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Without Kerwin to lend them this false confidence, the Terran’s spying would have yielded only minorinformation.

Elorie’s hand felt cold as ice in his. Without asking, Kerwin wrapped his fur-lined cloak around her,remembering against his will one of Johnny Eller’s stories. He could shelter Elorie against physical cold inhis Darkovan cloak; but now that he knew he had no more right to his Terran citizenship than to Arilinn,where could he take her?

She pointed through the window of the plane. “Arilinn,” she said, “and there is the Tower.” Then shedrew a deep breath of consternation and despair; for, faintly around the Tower, he could see a bluish,flickering iridescence.

“We’re too late,” she whispered. “They’ve already started!”

Chapter Seventeen: The Conscience of a Keeper

«^»

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Kerwin felt as if he were sleepwalking as they hurried across the airfield, Elorie moving dreamlike at hisside. They had failed, then, and it was too late. He caught at her, saying, “It’s too late! Accept it!” Butshe kept moving, and he would not let her go alone. They passed through the sparkling Veil, and Kerwincaught his breath at the impact of the tremendous, charged force that seemed to suffuse the entire Tower,radiating from that high room where the circle had formed. Incomplete, yes, but still holding incrediblepower. It beat in Kerwin like an extra heartbeat, and he felt Elorie, at his side, trembling.

Was this dangerous for her, now?

Swept on, dominated by her will and that mysterious force, Kerwin climbed the Tower. He stoodoutside the matrix chamber, sensing what lay within.

Auster’s barrier was no more than a wall of mist to him. His body remained outside the room, but hewas inside, too, and with senses beyond his physical eyes he touched them all: Taniquel, in the monitor’sseat, Rannirl firmly holding the technician’s visualization; Kennard bent over the maps; Corus in his own, Kerwin’s place; and holding them together, on frail spiderweb strands, an unfamiliar touch, like pain…

She was slight and frail, not yet out of childhood, yet she wore the robe of a Keeper, crimson, not theceremonial robe but the loose hooded robe they all wore within the matrix chamber, her robe crimson, sothat no one would touch her even by accident when she was carrying the load of the energons. She haddark hair like spun black glass, still braided like a child’s along her face, and a small, triangular, plainface, pale and thin and trembling with effort.

She sensed his touch and looked puzzled, yet somehow she knew it was not intrusion, that he
 
belonged
here. Quickly Kerwin made the rounds of the circle again, Rannirl, Corus, Taniquel, Neyrissa, Kennard—Auster…

Auster. He sensed something, from outside the circle as he was, like a sticky, palpable black cord,extending outside the barrier; the line that chained them, kept the matrix circle from closing their ring ofpower.
 
The bond, the psychic bond between the twin-born, that bound Auster’s twin without hisknowledge to the fringes of the circle
 
…

Spy! Terran, spy
! Auster had sensed his presence, turned viciously in his direction… though his body,immobile in the rapport, did not move… but the tension rippled the calm of the circle, came near tobreaking.

“
 
Spy and Terran. But not I, my brother
!” Kerwin moved into the circle, fell into full rapport and projected into Auster’s mind the full memory of that room where Cleindori, Arnad, Cassilde had been murdered, Cassilde struck down still bearing Auster’s sister, who was never born…

Auster screamed noiselessly in anguish. But as the barrier around the circle dropped, Kerwin caught itup in his own telepathic touch; flashed round the circle in a swift round, locking himself into it; and withone swift, deliberate thrust, cut through the black cord…
 
(sizzling, scorching, a bond severed)
 
andbroke the bond forever.

(Miles away, a swart little man who called himself Ragan collapsed with a scream of agony, to lie senseless for hours, and wake with no knowledge of what had happened. Days later, they found him and took him to Neskaya, where, in the Tower, the psychic wound was healed and Auster was ready, again, to greet his unknown twin; but that came later.)

Auster’s mind was reeling; Kerwin supported him with a strong telepathic touch, dropping into deep

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rapport.

Bring me into the circle!

There was a brief moment of dizzy timelessness as he fell into the old rapport. A facet of the crystal, abodiless speck floating in a ring of light… then he was one of them.

Far down beneath the surface of the world lie those strange substances, those atoms, molecules,ions known as minerals. His touch had searched them out, through the crystal structure in thematrix screen; now, atom by atom and molecule by molecule, he had sifted them from impuritiesso that they lay pure and molten in their rocky beds, and now the welded ring of power was to liftthem, through psychokinesis, molding the circle into a great Hand that would bring them instreams to the place prepared for them.

They were poised, waiting, as the frail spiderweb touch of the child-Keeper faltered, trying to graspthem. Kerwin, deeply in rapport with Taniquel, felt the monitor’s despair as she felt the girl’s waveringtouch.

No! It will kill her!

And then, as the welded circle faltered, ready to dissolve, Kerwin felt again a familiar, secure, belovedtouch.

Elorie! No! You cannot!

I am a Keeper, and responsible only to my own conscience. What matters? my ritual status, anold taboo that lost its meaning generations ago? Or my power to wield the energons, my skill as Keeper? Two women died so that I could be free to do this work I was born and trained to do. Cleindori proved it, even before she left Arilinn, she would have freed the Keepers from laws shehad found to be pious frauds, meaningless and superstitious lies! They would not hear her; theydrove her out to die! Now, with the Terrans waiting for us to fail, will you sacrifice the success of Arilinn for an old taboo? If you will, let Arilinn be broken, and let Darkover fall to the Terrans;but the blame is upon you, not me, my brothers and my sisters!

