"I don't try," he said. "In this area it's too great a danger to set something on fire. I'd rather learn to put fires out. Do your tower telepaths do that, perhaps, in forest-fire country?"
"No, though we do call clouds and make rain sometimes. Fire is too dangerous an element, except for baby tricks like these. Can you call the overlight?"
He shook his head, not understanding. I held out my hand and focused the matrix. A small green flame flickered, grew in the palm of my hand. Marjorie gasped. Thyra held out her own hand; cold white light grew, pale around her fingers, lighting up the room, flaring up like jagged lightning. "Very good," I said, "but you must control it. The strongest or brightest light is not always the best. Marjorie?"
She bent over the blue shimmer of her matrix. Before her face, floating in the air, a small blue-white ball of fire appeared, grew gradually larger, then floated to each of us in turn. Rafe could make only flickers of light; when he tried to shape them or move them, they flared up and vanished. Beltran could make no light at all. I hadn't expected it. Fire, the easiest of the elements to call forth, was still the hardest to control.
"Try this." The room was very damp; I condensed the moist air into a small splashing fountain of water-drops, each sizzling a moment in the fire as it vanished. Both of the women proved able to do this easily; Rafe mastered it with little trouble. He needed practice, but had excellent potential.
Beltran grimaced, "I told you I had small talent and less skffl."
"Well, some things I can teach you without talent, kins-
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man," I said. "Not all mechanics are natural telepaths. Do you read thoughts at all?"
"Only a little. Mostly I sense emotions," he said.
Not good. If he could not link minds with us, he would be no use in the matrix circle. There were other things he could do, but we were too few for a circle, except for the very smallest matrices.
I reached out to touch his mind. Sometimes a telepath who has never learned the touching technique can be shown, when all else fails. I met slammed, locked resistance. Like many who grow up with minimal laran, untrained, he had built defenses against tbe use of his gift. He was cooperative, letting me try again and again to force down the barrier, and we were both white and sweating with pain by the time I finally gave up. I had used a force on him far harder than I had used on Regis, to no avail.
"No use," I said at last. "Much more of this will kill both of us. I'm sorry, Beltran. I'll teach you what I can outside the circle, but without a catalyst telepath this is as far as you can go." He looked miserably downcast, but he took it better than I had hoped.
"So the women and children can succeed where I fafl. Well, if you've done the best you can, what can I say?"
It was, on the contrary, easy to make contact with Rafe. He had built no serious defense against contact, and I gathered, from the ease and confidence with which he dropped into rapport with me, that he must have had a singularly happy and trusting childhood, with no haunting fears. Thyra sensed what we had done; I felt her reach out, and made the telepathic overture which is the equivalent of an extended hand across a gulf. She met it quickly, dropping into contact without fumbling, and .. .
A savage animal, dark, sinuous, prowling an unexplored jungle. A smell of musk ... claws at my throat ...
Was this her idea of a joke? I broke the budding rapport, saying tersely, "This is no game, Thyra. I hope you never find that out the hard way."
She looked bewildered. Unconscious, then. It was just the inner image she projected. Somehow I'd have to learn to live with it. I had no idea how she perceived me. That's one thing you can never know. You try, of course, at first. One girl in my Arilinn circle had simply said I felt "steady." Another tried, confusedly, to explain how I "felt" to her mind and
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wound up saying I felt like the smell of saddle-leather. You're trying, after all, to put into words an experience that has nothing to do with verbal ideas.
I reached out for Marjorie and sensed her in the fragmentary circle ... a falling swirl of golden snowflakes, silk rustling, like her hand on my cheek. I didn't need to look at her. I broke the tentative four-way contact and said, "Basically, that's it. Once we learn to match resonances."
"If it's so simple, why could we never do it before?" Thyra demanded.
I tried to explain that the art of making a link with more than one other mind, more than one other matrix, is the most difficult of the basic skills taught at Arilinn. I felt her fumbling to reach out, to make contact, and I dropped my barriers and allowed her to touch me. Again the dark beast, the sense of claws ... Rafe gasped and cried out in pain and I reached out to knock Thyra loose. "Not until you know how," I said. "I'll try to teach you, but you have to learn the precise knack of matching resonance before you reach out. Promise me not to try it on your own, Thyra, and I'll promise to teach you. Agreed?"
