Marius leaned across his saddle as I laid the insulated sword across the pommel of my own.

“Going to unwrap it here?”

Around us the thin morning air was as expressionless as his face. Behind us the foothills rose; and J caught the thin pungent smell of slopes scorched by forest fire, drifting down from the Hellers. Further back in the clearing, the other Comyn waited.

My barriers were down, and I could feel the impact of their emotions. Hostility, curiosity, disbelief or contempt from the Ardais and Aillard and Ridenow men; interested sympathy, and disquiet from the Hasturs and strangely, from Lerrys Ridenow.

I would have preferred to do this thing privately. The thought of a hostile audience unnerved me. Knowing that my brother’s life depended on my own nerves and control didn’t help, either. Suddenly, I shivered. If Marius died — and he very likely would — only these witnesses would stand between me and a charge of murder. We were gambling on something we couldn’t possibly be sure about; and I was scared.

The Alton focus is not easy. Having both parties aware and willing doesn’t make it easy, even for two mature telepaths; it just makes it possible.

What we intended was to link minds — not in ordinary telepathic contact; not even in the forced rapport which an Alton — or, sometimes, a Hastur — can impose on another mind. But complete, and mutual rapport; conscious and subconscious mind, telepathic and psychokinetic nerve systems, time-scanning and coordinating consciousness, energonic functions, so that in effect we would function as one hyperdeveloped brain in two bodies.

My father had done it with me — once, for about thirty seconds — with my full awareness that it would probably kill me. He had known; it was the only thing that would prove to them that I was a true Alton. It had forced the Comyn to accept me. I had been trained for days, and safeguarded by every bit of his skill. Marius was taking it on almost unprepared.

I seemed to be seeing my brother for the first time. The difference in our ages, his freakish face and alien eyes, had made him a stranger; the knowledge that he might die beneath my mind, a few minutes from now, made him seem somehow less real; shadowy, like someone in a long dream. I made my voice rough.

“Want to back down, Marius? There’s still time.” He looked amused again. “Jealous? Want to keep the laran privilege all to yourself?” he asked softly. “Don’t want any more Altons in the Comyn, huh?”

I put the question point blank. “Do you have the Alton Gift, Marius?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t the least notion. I’ve never tried to find out. What with one thing and another, I was given to understand that it would be unwarrantable insolence on my part.”

I felt cold. That sentence outlined my brother’s Me. I’d have to remember that. There was a chance that what I gave him would not be death, but full Comyn status as an Alton. If he thought it was worth the gamble, what right had I to deny him? My father had gambled with me, and won. I lowered my head, and started to strip the insulating cloth from the sword.

“Is it a real sword?” Derik Elhalyn asked, guiding his horse toward us.

I shook my head, giving the hilt a hard twist. It came off in my hand, and I removed the silk-wrapped thing inside. A familiar hand crushed down on my chest.

“No,” I said, “the sword’s camouflage. You can look at it.” I thrust the pieces, hilt and blade, at him, but he backed away convulsively.

I saw the men hide unkind grins. But it wasn’t funny — that Derik, Lord of the Comyn, was a coward. Hastur took the pieces and fitted them neatly together.

“The platinum and sapphires in. this thing would buy a good sized city,” he said, “But Lew’s got the dangerous part.”

I stripped the matrix, feeling the familiar live warmth between my hands. It was egg-shaped and not quite egg-sized, a hunk of dull metal laced with little ribbons of shinier metal, and starred with a pattern of blue winking eyes. “The pattern of sapphires in the sword hilt — sensitized carbon-matches the pattern of the matrix. They’ve altered my nerve reactions some way, to respond to it—” I stopped, my throat dry. What idiocy of self-flagellation had made me bring the thing back to Darkover? I was walking back, on my own feet, into the corner of hell that Kadarin had opened for me.

“Just what are you going to do?” Derik asked.

I tried to put it into words he’d understand. “All over the Hellers, there are certain spots which are activated-magnetized, somehow, to respond to the — the vibrations that key in Sharra. They can be used to draw on the power of Sharra.”

Nobody asked the question I feared. What is Sharra? I would have had to say I didn’t know. I knew what it could do, but I didn’t know what it was. Folklore says a goddess turned demon. I didn’t want to theorize about Sharra. I wanted to stay away from it.

And that was the one thing I couldn’t do.

Hastur took pity on me. “Once a certain locus has been put into key with the Sharra matrix, and the Sharra forces — as was done, years ago — a residue of power remains, and that spot can be drawn on. Lew has kept the matrix all these years, hoping for a chance to find these spots, through the original activator, and de-activate them. Once all the activated sites are released, the matrix can be monitored and then destroyed. But even an Alton telepath can’t do that sort of work without a focus. One body can’t handle that kind of vibration alone.”

“And I’m the focus, if I live that long,” Marius said impatiently. “Can we get on with it?”

I gave him one quick look; then, without further preliminary, made contact with his mind.

There is no way to describe the first shock of rapport. The acceleration of a jet, the hurt of a punch in the solar plexus, the shock of diving headfirst into liquid oxygen, might approximate it if you could live through all three at once. I felt Marius physically slump in his saddle under the impact of it, and felt every defense of his mind concentrated to blocking me away. The human mind wasn’t built for this. Blind instinct locked his barriers against me; a normal mind would die under the thrust needed to shatter that kind of resistance.

It was just as bald as that. If he had inherited the Alton Gift, he wouldn’t die. If he hadn’t, it would kill him.

Inwardly I was concentrated on Marius, in agonized concentration, but outwardly every detail around us was cut sharp and clear on my senses, as if etched there in acid; the cold sweat? running down my body, the pity in the old Regent’s eyes, the faces of the men around us. I heard Lerrys moaning, “Stop them! Stop them! It’s killing them both!”

There was an instant of agony so great I thought I would Scream aloud, the tension of a bow drawn back — and back — and bent to the very point where it must snap, where even the snap and break of death would be relief unspeakable.

Regis Hastur moved like a thrown spear; he tore the sword hilt from Hastur’s hands and forced the matching pattern of gleaming stones into Marius’ clenched fists. I saw, and felt, the agony dissolve in my brother’s face, then the web of focused thought spread, gleamed, and wove together. Marius’ mind firmed, held, a tangible rock of strength, against my own.

Alton! Terran blood in his veins — but true Alton, and my brother!

My sigh of relief caught almost into a sob. There was no need of words, but I spoke anyhow. “All right, brother?”

“Fine,” he said, and stared at the sword hilt in his hands. “How the hell did I get hold of this thing?”

I handed him the Sharra matrix. I tensed in the familiar, breathless anticipation of anguish as his hands closed around it; but there was nothing but the familiar sense of rapport. I let my breath go.