Thank you, Ivor. Thank you for everything. Good-bye. Then he was gone, and she was alone once more. She felt the absence of her mentor like the cold blade of a knife in her heart, for just an instant. Then it was gone, and she knew that she would never see Ivor again except in memory. She felt her sorrow crumble as she realized that her mentor was having an afterlife that was as perfect as anything he could have wished for, that he was quite content, and only regretted that he would not be able to publish his findings. A true academic to the last. It was a comforting realization, and she felt someone watching her, amused and touched. Her father, or Jeff, she guessed, for it did not feel at all like Mikhail.
Bringing her attention back to the task at hand, Margaret moved in the direction he had indicated, and agreed that the overworld was confusing. After what could have been a moment or an hour she spotted what seemed to be some ancient stones, foundation stones, which looked as if they had been thrust apart by a giant hand. Her palm throbbed, and she knew the hand had been her own. It was not an easy feeling, and she tensed all over, in spite of the influence of Liriel or the incense.
When she reached the ruins, she knew it was the place she feared, but also the place she sought. Shards of glass rested between the stones, reflecting stars that did not shine overhead. Margaret kept her eyes from direct gaze, because she was sure that the scraps of mirror were dangerous. The remains of Ashara’s astral Tower seemed empty, but the matrix lines on her hand pulsed beneath her phantom skin. She half expected the ghost of the small woman to rise from the rubble and speak to her.
Donal! Donal Alar—come here right now.
I’m scared. The answer was weak, and Margaret could not tell where it came from.
I am here, and you don’t need to be afraid, Donal. She wished she had more experience talking to little boys, and that she was not quietly terrified herself.
Are you still mad at me?
No, Donal, I am not angry with you. I am worried about you. This is not a place for either of us. Come here.
I’m sorry I scared you, came the voice, and with it the vague figure of the boy. He seemed to materialize from a point in the glassy rubble, and he looked frightened.
It’s all right. There was no real harm done, except that you ended up here instead of in your bed, where you belong.
I didn’t know where to go.
Of course you didn’t, Donal. Now take my hand. That’s right. Margaret drew the little ghostly form against her breast and held him close with her unmarred hand. She sensed that touching him with the other one would be fatal. She could feel her heart pound, and the exhaustion coursed along her veins like some subtle poison. How do I get out of here? she wondered.
Margaret looked around the Plain and saw the Towers. For a moment there seemed to be nothing but these, and she felt lost and alone. Then, at last, she saw a kind of coalescence that was not a Tower, but just a clump of light. She knew it was her family in Armida, supporting her and waiting for her.
She drifted in the direction of that light, speeding and barely moving at the same moment, and then she had the sensation of being tugged by strong hands, firm hands and loving. She felt Jeff’s resoluteness, and her father’s power, but most of all what drew her and held her was her sense of Mikhail Lanart-Hastur. It lacked the strength of her father and the surety of Jeff but what it had in great measure was the love she had not even known she longed for, until she felt it.
23
The overworld was gone abruptly, without any transition, and Margaret found herself slumped on the couch next to Donal. Ringed around her were the concerned faces of her family; her father, grave and serious, Jeff, looking tired, Mikhail smiling and meeting her eyes quickly, and Liriel, her expression unreadable. When he smiles, she thought, he does look like an angel after all.
Margaret sat up slowly. Her face was wet with sweat, and her feet and hands were icicles. The cloth of her nightgown clung to her breasts with cold wetness, but she had no thoughts of modesty. Her mouth tasted foul and stale. She shivered and wished she had put on her robe before beginning, but it was too late to think of that now. Liriel vanished, and returned a moment later with a large woolen shawl that smelled of lavender, and she hugged it around her closely. It was a real comfort, like the people around her.
Then she looked down at her left hand, curious. The lines there were dark, but fading, as if they were retreating into her skin. Margaret hated the thing, that shadow matrix, even though it gave her something she had never had before. Reluctantly, she drew the disgusting glove back over her hand.
Donal sat up and looked at the adults, rubbing his eyes, and apparently none the worse for his adventure. “How did I get here? I’m hungry!”
This made everyone, including Margaret, laugh. “You are always hungry, it seems. Do you remember what happened?” She flexed her hand against the stiffened leather. There must be something I can use that isn’t so dreadful, she thought.
“I ’member spooking you, an’ that’s all.” He rubbed his eyes again. Then he leaned against Margaret’s body trustingly and snuggled up against her. She looked down at his tousled locks and felt something she had never known before. He smelled clean and healthy, not as if a part of him had just been wandering that place. What a dear boy! Perhaps motherhood was not as bad as she had imagined.
When she looked up from Donal’s head, she found Mikhail watching her indirectly, an unreadable expression on his weary face. All the energy she had seen in him seemed gone now, or banked away. She remembered how he had seemed to her when her eyes were closed, how fine and troubled. Then she wondered how she appeared to him, and to the others, not her disreputable physical self, but that other Margaret she hardly knew yet.
You were splendid, cousin! Mikhail’s answering thought warmed her, even as she chided herself for vanity, for needing approval.
