For a moment he thought it was the aftermath of bad whiskey, or that his overloaded mind had cracked. Then Taniquel made an uncontrollable sound of dismay and pity and flung herself down on her knees beside the filthy pallet where he was lying. And then he knew they were really there.
He rubbed a hand over his unshaven chin, wet his cracked lips with his tongue. His voice wouldn’t obey him.
Rannirl said, “Did you really think we would let you go like this,
bredu
?” He used the inflection that made the word mean
beloved brother
.
Kerwin said thickly, “Auster—”
“Doesn’t know everything,” Kennard said. “Jeff, can you listen to us sensibly now, or are you still too drunk?”
He sat up. The squalor of the hideout room, the empty bottle at the foot of the tangled blanket, the ache, still sharp, in the neglected knife wound, seemed all part of the same thing, his own misery and defeat. Taniquel was holding his hand, but it was the monitor’s touch of Neyrissa that he felt on his mind.
“He’s sober enough,” she said.
He looked around at them. Taniquel, her firm little fingers pressing his; Corus, looking troubled, almost tearful; Rannirl, troubled and friendly; Kennard, sad and concerned; Auster, bitterly aloof.
Elorie, her face a white mask, the eyes red and swollen; Elorie, in tears!
Kerwin sat up, gently letting Taniquel’s hand go. He said, “Oh, God, why must we go through all this again? Didn’t Auster tell you?”
“He told us a lot of things,” Kennard said, “all rooted in his own fears and prejudices.”
“I don’t even deny that,” Auster said. “I ask if the fears and prejudices weren’t justified. That spy—what did Jeff say his name was? Ragan. He’s another of them. It’s fairly obvious—damnt it, I
recognize
the man. I’d swear he’s a
nedestro
of Comyn, maybe Ardais or even Aldaran! With Terran blood. Just right to spy on us. And Jeff—He could even come through the Veil! And fool Kennard on telepathic interrogation!”
Rannirl said angrily, “I think you see Terran spies under every pillow, Auster!”
Taniquel reached for Kerwin’s hand again. She said, “We can’t let you go, Jeff. You’re one of us, you’re a part of ourselves. Where will you go? What will you do?”
Kennard said, “Wait, Tani. Jeff, bringing you to Arilinn was a calculated risk; we knew that before we called you through the matrix, and we all agreed on the risk. And it was more than that. We wanted to strike a blow against dark magic and taboo, take a first step toward making matrix mechanics a science, not a—thing of sorcery. To prove it could be learned by anyone, not by a sacrosanct—priesthood.”
“I don’t know that I agree with Kennard on that,” Neyrissa said. “I want no shadow of the Forbidden Tower, with their dirty ways and their forsworn Keepers, to touch Arilinn. But we’ve reclaimed Arilinn; and Jeff, Tani is right, you’re one of us. We all agreed on the risk.”
“But can’t you understand?” Kerwin’s voice broke. “I’m
not
willing to take the risk. Not when I’m not sure that I’m—I’m a free agent, not a planted spy; when I don’t know what they might make me do. When they might make me destroy you.”
“Maybe
this
was how you were meant to destroy us,” Corus said, and his voice was bitter. “To make us trust you—and then, when we can’t work without you, to walk out on us.”
“That’s a damnably unfair way of putting it, Corus,” Jeff said hoarsely. “I’m trying to save you; I can’t be the one to destroy you!”
Taniquel bent her head and put her cheek against his hand. She was crying without a sound. Auster’s face was hard. “Kerwin is right, Kennard, and you know it. He’s got guts enough to want to do the right thing, anyway. And you’re only hurting us all by prolonging this.”
Kennard stood leaning heavily on his stick, looking down at them all with contempt, with lip-biting repressed anger.
“Cowards, all of you! Now that we have a chance to
fight
this damned nonsense! Rannirl, you know what’s right! You’ve said it yourself—”
Rannirl clenched his teeth. He said, “My private beliefs are one thing; the will of the Council is another. I refuse to make a political statement about my career in Arilinn. I’m a technician, not a diplomat. Jeff is my friend. I gave him my knife. I call him brother, and I will defend him against his enemies. He doesn’t have to go back to the Terrans. Jeff—” He turned to the man on the bed and said, “When you leave here, you don’t need to go back to the Terrans; go to my family home in the Kilghard Hills. Ask anyone where to find Lake Mirion. Tell anyone there that you are my sworn brother; show them the knife I gave you. When this is settled, perhaps you can come back to Arilinn.”
