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He was trying to say, she realized, that because he loved her, he was willing to suffer all that pain ofdeprivation… Perhaps he did not even know, that night, how much his need had tormented her, couldstill torment her.

She tightened her fingers on his hand, remembering in despair that for a little while she had known what itwas to desire him, but now she could not even remember what it had been like. She spoke, trying tomatch his gentleness: “Andrew, my husband, my love, if you saw me bearing a heavy burden, would youweigh me down with your own burden as well? It will not lighten my suffering if I must endure yours too.”

Again the shock, strangeness, amazement, and Andrew realized, with sudden insight that in a telepathicculture, it meant something different, to share suffering.

She said, with a quick smile, “And don’t you realize that Damon and Ellemir are part of this too, and thatthey will also be miserable, if they have to share your misery?”

He was slowly making his way through that, like a labyrinth. It wasn’t easy. He had thought he had sheda great deal of his cultural prejudice. Now, like an onion, stripping off one layer seemed only to reveal adeeper layer, thick and impregnable.

He remembered waking in Ellemir’s bed to find Damon standing over him, had expected, almost craved Damon’s reproaches. Perhaps he wanted Damon to be angry because a man of his own world wouldhave been angry, and he wanted to feel something familiar. Even guilt would have been welcome…

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“But Ellemir. You simply
 
expected
 
this of her. No one consulted her, or asked if she was willing.”

“Has Ellemir complained?” Callista asked, smiling.

Hell, no, he thought. She seemed to enjoy it. And that bothered him too. If she and Damon were all thathappily married, how could she seem to get so much pleasure—damn it, so much fun—out of going tobed with him? He felt angry and guilty, and it was all the worse because he knew Callista didn’tunderstand that either.

Callista said, “But of course, when Elli and I married and agreed to live under one roof, we took that forgranted. Certainly you know that if either of us had married a man the other could not… could notaccept, we would have made certain—”

Somehow that rang a warning bell in Andrew. He did not want to think about the obvious implications ofthat.

She went on. “Until a few hundred years ago, marriage as we know it now simply did not exist. And itwas not considered right for a woman to have more than one or two children by the same man. Do thewords
genetic pool
 
mean anything to you? There was a period in our history when some very valuablegifts, hereditary traits, were almost lost. It was thought best for children to have as many different geneticcombinations as possible, to guard against the accidental loss of important genes. Bearing children to onlyone man can be a form of selfishness. And so we didn’t have marriage then, in the sense that we do now. We do not, as the Dry-Towners do, force our wives to harbor our concubines, but there are alwaysother women to share. What do you Terrans do when your wives are pregnant, if a woman is too faradvanced in pregnancy, too heavy, or weary, or ill? Would you demand that a woman violate herinstincts for your comfort?”

If it had been Ellemir asking this, Andrew would have felt he had scored a point, but as Callista said itthere was no challenge. “Cultural prejudices aren’t rational. Ours is against sleeping with other women. Yours, against sex in pregnancy, makes no sense to me, unless a woman is really ill.”

She shrugged. “Biologically, no pregnant animal desires sex; most will not endure it. If your women havebeen culturally conditioned to accept it as the price of retaining a husband’s sexual interest, I can only say I am sorry for them! Would you demand it of me after I had ceased to take pleasure in it?”

Andrew suddenly found that he was laughing. “My love, of all our worries, it seems that one is theeasiest to put off until it is at hand! Do you have a saying… can we cross that bridge when we come toit?”

She laughed too. “We say we will ride that colt when he has grown to bear a saddle. But truly, Andrew,do you Terran men—”

He said, “God help me, love, I don’t
 
know
 
what most men do. I doubt if I could ask you to do anythingyou didn’t want to. I’d probably… probably take the rough with the smooth. I guess some men wouldgo elsewhere, but make damn sure their wives didn’t find it out. There’s another old saying: what the eyedoesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.”

“But among a family of telepaths, such deceit is simply not possible,” Callista said, “and I would rather know my husband was content in the arms of someone who gave us this out of love, a sister or a friend, than adventuring with a stranger.” But she was calmer, and Andrew sensed that removing their talk from

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an immediate problem to a distant one had made it less troubling to her. He said, “I’d rather die than hurt

you.”

As he had done earlier, she lifted his fingertips to her lips and kissed them, very lightly. She said with asmile, “Ah, my husband, dying would hurt me worse than anything else you could possibly do.”

Chapter Thirteen

«^»

Andrew rode through melting snow, a light flurry still falling. Across the valley he could see the lights of Armida, a soft twinkle against the mountain mass. Damon said these were only foothills, but to Andrewthey were mountains, and high ones, too. He heard the men talking behind him in low voices and knewthat they were also looking forward to food, and fire, and home, after eight days in the far pastures,noting the damage of the great blizzard, the condition of the roads, the damage to livestock.

He had welcomed this chance to be alone with those who could not read his thoughts. He had not yetgrown wholly accustomed to life within a telepathic family, and he had not, as yet, quite learned to guardhimself against accidental intrusion. From the men he picked up only a small, slight background trickle ofthought, surface, undisturbing, inconsequential. But he was glad to be coming home. He rode through thecourtyard gates and servants came to take his horse’s bridle. He accepted this now without thought,though there were times when, stopping to think, it still disturbed him somewhat. Callista ran down thesteps toward him. He bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek, then discovered, though it was too dark in thecourtyard, that it was Ellemir he held. Laughing, sharing her amusement at his mistake, he hugged herhard and felt her mouth under his, warm and familiar. They went up the steps holding hands.

