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It was well after daylight when Callista stirred, opening her eyes in confusion.

“Andrew?”

“I’m here, love.” He tightened his fingers on hers. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, I think.” She could not feel any pain. Somewhere—a long time ago—someone had told her that was a bad sign. After the suffering of the last days she welcomed it. “I seem to have slept a long time, and Damon was worrying because I didn’t.”

Did she even know she had been drugged? Aloud he said, “Let me call Damon,” and stepped away. Onthe other bed Damon lay stretched out, lightly holding Ellemir with one arm. Andrew felt that cruel stab of

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agonized envy. They seemed so secure, so happy in the knowledge of one another. Would Callista and

he ever have this? He had to believe it or die.

Ellemir’s blue eyes opened. She smiled up at him, and Damon, as she stirred, was instantly awake.

“How is Callista?”

“She seems better.”

Damon looked at him skeptically, got up and went to Callista’s side. Following him, Andrew suddenlysaw Callista through Damon’s eyes: white and emaciated, her eyes deeply sunken into her cheeks.

Damon said gently, “Callista, you know as well as I what has to be done. You’re a Keeper, girl.”

“Don’t call me that!” she flared at him. “Never again!”

“I know you have been released from your oath, but an oath is only a word, Callista. I tell you, there is

no other way. I cannot take the responsibility—”

“I have not asked you to! I am free—”

“Free to die,” Damon said brutally.

“Don’t you think I’d rather die?” she said, and began to cry for the first time since that night, sobbing stormily. Damon watched her, his face like stone, but Andrew took her up in his arms, holding her against him, protectively.

“Damon, what in the hell are you doing to her!”

Damon’s face was red with anger. He said, “Damn it, Callista, I’m tired of being treated like a monstercoming between you, when I’ve exhausted myself trying to protect you both.”

“I know that,” she wept, “but I can’t bear it. You know what this is doing to Andrew, to me, it’s killing

us both!”

Andrew could feel her hands shaking as she clung to him, cradled in his arms, her body light as a child’s. From somewhere he seemed to see her as a strange web of light, a kind of electrical energy net. Wherewas this strange perception coming from? His body no longer seemed real, but was trembling in anowhere, and he too was no more than a fragile web of electrical energies, sparking and sputtering, witha deathly, growing weakness…

Now he could no longer see Damon—Damon, too, was lost behind the swirling electrical nets. No, Damon was flowing, changing, glowing with anger, a dull crimson like a furnace. Andrew had seen thisbefore, when he confronted Dezi. Like all men of easygoing temperament and flaring, easily dispelledanger, Andrew was shocked and horrified at the deep-down furnace-red glow of Damon’s. Dimlybehind the shifting colors and electrical energies, the swirling pulses and lights, he knew that the man Damon walked to the window and stood, his back to them, staring out into the snowstorm, struggling, tomaster his wrath. Andrew could feel the rage from inside, as he felt Callista’s agony, as he felt Ellemir’sconfusion. He fought to get them all solid again, all hard and human, not swirling confusions of electricalimages. What was real? he wondered. Were they really nothing more than swirling energy masses, fieldsof energy and moving atoms in space? He fought to hold on to human preception, through Callista’s

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frenzied, feverish grip. He wanted to go to the window… He
 
did
 
go to the window and touch Damon… He did not move, anchored by the weight of Callista across his lap. Fighting for human speech, he said, entreating, “Damon, no one thinks you are a monster. Callista will do whatever you think is best. We both trust you, don’t we, Callista?”

With an effort Damon managed to control his wrath. It was rare for him to let it have even a moment’smastery over him. He felt ashamed. At last he came to their side and said gently, “Andrew has a right tobe consulted in your decision, Callista. You cannot keep doing this to all of us. If it were only your owndecision—” He broke off with a gasp. “Andrew! Put her down, quickly!”

