She said, “At least he was buried as a full member of the Comyn, with all honors; even Lord Ardais came to do him honor, and Regis Hastur.” I started to say something bitter— what good is the honor of the dead?—then held my peace; if Linnell could find comfort in that, I was glad. Life went on.
“Lew, would you be very upset if Derik and I were married soon after Festival?”
“Upset? Why, breda? I would be glad for you.” That marriage had been in the air since Linnie put away her dolls. Derik was slow-witted and not good enough for her, but she loved him, and I knew it.
“But—I should still do mourning for—for Kennard, and for my brother—”
I reached over, clumsily, letting go of the reins for a moment, to pat her on the shoulder. “Linnie, if Father or Marius is anywhere where they can know about it—” which I did not believe, at least not most of the time, but I would not say that to Linnell—“do you think their ghosts could be jealous of your happiness? They loved you and would be glad to see you happy.”
She nodded and smiled at me.
“That’s what Callina told me; but she is so unworldly. I wouldn’t want people to think I wasn’t paying proper respect to their memory—”
“Don’t you worry about that,” I said. “You need kinsmen and family, and now more than ever; without foster-father or brother, you should have a husband to look after you and love you. And if anyone says anything suggesting you are not properly respecting them, you send that person to me and I will tell them so myself.”
She blinked back tears and smiled, like a rainbow through cloud. “And you are the Lord of the Domain now,” she said, “and it is for you to say what mourning shall be held. And Callina is Head of my Domain. So if both of you have given permission, then I will tell Derik. We can be married the day after Festival. And at Festival, Callina’s to be handfasted to Beltran—”
I stared at her, open-mouthed. In spite of all, was the Council still bent on this suicidal madness?
I must certainly see Callina, and there was no time for delay.
Andres asked me, as we rode through the gates of the city, if I would come and speak to the workmen who had been hired to repair the town house. I started to protest—I had always obeyed him without question—and suddenly I recalled that I need not, now, even explain myself.
“You see to it, foster-father,” I said. “I have other things I must do.”
Something in my voice startled him; he looked up, then said in a queerly subdued voice, “Certainly, Lord Armida,” and inclined his head in what was certainly a bow. As he rode away, I identified what had been in his tone; he had spoken to me as he had always spoken to my father.
Linnell’s eyes were still red, but she looked peaceful. I said, “I must see Callina, sister. Will she receive me?”
“She’s usually in the Tower at this time, Lew. But you could come and dine with us—”
“I would rather not wait that long, breda. It’s very urgent.” Even now I could still feel the prickling, as if Kadarin were watching me behind some clump of trees or from some dark and narrow alleyway. “I will seek her out there.”
“But you can’t—” she began, then stopped, remembering: I had spent three years in a Tower.
I had never been in the Comyn Tower before, though I had come to the Castle every summer of my life except for the Arilinn years. I had spoken to the technicians in the relays, but I did not think there were many living telepaths who had actually stepped through the insulating veils. And even among those who kept the relays going, I did not think there were many who had ever seen the ancient Keeper, Ashara. Certainly my father said she had not been seen in the memory of anyone he had ever known. Maybe, I thought, there was no such person!
Perhaps Callina knew I was coming; she met me and beckoned me softly through the relay chamber—I noted that there was a young girl at the screen, but I did not recognize her— and through an inner chamber into what must have been the ancient matrix laboratory—at least that is what we would have called it at Arilinn. I could believe it had been built long before that, in the Ages of Chaos or before; there were matrix monitor screens, and other equipment the use of which I had not the foggiest notion. I found I did not like to think of the level of matrix it would have taken to use some of these things. I could feel the soothing vibrations of a specially modulated telepathic damper which filtered out telepathic overtones without inhibiting ordinary thought. There was an immense panel about whose molten-glass shimmer I could not even make guesses; it might have been one of the almost-legendary psychokinetic screens. Among all these things were the ordinary prosaic tools of the matrix mechanic’s art; cradles, lattices, blank crystals, a glass-blower’s pipe, screwdrivers and soldering irons, odd scraps of insulating cloth. Beyond them she motioned me to a seat.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said, “ever since I heard that they got away with the Sharra matrix. I suppose it was Kadarin?”
“I didn’t see him,” I said, “but no one else could have touched it without killing me. I’m still here—worse luck!”
“You’re still keyed into it, then? It’s an illegal matrix, isn’t it?”
“It’s not on the screens at Arilinn,” I said. They had found that out when Marjorie died. But this was an older Tower; some memory of it might linger here. She said, “If you can give me the pattern, I’ll try to find it.” She led me to the monitor screen, flashing with small glimmers, one for every known and licensed matrix on Darkover. She made a gesture I remembered; I fumbled one-handed with the strings of the matrix crystal around my neck, averted my eyes as it dropped into her hand, seeing the crimson fires within…It still resonated to the Sharra matrix; it was no good to me.
And while I bore it, anyone with the Sharra matrix could find me… and it seemed, though it could have been my imagination, that I could feel Kadarin, watching me through it…
She took it from me, matching resonances so carefully that there was no shock or pain, and laid it in a cradle before the screen. The lights on the screen began to wink slowly; Callina leaned forward, silent, intent, her face shut-in and plain. At last she sighed. “It’s not a monitored matrix. If we could monitor and locate it, we might even destroy it—though destroying a ninth-level matrix is not a task I am eager to attempt, certainly not alone. Perhaps Regis—” she looked thoughtfully at my matrix, but she did not explain and I wondered what Regis had to do with it. “Can you give me the pattern? If the others—Kadarin, Thyra—were using matrixes which resonated to Sharra—”
“Thyra, at least, was a wild telepath. I don’t know where she got her matrix, but I’m sure it’s not a monitored one,” I said. I supposed she had it from old Kermiac of Aldaran; he had been training telepaths back in those hills since before my father was born. If he had lived, the whole story of the Sharra circle would have been different. I tried to show her the pattern against the blank screen, but only blurs swirled against the blue surface, and she gestured me to take up my own matrix and put it away.
“I shouldn’t have let you try that, so soon after a head injury. Come through here.”
In a smaller, sky-walled room, I relaxed, in a soft chair, while Callina watched me, aloof and reflective. She said at last, “Why did you come here, Lew? What did you want from me?”
I wasn’t sure. I did not know what, if anything, she could do about the ghost-voice in my mind, my father’s voice. Whether a true ghost or a reverberation from brain-cells injured in his dying grip on my mind, it would fade away at last; of that I was certain. Nor could she do anything much about the fact that the Sharra matrix was in the hands of Kadarin and Thyra, and that they were here in Thendara. I said harshly, “I should never have brought it back to Darkover!”
“I don’t know what choice you had,” she pointed out reasonably. “If you are keyed into it—”
“Then I shouldn’t have come back!”