nothing but praise for the boy's courage and good manner! I don't need it from you, too!" And he turned his back on me again. Well, I had little sympathy for him. He might well have lost us any chance of Danilo's friendship or help; and Danilo's help, as I saw it now, was all that could save this circle. If Beltran's laran could be fully opened, if with Danilo's aid we could discover and open up a few more latent telepaths, there was a chance, a bare chance but one I

was willing to take, that we might somehow control the Sharra matrix. Without that it seemed helpless.

Marjorie smiled and said, "Your friend wouldn't speak to me or look at me. But I would like to know him."

"He's a valley man, love, he'd think it rude and boorish to stare at a maiden. But he is my good friend."

Kadarin's lip curled in amusement. "Yet it wasn't for your sake he crossed the mountains, but for the Syrtis boy."

"I came here of my free will, and Regis knew it," I retorted, then laughed heartily. "By my probably nonexistent forefathers, Bob, do you think I am jealous? I am no lover of boys, but Regis was put in my charge when he was a little lad. He's dearer to me than my own brother born."

Marjorie smiled her heart‑stopping smile and said, "Then I shall love him, too."

Thyra looked up and taunted, through the chords of her harp, "Come, Marjorie, you're a Keeper! If a man touches you you'll go up in smoke or something!"

Icy shudders suddenly racked me. Marjorie, burning in Sharra's flame. ... I took one stride toward the fire, wrenched the harp from Thyra's hands, then caught myself, still rigid. What had I been about to do? Fling the harp across the room, bring it down crashing across that mocking face? Slowly, deliberately, forcing my shaking muscles to relax, I brought the harp down and laid it on the bench.

"Breda," I said, using the word for sister, not the ordinary one but the Intimate word which could also mean darling, "such mockery is unworthy of you. If I had thought it possible, or if I had had the training of you from the first, don't you think I would have chosen you rather than Marjorie? Don't you think I would rather have had Marjorie free?" I put my arm around her. For a moment she was defiant, gazing angrily up at me.

"Would you really have trusted me to keep your rate of chastity?" she flung at me. I was too shocked to answer. At last I said, "Breda, it isn't you I don't trust, it's your training."

She had been rigid in my arms; suddenly she went limp against me, her arms clinging around my neck. I thought she would cry. I said, still trembling with that mixture of fury and tenderness, "And don't make jests about the fires! Evanda have mercy, Thyra! You were never at Arilinn, you have never seen the memorial, but have you, who are a singer of ballads, never heard the tale of Marelie Hastur? I

have no voice for singing, but I shall tell it you, if you need reminding that there is no jesting about such matters!" I had 1 to break off. My voice was trembling.

Kadarin said quietly, "We all saw Marjorie in the fire, but it was an illusion. You weren't hurt, were you, Margie?"

"No. No, I wasn't. No, Lew. Don't, please don't. Thyra didn't mean anything," Marjorie said, shaking. I ached to reach out for her, take her in my arms, keep her safe. Yet that would place her in more danger than anything else I could possibly do.

I had been a fool to touch Thyra.

She was stil! clinging to me, warm and close and vital. I wanted to thrust her violently away, but at the same time I wanted‑and she knew it, damn it, she knew it!‑I wanted what I would have had as a matter of course from any woman of my own circle who was not a Keeper. What would have dispelled this hostility and tension. Any woman tower‑trained would have sensed the state I was in and felt responsible. . . .

I forced myself to be calm, to release myself from Thyra's arms. It wasn't Thyra's fault, any more than it was Marjorie's. It wasn't Thyra's fault that Marjorie, and not her‑, self, had been forced by lack of any other to be Keeper. It wasn't Thyra who had roused me this way. It wasn't Thyra's fault, either, that she had not been trained to the customs of a tower circle, where the intimacy and awareness is closer than any blood tie, closer than love, where the need of one evokes a real responsibility in the others.

I could impose the laws of a tower circle on this group only so far as was needed for their own safety. I could not ask more than this. Their own bonds and ties went far back, beyond my coming. Thyra had nothing but contempt for Arilinn. And to come between Thyra and Kadarin was not possible.

Gently, so she would not feel wounded by an abrupt withdrawal, I moved away from her. Beltran, staring into the fire , as if hypnotized by the darting flames, said in a low voice, **MareHe Hastur. I know the tale. She was a Keeper at Ar‑flinn who was taken by mountain raiders in the Kilghard Hills, ravaged and thrown out to die by the city wall. Yet from pride, or fear of pity, she concealed what had been done to her and went into the matrix screens in spite of the law of the Keepers. . . . And she died, a blackened corpse like one lightning‑struck."

Marjorie shrank, and I damned Beltran. Why did he have to tell that story in Marjorie's hearing? It seemed a piece of gratuitous cruelty, very unlike Beltran.

Yes. And I had been about to tell it to Thyra, and I had come near to breaking her own harp across her head. That was very unlike me, too.

What in all the Gods had come to us!

Kadarin said harshly, "A lying tale. A pious fraud to scare Keepers into keeping their virginity, a bogeyman to frighten babies and girl‑children!"

I thrust out my scarred hand. "Bob, this is no pious fraud!"

"Nor can I believe it had anything to do with your virginity," he retorted, laughing, and laid a kind hand on my shoulder. "You're giving yourself nightmares, Lew. For your Marelie Hastur I give you Cleindori Aillard, who was kinswoman to your own father, and who married and bore a son, losing no iota of her powers as Keeper. Have you forgotten they butchered her to keep that secret? That alone should give the lie to all this superstitious drivel about chastity."

I saw Marjorie's face lose a little of its tension and was grateful to him, even if not wholly convinced. We were working here without elementary safeguards, and I was not yet willing to disregard this oldest and simplest of precautions.

Kadarin said, "If you and Marjorie feel safer to lie apart until this work is well underway, it's your own choice. But don't give yourselves nightmares either. She's well in control. I feel safe with her." He bent down, kissing her lightly on the forehead, a kiss completely without passion but altogether loving. He put a free arm around me, drew me against him, smiling. I thought for a moment he would kiss me too, but he laughed. "We're both too old for that," he said, but without mockery. For a moment we were all close together again, with no hint of the terrible violence and disharmony that had thrust us apart. I began to feel hope again.

Thyra asked softly, "How is it with our father, Beltranr I had forgotten that Thyra was his daughter too.

"He is very weak," Beltran said, "but don't fret, little sister, he'll outlive all of us."

I said, "Shall I go to him, Beltran? I've had long experience treating shock from matrix overload‑"

"And so have I, Lew," Kadarin said kindly, releasing me.

"AU the knowledge of matrix technology is not locked up at Arilinn, bredu. I can do better without sleep than you young people."

I knew I should insist, but I did not have the heart to face down another of Thyra's taunts about Arilinn. And it was true that Kermiac had been training technicians in these hills before any of us were born. And my own weariness betrayed me. I swayed a little where I stood, and Kadarin caught and Steadied me.

"Go and rest, Lew. Look, Rafe's asleep on the rug. Thyra, call someone to carry him to bed. Off with you now, all of you!"

"Yes," said Beltran, "tomorrow we have work to do, we've delayed long enough. Now that we have a catalyst tele‑path‑"

I said somberly, "It may take a long time now to persuade Km to trust you, Beltran. And you cannot use force on him. You know that, don't you?"

Beltran looked angry. "I won't hurt a hair of his precious little head, kinsman. But you'd better be damned good at persuading. Without his help, I don't know what we'll do."

I didn't either. We needed Danilo so terribly. We separated quietly, all of us sobered. I had a terrible feeling of weight on my heart. Thyra walked beside the burly servant who was carrying Rafe to bed. Kadarin and Beltran, I knew, were going to watch beside Kermiac. I should have shared that vigil. I loved the old man and I was responsible for the moment's lack of control which had struck him down.

I was about to leave Marjorie at the foot of her tower stairway, but she clung hard to my hand.

"Please, Lew. Stay with me. As you did the other day."

I started to agree, then realized something else.

I didn't trust myself.

Whether it was the brief disturbing physical contact with Thyra, whether it was the upsetting force of the quarrel, or the old songs and ballads ... I didn't trust myself!

Even now, it took all my painfully acquired discipline, all of it, to keep from taking her into my arms, kissing her senseless, carrying her up those stairs and into her room, to the bed we had shared so chastely . . .

I stopped myself right there. But we were deeply in contact; she had seen, felt, shared that awareness with me. She was blushing, but she did not turn her eyes from mine. She said at last, quietly, "You told me that when we were working like this, nothing could happen that would harm or ... or endanger me."

I shook my head in bewilderment. "I don't understand it either, Marjorie. Normally, at this stage," and here I laughed, a short unmirthful sound, "you and I could lie down naked together and sleep like brothers or unweaned babies. I don't know what's happened, Marjorie, but I don't dare. Gods above!" I almost shouted at her. "Don't you think I want to?"

Now she did avert her eyes for a moment. She said in a whisper, "Kadarin says it's only a superstition. I'll... I'll risk it if you want to, Lew. If you need to."

Now I really felt ashamed. I was better disciplined than this. I made myself take a long breath, unclench my hands from the railings of the stair. "No, beloved. Perhaps I can find out what's gone wrong. But I have to be alone."

I heard her plea, not aloud but straight to my mind, straight to my heart: Don't leave me! Don't go, Lew, don't ... I broke the contact harshly, cutting her off, shutting her out. It hurt horribly, but I knew that it this went on I would never be able to leave her, and I knew where it would end. And her discipline held. She closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath. I saw that curious look of distance, withdrawnness, isolation, slip down over her features. The look Callina had had, that Festival Night. The look I had seen so often on Janna's face, my last season at Arilinn, She had known I loved her, wanted her. It hurt, but I felt relieved, too. Marjorie said quietly, "I understand, Lew. Go and sleep, my darling." She turned and went away from me, up the long stairs, and I went away, blind with pain.

I passed the closed door of the suite where Regis and Danilo had been lodged. I knew I should speak to Regis. He was ill, exhausted. But my own misery made me shrink from the task. He had made it clear he did not want my solicitude. He was reunited with his friend, why should I disturb them now? He would be asleep, I hoped, resting after that terrible journey alone through the Hellers.

I went to my own room and threw myself down without bothering to undress.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

I had felt a disruption like this once before, like a vortex of fury, lust, rage, destruction, surging up through us all. It should not be like this. It could not be like this!

Normally, matrix work left the workers drained, spent,

without anything left over for any violent emotion. Above all, I had grown accustomed to the fact that there was nothing left over for sexuality. It wasn't that way now.

I had been angry with Thyra at first, not aroused by her. I had been angry when it seemed she mocked Marjorie, and then suddenly I'd been so overcome by my own need that it would have been easy for me to tear off her clothes and take her there before the fire!

And Marjorie. A Keeper. I shouldn't have been capable even of thinking about her this way. Yet I had thought about it. Damn it, I still ached with wanting her. And she had wanted me to stay with her! Was she weeping now, alone in her room, the tears she had been too proud to shed before me? Should I have risked it? Sanity, prudence, long habit, told me no; no, I had done the only thing it was safe to do.

I glanced briefly at the wrapped bundle of the matrix and felt the faintest thrill of awareness along my nerves. Insulated like that, it should have been wholly dormant. Damn it, I trained at Arilinn and any first‑year telepath leams to insulate a matrix! What I insulate stays insulated! I must be dreaming, imagining. I was living on my nerves and by now they were raw, hypersensitive.

That damned thing was responsible for all our troubles. I'd have liked to heave it out the window, or better, send it out on a Terran rocket and let it work its mischief on cosmic dust or something! I heartily wished that Beltran and the Sharra matrix and Kadarin and old Desideria, with all her forge‑folk about her, were all frying together on one of their own forges.

I was still in accord with Beltran's dream, but standing between us and the accomplishment of the dream was this ravening nightmare of Sharra. I knew, I knew with the deepest roots of my self, that I could not control it, that Marjorie could not control it, that nothing human could ever control it. We had only stirred the surface of the matrix. If it was roused all the way it might never be controlled again, and tomorrow I would tell Beltran so.

Clutching this resolve, I fell into an uneasy sleep. For a long time I wandered in confused nightmares through the corridors of Comyn Castle; whenever I met someone, his or her face was veiled or turned away in aver* sion or contempt. Javanne Hastur refusing to dance with me at a children's ball. Old Domenic di Asturien with his lifted eyebrows. My father, reaching out to me across a great chasm. Callina Aillard, turning away and leaving me alone on the rain‑swept balcony. It seemed I wandered through those halls for hours, with no single human face turned to me in concern or compassion.

And then the dream changed. I was standing on the balcony of the Arilinn Tower, watching the sunrise, and Janna Lindir was standing beside me. I was dreamily surprised to see her. I was back again where I had been happy, where I had been accepted and loved, where there was no cloud on my mind and heart. But I had thought my circle had been broken and scattered, the others to then‑ homes, I to the Guards where I was despised, Janna married ... no, surely that had been only a bad dream! She turned and laid her hand in mine, and I felt a deep happiness.

Then I realized it was not Janna but Callina Aillard, saying softly, mockingly, "You do know what's really wrong with you," taunting me from the safe barrier of what she was, a Keeper, forbidden, untouchable. . . . Maddened by the surge of need and hunger in me, I reached for ber, I tore the veils from her body while she screamed and struggled. I threw her down whimpering on the stones and flung myself atop her, naked, and through her wild cries of terror she changed, she began to flame and glow and burn, the fires of Sharra engulfing us, consuming us in a wild spasm of lust and ecstasy and terror and agony....

I woke up shuddering, crying out with the mingled terror and enchantment of the dream. The Sharra matrix lay shrouded and dormant.

But I dared not close my eyes again that night

Chapter NINETEEN

After Lew had gone away, closing the door behind him, it was Regis who moved first, stumbling across the floor as if wading through a snowdrift, to clasp Dani's shoulders in a kinsman's embrace. He heard his own voice, hoarse hi his ears.

"You're safe. You really are here and safe." He had doubted Lew's word, though never in all his life had he reason to doubt. What kind of evil was here?

"Yes, yes, well and safe," fianilo said, then drew a harsh breath of dismay. "My lord Regis, you're soaked through!"

For the first time Regis became aware of the heat from the fireplace, the hangings sealing off drafts, the warmth after the icy blasts of the corridors. The very warmth touched off a spasm of shivering, but he forced himself to say, "The guards. You are really a prisoner, then?"

"They're here to protect me, so they say. They've been friendly enough. Come, sit here, let me get these boots off, you're chilled to the bone!"

Regis let himself be led to an armchair, so ancient in design that until he was in the seat he was not sure what it was. His feet came out of the boots numb and icy‑cold. He was almost too weary to sit up and unlace his tunic; he sat with his hands hanging, his legs stretched out, finally with an effort put his stiff fingers to the tunic‑laces. He knew his voice sounded more irritible than he meant.

"I can manage for myself, Dani. You're my paxman, not my body‑servant!"

Danilo, kneeling before the fire to dry Regis' boots, jerked upright as if stung. He said into the fire, "Lord Regis, I am honored to serve you in any way I may." Through the stiff formality of the words, Regis, wide open again, felt something else, a wordless resonance of despair: He didn't mean it, then, about accepting my service. It was , . , it was only a way of atoning for what his kinsman had done....

Without stopping to think, Regis was out of the chair, kneeling beside Dani on the hearth. His voice was shaking, partly with the cold which threatened to rip him apart with shudders, partly with that intense awareness of Dani's hurt.

"The Gods witness I meant it! It's only ... only ..." Suddenly he knew the right thing to say. "You remember what a fuss it caused, when I expected anyone to wait on me, in the barracks!"

Their eyes caught and held. Regis had no idea whether it was his own thought or Danilo's: We were boys then. And now ... how long ago that seems! Yet it was only last season! It seemed to Regis that they were looking back, as men, across a great chasm of elapsed time, at a shared boyhood. Where had it gone?

With a sense of fighting off unutterable weariness‑it seemed he had been fighting off this weariness as long as he could remember‑he reached for Danilo's hands. They felt hard, calloused, real, the only firm anchor‑point in a shifting, dissolving universe. Momentarily he felt his hands going through Danilo's as if neither of them were quite solid. He blinked hard to focus his eyes, and saw a blue‑haloed form in front of him. He could see through Danilo now, to the wall beyond. Trying to focus against the swarming fireflies that spun before his eyes, he remembered Javanne's warning, fight it, move around, speak. He tried to get his voice back into his throat

"Forgive me, Dani. Who should serve me if not my sworn man . . .?"

And as he spoke the words he felt, amazed, the texture of Danilo's relief: My people have served the Hasturs for generations. Now I too am where I belong.

No! I do not want to be a master of men . . . !

But the swift denial was understood by both, not as a personal rejection, but the very embodiment of what they both were, so that the giving of Danilo's service was the pleasure and the relief it was, so that Regis knew he must not only accept that service, but accept it fully, graciously.

Danilo's face suddenly looked strange, frightened. His mouth was moving but Regis could no longer hear him, floating bodiless in the sparkling darkness. The base of his skull throbbed with ballooning pain. He heard himself whisper, "I am ... in your hands . . ." Then the world slid side‑wise and he felt himself collapse into Danilo's arms.

He never knew how he got there, but seconds later, it

seemed, he felt searing pain all over his naked body, and found himself floating up to the chin in a great tub of boiling water. Danilo, kneeling at his side, was anxiously chafing his wrists. His head was splitting, but he could see solid objects again, and his own body was reassuringly firm. A servant was hovering around with clean garments, trying to attract Danilo's attention long enough to get his approval of them.

Regis lay watching, too languid to do anything but accept their ministrations. He noticed that Danilo unobtrusively kept his own body between Regis and the Aldaran servant Danilo chased the man out quickly, muttering under his breath, "I'm not going to trust any of them alone with you!"

At first the water had seemed scalding to his chilled body; now he realized it was barely warm, in fact it must have been drawn for some time, was probably a bath prepared for Danilo before he came in. Danilo was still bending over him, his face tight with worry. Suddenly Regis was filled with sucb intolerable anxiety that he cut off the intense, sensuous pleasure of the hot water soothing his chilled and stiffened body‑eleven nights on the trail and not warm oncel‑and drew himself upright, hauling himself out of the hot tub, reaching for a towel to wrap himself in. Danilo knelt to dry him, saying, "I sent the servant for a healer‑woman, there must be someone of that sort here. Regis, I never saw any‑1 one faint like that before; your eyes were open but you couldn't hear me or see me . . ."

