We were so much alike, he and I, I have known twins less like. And yet we were so different. I had not known he was personally ambitious, too. I had lost the last traces of personal ambition at Arilinn, had resented Father's attempts to rouse it in me, in the Guards. Now I was deeply disturbed. Would he let his plans slip through his fingers without protest? It would take all my persuasion, all my tact, to convince him to a course less dangerous for all our world. Somehow I must make it clear to him that I still shared his dreams, that I would work for his aims and help him to the utmost, even though I had irrevocably renounced the means he and Kadarin had chosen.
When the mountain lords had departed, Beltran courteously asked Regis and Danilo to remain for a few more days. I had not expected either of them to agree and was ready to try to persuade them, but to my surprise, Regis had accepted the invitation. Maybe it was not so surprising. He looked dreadfully ill. I should have talked to him, tried to find out what ailed him. Yet whenever I tried to speak to him alone be rebuffed me, always turning the conversation to indifferent things. I wondered why. As a child he had loved me; did he think me a traitor, or was it something more personal?
Such was my state when we gathered that morning in the small fireside hall where we had met and worked together so often. Beltran bore the marks of stress and grief and he looked older, too, sobered by the new weight of responsibil-ity. Thyra was pale and composed, but I knew how hard-won that composure had been. Kadarin, too, was haggard, grieved. Rafe, though subdued, had suffered the least; his grief was only that of a child who had lost a kindly guardian. He was too young to see the deeper implications of this.
Marjorie had that heartbreaking remoteness I had begun to see in her lately, the isolation of every Keeper. Through it I sensed a deeper disquiet Beltran was her guardian now. If he and I were to quarrel, the future for us was not bright
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These were my kinsmen. Together we had built a beautiful dream. My heart ached that I must be the one to shatter it.
But when Danilo and Regis were ceremoniously escorted in, I felt again a glimmer of hope. Perhaps, perhaps, if I could persuade them to help us, there was still a way to salvage that dream!
Beltran began with the utmost courtesy, making formal apologies to Danilo for the way his men had exceeded their orders. If the words had more of diplomacy than real regret, I supposed only the strongest of telepaths could feel the difference. He ended by saying, "Let the end I am striving for outweigh personal considerations. A day is coming for Darkover when mountain men and the Domains must forget their ages-old differences and work together for the good of our world. Can we not agree on that at least, Regis Hastur, that you and I speak together for a world, and that our fathers and grandfathers should have wrought together and not separately for its well-being?"
Regis made a formal bow. I noticed he was wearing his own clothes again. "For your sake, Lord Beltran, I wish I were more skilled in the arts of diplomacy, so that I might more fittingly represent the Hasturs here. As it is, I can speak only for myself as a private individual. I hope the long peace between Comyn and Aldaran may endure for our lifetimes and beyond."
"And that it may not be a peace under the thumbs of the Terrans," Beltran added. Regis merely bowed again and said nothing.
Kadarin said with a grim smile, "I see that already you are skilled, Lord Regis, in the greatest of the Comyn arts, that of saying nothing in pleasant words. Enough of this fencing-match! Beltran, tell them what it is you hope to do."
Beltran began to outline, again, his plans to make Darkover independent, self-sufficient and capable of star-travel. I listened again, falling for the last time under the sway of that dream. I wished?all the gods there ever were know how I wished?that his plans might work. And they might. If Danilo could help us uncover enough telepaths, if Beltran's own latent powers could be wakened. //, if, if! And, above all, if we had some source of power other than the impossible Sharra....
Beltran concluded, and I knew our thoughts ran for the moment at least along the same track: "We have reached a point where we are dependent on your help, Danilo. You are
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a catalyst telepath; that is the rarest of all psi powers, and if it is in our service, our chances of success are enormously raised. It goes without saying that you will be rewarded beyond your dreams. You will help us, will you not?"
Danilo met the ingratiating smile with a slight frown of puzzlement. "If what you are doing is so just and righteous, Lord Aldaran, why did you resort to violence? Why not seek me out, explain this to me, ask my aid?"
"Come, come," said Beltran good-naturedly, "can't you forgive me for that?"
