“It’s the rest of it,” she went on after a minute. “I can’t believe ordinary Trailmen would know enough to attack you, just then, and steal the Sharra matrix. Who set them on?”

I stared. “Didn’t Hastur tell you who set them on?”

“I don’t think he knew.”

Trailmen,” I said with angry emphasis, “would steal weapons, food, clothing — jewelry, perhaps — they would never dare to touch a matrix! And that matrix — why am I still alive, then?” I demanded. “Callina, I was keyed into that thing, body and brain! Even when it was insulated, if any out-of-phase person so much as laid a hand on it, it hurt! There are three people on the planet who could handle it, without killing me! Didn’t they tell you it was Kadarin himself?”

Her face went white. “I don’t think Hastur would know Kadarin by sight,” she said. “But how did Kadarin know you had the matrix?”

I did not want to think Rafe Scott would have betrayed me to Kadarin. The fires of Sharra had singed him, too. I’d rather believe that Kadarin could still read my mind, even from a distance. Suddenly, my loss hit me with overwhelming pain. Now I was absolutely alone.

“Don’t grieve,” Callina said softly. But I knew; to her, Marius had been only an alien, a half-caste, despised for his difference. How could I explain to Callina? We had been in total rapport, Marius and I, for perhaps three hours, with all that implies. I had known Marius as I knew myself; his strengths and weaknesses, his desires and dreams, hopes and disappointments. Years of living together could have told me no more. Until the moment of rapport I had never known a brother and until his dying mind ripped from mine I had never known loneliness. But there was no way to explain this to her.

Finally she asked, “Lew, how did you first get yourself involved with—” She started to say, with Sharra, looked at my twisting face and didn’t. “With Kadarin? I never knew?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said curtly. Again and again — must those old wounds be torn?

“I know it’s not easy,” she said. “It’s not easy for me to be handed over to Aldaran.” She did not look at me again. She took a cigarette from a crystal dish, and sparked it alight with the jewel in her ring. I reached for one and fumbled it; she raised her head and frankly stared, and I looked at her defiantly.

“Men smoke on some planets.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“They do.” Still defiant, I took one, remembered I had no light, and reached clumsily for her hand, raising her ring to light it. “And no one laughs. Or considers them effeminate. It is an accepted custom which causes no curiosity. And I learned to like it. Do you think you can endure the sight, Callina comynara?” We looked at each other in a blaze of hostility which had nothing to do with the small and silly argument over the cigarette.

Her lip curled. “One would expect it of the Terranan,” she said scornfully. “Please yourself.”

I was still holding her hand and the ring. I let them go, drawing in a deep breath of the thin sweetish smoke. “You asked me a question,” I said, staring at the distant snowcapped peaks. “I’ll try to answer.

“Kadarin was Aldaran’s foster brother, I’ve heard. No one knows who, or what, his parents were. Some say he’s the son of a Terran renegade, Zeb Scott, by one of the nonhuman chieri, back in the hills. Whatever he is, or isn’t, he has the mind of a clever man. He learned some matrix mechanics — don’t ask me how. He worked a while in Terran intelligence, got deported from two or three worlds, finally settled in the Hellers. Some of the Terrans back there have Darkovan, even nonhuman blood. He started organizing the rebels, the malcontents. Then he found me.”

I got up and walked away from her. “You know what my life had been. Here — a bastard, an alien. Among the Terrans — a telepath, a freak. Kadarin, at least, made me feel that I belonged somewhere.”

Not even to myself did I want to admit that once I had liked the man. I sighed.

“I spoke about a renegade, Zeb Scott.”

The flood of memory rushed on, resistless, only a few bald words escaping to fill in years of adventure and the long search. “Zeb Scott died drunk, raving, in a wineshop in Carthon, babbling about the blue sword with the power of a hundred demons. We guessed that it was Sharra.

“The Aldarans, centuries ago — so the legend ran — had summoned Sharra to this world; but the power had been sealed off again, and the Aldarans exiled for their crime. Only after that had the Aldarans played traitor to Darkover, and sold-the Terrans a foothold on our world.

“Kadarin went after the Sharra sword, found it, and experimented with the power. He needed a telepath. I was right at hand, and too young, too damned reckless to know what I was doing. And there were the Scotts. Rafe was just a child then. But there were the girls; Thyra, and Marjorie—”

I quit there. It was no use. There was no way, no way at all to tell her about Marjorie. I flung my cigarette savagely from the window and watched it spinning away on a little eddy of wind.

Callina said softly, when I had almost forgotten her, “What was he trying to do?”

This was safe ground. “Why does any traitor steal or betray? The Terrans have been trying for centuries to beg, borrow or steal some secrets of matrix mechanics. The Comyn were incorruptible, but Kadarin knew the Terrans would pay well. Experimenting with the power, he activated some of the focal points, showed them what he could do. But at the end he betrayed the Terrans too, and opened up a — a hole in space, a Gate between worlds, to take on all that power—”

My voice cracked like a boy’s. “Damn him! Damn him waking and sleeping, living and dead, here and here after!” I fought suddenly back to self-control and said quietly, “He got what he wanted” But Marjorie and I were at the poles of power, and—”

I shook my head. What more could I say? The monstrous terror that had flamed and ravened between worlds, the hellfire. Marjorie, confident and unafraid at the pole of power, suddenly crumpling in agony, under the backlash of that awful thing—

“I broke out of the matrix lock, and somehow managed to slam the Gate again. But Marjorie was already—”

I broke there, unable to say another word, and slumped into a chair, hiding my face on my arm. Callina came swiftly to me, kneeling, her arms around my bent shoulders. “I know, Lew. I know.”

I jerked away from her touch. “You know! Thank your Gods you don’t know!” I said savagely. Then, gripped in the fist of memory, I let my head fall forward on her breast. She did know. She had tried to save us both. Marjorie had died in her arms. “Yes,” I muttered, “you know the rest.”

My head was throbbing, and I could feel the echoing throb-throb of her heart through the soft silk of her dress. Her hair was like the dust of flowers against my face. I raised my good hand to clasp her soft fingers in mine.

She threw back her head and looked at me.

“We’re alone with this, Lew. Hastur’s bound by Compact to obey the council. Derik’s an imbecile, and Regis is only a boy. The Ridenow, the Ardais — they want anything that will keep them in power; they’d sell out to Sharra themselves if they thought they could do it safely! You’re powerless alone. And I—” her mouth worked, but no sound came.

Finally she said, “I’m a Keeper, and I could hold all the power of Ashara if I would. Ashara would give me strength enough to rule the whole council if I would let her, but I — I won’t be a puppet, Lew, I don’t want to be only her pawn! I won’t! The council pulling me one way, Ashara the other. Beltran couldn’t be worse!”

We were clinging together like children frightened by the darkness. She was soft in my arms. I tightened my clasp on her; then her half-breathed protest went lax in the middle of a kiss. She made no resistance when I lifted her to her feet and drew back her head beneath my own.