I whistled. The matrix had been outlawed as a weapon centuries ago. The Compact had not been made to keep us away from such simple toys as the guns and blasters of the Terrans, but against the terrifying weapons devised in our Ages of Chaos. I wasn’t happy about trying to key a group of inexperienced telepaths into a really large matrix, either. Some could be harnessed and used safely and easily. Others had darker histories, and the name of Sharra, Goddess of the forge-folk, was linked in old tales with more 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 knowsome of them were destroyed.”

“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 control 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. Then she lifted her firm little chin and said, “All the same, what one human mind can build, another human mind can master. And a matrix is no use to anyone lying on an altar for ignorant folk to worship.” She pushed aside 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 Donn was a beautiful city. Even now, when it lies beneath tons of rubble and I can never go back, it stands in my 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 its own small glass-roofed greenhouse for vegetables and herbs seldom seen in the hills because of the short growing season and weakened sunlight. There were solar collectors on the roofs to collect and focus the dim winter sun on the indoor gardens.

“Do these work even in winter?”

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

I thought of the darkness at Armida during the snow-season. 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 head. “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 hands locked 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 face of Darkover. I said something about how I felt as we climbed together upward again. We had elected to take the longer way, reluctant to end this magical interlude. We must have known even then that nothing to match this morning would ever come 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 kiresethno longer blooms in these hills, Lew. It’s all real. Or it can be.”

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

I felt nervous, somehow reluctant. It was always nerve-racking to work with a strange group of telepaths. Even at Arilinn, when the circle was changed every year, there was the same anxious tension. I felt 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 were first found in these mountains. None of them had his or her matrix what I would call properly safeguarded. That didn’t surprise me either. At Arilinn we’re very strict in the old traditional ways. Like 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 a scrap of silk and thrust into her gown between her breasts, where my hand had lain! Rafe’s was small and still dim; he had it in a small cloth bag on a woven cord around his neck. Thyra kept hers in a copper locket, which I considered criminally dangerous. Maybe my first act should be to teach them proper shielding.

I looked at the blue stones lying in their hands. Marjorie’s was the brightest, gleaming with a fiery inner luminescence, giving the lie to her modest statement that Thyra was the stronger telepath. Thyra’s was bright enough, though. My nerves were jangling. A “wild telepath,” one who has taught himself by trial and error, extremely difficult to work with. In a tower the contact would first be made by a Keeper, not the old carefully-shielded leronisof my father’s day, but a woman highly trained, her strength safeguarded and disciplined. Here we had none. It was up to me.

It was harder than taking my clothes off before such an assembly, 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 she could?

“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 the effort 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 a woman you’re attracted to. I’d learned at Arilinn to take it for granted, for psi work used up all the physical and nervous energy available. But Marjorie hadn’t learned that, and I felt shy. The thought of trying to explain it to her made me squirm. In the safe quiet of Arilinn, chaperoned by nine or ten centuries of tradition, it was easy to keep a cool and clinical detachment. Here we must devise other ways of protecting ourselves.