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Callista stepped between them. She seemed to tower above them all, tall and commanding, her matrixblazing at her throat. Damon saw the matrix in Dezi’s hand glow like a live coal, felt it burn through histunic and into his flesh. Dezi yelled in pain and rage, and for an instant Damon saw Callista as she hadbeen in Arilinn, flickering with the crimson of a Keeper’s robes. With the small dagger she wore at herwaist she struck at the thong about Dezi’s throat. The matrix fell to the floor, blazed like fire when Dezigrabbed for it. Damon felt with Dezi the flare of agony as Dezi’s hand began to burn in the flame. Thematrix rolled to one side, a useless black dead thing.

And Dezi
 
disappeared
 
! Andrew, for a fraction of a second, watched the place where Dezi hadvanished, the air still trembling behind him. Then it rang in all their minds, a terrible dying scream ofdespair and rage. And they
 
saw
 
it, as if they had been physically present in that room at Armida.

When Callista had destroyed Domenic’s stolen matrix, Dezi could not face being without one again. With his last strength he had teleported himself through the overworld, to materialize at that place where Damon had placed his own for safekeeping—a panic reaction, without rational thought. A moment ofconsidering would have told him it was safely locked away inside a solid, metal-bound strongbox. Twosolid objects could not occupy the same space at the same time, not in the solid universe. And Dezi—they all saw it and shuddered with horror—had materialized half in, half out of the box holding thematrix. And even before that despairing dying scream died away, they had all heard the echo in Damon’smind. Dezi lay on the floor of the strong-room at Armida, very completely and very messily dead. Eventhrough his horror Damon found a moment to pity whoever would have to deal with that dreadfullymaterialized corpse, half in and half out of a solidly locked strongbox which had split his skull like a pieceof rotten fruit.

Ellemir had sunk to the floor, moaning with shock and dread. Andrew’s first thought was for her. Hehurried to her, holding her, trying to pour his strength into her as he had poured it into Damon. Damonslowly picked himself up, staring into nowhere. Callista was staring at her matrix, in horror.

“Now I am truly forsworn…” she whispered. “I had given back my oath… and I used it to kill…” She began to scream wildly, beating at herself with her fists, tearing at her face with her nails. Andrew thrust Ellemir gently into a low chair, ran to Callista. He tried to grasp her flailing arms. There was a shower of blue sparks and he landed, stunned, against the opposite wall. Callista, looking at him, her eyes wide and half mad with horror, shrieked again, and her nails ripped down her cheeks, blood following them in a

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thin, scarlet line.

Damon sprang forward. He grasped her wrists in one hand, held the struggling, screaming womanimmobile, and with his open hand slapped her, hard, across the face. The screams died in a gasp. Sheslumped and he held her upright, cradling her head on his shoulder.

Callista began to sob. “I had given back my oath,” she whispered. “I could not refrain… I movedagainst him
 
as Keeper
 
. Damon, I am still Keeper despite my oath… my oath!”

“Damn your oath!” said Damon, and shook her. “Callista! Stop that! Don’t you even know you saved

all our lives?”

She stopped crying, but her face, ghastly with streaked blood and tears, was drawn into a mask ofhorror. “I am forsworn. I am forsworn.”

“We’re all forsworn,” Damon said. “It’s too late for that! Damn it, Callie, pull yourself together! I have to see if that bastard has managed to kill your father too. And Ellemir—” His breath caught in his throat. Shocked into compliance, Callista went quickly to where Ellemir lay motionless in the chair.

After a moment she raised her head. “I do not think the child has suffered. Go, Damon, and see if all iswell with our father.”

Damon moved toward the other rooms of the suite. But he knew without moving that
 
Dom
 
Esteban wasso near death that nature had provided its own shield. He had been spared all knowledge of that battle tothe death. Damon, however, needed a moment alone, to come to terms with this new knowledge.

Without thought, he had moved against a Keeper, an Alton, had moved, automatically, to shake her outof her hysteria, to take the full responsibility.

It is I who am Keeper of these four. Whatever we may do, it is on my responsibility
.

Before long, he knew, he would be called to account for what he had done. Every telepath from

Dalereuth to the Hellers must have witnessed that death.

And already he had alerted them to what was happening among the four of them, when with Andrewand Dezi he had built that landmark in the overworld, to heal the frostbitten men. Sorrow gnawed at himagain, for the boy so terribly and tragically dead. Aldones, Lord of Light… Dezi, Dezi, what a waste,what a tragic waste of all his gifts…

But even sorrow gave way to the knowledge of what he had done, and what he had become.

Exiled from Arilinn, he had built his own Tower. And Varzil had hailed him as
 
tenerézu
 
. Keeper. Hewas Keeper, Keeper of a forbidden Tower.

Chapter Twenty

«^»

Damon had known it would not be long in coming, and it was not.

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Ellemir had quieted. She sat in the chair where Andrew had laid her, only gasping a little with shock.

Ferrika, summoned, looked at her with dismay.

“I don’t know what you have been doing, my lady, but whatever it is, unless you want to lose this baby too, you had better go to bed and stay there.” She began gently to move her hands over Ellemir’s body. To Damon’s surprise, she did not touch her, keeping an inch or two between Ellemir’s body and her fingertips, finally saying with a faint frown, “The baby is all right. In fact,
you
 
are in worse case than
 
he
 
is. I will send for a hot meal for you, and you eat it and go to—” She broke off, staring at her hands in astonishment and awe.

