I said, “Beloved, I’d rather die than hurt you, but I must know what has been going on.” I did not ask about Sharra. Her trembling was answer enough. “How did he happen to let you come to me now, after so long?”
She controlled her sobs and said, “I told him—and he knew I meant it—that unless he freed your mind, and let us be together, I would kill myself. I can still do that and he cannot prevent me.”
I felt myself shudder. It went all the way to the bone. She went on, keeping her voice quiet and matter-of-fact, and only I, who knew what discipline had made her a Keeper, could have guessed what it cost her. “He can’t control the … the matrix, the thing, without me. And under drugs I can’t do it at all. He tried, but it didn’t work. So I have that last hold over him. He will do almost anything to keep me from killing myself. I know I should have done it. But I had to”—her voice finally cracked, just a little—”to see you again when you knew me, ask you …”
I was more desperately frightened than ever. I asked, “Does Kadarin know that we have lain together?”
She shook her head. “I tried to tell him. I think he hears only what he wants to hear now. He is quite mad, you know. It would not matter to him anyway, he thinks it is only Comyn superstition.” She bit her lip and said, “And it cannot be as dangerous as you think, I am still alive, and well.”
Not well, I thought, looking at her pallor, the faint bluish lines around her mouth. Alive, yes. But how long could she endure this? Would Kadarin spare her, or would he use her all the more ruthlessly to achieve his aims—whatever, in his madness, they were now—before her frail body gave way?
Did he even know he was killing her? Had he even bothered to have her monitored?
“You spoke of a fire at Caer Donn …?”
“But you were there, Lew. You really don’t remember?”
“I don’t. Only fragments of dreams. Terrible nightmares.”
She lightly touched the horrible burn on my hand. “You got this there. Beltran made an ultimatum. It was not his own will—he has tried to get away—but I think he is helpless in Kadarin’s hands now too. He made threats and the Terrans refused, and Kadarin took us up to the highest part of the city, where you can look straight down into the city, and—oh, God, Lew, it was terrible, terrible, the fire striking into the heart of the city, the flames rising everywhere, screams…” She rolled over, hiding her head in the pillow. She said, muffled, “I can’t. I can’t tell you. Sharra is horrible enough, but this, the fire … I never dreamed, never imagined… And he said next time it would be the spaceport and the ships!”
Caer Donn. Our magical dream city. The city I had seen transformed by a synthesis of Terran science and Darkovan psi powers. Shattered, burned. Lying in ruins.
Like our lives, like our lives…. And Marjorie and I had done it.
Marjorie was sobbing uncontrollably. “I should have died first. I will die before I use that—that destruction again!”
I lay holding her close. I could see the seal of Comyn, deeply marked in my wrist a few inches above the dreadful flaming burn. There was no hope for me now. I was traitor, doubly condemned and traitor.
For a moment, time reeling in my mind, I knelt before the Keeper at Arilinn and heard my own words: “.. . swear upon my life that what powers I may attain shall be used only for the good of my caste and my people, never for personal gain or personal ends …”
I was forsworn, doubly forsworn. I had used my inborn talents, my tower-trained skills, to bring ruin, destruction on those I was doubly sworn, as Comyn, as tower telepath, to safeguard and protect.
Marjorie and I were deeply in rapport. She looked at me, her eyes wide in horror and protest. “You did not do it willingly,” she whispered. “You were forced, drugged, tortured—”