"Threshold sickness." Briefly he sketched in an explanation. *Tve had a few attacks before. I'm over the worse." I hope, he added to himself. MI doubt if the healer could do anything with this. Here, give me that, I can dress myself." Firmly he took the towel away from Danilo. "Go and tell her not to bother, and find out if there's anything hot to drink.**

Skeptically Danilo retreated. Regis finished drying himself and clambered into the unfamiliar clothing. His hands were shaking almost too hard to tie the knots of his tunic. What's the matter with me, he asked himself why didn't I want Dani to help me dress? He looked at his hands in cold shock, as if they belonged to someone else. I didn't want him to touch me!

Even to him that sounded incongruous. They had lived together in the rough intimacy of the barracks room for months. They had been close‑linked, even thinking one another's thoughts.

This was different

Irresistibly his mind was drawn back to that night in the

barracks, when he had reached out to Danilo, torn by an almost frenzied desire to share his misery, the spasm of loathing and horror with which Danilo had flung him away.....

And then, shaken and shamed and terrified, Regis knew what had prompted that touch, and why he was suddenly shy of Danilo now. The knowledge struck him motionless, his bare feet cold through the wolfskin rug on the tile floor.

To touch him. Not to comfort Dani, but to comfort his own need, his own loneliness, his own hunger....

He moved deliberately, afraid if he remained motionless another instant the threshold sickness would surge up over him again. He knelt on the wolfskin, drawing fur‑lined stockings up over his knees and deliberately tying the thongs into intricate knots. On the surface of his mind he thought that fur clothing was life‑saving here in the mountains. It felt wonderful.

But, relentless, the memory he had barricaded since his twelfth year burst open like a bleeding wound; the memory he had let himself lose consciousness before recovering on the northward trail: Lew's face, alight with fire, his barriers down in the last extremity of exhaustion and pain and fear.

And Regis had shared it all with him, there were no barriers between them. None. Regis had known what Lew wanted and would not ask, was too proud and too shy to ask. Something Regis had never felt before, that Lew thought he was too young to feel or to understand. But Regis had known and had shared it.

And afterward, perhaps because Lew had never spoken of ft, Regis was too ashamed to remember. And he had never dared open his mind again. Why? Why? Out of fear, out of shame? Out of ... longing?

Until Danilo, without even trying, broke that barricade.

And now Regis knew why it was Dani who could break it ...

He doesn't know, Regis thought, and then with a bleak and spartan pride, He must never know.

He stood up, felt the splitting pain at his forehead again. He knew a frightened moment of disquiet. How could he keep this from him? Dani was a telepath too!

Lew had said it was like living with your skin off. Well, his skin was off and he was doubly naked. Taking a grip on himself, he walked out into the other room, decided his boots weren't dry. Inside he felt cold and trembly, but physically he was quite warm and calm.

How could be face Lew again, knowing this? Coldly, Regis told himself not to be a fool. Lew had always known. He wasn't a coward, he didn't lie to himself! Lew remembered, so DO wonder he was astonished when Regis had said he did not have laranl

Lew had asked him why be could not bear to remember....

"You should have gone straight to bed and let me bring you supper there," Danilo said behind him, and Regis, firmly taking mastery of his face, looked around. Danilo was looking at him with friendly concern, and Regis remembered, with a shock, that Danilo knew nothing, nothing of the memory and awareness that had flooded him in the scant few minutes they had been parted. He said aloud, trying for a casual neutral tone, "I collapsed before I saw anything of the suite but this room. I have no idea where I'm going to be sleeping."

"And I've had days with nothing to do but explore. Come, I'll show you the way. I told the servant to bring your supper in here. How does it feel to be quartered in a royal suite, after the student dormitory at Nevarsin?"

There was room enough for a regent and all his entourage in this guest suite: enormous bedrooms, servants quarters in plenty, a great hall, even a small octagonal presence chamber with a throne and footstools for petitioners. It was more elaborate than his grandfather's suite in Thendara. Danilo had chosed the smallest and least elaborate bedroom, but it looked like a royal favorite's chamber. There was a huge bed on a dais which would, Regis thought irreverently, have held a Dry‑Towner, three of his wives and six of his concubines. The servant he had seen before was warming the sheets with a long‑handled warming pan, and there was a fire in the fireplace. He let Danilo help him into the big bed, put a tray of hot food beside him. Danilo sent the man away, saying gravely, "It is my privilege to wait on my lord with my own hands." Regis would have laughed at the solemn, formal words, but knew even a smile would hurt Danilo unspeakably. He kept his composure, until the man was out of earshot, then said, "I hope you're not going to take that formal my‑lord tone all the time now, bredu."

There was relief in Danilo's eyes too. "Only in front of strangers, Regis." He came and lifted covers off steaming bowls of food, clambered up on the bed and poured hot soup from a jug. He said, 'The food's good. I had to ask for cider

instead of wine the first day, that's all. I see they brought both tonight, and the cider's hot."

Regis drank the soup and the hot cider thirstily; but although it was his first hot meal in days, he found it almost too hard to chew and swallow.

"Now tell me how you found me here, Regis."

Regis' hand went to the matrix on the thong around his neck. Danilo shrank a little. "I thought such things were to be used only by technicians, with proper safeguards. Isn't it dangerous?"

"I knew no other way."

Danilo looked at him, visibly moved. "And you took that risk for me, breduT

Regis deliberately withdrew from the moment of emotion. 'Take that last cutlet, won't you? I'm not hungry. . . . I'm here and alive, aren't I? I expect I'll have trouble with my kinfolk; I got away from Gabriel and my escort by a trick. I was supposed to be on my way to Neskaya Tower."

The diversion worked. Dauilo asked with a faint revulsion, "Are you to be a matrix mechanic, now they know you have laranT

"God forbid! But I have to learn to safeguard myself."

Danilo had made a long mental leap. "Is this‑using a matrix, untrained‑why you have been having threshold sickness?"

"I don't know. Perhaps. It couldn't help."

Danilo said, "I should have sent for Lew Alton, instead of the healer‑woman. He's tower‑trained, he'd know what to do

for it."

Regis flinched. He didn't want to face Lew just yet. Not till he had his own thoughts in order. "Don't disturb him. I'm all

right now."

"Well, if you're sure," Danilo said uncertainly. "No doubt, by now, he's in bed with his girl and wouldn't thank anyone for disturbing him, but just the same‑"

"His girl?"

"Aldaran's foster‑daughter. The guards are lonely and have nothing to do but gossip, and I thought it just as well to learn as much as I could about what's going on here. They say Lew's madly in love with her, and old Kermiac's arranging a marriage."

Well, Regis thought, that made good sense. Lew had never been happy in the lowlands and he was lonely. If he took a wife from his mountain kinsmen, that was a good thing.

Danilo said, "There's wine, if you want it," but Regis firmly shook his head. He might sleep better for it, but he dared not risk anything that might break down his defenses. He took a handful of sugared nuts and began nibbling them.

"Now, Dani, tell me all about it Old Kermiac did not know why they had brought you here, and I had no chance to ask Lew alone." He wondered suddenly which of the women in the fireside room was Lew's sweetheart. The hard‑faced girl with the harp? Or the delicate remote, younger one in blue?

"But you must have known all about it," said Danilo, "or bow could you have come after me? I tried ... I tried to reach out for you with my mind, but I was afraid. I could feel them. I was afraid they'd use that somehow . . ." Regis sensed he was almost crying. "It's terrible! Laran is terriblel I don't want it, Regis! I don't want it!"

Impulsively Regis reached out to lay a steadying hand on bis wrist, stopped himself. Oh no. Not that. Not so easy an .excuse to ... to touch him. He said, keeping his voice detached, "It seems we have no choice, Dani. It has come to us both."

"It's like‑like lightning! It hits people who don't want it, hits them at random‑" Danilo's voice shook.

Regis wondered how anyone lived with it. He said, "I don't much want it either, now that I've got it. No more than I want to be heir to Comyn." He sighed. "But we have no choice. Or the only choice we have is to misuse it‑like Dyan‑or to meet it like men, and honorably." He knew he was not talking only of laran now. "Laran cannot be all evil. It helped me find you."

"And if I've brought you into danger of death . .."

That's enough of that!" The words were a sharp rebuke; Danilo shrank as if Regis had slapped him, but Regis felt he dared not face another emotional outburst. "Lord Kermiac has called me guest. Among mountain people that is a sacred obligation. Neither of us is in danger."

"Not from old Kermiac perhaps. But Beltran wants to use my laran to awaken other telepaths, and what's he going to do with them when he's got them awakened? Whatever they're doing . . ." He stared right through Regis and whispered, "It's wrong. I can feel it, reaching for me even in my teepl"

"Surely Lew wouldn't be a party to anything dishonor‑abler

"Not knowingly, maybe. But he's very angry with the Comyn, and wholly committed to Beltran now," Danilo said. "This is what he told me."

He began to explain Beltran's plan for revival of the old matrix technology, bringing Darkover from a non‑industrial, non‑technological culture into a position of strength in a galactic empire. As he spoke of star‑travel Regis' eyes brightened, recalling his own dreams. Suppose he need not desert his world and his heritage to go out among the stars, but could serve bis people and still be part of a great star‑spanning culture... it seemed too good to be true.

"Surely if it could have been done at all, it would have been done at the height of the strength of the towers. They must have tried this."

"I don't know," said Danilo humbly, "I'm not as well‑educated as you, Regis." And Regis knew so little!

"Let's not sit and make guesses about what they're doing," Regis said, "Let's wait till tomorrow and ask them." He yawned deliberately. "I haven't slept in a bed for a dozen nights. I think 111 try this one out." Danilo was taking away the mugs and bowls; Regis beckoned him back.

"I hope you have no foolish notion of standing guard while I sleep, or sleeping on the floor across my doorway?"

"Only if you want me to," said Dani, but he sounded hurt, and with that unwelcome sensitivity Regis knew he'd have liked to. The picture that had haunted him for days now returned, Dani's brother shielding his father with his body. Did Dani really want to die for him? The thought shocked him speechless.

He said curtly, "Sleep where you damn please, but get some sleep. And if you really like having me give you orders, Dani, that's an order." He didn't wait to see where Dani chose. He slid down into the great bed and dropped into a bottomless pit of sleep.

At first, exhaustion taking its toll of his aching body and overstrained emotions, he was too weary even to dream. Then he began to drift in and out of dreams: the sound of horses' hooves on a road, galloping ... the armory in Comyn Castle, struggling weakly against Dyan, armed and fresh against an aching lassitude that would not let Regis lift his sword ... a great form swooping down, touching Castle Ald‑aran with a finger of fire, flames rising skyward. By the firelight he saw Lew's face alight with terror, and reached out to

him, feeling the strange and unfamiliar emotions and sensations, but this time he knew what he was doing. This time he was not a child, his child's body responding half‑aware to the most innocent of caresses; this time he knew and accepted it all, and suddenly it was Danilo in his arms, and Danilo was struggling, trying to push him away in pain and terror. Regis, gripped by need and blind cruelty, gripped him more and more tightly, fighting to hold him, subdue him, and then, with a gasp, cried aloud, "No! Oh, no!" and flung him away, pulling himself upright in the great bed.

He was alone, the firelight burned down to coals. Across the foot of the enormous bed, like a dark shadow, Danilo slept, wrapped in a blanket, his back turned away. Regis stared at the sleeping boy, unable to shake off the horror of the dream, the shock of knowing what he had tried to do.

No. Not tried to do. Wanted to do. Dreamed of doing. There was a difference.

Or was there, for a telepath?

Once, one of the few times Kennard had spoken of his own years in the tower, Kennard had said, very seriously: "I am an Alton; my anger can kill. A murderous thought is, for me, almost a murder. A lustful thought is the psychological equivalent of a rape."

Regis wondered if he was responsible even for his dreams. Would he ever dare sleep again?

Danilo stirred with a moan. Abruptly he began to gasp and cry out and struggle in his sleep. He muttered aloud, "No‑ DO, please!" and began to cry. Regis stared in horror. Did his own dream disturb Dani! Dyan had reached him, even in sleep.... He could not leave him crying. He leaned forward, saying gently, "Dani, it's all right, you were asleep."

Half asleep, Danilo made the safeguarding sign of cristo‑foro prayers. It must be comforting to have their faith, Regis thought. Danilo's smothered sobbing tore at Regis like claws. He had no way of knowing that far away in the castle Lew Alton had also started out of nightmare, shaking with the guilt of the most dreadful crime he could imagine, but Regis did find himself wondering what form Danilo's nightmare had taken. He dared not ask, dared not risk the intimacy of midnight confidences.

Danilo had his crying under control now. He asked, "It's not... not threshold sickness again?"

"No. No, only a nightmare. I'm sorry I woke you."

"This damned place is full of nightmares . .." Danilo muttered. Regis felt him reach out for reassurance, for contact. He held himself aloof from the touch. After a long time he knew Danilo slept again. He lay awake, watching the dying remnants of the fire on the hearth. The fire that had been a raging forest fire from his troubled childhood, that had become the great form of fire. Sharra, of the legends. What, in the name of all the Gods, were they doing here at Aldaran? Something here was out of control, dangerous.

Fire was the key, he knew, not only because the memory of a forest fire had brought back the memory he'd buried, but it was worse than that. Lew looked as if he'd been doing something dangerous. And all this ... this dislocation of memory, these nightmares of cruelty and lust ... something terrible was going on here.

And Regis had Danilo to protect. He came here for that, and he vowed again to fulfill it

Weighed down under the unendurable burden of laran, knowing guilt even for his dreams, shouldering the heavy knowledge of what he had forgotten, Regis dared not sleep again. He thought instead. The mistake was in sending him to Nevarsin, he knew. Anywhere else he could have come to terms with it He knew, rationally, that what had happened to him, what was happening to him now, was nothing to bring such catastrophic guilt and self‑hatred. He had even minded when the cadets thought him Dyan's minion.

But that was before he knew what Dyan had done....

Dyan's shadow lay heavy on Regis. And heavier on Danilo. Regis knew he could not bear it if Dani were to think of him as he thought of Dyan ... even if Regis thought of him that way....

His mind reeling under it, Regis knew suddenly that be had a choice. Faced by this unendurable self‑knowledge, he could do again what he had done when he was twelve years old, and this time there would be no lifting of the barrier. He could forget again. He could cut off the unwelcome, unwanted self‑knowledge, cut off, with it, the undesired, unendurable laran.

He could be free of it all, and this time no one would ever be able to break through it again. Be free of it all: heritage, and responsibility. If he had no laran, it would not matter if he left die Comyn, went out into the Empire never to return. He even left an heir to take his place. He had done it once. He could do it again. He could meet Danilo in the morning with no guilty knowledge and no fear, meet him innocently,

as a friend. He need never again fear that Danilo could reach his mind and learn what Regis now felt he would rather die than reveal.

He had done it once. Even Lew could not break that barrier.

The temptation was almost unendurable. Dry‑mouthed, Regis looked at the sleeping boy lying heavily across his feet To be free again, he thought, free of it ail.

He had accepted Dani's oath, though, as a Hastur. Had accepted his service, and his love.

He was no longer free. He'd said it to Danilo, and it was true for him, too. They had no choice, it had come to them, and they had only the choice to misuse it or meet it with honor.

Regis did not know if he could meet it with honor, but he knew he'd have to try. Chickens couldn't go back into eggs.

Either way, there was nothing but hell ahead.

Chapter TWENTY

(Lew Alton's narrative)

Shortly after sunrise I let myself fall into a fitful drowse. Some time later I was awakened by a strange outcry, women screaming‑no, wailing, a sound I had heard only once before ... on my trip into the backwoods, in a house where there was a death.

I threw on some clothes and ran out into the corridor. It was crowded, servants rushing to and fro, no one ready to stop and answer my questions. I met Marjorie at the foot of the little stair from her tower. She was as white as her chamber robe.

"Darling, what is it?"

"I'm not sure. It's the death‑wail!" She put out a hand and forcibly stopped one of the women rushing by. "What is it, what's that wailing, what's happened?"

The woman gasped. "It's the old lord, domna Marguerida, your guardian, he died in the night‑"

As soon as I heard the words I knew I had been expecting it. I felt stricken, grieved. Even in such a short time I had come to love my uncle, and beyond my personal grief I was dismayed at what this must mean. Not only for the Domain of Aldaran, but for all Darkover. His reign had been a long one, and a wise one.

"Thyra," Marjorie whispered, "Evanda pity us, what will she do, how will she live with this?" She clutched my arm. "He's her father, Lew! Did you know? My father owned to her, but she was none of his, and it was her doing, her mistake, that has killed him!"

"Not hers," I said gently. "Sharra." I had begun to believe, now, that we were all helpless before it. Tomorrow‑ no, today, the sooner the better‑it should go back to the forge‑folk. Desideria had been right: it had lain safe in their keeping, should never have left them. I quailed, thinking of

what Beltran would say. Yet Kadarin had pledged Desideria to abide my judgment.

First I must visit the death chamber, pay a kinsman's respects. The high wailing of the death‑cries went on from inside, fraying my already ragged nerves to shreds. Marjorie clutched desperately at my fingers. As we entered the great chamber I heard Thyra's voice, bursting out, almost screaming:

"Cease that pagan caterwauling! I'll have none of it here!" One or two of the women stopped in mid‑wail; others, halfhearted, stopped and started again. Beltran's voice was a harsh shout:

"You who killed him, Thyra, would you deny him proper respect?"

She was standing at the foot of the bed, her head thrown back, defiant. She sounded at the ragged end of endurance. "You superstitious idiot, do you really believe Ms spirit has stayed here to listen to the yowling over his corpse? Is this your idea of a seemly sound of mourning?"

Beltran said, more gently, "More seemly, perhaps, than this kind of brawling, foster‑sister." He looked as you would expect after a long night of watching, and a death. He gestured to the women. "Go, go, finish, your wailing elsewhere. The days are long gone when anyone must stand and wail to scare away demons from the dead."

Kermiac had been decently laid out, his hands laid crosswise on his breast, his eyes closed. Marjorie made the cristoforo sign across the old man's brow, then across her own. She bent and pressed her lips for a moment to the cold brow, whispering, "Rest in peace, my lord. Holy Bearer of Burdens, give us strength to bear our loss . . ." Then she turned quietly away and bent over the weeping Thyra.