“I’m hungry! Can I have something to eat?” Donal’s piping voice broke into her thoughts, and Margaret realized she, too, was ravenous. She wondered if she would ever have a private thought or feeling again. Margaret looked over at her father. He lifted his arms and stretched, and she could hear the pop of spinal bones. He seemed different, and it was not the same difference she had noticed during dinner. What had changed?
I now know you as I have never known you before. The answering thought was filled with calm affection, and a certainty she found delightful. It was an intense sensation, simultaneously intimate and deeply respectful. She liked the closeness she had felt in the circle of her family, but it was rather overwhelming at the same time. She was so accustomed to being alone and separate, so unused to being known and, more, accepted. Will I ever be comfortable with this?
“Among those of us with the Alton Gift, I am afraid,” Jeff said slowly, answering her unspoken question, “what you regard as privacy is almost unknown. When I was first married to Elorie, I used to resent that terribly. Not that it did the least bit of good. Things are as they are. You get used to it, or you don’t. You just learn to live with it. Period.”
“Swell,” Margaret commented, too tired to be polite.
Jeff chuckled. “Life is not fair, Marguerida, and it is never easy. Think how boring it would be if it were.”
“I would settle for about ten years of being bored just now, really. I have had enough adventures since I came to Darkover to last me the rest of my life. I’d even learn to embroider if I could just be sure my life would not be exciting any more.”
Liriel laughed at her. “Marguerida I never heard anyone long for dullness before.”
“Right now, I would trade Armida and the Alton Gift for a good hot bath and the promise of constant tranquillity.”
Lew looked at her, a half smile playing across his mouth. “The bath you can get for free, my Marja, but the other—I don’t think so. I have a strong feeling your adventures have only begun.”
“Humph! I will thank you to keep any Aldaran foretellings to yourself Father! They have caused enough trouble today already. Com
e on, Donal, let’s go raid the kitchen before we faint from hunger.”
As she rose and took the child out of the room, she was aware that Liriel, Jeff, and Lew were talking about her silently. She forced herself not to “hear” the discusion, because it would only have made her angry right then. She knew perfectly well that she had very little choice but to go to a Tower for training, whether she wanted to or not. She wondered if she would be a good technician, like Liriel or her father, and what it would be like to work intimately with a full circle. Margaret shied away from the idea, for while she could manage it with her kin, she was not sure she would ever be easy with the thoughts of strangers.
Then she chuckled at herself. A mere month before she had thought the whole idea of telepathy was ridiculous, and now she was trying to find a means to adjust to it.
Mikhail caught up with her as she and Donal entered the great kitchen. It was an immense room, with two fireplaces, a hive-shaped oven, and three long tables set across the middle of the space. Polished cooking vessels hung along the walls and were stacked on counters, and the whole place smelled of cleanness and the lingering odors of cooking.
“Did you mean it when you suggested we run away, cousin, or were you teasing me again?”
The question surprised her, but it was a pleasant surprise. Mikhail walked across the room and opened a cupboard on one wall. He pulled out a plate of meats left over from supper and put them on a table, then filled a pot with water and set it in the still hot fireplace. Donal sat down at the table and looked eager as he pulled a slice of meat off the plate and began to wolf it down.
“I wasn’t teasing, Mik, but I was speaking in jest. I know it would create a lot of problems, and right now I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”
“Except learn to embroider and have a dull existence. How I envy you. You have been to other worlds, so now you can think of settling down.”
Margaret was a little alarmed at the tone of his words. She was too tired to want to discuss the future, any future, except eating and getting back to sleep. Her eyes itched a little. She tried to focus on something that had no particular importance, that had no emotions attached to it. She did not want to think of how he had seemed to her in the overworld, and how she might have seemed to him. “Mikhail, if you had ever seen my sewing, you would know that I would never be able to learn to embroider well. Dio tried her best to show me, but I never could make a French knot, and my cross-stitches were never even.” The maidenly arts of needlecraft were as safe a subject as she could think of, and she was grateful for that.
“I know what a cross-stitch is, for Liriel and Ariel did that when they were younger—Liriel insisted they were called “cross’ because they made one crabby. But I never heard of a French knot. What is it?”
Margaret sat down beside Donal, and tried to recall the thing. It seemed he also wished to speak of something neutral. She glanced at him and she realized that Mikhail was not asking her this because it was safe, but because he was really curious. His blue eyes were alight with interest. What a splendid scholar he could have been, if he could have gone to University. And what a contrast he was to his father and brothers who seemed to have no interests beyond horse-raising and child-making. It occurred to her that very few people she had encountered on Darkover were interested in things they did not already know, and she knew that Ariel and Gabe’s illiteracy was not about reading, but about a lack of curiosity.
“You take the needle and bring it up, then wrap the thread around it a couple times, and push the needle back down very close to where you came up. Only I always went back into the first hole, and my knots unwound. It is a maddening thing.”
“Oh, that. We call that The Keeper’s Stitch.” Mikhail put some leaves into a pot for tea. Then he put several empty plates on the table, and brought out bread and honey and thick cream. “Liriel hated it, too, but Ariel loved it, and made thousands of those things.” As he spoke, Lew and Liriel came in, with Jeff behind them.
