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But Damon was not working along those lines. He knew he could not defeat Arilinn by doing what theydid. His Tower was building something wholly new, built upon their fourfold rapport. It was only rightthat they should spend this night in completing the bond, helping Callista to be part of it, to share it fully.

Andrew took the flowers from Callista’s hands. As he breathed their scent— dried, powdery, but stillreminiscent of the field of golden flowers under the crimson sunlight— he seemed to see Callista comingthrough the field of flowers again, and the memory made him faint with longing. As Ellemir took them inher turn, he felt moved to protest—was this safe for her, in her condition? But she had the right tochoose. She should share whatever this night brought them.

Damon felt a rush of expanding outward consciousness, a heightened awareness. It seemed that thematrix at his throat was flickering, throbbing like a live thing. He cradled it in his hand and it seemed tospeak to him, and for the moment he wondered if the matrices were, after all, a form of alien life,experiencing time at a fantastically different rate, symbiotic with mankind?

Then he seemed to rush backward as he had done during Timesearch, and experience, with curiousclairvoyance, what he had heard of the history of the Towers, at Arilinn and at Nevarsin. After the Agesof Chaos, centuries of decadence, corruption, and conflicts which had decimated the Domains and ragedover half a world, the Towers had been rebuilt and the Compact formed, forbidding all weapons savethose within hand’s reach of the wielder, and forcing anyone who would kill to take an equal chance atdeath. Matrix work had been relegated to the Towers and to those of Comyn blood, sworn to the Towers and the Keepers. The Keepers, vowed to chastity and without allegiance even to family ties,were required to be disinterested, without political or dynastic interest in the rule of the Domains. Thetraining of Tower workers was based on strong ethical principles and the breaking of all other bonds,creating strength and integrity in a world corrupt and laid waste.

And the Keepers were sworn to protect the Domains, to guard against further misuse of the matrixstones. Without political power, they had nevertheless taken on tremendous personal and charismatic

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force, priestesses, sorceresses, with a vital spiritual and religious ascendancy, controlling all the matrix

workers on Darkover.

But had this in itself become an abuse?

It seemed to Damon that he was in telepathic contact across the centuries with his distant kinsman Varzil—or was it a faint racial memory? When had the Towers abandoned the Year’s End ritual whichkept them in touch with their common humanity? The ritual had allowed a Keeper, celibate by harshnecessity for her incredibly difficult and demanding work—and in those days, at the height of the Towers,it had been far more demanding still—to become periodically aware of her common humanity, sharing theinstincts and desires of her fellow men and women.

When had they abandoned it? Even more,
 
why
 
had they abandoned it? At some time during the Ages of Chaos had it become a kind of debauchery? For whatever reasons, good or bad, it was gone, and with itthe knowledge of how to unlock the channels frozen for psi work at such a high level. So the Keepers,no longer neutered, had been forced to rely on a kind of training basically inhuman, and the power of the Keepers lay in the hands of such women who were capable of withdrawing themselves thus completelyfrom their instincts and desires.

It seemed to Damon, as he traversed the years, that he could feel within himself all the suffering of thesemen and women, alienated, despairing, many failing because they could not so fully separate themselvesfrom the human lot. And those who succeeded had had to adopt impossible standards for themselves,training of an inhuman rigor, total alienation even from their own circles. But what choice had they had?

But now they would rediscover what the old rite could have done…

He was not looking at Callista but he
felt
 
her frozen decorum dissolving, felt the lessening physicalrigidity, tension running out of her like running water. She had dropped into a chair. He turned and sawher smiling, stretching like a cat, holding out her arms to Andrew. Andrew went and knelt beside her, and Damon watched, thinking with longing of a lovely child in the Tower, all her exquisite spontaneity leavingher day by day, slowly changing to a prim tense silence. Now, his heart aching, he could see a little ofthat child in the sweet smile Callista gave Andrew. Andrew kissed her hesitantly, then with growingpassion. As the fourfold rapport began to weave among them again, they all shared, for a moment, in thekiss. But Andrew, his own inhibitions broken by the
 
kireseth
 
, moved a little too quickly. His armstightened around Callista, crushing her against him, and the growing demand of his kisses frightened her. In sudden panic she broke away from him, thrusting him away with the full strength of her arms, her eyeswide with dread.

Damon felt the double texture of her fear: partly she feared that what had happened before wouldhappen again, that the reflex she could not control would strike Andrew, hurt him, kill him; partly shefeared her own arousal, strange, unfamiliar. She looked at Andrew with something like terror, stared at Damon with a numb, trapped look which bewildered him.

Ellemir’s thoughts moved quickly through the growing rapport.
 
Have you forgotten how young she is
 
?

Andrew stared at her without comprehension. After all, Callista was Ellemir’s twin!

Yes, and after so many years as a Keeper, in some ways she is older, but all of that is gone fromher mind now. She is, essentially, the little girl of thirteen who went to the Tower. For her, sex isstill a memory of terror and pain, and how she nearly killed you. She has nothing good toremember except a few kisses among the flowers. Leave her to me for a little, Andrew.

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Reluctantly Andrew drew away from Callista, and Ellemir put an arm around her twin’s shrinkingshoulders. None of them needed to speak aloud now, and didn’t bother.

Come with me, darling, it won’t hurt them to wait until you are ready
. She led her into the innerroom, telling her,
 
This is your real wedding night, Callista, and there will be no crude horseplay andjokes
 
.

Pliant as a child, and to Ellemir she seemed almost like a child, Callista allowed her twin to undress her,to remove the paint with which she had concealed the red marks on her face, to brush out her long hairover her shoulders, put her into a nightgown. The touch laid them open to one another, Ellemir’s guardalso going down under the growing influence of the
 
kireseth
 
. She felt the flood of memories her twin hadnot been able to share when they had tried, on the night before their wedding, to exchange hesitantconfidences.