"He is past all forgiveness or blame, darling. Don't torment yourself this way. It is for us to bear now, for the living. Come away, love, come away."

Thyra collapsed into terrible sobbing and let Marjorie lead her out of the room. I stood looking down at the calm, composed old face. For a moment it seemed my own father was lying here before me. I bent and kissed the cold brow, as Marjorie had done.

I said to Beltran, "I knew him such a little while. It is my great loss that I did not come here before." I embraced my kinsman, cheek to cheek, feeling the pain of his grief added to my own. Beltran turned away, pale and composed, as

Regis came into the room, Danilo in his wake. Regis spoke a brief formal phrase of condolence, held out his hand. Beltran bowed over it but he did not speak. Had his grief dimmed his awareness of courtesy? He should have bidden Regis welcome as his guest; somehow it made me uneasy that he did not. Danilo made the cristoforo sign over the old man's brow, as Marjorie had done, whispering, I suppose, one of their prayers, then made a formal bow to Beltran.

I followed them outside. Regis looked as if he'd had the same nightmare‑ridden sleep I had, and he was fully barriered against me‑a new thing, and a disquieting one. He said, "He was your kinsman, Lew. I'm sorry for your grief. And I know my grandfather respected him. It's fitting there should be someone here from the Hasturs, to extend our condolences. Things will be different, now, in the mountains."

I had been thinking that myself. The sight of Regis almost automatically taking his place as the formal representative of Comyn was disquieting. I knew his grandfather would approve, but I was surprised.

"He told me, Regis, shortly before his death, that he hoped for a day when you and Beltran could sit down together and plan a better future for our world."

Regis smiled bleakly. "That will be for Prince Derik. The Hasturs are not kings now."

I gave him a skeptical smile. "Yet they stand nearest the throne. I have no doubt Derik will choose you for his nearest counselor, as his kinsmen chose your grandsire."

"If you love me, Lew, don't wish a crown on me," Regis said with a shudder of revulsion. "But enough of politics for now. I will remain for the funeral, of course; I owe Beltran no courtesies, but I'll not insult his father's death bed, either."

If Kermiac's untimely death had delayed Regis' immediate departure, it must also, in all decency, delay my ultimatum to Beltran. I anticipated less trouble now that he had had a bitter taste of the dangers inherent in Sharra. Kadarin might be less tractable. Yet I had faith in his good sense and his affection for all of us.

And so, all those days of mourning for the old lord of Ald‑aran, none of us spoke of Sharra or Beltran's plans. During the days I could guard myself against the memory and the fear; only in terrifying dreams did it return, claw at me with talons of torment....

The funeral services were over; the mountain lords who had come to pay their respects to the dead, and to give alle‑

giance to Beltran, departed one by one. Beltran made an appearance of grave dignity, solemnly accepting their pledges of amity and support, yet I sensed in all of the mountain men an awareness that an era had irrevocably come to an end. Beltran was aware of it, too, and I knew it hardened his resolve not to run peaceably along the track his father had made‑resting on his father's accomplishments and accepting their homage because of their goodwill to Kermiac‑but to carve his own place,

We were so much alike, he and I, I have known twins less like. And yet we were so different. I had not known he was personally ambitious, too. I had lost the last traces of personal ambition at Arilinn, had resented Father's attempts to rouse it in me, in the Guards. Now I was deeply disturbed. Would he let his plans slip through his fingers without protest? It would take all my persuasion, all my tact, to convince him to a course less dangerous for all our world. Somehow I must make it clear to him that I still shared his dreams, that I would work for his aims and help him to the utmost, even though I had irrevocably renounced the means he and Kadarin had chosen.

When the mountain lords had departed, Beltran courteously asked Regis and Danilo to remain for a few more days. I had not expected either of them to agree and was ready to try to persuade them, but to my surprise, Regis had accepted the invitation. Maybe it was not so surprising. He looked dreadfully ill. I should have talked to him, tried to find out what ailed him. Yet whenever I tried to speak to him alone be rebuffed me, always turning the conversation to indifferent things. I wondered why. As a child he had loved me; did he think me a traitor, or was it something more personal?

Such was my state when we gathered that morning in the small fireside hall where we had met and worked together so often. Beltran bore the marks of stress and grief and he looked older, too, sobered by the new weight of responsibil‑ity. Thyra was pale and composed, but I knew how hard‑won that composure had been. Kadarin, too, was haggard, grieved. Rafe, though subdued, had suffered the least; his grief was only that of a child who had lost a kindly guardian. He was too young to see the deeper implications of this.

Marjorie had that heartbreaking remoteness I had begun to see in her lately, the isolation of every Keeper. Through it I sensed a deeper disquiet Beltran was her guardian now. If he and I were to quarrel, the future for us was not bright

These were my kinsmen. Together we had built a beautiful dream. My heart ached that I must be the one to shatter it.

But when Danilo and Regis were ceremoniously escorted in, I felt again a glimmer of hope. Perhaps, perhaps, if I could persuade them to help us, there was still a way to salvage that dream!

Beltran began with the utmost courtesy, making formal apologies to Danilo for the way his men had exceeded their orders. If the words had more of diplomacy than real regret, I supposed only the strongest of telepaths could feel the difference. He ended by saying, "Let the end I am striving for outweigh personal considerations. A day is coming for Darkover when mountain men and the Domains must forget their ages‑old differences and work together for the good of our world. Can we not agree on that at least, Regis Hastur, that you and I speak together for a world, and that our fathers and grandfathers should have wrought together and not separately for its well‑being?"

Regis made a formal bow. I noticed he was wearing his own clothes again. "For your sake, Lord Beltran, I wish I were more skilled in the arts of diplomacy, so that I might more fittingly represent the Hasturs here. As it is, I can speak only for myself as a private individual. I hope the long peace between Comyn and Aldaran may endure for our lifetimes and beyond."

"And that it may not be a peace under the thumbs of the Terrans," Beltran added. Regis merely bowed again and said nothing.

Kadarin said with a grim smile, "I see that already you are skilled, Lord Regis, in the greatest of the Comyn arts, that of saying nothing in pleasant words. Enough of this fencing‑match! Beltran, tell them what it is you hope to do."

Beltran began to outline, again, his plans to make Darkover independent, self‑sufficient and capable of star‑travel. I listened again, falling for the last time under the sway of that dream. I wished‑all the gods there ever were know how I wished‑that his plans might work. And they might. If Danilo could help us uncover enough telepaths, if Beltran's own latent powers could be wakened. //, if, if! And, above all, if we had some source of power other than the impossible Sharra....

Beltran concluded, and I knew our thoughts ran for the moment at least along the same track: "We have reached a point where we are dependent on your help, Danilo. You are

a catalyst telepath; that is the rarest of all psi powers, and if it is in our service, our chances of success are enormously raised. It goes without saying that you will be rewarded beyond your dreams. You will help us, will you not?"

Danilo met the ingratiating smile with a slight frown of puzzlement. "If what you are doing is so just and righteous, Lord Aldaran, why did you resort to violence? Why not seek me out, explain this to me, ask my aid?"

"Come, come," said Beltran good‑naturedly, "can't you forgive me for that?"

"I forgive you readily, sir. Indeed, I am a little grateful. Otherwise I might have been charmed into doing what you wish without really thinking about it. Now I am not nearly so sure. I've had too much experience with people who speak fine words, but will do whatever they think justified to get what they want. If your cause is as good as you say, I should think any telepath would be glad to help you. If I am made sure of that by someone I can trust, and if my lord gives me leave"‑he turned and made Regis a formal bow‑"then I am at your service. But I must first be wholly assured that your motives and your methods are as good as you say"‑he looked Beltran straight hi the eyes, and I gasped aloud at his audacity‑"and not just fine words to cover a will to power and personal ambition."

Beltran turned as red as a turkey‑cock. He was not used to being crossed, and for this shabby nobody to read him a lesson in ethics was more than be could face. I thought for a moment that he would strike the boy. Probably he remembered that Danilo was the only catalyst telepath known to be adult and fully functioning, for he controlled himself, although I could see the signs of his inward wrath. He said, "Will you trust Lew Alton's judgment?"

"I have no reason not to trust it, but. . ." And he turned to Regis. I knew he had reached the end of his own defiance.

I knew Regis was as frightened as Danilo, but just as resolute. He said, "I will trust no man's judgment until I have heard what he has to say."

Kadarin said shortly, "Will you two boys, who know noth‑mg of matrix mechanics, presume to sit in judgment upon a trained Arilinn telepath about matters of his own competence?"

Regis gave me a pleading look. After a long pause, during which I could almost feel him searching for the right words, he said, "To judge his competence‑no. To judge whether I

can conscientiously support his ... his means and motives‑ for that I can trust no man's judgment but my own. I will listen to what he has to say."

Beltran said, 'Tell them, then, Lew, that we must do this if Darkover is to survive as an independent world, not a slave colony of the Empire!"

All their eyes were suddenly on me. This was the moment of truth, and a moment of great temptation. I opened my mouth to speak. Darkover's future was a cause justifying all things, and we needed Dani.

But did I serve Darkover or my own private ends? Before the boy whose career was ruined by a misuse of power, I discovered I could not lie. I could not give Danilo the reassurance it would take to enlist his aid, then frantically try to find some way to make the lie true.

I said, "Beltran, your aims are good and I trust them. But we cannot do it with the matrix we have to work with. Not with Sharra, Beltran. It is impossible, completely impossible."

Kadarin swung around. I had seen his rage only once before, turned on Beltran. Now it was turned on me, and it struck me like a blow. "What folly is this, Lew? You told me Sharra has all the power we could possibly need!"

I tried to barrier that assault and hold my own wrath firmly under control. The unleashed anger of an Alton can kill, and this man was my dear friend. I said, "Power, yes, all the power we could ever need, for this work or any. But it's essentially uncontrollable. It's been used as a weapon and now it's unfit for anything but a weapon. It is‑" I hesitated, trying to formulate my vague impressions. "It's hungry for power and destruction."

"Comyn superstition again!" Thyra flung at me. "A matrix is a machine. No more and no less."

"Most matrices, perhaps," I said, "though I am beginning to think that even at Arilinn we know far too little of them to use them as recklessly as we do. But this one is more." I hesitated again, struggling for words for a knowledge, an experience which was basically beyond words. "It brings something into our world which is not of this world at all. It belongs to other dimensions, other places or spaces. It's a gateway, and once it's opened, it's impossible to shut completely." I looked from face to face. "Can't you see what it's doing to us?" I pleaded. "It's rousing recklessness, a failure of caution, a lust for power‑" I had felt it myself, the temptation to lie ruthlessly to Regis and Danilo, just to enlist their aid. "Thyra,

you know what you did under its impulse, and your foster‑father lies dead. I'll never believe you would have done that, knowingly, on your own! It's so much stronger than we are, it's playing with us like toys!"

Kadarin said, "Desideria used it with none of this fuss."

"But she used it as a weapon," I said, "and in a righteous cause. She had no wish for personal power, so that it could not take her and corrupt her, as it has done with us; she gave it over to the forge‑folk, to lie unused and harmless on their altars."

Beltran said harshly, "Are you saying it has corrupted meT

I looked squarely at him and said, "Yes. Even your father's death has not made you see reason."

Kadarin said, "You talk like a fool, Lew. I hadn't expected this sort of whining cant from you. If we have the power to give Darkover its place in the Empire, how can we shrink from anything we must do?"

"My friend," I pleaded, "listen to me. We cannot use Sharra's matrix for the kind of controlled power you wish to show the Terrans. It cannot be used to power a spaceship; I would not trust it even to control the helicopter now. It is a weapon, only a weapon, and it is not weapons we need. It is technology."

Kadarin's smile was fierce. "But if a weapon is all we have, then we will use that weapon to get what we must from the Terrans! Once we show them what we can do with it‑"

My spine iced over with a deadly cold. I saw again the vision: flames rising from Caer Donn, the great form of fire bending down with a finger of destruction.,..

"No!" I almost shouted. "I'll have nothing to do with it!"

I rose and looked around the circle, saying desperately, "Can't you see how this has corrupted us? Was it for war, for murder, for violence, blackmail, rum, that we forged our link in such love and harmony? Was this your dream, Beltran, when we spoke together of a better world?"

He said savagely, "If we must fight, it will be the fault of the Terrans for denying us our rights! I would rather do it peacefully, but if they force us to fight them‑"

Kadarin, coming and laying his hands on my shoulders with real affection said, "Lew, you're foolishly squeamish. Once they know what we can do, there will certainly be no need to do it. But it places us in a position of equal power with the Terrans for once. Can't you see? Even if we never

use it, we must have the power, simply in order to control the situation and not be forced to submit!"

I knew what he was trying to say, but I could see the fatal flaw. I said, "Bob, we cannot bluff with Sharra. It wants ruin and destruction ... can't you feel that?"

"It is like the sword in the fairy tale," Rafe said. "Remember what it said on the scabbard? 'Draw me never unless I may drink blood.'"

We swung to look at the child and he smiled nervously under all our eyes.

"Rafe's right," I said harshly. "We can't loose Sharra unless we really mean to use it, and no sane human beings would do that."

Kadarin said, "Marjorie. You're the Keeper. Do you believe this superstitious drivel?"

Her voice was not steady, but she stretched her hand to me. "I believe Lew knows more about matrices than any of us, or all of us together. You pledged, Bob, you swore to De‑sideria to be guided by Lew's judgment. I won't work against it."

Beltran said, "You're both part‑Terran! Are you two on their side then, against Darkover?"

I gasped at the old slur. I would never have believed it of Beltran. Marjorie flared. "It was you, yourself, who pointed out not a moment ago that we are all Terran! There is no 'side,' only a common good for all! Does the left hand chop off the right?"

I felt Marjorie struggle for control, felt Kadarin, too, fighting to overcome his flaming anger. I had confidence stil! in his integrity, when he took the tune to control that vicious rage which was the one chink in the strong armor of his will.

Kadarin spoke gently at last: "Lew, I know there is some truth hi what you say. I trust you, bredu." The word moved me more that I could express. "But what alternative have we, my friend? Are you trying to say that we should simply give up our plans, our hopes, our dream? It was your dream, too. Must we forget what we all believed in?"

"The Gods forbid," I said, shaken. "It is not the dream I would see put aside, only Sharra's part in it." Then I appealed directly to Beltran. He was the one I must convince.

"Let Sharra go back to the forge‑folk's keeping. They have held it harmless all these years. No, kinsman, hear me out," I pleaded. "Do this, and I will go to Arilinn; I will speak with telepaths at Hali, at Neskaya and Corandolis and Dalereuth.

I will explain to all of them what you are doing for Darkover, plead for you, if need be, before the Comyn Council itself. Do you honestly believe that you are the only man on Darkover who chafes under Terran rule and control? I am as certain as that I stand here, that they will come to ' your support and work with you freely and wholeheartedly, far better than I alone can do. And they have access to every known, monitored matrix on Darkover, and to the records of what was done with them in old times. We can find one safe for our purpose. Then I will work with you myself, and as long as you like, for your real aims. Not bluff with a terrible weapon, but a total, concerted effort by all of us, every one of us together, to recover the real strengths of Darkover, something positive to give the Terrans and the Empire, in return for what they can give us."

I met Regis' eyes, and suddenly time was out of focus again. I saw him in a great hall, crowded with men and women, hundreds and hundreds of them, every telepath on Darkover. It slid away and the eight of us were alone in the little fireside room again. I said to Regis and Danilo, "You would cooperate in such an endeavor, wouldn't you?"

Regis, his eyes gleaming with excitement, said, "With all my heart, Lord Beltran. I am certain that even Comyn Council would put all the telepaths and towers of Darkover at your service I"

This was a greater dream than the one which had drawn us together! It must be! I had seen ill Beltran must catch fire from it too!

Beltran stared at us all, and before he spoke my heart sank. There was icy contempt in his voice and words.

"You damnable forsworn traitorl" he flung at me. "Get me under the heel of Comyn, would you? That I should get on my knees before the Hali'imyn and take from them as a gift the power which is my right? Better even to do as my doddering old father did, and grovel to the Terrans! But I am lord of Aldaran now, and I will plunge all Darkover into red chaos first! Never! Never, damn you! NeverI" His voice rose to a hoarse shriek of rage.

"Beltran, I beg of you‑"

"Beg! Beg, you stinking half‑caste! As you would make me beg, grovel‑"

I clenched my fists, aching with the need to fall on him, beat that sneer off his face . . . no. That was not his true self, either, but Sharra,

"I am sorry, kinsman. You leave me no choice." Whatever happened after, the closeness of this circle was broken; nothing could ever be the same. "Kadarin, you placed Sharra in my hands and pledged to abide my judgment. Before it is too late, the circle must be broken, the link destroyed, the matrix insulated before it controls us all."

"No!" Thyra cried. "If you dare not handle it, I do!"

"Breda‑"

"No," Marjorie said, her voice shaking, "no, Thyra. It is the only way. Lew's right, it can destroy us all. Bob." She faced Kadarin, her golden eyes swimming in tears. "You made me Keeper. By that authority, I have to say it" Her voice broke in a sob. "The link must be broken."

"No!" Kadarin said harshly, repulsing her outstretched hands. "I did not want you to be Keeper; I feared just this‑ that you would be swayed by Lew! Sharra's circle must be preserved! You know you cannot break it without my consent!" He stared fiercely at her, and I thought of a hawk I had once seen, hovering over its prey.

Beltran stood in front of Danilo, facing him down. "I ask you for the last time. Will you do what I ask?"

Danilo was trembling. I recalled that he had been the youngest and most timid of the cadets. His voice shook as he said, "N‑no, my lord Aldaran. I will not."

Beltran turned his eyes on Regis. His voice was level and grim. "Regis Hastur. You are not now in the Domains, but in Aldaran's stronghold. You came here of your own free will, and you will not depart from here until you command your minion to use his powers as I shall direct."

"My paxman is free to follow his own will and conscience. He has refused you; I support his decision. Now, Lord Aldaran, I respectfully request your leave to depart."

Beltran shouted in the mountain tongue. The doors suddenly burst open and a dozen of his guards burst into the fireside room. I realized, in sudden consternation, that he must have meant this all along. One of them approached Regis, who was unarmed; Danilo quickly drew his dagger and stepped between them, but was swiftly disarmed. Beltran's men dragged them back out of the way.

Marjorie faced Beltran in angry reproach.

