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 without returning the greeting, and Leonie turned to Damon. Again, in silence, he bowed over her hand, not raising 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 the forbidden Tower, and it had to be so. From Damon’s work a whole new science of matrix mechanics would 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 the head of the party, then servants, retainers, and banner-bearers. At the end rode Damon, with Ellemir at his side. He felt that his heart would break. He had his happiness, such happiness as he had never deemed possible. But his happiness was built on the lives of Leonie and others like her, who had kept the knowledge alive. Cassilda, mother of the Domains, he prayed, grant that we never forget, or hold their sacrifice lightly…
He rode with his head bent, grieving, until he saw Ellemir’s sorrowful eyes on his and knew that he must not 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 secret luxury. 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. And more 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 to come there would be others.
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 the sunshine.”
Together they rode forward, past the servants, the piled pack animals, to where Callista and Andrew rode side by side.
As they went through the pass, Andrew took a last, fleeting look at the Terran spaceport. He might never see it again, but surely the Terrans would be there for the rest of his life. Perhaps Valdir’s attitude toward the Terrans would be different, because he had known Andrew well, not as a strange alien, but a man 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 world lay elsewhere now.
They rode down from the pass and the spaceport was gone. But Callista could hear the thunder of one of 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 if she 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 to make 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 them together.