How much longer? In the name of all the Gods at once, how much longer can we go on like this? And even as the thought tore through his mind, he realized he was not sure whether it was his own or Callista’s.

Three days later, Andrew and Damon rode out, as planned, for Serrais. Ellemir was out of danger, and there was nothing more that Damon’s presence could do for her. Nothing, Damon knew, could help Ellemir now but time.

Andrew felt strangely relieved, although he would have been ashamed to say so, to get away. He had not realized how the tension between himself and Callista, the aura of silent grief, had weighed down on him at Armida.

The wide high plains, the mountains in the distance, all this could have been the Arizona horse ranch of Andrew’s childhood. Yet he had only to open his eyes to see the great red sun, gleaming like a bloodshot eye through the morning fogs, to know that he was not on Terra, that he was nowhere on Earth. It was midmorning, but two small shadowy moons, pale violet and dim lime green, swung low beyond the crest of the hill, one nearing the full, another a waning crescent. The very smell of the air was strange, and yet it was his home now, his home for the rest of his life. And Callista. Callista, waiting for him. His mind’s eye retained the memory of her face, pale, smiling from the top of the steps as he rode away. He cherished the smile in memory, that with all the grief their marriage had brought to her, she could still smile at him, give him her fingertips to kiss, bid him ride with the Gods in the soft speech he was beginning to understand: “Adelandeyo.”

Damon, too, brightened perceptibly as the miles lengthened under their horses’ hooves. The last few days had put lines in his face that had never been there before, but he no longer looked old, weighted down with anguish. At midday they dismounted to eat their noon meal, tying their horses to graze on the new grass poking up sturdy leaves through the remnants of the last blizzard’s snow. They found a dry log to sit on, surrounded by flower buds casting their snow-pods and breaking out in riotous bud and leaf as if it were spring. But when Andrew asked about it, Damon said blankly, “Spring? Zandru’s Hells, no, it’s not even full winter yet, not till after Midwinter feast! Oh, the flowers?” He chuckled. “With the weather here, they bloom whenever there’s a day or two of sun and warmth. Your Terran scientists have a phrase for it, evolutionary adaptation. In the Kilghard Hills, there are only a few days in high summer when it doesn’t snow, so the flowers bloom whenever they get a little sun. If you think it looks odd here, you should go into the Hellers, and see the flowers and fruits that grow around Nevarsin. We can’t grow ice-melons here; you know. It’s too warm — they’re a plant of the glaciers.” And indeed, Damon had taken off his fur riding cape, and was riding in shirt-sleeves, though Andrew was still muffled against what seemed a cold, biting day.

Damon unwrapped the bundle of food Callista had given them for their journey, and broke out laughing. “Callista says — and is very apologetic — that she knows very little of housekeeping. But we are in luck, since she has not yet learned what is suitable food to give to travelers!” There was a cold roast fowl, which Damon divided with the knife at his belt, and a loaf of bread still faintly warm from the oven, and Andrew could not imagine why Damon was laughing.

He said, “I don’t see what’s funny about it. She asked me what I thought I would like to eat during a long ride, and I told her .”

Damon laughed, handing Andrew a generous portion of the roast meat. It was fragrant with spices which the Terran had not yet learned to identify by name. “For some reason, just custom, I suppose, about all the food one can ever get for the road would be hard journey-bread, dried meat rolls, dried fruits and nuts, that sort of thing.” He watched Andrew slicing up the bread, making a neat sandwich of the roast meat. “That looks good. I think I shall try it. And — will wonders never cease! — she gave us fresh apples too, from the cellar. Well, well!” He was laughing as he bit with gusto into the leg of the roast fowl. “It would never have occurred tof me to question traveler’s food and it would never have occurred to Elli to ask me if it was what I wanted! Maybe we can use some new ideas on our world!”

He sobered, lost in thought as he watched Andrew eating the sliced meat and bread. He himself had had heretical thoughts about matrix work outside the Towers. There ought to be a way. But he knew if he broached that to Leonie, she would be horrified, as horrified as if they were in the days of Regis the Fourth.

She would have known he was using a matrix, of course. Every legitimate matrix keyed to a Comyn telepath was monitored from the great screens in the Arilinn Tower. They could have identified Damon from his matrix, and Dezi, and, perhaps, though Damon was not sure, even Andrew.

If anyone had been watching. There was a shortage of telepaths for such inessential jobs as monitoring the matrix screens, so probably no one had noticed. But the monitor screens were there, and every matrix on Darkover was legally subject to monitoring and review. Even those like Domenic, who had been tested for laran and given a matrix, but never used it, could be followed.

That was another reason why Damon felt they should not waste such a telepath as Dezi. Even if his personality did not fit into the intimacy of a circle — and Damon was ready to admit Dezi would be hard to live with — he could be used to monitor a screen.

He thought wryly that today he was full of heresies. Who was he to question Leonie of Arilinn?

He finished off the leg of roast fowl, thoughtfully watching the Terran. Andrew was eating an apple, staring off thoughtfully at the far range of hills.

He is my friend. Yet he came here from a star so far away that I cannot see it in the sky at night. And yet, the very fact that there are other worlds like ours, everywhere in the universe, is going to change our world.

He looked at the distant hills, and thought, I do not want our world to change, then bleakly laughed at himself. He sat here planning a way to alter the use of matrices on Darkover, thinking of ways to reform the system of ancient Towers which guarded the old matrix sciences of his world, guarded them in safe ways established generations ago.

He said, “Andrew, why are you here? On Darkover?”

Andrew shrugged. “I came here almost by accident. It was a job. And then, one day, I saw Callista’s face — and here I am.”

“I don’t mean that,” Damon said. “Why are your people here? What does Terra want with our world? We are not a rich world to be exploited. I know enough about your Empire to know that most of the worlds they settle have something to give. Why Darkover? We are a world with few heavy metals, an isolated world with a climate your people find, I gather, inhospitable. What do the Terrans want with us?”

Andrew clasped his hands around his knees. He said, “There is an old story on my world. Someone asked an explorer why he chose to climb a mountain. And all he said was, ‘Because it’s there!’ ”

“That hardly seems enough reason to build a spaceport,” Damon said.

“I don’t understand all of it. Hell, Damon, I’m no empire-builder. I’d rather have stayed on Dad’s horse ranch. The way I understand it, it’s location. You do know that the galaxy is in the form of a giant spiral?” He picked up a twig and drew a pattern in the melting snow. “This is the upper spiral of the galaxy, and this is the lower arm, and here is Darkover, making it an ideal place for traffic control, passenger transfers, understand?”

“But,” Damon argued, “the travel of Empire citizens from one end of the Empire to the other doesn’t mean anything to us.”