“In the name of the Goddess, what am I doing!”

Callista, recalled to responsibility, said, “Don’t worry, Ferrika, your instinct is good. You have beenaround us so much, it is not surprising. If you had a trace of
laran
 
it would surely have wakened. Later Iwill show you how to do it very precisely. On a pregnant woman it is a little tricky.”

Ferrika blinked, staring at Callista. Her round, snub-nosed face looked a little bewildered, and she tookin the dreadfully bloody scratches down Callista’s face, blinking. “I am no
 
leronis
 
.”

“Nor am I now,” Callista said gently, “but I have been taught, as you shall be. It is the most useful of skills for a midwife. I am sure you have more
 
laran
 
than you know.” She added, “Come, let us take Ellemir to her room. She must rest, and,” she added, raising her hands to her bleeding face, “I must see to these, too. And when you send for food for Ellemir, Damon, send for some for me too; I am hungry.”

Damon watched them go. He had long suspected Ferrika had some
 
laran
 
, but he was grateful it was

Callista who had decided to take the responsibility for teaching her.

There was no reason that any person with the talent should not have the training, Comyn or no. Becausethings had been done this way since the Ages of Chaos was no reason they must continue to be done thisway till Darkover sank into the Last Night! Andrew had become one of them, and he was a Terran. Ferrika had been born on the Alton estates, a commoner and, worse, a Free Amazon. But she hadeverything that was needful to make her one of them too: she had
 
laran
 
.

Comyn blood? Look what it had done for Dezi!

Aware that after the terrific matrix battle he too was famished, he sent for some food and when it camehe ate it without caring what it was, watching Andrew do the same. Neither spoke of Dezi. Damonthought that at some future time
Dom
 
Esteban would have to know that the bastard son he had cherishedand defended had died for his crimes. But he need never know the dreadful details.

Andrew ate without tasting, aware of the terrible hunger and draining of matrix linking, but he felt sickeven while his starved body put away the food with mechanical intensity. His thoughts ran bittercounterpoint; he saw again Damon shaking Callista, holding her against self-mutilation. The memory of Callista’s bleeding face made him sick.

He had left it to Damon to care for her, thinking of no one but Ellemir. Elli, bearing his child. He hadtouched Callista and she had thrown him across the room. Damon had grabbed her like a caveman, andshe had quieted right down. He wondered, despairing, if they had
 
both
 
married the wrong women.

After all, he thought, his mind plodding miserably along an all too familiar track, they were both

Tower-trained, both top-rank telepaths, understanding each other. Elli and he were on a different level,

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just ordinary people, not understanding these things. He glanced at Damon with a sense of resentful

inferiority.

He killed a boy this morning. Horribly. And he sat there calmly eating his dinner!

Damon was aware of Andrew’s resentment, but did not try to follow his thoughts. He knew andaccepted that there were times, perhaps there would always be times, when Andrew, for no reason hecould understand, suddenly went apart from them, no longer a beloved brother but a desperatelyalienated stranger. He knew it was part of the price they both paid for the attempt to extend theirbrotherhood across two conflicting worlds, two very different societies. It might always be this way. Hehad tried to bridge the gap, and it always made things worse. Now all he could do, and he knew it sadly,was to leave it to run its course.

When the door opened again, Damon raised his head in irritation which he quickly controlled—theservant, after all, had his work to do. “Do you want to take the dishes? A moment… Andrew, have youfinished?”

“
 
Su serva, dom
,” the man said, “the Lady of Arilinn and her
 
leroni
 
from the Tower have begged the

favor of a word with you, Lord Damon.”

Begged
? Damon thought skeptically, not likely. “Tell them I will see them in the outer chamber in a fewminutes.” Privately he thanked whatever God might be listening that Callista was with Ellemir and theyhad not asked for her. If Leonie saw those scratches on her face… “Come along, Andrew,” he said. “They probably want all four of us, but they don’t know it yet.”

Leonie led the group. Margwenn Elhalyn was with her, and a couple of telepaths from Arilinn who hadcome since Damon’s time, and one, a man named Rafael Aillard, who had been there with him, thoughhe was now stationed at Neskaya. It was incredible, Damon thought, that at one time this man was partof his circle, closer to Damon than blood kin, a beloved friend. Leonie was veiled and this struck Damonwith irritation. Surely it was seemly for a
 
comynara
 
and Keeper to go veiled among strangers. He couldhave understood it if Margwenn had veiled herself. But Leonie?

But he spoke as if it were an ordinary thing to have his chamber invaded by four strange telepaths andthe Keeper of Arilinn. “Kinswoman, you lend me grace. How may I serve you?”

Leonie said bluntly, “Damon, you were sent from Arilinn years ago. You have
 
laran
 
, and you havebeen trained in the use of a matrix, so you may not be forbidden to use it for such personal purposes asare lawful. But the law forbids that any serious matrix operations shall be undertaken outside thesafeguards of a Tower. And now you have used your matrix to kill.”

As a matter of fact, he thought, it had been Callista who killed Dezi. But that didn’t matter. It was hisresponsibility. He said so.

“I am regent of Alton. I put to death, lawfully, a murderer who had killed one and attempted to kill

another within the Domain. I claim privilege.”