"Beltran, you cannot! This is treachery! He was our father's guest!"

But not my guest," Beltran said, and the words were a snarl, "and I have no patience with barbarian codes under a

pretense of honor! Now for you, Lew Alton. Will you honor your pledge to us?"

"You speak of honor?" The words seemed to rise from

some hidden spring within me, and I spat on the floor at his

feet. "I honor my pledge to you as you honor your father's

memory!" I turned my back on him. Within the hour I would

f be in touch with Arilinn by matrix, and the Comyn would

rfcnow what Beltran planned . . .

I had forgotten the link still strong between us all. Kadarin said, "Oh, no, you won't," and gestured to the guards. "Take him!"

My hand fell to sword‑hilt‑and found, of course, nothing. Wear no sword, at kinsman's board. I had trusted in my safety in my cousin's own house! Two guards seized me, held me motionless between them. Kadarin came to where I was held and raised his hand to my throat, jerking the laces of my tunic undone. He raised his hand to the leather bag con‑taming my personal matrix.

I began to struggle now in deadly fear. It had never been more than a few inches from my body since I had been keyed into it when I was twelve years old. I had been warned what it meant to have anyone else touch it. Kadarin hauled at the leather bag; I brought my knee up into his groin. He yelled with pain, and I felt the shock of the agony through my own body, doubling me up, but it only strengthened his fury. He beckoned to the rest of the guards. It took four of them to do it, but before long I was spread‑eagled on the floor, arms and legs pinioned down, while Kadarin knelt atop me, straddling my helpless body, his fists flailing blows on my face. I felt blood breaking from my nose, my eyes; I gagged " on my own blood, streaming down my throat from a broken tooth. I could no longer see Marjorie for the blood in my eyes, but I heard her shrieking, sobbing, begging. Were they hurting her too?

Kadarin drew his dagger. He stared straight down into my eyes, his face flickering with that unholy flame. He said between his teeth, "I should cut your throat now and save us all some trouble."

With a swift, downward slash, he cut the thong that held the leather bag; seized it between his hands and wrenched it away.

Until the day I die, I shall never forget that agony. I heard Marjorie scream, a long, death‑like shriek of pain and terror, felt my whole body arch backward in a convulsive spasm,

then fall limp. I heard my own voice screaming hoarsely, felt steel fingers clutch at my heart, felt my breathing falter. Every nerve in my body was in spasm. I had never known I could live through such anguish. Red haze blurring what was left of my sight, I felt myself dying and instinctively I heard my own tortured shriek:

"Father! Father!"

Then it all went dark and blind and I thought, This is death.

I don't know what happened in the next three days. For all I know, I was dead. I know it was three days because I was told so later; it might have been thirty seconds or thirty years later that I came up to foggy awareness that I was alive, and that I would much rather not be.

I was lying on the bed in my quarters in Castle Aldaran. I felt bruised, sick, every separate bone and muscle in my body with a separate ache. I staggered into the bathroom and stared at my reflection in the mirror. From the way my face looked, I can only imagine that my body kept on fighting long after I wasn't in it any more.

There were a couple of broken teeth ragged in my mouth, and they hurt like hell. My eyes were so bruised and swollen I could hardly get them open to see. My face had been cut by something hard, the big rings Kadarin wore, maybe. There were going to be scars.

Worse than the physical pain, which was bad enough, was the terrible sense of emptiness. Drearily, I wondered why I had not died. Some telepaths do die of shock, if they are forcibly severed from their own personal keyed matrices. I was just one of the unlucky ones.

Marjorie. My last memory was hearing her scream. Had they tortured her too?

If Kadarin had harmed her I would kill him . ..

The thought was wrenching pain. He had been my friend‑he could not have pretended‑not to a telepath. Sharra had corrupted him....

I wished he had cut my throat instead.

Sharra. I went to look for the matrix, but it was gone. I was glad to be rid of the damnable thing, but I was afraid, too. Would it let us go?

I drank cold water, trying to lessen the dry sickness in me. My hand kept fumbling for the place around my neck where the matrix should have been. I couldn't think straight or see

properly, and there was a constant dull ringing in my ears. I was really surprised I had survived this shock.

Slowly I realized something else. Sore and aching as I was, there was no blood anywhere on my face or garments. Nor had I fouled my clothes. Someone had therefore been here, tended my wounds after a fashion, put clean clothes on me. Kadarin, when he came to take away the Sharra matrix?

I found I very much disliked the thought of Kadarin coming here, handling my unconscious body. I clenched my teeth, found out it hurt too much and made myself relax. Another score to settle with him.

Well, he'd done his worse, and I was still alive.

I tried the door cautiously. As I had suspected, it was bolted on the outside.

I ached so much that the thought of a long hot bath was tempting. The thought of being surprised naked and defenseless in the bathtub, however, removed all temptation from the idea. I soaked a cloth in the hot water and bathed my bruised face.

I ransacked the apartment, but of course my sword was gone, and the dagger, too. When I rummaged in my saddlebags for my heavy traveling boots, even the small skean‑dhu in the boot was gone from its sheath.

A grim smile touched my face. Did they think me helpless? I had my Guardsman training still, and Kadarin might‑he just might‑despise me enough to come back alone.

I dragged up a chair‑I still wasn't steady enough on my feet to stand for what might be hours waiting for him‑and sat down facing the bolted door.

Sooner or later someone would come. And I would be ready.

It was a long time before I heard a tiny metallic rasp from the door. Someone was stealthily rumbling to draw the bolt back. Finally the door began, very slowly, to open inward.

I leaped, grabbed the hand that had just begun to steal inward and jerked hard‑and felt the delicate wrist too late to arrest the force of the swing. Marjorie skidded inside, gasping, slammed against the door‑frame. I dropped her wrist as if it was burned. She staggered and I held her quickly upright

"Quick," she whispered, "shut the door!"

"Gods defend us," I whispered, staring in horror at her. "I could have killed you!"

"I'm glad you're able‑" She drew a quick gasp. "Lew, your face! Oh God ..."

"The loving attention of my kinsmen." I shut the door, shoved the heavy chair up against it.

"I begged them‑I begged them‑"

I laid my arms around her. "Poor love, I know, I heard you. Did they hurt you?"

"No, even Beltran didn't hurt me, though I scratched and bit him." She said, her voice coming in gasps, "I have your matrix for you. Here, quick." She held the small leather bag out to me. I thrust it inside my tunic, next to my skin. It seemed that my vision cleared at once, the dull ringing inside my head quieted. Even my heart beat more solidly. I was still battered and aching from the terrible beating I had taken, but I felt alive again, "How did you get it?"

"Bob made me take it," she said. "He said I was Keeper, only I could handle it without hurting you. He said you'd die otherwise. So I took it. Lew, only to save you. I swear it‑"

"I know. If anyone but a Keeper had kept it long, I would certainly have died." Not that I credited Kadarin with that much kindness for my well‑being. He probably knew what too much handling of someone else's keyed matrix would do to him.

"Where is the Sharra matrix?"

"Thyra has it, I think," she said doubtfully. 'Tin not sure.**

"How did you get in here, Marjorie? Are there guards watching me?"

She nodded slowly. "All the guards know me," she said at last "Most of them were my father's friends and have known me since they held me on their knees. They trust me ... and I brought them drugged wine. I'm ashamed of that, Lew, but what else could I do? But we must get away at once, as quickly as we can. When they wake up they will know, and tell Beltran . . ." Her voice failed.

"He should thank you for saving the small remnant of his honor," I said grimly. Then I realized she had said "we."

"You will come with me?"

"I must, I dare not stay after what I have done. Lew, don't you want me? Do you think I had any part in ... oh

I held her tight. "Can you doubt it? But in these mountains, at this season‑"

"I was born in these mountains; I've traveled in worse weather than this."

"We must be gone, then, before the guards wake. What did you give them?"

She told me and I shook my head. "No good. They'll wake within the hour. But maybe I can do better now." I touched the matrix. "Let's go." Hastily I gathered my things together. She had dressed warmly, I saw, heavy boots, a long riding‑skirt. I looked out the windows. It was nightfall, but by some god's mercy it was not snowing.

In the dim hallway two figures sprawled in sodden, snoring sleep. I bent and listened to their breathing. Marjorie gasped, "Don't kill them, Lew. They've done you no harm!"

I wasn't so sure. My ribs still ached from the weight of somebody's boots. "I can do better than killing them," I said, cradling the matrix between my palms. Swiftly, incisively, I drew into the minds of the drugged men. Sleep, I commanded, sleep long and well, sleep till the rising sun wakes you. Marjorie never came here, you drank no wine, drugged or wholesome.

The poor devils would have to answer to Beltran for sleeping at their post. But I'd done what I could.

I tiptoed down the corridor, Marjorie hugging the wall behind me. Outside the great guest suite were two more drugged guards; Marjorie had been thorough. I stooped over them, sent them, too, more deeply into their dreams.

My hands are strong. I made shorter work of the bolts than Marjorie had done. Briefly I wondered at the kind of hospitality that puts a bolt on the outside of a guest room door for any contingency. As I stepped inside, Danilo quickly stepped between me and Regis. Then he recognized me and fell back.

Regis said, "I thought they'd killed you‑" His eyes fell on my face. "It looks as if they'd tried! How did you get out?"

"Never mind," I said. "Get on your riding‑things, unless you love Aldaran's hospitality too well to leave it!"

Regis said, "They came and took away my sword, and Danilo's dagger." For some reason the loss of the dagger seemed to grieve him most. I had no time to wonder why. I went and hauled at the senseless guardsmen's sword‑belts, gave one to Regis, belted the other around my own waist. It was too long for me, but better than nothing. I gave the daggers to Marjorie and Danilo. "I have repaid my kinsman's theft," I said, "now let's get out of here."

"Where shall we go?"

I had made my decision swiftly, "I'll take Marjorie to Arilinn," I said. "You two just get away as fast and far as you can, before all hell breaks loose."

Regis nodded. "We'll take the straight road to Thendara, and get the word to Comyn."

Danilo said, "Shouldn't we all stay together?"

"No, Dani. One of us may get through if the others are recaptured, and the Comyn must be warned, whatever happens. There is an out‑of‑control, unmonitored matrix being used here. Tell them that, if I cannot!" Then I hesitated. "Regis, don't take the straight road! It's suicide! It's the first place they'll look!"

"Then maybe I can draw pursuit away from you," he said. "Anyway, it's you and Marjorie they'll be after. Danilo and I are nothing to them."

I wasn't so sure. Then I saw what I could not mistake. I said, "No. We cannot separate while I send you on the route of danger. You are ill." Threshold sickness, I finally realized. "I cannot send the heir to Hastur into such danger!"

"Lew, we must separate." He looked straight up into my eyes. "Someone must get through to warn the Comyn."

What he said was true and I knew it. "Can you endure the journey?" I asked.

Danilo said, "I'll look after him, and anyway he's better off on the road than in Beltran's hands, especially once you've escaped." This was true also and I knew it. Danilo was quickly separating the contents of Regis' saddlebags, discarding nearly everything. "We've got to travel light. There's food here from Regis' journey north ,.." He quickly divided it, rolling meat and fruit, hard bread, into two small parcels. He handed the larger one to me and said, "You'll be on the back roads, further away from villages."

I stuffed it into the inside pocket of my riding cloak and looked at Marjorie. "Can we get out unseen?"

"That's easy enough, word won't have reached the stables. We'll get horses, too."

Marjorie led us out a small side door near the stables. Most of the stablemen were sleeping; she roused one old man who knew her as Kermiac's ward. It was eccentric, perhaps, for her to set forth at nightfall with some of Beltran's honored guests, but it wasn't for an old horse‑keeper to question. Most of them had seen me with her and had heard the castle gossip that a marriage was being arranged. If he had

heard of the quarrel, this would have accounted for it in his mind, that Marjorie and I had run away to marry against Beltran's will. I'm sure this accounted for the looks of sympathy the old groom gave us. He found mounts for us all. I thought tardily of the escort from Comyn, who had come here with me.

I could order them to go with Regis and Danilo, protect them. But that would make a stir. Marjorie said softly, "If they don't know where you've gone, they cannot be made to tell," and that decided me.

If we rode hard till morning, and Beltran's guards slept as I had insured they would, we might be beyond pursuit. We led our horses toward the gates; the groom let us out. I lifted Marjorie to her saddle, readied myself to mount. She looked back with a faint sadness but, seeing me watching, she smiled bravely and turned her face to the road.

I turned to Regis, holding him for a moment in a kinsman's embrace. Would I ever see him again? I thought I had turned my back on Comyn, yet the tie was stronger than I knew. I had thought him a child, easily flattered, easily swayed. No. Less so than I was myself. I told myself firmly not to be morbid, and kissed him on the cheek, letting him go. "The Gods ride with you, bredu," I said, turning away. His hand clung to my arm for a moment, and in a split second I saw, for the last time, the frightened child I had taken into the fire‑lines; he remembered, too, but the very memory of conquered fear strengthened us both. Still, I could not forget that he had been placed in my charge. I said hesitantly, "I am not sure ... I do not like letting you take the road of most danger, Regis."

He gripped my forearms with both hands and looked straight into my eyes. He said fiercely, "Lew, you too are the heir to your Domain! And I have an heir, you don't! If it comes to that, better me than you!" I was shocked speechless by the words. Yet they were true. My father was old and ill, Marcus, so far as we knew, was without laran,

I was the last male Alton. And it had taken Regis to remind me!"

This was a man, a Hastur. I bowed my head in acquiescence, knowing we stood at that moment before something older, more powerful than either of us. Regis drew a long breath, let go of my hands, and said, "We'll meet in Then‑dara, if the Gods will it, cousin."

I knew my voice was shaking. I said, 'Take care of him, Dani."

He answered, "With my life, Dom Lewis," as they swung into their saddles. Without a backward glance, Regis rode away down the path, Danilo a pace behind him.

I mounted, taking the opposite fork of the road, Marjorie at my side. I thanked all the gods I had ever heard of, and all the rest I hadn't, for the time I had spent with maps on my northward journey. It was a long way to Arilinn, through some of the worst country on Darkover, and I wondered If Marjorie could endure it.

Overhead two of the moons swung, violet‑blue, green‑blue, shedding soft light on the snow‑clad hills. We rode for hours in that soft night light. I was wholly aware of Marjorie: her grief and regret at leaving her childhood home, the desperation which had driven her to this. She must never regret it! I pledged my own life she should not regret.

The green face of Idriel sank behind the crest of the pass; above us was a bank of cold fog, stained blood color with the coming sunrise. We must begin to look somewhere for shelter; I was sure the hunt would be up soon after daylight. I was enough in contact with Marjorie to know when her weariness became almost unendurable. But when I spoke of it, she said, "Another mile or so. On the slope of the next hill, far back from the roadway, is a summer pasture. The herd‑women have probably taken their beasts down into the valleys, so it will be empty."

The herdwomen's hut was concealed within a grove of nut trees. As we drew near my heart sank, for I could hear the soft lowing of herd aminals, and as we dismounted I saw one of the women, barefoot in the melting snow, her hair long and tangled around her face, clad in a ragged leather skirt. Marjorie, however, seemed pleased.

"We're in luck, Lew. Her mother was one of my mother's people." She called softly, Mhari!"

The woman turned, her face lighting up. "Domna Mar‑guerida!" She spoke a dialect too ancient for me to follow; Marjorie answered her softly in the same patois. Mhari grinned widely and led us into the hut.

Most of the inside was taken up with a couple of dirty straw pallets on which an older woman lay, entangled with half a dozen small children and a few puppies. The only furniture was a wooden bench. Mhari gestured to us to sit on it,

and ladled us out bowls of hot, coarse, nut‑porridge. Marjorie almost collapsed on the bench; Mhari came to draw oS her ;i. riding‑boots.

"What did she say to you, Marjorie? What did you tell her?"

"The truth. That Kermiac was dead, that on, his deathbed v he had promised me to you, and that you and Beltran had quarreled, so we are going into the lowlands to marry. She has promised that neither she nor her friend, nor any of the children, will say a word of our being here." Marjorie took another spoonful of the porridge. She was almost too weary to lift her spoon to her mouth. I was glad to down my portion, to put aside my sword and haul off my boots and later, when the conglomeration of babies and puppies had vacated the mattress, to lie down there in my clothes beside Marjorie. "They should have gone, days ago," Marjorie said, "but Caillean's husband has not come for them. She says they'll be / out all day with the beasts and we can sleep safely here." And indeed, very shortly the clamoring crew of babies and puppies had been fed on the rest of the porridge and hustled outside. I drew Marjorie into the circle of my arm, then realized that in spite of the noise made by children and dogs she was already deeply asleep. The straw smelled of dogs and dirt, but I was too tired to be critical. Marjorie lying in the curve of my arm, I slept too.

The next thing I knew it was late evening, the room was full of puppies and children again, and we rose and ate big hot bowlfuls of vegetable soup that had been simmering over / the fire all day. Then it was time to pull on our boots and go. The women, from their vantage point high on the slopes, had seen no riders, so we were not pursued yet. Marjorie kissed Mhari and the smallest of the babies, and warned me not to offer them money. Mhari and her friend insisted that we take bags of nuts and a loaf or two of the hard‑baked bread, telling us they had too much to load on their pack animals on the way down into the valley for winter. I didn't believe a word of it, but we could not refuse.

The next two or three nights of travel were duplicates of that one. We were blessed with good weather and there was no sign of pursuit. We slept by day, concealed hi herd‑huts, but these were deserted. We had food enough, although we were almost always cold. Marjorie never complained, but I was desperately concerned about her. I could not imagine

any woman I had ever known enduring such a journey. When I said so to Marjorie, she laughed.

"I am no pampered lowland lady, Lew, I am used to hard weather, and I can travel whenever I must, even in dead winter. Thyra would be a better companion, perhaps, she is hardened to long journeys with Bob, in and out of season ..." She fell silent, and quickly turned her face away. I kept silent. I knew how close she bad been to her sister and how she felt about this parting. It was the first time she spoke of her life at Castle Aldaran. It was also the last.

On the fourth or fifth morning we had to ride far into daylight to find any shelter at all. We were now in the wildest part of the mountains, and the roads had dwindled away to mere trails. Marjorie was dropping with weariness; I had half resolved that for once we must find a sheltered place in the woods and sleep in the open, when suddenly, riding into a small clearing, we came on a deserted farmstead.