“I didn’t think you were such a coward, Rannirl,” Kennard said. “Defend him here, why don’t you? If he needs a home, Armida is his; or, as Cleindori’s child, Mariposa Lake. But isn’t there anyone with the guts to stand up for him at Arilinn? He’s not the first Terran—”
“You’re too damn transparent, Kennard,” Auster said. “All you care about is getting that half-caste boy of yours into Arilinn some day, and you’ll even put up with a Terran spy to create a precedent! Can’t your damned son make it into Arilinn on his own merits, if he has any? I don’t wish Jeff any harm now; Zandru seize this hand—” he laid it briefly on the hilt of his dagger—“if I wish him any harm. But he must not return to Arilinn; we cannot risk a Terran spy actually within a matrix circle. If he returns to Arilinn, I will go.”
“And I,” said Neyrissa. Rannirl, looking bitterly ashamed, said, “I am sorry. So will I.”
“Cowards,” Corus flung at them fiercely. “The Terrans have broken our circle after all, haven’t they? They didn’t need to make Jeff their spy. They just had to make us suspect him!”
Kennard shook his head in disbelieving disgust. He said, “Are you really going to do this, all of you?”
Kerwin wanted to cry out:
I love you all, stop torturing me this way!
He said thickly, “Now that you know it can be done, you’ll find someone to take my place.”
“Who?” Elorie asked bitterly. “Kennard’s half-caste son? He’s not ten years old yet! Old Leominda from Neskaya? The Heir to Hastur, who’s only four years old, or the Heir to Elhalyn, who’s nine years old and not much better than a half-wit? My madman of a father, perhaps? Little Callina Lindir from Neskaya?”
Kennard said, “We went all over this when we decided to bring Jeff here. In all the Seven Domains we could find no other candidates. And now, when we have a fully qualified and functioning Keeper’s Circle at Arilinn, you are going to throw that away and let Jeff go? After all we went through to get him here?”
“No!” Elorie startled them all with her cry. She flung herself forward; afraid she would fall, Kerwin put out a hand to catch her. He would have let her go at once, respectfully, but she clung to him, her arms tightening around him. Her face was whiter than when she had collapsed in the matrix chamber.
“No,” she whispered. “No, Jeff, no, don’t go! Stay with us, Jeff, whatever happens—I beg you, I can’t bear to see you go—”
For an instant Kerwin held her tight, his own face like death. He whispered, under his breath, “Oh, Elorie, Elorie ...” But then, steeling himself, he put her gently away.
“Now do you see why I must go?” he said, almost in a whisper, speaking to her alone. “I
must
go, Elorie, and you know it was well as I. Don’t make it harder for me.”
He saw shock, anger, compassion, accusation dawning in the faces all around him. Neyrissa came to take Elorie away, murmuring to her, but Elorie flung off her hand. Her voice was high and shrill.
“No. If this is what Jeff has decided, or what you force on him, then I have decided too, and it is over. I—I can’t give up my life for it this way anymore!” She faced them all, her eyes enormous, looking like bruises in her pale face.
“But Elorie, Lori,” Neyrissa pleaded. “You know why you cannot withdraw, you know how much you are needed—”
“And what am I, then? A doll, a machine to serve the Comyn and the Tower?” she cried, her voice high and hysterical. “No. No. It’s too much! I cannot stand it, I renounce it—”
“Elorie—
breda
,” Taniquel pleaded. “Don’t say that—not like this, not now, not here! I know how you feel, but—”
“You say you know how I feel! You dare to say that to me, you who have lain in his arms and known his love! Oh, no, you have not denied yourself, but you are all too ready to tell me what I must do—”
“Elorie,” Kennard’s voice was tender. “You don’t know what you are saying. I beg of you, remember who you are—”
“I know who I am supposed to be!” she cried, sounding frantic, beside herself. “A Keeper, a
leronis
, a sacred virgin without mind or heart or soul or life of my own, a machine for the relays—”
Kennard closed his eyes in agony, and Kerwin, looking at the old man’s face, seemed to hear words spoken like this, years before, and saw, mirrored in Kennard’s mind and memory, the face of his mother.
Cleindori. Oh, my poor sister!
But aloud Kennard only said, very gently, “Lori, my darling. Everything you suffer, others have suffered before you. When you came to Arilinn, you knew it would not be easy. We cannot allow you to renounce us, not now. Another Keeper is being trained, and when that day comes you can be freed. But not now,
chiya
, or you throw away all we have done.”
“I cannot! I cannot live like this!” Elorie cried. “Not now, when at last I know what it is I swore to renounce!”