The expressions on their faces were solemn and slightly conspiratorial. Margaret watched them as she cut off a slice of bread and slathered it with honey. “So have all of you decided what you think you will do with me?” She let herself sound challenging because it was true. She might go to a Tower, but it would be under her own power, of her own choice. She needed to have that much control left in her life! Lew and Liriel exchanged a glance while Jeff looked fairly sheepish, as if he had been caught with his hand in a cookie jar.
Lew rubbed the back of his neck with his one hand. “No, we have not, but we have discussed the matter.”
“Would some coffee keep you awake, Marguerida?” Jeff asked before she could answer her father.
“Nothing would keep me awake, and some coffee would be most welcome. So, Father, am I to marry young Gabriel or go to a Tower and be locked up?”
Lew settled down next to her at the table. “Your penchant for the dramatic has not lessened over the years.”
“By all accounts, I come by it honestly! From the stories I have heard since I came here, you were pretty dramatic yourself, before you left Darkover.” Istvana had given her some account of the Sharra Rebellion, and her father’s part in it, very censored, she suspected, but there were still enough details to make her think Lew Alton must have cut quite a figure in his youth.
He sighed and looked all his years with weariness.
“And you still have the unsettling habit of speaking your mind, I see. No, we don’t think that you should marry Gabriel—for the sake of the hinges of the doors, of course.” Margaret giggled; her father went on. “Jeff make enough coffee for me, would you? I wish there was someplace on the planet where coffee could be cultivated. But we do think that it would be completely irresponsible not to take you to Arilinn for training, yes.”
“Well, I agree, but I’m not sure about Arilinn.”
“What?” She could not tell if Lew was surprised by her sudden capitulation or her reluctance regarding the Tower where he had trained.
“I agree I need to be trained. I never, never want to make anyone do something they don’t want to again! The overworld scares me. Being a telepath scares me. I’d rather have really curly hair or a grander bosom, if I had any choice.” This remark made everyone at the table laugh, except Donal who was too busy trying to consume all the meat on the plate in two bites.
“But why not Arilinn? It is the principal Tower of Darkover, and everyone goes there.”
“So I have heard. But I just have this feeling that I should start at Neskaya with Istvana Ridenow.” Margaret paused and frowned. She had not known her feelings until she spoke, but she knew that she was right. “Is that against the rules?”
Jeff turned from the counter where he was spooning ground coffee into a paper filter. “It is not against any rules, Marguerida, though it is slightly untraditional. Frankly, none of us even thought of it. Do you have some objection to training with me?”
“Absolutely not, Uncle Jeff.” Margaret chewed her bread for a moment. “But I think it is that the Alton Gift is so forceful, so strong, that I believe that working with an empath would make it wiser.” And I have a kind of bond with Istvana now that I do not have with anyone else.
A silence spread across the kitchen. Jeff took the boiling pot from the fire and poured it into his coffee pot. The sweet smell of it filled the air. Mikhail brought more food to the table, looked at Margaret, and gave her a wonderful, supportive smile. Neskaya is not so far from Ardais that I could not see you when your duties permitted.
You could see me even if my duties didn’t permit, you dolt!
How can I resist such tender thoughts?
What makes you think I want you to resist them?
This pleasing byplay went unremarked by everyone except Liriel. She looked from her brother to Margaret, knitted her brows in a frown, then shrugged. That is how the wind blows between you, is it? We should have known, have guessed, of course. I confess I am rather pleased, and distressed, t
oo, for our parents are not going to be at all willing to support such a match, Mik, and you know it.
Yes, I do know it, but what can I do? It is not my fault that so much power rests, potentially, in my hands, and in Marguerida’s.
You are being logical, Mik, the way you often are, and this is not a matter of logic one bit! Liriel managed to sound severe. Our father has never let his logic guide him, and our mother—well, you know that she was set on keeping Armida in her hands. She is almost obsessed with the place, as if it were her ancestral estate and not her husband’s.
I can explain it, I think, Lew chimed in. Javanne is ambitious, and she was ambitious as a young woman. She wanted to run things, even when we were children. But, there being very little opportunity for female ruler-ship on Darkover, she was forced to make do with marrying into the most powerful family she could manage. Which she did. But she would trade Armida for Comyn Castle in a second, if the chance were offered. It is not good, as I have discovered during my time in the Federation, to keep one sex confined and let the other do as it pleases.
You make her sound as if she wanted Regis’ position, which is impossible! Liriel’s mental voice had a snap in it.
In imagination, Liriel, anything is possible—anything!
The room was quiet now, and Jeff served out the coffee. Donal, gorged and sated, gave a profound belch without the least self-consciousness. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stretched out on the bench. Then he pillowed his head against Margaret’s thigh and fell into a deep sleep.
“Marguerida has something, you know.” Liriel spoke quietly, as if she had set aside the disturbing thoughts of her mother and turned her mind to something she could grasp. “Istvana is the most innovative Keeper we have had in years—since Cleindori, really. I know you have tried to change things, Jeff, but you have been swimming against the current. How do you feel about it, Uncle Lew?”