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and sleep in the open, when suddenly, riding into a small clearing, we came on a deserted farmstead.

I wondered how anyone had ever managed to farm these bleak hills, but there were outbuildings and asmall stone house, a yard which had once been fenced, a well with wooden piping still splashing waterinto a broken stone trough in the year-all wholly deserted. I feared it had become the haunt of birds orbats, but when I forced the door open it was weathertight and almost clean.

The sun was high and warm. While I unsaddled Marjorie bad taken off her cloak and boots and wassplashing her hands in the stone trough. She said, "I am past my first sleepiness, and I have not had myclothes off since we set out. I am going to wash; I think it will refresh me better than sleep." She wassuiting action to words, pulling off her riding-skirt and fur-lined tunic, standing before me in her longheavy shift and petticoat. I came and joined her. The water was icy cold, coming straight down from amountain spring above us, but it was marvelously refreshing. I marveled how Marjorie could standbarefoot in the last melting runnels of the last night's snowfall, but she seemed not as cold as I was. Wesat in the growing warmth of the sun afterward, eating the last of the herdwomen's coarse bread. I founda tree in the yard where the former owners had fanned mushrooms, an intricate system of small woodenpipes directing water down the trunk. Most of the mushrooms were hard and woody, but I found a fewsmall new ones high up, and we

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ate them at the end of our meal, savoring their sweet freshness.

She stretched a little, sleepily. "I would like to sleep here in the sun," she said. "I am beginning to feel likesome night-bird, never coming out into the light of day."

"But I am not hardened to your mountain weather," I said, "and we may have to sleep in the open, soon

enough."

She made a mock-serious face. "Poor Lew, are you cold? Yes, I suppose we must go inside to sleep." She gathered up our heavy outer clothes and carried them. She spread them out on an old, abandonedpallet in the farmhouse, wrinkling a fastidious nose at the musty smell. I said, "It is better than dog," andshe giggled and sat down on the heap of clothing.

She had on a thick woolen shift, knee-length and with long sleeves; I had seen her far more lightlyclothed at Aldaran, but there was something about being here like this that roused an awareness that fearand weariness had almost smothered. AH during this trip she had slept within the circle of my arm, butinnocently. Perhaps because I was still recovering from the effects of Kadarin's brutal beating. Now, allat once, I was aware again of her physical presence. She felt it-we were lightly in rapport all the timenow-and turned her face a little away, color rising along her cheekbones. There was a hint of defiance asshe said, "Just the same, I am going to take down my hair and comb and braid it properly, before it getstangled like Mhari's and I have to cut it off!" She raised her arms, pulled out the butterfly-shaped claspthat held her braids pinned at the nape of her neck, and began to unravel the long plaits.

I felt the hot flush of embarrassment. In the lowlands a sister who was already a woman would not havedone this even before a grown brother. I had not seen Linnell's hair loose like this since we were littlechildren, although when we were small I had sometimes helped her comb it. Did customs really differ somuch? I sat and watched her move the ivory comb slowly through her long copper hair; it was perfectlystraight, only waved a little from the braiding, and very fine, and the sun, coming in cracks through the

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heavy wooden shutters, set it all ablaze with the glint of the precious metal. I said at last, hoarsely, "Don't

tease me, Marjorie. I'm not sure I can bear it."

She did not look up. She only said softly, "Why should you? I am here."

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I reached out and took the comb away from her, turning her face up to meet my eyes. "I cannot takeyou lightly, beloved. I would give you all honor and all ceremony."

"You cannot," she said, with the shadow of a small smile, "because I no longer ..." the words were coming slowly now, as if it were painful to speak them. "-no longer acknowledge Beltran's right to give me in marriage. My foster-father meant to give me to you. That is ceremony enough." Suddenly she spoke in a rush. "And I am not a Keeper now! I have renounced that, I will not keep myself separate from you, I will not, / will not!"

She was sobbing now. I flung the comb away and drew her into my arms, holding her to me with suddenviolence.

"Keeper? No, no, never again," I whispered against her mouth. "Never, never again-"

What can I say? We were together. And we were in love.

Afterward I braided her hair for her. It seemed almost as intimate as lying down together, my handstrembling as they touched the silken strands, as they had when I first touched her. We did not sleep for along time.

When we woke it was late and already snowing heavily. When I went to saddle the horses, the windwas whipping the snow in wild stinging needles across the yard. We could not ride in this. When I cameinside again, Marjorie looked at me in guilty dismay.

"I delayed us. I'm sorry-"

"I think we are beyond pursuit now, preciosa. But we would only have had to turn back; we cannot ride

in this. I'll put the horses into the outbuilding and give them some fodder."

"Let me come and help-"

"Don't go out hi the snow, beloved. I'll attend to the horses."

When I came in, Marjorie had kindled a fire on the long-dead hearth and, finding an old battered stonekettle discarded in a corner, had washed it, filled it at the well and put some of our dried meat to stewwith the mushrooms. When I scolded her for going into the yard-in these snow-squalls men have beenlost and frozen between their own barnyard and doorway-she said shyly, "I wanted us to have a fireside. And a ... a wedding-feast."

I hugged her close and said, "The minute he sees you my father will be delighted to arrange all that."

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"I know," she said, "but I'd rather have it here." The thought warmed me more than the fire. We ate the hot soup before the fire. We had to share one spoon and eat it straight from the old kettle. We had little fuel and the fire burned down quickly, but as it sank into darkness Marjorie whispered, "Our first fireside."