She promised, badly shaken by the failure. I felt depressed. Four of us, then, and Rafe only a child. Beltran unable to make rapport at all, and Kadarin an unknown quantity. Not enough for Beltran's plans. Not nearly enough.
We needed a catalyst telepath. Otherwise, that was as far as I could go.
Rafe's attempts to lower the fire and our experiments with water-drops had made the hearth smolder; Marjorie began to cough. Any of us could have brought it back to brightness, but I welcomed the chance to get out of the room. I said, "Let's go into the garden."
The afternoon sunshine was brilliant, melting the snow. The plants which had just this morning been thrusting up spikes through snow were already budding. I asked, "Will Kermiac be angry if we destroy a few of his flowers?"
"Flowers? No, take what you need, but what will you do with them?"
"Flowers are ideal test and practice material," I said. "It would be dangerous to experiment with most living tissue; with flowers you can learn a very delicate control, and they live such a short time that you are not interfering with the balance of nature very much. For instance." Cupping matrix
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in hand, I focused my attention on a bud full-formed but not yet opened, exerting the faintest of mental pressures. Slowly, while I held my breath, the bud uncurled, thrusting forth slender stamens. The petals unfolded, one by one, until it stood full-blown before us. Marjorie drew a soft breath of excitement and surprise.
"But you didn't destroy it!"
"In a way I did; the bud isn't fully mature and may never mature enough to be pollinated. I didn't try; maturing a plant like that takes deep intercellular control. I simply manipulated the petals." I made contact with Marjorie. Try it with me. Try first to see deep into the cell structure of the flower, to see exactly how each layer of petals is folded....
The first time she lost control and the petals crushed into an amorphous, colorless mass. The second time she did it almost as perfectly as I had done. Thyra, too, quickly mastered the trick, and Rafe, after a few tries. Beltran had to struggle to achieve the delicate control it demanded, but he did it. Perhaps he would make a psi monitor. Nontelepaths sometimes made good ones.
I saw Thyra by the waterfall, gazing into her matrix. I did not speak to her, curious to see what she could do unaided. It was growing late?we had spent considerable time with the flowers?and dusk was falling, lights appearing here and there in the city below us. Thyra stood so still she hardly appeared to breathe. Suddenly the raging, foaming torrent next to her appeared to freeze motionless, arrested in midair, only one or two of the furthest droplets floating downward. The rest hung completely stopped, poised, frozen as if time itself and motion had stopped. Then, deliberately, the water began to flow uphill.
Beneath us, one after another, the lights of Caer Donn blinked and went out.
Rafe gasped aloud; in the eerie stillness the small sound brought me back to reality. I said sharply, "Thyra!" she started, her concentration broken, and the whole raging torrent plunged do
wnward with a crash.
Thyra turned angry eyes on me. I took her by the shoulder and drew her back from the edge, to where we could hear ourselves speak above the torrent
"Who gave you leave to meddle?!"
I deliberately smothered my flare of anger. I had assumed responsibility for all of them now, and Thyra's ability to
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make me angry was something I must learn to control. I said, "I am sorry, Thyra, had you never been told that this is dangerous?"
"Danger, always danger! Are you such a coward, Lew?" I shook my head. "I'm past the point where I have to prove my courage, child." Thyra was older than I, but I spoke as to a rash, foolhardy little girl. "It was an astonishing display, but there are wiser ways to prove your skill." I gestured. "Look, you have put their lights out; it will take repair crews some time to restore their power relays. That was thoughtless and silly. Second, it is unwise to disturb the forces of nature without great need, and for some good reason. Remember, rain in one place, even to drown a forest fire, may mean drought elsewhere, and balance disturbed. Until you can judge on planet-wide terms, Thyra, don't presume to meddle with a natural force, and never, never, for your pride! Remember, I asked Beltran's leave even to destroy a few flowers!"
She lowered her long lashes. Her cheeks were flaming, like a small girl lectured for some naughtiness. I regretted the need to lay down the law so harshly, but the incident had disturbed me deeply, rousing all my own misgivings. Wild tele-paths were dangerous! How far could I trust any of them?
