Caer Donn. Our magical dream city. The city I had seen transformed by a synthesis of Terran science and Darkovan psi powers. Shattered, burned. Lying in ruins.

Like our lives, like our lives … And Marjorie and I had done it.

Marjorie was sobbing uncontrollably. “I should have died first. I will die before I use that—that destruction again!”

I lay holding her close. I could see the seal of Comyn, deeply marked in my wrist a few inches above the dreadful flaming burn. There was no hope for me now. I was traitor, doubly condemned and traitor.

For a moment, time reeling in my mind, I knelt before the Keeper at Arilinn and heard my own words: “ … swear upon my life that what powers I may attain shall be used only for the good of my caste and my people, never for personal gain or personal ends … ”

I was forsworn, doubly forsworn. I had used my inborn talents, my tower-trained skills, to bring ruin, destruction on those I was doubly sworn, as Comyn, as tower telepath, to safeguard and protect.

Marjorie and I were deeply in rapport. She looked at me, her eyes wide in horror and protest. “You did not do it willingly,” she whispered. “You were forced, drugged, tortured—”

“That makes no difference.” It was my own rage, my own hate, they had used. “Even to save my life, even to save yours, I should never have let them bring us back. I should have made him kill us both.”

There was no hope for either of us now, no escape. Kadarin could drug me again, force me again, and there was no way to resist him. My own unknown hatred had set me at his mercy and there was no escape.

No escape except death.

Marjorie—I looked at her, wrung with anguish. There was no escape for her either. I should have made Kadarin kill her quickly, there in the stone hut. Then she would have died clean, not like this, slowly, forced to kill.

She fumbled at the waist of her dress, and brought out a small, sharp dagger. She said quietly, “I think they forgot I still have this. Is it sharp enough, Lew? Will it do for both of us, do you think?”

That was when I broke down and sobbed, helplessly, against her. There was no hope for either of us, I knew that. But that it should come like this, with Marjorie speaking as calmly of a knife to kill us both as she would have asked if her embroidery-threads were the right color—that I could not bear, that was beyond all endurance.

When at last I had quieted a little, I rose from her side, going to the door, I said aloud, “We will lock it from the inside this time. Death, at least, is a private affair.” I drew the bolt. I had no hope that it would hold for long when they came for us, but by that time we would no longer care.

I came back to the bed, hauled off the boots I had found myself putting on for some unknown purpose. I knelt before Marjorie, drawing off her light sandals. I drew the clasps from her hair, laid her in my bed.

I thought I had left the Comyn. And now I was dying in order to leave Darkover in the hands of the Comyn, the only hands that could safeguard our world. I drew Marjorie for a moment into my arms.

I was ready to die. But could I force myself to kill her?

“You must,” she whispered, “or you know what they will make me do. And what the Terrans will do to all our people after that.”

She had never looked so beautiful to me. Her bright flame-colored hair was streaming over her shoulders, faintly edged with light. She broke down then, sobbing. I held her against me, straining her so tightly in my arms I must have been hurting her terribly. She held me with all her strength and whispered, “It’s the only way, Lew. The only way. But I didn’t want to die, Lew, I wanted to live with you, to go with you to the lowlands, I wanted … I wanted to have your children.”

I knew no pain in my life, nothing that would ever equal the agony of that moment, with Marjorie sobbing in my arms, saying she wanted to have my children. I was glad I would not live long to remember this; I hoped the dead did not remember …

Our deaths were all that stood between our world and terrible destruction. I took up the knife. Touching my finger to the edge left a stain of blood, and I was insanely glad to feel its razor sharpness.

I bent down to give her a long, last kiss on the lips. I said in a whisper, “I’ll try not to … to hurt you, my darling … ” She closed her eyes and smiled and whispered, “I’m not afraid.”

I paused a moment to steady my hand so that I could do it in a single, swift, painless stroke. I could see the small vein throbbing at the base of her throat. In a few moments we would both be at peace. Then let Kadarin do his worst …

A spasm of horror convulsed me. When we were dead, the last vestige of control was gone from the matrix. Kadarin would die, of course, in the fires of Sharra. But the fires would never die. Sharra, roused and ravening, would rage on, consume our people, our world, all of Darkover …

What would we care for that? The dead are at peace!

And for a painless death for ourselves, would we let our world be destroyed in the fires of Sharra?

The dagger dropped from my hand. It lay on the sheets beside us, but for me it was as far away as if it were on one of the moons. I regretted bitterly that I could not give Marjorie, at least, that swift and painless death. She had suffered enough. It was right that I should live long enough to expiate my treason in suffering. It was cruel, unfair, to make Marjorie share that suffering. Yet, without her Keeper’s training, I would not live long enough to do what I must.

She opened her eyes and said tremulously, “Don’t wait, Lew. Do it now.”

Slowly, I shook my head.

“We cannot take such an easy way, beloved. Oh, we will die. But we must useour deaths. We must close the gateway into Sharra before we die and destroy the matrix if we can. We have to go into it. There’s no chance—you know there’s no chance at all—that we will live through it. But there isa chance that we will live long enough to close the gateway and save our world from being ravaged by Sharra’s fire.”

She lay looking at me, her eyes wide with shock and dread. She said in a whisper, “I would rather die.”

“So would I,” I said, “but such an easy way is not for us, my precious.”

We had sacrificed that right. I looked with longing at the little dagger and its razor sharpness. Slowly, Marjorie nodded in agreement. She picked up the little dagger, looked at it regretfully, then rose from the bed, went to the window and flung it through the narrow window-slit. She came back, slipped down beside me. She said, trying to steady her voice, “Now I cannot lose my courage again.” Then, though her eyes were still wet, her voice held just a hint of the old laughter. “At least we will spend one night together in a proper bed.”

Can a night last a lifetime?

Perhaps, If you know your lifetime is measured in a single night.

I said hoarsely, drawing her into my arms again, “Let’s not waste any of it.”

Neither of us was strong enough for much physical love-making. Most of that night we spent resting in each other’s arms, sometimes talking a little, more often caressing one another in silence. From long training at disciplining unwelcome or dangerous thoughts, I was able to put away almost completely all thought of what awaited us tomorrow. Strangely enough, my worst regret was not for death, but for the long, quiet years of living together which we would never know, for the poignant knowledge that Marjorie would never know the hills near Armida, that she would never come there as a bride. Toward morning Marjorie cried a little for the child she would not live long enough to bear. Finally, cradled in my arms, she fell into a restless sleep. I lay awake, thinking of my father and of my unborn son, that too-fragile spark of life, barely kindled and already extinguished. I wished Marjorie had been spared that knowledge, at least. No, it was right that someone should weep for it, and I was beyond tears.