And so, when the news spread through the domains, there was much excited speculation, even in this most distant of remote corners in the Domains, about the question that now quickened and burned all over the Domains, from the Hellers to the Plains of Arilinn:
Who now will be Keeper of Arilinn?
And to Damon, one day soon after that, in the privacy of his own study, came his youngest daughter Cleindori.
She had been given the old fashioned name, legendary and traditional, of Dorilys:
Golden-flower
. But as a child her hair had been pale sunny gold, and her eyes so big and blue that her nurses dressed her always in blue frocks and blue ribbons; her foster-mother, Damon’s wife Ellemir, said that she looked like a blue bell of the
kireseth
flower, covered with its golden pollen. so they had nicknamed her, when she was only a toddler, Cleindori,
Golden Bell
, which was the common name for the
kireseth
flower: And as the years passed, most people had all but forgotten that Dorilys Aillard (for her mother had been a
nedestro
daughter of that powerful Domain) had ever borne any other name but Cleindori.
She had grown into a tall, shy, serious young woman, thirteen years old now, her hair sunny, copper-golden. There was Drytown blood in the Ridenow clan, and her mother’s father, too, had been, it was whispered, a Drytown bandit from Shainsa; but that old scandal had been long forgotten. Damon, looking up at the womanly body and serious eyes of his last-born daughter, felt for the first time in his life that he was approaching old age.
“Have you ridden all the way from Armida today, my child? What had your foster-father to say to that?”
Cleindori smiled and went to kiss her father on the cheek. “He said nothing, for I did not tell him,” she said gaily, “but I was not alone, for my foster-brother Kennard rode here with me.”
Cleindori had been sent to fosterage at nine years old, as the custom was in the Domains, to grow to womanhood under a hand less tender than that of a mother. She had been fostered by Valdir, Lord Alton, whose lady, Lori, had only sons and longed for a daughter to rear. There was a distant understanding that when Cleindori was old enough to marry, she might be wedded to Lord Alton’s elder son, Lewis-Arnad; but as yet, Damon supposed, there was not thought in Cleindori of marriage; she and Lewis and Valdir’s youngest son Kennard were sister and brothers. Damon greeted Kennard, who was a sturdy, broad-shouldered, grey-eyed boy a year younger than Cleindori, with a kinsman’s embrace, and said, “So I see my daughter was well-guarded on her way here. What brings you here, children? Were you hawking and late returning, and chose to ride this way, thinking there would be cakes and sweets for runaways here when there would be only the bread and water of punishment at home?” But he was laughing.
“No,” Kennard said seriously. “Cleindori said she must see you; and my mother gave us leave to ride, but I do not think she knew fully what we asked or what she answered, for there was such hullabaloo at Armida on this day, ever since the news has come.”
“What news?” Damon asked, leaning forward, but already he knew, and felt his heart sink. Cleindori curled herself up on a cushion at his feet, looking up at him. She said, “Dear father, three days ago the Lady Janine of Arilinn came riding to Armida on her search for one to bear the name and dignity of the Lady of Arilinn who is dead; the
leronis
Leonie.”
“It took her long enough to come to Armida,” Damon commented with a curl of his lip. “No doubt she had tested in all the Domains before this.”
Cleindori nodded. “I think so,” she said, “for after she knew who I was, she looked at me as if she smelled something bad, and said, ‘Since you are from the Forbidden Tower, have you been taught in any of their heresies?’ For when Lady Lori told her my name, she was angry, and I had to tell her that my mother had given me the name of Dorilys. But Janine said, ‘Well, by law I am required to test you for
laran
. I cannot deny you that.’”
She screwed up her face in imitation of the
leronis
, and Damon put his hand across the lower part of his face, as if in thought, but actually to conceal a grin; for Cleindori had a knack for mimicry and she had caught the sour tone and disapproving stare of the
leronis
Janine. Damon said, “Aye. Janine was among those who would have had me burned alive or blinded when I fought with Leonie for the right to use the
laran
gods had given me as I myself chose, and not only as Arilinn demanded. It would not make her love you, child, that you are my daughter.”