Marjorie came up to us; I could tell that she shared Thyra's humiliation, but she made no protest. I turned and slipped my arm around her waist, which would have proclaimed us acknowledged lovers in the valley. Thyra sent me a sardonic smile of amusement beneath her meekly dropped lashes, but all she said was, "We are all at your orders, Dom Lewis."
"I've no wish to give orders, cousin," I said, "but vour guardian would have small cause to love me if I disregarded the simplest rules of safety in your training!"
"Leave him alone, Thyra," Marjorie flared. "He knows what he's doing! Lew, show her your hand!" She seized the palm, turned it over, showing the white ridged scars. "He has learned to follow rules, and learned it with pain! Do you want to learn like that?"
Thyra flinched visibly, averting her eyes from the scar as if it sickened her. I would not have thought her squeamish. She said, visibly shaken, "I had never thought... I did not know. I'll do what you say, Lew. Forgive me."
"Nothing to forgive, kinswoman," I said, laying my free
hand on her wrist. "Learn caution to match your skill and you will be a strong leronis some day." She smiled at the word which, taken literally, meant sorceress.
"Matrix technician, if you like. Some day, perhaps, there will be new words for new skills. In the towers we are too busy mastering skills to worry about words for them, Thyra. Call it what you like."
Thin fog was beginning to move down from the peaks behind the castle. Marjorie shivered in her light dress and Thyra said, "We'd better go in, it will be dark soon." With one bleak look at the darkened city below, she walked quickly toward the castle. Marjorie and I walked with our arms laced, Rafe tagging close to us.
"Why do we need the kind of control we practiced with the flowers, Lew?"
"Well, if someone in the circle gets so involved in what he's doing that he forgets to breathe, the monitor outside has to start him breathing again without hurting him. A well-trained empath can stop bleeding even from an artery, or heal wounds." I touched the scar. "This would have been worse, except that the Keeper of the circle worked with it, to heal the worst damage." Janna Lindir had been Keeper at Arilinn for two of my three years. At seventeen, I had been in love with her. I had never touched her, never so much as kissed her fingertips. Of course.
I looked at Marjorie. No. No, I have never loved before, never.... The other women I have known have been nothing. ...
She looked at me and whispered, half laughing, "Have you loved so many?"
"Never like this. I swear it?"
Unexpectedly she threw her arms around me, pressed herself close. "I love you," she whispered quickly, pulled away and ran ahead of me along the path into the hall.
Thyra smiled knowingly at me as we came in, but I didn't care. You had to learn to take that kind of thing for granted. She swung around toward the window, looking into the gathering darkness and mist. We were still close enough that I followed her thoughts. Kadarin, where was he, how did he fare on his mission? I began to draw them together again, Marjorie's delicate touch, Rafe alert and quick like some small frisking animal, Thyra with the strange sense of a dark beast prowling.
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Kadarin. The interlinked circle formed itself and I discovered to my surprise, and momentary dismay, that Thyra was at the center, weaving us about her mind. But she seemed to work with a sure, deft touch, so I let her keep that place. Suddenly I saw Kadarin, and heard his voice speaking in the middle of a phrase;
"... refuse me then, Lady Storn?"
We could even see the room where he was standing, a high-arched old hall with the blue glass windows of almost unbelievable antiquity. Directly before his eves was a tall old woman, proudly erect, with gray eyes and dazzling white hair. She sounded deeply troubled.
"Refuse you, domf I have no authority too give or refuse. The Sharra matrix was given into the keeping of the forge-folk after the siege of Storn. It had been taken from them without authority, generations ago, and now it is safe in their keeping, not mine. It is theirs to give."
Kadarin's deep exasperation could be felt by all of us? stubborn, superstitious old beldame!~as he said, "It is Kermiac of Aldaran who bids me remind you that you took Sharra's matrix from Aldaran without leave?"
"I do not recognize his right."
"Desideria," he said, "let's not quarrel or quibble. Kermiac sent me to bring the Sharra matrix back to Aldaran; Aldaran is liege-lord to Storn and there's an end to it."
"Kermiac does not know what I know, sir. The Sharra matrix is well where it is; let it He there. There are no Keepers today powerful enough to handle it. I myself called it up only with the aid of a hundred of the forge-folk, and it would be ill done of me to deprive them of their goddess. I beg you say to Kermiac that by my best judgment, which he trusted always, it should stay where ft is."