“How are all at home, Elli?”

“Well enough, though Father has grown short of breath and eats little. Callista is with him, but I would

not let you go ungreeted,” she said, giving his fingers a slight squeeze. “I’ve missed you.”

Andrew had missed her too, and guilt surged in him.

Damn it, why did his wife have to be twins? He asked, “How is Damon?”

“Busy,” she said, laughing. “He has been buried in the old records of the Domains, of those of our family who were Keepers or technicians at Arilinn or Neskaya Tower. I do not know what he is looking for, and he has not told me. In this last tenday I have seen little more of him than of you!”

Inside the hallway Andrew shrugged off his great riding cloak and gave it to the hall-steward. Rhodridrew off his snow-clogged boots and gave him fur-lined ankle-high indoor boots to put on. Ellemir on hisarm, he went into the Great Hall.

Callista was seated beside her father, but as she came through the door she broke off, laid her harpunhurriedly on a bench and came to meet him. She moved quietly, the folds of her blue dress trailingbehind her, and against his will he found himself contrasting this with Ellemir’s eager greeting. Yet hewatched her, spellbound. Every movement she made still filled him with fascination, desire, longing. Sheheld out her hands and at the clasp of those delicate cool fingertips he was baffled again.

What the hell was love anyway? he asked himself. He had always felt that falling in love with one woman

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meant falling out of love with others. Which of them was he in love with anyway? His wife… or her

sister?

He said, holding her hands gently, “I’ve missed you,” and she smiled up into his face.

Dom
Esteban said, “Welcome back, son, hard trip?”

“Not so much.” Because it was expected, he bent and kissed the old man’s thin cheek, thinking that he

looked paler, not well at all. He supposed it was to be expected. “How is it with you, Father?”

“Oh, nothing ever changes with me,” the old man said as Callista brought Andrew a cup. He took it, raised it to his lips. It was hot spiced cider, and tasted wonderful after the long ride. It was good to be home. At the lower end of the hall the women were laying the table for the evening meal.

“How is it out there?”
Dom
 
Esteban asked, and Andrew began his report.

“Most of the roads are open again, though there are heavy drift-falls, and pack-ice at the bend in the river. All things considered, there’s not much stock lost. We found four mares and three foals frozen in the shed beyond the ford. Ice had drifted over the fodder there and they had probably starved before they froze.”

The Alton lord looked grim. “A good brood mare is worth her weight in silver, but with such a storm,we might have expected more losses. What else?”

“On the hillside a day’s ride north of Corresanti, a few yearlings were cut off from the rest. One with a broken leg could not get to the shelter, was covered by a snow-slide. The rest were hungry and shivering, but they’ll do well enough, all fed and tended now, and a man left to look after them. Half a dozen calves were dead in the farthest pasture, in the village of Bellazi. The flesh was frozen, and the villagers asked for the carcasses, saying the meat was still good, and that you always gave it to them. I told them to do what was customary. Was that right?”

The man nodded. “It’s custom for the last hundred years. Stock dead in a blizzard is given to the nearestvillage, to make what use they can of meat and hides. In return they shelter and feed any livestock thatmakes its way down in a storm, and bring them back when they can. If in a hungry season they slaughterand eat an extra one, I don’t worry that much about it. I’m no tyrant.”

The serving women were bringing in the meal. The men and women of the household gathered aroundthe long table in the lower hall, and Andrew pushed
Dom
 
Esteban’s rolling-chair to his place at the uppertable, where the family sat with a few of the upper servants and the skilled professionals who managedthe ranch and the estate. Andrew was beginning to wonder if Damon would not appear at all when hesuddenly thrust open the doors at the back of the hall and, apologizing briefly to Ellemir for his lateness,came to Andrew with a welcoming smile.

“I heard in the court that you were home. How did you manage alone? I kept thinking I should have

come with you, this first time.”

“I managed well enough, though I would have been glad of your company,” Andrew said. He noted that Damon looked weary and haggard, and wondered what the other man had been doing with himself. Damon volunteered nothing, beginning to ask questions about stock and fodder sheds, storm damage, bridges and fords, as if he had never done anything in his life except help to manage a horse ranch. While they talked ranch business with
Dom
 
Esteban, Callista and Ellemir talked softly together. Andrew found

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himself thinking how good it would be when they were all alone together again, but he did not grudge the time spent with his father-in-law on the ranch affairs. He had feared, when he first came here, that he would be received only as Callista’s husband, penniless and alien, useless for the strange affairs of a strange world. Now he knew that he was accepted and valued as a born son and heir to the Domain would have been.

The business of repairs to buildings and bridges, of replacements for lost stock, occupied most of themeal. The women were clearing away the dishes when Callista leaned over and spoke in an undertone toher father. He nodded permission, and she stood up, rapping briefly on the edge of a metal tankard forattention. The servants moving in the hall looked at her respectfully. A Keeper was the object of almostsuperstitious reverence, and though Callista had given up her formal status, she was still looked on withmore than ordinary respect. When the hall was perfectly quiet, she spoke in her soft, clear voice, whichnevertheless carried to the furthest corners of the hall: “Someone here without authority, has beentrespassing in my still-room and has taken some of an herb from there. If it is returned at once, and nounauthorized use made of it, I will assume that it was taken by mistake, and not pursue the matter anyfurther. But if it is not returned to me by tomorrow morning, I will take any action I think suitable.”