Cleindori smiled again, gaily. “I can live well enough without her love; I can well believe that she has never loved even a pet kitten! But I was trying to tell you, Father, what she said to me and what I said to her ... she seemed pleased when I told her that you had taught me nothing as yet, and that I had been fostered since I was nine at Armida; and so she gave me a matrix and tested me for
laran
. And when she had done, she said that she wanted me for Arilinn; and then she frowned and told me that she would not have chosen me for this, but that there were few others who could bear the training; and that she wished to train me as Keeper.”
Damon’s breath caught in his throat; but the cry of protest died unspoken, for Cleindori was looking up at him with her eyes shining. “Father, I told her, as I knew I must, that I could not enter a Tower without my father’s consent; and then I rode away here to ask for that consent.”
“Which you shall not have,” said Damon harshly, “not while I am above ground and unburied. Or after, if I can prevent it.”
“But Father—to be Keeper of Arilinn! Not even the Queen—”
Damon’s throat tightened. So after all these years the hand of Arilinn was reaching out again toward one that he loved. “Cleindori, no,” he said and reached out, touching her fair curls, which shone with the light of alloyed copper and gold. “You see only the power. You do not know the cruelty of that training. To be Keeper—”
“Janine told me. She said that the training is very long and very cruel and very difficult to bear. She told me something of what I must vow and what I must give up. But she said also that she thought I was capable of it.”
“Child—” Damon swallowed hard. He said, “Human flesh and blood cannot endure it!”
“Now that is foolish,” Cleindori said, “for you endured it, Father. And so did Callista, who was once Leonie’s novice-Keeper at Arilinn.”
“Have you any idea what it cost Callista, child?”
“You made sure I should know, before I was out of childhood,” Cleindori said. “And so, too, did Callista, telling me before I had come to womanhood what a cruel and unnatural life it was. I cut my teeth on that old tale of how you and Callista fought Leonie and all of Arilinn in a duel that lasted nightlong. ...”
“Has the tale grown so much?” Damon interrupted with a laugh. “It was less than a quarter of an hour; though indeed the storm seemed to rage through many days. But we fought Arilinn; and won the right to use
laran
as we would and not as Arilinn should decree.”
“But I can see, too,” Cleindori argued, “that you, who were trained in Arilinn, and Callista, too, trained in the Way of Arilinn, are superbly skilled; while those who have been taught
laran
here have fewer skills and are clumsy in the use of their gifts. And I know, too, that all the other Towers in this land still hold to the Way of Arilinn.”
“These powers and skills—” Damon paused and collected himself, trying to speak calmly, for he was shouting. Then he said, “Cleindori, since I was a young man I have believed that the Way of Arilinn—and of all the other Towers on whom the people of Arilinn force their will—is cruel and inhuman. I believe this; and I fought, laying my life as forfeit, so that men and women in the Towers need not give up all their lives to a living death, sealed within Tower walls. Such skills as we have can be learned by any man or woman, Comyn or Commoner, if they possess the inborn talent. It is like playing the lute; one is born with an ear for music and can learn the way of plucking the strings, but even for that difficult vocation no one should be asked to give up home and family, life or love. We have taught much to others; and we have won the right to teach them without penalty. A day will come, Cleindori, when the ancient matrix sciences of our world will be free to any who can use them, and the Towers will be no more needed.”
“But we are still outcaste,” argued Cleindori. “Father, if you had seen Janine’s face when she spoke of you, calling it the Forbidden Tower. ...”
Damon’s face tightened. “I do not love Janine so much that her evil opinion of me will lose me any sleep of nights.”
“But Cleindori is right,” Kennard said. “We are renegades. Here in the countryside people hold to your ways; but all over the Domains they turn only to the Towers to know of
laran
. I too am to go to a Tower, Neskaya perhaps, or perhaps to Arilinn itself, when I have done my three years’ service in the Guards; if Cleindori goes to Arilinn, they said I could not go until she had completed her years of seclusion, for a Keeper in training cannot have a foster-brother near, or anyone to whom she is bound by affection—”
“Cleindori is not going to Arilinn,” Damon said, “and there’s an end of it.” And he repeated, even more vehemently, “Human flesh and blood cannot endure the Way of Arilinn!”
