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Then she was the Leonie of today, faded, worn, ravaged by time, weeping with a helpless sound hethought would break his heart. She whispered, “Go now, Damon. Return after Midwinter, and I willguide you to where you may seek in time for Callista’s destiny and your own. But for now, if there is anypity left in you, go!”

The overworld trembled as if in a storm, vanished in grayness, and Damon found himself back in theroom at Armida. Callista was looking at him in dismay and consternation. Ellemir whispered, “Damon,my love, why are you crying?” But Damon knew he could never answer.

Needless, Cassilda and all the Gods, needless, all that suffering, his, Callista’s. Poor little Hilary’s. Leonie’s. And the pitying Avarra alone knew how many lives, how many telepaths in the Towers of the Domains, condemned to suffer…

It would have been better for the Comyn, better for all of them, he despaired, if in the Ages of Chaosevery son of Hastur and Cassilda had blown themselves to bits and their starstones with them! But theremust be an end to it, an end to this suffering!

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He clung desperately to Ellemir, reached beyond her to clutch at Andrew’s hands, at Callista’s. It wasn’tenough. Nothing would ever be enough to wipe out his awareness of all that misery. But while they wereall around him, close, he could live with it. For now. Maybe.

Chapter Fourteen

«^»

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Esteban had asked them to delay the psi work until Midwinter was past and the repairs of thestorm completed. Damon welcomed the respite, even while he felt sick with apprehension, with the needto have it over. He knew that a lot would depend on the weather. If there were another storm, Midwinterfestival would be celebrated with only the house-folk, but if the weather were fine, all the people within aday’s ride would come, and many of them would spend the night. Midwinter eve dawned red andpleasant, and Damon could see
 
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Esteban visibly brightened by the prospect. He was ashamed of hisown reluctance. A break in winter isolation meant a great deal, in the Kilghard Hills, and more to an oldman, crippled and chair-bound. At breakfast Ellemir chattered gaily about plans for the festival, taking upthe holiday spirit.

“I will set the kitchen girls to baking festival cakes, and one of the men must ride down to the South Valley and ask old Yashri and his sons to come play for the dancing. And if many are going to be sleeping overnight, we must have all the guest rooms opened and aired. And I suppose the chapel is shamefully filled with dust and dirt. I have not been down there since…” She faltered and looked away, and Callista said quickly, “I will tend the chapel, Elli, but are we to make the fire?” She glanced at her father and he said, “I dare say it’s foolishness, in this day and age, to kindle sun-fire.” He looked at Andrew, his eyebrows raised, as if, Damon thought, he expected the younger man to jeer. But Andrew said, “It seems to be one of the most universal customs of mankind, on most worlds, sir, some form of Midwinter festival marking the return of the sun after the longest night, and some form of Summer festival for the longest day.”

Damon had never thought of himself as a sentimental man, had trained himself harshly to leave the pastburied, yet now he remembered all the winters he had spent at Armida, as Coryn’s friend. He used tostand beside Coryn at Midwinter festival, with all the little girls around them, and think that if he ever hada family of his own, he would keep to this, custom. His father-in-law picked up the memory and raisedhis eyes, smiling at Damon. His voice was gruff: “I thought all you young people thought it a pagannonsense and better forgotten, but if someone can carry my chair into the court we will have it done,then, if there is enough sun for the purpose. Damon, I cannot go choose wine for the feast, so here is thekey to the cellars. Rhodri says the wine was good this year, even if I had no hand in the making.”

Andrew was returning from the daily task of inspecting the saddle horses when Callista intercepted him. “Come down and help me tend the chapel. No servant may do this, but only one connected by blood ormarriage to the Domain. You have never been down here before.”

Andrew had not. Religion did not seem to play a very great part in the daily life of the Domains, at leastnot here at Armida. Callista had tied herself up in a big apron, explaining as they went down the stairs, “This was my only task as a child; Dorian and I used to tend the chapel at festivals. Elli was neverallowed down here, because she was boisterous and broke things.”