I wondered how anyone had ever managed to farm these bleak hills, but there were outbuildings and a small stone house, a yard which had once been fenced, a well with wooden piping still splashing water into a broken stone trough in the year‑all wholly deserted. I feared it had become the haunt of birds or bats, but when I forced the door open it was weathertight and almost clean.

The sun was high and warm. While I unsaddled Marjorie bad taken off her cloak and boots and was splashing her hands in the stone trough. She said, "I am past my first sleepiness, and I have not had my clothes off since we set out. I am going to wash; I think it will refresh me better than sleep." She was suiting action to words, pulling off her riding‑skirt and fur‑lined tunic, standing before me in her long heavy shift and petticoat. I came and joined her. The water was icy cold, coming straight down from a mountain spring above us, but it was marvelously refreshing. I marveled how Marjorie could stand barefoot in the last melting runnels of the last night's snowfall, but she seemed not as cold as I was. We sat in the growing warmth of the sun afterward, eating the last of the herdwomen's coarse bread. I found a tree in the yard where the former owners had fanned mushrooms, an intricate system of small wooden pipes directing water down the trunk. Most of the mushrooms were hard and woody, but I found a few small new ones high up, and we ate them at the end of our meal, savoring their sweet freshness.

She stretched a little, sleepily. "I would like to sleep here in the sun," she said. "I am beginning to feel like some night‑bird, never coming out into the light of day."

"But I am not hardened to your mountain weather," I said, "and we may have to sleep in the open, soon enough."

She made a mock‑serious face. "Poor Lew, are you cold? Yes, I suppose we must go inside to sleep." She gathered up our heavy outer clothes and carried them. She spread them out on an old, abandoned pallet in the farmhouse, wrinkling a fastidious nose at the musty smell. I said, "It is better than dog," and she giggled and sat down on the heap of clothing.

She had on a thick woolen shift, knee‑length and with long sleeves; I had seen her far more lightly clothed at Aldaran, but there was something about being here like this that roused an awareness that fear and weariness had almost smothered. AH during this trip she had slept within the circle of my arm, but innocently. Perhaps because I was still recovering from the effects of Kadarin's brutal beating. Now, all at once, I was aware again of her physical presence. She felt it‑we were lightly in rapport all the time now‑and turned her face a little away, color rising along her cheekbones. There was a hint of defiance as she said, "Just the same, I am going to take down my hair and comb and braid it properly, before it gets tangled like Mhari's and I have to cut it off!" She raised her arms, pulled out the butterfly‑shaped clasp that held her braids pinned at the nape of her neck, and began to unravel the long plaits.

I felt the hot flush of embarrassment. In the lowlands a sister who was already a woman would not have done this even before a grown brother. I had not seen Linnell's hair loose like this since we were little children, although when we were small I had sometimes helped her comb it. Did customs really differ so much? I sat and watched her move the ivory comb slowly through her long copper hair; it was perfectly straight, only waved a little from the braiding, and very fine, and the sun, coming in cracks through the heavy wooden shutters, set it all ablaze with the glint of the precious metal. I said at last, hoarsely, "Don't tease me, Marjorie. I'm not sure I can bear it."

She did not look up. She only said softly, "Why should you? I am here."

I reached out and took the comb away from her, turning her face up to meet my eyes. "I cannot take you lightly, beloved. I would give you all honor and all ceremony."

"You cannot," she said, with the shadow of a small smile, "because I no longer ..." the words were coming slowly now, as if it were painful to speak them. "‑no longer acknowledge Beltran's right to give me in marriage. My foster‑father meant to give me to you. That is ceremony enough." Suddenly she spoke in a rush. "And I am not a Keeper now! I have renounced that, I will not keep myself separate from you, I will not, / will not!"

She was sobbing now. I flung the comb away and drew her into my arms, holding her to me with sudden violence.

"Keeper? No, no, never again," I whispered against her mouth. "Never, never again‑"

What can I say? We were together. And we were in love.

Afterward I braided her hair for her. It seemed almost as intimate as lying down together, my hands trembling as they touched the silken strands, as they had when I first touched her. We did not sleep for a long time.

When we woke it was late and already snowing heavily. When I went to saddle the horses, the wind was whipping the snow in wild stinging needles across the yard. We could not ride in this. When I came inside again, Marjorie looked at me in guilty dismay.

"I delayed us. I'm sorry‑"

"I think we are beyond pursuit now, preciosa. But we would only have had to turn back; we cannot ride in this. I'll put the horses into the outbuilding and give them some fodder."

"Let me come and help‑"

"Don't go out hi the snow, beloved. I'll attend to the horses."

When I came in, Marjorie had kindled a fire on the long‑dead hearth and, finding an old battered stone kettle discarded in a corner, had washed it, filled it at the well and put some of our dried meat to stew with the mushrooms. When I scolded her for going into the yard‑in these snow‑squalls men have been lost and frozen between their own barnyard and doorway‑she said shyly, "I wanted us to have a fireside. And a ... a wedding‑feast."

I hugged her close and said, "The minute he sees you my father will be delighted to arrange all that."

"I know," she said, "but I'd rather have it here." The thought warmed me more than the fire. We ate the hot soup before the fire. We had to share one spoon and eat it straight from the old kettle. We had little fuel and the fire burned down quickly, but as it sank into darkness Marjorie whispered, "Our first fireside."

I knew what she meant. It was not the formal ceremony, di catenas, the elaborate wedding‑feast for my kin, her proclamation before Comyn Council, that would make her my wife. Everywhere in the hills, where ceremonies are few and witnesses sparse, the purposeful sharing of "a bed, a meal, a fireside" acknowledges the legal status of a marriage, and I knew why Marjorie had risked losing her way in the snow to kindle a fire and cook us up some soup. By the simple laws of the hills, we were wedded, not in our own eyes alone, but in a ceremony that would stand in the eyes of all men. I was glad she had been sure enough of me to do this without asking. I was glad the weather kept us here for another night. But something was troubling me. I said, "Regis and Danilo are nearer to Thendara now than we are to Arilinn, unless they have been recaptured. But neither of them is a skilled telepath, and I doubt if a message has gone through. I should send a message, either to Arilinn or to my father. I should have done it before."

She caught my hand as I pulled the matrix from its resting place. "Lew, is it really safe?"

"I must, love, safe or not. I should have done it the moment I had my matrix back. We must face the possibility that they will try again. Beltran won't abandon his aims so quickly, and I fear Kadarin is unscrupulous." I backed off from speaking the name of Sharra aloud, but it was there between us and we both knew it.

And if they did try again, without my knowledge or control, without Marjorie for Keeper, what then? Playing with forest fire would be child's play, next to the risk of waking that thing without a trained Keeper! I had to warn the towers.

She said hesitantly, "We were all in rapport. If you ... use your matrix ... can they feel it, trail us that way?"

That was a possibility, but whatever happened to us, Sharra must be controlled and contained, or none of us would ever be safe again. And in all these days I had sensed no touch, no seeking mind.

I drew out the matrix and uncovered it. To my dismay, I felt a faint, twisting tinge of sickness as I gazed into the blue depths. That was a danger signal. Perhaps during the days I had been separated from it, I had become somewhat unkeyed. I focused on it, steadying my mind to the delicate task of establishing rapport again with the starstone; again and again I was forced to turn my eyes away by the pain, the blurring of vision.

"Leave it, Lew, leave it, you're too tired‑'*

"I cannot." If I delayed, I would lose mastery of the matrix, be forced to begin again with another stone. I fought the matrix for nearly an hour, struggling with my inability to focus it. I looked at Marjorie with regret, knowing that I was draining my strength with this telepathic struggle. I cursed the fate that had made me a telepath and a matrix mechanic, but it never occurred to me that I should abandon the struggle unfinished.

If this had‑unimaginably‑happened in Arilinn, I would have been given kirian or one of the other psi‑activator drugs and helped by a psi monitor and my own Keeper. Now I had to master it alone. I myself had made it impossible and dangerous for Marjorie to help me.

At last, my head splitting, I managed to focus the lights in the stone. Quickly, while I still had the strength, I reached out through the gray and formless spaces that we call the underworld, looking for the light‑landmark that was the relay‑circle at Arilinn.

For a moment I had it. Then, within the stone, there was a wild flaring flame, a rush of savage awareness, a too‑familiar surge of fiery violence ... flames rising, the great form of fire blotting out consciousness ... a woman, dark and vital, bearing a living flame, a great circle of faces pouring out raw emotion. . . .

I heard Marjorie gasp, fought to break the rapport. Sharra! Sharra! We had been sealed to it, we were caught and drawn to the fires of destruction....

"No! No!" Marjorie cried aloud, and I saw the fires thin out and vanish. They had never been there. They were reflected in the dying coals of our ritual marriage‑fire; the eerie edge of light around Marjorie's face was only the last firelight there. She whispered, trembling, "Lew, what was it?"

"You know," I hesitated to say the name aloud, "Kadarin. And Thyra. Working directly with the sword. Zandru's hells,

Marjorie, they are trying to use it the old way, not with a Keeper‑controlled circle of telepaths in an orderly energon ring‑and it's uncontrollable even that way, as we found out‑but with a single telepath, focusing raw emotion from a group of untrained followers."

"Isn't that terribly dangerous?"

"Dangerous! The word's inadequate! Would you kindle a forest fire to cook your supper? Would you chain a dragon‑fire to roast your chops or dry your boots? I wish I thought they would only kill themselvesl"

I strode up and down by the dead fire, restlessly listening to the battering of the storm outside. "And I can't even warn them at Arilinn!"

"Why not, Lew?"

"So close to‑to Sharra‑my own matrix won't work," I said, and tried to explain how Sharra evidently blanked out smaller matrices.

"How far will that effect reach, Lew?"

"Who knows? Planet‑wide, maybe. I've never worked with anything that strong. There aren't any precedents."

"Then, if it reached all the way to Arilinn, won't the tele‑paths there know that something is wrong?"

I brightened. That might be our only hope. I staggered suddenly and she caught at my arm.

"Lew! You're worn out. Rest here by me, darling." I flung

myself down at her side, dizzy and despairing. I had not even

spoken of my other fears, that if I used my personal matrix,

v I, who had been sealed to Sharra, might be drawn back into

that vortex, that savage fire, that corner of hell....

She knew, without my saying it. She whispered, "I can feel

it reaching for us. ... Can it draw us back, back into itself?"

t] She clung to me in terror; I rolled over and took her to me,

holding her with savage strength, fighting an almost uncontrollable desire. And that frightened hell out of me. I should be drained, spent, exhausted, incapable of the slightest sexual impulse. That was frustrating, but it was normal, and I had long since come to terms with it.

But this wild lust‑and it was pure lust, a hateful dark animal thing with no hint of love or warmth‑set my pulses racing, made me gasp and fight against it. It was too strong; I let it surge up and overwhelm me, feeling the fire burn up in my veins as if some scalding ichor had replaced the blood in

my body. I smothered her mouth under mine, felt her weakly struggling to fight me away. Then the fire took us both.

It is the one memory I have of Marjorie which is not all joy. I took her savagely, without tenderness, trying to slake the burning need in me. She met me with equal violence, hating it equally, both of us gripped with that uncontrollable savage desperation. It was fierce and animal‑no! Not animal! Animals meet cleanly, driven only by the life‑force in them, knowing nothing of this kind of dark lust. There was no innocence in this, no love, only raw violence, insatiable, a bottomless pit of hell. It was hell, all the hell either of us would ever need to know. I heard her sobbing helplessly and knew I was weeping, too, with shame and self‑hatred. Afterward we did not sleep.

Chapter TWENTY‑ONE

Even at Nevarsin, Regis thought, it had never snowed so hard, or so persistently. His pony picked its way deliberately along, following in the steps of Danilo's mount, as mountain horses were trained to do. It was snowing again.

He wouldn't mind any of it, he thought, the riding, the cold or the lack of sleep, if he could see properly, or keep the world straight under him.

The threshold sickness had continued off and on, more on than off in the last day or so. He tried to ignore Danilo's anxious looks, his concern for him. There wasn't anything Danilo could do for him, so the less said about it, the better.

But it was intensely unpleasant. The world kept thinning away at irregular intervals and dissolving. He had had no attacks as bad as the one he'd had at Thendara or on the way north, but he seemed to live in mild chronic disorientation all the time. He didn't know which was worse, but suspected it was whichever form he happened to have at the time.

Danilo waited for him to draw even on the path. "Snowing already, and it's hardly midafternoon. At this rate it will take us a full twelve days to reach Thendara, and well lose the long start we had."

The more quickly they reached Thendara, the better. He knew a message must get through, even if Lew and Marjorie were recaptured. So far there was no sign of pursuit But Regis knew, cursing his own weakness, that he could not take much more of the constant exertion, the long hours in the saddle and the constant sickness.

Earlier that day they had passed through a small village, where they had bought food and grain for the horses. Perhaps they could risk a fire tonight‑if they could find a place to build it!

"Anything but a hay‑barn," Danilo agreed. The last night they had slept in a barn, sharing warmth with several cows

and horses and plenty of dry hay. The animals had made it a warm place to sleep, but they could not risk a fire or even a light, with the tinder‑dry hay, so they had eaten nothing but hard strips of cured meat and a handful of nuts.

"We're in luck," Danilo said, pointing. Away to the side of the road was one of the travel‑shelters built generations ago, when Aldaran bad been the seventh Domain and this road had been regularly traveled in all seasons. The inns had all been abandoned, but the travel‑shelters, built to stand for centuries, were still habitable, small stone cabins with attached sheds for horses and proper amenities for travelers.

They dismounted and stabled their horses, hardly speaking, Regis from weariness, Danilo from reluctance to intrude on him. Dani thought he was angry, Regis sensed; he knew he should tell his friend he was not angry, just tired. But he was reluctant to show weakness. He was Hastur: it was for him to lead, to take responsibility. So he drove himself relentlessly, the effort making his words few and sharp, his voice harsh. It only made it worse to know that if he had given Danilo the slightest encouragement, Dani would have waited on him hand and foot and done it with pleasure. He wasn't going to take advantage of Danflo's hero‑worship. The Comyn had done too much of that.... The horses settled for the night, Danilo carried the saddlebags inside. Pausing on the threshold, he said, "This is the interesting time, every night. When we see what the years have left of whatever place we've found to stay.**

"It's interesting, all right," Regis said dryly. "We never know what well find, or who'll share our beds with us." One night they had had to sleep in the stables, because a Jiest of deadly scorpion‑ants had invaded the shelter itself.

"Um, yes, a scorpion‑ant is a lower form of life than I care to go to bed with," Danilo said lightly, "but tonight we seem to be in luck." The interior was bare and smelled dusty and unaired, but there was an intact fireplace, a pair of benches to sit on and a heavy shelf built into the wall so they need not sleep on the floor at the mercy of spiders or rodents. Danilo dumped the saddlebags on a bench. "I saw some dead branches in the lee of the stable. The snow won't have soaked them through yet. There may not be enough to keep a fire all night, but we can certainly cook some hot food."

Regis sighed. "Ill come and help you get them in." He opened the door again on the snow‑swept twilight; the world toppled dizzily around him and he clung to the door. "Regis, let me go, you're ill again." "I can manage."

"Damn it!" Suddenly Danilo was angry. "Will you stop pretending and playing hero with me? How the hell will I manage if you fall down and can't get up again? It's a lot easier to drag a couple of armfuls of dry branches in, than try to carry you through the snowl Just stay in here, will your pretending playing hero. Was that how Danilo saw his attempt to carry his own weight? Regis said stiffly, "I wouldn't want to make things harder for you. Go ahead."

Danilo started to speak but didn't. He set his chin and strode, stiff‑necked into the snowy darkness. Regis started to

unload the saddlebags but became so violently dizzy that he

had to sit down on one of the stone benches, holding on with

both hands.

He was a dead weight on Danilo, he thought. Good for nothing but to hold him back. He wondered how Lew was faring in the mountains. He'd hoped to draw pursuit away from him, that hadn't worked either. He felt like huddling on ; the bench, giving way to the surges of sickness, but remem‑;bered Javanne's advice: move around, fight it. He hauled ;: himself to his feet, got his flint‑and‑steel and the wisps of dry >‑ hay they had kept for tinder, and knelt before the fireplace, /clearing away the remnants of the last travelers' fire. How J many years ago was that one built? he wondered. t Wind, and cold slashes of snow blew through the open ''"doorway; Danilo, laden with branches, staggered inside, :, Shoved them near the fireplace, went quickly out again. Regis ..tried to separate the driest branches to lay a fire, but could not steady his hands enough to manipulate the small mechanical flint‑and‑steel, fed with resinous oil, which kept the spark alive. He laid the device on the bench and sat with his head in his hands, feeling completely useless, until Danilo, bent under another load of branches, came hi and kicked the door shut behind him.

"My father calls that a lazy man's load," he said cheerfully, "carrying too much because you're too lazy to go back ' for another. It ought to keep the cold out awhile. Anyway, I'd rather be cold here than warm in Aldaran's royal suite, damn him." He strode to where Regis had laid the fire, kneeling to spark it alight with Regis's lighter. "Bless the man who invented this gadget. Lucky you have one."

It had been part of Gabriel's camping‑kit that Javanne had given him, along with the small cooking pots they carried. Dani looked at Regis, huddled motionless and shivering on the bench. He said, "Are you very angry with me?" Silently, Regis shook his head.

Danilo said haltingly, "I don't want to ... to offend you. But I'm your paxman and I have to do what's best for you. Even if it's not always what you want."

"It's all right, Dani. I was wrong and you were right," Regis said. "I couldn't even light the fire."

"Well, I don't mind lighting it. Certainly not with that gadget of yours. There's water piped in the corner, there, if the pipes aren't frozen. If they are, we'll have to melt snow. Now, what shall we cook?"

The last thing Regis cared about at that moment was food, but he forced himself to join in a discussion about whether soup made from dried meat and beans, or crushed‑grain porridge, would be better. When it was bubbling over the fire, Danilo came and sat beside him. He said, "Regis, I don't want to make you angry again. But we've got to have this out. You're no better. Do you think I can't see that you can hardly ride?"

"What do you want me to say to you, Dani? I'm doing the best I can."