"I forgive you readily, sir. Indeed, I am a little grateful. Otherwise I might have been charmed into doing what you wish without really thinking about it. Now I am not nearly so sure. I've had too much experience with people who speak fine words, but will do whatever they think justified to get what they want. If your cause is as good as you say, I should think any telepath would be glad to help you. If I am made sure of that by someone I can trust, and if my lord gives me leave"?he turned and made Regis a formal bow?"then I am at your service. But I must first be wholly assured that your motives and your methods are as good as you say"?he looked Beltran straight hi the eyes, and I gasped aloud at his audacity?"and not just fine words to cover a will to power and personal ambition."
Beltran turned as red as a turkey-cock. He was not used to being crossed, and for this shabby nobody to read him a lesson in ethics was more than be could face. I thought for a moment that he would strike the boy. Probably he remembered that Danilo was the only catalyst telepath known to be adult and fully functioning, for he controlled himself, although I could see the signs of his inward wrath. He said, "Will you trust Lew Alton's judgment?"
"I have no reason not to trust it, but. . ." And he turned to Regis. I knew he had reached the end of his own defiance.
I knew Regis was as frightened as Danilo, but just as resolute. He said, "I will trust no man's judgment until I have heard what he has to say."
Kadarin said shortly, "Will you two boys, who know noth-mg of matrix mechanics, presume to sit in judgment upon a trained Arilinn telepath about matters of his own competence?"
Regis gave me a pleading look. After a long pause, during which I could almost feel him searching for the right words, he said, "To judge his competence?no. To judge whether I
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can conscientiously support his ... his means and motives? for that I can trust no man's judgment but my own. I will listen to what he has to say."
Beltran said, 'Tell them, then, Lew, that we must do this if Darkover is to survive as an independent world, not a slave colony of the Empire!"
All their eyes were suddenly on me. This was the moment of truth, and a moment of great temptation. I opened my mouth to speak. Darkover's future was a cause justifying all things, and we needed Dani.
But did I serve Darkover or my own private ends? Before the boy whose career was ruined by a misuse of power, I discovered I could not lie. I could not give Danilo the reassurance it would take to enlist his aid, then frantically try to find some way to make the lie true.
I said, "Beltran, your aims are good and I trust them. But we cannot do it with the matrix we have to work with. Not with Sharra, Beltran. It is impossible, completely impossible."
Kadarin swung around. I had seen his rage only once before, turned on Beltran. Now it was turned on me, and it struck me like a blow. "What folly is this, Lew? You told me Sharra has all the power we could possibly need!"
I tried to barrier that assault and hold my own wrath firmly under control. The unleashed anger of an Alton can kill, and this man was my dear friend. I said, "Power, yes, all the power we could ever need, for this work or any. But it's essentially uncontrollable. It's been used as a weapon and now it's unfit for anything but a weapon. It is?" I
hesitated, trying to formulate my vague impressions. "It's hungry for power and destruction."
"Comyn superstition again!" Thyra flung at me. "A matrix is a machine. No more and no less."
"Most matrices, perhaps," I said, "though I am beginning to think that even at Arilinn we know far too little of them to use them as recklessly as we do. But this one is more." I hesitated again, struggling for words for a knowledge, an experience which was basically beyond words. "It brings something into our world which is not of this world at all. It belongs to other dimensions, other places or spaces. It's a gateway, and once it's opened, it's impossible to shut completely." I looked from face to face. "Can't you see what it's doing to us?" I pleaded. "It's rousing recklessness, a failure of caution, a lust for power?" I had felt it myself, the temptation to lie ruthlessly to Regis and Danilo, just to enlist their aid. "Thyra,
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you know what you did under its impulse, and your foster-father lies dead. I'll never believe you would have done that, knowingly, on your own! It's so much stronger than we are, it's playing with us like toys!"
Kadarin said, "Desideria used it with none of this fuss."
"But she used it as a weapon," I said, "and in a righteous cause. She had no wish for personal power, so that it could not take her and corrupt her, as it has done with us; she gave it over to the forge-folk, to lie unused and harmless on their altars."
