“I feel as if I were drugged with kirian!”
She laughed, a silvery peal. “But the kireseth no longer blooms in these hills, Lew. It’s all real. Or it can be.”
I began as I had promised later that day. Kadarin had not returned, but the rest of us gathered in the small sitting room.
I felt nervous, somehow reluctant. It was always nerve-racking to work with a strange group of telepaths. Even at Arilinn, when the circle was changed every year, there was the same anxious tension. I felt naked, raw-edged. How much did they know. What skills, potentials, lay hidden in these strangers? Two women, a man and a boy. Not a large circle. But large enough to make me quiver inside.
Each of them had a matrix. That didn’t really surprise me since tradition has it that the matrix jewels were first found in these mountains. None of them had his or her matrix what I would call properly safeguarded. That didn’t surprise me either. At Arilinn we’re very strict in the old traditional ways. Like most trained technicians, I kept mine on a leather thong around my neck, silk-wrapped and inside a small leather bag, lest some accidental stimulus cause it to resonate.
Beltran’s was wrapped in a scrap of soft leather and thrust into a pocket. Marjorie’s was wrapped in a scrap of silk and thrust into her gown between her breasts, where my hand had lain! Rafe’s was small and still dim; he had it in a small cloth bag on a woven cord around his neck. Thyra kept hers in a copper locket, which I considered criminally dangerous. Maybe my first act should be to teach them proper shielding.
I looked at the blue stones lying in their hands. Marjorie’s was the brightest, gleaming with a fiery inner luminescence, giving the lie to her modest statement that Thyra was the stronger telepath. Thyra’s was bright enough, though. My nerves were jangling. A “wild telepath,” one who has taught himself by trial and error, extremely difficult to work with. In a tower the contact would first be made by a Keeper, not the old carefully-shielded leronis of my father’s day, but a woman highly trained, her strength safeguarded and disciplined. Here we had none. It was up to me.
It was harder than taking my clothes off before such an assembly, yet somehow I had to manage it. I sighed and looked from one to the other.
“I take it you all know there’s nothing magical about a matrix,” I said. “It’s simply a crystal which can resonate with, and amplify, the energy-currents of your brain.”
“Yes, I know that,” said Thyra with amused contempt “I didn’t expect anyone trained by Comyn to know it, though.”
I tried to discipline my spontaneous flare of anger. Was she going to make this as hard for me as she could?
“It was the first thing they taught me at Arilinn, kinswoman, I am glad you know it already.” I concentrated on Rafe. He was the youngest and would have least to unlearn.
“How old are you, little brother?”
“Thirteen this winter, kinsman,” he said, and I frowned slightly. I had no experience with children—fifteen is the lowest age limit for the Towers—but I would try. There was light in his matrix, which meant that he had keyed it after a fashion.
“Can you control it?” We had none of the regular test materials; I would have to improvise. I made brief contact. The fireplace. Make the fire flame up twice and die down.
The stone reflected blue glimmer on his childish features as he bent, his forehead wrinkling up with the effort of concentration. The light grew; the fire flamed high, sank, flared again, sank down, down …
“Careful,” I said, “don’t put it out. It’s cold in here.” At least he could receive my thoughts; though the test was elementary, it qualified him as part of the circle. He looked up, delighted with himself, and smiled.
Marjorie’s eyes met mine. I looked quickly away. Damn it, it’s never easy to make contact with a woman you’re attracted to. I’d learned at Arilinn to take it for granted, for psi work used up all the physical and nervous energy available. But Marjorie hadn’t learned that, and I felt shy. The thought of trying to explain it to her made me squirm. In the safe quiet of Arilinn, chaperoned by nine or ten centuries of tradition, it was easy to keep a cool and clinical detachment. Here we must devise other ways of protecting ourselves.