Callista had gone limp in Andrew’s arms. Shaken by the fright in Damon’s voice, Andrew made noprotest when Damon lifted Callista from his arms, laid her back in bed. He motioned Andrew to moveaway. Puzzled, resentful, Andrew obeyed. Damon bent over the woman.

“You see? No, don’t cry again, you haven’t the strength. Don’t you know you went into crisis last night?

You had a convulsion. I gave you some raivannin—you know what that means as well as I do, Callie.”

She hardly had the strength to whisper, “I think… we would all be better off…”

Damon held her wrists lightly in his hand, such slender wrists that even Damon’s hands, which were notlarge, could wholly encircle them. Feeling Andrew’s resentful stare, he said wearily, “She hasn’t thestrength for another convulsion.”

Andrew said, at the end of endurance, “Was this my doing, too? Is it always going to be unsafe for meto touch her?”

“Don’t blame Andrew, Damon…” Callista’s voice was only a thread. “It was I who wanted…”

“You see?” Damon said. “If I keep you away from her she wants to die. If I let you touch her, the physical stress gets worse and worse. Quite apart from the emotional strain, which is tearing you both to pieces, physically she can’t endure much more. Something must be done quickly, before—” He broke off, but they all knew what he did not say: Before she goes into convulsions again and we can’t stop it this time.

“You know what has to be done, Callista, and you know how much time you have to make up your mind. Damn it, Callie, do you think I want to torment you when you’re in this state? I know you are physically in the state of a girl of twelve, but you are
 
not
 
a child, can’t you stop behaving like one? Can’t you somehow manage to behave like the adult professional you have learned to be? Stop being so damned emotional about it! What we have here is a physical fact! You are a Keeper—”

“I am not! I’m not!” she gasped.

“At least show some of the good sense and courage you learned as one! I’m ashamed of you. Your

circle would be ashamed of you. Leonie would be ashamed—”

“Damn it, Damon,” Andrew began, but Ellemir, her eyes blazing, grabbed his arm. “Keep out of this,

you fool,” she whispered. “Damon knows what he’s doing! It’s her
life
 
at stake now!”

“You are afraid,” Damon said, taunting, “you are afraid! Hilary Castamir was not fifteen, but she endured having her channels cleared every forty days for more than a year! And you are afraid to let me touch you!”

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Callista lay flat on her pillows under Damon’s hard grip, her face dead white, her eyes beginning to blazewith a lambent flame none of them had ever seen in her before. Her voice, weak as it was, trembled withsuch rage that it was like a shout.

“You! How dare you talk to me that way, you that Leonie sent from Arilinn like a whimpering puppy

because you had not the courage. Who do you think you are, to talk to me like that?”

Damon stood up, releasing her, as if, Andrew thought, he was afraid he might strangle her if he didn’t. The dull-red furnace glow of rage was around him again. Andrew clenched his hands until he could seeblood beneath the nails, trying to keep them all from disintegrating into whirling fields of energy again.

“Who am I?” Damon shouted. “I am your nearest kinsman, and I am your technician, and you know very well what else I am. And if I cannot make you see reason, if you will not use your knowledge and good judgment, then I swear to you, Callista of Arilinn, that I shall have
 
Dom
 
Esteban carried up here and let you try your tantrums on him! If your husband cannot make you behave, and if a technician cannot, then, my girl, you may try conclusions with your father! He is old, but he is still Lord Alton, and if I explain to him—”

She said, white with fury, “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Try me,” Damon retorted, turning his back and standing firm, ignoring all of them. Andrew stood by, uneasy, looking from Damon’s turned back to Callista, white and raging against her pillows, holding to consciousness by that very thread of rage. Could either give way, or would they remain locked in that terrible battle of wills till one of them died? He caught a random thought—from Ellemir?—that Damon’s mother was an Alton, he too had the Alton gift. But Callista was the weaker, Andrew knew she could not long sustain this fury which was destroying them all. He must break this impasse and do it quickly. Ellemir was wrong. Damon could not break her will that way, even to save her life.