"I am sick of this superstitious talk of goddesses and talismans, lady. A matrix is a machine, no more."
"Is it? So I thought when I was a maiden," the old woman said. "I knew more of the art of a matrix at fifteen, sir, than you know now, and I know how old you really are." 1 felt the man flinch from her sharp, steady gaze. "I know this matrix, you do not. Be advised by me. You could not handle it. Nor could Kermiac. Nor could I, at my age. Let it lie, man! Don't wake it! If you do not like the talk of goddesses, call it a force basically beyond human control in these days, and evil."
Kadarin paced the floor and I paced with him, sharing a restlessness so strong it was pain. "Lady, a matrix can be no more good or evil in itself than the mind of the man who wields it. Do you think me evil, then?"
She waved that away with an impatient gesture. "I think you honest, but you will not believe there are some powers so strong, so far from ordinary human purpose, that they warp all things to evil. Or to evil in ordinary human terms, at least And what would you know of that? Let it be, Kadarin."
"I cannot. There is no other force strong enough for my purposes, and these are honest. I have safeguarded ail, and I have a circle ready to my hand."
"You do not mean to use it alone, then, or with the Dar-riell woman?"
"That foolhardy I am not. I tell you, I have safeguarded all. I have won a Comyn telepath to aid me. He is cautious and skilled," Kadarin said persuasively, "and trained at Ar-ilinn."
/> "Arilinn," said Desideria at last "I know how they were trained at Arilinn. I did not believe that knowledge still survived. That should be safe, then. Promise me, Kadarin, to place it in his hands and leave all things to his judgment, and I will give you the matrix."
"I promise you," Kadarin said. We were so deeply in rapport that it seemed it was I myself, Lew Alton, who bowed before the old Keeper, feeling her gray eyes search my very soul rather than his.
It is in the memory of that moment that I will swear, even after all the nightmare that came later, that Kadarin was honest, that he meant no evil....
Desideria said, "Be it so, then, I will entrust it to you." Again the sharp gray eyes met his. "But I tell you, Robert Kadarin, or whatever you call yourself now, bewarel If you have any flaw, it will expose it brutally; if you seek only power, it will turn your purposes to such ruin as you cannot even guess; and if you kindle its fires recklessly, they will turn on you, and consume you and all you love! I know, Kadarin! I have stood in Sharra's flame and though I emerged un-burnt, I was not unscarred. I have long put aside my power, I am old, but this much I can still say?beware]"
And suddenly the identity swirled and dissolved. Thyra sighed, the circle dropped like strands of cobweb and we stood, staring at one another dazed, in the darkening hallway.
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Thyra was white with exhaustion and I felt Marjorie's hands trembling on mine.
"Enough," I said firmly, knowing that until it was certain who was to take the centerpolar place, until we knew which of us was Keeper, it was my responsibility to safeguard them all. I motioned to the others to separate, draw apart physically, to break the last clinging strands of rapport. I let Marjorie's hands go with regret "Enough. We all need rest and food. You must learn never to overtax your physical strength." I spoke deliberately, in a firm, didactic manner, to minimize any emotional contact or concern. "Self-discipline is just as important as talent, and far more important than skill."
But I was not nearly as detached as I sounded, and I suspected they knew it.
Three days later, at dinner in the great lighted hall, I spoke of my original mission to Kermiac. Beltran, I knew, felt that I had wholly turned my back on Comyn. It was true that I DO longer felt bound to my father's will. He had lied to me, used me ruthlessly. Kadarin had spoken of Compact as just another Comyn plot to disarm Darkover, to keep the Council's rule intact. Now I wondered how my elderly kinsman felt about it. He had ruled many years in the mountains, with the Terrans ever at hand. It was reasonable he should see everything differently from the Comyn lords. I had heard their side; I had never been given opportunity to know the other view.
When I spoke to him of Hastur's disquiet about the violations of Compact and told him I had been sent to find out the truth, he nodded and frowned, thinking deeply. At last he said, "Danvan Hastur and I have crossed words over this before. I doubt we will ever really agree. I have a good bit of respect for that man: down there between the Dry Towns and the Terrans he has no bed of roses, and all things considered he's managed well. But his choices aren't mine, and fortunately I'm not oath-bound to abide by them. Myself, I believe the Compact has outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any, which I'm no longer sure of."