It was easy to see Callista as a small, grave little girl, trusted to handle valuable and fragile things withoutbreaking them. She said as they went into the chapel, “I have not been home for the festival since I went

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to the Tower. And now Dorian is wedded and has two little daughters—I have never seen them either—and Domenic away in Thendara commanding the Guard, and my youngest brother in Nevarsin. I have not seen Valdir since he was a babe in arms. I do not suppose I will see him now until he is grown.” She stopped and suddenly shivered, as if she had seen something frightening.

“Is Dorian much like you and Elli?”

“No, not much. She is fair, as many of the Ridenows are. Everyone said she was the beauty of the

family.”

“I am reluctant to think all your family had defective eyesight,” Andrew said, laughing, and she colored,

leading him into the chapel.

At the center was a four-sided altar, a stone slab of translucent white stone. It looked very old. On thewalls of the chapel were old paintings. Callista pointed, explaining quietly,

“These are the Four, the old Gods: Aldones, the Lord of Light; Zandru, who works evil in the darkness; Evanda, lady of spring and growing things; and Avarra, the dark mother of birth and death.” She took up a broom and began to sweep the room, which was, indeed, very dusty. Andrew wondered if she herself believed in these gods, or whether her religious observance was merely formal. Her very contempt of religion must be something different from what he believed about it.

She said, hesitating, “I am not sure what I believe. I am a Keeper, a tenerésteis, a mechanic. We aretaught that the order of the universe does not depend upon any deities and yet… and yet who knows if itwas not the Gods who ordained these laws which built things as they are, the laws we cannot refuse toobey.” She stood quietly for a moment, then went to sweep in the corner, calling Andrew to help herbrush up the dust, gather the small dishes and vessels from the altar. In a niche on the wall was a very oldstatue of a veiled woman, surrounded by roughly sculptured children’s heads in blue stone. She said in alow voice, “Perhaps I am superstitious after all. This is Cassilda, called the Blessed, who bore a son tothe Lord Hastur, son of Light. They say that from
his
 
seven sons were descended the seven Domains. Ihave no idea whether the tale is true, or only legend or fairy-tale, or garbled memory of some old truthsomewhere, but the women of our family make offerings…” She was silent, and in the dust of theneglected altar Andrew saw a bunch of flowers, left to wither there.

Ellemir’s offering, when she thought she was to bear Damon’s child…

Silently he put his arm around Callista’s waist, feeling closer to her than at any time since the dreadfulnight of catastrophe. Many strange threads went to the making of a marriage… Her lips were moving,and he wondered if she was praying, then she raised her head, sighed and took the withered posybetween her fingers, dropping it tenderly into the pile of rubbish.

“Come, we must clean all these vessels and make the altar clean for the new fire to burn there. We must scrape all these candlesticks—how came they to leave all the dead wax in them last year, I wonder?” The gaiety was back in her voice again. “Go out to the well, Andrew, and bring in some fresh water.”

By noontime the great red disk of the sun hung clear and cloudless overhead, and two or three of thestrongest Guardsmen carried
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Esteban into the courtyard, while Damon set up the arrangement ofmirror, burning-glass and tinder which would kindle the fire in the ancient stoneware fire-pan. They couldsmell the balsam incense Callista had kindled on the altar inside, and Damon, looking at Callista and Ellemir, could almost see them as little girls in tartan dresses, their hair curling around their cheeks, solemnand well behaved. Dorian had sometimes brought her doll to the ceremony— he could not remember

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ever seeing either Callista or Ellemir with a doll. He and Coryn had stood beside
 