Ellemir felt and
experienced
 
, with Callista, the conditioning to withdrawal, the harsh discipline againsteven a random touch of any other human hand. With overwhelming horror, she looked at the smallhealed scars on Callista’s wrists and hands, awash with the physical and emotional anguish of those firstterrible years in the Tower.
 
And Damon had a part in this
 
! For a moment she shared Callista’sagonized resentment, the rage never given voice or outlet, poured into a tension and force whose onlyoutlet was through the focused energy of the matrix screens and relays.

She reexperienced with Callista the slow, inexorable deadening of normal physical responses, thenumbing of bodily reflexes, the hardening of tensions in mind and body into a rigid armoring. Callista, bythe third year in Arilinn, had no longer been lonely, had no longer craved human contact or emotionalnourishment.

She was a Keeper.

It was a miracle, Ellemir realized, that she had any human compassion, any real feeling left at all. In a fewmore years it would have been too late; even
 
kireseth
 
could not have dissolved away the hard armor ofthe years, the imprint in the mind of so much tension.

But the
 
kireseth
 
had dissolved the patterning in Callista, leaving her a trembling child. Her mind wasfreed, and her body was no longer bound by the inexorable reflexes of the training, but with it had goneall the intellectual acceptance and maturity with which Callista had overlaid her inexperience, and she wasa frightened little girl. Essentially, Ellemir thought with deep compassion, Callista was younger than sheherself had been when she took her own first lover.

After being freed like this, Callista should have had a year or two to grow up normally, to come first toemotional and then to physical awareness of love. But she did not have that much time. She had onlytonight, to cross a gulf of years.

With anguished empathy, cradling the shaking girl in her arms, Ellemir wished she could give Callistasome of her own acceptance. Callista did not lack courage—no one who had been able to endure thatkind of training could be thought lacking in courage. She would harden herself, go through with theconsummation, so that she could face the Council tomorrow and swear that it had been done, but, Ellemir feared, it would be an ordeal, a test of courage, not the joyous thing it should have been.

It was cruel, Ellemir decided. They were asking a child to consent to her own rape—for in essence thatwas what it would be!

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She would not be the first. So many women of Comyn were married, almost as children, to men theyhardly knew and did not love. Callista had courage, so she would not rebel. And she really loved Andrew. But still, Ellemir thought, it would be a wretched wedding night for her, poor child.

Time was the one thing she needed, and the one thing Ellemir could not give her.

She felt Callista’s tentative touch on her mind, a reaching for reassurance, and suddenly realized thatthere
 
was
 
a way to share her own experience with her twin. They were
 
both
 
telepaths. Ellemir hadalways been doubtful, hesitant about her own
 
laran
 
, but under the
 
kireseth
 
she too was discovering anew potential, a new growth.

Confidently, holding Callista’s hands in hers, she let her mind drift back to her fifteenth year, the time of Dorian’s pregnancy, her growing closeness to Dorian’s young husband, the agreement of the sisters that Ellemir should take Dorian’s place in his bed. Ellemir had been a little afraid, not of the experience itself,but that Mikhail might think her ignorant or childish, too young, too inexperienced, not a fit substitute for Dorian. When he first came to her, and Ellemir had not remembered this in years, she had been paralyzedwith fright, almost as frightened as Callista was now. Would he find her awkward, ugly?

And yet how easy it had been, how simple and pleasant, after all, how foolish her apprehension hadseemed. When Dorian’s child was born and the time was at an end, she had regretted it.

Slowly she moved forward in time, blending her awareness with Callista’s, sharing the growth of her lovefor Damon. The first time they had danced together in Thendara, at Midsummer festival, he had seemedmiddle-aged to her, only one of her father’s officers, silent, withdrawn, showing attention to his cousin outof politeness, no more. Not until Callista was imprisoned among the catmen and she had sent for him inpanic, had it occurred to her that Damon was anything but a friendly older kinsman, the friend of herlong-dead elder brother. And then she had known what he meant to her. She shared with Callista, as shecould never have done in words, the growing frustration of waiting, the dissatisfaction with kisses andchaste embraces, the ecstasy of their first coming together.
 
If I could have known then, Callie, how toshare this with you
 
!

She reexperienced, with mingled joy and the memory of dread, her first suspicion of pregnancy:happiness, the fear and sickness, the turmoil of her body which had turned into a hostile strange thing, butthrough it all, the ioyfulness. She felt herself sobbing again uncontrollably as she relived the day the fragilelink had given way and Damon’s daughter had died unborn. And then, more hesitantly—
 
are you able toaccept this? Do you resent it
?—she felt again her growing awareness of Andrew’s need, welcominghim into her bed, for a little almost fearing it would lessen her closeness to Damon; again the delight oflearning that it heightened it, because now it was a matter of choice and not merely custom, that herrelationship with Damon had developed even more deeply with what she had learned about herself andher own desires from Andrew.

I knew you wanted me to do this, Callista, but I couldn’t help wondering if it was because youreally did not know what it meant to me.

Callista sat up in bed, put her arms around Ellemir and kissed her, reassuringly. Her eyes were wide withwonder and awe. Ellemir was struck by her beauty. She knew Damon loved Callista too, sharingsomething with her that Ellemir never could. Yet she could accept it, as she knew Callista accepted that Ellemir and not she herself would give Andrew his first child. Independently she came to the conclusion Andrew had reached: they were not two couples changing partners now and then, like some figure in acomplicated dance. They were something else, and each of them had something unique to give the others.