Beltran said harshly, "Are you saying it has corrupted meT
I looked squarely at him and said, "Yes. Even your father's death has not made you see reason."
Kadarin said, "You talk like a fool, Lew. I hadn't expected this sort of whining cant from you. If we have the power to give Darkover its place in the Empire, how can we shrink from anything we must do?"
"My friend," I pleaded, "listen to me. We cannot use Sharra's matrix for the kind of controlled power you wish to show the Terrans. It cannot be used to power a spaceship; I would not trust it even to control the helicopter now. It is a weapon, only a weapon, and it is not weapons we need. It is technology."
Kadarin's smile was fierce. "But if a weapon is all we have, then we will use that weapon to get what we must from the Terrans! Once we show them what we can do with it?"
My spine iced over with a deadly cold. I saw again the vision: flames rising from Caer Donn, the great form of fire bending down with a finger of destruction.,..
"No!" I almost shouted. "I'll have nothing to do with it!"
I rose and looked around the circle, saying desperately, "Can't you see how this has corrupted us? Was it for war, for murder, for violence, blackmail, rum, that we forged our link in such love and harmony? Was this your dream, Beltran, when we spoke together of a better world?"
He said savagely, "If we must fight, it will be the fault of the Terrans for denying us our rights! I would rather do it peacefully, but if they force us to fight them?"
Kadarin, coming and laying his hands on my shoulders with real affection said, "Lew, you're foolishly squeamish. Once they know what we can do, there will certainly be no need to do it. But it places us in a position of equal power with the Terrans for once. Can't you see? Even if we never
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use it, we must have the power, simply in order to control the situation and not be forced to submit!"
I knew what he was trying to say, but I could see the fatal flaw. I said, "Bob, we cannot bluff with Sharra. It wants ruin and destruction ... can't you feel that?"
"It is like the sword in the fairy tale," Rafe said. "Remember what it said on the scabbard? 'Draw me never unless I may drink blood.'"
We swung to look at the child and he smiled nervously under all our eyes.
"Rafe's right," I said harshly. "We can't loose Sharra unless we really mean to use it, and no sane human beings would do that."
Kadarin said, "Marjorie. You're the Keeper. Do you believe this superstitious drivel?"
Her voice was not steady, but she stretched her hand to me. "I believe Lew knows more about matrices than any of us, or all of us together. You pledged, Bob, you swore to De-sideria to be guided by Lew's judgment. I won't work against it."
Beltran said, "You're both part-Terran! Are you two on their side then, against Darkover?"
I gasped at the old slur. I would never have believed it of Beltran. Marjorie flared. "It was you, yourself, who pointed out not a moment ago that we are all Terran! There is no 'side,' only a common good for all! Does the left hand chop off the right?"
I felt Marjorie struggle for control, felt Kadarin, too, fighting to overcome his flaming anger. I had confidence stil! in his integrity, when he took the tune to control that vicious rage which was the one chink in the strong armor of his will.
Kadarin spoke gently at last: "Lew, I know there is some truth hi what you say. I trust you, bredu." The word moved me more that I could express. "But what alternative have we, my friend? Are you trying to say that we should simply give up our plans, our hopes, our dream? It was your dream, too. Must we forget what we all believed in?"
"The Gods forbid," I said, shaken. "It is not the dream I would see put aside, only Sharra's part in it." Then I appealed directly to Beltran. He was the one I must convince.
"Let Sharra go back to the forge-folk's keeping. They have held it harmless all these years. No, kinsman, hear me out," I pleaded. "Do this, and I will go to Arilinn; I will speak with telepaths at Hali, at Neskaya and Corandolis and Dalereuth.
I will explain to all of them what you are doing for Darkover, plead for you, if need be, before the Comyn Council itself. Do you honestly believe that you are the only man on Darkover who chafes under Terran rule and control? I am as certain as that I stand here, that they will come to ' your support and work with you freely and wholeheartedly, far better than I alone can do. And they have access to every known, monitored matrix on Darkover, and to the records of what was done with them in old times. We can find one safe for our purpose. Then I will work with you myself, and as long as you like, for your real aims. Not bluff with a terrible weapon, but a total, concerted effort by all of us, every one of us together, to recover the real strengths of Darkover, something positive to give the Terrans and the Empire, in return for what they can give us."
