Some day he would know the trick of directing those currents without making them flow through his body. But now this is what he needed, and only someone who could accept him entirely, all of him, mind and body and emotions, could have given it to him. And it was a closer brotherhood than blood. Living with your skin off.

And suddenly be knew that he need not go to a tower. What he had learned now was a simpler way of what he would have been taught there. He knew he could use larannow, any way he needed to. He could use his matrix without getting sick again, he could reach anyone he needed to reach, send the message that had to be sent.

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Chapter TWENTY-TWO

(Lew Alton’s narrative)

For the ninth or tenth time in an hour I tiptoed to the door, unfastened the leather latch and peered out. The outside world was nothing but swirling, murky grayness. I backed away from it, wiping snow from my eyes, then saw in the dim light that Marjorie was awake. She sat up and wiped the rest of the snow from my face with her silk kerchief.

“It’s early in the season for so heavy a storm.”

“We have a saying in the hills, darling. Put no faith in a drunkard’s prophecy, another man’s dog, or the weather at any season.”

“Just the same,” she said, struggling to put my own thoughts into words, “I knowthese mountains. There’s something in this storm that frightens me. The wind doesn’t rage as it should. The snow is too wet for this season. It’s wrongsomehow. Storms, yes. But not like this.”

“Wrong or right, I only wish it would stop.” But for the moment we were helpless against it. We might as well enjoy what small good there was in being snowbound together. I buried my face in her breast; she said, laughing, “You are not at all sorry to be here with me.”

“I would rather be with you at Arilinn,” I said. “We would have a finer bridal chamber.”

She put her arms around me. It was so dark we could not see one another’s faces, but we needed no light. She whispered, “I am happy with you wherever we are.”

We were exaggeratedly gentle with one another now. I hoped a time might come, some day, when we could come into one another’s arms without fear. I knew I would never forget, not while I lived, that terrifying madness that had gripped us both, nor those dreadful hours, after Marjorie had cried herself into a stunned, exhausted sleep, while I lay restless, aching with the fear she might never trust or love me again.

Thatfear had vanished a few hours later, when she opened her eyes, still dark and bruised in her tear-stained face, and impulsively reached for me, with a caress that healed my fears. But one fear remained: could it seize us again? Could anyone, ever, be sane, after the touch of Sharra?

But for now we were without fear. Later Marjorie slept; I hoped this prolonged rest would help her recover her strength after long traveling. I moved restlessly away, peering into the storm again. Later, I knew, I must brave the outdoors to give the last of our grain and fodder to the horses.

There was something very wrong with the storm. It made me think of Thyra’s trick with the waterfall. No, that was foolish. No sane person would meddle with the weather for some private end.

But I had said it myself: Could anyone be sane, after the touch of Sharra?

I dared not even look into my matrix, check what, if anything, was behind the undiminished strangeness of the storm. While Sharra was out and raging, seeking to draw us back, my matrix was useless—worse than useless, dangerous, deadly.

I fed the horses, came back inside to find Marjorie still sleeping and knelt to kindle a fire with a little of our remaining wood supply. Food was running low, but a few days of fasting would not hurt us. Worse was the shortage of fodder for the horses. As I put some grain to cook for porridge, I wondered if I had yet made Marjorie pregnant. I hoped so, of course, then caught myself with a breath of consternation. Evanda and Avarra, not yet, not yet! This journey was hard enough on her already. I felt torn, ambivalent. With a deep instinct I hoped she was already bearing my child, yet I was afraid of what I most desired.

I knew what to do, of course. Celibacy is impossible in the tower circles, except for the Keepers, and it takes an unimaginable toll of them. Yet pregnancy is dangerous for the women working in the relays, and we cannot risk interruption of their term. I suspected Marjorie would be shocked and indignant if I tried to protect her this way. I would not have had her feel otherwise. But what were we to do? At least we should talk about it, honestly and openly. It would have to be her own choice, either way.

Behind me Marjorie stirred restlessly in her sleep, cried out “No! No! Thyra, no—” and sat bolt upright, holding her hands to her head as if in wild terror. I ran to her. She was sobbing with fright, but when I got her fully awake she could not tell me what she had seen or dreamed.

Was Thyra doing this to her? I didn’t doubt she was capable of it, and now I had no faith in her scruples. Nor in Kadarin’s. I braced myself against the hurt of that. We had been friends. What had changed them?

Sharra? If the fires of Sharra could break through the discipline of years at Arilinn, what would it do to a wild telepath without it?

Marjorie said, a little wistfully, “You were a little in love with Thyra, weren’t you?”

“I desired her,” I said quietly, facing it. “That kind of thing is unavoidable in a close circle of that sort. It might have happened with any woman who could reach my mind. But she did not want it; she tried to fight against it. I, at least, knew it could happen. Thyra was trying very hard not to be aware of it.”

How much had that battle with herself damaged and disrupted her? Had I failed Thyra, too? I should have tried harder to help her confront it, face it in full awareness. I should have made us all— all—be honest with one another, as my training demanded, especially when I saw where our undisciplined emotions were leading us—to rage and violence and hate.

We could never have controlled Sharra. But if I had known sooner what was happening among us all, I might have seen the way we were being warped, distorted.

I had failed them all, my kinsmen, my friends, by loving them too much, not wanting to hurt them with what they were.

The experiment, noble as Beltran’s dream had been, lay in ruins. Now, whatever the cost, the Sharra matrix must be monitored, then destroyed. But again, what of those who had been sealed to Sharra?

The snow continued to fall all that day and night, and was still falling when we woke the next morning, drifting high around the stone buildings. I felt we should try to pass on, nevertheless, but knew it was insanity. The horses could never force their way through those drifts. Yet if we were trapped here much longer, without food for them, they would not be able to travel.

It must have been the next afternoon—events of that time are blurred in my mind—when I roused from sleep to hear Marjorie cry out in fear. The door burst inward and Kadarin stood in the doorway, half a dozen of Beltran’s guards crowding behind him.

I snatched up my sword but within seconds I was hopelessly outmatched, and with a horrible sense of infinite repetition, stood struggling, helplessly pinioned between the guards. Marjorie had drawn back into a corner. As Kadarin went toward her I told myself that if he handled her roughly I would kill him, but he only lifted her gently to her feet and draped his own cloak over her shoulders. He said, “Foolish child, didn’t you know we couldn’t let you go like that?” He thrust her into the arms of two of the guards and said, “Take her outside. Don’t hurt her, treat her gently, but don’t let her go or I’ll have your heads!”