That fear had vanished a few hours later, when she opened her eyes, still dark and bruised in her tear-stained face, and impulsively reached for me, with a caress that healed my fears. But one fear remained: could it seize us again? Could anyone, ever, be sane, after the touch of Sharra?
But for now we were without fear. Later Marjorie slept; I hoped this prolonged rest would help her recover her strength after long traveling. I moved restlessly away, peering into the storm again. Later, I knew, I must brave the outdoors to give the last of our gram and fodder to the horses.
There was something very wrong with the storm. It made me think of Thyra’s trick with the waterfall. No, that was foolish. No sane person would meddle with the weather for some private end.
But I had said it myself: Could anyone be sane, after the touch of Sharra?
I dared not even look into my matrix, check what, if anything, was behind the undiminished strangeness of the storm. While Sharra was out and raging, seeking to draw us back, my matrix was useless—worse than useless, dangerous, deadly.
I fed the horses, came back inside to find Marjorie still sleeping and knelt to kindle a fire with a little of our remaining wood supply. Food was running low, but a few days of fasting would not hurt us. Worse was the shortage of fodder for the horses. As I put some grain to cook for porridge, I wondered if I had yet made Marjorie pregnant I hoped so, of course, then caught myself with a breath of consternation. Evanda and Avarra, not yet, not yet! This journey was hard enough on her already. I felt torn, ambivalent. With a deep instinct I hoped she was already bearing my child, yet I was afraid of what I most desired.
I knew what to do, of course. Celibacy is impossible in the tower circles, except for the Keepers, and it takes an unimaginable toll of them. Yet pregnancy is dangerous for the women working in the relays, and we cannot risk interruption of their term. I suspected Marjorie would be shocked and indignant if I tried to protect her this way. I would not have had her feel otherwise. But what were we to do? At least we should talk about it, honestly and openly. It would have to be her own choice, either way.
Behind me Marjorie stirred restlessly in her sleep, cried out “No! No! Thyra, no—” and sat bolt upright, holding her hands to her head as if in wild terror. I ran to her. She was sobbing with fright, but when I got her fully awake she could not tell me what she had seen or dreamed.
Was Thyra doing this to her? I didn’t doubt she was capable of it, and now I had no faith in her scruples. Nor in Kadarin’s. I braced myself against the hurt of that. We had been friends. What had changed them?
Sharra? If the fires of Sharra could break through the discipline of years at Arilinn, what would it do to a wild telepath without it?
Marjorie said, a little wistfully, “You were a little in love with Thyra, weren’t you?”
“I desired her,” I said quietly, facing it. “That kind of thing is unavoidable in a close circle of that sort. It might have happened with any woman who could reach my mind. But she did not want it; she tried to fight against it. I, at least, knew it could happen. Thyra was trying very hard not to be aware of it.”
How much had that battle with herself damaged and disrupted her? Had I failed Thyra, too? I should have tried harder to help her confront it, face it in full awareness. I should have made us all—all—be honest with one another, as my training demanded, especially when I saw where our undisciplined emotions were leading us—to rage and violence and hate.
We could never have controlled Sharra. But if I had known sooner what was happening among us all, I might have seen the way we were being warped, distorted.
I had failed them all, my kinsmen, my friends, by loving them too much, not wanting to hurt them with what they were.