The first time she lost control and the petals crushed into an amorphous, colorless mass. The second time she did it almost as perfectly as I had done. Thyra, too, quickly mastered the trick, and Rafe, after a few tries. Beltran had to struggle to achieve the delicate control it demanded, but he did it. Perhaps he would make a psi monitor. Nontelepaths sometimes made good ones.

I saw Thyra by the waterfall, gazing into her matrix. I did not speak to her, curious to see what she could do unaided. It was growing late—we had spent considerable time with the flowers—and dusk was falling, lights appearing here and there in the city below us. Thyra stood so still she hardly appeared to breathe. Suddenly the raging, foaming torrent next to her appeared to freeze motionless, arrested in midair, only one or two of the furthest droplets floating downward. The rest hung completely stopped, poised, frozen as if time itself and motion had stopped. Then, deliberately, the water began to flow uphill.

Beneath us, one after another, the lights of Caer Donn blinked and went out.

Rafe gasped aloud; in the eerie stillness the small sound brought me back to reality. I said sharply, “Thyra!” she started, her concentration broken, and the whole raging torrent plunged downward with a crash.

Thyra turned angry eyes on me. I took her by the shoulder and drew her back from the edge, to where we could hear ourselves speak above the torrent

“Who gave you leave to meddle—!”

I deliberately smothered my flare of anger. I had assumed responsibility for all of them now, and Thyra’s ability to make me angry was something I must learn to control. I said, “I am sorry, Thyra, had you never been told that this is dangerous?”

“Danger, always danger! Are you such a coward, Lew?” I shook my head. “I’m past the point where I have to prove my courage, child.” Thyra was older than I, but I spoke as to a rash, foolhardy little girl. “It was an astonishing display, but there are wiser ways to prove your skill.” I gestured. “Look, you have put their lights out; it will take repair crews some time to restore their power relays. That was thoughtless and silly. Second, it is unwise to disturb the forces of nature without great need, and for some good reason. Remember, rain in one place, even to drown a forest fire, may mean drought elsewhere, and balance disturbed. Until you can judge on planet-wide terms, Thyra, don’t presume to meddle with a natural force, and never, never,for your pride! Remember, I asked Beltran’s leave even to destroy a few flowers!”

She lowered her long lashes. Her cheeks were flaming, like a small girl lectured for some naughtiness. I regretted the need to lay down the law so harshly, but the incident had disturbed me deeply, rousing all my own misgivings. Wild telepaths were dangerous! How far could I trust any of them?

Marjorie came up to us; I could tell that she shared Thyra’s humiliation, but she made no protest. I turned and slipped my arm around her waist, which would have proclaimed us acknowledged lovers in the valley. Thyra sent me a sardonic smile of amusement beneath her meekly dropped lashes, but all she said was, “We are all at your orders, DomLewis.”

“I’ve no wish to give orders, cousin,” I said, “but your guardian would have small cause to love me if I disregarded the simplest rules of safety in your training!”

“Leave him alone, Thyra,” Marjorie flared. “He knows what he’s doing! Lew, show her your hand!” She seized the palm, turned it over, showing the white ridged scars. “He has learned to follow rules, and learned it with pain! Do you want to learn like that?”

Thyra flinched visibly, averting her eyes from the scar as if it sickened her. I would not have thought her squeamish. She said, visibly shaken, “I had never thought … I did not know. I’ll do what you say, Lew. Forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive, kinswoman,” I said, laying my free hand on her wrist. “Learn caution to match your skill and you will be a strong leronissome day.” She smiled at the word which, taken literally, meant sorceress.

“Matrix technician, if you like. Some day, perhaps, there will be new words for new skills. In the towers we are too busy mastering skills to worry about words for them, Thyra. Call it what you like.”

Thin fog was beginning to move down from the peaks behind the castle. Marjorie shivered in her light dress and Thyra said, “We’d better go in, it will be dark soon.” With one bleak look at the darkened city below, she walked quickly toward the castle. Marjorie and I walked with our arms laced, Rafe tagging close to us.

“Why do we need the kind of control we practiced with the flowers, Lew?”

“Well, if someone in the circle gets so involved in what he’s doing that he forgets to breathe, the monitor outside has to start him breathing again without hurting him. A well-trained empath can stop bleeding even from an artery, or heal wounds.” I touched the scar. “This would have been worse, except that the Keeper of the circle worked with it, to heal the worst damage.” Janna Lindir had been Keeper at Arilinn for two of my three years. At seventeen, I had been in love with her. I had never touched her, never so much as kissed her fingertips. Of course.

I looked at Marjorie. No. No, I have never loved before, never … The other women I have known have been nothing …

She looked at me and whispered, half laughing, “Have you loved so many?”

“Never like this. I swear it—”

Unexpectedly she threw her arms around me, pressed herself close. “I love you,” she whispered quickly, pulled away and ran ahead of me along the path into the hall.

Thyra smiled knowingly at me as we came in, but I didn’t care. You had to learn to take that kind of thing for granted. She swung around toward the window, looking into the gathering darkness and mist. We were still close enough that I followed her thoughts. Kadarin, where was he, how did he fare on his mission?I began to draw them together again, Marjorie’s delicate touch, Rafe alert and quick like some small frisking animal, Thyra with the strange sense of a dark beast prowling.

Kadarin.The interlinked circle formed itself and I discovered to my surprise, and momentary dismay, that Thyra was at the center, weaving us about her mind. But she seemed to work with a sure, deft touch, so I let her keep that place. Suddenly I sawKadarin, and heard his voice speaking in the middle of a phrase:

“ … refuse me then, Lady Storn?”

We could even see the room where he was standing, a high-arched old hall with the blue glass windows of almost unbelievable antiquity. Directly before his eves was a tall old woman, proudly erect, with gray eyes and dazzling white hair. She sounded deeply troubled.

“Refuse you, dom? I have no authority to give or refuse. The Sharra matrix was given into the keeping of the forge-folk after the siege of Storn. It had been taken from them without authority, generations ago, and now it is safe in their keeping, not mine. It is theirs to give.”

Kadarin’s deep exasperation could be felt by all of us— stubborn, superstitious old beldame!as he said, “It is Kermiac of Aldaran who bids me remind you that you took Sharra’s matrix from Aldaran without leave—”

“I do not recognize his right.”

“Desideria,” he said, “let’s not quarrel or quibble. Kermiac sent me to bring the Sharra matrix back to Aldaran; Aldaran is liege-lord to Storn and there’s an end to it.”

“Kermiac does not know what I know, sir. The Sharra matrix is well where it is; let it lie there. There are no Keepers today powerful enough to handle it. I myself called it up only with the aid of a hundred of the forge-folk, and it would be ill done of me to deprive them of their goddess. I beg you say to Kermiac that by my best judgment, which he trusted always, it should stay where it is.”