Left alone with Marjorie, I said, “You should rest, too, after all that.”

She said in a very small voice, “I’m afraid to be alone. Don’t leave me alone, Lew.”

I didn’t intend to, not until I was sure she was safe. A Keeper in training has stresses no other matrix mechanic suffers, and I was still responsible for her. Although emotional upheavals were common enough when first keying into one of the really big matrices, such frightful blowups as this between Beltran and Thyra were not common. Fortunately. No wonder we were all literally sick from it.

I had never seen Marjorie’s room before. It was at the top of a small tower, isolated, reached by a winding stair, a wedge-shaped room with wide windows. In clear weather it would have looked out on tremendous mountain ranges. Now it was all a dismal gray, gloomy, with hard beating snow rattling and whining against the glass. Marjorie slipped off her outdoor boots and knelt by the window, looking into the storm. “It’s lucky we came in when we did. I’ve known the snow to come up so quickly you can lose your way a hundred paces from your own doorway. Lew, will Rafe be all right?”

“Of course. Just stress, maybe a touch of threshold sickness. Beltran’s tantrum didn’t help any, but it won’t last long.” Once a telepath gained full control of his matrix, and to do this he must have mastered the nerve channels, recurrences of threshold sickness were not serious. Rafe was probably feeling rotten, but it wouldn’t last.

Marjorie leaned against the window, pressing her temples to the cold glass. “My head aches.”

“Damn Beltran anyway!” I said, with violence that surprised me.

“It was Thyra’s fault, Lew. Not his.”

“What Thyra did is Thyra’s responsibility, but Beltran must bear the responsibility for losing control, too.”

My mind slid back to that strange interval within the matrix—whether it had been a few seconds or an hour I had no way of knowing—when I had sensed my father’s presence. It occurred to me to wonder if at any of the towers, Hali or Arilinn or Neskaya, they had sensed the wakening of this enormous matrix, stirring to life. My father was an extraordinary telepath; he had served in Arilinn under the last of the old-style Keepers. He must have felt Sharra’s wakening.

Did he know what we were doing?

As if following my thoughts Marjorie said, “Lew, what is your father like? My guardian has always spoken well of him.”

“I don’t want to talk about my father, Marjorie.” But my barriers had been breached and that furious parting came back to me, with all the old bitterness. He had been willing to kill me, to have his own way. He cared no more for me than a…

Mariorie said in a low voice, “You’re wrong, Lew. Your father loved you. Loves you. No, I’m not reading your mind. You were … broadcasting. But you are a loving person, a gentle person. To be so loving, you must have been loved. Greatly loved.”

I bent my head. Indeed, indeed, all those years I had been so secure in his love, he could never have lived a lie. Not to me. We had been open to one another. Yet somehow that made it worse. Loving me, to risk me so ruthlessly…

She whispered, “I know you, Lew. You could not have lived—would you have wanted to be without laran? Without the full potential of your gift? He knew your life wouldn’t have been worth living without it. Blind, deaf, crippled … so he let you risk it. To become what he knew you were.”

I laid my head on her knees, blind with pain. She had given me back something I never knew I had lost; she had returned to me the security of my father’s love. I couldn’t look up, couldn’t let her see my face was contorted, that I was crying like a child. She knew anyway. I supposed this was my form of throwing a tantrum. Thyra disobeyed orders. Rafe got threshold sickness, Kadarin and Beltran started slamming each other … I started crying like a child …

After a time I lifted her hand and kissed the slender fingertips. She looked worn and exhausted. I said, “You must rest too, darling.” I was deeply proud of the skill with which she had seized control. She lay back against her pillows. I bent and, as I would have done at Arilinn, ran my fingertips lightly along her body. Not touching her, of course, simply feeling out the energy flows, monitoring the nerve centers. She lay quietly, smiling at the touch that was not a touch. I felt that she was still depleted, drained of energy, but that would not last. The channels were clear. I was glad she had come through this strenous beginning so well, so undamaged.

I was not, at the moment, actively suffering because she was forbidden to me, that even a kiss would have been unthinkable. I was remotely aware of her but there was no sexual element in it. I simply felt an intense and overwhelming love such as I had never known for anyone alive. I didn’t have to speak of it. I knew she shared it.

If I couldn’t have reached Marjorie’s mind I’d have gone mad with wanting her, needing her with every nerve in me. But we had this, and it was enough. Almost enough, and we had the promise of the rest.

I knew the answer, but I wanted to say the words aloud.

“When this is over, you will marry me, Marjorie?”

She said, with a simplicity that made my heart turn over, “I want to. But will the Comyn let you?”

“I won’t ask them. By then the Comyn may have learned it’s not for them to arrange everyone’s life!”

“I wouldn’t want to make trouble, Lew. Marriage doesn’t mean that much to me.”

“It does to me,” I said fiercely. “Do you think I want our children to be bastards? I want them at Armida after me, without the struggle my father had to get it for me … ”

Her laugh was adorable. Quickly, she sobered. “Lew, Lew, I’m not laughing at you, darling. Only it makes me so happy, to think that it means all this to you—not just wanting me, but thinking of all that will come afterward, our children, our children’s children, a household to stand into the future. Yes, Lew. I want to have your children, I’m sorry we have to wait so long for them. Yes, I’ll marry you if you want me to, in the Comyn if they’ll have it, if not, then any way we can, any way you choose.” For a moment, a feather-touch, she laid her lips against the back of my hand.

My heart was so full I could bear no more. I had desired women before, but never with this wholeness, going far beyond any moment of desire, stretching into the future, all our lives. For a moment time went out of focus again …

… I was kneeling beside the cot of a little girl, five or six perhaps, a tiny child with a heart-shaped face and wide eyes fenced in long lashes, golden eyes just the color of Marjorie’s … I felt a strange wonder, pain in my right hand, dismayed, torn with anguish.

Marjorie whispered, “What is it, Lew?”

“A flash of precognition,” I said, coming back to myself, strangely shaken. “I saw—I saw a little girl. With your eyes.” But why had I felt so bewildered, so agonized? I tried to see it again, but as these flashes come unbidden, so they can never be recalled. I felt Marjorie’s thoughts, and hers were wholly joyful: It will be all right then. We will be together as we wish, we will see that child.Her lashes were dropping shut with weariness and, kneeling beside her, I looked into her face again. She thought drowsily, We should have a son first,and I knew she had seen the child’s face in my mind. She smiled with pure happiness and her lids slipped shut. Her hand tightened on my own.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, half asleep.

“Never. Sleep, beloved.” I stretched out beside her, holding her fingers in mine, my love encircling her sleep. After a moment, I slept too, in the deepest happiness I had ever known.

Or was ever to know again.

It was dark when I woke, the snow still rattling the windows. Kadarin was standing above us, holding a light. Marjorie was still deeply asleep. His glance at her was filled with a deep tenderness that warmed me to him as nothing else could have done.