Now I really felt ashamed. I was better disciplined than this. I made myself take a long breath, unclench my hands from the railings of the stair. “No, beloved. Perhaps I can find out what’s gone wrong. But I have to be alone.”

I heard her plea, not aloud but straight to my mind, straight to my heart: Don’t leave me! Don’t go, Lew, don’t… I broke the contact harshly, cutting her off, shutting her out. It hurt horribly, but I knew that if this went on I would never be able to leave her, and I knew where it would end. And her discipline held. She closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath. I saw that curious look of distance, withdrawnness, isolation, slip down over her features. The look Callina had had, that Festival Night. The look I had seen so often on Janna’s face, my last season at Arilinn. She had known I loved her, wanted her. It hurt, but I felt relieved, too. Marjorie said quietly, “I understand, Lew. Go and sleep, my darling.” She turned and went away from me, up the long stairs, and I went away, blind with pain.

I passed the closed door of the suite where Regis and Danilo had been lodged. I knew I should speak to Regis. He was ill, exhausted. But my own misery made me shrink from the task. He had made it clear he did not want my solicitude. He was reunited with his friend, why should I disturb them now? He would be asleep, I hoped, resting after that terrible journey alone through the Hellers.

I went to my own room and threw myself down without bothering to undress.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

I had felt a disruption like this once before, like a vortex of fury, lust, rage, destruction, surging up through us all. It should not be like this. It couldnot be like this!

Normally, matrix work left the workers drained, spent, without anything left over for any violent emotion. Above all, I had grown accustomed to the fact that there was nothing left over for sexuality. It wasn’t that way now.

I had been angry with Thyra at first, not aroused by her. I had been angry when it seemed she mocked Marjorie, and then suddenly I’d been so overcome by my own need that it would have been easy for me to tear off her clothes and take her there before the fire!

And Marjorie. A Keeper. I shouldn’t have been capable even of thinkingabout her this way. Yet I hadthought about it. Damn it, I still ached with wanting her. And she had wanted me to stay with her! Was she weeping now, alone in her room, the tears she had been too proud to shed before me? Should I have risked it? Sanity, prudence, long habit, told me no; no, I had done the only thing it was safe to do.

I glanced briefly at the wrapped bundle of the matrix and felt the faintest thrill of awareness along my nerves. Insulated like that, it should have been wholly dormant. Damn it, I trained at Arilinn and any first-year telepath learns to insulate a matrix! What I insulate stays insulated! I must be dreaming, imagining. I was living on my nerves and by now they were raw, hypersensitive.

That damned thing was responsible for all our troubles. I’d have liked to heave it out the window, or better, send it out on a Terran rocket and let it work its mischief on cosmic dust or something! I heartily wished that Beltran and the Sharra matrix and Kadarin and old Desideria, with all her forge-folk about her, were all frying together on one of their own forges.

I was still in accord with Beltran’s dream, but standing between us and the accomplishment of the dream was this ravening nightmare of Sharra. I knew, I knew with the deepest roots of my self, that I could not control it, that Marjorie could not control it, that nothing human could ever control it. We had only stirred the surface of the matrix. If it was roused all the way it might never be controlled again, and tomorrow I would tell Beltran so.

Clutching this resolve, I fell into an uneasy sleep. For a long time I wandered in confused nightmares through the corridors of Comyn Castle; whenever I met someone, his or her face was veiled or turned away in aversion or contempt. Javanne Hastur refusing to dance with me at a children’s ball. Old Domenic di Asturien with his lifted eyebrows. My father, reaching out to me across a great chasm. Callina Aillard, turning away and leaving me alone on the rain-swept balcony. It seemed I wandered through those halls for hours, with no single human face turned to me in concern or compassion.

And then the dream changed. I was standing on the balcony of the Arilinn Tower, watching the sunrise, and Janna Lindir was standing beside me. I was dreamily surprised to see her. I was back again where I had been happy, where I had been accepted and loved, where there was no cloud on my mind and heart. But I had thought my circle had been broken and scattered, the others to their homes, I to the Guards where I was despised, Janna married … no, surely that had been only a bad dream! She turned and laid her hand in mine, and I felt a deep happiness.

Then I realized it was not Janna but Callina Aillard, saying softly, mockingly, “You do know what’s really wrong with you,” taunting me from the safe barrier of what she was, a Keeper, forbidden, untouchable … Maddened by the surge of need and hunger in me, I reached for her, I tore the veils from her body while she screamed and struggled. I threw her down whimpering on the stones and flung myself atop her, naked, and through her wild cries of terror she changed, she began to flame and glow and burn, the fires of Sharra engulfing us, consuming us in a wild spasm of lust and ecstasy and terror and agony …

I woke up shuddering, crying out with the mingled terror and enchantment of the dream. The Sharra matrix lay shrouded and dormant.

But I dared not close my eyes again that night.

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Chapter NINETEEN

After Lew had gone away, closing the door behind him, it was Regis who moved first, stumbling across the floor as if wading through a snowdrift, to clasp Dani’s shoulders in a kinsman’s embrace. He heard his own voice, hoarse in his ears.

“You’re safe. You really are here and safe.” He had doubted Lew’s word, though never in all his life had he reason to doubt. What kind of evil was here?

“Yes, yes, well and safe,” Danilo said, then drew a harsh breath of dismay. “My lord Regis, you’re soaked through!”

For the first time Regis became aware of the heat from the fireplace, the hangings sealing off drafts, the warmth after the icy blasts of the corridors. The very warmth touched off a spasm of shivering, but he forced himself to say, “The guards. You are really a prisoner, then?”

“They’re here to protect me, so they say. They’ve been friendly enough. Come, sit here, let me get these boots off, you’re chilled to the bone!”

Regis let himself be led to an armchair, so ancient in design that until he was in the seat he was not sure what it was. His feet came out of the boots numb and icy-cold. He was almost too weary to sit up and unlace his tunic; he sat with his hands hanging, his legs stretched out, finally with an effort put his stiff fingers to the tunic-laces. He knew his voice sounded more irritible than he meant.

“I can manage for myself, Dani. You’re my paxman, not my body-servant!”

Danilo, kneeling before the fire to dry Regis’ boots, jerked upright as if stung. He said into the fire, “Lord Regis, I am honored to serve you in any way I may.” Through the stiff formality of the words, Regis, wide open again, feltsomething else, a wordless resonance of despair: He didn’t mean it, then, about accepting my service. It was, it was only a way of atoning for what his kinsman had done…

Without stopping to think, Regis was out of the chair, kneeling beside Dani on the hearth. His voice was shaking, partly with the cold which threatened to rip him apart with shudders, partly with that intense awareness of Dani’s hurt.