I knelt beside the bundle and began to unfasten the heavy wrappings. It was longer than my arm and narrow, and had been bundled into layer on layer of heavy canvas cloth, the layers bound and knotted with embroidered straps, Marjorie and Beltran came to look over my shoulder as I struggled with the knots. Inside the last layer of heavy canvas was a layer of raw colorless silk, like the insulation of a matrix. When I finally got it unrolled, I saw that it was a ceremonial or ornamental sword, forged of pure silver. An atavistic little prickle went down to the ends of my spine. I had never set eyes on this before. But I knew what it was.
My hands almost refused to take it, despite the thing of beauty the forge-folk had made to cover and guard it. Then I forced myself back to sanity. Was I as superstitious as Thyra thought me? I took the hilt in my hand, sensing the pulsing life within. I seized the sword in both hands and gave the hilt a hard twist.
It came off in my hand. Inside lay the matrix itself, a great blue stone, with an inner glimmer curling fires which, trained as I was, made my head reel and my vision blur.
I heard Thyra gasp aloud. Beltran had quickly turned away. If it made me, after three seasons in Arilinn, fight for control, I could imagine what it had done to him. I quickly wadded it up in the silk, then took it gingerly between my fingers. I was immensely reluctant to look, even for a moment, into those endlessly live depths. Finally I bent my eyes to it. Space wrenched, tore at me. For a moment I felt myself falling, saw the face of a young girl shrouded in flame, crimson and orange and scarlet. It was a face I knew somehow—Desideria! The old woman I had seen in Karadin’s mind! Then the face shifted, shrouded, was no more a woman but a looming, towering form of fire, a woman’s form, chained in gold, rising, flaming, striking, walls crumbling like dust. . ..
I wrapped it in the silk again and said, “Do you know what this is?”
Kadarin said, “It was used of old by the forge-folk to bring metals from the deeps of the ground, to their fires.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said. “Some of the Sharra matrices were used that way. Others were . . . less innocent. I’m not sure this is a monitored matrix.”
“All the better. We want no Comyn eyes spying on what we do.”
“But that means it’s essentially uncontrollable,” I said. “A monitored matrix has a safety factor: if it gets out of hand the monitor takes over and breaks the circle. Which is why I still have a right hand.” I held out the ugly scar. He flinched slightly and said, “Are you afraid?”
“Of this happening again? No, I know what precautions to take. But of this matrix? Yes, I am.”
“You Comyn are superstitious cowards! All my life I’ve heard about the powers of the Arilinn-trained telepaths and mechanics. Now you are afraid—”
Anger surged through me. Comyn, was I? And cowardly? It seemed that the anger pulsed, beat within me, surging up my arm from the matrix in my fist. I thrust it back into the sword, sealing it there. Thyra said, “Nothing’s gained by calling names. Lew, can this be used for what Beltran has in mind?
I found I had an incomprehensible desire to take the sword in my hand again. The matrix seemed to call me, demanding that I take it out, master it…. It was almost a sensual hunger. Could it really be dangerous, then? I put the canvas wrappings around it and gave Thyra’s question some thought.
Finally I said, “Given a fully trained circle, one I can trust, yes, probably. A tower circle is usually seven or eight mechanics and a Keeper, and we seldom handle more than fourth- or fifth-level matrices. I know this one is stronger than that. And we have no trained Keeper.”
*Thyra can do that work,” Kadarin said.
I considered it for a moment. She had, after all, drawn us all around her, taking the central position with swift precision. But finally I shook my head.