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Esteban for this ceremony. Now the old man could not kneel beside the fire-pan, and it was Damon who held the burning-glass, stood waiting while the brilliant focus of light crawled across the tinder and resin-needles, raising a thin trail of fragrant smoke. For a long time the spot smoldered, the smoke rising. Then a crimson spark echoed the glare of the sun in the mirror, and a tiny flame leaped to life at the center of the smoke. Damon crouched over the fire-pan, coaxing the flame, carefully feeding it with resin-needles and shavings, until it blazed up, to an accompaniment of cheers and cries of encouragement from the watchers. He handed the fire-pan to Ellemir, who carried it inside to the altar. Then, laughing and exchanging good wishes and season’s greetings, they began to leave the court, passing one by one past the old man’s chair to receive small gifts. Ellemir, standing beside him, handed them out, trinkets of silver and sometimes copper. In a few cases—the more valued servants—she gave certificates entitling them to livestock or other property. Callista and Ellemir bent one after another to kiss their father and wish him the joy of the season. His gifts to his daughters were valuable furs which they could have made into riding cloaks for the worst weather.

His gift to Andrew was a set of razors in a velvet case. The razors were made of some light metal alloy,and Andrew knew that on metal-starved Darkover this was a handsome gift. He bent, feeling awkward,and embraced the old man, feeling the whiskered cheeks against his with a curious sense of warmth, ofbelonging.

“A good festival to you, son, and a joyous New Year.”

“And to you, Father,” said Andrew, wishing he could think of more elequent words. Just the same, he felt as if he had taken another small step toward finding his place here. Callista held his hand tightly, as they went into the house to make preparation for the feast later that day.

All afternoon guests were arriving from outlying farms, from small estates nearby, many of them guests atthe wedding. Going up to dress for the festival dinner, Damon found himself exiled from his own half ofthe suite. Ellemir, drawing him into the rooms shared by Andrew and Callista, told him, “I have given ourrooms to the folk from Syrtis, Loran and Caitlia and their daughters. You and I will spend the night inhere with Andrew and Callista. I have your holiday clothes here.”

Andrew, sharing the cramped quarters in holiday spirit with Damon, lowered his shaving mirror so thatthe smaller man could look into it. He crouched, fingering the hair that had grown long on his neck. “Ishould get someone to cut my hair,” he said, and Damon laughed.

“You’re neither a monk nor a Guardsman, so you surely don’t want it any shorter than it is
 
now
 
, do you?” His own hair was trimmed smoothly, about the length of his collar; Andrew shrugged. Custom and dress were completely relative. His own hair now seemed enormously long, shaggy, unkempt, yet it was shorter than Damon’s. Shaving with the new razors, he found himself wondering why, on a freezing planet like Darkover, only old men went bearded against the cold. But then, customs made no sense.

Downstairs, looking at the hall hung with green boughs, and spiced festival cakes smelling not unlike thegingerbread of his Terran Christmases, it seemed poignantly like a childhood celebration on Terra. Mostof the guests were people he had seen at his wedding. There was a lot of dancing, and enough heavydrinking to surprise Andrew, who had thought of the Darkovan hillmen as sober people. He said so to Damon, and his brother-in-law nodded. “We are. That’s why we save our drinking for special occasions,and those occasions don’t come very often. So make the best of them. Drink up, brother!” Damon wastaking his own advice; he was already half drunk.

There were some of the boisterous kissing games he remembered from his wedding. Andrew

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remembered something he had read years ago, how urban societies with a great deal of leisure

developed highly sophisticated amusements, not needed for the rare leisure of people who spent a lot of time in hard manual work. Remembering what he had heard of frontier days on his own world, quilting parties, corn-husking bees, where hardworking farmers whiled the time with what would later be considered games for young children—bobbing for apples, blindman’s buff—he realized he should have expected this. Even here in the Great House there was plenty of hard work to be done and festivals like this were few, so if the games seemed childlike to him, it was his fault, not the fault of these hardworking farmers and ranchers. Most of the men had calloused hands betraying plenty of hard physical labor, even the noblemen. His own hands were hardened as they had not been since he left the horse ranch in Arizona, at nineteen. The women worked too, he thought, remembering the days Ellemir spent supervising in the kitchens, and Callista’s long hours in still-room and greenhouse. Both of them joined gaily in the dancing, and in the simple games. One of them was not unlike blindman’s buff, with a man and a woman blindfolded and made to seek through the crowds for one another.