“Is that such a tragedy? Let him have it! I don’t want it.”

“When you have a son of your own, you will understand, Lew. That time is not very far away, either. I think you should come back with me to Darkover, and settle things at this Council season.”

He heard my refusal, like a shout of rage, before what I actually said, which was a quiet “No. I cannot and I will not. Dio is too pregnant to travel.”

“You can be back before the child is born,” he said reasonably. “And you will have settled his future properly.”

“Would you have left my mother?”

“No. But your son should be born at Armida—”

“It’s no good thinking about that,” I said. “Dio is here, and here she must stay until the baby is born. And I will stay with her.”

His sigh was heavy, like the rustling of winter leaves. “I am not eager for the journey, alone, but if you will not go, then I must. Would you trust me to stay with Dio, Lew? I do not know if I can bear the climate of the Kilghard Hills. Yet I will not let Armida go by default, nor let them pass over Marius’s rights without being sure how Marius feels about it.” And as he spoke I was overwhelmed with the flood of memories—Armida lying in the fold of the Kilghard Hills, flooded with sunlight, the great herds of horses grazing in the upland pastures, the streams rushing, or frozen into knotted and unruly floods, torrents arrested in motion and midair; snow lying deep on the hills, a line of dark trees against the sky; the fire that had ravaged us in my seventeenth year, and the long line of men, stooped over their fire-shovels in back-breaking work; camping on the fire-lines, sharing blankets and bowls, the satisfaction of seeing the fires die and knowing that our home was safe for another season… the smell of resins, and bloom of kireseth, gold and blue with the blowing pollen in a high summer… sunset over the roofs… the skyline of Thendara… the four moons hanging behind one another in the darkening sky of Festival… my home. My home, too, loved and renounced…

Get… out! Were even my memories not my own?

“There’s still time, Lew. I won’t leave for more than a tenday. Let me know what you decide.”

“I’ve already decided,” I said, and slammed out, not waiting for the concerned questions I knew would follow, his scrupulous inquiries about Dio, his kind wishes for her well-being.

The decision had been made for me. I would not return with my father. Dio could not go and so I would not go, it was as simple as that, I need not listen to the thousand memories that pulled me back—

It was that night that she asked me to monitor the child. Perhaps she sensed my agitation; perhaps, in that curious way that lovers share one another’s preoccupations and fears (and Dio and I, even after the year and more we had spent together, were still very much lovers), she felt the flood of my memories and it made her eager for reassurance.

I started to refuse. But it meant so much to her. And I was free now, free of it for months at a time; surely a time would come when I was wholly free. And this was such a simple thing.

And what the Terran medic had said made me uneasy, too. Twins; that was the simplest answer, but when he had asked about congenital deformities, I knew I was uneasy, had been uneasy since the child was conceived.

“I’ll try, love. I’d have to try sometime—”

One more thing, perhaps, to rediscover with Dio; one more healing, one more freedom, like the manhood I had rediscovered in her arms. I rumbled one-handed with the little leather bag around my neck, where the blue crystal hung in its shielded wrapping of pale insulating silks.

The crystal dropped into my hand. It felt warm and alive, a good sign, without the instant flare, blaze, fire. I cupped the blue stone in my palm, trying not to remember the last time I had done this.

It had been the other hand, the stone had burned throughmy hand… not my own matrix, but the Sharra matrix… enough! I forced the memories away, closing my eyes for a moment, trying to settle myself down to the smooth resting rhythm of the stone. It had been so long since I had touched the matrix. Finally I sensed that I had keyed into the stone, opening my eyes, glancing dispassionately into the blue depths where small lights flickered and curled like live things. Maybe they were.

I had not done monitoring for many years. It is the first task given to young apprentices in the Towers; to sit outside a matrix circle, and through the powers of the starstone, amplifying your own gifts, to keep watch on the bodies of the workers while their minds are elsewhere, doing the work of the linked matrix circles. Sometimes matrix workers, deep in rapport with one another through the starstones, forget to breathe, or lose track of things which should be under the control of their autonomic nervous systems, and it is the monitor’s work to make sure all is well. Later, the monitor learns more difficult techniques of medical diagnosis, going intothe complex cells of the human body… it had been a long time. Slowly, carefully, I made the beginning scan; heart and lungs were doing their work of bringing oxygen to the cells, the eyelids blinked automatically to keep the eye surfaces lubricated, there was stress on the back muscles because of the weight of pregnancy… I was running through surface things, superficial things. She sensed the touch; though her eyes were closed, I felt her smile at me.

I hardly believed this; that, once again, slowly, stumbling like a novice, I was making contact with the matrix stone after six years, though I had, as yet, barely touched the surface. I dared a deeper touch—

Fire. Blazing through my hand. Pain… outrageous, burning agony— in a hand that was not there to burn. I heard myself cry out… or was it the sound of Marjorie screaming… before my locked eyes the fire-form rose high, locks tossing in the firestorm wind, like a woman, tall and chained, her body and limbs and hair all on fire—

Sharra!

I let the matrix stone drop as if it had burned through my good hand; felt the pain of having it away from my body, tried to scrabble for it with a hand that was no longer part of my arm.. . I felt it there, felt the burning pain through every finger, pain in the lines of the palm, in the nails burning… Sobbing with pain, I fumbled the matrix into its sheath around my neck and wrenched my mind away from the fire-image, feeling it slowly burn down and subside. Dio was staring at me in horror.

I said, my mouth stiff and fumbling on the words, “I’m— I’m sorry, bredhiya, I—I didn’t mean to frighten you—”

She caught me close to her, and I buried my head in her breast. She whispered, “Lew, it is I should beg forgiveness— I did not know that would happen—I would never have asked—Avarra’s mercy, what was that?”

I drew a deep breath, feeling the pain tearing at the hand that was not there. I could not speak the words aloud. The fire-form was still behind my eyes, blazing. I blinked, trying to make it go away, and said, “You know.”

She whispered, “But how…”

“Somehow, the damned thing is keyed into my own matrix. Whenever I try to use it, I see… only that.” I swallowed and said thickly, “I thought I was free. I thought I was—was healed, and free of that…”

“Why don’t you destroy it?”

My smile was only a painful grimace. “That would probably be the best answer. Because I am sure I would die with it… very quickly and not at all pleasantly. But I was too cowardly for that.”

“Oh, no, no, no—” She held me close, hugging me desperately. I swallowed, drew several deep breaths, knowing this was hurting her more than me; Ridenow, empath, Dio could not bear any suffering… there were times when I wondered whether what she felt for me had been love, or whether she had given me her body, her heart, her comfort, as one soothes a screaming baby because one cannot bear his crying and will do anything, anything to shut him up—