Ellemir shifted her weight in the saddle and Damon said anxiously, “You must not tire yourself, my love. Should you truly ride now?”

Ellemir laughed gaily. “Ferrika is waiting to order me into the horse-litter, but for now I will ride in the sunshine.”

Together they rode forward, past the servants, the piled pack animals, to where Callista and Andrew rode side by side.

As they went through the pass, Andrew took a last, fleeting look at the Terran spaceport. He might never see it again, but surely the Terrans would be there for the rest of his life. Perhaps Valdir’s attitude toward the Terrans would be different, because he had known Andrew well, not as a strange alien, but a man like themselves, the husband of his sister.

But all that was the future. He turned his eyes from the spaceport without a backward look. His world lay elsewhere now.

They rode down from the pass and the spaceport was gone. But Callista could hear the thunder of one of the great ships, and trembled a little. It made her think, too much, of the changes which had come to Darkover, of all the changes which would come, whether she knew of them or not. But she thought that if she could have endured all the changes of the last year, surely she could face what would come after this. She also had work to do, sharing Damon’s work, and thinking, as well, of her coming child.

She too is being called unwanted into a world she does not want, even as I was…

But the coming world would be for her children to face. All she could do was prepare them, and try to make a better world for them to live in. She had already begun. She reached for Andrew’s hand, enjoying the simple awareness that it could lie in hers and she felt no need or desire to pull it away. As Damon and Ellemir joined them, she smiled. Whatever changes would come, they would face them together.