"You're doing more than you can," said Danilo. The light of the blazing fire made him look very young and very troubled. "Do you think I'm blaming you? But you must let me help you more." Suddenly he flared out, "What am I to say to them in Thendara, if the heir to Hastur dies in my hands?" "You're making too much of this," Regis said. "I never beard that anyone died of threshold sickness." Yet Javanne had looked genuinely frightened ... "Maybe not," Danilo said skeptically, "but if you cannot sit your horse, and fall and break your skull, that's fatal, too. Or if you exhaust yourself and take a chill, and die of it. And you are the last Hastur."

"No I'm not," Regis said, at the end of endurance. "Didn't you hear me tell Lew? I have an heir. Before I ever came on this trip I faced the fact that I might die, so I named one of my sister's sons as my heir. Legally." Danilo sat back on his heels, stunned, wide open, and his thought was as clear as if Jie had spoken aloud, For my sake? Regis forcibly stopped himself from saying anything more. He could not face the naked emotion in Danilo's eyes. This was the time of danger, the forced intimacy of these evenings, when he must barricade himself continually against revealing what he felt. It would be all too easy to cling to Danilo for strength, to take advantage of Danilo's emotional response to him.

Danilo was saying angrily, "Even so, I won't have your death on my head! The Hasturs need you for yourself, Regis, not just for your blood or your heir!"

"What do you suggest I do about it?" Regis did not know, himself, whether it was an honest question or a sarcastic challenge. "We are not pursued. We must rest here till you are well again."

"I don't think I shall ever be well again until I have a chance to go to one of the towers and learn to control this." Gift? Curse, he thought. In his blood, in his brain.

But that was not the only thing making him ill, he knew. It was the constant need to barrier himself against his feelings, against his own unwelcome thoughts and desires. And for that there was no help, he decided. Even in the towers they not make him other than he was. They might teach to conceal it, though, live with it.

Danilo laid his hand on Regis' shoulder. "You must let me look after you. It is my duty." He added after a moment, and my pleasure."

By an eifort that literally made his head spin, Regis remained motionless under the touch. Rigidly, refusing the offered rapport, he said, "Your porridge is burning. If you're so eager to do something, attend to what you're supposed to be doing. The damned stuff is inedible even when properly cooked."

Danilo stiffened as if the words had been a blow. He went to the fire and took off the boiling concoction. Regis did not look at him or care that he had hurt him. He was beyond thinking about anything, except his own attempt not to think.

He felt a violent anger with Danilo for forcing this intimate confrontation on him. Suddenly he recalled the fight Danilo had picked in the barracks; a fight which, had it not been for Hjalmar's intervention, might have gone far beyond a single blow. He wanted to lash out at Danilo now, flay him with cruel words. He felt a need to put distance between them, break up this unendurable closeness, keep Dani from looking at him with so much love. If they fought, perhaps Regis would no longer have to be constantly on guard, afraid of doing and saying what he could not even endure to think....

Danilo came with porridge in a small pannikin. He said tentatively, "I don't think this is burned ..."

"Oh, stop being so damned attentive*." Regis flung at him. "Eat your supper and let me alone, damn you, just stop hovering over me! What must I do to make you realize I don't want you, I don't need you? Just let me alone!"

Danilo's face went white. He went and sat on the other bench, his head bent over his own porridge. His back to Regis, he said coldly, "Yours is there when you want it, my lord."

Regis could see clearly, as if time had slid out of focus, that searing moment in the barracks, when Danilo had flung him off with an insult. It was clear hi Danilo's mind, too: He has done to me, knowing, what I did to him, unknowing.

By main force Regis held himself back from immediate apology. The smell of the porridge made him feel violently sick. He went to the stone shelf and laid himself down, wrapping himself in his riding‑cloak and trying to suppress the racking shudders that shook his whole body. It seemed to him that he could hear Danilo crying, as he had done so often hi the barracks, but Danilo was sitting on the bench, quietly eating his supper. Regis lay looking at the fire, until it began to flare up, flame‑hallucination. Not forest fire, not Sharry. Just hallucination again. Psi out of control.

Still, it seemed that he could see Lew's face, vividly, by firelight. Suppose, Regis thought, when I reached up toward him, drew him down beside me, he had flung me off, slapped me? Suppose he had thought the comfort I offered him a thing too shameful to endure or acknowledge?

I was only a child. I didn't know what I was doing.

He wasn't a child. And he knew.

Unable to endure this train of thought, he let the swaying sickness take him again. It was almost a relief to let the world slide away, go dim and thin out to nothing. Time vanished. He heard Danilo's voice after a time, but the words no longer made sense; they were just vibration, sound without sense or relevance. He knew with the last breath of sanity that his only hope of saving himself now was to cry out, get up and move around, call out to Danilo, hang on to him as an anchor in this deadly nowhere He could not. He could not surrender to this; he would .rather die ... and he heard some curious remote little voice fo bis mind say Die, then, if it is so important to you. And he felt something like a giant swing to take him, toss him high, '‑further out into nowhere with every swooping breath, seeing stars, atoms, strange vibrations, the very rhythm of the universe‑or was it his own brain cells vibrating, madly out of control? He'd done this to himself, he knew. He'd let it happen, too much of a coward to face himself. "Call out to Dani, that inner voice said. He'll help you, even now, if you ask him. But you'll have to ask, you've made it impossible for him to come to you again unless you call him. Call quickly, quickly, while you still can. I can't‑

He felt his breathing begin to come in gasps, as if he hung somewhere in the far spaces which were all he could see, with every breath coming for an instant back to that isBtruggling, dimming body lying inert on the shelf. Quickly! out now for help or you will die, here and now with ev‑ing left undone because of your pride . . . '?%, With the last of his strength Regis fought for enough voice jito shout, call aloud. It came out as the faintest of stifled whispers.

"Dani ... help me ..."

Too late, he thought, and felt himself slide off into noth‑jingness. He wondered, with desperate regret, if he was dying |... because he could not bear to be honest with himself, with lis friend....

He swung in darkness, immobile, numb, paralyzed. He felt >anilo, only a dim blue haze through his closed eyes, bending ;"over him, fumbling at his tunic‑laces. He could not even feel )anilo's hands except that they were at his throat. He f thought insanely, Is he going to kill me? I‑*' Without warning his body convulsed in a spasm of the I most hideous pain he had ever known. He was there again, sCDanilo's face visible through a reddish blood‑colored mist, ^ Standing over him, his hand just touching the matrix around j^Regis' neck. Regis said hoarsely, "No. Not again‑" and felt fthe bone‑cracking spasm return. Danilo dropped the matrix

as if it burned him and the hellish pain subsided. Regis lay gasping. It felt as if he had fallen into the fire.

Danilo gasped, "Forgive me‑I thought you were dying! I knew no other way to reach your mind... .** Carefully, without touching it, Danilo covered the matrix again. He dropped down on the stone bed beside Regis, as if his knees were too weak to hold him upright.

"Regis, Regis, I thought you were dying‑"

Regis whispered, "I thought so too."

"I told myself, if I let you die because I could not forgive a harsh word, then I was a disgrace to my father and all those who had served Hastur. I am a catalyst telepath, there had to be something I could do to reach you‑I shouted and you didn't hear, I slapped and pinched you, I thought you were dead already, but I could feel you calling me...." He was entirely unstrung. Regis whispered, "What was it that you did? I felt you‑"

"I touched the matrix‑nothing else seemed to reach you, I was so sure you were dying‑" He broke down and sobbed. "I could have killed you! I could have killed you!"

Regis drew Danilo down beside him, holding him tight in his arms. "Bredu, don't cry," he whispered. "See, I'm not dead." He felt suddenly shy again. Danilo's face, wet with tears, was pressed against his cheek. Regis patted it clumsily. "Don't cry any more."

"But I hurt you so‑I can't bear to hurt you," Danilo said wildly.

"I don't think anything less would have brought me back," Regis said. "It's my life I owe you this time, bredu." He was still dizzy and aching with the aftermath of what he now knew must have been a convulsion. Later he was to learn that this last‑resort heroic treatment, gripping a matrix, was used only at the point of death; when stronger telepaths determined that without it, the sufferer might wander endlessly in the corridors of his own brain, cutting off all outside stimuli, until he died. Danilo had done it by pure instinct. Now Regis remembered what Javanne had said. "I've got to get up and move around or it may come back. But you'll have to help me, Dani, I'm too weak to walk alone."

Danilo helped him upright. By the last light of the dying fire Regis could see the tears on his face. He kept his arm around Regis, steadying him. "I should never have quarreled with you when you were sick."

"It was I who picked the quarrel, Dani. Can you forgive me?"

He was cruel to Dani out of fear, Regis knew, fear of what he was himself. Perhaps Dyan, too, turned to cruelty out of fear and came at last to prefer cruelty to fear‑or to shame‑at knowing himself too well.

Laran was terrible. But they bad no choice, only to meet it with honor.

Danilo said shyly, "I kept your porridge hot for you. Can you try to eat it now?"

Regis took the hot pottery pannikin, burning his fingers a little on the edges. The thought of food made him feel sick, but obediently he chewed a few mouthfuls and discovered that he was actually very hungry. He ate the hot unsweetened stuff, saying after a time, "Well, it's no worse than what we got in barracks. If you ever find yourself a masterless man, Dani, well get you a job as an army cook."

"God forbid I should be a masterless man while you live, Regis."

Regis reached for Danilo's hand, holding it tight. He felt exhausted and aching, but at peace. He finished the porridge and Danilo took the bowl away to rinse it out. Regis lay down on the shelf again. The fire was dying down and it was cold. Danilo came and spread out his own cloak and blanket beside Regis, sat beside him, pulling off his boots.

"I wish I knew more about threshold sickness."

"Be damn glad you don't," Regis said harshly, "it's hell. I hope you never have it."

"Oh, I had it," Dani said. 'T know now that's what it must have been when I began ... reading minds. There was no one to tell me what it was, and I never had it so seriously. The trouble is, I don't know what to do about it. Or I could help you." He looked at Regis hestitantlyMn the dim light and said, "We're still in rapport a little. Let me try."

"Do what you want to," Regis said, "I won't drive you away again. Only be careful. Your last experiment was painful."

"I did find out one thing," Danilo said. "I could see and feel things. There's a kind of ... of energy. Look." He bent over Regis, running his fingertips lightly above his body, not touching him. "I can feel it this way, without touching you, and certain places it's strong, and others I feel it ought to be

I don't know how to explain it. Do you feel and isn't.

itr

Regis remembered the very little the leronis had told him when she tested him, unsuccessfully, for lawn, 'There are certain ... energy centers in the body, which waken with the wakening of laran. Everybody has them, but in a telepath they're stronger and more ... perceptible. If that's true, you should have them, too." He reached out toward Danilo, running his hands over his face, feeling the definite, tangible flow of power. "Yes, it's like an ... an extra pulsebeat here, just above your brow." He had once been shown a drawing of these currents, but at that time he had no reason to believe it applied to him. Now he struggled to remember, sensing it must be important. "There's one at the base of the throat."

"Yes, I can see it," Danilo said, touching it lightly with a fingertip. The touch was not painful, but Regis felt it like a faint, definite electric shock. Yet once he was fully aware of the pulse, his perceptions cleared and the dizziness which had been with him for weeks now seemed to clear and shift somehow. He felt that he had discovered something very important, but he didn't know what. Danilo went on, trying to trace out the flows of power with his fingertips. *'I don't really have to touch you to feel them. I seem to know‑"

"Probably because you've got them yourself," Regis said. "Matrix work needs training, but it must be possible to learn to control laran, or the techniques couldn't have evolved. Unless you want to believe all those old stories about gods and demigods coming down to teach the Comyn how to use them, and I don't." It was very dark, but he could see Danilo clearly, as if his body were outlined with the pale, pulsing energy flows. Danilo said, "Then maybe we can find out how to keep you from going into that kind of ... of crisis again."

Regis said, "I seem to be in your hands, Dani. Quite literally. I don't know if I could live through another attack like that one." He knew that the physical shock Danilo had given him by touching his matrix had revived him, but that he was drained, dangerously weak. "You had threshold sickness? And got over it?"

"Yes. Though, as I say, I had no idea what it was. But finding out about these energy currents helped. I could make them flow smoothly, most of the time, and it seemed that I could use that energy. I'm not saying this very well, am I? I don't know the right words."

Regis smiled ruefully and said, "Maybe there aren't any." He lay watching the energy flows in Danilo's body and had the strange sensation that, although they were both heavily clothed against the cold, they were both, somehow, naked, a different kind of naked. Maybe this is what Lew meant: living with your skin off. He could feel the energy flows in Danilo, too, pulsing, moving smoothly and steadily with the forces of life. Danilo went on, gently searching out the flows, not touching him; even so, the touch that was not a touch stirred physical awareness again. Regis had not heard Lew explain how the same currents carried telepathic force and sexual energy, but he sensed just enough to be self‑conscious about it. He gently reached out and held Danilo's hand away from him.

"No," he said, not angry now, but honestly, facing it‑they could not lie to each other now. "You don't want to stir that up, do you, Dani?"

There was a frozen instant while Danilo almost stopped breathing. Then he said, in a smothered whisper, "I didn't think you knew."

"So when you called me names‑you were nearer right than you knew yourself, Dani. I didn't know it then, either. But I would rather not ... approach you as Dyan did. So take care, Dani."

He was not touching Danilo now, but just the same he felt the steady currents of energy in Danilo begin to halt, the pulse go ragged and uneven, like an eddy and whirlpool in a smooth‑running river. He didn't know what it meant, but he sensed without knowing why that it was important, that he had discovered something else that he really needed to know, something on which his very life might depend.

Danilo said hoarsely, "You? Like Dyan? Never!"

Regis fought to steady his own voice, but he was aware of the energy currents now. The steady pulsing which had eased and cleared his perceptions was beginning to back up, eddy and move unevenly. He said, fighting for control, "Not in any way that ... that you have to fear. I swear it. But it's true. Do you hate me, then, or despise me for it?"

Danilo's voice was rough. "Don't you think I can tell the difference? I will not speak your name in the same breath‑"

"I am very sorry to disillusion you, Dani," Regis said very quietly, "but it would be worse to lie to you now. That's what went wrong before. I think it was trying so hard to ... to

keep it from you, to keep it from myself, even, that has been making me so sick. I knew about your fears; you have good reason for them. I tried very hard to keep you from knowing: I almost died rather than let you think of me like Dyan. I know you are a cristoforo, and I know your customs are different."

He should know, after three years in one of their monasteries. And now Regis knew what cut off his laran: the two things coming together, the emotional response, wakening that time with Lew, and the telepathic awareness, laran. And for three years, the years when they should have been wakening and strengthening, every time he had felt any kind of emotional or physical impulse, he had cut it off again; and every time there was the slightest, faintest telepathic response, be had smothered it. To keep from rousing, again, all the longing and pain and memory. . . .

Saint‑Valentine‑of‑the‑Snows, saint or no, had nearly destroyed Regis. Perhaps, if he had been less obedient, less scrupulous ...

He said, "Just the same, I must speak the truth to you, Dani. I am sorry if it hurts you, but I cannot hurt myself again by lying, to you or myself. I am like Dyan. Now, at least. I will not do what he has done, but I feel as he felt, and I think I must have known it for a long time. If you cannot accept this, you need not call me lord or even friend, but please believe I did not know it myself."

"But I know youVe been honest with me," Danilo gasped. "7 tried to ‑keep it from you‑I was so ashamed‑I wanted to die for you, it would have been easier. Don't you think I can tell the difference?" he demanded. Tears were streaming down his face. "Like Dyan? You? Dyan, who cared nothing for me, who found his pleasure in tormenting me and drank in my fear and loathing as his own joy‑" He drew a deep, gasping breath, as if there were not enough air anywhere to breathe. "And you. You've gone on like this, day after day, torturing yourself, letting yourself come almost to the edge of death, just to keep from frightening me‑do you think I am afraid of you? Of anything you could say or ... or do?" The lines of light around him were blazing now, and Regis wondered if Danilo, in the surge of emotion blurring them both, really knew what he was saying.

He stretched both hands to Danilo and said, very gently, "Part of the sickness, I think, was trying to hide from each

other. We've come close to destroying each other because of h. It's simpler than that. We don't have to talk about it and try to find words. Dani‑bredu‑will you speak to me, now, in the way we cannot misunderstand?"

Danilo hesitated for a moment and Regis, frightened with the old agonizing fear of a rebuff, felt as if he could not breathe. Then, although Regis could feel the last aching instant of fear, reluctance, shame as if it were in himself, Danilo reached out his hands and laid them, palm to palm, guided by a sure instinct, against Regis* own hands. He said, "I will, bredu."

The touch was that small but definite electric shock. Regis felt the energy pulses blazing up in him like live lightning for an instant. He felt the current, then, running through them both, from Danilo into him, into his whole body‑the centers in the head, the base of the throat, beneath the heart, down deep inside his whole body‑and back again through Danilo. The muddied, swirling eddies in the currents began to clear, to run like a smooth pulse, a swift current. For the first time in months, it seemed, he could see clearly, without the crawling sickness and dizziness, as the energy channels began to flow in a straightforward circuit. For a moment this shared life energy was all either of them could feel and, under the relief of it, Regis drew what seemed his first clear breath in a long time.

Then, very slowly, his thoughts began to merge with Danilo's. Clear, together, as if they were a single mind, a single being, joined in an ineffable warmth and closeness.

This was the real need. To reach out to someone, this way, to feel this togetherness, this blending. Living with your skin off. This ty what laran is.

In the peace and comfort of that magical blending, Regis was still aware of the tension and clawing need in his body, but that was less important But why should either of us be afraid of that now?

This, Regis knew, was what had twisted his vital forces into knots, blockading the vital energy flows until he was near death. Sexuality was only part of it; the real trouble was the unwillingness to face and acknowledge what was within him. He knew without words that the clearing of these channels had freed him to be what he was, and what he would be.

Some day he would know the trick of directing those currents without making them flow through his body. But

now this is what he needed, and only someone who could accept him entirely, all of him, mind and body and emotions, could have given it to him. And it was a closer brotherhood than blood. Living with your skin off.

And suddenly be knew that he need not go to a tower. What he had learned now was a simpler way of what he would have been taught there. He knew he could use laran now, any way he needed to. He could use his matrix without getting sick again, he could reach anyone he needed to reach, send the message that had to be sent.