“Lori, my child—” Neyrissa said softly, but Elorie turned on her like a fury. “You have lived as you saw fit, you found freedom, not slavery in the Tower! For you it was a refuge; for me it has never been anything but a prison! You and Tani both, you are quick to urge me to give up forever what you have known, love and shared joy and children—” her voice broke. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know, and now—” She flung herself into Jeff’s arms again; he could not put her away.
Auster said in a low voice, staring at Elorie in horror, “This is worse treachery than the Terrans could ever compass. And to think, Jeff, that I believed you had done this innocently!”
Rannirl shook his head, staring at them in dismay. He said in a low, vicious voice, “I gave you my knife. I called you brother. And you have done this to us, done this to
her
!” He spat. “There was a day when the man who seduced a Keeper would be torn on hooks, and the Keeper who violated her oath—” He could not continue. He was too angry. “And so history repeats itself—Cleindori and this filth of a Terran!”
“You said it yourself,” Elorie cried out in torment. “You said that any mechanic could to a Keeper’s work, that a Keeper was an anachronism, that Cleindori was right!”
“What I believe, and what we can do at Arilinn, are two different things,” he spat at her, contemptuously. “I had not believed you were such a fool! Nor did I think you weak enough to go whoring after this handsome Terran who has seduced us all with his charming ways! Yes, I too was charmed by him—and he used this, damn him, he used it to break the Tower!” Rannirl swore, turned his back on them.
“Dirty bitch,” Neyrissa said, and raised her hand to slap Elorie. “No better than that dirty old man, our father, whose filthy lecheries—”
Kennard moved swiftly to grab Neyrissa’s hand in midair. “What? Lay a hand on your Keeper?”
“She has forfeited that,” said Neyrissa, curling up her lip in contempt.
Auster said, staring somberly at them, “In days past, it would have been death for you, Elorie—and death by torture for
him
.
In shock and dismay Kerwin realized the mistake they were making; for Elorie was clinging to him, white and terrified, her face hidden against his breast. He stepped forward quickly, to deny the accusation, to reaffirm Elorie’s innocence. The words were already on his lips:
I swear that she has been sacred to me, that her chastity is untouched
—
But Elorie flung back her head, white and defiant. “Call me what you will, Neyrissa,” she said. “All of you; it’s no use. I have renounced Arilinn; I proclaim myself unfit to be Keeper by Arilinn’s laws—”
She turned then to Kerwin, sobbing bitterly, and flung her arms around him again, hiding her face on his breast. The words still unspoken—
This is only an innocent girl’s fantasy. I have not betrayed her, or you
—died forever on his lips. He could not rebuff or repudiate her now; not as he saw the shock and disbelief on their faces changing to revulsion and disgust. She was clinging helplessly, holding herself to him with desperate force, her whole body shaken with her weeping.
Deliberately, accepting, he bowed his head and faced them, his arms sheltering Elorie.
“They should die for this!” Auster cried.
Rannirl shrugged. “What’s the use? They’ve sabotaged everything we tried to do, everything we’ve accomplished. Nothing we could do now would make any difference. Wish them joy of it!” He turned his back on them and walked out.
Auster and Corus followed; Kennard lingered a moment, his face lined and miserable with despair. “Oh, Elorie, Elorie,” he said in a whisper, “if you had only come to me, warned me in time—” and Kerwin knew that he was not speaking to Elorie, but to a memory. But she did not raise her head from Jeff’s breast and after a time Kennard sighed, shaking his head and went away.
Stunned, still shaken by the force of her lie, Kerwin heard the door closing behind them. Elorie had quieted a little; now she began to weep again, brokenly, like a child; Kerwin held her in his arms, not understanding.
“Elorie, Elorie,” he entreated. “Why did you do it? Why did you lie to them?”
Sobbing and laughing at once, hysterical, Elorie leaned back to look at him. “But it wasn’t a lie,” she sobbed. “I couldn’t have lied to them again! It was my being Keeper that had become a lie, ever since I touched you—oh, I know you would never have touched me, because of the law, because of the taboo, and yet when I spoke to them they knew I was telling the truth! Because I had come to want you so, to love you so, I couldn’t have endured it, to turn myself into a robot again, a machine, a dead-alive automation as I did before—” Her sobbing almost drowned out the words. “I knew I could never endure it again, to go on being Keeper—and when you went away, I thought at first without you there I could perhaps go back to being what I was, but there was nothing, nothing anymore in my world, and I knew that if I never saw you again, I would be more dead than alive—”