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

I glanced at the strengthening sun. "The morning's well on. Will anyone be expecting us?"

"I'm usually expected at breakfast, but Thyra likes to sleep late and no one else will care." She looked

shyly up into my face and said, "I'd rather stay with you."

I said, with a leaping joy, "Who needs breakfast?"

"We could walk into Caer Donn and find something at a food-stall. The food will not be as good as at

my guardian's table...."

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

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

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A little way inside the city gates Marjorie led the way to a food-stall. We ate freshly baked bread anddrank hot spiced cider, while I pondered what she had said about matrices for generating power. Yes,they had been used in the past, and misused, too, so that now it was illegal to construct them. Most of

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them had been destroyed, not all. If Kadarin wanted to try reviving one there was, in theory at least, no

limit to what he could do with it.

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

"You're lost somewhere again Lew. What is it?" "If Kadarin wants to do these things he must know of a

matrix capable of handling that kind of power. What and where?"

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

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

She said, looking incredulous, "Are you afraid?" "Damn right," I said. "I thought most of the talismans of Sharra-worship had been destroyed before the time of Regis Fourth. I know some of them weredestroyed."

"This one was hidden by the forge-folk and given back for their worship after the siege of Storn." Her lip

curled. "I have no patience with that kind of superstition."

"Just the same, a matrix is no toy for the ignorant." I stretched my hand out, palm upward over the table, to show her the corn-sized white scar, the puckered seam running up my wrist "In my first year of training at Arilinn I lost con-

trol for a split second. Three of us had burns like this. I'm not joking when I speak of risks."

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

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

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

"Do these work even in whiter?"

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

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I thought of the darkness at Armida during the snow-sea-

, son. There was so much we could learn from the Terrans!

;   Marjorie said, "Every time I see what the Terrans have

made of Caer Donn I am proud to be Terran. I suppose

Thendara is even more advanced."

I shook my bead. "You'd be disappointed. Part of it is all Terran, part of it all Darkovan. Caer Donn .. .

Caer Donn is like you, Marjorie, the best of each world, blended into a single harmonious whole ..."

This was what our world could be. Should be. This was Beltran's dream. And I felt, with my handslocked tight in

* Mariorie's, in a closeness deeper than a kiss, that I would risk anything to bring that dream alive and spread it over the ;4  face of Darkover. J^  I said something about how I felt as we climbed together

-rVupward again. We had elected to take the longer way, reluct-

I  ant to end this magical interlude. We must have known even

then that nothing to match this morning would ever come

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again, when we shared a dream and saw it all bright and new-edged and too beautiful to be real.

"I feel as if I were drugged with kirian!"

She laughed, a silvery peal. "But the kireseth no longer blooms in these hills, Lew. It's all real. Or it canbe."

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

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

Each of them had a matrix. That didn't really surprise me since tradition has it that the matrix jewels werefirst found in these mountains. None of them had his or her matrix what I would call properlysafeguarded. That didn't surprise me either. At Arilinn we're very strict in the old traditional ways. Like

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most trained technicians, I kept mine on a leather thong around my neck, silk-wrapped and inside a small

leather bag, lest some accidental stimulus cause it to resonate.

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

I looked at the blue stones lying in their hands. Marjorie's was the brightest, gleaming with a fiery innerluminescence, giving the lie to her modest statement that Thyra was the stronger telepath. Thyra's wasbright enough, though. My nerves were jangling. A "wild telepath," one who has taught himself by trialand error, extremely difficult to work with. In a tower the contact would first be made by a Keeper, notthe old carefully-shielded leronis of my father's day, but a woman highly trained, her strength safeguardedand disciplined. Here we had none. It was up to me.

It was harder than taking my clothes off before such an as-

sembly, yet somehow I had to manage it. I sighed and looked from one to the other.

"I take it you all know there's nothing magical about a matrix," I said. "It's simply a crystal which can

resonate with, and amplify, the energy-currents of your brain."

"Yes, I know that," said Thyra with amused contempt "I didn't expect anyone trained by Comyn to

know it, though."

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

"It was the first thing they taught me at Arilinn, kinswoman, I am glad you know it already." I

concentrated on Rafe. He was the youngest and would have least to unlearn.

"How old are you, little brother?"

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

"Can you control it?" We had none of the regular test materials; I would have to improvise. I made brief

contact. The fireplace. Make the fire flame up twice and die down.

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

"Careful," I said, "don't put it out. It's cold in here." At least he could receive my thoughts; though the test

was elementary, it qualified him as part of the circle. He looked up, delighted with himself, and smiled.

Marjorie's eyes met mine. I looked quickly away. Damn it, it's never easy to make contact with awomaa you're attracted to. I'd learned at Arilinn to take it for granted, for psi worked used up all thephysical and nervous energy available. But Marjorie hadn't learned that, and I felt shy. The thought oftrying to explain it to her made me squirm. In the safe quiet of Arilinn, chaperoned by nine or ten

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centuries of tradition, it was easy to keep a cool and clinical detachment. Here we must devise other

ways of protecting ourselves.

Thyra's eyes were cool and amused. Well, she knew. If she and Kadarin had been working together, nodoubt she'd found it out already. I didn't like her and I sensed she didn't like me either, but thus far, atleast, we could touch one another with easy detachment; her physical presence did not

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embarrass me. Where, working alone, had she picked up that cool, knife-like precision? Was I glad or

sorry that Marjorie showed no sign of it?

"Beltran," I said, "what can you do?"

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

A child's trick, of course, one of the simplest tests we used at Arilinn. "Can you call the fire without thematrix?" I asked.

"I don't try," he said. "In this area it's too great a danger to set something on fire. I'd rather learn to put

fires out. Do your tower telepaths do that, perhaps, in forest-fire country?"

"No, though we do call clouds and make rain sometimes. Fire is too dangerous an element, except for

baby tricks like these. Can you call the overlight?"

He shook his head, not understanding. I held out my hand and focused the matrix. A small green flameflickered, grew in the palm of my hand. Marjorie gasped. Thyra held out her own hand; cold white lightgrew, 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 ballof fire appeared, grew gradually larger, then floated to each of us in turn. Rafe could make only flickersof light; when he tried to shape them or move them, they flared up and vanished. Beltran could make nolight at all. I hadn't expected it. Fire, the easiest of the elements to call forth, was still the hardest tocontrol.

"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.