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She knew Callista’s fear had gone, that she was eager to become part of this thing they were, and shedid not need to raise her eyes to know that Andrew and Damon had come to join them. For a momentshe wondered if she and Damon should withdraw, leaving Andrew alone with Callista, then almostlaughed at herself for the idea. They were all a part of this.

For a little the contact was only of their minds, as Damon began to reach out and weave the fourfoldrapport among them, close, intertwining, complete as it had never been before. Ellemir thought in musicalimages, and to her it was like blending voices, Callista’s clear and golden like the singing to the harp, Andrew’s a strong bass undercurrent, Damon’s a curiously many-voiced harmony, her own weavingthem together, blending with each. Even as she visualized this rapport as music, as harmony, she sharedthe images of the others: a sunburst of blending colors in Callista’s mind; the close tactile sense of Andrew’s private imagery, so that for a little it seemed that they all curled naked together in a strangedarkness, touching everywhere; sparkling spiderweb threads from Damon’s consciousness, weavingthem all into one. For a long time they seemed to need no more than this. Callista, floating in the glowingcolors, was faintly amused to feel Damon’s touch and knew he had kept enough separate awareness tomonitor her channels. Then, as he touched her, the emotional rapport deepened, became a strongerawareness in her body, something new and strange, but not frightening.

Vaguely, at the edge of her mind, she remembered her father’s stories.
 
Kireseth
 
was given to reluctantbrides. Well, she was reluctant no more. Was the effect of the resin on body or mind? Was it the openingof the mind which had freed her to be so aware of her body, of the closeness to Ellemir, who was rousedand aware of all of them? Or was it the body’s hunger for closeness which opened the mind to thedeeper communion of minds? Did it matter? She knew Andrew was still afraid to touch her. Poor Andrew, she had hurt him so much. She reached out to him, drawing him into her arms, felt him cover herwith kisses. This time she gave herself up to them, feeling as if she were drowning in the ecstatic shimmerof lights, and at the same time woven into a trembling darkness.

In a sudden bewilderment of sensuality it was simply not enough to be in Andrew’s arms. She did notmove away from him, but she reached for Damon, felt his touch, kissed him and suddenly, in a flash,remembered how she had found herself wanting to do this during her first year in the Tower, had stifledthe memory in a frenzy of error and shame. Touching both hard male bodies, she felt her fingertips tracingdown the curve of her sister’s breast, down the pregnant body, letting her consciousness sink deeper,just touching the faint, faint stir of the unborn child’s dreamless sleep. Somehow she felt enfolded likethat, safe, surrounded by love, and she knew she was ready for the rest too.

Andrew, sharing this with her, knew that for Callista, Ellemir’s accepting sexuality would always be thekey, that it had bridged the gap for Callista as it had almost done on their first catastrophic attempt. Heknew that if he had welcomed the rapport, even then Ellemir might have managed to bring them all safelythrough. But he had wanted to be alone with Callista, separate.

If I could only have trusted Ellemir and Damon then
... and through his regret felt Damon’s thoughts,

That was then, this is now, we have all changed and grown
 
.

And that was the last moment of separate awareness for any of them. Now, as it had almost been at Midwinter, the rapport was complete. None of them ever knew or wanted to know, none of them evertried to separate out or untangle isolated sensations. Details did not matter it that point— whose thighsopened or clasped, whose arms held close, who moved away for a moment, only to come closer, whokissed, probing, whose lips opened to the kiss, who penetrated or was penetrated. It seemed that for alittle while they all touched everywhere, sharing every closeness so deeply that there was no separateconsciousness at all. Callista was never sure, afterward, whether she had shared Ellemir’s awareness of

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the act of love or had experienced it for herself, and for a little while, briefly dropping into rapport with one of the men, saw and embraced
 
herself
—or was it her twin? She felt one of the men explode into orgasm, but was not sure whether or not she had participated in it. Her own consciousness was too diffuse. She felt her own awareness expanding, with Damon and Andrew and Ellemir like more solid spots in her own body, which had somehow expanded to take up all the space in the room, pulsing in multiple rhythms of excitement and awareness. Whether she herself had known pleasure or whether she had simply shared the intense pleasure of the others, she was never wholly sure; she did not want to know. Nor did any of them ever know which of them had first possessed Callista’s body. It did not matter; none of them wanted to know. They floated, they submerged in ecstasy, so blended from sensuality and the sharing of intense love that such things were irrelevant. Time had gone completely out of focus. It seemed to have gone on for years.

A long time later Callista knew she was drowsing, in tremendous content, still surrounded by them all. Ellemir was asleep with her head on Andrew’s shoulder. Callista felt weary, strange, and blissful,dropping now into Damon’s consciousness, now into Andrew’s, now submerging for minutes at a timeinto Ellemir’s sleep. Drifting between past and future, aware of her own body as she had never beensince childhood, she knew she would be able to go into Council and swear her marriage had beenconsummated, and then, with a reluctance which actually made her laugh a little, that she had come fromthis night pregnant. She did not really want a child, not yet. She had wanted a little time to learn aboutherself, to know the kind of growth Ellemir had known, to explore all the new and unexplaineddimensions in her life.