Chapter TWENTY‑TWO

(Lew Alton's narrative)

For the ninth or tenth time in an hour I tiptoed to the door, unfastened the leather latch and peered out. The outside world was nothing but swirling, murky grayness. I backed away from it, wiping snow from my eyes, then saw in the dim light that Marjorie was awake. She sat up and wiped the rest of the snow from my face with her silk kerchief.

"It's early in the season for so heavy a storm."

"We have a saying in the hills, darling. Put no faith in a drunkard's prophecy, another man's dog, or the weather at any season."

"Just the same," she said, struggling to put my own thoughts into words, "I know these mountains. There's something hi this storm that frightens me. The wind doesn't rage as it should. The snow is too wet for this season. It's ‑wrong somehow. Storms, yes. But not like this."

"Wrong or right, I only wish it would stop.** But for the moment we were helpless against it. We might as well enjoy what small good there was in being snowbound together. I buried my face in her breast; she said, laughing, "You are not at all sorry to be here with me.'*

"I would rather be with you at Arilinn," I said. "We would have a finer bridal chamber."

She put her arms around me. It was so dark we could not see one another's faces, but we needed no light. She whispered, "I am happy with you wherever we are."

We were exaggeratedly gentle with one another now. I hoped a time might come, some day, when we could come into one another's arms without fear. I knew I would never forget, not while I lived, that terrifying madness that had gripped us both, nor those dreadful hours, after Marjorie bad cried herself into a stunned, exhausted sleep, while I lay rest‑

less, aching with the fear she might never trust or love me again.

That fear had vanished a few hours later, when she opened her eyes, still dark and bruised hi her tear‑stained face, and impulsively reached for me, with a caress that healed my fears. But one fear remained: could it seize us again? Could anyone, ever, be sane, after the touch of Sharra?

But for now we were without fear. Later Marjorie slept; I hoped this prolonged rest would help her recover her strength after long traveling. I moved restlessly away, peering into the storm again. Later, I knew, I must brave the outdoors to give the last of our gram and fodder to the horses.

There was something very wrong with the storm. It made me think of Thyra's trick with the waterfall. No, that was foolish. No sane person would meddle with the weather for some private end.

But I had said it myself: Could anyone be sane, after the touch of Sharra?

I dared not even look into my matrix, check what, if anything, was behind the undiminished strangeness of the storm. While Sharra was out and raging, seeking to draw us back, my matrix was useless‑worse than useless, dangerous, deadly.

I fed the horses, came back inside to find Marjorie still sleeping and knelt to kindle a fire with a little of our remaining wood supply. Food was running low, but a few days of fasting would not hurt us. Worse was the shortage of fodder for the horses. As I put some grain to cook for porridge, I wondered if I had yet made Marjorie pregnant I hoped so, of course, then caught myself with a breath of consternation. Evanda and Avarra, not yet, not yet! This journey was hard enough on her already. I felt torn, ambivalent. With a deep instinct I hoped she was already bearing my child, yet I was afraid of what I most desired.

I knew what to do, of course. Celibacy is impossible in the tower circles, except for the Keepers, and it takes an unimaginable toll of them. Yet pregnancy is dangerous for the women working in the relays, and we cannot risk interruption of their term. I suspected Marjorie would be shocked and indignant if I tried to protect her this way. I would not have had her feel otherwise. But what were we to do? At least we should talk about it, honestly and openly. It would have to be her own choice, either way.

Behind me Marjorie stirred restlessly in her sleep, cried out "No! No! Thyra, no‑" and sat bolt upright, holding her bands to her head as if in wild terror. I ran to her. She was sobbing with fright, but when I got her fully awake she could not tell me what she had seen or dreamed.

Was Thyra doing this to her? I didn't doubt she was capa‑able of it, and now I had no faith in her scruples. Nor in Kad‑arin's. I braced myself against the hurt of that. We had been friends. What had changed them?

Sharra? If the fires of Sharra could break through the discipline of years at Arilinn, what would it do to a wild tele‑path without it?

Marjorie said, a little wistfully, "You were a little in love with Thyra, weren't you?"

"I desired her," I said quietly, facing it. That kind of thing is unavoidable in a close circle of that sort. It might have happened with any woman who could reach my mind. But she did not want it; she tried to fight against it. I, at least, knew it could happen. Thyra was trying very hard not to be aware of it."

How much had that battle with herself damaged and disrupted her? Had I failed Thyra, too? I should have tried harder to help her confront it, face it hi full awareness. I should have made us all‑all‑be honest with one another, as my training demanded, especially when I saw where our undisciplined emotions were leading us‑to rage and violence and hate.

We could never have controlled Sharra. But if I had known sooner what was happening among us all, I might have seen the way we were being warped, distorted.

I had failed them all, my kinsmen, my friends, by loving them too much, not wanting to hurt them with what they were.

The experiment, noble as Beltran's dream had been, lay in ruins. Now, whatever the cost, the Sharra matrix must be monitored, then destroyed. But again, what of those who had been sealed to Sharra?

The snow continued to fall all that day and night, and was still falling when we woke the next morning, drifting high around the stone buildings. I felt we should try to pass on, nevertheless, but knew it was insanity. The horses could never force their way through those drifts. Yet if we were

trapped here much longer, without food for them, they would not be able to travel.

It must have been the next afternoon‑events of that time are blurred in my mind‑when I roused from sleep to hear Marjorie cry out in fear. The door burst inward and Kadarin stood in the doorway, half a dozen of Beltran's guards crowding behind him.

I snatched up my sword but within seconds I was hopelessly outmatched, and with a horrible sense of infinite repetition, stood struggling, helplessly pinioned between the guards. Marjorie had drawn back into a corner. As Kadarin went toward her I told myself that if he handled her roughly I would kill him, but he only lifted her gently to her feet and draped his own cloak over her shoulders. He said, "Foolish child, didn't you know we couldn't let you go like that?" He thrust her into the arms of two of the guards and said, "Take her outside. Don't hurt her, treat her gently, but don't let her go or I'll have your heads!"

"Do you make war on women? Can't you settle it with me, man to man?"

He was still holding my sword; he shrugged, flung it into a corner. "So much for your lowland toys. I learned long ago to fight my battles with sounder weapons. If you think I'd hurt Marjorie, you're more of a fool than I ever believed you. We need you both."

"Do you think I'll ever work with you again? No, damn you, I'll die first."

"Yes, you will," he said in an almost amiable tone. "There isn't the slightest use in your heroics, dear boy."

"What did you do, find you couldn't handle Sharra alone? How much did you destroy before you found it out?"

"I don't have to account to you," he said with sudden brutality. I fought momentarily against the men holding me and at the same time lashed out with a murderous mental assault. I had always been told that the unleashed rage of an Alton can kill, had been disciplined never, never to let my anger wholly free. Yet now ...

I let my rage go, visualizing hands at Kadarin's throat, my mind raining hatred and fury on him ... I felt him wince under the onslaught, saw him go white, sag to his knees ...

"Quick," he gasped in a strangled voice, "knock him‑ out‑"

A fist connected with my jawbone, darkness crashed

through my mind. I felt myself go limp, hang helpless between my captors. Kadarin came and took over the beating himself, his ring‑laden hands slashing hard at my face, blow after blow until I went down into a blurred, red‑shot darkness. Then I realized they were hauling me out into the snowstorm; the cold sleet on my face revived me a little. Kadarin's face hung in a red mist before my eyes.

"I dont want to kill you, Lew. Come quietly now."

I said thickly, through my torn and bleeding mouth, "Better kill me . . . brave man, who beats a man held helpless by ... a couple of others. . .. Give me two men to hold you and I'll beat you half dead too ... dishonored ..."

"Oh, save your Domain cant," he said. "I went beyond all that jabber of honor and dishonor long ago. I've no use for you dead. You are coming with me, so choose if you will come quietly, like the sensible lad you always were and will be again, or whether you will be carried, after these fellows beat you senseless? They don't like beating helpless men, either. Or shall I make it easy and immobilize you?" His hand went out toward the matrix on my neck.

No! No! Not again! I screamed, a frenzied cry which actually made him step back a pace. Then quietly‑there had never been anything in the world as terrible as his low, even voice‑he said, "You can't endure that again, can you? I'll do it if I must. But why not spare us both the pain?"

"Better ... kill me ... instead." I spat out the blood filling my mouth. It struck him in the face. Unhurriedly, he wiped it away. His eyes glinted like some bird of prey, mad and inhuman. He said, "I hoped you'd save me the worst threat. Nascar, go and get the girl. Get her matrix stone off of her. She carries it in‑"

I cursed him, straining. "You devil, you fiend from hell! Do what you damn please with me, but let her alone!"

"Will you come, then, with no more of this?"

Slowly, defeated, I nodded. He smiled, a silky, triumphant smile, and jerked his head at the men to bring me along. I went between them, not protesting. If I, a strong man, could not endure that torment, how could I let them inflict it on Marjorie?

The men shoved us along through the blinding snow. A couple of hundred feet from the house, past the wall of trees, the snow stopped as if a water faucet had been turned off; the woodland road lay green before us. I stared, unbelieving.

Kadarin nodded. "Thyra has always wanted to experiment with storms," he said, "and it kept you in one place until we were ready for you."

My instinct had been right. We should have pressed through it. I should have known. Despair took me. A helicopter was waiting for us; they lifted me into one seat, set Marjorie in another. They had tied her wrists with her silk scarf, but had not otherwise harmed her. I reached out to touch her hand. Kadarin, swiftly coming between us, gripped my wrist with fingers of steel.

I jerked away from him as if he had been a cold corpse. I tried to meet Marjorie's eyes. Together we might master him . . .

"It's no use, Lew. I cannot fight you and keep threatening you all the way to Aldaran," Kadarin said tonelessly. He reached into a pocket, brought out a small red vial, uncapped it. "Drink this. And don't waste time."~

"No‑"

"I said drink it. Quickly. If you contrive to spill it, I shall have no recourse except to tear off your matrices; first Marjorie's, then yours. I shall not threaten again."

Glancing at those inhuman eyes‑Gods! This man had been my friend! Did he even know what he had become?‑I knew we were both defenseless in his hands. Defeated, I raised the flask to my lips and swallowed the red liquid.

The helicopter, the world slid away.

And did not return.

I did not know then, what drug he had given me. I am still not entirely sure. Nor have I ever known how much of what I remember from the next few days is dream and how much is underlaid by some curious core of reality.

For a long time I saw nothing but fire. Forest fire raging in the hills beyond Armida; fire raining down on Caer Donn; the great form of fire, stretching out irresistible arms and breaking the walls of Storn Castle as if they had been made of dough. Fire burning in my own veins, raging In my very blood.

I stood, once, on the highest point of Castle Aldaran and looked down on a hundred assembled men and felt the fire blazing behind me, sweeping through me with its wild lust and terror. I felt the men's raw emotions surging up to where

I stood, the Sharra sword between my hands, feeding my nerves with crude fear, lust, greed. . . .

Again, a terrified child, I stood between my father's hands, docilely awaiting the touch that could give me my heritage or my death. I felt the fury rising in me, raving hi me, and I let the fire take him. He went up in flames, burning, burning....

I saw Regis Hastur, lying in a small dark hut somewhere on the road between Aldaran and Thendara, and knew he had failed. He lay there dying, his body torn with the last dying convulsions, unable to cross that dark threshold, fafled, dying, burning....

I felt Dyan Ardais seize me from behind, felt my arm snap in his hands, felt through his touch the combined cruelty and lust. I turned on him and rained hatred and violence on him, too, and saw him go up under the flame of my hatred, burning, burning....

Once I heard Marjorie crying helplessly and fought up to consciousness again, and then I was in my room in Castle Aldaran, but I was tied down with enormous weights. Someone wedged my jaws open and poured down another dose of the pungent red drug, and I began to lose myself again in the dreams that were not dreams.

I stood atop a great flight of stab's, leading down and down and down forever into a great burning pit of hell, and Marjorie stood before me with the Sharra matrix between her hands and her face white and empty, and the matrix gripped in my hands burned me like fire, burned through my hand. Down below, the faces of the men, upturned to me, poured wave upon wave of raw emotion through me again, so that I burned endlessly in a hell‑fire of fury and lust, bum‑nig, burning....

Once I heard Thyra crying out "No, no, I can't, I won't,** and a terrible sound of weeping. Even at the deathbed of her father she had not wept like this....

And then without transition Marjorie was there in my arms and I threw myself on her as I had done before. I covered her with frenzied and despairing kisses; I plunged gratefully into her warmth, my body and the very blood in my veins, burning, burning, trying in a single act to slake the frenzy of rage and lust which had tormented me, helpless, for days, months, years, eternities.... I tried to stop myself, feeling that there was some dimension of reality to this which had not been in most of the other dreams or illusions. I tried to

cry out, it was happening again, the thing I feared and I hated, the thing I desired ... the thing I dared not see‑I was responsible, personally responsible for all this cruelty and violence! It was my own hate, never acknowledged, never admitted, which they were using, channeling through me! I was powerless to stop myself now; a world of frenzy was shaking me, endlessly tearing at me with great claws. Marjorie was crying helplessly, hopelessly, and I could feel her fear and pain burning in me, burning, burning.... Lightning ripped through my body, thunder crashing inside and out, a world of lust and fury was pouring through my loins . .. burning, burning. ...

I was alone. I lay spent, drained, still confused with the dreams. I was alone. Where was Marjorie? Not here, thanks to all the Gods, not here, not here! None of it had been real.

My mind and body at peace, I slept, but far away in the blackness, someone was crying....

Chapter TWENTY‑THREE

"It's not threshold sickness this time, bredu," Regis said, raising his head from the matrix. "This time I'm doing it right, but I can't see anything but the ... the image that struck me down on the northward road. The fire and the golden image. Sharra."

Danilo said, shuddering, "I know. I saw it too.** "At least it didn't strike me senseless this time." Regis covered the matrix. It roused no sickness in him now, just an overwhelming sense of heightened perception. He should have been able to reach Kennard, or someone at Arilinn, but there was nothing‑nothing but the great, burning, chained image he knew to be Sharra.

Yes, something terrible was happening hi the hills. Danilo said, "I'd think every telepath on Darkover must know it by now, Regis. Don't they keep a lookout for such things in the towers? No need for you to feel guilty because I you can't do it alone, without training." I "I don't feel exactly guOty, but I am dreadfully worried. I * tried to reach Lew, too. And couldn't."

"Maybe he's safe at Arilinn, behind their force‑field.** Regis wished he could think so. His head was clear and he knew the sickness would not return, but the reappearance of the image of Sharra troubled him deeply. He had heard stories of out‑of‑control matrices, most of them from the Ages of Chaos, but some more recent. A cloud covered the sun and he shivered with cold.

Danflo said, "I think we should ride on, if youVe finished.** "Finished? I didn't even start," he said ruefully, tucking the matrix into his pocket again. "We'll go on, but let me eat something first." He accepted the chunk of dried meat Danilo handed him and sat chewing it. They were sitting side by side

on a fallen tree, their horses cropping grass nearby through the melting snow. "How long have we been on the road, Dani? I lost count while I was sick."

"Six days, I think. We aren't more than a few days from Thendara. Perhaps tonight we'll be within the outskirts of the Armida lands and I can send word somehow to my father. Lew told Beltran's men to send word, but I don't trust him to have done it."

"Grandfather always regarded Lord Kermiac as an honorable man. Beltran is a strange cub to come from such a dea."

"He may have been decent enough until he fell into the hands of Sharra," Danilo said. "Or perhaps Kermiac ruled too long. I've heard that the land which lives too long under the rule of old men grows desperate for change at any cost."

Regis wondered what would happen in the Domains when his grandfather's regency ended, when Prince Derik Elhalyn took his crown. Would his people have grown desperate for change at any cost? He was remembering the Comyn Council where he and Danilo had stood watching the struggle for power. They would not be watching, then, they would be part of it. Was power always evil, always corrupt?

Dani said, as though he knew Regis' thoughts, "But Beltran didn't just want power to change things, he wanted a whole world to play with."

Regis was startled at the clarity of that and pleased again to think that, if the fate of their world ever depended on the Hasturs, he would have someone like Dani to help him with decisions! He reached out, gave Danflo's hand a brief, strong squeeze. All he said was, "Let's get the horses saddled, then. Maybe we can help make sure he doesn't get it to play with.1*

They were about to mount when they heard a faint droning, which grew to a sky‑filling roar. Danilo glanced up; without a word, he and Regis drew and the horses under the cover of the trees. But the helicopter, moving steadily overhead, paid no attention to them.

"Nothing to do with us," said Danilo when it was out of sight, "probably some business of the Terrans." He let out his breath and laughed, almost in apology. "I shall never hear one again without fear!"

"Just the same, a day will come when we'll have to use them too," Regis said slowly. "Maybe the Aldaran lands and the Domains would understand each other better if it were not ten days' ride from Thendara to Caer Donn."

"Maybe." But Regis felt Danilo withdraw, and he said no more. As they rode on, he thought that, like it or not, the Terrans were here and nothing could ever be as it was before they came. What Beltran wanted was not wrong, Regis felt. Only the way he chose to get it. He himself would find a safer way.

He realized, with astonishment and self‑disgust, the direction his thoughts were taking. What had he to do with all that?

He had ridden this road from Nevarsin less than a year ago, believing then that he was without laran and free to shrug his heritage aside and go out into space, follow the Terran starships to the far ends of the Empire. He looked up at the face of Liriel, pale‑violet in the noonday sky, and thought how no Darkovan had ever set foot even on any of their own moons. His grandfather had pledged to help him go, if Regis still wanted to. He would not break his word.

Two years more, given to the cadets and the Comyn. Then he would be free. Yet an invisible weight seemed to press him down, even as he made plans for freedom.

Danilo drew his horse suddenly to a stop.

"Riders, Lord Regis. On the road ahead."

Regis drew even with him, letting his reins lie loose on his pony's neck. "Should we get off the road?"

"I think not. We are well within the Domains by now; here you are safe, Lord Regis."

Regis lifted his eyebrows at the formal tone, suddenly realizing its import. In the isolation of the last days, in stress and extremity, all man‑made barriers had fallen; they were two boys the same age, friends, bredin. Now, in the Domains and before outsiders once again, he was the heir to Hastur, Danilo his paxman. He smiled a little ruefully, accepting the necessity of this, and let Danilo ride a few paces ahead. Looking at his friend's back, he thought with a strange shiver that it was literally true, not just a word: Dani would die for him.

