Damon’s face was set. “I believe Dezi’s own weakness will expose him. True, he could have disposed of the proof, but I do not believe he could give up that kind of power. Would he be able to resist the temptation to have one again in his own hands? Not if I know our Dezi. And he could modify the stone to his use, which means there is still a witness against him. Silent. But a witness.”

“Fine,” said Andrew sarcastically. “We have only to go to him and say hand over the matrix you killed Domenic to get, like a good boy.”

Damon’s hand clutched his own matrix as if for reassurance. “If he is carrying a modified matrix the relay screens in Arilinn and the other Towers will show it.”

“Fine,” Andrew said again. “How far is Arilinri from here? A tenday’s ride, or more?”

“It is simpler than that,” Callista told him. “There are relay screens here in the Old Tower of Comyn Castle. In time past, so they say, technicians could teleport themselves between Towers by use of the great screens. It isn’t done much anymore. But there are also monitor screens, attuned to those in the other Towers. Any mechanic can link into those and trace any licensed matrix on Darkover.” She hesitated. “I cannot… I have given back my oath.”

Damon was impatient with this technicality. Such a loss to the Towers, such a loss to Callista, but whatever Keeper or mechanic was now in charge of the Old Tower, she would observe the prohibition, and there was nothing to be done.

“Who keeps the Old Tower, Callista? I cannot believe that the Mother Ashara would receive us on such an errand.”

“No one within living memory has seen Ashara outside the Tower,” Callista said. “I think she could no longer leave it if she would, she is so old. I myself have never seen her, except in the screens, nor, I think, has even Leonie. But when last I heard, Margwenn Elhalyn was her under-Keeper; she will tell you what you want to know.”

“Margwenn was psi monitor at Arilinn when I was Third there,” Damon said. “She went from us to Hali; I did not know she had come here.” Technicians, mechanics, monitors were moved from Tower to Tower, as the need was greatest. If Margwenn Elhalyn was not precisely an old friend, at least she knew who he was and it saved lengthy explanations about what he wanted.

He had never been inside the Old Tower of Comyn Castle. Margwenn admitted him to the matrix chamber, a place of ancient screens and lattices, machinery whose very existence had been forgotten since the Ages of Chaos. Damon, his errand forgotten for a moment, stared at it in avid curiosity. Why had all this technology, the ancient science of Darkover, been allowed to sink into obscurity? Even at Arilinn he had not learned to use all these things. True, there were too few technicians and mechanics even to staff the relays which provided communications and generated essential energy for certain technologies, but even if matrix workers were no longer willing, in these self-indulgent days, to give up their lives and live guarded behind walls, surely some of these things could be done outside!

Strange heretical thoughts to be thinking in the very center of the ancient science. When their forefathers forbade that very thing, they must have had their reasons!

Margwenn Elhalyn was a slim fair-haired woman of unguessable age, though Damon thought she was a little older than he was himself. She had the cold withdrawnness, the almost hieratic decorum, of all Keepers. “The Mother Ashara cannot see you, her mind sojourns elsewhere much of the time in these days. How may I serve you, Damon?”

Damon hesitated, unwilling to explain his errand and charge Dezi, without proof, of what he suspected. Margwenn had not attended the Council, though she had every right to do so. Many technicians were not interested in politics. Damon had once felt that way himself, that his work was above such base considerations. Now he was not so sure.

Finally he said, “Some confusion has arisen about the whereabouts of certain matrices in the hands of the Alton clan, legitimately issued, but their fate uncertain. Are you familiar with Dezi Leynier, who was admitted to Arilinn for something under a year, some time ago?”

“Dezi?” she said without interest. “Some bastard of Lord Alton’s, wasn’t he? Yes, I remember. He was dismissed because he could not keep discipline, I heard.” She went to the monitor screen, standing motionless before the glassy surface. After a little time lights began to wink, deep inside it, and Damon, watching her face without attempting to follow her in thought, knew she was linked into the relay to Arilinn. Finally she said, “Evidently he has given up his matrix. It is in the hands of a Keeper, not inactivated, but at a very low level.”

In the hands of a Keeper. Damon, who had himself lowered its level and put it into a locked and sealed box, metal-bound and tamperproof, understood that perfectly well.

Hands of a Keeper. But any competent technician could do a Keeper’s work. Why should it be surrounded with taboo, ritual, superstitious reverence? Concealing his thoughts from Margwenn, he said, “Now can you check what has become of the matrix of Domenic Lanart?”

“I will try,” she said, “but I thought he was dead. His matrix would have died with him, probably.”

“I had thought so too,” Damon said, “but it was not found on his body. Is it possible that it is also in the hands of a Keeper?”

Margwenn shrugged. “That seems unlikely, although I suppose, knowing Domenic unlikely to use laran, she might have reclaimed it and modified it to another’s use, or to her own. Although most Keepers prefer to begin with a blank crystal. Where was he tested? Not at Arilinn, surely.”

“Neskaya, I think.”

Margwenn raised her eyebrows as she went to the screen. It took no telepathic subtlety to follow her thought: At Neskaya they are likely to do anything. At last Margwenn turned and said, “Your guess is right, it is in the hands of a Keeper, though it is not in Neskaya. It must have been modified and given to another. It did not die with Domenic, but is fully operative.”

And there it was, Damon thought, his heart sinking. A small thing for positive proof of a cold-blooded, fiendish murder.

Not premeditated. There was that small comfort. No one alive could have foreseen that Cathal would strike Domenic unconscious as they practiced. But a sudden temptation… and Domenic’s matrix survived him, to point unerringly to the one person who could have taken it from his body without himself being killed by it.

Gods above, what a waste! Had Dom Esteban been able to overcome his pride, admit to the somewhat shameful circumstances of Dezi’s begetting, had he been willing to acknowledge this gifted youngster, Dezi would never have come to this.

Damon thought, with wrenching empathy that the temptation must have been sudden, and irresistible. For a trained telepath being without a matrix was like being deaf, blind, mutilated, and the sight of the unconscious Domenic had spurred him on to murder. Murder of the one brother who had championed his right to be called brother, who had been his patron and friend.

“Damon, what ails you?” Margwenn was staring at him in amazement. “Are you ill, kinsman?”

He made some civil excuse, thanked her for her help, and went away. She would know soon enough. Zandru’s hells, there would be no way to hide this! All the Comyn would soon know, and everyone in Thendara! What scandal for the Altons!

Back in their rooms, his drawn face told Ellemir the truth at once. “It’s true, then. Merciful Avarra, what will this do to our father? He loved Dezi. Domenic loved him too.”

“I wish I could spare him the knowledge,” Damon said wretchedly. “You know why I cannot, Elli.”

Callista said, “When Father knows the truth, there will be another murder, that is sure!”