“I won’t risk it. She’s worked wild too long. She’s self-taught and her training could come apart under stress.” I thought of the prowling beast I had sensed when the circle formed. I felt Thyra’s eyes on me and was painfully embarrassed, but I had been disciplined to rigid honesty within a circle. You can’t hide from one another, it’s disaster to try.
“I can control her,” Kadarin said.
“I’m sorry, Bob. That’s no answer. She herself must be in control or she’ll be killed, and it’s not a nice way to die. I could control her myself, but the essence of a Keeper is that she does the controlling. I trust her powers, Bob, but not her judgment under stress. If I’m to work with her, I must trust her implicitly. And I can’t. Not as Keeper. I think Marjorie can do it—if she will.”
Kadarin was regarding Marjorie with a curious wry smile. He said, “You’re rationalizing. Do you think I don’t know you’re in love with her, and want her to have this post of honor?”
“You’re mad,” I said. “Damn it, yes, I’m in love with her! But it’s clear you know nothing about matrix circles. Do you think I want her to be Keeper in this circle? Don’t you know that will make it impossible for me to touch her? As long as she’s a functioning Keeper, none of us may touch her, and I least of all, because I love her and want her. Didn’t you know that?” I drew my fingers slowly away from Marjorie’s. My hand felt cold and alone.
“Comyn superstition,” Beltran said scornfully, “driveling nonsense about virgins and purity! Do you really believe all that rubbish?”
“Belief has nothing to do with it,” I said, “and no, Keepers don’t have to be sheltered virgins in this day and age. But while they’re working in the circles they stay strictly chaste. That’s a physical fact. It has to do with nerve currents. It’s no more superstition than what every midwife knows, that a pregnant woman must not ride too fast or hard, nor wear tight lacing in her dresses. And even so, it’s dangerous. Terribly dangerous. If you think I want Marjorie to be our Keeper, you are more ignorant than I thought!”
Kadarin looked at me steadily, and I saw that he was weighing what be said. “I believe you,” he said at last. “But you believe Marjorie can do it?”
I nodded, wishing I could lie and be done with it. A tele-path’s love life is always infernally complicated. And Marjorie and I had just found each other. We had had so very little, so very little. . . .
“She can, if she will,” I said at last, “but she must consent. No woman can be made Keeper unwilling. It is too strong a weight to carry, except by free will.”
Kadarin looked at us both then and said, “So it all hangs on Mariorie, then. What about it, Margie? Will you be Keeper for us?
She looked at me and, biting her lip, she stretched out her hands to mine. She said, “Lew, I don’t know …”
She was afraid, and small wonder. And then, like a compelling, magical dream, I remembered the morning when we had walked together through Caer Donn and shared our dreams for this world. Wasn’t this worth a little danger, a little waiting for our happiness? A world where we need not feel shame but pride for our dual heritage, Darkovan and Terran? I felt Marjorie catch the dream, too, as without a word, she slowly loosed her hand from mine and we drew apart. From this moment until our work was ended and the circle dissolved, Marjorie would stand inviolate, set apart, alone. The Keeper.
No words were necessary, but Marjorie spoke the simple words as if they were an oath sealed in fire.
“I agree. If you will help me, I will do what I can.”
Chapter FIFTEEN
For ten days the storm had raged, sweeping down from the Hellers through the Kilghard Hills and falling on Thendara with fury almost unabated. Now the weather was clear and fine, but Regis rode with his head down, ignoring the bright day.