“And again I say that is foolish,” Cleindori said, “for Callista endured it; and the lady Hilary of Syrtis; and Margwenn of Thendara; and Leominda of Neskaya; and Janine of Arilinn; and Leonie’s self; and nine-hundred-and-twenty-odd Keepers before her, so they say. And what they endured, I can endure if I must.”
She leaned her chin on her folded hands, looking up at him seriously. “You have told me often enough, since I was only a child, that a Keeper is responsible only to her own conscience. And that everywhere, among the best of women and men, conscience is the only guide for that they do. Father, I feel it is laid upon me to be a Keeper.”
“You can be Keeper among us, when you are grown,” said Damon, “without such torment as you must endure at Arilinn.”
“Oh!” She rose angrily to her feet and began to pace in the chamber. “You are my father, you would keep me always a little girl! Father, do you think I do not know that without the Towers of the Domains, our world is dark with barbarism? I have not been very far abroad, but I have been to Thendara, and I have seen the spaceships of the Terrans there, and I know that we have resisted their Empire only because the Towers give our world what we need, with our ancient matrix sciences. If the Towers go dark, Darkover falls into the hands of the Empire, like a ripe plum, for the people will cry out for the technology and the trade of the Empire!”
Damon said quietly, “I do not think that this is inevitable. I have no hatred for the Terrans; my closest friend was Terran-born, your uncle Ann’dra. But it is for this I am working, that when every Tower is dark, there will be enough
laran
among the populace of the Domains that Darkover may be independent, and not go begging to the Terrans. That day will come, Cleindori. I tell you, a day will come when every Tower in the Domains stands bare and empty, the haunt of evil birds of prey—”
“Kinsman!” Kennard protested swiftly, and made a quick sign against evil. “Do not say such things!”
“It is not pleasant hearing,” Damon said, “but it is true. Every year there are fewer and fewer of our sons and daughters with the power or the will to endure the old training and give themselves over to the Towers. Leonie once complained to me that she had trained six young girls and of them all, only one could complete the training to be Keeper; this was the
leronis
Hilary, and she sickened and would have died if they had not sent her from Arilinn. Three of the Towers—Janine would not tell you this, Cleindori, but I who am Arilinn-trained know it well—three of the Towers are working with a mechanic’s circle because they have no Keeper, and their foolish laws will not allow them to take a Keeper to their circles unless she is willing to be a cloistered symbol of virginity. They say her strength and her
laran
powers are less important than that she should be a virgin goddess, sequestered and held in superstitious awe. There are, at a guess, a hundred women or more in the Domains who could do the work of a Keeper, but they see no reason to undergo a training that will make them, not women, but machines for the transmission of power! And I do not blame them! The Towers will go. They must go. And when they are gone, standing bare as ruined monuments to the pride and the madness of the Comyn, the
laran
power, and the matrix stones that help us to use it, can be used as they were meant to be used; science, not sorcery! Sanity, not madness! I have worked for this all my life, Cleindori.”
“Not to overthrow the Towers, Uncle!” Kennard sounded shocked.
“No. Never that. But to be there when they have been abandoned or forsaken, so that our
laran
sciences need not perish for lack of Towers to work them.”
Cleindori stood beside him, her hand lightly on his shoulder. She said, “Father, I honor you for this. But your work is too slow, for they still call you outcaste and renegade and worse things. And that is why it is so much more important that young people like I, and like my half-sister Cassilde, and Kennard—”
Damon said, shocked, “Is Cassilde, too, going into Arilinn? It will kill Callista!” For Cassilde was Callista’s own daughter, four or five years older than Cleindori.
“She is too old to need consent,” Cleindori said. “Father, it is necessary that the Towers shall not die until the time has come, even if the day must come when they are no longer needed. And I feel it laid upon my conscience to be Keeper of Arilinn.” She held out her hand to him. “No, Father, listen to me. I know
you
are not ambitious; you flung away the chance to command the City Guard; you could have been the most powerful man in Thendara; but you threw it away. I am not like that. If my
laran
is as powerful as the Lady of Arilinn told me, I want to be Keeper in a way that will let me
do
something useful with it; more than ministering to the peasants and teaching the village children! Father, I want to be Keeper of Arilinn!”