“Comyn superstition,” Beltran said scornfully, “driveling nonsense about virgins and purity! Do you really believe all that rubbish?”

“Belief has nothing to do with it,” I said, “and no, Keepers don’t have to be sheltered virgins in this day and age. But while they’re working in the circles they stay strictly chaste. That’s a physical fact. It has to do with nerve currents. It’s no more superstition than what every midwife knows, that a pregnant woman must not ride too fast or hard, nor wear tight lacing in her dresses. And even so, it’s dangerous. Terribly dangerous. If you think I want Marjorie to be our Keeper, you are more ignorant than I thought!”

Kadarin looked at me steadily, and I saw that he was weighing what be said. “I believe you,” he said at last. “But you believe Marjorie can do it?”

I nodded, wishing I could lie and be done with it. A telepath’s love life is always infernally complicated. And Marjorie and I had just found each other. We had had so very little, so very little …

“She can, if she will,” I said at last, “but she must consent. No woman can be made Keeper unwilling. It is too strong a weight to carry, except by free will.”

Kadarin looked at us both then and said, “So it all hangs on Mariorie, then. What about it, Margie? Will you be Keeper for us?

She looked at me and, biting her lip, she stretched out her hands to mine. She said, “Lew, I don’t know … ”

She was afraid, and small wonder. And then, like a compelling, magical dream, I remembered the morning when we had walked together through Caer Donn and shared our dreams for this world. Wasn’t this worth a little danger, a little waiting for our happiness? A world where we need not feel shame but pride for our dual heritage, Darkovan and Terran? I felt Marjorie catch the dream, too, as without a word, she slowly loosed her hand from mine and we drew apart. From this moment until our work was ended and the circle dissolved, Marjorie would stand inviolate, set apart, alone. The Keeper.

No words were necessary, but Marjorie spoke the simple words as if they were an oath sealed in fire.

“I agree. If you will help me, I will do what I can.”

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Chapter FIFTEEN

For ten days the storm had raged, sweeping down from the Hellers through the Kilghard Hills and falling on Thendara with fury almost unabated. Now the weather was clear and fine, but Regis rode with his head down, ignoring the bright day.

He’d failed, he felt, having made a pledge and then doing nothing. Now he was being packed off to Neskaya in Gabriel’s care, like a sick child with a nanny! But he raised his head in surprise as they made the sharp turn that led down the valley toward Syrtis.

“Why are we taking this road?”

“I have a message for DomFelix,” Gabriel said. “Will the few extra miles weary you? I can send you on to Edelweiss with the Guards … ”

Gabriel’s careful solicitude set him on edge. As if a few extra miles could matter! He said so, irritably.

His black mare, sure-footed, picked her way down the path. Despite his disclaimer to Gabriel, he felt sick and faint, as he had felt most of the time since his collapse in Kennard’s rooms. For a day or two, delirious and kept drugged, he had had no awareness of what was going on, and even now much of what he remembered from the last few days was illusion. Danilo was there, crying out in wild protest, being roughly handled, afraid, in pain. It seemed that Lew was there sometimes too, looking cold and stern and angry with him, demanding again and again, What is it that you’re afraid to know?He knew, because they told him afterward, that for a day or two he had been so dangerously ill that his grandfather never left his side, and when, waking once between sick intervals of fragmented hallucinations, he had seen his grandfather’s face and asked, “Why are you not at Council?” the old man had said violently, “Damn the Council!” Or was that another dream? He knew that once Dyan had come into the room, but Regis had hidden his face in the bedclothes and refused to speak to him, gently though Dyan spoke. Or was that a dream, too? And then, for what seemed like years, he had been on the fire-lines at Armida, when they had lived day and night with terror; during the day the hard manual work kept it at bay, but at night he would wake, sobbing and crying out with fear … That night, his grandfather told him, his half-conscious cries had grown so terrified, so insistent, that Kennard Alton, himself seriously ill, had come and stayed with him till morning, trying to quiet him with touch and rapport. But he kept crying out for Lew and Kennard couldn’t reach him.

Regis, ashamed of this childish behavior, had finally agreed to go to Neskaya. The blur of memory and thought-images embarrassed him, and he didn’t try to sort out the truth from the drugged fantasies. Just the same, he knew that at least once Lew had been there, holding him in his arms like the frightened child he had been. When he told Kennard so, Kennard nodded soberly and said, “It’s very likely. Perhaps you were astray in time; or perhaps from where he is, Lew sensed that you had need for him, and reached you as a telepath can. I had never known you were so close to him.” Regis felt helpless, vulnerable, so when he was well enough to ride, he had meekly agreed to go to Neskaya Tower. It was intolerable to live like this …

Gabriel’s voice roused him now, saying in dismay, “Look! What’s this? DomFelix—”

The old man was riding up the valley toward them, astride Danilo’s black horse, the Armida-bred gelding which was the only really good horse at Syrtis. He was coming at what was, for a man his age, a breakneck pace. For a few minutes it seemed he would ride full tilt into the party on the path, but just a few paces away he pulled up the black and the animal stood stiff-legged, breathing hard, its sides heaving.

DomFelix glared straight at Regis. “Where is my son? What have you thieving murderers done with him?”

The old man’s fury and grief were like a blow. Regis said in confusion, “Your son? Danilo, sir? Why do you ask me?”

“What have you vicious, detestable tyrants done with him? How dare you show your faces on my land, after stealing from me my youngest—”

Regis tried to interrupt and quell the torrent of words. “ DomFelix, I do not understand. I parted from Danilo some days ago, in your own orchard. I have not laid eyes on him since; I have been ill—” The memory of his drugged dream tormented him, of Danilo being roughly handled, afraid, in pain …

“Liar!” DomFelix shouted, his face red and ugly with rage and pain. “Who but you—”

“That’s enough, sir,” said Gabriel, breaking in with firm authority. “No one speaks like that to the heir to Hastur. I give you my word—”

“The word of a Hastur lickspittle and toady! Idare speak against these filthy tyrants! Did you take my son for your—” He flung a word at Regis next to which “catamite” was a courtly compliment. Regis paled against the old man’s rage.

“ DomFelix—if you will hear me—”

“Hear you! My son heard you, sir, all your fine words!”

Two Guardsmen rode close to the enraged old man, grasping the reins of his horse, holding him motionless.

“Let him go,” Gabriel said quietly. “ DomFelix, we know nothing of your son. I came to you with a message from Kennard Alton concerning him. May I deliver it?”

DomFelix quieted himself with an effort that made his eyes bulge. “Speak, then, Captain Lanart, and the Gods deal with you as you Comyn dealt with my son.”

“The Gods do so to me and more also, if I or mine harmed him,” Gabriel said. “Hear the message of Kennard, Lord Alton, Commander of the Guard: ‘Say to DomFelix of Syrtis that it is known to me what a grave miscarriage of justice was done in the Guards this year, of which his son Danilo-Felix, cadet, may have been an innocent victim; and ask that he send his son Danilo-Felix to Thendara under any escort of his own choosing, to stand witness in a full investigation against men in high places, even within Comyn, who may have misused their powers.’ ” Gabriel paused, then added, “I was also authorized to say to you, DomFelix, that ten days from now, when I have escorted my brother-in-law, who is in poor health at this moment, to Neskaya Tower, that I shall myself return and escort your son to Thendara, and that you are yourself welcome to accompany him as his protector, or to name any guardian or relative of your own choosing, and that Kennard Alton will stand personally responsible for his safety and honor.”