I knew what she meant. It was not the formal ceremony, di catenas, the elaborate wedding-feast for mykin, her proclamation before Comyn Council, that would make her my wife. Everywhere in the hills,where ceremonies are few and witnesses sparse, the purposeful sharing of "a bed, a meal, a fireside"acknowledges the legal status of a marriage, and I knew why Marjorie had risked losing her way in thesnow to kindle a fire and cook us up some soup. By the simple laws of the hills, we were wedded, not inour own eyes alone, but in a ceremony that would stand in the eyes of all men. I was glad she had beensure enough of me to do this

;   without asking. I was glad the weather kept us here for another night. But something was troubling me. I said, "Regis and Danilo are nearer to Thendara now than we are to Ar-ilinn, unless they have been recaptured. But neither of them

:   is a skilled telepath, and I doubt if a message has gone through. I should send a message, either to

Arilinn or to my father. I should have done it before."

>   She caught my hand as I pulled the matrix from its resting place. "Lew, is it really safe?"

"I must, love, safe or not. I should have done it the mo-

f   ment I had my matrix back. We must face the possibility that

>'   they will try again.  Beltran won't abandon his  aims so

;   quickly, and I fear Kadarin is unscrupulous." I backed off from speaking the name of Sharra aloud,

but it was there between us and we both knew it.

:   And if they did try again, without my knowledge or control, without Marjorie for Keeper, what then?

Playing with forest fire would be child's play, next to the risk of waking

/   that thing without a trained Keeper! I had to warn the towers.

She said hesitantly, "We were all in rapport. If you ... use your matrix ... can they feel it, trail us thatway?"

That was a possibility, but whatever happened to us, Sharra must be controlled and contained, or noneof us would ever be safe again. And in all these days I had sensed no touch, no seeking mind.

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I drew out the matrix and uncovered it. To my dismay, I felt a faint, twisting tinge of sickness as I gazedinto the blue depths. That was a danger signal. Perhaps during the days I had been separated from it, Ihad become somewhat unkeyed. I focused on it, steadying my mind to the delicate task of establishingrapport again with the starstone; again and again I was forced to turn my eyes away by the pain, theblurring of vision.

"Leave it, Lew, leave it, you're too tired-'*

"I cannot." If I delayed, I would lose mastery of the matrix, be forced to begin again with another stone. I fought the matrix for nearly an hour, struggling with my inability to focus it. I looked at Marjorie with regret, knowing that I was draining my strength with this telepathic struggle. I cursed the fate that had made me a telepath and a matrix mechanic, but it never occurred to me that I should abandon the struggle unfinished.

If this had-unimaginably-happened in Arilinn, I would have been given kirian or one of the otherpsi-activator drugs and helped by a psi monitor and my own Keeper. Now I had to master it alone. Imyself had made it impossible and dangerous for Marjorie to help me.

At last, my head splitting, I managed to focus the lights in the stone. Quickly, while I still had the strength, I reached out through the gray and formless spaces that we call the underworld, looking for thelight-landmark that was the relay-circle at Arilinn.

For a moment I had it. Then, within the stone, there was a wild flaring flame, a rush of savageawareness, a too-familiar surge of fiery violence ... flames rising, the great form of fire blotting outconsciousness ... a woman, dark and vital, bearing a living flame, a great circle of faces pouring out rawemotion. . . .

I heard Marjorie gasp, fought to break the rapport. Sharra! Sharra! We had been sealed to it, we werecaught and drawn to the fires of destruction....

"No! No!" Marjorie cried aloud, and I saw the fires thin out and vanish. They had never been there. They were reflected in the dying coals of our ritual marriage-fire; the eerie edge of light around Marjorie's face was only the last firelight there. She whispered, trembling, "Lew, what was it?"

"You know," I hesitated to say the name aloud, "Kadarin. And Thyra. Working directly with the sword.

Zandru's hells,

Marjorie, they are trying to use it the old way, not with a Keeper-controlled circle of telepaths in anorderly energon ring-and it's uncontrollable even that way, as we found out-but with a single telepath,focusing raw emotion from a group of untrained followers."

"Isn't that terribly dangerous?"

"Dangerous! The word's inadequate! Would you kindle a forest fire to cook your supper? Would you chain a dragon-fire to roast your chops or dry your boots? I wish I thought : they would only kill themselvesl"

•I   I strode up and down by the dead fire, restlessly listening

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•^  to the battering of the storm outside. "And I can't even warn them at Arilinn!"

"Why not, Lew?"

"So close to-to Sharra-my own matrix won't work," I said, and tried to explain how Sharra evidently

blanked out smaller matrices.

"How far will that effect reach, Lew?"

"Who knows? Planet-wide, maybe. I've never worked with anything that strong. There aren't any

precedents."

"Then, if it reached all the way to Arilinn, won't the tele-paths there know that something is wrong?"

I brightened. That might be our only hope. I staggered suddenly and she caught at my arm.

"Lew! You're worn out. Rest here by me, darling." I flung

myself down at her side, dizzy and despairing. I had not even

spoken of my other fears, that if I used my personal matrix,

v   I, who had been sealed to Sharra, might be drawn back into

that vortex, that savage fire, that corner of hell....

She knew, without my saying it. She whispered, "I can feel

it reaching for us. ... Can it draw us back, back into itself?"

t]   She clung to me in terror; I rolled over and took her to me,

holding her with savage strength, fighting an almost uncon-

';:   trollable desire. And that frightened hell out of me. I should

:'   be drained, spent, exhausted, incapable of the slightest sexual

impulse. That was frustrating, but it was normal, and I had