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done?”

Leonie said, shaking, “He has destroyed the Towers. And you, Callista, you have betrayed us all!” Sheshrank from the girl, staring at her in horror. Damon, linked with her now, knew that she could
 
see
 
whathad happened to Callista, that she was a woman, loving, loved, fulfilled—not Keeper in the old sense atall, yet wielding the full power of her training and her strength. “Callista, Callista, what have you done?”

Damon answered, gently but unyielding, “We have discovered the old way of working, where a Keeperneed not sacrifice life and all the joy of living.”

Then my life was useless, my sacrifice needless
. And, with a despair Damon could neither measurenor endure:
 
Let me die now
 
.

He could see
 
through
 
her, with the new sight of a Keeper, and he saw in horror what she had done toherself. Why had he never guessed? She had sent him from the Tower to remove forever the temptationthat he might lose control and reveal his desire for her. But to remove her
 
own
 
temptation? The lawsforbade the neutering of a Comyn woman, and she had stopped short of that with Callista.

But for herself?

He said with an anguished compassion, “Not needless, Leonie. You and all those like you have kept thetradition alive, kept the matrix sciences of Darkover alive, so that some day this rediscovery might bemade. Your heroism has made it possible for our children and grandchildren to use the old scienceswithout so much suffering and tragedy. I do not want to destroy the Towers, only to take some of theburden from you, to make it possible to train others outside the Towers, so that you need not give upyour lives, so that the price need not be so cruelly high. You, and all of us who have come from Arilinnand the other Towers, have kept the flame alive, even though you fed it with your own flesh and blood.” He stood disarmed before them all, knowing they could strike him down now, but also
 
knowing
 
, withthat deep inner knowledge, that now they heard what he said.

“Now the living flame can be rekindled, and it need not feed on your very lives. Leonie”—he turned to her again, his hands held out in pleading—“if you could break under the strain, you, a Hastur, and Lady of Arilinn, then it is surely a burden too heavy for any mortal man or woman. No one alive could have borne it without breaking. Let us work, Leonie, let us go on as we have begun, so that a day will come when once again the men and women who come to the Towers can find joy in their work, not endless sacrifice and a living death!”

Slowly Leonie bowed her head. She said, “I acknowledge you Keeper, Damon. You are beyond harmor vengeance at our hands. We merit any penalty you choose to invoke.”

He said, his heart aching, “I can inflict on you no penalty greater than you have laid on yourself, Leonie,the self-chosen sentence you must continue to bear until another generation is strong enough to carry it. Avarra grant in her mercy that you will be the last Keeper of Arllinn to face such a living death, but Keeper of Arilinn you must remain, until Janine can bear the burden alone.”

And your only punishment will be to know that for you it is too late
. Torn with Leonie’s agony, heknew it had always been too late for her. It was too late when, at fifteen, she went into the Dalereuth Tower under the vows of a Keeper. He saw her receding, further and further, like a star dimming out inthe morning light. He saw the Tower of Arilinn itself receding on the fluid horizon of the overworld, till itdwindled in the distance, shone with a faint blue light, was gone. Damon and Andrew, Ellemir, and Callista were alone in the forbidden Tower, and then, with a sharp shock, the overworld too was gone,

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and they were in the suite in Comyn Castle. The peaks beyond the window were flooded with sunlight,

but the great red sun had barely cleared the horizon.

Sunrise. And the fate of the four of them, and the fate, perhaps, of all the telepaths on Darkover, hadbeen settled in an astral battle lasting less than a quarter of an hour.

Epilogue

«^

You are a fool, Damon,” said Lorenz, Lord of Serrais, with deep disgust. “You have always been a fooland you will always be a fool! You could have been regent of Alton and commanded the Guards longenough to break the hold of the Altons on that office and give it to the Domain of Serrais!”

Damon laughed good-naturedly. “But I do not want to be commander,” he said, “and now there is noneed.
 
Dom
 
Esteban is likely to live as long as needful to bring Valdir to manhood, and perhaps more.”

Lorenz looked at him with suspicion and distrust. “How did you do that? We had heard he was atdeath’s door!”

“Exaggerated,” Damon said with a shrug, knowing that this would be his lifework, to study the ways of

healing with matrix and monitor.

The principle once vindicated, it had not been difficult to go into the damaged heart, remove theblockages and restore the heart to full function. Esteban Lanart, Lord Alton, would be paralyzed for therest of his life, but a man could command the Guards from a wheeled chair. When it was needful to takethe field, young Danvan Hastur or Kieran Ridenow could command in his place. Damon was regent ofthe Domain only in name now, as a contingency against accident or ill luck. Precognition was not the maingift of either Alton or Ridenow, but he had a flash of it now, knowing that Valdir would assume thewardship of Alton as a grown man, and that he would be one of the most innovative Altons ever to rulethe Domain.

Lorenz said in disgust, “Have you no ambition at all, Damon?”

“More ambition than you can imagine,” Damon said, “but it takes a different form than yours, Lorenz. And now, I fear, we must part, since we have a long way to ride. We are returning to Armida. Ellemir’s child is next heir to the Domain, and he must be born there.”

Lorenz bowed with an ill grace. Andrew, riding just behind Damon, he ignored, but he saluted Ellemircourteously, and Callista with something like real respect. Damon turned to embrace his brother Kieran.

