I had never seen Marjorie’s room before. It was at the top of a small tower, isolated, reached by a winding stair, a wedge-shaped room with wide windows. In clear weather it would have looked out on tremendous mountain ranges. Now it was all a dismal gray, gloomy, with hard beating snow rattling and whining against the glass. Marjorie slipped off her outdoor boots and knelt by the window, looking into the storm. “It’s lucky we came in when we did. I’ve known the snow to come up so quickly you can lose your way a hundred paces from your own doorway. Lew, will Rafe be all right?”
“Of course. Just stress, maybe a touch of threshold sickness. Beltran’s tantrum didn’t help any, but it won’t last long.” Once a telepath gained full control of his matrix, and to do this he must have mastered the nerve channels, recurrences of threshold sickness were not serious, Rafe was probably feeling rotten, but it wouldn’t last.
Marjorie leaned against the window, pressing her temples to the cold glass. “My head aches.”
“Damn Beltran anyway!” I said, with violence that surprised me.
“It was Thyra’s fault, Lew. Not his.”
“What Thyra did is Thyra’s responsibility, but Beltran must bear the responsibility for losing control, too.”
My mind slid back to that strange interval within the matrix—whether it had been a few seconds or an hour I had no way of knowing—when I had sensed my father’s presence. It occurred to me to wonder if at any of the towers, Hali or Arilinn or Neskaya, they had sensed the wakening of this enormous matrix, stirring to life. My father was an extraordinary telepath; he had served in Arilinn under the last of the old-style Keepers. He must have felt Sharra’s wakening.
Did he know what we were doing?
As if following my thoughts Marjorie said, “Lew, what is your father like? My guardian has always spoken well of him.”
“I don’t want to talk about my father, Marjorie.” But my barriers had been breached and that furious parting came back to me, with all the old bitterness. He had been willing to kill me, to have his own way. He cared no more for me than a…
Mariorie said in a low voice, “You’re wrong, Lew. Your father loved you. Loves you. No, I’m not reading your mind. You were … broadcasting. But you are a loving person, a gentle person. To be so loving, you must have been loved. Greatly loved.”
I bent my head. Indeed, indeed, all those years I had been so secure in his love, he could never have lived a lie. Not to me. We had been open to one another. Yet somehow that made it worse Loving me, to risk me so ruthlessly . . .
She whispered, “I know you, Lew. You could not have lived—would you have wanted to be without laran? Without the full potential of your gift? He knew your life wouldn’t have been worth living without it. Blind, deaf, crippled … so he let you risk it. To become what he knew you were,”
I laid my head on her knees, bund with pain. She had given me back something I never knew I had lost; she had returned to me the security of my father’s love. I couldn’t look up, couldn’t let her see my face was contorted, that I was crying like a child. She knew anyway. I supposed this was my form of throwing a tantrum. Thyra disobeyed orders. Rafe got threshold sickness, Kadarin and Beltran started slamming each other … I started crying like a child….
After a time I lifted her hand and kissed the slender fingertips. She looked worn and exhausted. I said, “You must rest too, darling.” I was deeply proud of the skill with which she had seized control. She lay back against her pillows. I bent and, as I would have done at Arilinn, ran my fingertips lightly along her body. Not touching her, of course, simply feeling out the energy flows, monitoring the nerve centers. She lay quietly, smiling at the touch that was not a touch. I felt that she was still depleted, drained of energy, but that would not last. The channels were clear. I was glad she had come through this strenous beginning so well, so undamaged.