Andrew shrugged. “I know. I’m sure Empire Central would have preferred an uninhabited world at the crossroads, so they needn’t have worried about who lived there. But here you are, and here we are.” He shrank from Damon’s frown. “I don’t make their policy, Damon. I’m not even sure I understand it. That’s just the way it was explained to me.”

Damon’s laugh was mirthless. “And I was startled by Callista giving us roast meat and fresh apples for journey-food! Change is relative, I suppose.” He saw Andrew’s troubled look and made himself smile. None of this was Andrew’s fault. “Let’s hope the changes are all for the better, like Callie’s roast fowl!” He got off the log and carefully buried the apple core in a small runnel of snow behind it. Pain struck at him. If things had gone otherwise, he might have been planting this apple for his daughter. Andrew, with that uncanny sensitivity which he exhibited now and then, bent beside him, in silence, to bury his own apple core. Not till they were in the saddle again did he say, gently, “Some day, Damon, our children will eat apples from these trees.”

They were away from Armida more than three tendays. In Serrais, it took time to find ablebodied men who were willing to leave their villages, and perhaps their families, to work on the Armida estate for anywhere up to a year. Yet they could not take too many single men, or it would disrupt the life of the villages. Damon tried to find families who had ties of blood or fosterage with people at Armida lands. There were many of them. Then Damon wished to pay a visit to his brother Kieran, and to his sister Marisela and her children.

Marisela, a gentle, plump young woman who looked like Damon, but with fair hair where his was red, expressed grief at the news of Ellemir’s miscarriage. She said kindly that if they had no better fortune in a year or two, Damon should have one of their children to foster, an offer which surprised Andrew, but which Damon took for granted.

“Thank you, Mari. It may be needful, at that, since the children of double cousins seldom thrive. I have no great need for an heir, but Ellemir’s arms are empty and she grieves. And Callista is not likely to have a child very soon.”

Marisela said, “I do not know Callista well. Even when we were all little maidens, everyone knew she was destined for the Tower, and she did not mingle much with the other girls. People are such gossips,” she added vehemently. “Callie has a perfect right to leave Arilinn and marry if she chooses, but it is true we were all surprised. I know Keepers from the other Towers often leave to marry, but Arilinn? And Leonie has been there since I can remember, since our mother can remember. We all thought she would step directly into Leonie’s shoes. There was a time when the Keepers of Arilinn could not leave their posts if they would…”

“That day is hundreds of years gone,” Damon said impatiently, but Marisela went on, unruffled. “I was tested for laran in Neskaya when I was thirteen, and one of the girls told me that if she was sent to Arilinn she would refuse, since the Keepers there were neutered. They were not women but emmasca, as the legend says that Robardin’s daughter was emmasca and became woman for the love of Hastur…”

“Fairy-tales!” said Damon, laughing. “That has not been done for hundreds of years, Marisela!”

“I am only telling you what they told me,” Marisela said, injured. “And surely Leonie looks near enough to an emmasca, and Callista — Callista is thinner than Ellemir, and she looks younger, so you cannot blame me for thinking she might not be all woman. Even so, that would not mean she could not marry if she wished, although most do not want to.”

“Marisa, child, I assure you that Andrew’s wife is no emmasca!”

Marisela turned to Andrew and inquired, “Is Callista pregnant yet?”

Andrew laughed and shook his head. It was not the slightest use in being cross; standards of reticence differed enormously between cultures, and why should he blame Marisela, who was after all Callista’s cousin, for asking what everyone wanted to know about a bride? He remembered what Damon had said about Ellemir and repeated it.

“I am content that she should have a year or two to be free of such cares. She is still very young.”

But later he asked Damon in private, “What in the world is an emmasca?”

“The word used to mean one of the ancient race of the forests. They never mingle with mankind now, but there is said to be chieri blood in the Comyn, especially in the Hellers; some of the Ardais and Aldaran have six fingers on either hand. I am not sure I believe that tale — any horse-breeder will tell you that a half-breed is sterile — but the story goes that there is chieri blood in the Comyn, that the chieri in days past mingled with mankind and mixed their blood. It was believed that a chieri could appear as a man to a woman, or as a woman to a man, being both, or perhaps neither. So they say that in the old days some of the Comyn too were emmasca, neither man nor woman, but neuter. Well, that was very long ago, but the tradition remains that these were the first Keepers, neither man nor woman. Later, when women took on the burden of being Keeper, they were made emmasca — surgically neutered — because it was thought safer for a woman to work in the screens if she had not the burden of womanhood. But in living memory — and I can say this positively, knowing the laws of Arilinn — no woman has been neutered, even at Arilinn, to work in the Towers. A Keeper’s virginity serves to guard her against the perils of womanhood.”

“I still don’t understand why that is,” Andrew said, and Damon explained. “It’s a matter of nerve alignment. The same nerves in the body carry both laran and sex. Remember that after we worked with the matrices we were all impotent for days? The same nerve channels can’t carry both sets of impulses at once. A woman doesn’t have that particular safety valve, so the Keepers, who have to handle such tremendous frequencies and coordinate all the other telepaths, have to keep their channels completely clear for laran alone. Otherwise they can overload their nerves and burn out. I’ll show you the channels sometime, if you’re interested. Or you can ask Callista about it.”

Andrew, didn’t pursue the subject. The thought of the way in which Callista had been conditioned still roused an anger in him so deep that it was better not to think about it at all.

They rode to Armida after a long trip home, broken three times by bad weather which forced them to stay overnight in different places, sometimes housed in luxurious rooms, sometimes sharing a pallet on the floor with the family’s younger children. Andrew, looking down at the lights of Armida across the valley, thought with a strange awareness, that he was truly coming home. Half a galaxy away from the world where he was born, yet this was home to him, and Callista was there. He wondered if all men, having found a woman to give meaning to life, defined home in that way: the place where their loved one was waiting for them. Damon, at least, seemed to share that feeling; he seemed as glad to return to Armida as he had been, almost thirty days before, to leave it. The great sprawling stone house seemed familiar now, as if he had lived there always.

Ellemir ran down the steps to meet Damon in the courtyard, letting him catch her up in his arms with an exuberant hug. She looked cheerful and healthy, her cheeks bright with color, her eyes sparkling. But Andrew had no time to spare for Ellemir now, for Callista was waiting for him at the top of the steps, still and grave. When she gave him her little half-smile, it somehow meant more to him than all Ellemir’s overflowing gaiety. She gave him both her hands, letting him raise them to his lips and kiss one after the other, then, her finger-tips still lying lightly in his, she led him inside. Damon bent and greeted Dom Esteban with a filial kiss on the cheek, turned to Dezi with a quick embrace. Andrew, more reserved, bowed to the old man, and Callista came to sit close beside him while he gave Dom Esteban a report on their journey.