Damon answered, gently but unyielding, “We have discovered the old way of working, where a Keeper need not sacrifice life and all the joy of living.”
Then my life was useless, my sacrifice needless. And, with a despair Damon could neither measure nor 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 to herself. Why had he never guessed? She had sent him from the Tower to remove forever the temptation that he might lose control and reveal his desire for her. But to remove her own temptation? The laws forbade 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 the tradition alive, kept the matrix sciences of Darkover alive, so that some day this rediscovery might be made. Your heroism has made it possible for our children and grandchildren to use the old sciences without so much suffering and tragedy. I do not want to destroy the Towers, only to take some of the burden from you, to make it possible to train others outside the Towers, so that you need not give up your lives, so that the price need not be so cruelly high. You, and all of us who have come from Arilinn and 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, with that 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 harm or 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, he knew 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 in the morning light. He saw the Tower of Arilinn itself receding on the fluid horizon of the overworld, till it dwindled 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, 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, had been 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 fool and you will always be a fool! You could have been regent of Alton and commanded the Guards long enough 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 no need. 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 at death’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 the blockages and restore the heart to full function. Esteban Lanart, Lord Alton, would be paralyzed for the rest of his life, but a man could command the Guards from a wheeled chair. When it was needful to take the field, young Danvan Hastur or Kieran Ridenow could command in his place. Damon was regent of the Domain only in name now, as a contingency against accident or ill luck. Precognition was not the main gift of either Alton or Ridenow, but he had a flash of it now, knowing that Valdir would assume the wardship of Alton as a grown man, and that he would be one of the most innovative Altons ever to rule the 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 Ellemir courteously, 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?
So he did not mount, but signaled to his groom to hold the horse ready and went toward her, meeting her 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 gray mare. Leonie raised her head, and it seemed to Andrew that the old woman’s eyes burned out from the depths of a skull, blazing resentment at him, but she inclined her head formally, saying, “Good fortune attend you.” She reached out her hands then, and Callista just touched her fingertips, the faint feather-touch of telepath to telepath.
Leonie said quietly, “Take my blessing, child. You know now how deeply I mean it, and how much good 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.