But I’ll live through it, women do
, she thought with secret laughter, and the laughter spilled over to

Damon. He reached out, enlacing her fingers with his.

Thank the Gods you can laugh about it, Callie!

It isn’t as if it had to be a choice, as I feared. As if I could never use my own particular skillsagain. It’s a broadening of what I am, not a narrowing of choices.

She still resented the need to have a child by the Council’s choice and not her own—she would neverforgive the Council for their attitude—but she accepted the necessity and knew she would easily manageto love the unwanted child, enough to hope that the coming daughter would not know, until she was oldenough to understand, just how
 
very
 
much she had been unwanted.

But I want never to know who fathered it… Please, Elli, even in monitoring, never, never let mebe sure
. And they promised one another, silently, that they would never try to know whether the childconceived this night was Damon’s daughter or Andrew’s. They might suspect, but they would neverknow for certain.

For hours they lay dozing, resting, sharing the fourfold rapport, feeling it come and go. Although all theothers had drifted into sleep toward morning, Damon found himself wakeful and a little fearful. Had heweakened them, or himself, for the coming battle? Could Callista clear her channels quickly enough?

And then, dropping into Callista’s consciousness, he knew that they would always be wholly clear, forwhichever force she chose to use them. She would not need the
 
kireseth;
 
now she knew within herselfhow it
felt
 
to switch them over from sexual messages to the full strength of
laran
 
. And Damon knew,with surging confidence, that he could meet whatever came.

And then he knew, reluctantly, why the use of
kireseth
 
had been abandoned. As a rare and sacramentalrite, it was safe and necessary, helping the Keepers reaffirm their common humanity, reaffirming the close

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bond of the old Tower circles, the closest bond known, closer than kin, closer than sexual desire.

But it could all too easily become an escape, an addiction. Would men, with this freedom accessible,ever accept the occasional periods of impotence after demanding work? Would women accept thediscipline of learning to keep the channels clear?
Kireseth
 
, with overuse, was dangerous. A thousandstories of the Ghost Winds in the Hellers made that clear. And the temptation to overuse it would bealmost irresistible.

So it had first fallen into a taboo, for rare and sacramental use, later the taboo being enlarged to totaldisuse and disrepute. With regret for what he would always remember as one of the peak experiences ofhis life, Damon knew that even as a Year’s End ritual it might be too tempting. It had brought them,undamaged, through the last barrier to their completion, but in future they must rely on discipline andself-denial.

Self-denial? Never, when they had one another.

And yet, if all of time coexisted at once, this magical hour would always be present and real to them as it

was now.

Sadly, lovingly, feeling their presence all around him and regretting the necessity to separate, he sighed.

One by one, he woke them.

“Sunrise is near,” he said soberly. “They will observe the terms precisely, but they will not give us a

moment’s advantage, so we must be ready for them. It is time to prepare for the challenge.”

Chapter Twenty-three

«^»

It was the thin darkness which preceded the dawn. Damon, standing at the still-dark window, not evengrayed with the coming light, felt ill at ease. The exultation was still with him, but there was a smallgnawing insecurity.

Had this, after all, been the wrong thing to do? By all the laws of Arilinn, this should have weakenedthem, made them unfit for the coming conflict. Had he made the most tragic, and irrevocable of allmistakes? Had he, loving all of them, condemned them to death and worse?

No. He had staked all their lives on the rightness of what they were doing. If the old laws of Arilinn wereright after all, then they all deserved to die and he would accept that death, if not gladly, at least with asense of justice. They were working in a new tradition, less cruel and crippling than the one he hadrejected, and his belief that they were right must triumph.

He had wrapped himself in a warm robe against the cold of the overworld. Callista had done the same,and had wrapped a fluffy shawl around Ellemir’s shoulders. Andrew, shrugging into his fur riding cloak,asked, “What exactly is going to happen, Damon?”

“
 
Exactly
? There’s no way I can tell you that,” Damon said. “It is the old test for a Keeper: we will build our Tower in the overworld, and they will try to destroy it, and us with it. If they cannot destroy it, they must acknowledge that it is lawful and has a right to be there. If they destroy it… well, you know what will happen then. So we must not allow them to destroy it.”

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Callista was looking pale and frightened. He took her face gently between his hands.

“Nothing can hurt us in the overworld unless you believe that it can.” Then he knew what was troubling

her: all her life she had been conditioned to believe that her power rested in her ritual virginity.

“Take your matrix,” he commanded gently.

She obeyed hesitantly.

“Focus on it. See?” he told her, as the lights slowly gathered in the stone. “And you know your channels

are clear.”

They were. And it was not only the
 
kireseth
 
. Freed of the enormous tensions and armoring of the Keeper’s training, the channels were no longer frozen. She could command their natural selectivity. Butwhy had no instinct told her this?

“Damon, how and why could they allow a secret like this to be forgotten?”

It meant that no one ever had to make the cruel choice Leonie had forced on her as a child, which other

Keepers for ages past had accepted in selfless loyalty to Comyn and Towers.

“How could they abandon
 
this
 
”—her words took in all the wonder and discovery of the night just

past—“for
 
that
 
!”