I met Regis' eyes, and suddenly time was out of focus again. I saw him in a great hall, crowded with men and women, hundreds and hundreds of them, every telepath on Darkover It slid away and the eight of us were alone in the little fireside room again. I said to Regis and Danilo, "You would cooperate in such an endeavor, wouldn't you?"
Regis, his eyes gleaming with excitement, said, "With all my heart, Lord Beltran. I am certain that even Comyn Council would put all the telepaths and towers of Darkover at your service I"
This was a greater dream than the one which had drawn us together! It must be! I had seen ill Beltran must catch fire from it too!
Beltran stared at us all, and before he spoke my heart sank. There was icy contempt in his voice and words.
"You damnable forsworn traitorl" he flung at me. "Get me under the heel of Comyn, would you? That I should get on my knees before the Hali'imyn and take from them as a gift the power which is my right? Better even to do as my doddering old father did, and grovel to the Terrans! But I am lord of Aldaran now, and I will plunge all Darkover into red chaos first! Never! Never, damn you! NeverI" His voice rose to a hoarse shriek of rage.
"Beltran, I beg of you?"
"Beg! Beg, you stinking half-caste! As you would make me beg, grovel?"
I clenched my fists, aching with the need to fall on him, beat that sneer off his face . . . no. That was not his true self, either, but Sharra,
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"I am sorry, kinsman. You leave me no choice." Whatever happened after, the closeness of this circle was bro
ken; nothing could ever be the same. "Kadarin, you placed Sharra in my hands and pledged to abide my judgment. Before it is too late, the circle must be broken, the link destroyed, the matrix insulated before it controls us all."
"No!" Thyra cried. "If you dare not handle it, I do!"
"Breda?"
"No," Marjorie said, her voice shaking, "no, Thyra. It is the only way. Lew's right, it can destroy us all. Bob." She faced Kadarin, her golden eyes swimming in tears. "You made me Keeper. By that authority, I have to say it" Her voice broke in a sob. "The link must be broken."
"No!" Kadarin said harshly, repulsing her outstretched hands. "I did not want you to be Keeper; I feared just this? that you would be swayed by Lew! Sharra's circle must be preserved! You know you cannot break it without my consent!" He stared fiercely at her, and I thought of a hawk I had once seen, hovering over its prey.
Beltran stood in front of Danilo, facing him down. "I ask you for the last time. Will you do what I ask?"
Danilo was trembling. I recalled that he had been the youngest and most timid of the cadets. His voice shook as he said, "N-no, my lord Aldaran. I will not."
Beltran turned his eyes on Regis. His voice was level and grim. "Regis Hastur. You are not now in the Domains, but in Aldaran's stronghold. You came here of your own free will, and you will not depart from here until you command your minion to use his powers as I shall direct."
"My paxman is free to follow his own will and conscience. He has refused you; I support his decision. Now, Lord Aldaran, I respectfully request your leave to depart."
Beltran shouted in the mountain tongue. The doors suddenly burst open and a dozen of his guards burst into the fireside room. I realized, in sudden consternation, that he must have meant this all along. One of them approached Regis, who was unarmed; Danilo quickly drew his dagger and stepped between them, but was swiftly disarmed. Beltran's men dragged them back out of the way.
Marjorie faced Beltran in angry reproach.
"Beltran, you cannot! This is treachery! He was our father's guest!"
But not my guest," Beltran said, and the words were a snarl, "and I have no patience with barbarian codes under a
pretense of honor! Now for you, Lew Alton. Will you honor your pledge to us?"
"You speak of honor?" The words seemed to rise from
some hidden spring within me, and I spat on the floor at his
feet. "I honor my pledge to you as you honor your father's
memory!" I turned my back on him. Within the hour I would
f be in touch with Arilinn by matrix, and the Comyn would
rfcnow what Beltran planned . . .
I had forgotten the link still strong between us all. Kadarin said, "Oh, no, you won't," and gestured to the guards. "Take him!"