My matrix was back in its bag around my neck, though the thong Kadarin had cut had been replaced with a narrow red silk cord. I fumbled to take it out. Before I had the stone bared, the image flared, golden, burning … Sharra!With a shudder of horror, I thrust it away again.

What had happened? Where was Marjorie?

Either the thought had called her to me or had been summoned by her approaching presence. I heard the creaking of the door-bolts again and she came into the room and stopped, staring at me with a strange fear. My heart sank down into my boot soles. Had that dream, of all the dreams, been true? For an aching moment I wished we had both died together in the forests. Worse than torture, worse than death, to see Marjorie look at me with fear …

Then she said, “Thank God! You’re awake this time and you know me!” and ran straight into my arms. I strained her to me. I wanted never to let her go again. She was sobbing. “It’s really you again! All this time, you’ve never looked at me, not once, only at the matrix … ”

Cold horror flooded me. Then some of it had been true. I said, “I don’t remember anything, Marjorie, nothing at all since Kadarin drugged me. For all I know, I have been in this room all that time. What do you mean?”

I felt her trembling. “You don’t remember anyof it? Not the forge-folk, not even the fire at Caer Donn?”

My knees began to collapse under me; I sank on the bed and heard my voice cracking as I said, “I remember nothing, nothing, only terrible ghastly dreams … ” The implications of Marjorie’s words turned me sick. With a fierce effort I controlled the interior heaving and managed to whisper, “I swear, I remember nothing, nothing. Whatever I may have done … Tell me, in Zandru’s name, did I hurt you, mishandle you?”

She put her arms around me again and said, “You haven’t even lookedat me. Far less touched me. That was why I said I couldn’t go on.” Her voice died. She put her hand on mine. I cried out with the pain and she quickly caught it up, saying tenderly, “Your poor hand!” She looked at it carefully. “It’s better, though, it’s much better.”

I didn’t like to think what it must have been, if this was better. No wonder fire had flamed, burned, raged through all my nightmares! But how, in the name of all the devils in all the hells, had I done this?

There was only one answer. Sharra. Kadarin had somehow forced me back into the service of Sharra. But how, how?How could he use the skills of my brain while my conscious mind was elsewhere? I’d have sworn it was impossible. Matrix work takes deliberate, conscious concentration … My fists clenched. At the searing pain in my palm I unclenched them again, slowly.

He dared! He dared to steal my mind, my consciousness …

But how? How?

There was only one answer, only one thing he could have done; use all the free-floating rage, hatred, compulsion in my mind, when my conscious control was gone—and take all that and channel it through Sharra!All my burning hatred, all the frenzies of my unconscious, freed of the discipline I kept on them, fed through that vicious thing.

He had done that to me, while my own conscious mind was in abeyance. Next to that, Dyan’s crime was a boy’s prank. The ruin of my face, the burn of my hand, these were nothing, nothing. He had stolen my conscious mind, he had usedmy unconscious, uncontrolled, repressed passions … Horrible!

I asked Marjorie, “Did they force you, too, into Sharra?” She shivered. “I don’t want to talk about it, Lew,” she said, whimpering like a hurt puppy. “Please, no, no. Just … just let’s be together for now.”

I drew her down on the bed beside me, held her gently in the circle of my arms. My thoughts were grim. She stroked her light fingers across my battered face and I could feel her horror at the touch of the scars. I said, my voice thick in my throat, “Is my face so … so repulsive to you?”

She bent down and laid her lips against the scars. She said with that simplicity which, more than anything else, meant Marjorieto me, “You could never be horrible to me, Lew. I was only thinking of the pain you have suffered, my darling.”

“Fortunately I don’t remember much of it,” I said. How long would we be here uninterrupted? I knew without asking that we were both prisoners now, that there was no hope of any such trick as we had managed before. It was hopeless. Kadarin, it seemed, could force us to do anything. Anything!

I held her tight, with a helpless anguish. I think it was then that I knew, for the first time, what impotence meant, the chilling, total helplessness of true impotence.

I had never wanted personal power. Even when it was thrust on me, I had tried to renounce it. And now I could not even protect this girl, my wife, from whatever tortures, mental or physical, Kadarin wanted to inflict on her.

All my life I had been submissive, willing to be ruled, willing to discipline my anger, to accept continence at the peak of early manhood, bending my head to whatever lawful yoke was placed on it.

And now I was helpless, bound hand and foot. What they had done they could do again … And now, when I needed strength, I was truly impotent …

I said, “Beloved, I’d rather die than hurt you, but I mustknow what has been going on.” I did not ask about Sharra. Her trembling was answer enough. “How did he happen to let you come to me now, after so long?”

She controlled her sobs and said, “I told him—and he knew I meant it—that unless he freed your mind, and let us be together, I would kill myself. I can still do that and he cannot prevent me.”

I felt myself shudder. It went all the way to the bone. She went on, keeping her voice quiet and matter-of-fact, and only I, who knew what discipline had made her a Keeper, could have guessed what it cost her. “He can’t control the … the matrix, the thing, without me. And under drugs I can’t do it at all. He tried, but it didn’t work. So I have that last hold over him. He will do almost anything to keep me from killing myself. I know I should have done it. But I had to”—her voice finally cracked, just a little—“to see you again when you knew me, ask you … ”

I was more desperately frightened than ever. I asked, “Does Kadarin know that we have lain together?”

She shook her head. “I tried to tell him. I think he hears only what he wants to hear now. He is quite mad, you know. It would not matter to him anyway, he thinks it is only Comyn superstition.” She bit her lip and said, “And it cannot be as dangerous as you think, I am still alive, and well.”

Not well, I thought, looking at her pallor, the faint bluish lines around her mouth. Alive, yes. But how long could she endure this? Would Kadarin spare her, or would he use her all the more ruthlessly to achieve his aims—whatever, in his madness, they were now—before her frail body gave way?

Did he even know he was killing her? Had he even bothered to have her monitored?

“You spoke of a fire at Caer Donn … ?”

“But you were there, Lew. You really don’t remember?”

“I don’t. Only fragments of dreams. Terrible nightmares.”

She lightly touched the horrible burn on my hand. “You got this there. Beltran made an ultimatum. It was not his own will—he has tried to get away—but I think he is helpless in Kadarin’s hands now too. He made threats and the Terrans refused, and Kadarin took us up to the highest part of the city, where you can look straight down into the city, and—oh, God, Lew, it was terrible, terrible, the fire striking into the heart of the city, the flames rising everywhere, screams … ” She rolled over, hiding her head in the pillow. She said, muffled, “I can’t. I can’t tell you. Sharra is horrible enough, but this, the fire … I never dreamed, never imagined … And he said next time it would be the spaceport and the ships!”