Then, with infinite gentleness (a steadying arm slipped around childish shoulders, a faltering and spillingcup held firmly in place), Elorie slid into the rapport, gently displacing the spiderweb-threads of thechild-Keeper’s touch with her own strong linkage, so gently that there was neither shock nor hurt.

Little sister, this weight is too strong for you…

And the rapport locked suddenly into a closed ring within the crystal screen; the power flared, flowed… Kerwin was no longer a single person, he was not human at all, he was one with the circle, part of atremendous, glowing, burning river of molten metal that surged upward, impelled by great throbbingpower; it burst, spilled, flamed, engulfed them…

Slowly, slowly, it cooled and hardened and lay inert again, awaiting the touch of those who had need ofit, awaiting the tools and hands that would shape it into tools, energy, power, the life of a world.

One by one, the circle loosened and dissolved. Kerwin felt himself drop from the circle. Taniquel raisedeyes, blazing with love and triumph, to welcome him back. Kennard, Rannirl, Corus, Neyrissa, they wereall round him; Auster, deep shock in his cat’s eyes, but burnt clean of hatred, came to welcome him with

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a quick, hard embrace, a brother’s touch.

The little girl, the Keeper from Neskaya, lay fallen in a heap; she had physically fallen from the Keeper’sseat to the floor, and Taniquel was bending over her, hands to her temples. The child looked boneless,exhausted, fainting. Taniquel said, troubled, “Rannirl, come and carry her…”

Elorie
! Kerwin’s heart sucked and turned over. He leaped over the chairs to throw open the door ofthe room. He had no memory of how he had gotten into the room, but Elorie had not managed, howeverit was, to follow him. Her mind had come into the matrix ring… but her body lay outside the shieldedroom, unguarded.

She was lying on the floor in the hall, sprawled there white and lifeless at his feet. Kerwin dropped to hisknees at her side, all his triumph, all his exaltation, melting into hatred and curses, as he laid his hand toher unmoving breast.

Elorie, Elorie! Driven by the conscience of a Keeper, she had returned to save the Tower… buthad she paid with her life
? She had gone unprepared, unguarded, into a tremendous matrix operation. He knew how this work drained vitality, exhausting her nearly to the point of death; and even when shewas carefully guarded and isolated, this work taxed her to the breaking point! Even guarding her vitalityand nervous forces with chastity and sacrosanct isolation, she could hardly endure it! No, she had notlost her powers… but was this the price she must pay for daring to use them now?

I have killed her
!

Despairing, he knelt beside her, hardly knowing it when Neyrissa moved him aside.

Kennard shook him roughly.

“Jeff! Jeff, she’s not dead, not yet, there’s a chance! But you’ve got to let the monitors get to her, let us

see how bad it is!”

“Damn you, don’t touch her! Haven’t you devils done enough—”

“He’s hysterical,” Kennard said briefly. “Get him loose, Rannirl.” Kerwin felt Rannirl’s strong arms holding him, restraining him; he fought to reach Elorie, and Rannirl said compassionately, “I’m sorry,
 
bredu
 
. You have to let us—damn it, brother, hold still or I’ll have to knock you senseless!”

He felt Elorie taken by force from his arms, cried out with his rage and despair… then slowly, sensingtheir warm touch on his mind, he subsided. Elorie wasn’t dead. They were only trying to help. Hesubsided, standing quiet between Rannirl and Auster, seeing with half an eye that Rannirl’s mouth wasbleeding and that there was a scratch on Auster’s face.

“I know,” Auster said in a low voice, “but easy, foster-brother, they’ll do everything that can be done. Tani and Neyrissa are with her now.” He raised his eyes. “I failed. I failed,
 
bredu
 
. I would have broken, if you hadn’t been here. I never had any right to be here at all, I’m Terran, outsider, you have more right here than I…”

Unexpectedly, to Kerwin’s horror, Auster dropped to his knees. His voice was just audible.

“All that I said of you was true of myself,
 
vai dom
 
; I must have known it, hating myself and pretending it

was you I hated. All I deserve at the hands of the Comyn is death. There is a life between us, Damon

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Aillard; claim it as you will.” He bowed his head and waited there, broken, resigned to death.

And suddenly Jeff was furious.

“Get up, you damned fool,” he said, roughly hauling Auster to his feet. “All it means is that some of you half-wits—” and he looked around at all of them, “are going to have to change some of your stupid notions about the Comyn, that’s all. So Auster was born of a Terran father—so what? He has the Ridenow Gift—
 
because he was brought up believing he had it
! I went through all kinds of hell in my training…
 
because all of you believed that with my Terran blood I’d find it difficult, and made me believe it
 
! Yes,
 
laran
 
is inherited, but it’s not nearly to the extent you believed. It means that Cleindori was right; matrix mechanics is just a science anyone can learn, and there’s no need to surround it with all kinds of ritual and taboo! A Keeper doesn’t need to be a virgin…” He broke off.

Elorie believed it. And her belief could kill her
!

And yet… she knew, she had been part of his link, with Cleindori; this was why Cleindori had given himthe matrix, although his child’s mind had almost broken under the burden: so that one day another Keeper could read what Cleindori had discovered, and deliver to Arilinn the message they would nothear from her, read the mind and heart and conscience of the martyred Keeper, who had died to freeother young women from the prison the Arilinn Tower would build around their minds and their hearts.

“But we’ve won,” Rannirl said, and Jeff knew they had all followed his thought.

“A period of grace,” said Kennard somberly. “Not a final victory!”