It was a terrifying thought, though it should not have been so strange. He knew perfectly well that any one of the Guardsmen who had escorted him here and there when he was only a sickly little boy, or ridden with him to and from Nevarsin, were sworn by many oaths to protect him with their lives. But it had never been entirely real to him until Danilo, of his free will and from love, had given him that

pledge. He rode steadily, with the trained control he had been taught, but his back was alive with prickles and he felt the very hairs rise on his forearms. Was this what it meant, to be Hastur?

He could see the riders now. The first few wore the green‑and‑black uniform he had worn himself in the past summer. Comyn Guardsmen! And a whole group of others, not in uniform. But there were no banners, DO displays. This was a party of war. Or, at least, one prepared to fight!

Ordinary travelers would have drawn off the road, letting the Guardsmen pass. Instead Regis and Danilo rode straight toward them at a steady pace. The head Guardsman‑Regis recognized him now, the young officer Hjalmar‑lowered his pike and gave formal challenge.

"Who rides in the Domains‑" He broke off, forgetting the proper words. "Lord Regis!"

Gabriel Lanart‑Hastur rode quickly past him, bringing his horse up beside Regis. He reached both hands to him. "Praise to the Lord of Light, you are safe! Javanne has been mad with fear for you!"

Regis realized that Gabriel would have been blamed for letting him ride off alone. He owed him an apology. There was no time for it now. The riders surrounded them and he noted many members of the Comyn Council among Guardsmen and others he did not recognize. At the head of them, on a great gray horse, rode Dyan Ardais. His stern, proud face relaxed a little as he saw Regis, and he said in his harsh but musical voice, "You have given us all a fright, kinsman. We feared you dead or prisoner somewhere in the hills." His eyes fell on Danilo and his face stiffened, but he said steadily, "Dom Syrtis, word came from Thendara, sent by the Terrans and brought to us; a message was sent to your father, sir, that you were alive and well."

Danilo inclined his head, saying with frigid formality, "I am grateful, Lord Ardais." Regis could tell how hard the civil words came. He looked at Dyan with faint curiosity, surprised at the prompt delivery of the reassuring message, wondering why, at least, Dyan had not left it to a subordinate to give. Then he knew the answer. Dyan was hi charge of this mission, and would consider it his duty.

Whatever his personal faults and struggles, Regis knew, Dyan's allegiance to Comyn came first. Whatever he did, everything was subordinate to that. It had probably never occurred to Dyan that his private life could affect the honor of the Comyn. It was an unwelcome thought and Regis tried to reject it, but it was there nevertheless. And, even more disquieting, the thought that if Danilo had been a private citizen and not a cadet, it genuinely would not have mattered how Dyan treated or mistreated him.

Dyan was evidently waiting for some explanation; Regis said, "Danilo and I were held prisoner at Aldaran. We were freed by Dom Lewis Alton." Lew's formal title had a strange sound in his ears. He did not remember using it before.

Dyan turned his head, and Regis saw the horse‑litter at the center of the column. His grandfather? Traveling at this season? Then, with the curiously extended senses he was just beginning to learn how to use, he knew it was Kennard, even before Dyan spoke.

"Your son is safe, Kennard. A traitor, perhaps, but safe."

"He is no traitor," Regis protested. "He too was held a prisoner. He freed us in his own escape." He held back the knowledge that Lew had been tortured, but Kennard knew it anyway: Regis could not yet barricade himself properly.

Kennard put aside the leather curtains. He said, "Word came from Arilinn‑you know what is going on at Aldaran? The raising of Sharra?"

Regis saw that Kennard's hands were still swollen, his body bent and bowed. He said, "I am sorry to see you too ill to ride, Uncle." In his mind, the sharpest of pains, was the memory of Kennard as he had been during those early years at Armida, as Regis had seen him in the gray world. Tall and straight and strong, breaking his own horses for the pleasure of it, directing the men on the fire‑lines with the wisdom of the best of commanders and working as hard as any of them. Unshed tears stung Regis' eyes for the man who was closest to a father to him. His emotions were swimming near the surface these days, and he wanted to weep for Kennard's suffering. But he controlled himself, bowing from his horse over his kinsman's crippled hand.

Kennard said, "Lew and I parted with harsh words, but I could not believe him traitor. I do not want war with Lord Kermiac‑"

"Lord Kermiac is dead, Uncle. Lew was an honored guest to him. After his death, though, Beltran and Lew quarreled. Lew refused . . ." Quietly, riding beside Kennard's litter, Regis told him everything he knew of Sharra, up to the mo‑

ment when Lew had pleaded with Beltran to renounce his intention, and promising to enlist the help of Comyn Council ... and how Beltran had treated them all afterward. Ken‑nard's eyes closed in pain when Regis told of how Kadarin had brutally beaten his son, but it would not have occurred to Regis to spare him. Kennard was a telepath, too.

When he ended, telling Kennard how Lew had freed them with Marjorie's aid, Kennard nodded grimly. "We had hoped Sharra was laid forever in the keeping of the forge‑folk. While it was safely at rest, we would not deprive them of their goddess."

"A piece of sentiment likely to cost us dear," Dyan said. "The boy seems to have behaved with more courage than I had believed he had. Now the question is, what's to be done?"

"You said that word came from Arilinn, Uncle. Lew is safe there, then?"

"He is not at Arilinn, and the Keeper there, seeking, could not find him. I fear he has been recaptured. Word came, saying only that Sharra had been raised and was raging in the Hellers. We gathered every telepath we could find outside the towers, in the hope that somehow we could control it. Nothing less could have brought me out now," he added, with a detached glance at his crippled hands and feet, "but I am tower‑trained and probably know more of matrix work than anyone not actually inside a tower."

Regis, riding at his side, wondered if Kennard was strong enough. Could he actually face Sharra?

Kennard answered his unspoken words. "I don't know, son," he said aloud, "but I'm going to have to try. I only hope I need not face Lew, if he has been forced into Sharra again. He is my son, and I do not want to face him as an enemy," His face hardened with determination and grief. "But I will if I must." And Regis heard the unspoken part of that, too: Even if I must kill him this time.

Chapter TWENTY‑FOUR

(Lew Alton's narrative concluded)

To this day I have never known or been able to guess how long I was kept under the drug Kadarin had forced on me. There was no period of transition, no time of incomplete focus. One day my head suddenly cleared and I found myself sitting in a chair in the guest suite at Aldaran, calmly putting on my boots. One boot was on and one was off, but I had no memory of having put on the first, or what I had been doing before that

I raised my hands slowly to my face. The last clear memory I had was of swallowing the drug Kadarin had given me. Everything after that had been dreamlike, hallucinatory quasi‑memories of hatred and lust, fire and frenzy. I knew time had elapsed but I had no idea how much. When I swallowed the drug, my face had been bleeding after Kadarin had ripped it to ribbons with his heavy fists. Now my face was tender, with raised welts still sore and painful, but all the wounds were closed and healing. A sharp pain in my right hand, where I bore the long‑healed matrix burn from my first year at Arilinn, made me flinch and turn the hand over. I looked, without understanding, at the palm. For three years and more, it had been a coin‑sized white scar, a small ugly puckered patch with a couple of scarred seams at either side. That was what it had been.

Now‑I stared, absolutely without comprehension. The white patch was gone, or rather, it had been replaced by a raw, red, festering burn half the breadth of my palm. It hurt like hell.

What had I been doing with it? At the back of my mind I was absolutely certain that I had been lying here, hallucinating, during all that time. Instead I was up and half dressed. What in the hell was going on?

I went into the bath and stared into a large cracked mirror.

Hie face which looked out at me was not mine.

My mind reeled for a moment, teetering at the edge of madness. Then I slowly realized that the eyes, the hair, the familiar brows and chin were there. But the face itself was a ghastly network of intersection scars, flaming red weals, blackened bluish welts and ridges. One Up had been twisted up and healed, puckered and drawn, giving me a hideous permanent sneer. There were stray threads of gray in my hair; I looked years older. I wondered, suddenly, in insane panic, if they had kept me here drugged while I grew old....

I calmed the sudden surge of panic. I was wearing the same clothes I had worn when I was captured. They were crushed and dirty, but not frayed or threadbare. Only long enough for my wounds from the beating to heal, then, and for me to acquire some new ones somehow, and that atrocious burn on my hand, I turned away from the mirror with a last rueful glance at the ruin of my face. Whatever pretensions to good looks I might ever have had, they were gone forever. A lot of those scars had healed, which meant they'd never look any better than they did now.

My matrix was back in its bag around my neck, though the thong Kadarin had cut had been replaced with a narrow red silk cord. I fumbled to take it out. Before I had the stone bared, the image flared, golden, burning ... Sharrat With a shudder of horror, I thrust it away again.

What had happened? Where was Marjorie?

Either the thought bad called her to me or had been summoned by her approaching presence. I heard the creaking of the door‑bolts again and she came into the room and stopped, staring at me with a strange fear. My heart sank down into my boot soles. Had that dream, of all the dreams, been true? For an aching moment I wished we had both died together in the forests. Worse than torture, worse than death, to see Marjorie look at me with fear. . , .

Then she said, "Thank God! You're awake tins time and you know me!" and ran straight into my arms. I strained her to me. I wanted never to let her go again. She was sobbing. "It's really you againl All this time, you've never looked at me, not once, only at the matrix...."

Cold horror flooded me. Then some of it had been true. I said, "I don't remember anything, Marjorie, nothing'at all since Kadarin drugged me. For all I know, I have been in this room all that time. What do you mean?"

I felt her trembling. "You don't remember any of it? Not the forge‑folk, not even the fire at Caer Donn?"

My knees began to collapse under me; I sank on the bed and heard my voice cracking as I said, "I remember nothing, nothing, only terrible ghastly dreams...." The implications of Marjorie's words turned me sick. With a fierce effort I controlled the interior heaving and managed to whisper, "I swear, I remember nothing, nothing. Whatever I may have done . . . Tell me, in Zandru's name, did I hurt you, mishandle your*

She put her arms around me again and said, "You haven't even looked at me. Far less touched me. That was why I said I couldn't go on." Her voice died. She put her hand on mine. I cried out with the pain and she quickly caught it up, saying tenderly, "Your poor hand!" She looked at it carefully. "It's better, though, it's much better."

I didn't like to think what it must have been, if this was better. No wonder fire had flamed, burned, raged through all my nightmares! But how, in the name of all the devils hi all the hells, had I done this?

There was only one answer. Sharra. Kadarin had somehow forced me vback into the service of Sharra. But how, howl How could he use the skills of my brain while my conscious mind was elsewhere? I'd have sworn it was impossible. Matrix work takes deliberate, conscious concentration. . . . My fists clenched. At the searing pain in my palm I unclenched them again, slowly.

He dared! He dared to steal my mind, my consciousness ... But how? How?

There was only one answer, only one thing he could have done; use all the free‑floating rage, hatred, compulsion in my mind, when my conscious control was gone‑and take all that and channel it through Sharral All my burning hatred, all the frenzies of my unconscious, freed of the discipline I kept on them, fed through that vicious thing.

He had done that to me, while my own conscious mind was in abeyance. Next to that, Dyan's crime was a boy's prank. The ruin of my face, the burn of my hand, these were nothing, nothing. He had stolen my conscious mind, he had

used my unconscious, uncontrolled, repressed passions. . . . Horrible!

I asked Marjorie, "Did they force you, too, into Sharra?" She shivered. "I don't want to talk about it, Lew," she said, whimpering like a hurt puppy. "Please, no, no. Just... just let's be together for now.**

I drew her down on the bed beside me, held her gently in the circle of my arms. My thoughts were grim. She stroked her light fingers across my battered face and I could feel her horror at the touch of the scars. I said, my voice thick hi my throat, "Is my face so ... so repulsive to you?"

She bent down and laid her lips against the scars. She said with mat simplicity which, more than anything else, meant Marjorie to me, "You could never be horrible to me, Lew. I was only thinking of the pain you have suffered, my darling."

"Fortunately I don't remember much of it," I said. How long would we be here uninterrupted? I knew without asking that we were both prisoners now, that there was no hope of any such trick as we had managed before. It was hopeless. Kadarin, it seemed, could force us to do anything. Anything!

I held her tight, with a helpless anguish. I think it was then mat I knew, for the first time, what impotence meant, the chilling, total helplessness of true impotence.

I had never wanted personal power. Even when it was thrust on me, I had tried to renounce it And now I could not even protect mis girl, my wife, from whatever tortures, mental or physical, Kadarin wanted to inflict on her.

AH my life I had been submissive, willing to be ruled, willing to discipline my anger, to accept continence at the peak of early manhood, bending my head to whatever lawful yoke was placed on ft.

And now I was helpless, bound hand and foot. What they had done they could do again.... And now, when I needed strength, I was trully impotent . . .

I said, "Beloved, Td rather die than hurt you, but I must know what has been going on." I did not ask about Sharra. Her trembling was answer enough. "How did he happen to let you come to me now, after so long?"

She controlled her sobs and said, "I told him‑and he knew I meant it‑that unless he freed your mind, and let us be together, I would kill myself. I can still do that and he cannot prevent me."

I felt myself shudder. It went all the way to the bone. She

went on, keeping her voice quiet and matter‑of‑fact, and only I, who knew what discipline had made her a Keeper, could have guessed what it cost her. "He can't control the ... the matrix, the thing, without me. And under drugs I can't do it at all. He tried, but it didn't work. So I have that last hold over him. He will do almost anything to keep me from killing myself. I know I should have done it. But I had to"‑her voice finally cracked, just a little‑"to see you again when you knew me, ask you ..."

I was more desperately frightened than ever. I asked, "Does Kadarin know that we have lain together?"

She shook her head. "I tried to tell him. I think he hears only what he wants to bear now. He is quite mad, you know. It would not matter to him anyway, he thinks it is only Comyn superstition." She bit her lip and said, "And it cannot be as dangerous as you think, I am still alive, and well.*1

Not well, I thought, looking at her pallor, the faint bluish lines around her mouth. Alive, yes. But how long could she endure this? Would Kadarin spare her, or would he use her all the more ruthlessly to achieve his aims‑whatever, in his madness, they were now‑before her frail body gave way?

Did he even know he was killing her? Had he even bothered to have her monitored?

"You spoke of a fire at Caer Donn ...?*' "But you were there, Lew. You really don't remember?" "I don't. Only fragments of dreams. Terrible nightmares.** She lightly touched the horrible burn on my hand. "You got this there. "Beltran made an ultimatum. It was not his own will‑he has tried to get away‑but I think he is helpless in Kadarin's bands now too. He made threats and the Ter‑rans refused, and Kadarin took us up to the highest part of the city, where you can look straight down into the city, and‑oh, God, Lew, it was terrible, terrible, the fire striking into the heart of the city, the flames rising everywhere, screams ,.." She rolled over, hiding her head in the pillow. She said, muffled, "I can't. I can't tell you. Sharra is horrible enough, but this, the fire ... I never dreamed, never imagined. . , . And he said next time it would be the spaceport and the ships!"

Caer Donn. Our magical dream city. The city I had seen transformed by a synthesis of Terran science and Darkovan psi powers. Shattered, burned. Lying in ruins.

Like our lives, like our lives.... And Marjorie and I had done it.

Marjorie was sobbing uncontrollably. "I should have died first. I will die before I use that‑that destruction again!"

I lay holding her close. I could see the seal of Comyn, deeply marked in my wrist a few inches above the dreadful flaming burn. There was no hope for me now. I was traitor, doubly condemned and traitor.

For a moment, time reeling in my mind, I knelt before the Keeper at Arilinn and heard my own words: ".. . swear upon my life that what powers I may attain shall be used only for the good of my caste and my people, never for personal gain or personal ends ..."

I was forsworn, doubly forsworn. I had used my inborn talents, my tower‑trained skills, to bring rum, destruction on those I was doubly sworn, as Comyn, as tower telepath, to safeguard and protect.

Marjorie and I were deeply hi rapport. She looked at me, her eyes wide in horror and protest. "You did not do it willingly,*' she whispered. "You were forced, drugged, tortured‑"

"That makes no difference." It was my own rage, my own hate, they had used. "Even to save my life, even to save yours, I should never have let them bring us back. I should have made him kill us both."

There was no hope for either of us now, no escape. Kad‑arin could drug me again, force me again, and there was no way to resist him. My own unknown hatred had set me at his mercy and there was no escape.

No escape except death.

Marjorie‑I looked at her, wrung with anguish. There was no escape for her either. I should have made Kadarin kill her quickly, there in the stone hut. Then she would have died clean, not like this, slowly, forced to kill.

She fumbled at the waist of her dress, and brought out a small, sharp dagger. She said quietly, "I think they forgot I still have this. Is it sharp enough, Lew? Will it do for both of us, do you think?"

That was when I broke down and sobbed, helplessly, against her. There was no hope for either of us, I knew that But that it should come like this, with Marjorie speaking as calmly of a knife to kill us both as she would have asked if

her embroidery‑threads were the right color‑that I could not bear, that was beyond all endurance.

When at last I had quieted a little, I rose from her side, going to the door, I said aloud, "We will lock it from the inside this time. Death, at least, is a private affair." I drew the bolt. I had no hope that it would hold for long when they came for us, but by that time we would no longer care.

I came back to the bed, hauled off the boots I had found myself putting on for some unknown purpose. I knelt before Marjorie, drawing off her light sandals. I drew the clasps from her hair, laid her in my bed.

I thought I had left the Comyn. And now I was dying in order to leave Darkover in the hands of the Comyn, the only hands that could safeguard our world. I drew Marjorie for a moment into my arms.

I was ready to die. But could I force myself to kill her?

"You must," she whispered, "or you know what they will make me do. And what the Terrans will do to all our people after that."

She had never looked so beautiful to me. Her bright flame‑colored hair was streaming over her shoulders, faintly edged with light. She broke down then, sobbing. I held her against me, straining her so tightly in my arms I must have been hurting her terribly. She held me with all her strength and whispered, "It's the only way, Lew. The only way. But I didn't want to die, Lew, I wanted to live with you, to go with you to the lowlands, I wanted ... I wanted to have your children."

I knew no pain in my life, nothing that would ever equal the agony of that moment, with Marjorie sobbing in my arms, saying she wanted to have my children. I was glad I would not live long to remember this; I hoped the dead did not remember....

Our deaths were all that stood between our world and terrible destruction. I took up the knife. Touching my finger to the edge left a stain of blood, and I was insanely glad to feel its razor sharpness.