“You will visit us at Armida in the autumn, when you return to Serrais?”

“I will indeed,” Kieran said, “and I hope then to see Ellemir’s son. Who knows, he may command the Guards someday!” He dropped back, leaving the Guardsmen who were to accompany Damon and his party on their journey to ride ahead of them. Damon was about to give the signal for the rest to ride when he saw a slender woman, cloaked and hooded as was seemly for a
 
comynara
 
before this great company, coming down the stairs from the courtyard of Comyn Castle. Instinct told him who she was, or was it only that nothing now could have hidden Leonie of Arilinn from his sight?

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So he did not mount, but signaled to his groom to hold the horse ready and went toward her, meetingher at the foot of the steps.

“Leonie,” he said, bowing over her hand.

“I came to say farewell, and to give Callista my blessing,” she said quietly.

Andrew bowed deeply as Damon led her past, toward Callista, who stood ready to mount her graymare. Leonie raised her head, and it seemed to Andrew that the old woman’s eyes burned out from thedepths of a skull, blazing resentment at him, but she inclined her head formally, saying, “Good fortuneattend you.” She reached out her hands then, and Callista just touched her fingertips, the faintfeather-touch of telepath to telepath.

Leonie said quietly, “Take my blessing, child. You know now how deeply I mean it, and how muchgood fortune I wish for you.”

“I know,” Callista whispered. The resentment had gone. What Leonie had done had been difficult to endure, but it had made this deeper breakthrough possible, had brought her to what she now knew was the deepest possible fulfilment. She and Andrew might have come together without harm, and lived together happily, but she would have given up her
 
laran
 
forever, as it was always assumed a Keeper must do. She knew now that she would have lived the rest of her life only half alive. She raised Leonie’s fingertips to her lips and kissed them, reverently and with deep love.

It was too late for Leonie, Callista knew, but now she no longer grudged their happiness.

Leonie turned to Ellemir, making a gesture of blessing. Ellemir bowed her head, accepting withoutreturning the greeting, and Leonie turned to Damon. Again, in silence, he bowed over her hand, notraising his eyes to hers. It had all been said; there was nothing further to be said or done between them. He knew they would not meet again. Enormous, uncrossable distances lay between Arilinn and theforbidden Tower, and it had to be so. From Damon’s work a whole new science of matrix mechanicswould spring, to remove the terrible burden from the Towers. She made the gesture of blessing again,and turned away.

Damon mounted his horse in silence and they rode through the gates, Andrew riding with Callista at thehead of the party, then servants, retainers, and banner-bearers. At the end rode Damon, with Ellemir athis side. He felt that his heart would break. He had his happiness, such happiness as he had neverdeemed possible. But his happiness was built on the lives of Leonie and others like her, who had kept theknowledge alive. Cassilda, mother of the Domains, he prayed, grant that we never forget, or hold theirsacrifice lightly…

He rode with his head bent, grieving, until he saw Ellemir’s sorrowful eyes on his and knew that he mustnot continue to sorrow like this.

For the rest of his life he would remember and regret, but it must be a private grief, almost a secretluxury. Now his face must be turned firmly toward the future.

There was work to do. Work perhaps too trivial for the Towers, but important: work like the repair to
 
Dom
 
Esteban’s heart, like the work he had done to save the feet and hands of the frostbitten men. Andmore important still, testing the outer limits of who could actually be matrix-trained. Callista, as promised,had already taught Ferrika to monitor. She was an apt pupil and would learn more. And in the years tocome there would be others.

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Ellemir shifted her weight in the saddle and Damon said anxiously, “You must not tire yourself, my love.

Should you truly ride now?”

Ellemir laughed gaily. “Ferrika is waiting to order me into the horse-litter, but for now I will ride in thesunshine.”

Together they rode forward, past the servants, the piled pack animals, to where Callista and Andrewrode side by side.

As they went through the pass, Andrew took a last, fleeting look at the Terran spaceport. He mightnever see it again, but surely the Terrans would be there for the rest of his life. Perhaps Valdir’s attitudetoward the Terrans would be different, because he had known Andrew well, not as a strange alien, but aman like themselves, the husband of his sister.

But all that was the future. He turned his eyes from the spaceport without a backward look. His worldlay elsewhere now.

They rode down from the pass and the spaceport was gone. But Callista could hear the thunder of oneof the great ships, and trembled a little. It made her think, too much, of the changes which had come to Darkover, of all the changes which would come, whether she knew of them or not. But she thought that ifshe could have endured all the changes of the last year, surely she could face what would come after this. She also had work to do, sharing Damon’s work, and thinking, as well, of her coming child.

She too is being called unwanted into a world she does not want, even as I was…

But the coming world would be for her children to face. All she could do was prepare them, and try tomake a better world for them to live in. She had already begun. She reached for Andrew’s hand,enjoying the simple awareness that it could lie in hers and she felt no need or desire to pull it away. As Damon and Ellemir joined them, she smiled. Whatever changes would come, they would face themtogether.

—«»—«»—«»—

A note from the publisher concerning:

THE FRIENDS OF DARKOVER

So popular have been the novels of the planet Darkover that an organization of readers and fans hascome into being, virtually spontaneously. Several meetings have been held at major science fictionconventions, and more recently specially organized around the various “councils” of the Friends of Darkover, as the organization is now known.