He went to Callista and knelt at her side again. He begged, “Darling, do what Damon wants!”

She whispered, the cold anger breaking so that he could see the terrible grief behind it, “Did he tell you itwould mean I could not… that he would lose even what little we have had?”

“He told me,” Andrew said, trying desperately to show somehow the aching tenderness that had swallowed up everything else in him. “But my darling, I came to love you before I had ever set eyes on you. Do you think that is all I want of you?”

Damon turned around slowly. The anger in him had melted. He looked down at them both with a deepand anguished pity, but he made his voice hard. “Have you found enough courage for this, Callista?”

She said, sighing, “Oh, courage? Damon, it is not that I lack. But what is the reason for it? You say it willsave my life. But what life have I now that is worth keeping? And I have involved you all in it. I wouldrather die now before I bring you all to where I am.”

Andrew was aghast at the bottomless despair in her voice. He made a move to take her in his armsagain, remembered that he endangered her by the slightest touch. He stood paralyzed, immobilized byher anguish. Damon came and knelt beside him. He did not touch Callista, either but nevertheless hereached for her, reached for both of them, and drew them all around him. The slow gentle pulse, the ebband flow of matched rhythms, naked in the moving dark, closely entangled them in an intimacy closer thanlovemaking.

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Damon said in a whisper, “Callista, if it were only your own decision, I would let you die. But you are somuch a part of all of us that we cannot let you go.” And from one of them, Andrew never knew whetherhimself or another, the thought wove through the multiplex joining that was their linked circle:
 
Callista,while we have this, surely it is worth living in the hope that somehow we will find a way to havethe rest.

Like surfacing from a very deep dive, Andrew came back to separate awareness again. Damon’s eyesmet his, and he did not shrink from the intimacy in them. Callista’s eyes were so bruised, so dilated withpain that they looked black in her pallid face, but she smiled, stirring faintly against his arm.

“All right, Damon. Do what you have to. I’ve hurt you all… too much already.” Her breath faded and

she seemed to struggle for awareness. Ellemir brushed a light kiss over her sister’s brow.

“Don’t try to talk. We understand.” Damon rose and drew Andrew out of the room with him.

“Damn it, this is work for a Keeper. There were male Keepers once, but I haven’t the training.”

“You don’t want to do this at all, do you, Damon?”

“Who would?” His voice was shaking uncontrollably. “But there’s nothing else to do. If she goes into convulsions again she might not live through the day. And if she did, there might be enough brain damage that she’d never know us again. The overload on all life functions—pulse, breathing— and if she deteriorates much further… well, she’s an Alton.” He shook his head despairingly. “What she did to you would be nothing to what she might do to all of us, if her mind stopped functioning, and all she knew was that we were hurting her…” He flinched with dread. “I’ve got to hurt her so damnably. But I have to do it while she’s aware, and able to control and cooperate intelligently.”

“What is it you’re afraid of? You can’t really hurt her, can you, using—what is it, psi?—on those

channels? They aren’t even physical, are they?”

Damon shut his eyes for a moment, an involuntary, spasmodic movement. He said, “I won’t kill her. Iknow enough not to do that. That’s why she has to be conscious, though. If I make any miscalculations, Icould damage some of the nerves, and they are centered around the reproductive organs. I coulddamage them just enough to impair her chances of ever bearing a child, and she can tell me better than Ican myself just where the main nerves are.”

“In God’s name,” Andrew said in a whisper, “can’t you do it while she’s unconscious? Does it
 
matter
 
if

she can have children?”

Damon looked at him in shock and horror. “You can’t possibly be serious!” he said, desperately makingallowances for his friend’s distress. “Callista is Comyn, she has
 
laran
 
. Any woman would die beforerisking
 
that
 
. This is your wife, man, not some woman of the streets!”